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

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

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

Shrug Family this week on Barbell Shrug Physiology Friday is back and Dr. Michael Lee, health optimization, the coolest company in the whole wide world, one of our coaches here, also a professor in Eastern Kentucky and today he's going to be talking about strength and conditioning, building resilience for tactical athletes. That could be people that are getting punched in a boxing ring or in an octagon or for military people but everybody that's got, that falls into the tactical side of things and understanding, managing and optimizing stressors and how you can continue to increase and optimize for health and performance.

As always friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That's where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle performance analysis. And you can access that free report over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Marvel Shrugged. I'm Anders Warner. Doug Larsen, Coach Travis Mash.

Dr. Mike Lane. If you guys don't know who he is, he is the one that manages all of our boxers with Coach Travis Mash. My partner. Getting ready to get people to knock other people out. That's what we hope so. We got a bunch about to fight. And brought in the power people. Today though, we're going to be talking about

tactical athletes and you, Preshoe, and you just gave a talk at NSCA in Kentucky, correct? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Spoke about. And a fun word that I would like you to define to kick this thing off. First, give you a little background on yourself, but load carriage. That's what your talk was about, right? Yeah. Yep. Talked about load carriage and tactical populations. So- Look at that. Take it away. Yep. Hi, I'm Mike Lane. I did my undergrad in biology and a minor in chemistry because I didn't know exercise science existed at that point, but was initially working as an undergraduate intern

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

into working with tactical populations. So in my capacity here, we've literally been writing the training program for the morning PT for the ROTC cadets, as well as helping a little bit with their testing, like doing body composition and long-term tracking as well as we're doing some cadet tracking because we have what's known as the Department of Criminal Justice Training Center that is like 200 yards that way where every single cop in the state of Kentucky outside of Lexington PD, Louisville PD and Highway Patrol all come in for their training. And so that's kind

of led me into this kind of load carriage. I don't know if we call it a rabbit hole, but just a really interesting facet of what is combat phys. So to contextualize that, exercise physiology is exactly that, how the body's reacting to exercise. And then the level up to that is sports physiology. Because now we're talking about, we have very specific goals. With the boxers, we know we have this rule set. We've got three minute rounds. We have this amount of rest. We have this many rounds that they agree

that it's going to potentially go for. And then obviously a number of criteria, that is the end of the fight. Now with combat physiology, we don't, well, we have rules like the Geneva Convention, but beyond that, we can have police officers that spend their entire career and never once have to run after another human being or get into a physical altercation. And then we have other

ones that get into the worst situations of their life, day one, or literally day would be 20 years minus one right before retirement. And so we have to have them ready for those types of actions at any given moment. So it lends you some really interesting situations because boxers, we've got a great, we know we've got this one to maybe four fights in a year that we're peaking for. But if you're a police officer or a firefighter, you're doing your job. You are on the field once every three days. So how do we develop athleticism? How do we make sure that we're, you know, keeping ourselves in a good maintenance program without having them trying to go into the field of fatigue state? And if we're working with our literal army, military type

personnel, like we've got deployment. So at least we've got more of a true in season and an off season to develop them. And I talk to them. Some of them, some of them are like, you know, like your special forces, they're in and out, in and out, in and out. So like so many different variables. I think that's why it's exciting, personally, but. Absolutely, you know, I'm, I know I'm, I call myself a power lifter,

but unfortunately I'm the call with mash. So we'll say I'm about 80% of mash and 90% of mash on my deadlift. That one, I'm at least somewhat close. Um, squat. Which era of mash? Yeah, exactly. This area, you're probably being the last. Dad era.

An old lion is still a lion. I did have a meet this past weekend and I pulled a 751 at a bodyweight of 207. Dude, that's impressive. Yes, very impressive. Well, it turns out when you have a six foot four wingspan and you're a five, nine and a half guy on a good day, deadlift is your friend. Yeah, are you a sumo or conventional? Oh, conventional, the only way to pull.

Sweet. I'm doing an article right now about, you know, assume over conventional anyway. Oh, yeah. Well, and getting into anthropometrics and what's going to be optimal, and that kind of lends itself to the load carriage. Yeah, I want to hear what is this load carriage thing. 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 combination 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.

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That's a-r-e-t-e lab.com. Now back to the show. Yeah, so like, you know, we all carry our emotional baggage everywhere. So I'm just trying to talk about like where we can shove it down. So that way it's going to have the least amount of effect on our performance.

