Barbell Shrugged - Episode 26 - Our Biggest Training Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Episode Date: September 19, 2012

Our biggest training mistakes and how to avoid them

Hey! This week on Barbell Shrug we have guest Dr. Brian Schilling. We're all going to discuss the biggest mistakes we made in our training history and what we would have done differently if we could go back. 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. Mmm. All right, guys. Welcome to Barbell barbell shrug I'm Mike Bledsoe I'm here with co-host Chris Moore and Doug Larson hello you been our guest dr. Brian Schilling the second time yeah the Schilling returns right second time around he's a professor at University of Memphis you work in the neuromuscular lab. Is that right? Neuromechanics lab. Get it right, dude.

Come on. Don't besmirch his field. Sorry. Today we're going to talk a little bit about what you would have done differently in training. So the four of us are going to cover that topic, and that's going to be a lot of fun, I think. First, I'm going to... We could go like eight hours for this one. I'm trying to think of what the most likely mistake or the biggest, fattest mistake I'd carve out first.

It's hard to name one. It's going to be tough. I think it's going to be a nice, meaty topic. First, I want to let you guys know that you should go to fitter.tv and sign up for the newsletter. That way you can get updated any time we do a new technique wad or a new blog entry or we have new products or anything like that. I want to bring y'all's attention to Simple Strength. We're going to be talking a lot today about training mistakes that we've made. I know in Chris's Simple Strength seminar, he talks a little bit about the mistakes he made and then the things he's done better because of those mistakes.

And what he wants to help you guys pretty much avoid making those mistakes. And he kind of spells that out. It's a classic do as I say, not as I did scenario. Exactly. It's 10,000 hours of experience condensed into a couple hours. How long is the seminar? Three and a half hours? I want to say it is. Quite a few people have purchased it and they're all extremely happy about it.

You can read those testimonials on the website. Also, Douglas has one up now, right? Yeah. We're not going to talk about him, though. It's all about you today. Doug's boring. Nobody needs to be mobile. The most overrated thing in the world Being mobile Oh that was my biggest training mistake

No actually Actually no that's true I could probably name that to my long list of mistakes Because I'm not very mobile In the hips but nothing else Alright so we're going to go around the room We're going to start off with Brian first Since he's our guest And we're going to go around the room. We're going to start off with Brian first, since he's our guest.

And we're going to ask him to basically just give us a kind of a general timeline for his training history. So take off and talk about when you started training and kind of where you are now. All right, this is very fitting. When you mentioned this topic to me earlier this week, I thought about it. I thought, hmm, it's very interesting because today is my 37th birthday congratulations i've been training for 25 years i'm pretty sure it's a good number yeah i started i mean i know i started before i could drive i don't remember staying after school and taking the activity bus home so 25 years of training i started with your typical going down and see how much i could bench press every day

and just thinking that the next day i went in there's surely going to be more weight on the bar. Do you remember the day that you started to use the big plates? Uh, actually, yeah, because I think I said the concrete small hole. I mean, I think at the time I could probably do one 35 cause I was,

you know, I don't know how old I was, but I think I could maybe do it once. I think that's a big milestone. That was, that was the big one. You can do one big plate. That's right.

And then the next one was two big plates, which who knows how many years later after that so i i basically i started that doing the typical bench press workout we had workouts for the high school football team i played on which were you know probably not very good lots of leg pressing and bench pressing probably and i remember curls with the arm blaster i mean of all the exercises you could remember those were the three i could remember right uh did you do the classic put like 45 two pound plates on the bar and then do a set of 10 and take one off I'm sure we did it all I remember we used to train in this basement you know it was just it was unbelievably smelly it was like

next to the locker rooms it was awful I don't even know if that building still stands but anyway uh so I did that for a long time you you know, did these football workouts. And unfortunately, I was exposed to bodybuilding culture, muscle and fiction early on. So I basically did the bare minimum and always, you know, tried to figure out what I was going to do from the bodybuilding standpoint, not realizing that training like that is completely different than training to play football. And did that for a long time. Then when I got to college, it was a little bit better. We had a little bit better instruction for strength coaching for playing football, but it still wasn't that good.

Still very basic and really didn't have a full-time strength coach. It's not until I really got into my master's degree, so this is 10 years after I started, before I actually learned how to do a real clean, real snatch. And then from there, that's when I really started to get exposed to different stuff, working with different sports at the Olympic Training Center, and then trying to, you know, work some of that stuff back into my own training program. Did weightlifting from, you know, for about five years, you know, I thought I was going to qualify for nationals right when I started. And I, you know, you know, took me five

years to get there, qualified for nationals, lifted nationals a couple times and decided that I was going to qualify for nationals right when I started, and it took me five years to get there. I qualified for nationals, lifted nationals a couple times, and decided that I was going to just not do it anymore. The price of competing was just too much. To fly and pay for hotel rooms and everything, I thought, you know, I'm just going to do something else. Then I've kind of gone back and forth. I've done a little bit more weightlifting and gotten away from weightlifting again.

Now I'm just kind of doing whatever, trying to maintain my bone and joint health, stay lean enough, and really enjoy my training. It used to be, it was getting to the point at the end of my weightlifting career that was a burden to train. It was just so hard and painful. The tail wagging the dog. Yeah, yeah.

So now it's kind of liberating to be where I am now where I feel like I'm in decent enough shape where I can pretty much do whatever I want to in the weight room. I don't have to do something one day. I can do a little bit something different or have different training goals. It's been a long, long road, man, 25 years. It's hard to believe. That's a long time.

That's a long training history. Never no CrossFit. Never. Never any CrossFit. I. Never any CrossFit. I will never, ever do more than three reps in any of the Olympic lifts. You got to have standards. And that's one. Thou shalt not break that rule.

That's right. That is one thing that's tough for weightlifters. Would you do like 55 box jumps in a row? I guess if I had to. But you don't have to. That's right. There's not a lot of people that come out of weightlifting as a competitor in weightlifting

that ever want to do 100 reps with 100 pounds for snatches. I mean, not only do I not want to do it, I don't think anybody should do it.

But again, I'm not, that's a whole other episode. Oh, Zach Critch, he recently like, what was the weight he did? Like a 300 pound?

It's like 303 or something like that? 300 for 30. Yeah, 300 for 30. Like 12, like, what was the weight he did? Like a 300 pound. It's like 303 or something like that. 300 for 30. Yeah, 300 for 30. Like 12, 13, 14 minutes, something like that. I feel like it was faster than that. I don't know. Oh, really?

I thought it was somewhere in the mid-teens. Well, a Spencer Mormon guy did it in like maybe under 10. Man, that's crazy. I think. Maybe somebody will comment and say you're a jerk because you got the time wrong. But it was impressive nonetheless. Yeah. That's body weight in half for 30 in 15 minutes or however long.

I've always been pretty happy with doing 300 over the head from the ground just for a few or one even. That was always decent enough for me, especially on that axle press and stuff. So 300 for 30 is pretty impressive. It's ridiculous. He power cleaned all of them, I'm pretty sure. Would it make you better at taking a shot at 450? I don't think so.

No. It kind of depends on your goals. Have your goals changed since? Now I was just trying not to get fat and lose too much at this point. It really went from being all involved around football, I thought at least, even though I didn't know how to train to play football, and then went straight into the weightlifting stuff. And since then, I've just been kind of doing a little bit of everything.

No really competitive stuff. A few raw powerlifting deals here and there, but the last time I tried that, I screwed up my shoulders bench pressing too much, and I just got rid of that too. Yeah. All right. How about you you Doug a little three minute training history man I got a long training history too uh I was very fortunate when I was super young to get put into gymnastics when I was probably like five and I did that for a solid at least five years um so you know I was fortunate to be pretty flexible you know throughout my better start than any of us right in terms of mechanics and basic abilities yeah I was very fortunate with that and I was pretty fortunate later on too which you'll hear here in a minute so I did that for a solid five

years you know I got a got a pretty good foundation of upper body strength when I was young and and you know gained a lot of flexibility or maybe I should say since I was so young I gained a lot of flexibility, or maybe I should say since I was so young, I kept a lot of flexibility. Little kids are pretty mobile as it is. Where I could do the splits pretty much my entire childhood, that type of thing, where a lot of guys may not have been able to do that if they didn't do gymnastics. So I started off with that, and I was going to find a video to edit in one time with me being four or five years old on the parallel bars. I forgot to grab one.

