Barbell Shrugged - Picking Proper Accessories to Eliminate Asymmetries and Imbalances w/Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #505

Episode Date: September 21, 2020

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   The difference between asymmetries and structural imbalances What causes imbalances in your training How do you pick the right accessories to fix imbalances Top accessory movement to eliminate asymmetries and imbalances  How to program to eliminate asymmetries and imbalances   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa ———————————————— Please Support Our Sponsors   Legion Athletics Whey Protein, Creatine, and Pre-Workout - Save 20% using code “SHRUGGED”   Fittogether - Fitness ONLY Social Media App   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

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In your app store, all your devices, F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R, Fit Together. And friend me, Anderss varner get into the group barbell shrug that's three things to do and then starting october 5th have a chance to win all the cash win a bundle of your choice five programs nutrition and a course to go along with it and and come hang out it's super fun got all the barbell stroke people in there fit together let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Stroke. I'm Anders Varner. Doug Larson, Coach Travis Bash.

You can't see at home. I've got bare feet. I'm hanging out. PRX Performance. Squat rack in the background. Makes me feel like I'm in a gym. We're coming back online here, folks. We're coming back soon. Today we're going to talk about imbalances in your training. Not so much making sure you're hitting all the proper movement patterns, but what happens.

Some of the most common things we see like hip shift, offset pulling mechanics, where that can lead towards the end. If we don't get these things fixed, a lot of times we start to see some injury low back pain um but imbalances in your training a lot of times i'm thinking about things kind of like on the highest level of the neurological components that your brain and your body not connecting well and um everything firing as well as um just movement patterns in general and then what happens if kind of like you're coming back from an injury and your brain's a little freaked out by moving. I guess, kicking it to you, Doug, when you start to think about the highest level of where these imbalances come from, what are some of the big buckets that you start to recognize with people?

Well, in my head, I mostly think about it in terms of imbalances and asymmetries as kind of being two separate categories. There's definitely gonna be some crossover there, but mostly think about it in terms of imbalances and asymmetries as kind of being two separate categories. There's definitely going to be some crossover there, but I think both are relevant. I think about imbalances being more like the ratio between two types of movement patterns. What's your squat compared to your deadlift? How much do you press versus how much do you pull? What percentage of your bench press is your overhead press? That type of thing to see how well-rounded you are and to see where you might be really strong in some areas and really weak and others you know

if you you bench 400 pounds but but you you only row you know 155 it's like well something something's wrong here you bench all the time you don't do any back work like it's an extreme example to be sure but uh that's that's generally how i think about imbalances how what the ratio between your lifts look like. We can throw some numbers at that here in a little bit. I'd actually love to hear what Travis has to say about that. And then also asymmetries, you know, left versus right. Are you a much stronger puller with your right or your left arm and a much stronger presser with your right arm?

That happens. That's common. A lot of people have a stronger left glute. If they're right handed and they kind of they kick kick a soccer ball or whatever with their right foot you tend to have a stronger left glute and you tend to have a stronger right quad you tend to have more ankle mobility on your left less ankle mobility on your right like these these natural uh asymmetries occur and they're not necessarily something you have to to attempt to fix to be totally even some asymmetry is completely natural but um but again you can you can have those

asymmetries go a little too far sometimes where you're you're having hip shifts when you squat and your your movement patterns aren't aren't close enough to symmetrical where you start to have issues where if you talk to great cook you know after pre-existing injury movement asymmetries are the number two predictor of injury in the future so there is some incentive to fix the asymmetries but you don't have to be completely symmetrical because your body's not completely symmetrical yeah yeah we're asymmetrical by nature hence the reason why you're right-handed or left-handed and how very few people are ambidextrous. So, you know, yeah, I think sometimes, you know, like coaches will get too caught up in asymmetry. So you need to understand that, yes, asymmetries exist, and that's all right.

But, you know, working towards balance is the key. You know, and that's a very smart and practical thing to do is work towards balance, realizing that you probably never get there. I would guess the only, you know who I would love to see? I would love to test Rich Froney and see how balanced he is. I have a feeling that he would be as

close to symmetrical as it gets. I bet he's perfect. I bet he's really darn close because of the way he moves and the way everything he does is pretty strong. Nothing is insane strong. Everything is pretty strong. So I bet he's close.

Yeah, Mash, when you actually first saw Froning moving the way he moves and the weight that he moves as fast as he moves it, did that freak you out a little bit? Had you ever seen anybody that was that athletic? Uh, not in so many ways. You know, you always have the freak who can do crazy things. Like, you know, like you'll always, you know, there'll always be somebody who can beat him at, uh, you know, what is it? The, the, the 30 cleaning jerks. What's that? Grace or, yeah. yeah yeah or someone who'll beat him at isabel or but he pretty much is going to be the top three in the world in every single thing and like yeah

so that freaks me out because you know i've seen weightlifters you know like break the record on grace and then die of course but but um just because you know such a small percentage eddie hall just did it that's a big man to be moving that weight around like that. Yeah, he did. He actually ended up calling it like the Isabel the 30 snatches because he wasn't touching his shoulders. So I think it wasn't quite meeting the standard. Yeah, exactly. With Rich, yeah, he was a longtime baseball player.

