Barbell Shrugged - Episode 18 - Opening a CrossFit gym, Supplements, Weightlifting Belts and Straps w/Justin Metts

Episode Date: July 17, 2012

Opening a CrossFit gym, Supplements, Weightlifting Belts and Straps w/Justin Metts

Hey guys, this is CTP with Barbell Shrug. For the video version of all these podcasts, go to our website, fitter.tv. That's F-I-T-R dot TV. Check out the video version of all of them. They're a lot cooler. They're super juicy and tasty. And welcome to another edition of Rory. I like it.

You're here for another episode of Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson and Chris Moore. Hello. And our guest, Justin Metz. Justin is one of the owners of Rotary Strength and Conditioning, home of CrossFit Eastern Shore. Correct. And that is a relatively new gym.

Yeah. Kind of and kind of not. So can you go into how it's new and how it's not? Yeah. It's been around for a while, but not as we are now, I guess. When I moved down to Alabama from, obviously, well, I'm originally from here. So I know you guys. And when I moved down from Alabama, I was wanting to start my own thing.

And there was a gym that I got a hold of and was talking to some people and just kind of training there just to kind of work out and train people when I first got there. And then the owners or the people that were running it kind of split and it was pretty much one guy. And the people that left kind of took like almost all the clients with them. They kind of have like a little bit bitter.

Yeah, well, I actually don't know those people, so it's hard to talk about people you don't know. But I kind of came in right at the right time. I've got no problem with them. Jason Odom, who is really the guy that started it, the main owner, he was ready, I guess, to kind of give it up. And I was like, man, we can do this. He's like, I can't do this with one person. Like we've got like two bars and nothing, you know? So, uh, we

just kind of started from scratch. And I think we had maybe when it all happened, maybe like six members, like not even enough to pay rent. So, um, how long ago was that? That was actually about, about a year ago. and we went for about six months or so and couldn't really get over 20 people just because we didn't really have the facilities you know we're getting some equipment slowly with a little bit of money that um went and got a loan for and stuff but um about the last six months or so it's really picked up and we've you know we're over 40 members now so um i don't really know why you know we finally had the equipment in um i guess it's kind of word of mouth the couple people that we did have in there were

kind of really close knit and just kind of grew that way it's still just the two of y'all coaching uh with my wife elise and and then Jason and I, yeah. And I quit my full-time job here a couple months ago. Sweet. So we've had, yeah. Not for really good reasons, but. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter, man. There are positives in it, I guess.

And yeah, it's just been kind of going from there. It seems like every one of these places has its own threshold you have to seek out. And you have to just do absolutely whatever it takes to keep searching out the threshold where shit will start happening and popping. And then the equipment kind of starts taking care of itself. And the people start advertising enough for you to where more and more people come through the door. It's like if you just survive the vicious in the weeds first little phase of your efforts then eventually it starts happening i think i think a lot of gym owners they'll they have like a a regular full-time job and then you know they have the gym on the side and their their

dream is usually i want to quit my full-time job and i want to coach yeah but making that making that jump to go from and a lot of times they have kids and they're married and stuff like that, and that's really, really tough. And to make that transition, you're going to have to be poor for a while, I think. Doug and I used to live in the gym, like above the office. Couldn't even stand up in our bedroom. Yeah, because there were nails coming through the ceiling. Right, yeah. We just hoped that we didn't have a nightmare and sat up too fast.

You know what I mean? I had that one time. I sat up and hit the bridge of my nose on one of the metal rafters. Oh, I thought you were being metaphorical. You were being literal. Oh, yeah. This is absolutely literal. We slept in a cave with spiders.

It was kind of what it was like. And the old gym was really awesome in a lot of ways but really gnarly and very rugged and primitive if code enforcement came in we'd been shut down it was it was a it was old building like a old 60s era garage right wooden structure garage with like a concrete and beam structure bolted to the side of it i I love y'all's old place, man. It was really hardcore, and not a bad part of town, but really nothing to showcase. Yeah, probably hard to... If you looked at the walls in the back,

they were angled back a little bit. Like, we're waiting for that fucking building to fall down. It wasn't exactly a place you'd bring, I guess, mainstream soccer mom clients. But people who wanted just action loved it, though. I mean, no one who was a frequent client had any problems at all with that place. And we loved training there. Fuck, man, you got married there, right?

Yeah. I know. We have a lot of memories there. Justin was the DJ for the wedding there. Yeah. We had awesome times at that place. But, yeah, you had to be really focused to keep your eye on the prize that would come a couple years later.

Yeah. So you had like a transition. You quit your job. It just wasn't paying what it needed to pay. Yeah, it's kind of a long story, not really worth telling, but I had a really good job up here. Everybody knows that feeling, dude. Yeah, and it kind of went from making a lot of money up here,

and we wanted to get out of here to raise our family. Because Memphis, no, I'm just kidding. I'm not going to talk about Memphis. And it was a miracle. The first person I called, like the first place I called, I got a job at. I was like, oh, this is great. It was pretty much the same thing I was making down there. It was like a dream.

And, yeah, it wasn't. More like a nightmare is great it was like pretty much the same thing I was making down there I was like it was like a dream and yeah it wasn't more like a nightmare so it really went downhill quick and then a couple things happened like with insurance and stuff like that it's kind of the last straw and we just realized I just need to quit it's not worth it so and so did you quit that job kind of like is that when the gym started picking up or the gym had already started picking up um but i think it has it's definitely it's continued to pick up um as and i think it's because we've been able to pick up some more classes and we've got more people there it's you know it used to be one person we had to delegate like all right i gotta work you got this going on you got this going on all right i this going on. All right, I'm going to do this,

and we're just going to have to, like, juggle fundamentals with regular class. But now it's, you know, I'm working, like, 15 hours a week, so I've got a little bit more freedom. And Jason, he's going to school, so he's not really working either, kind of living off his Army GI Bill. Sounds familiar. Yeah, that's how I did it.

Actually, I was taking like GI bill money and putting it into the gym business. It's only $1,200 a month. So it's like living off a GI bill plus taking the extra. Well, you can do that when you're living there too, though. Yeah. So you don't really have like, there wasn't like a big turning point where you're like oh we started doing this and we just started getting more clients or or we did this and we retained

more clients and or we um i mean i think there's probably been a couple tipping points for us or whatever um and we really haven't met the big one yet but um i mean i think um why does everything always come back to malcolm gladwell he infiltrates every conversation somehow six degrees of malcolm gladwell yeah um you know i i think um the last one is when i quit my job you know we've really been able to focus a little bit more on the gym and i've been able to do things that i want to do with promoting the gym like videos and you know things like you guys do um social media stuff like that i couldn't do before um and you know it videos and, you know, things like you guys do, um, social media, stuff like that. I couldn't do before. Um, and you know, it's hard for, you know, just my wife or just Jason and my wife has only recently came on too. So I think that's been a big thing to,

you know, to go from one person training at a time to now, you know, up until a couple months ago, she wasn't really working. So, you you know we've got three floating people to take care of people so awesome man but i think honestly i think just this whole sport of fitness kind of like blowing up recently has really helped you know us being on crossfit's page and um you know the games be on an espn i, I can't tell you how many people have come in. Like, I saw that Rich Fronin guy on ESPN7, and that's what I want to do, man. I can envision that guy in my head as you talk like him. We actually have no client like that. That talks like him. You need one.

