Barbell Shrugged - How To Build a Home Gym, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #453

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

“Bodyweight Bundle” Save 66% using the code “bodyweight”   In today’s episode the crew discusses:   Basic equipment   Flooring needs to protect garage   How much weight should you buy   Unknowns that make a massive impact in home gym   What size Kettlebells should you buy   Do you need a full rack or squat stands   The best awkward training tools for cheap   And more…   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Travis Mash on Instagram   ________________________________________________   TRAINING PROGRAMS   Host the One Ton Challenge at your gym: http://shruggedstrengthgym.com   One Ton Challenge   One Ton Strong - 8 Weeks to PR your snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench press   20 REP BACK SQUAT PROGRAM - Giant Legs and a Barrel Core   8 Week Snatch Cycle - 8 Weeks to PR you Snatch   Aerobic Monster - 12 week conditioning, long metcons, and pacing strategy ________________________________________________   Please Support Our Sponsors   Paleo Valley  - Save 15% at http://paleovalley.com/shrugged   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   PRx Performance - http://prxperformance.com use code “shrugged” to save 5%   http://kenergize.com/shrugged use Shrugged10 to save 10%   Masszymes http://masszymes.com/shrugged use Shrugged to save 20%

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So get over to barbellshrug.com forward slash bodyweight. 100 for AMRAPS for time. Aerobic, Monster, Shredded Anytime, Shredded Nutrition, and Fire Raider Skill Sheets save 66%. Let's enjoy the show, friends. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Andrew Smarter, Doug Lars, and Coach Travis Smash. Although you might think we're wondering if coronavirus can live in space, today we're talking about building a home gym, which is super rad because I have gotten one billion questions over the last two weeks. Now that the whole world is living in captivity in their own house on garage gym workouts,

we're putting out a brand new e-book, 100 AMRAPs for time, which is just 10 workouts a week, 10-minute AMRAPs, 10 weeks' worth of them. That's going to get us all the way through captivity. Am I allowed to call it captivity or is that too much? I definitely feel like I'm in captivity. I feel like I'm in captivity. I haven't spoken to a human being in person that is not my wife or my kids in at least a week or week and a half. Yeah, I decided yesterday that yesterday turned into captivity.

It's like social distancing is a very 2020 word for what we're doing here. It's like it's a really new age spin. Like it sounds very hipstery. It's cool. Like what are you doing? No, I'm not. It's like I'm not an introvert i'm just social distancing no you're in captivity you put yourself in your house and trap yourself

boy's getting down in the garage i have a really sweet garage gym i'm really lucky but i've gotten a ton of questions. We're going to talk about how you build one from the ground up, why you don't need to spend a billion dollars on it, and then if you were going to spend all the money, all the fun accessories that you got. So we all have one. You have one, Mash, right?

I know Doug's got the full Aleko set, and I've got a full PRX Performance set and uh dude i love my prx performance gym um where do you start where's uh what what's what are the basics um and then how'd you guys build your gyms out well i mean i own a gym so i just all i did was just take you know as i was buying equipment for my gym, you know, I got it for myself. But that's cheating. Yeah, we kind of cheated the system by having all the access. What are your athletes doing right now?

Because they're scrambling, I would imagine. I loaned them all equipment. Like even some of them, like Mallory Garza who's in Texas, you know, we shipped her weights in a barbell. And so, yeah, so they all, yeah, I got, them all equipment like even some of them like uh like mallory garza who's in texas you know we shipped her weights in a barbell and so um yeah so they all yeah i got i made sure that they all have equipment and um yeah even yesterday we still we're still doing it um so yeah luckily we you know like we have a lot of extra just because like usa weightlifting gave me a lot of you know equipment um you know just because we're you know produce a lot of you know equipment um just because we're at you

know produce a lot of athletes so that that was cool but um yeah we're just we're just trying to figure it out every day man like everyone else right now yeah well you're actually used to watch you guys ever used to watch good eats alton brown's old like cooking show that he did for like 10 years uh you talked about it though about how he teaches cooking yeah no like i me and andy galpin and chris moore like seriously learned how to cook by watching that show it's it's it's a rad show i can't wait to watch with my kids someday it's cool alton brown's yeah um but as a part of that show he he points out consistently that he doesn't want anything in his kitchen that is a unitasker. If it only does one thing, then it's a waste of space.

He only wants things that, like a good chef's knife can do a million things, as an example. Then if you have something that's like a cherry seed pusher outer or whatever it is. That only does one thing. It just sits in your drawer 99.9% of the time and then you use it. I feel like for a home gym, to bring this back to the gym conversation, it's very similar. If you're going to have a home gym, you've got limited space, you've got limited money.

