Barbell Shrugged - Metabolic Stress: Science and Application of Sick Pumps and Building Muscle w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #515

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

Barbell Shrugged’s “Functional Fitness Bundle” is for the functional fitness athlete that wants to improve their strength, gymnastics, weightlifting and build a bigger engine in six weeks.   Program Goals:   Improve Gymnastics Increase Raw Strength Master Olympic Lifts Brutal Anaerobic Endurance Metcons Build Aerobic Capacity Peak for the CrossFit Open   What you get: Seven Functional Fitness, Goal Specific Training Programs   Gymnastics Focused Functional Fitness - 6-Week Gymnastics Focused CrossFit Program  ($47) Shrugged Functional Weightlifting - 6-Week Olympic Weightlifting Focused CrossFit Program ($47) Strength Bias Functional Fitness - 6-Week Strength Bias CrossFit Program ($47) Anaerobic Assault - 12-Week Anaerobic Engine Building Accessory Program ($47) Aerobic Monster - 12-Week Aerobic Capacity Accessory Program ($47) Open Prep - 7-Week Competition Prep Cycle ($47) Advanced Functional Fitness Workout Builder - 6-Week Advanced CrossFit Strength and Conditioning Template ($47)   Total Retail Value $329 for all 7 Programs.   This week only, get all seven programs for $97, saving you 70% off retail.   Use code “functional” at checkout to save 70%.    7 Programs for the price of 2 saving you over $329.   Barbell Shrugged’s “Functional Fitness Bundle” is for the functional fitness athlete that wants to improve their strength, gymnastics, weightlifting and build a bigger engine in six weeks.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   What is Metabolite Training (Metabolic Stress)  What are the three mechanisms of hypertrophy What is metabolic stress Benefits of getting a pump for building muscle Common drawbacks to this intensity What are the best methods for this training Post Activation Potentiation  Four most common forms of Metabolic Stress Training   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa ———————————————— Please Support Our Sponsors   Fittogether - Fitness ONLY Social Media App   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, we're teaching you how to get the super sick pumps. Metabolic stress, one of the three main ingredients in building muscle hypertrophy, often showing up in the form of metabolite training cycles, somewhere in the six week range, why you need them, some of the drawbacks that go along with metabolite training, and how you can use this methodology and use metabolic stress to get giant muscles. That's what we're here for. Everybody wants to get super sick pumps. Everybody enjoys lifting weights. When you walk out and the skin is peeling off your arm because your biceps are so jacked, that's what we're going for today. It's also just a key ingredient to hypertrophy, and it's really important to understand the best ways to go about it, some of the drawbacks that come along with it,

why it's so challenging, how far you should push yourself, and we're really excited about it. Speaking of excitement, it is for functional fitness athletes that want to improve their strength, gymnastics, weightlifting, and build a bigger engine in six-week programs. There are seven programs in this bundle, encapsulating the five big areas of fitness that every functional fitness CrossFit athlete needs. Strength, Olympic lifting, gymnastics, increasing your work capacity, not just overall work capacity, but we have two programs, aerobic monster for long workouts, building your aerobic engine and then anaerobic assault, which is for building your anaerobic engine, seeing how hard you can go, how fast you can go for shorter workouts. And then our testing

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workout builder for an advanced functional fitness athlete so that you can go in and specifically pick your weaknesses and build the workouts out. It's a much higher volume, higher kind of capacity program. So seven programs all for the price of $97, saving you 70% off. If you go over to barbellshrug.com forward slash FF bundle, it's barbellshrug.com forward slash FF bundle. And over there, it'll also be in the show notes. You should totally do that. Use the code functional. It's going to save you $329, all seven programs for 97 bucks. We're really stoked to put this out. We all love CrossFit so much. We all love functional fitness. It's our biggest audience of people that want to learn from us. So it's really cool for us to write some new programs towards functional fitness athletes

with all the things that we have learned, all the experts we've talked to, and how we're able to structure these six-week programs. Ideally, you're going to be doing one of them at a time, focusing on your biggest weakness, bringing that up to speed with your strengths, making your strengths stronger, improving your Olympic weightlifting, getting stronger, building a bigger engine,

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My name is Anders Varner, Doug Larson, in the house, Coach Travis Mash, coming to you from Lenore Rhine University, the strongest weightlifting campus in the whole wide world. Dude, you really do have like the strongest school. There's no other schools stronger than your school right now. No chance. That just follows you around. That's just everywhere you go, it has to be the strongest. Yes. Today on Barbell Shrug, we're going to be talking about metabolite training, metabolic stress, the three mechanisms of hypertrophy, and we're going to talk about the most fun one. We always talk about getting super jacked, which is a lot of fun, but we very rarely spend much time talking about just getting a sick pump and all the ways that you can do it.

Doug Larson, tell me about metabolic stress on the muscles, why we need it, and let's, let's, let's break down like the three mechanisms of hypertrophy. It's just starting at the very top and then get into why metabolic stress is, is an important piece of that. Yeah. One of our most popular and informational shows we've ever done, I think was the show we did with Andy Galpin, where we, we covered those, those three mechanisms of hypertrophy, uh, which really Brad Schoenfeld kind of has really pioneered and made, uh, mechanical tension, metabolic stress and muscle damage, those three mechanisms. He's kind of really brought those into the forefront of, uh, strength conditioning and, um, everyone knows about them but mechanical tension I feel like gets a lot of the attention where if you're trying to get strong you need to lift heavy weights of

course and then muscle damage a lot of people focus on that especially in CrossFit like you know especially when you're new like you're just focusing on like how sore you are and like it must be working I'm really sore and then metabolic stress uh you know to simplify basically you know is the pump and that seems to be more focused on in in the bodybuilding physique world hypertrophy world uh it doesn't get quite as much attention in the the crossfit weightlifting world but but inevitably if you if you lift weights, you tend to, at some point, decide that, hey, a pump feels good. I like having a pump. It feels rad.

