Barbell Shrugged - How Travis Mash Got a 6-Pack at 50 Years Old w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #807

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

The home team is back again and Travis Mash has been posting too many shirtless selfies with all the abs for us not address the nutrition, fitness, and training programs he is up to. Tons of insight into getting back to the basics, simplifying, and making it all work while keeping family at the center of it all. Enjoy. Work With Us: Arétē by RAPID Health Optimization Links: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrugged family this week on Barbell Shrugged, a fun one. The homies are back, we're talking about Travis Mashes abs. If you haven't seen these things on Instagram, it's absurd. You got a guy, he squats like 700 pounds and dude has like a nine pack and each one looks like a loaf of bread. You can't go and squat that much weight

without having just like bricks inside there. It's gonna be fun. You'll laugh, you'll have fun. You're gonna hang out with us. It's gonna be incredible. This is what we like to do. This is like, if you were to just sit down and have a cup us. It's gonna be incredible. This is what we like to do. This is like, you were to sit down and have a cup of coffee with us in the morning.

This is what it sounds like. As always friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dan Garner, Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis. You can access that over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Bar-Dog-Shark, I'm Anders Barnard.

Doug Larsen goes Travis Mash. The homies are back. Today we're talking about Travis Mash's abs. I never thought I'd be saying that again. I hope when Colton puts this intro there's like the sexual healing song in the back. When I get that feeling. Let's just turn on Travis Mash's Instagram. Dude, did you set out to get super shredded or is this like just a symptom of a healthy lifestyle that you have adopted?

Yeah, I think it's symptom of healthy lifestyle and I got my hip, you know, in January and so I just decided to, you know, get back into great shape. It's lucky what we do, barbell shrug. And like, um, you know, we hear so many great people. And so I've learned so much like about sleep, like Chris Perry, that honestly, that guy has like helped me the most getting my sleep dialed in. And anyway, one thing led to another. And I just, you know, I hate, I don't know about you guys, but when you have the hip surgery and I'm 52 and you people are like, I think you won't probably won't squat again. Like that's of all the things that freaks me out

thinking I can't do something. And so that got me training and but I didn't want to just be a, you know, I never want to be like the old power, the sort of where I just lived, but started training hard, kept my cardio up, listening to Andy, talking about the nine traits of physical fitness, he talks about anaerobic, aerobic, all the different muscular endurance, power, strength, speed, all those

things. And so I just started sticking to it. And it's just fun being able to play basketball with my kids and being able to, you know, to run or walk a mile and not be, you know, pissed. I remember when we were in Miami and we were walking, I was getting so pissed because we kept walking. I'm like, man, I'm a lifter. I don't walk this much. And so my wife was like, man, you gotta do better than this.

But it feels good to be 52 and to be in the best shape. I guess it's in thirties. Yeah. Like if you added in the like cardiovascular side of things, like cardiovascular health and movement and like all that training that you're doing. Yeah. I would imagine you might actually be in the healthiest slash best shape of your life. I am no doubt since 20s maybe, you know, like when my wife met me in 2006, I was mentally unhealthy, but I was pretty physically fit

because I was getting ready for bobsled. So that was the last time she ever saw me with abs until now. And so that was 2006, so here we are, 2025, almost 20 years later. So it's not a complete bait and switch. I've always laughed, bait and switched her, but so here we are. So you decided to compete in powerlifting again, and you want to compete at 198.

Yes. Yeah. So you're you're trying to just make a weight class and then the abs are like a result of that? Or was it like I also want to be lean? Like even if even if I'm smaller and leaner, like my strength won't be as high, but I'm not worried about strength. Even on competing and powerlifting, strength isn't like the all the way focus. It's like this whole, this holistic view of life as opposed to just trying to hit the highest numbers possible.

Well, you know, I still like at 198, I want to be competitive, but like at 198, I know I can be lean. It's like, you know, for me to be lean at 220, I would have to bulk and I don't want to do that. Like I don't want to do what I have to do. Because I'm 5'6". So like really, there's no way I can say that I can be healthy at 5'6", and be weighing 240 and cutting to 220. That's just a walking heart attack. But I can be like barely

above 200 and lean and I feel like I hold that well and yeah yeah I feel like I can go rucking and I can go mountain biking with you guys without being destroyed and yeah sure that was another turning point too. That's right. That was the safest thing you ever did not going mountain biking. I was just man I was so mad. Being fat out of shape is nice when you don't have to separate your shoulder. Yeah at least I didn't separate my shoulder. That was so out of shape. You hit the jump first. You showed us all we shouldn't go on the jump. Oh no, just straight down.

He just disappeared off the cliff. There was probably like 12 things that I was supposed to get hurt doing until I finally hurt myself. Yeah. Like that was a matter of time. The broker that we were working with at Walmart down there took us like way past the skill that we should have been riding our bikes at. Absolutely.

I was like taking somebody surfing in San Diego and I was like, you want to ride the 12 footers today? Not at all. This is like a normal thing. I remember it was like, we also didn't fight him though. He was like, yes, we'll go to the jump park. We were like, hell yeah. I want to go to the jump park. Let's do this. And Travis was like, no, something like he took us to a place and it was like, yeah, I'll go. I'll try it. I remember there was like one start where we had like, it felt like I was going over the handlebars for sure to get down.

