Barbell Shrugged - Key Habits to Overcoming Obstacles in the Snatch, Clean & Jerk - 183

Episode Date: June 24, 2015

Part 2 of 5.

This week on Barbell Shrugged is part two of a five-part video series on the Olympic lifts. And today we're going to be talking about the key habits for overcoming obstacles in the snatch and clean and jerk. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe, standing here with Doug Larson, Chris Moore, CTP behind the camera, and Charlotte over there. What's up? Hello. All right.

I won't do that again, Charlotte. I'm sorry. Yeah, she was British once, and now we're back. Used to be. Yeah, but we're Americanizing her because anytime anyone does anything great, they are American. American. Just kidding.

Just kidding. We just lost so many internationalists. There you go. Oh, these sons. Yeah, so today we're going to be talking about the key habits that may and most likely are holding you back from reaching weightlifting mastery. This is part two of a five-part video series. Well, the habits will help you reach mastery. And what we're going to do is we're going to talk about those obstacles, and then we're

going to talk about habits to overcome those obstacles. So some of the things we've identified that are extremely common amongst everybody who gets into weightlifting is falling off the wagon. We're going to go off on point by point. We've outlined this. Like professionals. Yeah, like professionals. I don't believe you. Falling off the wagon is the first one.

We've all experienced that. Impatience, desire to tinker with programs. You tinkering bastards. Comparing yourself to other lifters. Lack of recovery, lack of preparation, and being realistic and honest with just yourself. So, nobody else. Chris Moore. We're starting with derailment?

Tell us about derailment. I mean, since you're the king of derailment, I think it would be appropriate that we start. You know, I'm not honest at all. You're not racist for asking you to derail us. I thought I was doing a little better with that lately, but I retain a dishonest ability to kick the conversation off the rails. But yeah, so derailment. Here's the thing. Even let's assume that the plan was perfectly written down, right, Mike?

Perfect. You can bet your ass with some certainty that something in your life is going to jump in and disturb that plan. When you say derailment, you had a workout, let's say planned for Wednesday and something happens. The dog flew up

in your living room. It's a point match. You know, what have you. Your gym blew up from a gas explosion. Something could happen in your workout

for whatever reason. You say, well, I guess I can't do that day. So there's got to be some steps you're going to have to keep in mind for getting back on track. What? Are you thinking your box can't blow up from a gas explosion?

I've seen it happen. I've seen it happen. Have you really? No. It could happen. If you think it could happen, then by the laws of quantum mechanics, it could happen. If it could happen, it will happen.

If it could happen, it will happen. Or you could get injured. You could blow out your shoulder, blow out your knee, blow out your back. Something could happen, and then you'd have to find a new program to get on for the next six weeks before you get back on track. That's probably one of the more common ways. Yeah, right, Doug. Kind of like a gas explosion happens all the time.

Yeah, just getting sick. If you have kids, kids getting sick. Your stupid boss asking you to stay late to work. I've got a snatch progression plan. There are a number of things we've all experienced. Even as a college student, things come up. Like that party on Friday night. That can derail you on Saturday morning sometimes.

Sometimes? Not really. Weekly maybe? You've got to be proactive and just not plan the heavy stuff when you know you're going to be hammered. We definitely feel you on being derailed. What about impatience, Mike? Have you ever wanted results fast so that you can have them? I'm begging the question.

Do you know who you're talking to? Are we going around the room like, who's really good at being at these things? Like, you're really great at derailment. I'm really good at being impatient. What does it mean then practically? Somebody's out there being impatient. What would it look like? Yeah, I think a Somebody's out there being impatient. I'm so jealous. What would it look like?

Yeah, I think a lot of people are impatient because they're thinking so much. They're being impatient about the wrong thing. I think impatience can actually be a good thing if you have to direct it to the right place. Says the impatient person. That's right. It is not a problem. Justification at its best. I'm also the king of justification

damn right you are so in regard to impatience well justification is a good thing that's right you should have gone down that track you can get away

with a lot of stuff never feel guilty for example let me justify this that's right the impatience is like be impatient with your progression

in regard to like trying to move better I think people become impatient with the weight on the bar and so like I think people become impatient with the weight on the bar. And so they put all their focus on the weight on the bar, and that's where they start loading up. You should be so impatient about perfecting your technique that you spend extra time with just an empty barbell

and really focusing on the movement, getting strong in the movement. Yeah, but most people are impatient. It's like, I only put 10 pounds on my squat last week. What new program should I do? Right. And we're like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Like, you're fucking killing it right now. Just keep doing what you're doing. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, you know, people are, they expect, I don't know what they're expecting. I mean, usually. Anytime anybody says, hey, I've got a problem. Well, first things first, I'm getting better. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, well, just, you know, that's awesome.

You don't have a problem yet. You're getting better. Awesome. Just wait until you're 33, and you're going to start getting worse real soon. Nothing ever gets better ever again. You die a slow death. No, I'm joking. What about the desire to tinker?

Have you dealt with that, Doug? Yeah, I deal with that all the time. You know, the more and more you learn about training, and the more and more that you get with that, Doug? Yeah, I deal with that all the time. You know, the more and more you learn about training and the more and more that you get into training, you start learning about all the massive variety that really is out there for you to do. And you want to go try it all out. And if you at some point, if you don't try it all out, then, you know, you're not going to have the experience that you would need to be to be an expert and to be able to help many different people because all those varieties do have some value. But what most people do is that they tinker way too often. Just as I just said, you put 10 pounds on your squat last week and then you want to go change your program.

