Barbell Shrugged - Physiology Friday: [Body Transformation] Simple Strategies to Getting Shredded w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Dan Garner

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

In today’s episode of Barbell Shrugged you will learn: Setting goals for physique transformation How long should you plan for a bulk and cut Strategies for building muscle on a bulk How to handle lagging body parts Time frame for cutting weight and getting shredded Being realistic on the amount of fat you truly need to lose Prep cycles for peak week How to maintain muscle mass when depleted To learn more, please go to https://rapidhealthoptimization.com Connect with our guests: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram

Shrug family this week on Barbell Shrug. Dan Garner Physiology Friday is back and today we're talking about some simple strategies for you to get shredded. Summer's coming. The time is now. As always friends make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpeter are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive and you can access that free video over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Andrew Smoltz, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, and nobody else today. No one else is invited. It's just a bunch of homies hanging out and talking about the fitness. Number one on the docket today,

Coach Travis Mash. How long have we known you now? I've known it, see. What was the first time you were on Barbell Shrugged? I just had a time hop from one of our first episodes that was 10 years. 10 years. So presumably 11 or 12 years. You probably hopped on the show within a year or two of knowing us, for sure. Were you coaching

Bledsoe before you were on the show? Right around the same time, pretty much. I met him 2013. It was the American Open when it started snowing in Dallas, a lot of places. It was like an ice spaghetti. It was crazy.

So I met him. It took us 12 years to officially work together. Yeah, dude. It seems like a long time, right? I know. I was so pumped. Who was it? Was it you, Anders, that asked me, or Doug? No, Doug asked. One of y'all I know. I was so pumped. Who was it? Was it you, Anders, that asked me or Doug?

No, Doug asked. One of y'all asked me. I was so pumped. Yeah. We did a little bit together when we were doing the One Ton Challenge. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we did. Right before COVID. Remember, we tried to start an event company right before COVID, two months before COVID.

That was the worst decision of all time. COVID shit all over you. You did write the programming for the One Ton Challenge, which still is phenomenal programming. Everybody wants to get just insanely strong on the six big lifts between powerlifting and weightlifting. That was fun. Yeah.

Do y'all still sell that? I mean, we haven't. We haven't promoted it in a long time, but it's still available in the ether of the internet. You can find it. I see it come through on our uh on our receipts on a yeah somewhat random basis i'm like damn there's people out there still getting jacked you guys got the rapid is crazy man the team how do y'all do that you have such an amazing team you've assembled

like i hope you're not asking me you've been here for three weeks now you should know not to ask me that doug's the one that does it all. Doug's the one that knows all the people. Yeah, man. Doug is really good about the whole process shit. Yeah. Sure. I've been in business long enough to know that it's not that easy.

It's not like I could just do this with anything. Like, you know, Barbell Strug worked out really well, and we crushed for many, many years, and are still doing our thing. And now Rapid's been crushing for a couple of years, and it's grown very well. But I've tried many, many years and are still doing our thing. And now Rapid has been crushing for a couple of years and it's grown very well. But I've tried many, many things over the years. Most of them did not work. Every once in a while, you get something that does work and you just you make hay while the sun shines. So Rapid has been doing phenomenal.

We've got a great team. Anders, me, Dan, Andy came together and we all have our own unique roles. And we don't cross over very much at all. We have our own unique thing that we do within the company. We all stay in our lane. And then, you know, luckily we have a gangster service that has been absolutely smashing for our clients and, you know, the more we sell the better we can grow the team. I remember y'all asking me about, or telling me about Andy is doing this crazy testing for athletes. He's right around i was taking this class i'll be monitoring i remember totally and then like three and a half

years ago yeah like we're November like November 3rd or something like that so we're coming up right on three years of it of the first client joining um but Doug and i went and did it like four or five months before that we're like oh this is like a real thing we're down in uh at bledsoe's event the strong coach summit or what i think that's what it was called in austin doug and i were like damn i feel amazing right now we need to go do this thing yeah Yeah. And there we go. Three years later. Correct. And there you go. That really was only a fraction of what it is now.

That was like, that was like the 1.0 version. We're like, we're now on, I don't know, three or 4.0, whatever it is. And it's,

it's scaled up and gotten much more comprehensive since then. I mean, back then it was just Dan and Annie running labs on people. They didn't have any, like the coaching side of it. There were no subject matter experts. There were no nutritionists or physical therapists or behavioral health coaches or sleep specialists. Like, now we have a whole team of people that work with our clients as opposed to just running labs and giving people advice and suggestions based on labs, which, of course, is very important.

