Barbell Shrugged - Managing Stress and Performance for Tactical Populations w/ Dr. Mike Lane, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #776

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Mike Lane is a professor at eastern Kentucky university teaching in the parks, recreation, exercise, and sports science on the graduate and undergraduate level. His phd is in exercise physiology with an emphasis in muscle physiology. Currently he works with a variety of sports and tactical athletes and performs research tracking those athletes and their performance over time. Work with RAPID Health Optimization Links: Dr. Mike Lane on LinkedIn Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Dr. Mike Lane is coming into the program. He is a professor in a real college, a place that, let's just say, I may or may not have attended all the classes I was supposed to, but if Mike Lane was my professor, I probably would have gone more,

would have been more exciting. We would have talked about meathead things that I like talking about instead of all those business classes, so boring. Friends, he's also one of our coaches, most importantly, most cool at Rapid Health Optimization. Today, we are going to be talking about managing stress loads and performance for tactical athletes. And Dr. Lane has actually worked with a lot of our pro athletes that are in combat sports. So aligning the skill set of tactical athletes and the physicality of their jobs with also things like

professional boxers aligns very well. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where you can learn more about all the lab, lifestyle, performance, analysis, testing, and program design that we are going to be doing for you. If you want to join us inside Rapid Health Optimization, you can schedule a call. Just get over to rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Warner.

Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mesh. Dr. Mike Lane. If you guys don't know who he is, he is the one that manages all of our boxers with Coach Travis Mesh getting ready to get people to knock other people out. That's what we hope so. We got a bunch about to fight. The power people. Today, though, we're going to be talking about tactical athletes.

And you, pre-show, and you just gave a talk at NSCA in Kentucky, correct? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Spoke about. And a fun word that I would like you to define to kick this thing off. First, give you a little background on yourself, but load carriage. That's what your talk was about, right? Yep. Talked about load carriage and tactical populations. So take it away. Hi, I'm Mike Lane. I did my undergrad in biology and a minor in chemistry because I didn't

know exercise science existed at that point, but was initially working as an undergraduate intern and then graduate intern in strength conditioning and really fell in love with the entire profession of strength conditioning. Worked under a lot of great strength coaches. They were kind enough to help me get a master's in it or to let me get a graduate assistantship where I worked as a strength coach at St. Louis University, got my master's in nutrition because they didn't have exercise science as a master's program. And then from there, I kept continuing to fail upwards and did my PhD at the University of Kansas under Andy Fry, where we did a lot more sports phys. And it wasn't until I came here, where I'm at Eastern Kentucky, that I was able

to get into working with tactical populations. So in my capacity here, we've literally been writing the training program for the morning PT for the ROTC cadets, as well as, you know, helping a little bit with their testing, like doing body composition, a long-term tracking, as well as we're doing some cadet tracking because we have what's known as the department of criminal justice training center. That is like 200 yards that way where every single cop in the state of Kentucky, outside of Lexington PD, Louisville PD and highway patrol all come in for their training. And so that's kind of led me into this kind of load carriage. I don't know if we call it a rabbit hole, but just a really interesting

facet of what is combat phys. So to contextualize that exercise physiology is exactly that, you know, how the body's reacting to exercise. And then the level up to that is sports physiology, because now we're talking about, we have very specific goals, you know, with the boxers, we know we have this rule set, we've got three minute rounds, we have this amount of rest, we have this many rounds that they agree that it's potentially go for. And then obviously a number of criteria that is the end of the fight. Now with combat physiology, we don't, well, we have rules like the Geneva Convention, but beyond that, you know, we can have police officers that spend their entire career and never once have to run after another human being or get into a physical altercation. And then we have other ones that get into, you know, the worst situations of their life day one or literally day, what would be 20 years minus one right before retirement. And so we have to have them ready for those types of actions at any given moment. So it lends you some really interesting

situations because boxers, we've got a great, we know we've got this one to maybe four fights in a year that we're peaking for. But if you're a police officer or a firefighter, you're doing your job. You are on the field once every three days. So how do we develop athleticism? How do deployment so at least we've got more of a true in season and an off season to develop them and i talk so some of them are like yes you know like your special forces they're in and out in and out in and out so like so many different variables i think that's why it's exciting i don't know personally but absolutely you know i'm i know i'm i call myself a power lifter, but unfortunately I'm the call with mash. So we'll say I'm about 80% of mash and 90% of mash on my deadlift.

That one, I'm at least somewhat close. Which era of mash? Yeah, exactly. This era, you're probably being my ass. Dad era. An old lion is still a lion. And I did have a meet this past weekend, and I pulled a 751 at a body weight of 207.

That's impressive. That's impressive. Very impressive. Well, it turns out when you have a 6'4 wingspan and you're a 5'9.5 guy on a good day, deadlift is your friend. Are you similar or conventional? Oh, conventional.