I wish we did. We've definitely had some people that come through the door, and they saw the they saw the games like oh how'd you hear about crossfit like espn like hey man my domains are way too narrow bro gotta get me some of that much more broader fitness i gotta get me some broads and your other job is you have a part-time job yeah um right like actually like the very next day um i got a call from um a place that somebody i had been talking to after i quit my job to uh to go work for a little like nutrition sports nutrition place to sell like supplements and stuff like that oh and um so that, that's kind of been what I've done. He knew that I had a gym and you know, it's, it's a part time job, you know, but, but everybody's really cool there.

Everybody knows their stuff. It's not like working for a, I don't know if I'm a big box supplement store or whatever. Interval Nutrition Center. It's kind of like if you go to GNC, though. You talk to some of those guys, and you start asking about anything that's in the supplements. Like, this supplement's good for this. Well, what's this ingredient do? Well, here's what you'll find. There is a college freshman meathead aspiring bodybuilder of some kind.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing is that you guys may know this they they get paid minimum wage and work on commission so they get more commission based off of certain products so like they make make five dollars off this protein they might make 12 off this one so you're gonna walk in there it doesn't matter if it's crap or not. They're like, oh, yeah, this so-and-so muscle fortress is the best weight gainer we've got, man. The guy weighs like $1.40. But, yeah, I mean, I've really been able to. I feel really bad for all the years.

There's a stretch where I made my mom go with me to G&C. Mom, I had to have this supplement. I always pick a random one off. The one that said muscle growth, incredible strength gains the most. I've got to have that one. It's only like $30, Mom. Come on. I was like 12 years old, 13 years old, training. I remember doing the same thing, dude.

I was like 15, buying supplements. It tasted terrible. I should have just been eating more food. Yeah, but you're dumb, and no one's going to help you at that point. No one can provide any sort of meaningful insight. When I was 17 I was working at a Globo gym and I just thought I knew everything just because

I worked at a Globo gym. It was... I'll tell you a story. I had a guy talk me into drinking plant fertilizer at my old gym. No! I used to work at, do you remember? How are you still alive? Do you remember Olympic Fitness Center on Shelby Drive?

I do. That's where we used to train. That's where Penny Hardaway and everybody used to train, too. Yeah. It was a great gym, but I worked there when I was like 13. I could work there and clean up after hours and train for free. But I was working the front counter like one saturday morning and we had to just like aspiring bodybuilder guy who was like sort of the requisite

the local meathead and you had to have a guy like that in your gym he trained people and he was sort of big sort of successful we was doing but he would never win anything more than like a local tunica show because hey man come here you want to know. You want to know my real secret, bro? I'm like, yeah. You're huge. I want to be huge. He's like, yeah. Dude, I take one vial of this plant fertilizer every morning. I swear to God, bro.

You just pop it in your mouth. I go, really? He's like, yeah, trust me, bro. He pulls out this thing from the counter and takes a whole vial, a little squeezer you know squeeze her drop her he's here do it so i i go yeah i just immediately pop the whole thing in my mouth and like have this this reaction like the kids you see on youtube take all of it like the kids on youtube you see do the cinnamon challenge immediately go wait do a spoonful of cinnamon in her mouth i basically did that and all of a sudden the whole staff just rolls on the floor staring including the the hot chick who was like 17 who

worked the back counter who all the 13 year old kids who were like trying to want to hit on and impress she's laughing at me i'm humiliated that's my big first lesson and don't listen to idiots think for yourself think do i really need am i I a plant? No. I don't need this. Question everything. Isn't that what they said? Question everything, but really only the important stuff. That's the important thing.

How have we gone all these years and not heard that story? I don't know, man. We're all guilty of doing dumb stuff. You just got to learn your lesson when you do the dumb thing and then tell other people not to repeat it. That's all you can do.

That's all you can do. So, Justin, what's up unless you're taking right now uh i take fish oil um i was recently taking a lot of different stuff just because just trying stuff out trying to see what works i guess you know research i'm my own guinea pig too. I cut everything out. I'm taking fish oil. I still take ZMA. I've taken ZMA for years because I found out that I had a zinc deficiency. And it really helped my sleep.

Like you just got blood work done? Noticable difference, yeah. I got like, back when I had good insurance, I got a ridiculous amount of blood work done. Kind of like on the whole Rob Wolf tip. And found out some things. But really, that's all I take. I try not to do a pre-workout unless I'm just like, for whatever reason, for that day, just dead or get up in the morning. See, Doug, we juice.

We ain't got to worry about that. That's right. He's talking about juicing vegetables. Everyone thinks we're on steroids now. Oh, I thought you were going to talk about supplements. Yeah, I'm going to take the Diane ball. Yeah, I say that every day now. I'm juicing now. I feel great. I forget to say I'm juicing actual

vegetables and fruits. Jack LaLanne style. Of course you're going to feel great. You got a gram of test running through your veins. Feel awesome. Actual juice, ladies and gentlemen literally juice um the juice is really spreading around the group everyone's picking it up i love it it's fucking awesome beet juice for president uh oh yeah quick story so on wednesday i ran out of carrots so i was like oh i'll just double my beats so we were having this workout at shelby farms it's like a 25 minute workout in the heat it's like 100 degrees

and so fourth of july fourth of july wad i i'm like oh we're out of carrots we'll just do more beats well i didn't know that if you drink too much beet juice it'll make you sick so i drink this beet juice and then how many beats worth like two beats like four oh god and actually i split it and then i had raw eggs on top of that so then that didn't have anything to do with it was it just beat i do raw eggs pretty regularly just beats and raw eggs the beats and now i've never done that many beats before so like i go to the bathroom and i just like cut loose and it hurts so bad like my stomach was just no my stomach was killing me like i crawl into bed with the cold sweats and ashley's like are you gonna make it i'm like no like that's what a workout i mean i'm gonna make it in life but uh

i'm gonna persevere i won't die just go on without me go the workout. I'll be dead when you get back, but it's okay. Get your fitness on. Four beats worth of juice. She takes off and goes, you know, they're out there. And I finally, I'm like, oh, I feel better. So I get out there, and I run up, you know, right before the warm-up and right before the workout. It's a partner one. And I'm like, dude, I think I'm going to sit out and Jason, my partner,

is like, no, you have to do it with me. I don't want to lose, you know. I'm like, dude, I think I'm going to sit out and Jason, my partner, is like, no, you have to do it with me. I don't want to lose. You know? I'm like, I'm not sure we're going to be the winning team. I don't feel so hot. That's where CrossFit gets a little extreme. I'm like, dude, you do know that if we don't win this or, like, we choose not to do this because we're sick, nothing will happen as a consequence. There will be no consequences to not winning.

You know that, right? So I'm like, no, no. no holiday for fun we go back and forth and i'm like in my head i'm like oh man you've done stuff way harder than this don't be a pussy so i'm like all right i'm gonna do this so we take off running up up this hill and we do all this stuff and um i'm going i'm like man i i don't feel good at all i didn't really warm up whatever screw it so halfway through the workout i'm like uh-oh and i get i walk out of the side and i just start hurling i get like probably 20 good pulls total but i got three good throw-ups like so you actually got in the mindset that no i think i can do this oh yeah and so i throw up

and it's just red. Oh, yeah. It's beet red. Please tell me you got it on camera. It just looks like you're throwing up blood. I wish, dude. I wish. We can redo that.

