Barbell Shrugged - How to Build a High School Strength Training Program w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #607

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   What are the priorities for early teenage lifters. Coaching kids through puberty and large growth phases How to coach large groups and get great results Why movement quality is the priority in youth lifters How often should you test youth athletes   Connect with our guests:   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug we are talking about how you can build a high school strength training program. What we're really talking about is how you train adolescents. There's such a giant gap between somebody that might be 14 years old and just starting their athletic training career and somebody that's 18 years old. And if you have 18 year olds that are super freaks like Coach Travis Mash does, they're standing on world stages. And that gap between 14 and being a world-class athlete happens very quickly. And how you can manage that, whether you have kids that are getting into strength training, whether you are a coach that trains athletes in the high school level, or you're just very interested in youth development and what weight lifting can do for kids through that time period in which they are experiencing massive growth,

just in size and musculature. And you are going to be able to learn what the priorities are for early teenage lifters, coaching kids through puberty and large growth phases, how to coach large groups and get great results, why movement quality is the priority for youth lifters, coaching kids through puberty and large growth phases, how to coach large groups and get great results, why movement quality is the priority for youth lifters, and how often you should be testing your youth athletes. Shrug family, I want to thank our friends over at BiOptimizers. At some point, we've all been sold a big lie, including yours truly. It's called the protein lie. Starting in the 1980ss supplement companies began pushing massive protein consumption we all believe that more protein equals more muscle growth I'm here to tell you it's all a big fat lie let's say you eat an 8 ounce chicken breast you're consuming

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Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we're going to be talking about high school strength and conditioning programs and how you can get your 15 to 19-year-old super jacked. Hopefully get them a D1 scholarship because those are just getting handed out all over the place and the only way you're going to be able to do it is uh do what we're doing today in the show uh but before we get into the show fellas i'm up here in new hampshire rural new hampshire do you know how do you know how hard it is if you do not live in a place where, like, there's a gym on every single corner? I was on the phone yelling at Doug this morning about the hardest part of my life. He's in the dentist, and I'm yelling at him while he's inside, like, this perfect dentist office with, like, probably, like, 1996, like, slow jazz playing where they're trying to be nice

and calm and i'm like i have to drive 20 minutes to a gym and i have to drive 20 minutes home and it adds an hour to my to my workout i can't just go to my i can't just go to my garage and go squat a little bit and then get back to my real life. It is literally like the hardest thing in my life right now for the next month is to just get to the gym, to actually just go there, to commute. I have a commute to go lift weights. It couldn't be more annoying. Wait, so your 20-minute drive is the hardest part of your life right now? You've got some high-quality first-world problems. It's not the drive, though. It's getting away from family and having your wife watch your kids while you're gone for so long. Is that why it's so difficult?

You take for granted how easy it is when you have a home gym to get a workout in. Like if I have half an hour, I can go smash four exercises, hit it hard. And then I'm back to doing whatever I need to do. It's like a full effort planned out in the, in, in my day right now to when am I going to do this? How am I going to get there? Do I have two hours is literally like what it takes. My 30-minute workout that I usually hit three to five times a week is now a two-hour long process. There's no way around it because of the commute. It's like what most people face on a daily basis that don't have home gyms.

But I've had one for so long that I just completely forget. Right. And when I get to Globo Gym, I don't – I'm not saying this to be a jerk. I want everyone to go to the gym and have a lot of fun, but I cannot help it. When I train at a Globo Gym, i have to be the strongest person there i am so insanely sore right now by just trying to prove myself because i don't train around people like i don't go to the crossfit gym where there's competition every day and some big gorilla picked up the hundreds and was doing rdls with them the other? I got to go grab the 110s, and I got to do it from a deficit.

Yeah. Of course. Now my hamstrings are so damn sore. It's absurd. You can't put me in a regular gym. I lose my mind. I feel like I'm 23 years old again. I'm actually looking to take Brian's advice from the show we just did with him recently where he was talking about doing more sets on things that don't make you as sore and fewer sets on the things that do make you sore.

