Barbell Shrugged - How to Choose the Right Accessories w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #556

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: Why do you program accessory movements? How do you fix asymmetries and imbalances? How much volume should you program? Upper body accessories and fixing lagging body parts  Unilateral exercises and their importance   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   U.S. Air Force. Find out if you do at airforce.com.   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, we are talking about how to choose the right accessories. We go through upper body accessories, lower body accessories, how to eliminate asymmetries and imbalances, as well as finding out how much volume you should add in your accessory training programs. But before we get rolling, I want to talk to you about our good friends over at Organifi, the green, the red, and the gold. Every week, every week, every week you listen to me talk about the green, red, and the gold is a morning that you should wake up and put the green in your mouth because getting your greens first thing in the day optimizes all of your body's functions. The ashwagandha relieves

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Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash. Mash, you're in the mountains right now. Loving it. Guys got beautiful scenery. Today on Barbell Shrug barbell shrug we're talking about accessory work why we program it all the problems we can solve and how you can eliminate imbalances add athleticism get some conditioning and uh build some resiliency and some musculature

so you can get super jacked and not have to deal with injuries and just in general solve a bunch of problems without doing just squat dead bench snatch clean and jerk doug larson when you start putting uh all your accessory work together how uh what are some of the the big buckets that you're thinking about uh as you start to write programming? Yeah. I mean, I tend to think about all programming, to me, cycles back to movement patterns and muscle groups. And then from there, I can branch out into other topics. But with assistance work, you're intentionally trying to make sure

that all of your muscle groups and all of your movement patterns are getting enough stimulus to get stronger and or to gain muscle mass for hypertrophy or whatever else and putting on muscle in some areas is going to be easier than others like people that have long long limbs they tend to put muscle on their torsos like it's easier to put muscle on your pecs than to put muscle on their triceps for example like if you if they bench a lot they'll they'll develop more in their pecs than their triceps. Usually they're doing just kind of standard bench press and not intentionally doing close grip bench or whatever it is. And so for them, a lot of times their, their weak link is their tricep strength. So doing a much

extra tricep work, you know, can, can bring up the weak, the weak link in the chain. And so when I think about assistance work, I'm thinking about like, what are my weak links? How can I add volume to fix those weak links in a way that's going to be hopefully less joint stress than just simply doing more of the same, more of the big list. Like if you want bigger quads, you can't just go, okay, well I'm going to, I mean, you could do this, but I don't think it's a great idea to just, you know, double, triple, quadruple your squatting sets. If you just did 40 sets of squats every week and no other assistance work, you would make some progress, but it probably beats you up a lot too. Yeah. Mash, when you, I think that this is really where the like personalized programming

comes in and makes a big difference in how far you can take an athlete. When you start to not even just assess your athletes, but when you look at them as like a complete athlete and where you are getting them, how important do you think the accessory work is just compared to the main lifts that you're working on? I think it's way more important than most coaches would agree in weightlifting. You know, weightlifting, there's a lot of coaches,

there's a big culture for just doing, you know, the main list. Yeah. And they don't want to do anything outside of it. But it's really helped our team. I think there's several ways that I go about diagnosing. Obviously, you can look and see, like, where people are struggling and, you know, make a pretty good guess at what's going on. But about five years ago, we developed this big chart.

It's like a – it's in – if you buy my book, No Weaknesses, it's in there. And you take – and you go through and you do all these maxes or input all your maxes. And it starts to show red where there's deficiencies. And then it gives me a good idea of what's probably wrong. Like, for example, if someone is not very good at squat squatting and then you look at their deadlift and it's you know it's more than 10 you know the deadlift is more than 10 of the squat you know that there's a you know deficiency there and you start to say why well you know the person uh is probably there's a good chance it's the back and here's what or quad it'll be back or quads

in in the conventional deadlift because in the conventional deadlift the quads do very little yeah if you look at the you know what how much work is the the knees are going to do you know the knee extensors it's not very much you can just look at you know the the moment arm there it's it's short yeah you know the hips there's a lot in the back there's a lot but the thing they can do with their back is they can let their thoracic spine round and they can like take advantage of that shortening of that moment arm and so it makes it easier on the back therefore then it goes to the hips so then i would assume it's either the quads or the back so that's one way you can start to yeah deduce what they need to work on yeah i kind of put uh all of my accessory work and when i was kind of writing notes for the show thinking about

them and and some some really big buckets right structural imbalances being one of them um and which kind of that really gets into the unilateral um single arm single leg movements to um and then really personalizing it into adding additional reps to weaker sides or poor movement patterns um if you if you move well standing on your right leg but not on your left, this is a great opportunity for people to really dig into those imbalances, maybe some asymmetries, and really be able to complete, like just make a complete program by finding imbalances and asymmetries that you can work on to get stronger.

