Barbell Shrugged - How to Build a Strength Programs w/ Spencer Arnold, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #510

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

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Shrug family, this week we are on the road headed to Bentonville, Arkansas to hang out with the fine folks from Walmart. How cool is that? We're headed to Bentonville. We're bringing the camera crew and we're going to be recording podcasts. We're going to be hanging out with the people from FitOps. So Walmart, of course, we are going to be dropping three training programs for fat loss, cardio, and muscle gain in stores in San Diego, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, and L.A., Vegas, which is really cool. I mean, it's unbelievably cool. We've got the sickest display. We've been doing tons of work on the graphics. We've been building the programs out.

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you can get a no questions asked, money back guarantee, return on your error. For fastest shipping, go to buyoptimizers.com forward slash shrug and use coupon code shrug. You save up to 48% off select packages to get the most full-spectrum and effective magnesium product ever. Friends, we're going to get into the show. Let's get it. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Andrew Swartner. Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mass. Welcome to the show, man. I've never actually met you in person. I've been following you for a while and stoked to do this thing. Appreciate y'all having me on here.

Yeah, this is rad. So are you at the high school right now that you coach at? I just left. I of Strength and Additioning. I'm currently in our training facility for Power and Grace. I just left the high school, trained athletes all morning, snuck over here, ate some lunch, got a brownie to treat myself to, and then here I am ready to go. You need brownies. I'm 80 kilos on the dot right now, Travis.

That's like one of my legs. Are you still competing or are you a full-time coach now? Gosh, dude. I'm a full-time coach that gets coached into competing by the people that I full-time coach. That's what happens. If I'm competing, it's because somebody on our team told me I couldn't do something. And I'm like, here I go. And then I end up hobbling around for six weeks

after I show them that I can do it. Are you competing? Is that what you're getting ready for right now? They want me to compete at nationals. I am training a little, but I'm just doing our high school football workouts. But it's all Olympic lifting because it's high school football. I mean, i feel pretty

good right now i hit some big numbers this morning so you know yeah we'll see it's it's it's july do you get the like are you gonna make a comeback and you're like no no i have like a job i have kids i've got things to do i'm like come back to what now on instagram you can like make your big retirement speech right like i'd like to step out and you get like six likes people like you were competing i didn't even know that's what i'm saying i'm gonna put my thing my shoes down on the platform like what platform do it on just your own training like in your garage instagram has given athletes a totally wrong uh idea of waylething the way they get their long speeds my favorite is like after they compete and they make excuse for what i did so poorly i'm like nobody cares except you. Nobody. Nobody wants to.

Yeah, rule number one for our football team. Don't make excuses because the only person that cares about them is you. Don't make them. There's nowhere better to see that than after a UFC fighter loses a fight. And if you've ever seen somebody get on the mic and be like, yeah, I guess my back wasn't doing as well as I thought it was, the entire crowd goes boo. They just get booed out of there.

Like all you're supposed to say is that guy's great. He beat me tonight. He's a better fighter than I am. Hats off to him. And then you walk off the fucking place. Shut your mouth. Any excuse about why he lost is not received well at all. His eyes swollen shit.

Most of them are bad, guys. Most of them are bad. No. No. No. I'm like, did you use your face to punch his fist a lot? It's a bad strategy. I actually came across

someone's Instagram account the other day and she was either married to or dating a UFC fighter. And it was like this like selfie of them on the couch, like three days after a fight. And his eye was like, there was no eyeball to be seen. It was so swollen shut that it was just like this big fat chunk of skin on one eye.

And I was just like, she's she's like sometimes you win sometimes you lose sometimes you lose oh my god somebody's to scalpel his eye off sometimes you shouldn't have got in that ring at all oh i could i was like like nobody ever sees the fighter two days later nobody nobody knows what that looks like it was the first time i'd ever seen a picture like so gruesome of just like oh my god that is the worst way to make no money ever yeah doug i got i'm gonna i'm gonna tell you something's gonna ruin your life but this is there's a show on netflix have you seen kingdom on netflix the jonas. I love that movie. It's the Jonas Brothers? The main character is

the main Jonas Brother. The oldest brother. I didn't know they were. Travis Mash, let's have Jonas Brothers. This show, Kingdom, is amazing. It's about MMA. I haven't slept in three days because I stay up like

every night it's the same thing. It's like I'm on Groundhog Day. I say I'm going to watch one. And then it's 3 a.m. And then it's 4 a.m. And I'm like what are you doing? I go to sleep for a couple of hours. Back at it. I gotta go. So anytime you text

us at 6.30 in the morning which is normally when we shoot shows your time you're like can't do it today boys it was kingdom Monday it was kingdom straight admit it you didn't tell us a couple days ago when it actually happened I was too embarrassed

I was like man I had every intention of just toughing it out and I was in a coma can you know, I had every intention of just toughing it out. And, like, I was in a coma. Can't do it. The Jonas Brothers won. The Jonas – it's so good, though, this show.

You were saying a second ago regarding the high school football program that was mostly weightlifting. Like, I met my strength coach while I was in high school. And I remember, like, the administration giving them a lot of pushback on the Olympic lifts because they were dangerous. And, you you know we've come a long way in the last 20 years but does your administration give you give you shit about how you write your programs or do you is it kind of just free for all so I was hired I was hired to bring Olympic lifts to that to the school and make that a fundamental part of what we do my football coach was my strength coach in high school,

and he taught me the Olympic lifts. We're both senior international weightlifting coaches. So in the weight room at any time, you have two senior international coaches. I'm the second most qualified strength coach in the room. He is far more qualified than me. So we brought in he, an Olympic lifting guy, coached Olympians. So, I mean, the Olympic lifts is fundamentally part of why I was hired and what we do. So not only do we not get pushback, we might get push list is fundamentally part of why I was hired and what we do.

So not only do we not get pushed back, we might get pushed back if we didn't make it a part of what we do, because we were hired for that purpose. How did you find an administration that was so intelligent? I didn't find them. They found me, man. I have no idea. I know, but like, who are they? How did they know that this was the right way to train people? Really long story short, our football team is pretty good.

The football coach before Coach Luttrell was Jeff Saturday, the pro bowler that snapped for Peyton Manning. Oh, yeah. If you think about him, he was a workhorse when he was in the league. He just was one of those guys who was constantly working. And Saul and Cheris have valued the weight room and the Olympic lifts. So he brought on a buddy of mine that I kind of got him in the process, got him hired. And that buddy then like kind of introduced the Olympic lifts. They saw the utility and then he

went and went and joined the Navy SEALs and I got his job, which greatest blessing ever to get for him to call me and say, Hey, you want the job that you got me? I'm like, yes. Um, and so, and that's exactly how it worked. was a crazy it's great like like legitimately four years ago they didn't really have a good strength program at all and they went if we're gonna do it jeff saturday went we're gonna do it let's do it right it's gonna guide them to be doing we're gonna do the olympic lifts and that's literally how it happened he's a monster do you ever lift weights with that guy yeah he's not a monster anymore and he's afraid to get in the weight room with me.

I'll tell him that in his face, Jeff Saturday, if you're listening. I will, because he's not a monster. He's lost a lot of weight. He's real functional. He looks great. But he's a shadow of what he was back in the day. I'm talking about throwing people across the room. He's a big boy. He was a big boy. I saw videos of him fighting, verbally fighting with Peyton Manning. I'm like, Peyton, you're ayton manning i'm like man peyton you're you're a gutsy dude that dude looks like he'll take your head off uh when do kids uh it's

a private school so when do kids actually start coming to the school is it k through 12 pre-k pre-k through 12 yeah so we got them all from four uh and then you get them in eighth grade yeah i get i get them in eighth grade so eighth, I get them in eighth grade. So eighth grade sports. So in middle school, we don't have PE classes. We have sports classes. So I guess we do have some, like team sports, but nobody takes them most of the time. We end up with, like, middle school volleyball will take six period.

Middle school football will take fifth period. And so those periods are when they can both practice their sport and be in the weight room. So that's kind of how we do it. That's awesome. Tell them the system. the system that is like for all the coaches listening who think it's too hard to implement weightlifting tell them how you guys do it's beautiful yeah so it's straight out of coach letrell's learn to lift program so we we literally i can i can teach a kid how to snatch or clean in in two weeks and feel comfortable with them doing both.

