Barbell Shrugged - Fun Ideas You Can Steal From Us To Improve Your Strength Training

Episode Date: May 13, 2015

How do I intro this again? What do I start with? Oh yeah, do I say this week on Barbell Shrug? Yeah, I'm trying to remember. This week on Barbell Shrug, we talk about how Doug Larson, Chris Moore, Mike Bledsoe, and CTP all trained to get stronger.

Hey, this is Rich Froning, you're listening to Barbell Shrug. For the video version, go to barbellshrug.com. Is it going? Can you confirm? I told you. We have waves. I see the squiggly wave line, so that means it's a good sign.

I think pumping iron is going to be distracting for me. Look at the man. Jeez. All right, here we go. Three, two, one. Shocker, brother. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe, standing here with Doug Larson, Chris Moore.

Got CTP behind the camera. And behind the other camera, we have Charlotte. Boom. Boom. Avengers assemble. Yeah. Kicking in Chris's new garage. the other camera we have charlotte boom boom avengers assemble yeah uh kicking in chris's new garage chris's new garage slash this man cave i don't think i've ever stood inside a man cave as epic as this this is incredible well i had a dream mike now before you were seeing a a physical

representation of the inner workings of my mind and my history. It's basically what the space is, which I love. And to note, it is Monday, and you arrived in your Penske truck on Thursday night. I drove across the country with my father-in-law. God bless you, Dave. Jesus, really. He drove the truck the entire way. But we left Memphis Tuesday at 1 p.m., and we got to Encinitas Thursday at 5 or 6 p.m. And then two days later, this was done.

It was amazing. All right, guys. Before we go any further, make sure to go barbellshrug.com, sign up for the newsletter, and you can find out how you, too, can build a cave like this. I might do a cave guide in the future. I have a feeling he's going to put together an e-book about how to make a proper man cave. Go sign up for the newsletter, and maybe you'll get that one day. Today we're going to be talking about what we do for training.

What we do now, we're all strength athletes. We've all been pursuing strength for, I've personally been pursuing strength and allowed to go to the weight room for 18 years now. How about you, Doug? I started training when I was for this type of stuff like squats heavy deads cleans and whatnot when i was 14 i'm 31 now so 15 16 17 years in this world 17 i got one more than you before that because you're old shut up before that i was actually i did gymnastics when i was super young so so i had i had some training experience before i started doing barbell work

gymnastics helps gymnastics helped a ton yeah, that was like the best thing I ever could have possibly have done when I was a little kid. I never had mobility restrictions. Like, I was stronger than a normal six-year-old and it carried over. Dude, that's six-year-olds.

They can surprise you. Yeah. Being able to do the splits since you were a little kid helps with everything. Absolutely. Especially learning weightlifting. If I ever have kids,

gymnastics for sure. Mm-hmm. How about you, Chris? how long have you been doing this well I'm 34 and dog years like 79 20 years and then I've started

lifting weights in my friend's backyard when I was 10 or 11 so 24 25 years something like that damn so between the three of us

I think we have a pretty good amount of experience we have something to say and it's rooted in actual experience. We also studied this shit, too, and read magazines and books and all kinds of stuff. Lots of magazines, mostly.

Lots of magazines. Well, hey, man, Flex Magazine is better than nothing. We've been training this long, and we're not exactly running a lot of drugs to stay in the game. So I want to put that out there, too. Oh, yeah, we are natural, and it shows when you try to lift in front of you and you go, oh, these guys aren't as strong as I thought. That's a joke.

That's a joke. I don't know why I'm not strong, that's why. Yeah. We have to battle recovery issues and time restrictions because we're busy like normal people. We don't do training full time so we have to manage it like anybody else.

We have the pain and wear and tear from history of athletics and pursuit. So we have to deal with everything that everybody else is dealing with. Yeah, I'm just saying, be careful sometimes. People seem like they deal with everything that everybody else is dealing with. Yeah, I'm just saying, be careful. Sometimes people seem like they're doing everything, and they're recovering really well, and it's hard to explain why.

And then you try to follow what they do, and you don't understand why you can't recover. That might be why. And let's just say, wink, wink, you're not taking the right medicine. There you go. But we're going to talk about how we train after 15-plus years of training. We have a lot of history. And so what we do now might be a little bit different than what you do as a beginner. If, say, you haven't been training longer than five years,

your training might need to look a lot different until you have a large training history. Like mine. Like CTP behind the camera. He's actually mic'd up. He's going to tell his story later on. He's a lot newer to training than the rest of us. So ladies, keep ready. He's actually doing a lot of things that we all think he should be doing

as a more beginner strength athlete. Good job, CTP. Yeah. What are you doing right now for your strength work? I've done a lot of different stuff over the years, kind of as you were just saying. But lately, I feel like I dug myself into a pretty nasty hole back when I was competing in MMA full-time and competing as a weightlifting athlete full-time. And I used to do crazy volume.

And I think that eventually caught up to me, especially as I got older. Now that I'm 31, I can't do that volume anymore and feel good. If you were a full-time athlete, you could probably handle it. But the fact that you have a job makes it a little bit harder to recover. Yeah, I mean, it certainly does, but I feel like I can handle the volume. I can mentally tolerate the volume.

I can get through the workouts. I can feel good, but my joints don't tolerate the volume that well anymore. I wake up achier. I rarely have injuries, but I just wake up way achier than I used to. So, so lately, uh, what's worked really well for me to, to get away from that was I, I started doing more of an upper lower split. I've been doing mostly strength work in the gym lately. And then now that I'm back doing more jujits and, and I, I kind of live out in the

hills, I've been doing trail running and a lot of hill sprints and whatnot. I've been kind of separating my day, uh, or my days rather into more strength focused days and more, um, you know, work capacity style days or skill days where, well, I'll kind of have two weight room days and then an off day where I go do jujitsu or I, or I box or I go trail running or I run hill sprints or, or I just go to the gym and just push the prowler and do mobility work. Like I'll have like two hard days and then kind of an off day where I do something else that is just fun for me. That's physical activity. What was that split, Doug?

What days are you training upper and lower or whatever? How much time between? So right now I don't have like a – I do Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, like a four-day split like that necessarily. I just kind of keep the order. So I'll do like a lower day, an upper day, and then kind of an off cardio, jujitsu, boxing type day. So you have recovery time, right? And then recovery or excuse me, rather rest days, they kind of just creep their way in there. If I have a particularly busy day, it's weird how those rest days just creep into my schedule. We travel a ton. And so a lot of times on

a travel day, I'll just go perfect. That's my rest day. And I know that that's going to be my rest day that day, or some days I'm just, we're just swamped busy and I just don't have time to train that day. And so I'll just, I'll know that that day is going to be my rest day. And so basically I just trained every day that, that I can. And then the rest days, they always just seem to happen. If for whatever reason, you know, I don't have a particularly busy week, uh, and I, and I don't have a day that's going to automatically be the rest day, then, you know, I will just take a day off every once in a while, but I tend to train between three and five days in a row. And then I take a day off and it just seems to always kind of naturally happen like that. But by and large, if I have the opportunity to train, then I do.