He may have worked through some of the asymmetries that come from playing baseball, but any rotational sport, if you're swinging a hockey stick or a tennis racket or you're throwing in baseball like you're going to end up with asymmetries because you're only throwing with one side of your body so like right your your rotation as a right-handed person rotating to the left might be like really fast and whippy and very fluid and graceful but then you know you're throwing with your left arm and you look all funny. Baseball players tend to have more external rotation

glenohumorally on their throwing arm, and then they tend to lose internal rotation over time, and then they tend to have the opposite pattern on the opposite side. Anytime you decelerate into a range of motion, you tend to lose that range of motion, which is why baseball pitchers lose internal rotation on their

plant leg when they're pitching. So you have less internal rotation on your left hip if you're a right-handed thrower. So I wonder how Rich has worked through some of those imbalances or if he still hasn't, but they don't really tend to affect him. Luckily, he only played through college, right? So he didn't go on to the pros. So maybe he got out in time. Or was it so bad?

And was he a pitcher? That's the big one. If you're a pitcher, you're in trouble because the volume is just so much higher than everybody. Not only are you throwing, you're throwing pretty much as hard as you can every single time.

Dude, I sat in the second row behind the service line at an ATP event in which Andy Roddick and James Blake played in the finals. And first off, when someone serves a tennis ball at you at like 130 miles an hour or whatever it is, frightening, frightening. That's not like, oh, let's go hit the tennis ball on a Sunday afternoon with your friends.

It's different. It's terrifying. It sounds like a bumblebee flying by. It's like, yeah, freaks you out the first time someone serves a ball at you like that and i'm i was like 50 feet back from where james blake is standing but when they doug i got so excited when you're talking about this because when andy roddick walks to you he he's got, his left arm is normal. His right arm is so good.

All the serves. It is like he's got veins coming out of his forearm that you didn't even know existed. It's world-class bodybuilder forearm to serve the ball 100 billion miles an hour like he does. His left arm, Anders Varner, child's play.

The least impressive forearm you've ever seen on the left side. Right side, Jeff. Left side, Anders Varner. I coach one of the best throwers in America. And with him, you guys have seen him, Mason. He's just a massive, amazing athlete. We do a lot of throwing on the opposite arm, and we do a lot of deceleration work on the arm he throws.

Obviously, not to improve performance, but more to try to prevent some of these asymmetries. We're not going to prevent him. He's going to be asymmetrical. He throws every day of the year with his right arm so but the goal is just to you know prevent and allow him to be able to do his sport for as long as possible match i'm actually really interested where how many times do you have an athlete that just slowly starts to develop these things and then one day your eyeball just catches it and goes whoa where did that come from are you able to kind of like look back at your programming and see a track of why some of these like structural imbalances may come about for people that are just weightlifters?

Yeah. You know, within the last year or two, we started tracking a lot more numbers than I have in the past. Like, you know, you do optimal number of lifts is one. I actually got that from kevin uh simons you know just making sure that your balance and your approach to all the different things as opposed to like you know if you watch some programs will be super dominant to snatch for example or super dominant to bilateral squatting and they do zero you know so what you're doing is trying to see like the balance between these things to avoid what you're talking about. So yeah, we do. And then if I,

if I see some weightlifting coaches like do not care about valgus and some do not like hip shift, they kind of ignore it. But I think the newer age coaches nip that in the bud. Like, you know, one thing I give a shout out to to Great Chiropractic locally. Like, they do this, it's a crazy 360 core, it's called. Anyway, it's this machine they put you on that strengthens your torso, you know, in a very vertical way. Yeah. It is amazing.

So, we have this athlete, Ryan Grimsland, who had a major shift. And it was, like, he was a young CrossFit athlete, and he was super good. He was trying to make the CrossFit Games as a teen. And the coach that he was with, I don't know the whole story. I wasn't there. But anyway, he chipped his hip. He fractured his hip as a young guy. So it's caused a lot of issues.

But then we put him on this all course called and man his hip shift has gone away he would you know he would twist that stopped and uh it's it's insane so we don't ignore it is what my point is if i see a rotation if i see a hip shift i'm going to do my best to address that as much as possible yeah i think that's one of the reasons i really wanted to do this show because i think ignoring it in the long run is detrimental to the long-term health to the long-term health like you look at ryan and that was one of i i had a pretty massive hip shift anytime i would get inside like 90 when i was squatting um and it was just because I was just purely

focused on how much can I possibly squat again today. Um, and I had, I had an injury to my big toe, which led to my ankle, which led to some knees. And all of a sudden, like you, you just train through all of it without fixing the problem. And next thing you know, nasty hip shift turns into a hip problem like just the downrange effects from poor movement always get you especially when you're just loading super heavy weights on top of movement dysfunction it just gets really jacked up and give a nugget to the group right now this is like right up front kelly starrett shout out to him. Like, love him or hate him, I love him. Game changer.

Yeah, he, we started, we had a couple, nobody was injured, but people, their low backs were starting to flare up. Like, there was like two or three, enough for me to notice a pattern. So I called him, and what he told me about weightlifters, so if you're a weightlifter or crossfitter, you should listen up. So we do everything, we load on reflection. Like, when're a weightlifter, crossfitter, you should listen up. So we do everything. We load under flexion. Like when you squat, when you clean, when you, you know, your hips are flexed. We rarely load them under extension.