Arnold said it feels like you're coming. That's right. Yeah, like your muscles are swollen. If you look in the mirror, you look bigger and stronger than you normally look, and everything kind of feels tight. It feels fantastic. It's like Arnold said. It feels like I'm coming. If you don't know what we're talking about,

you've got to go watch Pumping Iron, the original docudrama in the TV world. I'm coming in the gym. I'm coming home. I'm coming home. Yes. Arnold had it figured out when he was like 23 he just

stayed 23 even though he's now like 65 he's still he just like this is the way you just go through life being super attractive and jacked all the time he figured it out oh yeah his whole life he has just oozed charisma he walks in the room and people

just like everybody stops and just knows that Arnold's there. Like you can just feel his presence. I hate to be this off topic already, but you actually tell my favorite story about Arnold when you met him. Well, not when you guys didn't get to interview him, but when you were – the way you tell the story of like – when Arnold walks in the room, Obama could be there, Trump could be there. Every most powerful person in the world could be in the room, and then they all go, Arnold's here.

That's Arnold. They're all the same, except Arnold's way more jacked, and he wins. He's probably also the most famous. Arnold can't go anywhere on the planet earth without everyone in the room knowing who he is like there's no like tucked away corner of the world where people are like i don't know who that guy is yeah so great all right all right we got so off topic that's what arnold does he steals the show um mash how uh tell me about programming this stuff and how how do you go about uh because there are a bunch of drawbacks that we're going to get to uh but but getting into some of the benefits of um adding in metabolic stress to to training um how do you how do you set this stuff up in your programs well Well, definitely towards, you know, like when we're getting closer,

it's going to be probably the opposite of what people think. But, like, the closer we get to a competition, when we still want hypertrophy, yet we don't want muscle damage, you know, it flips to that's the focus. Because, like, you know, we will still do, like, even the week of, we'll still be doing lateral raises. We'll still be doing, like, we'll be doing barbell rows. We'll be doing things that have gotten us where we are.

You know, we've gotten really good because we have developed the system, and so we don't want to lose the system when we need it the most. So we just switch to that being the focus because it's easy to recover from. Like, the beautiful thing about metabolic stress is that you recover quickly. I don't have to like, you know, you're not fighting with, you know, the muscle damage. Like, you know, when you do RDLs and it makes you super sore, it also takes longer to recover from.

And during the last few weeks of competition phase, that's, you know, the last thing you want to be doing is battling phase, that's, you know, last thing you want to be doing is battling RDLs for, you know, what's important. So that's what we do towards the end, whether it's hybrid extensions, whether, you know, we do hybrid extensions versus RDLs. We'll do lateral raises versus like, you know, you know, strict presses, you know, so that's, that would be the way we make the switch in weightlifting. And the same goes for if I'm taking an athlete, a football player, or if I was coaching a CrossFit.

If they're getting ready to go into the games, I want them to go healthy. So I want them to keep the muscle mass that we've added throughout the year. So we'll switch it to mainly focusing on metabolic stress and way less about muscle damage. What are some of of that what are the kind of the overall rep ranges that people want to be looking at i know you know if you're looking for max effort uh somewhere in a one or a two that's going to be really in that mechanical tension where you're just working on building um top end strength even all the way up to fives

uh but when you start to get into the metabolic stress side, where, where should people be hanging out in, in those rep ranges? Is there an actual rep range that it's kind of ideal or, you know, too little, too much? Where, where does that sit? Yeah. I mean, I think we'd all agree. It's somewhere in that eight to 12 range. You know, that's, I mean, that's the way i program it if i'm doing lateral raises we're not going to do a 3rm you know plate lateral raise we're going to do you know 8 to 10 probably i think people in a way naturally if you've been in the gym a little while they almost naturally uh start to uh fall into those rep ranges just through exercise selection.

When you bring up lateral raises, I've never in my whole life done a one-RM lateral raise. Yeah. That would be awesome though, right? Just a whole bunch of like using my thoracic spine to throw weights one inch higher and act like I did something. You just can't do it. I'm chalking up just can't do it. Chalking up.

Grabbing some dumbbells. Snorting pre-workout. You're like, what? And then just drop them from like the wing position. That would be awesome. We should do that. I'm excited about it. I feel like a lot of that stuff, you know,

sometimes the rep ranges and this stuff, i often think about uh the metabolic stress like yes we all want to be getting a pump um and and that's that's a lot of fun it's like 50 of the reason why we why we do this whole thing um but coming from the crossfit world and i wonder why if this is why crossfit works so well for so many people that have never really done it. I feel like the Metcon and doing things for time, when it was originally started, like 2000, I don't even know when Glassman first started doing Metcoms. But he basically just took supersets, dropsets, giant sets, and turned them into a race. Like it's all in this metabolic stress time window. It all uses the methodologies that people study. The difference is, and I think this is where CrossFit really starts to get a weird little hang up, is that if you do it and you're doing a set of 21 on lateral raises, awesome. You're going to do something that's very, very healthy for your shoulders. You're going to be

doing it with weight that you can use proper form. The problem is where you start focusing on a time priority or a score priority or a load priority and not on a movement priority. And I think that this is where things start to get a little weird is that the focus of this type of training has to really stay. to do it a disservice if you are just doing the reps without thinking about the proper movement patterns and what muscles you're actually supposed to be doing or muscles you're supposed to be using. If you're setting up for a lateral raise and you're just throwing weights around, you're doing nothing. If you're using a bunch of back to throw weights, and when I think about overall metabolic stress, everybody kind of knows how to get super strong. And then when you get into this extra piece of metabolic stress, it's like, okay,

are we going fast? Are we doing it the CrossFit way? Are we doing it the bodybuilding way where we're just getting a huge pump and we're sitting on machines? Or are we doing it the Olympic lifting way where we're not trying to get sore, but we're trying to maintain positions and have faster recovery? So this one seems to be the one that gets tweaked more and more specific to the goal. It's hard to argue with the mechanical tension piece where it's like everybody knows that you just have to get jacked. You got to add more weight to the bar.

And ones, twos, threes, fives, it's pretty simple. Is there like a way in which this stuff kind of self-selects rep ranges and what you're going to be using just based off the exercise selection? I mean, I would definitely think so. Like, you know, like, um, I never really even thought about that, but like, I guess, you know, you, you, when you've done it, so I don't know if that's good or bad. No, I think you're definitely right. Like, I feel like when you grab a little 20 pound dumbbells and you know, that it's going to, you know, you're not going to do three reps. I feel like, you know, that I feel like you just automatically know what you're going for.