So, so lately the, the upper lower splits been really good for me. It's been, it's been really easy on my joints and I felt a lot better. You know, my, my elbows, especially my elbows, my neck, I had some neck problems there for a while from, from boxing and jujits, my elbows, my neck, you know, my low back was a little achy there for a while. And right now I feel, I feel fantastic. And I really think switching onto that upper lower split, which a lot of guys find, especially as they get more and more experienced um you know especially if you talk to kind of the west side powerlifting style world all those guys do an upper lower split because they can they can train hard and heavy and then they can recover enough with that upper lower split to uh to make a lot of gains with muscle mass make a lot of gains with strength without beating their body

up too much it took louis a long time to figure that out. Initially, if you watch the episode we did with Louie and just the conversations we've had with him, they broke a lot of people before they figured out that style. There's a lot more that goes into it than that. Theoretically, you should just find, especially when you're a beginner,

you can squat on a Monday. On Tuesday, you should be able to bench press. The problem when you're a powerlifter and you start getting stronger, even a crossfit, you start squatting like a monday and tuesday you should be able to bench press the problem when you're a powerlifter you start getting stronger even across but you start squatting like 500 pounds or 400 pounds the load on your shoulders gets a little rough you get it's hard to recover from the squatting in time to then blast your shoulders with pressing or something for example so yeah that's an amazing way of just spacing it out yeah the more experience you get it's the easiest way to manage the fatigue yeah i think you know when you're less experienced doing a squat,

it feels like a lower body movement. And, yeah, once you get 500 pounds on the bar on your shoulders, like your whole body is. You ask Jesse Burdick or any powerlifter now, Mark Bell, and these guys, every lift is a total body lift. If you don't think you're using your legs and your abs and your back when you bench press, for example, that's probably why you don't bench as much as you could if you're a powerlifter.

Same thing is true of a press. If you're just standing and pushing with your arms above your head and not utilizing your abs and your ass and everything, even your feet to paw and grip the ground, then you're missing like 30 pounds in a press, potentially. Who knows? Even if it's five pounds, and every time you press, if you could lift five more pounds, the cumulative effect of that's huge,

all because you're not pawing the ground with your feet or something. Yeah. So all that being said, what I didn't say was i found it i figured it out upper lower split is the way to go for everyone in every situation forever that's not what i said at all so for me i tried that lately knowing that there was a high likelihood that as beat up as i felt this would be a good way to make an adjustment and still be able to train regularly make some good progress and be able to you regularly, make some good progress and be able to, you know, decrease the amount of, of achy joints that I had. So I could get back to doing

jujitsu and boxing and some of these other things that I really enjoy. I don't have any, any CrossFit competitions. I, you know, I'm not competing in grid. I'm not doing weightlifting right now. I'm not doing powerlifting. I'm just training to feel good and have a good time. And so that's worked very well for me lately. Takes the pressure off. It does. I find that anytime I'm competing or I'm signing up for a competition, I usually run right up to injury.

Like, it's like I... You're injured all the time. Sometimes right over it. Right, yeah, right. Speed bump along the way. No, but I mean, if you're doing it right, I mean, like a lot of times I get injured right after a competition.

It's like... Technically, that's what you do. That's not doing it right. But like when you're pushing to the edge of performance injury or getting sick or something like that is actually pretty common. Like most people who are at the competition level, like most athletes at the CrossFit games, like the week of the games or the week after the games, they get sick or they, or they're like on the edge of being sick or something like that. Because all that matters is how you perform

and not really worried about the health after it because you're trying to get that money, man. You know? Yeah. You ain't worried about your health.

That's what I mean. It sounds like you're on the health path versus the... I am. Sounds like you're on the health path. Cough, cough.

I was going to say, I think most of us have not been on the health path. Doug's got a kid. He wants to see him grow up. Wham. No, I get it. We've all spent most of our lives chasing performance and we've all known that we're

sacrificing some health along the way. It's like our buddy Lawrence says, weightlifting is very good for you unless you compete in it. It's not so good for you anymore. It's the worst possible thing to do for your health. It's pretty rough on your body. You got to make your run and then stop as soon as your shoulders go numb when you just tie your shoes in the morning. That's what I think.

So actually on that note of being on the health path, I've been doing a lot more tempo work and pause work lately. Intentionally doing, you know, like a pause front squat or intentionally doing deadlifts with a pause two inches off the ground. You know, pick up the weight two inches off the ground, pause for three seconds, maybe go right below the knee, pause again for three seconds and then complete the lift. Yeah. Travis Nash actually wrote an article about that on the daily. So if you want to read about how to do those pause deadlifts and the benefits and all that kind of stuff,

building your pause work or something like that, you can search, there's a little search bar on the website. You can check it out to search for Travis, man. Yeah. Then you go to mash mafia.com, pick up one of these sweet shirts that I'm wearing.

Do what I want, bitch. Do what I want. But yeah, we've had a big influence from Travis for how we program for our own workouts.

I know a lot of stuff that you did for a long time since Travis was your coach there for a while. You did a lot of things that were very much his style during that time since he was writing

your workouts and then that's influenced the way that you write workouts ever since. Absolutely. You have any examples of that? If you don have some for you uh yeah actually uh doing a lot of the downsets you know finding a rep max and then um not that that was like my first exposure to but it's my first time where i lived in it for four or five months you got an actual effect from

it yeah i lived in that like this is what we're doing all the time is like monday tuesday thursday friday saturday we're doing uh you know a rep max followed by some downsets you know go down to 95 do more reps so you might go to five rm on a squat for example go to five rm or an 8rm and then go to 95 do another five or eight or 90 do another one yeah it could be an 8rm 10rm 12 rm with some some downsides like 10 12 for a block and then go down to five and the three like did he do you do a high rep phase and a moderate sure rep phase yeah yeah i mean depends on which part of the site how close i was to a competition what the rep range looked like but definitely the further out from the competition The reps were a lot higher. I saw huge benefits from that style of training

for strength. The problem was is just the recovery necessary to train like that was you have to, I mean, I think that's, I personally think

that's the best way to get strong, you know, and I like to program for people who are trying to get strong. Do the rep max followed by the sets afterwards

and you can use a ton of, and you can do that with ollie lifts as well. Find a three rep max, drop to 90%, do some more. I know we do a lot of that in the Muscle Gang Challenge

and in the flight program. You'll build up to like a five rep max and then you'll go 90% for five by five. And so if you did a five rep max at 200 pounds,

then you would just take off 10%, which is 20 pounds. You go down to 180 pounds and you do five by five at 180 pounds. That's an easy way to get in a lot of volume so you can put on muscle mass and get strong without beating yourself up too bad it's potentiated you do the heavy set then you back off to the light set now all the five by five sets feel really light whereas if

