Barbell Shrugged - Episode 7 - Paul Eich

Episode Date: April 17, 2012

The Barbell Shrugged crew is joined by Paul Eich to dicuess "Olympic Weightlifting Elitism," nutrition, and more!

Hey guys, this is CTP and you're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version of this podcast, check out Fitter.TV. zigzag technology. So in your mind, picture a fucking Doc Martin. Are they purple and white? Or a fucking Timberland boot that's got plastic zigzag bottoms. It is as worse as you can imagine. Just think about how

ugly it is in your mind and it's way uglier. Well, you don't believe me. Beauty's in the eye of the beholder. And they have these like purple... As I was going to say, there's some dude out there fucking sporting that well you don't believe me beauty's in the eye of the beholder and they have these like they have these like purple as I say there's some

there's some dude out there fucking sporting that and he's proud oh yeah oh man oh yeah man he's like

he's like you'd be talking and he would just look at you and say degustibus nundus butandum it's almost as bad as the

we're recording oh we are recording I saw a picture I posted to Facebook while it was a croc with toe slots

and a furry insulated center and it was pink did you see that picture I posted like the worst shoe ever made

it was probably not real but it was all the ugly shoes you can think of including the Vibrams forced into one item of apparel yeah alright Donald

I think I just want to make sure I'm not going to butcher your last name on the air because I've done it before. I always mispronounce it. Oh, yeah. Okay. That's what I was going to say. I just want to re-verify. Hey, if you get it right, I'm not sure anybody will know who I am.

Yeah. Call Paul. How do people usually say it? Put it through. Ike. Eric who I am. Yeah. How do people usually say it? Ike, Eric, Ick, Etch. What's the origin? Well, it's German for oak tree,

but we think it's let's see, we think it's the Belgium-Luxembourg route that our ancestors made it here. Well, in other words, so if you're in the Belgium Luxembourg route that our ancestors made it here well in other words so if you're in

Belgium or Luxembourg you learn German but it's a little bit different accent because you also know French and all kinds of other stuff so you would say

Iich instead of the German Eich yeah oh we're going with Eich I can't believe these fuckers

there you go aren't you sorry you asked is that too hot for you? What's the matter? No, no, I'm not feeling it. It's not part of my mojo today. What's the matter?

Is it the level or is it just the headphone? It's just the vibe. It's casting on my soul. Really? I don't want to be having a fucking head squeeze. Maybe it's because it's hot. You got a soul? Yeah.

No, you don't. Sail it one more? It's just a bunch of chemicals talking to each other. Fuck yeah. Soul. There you go. I'll buy that. Sometimes I'll just promote it for the sake of it.

Like any good American. You and Sam Adams. Alright, guys. The guy who makes the beer? Yeah, that guy. Yeah, that guy. Turn me off so yeah focus you want it you are gonna like I gotta fuck this stuff I uh all right I'm gonna do a little intro you want to come or suck cover some of the broad topics before we get into the

shit or just wing it so just go into it to it. I don't know. We're all about winging it here, Paul. You'll see. Okay, now, yeah. Okay, now, you got bearings about your blood, so you want to formally introduce this week's Barbell Shrug podcast? I do. Alright, guys. Welcome to Ball... Ball Bar. That's easy for you to say. Barbell Shrug. Yep, Barbell Shrug.

I'm here with... This is Mike Bledsoe. I'm here with Chris Moore, James Chaney, with our guest Paul Eich. Nicely done. Thank you. We're going to roll into some weightlifting discussion because Paul wanted to talk about Olympic weightlifting elitism. You're going limp, Paul.

All ready. Nobody wants that. Paul's mic went limp. I don't like these mic stands at all. They're not strong enough. When we get our studio built, we're going to have our mic stands hanging from the ceiling. Did you get these out of the used bin or something? They were the cheap ones at Guitar Center.

It's a consequence of sharing these great ideas. They're heavy and hard to catch. Yeah, we'll go with that. They can't handle it. Yeah. So, Paul, Olympic weightlifting elitism in reference to CrossFit? I'm sorry, did you introduce Paul? I missed it, if you did.

I did. I totally missed it. You even said my name right. Dang it. Stoner, surfer, hippie. I'm locked in. I'm locked in from here on out. I haven't surfed in over a year or so.

Oh, so you're a stoner. Well, he just got out of the Navy like a month ago. Actually, no, I surfed in September. That so oh so you're stoner well he just got out of the navy like a month ago actually no i surfed in september that was the last time all right there you go well crossfitting uh well olympic weightlifting elitism from the perspective of a crossfitter and what i what i see is this there's a whole culture of olympic weightlifting and it's a culture built around competing. In other words, if you're a competitive Olympic weightlifter, you're going to go OCD on anything that anybody ever thought might have a negative effect on your performance on the platform.

Just like if you're a bodybuilder, you can't get up and walk across the street because it might take a millimeter off your thighs. And so instead you get in a car and drive right or some of that yeah some of those other we've made that point before i just had that perspective for power lifters yeah exactly if you're gonna get up and walk that might decrease your squat performance and you wouldn't want to do that so why walk so you drive fucking everywhere right yeah everywhere so so olympic weightlifters and and you know i should say on the front end i don't mean this in a disparaging way i i'd like this i I don't mean this in a disparaging way. I'd like to mean this in a way that's respectful of their discipline and their commitment to what they do.

But with that respect, also make the point that sometimes their discipline and their commitment to what they do means they give advice I would disagree with as regards to crossfitting. So you see sort of elitist Olympic weightlifters that view every CrossFit movement from the lens of, would I teach this to my fledgling Olympic weightlifters? Well, like, you know, the sumo deadlift high pull, for example, is one that gets picked on a lot. Or the med ball clean. Well, the med ball clean and well the med ball clean now i was going to point out do you is this is this targeted just towards

the implementation of other pulling movements or is it and how well there's view the execution of the actual lifts by crossfitters two two topics right one's a little obvious and one we've all heard and one's a little maybe less obvious in terms of commenting on the implementation of other CrossFit activities. So, well, at its base, CrossFit is about being a generalist, not a specialist. And that right there is what people don't get. They go, once a week you'll see some guy, some dude, some bro on the internet saying, CrossFit's so stupid. You shouldn't train an athlete like that.

Or you shouldn't train like that for fucking weightlifting. Who said you would? Don't you know that Olympic lifts are to develop speed and power? I think you shouldn't be using those. If you're going to develop your speed and power, optimally, you need to focus and do X, Y, Z. But no shit. Right.

Thanks for the BFO, then. I'm not always a strict champion for the BFO I'm not always a strict champion for the CrossFit cause I mean I obviously think there's some things not always correct and that's one of them but I'm the first to say no one in CrossFit no one

is sitting there saying this is how you should train for your sport XYZ they're saying if you want to be balanced in a little bit of everything, you do this. And I don't know how anybody ever gets that confused. Chris, I've seen you do jump rope. I mean, that's your halfway to being a full-fledged crossfitter. I can do one or two double-unders,

but I can fucking touch all day long. 100, 200, 300 a row, bitch. But in all fairness to me, at being 305, a double-under is a better achievement than if you're 180. I would like to know how many horsepower are generated with two Chris double-unders. But in all fairness to me, at being 305, a double under is a better achievement than if you're 180. I would like to know how much. That's for sure. I would like to know how many horsepower are generated with two Chris double unders.

I can move okay when I need to move. Actually, I think there's a website where we can input that data, and it will give us wattage. But as somebody who still – I won't call myself a powerlifter. I still compete in the sport of powerlifting from time to time. I don't buy into the mindset much anymore. I'm doing things for different reasons. But as somebody who's been competitive and has been immersed in the sport of weightlifting for a long time, my closest friends on the planet have studied it closely for years and are very good weightlifters.

I researched it a lot in grad school. I followed it all the time. It's a great sport. That being said, other than CrossFit, here's my main point. Other than CrossFit, how is my main point. Other than CrossFit, how is... What is that noise? It's like a fucking dragon or something. There's a TV show in there. Aside from a CrossFit box,

soccer mom, middle-aged salesman, insert any person who's beyond let's just say even college age, which one of these people are going to be exposed to any form or fashion, any shape of the clean and jerk or the snatch or even the deadlift or a proper squat? Who else is going to teach them these things?

It's not going to be a global gym. Right. On a very rare occasion, somebody might live close to some proper sports conditioning facility. There may be like fucking five of those in the continental United States. It's going to be a global gym or a CrossFit box. And from that perspective, CrossFit is fighting a very, very great

cause. And if it's not specialized, well, should fucking a 45-year-old soccer mom be specializing? Only if she wants to. Or should be dabbling a little bit of everything. Yeah. And does it make a shit if they catch their snatch on a bent elbow? Come on.