You're going for that, you know, the blood you're, you're going for the pump. And so, you know, you're, you're going eight to 12 reps. Whereas if you get a, you know, get a big barbell on your back, like, it's just like, I feel like instantly, you know, maybe you're going to do that, but that's not your main goal. You're trying to see how much you can lift but i've never really even thought about that in weightlifting the the number that goes down on the on the paper gets input into the system afterward that gets displayed online for everyone to see that's what you're trying to do you are trying to just post a score so to speak but uh for for bodybuilding where metabolic stress and the pump is is that

much more prevalent, like I've heard Ben Pekulski, former top 10 bodybuilder in the world, he said if you're focusing on hypertrophy and you're just trying to look good, you don't have performance metrics you're trying to hit specifically because you're not a weightlifter, you're not a powerlifter, you're not a crossfitter, you don't have to go a certain speed, your entire focus should be completely internal. You shouldn't be worried about what the weight is or how fast the weight's moving you should just be feeling the muscle you should be feeling the muscle contract you're you're eliminating momentum you know like that's like the classic bodybuilding thing like

slow controlled reps no momentum and then that's how like their arguments for like you know why kipping pull-ups are terrible and they're not real pull-ups. That's how those arguments come into being where you're using the rest of your body to generate some momentum. Therefore, your biceps and your lats and whatever else don't have to do all of the work so you can do more reps. In bodybuilding, when you're trying to get a pump, not that you can get away from having mechanical tension or creating muscular damage while you're creating a, while you're creating some metabolic stress and getting a pump, they're all going to be working at the same time. But if you're using lighter weights and you're really focusing on, you know, that, that mind muscle connection, the bodybuilders talk about where you're, you're getting that, that squeeze and you can just feel the muscle working through its entire range of motion. You can start to feel that, you know, that, that pump emerging. That's, that's really where the focus should be. If you're during that phase

of your training, maybe you're not actually a bodybuilder, but once you say you've, you've done all of your snatches, clean squats, et cetera, and now you're just doing assistance work at the end of the workout. Well, now it's time to switch from, you know, how fast is the bar moving? So to speak to just what are my muscles feel like during the contraction am i getting a good squeeze can i can i feel them contracting all the way like the focus switches from external to internal yeah that really is like the the big thing that everybody kind of makes fun of it when you do a bicep pump and you do it nice and slow and you feel the entire range of motion i hope you're driving right now and you're doing a bicep curl with no weight like I am just talking about it. Yeah, when you're doing it just to get the pump, you have to sit

there and think about the muscle contracting through the full range of motion. And I think that's what Glassman did when creating CrossFit. He was like, well, instead of us slowing this down, why don't we speed it up and see how fast you can do this thing? Because they're the exact same movements. They're the exact same rep schemes. It's just all of a sudden, now we have a different goal at the end versus going slow and being super methodical about feeling every ounce of the movement and making sure it's put perfectly into your bicep. Now all of a sudden we've got a sport that we can create out of creative metabolic stress. And it's really, really painful. That's why CrossFit's really hard because this type of training is just really brutal. Even if you're just doing it in a

bodybuilding sense. I was actually really surprised when we had Coach Kasem on the show to learn about the bodybuilders training and that they don't even really focus on the mechanical tension side of training, they're just too big and there's too much muscle for them to be worried about getting really, really strong. Right.

Your potential goes up too. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think, I don't think all I don't think all, I think that was just him. I think there are bodybuilders who do focus on,

you know, getting strong. Like, you know, obviously Ronnie Coleman had a big, he's very strong. And,

you know, Johnny O'Jackson, huge emphasis on getting strong. And so, and, you know, Ronnie's probably the best of all time. So like,

you know, I definitely wouldn't suggest bodybuilders out there to not do it. But, you know, Ronnie's probably the best of all time. So, like, I definitely wouldn't suggest if bodybuilders are out there to not do it. But, you know, I get why he would. Because, like Doug said, yeah, when you're going heavy, there's definitely, like, a risk of injury. But there's a way to go heavy safely as well, though. You just got to, you know, like, for example, using velocity would keep you from ever truly failing

if you wanted to use that yeah yeah and he also doesn't mean the bodybuilders never add weight to the bar and they just oh yeah you can just keep light weights forever like they they might be talking about just pure top-end strength saying that okay these bodybuilders they're not trying to bench five six seven hundred pounds like but they might still be really fucking strong if you're if you're 245 pounds and you're lean and you're just fucking pure muscle and you're that big like you might be doing you know dumbbell pec flies with 80s like you're still you're still you're still very strong but you know but maybe you own quote-unquote only bench 400 pounds or 350 or something like

that like but you're not benching five or six or seven like the power lifters and so you're you're you're in their mind on those lifts not very strong even though compared to the rest of the world you're pretty fucking strong yeah i think there's more gray area i'd actually love to hear from you guys on this that um have been in a little bit more of the exercise science but how do those two kind of the mechanical tension and the metabolic stress, because when I think about them, you're still, in the end, trying to add weight to the bar or trying to add weight to the dumbbells and get stronger. Like, no matter what rep range I'm doing, it's not like if I pick up, if I'm doing RDLs for like 10s and 12s with 225, I'm not getting stronger. You're still putting a crazy load on your body, having to maintain good positions and move around a joint.

So how does metabolic stress actually play into total strength? Because I don't feel like the three categories of hypertrophy really are that different yet they get separated out well i think that you know the with the metabolic stress one thing that you know that people don't talk about is is the you know recovery factors that that come from metabolic stress which is weird when talking hypertrophy you think ohglycemia, you think, oh, it's beating me down and I'm going to have to recover. But, you know, the hormonal release that you get, there's definitely recovery factors.

When you have an increase in, especially if you have an acute release in testosterone, growth hormone, IGF-1, you know, when you get those pumps, you know, like Brian, was this on that? No, this was on a different show. Brian Mann was talking to us about, like Brian, was this on that? No, this was on a different show. Brian Mann was talking to us about like, when, when you're doing velocity and you're like, say you have a big dip one day and you're like, you're weak, you know, you're beat up. He said, that would be a great day to like, if you're a powerlifter or a weightlifter, or even if you're strength conditioning,

go away from those really complex lifts, like snatching, clean jerking, even squatting, and go bodybuild that day because the hormonal release that you'll get will help you recover, you know, both in your CNS and in your PNS. So, like, there's that benefit that is not talked about near enough. Yeah. Is there any drawback to training in this manner and doing more metabolic stress type workouts? One thing that, you know, Mash, when I think about Olympic lifters, they need to be, it's like, everything is fast twitch.

