Barbell Shrugged - How to Break Through Training Plateaus w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #569

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   Why plateaus exist in training Increasing and decreasing volume strategies Playing the long game and expecting setbacks Eliminating imbalances and additional accessory work The mental strength to keep going   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   U.S. Air Force. Find out if you do at airforce.com.   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   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 are talking about how you can break through training plateaus. We're talking about why training plateaus exist, increasing and decreasing your volume, playing the long game and expecting setbacks and what you can do about that. Eliminating imbalances, asymmetries, and additional accessory work to get you stronger and moving better and understanding the mental game and strength to keep you moving forward even when things are tough. Friends, before we get into the show, I want to thank everyone over at Organifi, the green, the red, and the gold.

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slash shrug and use the code shrugged to receive 10 off any order you have a 365 day money back guarantee that means an entire year leaky gut guardian.com forward slash shrugged save 10 friends let's get into the show welcome to barbell shrugged i'm andrews varner doug larson coach travis smash bros bros it's like 75 outside today thank god you hear this i'm not even like sniffling the lady that yelled at me for sniffling on the show the other day well guess what i'm 100 healthy now can't write that comment on instagram anymore today on barbell shrugged we are talking about how to bust through training plateaus but bros i gotta tell you i have my first experience of what it's gonna be like for the next like

i don't even know the next like 18 years of my life and trying to figure out how to be like I feel like as I continually be a dad and as Adelaide gets older and older and the more things she's going to be doing all of the things that she's going to be doing are going to creep into my training time so hard that I'm going to be up at like 3 a.m. just trying to get a pump. Like it's yesterday, it was so nice out. We went for a walk and that walk turned into like double the amount of time because it was so nice outside. And then we had to go pick up some furniture and then furniture happens. And now all of a sudden I'm like an hour behind my normal

schedule of what I'm trying to train. And then what happens? I got to go to little diesel's freaking first swim lesson. You know what time I actually had 20 minutes to go do fitness. It's like eight o'clock at night. I can't handle that. Do you know that stress inside me? Like the anxiety of, am I going to work out today? It's too heavy. It's way too much too much i like i cannot be a normal human being it drives me insane do you guys like deal with that anxiety like basically balancing other people's expectations of you and just wanting to go into the gym and front squat really heavy oh yeah it's brutal yeah like it's, it's been – I've been losing that battle until lately. Since you guys visited, since you guys were here, I've been good ever since.

But, like, yeah, up until then, yeah, it's just like – It weighs on you all day long. Yeah. Yes. He's got to put it as part of, you know, like – it's got to become a habit. I can't believe I'm having to talk to myself like this. I know.

Like, I would talk to people in the past. I would be like, hey, make it a habit. I'm having to tell myself that shit. Yeah. Dude, Doug, you have three of the – what are you going to do when you have three jiu-jitsu practices to go to and three soccer practices to go to? I don't know.

You're coming up, too. It's actually much easier for me because my oldest right now does jiu jujitsu at the same time that i do jujitsu and we're like the kids class and the adult class are right next to each other so i i get to go to practice with him and so the more jujitsu those guys want to do the better because i'm going to go train at the same time now that's brilliant see my wife has got it to where I have to take, you know, so Rock and Bear are doing it together. They're doing wrestling. And then, but I have Magnolia. So, like.

Magnolia's coming, dude. She's going to be on the other side. She'll be, Rock's going to be lifting weights, doing jiu-jitsu and wrestling. Magnolia's going to be just playing soccer. Totally. Magnolia wants to wrestle. She keeps trying to get out there. Ready?

And I'm like, chill. Settle down. The Magnolia is going to be so jacked. I don't know if Adelaide's more jacked than all the other kids in school, but I think she's kind of strong. Yeah. And like, I don't know. All redheads are strong.

I've never met a weak redhead. They got to. They have to have special powers when you stand out like that. Yeah. Like, I've never met a weak redhead. They got to. They have to have special powers when you stand out like that. Yeah. Like, I've never met a weak redheaded anything. Like, girl, I really like. You know, the redheaded boys seem to be the great athletes. Redheaded girls seem to be the fiery, like, they'll punch you in the face type people.

Well, the reason I even bring this up because, you guys we're all we're all in this like dad life and we have to train and get it all done all at the same time but um i as soon as i finished training last night literally like 8 15 8 20 at night and it was like i just hopped on a rower and just hit 20 minutes i just rode a 5k while Adelaide and mom were showering upstairs. It was like the only time in the day that I actually had. It was just insane. And like throughout the day, like the anxiety of, am I going to be able to train today, just was like just inside me,

which makes me like irritable and frustrated. But I put on right after I was done, um, and like felt finally like, ah, I got it in. I did it. I checked the box today and the number of people that are in our like diesel dad, Facebook group that were like, dude, I didn't know that you struggled with this stuff. I didn't know that you were like a normal person. I didn't know. Like I was like, bros, the reason we started this is because it's so freaking hard. It's real.

Sometimes you find time. Like, we sit here and talk about fitness all day, and we write about fitness all day, and we meet fitness people all day. You know what we're not doing, though? Fitness. That's where I feel like a fraud. You know, Coach Ken told me that years ago, he says, you know, how can you preach about it and tell people do it and don't do it.

Like that guy has gone. I mean, he never misses a day. Like he's like 365 days out of the year. He's doing something training. And so then, yeah, I feel like a fraud. I don't care about, you know, like I've got a lot right now with school. I still have business, you know, our podcast, three kids, but like, school. I still have business, you know, our podcast, three kids. But, like, man, I still have to do it. What is the most brilliant thing? Go ahead.

