Barbell Shrugged - [Joint Pain] How to Effectively Train With Creaky Joints and Old Injuries w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #679

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

In today’s episode of Barbell Shrugged you will learn: How to measure and manage fatigue The benefits of soft tissue work using lacrosse balls and foam rolling Why perfect movement is critical to eliminating joint pain Using isometrics for max effort without risking injury How to develop tendon strength and resilience Why you should be going to a globe gym How to structure workouts around injuries   To learn more, please go to https://rapidhealthreport.com Connect with our guests: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, we are talking about joint-friendly strength training. And the reason this comes up all the time is because I talk to a lot of people, whether they're inside the Rapid Health Optimization Program or if they're inquiring about information, but I'm talking to a lot of human beings. And there's this common thread

that everybody has been living this life to the fullest for a very long time. And along with that comes some creaky joints. And a lot of times it'll end up sidelining people and they don't know where to go, what to do. Maybe they don't have the tools to understand how much they can do, even if they have joint pain injuries and things along those lines. And we've got a nice little panel here of myself, Doug Larson and coach Travis Mash. Mash has had a hip replacement and has had enough surgeries for all of us.

And then Doug has had tons of shoulder injuries and stuff from jujitsu. And then from my competitive weightlifting and CrossFit days there's always little nicks and dings that are going along with things that kind of limit the full breadth of exercises and things that I can do. So I think we're pretty well versed after 26 plus years. I think Mass is coming up on like 40 years of lifting weights at this point

to be able to provide some real insight into what you can do when you have little nicks and dings, when you have achy, creaky joints, ways that you can get around it, warm-ups that you can do, and just a framework for understanding how you can continue to progress towards your goals without joint pain kind of sidelining you. As always, friends, you can head over to rapidhealthreport.com to see Dan Garner.

We've actually got a new set of labs from one of our awesome members in there. We've blocked out his name, but he was very willing to get his labs up and let people kind of see what the inner workings of the program looks like. So we got some new lab readings from Dan Garner. Head over to rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Andrew Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mast. Today on Barbell Shrugged, for all of us old people out there,

we're going to be talking about some joint-friendly strength training because not a single person on this podcast has not had to face this. And somehow, Travis Mast has had to face this with his hip surgery, and he still front squats over 400 pounds five weeks later. This show is for Travis, actually. We're actually speaking to Travis. Travis, stop doing 500-pound front squats over 400 pounds five weeks later. This show is for Travis, actually. We're actually speaking to Travis. Travis, stop doing 500-pound front squats. Every number you hear in here, at least cut it in half for normal human beings.

And you just wrote a program about the flywheel, which I think is one of the coolest pieces of equipment that gets very little attention in our space. Yeah, man, starting this thing off, Doug Larson, you've had enough injuries from trying to choke people out that I would assume joint friendly training is the highest priority for longevity in your repertoire here. Yeah, it really is uh as you said jiu-jitsu is my number one goal my number one sport at the moment so all my strength training is really focused around just being in shape strong fast athletic good cardio etc for jiu-jitsu

the entire sport is based around bending joints the wrong way and hurting people and so inevitably you're gonna have, achy joints, whether you strength train or not. And so I'm always working around something, you get armbarred, but it's like not like a full armbar. You kind of spin out of it. And then like,

but still the next day, your elbows like kind of shot and you're, you're not wanting to do any bicep curls for, for two weeks or whatever it is. Yeah. Most of my strength training is fairly conservative. Cause I'm just, I'm always working around some ache or pain. That's inevitably jujitsu related

at some level. A hundred percent. Yeah. Matt, I actually, how much do you think about this stuff when you're actually training, training your athletes? Cause dude,

when I was deep into Olympic weightlifting or just in CrossFit, I felt like I walked around like not sore. That was like a given, but like walking up the stairs, like pain in my upper knee, at least 70% of my life, like, but just always push through it. Um, how much do you talk to your, your team about just in general keeping their joints healthy like what are some of the tactics that you gotta go about to monitor this over the last few years i would say fatigue management has become my number one priority you know um not what you know i talk a lot about ryan but um it's for my whole team i feel like you like giving just the optimal dosage is so much better than just beating your people.