The only way to pull. Sweet. I'm doing an article right now about, you know, sumo versus conventional anyway. Oh, yeah. Well, and getting into anthropometrics and what's going to be optimal. And that kind of lends itself to the load carriage,

which is... Yeah, I want to hear what is this load carriage thing? Yeah, so like, you know, we all carry our emotional baggage everywhere. So I'm just trying to talk about like where we can shove it down. So that way it's going to have the least amount of effect on our performance, but this is the show that I needed to hear. All right. With load carriage, we're really looking about, you know, just the simple reality of the equipment you need to be wearing for your given athletic endeavor. So obviously, you know,

there's a big difference between what's your 40 time wearing your t-shirt shorts than that isn't full football pads. And obviously not that they're having firefighters run a 40, but you know, now we're talking about turnout gear. We're talking about our self-contained breathing apparatus, the SCBA units, the tools they have to carry, hoses, extra air. So some of those firefighters are literally running into buildings with on the low end, 60 plus pounds attached to their body. And on the upper end can easily be over a hundred pounds. And so, you know, with that load carriage, we're not, you know, now we're thinking about training our athletes, you know,

we're going to be training them, not just energy system-wise, but strength-wise, so that they're going to be able to operate in that equipment effectively, and we're not going to be fatiguing out. And that's one of our current research endeavors we're doing over here, in that currently the standard test for Kentucky is what's known as POPs testing. POPs testing is a bench press, a push-up, a sit-up, a 300-meter run, and a 1.5-mile run that they have to pass certain criteria in order to go through. Now, this was initially implemented in the early 2000s. And this is before you've seen the addition of tactical vests, even more hand tools on police officers. So yeah, the police officers that we remember from like the 90s of, you know,

essentially, you know, they got the badge, they've got a gun, and a lot of them didn't even have tasers at that point. You know, they had cuffs and that's about it. They didn't have any near as much equipment that they're carrying. So they're still on very similar physical fitness standards they have to pass.

But now it's the equivalent of, okay, congratulations, you passed this. Now put on this 20 pound weight vest for every single activity you're going to do for the rest of your career in the field. I've thought many times, especially on the police officer side of things, but they do have this tactical vest on. And most of them spend the entire day sitting. And then out of nowhere,

one day, you're going to have to get up and be at a 10 out of 10 when it comes to performance after you've been riding around in a car, sitting at a desk, filling out reports. It's a very different, the scale of their day-to-day can vary so much that being physically ready and to be able to produce that level of intensity when it's needed is a really tricky thing to train for. Absolutely. And, you know, again, like we kind of brought up a bit earlier, you've got a great point of that straight up, you're going from zero to a hundred, you know, you've literally been sitting in a car for quite possibly hours at that point.

And then you have to get out and sprint maximally. And I know just in my early forties, I am hesitant to just get up and sprint in general, much less into a situation that obviously could require some type of force on force. And we're contextualizing this with obviously the immense respect for anybody that's willing to take up this profession. Yeah, no doubt. In situations that you have to make incredibly tough decisions in a very short period of time, that hindsight, yeah, can tell us what was best, but unfortunately, we're dealing with those limitations. So how do we make sure that they have the mobility? They've got the general overall strength.

We can talk about hip mobility. We can talk about low backs getting tight from just having that compression. We can talk about having the sheer work capacity of having the aerobic fitness to be able to, you know, get up and recover in case the situation doesn't resolve itself very quickly. And then it's the, my bad joke back in the day, whenever I would be around students that would, you know, they, they pick up CrossFit and then be like, kind of like, what's your Fran time every five seconds. And I would tell them like, Hey, you pick the exercises. We're going to do three things. I

pick the second exercise. The second exercise is going to be deadlifting 600 pounds for one. I'll give you a one year headstart. And so, you know, it's in that's getting into its issue with the firefighting testing. And part of it, I really do like their test with the CPAT. No, that's with the military. My apologies. I'll fix the right acronym at some point. But they have a dummy drag.

And that dummy drag is usually about 175-odd pounds, higher, lower, in different areas. But we have been in public and realized that the average American is much heavier like myself, 175 pounds. So if the person can only drag a hundred or a 205 pound dummy, well, this dummy might as well be glued to the floor because he's not going to be able to be moved. So again, making sure they have the strength and the conditioning to do that with the external load on top of them with firefighting gear, they're already doing that as part of their testing, which hence I really liked that specificity, but how we do that with the policemen and women to making sure that, yeah,

they can do these physical tasks and what's a task that we can have them do it everywhere. So that way, you know, that's why the old school army standard of pushups, sit-ups and run, you don't need specialized equipment. It's super simple.