No, you just started a new little thing. Thanks to you guys. Yeah. So Doug has been talking about it forever, like the 20-minute e-moms. Yeah. And I've been thinking about that for months and then when you guys are here like it just dawned on me i'm like you know what no matter what 20 minutes and so then i was like so the problem with me is like you know if i do front squats it takes a long time to warm up

and so you know that's the problem is that it takes 20 minutes to warm up so i'm like what can i do every single day like i can deadlift for some weird reason i can deadlift 600 pounds cold any moment of my life like yeah doesn't matter and won't hurt me the next day it'll be as if nothing happened so then i started doing the trap bar deadlift you know uh shout out in tech with their new modular bar i love thank you i've been waiting on that bar forever so i have it loaded downstairs at all times it's got two plates and a quarter on each side. And at any moment, at least go down there and do – what I do is a farmer's walk paired with something paired with mobility. So I do 20 to 30 minutes of that in just circles.

Yeah. At least do that. And my work capacity has gone through the roof, which is, as you guys both know, that's what I need. I don't need to get stronger. I need to get some capacity. So that's like the, it's like the perfect flow when you can, I mean, if you were to, if we had Dan John on the show right now, he would just be nodding his head going, Oh yeah, just keep doing that.

That's what I've been telling you. He's like, I've only been talking about doing exactly what you're talking about for the last 30 years of my life. It took you 47 to let, to me my bad my bad uh yeah have you done the diesel that 100 30 days 100 reps workout uh something anders and i put together uh where basically they're like kind of like start your day get some blood flow very easy workouts they probably take you 10 minutes but it's just 100 reps.

Which is what he does. You do that, right, Anders? Yeah, every day. Five days a week, I should say, Monday through Friday. So you get up, and the first thing you do is you go downstairs and do 100 reps of whatever? Yeah, you go 50 push-ups, 50 squats, or whatever it is. Yeah, we put together an actual e-book.

So if you go to barbellshr or barbell shrug.com for splash diesel dad, 100, there's 30 workouts in there, which gets you through the first month. Um, or six, six, five days a week. Um, but the, the general concept, uh, is, is to wake up 15 minutes before your family does and go downstairs or wherever the hell you feel comfortable just moving and if you do 50 push-ups 50 air squats congrats you did it if you do if you have access to dumbbells or kettlebell if you do 50 swings and you know 50 push presses awesome you got there but brilliant something that is relatively light something that is relatively light, something that is relatively simple, but getting just the

big joints moving, getting blood out of your organs and into your muscles. And just really what Dr. Rady was talking about, like turning your whole body and brain on so that you're prepared for the day. And, you know, I did it literally just to start, uh, my day when we were recording at six 30 in the morning to be awake for shows, to be able to like, actually be able to talk to all these people and teach stuff without my first word being like some groggy coffee fueled thing, like just start moving and feeling like an athlete. And then, um, man, what I really started to notice is that as you get better moving first thing in the morning, your body, as you would, it has to adapt as you would expect. And the very next thing you notice is that like, damn,

I moved really good. Like you say, it takes you a long time to warm up in front squats. Well, first off your front squatting over 400 pounds. So it takes you a long time to warm up in front squats well first off you're front squatting over 400 pounds so it takes anybody a long time but like you should hypothetically be able to walk up to 50 of that number and just be able to hit it cold like first thing out of bed but if you need to hit 45 pounds for 10 and then you got to go to 135 and hit it for you know six to eight just to get moving and make your joints feel good. Like, I shouldn't say I used to have to do that. But I feel so much more confident in my movement patterns straight out of bed. And it's something that I've never tested, never had to challenge my body. And the fact that you could just wake up and go get after it

feels amazing. I mean, I do a lot of like just accessory stuff. Like it's like RDLs with 135 for two sets of 25 and then lateral raises with 15s or something like that. Just lots of just moving. And yes, I think the easiest way that I end up doing it, like whatever I trained the day before, I end up doing it, like whatever, whatever I trained the day before, I'll just leave like one 35 on the bar. So if I did heavy RDLs the day before the next morning, I'll wake up and do light RDLs

for two sets of 25. If we did heavy shoulders, heavy push press, something like that. Um, I'll leave 95 pounds on the bar, something I can hit for 25 reps unbroken, um, with like relatively low intensity. Uh, because after 50, the intensity is going to be pretty high no matter what. Yeah. Yeah. It tends to be done in addition to your normal workout.

So you'll still be lifting heavy some other time of the day, a couple of days a week. But you know, if you add 700 extra reps per week, 100 per day, seven days a week, like that's going to help. You're mentioning your kind of just overall work capacity. That's going to contribute. 700 reps a week is not an insignificant number. No, it's going to. For me, that would contribute like significantly more than you guys probably. That's a great idea.

And, dude, what you were talking about, the 20-minute thing, like the EMOM Aesthetics program, every time I even try to set up like a 45-minute or an hour-long training session in my house, that shit is getting clobbered, clobbered. I don't even know what's coming out of left field my way, but someone is going to find a way to smash that 45 to 60 minutes. It's just not happening. I mean, that's how EM aesthetic started it started as 10 minute two movement amraps because I knew I could do 10 minutes on unbroken without being distracted without someone coming to get me without crying

my wife can handle kids for 10 minutes then I could take it then I could take a little break and and do another 10 minutes take a little break and then do another 10 minutes maybe it's like morning was 10 minutes afternoon was 10 minutes however i could break it up but that's actually how that that whole thing originated was when covid hit and had all three kids at home and i was trying to run barbell shrug and i was trying to spend some time with my wife and it was just i was busy waking up early in the morning to to work and then training just whenever i felt like i could squeeze in 10 minutes here or there and then it kind of rolled eventually into a bigger more comprehensive program dude I'm dying the the ultimate diesel dad training program Doug Larson tells me about he goes I'm finding it really good I can hit like

really heavy front squats and then go do some dishes for like three to five minutes and then go back out to the garage hit some front squats and then go do some dishes like he's super setting plates and cups with front squat totally different than the knee mom aesthetics but yeah you're totally right like there are some days where i'm like fuck like i i can just tell that i'm not gonna get my workout in i was supposed to train at three and i got pushed back or something happened i had to pick up a kid or whatever whatever it was and uh i eventually learned that even while I was cooking dinner, I had like food on the stove. I had food in the oven.