you just worked up to 180 and then five by five half the sets are still warm-up sets and your mind is still not in the zone actually lift heavy so if you go up above going down feels like okay this is easy stuff actuality before you'd be really hard for you until you get to like set three and then you're like no this is heavy you're like okay now i'm gonna hurl so yeah yeah but uh yeah i see a lot of benefit from that style of training um i i'm not sure how long someone can stick with that and it all comes down to like what's your recovery like are are you uh just in between workouts are you recovering well are you you know taking time after competition to kind of take care of yourself are you getting massage therapy is you know there's all these

different recovery methods but if you train like that and you just go i'll eat however i want and i'll get six hours you will fall apart yeah you have to get your eight nine hours of sleep you have to be eating right. The recovery has to be as intense as the training. Yeah. And when I talk about doing Travis' program, I was in the gym for like three hours a day. He does a lot of volume. A lot of the stuff we were doing, I like the rep max and then the down set,

but maybe a lot of times when I program from other people, they're not in the gym for three hours. It's like an hour and a half. So the total volume is lower, but that style is the same. Yeah, travis is very open about not giving a shit if your joints are achy he is he is there to win and that is it this is competition yeah he is 100 competitor he's not he's not concerned about your health compared to competition he's concerned about your health you as a person he loves you yeah he's a very loving person but he is there to make you a fucking winner yeah so you're gonna be there for a long time you're fucking winner. Yeah. So you're going to be there for a long time. You're going to do a lot of volume.

You're going to have to dedicate basically your life to weightlifting or powerlifting. And if you don't like it and you don't like that style of training and you're concerned about your achy wrist or your achy shoulder or your achy back, then you basically can go fuck yourself and go find something else to do. Hey, no offense, but get the fuck out of here. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of achy joints involved in training. I mean, there'll be some of achy joints involved in training. I mean, and he's not a dick about that. He's just very honest. Like, you are here to win.

Yeah, there's no, like, anytime I've been in a competition phase of training for weightlifting, nothing's felt good. I mean, I go to bed at night and I'm just like, my whole body's going. It's like football is like general fitness. Then like competitive college football is like what you're trying to do when you're weightlifting. It's not like fun and casual. Hey, let is like general fitness, then like competitive college football is like what you're trying to do when you're away out there. It's not like fun and casual.

Hey, let's go work out, man. We want to do these. Some snatches, all right. Hey, almost got that PR, Chuck. No, it's like if we don't do this, nothing else matters. This is our body and everything on the line. You're heavily invested in it

and you're going to take the risk to get it done. That's how you see these guys. Like the guys at the training center, they're not like also going home and living in a posh apartment and they have all the best foods all from whole foods of course and they drive a fucking audi at least fresh 2015 no they're fucking almost poor because everything and all they are is weightlifting for this time commit fully yeah another thing i've been doing on my lower body day i've been basically doing a rotation of three different types of day i've been having

again i'm doing this purely for fun i've been having a weightlifting focused day, which is for me kind of a more, obviously I do, you know, snatches, cleans, clean pulls, snatch pulls, things like that. And then the rest of the day is kind of more of a quad dominant vertical torso type day. So I would do, I would do front squats or high bar back squats. Or even in this case, I would do something like a pistol, something that's very quad dominant, very vertical torso type movement where I'm going to have sore thighs rather than sore glutes and hamstrings, ideally the next day. And then the other day I would do something that's more hip dominant where I'm bending over a lot. I'm doing RDLs and good

mornings and deadlifts and one leg RDLs and kettlebell swings. And then the third day is more of a kind of a lighter day. It's more of a volume day. Those other days are heavier days. And then the third day is more of a volume oriented day where I do a lot of single leg work. So I'll do step ups and maybe I do pistols on that day too. And rear for elevated split squats and I'll push the prowler and I'll run hill sprints.

Like it's more of a, more of an athletic day cause I do sprinting and agility drills and whatnot. And then I just do a lot of volume, usually in some type of a split stance or on one leg somewhere or another. So that's been a good way to get me a lot of variety. And then that third day really makes it where my back gets that extra day to recover because the load on my shoulders is very low on the day. So I'm not doing heavy deads, heavy cleans, heavy squats on that third day. We're already at Doug. That's all we've gotten to. And as the beginner in the group, I feel like if I was to be listening to this, which I am, by the way, I would, I would be asking, okay, cool. You got your down sets. You got your pause squats. You

got your this, you got your that. How do I connect it all? And I feel like it's important to point out that it's, you know, you guys have the benefit of, you know, years and years and years of sticking to multiple programs all the way through so that when they're, they now become like a tool in your toolbox where you could say, Oh, I could do this, I could do that. And, but for me, since I haven't done a whole bunch of programs, I'm like, well, fuck, when do I do them? But to you, I guess my question is is it just so like well yeah that's what i do because is that a correct assumption on my part that you like because you've done it for so long and you've experienced it all in different ways you know when to do what or you just kind of i do just know when to do what uh you want more like a like a weekly structure of what i'm doing what are you asking

no like i just how would the beginner work this into their programming yeah like where would it what? You want more of like a weekly structure of what I'm doing? What are you asking? How would the beginner work this into their programming? Where would it fit? So anytime I program any workout for any day, I generally follow a template of speed work, power explosive work, which would be like Olympic stuff would be in that category, strength work, volume or hypertrophy work,

and then conditioning at the end. And that's kind of the general template of every day that I do. So I might run sprints and then do Olympic stuff and then conditioning at the end and that's kind of the general template of of every day that i do so i might run sprints and then do olympic stuff and then do a heavy squat and then uh and then do something that where it's like you know four sets of eight of you know lunges or something like that something that's like not a core movement but you know is a quality movement that you're going to do for a little more volume and then then i would do my metcon at that point after I've done all my strength and volume work. So you could do whatever Metcon you wanted. And then if you want to do like row intervals

or push the prowl or something like that at the end, then that would be like how I tend to think of all workouts. They don't all fall into that category 100%, but that structure is how I generally design workouts for myself and other people. When do I do Fran? During the Metcon portion. Oh, okay. You know, if you're testing, you just warm up and do it. When do I do Fran? During the Metcon portion. Oh, okay.

Duh. You know, if you're testing, you just warm up and do it. But if you're just throwing it into the workout, then that's probably the best place to do it. You would show up. I tend to run hill sprints almost every day that I train. I warm up, and then hill sprints, you know, really make me feel like I'm 100% warm at the end of it.