I went back to visit my parents just recently. A cute little tiny doe-eyed dog doing parallel bars. So I was pretty lucky there. I remember doing pull-ups with my probably first grade class. And me and my buddy Ricky were there. And they were doing like the chin hang for the presidential physical fitness awards and and you know some kids like could barely hang on the bar you know and i could do like 12 pull-ups and ricky could do like 18 and we had no idea why

these kids couldn't hang on the bar we didn't get it because all of our friends were gymnasts and all of our friends could do rope climbs and pull-ups and stuff. So that was like the first time I remember thinking like maybe being fit or maybe doing all the stuff we do is beneficial in some way. And I was probably six years old, right? After that, I got out of gymnastics when I moved from Arizona up to the northwest and I started doing some Taekwondo type martial arts and stuff and I got away from doing the volume of strength training that that's required in gymnastics and uh eventually uh i thought when i was super young maybe i'll be navy seal when i grow up and i i got the the

buds warning order which is kind of like the the prep for navy seal boot camp and it's got uh you know i forget how long or how many weeks long it is it's like six months or something like that uh it takes you through a progression of something like three by three pull-ups and same thing for dips and sit-ups and push-ups and all kinds of other stuff. And it builds up over time. It builds your volume. It goes from three by three to three by four to three by six to five by five to on and on. I started three by three pull-ups when I was 14,

and I did it for like a year very consistently. And I got to 17. And three by three was pretty easy for me at. And I got up to seven sets of 17. And three by three was pretty easy for me at the time. But I just did what it said. And I had no lower body training under my belt at all. I'd never squatted. I'd never deadlifted.

I'd never done anything. And so I had these stick bone legs and then all upper body at the time. And eventually I ended up at a bigger, faster, stronger clinic when I was 15. Remember that? Those magazines used to be always in the high school locker room and weight room. Yeah. And that was the first time that I'd ever seen a clean. It was the first time I ever put a bar on my back or done any of that stuff. And it turns out, I didn't meet him there, but it turns out that a guy who I met maybe six months later at my high school,

who turned out to be a lifelong friend of mine and at the time just a coach, my strength coach Mark Real from Real Performance in Washougal, Washington. He was at that same conference too. And so we ended up talking about it one day when we were in the weight room. And he kind of took me under his wing and showed me how to do squats and deadlifts and cleans and whatnot. And he had actually learned, as a former powerlifter, he had learned weightlifting, the sport of weightlifting, from Coach Bergner.

It's just making me very jealous. You have so much more resource available. I think the three of us are all jealous of you. Don't forget CTP. I'm sure he's jealous as well. Well, yeah yeah that's extraordinary yeah i had a very very privileged weightlifting upbringing so to speak yeah especially meeting mark that was key mark mark helped me out man he he never charged me a dime you know he just he

just liked he's a great guy he liked coaching weightlifting and uh and he liked coaching kids that liked to be coached and would do it you know would follow the program and do what he said and we had a couple you know maybe five guys that were very consistent so we had a nice little strength training and weightlifting club and and we all got very strong i remember in high school thinking um thinking that the other kids like playing football for example the other kids when i I would just push them over backwards, I thought they were trying. They were doing walk-throughs, and I was going too hard.

Come on, try again. Half-speed All-American. Yeah, that's what I thought at the time, but I had gained 30 pounds and took my squat. I remember doing 20-rep squats with 165, and then I remember doing 20-rep squats with 265 a year later. And that's a huge change for a high school you know like a year later and that's that's a that's a huge change for a high school kid to put on 30 pounds and that kind of strength and so

and at the time i didn't realize i didn't i didn't really know i just thought i literally thought the other kids weren't trying and it wasn't until i got to college that i that i realized like man like all the stuff i've been doing all the other kids don't do i didn't know i really i really didn't know that that was your normal i really didn't know yeah i didn all the other kids don't do. I didn't know. I really didn't know the other kids. That was your normal. I really didn't know. Yeah, I didn't know other kids didn't do all this stuff. I just thought everybody did it. And I had no idea that it was me that had this privilege upbringing.

Fat, unathletic kids don't realize there are people out there who work hard. Yeah. Oh, I just figured you'd show up and you hope for the best. So Mark did a lot of things for me other than just coaching me you know he took me to strength coaching conferences and introduced me to Coach Bergener multiple times you know well before I ever heard what CrossFit was

and so you know meeting Mark was huge he did a lot for me so actually Mark if you're listening I really appreciate all the things that you've done for me and I think he actually opted into the newsletter a few days ago. So maybe he is. I haven't talked to him in a few months. Yeah, because of his great contribution to your life, here you are.

Yeah, really. With the love of his stuff, you know. Yeah. I mean, after we got done doing weightlifting, he has a gym at his house. And so I'd go train at his place. And afterward, he'd be like you want to you want some food and you know when we would go upstairs to make food he would show me how to cook and he'd teach me about nutrition in the process he's a nice coach yeah he's a natural teacher and knew a whole lot about all this cool

stuff and he you know if if i was willing to learn he was willing to teach and he taught me a whole lot of stuff how many other guys has he done the same with? How many good vibes has he sent out into the universe? He still does it. How long has he coached? Shit. I mean, I met him when he was 25, so he'd probably been coaching for maybe a few years then.

That was 10, 11 years ago. So, yeah, he's got a solid 15, 20 years of coaching under his belt. Yeah, so the world needs more guys like that. Yeah, and I go back to town, back to Washington State, and there's always a few kids around that that are willing to work hard and he's happy to coach him just a great guy so yeah that's that's pretty much the kind of the start to the midway through for my story and throughout college i was playing football always trying to keep as much size as possible. Back then, I'd do linear periodization where I'd have my hypertrophy phase,

then my strength phase, then my power phase, then my speed phase, and then preseason training, and then I would go through the season. But still in there, still doing the right movements, still doing back squats, and still including cleans even when I was in my hypertrophy phase, and always trying to get as big as possible. Since then, now that I heart hypertrophy phase and always trying to get as big as possible and since then now that I fight MMA I'm not always trying to be as big as possible I'm trying to you know being being in good shape and explosive but I'm trying to usually keep my weight under control I can't walk around 215 anymore if I fight at 170 no that seems like a difficult thing to manage yeah so now I

walk around it 200 or so depending depending on how many vacations you've had lately. Yeah, pretty much. How far up that next fight really is. That's right. I got a fight next week. We were in Florida for an entire week last week, and that did not help my weight at all. I kept on poking him in the belly. It's been a low-calorie week.

It's not going to help you out, Doug. No. All liquid cheat meal calories. Mm-hmm. Not a lot of that. The fermented kind. I also carefully manage my weight. I'm about 115 months away from my show.

Is that it? We could talk for days and days about this, but go ahead. We'll transition to someone else. Chris? I guess my history is much more like Brian's and a whole hell of a lot less like Doug. That's extraordinary. Yeah, but my background is pretty similar.

I discovered from some time in my buddy's backyard, weights, and got the interest, and then you look for information, where you find that information about how to be better at this stuff. You go to the grocery store and you get a copy of... I guess my big one was Flex

because the guys were visually more impressive on the cover. Right, right. I mean, that magazine was, is, always will be just a really ridiculous magazine. 115 pages. Of nothing. 80% of which are supplement advertisements.

Yeah. I still look at it on occasion just because it's so extreme. It's sort of fun, but... know the other i still look at it on occasion just because it's so extreme it's sort of fun but it is fun to look at it and then to see the same there's the same photo shoot it's always been every single episode of that or every single edition of that magazine there's a guy gonna show you his his ex-blasting regime or his training program like something's gonna be blasted hard, biceps, glutes, something. It's always a list of 45 ridiculous exercises. They're all the same rep range, always and forever.

This is his program. Do everything you can find at the gym for these reps. That's kind of extraordinary. There's no thought to that. But people go, oh, this is the secret. But you could have figured that out on your own. Just do everything you can in the gym until you can't move your arms anymore. But yeah, that's the way I... I remember giving other guys in high school advice

because I had some success with those approaches and was the strongest guy in school. To be like, hey, man, what should I do? I go, you should do an X-blasting program, bro. You should bench. Then you should incline bench. Then you should dumbbell decline bench. Then you should extend your bench. Then you should dumbbell decline bench. Then you should extend

your arms during these 45 different versions of a tricep extension exercise. Don't forget cable crossovers. Then you should cable crossover. Then you should do the air crossover machine. That's like a pneumatic device. You should do all that. Then you've done your chest workout. Peck deck, man.

