Barbell Shrugged - How Strong is Too Strong w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #550

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

How Strong is Too Strong w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #550   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: Misconceptions about strength training Why strength training does not make you slow Absolute strength vs. relative strength Why sport specific training is done on the field, not the weight room Cost Benefit Analysis for increasing strength compare to goals Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we're talking about how strong is too strong, which may be making you shake your head. Why would anybody think you're too strong? Well, guess what? Some people don't have goals about being the strongest human in the entire world like you do. Some people are looking for quality of life, and the idea of adding five pounds to their back squat may be totally ridiculous. Sometimes people are trying to be the strongest people in the whole wide world, and five pounds is the most important thing that they can do for their back squat. In addition, you may be an athlete, and adding five pounds may make you stronger and faster. However, the amount of time that it's going to take in the gym versus being on the field practicing your sport may not have the benefits that you need to get better at your actual sport.

So there's a lot of cost and benefit analysis going on and how to decide how strong is too strong and if that's even a possibility. Before we get into that though, friends, I got to apologize. My voice is absolutely heinous today. I've been sick for an entire week now. It's rained for the last nine out of ten days in North Carolina. And on top of that, the weather has not gotten above 35 degrees. We have had zero snow.

It's just rainy and wet and cold. And your boy got sick for the first time in like 18 months. I honestly can't remember the last year I was sick. I'm assuming it's 18 months because I can't remember anything before then. So I apologize for this brutally raspy voice right now. But on top of that, the EMOM Aesthetics Bundle is on sale this week. So make sure you get over to barbellshrug.com

forward slash EMOM Bundle and use the code HYPERTROPHY at checkout. You're going to get seven programs for the price of two and that includes the EMOM Aesthetics Original Program, EMOM Aesthetics Strong 30, which is the higher intensity, higher volume program, as well as three accessory programs, EMOM Aesthetics Breathe and Burn, Arms and Abs and Abs and Glutes that you can tack on to the main programs. So you have a complete program designed specifically for you as well as shredded nutrition which is a 12 module nutrition course to teach you how to get super super lean

so you're looking fresh for the summer as well as a personalized macro nutrient calculator just get over to barbell shrug.com forward slash emom bundle and that is where you can enter the code hypertrophy to get seven programs for the price of two. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Bash. Bros, I'm so excited we're here right now.

First off on today's show, we're going to be talking about how strong is too strong? How strong should you be how do we know and how do we know or how do we know that you are strong and then is there a thing is there such a thing as being too strong i think that's about right can you be too strong doug larson i was gonna i was gonna diss that one over to travis Travis. Travis, you're the one that got us all fired up. To kick it off. He's already scribbling notes on his paper. He's got the artillery lined up.

This is my favorite topic, and I would say, no, you cannot be, but it depends. So I'll give you an answer, but it depends. Which you'll find out as we go on through the show um well what is the what is the answer that it all depends upon start this thing off well there's a lot of elements to you know and this it all stems from people in in strength and conditioning or you know the this track and field world and some people would say that there's a point of being too strong where there's diminishing returns to where either nothing else happens or or it goes backwards. And, you know, to say that, you know, the absolute statement is absolutely wrong because, you know, there's just a lot of elements to getting fast and being athletic. There's, you know, you got to ask, you got to have a good range of motion.

You got to have really good technique. You know, the neuromuscular pathway, that has to be perfected because, you know, your body will definitely adapt to however the way you train. So it has to be similar to what you do for sprinting or changing directions on the field. You know, there's strain energy. You know, there is, there's definitely going to be you know all the different energy levels like you know so there's going to be strain energy kinetic energy um totally blanking out then there has to be what's the other uh where height is considered doug potential energy potential yeah there has to be potential energy you have to look at so just all these different elements and if you know if like you do focus on absolute strength so much that

you forget about all the rest then yeah but like the key is a nice balance yeah i totally agree that i feel like this whole question comes down to opportunity cost right it's like you only have so much time to train you're you only have so much time to train you're you only have so much stress that your that your muscles and your joints and whatnot can take in a given week if you're if you're a soccer player and you already front squat double body weight well i don't know you front squat and two and a half times body weight is that gonna make you a better soccer player probably not i'd say i'd say the effort it takes to get from double bodyweight front squat as a soccer player to two and a half times bodyweight as a soccer player,

the amount of effort that would go into that would take away from the amount of time and the amount of focus that you have practicing to just simply get better at the sport of soccer. If you bumped your front squat from from from you know a pretty high number for a soccer player double body weight to two and a half times body weight um i think it probably would make you better in some way like it's going to make you faster you be able to jump higher like you're just you are more athletic but there's there's more to being a good soccer player than just being strong and just being able to run fast and jump high.

So I think it's really all about opportunity cost. What else could you be doing with your time dedicated to training? The only thing I would say is that if you get two times or whatever and you're a soccer player, it doesn't mean that you can stop squatting because you'll go back. We all know you'll go backwards, and then that's going to affect everything else. So the key would be, like, you know, say if I get to two times and I feel that I have room for improvement in all these other areas, then, you know, then maybe instead of, you know, squatting two or three times a week,

you know, once a week, and maybe you look at the quality of strength. So you start to maybe that's where velocity based training might come in to play and you start looking where along the force velocity scale, where am I weakest, I'll target that that'll be simple, I can do it once a week, and it won't take me that long. So you can't just stop. it will the thing here's the thing I will say about strength is that if you look at Newton's three laws a biomechanical laws of motion in the biomechanical world the one thing that's in common is force is in all three so if you have the the law of you know inertia meaning that a you know object will stay at rest or in motion unless acted on by force, or the law of acceleration, which is the Lewis-Simmons force equals mass times acceleration.