They should not feel like you were talking about feeling. They shouldn't be walking around feeling crippled all the time. They should feel sometimes they should feel tired, but they should not feel terrible all the time because that's the body's way of saying something bad's about to happen. And so it just compiles over and over until something bad happens, which we just experienced last year. So that's my number one priority right now is to prevent that. Yeah, and you just did Kelly Starrett. I just call him Kelly, as if everybody knows who the one Kelly is in fitness. Do you prescribe to a lot of the like foam rolling lacrosse balls,

the voodoo floss? Do you still, cause that obviously had like a, it was like a huge spike in the amount of large, flat black rubber bands that were getting sold to people. I own, I probably own five of them over there that haven't been touched in a couple of years. Um, and I hope he has, I hope he has stock in lacrosse balls for that, for that decade of lacrosse ball mashing. Um, but do you still do that on a, on a regular basis? Every day we do 10 minutes of warmup. That's that's um directly related to you know weightlifting weightlifters

yeah do we do um then there's 10 minutes that's individual so so we go through 10 minutes of warming up you know the knees the hips the ankles yeah you know the thoracic spine but then there's 10 minutes that's individual and that's when they would probably do some of their you know bands you know the the joint uh distractions and then that like um they might do some pvc pipe they might do some whatever it is that helps them minimize that pain is in like is there anything happening is it like you know i don't know but i'll say this if the body you know feels less, feels less pain, it's going to, it's going to produce higher results. And so like, that's what I'm after.

And like, if they can, here's my thing, Anders, is like, if when they warm up, the pain that they might've been experiencing, if it goes away, we're good to go. If they warm up and they're still hurting, then we have a problem. I'm not going to ignore it. I'm not going to be the coach that says, ah, it out keep going that's that's an idiot's approach and like you know especially when you're trying to help athletes get to the tip top you know that that's a very dumb thing to say and so i won't have any of my athletes ever again work through pain like that so yeah um there's there's a single thing that I have learned over the last, call it five years,

since ending the competitive side of weightlifting. And I think it takes you a long time to actually realize what people are saying when the number one goal is like, I have to be the strongest I can possibly be no matter what hurts. And I'd like to be strong for the rest of my life. The difference between those two questions and, or the difference between those two answers of how to accomplish those goals. Great movement. Great movement. You move really, really well.

You miraculously have significantly fewer injuries and it doesn't actually matter uh the total amount of weight on the bar because you're going to get a better stimulus with lighter weights done perfectly than uh just lifting the weight for no just as much weight as possible no matter what the form looks like but when you slow things down and actually focus on the movement all of a sudden all those little nicks nicks and dings stop showing up i would have one more caveat to that is like not just being able to move perfectly through a range of motion it's being able to move through it with stability and some type of control because like when people say like um like a ballerina they're going to be able to do anything and move through any kind of range of motion but they're also at a very high risk of injury because

they're hypermobile so like if you can move through those ranges of motion with stability some type of stability that's the person who has a much lower chance of getting hurt yeah it also means having a few reps in reserve oftentimes if you. If your first rep looks like your last rep, then you're great. If your last rep looks different than your first rep, then you probably should have cut it off one or two reps before. Again, we're talking about a part of the game, pushing yourself to your limits. But if you're trying to just have healthy joints for many decades, then, you know, having one or two reps in reserve is a good idea for the longterm. Yeah. That's where I'm going to have to say, you know, obviously this is not me just like trying to talk about velocity for gym wear. It's about me saying why it's important is like the whole reason I approached in first

place was, was that, you know, it was for first place was was that you know it was for being able to say you know exactly because you know i'm i'm working with a bunch of 18 to 20 year old men and women but like at that age none of them are thinking wisely like you know the whole that's why i hate rpe sometimes when you go on instagram somebody's like oh rpe7 i'm like bro that was an 11 you barely got it and you're saying seven so like to have some type of objectivity is important and that's you know keeps us from like number one if i say work to a 1rm at 0.45 meters per second i know if they do what they were told they're at no risk of getting hurt, you know, because that's nowhere near a true failure when, you know, rap max. But if I tell them, you know, say they're doing, you know, sets of five.

If I say keep that velocity loss below 20% or less, once again, you know, we're keeping them from getting to that, you know, failure range. And that's where you're going to get hurt is when you're pushing for that last rep. No one gets hurt in this first couple when it's feeling good. It's when you push that one you shouldn't have. I've got plenty of scars. I look like Frankenstein. I've got so many scars all over me where I didn't listen to myself. Well, and the other piece of that too, what I always found with anybody that I was coaching

and myself included is you don't realize how that fatigue starts to wear on you even inside each set. For me, you could put any amount of weight. We'll just call it heavy. One through three might look great.