It doesn't really matter. Exactly right. Because the point is that her having the exposure to and the ability to learn and execute really complex human movement, but sort of primal human movement. It's the human movement that generates the most force that you can in the human body. Well, in my view, that's a beautiful thing. And, you know, people will make the, the, you know, the, where I get, where I get hung up is as you pointed out, the, the elites forget what the, or don't grasp what the purpose of CrossFit is, which is so you can be a generalist. And as a generalist, that complex movement when

you're exhausted is a tremendously potent stimulus for metabolic adaptation, but it's also a great adaptation to be able to concentrate and execute complex human movements when you're tired. Let's face it. If you're fighting for your life, you don't need to be able to just be able to do this, move your arms up and down in a curl don't need to be able to just be able to do this, move your arms up and down in a curl. You need to be able to throw punches and wrestle and, you know, move your body in complex ways. You need to be able to generate force and you need to be able to have exposure to doing that when you're exhausted. So I'm going to, that's my argument with the, what I call the Olympic weightlifting elitist is there is a purpose

for doing Olympic weight lifts in CrossFit and it's a valid one and it's very useful for somebody who wants to be a generalist, somebody who wants to be fit. The visibility at CrossFit is just, I mean, just in the last year, it's pretty incredible. And like it or not, like it or not, there's probably 10 times more kids seeing weightlifting because they're seeing on ESPN or something. Absolutely. In the CrossFit Games. Then there were people catching the 2 a.m. showing of weightlifting

on the Olympic reruns this summer in London. It'll be fucking 2.30 a.m. in the morning. That's redundant. Yeah, but shut up. 2.30 a.m. You'll stay up all night. You might catch a glimpse of two clean jerks, and they'll say, oh, this guy is so strong.

Look how he picked up the weight. They won't know shit about weightlifting. So compared to the dedicated exposure you get in CrossFit in prime time now and in Reebok fucking commercials, you're going to have a bigger pool of talent to develop real weightlifting talent in the future for the sport of weightlifting. I think our next wave of weightlifters are going to come out of

CrossFit gyms for sure. They've had a chance to come out of the local weightlifting gyms doing their best with the people around them locally. It's not happening. We don't have the infrastructure of any other nation who devotes this much more focus towards sports like weightlifting.

And here's where the upside of Olympic weightlifting elitism comes in, at least in so far as getting more Olympic weightlifters. And that is everybody, once you get just a little bit of exposure to authentic strength and conditioning, everybody picks up on the vibe that Olympic lifts are cool. They're really cool. So if you put a bunch more athletes in a genuine strength and conditioning environment

like you should have in a CrossFit gym, you won't have to sell anybody on how cool clean and jerk and snatch is. They're going to get it. And some of them are going to just want to do that. What do you think about, and I come from a weightlifting background. I was weightlifting before I discovered Crossfit and i i first approached crossfit and i was like i can't believe

they're doing high rep olympic lifts and i met you near the beginning elitist yeah actually i think i well i've become uh i've become much more understanding. And CrossFit's developed as a sport, too. Right. So, like, when it was just CrossFit.com and it wasn't a sport yet, I think there's a little bit more argument there. Once that activity becomes specific to what you're competing in, it makes sense. Yeah, doing 75 snatches at 75 pounds for time, probably not the safest thing for the average person to be doing. I remember doing it myself and having, I was thinking, this is retarded near the beginning. But as the sport of CrossFit has developed, it's very obvious why you have to do the Olympic lifts during Metcons and all that kind of stuff. I know that I still try to encourage new athletes to,

and instead of doing the Olympic lifts, doing like some kettlebell work in the first few months of training, and say, all right, do 10 clean and jerks at 135, then row and then come back and do more clean and jerks. I mean, how do you feel about that as far as using the kettlebells instead of the weights for or the barbell um for things like snatches during a metcon until someone becomes gets to a certain proficiency well you're bringing me to you know the other thing i would probably think is worth talking about it uh from my soap box and that is the the subject of programming and you have the same effect of people that are

so steeped in programming and maybe they take a lot of pride in programming and you have the same effect of people that are so steeped in programming and maybe they take a lot of pride in programming and because of that they feel like it's important to to believe and to tell everybody else within hearing uh earshot that their programming is the best programming or they've got some leg up on everybody else in programming and you know we should talk about programming elitism. Well, it's hand in glove. But the relevant thing is most of the people. The elitist left-wing programmer. Most of the guys that would. Someone's going to start a website.

Most of the guys that would tell you. That's a freebie, Drywall. Or a political party. Drywall is going to take that one and run. Hey, everybody watch Chris. I put salt in my beer and I got the reaction, That's a freebie, Drywall. Or a political party. Drywall is going to take that one and run. Nice. Hey, everybody watch Chris. I put salt in my beer and I got the reaction. He's pouring beer on everything in sight. So if you take programming as an example,

most of the people who will say, hey, my programming is better or our programming is the best or make some claim like that, and, you know, hot dog for their confidence, but they're also steeped enough in the world of sports and exercise physiology that if they thought about it for four seconds they would know there's no possible way they could actually assess that because the variables are infinite which you'd really have to know if your programming is best is to know what is the athlete's potential and how close you got them to their potential and how long it took you sure and nobody knows that i talked to an athlete today that wasn't happy with her performance

during one of the open WODs. Okay. And we were kind of discussing, like, why she isn't performing at the level she kind of expected herself to. Yeah. And, of course, when you go into something like that, these are WODs that you've never done before. So there's no benchmark to measure yourself against you only

have others to measure yourself against right so the expectations are depend on how other people perform that's not how you perform really so uh she was really concerned about that and we were talking about programming and i was and then i kind of was like well you know i know her nutrition's on point she's been doing what i tell her to do. Then I asked her about sleep. Then I was like, ah, I don't get a lot of sleep. Until you fix all those other things, it's hard to say it's the programming. You know what I mean? What should I change in my training?

I'm like, probably nothing. You probably need to change your recovery. That gets me opinionated about programs i hear crossfit it's about programming uh i think i see guys who do just complete random shit all the time so this programming doesn't make any sense in that context i program today the first 15 random fucking things i can think of it's not a program and surprisingly But then there's these group of guys who fancy themselves. Let's not name any names. No, I won't.

No one wins. I do that. There's a collective group. They're represented in every class of competitive athlete who just overthinks everything and think they have a really awesome grasp of how to appropriately program you know an optimal response to the human body

and across it there's these guys who fancy themselves highly enlightened exercise physiology motherfuckers who have

dissected this thing you know way way too much like they just think they've got this all to mathematics and shit. It's like when I see people talk about Westside Barbell Training.

Oh, it's all math. It's not fucking math. There are people who do things that are 100% easier who just go into the gym and lift five more pounds than they did last time and get the same result. There's a balance between not thinking about anything you're doing and just doing random shit and not even thinking about the future and then overthinking. The true art form and programming or

periodization whatever is just recognizing that i'm honestly at point x i'm not gonna bullshit myself i'm gonna get better at these wads or these basic skills that will make up most likely comprise a wad i can get better with weightlifting powerlifting whatever and then i know i would like to get there eventually to point y and i know that the first step towards that is one small tiny inch in that direction yeah and i do what i need to do just to get there that's fucking periodization it's like i have a general plan to add a little bit let myself adapt cool the, and then gear back up to make the next step. Yeah.

These fucking guys who pretend like they've discovered something. No one has discovered shit that hasn't already been known, first of all. The physiology of your body is somewhat understood,

but in terms of like putting a stimulus on you and getting a very predictable output with CrossFit especially, no one fucking fully grasped that. Of course not. Why even pretend to know that? Right. It's stupid.

And if you say you know it, and you sell it in a fucking e-book, I believe you know you're an asshole. So when you see somebody sell you an e-book with this secret to XYZ, they're basically saying, here's a piece of paper where the patron says I'm an asshole. Chris speaks with my inside voice. And so that brings me back to your question earlier about using kettlebells or using Olympic barbells in Metcons early on for an athlete. And what it's going to come down to is your taste and your best judgment as a trainer for your athletes. And for me, I want to get my

athletes doing the Olympic lifts right when they come in the door. I don't know how long I'm going to have them. I want them. I like the Olympic lifts because they are good human movement. If you can get yourself moving, approximating a good Olympic lift, you're using good body mechanics. So if I give my 50-year-old grandma, who is just learning CrossFit at PVC, and we start playing around with a burgeoning warm-up for the first 15, part of my skills and drills for the first part of every session. That's the workout, just doing that warm up the first couple times. Well, you know, depending on their fitness level, you're right. It could be.

And, of course, if they have horrible hip mobility, some of that's going to be a waste of time. They're not going to have a lot of – it's not going to be all that useful for them to be doing overhead squats with the PVC. But six weeks in, when I ask her do uh snatches the first time she can do it and she loves it you know and she's proud of it and it's athletic movement for her it's incredibly athletic movement for her so as long as i don't give her a weight that's gonna damage her

right then i think for me it's for me it's useful but this gets back to the difference between programming and elitist programming. Everybody's got to figure out something to do with their clients to make them better. The mistake to me is in allowing yourself to think that you're smart enough to know that that's the absolute best thing you possibly could do. Oh, sure. There's a world of difference between saying, you know, I love the results my clients are getting and saying, I'm the smartest motherfucker alive. Because that's just, you know, that's like. It's just not true. Every three months. You I'm the smartest motherfucker alive. It's just not true.

Every three months, I look back to what I was programming three months ago and I'm like, I thought about this. I was like, you know what I ought to do is go back and I was like, man, today I was thinking this.