I think a lot of people, when they think about accessory work, just think that they're just trying to get their pump on. And I think that it's a massive opportunity to really build just a more complete frame structure musculature as far as eliminating a lot of those imbalances. When it comes to just getting jacked and doing more reps just to get more volume, that's definitely a piece of it

and probably the most common use. But I also think about just the idea of adding athleticism. We talked about accommodating resistance, adding band work. If it's using odd implements like i want to talk a little bit about kind of implement and tool selection from dumbbells to kettlebells to bands um i've been using a ton of sandbags lately which is been phenomenal um and then really like the conditioning side of things as far as you know we have to have conditioning so does that get into drop sets does that get into some sort of like

am wraps where we're focusing on really quality movement or adding in conditioning tools like the the skiers rowers but Doug when you think about the imbalances and asymmetries I know we did a full show on it but what are some some just kind of the exercises and the thought patterns when it comes to, even if we're just talking about like the movement pattern of like going, like improving your deadlift or improving your squat and some lower body ways to go about thinking about eliminating those and how accessory work plays into eliminating the imbalances and asymmetries yeah yeah if you read greg cook's book called movement which is a phenomenally good book you know one of the key points he makes in that book is that the number one predictor of injury is pre-existing injury so if you hurt your knee once then you're you're just that much more likely to hurt it again in the future. There's already some damage there.

You already have some potentially poor movement patterns that have been ingrained that are causing damage that you'd prefer not be there. And then number two is predictor. The number two predictor of injury is movement asymmetry. Do you move differently from side to side? I think an easy example there is like if you're a runner, like you're a distance runner, presumably, roughly, you're doing 50% of your reps on each side, step left, right, left, right, right. So roughly 50%, you know,

maybe you always start on your left foot, and it ends up with one or two more steps than you're right. But generally, the same amount of volume is happening on each side of your body if you're just going for a run. But your right knee might hurt really bad well why is your right knee hurt and your left knee doesn't hurt well you think if it was just just over training you know someone comes to you and say oh yeah i just my knee hurts i've been over training like well why doesn't your left knee hurt just as much as your right knee like you should roughly be able to tolerate the same amount of volume yeah it's because those you know there's many reasons for this not just this one reason but um they're those your knees your left knee versus your right knee they're not experiencing the same forces in the same way

all right if you if you're running asymmetrically where you know maybe you're you're heel striking and breaking a lot on your right side and a lot of those forces are being absorbed by your knee and on the other side you're running in a way that that isn't applying a breaking force a deceleration force and so you're not getting a spike in impulse a spike in forces on your left knee like you are on your right knee and so your right knee takes more forces and so it breaks down doesn't recover as fast because it's getting more damage and then it builds up over time and then all of a sudden your right knee hurts and your left knee feels fine yeah that that type of thing is happening on in many different activities like you know somebody could be bench

pressing and they they always tear their left pec you know or they always like strain their left pec but never the right pec well they're something is different from side to side so of course those what's actually different can be tough to discover you know is it is it a movement is it a mobility asymmetry that's causing the, the movement asymmetry? Is it a strength or motor control asymmetry that's causing the movement asymmetry? Uh, it might take a little work or better yet, you know, hire someone like gray cook or physical therapist to give you some type of an eval. Um, that way.

If you hire gray cook, you are crushing it. It's close to all of us. I'm like, it's close it. He's close to all of us. He's close to – he's definitely close to us. He's like in Danville, Virginia, which is like just north. It's like an hour from you, an hour from me. Let's go. Seriously. I love that dude because he's so – he's such a country dude too.

He wears cowboy boots. Such a stud. That's funny. Every time I see him speak, or I've only seen it a couple times, but whenever I see him talk at all, I'm just like, this guy knows too much. This guy's too smart. Isn't his dad a preacher or something like that?

He understands that stage presence. Yeah. When we went and interviewed Boyle Mash, I was talking. I saw him speak at Perform Better. And like, no matter what was coming out of his mouth, the cadence and the way that he spoke was just like, it was it was like the cadence of that it was like the car he was like waiting for the call and response from the audience. And like, he just had this like, flow to the way that he enunciated the words and how he piqued his voice at these certain moments of the important parts. And we went up and interviewed Boyle and he was like, yes, dad was a preacher for like 40 years in the church.

And I was like, oh, oh, he's been doing this and listening to this cadence and getting people caught up in the word for so long that he just sits there and it comes out perfectly like obviously he's worked on and he's very confident in his material but just the way that he went walked through every single slide was so good and i just he could have been talking about literally watching paint dry in that same cadence and i just would have i was God, this guy's so good. I should be there at the wall. I gotta go stare at the wall. He must've sold 500 freaking books, boards with, uh, with sticks coming out the top.

Oh yeah. His little kit, you know, smashing FMS that day. I couldn't believe it. I just want to go hang out and have a beer with him because he's just so cool you know but yeah um one thing i'm actually really interested to match when you're working with your lifters um it's almost impossible no matter how skilled you are without really quality accessory work to develop imbalances. Like one of the biggest things that I dealt with for me was like at some point, probably from just smaller injuries, larger injuries, just over time, bad movement patterns that turn into bigger problems, but developed like a really large hip shift in my squat, probably overdoing it and just training

too hard, trying to lift more weight than my body. And it just starts shifting to the left because I was just more focused on making lifts than quality movement. How do you manage that with your athletes in that it's almost guaranteed that if you're not doing the proper accessory work, you're going to develop these imbalances and kind of seeing the problems before they arise. And now all of a sudden you're, you're working backwards instead of continually moving forward. So how, how do you address a lot of that and seeing their movement patterns and then

kind of fixing the issues that you know are coming without them actually being there yet? I would look at their, you know, their age, their biological age, number one, because if they're like – like, for example, here's a good – right now we have a little issue with Hannah's hip, and so the way I address her is way different than I would, you know, someone who's a year out from the Olympics. So with Hannah, I'm like we stopped everything until she's going to go to the doctor

because she's too – I don't want to mess her up yeah at 16 years old because she's going to be amazing that's incredible for eight years from now but she moves really well yeah yeah so she's going to get an MRI today but so like but then again like if you know you're you're out for the Olympics still going to go to the doctor but you know I'm going to you know I'm going to be a little more aggressive as far as trying to do what I can do to help it. The thing is with asymmetries is that by nature, humans are asymmetrical, right-handed, left-handed. But the thing is you should always be working towards symmetry. Because a lot of people threw down on Stuart McGill because of that very thing.

