Barbell Shrugged - How to Build and Engine: Increasing Your Aerobic and Anaerobic Capacity w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson and Travis Mash- Barbell Shrugged #464

Episode Date: May 4, 2020

In today’s episode the crew discusses:   Breakdown of energy systems  What are the best tools for testing and assessing capacity Is there a way to not be in pain training the anaerobic system How to go short, medium, and long and not red line The importance of having an efficient aerobic system Strategies for recovery and how the aerobic system plays into recovery Why you redline and what you can do about it And more…   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Travis Mash in Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Paleo Valley  - Save 15% at http://paleovalley.com/shrugged   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   Purchase our favorite Protein, PreWOD, PostWOD, and Amino Acids here and use code “Shrugged” to save 20% on your order: https://bit.ly/2K2Qlq4    Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged” http://magbreakthrough.com/shrugged to get a 10% discount with coupon code SHRUGGED10.

Shark family, today we are building an engine. How to build an anaerobic and aerobic engine. Building your capacity. Get into the pain cave. Going long. Making sure you don't redline. Want to make everybody aware, next week we are launching the Stay Home Bundle. This is the largest, most comprehensive at-home workout program bundle we have ever put together.

Really, really, really stoked on it because we have a bunch of new products coming out. We've got some products that you can guide your own adventure. So it starts with a body weight only, the 100 AMRAPs for time. That's kind of our like beginner, intermediate body weight workout. It's a hundred 10 minute AMRAP workout

so you can get your little movement snacks throughout the day. We're launching a brand new advanced body weight program, a little bit more complex, a little bit more challenging, a little bit more strength building specific things, a bands and body weight workout program. So people that have bands at home plus body weight movements, you'll be able to get everything that you need. It's a much more of a hypertrophy program using bands and body weight only.

Aerobic Monster, which we'll be discussing in today's show. And then the thing that I'm the most excited about, we're going to have a guide your own adventure. A lot of people are reaching out having a very hard time finding a program that matches what they have in their house. Some people have one kettlebell, some people have two, some people have a set of dumbbells, some people have a barbell and a set of dumbbells. And what we've put together is a program in which you have drop down menus based on the equipment that you have at your house, so that you can lift weights, it matches the specific specificities of the equipment that you have at your house. And you can guide your own adventure on the specific goal. So if it wants to be more strength focused, have a little bit heavier

weights, or if you want it to be a little bit more aesthetics focused, so there'll be a little bit higher rep ranges on a hypertrophy side of things. Or if you want to have a bunch of Metcons, we have that in there as well. So you literally able to put in your goal. You're able to put in your, the equipment that you have and what we'll formulate each day is the perfect workout for the equipment and your needs. We're super, super stoked on it. And then on top of that, you're going to be getting a mobility program, which everybody should be working on while you're at home. And then you're also going to get a nutrition program as well. So you're going to get body weight only, 100 ambers per time, advanced body weight, the bands and body weight, aerobic monster, which is our conditioning program, a nutrition program,

a mobility program, and then the guide drone adventure program. So what we're looking at is body weight, one, advanced body weight, two, bands and body and body weight three aerobic monster four guide your own adventure five that's five programs plus nutrition plus mobility i'm stoked about this this thing is going to change the game if you are not a part of this you are missing out on a ton because we're going to be allowing you to learn a bit a little bit of programming as well and just the fact that we can match specific programs to the specific weights and the tools that you have at home right now is next level. This does not exist in all the strength conditioning. And we've been working super hard on finding a way to meet everybody where they're at right now. And creating this template is just massive. It's massive. It's

going to change everything. You can find, you can input your goal. You can put in the, uh, the equipment that you have and it's going to spit out perfect workouts for you to do every single day. Um, I'll have all the links and everything. Make sure you pay attention to the socials, but this thing's going to be a game changer. And, uh, there's, you're literally, or your mind is going to be blown at how specific we can make these things with these templates and line them up to exactly what you have in your house and what you would like to, what your goal should be. Before we get into the show today, I want to thank our sponsors over at Organifi. As always, Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. The green, the red, and the gold juices. I actually just got a really cool product from them called Balance, which is a mood and immune system boosting little formulaic thing that they created,

but it's super delicious. I put it in with protein shakes, and it's really fantastic. So get over to Organifi.com. As always, the greens, the red, and the golds, all the micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals that you need to be healthy, keep your immune system, digestive system, everything moving and acting properly. Organifi.com forward slash shrug to save 20%. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larsen, Coach Travis Mash.

We're hanging out on the internet because we're in the coronavirus land. We're talking about building a big engine today. I feel like this whole conversation started, I don't know how often people really talk, like general population humans were talking about, I need to get better conditioning. If you ever talked about that for probably the first

25 years of my life, everybody always just thought, okay, I'm going to go run a long ways. And then the CrossFit thing showed up and people were just full gas pedal. But there's a much bigger conversation. I know, Mash, you've been doing last year when we were hanging out doing some meathead metabolics, you call it. But there's tons of angles that we're going to be taking on this, from body weight stuff to actually adding weights to skill development. I had somebody reach out on email yesterday actually saying, I'm doing this program.