But this is the show that I needed to hear. All right. With Load Carriage, we're really looking about just the simple reality of the equipment you need to be wearing for your given athletic endeavor. So obviously, there's a big difference between what's your 40 time wearing your t-shirt shorts than that is in full football pads. And obviously, not that they're having firefighters run a 40, but now we're talking about turnout gear.

We're talking about our self-contained breathing apparatus, the SCBA units. They have tools they have to carry, hoses, extra air. So some of those firefighters are literally running into buildings with on the low end 60 plus pounds attached to their body. And on the upper end can easily be over 100 pounds. And so, with that load carriage, now we're thinking about training our athletes. We're going to be training them,

not just energy system wise, but strength wise, so that they're gonna be able to operate in that equipment effectively, and we're not gonna be fatiguing out. And that's one of our current research endeavors we're doing going to be fatiguing out. That's one of our current research endeavors we're doing over here in that currently the standard test for Kentucky is what's known as POPs testing. POPs testing is a bench press, a push-up, a sit-up, a 300-meter run, and a 1.5-mile run that they have to pass certain criteria in order to go through.

Now, this was initially implemented in the early 2000s. And this is before you've seen the addition of tactical vests, even more hand tools on police officers. So yeah, the police officers that we remember from like the 90s of, you know, essentially, you know, they got the badge, they've got a gun and a lot of them didn't have tasers at that point. You know, they had cuffs and that's about it.

They didn't have any near as much of equipment that they're carrying. So they're still on very similar physical fitness standards. They have to pass, but now it's equivalent of, okay, congratulations, pass this now put on this 20 pound weight vest for every single activity you're going to do for the rest of your career in the field. So I've thought many times, especially on the police officer side of things, but they do have this like tactical vest on and

most of them spend the entire day sitting and Then out of nowhere one day You're gonna have to get up and be at a 10 out of 10 when it comes to performance after you've been riding around in a car Sitting at a desk filling out reports it's a very different, the scale of their day to day can vary so much that being physically ready and to be able to produce that level of intensity when it's needed is a really tricky thing to train for. Absolutely. And again, like we kind of brought up a bit earlier, you've got a great point of that straight up,

you're going from zero to a hundred. You've literally been sitting in a car for quite possibly hours at that point, and then you have to get out and sprint maximally. And I know just in my early 40s, I am hesitant to just get up and sprint in general, much less into a situation that obviously could require some type of force on force.

And we're contextualizing this with obviously the immense respect for anybody that's willing to take up this profession. Yeah, no doubt. And in situations that you have to make incredibly tough decisions in a very short period of time that hindsight, yeah, can tell us what was best, but unfortunately, we're dealing with those limitations. So, how do we make sure that they have the mobility? They've got the general overall strength in... We can talk about hip mobility, we can talk about low backs getting tight from just having that compression. We can talk about having

the sheer work capacity of having the aerobic fitness to be able to get up and recover in case this situation doesn't resolve itself very quickly. And then it's the, my bad joke back in the day, whenever I would be around students that would, they pick up CrossFit and then be like, kind of like, what's your Fran time every five seconds. And I would tell them like, hey, you pick the exercises, we're going to do three things. I pick the second exercise. The second exercise is going to be deadlifting 600 pounds for one. I'll give you a one-year head start. And so, that's getting into its issue with the firefighting testing and that they're part of it. I really do like their test with

the CPAT. No, that's with the military, my apologies. I'll fix the right acronym at some point. But they have a dummy drag and that dummy drag is usually about 175 odd pounds, higher or lower in different areas. But we have been in public and realized that the average American is much heavier like myself, 175 pounds. So if the person can only drag a 100 or 205 pound dummy, well, this dummy might as well be glued to the floor because he's not going to be able to be moved. So again making sure they have the strength and the condition to do that with the external load on top of them with firefighting gear, they're already doing that as part of their testing which hence I really like that specificity. But

how we do that with the policemen and women to making sure that yeah they can do these physical tasks and what's a task that we can have them do it everywhere so that way, you know, that's why the old school army standard of push-ups, sit-ups, and run, you don't need specialized equipment, it's super simple. And whereas now that I really like the deadlift being added, I, you know, the plank can obviously be a challenge because how do we make sure that subjectively we're doing that correctly? Right. Same thing with the, you know, lift, carry, drag, slide,

like, at least it's something that we can homogenize and compare from one side to another. Things are starting to trend in the direction, in the proper direction, I think. Yeah, I actually wanted to hear your opinion on the new test. So, was this what, like three years old now, four years old, maybe, maybe more. It's obviously a massive improvement. I think the old one

was like, just, it was pull ups, push ups, basically in like a mile and a half run or something like that. Right. And now there's actually some strength in throwing elements in it. Am I correct? Yeah. So it's an overhead medicine ball throw for distance. And yes, it's a three RM on the trap bar deadlift. And I think the max there is 345 and just so we're clear for Coach Mash, that's two handed, not one. So we know it's really easy for you. Yeah.