And whereas now that i really like the deadlift being added i you know the plank can obviously be a challenge because how do we make sure that subjectively we're doing that correctly right with the you know lift carry drag um you know slide like you know at least it's something we can homogenize and compare from one side to another things Things are starting to trend in the direction, in the proper direction, I think. I actually wanted to hear your opinion on the new test. That's what, like three years old now?

Four years old? Maybe more? It's obviously a massive improvement. I think the old one was like, it was pull-ups, push-ups, basically a mile like a mile and a half run or something like that right and now there's actually some strength and throwing elements in it am i correct yeah so it's an overhead medicine ball throw for distance and yes it's a 3rm on the trap bar deadlift and i think the max there is 345 and just sort of clear for coach mash that's two-handed not one so we know it's really easy for you yeah um you know

the plank the idea is that they hold a good streamline and what i like is they switch the push-ups over to hand release so it's straight up chest to the floor touch the hands out wide bring them back in do your next rep i have less variance than the push-ups they're so so hard to judge that whole you know are they the lockouts man, I used to watch a lot of like it's like people are doing like you're doing like three inches, man, they're crawling up anyway, but at least they're going all the way down, I like the hand release

three inches is more than enough MASH, okay, anything after that is bragging oh, yeah, yeah, yeah and I'm referring to pinpole deadlifts, I don't know what you guys are thinking about because it's a lot if it's not pinpole deadlifts. I don't know what you guys are thinking about. Because it's a lie. If it's not pinpole deadlifts, it's a lie. With the realities of that, and that's the problem. So like a great example at our university where, you know, Dr. Perry and I are working with this ROTC, their cadre, literally their current leader.

I will leave his name out just out of respect, but the gentleman is an animal. He's a ranger. He's now in charge of the regiment here. He literally leads the runs, maxes the deadlift, maxes every single score as a guy who's turning 40 in a month. That's mad at him. And the only thing he doesn't max is the overhead ball throw because relative to his

stature he's about a 5'9 5'10 guy but he's got somewhat short arms so he just has a heck of a time creating that lever you know having that longer arm to throw the ball but at least we've got something that's a power indicator now of course you know the vertical jump has its flaws because well we've all worked with general population and seen vertical jumping abilities and can other company would love to be the official provider of the vertical jump testing apparatus, medicine ball and literally a measuring tape and you can do it. So it's like they throw it behind them as far as they can or going overhead. The old school. Granny toss.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. Looking at that triple extension. Yeah. Sorry-hmm. Right. Looking at that triple extension. Yeah. I was going to say, what's the general structure of how you're training these guys? If they have no idea when they're going to perform or even what the test, so to speak, really is going to be, they don't know if they're going to put in a 12-hour shift where they're going to be in some crazy situation

where they're just got to go all day and all night. You know, September 11th is probably the most extreme example. You don know that you're gonna have to get all your gear and just and just run up and down like huge flights of stairs and then you got and in basically an endless project of cleanup afterward like you don't know when that's coming and most of the time you're just riding around your cruiser and or doing kind of low intensity activities and then and then one day as we've been saying like all of a sudden you have an immense amount to do and you can't be fatigued. So how do you, how do you structure training where you can have enough stimulus for improvement, but not so much stimulus that if, if that very day after, right after training, maybe you're going to have to go into, into many

hours of physical exertion already fatigued from, from the training session you just had. Yeah. And you know, this harkens back to our conversation before we recorded. So it's a combination of EPO growth hormone test, and then just enough DMA to get you through the workouts. No, but this guy knows how to perform. I like it. Yes. Yeah. Can I have some of all of that? Just kidding. I just wish I could wake up with a, anyways, I'm not jealous of your lifting. That is what I will say since it's being recorded.

But at the end of the day, you know, this is where trying to take advantage of cadet training as much to the extent as you had, because that is for sure the last real pre-season technical off season that you're going to have for those professionals. So during that period of time, really trying to develop, and it's very similar in, I like the approach of obviously what we all do at Rapid, where we're trying to figure out like, what are the biggest issues? And a lot of these folks, the issues that they had previously, when we started working with the DOCJT, that's the police training center, is some of the folks coming from the eastern Kentucky components, during their training, they're making half of their hourly wage,

and they would be getting paid during training about $4 to $5 an hour. Now, of course, those wages have gone up a little bit, but the sheer thing is calories. They can't afford really enough food to sustain themselves. Wait, explain that a little bit more what now like when they were like that's what they were getting paid as police officers in some of the smaller towns in eastern kentucky and mind you this was at this point over five years ago and our wages have come up some some of those police officers while on patrol are making anywhere from $12 to $14 an hour. No way.