So that's extreme. Yeah, I mean, then that took me right into football in high deck, man. So that's extreme. Yeah, I mean, and I, then that took me right into football in high school, which still remained that general training program.

We didn't squat. We did a whole lot of benching. We had an old hip, it's not, it was like the primordial

leg press machine. AMF one? Yeah, it was like a thin, thick metal bar and then a completely overly frictioned apparatus that just slid rusty metal on rusty metal.

And it had this clunky adjustment so you could get your legs lined right. So it did that thing. I think everybody had one of those. Yeah, a lot of bench. And then the worst power cleans anybody could ever imagine. Strap up tight, stand up, start swinging. When you feel like you had the nice rhythm in the way,

you curled the thing and you went into a sumo stance, you tried to hold it upright, then coach said, good job, you're doing power cleans. And because we do this, we're going to be an athletic, successful team. That was the first lesson. You just do an exercise because that makes you good at something.

We don't know why or what we're going to get at this, but we're going to do cleans and bigger, faster, stronger says it. So we're going to do it, whatever. Yeah. And then,

but I don't remember anybody ever coaching technique on anything. Really? No memory of somebody going, you should, maybe you should try this. No one ever said anything about, they said, well,

bench, and then go do squats and do pack cleans. We're going to sit by this desk, and I'm going to shuffle papers. I'm going to grade my chemistry test or whatever. I'm not going to pay attention to what these kids are doing. And then our college football strength and conditioning program was kind of okay. I mean, they printed off programs from a computer. It was like some strength 5.0, some training program. The guy would just put your number in, print it off. They'd keep it in a computer. It was like some strength 5.0,

some training program. The guy would just put your number in, print it off, they'd keep it in a folder, they'd hand it to you. And you'd go through it in teams with three or four guys. You know, it was sort of just progressive.

Every football program you've ever seen is general. But again, no coaching on power cleaning. It was not a very great approach. And if you, I remember like doing sets of squats like 365 or so rounding over not getting depth not being very good at anything and going man my back really hurts having a coach tell me oh you just keep doing it i mean you keep

do it till you get better at it yeah get a stronger back get yeah make your back stronger i go yeah i don't seems like a not the right path okay and that got me into the situation where I had degenerative disc disease and couldn't jump couldn't bend over you know blew a couple discs you know so my my path began when I left football halfway through college and started trying to figure things out for my own and that that led right into power because it's the next thing I sort of stumbled upon like all on the way it would be nice if i had a guy say you know you got you got short stubby arms you're reasonably athletic i should teach you decent form when i clean maybe you could be good at that i know i didn't anybody

instruct me and i was that's probably a big regret that i couldn't seek out or have more coaching knowledge around me but i went right into powerlifting then became competitive that rehab my back successfully doing some things like lots of that's a good thing i discovered is that doing things that didn't necessarily require heavy squats i did a lot of back raises and ab work i said i'm gonna maybe rehab my back and discover that on my own and so i can do a squat with some better form and not without pain. I'm not going to try it anymore. Every one a year,

I'd got my squat up to 800 pounds, but I'd also take my body weight from two 80 to like three 70. Uh, so I, I kind of just kind of took on this new personality. What's going to be, it's this big, huge power up there.

And that's what my thing. And Brian probably remembers me being a big, huge power. I's it going to be? It's this big, huge power up there and that's my thing. And Brian probably remembers me being a big, huge power up there. I remember it very well. My idea of dressing up for school was wearing new cargo shorts. I was like, I'm dressed up.

I got a big presentation. I'm going to wear cargo shorts and an untucked polo shirt. That's what I'm going to fit myself into. But yeah, that was my approach for the next,

from like 2001, 2002, when I got through that done with football to like really until like we found the gym i was on that track and fully pursuing it doing powerlifting nothing but and being fully absorbed by it uh and then that that sort of led to a point where it became obvious that being unnecessarily heavy and fighting an uphill battle to compete against guys who didn't have the same life goals as me that for myself were emerging.

I didn't want to only do this. I didn't want to only be some yelling, screaming meathead in the gym. I quickly became uncool for the first time in my life. Getting mad at lifting a bar seems stupid. This is not fun. What am I doing?

That began my sort of modern process of introspection going, why am I training? What would be the better way of doing this? Like what is really important? How should I form new goals that are actually fulfilling and meaningful? And that sort of has led all the way up to now where I sort of did that seminar where a lot of those lessons are sort of captured in that talk where looking back, there was a lot of good things I did

and a lot of bad motivation, a lot of mistakes, and a lot of things that seemed a good idea at the time that no longer are a very good idea, I don't think. And I think you can get a much more fulfilling go at things if you have a different motivation so that was sort of my timeline I don't know how far I

went over my three minutes probably I think we've all gone over yeah these three Mike won't go over though yeah Mike no way Mike's like I've always done crossfit and I've always been awesome I actually was doing crossfit before it came around before Greg Glassman I just didn't call it crossfit I called it fit cross you told a guy in high school I don't want to blow my wad

wad so what's your story all right let's see um i played a lot of sports when i was younger baseball swam swimming uh one of the the oddest thing sports i ever did was fencing not many people would know that i don't even know if i knew that pretty nerdy it's probably i don't go around announcing it, but I just did. Foil or Sabre? Foil. There's Foil, Sabre, and Epi.

That's right. More than I know. Can't tell what those mean. Anyways, we won't go too far into that. See, I had a habit when I was younger of never doing anything long enough to get good at it. And that's probably why I love CrossFit. It's because... Now you're not good at anything.

Exactly. Training ADD. Yeah. So, definitely CrossFit attracts people like me. So, I never did any one thing long enough to get great at it. I was pretty good at quite a few sports all throughout high school. When I was 15, I remember being, before I was 15, I remember begging my parents.

I was like, let me, I want to lift weights. And I never did play football like you guys, but I probably would have been exposed to it earlier if I had. But I always remember thinking, I want to lift weights. I want to be bigger, and I want to be stronger, and all that stuff, and I know I have to lift weights to do that. I begging my parents let me go to the gym they're like no and i think the the gym we were members of you couldn't get into the weight room unless you were at least 15 anyway that was like the rule and they were like and i do remember having like the stunt your growth uh talk yeah right and yeah, looking back on that. Yeah. That's kind of ridiculous. Um, and so like the day I turned 15,

I went and got like my learner's permit to drive. And then I also went to the gym and started lifting weights and big milestones and old blood. So yeah. Yeah. Um, all my workouts, I came out like flex magazine, muscle and fitness. Um, yeah, I remember like taking uh arnold schwarzenegger's chest routine mixing it with dorian yates back routine and like yeah like ronnie coleman's leg routine i was drinking training it's the best part from everybody i'm gonna look like all those guys mixed into one exactly uh somewhere between some some at some point when I was 15, I remember thinking I wanted to go in the Navy and I wanted to be a SEAL.

So I didn't change my training. I just added to it. Right. So up to that point, my training was I lifted weights six days a week for two hours, like 60 second rest in between sets for like two hours. It was, I, I, and it was three day splits. Looking back, I was like,

where did I get this energy? It was insane. Because you're probably not even eating food during the day, really. I mean, you had like, actually, I ate pretty big.

I also started watching my diet when I was about 15. Like I started like doing the things the magazine said and stuff. I went and bought my own food sometimes. I was weird. Chicken breast and rice. Yeah, I was a weird kid. Some things never change. Yeah, still weird.

Let's see. So what I did was like, well, I'm going to go in the Navy. So I started running and swimming on top of the weight training. I remember putting leg weights on my legs, running a mile and a half to the gym from my house, lifting for two hours, and only water consumed during this entire period. Lifting weights for two hours,

putting the leg weights back on my ankles, and running home, weighted backpack too, and running back home the mile and a half. You do crazy shit when you're young. And then swimming got thrown in there a couple days a week too. I was like, man, I can't figure out why I can't gain weight. Why can't I break 140 pounds? Yeah, again, that was a huge training mistake.