My goal is to go to the CrossFit Games or CrossFit Sanctionals, whatever it is. How do I schedule two-a-days? What are the capacity aspects that they can work on while they're doing it? So we're going to dive into all that today. Doug Larson, tell me what you think about when someone reaches out to you and says that they are trying to build a bigger engine. What are the thoughts that immediately come into your brain? Well, I mean, it's the same thoughts that I would have if anyone came to me for any fitness goal. Like I'd want to get their whole, you know, their health history, their injury profile,

what they've done in the past, specifically why they want that goal, kind of maybe even refine the goal to some extent. If someone says they want to have a bigger engine, I'm going to say, okay, well, what does that mean? Like, you want a quote-unquote bigger engine? What are you trying to actually accomplish? It's going to be different if someone's trying to be a marathon runner or a 5K person or to win a 400-meter sprint or to compete in the open or to go to sanctionals or whatever it is. There's way more information to gather on the front end, which anyone that's coached for a long time probably has some standard method for intake and evaluating and clarifying before they start setting goals and writing programming.

Mash, what do you guys do for, I assume this falls into kind of the GPP of just you have to be in shape and you have to, I mean, you still have to be an athlete when it comes to your conditioning side of things, even if the goal is to be the strongest person in the world. Well, yeah, if you're talking about building an engine as far as like weightlifting or powerlifting or even for like a football player, it's, yeah, it's a little bit different. You're building work capacity is what you're doing. You know, the body's ability to build to do work and you know i even believe um which not everyone agrees with me but i even believe that at times doing some aerobic capacity is is good because if the body gets more efficient at uh you know using oxygen actually even forming

extra capillaries around the heart you can just do more work you know and if i can do if morgan can do more work than the guy in russia at the end of the day he's probably going to win you know that's the that's the bottom line is how much quality volume can we do yeah there's a saying in mma that you don't you don't get in shape for fights you get in shape to train for fights right not in shape then you can You get in shape to train for fights. If you're not in shape, then you can't train hard enough to fight well. You have to be in shape first, and then all your training, all your fight conditioning, you have enough capacity to actually do it all.

That's brilliant. Brilliant. I actually think that that's one of the biggest lessons that everyone in the CrossFit space needs to learn is that when they throw their wads together or they're like trying to build this year out of how to get to the sanctionals or how to get to the games or whatever it is um they always just throw together like these really gnarly four, three, four, five round workouts that are filled with all these high skill components without realizing that that should probably be separated or all those high

skill elements should be practiced in a way that creates a more goal specific thing. Like you're building like a massive aerobic base early on in that crossfit season with a really good strength program so for example the guy that emailed me yesterday he is so stoked to be cooped up in his house right now it the email literally says like this is the greatest opportunity because now i can be a full-time athlete they have taken my job the government is handing me enough money to get the calories that i need in my life and i can sit in my garage and just train so he's doing 20 rep back squat program he's like

i want two a days do i do morning workouts and then afternoon squats do i do squats in the morning and i'm like bro down. Let's have a better, cooler conversation than just go. You're going to blow it out in the first three months. You're going to hate your life. You're going to have banged up knees. Your hips are going to suck. Let's talk. Yeah. So when you start thinking about how do you position yourself to, you know, have a 12 month program, which is a really the really the idea of what you want to be putting together, to be peaking at whatever sanctioned event, qualifier, whatever it is, building as large of an aerobic base as possible.

And then on the other end, so thinking about on the spectrum where you're going to be training and where you're supposed to be peaking. So on one end of the spectrum, you're looking at having a one rep max, one rep max deadlift, that energy system. Doug, do you remember all the names of the energy systems? Sure. Do you really? You got them all? You got them all? Yeah, your phosphocreatine system, your glycolytic system, your oxidative system.

Look at that. The basic basics of exercise physiology. See? You say them. Basic basics. And I totally just – Yeah, it's like short, medium, and long-term stuff is basically how you can think about it. I'd say 1 to 3 RM, 8 to 12, and then long.

Yeah. Those are the big ones. That's an easy way to think about it. You've got a few seconds, a few minutes, and then everything else. It's like whatever rep range gives you a massive pump, and then whatever's above and below it. Massive pump is glycolytic, and then above and below it. This is why I have a few people in my life.

Because I oversimplify. I'm like, okay, are we going long? Are we going middle? Are we lifting heavy? You let me know, and I'll show up. But when you plan out the season, you want to have kind of on the spectrum, especially if you're a CrossFit athlete, of like you've got to get strong as hell. But while you're getting strong as hell, you should be out in that area where you're not going to be so beat up,

and you're going to be doing longer interval training. So you're going to be in that like doing if you hop on a rower you do some some 10 minute intervals like a five minute rest in there um getting on there and just doing like a 20 maybe a 30 minute just max calories and like pacing just really practicing consuming oxygen, those opposites are really good. Because once you start to get into that like 6, 8, 12-minute range, that level of intensity is really, really gnarly. So the idea is as far out from competition, you're building really, really strong body, really the ability to breathe really well.