That explains why he's so much better at running than me. So, hill sprints. Don't go smoking your ass on trail runs, by the way. Do your Olympic stuff. Do some heavy squats. If you want to perform well on Fran, then you probably wouldn't do a whole lot of volume on, this is a low body day example for me at the moment,

but you probably wouldn't do four sets of eight lunges, heavy per leg, and then go do Fran. You wouldn't perform very well on Fran. But if you don't give a shit what you get on Fran, you're just trying to get the volume from that workout, then doing that would be just fine. And then if you had it in you, you could go do some row intervals and go home. So you don't have to do it like that every time, but that's generally how I structure

my day. Did that cover your question there, CTP? I don't know. Now I feel like I just confused you. I don't think I necessarily had a question. I was just pointing out that it seems to me like that would only come from. I was just trying to fuck with Doug, to be honest with you. That's what he's saying.

I think all three of us, the problem with having this conversation and relating it back to someone who's a beginner is, yeah, we did do all these different programs over the years, and we are kind of tuned in. I know for me personally. I guess that's what I'm saying. Like as the beginner listening, should I be like, why don't I not know

when to do that? But you know, because you've done it for years. It's one of those things is you'll know when you know. Right. Like, like you'll know when you're like,

people are like, oh, am I there yet? It's like, if you're asking the question, the answer is no. Where there is doubt, there is no doubt.

There's your answer. Yeah. So like, uh, for me too, like I know what to do. Like I can wake up that morning and go,

oh, I know what I need to do today. Like I can be tuned into that. There's guys that they, they measure HRV and all this stuff. They go, oh, today's a good day to lift or a good day for aerobic work or something like

that. But they, the, the experienced athlete and the good athletes going to wake up in the morning and know that data just because of how they feel, how they perform in the past. It's a subconscious thing. You wake up and go,

oh, today is a cardio day. Today is the day when I pull back from weightlifting and I go for a jog instead or hop on the rower. This is being highly observant of how they feel and how they did that day. And then over the course of a year, two years, three years, and certainly over the course of a decade as you get more and more into it, you have more and more experience where you go,

I felt like shit last time I had a bad workout. Maybe this time I'll adjust because I feel kind of the same way. I mean, you repeat that a thousand times and it starts sticking. But before you get to that, you have to do a lot of workouts and do it no matter how you feel. You've got to like, because your body will lie to you. It'll tell you you feel bad when you're going to perform well. So, like, you've got to learn even when that's happening.

And so you've got to learn even when that's happening. And so you've got to do a lot of, I think 10 years plus for a lot of people, and different people are going to tune in faster than others. I think that's one reason Rich Froning is as successful as he is because I think he's just naturally more tapped into what his body's doing. When he wakes up in the morning, he's like, oh, I feel like doing this. Oh, he's so tapped into his body. He's so tapped into his body he's so yeah uh but it takes i think it takes you know a decade or longer of following someone else's plan no matter what just

doing it every day kind of taking oh okay these were the kind of results this is what i did this past weekend plus you know i know if i stay up late last night at a concert today is not the day that you know max out on deadlift you know i want to make sure that you know i had a good you know a lot of rest before something like that um that said every once in a while you're gonna do that shit anyway because that's how you get hurt once a year you go you know what i know i shouldn't do this shit you know what i'm rolling the dice it's new year and then bang hurt do as i say well i might add that 99 of the time i'm right on point. It's that 1% that I still get screwed up.

It's that 1% of the time once a year where I get hurt every May. Right, that's when I try to get strong. Hey, it's May right now, and I am injury-free, actually, my friend. So far. I know, we're only a third of the way through the month. What have you been doing for training? I have been doing I have actually since

I moved to Southern California Six months ago? Yeah, six months ago. I bumped my physical activity considerably. Just my physical activity on the daily. Outdoor play? It's just so easy to be outside here. It is. Not a lot.

Before, all my physical activity happened in the gym and it just wasn't as convenient so um but what i've found since moving here is the time the gym has actually gone down a bit and the physical activity has gone up i'm probably being physically active two to three hours a day um yeah on average but that's uh surfing running um doing a little bit of yoga uh doing a lot of gymnastics stuff doing a lot of calisthenics and then uh i still be i'm still getting in the gym and when i get in the gym i make it really i get as much bang for my buck as possible so like um i i weight lifted for eight years uh so i i did snatch and clean and jerk almost every day for eight, nine years. So it's like, okay.

And I'm not competing in that anymore. So now it's like, okay, I'm going to see how much bang for my buck I can get in an hour. Do I really need to work on snatch? The answer is no. So I've been doing a lot more power lifting. I've been doing a lot of bench pressing, dead lifting. I'll tell you, I'm a huge fan of sumo deadlifts. I've always thought they were great for other people,

but being a weightlifter, I never did very many sumo deadlifts because there's only so many things you want to get good at, and that's a hard thing to put some time in. I've been doing sumo deadlifts back in my program. Oh, wow. I don't know why more people don't. That and Barbell Rose. Why are people not doing this shit?

I don't know. Oh, yeah. So I've been doing a lot of, you know, I alternate. I do full-body workouts now. So every time I go in, it's full-body. I do a squat and a press or a deadlift and a press or, you know, I'll do a lower-body lift followed by some gymnastics. I do a lot of gymnastics progressions.

And then I like to do things like Corey Gregory. We interviewed him. He kind of inspired me to like, you know, instead of standing in the gym and going, oh, what kind of assistance work can I do for my lower body? It's like, just go to the beach and do, you know, a thousand lunges. Just go walking lunge until you're like shaking. And it's like, okay, that's cool.

No thinking required. I've simplified a lot. just go walking lunch until you're like shaking and it's like okay that's cool and so like no thinking required there's been i i've i've simplified a lot so when i get in the gym like my goal is to be in and out in an hour because guess what i want to go out and do something outside so i don't spend as much time in the gym and that means and for me like a lot of times i'm in the gym for like hour hour and a half and to me that's really short like it's an hour and a half later i'm like man i got, I got out of there really fast. Most people are like, what the hell? I felt like I was in there forever. And I think most new people, especially people who are like used to the CrossFit class, it's like in and out in an hour.

That just seems really crazy to me, really. What kind of effect has getting out helped or had? I've had more energy. I think just being outside and being more physically active. Joints feel great. More energy because I'm not just, I'm not working on getting good at like one or two things only. How's your mobility and stuff? Is all this motion helping you be more aligned more often?

Yeah, I think mobility is better. What I do when I get in the lift, I do EMOMs, ascending weight EMOMs. So I start about 60% of my one rep max. And if it's a lower body movement, I had 20 pounds per minute until I kind of, I do triples until triples get a little shaky. And then I, I, uh, go down to singles and I, I rarely hit failure. You know, I just go right up until I'm like, okay, another 20 pounds and my form is going to break down. So I cut it off there. So I do that for lower body. I do that for an upper body press or pool. And then I move on gymnastics for some,

uh, assistance work. And then I do some lunges and maybe I'll do some, uh, GHRs for some assistance work for lower body. And then, uh, yeah, I get a lot of time surfing. So I'm in the water like three to five days a week doing a lot of paddling. Um, and then, uh, yeah, I like to jog on the beach and whatnot. Mostly, uh, I wear as little clothing as possible. Do they keep your man bag secure? Maximize the vitamin D. Right up next to the chode, you know? Yeah, I got an interesting story about my shorts and running down the road.