So instead of just blindly saying I'm going to do five sets of RDLs like you just do two or whatever it is. Unless you have a really good reason for needing to do specifically the thing that's going to make you sore like RDLs. Especially he was saying if there's a caloric deficit, he's at reduced calories and being brutally sore for five days. It's harder to recover from when you're in a deficit. Right. Protein synthesis needs calories, specifically protein. That's me right now. In 110-pound dumbbells from a deficit for RDL. I've got my hamstrings all lit up, and it's a problem

because you're around all those people in the regular Globo Gym. When I train in the garage, it's like, oh, 225, that feels good for the day. I'll just sit down and stand up with that a couple times. Guys, have you ever done – When you see other people doing other weights you're like oh yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna have i'm gonna play king of the jungle and nobody else cares yeah except me same same i can't help it it's terrible you know what a waterberry crucifix is no no it's like, it is like the most

intense posterior chain movement you can do. It only takes like five pound dumbbells. Literally, if you do it with five pound dumbbells, all you do is put your hands up directly to your side, from your shoulders, and do a good morning.

It's all you do. You probably want to sit your butt back and keep your legs straighter than normal, but it's really just a hinge. And for some reason, your hamstrings will be the most lit up you have ever... With five-pound dumbbells? Five-pound dumbbells. Makes any amount of weight on RDLs look, like, insignificant.

Go do that. Yes. I did those when I was working with D1 Performance and one of the one of the assistants, he was doing an internship from college, showed me that and so I was like, this is doing nothing. And the next day I couldn't even walk with five pound dumbbells. Wow. I want it. I see a five pound set of dumbbells in the office I'm in right now. I'm going to go try it right after we do this show. Send me a video. I'll tell you if you're doing it right.

And if you're not sore, I'll kiss your tail. More sore, you're already out. Maybe I should wait a day or two until I can walk again after Tuesday's performance. Let's talk about training some teenagers. Where do we start this? Where do we start this? How do we build out a program? Because I think this is – I'd actually love to know what –

Doug and Travis, you – Doug, you had a really good strength coach. I would say I had a great strength coach as well, whether I knew about it or not at the time. But what did a lot of like your program look like? And now that you have 25 years of experience, when you think about bringing somebody in that's 14, 15 years old, just starting to get strong and hit puberty, some of the big pieces that you – some of the big rocks that you would start moving in their training program as you structure what hopefully will be a long career of lifting weights? Yeah, I was pretty fortunate. I found a strength coach when I was about 14. So basically like right

when I'm starting high school, I was like ninth grade when I first met him. And I was very fortunate that he was a super extroverted. I was very introverted and didn't say much. He was super extroverted and just like talked and repeated himself constantly, which was good reinforcement for me. He was funny, so he was enjoyable to be around. I feel like as a high school kid, little things like that

go a really long way. Even if he did know what he was talking about, but even if he didn't, I still would have kept showing up because I didn't know any better if he really knew what he was talking about compared to other professional strength coaches. I just knew that it seems like he likes me, and I think weightlifting is cool, and I see there's benefits there, and this guy's going to help me out.

And he wasn't – it was free. He wasn't charging me or anything. So I had great access to unlimited training, so to speak, and I was just excited to fucking eat up all the knowledge I could. Um, but our program wasn't fancy, you know, it was just a, you know, basic straight sets, you know, we do cleans and then squats and then RDLs and then lunges and then assistance work and we go home. And, uh, most of it at the time,

especially was, you know, mostly hypertrophy rep ranges, just getting volume in trying to put on weight for football and wrestling and everything else I was doing. And I did. I started really training with him consistently. 14, 15, something like that. And then over the course of the next two years, I put on a solid 20 pounds.

And you learned how to move. Yeah, I learned how to move, doing a lot of 20 rep back squats. I did gymnastics when I was younger. So I had semi-good upper body strength for a kid from doing years of gymnastics. And then I had good mobility and flexibility. So I didn't have any big mobility restrictions with squats and cleans and snatches and whatever else. But yeah, man, just doing the basics.

Nothing fancy. No mech cons or not much cardio. That was all done with running sprints for football and doing conditioning for wrestling. It was just us just lifting. Yeah, that was probably the most important thing. I actually, I would say that so much of what I deem to be important comes down to like really two things.