You know, the plank, the idea is that they hold a good streamline. And what I like is they switch the pushups over to hand release. So it's straight up chest to the floor, touch the hands out wide, bring them back in, do your next rep. I have less variance than the pushups. They're so hard to judge that whole, you know, are they, the lockouts too, man. I used to watch a lot of like,

it's like people are doing like, you're doing like three inches, man. They're calling that anyway, but at least they're going all the way down. I like the hand release first. Three inches is more than enough, Mash, Okay. Anything after that is bragging. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I'm referring to pin-pull deadlifts. I don't know what you guys are thinking about.

Because it's a lie. If it's not pin-pull deadlifts, it's a lie. So just, yeah, anyway. With the realities of that and that's the problem. So like a great example, at our university where Dr. Perry and I are working with this ROTC, their cadre, literally their current leader, I will leave his name out just out of respect, but the gentleman is an animal. He's a ranger. He's now in charge of the regiment here. He literally leads the runs, maxes the

deadlift, maxes every single score as a guy who's turning 40 in a month. And the only thing he doesn't max is the overhead ball throw because relative to his stature, he's about a five, nine, five, 10 guy, but he's got somewhat short arms. So he just has a heck of a time creating that lever, having that longer arm to throw the ball. but at least we've got something that's a power indicator. Now, of course, you know, the vertical jump has its flaws because well, we've all worked with general population and seen vertical jumping abilities and can leave a little bit to be desired on occasion. Yeah. And how do you get something to scale up for literally,

think of the US military, how many hundreds of thousands of people do we have involved in that? So, as much as I'm sure just JumpMet or some other company would love to be the official provider of the vertical jump testing apparatus, medicine ball and literally a measuring tape and you can do it.

It's like they throw it behind them as far as they can or, or going over it. The old school. Russian. Granny toss over. Yeah. Right. Looking at that extension.

Yeah. I wouldn't even say, yeah, sorry, Doug. I was gonna say, what's the general structure of how you're training these guys? If they have no idea when they're gonna perform or even what the test, so to speak, really is going to be, they don't know if they're going to put in a 12-hour shift where they're going to be in some crazy situation where they're just got to go all day and all night.

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

right after training maybe, you're gonna have to go into many hours of physical exertion, already fatigued from the training session you just had. Yeah, and this harkens back to our conversation before we recorded. So it's a combination of EPO, growth hormone test, and then just enough DMAA

to get you through the workouts. I know, but- This guy knows how to perform. I like it. Yes. Yeah. Can I have some of all of that? Anyway, just kidding. I just wish I could wake up with a anyways,

I am jealous of your lifting. That is what I will say since it's being recorded. But at the end of the day, this is where trying to take advantage of cadet training as much to the extent as you had, because that is for sure the last real free season, technical off season that you're going to have for those professionals. So during that period of time, really trying to develop, and it's very similar in, I like the approach of obviously what we all do at Rapid, where we're

trying to figure out like, what are the biggest issues. And a lot of these folks, the issues that they had previously when we started working with the DOCJT, that's the police training center, is some of the folks coming from like the Eastern Kentucky components, during their training, they're making half of their hourly wage and they would be getting paid during training about four to five dollars an hour. Now, of course, those wages have gone up a little bit, but the sheer thing is calories. They can't afford really enough food to sustain themselves. Wait, I'll explain that a little bit more. What now? Like when they were, like that's

what they were getting paid as police officers? In some of the smaller towns in Eastern Kentucky, and mind you, this was at this point over five years ago, and our wages have come up some. Some of those police officers, while on patrol, are making anywhere from $12 to $14 an hour. No way. Wow. And you wonder why it's hard to find people that want to fill those positions. So one of the real challenges, you know, we can have a great training program, but if all they

can afford is baloney on hand, you're not going to get a great response. And then of course, how many of them also have got really bad relationships with sleep? And that's what Dr. Perry and I have been working on trying to figure out what are going to be the first interventions we're trying to do to help improve that. Now obviously on the training side, that's the nice thing about having they come in and they do their testing immediately. So they have to prove that they at least are able to pass the POPs testing by the end of it. So from there, okay, how far off is that mile and a half time? How far off is that 300 meter? If, for example, Coach Mash and I were going to do it, the bench press