So he started talking about doing like, not just lunges, because if you do it incorrectly, you won't, you'll still be flexed. The key is to really maintain a vertical torso don't lean forward and go straight down and like so we started doing you know lots of either rear leg elevated or or you know both legs elevated like either split squats and or rear leg elevated and or lunges and since that moment in time we've had zero complaints of low back issues that's why that's my secret little trick that was like all i i built an entire company off of that by keeping by getting people squatting without hinging at the hip yeah and it was magical because it turns your glutes on so quickly and And I would just counterbalance it with a kettlebell.

So you have a kettlebell in between their legs. You take a little bit wider stance so they don't have to hinge to get their hips back. And just let the kettlebell fight, like, actually just, like, pull you all the way down. And your body just has no choice. But you can counterbalance. And split squats is phenomenal as well. But you build it like – Like you can't – like he's saying, in a split squat stance, you know, the leg that's back, that hip is in –

that side of your hip is in complete extension, and you're loaded. So you're loading that hip while it's extended versus like, you know, if you squat, like no matter whether you sit back or whether you sit straight down, there's still flexion, obviously. So he's talking about loading the hip completely under extension, like lengthened versus like, you know, when you squat, you know, the – Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You're flexed.

Yeah. I guess what I was saying. When you load it with something in the front, it doesn't get that like super forward torso. Totally. So that's, yeah. But yeah. Uh,

split squats. Yeah, for sure. That's like the, another sweet little trick, but it's, it's crazy how quick you can, uh,

you just fix people's movement patterns a lot more. Um, but what, what is that? What is the machine that like, or I guess, is it possible to mimic the machine that you guys were using with Ryan to to i don't think so uh let me let me give you the exact one it's actually you guys could go on to instagram and actually see it's like i'm pretty sure it's all core uh c-o-r-e obviously

um yeah all core 360 so like if uh man they should pay us for this. But, like, all-core 360. And it is a miracle. I'm really considering buying one myself. Yeah. But they're super expensive. They're, like, $50,000. But, you know. Good call.

But then you get – I tell you. Payment plan. We've had at least five now of our athletes go. And, like, it's almost – for Ryan Grimsland, it was like a drug. It's how much stronger he got. Like, you know, he's a 67-kilo lifter, so he's 148 pounds. And he just tripled back squat, 210, so 462 pounds. Yeah.

Yeah! With zero twisting, with zero movement it was perfect that twisting thing is the part that i think so many people freak out about when it comes to uh the back squat really yeah because you get to a certain point and any when you're creating that much stability in every single joint and everything is so tight there's not room you're nobody's nobody's flexible at peak tension to be twisting at the at your low spine it's guaranteed scary injury coming your way yes um there's just no way around it uh i used to watch myself squat and it'd be like straight down and then as soon as i would push there'd just be this like nasty drive out of my right

leg into my left because the left one was the strong one and it would the amount that my hips moved I would just look at it and I was you know when you have those moments where you're like if I was coaching myself what would I do my answer was always stop don't do that anymore but you're like mentally override all of your own intelligence just because you're so focused on trying to get to wherever you're going. But yeah, I think that those asymmetries really need to be fixed. When you see people pulling off the floor, are there things that you're looking for as well? Because it's a movement pattern thing most of the time it's not just in your squat it's there's a there's a brain body connection that's going on uh where your body kind of like

just or your brain just diverts all of the strength in a specific direction to to actually move right yeah i'm definitely looking at rotation and then spinal flexion those would be the two on the pool lane oh and if someone were you you know, some people actually will, you know, they'll demonstrate valgus from a pool. That's very bad. Yeah. So, yeah, what the hell? But those are the three things, you know, that I'm worried about as far as,

you know, injury, you know, is are they maintaining integrity? Are they rotating? Rotation is bad because if you start rotating at the lumbar spine, it's a guarantee you're going to get hurt. Sooner or later. Are we meeting? Is it this week they were talking to Stu? I hope so.

Oh, yeah. You'll hear all about this, and he'll tell you. He'll give you the true ins and outs. But, yeah, if there's rotation at the lumbar spine, the person's getting hurt. It's just a matter of when. So, like, I'm going gonna nip that in the bud right away you know normally what i'll do is like i don't try to pretend that i am a you know chiropractor or pt like i get people super strong super fast i do that's what i do and but i just get really

good at referring out because i don't want to take away from everybody else for me to have ryan over here trying to like you know do anti-rotation, I'll send him to Dr. Gray. Now it doesn't take away from my time. And Dr. Gray's a professional. That's why he went to school versus I went to school to get you badass. He went to school to get you not hurt. So two different things. First time we ever hung out, I was teaching people rehab,

trying to get them healthy. Coach Mast was like, that sounds fucking boring. I was like, Mast just called me boring. I'm out of this place. Oh, yeah. He's in California. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think you knew I had.

