Barbell Shrugged - Programming Bombs with USA Weightlifting Coach Travis MASH — Real Chalk #97

Episode Date: October 15, 2019

I recently spent a week in Sweden with Travis while visiting the CEO of Eleiko. The only thing I knew about him at first was that he was the head coach for team USA weightlifting. Then, I found out he had a few world records for powerlifting, a phenomenal Olympic lifting career, and he’s kind of nerd when it comes to training methodology and science.    First thought... I just found a new best friend. Second thought... This dude needs to be on a bigger platform because everyone in the strength and conditioning world should know him. He’s changing the game, putting a twist on traditional methods, and adding a ton to the strength and conditioning community.    Considered the “Louie Simmons” of Olympic Lifting... You. DO NOT. Want. To Miss. This One.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/rc-mash ------------------------------------------------------------------------------   ► 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

All right, Chalk Nation, guess where I'm at right now. I'm actually all the way out in Sweden, which I definitely did not think I'd be out here anytime soon in my life. But we're here, and we're doing it. And I'm sitting in an Airbnb across from a man named Travis Mash. And if for any reason you don't know who that is,

first off, that'd be kind of weird. If you're in the strength and conditioning world, you listen to this podcast, you don't know who he is. He happens to be the head coach for the USA Weightlifting team and you also are a world record holder for a couple power lifting records yeah well i held the um all-time total i held the squat record the bench record so but also you have some solid records in lifting too yeah yeah yes i mean i don't really have any world records in in weightlifting, only you guys might. But, you know, but I was pretty good.

I was at the Limit Training Center. I was only there for a short time before I transitioned into powerlifting. My dad, back in those days, in the 90s, there wasn't a lot of weightlifting. There was zero CrossFit. So you didn't have access to bumper plates and awesome bars. And so, you know, when I moved back to North Carolina because my dad was dying of cancer, I just went to powerlifting because you can powerlift anywhere. You can powerlift in a global gym.

Yeah, for sure. And then, I mean, I think what's really cool about your story, because I didn't know a whole bunch about you until I came out here and met you, is that you have a solid career in both powerlifting and Olympic lifting. Yeah. And it is pretty rare, right? There's not a lot of people who have that. No.

You know. Because powerlifters are so slow. Two or three. Most are pretty slow. Yeah. Or can't move. They might be fast, but they can't move. Or they might can move, but they're too slow.

But, you know, the right takes the right combination. Like Shane Hammond, who is a world champion powerlifter, you know, the right takes the right combination. Like Shane Hammond, who is a world champion power lifter, you know, world level weight lifter, but he's one of the few. Or Mark Henry. There's only two I can think of. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Well, I just wanted to get a little bit of your background out of the way just to show your qualifications so people are just like, you know what, I really want to listen to this guy talk. Yeah. So let's get that out of the way. Obviously have some great numbers in the past, and now you're training which athletes right now that people might know? I mean, I think the most famous right now would be Morgan McCulloch.

He's the 16-year-old phenom who is a clean and jerked 190 kilograms, 418 pounds already at 16. He's like C.J. Cummings' level. Yeah. I would put Cummings' level. Yeah. I would put him definitely on that level. He's a bigger version. He's clean and jerked like 190 sooner than anybody else. Is he a white kid? He's a taller, bigger white kid, and he just moves really well.

He's fast, strong. The only strong people that I can think of that are super strong and very young would be CJ and then Kendrick Ferris. Or you got Harrison Morris, you know, too, who is on that level. And so I would put him in the ranks of those guys. But I think he's going to be the bigger version. So he's going to be like a 109-kilogram, 240-pound guy is what I think he'll cap out and be very strong. So was the USA Weightlifting gig something that you wanted or they asked you at a certain point because you had so many athletes that were doing well?

That's what happens. And now at this point – Did you happily take it or were you kind of like, yeah, I'll do it? No, I was happy, especially the first time because it was an honor to be that. So 2016 was my first gig as the head coach. And I was head coach three times. I was junior world, junior Pan Am, youth Pan Am. And this year I was team USA head coach again in Columbia for an Olympic event.

It's called a silver level right now. We're less than a year out from the Olympics. And this event was, like I said, was in Columbia, and there was a group of people trying to get there that went from Team USA. So I got to coach that. So it was my first time in a while. Do you think anybody has a chance of winning a medal at the upcoming Olympics?

