Barbell Shrugged - Our Test for Strength: The Shrugged Strength Test - 209

Episode Date: May 4, 2016

Try out our new way to test your strength... http://www.ShruggedStrengthTest.com

This week on Barbell Shrug, we talk about the Shrug Strength Test. How to sign up. How to walk through it. Why we did it. Where you're weak. Where you're adequate. Where you're not inadequate. Not inadequate meaning adequate.

Where you're inadequate. Where you're inadequate. Find out who you even are. I do that? You go. Me? This week on Barbell Shrug, we we talk about the Shrugged Strength Test. Your inadequacies.

You're inadequate. Not so easy, is it, ass clown? I never said it was. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Hey, I see you sitting there, lonely by your keyboard. If you want to, just whip your fingers out.

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It's a sweet place with a bunch of sweet stuff. And last but not least, I know you're trying to find a bitchin' t-shirt to get your mom for her birthday. Head on over to

merch.barbellstruck.com. Come on. Come on. What are we saying at the top? What are we saying? Struckstank score! Test. Struckstank test!

That could have been way better. Alright, what's up, guys? I'm Mike McGoldrick here with the Barbell. Oh, shit. Go ahead. We know it's the Barbell Shrug Podcast. You're listening to the podcast. Here with Mike McElroy.

What's happening? Alex Macklin. What up? And Kurt Mulligan. Hey. We got something special for you guys today. Something new we just came up with. It's called the Shrug Strength Test.

All right, so we took a bunch of movements that we felt was really important to help analyze strength and balance, structural balance, and let you know exactly what standards we think are very important to show that you're actually balanced and a well-rounded athlete, specifically in strength. So with that said, if you want to try this test, head over to barbellshrug.com, and you can sign up. We'll send you the three.

It's a three-day test. We'll send you the three, it's a three day test. We'll send you all the workouts, movement demos, and then some tips on how to get started. So with that said, we're going to talk to you today, move my movement about why we chose each one. And then we're going to go a little bit into discussion about each one, like what the results should be, what standards we're looking for. And we're gonna tell you how to improve them. Yeah, basically how to improve them. So how to get better at it. If you're lacking or inadequate, if you're, you get better at it if you're lacking or inadequate. If you're inadequate. You're so inadequate.

If you're inadequate. That sounds so mean. It does. If you have a weakness. All right, so cool. With that said, day one, number one. Actually, let me back up for a second. Yeah, well, explain maybe the whole test as a whole.

All right, so it's three days long, right? Day one is mostly lower body. It's a lot of squatting tests. We've got a couple of upper body things in there, but we wanted to balance it out over three days so you don't wear yourself out. We're not testing the same things back to back to back. Day two is a little bit more of an upper body,

like pressing and pulling testing day. And then day three is a little bit more of postural endurance, carries, pulls, things like that. Speaking of that, when you do the test, don't do a whole lot before or after the test. We want you fresh because you want these results fresh. Do you do this like three consecutive days or you do like in between? Yeah, three days.

So this could be your training for the next three days. Do you need a number two sharpened pencil? You don't need a number two pencil. You need a Scantron. Can I get a personal? There's a digital Scantron at the end. And then also, it's about five to six exercises each day, so it could take you roughly an hour.

Each one of them leads into one another, so you get a good warm-up in. You don't have to, like, go set something else up that doesn't really, like, correlate to the one before that. And then also, if you want to do other stuff that day we just recommend like maybe some like easy aerobic work some breathing rowing etc aerobics nothing yeah no more strength work because we want again we want these results to be like you want them to be like a true test and very fresh so so where do i start i just. No, like what's the first move? Oh, the first exercise.

Yeah, so day one, the first thing you're going to do is what's called a beginner shrimp squat. It's basically like a single leg lunge. Can you do one right now, McElroy? Yeah, if you're just listening to this. Back knee touches the ground. He did it. Yeah, so with this, we just want to see that you can do

one controlled attempt or one repetition per side and with that we're looking for a strength imbalance from left to right side as well as some hip and ankle mobility. What else do we look for with that? Yeah, typically like you said this one's a little bit less of a strength test it's more of a mobility and movement test so like you said ankle mobility can be you said, ankle mobility can be an issue. Uh, hip mobility can be an issue, um, also balance just all of a sudden, you know, we have, maybe we have, maybe you have some back issues or you have some knee issues, which are always doing double leg

squatting. And maybe you get all of a sudden on one leg and all of a sudden you're super unstable. So just looking for balance and stability in the ankle and hip and knee. Right. So if, if that was the issue, let's say that, um, let's say that strength was the issue. Like one side you could go down and strengthen coordination. You go down and one side's fine, the other side's not. Like what exercises would you do to get better at that? Yeah, if mobility is a non-issue and stability and strength is more of an issue, I would do things that require balance and coordination.

So things like a single leg pal-off press where you're having to balance on that one leg i love that you're pressing a band away from you um kind of hard to explain on audio so yeah go find those but i like uh i like rear foot elevate split squats or what they call bulgarian split squats um even if you can do it with a you can do it with dumbbells or kettlebells or if you want to make it even harder with a barbell or a safety bar, but I find that you have to be very balanced and very strong to be able to do those reps, and those are great, man. Even doing a counterbalanced weighted trim squat, so very similar to what we just showed you.

Again, if you can't see this, you need to go to a video and check it out. But you can hold a plate out in front of you you it's going to help you stay upright and feel more upright and balanced yeah so a lot of times a non-weighted shrimp squat is harder than like a 10 pound weighted shrimp squat if you're holding the weight out in front just because the balance and the center of gravity and everything like that and for mobility obviously i mean you would want to work on uh you know hip and ankle mobility i like voodoo flossing. Yep. And I also just like just sitting in the bottom of the squat with the barbell on my quads that kind of lean into the ankle to kind of push it forward, get some flexion in the ankle.

Yep. Figure out exactly where that mobility issue is. Right. Obviously would be top priority. Cool. Number two, overhead squat. You find a one rep max. And now this is a controlled repetition.

So what we look for is obviously starting overhead, and you go all the way below parallel, pause for one second, and we're going to explain why in a second, and then come back up and finish the rep. So the pause in the bottom is mainly to show control and that you didn't just kind of bounce out. And the funny thing about having that controlled second in the bottom is that most people actually do more weight that way. A lot of times people pr when we have a tempo or we have a pause just

because balance is such a big issue in the overhead squat when they try to rush it and get out because it's heavy they dump it forward or lose it behind them as opposed to controlling it they stay in that stable position focus on pushing through the shoulders um and yeah this is just this is like i said this is one of my favorite tests to do on everybody just to get overall, like I said, shoulder mobility, thoracic mobility, hip mobility,

core stability. I mean, it includes everything. You can learn so much about someone's movement quality by watching them overhead squat. Yeah, you just watch mine. It sucks. It doesn't tell you

absolutely everything, but I can't think of many other movements that are used that much in training that tell you that much. Yeah, well, I mean, like you said, everything is required. You have to have almost excellent mobility to get into a good overhead squat position,

and you have to have balance and stability to maintain that bar overhead. So, yeah, if you don't have those three things, then overhead squat is going to be hard for you. I think also, I mean, just the carryover to Olympic weightlifting, if you can't overhead squat what you can snatch, then that's an issue. I mean, speaking from personal experience, I have had that struggle with being able to snatch more than I can overhead squat because when I catch a snatch, I walk out.