We can recreate it. When you invite beets to the party, everything turns red. It doesn't matter what else you put in your juice. Yeah. So I throw up, and then I walk back over, and Jason's just standing there like, what are you doing? Should we be doing burpees? And he's like, oh, I walk back over, and Jason's just standing there like, what are you doing? You should be doing burpees. He's like, oh, I thought we were done. I'm like, no, just go, just go.

So I start doing more burpees, and we finish the WOD. And it comes out the same color on the other side. And I am – usually after you get done working out, like five minutes later, you feel fine. I'm still just miserable. I'm like, I feel like I'm going to die. I can't cool off. I'm drinking all the water I can.

I'm not cooling off. Someone hands me going to die. I can't cool off. I'm drinking all the water I can. I'm not cooling off. Someone hands me some ice water and I start feeling better. I come to find out. I talk to Amanda. She's like, oh yeah, last time I drank a bunch of beet juice, I got sick. Now I was at your house. We thought she drank too much alcohol. She drank too much beet juice and was hugging the toilet. Oh, that's what happened at that party?

Yeah. McGoldrick and Brandy, they both did the same thing. They had to leave the party early because they felt sick they thought it was just from juicing alright so let's break this down and then Marcy comes and tells me that too much beets can be bad for me you got sick when you mix beets with raw eggs

and the other person that you know that got sick mixed it when they mixed it with a lot of alcohol maybe you just shouldn't mix beets with anything I agree what is it in mix beets with anything. I agree. I'm not touching beets ever again. What is it in the beets that could be bad?

I'm not sure. I put a beet in my juice every day. I never feel bad. I don't think all beets are bad. I usually put a beet in. I think it's just the dubstep ones. I did too much. Wait, what do you normally put in your drinks?

Beets by Dre. Carrots, beets, and celery with a little bit of ginger. What do you normally put in your drinks? Beets by Dre. Carrots, beets, and celery with a little bit of ginger. Alright, what do you normally put in? I go a beet. I go like an apple or a peach or something to add a little sweetness. Maybe a handful of strawberries. Celery. All the greens I can shove in there. A little ginger.

What else? I'm doing like watercress. When you say beets, or when you say greens, are you literally putting roughage in there? Yeah, like spinach. Young, crispy baby spinach works good. Bok choy works amazingly well. Things like collard greens don't work so good unless you wrap them around something with a body enough to get through the blade. Otherwise, they kind of clump up and slow the blade down but yeah i mean usually i put enough greens in there to get at least like a like a half a cup of green juice in the bottom then i throw in the carrots and the

celery and the cucumber is awesome and yeah i mean it's just fantastic once you get over the initial like this kind of grassy flavor bro once you get over the initial like vegetable flavor it's really so much better than any other juice you ever had especially with carrot in there or and peach is amazing add a peach with any vegetable you want you're gonna have a good time yeah i haven't tried peaches or strawberries yet strawberries yield a lot of juice the peach the peach comes out looking just like the carrot juice sort of thick and velvety gives you that texture yeah i stick and if i if i'm gonna drink just the juice i think i started adding coconut milk so so i'm pretty sure.

I was reminded of a study this week where the guy was talking about, like, if you eat a salad, you put fat-free dressing on, you're kind of dumb. Because if you eat that, there's, you know, half the nutrients in there or whatever are only going to be liberated if you have some fat with it. So you should probably put full-fat ranch on there. Of course, all the comments were, I know ranch tastes good on vegetables for a reason bro

uh but yeah it's called olive oil just put olive oil on your salad dummy yeah or anything but yeah i i add a little coconut milk in there not calling you dummy just i'm just gonna drink the juice i put a little coconut fat in there too to kind of help me make more of it yeah it's awesome i basically put anything in there i can i can grab yeah i just that's. Before, I'm almost certain I was not getting enough vegetables in. Because who can eat, like, at that TED Talk, the girl's like, what I want you to do is eat 17 plates of vegetables a day. That's how you'll be healthy. No one can do that, bro.

No one can do that. I don't even know if you're doing it. It's impossible. What, do you sit around and professionally eat salad? Who can sit there like, oh my God, the eighth plate of salad greens today. That's what we're supposed to say when we're selling vitamins. You're like, should I take vitamins or should I? You're supposed to be like, well, do you eat five to seven servings of fruits and vegetables every day?

No. No. So take, buy this vitamin. Actually, I would love to hear other examples of how you're supposed to sell supplements what do they tell you like what are your tactics actually i the guy that i work for their secret he'll probably he'll probably never see this so hey listen take this you're gonna get cancer bro good or bad about him but i mean he's he actually knows his stuff i mean he's um and he he's very big from a sales point of view or from just like

he just knows a lot about nutrition and training he's a strength coach and i mean he's you know has you know went to school for strength and uh nutrition um i don't think he has his master's in nutrition but um but uh he uh he's not really on the same ideas of the GNC big boxes or whatever. He's like, look, if somebody comes in, if they're 18 and they ask for an Oxylee Pro or something with three dimethylamine, which we all know is horrible. It's my one three. And by awful, you mean awesome. I call it my dimethyl meth meth.

It's awesome. my triple meth i take a hit probably once every two weeks i'll take one of those i mean i took two this morning just for nothing just to do it but you know like dma is the stuff in jack 3d for anyone in the audience that didn't know what he was talking about yeah but by what's still available as band neuro core and god it's good oxy elite pro and a lot of a lot of other stuff they ban every every good drug that's good they they ban it it's gonna come back because what a lot of people don't know is that a couple products are getting away with putting geranium right extract on there which is dimethyl don't call it the drug just call it the plant yeah well it's natural it's geranium root yeah so but it the drug. Just call it the plant. Yeah. Well, it's natural. It's geranium root.

Yeah. So, but... It was the same with, I mean... What, you're saying those ones won't be illegal? They'll get away with it for a little bit because it's called something else. They'll probably ban it again, I'm sure. You make the politicians happy that they can say they saved somebody's life by banning this fucking harmless thing. Yeah.

And then everything else is fine. Oh, it's geranium. No one cares about geranium. Somebody died on it. Yeah, but it was 120 degrees outside, and they hadn't drank anything in four days, and they were doing PT in Afghanistan. I mean, like...

It was the same thing when they came down on ephedra. Man, ephedra is one of the better things ever. You took one, and you went from wanting to sleep to wanting to train for three hours. You know, I mean, that's just clearly a magical thing. And some kid goes well one's good the whole bottle is better and dies of a heart attack and i did that when i was 15 i think i definitely took my share for that yeah share fair i remember share fair fair share and my

before i took my share fair of that stuff before every paladin before every paladin workout i was doing in my prime there i would take you know a handful of ephedra and then a bunch of no-dos. And then you'd cough and spasm. You'd spasm. Your stomach would be spasmed. You'd be like, bleh, bleh. And then you'd do those things. But you'd get huge squat attempts, bro.

It was great. I mean, it takes a little blood in your throat, but that's okay. We're all joking here. We're not. None of us are saying go and take this stuff. That's what I did. No, no, no. We're not.

We're not. This is not a recommendation. We're not, none of us are saying, I'm not joking. That's what I do. No, we're not, we're not, we're not, this is not a recommendation. We're not recommending this. Do as we say, not as we do. Well, we currently,

none of us currently take a lot of that stuff. Not as we did when we were 16. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. When you're, when you're 22, you can take a lot of things and get kind of,

your liver is robust. Yeah, just listen to what we say. We've tested all this stuff out. We've seen the results. Oh, it's totally not necessary. Yeah. No, I mean, just drink a cup of coffee. You've tested all this stuff out. We've seen the results. Oh, it's totally not necessary. Yeah, unnecessary.

