Barbell Shrugged - How Coronavirus Has Affected the Fitness Industry, Gym Owners, Athletes, and How you Can Maximize Your Time In Social Isolation w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #451

Episode Date: March 23, 2020

Host the One Ton Challenge at your gym: http://shruggedstrengthgym.com   In today’s episode the crew discuss the mindset of a strength athlete.   How will the Olympics happen and unite the world? The state of gym owners in these hard times Transitioning to online personal training and nutrition clients Why this is the best time to get in the best shape of your life Why you should try new things now What is the long term state of fitness if this continues  And more…   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Travis Mash on Instagram   TRAINING PROGRAMS   One Ton Challenge   One Ton Strong - 8 Weeks to PR your snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench press   20 REP BACK SQUAT PROGRAM - Giant Legs and a Barrel Core   8 Week Snatch Cycle - 8 Weeks to PR you Snatch   Aerobic Monster - 12 week conditioning, long metcons, and pacing strategy   Please Support Our Sponsors   “Save $20 on High Quality Sleep Aid at Momentous livemomentous.com/shrugged us code “SHRUGGED20” at checkout.   US Air Force Special Operations - http://airforce.com/specialops   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   PRx Performance - http://prxperformance.com use code “shrugged” to save 5%   http://kenergize.com/shrugged use Shrugged10 to save 10%   Masszymes http://maszymes.com/shrugged use Shrugged to save 20%

Shrug family, me, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, rapping on the coronavirus. Last Wednesday, I told you that we were hopping in a car, sprinting to Nossville, Tennessee to shoot a ton of shows, and the boys came together and realized that we should not do that. We are cooped up in our house. We did the social isolation. We are not leaving. We're all in our garage gyms training. We're with you. We're doing the same thing everyone should be doing.

And trying to help flatten the curve and calm this thing down as much as possible to minimize the damage and with that we're doing shows online right now and the very first one is just uh it's very telling in that we are affected by this thing just like everybody else doug lives in memphis i'm in raleigh north carolina and travis mash is in winston-salem north car Carolina. And we are taking the show online here for the very near future. We'll be back on the road as soon as really the government allows us to and this whole thing passes. But we're online, and the shows are still fire. We're still recording.

We're still talking strength. We're still laughing a lot. We're still recording. We're still talking strength. We're still laughing a lot. We're still bringing all the love that comes with it. It's just very interesting because we've never recorded shows online before. We've never been faced with a pandemic that's over 10,000 deaths right now. By the time this airs, it's going to be significantly more than that. And reached over a quarter million people worldwide. And because of that immediate issue and the fact that we need to be in our homes right now, we all have families. time I've ever experienced a pandemic and much more importantly the first time I've done anything

of this magnitude while being a father being on the road and recording shows and being around other people just doesn't seem like the right thing to do so I have one child or one baby. Doug has three and Mash has got four. And with that, this is the smartest, best thing we can do, not just for the show, not just for the business, not just for ourselves, but for our families. And I'm really excited about being with my family right now and doing what's best for humanity as a whole uh we're gonna take a quick break thank our sponsors uh at uh halfway point and uh let's get into the show talking about how coronavirus is affecting the fitness

world here we go oh my god welcome to barbell shrugugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash. This is the first time I've ever sat in my house and introduced Barbell Shrugged to the world. We are on lockdown, which means the recording must go on. I can promise you it's already a different thing by introducing the show without staring at you guys in the exact same room. But what we're going to talk about today is how this whole coronavirus thing has really affected the fitness industry. My life has changed. I have a baby, a couple rooms over. I know you guys, we were actually putting the emergency plan together on Monday. It's a Thursday right now. On Monday, we all put the bat signal up, and we were going to go drive to Knoxville, Tennessee, hunker down,

stay away from all the people, record like 15 shows, and then sprint back to our families. And the reason we have Coach Travis Mash here is because he is a better family man than all of us. And he was like, I don't know guys, I'm in, but we should probably think about the, the larger impact of what's going on. Um, so Doug, man, what are you, uh, what's going on with you? You survive it over there. Well, first I need to thank Travis for making the mature decision,

not to travel this week. That way my wife didn't kill me. And I can say, well, Travis, then I don't feel like it's my fault that we didn't get the shows in person. I can blame Travis. But at the same time, I think you're probably saving my marriage by having me stay here so my wife can lose her mind watching my kids. But did I do it? Or did my wife do it that's oh yeah we'll blame her yeah she can take the fall that's yeah man we're doing we're doing these shows

virtual for a while like we can't travel all even one of the ways like the trip that we really wanted to do those really fun got canceled uh which probably makes sense it was probably the first thing they got or that that we were talking about not going to since getting quarantined on a cruise isn't really an option when you have three kids. Could you imagine being on a cruise right now? No. Especially a month from now.

I assume it's going to be worse a month from now since it gets a little worse every day with no real end in sight. By the time Waddle the Wave shows up a month from now, we're definitely not going to be wanting to be on a boat no mash what do you guys have going on i know you've got a gym full of people you've got legit athletes that are in big training blocks world athletes what what's going on louis everyone man like i mean luckily usa waylifting and not only that but the olympic is offering people, like, mental health, like, psychologists, counseling.