Well, the thing about it, when I catch a snatch, I stand up very quickly, which is not ideal because a lot of times that bar goes forward. Instead of being able to receive the bar in the bottom, stabilize it and then stand up with control. So working on your overhead squat, especially pausing, will definitely help you with being more comfortable in receiving heavy weights when you actually go to snatch or snatch. Yeah, I mean, ideally we should be able to receive a snatch, and if we're just a little bit out of balance,

instead of trying to stand up and lose it, we stabilize. We should be able to stabilize, exactly. So there's a lot of standards for the overhead squat. You've got the old CrossFit gold standard of 15 at body weight, and then you've got the Olympic lifting standard, which I think is like 130-ish percent of your snatch is what you're looking for. So what is the standard, I guess, that we're looking for? What we're looking for is you want, when we test the front squat next,

that's number three on day one, we want 85% of your front squat. Minimum. Yeah, at a minimum. So obviously if that's more, that's going to be a lot better, but that's a good starting point to aim for. So with that said, yeah, yeah, yeah, where are you at? Let's see. My best front squat is 180 kilos.

Yeah, nowhere near that. I would have to over at squat like 153. With that said, that doesn't tell you, like the number itself doesn't tell you where the limitation is, so you need to spend some time figuring it out. Just tell you that you're inadequate. Very rarely is it just pure leg strength. Very rarely is it that.

Most of the time it's movement quality. Yeah, it's movement quality. Right, so what are some things we can do to get better at that? Obviously, more mobility in the hips and the ankles and the upper back. And then if balancing the weight or stabilizing is your issue, doing things like snatch grip, push presses, presses, snatch grip carries, things like that. Yeah, actually snatch grip carries with kettlebells hanging from bands

if stability is a major issue. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Having to stabilize and walk with it. We were talking about yokes the other day. Doing an overhead yoke carry will definitely help with stability overhead or any kind of overhead carry in a wider grip. I think some of the people in our flight program were probably like, it looks familiar.

That's cool. One other thing, too, is the obvious thing is just practicing doing overhead squats. You may just suck at overhead squats. Increasing the pause can also help with that bottom position, and it helps work a little bit mobility as well. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to get into more specific mobilities with the different tests throughout the next three days.

So I think it's important to point out here that – The show's not three days. We're talking about three days of testing. The show could be three days. Some people can overthink mobility a little bit, and like you said, a great way to get better at overhead squat and mobility is just sitting in that bottom position. Yeah, keep it simple.

All right, so number three on day one, the front squat. You're going to find a one rep max. Now, the only real standard on this, well, other than going below parallel, is you have to keep your hands in the front rack position. You don't have to full hand grip it, but we do that to help really illustrate any mobility limitations you have with that mainly because if we're doing this test we're assuming that you want these this front squat to translate to many other lifts that you're doing so no no cross no crossover right no cross

grip can you use what if you're injured can you use like straps and get if you're injured i would say that but i would almost like like it's like treated like a screen where it's like almost like zero like like that needs to be fixed you know right right so that would be like, it's like treated like a screen where it's like almost a zero. Like that needs to be fixed, you know. Right, right, right. So that would be like a fail. We want it to be translated to everything. So if we're doing thrusters or if we're doing cleans, we don't want this number to say you do this and you compare it to your clean.

And if your front squat is, you know, 200% of your clean, there's a bunch of reasons that could be. But if you can't even get into the front squat then that may be the reason so it skews the test so we want it to be directly related to everything else we're doing and this is also like this is our bilateral like pure leg strength test now it's not the highest

absolute strength test for your legs but we want to keep it a little functional in nature so doing things like obviously it's still going to test some core stability. Your upper back mobility is going to be a limitation. Hip, ankle. Yeah, it's going to bring out a lot of things. So that's mainly why we chose it instead of just like a regular back squat.

Should you do this? So when you do these tests, should they do these tests with, I mean, full gear on, weightlifting belt, weightlifting shoes, if that helps them? I think if you're going to do that and you retest this, make sure it's the same. Right. Yeah. Okay. So I wouldn't, like, one time do it in flats without any gear and a belt,

and the next time put on the shoes and everything, and you're like, I went up 40 pounds. Right, right, right. I mean, it's great. Or you could go down. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So just keep the testing standard the same. Yeah, I think it a little bit depends on what your sport is.

I mean, if you're a weightlifter, yeah, use it. If you're a crossfitter, maybe not because, again, it may skew think it a little bit depends on on what your sport is i mean if you're a weightlifter yeah use it if you're a crossfitter maybe not because again it may skew the test a little bit if you don't ever wear them for thrusters or if you don't ever wear them for heavy cleans in a metcon then it's going to skew your test a little bit so wear the same stuff you're going to use normally so if you normally wear the weight let's just use then normally wear them yeah so okay sorry go ahead oh i was gonna say there's three things we're generally generally going to see with this. There's probably more, but we'll just pick three. Leg strength.

All right. Like how do we get better at that? I don't know. Drink more milk and squat more. Number two, core stability. So if you're someone who does it and melts like a candle on the way up, all right. Question mark. We could do lots of heavy carries, more yoke walks.

Like there's a ton of different things you can do. Ten-second pauses in the bottom front squats. Yeah, the point is to recognize that core stability is the issue. Yeah, actually, what you said just right there, if core stability is an issue, I love doing long, long pauses. You actually love doing those? Oh, I love them. I absolutely love them because they help my front squat.

They work really well. Like Travis Mash, he had me squatting seven second pauses in the bottom and then 15 seconds pausing in the front rack at the top. That doesn't look that bad. For a one rep max. Because you're like, oh, once I get past seven seconds, it won't be that bad. You stand up and you're like.

No. How would you write that as a tempo? It would be like, what, seven? You just have to write it all out. Seven, one. Just write it all out. One, 15. People are like, what is this?

What does 30X1 mean? It's my zip code or is that my tempo today? But specific things I think that have helped me pull my front squat up. Like I started off of maybe like a 140 front squat, and then over a year I got up to like a 180-kilo front squat, doing a lot of pausing. So a lot of pausing, pause reps, like shorter reps or shorter pauses, and then working up to, you know, a three-rep max, something like that.

And then also a lot of chain work, so front squats with chains. And that helped because a lot of times you get stuck sometimes in that right in that middle, especially for me. So so working those chains it helps that accommodating resistance that varying resistance you you you push through that sticking point right yeah there's a lot of core work in that too when you're coming up and you feel those chains if if kind of forward is one of those uh issues that's where like yeah when you're driving up you feel like your guts are going to come out oh yeah yeah stay still man chains and the sound of them makes you gain so with the core stability issue and the leg strength like one of the biggest things that

would actually make those worse could be mobility so again we could talk all day about different mobility exercises to do but make sure that the hips and the ankles and the in the upper back actually can can extend and stay straight, and then it might allow you to actually get stronger without actually getting any stronger. One more thing about that, too, the upper back, another great exercise. Sorry, I do a lot of these accessory works,

but waiter squats with a dumbbell. Oh, yeah. So one-arm waiter squats you can do with a dumbbell or you can do it with a farmer handle. Oh, yeah. So one-arm waiter squats, you can do with a dumbbell or you can do it with a farmer handle. Yeah, exactly. That will really test your ability to keep your torso upright and keep your chest up. So doing those will really help your front rack position.