Wow. And you wonder why it's hard to find people that want to fill those positions. So one of the real challenges, you know, we can have a great training program, but if all they can afford is bologna on hand, you know, you're not going to get a great response. And then, of course, how many of them also have got really bad relationships with sleep. And that's what Dr. Perry and I've been working on trying to figure out what are going to be the first interventions we're trying to do to help improve that. Now, obviously on the training side, that's the nice thing about having, they come in and they do their testing immediately. So they have to prove that they at least are able to pass their test, the POPs testing by the end of it. So from there, okay. How far off is

that mile and a half time? How far off is that 300 meter? You know, if, you know, for example, coach mash and I were going to do it, the bench press would not be the problem. It's that mile and a half run. So congratulations, you and I are going to be living that zone two zone five lifestyle. Yeah. Build that aerobic base. I build that aerobic base i've been living it i've been living it i mean i talked about that earlier yeah yeah yeah but you know so hence trying to build up whatever those you know weaknesses are the most glaring ones and that tends to help things as well as looking on that recovery side of what's their nutrition look like what's their sleep look like it seems like a number of them believe the only thing you can hydrate with is white monster so we are trying to introduce this

thing called water and trying to yes making sure they're doing that but they do a good job of now making sure they get water bottles and they're hydrating throughout the you know throughout the day doing mobility work because they used to have a rash of a lot of issues with uh hamstring strains the issue they have now is they have a lot of issues with both i wouldn't call it a stress fracture but stress reactions in the lower leg as well as plantar fasciitis because these guys are wearing the same pair of shoes for years so and you guys know as well as i do like a good pair of shoes is expensive so that's the question i had what shoes do they wear are they wearing like this like dress type shoes or what are they wearing?

In their training, it's a wide variety of them. Some of them just have got, you know, they stole their dad's new balances. And that's a joke, just so we're clear. I'm not saying these police officers are stealing. And, you know, some of them are wearing like hokas. Actually, I saw a gentleman when he had the testing this past week. He was wearing the actual barefoot shoe, like the ones that were popularized by the gentleman from Kabuki Strength.

And he's actually on the mile and a half on that in the 300 meter. And I'm like, okay, man. Obviously, you can be a barefoot athlete and be capable. But that one, obviously obviously he's been doing this for a while, so I don't think he's going to have an issue, but you have the other folks that, you know, there may be people like me, they like to lift weights, but they don't do much conditioning, especially not much impact conditioning with like running. And so those tissues are just completely undeveloped. So we need to make sure that footwear is optimized

as well as then, you know, what's the surfaces we can go on and train from there. But, you know, to keep going with Doug's really great question, which is, okay, now let's look at their schedule. So if you've got a officer, you've got a firefighter that knows they're essentially on a 24 on 24 off. Okay. Well, that's more for the fire schedule. Then we probably want to have them train and kind of more of an in season. Like we're just hitting the low end of the prolipin volume is just kind of a benchmark. Have that right when they get off shift. So that way, you know, they've got the next 24 hours to recover before they again are back out there. And I, you know, had conversations

with people like Matt Wenning and other folks, and I like his approach to where if we're going to do a lower body training, it is that literally right before we leave. Now you can probably do a little bit of upper body training while you're on shift. And again, we're going to make sure that we control the volume. We're not trying to push ourselves too much. And then that way, cause you know, when they're trying to deadlift that large person that, so they're awkwardly like in between their toilet and their, you know, when they're trying to deadlift that large person, that. So they're awkwardly like in between their toilet and their and their shower, like or their tub, like how do we pick them up without straining our back? And now we're hurt and now someone needs to do overtime and we're all working this comp and it just becomes a greater burden for that department in general.

And then obviously, you know, costs in general for their budget when you have an injured individual. Now with the police, you can see that shift work type situation of them going from those, you know, day shift, you know, second, third shifts, if they're working with a precinct that's gonna be consistent. And so they know again, when those are going to be, you know, let's try to program that lower body training to be in their zone five, the real hard stuff, right before they have a bit more time off, they're going to have that 24-48. Whereas, you know, upper body or just lighter total body, you know, I really tend to think of it if I'm going to go from the sports world. Excuse me as my voice cracks. I'm 41. I'm still going through puberty.