Or if you look at the third one, which is the law of reaction, for every action there's equal and opposite reaction. They're talking about the amount of force. For example, in sprinting, the amount of force that I apply into the ground is directly proportional to how fast it propels me down the field. So the one thing that all three of those laws has in common is force. So you do have to be strong. You cannot be weak and be a great athlete.

I don't believe at all. Yeah, I think that the training system that actually exemplified this the most was when Tom Brady came out with TB12 and went like super, super viral. And everybody was buying his like PT system and all of the weird exercises he was doing for his core and all. Whatever. I never actually bought the book, but I remember a bunch of strength coaches getting really angry about it, saying you need to get stronger. And then Tom Brady is sitting there with Giselle and he said, I don need to get stronger and giselle's like the trump card it doesn't matter he already won so because he has got the rings and he's got giselle so yeah he he's undefeated even if he's undefeated he's got a crooked strength coach has been kicked off you know

that strength coach couldn't even come onto the grounds at any of the New England pitches because he's so dirty. So when you look at what he was putting out, though, it was like, well, this is what Tom Brady did when he had already won five Super Bowls or whatever it was. And he was already 35 years old. It wasn't like 19-year-old Tom Brady's in there doing these PT drills and just running ladders to be able to go from this wiry kind of kid-looking figure to becoming the Tom Brady in the NFL that everybody knows. Those aren't the exercises. That's not the strength program he was on. That was what was put out to the world once he became older and very, very famous to use that to sell strength training programs. But do you guys have like general metrics of where people should be in their strength before this is even a thing? It's not like novice lifters or intermediate lifters should ever even be considering like,

am I too strong? Because you're definitely not. It takes an insanely long time before you even get close to your genetic potential to even think about, like, having that conversation with yourself of, am I too strong? There's one bit of research that was done. However, it's pretty flawed. It's something that I'm going to be working on through this next semester. Who would say 1.7 times is where it's at? But you can't say that. For what exercise?

They're saying for squatting. Squatting is the big one that they talk about. And I would say this. How were you back squatting? Were you low bar squatting, high bar squatting? Were you squatting to parallel, above parallel, below parallel? Like, there's so many variables in there. You can't just say we did this research article on, you know, and we all did back squats. Doing back squats is the broadest statement that one can make because the way you back squat and the way we back squat are totally different.

And here's what i know i know that if you take my weightlifters you take uh morgan you take ryan you take matt weininger and like they don't sprint or jump or you know they once in a while we'll do a few plymatics but for the most part they don't do those things and you ask them to go do it they're going to do it really well i know this this because I train both. I train football players, the top of the line football players who are either in college or well on their way to Division I sports, and I train these dudes. And I've had them run against each other, jump against each other, and every single time the weightlifters will either do it the same or better

without doing any of those movements ever. I just did the math. It says I should back squat at most 330 pounds. Yeah. That's not even remotely. I mean, I think that this is, it really,

if, if you're trying to be an athlete, there is no max. It's, it's the opportunity costs. Like Doug was saying, I'm like, should you be out?

If you're, if you play football, should you be out on the field, know running routes getting better hands seeing the ball come at you more yeah should you be in the gym going from you know a 400 pound back squat to a 405 because at some point that five pounds becomes like a two-year journey to adding five pounds to your back squat and that's when it. That's when I say don't do it. And that is the real key. I think for most people that are listening to this show,

you've gotten strong enough at whatever point where you start to incur injury because either your movement patterns aren't great and you need to go back and redo them or you're solely chasing poundage and it is taking away from many aspects of your life i think that we've probably all gotten there whether it's through weight lifting or crossfit or whatever in which you know i told the story about me being angry at my mom for cooking. It's probably going too far. It probably takes away from a lot of the aspects of your life if you're yelling at your mom for putting sugar in the Christmas dinner.

But I think that you have to be able to objectively view where you're at and what your actual goals are. At the time, CrossFit was so important to me that, no, I wasn't eating anything bad. I wasn't living a life of a normal person. I was living the life of somebody that wanted to go to the CrossFit Games versus somebody that was trying to experience life and have family around and friends around that were really good people. None of that mattered to me. I only wanted to play CrossFit.

So everything mattered when it was trying to be able to snatch an extra five pounds. That was the only goal, and then it's worth it. If you snatch 125 pounds, if you snatch 100 kilos, but you're an asshole, you don't need to go snatch more than that. You need to go be a better person. I'm with you. And like, you know, some people say, well, we're not weightlifters. We're not powerlifters.

And I agree, especially if you're training like a powerlifter. And like this is where I would say Louie Simmons is 100% wrong. So if you train a football player to do a really wide stance to a box squat and to go just at parallel, are um you don't really realize this but what you're doing is you're training to shorten the range of motion that's what power lifters do we're trying to get to bottom out right below parallel that's our goal well guess what now you just messed yourself up for like running and jumping because potential energy is directly related to how high the knee can come so if all of a sudden I'm shortening that range of motion

and my knee can only go to like, you know, instead of like getting to 90 degrees, it is like, you know, 75. Well, you just shortened it. And now that, you know, the potential energy is directly related to how much kinetic energy. So, you know, how high it goes is going to be related how fast it can go downwards and apply force into the ground so now you've messed up yeah yeah you're intentionally harming yourself by shortening the range of motion totally so you can add 10 pounds to your squat totally and that is why i would say high bar full range of motion is superior i mean and i'm not saying

