Barbell Shrugged - How We Use Athlete Monitoring to Train Smarter w/ Doug Larson, Dr. Mike Lane and Coach Travis Mash #849

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

In this episode, Doug Larson, Dr. Mike Lane, and Coach Travis Mash break down athlete monitoring, readiness testing, and how coaches can use simple data to make better training decisions. Travis explains how his master's thesis used daily depth jumps, subjective questionnaires, and warm-up performance to track fatigue and readiness in weightlifters. The big lesson: testing only works when you minimize variables, collect enough data to understand normal fluctuations, and know the athlete behind the numbers. The team discusses why reactive strength index, vertical jumps, drop jumps, and counter movement jumps can reveal useful trends in central nervous system readiness, but only when paired with honest communication and smart coaching judgment. The conversation expands into how to adjust training when performance drops, why a 10% decrease may mean it is time to send an athlete home, and why volume is often the first lever to pull before reducing intensity. They also explore broader performance monitoring for everyday athletes, including deadlift strength, pull-ups, mile or mile-and-a-half run times, mobility screens, DEXA scans, VO2 max testing, bloodwork, blood pressure, wearables, and input tracking. Whether you are a coach, lifter, athlete, or performance-minded adult trying to stay strong and healthy over decades, this episode gives you a practical framework for measuring what matters, spotting problems early, and using data to guide better decisions without losing the human side of coaching. Links: Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrugged family. Doug Larson here and this week on Barb Bell Shrugged. I'm joined by Mike and Travis to talk about athlete monitoring and how to use simple data to train more intelligently. This was actually Travis's primary focus while he was in graduate school. So our man Travis knows a lot about this and he uses it on a regular basis with his high level weight lifters. And it lets him know exactly when his athletes are fatigued and when he needs to therefore tone it down, as well as when his athletes are performing quite well and are fully recovered and he can therefore really push them to their limits. go for a PR, et cetera, and do it in a safer manner than he would otherwise because he has some data, which is always nice.

So if you want to for yourself or you have athletes that you coach and you want to know when they are ready to go and when they very likely need to kind of pull it back and go a little easier that day, this episode is for you. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Strug. I'm Doug Larsen here with Dr. Mike Lane and coach Travis Mash. Travis, you did your master's thesis on athlete monitoring, which essentially like assessing, and retesting athletes to track their progress over time.

We're going to dig into that here today. Can you start off by just kind of defining that in a more precise manner and tell me about your thesis and what you did for graduate school? And then we can talk about what you currently do with your athletes. Sure. You know, the goal is this was to like really look at ongoing fatigue levels. And but using like we used a 24 inch, not drop jump, but a depth jump. And so we used that compared to the warm-up sets for their first exercise,

which became kind of the problem in a subjective questionnaire. So we used this three elements. And we saw how they, you know, how did they compare together and, you know, like how insightful was the athlete versus like what the, you know, what the data was telling us. And some of the things that I learned from that is like minimizing variables, for example. Like the thing about a depth jump is like it's it can be very it's so variable meaning like if they hit the jump just perfect You know you it can be quite different and so So but I didn't learn a lot you know and that my goal was by you by looking at the depth Let jump was to look more at the central nervous system because it's such you know

It is so much you know because you're looking at how the stretch sorting cycle is is really working So that was the goal versus just a sense simple counter movement jump, which is so just, you know, even that stretch short and cycle, but not as much, you know, muscular with a little bit of it. So we did find a lot. Here's what we found. We found that the athletes with the best RSI scores, meaning the people who spent the less time on the ground, but got the highest, you know, that it's a ratio of the two, really because you're looking at height divided by ground contact time, you know, what we found is those are our best athletes.

And we did find that it did vary quite a bit. And when it varied the most, you know, obviously performance, you know, if it was super, if all of a sudden one day their depth jump was amazingly higher, their performance was better. If it was quite a bit lower, then it was definitely off, meaning like at some points we found it, we should probably just go home. We found at the AIDS group that they were, you know, some of them were very in tune with that, you know, especially the, believe it or not, the female athletes were way more in tune with their bodies than the male athletes.

A male athlete will tell you they feel great no matter what, I feel like, you know. And so, and that's what the subjective questionnaire was showing. It said that's the thing, too, the subjective questionnaire, it's only as good as a person answering the questions. So that was primarily like a daily readiness test? It daily was. Yep, they did the jump every day. They did the subjective questionnaire every day.

And the only other variable was the first exercise of the day, which that was the problem, too. Because for you to use, because it changes so often. You know, Mondays would be like snatch, you know, Tuesdays would be like a power snatch Wednesdays would be like clean and jerk and so you see how quickly the it takes forever to get enough data to get you know the to get the um somewhere looking for like the the change you know the um you're developing averages but you're trying to get your standard deviations that's what i'm yeah yeah it takes forever to get enough data points to create enough standard deviation to see what is the data point that matters you know because

It varies too long. It would take months. However, by just doing the depth jump, probably should have just done the depth jump with the subjective questionnaire and left out the rest. That would have been much better. And it would have taken a lot less time to develop any type of data that would be useful. So how have you taken those learnings and applied them into what you do, you know, on a day-to-day basis these days? Great question. So we still do subjective questionnaire.

there, you know, the key is like letting them know is spending some quality time early on, how important that is. You know, if you don't, if you don't let them know, then they're just going to bust through it. They're going to just, but if you let them know the things that you can, you know, that you can construe from that, then they start to take more, you know, time with it and they start to give you more realistic answers or more truthful answers. So, but then we still do, instead of doing the depth chop, um, sometimes we do a drop jump, which is only from 12 inches with the hands on the hips. And it's about stiffness, and that's way less varying, especially after a few weeks of doing it.

