Barbell Shrugged - One Ton Challenge Training Program Details - Registration Closes Thursday

Episode Date: June 2, 2019

Anders, Doug and Travis walk you through all the details of the One Ton Challenge Training Program.  For more information visit: https://www.theonetonchallenge.com/join Registration ends this Thursday June 6th at 11:59pm cst If you have any questions please email [e-mail]  

Shrug family, this is a Sunday show. You don't get too many of those from us, but we wanted to talk about the One Ton Training Plan. We've spent a ton of time posting tons of videos from people around the world that are doing the One Ton Challenge. You've seen them on Instagram over at the Shrug Collective, but we keep getting questions.

In this very first launch, we're bringing people in to learn the snatch, clean, jerk, squat, dead, and bench. We want you to be strong in those six lifts, and we have put the One Ton Challenge training plan together to help you work on those six lifts. On top of getting very strong in the six major lifts, we have given you a goal. It's 2,000 pounds for men and 1,200 pounds for women. In the podcast that you're about to hear,

this is on the link and the page that everybody has been going to. It is a 29-minute show that we also have a video of the show, Coach Travis Mash, Doug Larson, and myself. And you can go and watch it at theonetonchallenge.com forward slash join. Or stick around here and then head to that page the one ton challenge.com forward slash join we are in an open cart through this thursday so you can come be a member of our cool online gym that is teaching you these six lifts how to get into the one ton club at 2 000 pounds and 1200 we can't wait to make you strong these six lifts are the most important thing to us we brought coach Travis Mash in because he is

the single best person to write this program three time strongest man in the world he also just won best male and best female weightlifter at USAW Nationals and we've been great friends with him for a long time so we're

very honored to have him come in write this program Doug Larson and myself will be coaching the program and we've been great friends with him for a long time. So we're very honored to have him come in, write this program. Doug Larson and myself will be coaching the program and we can't wait to have you on here. So squat, dead bench, snatch, clean jerk, taking those six lifts, add them all together. That's the one ton total. We want you to be at the number 2,000 for men, 1,200 for ladies.

That's how we are building this program out. It's a one-year program and you're going to find all kinds of details. This is the masterpiece that is the One Ton Challenge. And once you're done listening to this, head over to theonetonchallenge.com forward slash join. Enjoy the show. Strong people, welcome to the One Ton Challenge. The most fun weightlifting event, testing the lifelong pursuit of strength. My name is Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Travis Mash.

We found the strongest kids in the whole gym to come talk to you about how we're going to make you stronger and get you into the One Ton Club. So what is the One Ton Challenge? Well, we're going to take six lifts. Snatch, clean jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench. Add them all up. That's your one ton total, and the goal is to hit 2,000 pounds and enter into the one ton club You've made it the lifelong pursuit of strength 2,000 pounds

The purpose of this video is to talk about exactly what the one ton challenge is how it works how you can be involved what? the program and the programming is like which is why I brought guy in, because he's pretty much the most qualified person on the entire planet to write a strength powerlifting slash weightlifting one ton total program, where we're programming specifically to get really strong for snatch, clean, and jerk, squat, bench, and deadlift. And Travis is a world record holder in powerlifting. He's the head coach for Team USA,

at least has been multiple times in the past. He's basically the best weightlifting coach in the country, and so his programming is just perfect for exactly what we're doing with this program. But before we go into all the details of the program, Anders, you and John Cena, Mr. Famous Wrestler, Actor, Performer, he's many, many things. Entertainer. A very well-known human being.

You and him are buddies, and you guys did the One Ton Challenge together years ago, and you always have wanted to do this since you guys were together doing the One Ton Challenge years ago. So jealous. We started training together in 2011. Four years later, he walked into the gym one day and said, Hey, we're going to go to my private gym in Tampa, Florida,

and we're going to take the One Ton Challenge. Tampa, Florida, and we're going to take the one-ton challenge. And I said, I have no idea what that is, but I had about a week to prepare. And preparing really doesn't matter when you learn that you have to be inside 97% of your all-time best in a 48-hour window. Preparing just means pack your bags, we're going to Tampa, and you've got to lift the weights. So we get there. We hop in a private jet up in la red eye to tampa got off the plane got a little bit of sleep went to the local diner had a bunch of milkshakes to work on our squat bellies and six lifts later i entered into the one ton club 2009, 2,009 pounds. Every single lift that I hit was inside 97% of my lifetime best, which I had no clue and no idea that I was capable of doing that.