How we're all asymmetrical you can't the point being is like it's the it's the amount so if you're definitely if you're right it's 20 stronger than your left that's huge and that will cause problems that will cause rotation at the spine that you don't want so like you need to work towards you know towards symmetries right now too like hunter is a good example like where she had a little hip shift so we've you know she's been working with a pt we're doing other movements in the gym to like counter that so because we're now we're looking at five years from now or four and a half yeah we have time if you know it just changes depending on where they're at if there's six months out we still got to go hard yeah can't do what we're doing right now but do you get better at kind of guessing slash a very

educated guess just in watching the way your athletes move on what problems are coming was there something in hannah that you saw saying oh there's there's there's an issue arising or just does it kind of turn into little pain turns into big pain and they don't tell you and now all of a sudden you've got an issue that you've got to deal with well she is you know hannah is so mobile she's like hyper mobile and she has no yeah hard to have it's hard for her to um produce eccentric control you know it's like there's no stopping weights from just mashing her down so that tells me that if we don't stabilize that that that will be in the injury eventually so we start doing

stuff like triphasic training you know so yeah and there's like you know if you look at the reverse hyper here's a really good example the reverse hyper is great accessories for some people yeah some people it's quite the opposite so how you load it's going to be key like uh it's hard to like you know it's hard to do some kind of like um it's hard to predict who that's going to be so you load it very slowly and like yeah in the moment if someone say you have a 45 pound on each side of the of the pegs and that starts to tweak someone's back or irritate it that's telling me it's a wrap it's like you know that that you know motion is going to be bad for them however if you know if people are experiencing like an improvement in the way they

feel you know especially like if they get off of you know like oh i feel so much better that's telling me it's addressing their issues and i know it's not very scientific but there's just not has a lot of research been done on that you know stewart mcgill it's you know he came he taught us his way that he would recommend doing it and he told me that's his idea uh and then there's you know another example like the reverse hybrid could be very bad for someone but then if they only use one leg all of a sudden that's a miracle cure so it's you just got to learn you know the wind to say when if an athlete experiences pain from accessories you know especially if it's loaded at a low volume then that's something about that movement it's not good for them and it's not worth it or that might be a good chance to say go to

your pt and see why is that little movement hurting you. I think the mobility and stability piece is also, like when you're programming the accessory work, is a massive opportunity for coaches to be able to get in and actually individually prescribe the way movements are done. Adding just tempos to work. Like if you have an athlete that's really struggling with stability and movements or hypermobility and they're bottom bottoming out they're having trouble getting out of the hole

of cleans or front squats or whatever it is adding tempos doing a lot of pause reps even your it may not look like accessory work because so many people pro like if it has a barbell people just assume that it's a main lift and you're supposed to put as much weight on the bar as possible. But controlled eccentrics, um, dead stop front squats or back squats, that stuff has a massive application as an accessory lift once or as an

accessory after you've done a lot of your, your main work. Um, I know for me personally, just like slow controlled single leg um rdls i don't care what the implement is but that um even if i just do it on kind of the weaker side um i i noticed that when you when you add that um that the tempo and depending upon whatever the tempo is and we've had had Doug does a lot of the,

like there's, and I think it's seven seconds, um, of paused shrimp squats. And one of the programs he just wrote, and I know I get questions about it and like DMS about, I'm like, yeah,

you just go down to the bottom and hang out there and see how well you can stand on one leg and really compromised position good luck yeah and but the ability to you know be aware of where your body is in space it doesn't have to be such a a big conversation to just eliminate imbalances like you can find them and then go to those places. And since you're not loading it to 80, 90, testing a one RM, um, and you can go there and just make the mind muscle connection. And I think that that's a really important part of kind of just eliminating a lot of the asymmetries and imbalances, just being aware of them. Most people, if you're just using a barbell and you're just lifting heavy weights, they

sit down in the bottom of a squat, they stand back up and they just assume both legs are pushing off the ground at the exact same weight or with the exact same amount of force. And it's just not the case. So if you can get on one leg and you can start to move in patterns that you or do exercises with a tempo where your brain is forced to connect with your body, slow things down a little bit. And actually, you know, talking about feel doesn't have a lot of science backing it because everyone feels different things. But the way a movement feels is really important for progressing through it. So if you are really strong doing a single leg deadlift on your right side, and it's tough on the left, if you lose your balance, well, there's probably