I'm doing such a good job with programming right now. What I should do is I'm going to save this up, and then I'm going to do what I'm programming for these other guys for CrossFit. But every time I do that, I look back three months, and I was like, man, I was so stupid. I discovered this new stuff that's even better. In three months, I'm going to look back on what I'm programming today

and be like, oh. There's some things I'm doing now that I wish I was doing. I had programmed three months ago. Training is tinkering. Yeah, it's constant. Training is just a short-scale version of any other tinkering procedure. So you're never done. You have to fuck up before you get any knowledge.

You just don't learn it. You just don't go, oh, I've discovered a great way to train. No, you ruin yourself in some respect and go, well, I won't do that shit again. So you don't let anybody else probably do it either. Oh, yeah. Like every time I do 5s to 10s bench press for three weeks in a row, my bicep tendons inflame like swollen ropey cords.

I go, well, I can't do that shit. In two years, I'll forget. I'll go, oh, I'll try some high rep benching. Then my bench will go to the shit. You know what was kind of interesting from an athlete's perspective is because I actually do your programming, Mike. And I sometimes wonder what the hell you were thinking when you programmed some of the things that you programmed.

Yeah, I know. You're all my little guinea pigs. Well, you know, it's weird because from an athlete's perspective, whether you follow OPT or you follow any coach, whatever, even if it's just main site. I think most people who follow programming, whatever it is, assume that the person programming knows what the hell they're doing and knows that they're doing these things for a purpose. So it's interesting to hear people say that, well, we're just tinkering and we're still trying to figure this out. Well, everything I do program is for a purpose.

There's a baseline of knowledge that goes into that. I know that certain things need to be happening, but if I'm not constantly tinkering, then the programming is not going to improve ever. And I think the point of all this is... That's where feedback gets really important. Right. And I get really pissed off a lot of times.

I usually get feedback, like 50% of the time. You're better than most. Hey, all you assholes at home. Give feedback, comment. Not everyone that's listening, just people at Faction. Put your results in the comments. It's useful. It's good to know how long it took to do certain intervals.

It's good for me to know that kind of stuff so that I can adjust the training. If I don't get any feedback, I'm in the dark, essentially. Well, it's interesting, too, because I think the point of or kind of the to summarize what you're saying is that there's no magic formula to produce the perfect athlete or the perfect you know whatever there's a crossfit journal article i wish i could remember the name of it um i printed off a couple copies to hand out a while back and it talks about just that i think it went over four different crossfit athletes interviewed them all yeah and yeah you remember the name of it it's been two months ago and it's by hillary i believe hillary ackauer and uh it was really good i thought i was like man i wish

every athlete would read this because every athlete you know they always have that am i doing the right thing yeah this and that and you know they interviewed one guy that all he did was crossfit.com yeah and then you had all he did was CrossFit.com. Yeah. And then you had someone else that did CrossFit.com plus whatever happened. You know, if they felt good that day, they were going to jump in the WOD at their gym. This is the same thing, though, that every competitive athlete deals with. Like, people obsess about if they're doing the right thing to be as strong as possible, like in powerlifting or weightlifting. Right.

And they obsess about looking at the training of other people. What are they doing in Korea? What are they doing in Korea? What are they doing in Bulgaria? And I'll start incorporating that into my training. Therefore, I will be like them. I do less and less of that now. But the thing is, there are people who overthink their training. Yeah.

There are people who put no thought into their training. There are people who do a little bit of this and that, train five days, train three days, train fucking one day. And they all can either screw up or achieve world record events. So here's one of the things that it boils down to, and that is a lot of the people that are intense enough and OCD enough to excel in coaching have no tolerance for uncertainty in their lives

or in what they're doing at all. And what it looks like to me is as a defense against uncertainty, they'll just say, oh, yeah, I know it all, and I've got the best program. It's not reality. It's just what they need to feel for themselves to meet their own human needs. So, you know, I can't even pick a fight with Chris about programming elitism because we basically believe the same thing.

I want to hear a fight. More entertaining. We'll have to find something we disagree on after watching other athletes after programming for other athletes and seeing them be basket cases about programming it makes me way less of a basket case I used to be

just like that what do Bulgarians do? what are they doing at California Strength? the answer is who fucking cares that's the truth I'm over here worrying about this, and I have my athletes come to me and worrying my ear off because of this or that that's going on somewhere else.

I'm going, I need the same shit. You need to get that quote from Ripto's book. Which one is that? I can't remember if it's a practical program or starting strength. The quotable Ripto. The gist of it is this. Most people start on a plan, and before they even really get far enough down the road on that plan to know what it's going to do for them, they get bored and try something else. So they essentially never figure anything out.

Shiny object syndrome. Yeah, exactly right. And it doesn't actually matter what the program is. You have to stick with it long enough to see the outcome of the experiment. Which is a lot longer than most athletes. Like science. Have an idea about what you want to demonstrate. Do a couple experiments.

Collect the evidence. Review it. And then decide what study you'll do next. It takes too long, Chris. Shit. That's another thing. People want to, like, I want to come in the gym today and be an out of shape weak piece of shit

and then tomorrow I want to be Rich Froning get out there it's just not it's just not going to happen I hate to be the guy I hate to run you out here by telling you this

but it's just not going to happen I talked to Rich last week or two weeks ago and we were talking about him talking to him about training I guess they have like a he and Dan Bailey are training together now and he was telling I guess they have like a – he and Dan Bailey are training together now.

And he was telling me that they have a semi-structured strength program, which consists of the Olympic lifts if they feel like it. That's why I say semi-structured. Right. And then they just do whatever Metcon they feel like doing that day. And these are like the two of the best dudes in the whole world. Yeah, a couple things working for them. 99th percentile.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're The 99th percentile. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're 99.99 percentile for sure. They're athletes to start. They believe in themselves, secondly. They have incredible talent. And they train really hard. So then the actual things you do with those things in mind don't really matter that much.

Matters a lot less, doesn't it? Yeah. He can fucking eat donuts all day and beat your ass on any wad because he's not like you. Because he's not me. You are normal and he's not normal. It's like why you could train really hard and lose in a fight to a bear who never trains. Fucking bear.

But people need to get that. But I'm going to beat the bear. People need to understand that people need to understand that you are where you are and you are who you are what if I train like a bear eat salmon straight out the creek pretty fucking good training program

are you saying I should just accept the way I am and not have no hope for improvements no no no I'm saying you have to accept who you are so if you're a beginning crossfitter and you haven't trained in two or three years or you've never exercised and you've spent two years packing on weight or longer

and you currently eat like shit and you have just now learned what a snatch is, you have to recognize that your next immediate step will be to snatch an empty bar with no weight with decent form. Not to do it 100 times perfectly so you can post a decent score on the 12-point whateverad could you be embarrassed if you don't get this number you're thinking of no you have to just start with the next reasonable step yeah strong i'm not saying

that in two years you can't be a fucking killer crossfitter because that i've seen that should happen i've seen complete beginners in one to two years which just may surprise the audience that's not a lot of time right that's a flash that's a trash yeah yeah but in two years, which just may surprise the audience, that's not a lot of time. Right. That's a flash. That's a flash. Yeah. Yeah. But in two years, you go from not knowing what the fuck a clean jerk is to clean jerking your body weight. Yeah.

That's incredible. Yeah, it is. That's really incredible. Well, that's the beauty of my friend, David, Chef Wallach, who quoted, stronger today than yesterday, stronger tomorrow than today. You can't tell yourself that enough. That's not meaning today I did a 100-kilo clean jerk, tomorrow, 110 kilos. It even means I snatched 100 pounds barely today, and then next week I want to do it with just this much cleaner form.

Or a little bit quicker. It ain't even about the weight. It's about some marker that you got better. That's a great point. Because that shit adds up a lot in just a few months. Yeah. Like I go, okay, I want to show more progress this week. If I do the same weight faster, I'm better.

That's a good point. I know I'm faster. A lot of people don't think about that. There's lots of ways to measure how big you are. They just think about the pounds on the better. That's a good point. I know I'm faster. A lot of people don't think about that. There's lots of ways to measure how big you are. They just think about the pounds on the bar. That's for sure. That's the wrong way to proceed because usually if you just keep on trying to add weight all the time, you're going to stall. Well, that works for a while.

And if you stall, you've got to be disciplined enough to back off. It is amazing how somebody who hasn't trained comes in and trains and they'll see monster progress for six months. Yeah. You know. And then it starts to kind of level off a little bit oh yeah it always does and i almost have to warn people i can i can see it coming you know they get i can see that they're getting really excited yeah and that's their motivation for training i'm going just so you know it's not gonna last forever i used to pr every time i walked in the gym right and that's right if you keep if you keep pushing that direction, it's sort of like the faster and faster you dive in the water,

the harder it's going to hurt. The faster you keep pushing that direction, the more you're going to get fucked up. So you have to have the discipline to step way back and say, okay, I recognize what's going on. I've got good coaches to help guide me. Take a couple steps back, repolish, rethink about what I need to do, add in a few variations, and now I take the next steps. That repolish, rethink about what I need to do, add in a few variations,

and now I take the next steps. Like, that's how periodization actually works. That's how you go from training like a beginner to an intermediate person. Because the only thing that separates somebody who's a beginner from somebody who's really fucking advanced,

like Rich, or, you know, Royal Caliber, weightlifter pal out there, is that you can come in the gym and get better at everything

every time you fucking come in the gym if you're a beginner, because you're so under your abilities. But with time, it gets harder and harder and harder to adapt to your increasing level of ability. And it doesn't hurt any less. Yeah. So you have to take steps back, evaluate where you're at, then slowly add work back in. You've got to relearn how to proceed. That same pattern applies to

how you coach athletes too. It just seems to me as I keep coaching, keep learning how to train myself because I do the majority of my own coaching. In other words, I just don't avail myself of all the good coaching resources around so I end up trying to do my own effort to improve myself.