All kids are sitting at the dinner table. I could go out and do a heavy set of doubles on front squats because I walk into my garage. It takes me 30 seconds, and I'm back in the house for five minutes, back out, a set of doubles. It's almost like I'm not even gone, but I can still train relatively, relatively heavy to get something significant done. And I do it all the time now. I actually really enjoy it.

My wife likes it too. It's like, I'm not even gone. Yeah. Brilliant. The only reason I even bring this up is because yesterday I was like really, really struggling. Like I really wanted to spend more time with Ashton and go on a walk it's been so gross we haven't been able to like live our normal active outdoor life and then that got rolled into swim lessons which obviously you want to be at swim lessons and watch your little daughter cry her eyes out while some random person dunks her underwater. These are momentous occasions.

Wow. My eyes have become. I know. But I posted that video in our group and so many people commented on it and it was really rad. But when people were commenting like, oh, I didn't know that you did this too, or this means a lot coming from you as the fitness professional, the guy that does this. I'm like, man, we're all just – we're so insanely dads and husbands, and all of that stuff typically competes with the time that we would normally be training yet you know we all of us have to fight for that time and that space to be able to go do the thing that is is really at the core of what's been at our core for the past 20 30 years it's so much you know i've always given people shit for like procrastinating i've said i'm like come on you can always find x amount of time and here i am i'm in a point in my life where it's i'm not

procrastinating shit man yeah it's just i have a very busy life you know and it's my fault i'm the one who decided i'm gonna go back to school what a brilliant decision that was and so but here i am i've committed so i'm gonna do it yeah and i still have my business and i have my kids and like has nothing to do with procrastination is everything like trying to find time of the day well i think that's so what's it's also like we're all three of us are at this stage you guys are way closer than i am with having six-year-olds um but now though you're on you're on your way you're trying to catch up i know i yesterday i feel like i got that my first taste of what being six or having a six-year-old is like

where it's like you got to go to soccer or you got to go to swim lessons you got to go to this next thing and then the second one turns four five six and they're playing sports and I was like man like yesterday was the first taste of like not only am I gonna have to fight for that 20 minutes and really push hard to keep it four to five days a week. But like you, you have that internal battle and anxiety of like doing the thing that you love to do that you need to do. That's really, you're passionate about. And at the same time,

like balancing it and with the competing thing of being with your family and being with kids. And it's really, it's really it's it really is tricky and i'm just like yesterday was man it was it was it was like the quintessential i know what's coming and adjustments will have like constantly having to adapt in order to meet the the standard of living and and health and fitness and strength that we all want with the battle that is life. I read, I was reading Dr. Brady's book, you know, for people who have ADHD, you know, which is obviously me, like, so like, you will always find a way to make your life busy. And so, and sometimes you become higher, you know, was it called like, i am um i'm able to handle now at this point in my

life a lot more than i could when i was younger but then what i'll do is just keep stacking and i get it now i'm well aware of you know i just didn't think about that that was a characteristic but now i'm aware of it like so i had a really good life when covid happened life was chill so i decided to what i decided to oh let's go back to school. Then I decided to, you know, do this thing with China. Then I decided to, uh,

there's another thing I've been talking to, um, to, uh, Matt Bruce about doing, and like, now I get it. And so now I've learned to say no,

and that's helping a lot. I've been learning to, there's been a bunch of things where I've like stopped. I've called him. I mean, I appreciate you, but like it's too, you, but now I know. It's good to know.

If you guys out there listening, it's good to know that if you have that tendency, once you realize you have it, it's to say, okay, I'm just going to keep doing this. I'm going to keep adding stuff until I'm stressed out. Then you can start stopping. You can start saying no more often. Tell me about the China thing again. Oh, so like with Stronger Experts, we were asked by their strength conditioning.

They have, you know, just like we have NSCA, you know, they have a, China has a, you know, a founding federation that is over there, strength conditioning coaches. And so they wanted a weightlifting course. And they actually wanted several courses. And so they wanted a weightlifting course. They actually wanted several courses. And so they somehow, you know, my man Phil, that dude is connected. One thing he's really good at is getting connections.

He's got all the people. He's got all the people. And so, like, they decided to contract Stronger Experts to do their weightlifting course, to do their nutrition course. So then you got me doing – me and then Spencer Arnold helped do the weightlifting course. And you have people like the guy from RP. Mike. Mike, yeah.

Isertel. Yeah, Isertel. He did their nutrition. So they just – they got all the people to do their courses. So it's going to be a sweet thing. They specifically wanted it to be done in English? Or why are they reaching out to Americans to take care of that? Obviously, China is great at weightlifting.

They would have courses already. Evidently, they don't play. Hold on. Speaking of which, did you see the video of Lou? Oh, I did. Take out in a jerk grip like 496 from an overhead squat at the bottom. I don't even know what the hell you would call it. Like squat recoveries, overhead squat recoveries, snatch recoveries.

