Barbell Shrugged - How to Train Without Burnout w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #579

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   The science behind overtraining Why overreaching is necessary for performance When does overreaching turn into overtraining Why sex drive is a massive indicator of overtraining How to program workouts for peak performance without burnout   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   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

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and I think that you should as well. So let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Bass. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we are talking about overreaching, overtraining, what you can do to not get so burnt out with your... The reason we want to do this show, Mast, the other day you mentioned that there's a whole bunch of new research out on overtraining and overreaching and the differences and how devastating actually overtraining can be to people. And we weren't talking about this specifically but it super

piqued my interest because i always have thought that really overtraining meant overreaching and that in order for people to really get where they're going or what what they're saying and what what they're really saying aren't always the exact same thing but there's new research coming out of this is like really devastating long-term damage that people can do to their bodies. Right. So there's, um, there's this research I have in front of me. You can, you guys can look up this Lucille Lake, your Smith is from Tulsaing, uh, wait,

Shawnee university of technology. That's in South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa. And, um, we need to go visit them by the way safari is like the coolest thing you've ever done in your entire life absolutely and like it was one of the things we studied in physiology this past semester and it was one of my favorite things because you know i've always thought there's always been that debate in like is there is there overtraining or is it just under recovery, which is silly because, you know, the answer is yes on both. But like, you know, the easiest way

to know the difference is if you take some time off and if in a few days you bounce back, then it was overreaching. Perfect. That's exactly what you're after. But if you don't, you know, week, two weeks, month, sometimes, believe it or not, there's been, there have been documented cases of people never, ever recovering because you've created so much systemic, you know, inflammation and so much systemic damage that the body is never the same. So it's no joke, really. It's really not something to debate or be funny about. And if you want to – if you really want to know how do I diagnose it, you can go get tested. You know, there's a – you're looking at cytokines.

This is part of the inflammatory process. Anyways, if they're, you know, in the blood throughout, you know, the system, then you're over trained and you have a problem i do think there's a distinct difference between over training and under recovering like if you have like normal training volume you train one time a day five days a week normal stuff but you're only eating like 1500 calories and you're not you're sleeping five hours a night or whatever it is like your training volume is not too high you You might not be making progress and feel really tired all the time and whatnot, but it's not because your training volume is so high.

I feel like overtraining to me means that your training volume is so high and your recovery is optimized, but you're still doing too much. Even though you're eating 6,000 calories a day and you're getting 10 hours of sleep a night, you're still just all fucked up. And you're emotional and your hormone levels are all messed up. You can't sleep very well. Like, you're injured, on and on.

I would agree as a coach. But I would also say, you know, medically, probably not correct. But, like, I agree with what you're saying. However, if that person is training one time a day for one hour, moderate volume, and they're still getting this systemic inflammation, systemic damage, then it's still going to be classified as overtraining, and they're still whatever. They need to correct their lifestyle, whichever. Either maybe it's training too much, maybe it's not recovering.

However, it still leads the same thing which is overtraining and systemic damage i of the three of us every single one of us here could probably agree that we have beat the ever-living crap out of our bodies while we were training yet none of us really have this long-term systemic like damage that has been done so like what does that training actually look like if you're real i mean from owning a gym and training and mash i'm sure there was an amount of weight that you've lifted in your life that like and then you combine d Doug fighting and training for like weightlifting nationals and all these things. And CrossFit is like designed to overtrain and running a gym all

at the same time and coaching. And like, what is an actual amount of volume? I feel like that leads itself to long-term damage in the way that those those studies are talking about you know man I think it would be very individual I think it would be like you know it would depend on what's the person's training you know life it would depend on what is their lifestyle it would just I think it would just depend on a lot. But, you know, one thing that I didn't mention is that one of the first, like, precursors to all of this, to knowing that you're on your way to overtraining, is a change in mood. Because, believe it or not, like, this systemic, you know, inflammation causes issues in the brain. So, at first, this is, man, you should definitely be listening. It affects the hypothalamus, which is like, you know, when your sex drive dips, when you're.

This is going to be my story. Go. Yeah. When you're struggling to sleep at night, when you're getting depressed, moody, angry, like that's a serious thing. Your brain is affected at this point and it's because this this uh overtraining syndrome they're called OTS is the the medical term is like it's affecting your brain and so that literally is like the so of all of the times where I've been in like a a deep hole of training way too much putting too much stress on my body um and this was with my current wife. So she loves to bring this up at

very inopportune times in my life still to this day. But there was like a two week window in my life in which I could not get it up to have sex. And if I did get it up to have sex in the middle of having sex, I couldn't keep it up. You're like, what is wrong with you? And I couldn't actually explain to her the number of things that were going on in my brain that did not involve being present and having sex. But there is nothing more embarrassing and more like of a rude awakening than when your body does not want to have sex with your then girlfriend at like the time when things are the hottest in life when you're like just getting dating and you're like well she's like well why are you not