Yeah, I do. Yes, I 100% do. I think our females 100% will. I think C.J. Cummings has a chance. Harrison Morris has a chance. Wes Kitts. Be rough, but I think he'll be up there. But those will be the ones that have a chance mentally.

Boys, girls, I think Kate Nye does. I think Sarah Robles does. I think, shoot, Manny Sasser could. That's it, right? Maybe like Jordan De La Cruz. But anyway, yeah. We will definitely walk away with medals, multiple. It'll be the best ever.

That'll be the first time ever for sure. Yes. I think it's crazy. When I used to do bobsled back in the day, I remember all of us athletes, we were so broke. I think the best paycheck anybody was getting was like $600 a month we were so broke i think like the the best paycheck anybody was getting was like 600 bucks a month maybe and this was even like the top world cup guys and everything and then we would uh we would have like a world cup race and germany would be

there and russia would be there and they were all telling us how they all got like free cars from audi or bmw back in europe they had like hundred thousand dollar contracts and like i think it's it's for a lot of you out there who don't understand the whole thing like when an american wins a medal like that person grinded grinded you know phil andrews really get anything handed to them no i think including the coaches just now phil andrews who's the ceo has um has got to where some of the athletes make pretty good you know like when i say pretty good like they might like um only the top there's like levels there's gold well there's metal level gold level silver level bronze and so like someone like uh kate nye who just metal she's making really good she might be well really good

for a way there's like 4 000 a month yeah uh most people who are like at that gold level, like Harrison, he's making $2,500. So they're not starving anymore. And then they get bonuses for medals, or not American records, but when they hit a world record or a Pan Am record. So they're doing much better thanks to leadership like Phil Andrews. That's awesome. Yeah, but it's for a select few, though. much better thanks to, you know, leadership like, you know, like Phil Andrews. That's awesome. Yeah. But, you know, it's for a select few, though. It's only, you know, you have people on a world team who are getting zero.

And so, like, you know, he's really focusing. I get it. They're focusing on people who are, number one, going to make the Olympics now. Because by now we know who has a chance and who doesn't. And so it's really focused on the ones who have a real chance and the ones who are performing. So I get it. Now I'm going to get into the part that I'm really excited about. So some people like to call you the Louie Simmons of the Olympic lifting world, right?

Well, that's my favorite. I've actually looked it up, and I've seen it pop up in a couple articles. So I'm assuming when someone says that that means that you're using some sort of conjugate method in your lifting yeah definitely like you know i think if everyone told the truth we're all using something from west side barbell even when you hate him i love it when someone talks junk about louis and then i watch their training and they're doing reverse hypers i'm like man you know you know don't don't talk junk and use this stuff but yes i definitely use conjugate method,

meaning we have max effort days. We don't do a lot of dynamic effort because weightlifting is so dynamic. We do dynamic every day. We do a snatch or a clean because we're pulling at 1.3 meters per second. So there's no point in doing dynamic. But a true dynamic day would be like a 50% effort, right?

And they would use like bands or chains or something like that, correct? Well, it's – man, this is a good point. So I'm going to enlighten everyone. The only really way to know exactly what they do is go to Westside. But that's what they would tell you. Like they might do, for example, 50% of bar weight, another 25% of bands, so a total of 75% at the top for multiple, depending on if it's

squats. It used to be multiple singles. Now they're doing 5x5, equaling the same amount of reps, but they're able to do, they've worked so hard at doing those multiple doubles, like 12 doubles mean 24 reps, or now they're doing 5x5, 25 reps,

they're able to maintain that speed for five reps in a row. But I don't think the normal person could do that because you would probably do.8 meters per second for two or three. Well, you might. Never mind. I've watched you lift now. You might very well do 5x5 at that that but most people couldn't do that so all right so what are what are some of the other methods that are unique to your coaching that people haven't done in the past especially like at the olympic lifting level well you know we're going to use the conjugate method uh we're really going to focus on um let's see if you can like

maybe take me through a week yeah i will so like um for the typical person you know we're going to do what i would call repetition method or like volume training. You know, that would be like Monday and Wednesday. And see, here's what you got to think about. You got to think we got to break up the Olympic list, snatch and clean and jerk, and squat and deadlift or pulls. We would call it clean pulls. But we got to kind of break them all up. So you're focusing on deadlifts with your athletes?

I am. I do. And a lot of weightlifters don't. Because that's rare. It is. Or it's 50-50. I think if you talk to 100 weightlifting coaches, 50 would do it, 50 wouldn't.