I was doing that. But I was like, yeah, he's totally right. This is super boring. Yeah. This is not my thing. I was teaching everybody what I was learning at the time because I was all jacked up. I was like, I just need the best way for me to get healthy is to learn how to teach this the most and then uh and then I met you at Anaheim and I was like man that's boring I'm mad I need to go hang out with the strong people again

it's just to me boring not boring but it's like I like to see just massive weights being lifted you know so yeah I'm not trying to be like oh let's get this little lacrosse ball and do this thing like yeah that's tough um doug have you noticed any imbalances from like your your fighting i mean the rotation side of things and how do you how do you guess how do you like overcome some of that from training or have you worked on it specifically from fighting i don't know that i really have noticed anything specifically from from fighting um you know i started doing this type of training functional fitness training you know at a pretty young age and have done it my entire life so like that's actually the majority of my total training volume has been fairly balanced um thankfully i mean common common imbalances in mma though are a lot of guys like everything's out in front of you when you're wrestling right

so a lot of guys like if you're trying to have them do a scapular wall slide where they back their back against the wall and they try to put their their hands flat against the wall and just just go up and down like they don't have very good shoulder flexion or external rotation at all that's really common in wrestlers um also in jiu-jitsu like you're you're very often in in the guard position where you're on your back and you you have your your legs flexed and externally rotated and your feet kind of hooked around each other you spend a lot of time in that position so a lot of jiu-jitsu guys have really good external rotation but really poor internal rotation uh which can really affect their ability to do certain types of sweeps and other things but um i have i kind of have some of that like i don't have very good internal rotation with my hips but i don't i'm not sure

if i got that from jujitsu or if or if that was just going to be there anyway genetics yeah yeah like that every sport has their thing but I'm not sure that that affected me personally. Yeah. I always just think, because if you punch or if you're standing from a specific side, you always lead like you lead with a specific, I don't really know much about MMA, but everybody has their own specific stance.

So you start to get stronger in certain positions. But, and then the weight room is more or less where you you end up overcoming that um hey guys uh slightly off topic i'm not gonna sit us down a rabbit hole but have you seen mike tyson lately like jesus he's still i would never fight him i don't know he is still so fast i would just love for him to just make one come i think he would kill people still. Like if he trained hard.

Like we were talking about last Friday at the end of the show. There's a wire in there. We'll have to kill you. He'll kill you. Right now he owns a pot dispensary shop in Las Vegas that's like the biggest one in the world or something like that. But. Yeah. But.

But. If you want to come over and try and steal his groceries from him, he's going to pop you. It's going to hurt. or something like that. But, yeah. But, but, if you want to come over and try and steal his groceries from him, he's going to pop you. It's going to hurt really bad. That wire is in there. He could go back to Brownsville in a second. I love that guy, anyway.

People like that are so terrifying. Yeah, he has zero imbalances. He's just so... He'll knock you out. All his imbalances are not the ones you want jesus they're all in his brain i love watching him fight yeah dude when that guy hits a bag you're like whoa i don't know anything about boxing but that one sounded loud yeah like he doesn't throw he doesn't throw an easy one he's like his jab would knock you out he's just like

knock out knock out knock out, knock out, knock out. Kill you. Sometimes Doug, I don't remember where we were. You were talking about how he fights and his like big head bobs to confuse people. And Doug did it, but not even at like Tyson speed. He just like did it at normal human, regular, I know how to fight people speed. And I was scared. I was like, fuck, Doug, that would knock me out in a second. Doug was talking about how he clipped people in the back of the jaw or whatever. I was like, fuck. That would knock me out in a second. Doug was talking about how he clipped people in the back of the jaw or whatever.

I was like, yeah. He uses that movement to load. So he bobs this way. He's loading the ride. It's like, it's amazing. His defense ends up being his. I've studied Tyson. I love it.

But his defense is his offense. It's a load. I'm loading to my right. I'm going to kill you now with my right hand. That peekaboo style boxing was like my first introduction to boxing. That's how I learned it from day one. You can't really do it the same way in MMA. It doesn't work the same way.

Yeah, because you catch probably a foot right in the face when you bend over. Yeah, you bob. You bob hard inside like that, and the're like, I know you're doing it, and you just meet a fucking wind kick. I've done it. Good night. I've done it. Doesn't feel good.

Oh, my gosh. You run right into it. Oh, man. Another, getting back to the imbalance, Tyson stole the show again. That guy. He's so good. I had to say it.

Yeah, that's great. Yo, Squat University puts up really good videos and some of the stuff that i really like uh of course the squatting videos but he also gets into uh you know talking about scapular stability and we'll post like a lot of a lot of stuff on when people do pull-ups and seeing kind of like how their scaps retract and which sides are stronger and i don't think a lot of people think about um kind of the upper half of their body and the imbalances that you you create um especially people in the crossfit world that are kind of going straight into kipping pull-ups as fast as they possibly can and they they don't really master the art of upper body pulling um and and to do five, six, seven, eight pull-ups before they start to try and learn kipping.

And the downrange long-term effects of that can be pretty brutal. But we're going to get into strategies of how to fix the shoulder, the hip, and the knee. But how often do you guys kind of see, Mash, especially like in your gym, or do you guys have a lot of people that like show up with some of these imbalances or is most of that stuff, like, I feel like the lat and those in the upper body pulling is less apparent, maybe just because it's the size of the joint. But that's like just a little bit less. It's less apparent than a lot of the hip issues. But do you see people come in and you watch their pulling pattern?