You don't need a GHD machine that only does a handful of things we'll say in that case yeah as opposed to a barbell or like i have those like select tech dumbbells that that go from 10 pounds to 90 pounds and you can just like click click click you know set them on 35 or set them on 70 and you just pick them up and they're they're modular they take up almost no space, and they're insanely useful. So that's 90% of my gym. I have an Aleko set where it's just a nice barbell and bumpers, of course, and then Select Tech dumbbells and just a platform and a squat rack,

and that's really all I need to get 90% my work done on any given day you know do i wish i had more stuff sure but like i can get basically anything i want to get done done with a barbell and select tech dumbbells yeah i think that when people start to set these things up though like you have to especially if you're in a house that you own, the basic piece is you've got to get a mat. I don't know where you guys have bought all of your gym mats. I know you have a platform set up. I have a platform set up right now, but it still has the rubber mats.

And I think that some pieces, kind of like you're talking about, Doug, where you want to be the piece that you're going to be using for everything, like the mats or the barbell, it's worth spending a good amount of money and buying something very nice. Where the actual weights, just go get some heavy weights. You can go get metal bumpers. You don't have to go and buy the rogue competition plates with the blue and yellow and green. There's no real need for that. But for the matting, if you own your house and you own your garage, you should go spend money on really nice horse stall mats because you don't want weights dropping and breaking the

foundation of your house. That's a really, really expensive way to build a garage gym. The long-term expense of breaking your – what's up, dude? What up? We got a little one hanging out. He said, I'm doing yoga. Oh, baby yoga? Baby yoga is crushing these days.

6 a.m. yoga. I love that. For all the heroesm. yoga. I love that. For all the girls in my house. I love that. That's a really expensive way. If you break the foundation in your house because you drop clean, that's not a good thing. So I have six three-quarter inch horse stall mats that I've turned into a platform, which was a really easy process,

which I can, I've built so many platforms in my life. And I think on the 100th one, I finally got it right in the cheapest, easiest possible way to get it done. But go to a local tack and feed and go buy a three quarter inch piece of rubber, the horse stall mats.

I've had the ones that I'm using right now in my life for over 10 years. They never go bad. They're the best investment that I've made for all the gyms that I've owned and built in my life, which is in the double digits now for sure. Tractor Supply has a lot of those too. They're pretty much everywhere. You can get a really good deal on the horse mats at a Tractor Supply has a lot of those too. You know, they're pretty much everywhere. You can get a really good deal on the horse mats

at a Tractor Supply store. Yeah. And what are they like 50 or 100 bucks a piece? Something like that depending on what you buy. Man, it's been a minute since I did

but it was like 40 something per. It was not that bad. Tractor Supply is probably the cheapest one cheapest place you can find just because they do such high volume in those something per. It was not that bad. Charger Supply is probably the cheapest one, cheapest place you can find just because they do such high volume in those because horse

people go there to buy their stuff. Needless to say, that's where the best place. If you ideally you're not cutting them because that is one of the rough. I almost vow to every time I say I'm never going to cut another piece of horse stall mat in my life, I end up building a new gym in the next couple years.

I find myself with the razor blade slicing horse stall mats again. But if you've never done that, there is a good way to do it and the only way to do it is with a very sharp razor blade you can try every saw that exists in the world you cannot saw you can't use a jigsaw you can't use a skill saw if you use a skill saw you're going to find out rubber does not go through a skill saw very well the only way to do it is to get a... What's the tool where you just pop the blue line? Pop the blue line.

Gosh. No, it's like the chalk. The chalk thing. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's why we lift weights and we're not construction people. Get one of those

so you can make a straight line. But you're going to be in there with a... My wife knows what that is But you're going to be in there with a My wife knows what that is. You're going to be in there with a race. She's asleep. I'm not waking her up. Or the baby for heaven's sakes. No way.

Mats are cool but really you got to go by your weights. That really is like the first thing. You can have mats if you want mats but you don't really need mats for that much stuff. You can squat and do and do deadlifts on basically anything you can do it on your concrete you want to crack your concrete because then you're paying for for a foundation yeah but yeah like really just like if you have dumbbells some kettlebells

and or some weights there's just a million things you can do that don't require you to To get on the ground and or to drop weights on something that's gonna crack your foundation But if you want to weightlifting you need you need some type of something to draw on Your stuff and 200 pounds and you're gonna drop it from overhead Like you need a mat yesterday. I called if you guys heard of fringe sports, it's like a new, uh, you know, equipment company and they're already super cheap. And,

uh, yesterday I called for, I don't, um, you might want to edit this out if it's like conflict with any of your sponsors, but, um,

I called them and negotiated a deal for our listeners. And so they get, I, what I did is I got a squat rack with a pull up bar, um, a good barbell and plates. They have two options. They can either, if you're a weightlifter, I got a squat rack with a pull-up bar, a good barbell, and plates. They have two options. If you're a weightlifter, you got a super nice.