We finished this just epic, epic weightlifting adventure, and I was sitting in the backseat of his car. We're headed back to his house, and he could see that I was just kind of glazed over of this just obscenely transformational weekend of I never knew the barbell and the gym would actually bring me to this place in life where I was at Sina's house in his private gym and now my name is stenciled on the garage door at Hard Knocks and uh he he looked in the back seat and said, you know, I don't own this event. You need to go tell the world about this and share it with people and let them have this adventure that you just went through.

And that was in 2015. Four years later, we're here. I've been thinking about this and bringing it to the people so that you can go through this adventure just like I did. Like I've spent my entire life in the gym. I love being in the gym. I love being around people that like lifting weights. And it's the thing that I do, but I'm not good enough to be at nationals and Olympic weightlifting. I'm not good enough to go to the CrossFit games.

I'm not big enough to be in strongman. There's so many things that are out of my control, but I still want to be in strongman there's so many things that are out of my control but i still want to be strong i still want to go and be strong every single day on this lifelong pursuit of strength like it's not only our mission statement but it's at the core of why we get up and do what we do and educate you through the show and through these programs that we put out and this program this process the one-ton challenge is for everybody that loves being in the gym, that loves training, that loves being around their friends, turning the music up, getting rid of all the crap,

and just getting down to lifting some weights. And that's who we want to be on this program. That's why we all came together to launch the One Ton Challenge, to give you the tools to get you into the One Ton Club and understand why you've been doing this your whole life why you put the sets the reps why do you show up every day and hang out with your best friends to lift weights have fun and our expression of that is the one-ton challenge we want you to understand the barbell lifts we want you to be good at them we want you

to be strong and that's why the one- Club matters. Moving into the programming and how the program works, again, I said this before, Travis, I think you're the best person in the world to do the programming for the One Ton Challenge, having really mastered powerlifting and mastered weightlifting. Most people, they haven't done either one, let alone done one well, let alone done both well. You're inside a small handful of people that have really done both at a world-class level. So super excited to have you writing the programming for the One Ton Challenge. You know, first I've got to say that makes me so happy. I mean, like, I've spent my whole life.

Pumping tires on the hoops. I have just spent my whole life with the barbell. And I love both sports, the weightlifting and the powerlifting. And to have, you know, someone say that, you know, it makes me happy inside. You know, think about it. I started when no one cared about the barbell. Like, you know, my mom was like, you know, go get a real job. And she literally was like on me all the time, thought I was wasting my time,

wasting my life. And then to be on a podcast and to be, you know, teaching you guys about what I spent my whole life on is like, man, it makes me super happy. Talking about the programming of the whole thing, it's going to be in 13 mesocycles and then to a grand finale peak

where we peak all the movements. It's really cool the way I'm going to do it. Let me explain this in the most simplest terms. When you're doing the squat, you're going to be focused on the squat. It'll be more frequency. This, you're going to be focused on the squat. So it'll be more frequency. This means you're going to be doing squat more often.

So it was that. However, we're still going to be snatching, cleaning, jerking, benching, deadlifting. It's just that won't be the focus. But once you've, you know, peaked your squat, which you will in your second, it's two four-week mesocycles. And at the end of the second one, you'll max out on your squat and you'll hit PR as I promised. And then after that, what you'll do is we'll put you in a maintenance type phase. So you'll still be squatting.

And you might still be getting stronger in the squat. It just won't be the focus. Whereas you might get a 20-pound PR or 30-pound PR in your squat in those first two. Now we're going to still be doing it. You've still got to be 85% and above. It just won't be as frequent. And then the focus then will shift to the other lift. And it'll go like that throughout the whole time

until we peak it perfectly. And with the Olympic movements, snatch and clean and jerk, them being the most technical, there'll definitely be more preparatory phases for that. And then the closer we get to the end of it the more specific those movements will get leading to boom that the one-time challenge so a quick summary there so it's a 52-week program right and we have six movements right we have two four-week mesocycles per movement so basically eight weeks per movement right so at the end of

each eight-week block the first one being the squat we'll max out on squat and then every eight weeks thereafter we'll max out on whichever movement is the focus for those for those eight week blocks that you know six movements times eight weeks is 48 weeks it's a year-long program that's 52 weeks in a year so the last four weeks is a is a peak a peaking phase so you can one-ton weekend, which is where you do all six lifts within a 48-hour period. Right. And you try to hit that one-ton mark during the one-ton weekend. And then we want you to get over to the leaderboard right now and make sure that you have your initial, your starting numbers in there.

