Barbell Shrugged - Extra: Why You Should Do The Shrugged Strength Challenge

Episode Date: November 14, 2016

The goal of the Shrugged Strength Challenge is to help you GET STRONGER & add 50 pounds to your squat, while IMPROVING YOUR CONDITIONING to drop your "Helen" time by 3 minutes, and improve your overhead movement & mobility. Now that might seem like a tall order, but it's already happening with our Shrugged Strength Challenge athletes.  We've seen it! In just 3 months of training our athletes have  dropped their "Helen" times by 2:30 on average! They've also gotten bigger squats and improved their mobility at the same time! So whether you've been training for a while or just starting your strength & conditioning journey we're up for the challenge! Following this program and sticking with it will help you with more than the things listed above.  Those are just our big goals to give us something to aim for.  Other goals we have for this include building a fun as shit tight knit online community, providing you accountability, and helping you with all the things you're going to have to master that go on outside of the gym. We're about to enter our 4th year of running online training programs and we've learned a lot over that time.  We're taking what we know works and cranking it to 11. This program is going to be hard work.  We like to say this program is for those who want to "TRAIN, not exercise."  And what that means is... we're not just going into the gym to break a sweat and get some exercise in.  We're going in with a plan, and we're going to work our ass off and stay committed through hell or high water to reach that goal.  To earn it.

I don't want to tell the story on camera. I'm not proud of it. What happened after he was, like, shooting off his water bottle? His greasy paws are still on my window. Dude, he, like, hit the car, which is why I stopped. He's got water bottles attached to his hands. I know, I was so mad. I'm like, I'm going to just kill one of them to make it more.

Oh, my God. We are not using this. I'm turning left. I am vetoing. We are not using this. I'm turning left. I am vetoing. It's on Riverside. You know where the gas station is at Riverside? When you get off of Riverside, you know Riverside. Never mind.

I'm turning left. There's cars coming. And as I'm, like, turning, I see the guy. I already see him, like, way back. So you planned it. I start turning. And then I'm still, like, driving through the intersection, and he just runs out in front of me, assuming

I have to stop. Did you have a stop sign? Did he? Did you? No. I was turning left. But you saw him coming the whole way. Way back before he was even across the street. You were turning left and he was running this way. I got it right here. He's running at you.

Just try. He's running at him. As a runner, though, it's more important for him to gauge that he could be hit by a car. Here's the road. You can't assume people see you. This isn't even a road. This is just where I turn. He's way over here. You weren't even on the road.

I start turning. There's cars coming fast. I'm going. I'm going. He runs out in front of me. Oh. Okay. He was trying to make a point.

He saw a car and thought I just had to stop no matter what. I'm like, you don't just run out across the street. You still stop. You still look. You don't have to stop, but you still look. Well, common fucking sense, yeah. But he thinks that he has the right-of-way on this, and he's like, he hits the car. I pull over.

I roll out the window, and I'm like, what the fuck? You don't have the right-of-way. And he's like, runners always have the right-of-way. And he's got little water bottle hands. And the water's flying around. And I'm getting so mad because he's got water bottle hands. And the water's flying around, and I'm getting so mad because he's got water bottle hands. And it's 70 degrees out.

You're not that fucking thirsty. I can't understand it. Common sense was like what? Like a 2,000-pound vehicle versus a 130-pound dude. Why would you not, like – I saw it in his eyes. The principle to him was I've got my mileage, and I cannot get off

this mileage. I cannot let it stop. And he's like, I'll get hit by a car before I slow down my pace right now. What kind of shorts did he have on?

What's up, guys? I'm Mike McGoldrick here. Oh, my gosh. I'm cool. Everything's cool. I'm Mike McGoldrick here with Alex Macklin. What's up?

Coach Mike McElroy. What's happening? Coach Kurt Mulliken. And I'm the host of the cool. I'm Mike McGoldrick here with Alex Macklin. What's up? Coach Mike McElroy. Oh, that's Edmund. Coach Kurt Mulliken. And I'm the host of the Barbell Shrug Podcast. These gentlemen as well are also coaches and hosts of the Barbell Shrug Podcast. Thank you for tuning in. If you have listened to some of our other shows, we've got a bunch of fitness-related podcasts online,

a bunch of videos out there. So if you haven't listened to them before. We do cool shit. Yeah, we've got a lot of really fun stuff out there. Free entertainment, I'll just call it that. Edutainment. Edutainment. That's the word we like to start with.

So today we want to talk to you a little bit about our program called the Shrugged Strength Challenge. So we want to talk about why we made this program, what this program is going to do for you, and stuff like that. So one, I guess, who the fuck are we? Bring it back to me. Yeah. Yeah. What's up, guys? So I'm the host of the Barbell Shrug Podcast.

I've been coaching programs for Barbell Shrug for about three years now. Mack O'Roy has been coaching for three years. Kurt Mulligan has been coaching for three years. Alex, you've been at it for a couple of years now. Like three or four years. Yeah, three or four years. We've got four other different programs. We've got strength programs, the muscle gain challenge.

Weight lifting. Weight lifting called flight, fat loss, a bunch of different stuff. We've been coaching thousands of athletes. Yeah. I mean, I started in 2013 with the muscle gain challenge, and I think Kurt was in one of my groups. I was in the first group? Yeah, you were in the first group.

So I've been coaching muscle gain and flight. And pretty much all of us have seen practically almost every type of athlete going through our programs and multiple goals. People want to lose fat. People want to get stronger. People want to get better at weightlifting. And a lot of us, like you, McGee, and McElroy, you both also program design for these programs as well. Yeah, so McElroy's got a lot of personal clients. I do a lot of personal programming.