something going on in there and you need to just close the gap from the right to the left. Yes, you may never be completely balanced and there are asymmetries and everybody, but if you can close the gap and, and make those numbers as close as possible from right to left, you're going to be a much stronger athlete, and you actually will get closer to doing a front squat and pushing off the ground with equal force. I think a simple way, too, for our audience, I think this would be a good takeaway for them,

is that if you take, like, the three squats, the three main, when you take a low bar, a high bar, and then you take a front squat, you can start to diagnose certain issues and you can start to see what accessory work you need. For example, when you low bar, what you've done is you've made it easier on your spine because you drop the bar closer to the center of mass on the bar, therefore shortening any kind of stress the spine is going to have to endure. But yet what you've done, you've put it more on the hips,

which is a bigger movement, and you get more range of motion at the hips. So therefore, if you're really, really good at the low bar and you kind of suck pretty badly on the high bar, you have to say, I must have strong hips and maybe my quads are weak because on the high bar, there's going to be more of a range of motion at the quads. And then maybe my back's weak. And then if you do front squat, if your high bar is really good, but yet your front squat sucks, then it's probably your back

because there's more stress on your back than the front squat. So that simple little, you know, doing those three, comparing them, is a great way to say, you know, I need to work on my spine. I need to work on my hips. I need to work on my quads, which are the three big, you know, movers for anything awesome like deadlift, cleans. Yeah. Can you use that same logic and run through squatting or snatches or cleans?

What kind of movement flaws determine potentially what weaknesses are there? Sure. So, like, you know, if somebody – so, like, in the front, you want to go through those movements and tell you what movements you should do. You just talked about the squatting, but talk about maybe deadlifts with the same with the same rationale easily because like so the the deadlifts let's take the sumo and the conventional so like if your deadlift is way better than your you know back squat i almost compare everything to the back squat because you got to find something to be like

the starting point so if it's way better odds are you know you need to strengthen your back because you have a weak back you're obviously your hips are strong or you wouldn't be good at deadlifting so uh in the sumo though that's a you know that is a big you know the quads become a big mover you change things and the back is not used very little. And so then you can say, if I'm really good at sumo, but yet, and I'm good at low bar, but I suck at high bar, then you got to say, you know, well, that would be really weird. That would definitely say that would be your back because you're taking your back out of it in the sumo.

You're taking it out in the low bar. You suck at high bar. So that has to be your back because you got your hips are good, low bar you suck a high bar so it's that's it has to be your back because you got your hips are good low bar your quads are good sumo but then you suck a high bar by that only thing left is is back so right you could probably make some of those predictions based on body type again if we're talking like the the two the two kind of ends of the spectrum regarding body types for weightlifting, like the prototypical weightlifter has a very long torso and short limbs,

and that makes doing squatting, you know, you can squat with that more vertical torso, which makes snatches and cleans that much easier. It makes it where you could potentially like squat jerk, whereas if you have really long arms and really short torso and you have to bend over a lot when you squat, like doing a squat jerk is just's just very, very difficult. You need crazy mobility.

Yeah, but you wouldn't have to worry about your back because you got a short torso, but you'd want to do a lot of quads. Right, exactly. When I train deadlift, I never round my back on my deadlift. I pull as hard as I can, and the bar just won't go anywhere, but my back is never the limiter. Quad strength and knee extension strength is never the limiter um quad strength knee extension strength is always the limiter so when i when i train to specifically improve my deadlift like front squatting and single leg work makes my deadlift go up you know i'm still also deadlifting i'm not like neglecting deadlifting but you know the majority of my volume that actually helps me

is very quadricep focus yeah totally yeah so anthropometrics does come into play yeah how much do you think about like uh connective tissue strength and training versus just like pure muscle belly getting your pump on not as much as i should probably that just takes you know like i think cory Corey Gregory does, does that better than most people because, you know, tendons and ligaments, they just take a lot more reps than say, you know,

your muscles. You're talking about his 400 to 800 meter lunges every day. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people, some people, you know, hate on that,

but I totally, I totally understand it. You know, why do you think the dude is, you know, 47 years old and is running around like he's 20? He's doing something right. Yeah, I believe it.

He's working with a dude that was on our show that's a vertical leap specialist. He's going to dunk for sure. I really believe he will too. Which will be sick. I love that dude. I do too. If you hate on him, maybe you should lick yourself in the mirror.

You know, like maybe you're just a dick. You know what I mean? You can't be mad at Corey Gregory. No. He's four years old, but he takes his shirt off every day, and his abs are on just lit up. And the hardest worker on the planet still looks that. And he changed his wake-up time.

Last time I talked to him, he changed his wake-up time to 3.30 a.m. I think he's gone crazy, but yeah, good for him. Yeah, good for him. That's giving him more sleep, for the record. What? No, no, he's an hour early now. Wait, I thought it was 3.05. No, no, no, hold on.

It was 3.05, right? He changed it to like five minutes, and he said the five minutes adds up. Yeah. I think it was 330 he told me that he was waking up at now, which would be the other way. I was thinking that it was going the other way. Is it 5 a.m. that he trains at or 4 a.m.? Four.