And then if you're just the normal person, then you got this other one. And they're giving like 20% off all their super cheap stuff already. So anyway, I will send that to you guys, and you can decide what you want to do with it. Yeah, my PRX system, we actually work with them too. PRX is super rad. Dude, the coolest it's crazy. They were on Shark Tank and I remember watching

it and going, I need that. That is totally what I want. I actually feel like there's a massive need inside commercial gyms for it because it saves so much space. So they created the system so that the squat rack comes out and then it just easily folds back on the wall. So when you're storing all – and then they created the system so that the plates all sit on studs on your wall so if you didn't have a platform and all you had was the gym setup that they send you you can store the entire system inside it's like four and a half

five inches off the wall so they sent the the pull-up bar which then folds down onto the ground into the squat rack um yeah it's awesome two wall balls um the there's a kettlebell package there's a box jump there's like a wall ball target uh and then two med balls jump ropes bunch of accessory stuff um but the the fact that you can mount this thing to the studs and then it folds up, you literally lose zero garage space unless you're building a platform on the ground, which I did. It's super well built. I've had at least 10 people go and buy these things over the last – I'm waiting for my check in the mail um but yeah i've had at least like 10 people in the last week reach out and buy something from them because the setup of dude do you remember when weights used to be so hard to find like the only bumper plates were either a lego or the black

rogue or again faster plates and that was it now there's tons of companies selling comp plates it's insane that you can go get all this stuff for so cheap god man that's why i brought the price right down when i worked for muscle driver man it was so expensive because it really you what you just said it was only like it was like rogue muscle driver was second again faster was third and like everything was super expensive. Because we were the only three players in the market. Now it's a lot better for people. Yeah, I think I have a black set of 45s from a company called Agile Fit or Agile Fit.

I don't even know who they are or what they do. And then I have the comp plates from PRX. And I don't know much about the equipment world and what ship it all comes in on. But they're the exact same plates that all of the big companies are using. That stuff just gets shipped right to your door. It's so simple. Awesome.

What are you, when you guys are building it out, what size kettlebells do you go with? I had this conversation the other day about what is the appropriate amount of weight that you need to get for your home gym workouts. I would say it doesn't even matter. If you think about tempo, you can make any kind of weight. I mean, relative. Obviously, 5 pounds is not going to be heavy no matter what you do. But instead of worrying about the specifics, it's just like now's a good time. If you have a 50-pound kettlebell, perfect.

If you have a 35, perfect. You don't need to order a 75-pound kettlebell. Or just think about tempo. Think about slowing it down. You know, if you think 50 pounds is too light, try doing 10 reps at 10 seconds on the eccentric. See what happens. You know, I mean, it's hard with your body weight. So like now's a good time to get creative with like, you know, the way you do things versus necessarily like getting new things, you know?

I actually, my right. Do with it too. Yeah. If you're, if you're a person that's like, I definitely want kettlebells. I want to be able to do farmer's walks.

Then you need heavy, like one arm heavy point on farmer's walks. Then you're like, okay, well maybe you need a three food kettlebell or whatever it is. But if you're, you just want to Metcon with it. Well then maybe you need like a 35 and a 55, depending on how strong you are.

And if you have a... So I think having like a big one and a small one, if you're on a budget, and then maybe like a small, medium, large. If you're on a budget. If you're not on a budget, just go buy a whole set and call it good. You have the space for it and all that. But depending on what your goals are, you just buy a small one and a large one. Then you just do everything unilaterally if you don't want to spend money on having a set. Two of each one.

Yeah. That's actually where I want to get into exercise selection and getting creative. My recommendation to the person because they were asking about the perfect kettlebell size. I could say I'm a relatively strong person and I wish that I had smaller kettlebells so I have a 53 and a 35 and the 35 is like a little too light but the 53 is too heavy and I wish for the ability to go like when I pick up the kettlebell I want to go do snatches and cleans and all the stuff but I enjoy up the kettlebell, I want to go do snatches and cleans and all this stuff. But I enjoy swinging the kettlebell in my garage and just having fun. And the 53 is a little bit too heavy to just go have fun with.

And I told her, I was like, go a little bit lighter than you think. Because you can always, like you're saying, Mash, you can always slow tempos down. And you can always make lightweight heavier. But you're never going to make the 53 lighter it's always going to be the 53 um so i don't it depends upon what you what your end goal is but i think that there's more ways to make lightweight heavier and it's also more fun when you just get in the idea of like you're in your garage and you're just playing around um to have a little bit lighter more manageable weight than always thinking that heavy is the answer no definitely and that's coming from the power of the church yeah yeah i mean if you want heavy that's that's

what barbells are for like i feel like for the most part kettlebells can get you brutally strong for sure but for the most part most people that that do crossfit and whatnot they use kettlebells can get you brutally strong for sure, but for the most part, most people that do CrossFit and whatnot, they use kettlebells for conditioning, for Metcons, for muscular endurance. There's some strength aspects there, but if you're trying to get strong and you're on a budget and you only have one or two kettlebells and you're wanting to do heavyweights, well, that's what your barbell is for. Right.