that there's not a time to do some high squats because there's a lot of good, you know, it's more specific. The joint angles are more specific to like running, jumping, sprinting. But by the time, but by not going full range of motion and you start to shorten, you're going to cause problems. Yeah, I think we all kind of go through this too. And it's typically when people either get out of the competition thing or they're just beat up and they want to go do new stuff. But in the weightlifting world or not even weightlifting but in the lifting weights world, there's so many exercises and this is like the part where having – if you've only done squat, deadlift, and bench because you're a powerlifter,

you're going to be so blown away at how weak you are standing on one leg and doing a single-leg deadlift. And now all of a sudden you've got to go back to the beginning and reestablish some sort of baseline, go back and do progressive overload, and you have hundreds of exercises that you can get better at. But what you don't need to do is try and kill yourself doing box squats anymore. Because you're not – and I think that we've probably all been through some sort of experience where it's like I just can't bash my head into this wall again. When I left CrossFit, I only wanted to do things on just different exercises. I remember sitting there thinking if I have to coach another wall ball, I'm just going to go lay in traffic.

I can't look at another person and tell them, no, this wall ball is really important. You're going to throw it to that 10-foot target, and it's really important for you to be able to do this. It's like, can we coach other things? Can we do different things? I'm 12 years into wall balls. I just can't do it anymore. And it's cool. Like you've gotten to the point.

You're strong enough. It's not worth the time commitment, the energy commitment to try and knock five seconds off your Fran time or whatever. That's great. But there's so many things that you can get better at in the gym by just expanding the idea of what the goal is. I think one area that like CrossFitters, football players, everyone could benefit from would be understanding strain energy, which is like strain energy is related to tendons and ligaments and like how much they deform when they strike the ground. If I have a really strong thick tendon in say my ankle and knee

and hip really, when I strike the ground, it's not going to lose energy out the back. It's going to deform a little, which is what you want but the amount of energy you're going to get from that little bit of bend is going to be phenomenal. That's where, now that is where speed, gosh, man, like I wish strength coaches understood

what we're talking about now. Like if I do some quality work to really strengthen that tendon at the ankle and knee, you could really add some, a great amount of not only speed, like linear speed, but you could change direction better. You could jump better. You could land better. There's so much you could do by really focusing on that, which things you could do would be obviously you can do calf raises,

but really that's where bounding comes in. By doing X amount of bounding and like and then isometric training at specific angles so if there is a angle of the joint that you're predetermined to be a quality angle that you want the joint to be strong at doing isometrics would be perfect for creating this strain energy that i'm talking about it's a mirror i think i think that is where you could get a lot of gains and with very little energy put into the workout yeah you've said the word strain a couple times what can you break that down there's going to be a lot of people that don't have

yeah it's just strain strain energy equals like you know the amount of deformation times the amount and like the the next thing I'm going to tell you is directly related to how thick and strong you can get the tendon. So it's the amount of strain, which is the amount of bend. So when your Achilles, when you strike the ground, there's going to be a little bit of deformation, a little bit of bending, and then times how strong and stiff that tendon is. So, like, you've got to work on how strong it is.

And, you know, by applying force to the ground without it bending too much equals being super fast if it bends too much that's when we tear yeah or just or lose energy you know so if you're like gumbo at the at the ankles then yeah you're going to be slow and you're you know you're going to get a lot of breaking meaning your your ankle will collapse your heel will push into the ground, and it'll slow you down. But we don't talk much about actually training tendons. Too bad, because that is where you could get some miracles for people. Well, what does that methodology look like?

How do we train tendons? That is where, like, doing strength training in the gym, and yes, by doing slow eccentrics and, or I would say, and isometrics in the gym. So, like, you know, putting the, like, doing, holding a calf raise at the exact angle you want your foot to be when it strikes the ground and holding it and getting, you know, 30 seconds seems to be, there are two guys out there right now who are doing a phenomenal job at focusing on just what we're talking about. And there's a, on Instagram, one is knees over toes, and I'll look up the other guy in a second.

And they're doing a great job. They're really using it for vertical leap training, and they're getting some incredible results. But so, like, taking those exact angles that you want and like holding it isometrically and then you start to load it you know but like 30 seconds seems to be like the miracle number that you want to focus on yeah and and the good thing about isometrics is that you can train it more often like that because you don't have a lot of damage and so you can get stronger and stronger and stronger and then you got at times bounding so like by doing by actually

practicing your craft sprinting and that's where yes i totally agree you know you need to spend quality time sprinting or if you want to be a good jumper you know if you want to you know leap out of the gym and basketball you have to practice jumping and then by doing specific drills like like bounding or death jumps that's why death death jumps, I agree, are, you know, I wish they would explain that a little bit better. Because, you know, in the strength and conditioning world, the good strength coaches know that death jumps are more applicable to speed and vertical leap than any other plymetric.

Really, that's the only true plymetric is a death jump. And so by looking at the ground contact time, all you're doing is saying, I need to get better at strength and energy. That's what you're doing. Because, like, if I have a really strong ankle, that ground contact time will all you're doing is saying, I need to get better at straining energy. That's what you're doing. Because if I have a really strong ankle, that ground contact time will be shorter and shorter and shorter. So there's your methodology. You're going to look super smart

if you listen to what I just said and apply it to your training. But you can tell everyone that it was your idea. You mentioned depth jumps more than once now and and talk about deceleration when it comes to forces the highest forces are always in deceleration and in landing right and so that in those instances strength is even that much more important like if you're if you're like a fullback and you have you're gonna run five yards and then you're gonna change directions then you're gonna turn around you're gonna go run five yards and then you're going to change directions and then you're going to turn around and you're going to go the other way.