I don't feel forced. Yeah, it's so much more than that now. Yeah, I don't feel, you know, it's cool. I don't feel forced to do things. i don't necessarily feel like the expert you know like in the past where i'll be coaching someone and i will try to you know help people with nutrition i mean obviously i know nutrition but i don't know it like a nutritionist who their whole focus is nutrition it's like feels so good it's like when someone asks me a question i'm like oh we have this other person that's way better than me at this yeah yeah this is the this is the first business i feel like um we've we've only like looked for the world-class solution yeah it's crazy like not just a

nutritionist but who's like really worked with like really high level people um and can i mean a genius every single person that comes through there's like and this is just the nutrition side of things there's like an hour presentation of like we could do a podcast on nutrition but like yeah for every single client that comes through having a 60 minute video presentation of what their current nutrition is where it it's lacking, how to improve it. And here are the exact meal plans to get all the way calorically, macronutrients, micronutrients to an optimal level so that you can go slay is wild. And then to be able to do that for behavioral health and sleep and stress management, the physical therapy side of things, like it's wild. It's crazy.

Yeah. Every business that I've ever been a part of where we had any level of success, I've also been like the target customer. Like when I was running a CrossFit gym, like I wanted to be like the best athlete I could be. I was competing in MMA at the time. I wanted to be strong, fit, mobile and in every sense of the world. So I could be a

very well-rounded athlete. And so running across the gym, teaching people gymnastics and weight lifting and power lifting, and just, you know, training in general, it was what I wanted to do all day, every day. And so, because I was interested in it, I was more interested in teaching it because I was more interested in learning about it at the time. Like the more you can be your own customer in a business, the more you're just going to be all in on that business. And it's going to be like an extension of, of, of your life. It's going to be an extension of your personality and your temperament and, and your goals and

just the, the life that you're surrounding yourself with. If you have a business around that, it's easy to be in business and to work all day. Cause you don't feel like you're working all day. You're just living your life. And that, that has then scaled from owning a gym to running Shrug, which was very similar. Like my life, I wanted to be someone who was just traveling around with my friends,

lifting weights and talking about training with cool people that knew a lot about training. And that was the easy business to run. It still is an easy business to run. Not because it's easy to do, but my interest is so high and it's so enjoyable for me with who I am that it just doesn't feel like work. Same thing when we moved on to the Diesel Dad.

Like I had kids. I was in a new stage of life. Now I still wanted to be strong and fit and whatever else. But I had like these new constraints of having these three little monsters run around where I wanted to be fit. But I had a limited amount of time to get it done. And so, you know, we created EMOM Aesthetics and all the other training programs that were involved with the Diesel Dad because I, again, was the target customer. And then now fast forward to Rapid. Part of the reason that we decided to get together with Dan and Andy and create this like super program was because as I'm getting older, like my goals, again, have shifted. Like I just want to have like high energy, high libido, again, strength, speed, power, etc.

But be as lean as possible. I want to age well is the reality of it. And the medical side of it and running labs and working with specialists and whatnot, like all that stuff is available. But it was all siloed into like, you had to have all these like separate individual specialists. There was nowhere you could go or nowhere I could go nowhere. I could find where I could have this like one-stop shop where I could work with all the different people I wanted to work with, where they're all talking to each other and they all knew each

other. And I was getting one comprehensive plan without having, I don't need a strength coach specifically. Of course, everyone can have a coach and that would be helpful. But you know But if I had a strength coach and I had a nutritionist and I had a physical therapist and I had a functional medicine practitioner and I had a behavioral health coach, if I had all these different separate specialists. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the RTA program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garner and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers,

award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Arte is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan. It's not physique transformation or pre and post pictures. RTA is something completely different. RTA is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors and solve them permanently. You'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization plan. Arate isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's a R E T E lab.com. Now back to the

show. If I had all these different separate specialists, even if I had them all, they're not talking to each other. They're all giving me different advice. That's potentially conflicting. And it's just a headache. And so once, once we were able to meet with Dan and Andy and, and realize that they, they have this like unique part of it with the labs side of it, with the functional medicine practitioner and a muscle scientist looking at labs, giving hyper specific recommendations. We had the coaching side of it. And then we could come in and layer in all the other specialists to make this like comprehensive super program. And I was the client. I knew exactly what I was looking for.

And we basically just built it for ourselves, knowing other people in our same similar situation would definitely want it. It was a no brainer. Shrug family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside out approach. So we're not

going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. And then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level,

and just my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidhealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page.

