Barbell Shrugged - Post-Activation Potentiation: The Unknown Secret to Maximizing Muscle Fiber Recruitment and PR Any Lift Today w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged— Barbell Shrugged #437

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

Post-activation potentiation is a theory that purports that the contractile history of a muscle influences the mechanical performance of subsequent muscle contractions. Fatiguing muscle contractions impair muscle performance, but non-fatiguing muscle contractions at high loads with a brief duration may enhance muscle performance.   In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, Anders, Doug, and Travis discuss:   What is post activation potentiation?   How to apply post activation potentiation to testing your PR   Programming Post Activation Potentiation   How to apply post activation potentiation to olympic lifts   Isometrics for Post activation potentiation   Should you use post activation potentiation on strengths or weaknesses.   And more…   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Travis Mash on Instagram   TRAINING PROGRAMS   One Ton Challenge   One Ton Strong - 8 Weeks to PR your snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench press   20 REP BACK SQUAT PROGRAM - Giant Legs and a Barrell Core   8 Week Snatch Cycle - 8 Weeks to PR you Snatch   Aerobic Monster - 12 week conditioning, long metcons, and pacing strategy   Please Support Our Sponsors   “Save $20 on High Quality Sleep Aid at Momentous livemomentous.com/shrugged us code “SHRUGGED20” at checkout.   US Air Force Special Operations - http://airforce.com/specialops   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   PRx Performance - http://prxperformance.com use code “shrugged” to save 5% ------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs-ep437 ------------------------------------------------------------------   ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Six lifts, snatch, clean jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench. I want to give a shout out to my main dude, Nick, and I'm not going to say his last name because it might be rude sending his last name out, but he just set a 50-pound PR on his back squat. And here's what it took. He did the 20-rep back squat program for three months, put 120 pounds on his 20RM. It's a massive volume phase.

And then he went in, bought the One Ton Challenge program. And the very first eight weeks on the One Ton Challenge program is a back squat cycle. It starts with medium volume, less than the 20 rep back squat program, moves into a medium volume back squat cycle lots of front squats and then the last four weeks is a peak phase into building a new one rm so that was three months 12 weeks of the 20 rm back squat program and then a medium phase or a medium volume phase in the first four weeks of the one ton challenge program. And then all of it building to a new one RM. And it is so rad when somebody hits a 50 pound PR and their life is better. They're so happy. They're so confident. And on top of that, um, it's also down about five pounds body fat in the past four weeks after eating his face off and getting super strong on the 20RM.

Now we're cutting back on the body fat and still hitting tons of PR. So make sure you get over to OneTonChallenge.com forward slash join. OneTonChallenge.com forward slash join. Six lifts, snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench. You're going to get so strong. Come and hang out with us. They're back. Organifi.

We had a big month. We took a break. We didn't really take a break. It was just chaos because it's the beginning of the year in fitness. But make sure you get over to Organifi.com. I'm so happy that they're back. Organifi.com forward slash drug. Save 20% on your order. They're back.

I got all the greens, all the reds, all the golds, everything in my life that I love so much. I love working with these guys. We're actually three years deep into this beautiful relationship. I'm so grateful for them. I'm so grateful for you buying their products, keeping us in the loop with them, keeping everybody happy on their side, keeping everybody happy on our side, and hopefully, and from the sounds of it, keeping everybody at home happy, feeling good with all the micronutrients you are getting. The green, the red, and the gold, they're amazing. Sunrise to sunset.

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Today's show is about post-activation potentiation. I've been using this for a very, very long time and had no idea it was a name for an actual recruitment pattern for setting PRs, getting super strong. And I cannot wait for you to listen to this show. Coach Travis Smash Smashes. I'm so stoked that we had such a great conversation. Doug Smashes brings tons of really good content and on top of it, it's Monday and the future of Shrugged

is going to be a lot of me, Doug and Travis sitting in a room and really hammering strength and conditioning it's where our heart is at, it's what we love to do we've got such a rad team on the side. It's incredible that we get to work and communicate and record all of it and get it to you guys

about just the conversations that we have on the day-to-day in our friend group. On Wednesdays, we're still going to be having the majority of the shows being guests, but Shrugged is here two days a week, Monday. Going to be crazy coaching going on. Today is post-activation potentiation. Let's get into it. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash.

We're in Louisville, North Carolina. Love St. Louisville. Mash Elite Performance. Today we're going to be talking about post-activation potentiation, which is a gigantically long word, and we're going to come up with a better saying for that. But you are going to learn how to PR every single lift. Right now. Especially the big six right now. The big six, snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench.

Something that I've been using for a very long time. I didn't even know how to name. And then Coach Mash has been talking about it on the show for the past three months or so. Every time we've recorded. And wrote an e-book about it called The Mash Method. Dude, give us a breakdown of what this thing is. Because I have been using it for a long time. I didn't know I was using it.

It just made my body feel great every time I had to go do something important as far as strength is concerned. And you're the person that talks about it more than anyone in the strength community as far as I know. All right. First, I'm going to read the definition, and then I'm going to give you the layman's term of version. So it's a theory that purports that the contractile history of a muscle influences the mechanical performance of subsequent muscle contractions. Here's what it boils down to. Got it. Done. You do something

that's kind of heavy, that's similar to what you're about to do, and your body is still thinking about that amount of weight. So it's recruiting fibers for something much heavier than it's actually going to do. Therefore, you perform more efficiently. So you go do like heavy back squats and then you do vertical jumps right afterward. Right.

Or you do a heavy walkout. And, you know, like, you know, say your max is 300 on squat. You walk out 330, hold it for 10 seconds, go back, wait a minute, squat 305, set a PR. Yeah. So I used to – so you tagged so you just had matt winneger and he had a really his he's coming back to weightlifting yeah and he just had a meet you tagged me on a post um where i've been watching you do we're just going to call it pap because that definition is just as confusing as saying post-activation. Potentiation is just ridiculous.

Just call it PAP. PAP. And used it before a meet with him coming back. And when you tagged me on the post, it was him doing heavy snatch pulls right before he went onto the platform to go. Was it a PR attempt? Yeah, PR. Did he make it?

Did he hit it? He hit it. Yeah, he went three for three in the snatch. And he did his opener, and then we jumped, and they just put him. A lot of times weightlifters will find themselves like, you know, they'll go up three kilos and find themselves 12 attempts out. Yeah. You can't just wait 12 attempts before you snatch again.

You'll get cold. You know, efficiency is everything in weightlifting. So you have to either, you know, go back down and work back up. So what we did, we did go back down. Let's say, for example, he hit 100 on his opener, and we jumped to, say, 105. So what we did was, you know, and he's stage 12 with himself. So we wound back down to 80. So we went 80, 85, 90, 95 heavy pull.

So, say, 105, we pulled 108. We're not out front in 105, you know we did that you know twice two you know we did it for his second attempt third attempt and um he had a pr then we started you know with matt doing it in his training and the very first day he did it in training he hit a lifetime pr again of 100 so he hit 107 there. Then we do it in training. He hits 110. So now he's had massive jumps. Crazy. Yeah. Well, the reason that that post made me want to get on here and do a full show on PAP was

because I was watching you do the polls, and I was thinking about how each lift and the confidence that each athlete has in that lift and kind of strengths and weaknesses of those athletes it makes a huge difference probably in how you're programming it and my experience with it did you ever use any of this stuff when you were training or with any coaches you had doug yeah quite a bit in in graduate school when we're on the university memphis kind of club weightlifting team yeah we did quite a bit of it we actually even did a did like a full study on it oh wow lauren shu who was doing his phd in biomechanics set up a study where we took muscle biopsies before we lifted and then did eight sets of doubles or triples on clean pulls and then took another muscle biopsy you know chunking out a

piece of muscle out of the the outside of our thigh out of our fastest lateralis and then took another muscle biopsy you know chunking out a piece of muscle out of the the outside of our thigh out of our fastest lateralis and then took that chunk of muscle out and then did eight more sets and then took out more muscle and the whole goal of the study was to see how i think it was how the myosin light chain of the muscle was being phosphorylated which is like the at the cellular level like what one way to define how much a muscle was being phosphorylated, which is like at the cellular level, like one way to define how much a muscle is being post-activated, potentiated, if you will. And I actually don't remember the specific results

of his study as far as the cellular physiology of it, but in practice, we did it all the time. We do heavy lifts, and then usually, like the example I used earlier, we'd do heavy lifts and then something pretty light afterward, but occasionally doing five kilos over a PR for a pole and then trying to hit a PR. Yeah. For sure.