But the biggest thing I think that we've got experience in that we've done for several years now is group programming. And there's a lot of stuff out there like it now in terms of people wanting to put together, you know, a similar program for a lot of people to follow. And we've just gotten really, we've really learned a lot over the past three years because we've built so many of them. And every year we try to make them a little bit better. So, you know, which leads us to the Shrugged Strength Challenge. This one came up and why we made it was because we saw kind of a gap that was not being filled that a lot of people had a need for and that need was the the you know that that you could only get strong

while you know getting out of excuse me only gets basically what you're trying to say is you can only improve in one thing yeah category layering it together right so endurance there's this common conception misconception that you can only get strong and you can only basically focus on one thing at a time. And you can do that. And we've arguably, just be honest, we've actually been like, okay, if you want to really get good at weightlifting, you've got to focus on weightlifting, which is true.

Like if you want to get really, really good at something, you're going to have to focus on weightlifting which is which is true like if you want to get really really good at something you're going to have to focus on it but at the same time like we recognize and after seeing like how many people have done our programs like you guys come from a from a from a background where you still want to do the conditioning you know you still want to do the gymnastics you still want to have those things where you can be balanced and all around. And it sucks when you try to, like, when you focus for so long, and then now you want to go back. You want to take what you've learned, and now you want to go back to what you were doing, which is, you know, arguably CrossFit, and it's tough. Yeah.

Yeah, nothing worse than following a strength program. And, I mean, you do get some good results out of it. You know, your back squat goes up or whatever, but then when you come back to it you're like oh my god I've got to dig out of this condition hold it like Kurt like you did the muscle game challenge like man we're not throwing other programs under the bus we're just saying like it's hard to dig out I think we've all done a little bit of that though where you know you you or you see it every day people like almost use your strength program as an excuse to just get totally out of shape you you make you comfort yourself by saying well i'm focusing on on my squat or my clean and jerk or my weight lifting and then uh nine months down the road when

you may or may not be where you want to be you realize that you can't walk up a flight of stairs like getting out of breath and that is that is a hard it is so hard to come back yeah dude i've been there man like for i don't know how like since i since 2010 i've been strictly doing weightlifting and i just now recently you know started to get back into into crossfit and i'm telling you right now like i did i started off doing the open and that open was rough like i was strong but i couldn't use that strength yeah like that's the that's what that Yeah. Like, that's what I think this program, why we wanted to make this program is because we want you to be strong, but we want you to use that strength, right?

Yeah. Well, that's the cool thing that CrossFit has taught us is that GPP is how important that is. And while your goal may be to get stronger, your goal may be to build endurance, it doesn't mean you have to neglect those other things. You can still improve on those things really well while not neglecting those other things. So you can use it, whatever that is you want to build.

Yeah. I mentioned layering earlier. Also, you know, people like to, one of the biggest problems with seeing so many different group programs out there, you want to do all these different things at once. And you're like, I don't really know how to structure this together so i'm trying to organize all that is like is really tough and some of it might work you could have a back squat program plus an endurance training program plus a gymnastics program but then when you look at like the total volume of it you're like i don't know if there's too much for me or what like

the biggest thing the strength challenge that we want to do is like put all that together for those interested in general physical preparedness and we have some very specific goals in the program that we talk about later but for the most part we wanted like really good balanced programming that's not going to like let you fall too far off in any other area of fitness yeah i think we also wanted a program where you could make you know steady improvements and and we had longevity we have longevity in mind like this program like i don't know mike mackerel you can comment on this but this program is is designed it seems to keep somebody training for a long time and that's what some people have said like they want

to be they want like i'm 30 i want to be like 40 50 years old and still doing this stuff i don't want to be just wrecked and completely just sit in my bed and taking an hour to get out of bed because I just completely destroyed my body. Because you PR'd your back squat. Yeah, because I PR'd pounds when you were 20. Dude, I was almost there. I was straight up. I was almost about to quit. You were pretty broken.

Yeah, I was broken because I wasn't doing these things. And, I don't know, Macro, I'm just going to let you comment on this. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a common problem we see now is this kind of structural balance and training for longevity is getting popular. But the problem is people are trying to layer that work on top of a program that's already destroying them. So they have a program that's maybe it worked for the first one or two years of their CrossFit career, and it's beaten them up.

So now their solution to that is tack on this health program on top of that with another hour of work and it doesn't it can't work like that it has to be blended together yeah to be one complete and you know what also is happening they're doing that so let's say someone comes to this or comes to a program because they're broken and like i just need to do a structural balance program you know that's fine they get healthy but the fitness drops somewhat overall like your work capacity goes down like you lose a lot of other things. And that's okay, right?

You're obviously out of pain. You're moving better. You're feeling better. But at the same time, with good, smart programming, you don't have to let all of it drop off. You don't just have to pull the plug on the other stuff. You can still have those things in there with good programming. It's just tough to do it on your own.

Just like I said. You don't have to lose it. You can change it to where you're building a bigger platform instead of just simply losing it. So if you go to just a structural balance program or just a rehab-based program, then you're literally losing all your

fitness, whereas if you build it into a structured program, you may just be building a bigger base where maybe you're not hitting those seven minute AMRAPs, but you're building a bigger base to where when you do come back to that you're ready to get even higher it's you know you're putting something in place for long-term progression right yeah like you're not just doing the work just for work's sake you know we have an episode we talk about training versus versus exercising you know and uh and that's kind of the difference like i look at exercising is

almost kind of like maintenance you know like you do it to make you feel good and then you really don't have much concern with uh getting much better past that point and training these programs we have everything put in place for progression we want to actually show that you're getting better right because you're going in and do a lot of hard work if you're not getting better like what's the point yeah of killing yourself yeah and many people that's a big thing people are struggling with there's like well i don, I don't know. I've hit plateaus. I don't know how am I going to get better. I don't know how to get better. And people are tired of figuring it out, trying to figure it all out. Like I know for me personally, I don't want to figure it out. Just, just tell me what to do and get me there. And that's, that's a big reason I think why, you know, we make these

programs because we're trying to help people get to this, get to this point and give them the tools and give them the things that they need. Yeah, so if you've never followed a program before, committing to something like this is actually really challenging. Because you get this fear that, you know, if I join this, you know, I might lose these other things or I might have to let go of that, or this might drop. But if you've ever trained for anything hard, you've got to understand that it just takes full commitment and trust in those programs. So especially if you're someone who has shiny object syndrome, you maybe see something cool and you're like, oh, yeah, that's the goal I want to go do.

