Barbell Shrugged - How to Train: Function Bodybuilding vs. Bodybuilding Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #519

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   What is Functional Bodybuilding What makes bodybuilding training so specific Will bodybuilding make you stronger  Is functional bodybuilding the best way to train for athleticism. How can you use both to get super jacked   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on 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   Fittogether - Fitness ONLY Social Media App   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://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we are talking about the similarities and differences between functional bodybuilding and regular bodybuilding and the training methodology behind each, why we like some of one, some of the other, why we don't like some, what do we like, what don't we like, all the things about liking things. You like that? This is actually a really cool one because functional bodybuilding is something that we incorporate into our training programs and it's really nice to actually get a nice bird's eye view of what functional bodybuilding is, how we implement it into our programs. And then some

of the pieces that we take from the bodybuilding world to get you super jacked, get you super pumped, grow giant legs and glutes and quads and all the things. The big difference that you're not going to learn about today from the bodybuilding world is how to put on all that spray tan and stand up on the stage in front of all the bright lights and all the people and flex as hard as you can. We can't teach that. I don't know how to do that. I wish I did. The only person I flex in front of is my two-year-old little Diesel. She loves it. I teach her how to do most muscular. I'm posing so hard. I got bloodshot veins popping out of my head. She thinks I'm a gangster. I don't even

actually know if that's true, but I flex super hard when she sees me training in the garage. Friends, this is a fun one. I'm glad we got to do it. I'm stoked you're here to hang out with us and listen. And I hope you take everything that we talk about and go get in the gym and hit it hard. Get strong, lean, athletic, and get to work. We'll see you guys at the break for some commercials. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Bass. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we are talking about bodybuilding versus functional bodybuilding.

The differences, similarities, how you can structure it. And Doug, I'm kicking it to you. You wanted to talk about this. What do you think about bodybuilding? Just the way that those people train. Maybe not even like Mr. Olympia versus kind of like the creator of the functionality or varsity the uh functional bodybuilding trend um which is james fitzgerald which we actually didn't know about and then uh kind of marcus philly made this thing super popular um how do you think of like what do you think the the major

differences is and just kind of like as even a larger topic um what what are the goals of both of them and then how do they start to uh separate themselves into their own categories of hypertrophy and and functional movements yeah yeah i feel like functional bodybuilding is this happy medium in between being a bodybuilder or someone that's very concerned about aesthetics and someone who's like pure CrossFit athlete. Like they, they just want to perform well. Obviously if you train CrossFit really, really well and consistently, then you're going to look good. Maybe not exactly like a bodybuilder, but you're going to, you're going to be muscular and lean and have, you know,

semi well-rounded development depending on what you think well-rounded is, but you will, you will be very fit and, and, and really, really good shape and much more conditioned than like an actual bodybuilder like an onstage bodybuilder so i feel like one of the the big differences between bodybuilding and functional bodybuilding is is the conditioning element like the guys that do functional bodybuilding are going to have better conditioning for um if they if they did enter something like the CrossFit competition versus a pure bodybuilder that's training just for aesthetics. They just want to have big muscles and they just want to be super lean and they just want

to look good. And then, you know, if you're competing in bodybuilding, then you're actually getting on stage and the performance is completely novel compared to competing across the competition. So I think that's a big component. The movements, they can be similar. There's a lot of crossover, of course. You know, bodybuilding, you're still, ideally, if you're a relatively fit, injury-free, etc., etc. person, you're still going to be squatting and lunging and doing bench press

and overhead press and pull-ups and whatever it is. So there's a lot of crossover there, but you're probably going to have a lot more single-joint training. You're probably going to have a lot more machines. And there's value in doing those things, especially if you're a bodybuilder and you're just trying to put on a lot of volume and trying to minimize joint stress. Whereas, you know, a pure CrossFit athlete, you're going to be doing a lot more

kind of cardio on the reg versus bodybuilding where you'd only do cardio pre-contest more or less when you're just trying to lose body fat before you go compete on stage. But functional bodybuilding, again, is some blend in between where you're doing a lot of hypertrophy rep ranges you're uh you're doing some percentage of single joint training and you're you're looking at your body in the mirror as well and you're saying okay well you know i want more development here so i'm gonna i'm gonna alter my programming to put more more mass on my medial

delts or whatever it is like you could still have uh physique goals that are independent of your actual performance during functional bodybuilding so i feel like it's this just so i can let you guys talk also i feel like don't do it don't do it it's nice happy medium you'll never get the mic back uh being not just training for aesthetics not just training for performance but you're training more for for both than if you chose one or the other. Yeah. Mash, where do you see like the big strengths and weaknesses and like just a pure bodybuilding? I mean, we're talking about like the magazines back in the day, like those pure bodybuilding programs. Where do you start to see some of the big strengths and then kind of like that tipping point where now we're just focusing on these tiny little muscles that only show up on stage and you're kind of just wasting your time?

You know, the thing is, well, it's so broad, you know, because like back in the day when they would do bodybuilding, you'd have one guy telling you that 10 by 10, which is, you know, German volume, that makes total sense to us. But then you have people, you know, that would say, I've read where people are only machines. So they're only doing like high intensity training on machines, going to failure. Kind of like Dorian Yates. Dorian Yates used to do high intensity training, but, you know, of course he used barbells and machines.