Everything needs to be as fast as possible. possible and then you know you you set them up with higher rep ranges and all of a sudden we might have some sort of conversion of muscle fibers that that makes them slower and actually uh less speedy strong under the bar if you have that athlete who is like who happens to be in the sport of weightlifting that's slow then you need to be careful you know but like most people who are in the sport of weightlifting are naturally faster people. There's nothing I can do to make Ryan slow. Because he did CrossFit, and what happened is that

CrossFit flushed him out because he could not go slow enough. His phosphatidyl creatine system is going to be, it's going to take precedent over any either glycolysis or oxidative systems. He just is an explosive one rep type of person. And so when I do some hypertrophy, it's not going to make him slow. But there are other people on our team. Like we did this this we tested them and over the last couple weeks we did some testing to see who needs to focus on getting strong and who needs to focus on getting fast and there were some people on my team right now who are pretty good weightlifters who tend to be a little bit slower so yeah for

them we're not going to do a ton of like you know slow bodybuilding especially until we get them to where i want them to be in that force velocity curve so well how long should people be in this like metabolite phase of training you were talking earlier about it it showing you guys do it before meets and stuff so that they can recover a little bit quicker. But how long is too long? Because I think that another piece of this type of training is that it's really hard mentally to go. This is why I often associate this type of training to CrossFit and like the Metcon side. I think Metcons get all this like rap about the breathing part,

but nobody ever thinks about the fact you just did 45 reps of thrusters and pull-ups, 90 total reps in three minutes when you do Fran. It's a massive workload and it's mentally taxing to think about going and doing that type of training every single day. How long is a good phase for focusing on metabolite just in a way going to the pain cave i think louis simmons would say it would be it would be all the time he's like he's he believes in doing hypertrophy work year round and i'm gonna have to agree with him but i would say the exercise selection so you mentioned pull-ups that would definitely be one we're going to avoid like the last six weeks before competition because you know as you're lengthening the muscle you're not

kipping pull-ups yeah yeah if you're doing like you know slow yeah muscle you're going to create even with you know strict it's going to create muscle damage yeah muscles you're going to create muscle damage however if i do like uh you know like um rose i'm not or if i'm going to do like uh you know instead of instead of thrusters i'm doing leg extensions you know believe it or not there are plenty of there are plenty of weightlifters right now who have weak quads on my team we have people who need to build their quadriceps and so like a leg extension is fine you know and it's not going to create a whole lot of muscle damage either um it's just going to give

a massive pump though you're going to get a massive pump and feel great but you're not going to be ripped apart like you would when you do a squat so it'd be really be exercise selection would change more than our purpose because i don't think people really freak out. If I'm thinking I got to do 10 by 10 on squats, I'm scared and it's going to be a terrible day mentally. It's going to be a lot. However, if you're saying lateral raises, four sets of 10, I'm not scared at all. Or if you say go do some leg extensions after, you know, my workout,

that's not going to scare me. So it'd be really be like the exercise selection will change more than, you know, more than should you stop doing hypertrophy i mean but of course and you can't stop doing hypertrophy regardless if you're training there's going to be some type of hypertrophy you know happening yeah even if you're not trying to get bigger you're also probably trying not to get smaller at least at least for your muscles you don't want your muscles even if you're trying to lose body fat and you're in a caloric deficit and you're trying to hit your weight for your weight class, you're still trying to maintain and preserve as much muscle mass as possible.

And so still having a little bit of the higher rep ranges, the shorter rest intervals, getting a pump, that can contribute to the maintenance of the muscle mass that you currently have. Yeah. So long people gave Louie a hard time about, you know, about this, you know,

cause you know, he's like saying you should be doing bodybuilding, you know, the week of the meat. And now if you go to a weightlifting competition, go watch and see what the Chinese do. The week of the meat, like their bodybuilding,

they're straight getting at it. They're doing dips, lateral raises, front raises. Like, I mean, honestly, the reason why we do plate lateral raises because

i saw lou doing it because lou does it yeah exactly that's the reason everybody does it i have to use a green a green 10 kilo plate to do my raises everybody started doing the full angel raises right he made a lot you gotta go you gotta go a thumbs up the whole way around just like he does perfect shoulder position absolutely i don't even know if it works but he did it so i started doing it and it looks cool as shit on instagram and he's jack so i mean i want my athletes to be jack so you guys gonna do that too this is the bottom line we follow instagram people that are really strong we just try and do what they do.

Right. There's something to that, right? We lost all credibility right there. That's so great. But he's the best in the world, so it's got to work. I wrote down four ways in which a lot of this type of training shows up, the most common being supersets. And I think this also gets into a really cool conversation. We could do an entire show just on supersets alone. But how do you structure supersets? Because there's kind of the antagonist push and pull, the same muscle group agonist sets in which you're, you know, if you're doing curls

and focusing on the bicep, just taking two exercises and going back to back with them. And then I'd love to get into just kind of like how we set up with rest periods in between so that you know that you're not overdoing, you're actually maximizing, getting a little recovery in there. But how do we, what's like the getting a little recovery in there um but how do we what's what's like the best not even the best but how do you think about structuring uh supersets when when you're writing out training i'm gonna go conjugate method i i do both so like i love the push pull i know we've all talked about doing you know i love doing you know like uh the hammer

strength like chess machine with a hammer strength row machine. But then there's times where I'm going to do like, you know, the hammer strength chest press with a hammer strength fly. And so now we're doing, you know, the same muscle and just doubling up. So I think the key is just don't do the same thing all the time. I don't know that – is there a way to prove one's better than the other? I just think that change is often, you know, maybe do a four-week block where I do push-pull,

four-week block where I'm doing, you know, the same muscles together. But I don't know if there is one size fits all. What about you? What do you think, Doug? Just a reminder, friends, this week only save 70% on the brand new Functional Fitness Bundle, seven programs for the price of $229. $329.