One is just movement. I always had people teaching me how to do things the right way, which was like something that I didn't even know was happening. Like my dad knew how to squat. My first strength coach, his name was Steve Sakis, and that was actually my dad's coach. Like my dad went to his actual gym and then I trained with the wrestling team. So you kind of just get into like a scenario where you just have really good coaches around you, whether you believe it or not. And then the actual like culture of where we were training, it was like straight up dungeons like no no air conditioning close the door like intentionally making it so hot and like feeling like there you couldn't get out it was like

that guy was so good at creating this like specifically for wrestling it was like now i'm saying this 25 years later but it it felt like he put a bunch of pit bulls into a room and then closed the cage and said, well, you guys go lift weights and figure this thing out. And I was like the smallest, like most timid dude in there. Cause I had no idea what was going on,

but you've got like the Great Bridge wrestling team like playing king of the jungle all at once in this like hot steamy room and it's like man but it also created like a winning culture and I think that that is something that

I just I don't think I've ever gotten away from that like that vibe of like just the hardcore grind that happens in weight rooms when you have the right people around and really good coaching and movement capacity. And then let's create a culture where everybody has to fight their way to the top. I love it. It just seems to work really well. You know, I would, if anyone listening, if I were you, I would probably, you know, I would recommend if you're a coach to start by doing a very simple assessment. And what you can do, the simplest of assessments would be like an overhead close grip, you know, squat.

So you take just a dowel. It doesn't have to be a bar. And then you'll see, like, you know, can these can these people you know if they can do that they can perform any movement you're about to teach them and if they can't you know based on how bad they fail it you want to maybe you know put some guys in a group of just learning to move their body weight then a group of people who might be using kettlebells and then the group that's like using the barbell but you just yeah i wouldn't lump everyone into hey let's use a barbell because you're going to see in high school there's's gonna be plenty of kids who should not be touching

the barbell because they can't you know they can't squat down to take a poop you know so yeah actually how many kids come to you travis that are maybe not specifically to you but before you had like the the level of athlete that you do now but how many kids would walk into mash elite and and say 10 years ago as you were building your team and all that and it's like don't have just like regular kid mobility to be able to just sit down and have their arms over their head like did video games kill the teenager even that long ago like oh yeah so they just couldn't move for sure there was a kid who um one of my, I hope he listens to this, but one of my athletes, Bresner was his name, Bresner Montoya,

and when he came to me, he was a wreck. His posture was so bad that, you know, and I was a younger coach, and I really thought that maybe I couldn't help him. That's how bad it was. But that kid is still now, this was in like 2009. Here we are 12 years later, and the dude is still training. Now he's competed in weightlifting, powerlifting, and he's still training to this very day.

But it was a challenge. I remember one day, it was when I was younger, so what I'm about to tell you, I'm not like this anymore, but he was wanting to put a sissy pad on the bar and I said absolutely not and so there was like 65 pounds and he was like whining and I I said some things I shouldn't I grabbed the bar off his back and told him to leave because it was a boy you know and he was whining about it you know he started crying I felt so bad and I sat him down and I was like,

look, I just want to help you get through this process and to grow up and become a man. We formed a bond at that moment that we still have to this day. Now this kid, he's gone from someone who I thought wasn't even going to graduate high school to, I'm very proud of

the man he's become. That's awesome. We used to do a lot of graduate high school to, I'm very proud of the man he's become. So yes. That's awesome. Yes. We used to do a lot of, a lot of like group things. Like we would do car pushes together in high school. I feel like that was like good. We didn't have like a weightlifting team, but like for all the guys that trained together, like doing kind of partner wads we'll call them for the moment where we're,

we're pushing a suburban and there's three guys pushing at the same time. We're kind of just like rotating one guy out one new guy comes in like that type of like team conditioning exercise was uh really cohesive for us um we also used to do like farmer's carries where we would just put on you know 65 pounds per hand with like thick handled dumbbells and and just like you carry as long as you can we set them down next guy picks them up like all that kind of stuff in in high school i remember being really really fun and i didn't really feel like i was training even though i totally was yeah yeah you were developing work capacity and tons of core stability while you're laughing and having a good time with your teammates yeah really we've uh we've had two strength coaches on that run full high school programs.