And they're learning how to do it. Then there's way less variance. And that gives you way better look into the central nervous system. But we do that with jumps. So we do a drop jump and a counter-movement jump every single day with the, with the, deductive question. I don't do the first exercise anymore because I don't know how long that would take to get enough data with the standard deviation to make any difference.

Now, a couple things. One, were you standardizing as well for body weight? Like an equation? No. So that would have been a good thing. So let's hear that because like, you know, even now I would like to use that. Yeah. So when it comes to vertical jump power, which is a great.

great, like relatively low skill, good indicator of what they can do. And then for the folks listening to home, reactive strength index is effectively how quick an athlete gets off the ground. So you got two athletes, they both jump 30 inches, which is awesome. But if one of them gets off the ground at half the time, they're probably going to get more rebounds. They're probably going to catch the ball more. They're probably going to be a better athlete. Hence why a match pointed out, like that isn't a key factor. Now, power is just essentially looking at the work, which is force time distance over time.

Right. So if I weigh more, but I jump the same height, so the same vertical, I had to produce more power in order to get off the ground. Whereas if I'm lighter, I might jump higher, but the reality is my power output is the same. So now you have to ask yourself, if I'm working with a NBA center or high school center, anyway, a basketball player and they can jump a bit higher and they're not so light they're going to get hurt, then who cares if power hasn't gone up, vertical jumps higher. It's probably going to be better with their sport. But if I'm dealing with a shot putter, I want them to be as powerful as possible. Absolutely. So if you're jumping higher, but you're lighter, your power's the same.

If anything, there's certain situations, or maybe your power is going down a little bit because that jump isn't going up as much as one would suspect. And congratulations, there's something going on that we need to fix. So power is a good indicator. And what MASH brought up with averages and C-Nirriviations is, I mean, that's a big thing that a lot of people screw up because let's think body weight, depending on how much salt we had yesterday, how hydrated we are, how many carbs. Some people's body weight, especially some of the female athletes I've worked with, depending on where they're out in their cycle, that can be a 10 pound swing. Oh, my God, I gained five pounds.

Like, yeah, you crushed a Chinese barbecue or a Korean barbecue last night. You had like 10 grams of sodium in your face is two inches wider than usual. Like, you did not gain 10 pounds of fat overnight. Like the thermodynamics that is terrifying, how many calories you'd have to smash. So knowing how much your athlete naturally fluctuates is really good. And then one other piece I want to go is with athletes. Some of them will lie about how they feel. Often you get the ones that try to undersell like, yeah, it wasn't that hard coach.

I feel great. And like they're just sucking wind and like, you know that was hard. But then you know, oh my God, that was like a 10 out of 10 pain. Like I'm so uncomfortable. Like I don't know why I use that you voice. I'm sorry. But at the end of the day. I understand.

Sadly, I get it. Yeah. If you're a 10 out of 10 in pain, you can't tell me that because you're like screaming. and crying and then blacking out. You're on your way in the hospital. Exactly. So with, that's why you got to know that average is, that athlete's average. You'll have your tickers, your ones that everything is awesome.

And then all of a sudden when they fall off like, oh, we got to know what's going on. And you get your freaking Eeyors. That every day is awful, everything's the worst. But in reality, you need to know where their natural fluctuations are. Some athletes are up and down. Others are just Homer Simpson's wardrobe. Same thing every day. So when they are different, something's,

going on either we made progress or regressing and that's still that's when you got to go be a good coach right dude between eore and homer simpson's wardrobe you uh you made my day over here uh my analogies are very much where i grew up mass when uh when you get an athlete who who is noticeably less powerful than they were the day before in a significant way and or noticeably higher in power uh how do you adjust programming for that day definitely like you know if if they're if they're more than 10% you know it's a good thing too to go back and look at the subjective questionnaires as well

if their answer honestly that's what opens up conversations so like you know you see the data you know especially for females too because you know you got to be careful on how you approach certain conversations but if on their

subjective questionnaire you ask some questions like the on a scale from 1 to 5 the amount of stress they're experiencing outside of, you know, that your sport or in school. That's an important one because, like, you know, if testing, we all know when exam time comes, things happen. It's not a great time to max out.

You know, you also know when I'm giving them lots of volume on purpose. However, what I really want to know is there's something going on outside of either one of those. Something like, you know, are your parents splitting up? Did you and your, you know, boyfriend break up or did your girlfriend break up or whatever? Then you can, like, ask him, I see that you're experiencing a lot of stress outside of those two elements. Like, you know, what's happening? And then hopefully that warrants them telling you. And so then it's more important.

I feel like that becomes more important than anything you can do because, like, there's, nowadays, we're forever reading about, you know, kids, you know, like getting bullied, kids like, you know, thinking their own life at a super young age. So if we can, like, if we can help our athletes outside of the sports, then, man, that's way more important to me than any type of athletic performance. And it definitely, in my experience, since I've learned more about athlete testing monitoring,

has opened those doors, you know, like, me way more important than how well my athlete is performing. If they'll tell me something outside of this, that's bothering them, and I can help them in some way. Awesome. You know, versus turning a blind eye. Like, none of my college coaches came a damn about it.