Because you've got athletes who are, like, you know, months away from the Olympics, not even knowing is there going to be an Olympics. Yeah. It's brutal right now, man. Like, I'm just doing my best. Okay, here's the positive. Let's talk about the positive. So this zoom thing that we're doing, like all of a sudden I was like, you know what, let's try to turn a negative into a positive. So now like, like on Wednesday, for example,

I was able to train my girls in Denmark, Jordan can travel in California. And like my athletes at home and all at the same time. So that was cool. Cause I don't get to do that. You know, I don't see Jordan that often. I never see my girls from Denmark. So that was cool. And so now I'm getting better and better at that. I'm just trying to make the best of it.

But really the worry is that, is that, you know, the people who are about to do the Olympics, I mean, man, can you imagine training your whole life for something that happens once every four years? I mean. Yeah. I've actually thought about the olympics a couple times and um the financial impact i've learned a lot over the last couple years of how

brutal it can be on a country to go and build all that infrastructure for a week-long event and then it just bankrupts the the country afterwards basically like it's it's not a good thing for your country if you don't already have the pre-existing infrastructure to do the olympics like you just you're in a bad spot you got these giant buildings and no sports to fill them there aren't enough concerts um but then i was thinking about the athletes and you like you said you train your whole life to go and do this event and you become the best in the world or the best in your country at a minimum and then all of a sudden a global outbreak happens like what are you supposed to do but i also kind of buy into the thing i've been

thinking about this a lot of like when you kind of listen to the experts and you start to look down the timeline of where this is like there is some unifying thing like i still get the warm and fuzzies when i watch all of the opening ceremonies i've been known to shed a tear watching all the athletes enter into the arena and support like us comes in we're decked out like all white we look badass yeah that's a super emotional cool thing to see all those athletes that have committed their entire life to being great at this singular sport hey man so maybe it does have like that um that unifying thing to in a way just be the symbol this year of like we're back um the the world will go on we still have all of the all the athletes moving um but what do they do what are they doing at training centers like you can't have a training center. Everybody's at home.

I got my girls from Denmark. They're in their basement training. It's crazy. I'm about to drop some videos next week once I splice it all together. But, yeah, they're in their basement training for the Olympics. You know, luckily, though, with Zoom, you know, they still have the coach. Because normally I do the programming and like um my company does nutrition work and then they have a coach in denmark who does the day-to-day like technique work but thank god to

zoom you know at least they have me to be able to now you know correct their technique keep keep moving forwards is is all you can do i can't imagine i don't know what i would do imagine this because you know i know a lot of olympians from the 80s, when America boycotted, then Russia boycotted, and they're like, I was an Olympian in 1980, but I didn't really get to go. So the people who, they're facing that this year. So the 2020 Olympians are facing having to say, I was an Olympian, but I didn't get to go.

I mean, you guys, I mean. This is also one of those situations too where it's like uh if you were to ask any of those athletes hey there's a chance you're going to get not even a chance if you go you will get it do you still want to go and every single one of them is going they do not care about this freaking flu at all they want to go compete against the best in the world because that's what they've been doing their whole life yeah now how do you take that away do you just do it in front of empty people like empty stadiums i uh i don't know what they'll do man i don't know the olympic committee the ioc is saying right now that they have full intentions of still competing,

but they might move it at a different time. Think about this, man, like Japan. If they don't have it, they're for sure going to take the biggest economic hit of any country in the history because not only do you already have that, you've already bought that. And so you do get some – you do recoup some of your funds during the time. They don't want to even get that. Let's spend all that money on outlaying this huge.

All Asian countries always go big. I guarantee it's like the best Olympics ever if we have it. Imagine you go big. You have the best Olympics that's ever been in the history of the world, and you can't do it oh at least they have already built a large majority of the infrastructure because a lot of the buildings that they're using what they used i want to say it was like 20 or 30 years ago i don't remember the exact year uh when they had the olympics But yeah, so they're not starting from scratch, kind of like Brazil was, but I couldn't imagine.

That's just such a brutal call to make. I made the joke when they canceled the Arnold at Expo West. Yeah. Thinking at that time, I thought, that's probably smart, but man, that sucks. Imagine you're having a that sucks like imagine you're having a bad day but you're not having i had to cancel the arnold bad day you're not canceling expo west there's billions of dollars exchanging hands that weekend people's lives change that

weekend like launches like you're introducing your company at expo west and all of a sudden you've got all your products sitting there everything's shipping you got this beautiful thing set up and oh sorry two days before it's not happening you just bankrupted a brand new company without even thinking about it like that I bet that happened there's no insurance policy for global outbreaks yeah I talked to Corey Gregory and he was talking about you know I mean I'm not gonna say I bet that happened. There's no insurance policy for global outbreaks. Yeah, I talked to Corey Gregory, and he was talking about, I mean, I'm not going to say, but he told me how much money they lost.

So then I started doing the math for the people who had the bigger, even bigger booths. I'm like, you know, a company like Bang, they lost millions. I mean, millions on top of millions. Because they go all out. They always have like – Stage. City block, yeah. Yeah.