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You can just do straight sets and you don't have to pair them at all. But for time reasons, for the efficiency of your workout, just to get a lot of volume in, in a short period of time, I think it's wise to do super sets and giant sets and things like that, which these techniques, these, these Weider principles,

so to speak, used to be that much more novel back when bodybuilding was just straight sets. And they were like, you could pair two sets together. Amazing. But now, like now that people do CrossFit,

like it doesn't sound that crazy to be like you're gonna do push-ups and then rows right afterward they're like well yeah it's just like fucking this is what you do yeah so it's not so it's not not that crazy but if you're you may even do snatches in the middle of it why not yeah so yeah the you know, pairing, pairing a press with a pole, that's like the easiest, probably most common way that people use, use supersets. But yeah, you can do a compound movement and then a single joint movement right afterward. Like if you, like, like I have really long arms and so my triceps tend to be my limiter more so than, than my pecs on pressing, we'll say.

And so maybe I go do you know a set of bench press and then right afterward i do i do higher up tricep extensions just to give my triceps a little bit extra work um i think i think having that model of compound movement plus single joint movement right afterward for the for your lagging body parts is is one uh one way that works really well yeah i'm gonna give you guys the best tricep pump of all time yeah you take you take dumbbell tricep extensions rock and rolls west side we call them rock and roll so you bring the dumbbells to your shoulders you kind of rock back so you're going to get the long head bring it back and then extend so you pair that and you do five to six reps on that one paired with pushdowns, 10 to 12 reps,

and you do anywhere between six to eight sets, maybe 30 seconds rest between the pair, go do that. And what's your goal? The goal on the tricep on the rock and rolls is to periodize up. So if you start with 35 for five or six, try to go to 40, 45, you're working your way up on that one. Meanwhile, maintain the same weight on the pushdowns. You will have the biggest tricep fives for five or six try to go to 40 45 you're working your way up on that one meanwhile maintain the same weight on the push downs you will have the biggest tricep pump of your life there you go that's free pause this go do it and come listen to the rest of it i feel like if somebody wrote that on paper like it it's so funny what CrossFit has done. If you wrote that on paper, they'd be like, oh my God, Travis is getting a huge tricep pump. And you write it on paper, it's like an ascending ladder and a descending ladder.

And people are like, I'm going to smash that. I would do that in like three minutes. Oh, God. When you reframe accessory work into a sport, you call it CrossFit. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've been doing that a little bit lately because I'm trying to get my – there's a time where if work capacity becomes important to you, but I feel not going to – I'm never going to sacrifice the quality.

Well, I think that that's really just where the conversation gets really, really muddy is that in order to do some of this stuff if you're fight the the overriding principle i think in what separates this and where we start to get mad at each other in these like bigger concepts of crossfit being right or bodybuilding being right it's like as soon as your movement break that breaks down we can all agree that you should stop doing whatever you're doing it It's wrong. And just don't move poorly. And it's not worth sacrificing. If you're in bodybuilding, you're not getting a pump in the muscle that you're supposed to be working. So you're wasting your time. If you're doing it

in CrossFit, you're probably moving too fast and just trying to fight through whatever muscles just too tired to work. So you're going to start risking injury. And there's just no reason to go past, you know, muscular failure and just keep pushing for the sake of the clock or for the sake of getting an additional rep and being able to write it in your logbook. Like it just isn't worth it. So that really is, I mean, the entire EMOM aesthetics program that Doug wrote is, is this type of training. And when one of the things that I was doing when we were kind of putting these workouts together in that, in that ebook is I was in here absolutely massacring myself doing it the wrong

way. Cause I like to go take two of them, like take a heavy squat and then take like a reverse lunge and pair those together and then go into like a more hip dominant. So it's like a full lower body day in which I go back to back supersets, but it's all in lower body. And then the problem is I can't walk for three days. And that is not a smart way to do it. I really love doing it the more intelligent way now and just doing full body work. And if you don't have a ton of time, I think that supersets are just a phenomenal way to get a lot of volume in, really focus on

quality movement and pairing it with like a big multi-joint compound movement. And then as Doug said, kind of taking that more aesthetics approach to whatever the second movement you're pairing it with. And that aesthetic thing is also can be used as a rehab thing. It can be used for just ensuring quality movement patterns, creating mind muscle connection, creating really good wires in your body. So you move better.

All of those things, when you slow them down just enough to really be able to focus on what muscles are supposed to be used and how to properly execute those movements it just creates a much healthier joint and and you're really focusing on the the muscles that you should be in order to get the result that you're looking for. I think if you're not careful, when people are getting crazy, they're going to move away from muscle damage and they start moving into joint damage. And that's a big difference.

And so damaging your joint is not cool. It's not hypertrophic. It means you're about to get hurt. Yeah. Not cool. Not cool at all. Well, then the next step to this is giant sets, which are probably less common, and I would say that's a good thing. For the most part, do you guys ever set these up in your own training?

I do, just because my goal is, you know, work capacity right now. Yeah. My goal is, you goal is I'm trying to get in better shape it's not some I mean it's still at birth of me but it's the my priority right now is to like get in better shape I say that after like crushing my dark energy I'm really focusing on my health which is why I'm only taking two scoops of pre-workout at 6 a.m right we're chased with a monster yeah and i'm gonna just have one monster a day versus three i mean that's improvement man it is a step up so so yeah you know i think giant says all right it just depends on when i think a lot of bodybuilders would agree that you know towards at least the

friends the bodybuilder friends i've had in the past would say, especially towards the end, when they know that they're just trying to maintain what they've done. They're not trying to build extra muscle because they don't have the calories to do it. It becomes a good time to throw that in. I view Giants as kind of like're interval met cons in a way, like say, say you structured a, like a, like a E3 mom. So every three minutes on the three minutes and you chose, you know, three, four or five exercises to do every three minutes on the three minute, or maybe even every four minute on the four minute. Like I used to do a thing where I would do, I would do something heavy, something

explosive, and then like one, two, maybe, maybe three, um, more metabolic stress, higher rep range, volume oriented hypertrophy type assistance work. And so I might do like a heavy front squat, you know, like for like a double. And then I would immediately do like five reps on a max speed, max jump height burpee. So i'm just moving very quickly all the way down to the floor and then get up and jump as high as i possibly can and then then i'd move to you know from there i usually do these at at a lifetime um where i would do my seated rows next and then maybe a set of weighted push-ups and then some bicep curls or whatever and like that and that's that's my whole set and And then I would structure my workout doing –

kind of for time efficiency's sake, I would structure my workout where I would do one or two or three different blocks of three or four or five movements like that. It was really time efficient. I got a good conditioning element to it. I was always rested enough where I was doing my doubles on front squats at the same-ish weight that I normally would do. But I feel like I was checking a lot of boxes at the same time,

and I was having very efficient workouts using giant sets. Damn, man. You never know when Doug's going to say something that just blows your mind. Just drops it like that. What a great plan. Yeah. Why would I think I've heard everything I can hear in this industry, then Doug says something? That's got to slap a name on it.