Because of how we do it as a group, on the whistle, start at the hips. It's a basic top-down mentality. We have them doing overhead squat. Looks good. Front squat looks good. Can we hinge? Good. All right, we're off to the races.

And we start at the hips and work on, can I move under the bar? Can I move my feet? We're focusing on those things. We're good there. We move to the knee, move to the floor. And it's all tempo. So one of our, our three big things is technique, tempo and transition. And so we're hammering technique, no matter what you're doing in the day, we're on a tempo on the whistle. Every 40 seconds, we're doing something. Why? Because that carries to a field, right? Like every sport, the faster the pace you can play, the more,

more, how great advantage you have. But we do that in our teaching too, right? So, so every time we're, bang, snatch from the hip. All right, 20 seconds later, bang, snatch from the hip.

And so they get a crap ton of repetitions in, in a small amount of time. And so we can compound, what would it be? Eight, 10 weeks of training into, you know, two weeks.

Now we regress, individually we'll regress back because you got some of those kids. It just doesn't take so easy. Yeah. By and large, like 80, 85% of our people. And we, we regress – individually, we'll regress back because you've got some of those kids it just doesn't take so easy. Yeah. We'll regress back. By and large, like 80%, 85% of our people, we're moving quick with them and we're doing it in eighth grade. Now, if I can get them in eighth grade with Luttrell together,

he and I together in January, we'll slow that process down just a hair because they're not playing football. They're not – you know, we've got them in the weight room. And so that's when we'll slow that process down. By ninth grade, if you walk into our school in ninth grade, we're going to teach you the lifts in two weeks and then regress you to an appropriate place.

Every block will progress you from there. That's so awesome. Yesterday on Twitter, a really good strength coach tagged me and somebody was saying that the clean was bad for baseball. It was going to hurt the UC. It's Zach the Champ.

It's Zach the Champ. He's here. But he's been that way from the jump. And, I mean, I love Zach. He's a great dude. I would challenge him on that and challenge him on the front squat. I did. And I, like, you know, I had, like, there was, like,

two or three pieces of research that said not only is it not bad, it's actually good for you because, like, stress, especially isometric stress, is very good as far as, like, stabilizing and, you know, for the ligaments, the tendons, you know, and the muscles. And so there's actually some pretty good evidence saying it's safe and it's actually healthy. And then somebody said, then somebody, you know, once I crushed them there, they're like, oh, yeah.

They said it just takes too long to teach the rack position. I'm like, if you can't teach the rack position, you should not be in the weight room. Yeah, and I would tell that person and tell Zach, like, hey, look, if you just can't teach the lifts, like, just call it what it it is say i don't want to take the time to learn to teach it and and there's a there's five other ways that i can get some of this right output but just say it for what it is don't blame it on the lifts like blame it on your fact that you just don't want to take the time to learn to coach it right i have a blog a long time ago it says hey like don't blame your ignorant

like don't make the lifts the end of the scapegoat for your ignorance you just don't know and don't want to learn and this at this point we were only talking about the front squat, literally just doing a front squat. They don't want to teach a front. They said they would teach it like this, that this is too hard to teach. They would not have time to progress the athlete to make a better athlete because they would spend all their time teaching this. I just want to be like, you should be fired because you can't teach that.

I mean, I don't even know what to say to this person. That's legitimately like an athletic trainer that can't take an ankle. Yeah. Yeah. No, you can't put ice on that. I actually thought about this when you – another video of yours that goes viral when you post pictures of rock doing cleans they did like the the the set of five with whatever what is it like 35 pounds or something

like that and everybody freaks out yeah and it's so interesting because i was i was i i get relatively frustrated with you because i know that my daughter is going to understand how to do a clean by the age of five like there's just no doubt in my mind. All of our kids that are on this call right now, there's no doubt that they're going to be able to do a relatively pretty clean very early in life. It's just by watching us in our garages doing things. But if you're like a mom scrolling through and your standard night is your kids playing video games, what you're doing with that kid is like basically torture. Like you're trying to harm your child. Like if adults think weightlifting is scary and all of a sudden you've got a five-year-old out there with these big yellow plates on and like a barbell

and like he's doing it barefoot like it's like it's like a giant stack of things that seem wrong from being barefoot to lifting weights to growth plates and like every story they've ever heard and she thinks adults is or adults shouldn't even be lifting weights it's madness how do you like when you're when you're developing a program and parents come in, do they carry with them all of these questions and worries or do they just hand them off to you and say, we're paying for this education?

Teach them. Yeah, so here, the beauty is our school is kind of like, we're like a blue collar private school. So I say that lovingly because our parents listen. So like they come at me with concerns and some of them are legitimate concerns that I need to listen to. But I respond with a well-written email, generally with words that have more than one syllable in them. And they listen, they read the email. I mean, I've saved and taken emails

and printed them off where parents be like, hey, that sounds awesome. You sound like you know what you're doing. Go for it. When they come at me with those questions, like, hey, is my kid too young? Hey, what about growth plate stuff? Hey, my kid has a bad shoulder mobility.

Sure, you want him to snatch? And so like, I've been able to respond. It's the beauty of just use data, just use intelligence, give them the information and let them process it. I'm lucky enough to have a parent population that responds well to actual factual information rather than saying, Hey, well, you're wrong anyway. Cause I'm right. And I've been in schools where that's the case. And that's just like, like, you're not going to win. So just hit the lead.

What did you do? Remember at your old school, you told me about a parent. It was one of the athletes who's actually pretty good i can't remember if it's a baseball football player you told me the dad was like he can't he can't do a lifting or something what'd you do baseball baseball uh i responded with again a well-tempered email his his uncle is a physical therapist which is right and i responded with a well-tempered email and it didn't matter the irony is when i left he bought into the weight room after I left to my assistant, who's now the head guy there, and is like one of the biggest weight room warriors in there.

So, like, I don't know what changed. Maybe it was just the thing they were on or the article they read that month or whatever, but, like, when I left, he became, like, I found out, like, one of the studs in the weight room, like, pretty solid dude. He's going to Western Carolina for pitching. Like, he's a stud. He was a stud to begin with. They were worried about because they read some article from some dude who didn't know what he was talking about.

And they were worried that I was going to break his kids on. What are your thoughts about Eric Cressy, you know, the overhead and pitching. I've been to a couple of his seminars, love Eric. I've gained a crap ton of information from him. I asked him point blank in the seminar with a bunch of people and said, hey, what do you think about overhead pressing? And he gave one of the best answers that I've ever seen. He's like, just so you know, he said, my majority of my population is baseball players. He's like, so I'm looking at, can I overhead press safely? And if I can, I do. If I can't, do I need to overhead press safely and if i can i do if it if i can't do i do i need to overhead press and if i don't i don't he's like but if i can't overhead press safely or i don't have a need for it i don't he's like there are circumstances where we overhead press he's like but it's just rare that we get he gets a baseball player in his world

where that where they've either done it before which most of them have not or they don't have some sort of um like some sort of carryover damage from something they've done in the past mobility flexibility wise that it becomes a hindrance and he's like rather than i mean he's coaches like five cy young ward winners like yeah you gotta be i'm gonna have a hard time telling that man what to do when he's got millions of dollars walking in and out of his room right yeah but you know i had a really good discussion at one of the seminars when he said i'm not against it i'm just make sure it's properly placed and i can totally roll with that if somebody's coming yeah if somebody's come if somebody's coming to cressy they've probably thrown with one of their arms maybe like 10 000

pitches yeah right there's got to be some imbalances and some weird stuff and i'm not yeah i'm not gonna go at cressy there i'm gonna go at the 17 other people before that guy got the cressy and be like hey why didn't you start this guy on a balanced unilateral program for pressing so that he had to help put two healthy arms when he walked in like that's not cressy's fault cressy's do it dealing with what is handed to him He's getting the end product and it's like at that point it might be too late. Right. And I don't blame him. That dude's about to step on a mound in five

months and every pitch he throws is worth $1,000. Yeah. The downside is very high. If you hurt someone, that's millions of dollars that they're not going to get if they're on the bench or they get cut. Mesh, think about House's approach to music

at the Panthers. I remember sitting in his office being like, yep, you're right. I feel like the majority of those strength coaches at that level, they view themselves as trying to get out of the way almost a lot. They want to do as much as

possible. It's the priority shift man yeah well anyways their job is to keep the best players playing like you you got a bunch of ferraris that showed up and you just need to keep them running yeah yeah well there's even there's a step before that too like when you get um in the pro level and you get a Cam Newton or like whoever his sons are. Yeah. Step number one is don't hurt them in the weight room. That's step number one. You'll get fired.