My alma mater, Willis Northampton, Blaine Lappin, and then we have Cody Hughes coming out on the show next week. Spencer Arnold too. Spencer. Yeah, he runs a solid program. The thing that has stood out to me in interviewing those guys so much is that from what I was doing when I was in high school to what they're doing now, there is such a system and structure to laying out a full year that is super impressive that I never had like I actually could I don't have it anymore but I remember printing out the summer training uh that our hockey coach gave us and it was like 100 pure bodybuilding probably could have taken it right out of the muscle and fitness

like magazine just because it was so not athlete specific uh like there was no cleans there was no periodizing there was no off-season prep there was no there was nothing that any of those three guys talk a lot about now um but how how do you travis this is actually like with you being at school and having an off-season and on-season how do you guys structure 12 months of training so that you're actually peaked out when you're actually in season? I mean, just strategic. You know, normally we know our schedule. Right now, for some reason, USA Weightlifting is, you know,

they don't have their meets for next year. So I'm guessing right now, it's really weird. You know, normally they're like a year or two ahead, but right now they're not. They had too much success at the Olympics. I guess. Phil forgot he had to show up to work. Or Phil's like getting ready to make his move to something else. I don't know.

But normally I know and I just look. Here's the thing, the biggest challenge I have is that each of my athletes is different. It's like, you know, right now Ryan's biggest meet is going to be the Senior Worlds. But Morgan's is going to be, you know, Pan Am Games. And then Mallory and Hannah's is going to be, is really going to be here in about seven weeks where they're trying to make the Pan Am Games. So you just got to – So yours is different than like – yeah, yours is different than like I'm a football player and I've got 11 games that I have to prepare for.

And each Friday night I need to be good. And then after that, who cares? It's not who cares. But then it goes immediately into some sort of off-season training. So that was more what I was thinking because your schedule is all over the place. You've got to have individualized everything for each athlete. Right. But I do have high school football players.

I actually am programming for two, at least three Division I recruits right now that are amazing football players. So for them you know yeah a program uh in a block of time obviously after they're done with football becomes the offseason and then about eight weeks out we're talking preseason and then you know now they're in season and so it does it definitely changes you know when we're going offseason we're going to do a ton of hypertrophy work and towards the end of it we're going to try and peak their strength. And so as they go into preseason, it becomes power mainly. It shifts to power. And then when it gets in season, I'm really just going to look at velocity

and I'm going to try to use velocity to either keep them where they're at or preferably I'm really going to try to continue to progress them even on the end season. And if you use velocity, it's not that hard. Yeah, velocity training was not something we had. Right, neither did we. It's unreal how well that that plays into. If your school or your coach has the money or you as an athlete has the money to invest in that, that is such a weapon when it comes to being a high school kid

and managing load and just developing speed and power. Totally. With gym wear, with flex, it's not so expensive as it used to be. So most of these people, if someone can afford to hire me online, normally they can afford to get a flex. And so it makes my job so much easier and i feel it's like having a second coach so if i can't be there every day the flex is like my eye so it tells it'll tell them to stop because i'll set you know limits on how slow they can get

yeah for a 15 year old kid how do you determine how much volume to give them like they're they're young they're they're presumably not anywhere near their their actual limits of their of their For a 15-year-old kid, how do you determine how much volume to give them? They're young. They're presumably not anywhere near their actual limits of their real one-rep max strength. And so even if they're doing 80%, it's like, I don't know, is it really 80%? Probably not, yeah. How much volume do you give younger kids like that, 15, 16, 17, versus like your late 20s athletes? I would look, if you're going to like, if you, to make it easy, if you look at the preliminaries chart, I would always schedule them on the lower end of that, you know, because, you know, they have the optimal levels,

you know, you have, they have the range, and then they have that optimal, they have high, and they have low, and I would just start on the very lowest, I would probably only choose two, three main movements at most for a workout. So that way you're guaranteed, because you've got to look at the total load. You can't just say, hey, I'm squatting this, and you do all this accessory and kill them. But I would keep it to two to three movements at the minimum effective dose. And then it's as easy as asking them, how are you feeling you know if they're feeling you know if every single day they're feeling fine you probably should up it but you know if they're feeling beat to crap you want to pull that back it's like it's as simple as that but yeah start

low and then see what see what happens yeah yeah how do you something we've been doing sorry something we've been doing with a lot of our mentorship athletes with everybody is we do a lot of subjective ratings. How do you feel, scale of 1 to 10? What's your mindset like, scale of 1 to 10? How much energy do you have, scale of 1 to 10? If they set goals, we always ask them how much effort they feel they put into that goal for the past week on a scale of 1 to 10. That's awesome. So quantifying stuff like that.

Even when I train, I train my neighbors. One's a 16, 17-year-old baseball player, and I train his little brother, too. He's like 12 years old. They come over every once in a while, and we train. How lucky to be besides you. Yeah. It was great, man. They come over, and we just train in the garage.