Yeah, like a bottoms-up overhead squat. Because that's literally snatch. With 496 with the jerk grip and then walked it out. Dude, his back, his like low trap is i want to put it in i want to cut it out and make like a steak out of it it's like the most perfect oh my god that guy is so shredded he would be a great bodybuilder if you want to like really load up and like you have to slow roast that trap of that low trap of his for like four days in a crock pot because just every weightlifter wants to look like lou and if they say they don't they're lying yeah so yeah

including i didn't mean to cut you off as soon as you said china weightlifting i lost my mind yeah i guess that china's weightlifting you know they don't play nicely with their strength conditioning coaches you know and so and besides their weight lifting program you know uh evidently they're kind of far behind when it comes to strength conditioning and so um they decided to catch up and so what they're doing is they're taking our courses and they're translating it to chinese and then give it to them so it'll be interesting and then we're going to we're going to release these courses you know throughout the world soon too so like we're working on dropping that so it makes us to see it's like the weightlifting course is 15 hours of video content so that doesn't mean that doesn't

take into consideration how much of the you know practical go out and practice time that they'll have so you literally would take four days to do the way that the course it's it's way way bigger way longer than like usa Weightlifting. So way more in depth, lots of science, lots of practical, like it's good. Is there a way that, that Americans can get access to this? They will. Yeah. How do we get access? As soon as we, in a couple of weeks, we're going to drop it with stronger experts and they'll be able to, I'll give you guys access, obviously, but, but, but we'll be able to, we, I'll give you guys access obviously, but, but, um, but we'll be able to, we're going to launch it, you know, just like as a discounted price. And it's really, it's good. It almost killed me though. That's what the beginning of

the semester, I, they called, you know, Phil called me and said, Hey, we have 10 days to do this. So I had to like in 10 days produce 15 hours of video content. So that means I had to make the PowerPoints. I had to do the content. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. And so I neglected my schoolwork. I neglected my workouts. But we got it done. So I was thankful.

A lot. 15 hours, 10 days. It's like per hour of actual published content is like five hours of work right so there you go no matter how good you are in 10 days at coaching or writing it's five hours work for sure it was so brutal it was like it's like a stand-up comedian no matter how funny you are you probably have to write 50 jokes before you find five that land it was a brilliant some of the stuff was easier and then but you know the science making sure that i got it right and like uh we just it's just so in-depth it's like it like take you know it looks at like the percentage of injuries and certain per joint and like what

would cause them but like compares it to soccer like it is so in-depth it is the most in-depth weightlifting course i guarantee that's the most in-depth weightlifting course that has ever existed on planet earth guarantee like show me a better one then i'll start all over and i'll beat it but i don't think it's out there someone find it that way he has to go work 40 hours i feel sorry for the person who created something more than that they see you phil yeah usa weightlifting coming for you bros let's talk a little bit about plateaus this is uh i think everybody that has been in weightlifting more than two years has probably experienced plateaus at some point um and i'd like to just kind of

break these things down into like the lifestyle side of things, the actual training and programming side of things, and then a little bit of the nutrition side of why you may be experiencing plateaus and how you get out of them. Doug, when you start seeing and hearing people talking about plateauing, obviously there could be a million different reasons of why somebody has hit a plateau and not, doesn't feel like they're advancing, whether it's the speed or the amount of weight or whatever it is that they'd like.

What are some of the things that kind of immediately pop in your brain when you hear somebody say they haven't gotten stronger? Well, I mean, there's many different ways you can plateau. You can plateau on fat loss. You can plateau on gaining muscle. You can plateau on building strength. Maybe it's just one movement. Maybe your squat's going up, but your bench press has just been the same

for the past six months or a year or whatever it is. So just because you're plateauing doesn't mean that you're not making progress in any category. It could just be one or two things. You know, first you got to look at, are you simply under recovering? If we're talking about strength and our muscle mass, like if you're under recovering, then, you know, you basically resort to kind of the big two and maybe a third of, are you getting enough calories? We can talk about macros there as well. Are you getting enough sleep and rest? Are you supplementing, which is supplements, so it's like a fraction of those first two. I feel like that's always the place to start. You could go plateau and then go revamp your whole training program,

but it might be a fruitless effort if you don't address your nutrition and or recovery. And it can be potentially a lot more work and could be totally unnecessary to revamp your whole program when that's not the problem in the first place. Your programming might be good. So I think it's wise to make sure that your recovery is on point before you go rewriting programs yeah i totally agree match you actually uh just coached morgan through probably like the longest streak in his life uh granny's only what 16 years old now 17 uh so it's not that long of a life morgan sorry bud you got a couple more coming. But what were some of the things, just the conversations that you had with him on keeping his head in the game and battling to kind of get past some of the sticking points?

Well, to be clear, too, it was, you know, his mom is his primary coach. But what we did do is meet once a week and like talk through the programming, talk through his lifestyle. We did exactly what I would tell anyone to do. You know, we looked at his sleep, his diet, his stress in his life, which he was definitely going through some stress with relationships that he's not, you know, he's young. So this is the first time he's dealing with that. You know, we looked at like intensity.