would not be the problem. It's that mile and a half run. So congratulations, you and I are going to be living that zone two, zone five lifestyle. Yeah. You'll build that aerobic base. I've been living it. I've been living it. We were talking about that earlier. Yeah. Yeah. But so hence trying to build up whatever those, you know, weaknesses are, the most glaring ones, and that tends to help things as well as looking on that recovery

side of what's their nutrition look like, what's their sleep look like. It seems like a number of them believe the only thing you can hydrate with is white monster. So we are trying to introduce this thing called water and trying to, yes, making sure they're doing that, but they do a good job of now making sure they get water bottles and they're hydrating throughout the, you know, throughout they're doing that, but they do a good job of now making sure they get water bottles and they're hydrating throughout the day doing mobility work because they used to have a rash of a lot of issues with hamstring strains. The issue they have now is they have a lot of issues

with both, I wouldn't call it a stress fracture, but stress reactions in the lower leg as well as plantar fasciitis because these guys are wearing the same pair of shoes for years. So, and you guys know as well as I do, like a good pair of shoes is expensive. So, trying to- That's the question I had. What shoes do they wear? Are they wearing like this, like, dress type shoes or what are they wearing?

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

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

go on and train from there. But to keep going with Doug's really great question, which is, okay, now let's look at their schedule. So if you've got a officer, you've got a firefighter that knows they're essentially on a 24 on, 24 off, okay. Well, that's more for the fire schedule than we probably want to have them train and kind of more of an in season,

like we're just hitting the low end of the prolipin volume is just kind of a benchmark. Having that right when they get off shift. So that way, you know, they've got the next 24 hours to recover before they again are back out there. And I, you know, had conversations with people like Matt Wenning and other folks, and I like his approach to where,

if we're gonna do lower body training, it is that literally right before we leave. Now you can probably do a little bit of upper body training while you're on shift. And again, we're gonna make sure that we control the volume. We're not trying to push ourselves too much. And then that way, because when they're trying to deadlift that large person that... So they're awkwardly in between their toilet and their shower or their tub, how do we pick

them up without straining our back and now we're hurt and now someone needs to do overtime and we're all working this comp and it just becomes a greater burden for that department in general. And then obviously costs in general for their budget when you have an injured individual. Now with the police, you can see that shift work type situation of them going from those day shift, second, third shifts. If they're working with a precinct that's going to be consistent, and so they know again when those are going to be, let's try to program that lower body training to be in their zone five, the real hard stuff, right before they're going to have a bit more time off, they're going to have

that 24, 48. Whereas upper body or just lighter total know, I really tend to think of it if I'm going to go from the sports world, excuse me, as my voice cracks, I'm 41 and I'm still going through puberty. I hope in one day to be as big and strong as Coach Mash. But, you know, we'll go and, you know, treat them like an in-season athlete where it's like we can't really push fitness too much or what we do is we think of it like a specialization routine where we're going to adjust the maintenance volume for strength and for the lower and upper body and then we're going to increase their conditioning a little bit. So we will add a little bit more of that zone five work, perhaps trying to add in just some

more general zone two work throughout the week because we know that's not going to be too hard to recover from. And of course, the nice thing is, is you get a lot of these officers that are also doing things like jiu-jitsu. Like you know, they're actually getting in a pretty decent amount of conditioning that has its natural little bit of strength that's being addressed. So we probably just need to do a little bit more global strength, you know, AKA your, you know, your meat and potatoes of your squats and to a lesser extent, deadlifts of making sure that systemically we're strong. And then of course, you know, you get somebody in there that's incredibly strong and incredibly fit,

but they can't touch their toes unless, you know, you tie a 200 pound barbell to their hands, then maybe we do incorporate a lot of that mobility work and that can be that down regulation at the end of the day because it's a stressful job. You see how again, it sounds a lot like a lighter version of the rapid stuff because now we're talking about breath work, which obviously a lot of that area is built on. I thoroughly suggest everybody here, if they get a chance, they're interested in this world, a great way to start looking at it. This is from the outside, or somebody like me from exercise phys, is look at Dave Grossman's work with on combat. And he does a great job of just going through the fight or flight response and how when you go through these are incredibly stressful events in your