Too busy. That's my excuse and i'm sticking to it so yeah so the i think you should neglect your wife and kids personally well i'll take that under advisement uh the point of that all that is that what what you keep what you learn as quote unquote the way to squat when you're first learning how to squat or learning how to coach other people how to squat pretty soon you learn there's four different ways to squat and they're all legit and they apply to a slightly different circumstance so uh you know this is a difficult thing for people to pick up they want they really especially people that are passionate and maybe a little bit over over ocd and probably the perfect person to crossfit in the first place because they're a little bit nuts they want there to be a way to deadlift and a way to squat

and a way to press and a way to jerk. And the truth is there's probably five or six or more legitimate ways to do it, and it's going to vary by your maturity as an athlete and your anthropometry and a bunch of other factors. And maybe even just based on what you want to do. For example, box squatting is a whole different skill set than regular squatting. It has a totally different purpose. And, you know, it's not like box squatting is wrong and free squatting is right. It's just a different tool.

Yeah. I think a good example of how you can apply it is that, you know, if I was going to go back, this would be stupid and idiotic, but if I was going to play football again. I would love to see that. I could probably physically do a better job now than I would at 18. I think you should go to the semi-pro football league here in town. But if I was going to play, I might entertain doing the box squat much more frequently. Not that I squat frequently now with a free squat form and all kinds of forms.

I'm a fan of the box squat for football for sure. Yeah, a good thing is it looks pretty much exactly like what you'll do if you're like offensive lineman. Yeah. You sit and you pause for a long period of time, and you go from a complete dead pause, relaxed position, to a violent explosion. Yeah.

And it has the side effect of not making you sore at all, no matter how much you fucking do it. You can sit down in a box and stand up and not have any – it kind of takes out some of the stretch. So you don't get a whole lot of eccentric loading, and you can squat a lot more often. Now, will your free squat form and your ability to bounce out of the bottom or catch a clean go to shit?

Yeah. But if you're an offensive lineman, guess what? You don't really care. You just need to go from no movement to lots of forceful movement really quickly. So it makes perfect sense to do that. Yeah. Yeah, I used to be much more, I guess, opinionated about how football strength coaches program until I started programming for football players.

I go, oh, well, if we want to get results, I can't teach these guys snatches. That's retarded. Or if you're way up in the leaders, you go, that's if we want to get results or if you can't teach these guys snatches that's where i used to get on my former colleagues they get really they go if you're an athlete why do you need to do bench pressing or why do you need to do why wouldn't you only do jerks and front squats and clean pulls like well i mean i play football and i know that having strong arms is really important if i if i can if two guys squat good weight and two guys clean okay and one guy benches three and one guy benches 450 which i play with a lot of guys who bench like 450 someone couldn't squat and then use their arms to still to great effect but if you can bench 450 pounds, you're a defensive lineman, and you can fight off of one arm a fucking block from a 300-pound guy,

that has its utility. You can probably do that assuming that you are an athlete who's playing football. You probably have the ability to brace yourself and hold a good position while you push with this arm. But there's no wrong and right way to use certain tools. Bench pressing is great. Some people, one guy told me, you never lay down on your back

and push up in your sport. So why bench in the gym? Why not? I go, dude, you're forgetting about fucking gravity. You have to lay on your back to bench. This is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard. Yeah, it's a bench. That's what the hammer strength machine's for, Chris.

Does it replace? Yeah, they go, why bench when you can do the jammer? You guys know what the jammer is? Yeah, yeah. What's the jammer? It looks like what you do in football. You sort of stand up and you push these two machine arms. I go, okay, i bench pressing even though it

doesn't look like something bench pressing or especially incline pressing is way better than that fucking machine called a jammer it is i'm trying to find a way if you're a big weightlifter and you've got a weak lockout you're not comfortable holding weights or you don't you can't jerk with enough weight to really give your arms a workout after you do your lifts if you go do an incline press or some bench pressing you don't make a huge focus but if you do that your jerk could improve greatly

you can press more than you can overhead press that's a given it's definitely a good tool for loading the muscles that press even if it's not the same exact direction that's an example of fucking overthinking but Cress put that on the spectrum with all of the guys the muscles that press. Even if it's not the same exact direction, there's a place for it. That's an example of fucking overthinking. But Cress, put that on the spectrum

with all of the guys who love to bench press and can't do jacks over the squat or a deadlift. I used to love bench pressing, and now I really hate bench pressing. Because bench pressing is the only exercise that fucking really hurts. My bicep tendons... Well, there's an argument that it's not natural

movement, that's for sure. I didn't train to bench all year, and for that meet, I benched for three weeks. My shoulder health really deteriorated, my standing press went way down, but I squeaked out a close grip 400 bench of that meet with a long pause, but really paid for it.

My delts were jacked up for a week after, and it took me four weeks to recover just from focusing on a bench again. But I can incline press probably three days a week, two max, no pain ever. And plus, if I incline press, my standing press goes up. If I bench press, nothing happens to my standing press. There are certain exercises that are very, very good for their own benefit. But Chris, no high school wants to know what your incline to rep max is. That's a shame.

The only thing they want to know is what's your bench? How much do you bench? It's true. If you incline, if you spend all your time inclining, your press will go up and your bench will go up. If you spend all your time pressing, your incline press will still go up and your bench will go up because your arms and shoulders are strong. If you bench only, your incline

and your fucking press will not move. Yeah, but that's not the issue at hand. The real issue is, is it going to make my pecs bigger? Yeah.

Is your chesticles big enough? That is what really matters. If you could train where you could do like a 300 pound incline press, your chest is big enough. All right.

Next goal to have, win at weightlifting and then incline bench press it is interesting you know people that just train just for aesthetics just for looks i mean bench press is their you know that's their golden ticket right there nobody cares how big their thighs are you know or their close or how good their hip function is yeah exactly you know so you usually don't see those folks doing squats. Assuming you can clean explosively or pull explosively in good form and you can squat in good form, doing some benching and whatever you want to do,

any way you want to do it, is a great thing. All you do is bench, you're an asshole. That's just, I'm sorry. And you can bench 700, but if you can't, if you never do anything else, you're just an asshole, man. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And you can bench 700, but if you never do anything else, you're just an asshole, man. I'm sorry. All right, guys.

Let's go ahead and take a break real quick, and then we'll reconvene with some good topics. You forgot to mention that CTP will play a really cool video for you. Oh, yeah. CTP is going to play an excellent video. Put that pressure on me now. Love the pressure, man. Come on. Yeah. Just post and harder to push the wall people's eyes and liberation will come

brothers see is people want to be willing accomplices to the deception yeah that's hard to overcome I think it's usually the older folks, though. Kony 2012. I think... Kony, motherfucker. Oh, my God. I got a whole... If you saw my Facebook today, you'd know my whole opinion on the whole Kony thing. Kony is around 25 years. I've known about that for a long fucking time. Here's my point.

People find out about it, and they're like, oh, my God, we have to do something. I'm like, no shit. There's lots of bad people. Yeah, yeah. My point is, there's people who watched it and liked it and actually thought it was really great. I thought it was good. Yeah, it's good. But at the same time.

And then people go, hey, man, you guys should fucking think about what you posted to Facebook. Not just post it because you watched it. Here's a link to some blog that I just fucking read and I believe this. That's my main ironic observation. I just read a blog in two minutes and now I believe that I'm this. That's my main ironic observation. I just read a blog in two minutes. Now I believe that I'm enlightened. You should not give the Coney. Versus the guy who just watched a three-minute video.

Now he's an expert on geopolitics. I posted something on Coney, and there was the action figure. What's it called? AFT? The action figure whatever. Justin Key actually posted that on there. And there's like this whole YouTube video where an action figure's talking about

the whole Kony 2012 thing. And it's right on, which is hilarious. Did you see the picture? It's really funny, but it's right on. It's like, why don't we just hire some mercenaries? Whatever. It's a little more complex than that, but at the same time,

it's like all these assholes, you got all these kids standing there with signs. How about we buy them a plane ticket to Africa and an AR-15 and let them go get Kony? If you believe so strongly in it, why don't you go do it? No, no, no. I just want to petition my government

so they'll send the military. You feel real strongly about that, don't you? The meme that popped up last Friday on Facebook, the meme that popped up was people took pictures of Carl Weathers from Predator. Oh yeah, I saw that. Posted a lot and said,

I love this guy. It's like a great experiment like a hundred people did. Right, right. No, he's supposed to, how could you, motherfucker? You don't know anything

about the atrocities this guy's committed. He's got child armies that are cutting off arms and killing their parents. Like, I don't think Carl Weathers from Predator has a child arm. That's how amazing armies that are cutting off arms killing their parents like I don't think Carl Wethersoom Predator

has a child arm that's how amazing some people are they didn't even know about Conan now they're a master of it they can't even

they don't remember the movie Predator came out that's what's so awesome about people but here's a great lesson in all that I've never seen Predator

in 24 hours 40 million people can become aware of something that is pretty amazing. If it hits the right core. That's awesome. When I woke up.