I hope that one day I'll be as big and strong as coach mash but we you know we'll go in you know treat them like an in-season athlete where it's like we can't really push fitness too much or what we do is we think of like a specialization routine of where we're going with just the maintenance volume for strength and for the lower and upper body and then we're going to increase their conditioning a little bit. So we will add a little bit more of that zone five work, perhaps trying to add into some more general zone two work throughout the week, because we know that's not going to be too hard to recover from. And of course, the nice thing is, is you get a lot of these officers that are also doing things like jujitsu. Like, you know, they're actually getting in a pretty

decent amount of conditioning, you know, that has its natural little bit of strength that's being addressed. So we probably just need to do a little bit more global strength, you know, AKA your, you know, your meat and potatoes of your squats and to a lesser extent, deadlifts of making sure that systemically we're strong. And then of course, you know, you get somebody in there that's incredibly strong and incredibly fit but they can't touch their toes unless you know you tie a 200 pound barbell to their hands then yeah then maybe we do incorporate a lot of that mobility work and that can be that down regulation at the end of the day because it's a stressful job and you know then we can and you see how again it sounds a lot like you know a lighter version of the rapid stuff because

now we're talking about breath work which obviously a lot of that area is built on. And I thoroughly suggest everybody here, if they get a chance, they're interested in this world, a great way to start looking at it. And this is from the outside in or somebody like me from Exercise Fizz is look at Dave Grossman's work with On Combat. And he does a great job of just going through the fight or flight response and how when you go through these incredibly stressful events in your life, you're not going to go home and just turn it off. What are you going to do to help yourself downregulate, help yourself relax? And it would be remiss of me not to bring up that very real situation of there is a bit of a cliche in that first responder world is that those folks retire and then they die of a heart attack five years later because it's that chronic stress throughout their entire profession. So what are we doing, obviously, nutritionally to address this? What are we doing sleep wise to address this?

And what are we doing, you know, training and specifically more probably the conditioning cardiovascular training to address this? Because if you're going to go through and you're going to be someone that was to serve and protect you know running into burning buildings for your entire career i don't it doesn't make me feel good to think that person only gets five years you know or 10 years afterwards to enjoy that pension i know that's rough if you're going to add that to society you know i want to be on a beach in florida at some point i think we need to do a better job as a as a industry of like making the breathing thing like uh helping people understand that it's not like frou-frou or that it's scientific yeah i'm talking about myself for the longest time i thought what do you you know i thought breathwork was so silly and cliche and and until you know um was the lady who sent us the book and we had her on um the big

thick blue book and i started reading that body by breath yes it's a and then of course you know joe miller and um anyway i started reading and practicing it it's it's a definite game changer you know as far as not only stress, but like helping your CO2 tolerance, there's so many. We just need to do a better job of helping people understand it's not just some yoga, you know, silliness. Not that yoga is silly, time out. But you know what I mean.

So just because I want to dogpile here for a second, at the end of the day, I like to think of fitness really boiling down to essentially three points, which is you've got a strength side for long-term health. You've got a conditioning, cardiovascular side, and then you have a mobility side. And obviously for good overall health you need all three and of course you know that's where you know we all came up in that era of you know be really strong and like that's all you need or yeah you know be that long distance runner so you got conditioning but again you couldn't squat to parallel even though you weigh 110 pounds because everything's just too tight and of course we've always had nothing always but you've seen the rise of yoga and that becoming, you know, you got the yogis that are like, oh, they have such great core stability. I'm like, I'd like to see them under 405. So exactly. Like you need all three legs for that table to stay up. If you've only got two,

it's not balanced. You're going to have yourself some issues. And what's some of the really cool conversations that I've been lucky enough to have with the trainers over at the DOCJT is they, you know, a lot of them came up in the era of where it was deterrence. Like if you're a big Jack dude, people just kind of assume it's probably not worth trying you just because you're a big Jack dude, but I've done enough jujitsu read getting thrown by small people to know that it isn't obviously just about being a large person it's about obviously exactly having skill and having that conditioning to go behind it and so you know that's what they're trying to address is making sure that we have this holistically developed individual you know because obviously

you know doug can speak at length to if you get somebody that's big and tight, like that's like, oh, let's go because you can put them in bad positions really quickly. And they're they can't try to wiggle out of it. You know, those ankles are too tight. Congratulations. I've got nothing but angry levers to pull on. And, you know, same thing like my the people, I mean, I don't want to get in any physical altercations ever again in my life. But the person that gases out in 10 seconds, like, that's great. You just got to wait them out. And at the same time, I have been punched by people that are not very strong.

And it turns out, if you can't bench an empty barbell, you're probably not going to be able to punch me hard enough that it's going to really register. Again, not trying to block punches with my face. So, again, how do we holistically develop these individuals so that there is no weak point? And the best SWAT guys are now, just like you guys have seen the special forces, they are not Captain America. They are physically yeah, they're like, that's an in-shape guy, but you wouldn't look at him and be like, oh, that dude can bench press 500 pounds. Or, you know, that dude obviously can run a marathon in two and a half hours. They just have that great, just general base of fitness. So it's like, they're ready for the unknown and unknowable. It's like, they've been training to be prepared for a wide variety. I've heard this before.