Because once you get on the program, we want to see how that goes up throughout the year. That's going to be the most fun part. Yeah. Yeah. It's like being a community together and seeing people hit these numbers. I mean, that is the most fun part to me of coaching is just watching people set a goal and reaching it. Is there anything more fun in the world than watching people lift big weights?

Oh, dude. I literally will watch – Netflix is so good right now. They've got like nine documentaries out on lifting weights, and I will watch all of them multiple times in a row because lifting weights, it's just awesome. Absolutely. Lifting big weights is great. People get the vibe going, and it's just so awesome.

You know, probably the coolest moment of my coaching career and maybe my athletic career, Hunter Elam, one of my athletes, who is, you know, a lot of you maybe know, but she came to me, when she first came to me, she had just been doing Olympic lifting for a short time, like a month or two. And she was just naturally pretty good at it. And she came to me to the goal to make, you know, Team USA, a world team. And so we started the process. We started at the beginning, very similar process that you guys will go through,

learning the basics of the movement, getting stronger. And then you lead her to that moment and she hits that number and it was the most crazy moment you know we had to like open her up at her lifetime pr on clean jerk because we were there to make timmy say i could care less about winning that competition that was our goal yeah and she goes out there she literally missed her last two warm-ups too. She misses, misses, and then she goes out there and nails it. It was a 266-pound clean and jerk. And for a 140-pound girl, to see her face light up and to see her jumping up and down, it was, yeah. And it doesn't matter.

It has to be team USA. I just use her as an example. Anytime anyone comes to me with a goal and they actually get there and you had a small part in that process, it's the best feeling. It's way better than actually doing it yourself. I think that's the most important part about hitting the 2,000 numbers. Everyone can do it. Everybody.

When we talk about the Olympics or Nationals or the CrossFit Games or strongman competitions, USP, there's things that just are out of your control a lot of the times of being at that extreme elite level things have to be perfect everyone can get to 2,000 pounds there's no reason if you don't put the time and the work and the effort into learning how to be strong being consistent with your programming understanding that there's nutrition there's lifting there's a lot there's a lot of pieces that go into being strong, but everyone can get there.

I know because when I started lifting weights, there was nothing special about, nobody looked at me. Nobody was picking me out of the classroom saying, hey, you have a chance to go to the Olympics. Your arms are the perfect length. Your torso is the perfect length. It doesn't exist. I'm just a regular guy,

regular people that want to go lift weights and be strong. And isn't that the beautiful thing of the barbell? It's like it's just individual. It doesn't matter if it's Hunter making it to Team USA or if it's a person coming in who's never snatched before and then we lead them all the way to a 150-pound snatch. It's just as cool. You help that person reach a goal in their life that made them feel

better. At least for that moment in time, you made that person happy and you had a part of it. That's what, I mean, that's the beautiful thing about coaching. And if that doesn't make you excited, then you're not a coach. The experience as an athlete, whether you're snatching 200 pounds, you're snatching 400 pounds, it's very similar. The fight is the same. The sense of accomplishment is the same. W of accomplishment is the same wondering if you're going to be able to hit this number and then you're like you're super nervous and like you pull really hard and like you're kind of out of position because you're hitting your lifetime pr and you stand up and you're shaking and you get it you're so proud of yourself

like whether you're a world-class athlete or you're just some random joe like the experience and the thrill of the success of hitting a pr is the same absolutely Absolutely. I actually, when I did the one-ton challenge myself, I had a week buildup to it, not even a buildup, but just I knew about it for a week. He kind of came in, we trained together, and he said, oh, by the way, this is going to happen. So the next day I came in and I tested all my numbers just to see if it was close. Right.