I'm going to go follow that for three weeks. And then week four, bang, you see something else come up. You didn't give yourself enough time to see if you could actually make progress in that. Well, the people who say that or do that, they also, a lot of those people recognize that they have that problem. And what the problem is is that when you do some other programs or things out there, there's no accountability. There's no motivation. There's nothing to keep you engaged.

You really are left to your own devices. And when that happens, I mean, yeah, you just basically just jump ship whenever the next shiny thing comes along. But, like, we made this program because, you know, we saw the most effective things in our other programs. We've all coached our other programs, and we saw what's the most effective thing. When we get in there and we motivate and we keep people accountable, so, you know, we build a lot of stuff in this program to keep people on track, keep people motivated and accountable.

And that's what people, like, they were like, I need that. Yeah. No, we've got things in place in this program that, like, we just got done looking at some of the numbers and the results from the past few months. And, like, we can see right away, like, this person only did this many sessions this month. This person did three sessions. And look at their freaking improvement. They're killing it.

This person missed 10 sessions and is not getting the improvement they wanted. So we contact them. We say, what's the deal? We're going to work with you and try and figure it out. We're not just going to give you the program and say, all right, jump in. Good luck. We'll see you on the other side. A big thing about a lot of this stuff is there's a lot of stuff that goes on

outside of the gym that's important to success inside of training. And a lot of those things, you guys told us, I need help. I need help with getting to the gym every day. I need help with making sure I eat enough food, making sure I do my mobility work. Like I need help with that. Like you told us that. And those are the things that we definitely wanted to address. And we we built this program a lot with those things in mind, like building habits and all that kind of stuff to like help you get the shit that, you know, like the 80 percent of the work that you're doing outside the gym, lock that down. Yeah, right on.

In terms of like other fears that you might see that come up with joining programs, McElroy, like you've worked with a lot of clients in the past too that you've kind of helped stick to programs. What are some of the things that they've run into and obstacles that you've helped them hurdle? I think one of the things to be noted is kind of the shiny object syndrome where people see all these different stuff. And this program has a lot of variety in it and we also try to do a good job

of staying on top of the uh the newest and freshest things so things that you may see getting popular like that encyclopedia probably already in the program or getting built into the program because we're always experimenting with new things so if our program looks the same as it did four years ago, then we're probably doing something wrong. So if your program still looks like just kind of a basic, classic CrossFit program, then there's nothing special and unique about that. Not to say that it's necessarily wrong,

but it means you're not experimenting with stuff. So we're always experimenting with new things, which means it kind of addresses that shiny object syndrome within the program that you're doing. We should make that a hashtag, basic ass program. You know what the special thing is about that? Basic CrossFit program. Is that not only did you just say that we're progressing our program,

but we're doing it based on results and monitoring our actual clients' results in this program. No group programs do that. No. They don't do that because we are constantly updating and following along with how the people in our program are doing with this, and we're changing based on that. No. They don't do that because we are constantly updating and following along with how the people in our program are doing with this, and we're changing based on that. Meso to Meso every week builds on the previous week, so that shiny object center was kind of taken care of. Instead of somebody looking over there, they're looking to the next week of the program that

they're in and going for it. Yeah, and that's another thing I like to see that some people, I know in the first mezzo when we did those check-ins, the repeatability of some of those things got a little mundane for people, but the thing they said was seeing their progress week to week helped with that motivation because they see themselves progressing. And so it took a little getting used to, but then they see themselves progressing, and so it keeps that motivation there.

The beautiful thing about monotony in programming is that progress is easy to see. And if you're not seeing progress, it's really hard to continue to follow that. So you've got to make sure you're making progress with that stuff. And we do. We have it. We make sure you can see it. We make sure week to week it's illustrated. Yeah, we've done a really fantastic job with making people people be very very sure like i'm looking

in the facebook group and people are like oh my god like last week i couldn't barely do these and now i've just got you know 10 more pounds or i can do these very easily now or like even just with with strength like i just post i just asked in the facebook group like how many people have gotten prs and they're on their back squat or front squat and people can see that because we're testing it every single month, you know, our strength movements, and they're seeing, like, I'm getting 25 pounds, 30 pounds, 40 pounds. My Helen's dropping, you know, two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, whatever.

They see that progress, and that's that fire, putting that gasoline on that fire to just keep you going. Yeah, and you know what? On that topic, like, what are some of the other benefits of the program? Or not benefits, excuse me. Like, what are some of the goals of the program? Like, what is it we're actually working on? topic, what are some of the other benefits of the program? Or not benefits, excuse me. What are some of the goals of the program? What is it we're actually working on? What are we measuring?

Well, you guys, well, we basically came up with the basic overarching goal, which is to increase your squat by 50 pounds and decrease your Helen time by three minutes. Yeah, so basically getting stronger while not just maintaining conditioning but improving conditioning at the same time yeah and showing that you can do that yeah people people are doing that like right now yeah and if you've never seen the workout helen it's basically three rounds of running 400 meters 21 pull-ups excuse me 21 kettlebell swings and 12 pull-ups and we test that every month so you can see the progress in that.