into me and you go ah no i'm super into you but look i have this gym that's exploding right now and it's like the only time in my life i've ever been successful in anything. And I need to go do this. And also, I have this like CrossFit thing that I want to be really good at. And I can be really good at it. And I'm training way too hard all the time. And every time I'm not training, I feel like I'm not getting better. So I always am training. And now I walk out of the gym and I'm completely stressed about business. I'm completely stressed about life. I'm completely stressed about life. I'm completely stressed about everything. And I feel like even

when I'm overly stressed that I need to be doing more. And then next thing you know, you don't have sex for two weeks and you're like 28 years old. That's a problem because like, not only, you know, is that happening, but like your brain is not going to be operating at a level where you're going to be good at you can't do anything you can't do anything because the next thing is hippocampus is is affected is the next step which now you can't remember you can't learn new things you know like it causes even more so it's like a it's a slippery slope and so if you start to notice these things, you should be aware and be like. I feel like all along your training career or business or life or whatever the hell it is,

you have these like, these things where like life checks you. That was like one of the biggest checks of my life at 28 when you can't get it up and do the thing that a 28 yearyear-old that's like banging weights and doing business and feeling like he's total savage. Like the reason you're a total savage is to try and breed and then you can't do the breeding thing. Yeah. But that was like the only time in my life where life checked me in that manner where it was like, we're taking like this, the most prized possession from you if you don't settle down and get your life together i think an easy way to avoid this initial you know this can avoid even coming close is if you did a simple questionnaire which i'm doing it's a part

of this new thing i'm building well now these are teaser that i've built and And so when you're an athlete, when you start noticing an effect of their sleep, of their appetite, of their mood outside the gym, if you start to see those things trending downwards, you should at that point intervene with your athlete and be like, all right, we're not going to train today. You're going to go home. You're not going to think about training. I literally had this talk maybe three weeks prior to the end of the semester because I had one of my athletes who was an absolute savage. And because the kid is such a driven kid, he's got a 4.0, by the way, as a freshman. And he went from being like a pretty good weightlifter to now he's like right at that ceiling of making Team USA, of which shout out to Sean Hamill, who became my 29th Team USA athlete, FYI. The kid I'm talking about now, Blaine, is going to be my next.

He'll be number 30. But that kid, man, he like one day he was having such a terrible day. And it wasn't just off. It was way off. And then he misses some lightweight and he starts hitting the, he grabs where he sit at his seat and starts pounding with his fist. And I took him outside and I asked him some simple questions and how sleep, how, you know, he was completely stressed out. He was obsessing over this chance that he might make team USA. So anyway, I sent him home. First, I had him do

some bodybuilding, which is a recommendation by Brian Mann. So we did some light weights. Got a pump is all we did. Sent him home. Made him take two days off. Came back and he ended the semester absolutely on a tear. Being aware of your athletes.

I recommend doing the questionnaire so you can like quantify it, but you can really, you can, number one gives you a chance to intervene and taught your athletes and see what's going on in life. And number two, it's going to save their ability to perform. I mean,

Travis, you train a lot of high level athletes. You just say you have your, you're on your way to 30 team USA athletes out of all those athletes. Can you, can you outline like what the highest training volume you've ever given any of those athletes looks like like is it how many sessions how long are they you know how many days are they are they doing you know 80 plus percent etc etc like i can i mean can look like for example um see hold on let me pull let me pull somebody's up and i'll let me give me a second i'll come back to it and uh i'll tell you yeah i'd love to as like it as like i want to go ahead

here what i want to hear what high training volume looks like that's still effective what like what's what's as high as you can go without doing too much all right so the tough part with overtraining is like okay well like where's where's the line in the sand where beyond that you're overtraining and just below that you're just actually hitting your maximum volume that you – maximum recoverable volume or whatever it is. And I know there's no like actual percentage because it's such a way in which people just manage stress. But how much of that isn't even the physical toll that it takes but like the amount of pressure that you put on yourself to do something like make it to regionals make it to the games make it to nationals make it to team usa like the the physical toll is a piece of it of total training volume but the amount of pressure that you put on yourself and is is the other like 22 hours of just total beat down that goes on where you're not that kind of like sits you up at night

watching your brain spin in circles here's an average week from this is now this is hannah who is like um she's my one of my Team USA athletes. She's like been three times Team USA. But now remember, she's only a 55-kilo girl and – no, I'm sorry, 49-kilo girl with 160-kilo total. So she's a teeny one. But her total volume for the week is 21,350 kilograms, 276 reps. Her average intensity is about 77 kilos.

Anyway, so I also track there. It's called INOL, which is basically relative intensity. So that's a good way to really make sure you stay within parameters that won't crush them is, is doing that relative intensity. Because what I mean by relative is this is like, you know, if you're doing five by five at 83%, that's a hundred percent. It relative intensity, like you're killing it. You know, you're beating that person up because they're barely going to survive that.