So, speaking of bang, so poor bang, shout out to bang. That was a bang plug right in the middle. That was a real endorsement too. Hey, Matt, I'm positive that uh really helped them recover the arnold funds that they lost with that endorsement at least two bucks our whole audience just ran to 7-eleven that's great they should speaking of bang to to take this sorry speaking of bang to take this a slightly different direction talking about nutrition i actually feel like a lot of people that should

be their focus right now if you're stuck at home and you have control over all of your meals and you don't have a gym to train at like nutrition should be your main focus right now like learning how to eat really really well making sure all your meals are like you know prepared in advance and like portioned out where you have total control over the quality and your macros, like all your supplements are there. Like you're going to, I feel like sleep and nutrition are like should be the big focus for almost everyone who doesn't have an actual competition coming up that they still

think they might do. I agree. And if you happen to have some weights, I mean, really, for me, I know a lot of people are in a really bad situation, but for me it's like it's put me in a situation to get into the best shape I've been in in a long time. So, like, I brought some weights, a barbell and a squat rack home, and, like, I've been banging it out. So I'm actually – it's actually going to help me get

in good shape so i make the most of it i feel like everything that has come along with the social distancing thing has actually as far as health is concerned is on the up and up and it should be for everybody if you're doing doing it well uh, you just don't have junky food in your house and you can't go out and eat. If you could eliminate eating out, your level of nutrition gets better so much quicker. And I just finished my last Quest bar, so I'm screwed. I got to eat super healthy now. Even my bad food was pretty good, but i'm just now it's just rice veggies rice

veggies steak here we go um i'm walking more i'm outside more i'm getting way more vitamin d because it's it's been nice this week so i'm walking around barefoot i feel like i'm actually doing everything that i should be doing i wake up a little bit earlier cause I know that I got to get work done before Adelaide wakes up. Well, then things, then things get wild. Um, yeah. If you're taking the steps to do it right, you should be able to live like a relatively, I mean, not even relatively, it should be almost an increase in quality of living just because you got to slow down and the only thing to do is go walk honestly I needed this I'm gonna be

there was these first three months of 2020 have been the hardest of my entire life with this going back to school you know trying to make this move to Lenoir Ryan uh you know, looking to sell our gym, which we did. Thank God. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. Sold it. Yeah. No way.

Yes. And made some money. Very happy. Yeah. Yesterday. Literally just did it yesterday. And so I was like, I was like,

that's by us, bro. Like I'm so happy. And so we did that. Literally things have gotten a lot better so now we're at home and drew and i've had a chance to um talk about our future we've been so busy we couldn't even talk i couldn't even stop to think that this is is this really the direction i want to go is this yeah it's been refreshing to us and i like you know luckily i love being around i'd

hate to be or have a wife i didn't like thank god i love my wife but because you're trapped with her and so um but it's been fun like we just talk and hang out and play with the boy i got rock and bear and teaching them how to do weightlifting it's been great that's awesome yeah i actually find these situations, these like large, in a way, life-changing things where you kind of dread a lot of the, like what's going to happen because you know it's going to take a lot out of your like ego and self. Like you have to always be thinking about the greater good versus like what do I need right now?

Yeah. They turn out to be the situations where you end up becoming happier like being terrified of getting married or having a kid because you realize like it's no more me yeah right now it's not me we got basically it's like 6 to 11 p.m every 6 a.m to 11 p.m from the time I wake up to the time i go to bed and we've got like three people in a house and the whole thing's got to get done it's crazy man so what did you guys do with your gym going through all this you just kicked everybody out and sold it like how did that happen this is not only do i want to know what you guys are doing

with the gym but how did you make a sale in a time where everybody's leaving? Got super lucky, man. So the gym up the road, there's a big global gym shut down. And so they got, not because of this, it happened before. The owner made a few mistakes. Anyway, bankrupt. So one of the trainers put a deal together and basically bought their members. They got 1,800 members. They had to get out of that because the bank took over that spot.

So they came and asked us to buy our gym, our people, and then also got the space next to us. So it's going to be about 8,000 square feet now, maybe 10,000. It's going to be big. And so, yes, they bought our members. They have those. So they're going to have about 2,000 members, and the rent is a lot better

where we are in Louisville. And they want to keep weightlifting, powerlifting. So, and our strength and conditioning. So really nothing changed for me other than like, I don't own it and have the stress and now I have some cash on hand and it's just a great deal. So they're going to let me train my athletes for free you know as long as i want to stay is a great thing like yeah all my worries and gave me i

still have everything i need they want me to teach clinics there i'm like okay you know so it's like yeah that is the luckiest thing i wish i could tell you some business awesome idea i had it was luck it just happened in the putting the right foot forward. That's awesome, man. Congratulations. Give Chris a big hug next time you see him. Dude, he was so happy. That boy has been so stressed putting his life through veterinary school,

but it was good. We're all happy. The athletes are happy because they're going to have a big gym to get. I'll have all kinds of equipment to get the pump on. Everybody wants to get a pump. Dude, someone coming through with a bunch of funding yeah build out a nice weight weightlifting place that's rad it's rad it's gonna be it'll be the sickest place ever that's awesome um doug what are the people