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That's A-R-E-T-E-Lab.com. Now, back to the show. Yeah, and then if you've, I imagine if you have like a real conversation, so to speak, at one point, then at that point, or from that point, rather moving forward, they, they know, like, deep in their bones that like you actually give a shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not just as an athlete, not just because they're going to, they're going to win championships and football games for you or whatever it is.

They actually know that you care about them as a person. And then they're going to actually put out even more for you as a coach. They're going to want to want to make you proud. And they're going to want to like, just like, go the extra mile for you. because it's not just them, you know, working out by themselves. Like they have this person that's present that actually cares and they're going to work even harder because of it. Right.

Especially when it's like even obviously, you know, I got my athletes like Ryan Grimsela or even Matt Wanager who have been really, really top, you know, national elite athletes. But it's even for my other ones who aren't so good for them, for me to do the same for them. And for them to see that I care just as much about them too. because I'm sure sometimes they look and they see a guy like Ryan they're like, man, I'm nothing like that.

He doesn't care. And then they see that I absolutely care. You know, like, it's just a sport. You know, I care about your life. You know, if you're going to be my athlete for the next four or five years, you know, yeah, I would love for you to leave me being a better human too.

And like, like, you care me. It's just weightlifting. Any of us, it's even if you're a football coach at a pop SEC school, it's football, man. you know, it's a game. It's a complete game. But if you can take one of those athletes and, like,

make them a better human being in that way more important to me. It is, you know, like, at least the way I think, yeah. I mean, 100% agree. I mean, my original strain coach back when I met him when I was 14 years old, it was still a great friend of mine to this day.

I'm 42 now. And I never once ever thought that if I didn't perform well, that he was going to think less than me. Like, I thought this dude fucking actually cares about me as a person. And win or lose, he's going to treat me, same and he's going to do his best to make me better. And I was very fortunate to have that from

a young age. He was like, you know, kind of a father-like figure, you know, for for the time that I met him in my teen years. And then, you know, over, over time, the age gap, you know, he was, he's only 10 years older. I was 14. He was 24. So he kind of seems slightly older like he was like an adult figure when I was 14. And then, but it didn't take long. A decade later, we were more a peer relationship. And now, now he's just my friend. Right. You know, even like, the longer I'm with Ryan and Matt, it's more, you know, I'll always be like, it's not me just being friends. There's definitely like a difference. They're, they're very close to being like my kids, but like more and more it becomes like that. But they'll always be a little,

I'm so much older than those two that it's definitely like, it's something when, when you see us interact, it looks like we're friends. But when stuff gets, when their lives, gets really bad, I'm the person they're going to come to, and then it's a whole different interaction. But people don't see that because that's normally happening behind closed doors. And, you know, they're tearing up and something terrible has happened. And I can help walk them through it. But both of those guys have we've been through it, everything, you know, from breakups to, you know, people dying in the family to like, you know, class getting hard, you know, school getting hard. So, but that's what's fun. Can you explain to Mike what tearing up is? He's, he's never

experienced that before. It's one you have you have water comes right out of your face. Oh it's like I sweat right like the sweat falls down in there. Yeah. Can you dig in deeper on the on the programming adjustments? Like do you change the exercises you change the volume? I'm pretty sad like you know like when I see like a 10% or more you know change I'm going to probably go home. I'm going to that's when you're going to have that talk. I'm going to you know turn. it to something super easy or completely just say go home, you know, and I have no problem.

I've done that with, I think there's not an athlete I've ever coached where there hasn't been a day where I'm like, just come home. It's okay. You're not going to go backwards. And it's so funny, it's the athletes who want it so badly that you got to say, look, you're not going to, it's not going to, your career is not going to be ending because you go home today. It's like, you know, you're so, you're so fatigued. Nothing good is going to happen, but you can make yourself go further in the hole by going to practice today. And so it's just having those talks. But then if it's just a little bit, let's say that it's like, you know,

within zero to five percent normal. Then we're nothing, that's typical, right? Things change. You know, you add extra volume, you make them a little tired. You back, you peel back. People compensate. But then if they're like five to 10 percent, it's still pretty good. But like, you know, it's a little higher than I would like.

Then we'll probably, you know, adjust it. I would rather adjust volume than intensity. You know, personally, I would pull way back in the volume. It's way less taxing. You know, you're going to take way less of, you know, hit on more and more fatigue by simply filling back the volume and keeping the intensity. So, especially in weightlifting.

The whole sport is, you know, lifting heavy weights fast. And so keep that, do less. Well, and I think a lot of folks overlook the continuum. Like, there's under-training, which makes sense. Like, an athlete's trained for a long time is always scared that, like, I'm going to go backwards because I didn't do enough because I can train myself. And acute overload is, you know, that's where you start off. Like, you know, five by five, and we just go in and just follow the basic starting strength.

But then you get into that, like, yeah, you got to do phases of non, sorry, of functional overreaching. Right. You literally beat yourself down. So, like, week three, you're like, I need to. to freaking delode after this. Like, there's no shot. That way, you peak for your meat, you really tear it up. But then they forget, then you go into non-functional reaching, like, congratulations.

You kicked your ass to go nowhere. And then you start flirting with overtraining, which is like, not only do you kick your ass to go nowhere, you went backwards. And you can go really backwards. Yeah, as in like permanently go backwards and be done. You could. Or like in weightlifting, I've definitely, we have taken Ryan to a point to where it took almost a year to get him back to where he was, you know.