No, he wakes up at 305. This was his last day, I guess. He wakes up at 305, and then he trains right away, and he's done training by like 5 a.m. Yeah. I was telling him, his content schedule is so legit because by the time the whole world wakes up he's already got his videographer in there he's already got his photographer in there he's already trained with his boys he's already done his whole and what everyone else like thinks about doing for the rest of the day that dude's already

done it by 4 30 a.m 5 30 a.m and you can't do it with kid you know i can't do it yeah they got to be older when you when your kids are like 13 they don't need you yeah i just uh i wish i've done you know i've tried to get up at three o'clock like you'd have to go to bed like i'd have to go get you know i need to go see a sleep specialist anyway. So if I got six hours a day every single day, eventually I would be like so wrecked. Yeah. This weekend's got to be different. But I woke up and started one day over quarantine. I woke up at 2.30 because Adelaide woke up, and I went into the room,

and then I went back into my room, and I looked at my clock, and I was so pissed off that she woke up that I went you know what screw it going downstairs I just cranked out like three hours work before the world woke up I got more done in that three hours from like 3 a.m to 6 than I could have ever imagined I was like maybe I should wake up on Corey Gregory time every day before the birds are chirping I was just in the garage just cranking it out um you know the majority of what people think about when it comes to accessory work is just getting jacked which is why i wanted to think about uh kind of the the connective tissue and and just that low level long kind of the 400 meter lunges like doing 200 i counted the steps

because i really wanted to know and it's about 500 lunges to get a 400 meter so if he's doing a 400 to 800 every day you're looking at 500 to a thousand body weight lunges every day that he's done for almost what a year or two three years something crazy some crazy numbers i've known him so at least since like 2015 that's when i started doing so over five years he's been doing that crazy lunge and learn for five years at minimum that's yeah that's when i come to know another guy so what is kind of the the benefit and kind of the the mad genius be behind really thinking about strengthening connective tissue as a part of your accessory movements though which it takes a whole lot more volume it's you know it doesn't you know you

obviously like the heavyweights and low reps you know they don't quite you know build the ligaments and tendons like they do the muscle well they don't at all you know so you you do need like long you know higher much higher volume you know. So you do need, like, long, you know, higher, much higher volume, you know, long, slow, you know, motions to build those ligaments and tendons, which is why he does the 10, 10, 10 on benches. You know, if you've seen him do that, it's like close grip. It's like 95 pounds. You do 10 close grip benches, 10 normal, and then 10 super wide, you know,

without putting it down. You do three sets of that, you know, same reason. So there's definitely something to it. You know, like when I'm on lunge, I feel better. My knees do. Travis, what are, let's break this down by, for weightlifters and for just people who want to put on muscle mass, what are like your, kind of your go-to assistance movements for, for your athletes, like top five?

For strength athletes, definitely like, uh, uh good mornings you just cannot beat it i like the rdls from a deficit with bands i like um everyone should do uh pull-ups but then i like the unilateral rdls and a carry that would be the there's a bunch i like i program a ton of accessories but i would say those would be my top five just off the top of my head RDLs and a carry. There's a bunch. I program a ton of accessories, but I would say those would be my top five just off the top of my head. I need to do more carries. Everyone needs to do more carries. Everyone should do carries.

Especially one-armed farmers, specifically one-armed farmers walks, I think are one of the best assistance movements you could ever possibly do. You can get brutally strong. They're ridiculously easy to learn. You could do them with people on their very first day, and you could do it all the way out to elite athletes.

You know, the new person's carrying a 35-pound kettlebell, and the elite athlete's carrying, you know, 1.5 times body weight, whatever it is. But, man, just amazing assistance work that is very difficult to replicate. I think one thing with the thing with the unilateral carries is making sure that you don't just lean into it. You want to try to stay as upright

as possible. We tell our athletes to put the elbow out, the carrying elbow out, and that keeps them upright for the most part. I won't do that unless you're doing CrossFit. You're just trying to do whatever. Just get to the finish line the goal is to make a stronger structure around the spine and definitely try to stay upright how often do you yoke walk with your athletes a lot is like

as long as you know as long as we have yoke you know yokes available but if we don't then we you know we could do you could always do a barbell with bands and kettlebells dangling. So we do that too. We have the bamboo bar that we do a lot of dangling kettlebells. That's really crazy. But I like the yoke walks. I mean, for one thing, it's fun. You get the athletes out there battling it out, and it's relatively safe.

You make sure your environment is safe. You don't have holes in the ground or something, but that's always fun. Yeah. I mean, that's a big part of assistance work, really, is that it is more fun than the hard work of real training. Yeah. It's stressful. Hey, guys.

All three of my kids just ran into my room. What's up, bud? Come on. Come play. Okay. How do they get so excited at this hour i don't know yeah regarding uh training and just making it fun and and in some cases like tolerable like if all you did was max 20 rep back squats and and 45 second 100 full speed airdyne sprints and that was like all you did every day it's like every day you're just smoked and and 45 second 100 full speed airdyne sprints and that was like all you

did every day it's like every day you're just smoked and and you're trying to throw up the whole session and whatever else like so if you go and you do your you know you do your big list you know hard and heavy and all that and then and then if you're doing you know bent rows and and bicep curls and one-arm farmers walks and whatever else to fill up you know the second half of your session. It's kind of like whenever I transition from the big movements to assistance work, it's like in my mind, it's an obvious psychological shift for like, okay, now I can kind of just chill and have fun. I'm still putting forth effort, but, you know, doing a set of eights on bicep curls is only

going to tax your whole system so much. Like I'm not, I'm not dying at that point in my workout anymore, the way that I would be if I was doing something, you know, much more intense. And I'm not stressed out thinking, okay,