Well, with me, any time as – We actually did football in college more than weightlifting as a sport. Nice. Yeah. Summer training. Well, that was – so getting back to your point of for me when i saw that um doing heavy pulls going into that i was thinking i instantly thought when i saw your post that there's no way that i would ever do that before walking on the platform because the weakest part of all of the lifts for me is getting from the floor to my

knee so doing the pulls would put me at a really high it would almost really jack my confidence up taking 105 or 105 off the floor of the athleticism and wiring that i relied so much on and the speed piece it would make me feel slow off the floor or it would pull me forward onto my toes and i would like instantly recognize it and then i would have this kind of like the lack of confidence or like a bad a bad rap bad rep going on to the platform right after and i was thinking, I was bought in on all of it, and I still am bought in on the concept, but the idea that using it for a very high-athletic, high-speed piece becomes a very complex thing in coaching and programming.

Because if you had told me, if there was blocks set up in the back and you were like, you know 97 or 100 off the blocks i would probably do that and feel great about it because i would be able to be speed i'd be fast athletic i'd be able to get under the bar and it would feel great but it would be a partial range of motion probably doesn't work in a full scale like that but i'm just thinking about how difficult it would be to for each athlete to know how to implement this um and doing it in all the lifts we're learning right now because we're implementing it with the whole team now and so like um we're implementing it with a group that's getting ready for junior worlds that's in about nine weeks from now so i wanted to do it now

and so i'm collecting the data and seeing who it works the best for. And so if it works really well, we'll keep it exactly the way it's programmed. If it doesn't, I'll tweak it one more week. If it doesn't work one more week that well, I'll take it out. Here's what I'm finding. Guys like you, like Isaac, he's a guy from New Zealand who relies completely on speed, who's not the strongest of our athletes.

Like you, you're very athletic, very fast. That's what you rely on. He's like that too. And so the guys who are strong, like Morgan, they rely on the feel of how light the bar feels off the floor because they're strong dudes. So when it feels light, they know they can control it. It seems to be working for guys like that a little bit better.

And so we're going to do one more tweak. But like that, what you just said about doing the pull off the blocks it might work better so you warm up doing a full snatch do a heavy pull out block so it doesn't number one it doesn't fatigue you but um but you still get the same effect it doesn't really matter yeah he could literally walk out you know you could you could take it out of a rack a snatch grip and, and just hold it, and it would work the same. Yeah. It just has to be similar. And so that's a very good idea. Here's the thing, though. There's a couple things to consider.

As soon as you do the heavy movement that you're going to do, fatigue's the highest, but so is potentiation, the thing that you're after. So you've got to wait until the fatigue and the potentiation come down to where they meet, and that's the perfect place. So knowing how long to rest in between is different for each person too. So it's a lot more complex. Is it usually kind of like 30 seconds to a minute?

It depends on what we're learning. What I did today is I learned, you know, we did some doubles and then we did some singles. So if you do a double snatch pull, it's going to be longer. It's going to be like a minute, two minutes. If you do a squat with, there's a guy, gosh, I'm blanking out. I'll think in a minute. He's from

Penn State. Dang it. I'll have to remember. But anyway, he's the one who first told me about it. He weighed three minutes. He would do a squat, an 85% squat, and then he'd wait. Cam Davidson, thank God. Sorry, Cam.

But he showed it three minutes after doing a heavy squat in between that and a jump was perfect. He said, but it wasn't practical in a team setting. So he did it less. And so it just wasn't perfect, but it still worked. So he did it like 60 seconds. So it depends on how much fatigue you have. Like, you know, like if you did it off the blocks, 30 seconds is probably better

because the fatigue won't be that much. Does that make a case for doing things like waves? Like if your max snatch is 100, you do 75, 85, 95, 75, 85, 95, like that type of like rolling heavier sets yes and we're doing it without with our program they're doing waves so you guys are doing post activation potentiation you just don't know it yeah so and a lot of times it's good like early on you know like in squats for example so when typically people do hypertrophy like say as far 12 weeks out and they do tens or whatever we do We do 3s first, then 10s.

It's not really about the 3s as much as it is about making those 10s more efficient. So, like, that's the thing, too. That's us programmed into the one-ton challenge. I've gotten questions about that before, about why it's structured like that. There's two reasons. You know, number one, for females, you know, in a traditionally progressive overload program, you start with tens, they'll set ten RMs. You go to fives, they'll set the five RMs.

Even threes, they might do a three RM. Go to one, nothing happened. But if you start with absolute strength earlier and it's in there the whole time, odds are there's a good chance the girls will set PRs more often than if you do the traditional progressive overload. So that's the other reason too. When it comes to squatting, 20-hour back squat is always my favorite. But I actually did it recently and I hit 315.

Right. And building up to – which is a fucking gangster, by the way. Yeah. That ties lifetime best. Going to 365. So this is something we talked about a little bit earlier about of as my training age has developed and the longer i'm able to activate that those muscle fibers faster i have to do less than when i was younger and going for the same stimulus. So I used to build up in that program or in – I haven't competed in a while,

but I would imagine that I can do this quicker in every aspect. But I used to build up to, say, 355, 365, 375, and I'd hit it for a double or a triple. But now I'm able to get there because I've been training so much longer and I understand the mental side of what's coming, and I'm more comfortable with the weights that now I can get that done in a set of two versus a set of three. And the three is actually significantly more tiring and a much larger beat down on my body, that extra rep. But it used to take that amount of time just to get everything turned on and like mentally i

used to just think it was purely mental of me walking around feeling like a badass of like oh i just hit 375 squat at 375 for a triple 15 is not 315s child's play let's go and to find out that it's actually like recruiting more muscle fibers insane if you If you guys are having to be football players listening, I'm going to give you some gold. When you do the 225 for reps, or in high school it's 185 for reps, but the best thing to do is if you're pretty strong, hit 315 for one. Then do your 225 for reps. You'll definitely hit.

I learned that when I was in college. You do that and you'll hit way more reps for 225. So that's brilliant. The 20 reps. You put out a video recently too talking about how you would take Louie's conjugate method and then add this in there. Yes.

This was my... That's why we joked around and we called it the mass method. It's because my entire powerlifting career was based on this one theory. Why did you find it, though? Does it just make you feel better? I wanted to go heavy.

That was in my blood. So I would do dynamic stuff. Let's say that it was like 60% bar weight plus 30% bands. Let's just say. And I would say I have blue bands and whatever. I would do what he said. I would do, you know, eight doubles or eight triples or whatever it was, but then I would keep going.