And then as the season progresses, narrowing that in, and we can talk about a little bit later, but how do you, how do you create those workouts as you start to get in? But that really was, is, was, it was my suggestion to him to get on some sort of, for our program, the aerobic monster program, which is just pure aerobic capacity. Um, and then stay in the, get strong as hell hell so he's got six months of 20 rm going into the one ton challenge so he's got that full year built out so he's going to build like a big strength base and then go into the one ton challenge which is going to set six prs which is going to be radical and then on the aerobic side of things, start long, and then let's move that needle closer to the middle,

which is where the majority of your CrossFit workouts for the qualifiers are going to be, which is in the 6 to 12-minute range. Yeah, and it only takes, like it's short. To build your glycolytic system, it only takes a few weeks versus aerobic and strength. It just takes longer. So to do those early would make total sense. And then spend the last, like basically preseason, that would be really crushing the glycolytic.

Because they will, the glycolytic and the strength, they will definitely compete. They will beat you to a pulp versus aerobic and strength. And phosphocreatine and pure aerobic oxidative they won't compete yeah all glycolytic all the time yeah you're gonna get burnout much faster than you would if you were doing just the the two on the on the end if you're doing just strength stuff phosphocreatine one to three reps you're doing you know zero to ten second sprints and then you're doing a bunch of longer distance stuff you know going for you know 30 40 60 minute jogs that type of thing

that's just a lot more tolerable in the long term I actually think it's great practice for regular people to not really even do much glycolytic stuff which is overstating it but but to just lift weights and go on jogs is a very sustainable easy way for just kind of regular people you know like if you're if you're you know a 40 year old and you're not competing in anything and you just want to be in good general shape and lift weights and go for runs that's that's a pretty good setup overall if you're really consistent with it and you're you're training correctly within those constraints but if you're doing all glycolytic stuff all the time you know

every session that you're going to show up and be like fuck like okay i'm gonna i'm gonna throw up today again i mean if you're in really good shape you don't you don't throw up all the time but like i remember i'm actually in a unique situation where i came out of um doing almost all you know high intensity weightlifting because i did this crossFit-type weightlifting since I was about 14. Then in college, I played football, did a lot of heavy strength training, ran a lot of sprints, did a lot of intervals. I was fighting in MMA, so I was doing a lot of interval training, running 400-meter sprints as fast as I can, a couple minutes break,

and then doing it again. Those were brutal sessions. If you ever run 400 meter sprints really hard and done them back to back to back to back, it's tough. And then when I actually showed up to, you know, to try CrossFit workouts for the first time after having, you know, 10, 15 years of weightlifting and interval training under my belt the first time i did like a 20 minute amrap i thought it was really easy it was the it was like the opposite of what a lot of people have when they come to crossfit and they get they get really tired for the first time ever and they're like damn this shit works really well i was like okay i got 20 minutes to do this workout and it's all stuff that i'm very familiar with it was like

okay i got to work on my pacing work on my breathing and then I'll then I'll ramp it up toward the end and and I did I you know I ramped up toward the end I got very tired one time but compared to my other workouts where like you get all the way to yeah to you know semi-aerobic fatigue um and anaerobic fatigue all the time where you're you're you know you're breathing as hard as you can possibly breathe you're totally out of breath like you're you have a pump your muscles are burning and you feel like you're gonna throw up or you do throw up and then when i came to crossfit i i only felt like that one time instead of the whole damn day i thought it was awesome see dog i needed you around brian used to yell at me all the time pace slow down slow down i'll just gas pedal i'm gonna get a big head start i'm gonna hold on i would say that's a temperament thing though no one's

gonna talk you out of that until you crash and burn a couple times may you talk yourself a couple times i did it for 12 straight years i never learned i never learned it was 100 every day i would add one thing to those you know to, to doing, say that, you know, you're in your off season of CrossFit and doing your aerobic and your strength. I would also add in is a good time to, to work on skills, you know, to not to burn them up, not to, you know, to do a hundred pull-ups, but to be able to get better at pull-ups or muscle-ups or whatever you're not good at, that's a great time to practice doing it without having to do it for 10 minutes straight or 20 minutes straight. Well, I think that's the most important part of the conversation. I think everybody understands if you want to be good at CrossFit, you have to spend – the part of the high-level CrossFitters that most people don't see, sometimes you'll see it in the longer documentaries, is how did Matt Frazier go from nobody to CrossFit Games champ? Or the three years where he finished, it was like second, first, second.

Like those years. I don't even exactly remember what his path was. I think he maybe finished second three times. But how did he go in four years it was like well he was the strongest person in crossfit when he showed up because he was at the olympic training center so long and then when he finished second he got pissed off and he just went in a basement and he rode a 10k or like rode for 30 minutes every single night of his life by himself and when those people wake up in the

morning they don't do what normal people do they they don't go and get coffee with their friends and relax they wake up and they go to their garage and they sit on an airdyne and they just start flushing blood and they just start opening their lungs up and they're just consuming oxygen all day because over time the miles and miles and miles of just sitting there at a low intensity like obviously though they're doing some heavier some higher intensity like longer intervals but for the most part you need to spend a lot of time just sitting on there and practicing breathing and getting good at consuming oxygen know, and like people don't realize that literally doing that, he's building more pathways for blood.