And so far, we pulled up some of the data on it, and holy crap. Yeah, like people from the first time we did it, I just ran the numbers, the first time we did it was the zeroth month, I guess, to the last time we had them update us, two minutes and 29 seconds. That's the average decrease in time. Decrease on average. I mean, we're only three months in, and we're pretty much 30 seconds away. Yeah.

So, I don't know, maybe we need to make a bigger goal. Yeah. But, yeah, so that's the type of progress that people are making in this program. You know what, I'm all excited about talking the numbers of that, but what excites me the most is the day-to-day comments that we get in the Facebook group from these clients that say, you know, I crushed my hell in time, but the most important thing is

that when I tested my back squat, I hit a PR on it, but it didn't hurt. It didn't hurt. I went through a full range of motion. I did Helen, and pull-ups didn't hurt. I was able to kip them. There's so much more to it about how good people feel right now in the program. They feel balanced.

They're not training three hours a day. They're hitting 60 to 90-minute sessions, and they're feeling awesome. They're feeling very healthy, and it feels sustainable. They're like, you know what? I don't feel like I just peaked my lifetime. I feel like I've got more in me. Every month I want you to say, hey, I just PR'd, but you know what? I feel like I can get more next month.

That's a really good sign. right way not only that they because of all those things we've said it before the best program for you is the one that you're enjoying and that's what those characteristics lead to is all these people are having fun again during their training and so they're not they're not just dreading going into the gym they're now enjoying their training again yeah it's changed the way a lot of people are moving too. Their squatting or pulling completely different than they were three months ago. They've completely changed the way they

squat, the way they clean. They're moving so much better. You've done the program. Tell us how it's treated you. Yeah. You posted on Instagram a couple months ago about how your bottom position has just gotten so much better. Yeah, I learned how to use my legs, which was cool. Alex will tell you, it's always been I'm a walking back.

You're a walking back. Yeah, so I've never really learned how to use my legs. And as a coach, you know, it's also helped me to be able to convey that to the people that are in the program. But you learn to move so much better when you just slow it down a little bit. Yeah. You know what? We talked about experimenting,

and McElroy is the master program designer over there. He's the brains behind it. And the important thing with the experimenting is that we're not just making things up when we say we experiment. We're actually testing it. We've got one of our coaches actually doing the program. I make most of it up. We follow principles that

work and we know have worked for a long time but we are constantly raising the bar. Not only are we doing that but we're having someone test it as we go along to make sure this is good stimulus. This is what we want to get out of it. There's not a lot of that going on out there either because it just takes time.

A lot of people are writing programs but but, you know, I do it, and I'm, what, two mesos ahead of everybody. But I ask, you know, I'll text you or something like, hey, let's, you know, limit the rest time or something like that. Well, we've all been – oh, sorry. We've all been athletes ourselves, and we've done programs, and maybe, like, Kurtz, you've done some group training programs. I've done some group training programs. Like, we've seen, and we've seen and we've coached so many athletes like we've seen the issues

like we've seen that people are like broke like a lot of people are not don't move that great yeah i mean i wouldn't say they're broken but they don't move that great they're in pain not broken yet yeah and i mean they've been doing these things which they've been doing these programs that aren't really addressing those issues because they're just not meant for that. Yeah. And, yeah, they may get stronger, but at what cost? Yeah. You know, and there's also the case where you may not be someone who's hurt.

We're not saying, like, you have to be hurt to do this program. Like, no, not at all. What we're saying is people only take action when they're hurt. Yeah. Or, excuse me, they usually only take action to make a change in the programming after they've gotten hurt, you know? So, like, I say, like, don't waste time

for that kind of stuff. Like, get on it now and, like, don't wait. Yeah, don't be reactive. This program, if you want to get strong in the right way, this is how you do it. You do these movements which balance out your your weaknesses you you do movements that uh build core stability overhead stability shoulder health all these things that we're doing that we're doing in this program those are the things that you do yeah and this is how

you end up training for years and years and years to come. And this is how you get long-term progress. Yeah, it's not a one-time fix. So it's not a you come and that's why certain rehab programs may or may not work is because you do these programs and then you go back to training the way that hurt you in the first place and you're just going to come back with the same result. So it's got to be meshed together. And this is a way that you can do this stuff and increase your performance at the same time because like as like other programs like yeah maybe they may be

built to design to get you back to healthy again but you lose yeah you know the things that you want to try to do i've been through that so many times i i love getting strong like it just comes so much easier to me than conditioning does but i feel the worst when i don't take care of the conditioning like i really do not feel healthy i just did a big weightlifting cycle this summer for about four or five months and it was amazing because i got really strong but you guys all saw i wasn't doing any conditioning at the end of it and we tested helen after that actually and i was it was like three minutes off one of my best times i was miserable yeah and i didn't expect to like pr the helen or anything like that but i didn't expect to PR the Helen or anything like that,

but I didn't expect to feel that bad. I did not like that feeling. I do not like the feeling of being incapable in anything. You just don't like the feeling of getting beat. Yeah, I'm super competitive. I think that's a super important point. Go ahead, finish your point. I was going to say, if you're someone who doesn't

like being incapable in anything, if you want to make sure there's nothing you can't do, then this program is perfect for that because it's super balanced. That's a huge point, the feeling that you're capable of doing just whatever. Like having that confidence and knowing that you can move well and you can tackle this training program and tackle these weights and do these things, like that is huge. When I first started, like, getting back into fitness, I was i was like man it feels awesome just to be able to do anything that comes

to me yeah yeah and and i think that's something that we hugely deliver that people don't really necessarily think about in terms of like you know what you're going to get out of this program yeah yeah who else is this for like what kind of athletes do we look for in this program well i would say like people. We're in their fitness journey. One to two years in, a beginner. You know, I think anybody can do this. Anybody can benefit from this program.