I got to hit this X number on snatch or like, you know, like, you know, with weightlifters, they're so like, Oh God, you know,

they need to do well in the snatch and that's their whole life is, is wrapped up in those movements. So when they move to accessories and to the bodybuilding, they can just chill, relax, get a pump like everybody else. Yeah, that's a good point as well. Like with the big movements, I'm always focusing externally. I'm thinking about the weight that's on the bar and how fast the bar is moving. And then all of a sudden, once I switch to assistance work, then it's like 100% internal. I'm just trying to think about how I'm squeezing the muscle, getting down my muscle connection, trying to get a pump, getting a

good contraction, and just feeling the muscle work. And I'm not really thinking about the weight on the bar so much anymore. I'm just kind of paying attention to how the reps feel. And am I getting between, you know, between like six and 15 reps? Like I have this like big range that I'm shooting for and I don't really care as long as I go somewhere close to failure. Exactly. That's all that matters. And like, you know,

I don't know about you guys. Is it easy for you to catch, you know, when you lift now, is it easy for you to get a pump? Like, it's not for me now. I don't know if it's my age,

but like lately though, just lately I've been able to start getting big pumps again. I don't know why that is, if my trainees are some old man, but lately I've been able to get some pretty big pumps. It's so much fun. This shit's addicting. I was at my original gym the other day. Oh, I saw that.

Yeah. What does your main program look like because mine's changed so much in the last six months that i i pretty much only do like hypertrophy work like i i squat once a week with like a back squat uh which is fine it's just less than normal um and then i do more deadlifts but i haven't done much olympic lifting in the last six months just because, well, one, I was training during nap time. If you drop a freaking snatch from over your head and baby wakes up, you're an idiot. You wake up, take them. Yeah.

Right. Um, but all of the, the majority of the rep ranges that I've been doing main lifts and has been in that like six to 12, which is way more than three to one, which I would typically train in. Um, but I think that's made a massive difference just increasing the total volume of, um, just everything really like having moving, you know, suboptimal submaximal weights, but increasing the reps for a long period of time has made a big difference in in my just i think i'm i would say i feel much stronger um even though it's probably in a different rep range than like just wandering around you're probably more bigger

you probably added muscle so therefore you definitely your capability to be stronger has probably gone up i would yeah i would dare say especially this long a time since kovas i guarantee you're you're capable right now of getting super strong well i wonder the reason i asked like are you still i mean every video i see is like massive weights that you're you're still moving around is are you still in the the the threes and twos and ones for for everything you you're doing? I go on streak. So I'll do like a streak of like, you know, body build like in the fives and threes. And then like one day is like hypertrophy and one day is velocity. And you know, and even on my hypertrophy, it'll still be,

I'll still do like a five RM. So I'm still doing max ever. It's at those higher thresholds. And then I do a lot of downsets. And then, you know, I'll do that. You know, know it's a simple concept I do that four to six weeks then I'll go on the streak of two to three weeks of like going heavier and you'll see PR PR PR then I'll go back to that yeah one of the things I actually really want to talk about because I think it uh and I mentioned at the beginning of the show like adding the idea of athleticism into your training um and not that you can't be athletic with the barbell clearly snatch clean and jerk are some of the most athletic movements that are on this planet. But, um, I've been changing. I mean, I use sandbags almost daily. I'm doing it tonight.

And it is so good. Cause I can grab a 100 pound sandbag or 150 pound sandbag and do squats and i just it's completely different than what i'm doing with um with a barbell like it's the same movement pattern but the the loading the core engagement the fact that that thing just fights back and you're constantly trying to hold it up um and just the way that your shoulders kind of have to round around the bag in order to maintain a good torso position. There's so many different things. And when I think about like, how do you build athleticism in the gym, that variety and that variance, even though you're maintaining like the same movement pattern is kind of the best way that I have to describe it. It's like, we can all do a deadlift. But if you do a deadlift with a sandbag, it's completely different. Or

you're doing a deadlift with like a, one of those, like Contreras has those like T T bells where you can, it's like a plate loaded thing that drops right between your legs. It's a deadlift, but it's much more in like a squatting pattern and you're doing it from a deficit um like stiff like a deadlifts was trying to do that with a hundred pound sandbag the other day and it lit me up yeah because the range of motion is so far to be able to get your hands down to the ground i mean you're trying to touch the ground with the back of your hands when you're holding on to a hundred pound sandbag and just that stretch of your hamstrings, plus just holding on to that thing in such an awkward position.

Like, do you think much about just the variance inside specific movements in that the more you take the basic movement pattern and vary stance or implement, you're really kind of like hard wiring the body to be more athletic and, and adapt to whatever, adapt to whatever, whatever demand is being thrown at it, even though you're really just doing a deadlift.