Yeah. Just get two kettlebells that are kind of like, we'll say they're medium heavy, whatever that is. Just right above and below medium. And then if you want something that's like super high reps, just like go do body weight stuff and jump squats and whatever else. And then if you want heavy weights, you know, go deadlift 500 pounds on your leg. Have you guys ever thought about like with a barbell and plates, what all you can do? I mean like pretty much anything you can do with like kettlebell or dumbbell what all you can do i mean like pretty much anything you can do with like kettlebell or dumbbells you can do with plates you can do lateral raises you can do swings

with a plate you can do you could do flies you can do presses with just plates then you have the barbell you could do your talking about the farmer's carrots do it with your barbell if you want it to be super hard like try doing like um i don't know 100 pounds on a barbell carrying it in the with the middle because now you have to balance that big you know the bigger apparatus so there's so much you can do with just a barbell i mean if you have a barbell in place i think you're set you don't you can save your money because right now things are tight so if you just like feed a rope or a towel through a 55-pound plate and then stand on two boxes, you can do swings with it very comfortably. Oh, yeah.

Wait, say that one again? If you ever take a plate, a 55-pound plate or whatever it is, and put a rope or a towel or something through the middle where the barbell usually goes and then just stand on two boxes or two chairs or whatever's stable and just hold the rope. And that's a method people use to teach people how to kettlebell swing correctly is that they'll feed something through the kettlebell where you're not holding on to the actual kettlebell. You're holding on to something that has slack so you can keep that constant tension and it teaches people how to swing correctly so you can you can do that with a plate very easily if you want to feed it through two

plates great as long as you hold on to the to the grip uh it's it's it's really really comfortable um or if you if you want to do heavy kettlebell swings and you don't want to buy a lot of kettlebells and you're just worried about the swing portion you can always buy one of those T-handles where you can just say plate loaded T-handle where you can do 200 pound swings or whatever you want to do

I used to do that a lot back 10 years ago or whatever there's a bunch of videosubes on or excuse me there's a bunch of videos on youtube of me you know doing whatever it is four or five food kettlebell swings i i used to really like it like that was that was good kind of strength endurance type training for back when i was trying to actually pr deadlifts and all that. Sick. I learned something. I've never done that. Good work, Doug Larson.

One thing that I think a lot of people freak out about too because they've spent so much time in CrossFit gyms and they didn't know what strength conditioning really looked like pre-Rogue Fitness mastering the squat rack is understanding how well you can get away with having just a janky squat rack in your life i think every squat rack until i owned a gym that i had was like the two stands that were never lined up appropriately and if you actually put 400 pounds on the bar you thought they might break they never break now it's very sturdy it's a very sturdy situation um but there's some things to spend a lot of money on i don't if you are limited on space and you want like the full prx that

folds down off the wall or you want you have the space to put in a full power rack from rogue like sweet that's gonna look really cool when you take pictures and take videos or you have the space to put in a full power rack from Rogue, sweet. That's going to look really cool when you take pictures and take videos. But if you're trying to spend $75, you can go get a badass squat rack that works perfectly off of Amazon. And I've had many of those, and they all work the exact same. Yeah, dude, I've shane hammond squat 400 kilograms 880 pounds out of those really i promise no one watching this is going to break one of those things

no chance yeah that's so wild i always so those two pieces that are the things that you don't realize you think like that you need a nice squat rack because you go into your CrossFit gym and that's the only squat rack you've ever seen. So if you then show up and you're like looking on Amazon or you're looking at all the other outlets, you can buy the squat rack and you look at it, you're like, I'm going to break that. There's no way you're not going to break it. And it costs you $75. The $75 squat rack is more than enough for everybody that's probably listening to this show right now. Yeah, and no one really needs the pull-up rack.

You don't need it because you can do pull-ups almost anywhere. Go grab a tree and do pull-ups. My son does pull-ups, my 5-year-old, on the doorframe. Savage. Fingertips. Yeah, and does pull-ups, my five-year-old, on the doorframe. Savage. Fingertips. Yeah, and does pull-ups at five. We do all ours at my house. I just put my giant camera bar on my squat rack.

Giant camera bars are nice because they don't roll. Yeah. They just sit there and you can grab onto it just like a regular bar. And so I just put my – I have those H stands that are easy to move around, like the individual single squad racks that you can just pick up and move. Yeah. I just put the J hooks at one of the higher settings, and I do pull-ups on that really comfortably.

Yeah, that's what we were doing. We're doing that type of thing. You can't do anything that's lateral or forward back motion. Those H-stands won't tolerate it. But force straight down for strict pull-ups, it works great. 100 AMRAPS for time. That is how we are launching the Body Weight Bundle, the brand-new 10-week e-book.