But would you add one more caveat to that? I would add like stress management in there as well, because let's say that you're super strong, super mobile, and you have great endurance, but you can't handle stress. And so you're going into a fight and your breathing is out of control you know even though you have great cardiovascular you're still gas out because you got your you become so sympathetic it starts dominating so quickly and so i've seen it with so many of my athletes who are incredible who get ready to go into competition and things completely are out the door. So it had nothing to do with the three. It just happened to do with their ability to take on what's in front of them. So to contextualize my pyramid of mediocrity,

that's just to live a long life. That's not to be able to really necessarily do really cool things because cool things. Cause obviously you can just be really fricking strong and do really cool things. Now, what you're bringing up is that's the question where don't get me wrong. My goal in life is to be right more than I am wrong. And I hope I'm doing it at the same time. Now I think it's, we're getting into two interesting and there's going to be more variables there, but I like to think of it and basically break it down to two. How many people are just psychologically the type of person that can survive buds, that can survive ranger selection, that can survive Delta? It requires a type of person with a type of psychology that is not a very normal person.

And this is more in all of that type of person than a type of psychology that is not a very normal person. And this is more in all of that type of person than anything else. And I joke with my students, like if they just had, and I know they have like the version of this that you can sign up for, but if they're like, hey, you can go try butts. Like, we'll just let you do it on the sidelines to be like, this is what an average guy gets through. Like, I just want to know how many minutes I can make it through there. And to be like, cause you know, those human beings are not just incredibly physically strong, but they have a psychological toughness. And then that hearkens itself to, is this a type of toughness that is innate? This is a type of psychological resilience that is genetic in origin? Or is this something

that effectively it's nurtured? It is built to a certain point. Is this something that people need to go through a crucible? Why is it that it seems like there's slightly per capita individuals, more spec ops people that come from Texas? Is growing up in Texas just really makes you want to kill somebody. I'm being very sarcastic when I say that I'm being very sarcastic. However, I do have a joke. If you guys are comfortable with me making fun of Ohio. None of us are. Yeah. Did you guys go to the Ohio Capitol? There are more astronauts that come from the state of Ohio than any other state in the U.S. I didn't say that on my bingo card. Do you know why that is?

I don't. Because if you grew up in Ohio, you'd want to get off this planet, too. Oh! My wife's family's from Ohio, so this will be another reason why we don't get along at Christmas. He's using that Thanksgiving joke on it. He's warming up.

He's warming up here yeah i got a bunch of ohio guys i'm not telling that oh i mean that's where west side barbell is so i mean exactly from my life from that place more than once but yeah um but yeah so you know more to the forum with that i think that's a great point coach which is stress inoculation is great you know the more that we can get people exposed that's why they do simunition. And did Dr. Perry tell you guys about the first time we got to watch them do a simunition pullovers? I don't know what you're talking about, simunition. So what it is, it's essentially they're normal guns,

and in that bullet jacket is essentially a paintball. But it, like, it is a gun. And, you know, you see the mu gun and, you know, you say, you know, you see the muzzle flash, you see the cartridge eject, and there is a projectile going at you. So he and I are wearing like these helmets. So like if it hits us in the face, you know, it's going to be like getting hit with a even more high velocity paintball. Like it's going to sting. And I'll always remember it. And we got to see this simulated pullover where they run different scenarios. And when you see it and you see an actual firearm being turned and pointed at another human being, that's when you see these people freak out.

And first, availability heuristics is a dangerous way to do statistics because you can base it off of that small sample size of what you see and make extrapolations. But the small sample size of what Chris and I saw, the individuals that were in better physical condition seem to have handled that stress far better. And this is literally with one of their trainers coming out of the car and firing in one of the examples, a literal AR at them. Another is they walk up on the car and the person literally leans out and starts shooting at them from inside the car yeah another one is the person's just being an absolute douchebag and trying to get them to do something so that's just more about de-escalation and the other one that was the force was essentially the person uh was trying to do a

simulated um if we have to bleep this out bleep it out but suicide by cop so like one of those and then at a certain point they turn the pistol and face it at a cop and they've got a you know they got to go and they got to make choices and one of the cops uh one of the cadets because they're still going through training and this is probably the first time they're going through this and they're not even told like here's your scenarios they're just like yeah you're going to be up there for this number of times you know have fun so literally the guy comes out you know firing i literally see the cop hunched down behind the car doing this blind fire stuff shouting i will effing kill you yeah and he freaked out he obviously he lost his you know he got scared and guys any of us if we're scared um yes to that extent we're going to make poor decisions that's just

sympathetic you know beyond psychological arousal you are not good at regulating and that's just the horrible situations that these individuals can be put in hence why it's so important they are trained to an incredibly high level and held to a high standard and when he's going through the debrief like literally chris and i just saw this because like i'm not gonna lie he and i are both like turning sideways and like dear god like because he's just blind firing and i don't want to get winged by anything yeah sure the the other instructor so there's one that's like just watching and giving them feedback. There's the one that obviously, you know, was the criminal in that version. Yeah.