You're like, whoa. Yes. Fix this stuff. Especially in weightlifters. They just tend to be like so lower body dominant that you'll get a lot of upper body imbalances and just sheer weaknesses, you know? So like, as far as like, you know, he was, Doug was talking about imbalances. So like, you know, their upper, you know, ability to push and pull versus their lower, lower body ability to push and pull is like completely out of whack. So therefore,

what happens is this, is that you'll get athletes so strong that they can heave weight above their head that they're not prepared to stabilize there especially females like uh rebecca gordon was if she's either the or one of the first weightlifters i've ever coached and she got so strong that she ended up breaking her wrist simply from the amount of weight she was putting above it just naturally occurred that she fract up breaking her wrist simply from the amount of weight she was putting above. It just naturally occurred that she fractured her wrist. And so then we started realizing, oh, we need to do a lot of work, especially to females,

but even males, to stabilize that position overhead. Because you'll see guys like, what was his name? Totally blanked out. He was an amazing lifter as a junior I just went blank but he was like he had amazing lower body strength but his upper body you could just tell I think his military press was like

90 kilos like 198 pounds yet he could like heave 211 kilos above his head and so like he didn't last long is my point his best year was his last junior year and then and then that was it uh uh i'll remember in a second killing him yeah i think that the barbell um so many people like we all clearly love the barbell

but as a tool it really allows you to cover like so many of these imbalances up because you can have an an arm that is very strong or a leg that is very strong and for a very long time you're going to be able to move really heavy weights until this stuff kind of catches up to you and getting overhead is like a really really big problem i know in wilson by the way sorry that ian wilson yeah yeah yeah ah there you go uh yeah like one of the first things i look at in in weightlifters especially but crossers and weightlifters because they're they're similar in so many ways it's like i'll see if people have a long torso if they have big glutes and then if they have big lower traps like if you're if your lower traps are like appropriately hypertrophied we'll say a good

thing where in between your shoulder blades like it there's a there's a there's a bump rather than a than a hole so to speak yeah some people have like a like a little cavern there like a little hole where the lower traps should be and you can just see it you can just see that that person's low traps are not hypertrophied very well but other people you can really see how they have these big monster upper and lower but but specifically lower traps like if you if you look at emg graphs for the force couple between your upper traps your lower traps and your serratus anterior throughout upper rotation as you're going from from neutral to flexed overhead with load you'll see that it's the last part of the range of motion from like, you know, 160 to 180 where the lower trap EMG piece spikes. So your lower traps are most active when you're all the way flexed overhead regarding upward rotation.

Stabilizing. Yeah, if you, for some reason, you just have weak lower traps and they're not doing their job when you're all the way overhead, you can still get overhead. Your upper traps will kind of take over a little bit. Your serratus anterior trying to do a little bit extra but your lower traps aren't firing you don't get that good posterior tilt of your scapula which leaves you um more at risk to have some type of impingement to get some fraying in your super spinatus or your subscapularis or whatever it is like one of your rotator cuff muscles or multiple of them can can take some amount of damage if your if your

shoulder blade isn't positioned correctly and your lower traps are a big part of doing that everything's just going to come back to bodybuilding but i want to talk about kind of the tools as well because i mean finding your lower trap is not the easiest thing in the world for a lot of people it's it's really tough to go in and actually train that and be able to figure out movements and stuff. But when we think about the tools, getting away from barbell movements and doing a lot of higher rep stuff with light dumbbells to just be able to get your brain to recognize those imbalances. What are some of the, I guess, just exercise? If we start at the hip, we talked a little bit about the rear foot elevated split squats. Mash, tell me about single leg deadlifts. I feel like this is my go-to every single time.

Me too. I know we've talked about it a little bit. Why are they so effective? Well, I think, you know, that the pelvis is meant to move a little bit opposite of each other, you know. So what happens if you're always bilateral, you get the ability to move the hip becomes, you know, limited even more. So by doing some, you know, unilateral, you know, RDLs, which is my go-to, tell you you guys anyone out there who's got like back issues or like hip issues like me like if I do unilateral RDLs you know after every big squat session it is it has been a game changer like yesterday I had an amazing squat workout and I ended with

unilateral RDLs that you're talking about and And today I feel great. Had I not, today I'd be feeling terrible. My back would be hurting. You know, my pelvis would be, I mean, my hips would be like so immobile. But doing that at the end was a game changer. So just, you know, getting the pelvis where it's meant to be free from each other. Also, you know, you have that quadratus lumborum that moves opposite. So the hips are meant to go up and down and even rotate a little bit apart from each other. So doing some unilateral work will help to get that going.

Dude, when I think about single leg deadlifts, I love geeking out on just kind of like the neurological component of thinking about my brain having to communicate with the bottom of my feet and how far that signal has to travel in or for that movement to look really pretty and then you're loading it and you're on one leg and you're bending over like it's the most complex slow movement to me that you can you can really do in the gym it builds the most athleticism the balance is there the core stability is there and as a movement screen i dude, when I saw Max Schenck deadlift on one leg, 315 for five for the first time, I was like, I bet I can do that. No big deal. I did 225 for three, and I was like, whoa, that guy is super, super freak. Because that is so heavy for a single leg deadlift.

But that's doing it at one rm but i started to go on like a super geeky path of like trying to master the single leg deadlift because i found so much benefit slowing it down finding where my my foot was placed on the ground like actually using my midfoot um people that people that are really, really strong, um, or, or understand movement really well. Uh, if you are doing single leg deadlifts and I think a lot of times the difference between people that move really well and people that are just getting started in understanding movement patterns, um, watching people's back leg and how that back leg moves with intent to create a completely flat body. This isn't just some move that meatheads do. It's warrior two pose for yoga people.