However, you know, it's, but if you did 95% for a couple of singles, you're right. You're a little bit below that. However, you know, but if you did 95% for a couple singles, you're right, you're a little bit below it. So it's like, you know, it's relative. It's just like how hard is that workout on the body? So knowing relative intensity is very important as a coach. And knowing something called monotony, which is like, I think, I feel like we mentioned it the other day, but monotony is but not because we were talking about your spreadsheet. Yeah. Oh yeah. So monotony is

simply like, you know, you can't do the same volume every single day. It needs to, it needs to wave. So like, like for example, if Monday is normally my highest volume day of the week, Tuesday is super low. Wednesday is, is, is pretty medium. Uh, Thursday we take off. Friday is like moderate but high intensity. And then once again, Saturday is high. So like you see how it waves? If you like do the same volume, even if it's like just moderate volume, if you do the same volume every single day, monotony will eventually get you. And so like the studies will show you're going to get hurt like that too.

So understanding a few simple – and it's not that complicated if you just do a little research or if you want to buy this new products about to come out, that'll be even easier. These are two. These are two. That is, so those are the, those are the ways,

you know, Ryan's obviously is much higher. So, um, in a minute before the show's over, I will, he weighs like what? One, one 60. What is that? 70. Yeah. much higher. So in a minute, before the show's over, I will – He weighs like, what, 160?

What is that, 70? Yeah, he's 67 kilos. No, no, no. He's – he's 70. He's 148 pounds. So, yeah, he's a teeny little dude. But beast. That kid, I'm shattering right now.

He is going to be amazing. He's on's on track now he's gotten used to college he's super focused him and his girlfriend are you know the news worn off perfect and so he is absolutely on fire i cannot wait to take this boy i'll tell you right now what we're about to do to the dudes at pan ams is it should be illegal we're gonna beat them so badly do you have like uh mechanisms in place with your team to get people like you just talked about the amount of stress that one of your athletes is taking into making team usa do you have kind of strategies in place of like monitoring their kind of the emotional mental stress side of things that isn't just the physical training that they endure every day absolutely like you know we have that questionnaire and we have well i monitor them in two specific ways one is like a day-to-day

questionnaire that the answer that takes like two minutes so it's like you know i met somebody out there it's probably like my god he's having these athletes do so much it's two minutes. So it's like somebody out there is probably like, my God, he's having these athletes do so much. It's two minutes. And so they fill that out, and I have what's called statistical process controls, just a fancy word for like I have highs and lows. And as long as they're in there in the middle, I think we're good. But once it gets either above it or below, the lowest of the low or highest of the high, there's a a problem and it shows a red flag for

me it immediately pops up red when i open up their program and i'm like oh we have a problem here so so but in solving it and addressing it is it are i guess what are the strategies to make sure that number's right and um or is it just like take a day off go relax it depends you know it depends on how how long they it did it was it red one day and then the very next day drop way down that's okay so that's like that's how you do overreaching but if it's red you know say they only got like you know we're in exams right now we're about done with it but i think matter of fact see everyone's done at this point but if they were redlining multiple days in a row, then it's absolutely get out of the gym. You're not allowed to come in.

Do a little bodybuilding. Get a little testosterone and growth hormone flowing. Get a little hormonal response. Go home and recover and go to sleep, man. So that would be it. So it just depends on how badly this thing is and like how far have we gone but the cool thing is it's not ever going to be that bad with me because i'm going to see it the day of like i see it every day well the athletes that are with me

in the college it won't go long because i'll see it but like you know people online they're not going to go past two or three days can i check their stuff every two to three days so either way it's not going to go too far um which is important so if you have these controls in place i mean you just created this whole system for for athlete monitoring that we're going to talk about on a show when you actually uh want to want to launch the product and all that stuff. I guess most people aren't going to have access to a coach like you that is having daily inputs, or they're just in their gym, banging weights as hard as they can. So before you had these very specific markers that you were tracking,

did you have – I imagine at some point, Jordan Cantrell, before you had this beautiful spreadsheet that you've put together of tracking all this stuff, he was probably burnt the hell out many times in competing for the last in particular, it's funny you mentioned him, because he's getting married. So he's stressed out. They just built a new home. Yeah. So he didn't do very well at Pan Ams, but we knew it. We knew going in, so we did not push him hard because he's getting married. And because we did not make the Olympics this time, there was a lot in it.

We made it. Let's go have some fun. But now we're going to start focusing on the next Olympics. So now we'll be super focused. So if you don't have all these fancy things, it's as easy as does your guy look tired?