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The pull-up bar to me, I actually, so when I go to my in-laws' house in New Hampshire, they're on like 10 acres, and they've got trees everywhere. And I find myself way more drawn to just climbing trees. And that's like the, it's actually way more fun just because I spend so much time on pull-up bars that like we talk about like just go grab a tree and go. Another thing that I end up, I think everybody needs, and I actually don't have one right now, is a nice set of rings. Just because of how versatile. I find that it's very hard in a home gym setup if you don't have a pull-up bar.

And even if you do have a pull-up bar, TRX is a good way to do it as well. I like the rings better. But it's really hard to do upper body pulling exercises in a gym. You can do all the bent rows and all the different angles of rowing relatively easy if you have a barbell and weights but we start getting into like vertical pulling it's a really challenging thing if you don't have some sort of setup and the rings allow you to be able to pull from so many different angles it's one thing I'm missing in my gym right now that I really wish I had and for traveling it's another piece.

You could throw a set of rings in your bag. I used to travel with the ring strapped on my bag all the time. Um, I think rings cost you a grand total of like 50 bucks now delivered right to your house. Um, so if you can, if you can invest in a set of rings, that would be, in my eyes, a really good use of $50. Yeah, it's not one of those things that's a total multitasker. There's just a mountain of things you can do with rings that also can make you brutally strong. Gymnasts have some of the strongest upper bodies of any athlete, especially relative strength, of course.

So having a set of rings, I think, is really beneficial. Mash, what do you do for a lot of the upper body? Does everybody have, across the country, everyone that you're coaching, does everyone pretty much have access to pull-up bars, rings, TRX bands? The TRX bands, I feel like I hated on trx bands for like a long time for no real reason outside of it wasn't a barbell but i feel like there's that that setup is like the perfect setup for a home gym for for storing them for pull-ups for i guess you could do a muscle up or something along those lines any ring row variation you can do pretty much all of that stuff with TRX.

Oh, I lost you. You're muted, Barrow. Hold on, bud. I can't hear you. No. Nope. Nope. Hold on.

Let's see what minute we're at so i can make a note 28 minutes we lost mash nope he's gone i think he's logging out and come back in cool you know that uh while he's coming back in i uh i found that video i was talking about it's a youtube video it's just called doug larson 140 pound kettlebell swings it's just's just called Doug Larson 140-pound kettlebell swings. It's just me swinging one of those T-handle kettlebells while standing on two boxes. I used to love doing those.

That's rad. Dude, they're super comfortable. If you're competent and have good technique on kettlebell swings, there's no reason you can't do it. Dude, that looks strong. Fairly heavy.

Mash your back, buddy. Yeah, it's really heavy. All right, here we go. The form looks tight, too. Can you hear me now? Oh, yeah. Are you recording everywhere? You didn't stop your GarageBand file, right?

No, I didn't stop that. Cool. I just need to make a note to Colton, 28 to 29. Cool. Yeah, I was saying that, yeah, definitely if you had rings and or, I mean, or like TRXs, I think you can do anything. You can do triceps, biceps, rows, face pulls. I mean, it goes on and on.

Like you can do, with TRXs, You can do some really cool unilateral squat stuff. It's, uh, especially for athletes. I use it for my football players, you know, um, or football,

basketball, baseball, but, uh, it's, uh, it's, it's really unlimited.

I guess thinking about it, you could do it with the ring too, but, uh, I think I'll make some videos, you know, with that very thing. Cause it's a million,

you can do a million different movements with rings or TRXs. Yeah, that guy nailed that design. Yeah, it's awesome. Crazy Navy SEALs out there doing their thing. They figure things out. They're resourceful people. Who would have thought? Yeah.

Yeah, I really miss having a set of rings um my garage wouldn't really my setup is just a little bit too close to the ceiling right now um to be able to do muscle ups and stuff like that but that's all very extra anyways um when dude what do you guys buy for do you guys have bench press bench? Do you have a bench? Not even bench press bench. You just have a bench? Yeah, I do. That's another thing I totally recommend people go buy, the $40 bench.

Don't spend the money on the giant power lifting. Your back isn't that big. No, no. Your arms are going to hit the bench. Get the regular human bench. Yeah yeah because that's the one even if a power lifter like i love doing the diet you know i have a thompson you know the big fat pads i have one but using it is really it's crazy because it's not the same you don't have it in competition is my point so yeah for power lifters i'm not sure it's a great idea to do too much because it's pretty different you know um i can do a whole lot more on that fat

pad for whatever reason than i can on a regular so no use getting used to that um doug do you have one in your garage a bench no no one would need it no I, I can pretty much do, you know, again, 99% of the stuff that I need to do with dumbbells and barbells, um, without much extra. If I, if I want to floor press, I certainly can. Um, but I, I tend to, I tend just to gravitate toward when I'm, when I'm training at home. If I want to do pressing, I'll do pushups or, or weighted pushups are really easy and convenient. Just have something, put a plate on your back. Luckily, my wife's around, so you can do that type of thing for me. If you live alone and you're in social isolation, that might be a little more difficult,