life, you're not going to go home and just turn it off. What are you going to do to help yourself down regulate, help yourself relax? And it would be remiss of me not to bring up that very real situation. There is a bit of a cliche in that first responder world is that those folks retire and then they die of a heart attack five years later because it's that chronic stress throughout their entire profession. So what are we doing? Obviously nutritionally to address this, what are we doing sleep wise to address this and what are we doing training and specifically more probably the conditioning cardiovascular training to address this? Because if you're going to go through and you're going to be someone that was to serve and protect, running into burning buildings for your entire career, it doesn't make me

feel good to think that person only gets five years or 10 years afterwards to enjoy that pension. I know, or 10 years afterwards to enjoy that pension. I know that's rough. If you're going to add that to society, you know, I want to see you on a beach in Florida at some point. I think we need to do a better job as a, as a industry of like making the breathing thing, like, uh, helping people understand that it's not like fufu or that it's scientific. Yeah, I'm talking about myself for the longest time.

I thought, what do you know? I thought breath work was so silly and cliche and until, you know, was the lady who sent us the book and we had her on the big thick blue book. And I started reading that body by breath. Yes. And then, of course, you know, Joe Miller and anyway, I started reading it and practicing it. It's a definite game changer. You know, as far as not only stress, but like helping your CO2 tolerance. There's so many, we just need to do a better job of helping people

understand. It's not just some yoga silliness. Not that yoga's silly, time out, but you know what I mean. So just because I want to dogpile here for a second, at the end of the day, I like to think of fitness really boiling down to essentially three points, which is you've got a strength side for long-term health. You've got a conditioning cardiovascular side, and then you have a mobility side. And obviously for good overall health, you need all three. And of course, that's where we all came up in that era of be really strong and that's

all you need. Or be that long distance runner. So you got conditioning, but again, you couldn't squat to parallel, even though you weigh 110 pounds because everything's just too tight. And of course we've always had, not the always, but you've seen the rise of yoga

and that becoming, you got the yogis that are like, oh, they have such great core stability. I'm like, I'd like to see them under 405. We'll see how stable that core is. So- Noodle, yeah. Exactly. You need all three legs for that table to stay up.

If you only got two, it's not balanced. You're going to have yourself some issues. And with some of the really cool conversations that I've been lucky enough to have with the trainers over at the DOCJT is they, a lot of them came up in the era of where it was deterrents. If you're a big jack dude, people just assume it's probably not worth trying you just because you're a big jack dude. But I've done enough jujitsu read getting thrown by small people to know that it isn't

obviously just about being a large person. It's about obviously exactly having skill and having that conditioning to go behind it. And so that's what they're trying to address is making sure that we have this holistically developed individual. Because obviously Doug can speak at length to, if you get somebody that's big and tight, that's like, oh, let's go. Because you can put them in bad positions really quickly and they can't try to wiggle out of it.

Those ankles are too tight. Congratulations, I've got nothing but angry levers to pull on. Same thing. I don't want to get in any physical altercations ever again in my life, but the person that gases out in 10 seconds, that's great. You just got to wait them out. At the same time, I have been punched by people that are not very strong. It turns out if you can't bench an empty barbell, you're probably not going to be able to punch me hard enough that it's going to really register. Again, not trying to block punches with my face. So again, how do we holistically develop these individuals so that there is no weak point?

And the best SWAT guys are now just like you guys have seen the special forces. They are not, you know, Captain America. Like they are physically capable and they're in incredible condition. But, you know, a lot of those really incredibly capable operators and otherwise, yeah, they're like, that's an in-shape guy. But you wouldn't look at him and be like, oh, that dude can bench press 500 pounds. Or, you know, that dude obviously can run a marathon in two and a half hours. They just have that great just general base of fitness. So it's like they're ready for the unknown and unknowable. It's like they've been training to be prepared for a wide variety. I've heard this before.

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

their ability to take on this what's in front of them. So to contextualize my pyramid of mediocrity, that's just to live a long life. That's not to be able to really necessarily do cool, do really cool things. Cause obviously you can just be really freaking strong and do really cool things. Now, what you're bringing up is that's the question where,

don't get me wrong. My goal in life is to be right more than I am wrong and I hope I'm doing it. At the same time, now I think it's, we're getting into two interesting and there's going to be more variables there, but I like to think of it basically breaking down into two. How many people are just psychologically the type of person that can survive buds, that can survive rUDs, that can survive Ranger selection, that can survive Delta. It requires a type of person with a type of psychology that is not a very normal person. And this is more in all of that type of person than anything else.