That's a bad thing. You do not want to do that. Yeah, we actually went over that last week. So if you haven't watched part one, go watch that. And we talk about how there's information overload. And because there's, you know, tinkering with a program wasn't nearly as tempting a decade ago when there weren't like thousands of programs that you could pick online at any whim just by clicking a button. Now it's like, oh, that's interesting. Maybe I should try that. And I think most times people want to tinker with programs that don't, there's not even a real reason to tinker with it other than it's different.

The golden rule is if you're making progress, then don't. You wrote a book on it? I did. I wrote a book on progress. I'll end up, hey, nice book, Doug. Hey, yeah, yeah. Where can you find that book? I felt like we were about to.

It's on Amazon and merch.barbellshug.com. Merch.barbellshug.com. People don't know we sell shit. We sell shit. Amazon and merch.barbellshug.com merch.barbellshug.com people don't know we sell shit we sell shit go on merch someone buy that book so we can have heartier breakfasts

here at Chris Moore's house I'll get rich five dollars at a time oh my god what worth a year of your life you put into that book speaking of derailments

I don't even remember what you said now if you're making progress don't switch yeah don't switch your program that's right we'll roll right back

over to Chris for the jealousy and comparison I'm a person who's just running over frothing with jealousy at all times

that's what I was going to say I thought when you were younger though when you were powerlifting all your comparison was again. I mean, we all did it. I'm not I'm not pointing out.

Everybody struggles with this. I mean, actually, I am. But it kind of ties back to impatience a little bit. What the problem is, when you see people, especially now, when you can go on Instagram and follow the best lifters in the world, which is cool because you pick up a lot of insights. But the problem is you're seeing a huge gradient between you and what this individual can do and sometimes you forget uh compared to what they squatted or snatched or cleaned or whatever or even compared to how sexy they might be like cloak off snatching 400 pounds with his abs ripped off he's got knuckle deep ridges and you're sitting there going i'm no cloak off so i think expecting yourself to get to that point now forgetting that he's been at it his whole adult

life and part of his childhood too, that gradient makes you feel like you're less than. I think that's a big mistake. Yeah, in business, we've learned this. They call that the gap. It's like you think about where you want to be and where you are and that gap in between. It happens all the time.

That's the best way to be unhappy. Because guess what? You'll keep finding gaps if that's the way you're living in that gap so uh i think most people do live in that gap and that's why it gets addressed in business coaching a lot is like you you look at where you are you look at where you want to be and you never even look where you came from um but yeah living in that gap is a great way uh even if you're trying if you're just worried about yourself but you also looking at what are what people other people are doing kind of create that like oh that's where i could be and then it creates this giant gap oh yeah it's easy to look on instagram and think that all those people are just overnight successes who just have gifted

genetics and they just kind of had that handed to them not knowing that they were like learning weightlifting when they were seven years old with pvc pipe and a broomstick and then eventually when they were 16 they were like just a cusp off the world record because they'd already already been doing it for 10 years like like suly monglu set world records when he was 15 and 16 he set multiple world records like when he was in his like early like mid to late teens and then he kept doing that for like 10 years and so it's easy to look at somebody like that in his case he he you know is the best weightlifter ever ever ever basically um clean and jerking well over three times body weight but but even in his case he worked brutally hard they had to like drag him

out of the weight room every day yeah in the rack yeah and just like throw him on his bed and like he would just sleep until they drug him back into the weight room and he would do it again basically would wake up every morning like wolverine the next day magically regenerate it's not too far from his ability to recovery yeah uh and then you have to consider too the uh i've talked to a lot of elite level athletes who talk about the instagram thing and they talk about how uh even they feel they feel guilty that, oh, yeah, I never think to post anything until there's a success. And then people – and they actually feel guilty that like, you know what? I wish I was better about posting my failures because people have this idea about me that's just completely wrong. That's a very good point because you're seeing like these guys every day.

They're snatching huge PR numbers basically. It could be that they're just seeing a highlight reel from a week's worth of training or two months. They're just letting them out one day at a time. But to you, you're kind of getting fooled into thinking that every day is a success. Additionally, I follow maybe 100 weightlifters on Instagram. And at any given time, one of them is hitting a PR. And it feels like that person is hitting a PR all the time. But it was Osorio that was hitting a PR time but it was Osario that was hitting a PR yesterday

and it was John North that was hitting it tomorrow or whatever you know what I mean it's like but in your mind you're seeing PRs every day so you're like getting conditioned that that's actually like how the world works it's kind of how you think about everything what you notice is everybody else's highlight reel and what you see in your head what you feel

is your behind the scenes footage fuck up don't give a fuck about it that's a really good way to say that's how your consciousness works yeah put that in a book chris i think that's what i've been said a few times i'm not the first human to go oh uh next point was lack of recovery um i think i might be the best at this one people think that working hard in the gym is everything everything best is a funny term I'm the best at not recovering I was when I was younger definitely drove it way into the ground

that's actually something you have to you talk about working hard with a bar but you gotta work harder at that with time to get better and better too the thing is everyone focuses on the training plan but not on

really anything else. I mean, even if you're focusing on mobility, which technically is not recovery, even if you're focusing on mobility, you're making a step in the right direction. But the next, the harder step beyond that, because what mobility might be half an hour, hour a day, well, that leaves another 20 hours of the day where you're doing, where you're having to actually do the hard part. I mean, that's hard changing habits. We talked about before, if you're just thinking about there's a total amount of time that you're alive,