doing at your gym how are they keeping the the memberships going and like what's what's the the state of just gym owners i know what my people are doing but i'd love to hear what you guys have going on in memphis yeah yeah i'd imagine almost every gym kind of converges on the same set of ideas about how to handle this how to keep providing some value how to keep getting uh subscription revenue so people don't cancel their membership so they can get that monthly continuity revenue and then um you know just how to how to make it through this whole mess in one piece and and not have to go out of business and then start over when it's all over yeah so right now it's it seems like most people at his at the gym that i primarily hang out at

uh here in memphis doesn't seem like that many people have quit uh i'd imagine he's signing up i haven't asked him this specifically but i imagine sign i'm so pretty sparse so it's probably here in Memphis, it doesn't seem like that many people have quit. I'd imagine he's signing up. I haven't asked him this specifically, but I imagine signups are pretty sparse. So it's probably not growing. And then I've talked to him about doing virtual coaching, virtual mostly nutrition coaching. So they're paying their $150, $200 a month or whatever it costs. And then that's pretty much what good nutrition coaching costs. And, you know, many people at the gym have done that for people before. So I was like,

just transition all of your clients to at home workouts and nutrition coaching. Um, and then if you need to like either give them or rent, rent them any of your equipment, um, you can do that. Uh, you also can just have, you you know like a lot of people have policies around washing their hands when they show up and you know sanitation rules he wipes down all his equipment after after every single person uses a set of equipment everything gets wiped down and cleaned and then he was talking about doing you know just mandatory smaller classes you know so five people per class yeah maybe shorter classes with less people or uh he's come up with a lot of ideas like that yeah is he renting equipment out the reality of

it is it's just a tough time for everyone everyone's going to take a hit yeah is he renting equipment out to people uh i'm not sure if he decided to actually charge people for it yeah renting it to them or to just simply keep their membership going and then just let them have it so they have equipment, which I think that's probably what he's going to do for most people. If you cancel your membership, maybe he says, okay, well, I'll just rent

you gear. But if you keep your membership active, then that is your payment. And he just gives them gear. Probably a barbell, one set of bumpers maybe one large set like 45s and one small set 25s and then you know maybe like one kettlebell yeah and that's it and then they can have their own jump rope and figure out where to do box jumps and whatever else yeah maybe not yeah my gym just started doing that exact thing of if you're a member then it it works

um you can just take or basically you rent it but you're not paying for it and then if you want to come by and actually rent it because you're not a member then that works um my gym's actually been in a really interesting spot because they i i learned this through everything that they were doing, but, um, their original business plan was to have the gym, but run it. It was almost like virtual online, or it was like virtual personal training with the individualized nutrition, individualized kind of coaching side of it for the other 23 hours of the day.

Um, and then just have the brick and mortar where people congregated and went to class. Um, so when they went to running zoom classes or when they went to, uh, kind of renting the equipment out, they just kicked that business plan that they've been like dying and waiting for the right time to actually implement this like higher level coaching side of things. And they just went right into it. Their biggest thing that they keep asking me about is how do they create content? Because they're a brick and mortar gym that isn't, they're not super interested in like big growth and big marketing. So as soon as they, as soon as they,

as soon as this happened and they had to start like filming workouts they were like what camera do i get they didn't even know that you're supposed to be going like the to go horizontal versus vertical um to get on youtube like they're just not a big content gym they're just it's 120 to 140 people. Everyone knows everyone's name. They all love each other. The Facebook group is fire. And then they just kind of kicked this new business plan in that they had just in their back pocket waiting for a time that it made sense. And no feathers had ever been ruffled. So there was no real reason to do this new thing and get all the questions. But as soon as it happened, they just, it was already written it was ready to go so it's been cool to watch them like

their battle was not the business plan their battle was how do we get information out now we weren't they weren't prepared for the content piece which is the part that we are constantly doing so it's been fun talking to them and um hanging out um yeah this is a good example of why you want to have more than one stream of revenue like all the gyms that have an online component in addition to their in-person component are at least have somewhere to go yeah some like some avenue to kick off right away without having to build something from scratch i feel like having like the brick and mortar plus the online, most people I know that do that do really,

really well, you know, regardless of the pandemic where a lot of times if they're, if they do their online piece well enough, it kind of kind of like floats the gym and like makes it where they don't have to worry about the stress of trying to make your, your monthly nut. Because with just personal training clients and CrossFit classes.

Right. Yeah. We left our gym open because we have the key system. You know, we have the little fobs. And so if people want to go, they can go. And then, you know, we have someone that cleans it every day. But, you know, we tell them, obviously, clean your bars. Some of my athletes who don't have bars and plates at home, if they want to risk it, they can go.

But we've asked them to keep it to less than 10 people in the whole gym. We have a 5,000-square-foot gym, so if 10 people, it's definitely spread out more than six feet. It's still open, and what're doing, we record our work, you know, like for our general pop, we record the workouts and then we have, whoever is supposed to coach that class is sitting live on zoom, ready to take any questions, answer anything.

You know, if they want to jump in the zoom and film, you know, show them their workouts, you know, they can do that too. So we have, you know, it was easy transition for us. Anyone us anyone like you said if you were doing some online stuff

it becomes an easy transition yeah yeah i uh i feel like i feel like with something like this it's a it's a forced change of routine right and you should you should basically just use that that the fact that it is forced to change your routine right your routine is going to get changed a lot of ways that you don't want it to change unfortunately but with that because everything's so chaotic and changing already it actually makes it easier in some cases to kind of get out of an old pattern like something that you just you always gravitate towards doing you know one rep max back squats but now that's that's just not in the cards for you.