But I think it was, it wasn't just like a four-week period of weightlifting. It was a lot of stuff. It was relationships. It was the stress of the Olympics. It was the stress of school. It was a bunch of things all at once. And it really took him backwards. It took almost a year to get out of that hole.

So it's something that we monitor great, great. now. So this was a lot. I mean, this was, this was, this was, uh, exactly, I can tell you, it was, um, it was 2019. It was, so it's been almost seven years ago to where we really pushed him too far. And like, we had to really pill back. But that's in, I mean, you can look at, it was a survey, like, I think it's almost over a decade old when they surveyed Olympic lifting or Olympic athletes. Right. And they like, it was something like almost a two thirds of them. Like it was a big number that were like, yeah, I was over trained going into the Olympics. Yeah.

It was, you know, it's like, and these are folks that are getting supposedly the best country or best coaching in their country. You know, I have the best opportunities for recovery and they're walking into it like that. Like the chance that you can have a guy like you're, you know, that's going hard. And I mean, we all know that athlete that then you talk to him is like, oh, you're working part time and fast food. So you literally got off last night at like two in the morning and then you got up here for six a.m. weights and I'm wondering why you're you know they're lifting like crap because they smell like the club right you're lifting like crap because you legitimately have to work full-time go to school part-time and then play your sport part-time right you have no time we're not we're not a state

sponsored you know sport like you know you in china you know like a like a tint towel or a lu Jones, you know, like they've got, number one, they're getting paid, and they get paid really well. And so everything's taken care of. And so it, you can like program and you know the X volume is probably going to lead to X result. In America, it's not like that. Like, I don't know everything that's happening in that athlete's life. Like, they have school. They have, and they might have school, they might have work, then they have relationships, you know, like they have all these elements and like you can do do athletes the exact same way like you say you have a i'll give you an example matt and ryan very similar they look the same you know they're within a one-way class

away they're almost the same age they have the exact same vertical leap and like you if you program for matt the way you do ryan like what's going to happen is matt will do well and ryan is going to tank because like he is like he honestly is like it's like a Porsche you can drive him fast and but you need to park him and take care of him you know like but you know with Matt to get stronger it requires way more volume you know and like like how do you know like it just takes a long it takes making a mistake sometimes you understand you know like because you you know you do what you think is right or you look at say like um for example and wait lifting. It was only recently that young athletes say CJ Cummings and at the same time,

Harrison Morris, both at 16 years old were already stronger than the older. They were the Olympic hopefuls at 16. So then you look at like, okay, what did they do from a young age? And then so then everyone starts to program kind of like their coaches program for them. But then you find out after the Olympics, both of them almost lost their mind. Harrison quit. CJ literally had like a mental breakdown and you're like, oh, so that wasn't right. So there's like lately in the last like 20 years in weightlifting, there have been so many first times. And like the precedents that were set, you know, which for youth athletes, because like right behind those athletes, here's why I say that.

I had Morgan McCulloch. I had Ryan. I had Matt. And so I'm looking at what Harrison and what CJ were doing. I'm like, all right, I'm going to try to like mold after them. It looks like it's doing pretty well. Nope, it wasn't at all. And like, I feel very responsible sometimes for Morgan, who I thought was for sure going to be the next Olympian.

And like, and to date, his career, you know, of course he's not with me anymore, but to date, his, his, his, his career never took on. I think we really pushed him too hard too soon. But it, I didn't do it on purpose. All I had was the precedents that were set. before them and the science that I knew and I still was you know I still was like trying to you know the volume it wasn't like I was programming for them like I was Nathan Damron or you know Tom Summa which is way older than them I was definitely programming for them as if they were youth athletes but the problem was we were already discussing things like the Olympics and this kid

is 14 years old that was a big mistake but but you don't know it until you made it and so here we are He was so strong and so big for a 14 year old kid. Like he looked like a kid. Like he was young and just brutally strong. Brutely strong. I was so impressed when I'd see him. When I come and see you in person, I watch him lift, I'm like, God damn, look at that kid. That was I.

You know, and I'm like, and like Ryan, you know, he matured in a more traditional way. You know, he, you know, at 15 years old, he was good. He was making teams. For example, they both made the team Mercedes the first year together. And Ryan went six for six, but got six in the Pan Ams. Morgan went like four for six and got gold. You know, and like first meet out. And I'm like, this kid, you know, we're winning the Olympics.

And then it's just like, you know, I really do believe because we were talking about such, you know, big things like the Olympics, I was creating, you know, we were creating issues. We were becoming more like performance driven too soon for a young kid. And I get it. You know, and he and I've, we've talked to him a bunch about this. Whereas Ryan, we weren't, you know, he was also doing CrossFit. So like he was doing all these things. And I wasn't looking at him as like the Olympian yet.

But yet he developed much more, like much slower, but in a nice, steady rate. And now, all of a sudden, he's by far the best. best athlete I've ever had. And, like, I feel like, you know, doing it slow and steady, maybe not talking about such things like the Olympics at a young age. Like, I would never, now with my own children, we won't talk about any of that. And I want them to play all the sports. And not until they're out of high school, we start to even mention things like the Olympics.