and if you add up the amount of time you're actually in the gym right now working on this stuff, compared to how long you're just doing other stuff at work in your life, you're sitting around the house, and the amount of time you're working on improving is very small. So the other part is there's opportunities to to also make progress i like the term aggressive self-care even though it sounds maybe a little bit too personal aggressive self-care working hard to make sure you're optimized it's better than because recovery sometimes i used to think like it would just sit around do nothing until you're ready to do something again that's just not the way it works yeah that's like a 10 year old 20 year old idea in lifting now and it's actually uh that's how you can kind of tell

the maturity of the athlete a lot of times like what is happening the other 20 hours of the day when they're not doing mobility or or when they're uh doing uh or training in the gym is like what's happening then are they just living the life that everyone else is living? Or are they, like you're talking about, doing the aggressive self-care or whatever you want? And just sitting around thinking over your mind what you want to achieve and shit. I mean, it's not just like rolling around on balls or whatever to recover. Yeah, it seems that athletes don't ever really focus on recovery until they've been training for a while consistently. And they start to realize that in order to in order to get better i can't just keep focusing on the workout something else has to give i need to start focusing on the outside

of the gym stuff so in a way you need that experience of grinding yourself into the ground and you not recovering before you go wow it's it's as important as they've been telling me but if you're if you're a super smart person then you probably can take our advice and just jump right to it and focus on your recovery before you need it. That way you don't ever need it. Don't wait till your wrists are fucking throbbing. I could say that I wish somebody would have told me. But they probably did.

I was like, yeah, whatever. I'm 22. In fact, I think, you know what? Honestly, I think I've been telling you this every day. We've worked out together for the last 10 years. Hey, Mike, maybe you shouldn't go. Ah, fuck you. I'm going to show you, asshole. And then something 10 years. Hey Mike, maybe you shouldn't go. Ah, fuck you.

I'm going to show you, asshole. And then something pops off. Yeah, that's usually how it goes. The next one was lack of preparation. Doug, you're actually probably the best at preparation. That tends to be my jam. I like to be prepared when I show up for things. Why do you think that Chris and I have such low preparation skills?

That's the funniest thing I've heard in a while. Preparation. That's going on a t-shirt. That's going on the August t-shirt. Can you put it on a sweet? Show them the technique. Mini technique one right here. Show them the pinky up.

Logan's going to love that. Hello, mate. Was that British? I guess. I don't know. Is that British or Australian? British Australian. How are people typically unprepared

dug in a gym setting i think i think a lot obviously you're like i can't believe these motherfuckers are so unprepared well i mean a lot of times if you're brand new you don't you know you just don't know what you don't know and so you can't be prepared because you just don't know what you need you don't know what you don't know how to plan a workout you don't know what equipment you need you don't know how much rest recovery you need you don't know what to eat you don't know what your workout drink is going to be you don't know what equipment you need you don't know how much rest recovery you need you don't know what to eat you don't know what your workout drink is going to be you don't know anything and so it's impossible to be prepared until you find out those things that you don't know that you don't know and you can kind of move up to that that next phase where you at

least you understand that there's things that you don't know so if you don't know doug is calling you an idiot but you probably don't know you're being called an idiot who thought we were we're not offended so we're cool right we went meta we actually went Socrates there I was like Socrates like now I'm wise

because I know all that which I do not know yeah go on Socrates asshole drink this voice for yourself yeah so I mean I mean step one

is figuring out what you don't know you don't know and if you're watching this show at least if you watch this show routinely then you probably have heard us talk about many of the things that I just mentioned. So you're probably at least somewhat aware of the things that you probably need to be focusing on. But are you optimizing those things?

And are you are you optimizing those things almost before you need them? We just talked about recovery a second ago. Are you focusing on your recovery before you're beat up and injured and overtrained? That's the key. A lot of people don't focus on it until it's absolutely crucial that they do so. But in your case, if you are a smart human being and you want to be ahead of the game,

then you probably should worry about things before they become the limiting factor. Signs you might have overdone it. I should have just liked jail. It was the greatest thing I've ever heard. If you, if you go to the doctor and they say you have stage three adrenal fatigue, that was the problem.

Uh, you're in front of my last point. It was being realistic and honest. Oh man. Just being honest with yourself. Uh, well, cause you're not Kendrick.

Yeah. Like being like, you know, I, i am five eight i am not gonna be a forward in the nba no no a step too slow and honest i don't know i saw you out there today you won you won i did win yeah but i was crushing basketball today i went on rebounds i got up no no no how long do we push the the backcourt basketball until somebody blows out an Achilles tendon or something? Oh, yeah.

One of us is bound. I mean, we don't even wear shoes out there. It's about being prepared for situations. We're not prepared for that kind of real athleticism. No. Yeah, but being honest with yourself, I think that goes kind of back to planning, too. And we talked about this in the first segment. In last week's episode, we talked about this in, in the first, uh, in the first segment,

in last week's episode, we talked about planning a year out and, and you have to almost plan that far out, uh, to kind of set up some realistic expectations because I think a lot of times people don't, uh, they're not honest with the results because they never think far enough out to go in a year. I want to be here a year. I want to be there. And it's like hard to be honest with yourself if you don't even have timelines set up. Yeah. People tend to overestimate how hard something's going to be, but they drastically underestimate how long it's going to take for that thing to happen. So if you're talking about being honest, it's not necessarily being honest with yourself about how strong you can get or something like that. It's how long it's going to take you to get that strong in most people's case.