But the Chinese do it and they're dominating. They're dominating weightlifting in an era where there's tons of drug testing and they're dominating like no one has ever dominated. I've never seen them do a deadlift in the training hall. I've seen them do super heavy pulls. That's what I mean. When I say hall. I've seen them do super heavy pulls. I've got to. That's what I mean.

When I say when I say deadlifts, I'm talking about heavy pulls. OK. Yeah. So, yeah, I saw I actually saw a 73 was a 67. It was a 67 kilo lifter do a 600 pound clean pull. And it was it was a deadlift basically at the very top. He kind of shrugged. Yeah.

To make it into like a little faster. But it was a deadlift, you know. But I saw, he kind of shrugged to make it into like a little faster. But it was a deadlift, you know. But I saw him doing reps with 600 pounds. I mean, yeah. So like then I'm like, it confirmed. I'm glad I'm doing pulls. And so, you know, so we got to break it up. And we got to, number one, we focus on targeting with accessory movements.

So we have a big test that we give. And we pinpoint asymmetries. We pinpoint weaknesses. Like, you know if someone's weak in the hamstring versus quads or if right to left and so once we've once we've pinpointed where we need to focus that'll be the accessory movements they do so that will be completely different money will normally be that's nice to know yeah yeah do some tests you're like these are your accessory movements and accessory movements aren't hard to really make for people no it's easy like if you. If you need hamstrings,

let's go do RDLs. I even do some knee flexion or leg curls because not necessarily everything you do doesn't need to improve the snatch or clean or jerk. Some things you need

to do to be able to do them without getting hurt. Doing some lift curls. That's a good point. Yeah. Because a lot of people are like, if it doesn't have anything to do with your lift, then forget it. Then forget it. Yeah. But like what about longevity or what about, you know.

I feel like a hamstring curl like has some significance. Like I told you. It's like when do you get to isolate that muscle to build it. You never do. To the strength of durability like you need for a long-term career. Right. And, you know, the hamstring crosses the hip and it crosses the strength of durability like you need for a long-term career. Right. And the hamstring crosses the hip and it crosses the knee. And we always ignore it as it crosses

the knee. Yet we do all of this quad extension work where the quadriceps are getting strengthened as it crosses the knee. And so you create this massive imbalance. And then we all have knee injuries. You would be surprised if you have knee injuries right now. Or knee pain. Not an injury. If you already have an injury, you would be surprised if you have knee injuries right now or knee pain, not an injury.

If you already have an injury, it's too late. But if you have knee pain, if you add some leg curls, like I'm not saying anything heavy, just some light, you know, four to five sets of 10 leg curls to your regimen two to three times a week, a lot of that knee pain will go away. I see it all the time. Yes, it'll go away right away. What do you think about knee extensions? I mean, if I pinpoint, you know, that that's an issue, if like for some reason someone

has quadricep struggles, yes. As a matter of fact, we were talking about it today, there's a lot of that. You know, when someone squats and their butt comes up first, that's the body shifting to where it's strongest, which is that then the posterior chain is saying you don't have any anterior, you know, like you don't have quadriceps. So we're going to go to the hamstrings, glutes, and low back. So if you have that problem out of the hole, which is not a good position to be in, you know, adding some direct quad work would be awesome, leg extensions,

even this is leg press. This is totally opposite of what most weightlifting coaches would say, but that would be a good time to do some leg presses, some leg extensions to strengthen the quadriceps. What do you think about calf work? Because a lot of people neglect, I would call it the soleus, because a lot of stuff you do is standing, and it's your gastrocnemius, which is the cool muscle that everybody sees.

But then once you catch a squat clean, for instance, your knee is bent, that muscle is shut off because that attaches above your knee, and then now you might have some work to do in there. Because I know a lot of injuries I've had in the past, the physical therapist will start just digging into my calves and I feel like I'm going to die. Me too. I think calf work would be really good for, once again, longevity. You know, would it help with performance?

Maybe. Here's why. Because the gastric crosses the knee, like you said, it also crosses at the ankle. So when you talk about plantar flexion was that last little bit of lift, you know, the amount that you extend at the knee, that force is transferred down the soleus into the ankle and creates that plantar flexion basically without you trying. So if your calves are a little stronger, you know, there is some research out there that says it probably would lead to a little. The soleus, the plantar flexion, leads to about 10%.