That's crazy stuff, man. When I woke up, it was already big. I was like, shit. 45 of my friends are posting this. I definitely realize I'm over 30 when it took me until today to watch that video. Excuse the biases and excuse the fallacies and thought and some of the, like, excuse the fact that somehow hitler gets brought up in a coney video i mean he had nothing to fucking do with coney excuse all these errors

and these reaches and all the stuff but a bad guy is now known to 40 million people who didn't fucking know who he was the day before that's pretty awesome yeah that's pretty incredible all right guys yep all right guys uh welcome, uh, barbell shrug. We, uh, we seem to rope in CTP to be one of the people on a mic. We'll see if he actually says anything. Oh, uh, still have Paul.

I cheer. We haven't kicked him off yet. Uh, Paul, harder. Why don't, uh, yeah,

you gotta piss us off, man. You gotta, I want an argument. No, man, we need, yeah,

controversy, dude. Yeah. We need yeah controversy dude yeah we need the controversy okay it's a bro so you were telling us you started to tell us a story during the break but we had to say we were like oh this is this guy got a podcast we only heard the first 10 seconds we're like i'd say two seconds two seconds all right paul let's hear it some legend this better be good no pressure go so chris not not totally unresembling of a bear mind you tell starts to tell a bear story and in the same vein i posted on facebook the other day this nifty video of a hunter who's got a bear that climbs up his tree stand and all he does is lean over and says what are you doing man and the bear turns around and runs off

so we got a bear thing going on in our in our lives here but uh so there's an ancient uh there's a great legend of an okinawan karate man who uh trained the king's son or something like that just legendary across okinawa so the king decides that a fitting challenge would be for a great warrior like himself to defeat a bull in the ring for some sort of celebratory event for the king. This sounds like the plot for Gladiator. Well, maybe they stole it from this story. Probably. So the guy's a great martial artist, but he's thinking,

hmm, let's see, 125-pound Okinawan, 1,000-pound side of beef, maybe this isn't a great battle to pick. No. So he finds out what bull they're going to use for the fight, one, a thousand pound side of beef. Maybe this isn't a great battle to pick. No. So, he finds out what bull they're going to use for the fight. And he goes and pays the stall keeper for the bull. And he has him chain the bull down. And he walks over and he gets up

in the bull's face and he lets the bull get a good sniff of him. And he stabs a needle in the bull's nose. Of course, motherfucker, this is Gladiator. Gladiator probably stole that plot twist from this fucking story. Probably did. I've never seen that either. I don't know what you're talking about.

You ever seen the movie Gladiator? Yeah, he injures him before he fights him. The emperor goes after the lead character in a final fight to prove that this guy was not worthy. But not a bull. And before the Gladiator fight, he takes his ship and he stabs the guy in the lung and creates a wound to try to defeat the animal preemptively. Stay with me just a minute. It's a little different.

It's the same idea, but a little different. Wrong. Bottom line is, every day that the warrior goes back, has the bull chained down, stabs him in the nose with a pendant, the bull gets enraraged but he can't do anything about it so within a within a couple of weeks by the time the guy walks in this in the cave the bull is just standing there shivering because he knows what's coming and he knows he can't do anything about it so the big day comes they let the bull out in the ring and he's all stomping and snorting and pawing and getting ready to put put the major beat down on whatever crosses his path and the warrior walks out into the ring and just walks right up to the bull and as soon as the bull gets a whiff of me turns and runs psychological warfare at its finest so yeah now from that legend

you got another legendary it's actually a Korean his name was Masa Yama and he studied Shotokan karate and broke away from Shotokan and became Kyokushin, which I think he called the true high method. And as part of Kyokushin, he would fight bulls in the ring. And he killed 50 of them. You know, Manoa bull, kind of. Holy shit. It was pretty cool.

Super cool. So he gets a little bit bored with killing bulls and decides, I want to up the ante a little bit. Gets in the ring with a bear. This is a true story. True story. Well, I mean. I mean, it was told to me by martial arts people that I trusted and worked with.

Chris, it might be by now. No pictures. Here's the. No video. It didn't happen. Here's the short. Here's the short version of what happened to Mazo Y yama man who killed 50 bulls in the ring after a short while he was taken to the hospital where he stayed for one year you know and so you know i was wondering if that's how you were thinking about why

yeah exactly why a man should not fight a bear yeah a bear well you know uh just just to kind of go into why bears are so awesome. Do you remember that our friend, Professor Galpin, here in spirit, did his PhD studies at Ball State. He's not dead. He's not dead, people. He's alive, but also here in spirit. His soul is with us. But he did his studies in muscle physiology at Ball State University, a very fine university and a very good program for human performance. They did a little study on muscle bear muscle protein samples.

Sorry, muscle bear. That's a new energy drink for faction. But basically he found, okay, obviously bears have more muscle mass than you. How much do you weigh, Bledsoe? 175. Okay, you're 175 pounds, pretty lean. So we can suppose that the majority of your weight is protein. 160 pounds of muscle and bone.

Yeah, let's assume you're all muscle. 175 pounds of all muscle. I am. Well, a bear is all muscle as well, but weighs like fucking 1,000 pounds or more. So that's a very big animal to be muscled. So assuming that the quality of muscle is the same, he has an advantage. It's like if you want to get a thousand pound man who is all muscle, it's not good. But the cool thing about bear muscle

is that in the same cross section sample, the same unit of measure, there's like twice the cross bridge formation or maybe three times the cross bridge formation. So basically the same amount of muscle contracts more forcefully and more efficiently and faster. So a bear is also X times your size and also X times more efficient with that size. And then you add on the fact that he's got giant fucking razor sharp claws on the end of his hands. And basically what you have is something that you should never get near in any respect. Just don't do it. 300.

Which brings me back to that commercial they played in the Super Bowl a while back where that guy is fishing for salmon and he ends up fighting the bear fort and kicks him in the nuts. Yeah. Hilarious. All right. So got a got a couple of questions. Yeah. Hilarious. All right. So got a couple questions. Yeah.

Actually. Fucking go see Gladiator too. You'll get what I'm saying. Whatever. Are you working for fucking Gladiator? What's going on here? No, I'm just saying. Just watch it.

Is it solid? Is it on Netflix? Of course it's on Netflix. I don't mean like where they send you the DVDs. I'm talking about instant stream. You've never seen Gladiator. Sure haven't. Have you ever seen Braveheart?s. I'm talking about instant stream. You've never seen Gladiator. Sure haven't. Have you ever seen Braveheart?

I wish I could say I did, but no. Oh, Jesus, man. I've seen South Park's Braveheart. What do they teach kids in school these days? No shit. Should be watching movies. In that same vein, I've seen 300, but that shit was weak. Was it the movies of today or like the books of yesterday?

Well, it's like I'm all up to assume now that young people know what I'm talking about when I reference an 80s action movie or a classic rock band or even fucking like Van Halen or whatever. They go, who? The band Train. You've heard of the band Train? Everybody knows Train. A poppy ass

band. Oh yeah, terrible. Here's the thing. Maybe you don't like their original music, but the band itself is actually very talented. One of the things they used to do they used to play really killer Led Zeppelin covers. If you type in train cover Led Zeppelin, you'll hear awesome, awesome Led Zeppelin covers. But say, they quit doing it

at shows, because kids that come to see you sing Hey Soul Sister, have no fucking clue who Led Zeppelin is. Or weren't paying to see you. They go, what is this band? You go, it is an awesome cover we're doing.

Like nobody even claps when you get through it. What was that? I wouldn't give a shit how good their cover was. If I want to hear Zeppelin, I want to see Zeppelin. I don't want to see

Train fucking play Zeppelin. But look, if you show up live and you see a good cover of a solid rock album, you're going to, or the track, you're going to really like it.

And they do a really good cover as far as covers go. And no one knew what the fuck they're talking about. Bled Zeppelin. Haters. I want to hear Paul's. I got some

kid that was training with us back last summer. He's at UTC Chattanooga. He's in the exercise science department there. And I guess there was some kind of, like, strength and conditioning forum with, you know, local coaches. And I guess it ended up being an issue at one of the schools that one of the football coaches at one of the high schools was having kids. Or sixth graders.