If you're changing directions constantly as opposed to your 100-meter sprinter or whatever it is where you're going to run one straight line but you don't have to worry about decelerating, I think strength becomes even that much more important. So you see for guys like football players, like fullbacks, they are focusing on strength

to a higher degree than the sprinters because they have a slightly different role to play. totally totally like barry if you look at barry sanders the dude was jacked and like there's i remember being motivated by him because like he was in bigger faster stronger doing paw squats with 600 pounds you know and nobody i think we can all agree nobody changed directions like that guy or you look at, I don't know if you guys remember Warwick Dunn. Florida State. Yeah, Florida State. And his original coach was Gale Hatch,

the famous swing conditioning weightlifting coach out of Louisiana. And he trained Warwick Dunn. And so there's a reason why Warwick Dunn could change directions unlike anybody else. This is exactly what Doug said. Because if you're weak and you you know stick your foot into the ground to change directions you're going to lose energy however if it's if that system is strengthened properly it's going to be able to absorb and change directions does this play into

kind of the training the elasticity of the muscle um that like stretch reflex that absolutely okay so now now you're talking about like the neuro when i said earlier that was a savage segue right there yes it's almost spilled water on himself yeah he got excited well that's where i'm talking about the neuromuscular junction that neuromuscular you know connection is because like there's like there's two there's there's two um neuromuscular elements that we need to talk about one being yes the stretch reflex you know which is the um oh totally i'm blanked out i'm thinking gold tendon unit which is one of them and then there's the oh muscle spindles so like muscle spindles run you you know, parallel with, you know, muscle fibers. And so when you, when the muscle starts to lengthen, you know, it doesn't mean it either lengthens at a fast rate or when it gets to full range of motion, the muscle spindles, you know, fire those fibers to contract.

So they don't keep stretching and tear, you know? So, and then the Golgi tendon unit is like the what it is that's in the tendon and does the same thing and when there's a lot of force in that tendon it shuts you down you know so you just get limp so if you haven't done any uh any work in the gym then that golgi tendon unit won't allow you to change directions it will cut you down but it what happens is when you train in the gym and you you do lots of strength work plyometrics what happens you start to inhibit that goal detaining unit and so you start it starts to get need more and more and more of a force before it shuts you down so then i can

you know i can put my foot in the ground it won't you know the goal detaining unit won't shut me down and so i can change directions faster than you did that did that make sense to everybody's yeah we're going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors over at organifi organifi.com forward slash shrugged that is where you get the green the red and the gold trust me i know you need to be eating more micronutrients the vitamins and minerals are super important to keep you healthy keep you strong keep your digestion intact and that is why we have been working with organifi for the last four years. If that means four years of a partnership means there's a whole lot of you out in the world making Organifi a part of your daily health and wellness journey. So take the

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Buyoptimizers.com forward slash shrugged. And of course, get over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash EMOM bundle. Using the code hypertrophy7programs for the price of two. Let's get back to the show. Where is like the plyometrics world at right now i mean we talked a little bit about depth jumps i think that that was the first vhs fitness vhs maybe outside of like body for life i think i even owned it before body for life my dad bought it because i was training for hockey and body for life hadn't even happened um but i remember by or having that vhs tape and watching the guy like bound across

the football field and doing depth jumps or is is that has that really just kind of like solidified itself in the track and field um or are you guys using it on your weightlifting team oh we we use it and like for my athletes we use it a lot you know because that is one area like if you were to do death jumps properly and you were to squat properly in the gym if you just did those two things you can make a world of difference with a football player with a basketball player yeah with any kind of athlete so if you could just really get good at those two things you wouldn't have to necessarily clean even though you know i'm not saying you shouldn't you should but like let's say that you're not very good at what you're doing and you don't want to tell anybody well then get really good at those two things and you'll still

look smart and so yes you swing and dizzy coaches can be really good by knowing a couple things really well and so you can be a not very smart person and still look smart so yeah i think giving you guys all secrets when i think about plyometrics now in my training it's like i just need to go run hill sprints like jump a little bit it's kind of like doug was saying it's like the last thing or the first thing you lose is that speed and power and the ability to to move quickly and if you could just get up and go do it a lot of that stuff will just take care of itself instead of having to do bounding drills across a football field. It's like just go find a hill, get after it. That is the one thing I miss the most about training.

And so this past week I've been reflecting on if I want to get in shape, I want to do something new and I want to be healthy. But I don't want to just start doing tons and tons of miles on a bike and get totally wimpy what i want to do is like go back to like what was the most like uh i don't know you know that rocky type feeling of like being an athlete so i want to go back to like you know let's look at my 40 year dash how fast can i get at 47 after a hip replacement? And I want to do vertical leap training. I want to see how high I can jump now. Because even at 40 years, I was like 41 years old, I could still dunk. There was a video of me dunking at 41.

Now at 47, six years later, I know right now I'd be lucky to touch the rim. We got a hip replacement. Yeah. I still think I can. I think I could get to where I could either almost dunk or like – I know I can get to where I can almost dunk. But I would love if I could dunk one more time. I just want to be in that. I want to train like an athlete again, broad jumps.