So then I would either work up to a 3RM or a 1RM with the bands, take the bands off, keep going, and I would normally set PR, you know, squat. It's how I got to 805 on the squat. Really, the first time I ever squatted 805 was weight releasers which is the i mean that's the epitome of post-activation potentiation so i lowered 905 the clips came off and i squatted 805 i was actually asking anna's on the way over here if you had any weight weight releasers here at this gym idiot i know i was gonna play with them this week no i'm gonna get some for sure because, like, you know,

now that I'm doing more and more with post-activation potentiation, for sure I'm going to. I always thought it was all mental to me. Like I never thought that there was an actual physiological piece. Yeah. So before every single CrossFit open workout, before every single regional workout, every time, I would build up to a snatch that was like 225.

And I always wanted to do it for, one, it made my body feel great. I always felt like if I could snatch up to two and a quarter, it would just my brain and my feet were 100% dialed in. There was no way there was lacking athleticism, but it also

I wanted everybody in the building to know that I snatched 225 just because like you yeah like i'll do it multiple times today it just doesn't matter yeah and like if you walked into the gym before an open workout and like all the freaks are hanging out i just wanted you to know i'm gonna smash you today because i just casually hit two and a quarter and now i'm gonna go work out that's why I thought it was always a mental thing. No, it was something physiological happening. You mentioned the mental thing.

That makes me think of something related to this. It's not weightlifting or powerlifting. It's more like a speed thing. In the baseball world, a very common thing to do before you go up to the plate is to put a weighted donut on your bat. You make your bat a little bit heavier. You do a couple of swings with the weighted bat and then you take the donut off so your bat is back

to its normal weight. It's lighter. When you swing, it feels like you're swinging really fast because in comparison, you are swinging faster than you were when it was weighted. You feel like you're swinging really fast. You feel really good. It's probably a confidence piece to that. You're like, fuck yeah, I'm going to

smash this thing. That's another thing too but but when they when they actually study they said it's that speed it slows down the bats right so it's like i think i think the mental part of it is tricky because i think you can convince yourself that something is easier but then when you actually look at it objectively and you measure it might not actually be beneficial that's why definitely when i'm at lenore ryan, which maybe people listening don't know, but, you know, we're starting a new university program.

But when I'm there, one of the big studies we're going to be is post-activation potentiation. Is this the thing that gets you the most stoked about strength

training right now? Post-activation? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, it just fascinates me. And we've used it to, on the jerks, we don't really use it

on cleans because, like, you know, most of our guys are really good, and, like, after you've done weightliftinglifting long enough most people are going to make the clean but you could the only thing is it'd be super fatiguing so if you did it you know i had you know if you can you say you could clean 300 you know you do a clean pull with 350 that's more fatiguing than a snatch pull you know yeah what guys are powerlifting does anyone use bands in

the back room as a way to do pap? No, but we're about to. Before they go out onto the platform? If you ask both my women powerlifters, if you ask Crystal or Sarah, they would tell you that the bands are a freaking miracle. Like, they will PR every single time. They do. We'll do. Simply, we threw out the whole, let's do dynamic day.

We literally just work up to a max single with bands, take the bands off, work up to a max single, no bands. Both of them have hit lifetime PRs, like massive lifetime PRs doing that. I like that model of building up to a max with the bands and taking them off and then doing it again. It's a miracle. Have you seen any difference in these specific lifts? Like it works better in the squat because it's like glutes are massive muscles

and, you know, it's a larger muscle region for more activation, whereas like a bench press is significantly smaller. It's much more. I think bench is even more. I think both of those are big. I've never really played around with the deadlift that much. However, I wish,

you know, I plan to, but I know one thing that there was a guy, one of the first dudes to ever Vince Anello, he would lower, he would like take it out of the rack and lower, let's say eight 80 and then go back, try to deadlift eight 30.

And it worked for him. He's the first guy under 200 to deadlift over 800 pounds. And so he did it. I've never played around with that, with the deadlift yet, but I plan to. But benching and guaranteed 100%, the reason I became a world record setter in the bench press was what I'm talking about. Like I was not a good bencher, you know, well comparatively to the best in the world.

But I would win in squats get whipped in bench and then have to catch up in deadlift so I was tired of that so I got I worked that like through the roof

you talked about the bands but I wonder adding isometrics to like a sticking point or your weak point even better in the deadlift would be a huge one

I've programmed that a lot you know I've never done it to where you do the isometric, take it away. But I know Charles Polgan talked about that some. And, like, I definitely – that's one of the things I plan on doing. I do know this. There's nothing better at strengthening a joint at a particular angle

than an isometric contraction. So, like, if you have a certain weak spot, you know, you can strengthen that joint no better way than with isometrics. And it works, you know, up and down, you know, up a little bit and below a little bit of the joint angle that you're working. I think the research says it's, like, 20 to 30 degrees. I think so. Like, above and below the joint angle. A little bit.

You know, it probably varies. I'm assuming, like, everything else. But, yeah, probably. Yeah. But it's. I'm sure that's, like, a bell curve type of thing. As one of the things, too, I did with benching, i did this workout with um charles paul again this was his workout so you start with the bar on your chest and you push it up maybe four inches in the pins you do like three

sets of like you know you do three sets of three for like you know five seconds each one then you start where you were ending and you push from there up about four inches and then you finish at the tip top so it was literally nine sets of triples and um that's for sure getting max tension at every range of motion every range of motion and at 100 that was definitely a definitely a big increase in my bench press as well well in that example are you are is that an empty bar against pins or is it a loaded bar that with max effort you can only hold it against the pins for three to five seconds? Right. You know, you didn't have to go that heavy, but of course me, I was going.

Sure. And the higher it got, the heavier it went. We mentioned weight releases earlier. If you don't have those, if someone's listening and they want to have that kind of an effect, like have you ever just gone in a rack and put the pins at hip height or whatever it is, lowered down 500 pounds, pulled off a 45, and then come up with 90 pounds less? That would be awesome.

That would be a great idea. I feel like that's an easy way to do it if you don't have weight releasers. You just need partners to strip your weights. But most of us do, so, yeah, that would be – maybe we'll play around with that later this week. Yeah, we'll do that tomorrow. Yeah. We're headed there.

So we'll experiment on my friend John over here. Right. He's hanging out. We'll get your Instagram handle later. I love how people listening to this show

have no idea when we have other people in the room. What else is going on? We got a guy in the room that can ruin me right now. He's known me for 25 years. He's got so much dirt

all the dirt um another thing that i thought about um and now that i've like i know that pap is a thing um and i wish i could go back and test all these new ideas that have popped in my brain is um like jerk lockouts taking it out of like a really high rack do you see over time or like if i did it on a thursday how much of like that wiring carries over to like a friday or saturday or an upcoming meet or do you just look at that as like and we're putting heavy shit over our head and it that's just creating stability but that's isometrics too so that i mean it works so we definitely do jerk recoveries yeah but one thing that you're about to see uh i don't know we'll probably be um in lenoir ryan tomorrow

but tomorrow they're gonna do they're gonna do um jerk jerk dip squats you know where you load up super heavy you just do like three like you do the same range of motion you're gonna do if you're gonna dip and drive a jerk yeah and then you take some weight off then you jerk they're about to do that tomorrow so yeah oh i like that yeah that works for sure because we all know let's be honest let's throw science out the window right now when you rack something and it feels like odds are you're probably going to jerk it but when that thing feels super heavy like you're like oh shit you know you're like you're not am i going to go into this or not that's the exact thing i think i go oh shit yeah you can just tell it's too fun too much you're like i'm this is not going to go well you know i'm going to do like like where i kind of

pretend i'm going but not you know like so like you know but when it feels easy i mean it's truth you know like uh courtney you guys you saw her lifting tonight um she's one of our rookie lifters who's improved a ton but it worked miracles for her. She said the first time she ever did that was a PR. It just depends. You've got to keep, you know, if your coach is out there, you've just got to keep your data on your athletes. Do you think it's better to do this with a piece of the lift that is a strength?