And I was off by, like, 70 pounds, and I just realized, like, oh, my Lord. Like, this is going to be so hard and then you start picking numbers off and you start hitting these things and you get that momentum built up all of a sudden you're nine pounds over the number it's six lifts so it's like think about it 10 pounds per lift equals 60 pounds yeah so you can quickly up those numbers it's not a problem and like to to that point too i think the first time i snatched 200 pounds was cooler than 300 pounds i remember going crazy when i snatched 200 and like wes barnett looking like yeah i said the first time i hit 200 i'm happy i could actually walk you to the spot that i snatched 200 for the first time it's

a great feeling greg glassman was there they had the like one of the very first level one seminars and the whole like early days of crossfit was in the gym i was at that day i was like oh i'm about to go hard in the paint today glassman's here and 200 pounds i snatched that i looked up and like the whole crew was there i was like holy shit yeah this is so rad and then that leads you to 232 at Cena's house. It was just like, man, I fucking did it. I remember trying to snatch 220, 100 kilos forever and missing it, missing it, missing it, and getting 95 kilos, 97.5 kilos, and missing 100 over and over again, and then finally getting 100 kilos. I was all by myself.

I didn't have any training partners. There were other people in the weight room, but I didn't have anyone to celebrate with. I hit it, and nobody was doing it. I was the only person partners there other people in the weight room but like I didn't have anyone to celebrate with like I hit it and nobody was doing I was the only person doing weightlifting in my college weightlifting nobody knew what it was back in 2005 when I hit those numbers I remember walking around the weight room just like so happy just like looking for anyone that I knew that I could go tell somebody excited with me but I still remember that day like it was a big day for me he's gonna go out to a stranger but I need a hug right now don't worry

about it don't worry about it yeah uh but this is also a piece that is so cool i think about the one-ton challenge right it's like so many people and you probably experienced this like they they're nervous to compete in weightlifting because what happens is like you get you get three chances there's an audience in front of you what people really love is being in the gym and being around their friends and having that gym training vibe versus the competition vibe you don't just have three you can lift as many deadlifts as you want to hit the number that you want to get into the one-ton club there is no rule on it has to stop here there is no we we have standards set up for each lift to ensure you're doing it properly but there are no rules

on how you know how many attempts how long it's going to take you. You can sit. You can do one lift in the morning, go eat some lunch, come back, make an entire weekend out of it. You know, you're just in the gym slamming bars with your best friends. I mean, that's what's fun. Nathan Dameron will tell you, who's another one of my athletes, but he'll tell you he loves training way more than competing. He goes to competing just because he gets paid to lift.

So he goes there because he has to. He prefers to be in the gym doing it with his friends more than going. Yeah. He goes to competing just because he gets paid to lift. So he goes there because he has to. He prefers to be in the gym doing it with his friends more than going to the competition. Yeah. It's so much like all those judges

are staring at you. All the people are staring at you. People are waiting on you to miss. Yeah. But in the gym it's just your buddies

pulling for you, praying for you. Let's go, man. Yeah. It's so much more fun, I think. And when you hit numbers and the whole gym lights up,

that's way cooler than the golf claps that go on Olympic lifting because everybody wants to be so proper. Can I get an amen? Can we just slam a barbell and have some fun? Absolutely. I'm not about that.

I'm going to slam a bar and get crazy. I wish weightlifting was more like powerlifting in that respect where it's just heavy metal music and it's just crazy and there's so much more energy. It's not like the golf claps like you were talking about. It's too fly for me. Me too. And I'm a weightlifting coach.

I am not a purist at all. That's why this thing appeals to me way more because I'm not a purist. I'm about getting crazy, lifting heavy weights. Let's have fun. I tell you there are coaches out there that if you have fun, they get pissed. I'm like, isn't that the point? So you want me to do a sport and not have fun? Wait.

How many times, especially in Olympic weightlifting, the first time I trained in a solely Olympic weightlifting gym, it was like no music. Yeah. Everybody sat down in between sets. I'm not about that life. Hold on a second. Who's excited to be here right now?

Am I the only one that really loves doing this? But I think the competition side of it, the one-time challenge just eliminates all the things that people get turned off about the competition. Seriously. Be around your friends. Go lift weights. Right. Very, very few of us are getting paid to do this, so you might as well do it in the best

possible place with your friends. Turn the music up. Make an afternoon of it. And we won't get mad if your feet touch the barbell. Exactly. Inside story. Kick it. Yeah.