Are you working on squatting right now? Number four. All right, moving on. Number four. What about left to right imbalance with the squat? So this fourth one on day one, we do front rack, rear foot elevated split squat. All right. And the point of this one is it does test a little bit of leg strength, but for the most part.

Five rep max. Yeah, we do. Oh, yeah, sorry. We do a five rep max at a strict tempo of a 3-0-1-0. So when you say, when you hear 3-0-1-0, that means three seconds down, a controlled eccentric, no pause, one second up, no pause. So you do five reps at a nonstop pace, right? Each side.

Now, the point of that is to really show how much stronger your left might be from your right or if there's any imbalance. Again, it's not going to be like crazy heavy, right? Because we're just on one leg. But again, the point is just to really show like, A is my right side equal to my left side. And if not, then you need to go a little bit stronger. Yeah, as opposed to the strength squat, there's a little bit less of a mobility factor here. So it's more of an absolute strength factor, but individual legs. There is a little bit of mobility factor though, with that back leg being elevated. That hip flexor on that back leg can sometimes be a limiter.

And, again, the exercise itself is a great exercise for this because you're working that mobility through the full range of motion while you're strengthening it. So, yeah, that was good. Coach Mike, I have a question. What if my right side is a lot weaker than my left? What are some exercises I can do to improve that? Yeah, so basically any single-leg exercise. Yeah.

So step-ups. I like starting with step-ups, walking lunges, front-rack lunges, rear-foot split squats, more of those. Basically just any single-leg exercise, even single-leg glute bridges if specifically the glute is weak. Yeah, so any single-leg exercise. Oh, CTP has one. Me first.

You go ahead. Me first. You go ahead. Me first. You go ahead. The one with less strength or contention? Ah, I was about to ask that same question. You should always start with the weak leg first and then do the same weight for the other leg. So don't do 20 pounds on this side and then 75 pounds on this side. Right.

Take the weak leg first and then just do the same weight on the other side. What if you don't want the other leg to get weaker? It won't. The point is to balance out. It's not to let them both continue to get stronger. So, yeah, do the weaker side first, let it catch up with the other one, and then get them both stronger.

And you said this was at a tempo pace? Yeah. What was the tempo again? The tempo is 3-0-1-0. So three seconds down, no pause, come up. So it's basically like 1-2- tempo is 3-0-1-0. So three seconds down, no pause come up, so it's basically like 1-2-3. Up, 1-2-3. That's pretty good. I wonder how many

questions we'll get about what is 3-0-1-0-X? I'm supposed to do 30 times 10? If you don't know what tempo is, go Google We've got one. We have that, but just go Google what is tempo and you will find out what it is.

That's like the most common question we ever get. Alright, so last exercise of the day. Strict handstand pushups. You're going to do one attempt of max unbroken reps. So kick up to the wall, start locked out. That's where the rep begins. Come down, touch your head, and then back up. These are the wall, start locked out. That's where the rep begins. Come down, touch your head, and then back up. These are completely strict, no kipping. And we're using the standard that the CrossFit Games Open uses, mainly because it's just one that we found that

most people are familiar with. It's a simple standard. It's very simple. Takes a couple seconds to set up. You put your thumbs together, hands on the wall, body against the wall, feet against the wall, feet together, actually. And then you measure three inches below the crease of your wrist. And that's where your heels, that line that you would draw, the three inches below here, that's where the heels have to go above on each rep. This is just a simple test of inverted awareness and upper body absolute strength. Coordination and strength, yeah. I like that standard, too, because it brings out, when they first yeah i like that standard too because it

brings out when they first came out with that standard a couple years ago like a lot of people got mad about it um because they it was such a hard standard but if you're in good positions you know if you take bring a gymnast in here they're not gonna have any problem with that standard because they stack really well so their bones stack on top of each other really well they keep their core tight so they're not all hyper extended because and that's when it gets yeah that's when it gets sketchy so it requires that core stability and that coordination when you're inverted uh to be in those good positions and what if you couldn't what if you cannot do a hand sample yeah so this is kind of a pass or fail type test if you can't do one

for testing purpose then your score is zero yeah and we give you some insight into how we'll get better at that yeah so let's talk about that. If you're someone who can't do one or might be very close, you can do things like wall-facing handstand holds or just handstand holds locked out with your back against the wall, basically isometric holds. You can do slow eccentric lowering. What else? So lower all the way to your head, fall down, kick back up, lower all the way to your head fall down kick back up yeah lower all the

way to your head uh wall walks wall walks yeah yep yep suck man um so that's yeah that focuses on the concentric a couple episodes ago in the pull-up episode about weight being a factor and this is another one of those body weight tests so weight could be a factor um dumbbell pressing where you have that stability uh even strict barbell pressing any kind of pressing overhead is going to assist with this one of the things you said earlier too was if you had a gymnast go over there they stack on they what exactly do you mean by that and then i was kind of saying that they keep a hollow body so a hollow body holds i think are a very good uh help if you have trouble get into a good handstand position.

Yeah, so hollow body hold or basically a straight line from wrist all the way down to toe should be a perfectly straight line. And being stacked means your joints of your shoulder and your elbow and your wrist are all stacked right on top of each other as opposed to looking like me right now where I'm not really stacked. Where you're broken. If you're this guy, which is a lot of us out there on the walks. It makes it a lot harder, and that's why you see somebody

who maybe is not as strong as you. Maybe you are doing presses and whatever, and they can do like half as much as you, but they can stand in a handstand hold all day long. I remember watching, I mean, we reference frowning a lot, but I remember watching frowning in the team competition a couple years ago. I don't know if it was last year or what, but they had handstand pushups while the partner was holding the handstand. And so many people were coming down, were limiting their partner on the holds, not the actual pressing, because that hold was so hard.

They just couldn't hold that position because they weren't stacked good. And frowning was just like sitting there hanging out. He would even just stay there while the partner came down and rested and that just shows a limiter as far as mobility and being able to stack on top of each other and it should be a basically resting position gotcha uh briefly let's talk about if you are someone who can do them already what are some ways you can get more reps at them so if it's like an endurance issue yeah it's still it's still an absolute strength issue. Right. Yeah, I really like density sets or EMOMs where you're doing, maybe you can do five is the most you can do unbroken.

Maybe we break that down and do two per minute, four or five minutes, which would give us ten total reps in a controlled manner, and we build on that. Either decrease the time between those sets or add one rep every other minute or something as we build on that. Gotcha. And these are strict, correct? Yes.

Hey, there's my mom. Hey, Mom. All right, so that concludes day one, right? Go get some rest. Again, light training. I feel like I should say, hey, Mom. Yeah. Light training if you are continuing these,

which hopefully you are. We're going to do all the tests. Don't do any more strength work afterwards. Some people are going to be wiped after this. Some people are going to be like, man, I could do more. Just bear with us. Stick with it. You've only got two more days after this.

Make sure you eat some good food later on and get that window of gains. Or tomorrow's day two is upper body testing day. So it's not all gymnastics. So eat big. But if you want to do better on on the gymnastics eat lean yeah show up light okay so day two starts with a standing barbell strict press right a one rep max um point here is just a simple upper body absolute pressing strength test what else a simple upper body absolute vertical pressing strength test i mean that's the king of that's the king of

figuring out if you're strong overhead or not. It's a strict press. I mean, that was back in the day. That was the test. That was the test. The clean and press. Clean and press. If you could fucking clean and press.