And so maybe it's a good opportunity to actually go trail running and, and actually work on your cardio for the first time in a long time, or just train for like high reps, muscular endurance, like do your mobility, all the stuff that you've kind of been meaning to do, but just haven't, they haven't risen to the top of your priority list. This is a good time to, to just change direction and say, this is it. This is the perfect opportunity in some sense to work on these things that are often neglected. That's exactly what I'm doing, is just doing all the things I've been wanting to do. I'm just

doing them. I mean, we have to change regardless. So I'm just like, you know, I'm just taking all the risks now because, you know, we're all taking a huge risk right now. Who knows what the world's going to do? So that's what I did. I'm actually, so far, I'm winning. We'll see what happens. Two months from now, we might all be dead. Two days into this, I'm winning. Truck family, we have a new sponsor today,

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Save 20% on the products. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Save 20% on the products. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Save 20% on the green and the red and the gold. Get your micros. And back to the show, friends. I think that that's going to be, you know, I think what's happening to gym owners right now is all of us, we can now say this. We've all started from basically nothing, built and sold gyms. That's pretty cool.

Good work, businessmen. Good work, fellas. People are going to think we know what we're doing. They're going to ask for our advice. How do I build and sell a gym? Get lucky. All of us are going to shrug our shoulders and go, I don't know. It just happened.

I don't know. I really, yeah. Get lucky. Yeah, I don't know. It just happened. I don't know. I really – yeah. You're lucky. Yeah, just don't sleep forever. I now more so than ever realize that I definitely know how to and I definitely don't know how to at the same time. Yeah. I completely agree with you.

There's a lot of timing. But now I know I don't know a lot more than I used to think that I didn't know. Wow. That just got't know. Wow. That just got real deep. Yeah, there's a lot of timing that goes into that. But yeah, I think, and this is like the, I think the bigger question is like, I wrote a blog that will be going out on our email next week. Just kind of like writing right now is like a really,

really good way for me to kind of conceptualize like what's going on and where, like, what do I, what am I trying to get out of this because I can't get anything. I don't control anything. So what do I control? And, you know, I mentioned a little bit earlier, but I've actually been feeling significantly more connected to everything that I do right now. Like my neighbors are out walking around. We don't have that, that weird friction of like, do I say hi? Am I supposed to talk to you? I feel more connected to people that I don't know right now than I ever have in my life. Yeah.

I, you know, I typically am trying to avoid people when I'm at a coffee shop or I just, I put my head down. I have my earbuds in. Most of the time I don't even have music in. I'm just signaling to not talk to me. Because I just want to write, or I just want to do my work, or I just want to do this. And now, because we're all in this thing, and there's this innate sense of survival and community that kind of comes together of like, hey, how you doing? You good? Because if they're not good good you kind of want to

know you also really want to know who's around you who's outside moving around um and there isn't that that weird friction anymore of like do we talk to each other we're neighbors but like i don't really want you knowing about me um like i i have i have felt all of that slip away in the past this week. So Monday was like the big turning point, I think, for me. I don't know when you guys kind of – I think when we were talking about flying, which was going to be next week, Doug was like, I don't know. I was like, I'll hop on a plane right now. Let's go. I'm not worried about this thing.

And then Monday I just started to do more research um and it i was like okay we're gonna shut it down um but i i feel like um for people that are at there in thinking about this fitness thing i'm really conceptualizing it as like look we have a 12-week training block. And right now, it's super exciting. Maybe not exciting, but it's interesting. We've got a whole bunch of new stuff. We're adapting. You don't really know what kind of volume you're getting into. You don't know how long it's going to be. You don't know really a lot of what is about to happen. But week seven is going to be very different than week one and that's a serious grind that you're about to be in there's going to be a lot of slowing down there's going to be a lot of really quiet time a lot of people walking around like very aimless like right now

there's still a sense of purpose of i have to i have to do my job i everybody brought their computers home everybody's got in home what happens in week seven when 20 of our workforce has been laid off and all of a sudden your value system changes that's a weird ass thing to me right now. Yeah, man. I really don't know what happens to an entire population when that value system shifts from, I don't think work is the thing anymore. I'm not going to spend my time in front of the computer because I might be here for another six months. Like who knows yeah um and those are the things that i'm very interested to see play out but i'm also if it helps me conceptualize like oh i've been here before i've

been a part of this like long-term grind i understand what it takes to deal with a lot of, how about this? Let me, I know what it takes to deal with what I consider to be adversity. But also I, I don't know what it looks like when tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of people are dying around me and dealing with that level of adversity. Yeah. I mean, conceptualizing the fact that i'm at least we're all at least 12 weeks right now sitting in our house so get ready what does it look like in week seven week eight what does it look like how long do we sit here and wait for the president to go hey go spend money go back to your real life do you remember what it was like what's your values now that you've been in your house for 12 weeks my god yeah i don't know man

like i know a month ago um i actually what i did when i saw italy uh they went from like 15 cases to 504 days and so then i i did the math on that one law and i'm like oh yeah we're in bad trouble because i i understand i'm sure you guys understand exponential growth yeah when i saw that i'm like, oh yeah, we're in bad trouble. Because I understand, I'm sure you guys understand exponential growth. When I saw that, I'm like, so I made a post on Facebook. I'm like, you know, this thing is actually very real. And I started talking about some of the things that were going to happen. And people were crushing me. I'm not, I was like, I'm not fear mongering.