Yeah. And so then step two is let's prepare them to not get hurt on the field. And then step three is performance. Let's try to help. Yeah. And I remember, so Jeff Saturday actually said this to me. He's like, when you go in a league weight room, you're going to have guys who got there by banging away at the weights and banging away on the, on the, on the lifts. And that's all that knows. Like Jeff is

one of those guys. And so those guys, like you can do a little more with, because they're bought into that. And that's how they got there. And then you got the guys that got there because mommy and daddy were the right pairing of genetics. And that's why they got there. And they didn't really need to bang away at the weights. And so if you start making them bang away at the weights, then you have a problem, right? It's like look at what they've done to get there and facilitate that, but don't make them do something that didn't get them there to begin with.

Hey, you're going to break one of those three rules, Travis. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, like when you're debating Cam Newton, if you have a Cam Newton and you start arguing with him, you're losing that. You're losing that argument because they're paying him you know 25 million and you're getting you know 500 000 you're fired like so you learned you shift your values and you shift you have to put your ego aside the pros because nobody cares what you think you know like just do your job even if you've done everything right if you're a professional baseball player you still do not likely have a normal shoulder like i've seen research that shows that for it was either i'm not sure if it was every every position on the

field but if you are if you're at the major league level so not necessarily even just pro ball but like if you're in the majors you're at the highest level of pro ball then it was something along the lines of upwards of 95% of those players have a labrum tear at all times. Sure. They do. I mean, you do anything over and over and over. It doesn't mean you're symptomatic.

It doesn't mean you're in pain or that you can't perform, et cetera. But it does mean that there's something going on in there. Yeah. And so it's better to be cautious and keep that best player on the field than it is to say, no, everyone has to overhead press. When the upside of overhead pressing versus doing like a high-angled incline press or a landmine press or something else that's kind of similar-ish but the risk is just a little bit less, there's other options there.

I could take that guy and do an inclineline like a kneeling landmine press and then do some scapula movement stuff like i like i learned that from cressy and i can still get some of the scapula movement that i need from overhead press combined with the and avoid the issue altogether but a guy like that yeah i think that makes sense why i love my job is i get them before all of that yeah so i i had the only excuse to them not over impressing is i did something to hurt them right and so like i love our my job because i get them as relatively a blank slate every now and then you get a biomechanical structure that you got to work around but it's super rare right and and so like i love my job because i get them before all of that so i can hand them to a college college with all those things ready to go,

ready to rock and roll. Our quarterback is committed to South Carolina, and he's just smoked 225, beautiful clean. It's going to hit the internet here shortly. For the first time ever, he'll walk into a Paul Jackson, Olympic-based dude, Paul Jackson weight room in South Carolina next year, and he'll have a really good technique. He'll be able to immediately insert right into their system with no drawback.

That's how you know you've done your job. Exactly. He's like, you know what? There's two points I want to make before I say what I was about to say. Number one is what they should say, the Eric Cressy followers in there. When you say this stuff about no overhead, explain the circumstances. Explain no overhead if this. It's normally not him.

It's somebody else quoting something he said at a seminar without saying it. Out of context, yeah. Yeah. I know him too. Like we were on Elite FTS together. And like when people started telling me like, oh, Eric says no overhead on my way. I'm pretty sure. Sit him down.

Yeah. He won't get that answer. But that's what, you know, these people get so dogmatic about their approaches but the other thing you're right like as a high school strength and conditioning coach whether you're like you are at the school or whether you're private the one thing

the one reward that you should be after because it's telling you if you're doing a good job is once they go on do their strength coaches give you you're doing a good job is once they go on is do their strength coaches give you a call and say good job or do they come by like you know and say what are you doing and that's what you're after so think about you're at lenoir ryan right like at lr when trey lutchell showed up at lr to be to be on their football team they went okay yeah we love this kid right like he's a quarterback and he's strong to everyone.

He's a quarterback and he's strong enough, let's go to work. The biggest compliment to a high school strength coach is when the kid can show up and the coaches go, okay, let's go. No block zero for you. Let's go. Exactly. Do you have metrics set up? If you get a kid in eighth grade and you've got five years of legit

training do you have metrics set up or uh kind of goals for each year along the way progressing them to being a senior yeah they're all movement based so we don't have numbers that we see so much as we i mean we we have numbers that we want them to hit but that that changes as soon as they hit it we give them a new number right um and so like what we're looking for is movement standards i and that's and that is team specific right i want i want my basketball players to be able to do a snatch from the floor well and by the time they graduate high school right like i want our starting five on the court to be able to snatch well and clean well. And that's from the floor, full movement with no regression. Right. And so I, I, that, that's a sliding bar. I don't believe,

I think the top end in me, like if I, if I could say like my, my very top end you're walking into a college program is I can, I can put a bar over my head at a high velocity. So split jerk or power jerk and it'd be in a, in a safe position over my head in a way that is beneficial to performance. I have a clean from the ground that passes through a full squat or a power jerk, and it'd be in a safe position over my head in a way that is beneficial to performance. I have a clean from the ground that passes through a full squat with good technique. I have a snatch from the ground that passes through a full squat with good technique.

If I can hand that athlete to whatever system, I'm confident that they're going to be fine no matter where they go. And so my metrics are really sliding bars based on what's in front of me, the sport performance requirements, and the coach requirements, right? Like a lot of the coaches will tell me what they want. Do the kids train as a team, or do they all just kind of – they have free hours and they come in? Because I can imagine going from like the soccer field or soccer team

to the basketball team, there's a whole set of kind of complications in that. The basketball team seems really hard. There's a lot of growing going on in those years to get a kid to like 6'5". I can show you a 6'7 guy with 40 kilos on the bar and the most pretty snacks you've ever seen. Oh, I'm sure. As getting them all in rhythm and moving i can see like something like soccer and basketball being in very different kind of like uh learning pattern

so a couple answers that one we try to group them as best we can according to their schedule in the classes together like first period batman's basketball seven periods men's football blah blah blah blah right oh so you do break it into sports as best we can now sometimes it doesn't fit because i got an ap class i'm gonna do enrollment or whatever but we try our best to put them in there um the second thing is everything we do is tempo tempo tempo so like if my soccer players are in the weight room with my volleyball players um they're still in the same tempo so like right and then and then they have a sport or a sport specific. That's not really what it is.

It's, it's more sport idealized program for them. So I'll put all my soccer players on one station together and they'll roll through together. And all my volleyball players and other worlds together, but they're still rolling at the same tempo. So there's no option for them to lag behind. Like there's no choice because every 40 seconds,

the next man's up. So every 40 seconds, bang, next four, next bang, three people in a group. And we choice because every 40 seconds the next man's up so every 40 seconds bang next four next bang three people in a group and we're banging every 40 seconds for five sets so it's like it's that i mean we don't they don't have an option of being behind because we're on them because man for me what the weight room should create great team culture so i'm going to group people together according to teams it should should create 100% carryover from the weight room into whatever, court, field, and it should always create great confidence. And so if I'm on a tempo, I generally don't have time to get in my own head.

I just do what's in front of me, right? And that's all I ask. So really the tempo saves that. And that's a stand-luncher move, 100%. He showed it to me. I loved it. I bought into it. And, I mean, that is how we work.

The beauty is there's no sport where going fast is bad. We got to get him on our show. I've actually tried. Like, you know, he's been so busy. I would love to get him. He's the one who brought in my eyes, opened my eyes to, like, it can be done. I've always taught cleans. I thought, yeah, we'll teach clean, but I don't know about it can be done. I've always taught cleans. I thought, yeah,

we'll teach clean, but I don't know about jerks and snatch. Just a lot. He's the first one. You know, he sat me down and told me his system. I'm like, this is really, you'll love this. You know, I'm a data guy, right? Like I love the numbers. I love the data. We're about to get into that. I'm about to ask. I love that. And so high school, high school transition, I'm no different, right? I push all the numbers. I want to know the volume. I want intensity. He gave me what he wanted. It's the first time in his career ever.