We looked at total volume. We looked at total volume. We looked at relative intensity and frequency. And we just, you know, made changes until something hit. And now that it's hit, you know, you know, we've, you know, especially like they're going to visit Cal Strength, for example, and they're like not going to veer from what's working. So they're not going to like go in like, oh, let's try Dave's program. So now that we figured a good formula, Crystal's wise enough to know, all right, we're not

going to fear from what's happening. But it was definitely an interesting time because it all started with he had a bad competition at his youth world championships. And I think there was some mental things he dealt with. It was just, it was a combination of a lot, but now he's broke, he's broken through it and he's like a whole new, a whole new human being. So hats off to him, to Crystal, to everyone that was involved with that. Yeah. The first thing that always comes to my mind and like the question I like the question when someone reaches out and asks about plateaus or why they aren't getting stronger, I actually

very rarely find that it is the program. I think if somebody's just following a pretty standard program with progressive overload, you have some heavyweights, you do a lot of accessories and you're getting the volume and your body is going going to adapt. I think the biggest thing that I run into is people expecting results way too fast, not understanding how long it takes. I think a lot of times this question comes up when you're transitioning in that two- to three-year training window in which, at first, everything comes so easy. Every week, something great happens in the gym. And when you start to hit that two-year mark or that three-year mark

where you actually have to really learn how to train hard, instead of just getting stronger, adding five pounds to the bar, the amount of effort that people put into lifting weights is, you know, lifting weights and getting stronger. Yes, putting weight on the bar is a piece of that. But if you're not actively thinking about the level of aggression, and the level of commitment that you're bringing to each training session and walking out feeling completely waxed and knowing that you left it all there, there's a lot to be desired and how hard you're actually working while you're training. And I think that that's one of the biggest, you know,

kind of turning points when people start to hit these roadblocks where things get really frustrating and you go, well, this is one, it's kind of part of it, but two, you really got to learn how to work hard and you really got to learn how to put the reps in. And, and once you get out of that real sweet spot of, you know, the first couple of years, things may not happen every month. They may not happen every quarter, every three months. It may take six months to actually add 10 pounds to the bar. And for me, in my personal training, my progression, and this sounds so depressing to think that this was like, I considered this success, but I added 10 pounds to each lift in my strongest years of training from snatch,

clean and jerk, back squat, front squat, and deadlift, I basically added 10 pounds to each of those lifts over each CrossFit season. And I thought that was awesome. But that's an entire year of training insanely hard, five to six days a week, sleeping, eating. I mean, eating a lot and lifting a lot and training very, very hard for 10 pounds of lift. So there's a piece of this where I want to say to people, well, you just have to learn how to work harder because hard work in the end is going to be one of the biggest catalysts to being able to push yourself to the next level. There's always the balance between working hard and working smart, like you're talking about. Even if I zoom back out a little bit more, being consistent is obviously a huge component here.

I remember running the gym and people would say, oh, I haven't really lost any weight. Then we dig into how often they're actually training. They think they're there four days a week, but really they're there two and a half days a week on average. And so are you doing all of your workouts? Are you showing up as often as you need to? Uh, if you're plateaued and you're training, you know, three or less days per week, you probably just need a little bit more training, like four days a week, five days a week, maybe six days a week. But I think four or five is kind of the sweet spot for good progress for kind of normal people. Uh, the other component here is that say you, you have a, a on paper, it looks like a good structure to your, to your training.

You're, you're doing the right movements, you're doing appropriate volume, et cetera. The question then might become, you know, what really is your limiter? What is the weak, the weak link in the chain? That's, that's limiting your progress. If every time you get a really long torso as an example, the weak link in the chain that's limiting your progress. If every time you have a really long torso, as an example, and every time you front squat heavy, you fold.

Maybe your thoracic spine folds and your elbows drop. And then after you get done front squatting, maybe you go do a bunch of leg pressing and you do a bunch of just like leg quad type work. But that's not the problem. The problem isn't that your legs aren't strong enough. Granted, making your legs stronger is still a good thing you do a bunch of just like leg quad type work but that's not that's not the problem the problem isn't that your legs aren't strong enough granted making your legs stronger is still a good thing for many other things especially if you're not just a weightlifter if you're a soccer player or whatever it is but if you're plateaued on the front squat yeah you got a core a core problem

you have a stability problem well if that's not addressed in the programming then getting stronger at these other things isn't going to make that particular lift improve. Irrelevant. Exactly. I think there's like, I think there's like a checklist you could easily go through. Like I'm, I'm with the help of Dr. Lighting and Dr. Cook, which about it, I think they're going to be on the show in a couple of weeks, but you know, I'm going to, I'm developing this chart where I can, where I can actually come up with correlations between like what's causing the problem. So you can look at sleep on a day-to-day basis. You can look at diet on a day-to-day basis. Stress in school for my athletes, stress in life, which are two different things. But stress is

stress because stress is going to cause cortisol and hormonal imbalances, just like when you work out. Then I look at intensity. I'm going to look at total volume, frequency, and then relative intensity. And then it gets into like, you know, like some deeper things like K values and that number of optimal lifts. But, you know, the main things were the first thing, the first few things I said, and then we'll look and you can easily, thanks to statistics and Excel sheets, you can come up with correlations on what is the main cause, you know, like where is, what's the variable that's, you know, pinpointing the dip in training results. So, you know, you just, or you could easily just go through it simply and be like,

has anything changed with my sleep? Has anything changed with my diet? Is there stress been changed? If all those things in your life are like money, then you can start to say okay you know i probably need to change one of these things like intensity total volume but you don't change them all at once because then you don't know what worked change one wait a couple months you have this then change another that's why the process could be long but if you change them all you'll never know what was the main thing that needed to change. Yeah. I think that's also, I mean, we were talking about it literally at the beginning of the show. Like, does your lifestyle actually, you know, allow the opportunity to be getting

stronger and like almost panning out to like, what is the actual goal? Like everybody wants to get stronger, but is strength really the goal? is that really what you want to do it does it mean that much to you that and and being stronger is actually aligned with what who you want to be outside of the gym um you know if you're if you're trying to compete at the crossfit games it 100 everything should be aligned with that goal and you need to get stronger if you're trying to just live a great life um it's not a priority it's it's not a priority so walking in and thinking you're going to add five pounds to your front squat and and go i think i test match this was actually awesome because when we were at your house was the first time i had tested a head single and

since i did the one ton challenge over a year before we did that i'd never i've never seen you do that that was the first time and i squatted more uh at your house i squatted 375 at your house i squatted 365 um when i did the one-ton challenge at crossfit surmount out here and bell is too you didn't use a bell, did you? No. Yeah. We were definitely not planning on it, and we stayed up until like 1, 2 o'clock in the morning the night before,

which is a whole different thing. But, you know, like if I test something once a year and I'm relatively close to 400 pounds, which is kind of like my brain, what I still consider to be like very strong for me. Um, and I haven't squatted in a long time, but if I'm, if I'm within a few percentage points of that, I feel great. And you're six weeks away from my life doesn't align with being able to squat over 400 right now. And it probably won't for a while. So why, why would my goal and why would I be having this added pressure on my, on myself to, we have to go get stronger. You have to go get stronger.