But I did that from like 15 to 18. I was crazy committed. I would stay late Friday nights, get my workout in skipping movies. Um, I played, played a little bit of baseball. I thought I, I thought maybe I could play like, you know, I was like, man, I could, maybe I could be pro one day. And then I started playing with like some guys that were, uh, in college and they were good. They, they destroyed college. And they were good.

They destroyed me. Maybe I won't go to the MLB. I was like, the first real fastball. Like some guy who doesn't lift weights ever. He eats nothing but Taco Bell, just smokes you on every arm. Exactly. I was like, oh. I ended up going in the Navy.

I did not become a Navy SEAL. But while I was in the Navy, I kept up the running, swimming, and bodybuilding protocol. And that was pretty much it. I got out of the Navy at the age of 23, 24. I went to University of Memphis. I went to exercise science class. First class I ever took for exercise science was with Brian Schilling here. It all comes full circle. He introduced me to this thing called I had to take weight training for the degree program. I already know weight training. I've been doing it for a decade.

God, I'm a master of it. What are they going to teach me? He's like, today we're going to learn the snatch. I go, what? And then instantly fell in love with it. I remember you spent some time with me. I would come back in the afternoons or something and spend extra time. And I learned how to snatch and clean and jerk.

And then you had that first experience when you try it. You go, this will be easy. And you go, holy shit. What am I doing? Overhead squats were kicking my ass. But the thing was, that was the first time I understood training for performance. when you try it you go this would be easy to go holy shit yeah what am i doing over head squats were kicking my ass yeah but the thing was is like that was the first time i i understood training for performance like kind of like what you were talking about i was i thought i was training for performance the whole time right because that's what the information had out there is like this

is how you train it never didn't say what train goal was everything yeah so like i uh that was the first time i understood like oh training for performance is different i was like oh man why didn't i know this before it killed me so i did uh just weightlifting for a year and a half got pretty good at it and uh learned and then i uh i got sidetracked at one point and tried crossfit because i didn't we didn't have any weightlifting competitions coming up or something we'd competed a little bit, Doug and I. I think I remember the first couple workouts you did for CrossFit. Yeah. I think you were down at the field house, and you did like a 30-rep something with snatches or some shit.

Actually, one of my buddies who was a Navy SEAL introduced it to me while he came and visited for Christmas. And then six months later i've looked up the website again and decided doing started doing that i did crossfit for like a year and i probably did like dot com for like a year tore my shoulder up to where like i couldn't do any pull-ups i was like well that was stupid so a lot of hanging from the bar back in the 07 CrossFit.com days. Not so much anymore. I've looked at it more recently. Had to rehab my shoulder on my own kind of.

I was pretty worried about it, but ended up getting healed back up. And then since then I've done a lot of different. My own programming. I've looked into OPT for a while. Kind of done a lot of that other stuff. So you say where you're at now is sort of a mix of your experience with performance uh research and education i feel like last year last year everything's kind of come i feel like everything's kind of assimilated in a really good philosophy yeah yeah exactly so and it's always changing of course but yeah as i feel like i'm more of a coach than an athlete who, for sure.

Doug, who was born and bred to be awesome, and then all of us who didn't train with a shit until, like, 22, 23, 24. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. That really did help when I moved to Memphis and got to train with Brian, actually. He made a couple of small changes to my lift that really went a long way. Yeah, you were a lot further along than a lot of other people

that have come in the weight room, though. I mean. Yeah, well, I mean, like, in Mike like in mike's case like he just like he said he didn't he never heard of it in my case like i had already gone through an exercise science program and like my senior project was on the biomechanics of snatching right and i've been lifting that way for eight years not not perfect but but getting better along yeah along the the entire progression but when i met you the you probably remember this at all but the two changes that that you had to make was number one sink my butt a little bit lower because my back was almost flat to the ground

especially snatching and i and my shoulders were behind the bar starting position yeah he fixed my starting position then the the other one was you had me widen my grip. Oh, okay. Those two things. Well, you got long arms, so that makes sense. Yeah, those two things were the key because I was always tweaking my lifts, always trying to find the way to make a hit in the right spot, and I always didn't feel right, and I always changed it. And then when I did those two things, I literally haven't changed it since. It's been like five years, and I haven't changed it once.

It feels great every time. That's why people who have aspirations to compete and do well but have been under one set of eyes and they're looking at their training and they have a coach who's looked at their training for a long time it helps to have somebody fresh look at you because

mistakes and bad tendencies become dull to everybody around you. Everybody starts thinking that's the normal. They miss the obvious things that can really make a big difference. Nothing against the coach that you had. I tell this to our athletes

all the time. If you go out of town, take the opportunity to go train under another coach. They might spot something or they may say the same thing I'm saying but differently

in the way that it clicks. You have to do that if you want to be a good athlete. The problem is there's too many egos around coaches get too possessive of their athletes and and honestly i've seen like i've seen the converse where you've got a a person who's pretty talented but they listen to everybody i mean anybody anybody hey what do you think what do you hey what do you think what do you think and then they they just they can't concentrate on anything

they're listening to everybody instead of so i there's somewhere on that spectrum of listening to the right people and enough people or too many of the wrong people too so yeah because maybe that's problematic in cross like i wrote a article about listening to everyone and before you know it you're doing cross endurance to run far farther and better and you're doing west side barbell stuff to get better at power lifts, and you're doing Coach Bergner's 15th thing warm-up to get better at your Olympic lifts, and then you're doing plyometric training, you fall into the same trap.

You're turning into a bloodsow, a high school bloodsow. A lot of you CrossFitters are like this asshole. I know a lot of pretty competitive CrossFit athletes. They do that. I've done it before. I would say I don't do it anymore. I stick to one comprehensive plan, and I think that's what everybody should do. Hire a coach to handle your programming as a whole.

But, yeah. We agree. Mixing programs. Oh, yeah. I remember doing a weightlifting program in the morning, CrossFit. you know in the afternoon and then doing crossfit endurance in the evening what is going on and there's guys that actually they they do well with that but imagine what they could be doing if they did it's weird because somebody if somebody asked you for advice you'd probably say yeah you should probably just try this thing then your own personal training you're

making all these mistakes it's kind of you make those mistakes and it's kind of hard to see at that time that you're you're doing this yeah one of the things that i miss when i was younger is that i i wish that there was even like good coaches and maybe there wasn't in memphis you know 15 years ago you know maybe in memphis, it probably would have been hard to track someone down. I just wish... There's no internet then. I had AOL and I had chat rooms and that was about it. You weren't chatting about training.

Absolutely not. Those will probably pop up one day when I run for office. He was chatting with M8345 about this. I think now it's so much easier to do it right because you have the Internet. So you have a lot of information. There's a lot of bad information out there.

But at the same time, like there was no resource at all for me when I was younger. At least now a 15-year-old can go, oh, there's five CrossFit gyms in my town. I can visit all of them, try them all out, see which one seems good. I mean, if I would have been exposed to it. Yeah. But we've gone from a phase where you couldn't find out anything. Now you can find out too much. So now you've gone from finding anything that's useful.

Now it's all there. Now you've got to figure out what's useful from what's all there. Yeah, so you've got to be intelligent about the information. And if you're not intelligent about the information, you're probably screwed in the long run anyway. Either way. You're lost. There's some pretty hilarious videos on YouTube that, I mean, the title says how to power clean or how to snatch or whatever. And then you start watching it, and it's just bad.

Hence why we have Technique WOD. Yes. I've actually had clients they go all right you program this and i watched this video and they were doing it like this i'm like whoa whoa whoa don't do that ever don't move like that uh so and but that's kind of like why you started technique wad was you know like this is the safe youtube channel like not that other things aren't good there's probably some really good stuff out there but this is the safe one this is one where you can

go to with confidence and know that you're doing the right thing yeah technique was started well before we had you know the podcast or anything else originally was just supposed to be a an easy resource for us to send our own clients to you know we'd be teaching something in the class that day and then I'd say, if you want to go on Technique Quad and watch this video, you can review it at home. That way you can replay it over and over again because some people, they're nervous.