But it is going to be a program that are for people who want to train. I think if you want to train. Alex, you're being nice right now. Tell us how you feel about those that don't want to train. I think if you want to train. Alex, you're being nice right now. Tell us how you feel about those that don't want to train. Come on. I mean, what's the difference between training and exercising, right? Maybe we should watch that. I forgot what number that podcast is.

But, like, again, you want to train. You want to work towards a goal. You want to make progress. You're going to do the things that are going to facilitate you to make that constant progress. You're not going to sit there and that are going to facilitate you to make that constant progress. You're not going to sit there and fucking go around and jump from program to program. Stop yelling at me, dude. You're not going to sit there and jump from program to program and get the shiny object.

You're going to do the fucking unsexy work because that's what you need to do in order to make long-term progress. I'm sorry. No, man. I mean, it's the truth. Split squads are sexy. We went off about that in a whole episode. It just comes down to we want committed people. Yeah.

Again, going back to the progress, it takes consistency. It takes hard work. And it takes being okay with being held accountable. If you're not someone who is okay with having someone follow up and be like what's the deal man like we're gonna call you out you know like if you're missing stuff oh yeah we see it we know but he calls people out of the facebook group all the time and it's not it's not because i'm like look i'm not a coach who's just here to point out bad things i don't get like anyone can do that it's easy to point out what you're doing wrong my point

with coaching is that i want you to actually make progress, right? I'm here to actually help you care and push you because we care because I've been there. I've had someone who's pointed at all the things I'm doing wrong and it's discouraging. And then I've had someone who's like, girl, yeah, I've had someone who's shown me what I've done wrong and then why it's happening and then how to actually fix it so we can move on from it if you really want to. Yeah. I think the biggest thing is because, yeah, we care. Like we care about the fact that you are getting results. That's why we built in things in this program to check up on you

and to make sure that you're staying on track because we're not just doing this because, I mean, we want you to get results. Like we're athletes ourselves. We've coached so many people. Like we want you to get results. So we want you to do the program and not sit there and just hop from ship to ship to ship. I want to talk about who we don't want in the program. Let's do that.

There's people who have – maybe you're someone who doesn't trust other programs or doesn't trust coaching. This is an opportunity for you to either change and deal with that because we've had people in the past that have been kind of a pain in the ass that have gone in and been like, well, why are we doing this? Shouldn't we be doing that? And I'm like, look, you might be right. There's a million ways we could do something. But this is how we're doing it right now because we believe in this progress.

You know, like you got to trust the process. Well, you said to speak to that. If you're somebody that is kind of like that, but you want to maybe grow from that. For sure. It's a perfect opportunity because we're in the group, so you can challenge anything that we're doing. It's your salvation. So many people have come in, even in past programs and even this program,

they learn so much just from seeing how other people do it. Yeah, just from questioning. I don't mind people asking questions because if you're asking questions, you're obviously curious and you want to learn. But as long as you want to learn and you're not sitting there saying, like, my way is the right way or whatever. I want to make sure I made a clear difference on that. I didn't mean don't ask questions. Of course, ask questions.

I want to make sure, man, like you're not just constantly doubting. But that's the thing. That'll hold you back. I think from this program and what I've seen from all of our programs like flight, muscle gain, all these other programs, when people come in, they're like, man, I learned so much about training and how to train. Like that stuff that you could take. It's like basically if you first started working out or exercising, you know that person that was before. And then you step in the gym and then now you're this person. And you're like, I can never go back to that.

That's how our programs are. You learn so much stuff, you're like, man, what the hell was I doing before? Now I can never go back to that because you've just changed. We ruin you in a good way. You get actual change from doing our program. Consider yourself deflowered after doing our program. Yeah, yeah. change from doing our program. Consider yourself deflowered after doing our program. Yeah. And then I say also people that we

want in the group. We want people that are supporters, man. We have a Facebook group. We have a group of people that we do the program with. And we want people that are going to bring people up. Because this is your tribe.

You're the biggest proponent on the community. Yeah, man, we have an awesome, awesome community of athletes on Facebook, and that's one huge difference, and that really sets it apart. You've got access to the coach and everybody that's doing it with you, and we're super responsive. It's awesome. I love waking up every day. We check the group daily.

I like waking up. I mean, it's just fun hanging out in there. People go in and they just – it doesn't even have to be about training. People write about bullshit in there. Everyone's like – we even post on the rest day. It's a rest day for everyone. List something cool that you're doing. Just hear what people are doing in their regular lives.

If you're someone who likes to share and wants to make friends like it's a good spot for it because you're gonna build relationships in here like everyone knows like individual program is fantastic because it's written specifically to you but when you have a group and community support yeah man it is powerful like you can go a long way with that when the shit gets hard man you go in that group and you're like man i just really what was it one girl i'm not gonna name her name but one girl got in there and she basically asked for help she's like I need you guys to help me and people fucking rushed into there I know and I was like before we can even get to it I was like yeah holy crap this is awesome yeah and even weeks later they're like tagging her yeah you hit this

day yeah exactly it that's that's the that's the stuff that a lot of programs and a lot of things out there don't have. Silence. Mic drop. I know. All right, so why wouldn't you want to sign up for this? Like, why would people – or, excuse me, like, what are the hesitations typically when it comes to signing up for a program like this, especially when we ask for a long commitment?