I just, I think the main thing is just the broadness of how they can get there and i think that uh another issue with listening to that group of people is that you know if they're on steroids well what will will it work you know for the average person you know probably not it definitely won't work as well obviously so you know if you take enough drugs almost anything will work and so that would be just the you know the dissemination of information is just too broad yeah the spectrum when i when i put together kind of the pieces of understanding like in in my in my idea of what i am training for the functional bodybuilding idea fits really well mainly because I just feel like I'm focusing on creating as large of a base as possible in that I want to be strong I want to

be athletic I want to be relatively lean that way if somebody says hey in two weeks you're going to be going to Jamaica to do this cool thing and you're going to talk shit to johan blake and go race him like i could go run some sprints and for two weeks and i'm relatively in shape enough like i have a large enough base of athleticism and i've been training that way for long enough that now i just have to kind of tailor the training towards a specific goal and it's going to take like two to four weeks to be dialed in on that specific thing and And then just coming back to a base, I feel like the bodybuilding stuff really at like loses itself in the athleticism side of things where you're just kind of sitting on a machine, trying to get the biggest pump possible. And yes,

hypertrophy is super important in building that base, but it seriously lacks the athletic side of training, which I really enjoy. When you start to think about athletics, to me, you have to be doing some sort of power clean at a minimum. I've been getting really into sandbags and stuff like that just because it adds a lot of that athletic stimulus in that I'm still doing a bunch of hip extensions, still creating a ton of power, but I'm doing it with odd objects. That's cool.

And I'm sticking to these overarching goals of I need to be in rep ranges of 8 to 10, 8 to 15, somewhere in there for growing muscle, making sure there's enough weight on the bar that I'm actually creating strength. But then taking that base and adding some sort of accessories to it that really hammer home the athleticism piece. And I think that's something cool

that we do in the EMOM aesthetics piece is like, yes, you're going to get strong. Yes, you're going to be doing hypert in this new angle so that you're maximizing hypertrophy in this one single tiny body part that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of it. I think that the athletic piece of functional bodybuilding is super important in that at any point in time, if you have a wide enough base of strength, a wide enough base of athleticism, and you have a body composition that's as, you know, relatively lean at any point, you can kind of set, like, look at a specific goal and go, okay, I'm just going to go attack that. So if you want to go run a marathon, give yourself four to six weeks. I used to call it when I was in the gym, people

would ask like what, what their diet should be or what their nutrition should look like. And I'd be like, look, you need to be like two to three weeks out from whatever goal and then just focus on that thing for the last two to three weeks. But if you want to go run a marathon, your training in general should be, have a day in which you're running long if you want to go do an olympic lifting meet your training in general should have some sort of snatch and clean and jerk in it just because that to clean and jerk is a great skill to learn and it develops athleticism if you want to go run the 400 if you want to go run a mile if you want to go do an ocr spartan race all of your training should have elements of those things in it.

It's just the base of it should be squat, bench, deadlift, and variations of that so that you have this massive base to draw off of. And then once your Spartan race shows up and you've got to go run half a marathon in the mountains, not all you have to do for the four to six weeks, maybe even two weeks depending upon what kind of shape you're in do for the four to six weeks, maybe even two weeks, depending upon what kind of shape you're in. But between two and six weeks, all you have to do is go find some mountains and go hike them. And now you can go run the Spartan race and feel great about your

performance. That's really where I see the benefits of being in that functional bodybuilding space is your ability to maximize hypertrophy up front and then build athleticism on the back end. And that combination is ideal for what my goals are and how I view myself as an athlete and where I want to go really for the rest of my training is that in order to accumulate athletic experiences and do things that are fun and athletic, I need to be very strong. I need to be relatively lean. I need to be athletic. So how do you train all those things, build a very big base and then move into some more specificity or fun, which creativity, which, which really just builds that athleticism side.

Right. The only thing I would, the only thing I would caution people with doing any kind of bodybuilding, if you're an athlete is realizing that not all bodybuilding is created equal and that, you know, if you're like always going to failure and getting this massive pump, if you're staying in these super high rep ranges, then you're going to, if you're staying in these, you know, super high rep ranges, then you're going to, if you're not careful, you're going to be, you're going to be building the slow twitch fibers. And so then it's really hard to start reversing that in two to three weeks. You know, like, you know, I love what you're saying.

Like I would stick, I would stick to rep ranges and to, you know, maybe not going to failure, therefore building more type you know two fibers fast twitch yeah so it's more athletic more explosive but then again if you're like going to do marathons then it's awesome because you want the slow twitch fibers are perfect for what you're about to do so so you do need to realize you will be you know depending on how you train you'll be developing certain types of fibers yeah and by the time this airs, I mean, we're, we're building out a program right now called high intensity hypertrophy, which is basically exactly what you're saying. And that some of the days need to be focused on top end

strength or something in the doubles, triple something five and under, um, because top end strength is super important, specifically the hypertrophy, you have to be able to have some sort of you know progressive overload and something that you can test um and then be able to to build it out from there so your higher volume days need to be a little bit different and that we've talked a little bit about like we did an entire show on kind of undulating periodization but the ability to have something it have numbers to be based off of like a two, three, and a five. I don't know as you get older, how much a one rep max is, is the right move, but, um, a two, three, and a five are like a great metrics to be able to build strength off of. And then from there, you've got to have days that are in that eight to 12 to 15 range of big movements where you're just kind

of layering a lot of volume and um stress on the muscles and then i think that the thing that i like so much about kind of the functional bodybuilding is just the ability that whatever that next accessory or whatever however you layer your accessories in kind of doesn't matter as long as it's you know it's it's structured with with the movement patterns, but the goal is to really build athleticism. So Doug loves doing these. I hate doing them. I'm drawing a blank on the lunge where you lunge back to your knee. I think Max calls them, like Max Chang calls them,

airborne lunge or something like that. Trim squats. Trim squats. God, I don't have ankles for that. What are you talking about? Like, I don't know. He's got great ankles. So he embarrasses me when he programs them.