We had like a sharp turn right to get to the thing. And it was like, that was scary. But I guess this is like the intro step. He knows we suck at this. Like why? Sure enough, here we go. We're going to the hospital. That's another thing I've noticed. Aging is like, um, when I was your age, even, or especially my thirties, there was no limit. I had zero limits.

Like I wasn't afraid of anything. And then all of a sudden I started finding myself afraid of things like that time that we went mountain biking. And I'm like, I, I don't like that about, I did not like this whole turning point. So I started forcing myself to do hard things again, you know, which will help HRV indirectly by being you know, I was afraid of like cold stuff like I didn't want to get in the cold and like, is I just felt myself trending not on a good path. And I'm like, I'm not gonna do this. I'm just not gonna do that.

I'm not gonna spend the last couple of decades or three of my life being afraid of everything. And so I just grabbed a hold of things, especially when I got done with schoolboys, boys. Like you do have to have a certain balance so you can mentally do these things. You gotta prepare, you know, you gotta breathe and like take control of your life and say,

I'm gonna do hard things again and I'm gonna do it on purpose and actually put them in your life. Make yourself dumb. Yeah. Sure. Do you feel like your life is easier because it's like structured now?

Like you're not, there's like, I would imagine you know what you're not, there's, there's like, I would imagine you, you know, what you're going to eat every day. You don't have to worry about what time you're going to go to bed or the things you're going to be, you just, this is, it's so simple. Once you just, it's not even like have a goal.

It's like the standard of living that you are accepting of. You just, you don't have to worry about all the extra stuff. You just don't do it. I love it, man. I love, you know know I love like when my kids now we we used to homeschool and so that gives too many variables we could do it I like them being and now we're we're doing a you know private school but I like the fact that we got to get up at this time go to bed at this time and like it makes it easy for me to do even though it's summertime right now. But we've done a good job of keeping the same structure of going to bed at 830 of like, you know, I read them a story, you know, we, you know, like yesterday that we're talking with Dr.

Perry, I'm definitely going to implement that. Like I'm going to be done eating at 630 and then it's family time. And I'm going to commit from 630 to 8.30, we're going to go outside and play, and then we're gonna have our, at eight o'clock they'll go brush their teeth at 8.30. You know, I'll sit them down and I'll read them this book and pray with them. So yeah, I took a lot away from it. I can't wait to the,

I don't know when this will be released, but listen to the podcast again. Yo, last night. That's very not impressive compared to the fact that you can get your kids down to bed early and easy. That sounds incredible. We should change the subject of the show immediately.

Yeah. Well, they, if you know, I read them a book that they like and like we have a good time though with it. They love when they love me reading the story or telling it. They love me telling stories more than anything. Like if I will tell them a story about when I was a kid with their uncle KJ, that's their favorite. Then they'll go to bed, they go to bed at 7 p.m. if I'll do that.

And so, which I will sometimes, but some of them, it's not PG enough yet. So as they get older, they'll hear more and more of those. But yeah. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the Arate program, which we're all incredibly proud of.

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It's not physique transformation and pre and post pictures. Arate is something completely different. Arate is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently. You'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness

of your analysis and optimization plan. Arte isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling, and performing at your absolute best, physically and mentally, when the stakes are the highest. To learn more, visit AreteLab.com. That's A-R-E-T-E lab dot com. Now, back to the show. You know, I almost never train in the evenings. It's just like not practical for my day to life. I have like three little kids and training at like seven or eight. Yeah, that's bedtime You can't do that as you just as you just mentioned but on the show that we recorded with Perry last week

It was like one of the only shows really talked about training in the evenings How you basically aren't supposed to do that and then it was like that was the first night that in fucking years I had the opportunity to train in the evening and I had I had skipped training earlier that day because one of my sons had Trouble at camp and like had to come home He was like super tired and just came home and crashed and fell asleep Like in the early afternoon So I didn't get to train that that that afternoon before I picked him up And so even though that was like the first show in the longest time where we actually talked about training in the evening and how that's

Not a good idea That was the first opportunity I had to actually train. I was like, oh, okay what perry says i'm trying i'm training This is happening. I'm going to fall asleep just fine. Well, I definitely went for a walk yesterday evening. I mean, I think nothing, I guess prepared me to settle down more than a walk, you know, like a long, like a low intensity steady state. I love, I love what, um, who was the guy, the guy who, um, life was for walking. Um, what was, who was the guy, the guy who life was for walking. What was, who makes the shoes, the guy that we had on our shoulder, the older guy.

Oh, Mark Sisson. Oh man, I love that. But like, I'd like to do it rucking. Did you buy the shoes? You bought his book, right? I bought his book and I've been doing, you know, a lot of his protocols for the walks. I've been doing rucking now. I definitely don't run because I feel like for me to do running, I would need to get a running coach and make sure my technique is good. But I've been doing some sprinting though uphill.

I'll do some hills. I feel good about that. But long's is running was just I was starting to mess with that and I could definitely feel it in my back And some not doing that but rucking In my basement, I'll do a lot of the of the high intensity with with sled pulling So I'll go super hard for like pulling a sled Doing some carries taking a break and so I don't do anything like that. I'm just not gonna necessarily do some jogging. That's the only thing that seems to have hurt me at all. Yeah. And so, yeah, not gonna do that.

I wanna, whatever makes me feel good. So there's a lot, as Andy will tell you, he'll even, Andy will say, like there's plenty of things you can do. And like, if you don't know how to run properly, then don't use running. Don't, don't implement running in your fifties. That's probably not a good idea.