So especially looking at, like, you know, now we know this. We know most of our Olympians, like West Kitts, he didn't even do way. into after college you said they can it just takes data man it takes years of you know trial and error and like what works what doesn't like well now we know mash's kids are never going to make it in olympic gymnastics you know it's specializing early enough i know seriously no i'm not going to do definitely not you know no so but we well we did start kids at one years old in gymnastics we did do that it's and it's and i think there's a couple things that a lot of folks, everyone has genetic baselines, everyone has genetic response to training.

And some folks have got a really high baseline, but they don't respond that much more at extra training. Other folks can have a low baseline, so you're not like, they're nothing impressive, but then you give them five, ten years of consistent progress and all of a sudden they're world class. And of course, go figure your best athletes are the ones that typically have a really high baseline and then a high adaptability. And, you know, I've heard the rule of thumb. and I don't give it a whole lot of belief in that most athletes after 10 years of specialization will essentially be at the zenith of their career. But at the same point, like, that kind of holds a bit of water.

Like, you're right. West kids didn't have to specialize early. But, you know, by the time he's in his early 30s, if he hasn't done it in Olympic lifting. Oh, yeah. Totally. I mean, there's a point in their return for sure. And make no mistake, Wes was doing strength training, you know, like, and like he was getting strong, incredibly strong.

And so now he's doing the enhanced games and killing it, making lots of money. I don't know. I don't know that. Yeah, we should get him on the show. We should. You know, I've heard all about, like, you know, they're making good money. And, like, he is lifting heavy. I'm pretty sure I saw him snatch 190 the other day.

Okay. And I'm like, holy shit. I'm like, yeah. Like, he cleaned 2.30 last night. Like, I'm like, he's doing, I can't imagine West kids. if they had done enhanced games, say when he was like 27 or something, I mean, like, who knows? Like, I think he does the weights that we're seeing, like, people live in China. You know, it's always been my thoughts, but now seeing it come to fruition.

It's, like, really cool. Like, Wes is tearing it up. Like, I love that dude, too. Like, so, you know, he's just such a brute. Like, he moves well, but, like, he doesn't move. like a traditional weight lifting is just incredibly strong and powerful so are you a circle circling back to athlete monitoring we're talking about like you know daily readiness test like vertical jump of various kinds is super easy it doesn't beat you up you can do it every day yeah uh it's easy to measure

it's a it takes you know a half second it's easy easy easy in many ways which is why it's selected for things like that but of course um over a longer on time horizon weight lifting is an easy example like you know is your snatch and cleaning your shirt you going up over time. So you're monitoring your your strength and in progress automatically in that sport. I'll kick over Mike since Travis has been doing this talking here. Mike, outside of the strength sports with measuring squat bench dead or snatch the cleaners, et cetera, like what, how do you select specific movements or activities, et cetera, for the athletes that you train that you monitor over time based on their particular needs and situation?

Awesome. an incredibly difficult one. So at the end of the day, it comes down to what are we trying to train them for. And so, you know, we work with first responders. And so we know what the AFT is. We know what they need to do when it comes to, you know, their two mile time, their three RM deadlift. Like we've got lifts that we can use. In our M test on the deadlift, we can just look at velocity at a given load on the deadlift and get an indicator where they're at. You know, pushups. They're pushups. You can take those to failure or at least get, you know, a good, approximate there and you get a good idea of body weight relative test. Same thing with pull-ups. And we'll come back to that in a minute with the body-weight relative concept. And then when you're working with, you know, average folks, it's kind of like what matters.

And that's why I like something like a pull-up and then something that's a compound movement, squat, deadlift, something that they enjoy that is orthopedically really good for them. Maybe it's a trap bar deadlift. I'm not in love with it. But again, it's something that we can use as an indicator. And the reason why I like an absolute strength test, which is a squat, a deadlift, et cetera, and a bodyweight relative is it gives us kind of a proxy of how body comp's going. So, you know, we have all had that, I believe the colloquial term is dreamer bulk, where we put on like 10, 20 pounds and our squat really went up and we're like, yeah, man, like it's all muscle. Then you're like, no, I'm sitting on my belly.

And that's why I can squat more because I can't get folded over in the bottom. And then you go to do pull-ups, you're like, this is a lot hard. than I remember. So when you've got something like a pull-up, and it's like, hey, my pull-ups are staying the same, but my squat number is going up, then cool. You're probably gaining muscle at about the same speed of which you're gaining fat at your current body comp. So if you're 20% body fat, four pounds of lean for one pound of fat, everybody in here

would take that deal. Like that's pretty freaking cool. And then if you have them doing the opposite, like we're trying to lean up a little bit, pull-ups better be going up because now you're lighter. and if your squat deadlift starts tanking, then it's like, okay, are we maybe losing a little bit more of the weight that flexes and not as much of the weight that jiggles? And then, of course, long haul, most people, it's weight maintenance. So if we keep you at a solid, you know, you stay buck 80, but you can do more pull-ups and you can squat heavier weight, we're probably recomping, you know, and same thing. Like if you, if any of us had a button, we could slap and all of a sudden we lose five pounds of fat and gain five pounds of muscle, I'm going to be drumming on that thing.

until I am just absolute stage ready. Right. So, you know, it's good because, let's face it, body composition is important for long-term health and just quality of life. And then, of course, there's a certain amount of vanity. You know, there's a certain amount of, you know, people want to look a certain way. Yeah. And that's, we're not even getting into like a good conditioning test, which, you know,

military, they have their two mile, but now they've got other options. Like, hey, you can go hop on a bike and you've got to hit a certain distance. You can hop on a rower. I think Navy has a swim that you can use in lieu of the two-mile run, because let's face it, running selects a certain body type. And, you know, if you're somebody that's, let's just say a block that's moving forward, same thing swimming, it's not your fan, you're not a fan, but you can probably hop on a bike and put out some wattage.