Maybe at most I would like to look at like how fast could I run a mile. Yeah, I think getting back to like the original question too, I think that that is the most important thing to be able to objectively view like what's fun to you because at some point strength isn't that fun it's fun being strong for your entire life but if you're just i don't even real i've kind of stopped back squatting because i've back squatted like four million reps in my life. What am I really going to get at? How am I actually challenging any movement patterns anymore? If anything, I'm just going backwards and giving myself an opportunity to mess something up and not being as methodical and aware of my movement. I'm just kind of like doing it because I'm supposed to. And choosing different ways and different stimuluses,

different implements to use in your training. But yeah, getting outside and actually moving and – Be an athlete. Being an athlete is the thing that we – I feel like we all end up missing where you go, oh, I'm doing this thing that I started because i wanted to be an athlete and then 20 years later i've done it so much that i'm not getting better as an athlete and the thing that nobody is doing is going and running wind sprints in their neighborhood or going to the yeah going to the football field and just going i feel like that is and it's it's

because it's harder like people people have to go challenge themselves. And when I say harder, I don't mean like it's more exhausting than a one rep max back squat or 20 rep back squat or whatever it is that you do in the gym that you really like doing. But at some point, CrossFit stops being hard the day that you realize that if you go like 83 your time is better you don't feel like shit at the end you're not rolling around on the ground you just did well and you but you're playing the game properly and then it becomes not fun because you stop doing it for the reason that you originally did, which was like to totally wax yourself and then go and compete and take yourself to the edge every single day.

And then you realize, Oh, I don't even need to do that. And I still set PRS and I still do it. It's because I'm controlling my body better and I understand how to move better and all these things. And then you get to a point where you go, Oh,

I'm just, I got here because I got to do 75 different movements in a week. And it was super fun. But then it becomes easy. I think it's funny when people say – you'll say, I wish I looked the way I did when I was 18. What did you do when you were 18? I did sprints. I jumped.

I played basketball. And I worked out, lifted some weights. I'm like, what are you doing now? Well, I'm on this treadmill, and I lift weights a little bit. You can't expect to look the way you did then and not do the same things you did when you looked so good. So why do we stop? And why do we think it's not good to sprint? Have we ever had Martin Rooney on this podcast?

No, we've got to do it. We're holding out for our North Carolina trip you know that dude is so inspiring when he talks to people about you know being fit as we get older he's like one of the things that he feels that we were meant to do you know as organisms

is to like it's to sprint because we were just designed to run away either run to kill something or to run away from trying to kill us and so in like when we stopped doing it he says that's when you start to start dying and so i i'm believing them and like definitely would think everyone should start you know running but like but back to the original question about you know the how strong is too strong one thing that strength coaches issues they have and this I can relate to them, is like time.

And so like the NCAA dictates how much time or high schools dictate how much time you have. So if you only have 45 minutes three or four times a week, then yeah, I agree. It becomes like an issue. And like Doug said, you know, there could be other things you could do better but I would definitely say like one thing that we don't talk

enough about too would be relative strength so like if my squat goes from say 400 to 500 but yet my ability to control my body weight went down well then I got slower even though I got stronger.

Because all that really matters at the end of the day is how well can I move my body. So definitely having relative strength, like, you know, whether it be pistol squats or what Aaron said to us the other day on his podcast, when we had him on our podcast about, you know, about doing like the unilateral work, like barefoot, the step-up progressions. Those are important. Even Martin Rooney would say that if you take a group of athletes and you say you put 10 athletes in a room and you have them do pull-ups, normally, and this guy can say it and I'll tell you why when I'm done done he would say the guy who can do the most pull-ups nine times out of ten is also your fastest

guy on you know when they do the 40s and he can say that because he's trained more first round draft picks in the nfl than any other strength and easy coach in the country so funny he's got the data and so you do have to look at what really what he's saying is this. It's not that a pull-up makes you stronger. It's just that you see how lean somebody is. Because if someone's fat, they're obviously not going to do a ton of pull-ups. But if someone's super lean, pull-ups are going to be easy. So looking at, you know, nutrition, which most strength coaches don't,

they rarely touch on it at all. Like that is a big mistake. And that is something you can really, once again, if you can get really good at nutrition, you can look really smart. Because if you get your athlete leaner, I'm not saying to get them to lose muscle, but if you get them eating better while you're doing all this energy, you know, workouts, and they get leaner, they'll be faster, they'll jump higher, and without any work in the gym at all but there's that too

you actually think when back when i was competing in mma i was also competing in weightlifting so i wasn't i wasn't lifting weights just to get good at mma i was doing weightlifting because i love weightlifting and then i also happen to love mma but trying to do two sports at the same time my training volume was very high you know i'd I'd go from, you know, two-hour practice for weightlifting from 3 o'clock to 5 o'clock or 2.30 to 4.30 or whatever it was. And then I'd go to jiu-jitsu for an hour and I'd go to Muay Thai for an hour. Maybe I'd do MMA practice after that. And so I'd be in the gym for, you know, many hours,

like the entire afternoon slash evening, you know, four or five days a week. And so having, you know, say 20 hours of training time every week, not all super intense. A lot of it's like technical and learning and all that, especially with MMA. But as far as if I was to focus just on MMA, I would have cut my weight training down because I would have become, I would have become a better MMA fighter if I spent more time learning MMA. Because if I was going to lose in MMA, it's because I got knocked out. Not because I wasn't strong enough to pick the guy up or to do whatever I needed to do.

I think if I spent more time actually learning the technical side of MMA and less time doing strength training, I would have been a better MMA fighter. And I think I would have suffered fewer injuries. Because I think I tore my suffered fewer injuries, because I think, like, I tore my shoulder in my fourth fight, got a labrum tear, and I got it surgically repaired and all that, and, like, the

probably three or four times leading up to that, like, the final injury, like, when I kind of just tweaked my shoulder a couple times, almost every time is because I went from weightlifting, you know, doing heavy jerks and bench press and like, you know, training to failure and then going straight to jujitsu and Muay Thai and MMA. It's like my, you know, I already have like both of my parents have two unworking shoulders.