And I'm like, no. Shrimp squats basically like, like a pistol is a single leg squat. Yeah. With your, your up leg is in front of you. Right. Uh, a shrimp squat is where you, you put your leg behind you, like you're doing a lunge, but you don't put your foot on the ground. You just tap your knee behind you.

Oh yeah. I've never even tried that.'s very it's very tough it's very hard if you have good uh mechanics for it where you have you know you have squatting leverages where you have a long torso and short legs then it's it's not too bad but if you have really long legs you need a lot of ankle mobility to be able to do it correctly just like just like pistols like if you have some leverages for pistols it's easy and if you if you have really short torso long limbs and no ankle mobility then pistols are basically impossible were pistols hard for you uh me anders no for anders uh not on my right foot yes um but also i only really did them when i needed to and i will blow by when the time comes.

If you need me to do a pistol, I will risk my knee to finish a couple seconds further ahead. So it's not like I would typically do like a box step up and like lower myself to the ground with a very slow negative to train um until i like really needed to do it but my ankles don't you tape your hot you tape your ankle into a hockey boot for yeah 16 years and you don't have ankles to to go and play games like that it's just hard yeah yeah well now that we're talking about range of motion that's that's that's also a distinction in my mind where bodybuilding you're not really concerned about the range of motion that you can get you're trying to you know get a lot of muscular tension get a big pump uh of course you know um you know get a lot of concentric eccentric contractions and whatnot but it doesn't really necessarily matter if you're getting a full depth on your on your front squats you might not front squat at all might not even be

on your on your to-do list if you're an actual bodybuilder. Of course you could, and I think there's benefits there. But, uh, if you, if you are a bodybuilder, the range of motion that you can achieve doesn't really matter because it's not going to limit you in your performance at all. You're trying to just look good and be on stage. And if you can't, if you can't get to the bottom of front squats, it's not limiting them in the same way that if you couldn't do, if you couldn't get to the bottom of front squat as a weightlifter or a CrossFitter, then you basically can't even compete in the sport. Yeah, it's a wrap. Exactly. So having full range of motion is much more important to someone who has performance goals, whether you are an actual functional bodybuilder person, whatever that means, or you're a CrossFit athlete,

if you don't have full range of motion overhead, then you can't compete in weightlifting. But you can be a bodybuilder, no problem, without having full 100% shoulder flexion. Totally. I think that's what gives bodybuilding a bad rap too because when people think bodybuilding, they think, oh, you won't be able to move.

And they think that not only do you not do this range of motion but you can't you know it makes you look stiff and uh yeah it's the whole concept of being muscle bound from decades back it messes me up it totally messes me up with you know when i was training mostly at the kids you know the parents it freaks them out like uh you know, I trained this one kid who played at Wake Forest running back. I talk about him a lot, Cade Carney. I take it, Coach's brother now. But his dad would have periodic meetings with me, like, you know, I don't want him getting so big that they're going to put him on the line.

I'm like, they're not going to put your son on the line. You know, but, you know, finally at the end they started to believe me and realized I wouldn't try to make him muscle-bound. son yeah on the line you know but you know finally at the end they started to believe me and realize i wouldn't try to make him muscle bound yeah dude i think that that's like the funniest comment that anybody could ever make because i just want to look at them go look i've been doing this for 24 years if you told me when i was 13 years old that i would look the way i do after 24 years of hard work in the gym, I would have quit right there.

There's no way. I would have been like, anyone can do that. You're not going to get jacked, giant, huge human. I'm going to look like some dude standing on the stage at Olympia just because I lift weights. It so doesn't happen like that. It's like, man, if I i play football maybe one day i'll be peyton manning maybe i'll be tom brady like no no no those people are wildly different and wild have different lives like will not happen you have no chance of being that person we used to tell

people like if we ever got accused of being on steroids which you know especially when i was younger like happened every once in a while. I was never super jacked, but people that just don't know any better would be like, oh, you're on steroids? We'd always say, if I'm on steroids, I want my money back because they didn't do shit. Absolutely.

Even you, Travis, I've squatted 1,000 pounds before they're like, whoa. And you're like, well, yeah, but I still don't look like Phil Heath. I wish. That'd be cool. That'd be awesome. I do believe that most powerlifters that are super good, I think that's another misconception,

is that they think power, they think big and fat and i'm like uh then when you're the 220 weight class or the 198 or even 242 like if you're fat it's a total waste waste of space well in that in the in the suit era i think it was much more prevalent that you would see somebody that just had tons of extra weight because it just the bar sat on them different i mean uh you know yeah especially the heavyweights maybe but uh but even if you look at the wpl like chuck vogelpo was absolutely right yeah you guys were lean back in the day super super lean uh ed cone was super ed cone was in a bodybuilding yo i'm gonna have to divert right now stop talking smack to all the old people on the internet right now.

I'm trying to get them. MASH is coming at people hard. Who are you talking to? Dude, MASH is calling people out. Trying to get half of them don't even have Instagram accounts. I know. You said Chuck and who else? I've called out Chuck, Ed Cohen.