Well, I think that's one thing. You know, people see, you know, we want people to be committed to this program. And, you know, okay, commitment may scare you and things like that, but there's a reason why we want people to commit because we are freaking committed to you. Like, we care about what – we're putting a lot of energy into this program, put a lot of energy into you. We want you to get results.

We want you to deliver that back. And we don't want people just to sit there and, like I said, like jump from ship to ship to ship because we want you to get results. It looks bad on us if y'all don't get results. I think that's the big thing about commitment. Yeah, for sure. I mean, what do you think? Man, what are some of the biggest hesitations?

You know, like even myself, like it took me a while to actually start following a program and deal with it. It was, again, like going back to kind of what we mentioned earlier is like fear of missing out on other things. You know, like FOMO. There you go. Yeah. First class FOMO. You just get nervous sometimes that, what is that, fear of missing out? Yeah. sometimes that was that fear of missing out yeah um you get nervous that again things are going to

fall off or or even the commitment in terms of like um signing up and actually paying for your first program i think people who i think i think if you pay for your program you it's a whole different ball game man well look here's the thing you've never paid for a program for like it's gonna change things for you put value on what you're paying for that is a commitment right like i can go down that rabbit hole of like well what's your health worth you know we've all heard that things for you. You put value on what you're paying for. That is a commitment, right? Like, I can go down that rabbit hole of like, well, what's your health worth? You know, we've all heard that shit. And like, it's true. But at the same time, like, come on, we're tired of hearing it. Like, you know that I'm not going to like put on paper how much your health costs you each month. And then the risk analysis benefit of doing a program like, come

on, let's be real. But the truth is like, you put money into something, you value it, right? You paid and now you're going to go do the work. You sign up for something that's free or $5 a month, you don't care if you miss it. It's only $5. And you know what? They don't care either. That's the other thing.

That's the truth of the matter. You pay fucking $5 a month for some program or $9, $10. Do they care if you do it or not? No. I'm getting paid regardless. There's an energy trade. If you quit, I can find 10 other people that are going to do the same thing. Give me $10, whatever.

Do you want somebody to really not care about you? I mean, for real, though. You're doing a program. Do you want somebody to just not give a shit? No. I mean, that's true, man. I mean, that's real. That's real talk.

You pay more for a program, you're getting a better service, which means we have more time invested in it. So if we lose a client, we know. What's going on? We don't want you gone. We want you to succeed. But it's also our business too. I'm going to be honest.

That's just how it goes. We just care more. And we do a lot of stuff to add value to the program. We have all these things like the group, and we make videos every month. Every month we have a video that comes out, talks about building a habit. Man, I wrote a nutrition guide that's like 50 pages.

It is so good. Start to finish, if you want to figure out how much to eat and like what good food selection, like this guy that he has. And a whole meal plan like builder. food selection like and a meal plan like builder it'll build you a meal plan you just follow it and it goes along i mean with the program it's designed to like how much volume you're doing in the program is designed to follow that so whether you want to like gain weight uh lose fat or maintain like it's built for that you know that's that's one of the biggest questions we get in the beginning is like are you guys going to provide

like what to eat or whatever? No, we're not going to tell you like eat this exact meal. We have a lot of examples, and we're going to help educate you along the way so that you're not stuck on a crutch after a month and being like, what's next? We're going to help educate so you can actually build your own nutrition plan. It's pretty awesome. But those things are value. That's value, and you've got to stop looking at cost. Like I don't even – man, I don't even – I was talking to cgp last night i don't even really look at cost anymore i look at what it's

gonna do for me like how it's gonna change me how it's gonna help me that's that's what i'm looking at i don't care about what the cost is because if i if i know that this is gonna be something that changes the way i do things and helps me then it's worth every penny. And it's going to pay off ten times in the long run. Yeah. If you live in the rainforest, in the Amazonian rainforest, and you don't have the internet or a credit card, it's probably not going to work out for you. But otherwise, it's going to benefit you.

Yeah, that's probably true. Let's see. Wait a minute. What are we talking about? What are some objections? I've heard this. I don't know if I'm ready to do this type of training program. I don't know if I'm at the level or strong enough or experienced enough.

What would you say to those people? A couple of things. I mean, I'll be honest. Like, if you don't know how to exercise and you're, like, just getting into it, no, it's probably going to be hard. Like, you've got to learn the movements. But if you're someone who's been training for a little bit and you have a good idea on movements and, you know,

you just want a little bit of help on how to move better, we provide movement demos. You've got the coaching group, the Facebook group. We can go in and ask questions. You can post videos, and we'll give you feedback on those videos. So go film your training that you did. If you're not sure you're doing something correctly, post a video in the group, and a coach hops all over that.

More people should do that. A lot of people, if you sign up to do this program, do that. Like I'll see a lot of people, they'll do it at first, and it'll drop off because, you know, whatever. But that is super huge in terms of getting great progress is being active in that group and sending us videos to review. Yeah, video feedback is good. I mean, it's available 24-7.