Four, hip shift. Five, scoliosis all at once like yeah like it's funny but it's just progressively gets so ugly when you're pushing the limits like that that standing up is more important than the shape of your spine and that's terrifying that's terrifying and this is not smart start to break down that yeah the breakdown happens that fast i totally get it yes it takes years to unwind the neurological component of that when your brain starts to recognize oh if it gets bad i'll just throw my spine to the left and go to my strong leg that is a that is that's a disaster waiting to happen i know all about accumulating reps on the clock is so so valuable like that whole dynamic effort method type stuff where

you're just doing doubles every 90 seconds and just perfectly clean reps until you accumulate you know 12 sets of two or three or whatever you're going for instead of three sets of 10 you're doing 10 sets of three i love that whole concept you're just getting more first reps again you don't have to be competing in power lifting but you're you're training for just like travis is talking about you're training for velocity you got 70 you're doing triples it's easy perfect reps every time you're you're accumulating volume like you're just trying to be healthy and and feel good like that is a phenomenal way to train if you're trying to be healthy and feel good and i'm definitely not saying that we shouldn't push a little bit because you know we still want to gain some muscle or at

least you know maintain what we have and so you will have to like you know there has to be some velocity loss or they'll not you know there won't be enough force being produced to recruit those high threshold motor units but like you don't need to go where the bodybuilders like bodybuilders will push it to 50 to 60 percent a lot you know 60 is where it's like that's you you're felt you felt but like they'll push 50 to 60 a lot and that's fine they're young and their goal is just being huge but like that's not the normal person's goal we want to add a little muscle but we want to feel better so you know keeping that around 20 is safe you'll still get you'll still gain some muscle but you're not going to get crushed yeah i mean if you're doing fast singles at 85 or 90 like that's still a quote-unquote easy rep

for most people most of the time uh you know if you if you squat 700 and you're doing 630 for singles like that's different but if you're just a normal person and you you can squat 350 and so you're doing 315 for a single like that's not going to beat you up too much, but it's going to be enough to get a stimulus where you're like your, your body's still used to lifting something that's kind of heavy for you. You don't want to do a crazy amount of volume at 90% necessarily. Again, if joint health is your, your number one concern, but touching that weight on a weekly basis to, to, to keep strong and to have your muscles remember what it's like to push against real resistance is still very important. But then you're also going to complete your workout with, with higher volume, more conservative training. Are you, are you doing four sets of sets of 12 on, on step-ups

or whatever it is? Like you can still put in some, um, some higher volume work and get your muscles all the way to true fatigue, um, doing split squats and lunges and whatever else where there's still some stimulus for growth, but you can get that volume in with more conservative movements while keeping low volume on kind of the less conservative movements. Shark family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidalthreport.com,

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That means the inside out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. And then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns.

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Yeah. I mean, and that's a great idea. And same thing, even with our top athletes, what happens is that what we do is when they're six weeks out, they've already maxed out assuming that this is the target meet they will already maxed out their squat and so now it turns into power and so like the the focus becomes snatch clean and jerk and so they won't go to any types they won't be doing any one rms and they won't be doing any type of like true three or 5RMs.

At that point, it's just about speed. But they will go to some 1RMs at 0.4, 0.45, nowhere near a miss. But it's enough stimulus that the body stays strong, if not continues to get even stronger. But there's no risk of injury, no risk of like pushing past that, you know, that place where they can get hurt. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like isometrics play into this very well as well. Like, like for me, again, we talked about this a week or two ago on the show where the part of my deadlift that is the most challenging for me is right off the floor.

And so me pulling, you know, 100% full effort isometrics with a bar loaded beyond my 100 max that's still on the ground where i'm just i'm just doing a a pull on a bar that's basically glued to the floor in perfect position perfect technique uh and i just pull as hard as i can with perfect form that's a very conservative way to get full peak muscle tension but again it's very conservative because i'm not i'm not trying to hit a true 100 max in that case i'm just getting max tension in a specific position at a certain joint angle. That's a great point. And that's another one that, you know, taking it even further with isometrics, you know, you got the Dr. Keith Barr, who's like the man when it comes to tendons, but he will tell you doing those, you know, isometric contractions when the muscle is fully lengthened. So take, for example, for your quads, when you're doing a leg extension,

when you first get on the machine, it's lengthened. So load the stack up to something you can't do and push into that. I think he said work up to three to four sets of 30 seconds. Is anything past that? He said there's not a big return on it. So 30 seconds seems to be like the maximum threshold. But like doing that or on a leg curl, like when you first get on a leg curl machine, you're fully lengthened, loaded up, something you can't move,