It kind of started during COVID when they didn't have access. They're trying to still be high school athlete for the baseball player, but he wanted to keep putting on muscle mass, but it wasn't training normal, so we started back then. I'll ask them when they come in, like, how how beat up are you how sore are you uh after each exercise you know i'll say i do as many reps as you can with that weight or whatever and then i'll ask him like how how hard was that how hard was that for you scale one to ten at the end of the workout i say overall like how difficult was that for you and they'll be like you know six or whatever and i'll be like okay so next time we can make it harder have it having that that very simple tool to

quantify effort has been really really yeah really really valuable it just it just it calibrates me much more closely than oh yeah that felt pretty good and I'm like what does that mean if they explain explain it to me uh so it just it's and and it it lets people um if they want to just say good because they're being nice to you but you tell them scale one to ten they can they can be like ah it was like a that workout was like a five where they can like kind of say it wasn't that great without saying specifically hey that workout wasn't that great does Does that make sense? Totally. I love it.

I get it. I was going to say, go ahead. I just wanted to add on because you were talking about, like, the subjective rating and how that almost, like, how that relates to overall volume. And it's like I used to coach, I coached the La Jolla lacrosse team for three years when we had the gym in San Diego. And one thing that I noticed is many of the kids that are like very motivated athletically and understand weightlifting, as soon as they walk in, they get it. They know how to work hard and they know how to push themselves.

And then as you move your way down the squat rack, you start to notice like kids that may not know how to work so hard but need and be able to work hard was just increasing volume on them until they got to a point where it was like, I just can't do any more. And you go, oh no, now you have to do more. Like now is the time where you learn how to work hard and actually get the stuff done. In your experience, whether it's subjective ratings or whatever it is, like how have you kind of overcome those differences in a group setting? Because I really felt like

volume and just pushing them to the point where they were really struggling and then having to do more was the only way that I could like really break through of, no, this is, this is now the time where we develop mental toughness. You know, there was a time where I would have totally agreed. There was a time I would totally disagree. And now I go back to agreeing. I'm reading this book called Endure and it's talking about like, you know, fatigue and like most coaches would say fatigue is determined by you know you know

the energy systems they would say it's determined by um your aerobic anaerobic and then lactate thresholds vl2 max but now they're saying it's it's the brain and some really good scientists with some serious data would say that it's completely the brain almost and so i would say yes you got you do need to it's how much pain that someone can do it out let me clarify like the technique has to be number one so like you're doing what you're saying with perfect techniques you're not you know endangering anybody but teaching them to push past what they think is possible is going to pay off dividends at this moment and throughout, you know, completely through their life. Because what they think is possible is exactly what's possible. So I think I would say that that is brilliant. of, you know, I guess athlete data points to track would be at the end of the session,

if you ask the, you know, your athletes, hey, on a scale from one to 10, 10 being you absolutely wrecked me, what would you rate it? And they'll tell you. And then I would times that by, you know, the number of minutes the session lasted and you can get some quality data. And so if you take that, the one to 10 scale times the time, there's like four, you can get some quality data. So if you take that, the 1 to 10 scale times the time, you can get a pretty close to quantifiable data point saying it's a light session, a moderate, a hard, or a crushing session,

with light being less than 150, moderate 150 to 450, hard being 450 to 600, and then greater than 600, you whip this person. You should chill. But the thing that you would want to see, is it matching your intent? So like me, personally, there's going to be, even with my beginners, even with my young athletes, week two is always going to be the week that should kill them. So if on week one, I'm getting a 600 score, I know right away for week two I need to drop things away and start all over.

So anyway, that's a little data point. It's easy. It doesn't cost anything. And it can pay off dividends. And I've already got the data that says it's really good. It's a good – yeah. Travis, did you have anyone helping you train when you were in high school? I did. I got lucky I had a high school coach

Dwight Kerr who looking back obviously he wasn't perfect but he was way ahead of you're talking about the 80's man so he was way ahead of the strength coaches of the time and luckily we did an inter-county they called it powerlifting but it was Cleaninger Squad Bench Deadlift. So it set me up for my, I mean, really set me up for my future. You know, I was like, because I was really good at it, you know, even in eighth grade, I was, you know, I was beating most of the seniors in high school. And so it set me up for what I'd be doing my whole life.