You can post a video of literally everything you do and get awesome critique on it. Yeah, for real. No, that's not the case not only is it it's not just one person monitoring the group like a customer service guy it's a bunch of people coaches in there five coaches and not only are you gonna you know if you post a video it's very helpful for the others but yeah other people are going to learn from that too so you know you may be getting the advice from the coach on that but everyone else in the group sees that and they're

definitely learning from that too. Macro, I want to ask you, you've designed this program. What would you say to that answer or that objection? Yeah, I would kind of lean on what McG said about if you're somebody that possibly needs hands-on coaching on the basic fundamental movements like squatting and bending and maybe you need a coach then. But otherwise, there's no real prerequisite of strength because you're going to be able to build on whatever your platform already is so

and there's there's it builds the strength progressions build in a way to also build movement and technique yeah within that what about the gymnastics you know that's a big one too like i can't do pull-ups you know you guys have pull-ups yeah i mean we give scaling options and and give you an idea of like you can kind of talks about the videos for the mezzos and kind of the weekly descriptions there's scaling options based off whatever that purpose of that specific workout is yeah so you're not just scaling to what you normally scale pull-ups but maybe one day you scale it for ring rows and one day you may scale it for negatives or whatever it is so it's specific to what we're doing and you know what we've even since we monitor the progress we've had some clients come and say you know what all right the scaling options i tried

them and they're not working right now all right look we're gonna go send you to our overtime products we've got get your first pull-up program squat program some other bunch of accessory programs and we're gonna help you run through that so if you're someone who has like like a huge deficit maybe in like doing pull-ups and things like that we're going to help guide you and find something else that's going to continue to make you you know grow and improve that area as well because it obviously needs some extra work so there's like a million options on you know if there are limitations on things you can do you've got all of us here to help with that yeah and and going back to what you were saying is is that you've designed this program to be pretty

much anybody can do it like i noticed a lot of the movements uh they're purposely designed to make you move with quality right yeah yeah and that's kind of what i was saying earlier about blending kind of rehab rehab type exercises with strength training it has to go hand in hand because if you're doing it separately you're not you're not learning to use those pt type movements yeah for functional movements like it's got to go together so they have to build with each other can you give us an example um as opposed to doing like a bunch of banded shoulder exercises maybe because you're hurting when you go overhead yeah we need to be doing overhead yoke holds or kettlebell

kettlebell carries or something like that. So it directly correlates with what you're trying to do. Instead of doing your normal workout, which has 100 push presses in it, and then after that you have to do 30 minutes of banded rehab and stretching. Now we put it all in one, and so it takes less time, and it's more effective for what we're building. That's another thing people usually say, like, well, I don't have time. Right.

I don't have time to do a program. How much time is it going to take? Yeah, I mean, this is a 60 to 75-minute program each day. So, I mean, it's a normal training session. Yeah, we ask everyone each month how long the sessions take. And it's like 60 to 75 minutes as well as Kurt testing it. You wrote down all your training times to figure it out because we understood that. You might have got two or three hours to be sitting in the gym, man. I mean, ideally, like, if no one worked, like, I would say, yeah, go got two or three hours to be sitting yeah like I mean

ideally like if no one works like I would say yeah I go train two or three hours a day but like I understand like I work a lot of hours in a day like I don't have the mental capacity sometimes either there's nothing more discouraging when you look at your training for the day and you know it's two hours long like good programming you should be able to get a really strong dose response in an hour yeah it's to keep your attention span. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's something Kurt and I have communicated on with him doing the program ahead of time.

Like, I'll ask him, like, was this workout too short or was this workout too long? And he'll give me that feedback so we can make adjustments based off that. Yeah. I mean, if you don't have at least an hour a day, there's things that maybe you need to figure out in your personal life to free up some time. And we help with that. You know, we do the first habit is our pre-workout routine. We have things in the program to help build routine so that you can free up some time,

so you can have some time to train. Because that was a big issue, like, people had. Like, look, I want to get strong and I want to do all these things, but just don't have time to be sitting here doing some some two hour three hour you know training training program or you know what they don't have the capacity or even the knowledge yet to set themselves up for that they have no idea where to start yeah that's true like so we when we design this program we all sat down and we're like what are the important things we need to teach obviously exercise is important like we want these people to train you know we want people to get in there and get physical progress, but we also want them to improve everything that goes on outside of that because you're only in the gym for an hour to two hours

of your day. The rest of it, you're doing fuck whatever. If you don't have control of that stuff, it's going to affect your training. The biggest thing is people can't get to the gym because they don't have control of what goes on outside of that now we're not time management experts but we've coached a lot of people and we've seen what does work we've used habits in the other programs we put these habits in here now to actually help you make real change and habits that stick for long-term progress so that going to the gym is like a priority like it becomes the number one thing on your calendar and you build everything around that it's super possible and we put those things in place, and it helps. I mean, we pretty much take a lot of – there's no excuses, really.

I mean, we take a lot of that stuff out. We're going to help you with all the gaps. We took everything that we learned from doing these other programs and coaching these other programs. We seriously cranked it up to like 11. What works? We only took what works we put it in this program yeah that is a beautiful thing too like we learned from the other ones too

like the other programs are great but this is just something that just keeps building and going we grow you know just like yeah so you signed up you did it you stuck to the program you know you you overcame your biggest fears of actually committing to something. Three, four months later, what's the dream scenario look like? Like, what's it like on the other side? Man, that just makes me feel good thinking about it. Blue skies, birds chirping, 50-pound back squat PR. You win the CrossFit game. No, so, I mean, for real, though, like, what's it look like if you, you know what, you stuck

to it, you listened to all our advice, you asked all the questions, you were super interactive in the group. What's it look like if you, you know what, you stuck to it, you listened to all our advice, you asked all the questions, you were super interactive in the group. What's it look like? You know, I think you're just going to be a new fucking person, man. I'm telling you right now because I know that's true because I've seen it happen to people. I've seen it happen to people in our programs. They do our programs and they become new people. It's like everything changes.

You know, you struggled with things before that you don't struggle with now. You know, we need to link up Kelly Jostens' testimonial when he did one of our other programs, Barbell Shredded. This guy learned so much that he actually got into coaching. You know, so, like, that was an inspiration that fired me up was that we coached him, and then now he wants to go and help coach other people. And what a ripple effect, right? It just spread out.