He's been coaching for 25 years. He's never had to be in charge of writing the program. He's never had to convince people that this was the right way. I write the program. We implement it together. I had a program. He was like, no, change X, Y, and Z. I was like, coach, if you change that, you're going to get these problems.

You know what he did? He said, 25 years. And then he showed me a state championship ring. And I was like, all right, what do you want? You know, this is what it is. And the beauty is, like, he was right. We went after it again today. We tested. And we had, like, 40-pound PRs on the clean.

Tell me what he changed. Like, this is awesome. I'm listening. Like, what? He saw that technically we just needed more frequency, more number of lifts on the clean. Where I'm trying to, like, add variety in there, he wanted to really implement the clean so that he could get forced production up on the team and wanted to see the verticals track with it, which we did. Right? And so he looked at his team and said, I need X, Y, and Z to happen. My program didn't reflect purely like fully, like what he was looking to have happen on his team in

four weeks. And so he said, take out that, add this, you're doing too much here. A lot of it was just me doing too much. Right. Yeah. You love volume. I do. He's like, pull that away, do it this way. It's simple and it works. And I was like, how do you know it works? He's like 25 years in the state championship ring. And I'm like, okay, yes, sir. You win. Right. Absolutely. And so he pulled things away and he simplified it a little bit when we clean every single day, Travis. Now, one of those days I was like, Hey, there's no, I agree with that. I agree. Yeah. Wait, wait, what, what? You heard me? You heard me? I was like, there's no unilateral work, coach. He was like, all right, great point.

Split clean. So on Tuesdays, we split clean and we alternate feet. And that's how you get to do unilateral work in. Bro, I like cringe because I – I didn't even know they still did that at all. Bro, he loves it and it works. I couldn't – I wouldn't have believed it if you told me, but it works. And he showed me why.

He's like, when they catch, look at at this position then he showed me a picture of somebody making a tackle he's like same position or sprints or changes direction yeah he's like instead of doing a split squat and sacrificing that let's do it in a split clean so i can get the clean work in that i'm looking for and get the force production and get the unilateral work it's like i would have never thought to do that. He just got 25 years of experience. Bro, I'm telling you, if I were to take over a strength and conditioning position where I had hundreds of athletes, I would have three people I would ask advice. I would ask Coach Ken, of course, for Latrell and then you.

But I would want you three to come and give me some insight because you guys have done it. It's just brilliant. What you, the way you set up the systems for such big groups of people and make snatching and jerking and clean, like easy. I clean every day too with football players, by the way. And it's working.

It's working. I like diversity enough that I'm going to like, well, let's take the clean out here and maybe do a safety bar split squat. And he's like, maybe later we're not good enough yet. Get rid split squat. And he's like, maybe later. We're not good enough yet. Get rid of that.

Let's get really good at this. And then maybe when we've got 30 people cleaning 100 kilos, we can consider that. Well, Todd, I agree. I have never seen a football player that was poor that could clean a lot and could squat a lot. And so, like, why do – like, get them really good. I've never seen someone clean a lot of weight. That was not good on the field ever, ever.

I've seen people, obviously people can bench a ton. They're terrible. I've seen some people who can squat a lot and they were okay, but I have yet to ever see someone clean the most weight on the team. And it was not awesome on the field. Taking a quick break to thank our friends over at fit together. Fit together is having a body weight challenge starting today.

What that means is Fit Together is giving away $600 in cold hard cash. That's right. Starting October 5th, you have to go download the Fit Together app. F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R. And on top of the $600 cash that they're going to be giving away, we are going to be giving away $600 in programs. We're matching it. That's $1,200 total dollars. That is a really good deal for waking up, doing some body weight exercises, taking a video, posting it to the Fit Together app, finding Barbell Shrugged, finding me, Anders Varner, and having a radical community

that's super positive and fitness focused, which is what fitness people need in the social media world. That's what we like. We like to see deadlifts and hikes. And we like to see people walking and putting their Fitbit on and telling us how cool they are in the gym. What we don't like to see is politics and pandemics and craziness and people yelling and negativity. I don't like any of that. That's why I choose Fit Together. I love it because we have the coolest group. We've taken over the entire app because all of our people

are on there. We have the biggest group. We've got the most people. Everyone likes to share. It's awesome. That's why when we partner with them, we like to match. They've got a $600 cash prize going out to their winners. We're matching it with programs. That way, you got cash, you got programs, you're going to get jacked, you're going to get rich, padded back pockets, padded biceps, life is good. Go download the Fit Together app, F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R. Fit Together in all your app stores on all your devices. And make sure for the next 30 days you're posting your workouts, your bodyweight workouts, or just bodyweight exercises to the Fit Together app with the hashtag bodyweightchallenge. And enjoy.

Come hang out with us. Find me at Andrews Warner. Find us in the group. Also, I want to thank our friends over at Legion. Legion Athletics is the number one brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. Naturally sweetened and flavored supplements, scientifically backed ingredients and doses, 100% transparent formulations. There's no proprietary blends and there's a 100% money back guarantee and free shipping. Check it out. We partnered with Legion about

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So those are the things. I need to know that it's high quality. I need to know that the doses that I'm actually taking, what it says on the nutrition facts as a serving size is what is actually happening. And I need to make sure that it tastes good and mixes well. They crush it. All three of those, all three of them smash. So what you need to do is go over to by legion, B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-n.com forward slash shrugged use the code shrugged to save 20 that's by legion.com forward slash shrugged and use the code shrugged to save 20 at checkout let's get back to the show i've never seen i've seen people that are great on the field that can't clean a lot we've both seen those right yeah but i've never like you said i've never seen this is a

cressy quote i've seen people that are fast but not oh what do you say i don't want to mess him up he said i've seen people that are strong but not fast but i've never seen somebody that is fast that is not strong agreed 100 totally like every great sprinter has the capabilities of being strong in the weight room whether they choose me me or not, I don't know. But, like, I mean, if you look at, like, Ben Johnson, of course, he's a whole different thing about the Jews, but so is everybody else. Anyway, but, like, he did incredible things in the weight room. I've heard legendary stories of 600-pound paw squats

while they were measuring velocity. Did you hear what I just said? Yeah. Pause, 600 pounds, measuring velocity, trying to explode, and then going out and sprinting. Like, what? Ben Johnson? Yeah, Ben Johnson.

He was a tank. You've been measuring the velocity of the bar falling off my shoulders onto the ground. I get squatted, but I don't know if I'm doing it. Measure the velocity of me going through the floor yeah i'm trying to stand up i'm not worried measuring how fast my vertebrae snap and well my question uh let me ask the guy so many questions because i really wanted to ask you about this you know the team setting we never i've never asked you too much when that's and

that's when i said that there's two things that i'm really focused on that's one of them it was something i'm really trying to handle for who power and grace is like outside of the high school setting and even in the high school setting just stuff we're trying to develop is such a team element yeah so but like um what i was gonna say is like in your in the weight room do you do any kind of plyometrics, or is it just cleaning, squatting, and let that handle it? This is going to blow your mind. We have 49 football players in the weight room at a time. We have four double-sided down-to-body rags, and we have four wooden platforms.

That's it. I just did the math. 1,500 square feet jettis and 49 people 49 people i did 1500 square feet it's like sounds like covid but i can't i can't do that not socially distanced at all so like we're in the process of designing and building one that's going to be somewhere in the range of 10 to 12 000 okay and then you'll see plyometrics like i would love to be able to pair a plyo and a clean together um but but you you right now like there's just no way with football

i do it with basketball they'll do some depth drops and some vertical leaps and stuff um with their with their plyometrics but they they, or with their lifts, their Olympic lifts, but I don't have any space for it with football. Oh, but I mean, I just did the math. You said,

you got basically eight places to do things, right? 12, 12. So four wooden platforms, four squat stations,

four bench stations. Okay, still, so tell me how it works. Four people per spot. Yeah, what? Three to four people per spot. So it's real,'s real it's real beautiful so like if i'm in the clean group i'll run through my clean group five sets every 40 seconds rotating through with my group right and then if i'm in a squat group same thing if i'm in bench group same thing and then after my five sets everybody just rotates up yeah that

would work so you so those are your main lifts like the clean some sort of squatting some sort of olympic lift and then we rotate through but if you clean every day during their 40 second block and then they're taking a break while everyone else is going is there a movement for each person during each 40 second block so doug let's say me you and travis are in a group i'll clean it rest the remainder of the 40 seconds then travis will clean for in rest the remainder of 40 seconds then you'll clean rest so like i'm actually getting 80 seconds of rest right and so generally on my pressing one i'll have a super set so like i'll bench travis will row you'll rest and then we'll rotate you

that's perfect gotcha gotcha i gotta come see that it just sounds so beautiful like well you're gonna have to do it at Lenore Ryan because you just recruit all the other athletes into the weightlifting team. I did. I got Stanley Trell's son is going to be one of my weightlifters. And, like, it's such a gift. It's like I didn't do anything, and here's a guy who's going to go to the university's nationals

and potentially win. You'll love this, Travis. So we maxed our clean today. Luttrell's younger son is a sophomore at the school. We're maxing our clean. He's trying to get 300 for the first time as a sophomore. Think about that. I just did.