So like I probably don't have the best shoulders genetics, even though I did gymnastics when I was younger and have full range of motion. I've done strength training essentially my whole life i think there there was a fatigue element there that that was contributing to to the shoulder injuries so if you're someone like an mma fighter or like jujitsu if you took two guys and you said you know if i if right now i said okay andrews you're going to strength train for the next five years and get as strong as possible and travis you're going to just do jujitsu and nothing else and then after five years you're both gonna go do jiu-jitsu and you're still gonna have no idea how to do jiu-jitsu and travis you're gonna be much much better at jiu-jitsu even if

you've gotten weaker there's just you just need to know how to do the sport i agree yeah so from your from the point you just made about the time available to train like you got to figure out what your weak link is and then and then i think that's like a hundred percent why i like the emom aesthetics program following that one that you write doug it's just because i don't need to spend like six hours a week doing strength training right it's just it's it's it nothing is going to come of that except me getting more injured trying to hit numbers. You spent your life doing it, right? Yeah.

There's enough in the savings bank already of – like a squat of 315 for a double. I didn't know I could still do that. That was terrifying too. I pulled that thing out. I was like this thing is sitting on my body a lot heavier than it used to. You can still do it. Yeah, if you're just trying to maintain, then you don't need to spend two hours in the weight room six days a week.

If you've been lifting weights for decades, then you can do 30 minutes five days a week and still look great. Yeah, maintaining almost sounds boring, but the goal is to be really strong and just be able to go do other stuff. Like you're saying travis i really miss going out to the to the football field it's the track and just let it go like those finding a hill and sprinting is super fun i don't think most people even know how to sprint or know what that feels like when when your legs start moving and you're going at 100 you should not just start yeah

disclaimer is don't just like go out and do a 40-yard dash you'll tear your hamstring find a hill first but that's why hill sprints are better you're much less likely to tear your hamstring yeah because well really you probably aren't you can't it's almost impossible unless you do hill sprints totally you know wrong you know you do hill sprints totally wrong. So, yeah, hill sprints would be beautiful. So start with that and slowly ease into it. I would go if you're 47, get a coach. And rolling starts.

Rolling starts all the time. Don't start and try and be Usain Bolt out of the blocks. Just rolling starts, walk into it, take a couple to get up to speed. When I debate this whole thing, this whole how strong is T-Pone, I'm like, here's my trump card. Then I use it for the end thing.

I'm like, if strength is not important, then why did everyone get so mad at Ben Johnson for taking steroids? What did those guys athletes take steroids at all crickets is what you get oh that doesn't matter i'm like come on i won right is that what you're saying i feel at that point i feel like the the old tombstone movie uh where the guy says uh looks like i win so So, like, it doesn't matter. It's just in proportion. And, like, being able to, like, you know, once you get to a point where you're stronger than you need to be, then finding the quality strength.

That's where you do need velocity, you know, to bring it back. You need velocity. Because then I can just do speed work once a week. I can easily go in there and in 45 minutes have a great lower body workout that will be all I need.

You can still get improvements then because you can improve that quality of strength which is directly related to being a better sprinter. You can just focus on that. I'm actually super interested in where you're at right now

because I know you're writing a new strength program for yourself and like reestablishing what's important and kind of objectively viewing where you want to go and what it looks like. When you, outside of just, of course you love squatting

and benching and deadlifting. All those things, right. You made like a life out of those three. What do you even think about as far as how much volume you actually need to do and what are like the goals of putting a strength program together for yourself because you're probably not going to squat 1,000 pounds again. I know I'm not going to squat 1,000 pounds. I have no desire to squat 1,000.

And I think that's really cool because it's like, one, you did it. But two, when you say like you should be getting stronger to people, well, they go, well, you don't get stronger. You go, well – I'm still stronger than you'll ever be. Yeah. As a beaten 47-year-old man. So the question really is like when – and I know the answer for myself. I just want to stay strong and stay stronger than everyone else that I pretty much know. But what are like the other things that interest you as far as like putting your own program together?

And then in order to maintain the strength that you currently have, like the level even if it's you front squat 500 or 450 whatever that is like how much do you think you actually need to be under the bar to maintain those numbers and then what like what else interests you in in ways to develop strength and fitness i think at this point i could train three days a week of strength training and like i could i could see results because like i just went through like the longest little you know when exams hit and we bought our new house and we moved it it was the roughest time i've gone through as far as like you know i just either i couldn't find time or my brain just could not make myself go work out yeah and then when i came back to it and I could still bench 315, I could still, you know, I still front squatted my first day back.

I did 407 pretty easily the other day. So, like, that's as weak as I can get. I think I could go four years, no training, and that's as weak as I could possibly get. And so, like, if I train three days a week, I can see some results and I can get a really high level of strength. But really what I want to focus on is I want to do a little bit of cardio. I want to sprint and I want to jump.