and then isometric contractions for 30 seconds. Not only will you get stronger and not only will you get like some hypertrophy, but you'll also at those lengthened you know muscle lengths when the muscle is fully lengthened you're also going to get some some really good adaptations to the tendons and and even the ligaments they're going to be strengthened and so that's what i mean if you want to for longevity and to avoid injuries that's where that and here's the beautiful thing. If you're our age, you can do,

you can do, let's say you have some knee issues. One of the best ways to number one, make the pain go away is to do what I just told you. And here's the even better thing. You can do it every day because it only,

you only need six hours of recovery time before to be completely recovered from the isometric contraction. So you can really make some headway on any types of aching body parts. Yeah. You bring up knees.

And if there was like an overriding thing that I also would tell people as they start to get a little bit older and still like to push the limits a little bit, go to like a Globo gym because you have so many options in there to be able to actually so the last time i had like a real i wouldn't it's not an injury by any means it was just i had uh i had a bunch of like just felt like just like creaky knees just like there was it felt inflamed there was nothing wrong i didn't i wasn't missing any ranges of motion. I wasn't like in pain, but it just felt like it was just harder to get into like a bottom of a squat to just like sit there. And I kept, I did everything. I did everything. I wrapped it in a bike, whatever, Kelly Starrett's mobility band thing, just the most pain you can possibly put yourself in. And then I realized, oh, I wonder if it's because every time I do hamstrings, I only do barbell RDLs. Oh, so you weren't doing any

knee flexion. The complete imbalance of doing hamstrings from the hip had just pulled on my knee so much. And literally the very first day I came in and started doing leg curls on the machine, pain gone, inflammation gone. Everything just wiped itself away because it had just started to become more balanced. And being able to go to a globo gym like once a week, and this is for all you like hardcore humans out there that think your garage or like going to the CrossFit gym is the only way and barbell training is the only way. You know, those machines will save your life. Yes. They will like, especially when it comes, if you've got shoulder things and you want to do back training or shoulder training, like there's a machine out there that is designed and the perfect angle for you to actually be able to still go do all that, all the work you want to do. And you don't have to deal with all the pain. It'll actually be like a very, um, a, a movement that is, is perfect for your, uh, injury or whatever you're working through. It'll be in the plane that makes it feel good. there are so many awesome things that i used to make fun of people that used machines for that like i need them now i have to go once a week and just do all the like all the fun stuff that i

would have never have done when i was trying to be the strongest person that i could be like when we went to arkansas and we were also pumped to go to that one gym that was like filled with all the equipment we've ever dreamed of and we're like yeah so yeah things are flipping back to you know i like those global gyms as long as i love them so yeah things are flipping back to you know i like those global gyms as long as i go i love them people aren't going to be like you know so weird like i'm not totally into like you know planet fitness or anything but like you know going to a gym where they still live you know and they still have groups of people who like to train heavy i love those global gyms i mean i always did i like the world the other thing about global gym people used

to make fun of them because it was all goofy people in there doing stuff. It's not. No. Movement intelligence is significantly better now than it was 15 years ago by so much. Like, I very rarely see people doing goofy stuff in there. There's also, like, a ton of high school kids that are working really hard. And I work in with them all the time and make them train with me. I call them out and I'm like, you're on this machine.

Now we're working in together. I go with my wife to the YMCA twice a week, you know, just so we can train together some, but yeah, I love this. I love those big old gyms and like all the equipment and yeah, they're still the same people. You got the, you know, the old guy still used to be super big and he's still training, looking like me looking like Frankenstein with all of his injuries but yeah it's a great place people like us to make an impact you see somebody and to give them some tips yeah i have nothing wrong with those big global gyms i i found just there was so many uh my my daughter's

dance and gymnastics class both share walls with globo gyms. And it's the greatest thing ever. Cause when I drop her off, I can just go train and it's like, I need it so bad, but you know, seated leg curls, leg extensions, those will handle so many of the problems of over squatting and only doing hip dominant movements. And if you can overcome the ego and actually just go use them, you will find so much benefit in that stuff. And, but it kind of takes a little, uh, it takes a few of those injuries to figure out the balance and actually