You know, you can get on a rower and crank. And either way, it's do you have the aerobic motor to support everything on the back end? Because, you know, I used to love the joke for cardio. weightlifting and strong man is like yeah I walk up to the bar yeah got it got it uh if you if you're out there listening and you're wondering like what like what should I select for myself um I've always felt like one run max deadlift max pullups and a one mile run is like those are super easy things to do for anybody like it tests max strength it tests relative strength and it tests again to your point like it tests cardiovascular capacity but it's kind of in combination with body

composition. Yeah. Those three together work pretty well for most people most of the time. Unless you're a competitive weight lifter and you have this specific goal. But if you're just a regular person and you're kind of just wondering over the years from 40 to 45 to 50 to 55 to 60 how you're doing, I feel like those are three easy tests. I agree with you. I would say the mile and a half just because there's so much data that you can attribute to your

VL2 max. You know, I'm sure you could probably use the mile. But like the mile and a half is like, it's like there's so much. That's doubt out there. It's pretty close. But which is what I use myself is, you know, the mile and a half. So I agree. You said the mile and a half, the deadlift and the pull-up.

Yeah. Well, then you've got the whole max distance in 10 minutes or things along those lines. I honestly use a Bruce Submax for me or Bruce Treadmill Protocol. You just keep hitting yourself with incline and speed until eventually you get kicked out the back and you can run the math on it and not have to hop on a metabolic cart. the key thing is it's got to last more than three minutes by a solid margin because then you can't just brute force it through the anaerobic side so it's like okay what can you do and then okay gosh it's going to be kind of I don't

know if you said they a deep cut but there's a blog that I would read on occasion called the art of manliness and one of them is like first the World War II standards is wild for like the military they that's what they originally required a pull up the guys that got made fun of the guys that got sand kicked in their face could only do two pull-ups in the 1940s. If we go to pull-up bar in front of a Walmart and we give everybody who does a pull-up 20 bucks, how much money we lose

in over the course of that day? I knew this is, you know, 18 to 20 Walmart. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. It's really just an indication that people were just thinner back then. Yeah, exactly.

Primarily. No, you're absolutely correct. Yeah, we are. Same. Yeah, so when you've got those different type of tests, and you're looking for something a aerobic. Some folks like, you know, 500 meter row, you know,

something more like a thousand meters. Something you've got to do a decent distance. You know, whatever's going to, again, you've got to show the aerobic. And I do think a vertical jump, most people, honestly, I go broad jump. Just because it's so much easier to test. And let's face it, you know, a dude who's an okay shape should easily be able to jump five feet. But like a true, like 30 inch vertical. like not step approach, not like we're inflating the numbers.

Like that's not a normal jump. Plus, you got a lot more equipment you need in order to do that. Yeah, especially if you take the arms out of it, a 30 inch jump is like, that would be like very rare. You know, if you put the hands on the hip, that changes everything, at least for me too. Yeah. Yeah, but for adults, too, I would probably,

the only thing I would throw in there would be like a mobility thing because that becomes super important too because like you know if you have them do a deadlift and you have them do pull-ups but yet they can't move well i think that's you know you start becoming a good indicator that they're going to hurt you know too so like just having like a simple like you know i would as they get older when they're young i would say overhead squat but as they get older just a simple squat if they can like you know put their hands in front of them and squat down and maintain a relative neutral, I mean, the whole word, neutral spine.

I understand there's some flexion, but you know what I mean. Probably keep their back pretty flat. They can sit all the way down, the knees contract with their toes, then that's good. But if they can't move, that's a good indicator.

You need to spend some quality time. I'm preaching to myself right now, too. That's what I've worked so hard on in the last couple of years is just movement. It's cool. I feel like, too, You can change movement. I feel like there's a lot about people out there.

Like, you know, it's hard to change, you know, your flexibility. But, like, it's really movement, you know, isometric contractions. You can really change. I know I have. Well, I mean, that's where the more recent Litch shows if you're lifting through a full range of motion, as long as it's orthopedically sound, like, that's the way to do it. You have more flexible hamstrings. There's nothing wrong with, you know, exactly hold the stretch, but do some heavy RD else.

to do some of the warnings, like really load that tissue and make it go into its longest lengths, and you know, you can help improve that. And then at the same time, FMS has its flaws, but I do think, you know, having an in-line lunge and overhead squat.

Yeah. You know, there's some basic movements you can do there. The other little wrinkle is then anthropometrics. Because we all know that person who's got, you know, six-inch femurs, so their squat always looks great. Not because they really have mobility.

they don't have to sit back into it. And then you guys like me that are a, you know, a cricket within, you know, a little, like, torso. Then it's just like, man, I will always be entertained with my students. They're like, why do you sit back so far to the squat? I'm like, okay. So then I like demo, like I'm not going to sit back at all. I'm just going to do like you do. And you see me falling backwards, falling backwards.

It's like, you just can't get there. Unless you have like, like, we'll simply say like you got like a genetic abnormality. where you have hyper mobility in your ankles. Like there's no shot. Because my femurs are longer than my torso. Yeah, man, there's nothing you can do. Guys, like, you were laying Norton, like, you're going to have to, it's going to look a little different.