Because we're talking about the post you tagged. If I was doing the snatch pull off the floor that's a big weakness for my for me so in a way the opposite of what i felt when i was snatching 225 or whatever it is um like in a warm-up um i feel like that would mess with my confidence do you want in practice or wherever it is going towards people's weakest areas to make that stronger strongest yeah i would do i you know i didn't even think about this till you said it i would do it pull off Going towards people's weakest areas to make that stronger. Probably the strongest. Yeah, go to the strongest spot. I would do it. I didn't even think about this until you said it. I would do it, pull off blocks, and then go from the floor.

It would not fatigue you. It would not feel as heavy as it would off the floor. You wouldn't get pulled to your toes and then do it from the floor. I bet that's a great idea. Yeah. What if you – I have so many things of ways that I would love to implement this. We're going down a rabbit hole. I love going down. Let's go.

If we did just the eccentric phase, like I think that the spot that I have always – this is like the game that I used to play because I could snatch like 105% pretty regularly. If you allowed me to deadlift it and get set and eccentrically load to below my knee, I'm fucking money from there all day long. You get stretch reflex. I'm perfectly balanced. I put the bar wherever I want, and everything's loaded. If I can do that with a heavy snatch, it's going down for sure.

That would always be how I knew I was like three weeks out from setting some sort of new record if I could set a PR from below the knee and then move it onto the blocks. That would be like the way that I always progressed. It would be from hip down and then to the blocks, and then I'd be able to go pretty much PR a couple weeks later just because that progression going from eccentric or the eccentric load stretch reflex and then setting on the blocks and having to go from a dead dead stop right um but if i did that with say like 110 percent out of meat and then got the bar into the sweet spot i wouldn't even have to snatch it i could just pull it and i feel like I would have made nationals for sure. But have you guys tested it on any of just the pure eccentric lifts? Not yet.

But it's definitely in the plans. I would love to do it with, like I said, the deadlift, the eccentric, into less weight, into the concentric. But we haven't. I just know that. Not enough time. I've heard. Yeah, I mean, there's so many different ways you can test it. And, like, I can't go too crazy because, you know, we are nine weeks out,

so, like, we are trying to win the junior world. So, like, you know, I experiment just enough to where I know I'm not going to mess anyone up, but it could be a big boost. Yeah. And so we're going to make tweaks, like I said, this week. You know, for Isaac, if the tweak i make doesn't work next week probably ditch it all together but it worked really well already again for matt and worked really well already uh for ryan so we'll keep it in i'm gonna adjust it you know we we've um it's a little you know all my programs are

individual here so like uh morgan is doing it on friday so based on what the results i got today i'm gonna already adjust his and then um i'm learning i'm seeing the different types you know we have morgan who's pure he's a strength guy who's athletic um uh ryan is pretty much well-rounded he's fast he's you know he's not not strong necessarily as morgan but he's really strong isaac is the most he's really relies completely on speed and athleticism like you matt's somewhere in the middle so i'm learning what types of people he's the fastest isaac is unbelievable i've never seen that last time we were here whoo he's a big boy too his movement and his speed is there's nobody better if we just you know keep getting him stronger which we did the the German volume with him and he said a 10 kilo PR.

I was just about to bring that up. How many weeks do you do that with him? How is that implemented as well? What does it look like? 5,000 calories a day. I think we did it for three weeks. We did the first week with 63% 10x10,

then 65% 10x10, then 68% 10x10. I've yet to have someone do that and not PR. Because he's got Junior Worlds. He's got Junior Worlds. How's he going to do? He'll do really well. Definitely do better.

He's gotten a lot stronger since he's been here with us. He's snatched 140 now. He hasn't cleaned 170 yet. He's cleaned 170. He hasn't jerked it. But, yeah, hasn't clean jerked 170 yet. He's cleaned 170. He hasn't jerked it. But, yeah, he's going to do really well. You know, he's in Morgan's weight class, so that's going to be tough for him. He's a little bit better and more consistent in the snatch than Morgan,

but then, you know, Morgan clean jerks 190. So that's a bad day at the office. We had our first one-tone challenge athlete qualify for the American Open. No way. Yeah, it's dope. Chris Lemel. He's got a shout-out on the show. Shout-out bad day at the office. We had our first one-ton challenge athlete qualify for the American Open. No way. Yes, don't. Chris Lemel. He's got a shout-out on the show. Shout-out.

Good work, bro. I'll get to coach him. That would be awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be awesome. Yo, where did Junior Worlds end up? It wasn't Egypt, but that got canceled, right? It got canceled because they got exited out of the IWF.

But, no, it's Romania. Wait, why'd they get kicked out? Drugs? Too many drugs. Really, our sport is we're in a desperate moment right now because we had this whole

thing come out, this corruption with our president of the IWF is just a mess. I hadn't heard the full story. I don't need the full story, but what's the gist of it the corruption the you know hidden you know knowing that that countries are on drugs not doing anything about it taking money you know like it's just it's terrible and if they don't do something to rectify it man you know now we were safe uh for the next two olympics and now

for the first time ever someone's calling again and be like, you know, The internet is a motherfucker. I know, man. I see, I feel like all of these gigantic organizations, like FIFA was like the first one. Yeah.

Where it's like, before the internet, you could be as crooked as you wanted. It was so hard to find out. Now, you got three people that are like,

hey, did you hear this? Like, oh, I heard this. And next thing you know, like everybody's just talking. Yeah. Next thing you know, you got a documentary about you. Phil, this and next thing you know like everybody's just talking yeah next thing you know you got a documentary about phil phil uh enters our you know ceo he is like he's on top of it you know that dude is amazing so but he's calling for a full investigation of it and

like needs to man like these dudes gotta realize it's not a joke we're going to lose our sport if they do not stop being corrupt you cannot take drugs the era is over yeah well how do you say if we say lose the sport you mean it's kicked out of the olympics yeah and like right then who cares at that point i would be so i don't i'd be super upset you know yeah point i mean that it's olympic weightlifting it's the carrot man it's the carrot you know no i mean there's a lot of us that won't make it but like it's the carrot that you know it opens up a spot for a new place though huh it opens up a place for open i always think about the challenge there you go nobody takes drugs on the one-time challenge nobody that's ridiculous yeah he does a barbell is a good chance somebody

well that's i guess that's an interesting question. It's like how do you keep – I mean, people are going to do steroids to look better on the beach. Yeah. Much less look amazing and lift all the weights and go play sports at the highest level and create a career out of it. It's impossible to get rid of it. I mean, you know, I feel confident in America.

Nobody makes Team USA that takes drugs. Who was the last person that popped for us? We don't pop. We've had one person since like 2015. They're probably all CrossFitters. Yeah, seriously. That's true. We pop ourselves.

Somebody was like saying, yeah, but you guys get all the positives in America. Yeah, man, because we're governing ourselves. You're right. We do. We get a lot of positives because we drug test ourselves. It was an American. I'm like, you're such an idiot. You know, like, yeah, because we actually test our athletes. So when they go represent America, they don't make us look like idiots like Egypt and all these other countries.

Yeah, govern yourselves. So when you go to a big meet to the olympics the biggest you know highlight of your life you don't look like a fool you don't embarrass your friends family your entire country well isn't most of it like state funded though i mean that icarus documentary was one of the craziest things i've ever seen the guy running the test was also the guy running the cheating right insane wow that's wild either There are some claims, this is probably going to get me in trouble, but there are some claims that USADA can be bought. I mean, I don't know that that's to be true.

I just know that track and field and swimming, all of a sudden doesn't get any tests, doesn't get any positives. So I'm like, I mean, they have the most money, you know. They're getting millions, you know. If you're a top-level sprinter, you're making way more money than a top-level weightlifter. You know, if we make $40,000, we're like crying, we're so happy. And they make, you know, $40,000 a weekend. And so, you know, so there's rumors, but I don't know that to be true.