And if they do, asking them, are you sleeping? Asking them. When I see somebody who is way below normal, you know, below average, like they're, they're way weaker than normal, or they just are moving slowly. I'm going to ask them two questions. I'm like, is, you know, how's your sleep at night? And how's your, how's your appetite? And if one of those two things, you know, if they're like, man, I can't sleep or you know i can't eat

then we got a problem you're going to address it and and do the same thing so that's that's the easier way it's just not as yeah it's hard to quantify that how much weight do you put on their their subjective experience about how they feel like if they do have an appetite and they are sleeping and they they appear to be moving well but they're coming over to you very frequent they're like i'm so fucking tired all the time like like i just don't feel like being here like my motivation to train is low but they've seemed to be performing just fine does that ever happen where you're like okay like what how do we solve this problem i'd be like don't be a pussy you know so like i mean like you know like if they're performing they're just you know

they're being lazy and they say that. It's just those two go hand in hand. Like, and especially like, but it could be this, Doug. So it could be the fact that, you know, they're performing well now, but their sleep is being affected for like a couple days. You could see a correlation three or four days later. And so I'm going to be alert. If they tell me that, I'm going to be alert. If they tell me that, I'm going to be like, look, let's take it easy.

I'm not going to tell them to go home or anything yet, but I'm going to start watching. And then if all of a sudden performance is affected in the slightest, then I will say, all right, same thing. But, yeah, it's not necessarily the day of or the next day. Sometimes it's like three, you know, to seven days. And so that's, that is where it's really handy to have, you know, a spreadsheet because you can start to develop correlations between when this happens, you know, you know, this many days, like, you know, three to five days later, this happens. And so, I mean, like, look, like, unless you're

dealing with like athletes trying to do as good as they can or you know very high level athletes you know you don't necessarily you know if i'm running a crossfit i'm not going to do a spreadsheet like this for every one of my athletes but well that's yeah you bring up crossfit and it's like the perfect example because in the definition it says what we only do high intensity right i actually like got um i just want everyone to know that i haven't trained with high intensity in like two years right the highest intensity that i are are you defining it for this i'm about to the highest intensity that i have really touched in the last two years was when Hunter Elam was eight feet in front of

me and talking shit about how much I snatch because it's the same as her opener. And I actually had to really, really think about lifting the weight. No, but I, what I'm really more getting at is like the intent behind how you work out and the intention that you bring to whatever workout it is. Like I've been doing this EMOM aesthetics program for the past year because that's the exact amount of intensity that fits my life. It's the timeframe and I have no interest. Like you should be able to train to a level of intensity that you go, oh, that's where I should be today. That might mean that you work out really hard, but you should always be able to go harder if it meant something. Most of the day should be hanging out somewhere around like a relative

intensity or like an RPE of somewhere in like an eight, seven and a half to eight and a half is probably like a really good day of lifting weights. You're lifting a decent amount of weight. You're doing it really well. You're aware of how you're moving, but you don't need to go out and just prove yourself every single day under the barbell, especially for like the people that we're coaching that are, you know, in the 35 year plus year range. Like, what are you, what are you really trying to prove to yourself like show up to the gym and one of the one of the most beautiful things that i have really experienced post competing and post like trying to prove my worth to the world through how much i can lift is the number of different frames that you can bring to strength training.

So like when you are competing, the only frame that you bring to the game and that you bring to your training sessions and you bring to the, to the gym is how do I stack up against the people I'm competing against? That's the only thing that matters. If your goal is to be as good as you can be like Jordan could walk into the gym and PR, but if he finishes fifth, he's pissed. Like it's just the reality of being an athlete. But if your goal is to be strong and be healthy, be lean and enjoy the gym for the rest of your life, you have to develop a zillion different frameworks

in which you bring to the gym and the intent that you go in to lift weights. Like, have you ever thought about, like, a therapeutic dose of weightlifting? Like, what does that look like? It's probably like front squatting 185 pounds and doing it for, like, eight reps and doing it really well.

Or, like, just going and doing regular pull-ups and not having to do chest to bar butterfly kipping pull-ups as fast as you possibly can like grab a landmine grab a sandbag grab go do things that get you out of the i have a metric that i have to hit or just like try to bring an intent to the gym that does not 100% involve performance-based metrics or comparing yourself to other people. And you'll start to recognize that there's like, there's a zillion different ways that you can lift weights. And since I have stopped competing, it's taken the form of like rehabbing my body back so that I feel good. It takes the form of like, I've got 30 minutes. And how do I get in, get some really good stuff done, get my heart rate elevated? Like, how do I enjoy just the middle of my competitive career, I'd have been like, dude, you're not even trying. Like all these people are smashing you because you're not getting better today, but none of it matters anymore. I'm not, I'm not in a competitive

mindset. So you have to change the framework that you bring to the gym every day to be able to have a better conversation with yourself and actually develop longevity and bringing an intent that matches where you're at in life and allows you to keep moving forward. Totally agree. So some other things, you know, that you can look at when it comes to overtraining, overreaching too, would be, you know, we've talked about your mood. We've talked about, you know, if you're having trouble remembering, we've talked about, you know, the blood testing, which is the side of it. If you're getting sick a lot too, that's a big one too. And that's a big problem too.