You might want to save that one for later. He had a boner. He had a boner running down the street. We're trying to fucking teach people here, dude. Not gross them out. Sometimes it just happens. I don't know. I feel like I'm 13 years old.

I do like the ascending weight model that you just talked about a second ago. You gave me the idea, Doug. I know. I'm going to have to give you the credit. No wonder I liked it. Ascending weight? I wasn't going to say anything. I was just going to say I liked it and give an example.

Ascending weight? Are we back to his boner already? Ascending boner model. I like the model of doing one single barbell where it just gets heavier and heavier and heavier and heavier.

So I'll go and I'll do snatch pulls until I can't do any snatch pull with good technique. Again, you could do every minute on the minute or sometimes every two minutes on the minute

depending on how heavy you're going at the time. Yeah, if you want to compete, if you're trying to get stronger yeah just add more time in between the reason the reason i do every minute on the minute is so that my muscles will fatigue before i hurt my joints that's really the reason there you go so if i was going for maximal strength it'd be like every two or three minutes right so i'll take a barbell and i'll do i'll do snatch work first so i'll do snatch pulls followed by snatch deads and just putting 10 more kilos on the bar every single set until I can't do any more snatch pulls correctly.

Then I'll switch to snatch deadlifts. Once I can't do snatch deadlifts any more correctly, I'll do clean pulls and then move on to clean deadlifts and then move on to sumo deadlifts and then on to regular deadlifts. It just gets 10 kilos heavier every single minute and then I just switch movements all the way until, until it's done. So what I'm doing, but better. So that's been something that I've, that I've done lately. I treat it almost like it's a, like, like it's one single workout. Like it's just,

it's like, it's a ladder that you change movements on and it's been really fun. I've probably done it maybe like three or four times and, and I do it if i'm in a rush like okay i have i have 40 minutes to train yeah and i'll just do every minute on the minute and then once i'm done i'm out of there again doug's rush workout is 40 minutes long just so you know sweet pump man sweet pump sweet should we take a break and then chris moore's the focus when we come back. I can't wait to share with you what I've been doing lately. I can't either. This is Tim Ferriss, and you are listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com.

Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter. Three, two, one. I wish I could be sign up for the newsletter. Three, two, one. I wish I could be as strong as Arnold. One rep, two, oh. Look at this guy in his ponzi squat form. His glutes are not even firing correctly.

His mustache just looks like a porn mustache here. Look at this. I got to warm up to that okay accent. That's my best bet on the spot. And we're back. We are going to cover Chris Moore's training here, what he's been up to lately. And we're going to get CTPs. No way.

Because CTP, you know, he's the newest of all of us to getting as jacked as possible. I went from raviolis to kind of training. You just want to go ahead and do yours? You tantalized him with a ravioli story already. What? You said raviolis. Raviolis are strong.

So how'd you do that? I mean, do you want to go ahead and do yours or do you want me to go? Let's go Chris. Okay, go me. We'll go you and then we'll get back to CTP. What? What do you want to know, Michael?

I think CTPs is actually the most relevant. Okay, yeah. But you're going to have to wait. Grand finale. You have to wait until we get to the back. Grand finale. So what have you been doing lately? Well, yeah.

I mean, oddly enough, I actually am gearing up to compete again. Hold on. I know what you're thinking. Chris, don't hurt him. Don't go out there and impress him too much. That's a joke. I haven't competed.

It's been since like seriously since maybe like 2009. So I've been on the shelf for a while in that time working, had a baby and whatnot. Got a little. You had a baby. Two babies. I look great, don't I? For two babies. My wife had the babies.

I'm mostly just kind of clumsily trying to make sure they don't die on my watch. You know what I'm saying? So far so good. Yeah, so I'm actually at a point now where things are settling down. We're still busy as hell, but I can actually devote time now to training. This is what I love the most. I haven't done it in so long. I'm like, fuck it, man.

I love this shit. There's no reason why I'm not going to get back on the saddle, so to speak, and do it. I might not ever hit a PR again, but that's not what's important. The important thing is just doing it. So to do that, again, I'm competing June 27th. Jesse Burdick's got to meet up in CSA Gym in, what city is that? Pleasanton, California, I think. I'm going to do that meet. Something near Oakland. Yeah, I'm going to do that competition. Now, I can zoom out and say what I've been doing

to kind of get myself here for like a year and a half. And you guys have seen me struggle with this. I've been trying to fix my posture for a long time. So you struggle with a lot of things. Like one of the things I did in the past to get my squat okay was that I just did a lot of good mornings and stuff. And really was big and strong, trying to make myself stay upright, but having poor spinal mechanics. Some of it's natural some of it is just poor posture and it was never important so i never really worked it so i spent like two

years not trying to be a whale but doing whales and movements where i was trying to get comfortable finally with the front squat right now i can front squat pretty casual like 450 or something when i was squatting in powerlifting i could squat 975 wide stance with uh gear and everything to me but i could squat fucking 400 wide stance with gear and everything in me, but I could squat fucking 400 pounds in the front squat. I would just fold over immediately. Just wide stance, low bar,

hinging at the hips type of squat and all that. So I went back and for two years did a lot of upright stuff. Lots of pause work, Doug, like in the front squat where I would just walk the bar out and breathe for a while,

holding it and fighting for position each time and then doing light sets in the front squat. Pausing a lot, using change in the front squat a lot. I like using change. So, after about two years, I got my posture sort of reestablished. And for the past couple months, I've been pushing and lifting a little bit. The big change is that I don't really train as heavy as I used to because I really can't, and that sucks and all.

But the writings on the wall, time is ticking away and I can't really recover from it. We're all recognizing that. So when it comes to heavy barbell stuff, I still pretty much do west side stuff. I alternate upper and lower body. So it'd be like a bench workout and then a really squat focused workout and then upper body work

and then like a deadlift focused workout, bouncing between. Typical of what you'd see west side guys doing. The difference is, I don't go heavy. I don't push for a number every week. I think about one number on each main lift once a month. So if I'm starting, if today's Monday and this is my first week of training, I only think about the next four weeks and what will be good for me in three weeks time. Because I do an easy week, a moderate week, a heavy week where I'm going for something and then I unload where the fourth week is easy. I just repeat that. So the first two weeks are all about preparing myself to have a shot at getting the modest progress lift on that

third week. So if I'm doing squats, I think about, I want to squat 400 pounds for eight sets of two on week three, that will be good. So I work backwards from there i say well i start with uh 335 eight sets of two i know i can do that it's easy i'll be primed i can move well check my form and over two weeks i know i'll have a good shot of hitting the 400 so i keep my volume lower i try to get a higher quality of work in that time but i can't squat heavy like i used to i can't squat every other day heavy just my shoulders won't handle it so I have to think of a way to get that work in right I can't like just squat heavy once a month and try to do a power with a mate so what I've leaned on heavily I got this idea from Glenn Penley years ago we talked about how it's important especially as you get older in lifting to do more assistance work to get the work in when you otherwise couldn't like if you can't recover

from frequent squatting you don't sit on your ass and not do anything you find a way yeah to squat in some form that's easier to recover that's actually one reason i got this big awesome thing here this fucking pitch shark thing belt squat machine folks at home but this machine is not quite as hard on my shoulders or my spine as a back squat right when the weight is just sitting on top of me but i can do heavy squats, even with heavy bands on this thing, very frequently, like every day, and have no problem recovering on it.