So, yeah, I did coach. And I went to play football at the same school he played at. He played at he played he was a running back at avalanchee state and so i owe the guy a lot he's it's more than just that he was a mentor too for sure yeah i think it's it's really interesting if all three of us you know travis you've been lifting weights for 35 years and doug and i are 25 and we've somehow like those initial people that introduce you to what were some of the things like for you that like as having a mentor that could actually teach you what's going on? Do you feel – I mean I feel like Doug's coach, like as far as like an actual coach, was probably significantly more – I don't want to say intelligent

because that's a weird one because in the end results are the only thing that matter. Advanced. Yeah, like let's say like more just he had read more books about it. The guy that I had was like way more interested in putting a bunch of pit bulls into a room and seeing who could wrestle their way out. So was Coach Kerr, my coach too. It was like, he wanted us to go hard. He pushed us really hard.

Yeah, so you being more attracted to, or not even attracted to, but having a coach that's like just pushing you and creating that culture of just hard work. Do you feel like they – as a young kid, like where is that balance for you of like having a high school coach of like that's very – call it academically or like by the book on how to train versus like just creating a culture where the kids want to show up and grind? In the middle i would want you know like i know there's coaches like like spencer arnold is a is a really good coach who's really data driven um yeah but i'm not sure i've been looking for it i'm not sure that he would be like the coach for me at a young age because you know i need the intense like coach kerr had no problem of jerking me up and telling me when i was being, you know, a little shit, you know.

So I needed that because I was a kid on the verge of, I was easily at a point in my life where I could have gone one of two ways. I was either going to be super successful or I was going to go to prison. You know, that's where I was. I mean, it's the truth. And I needed a coach like him to say, look, you know, you have a lot of athletic ability. You know, you're good in school. Like, you don't have to go down this path. I really want to see you down this.

And he, you know, took me fishing. We went fly fishing. You know, we were in the river waiting, and we had this big talk of, like, possibilities for me on either side. I could either, the possibilities could be if I keep going down this path, I'm going to end up in prison. Or the possibilities could be down this path, I could go to college and experience things I could only dream of. And so thank God I had this guy who was not afraid to pin me against the wall and tell me the truth. And so some parents, when we get mad, it's exactly what that kid needed, what I needed as a 16-year-old. I needed someone to grab me up and say, stop.

You're better than this stop I don't think that there was a chance I was going to jail but I was going the other way where I felt like I may have just turned out a much softer human than I am today like an inability to just deal with real hardship

if presented or when it presented itself I really do attest to so much of a mindset that was created just because I was trapped in this room with these people. I love it. The guy standing in the doorway was this giant that wouldn't let you out. It was kind of terrifying. I love it.

That's exactly what I need. There was no chance of me being soft. I was in such a place. I love it. That's exactly what I need. I didn't need, you know, there was no chance of me being soft. I was in such a place where I grew up. We were forced to do things that my kids would never have to do. But what I did, I was forced to not go to practice, to just make better choices. It's been super interesting interviewing these guys that are running these programs really well because the way that i feel like strength conditioning and and the intelligence that goes behind these programs

now when you're if you're send your kids to a high school or you're lucky enough to live in a in an area where there's an actual strength coach they're really really smart people like if you send your kids to spencer arnold. You have a freaking strength coach that trains Olympians. Three. Three Olympians. Like that was not even remotely something that was like a possibility. And he's like such a good human being. You know that he cares about the kids so much.

And he still has parents questioning him. being you know that he cares about the kids so much like i've never seen yeah i've never i've never come across like a spencer arnold thing where i'm like that guy might be a dick in real life i don't he's like the nicest human he's like on the surface and then you get to talk to me like oh you've never said anything bad about anyone ever like he's got it sweetest guy and the most you know most caring dude and he still gets parents emailing him uh questioning his ability to coach and i'm he let me he sent me one of the emails he's like what would you say to this i'm not gonna tell you that's like a random parent from a not like from one of his like real athletes like but just a random yeah someone at his high school one of his real you know an athlete um a parent from one of his real athletes, but just a random someone at his high school? One of his real, you know,

a parent from one of his athletes at the high school, you know, so it was like it was a basketball player or a baseball player questioning why he needs to lift weights. And like, if Spencer knew what he was doing and I was like, I was like, let me email this parent for you.