So I mean, I also think, especially if you're not built like a runner, and I'm not, if you're like a pro tip, a runner, maybe you get away with it. Like you're, you're made to do it, but you have very obviously built to be a power lifter as opposed to a runner. And so it's just not your thing. All you can do is bang yourself up. No, but I do like rowing. I do like the, to do rowing, I like the air dine. That's one of my favorites. So I can go super hard on the air dine and for sprints. So I'll definitely do that. But

just covering the nine physical fitness characteristics, maybe we should name those like, so there's anaerobic and then there's aerobic. There is muscular endurance, there is power, speed, strength. Oh, hypertrophy is one of them, so gain some muscle. Yeah, right. Oh, VOQ max. Like agility, balance, coordination some muscle. Oh, VOQ Max.

Agility, balance, coordination type stuff. Oh yeah, skills, skills. That's right. Definitely learning new skills is important, the brain. And then Ben, he said yes, then low intensity steady state was one of them too. So just like long endurance. But VOQ max, if you're talking about longevity, the number one predictor of longevity. So you have to consider that one as you get older. And so definitely doing that. And so you can't just do low intensity steady state and affect it as much as you can, as if you actually understand like lactate thresholds and trying to push that along. So it sucks.

That's not, but it's good. Not enough older people do max heart rate, anything. Like there's lots of people that, that will go for, they go for a walk, they go for a rock. They will go for jogs, but not a lot of people do high intensity interval training. And even if they do, a lot of times they don't actually really truly get to a,

like a hundred percent heart rate max. They'll go to a higher heart rate by doing, you know, 20 second intervals or whatever. But as far as like getting to the highest heart rate you're able to produce, I feel like that is very underutilized by the vast majority of the population. And I understand because doing that is tough. It's a painful experience to put yourself into a situation where your heart is beating as fast as it possibly can on a regular basis. Like you got to just embrace the suck and make it happen because it's not going to happen automatically. It's like, it's a very difficult thing to talk yourself into week after week after week. Once you're

in your thirties and forties and fifties and sixties and beyond. You'll see people, they'll do a Tabata and they'll go a little harder. And like that is, there's nothing to do with like all out. Like a max means you go as hard as you possibly can go. You know, you'll hear, you'll, you'll see people say, oh, I'm doing hit training and they'll jog a little faster. And that's, there's nothing to do with it. It means absolutely all you have maximum.

And so there, that's why the air down is amazing. So you know, you see like a lot of MMA fighters using the air down and you can just crush that thing. It is hard man. At first, you know, you can't breathe. You're like, if you have it, have that sensation in a while. It's kind of scary. You know, at first you can't breathe for a minute and then you, you learn it's going to come back. You'll breathe. You'll be alright And then I start to really dig on it after a while. Yeah, you start to kind of dig that. Yeah, cuz that once you once you It's it's like anything really the first time you try you suck it the efficiency of it so much Yeah, and then sooner or later your ass doesn't hurt for sitting on it for the

period of time. Like you also learn how to use your arms and legs together, which makes it so much more efficient than like fighting yourself. Yeah. The air time is great. You get to play little games on there too with the miles an hour or the way you're breathing. That's until I until there's almost no form of training is fun for me until I understand what's going on enough that I can create little games inside the bigger game. Where it's like, can I get 10 hard strokes on a rower every every 30 strokes or one minute hard? Can I increase the like there's always like a even when I'm lifting weights, like, if I'm doing a set of 12, I'm really doing four sets of three.

Like if I'm doing, if I'm doing a set of like, back of the day, like a set of 20 back squats, like I have to get through 12 and I can't, and I have to mentally think that that's the easiest thing I've ever done in my life because I know the next eight are gonna be the hardest. You're gonna be terrible, right. And like I have to get through 12 squats and be fresh.

How do I do that? That's that's the whole game to be played. Like, yes, there's until I can create the little tiny games inside there. I'm miserable because I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just very inefficient. Totally. You know, the cool thing about having so many variables to shoot for is that there's always something you can improve. I mean, that's what, it was in, is one of his early, one of Andy's early, when he started his own podcast, what's it called? Like, oh my gosh. Anyway, yeah, his new podcast. Oh, it's called perform.

Yeah, perform. It was like one of the early ones. And like once he started talking about all those different elements, it would just gave me so many things to shoot for other than one RM, Max Smith. And don't get me wrong, I'm still trying to get stronger and I'm doing a pretty good job at continuing to get stronger. But there's so many having all those elements, you know, like being able to go a little bit further to go a little bit faster to another one that I added, which he didn't talk about, which I think he probably should have, but about movement,

you know, about being able to move in a functional way is important. Being able to, especially, I think, for people my age, at the hip, especially being able to internally and externally rotate to make sure you can do abduction, abduction, flexion, extension, you know, it's super important. And the more that I've focused on that is allowing me to train for the first time and not get hurt. Something that even I wish when I was younger that I'd spent more time, you know, with just moving, especially like isometrics, being able to hold certain positions. And this was Kelly Storette is the one who told me about this. But I've for the first time in my life, in so many years of my life, I've never been able to improve my mobility. It's just been what it is.

But by doing isometrics and holding certain positions with weight and like holding them and breathing through those positions, for the first time I've actually gotten better at movement and I'm 52. It's like I just, you know, part of me thought that that just wasn't in the cards for me, but it is. Wait, give me a more specific example. Like what exactly do you do? Okay, so like I've never, you know, oh, for example, the Kazakh squat. Like you've, there's a good video on YouTube of you teaching the Kazakh squat.