using the muscles the way and from, from each joint and how your body's designed for that to uh to actually get there and and see the value in it i think you know talking about muscular symmetry um kind of going with that theme is that i feel like too in the last decade where you know west side barbell has told everyone that we're our posterior chains are weak I feel like it's flipped now. I see weak interior chains more than I see posterior at this point. Like I see a lot of people, you know, if your butt flies up, if you're doing a squat and your butt flies up and you're doing like an RDL, stripper, squat, whatever you want to call it, like it's one of two things. Either your technique is wrong, you know, your back is weak,

or three, you have weak quads, so your body is simply shifting towards strong hips the hamstrings and so which can cause you know lots of issues so looking at muscular symmetry is a really good way to prevent any of these injuries there's so many like tools out there to go and like i think even sean waxman has a free one you can go and put in all your maxes they'll tell you like you know where you're lacking symmetry and like i'm not trying to pretend that anybody there's no human out there completely symmetrical but you should work towards that's all yeah yes i think that the like the the shoulder stuff at the globo gyms is so awesome because i don't like pressing. You guys saw I'm freaking ripped my arm off my body

in a bike accident. Like I can't, I can't do any of that stuff anymore. Like the idea of even push presses is almost guaranteed to make me tweak a trap and not be able to turn my head for a week. So I can't do any of that stuff if I go directly overhead, but I can, I can do it on all the angles, like the incline press machines, all the hammer strength stuff is like perfectly designed for me to be able to actually go and be able to do that stuff when my body just for lack of better terms, just beat the crap. And it can't really get into the positions that a barbell or dumbbells really want me to.

We can even do a full show on the landmine. So if you want to do overhead, if you've been at a desk for your whole life and you're like 40 years old and you're just deciding to get in the gym, you're probably, like number one, there's no point in you doing a snatch or a jerk. Maybe you want to, and if you want to,

by all means, go do it. But if you're just trying to be healthy, I would say go overhead with the landmine. Or if you're a baseball player and you've been pitching your whole life and now you're starting to strength train, there's a good chance that maybe you shouldn't, at least at first. I'm not the anti-overhead guy. Obviously, I'm a weightlifting coach, but the landmine is a great way to go overhead and do a lot of movements in a very safe manner. Yeah, I use the landmine a ton. I to go overhead and do a lot of movements in a very safe manner so yeah i use a landmine a ton like i tore my labrum in my fourth mma fight and had surgery afterward and now just going overhead is basically not an option anymore like i can't even hang from a

pull-up bar despite 10 years of trying to get all my range of motion back and fix that problem and seeing many people that have been on this show before that are real specialists and real experts just it's just not it's not happening after that surgery uh and so using landmines and just doing basic stuff like a like an inclined dumbbell press like where i'm not doing overhead press and jerks and handstand push-ups and and pull-ups and whatever like i kind of need cable machines and dumbbells and other things to work around the the fact that i don't have that last 20% of the range of motion from 160 degrees, 180 degrees, just the very, very last bit of the range of motion directly overhead and full shoulder flexion. I just can't do, but I can do a high incline press and I can

do many things that kind of look like I'm pressing kind of overhead, but not fully overhead. And so having a globo gym where I can, I can work around that, that existing issue is really, really useful for me. Yeah. Agreed. Doug, how do you structure the big compound movements to maintain strength and then really sprinkling in all the accessory work to get through the shoulder stuff? Or just in general, but specifically to your shoulders? Yeah, there's no one way that I do it.

I've done it many different ways. Part of it's just training for 20 years. You don't want to do the same thing all the time because it just gets boring after a while. But I'd say my base for how I train came from my upbringing. I was kind of trained to train like a college football player where I would come in and I would do my kind of dynamic warm-up stuff where I would do high knees and butt kickers and lateral shuffles and like field sport type warmups. I still kind of gravitate back toward that. Uh, even though

now I do like, uh, I do like yoga flows and, and bear crawls and more jujitsu kind of stuff also as part of warmups. And then I pretty much go from the fastest movements to the slowest movements is the easiest way to think about that. You know, I would I would run sprints and do and do plyos and jumps. And then after that, then I do I do throws and or Olympic stuff, you know, kind of, you know, power cleans and power snatches to heavier snatch pulls and whatnot onto deadlifts and squats. And then hypertrophy kind of assistance work work higher rep slower reps stuff after that followed by you know i used to call energy system development esd training or now it's just kind of conditioning high intensity intervals or just some type of conditioning at the end where you just run sprints you know not like speed sprints but more um like gasser type sprints where you're