He walks into the weight room and he's got his lifting shoes in one hand, bright yellow, and he's got a 2002 Alico bar on his shoulder. As a sophomore, he's like, Coach, if I'm going to get 300 today, I'm not doing it with those bars. I'm going to do it with this one.

He walked over and goes, oh, an Aliko bar. And I asked him, I was like, and I've been trying to steal that bar from Luttrell for 10 years. And it's the bar that Coach Luttrell himself trains on. And it's this old, like thin, you think about the thin collars, like the old school Aliko. I looked at him and I was like, I'll pay you three grand right now. Let me take it. That one right there?

Oh, hold on. That one right there. No. No. It's thinner. They don't fake them like that. It is gorgeous. I cleaned on it this morning.

I was like, good gosh, this thing is just – It is – if you're Aliko, if ours, good gosh, this thing is just. It is. If you're a Lico, if ours is the one we built, that's the Porsche. That's the one. That's the one. You write that, and you will. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So what are the data points you track? I know what you do in weightlifting, and it's crazy. So for high school, what do I track? In high school, I track overall volume do in weightlifting. Like, and it's crazy. So for high school, what do I track? In high school, I track overall volume, number of lifts, overall,

I mean, it's almost the same as weightlifting. Overall volume, number of lifts, intensity per exercise per day, per week, per block. Right.

And then, and I track. That's a lot already for high school. Well, and then same thing on volume, right? I track number of reps per day, per week, per block block and then i also track ratios of certain things other things so i want to make sure my ratio of pulling is right on pressing so i make sure that i've always got

double pulling over pressing um and tracking the ratio on that i track ratios of olympic lifts to squats right i want to make sure that my squats are higher than my olympic lifts and developing the squat um and so i track ratios and then i think the only other thing i track is what is our peak intensity averages it's like what numbers am i touching and how often am i touching them right and i'm going above 90 percent how often on what lifts is it too much is it too little um those kinds of things and so i make sure that like sure my volume or my overall average intensity might be 75 but am i touching up 90 too often and so um obviously the track cns fatigue and that kind of stuff so um that those are things i track in high school so how do you i mean uh do you guys have velocity there and the you know how do they you have to trust your guys to put the numbers in or

what all right travis i love you buddy we have 12 perch cameras in our weight room oh I knew you told me you're about to get that I think that's awesome so everything they we just got them like are installing them right now so when I have them installed all our kids will have an iPad that's just like a gym aware right yeah shows them and so next to them it'll say hey we're going to use it as an auto regulator first. So they get used to it. Yeah. So I'm going to say, I want you to do five sets.

I want you to do a set of three at 180 pounds and it should be above 0.5 meters per second. So we'll use it as an auto regulator initially. And then eventually once they're used to the system and they're operating, it's a second hand for them. And this is, I'm pulling this from Tommy Moffitt and those boys down at LSU. And when it becomes second hand, then we'll move and take the weights away and then because right now they have no cognitive idea of what weight is 0.5 meters per second right i do you do they don't and so i want them to give them a year to understand what 0.5 is as far as what it feels like right and then

right and then and then we'll take the weights away, and I'll do everything by blossoming. I love that, man. How did you guys afford that? Is it just a rich school? How expensive was that? There were about four grand each. I'm going to introduce you to four words. Cross-curricular cohesion, STEM education, diversified learning, and differentiated programs, or differentiated curriculum. I use those four words to show how the weight room is more than

just a place you bang your head against and how it crosses and reaches out into the school. So now our statistics class, our AP stats class is taking that data and using it for their stats program. Our anatomy and physiology program is looking at the different muscle fiber types and what shows up in moderate meters per second, right? So I've pulled other programs in so that they can see and use it. So we're more than just – now we're a laboratory. We're developing an introduction exercise science for seniors, and one of the units will be the weight room.

So what it did is it – I showed that it's a technological investment in the student population 50 of the high school walks to that weight room travis yeah 50 grand 50 grand for 50 of your high school to use it and then for it to differentiate out to all these classrooms like that's a drop in the bucket it's just a few bucks a person now and so that's what we did how did you present that how did you get to the point of presenting that that's brilliant um i'm about to steal everything i mean so i brought we got a new headmaster the new headmaster is big on technology wants to make us on the front leading edge of all technological advancement as far as high schools go and so i had the camera and i brought him in i showed him what it did i talked to him about introducing it and then i talked to the teachers and the RIT department loved it, got behind it from,

pushed it to him. And so we had like five or six people saying, Hey, you should do this. You were like the last person to come in and be like, Oh yeah. And the weight room can do it. Even though you were choreographing the whole thing. Like I grabbed the stats coach who was also the basketball coach. And then I grabbed the IT partner, and I just said, hey, make sure you mention this. Mention this. Mention this. And then I talked and showed it to him. He was like, I love it.

Let's go. Did you show him your crazy Excel sheet that you developed? I didn't need to. I mean the stats guy. I feel like the stats dude would love you. Oh, the stats guy did. No, no, no. He did.

That's why I was able to get him. He saw all the stats and was like, yes. We have to make this happen. Do you guys have any long-term or as kids leave the school kind of like success rates of them staying in the gym, staying healthy? I think that that's something that we really need when I think about just like physical education as a whole. Having people that actually give a shit in high school. Now it just doesn't exist. So here's what I would say.

Two elements. One, I'm in my second year there. So what I'm going to do is tap the alumni, right? So use the development department to be able to contact the alumni and let the alumni give us feedback and then push that into the stats class. So we can find out,

Hey, what does your exercise routine look like now? 10 years later, after being in our class and learning everything there is on? Because every day, they get a scripture verse in the day. They get a quote of the day from somebody to work on mindset and talk about mindset. And then they get some sort of anatomy and physiology term every day. And then they get an exercise science term every day.

So we're educating them well as well. I want them to know what hypertrophy is. I want them to know what absolute strength is. And I want them to be able to use that so that when they leave my gym, if they don't go to college, or they don't go to a college strength program, they go to college, they can still walk into their rec facility and create a well-balanced program that understands, why do we push and pull the way we do? And then ultimately, I want to find out in 10 years, are they doing it?

And if they aren't, what can we do to change that? So that'll be something that I develop. I think there's a study out there. I've been meaning to tell you this. The push-pull thing, now they're kind of going off away from that as far as shoulder health and all that. But it's more about internal-external rotation versus pull-push. I think I can roll with that i think why i like pulling is less to do with shoulder composition and health and more to do with man any team that can step on

the field or the court guys or girls and the majority of the people on there can do body weight pull-ups that seems nasty i mean they're nasty right like talk about muscle composition lean muscle mass, the ability to move their weight in space. Like regardless of shoulders, like when I say pulling, we do a lot of pull-ups and a lot of chin-ups. If I can put a volleyball team on the court and the six girls on the court can all do five-strip pull-ups by themselves with no assistance,

they're going to win a state championship. When I talked to Martin Rooney about speed development and asked him, you know, what are the keys? One of the big keys, you you know obviously is relative strength and he told me that he would he would track people's pull-ups strict pull-ups and he said nine times out of ten the person who could do the most pull-ups was the fastest person on the field three collegiate strength coaches ask them what's the one thing you want and your female female athletes and they walk in This is the ability to show full looks. I have a two-year-old daughter.