You can do the same thing with leg presses, for example. Lunges, Doug, like I said. I can sneak the work in without creating a huge recovery demand. So I can do that where else I would otherwise be trying to push the squat or something. So I can stay injury-free. The other thing is a shitload of kettlebell, man.

You know, for years I was kind of like not on the kettlebell bandwagon. I'm like, why don't you just fucking do the barbell because it's heavier and gets stronger. Like, I know it's great. You can swing your bells for an hour. That's great, man. But like, why don't you fucking, you know, just do a snatch.

I used to be kind of arrogant that way. It was like powerlifting or weightlifting or, you know, why are you wasting your time? Now I realize that's kind of like stupid stupid silly bullshit because kettlebells are great in between you can do speed work and jumps and sprints like doug was saying to train for speed because you need speed to lift huge weights you got to be able to get the fucking weight moving you got to do heavy work because that's there's no replacement for a heavy squat but i feel the in-between space all the reps now, with a lot of kettlebell

swings for lots of reps. And I don't make it too hard. I just do a lot of clean and swings, kettlebell snatch, and heavy one-arm snatches. And what I've found is that my hand strength has come up, my durability in my arms, so now I can train the deadlift better again. Like, my hands feel good. The other huge thing I've noticed is that every time I swing the kettlebell and I work on sort of initiating with my hips first or my hips and abs, I kind of thrust out with my abs to initiate the weight. And when I started getting good at that, when the kettlebell swings got effortless, on speed days, when I do my west side style box squats, I could all of a sudden, instead of having the weight sitting on top of me, I was leveraging it down through my abs and my hips. So I was kind of just popping the weight up instead of squatting down and pushing with my weight on my feet and raising the load i was thinking more of sitting back coiling like a spring and then popping my abs as the

bar was starting to explode so you got your whole system just kind of integrated versus yeah my posture is better i'm using my abs and core better and now all of a sudden even though i don't quite have like the ability to recover and like the talent i used to for strength uh you know i think i could maybe do i can't predict it but i can get within 90 of my best former raw squat i think in time like i maybe can do 600 650 or something while i just meet maybe i hope to do that for me it's pretty good i haven't been training i got two kids i don't really sleep that much 34 drug free not eating all the time as i should but that's pretty fucking good for where I'm at now.

You have been sleeping more lately though. I have, but not with this move. When did you decide you were going to compete? Up until last week he was doing pretty good.

Right before the move I was like, you know what, it's time to step back on the platform because I was really disappointed that I wasn't, you know,

no longer do I think of competing as I want to win this thing. I think of it as I need to have a marker or a metric, something in my life to hold me accountable, something I see in 12 weeks or six months' time that I can work back from

and create an incentive to do the preparation. It's like if you're a CrossFitter, you want to get stronger, you could pick a palatometer or something as a way of laying out a 14-week timeline and work back, say this would be a good number. I work back. And it's a strong incentive to pull you from a weaker state into a stronger state because you're better because you're going to step up and you have this thing to do. It formally makes it an incentivized thing. I'll quickly say one more thing.

The reason why I did my office this way, yes, it's convenient. I can just blow out all the dust. I don't have to clean the office and clean my gym. But really why I did this is I can sit blow out all the dust. I don't think like clean office and clean my gym is an advantage. But really why I did this is I can sit over here and work. Like I don't, my final point, I don't like doing a training session anymore. What I like to do is to spread my workout as much as possible. All that matters when you're getting strong is like the work you are accumulating over time. Let's say if it's a month. In that month time, there's a certain amount of squats that you should do or you could do. There's a certain amount of work you could

be done. You could do it all in these hour or two-hour blocks, four days a week, or you could spread it all out. So what I do is I'll work a little bit, and I'll plan on doing 20 minutes of hard kettlebell work. I'll do that, and I'll go back to work. It's a kind of flip-flop between the two. There's no hard line between work session and training session. I try to move as much as possible throughout the day.

It keeps my recovery time down. It makes my mobility better. It makes me feel better. I work better because now I sort of excite my mind with the kettlebell work or the sunshine or the deadlifts. If I want to do strength work later in the day, after my day is done, I'll come over here and do some crisp, clean speed deadlifts

or something where the only thing I'm thinking about, I'm not thinking about the second exercise after deadlifts. I'm not thinking about the WOD that comes after that only thing I'm thinking about, I'm not thinking about the second exercise after deadlifts. I'm not thinking about the WOD that comes after that. All I'm thinking about, how can I pull as efficiently and make the most of this next 10, 15 minutes as possible? And for me, that's helped me get a really high quality result from my training. Nice. Boom.

Love it. Can I put that in the heat book? All right, CTT, what about you? You want me to hold the camera? No. That thing's expensive, man. Don to put that in the heat book. All right, CTT, what about you? You want me to hold the camera? No. That thing's expensive, man. Don't break that shit. No, I've been doing super basic stuff.

I think after listening to what you guys were saying, it's like coming back and hearing everything y'all are saying, I would have a whole bunch of questions, like I was saying earlier. When do I do this? When do I do that? What I've learned recently is that my problem wasn't what program should I do, when should I do this, when can I implement that? My problem was that I just wasn't fucking consistent.

And I think there's probably a lot of people who are in that same boat. And it's easy to realize you're not consistent, but then it's another thing to try to figure out how to like, how do I now go get consistent all of a sudden? So I really tried to like hone in on just doing what you always say which is just get to the gym and the rest will take care of itself and uh you got you've had a nice morning ritual of training yeah I started doing well since we podcasted with Corey he had the piece about waking up early and you know getting it done and with

you know with the amount of work that we do for the podcast and otherwise, I found that if I didn't train in the morning, then shit would be added to my plate, and then I would quickly be like, come up with excuses on why I wasn't going to train. And it would happen way more than I would. If I wrote it out on paper how many times it happened, it's probably way more than I would have thought if I didn't.