Like, what was the record? Like 400 or something? I don't know. They used to do like the hip drive where they go. The Olympic press. Yeah, they kind of rock into the toes. I mean, that's. I've heard it said before, and I believe this too,

like if you have a guy who can bench press 400, he may or may not can strict press 300. But if you have a guy who can strict press 300, he can definitely bench press 400. There's a lot to be said for that. There's a carryover there that's way greater if you can do a strict press with a lot of weight than it is if a bench press a lot of weight. If I can strict press 220, I did it last night.

Then you can bench press 330. No, I can't. Nope. What's your bench press? About 300 pounds. Well, it could be technique for that, too. But there's a lot of people that can bench press 300 that can't press 200. Gotcha.

Cool. So, yeah, with that said, what number are we looking for here? We want to at least be at body weight. Okay. So, for men. Yeah. Men, you at least be at body weight. For men. Men, you want to be at body weight. That's Diesel, man. I'm stronger. That's kind of the CrossFit standard.

I guess you're 20. That is Diesel. Where are you at? I think my best was body weight. That's my absolute best. I thought I had a strong press. Man, that's tough. Body weight press is hard.

You know McElroy pressed like 210, like 170 pounds. Kurt, what about you? What's your body weight and what's your press? Same, body weight. Perfect. Cool. Very adequate. What's it for women?

Women, I think we said 0.75, 75% of your body weight. Cool. All right, awesome. So one of the things that we're looking for here, again, is absolute strength, obviously. And then you also see uh left to right imbalance on this so um with that said like if you notice that you're going you might have some issues there and we'll talk a little bit about how to get better at that um with coming up with the next test um so how do we get stronger in strict press do more do it press. Do it more. Drink more milk and more strict pressing.

Yeah. I mean, if mobility is not an issue, then especially just getting stronger. If mobility is an issue, which it commonly is for CrossFitters, not so much for weightlifters. Usually for weightlifters it's more of a strength thing just because they practice the mobility so much and don't do a lot of strict pressing. But for CrossFitters, a lot of times it's mobility.

So working on that mobility behind the neck presses, wall slides, things like that. Yeah, improving the position gives you more power. Strict press is one of those exercises that's really hard to improve. It does. It takes a lot of time. A lot of people get frustrated because, like, well, my strict press hasn't gone up or it's only gone up like five pounds.

That is a lot for a strict press. If you're talking about a maximum effort. I mean, basically you're just going to have to get, you have to do it more. You're going to have to get stronger. Same things apply. You can still do, you know, accommodating resistance. You can set up some bands, single arm pressing,

like taking a single arm dumbbell pressing. That can also help with, especially with stability part, or the balance rather. So, I mean, it's going to take – it's hard to improve. I think mentally, like just look at it from a percentage standpoint, like five pounds on a 100-pound press, it's big. Like look at that compared to your squat. It's probably – Yeah, it's just because it's probably one of your lower lifts.

Yeah, so it's going to be harder to see big numbers. If mobility is not an issue, then bench pressing, doing things where you can overload that pressing. Incline pressing. Incline bench press. That's a key point is that you can overload with the bench press. You can do a lot more weight, so, yeah, it's going to help you adapt a little better. But if you're somebody with mobility issues, then that may not be the best idea.

I know when my bench press is going up, my press sometimes go down, or definitely my jerk goes down because that mobility gets more restricted. Gotcha. As it already is. All right, so exercise number two on day two, weighted strict pull-up. You're going to find a one rep max with a pronated grip. Again, pronated grip meaning palms away from your face. Overhand.

Yeah, overhand grip. Not facing you. Right. What we're looking for here is very similar to the, yeah, I say supinated, like a bowl of soup. No soup for you. Yeah, no soup for you. We do this because it's another simple, absolute strength upper body pulling test in a vertical plane.

What we're looking for here is generally you want to do, if you're a guy, you want to do about 30% of your body weight. All right, so. Female is about 20%. So what's 30% of 200? 60 pounds. Did I just do that? No, you did.

Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. So when you enter this number, you're going to do your body weight plus the external load that you did. So if I did a 60-pound weighted pull-up, I would enter in 260 pounds. So it's 30% for men and 20% for women. What else are we looking for with this?

Is that difficult for you? No, it's not. I think for CrossFitters, we would probably want to shoot a little higher than that. Why is that? Just because of the demand that we put on those when we're doing kipping muscle-ups and kipping pull-ups and so much torque on the shoulder anyway. So we want to have a little bit of reserve strength in there that it should be a little bit higher. This is just a general number, but, yeah, that's a really good point.

So much more volume and demand in upper body gymnastics in the sport of CrossFit. So some ways we get stronger. Yeah, so if you don't have a pull-up at all um then i mean just like our our program in the overtime with the getting your first strict pull-up you know we start with uh static holds whether it's chin above the bar hold um even hanging from the bar static holds and then we go into eccentrics where we're just doing the negative portion just lowering down eventually getting to where we're lowering down added weight. And even weighted pulls like pin lay rows or single arm dumbbell rows.

Horizontal pull. So inverted rows or ring rows. So very similar to what you said with the strict press. With the bench press, you can kind of overload that way. So it's kind of the same thing with the weighted pull-up. You can overload by doing more horizontal rows because most people can horizontally row a lot more than they can do a pull-up with. Very cool. All right. So now we're going to talk a little bit about finding left-right imbalances in both of those for the pushing and the pulling. Actually, not for the pulling, just for the pushing. So number three on day two is

single-arm seated dumbbell press. You're going to take 40% of the standing barbell strict press that you had, and you're going to find a rep max for each arm. So if I did a 100-pound press, I'm going to take a 40-pound dumbbell, I'm going to sit on a bench, and I'm going to do as many reps as I can. So this is a vertical press. Yeah, vertical press overhead. And I'm not going to sit here and take breaks. I'm going to try and keep it constantly moving.

However, if you start to slow down a little bit, that's okay. As long as you're not like waiting like 20 seconds to get like a few more reps and you need to like, you put a score, you're like, I did 70. Yeah. What would be the case if you, if you did so many on that side? Like, well, again, if it's based off your pull up, well, we're not looking for a strict press. We're not, we're not looking for a number on this specifically. We're just looking for uh based on your strict press it's based on your strict press we're not we're not looking for a number on this specifically we're just looking for a left to right imbalance so if one side gets 10 the other side gets 7 that's an issue and it's a potential for injury that's why we check for imbalances right it's an asymmetry and we want to fix that yeah again a lot of time we talked about this earlier with with crossfitter with weightlifting we do a lot of bilateral stuff

so if we're only doing you know push presses and jerks and pull-ups and things like that and we're never looking at a single arm we may have an imbalance that we may not be aware of until all of a sudden injury happens um and it may not but we just want to be aware of that so testing the single arm seat making sure there's no major imbalance because if there is you're probably pushing at an awkward angle that you don't really realize um and so just making sure there's no imbalance there and fixing that. Yeah. We said also, like, even if you don't have an imbalance,

we still think people should do more unilateral, you know, pressing and single arm stuff. Remind me, was this for max reps? Yes. Okay. So what if somebody, is there a minimum or maximum number of reps that you should probably try to hit? No.