How do we – when you think about training the girls, nobody else on – oh, you do Magnolia. She's one now, right, Travis? Yeah, she's one. I got a three-year-old and a six-year-old daughter, so I will have her. Nice. What do I need – not what do I need to do, but when

when they get into the weight room do the girl are they ready to rock like do they have pretty good strong mental attitude and kind of brave when they get in there our females are i will how to put this well females that i've interacted in the strength conditioning world in general are just more compliant they listen they work harder and they have greater tenacity generally speaking a because they see the weight room as a facility to get them better at something guys generally see it as a way to look good in the mirror um and i mean that's just the culture right that's the culture like if i if i could tell most of my dudes like hey i'll make you the most elite football on the planet which will play on a dad bod, they're out, right?

Like to you. But females, like, see it as a facility to get them somewhere. And so I generally have greater attention and greater application of, like, just being in on that. You're really good at that. When I am, I am. And part of it is I'm surrounded by females everywhere I go. His weightlifting team is like,

he has the best female weightlifting team in the country by far. Maybe it's ever existed. And so, he's got one going to Olympics. And so, one female

and one male. So like, yeah, he's just naturally pretty good at relating with females. But that's what I was telling you. He was like, they buy into this team concept better than most. Now now you have kinks in the road and you have personalities that facilitate it

and some that like aren't all bought in all the time but like generally speaking females see the like team concept better than males right and it's because they like they have this natural ability to lean on each other a little more um and so we just we've kind of like kind of naturally feeling it now when the problem is like if you have two like you have a morgan king or jesse stimmo who are really big facilitators of that and then they like move to california wisconsin you got to figure out a way to replace that and that's kind of where we are as a team right now is like figuring out how do we fill that hole in the team dynamic and which leaders are going to step up and lead the team. But females in general,

they just have a greater affection for teams where guys are a little more individualistic. As long as you keep it, as long as you don't... As long as they're not taking each other's spots. Yeah. Well, he had that this time. He did good. I'm proud of you.

I don't know if y'all know, but he had Morgan King, Olympian, and he had Jordan De La Cruz. And then he had to do what's best for both of them. And what was best for Jordan was to go down and go against Morgan because it pretty much

solidified her Olympic spot. How hard was that? Yeah. I have a hard time imagining a coaching decision that's harder than that. Yeah. Because you feel for both of them. They both feel for each other. They loved each other too, by the way.

They still are. They're still good friends. And the tension and the way they handle that, like, I don't know. Like, I have so many thoughts now post having walked through that for two years. But, I mean, one of the hardest decisions in coaching this choice is that I can imagine any coach would ever have to do. I don't think it's going to be a one-off thing. I think I'm going to find myself in those shoes a couple more times. And so having learned that, I'm happy.

And Morgan and I go way back. And so we had a great relationship going in. And so she kind of understood what was happening. And she had some good conversations with me she's a high communicator so she and I communicate sometimes sometimes loudly at each other um but but she's a great communicator and so she and I kind of worked through that together and Jordan's been with me from the jump so um it was it was hard it was uneasy and it kept me up at night a lot it still does sometimes um but i don't i looking back there's not much that i would have done different a couple things i've done different

but not much when we interviewed morgan she seemed like she kind of uh was just i'm sure it was very different and over a two-year-long period like the the frustration or the situation just kind of like builds and seems like a very long time daily stressor yeah but she seemed like it was kind of a situation of okay well we're gonna put the weight on the bar and then we're gonna see who wins at the end and that's the maturity of a seasoned athlete like morgan by the time morgan gets to weightlifting y'all she's been through two other sports, been with a bunch of teams, been with a bunch of personalities. The maturity of a Morgan King on this team, I can bank on that. I mean, I can trust her to see this reasonably and understand ultimately, in order to be the best, I got to beat the best. So let's put the weight on the bar and go beat them. And if I don't, I don't. And we talk about that. We're

wishing people had that mentality. You're talking about the UFC fighter. She has that. She has that mentality. I'm going to put my best foot forward. I'm going to put the weight on. And I'm fully supportive of her putting the weight on the bar. And if we miss it, we miss it. But we're going to put the weight on the bar.

She's about it. Let's go for it. We're playing to win. We're not playing to lose. Yeah. Her attitude when we hung out with her at the CrossFit Games just seemed like it was like, well, let's just load it up. Let's get after it.

And she's still that way, and I love that. Yeah. Snowbite's fault is just, you know, somebody was better. And what do you do? You can't get mad. It's not personal. You know, it's just you should have been stronger. You weren't.

It's all right. Life goes on. And she's still got a couple of competitions in her bag. She's still going to Columbia. She's still going to Pan Ams. You know, it's like I expect her to bag that were still like, she's still going to Columbia. She's still going to Pan Ams. Still going to, you know, it's like,

I expect her to see some numbers and like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, that's my American record. I'm going to go take it down and we're going to put it on the bar. That'd be awesome.

It's cool. So what about, who are all the high level athletes that you're working with right now? So, so on the team, we have Harrison Moore. And after leaving... But then you...

Bradley, one of the better 87s in the country. You got CeCe Kyle, who's the number 145 in the country, number 445 in the world. And then, I mean, I could go on and on about people. The little, what's that guy, the boy, Rutan, or what's his name? Matt Rattay, who's an up-and-coming 81, who went toe-to-toe with Harrison recently. And now, granted, I had tapered Matt Rattay, and Harrison was in the middle of a nasty block.

But they went toe-to-toe on a clean and jerk, and that was pretty fun to watch. Who won? Harrison, but just barely. Really? No, no. They tied. They tied. They tied.

Wow. Yeah. Harrison made a dumb jump. He went from 80 to 90 and could have gone 85 for the win and won in 190 and went for it. Had no business. But, I mean, he was just – it was a bro sesh. We had 45 people in the gym.

They were just going for it. And then also keep people to watch out for. We have Sierra Gray National Championships at Baylor. They won four national champions at Baylor and came in with immediate success. But you were talking about a problem. They walked in the door and said, hey, 2024, we're done with this sport. Make us Olympians. And I was like, all right, let's go to work.

And, I mean, within months, I was like, oh, yeah, we can do this. I mean, Shayla – this is what Shayla did to me. Shayla Moore, 59, she had a front squat up to like 133 or something, like a single. And I was like, I was making some joke about how I could, you know, I could do something with that or whatever. And she was like, I could put 145 on this bar right now, cold. And it was like a six kilo PR. She's like, and make that. And if I do that, you don't have to do my accessories today i was like whatever like fine

you're not gonna make that you're gonna miss it and i know i'm on the phone in a video and i look up and she's standing up with it and i'm like all right you're just like you know no big deal 12 kilo jump to a nine kilo pr at 145 kilos in the front squat. Wow. 59 kilos. I was like, okay, you're good. All right. What about the other girl too, the girl from Utah? What's her name? Kaya.

Yeah. So Kaya Bramwell-Mazur, she actually just moved here. She moved here from Utah. She graduated from BYU. Her and her husband moved here. Yeah. So funny thing, her and Shayla went head-to-head yesterday in a little clean complex and seeing who would win.

You know, Kaya is a competitor. Shayla is a competitor. I gave them – I said, y'all can keep going. One miss and you're done. And Shayla missed 114 in a clean, and Kaya put 111 on to beat her 110 and missed it barely. So it was cool to see them go ahead. Oh, yeah.

That's awesome. When you kind of look at all of these these buckets that you had that you're coaching and you've gotten pretty good at building teams like that kind of keeps coming through to me when when you're talking about this from the the multiple teams that you're coaching just in the weight room um and then you're with power and grace when when you're building a weightlifting team do you think about kind of like how the pieces all fit together or you know at the high school how how all the kids and personalities fit together and just uh what are you looking for and and how kind of like getting a team into flow so that they can actually perform well together

so one of the things i took um and try to get travis to do this because you know he is just busy doesn't listen doesn't listen one of the things that i did um as two years ago i got accepted to a usopc cohort of of other coaches from other sports i was the only way that can coach in it and the whole cohort is based around mindset development of teams and so you you get paired up with a bobsled coach and a boxing coach or whatever, and you talk about developing mindset. And so we have these six or seven trips, and we take trips and get up together three or four days in a row.