I think at the end of this, one of the biggest things you can see too as a change is if you're someone who you would consider yourself flaky, maybe you have a hard time actually sticking to your word. I've seen it numerous times in programs and with clients. The biggest fear that they have is letting the other people around them down that they knew they were doing this program. They told everyone that, Hey, I'm really fired up. I signed up for this program. And their biggest fear is that they can't commit and continue it. Yeah. Right. I think that it's empowering to know that like you actually stuck to it and, and delivered on what you promised

yourself and the people around you. That's really powerful. That can be life-changing. Yeah, yeah. No, that's huge, man. I love that. Empower it. You will feel empowered to just know that you have the confidence to know that you can just tackle anything. You know, we're not going to lie. This is called the Shrugged Strength Challenge.

It's a challenge. Nothing that isn't challenging came easy. So when you get through this, you're going to know that you made it and you actually stuck to it and you did it. You have a sense of pride that you just got these these results and you're gonna have these results what about the other side the dark side if they don't do it yeah i don't know i think that the biggest thing is you look back in a year and you're still still not making progress yeah are you still hurt you're still or you're still hurt or you've quit altogether like you say you're on the verge of quitting now so a year later you've quit

then what yeah no man i'm telling you from a personal standpoint like that was straight up like if now looking back if i had not decided to change and do differently like i probably would not have been fucking doing i probably wouldn't be fucking training right now which which is a crazy thing to think about because, you know, you picture this life where, yeah, you always have this aspect in it, but it came real close to being that. And, you know, if this is something that if you're in that boat, then, you know, that's a very real thing that could happen.

So don't say, man, I don't even want to go anyone think about it depresses me but think about it i've been there i've been there i've hit a point where i didn't know what to do with my training anymore and uh i tried to figure it out right like so i was like all right i'll ride a few weeks and then like trying to ride for yourself is hard you don't know how much you're doing you don't know how much is too little how much is too less i don't know what is important to me in terms of strengths and weaknesses it gets really hard but the but the the fun part is when you finally accept that you know what i'm just gonna put it in someone else's hands and just let them kind of lead the path you know it's so much easier to follow feels good and you know what you're just more consistent like

it's just easier to stay on track you know you don't feel like you don't feel like you wasted you're wasting your time you know that's the biggest thing i think that's a big thing like you know you could be sitting here a year later not doing this and then you're still at the same point you're like man i wasted so much time and you see the people maybe we come out with this video or we come out with this program again and you see all these people that are getting results like i just like these people are getting 15 30 25 pound They're moving better. They're feeling better. I'm like, man, that could have been me.

But this isn't going to happen because we don't like to talk about the negative stuff. The positive things that are going to happen are that you're going to sign up. You're going to be very happy that you stuck to something. You're going to make a lot of friends. You're going to learn a lot about training. Your body is going to feel better. The list goes on. Yeah.

Man, this whole just, man, this whole, this whole program, man, is just, it blows me away. People are, people are getting some awesome results, man. It's, it's, it's incredible. We've got a guy coming in, Steven Caserta. He's made amazing progress in this program. He, he PR'd his back, his front squat by like 30 pounds already after month two. His Helen time went down a couple of minutes, but the biggest thing, like, like everyone's made, most people have made progress in the program, right? So squat was like 30 pounds already after month two. His Helen time went down a couple of minutes. But the biggest thing, like everyone's made – most people have made progress in the program, right? So it was like hard to pick like who had the best numbers. But we chose to kind of pick on him right now for a second

because he's so interactive in the group and he's learning so much. He's getting so much out of it. This guy is like super busy. He works a ton. And then seeing him actually in there every day still posting and asking questions and taking full advantage of this, like, that's what stood out to me. Of course, his progress is an amazing thing, like seeing those numbers.

But to me, what I like seeing from him is that he's in there asking those questions. He's learning. He's taking full advantage of what he signed up and actually is paying for. That's a pretty awesome. 40-pound front squat PR. 40 pounds. Sorry about that. Sorry, Steven.

Kerr, what do you have to say to people that are on the fence about doing this? What do you say? Yeah, you could make the safe choice and just not do it and risk failure. You don't have to risk failure. You can stay the same. What are you most excited about? Like what gets you fired up about this program, man? Man, the community is the balls.

Can I say that? Can you say that? I don't know, man. The community is so badass. Is balls a bad word? Just getting everybody together. It's constant high-fiving in there because everybody's making so much growth and progress. It's super fun. Personally, i love giving people feedback on the videos

and stuff but but just like fucking just the team in there so so awesome yeah that's what hurts a people person what's going through my head when we're talking about the dream scenario whatever we mentioned back squat increasing and feeling better and all that stuff but the thing that's going through my head which is kind of why it's hard to put in words is the intangible and you kind of said it at first that you'll be a whole new person but that really is the kind of dream scenario is the intangible of like everything will be different you won't be able to go back to a different training program or the old style of training program you won't be able to look at your lifestyle the same way because you've learned these new habits you won't be able to do anything

the same because this thing is kind of revolutionized your whole outlook on training and what you're what you're even doing this program is is the carpet and we're aladdin and you're jasmine that is a whole new world that's perfect oh man that's so funny all right so i i if nobody does anybody else have anything to say? No, man, I just want people to know, I mean, obviously we shared how fired up we are about it. I want you to come join us. I want you to come learn with us, come change, come grow, come meet new people, experience new things, challenge yourself, stick to a program,

and, like, actually follow through with a commitment. Like, you'll be blown away about how powerful it is and how good it makes you feel. Together we will defeat Jafar. Yeah, so all the information about how to sign up, when to sign up, what you're going to get. Yeah, if you missed all the details and stuff, and we covered it in this video,

all those details are below this video. So check those out. Yeah, man, we just want you guys, we want you to join us. Come join us in this. Come hang come hang out come hang out come get strong