And I joke with my students, if they just had, and I know they have like the version of this that you can sign up for, but if they're like, hey, you can go try buds. Like we'll just let you do it on the sidelines to be like, this is what an average guy gets through. Like, I just want to know how many minutes I can get through there. And to be like, cause you know those human beings

are not just incredibly physically strong, but they have a psychological toughness. And then that harkens itself to, is this a type of toughness that is innate? This is a type of psychological resilience that is genetic in origin, or is this something that effectively it's nurtured? It is built to a certain point. Is this something that people need to go through a crucible? Why is it that it seems like there's slightly per capita individuals, more spec ops,

people that come from Texas, is growing up in Texas just really makes you wanna kill somebody? I'm being very sarcastic when I say that. I'm being very sarcastic. However, I do have a joke if you guys are comfortable with me making fun of Ohio. None of us are Ohio. Is there a, yeah. Did you guys are comfortable with me making fun of Ohio. Not necessarily.

Is there? Yeah. Did you guys go to the capital? There are more astronauts that come from the state of Ohio than any other state in the US. I didn't see that on my bingo card. You know why that is? I don't. Because if you grew up in Ohio, you'd want to get off this planet too.

My wife's family's from Ohio, so this'll be another reason why we don't get along at Christmas. He's using that Thanksgiving joke on, he's, he's warming up guys. He's tracking us with us. That's for his warmup here. Yeah, so. I got a bunch of Ohio guys,

I'm glad to tell them that. Oh, I mean, that's where West Side Bar Bowl is, so I mean, I've had to run from my life in that place more than once, but. Yeah. But yeah, so, you know, more to the form with that, I've run from my life in that place more than once, but yeah. But yeah. So, you know, more to the form with that, I think that's a great point coach, which is stress inoculation is great. You know, the more that we can get people exposed, that's why they do

Simunition. And did Dr. Perry tell you guys about the first time we got to watch them do a Simunition pullovers? I don't know what you're talking about. Simunition. So what it is, it's essentially they're normal guns and in the bullet jacket is essentially a paintball, but it like, it is a gun and you know, you see the muzzle flash, you see the cartridge eject and there is a projectile going at you.

So he and I are wearing like these helmets. So like if it hits us in the face, it's gonna be like getting hit with a even more high velocity paintball. Like it's gonna sting. And I'll always remember it. And we got to see this simulated pullover where they run different scenarios.

And it's when you see it and you see an actual firearm being turned and pointed at another human being, that's when you see these people freak out. First availability of heuristics is a dangerous way to do statistics because you can base it off of that small sample size of what you see and make extrapolations. But the small sample size of what Chris and I saw, the individuals that were in better physical condition seem to have handled that stress far better.

This is literally with one of their trainers coming out of the car and firing in one of the examples, a literal AR at them. Another is they walk up on the car and the person literally leans out and starts shooting at them from inside the car. Yeah. Another one is the person's just being an absolute douche bag and trying to get them to do something. So that's just more about deescalation. And the other one that was the force was essentially the person was trying to do a simulated, if we have to bleep this out, bleep it out, but suicide by cop. So, like one of those, and then at a certain point they turn the pistol and face it at a cop and they've got to, you know, they got to go and they got to make choices. And one of the cops, one of the cadets, because they're still going through training and this

is probably the first time they're going through this and they're not even told like, here's your scenarios. They're just like, yeah, you're going to be up there for this number of times, you know, have fun. So literally the guy comes out, you know, firing. I literally see the cop hunched down behind the car doing this blind fire stuff, shouting, I will effing kill you. Yeah. And he freaked out. He obviously he lost his, you know, he got scared and guys, any of us,

if we're scared, yes, but to that extent, we're going to make poor decisions. That's just sympathetic, you know, beyond psychological arousal, you are not good at regulating. And that's just the horrible situations that these individuals can be put in. Hence why it's so important. They are trained to an incredibly high level and held to a high standard. And when he's going through the debrief, like literally Chris and I just saw this because like, I'm not going to lie, he and I are both like turning sideways and like, dear God, like, cause he's just blind firing and I don't want to get winged by anything. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

The other instructor, so there's one that's like just watching and giving them feedback. There's the one that obviously, you know, was the criminal in that version. It was a debrief and he's like, okay, we have first off, if anything happens, you do not yell, I will f**king kill you to which that officer goes, I didn't say that. I didn't say that all. I said, I said, stop. And like, no, nobody. You definitely said that a number of times. And it's not that, you know, he's trying to lie. Cause I mean, we all just observed it. It's just, he lost his mind. Wow. That high level of psychological arousal. Like at that point, I am like, in my mind, I'm like, I wish we had a heart rate monitor strapped onto that guy.