And like I've never been able to do that. And over time, I've been holding that position with the kettlebell and I'm getting better and better and better. And now I'm pretty good at that position. Not as good as you're, as efficient as you are. Like I have deep hip and better and better. And now I'm pretty good at that position. Not as good as you're as efficient as you are. Like I have deep hip sockets and I make excuses, but it's coming.

But even the depth of my squat now, like another example, like a 45 pound bumper plate, putting my feet on each side of it, holding the kettlebell to do a goblet squat and sinking into the bottom of a squat with my feet slightly past shoulder width. I can get into the complete bottom with a vertical spine and my keeping my knees aligned in my first two metatarsals. I wasn't able to do that even in my 30s. Like I could barely get below parallel, which was great for powerlifting because you want to be able to get below but barely and so. Yeah.

But I want full range of motion now. I'm actually kind of surprised to hear that from from 20 years ago or whatever because you were a weightlifter for for so long. Yeah, but then I switched to powerlifting and messed me up. Yeah. Okay. So you had it and then you kind of lost it over time. Oh yeah.

From powerlifting, gaining all that muscle and like, you know, switching to low bar, sitting way back. It changed everything, you know, because, you know, obviously, when you sit back, the reason you can go deep, you know, deep is hip flexion. And so by by immediately going into hip flexion and sitting back right there, now you're already starting to limit your range of motion. You do that over time and you go from squatting, say 650 to 900 pounds. Oh well, raw.

I went from 600 to 805 was my best. Over time that's a big change. And so then yeah, it messed my range of motion up big time. So yeah. So even when you first met me and I could still do Olympic lifting and even then I was in my 40s I did 135 snatch so 297 and I did a 170 clean jerk so 374 but the reason I couldn't get any better than that was because I couldn't get as deep as I could when I was younger and so yeah definitely affected my range of motion and then it got worse and worse because

of my hips and so yeah What about upper body you saw good overhead range of motion for for can you do jerks normally Oh, yeah, and I can do overhead squats again But when I first came back from powerlifting man, I could even do a front squat Like I could not even get into that position No, not even close and so but over time I was able to get that position back, but my hips were just ruined. I'm pretty sure by the time power was over, I'd already done so much damage to my hips. It was probably just inflammation and just, you know, it was just damage was done and there was no going back from it.

But now I'm moving great. It feels crazy to come like, I can't believe I can do this. I enjoy mobility. Yeah. It does help to be a little bit lighter as well. I'm sure it does. Having more range of motion. Yeah, I'm sure.

Just a little bit thinner. Thinner and the fact that I move more often, I'm sure that helps. And the fact that I do it more often. The fact that I'm moving into those key positions more often, that helps. But I will say this, you know, holding positions between 20 to 30 seconds loaded and breathing through them is the key to, in my opinion, is the key to improving, is one of the keys to improving mobility at a high rate. I think it's the high, of all the things,

you can change movement patterns the quickest through isometrics, I would bet. So, yeah, I've noticed. How many hours a week or what's like your time domain or how many days and those sessions are, how long are they that you're doing a week? I'm doing my power lifting four times a week, you know, three to four. If I'm like hurting, I will have no, I have no problem of calling it.

But my mobility pretty much daily, you know, I'm going to do the certain positions isometrically daily, you know. And now after yesterday, I'm going to try to do this first thing. I'm going to try to wake up, go do a little movement and then do my cardio or my HIIT training first. So based on our boy, blanked out, doctor, we talked to him yesterday. Help me out. Perry, Perry.

Perry, yeah, based on the Dr. Perry stuff from yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man, forgetting stuff. This is the lowest of my entire life, like ever. Total, total like time of working out. It's like an hour a week, two sessions, 30 minutes. It's really crazy how little. I mean, are you counting like chopping trees down and all the stuff you do in the woods

these days? Like all the extra labor, you're a laborer now. You're a fucking lumberjack over there. What I'm getting at is like, I've turned it all into like physical labor is like the thing that I am trying to do the most is like getting out of the gym. Oh, but that's, that's, that's different though. You're working out. I would count that as working out. I've worked out seven days a week for 90 minutes a morning, but going to the actual

gym and, um, like lifting weights. I, I, I, I feel like the, um, my, my whole mindset around all of that has just turned into like structurally reorganizing everything. Yeah. And like practicing the movement pattern, kind of like you're talking about, like a full range of motion and making sure everything just like moves properly. And then the game I get to go play is like hanging out, Doug, building my log cabin. That's awesome.

I mean, you're building your own log cabin like that's like how far along are you? Oh, it's good. I got, uh, I'm about ready to go build a roof. What I don't know how to do, but I'm going to go figure it out. Are you, are you telling me that you're watching YouTube and literally building a log cabin? Yeah. Doug did it with me.

Yeah. I mean, you got, you got walls that are probably chest height at this point, all the way around. Chopping trees down. There's about five foot high and then I may go up another foot so that I can like walk through it because I'd like to put on a front porch to it with like an overhang, but that's more complicated. Um, and then it'll be like, uh, probably like a four foot tall roof. So it'll be eight, nine foot inside. What hang out. That's amazing.