Again, we don't have enough information yet on that. After more people do this, we will. But, again, all we're looking for is the left to right imbalance right now. As we get more data, then, yeah, we'll have a better number. Yeah, because it seems like if you were able to – like what I was trying to ask earlier is that if you were – if it's based off your strict press and you're 40 percent of your strict press but you were able to do like 30 reps then something's off with especially maybe that's what that's all we're looking for is like you don't want to see that yeah right we tried to make these these tests and this goes for any that we're about to discuss

or that we've discussed before as comprehensive as possible um and it's not something a lot of the things we have numbers on but a lot of them we don't necessarily have a bunch of numbers on so we're trying to try to get a more comprehensive test out there that we can apply to our training going forward we're doing experiments you're our test yeah so once you do the test or actually when you sign up for this you'll get all the workouts and then you'll have a link that you can click where you go and you actually fill in all your results. And we're going to have all the data and all the information

and see where everyone stacks up. It's going to be pretty cool. You're a guinea pig. Yep. All right, so following that, we're going to do strict pull-up AMRAP or as many unbroken reps as possible with a pronated grip.

So again, here it's more of an upper body pulling endurance test. Obviously, if you couldn't do a weighted pull-up, unbroken reps as possible with a pronated grip. So again, here, it's more of an upper body pulling endurance test. Obviously, if you couldn't do a weighted pull-up, you might be able to do an unweighted pull-up. If you can't do a pull-up at all, it's just going to be a score zero. We'll talk again, or we actually already have kind of talked about how to get stronger at pull-ups, but mainly what we're looking for here is just another simple gymnastics test to test the endurance of your upper body pulling. Yep. So this will will be trained very very similar to the handstand push-ups so if you don't have a pull-up yet you'll do negatives you'll just continue to get try to get stronger if you do have strict pull-ups but you don't have

very many say you have five you do two per minute for five minutes that'd be 10 reps total in a kind of controlled environment and just try to build on that. So train it very similar to the handstand push-up. Very cool. After that, weighted ring dip. So, again, more vertical movement, but now we're doing downward pressing. All right. So you're going to find a one rep max weighted ring dip. This is a full range of motion.

The standard is basically shoulder going below the elbow and then coming up all the way at the top for a lockout. So you start locked out all the way down, shoulder below elbow, and then come back up to the top and lock out. No bar dip. No bar dip. This is on the rings. Why did we choose the rings?

Yeah, why did we choose the rings? We chose rings because of the stability issue. Obviously, with the bars, all you're worrying about is the hold and the press. As opposed to the rings, you're having to worry about keeping them in. The farther out they get, the more unstable they get, and you fall out. Right. So, yeah, again, that's just to illustrate and show the instability that you might have at the top or at the bottom.

So if you can't do a ring dip, there's a bunch of different ways you can get strong, specifically if it's a stability issue. So isometric holds at the top top isometric holds at the bottom same thing with you know like think about like handstand push-ups you can do loaded eccentrics what are some other exercises they could throw in yeah so if strength is an issue you could do bar dips to help get stronger with this you know again talking about bench press relative to press bar dips relative to ring dips you can overload the nervous system as far as strength goes um so doing that you can also do uh you mentioned holds uh slow tempos um yeah those are some good so what do they want this number to be we want this to be we said this is should be

uh equal to your strict pull-up yeah so when you enter this again just like the strict pull-up it's going to be the weight that you did plus your body weight. So it's body weight plus the external load. So, again, if I weigh 200 pounds and I did a 60-pound pull-up, I would want to be able to do a 60-pound weighted ring dip as well. Man, yeah. I'm listening to this right now, and I know how imbalanced I am because I definitely cannot pull what I can actually bring up.

Right, yeah. A lot of people are much stronger in the pressing. I'm way stronger in the pressing. Yeah. Another exercise I think is good, too, is if you're trying to build that absolute strength is close grip bench pressing. Close grip bench. Because you can definitely overload that.

Yeah, you can overload that to shit, and then that will help strengthen your triceps a lot. Weighted push-ups. The cable machine? Oh, yeah. Well, that just feels good. That will help strengthen your triceps a lot. Weighted push-ups. The cable machine. Oh, yeah. Well, that just feels good. The combination of some bench press and the weighted dip,

you look hella alpha in the gym doing that. Yeah, that's what I do on my arm day, man. I do the closed-grip bench, and then I superset it. So, yeah. All right, so last exercise of the day, strict re-dips. We're basically, again, going to test endurance of the downward pressing. So you've done the weighted. Now we're going to see how many reps you can do unbroken, one attempt, just strict ring dips.

So again, full range of motion. Rep starts at the top, all the way down, shoulder below elbow, and then back up. That's one rep. You don't have to do a full pause each time. You can keep it fast as long as you're just obviously locking out. I don't know if we mentioned this on the last one, but one of the things we're looking at in the ring dip, whether it's this one or the weighted one,

is that extension in the shoulder. Make sure we have that mobility. A lot of times that's a position that's missed out. We focus so much on flexion overhead, and we don't think about extension in that position. Not only translates to if you have pain, something in the bench press or ring dip but also snatching and cleaning where your elbows are outside and in that same uh internal rotation position so yeah that's one of the things we're looking at too yeah so how do we get better at these at the ring dips yeah uh

very similar to the both other gymnastics tests we've done so the pull-up and the handstand push-up if you have uh ring dips um if you don't have them again we talked about how to get stronger when we're talking about the weighted one but if you do have them same thing eat moms maybe you do two on the minute for five minutes or one on the minute for 10 minutes or whatever and just try to accumulate that volume in a progressive form gotcha yeah and one thing i see like i'll use crossfit as an example is like so many people struggle with finishing the lockout like in muscle-ups and in ring dips, but you see it more in muscle-ups.

And like we just don't do enough ring support holds. A ring support hold is basically where you lock out at the top and you just hold. Have you ever done that for like accumulate like 30 to 60 seconds? Especially if you focus on the external. If you externally rotate and you turn out, that's even more difficult. I can't even – I did a gymnastics phase a while back in my training, and I was doing lots of ring support holds, and I can't explain how easy the lockout became in muscle-ups.

It was crazy because I was really working on that turnout, and then when it came time to test some muscle-ups in a workout, it wasn't even a thought that I would ever have an issue locking out. It's really surprising. I've done some shredded workouts where there was some. Yeah. It's humbling. Yeah, it is.

You get up there and you're not expecting to look like a dolphin when they come out of the water. So this concludes day two testing. By now you should have a massive pump. Yeah, I was going to say, you're going to have a serious pump after this day. Day two should be just called bro session. It is. It's bro session day. Yeah.

But, yeah, so we talked a lot about, you know, why we chose those movements and then how to get better at them. We're going to take a little break before we start on day three. So stay tuned. Out. All right. And we're back. Now we're going to talk about day three of the shrug strength test. We've talked about day one, day two. Did a little bit of squatting on day one. Figured out where the legs are at, where you might have some imbalances and weaknesses. Day two was more upper body focused. Getting your pump on.