What's that called? I don't know. I call it the Larsonism. Larsonism. Right? Yeah, I often think about like in back training going from like a horizontal pull into a pull-up where you're going vertical and then going to smaller joint as well. So you can stack them.

They all tire kind of the same muscle groups, and they're all in the same family, but you're able to get a lot more work done and target different joints, different musculature. I really love the bent row to pull-up piece, going back to just in that you're, you're tight. Pull-ups are never going away. I think you should do pull-ups almost daily, just in general. But when you are doing a specific back focused, um, upper body pulling day, you can do the exact,

the same musculature, just moving in different planes. And then if you want to tack a bicep curl or a barbell curl onto the end of that superset, now you enter into the giant set structure. And it's a really good formula. I mean, if you want to go squat, hinge, and then some sort of single leg, it's another great way to structure it just so that you stay in the same family and the same musculature, but you're also challenging all of that musculature and in a different way. Um, usually giant sets, by the way,

I think usually kind of traditionally giant sets are, are three or four exercises for the same muscle group. I get, so as opposed to what I just said, where I was, I was just doing a total body workout in an efficient way. Um, you know,

bodybuilding once you're, once you plateau in bodybuilding, like you just, you've been lifting weights for many years. Like you have a lot of experience and you're, you're trying to get bigger and you're just not getting bigger. You do need to do something to switch it up and provide some type of stimulus, um, to actually promote growth. And so that's when bodybuilders would, would bring in things like supersets, supersets and giant sets, which they're the exact same concept. It's just more sets for the giant set, where you might do three or four exercises for the exact same muscle group,

where you go from a barbell bench press to a dumbbell incline press to a machine press to pec flies. You got four things in a row like that. You can do that in strength sports as well, but at some point, if you're doing back to back to back exercises like that, you just, your, your mechanical tension is going to be very low just because you're just, it's that muscle group is, you know, you're essentially getting a set of 50, you know what I mean? You're, you're, you're not, you're not doing a set of a

set of five anymore with, with big weight. You're doing a set of 50, which means that you're doing pretty lightweight. It's relative to what you would be doing otherwise and so yeah i feel like giant sets aren't for a for the same muscle group um they're just not very popular in in the strength sports unless yeah again unless it's like that that one phase of training where you have a six-week block of hypertrophy it's like you're out of season and you're not you know you're doing something different on purpose might be doing it for the psychological aspect of it's just kind of fun. You know, that's always relevant. Like are you just enjoying your training by doing something new?

But, you know, for Travis' lifters, they got competitions coming up. Like they're not doing, you know, four sets back to back to back of all pressing. You know what I mean? Ever. I don't think they't ever do that but um and uh drop sets this is where the real pain kicks in taking the exact same movement doing it really heavy for 8 to 12 taking a little weight off doing it for 8 to 12 12 take a little weight off doing 8 to 12, getting between 2 to 5 sets, doing that exact thing so that by the time you've bench pressed for 50 reps

and now you're trying to bench an empty barbell and there's just absolutely nothing left in the tank and that 45-pound bar feels like you're benching 400. That's a super fun game. We used to do that with curls all the time, of course. All of this stuff always comes back to curls. No one wants to talk about it, but it always just comes back to curls. How can you get the biggest bicep pump possible?

21s, partner curls. Yeah. Do a set of 21s and then drop the weight. Do another set of 21s. By the time you get three of them you got 63 reps in there dude i just think back to when your head is straight to the bar when i was first a coach strength coach thinking how much stuff i did that probably wasn't good you know like we do this thing called mass jack and i would put like you know depending on how strong you are

let's say that you're let's say you're a 315 bencher well we're going to put like 5 25s per side and so we're going to go until you fail take one off fail fail all the way to the bar and i would make them do the bar until they could not do the bar then i would say go do a push-up of course they would just go pat and their face would hit the floor and I'd laugh I call that mash jacked you know which then I love it yeah I know it was awesome so I mean you can't do that you can't do that every single day but as you accumulate just a lifetime of getting jacked you have to do this stuff it's like the most fun it doesn't matter if they test it in the lab it has efficacy because it makes training fun right and you're gonna

massive pump there's no perfect way to schedule it yeah you just have to go do it and you walk out and when your whole team walks out and their chest is just pumped out of their shirt, that's called culture. That's culture. You're welcome. You do that. What my coaches to do that in college, Mike Kent, we should get that on this, on the show, but he would do when you were a freshman,

assuming you got red shirted, which almost everyone does. You know, there's always that one or two awesome people, but I was not. And so I was redshirted. And every Friday he would do a superset, which at the time I knew what supersets was, I thought, but I was completely wrong. This dude was, I mean, he was demonic is what he was. And, like, I remember the very first Friday he was going to do that.

And he's like, during the whole week, he's laughing. He's like, Nash, on Friday, I got you supersets. And I'm like, all right. I'm thinking this is going to be a good pump, you know? And this dude, I mean, like the first one was, it was pull-ups, supersetted with pull-downs. How hard could that be, right? Wrong.

It's terrible. terrible and so number one you had to do 10 and so let's say that you can only do five where you're going to do five forced reps and you got to go down slowly if you just drop it doesn't count so like when you're doing your 10 then you're doing then you're doing supinated close grip pull downs. Once again, the same thing. You have to go slow. If you go too fast, doesn't count. If you let go, you got to start over. Like I was pumped for four days.