But I just know that we're dominating swimming and no one's testing positive. So maybe they're just more elite than us. I don't know. Maybe I'm just bitter. No. Dude, I don't think you're ever getting rid of it. I think people have just – drugs were invented for people to get strong and be in gyms. Like the guy that makes $0 and just wants to be cool is taking them.

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Yeah. There's plenty of people that aren't. There's freaks in the back right now that are just amazing athletes, but you're not getting rid of it. And when it's state-funded, that is the gnarliest thing. I didn't even know egypt actually got kicked out yeah they're done i mean they were getting 14 year old girls getting popped i mean they should be actually there's a couple of their dudes they're going to prison like they're

in big trouble yeah like yeah you give a 14 year old girl you should be killed taken out back and killed come on man like yeah you say youth the youth weightlifting championship junior junior world we're going to Junior Worlds. Junior Worlds. So what's the age bracket for that? What's the cutoff? Anything until 20 years old. 20 years old and down.

20 years old and younger. Right. And that team, the teenage team, is getting popped for steroids. The youth team is getting, I'm talking 17 and down. I'm literally talking, I wasn't exaggerating. Like 14-year-old girls were getting popped. Yeah. Not boys, 14- year old girls were getting popped. Yeah. Not boys,

14 year old girls in Egypt. That dude, if it were my daughter, that's a wrap for that boy. Like he's going in the back of my car for one trip. Nowhere good for him. You gotta think the parents know.

The parents aren't like, wow, she really is vascular these days. If that's true, then they should be killed too. Come on, man. Killed. Like, yes, killed.

I mean, you're doing damage to you. You know good and well what it does to the body. To a female, it will change them forever. Like, that female will never be the same. I can direct you to a few YouTube videos that will tell you what's happening. Absolutely. Yeah. When a girl has a deep voice, just use it.

Send me a DM. I'll shoot them over. Yeah. It's terrifying when you hear that voice come out, right? I know exactly who you're talking about right now. There's plenty of them. There's plenty of them. Like, oh, nice to meet you.

Hi. You know what it sounds like? Remember Jim Carrey's character on In Living Color? Exactly, yeah. That's what it sounds like. I mean, you're doing it to your 14-year-old daughter. That's brutal, right? 14 years old.

She's 14 now.? 14 years old. She's 14 now. Not when she started. Yeah. So she very well could have started when she was 11. Come on. I mean, like what to win a what? A youth world?

Like who cares? Do you know who won the youth world last year? Yeah, me either. The whole point is teaching these young people how to compete at a bigger level. I mean, I care because it's my kids, but nobody else really cares. And I'm not going to remember. But if that is their thing,

then they can go and compete at the next level, whatever the next world championship is. And then now they're representing the country and they've got a job. They're not thinking about it. I mean, no athlete, even in the States. Like, no athlete at the Olympic Training Centers right now is like, you know what, I'm really thinking about my long-term.

I'm making $400 a week right now, and hopefully I'll be able to play bobsled one time that it means something. Like, they don't do that. They would take all of it. I think they actually not they don't do that they're only they would take all of it i think they actually even ran a study and asked everybody like about winning a gold medal versus long-term health and they were like no i know i want to win gold that's why i'm here somebody asked me one time a long time ago in an interview they're like you know if i told you you could be the strongest power that's ever lived that's ever going to live but you're gonna subtract 20 years from your life what would you

do absolutely now i'm 46 i'm like no can i take that back i'm glad i'm not i didn't make it so like yeah your training's changed a little bit lately yeah i've been riding them um i want to do peloton with travis mass so bad we're the same the same Peloton class. Go, go, go, go, go. That's so funny. Faster. If somebody can just see, sometimes this is terrible. A big old sweat pool underneath him. I'm about to give you a terrible vision.

Sometimes I'll just be in my underwear. That's what I was going to say. He's probably just in his boxer briefs just cruising. I am, for real. 5 a.m. 5 a.m. in my boxer. Sometimes I'll be riding, and I'll think about what's really happening, and I'll start laughing. I'm like, if somebody can see me now.

You, 25 years ago, could picture you on the Peloton bike. Oh, I would have shot me. Oh, man. Let me do you a favor. That's real life. That post you wrote about fitness, that i feel a lot of that and when we interviewed your your buddy mike mike boyle that was like one of the things that he actually um completely changed my life about fitness um and just health and the decisions i make is he

was talking about how like when you are young and you are selfish you don't think about the next generation or how much you want to be around your grandkids or how much you want them to to be a part of their lives and see them get older and see how much they are doing it so now it's like man if i do something stupid yeah all of a sudden, or like you go and jack yourself up training, and now you can't participate for six months in your daughter's life. It's freaking weird. There's something about the daughter, too. It's totally, man.

I'm a disaster now. I thought about it with my boys, but my daughter made me drop the $2,000 on the bike. You know, like, it was like, I mean, my goal goal is to this is the only goal i have is to like walk my daughter down the aisle like if i can do that and like then i die i'll be i don't want to but if i had to i'll be happy you know but like i definitely want to walk my daughter you're 46 right now right yeah so it's 66 that's 20 yeah yeah i can do that i'll be ready to cash out you know i mean i'll be ready but i'm ready, but if I walk my daughter down the aisle and they say, hey, you have terminal cancer, I'll be able to deal with it.

Because then I'll be like, because I will have told the dude what I'll do to him, even on the other side. Like I will come back and kill him. I need him to know. Matter of fact, if I die before that, I need him to hear this show to be like, I want him to know what happened. We've laid it down. We've laid it down.

Mastiff's killing the – he's going – potentially, if he does anything wrong to Magnolia, he's going down. I will come back and get you. I want you to – Anders, it's up to you. If I die, you need to go get her future husband. Look, you need to hear this before you walk her down the aisle. I'm carrying this message on well um dude i it's really crazy because i um i feel like my training well it's not even the training it's just the outlook and boyle really changed that for me when i talked to him when he

was just like man you're so selfish and all you want to do is not have kids and live your life and then one day you're 40 and then one day your life, and then one day you're 40, and then one day you're 60, and then one day you realize that, like, you're not going to be a part of your grandkids' life. Yeah. So that was a really wild one. It's funny. Boyle and I are a lot more alike than we are different.

That's everybody that you don't like. That's everyone that's in a fight. Yeah. That's everyone that's fighting for the same place on the hierarchy it has nothing to do with who they are it's you're you're battling for like we're two running coaches that we know in the industry they're clearly like the best functional fitness endurance coaches that exist and they hate each other they don't even know if they hate each other just talk shit about each other and it's like right why you know what you're talking shit about? Nothing. They're fighting over

minutia. Can I tell you guys a story? You battle it out over these points of performance, but it's like, what you're really saying is like, he should be number two. And that's it. You're number two! Okay, I'm number two. Second best in the world.

Okay. That's what you're doing to the people. Don McCauleyley god rest his soul and sean waxman used to argue all the time and i'm friends with both and i know what both of them say so one time i wrote an article listing all the things they agreed on and the two things they disagreed on it literally 99 they agree on and they both got mad at me because i was trying to make peace they're like they're like you know yeah they both like you know you're always trying to be a peacemaker you don't ever try i'm like you you're never black and white i'm so good i'm

i'm totally black and white i listed it exactly and they both got mad at me because i was trying to make peace with them you're like do you disagree with anything I wrote? They're like, no. No. I'm still mad at you. You're such an asshole. I'm like, what? Like, okay. So then I just gave up. Literally, Don was like mad at me because I was trying to make peace.