Just drink a cup of coffee. You're fine. To get back to your point, what you're asking about is, he doesn't really have a lot of set-like spiels. I mean, there's a couple things that he told me that, because I came in not being an anti-supplement guy, but kind of coming from my background, I wasn't really all about let's take everything we can

to get as much edge as we can. I was more like eat real food, sleep well, drink lots of water, whatever. So there's a couple things that I've learned a lot since I've been there, and he's just kind of shown me that. It hasn't really been a lot of spills, but that is one that he did tell me. It's like we try and get everybody. Everybody that walks out the door,

you want them on a vitamin and a fish oil. Pretty much. And I don't think that's so bad. No, that's probably good for the general population or for even most people that are hardcore trainers. That's pretty much what we first recommend. People take fish oil and vitamin D just because most people are deficient in vitamin D. You guys take the...

I was taking vitamin D for a while, but I, I don't know. Did you get blood work done ever on, when you look at your vitamin D levels? Yeah, it was on there too, and it wasn't really, I was taking vitamin D at the time of the blood work. So it was normal, so I don't know if I was loading it in. I've stopped, I haven't taken it in about three weeks now. Do you get a lot of sunlight? Now I do, yeah, that's kind of why I stopped taking it. It might be fun.

Before you spent all day in your corporate hovel working and not getting any natural sunlight. It's still over. So the only thing you're taking now is fish oil? No, I take fish oil, ZMA, and I will do a pre-workout sometimes. I try not to do stuff with proprietary blends. I think we were talking about that the other day. Rice flour? When you say pre-workout sometimes. I try not to do stuff with proprietary blends. I think we were talking about that the other day. Rice flour? When you say pre-workout, you mean stimulants in particular?

No, that's not a workout. I try not to take something as a stimulant. If I'm doing a really, really lactic workout, I'll take a beta alanine. Oh, sure. If I'm doing a heavy one single attempt or just a heavy something, I'll take a creatine. And sometimes if I'm just dead for whatever reason, like I was saying, I'll mix it with a third of a dose of some type of stimulant,

like a plug, but like InnoXplode or something like that. So you only take creatine on a daily basis? You only take it when you're going to do something heavy? I was loading. I was loading for a while and um and i don't really think it's bad i mean i there may be some negative effects i guess but a i didn't notice any bloating from monohydrates that everybody talks about like it's the first thing when you say creatine and like oh you bloated um and i i i loaded for a while but now i now I really only take it for at that one time. And I mean, I just work off my normal ATP the rest of the time.

Okay. But it's not all the time. Going natural. Yeah. You don't need these cheating things. Cheaters taking all this creatine and shit. I've honestly just been kind of messing around with it and see whatever works best.

I mean, if you took a lot of it in the past and now you don't take it much now and you still have good training, who cares? I mean, if you're not competing and looking for that 2% edge, it doesn't matter. Yeah, well, it's like almost... Although, just to interject and derail the conversation, which is my primary skill on this show,

is there all that evidence, though, that Doug may know more than me? Really, I only heard a second-hand conversation with the good old Dr. Kreider one time. Really, there could be a lot of evidence that creatine protects against brain injury and neurological degeneration. Age.

There's been a lot of research on creatine with elderly populations, and it seems to help older people, I don't know how I want to say this like think better or maintain their intelligence which is pretty curious like i mean yeah they're going for huge prs yeah no i mean like if if you're loading the creatine on a daily basis you know you're not well i guess you mean taking it consistently consistency yeah consistently excuse me jesus or you mean actually actually loading business oh yeah well so i think about creation i think about loading i think about taking like multiple doses multiple times a day for a period of like five days and then you've

loaded and then you just take it consistently from there and out yeah exactly you just drop a little teaspoon in your shake in the morning or your jackaloon produced or they are they saying just taking like five grams a day and not and not getting protein. Exactly. They're saying just taking it consistently. I got you. Yeah, I've had that conversation. I'm in a lot of trouble with that word today. Yeah. I've had a talk with Brian.

He's like, you need to just take creatine just as you would a vitamin. It's kind of the way he's been seeing it lately too. He was doing studies with creatine and Parkinson's patients. Is that right? Yeah. A couple of the strength training. I think he was seeing good benefits to that. Yeah.

I don't know all the exact results. Considering it's basically heavily tested and basically harmless, with strength training. I think you're seeing good benefits to that. Yeah, I don't know all the exact results but from what I know they found something. heavily tested and basically harmless it's probably a good thing just to toss in your shake

as a daily supplement. The thing about creatine is if you're not don't take the stuff with the proprietary blend that happens to have creatine take creatine on its own. a $10 jug of creatine.

It's super cheap. It's not going to harm you. More than likely you're going to see some benefits so why not take it because you don't need to buy all that like four times the price ph balance micronize all right get the stuff that costs twenty dollars twenty dollars for a six month supply it'll last you yeah three to six months um yeah it's not going to hurt you it can only help you you. Any name brand, middle of the road, inexpensive creator. Don't get like Create and Explode Chinese or something with half Mercury content or something.

Plug Now Sports. Plug Now. Now Sports, is that the orange label? Oh, yeah. That stuff's fantastic. They're great because they don't spend any money on marketing at all. Full disclosure, I don't get anything from them. No way.

None of us do. Which company were you talking about? The Now. Bright Orange Containers. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to get a little thing of their protein from Whole Foods because I was out of mine. It was super flavorless, but good quality. No unnecessary ingredients.

Pretty much everything I've ever had for them seems fantastic i have no affiliation for them but i got it when we had the conversation with brad pope about looking for that label and they've got like four or five labels on there attesting to the quality of the product and i've always seen nothing but good discussions around that brand so yeah that's probably a good one again we actually have a client that's the reason why i said that we have a client not at the gym but a regular that comes into the place and he's going to school for chemistry or whatever and they brought in a couple of their products to run it through the whatever the heck it is yeah i know right whatever that whatever it is that they what is it mass

spectrometer i don't know what they put it in sounds right yeah so the samoflange flux capacitor yeah they put it in that and they said it was i mean just like to the miller it was one one ingredient basically like you can see that graphed out this is creatine yeah so beta alanine is the same way i don't think there's any reason not to just take that on a daily basis speaking of that we want to go to point two about let's do it oh yeah okay i want to say something about two about this? Let's do it. Oh, yeah. I want to say something about beta alanine. If somebody has never taken it and they take a full dose of it,

it gets you high, man. They don't need to get freaked out when they feel like there's a million pins and needles all over their skin because it's actually this thing that's like paranesia or something like that.

It's all the blood flowing to the top of your skin and it freaked me out the first time I took it. Actually, what's going on? I thought I was having a panic attack. Me too. I had no out the first time i took it actually what's going on i thought i was having a panic attack me too if you've ever done i have no idea the first time i took it that was gonna happen i'll sit on my computer i was like my hands fell

asleep yeah and then i walked in the kitchen i was like my feet fell asleep too yeah i'm weird i was like oh i just took that shit uh straight to google don't worry what would you have done if you googled it and it said you will die yeah no when it happens turn on dark side of the moon just relax take advantage of my screen hello don't freak out well like i took i think i took two grams so two scoops because you get a one gram scoop they're just tiny tiny scoops and uh. And my brother, on the other hand, he couldn't find his scooper either. There wasn't one in there or he just didn't look for it very long. And it said two scoops.