They don't want to come. They're brand new. They don't want to come ask you again what you said. I mean, you spot them doing it wrong, go over and help them and whatnot, but it's just easier if you can go just click the video, and then if you don't get it, you can just watch it again and watch it again

until you do get it. And that's that's originally how technique quad started yeah i think i think it actually helps out our clients a little bit more too like they can look at the workout the day that day and i try to most of the time link the movement to the technique video that way like even before they get you know the coaching in the gym they can review uh what it is they're about to do. If they're one of those people that like to look at the WOD before they show up, some people don't want to see it. They want to be surprised.

They don't want to have anxiety all day over it. How'd you start doing research on weightlifting? I started doing research on weightlifting basically at the same time I was learning weightlifting, working with Stone at Appalachian. So this would be in 97. And who is he for the viewers? Dr. Mike Stone was at Appalachian at the time. He's now at East Tennessee State University.

He'd been involved in weightlifting, USA weightlifting, for a long time as a coach and an athlete and then as a researcher too. He's been in all aspects. Their program is great. If you want to get your master's somewhere in exercise science, first go to University of Memphis. Only if you're smart. If you're not, don't bother.

At ETSU, they have a pretty cool weightlifting program. They have their cheerleaders weightlifting. They have a PhD program, which we don't and probably won't have anywhere. So, it's definitely a good situation over there.

Yeah. You can't really call yourself somebody educated in the topic of sports science unless you've read all of Dr. Stone's and Dr. Garhammer's articles they put out

in that late 70s to early 90s time frame or whatever. You have to read those. I remember when the first guys to critically assess on on the for the in the states i guess a lot of these issues yeah especially in weightlifting john's technique is his his own lifting technique is picture perfect and he knows the technique so well i remember when stone was moving to uh he is not a young guy no

no yeah when uh when stone's moving to scotland i remember finding like a stapled bound original typewritten copy of Garham's dissertation blow off the dust I'm like man this should be like in the Smithsonian so what papers have you one more comment about that guy he was like he had the chops to be like a proper physicist right

yeah I mean I don't really know much about his training I just know he's a really really smart guy he's a guy who has like properly trained physics. Yeah, and he taught Misty May how to do

a snatch and a clean and jerk. Yeah, but he applied that expertise to sport. He could have been just an academic

physicist or something, but he was interested in the biomechanics of sport. That's really incredible. He's not a very dull guy. That guy has some

brain power. Yeah, just find a place with good margaritas and the story will start coming. Yeah, hadn't had that opportunity yet. That's kind of what Dr. Fry is. Yeah, that's right. That's originally how I ended up at University of Memphis. Dr. Fry met me and Andy

when Mark took me to a conference. Dr. Fry was there and he talked to me and Andy about University of Memphis' program and about how it was very weightlifting focused. And so I literally came to Memphis for the weightlifting program and the weightlifting research that these guys had done, Dr. Fry and Dr. Schilling over here. And that's why I came to Memphis was for the weightlifting.

And you can't meet Fry and not have a good time talking to Dr. Fry. Oh, no, he's a great guy. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody has that. He's a bright light for sure at a conference. talking with Dr. Fry. Oh, no, he's a great guy. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody has that. I mean, he's a bright light, for sure, at a conference. Mm-hmm. All right. I'm going to pull this back on track a little bit.

Okay. Since you guys suck. No, I'm just kidding. Ron, what's the biggest training mistake you think you've made? No, we all got to focus on, like, that one big thing. This is tough. It is tough. I think we kind of covered what we felt like it it was kind of glossed over it during the explanation there's there have been many and

there have been different degrees of them and it depends on probably which training phase i was in i would say if i had to narrow it down to one thing is i would start weight lifting earlier i didn't really learn how to do a snatch or clean and jerk i guess i said when i got to appalachian but i somebody actually taught me some clean stuff when I was doing my internship for my undergraduate degree. I mean, this is literally six months earlier than I first dated it. So, I mean, this is, you know, this is, I've been training from, you know, I've been training for a good, you know,

eight years before somebody really taught me how to do it. And by then I had lost all the flexibility that I had had when I was doing taekwondo and stuff when i was a kid i remember being able to do splits and stuff i mean i didn't do it for that long but i remember having all that mobility and lost it all by high school and then starting when you're 22 years old and trying to gain back all that i remember getting outlifted by one of the girls on the track team she was like a shot putter or something so she she's bigger than i was still but i'm like it's embarrassing i'm like holy moly i gotta learn how to do these snatches this girl's outlifting me right here that that if i could do

one thing over again i would go back and start weightlifting earlier however i can take i get a little bit of solace in the fact that nobody was really doing it around me it's not like i saw it and like oh i don't need that stuff you didn't make a conscious you didn't reject the truth you didn't you didn't have the option of the red or green pill. All I was, I was just, I was trying to find information. You know, I had the, I had the, the bodybuilding magazines. I remember like, I bet there was one time where I was getting Flex and Muscle and Fitness and Ironman in the mail. Like I was paying for subscriptions.

I mean, I'm sure I was, you know, and I had a member giving stacks and stacks of them to some local gym years and years later. But I was, I was looking for information, but that's all there was. And I remember giving stacks and stacks of them to some local gym years and years later. But I was looking for information, but that's all there was. Did you also lay the guilt trip on your parents like, Mom, I've got to have the protein powder. There's egg wheat or egg protein powder. I've got to have it. I won't be big without it.

It was Joe Weider's Dynamic Muscle Builder. It was kind of like in this cylinder type thing. And I was allergic to milk, so I was missing the orange juice. And my old man walks by. He goes, oh, my God. What is that stuff? I said, well, it's Joe Weider Dynamic Muscle. He goes, that smells like milk replacer that we feed calves on the farm.

He was an old farm kid. It probably was. I'm like, that's probably exactly what it is. They just put Joe's face on it. That's where it all started, man. Reading Muscle and Fitness. My first supplement ever was Joe Weider egg protein powder. It was delicious, I remember.

But I pressured my mom into giving me like 20 bucks to go buy my steak in this bottle. Me and my friend split. We started to drink it. Go, you feel bigger yet? I feel bigger, dude. Let's go lift now. You go back to your buddy's porch, start slinging those concrete weights around. It makes me think about Ultimate Orange.

Yes, I was going to bring that up. It's like the original Jack 3D. That shit was dangerous, man. Dude, I remember taking that before like... Shit's amphetamines or something. I don't even know what's in it. I remember taking that before like a soccer game once. I was like 15.

I remember like halfway through going maybe i shouldn't have taken this i feel really funny but i'm doing awesome yeah we used to take yellow jackets they probably they probably still sell them at like convenience stores and i have no idea what's in them and i haven't taken them since i was probably 16 or something like that but i remember a bunch of kids a bunch of guys on the football team took a bunch of yellow jackets and we had like the best football practice ever. I fucking cried afterwards. It was a spiritual experience. Yeah, it's like we were running the stairs

at the stadium after practice and it was like I wouldn't even consider trying to stop accelerating the entire length on every single sprint. It's like i couldn't get tired it was it was fucking insane i'm sure it was just terrible for me and then the coach got wind of that and he cut that off pretty pretty quick so some kid drops dead on another we had the advantageous exercise of of brown all right hitting on one that we all would echo and

that like for me i can't even probably bend my elbow back anymore. We would all pursue earlier, better technique work, especially in the lifts to be able to rack barbells effectively and do all that. So we can chalk that one off the big board. You want to name your big, the big one. Probably for me would be,

uh, I would not have done as much linear periodization. I spent too much time doing hypertrophy stuff, like thinking size was the big thing and not just getting stronger. And I think ultimately that hurt my speed. Would you say you would go back and just do less focus on some things in a shorter duration of blocks, or would you just not pursue that? The general focus on one

thing to move the next thing approach instead of doing you know three four sets of 10 sets of 12 on everything i would have at least at least for the bigger movements back squats and dead so maybe your hypertrophy phase would be like five by five or five by exactly i think that was something i mean yeah you have you have such a short amount of time in your offseason to get stronger and get faster. I think that I wasted half my offseason focusing on just getting bigger. And that was never my problem. I was similar size to most of the guys at that point. I was 215 as a linebacker.

You weren't like 140 pounds like this guy. Yeah, I mean, this is in college. See, I was always trying to game it, but I wasn't light. I was just short. I knew that I'm still going to have to get bigger. I was just always thinking. I don't remember ever being 140. I don't remember that. You went from 100 to 250, I think.