Let's see see I called out are you friends with these people what's the relationship no Vogelpool really getting in a fight or something in the middle yeah you friends with Ed I texted him and said let's go at it one more time

I never met Ed he's supposed to be a great dude right he's a great dude I'm not trying to be mean. I'm just trying to say let's go one more time. I know. You're just talking smack. A little bit. And you probably know that you kept after it longer than them,

so you could come in and just clean up. No. Ed Cohen, I saw him just the other day. He was squatting like a ton of weight. I'm well aware that it would be tough. You're not going to easily beat Ed Cohn no matter what. But I just can't think of anything that would pump me up more than going against the Wizards. I'm ready.

Let's get them all lined up. The OG virtual powerlifting competition. Dude, let's go to Westside. We'll go to Ohio. We can go out there. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Louie would lose his mind. It would be like Louie's last day alive. He'd be so happy.

If he got Chuck Vogelbull to compete one more time, it would be his happiest moment. That's his golden child. Friends, we're going to take a quick break. We've got to pay the bills. The commercial's got to run. And this week, I want to tell you about a product called Magnesium Breakthrough from our friends at Bioptimizers.

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I'll do it right now. I'll record the whole thing. That would be dope as fuck, by the way. I know it would be dope. I know if I just get this piece to... I wonder if AJ's still lifting. I haven't talked to him lately. I haven't either.

I used to run into him at least once or twice a year. But I think that even that, you know, going back to the idea that you have to be to, in order to lift a bunch of weight, you have to be overweight and you're carrying all this extra fat on you. Like the functional bodybuilding thing really is kind of the antithesis of that. And that it really stemmed really when I think we, we interviewed James Fitzgerald and one of the things that he talked about the most when we were down in Miami a couple of years ago, it was literally like, okay, we're doing all of this functional movements at high intensity and

throwing all this CrossFit stuff at people, but we're really not understanding that we have to train every joint in the body. It can't just be heavy deadlifts and heavy back squats all the time. We have to do a lot of this accessory stuff just to keep joints healthy, or we just start layering some really bad movement patterns. In a way, if you're not getting into elbows and you're not getting into knees and maybe even doing like some, some calf raises and stuff, um, you're kind of limiting the way that the body is supposed to move by just only doing deadlifts and squats. And I think James was one of the first people that really started to like hammer home and really kind of revolt, maybe not revolt, but speak out against, uh, the big

high intensity functional movement specific, uh, methodology, just because he saw so much value in people slowing down a little bit and actually doing real accessory movements. Um, and I think a lot of that really comes into just joint health, especially when you get into like shoulders like the amount of the lack of uh kind of like horizontal pulling that goes on in crossfit like a lot of people are are doing deadlifts cleans and snatches but you're not going to go into many crossfit classes and see people doing like bent rows a lot of dumbbell rowing. And that stuff's like super, super important to just overall joint health. I think that's one of the biggest factors that people need to incorporate into their training

is like understanding what keeps your joints and tissues healthy and moving forward so that you can be strong when it comes to the big three or big six lifts. Totally agree. I think the thing with a functional bodybuilding movement that anybody who's powerless could do would definitely be doing things that incorporate external rotation. So if you're a powerlifter, you bench all the time, so you have massive amounts of internal rotation,

which is why powerlifters walk around with their hands, with their thumbs, you know, with their thumbs facing in. And so, you know, by doing like dumbbell, um, seated power cleans, which are really, it's just a, it's a funny way for just saying dumbbell external rotation. So. Let's just go watch the West side movie. They do them. Like it's every third scene is somebody doing those. Yeah. Yeah yeah i did a

ton of those too i wish i would have really focused on even more is because i think um what ends a lot of powerlifting careers are you know shoulders the shoulders get jacked up i actually also have this this thought that you know there's there's a point in time where you just the returns on squats deadlifts bench press snatch and clean and jerk like you get to this like level where yes you will get better by doing them every single day of your life and i mean we've talked about it on shows where for five straight years my snatch and clean and jerk went up exactly 10 pounds a year and you know squats and deadlifts like everything kind of went up in these like in these it's like stepping stone kind of pattern um and that's great but there's so many other lifts that can make you strong and if you're just

sitting there hammering squats hoping after however many years that you're going to just continually get better and better and better. And you're doing the exact same training without adding a little bit of creativity. It gets like mind numbingly boring at times. That's the problem. Yeah. I went on like a year long kick where my biggest goal was to, this actually came from Max Shank too. That dude did a single leg deadlift on each side with 315 for a set of

5 and the first time I did like first off Max is super strong you kind of meet him and you're like oh what a nice friendly human he's super he speaks super well and then you watch him lift weights you're like whoa that's a strong ass

human right there. He looks, he looks jacked. Yeah. I was just looking at videos of him. Uh, he did a single leg deadlift on each side with three 15. And I went,

I bet I'm about as strong as max. And then I went and tried to do two 25 and went, I should probably start training this. Uh, but I, so I, I went, so i went i did like a full year just single leg deadlifts and i think i got up to like 275 by three i know i did 225 for a set of six on each side which was savage for me um but that stuff like it's not like you get weaker it just isn't tested lifts like we've got in this mindset that

we have to have like the the big six lifts have to be the big six lifts because there's entire weightlifting competitions and sports created out of them it's like okay well there's a large chunk of your time to be focused on those six lifts but once you hit this tipping point of you're not making increase you're not increasing the amount of weight you're lifting or your form's not getting better you've kind of hit your like as as you'd say a lot uh that biological tipping point of like anything past this we're really just overstressing ourselves we're putting a lot of emphasis on something that isn't giving the feedback and and really the the return on investment that we need in the gym, after you get past those six lifts, there's hundreds of lifts that you can focus on

and build more athleticism, build a wider base. And that's what I love about the ability to get in the gym and just get away from those six lifts. It relieves the pressure of, well, maybe you don't have to have the biggest squat in the world anymore, but you can widen the base and have a giant single leg deadlift. You can have a giant hip thrust. You can, you can focus on so many different things and it just reinvigorates everything that you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I'll say on a similar note,

the performance world's all kind of external focused. You're trying to get good times. You're trying to put up big weights. The numbers matter a lot. And so your focus while training can be more external. You put on 275 and you clean it and you're thinking how fast did the bar move? Where did I receive it? Was I in good position?