Once again, it's rap rapidhealthreport.com. And let's get back to the show. You actually hire all the people, Doug. You actually have all of our team members on your team writing your programs for you. Doug, like you're working with our physical therapist in the program, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's probably my main person right now is our physical therapist.

She writes all my PT. right yeah yeah that's probably my main person right now is our physical therapist she she writes all my my pt um you know basically like what i do before my training she handles that side of things i'm just clearing up aches and pains like i do jujitsu rib injuries are super common in jujitsu and as an example with me like i've had i've had three or four like back to back to back my spinal rotation is very poor like i've been very flexible my entire life i did gymnastics growing up i could do the splits until i was like 30 um but doing you know weight lifting and power lifting my entire basically my entire life um and almost no rotational sports like my spinal or thoracic rotation is super locked up so in jiu-jitsu when

i get cranked to the side instead of my spine just rotating it doesn't and then my ribs fucking pop and that's it's already a common thing in jiu-jitsu and it's happened to me many times and it's painful for all the obvious reasons not just when it happens but doing breathing and coughing and sneezing and getting out of bed like it makes everything hurt especially wrestling that's a big mistake a lot of adults make is not doing any rotational movement you know no one does anything in the transverse plane and then they're like let's go do golf and then guaranteed 90 of the people i hurt my back because they play golf out of the blue it's like we need to do rotation all of us need to yeah a lot of my rotation is very stability based. So it wasn't really mobility based.

And I think that's contributed to these rib injuries. So anyway, to cycle back to Anders' original comment, yeah, I've been working with our physical therapist to specifically to clear that up, plus a handful of other things I got going on because I'm always dinged up from just doing jujitsu now in my 40s for the last 20 years. But yeah, she's my main person. Anders, I know you're working with uh with our buddy mike t nelson on on cardio related things there for a while i got my vo2 max tested this week or last

friday what is your vo2 max oh yeah what is it 53.1 wow that's really good when i was like fighting mma my was only like 56 and i was like you yeah, much better shape than I am right now. I'm afraid to do it now. Now I'm definitely afraid to do it. I'm gonna be embarrassed. One year ago, before I started working with Mike, it was 51. So a whole year working hard to get two points to go from super superior to

extremely superior. I mean, anything that they say is superior on the sheet is like the coolest marketing thing ever. It's like, who came up with that? It's like, bad, not bad, good, better, elite, superior. You're like, how did they come up with that one? Mine is superiorly shitty is what mine is, yeah. Dude, you should take the bike test one.

This one was like way harder i remember last the last time a year ago when i did it and coming off the coming off the treadmill and going feel like i had a lot more to give here not realizing like i was at a max heart rate but this time the dude cranked me up to like a level 10 on the incline and my legs were just gassed so i felt like i um you probably need to do it with like the same tester person to like you would it's like your max heart rate and everything's kind of hurting for a little bit anyways but to be at one of the one of the um doctors or uh some guy at a running Raleigh runner, something. It's like a PT slash running gym. They've got all the things in there, but it's basically like where a bunch of runners go

to get tested and buy new shoes and stuff like that. But you can do them on a bike. I feel like a bike though, I've never done it on a bike. Bike just doesn't seem as challenging. I don't know how, it's gotta be hard to get your heart rate to a max heart rate, just pedaling your legs,

like not on an airdyne, on a bike. I think you do it on the airdyne better than a bike, you know, like, but like, how do you increase the difficulty

on, on an air, on a regular bike? Do you slow it down? That's how they do it on the treadmills. It's not on there forever is the incline. But I don't know how they do it on a bike. I've never had that one. I've never done it on a bike either.

But they could increase the resistance on the bike every couple of minutes. It just gets more and more resistance as opposed to having to pedal faster. I've never done it on a bike. I've only done DL2 max testing on a treadmill. I'm done with the mile run though. I can't do it anymore. I could do it.

I enjoy it. I still run. I think we talked about this a little bit a couple of weeks ago. I feel like if I put it in like a month at a track, so the last two miles that I've run six, 18 and six 19, like back to back testing, essentially that's a plateau. Um, I can get better at the sports specificity of going to a track four days a week, running four hundreds, pacing it out to exactly like one 25, one 27, one 27, hold on for dear life

on lap four. Like I could, I could go do that, but it just doesn't align with life. I don't, I don't have a track that I can consistently get to schools back in session. So like all the soccer kids are at the, at the tracks now, or like the soccer field in the middle of the tracks. So it's the,

in order to get where I want to go, it is going to take more of my life away than I'm willing to give. That's because you're too good. That. You're just naturally so good at it, give. That's because you're too good. That, um, you're just naturally so good at it, man. It's like,