I'm telling you what's, but math is math. This is not me being, I didn't, no one told me anything. I saw this. I did the math it's coming anyway two weeks later then people are like oh it is boom yes it's just numbers so people can say whatever you want you can put this math it's coming so now the question is is like how do we you know how do we respond because it is going to happen so you know that's the question right now that we're all trying to figure out yeah and that's that's going to be the time and stuff too

when i i really start to wonder you know you vote with your money and i hope people still you know i really hope people keep their gym memberships. My daycare, or my daughter's daycare, did one of the smartest things that I've seen so far where they just started charging us half costs because I want the teachers to get paid. I want everybody to make a portion of their salary, but I don't want to pay the absorbent amount of money it takes to go to a nice daycare yeah so they they just sent out the email that um they're charging half half

price for the month and it was just like thank you that's perfect like we'll give you the money to keep the teachers going to keep the owners fed to keep to keep all of that. And I think it's a great strategy for gym owners to start to look at because when we start looking at week eight, week 10, if no one's been to the gym, fitness is becoming like, when I think about like the long-termness of a 12-week thing, like how many people are going to be laying down on their street doing burpees in week eight week two a lot yeah week two is a lot right like people are excited they're they're going to stay on their fitness game but like week nine week seven week those those middle weeks where it just isn't fun and you're you're starting to really get cooped up that's that time where i just i see people kind of start really falling off and um i i hope that i i really hope that they

are able to like really mentally commit to you know every day getting some movement um as far as like advice though like what mean, have you guys thought about like what kind of like the bare essentials checklist of general health, like nutrition, what, where should people be at in this? Cause it's all got it. It's got to shift. Well, you better, I mean, I would imagine that you're going to need to look at your immune system.

I mean, obviously the healthier you are, the better chance you have of not getting it. So yeah, definitely looking at nutrition, you know, looking at avoiding any, you know, inflammatory foods, which I know, you know, there's a debate about that, but right now I would definitely, you know, you even look at like taking ibuprofen is a pretty bad deal. If you look at the research research that definitely opens you up to getting it um and so and not only getting it but actually having more severe um complications from it so i would avoid that and definitely move every day and if you have you know you don't even need like i'm working on this article i'm about to finish it but that i'm giving free it's like workouts even if you have nothing you know i'm sure you have a stool. You have canned goods to do lateral raises.

You have each other in my wife and I, we can squat each other if we didn't have barbells. Yeah. So like move, continue working, you know, like think about this too. Like I would recommend journaling this whole time, which I'm doing. I'm trying to write every single day. How am I feeling? How's my family doing right now through all this? Because someday your family's going to want to know what it was like going

through this, because this is one of those moments in time, like world war one, world war two, that people are going to want to know what it was like being us. And so I reckon only that, but it's going to be good for your soul too. Yeah. Just getting it off your chest and meditating, praying in my case, you know, do it every day. Start it.

And I would also, my advice would be start this routine as fast as you can. So you don't just start sitting around watching Netflix and let your brain melt. You know, your brain does atrophy. It will atrophy. You don't use it. So that's what I would recommend. I've been hard on the no TV. Just because I got a little one around.

And, man, that's so easy to turn that TV on. And I'm not judging anybody that does it. And I only have one kid, so I don't know anything about you crazy people that have many. But I have – I'm four days in, but not one day of TV and not using it as the distraction. I've been outside all day long. I got sun yesterday. I got in the shower, felt a little sunburn on the skin.

Your kid's getting bronzed out here. You want to know how I'm looking so good right now? Coronavirus. Social distancing. That's right there. How do you look so sexual, Anders? I'm on the coronavirus plan. I've been social distancing.

I'm not talking. I'm talking to people from afar. I'm not letting them come in my space. I got a bronze going because I'm outside on a blanket just laying out at the garage gym. I'm getting small. I got no bad food in the house. Boom. There it is. Yo, change the direction one more time.

I also think that this is a really good opportunity since outside of the people that you live with, you're by and large going to be having conversations over Zoom with your colleagues. If you're doing the virtual work thing or you're just going to be talking to your friends on the phone. So since talking to your friends on the phone is, you know, it's the same thing to call someone across the world these days is to call somebody down the street. It's also a really good opportunity to reconnect with some old friends that you've been meaning to have long conversations with. And it's going to be good for everyone's sanity to talk to their friends anyway. So like all my friends in California or Oregon or Washington or wherever that are like across the country from me that I just don't talk to those people as much as much as I would like to. This is the perfect opportunity for everyone's sanity to make those phone calls and talk to your buddy for 60 or 90 minutes twice a month.

Yeah. Or your parents or whoever else. A big piece of advice I would give too would be this would be instead of looking at what we can't do, because there's going to be a lot of things we can't do right now. Yeah. If you dwell on that, it'll drive you crazy. Start thinking about what you can do. Start thinking about the things that you do have. And also, like, start thinking about, I want to do X.