I remember being... I remember being 185 or 200 or something like in fourth grade. How big? Like 185 or close to how old is that fourth grade fourth grade yeah nine or so yeah and i wasn't i was chubby kid but i wasn't i wasn't the fattest kid around i wasn't the sole target of the fat jokes and i remember telling my middle school coach in sixth grade football whatever like he asked me hey what do you weigh son i go 245 because

i weighed myself that day he's like we carry it well that was day one of my introduction to football and he gave me a little lesson so i'm not too fat i'm not complete fat ass apparently i think that was a compliment i remember in two days in high school being i think i was 169 pounds because i remember like we were weighing in and the stud guy was, I guess I was a junior because the guy was a year older than me that had split backs. He was the other starting back. He was listed at whatever in the program

and he was only 10 pounds more than I was. He was 179. I thought, well, I'm really not that far off and he was taller, a lot taller, obviously. I thought, so that's not too long that I wasn't very big. One of the things that we were talking about like taking protein powders,

I did the same thing went to gnc's like the the one you know i picked out the the supplement that had like you know what what the thing that looked like it was gonna make me the biggest and i got that coolest label like the best label yeah and i remember it tasting terrible and i i feel like uh what i should have something I wish I would have known earlier, and I was allergic to milk also. And so that's one reason I went to that. But, I mean, in the last year, I've learned that goat milk doesn't bother me. So I go and score me some raw goat milk, which is illegal. Be careful how you describe how you score that.

Yeah. It's a felony. Well, I'm not going to tell anybody. Yeah, I'd get in a lot of trouble for that. It's illegal in the state of Tennessee. Nobody's going to know. You get ultra-pasteurized goat milk from Whole Foods, don't want anybody. Yeah, I'd get in a lot of trouble for that. It's illegal in the state of Tennessee. Nobody's going to know. You get ultra-pasteurized goat milk from Whole Foods, don't you? Right.

Okay, good. Yeah, but, I mean, lesson learned on that is I could have been crushed. Like, I could have maybe found something back then, crushed that, and got way better results for weight gain. It's funny that you bring that up, though, because even though I did start on the dynamic muscle builder, and even though I never really got good weightlifting advice, I did meet a guy who ran his own gym and ran a little health food store. And this was really – GNC hasn't been around forever, you guys, just like computers. So this was it.

I mean, this was like in the – This was before GNC. Yeah. Well, I don't really know when GNC started, but I'm pretty sure it was. This guy was selling liver tablets probably. Yeah. He had all that stuff. But he was a bodybuilder, powerlifter guy.

I mean, he was old school. And I still keep in touch with him to this day. But he gave me a decent discount on stuff. And he put me towards stuff that was food. Like, okay, it's got carbs and stuff in it, but it's food. And for a kid like me, I needed that. I just needed to have food coming in. And he's actually the person who told me about creatine.

When it was still, when you took it in tablets, you know, I was still in high school when creatine came out and it was a big deal. I remember at one time, I think I had, I had had mono and I lost some weight and I came back, but I gained 17 pounds in a month by taking these thousand calorie banana shakes from Optum Nut optimum nutrition which tasted awesome by the way and and creatine and i mean you're taking like the two or the foundation of modern calories and creatine calories and creating like a wild man yeah it's so cheap and prevalent but the only thing that really works so i guess i guess i should be as bitter as i could be about

not getting good weightlifting advice i should be appreciative of getting not too bad. That's one thing you would not change. You would not, not take creatine. Creatine is a good thing. Yeah. I still, to this day. So I,

I started in what, in 92 and still going strong. And now, and now for all kinds of other reasons, creatine is good, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Nervous tissue and cholesterol. If you have brain health, higher total cholesterol, which obviously that's debatable, whether that's a, but you eat, you eat bacon for breakfast every day. You don't get the problem. Do you have higher total cholesterol, which obviously that's debatable whether that's a bad thing or not. But you eat bacon for breakfast every day. You don't get the problem, do you?

Every day. Every day. Drink a bacon smoothie for dessert. When people tell me they don't take creatine, I'm like, what? It's so cheap? It doesn't taste like anything? You can't mix it in anything? When I was living in Scotland, this guy came up to me and he said, well, you know, my son is a pole vaulter.

And he finishes about fifth everywhere he goes. He's a pretty good pole vaulter. And he takes pride in the fact that he doesn't take creatine and the rest of the guys do. I thought to myself, could you live with taking creatine and finishing first? And I can't remember how I couched it to that guy. But it's like, I'm not really sure that's really a laudable thing to be talking about. Why not just give it a try? Well, I guess in his mind, something that gave you an edge was basically steroids.

I guess so. And you were cheating. Practicing pole vaulting gives you an edge too, but I'm sure the kid practicing pole vaulting. Eating food gives you an edge. Sleeping gives you an edge. Learning how to do pole vaulting gives you an edge. Why not take a powder that just gives you an edge? Bizarre conversation.

We hosted a powerlifting meet once and a guy called me and goes can I use straps you know for the deadlift I go no he goes are guys there going to be on creatine I was like yes he goes well I think that's cheating and I was like

airtight logic he was like you don't want to compete because you can't use straps but you won't compete against guys that use creatine. Brilliant. I want to say the only other thing I've found that surpasses my experience with creatine is the dimethyl meth meth. That shit makes you feel like a god. It still does.

Everyone who doesn't know what that is thinks you're talking about meth. The 1,3-dimethyl, say it, Brian. I can't say that word. 1,3-dimethylamelamine. Or geranium extract. Or what is in Jack 3D. There you go. But actually, I think it works.

I get a better experience. I'm more level but pure. I feel like I'm talking like pure drugs versus cut drugs. I get a much more pure level experience from just doing it in those pills. But I guess maybe I should make my mistake. What are you doing, CTP? You're distracting me, bro. I'm about to say my mistake.

Do it. He doesn't have to hear it for me. We got mobility. We got a little more focused approach with a periodization model i'd probably echo that and say i it's really important for people to to realize when they they can are now ready to move on to the next sort of type of training like once you learn technique and you you pick that lowest fruit you can move on to different models which like doug's suggesting he'd do more focus better ways of hitting squats and main lifts and i i'd agree with that i think the thing

is since entertaining this question for the last day or so really the thing that pops out to me is like probably the biggest mistake i've made especially when i went through the palathon deal is really putting too much importance or putting too much emphasis on trying to find all these great exercises. And I really believe that the more fancy exercise you come up with, even like inventing your own, that you would find all these untapped ways to make yourself super strong. Like beyond just the things that were born, everybody does those things and not everybody is super strong.

So it must be special combinations of things and fancy versions of things that would really make the difference. It's funny you say that because Lauren and I used to make fun of you when you weren't around thinking I wonder what Chris is going to set a new PR in today. It's going to be the reverse hack squat with bands and chains.

I wouldn't say it doesn't work because I was strong enough, but maybe it's not necessary. It's a qualifying statement. The things I really did do a good job of mastering were learning how heavy I could go and when, and when I probably shouldn't do that. I learned how to use variation on exercises to get the most out of my humble flesh, which I wouldn't change those things. But looking back on it, I would probably have much

more of a perhaps more of a weightlifting mentality with exercise selection. But now I realize like now in my own training, I just do I do squats with a straight barbell. Like simple strength almost. Yeah. But no, I've recapped some mobility. I do only squats with a barbell. And just the safety bar is the only real special bar I use anymore. I bench and press. Bench twice a week, press once a week. Let me ask you this. Would you change the amount of supportive gear that you used?

Yeah, I don't. I mean, my experience with that if you're going to compete in certain circles and power then you have to use it i don't think it's a bad thing i'll tell people that if you aren't gonna compete in a path of meat that uses that gear that's not the local meat that's not what you're trying to do then you shouldn't fool it because it's not going to help you just be stronger at all uh that being said i'd say don't listen to like one of the things i see now that i really don't agree with is crossfit seeks the advice of competitive powerlifters to help coach and improve crossfitters performance

on powerlifts but they're taking advice from guys who amongst other things are using competitive gear right if you're in a bench shirt your suit, you're going to do things fundamentally different that don't apply to a CrossFitter. Can you be a little more clarified what a squat suit and bench shirt is? Like on Rogue, yeah, a bench press shirt is a constrictive either... Something you're not going to go to the store wearing.