I wish we had a freaking blood draw of his epinephrine. Like where is all that sitting at? Because understandable, really high stress situation. You even know what the words that came out of his mouth. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah words that came out of his mouth. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah, there needs to be more study. It might have been in that world and more time spent.

Like, let me give you two examples. Like there's two, one guy I coached who I knew he's just different. Like he wrestled at Penn State. He was unbelievable year and like, I could, you know, I have never coached anyone like him before. I don't think I'll ever will again. He's just different. He could do whatever you asked.

He never complained. He just did it. He said, I need you to sleep this long. Whatever you said, he did. No problem. Right. Just, and I saw him one time we're in this room and there's another guy, also ex-athlete, and they're arguing.

And the one guy that he's arguing with is a 300 pound alignment who's going to NC State. So he's going to NC State on scholarship to play football. And this young guy is going to wrestle, I mean, little, like maybe 125 small, to Penn State to wrestle. I mean, little, like maybe one 25 small to Penn State to wrestle. And they're arguing. And I never that young kid, that young small boy was never even panicked or never even excited. He was just listening to the guy yelling at him. And then the big football player smacked him and he just looks

at me as if for me to give him a thumbs up. I'm like, I gave him the thumbs up and he beat that big boy up so quickly. He took him down like a tree and got on top of him, hit him like five times and I said stop and he stopped. He's like he never got mad the entire time and and the football players laying there bleeding he's looking at me and I was like you should have slapped him you know like but and then so my point being that same kid goes on now he's in Delta

Force he's just killing it so I got him ready to go you know and he's in Delta Force and he's just killing it. So I got him ready to go, you know, and he's just unbelievable. Meanwhile, example two, there was a guy who played football with Appalachia State. It was, I mean, obviously he's a good athlete. We're there together and he's strong and he's pretty good, but he was also kind of a clown. Got in a lot of trouble, would be late. And that same kid went on and changed. So like, it definitely was not the same. So it was like, they're not, they were not, you know, this kid did not have that killer instinct, but nurtured it and eventually went on to also be in a Delta Force. And right as we speak is about to be promoted to as a general, not what is it? The first general brigadier, whatever. And so it became a Delta Force that other other ones.

So the one was just born. He was Delta Force from birth. And the other one was nurtured Delta Force, but like, you know, it would be closely more time spent on what causes that shit. And like, I know we do, obviously that feels out there, but I still feel it's still in its infancy because just now, you know, is, you know, with weight lifters, we do a little bit and, you know, and they work with us a little bit, but I'm convinced that is, that is the biggest key.

You know, when it comes to elite athletes to elite athletes, that final 10 elite guys, the only difference is the brain. This final two, it's all brain. But yet we spend so much less time working on that. But anyway. No, I could not agree with you more because it's easy to quantify height. It's easy to quantify height. It's easy to quantify certain things like your 40 yard dash.

Power, jumping, all that stuff. Yes. But how does one quantify will? How does one quantify vigor? I don't know. And then, yeah, hence it's like, yeah, is there a crucible you need to have? So like maybe he had never been challenged and then he went there and he finally had a challenge and he rose to it. Because we all know people that have folded like paper. Like the first time they came up against a real opposition, they no longer had the advantage of side. Like, oh God, you guys were those guys that hit puberty

when they were 12 and they were just absolute monsters in whatever sport. And then by, you know, sophomore, junior high school, everyone else caught up and not only they lose the lead, but they lost the will because they're like, well, and I'm just a regular guy. And you know, it's, yeah. But I watched that kid. I watched him like get challenged and fail miserably.

And you know, he didn't do great at that state at all. And like even watched him getting two different altercations, possibly one with me. And like he didn't do well at all. And like. Now is no chance in hell I would want to get altercation with this guy like, you know, like he's killed people, is dealt for us and like, how did he change that his brain?

And like, we're super we've been friends forever. One day, though, I wanted to sit down with him over Scotch and be like, what changed you? How did you change? Because he was a great athlete. We're all great athletes. We're not. We're strong and fast and in like the best of our class wherever we went school. But he wasn't not that good and mentally was like last place. Now he's first place. He's about to be darn general. So like, how did he do that is my question.