Et cetera, et cetera. There's all these external things that that are going through your mind whereas uh and i heard pokulski talk about this um here just recently with bodybuilding your focus should almost 100 be internal it should be like how does the muscle feel is it getting a good solid contraction like with the mind muscle connection uh are you going to actual prime mover fatigue etc where it doesn't really matter the the external numbers involved like how many reps you did specifically doesn't matter you know you have a range you're trying to hit usually but the number of reps doesn't matter because you're not competing against somebody else the actual weight on the

bar doesn't matter quite as much because no one's looking. No one cares. Everyone's just looking at how you look as a result of your training. And so the numbers on the bar, the weight on the bar, is not quite as significant. I've actually noticed that. I mean, this past Monday, I had savage training session outside of the fact that it was 106 degrees in my garage By the time I even hit the play button on the wrap mix on my phone to start working out, I was like, looked in the sauna. I go into the sauna just to check and see what the base temperature is in the garage.

It says 106. You're like, this thing is totally jacked up. I am not going to make it through this. Banded single leg deadlifts. Lited up. I am not going to make it through this. Banded single leg deadlifts. Lit me up. Mash, I want to see you doing them. I want to know what your 6RM is with a banded single leg deadlift. Never heard such a thing.

I know. That's why I like functional bodybuilding because you get to make it up. I put 135 on the bar, and then I put the quarter inch band and um it rocked my world i was stumbling all over the place all of the the pieces of doing a single leg deadlift that i'm usually really good at which is like actually doing them well my back leg moves well i feel confident in the movement pushing your hips back and all that fun stuff. You throw a band on there. Now all of a sudden I got this big eccentric portion of the movement that I got to worry about. I'm getting pulled in different directions.

The band is obviously it's not like perfectly set up. So the bar is moving in weird spots. I feel like I just uncovered this whole new thing in training that I just had never experienced before. I'm ready for it. 6RM. A lot of bodybuilders will come up with the most unique movements. I know. I've hung out with them, and they always have a different grip or a different type of contraction, different squeeze.

They're just always thinking. I think that's because they do focus on that mind-body connection. In other words, power zoos are just definitely not. I think the implement thing is another awesome piece in just the idea of general athleticism. I grabbed the 100-pound sandbag the other day and just did a whole bunch of straight leg stiff leg deadlifts and when you do it with a barbell there's only so far you can go unless you're

standing on plates but if you grab a sandbag you're getting like just a giant hamstring stretch like tons of back in there trying to keep everything nice and tight on the way down and getting getting away from the barbell is also something that I think functional bodybuilding stuff like really helps with just in keeping things fresh and keeping things moving forward yeah there's just more of an emphasis emphasis in general on developing skills like learning the complex movements that are that are available like power cleans muscle ups potentially if you're doing more bodyweight gymnastics type stuff like a functional bodybuilder just like the crossfitter

is going to want to be able to if he needs to like you know run up a fence and and climb over it no problem and and you know keep running away from the cops or whatever you're doing whereas a regular regular bodybuilder um there's not as much of an emphasis on being able to do parkour stuff like I just mentioned. But a functional bodybuilder or a CrossFitter, they're going to look at something like parkour and be like, damn, I want to be able to do that. Yeah, the athleticism side is really what attracts me to it um whether it's it's changing the implement um the creativity that goes into it uh all of that just like creates a system in which you can um just build a a wider base versus just focusing i mean even for crossfitters like one they need to be doing more single joint

hypertrophy movements. Like most of the time when you walk into a gym and you look at the whiteboard on a CrossFit class, you're looking at built to a heavy single threes, fives. There's, you're not going to get really into the eights, tens and twelves on, on anything. That's what they do in their like conditioning work. It's when you, um, it's work it's when you um it's it's when you're able to really change implements get into higher rep ranges and like play really is like a a massive piece of it that i i enjoy more than anything just keeps it fresh yeah yeah i think about i think about bodybuilding i think it like, it's like for most people, probably 80 or 90% bodybuilding. And then depending on how, I mean, if you're like super serious, maybe it's a hundred percent bodybuilding, but if you're, if you're just a regular person and you, you've been training for a long time, you might still stick with like 80% bodybuilding, but then you might have 20% that's just in there more or less for fun. You want to go for a trail run just because you want to be outside. You run sprints just because you used to play football. There's like a little bit of the performance aspects in

there just from the perspective of pure enjoyment. And then CrossFit, same thing. A lot of people used to do just CrossFit. And over the years, bodybuilding has been less demonized and people have gotten a lot of injuries. and so people have gravitated away from pure crossfit to something that's more of a blend of crossfit and you know aspects of bodybuilding so it's like 80 crossfit for most people and they're like 20 bodybuilding type stuff like a lot of people i remember uh you know a lot of the invictus athletes they'd have like a bro day on yeah that on saturday where it's like they're just doing bodybuilding on one one day a week it's all single joint stuff it's biceps triceps calf raises maybe like maybe next ability maybe

some extra like targeted core training abs that type of thing yeah the the interesting thing about the bodybuilding specific training to me is like it starts to lose its functionality when you're just building a body that needs to be on stage. Like you need to have grip strength in your life. That's really important, but you probably don't need to spend 45 minutes in the gym or have like a training session dedicated to forearms. You just lose a lot of the return on your time and energy and all of that by sitting in the gym and doing calves. Biceps are awesome, but you don't need to do six different variations of bicep curls when you can get an overwhelming majority of by doing pull-ups with one or two sets of bicep curls backing that down as an accessory.