I really like to focus on sprinting and jumping so I can jump, to feel athletic again, and really getting lean, looking at my nutrition and seeing how lean I can get and like and what it does for me more than strength strength will not be a focus it's hard for me to say that because like this is like the first time I've ever decided this but like it's not going to be the focus it's just going to be part of what I do I want to see 20 pull-ups out of you that would be cool like 195 there we go 20 pull-ups that's where I need to be and and like want you to get down to like 195 and do 20 pull-ups. That's where I need to be. This is the first time you guys, it would be cool if you stayed on top of me

because I need a push in this area because if I just want to get stronger, it's super easy. I can easily get stronger. I can squat every day for 15 minutes, and I can get up to where I can darn near front squat 550 because i've done that two years ago front squat at 550 and i was barely training so like i need to run i need to put my interest and focus on is like yeah doing 20 pull-ups would be awesome you know doing you know 50 push-ups and but jumping and running i want to jump again i want to jump super high

because i have been able to jump super high and like that would be really cool to see somebody an old five foot seven guy dunk at 47 would be pretty crazy i love it i love it if you and cory g were out there playing one-on-one and you just dunked all over him i could dunk i see him yeah i'll set that one-on-one game up on instagram right now we'll just have you two talking smack to each other and the world to open up. We'll go to Ohio. Boom. I'm pretty good at basketball. It's hard to beat me at that.

Believe it or not in basketball. Like I'm either, you know, I'm not like you, like, like you are good at everything. And it's like, no matter what you do,

you're like better than average. It's not even like some people say that CrossFitters are like just good at everything you're better than good at everything you might not be great at any one thing but you're better than good i saw you in jamaica and you blew my mind but i'm either i'm either really good or shitty like basketball i'm really good baseball terrible you know football i'm really good you know bowling terrible like it's, I'm really good. Bowling, terrible. I don't have any in-betweenings. But if I tell you I'm pretty good at something, you're probably in trouble by trying to challenge me in that space.

Power of the team, I'm really good. Weight of the team, I'm pretty good. But that might be the one thing I'm pretty good, not really good. Yeah, I've been doing a lot of that assessing and what I – I mean in assessing what I'm interested in and the things that I want to kind of learn about, I've been doing a lot of that in my own training as well. The EMOM Aesthetics thing is the perfect program for me

just because it's 20 to 30 minutes, three, four days a week. I typically am probably in the three to four days a week range. I want to check that out. Can I check that out? Yeah, dude. There's a whole bunch of Diesel dads just hanging out, waiting for you to be a part of it and keeping you going. Yeah, I think that's where I need to be.

Everyone is – all of the people in the group are home gym dads just getting it done. Like us. It's exactly – it's super cool just seeing everybody that – you're like, oh, all of our friends are still out there. They just had kids and they don't hang out as much anymore. Yeah. They're all still there. I have a couple people from my gym that still follow me and keep track and are a part of it so rad do you see those um this is off topic of the you know how strong is too strong but the lives that were changing those

dudes like started crying when he talked to you like the diesel dad might be the coolest thing i've ever heard of all right and when you first said it like, I didn't grasp how awesome it could be. But now I'm seeing these dudes that, like, they needed this. And now, all of a sudden, like, not when it came when we were talking about it, but now I get it. Now I'm like, I get it. It's tough. We're trying to figure things out now in this next step of our lives. And, like, I totally understand the diesel dad thing

yeah i feel like we if you just want to even look at just crossfit specifically it's like all of these people were 25 years old when they found crossfit right they love working out and love training they love doing all of it but exactly what we're talking about right now is they just got to the end of crossfit and it's like what do i're talking about right now is they just got to the end of crossfit and was like well what do i do now yeah it's not like they got to the end and they just stopped getting better they stopped doing it but it was like they don't have all this time to go to the gym and sit around and have beers with their crossfit friends and do all this stuff and what they did was they they have less time than ever they built home gyms because

covid hit and like now and that guy joe is so rad he's i talked to him on the phone and it was the first time somebody's like legitimately looked at me and been like you saved my life this is incredible and he's just an he's an awesome dude he's a super successful guy i know it's yeah he's like got the hockey rink in the back you would never know that he's just an awesome dude. He's an awesome guy. He's a super successful guy. I know. He's got kids. Yeah. He's, like, got the hockey rink in the back. You would never know that he's, like, going through things.

He's like a horse doctor or something. Yeah. He does surgery on horses. I'm like, we talk now every day almost. Yeah. Like, we're just, like, it's crazy the stuff we're telling each other. Like, I'm telling him stuff I haven't told my wife. Just like the struggles of being a middle-aged dad.

But it's so hard. It's really one of the hardest periods, I think, for, just call it dads in general. It's like you go from being able to train all the time and you're getting better and you're getting stronger and you're in this period of time where you're like, as Paul Cech calls it, like the warrior stage where you're 18 to 32, 33 years old. Testosterone is just free. It's all inside you. You can go lift and bang weights all you want. Then at the end of it, you look out into the world of Instagram. look out into the world of instagram you go well i don't really want to play crossfit anymore i don't need to compete in

powerlifting i got all this shit going on at my house i'm trying to fill my 401k up not fill up barbells like what what do i do to stay in shape but at the same time like just you know keep keep this fitness thing moving because I know I need it, and it's really important to me. And then they just – it's the perfect flow. Doug, do you still do MMA? Do you still do jiu-jitsu at all? Yeah, yeah.

Did it last night. That's where I want to go. Usually twice a week these days. I would like to go once or twice a week and, like, you know, start. I did jujitsu, too, when I was younger. And, like, what you were just saying really resonated with me. During my years of football, you know, I would do jujitsu some during the season. But, like, especially in the summertime, I would do, you know, jujitsu as much as I would go to, you know, lift.