Other things, you might have to be realistic about how old you are. If you're 35 and you're just starting weightlifting, then it's unrealistic to be comparing yourself to the 20-year-olds in your gym as another example. I'm not 35. I can attest. That's a real point you made. Can you mean realistic about how chinese you are uh yeah i'm not very chinese at all so therefore i should not be doing like panda pulls horribly in my attempt to accelerate my whale thing you can google that that's the exercise i painted style way in the pool i'm not trying to be like making a panda joke or anything that's a thing man i don't know like panda jokes was a thing. That is a thing.

I used to make fun of my buddy Lauren's shoes. Is a panda watching this show shaking his head? No, I'm saying that. Sons of bitches. Because if I see somebody, especially in another country, doing something that I'm totally unfamiliar with, but they're good and I think just doing that's going to make me good, that would be a very awkward thing to do. So that's an example of something I wouldn't try if I was trying to accelerate my progress.

Thank you very much. That just kind of goes to looking at people who are more advanced than you like being realistic about where you're at in your progression are you beginner are you intermediate you advance you elite like and i think most people aren't very realistic about just where they're at and their skill level and someone feels like oh i've been weightlifting for a year i'm probably advanced it's like no no not not even intermediate still you You're still in that beginner phase. So just being realistic about where you're at in your training.

Alright, we're going to wrap it up there when we come back. What are we going to do when we come back? We're taking a break. We're going to answer these questions in great detail. How you cannot let this happen to you. Oh yeah. Solving your problems.

We're going to go over the habits so we can overcome these very specific obstacles. Let's just keep making up things we're going to do when we come back. Also, world hunger solved when we get back. All kinds of things. We know that we can already do that. Yes. People are just being assholes. All right.

Later. This is Tim Ferriss, and you are listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter. All right, here we go. Three, two, one.

And we're back. We're going to be talking about all these solutions to the problem. I don't know what I'm saying. I don't know how to intro to this. Slow it down. Slow it down, champ. You're doing a good thing. Don't get flustered.

Well, welcome back. We brought some stuff. Now we're talking about solutions. It's easy. Are we ready? Three. You've had much harder transitions than this one, haven't you? All right.

Here we go. Three, two, one. Shot. And we're back. Attack of the camera. Now we're going to be talking about the key habits to kind of overcome any obstacles you might be experiencing while moving through that weightlifting journey. We kind of touched on getting derailed, falling off the wagon for training and just about anything.

It could be your nutrition. It could be your recovery, all that kind of stuff. Doug, what is your advice to people when they're like, I fell off the wagon? I missed a whole week of workouts last week. What do you actually do? First, get a car. You're still rocking a wagon.

Get a job and get your ass cut. Or learn to drive. Or Uber will always save you. British. There will always be a Uber car. So this reminds me of an article I read. I'm going to reference, I want to say, Muscle and Fitness. One of the bodybuilding magazines like 10 or 12 years ago.

There is stuff to be learned from those. And there was an article. We've been in them. There was an article in there where Ronnie Coleman was doing like a Q&A session. And someone asked him, you know, have you ever been hurt during training? What did you do? Did you stop training for a while? And he basically responded

with, are you fucking kidding me? When have I not been hurt? I don't ever remember not being hurt somewhere. The takeaway there is that something will come up. It's always something. That's what my dad says. It's always something. One fucking thing after another. My dad said the same thing.

He knows this when I'm around. So it will. He's referring to you. It's always something. Doug was always screwing up his dad's life. That's right. The same thing I just did with Charlotte the second goer. I was like, let's see how I did that to my mom.

It's always something that points at me. But no, really, you'll always have something come up. There will always be um an injury that's popping up or you have an achy joint or or you know you you'll run out of gas money you can't go to the gym that day or your buddy doesn't come pick you up or gas explosion something will inevitably happen your friend brings a whole thing of donuts to the gym and you eat them out and you pass out and then you can't train yeah your window gains you blew up and crashed upon you and now you're unconscious so? Yeah. Your window gains blew up. It happens to everybody. It blew up and crashed upon you, and now you're unconscious.

So the path to weightlifting mastery is far from linear. It'll be very up and down, but hopefully over time you're getting a little bit better, and you're not letting those little setbacks really get to you. You're always finding something that you can do, and you don't really worry about what you can't do. So if someone can't come pick you up and you go, you don't go to the gym that day, do you just say, well,

you know, I'll just, I'll just skip today's training or do you, you know, do you go in the garage and do, do pistols and plow pushups and, and whatever else you can do to make sure that you don't lose ground while you're taking your, you know,

or why you can't make it to the gym that day. You can still do something. There's always something that you can do. I feel like that's one of the best lessons you can keep in mind overall. What can you do versus looking for ways of, like, not being able to do what you want to do. Like, oh, I got hurt, so I can't. Therefore, this, that.