How do I do that in this new world right now? And, like, stop thinking about all the negatives and the can'ts and just think about what can you do and how are you going to get to where you want to go. And that's what you focus on. And then you start going forward. I think a great example about that for focusing on what you can do. I don't know if you guys are up on this,

but Portland, Oregon's entire economy basically runs on craft beer and strip clubs. They have hundreds of strip clubs there. Really? Of course you can't go to strip clubs. Yeah, I think Portland has the most out of any city i want to say and uh and so of course strip clubs when when it's when it's covet out there it's a verb now or an adjective but anyway so seizing that opportunity some some strip club owner started a stripper meal delivery service called Boober Eats.

And he's smashing. Wow. He did it as a joke. Let me do this strip. And like everyone thought it was awesome. So he just scaled it up. And all the strippers need work. And so the girl delivers your food with their boobs out?

Yeah, no, no like pasties on wow wow and then you know bounces around for a second and then then goes about her way her $40 tip and she's out of there wow it's a really good time for people to learn how to begin the like foundations of an online business like i don't i'm not an affiliate but everybody should go to click funnels learn how to build a funnel learn how to write an ebook learn how to build a lead magnet and tell their friends even if it's just like a how to survive or ebook, learn how to build a lead magnet and tell their friends, even if it's just like a how to survive or what you're doing. Like if somebody right now had a 30 days of crafts that you could do with your toddler and it just laid out exactly what the hell I'm supposed to do for

the next 45, 70 days, three months, whatever the hell we're going be in the house i would buy that for 40 bucks right now like i need craft ideas because i can't sit here and like just kick the same soccer ball over and over and over again yesterday i threw a badass picnic in my front yard but there's only like i'm on week one someone's got to help me with week eight what am i going to do look mash is really writing down i'm really doing that is drew would smash it exactly who is going to smash this tell drew i will be her first client because i need crafter noon ideas right now i'm about as soon as we're done we're about to do this yeah how quickly this gets launched right yeah one click funnels account hit me on that upsell too all right the diy upsell i'll

pay for it all right we're about to do that mess thanks but he went and wrote that down i did right but i think this is like uh that i mean it's it's that is like what people need right now like your normal set of in i'm not gonna be charging for any of this and i'm going to let a weekend go by but i already started writing messages on my sidewalk outside just to try and lift people's spirits a little bit like smile we're all here together this is great like just little things to people as they're walking their dogs and stuff that's cool man but i am going to use my little sidewalk out here to tell to run morning fitness in my court where everybody's like 10 feet away from each other but we're doing mountain climbers. We're doing body weight, jumping squats. Like there's so many jillions of ways that we've never connected as humans before.

And everyone has this little skillset that maybe it was something you wanted to do. If you ever wanted to start and fail at a business, you got 12 weeks let's go let's start it up watch it bomb and you can say you tried um or you could create the crafting for dads program and sell a million of them everyone's online scrolling through their phone right now um there's there's i'm really excited about next weekend running a little fitness class. Those people that were in Spain and the, the guy was running around on the rooftop, getting people doing jumping jacks. I saw that and I was like, that is so rad. Like I want to be that person that is just bringing that level of positivity to fitness

and people's lives and doing whatever they can to unite people i was my neighbors next we have neighbors two little boys next door and i was teaching them weight with my sons they were all doing weight lifting i brought my my little um i don't know youth barbells like 10 kilograms and so we had the whole little there's four of them out there bear a little three-year-old bear doing front squats yeah yeah he's a tank that's awesome yeah i've been broadcasting my workouts out of the garage live um and they've actually been getting really good engagement people ask a lot of questions and people like people have no idea what to do so if you have been i've only done it a couple days now but

because the engagement's been good and people are watching like i'm actually wildly motivated where normally i want to go to my gym and not my i don't want my workout to be my work but now it's like i'm here i want to be with people i want to i want to hang out so set a camera up and go live and And as I'm going through my training, I think that also like one thing that's so awesome about the show is we get to talk about our training and talk about the principles of strength and all these subjects that come up in strength conditioning. But it's most of the time we're explaining it to a large population. So if I were to explain what I do in the gym, it doesn't make, it may not really hit a broad audience, but it's my interesting little way of thinking about how do I structure a five or six day a week training program.

So now I have the pressure of kind of not even pressure, but I get to go in, like, go live every day from my garage, everybody's going to be able to follow day by day exactly what I'm doing. Like, today, I'm four days into training already, I'm going to go in the garage, and people are going to watch me meditate and stretch. And they're probably bored out of their minds. But if they go back over the last three days to see what's been going on it's like here's the down day here's the recovery day this is why we go and have a down rag day which normally is very unsexy and not cool that you're not going to make the

instagram highlight real but if you're consistent about it people are going to see what's what's going on in your brain over time yeah i mean that's a great idea i'm gonna take that one too yeah yeah um so doug what's your training been like did you pop the garage door open or garage gym open again uh well i've been in a good spot where until two days ago i've been been going to my buddy's gym. He has a large space and kind of the whole back half of it is essentially unused.