I would lift weights, go straight to jujitsu, go home every day, and I would do my football training. I really love martial arts. I'm not near as good, obviously, as you are, but I enjoy it. I enjoy it because I'm not good at it. It's something I'm so far away from mastering. It makes me feel like it gets you like

when you first started lifting weights like you were so into it you wanted to read everything you wanted to figure it out you wanted to master this craft and like it's something new so i think that will definitely be a part of this journey but uh but before before it gets too late i got i want to bring one point home is in that in that um the whole how strong is too strong when people people argue about this whole, you know, that two times body weight is enough to be strong. I've been to so many high school, you know, weight rooms and college weight rooms. And none of them, not one is filled with people who can do two times body weight squats. And most of them have a lot of room to grow.

And so, like, really at the end of the day maybe this is a waste of time argument because there's nobody there's not that many people that are there in most colleges especially squatting properly which that's where that's where yeah that's where the problem is people like my whole team squats two times body weight like not one of your team squats at all because you're doing your squats i don't know what that is it's a brand new movement you know so like none of them do it brand new movement bro seriously totally not with you there's a lot of terrible well in high school too like you're looking at people that are you know what 18 years old 16 years old you're like well it's two times body weight. He's strong enough. No! He's going to put on 50

pounds in the next... You're looking at a 160-pound kid that can squat two times his body weight, but in a year, he's going to be 180 pounds. Kids are growing every day. Just keep them going. You guys can't do a pull-up. They can't do a push-up, and you're saying they're too strong?

We're going to have to agree to disagree because, no, they're not. They're gonna have to agree to disagree because no they're not they're weak they're so weak i just i coach them man like i see them when they first come into my gym i test them i know you're lying they're not strong like yeah you got a gym gym filled with weak people is what you have so you are not allowed to be in this argument with me because you don't have the people i have so that's that's another thing too those people don't when they're arguing with you on twitter or they're making these like claims about 1.7 times body weight like you only know what you know and what you've seen and if you've never if you've never seen someone squat 1,000 pounds or talk to somebody that's squatted 1,000 pounds, your just perception of what strong is, like 1.7 might be the most you've ever seen.

And you go, okay, we need to work on other things. But if you've never seen somebody squat 600, then 300 seems like a lot. That's a great point. That's a great point. You'll die on that cross because the most you've ever seen is someone squat 400. You go, well, you're already at the top end. You weigh 200 pounds, you squat

400. We're there. Let's go focus on other things. You look at 400 and you go, wait a second, you still have 200 pounds to go before you even get started. Part of the conversation here. Right, right. And if you look at, here's my final trump card that I use.

If you look at, like, you can take, all right, so you take, what was the dude from Canada? Oh, Ben Johnson, we already said. Or if you take, like, Michael Johnson, the 200-meter sprinter and 400-meter sprinter, the guy who just broke all the records here in America. If you look at, oh, if you look at, we saw the dude, help me out, Jamaican. Johan. Yeah, Johan. Look at Johan.

All these dudes are strong. Jack. There's a list of like, or you look at Barry Sanders, 600-pound squatter. You look at Ben Johnson with a 600-pound squatter. Michael Johnson squatted 500 pounds. So, like, there are lists out there that have all these. And then their answer will be, well, those are outliers. Absolutely.

And personally, I want to be coaching outliers. I don't want to be coaching average. So, like, it's another trump card. It's just they cannot win the argument. It's impossible. There's just too much data saying they're wrong. It's just what it comes down to is time and that's when people just immediately go well they're on steroids like because they've never

seen because it works because getting stronger probably one of the the greatest the coolest things about being able to train or like go and race johan and let's just see him go get around a track you go oh that's possible like training with cena if i didn't know him and train with him i would just look at him be like he's got to be on steroids right but you don't see him in the gym for two and a half hours a day doing everything he does and like his whole life like all accumulated into who the person is and you go but when you're around those people you know it's different like you you see it that it's different and right if unless you've been around different people if you're

just in the middle of nowhere whatever state and the the strongest person in your talent squad's 400 well and that's strong enough you need to go to a different place i agree man like so like i guess in some way like you know there isn't this thing it's too strong it's just like it's like how much time do you have to work on all the elements and you do have to have you know and like always like doug said that if he just practiced jujitsu he would get better jujitsu but if he just lifted weights he would not get better ju jiu-jitsu. I agree to that too. It's just like, yeah, focus on your craft.

So if you want to be a sprinter, yes, the majority of your time should be sprinting. If you want to be a good football player, you need to spend the majority of your time playing football. But then there's a time to get strong. There's a time for strain energy. There's a time for range of motion work. Range of motion work, of motion work i feel like can be done as long as you lift properly in the gym if you squat deep if you do like uh you know you know unilateral rdls like if you do those things properly you don't have to worry about

you know movement that much yeah so you just got to focus on everything but put them in their place of how much time. Travis Mash, where can they find you? Mashlead.com. Don't try arguing with me on Twitter either. At Mashlead on Twitter. I disagree. If you just graduated physical therapy school and you are a doctor, I want you to go

argue with Travis Mash on Twitter right now. Do that and then I will call in the dogs on you. I'll call Squat University. I'll call Kelly Starrett, and then you'll be made a fool of. So don't fall into that trap either, Mr. Ph.D., doctor, whatever you are. Doug Larson. On Instagram, Douglas C. Larson.

I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Get over to BarbellShrugged.com forward slash DieselDad. That is where all the dads get strong, lean, and athletic without sacrificing family, fatherhood, or fitness for everybody in Palm Springs, San Diego, L.A., and Vegas. Get over to Walmart. We are in the performance nutrition section near the pharmacy. Three programs on the shelves.

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