doing you know 30 seconds to to anaerobic fatigue that type of thing're doing, you know, 30 seconds to, to anaerobic fatigue, that type of thing. Uh, and then, you know, maybe like cardio at the end and not, not necessarily all of those things in every session, but that's like the progression. So I might just do two or three of those things where I come in and just do the warmup and then speed work and then a heavy lift and then, and then assistance work and I leave or whatever, but it's all, it's usually in that order. And, you know, CrossFit and being in that world for a long time uh even though i didn't grow up as like this crossfit disciple where i thought that crossfit was the truth the light in the way you know from from day one how dare you how dare you passively make fun of me in my 20s how dare you uh yeah me too 100 percent uh you know i went to crossfit

gym for 10 years and uh and it was great. I saw from the beginning where it was cool and where it was going to be popular and what was going to be effective and whatnot. And then I thought there were many areas, especially back in 2006, 7, 8, that it certainly could improve over time. And many experts came into that world and did make it better, especially with the games and having real athletes and not just beat, you know, beating themselves into the ground every single day, but training for a sport and starting some aspects of periodization and weightlifting coaches came in. It's like the whole thing, you know, grew over that those, those 15 years. But, but still my base was like, before that was general strength and conditioning. Cause I played college football, even though it was like a small D3 school, but we still, you know, had real training programs to do. And to do and i that tends to be my base and so i gravitate back to that oftentimes um and and or um kind of the west side model like upper lower split heavy day speed day um that's and that can

really kind of fit within the model i just described in many ways you can kind of combine those and have it really be fairly consistent so i I still do that. Like I still lift heavy, you know, first, and then I do assistance work afterward. And I, I, I train around whatever, whatever achy joint or injury I have. You know, I, I spent, I spent a lot of time, a lot of time injured, you know, fighting MMA, you know, 10 years ago or whatever, I was always always beat up and the reason i don't fight mma today is just because i i have joint pain and and i i didn't want to i don't want to have surgery on my neck as as one big example of why i stopped fighting like that was the the thing that really took me out of that sport was that i had dislocated my hip at one point i had surgery on my shoulder so yeah so i had four fights surgery on my shoulder took a year

and a half off came back had two more fights dislocated my shoulder uh wrestling with jacob noe who he's a guy that beat babalu and babalu's last fight before babalu retired in bellator so i was wrestling with jacob and then dislocated my hip there and then had two more fights and then like i could barely train for that fight because my fucking neck just hurt so bad like it wasn't broken but like still i could just kind of barely move and i get sharp pains all the time and i was like god man after this fight i gotta fucking fix my neck uh and and i still have neck pain that was 10 years ago so um messed up my neck and and still to this day train around it but uh after i got out of ma mma i was like man i'm going to take mike boyle's advice and just if it, don't do it.

I used to just do it anyway. And when, yeah, when you got a fight coming up, you're like, you're not, you don't care. I mean, I cared if it hurt, but I kind of didn't care for it. It's like, that's just, it's just a part of the game that I signed up for. Like if you're, if you're a fighter, you're going to be in pain. Like the whole point of the sport is to hurt people. You're going to be hurt training for a fight. Nobody goes into a fight just feeling fantastic all the time, every time. But yeah, when I got done with that i was like after having that shoulder surgery which you know i can't go overhead anymore i i was a competitive weightlifter like i

did weightlifting since i was 14 all the way through graduate school and then and then i went to crossfit gym and i couldn't i couldn't and i did and i did gymnastics growing up so like i i i was good at at gymnastics and weightlifting crossfit was like the natural place for me to be plus i had the you know the education behind it with the bachelor's and master's in physiology and kinesiology and i understood nutrition like the whole thing so running across the gym just made sense um and competing in it also would have made sense i think i could have done very well there but then you know right when the whole crossfit movement started 2008 is when I had my shoulder

surgery. And then I couldn't even hang on a pull-up bar anymore, let alone catch a snatch or a jerk or do handstand walks or anything else. So I was kind of out of competing in CrossFit, but I certainly would have. And so after having that experience and having that kind of taken away from me at a fairly young age, I was only in my late 20s. I was like, man, I don't want to like not be able to do all these, all the other fitness training, fun things that I want to like not be able to do all these all the other fitness training fun things

that i want to do for the rest of my life and so i was really concerned about my neck in particular but then just across the board i was like man if something hurts i need to just not not make it worse because that's how that's why my shoulder got hurt because my shoulder got hurt multiple times over and over and over and over and over again before finally just the straw that broke the camel's back and i had to go get surgery on it and then um you know now i just don't do that anymore it's just a good idea if something hurts find something else to do there are many ways to to get in shape and stay in shape and be strong um and if something hurts train around it and then once it feels better then come back to some things and if something never feels better ever again, that's also fine.