If you're getting sick, you know, you're not, there's this window of time too. If you do a hard workout, you've got this window that you're really at risk of getting sick. When you're training like you are used to, you've got this window that you're really at risk of getting sick. When you're training like you were, you know, when you used to do your CrossFit, I guarantee that you were in this window where your immune system plummets. And so now over time, though, here's the problem, is that that's just a window, and then it bounces back. But when you start doing that over time, it accumulates,

and that becomes a systemic problem, meaning that it goes throughout the system. And so, like, you know, making sure that after you train like an animal like you guys do as CrossFitters, that then, you know, like about, what is it, like one to three hours after you train, really try to avoid, you know, getting sick. So try to, like, be in a clean environment try to like not try to like not get sick then you know that's that's a great way to avoid anything but if like you know most crossfitters you know they'll train super hard then they'll lay around their dirty gym you know laying on the gym floor yeah laying on the gym floor and so like that's a

that's a big problem you know this is a weightlifter's too. Like when you do a hard weightlifting workout and I've abused you for two hours, same thing. Like there's going to be a window of time where you're very at risk of getting sick. And so being wise during that time is another thing I would recommend as well. How much do you think that, especially you, Travis, right now, and we're in the middle of like a massive work, like hardcore push right now, like the amount of external stress that you bring, that you have in your own training and the actual intensity or frequency that you're able to bring to to your own life like how do you manage

that because you just finished your master's degree and i didn't do a good job you know i had that stupid heart you know i had my blood pressure shot through the roof and like yeah my energy levels were you're so low that i was like constantly taking you you know, like caffeine and other things to like be stimulated. So like I didn't do a good job, but it forced me now, you know, some of the steps I'm taking now is making sure that, you know, I have at least seven hours sleep schedule period. I don't care. Here's the thing is like, like when you get only five hours of sleep or four hours of sleep, like studying becomes so much harder because, you know, your hippocampus is like in the gutter and you can't remember anything. So just remember that if you're out there trying to do great work, not just, you know, mindless, repetitive work.

But if you're trying to do something great you gotta sleep man you're not helping anything by not sleeping because that great work just turns to poop and like which is what happened like my brain just literally was like struggling to work so then towards the after i had the the scare you know i really started sleeping and then i crushed it my grades like shot through the roof then my um i had my best grade in exercise phys of all time on my final. And like, because I made myself sleep. So that was step one. Step two is making sure that I schedule time with my family. Because if I'm struggling or if I'm with my family and I'm looking at my phone,

that stresses me out because I know I'm not doing it right by them. So like by scheduling that quality time with my family, those two things alone led to me training again, eating better. Like it led to so much. So I just had to get ahold of those two. So I recommend that for sure. Yeah. I think that also people, when they're going through those like stretches and everybody does it, if you've got a family,

if you've got a professional career that you're like trying to be good at, you're going to hit patches where you just, it crushes you. Like the, uh, the, the interesting thing about forcing yourself to train, but being able to do it at a, a much lower intensity is that by getting up and moving or like going for a walk going for a light jog like yeah even if it's just like getting in a sauna for 20 minutes like those pieces are actually really really important for relieving stress assuming that you are not crushing your body while you're doing the training like if you if you go in and you try and pr while you're trying to pr at your job while you're trying to whatever it is like if you're in the middle of some super intense period and you go into the gym and you're trying to max out a five rep max back squat it's it's going to just beat

the crap out of you yeah but if you can just go for a walk, go for a light jog, like just move some weights nice and slow, like that actually has a very like therapeutic effect in stress relief and just being able to shake out all of the stress that's like stored in your body throughout the day. And as I mentioned, we all heard from Dr. Rady that that's going to stimulate the hippocampus. By getting up and doing what you do, you know, which I'm so envious how you get up and you do your 100 reps and then you do your walk,

like you're stimulating your brain at that moment. Like your hippocampus lights up and like it's creating that BDNF and like this is basically you're giving your brain steroids. And so like if you can just fit that in, I think that would be another one of those habits. I would build in that morning routine and I would build in time with my family, and I would build in sleep. I'm like, no matter what, no matter what, get your sleep. No matter what, I'm doing this with my family.

No matter what, I'm going to get up and do this first in the morning. I bet if you did those three habits, I have a feeling the rest of your life would probably fall into place, at least a lot easier than it was. Yeah. The last three weeks, I've actually woken up and gone and ran two miles. That's just like a nice eight and a half minute pace just to go breathe and move blood. I haven't been lifting weights early in the morning, mainly just because it's so nice outside.