Looking back, I had rhabdo is what I had. And I just thought, I was wondering, why is my pee brown? Like he murdered me and then get this at the very end he's like because we had like bowls of we had bowls of rice and bowls of sand he's like go do form work so you put your hands in the

rice or sand open close open close go do that for what was it for three more sets of a minute and a half then we had to go back to him to for him to check our forearms to see if we got the checkmark to leave or not wait did he measure them or he just touched them to see how hard they were they did not feel like a rock. You had to go do it again. But I was, I never, after one day of that, I never talked back to that guy ever. I never even joked with him ever again. Like I was just, yes, sir.

No, sir. I never talked. He broke me. He broke me. Forum training can be some of the most painful training that there is like if you if you've ever really done like like it's stuck in the claw workouts yeah that's like the some of the deepest muscular burn that you can get like that you can get it in your forearms like it's hard to do it takes a lot of effort and you have to have a super high pain tolerance to really take it to the end but if you're doing forearm training for max effort for

90 second sets on something like that where or you're just you're just squeezing through something like sand and there's you can always do it it's just a matter of are you doing it at 100 effort on every single rep just creates a nasty a nasty, nasty, nasty pump. Did you do stuff like that for Jets, Doug, for like holding on to geese? Well, a lot of people do. I never really did a lot of it. I've done many gee pull-ups and towel pull-ups and whatnot over the years. But no, not really.

I never really got into like the it's got to be so super sports specific yeah i have to do all my pull-ups hanging on to my gi i'm like no you just you go to practice and you hang on gis at practice all day long you don't need to do it you know while you're in the weight room just go lift weights and and get stronger so no not not not so much but but i know a lot of guys do it like it's like a part of the you guys mentioned culture a minute ago it's like a part of the culture in some jiu-jitsu gyms like they got pull-up bars with geese hanging over them they just go over there and they do their g pull-ups and and there's that that's a good thing in in many many ways like

they're still doing pull-ups and they're getting a lot of really high quality grip training that's very specific to the sport so it is a good thing but i never really focus on it too much i don't think it's that important if you're training you know other high quality ways yeah if you have a good grip i would say it's not important at all but like you know if you're a person in jiu-jitsu that happens to have like small hands or weak grip it might be a good idea but for the majority of people just like in weightlifting you don't need to do form work or grip work in weightlifting unless you have those short fat hands and then you do you know so it can be the limiting factor for some people since i stopped competing i think my grip strength has gone down like

at least 93 because your boy uses the straps every up i'll do a kettlebell swing with a strap if you want me to i don't feel I don't feel any pressure to hold on to the weight at all no one's coming because I don't know I gotta keep my straps on me 24 hours a day like no I mean I'm doing a 53 pound kettlebell uh swing I'm clearly not that was that was a little bit of a stretch but um Almost every exercise that I do on a barbell now, as it gets heavy and as I'm holding it for... Most of my training falls into this specific category, into 8s, 12s. If I'm doing RDLs, if I'm doing heavy deads, if I'm doing any of it, strapping them up. I don't like it when my hands hurt and I have no reason for my hands to hurt. I've got plenty of calluses to protect these hands, and this beautiful Aleko barbell sitting behind me right now has diamond knurling in it that will chop into my soul if I hold on to it too long.

And my thumbs are soft now. I'm going to own it right now in front of all these people that I got soft thumbs, and that's why I use straps because I like lifting weights. I don't like it when my hands hurt. Soft thumbs could mean soft something else. You got to be careful. Doug, when we're in Arkansas, I'm going to check. I bet we're going to be out to dinner, and there's going to be like,

oh, man, we got to lift. This car is parked where we can't get out. We need to lift and move it. Hold on. Let me get my strap. Let me get my strap up to the bumper. When we go mountain biking, I'll have to strap up. Someone falls over before I can help pick them up.

I'm worried about this mountain biking. I'm going to be the one that wrecks for sure. That's going to be the best part of the trip. No, I'm excited. I'm kidding. The weather's supposed to be fantastic too. Yeah. Well, Colton's coming out now.

He's more of a water-based animal than a land-based animal. So we'll have some. I haven't been on a bike in a – what's that? Colton's shredded, right? He is so jacked. Yeah, we're using his back as the front of the fucking car for people to go buy the e-books. Yeah, you know, if I'm Colton,

I'm probably not going to get a girlfriend for a long time. Like, I'm going to have multiple girlfriends as well. You have options. Yeah. Well, all of his – I don't know i'd love to we should have colton on the show talk about his dating life but all the girls he hangs out with are also the models for his clothing company of course they are yeah just like brett contraris yeah

add context to the the mountain biking trip. What are we doing out there? By the time this airs, we probably will be back, but we are headed to Bentonville, Arkansas on Monday. That's five, six days from today when we're actually recording this because we're in Walmart now, which is incredible. We've launched three training programs in Walmart. We're in 20 stores right now

in San Diego, LA and Las Vegas, the healthiest places in the country. It's interesting that they put you in Vegas. You wouldn't expect Vegas to be so healthy when there's the biggest party scene in the world.

Their biggest probably touches both those are the biggest. Probably touches both ends of the extreme. Super healthy people and then super not healthy people. I think people actually move there because they want to go hiking and do really cool stuff and be super healthy outside. But people only think about big. When we went there last for Olympia, we went on a massive,

awesome hike. We went out to Red Rocks. There's some really, really cool stuff out there um but we're going down to uh bentonville arkansas my favorite thing right now is to tell people that we're going to bentonville arkansas and they go what the hell is there this little thing called walmart yeah and they're the biggest retailers in the world and currently they have gigantic warehouses filled with products and not a single product on their shelf has to do with strength, conditioning, health, fitness. They sell equipment, they sell proteins, they sell pre-workouts,

creatines, all the supplements, all the fat loss, slim fast things that you could buy, but nobody has an actionable way to go to the gym or to train in their house and be healthy. So we are coming to the shelves of Walmart and, uh, we have three programs for one for fat loss, one to increase your cardio, just more of like a conditioning program. And then a strength program, which we were talking about Colton being the model of, because he's got such a shredded back. He's our videographer. I don't know.