I'm like. What were the two things they disagree on? On plantar flexion. Really, that might be it. Oh. And like shrugging up or shrugging down. Plantar flexion.antar flexion. Plantar flexion on the jump, like when they finish.

Yeah. And how their feet hit the ground. Yes. Whole. Not even hit the ground. No, they're talking about like in the air. In extension, you know, Sean is all about, you know, complete plantar flexion. Right.

And Don is like, you shouldn't consider it all. And then, you know, Sean is going to talk about shrugging is up, up, up. And Don is thinking down, down, down. That's it. Otherwise, you know, they're going to talk about shrugging is up, up, up. And Don is thinking down, down, down. That's it. Otherwise, you know, they're thinking about the same positions off the floor, staying over the bar, long arms, elbows, everything else, the exact same. Jesus. Two things made them want to kill each other. Right.

This is crazy. I'm not so infallible in the way that I think people need to be taught that, like, one way is the way that I think has to be the way for everyone. Like, with, like, the shrug up versus shrug down thing. Like, if I was coaching someone, I might tell them both just to see which one they respond to. Like, if one cue makes them, for whatever reason, just click, then that's the best cue for that person. Bro, boys, like, you know, Don was definitely my mentor, but I've used both.

Like, everybody thinks, assumes I'm like the catapult now, carrying it on. I'm absolutely not. I'm a weightlifting coach, a really, really good weightlifting coach. I will say whatever I have to say to get them to make the lift. If I have to say shrug your ears up for them to make the lift, I'll say it. Like, I am not going to be held to anything. Whatever it takes to win. Whatever it takes to make the lift i'll say it like right i am not going to be held to anything like whatever it takes to win whatever it takes to make that stupid lift like right you might have like a a hierarchy of cues where you're like i usually kind of try these ones first i've seen

the most success with these ones so you try them but if they don't work what are you just going to be like well there's no help on this person now you gotta get to move on to other options another one is jump like Don hated jump. Don't say jump. I agree because once someone is advanced, if you say jump, a lot of times they'll spend too much time at the top versus where they could be getting under it. But at the beginning, I say jump every time. That's what Thacker used to say.

When you're a beginner, you jump. Once you're a beginner, you're not jumping anymore. I want to write a post on or like an article just on the language that your coach uses really defines your training age. Like if he says drive under the bar, you've probably been around a barbell. If he says jump, you might be new. It's probably true. It has nothing to do with – it has everything to get for the coach to try to get the athlete to do the thing that they need them to do. And if you're just some schmo off the street, everyone knows how to jump. If you say drive under the bar or pull under the bar or speed under the bar, that's confusing as fuck to somebody who doesn't know what's going on.

Look at you, like speed under the bar. How am I going to – yeah, because it's weightless. You can pull. You can rip under the bar. Wait, what? It's weightless? it's weightless. You can pull. You can rip under the bar. Wait, what? It's weightless? It weighs 400 pounds. You want me to pull what?

Exactly. You're not going to do anything. But if your training age is zero, you jump. If your training age is 10, you understand. When I was in college, I was much more critical of listening to personal trainers or strength coaches talking to their athletes, like what the cues they would use or what they would tell them. Like someone would come to me and say, Oh, I got a trainer. My coach told me to do this. And I'd be like, no, like that's not,

that's not right. You don't want to do that. Oh, terrible. But now, now that I have more experience coaching, coaching many people and owning a gym and just doing all the things that we do now, and someone comes up to me and says, well, my, my coach told me to shrug down. I go down i go okay well why did he tell you that what did you try before and what worked what didn't like there's a lot more nuance there of like okay well this person's probably not an idiot for saying this one phrase like he probably has a rationale he or she probably has a rationale for why they did it they probably tried other things and this

thing just happened to work and so they they kept using it i think it's also like even a coaching age thing by getting angry about it you're like what what are you pissed off about like it's also like even a coaching age thing by getting angry about it. You're like, what are you pissed off about? It's so weird to me when I hear someone's name like Waxman being mad at another coach because they're all trying to do the same thing. He gets vicious. If you haven't seen Waxman, Waxman's one of the greatest dudes of all time. He's one of my best friends. I watched.

He used to run a – it was actually something i took a lot of pride in like um our gym would get invited to his crossfit weightlifting invitational where he'd invite like the top five eight strongest gyms in socal to come lift and we would get to come and lift to every year and i was like people are watching this is so cool but he would get up at the beginning and talk about his life if he was like, I was a fucking boot camp coach. I was doing strength conditioning. I was lost. And then I saw CrossFit Games 1.

And then I just moved into a gym and realized I could teach snatch and clean and jerk to CrossFitters. Yeah. And create strong people. And he, like, broke down. And I was like, dude, this guy is so awesome. He loves it. He loves coaching snatch and clean and jerk. With all his heart. He's, like, loves coaching Snatch, Clean and Jerk. With all his heart.

He's like such a purist. Such an awesome dude. But it's so weird to me because you should, as a coach, be able to hear words and not be emotionally connected to it and just objectively view what that coach is trying to say, whether he's saying jump and shrug or shrug down and speed over the bar it doesn't really matter you know what the bar is supposed to be doing how whatever the tactic is that the coach uses to get there doesn't shouldn't offend you they're all trying to get you under the bar and

catching it in the front squat and my question is is how are your athletes doing waxman has developed world team team usa senior world team members don has created team usa senior world team that was my point i'm like so you're both you both don't suck obviously you're pretty darn good so like i mean like can't you guys just come together my point was this if those two coaches were to ever have come together miracles would happen but that could not get it to happen so i so like what i would do i would never tell don this if i was stumped like for example hunter elam like there was times with her jerk and stuff i would ask ask waxman what to do or ask him his opinion and he would tell me i implemented it obviously we took a hunter from you know being pretty good to two world teams

and so i never could have i I couldn't even tell Don, or he would have been furious that I asked somebody else. Isn't that crazy? Because they're wrapped up, their ego is wrapped up in this sport. And if someone might know something they don't, that makes them less of a coach or a human. I'm like, come on. I feel like every time somebody gets mad at something that someone else is doing,

it's not because they actually don't like that guy. It's because they themselves want more recognition. Yeah, it's their identity. And they want to be known as the weightlifting coach. But yet there was two of them with big personalities. But also when there was only ten coaches in the whole country, you had to be the smartest one because the number of the amount of lifters was so small that you had to go around and say like i'm better than everyone else and be like how how like nobody

operated from a place of abundance like there wasn't crossfit to go and say i remember hiring my first olympic weightlifting coach and it just being like a very strange thing because there was only one of them in town it was a bunch of crossfitters learning on youtube from doug larson yeah and that's strange to think now because now every it's it's like the the path of the crossfitter is like you do this thing for a long time and then you're either drawn to powerlifting you're drawn to olympic weightlifting you're drawn to energy system work one-ton challenge super total you find your thing that you really like inside and i mean i have no people that have gone and done the strong first kettlebell stuff from crossfit and then they go that route

they love the kettlebell like you can find the piece that you really want to be good at because after a while being a great crossfit coach means nothing you have to go find the specialist to get better at the sport or progress in the thing that you like and now all of the coaches are able to operate from a much better place not the scarcity idea but just more abundance of look if you would like to learn from me awesome i like to think that you would love to come and learn from me when you are already strong you're trying to get stronger life is in the two to five range of like real training and then get away from me because i'm not the guy that's going to make you world class like go find the world class coaches right but i can make training super fun it's going to be like some great goal setting there's great

programs to follow i can really turn your brain into what it takes to be strong but if you really want to take it the next level go hang out travis mash like those there's people that can make you do that we're getting there you don't have to be in a place where it's like nope they're an idiot what makes them an idiot i'm not really sure just something something uh you're not working with me so so they're an idiot. It still happens, unfortunately. You know, we'll have coaches at the world level. Here's a bit of gossip. Like at the world level who will still try to take each other's athletes. I'm like. In the room?