It's like hot in the morning. You get a good sweat going. It's fantastic. Like your whole day is better. no wonder you're doing so you know we were bragging on you before the show but i wonder you're having such good ideas call rady i'm ready seriously where were you guys yeah yeah if you have if you have an athlete and say the they're you're trying to get their squat to go higher and it's just not going how do you determine if it's like kind of global overtraining they're just doing too much of everything or if they're say they're front squatting an absurd amount they're like 12 times a week or whatever it is like are they just

overdoing a movement pattern and they can't recover from that one thing but they could recover for other things like their upper body could still make progress because their upper upper body volume is kind of more normal how do you know whether it's like a specific thing like that or it's like a general they're just doing too much so they can't recover from anything well i mean if you keep meticulous records that will jump out at you you know so like you know number one i'm going to look and see if you know they they're telling me that they're stressed or any of these other things now if that's the same then we move on to like let's look at the the training is like is everything

in the gutter or is it just this one thing if it's the one thing what is that one thing out of the ordinary amongst all the things that are doing well so then you know if you know i see that hey we're doing way more frequency on squatting than these other things that are seem to be doing better then step one would be like let's cut back back, let's cut back the frequency, you know, or if like, you know, squatting is like, you know, the volume is way higher than these other things, then we'll cut that way back, you know, and maybe focus on intensity. So like the key is like, if you keep records,

then you can make really good, you know, educated guesses, because now I'm about to be honest with the world is like every coach is doing their best and making an educated guess. Nobody can look you in the eyes and tell you, I know X. They're lying. If they do that, you know, they're lying to your face because we just don't, because there's just so many variables. Now, if I've had you for like five years, I probably know, you know, at that point I pinned you down and I figured it out.

However, even then, things change. So the physiology changes. As you get older, things change. Things don't recover as fast as they used to. So, you know, I'll make certain adjustments. But, like, you know, we just got to make the best educated guess possible. So by keeping records and being able to find the outlier, that's how you make a decision.

It's like, which is the way I've always done it. Like, I'll give you an example. Like, so there was three athletes I had, three amazing athletes. There was Tom Suma, there was Dylan Cooper, and there was Nathan Damron. And so. I haven't heard that name in so long. Yeah. So Nathan and Dylan both were getting stronger easily.

Like their squats were going through the roof. You know, they're juniors. So like it's easy. But Tom was like it was so hard to get him strong. So like his workout slowly, you know, evolved to something completely different from theirs. It went from like, you know, evolved to something completely different from theirs. It went from like, you know, okay, let's do more frequency, higher intensity. That doesn't work. Okay. I've never written so much volume for any human on earth more than I have Tom Suma. Like when I wrote this one plan, it was literally me saying, I don't know what else to do. I'm just

going to kill this guy and see what happens. And so, like, I wrote this, you know, I called it something like a hard gainer. I wrote a hard gainer program, I called it. And it obliterated him. And you know what? He got ten times stronger. Next thing you know, Tom Suma starts shooting either equal to or above the other two. So, like, by knowing the variables and understanding, you know, what works for the one person, you just keep changing

until something changes, you know. Don't just keep – I think a big mistake coaches make is, like, you know, you hear a lot of coaches say, hey, just stick with the plan. Eventually you'll get out of it. I think that's – you know, if you have an athlete who's 20 years old and they're not seeing progress in three months, six months, there is a problem. And I would say switch everything you're doing completely.

And, like, because that's the glory years. You know, when they're 18 to 20, 21, that is the time to go hard. And, like, they should be getting gains galore. And so if they're not, switch what you're doing. Don't just stick with the plan. That's a bad idea. I totally disagree with anyone who says that. Just stick with it.

They'll finally get better. You know, that's a bad decision. Anyway. How do you know whether to, like, have the total revamp of the program versus maybe just adding one more set to all the major exercises, How do you know whether to like have the total revamp of the program versus maybe just adding one more set to all the major exercises, like a small change like that versus like take out all their assistance work or if they do any, if they, any cardio, cardio is gone.

I'm sure this will fluctuate depending on where they're at in their training cycle when competitions are, but how do you know whether to make big versus minor adjustments? I made so many small ones that I was, I was, I was out of things to do and like, and then finally when I'm literally, it was like, maybe this guy can't get strong. And then literally one night, I was just like, heck with it. I'm going to throw this volume that should kill you and like,

see what happens. And it just only, I would never have anyone else but him do this. And there was just, but he was, he was literally, not only was he high frequency squatting at least five days a week, like the volume is so high, like normally when you do squat every day, or squat almost every day, it's like you do one set, maybe one to three, you know, you do one big set, one to three reps, and, but this guy was doing massive amounts, on saturdays for example he would do uh the eight five three one three five eight plus at the end you know and then every single day yes that's a whole lot when the day before he maxed out snatch cleanser

and his front squats then he does that then he does back squat at the 8, 5, 3, 1. And, like, it was just absurd. It was absurd. And then, man, he skyrocketed, though. His squat went up. His front squat went up. And he's the guy that's so efficient. So did his snatch.