No, it's a garment that makes you bench more by... If you ever try to squat in a tight pair of jeans, you realize that the jeans start resisting your movement as you squat down. They kind of, they don't stretch and they compress your legs and it stops you from going down. But if you put it way on your back, it would make you go a little further and you'd probably come up out of the bottom a little bit.

Then you would finish on your own as the jeans didn't get so tight. That's basically what a squat suit does. It constricts and either helps you come out of the bottom or helps you not get, you know, stable to the ground as something you shouldn't be trying to lift, you know. And a bench shirt's the same. It helps you. There's stretchy kinds that help propel the bar off your chest, like a slingshot. Mark Bell sells a slingshot. That's basically the fundamental mechanics of a bench shirt.

It stretches. It propels the bar off your chest, helps you. I don't think it's a very good idea for people who want to get stronger. If you have a shoulder injury, maybe. But to get really good power, there's also arch a lot because that stretches the shirt more and helps you get more off the bar and also cuts your range of motion. But if you're a crossfitter wanting to bench more because you want strong arms,

that will help you perhaps maybe jerk a little bit better, but help you do kettlebell work better and help you be a stronger all-around person. You have no business trying to touch a bar to your belly or overarching your back or using a really wide squat stance or doing a tweaked out sumo deadlift or something. That's not going to carry over to anything you want to do in, in, in CrossFit or competition. So it's now realized that really, uh, it's not the exercise that matter. And Glenn Penlay's echoed that he, he made a comment that,

you know, he went around to all these, like at Pan Am games, carefully observing all the coaches, although the weightlifters and asking questions like, Hey, you know, what do you think about this?

Kind of just in conversation, seeing what everybody was up to in their training. And almost universally, everybody comments on how they're amazed at why Americans in general sort of are so obsessed by the programming or the way you organize exercise and what you're actually doing.

That really doesn't matter. What matters is, aside from drugs and stuff, the attitude and devotion to the sport like there's other things that are really important like how hard you're working uh your your dedication your refinement of your technique and all this kind of stuff but like whether or not you did rdls they're like well do them or don't do them who gives a shit doesn't it's not gonna make you a good whale they're not it's nice if you want to do those sure i always did a bunch of silly shit like uh banded back raises that makes your back strong do you have to do that to get a

strong back can you just do a barbell good morning for a couple sets of five to ten and at the end of your workout yeah that that's all you need to do you don't have to invent 50 ways of doing back raises and the current palatine culture is yeah you gotta do a bunch of silly shit to get stronger i wouldn't repeat that yeah i think i think it's interesting too if i i've walked into crossfit gyms before and they've got in the class every single client like squatting with bands or benching with bands and chains maybe not bands but i've seen chains i'm like these people just i don't ever use chains and i've been squatting for 15 years and I still get better with just straight barbell work.

If you're going to, if you're going to be a path to lifting gear, it's going to help you set records almost immediately. If you're a raw squatter trying to get better in a clean jerk or something, it won't have any effect. You have a ton of volume in your history. I mean, if you've been squatting for,

you know, five years and you've kind of tapped out on on natural ability but maybe throwing bands on there can change something one one difference would be if you want to do to not train your squat but you want to do some speed work before you squat or something you want to do like a you put a little bit of light tension on there and do like a jump squat or something or some quick box squats as a warm-up or to kind of supplement a well-planned, progressive barbell-based squat program, it could probably have some good effects for you.

I can see that if you're doing a pure strength program. If you replace your heavy-weighted, free-weight barbell squats with something else to build the free-weight barbell squat or to build a clean and jerk, you're going to fail. Yeah. My favorite thing about chains and bands is that they're just fun to use yeah they're fun and if you if you do that with a well-rounded program it's gonna be good if you only do that you're not gonna have carryover

to things you're trying to get better yeah i think that's the big mistake is some people think oh i like bands and chains let me find every possible variation of an exercise I can do a band and chain with and that's all I'm going to do. Yeah. Or it's none. The really awesome thing about bands is they allow you to do extreme cool things when you don't have equipment.

You can be at home and do 800 things with a band and get a full workout. It's actually really awesome. Stretch, hang it from a door or a doorknob, do rows and pushdowns. You can do some creative things with bands. They's actually really awesome. Stretch, hanging it from a door or a doorknob, do rows and pushdowns. You can do some creative things with bands. They allow you some freedom.

Great for mobility, great for targeted speed work with a barbell. But like anything, if you replace anything or you replace a barbell and plates with anything else

instead of lightly supplementing the barbell with other things, you're going to fail. That's the key mistake. You can't replace the things that should never be replaced. That's the foundation of your house is the barbell. There's never going to be anything better than a barbell for making dudes big and strong.

If there was, that's what Kurlovich would have used instead of barbells. That tends not to make people a lot of money out there. That's why they're always out trying to communicate. I know. It makes the coaches who don't recommend fancy shit maybe don't have the sexiness and the persona. You can't change certain things.

Marketing. While that's marketing, I always say sometimes when I see something, I'll be at a conference or something. This happened at a conference we were at a couple months ago. And I just looked at Doug and I go, these people are practicing innovation for the sake of innovation instead of innovation for the sake of necessity.

And they were trying to teach everybody about functional movement. And they took functional movement and they tweaked it a bit to make it different i'm like what are you doing the function it wasn't a good idea to see this is just like useless and made it even more useless this is just like a squat except we're gonna jam like that's i hate you right now so much that's a good point like should you do like questions like people say i would just do single leg squats because some rationale maybe not as good as doing squats and then at certain times also doing some single leg squats or some stability work if you're doing squats and clean jerks and stuff and you also do as supplemental lifts some stability training with a grappler or a band and you're also doing some

some single leg squats something yeah i mean this seems like a reasonable combination of things you can get some benefits of being on one leg or doing stability, but as soon as you think the stability thing is more important than moving big heavyweights super fast and explosively. And then you, in your sport, you face somebody who does lift heavyweights explosively and as fast as possible.

I think the reality will hit you pretty hard, literally and figuratively that you made a bad decision. I think some people think that functional training is only if you're totally off balance and falling over the whole time like being on one leg and hopping around or being on like a like a little balance yeah i think dynadisc or a ball or something holding more than your body overhead seems pretty fucking functional yeah pretty functional training holding your body weight over your head for five seconds and dropping the bar and doing it again.

I think functional training is anything that makes you do the things that you're trying to do better. You're trying to be a better wrestler. It makes you a better wrestler.

It was functional. Take it back. Take the word back for our people. And that's part of the problem with this whole industry is the idea of semantics and what do you call something.

I mean, it was called dynamic correspondence at one time. It's basically how much this exercise makes you better at your sport well now that's kind of what i think the functional guys are trying to say well yeah if it makes you better at your sport it's a functional exercise like well man do you really try to do non-functional exercises i mean everybody kind of thinks they're doing a functional exercise then so it's redundant your mom hello department of didn't say department how I help you yeah I mean

call it a functional exercise it's just an exercise these are the exercises we do your mommy out when I was a college or grad school went to a Verka Shansky seminar in Chicago mm-hmm seemed like a great thing to do this guy's a master of sport training Soviet Union shit I was so excited man and if my first lesson in thinking that it was all bullshit was at some point somebody asked him a question. How would you train a certain kind of athlete? You know, well, the first thing, Dr. Jess, one time he said,

oh, it's so easy to make somebody big and strong and powerful. What's harder is to really target the needs of their sport. And he started going through these really obscure, crazy-ass sprinting technique exercises and stuff. And I go, it's not super easy to make somebody hugely strong and powerful. I heard that.

Because everybody will be hugely strong and powerful. I mean, I've been in seminars. I've been at national conferences. There's a thousand people in the rooms like, well, we already know how to make people big and strong. I'm thinking, really? There's no big and strong people in the room who's like, well, we already know how to make people big and strong. No, there's no big and strong people in this room. But the other thing that really got my

attention was at one point he answers a question like, what's the key to some performance? He goes, I won't do the accent. I don't want to hear my bad Soviet accent, but he goes, I'll do it. The key is you must maximize

biological potential of the organism I go what the shit is that supposed to mean and basically I deduce

he goes you mean just get fit get in shape like the ability to do better than I'm doing today like yeah

the biological capacity of the organism must be maximized it sounds it's like when a british guy says something goes right guys like a cultured smart motherfucker but really it's the accent so this guy sounds like an intense sport coach but aside from the cool russian accent he's all he's full of shit it didn't mean anything i go it doesn't mean anything does it just nonsense that was the first look behind the court curtain he was just a

he was a short guy on a stool talking to the microphones what he was figuratively speaking I don't know how tall Berkashansky actually is but yeah I mean

that was a big lesson he's no longer with us oh yeah he's that guy's dead very next he's not watching the set very next to the guy who wrote Super Training

which is another big convoluted book doubtful yeah I have to say my biggest. This is a great finale, but make it a good one. I feel like what I'm going to say is too general now. I'm like, man, I wish I had something extremely specific and unique.