but you probably figure out a way to make it happen. Just a little practice. Like yesterday, I did two 10-minute AMRAPs from our 100 AMRAPs for Time program, and both of them were kind of kind of single leg squat oriented and, and pressing oriented. So I did like feet elevated pushups with my hands on dumbbells to increase the range of motion just a little bit. And then I did like,

and then after that I did, you know, like kind of like a high pike pushup, which is like a, kind of like a scaled version of a handstand pushup, um, with skater squats and, and B stand squats,

uh, which a lot of people don't do. Do you guys do B-stand squats? I do. It's kind of like the kickstand version of squatting. You know, like a kickstand deadlift where you come up on the ball of your foot on one side, and it kind of makes it more emphasis goes on one leg than the other. It's just like that for squatting.

You just pick your heel up off the ground intentionally, and then you're kind of like you're weighting the other side leg just a little bit more. So you're kind of like two-thirds, one-third, that type of thing. That's kind of cool, yeah. I'll try it today. What else am I going to do? You know what I'm saying?

I'm out here in captivity. What am I going to do? I'm out here in captivity. What am I going to do? I don't know. You know what? My bench probably gets used for the most in all of my training. It's like a really solid base for me to set a camera up so I can film myself. Yeah. Because I don't use it much like a standard bench press is probably the thing that i do the least in my own training

one it's the most dangerous thing i do because i can't get out of the way when that thing comes tumbling down on you so i don't actually really enjoy it that much. I just know something's going to go wrong at some point. And I just don't do that. Like laying flat, if I'm going to do any pressing, it's going to be overhead. I think it's a better movement for pretty much everything. And if I keep getting tagged on Instagram to do

1 billion push-ups a day, 10 at a time, I don't ever have to worry about any more horizontal pressing ever. Because I just did 4 trillion push-ups while in captivity here. One thing that I do

if I want to do incline pressing, which I actually really enjoy, specifically incline pressing, but if I don't have a bench, then I'll basically put my feet under something, kind of like I'm doing a supported hollow body hold.

Then I'll just flex at the hips just enough to have a little bit of an angle where my low back is off the ground. I'm holding this perfect hollow body position and then I'll do one arm incline dumbbell pressing. There's like an anti-rotation stability aspect to it. That's awesome.

Yeah. In addition to the hollow body hold. Of course you're not going to do that nearly as heavy as you would if you were actually doing stable bilateral inclined dumbbell pressing. But it's a great variation for many reasons. And if you're doing it in a Metcon or something like that where you're doing higher reps and there's conditioning, then there's many other benefits that you get from that

that you wouldn't have gotten if you were just doing it on an inclined bench. If you're a rotational athlete, I think that would be superior to almost anything i could think of like i i have one of the best throwers in the country that i coach he's about to do those right away that's awesome add it to the program yeah yeah um i feel like i use the bench actually for a lot of the hip thrust stuff so if you do get one there is some benefit to doing a lot of that stuff like it's a it's a really good tool just to have um but it's not as cool as just having a a rack and a nice barbell we're so spoiled with our barbell i actually find that my barbell gets in the way of things that i'd like to do because one thing that i when

i had a normal rogue janky barbell that i loved was doing landmine stuff where you just throw it in the corner of the garage and you can do landmine everything yeah if you if you don't know many landmine exercises we could probably put i should actually film some i just don't want to mess up my barbell by clanging it into a bunch of bricks in the corner of my garage um put it in a check out yeah check out ben bruno's stuff he's got a ton of resources on landmine work um anything from kind of like explosive um like snatches on the higher end to single leg RDLs, all the pressing variations. I think if you ever have any shoulder issues and getting overhead

and you kind of lose your core going overhead just for mobility, stability aspects, being able to press at like a 45-degree angle is going to give you almost all the benefits of being able to press straight overhead, but without that really tough range of motion for a lot of people that maybe have desk jobs or just limited in that position. In fact, when we went to his gym, he doesn't even own a barbell because he only does landmine pressing at different angles. There isn't a single barbell in his garage gym. I mean, it's also his studio where he trains people. Wait, what does he put in the landmine if he doesn't have a barbell? He built – it's like a T-bar – not a T-bar. It's like a hex bar. i'm losing my mind here it's got the handles on the

side it's like the open deadlift bar that we had at aleko he's got that with a yeah trap bar he's got uh with a barbell insert so he can put it into the landmine, and then he does cleans and jerks through that because the handles rotate. And then everything he does is just bilateral pressing, but just at a 45, maybe a little bit higher angle. It's all gen pop people. It's all super famous people, but it's all gen pop regular people that don't necessarily have to master jerks well if you're a football player that would be i think that's a little bit more superior than