This single position that your body is able to get in is expressed across pretty much every domain of fitness that you can find. It's just called something different. Or we load it and the yogis are doing it with their eyes closed. If you do it with your eyes closed, good luck. Super freak. That's really, really hard to do when you start taking your one foot off the ground, closing your eyes, and now you're only operating on a third of your entire vestibular system to move. That's a super difficult process. The core stability aspect,

like as soon as you push that hip back and you see somebody's hips shift up, now we know there's a big problem. There's a big weakness somewhere in their core, whether it's on a glute. There's some sort of rotational issue in which they can't just lean or they can't just push that hip back, push that leg back and then bend over all at the same time. You don't have to do a lot of weight. I find that the biggest benefit for most of it is really just doing the movement and the ability to, it's kind of like when you squat as much as Travis mask squats, which most people can't, but you could try, uh, when you are, when you're inside 90%, you're not sitting there thinking like, uh, I wonder how my brain is really operating with this bar on my shoulders,

trying to bury me into the ground. You're thinking, stand up. Yeah, that's it. Stand up. Don't die. How do I get all the way down and all the way back up? So along the way, there's all these little things that happen. There's like – it's like someone taking a little hammer and putting a chink in some sort of movement pattern all along the way. But when you do a single leg deadlift, it kind of washes all the way. It smooths everything out again that's how i kind of view the single leg deadlift because it just is like this nice little wash over that smooths out all the all the chinks that happen over time and it it's the single thing if i if i start to notice i have like a tiny maybe like

once a month tiny little thing i'll stand up weird like my hip will feel weird if that happens two days in a row the very next day i just go straight into the gym i squat i do front squats and then i do some single leg deadlifts and i'm good me too just it i feel like it's it's the single movement that i'm able to go in and it just it cleanses all of the the poor movement patterns that i've developed since the last time that it happened can i get an amen i told you yesterday i did a pause just to just to to um back up what you're saying like i did a pause front squat is 470 pounds is it pr of late of late yeah and then i only did my my um unilateral rdls with 25 pounds because it's just the movement. It doesn't matter.

I'll grab whatever's near. There might be a 40-pound, a 50-pound. In this case, it was 25 pounds. I just needed a little bit of a load to engage my glutes. It was just really the eccentric, perform the eccentric slow and steady. Today, I feel great. Whereas if I had not done that, today I would feel awful. But I feel ready to squat again.

The other piece that I really love about doing them too is that since you're not doing – like no one – there's no weightlifting competitions like single leg, deadlift, 1RM, today. And you're like training for it. It's purely an accessory movement-based thing to yourself healthy and and isolate some musculature and you're testing like the full body but when i was doing them all the time you can't move quickly while you do that it's just impossible the balance stuff just doesn't work so you have to move incredibly slow while you're doing them the tempo on them is built in so it's not it's not something that you just jump into hit your set of eight and go home it's there's very intentional movement pieces going on and it's a very long probably like

five second movement when it's all complete so each each thing, if you're doing a set of eight, you're looking at 40 seconds under load. And at some point you're going to think about where's your balance? Where's your foot? Where's your hip? How's your chest look? And you're able to really make a really solid brain body connection with each of the pieces of that movement in a way that most movements you're not able to do just because there isn't as long of time under load for each set. If you're doing three sets of eight on each leg, that's 16 movements times a five-second movement or five-second rep. I don't even know how to do the math but that's a long time under load for each set that your brain is just sitting there trying

to figure out how are we going to make this better over and over and over again yeah yeah i think there's a lot of value in in setting up some testing for yourself or your athletes uh some really common ways to test asymmetries in different categories, like doing a standing triple jump, a single, sorry, standing single legs triple jump. You know, you start just standing on your left leg. You jump one, two, three times and land on your left leg. And then you do the same thing on your right. And you see like what the distance difference is.

Right. I'm going to do that right now. You know, you could take, you know, 40 or 50% of your back squat max and and do rear foot elevated split squats you know maybe put it on a safety bar or whatever that's my preferred way uh and do a max max reps per side you know do i get 14 reps on my left but only 11 on my right um same thing with you know standing one arm dumbbell press you know can you you press one dumbbell or bottoms up kettlebell press even better my favorite you can you do um you know uh the the 70 pound kettlebell for five on one side and only three on the other or whatever it is like just you don't have to pick any magic tests necessarily just just

pick a couple of different movements that you know you can do your left side versus your right side and and just see how you compare and then you can adjust accordingly. To do the bottoms-up kettlebell in a Z-press where you're sitting and your feet are out in front of you pointing your toes, because it also takes into consideration your posture as well. Because if you're sitting way back and your hamstrings are tight, it's going to be tough to do that movement at all.

But I'm looking, are they vertical in their torso with their toes pointed, and they're keeping the kettlebell in, and then they're equal. Then I know, yes, their right and left arms are equal, but their posture is good too. That person is going to be really safe overhead, in my opinion. Yeah. Why doesn't the Z-Press get more love i i always i don't know i i uh program it almost every single block somewhere in the 12 weeks it'll either be in

there a lot or it'll be there it'll be in there somewhere we used to program them in the gym all the time brian would put them in there and you just see movement just falls apart when you take people's legs out of the out of the situation they got to rely on their core as the base yeah and like and being able to set up people just can't set up right you know they don't have the mobility that you know i'm practicing right now just getting my shoulders into a good pressing position while i sit on this med ball by the way med ball best office seat in the world i can't it's like painful to just get my shoulders in a good position right there nobody can see we have to we do all the movements throughout the podcast while

while we're all looking at each other on zoom here um when it when you get into like some of the pulling not pulling off the floor but like the upper body pulling imbalances. Um, I feel like this is kind of where like a lot of like band work and hypertrophy stuff comes in because, and it's also probably a really good place to talk about like when you're customizing workouts to your own and sets that for your accessory movements that are going to improve those weak areas if you're sitting there and doing kind of like a dumbbell row over and over again and you're hitting eight on each side with the exact same amount of weights we're not really building up that side. When you guys are writing workouts, and I guess this is in a much more customized thing,

so it's probably a little bit more for MASH, but how do you structure those sets and reps and total volume to build up people's weaker areas? What we do is we have them take this big test. I wrote this book. It's called No Weaknesses. And when we did it, I had a guy who's at our gym. Now he's a doctor. So shout out to Malcolm,