so yeah, you would, for you to get better, you're going to have to train like a ding, you know, pro or something. Yeah. Like all the training I've done right now is roughly like go run a quarter

mile Hill, which is like outside my house. Like I can just, I'm looking at the start line right now. Um, and then run around my neighborhood. That has an uphill and a downhill. So like I can, I can bomb the downhills. It's like, I've run the 0.93 mile loop and five 54, but I'm also just really good at running that loop now, which is kind of like what I need to do to get to six minutes or I feel like right now I'm in good

enough shape to run like a six Oh nine, but it would take, um, if I, if I ran it very intelligently, but to get the last 10 seconds off, like in, in the year, I essentially shaved 12 seconds. Yeah. That's what happens when you say another 10 seconds off that is just more specific getting to a track and it's like when you listen to Usain Bolt talk about the 100 meter, it sounds like he's racing like a mile, but it's because he knows the exact number of steps exactly how he's supposed to feel at those steps like every single meter along the way he knows exactly what's going on.

You just got to get to that point to be able to for my current fitness, it becomes like a very exact process of just getting reps and I can't do that. It's easy for me because my VO2 max is so poor.

If I move, it's a good thing dude you're still so jacked though man you're still clean 300 pounds can't you i'm i'm getting there especially like my power is up so everything is trending good all my health is like which is you know i heard andy say for this would be good for our listeners is like and he was talking about how closely like longevity and health for people like us is the same as it is for peak performance is like you know we need to focus on maximizing all the areas of our life to live a long time and to feel good and whereas like the athletes that we work with the high--end athletes, to maximize their athletic ability, it's the same exact thing. It's like maximize these areas, you know, anaerobic, aerobic, so PO2 max.

I feel like when you're young and you're an athlete, if you want to have any amount of success in a sport, you should be taking your strengths and really capitalizing on them and making them as good as possible. If you're already naturally strong, if you want to win at something, pick a strength sport and get really, really, really strong. And then you'll be a winner. Right.

But as far as like health and longevity goes, it's kind of the opposite where as you get older, you really should pick the thing that you're the worst at and shore that up, bring that up. And then that's the thing that's actually going to help you like live a longer, more balanced life. I've heard a similar analogy in business. Like if you want to make a lot of money in business, you should, you should take something that you're really good at in our case, like health and fitness things, and then make a

business out of that. You're already really good at it. Go be the best at it. And then you'll be successful. But like in your relationships, like your relationship with your wife or best friends or whatever, then it's like, whatever your defic deficiencies are then showing up your deficiencies will minimize the amount of conflict in your relationship so relationship-wise you should show up your deficiencies but like money and wealth wise you should capitalize on your strengths

i feel like it's like that for young athletes versus older non-athletes that are just looking to be healthy and and have uh good energy longevity and just feel good. Right. I mean, even like you talk about the athlete, it just depends on the person. Like, you know, like if you're a decathlete, well, then that would probably be the exact perfect program for longevity because they got to be strong, fast, got to have anaerobic, aerobic. And so it just depends on the athlete.

But even if it's like a, if you think about a one-mile sprinter, I guess runner, I don't call him a sprinter. But the way you improve that person is the same way you improve like an adult. It's like looking at their VO2 max and seeing anaerobic, aerobic, you know, lactate threshold and all those things. And so, yeah, it was, he was one of his newer podcasts was talking about longevity and performance. Oh yeah, it was the reason why he named his podcast Perform. It's like these things that work for the, the best athletes in the world work for old men like me and you.

Well, you guys aren't old, but old men like me. Yeah, we actually did a show on longevity, maybe like a year ago or somewhere around there. And we were talking a lot about this. And it was at the seminar down in Dallas. Like the very first slide that Galpin had was essentially comparing the goals of performance versus longevity. And he was like, basically, the only things in there's like a very few number of things in here that are different and one of them is like joint pain yeah the goal is longevity joint pain like he was comparing it to kind of like the olympic athletes because the

olympics were going on he was like if your goal is to live forever joint pain is probably very important because you don't want to just live in pain. If you're an athlete and you're competing for a gold medal, joint pain is par for the course. Just get used to it. You're pushing the limits that hard. But when you start to look at all of the performance metrics, they're

also the exact same things that are going to allow you to live a long time and perform at a high level for as long as you possibly can. Totally. I remember talking with Julian Pinault many years ago. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do.