even an overhead press because you know they they're going to use their hands at a 45 degree angle they're not going to block you know like that yeah i think it would be superior even if you're a football player rugby player player, wrestler even. Yeah. And there's some sweet landmine setups. The ones that – I think the thing that everybody needs to understand when they are going to build out their gym is like there's a spectrum of everything. And on the lowest end of the spectrum, you just have a barbell jammed into the corner of your garage and you can load it up and you're going to get 98 of the benefit and then you can go one step more into which i think is probably the right step where you stack 245 plates you insert the base of the landmine into the plates and that holds it stable yeah and then you get kind of that the full rotation you can move the landmine in all directions very easily and it's a really good setup and then if you actually went to go and

spend all the money and buy a big prx system or a rogue system and you want to connect it to the big squat rack now you're just spending a lot more money, but you're going to get probably 98% of the benefit just jamming a barbell into the corner of your garage and saying go. If you put it in an old shoe, it will protect the end of the barbell too.

Which is what I do. We just made a landmine with zero dollars. I'm not about to sell my Leeko barbell. That's such a simple but actually a fucking great idea. Not bad, friends. What a great idea. Dude, I've actually never heard of anybody putting a barbell in their shoe to save their house and their barbell. Yeah.

When did you learn that? Where did you get a hold of that one? I mean, I guess I've always had really good barbells, and so I never not trying to ruin any of them. So, I don't know. I was thinking about it. I saw an old shoe. It just kind of happened. Everyone's got old shoes laying around.

One thing, Doug, I am super amped. I'm hopefully going to be getting some of these soon uh that i think a lot of people when you talk about your like multi uh purpose tools a medium heavy sandbag uh doesn't doesn't get the love because it's not as like it's popular as tool or as a a as a barbell but i want a sandbag so badly right now it's pretty much one of those things you can do anything and everything with and it actually

it's not going to get you the top end strength but as far as like a functional piece of training that you can push pull do everything with getting like a 75 to 100-pound sandbag, doing cleans, doing squats, putting it over one shoulder, you get a lot of weird unilateral stuff or like some core stuff. Run with it, walk with it a long ways. We have a – I want to say it's like 100, maybe 125-pound sandbag at the CrossFit Surmount where I train. And I love working with that thing. Yeah. like a hundred maybe 125 pound sandbag at the uh crossfit surmount where i train and i love

working with that thing yeah what are those sandbags that emily strom has that she makes the impact the impact it's like her backpack yeah it's like a backpack that you can that you can load in a variety of ways it's not i don't know if it's technically sand, but it's something along those lines. Well, I mean, it's in the program a lot for what you wrote. Basically, the general idea of going to get a backpack and loading it up with the biggest, heaviest books you got. And, yeah, I mean, if you just put sand, if you put one of the sandbags that you would protect your house from if it was flooding or whatever, we used to have to do that all the time in PB because there's no drainage in San Diego. Every time it would rain, our gym would almost flood, so I'd have to run down to the beach,

fill up a bunch of sandbags, and then run back and try and protect the gym. It was so brutal. There's no drainage anywhere in SoCal. It never rained, so they just don't have the infrastructure. And our whole town would flood. It would flood for like an hour. But it was scary. You could see the water line creeping into the gym,

and it would happen at least twice a year. We'd get one or like nasty storms come through and we'd yeah we'd end up flooding so we got really good at like running to the beach with empty sandbags running them back it's like the dopest training session ever except you're trying to save your business from going underwater literally a cheap way to do a sandbag too if you got an old pillowcase go fill it with dirt man i mean like because right now it appears a lot of people are going to have like zero money soon so if that was to do you like yeah go get an old pillowcase go fill it with dirt and then do a bunch of Doug's workouts. That would be awesome. I can go past. Yeah.

Yeah, I think the sandbag's a really cool thing. I want a really nice one just because I know I'm going to use it all the time. But, yeah, there's a real, like, setup that you can just go get a pillowcase or go get a backpack and fill it up. You should have a zillion backpacks laying around your house. God, I have 10 million because every time I go on a trip with Team USA, we get a new backpack. I have a working theory about backpacks. What's that? You can tell how good of a coach you are by how many black backpacks you have in your that you never use well i must

be the best i have 10 million so i mean like backpacks because every conference you go to everything you get invited to everybody gives you the same black backpack or the ones with the drawstrings that you tighten up all right there it is right there um i yeah the ones with the uh the drawstring up top i i feel like i've thrown away thousands of those thousands i give them to my athletes right here take this mess out of my we were i don't remember what event we were at doug but we we had our rental car we had like the whole team maybe it was paleo effects we had the whole we had the whole team with us and we opened up the back of the truck whatever it was it had to have been a minivan because i

remember the door coming up and all you could see was like from floor to the ceiling of the car was just stacked with black backpacks and i was like we must be good at what we do what's up dude this is the kid show we got all the kids hanging out that's my friends right say hi rock hi how you doing bud what's your favorite what's your favorite tool in Dad's garage gym? What do you like in our gym? The weights. The weights. He's my son for sure. Yeah.