I gotta go put a door on it. Um, and all from the trees that you've cut down. So like me and an ax, how much does it cost you just nails then? Yeah. What? Well, it cost me nails and a whole bunch of blisters and a whole bunch of time. And I had to go buy a whole new wardrobe, which literally is like the cheapest wardrobe. I went to Walmart and I bought all the white tees from Haines. I bought a total of them for 23 bucks. And it was by far the best purchase I've made

since I moved into the woods. Like. Amazing. They're actually wildly comfortable and I don't care if they get destroyed because I've ruined like all my clothes out here. Working. But yeah, but yeah, we're we're doing it. Doug got to come and hang out with me.

It's the only time I've had any help is moving, moving those things around. Can I come help build? Come and hang out. I'll have you up on now that we're going high. I'll let you go climb the walls. Yeah. Let me do something a little scary. That's good. I need it. But I'm saying this for the first time on the show, but my next project once this thing's done is I'm building a gym in the woods of just trees. Like I'm going to go find like a large 10 foot,

10 foot long tree trunk and turn it into like a landmine that I clean jerk and can squat and I'm listening Set up I'm gonna I'm gonna take I'm gonna dig holes and put stumps in them so that I can have like a level Platform to stand on and then I can do like squats and deadlifts and really trees now with trees This is awesome hang them from my butt I It sounds nuts, but I was even when Doug was out here I was talking I was like being out there and like having to move awkward weird stuff in nature It's like really cool, it's really yeah

You do it every day. Is this part of like your routine? Except the days that I'll go to the gym. Yeah, I wake up at six. I have a cup of coffee by 630. I'm walking back with an axe and just go do it. So spend like, what do you do? Spend 90 minutes doing that and then you go do your work. Go do your calls. Yeah, I come back. The kids are 90 minutes doing that and then you go do your work, go do your calls.

The kids are typically like moving around and starting to get out of bed at eight o'clock. Then we just make breakfast and go do normal stuff. So it's all done before they, before anybody gets moving. And then, yeah, then we work. That's amazing. What an amazing life. Like, are you trying to be off the grid? I mean, I have electricity and I have like general functions of life that I need to.

But I my goal would be by the end of this year to be like 90% sustainable. So we slaughter our first cow in four weeks. And then, I mean, I have more fruit than I know what to do with right now. Like it's absurd. We're selling it like wholesale to farm stands and like trying to just like unload the number of blueberries that are in my house right now. And then we'll have 25 chickens to slaughter in a couple months and then we get like 10 eggs a day

from the other ones and outside of that I don't really need much and then hunting season comes around so I'm going to try and take down like two or three deer this year out of the backyard comes around. So I'm going to try and take down like two or three deer this year out of the backyard. And if I have call it 200 pounds of venison, 500 pounds of beef, and an entire orchard and eggs, like a 10 to 12 eggs a day. I don't know what else I need. Ice cream and bread, that's about it. That might be my next step then. After now I got this whole fit thing going. Like next step, getting to nature, learning new things. I think it's, I'm at the point where I'd like to learn new things.

Like building would be fun. Yeah, the gym part, I mean the building part is very, very cool. Like I love going out there. But the next piece of it, like once I started like picking up, like when you pick up a tree, you have no idea what I remember when we went to Paul checks house and like Paul checks exercise, like he did some gym stuff and like, of course he's still a meathead, but like he had these giant rocks that he would build like rocks structures out of and

it was just like picking up giant granite stones and moving them around. And like a lot of the times when I'm like lifting the trees, I post like the really cool ones where I can actually like clean and dirt these like 300 pound freaking monster trees. But like a lot of times I can't pick them up. So I have to like bend over and walk with these things like three inches over the ground. And then I gotta go figure out how can I pick it up

and get it on some other tree to then push it from the back. So like, there isn't a single like plane of motion or musculature that isn't, it's like, sounds absurd, but farm strength is like a real thing. Well, Louis Simmons used to talk about the finish. You know, he was like, the finish never lifted with people from Finland. Their deadlifts are insane.

They're all, I remember in my very first pro powerlifting the Anos on a Toshian in anyway, he was dead lifting 400 kilos. It was like 881 It was like two in the morning. Anyway, like he thought it was from there, you know, they were a lot of them were Woodsman a lot of bloggers and they would drag their the woods how the so yeah this Yeah, this I guess they would drag the woods out of it. And so he had this, you know, he had this, I guess, hypothesis of like, we needed to do more sled pulling. And so that's where he came up with the sled dragging

and all that, and the work capacity to build Deadless. But I don't know about that, but. There's one dude that I couldn't even tell you how to find him on Instagram, but I get like tagged with his videos, not tagged, but like the search function or whatever. It's like, you need to watch this guy. And he is an absolute monster that does like crazy.

He's out there in the middle of nowhere with like a very makeshift, squatting a bazillion, doing farmer carries all over the place with crazy farm equipment. I know. Exactly. Doing farmer carries all over the place with crazy farm equipment. I know exactly. Is it like Tom Hamlin? I think it's something like that. That might be it actually.

I'm pretty sure. And he is extraordinary. Is so farm strong, just like pure man strength that like that, that's kind of like the goal. Tom Haviland. H-A-V-I-L-A-N-D Haviland. He's got a million followers now. He is. Yeah, he is the most extraordinarily strong human. Like in the weirdest things, he's just out there by himself just going, well, I got to go pick up these gigantic things

and move them across my property for no reason. He's just huge. And he's got this huge. Yeah. Doug, you got to check this dude out. Like we gotta get him on the show. He is so strong. We just got this big old.