I think I'm strong enough. What I need to do is be consistent. And maybe you're hitting plateaus because your life is not aligned with your training or your training is not aligned with your life and having a better conversation with yourself about what the actual goal is and what would you, you would like to get out of spend, you know, what you would like the result to be from putting X amount of time in at the gym. What does that actually look like? And I think that being able to objectively view who you would like to be and how weightlifting aligns with that person is probably a really good place to start when it comes to those lifestyle choices. Because me waking up at 530 in the morning

probably doesn't align with having a 500 pound back squat. You just can't grow that much. Hey, now who wants to go downstairs and think about putting 500 pounds on a barbell? That just makes me want to find you last year. Yeah. Yeah. I saw it when you winked at your wife.

I saw it. Oh yeah. That's for later. Yeah. Get the weekend for what? That does align with your lifestyle oh yeah if my wife if my wife is watching me lift i'm gonna go heavy because i know she likes that and so it works to my advantage you know yeah uh different that's different so you know you know like if you know

for all of you listening if you don't have like four days a week 90 minutes times four to put into it getting strong is like, you know, you're probably putting too much pressure on yourself and that's okay. So if you have less than what I just said, Hey man, just be cool with that and be like, look, I would much rather be a good dad and a good husband than I care about getting strong. I am like getting strong to me is super easy. Like, you know, I can get stronger just because I'm at such a lower level than I've been at. So like, I don't have to. But, like, for most people, it's going to take a lot of work.

But, like, if you just want to stay healthy, which leads to me being able to play with my kids and to be better for my wife, if you know what I mean, then, like, things are more important, like work capacity, you know, being able to move properly. I want to play – throw a football with my kids. I want to go outside and play football with them. So there's just things that are more important to me. Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, when I think about, uh, you know, all the things that, um, create setting, like,

let's be honest, people want to set PRs. If you listen to the show, you're, you want to be getting stronger and seeing the results. I think that really just being able to objectively view how many positive benefits come out of being in the gym and having between 20, maybe 60 minutes, three to five times a week to get into the gym and actually develop yourself, focusing on you know, focusing on your own health, like the number of benefits that can come out of just spending that time in the gym. Um, when you think about just putting five pounds on the bar, that's a really small piece of the much larger puzzle. Um, it, it is kind of tough because, you know, when you go on Instagram and you see people getting

super jacked and doing the highlight reel of their life. But the reality is, is that all of this stuff should just make you live a higher quality life. And hitting plateaus is part of, you know, I always go back to this awesome joke that I, if I keep saying it one day, it's going to be a reality and that I want to, I want to back squat 315 when I'm 80 years old. Like if that really is a possibility, I don't need to do anything except be able to squat 315 every week for the rest of my life. It has nothing to do with being able to squat 430 pounds, which I've never done before. It has everything to do with just continually showing up and telling your body that you live in an ecosystem in which you will have 315 pounds on your back for the

rest of your life. And if you can't sit down and stand up, you're going to get crushed. So keep adapting. As your body gets older and it works less optimally, you have to continually be strong enough and figure out a way to stand up with this weight on your back. And that's consistency. If you can set the goal of consistency of just, hey, I did it today, one day longer than I did yesterday, that's a PR. You did it.

Congratulations. You know, one thing I think we don't, we don't talk a whole lot about it, but, you know, for people as they get older, I know one thing that helps me is using velocity, you know, because like, you know, if I don't want to go heavier, you could easily simply pick a number. Like, let's say that 280, 280 pounds is your number. And instead of like trying to get to 285 or 300 pounds, you know, you could easily monitor progress by seeing how fast you push 280. So, like it really keeps masters out of trouble. It keeps me out of trouble because it also tells me when I know good and well today is not a good day.

You know, if I go to 80% and it's well below normal, then I'm going to be like, look, okay, today's a good day to do some bodybuilding and kick it home. That's a good way to start. You can use Gemware for that? Yeah, I use Gemware for that. You don't have to buy Gemware because if you're just an individual in your garage, you could buy the Flex unit, which is way cheaper. I would recommend that Mash 5, by the way and you get five percent off there it is yeah but you know it's it's a cheaper version and it's still a very cool app and they got a really cool social uh aspect to it you got a little social media aspect yeah

yeah it keeps me from doing dumb stuff like i wish i'd had it when i was younger i would have probably still be lifting because i would have been like, okay, today is obviously not a day to max out. Yeah. It's 80% is 10% less than normal. Yeah. Anytime I've ever focused on, on, you know, peak power or velocity over grinding strength and heavier weights, my body always feels better. And I make good progress like that. Like I'm, I'm stronger than I am fast, I think. And so training speed, uh, is, we talked about the weak, the weak link in the chain.