Where is that guy now? I don't know. I haven't talked to him in a long time. He's a great dude. We're out at his gym. Dude, where is Julian? He was like wildly ahead of the game he really was yeah he was like so far ahead and i haven't thought about him in

five years he was on the show before totally that was like a massive show that was like right before i came on that was a massive show um was it yeah chris and i can't remember there was something you guys had like the full crew out there doing people were throwing up pushing sleds yeah we did throw up out there that was like his like that was like julian pano's like breakout thing everybody was talking about that show dj martin didn't he would start working with cj martin and yeah oh yeah i think he did that's right yeah yeah we did yeah he uh he introduced us to to bear crawl sled pulls i've never really done like heavy bear crawl sled pulls where what he would do is he would put a bunch of 45s on the sled and you would you would bear

crawl as hard as you could but you'd only be able to pull it like 10 feet and then he then you're basically stuck and he would remove a 45 and you'd be able to like barely pulled another 10 feet and then he remove a 45. It was like it was like these drop sets of bear crawl sled poles where it was heavy enough where you could barely pull it at all. And then then he would slowly make it lighter and lighter and lighter. And yeah, I told I totally threw up in that parking lot that day. I was not prepared for that. And again, I was in great shape back then. And still, that got me good.

I really enjoyed it. One of his main points was like CrossFit kind of originally started as like this idea that you would go 100% all out on one workout. And then you'd call it a day. And then it slowly kind of got away from that over time where people weren't really reaching true anaerobic threshold every single day they were now they were just training for a sport which of course there's advantages to that too but he was like every once in a while you need to make yourself as tired as you possibly can like in in a short bout so there's like airdyne sprints or salt bike sprints or whatever you want to call them these days um and sled pulls is definitely one of those things where if you want to go 100 all-out effort for you know 30 seconds and end up throwing up in

a parking lot then heavy sled pulls can get it done and so he absolutely goes to that and it was a great time i actually miss doing stuff like i haven't done a lot of sled work a long time i feel like andy talks a lot about that now about like he's not so much into the whole like Zone 2 cardio. You know, he's more into like the anaerobic, the sweep your butt or, you know, a combination of the two. So I agree. I like that. I would rather kill me for 10 minutes than let me miserable for 30 minutes. Yeah. I found more of a balance of that over time where I used to be,

I used to be heavy on the high intensity side of things. I used to only do like high intensity interval training and then just kind of general weight training type things and didn't do almost any slow long duration zone to cardio type work. Now it's a little more balanced where my, my ideal setup is if I'm not counting jujitsu as cardio, which it totally is at some level, of course. Um, but if I'm just doing quote unquote cardio work, um, I love doing assault bike sprints.

That's probably like my, my low impact, um, easy thing that I can do. It doesn't take a lot of time. We get a lot of bang for your buck. And if I'm trying to like hit max heart rate say once a week like that's the easy way to do it where there's almost no possibility of me injuring myself or exacerbating any pain that i already have from jiu jitsu or wherever else and then as far as like zone two cardio you know just doing something very light for an hour or more uh i've become more friendly to that over time purely because i just want to be outside agreed yeah i just want to go for an easy bike ride or for like a ruck

or or you know of course like just going for a jog because i just spend too much time in my cave i'm podcasting right now with all the lights off in this room with a light in my face with all my windows closed because that's what makes for the best lighting on zoom you know it's like you've got a garage i know i need i need to i need to get outside we all need a garage like yours this is why i sit out here just so i could stare outside and look at sunlight all day i mean i that's the only zone two i'm gonna do is like go for a rut go for a walk you know and the thing about the I'm going to do is like go for a rut, go for a walk, you know? And the thing about the Airdyne too is like my running because of, you know, hips and other issues.

If I go hard on a run, odds are it's going to give me, you know, I'm going to hurt because my gait's not perfect. That's another thing people listening, you know, if you're, if you're running, you know, if you're not really efficient as a runner, you know, if you're going to go and turn it up a little bit, it's probably not the it's not the um i would movement i would choose airdyne would be better or even like a um what's the the climber you know climbers would be good yeah versus climber but yeah really done like a hard set of of intervals on a versa climber i've like played with them before

but i've never seriously trained on one before oh for sure i did because rocky remember in the russian rocky ford yeah so when i did my one fight of my life i did that thing like like it was the russian guy yeah i was nowhere near the russian guy but yeah it looked cool i'd rather go run hill sprints hill sprints and stairs of the shit yeah yes again again too your your um risk of injury uh injury risk is low when you're doing things like that because you know it's when you get that max v and you're upright and you're you know your risk of hurting a hamstring or even a glute goes up so high, especially for me, you know, air dive. I feel like the, the,

the zone two training. I, I really struggle when I hear people are like, and then I sit on the rower for 45 minutes. I'm like, man, this zone two is like the living part. Yeah.