You know, like you'll actually build more capillaries. And so therefore, you know, when you start to do your glycolytic system, you'll be so much more efficient because you have all this extra blood coming that wasn't there prior to doing those long intensity, steady state, I mean low intensity, steady state pieces of aerobic capacity. Yeah, and when you see them – this is the part that shows up on social media or looks really cool. When you see them doing the high rep muscle-ups or these workouts that look like they're crushing them. One, their skill level is so high that it's they're crushing them one their skill level so high right that it's not

really crushing them but they're typically doing intervals where they're practicing up to say 80 of their max in the same way that you would do an 80 of your max back squat or something like that but they're doing 12 muscle-ups so when a normal human goes and does 12 muscle-ups they're doing 12 muscle-ups. So when a normal human goes and does 12 muscle-ups, they're like, oh my God, that totally killed me. For them, it's 80%. They're just practicing doing muscle-ups while they're tired and staying in an aerobic zone the entire time. So there's very few times that they're going to be redlining. But if you saw the numbers that they're doing

and then you went and tried to do their workout you're missing the entire stimulus of it because it's just going to wax you and ideally you're able to know yourself as an athlete so that you're putting you know four rounds of three minutes of work two minutes of rest and hitting 80 of of your muscle-ups, 80% of your handstand push-ups. You're just practicing the movement and practicing the skill of the movement without hitting fatigue or like extreme fatigue. Failure would be the worst thing because then you're practicing bad movement. But getting to those points where you go, oh, this is my 80, 85%, and now I move on to the next skill or the next thing. So you can practice the high-level skill movements while under fatigue

without getting to the point where you're redlining and beating the crap out of your joints. Yeah, you don't need to redline to be able to go to that place at the games. Your goal in training is to not go there. Save it for the CrossFit Games when it counts versus beating yourself to death in training. That doesn't make any sense. That would be like an MMA fighter literally going all out fights in the sparring match.

It would make no sense because then you get – I want no pads. No pads today. Yeah, come on. We're going to – That's what guys used to do for the record. A lot of people just you know 20 years ago when mma was kind of first getting off the ground ufc started in 93 like throughout the

late 90s people didn't they didn't know how to train like we know how to train today for for longevity they just thought you're gonna be just the toughest person in the room which takes it takes you a long way in the sport of mma um there's definitely something to be said for just fucking fighting it out in practice you need to do that at some level but you can't just do it every day NFL players don't play a real football game with like full real contact where a guy's running down field on kickoff and he's running full speed for for 40 yards before he smashes into you like you don't take those type of hits every single day in football you take them like one or two days a week and then on sunday you know stewart mcgill like told me the the most i mean eye-opening statement right when i was debating mike boyle about bilateral versus unilateral squats he's like travis let me

simplify everything for you he's like everything you do has a biological tipping point and so if you get to that tipping point and over it, then you get hurt and, you know, then you can't keep doing what you love. So the goal is to go, you know, close to that tipping point without going over. And that goes for everything. Like if a boxer goes all out in training all the time,

you know, there's only so much of a capacity that the brain will take of getting hit before it's like, it's done. You know, you'll see a guy gets knocked out in mma and then the minute he gets the first big knockout then it's easy he gets his chin touched and he's out and so the body has a capacity and the goal is to not go over that capacity yeah like Thai boxers as a similar example to mma they they fight a lot you look at mma, you look at UFC,

it's like if you fight two or three times a year, that means you're doing pretty good. That's a lot. Some of the guys that are known for fighting all the time, they fight like four, five, six times a year. That's a lot. Yeah, that's a lot. And Thai boxers, they'll fight every weekend for years.

Usually they're younger. They're like between 15 and. Usually they're younger. They're like between like 15 and 25. They're younger. But during the week, they're hitting pads. They're doing their cardio and their running and their conditioning. They're doing kind of more like touch sparring, point sparring, so to speak, where they're not really hitting each other very hard. They're just working on their combinations and taking hits and returning fire,

that whole thing. And then they're saving all like the actual intensity for the fights themselves and their brain fight every day yeah your brain can't take pounding every single day eventually it's going to dislodge and then that's a wrap then then you're not you're not going to be able to withstand anything somebody will flip you in the head and you'd be like you know you go to sleep so yeah but it's also not to say that you shouldn't practice getting to that really nasty point. It's just I think that there's also modalities like pushing a sled that you can get there all the time. And it doesn't really be – I mean you don't want to go push a heavy sled until the very end and you're throwing up every single day. But there are ways to go and test your anaerobic system in a really painful way that you can do more frequently.

Pushing a sled is not going to beat you up. You can't go fast enough. And the thing, there's no eccentric component to it. I mean there's not a big eccentric component. When you start doing the things that involve a lot of eccentric, concentric contractions, then there's going to be a price to pay. But, yeah, you're right. When you push a sled, drag a sled, do carries, you can go to red line, and it's not so hard to recover from.