I'll email him. I was like, are you kidding me? Like, shut your mouth. You know, stay in your lane, Mr. Parent. Yeah, right. You have one of the best coaches in the world, and you're complaining? This is the problem with America.

That email is the problem with America. That's so crazy. I couldn't imagine being Spencer and being like, how do I even try? Should I just write back, can you go back and watch last year's Olympics? Because right now I'm on a plane to the Olympics to coach another athlete that's the best in the world. Yes. And the dude is so good.

I mean, it's not a rant about Spencer, but the dude is starving for knowledge. He's one of my two. There's like three coaches out there that are my go-to, and he's one of them because he's always looking to get better. And then this parent is complaining. I'm like, you can't find a better one. You can't. And you're complaining. I just think it's so cool that the top-level coaches, like we are literally in like this era

of strength and conditioning and I'm sure it's in every industry where information and knowledge is so readily available. But how coaches are able to apply it to their specific situations and being in a high school setting where you're taking kids and we've talked about it with these coaches.

It's like, how do you take somebody that's 14 and get them into a program that's also helping somebody that's 18, 19 years old? Because those developmental years are insanely different from the 14-year-old that hasn't hit puberty yet to the 16-year-old who's so going through gross spurts that's lanky and unathletic and goofy and tendons are doing weird stuff and muscles are growing and then you've got a 19 year old that is doing a post-graduate year like at williston where where i went to high school and guys got a full beard and he shaves every day and like he's he's already graduated high school already been drafted and then he shows up at high school to like get a year older for next year's draft and you're like how the hell does that 19 year old sit on the same program as the 14 year old because that's where i was when i showed up and there was no actual plan

there was no system to to developing an athlete through through those years we just kind of did a lot of heavy back squats and and tried to get mean, for lack of better terms, like just try and learn how to be aggressive because there was no plan for actually progressing over what kind of is like an Olympic quad, like taking a four-year approach to developing athletes. I think Spencer's got to, His coach, his mentor as a coach, was Stan Luttrell, and they have a very good system.

Like seventh and eighth grade, they focus on overhead squats, front squats, still benching, pull-ups, bodyweight movements, how to hinge, which prepares them then in ninth grade to be introduced to the cleans, maybe some power snatches. And then 10th grade, each year they get more and more to the point where when they're seniors they're trying to go. Juniors and senior year, they're trying to push.

The clean is what they really test. They don't test the snatch. The snatch is just the movement because you're going to get the high velocities from the snatch. You're going to get the complete stability of the entire body and the movement of the entire body from the snatch. But the cleans they test, that's their biggest predictor of how good their team is, is how many people can clean over 100 kilos or over 220.

It's a big predictor. And Stan has got some serious data that backs him up, that the more people who can do that the better they are as a team and so and the other way would be just to go like doug has always said like instead of saying that today we're going to do you know clean squats and you know vertical leap we're going to do we're going to do movements we're going to do a hinge and we're going to do a squat movement and then they're paired into groups if a person can do the movement uh very stable like then they're going to do like you know the squatting uh if a person can clean they're going to groups if a person can do the movement very stable like then they're going to do like you know the squatting if a person can clean they're going to clean but if

they can't we're going to do a hinge like a kettlebell swing or you know whatever pattern you want to do for a beginner but there's easy ways to do it you just got to say these are the movements you know these are the groups make sure you assess them up front and just divide them easily and as they get better move them up so it's not that hard i don't think in the process of keeping things simple like how uh when you get into like the accessories and just building out like a full program uh how important do you think that is on just like the neurological side of things of just wiring movement capacity versus um for somebody that's at at an age where it's it's critical for developing athleticism in in those ages um

versus like just adding the volume and and kind of like lowering the weights but increasing the movement complexity just for um athleticism and and single leg deadlift, for example. Kids are going to need tons of that stuff just to develop balance and stability, athleticism, standing on one leg, moving heavy weights without it but they probably don't need to be doing super heavy weights tons of volume in those things when they're if they're getting their volume from right from squats bench deadlift press like the bigger lifts i think it's brilliant i think you know doing anytime you do you know some you know unilateral work you're going to develop stability at the hip. And also you're going to teach the hip to move like where one foot is planted and the other foot is. You're hinging on one side, but yet one foot is planted.