I think he never posts his face if I'm just his back. It's huge. His back is so terrifying. Here he is doing his Zurcher squat with like 600, 700 pounds. Like it's absurd. But yeah, man, like I need to do more of that next year. Yeah. Step one. Step one. Get back to shape.

I feel like once I started to have all the fun doing it, I was like, this is exactly like what I actually want, how I want to be lifting weights. Like the next progression of it to me is like, kind of exactly like that dude does it, of just go pick up some really big stuff and move it. Yeah, I still love, you know, the thing I've never lost is like,

I still love lifting weights. But when I was at, you know, the thing I've never lost is like, I still love lifting weights, but when I was at Sorenex and we did, it was their Summer Strong, Summer Strong 18, and all of a sudden I decided to jump in and so they do squatting and deadlifting. It was like, and all of a sudden it was exhilarating again. And I hadn't back squatting forever and I did a 250-pound back squat and the same for dead again. I hadn't back squatting forever and I did a 250 kilos, 550 pound back squat and the same for deadlift. I haven't deadlifted since I had surgery because it was just it was bothering my back and like but it was so exhilarating to be able to be 52. I was like the only old man all these young

guys in there and it just felt good to be in that crowd and my wife's watching me and I'm like, man, it would be super cool if my kids could watch once if they could see me not just get strong but to get really strong. And I have no intention of being like the strongest in the world, but I have intention of being one of, you know, like in the group and for them to see me like train hard, commit, you know, to make good decisions. I haven't, I haven't had any alcohol, like not drinking. And so instead of me saying, well, when I was a kid, I used to do this and I used to do that.

They'll see it. They'll see it at least once in their lifetime. And then they'll, you know, then if they want to do something amazing, then they will have seen what it takes. And so and then they can decide, do I really want that or not? Because I know I coach so many kids who say I want to be the best at this or I want to be the best at that. And then when you start telling them what it takes, they're like, well, maybe I don't odds are they don't, you know, but my kids will see it once and then they can decide they will know. I might not come to me and say I want to be the best at something, unless you the the I mean, I still love lifting, you know, like don't get me wrong. And I still love the people cheering.

But like I get there so many times now where I can easily stay in bed or I can easily not go, but then now it's like I want them to see it. And so but don't get me wrong, it was still fun. I still people cheering. That's fun. But the main goal, what gets me up in the mornings would be, I want them to see it. I want them to see it once.

But it'll be tough, to be able to get a 52-year-old body to squatting seven, deadlifting seven, and benching in the force. It's going to take some work, but then they'll see it. But I'm not going to do, not trying do, I'm not trying to get fat, I'm not trying to get huge, but 198 I feel good about. That should have been my weight class anyway. Like 220 is just too much.

Weighing 240 at 56 is crazy. It's like, dude, I feel great at this weight. I feel athletic, you know. I feel like I can do weightlifting if I want. That'd be fun. Walk me through, how big were you in 2000, 2005, 2010, in five-year blocks? What was your biggest? When I was at the Limit Trans Center in 1998, 99, I was the 91 kilo class. And as you know, it's a two hour weigh in.

So you needed to stay, you know, maybe I got up to 95 at the most, but 94 probably. Like, so I was like 207 at that point. So then when I, you know, my dad gets sick, 2001, you know, I'm walking away from weightlifting to be with my dad. I start deciding I'm going to get huge. So then I went to the 220 class, but now I'm just barely weighing 220.

Like I'm not a full. Then I go to my first pro. I qualify for the pro shows WPO and I go to Orlando, Florida. It was amazing because he is Ed Cohn, Chuck Vogelpool, like the best of the best all in one place. Jesse Kellum, like Donnie Thompson. They were all there. And I realized, you know, even though I did pretty good, so I go to this first meet and I tied Chuck Vogelpool in my very first meet. And so, but he wins by bodyweight. So I totaled 2022 at 220.

Um, but we both got beat by this German guy anyway, but then that didn't last long. And then we started beating him and we started balancing, but then I realized I'm giving up a lot of weight because they, those guys were weighing 240, 250, cutting to 220. So then I purchased V started getting started getting bigger and bigger and bigger. But the most I was weighing was 240, 245, and cutting to 250, but still 25 pounds. It was brutal. But Chuck, he looked like a skeleton when he would weigh in.

But then he would put it back on. So 2005, when I'm winning, I'm probably waiting 245 to be honest for the majority of the time 240 245 the most. So how much do you care how much you're weighing like the day before you weigh in like you water weight cut and all that. Are you water weight cutting a significant amount? Yeah. Like it was the most unhealthy thing like, you know, because since we were 20, for some of them, it was 24 hour away. And so when we were doing the I loved going to the USPF,

it was the the Mountaineer Cup was my favorite. That's when Ed Cohen and I got to go ahead, because it was just 24 hours, but WPO is 48. And so like people would do crazy stuff because you could like, you know, they using IVs to, to get back their weight, which I did too, you know, so I would normally cut, honestly, I would probably get down to within 10 kilos. I was the week of I'm cutting 10 kilos. So 22 pounds, um, the week of the meat. And the day before, I probably got two, two and a half to go then rolling in. I would weigh a hundred kilos on the dot every single time. There was no,

I never got below 100.0 kilograms and it was so brutal. And then my final meet, here's what ended it. In 2007, I decided I'm gonna go 198 one more time. And because that's when I was starting to do the bobsled. So I'd gotten pretty lean, like I said, I had abs. And I get right there and I'm in the, I'm in the sauna. And all of a sudden I drop. I see this, this bead of sweat goes off my nose and then it floats into the air. And I'm like, I'm in the sauna and all of a sudden I drop. I see this, this bead of sweat goes off my nose and then it floats into the air. And I'm like, I'm hallucinating.