I don't know that story. Oh, there's a new rule that you if you touch the barbell with your foot that's three reds immediately because people spin it with their foot yeah because like in other countries it's like a disrespect to the barbell i'm like uh weeks off so we talked about the programming and how all that works and you wrote the programming but also on the coaching side that was actually one thing that, to pump your tires a little more, that was one thing that when we first met, I really recognized how passionate you were as a coach and how much you cared.

It was very obvious that you cared a lot about your athletes, and you were doing it for them, and you weren't doing it for you. It was just beautiful in the way that you you projected that on onto your athletes about how you really were there for them and you really really really really care about their success absolutely i think a lot of coaches um you know like some parents they live vicariously through their athletes and i don't need my athletes to i've got my own career i'm i've done things i'm fine with it i just want to see other people reach those heights that i reached or reach goals of their own.

I want to have a part of that process, kind of guide them, teach them. You know, like I made a lot of mistakes in life, you know, like being too crazy, you know. So I want to help them avoid the mistakes that I made and get there. Yeah, man, it's all about like, you know, my favorite, one of my favorite athletes of all time, Adi, you're friends with Adi, is that, you know, seeing her go on and build this big business. I just want you guys to enjoy this.

Make it something that you'll do for the rest of your life, something that you can do outside of your work and outside of things that stress you out. I want the gym to be a place you guys can go, have fun, reach your goals, and you can just put all the negativity that might be in your life away for at least an hour or two. That's what I want. I want to see you change your life.

Yeah. And that said, on the coaching front, everyone that is in the One Ton Challenge is going to be coached. This isn't a program where we're just giving you workouts and you go figure it out on your own. There will be plenty of resources to help you along the way, video resources with technique and whatnot. Including me, yeah.

Yeah, we'll all be around to help at some level, but there will be also a dedicated coach to help you in the One Ton Challenge. That coach will vary depending on when we're launching and how many athletes we have and all that. So we have that coach's information on this page, so you can scroll down and read all about the coach that is going to be coaching for this particular session. But they'll be in the Facebook group answering questions,

giving you video feedback on your lifts. So you submit a video can they can tell you what uh what you're doing right what you're doing wrong what you need to work on etc if you have nutrition questions or just you know the volume's too high for whatever reason or it's too low for whatever reason or you got an elbow that's hurting you or whatever it is your coach is going to be there to help guide you along the way to help you through the hard days uh to you know pump you up and congratulate you on the good days you know and when you're hitting PRs to you know give you kind of a virtual high-five so to speak absolutely I think having coach a coach for the one-ton challenge is very very important so we made sure that you had an excellent coach throughout the competition we have

the one-ton challenge leaderboard so over at the one-ton challenge comm make sure you get in there start by putting your numbers in there and what we want to be doing each time we're going to be building to the big one ton weekend at the end of the year. So that's our end goal, this 12 month process. But along the way, we're going to be maxing out. We're going to be putting our totals in there. We're going to be updating it. And the coolest piece for us is to watch you climb the leaderboard as you get stronger. Yeah, that's a fun part of the program.

Like every eight weeks when you're doing the maxes for the individual movements and then at the very end of the program when you max out all six lifts over the one-ton weekend, in the Facebook group, everyone's posting their maxes, like, you know, 35-pound PR, 10-pound PR, 50-pound PR, whatever it is. Like it's a really exciting time in the Facebook group with all the athletes that are all maxing out on the same day. It's like a big celebration every two months when everyone's PRing so that's a fun part of the the competitive side of it you can be competing against your friends but also you know everyone is there to to encourage you and to pump you up when you hit your pr as well yeah and that really gets into the community piece

of what we're trying to build it's not just go do this challenge and you're on on your own not only do we have the coaches we we have this little competition, but the competition actually brings everyone together. There's a unifying goal of getting into the one-ton club, and that thing brings everyone together. We all want to be in the one-ton club. That's why we started training to begin with. We didn't know, but now we have this goal for strong people.

We can get into the club, and then you're part of this special group. You know, the community is everything. York Barbell used to do, once a year they'd do the York Barbell Picnics, old school strongman stuff. And they would come together, and they would all lift weights. Some of them, they would do snatch and clean and jerking. Some would do, like, strongman movements, heavy dumbbell, the Thomas inch. You know, they would do all this crazy stuff.