Not high school. Sixth graders drinking vegetable oil after football practice to put on weight. I think we're all aware that's probably not a great idea. But maybe you could explain why it's a terrible, terrible idea. Well, the short version is that vegetable oils are highly oxidizable. As you look at them and they're the way they react in the body or react when you're cooking with them it's a stunner that anybody ever thought it might have been a good idea to use these things and so the short version is they when you when you

eat a lot of poof is a lot of polyunsaturated fat fatty acids which is primarily these uh industrial vegetable oils what they what they are, they become incorporated into the cell walls. And as they get exposed to oxidizing agents as part of a cell, they oxidize rapidly. And one example of how that as a basis for a medical model of heart disease is if you get LDL particles that have a substantial part of the cell wall made up of PUFAs, they oxidize rapidly. And then once they become oxidized, they work in the body somewhat like broken glass. So glass, very useful when it's whole, but once you break it or oxidize it, it becomes damaging.

It becomes high risk. You've got to handle it really carefully. Well, it goes flying around your bloodstream, banging into the artery walls. And so this model posits that those highly oxidized LDLs banging into the artery walls cause damage. The body's natural response then is to send out cholesterol to repair the damage in the cell walls, which gives you the plaque buildups, which is part of your coronary artery disease or vascular disease in general. Same thing applies to stroke. You just got served, listener. So here's the good news. Your body has a pretty amazing capacity to heal. So hopefully these sixth graders will stop drinking massive quantities of vegetable oil.

Although I've heard some people say that even a teaspoon a day is a toxic dose of these things. But hopefully they'll stop. And if they do, there's a good reason they'll heal. One of the downsides they're going to see as football players is as these fatty acids become part of their cell walls, they're going to see a lot of inflammation based on that oxidized particles flying around, a lot more pain than they need to, a lot slower recovery. And then the thing that this brings, where this connects the dots for me is

it's the sadness or the insanity of a government agency endorsing any dietary strategy when they know and we know that there is no proof in science. In other words, for the last 30 or 35 years, they've been endorsing stuff like vegetable oils that were thought by some to be, quote unquote, healthy oils. Well, they're from vegetables. They've got to be good for you, right? Oh, right. Well, you know, because... Makes sense.

It's really easy. You just take some corn and squeeze it. You get vegetable oil, right? Last time I did it, that's exactly what happened. Sure. Is this team winning games or what?

That would be an interesting metric. Because we can end this right now if they're winning. If they lose every game because all their players are injured, I got a tip for the coach. Right. So that begs the question, though.

So if you're, aside from not doing the drinking of the vegetable anymore, what would you recommend they do right now to help themselves counter the tragic, deleterious effects of this idiotic, stupid-ass coach? By the way, I mean, I'm sure if he's doing this, he's not executing a well-thought-out, reasonable strength and conditioning program or anything else. Let's start with countering. Like, these kids, what can we do now to go in and save them?

Yeah. You just got to serve them up a diet of a balanced, healthy fat, some monounsaturated fats, some PUFAs in the form of, say, nuts. What was PUFAs again? Polyunsaturated fatty acids. Thanks, Chris. So you give them some of those in the form of healthy nuts, like, well, just normal nuts, but don't go crazy on that.

And then you also give them some saturated fat in the form of bacon, coconut oil, good butter, things like that, so that you can, over time, as your body processes the poof, you replace them with the fats that are supposed to do those things in the cell walls, make the cells work right. Man, if you can't get behind a bacon diet, or if somehow in your brain you think coconut is disgusting or something, man, you're just living some kind of faux lifestyle.

Like, I've been rocking the coconut butter, man. Like, I get home from work, I just eat a spoonful of that. Yeah. It's just a mind-blowing experience. We're all smiling. If you want it, it melts across your mouth and makes you smile. If you want to add another little wrinkle to that, try a spoonful of sunflower seeds and a spoonful of coconut oil.

With a strip of bacon? Well, hey, maybe that's the third quantum of this whole formula chris it probably is so and the peanut butter doesn't count you fuckers so there's been much debate book um i've talked to a few people and uh rob wolf has even like backed off of his recommendation for more fish oil and stuff like that um i'm now hearing, and I've heard both sides of the story. I'm hearing one side saying things like flaxseed oil should be taking the place of your fish oil, but I'm being told by the fish oil guys that flaxseed oil can't be used by the body like fish oil can. And so I've got people coming from both sides.

I still am of the, there's a lot of research supporting fish oil, and there's not as much supporting anything else. So I'm still on the side of the fish oil. That's what I'm still supplementing with. Is this a mercury argument, or what is this? No, it's not a mercury argument. It is a straight-up oil argument. Physiology of the fat.

Right. So I don't know if you have any deeper understanding of the flaxseed oil versus and what's the difference between flaxseed oil and, say, a vegetable oil? It's almost like this argument is almost like do you think Muhammad Ali was the greatest fighter or do you think Larry Zmad ali was the greatest fighter or do you think larry zonka was the greatest football uh greatest fullback it's not even it's not really an apples to apples comparison so uh if i understand rob and the other fish oil guys right what they're what they're basically pointing out is that fish oil is poofas and they're easily oxidizable and they probably don't don't make a great candidate for storage

and most of the chances you have to get PUF fish oil you're gonna get it in soy oil so there's another ox you know easily oxidizable oil so do you need enough fish oil to balance out your omega 6 intake to probably be healthy yeah you do but the best way to do that is not to ratchet up to massive quantities of omega-3s by fish oil it's ratchet down your omega-6 intake so right fewer nuts uh few zero industrial seed oils and so that's a more rational strategy if you're going for the long-term health effect and keep in mind there's no certainty in any of that. You just have to make your best guess. And then as you're doing that, look for the signs and symptoms that you might be able to identify that would tell you you've improved your health in some way or another. For me, for example, I cannot, I have to be super careful about my intake of fish oil because I have a joint, you termed it once, tuna fish knee, but essentially it's where

when I get too much fish oil, I get a little wrap on my knuckle or I do a couple of pull-ups that pulls across the knuckle of my index finger and the joint will swell enormously. In fact, if I get it on this finger, which I have several times, it'll swell so big, the ring will get trapped on my ring finger and I can't pull it off and it hurts like a mofro. So, you know, this is not a, this is not a characteristic of health for me. So I really have to be careful for that specific reason. I think it has to do more with, you know, some individual genetic thing that I'm susceptible to. I've also heard increased bruising risk and bleedability, right? Sure. Well, and that goes with the concept of fish oil, which is that it tends to make your bloodstream

slipperier, has an anticoagulant effect, which could be why it's helpful if you've got too much of an inflammatory effect. So this begs the question. So assuming you go, okay, look, I recognize that I'm not going to be frying any catfish and vegetable oil. Fuck that. I'm moving towards cooking with coconut

or I'm cooking with a little bit of olive oil at low temperature. Right. I'm trying to minimize the oxidative effect. I don't always get pastured meat because I can't afford it. But most of the time

I'm trying to eat grass-fed products or good quality products. So assuming that you got a good baseline hand on your diet yeah uh for the average person how much fish oil should be necessary sub-mite wise because one one more caveat one more caveat yeah this person not me doesn't really eat fish because fish is fucking gross yeah like jim gaffigan said, I'm trying this whole vegetarian thing, but I do eat beef and I do eat chicken and pork, but not fish because fish is gross. Well, you know, you're you're you just have to take a swag at it. There's no certainty about it. But one to three grams a day, one to three caps a day, which is going to be up to a gram of fish oil. Seems to me like that's a rational preventative dose. Going to help you at least get enough that you don't have to,

you're not going to be short of omega-3s. And as long as you're not quaffing down massive, you know, large quantities of omega-6s, you should get the balanced ratio of the 3s to 6s. And where that comes in is there are populations that are healthy, paleolithic populations that are healthy, that have extremely low intakes of omega-6s and omega-3s, which indicates that it's not so much that you need a whole big quantity of omega-3s to be healthy,

it's just you need the balance. Right, you just don't want a huge imbalance in ratio. You don't want a 20 to 1 ratio like most people have. Right, and to be clear, some of these guys, like Rob was making pretty big prescriptions in that calculator about how many you should be taking. At one point, it was like with a high-quality supplement, taking like 20 plus pills a day.

10 or 15 grams of fish oil. I think one of the active ingredients. It's a lot of fish oil. And I actually listened to the explanation on why they were prescribing that. And part of that was people were eating zone and were eating a lot higher carbohydrate. They were getting more inflammation. I think they were just trying to offset it with more good fats. Strongly counter, perhaps make up ground.

Yeah, exactly. They were trying to increase the fat intake, and they wanted to increase the fat intake with good fats. So the lesson is moderation is best. So as far as like, do you know why flaxseed would not be as effective as fish oils? Fish oils are what they call long branch chain amino or long branch chain essential fatty acids. So they're 18 carbon length or some such. So you take flaxseed and it is an omega-3 fatty acid, but it's a short chain of fatty acids.