So did his clean and jerk. Because he is the best weightlifter I've ever coached. Because whatever ounce of absolute strength he has, he uses to snatch and clean and jerk because he is the best weightlifter I've ever coached because whatever ounce of absolute strength he has, he uses to snatch a clean and jerk. So it was really the ticket to him getting better, and it worked. Dude, when you have guys coming in and doing, like, German volume training, and the kid from New Zealand that was with you last time we were at your gym when you still had it.

Yeah. How long do you keep people on? Yeah. Are you still coaching him? Yeah. Yeah. He's taking some time off. He hurt his knee.

He went home and played basketball and tore an ACL. Really? There should be a rule against pickup basketball for anyone. That's not trying to be just good at pickup basketball. Yeah, for anyone who's trying to go to the Olympics, yeah. Isn't that how it is at a lot of fire departments? The most common firefighter injury is rolled ankles from playing basketball. And so a lot of places won't let their guys play basketball because they keep getting injured.

It's the dumbest possible sport in the world. The number of Achilles, knees, a bunch of people out there trying to cut knees, ankles, Achilles. Those three things playing basketball. It's like, yeah. But it's so fun. Those sports are cool. Weightlifting's dangerous.

Yeah, weightlifting's super dangerous. Basketball is 10 times more dangerous than weightlifting, proven. I think any adult sport, just in general, is significantly more dangerous than the way that they've proven so i think any adult sport just in general is significantly more dangerous than lifting weights like the number of people that like when we had the gym to be like oh yeah i just blew my knee up playing adult soccer on saturday and you're like someone was slide tackling you doesn't he have don't they have like things to do on monday what is wrong with people why are you trying so hard?

So absurd. I don't think basketball is dangerous at all. There might be some inherent risk there with weightlifting too, but far from actually dangerous. Totally. I mean, it's very common to get one of these little injuries, like an ankle or, you know, but you recover from it in no time. The problem is people are doing things that whatever their top speed is and they

don't have that. You're Siri talking to you. Yes. Oh, I love that. Yeah. My iPad just came alive. It scared me to death. I'm like, what is happening?

Like, well, hold on. What's the Amazon thing that you got there? Making it it making it alexa yeah alexa showed up to barbell shrug today scared me to death i thought i thought somebody was in my room anyway what brilliant evil business that is to like put microphones in everyone's houses and just listen to all their conversations and aggregate the data and then fucking sell them things they talk about like that's like the most accurate way to figure out what's going on in the lives of everybody it's just to stick microphones just freaks me out when i'm talking about something then it comes up on facebook

all the time dude i'll mention something to my wife and that like she's never thought about never it's like just not on her radar be like we should get the iron neck like it's like a thing for grapplers like have stronger necks and then all of a sudden like five minutes later she's like shows me her facebook feed and there's an advertisement for the iron neck like that stuff happens all the time like on like twice a week happens all the time. Wow. Dude, people freak out about privacy, yet they will go buy Alexa. Like, Facebook's stealing our information. It's like you bought a robot to listen to you, to know what you like. Like, you can't really be that upset about privacy and your data

when you bought the robot to listen to you. No kidding. We don't have one of those in our house. You don't? No. There's a few things I definitely want to tell our audience before we leave. It's like there's some – in this group of research, there were some really good recommendations,

such as maintain records. we've already talked about that so you know like monitoring your athlete in the areas of like choice of exercise order of exercise volume average intensity rest etc a big one is don't increase volume more than 10 percent per week i think that's a pretty standard but like some people might not know but like you know you don't want to go up more than 10% from one week to the next. I recommend two, which is not in here on the deloads, really deload. Like I think the, I would go between 20 and 25% below where wherever you are at the time,

less volume, less weight, all of it. Weren't we together when we heard that? But like it was, it was one of my, it was either Dr. Cook or Dr. Lightning of which are both brilliant, but have at least one day of complete rest per week, at least one day.

So either, we have to, and until people stop getting stronger, here's another one not on the list. Like we have, Thursdays are off and Sundays are off

and until people are like stagnant, I'm not going to go to two days and I'm not going to go to an extra day. And we don't have anybody. Like, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get out in it. By next week, I'll be able to tell you how much, on average, people improve. Like, my whole squad, the entire group at the college improved and then just improved extraordinarily, you know.

So, like, there's no point. There's no point. When your top dude, Ryan, or Matt Weininger, who have both been with me for a decade, why would I go to... People just sometimes are like, I'm going to go to two days because Cal's doing this two days. That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Wes is 30 years old, and he's accumulated a lot more volume than your 19-year-old kids. The only people that should be doing what the best people in the world are doing are the best people in the world.