So I would just walk into his gym, walk all the way straight to the, all the way back where there's no people and just set two box jump boxes on top of each other and just have like my own little standup desk back there. And then I had a full gym I could train at whenever i wanted to um and yesterday i didn't

train today i'm training after after this call yeah my boys are gonna do kettlebells and then put it on my garage you know i got i got a nice aleko set in there including the bar that we all made together that's what i have yeah yeah i got giant camera ball and select tech dumbbells you know you know they go five through through 90 or something like that um so i got plenty of stuff and then uh you know andrews knows this i wrote i wrote a 110 minute amraps that are all body weight only that we'll probably put out here in the very near future uh so i like those workouts and i'll be doing a lot of those workouts too. Like it's only 10 minutes long.

I can just tell my wife I want to take a break for 20 minutes from watching kids five minutes to warm up. It's bodyweight only seeming to have to be like that warm to do jump squats and pushups and whatever else. Right. 10 minute AMRAP, five minutes to chill and I'm back inside. And then she can go take a break for 20 minutes and go do the same so for people that are smashed right now like like like me and my wife are watching you know a two three and five year old um and then trying to work

whenever i can and whatnot it's nice to have those short quick workouts that we can go do um just right out in our garage that's brilliant yeah so that's what i'm trying to just i'm back to the squat every day so i haven't done that oh yeah 42 years old so yeah we'll see um it brings me back what do you uh how do you how do you structure that uh the square every day i just do it you know basically the conjugate method like i'll do a front a front squat pause a front squat not pause back squat low bar high bar mix it up just jay i'm about to do this crazy band thing that cory gregor's been doing um i'm just gonna let me give a couple weeks to get my legs conditioned then i'll i'll

try this thing that he's been doing and i'm stoked on hearing about that yeah it's i talked to him probably two or three months ago and he was like super fired up about it. Yeah, he's on me. That dude's nuts. Yeah, he's nuts. Man's waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning every day to go back squat like 1RM inside 90% every day. 315, he said.

315. He said 15 minutes adds up, he told me. I'm like, are you crazy? Like 3, 315, does it really matter? But I guess it does. His quality of sleep, though, I'm really jealous. The key, you know, I saw him. He go to bed at like 7?

No, no, he only gets maybe, you know, he tries to go to bed by 930, but it never happens. So he goes to bed 10, 1030. That's me. I would fucking die. His quality kills everyone. I don't know how he does it, but he gave me some advice. His

REM sleep destroys everyone. He's got the little whoop thing. Something's going on because he looks like he's 20. He's my age and he's killing it. Shredded. Shredded. He's the king of tiktok for he's dude i'm going

huge on tiktok right now i quit tiktok i hate it i'm over 2 000 followers man tiktok hates me i don't know that's the only social media i cannot get it drives me insane i'm gonna go i needed a break dude if you went on and looked at my tiktok right now you'd realize how much you specifically would smash because you have so many freaky ass weight lifters moving big ass weights and all i do is post one ton challenge videos and people can't believe what is going on freaks that are lifting so much weight so fast and they just go viral i got a couple of them in the like 20 40 50 000 range this one just went into the 650 000 range what yeah i got 2200 followers or something like that right now not me man i'm about linkedin and that's my jam but one thing that this whole corona thing has done to me though is i've really gotten off of not gotten off of social media i did there's like a there's been a real

confrontation i've had with needs and wants yeah and like what's truly important and social media has not made the cut for me at all it's's been like I have learned that it's like if you're going from work to dad to husband to work to dad to husband, and you're in this like rhythm of the day, there's no like, oh, I'm just chilling right now. I'm going to put social media up. No. It's fourth or fifth place. And right now, fourth and fifth place don't get eyeballs man i got a new content dude i've never had someone help me with social i've had people try and do it for a few weeks it's never quite worked out but i have a new guy he's a bomb like he um he i'm super pumped yeah he like freed me so all i gotta do is like cut

and paste and it's like it's great and so i can do social i can do linkedin twitter you know instagram facebook and he does it for each he doesn't do one he doesn't want yeah we talked about what i want per social media group yeah he does it like i said and it smashes so i'm super love it beautiful yeah um travis mash where can they find you now that you own a gym where are we gonna freaking hang out we gotta go to lenoir ryan coming up dude yeah well right now there's a good chance you'll find me in winston-salem north carolina because i'll be you know behind bars basically but um no yeah go to matt3.com find me sitting on my couch or outside with the Alico bar.

Yeah. Yeah, go to matchlead.com and Instagram, Match Lead Performance. But if you really want some good stuff, go to Twitter or LinkedIn. Obviously, Travis Match on LinkedIn. Twitter is Match Lead. Doug Larson. I don't do all the platforms, man. I try to stick to one

Instagram to obviously the dominant player so that's all I ever talk about you can find me on Instagram if you find me on TikTok you win I'm Anders Varner we're Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged

we are back buddy life is good you can find us over onetonechallenge.com Thank God. We are back, buddy. Life is good. You can find us over at 1TonChallenge.com. The lifelong pursuit of strength. That's clean jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench. The lifetime goal of 2,000 pounds for men. 1,200 for you ladies.

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That's a wrap, friends. Be safe. We'll be back on Wednesday. We've got a couple more shows coming out of FitOps. Johnny Martin's taking over. He's the behavioral health specialist on Wednesday. And, again, thank you to our sponsors, Paleo Valley, for their delicious beef sticks, keeping me fed, keeping me healthy,

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