Yeah. I mean, in my training right now um uh so yesterday i did just like touch everything full body circuit and it's incredible when you slow things down just a little bit how much of a like an aerobic demand so like just going like row-up, thruster with a kettlebell, just like 53, RDL, and then there was something else. Dude, going through that for like eight to ten of each just to kind of turn all the right muscles on, five rounds of that with as much rest in the middle as i wanted with no actual speed or pace i was so waxed by the end of it just staying at like 70 to 80 percent of like uh moving moving quickly i think that there's such a in a way it was i could have just sat on a rower but because

you're doing the eccentric every single time and you have to brace every single time so like if you're doing grace for example 30 clean and jerks for time and then every single rep you're lowering it the amount of demand that is on your body for doing the eccentric lowering like you see the guys that are really good at this sport they're always dropping the bar now it used to be how cool could you be doing touch and go reps until you realize how demanding that is on your whole energy system to like those short quick breaths of air and controlling your core all at the same time i think that's one of the biggest things that i kind of started to you know when you think about the total demand that lifting weights really fast puts on your body,

it's basically holding your breath as long as you can and doing as many reps as possible. That's brutal. Yeah. Because there's no oxygen getting in doing those touch-and-go reps or doing muscle-ups. You're really just trying to complete as much work as possible with as little air as possible. Yeah, depending on what the weight is. If you're doing touch and goes, presumably it's fairly light. And if it's fairly light, as you get more experience,

you should be able to learn to relax along the way. That's a huge component, bringing this back to MMA again, like doing jiu-jitsu or anything else. A lot of people, when they start j start jujitsu, they're really tense. And so they get tired really fast because they, they don't know how and when to relax. I feel like that's, that's similar for, for touch and go deadlifts and whatnot. Like being able to figure out how to stay relaxed while still putting force

into the bar is just a skill that you only, you only get through experience. Yeah. Totally agree. when i started grid and i think i might have told the story maybe the the one of the testers was like uh 245 pounds for 20 shoulder to overhead and the goal you know for like you know the strength guys would be to do it uh you know unbroken and the first time i held my breath the entire time you know i got to 11 and like locked black out yeah then i learned to breathe through it because you know you know at the time like that was not very heavy for me so

i just had to breathe breathe and relax and then it was not so bad then the next week i was able to do it fairly fairly easily yeah that's one of the when you see people breathing and doing the work it's kind of like or how they transition from one movement to the next and like what – how they carry themselves as they walk to the next thing. proudest moments as a coach after I had stopped competing I would jump in with our classes or with our competition class and one of our best athletes he smoked me in the workout that wasn't the cool part but he was like watching us coaches go through it

Brian and I and he came up to me after and he's like I can tell you used to be good at this and he'd be like in between between sets, you relax really well. And I was like, I feel so cool right now. The cool kid thinks I'm cool. He thinks I'm good. But that's like a massive way to – like you're talking about, Doug, that only comes through practice.

It's like where do you find the spot where you can fully – you're not going parasympathetic but like turn that on or like just breathing through your nose find some head space where you're able to calm your system down and really just chill out even though you get what eight maybe ten seconds as you walk to the next movement because you got to stay present you got to to be able to control your breathing throughout the whole thing. Yeah, the goal would be to like if you don't relax and you get stressed out, then you get the opposite. You're going to get sympathetic nervous system. And then that's going to ruin you because you're going to get all this cortisol. Your heart rate is going to increase.

And then you're going to redline for sure. Yeah. Just relax. gonna redline for sure yeah just relax yeah i mean that's like on the the athletic side or the the competitive crossfit because that's who emailed me yesterday asking this specific question which is why i wanted to jump on and talk about it but um when we think about just like i want to be healthy i want to be strong i want to have low body fat and i just want to live a great life where i don't have to worry about you know it's it's kind of like a health and wellness like approach or just being strong but not having to go and kill yourself all the time and like chase that metabolic laying on the floor beat down um what's like the the best approach for for most people to understand

like a long-term game plan for just being lean being strong and having some conditioning i think doug already said it you know talking about just just lift weights and then do aerobics i mean uh you know do do some low intensity i mean steady state cardio along what is your what are you doing are you still on your bike yeah when was the last time you got on your bike i've been getting on my bike yeah i mean how long ago 30 to 40 minutes i don't go too far you know yeah yeah i'm just trying to like get some you know improve my aerobic capacity and then get strong you know plus i enjoy it so at the end of the day it's what you enjoy because if you don't enjoy something you won't probably won't do it for a long time but i like to lift heavy i don't mind riding a bike

at the farm we've been riding real bikes like actually riding around sick yeah and so that's been fun i've been riding with rock and racing and doing crazy stuff on the bike but he's gonna come after you dude he is for sure coming after you so how's your sprint training coming with training for the mile yeah yeah um yeah this this conversation is actually very uh in in what i'm doing right now, talking about kind of training versus testing piece. So day one, I went out and I ran four 400s. I ran some 100s just to get moving and feel fast, which was awesome. So it was like four by 100.