Supposedly, there's mixed reviews on that. Leads to 10% of the force created in the pull. So if your calves are stronger, the literature might state it would probably help a little bit at least. Makes me feel good about my training right now with my little bodybuilding i'm done i've been i've been admiring your your calves all week yeah so yeah i mean plus you're jacked everyone listening i know your show knows you're jacked so yeah all right so take us through i know when i did my usa lifting certification i had mike conroy which i told you about and we were talking about good coach super compensation theory the whole time. He brought up Idaho weightlifting. They had the

Calpian method, if I'm not mistaken, back in the day, and a few other styles. A lot of these were between four to eight week cycles, and typically you have a week where it's week one would be 75%, week two is 85%, then you go down to recovery week 65%, and then you hit your maxes on the last. Yeah. What does your cycle look like? It's similar but different.

I prefer 20 weeks. We might compete during that 20 weeks, but I'm not going... I'm pinpointing the meet at the end of 20 weeks. I really prefer that my guys only do 2 to 3 at most meets meets and probably only target two. So in 20 weeks, what I would do is at week 12, I'm going to peak the squats.

And then from 12 on, I'm going to worry about snatch, clean and jerk. And I'm going to focus on velocity of squats. So it's a little bit different than that, but yet we're going to do the same thing. So for 12 weeks, we're going to do the same thing so for 12 for 12 weeks we're focusing on velocity of snatch clean and jerk the movement strengthening the patterns technique so what does that look like week by week um all right first you know are you squatting every day um squatting a lot because i know you like to squat we squat a lot in like minimum of three up to every day so it depends on the person some people respond like i personally respond really well to very high frequency squats some people don't so some people you know like if i had you obviously wouldn't squat every day because i would focus on

you know you know healing your knee and stuff but um yeah some people respond awesome and then but then again there's guys like morgan this is a good example of two athletes you got morgan have ryan ryan is the number one youth in the country he's on my team morgan's number two he's on my team morgan's a little bit younger but like morgan has got a ton of absolute strength so does he need to squat every day probably not i might because i might take a four to five week cycle to do it simply to help his confidence. You know, when he squats 600 pounds at 16, he's going to feel invincible. But Ryan, on the other hand, is super efficient, meaning, like, whatever he can squat, there's a good chance it goes right into his clean and jerk and snatch.

So we're going to really focus on the strength movements like squatting and pulling. And he might do much higher frequency than Morgan because it's more important. So you're not even focusing on the snatch and clean and jerk as a main focus for that first 12 weeks? Not really. It's really mainly

A lot of 70% lifts? Yeah, a lot of 70% lifts, a lot of speed, a lot of complexes, a lot of hangs to strengthen that pull. You like complexes, huh? Yeah, we do a lot of complexes.

Give me a good complex. Oh, I love this one. Pull to the knee and pause. Do that for two. You do a three-second pause Give me a good complex. Oh, I love this one. Pull to the knee and pause. Do that for two. You do a three-second pause to the knee for two. Then you clean, and then you jerk. Or pull the knee twice. The reason I like, these are called liftoffs.

So you go from the ground just to the knee, pause three seconds, because most people miss from the floor to the knee. That's where the 90% of all lifts are missed because the bar just falls. That's part of the lift. Right. Everything starts from the floor to the knee. That's where the 90% of all lifts are missed because the bar just falls. It's the most advanced part of the lift. Right. And so we really work on.

Everything starts from the top down. For those of you listening, if you're teaching somebody, you start from the hang, below the knee, then the floor. The floor is the most advanced. So that makes the most sense. Right. So we do that. Some other good ones would be we do like two pulls from the floor all the way to the hip

and pause. So now you're working on really staying over the bar, you know, using your legs, not using the hips, not banging the bar with your hips, but more pushing with the legs. So we'll do two pulls, you know, a clean, two front squats. So now, not only are we working on the pull, now we're working on focusing on using technique on the jerk

versus, like, using your strength. So does that make sense? Yeah, for sure. You wear your legs out, then you jerk. Since now you're doing such a big complex with maybe four or five different movements in it, do you have them work up to max effort on the complexes? Yes. Okay.

You hit the nail on the head. That would be our max effort day. I'll use movements like that on max effort day when we're long ways away from the meet. Then when we're in like that. Every week, is there some sort of max effort something? Yeah, every week. Every Friday we call it Max Out Friday. There's going to be a maximum effort snatch, a maximum effort –

And the rest of it is percentage work, 70s, maybe – The rest of it is repetition. Maybe 80s, yeah. Volume work. And it would look similar. So there's where the west side comes in a little bit. There's the west side. Okay.