For me, especially for movements that I'm mechanically disadvantaged at, like squatting, deadlifting, I can grind a little bit easier. Training for speed, doing dynamic effort type stuff with moderate weights, you know, 60 to 80 percent, has always given me good progress. And my joints feel good. I'm not too beat up i'm not too sore i've always always really responded well with that type of training that's how we're peaking right now by the way um we are peaking by using velocity for my entire team so instead of like uh instead of like typically this time of year you know we're we're like less than two weeks we're like a week and a half out now you know we would be doing heavy everything you know we're we're like less than two weeks we're like a week and a half out now you know we would be doing heavy everything you know lower volume higher intensity but we're doing only higher

intensity on snatch clean and jerks and like squatting it's all speed work it's all you know we're really focused on strength speed for the most part which is that you know somewhere between 0.7 and one meter per second which is basically somewhere around 60%. We'll just say on average. And so it's working really well. So I don't know when this is going to come out. I hope it comes out slightly after national, so it will be too late for people to jump on this. We'll make sure.

Yeah. But it's worked so much better. So people are feeling better, so they can put all their effort into snatch and cleanser. And two, when you're trying to peak your squat along with your snatch and clean and jerk mentally, especially if you're that person that's very efficient, meaning your front squat is really close to your clean and jerk, it's a lot mentally on someone. But when they know they don't have to worry about that, they're just going fast, man, everyone is fresher.

Everyone is peaking better. Everyone is focused more on slants and cleanser. I've been meaning to do this forever. I was afraid to make a big change. But, you know, this time I'm like, you know, what's the worst going to happen? So I tried it, and it crushed, crushed. So there you have it. What are your thoughts on kind of like playing or fluctuating people's volume

and whether they hit a sticking point, they're hitting some sort of plateau, everyone's getting frustrated, whether increasing volume or decreasing volume. What are some of the kind of thoughts that go through your head on just seeing where someone's at or where they've been, where they're at and how you proceed forward? I would ask them these questions first. It'd be like, you know, how's your appetite? And I would ask them, you know, how's your sleep? So like, if their appetite is affected, meaning they're struggling to eat or if they're struggling to sleep, then I would say decrease for sure volume. If they're, none of that is affected, I would say then their body's handling the stress fine. Now we need to increase it. You know, is a good,

you know, is Is that scientific? There's a lot of data that would say I'm right, but it's not 100% scientifically backed. But I think that's a safe bet. But if you're using, obviously, velocity would tell you more scientifically. These dudes are not handling this volume well because 80% is killing them. So that would be the scientific way. But really just asking those questions.

In correlation, because I've already looked at this data, they go hand in hand. When someone's diet and they're, you know, they're struggling to eat and they're struggling to sleep, normally that 80%, 85% is dipped way below than typical velocity. So just ask the questions. I'll tell you the answer. I think it's also, you know, many times when people run into roadblocks in their training, it's like, just do the exact opposite. And like logically thinking, just do the exact opposite

of what you've been doing for the last 12 weeks, 24 weeks. Can't go wrong with that. Yeah. If you've been smashing yourself with volume and you're wondering why you're not recovering well and you can't get stronger, well, it's probably because your body's telling you you've just been beating the crap out of yourself and it's time to give it a break. Spend four weeks, spend eight weeks working on speed, power,

and back all the volume down and just give your body a little bit of time to have a different stimulus, adapt to something new because you probably have just hit the end of what's possible in a specific, whether mesocycle or even longer, if it's eight, 12 weeks, however, whatever you've been following for that block, just do the exact opposite, which will be really hard, especially if you think that you have a mindset in which you just want to hammer volume, volume, volume. But giving yourself time to have a break, whether it's if you've been training five days a week and hitting a lot of volume, just back it down to three. Focus a little bit more on speed and power um and then quite the

opposite if you've been testing wonder at maxes you know weekly or you know every other week like i i say that now and it sounds so ridiculous but i can specifically remember one of the first training blocks that i wrote for myself being on mond, build to a max back squat on Tuesday, build to a max snatch on Wednesday, build to a max clean and jerk. Bulgarian CrossFit. Awesome. All day.

Like every day was max out. And then that's my kind of CrossFit right there. Yeah. Hit Metcons as hard as you could immediately after there was no intelligence to it whatsoever and i be like i wonder why i can't snatch any more than 215 right now this is this it doesn't make because you're snatched 215 every day and this is all you were capable of why is it so hard for me to eat right now because your sympathetic nervous system is lit up man so yeah it feels like this big like a little pop knot.

It's funny how you learn these things later on, but they make so much sense at the time. But really just doing the exact opposite and giving your body four to eight weeks is, if you're able to objectively view where you've been, where you're at, why you're not getting better, and just find a different stimulus, you will typically find that your body reacts very, very well to something new. Doug, you'll like this.

In my excess fizz class I'm taking, they paired the neuromuscular system with the GI tract. And I was like, normally they don't. Even though I see now totally why they do, because like when someone like is just killing themselves, you know, like Anders was is like, it's all sympathetic. You know, the vagus nerve is not, it's not being activated very much because there's no parasympathetic time.

And so, but I didn't realize just how much, you know, the, the stomach affects, you know, the neuromuscular system and stomach affects the neuromuscular system and how much the neuromuscular system affects your GI tract. You can't digest. Your stomach slows completely down. You're going to get stomach cramps when all you're doing is going balls out like he was. Your digestion is not even taking place.

It shuts you down. Dude, last time we were in San Francisco. Doug, who did we interview? It was one of Galpin's buddies. Jimmy Bagley. Jimmy Bagley. He was doing testing on gut biomes and the results from gut biome samples, they were finding that specific training programs will suit other people better

based on their gut health. Ah, I would love, really, I would love. It's probably been like a year and a half since we talked to him too. We should have him back on to talk about that. It's just, you know, when I was in school, we never talked about the enteric nervous system, which is like the, you know, they talk about the other that the stomach has a mind of its own which the gi tract does you know the enteric nervous system is its own nervous system that and those nerves are nothing to do with the brain at all and so it's just cool to think about how much the stomach is on its own it can it can be like i don't need you brain i'll do my own thing so yeah i really hope that they didn't have to shut that study down now that we're talking.