Getting the pump, the bro sesh. Day three, we're going to finish it out. So if you're feeling sore and tired, hang in there. You're almost done. This first one is so fun to me. I love this exercise. You're going to find an overhand grip deadlift I didn't do it almost double overhand grip deadlift what that means is no hook grip you're gonna grab it with your thumbs around your fingers like this and you're gonna pick you're

gonna pick up as much weight as you can the point here is that it's another simple or it's not another it's the first simple lower body pulling test that we've done, but it's also a grip tester. What else are we looking for with this? Yeah, something we didn't mention earlier and when we were talking is scapular retraction, the strength in this position where we're pulling off the ground. I know with me and my injury, I notice this a lot with double overhand, I said it, double overhand grip uh deadlift where the heavier i get and it's getting better but uh this shoulder just won't stay back because that retraction so it kind of folds forward so that's one of the things we're looking at making

sure the shoulders are balanced side to side uh making sure seeing how much of a limiter grip strength is and how far off of our normal deadlift this is yeah yeah yeah because most people have done a deadlift before um and and we want to have that in there, but again, also, we want to get more into it. So just pulling a deadlift, it tells you exactly like your absolute full strength of pulling, but it doesn't tell us a lot about grip strength and integrity,

like specifically like postural integrity under heavy load. I'm not a huge fan of just maxing out on the deadlift, especially if I'm telling a bunch of people in the world to see this and I don't have an eye on them, just because a lot of people don't care about their spine and they're just going to be like, yeah. Got it. Crush the shrunk strength test.

So this kind of limits that. It self-limits that. I was really surprised. A little bit of butt hurt about my strength. I won't lie. What did you end up getting? 140 kilos. So what's that?

That's 308 pounds. That's double body weight for you. It is double body weight. But, like, I just – after hook gripping and I've got, like, a 200-kilo standard, like, deadlift, I was like, man, I had not another pound in me. Macaro, what did you get? What was it? 150, so 330.

330? What did I get? You got 200 kilos. You got 200 pounds. You got 200 pounds. You got 200 pounds. 200 pounds. McGoldrick. Times kg.

Crushed 440 deadlift with no hook grip. He has a great, very powerful grip. You know who's impressive? You? No, this guy named Andrew Rape. He's a friend of mine, teammate on the Rhinos. He never uses hook grip. He doesn't hook grip, and he snatches over 300 pounds.

It's insane. And he clean jerks 400 without hook grip. It's insane. I don't understand. I want to see him test this. Andrew, I'm calling you out. You've got to do the shrug strength test, and you're probably going to take down my score.

All right, so if grip is the limiter, what are some things we can do to get stronger? Yeah, so we're about to test it, but we're looking at farmer's carries, heavy carries, fat bar deadlifts, fat bar carries, fat bar hangs from the pull-up bar, more pause deadlifts in this clean grip position where you're not using the hook grip, slow control tempo, where it's lighter weight, but you're having to fight that grip a little bit more on the way down, all those things. I like, and if keeping that posture integrity is the issue, right? Like,

like staying nice and upright, like throughout the pool. I like things like pause deadlifts, like, like segmented deadlifts, you try there, come up halfway, pause there.

And then you go, it's going to make, obviously it's going to, you know, make you safer and healthier when you lift, especially if like, if you get tired, you're under fatigue,

but it's also going to really help your Olympic lifts. Did you, yeah. Did you say a slow eccentric lowering? Yeah. Yeah. Did you say slow eccentric lowering? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So come back up and then slowly go back down to the ground with control. Yeah.

That's also going to help strengthen the posterior chain, the back end of your legs, which I'm surprised we didn't. I'm curious. I'm not going to go back to the front squat, but front squat is more of a test of that, especially your quad strength. So with the back squat, you still get a little bit more of the glute. Yeah, a little posterior work. So the deadlift, now we're testing a little bit of the posterior chain strength.

And the front rack rear foot elevated split squat tests a lot of the glute as well. Man, I just did some of those the other day. I did snatch grip, lowering deadlifts at a slow tempo. And it feels like somebody took a bat to my upper back and hit it. I'm so sore from, like, fighting and holding that position. Now, this test is with a clean grip. Yes. This is not a wide grip.

Right. Not a wide grip. I don't want to say clean grip because everyone's clean grip is different, but it's just what feels comfortable to reach down and grab. Not sumo. In an overhand. Not a sumo. Yeah, hands outside.

Yeah, conventional. Hands outside legs. It's really interesting, too. A lot of what we're looking at here is postural integrity or postural strength. So the ability to stay in a good position. It's really interesting to note when you watch a bunch of people do this, as soon as the posture breaks down, the grip goes like that. It's not like you can fight through it.

Whereas if you have the hook grip or the reverse grip, you can fight through that bad posture. When the posture goes, the grip goes right after it. So it's really interesting how that's tied together. I wonder what I can pull, but my back is all messed up right now. I'm going to have to try that after I get healthy again. And it's really not super taxing like we did yesterday and we were talking about how it's not like it's not anything like a normal deadlift because it's not that as taxing like that right right um yeah it's just interesting how that posture falls falls apart and then the grip goes which means you stop the

movement which keeps it a little bit safer i think uh between this and what's what's coming next in the in the strength test man it's just day to day you are much more aware of if you have shitty posture if you're aware and you're like i'm totally collapsed yeah it just makes it makes it a habit in the gym and in life which is awesome yep cool so with that said number two of the day um farmer carry you're gonna take 50 of the weight that you just found for the deadlift you're gonna put that in each hand you're gonna pick it up and you're gonna walk with it as far as you can so if i deadlifted 200 pounds i'm going to put that in each hand, you're going to pick it up, and you're going to walk with it as far as you can. So if I deadlifted 200 pounds, I'm going to put 100 pounds in each hand, and I'm going to see how far I can walk with it.

What we're looking for here, again, is some bilateral imbalance in core stability, as well as grip strength again, and more of a postural endurance test. So as you pick it up and walk with it, something about the walking, Mike will go more in detail with that, but it starts to really show if you kind of melt down. But as you said, as you start to melt down, you're probably going to notice that the grip just goes. So anything you want to add to that?

No, I mean, this was really, and this is one of the reasons we're kind of looking deeper into this. I know the strength ratio talks a lot about this as far as the carries relative to your lifts. And I was listening to Greg Cook on the Movement movement fix podcast and he was talking about that like how much how many more reps can you get with a normal like overhand hook grip everything all included whatever how many more deadlift reps can you get once form breaks down and you can get several uh and his point was relating to the carry once you lose postural integrity how far can you

go nothing it just goes so it's really testing that out well yeah when we were we were doing And his point was, relating to the carry, once you lose postural integrity, how far can you go? Nothing. It just goes. So it's really testing that out. Well, yeah. We were doing some farmer's carries yesterday, heavy for like 30 meters. And, yeah, I think I had, what, like 175 on each. And you did the same thing.

But when me doing it, I was struggling to stay in a good, have a good posture. But when I noticed you doing the carries, even though you carried it for, I think, a little less, but you were so stable and you almost just looked like a board while you were walking. And I was just, I looked like I was about to just keel over. And I know that postural strength is a big issue for me because I feel it, especially when I, when I clean and snatch and then that's a huge carry over to that, to weightlifting, just not being able to be, have a strong torso. Yeah. So some, some ways to improve that. You can start with doing more carries again, more farmer carries with a lighter load for longer distances,

and you can do very heavy loads for shorter distances. Any type of carry, you can do one side at a time. You can do unilateral. You can do both. What else could they do? Something outside of farmer carries. Yoke walks? Yeah, I mean, if you feel more unstable in the core and stuff,

I mean, yoke walks could be a factor. So front rack yoke walks, back rack yoke walks know carries carry i've seen people doing carries while doing sled pulls i haven't done any of that but yeah yeah you can also do single single arm any kind of single arm just you know make sure you're balanced but yeah yeah specifically uh the grip specifically i like doing things like uh cannonball carries uh if you haven't seen a cannonball before it's like a little metal, a little steel ball that you can hook weight to. And I do walks with those, and it's just kind of a grip test.