I brought the little one with me. She does not want to leave my leg so I ended up picking her up and having to run some hundreds holding her because she would not get off of me which is super cool but chugging 30 pounds on one side and trying to sprint all at the same time

is quite a feat and then I ran 4x400 with as much rest so basically a walk around the track to get back to normal as possible and I went all four of them under 125

so I know that it's all there that's like a sub 6 minute mile if you did it if you were able to keep that but it's probably a 3 minute rest so you're looking at like a two to one work to rest or rest to work, work to rest. Um, and then, uh, that was like a really good day. I felt great about that. Um, Wednesday I went out and went two by 800, um, trying to keep those under three minutes and i went like 147 and the next one was like 210

i had like a massive massive wind in my face so the first one i take off the winds in my back and i thought i was freaking johan blake dude i just took off i was flying around the track and i made the i made the third turn and the wind hit me in the face and I was like, whoa, buddy. That's why I was going so fast. Which shouldn't really make a difference, but you catch like 10 miles an hour wind in the face and it makes a – It makes a huge difference.

Yeah. And you just – mentally you're like, fuck. I'm carrying a weight vest right now. And then I finished with four 200s, just rest as needed. But today I'm really stoked. So this is like the kind of where we can take the conversation as well and kind of wrap up on the final pieces of practice and capacity. But today I'm going six 400s on the 230. So ideally I'm going a minute and a half to a minute 40 for the 400s and then rest the

remaining amount of time, but I should be able to maintain somewhere about 85% capacity on the runs and still for six of those be able to clip them all out in the 230. That's the goal is to keep all six under two minutes for sure.

But I'd like to hang out in the 140 range, 140, 145. That way I'm getting a good rest, but I'm not pushing the limits so hard. And I'm really just practicing a good cadence and a good tempo without redlining. That's awesome. I need to start doing more. The running part just scares me.

With my hip, I would like to do more of that. Well, I think an airdyne is maybe even more effective if you can... I don't know the peloton well enough to know what an all-out sprint on a peloton looks like. It's brutal because you can increase the force. It's got a weight on it. Oh, yeah. Oh, cool. You can make it as absolute hard as you want to the point where it's just like gross.

But, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And I – because of the way I am, I'm always trying to beat what I did before and like kill myself. Yeah, it's been really fun. So that's why i did that um so all my training i'm trying to back like heavy lifting down a lot and doing circuits like i did yesterday where i just maintain like an aerobic state for 30 minutes so instead of going to like run a 5k i'm lifting weights so i'm really like building all

the muscles that i need to build um Um, kind of just like structural integrity stuff, but I'm also staying in an aerobic state of just breathing and breathing. And there's no reason that I can't do 135 pound row for 10 ever. But if you do five rounds of it and then you go right into pull-ups, like those pull-ups get really hard your back's pretty tired um you do 50 50 rows and you know 30 pull-ups and you're just gonna get tired when you don't you don't rest are you doing strict are you doing the like oh yeah i can't do so i did that fran and every single time if somebody like really needed me or i was like testing something because i just wanted like the fran that i did but i like wanted to see if i could still do a sub 3 fran i can go do 45 butterfly pull-ups but dude every single one of those that i did i felt

my shoulder like click and i was like fuck this no way you can't pay me so it's actually what i do when i go to the crossfit gym and pull-ups are on there as i try to do all even the high reps i try to do all of them um and i'll probably sometimes i'll like go into a gymnast gymnastics kit but i try to beat everybody in there by doing strict pull-ups that's like my that's like my my internal battle of like can i get through body weight movements strict quick enough to beat someone doing kipping or average people that are doing the kipping um it's just like it's not that i want to like beat them it's just my personal game that i like to play in there um but a couple yeah sorry i move on to a new topic are you saying something for no i was gonna i was gonna finish up so today um i have the on the 230 we're running six 400s but a piece that i'm really really excited about so the track obviously there's a football field the soccer field in the middle um and i

have scheduled that i'm going to do like a lot of backwards running into like all-out sprints so backwards as fast as i can for 20 yards turn and go um lateral movement and then 20 yards as fast as you can sideways, and then turn and go for the remaining 100. So all of that stuff, just like building general athleticism, is the part that I'm like really fired up to do this. I don't ever do it unless I have a specific goal of like, when do I really go out and actually just try to build athleticism and like that, like flexible, just flowing. I'm moving really, really well. Um, typically I just go in front squat because it makes me happy. Me too. So going and doing this stuff makes me really

happy. Like anytime I turn on YouTube and I watch NH nhl nfl like watching their training sessions i'm like man like i wish i had a coach that had me laying down and running cone drills and all that like that's the stuff that i really like to do but it takes initiative to go out and set it up where i could just load 225 on a bar and sit down and stand up so this has given me a really cool time to kind of get back to like the stuff the the athletic stuff that I really like to do. Practice all the knowledge that I really have because I don't – I haven't had a specific goal for so long that I just stopped doing all of the like very athletic things. um but what i wanted to transition into is like running the the the uh like setting up work to rest intervals um this is my brain i go so much on feel on like kind of where i'm at and staying in the aerobic zone that i want to be in ideally today it stays in that 80 to 85% feeling. Um, but how do you guys set that stuff

up for, for athletes, for yourselves? Like as far as going on, on the two 30, here's an amount of work we want to get this accomplished, rest this much, you know, and then pacing workouts out so that if, if I, if my goal today is to hit six, hit 6 140s it's going to be really hard but um the amount of rest needed and then learning the pacing side of things to actually make that happen i mean it'd be very individual i was you know i would assume is that because you got to know like like you would need to know why they're doing it like so if i'm doing it for to get you know to get better at you know sprinting or to get better at the mile, it depends on what I'm trying to accomplish.