You're like, just do it. You're in zone two, like doing the dishes, like holding clothes. Like you're like just doing move you're in zone two like doing the dishes like holding clothes like you're like focused on something and just move you're just you're doing anything except sitting on the couch no doubt sitting on your phone like it's just getting up and doing stuff get out of your house walk play with your kids play basketball yeah i feel like that specific thing is like the most overthought like how do i do it it's like you you literally just live that's it's slowly just transporting blood at a slightly higher level than laying in bed

like it's it's a very simple process that involves like playing with your kids or, uh, having a sport outside that you want to go do playing catch. Like I feel like sitting on a rower for 45 minutes or like, uh, a bike trainer at a slow pace is it's, it's only the word it's, it it's healthy but it's the worst way because there's zero experiential piece to any of it when that is like you could go for a hike or just no chance like it literally is like the simplest of actions of just going out and playing and then because you can train it in a specific way. When I hear people talking about like sitting on a rower for 45 minutes, not to go over one 30 and not to dip below one 15.

And I'm like, no way. It's just way, way better ways to go about living your life and, and incorporating fitness into it. Well, for a walk and call your friends and talk, you know,

like there's so many things you could do other than sit on a damn bike 45 minutes no chance like i'd rather beat myself up 12 i've done that a small handful of times where i've gotten on the airdyne or i just the assault bike in my garage and just slow and steady for an hour i've done that like three times probably in my life you know and and yeah and i got done i'm like okay i'm glad i did that and i only did it because i just i only had that like exact amount of time where i could train and maybe i hadn't trained in a couple days i just needed to do something and so i just so i did i just did something to check the box but it is it is not my preference at all yeah i just go do circuits outside with my kids. I play football with Bear.

I play basketball with Rock. With Magnolia, we'll just do whatever she wants. I just go in a circuit with them. It's so much fun. Before you know it, you've got to crush your steps. Have a good time. You're outside. Anything outside for me is what I need.

Man, I'm not going outside as much as I should here in the last couple weeks. I got to get out there. The outside is, I like trying to set my whole life. SoCal ruins you, man. Once you get the SoCal sawn, you're a full addict. That is the chronic of life right there. Do you miss California? I miss...

Saying I miss California is like, in my opinion, after five years of living in the middle of North Carolina, or missing San Diego, it's like saying I miss frat parties. Oh, yeah. Where it's like, I kind of miss that time of life, but I have way more valuable valuable things going on right now. But to think that owning a gym three blocks from the water.

That was perfect for you at the time. WWE might roll in and want to bang some weights around in like your beautiful facility. And it's 73 degrees outside. You haven't had a shirt on for two weeks and you might go surfing at noon in a golf cart. You know, who knows? Anything's possible, right? That's sick, man. Yeah. Those things probably won't happen again in my life,

but I also don't go to frat parties anymore either. So I'm pretty curious though with rapid, how did you guys find, you know, like you got Mike like uh you got mike lane and you got uh chris perry like you got how do you find these dudes i feel like you know there's andy was first you just like you find the super uh phds or something like the next chris perry is a rock star savage at forged athlete at my clinic he did. I was like, man, did you take acting lessons? I mean, that's how good of a presenter he is. And Mike Lane, I'm going to have him addition to all the cool stuff he does with pro athletes and now with his multiple businesses, Rapid being kind of the primary one. As we've had more and more success, all the coaches we've been able to hire, they all have graduate degrees. And a handful of them are also college professors and they coach at Rapid or they have they have professional teaching experience at a university level. And we actually, you know, one of the core values of Rapid is learning and teaching.

So like we very specifically and intentionally hire people that have professional teaching experience separate from professional coaching experience. So if we find people, again, very similar to Andy, I like high academic experience and then high professional athlete or coaching experience, like those are the people that we look for. And those people know other people that are like that, like they all hang out in the same circles. And so a lot of the people that we've recruited over time have been recommendations from the people that already work with us. So Perry was a great example he he invited mike lane to to the mix because he just knew that uh that mike's a gangster and that we're looking for high quality people and um you know mike lane's a great fit in the company oh dude we work so well together it's so much fun and he is like it's a culture of really smart guys who can understand the practicality of things. I feel like forever, like two decades ago, you had the research side, and then you had

the coaches, and then you had the athletes, and they were communicating really well. But you guys have brought it all together in one spot. You have people who've been great athletes, coached great athletes, and are super smart and understand academia, which that makes for an incredible culture and it's which is why it's fun like you don't even make me go to the to the meetings and i just want to because it's cool i mean it's it's fun to hang out with those people yeah we dig having that you know for for people that don't know this we announced this at the beginning of the show that you're working with us now but um so you're you are specifically working with some of our professional athletes that need to

get stronger you are former strongest man in the world over here and one of the best weightlifting coaches in the country like who better to help professional athletes get strong than travis mash so we have we have all of our various specialists and our kind of our our you know our main coaches but then we're bringing you in specifically as a strength specialist, just for those few people that need someone like with your, your very specific area of expertise here. Yeah. It's been a lot of fun. Mike is like, it's super fun to work with. We mix really well and the things I don't feel as confident and he's got it.