So it's probably good to keep you from, say, omega-3 starvation, but it's not good for making the, if you'll take the term, the land of omega-3 milk and honey. It's a way of sort of scraping by. It's like if you're starving, well, freaking eat corn and grain, right? Because it's better it's a way of sort of scraping by it's like if you're starving well freaking eat corn and grain right right because it's better than starving right but it's not really nutritious the argument the argument that i've seen is that we have enough um our bodies will convert that flaxseed oil to the omega-3s that we need and no more so that so that that the concern is that our body will do the job of converting that short chain um to the long branch chain yeah as needed as needed so that we don't get too much

and that may be true and this is where this is where i really think this has been my problem with a lot of the fish oil speculation from the beginning is it's great to speculate and it's great to think about it and it's great to test it in a clinical environment and on yourself, but there's no certainty. And so, you know, until the science gets another hundred years down the road and can tell us the things that it certainly can't tell us up to now, you're, you're fishing around. You're just taking it. It's kind of like we were talking about programming. And I think the only thing that that would be wrong is to pretend that you really know the right answer when you're dealing with the people that are asking you for

your help we talked about this a little bit with uh a couple weeks ago that think about like with this like we talk about with breast milk and trying to replicate what is in this regular breast milk right there's all these things which we know that are in there we try to replicate it we do it badly yeah there's all the things these things we know that are in there. We try to replicate it. We do it badly. Yeah. There's all the things you don't know are in there. That's right.

Yeah. The same thing about vitamin D supplementation versus just getting it from the sun. So if you think about how plants and animals came to be, and the long period of time it's taken you to get in your present form, we know that there has been a long series of fights and battles that have given you the ability to fight off infection or if it's given a plant the ability to fight off an invading plant you know these these plants do incredible battle with each other with their root structures and it can be you look at if you look at a forest they got as much as fucking stupid

trees these trees like why are trees tall trees fight other trees it's slower and slower progress but plants are brutal with other plants they fight and fight and fight if you look at your front lawn you're fighting a fight

every time you mow your lawn because you're basically fighting on behalf of the grass so the trees don't grow and block out the sun from the grass but you can take advantage

of everything in a plant when you eat it you know the great history of the plant but you don't have to understand it but if you try to duplicate what's in the plant with your current knowledge you would never the plant but you don't have to understand it but if you try to duplicate what's in the plant with your current knowledge you would never get close right you don't have to necessarily know to understand and trust in the the biological legacy of a

pasture-raised chicken egg or a organically grown batch of baby spinach you know that that's good it doesn't matter so much that you understand so i try to get my food from you know a farm where you know there's not just one single thing being grown and yeah you know all the they've got a lot of different animals and they're all eating each other's shit you have to explain now when you say i get my food from a farm you have to define like like it like a target amazing target like the farmer's choice? You know, farm. At Target, right? No, no. You got me on a... I mean, I go to a farm for food.

What do you mean? Well, I go to some place where a group of people grow animals with feed that they raise on the farm. Or the grass they grow. Chickens run around

and cows run around or whatever. You have to say, no, not like injecting chained up cows with biotoxins and shit, but you have to say, no, not like injecting chained up cows with biotoxins and shit, but you have to explain and define what a fucking three-year-old knows what a farmer is.

But people forget what a farmer is. What's in the children's book version. Yeah, that E-I-E-I-O motherfuckers. That kind of farmer. Well, in that line, at the risk of revealing what a true geek I am, if you go back and look at the Greeks,

the overriding theme in the literature of the Greeks that we know of is the idea of hubris and the idea of men attempting to do those things which are truly the realm of the gods. So what I love about that is not that i really give a shit about the greeks it's just that i i think that the idea if once you glom onto it you see it everywhere you see the hubris of trying to make baby formula you see the hubris of programmers saying they actually know their programming is better than somebody else's you see the hubris of anybody in the government saying they have any idea what's really going to happen when they change a law it's just everywhere it's it's ubiquitous it's part and parcel of the human experience only

we don't think of it as hubris anymore we think of it as hey we're just that badass and so so we must so when somebody stands up and says yeah we're going to fix health care everybody goes oh great it's so great somebody we're going to fix health care, everybody goes, oh, great. It's so great. Somebody's finally going to take control of that thing and make it work. Come on. It turns out it's kind of complicated. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, it's really great that cliches are cliches for very good reasons.

Like people keep saying over and over again, like, your money won't buy you happiness. People go, yeah, yeah, I understand. But I want my money, man. I want a lot of money. Yeah. I want a lot of money. Yeah, but the things that are most obvious to you are most obvious to you

because they're the things that you will struggle so much assimilating. Yeah. Like, yeah, things are complicated. If anybody steps up and goes, I know exactly how everything works.

Aren't I blessed? Aren't I the fortunate one? You should come over here and hang out with me. Don't you realize how fucking complicated things are? If you're just taking two seconds from your pathetic life That's why the first time I hear

Take two seconds from your pathetic life Is to go outside and look at the sky And go wow shit it's really complicated Earth's really small My favorite politicians are the ones that go I really don't know I should probably let the free market decide Yeah

That's why I like those politicians Same reason More people just need to admit, they just say out loud, I don't know, and stop right there. Because it's okay.

Because there's a lot of shit that you just don't know. There you go. Yeah. There's no shame in that. Awesome.

To answer your question, we circle back and close off the first thing you brought up, which was the vegetable oil drinking. You ready for another one? The only way i could close off more on the whole fish oil thing is to do your own experimenting so if you if you could take if you can eat flax seeds which i

never have and don't feel very tempted to and you feel like you're getting uh appropriate inflammatory response you know you fight off disease when you need to but you're not all uh inflamed and sore and feel like you need to take ibuprofen all the time. Well, then you're probably doing all right. Yeah. I actually cover all my bases. First thing in the morning,

two tablespoons of flax seed, coffee grinder in the smoothie, and then fish oil the rest of the day. If you, I can't tell anything. If you're just take it all. If you've been participating in this discussion, that means you're probably one of like 2% of people who are better off than 98% of humanity

who doesn't give a shit, doesn't even think about this ever. You're right. So just having a discussion is a good sign. If you're following this and participating, you're probably doing okay. You're taking some fish oil. And if you see Chris, he'll probably give you a gold star. Yeah, I'll give you two gold stars. High fives. Paul was alluding

to maybe the government not knowing everything and controlling. Shit. Sorry, Justin. I had to hang up on you. And to be fair, that goes for all members of government because a lot of them are clueless. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Most of them are. So, in my opinion. But so this, what was it? Taco Bell. No, it was McDonald's and their. Pink slime? The chicken nugget pink slime. I think we talked about this before.

Anyways, they got, they were put on the news and they had to come out and say, hey, we'll never do that again. What was the news? I've seen it on the news before. I think it ran viral on Facebook. Was it Facebook? It happened this time around. Facebook shook them up.

I've seen that ten times on the news. It seems to be a running problem for the media. They're not doing a very not nearly as good of a job as Facebook and stuff like that. If you want to know what's going on, you go to Reddit or BuzzFeed and you see what people are talking about.

I just go on Twitter and I follow who I like. I guess the same pink slime that McDonald's got in a lot of shit over is now headed for the public school system. So they're going to implement it there. And a million tons is what the news story says. Coming to a cafeteria in New York. So the first thing I think of is, okay, the shit storm went down.

When did that story break? Let's just assume it's been at least like two months ago, right? Trying to bring it up right now. So, it's been like at least two months since that story broke.

Oh, you're talking about the McDonald's one. Like, McDonald bailed on that like two months ago, right? Yep. So, one has to assume there's been a pile

of pink slime stuff sitting somewhere frozen. So, basically, McDonald's was going about their business of pureeing whole chickens and then dousing it in the equivalent of bleach.

And then packaging it up into little chicken-shaped morsels. Is that why it tasted so good? Deep frying it in fucking cheap vegetable oil. It tastes good when you dip it in honey and mustard. Coated in corn syrup solids. What the fuck? And people were eating it, eating it, eating it. And I said, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa.

People know what we're doing now. Big time now, bro. So we have to stop. So they make a formal announcement. We're not doing this no more. So one battle is won. The market eventually worked. One battle is won.

But now there's this pile of shit in a warehouse. This cheap pink slime. Who are they going to sell it to? So now, like, two months later, the government says, I know. We'll take that pureed chicken

that's been sitting there for two months with bleach and we'll feed it to kids. That's why I tell people... Who also aren't learning shit in school, but now they're being fed shit in school little opposite situation there's pretty awesome yeah so i mean that i mean that goes more further into like the whole free market solution yeah is that it people voted with their dollars with mcdonald's mcdonald's goes shit people about to vote with their dollars and we're going to lose a lot and then the government so we'll sell

it to the government for 50 cents on the dollar humbling bureaucracy that to vote with their dollars and we're going to lose a lot. And then the government... So we'll sell it to the government for 50 cents on the dollar. This big, bumbling bureaucracy that they vote with your dollar. I think you're looking at it wrong. They can wait years to make any change because people get voted out slowly and all that kind of stuff. So here's the actual...

How much is chicken nuggets? Only 99 cents, maybe. No. Like a six pack? Like a 10 piece. I'm not talking about your dog. You would know. I don't know.

Probably like 399. 399. I hear you, brother. So now you're telling me I can get the same. Let's not make a mistake. They're fucking delicious. Flat out awesome. I agree.

If you eat them without the honey and mustard, it is not delicious. Come on. Close your mouth. Close your mouth. But the thing is, it's $3.99. We'll take that. So now you're telling me I can get those same chicken nuggets for like $1.25 with the chocolate milk? Get out of town.