The west side would be the maximum effort day and it would also be the except the way we do accessories and the way we don't cut them out like we'll be the week of a meet and we'll still do accessory work it just might not look you know as it won't it won't fatigue you as much or damage the muscle as much on max out friday are you doing complexes on snatch and clean and jerk yes okay yeah you have to you know like and accessory No. No, we don't do a lot of that. We don't. It's just snatch, clean and jerk. But we might do maximum effort on squats on another day.

So that's the other element. On snatches, on squats and pulls is another day. Snatch and clean and jerk is another day. Okay. Yeah. What's the most you'll ever have someone do a pull over their one rep max? Over their one rep max clean and jerk? Let's say you snatch like 100 kilos. Right. What's the biggest snatch pull you'll have someone do a pull over their one rep max over their one rep max let's say you jerk let's say you snatch like 100 kilos right what's the biggest snatch pull you'll have them do very

often we'll go way above that like 120 150 like whatever they can do whatever they can do with good technique so the minute you know the back flexes stop the minute they can't stay over the bar stop you know just like i get that completely from the chinese okay they they pull almost every single day multiple times a day and they stop when they can't you know do it properly when it doesn't look like a snatch pull or a clean pull they stop have you ever had somebody because i know it's rare who was they were so bad at split jerking aka me he didn't look too bad today i thought i was like you know for while, I was squat jerking. Like when I was in college.

Yeah. And I was a good lifter. I was thinking about that with you today. I actually used to do like a power squat. Like I would hit like almost 90 degrees and just kind of like lose that. I probably would try that. Yeah. Yeah.

Because my shoulders were always really strong and I would just pop right under it. Right. And I remember doing like 150, 160 kilos kind of like that back in the day. Right. So there's a lot of people out there that are like – they watch the Chinese lift and they're like, you know what? I think that's what I need to do because my split sucks. Man.

But what do you think the actual percentages of their split sucking so bad that that's an actual option? 1%. Yeah. It's super small, right? Yeah. And it's like even with the Chinese, everyone in the world knows this.

They're going to clean it, and then everyone holds their breath to see if they'll jerk it. They're so inconsistent. They've all bombed out multiple times. Ten Tao, Lu, they've all bombed out doing that squat jerk. I'll tell you this, though. I'm surprised they don't ever try to split. I don't get it either.

I mean, maybe they've tried split split and it's just so bad. Because you can split and have a small margin of error and be okay. But you can't squat and have any margin of error. I'm with you. They would just say it's the most efficient, meaning it takes the least amount of effort, the squat jerk. But it takes the most amount of skill. I guess they're just saying we're the most skilled athlete. But, you know, you barely have to move the bar

to get under it I don't know, I just see it's very inconsistent so they haven't sold me on it but I tell you this, a guy like you it's definitely good to play with that either a power jerk or a squad jerk, play with it for a few weeks a lot of times, especially with the things

that you have, by doing some position split presses along with power or squad jerks could very easily, you know, change your life as far as jerks go. You know, fix a few of your, it's just a movement thing with you. Fix that. You know, you get a really good bar path with the power jerks and squad jerks. Put it back together into a split.

Next thing you know, you're sending PRs in your split jerk. I remember doing some, I'd never seen anyone do a split press. Yeah. I can't remember where I saw it, but I do remember watching like someone do it, and I tried it a little bit, and it does help you kind of really stay focused on where your butt needs to be and where your abs need to be and where your ribs need to be and all those types of things. That's what I'm saying with you.

I don't think you have a movement flaw. I don't think you have a movement flaw. I don't think you have a structure problem. I just think you have a movement problem. I think if you spent a few weeks doing split presses behind the neck from the rack, you'd fix it. I think that my – because for those of you listening right now, my biggest problem is when I do a jerk, I'll arch my back a lot. Right.

Which I think is actually kind of common. Right, it is. And I feel is actually kind of common. Right. It is. And I feel like it's almost as common as like someone whipping their head back. And it's almost probably as easy to fix. It is. It's like just looking, fucking look forward. And for me, it's like, you know, just fucking squeeze your butt and tighten your rib cage.

Right. You know, and I just haven't cared about it enough. To work on. You can tell when I grab the bar for a snatch, I'm so excited. And when I grab a bar for a clean and jerk, I'm like, I hate this. I can see you're just trying to get through it. Do your best. But today, I mean, I wonder by the time this airs if they'll know that you did a lunge with 418 pounds.