And so he just assumed two spoonfuls. And so he just took a regular spoon and took two scoops. And he probably, I'm going to guess and say he took five or ten times what I took my first time. And your first time, you take Beta-Algin and you feel a little tingling. If you take it consistently, then the tingling will go away. You really won't notice it anymore after a couple weeks. In his case, though, he took it and then went to the gym. He said he was halfway to the gym

and his face was on fire. He just turned straight around. He couldn't even make it home. He pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store and ran to the bathroom and had shit. Let me disclose here. The recommended dosage for beta alanine for an average like 200 pound males like 3200 million or 3.2 grams so if he took like that's like three times probably five probably 10 grams yeah it took a lot so i don't even know what that would do to you does this arm

fall asleep on a regular basis now? Long-term side effects. The barbell shrug recommendation is to use the provided scoop and follow directions. Directions are directions for a reason. Actually, I want to clarify that real quick because I know we talked about these supplements, and then everyone's going to be like, well, what should I take or how much should I take? What I personally recommend is take the scoop of creatine every day. It'll be like between three and five grams, and then there's no reason not to. And then beta-alanine is kind of the same scoop of creatine every day. It'll be between three and five grams. There's no reason not to.

Beta-alanine is kind of the same boat. Take it every day. The bigger guys should be taking six grams total a day, but no more than two grams at a time. If you take more than two grams at a time, you're going to get that super tingle sensation. Some people like that, though. A lot of people think, oh, I feel a tingle. I can go work out now, and I'm going to get the benefit from it. It's something that builds up over your system over weeks and months.

So you may not actually get performance benefits out of something like beta-alanine or creatine for like six to eight weeks. So that's just a quick rundown of what I know about these supplements. I noticed it on my first workout. Those of you that look for answers on the show, there you go. I don't do beta-alanine, but I like the creatine, man. I love beta-alanine. I think beta-alanine is just fantastic. Well, maybe I should take it then because you recommended it.

That's right. Oh, now that you're doing CrossFit stuff, you should. Maybe you're right. If you're CrossFit, you're talking about 150 wall balls for time. God, that sucks. Don't talk about it. Beta-alanine is exactly what you want for breakfast. That's true yeah i i had the only thing that made that workouts worse was i got 10 like 10 reps into

it and i'm already like this sucks this sucks i hate this and then i'm only i only got 15 times more of this and then all of a sudden somebody thought that they they i looked like i needed motivation so fucking mcgoldrick walks over. He's like, come on, bro. You've only got 140 more to go. Let's go. He was being serious. I go, are you insane? He screamed at me for 140 wall balls.

God bless him. That helped me a lot, but I was like, this is not going to be a fun experience. He's a great cheerleader. This is not going to be a fun experience. All right, guys. Let's take a quick break. We're going to come back and discuss some more topics. Maybe I'll give me

some beta-ality today at the gym. Actually, we don't sell it anymore. We never even said what beta-ality was. You don't have it anymore in the thing? Or like what it really

is supposed to do? You don't have it at the gym? We just talked about it. Oh, well, we talked. I said, I mean, for lactic stuff. You decided to now sell $100.

And now back to episode... We got to have you like... We need to record him. And now back to Bar. We got to have you like, we need to record him. And now back to Barbell Shrugged. I don't know. Sometimes when I go to a podcast and they've got something like that, I'm like, boop, off. Next one. If it's like uber produced.

If they're serious about it. But if you just got to picture me going, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Microphones are fun. They are. All right, so next topic. We're back. We now don't have Doug. Doug had to go open the gym.

He's always had Sunday duty. Duty. I said duty. He got paralyzed by taking too much beta alanine and now he's in the hospital. Beta alanine and beet juice overdose. The other thing we want to talk about was a multi-level marketing, uh,

supplements and, and your gym and the devil. Yeah. I personally think if you, uh, mix multi-level marketing with any business, any like regular business that you have going on. Yeah.

Yeah. One, you'll go to hell. No, I'm just kidding. Aren't you like two clicks away from being a Bernie Madoff of your time if you do that shit? Well, you are selling real products, so I don't think it's that bad. You're going in that direction. The problem with most multi-level marketing is that you're selling the same exact products you can get anywhere else at a higher price. What's going on?

Sorry, that's my wife calling me. No, go that was kind of moving uh if you if you're doing multi-level marketing you can get those products at walmart and or anywhere else muscle fortress you're just selling at a higher price and people get sucked into it because they're like oh i can make money doing this i like the products it's something i would buy anyways. This is the mentality that people have. I would buy that anyways. I need that. And if I could sell it to my friends, I'll make money and I'll be doing them a favor.

I'll do that and marry Kay and I'll be set. Yeah. So that's usually what happens with multi-level marketing. And with the supplements and you bring that into your gym, you really... I have a problem with it because taking the focus off the training and the education is going on and the supplements like we were talking about this is advocare they're not any better than any you know you can go into vitamin shop and get the same exact supplements and

if anything they're not they're not as good as some other supplements that I'm familiar with. Still inferior to food. Yes. Except for that Sparks. That stuff is awesome. Totally kidding. I don't know. All their products still have sucralose in them. There's still the golden rule, right?

The 80-20 or however you want to phrase it, where the bulk of the things you need to be concerned with and put 80% or 90% of your efforts into are sleeping enough, eating the best food you can get your hands on, training smart progressively as hard as you can, resting when you should. If you just do those simple things, you're going to get almost all the success

you probably could get. Everything else is nice and it's sugar on top but it's not going to make or break your progress. That's the big thing that bugs me is that people look at supplements and they completely forget the name. They're supplements. It's supposed to be supplemental.

Supplemental. It's like, how many sets of glute ham raise should I do? Ten, ten sets of five, five sets of ten. You put all the focus on weird things in your training. But they don't squat. When you don't do enough squats or cleans or whatever you want to get better at. to five five six to ten they they put all the focus on weird things in your training when you when you don't do the enough squats or cleans or whatever you wanted to get better at like you you're missing the whole thing that those are called assistance exercises for a very good reason they assist they help but they you shouldn't be obsessed with things like that

yeah another thing too is people try to they'll put a lot of emphasis on the supplements and i find that people like you know if they do like a challenge or something like that regarding like a supplement i think advocare has like a 24-day challenge or something people you know they're obviously going to watch their diet better they're going to be doing all this other stuff and they see results i'm like well you just really focused on you for 24 days or however long you really focused on yourself you probably didn't have anything you probably trained more you probably ate better and then you took these supplements too that pre-workout and the oolong mock tea you were taking probably didn't have that much of an effect on it yeah it's the same thing with like Nutrisystems you went on a plan you ate only what they gave you you got serious

about it and you had some success because of that it wasn't anything really special about the the program you just adapted some kind of plan and right plans are always pretty good if they're decent yeah i think actually that's one in in our facility we're kind of i mean we're kind of trying to get better about that is putting people on a plan for nutrition instead of just informing them actually trying to you know implement a plan so we're yeah we're doing uh we're putting together programs now that are it's less science and more you know function jeez hang on what's getting robbed mike shut up is that dog real or just in my head speed alanine's really got me jacked

so yeah so don't don't worry yourself with nutritional plans and dietary schemes that seem too complicated and good too good to be true because they probably are i think the main problem with multi-level marketing and avicare is the people that are selling it not even the product some of the products aren't bad like you said they're not any better than the other ones but they're not bad you can get all those the people that are selling it have no idea what they're talking about and i mean so if you go to a place that somebody knows what they're talking about and they've done the research and they know their stuff rather it be at a gym or like a legit sports nutrition company um or supplement store or whatever then you're going to get given the right product and get given how to take it properly. Instead of just saying here,

take this, this, this, this, and this. Cause I make that much money off of it. I think that's, that's my big quorum with or quarrel.