10-4. And, like, even Ryan is now one of the best in the world, but he doesn't. It all comes to me. I actually was never that guy that could really put that level of volume in. No matter – I mean mean it was probably because i owned the gym as well and so you're just constantly actually training without even knowing but i could only ramp myself up to do like two days three days when like real competition season started to come in which is actually a question that i really wanted to ask earlier

talking about like morgan i remember we did a show actually i think we were at your gym maybe a couple years ago but um we were talking about morgan getting morgan's training volume up to i want to say you were talking about like 14 to 16 sessions in a week to be able to get the volume and and eat and get the like just the overall size that he needs to be able to get where he's going. Right. Like when someone hears that, they're going to think that they need to do 16 sessions in a week. No, it's a slow process.

It's very slow. Very slow. I mean, he started his first snatch and clean and jerk when he was nine years old. Right. So by the time he turns 22, he's going to be – More than a decade. Yeah. He will at that point be 13 years into training.

Yeah. So right now he's at – hold on. See, six times – he's at nine sessions a week. So Morgan's a little bit higher, And he is more of a higher frequency, high intensity, moderate volume guy. Whereas Ryan is very high volume, moderate intensity.

He's definitely moderate. And Ryan is only once a day, five days a week. So Morgan's four more sessions a week. However, I bet their volume is probably – is relatively the same if I look. You know, but it just works out better for Morgan to train more times. But eventually I want both of them – that's the goal for both of them to get to.

But I don't see it being this quad. I see it – I see by the end of this quad getting to maybe 10 sessions a week, but I don't see 14. I think it would be the next squad, assuming they go one more. And even when you do, do you feel like those guys at some point – I mean, I understand that you have to just lift the weights to be able to grow the muscle to be able to get stronger, but, man, mentally that is just such a beating to think that you got to put it like Wes has been doing that for like

three years now like his volume is so high he's doing triple days yeah like that's such a beating to think that you got to come in and do that amount of work every single day just to get the volume you got to really want something extraordinary. And, like, yeah, I think it's – and there's a good chance that, you know, after this squad, that one of the two, if not both, say, okay, I'm done. You know, like, they're Americans. They have plenty of things. Like, Ryan wants to be a chiropractor.

You know, Morgan wants to be a strength coach, strength and weightlifting coach. And so eventually they're going to want to get on with their lives, have babies. And so there's a chance they, they don't do it. You know, the thing is, is that Wes got started later. And so this is his first quad that he's ready. And so just, I think, you know, he'll be one quad and done. And I don't blame him.

He played, I don't know if y'all know this, but he was an amazing college football player. Like he ran a four, four-40 you know as a running back like this is laser time nfl laser time so he he had a he's had a heck of a athletic career so and he almost made the nfl he was like he was right there and so yeah so i you know i it's the thing you're american you have so many other opportunities. That's why I feel like athletes in other countries tend to do better because they don't have – I mean, that sounds bad. They don't have the options.

It's like they either do well at this thing or they're going to work in a mine somewhere. And so it's a different ballgame. We'll see. After this quad, do they say, hey, let's go one more time, or do they say I'm done? I'm good with either. Whatever. Coach Travis Bash.

Bashlead.com. Let me quickly go through these last few things. Really quick. Just a few more. You're including the use of macro cycles, mesocycles, and micro cycles. Making sure that you're varying things. You have a different goal.

It's one of those, uh, avoid too many competitions because of the stress that comes with that. Yeah. Eat a well-balanced diet and possibly use, you know, when you're going super hard, you might want to consider what is that group that we decided our blood

tested by? Um, Oh, uh, not really well we had the girl the lady on the show yeah make sure you get your blood tested

I don't remember it was like our Christmas present to ourselves I should remember but I'm blanking on it too hold on it starts with I I get their stuff all the time anyway get your blood tested Hold on. It starts with I. What is it? I get their stuff all the time.

Anyway, get your blood tested because you're going to see you might need either a multivitamin, a really good one too. Inside tracker. Inside tracker. Yeah, get somebody like that to test you and see if you're having any major deficits. And then if so, get that mess handled. And then monitor your stress and anxiety. I recommend a really cool product that's about to come out. However, for now, you might want to start tracking that yourself. Rest and recovery, that's it.

That's all I have. But those are important. It's no joke. It's not even funny. It's definitely not up for debate anymore. Overtraining is a thing. If your mood and your sleep, your sex drive, if these things are affected, you've gone too far, man.

And you're endangering your whole system. So chill out. It's not helping you. You're being silly. So take it seriously. Anyway, MasterLeague.com. Go to Instagram at MasterLeague Performance. Doug Larson. Doug C. Larson

on Instagram. The motivational speaker. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Get over to BarbellShrugged.com forward slash DieselDad where all the busy dads are getting strong, lean, and athletic without sacrificing family, fatherhood, or fitness. For everybody in San Diego, LA, Palm Springs, and Vegas,

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