So getting the training done in the am like just waking up uh i can tell you what i was doing earlier but i pretty much wake up and then an hour later uh train and it was early enough in the morning i was training at six and i trained for an hour and a half two hours and then that was still early enough for none of you guys plus everyone else on our team was going to call me and ask me to do shit oh that's true so it was like it was like where otherwise if i we're all still going like where's the fucking coffee god my eyes are blurry what did you make me take last night mike fuck but if i waited to train at three or something then you know this is the nature of what we do it's like hey chris i need you to do this hey can can you do this for me and like, I already had enough to do that day. And then you stress me out by giving me some more shit. And I say this because I sure my job compared to what most of our, our listeners are

doing is probably way less stressful. You know, I love what I do. So there's probably people who don't do that and they probably get, you know, stuff added to their plate. So I see that this is probably like a big problem. And if I'm loving what I'm doing and having that problem, then it's probably even worse for some others. But getting it done in the morning, I don't even care what the science behind, if there is anything, any benefits of all that. For me, I just found that it really helped me to, I'm relating it back to the consistency piece.

Helped me be more consistent because I then wasn't allowing myself the opportunity to then push it off. It's like, you know, people I've gotten in conversations are like, oh, what's the most important part of training? And, you know, what's the key principle? And people are like, intensity. I'm like, or just frequency. Like, if you don't show up, it doesn't matter how intense you are. I was going to say, too, I'd rather see like a lower intensity, higher frequency training program, you know, someone's actually going to show up to. You mentioned, like, I don't know if there's a scientific reason.

People might get too focused on the scientific reasons because, like, you might get caught up in, should I train in the morning or evening? I don't know, like, what physiologically is best? When the nutrient timing is off? Well, it depends. Do I have the energy in the morning? Do you want to burn fat all day or not?

You want to get huge, bro. You want to get so huge, you're going to go deep ab bridges. No, but there's that, right? And that's a consideration. There's also a consideration of what sets your day up to be like the most productive, awesome thing possible, you know, and what will overall let you get more of a consistent strength training experience of getting a jump on things and getting the work done before your crazy ass, you know, law or medical or student lifestyle, soccer mom lifestyle, whatever kicks into gear, getting the most important thing and the investment in yourself first done in a day, that sets

up a huge positive wave of events in your day. It doesn't matter what the scientific physiological thing is. If it works better for you, go for it. Psychology trumps science all the time, right? I mean, I see it in gyms all over the world all the time. People doing okay training programs, but they're doing it in a group, so they're pushing harder and showing up more often. You cannot discount that.

I agree with what you said. I think Alan Cosgrove is a guy that really popularized that saying of psychology trumps physiology every single time, and I really think that's true. One of the things that you've mentioned to me in the last couple weeks is that ever since we podcasted with Corey Gregory and John Brose and the squat every day stuff has kind of been really in the forefront of all our minds lately. CTP's tried that lately and had really good results with it.

In part, and I'm speaking for you, and you can comment on this in a second. In part, what you told me was that since you're squatting every day and you view squatting as something that is very important, you're way more motivated to show up that day. Oh, for sure. Comment on that. Yeah. Yeah. Because, oh, two things. Um, squat. Yeah. I view it as more important and it's like, it, it's the one thing that, and this might just sound cheese, but it's the one thing that feels like I'm actually doing something like, you know, you never get done with a set of squats and you're like, oh, I didn't do anything. Like

you feel like, oh, I fucking spotted. It was really hard to do what i just did and i did it yeah i mean so you feel good about your workout every single day yeah whereas sometimes you know if you're doing a program or something you're gonna have those days where it's not the it's not the squat it's just you know the the easy day or something like that and i'm not saying that there's not a place for that but what it did is it made it where i carried every day and because squatting is fun to me it is anyway maybe some people it's not and this this't apply, but squatting to me was fun. So the idea of waking up every day and getting to do that was like, hell yeah, sign me up. Because I'm not going to go in there and be like, oh, here's the stuff that I know I need to do.

So it helped in that regard. And previous to this, this is the most consistent I've ever been, but previous to this, it was when I was doing CrossFit. And CrossFit's the same thing. It's just fun. So I think the kind of underlying thing there is just making it fun again. And in this case, squat was fun. If it's fun and you care, surprise, you have great results.

Did you change the way you were eating and fueling yourself at all? How'd your diet change? Yeah. I'm begging the question because I know how i mean i've stopped i've eaten some meals with you i've been adding to the problem i guess but it's not you have great results well previously it was like i do like a treat meal or a cheap meal occasionally and for the most part try to stay you know not super super super clean paleo but pretty much like as best you can. And what I found out, not drinking dairy and keeping your carbs down and all that stuff,

whatever I want. That doesn't mean eating like shit all the time, but if I want waffles, damn it, I'm going to eat some waffles. If I want, and if I want some pancakes, if I want some rice,

if I want just, you know, like preach, preach, preach, all that kind of stuff. But, but,

but post workout. Yeah. It's but carb but post workout yeah it's like it's like there you go so i'd go do my squats and then i'd be like look if you haven't figured out you should eat the carbs after your workout by now you have not been listening to the show just eat the fucking carbs but hold on here's the thing is i don't know if this is right or wrong but i'd crush a fuck ton of carbs like it'd be like more than i thought like if left to my own devices i would have been like yeah a little cup of rice like no i'd cut crush like 150 grams of carbs just didn't you also say it all depends like if you can do 150 grams of carbs and you're not in your measuring and you're not getting body fat and you're putting on muscle

mass then maybe you're doing a good thing but for some people taking in that much carbs after they may be putting on excess fat, and they're like, okay, maybe I need to dial it back. But it's all about like, no, no two people are the same. People have different training volumes, different stresses in life. You've got to like, that's very individualized. Well, I'll say this, though. It's not about just being able to eat whatever I want, and that's cool and fine.

But what I was doing was mostly eating vegetables. Like, yeah, vegetables are carbs, but you're not going to get any. Crab-a-teeth vegetables, dude. You're not going to get that. You're not going to get shit. Even if you eat a lot of vegetables, that's just like still. You could eat a fuck ton of vegetables, and that's just no carbs. Nothing.

You're not a gorilla. Your body doesn't work the same way. You need to eat fucking meat and stuff. After a workout, you can't just crush a whole bunch of vegetables. It doesn't matter. You could eat a whole smorgasbord of vegetables, and that's not going to be what you needed after a workout. No.

Post-workout, just divide your plate in half, put meat on one side, put rice or carbs, whatever carbs you want, on the other side. And that's a great post-workout meal. Did you say your overall appetite was picking up too? Yeah. Because I think that's a great sign that you're heading in the right direction

if you're getting really hungry, if you're sleeping really good. I always talked about that with Dr.rian shilling he's been on the show fuck me i don't know search it numbers early on and whatever yeah great resource my former uh mentor well still a mentor but he's always talked about how whenever you would get to where you're feeling good in the gym and you had this fucking insatiable hunger man i've been fucking killing food lately and you're feeling good guess what you're sort of now have bumped your body into a very favorable state so if you're getting hungry good if what? You sort of now have bumped your body into a very favorable state.