Hell's quorum. What's quorum? I know what you're saying, bro. New word. Start using it. Not my quorum, bro.

You want to hit the next question? All right. Next question. Yeah. next question um yeah no that was that's a topic that's been brought up like several times over the last couple weeks with us and i know that you and i had a nice heated discussion about it uh and uh so i got some questions off the twitters uh someone hit me up yesterday with some stuff. Perfect timing. They were asking about knee sleeves, wrist wraps, and belts. Whether they're necessary or what's the deal? They were just wanting to know why people are wearing them. I think they're walking around the gym. Well, the knee sleeves go here.

And the belts go here. Coming from the world of powerlifting, i guess that that's a huge issue and one i'm pretty familiar with so i guess i'll take this one on if you don't mind go for it let's go for it really you're always going to see people use all kinds of different sorts of equipment in their training sometimes they become crutches sometimes they're used out of habit sometimes they're required in order to compete so in this case we're talking about little supplemental items that people use in their training and really the reason why is that i guess with any with any piece of equipment it's going to either help you a little

bit it's going to help you warm up it's going to help support you and maybe enable then sometimes you take it too far like in powerlifting and you can use things that the only reason why you're using them is to improve performance it's like squat suits bench shirts uh like in swimming you'll see like shark skin designed suits that i don't think they allow anymore but basically they cut down your swim times like like last year everybody set world records at the last the olympic there are things that you just wear them to do better at your sport. But really, we're talking the appropriate use of a belt, which I guess we can go into more detail on, wrist straps, knee sleeves. We're talking about things that basically can help probably extend your lifting career,

maybe help enable better training sessions, but don't add too much to your performance. So the reason why I wear knee sleeves are really a light, very light knee wrap on just about anything where I'm going to bend my knee. They do a good job of providing light support. They can help capture and keep heat in your knees so you can increase the viscosity or decrease the viscosity of the fluids in your knee, help your knee bend a bit better, keep it warm, keep it mobile, give a little support. You do deep squats and stuff, which could be useful. If you're an older lifter who has a little bit of arthritis or pain in the wrist when you catch cleans

or you do bench presses or presses or push-ups, a light, supportive wrist strap can help you do a better job of your training and keep you doing it for a longer period of time, so it's prudent to wear. I've got that exact same issue. If your wrist hurts you when you do a jerk wearing a light wrap just give a little bit of support will help you jerk more frequently get better at jerks and keep doing jerks if that's what you want to do keeps the sweat off your hands too belts is probably the most controversial thing because it's really you most time you wear

that to lift more but my attitude is if you can wear something that will immediately help you lift 30 more pounds, that's a good thing. A belt for heavy squat attempts or a Velcro belt for cleans or snatches because it doesn't get in the way, there's nothing wrong with. So long as you don't use it on everything. If you warm up to 90% without a belt and you get a little unstable, a little uncomfortable. You put a light belt on. It helps you do a couple heavier top sets. You will get stronger because of that. You'll be a better lifter. It will help you maybe cut down a little of the injury risk, although it's probably not a big deal.

But if you use these things responsibly. Yeah, a belt should not be used to reduce the risk of injury. Yeah, it doesn't really. Really, you use it because you can lift more weight. And if you do that at the right time, you'll get stronger because you use the belt. This is the bottom line. But are you against squat suits and bench shirts and all that? If you're going to compete in powerlifting, you need to learn how to use it if that's what you want to do.

But there's some rationales to like if I have a shoulder injury, I can use a light bench shirt to maybe cut down on that. I can still keep benching. But my attitude now, I used to think that my attitude now is that you can train better to avoid the shoulder injury. Yeah. And you should be doing full range of motion benches. Like, even like the slingshot, which a guy sells, it's a good idea if you're powerlifting. If you're not powerlifting, you probably shouldn't use anything like that

because you need to be able to touch your chest with a bar and push the bar off your chest, bottom line, with no support. So you need a better approach to training if you have shoulder pain. I got a labrum tear a couple years ago and um and i was worried about bench and i was looking for different things to help it or whatever but really it was just through some other accessory you know training exercise or whatever and i'm pretty much bench yeah if you if you're benching enough towards causing pain you're trying to bench two three times a week one you need to start pressing overhead again and doing incline presses,

things that are going to be easier on your shoulders and are better exercises to begin with. And if you have a big-time shoulder injury like that, the last thing to be worried about is bench pressing, which is a good exercise but useless compared to things like standing presses and squats and everything else we do. And that's what I focused on because at the time, I was really just mainly doing CrossFit. I wasn't doing a lot.

So like, like we were talking about with assistance work and supplements, kind of this, this kind of equipment is kind of the same thing. If you got a little bit of sore knee or you, you feel more comfortable lifting in a pair of knee sleeves or a light knee wrap, you should wear those. It's not a big deal. It's not going to change a lot of stuff, but you should wear them. If your wrists are a little tight and sore when you do pushups or jerks, wear a wrist wrap. It's not going to be in the world. They're inexpensive. Put it on. You'll feel great.

You'll train better. If you're really working on your strength, you want to improve your deadlift and squat, get you a little inexpensive belt. It's going to last you. Wear it when you get to your very top sets. Get stronger because of it. Don't put too much worry in it. The people who have the attitude like, I don't wear any of that stuff cause it's cheating. It's sort of silly. That same guy's wearing weightlifting shoes and a hundred dollar calf sleeves and all this shit. I mean, it's just,

it's this sort of silly to cut, talk about cheating, where would you come up with, where, what helps you perform better, where, what gives you confidence and just have fun with it. I mean,

bottom line real quick, I did, this is only like semi relevant. I know we don't want to get off on a tangent here, but you're kind of the squat guru or Jedi or whatever. We're used to it. We're talking about just improving performance. Do you believe in low bar back squatting?

You do that a lot? I do it because that's really where I can hold the bar. I have a very curved spine. I'm a very forward postured guy. Years of bad posture, but really a lot of powerlifting where I did a lot of low i'm a very forward postured guy years of bad posture but really a lot of power thing where i did a lot of low bar squatting so i'm really sort of doomed but do you so you don't high bar i do a little more of olympic style squat now because i really treat the squat right now as a as a way to build my pulling strength because i'm losing weight i'm

not gonna be able to sit prs in a squat proud right now so i'm just trying to get all the range of motion i can get and get the bar a little higher. But with bar position, really the take-home message is if you're going to seriously try to clean and snatch, you want to get better at that, you should be doing front squats and high bar back squats like Glenn Penlay did in that. There's a great post on Penlay's forum on back squat position,

and it's really a common sense thing. If you're going to catch a heavy clean and stand up, you have to put your hips between your ankles. Yep. And you have to stand up straight. You're not going to, like if I try to catch a clean, I'm going to have my hips back like a power up there. I'm going to pull it to my chest.