Am I trying to make sure that they're running at a really steady pace and that they're efficient at it and that the arm action, the legs are good? Then recovery is going to be like full recovery. I want them to completely recover in between sets if i'm just trying to build their capacity that might not be the case so it would just depend on you know what is the goal does that make sense like um you know there's a time to completely you do a 400 and completely recover do a 400 completely recover because i want the brain to be able to process the mechanics of everything versus just getting capacity.

Yeah, I think you need to focus on a couple of things. You need to focus on the pace, and then you need to focus on the time domain of the energy systems. So we talked about this the other day when you were mentioning the mile and how you wanted to improve your mile time. And we started talking about interval training. And if you're trying to run a six-minute mile, that's a minute 30 for the 400. There's four 400s, a minute 30 times four is six minutes.

So if you're running 400-meter sprints, then at a minimum, you've got to run them in a 130. But if you have a 400 and then a three-minute break, well, you probably should try and run repeat 400s at like 120 or less. So you're training the pace, which means you're training the muscles through the range of motion that they need to be trained through. You're training the same fiber types, so to speak. You're training the lactate or acidity tolerance. You don't do it in the exact same way if you go if

you just go for long jogs if you jog for an hour the range of motion that you're running through the you know how how you use your your your glutes and your hamstrings will be will be different compared to like the short steps of a of a slow run so you need to train for the pace and then you need to train for it for the time domain as well like a lot of people that you can't just take interval training and just do interval training and then expect to run a marathon well if you haven't put in the volume uh and in the long long long runs like you you really do need to do both you got to train the pace and then you got to train the time domain yeah and the efficiency i would add you know like you know because if you get better at something like you if you just run mindlessly like you'll not get better at it but if you actually take you know certain

times to improve your sprint mechanics or your running mechanics that makes the whole thing easier you know like because you know if his gate is off then that's going to create all kinds of imbalances and breaking mechanisms. So he gets better at it. It becomes easier, too, just like anything else we do, just like butterfly pull-ups. If you do that, it becomes easy. Same thing with sprinting. Yeah.

When we were down in Jamaica and listening to Johan talk about his training, he runs the 100 better than anybody in the world he never runs the 100 in practice like that practice that we were at i think he ran like well first off he ran only like four sprints that day his whole training amounted to like four or five efforts that day do you remember that yeah it wasn. We were all like, wait a second, you're done? You only ran five times. We did like two or three 60s, and then two or three, it was like 120s, 140s, and then. He did like one 400. Didn't you race him at 400 or something?

No, Doug raced Prince at 400. That's right. Brave. Brave. Brave Prince is his Instagram handle. Yeah, it is. But he – I raced him in the 60. And I only went 45.

Yeah. That video looks like it's in fast motion. Like somebody sped it up at the beginning and then made it normal speed at the end but no one realizes that that's the slow-mo when you start to be able to see him. He's so fast. And then slow-mo.

Caught the deer. There was a couple of intervals that I used to do that I used to really like. I think there's something to be said for not having a certain amount of time and just performing at a set pace, like I was just talking about speed. And so you can do that if you're on an airdyne or a rower where you can see your numbers quantified right in front of you the whole time. So as an example, you can get on an airdyne,

just touch the fastest RPMs that you can get. Say you can get 110 RPMs. Well, just pick a percentage, whatever it is, depending on what your goals are, pick 90%. So 110, 10% of that is 11. So you go 99 RPMs, and you just stay above 99 RPMs as long as you possibly can. You're just holding on at above 90% rpms as long as you possibly can you're just holding on at above

90 full speed for as long as you possibly can and you time it you know you do it for for 27 seconds and the next time you try and do it for longer than that longer that longer than that where you're building capacity at that pace doing intervals like that uh is phenomenally effective in in my experience you also can just do it where you just go i do this i used to do this with mma fighters pre-fight because pre-fight you're just a week or two before you're pretty much doing conditioning like really safe conditioning you're trying to like let whatever whatever's broken on you heal up so you can go into the fight you know not as injured even though you always fight injured so we'd put people on aerodynes and just say, okay, just go 100% full speed, 100% effort.

If you're going and I say, come on, come on, faster, faster, and you're able to go faster, that means you were doing it wrong. You shouldn't be able to go faster no matter what. 100% effort the whole time and just hang on as long as you can tolerate. Just hang on. Even if you're slowing down, as long as you're going as long as you can tolerate. Just hang on. Even if you're slowing down, as long as you're going as fast as you possibly can or you're just exerting 100% effort,

and usually it's 30 seconds or a minute at the super high end, but doing really hard intervals like that where you're just trying to outrun yourself, outrun your own conditioning and dig yourself into a hole, but you're doing it in a very stable, safe manner like on an airdyne or a rower or skier or or something along those lines you can do the prowler pushing and pushing a sled i think i think a lot of people don't don't put themselves

in a hole like that very often because it's as uncomfortable as it is but if you can tolerate it it's it's highly effective that's been the best part of running right now is is like getting to that like very close to the edge again like i'm not trying i'm running i'm training for a mile so i don't have to you're not you should not redline until you cross the finish line that's the end um so running the 400s like but holding that pace is that's really really painful you like when you finish like my lord i have not gone this hard in so long yo actually speaking of speaking of mma um now now thinking back stuff i used to do like um at the university of memphis the the weight room there wasn't wasn't the most amazing and so i would i would use the treadmills there.