I can just be okay with that. I know enough about training to do a million different things. I can find something that does not hurt me. One of the things you said in your warmup that's important that people need to hear is that, you know, you're talking about doing like a dynamic type of warmup. And some of the bounding that people do in those warmups is a good idea, you know, because like, if you're going to still do things like go play pickup basketball, if you're going to do things like, you know, go out and play flag football, you need to be doing

some of those bounding movements, because that's how the matrix in the tendons is formed. It's like you can make a tendon thicker, but if you really want to make it strong, you need to do some type of bounding to create that matrix that is really going to tighten it up. So like doing some simple, you know, it doesn't have to be anything complicated. Jump rope. Like that's what we do. And for our warmup in class, we do, you know, jump rope, bilateral, unilateral, you know, and we do that like, you know, four to five times a week or just doing the skipping. But that bounding is important because we've talked about isometrics. We've talked about muscular symmetry. And now we're talking about the bounding.

And then the one other thing I feel like we should talk about before we get off is accentuated, eccentric movements. So finding ways to accentuate the downward, like in a squat, you're talking about the negative or in the bench press all the way down. By accentuating the eccentric component, you're going to get a lot of really good adaptations, such as strengthened ligaments, strengthened tendons. So find ways to do that, which is what we talked about originally earlier. We talked about the flywheel, which is – that's why the flywheel has become so. Yeah. Tell us about this program. So I'm friends with Chris Duffin, and he asked me if I would write a protocol for the flywheel.

And I said yes before I knew what I was doing because I said yes. And I started looking and i realized there was no information so you had like you know a little bit here and a little bit there but no one had like really i know what the information is on a flywheel every at-home gym company in the world right now is trying to create some sort of flywheel so people put them in their playrooms at their house and then they just collect dust exactly they don't because no one knows how to use it at all 10-4 yeah exactly so uh we had done it and i have to be honest i'm guilty like we were just doing three or four sets of like six to eight

reps you know and uh we would use whatever you know inertial load you know he gets it comes with two um inertial you know various inertial loads and we're going to get more because once this protocol is printed there's so many things and so many reasons why you should use various just like you would use various weight you know variable weights in any type of strength training but um after looking at the at the it's just, man, number one, there needs to be more. So I'm not saying that, you know, this protocol I just wrote is going to be the bee's knees.

It's just where we're at right now. Based on the research, it's a really solid protocol. And I wrote it for the, I did a preseason, offseason, in-season, and then post-season. So you got four different micro cycles. And then, of course, together, macro and then – oh, so you got inertial loads, the number of sets, the number of exercises. But it's a really good – the Flywheel is a great tool, and here's why,

because it's portable. So, like, if you're an athlete it's portable so like if you're an athlete or you know if you're like all of us and we and you work all the time it's very easy to pack up you know a a flywheel you can put in your bag easily you know like because he makes like chris makes or kabuki makes like four different kratos you know products is. Some of them are so simple, you can throw them in your gym bag, but you can do everything with them. You can do presses, squats, RDLs.

You can do bilateral to unilateral, but the key is learning how to use it. So here's the key. It's like, it's either number one, say if you're doing a squat, it's like you accelerate as fast as you can during the concentric. Then you start putting down the brakes.

And then right at parallel, you stop. You brake as hard as you can. So that's one way to guarantee, see an accentuated eccentric contraction. Or you can do things like you can use like the Hatfield squat where you help yourself during the concentric. Then you let go and you force yourself to control it all by yourself on the eccentric i mean there's multiple ways but the the i believe the fly will be a great way to eliminate not eliminate you can never eliminate all injuries but you can definitely take a bite of what we're seeing with youth athletics and then people are able to just go

out and you know hey i'm gonna go play pickup basketball i'm gonna tear my you know achilles tendon so like it'll be a great way to prevent a lot of these non-contact useless injuries that we see i believe it was you that was talking about some of the research that uh the hypertrophy with high speed eccentrics yeah umrics is one of the best ways to specifically just focus on hypertrophy. Yeah. And that's a very hard thing to do without a machine like that. It is. Just talking about RDLs or something like that, doing high-speed eccentrics with a heavy barbell, not that safe. No, no.