I'm going to drop it every freaking time. Yeah. If you're going to catch and stand up with a big clean or snatch, you're going to have to put your hips right between your ankles. That means you're going to have to train that position. That cleaner snatch, you're going to have to put your hips right between your ankles. That means you're going to have to train that position. That means you're going to have to high bar squat with your hips between your ankles. This is mechanics. It's physics.

Power lifting, low bar, not so bad. If you want to just be a big, strong guy and train your back and get strong hips, then a low bar, rip-a-toe-esque, powerlifting-esque squat is going to be fine. If you want to do just a standard power clean, you're probably okay. If you just want to be a big, strong guy, it doesn't really matter too much. This is where I have a problem with the CrossFit Level 1 certification squat that they teach. They want that nice vertical shin. They teach a powerlifting squat.

Which is great. An air powerlifting squat. It's just fine, but you're not going to be good at cleans. It takes stress off the knees, puts it towards the hips, and all this kind of stuff. But if you have long femurs, you're not going to be good at cleans. It takes stress off the knees, puts it towards the hips, and all this kind of stuff. But if you have long femurs, you're not going to be able to accomplish that. Doug was there, and they were trying to, like, you need to push your knees back.

He's like, I will fall over. He's like, he's got long femurs, period. And the thing is, you've got all these CrossFitters who are like, I've got to put my butt back. Sit back, back, back, back, back. And they're trying to catch snatches, and they're like bent forward, and they've got to snatch. I'm like, no.

Put your ass right between your ankles. Problem solved. And drop your butt straight down. And if you go to a CrossFit competition, like, and you should be training with a high bar back squat if you're a CrossFitter. Low bar on occasion. I do it a few months of the year to, you know, give my knees a break. But in competition, you're going to be doing Olympic lifts. They want you squatting below parallel, which is easier and faster if you just drop straight down instead of sitting back.

You're going to have to do a high bar squat. If you're a CrossFitter, you should be doing high bar back squats, front squats, some low bar. If all you're doing is low bar back squats, then you've got too much of a powerlifting emphasis and not enough of a CrossFit emphasis. It doesn't even have to do with Olympic lifting. The greatest illustration, I should forward an email to him as well, when Penlay describes his experience training with a powerlifter versus Donny Shankle, when Kyle Gulledge, I think, is nasty. Did you read that?

It's the greatest practical explanation of the difference. Kyle, I think his name was Kyle. I remember him. Yeah, it was Kyle. He was the guy who could squat 700 raw. practical explanation of the difference kyle i think his name was kyle i remember yeah he was a guy who could squat 700 raw he he's a monster monster monster deadlift he did speed deadlifts with like 700 pounds it's like that max aida guy you're talking about yeah he could pull 850 huge lower back hip strength amazing pretty good presser uh in contrast to donnie shankle who was

a guy with a relatively weak back lower back in terms of power thing like good morning so i probably couldn't even do that with much weight a relatively poor squad i mean compared to kyle he maybe only squad at 550 or six but the guy was huge in the quads extremely strong in vertical positions good front squat 500 for reps and i identify with kyle because if you're if you're a bent over sumo puller good morning guy pathing squatter low bar squatter forward bent over positions you're really strong at vertical positions like a front squat are impossible you go from incredible strength to incredible weakness that lever and if you're gonna catch a squat clean with 300 pounds or more

if you're not strong in a vertical position, you're never going to amount to anything. You have to... You'll be nothing. Watch a guy catch a big-time clean, and you see what position you need to be in for your squats. It's common sense stuff. Talking about that guy, I know we're out of time or whatever. We can't do the last question,

but I want to plug the strength seminar real quick. I got a chance to watch it or whatever, and you were talking about the max IED in there. That's what made me think about it. Scrting like was like 700 pounds raw or something like that for like well max is done in a meet now at 215 body weight he did a with a belt and knee wraps did a 700 squat olympic style big time squatter and he's pretty famous for injuring his wrist he has a like a dead bone in his wrist so he can't do olympic lifts anymore so he said he made the for a couple years he's i'm just going to do squats all the time so you squat

three times a day every day like seven days a week up to max every time and then one day a week he just crushed himself with like a five by five session with like 600 pounds raw squats he just got to where he could just squat like a monster i mean a guy routinely works to 600 pounds and probably can always squat 660 or more 300 kilos or better every time and it's just the the real key to strength is just really working i mean like glenn penlay and every one of his training sessions refers to it as practice good practice session today bad practice session today yet just like anything else you have to practice being strong. There's no magical combination of sets and reps and stuff

and exercises that are going to equal strength for you. You have to practice. Do all you can to recover. Practice with heavy weights as much as you can. That's what big, strong people have always done. That's what you're going to have to do. If you want to know more, check out fitter.tv. It's a simple strength seminar. Fitter.TV, Simple Strength Seminar.

Fitter.TV. Simple Strength by Chris Moore. The best tips you can get are the simplest ideas laid out in a way that makes you have your aha moment. You don't get caught up

in all these schemes. You don't read 800 versions of the super training book and try to memorize every periodization model because that's just all convoluted, unnecessary detail.

You don't need to consider the strongest people in the world or the strongest version of you is going to be the version where you keep things simple and just keep the focus on where it needs to be. Heavy barbells, pay attention to what you're doing and doing it the best you can. That's, that's why I liked it because you, you actually, I guess you kind of conveyed the way I felt about it already,

but you described it very well in the seminar, I thought. A couple of really cool metaphors that, like I said, I'll probably steal from you. I think the plates, the spinning the plates one. Yeah, yeah. I like that. But, I mean, once you get beyond the complication and feeling you have to memorize all these things, and you go back to a place where you realize it's actually pretty simple,

and when you reintroduce some complexity, you do it in a way that makes sense to you, and now you understand what you're doing and why you're doing it, then you really have an aha moment. That's when you get really a lot of satisfaction out of your training. That's where all the romance and satisfaction of weightlifting comes back. You're not so concerned with the things that don't matter. When you're really obsessed with the things that matter,

and you go in and you have this religious experience where you wrestle the barbell, you made progress, you have that satisfaction of it, that's when it really becomes rewarding. That's what I want more people to experience. Take your focus off the things that don't matter, and they're sort of pulling away at your passion, and refocus just on the awesome parts of training.

But to be fair, Glenn Penlay's camp just destroys themselves every single day and they hate it. Well, yeah, that's a cool thing. There's two ways to train. One is for your personal satisfaction and improvement and refinement. And two is to be competitive and better. And those are much different things. One is for health and fulfillment and improvement.

And one is not a healthy activity, is not a fun activity. We're trying to compete and win medals, and you've got to do everything you can to do it. And that means destroying and rebuilding yourself physically on a daily basis, foregoing any social life, spending all your free time in cold therapy pools, or eating. And watching every Abba J of video you can possibly get your head on. Yeah, and then not devoting any time

to your career or anything like that. So we're talking two different things that could be a whole other episode of the podcast for sure. Could you go in real quick? I think I just want to get clarified because there was a little bit of confusion the other day.