It's been fun so far for sure. Yeah. The, um, after coming out of your master's degree program, um, do you find a lot of value? And I'm assuming the answer is yes, but, uh, do you still get to feel like you were learning from them seeing as they're kind of like, who would have been your professors when you were learning from them seeing as they're kind of like who would have been your professors when you were yeah that's what's fun about it yes and i missed that a little bit about you know leno ryan because i was always around like you know if some research article came out my professor is going to be like oh did you hear about this new thing and so we're on the we're the like the front lines of learning all the new things that were coming out. And so I miss that. I still continue. Andy's a big part of my continue.

And I listen to him all the time as I, as I travel, but it's cool to be there with those guys like Mike Lane and Chris Perry, especially. They're my favorites. Those two guys are just getting what they're working on. What's new. Like,

and they communicate it so well. That's the weird thing about those two guys is like, they're the clearest of communicating what most people consider complex. They can make it seem very, I guess, easy or easy to understand. So, yeah. I think it's also cool about the clients that they are asking questions or nobody's really coming to us right off the bat.

We're not like the first option. They've been in like performance or longevity space for a while. And either not gotten the answers or looking to take things to the next level, looking for a more comprehensive solution. But the questions that they end up coming up with, I feel like are much more complex and coaches that are able to meet them at that level versus like a, like a basic macro.

Oh yeah. Like a basic calorie conversation. Today was a great example of like, you know, I'm not naming names, but like we were talking to one of the athletes and example of like um you know i'm not naming names but like we were talking to one of the athletes and they were just you know they're so complex in there and they're can i say what can i say a sport is that okay yeah yeah so they're fighters and so they're specifically boxers so they have think about how complex their training regime is you know they have to spar you know then they have to you know, they have to spar. You know, then they have to, you know, then they have their, you know,

mitts and they have their bag work. You know, then they have their running, their cardio, then they have their strength training, and they have all these complex pieces. And so, and then as a boxer, you've got to have an incredible, obviously VO2 max is super important, but then you have to have a really strong anaerobic system. And so, like, because, you know, when it's time to go, they've got to be able to turn it on. max is super important but then you have to have a really strong anaerobic system and so like because

you know when it's time to go they got to be able to turn it on and knowing when to do what and so when we test them and we can take out the guessing like today was i felt i saw a guy's face relax for the first time when he's like you know i gotta do this i gotta do this and we explained to them this is the part you're incredibly good at. Don't sweat that. That's already here. This is the part to target. And you could just see him feel so calm and like, oh, like they got me. I don't have to guess. This complex puzzle is solved. It was a cool feeling. It just happened right before the show. Yeah. You got your boxers, but we also have like a ton of golfers, professional baseball players,

MMA fighters, and on and on, on the professional athlete side of things. But really, the vast majority of people that are rapid clients are more like the business side. Like, yeah, like like wealthy entrepreneurs, executives, investors, et cetera. A handful of celebrities, but kind of mostly on the business side and people that have a hundred million dollar company or more. We have very wealthy clients have very high expectations and so to your point about but our coaches like like they expect our coaches to have a graduate degree or or you know at a minimum a master's but like probably a phd as well um or they don't want to work with someone who's just like a random personal trainer at a random gym

like they want to work with a with with a PhD who has like professional athlete experience that's taking all of that knowledge and education and pouring it into them. That way they can have the highest quality service available. Sure. They don't want anybody guessing either. But unfortunately you find so often, like you go to California, and sometimes the ones who are training the stars, you know, aren't the people that we have at RAB.

But they're sadly just somebody who met somebody who met somebody, and now they're coaching these people, and they have no idea what they're doing. But the poor clients have no idea who they're with. It's just really not very smart. But yet they come to us. It's a whole different ballgame. We're going to make sure we test them in all the areas. And you've got the physical therapy.