But it wasn't about the competition it was about doing it together i mean their families would be there they'd be eating together you know probably maybe drinking a beer together like having a good time together and it just happens the weights are just part of that community and now we get to do it virtually with hopefully lots and lots of people and like we can all do this thing together and watch each other, you know, get better and see, Oh wow. You know,

Doug set up your art. Yeah. Awesome. Doug. So it just, and it's not just the online piece, right? Like be in your gym,

get people fired up to do this with you. Because the more people you have around you, the easier it's going to be to hit six big, big lifts in a day. Your body's going to need the people around you to kind of fuel this entire day along with possibly a beverage at the end. Definitely a barbecue in the middle. You've got to keep the food going, lots of barbecue sauce. But the community piece is massive.

When we did it, there was four people in one room. Sina and Rob are in the corner just getting gigantic, doing who knows what was going on over there with those large humans. And then my buddy and I were walking through this process. We weren't even planning on doing the jerk on day one, but it was like the weights were moving so well. Our bodies were so fired up. And it was like, all right, well, let's see what happens if we break out the jerk blocks and get after it. Like you never really know where this thing's going to take you.

But if you're around the right people and you get that vibe in the gym going, all of a sudden that will just start carrying you to the places that you don't know that you can get to. So important. And the community, even in our gym, really a big part of the reason why we do so well is like we support each other. And like we have fun. Like we have a lot of fun. We are not a typical weightlifting gym like we yell screams and just have a good time and that community is what really that's a

at least 25 percent of why the athletes do strong it's like the culture of strong matters absolutely absolutely like having a good time and loving to go heavy and to celebrate each other going heavy and to know that you have a whole group around you supporting you. Same thing you guys are going to have. You're going to have all of us supporting you and wanting you to do well. Yeah, and it's starting very soon. Like if you're watching this video, that means that right now the One Ton Challenge registration is open. It's only open for a few days, and we only accept so many athletes,

depending on how many coaches we have available and how much time they have available to coach their athletes. we can only take so many people since everyone is being coached so if you're watching this video and you've made it this far along presumably you're interested in the program go ahead and look through the rest of this page all the details for the program about you know the schedule of when all the mesocycles when the workouts start when the mesocycles change when you're maxing out when the one ton weekend is going to be at the end of the program, when registration closes, which is a really important one. All the details for the program are on this page, including, you know, all the bonuses that you get when you sign up and a lot of frequently asked questions, you know, stuff where I'm,

you know, we can't go over everything in this video, but, you know, all the equipment that you're going to need, how long the workouts are, workouts are the yeah we try to keep it really simple the frequency of the workouts which is four mandatory workouts plus two extra workouts and there's more information on the page all about that all the details are on the page so make sure you go through it look at the different commitment levels they each have a different price per month associated with them for the for the full 12 month program and if you have questions we're totally happy to answer those questions you can just email us at help at barbell shrug.com and we can get back to you as as soon as we possibly can which we definitely will since we know that

there's a limited amount of time to sign up we'll be getting back to people very very quickly if they have questions about the program so if you do have a question definitely hit us up anything else now let's slam bars. Oh, yes. Also, there's a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can try the program risk-free in the first 30 days of the program. If you decide for whatever reason that it's just not for you, then we will, no questions asked, give you all your money back.

We can still be friends. It's all good. We can still lift weights together. It's cool. Also, after you sign up for the program, you'll get an email that will give you access to the membership site where we'll be housing all of the workouts. You'll get your username, password. Go in there, watch the welcome video.

It'll kind of show you around the site, so that way you know all the resources and where the workouts are and all that. Go ahead and check out all the workouts, and I highly recommend you take a few days rest before the workouts start. They start on a Monday. So at least rest over the weekend. This program is not so high volume that it's just going to beat the shit out of you right away. But it's still going to be a very intense program.

So definitely you want to start rested. You don't want to smash yourself over the weekend and then try and jump into a legit training program written by Mr. Travis Nash over here. So get some rest. And, again, if you have questions, hit us up. Help at barbellstrug.com. We'll see you in the One-Ton Challenge. One-Ton Challenge. Squat cycle starts Monday?

Monday. Monday. Some Monday. Some Monday.