Well, you meant you mentioned mentioning Simunitions earlier. This would be a fun story for people that are longtime listeners of the show. So Mike Bledsoe, the original host of Barbell Strug before Anish took over around six years ago. This is like 2010 or so we were in San Diego hanging out with a couple of Navy

SEALs. We're getting ready to leave. We're at these guys house slash apartment and Bledsoe takes a shower, comes out of the shower. I'm sitting on the couch with a guy named Brian and there's a nine millimeter on the table. Let's all comes out of the shower and it's just fucking with us. Like kind of lifts his towel up to like show his ass to his,

his, his buddies that we're visiting, just, just fucking around. And then his Navy seal buddy grabs the nine millimeter off the table and fucking just shoots him with the same munition right in his ass The same munitions like the what he was talking about earlier like it's a real 9mm Beretta But it has paintball rounds in a real gun Grabs it off the table and fucking shoots him right in the ass like Like on his bare ass too, which probably fucking hurt like hell. They scream. Oh yeah. Oh, it probably hurt. It probably hurt a lot. And then he wouldn't, got his clothes on and took off and took, those guys in that world, that was like totally fine.

No big deal. Easy, easy money. Should've known me. Yeah, you know what I mean? That's right. That's right. It's amazing how relative that, I don't know if I'll call it hazing, but just exactly. You're around those groups, like, yeah, let's just roll. If any of you guys were like, I want to wrestle, be like, okay, calm down. We've maybe drank a little too much. That's not going to happen.

But other cultures, like, yeah, this is what you do. It's like, you want a box? Let's just throw the gloves on. Let's just see what happens like i'm telling you different time when i grew up in the mountains it was just the culture we just fought a lot all the time it's just it's the Appalachians it's not even mean you're just that's what you do how much did you single-handedly decrease the bear population there? Well, you know, funny you say that, but I have a great-great grandfather.

There's a statue of him because he was historically this great bear hunter. And like there's a statue of him as we speak in my hometown for killing bears, but not me him, you know, but like, and there's stories of this guy, Wilbur Waters, you can Google it. And like, he's the dude, there's a story supposedly fell asleep in his deer stand. And then when he woke up,

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

There's nobody out there to save you. It's too far away. No, man. Unless you're meant for yourself. Yes, there's nobody coming to help you, no. No. Dr. Lane, thanks for coming to hang out with us, man. When, uh, where can the people find you? So on social media, I know I've got an Instagram that I honestly don't do a great job

of updating. I should probably do that. Obviously I've got a face for a radio, so I try to keep my face off it as much as possible and I try to use it as a way to help kind of teach. And then on occasionally, you know, I'll have videos of me lifting. It's usually something deadlifting because I'm just less mediocre at that than the other ones. And of course, anyone that's interested at the program here at Eastern Kentucky University, you know, they can look me up.

Then obviously I'm lucky enough to get a chance to work with you guys over at Rapid. So we get to help people be better at punching people in the face and other approaches in life. But yeah, yeah. And other goals. Exactly. Combat sports physiology is so much fun. We got two beasts. We got like we got one crazy.

He's really good. We got two beasts about to kill some people coming up. I'm excited about it. Don't forget about the third there. I know. I said he's good, too. He's just crazy. If he's not so crazy, he's awesome. You know? He's got to get out of that. He's what we're talking about. He figures that whole, then he's going to be a killer too.

Well, and that's what's fascinating to kind of go off on another segue is that he's very smart and he's very interested. And then it's kind of you, you guys have probably worked with those athletes where you're like, I wish you cared less and thought less about this because you're putting so much brain space

into these components that it's probably becoming its own stressor because of kind of a hit or fixation. Then if it was just, you know, you get the athlete that you just hand them the plan, like, okay, cool, coach. And they just do it. And, you know, never. I wish this guy would do that. That guy keeps second guessing and he doesn't do anything. He's like, you know, I'm like, you know, how about going to sleep, man? Try that step one. You know, there's a thought. I love Zio that. Oh, wait, wait. Never mind. Scratch that one.

love you. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Never mind. Scratch that one. Travis Bass. Massleed.com. If you're local, obviously come see me at Rise Indoor Sports. Or my email. Obviously, if you want to read any of my articles, jimway.com.

They got them all. There you go. Dougal C. Larson. You bet. I'm on Instagram. Dougal C. Larson. Mr. Mike Lane. Thank you for being here, brother. Love having you here at Rapid

and I was stoked to have you on the show today. So, I appreciate it, man. Thank you guys so much for the opportunity. It's been a pleasure and I've really enjoyed seeing you guys for, yeah, over, God, you guys over a decade now. So it's long. Long time. Very long.

2001, 11? I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged and make sure you get over to rtalab.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 ritalab.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.