One of those cohort trips, we talked about personality profiles. So I have like a personality profile, this profile. Just on hand. Just on hand, right next to him. Literally on all of them. On every one of our athletes. And so I know what their strengths and weaknesses are, where they fit as far as mindset goes,

what do they do under pressure, what do they do, what are their own self-image of themselves. And I have all that, and they have all of them, and they have everybody on the teams. So there's no poles barred. Like there's no two way, one way mirror here. They know I'm a high D meaning like, I'm trying to win everything. And once I win, I'm onto the next thing. And they know that, you know,

Shayla is a high I and she just wants to have community and be high, you know, high engagement with people. And so they all know this disc profile for each other. And, and that helps them like as a team understand each other, like, man, that girl's struggling today. Oh shoot. She's this, like for each other. And, and that helps them like, as a team, understand each other, like, man, that girl's struggling today. Oh shoot. She's this, like that makes sense. Or Harrison, I see. Why is he losing it? Oh, he just has an aversion to chaos. But what has been the last year for Harrison Morris? Chaos. And so, you know, the way that he processes and handles chaos, I've gotten to see him do that. And I've understand why he'd done those things. And then I help him and the team facilitate ways to help him do that well.

And that all comes from these disc profiles. And so we develop as a team communally, that's step number one, just to know how everybody handles pressure and stressors and those things. The second thing we do is that every, like we have a meeting tomorrow as a team, we generally go on retreat. So we'll go to a cabin somewhere for three or four days as a team. And then we look at our team handbooks. We have a team handbook that has mission, vision, our values, my coaching philosophy, and team rules. They created it. I did not create that. They did. And so every three or four months or so,

they review it. They decide if they like it, they want to change it. They want to add to it. They want to take things away. If that's still a representation of who they are. They approached me when all of this stuff came out with George Floyd and said, hey, we want to put something out that shows that we're a united team around this idea. And I said, all right, y'all create it. We'll go to work. And they created it. We made a video and pushed it out.

So like our team, I've always told people the best thing a coach can do to help develop united teams are single focus and love each other is to get out of the way um is i'm a sidecar to their to who they are um anybody i think most teams where the coach wants to be out front be the tip of the spear himself generally is going to falter because he's setting a direction that maybe they're not behind if i can let them set the direction and i can get behind it, then we're off to the races. And that way, if they want to change direction, they want to change who they are and representation of what they are or whatever, they can.

And it's my job just to get behind it and help facilitate that. And so that's how we build teams is power and grace performance. That's not easy. It sounds really good. It sounds really awesome. That's just, it's the hardest thing that i do every day for sure and create a cohesive loving team i tell people all the time the two things i want to do well is write good programs and love my athletes if i can do those two things

well i promise we'll have good teams yeah i think it's really tough in way living because you're talking about individual sport you're trying to get a team it's always kind of like you know with wrestlers, same thing. It adds a little something extra. When football players, it comes natural. It's like you are a team every day. Yeah, if I'm not your team, if I'm your center and you're my quarterback, if I don't block you, you get killed, you know.

And Travis, when I realized that, and it probably took me much longer to figure out the word that way than I was willing to admit. When I realized that, I said, hey, Spencer, you got all females. You are coaching a sport that's individual in nature and in competition, yet you're trying to create a team. What else is out there that you can tap and ask? And gymnastics is the first thing that came to mind. Female individuals that compete as a team and then i started to do some research best female uh female coach in my opinion that did a good job

of creating teams right is val condas and she was the the head gymnastics coach of ucla for 18 years won multiple national championships so i did what every good strength coach does travis i just emailed her yeah i said hey can I talk to you? This is the scenario I'm in. I think you can help me. Bro, inside of 24 hours, she'd call me back. I was on the phone with her in a week. And she's been a constant person that I can call.

Because here's the other thing. She gets people who go to the Olympics and then come to UCLA. So they've been successful, like Morgan. They've been successful with somebody else at a different level, higher than where they're at. And then they come to you and you have to try and drive them into this unit that does things a little differently than what's made you successful. Right.

And so I, I, I mean, I, I called her a funky one for two years. I probably called her a lot. I'm gonna call her a lot and ask her, Hey, what did you do this? How'd you do this? What about this? And she just like, I mean, fed all of it to me. And from, and she's not a weightlifting coach, from a non-weightlifting perspective it was so refreshing it's actually so backwards too because you would think in most scenarios you play your whole life to get to the the highest level but in gymnastics you play for

till you're like 16 17 to get to the highest level and then you go to college which is like way below what you were doing last summer and you're only training three days a week in college before you were training 30 hours a week yeah it was like she had all these great scenarios and i was like coach like i have so many questions i mean i was on vacation and i hope i buried myself in the room for two and a half hours and just started. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, that's super tricky. I mean, well, how long – do you have just regular people that are coming into your gym and training with Power and Grace, or is it only people that are competitive weightlifters? Competitive weightlifters.

So they have to have that attitude to be very good at it to begin with, to even on to the team and and want to they wouldn't want to be on it he's not going to get a regular person you know he's going to get well the majority of i feel like the majority of weightlifting teams it's like you take all these people that go to the gym and then it's like okay well we'll just make a barbell club because these people are interested in it. Very few people have the ability as coaches to, you know, really select who their, their athletes are. Like, obviously you, you have a bit of a track record that, that allows that. Um, but to be able to recruit that level of weightlifter to come in and not have to take it from like the general population that's floating around in the gym and to have athletes. Everybody wants to join our team has to have a phone call with me nobody joins our team without talking to me on the phone or in person and one of the first questions i asked was like all right

so like why'd you pick this crazy sport and what are your goals and if their goals are like oh it looks fun and i want to get in shape i'm like hey that sounds awesome let me recommend three or four people to you that'd be great for you. Yeah. Do you recognize in any, I mean, it sounds like to be able to have, uh, kind of the qualities that you're looking for, there has to be some like personal development that's already happened.

Some, some introspection into their own lives and why they're doing the sport. Like, do you, is that kind of a part of the process to help them understand like their, their bigger purpose and why they lift for you? Um, or does, do they show up that way? They, that took a long, Travis could probably give that timeline better than me. That took a long time to develop, but it philosophically, that's what, that's why people come to our team. Um, if they join our team because, and I, and I

know this because I asked this question in that interview, um, if they join our team because and i know this because i asked this question in that interview um is they join our team because they they see our values and they see what we stand for and they want to be a part of that and so it turned into something that i had to be really careful about early and travis knows i'm still having to be really careful about it um and but but now like if you don't fit that mold it's oil and water like it doesn doesn't, you clearly, you either, you either conform into that being a person who's others minded team above self, you either conform into that or like you're, it's just not going to be a good experience for you. And so I try to prevent that from being a bad experience to them by just telling them

from the job, like, Hey, this probably isn't your team. But if we do have some scenarios that happens, they either hey i'm gonna try a different team or they they conform and like become a part of what we are but that took early early early early on that took some rigidity and some very vocalness about hey this is who i'm trying to create and i won't i won't do this and do anything but this and then it kind of developed and we i was like and i got lucky jesse stemo jordan dela cruz were my two and cc kyle those three just fundamentally part of who I got lucky. Jesse, Stimo, Jordan Delacruz, and CeCe Kyle. Those three, just fundamentally part of who they are and their rearing and who they were as kids and their experiences.

That's kind of who they were. So I got real lucky that I got to start with something great. That's the key is who you started with. You know, like you can't undo that. So like all you weightlifting coaches or coaches, period, whatever coach you are, like who you weightlifting coaches are coaches period coach whatever coach you are like who you start that thing with it's who's going if that's the person that you're attracting now and so that that would be of all the things he said is the biggest key he started with like

you know i don't i don't know cc that well but i know jordan and i know um i know jesse and they're the best of kids and so then you're going to track the best of kids. And remember, there were other lifters in there, Travis, right? But nothing ever really stuck, right? Right. And not to the – I just wasn't a great coach early. Like I wasn't – I was struggling with my own like my own self-image and who I was going to be and how do I invest in my marriage and also invest in this team and how do I make sure that I do one better

than the other. And like as a young coach, Travis and I've talked about this for a length I just I just wasn't a very good coach I wasn't a very mature human yeah I made really dumb decisions and my athletes didn't have a great image to follow so like I don't I'm a pretty big believer in that they'll be what they see and they weren't seeing anything good. And so part of that was like own personal growth and maturity. And as that happened, the athletes were attracted to that. And then it grew. There's some athletes that if I were to put them on this podcast right now, I would just do a whole bunch of apologizing more than anything else.