So if you're getting hungry, good. If you are not looking forward to training and your appetite is kind of shitty and your goal is to gain, I think that's a big warning sign for you. That's actually, I mean, we were kind of discounting this earlier. It's like what time of day should you train? For me, I like to train in the a.m. if I'm trying to gain weight because it bumps right after I train.

For the rest of the day, my appetite skyrockets. So I'm going to gain weight because it bumps right after I train for the rest of the day my appetite skyrockets so I'm going to just put down more calories total if I train earlier in the day versus later in the day. If you're really hungry it's a good sign that you're not just like shoveling food and storing it as fat. Your body is telling you give me some fucking building supplies man. Eat, eat, eat, eat and you got to eat. Donnie Shank would

give you that advice. You want to get strong motherfucker you got to eat some food. The right types of foods too though. You want to make sure you get enough complete protein. Good food. What a farmer would feed you after a hard day's labor,

like some meat and some potatoes and shit and a big glass of fucking whole milk. That's what's going to make you strong. That's true. Put some vegetables on the side

because, you know, vitamins and shit. Pump and eat. Pump and eat, baby. Eat vegetables the rest of the day. Trust me. Just take like a green pill

once a day a green it fucking carries all your concerns in one little tiny serving that's what I do I'm joking yeah

I hope April sensed your sarcasm I've also been doing bodybuilding like when I say bodybuilding but I mean like the bro stuff

like I just never did that cause for people who don't know I didn't start training until I was like like really training like until I just never did that because for people who don't know, I didn't start training until I was like, like really training. Like until I was like 24, 23, 24.

Like most CrossFitters that just now are starting. Like I'm talking like nothing. Like it wasn't like in high school I was playing, I was a guitarist in bands and stuff

so I just didn't care and I was fat, triple chins, like just not, it wasn't good. It wasn't a good scene but I just. You didn't do

incline dumbbell press for five sets of ten for like ten years in a row like the rest of us did nope and I would say it's weird all these really successful

athletes tend to have done the bodybuilding stuff for a while before they got into anything if you're pushing your squat and your snatch like I'm doing everything right why can't I recover

you didn't do just all the years of preparation man so what specifically have you been doing lately so as part of when we came back, talked to Corey, you know, I was like, I'm going to do the squat every day.

And I just squatted every day. But then he eventually, a month later, put out an actual program that they had. And in that program, it's like you do your squat, and then you do bro out gym stuff. And I was like, I was all about it. It was fun. It was different. It was novel to me, at least, because I had never done it.

Sometimes I think about going back to it. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Just some dumbbell benches. Anything you could think of. Go pick up a muscle fitness and just anything that's in there is what I was doing pretty much.

Just lots of that stuff and now I can actually work my chest muscles. I can do the little... You can do the... Yeah, I can't do it like that. He was talking about how... But I couldn't do it like that he was talking about how but I couldn't even activate him

had I not done had the bodybuilding years I would never be able to do he'd be benching and I'd be like the pec pop do you feel that

like where's it working but I don't know kind of like man your chest really should be working when you're doing this as an example

doing the reps teaches you how to use your body isolating the muscles and having them fire is a really good thing like if CTP does five sets of five on a bench

and is frustrated at his progress, he can't use his chest. But since I started with CrossFit, it's pretty much where I started and the bodybuilding

is kind of like not cool in CrossFit so I was like, I always shunned it and then we'd travel enough and hear enough and I know most of you guys have done it

and now it's finally like, okay, now this stuff has merit and it's probably just my own shit. Bodybuilding is just a ton of assistance work. Yeah, yeah. It's just a bunch of assistance work. And I look at you.

Look at this dude. And that's fucking cannonball. And that's what we recommend people do. You know, do your strength work. Do your assistance work. It could be considered bodybuilding. But, yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you wanted to at the end of especially some of your upper body days,

wanted to throw in, you know, three sets of 8 to 12 of inclined dumbbell press or standing dumbbell press or curls or heavy lateral raises or bent rows even fall into that category in a lot of ways. I was going to say, most people probably need to do pulling. Seated rows, anything with cables. Cable work is great. Machines? Yeah, all this stuff isn't necessarily your –

A machine that's not a concept tube roller? Oh, God. I never understood how that was in the mix, but yeah, to do all that stuff at the end of your workout, it's just a little bit of extra volume to just top off all the rest of the stuff you're doing. It's, it's, it's supplementary work. It's really only like, you know, one to 5% of everything that you're doing. It's not all the work. It's, it's just a little bit to, to top off your training. So if you're not doing it though, you're probably left with some imbalances

that you could go correct. You just haven't done it yet. Yeah. That stuff makes you feel good, too. And it also helps on, like, wads and stuff. If you get, like, more fit legs from doing lunges, it's going to translate over into all your wads. Like those imbalances Doug's talking about,

like if muscles aren't firing, you might be leaving, I mean, up to 100 pounds on a squat. All you have to do is do single leg work for a couple months. You don't need fancy programming. You don't need new supplements. All you need to do is just be consistent and just do more work. Do full contact twists with a V handle.

You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Like that handle that goes down to an angled bar and you just swing like this. That's my favorite supplementary work of all time. I don't know if I'd call it bodybuilding work, but that's the kind of stuff that I love to do at the end of my workout. Oh, yeah. I'm going to let I'd call it bodybuilding work, but that's the kind of stuff that I love to do at the end of my workout. Oh, yeah. I'm going to let you finish, but the, what do you call that thing?

Full contact twist. Full contact twist is the greatest assistance of all time. Fail, fail, fail, fail. All right, let's shut this show down and the wheels are coming off.

No, they're not. No, they're not. All right, yeah, make sure to go over to barbellshrug.com, sign up for the newsletter. You got that muscle building guide that you guys made.

Who made it? Well, some guy. CTP and I and Alex and Alex. We all heard it. It's 100% free. And guess what? 100% dopeness. 100% dopeness.

If you click on the sidebar banner on the site, there should be something that says, get the muscle gain guide. It's free on there if you want to check it out. It's called How to Get Strong, so look for something like that. And it's really great. I'm not going to bullshit. Go see for yourself. There you go.

Thanks for joining us. Also, if you're listening to this, I will give you $100. $100. Rob is listening. He wants $100. Please, just take a pause. Head over to iTunes. You're about to be broke.

Give us a five-star review. Submit your reimbursement query, too. That's all He wants to know. Please, just take a pause. Head over to iTunes. You're about to be broke. Give us a five-star review. Submit your reimbursement query, too. That's all I got to say. CTP gives you money at barbellstruck.com. This is going to be episode 177. It's a lot of hours, folks. We do this for free. I will give you $100 if you go.

We are turning into PBS slowly. Go give us a five-star review. With this one five-star comment review, you get this. Barbell Shrug. Complimentary. Sign. M slowly. Go give us a five star review. Just one five star comment review. You get this barbell shrug complimentary sign mug. Look at that. Look at that. And for $200, this jacket, barbell shrug jacket. All right.

I'll see you guys later. See you guys.