And that's what I love about the EMOM aesthetics, like even just the methodology in general is you can take these like core functional compound movements and then in the very next piece, like you have part A, A1, A2, and in A1, you can do a big pull-up session. And that's going to be the bulk of the overall strength training, whether it's lower rep ranges and higher weight, and you're looking for more strength gains, or you're doing it in the 8 to 10 range for, for more hypertrophy, um, or more muscle stress. But then directly after that, you're going into some sort of accessory movement that really just fills in the pieces of what a pull-up can or can't do. Like doing the bicep curls rad. That's like what everybody in the whole world, as soon as they leave functional fitness, the very next day they're

like, I'm a bodybuilder. What do they do? They just go do bicep curls to feel good about themselves. It's like, it's like the most common annoying thing on the internet. It's like, I stopped doing functional fitness and now I'm doing more bodybuilding. What'd you do on day one? I just did a shit ton of pull downs and bicep curls. You're like, why didn't you just do that? And still deadlift? You don't have to make a statement about it. Just do the curls and the push downs. No one cares.

It's part of being strong. You don't have to make a statement. You're actually just sound like it's the first time, like a CrossFitter that wanted to go do something different, and it's okay. You're allowed. It's totally cool. You are allowed.

Are any two CrossFitters alike in the way they train anyway? go do something different and it's okay. You're allowed. It's totally cool. You are allowed. Are any two CrossFitters alike in the way they train anyway? So what's the difference in adding like a curl? I mean – It just cracks me up so much when you see that because it's like day one of everyone's new bodybuilding experience. They have to go do bicep curls. Couldn't do it before. Couldn't do 21s yesterday. It's high school bro day it's like

all you do is bench press do crunches and bicep curls it's like it's like the the three sets of muscles that you can see from the front yeah you're looking in the mirror you go oh man my biceps look good pecs look good abs look good i'm done yeah i don't need my quads really but we'll forget that yeah at the beach you got you got board shorts you said can you believe how physique training is yeah the competitive category of physique those guys don't have big legs they've got jacked upper bodies i tried to get mr olympia of the swimsuit edition whatever his name was oh that's what they are right they're swimsuit models yeah yeah i tried to get them on the show last time we were in new york but it didn't work out

i mean this dude's good upper body is so jacked you couldn't he's got a six-pack that is just amazing the guy looks incredible guys look the best out of all the different categories i feel like like like the real bodybuilders are just monsters absolute monsters uh where most people really actually probably don't want to live in that body like full-time and have to do all the maintenance to actually stay that big all the time but the physique category guys they look like they look like normal dudes who just happen to be jacked but they look they still look kind of normal that podcast that r Ronnie Coleman did on Rogan when he was talking about his diet, I mean, one, he stood on stage at his last Olympia 0.33% body fat, which is – I didn't even know that that was possible.

I thought you'd be dead. But his off-season body fat was 3%, which is what most people try to stand on stage at, which is insanely unhealthy. But to stand on stage at which is insanely unhealthy but he was eating like zero he didn't he ate like zero carbohydrates for like a decade maybe longer and he just would eat like five pounds of chicken a day chicken breast i think he put barbecue sauce on it but there was like when he explained his diet he's like oh i'd eat like a pound and a half of chicken in the morning,

then like a pound and a half in the middle of the day, and then like a pound and a half after I work out, and then like another pound and a half of protein at the end. You go, Ronnie, it doesn't even matter, buddy. You're just the one. You're the guy. You can do anything. You can do everything wrong, and you still win maybe six instead of eight.

I find the piece about no carbs very hard to believe. Did he say that? Just the way he described it, I went, man, he might only be eating like 50 grams of carbs a day. I think Rogan may have even called him out. I have to go back and like really listen to it again just to make sure of that. But I remember listening and going, how come he's not eating white rice all day long like that's like the the meal is chicken breast and white rice i feel like he didn't talk about it at all career i don't know how you don't know how to get to 300 pounds solid muscle at 0.33

body fat that's what i'm saying i think he's just a freak you see enough calories to stay that big just the freak show he's definitely saying i was like well a pound and a half of chicken alone is not going to get you to the amount of calories you would need to be 300 plus pounds of ripness i mean so he's getting that much what did he weigh what did he weigh on stage do you remember like what do you say he weighed he was like shy 300 pounds leaning on stage. Yeah, I think Olympia won. I want to say he said he was 230, but put on 60, 70 pounds over the course of the eight years to get there.

He was the biggest at the end. The year he lost, I think he said he was like... Wasn't it the year that he said he had to come back down, like he got too big? They told him he was too big. Who tells a pro bodybuilder he's too big?