Yeah, in the room. Oh. Behind their back. How brutal. Like let's say that, you know, like for example, I have like, you know, my athletes have gone before I got there. So they go to Worlds maybe five days before I get there. And by the time I get there, I realize that the coaches who went early

had already been trying to take them. This is a true story. Just like over there, just chatting them up. Chatting them up. Are you happy with your training, with where you live in? I think I know I can make you a lot better. I see these flaws. Meanwhile, their athletes are flaws, you know.

Meanwhile, their athletes are bombing out. You know, like. Yeah. You know, yeah, I mean. And then I didn't go to Youth Pan Ams. It's a long story. But, like, so I had two athletes at Youth Pan Ams. One of which, not only did he win, but he won the best lifter at Youth Pan Ams last year.

And meanwhile, because I didn't go, we had multiple coaches trying to take my athletes, of which one left, who's, you know, but the one who won didn't. But it was so funny. Some of the coaches that were doing that, you know, did that to me, competed against us at the American Open this past. Two of them were there, and two of them, their guys bombed out. And I looked at Ryan, like, oh, you could be with him.

You could have bombed out too. Instead, he won the whole thing as a youth, won the American Open as a youth. I mean, I'm like, come on, man. Like, I've had 23 Team USA athletes since 2015, and, like, you're better? You've had what, two? Come on now.

Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like there's so many coaches now, but there should be enough athletes at this stage to be able to find where your niche is and where everybody's – I feel like a lot of coaches, too, could benefit from the idea of, like, not trying to be the greatest coach in the world. Just do that. Like, just who is actually attracted to working out with you?

Who actually is capable of learning from you? A massive lesson I just learned. When I feel like the first one-ton challenge we did at the CrossFit Games, I look at Wes Kitts and I'm like, what if Wes Kitts came up to me and was like, I'd like you to be my coach, Anders. I'd be like, get the fuck away from me. You're not. No. I will screw you up be my coach, Anders. I'd be like, get the fuck away from me. You're not.

No. I will screw you up. I don't understand anything. I have no idea what you need. Like, I don't know. Just keep doing what you're doing. Keep hanging out where you're hanging out. That would be my best advice.

Stay right where you're at. As would I. David's done a good job with you. Yeah. Like, I would have no idea how to how to like take somebody that's like that. Where like somebody like you or Dave when Wes would come to him and be like, hey, okay, well, here's the plan. Here's how we're going to look at the next four years.

All of that would be so beyond me. For context, for someone who's like listening to the show for the first time, you know a ton about how to train weightlifters, but someone who's already at the top, he's like the best. He's the best in the country. How are you going to make that guy who's the best be 1% better?

Yeah, that's why I say, I'm so open about it. From year two of real strength conditioning to year five, let's hang out. That's my sweet spot, because in that time, you're the most five. Let's hang out. That's my sweet spot because that's – in that time, you're the most curious. You know the least.

You think you know things, but you really don't. You don't know anything. And then in that space, your body's already hit the plateau. So you have to really forget everything that you think you already know. Start back at zero. And get better, yeah. And the biggest thing is like i gotta get into your brain i gotta teach you how to be strong because it's way more attitude than the idea that you can just

go and pick up weights like you got to learn how to walk like a gangster right you got to learn how to be mean when you start to lift weights and you got to learn how to dance with the barbell in this like very aggressive and very pretty way and if you can't that, you're not going to get past the five-year mark. You're just going to be stuck in all the bullshit old patterns. But in that two- to five-year range, it's like when weightlifting starts to look really pretty, it starts to flow really well, and that's the part of the process that I like being a part of.

Once you get past that, then it becomes, in my eyes, now we're spending a whole year trying to get 10 pounds on your snatch. If that. If that. One kilo. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's a – when you're grinding it out day in, day out for a spot on the national team and you're two kilos off, I'm not that coach. I need more fun than that. I've got news for you. If West Kitts came to me, I would be like, no, because I had not that coach. I need more fun than that. I've got news for you. If Wes gets came to me, I would be like, no, because I had nothing to gain. Let's say

Wes gets a trap. Dave sucks, which he does. He's awesome. Yeah, I love Dave. He's my friend. I would say, Wes, I have nothing to gain here. Let's say that you come here. We're going to go to the Olympics. Everyone's going to say, Dave got in there trapped. He's cruising now. If I take you, though, and you do worse, I look like a clown.

I have nothing to gain and everything to lose. No way I'm doing that. Now, as a matter of fact, there's a story. One of Dave's lifters left and then called me and was curious about coming here. And I said, absolutely not. And I told Dave instantly. Some of us have great relationships with Dave, Spencer, Sean Waxman. I know that they would never.

And they know I would never. Matter of fact, I've called them and told them. You know, even Spencer, we've – back and forth, you know, things have happened where someone called me and I told him and vice versa. But, like, yeah, you have nothing to gain. I look at it. It happened all the time. Like, there was a few lifters that went to the barbells for boobs. And I like that guy.

He's fine. But, man, he looks terrible because he took two from Waxman and somebody from Amy Everett. And nobody improved. And so now you look terrible. And so I wouldn't do that, personally. You have nothing to gain. You just look like, oh, you know. And so I wouldn't do that personally. You know, you have nothing to gain. You know, you just look like, oh, you're taking people. You can't develop anybody.

I wouldn't do it. Yeah, I think that that used to happen a lot in the CrossFit world, especially when, like, we were the sixth gym in all of San Diego, and now there's 473,000. And finding athletes, like, I sure cj had no clue but i used to be in like this super internal like we need to crush invictus every single year because there was no athletes around doing crossfit so when somebody would show up in town he'd be like i gotta overcome invictus to get them to come to my broke-ass gym where we're just like grinding it out and have like we didn't have bergeron

showing up on the weekends we didn't have carl paoli showing up on the weekends like they had this dope system and they were like two and a half years ahead of us and we were just like battling and every year like they'd finish first we'd finish third in the region and i remember just being like oh like every year it eats you up so much and you just want to be like i'm better than them but now it's funny to look back at all that stuff but and but it's also because there's so many crossfitters now that like it's almost like west kids like there's only one Matt Frazier. There's a reason him and T are so much better than everyone else.

Like, there's a reason they train together and no one else is invited. They're the best in the world. They don't need anybody else. They just need that vibe. They're the tip top. Like, Wes is, you know, in that weight class, he's going to the Olympics. He's the tip top. But Wes is in that weight class. He's going to the Olympics. He's the tip top. But how do you make somebody like Wes, I mean, say you and Dave aren't best friends,

and he comes to you, it's like, what does a four-year block for Wes look like? I mean, I watch his training now, and it looks like. I would not do that. No, no, no. Let's say I did. If he showed up blank slate, and you had a four-year quad with him. Yeah. And, I mean, he told us he was putting in – this was at the games last year.

He was already at three sessions a day, three days a week, and then two on down days – or not down days, but morning session, night session, five days a week. So he's looking at, what is that, nine and four – 13 sessions a week already. That would be my goal. years out yeah i mean volume has to be you know a big consideration you know you have to say you have four years this is our volume right now i mean that has to ramp up you know volume is going to get your efficiency better it's also there was a cool study by um dr Stone. I talked at Wake Forest a few weeks ago, and so did Mike Stone. That was a pretty big honor.