You know, it's a bad mindset, man. Even if you don't replicate the exact thing you were doing, it's just keeping up the momentum of being consistent on something. Right. Effort was a plus. Yeah, if you can't do snatches and clean and jerks, like I said, you can just go do pistols. You can do max height jumps. you can go run sprints outside there is something you can do you know

in the case of weightlifters your goal often is to be as strong and powerful as possible there's still something you know power or speed oriented that you can do where there's no excuse that you can't do it you can always go outside and do sprints as i said hill sprints are particularly fantastic you can always just jump as high as you can and see if you can just touch the ceiling. There's something you can do to keep up your explosive capability and to keep some amount of muscle mass on you. Even if you're super beat up and you can't go to the gym, well, maybe that day, that's the day you just go take an extra nap. That's recovery, and that's going to help you. So there's always something you can do.

Do whatever you can that's best to move you forward and that doesn't always mean more training. It could be more something else. Right. It will never be ideal. Your situation will never be ideal. It's never the ideal time to start something. It's never the ideal time.

There's just no idealisms really in life. There's kind of the goal. The idealism gives you direction, something to shoot for, but you are not going to walk that path perfectly you're going to have to you know constantly get knocked off the path and then get back on the path or back off the wagon or whatever you want to call it so you just make you need to make sure for you that you stay persistent and that you simply don't quit

and that because it doesn't go perfectly the way that you wanted to go that you just go well you know i knew it wasn't meant to be and then you just go do something else that you wanted it to go, that you just go, well, you know, I knew it wasn't meant to be. And then you just go do something else. That's the people that are really, really good. There's the people that just kept showing up. And I just piggyback on that and say also that if you did miss a little bit, like Doug says, start again versus the urge to try to gain back all this time really quickly. Like if you miss a workout or two or three, start again where it makes sense. Don't try to make up a lot of lost ground and accelerate the process.

Start again is probably the best thing you can do. I know people, they'll miss three days, and then they'll try to cram five days of training in the rest of the week. It's like, yeah, that's probably not the best idea. Just because it adds up doesn't mean it's going to happen. Now something happened in your life that caused you stress, and now you're amplifying and magnifying it by trying to make it all up. So now you made a hole much deeper than it had to be. Yeah, and kind of going back to what Doug was saying, too, is this happens a lot with nutrition. When I talk to people about changing nutritional habits is there's always an excuse.

It's like, well, there was this event or someone got married or something. It's like they're always like making exceptions to their nutritional thing because things are happening. So I'm like, look, I'll put it off one week because that wedding's next weekend. So I'll just start after that. I was like, it will always be something. And once you do it once, you're going to do it twice and three times. Easier, easier, easier. If you make a habit of making excuses, well, now you're building up the wrong kind of habit for sure. I always bring up McGoldrick when we talk about that kind of stuff

because that's the guy who would say flat out, if you got a wedding, like if Mike was getting married and Mike McGoldrick had a workout plan that was really key to his performance, he'd probably tell you, I wish you the best, but I'm going to stick to my plan. Well, I mean, he may or he'll figure out how to make it work in the middle. He'll be at the wedding and he'll have to wake up extra early or get extra sleep at some other point to make up for whatever. Point being, if you've got a plan, it should be really important

if you're just going to willy-nilly change your plan. And if you do miss a week of training, if you train on your own, just pick up where you left off. But if you're training with a group, it might be good to just say, hey, screw it, I missed last week and I'm just going to pick up where you left off. But if you're training with a group, it might be good to just say, hey, screw it. I missed last week and I'm just going to pick up with the team. Sometimes you got to figure out

is it that you miss a critical progression in the week and that's a time to have a discussion with a coach or is it one of those things where it's better just be doing what everyone else is doing because motivation kind of beats the perfect program. A lot of times these days, the way that I structure my workouts

isn't that I do this workout Monday, this workout Tuesday, this workout Thursday, this workout Friday, et cetera. And then if I miss Thursday, I just skip Thursday and I just move on to Friday. I just have like, here's the 20 workouts or 100 workouts or whatever that I'm going to do in a row. Yeah. I just do workout one. And then if I can't work out the next day, no big deal. I do workout two the next day. I just do them in order. And the actual days of the week that I do them doesn't really matter. I just do these workouts in this order.

Month to month, that doesn't matter, right? You're just seeing the total work you do. You have to keep in mind that works for somebody who doesn't have a problem maintaining a workout schedule. Like none of us have a hard time.

No one has to like, oh man, I have to go work out now. It's like we've been doing it for so long that not working out is the strange thing. So if someone is, you know, that, that might actually be tougher for somebody who doesn't have like the consistency that, you know, someone that's got a decade of training under their belt. Right. I mean, we pretty much train every day and then, and then that's the standard we are going to train every day. And then when we need to, we take a day off.

So I might do like workout one, two, and three. And then on day four, I'm like, you know what? I'm feeling pretty beat up. I probably should take a day off today. And then that's the day that I'll improv. I'll say, well, I'm just going to go and do a little bit of mobility, maybe a few light exercises or whatever. I'll intentionally take a day off.

And then the next day, I'll jump on day four, day five, day six. And what about overcoming impatience? I was just thinking about that. I was impatiently waiting for you to get to that. No, I was just thinking how I'm glad you're part

of the conversation, Chris. No, I was just thinking about the best way I've found to deal with that is just saying what is today in this moment the most effective

or the most important thing I could do with my time? That's been the most thing that helped me deal with that because when you look outward and compare yourself to somebody else, the first thing is what are everybody else doing that I need to catch up to? But I always felt better saying,

out of everything I've got going on and all the real honest problems I've identified, what is the most important thing I could do right now? It could be that I'm tired. The most important thing is maybe a patient being hit in a rack or it's mobilizing a shoulder that is now sore, whatever it is.