But I think mine is going to be, a lot of people probably can say the same, is picking a goal, one goal, because I have a tendency to pick three or more, picking one goal and sticking with it for like four to six months. Until you accomplish that, the goal? Right. You know, shiny object syndrome, you know? Squirrel?

Yeah, exactly. I'm the world's worst, and I don't think i even realized that i did it until like the last year or two i always just thought that i was you know i just and doug would you say it also affects his business practices uh yeah it does sometimes for the better though not always it has its pros and cons for sure it's a give and take so as i've gotten older i think my motivation for training has become more intrinsic and less extrinsic and i think because of that i agree with that like we all find that oh absolutely that comes with age for sure and i

think since that's happened i've been able to kind of like not worry about like can i be the best me i can be like on that specific day and now i I'm more kind of thinking, you know, I just want to feel good at the end of this training session. I like setting PRs and I still do that. And I think that I have a much easier time now sticking with a single goal and seeing it through for several months on end. And I still struggle with that. It's not that's not something that like i had a realization one day i was like oh i do that i should stop doing that and it's not something it's not that easy is it it's a it's something in my personality i think like i said before i think

a lot of crossfitters have that same personality trait and that's what that's one of the things that attracts them especially the competitive guys you know they don't want to be good at weightlifting they want to be good at weightlifting and running and swimming and gymnastics. So I think even if it is a specific CrossFit program that you're following, see that program through for four, five, six months. If you're following a competition cycle or something like that, follow it out for a whole year. I know a lot of guys guys they'll do all this random

stuff and three months out from the crossfit games open regionals whatever whatever their competition is then they focus in on one program i was like well you probably should have been on that program for a whole year because i'm sure if the coach is anything like me i had a plan for the whole year to get you to that day. Well, you and I have had this conversation before about a lot of CrossFitters would do themselves a favor if they would concentrate on weightlifting at the beginning. Yes. Because the demands of weightlifting, and it's not just technique. Everybody says, oh, it's just technique. The demands of weightlifting from a biomechanical standpoint, technique standpoint, flexibility standpoint are so huge that if you concentrate on that

you will do yourself a favor in the long run you can you can always do the metcons that stuff the the enzymes and stuff the adaptations that come with metcons come skill aside are are pretty easy those training gains come fairly easy the the the skill and the the biomechanics the flexibility everything that goes away lifting that's harder to come by you'd be doing yourself a favor to concentrate on that and and keep the other stuff to a lesser degree nothing don't do it but concentrate on that and then later on you can you can always do that stuff i think i think brian's absolutely right do it with extreme efficiency too yeah that's move your body a lot better the efficiency is the key there if you if

you went to the regionals this past year i was was at CrossFit East coaching team and athletes. And the athletes, the individuals that placed top but and they had relied on their their their fitness i guess you could say but their movement efficiency just wasn't there they didn't have hip speed uh they they didn't use their hips in all the movements they muscled a lot of things and if you spend like i spent a year and a half only weight lifting like i weight lifted five days a week for a year and a half and the first time i tried to do a muscle up i didn't even know what a muscle up was called but i popped up in the muscle up i go i grabbed rings i did a muscle up and i was at another guy's gym and he goes you just did a muscle up i go well what's that this is before anything about that was a mark romano's gym and he had he does olympic weightlifting and grappling and stuff like that and he just happened to have a set of rings

he was like i can't believe you did that. I was like, I attribute that to the weightlifting, not because I'm a crazy athlete, but I think we have a lot of athletes that have really good movement efficiency because we focus on that for so long, and we don't get ahead of ourselves with throwing Metcons at people too fast. I mean, everyone kind of gets an intro.

It's shorter than what I would like. You're going to hijack your ability to learn something. Especially when you're doing the Olympic list for Metcon metcon huh see yeah yeah that's yeah if you if you're doing if you're trying to get better at weightlifting and you're doing snatches and cleaning jerks and metcons yeah you are hijacking yourself you should be that's one thing i cover uh i do a weightlifting seminar probably once every six months and that's like one of my rules you know if you want to get better there's these three rules and one of them is you know stop weightlifting your metcons pick up a heavy kettlebell instead yeah i mean there's a billion different other

things you could do in your account you don't have to do there's no lack of variation in profit i guarantee if you go from clean jerking 135 pounds to 225 pounds, rest assured that if somebody asks you to do grace 30 reps per time, you'll probably be better at it without having to do that in your Metcons all the time. Yeah, look at competitive Olympic lifters. They can do grace in just as fast time as any CrossFitter, and they look a lot better at it. And they're probably not tore up as much as the CrossFitter is.

But that's one thing to note, that if you look at the crossfit games this past year there's a lot of really good movement efficiency some of those people come by it naturally they just move well naturally but if you're somebody who wants to be competitive and you think you're going to get there on just grit and not not spending some focus focusing some time on olympic lifts and and good gymnastics movement and stuff like that then yeah you'll be screwed but i think that olympic lifting if you can get good at that everything else will come easy well not easy but right easier easier relatively yeah but uh i think

we're about ready to wrap this show up i'm gonna let we'll let uh brian go second to last so he can think about it. But Chris, anything you want to plug? Got your blog? Well, I guess you go to Fitter. Go to Fitter TV, check out the seminar. Check out the chrismoreblog.com if you want to see some articles. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.

Let's start a dialogue. Let's chat. Let's socially network ourselves. Dougie? Definitely check out Maximum Mobility. It was the mobility seminar that we did here a while back and record it and just put it onto the site here so go to the fitter.tv shop and there's a free preview on there that you can check out where i talk about or all about how to assess your ankle mobility and then how to fix it and in the product i go through every single one of your

joints in a very similar manner and i show you exactly you know what it looks like if you have a lack of mobility the type of movements that could potentially get you hurt in the future if you have that type of mobility deficit and then exactly what to do about it and it's a it's all self-assessment so you can figure out with yourself a very individualized stretching program if you've never been assessed before, then you might have limitations that you never would have suspected. If you don't know what your hip internal rotation or what your thoracic extension looks like, then this is a product that is probably going to be very eye-opening for you.

So go to the shop and check that out. All right. Brian, you have... Yeah, I'll give a plug. I mean, if you're listening to this type of stuff and you're thinking, you know, that's really interesting and you're interested in the profession of exercise and sports science, not necessarily the trade, but the profession, look into the bachelor's and the master's program at the University of Memphis.

I mean, I don't think there's any such thing as a perfect educational program, but I think we work really hard, and I think we have a very unique program. And, you know, it's not right for everybody, but for the right people, I think you could really thrive in the right environment. So we all came out of it and we're OK. Not too damaged. I'm so proud of you. I do think it was a great program.

I had a great time in graduate school. That's the only reason I'm sitting here today, I think. But the yeah, go to University of Memphis. Check that out. Check out their website. Definitely. I was going to say something about that. I don't know. Oh, yeah. If you do want to go to school in Memphis and you don't live in Memphis,

then you can come hang out and train at Faction. That's right. You get the best of both worlds. You would. You would have the best training and the best academics. It would be insane. And a pretty good barbecue, too. Yeah, if you want to come in town for a visit with the university,

definitely stop into the gym for a couple days and hang out and do some lifting and get to know the area. We'll tell you where to go. Lastly, make sure to go to fitter.tv. That's where you're going to find all the Barbell Shrug episodes and all the Technique WOD episodes. That's everything we we got is there. So check it out.

Share. Oh, yeah. Thanks, CTP. Oh, like Facebook buttons and shit on there? Yeah, yeah. When you're watching us, if you could, share us on Facebook. Spread the word. We want to reach as many people as possible.

We don't know why, but we feel like we should. We want to spread ourselves around. Yeah. All right thanks guys appreciate it yep thank you that was fun all right