Oh, that's a scary thing. I mean, like, if he got so big that the dudes told him you're too big, that is terrifying. How big is Big Ramy? I want to say his name is. Is that his correct name? I don't know. Who? Let's to say his name is. Is that his correct name? I don't know. Let's see. He's Egyptian.

Let me look this guy up. He's something along... Yeah, contest weight is 310. Big Ramy. I mean, what? R-A-M-Y. Big R-A-M-Y. His Instagram is

at big underscore R-A-M-Y. Ramy is at big underscore R-A-M-Y. Ramey. He's probably like, what, 5'8"? I don't know what it is. Is he like 5'8", 5'9"? That was the thing about Ronnie. That was the thing about Ronnie. He's a big-ass dude. He's tall, too.

How tall is he? I think he's over 6'0", isn't he? I don't think so. I think he's over six foot, isn't he? Ryan? I don't think so. No, I think he's like 5'8". Oh, really? 5'8", 300?

I thought he was taller than that. 5'9", maybe. Oh, no, he's 5'11". He is that tall. I'm 5'11". I remember thinking in person that he's shorter than me. Imagine taking Doug and then putting him 100 pounds and somehow

taking like 7%, 8% body fat off of him and that's his off season. Imagine walking around like that or having that guy pull you over for a speeding ticket. You got to go watch Ronnieman's unbelievable is the title of

this of his video yeah it's unbelievable bodybuilding documentary from you know we'll say 15 20 years ago it's fantastic like you see him doing like bent rows with 545s per side 495 and he's doing like you know he's doing like four sets of 12. Just sweating. Sweating so much. It's like August in Texas. 150 degrees. He's just sweating.

There's dust. When was the last time Metroflex got cleaned? Never. I've been to that gym. It's awesome. Have you? Oh, yeah. He didn't like it. Cena told me he didn't like it.

He said it wasn't that friendly. Well, it's not. It's like old and mean. I like that old and mean. Yeah. You'd think that they would want to upgrade a little bit, but Ronnie still looks like he goes in there and just does leg press every day still. can't even walk i saw i saw him the year before he won the year before he won i saw ronnie coleman and i remember thinking how is this man not winning oh that's

because he is now yeah he was i was just like he's so huge i remember when i saw him i was like i've never seen a bodybuilder that's awesome. And then, of course, he won. A few months later, he wins the whole thing. Yeah, and we can't use Ronnie as a standard person for what bodybuilding does to you because all of us got started. Well, Doug, I think you're probably way advanced in the knowledge, but we all got started really having very little knowledge of what we were supposed to do and you just go to the bodybuilding thing and like that was the first

relatively like the first eight years maybe 10 of my training was doing bodybuilding specific workouts where i like i had i did like a forearm day i was like twisting twisting the broom with the five-pound weight at the bottom of it, trying to get my forearms jacked because nobody knew that that was probably a waste of time and I could have swung a kettlebell instead. Just holding on to a pull-up bar is probably going to get me more return. All that stuff has a place, but kind of like we were saying about the crunches, bench press, and bicep curls, it if you if you heavily prioritize one or two things and then you just discount and or just forget to do the rest then then you're not setting yourself up up for success but yeah i feel like a lot of

guys though if they do something like forearms you know many many sets trying to get jacked forearms but they're not actually trying to put on body weight then your forearms aren't going to get that much bigger unless you start putting on muscle mass, like gaining 10, 20, 30, 40 pounds of muscle mass. That's going to be the easiest way to grow some of the harder muscles to grow, like your calves and your forearms. Whereas if you just do a bunch of wrist rollers and whatnot, but you stay weighing 175 pounds, your forearms are going to look the same. Maybe they're going to be more conditioned.

Maybe they're slightly bigger, but they're not going to be that much bigger. You got, you got to put on total body muscle mass in order to grow some of those harder to grow body parts. I thought mash was talking. He's talking to somebody else. Oh, I'm sorry.

I said, I think I believe that I believe that, um, calves are the hardest muscle group to grow of all. And this is so genetic. You know, all the muscles, they're the most genetic. You either have them or you don't have them.

And they don't have, since you've dunked and you have small calves, there isn't much carryover outside of standing on stage and then going on your tippy toes. Athletically, I don't think there's any any value like i really don't you know some people disagree you know they used to work their calves to jump higher and i remember like well i saw spud webb and he had zero calves so that's obviously not it but i think i think i know the research says that your your plantar flexion is about 10 of your olympic stuff right something along those lines like it it accounts for some percentage of it graham did that and uh but i've heard that

that's flawed i heard that he he purposely swayed that is what i heard it sound it sounds a little bit high to me but but it there's still something there but yeah if you're trying to improve your olympic lifts you're trying to improve your vertical jump, like going to calf raises, isn't like your number one place to go, but, but it's, it's a,

it is a component. So I think it should be done, but it shouldn't, it definitely shouldn't be overemphasized. It should be like one of the, one of the, it's, it's a supplement.