Me being present was the first step in trying to breaking through those impatience issues. Yeah. The, uh, I referred earlier in the first segment to the gap, you know, looking at where you want to be and where you are now.

And most people mentally, they spend a lot of mental energy living in the gap. And that is, is how do I, how am I going to get there? And if you can kind of go into your point is be more present, think about where you are right now and what is the very next step and being able to focus on that next step. And I, I find things like meditation kind of help you kind of harness the ability to be present i mean that's that's the whole point um and kind of really focusing on where you are now the very next step not getting caught up in what's happening next week or even tomorrow but just like what is happening today the most unfun part of you can have in a gym is when you're thinking about what

you have to do like the next workout in order to hurry up and get strong whatever because that is the number one way to zap any satisfaction and fun out of the process. It'll kind of haunt you. Versus taking five minutes to sit down, taking just enough time just to relax and quiet your mind before you start thinking about the warm-up you should do, just to give the day's activities a chance to settle so you can fully get into the workout you need to do right now

because that is the most important thing that's going to get you to your goal. It's just right now, what's happening right now in your warm-up. I've done some cool stuff with Mark Devine, which is where you actually – the workout's on the board or it could be on your log sheet or on your phone or wherever it is. Look at it, and as you're looking at it, visualize you doing every single repetition before you get going. And that way, when you do the workout, you won't quit. Um, it'll,

you'll be, the mental fortitude will be there. Like you will be more present. It helps you become present with what's happening today and not worrying about the future. And, um, that,

that impatience is like learning to another thing too. If you're, if you're talking about fulfillment and your training is being able to most people don't do this i know i don't look back on where you came from as like kind of take a moment and think where was i a year ago you're like holy like if you really were to like open up your log sheet to a year ago and you see the weights you were doing or you watch a video and how your technique was a year ago you'd go oh God, like I really have come a long way. Kind of feel that satisfaction and you're less likely to get caught up in, in too much future tense scenarios.

Yep. Absolutely. I agree. Well done, Taz. I agree 100%. Anything you want to add to that, Doug? No, not really. Well, I was going to say, one thing I didn't add to that, I don't know.

Nailed. Yeah, nailed it. No athlete is going to succeed without a lot of visualization as to back up that point. You've got to spend time visualizing and seeing yourself doing the shit. Spend a lot of time. If that's all you did the other 20 hours a day, that would be a good use of your time. Yeah. To make yourself a better lifter.

How long should someone stick to a program before beginning to tinker with it? Because we all have, as human beings, the desire to tinker. I'm tinkering. Because we all have, as human beings, the desire to tinker. Before I add CrossFit weightlifting and CrossFit endurance to my already planned OPT program, what should I do? You should keep doing a program as long as it's working. I think it's as simple as that. If the program is working, if you add 10 pounds to your squat next week, or last week, if you add 10 pounds to your squat last week,

Living in the future. That's right. I'm future casting. So if you add 10 pounds to your squat last week, then there's no reason to go changing things this week unless you add 10 pounds to your squat last week and this week you're like, fuck, my back hurts so bad.

There is reasons to change, but by and large, if everything's going really, really well and you're making progress, then it works. Just keep doing it. There's no reason to make a change if it's working. Yeah, you're probably going to – that'll last for a long time. Then things will slow down. And then before you tinker, then probably all you need to do is just back up a little bit, try to rest a little harder, and then just resume one, two, three times.

Before you change the mechanics and scope of the program you're saying like as long as you're making improvements but you're also not going to make with a with a good program you're not going to see improvements every single day like sometimes you need to let you know uh sometimes week three of a program you're not supposed to be doing you're not supposed to be feeling great you know maybe at the end of week you are. And I think a lot of athletes get confused. They're like, man, I feel really weak right now. The program's not working. It's like, well, during this phase of training,

you aren't going to be improving that very specific thing. So how long do you think people need to give a program a chance before they go, this isn't working? I think on the low, low, low end, four to six weeks is probably the shortest block of time that you should really give a program a chance. Any, any shorter than that, you really don't know how you're responding to that program. Again, strength wise, you probably don't know if it's just totally just destroying you. And like, you're just, you're just crushed. You're exhausted all the time. Like you're all your joints hurt. Like not just like my, my,

my left knee or my right knee is a little achy. It's like both my knees hurt. My back hurts. My shoulders hurt. My neck hurts. My fucking eyeballs eyeballs hurt like i don't need to do this you laugh but my eyeballs have hurt before yeah if your beard's sore you need to like find a new a new program to do so uh if that's the case then obviously you should tinker but in in that case you probably need to tinker probably just need to like make like a dramatic switch to something else yeah but which actually in most people's cases, what tinkering often means, like most people want to,

when they should just be tinkering, like leaving 90% of their program the same and then just switching out one or two little things there, they're actually just totally overhauling their program that is already working. That's true. So they should just be tinkering rather than overhauling. Yeah.

So yeah, that's a great point. I think most people don't tinker like a real tinker, like rather than overhauling. Yeah. So, yeah, that's a great point. I think most people don't tinker, like a real tinker, like the one or two things. Yeah. Because they don't understand the program in the first place. You should think of the smallest effective change you could find. If you don't understand why the program is written the way it is, tinkering is pretty much impossible or intelligent tinkering is impossible.