The only person I know who did really good at that was Shane Hammonds. He's different. He's different. He's got his midsection will withhold the load there. And his knees are the size of my head. They're so big. But other than that, you you got to be very smart but yeah the um what we found when i did the research is i think if there's a couple companies out there who do like

they have like you know was it the k meter but it's it's there they look at angular acceleration that you know what's going on in the flywheel but then there was more research they were they simply use and i'm not i'm not just like you know plugging gym wear over and over but they use linear velocity like an lpt and it was much better and like or even rpe even using rpe with various inertial loads is a great way it's better than using the angular acceleration you might get on the k meter because they're the that's only looking at what's going on in the wheel and not the human and so like you need to know the speed uh how fast is someone going down in the eccentric contraction you know how how far

are they going down you know how fast are they coming up and so it ends up that the lpt was was much better that's as soon as um i just sent over, so hopefully it'll get published by next week. I don't know when this is going to come out, but hopefully by the time this comes out, this thing will come out. This is the first of its kind. It's the first time I've ever done something that's truly the first of its kind, so I'm pretty excited. Primal, dude.

Yeah, man. Where are people going to be able to find it? Kabuki, you can go there they're gonna i'm gonna publish it on mass league too as soon as they do but it'll either be on massleague.com and or on the kabuki website so uh they were excited and i'm hoping everyone is excited about what it could possibly do for like youth athletics i'm really hoping that we take a bite out of this this it's become truly an epidemic with all the musculoskeletal injuries that we're seeing they just they don't get a

chance to train man and like we can bitch all we want about year-round training that's not going to go anywhere it's it's you know this is the way it is in america so we need to meet them where they are we need to make it easier for these kids to train at least two three times a week for 20 to 30 minutes which kelly started not talking about multiple times and his wife uh so we you know we've talked about doing microdosing training and so that's what they do with their own girls is like you know when they get super busy they'll do like a 10 minute of x so yeah just something something something that keeps the knees healthy. Yeah. On the flywheels thing, did you guys do anything in the program for overhead work, shoulders? I think it's really easy to look at the flywheel and go, well, that's kind of like a belt squat.

It must be all legs. But getting overhead is a a really tricky thing especially when you get into that like people that aren't going to feel comfortable pressing that's the easy part but the eccentrics and having something actually pulling the bar down is that's it's just a little funky how do you how do you put all that together well they got you know they you know they make the handles so it's easy. The eccentric is only going to be as hard as your concentric contraction. I would recommend

the first time you do any of the different movements, spend the first four sessions learning the movement and getting coordinated and teaching your body how to synchronize, how to recruit those motor units at the same time. The first four sessions should just be that, but motor units at the same time so the first four sessions should

just be that but then it's the same as anything else and so and you'll only use the load that you can control so remember there's a bunch of different settings so you can you know you can use a very low inertial low inertial load and they won't be that dramatic on you and so and then you work your way up just it's just like anything else it's like now it's like um and even several of my friends who have flywheels they were literally just telling their kids to go do it's like a finisher they were using it this thing is much more than a finisher it could be the movement and really as soon as you know i'm really considering doing a train cycle where i only use the flywheel because of safety it's because you know like it's so much safer and

even on athletes, let's say on football players or soccer players, teaching them a squat on the flywheel is so much safer than teaching them, you know, a squat with a barbell, because I don't have to worry about their spine. You know, I only have to worry about the muscle that I'm working on, but you can, you know, there is a harness that Kabuki sells where you could, you know, load the spine somewhat,

but you don't have to. So that's why I like it. I don't want to say a lot because I'm doing my own training now a little bit, so I want to see the results, and then I'll tell you more about it. But so far, so good. I like it a lot. Awesome. Where can people find you, sir?

Masterly.com. Go to Kabuki, though, and check them out, hopefully, within the week. You know, when this drops. Or go to Masslead Performance on Instagram. There you go. Doug Larson. You can find me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. There it is.

I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged, at Barbell underscore Shrugged. You can also follow us over at Rapid Health Report on Instagram. And, of course, if you wanted to, we actually have a new video up. It is no longer my lab report at rapidhealthreport.com. So if you want to see the wizard, Dan Garner reading labs and really see what a lot of the updates to our program deliverables and things like that look like, because it's been a fun year of growing and building this thing out.

So new lab videos are up and you can watch Dan Garner go and do, be a master lab analyst. Dude's a savage. Do Dan Garner things. Yeah, do Dan Garner things over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.