That's crazy. So you test, make sure they have shoulder issues, hip issues, ankle issues. Like it just literally, and we all communicate in the same place. I love how you've done that, Doug. The systems guy, where everybody can look and see, okay, this guy has to work on this thing. He's really good at this thing. So it makes it so easy easy and we're all talking and we're not we're not guessing or doing something we're not supposed to or stepping over the line trying

to pretend i'm a physical therapist when i'm not which happens way too much in my industries pretending i don't understand that why strength conditioning coach wants to pretend to be a pt like go to pt school i don't want to do that. You know, I don't want to mess with rubber bands and stretching people, you know, I want to get them jacked, but yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, again, we have very wealthy clients have very high expectations. And so like they want data driven decisions. So like we spent a ton of time doing data collection and assessments and whatnot.'re usually older as well you know you rarely run a hundred million dollar company if you're a kid like it does happen to some people but but most of our people are they're in their you know 40s and 50s we'll say and once you're in your 40s

and 50s as we all know like that's when starts getting achy and you got a shoulder thing that's been there for 20 years and and you you know you don't want to get a hip replacement because you can kind of feel it coming and so having a physical therapist on staff to to ensure that uh a we're we're you know accounting for any past surgeries and injuries and what have you we're not exacerbating any current pain you have and making it worse and and ideally we're we're fixing current problems and making that pain go away and then they're coordinating with with our strength coaches to make sure that whatever the training program is is in line with the physical therapy plan like everyone has to work together in order to have a great result yeah it's really cool even with mike and i like he's uh

the workout i just sent to one of our athletes he looks it over then he fits his you know he's doing more of the uh overall picture he's doing more of the the aerobic and aerobic work. Plus, I put in warm-ups, but then he'll look and make sure that they go with what everybody else is saying, with PTs especially. It's crazy. It's like a system. It's so well-oiled too. Everybody knowing where

they go. When we meet every week, we meet with our clients every single week, and we've got this checklist of stuff. Mike is good about holding them accountable, too. So, like, he's like, man, you've got to fill this out before we get on here so we don't have to ask these questions and we can do more things. It's really. And then they're like, even though, you know, they're paying us, they're like, oh, you're right. Got to get on top of it.

But I've learned a lot. I've learned a lot how to really handle people online as if they're almost better than if they're in front of us. Yeah. Do one other interesting kind of distinguishing factor with what we do is like a lot of people, if they're seeking out a personal trainer or a nutritionist, they're like, I'm 30 pounds overweight. I want to lose 30 pounds.

I'm going to go get a specialist to help me lose 30 pounds. They kind of already know what they need to do. But a lot of our clients, they're already in good shape. We're a health optimization company. People come to us when they're already doing pretty well. And they actually really don't know what they should be doing. They probably already train to eat well and sleep well. And they already do many things, but they're coming to us to say, Hey, what should I be working on right now? I kind of already work on a lot of things and i already feel pretty good but what what really should i be working on all things considered

because i don't actually know what is going to move the needle with my long-term health and they're only going to figure that out by collecting a bunch of data and doing like a comprehensive analysis and then right you know rank ordering all of your physiological needs in a hierarchical way and then we will tell them this is what you need to work on in order to you know increase your we call it your tpp your true physiological potential yeah that was that was the conversation we had today is like this guy who i'm talking about has like he has like his vo2 max over 50 so it's it's really good and it's over 50 now and he's kind of like in an off season where he hasn't been training well so he's just like naturally really good at it's like he's like anders he's naturally really his vo2 max is beyond most people but then but his um anaerobic capacity is not like his ability to be in the eighth round

and be able to like turn it up turn the heat up isn. And so, so we can tell him like, bro, let's focus on this aspect of the energy system, you know, answering his questions. He's had so many, so many years. It was really fun today. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Coach Traps Mash. Mashalee.com. What? They work in the people find you. Rabbit Health optimization, right? Yeah. Yes. If you want me to coach you, go to Rabbit Health. And so if you want to get to read my free articles, go to masterleague.com or go to

jimwarry.com, of course, for my latest articles. But if you want to work with me, go to these guys. We'll get you jacked out of your mind. Doug Larson. You bet. Travis. Dude. Friends for many years, of course.

Long time Shrugged host at this point. Just stoked to have you officially on the rapid team, man. Me too. This is fantastic news. Super pumped. Hell yeah, man. Find me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner, and we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged.

And make sure you get over to arete lab.com. That is the signature program inside rapid health optimization where you can go and experience all the lab lifestyle performance, testing analysis and coaching to help you optimize your health and performance. And you can access all of that over at arete lab.com.

Friends, we'll see you guys next week.