Charlotte, when you edit this, can we get a tinker count at the bottom? Tinker, tinker, tinker. Yeah. Yeah. Tinkering is like, okay, so last week I did four sets of something. I feel like I probably should be doing five of one exercise. That's tinkering. That's like making a very small adjustment. Or, okay, well, I did push presses. Maybe this week I'll do just straight up barbell overhead press.

It's a very small change. It's the same movement pattern, so to speak. But if you just like want a little bit less weight overhead, you know that an overhead press is slightly lighter than a push press. And so you make that very subtle change just to take a little bit of stress off your shoulders in that case. Do you get any data out of making too many changes at one time? Like in this case, Doug's saying you would change one thing. If nothing changed for the better, you change one more thing.

By doing that, you'll find out where the problem is. You'll learn, oh, for me, I got to watch my volume. You've learned a huge lesson. That'll save you many years of frustration. Yeah. Good point, Mike. Look at you, satisfied in your own points. What about recovery, man?

You've been away up and down for quite a while. What would you say are the three biggest things somebody needs to focus on to make sure their recovery is on point i would say uh the biggest mistake should people go out with a credit card and get a 200 degree freeze chamber for themselves yeah the cryo freeze thing uh i'm sure there's i've never done it but i'm a lot of people who i know like it so that's cool uh but i think the biggest problem most weightlifters make is they're not eating enough of the right stuff so they're just you know they're they're under recovering like i don't know how many times i've had an athlete go i've got 10 athletes on a very similar program

they're all doing it together at the same time one athlete goes man i'm just i'm getting weaker every week i'm like that's funny because these nine other people are hitting their goal just fine. So what's happening with you that's different? I did switch to soy-based all-vegan diet two weeks ago. Yeah, so usually it's like I ask for their nutrition log and their sleep log. And it's like, well, their sleep is like four to five hours and they're not getting enough calories,

they're not getting enough protein. So I think, A, if you aim for a lot of protein, I would say at least at a minimum one gram of protein for every pound of body weight. If you're not getting that every single day, even on rest days, if you're not hitting that as a minimum, then you're not getting enough to fully recover from a real weightlifting program. Also, eight to nine hours of sleep, maybe seven and a half. I mean, people do vary on what they need.

Seven to nine hours of sleep. A great way to find out is to, next time you have a chance, spend a week not setting your alarm clock, sleeping in a dark room and finding out exactly how long it is that you did end up sleeping when you wake up when it's your time. You might be surprised. Yeah. All the people that wake up at like 4.30 in the morning for work are like,

don't set my alarm clock. Ah, brilliant. Never thought of that. What I'm saying is like next time you get a chance, you have a vacation, black out your room next time you're on vacation, just kind of see what happens. Because if you're getting sick and you find out i'm a nine hour person well now that's very obvious and now you know you have to quit your job well at least you can get your ass to bed an hour earlier than you do you don't have to stay up till midnight every night watching game of thrones you don't

have to do that shit son you go to bed early i think in an ideal world you know eight hours is the standard and then for every workout you do that day, you add an hour. So if you did one workout, then you would sleep nine hours. Ideally, if you did two workouts a day, you would sleep 10 hours. Maybe that's eight hours plus a two-hour nap in the middle of the day. But you accumulate 10 hours on the day that you train twice per day. So eight hours plus one hour per workout. When I was training my hardest, I was thinking,

I was getting between eight and a half and nine hours a night and then I was taking a 60 to 90 minute nap somewhere in there during the day. Like, you know, and I would,

when I took my nap, I just, I slept until I woke up. So that's why it would vary between 60 and 90 minutes. But yeah, I mean, that was, I was getting 10 hours of sleep.

You get a nap, like you've said in the past, right? If you got to go out in your parking lot at work for lunch, quickly eat your lunch and fall asleep in your car seat for 30 minutes, that would be better than not getting enough sleep. That's a great skill. I did it like every day for a long time. Especially if I had to go to MMA after work or weightlifting practice after work,

I'd always take a nap at lunchtime because I'd be exhausted in the middle of the day. It kind of reminds me of that point before. Find a way to make it work. Don't look for ways and examples of why you can't get it done. Because there's always a way to get it done. Yeah. What about comparing yourself to others? Just break your iPhone.

Just remove the internet from your life. That's a really good point, actually. Like, not looking on social media. Like, social media fucking depresses people. Yeah. In a lot of ways. You see a lot of gaps between you and what these people are living yeah i mean i i found a lot i found for myself like the more i look at more i look at social media there's many benefits to social media social media is super cool which

is why everyone's fucking addicted to it but but if you don't look at social media or excuse me i shouldn't say you if i don't look at social media i find that i'm happier the majority of the day by not looking at social media we got a point here about prep i'd say good prep point is probably not doing any kind of social media comparison bullshit maybe before you're going to the gym like the first half of your day through work and through that pre-training phase maybe you just need to focus on what's most important to you what you should be doing and maybe afterwards to unwind you can look at instagram and check out what people are doing for training that day because there's always a time to look at it but maybe not before you're going to do your work.

That might be a good story. Yeah, I think it's good to look at it as motivation, but not imagining being there yourself, just kind of being able to get in the head space, like we said earlier, of what's my next step? Not worrying about where this guy is after he's been training for 12 years and I've been training for two months. Kind of to that point, Mike.