Exactly. Yes, there's going to be some leaning, you know. Even no matter how wide you go, there's going to be some leaning, you know. Yeah, unless I'm wearing shoes like I'm going to be. And next coming to the stage is, yeah. Your past life. Right. I am retired from cheerleading, okay?

Retired. Yeah. You know, man. Yeah, mind. But to your point about that I was leading into something similar. Like you mentioned FMS, that's a more professional, you know, comprehensive mobility screen. You know, three, three movements, like I mentioned, deadlift, pull-off, mile run. That's like, if I'm speaking to a large audience of, you know, a broad group of people and I don't know everyone's goals and whatnot, like, I like, I like simplicity.

Like, that's an easy thing for a large. group of people to take on. But if you're more serious and you're kind of in the optimization crowd, then doing an FMS and or a full total body real mobility screen with goniometry and measuring joint angles and all that, like makes a lot more sense. Doing blood work, you know, quarterly makes a lot of sense. Doing a VL2 max test, like an actual go into a lab, you know, put the tube in your mouth, real VO2 max test.

You know, yearly or every six months makes a lot of sense. Go get, go get a Dexas scan, you know, once or twice a year. Go get a spring box scan, you know, maybe. annually like there's there's many other ways you can you can monitor all of your data and then of course there's all the wearables where you're getting daily sleep metrics and whatever else like the the quantified self movement is like well underway and there's there's many things you can do to to monitor your progress over time those are all external outputs and then i actually like tracking inputs as well like having a dashboard for your inputs the things that are like completely within

your control i think is wise like have you ever graft the number of days you trained per week or graph the number of alcoholic beverages you drink per week or graft your body weight or all these types of things. I think there's a lot of value in, you know, in having input metrics. Not even with health, but even like, like I track like, you know, I actually measure and like quantify like how often I take my wife out on a date. So I have like like the average monthly metrics for for things like that. So I know if I'm slipping in the, in the husband department as an example.

I track many things like that. That's why you're an amazing operations guy. God, you just blew me away right there. This is a family podcast. I'm trying not to make a lot of jokes about data science. Okay. Yeah.

Tracking inputs, I think is very valuable. Yes. Because how are you supposed to, if you're not tracking your inputs, then your outputs are all random. Then you don't have a through line. And don't get me wrong.

a couple things. One, yeah, perfect world, I would love to have a springbok on myself. I, you know, I've done dexes on myself to have all those information pieces. They are expensive. So if, you know, listeners at home, if you're going to go, you can go get a dexter. It might put you back a couple hundred bucks depending on where you're at, but then go get a mediocre BIA schedule or scale. Take pictures of yourself. Do all those things on the same day. It's like the Dexas says you're 12% or 22%. And that's probably, probably what you are, give or take one. But if your Walmart scale says that you happen to be 8%,

whatever the Walmart scale says, add four, you know, to that 12. And you've got your adjustment factor. You know how you looked based on those progress pictures. You've got that. Go do the V02 max. Here's my V02. Here is my 1.5 mile time. Here is my two mile time.

Here's something else that I can do in the field. So that way I don't necessarily have to go back there. And then same thing. If you got everything, that giant snapshot in time of all your hormones, all your other blood metrics, everything else. And then you've got, here's my performance metrics that go with it. Here's my body comp. Here's how these things are going.

Then, yeah, you don't necessarily need to redo all those tests every quarter. But instead, maybe it's like, you know, in a half a decade, you re-chest or you retest. And that's if you really want to, depending on how relevant that data is to you. And at the same time, you know, if you don't know what your blood pressure is, is something that is going to straight up on a live view, and especially as, you know, three white dudes talking each other. Like a lot of us, the white guys disappear from the medical, you know, from getting regular medical care from essentially when they finish playing sports

until they show up for like their 50 year old prostate exam. And then like you've had high blood pressure for how long. You've had cholesterol for how long, like all those different things. Like you're in there for your first colonoscopy. And then so like if you're in your 20s, if you're in your 30s, listen to this or even in your 40s, like you should know. Because again, blood pressure, yeah, can kill you right now. But it's one of those things that's death by 1,000 paper cuts. You know, having a high A1C that's trending towards type 2 diabetes is doing some damage.

That's all adding up. Same thing with bad lipids. If you can catch it before, you know, it's too late. You know, once you're type 2 is, it's like, man, you've already screwed the people. pooch if you can just catch that trend and head it off you know like it definitely like blood pressure was becoming a definite problem for me and like um they wanted got three kids man what do you expect yeah and i you know when i was when i was finishing up my my master and like it was starting to trend high and they wanted to give me blood pressure medication and i was considering then i just went

really hard on my own and like now it's you know i've had it off and so now it's way low like typical that's where I'm typical I had to really push the stress thing my blood pressure to shoot up which is that's even worse you know if you're typically low and then you've got so much stress that it typically low is high becomes even bigger problem

so it's back down to so much better yeah you don't want to wait till you know yeah yeah you don't want to wait for stuff like that like you know now the memory 40s like I just got a CCTA to get like a like a 3D image of my corner arteries to see like do I have any calcium blockages type of thing which I'm totally clear and happy to say and like I want to go get a pre-novus scan and get like a cancer screening and like start to go down like more of like the medical diagnostic route and you know

presumably I'm I'm fairly healthy I've been working out my whole life and eating well my whole life and on and on but I'd like to get a baseline on basically all the things that I can I want to get like a brain key scan to see how things are happening upstairs. Yeah, totally. I'm terrified of Alzheimer's dementia and cognitive decline, et cetera, that all that sounds like, no fun. And so the more baselines I can get, let's say I'm clear, hey, I can just not worry about it and just realize, like, for the moment,

things are okay. But then also, if anything happens later, now I know, like, like I can see the progression rather than just catching it at the last minute and being like, oh, I'm at stage four. Fuck. Well. That's the rap. That's the rap. That's the rap.