Mr. Doctor. But anyway, he helped me do the research on a cool Excel sheet. And so they take it. So we look at their back squat to front squat. And it goes all the way down to right, upper right, right arm, left arm, lower right leg, left leg, you know, pushing, pulling. Also, with your arm, you got to think about pushing and pulling above your head, pushing and pulling below the head. So we did all of that.

And so they take the test and it lights up and it's all based on your back squat. So like if we indicate that you're more than like 10% off of what should be optimal, then it's a target of ours. And so that's how we choose accessory work. In some cases, that's how we choose even the main work. Because like if your front squat to back squat ratio is way off, let's say that your front squat is super weak. Well, then we'll just front squat for a while until that catches up. So that's how we govern everything. Yeah. Travis, what do you see as kind of the ideal ratios between the Olympic movements

and the different types of squatting? I've had it pulled up because I was waiting on this question. You're ahead of the game. Yeah, so we base it on back squat so like um i'll do some simple ones so like front squat we're looking at being 90 of your of your back squat the clean being about this is arguable but between you know between 65 and 75 is like you know we looked at a lot of different, like, studies, and so they vary quite a bit. So you could easily say 70%, you know. And then you clean and jerk the same.

Obviously, you want to be able to jerk what you can clean. You know, your, let's see, where's snatch? Snatch should be about anywhere between, like, 60% to 67% of your back squat. So, you know, that's about a good 10 percent or or more in some cases 20 below your cleaning jerk depends on the person so like the key is this is that just looking for any major ones like some people will naturally and no matter what you do are going to flow off like nathan dameron let's give you a good example. Like that boy has such small femurs. He is always going to be like what most people consider like not –

he's not going to be efficient is what some people would say. But he's totally efficient. It's just his squat is always – he's going to squat 700, 800 pounds. And you're never going to clean and jerk. Therefore, you're not going to clean and jerk 70% of that. Or, you know, you're not going to clean and jerk 70 of that or so you know you're not going to do that and so so uh you just look at the in those cases you just establish a ratio and you just maintain that ratio throughout throughout his career so like if the squat does go up the from that ratio then socially the clean jerking snatch does that make sense so um yeah

i have a box there's like overhead press. We got push press, power snatch, power cleans. Like, there's like over 40. What are the power snatch numbers to like a full snatch? So, it's about 10% difference. Well, actually, it's 12% to be exact, but around 10%. You know, 10% obviously less. Your power snatch should be about 10% less than your full snatch.

And I think, let me see, power clean should be about the same. Maybe not quite as much, but yeah. Somewhere around 10%. Are you testing anything on kind of like a neuromuscular endurance setup of like you should be able to hit 80% of your one-arm back squat to six to eight reps or anything along that? Or are you just focused on the top numbers? Not really. You know, one thing they would test, believe it or not, is like what we look at is reverse hypers.

It's like we're looking at your capacity to be able to do you know the reverse hyper because like i started training a guy online and his low back capacity is like zero like um you know normally i have them try to start out with somewhere around 25 percent of their back squat for 40 seconds is a goal three sets of 40 seconds and it just won't happen like uh you know it would flare his low back up. So we kicked it to 20%, and then we'll slowly work our way up to – the goal is to be able to do – once you can do, like, a percentage of your back squat for three sets of one minute straight

of steady, not, you know, not hyperextending, just a good – I have to show you the next time we're together like the way Stuart McGill taught us. So when they can do three sets of one minute, then we go back down and start with a higher percentage and work back up. It's a very slow methodical, but we do look at capacity there because the ability to perform work around that joint, that lumbar spot and hip joint is, it's gotta be,

the capacity has got to be super high because, you know, the amount of work that we're asking them to do in, like say an Olympic quad is just, you know, most humans can't endure that. So I need to know that they're prepared and ready for it. Can you wrap? Yeah. Yeah. I would love to hear a little bit more about you, how you guys incorporate that piece of equipment just because I've never really – and it always feels really awkward anytime I hop on one. It just – maybe it's something just because I don't practice it much and I don't have access to one too often. And it's also one of those things where the people that love it they don't just kind of love it they talk about it as if it's saved their entire life it can it can also be the thing that hurts you you know like yeah doug always says and like when stewart's on you'll see when dr mcgill's

on he'll tell you it depends is always the answer and like so if so if you're, you know, if you're a person who can tolerate the reverse hyper, it probably will save you. You'll either be someone it's going to save you or it's going to hurt you. So how do we know the difference is because the way it feels? In the way that if they're able to perform it correctly, like he wants you to be neutral spine always

and scapula locked down, you know, which is his go-to position and being able to maintain that while you're doing not see louis might teach or i don't know if he teaches it but when you see his guys doing it at the top extension yeah it's just too much and like you know the thoracic extension ends up being lumbar extension and over time that's going to create issues in the back why does does Louie teach it that way? I don't know. I mean, that's just sort of the difference in, like,