It's like one of the last things that you worry about. But that's like when you get into kind of like the program you wrote, the, the strong 30 taken and taking the email aesthetics and like adding the higher volume stuff. It gives you the opportunity to do. So like I typically only do like the 20 minute jam. That's enough. Big lift, some sort of accessory, some sort of athletic movement that I'm really happy

with. 20, 25 minutes and I'm done. But when you do the 30 minute one, now you really get into you've got the basic structure of the emom aesthetics like 20 minute program of big lift accessory big lift accessory and then you can go and do some of those extra body parts when you have an additional 10 15 minutes that you can dedicate to just doing the muscles groups that that don't really get a lot of love, especially calves. Every time I've done calves, I've almost like rhabdo'd myself. Oh yeah. Cause I always, I've never,

I've never done the appropriate amount of calves. It's always like I'm going to do 15 calf raises on each foot going up the stairs to my bedroom. And then you just more and more and more and more and the next thing you know i'm barely walking the next day i've got like stiff leg it doesn't work i've only really trained calves i think maybe once in my life like one four week walk in my whole life yeah i got zero return i'm like i'm not doing this you know yeah so i just stopped doing it especially there's there's zero carryover in power lifting doing calves yeah like yeah you're doing zero plantar flexion if you're doing

plantar flexion you you've messed up pretty badly you know so so i'm like i didn't do any i don't know any any weightlifter that really does other than the fact that they're doing it when they snatch a clean and jerk you you know, for the most part. Well, I think that a lot, and you know, this also goes into like, what are, what's your specific goal, right? Like if your goal really is to have this like perfectly proportion, large blown up body doing functional athletic movements is probably pretty stupid.

You should spend a lot of time developing your forearms and your calves and making sure your biceps look fantastic. And you're probably going to spend an entire day just doing horizontal pulling. And then you have another day dedicated to vertical pulling. If your goal is to look like a bodybuilder, do what the best bodybuilders in the world do because they figured it out. But if you want to kind of maximize the return and actually build some more like athleticism in the training, you don't really need to do a lot of forearms and calves. What you need to do is like more kettlebell swings probably where you're like connecting your body in as many different ways as possible to build that overall athleticism and mix it up so that you're getting

a higher higher return on every every lift anytime you can just challenge your body and like force your core to withstand a different load in a different way you're just going to get a higher return than if you just stand on your stairs and do calf raises. It doesn't challenge anything except your calf. So the goal to being like, to be as functional as possible, you want to get as high of a return on the investment in time and energy that you're spending in the gym. And to do that, that's like, when I was younger, thinking about the idea of athleticism meant I could go out on the field and run and jump and play and be good at things like that. But as I get older, I want my body to be connected and move properly and to do it under as many

different scenarios as possible so that when I do get to go play, I'm prepared. And the only way to do that now is to mix up the implements, to mix up the training stimulus, to get as much bang for the buck as I possibly can in what I do. And to do that after this many years of training, you've got to just change things up. And your accessories can build athleticism versus just building bigger calves. Agreed. I feel like you don't necessarily have to have this big identity shift

to now I am a functional bodybuilder either. If you're already doing just bodybuilding or you're already doing just CrossFit, just kind of nudge yourself toward the other end of the extreme. So if you're just doing bodybuilding right now, well, throw in some sprints. Short sprints once a week, you know, 20 yard sprints, you know, sprint down, walk back and, you know, do five or 10 of them and then, and then do the rest of your bodybuilding training or on the other end of it. You know, if you're, if you're just CrossFitter, well, go and throw in some, some bicep curls and some tricep extensions and some, some weighted crunches,

you know, at, at the end of some of your workouts. Like you can start to move toward the center without like completely overhauling your training. So I view the functional bodybuilding thing as it's on a spectrum. It's not just like you are or you aren't a functional bodybuilder. You know, if you're 100% CrossFitter and then you back it down and now you're kind of like 70-30 or 80-20, well, that probably is going to benefit you in some way where you're taking your CrossFit volume down a little bit and you're doing a little more on the end of joint support and bringing up lagging body parts, fixing your weaknesses. Whatever the weak link in the chain is,

you can dedicate a little more time directly to those joints or those muscle groups, and you'll probably be better off for it. I want to see the quarter-inch band, 6RM, one-leg deadlift out of you. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. That fits into your training. I'm doing legs today anyway. Oh, I like that. Is that like a kickstand deadlift, or is that like a completely single leg?

So back foot is completely off the ground the entire time? Yeah, I'll post it up on Instagram. Those have been my two movements of the week that I was super stoked to create was the banded single leg dead. I don't know if I created them. There's probably a billion people that have done it.

I've never heard of it. I doubt there's a billion. But I've been so stoked on the bandit deads and i swear one day if i have some time and energy i'm gonna um change up the i'm gonna get some a way to do more bandit squats because that's just gonna open up even more fun toys but the single leg deadlift i i'm actually just thinking like how many different movements can i add a band to that make things cool and is going to the bathroom taking a piss with the band yeah i'm gonna set up my landmine and

my old under armor shoe today and play with a bunch of banded landmine stuff that's kind of my goal of the day that sounds fun um and then the sandbag's been super rad um and how many ways can i train the exact same thing that i do with the barbell but with a sandbag and the hundred pounders like the perfect weight for me to like throw it around pretty easily but at the same time shit's heavy and the stiff legged deadlifts got my hammies lit up right now all the way to the ground because you can't just like the barbell only goes to just below your knee. You do a stiff, like a deadlift with a sandbag,

the ability, you'd have to like hold it so tight. Um, and then you have to go down an additional like five inches and that stretch and your hamstrings just lights you up. Yeah. And I never do it. So it's just something new,

something new to play with. I need a sandbag. I don't have, I don't have one on the gym farm. Definitely need one. Wait until you see the video of the gym farm now. Like we just redid it. Yeah. It might be my favorite of my gyms.

It's sick. Gyms. I love that. Travis Bass, where can they find you? Go to masterleague.com or go to Instagram, Master League Performance. Doug Larson. Find me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner.

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