He's a hero of mine. If you're in strength and conditioning and exercise science, if you don't know him, you're probably really not in exercise science. So I talked after him, and one of the studies that he talked about was getting hypertrophy via going to failure and getting hypertrophy via volume increasing volume and um yes you can definitely get hypertrophy from going to failure quickly however the cross-sectional areas of the fast twitch fibers were shrinking so you were getting bigger slow twitch fibers so you're

gonna get so that's why bodybuilders are so huge but they're not as strong as a power lifter or a weight lifter so therefore you know you gotta you know there's two ways to get strong i think we've talked about it probably before you can either get a bigger muscle you know hypertrophy or you can get more efficient at the lift so i mean obviously volume is the number you know one of the bigger concerns that you got to have you know plus technique and all that but it's all the same thing the more volume the better technique and the more you shoot your foul shot the better you get at foul shot so like that has to be a concern i would agree with them like i have my goal for morgan and ryan would be you know

i have a number of sessions i want i have a a total volume I want. I have it mapped out all the way for 2024 for both of those dudes. Of which the goal is, yeah, definitely. You don't want to go four-hour sessions, so three awesome one-hour sessions or three awesome two-hour and a half, one-one-hour. It seems oddly almost counterproductive though and if you think in terms of like the sport six lifts so why do we need that much volume leading up to the idea that they really just need to be great six times because you got to get opportunity and

you got to get better at the list efficiency those it's really boils down to those two things not being conditioned for the meat necessarily so much as doing enough volume to get the adaptations needed to be your best. Right. So, like I said, there's two ways. Get a bigger muscle, get more efficient. Either musculature or neurologically, that's it. It's all you have. And volume is the best way to affect both of those in different ways.

So, you know, think about it. Like, you know, do sports. Did you ever play baseball or football? Ice hockey. Ice hockey. The more you play, the better you got, I'm sure. Totally. Yeah.

Yes. So in that, I guess the difference in those is the number of, yeah, I guess it's like going out and just playing sticks and pucks which we used to do all the time swimmers they swim sometimes three times yeah like three times they'll do the same thing so the interesting thing the difference in those sports versus strength sports is is really interesting to me because in strength sports you have have to grow the muscle, which takes a lot of time. In hockey, baseball, like baseball is probably the most because you're training your eye to see the seams on a ball when you're hitting it. The more baseballs you see coming at you, it's going to train that specific skill set over and over and over and over again, which is also the timing, the strength piece of snatch a clean and jerk i guess growing the muscle is never a thought

or like that level of volume is never a thought in a sport like ice hockey yeah but it's swimming but there are parallels that you could draw of just being on the ice being comfortable skating just getting better breathing at the thing yeah so, like, you know, when you get better in weightlifting, you know, you introduce, you know, a stimulus. And then there's a response. And so, you know, that's the adaptation. Yeah. So, like, if I don't introduce a new stimuli, increased stimuli, like, the body, you know, gets used to it. So, you got accommodation now.

Totally. And referencing volume, volumes volumes more of a factor for hypertrophy than for pure strength right is that accurate for you uh your experience i mean really those all go together you know hypertrophy bigger muscles a stronger muscle you know but like um but getting better to efficiency you make a muscle i'm sure you're gonna have phases where the volume is is super high to create a that's your whole goal is hypertrophy and then you know you still you might drop the the number of reps you do but you're still trying to make that new muscle now get you know become super

efficient and obviously get better at this thing i'm kind of playing devil's advocate but you say a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle but if you're not developing the right muscle fiber types, then you're kind of going against what you need to be. So you need to be staying. This is actually something I was curious about earlier when you were talking about Wes. Is Wes out running sprints? Like Ryan, do those guys get to a track? Do they get to the football field?

We do some things. We definitely do jumps and we do some sprints, but we don't necessarily go to the track. Something that do some things we definitely do jumps and we do you know some sprints yeah but we don't necessarily like you know something that you talk a lot about and just training at maximal speed and i think about more now after hearing you talk about it and just recognizing that like i can go squat triples fives whatever it is but i'm moving slowly and then actually maintaining maximal speed something that i very rarely do but with weightlifting we're always maximal speed because you can't snatch something and move slowly. Yeah, so you've got to be doing the lifts every day.

So we're moving fast all the time. And so everybody, you can't do a big lift and move slow. Right. For context, what I was saying to him was, like, back when I played college football, like,'s all it's all speed training like you're trying to be as fast as possible leading up to the season that's the biggest thing and then i started doing more crossfit weightlifting powerlifting and i started doing more metcons and all that and like it is a very casual pace if you're not conning you're pacing yourself the whole time and i stopped doing so much full speed training where i'm going 100 full full speed sprint for 20 yards. Right.

Like that type of moving as fast as possible. Like a snatch, you're definitely moving as fast as you can with that load but you're not moving full speed as far as

your body's concerned like you would on a vertical jump. Right. Like I just stopped doing full speed movements because I was just playing the sport of

weight room. Yeah, yeah. So I like sprints, you know, just plus the way I feel. You got to be careful with high-level athletes like a Wes. If you took him out and did a 40-yard dash. Popped a hamstring.

Oh, geez. Talk about a quick way to lose your great athlete. You know, that would be lose all trust. I think this is where, like, sled sprints come in. That's awesome. Like loaded, resisted. Hills. Where you can't actually get to 100% full speed.

Hills are gangster. Yeah. That's actually one thing that sucks about where 100% full speed. Hills are very fast. Hills are gangster. Yeah. That's actually one thing that sucks about where I live right now. It's that pond flat. No, it's good hills. I'm going to tell you the best training method I've found in a long time. Put my 25-pound daughter in one of those Barbie cars that's supposed to be electric. They push the pedal.

Let the battery run dry so there's no battery. And you take off and push her as fast as you freaking can down the street. And then she looks at you and she goes, more. And you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, settle down. That was max effort. You need to slow your roll. We need three minutes recovery. I'm in bad energy system work right now.

We just redlined, more. And you turn around, crank that thing back to the house. Do that about eight times. And you look at her and you go, time for you to go to bed. No more. No more. You are done. Travis Mash, where can they find you on TikTok? How many TikTok followers you got? I'm terrible at TikTok. I'm trying

so hard. It's hard, right? Lately I've gotten really good at LinkedIn and Twitter, but I cannot master. Now you're an academic. You're on LinkedIn. I like LinkedIn. LinkedIn and Twitter, but I cannot master. Now you're an academic. You're on LinkedIn. I like LinkedIn. LinkedIn and Twitter are my favorites, but, man, I am terrible.

I'm trying. I think I got some cool stuff, but they don't think that's cool. Let's see. How many followers you got? I can't go on TikTok. I have never opened my TikTok, which I've only opened it like eight times in my whole life. But I've never opened it without having like some 19-year-old girl like dancing as like the opening thing. Look at that, Travis Smash. I can't do it.

Is that yours? I got 19 new followers yesterday. Why? 19 yesterday? Yeah, I put up some monster from Europe. I got like 19 total. I'm at 236. You're beating me.

Man, I got some cool stuff, too. Like, one, I did a dance with my son. I saw that. Oh, yeah? Five likes. Dude, see your boy Corey Gregory smashing it on TikTok? Yeah, the shirt off is a little weird, Corey, but that's cool, you know? You're an old man.

Put your shirt on. I don't know. If I were ripped like him, I would probably never wear clothes. So, I think he's doing better than I would do. Stack 45. That's what you're supposed to do. Can't wait to meet Corey in real life one day. But TikTok's Travis Mash if you want to check me out.

What's your Instagram? Mash Elite Performance. What's the website? MashElite.com. That's where you want to go. That's the spot. Doug Larson. You bet.

You can find me on Instagram at Douglas C. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're the Shrug Collective at the Shrug Collective. OneTonChallenge.com Snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench with a lifetime goal of 2,000 pounds. 1,200 for you ladies. OneTonChallenge.com forward slash stronger. Download our 97

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