Start doing all the drugs you've ever wanted to do. We'll do all the things. Going to Vegas. Yeah. And like that extrapolation and that kind of that thought exercise is useful because it's like, do I like this trend? You know, with the idea that everything's going to wear out. Like you only live as long as your first organ failure unless it's your kidneys and you have going dialysis. And it sounds like a great time.

So, you know, if you know, based on family history, you know, what takes out your family members? You get an idea of what you should probably have, you know, on the horizon to be concerned about. And then, of course, you can have your other metrics and be like, okay, like, if this cholesterol is already going the wrong direction, you know, it turns out, I know you like doing combative sports, which are freaking awesome. But, yeah, I never want to get a concussion ever get in my life. And, like, yours are at least kind of cool because it's another human being in a cage trying to hurt you. mine is a hundred pound female falling from eight feet and stomping me in the face. So like, but either way, like, it's the same mechanism of injury. And you don't want to catch that many of them.

So what are you doing, you know, for your brain health? What are you doing for your cardiovascular health? You know, and that's great when Tommy came on, just talking about the whole, like, validating like, yes, this is why I lift weights into cardio. And that darn duolingo owl is going to remind me that I need to go practice my language again to give you at least what we can control on the stimulus side on the inputs. And then of course we know about the nutrition, the sleep and the other pieces to help with the neurological health.

Dude, I totally thought that was like a, like a off color BDSM joke for a second. And then I realized you were talking about cheerleading. And then I realized it could be both. It could be both. Okay. Too many, too many damn cheerleading stories. But the one I will hit you with is when I was at Kansas, because it was kind of strong. And like finding a five, nine white guy is pretty easy in color.

college cheerleading. So it's we're in shoulder stands. So the girls on my shoulders and I'm looking over at my friend Zach and this has just been going poorly and he just looks over at me and I apologize for breaking our family rating. But he just looks at me as we're so fucked. And then sure enough, the girl comes up, gets the nails the one in the fit in the chest kicks her off the back. Zach gets pile driven in the ground and I just catch an elbow to my face. And it's just like, yep, welcome the cheerleading. What you see in practice. It's, uh, it's very much so refined. before it goes after the game. I always wonder how it never goes wrong out again. You see Chilers doing so many crazy things. I'm always waiting for something terrible to go wrong. So fun fact is I was actually there the night in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament when Chirley made with Christie, I think she was at Southern Illinois University, fell off the top of pyramid of basketball, like on the court, and she had to go backboarded

off the floor. And that re-changed the rules for the stunts you can act. actually throw during basketball games, depending on the actual flooring you're on. I'm old. And then second of all, most. Does he even cover? Yeah, yeah. She's fine.

She was throwing motions when they had her on the backboard going off, which was a interesting moment of time. But literally, based upon most programs, if you drop a stunt at the game, you got to throw it 10 times at the end of the game. So there's a very strong incentive to not miss anything at the game. game because you don't want to have just been out there for a three-hour basketball game, three-hour football game, and now you've got to go throw that same damn pyramid 10 times in a row as a disincentive for trying anything you're not sure you can hit.

No way. Oh, wow. It's a high standard. That is a super high standard, especially for help because you don't want to see somebody eat floor from 10 feet off the ground and then have to get backboarded or you know, EMT when it's like, that's not no offense. That's not something. the sport people are there for. Especially a cute little cheerleader. That would be horrible to see like this pretty little teeny girl get jacked up. Nobody wants to see that.

It's a big difference seeing that versus like a big 200-pound football player. Yeah, with a football player, you're like, well, that's what he signed up for. That's part of the game. With a cheerleader, you're like, ah, man, that's not cool. Next. I could tell you stories, but I will simply say with, you think most contact sports, the athletes train in a way to deal with that contact. And it's really hard to convince 100 pound female that like,

we need to do like legit neck work with you. Like we need to get you a schneck and get you some traps. So that way you can deal with these inputs. Like that's a real hard sell for an 18 to 20 year old girl. That's a woman to do that. So yeah. Yeah. Again, like,

thicken you up a little bit right here. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Like it's just a triangle. Like how are you supposed to give a concussion? Yeah. all right we're going to wrap it up fellas uh i got places to be here uh dr mike lane we're gonna be able find you yeah mike lane phd and hopefully i don't have to tell any more cheerleading

stories anytime soon all right uh coach travis mash mash macho lee dot com have a new bbt is an advanced vbt course coming out so excited about that probably than the next week so super pump again pin state is going to be my first certificate bt certification in you know in person We're doing a V-B-T and USA Weightlifting together. So it's going to be exciting. So anyone, any of you big colleges out there, let me know. Right on, very cool.

I'm Doug Larson on Instagram at Douglas E-Larson. We are barbell strugged at barbell underscore shrug. If you want to work with Dr. Mike Lane, coach Travis Masch, Dr. Andy Galpin, the whole team at Rapid Health Optimization. You can go to AritaeLab.com, A-R-E-L-B-D-com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.