But what I would do is I would put it at max incline, so like a 15-degree incline or whatever it is. And I would do 45-second sprints. But on a treadmill, you can set your speed in advance. You can just say, okay, I'm going to run for 45 seconds at 8.8 miles an hour and then if you can if you make the 45 seconds then the rule is you have to go up so now it's 8.9 miles an hour and you can you you can't slow down you have to keep the pace or you'll fall or you or you or you very consciously and obviously quit before the time, before the buzzer goes off. And so you can really, without wondering, did I go harder on that one versus the last one?

If you're running 400-meter sprints, you can time yourself and whatnot. But to have a condition put in place where you automatically have to keep a certain pace and you're just trying to hang on i i think is also highly effective oh man that sounds the most brutal of all yeah brutal sprints is what that is brutal sprints yes yeah well i think that's all motivation is high for mma you don't want to if you gas in an mma fight it's your ass you're gonna be really tired someone's gonna beat the shit out of you at the same time while you were saying that like, like, oh, two weeks before, we're really safe, we're trying to get rid of injuries, so we do these, like, basically redline and hold on as long as you can. It's like, yeah, because in about two weeks, you're going to be redlined and going as hard

as you can and someone's going to be punching you in the face. As hard as they possibly can. It's going to get worse. It will not get better. I've never all the way gassed in an MMA fight or any competition like that. But I'd imagine if you did, you are just out of gas. And you can see the other guy is not out of gas. It's got to be a terrifying feeling.

A scary, scary feeling. Because you know you can't quit either because then everyone's going to judge you're going to judge you for it. Like the coach and all the other fighters are going to see you quit. And like it's a bad spot to be. You're just going to have to take an ass whipping. Yeah, the second you let on to the fact that you're tired, they're just going to swarm you. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you got to fake that, man.

You got to – yeah. I feel great. I feel great. Sometimes in UFC even like you'll see guys that are really tired, and then they'll get choked out kind of easy. Like, wow, he kind of gave them that. And they'll never admit that they kind of gave it, but they kind of gave it. Because it's better to just take a rear naked choke and give it a tap

than it is to just get KO'd or ground and pound until you're just bloody and your face is flat. Absolutely. Some people just take the choke. Yeah. I'll take the choke any day. Yeah. I'm not that tough.

Just choke me out. Here I am. Yeah. Is my chin up? Is it up? Is it up high enough for you to get your bicep in there? That would be awesome. Please don't choke me.

Don't choke me. That's great. Travis Mash. Mashelite.com, baby. Or on Instagram, Mashelite Performance. Or LinkedIn, just Travis Mash. There it is. Get the man on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn.

Dude, my favorite comment on YouTube right now is when we post those videos from Lenore Rhyme. We're filming out there, and people start making fun of you because you've got khakis on. Oh, yeah. Do they really? I've got to go see that. You commented back. It was only like one or two people that were like, wow, wow, what's he doing? He's got khakis on.

Gotta play the game. The dude's looking super pro. Yeah, trying to be like Andy Galvin kids gotta play the game the dude's looking super pro yeah trying to be like andy galvin you know gotta play the game galvin's galvin's teaching zoom college courses from his bathtub from his bathtub like while he's in the tub he said he said uh if you should go back this is gonna air after his episode so go back and listen to it but he said that this is going to air after his episode, so go back and listen to it, but he said that he's doing typical two-plus-hour-long lectures at 20 minutes because everything's online. He's just like, here's the slides.

Go ahead. Go home. Are you already home? Okay. Go play beer pong in your basement. What are you going to do? There's just nothing to do. Doug Larson. Right on. You can follow me on Instagram at Douglas C. Larson. basement like what are you gonna do there's just nothing to do god doug larson right on you can

follow me on instagram at douglas c larson also we got the 100 amraps for time as part of the bodyweight bundle uh people are eating that up we've sold a lot of those so uh go check that out you can go to barbell shrug.com backslash bodyweight awesome i'm andrews varner at andrews varner we're barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged on Instagram. And get over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash store. Tons of programs, tons of e-books, courses, nutrition, you name it. And then onetonchallenge.com

forward slash join to come get super jacked with your boy, Doug Larson, Travis Mash, and myself. We will see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. As always, the Stay at Home Bundle is going to smash. That launches next week. That's a wrap, friends. As always, the Stay At Home Bundle is going to smash. That launches next week. I'm going to have more details on Wednesday before the show.

We're also probably going to be doing a show next Monday specifically on these new products and how it all lines up, which I'm really, really stoked about. So pay attention. And as always, get over to barbell shrug.com forward slash store. That is where you can use the coupon code shrug to save 10% storewide. Also our friends at Organifi, Organifi.com forward slash shrugged, save 20% on the green, the red and the gold juices. That's a wrap friends.