And then, and as that matured and grew and I grew up and kids will do this, y'all know that like my little girls, like they're the best, they're the best transformer of me than anything right and so as that happened that that naturally i began and then i and then jesse and jordan moved from the olympic training center to be with me cc kind of stuck in and held on tight and then it developed but it honestly the team will always be what they see and if i'm a really bad if i tell them we're going to be this and i'm this and that's just it's a terrible representation of my own personal integrity and personal accountability did it take you a while to get past like uh spencer the athlete that carries the ego that steps on the stage to just being coached and kind of getting out of the way to let let them

shine no because remember when travis did good like travis did a lot of good things right like remember was man was beating every like there was a point in time where like nobody was beating travis that was there was never a reality for me i would finish my best day and then my competition would start working out and so like i there was never a day where i was that level um i won some medals at the national level but i was never the guy that like everybody came to see nobody came to the 69 session to see spencer arnold being an athlete that wins medals at the national level you you carry uh yeah he's been extra yeah to carry some extra confidence with you when you walk on the stage like there's there's only one

bar and one platform and you got to go lift the weight you don't walk out there like i kind of suck at this guys like i'm not that strong why are you here don't be wrong i like beating people yeah i mean travis my best day when i beat mike zela at the 2013 nationals got silver it's my best day ever yeah like i dropped one 55 was super ecstatic. And then Caleb ad five kilos and open. I was never going to be in his realm ever. Five 10 in a class that was designed for five to like, I was never going to be that. And so, um,

I love the sport because I like beating people and I like beating myself. And so it was never about me. Um, I love the sport because I like beating people and I like beating myself. And so it was never about me. I think as far as like, hey, look at me, look, I'm the best. No, no, no. But I'm thinking like, you know, by the reason I asked is like that transition for many people is like really difficult. One, going from athlete to coach by itself. And then two, you're building this team and to be selfless enough to not want kind of that spotlight of like, oh, look what I built. Look at these athletes. That's naturally Spencer. He's naturally very good at like doing what you're saying there.

That's just him. But think about it though. Think about what you just said. Like, what better feeling in the world is there than watching somebody that partnered with you and trusted you and maybe they should have trusted somebody else to step on a stage and go beat everybody there's just like i could die feeling that's the drug feeling that's really the drug yeah i i have some of my favorite pictures are my athlete with a big grin on their face, holding weight over their head for a record or for a medal or whatever. Or whatever. Or a personal PR, like a PR. And I'm in the background.

Like, you can see the joy. Like, that joy never came out of weightlifting, ever. But when as a coach, like, I would pay a large amount of money to just feel that once a day. Oh, man. That's like the video. I would be an addict. Yeah, the video of –

Yeah. The video of when Hunter hit that clean and jerk. Did you see us losing our minds? I'm saving my lifter, and I just had a little investment in it. I was like, oh, my goodness. Well, I think many coaches or when people are looking for coaches need to look for traits like that because I don't think that that is the norm when you find coaches. I mean –

Good ones. Travis and I – I mean, Travis will be 90 and I'll be 70. But one of those days, like, we're going to be old men and our slipper is sitting on the front porch. He's still telling that story. Yeah. We have a top ten moment for us. If you guys would have been there, like, I remember – You have no idea.

I was like – I was a spinster. I'm like, we're done. Don't make a risk. Don't make're done. Don't make a risk. Don't make a risk. Don't make a risk. We are bombing out. Like, I knew we were bombing out. I was like, I just wanted to walk away with an intact athlete.

Well, now the people have no idea what we're talking about. It was when Hunter set a PR. She missed the lift twice, and it got her qualified for the – No, no, no. She did not miss the lift. She made the lift. No, no, back in the warm-up. The warmup last two warm-ups she missed badly didn't just miss them it wasn't like a bobbled jerk it was like barely stands up on another platform somewhere and she was over here

somewhere and she missed it that bad i legitimately thought like all right the safety of this athlete we take this lift and then i'm hugging that pole watching her go out the second travis is remember he's older than me so like it took him a second to cognitive realize that she had locked her elbows out and that bar was over her head i don't see it and i was on top of it because i had no i mean zero i would have bet the house she was gonna miss that lift And she proved us both wrong and smoked it. And I've never in my life have I been more proud of an athlete overcoming something. I mean, she just overcame something that I've never seen anybody do.

I don't know that it's ever been done in weightlifting like that. Like, how do you go out there and hit something you've never hit in your lifetime after missing two lifts in the back? At a lower weight class. At a lower weight class. At a lower weight class. I don't know, man. I remember when she missed the second warm-up. She looks at me and she's like, just like that.

I'm standing next to Sean Waxman like, uh-oh. She's like, what do we do? I was like, we're going. We did not come here to win the AO Series. Right. Let's go. That was definitely, as a weightlifting coach, that's my finest moment in sport come here to win the AO Series. Right. Let's go. That was definitely

my, as a weightlifting coach, that's my finest moment in sport because the whole, I heard, people were telling me everybody thinks you're crazy. Everybody's like, oh, Mashes lost his mind. I thought you lost your mind. And then she hit it. And don't let him play hard on y'all.

Within five seconds, there were big old fat tears coming down. Like a blubbering baby. I just sat there and was like. She still had two more lifts to go, and he's crying. I was like, Travis, you got to get together. Did you even put another lift on the bar? Was that it?

We went on there. Two deadlifts. I think we did. I think we scratched the third one. You scratched the third one you scratched the third you scratched the third we have a second one and we

I don't even remember what it looked like I don't remember doing it we'd already she didn't stand at the clean is what I remember

do you remember the conversation that you had with her after she missed the two lifts backstage yeah in the warmup area what did you say to her

she looked at me like this you know she misses it badly and she looked she was like this. She misses it badly. She went like this to me, put her hands on the air. She's like, what do we do? I'm like, we're going. I said, we did not come here to win

an AO series. We're going. We came here. I'm pretty proud of Travis in that moment because that would have been an easy moment to look her in the eyes like, maybe we'll try another time or whatever. He knew, no, that's not who we are. This is what we came for and he kind of bowed his chest for her and she thrived off that like she made that he showed confidence and courage in her oh you did you crushed it yeah and she bought it believed it and went for it and and both of us were like

by golly that girl just did that i can't believe it she made i think you know obviously you know spencer's got you know the two two of the top men and women in the in the world but that girl went from no one knowing her name you know and she wouldn't is she that quad the beginning of that quad she didn't exist in this sport to making a world team that was it was really cool you know she came moved all the way from oklahoma trusted me and then that was cool. And now she's coming back to Hickory. That's a whole other story.

I'm excited. It's awesome. I'm ready for 2024. Spencer, where can people find you? Easiest place is www.powerandgraceperformance.com. We have at Power and Grace Performance Instagram. Personal Instagram is at spencer g arnold if you like kids food um coffee general like dad jokes and coffee like that's probably you should follow me but if you like weightlifting follow power and grace performance um i mean i'm a pretty big you know when a dad joke becomes a dad joke

when it becomes a. And so, Hey, Tom Soroka right there. Hey. And so, that's where they can find me. I would say, hey, follow Power and Grace, but also follow our lifters.

They do way cooler stuff than we do, so. Yeah. Yeah. Travis Bash. Mashlead.com. Bye.

Smith and I wrote a book together called Bar Speeds about velocity-based training. Go buy that. There it is. Doug Larson. Right on. Spencer, appreciate you coming on the show.

You can find me on Instagram. This is the most low-key. It's fun. I love this. This is awesome. We need more of this. This is what I want to do. This is,

we're about to, hopefully, we're starting to deal with Walmart. This is, yeah, this is great, isn't it? Like, I want to do this all day, every day.

Just hang out, talk about weightlifting. Yeah. And I feel like there was good information conveyed. And I don't ever – like podcasts feel really formal to me. This did not feel formal, and yet there's still good information. You guys are the bomb. The best feedback – actually, someone tagged me on Instagram yesterday. They were like, it's the best feedback I think you can possibly get when someone's like,

I just wanted to jump into the conversation. Cause you know, they're like driving down the road and they're like, Oh, they can't hear me. And then they're like, wait, they're just, they're, they're in different rooms. You're just yelling. You're just yelling at the radio. It's like, so Doug Larson. You bet. This is awesome, man. You bet. Find my It's awesome. Doug Larson. You bet.

This is awesome, man. You bet. Find me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner. At Anders Varner, we're Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged. Get over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash store. That's where all the programs, e-books, nutrition, and mobility to make strong people stronger. We'll see you guys next week.

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