All right. The weights. Rad team, what's the nice to have? Doug, I actually want to learn about your dumbbells. Who makes those? What is that set up? Because I don't have any dumbbells. I need some.

I think there's really only two good options for selectable dumbbells. I have the Select Tech Bowflex dumbbells. Those are super expensive. Yeah, they're really nice. They're great. Yeah, super nice. And then also power blocks are really good. We had a couple sets of power blocks at the gym when I owned the gym.

Again, same deal. They're adjustable from 5 to 115 or something like that. Yeah. But Doug just uses the 115s. Only. He ain't got time for select or ice mask. No. Hammer curls.

Red plates and 115s on those. Yeah, he squats. Yeah, red plates. Red, red, red, red, red. Bar, one plate, two plate, three plate. Travis, when I came to your practice, I think it was that Mason kid. That's all he had. Yeah.

He went. I just tuned in to practice on monday doug and i look at the gym and there's this monster in the corner it's the thrower kid that's going to wake forest yeah it is he was like just warming up and he goes it was red red red and he walks over to the weights and i was like what are are we gonna get blue? I was just like Hundred hundred hundred like it just raised my kids, right? Yeah Yes, I went on 110 pound jumps all the way up to set five. I thought I yesterday I did um blues Red said okay. I did a front squat. I only had like 10 minutes. I wanted to set a PR, so I went

60, 110, plus 50, 110, 160, 190 yesterday. 195, sorry. I ended it with my new, as of late, PR. So it was like 429

pounds. Front squat? Yeah. Savage. Yeah, a video. Put it on video. It happened. And because Magnolia's screaming at me, so I'm just like...

Yeah, you got things to do. Yeah, Magnolia. Princess Magnolia was calling. Yeah, dude. I'm only training during nap time right now yeah that's why the garage is getting it done um rad team well just to recap get yourself a squat rec don't spend all the money um you don't really need a super nice one get yourself a nice barbell get yourself a nice set of weights um some manageable kettlebells will go a long ways. I highly recommend getting

some flooring, especially for if you own your house, you don't want to crack your own foundation. If you're renting your house, you don't want that landlord hating you. So go get a couple horse stall mats to save your life. And then if you've got time, space, a little bit of extra cash laying around, a set set of rings TRX straps for some upper body pulling very personal sandbags are gonna be a great addition and then if you're really in the market to spend a little bit of cash and want to make things well-rounded go get yourself a dope set of dumbbells like Doug's got cuz I wish I had a pair.

For us, we have a relationship with PRX Performance. Their whole thing, you can use the code SHRUGGED. It's going to save you 5%. I love my setup. It all basically folds up to about 5 inches off the wall. So if you're just going to use the ground floor, it's perfect. They send the entire setup to you and it's going to cost you about, I want to say about $3,500. I think Doug's brother just bought one. Magnolia's in the house now.

All the families are waking up. Use the code shrugged at prxperformance.com. I'm a huge fan of everything they've got going on. Magnolia, she looks like she squats about 100 kilos already. Already. Mash, where can they find you, bud? Go to mashlead.com, y'all, or Instagram, Mashlead Performance. LinkedIn is where I'm hot, though.

I'm hot. We're connected on LinkedIn now. Yeah, finally you joined. Yeah. I talked to our guy yesterday, the guy you hooked me up with, and he goes, how often do you log into LinkedIn? I was like, I don't know, like once a year. He's good, man.

That dude is good. Yeah. Right on. Find me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. We're barbellshruggedged at barbell underscore shrugged. Get over to OneTonChallenge.com. Snatch, clean jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench.

OneTonChallenge.com forward slash join the lifelong pursuit of strength. Making sure you get to the grand total of $2,200 for you ladies. If you are interested in hosting the One Ton Challenge at your gym gym shrugged strength gym.com we're hooking you up with all the marketing assets because when we get out of this containment issue we've got right now we're going to be the baddest strength event that you can bring to your gym and fellas just to let you know i talked to australia on last friday i think we got another gym we're going to an australia here once we get rid of this crazy disease floating around the world, we're going to go to Australia

and bring the house down. So I have four, you have one. That's five if we ever can get there. Yeah, we're going to get there. We're going down under. Late August, early September. Let's get rid of this COVID. Appreciate it, team. We'll see you guys

next week. That's Appreciate it, team. We'll see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. BarbellStruck.com forward slash bodyweight. Use the coupon code bodyweight to save 66% on our brand new e-book. 100 AM wraps for time. Plus aerobic monster. Plus fire breather skill sheets. Plus shredded nutrition. Plus shredded anytime.

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