It was a debriefing. He's like, okay, first off, if anything happens, you do not yell. I will effing kill you. To which that officer goes, I didn't say that. I didn't say that at all. I said, I said, stop. And like, no, nobody definitely said that a number of times and it's not that you know he's trying to lie because i mean we all just observed it it's just he lost his mind

wow that high level of psychological arousal like at that point i am like in my mind i'm like i wish we had a heart rate monitor strapped onto that guy i wish we had a freaking blood draw of his epinephrine like where is all that sitting at because understandable really high stress situation they even know what the words that came out of his mouth yeah that's incredible yeah there needs to be more study it might have been in in that world and more time spent like let me give you two examples like um there's two one guy i coached who i knew he's just different like he wrestled at ben state he was unbelievable year and like i could you know i never coached anyone like him before i don't think i'll ever will again he's just different he could do whatever you asked he never complained he. He just did it. He said, I need you to sleep this long.

Whatever you said, he did. No problem, right? And I saw him one time. We're in this room, and there's another guy, also an ex-athlete, and they're arguing. And the one guy that he's arguing with is a 300-pound lineman who's going to NC State. So he's going to NCc state so he's going to nc state

on scholarship to play football and this young guy is going to wrestle i mean little like maybe 125 small to penn state to wrestle and they're arguing and i never that young kid, that young small boy was never even panicked or never even excited. He was just listening to the guy yelling at him, and then the big football player smacked him. And he just looks at me as if for me to give him a thumbs up. I'm like, I gave him a thumbs up. And he beat that big boy up so quickly he took him down like a tree and got on top of

him hit him like five times and i said stop and he stopped he's like he was he never got mad the entire time and and the the football players laying there bleeding he's looking at me and i was like you should have slapped him. You know, like, but, and then, so my point being, that same thing goes on. Now he's in Delta Force. He's just killing it. So I got him ready to go, you know, and he's just unbelievable.

Meanwhile, example two, there was a guy who played football with Appalachian State. It was, I mean, obviously he's a good athlete. We're there together and he's strong and he's pretty good athlete we're there together and uh he's strong and he's pretty good but he was also kind of a clown got a lot of trouble would be late and that same kid went on and changed so like um it definitely was not the same so it was like they're not they were not you know this kid did not have that killer instinct, but nurtured it and eventually went on to also be in the Delta Force. And right as we speak, he's about to be promoted to as a general,

not, what is it, the first general, brigadier, whatever. And so it became a Delta Force, that other one. So the one was just born. He was Delta Force from birth. And the other one was just born he was delta force from birth and the other one was nurtured delta force but like you know we could see more time spent on what causes that shit and like i know we do obviously that feels out there but i still feel it's still in its infancy because just now you know it is you know withlifters, we do a little bit and, you know, and they work with us a little bit, but I'm convinced that is,

that is the biggest key. You know, when it comes to athletes, you know, that final 10 elite guys, the only difference is the brain. This final two, it's all brain, but yet we spend so much less time working on that. But anyway. No, I could not agree with you more because it's easy to quantify height. It's easy to quantify certain things like your 40-yard dash. Power, jumping, strength, all that stuff yes but how does one quantify will how does one quantify i don't know you know and then yeah it's hence it's like yeah is there a crucible you need to have so like maybe he had never been challenged and then he went there and he finally had a challenge and he rose to it

because we all know people that have folded like paper like the first time they came up against a real opposition they no longer had the advantage of side like oh god you guys read those guys that hit puberty when they were 12 and they were just absolute monsters in whatever sport and then by you know sophomore junior high school everyone else caught up and not only they lose the lead but they lost the will because they're like well and i'm just a regular guy and you know it's yeah but i watched that kid i i watched him like get challenged and fail miserably you know he didn't do great at upstate at all and like i even watched him getting to two different altercations possibly one with me and like he didn't do well at all and like now is no chance in hell I would want to get an altercation

with this guy. Like, you know, like, he's killed people. He's dealt for us. And, like, how did he change his brain? And, like, we've been friends forever. One day, though, I want to just sit down with him over scotch and be like, what changed you? How did you change?

Because he was a great athlete. We're all great athletes. We were strong and fast and the best of our class wherever we went to school, but he wasn't not that good. Mentally, it was last place. Now,

he's first place. He's about to be darn general and say like how did he do that is my question well you mentioned mentioning simunitions earlier this would be a fun story for people that are long-time listeners of the show so uh mike bledsoe the original host of barbell shrug before anish took over around six years ago this is like 2010 or so we were in san diego hanging out with a couple navy seals we're getting ready to leave we're at these guys house slash apartment and uh let's so takes a shower comes out of the shower i'm sitting on the couch with a guy named brian and there's a nine millimeter on the table let's all comes out of the shower and it's just fucking with us. Kind of lifts his towel up to show his ass

to his buddies that were visiting, just fucking around. And then his Navy SEAL buddy grabs the 9mm off the table and fucking just shoots him with the simunition right in his ass. Shoot him with a what? The simunition.