I may start crying in the middle of this because I'm so damn happy. Last night my dad texted me, and he just – fuck, I'm about to do it, man. My dad texted me last night and just wrote about how proud of us he was. I don't know how this thing plays out and all this, but guys, we're going into Walmart. It's fucking cool. It is cool Um, I think we have this like opportunity right now to just I Don't know like the world's been shut down we've been working on this thing Like I like getting people strong. But a lot of times I feel like we just talk into this abyss of people

that are focused on the top 1% of who's the strongest, who's the most jacked and shredded and coolest Instagram-looking thing. But we have this opportunity to walk into a demographic that's massively underserved, educate people that really need it, and we're coming out of this time that health is just, it's the number one focus of an entire election right now. It's the number one focus of every time you turn the news on, people talk about being sick. But what they really, you know, we have this opportunity to be the people that talk about health and getting people stronger and being more focused on their health. And the way that we can create the biggest impact is to go to the people that need it the most. It's not people that are paying $150, $200 a month to go to CrossFit gyms. The socioeconomic

side of what we're creating has the potential to just have massive benefits across so many, so many people's lives. And I don't think it's a coincidence at all that people have been in their houses, people have been unemployed, people are losing their jobs. And we also just happened to have hit for the first time in the history of America, obesity rates have gone over 40%. It's like 42.5%, which I don't live in one of those neighborhoods where people are obese. But when you go to places and you see, just go to the airport and look, just really objectively view how many people are sick and and unhealthy and probably terrified about a pandemic coming um i just think we have this crazy cool opportunity to make a massive impact and opening in these 20 stores and i i just want people to go even if they're not going

to use the program they're stocking stuffers the programs are nine dollars and 48 cents um give them to people get get them into the hands of people that need them the most and and we can create this amazing platform to um to help people which is really cool and i'm just really i didn't know that this was possible i didn't know we could we could go to walmart and create a relationship with the biggest retailer in the world which gives us the ability to create the most impact of potentially anybody in strength conditioning that's that's really ever ever played this game yeah dang it there's like you my whole day just got altered i'm so i'm jacked right now um yeah it's really really sunk in and then my dad texting me last night just like he was now that you like or i sort of understand what it would be like having a kid.

And I don't know. You're, you've almost been in business with your dad for the last 37 years. Like he, he, he was your business partner for the first 18 and then you got to go do it on your own. Just cool. The power that your dad has is amazing.

That whole I'm proud of you, it's like steroids. For anybody, for any boy or girl, when your dad says I'm proud of you, it makes you capable of anything i feel like yeah i heard a story about i want to say it was ted turner you know billionaire but about the time that he became a billionaire like somebody i heard the story that he was basically like in his backyard like yelling at the sky like are you happy now like yelling at his dad because like his dad he just like part of the drive that he had was just trying to make his dad happy trying to like trying to have his dad be

proud of him trying to impress his dad his dad it was like long since dead and he's still out there pushing and has like anger that his dad never told him that he was proud of him or whatever it was you know half of half of those facts probably totally wrong but but that's like that's kind of the story that just like always emphasized to me that man like doesn't matter how successful you are like you still want your parents to be proud of you yeah absolutely um so if you're in San Diego, LA, and Vegas, get into Walmart. Go buy some programs. They're $9.48. You pick up a card.

You come download a free e-book. It's got 30 days of nutrition, grocery lists, meal prep, giving you really the exact macronutrients, how to learn how to eat properly to lose weight, gain muscle, plus the training programs to go along with them. That's one of the best parts about this whole thing is that right now, most of our training programs are about $47, give or take, and then we've got bundles and long-term training programs and whatnot.

We need to charge that in order to stay in business. We don't make an incredible amount of money, but we do get by and we're able to run the business like we want to run the business, etc. But with Walmart, we had many conversations about how do we get this price down to like a super, super affordable level where people that aren't into fitness will be willing to make the leap. Like if we sell $50 training programs at Walmart, nobody's going to buy them. Yeah. So how do we get the price down to like, you know, below $10 that way, you know, people that, that pocket a $9 a month, uh, plan a fitness membership or whatever it is like might be like, okay, maybe I'll, maybe I'll try this thing out.

And so we're hoping that, and with, with Walmart and the scalable nature of being in the biggest retail on earth will give us the, um will give us the scalability and the volume needed to actually, you know, be able to turn a profit and be able to grow and to continue to serve many, many, many thousands of people through a physical retailer. Yeah. It's incredible to think about the size of their reach. I mean, the number of people that pass through those aisles and have the opportunity now to take something that we've worked our whole lives to get good at

and be able to talk to you guys every Monday and Wednesday about it and have this conversation that somebody can go in and for under $10 be able to take a training program with them that could for the people that are going to buy it it's not a joke like it really may change their lives and give them the ability to just understand they just don't have the education process

in their neighborhoods and in their schools um and this isn't really about like politics but man there's people that are struggling right now. The numbers aren't going down on how we need to help people. Yeah, I want people to have really big deadlifts, but when you think about what type of impact are you having on people and how do we really affect the most people and do the most good? I can't think of a better place than to partner with Walmart and do this. Agreed. Travis Mash, where can they find you?

Go to masterlead.com. If you want, I have a high-profile book, masterlead.com slash mashjack. Mashjack. You can do that workout where you fall on your face at the end with the push-ups. Only if you're not scared. Right. Doug Larson. I'm on Instagram.

Doug with the Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to Walmart, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. For those of you that do not live in those beautiful places, barbellshrug.com forward slash store. That is where you're going to find all the training eBooks, nutrition, mobility, making strong people stronger.

We will see you guys next week. Radical friends, barbellshrug.com forward slash FF bundle. Use the code functional to save 70% on seven functional fitness CrossFit programs to get you super, super fit. Gymnastics, Olympic lifting, strength-biased CrossFit programs, as well as engine building, anaerobic assault, aerobic monster to get all the breathing done, as well as open prep to prepare you for your upcoming competitions and the workout builder so that you can take an advanced template and design it to your specific skill set. Barbell shrug.com forward slash F F bundle functional fitness bundle. Use the code functional to save 70%. I want to thank

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Social media is so boring they're making it fun i like seeing you work out come join us fit together f-i-t-t-o-g-e-t-h-e-r make sure you download it in all of your apps right now friends we'll see you