I hope not. You got me all pumped up. Yeah. He, they had like, I want to say they had just finished it, but he wasn't really comfortable talking about the results of it. But I, I asked him if they were going to be able to look at just specific bacteria that was in the gut and be able to tell how that individual athlete was going to be able to respond to specific training stimuluses where it was like you're a much higher volume person lower volume speed power and he very high level said that is the goal of of where they were going with it with zero specifics um because they just

hadn't gotten to that point so i wonder if it's like you can make changes to you know like depending on like let's say that obviously my stomach bacteria is going to say that i'm very go heavy and chill type person yeah i wonder if you could like because of your training you know is it you know your muscles are very like plastic you know i is it, you know, your muscles are very like plastic, you know, I mean, they change, you know, because they're multinucleated, I mean, they have multiple nucleuses on a cell, nerve fiber, sorry, muscle fiber. So like, I wonder if in the stomach, because it has its own, you know, nervous system, is it plastic? Meaning, can it change based on the way you train? hope so because i don't want to just be the guy who lives heavy for the rest of my life i would love to become like more like you

uh anders is what i'm trying to be um well yeah that was quite the compliment i know i don't even know what to say wow i want to go the strongest man in the world wants to be a little bit more like a slightly mediocre strong guy. I want to go to Jamaica and be able to, like, beat everybody in swimming. And with their – you didn't just beat them. You murdered Jay. I was like, yeah. I was so proud of you.

I just felt like we were champions. We beat them in a speed sport. Yeah, I was like, yeah. They're so tough, Jamaica. Where you at? Anders Varner comes to Jamaica. They should have wrote a newspaper. Bring him to Champs.

That's the name of the track meet, right? Champs. National Championship for Ice Force. All right, let's chill right there. We're not going. Put him in the water. Let's raise him in the water. Right.

Whose house were you swimming in front of in the ocean there with Jay? Oh. It was DJ Khaled. DJ Khaled. That's right. That's right. Okay. He had an armed guard.

Yeah. They had their hands on their nines. We the best. That's what I should have stood up. Gotten out of the water. Started, like, beating my chest. Like, we the best. And they're like, pat, pat, pat. Yeah, I know. that's what i should have stood up gotten out of the water started like beating my chest like we the best

mma stuff on him doug did that when uh when he was bringing us through the jungle and we were going on that hike dude you had like uh how old was um magnolia magnolia she was not even a year old and she's like um i had her in the little carrier we've heard we've heard this story about me racing jay in the ocean multiple times but the best story to come out of happened in the first three minutes of us being on the ground in Jamaica. We land in the plane. We find our team. You have Magnolia. She's like three months old.

I mean, she probably weighed like 12 pounds at the most. Your first baby girl. Everyone's like, like we know. And we get in the van and you have to walk over to your wife who you just flew into Jamaica, who gave birth three months ago. And you have to go over to your wife who you just flew into jamaica who gave birth three months ago and you have to go uh there's no car seats you're gonna have to hold her uh i think ashton would have got back on the plane and been like uh enjoy yourself boys i'm going home i i'm so lucky that my wife is like a little chill or or maybe you know magnolia is not so lucky but

but we did it and it worked out man when we were driving through those mountains that's when i was really scared oh my gosh cali's house and we're like you know going through those swerving through those roads but dude i could have sworn when we when he was making us walk through the jungle to go to, I mean, one of the most beautiful deserted beaches I've ever been to. It was unbelievable. That could have been like that movie with Leonardo DiCaprio where he climbs through the trees and all of a sudden he just lands in the island. And there's like pot everywhere. Like all of a sudden you're wrapped up in some gangster scene like i had i thought we were gonna see a body like i had no idea i know i didn't think

we're going anywhere good when we're chopping through those trees i'm like yeah i was like prepared to fight to the death because i had magnolia on my belly you know i'm like, I'm not going down, like, not swimming in. Oh, that was so good. We're climbing through the jungle, and all of a sudden, bam. It was like a beautiful, beautiful beach you could imagine. And trusting her whole life to me, and I'm like going to some deserted place in Jamaica with her. It was so rad, right, that we had, had like we'd come down and it was there was like

a waterfall coming out of the mountains right where it entered into the spring so it was like super cold water coming off the mountains and then if you went into i assume it was the atlantic ocean i don't know what ocean it was the caribbean you know the caribbean yeah it was like there was like a legitimate break it was actually under the cold water. It was in your feet, and then the warm water was up top. It was incredible. Is it the Caribbean or the Caribbean? I don't know.

I don't know. Either or. I don't know. Caribbean. I'm going Caribbean. That's my guess. We can answer any question you got about plateauing at any stage in your training career, but we do not know the answer to Caribbean

or Caribbean. Either way, it's cool. MasterLeague.com, this is a great talk. Go and crush your plateaus, guys. Doug Larson. Instagram, Douglas C. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are

Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Get over to BarbellShrugged.com forward slash DieselDad where all the dads getting strong, lean, and athletic without sacrificing family, fatherhood, or fitness. And for everyone in LA, Palm Springs, San Diego, and Vegas, get over to your local Walmart. We are on the shelves in the pharmacy. Friends, we'll see you next week.

That's a wrap, my friends. Make sure you head over to airforce.com. Check out the Special Warfare. We have another story coming with them on Tuesday. I also want you to get over to leakygutguardian.com forward slash shrugged. Bioptimizers are friends helping you out keeping your gut healthy. Also, Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged.

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