Now the secret comes out. Pinch block carries, pinch plate carries. Pinch plate carries are brutal. You don't need any equipment for that. Just go grab a 15-pound plate, obviously, but like 15- or 25-pound plate, and just walk with that. You're not grabbing the lip of it or anything because that kind of defeats the purpose.

You're pinching it. Pinching it. Oh, man, it's brutal. Composition plate. Yeah. Anything like fat bar, so axles, or you can go buy yourself some fat grips. Deadlifts with the fat grips, that will train your grip hard.

Cool. Coming up next, the best. Everyone's been waiting for this one. The bench press one rep max. Oh, yeah. I was like, what is it? The mother of all strength lifts. All right.

So all the bases are covered. Three times body weight, right? Yeah, triple body weight. No, just kidding. So, again, we're doing this just to test our upper body absolute pressing strength, mainly because this is generally where more people most people can do the most weight so we want to see how strong you really are with that before we jump into this uh what's the standard on the bench

press setup because are we going to set up like power lifter style where you just totally just do some back curl up in there or we're going to actually just really test and and happy flat on the bench so that's a good question and i think we explained it earlier before the break but this is kind of specific to like what it is your goals are right so like we talked about how the weighted pull-up needs to be a little bit higher for crossfitters because uh they're generally doing like much higher demand of upper body pulling um with the bench press on how standard you would test it, if you're a power lifter, do it how you normally do it.

I wouldn't change anything specifically as long as you do it the same way the first time that when you come back and do it later. Yeah. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I would. I'm not a big fan of the big arch. I just think it puts way too much pressure on your back that's not needed unless you are a power lifter.

And even then, I don't know, I just have a hard time with it. And if you're a CrossFitter, there's no reason to do that. Like, you need to test pressing strength. You're not testing how you can game the system. But, yeah, I think it's do what you're training it for. What's a number that they're looking for? I think we said one and a quarter body weight for guys. For general, yeah.

And body weight for girls, I think is what we said. That's pretty good. Just to give you an idea, it doesn't mean it can't go up, but you want to at least get up to that number. So 1.25% for men and then body weight for women. Right. Cool. How can we get better at the bench press?

Drink more milk. Yeah, go mad. Go mad. Let's go mad. Gallon of milk a day. Gallon of milk a day. Not for real, though. Just do more strength work.

Like, there's a ton of exercises to improve your bench press. The cool thing about the bench press is that it's not body weight limiting. Everyone can do a bench press. Yeah, there's literally a library of bench press exercises. Because, I mean, powerlifters, that's one of the three main lifts that they do. So, you know, a lot of powerlifting training programs, they do a lot of variation to work the different sticking points of the bench press. So things like board presses.

Lockouts. Yeah, lockouts. They can even do – what's where you load it, where you hang bands? Reverse banded. Yeah, and reverse bands, all those types of things, bands, chains, all that. And we didn't add in a unilateral test for this because you obviously would see some of that with the vertical pressing, and not that it's going to be the same with horizontal.

It could be a little different. But you know how to test it now. So if you're someone who does the bench press and you notice you're like, like a broken jack on a car or something, it's like something, then you know how you could go back and retest that and improve it.

And that would just be with one arm or single arm dumbbell exercises, et cetera. And please get somebody to spot you. Put the clips on and get someone to spot you. You're not above that. Yeah, get somebody to spot you. We don clips on and get someone to spot you. You're not above that. Yeah, get somebody to spot you. We don't want to see videos of epic fails.

Oh, man, that one about the dude. I've gotten stuck under a bar. Yeah, the one guy, he had a safety rack set up, but he brought it out and he missed the safety rack and landed on his throat. And he was like, ah. Can people do this with a Smith machine? No. No. No.

You're not on the moon, so... Don't train like you're on the moon. We're not in space. Yeah. No Smith machine. This is real stuff. Just kidding. I'm not knocking on a Smith machine.

Every piece of equipment has its purpose, but not for this one. Right. All right, so what's after that? Hang on, close. Yeah, we're going to go kind of the opposite now. We're going to go exercise number four today is the inverted strict bar row.

This one you could do on a Smith machine. You could. You could use the Smith machine for this. It's probably easier to set up that way. However, the Smith machine bars

are a little bit fatter sometimes, aren't they? Yeah, usually like 31. Yeah, so inverted strict bar row, what we're looking for here is you're going to set up a bar that's equal to a box, the height of it, so that when you're

hanging from the bar, you're almost inverted. You're almost like at a downward angle. So your feet are on the box, your hands are on the bar, and your feet and the bar are the same level. What we're looking for here is obviously arms locked out, pulled your chest to the bar, you can do as many reps as you can. Massive pump. Yeah, I can see this in the video. Yeah, you know, we're talking about a lot of these movements, and you're like, I don't know how to set all this up. We've got a full, or we did all the demo videos for you, and we walked through each one step by step and explained how to set up. It's super easy.

So check that out if you're confused. So anyways, moving on. It's when you sign up for the Struck Strength Test. Yeah, when you want the test and you sign up for it, you'll get all the videos when you're ready. And you sign up for it, you'll get all the videos when you're ready. And you're ready now. We're looking for as many unbroken reps that we can get. You tested this.

How many did you get? Like 67. Holy shit. I was going to say. 21? 21, yeah. I think so. What we're looking to avoid is like you don't want to get.

This is strict, okay? So you could probably get to the bottom and, like, do this, but the point is just to get, like, a true indication of where that strength is. Yeah. So no breaking of the body. Right. Midline straight. And keep it pretty steady pace.

You know, you can get – it does go pretty quickly because it's that last – we want the bar to make contact every time. So it does kind of – when it goes, it goes. But you can rest a little bit in the bottom where you're just hanging and then get one or two more but squeeze keep it pretty and i'm okay with that because when we noticed when we tested this with some people the big like we thought that that would be an issue that they would just hang out but it goes pretty quick your grip starts to get tired too yeah and it's not like the pull is what necessarily i mean the pull is what goes but it's really that last, like, inch or two. Yeah, that last little bit of range of motion.

Yeah, retraction. So what are we looking for when we test this? Again, looking for – this is supposed to be a little bit more of an endurance test, pulling endurance test. For a lot of people, it will be a strength test. To get, you know, just a few is going to be tough. And also looking for side-to-side imbalance. You know, it is a bilateral movement,

but you can kind of tell if one kind of gives before the other. And then really that last little bit of retraction in the shoulder blades is really what we're looking for. So if you can't do strict chest-to-bar, if you have a real tough time with chest-to-bar, this may kind of highlight that too. If you're someone who has some mobility issues, again, going with that shoulder extension,

you might notice how hard it is to actually squeeze and finish that. I'm someone who has trouble with that. Doing like strict chest-to-bar holds or strict chest-to-bar pull-ups, they're much more difficult for me than they should be relative to how strong my regular pull-ups are. So, yeah, we're looking for adequate rhomboid and lat strength, the ability to touch your chest to the bar. And it's just a good horizontal test that we could, you know, the pin lay row is is good training it's hard to test necessarily because of standards and so it was just kind of a good horizontal pulling test that we could come up with standards that are easy to follow and easy to

measure right and you know we've done i do a lot with a lot of my clients we do a chest supported barbell row but there's just so many different ways to set that up we thought that this was the simplest and easiest to give you good indication of where you're at with that. So how can we get stronger at that position, in that pulling position? Yeah, so we talked about a lot of it earlier with the dumbbell rows, pin lay rows, more of these, more of these exact rows. If you can't get one at all, lower your feet down so your hands are a little bit higher so you're not so much at a downward angle.