What he was talking about earlier. It's a real 9mm Beretta, but talking about earlier like it's a real nine millimeter beretta but it has paintball rounds in a real gun right it just grabs it off the table and fucking shoots him right in the ass uh like on his bare ass too which probably fucking hurt like hell they scream oh yeah oh it probably hurt probably hurt a lot and then he wouldn't got his clothes on and took off and to those guys in that world that was like totally fine normal no big deal easy easy money should have moved me yeah it's amazing how relative that um i don't know if i'll call it hazing but just you know exactly

you're around those groups like yeah let's just roll like you know if any of you guys were like I want to wrestle be like okay calm down we've maybe drank a little too much like that's not gonna happen but other cultures like yeah this is what you do you know it's like a box like let's just throw the gloves on let's just see what happens like I'm telling him different time when I grew up in the mountains, it was just the culture. We just fought a lot all the time. It's just the Appalachians. It's not even mean. It's just what you do.

How much did you single-handedly decrease the bear population there? Well, you know, funny you say that, but I have a great-great-grandfather. There's a statue of him because he was historically this great bear hunter. And there's a statue of him, as we speak, in my hometown for killing bears. But not me, him. And there's stories of this guy, Wilbur Waters. You can Google it. And the dude, there's a story, supposedly he fell asleep in his deer stand.

And then when he woke up, there was a bear in the stand with him. And he killed it with his bear. He grabbed his knife and killed the bear. So, like, it's just mountain folk. It's just what you do. Mountain life is different, man. It is totally different. It's like, it's what you do.

There's nobody out there to save you. It's too far away. No to save you it's too far away no for yourself yes there's nobody coming to help you no dr lane thanks for coming to hang out with us man when uh where can the people find you so on social media i know i've got an instagram that i honestly don't do a great job of updating i should probably do that obviously i've got a face for uh radio so i try to keep my face off it as much as possible. And I try to use it as a way to help kind of teach. And then occasionally, you know, I'll have videos of me lifting.

It's usually something deadlifting because I'm just less mediocre at that than the other ones. And of course, anyone that's interested at the program here at Eastern Kentucky University, you know, they can look me up. And obviously, I'm lucky enough to get a chance to work with you guys over at Rapids. So we get to help people be better at punching people in the face and other approaches in life. But yeah. And other goals.

Exactly. Combat sports physiology is so much fun. We got two beasts. We got like, we got one crazy is really good. We got two beasts about to kill some people coming up i'm excited about don't forget about the third there i know i said he's good too like he's just crazy if he get his he's not so crazy he's awesome he's got he's got a guy that he's what we're talking about he figures that whole if he then he's going to be a

killer too well and that's what's fascinating to kind of go off uh on another segue is that he's very smart and he's very interested and then it's kind of you you guys have probably worked with those athletes where you're like i wish you cared less and thought less about this because you're putting so much brain space into these components that it's probably becoming its own stressor because of kind of a fixation. Then if it was just, you know, you get the athlete that you just hand him the plan,

like, okay, cool coach. And they just do it. And you know, never a second. This guy would do that. That guy keeps second guessing and he doesn't do anything.

He's like, you know, I'm like, you know, how about going to sleep, man? Try that. Step one. You know, there's a thought. I love Zio. Oh, wait, wait.

Never mind. Scratch that one. Travis Bass. Masterly.com if you're local. Obviously, come see me at Rise Indoor Sports. Or my email. Obviously, if you want to read any of my articles, JimWare.com. They got them all.

There you go. Douglas E. Larson. You bet. I'm on Instagram. Douglas E. Larson. Mr. Mike Lane, thank you for being here, brother. Love having you here at Rapid, and I was stoked to have you on the show today, so I appreciate it, man. Thank you guys so much for the opportunity. It's been a pleasure, and I've really enjoyed

seeing you guys for, yeah, over God, you guys, over a the opportunity it's been a pleasure and I've really enjoyed seeing you guys for yeah over god you guys over a decade now long time 2011 the very first episode of Shrugged dropped the very beginning of 2012 2012 two years ago it's the 10 year

12 years every Wednesday in your ears. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. And make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.com. That's where you can learn about all the lab, lifestyle, performance, testing, analysis, program design, coaching. And you can access that over at RapidHealthReport.com.

Friends, we'll see you guys next week.