Stuart McGill spending his life looking at lumbar spines or, like, the spine in general. And Louie just, you know, kind of winging it, basically. You know, I'm not – this is not me badmouthing Louie. I'm his biggest supporter. I'm just saying, in that instance, you know, he could you know he could stand to gain a little bit from stewart mcgill when you are louis simmons and you

invent the product yeah it's hard to teach everybody to do it the exact way that it helped you the most i know and so what do you do louis you invented it and then 20 years later there's a guy in a lab saying this might be better and And he's like, well, check out that board over there. Look how strong those guys are. Yeah, I beat them. It's not that – It's what I would say to him. Yeah, right?

Yeah, I beat your guy. Well, anyway. Yeah, well, I have the strongest people that have ever walked on the planet. So – Yeah, there's that. And so I don't know. But like you can't – science is science. Like the spine is a very delicate – if you prepare it properly, it's, science is science. Like, you know, the spine is very delicate.

You know, if you prepare it properly, it's super strong and stable. But if you, you know, perform bad movement patterns on an over-and-over type basis, eventually it's going to break. And then once you hurt your back, it's a bad thing. It sets forth a cascading set of events. I owe you my good mornings today. Yeah, good mornings. I still owe you.

I'm kick-starting that process today. I love the unilateral. It's funny that you said that. I thought that was just something I had just discovered. But the unilateral squats, boy, that is such a nugget. Or if anyone learns anything from the show today, it would be like do some unilateral deadlifts and do some unilateral squats with your hip in extension under load.

Shout out Kelly Starrett. Yeah, that guy's smart. He's incredible. I love single leg deadlifts. It's the best. I just love looking at it as like a – it's like I don't need to know anything about anything. I don't need to know anything about how you have been training your whole life.

I just need to see you do five single leg deadlifts, and I know where we're at. Yeah. Just seen enough of them. I just know what it looks like i know how your core is supposed to look i know how your brain's supposed to talk to your feet i know how your hips are supposed to look i know what your hamstrings are supposed to look like and all i need to do is just have you do five of them just so you get a little bit tired

see where the weaknesses are then we can start then we get to go um do we do any of this stuff for do you see any of this in the bench press? Oh, yeah, man. I think – I feel like the bench is like a big one. Here's a nugget. Louis would tell you your rows need to either match or double the amount of volume you're doing on the pressing. I would argue that external rotation needs to match the internal rotation of the bench press.

You see the dudes all doing the rows and they're still hurting their shoulders. But you see these dudes walking around with the internally rotated humerus and the scapula is weaned because they're doing this all the time. So by doing

some muscle snatch or he talks about it it he just doesn't talk about enough doing the the dumbbell power cleans the way you're supposed to where it's like you know a rotation yeah you know it's all about external rotation but adding that i think is more important than the rows is is what i would say because normally this you know when you go to you hurt your shoulder which i have and you go to the doctor, he doesn't look at like your pressing and rowing. He looks at your internal and external rotation. And like if there's always normally when you hurt your shoulder, there's a big imbalance somewhere.

So if you keep that balance, I think the longevity of your bench pressing career would be extended. Yeah. Yeah. But that internal rotation, when you get your traps all flared out like that it looks like a shield like the seven shield of it's not a shield

that's what I teach my daughter I go who's your favorite bodybuilder and I answer I go it's Ben Pekulski why because most muscular pose he looks like such a monster he's got traps all up in his ears that's your boy I met him in California too love that guy Why? Because of most muscular pose. He looks like such a monster. He's got traps all up in his ears. That's your boy.

Yeah, I met him in California too. Love that guy. Travis Mash. Where can people find you? Mashlead.com. You can go to Instagram, Mashlead Performance, or hit me up on – I am – you have to admit, my LinkedIn is hot. I see you now. You're creeping on the LinkedIn.

I put the shows up. I put the shows up. I like it. I don't really know. I like it. I don't really know. I like it. We got a new one. It's called Fit Together. It's like fitness focused.

It's just purely fitness based social media. Fit Together? Fit Together. I'm on it. I don't know. Come and hang out. All right. Yeah, we just started working with them.

It's kind of cool. I get in there, hang out, do things, post-workouts and stuff. But I've always wanted to get to the very, very base level of a social media company. That's awesome. Because if it takes off, you get everyone's information. No! That means I'll have all their workouts. Then we'll know.

Doug Larson, where can they find you? Right on. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner everywhere. And on LinkedIn too. And you can find us, we're Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Get over to Barbell Shrugged. Nutrition online courses. We'll see you guys next week that is a wrap my friends that is a wrap barbell shrug.com forward slash store training programs ebooks nutrition

mobility you name it it's over there you can use the code shrugged to save 10%. Also, also, Organifi.com forward slash shrugged save 20%. Also, Bioptimizers.com B-I-O-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E-R-S dot com forward slash shrugged

Bioptimizers.com forward slash shrugged use the code shrugged10 to save 10%. Also, also fit together. We got a big challenge coming up

in the month of October, October 5th. Get into the app store, F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R, Fit Together. Friends, we'll see you on Wednesday.