Oh, sorry. You have to kind of self-assess how that makes you feel. We talk about social media. If looking at other professional weightlifters or whoever does motivate you and it leaves you fucking fired up to hit the gym and you feel very positive about that and it's not actually a drain that's depressing you because you're not good enough, then that's fine.

But if you notice that when you do see other people lifting and it makes you actually feel bad and you're, you're going into the weight room because you feel bad and you feel like you're not good enough, then it's probably not the best source for you. There's probably another way that you could motivate yourself to do better without depressing yourself. You should go follow Alex Macklin's Facebook feed or his Instagram feed. That is pure motivation. What are all those? They're all like booty Instagram feeds. Booty everything.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Facebook will show you your friend is now following something. Every day it'll be Alex Macklin. Alex Macklin is now following asses of Instagram. Or some shit like that. I know his mom's following him

oh i i just found well you know i'm not even gonna say it because i don't want people to do it um we're saying constantly very bad decisions we're yeah constantly varied bad decisions is uh gonna be the bio of my book or the name of my bio yeah dog how can people prepare how can uh they have a lack of preparation what are some things they can do to prepare better dare i say other maybe remaining habits that can be cultivated yeah um to be prepared i mean again you need to define for yourself like what your actual end goal is you, do you have a

competition coming up in four months or a year or whatever? So competition is the easy way. Cause it's a hard end day. I like having that, that condition in place that you can, that you can build back from and then build back towards. Um, so that, that is key in my opinion. That way you can say, okay, I want to, I can do this much right now. I want to increase it by five kilos or whatever on my snatch or my cleaning jerk. And then you can build yourself a program toward that where you're peaking at the right time. As you get more experienced with weightlifting, peaking becomes very important. You're not just always going to be your best, which I feel like beginners think that like

once you hit a weight one time, you should be able to hit it like all the time forever, which isn't necessarily the case. You'll usually peak and then you'll kind of, you'll come off of that peak and you might be down 5% for a little while until again, you peak again. And hopefully when you peak the second time for the next competition, you're up another two or 3% over where you were last time. So, so identifying a competition that you can compete in, I think is really critical. As you said on the last episode, coming out of a competition, you're just so much more motivated.

So even if you don't feel like right now, you're ready for a competition, I highly recommend that you sign up for one as soon as possible. It's a little scary the first time, understandably, but it's not like you're signing up for an MMA fight where someone's going to punch you in the face. If you screw up, you'll miss the lift.

No big deal. Everyone will understand. It happens to everybody no big deal yeah i think people get embarrassed you know it's like i have lift i have seen people pee on the platform that's about the most embarrassing thing that can happen you might strain and piss on the platform that has happened before yeah but it's still better to get punched in the face i don't know i was to say one more thing about preparation I think coming into every workout knowing exactly what you should be hitting

and nothing more and nothing less and making sure that number is a reasonable step wise one deliberate action over where you just came from always returning your focus to the next best lift you can execute to keep you on your way is a good way of not rushing and keeping prepared

it kind of goes back and or into our our next and final point was being realistic and honest is like uh when you do when you are preparing you know do do just that what you're just saying like like don't set don't set goals that uh are based off what someone else is doing the most important or most effective people in the world every day in their life, and in this case, the most effective athletes every day in the training, just know what you need to get done just this day. This day, here's what I need to accomplish. It's one small step that is manageable.

Yeah, and earlier we talked about tweaking your program. I think that's the best way to tweak a program is tweaking it the day of because you can go into the workout that you already had planned and prepared ahead of time, and you can say, today you know my left shoulder is kind of bothering me so i'm not going to do jerks today maybe i do standing overhead dumbbell press like something that still again accomplishes kind of the same goal but just is scaled down a little bit where you can still work the same muscle groups and whatnot not that the overhead dumbbell press is the exact same thing as a jerk at all but it's kind of similar it's not going to beat your shoulders up as much or maybe you

back it off even further and you do you do like an incline dumbbell press or maybe just do push-ups or maybe you just handstand hold or something yeah you do something yeah perfect handstand holds you do something else where your shoulders can continue to get strong but you're not going to make the problem worse you're not exacerbating injury or achy joints that are already there. Yeah. Which, by the way, is people can be honest with themselves or realistic.

Take off all your clothes and look in the mirror. Stone sober. Say, is this what I really want to look like? No, I mean, I actually think that's probably the most powerful thing you can do is focus on the daily actions. Yeah.

Excellent. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. OMG. What's supposed to happen now, CTP? Well, I do believe that this is the second part in a five-part series. So who knows what's going to happen next week. Next week. Next week is going to – I've got a feeling it's going to be an interview.

Shipping off to a different state. Southern Florida. Miami, Florida. We're going to, I've got a feeling it's going to be an interview. Shipping off to a different state. Southern Florida. Miami, Florida. We're going to be meeting with somebody. And then MIA Classic. We're going to be there hanging out, coaching, and doing some workshops. And interviewing some really awesome people. Probably see a lot of familiar faces, or buns rather, from Alex's Instagram feed.

Yeah. I guess you could say we're going to show you how weightlifting can offer you a lot more than just making you strong and athletic. It can really deliver you. I'll say that. That's a good little tease. Yes.

Yes. So we'll see you for part three next week. Make sure you go to barbellshrug.com, sign up for the newsletter. And if you're looking for weightlifting information, go over to flightweightlifting.com. And we have an e-book there, 55 pages of awesome content that you can consume and make you a better person. For free. For free. Until then, stay shrugged.