It's going to make it a little bit easier. Even ring rows are a little bit different where you can kind of pull your hands aren't in a fixed position so it makes it where you can pull a little bit better so just any kind of different horizontal pulling yeah perfect cool motion um the last exercise of the shrug strength test using the exact same setup that you've got with your feet on the box and the hands on the bar, you're going to flip around and you're going to do as many push-ups as you can. All right, so what we're looking for here is we've done our absolute strength test. You're going to do one attempt max unbroken push-ups

with your feet on the box and your hands on the bar. With that bar making contact with sternum. Yeah, bar should hit sternum. Ziphoid process. Again, this is an upper body horizontal endurance test. For some, it might be just pure strength. But for the majority, we're testing for core stability. If you're someone who notices it when you go,

you have a real big problem. And that's why we put our hands on the bar and on the feet. It's because you can't cheat this. So you have nothing to rest. So it's really challenging. You'll notice that. You'll be like, man, I'm killing it. I'm killing it.

Oh, gosh. Where did it go? Yeah, it just goes away. You'll notice that you'll be like, man, I'm killing it, I'm killing it. Oh, gosh, where did it go? Yeah, it just goes away. How many did you get? 35. So you did 21 and 35, and you got? 27 and 41. 27 and 41. So we don't have an exact ratio yet, but I think it was around most of the people that we've tested with,

it was like 65 to 70% is a good balance of the pull to the press. And again, the biggest thing here is just to show how much stronger one is than the other. Meaning that if you do two on the row and 30 on the press, it's pretty obvious that your pull needs to get a lot stronger. All right. So again, 60% to 70% just intended to show the relationship between the two. As we do more of this, more and more people do it, we'll have a more narrowed down number. How much rest did you guys take in between? About two minutes.

Yeah, a couple minutes between each one. Make sure that you are at full recovery. There's no rush on these. We're looking for the best result here possible. Cool. Again, how do we get stronger for like the best result here possible. Cool. Again, how do we get stronger at these?

If core's the limiter, let's start with that. Yeah, core's the limiter, you know, planks, static plank holds, front landing rest on rings,

front landing rest on the ground, weighted planks, even back to yoke carries, things like that. Yeah. All those core stability exercises. What about pressing strength? Bench press.

That's the limiter. Bench press. Yeah, cool joke bench press uh again lowering your feet relative to your hands so you know we have the standard setup to where the bar is even with your feet um so if if you can't do one lower your feet down to where you're more at an angle and that's going to give your put your set you up in a better lever position where you can actually do them. Yeah. So doing those and working your way down. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, changing the angle just like you did with the row. Yeah. If it's too difficult, you brought your feet down.

This one, you would bring the hands up higher. Or bring the feet down. Yep. Same thing. Tomato, tomato. You know, like, so at the end of this test, you've gotten all the results now. You fill them out, and then we send you a written out feedback form that's gonna basically summarize a lot

of things actually it's gonna be more in-depth explanation of all the things that we've explained today it's gonna give you examples and how to get better at those things you know a lot of people have come to us and said like man I really want to get stronger at these things I'd like I have a good idea now where my balance is but what's the biggest thing they don't want to lose when they want to get stronger? People still want to be able to breathe, right? We've had so many people ask us that.

Can we actually get stronger at these things and still be able to breathe and do our conditioning? Is it possible? My answer is yes. Yes. I mean, well, yeah. I mean, CrossFitters, high-level CrossFitters, I mean, you're living proof.

You guys do it. Yes, you see that. You see athletes getting stronger all the time and still doing conditioning. Now, they both work. You can definitely get a lot stronger and not do any conditioning, but if you don't want to lose all your fitness, it's definitely possible. Anything you want to add on why and how that might be possible? Yeah, I think before we even touch on the conditioning thing,

again, with these tests that we try to come up with, we try to make it really comprehensive. So a lot of times, you know, people just focus on the conditioning thing we the again with these tests that we try to come up with we try to make it really comprehensive so a lot of times you know people just focus on the squat or they just focus on the snatch and clean and jerk and lower body stuff but we tried to bring in a lot of gymnastics type testing in there um that's simple simple simple simple simple simple and applicable word that everybody can do so it's not like max rep muscle ups and max rep you know ring handstand push-ups or something It's stuff that everybody can do that's going to translate to CrossFit. So blending that together with your conditioning in a specific way, you can have your cake and eat it too.

Yeah, so we've started building a program that's going to kind of involve that. You know, it's going to get you a lot stronger, and it's not going to necessarily crush your conditioning. Still a lot to do on it, but we would love to know if it's something that you guys would be interested in. So let us know if you're someone who is interested in that.

If you want to get a lot stronger and be very balanced and have improvements in your lifts and still be able to do tough Metcons and basically feel

functional still, let us know if you want to do that and we'll keep adding to it. Do you want to be better at everything or do you not? The choice is yours.

I mean, yeah, you can get a whole lot stronger uh and just focus on strength i mean that's arguably what i did for like four years and then i uh recently just stepped into this little world back again and it's a hard road it's hard it's it's very difficult i mean yeah being strong helps but if you're trying to do well at crossfit you cannot ignore the fact that you have to have breath. I don't care how strong. Yeah, like oxygen, 95-pound thruster without oxygen sucks. I think strength focus is so awesome, and I love strength programs, but you don't have to always give up the fitness.

You don't have to just stop doing it. So we ran through day one, two, and three of the Shrugged't have to stop doing it yeah um so we we ran through day one two and three of the shrug strength test uh go give it a shot um sign up online you'll get feedback yeah you'll get the workouts you'll have a place to put in all the results uh we're excited to see them yeah i want to do some statistical analysis some like uh a nova we've already got we've already got a good chunk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have to pull out my old bio statistics. This is biomedical statistics we're collecting here.

I can't wait to see the community's numbers. Oh, we can get Shireen too. Shireen's a big numbers geek, and we can just do a lot. I sent her the form the other day, and she was so excited. Shireen works for us, and she's kind of the behind the scenes on all the number crunching. She's also a fellow engineer. Engineer, and she's one of my athletes.

Super strong woman. Yeah. All right. Anything else you guys want to add? I'm going to wrap this up. Yep. So go to barbastroke.com. Sign up for the strength test.

We'll send you demos on all the videos on how to do it, how to set it up. It's really fun. It takes just a couple of days, three days. It takes a triple of days. Find out where you're lacking. Find out how to set it up. It's really fun. It takes just a couple of days, three days. It takes a triple of days. Find out where you're lacking. Find out how strong you might be, and it gives you a good insight on what you need to work on. Massive pump.

Cool. It'll be fun. And day two pump. Later, guys. Later. Woo!