You might have to shave the beard though, Chris. I don't know if they're going to let you in. The market has spoken. Nobody is starving, but everyone is malnourished. Next story. All right. Now, I actually want malnourished. Next story. All right. Now, I actually want to read the story a little bit. McDonald's and Taco Bell have banned it, but now the United States Department of Agriculture

is buying 7 million pounds of beef containing ammonia hydroxide treated ground. Beef, not chicken. Yeah, ground connective tissue and meat scraps and serving it up to America's school kids. Yummy. If you thought cafeteria food was gross before. I didn't. The term pink slime was coined by microbiologist Gerald Zernstein, formerly of the USDA.

That's a huge term. Pink slime. What's it look like? He first saw it being mixed into a burger meat when he was touring a Beef Products, Inc. facility in 2002. Salmonella, whatever. That's the official name is pink slime. Here's an interesting side thought to that, which is that we're probably made to eat a reasonable amount of 2002 Salmonella, whatever. Yeah. So that's the official name is pink slime.

Here's an interesting side thought to that, which is that we're probably made to eat a reasonable amount of connective tissue. So in that way, it might actually be more balanced nutrition than just eating the meat. I personally think people should be eating more organs. That too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know I try to suck the marrow out of the bones every chance I get. So when they puree.

Most people don't do that. They puree the whole chicken intestines and all. Does that count? Sure, man. Just drop it in the blender, I guess. That's right. I'm a little worried about the product they use to make it all stick together. That's what I'm more concerned with.

I think it's cornstarch. I don't mind eating chicken beak, but I don't want, yeah. No, if you could. I don't know if i could find the story right now but there's a i read a story a while back about like the actual product they use to make uh meat stick together like if you go to kroger and you buy a steak it was probably glued to it's like meat glue it's like a wood laminate but it's a big deal in australia but supposedly it's used worldwide so chris i know you had a know you had a little topic you wanted to bring up.

Did I? Yeah. It was about people getting too strong. Oh. It's an epidemic in America today. You know, I've heard recently that one gentleman's problem and his blessing was that he gets strong too quick. You've experienced this, right? Big problem. I hated the last time I got strong too quick. You've experienced this, right?

Big problem. I hated the last time I got strong too quick. It was terrible. I will comment on this. I won't mention his name. He was an acquaintance for a while. We trained together. He got too strong too quick.

But he was a former collegiate athlete who started power lifting uh he was like a defensive end or something so naturally gifted an explosive so he he did what a lot of powders do because they want to get to the level quickly of being able to lift very large amounts of weight and they want to settle for anything less than national level competitions and they don't want to sell for anything less than getting there within a year or so. So he went on a very robust regimen of chemical agents to help him get strong.

Steroids. He was doing steroids, okay? But this fucking guy went from like squatting maybe 650 or so to squatting 900 in a year. I think he was benching in a competitive setting like 725.

And he went from pulling 60 or so to maybe pulling 800. And then he... Did he pull all the tendons off the bone in one move? He exploded onto the scene. And then just as quickly

as he was on, he was off because he hurt a disc in his neck. Blew out a couple discs in his spine. Blew out a couple discs neck, blew out a couple discs in his spine. Blew out a couple discs. Blew out a couple discs in his spine.

And I think also I tore a large chunk of muscle off his spine. Yeah. And it was on the shelf. I didn't see him again until the Arnold Classic about a year and a half later. And at that point, it was quite clear and apparent to me he was off, whatever he was doing because he turned into a guy who looked like he was five six seven years removed from college football and now a little pudgy and out of shape but still probably plenty strong but he just had left it and then

two years later i see him again at a competition now he's back competing and now he looks like bruce banner in a rage he had completely changed at two years back to what he was before and pursuing the same course. Back on steroids. Yeah. I mean, again, completely changed physiologically. So the moral of the story is to juice, right? That's what I heard.

So here's the point. If you take shortcuts to get strength, you may be able to do it, but you will surely pay the price. But if you're a normal person training hard and reasonably in a gym like ours, and you're not doing that, I don't think you have the problem of getting strong too quickly. In other words, when people say powerlifting is dangerous, there are variables in making that assessment. So for me, I'm 31. Yes, it's true.

I know I look 22. I was thinking 21. I have a young son who soaks up more and more time daily. He's a joy and a pleasure, but five months old, started to get a little rowdy. Wife, I have a demanding corporate job. I do some writing on the side, so I stay pretty busy. But I train three days a week. I do it two max just about all the time.

I train hard and heavy. I try to make myself better every time I go in the gym. So I trained to maximum weights every week for as long as I can remember with this occasional break. And I've never torn a muscle palatine. Never had a real injury palatine. My injuries came training under the guidance of a poor strength and conditioning coach in football. I've never injured myself training reasonably with limit heavy weights. So, yeah, it's when you introduce stupid things it becomes dangerous.

I think the person Chris might be alluding to is somebody who's not strong and probably has never been very strong. Yeah. But assumes that they put on muscle. This is not a problem. This is something I see all the time, people being like. This is a delusion. This is like the woman who thinks, I don't want to touch a weight and gain they put on muscle. This is not a problem. This is something I see all the time. People being like. This is a delusion. This is like the woman who thinks, I don't want to touch your weight and gain 20 pounds of muscle.

Exactly. I don't know how to communicate that this is impossible. Yeah. This is not possible. Not only do you have people who are fearful of like, I don't want to touch weights and then I'll get that 20 muscles. Or 20 muscles. 20 pounds of muscle. Anyway.

I get new muscles. But you'll have people who work out for two weeks and like dang it's like man I've been working out for like a year and I can hardly

tell a difference and you're telling me in two weeks you can already see you're freaking that's the thing people think that I'm going to touch weights

get huge the people who touch weights and get huge are doing things you can't do and aren't willing to do I think the real the truth on this one

is a lot of people come in and do CrossFit. It usually comes from women, but recently it's come from a guy. It's like, you know, I don't like to lift weights too much because I'll get too strong, too strong too fast, and that's a problem. I'm like, bullshit, dude. You're out of shape. And you've got some kind of delusion going on in your mind.

I wrote a – And the person who says that is always the person who's out of shape i've never met anyone who's like amazing shape is like yeah man it just well i started too fast i should sucks i started a post today about strength development on the blog and one of the lines i wrote was that being strong is like harley's and and pinup girls and authentic tequila and john Coltrane music. More is always fucking better. It's bottom line. Awesome. You can't argue it.

Being strong and stronger is fucking righteously awesome all the time. Yep. And with that, we're going to wrap things up. All right. I think that was perfect. So, Paul, do you have anything? Well, we'll go with Chris first so you can think about it because I know you've got a lot.

All right. CTP, you got anything you want to plug? Yeah, we just kicked off our Kickstarter. Fuck it. No, I don't have anything to plug. Check us out on Kickstarter. We're trying to get an Olympic weightlifting documentary made, and you can go to, what is it, kickstarter.com and then just search.

If you just go to fitter.tv, you'll be able to find the weightlifting documentary. And once you go there, it'll be obvious where you should click to donate money. F-I-T-R.TV. That's right. Spelled cleverly. Maybe we need a jingle. F-I-T-R.TV. Fitter.TV. TV. we need a jingle f-i-t-r dot tv fitter dot tv tv so uh just so you know even if we exceed our goal

which is 36 000 you can still donate more and it will be very useful to us so just if give us your money oh yes give us your money if you're rich please give us some of that money come on man smashing's cool give us some money all right chris what do you got chris moore yeah just go to the chris moore blog.com send me rambo about shit paul i'll be appearing at a crossfit gym near you and the next one is uh crossfit wolf, or probably Wolf River CrossFit is actually how you say it. March the 25th, where I'll give my That Stuff Will Kill You brief, and please come out and see me. And what is that? It is a template of the Paleolithic model of nutrition and how you can use that.

So it's a nutrition talk? It is a nutrition talk. Good, good. Boom. And the second part I'd pitch is that June 9th CrossFit on a national scale is partnering with St. Jude's for the first Fight Gone Bad for St. Jude's, which promises to be an incredibly powerful partnership for a cause that probably anybody could get excited about. And so for me, it's really exciting to see that coming and happening this close

to something that's near and dear to us here in memphis yeah show yeah and i've seen uh paul's nutrition talk a couple times and it changes every time but it's it's excellent so thanks mike are they gonna do anything here at the saint jude uh anything locally because it is with them now or i don't know any details about that but like for like, for example, you probably got the email from HQ recently saying, hey, let's have a chat and see if we can do something really special in Tennessee or in Memphis because it's close to St. Jude. So, you know, it would be kind of nice to see. Maybe team up the local gyms.

I think I deleted that email. No, I'm just kidding. All right, so, Bledsoe, what would you like to plug? Yeah, besides the Kickstarter, plug TechniqueWad.com, of course. Doug's not here, so I'm going to plug that for him. Not that I don't have any part of that. As always, check out FactionSC.com. Check out TechniqueWad, of course, and check out ThreadedTV.

And iTunes. We are now on iTunes for this podcast. All right, guys. So now us and you two have something in common. Wrap your head around that. See you next time. I'm lost.