The hip is meant to move individually with each other, the right and the left. And so if you always do bilateral, you could cause some issues in the pelvis. So I think it's brilliant, especially because on the field, that's what you're going to be doing. When they're sprinting, that's what's happening. When they're cutting, that's what's happening. You've got one foot normally at some point that one foot's on the ground and the other foot's

not. I think it's good. That's basically how we outlined most of the training for the lacrosse team was like sticking to the big compound movements, the ones that everybody would expect to see, hang power cleans, and then everything else that we would be normally building like volume in a more like adult focused performance program and backing pretty much all the weights down just to a point where we could get perfect movement in more complex movement patterns which i felt like just did like a really good job of developing the athleticism and the kind of just like the the pieces that you're not going to get from doing large bilateral movements that are going to translate more into what people are going to do on the field or on the ice, whatever that is.

That's stuff that I didn't do any of because we just banked so much. Like it was just lift heavy all the time without anything when i was when i was growing up i think you know talking to i've told you guys we interviewed i interviewed professor keith bar i think he would definitely agree he's big on isometrics as far as developing you know tenders because like uh while you're doing that while you're doing unilateral work say you're doing rdls you're doing eight you're probably going to be on that one leg you know at least 30 seconds which there's a lot of literature that says in that 30 seconds you're going to maximize you're going to uh the benefits of you know the development in the tendons and ligaments

so i would say he would say that's really good not only would it be good as far as preventing injuries but it's going to help them in performance because you want stable like you know tendons are really weird because you want them to be super stiff on one end but like as where they attach into the muscle you want a little bit of pliability or else you know if they're super stiff and the muscle's not causes pulls in the muscle and tears sometimes so you you want that to be a little bit less, but you have to do some tendon work to get that stability and to create performance. So when your foot strikes the ground, I think we've mentioned strain energy on here before, but if your foot strikes the ground and your tendons are super tight and stable, that force is going to be propelled down the field

in a much greater degree. So I think to sum it up, it's a great idea. I guess I could have just said that. Coach Travis Mash. Mashlead.com. Go to Twitter. I've been having some fun battles lately, killing, slaying people. I haven't been on Twitter much.

Who are you killing on Twitter? Oh, we talked about your boy, Aaron from Squall University, said something about ice again. And I retweeted it and said, you know, here's why. But here's the other side of it because Andy Galvin likes it for in-between workouts to drop the lower the perceived exertion of the body. I said, here's the reason why you, you know, here's some instances where it's good. And then somebody was like, I forget what, oh, somebody got on him and said,

and said, who are you? You don't know anything about ice. I watched LeBron using ice the other day. You know, those guys are so much better than you. You don't even squat as much as me. And then I got on there and said, I squat way more than you you don't even squat as much as me and then i got on there and said i squat way more than you and i and here and then i said here's the research that agrees too so like yeah he didn't respond please do not try to play king of the hill with travis mash people not my boys erin is too nice destroy you yeah and he's brilliant. And I was like, go look at his clientele.

He coaches some really good people. You idiot. Yeah, there was a picture of LeBron with, like, giant bags of ice on his knees that went, like, viral. Yeah, viral. And then somebody said, you and Squire University need to quit using LeBron as clickbait because, you know, in your articles, they're not providing any kind of knowledge. I'm like, well, obviously, you know, it's getting retweeted way more than – yeah. I was like, be quiet. It's like somebody likes it.

Maybe you're so smart you don't need it, but other people do. I love it. Doug Larson. You bet. I'm on Instagram, Douglas C. Larson. so smart you don't need it but other people do i love it doug larson you bet my instagram douglas larson i'm gonna go get on twitter soon and go hash through some of travis's latest arguments on twitter i never go out there and actually look at like the whole thread i'm gonna go in there i only follow like three people on twitter or something like that one of them travis great

inspirational quotes we need to get my girl el on there. She just dropped a course for coaching youth and she's a German strength and conditioning coach and she's really smart. I need to get her on the show too, but anyone who's out there should check her course out. It's good. Love it. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at

barbell underscore shrug. Get over to Diesel Dad Mentorship. We're helping busy dads lose 20 to 40 pounds and support natural testosterone production without drugs doctors and destructive diets diesel dad mentorship.com and november 2200 walmart's just go to the walmart we'll be there look for my face on the box we got three programs coming out with new vitality and i'm super stoked on it so if you get to a walmart you don't see me performance nutrition in the pharmacy go to the one right next door to it because

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