And I'm like, oh, that's not good. And that's the last thing I remember. So then I pass out and my friend, Chris Mason and Chris, his wife find me in the sauna out. Like heat stroke in the sauna, not good. If they hadn't found me, I don't know. I'm assuming I died. So they take me to the hospital.

They give me IVs and the smart thing to have done, but just pull out. But I still competed. But I just went I went up. I went to the 100 kilo class. It was bad. Everything just went terrible. My opening squat, I get kind of pushed forward. I break a rib. I get kind of pushed forward. I break a rib. I'm starting to bleed internally. Like it's, I mean, honestly, it was the best going

out party ever. It was like, it was, I mean, like blood coming out of my mouth. I keep going the bench. I'm hurting my shoulder, but I finished the meat, but it was like, I knew it was over. Like I, it hurts. It was terrible. I looked like I needed to, it was time. It was time. I had, it was an easy decision to retire.

Cause I'm like, you had a heat stroke, you broke a rib, you're bleeding internally. It's time in my, so. And now you're back. Yeah, I'm back for one more round. I can't wait to get back out there guys. Oh, but I can say this. Good times. It'll be 24 hour weigh-ins and it's going to be 198 and I'm not going to get, like right now I'm weighing like 208 and that's what I'm going to be. I'm like, it's not going to be a massive cut.

So what's that? 10 pounds? So I can handle that, you know, I'm already there. I'm not going to, I'm good. it's not going to be a massive cut. So what's that? 10 pounds. So I can handle that, you know? I'm already there. I'm not going to, I'm good. I feel great. I'm not going to do anything that's going to, if my health at all starts to go sideways, then I will.

That would be the one thing I'll, I won't do that. What am I teaching my kids then? That kill yourself? No. Do you think that if you had the same mentality, call it 20 years ago, that you do now, but without the idea that you needed to do all this crazy shit that was like, do you think you would have been, what percentage of the crazy person do you think you could be by having just like a healthy mentality and being healthy as a like cardiovascularly efficient human?

Like how much do you think the craziness added to your back squat? A lot. Because it was like, yeah, because when you put, you know, especially when you put equipment on and you're putting a thousand pounds or even when you put 805 pounds on your back raw. And because you know, at that point, that's when things, you know, you see people snap both patella's and all these crazy accidents. And you know that every powerlifter when they're putting that weight on, they know, okay, I'm at the point of like things can go really bad.

And like that crazy love that this oh my this part of me inside it was like embrace that and loved it and like yeah, can I do that now? I don't know like because sometimes I will find myself like oh boy because you know, no, I'm worth it. I'm like I'm in the 600s now and I'm, and then I get mad and I'll push through it now. So when I put the first 700 pound on my back, we'll see what happens, you know, but I don't know. Sometimes I still have that, but it's not always. So we'll see. Like come back and we'll only be

there when I need it. We'll find out, but we're going to go one more time in the effort. If you know, if this is what blows my knees out, then that's what blows it out. What a great way to go out. So, you know, that's where I'm at. I'm going to see it through. I'm going to see it through crazy or not, but I'm going to show my kids what it takes and like maybe that gets me hurt. Well, they'll see.

Like even if you want to be a great football, basketball, whatever you want to be, when you're at that very end, then it's dangerous. Race car driver, sprinting. Like when you're the best in the world at anything, you're at any moment going to get hurt. Usain Bolt, Johan, Blake, the sprinters. When you're at the end goal, you're at the verge of injury. So do you really want that too? I did. I still do. So do they? I don't know. It's interesting though, like, the reason I ask is like, maybe it's because I was like more focused on like Olympic lifting, which is sort of technically, not

that squatting and deadlifting isn't, but in order to do Olympic lifting, you can get yourself so fired up to deadlift. You can just be in another planet on craziness to pull that thing off the ground. You can't really do that when you're doing a a one RM snatch in front of a lot of people. I don't know man. Think about this. Let me let me flip this on you when you're a guy like Hampton Morris and you weigh 61 kilos and he weighs 134 pounds. Yeah, you're pulling under 400 pounds. What kind of balls do you have to have to do that ass?

Yeah. So it's not massive. It's massive. It could blow out your back and knees at the same time. What that guy does, I can't even fathom. I couldn't even imagine what four bills feels like landing on your shoulders. And now weigh 60 some kilos. Right through a floor. Like no idea. And weighing, when I cleaned 318, which was the biggest clean of my life, like John Cena was standing next to me.

Like that was like the pinnacle of like craziness. That dude snatches it. Zero chance that I'm not getting just, I'm going so far down, putting 400 on my shoulders with it falling that I'm going to like, I'm going to the center of the earth. I'm going to get in the core of the earth. It's driving me so hard. But I guess what I'm getting at is like in the mindset of it, the craziness I think helps a lot when you watch power lifters, especially back in the day when they were using all the all the stuff like all of that.