Yeah. But you're, you know what you're doing, that is the conjugate method by nature. What you're saying is like, you know, I think the accessory movements is exactly where the majority of you know the variance should be you know like if you're a weightlifter you need to snatch a clean and jerk and if you're a power

lifter you need to squat base deadlift but your accessories is where i think yes change that mess up all the time yeah that way you'll never experience you know the law of accommodation where it's where you're it's a fancy word for saying plateau so yeah i think that's brilliant and i love these bags when they showed up they sat in the corner because i didn't know what to do with them i just forced myself but i don't have i don't have a rack of dumbbells yeah which i really need to invest in any companies out there want to hook me up with some dumbbells because I need some bad. Yeah. I do too. My kids broke mine yesterday, so I totally need some more dumbbells.

Oh, that's a brutal day. Yeah. You had those like in-tech, like they went up to like 100 pounds, right? Yeah, I have the select-tech dumbbells that go up to 90, like every five pounds or so. My kids break everything. Like if they're somewhere long enough. Doug, how'd your kids break them?

I have no idea. I wasn't home. You should just leave those things on 100 pounds so that they have no chance. We've already discussed that. Like bringing up old shit. If your kids are like mine they're like i don't know it's accident that's my kid said they go it's accident it's accident everything doesn't matter how blatantly obviously not accident it was it was an accident so you picked that up that machete

and chopped down accidentally I'm going to kill you. The other thing that I really, really need and is probably my – I'm going to tell you a story about getting angry at a gym. I went to the only Globo gym, corporate gym that's open right now because in my garage, I've got barbells, sandbags, kettlebells, I've got all these things, but it's really hard over and over and over again to do good back workouts when you just don't have cables. You don't have things that you can just sit there and pull on forever. Like I can do pull-ups, but you know what else I can do? I could do like 30 pull-ups or I could do weighted pull-ups or i could do assisted pull-ups and get all the reps in that i need but you know what's way cooler most of the time sitting my ass down yeah the low row going on hitting the pull downs i could just look

sometimes i'll just get a little bit high little high head to the head to the globo gym and your boy will just sit on the seated row machine and just go pull away i will close my eyes and throw on some tunes and your boy will be like a little it'll be like a meathead hippie hanging out on the seated row just pulling away getting a back pump and i don't count the reps i don't count anything i'm just i'm all scap right i'm just cranking away on it yeah and the boy's got your dude's got good music going i can't feel anything i'm in my zone the boy your dude is just crushing it yeah ah just swelling with blood right you can't you put it on you put it on like a medium high weight nothing you're ever gonna miss and you just crush it and i do the same thing on pull downs it's hard in my gym right now

to do like really really good back workouts because i don't have dumbbells for unilateral rows and i don't have and the 53 just isn't enough the kettlebell and then i don't have uh a cable machine those are it's killing me and so i went into the i went into a corporate gym the other day and they had i walked in and there was like oh there's my cables i need them i'm ready i'm about to just i'm about to just put up a set up shop anybody that walks by i'm just gonna growl at them so they just stay away from me you're gonna have to wait 30 minutes for me to get off the seated row they didn't have the low row they only had the pull i want my money back i could not believe it i was like i was on the way to the gym so excited

about just sitting on the the seated row and just cranking away. And I walked in, and it wasn't there. I was just like, this should be a crime that you have. That's why you're open. You have the full cable setup. They had the two sides set up. They had all the attachments. And I was going to have to sit on the floor to do my rows. And I was like, I just can't.

Give me my money back. Give me my $20 back. And I was going to have to sit on the floor to do my rows. And I was like, I just can't. This is so. Give me my money back. Give me my 20 bucks back. The only thing I showed up here for was that. And you didn't have it. It's messed up. I would want, if I could have three bodybuilding machines, I would want, I like the hammer strength, low row,

which is not cable, but man, it pumps me like crazy. I'd want the hammer strength, any of the chest presses, any of them just to let me get this massive, you know, peck pump. I mean, who doesn't like when their pecks are just engorged with blood? Your boobs are bigger than your wife's. You're just like, what? And then I would like either a leg press, but preferably a hack squat. I would love to have a hack squat at my house.

And then I'm complete because we have a cable machine. It's kind of like multi-purpose. But I would love to have a hack squat and just get my quads. Absolutely huge. The landmine hack squat hack is pretty good. But the problem with the landmine is you've got to get it up to your shoulders. You can't put a ton of weight on it and i end up like using straps just to get it around because the grip's so wide i think ben bruno invented slash he may have a patent on it but he invented like a

like a barbell size attachment that you can put like the the the handle of the barbell that you can stick off the end because it's so hard to pick it up once you get really heavy with that um but yeah hack squad would be huge that's 30 inch quads again um but dude do you get how do you handle back training accessory work for your athletes because they're most of them are at their home right now and it's training your back is one of the hardest things to do when you don't have the right equipment it's just it's too strong and the angles are too hard to get into when you just don't have that much stuff like when we were doing the when everybody was doing

bodyweight stuff it was like go grab a backpack and do some books. But at some point, you've got to be able to load your lats, and it's really hard. You'll get some massive rocks thrown in your backpack. I love what Doug taught. That's where I got the idea from him. So you have backpacks. They all do pull-ups. And obviously, you do the barbell rows.

But you can use plates as your dumbbells to do rows, and we do that a lot. We'll grab the plates in the circle. You can go up to 55 pounds in each hand, which isn't a time. When you get the grip strength part of that because it's an awkward...