I'm going way back to what we were talking about earlier with belts and straps and all that kind of stuff. I put my belt on the other day and the guy next to me was wearing a belt for squats too yeah and there's a belt party and i put it on and i had it around me not as tight he was cinching it down yeah and he basically making himself thinner almost i was like and i and i put it on he goes why are you wearing your belt so loose it's not gonna work i go yeah no this is how you wear a belt he goes what and they like he like questioned me i

was like pretty sure i know how more about wearing a belt and squatting than you yeah the secret to the secret to wearing i'm squatting 100 more pounds than you so the secret to wearing a belt is that you put it on just tight enough for it to fit firmly around your belly and maybe compress it maybe like a half inch or so. And then what you do is you push your abs out against it. And that's what gives you the stability in your midsection. If you pull the belt in tight, you sort of undermine your abdominal muscles' ability to provide any extra support. You decrease the abdominal pressure and you basically are compromising yourself, and you're probably going to fucking hurt your skin

and maybe damage your liver or something. But yeah, the whole secret to being stable is have something to push against. That's what makes you stronger. So you push your abs out. And it also probably is what makes a belt an efficacious thing to wear during heavy sets. I mean, you're not really going to pinch

and change your position. You're going to push out against it. You're not really going to pinch and change your position. You're going to push out against it. You're going to be a little more stable. You're going to lift an extra 30, 40 pounds. That is going to accumulate and make you stronger. It's the same with knee wraps and anything. Don't over-tighten. Don't go in excess.

You're not really looking for that. Basically, what the belt is doing is it's adding stability. You have stability in your core via your musculature. And usually, you should be taking a deep breath and pushing against your abs, making a big belt or no belt. You want your midsection to be as stable as possible. And by adding a belt, you're basically making your core a little bit thicker. Think about making it part of you. Now, if you cinch it down real tight,

then you're just squeezing yourself. But if you make it like, making your core bigger and pushing against it, like Chris was saying, push your abs against it, you're going to feel a difference. Yeah, more force is going to make it from your legs to the bar. You're going to do a more efficient job at doing that. You're going to lift more weight.

Yeah, it shouldn't change your position at all. And that's going to add up over time, and you're going to be stronger. So do it. Embrace the belt. For lifts over 90%, that's great. When you're warming up and you're at 70%… It doesn't matter. Don't do it.

You might actually be weakening your core. Yeah, and it becomes a crutch. You're going to always go and grab it. Yeah. Which I still do for… Like, I'll wear it it uncinched i'll just put it around me for like heavy sets of bench and stuff because i like the feel of it but since you get down to everything like if you're doing curls and you're wearing a belt you need to really ask yourself if you're training with the most efficiency you could do people do that all the time like what do you what

are you doing but i like my shirts tight tight, though. I definitely look much cooler with a big belt. I feel like I'm a superhero. We didn't talk about... Since that, I pull it in. Yeah, my shirts... Do you have one with your initials on the front? I should. We didn't talk about straps, but straps are similar.

Why would you use straps? Use straps because they save your grip on key exercise. If you're doing barbell rows with 300 pounds, if you don't have straps on, you're going to spend a lot of effort trying to desperately hold on to the bar. Yeah. You're not going to be thinking about

how you're training your lower back and lats. Yeah, you got to think about what the purpose of the exercise is. Is the purpose grip strength or is it to make your back stronger? Or what's your overall goal in training? Or if you're doing a lot of snatches, if you don't wear straps,

you're going to eat your thumbs up with a hook grip. Why do most competitive weightlifters always snatch with straps? It's because you're doing such a high volume of snatches that if you don't wear that, you're going to have thumbs that are bloody and you're not going to be able to even hold a bar. Yeah, when I'm weightlifting five days a week,

if I'm doing a weightlifting cycle, you have to use the straps. Yeah, I'm wearing straps on snatches. But that being said, that being said, if you're a bodybuilder who is doing deadlifts, you shouldn't be listening to this anyway, with like a hundred pounds or 200 pounds and you're using straps and you have one tied 800 times around one side and you have alternating grip and you also

use a strap on that 800 times and, and you do that, which inherently, if you know anything about uh why you use the over under grip you know why are you even using straps for that or if you're using straps for lat pull downs with 100 pounds you need to really think about why why are you using straps because if you're not thinking about why you're using straps you're probably not thinking about why you're doing anything in your training think about why you're using stuff and why you need it that's a

key people don't think about why they're doing what they're doing in a gym. That's the most fundamental lesson you can learn. I'm doing this. Why? Well, I can't think of a good reason. You should maybe stop doing that thing. There's an awesome video floating around somewhere on the internet, like a commercial of this guy.

He's like a bodybuilder working for a supplement company. He's just got straps on, and he's making coffee with his straps. He's wrapping the straps around the coffee mug. He goes into work. He's wrapping around the door before he pulls on it and everything. If you say, well, I wear them because I wear them, not a good reason. If you're saying, well, I'm doing a set of 10 in a deadlift with 500 pounds, good reason because your hands are going to hurt holding on to the bar.

Good ideas and bad ideas, folks. That's what you need to separate. Don't do the bad ideas. But if you're in my gym, you don't have to think at all. Just do what I say. Yeah, of course. Not as he does. Oxi Elite Pro.

Don't do that. That cover, what was the last part? The logic of strength. I think we're going to cover that another time. I think we're out of time, guys. Can I plug RotarySC.com? Oh, yeah. We should have done that at the beginning

home of CrossFit Eastern Shore hi guys make sure you pimp this when it gets on the internet yep plug the

strength seminar I promise you'll probably get a kick out of it if you just do it it's you know make the investment it is cool

I wouldn't even say for not just for people that are looking to get strong but like trainers like me as I mean you didn't really go over anything that i don't want to sound like i said but that i you know that i wasn't already aware of but the way you described it and the way you or way the way you conveyed it to everybody was very very elegant and i mean i think it would actually help

me in training other people yeah actually when i when i sat through it the whole time i had he was reminding me of things and making me think about things in ways that I hadn't thought about before. I was like, oh, wait, I'm going to apply that method to programming for this or that. It really got my wheels turning. Even if you're not, you'll learn new stuff. But in the very least, you'll think more intelligently about programming and it really needs to remain a simple thing it shouldn't be a complicated thing we're not we're not looking for the the higgs boson particle here we're fucking training we're we're making

people better we're conveying simple thoughts exactly you don't have to complicate things you need to keep the romance in it and the joy in it training beginners i think that's way more important than i mean all this ridiculous periodization or whatever i think it's the ability to get somebody to understand what you're trying to tell them yeah so i mean the easier you can convey that to somebody i think makes you a better trainer yes absolutely remember that's what coaching is remember um the few quotes that you know you're the easiest person to fool. So keep your thoughts basic. Don't get too fancy with what you're trying to do.

And if you can't explain something, the famous Einstein quote, I guess, if you can't explain something simply in a way that everybody can understand what you're talking about, you don't understand it. If you're using big words when big words aren't necessary at all, which is what mostly every gym is, then you don't understand it. Today we'll be working with the anti-disestablishmentarianism of... Yeah, if you're in a CrossFit box and you're trying to explain to some mother of four why she needs to do a concurrent periodization plan,

you don't know what you're talking about. You may not believe me, but you don't know what you're talking about. The best coaches just know how to communicate, and they don't try to impress their members with fancy biochemistry. That's one reason why I can't speak highly enough about Glenn and his guys because they're doing simple, awesome things. You never hear him use a big, stupid word. Yeah.

Seek out people who don't use big, stupid words. Yeah. You're forward. Same way with Jim Windler, I think. Jim's a great guy because he removes the complexity where no complexity is required.

Take that lesson, folks. Take it to heart. Take it to heart, and that's where we're going to leave you on this episode of Bob Isra. Don't forget to check out Technique Pod. Take it to heart, and we're going to take it away. We'll see you guys in two and two. Hey, all right.

That was funny. Eight. Oh man. Seven hours of driving. I watched.