With the Olympic lifting, there is the intensity, but I think that it's a it's more focused. It is. Technicalities. It is. more focused. It is. Technicalities. It is. Like you don't see,

there's one guy that I remember watching lift in his basement. He was like Polish. He had like blah, bleach blonde hair. And it was the most intense weightlifter I had ever seen. Like, cause most of the time when your name's not John North or Shankle way back in the day,

it seems like so poetic watching like the yeah weights yeah it's not like smelling salt and screaming and like but that is very much like the power lifting vibe so I that that's more what I'm want like I can see you get it and fired up and like growling at a barbell, but even today, but it's the focus side of it and like the connection to the barbell. Like those are the pieces that I think, do you think that you had that when you were trying to like force everything to intensity and like the attitude side of it? Or do you think that you're that you have more of that now?

I think I have more of that. I think I would love to be in somewhere between where I'm at now and where I was then. I think if I would have had more structure in my life and I had been more balanced, I feel like I would have... And it's funny we talk about this because this morning I was talking with my chiropractors about this big question. I think I would have been way better. I think I would have said a total that would have never been beaten. And I was so close to it, but I just was so crazy. I blew myself up before I was able to actually elicit that on the, on the, on the platform.

If I just like Ed Cohen was so much more balanced in his life. Yeah, I was gonna I was gonna bring him up. He always seemed and still even when we entered. Yeah. He was just like the most important thing is just feeling the barbell. Yeah. Feeling the weight like I wanted. He was so balanced. How heavy it was on my body. And I didn't even know you back in the day, but I know you now and I can imagine that you And I didn't even know you back in the day, but I know you now. And I can imagine that you rammed it as hard as you could and just tried to strangle it. And then it was like there was just more call it. I don't want to say anger, but that intensity more directed than like an angry ish.

It was it was a dark, not good. You know, he was his life was balanced. You know, you know, he told me so many times, and he said so many times, compete no more than twice a year, take six months and just do bodybuilding. If I'd taken that approach, I have no doubt I would have done way better. It would have been a much bigger total. I feel like he's much more rare than you though. Extreme extreme people do extreme things. Like maniacs become world champions. Like there's very few, like very balanced people that like have every aspect of

their life equally well put together because they're doing quote unquote things. Right. Those people don't become world champions. They lead great lives, very responsible, very successful in many ways, good family life. They don't get divorced. That's all great for many reasons. Yeah. They're not usually world champions. Usually world champions fucking sacrifice everything. Many areas of their lives are in shambles, but they're fucking really, really, really good

at the thing that they're the best at. Yeah, I know. I just, I wish I'd just been a little bit, not completely like him, because I did like the fact of, I did, I embraced that, I needed needed that I needed to exercise that Inner anger I needed somewhere to put that but I do wish I'd been a little bit if I would just been a little bit Not as crazy it could have gone longer

I just pushed too far too fat and like in 2005 when I was winning So I beat his total in 2004 beat it again in 2005 when I was winning, so I beat his total in 2004, I beat it again in 2005. I just wanted to keep beating it. If I would have just chilled, I would have destroyed it. And I just couldn't let well enough alone. I just wanted to keep competing. I wanted to just keep, you know, if I just twice a year, I would have destroyed it.

I should have, the total I should have done is what hurts me. It's like, it should have been so much more than the 24, 14 I did. Like in theory, oh, it hurts me to say, like I did a thousand, 35 squat, I did a 785 bench, and I did a 815 deadlift. Add those up. It would have been a total never heard of it. It hurts me. I left a lot out there. And then Lord knows if people said,

yeah, but quit it. If we'd have gone raw, it would have been worse. It's like I'm much better raw. I never, these people, I had a guy in my own gym. He could bra bench barely over 400 pounds. I could do 535. You put the bench shirt on, he benches the same as me. That drives me, like, raw would have been awesome. Like, if I could have just focused on that, then I don't know, I would have loved to put up the massive raw total, but you know, who knows?

Hey, listen at me. I'm starting to sound up the massive raw total, but you know, who knows? Hey, listen at me. I'm starting to sound like the same guy. Ready to go. There's gonna be a bang coming off his head soon. Like, yeah, I'm definitely gonna do some big numbers. And so I assume this will be, it'll end in something terrible. But there's something about that I like.

Slightly below terrible. Do that. Yeah. Some massive injury. It'd be like. Slightly below terrible. Do that. Yeah. Some massive injury. It makes life exciting. It does, man. If you're going to do it for your kids, don't tear your knee off underneath 600 pounds. Oh, it won't be 600.

It'll have to be 700. 700. 600 pounds can't hurt me. So we're going to do way more than that. It'll be in the sevens. Travis Mask, we're going to do way more than that. So it'll be in the sevens. So Travis, where are the people find you? I'm actually.com. If you guys are local, you can see me at rise indoor sports.

Email me Travis, the rise indoor sports, if you're local North Carolina, but actually.com. Thank you. This is fun. So look at my face is red. I'm like, right. You need to go get that man some pre-workout. It's still, I took pre-workout for this, for this podcast. You knew where it was going, man.

You knew, you had no water. Like, thin it out a little bit, just took it. Just, the first 10 minutes there was powder coming out of his mouth. Ah! See? That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. You're an extreme person in a good way.

That's why you're taking fucking pre-workout before you talk to your friends on video calls. I know. Who else does that? That's fantastic. Yo, I've known you for a long time. It's always fun to hear more of your story and getting all the background that all the details that I don't know yet. So very fun. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are Barbell Shrugged, at Barbell underscore shrugged and make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com.

That is where Dan Garner, Dr. Andy Albin are doing a free lifestyle and performance analysis and you can access that over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.