Pinch grip rows, I just made that up, but that'd be a great idea. You can't do it like you know. You can do a pinch grip row with 55 smash. I just made that up, but that would be a great idea. Yeah, you can't do it like you know. You can do a pen script row with 55 smash. You'd go viral. You'd go viral. I'm going to try that this evening.

Do you guys do that much in the way of grip training? If they need it, yeah. When I was working with Sean Rigsby, we did a ton because his hands are like, you know, shorter than normal, but not, you know, not like crazy short, but they're thick. So it's really hard for him to hold on. Like he'll barely have a hook grip on his snatch. And then, you know, any clean under like 185 is easy for him.

And the minute he puts 190, he gets tough because he's like literally barely holding on so yeah we did a ton with him uh i don't need to i my grip is just it's never the problem but i is that one of those situations where you you grow his thumbnail out just to get a little more length he does something to grab onto and then you tape it and it's like you're lengthening your your thumb just so you can get all that sure he does that you know but it's still you know eventually you gotta get that thing stronger so specifically so like you know pinch gripping or you know just simply holding on to heavy weight as long as possible but i have a setup if he is if if his grip is his limiter do you ever use the the 15 kilo bar the women's bar that has a smaller diameter just so

he can fully tax uh his prime movers as opposed to having his grip limit his his ability to fully tax his legs i wonder if he'd break that thing no because this girl's done they've done 190 i know that girl from Russia, she's cleaned her 190. So I wonder what he could do. I feel like if he had that bar, I bet he cleaned her 200 easily. Like, I don't know. I'm going to tell him. That's a good idea.

That'd be fun just to see what would happen. That would definitely give him an idea of, like, what he's capable, you know, if his hands get to that point. Yeah. Or even if it's just doing pulls yeah you know if he's doing clean pulls where he's not even putting overhead and worrying about putting a bar that's not a regulation strength bar over his head yeah and that you know one of the things when you're training if grip is your problem like the simplest way to you know to work on that is to stop using straps. That would be the best thing.

And then do pulls without straps. That's another thing. Or no hook grip as well. That's my favorite because that's a fun little competition. So I did that at Muscle Driver when I was a coach, and I beat everybody there, like all those young dudes. It made me feel so good. But you're doing the double overhand just you know pick it up so that's fun yeah i mean that's what tommy cono before he died uh told me years back was he never used straps or hook grip in training back when he was you know he was

you know winning in like the 50s or something like that he was an older dude uh but yeah he said they never used it he trained in his basement on shitty equipment. Never, never use straps, never use hook grip. And then in competition when he had, now he had a nice bar and he could use straps and he could use a belt. And all of a sudden, all of a sudden everything became a little bit easier in competition because he trained the hard way and there's pros and cons trade offs to doing that.

But that was his, that was his method. I guess he doing a lot, a little bit. I think he'd probably need at least six weeks to start using the hook grip, at least sometimes. You've got to practice how you're going to compete at some point.

Yeah, because you don't even know what you're capable of. You know what I mean? That would be a huge difference for me. Hook versus no hook. He's a gold medalist, so he wins. You're right. Andus or universe yeah animus or universe at the same time he did it in the same weekend right didn't he like he competed and won in weightlifting then he did the bodybuilding right after or vice versa

so i don't know i don't i don't know all the details there i don't like back when he was doing that stuff like bodybuilding was just as a sport was just uh basically just there to show the great physiques that you could make through sport and so people on stage wouldn't just be bodybuilders they would be weightlifters and they would be rugby players or whatever it was like they just happen to be really athletic muscular people and they would go on and like compete to see had the best body, but they weren't doing bodybuilding to win at bodybuilding. Then slowly, as bodybuilding became more popular with Arnold and whatever else, then people started specifically training to be bodybuilders.

That's why they used to do them in the same weekend. They would do weightlifting, and then they would do their bodybuilding in the same weekend, from what you just said. They'd compete and say, hey, I'm the strongest dude. Then they'd compete and be like, I'm also jacked. I'll see all you ladies out back. But, yeah. Oh, sorry, Adelaide.

I don't know what I'm talking about. That's why we got the headphones on. Perfect. Little Dean will show up. Andrew's holding his two-year-old right now. Yeah. We've got to film her podcast as soon as we get done with this. Dude. The podcast, I don't market my conversations with the two-year-old. Yeah. year old right now yeah we're gonna film her podcast as soon as we get done with this dude

the podcast i don't market my conversations with the two-year-old yeah she she's ever in like a annie that you know the the broadway she would for sure be annie she's so cute that's what we're that's what we're doing for our halloween this, oh, this is so cute. You have to. If you come to my house, I'm going to be like, here's my candy. Take it all. Take it all. You win. All right. We want to tell them where they can find them. She doesn't have an Instagram page yet.

Coach Bash, where can they find you? Masterly.com. Doug Larson. Beth, on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged. You can find us at 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. That's a wrap, friends. Be sure to get over to all our sponsors over at Organifi.com. Forward slash shrugged to save 20% on the green, red, and gold. Of course, the Air Force. sponsors over at Organifi.com. Forward slash shrug to save 20% on the green, red, and gold. Of course, the Air Force. Get over to airforce.com. Check out all things special warfare and, of course, leakygutguardian.com. Forward slash shrug from our friends over at Bioptimizer. Save 10% using the code shrug. We will see you on Wednesday.