Like I have seen a lot of strength things in my life. I mean, like I've been around everyone. And I haven't followed a squat program. I've actually, to be completely honest, since college, all through my entire CrossFit career, I've never followed a squat program more than one time. Because I naturally had a 485 back squat forever. And nobody was touching it in CrossFit. And I remember watching, I think it was Scott Pancheck at the time, maybe squatted 500. And I was like, you know what?

Fuck these people. I can squat over 500. So I followed the Hatch squat program. Oh, yeah. Gal Hatch program is good. And for those of you out there, I've talked about this on another podcast before. I did a solo podcast. And you guys asked me what my favorite squat program of all time was.

And I love that program because it's twice a week. Right. It's not a huge amount of volume. Which is what CrossFitters need. You don't need to take up your life with it. And in 12 weeks, it went from 485 to 515. And then you're the number one. Yeah, and I had the number one basketball team.

Yeah, but dang, dude, still, that's cool and all, but a 418 lunge. Yeah. And room to spare. Room to spare. Yeah, what I was going to say was since then, I haven't done any squat programs at all. Even when I go in the gym, we were saying the other day, like, hey, man, do you ever program for yourself? And I'm like, nah. Kind of depends what gym I'm in, what I feel like doing.

Some days I'll do 100 reps at 185 for time on lunch. I'll just do 100 reps at 185. Well, keep going. I'll do it as fast as I can. And then when I feel like I've done a lot of volume, I'll just randomly for a whole week, I'll just do like two and three rep maxes. Bro, I'll be honest. Today I was like, he's going to get hurt. That's what I was thinking.

I was like, this is going far enough. It's so weird. And you smoked it. I'm so confident when I put that leg back. But to go into a double leg squat is just gnarly to me. You look – I'm like, I saw you go down. I'm like, he's not coming up. And you stood right up.

And I'm like, I've never seen that. I've seen Ronnie Coleman do lunges with 315. Really? But he's like 300-something pounds. But you're a 180-pound dude and you did a 418-pound lunge. I don't even know what to say right now i'm gonna think about that for a few days but even know how to comment i'm gonna actually write an article all about what i just saw yeah i've done a lot of interesting things back in the day too i remember

not um i'm one of those just like rare i could do weird shit i remember i never hiked at all it was my very first hike ever was the biggest hike in the continental us it was the mount whitney hike somebody in my gym was like hey i have an extra permit you should go and her husband was like a really big hiker and he was really into it and he's like you know we're gonna go and blah blah blah and me and him like almost we went to the top of this thing and like it takes people a couple days and we did it in one day but we got to the top in like six hours like something really crazy fast you have have a strong mind. That's what you have that most people don't. You're able to go

places. Like you said, the same person who can go to the pain cave, what you said, and you love it, is the same person who can look at a 418 lunge and not be afraid. Most people, I'll be honest, I would never have tempted that. Never mind. I'm like, I'd be afraid I'd get stuck in that position. I wouldn't even know

what to do with the barbell. Coming from somebody who has, what, 1100 pound back squat? I mean, well, I've done 805 raw back squat. And I'm like, a 418 lunge would be, it's scary. It's like, and you're 180 pounds. And I'm like,

you know what? I would love this. I would love to take someone like you and be like, alright, stop all crossfitting. And let me just have you for one year and let's pick some strength things and see where we could go. Dude, if my knee wasn't where it's at right now, I would have loved to have stopped cross-fitting for a year and just done all the lifting. I would have loved it. I told you. I told you earlier that I think whether it's powerlifting, weightlifting, anything, I think you could have been the ultimate strength athlete. You look like Ed Cohn.

You know, you're the exact same build. Who's my buddy too? Whose record I beat. But he's my buddy and he's amazing. He's still the greatest of all time power lifter by far. But you look like him. Anyway. So I was cruising through a few of your books.

I really want to talk about just program stuff because I know that you're the man with that. So we're talking a lot about this Olympic lifting stuff. And your style is obviously a little bit different. We have a couple conjugate pieces that go through it. But you also have a hypertrophy book I saw on your website. Mass Jacked, yep. Yep. So what does that look like?

And how does the volume and all that stuff work? I've noticed this. Here's why I wrote that. A lot of weightlifters, if they spend 8 to 12 weeks of hypertrophy, direct hypertrophy work, they go into like more strength or more of a traditional weight lifting almost 100 of the time they will have a spike up you know there's only two ways to get strong there's like add muscle or get better at the movement that's only you know we can't do anything about our attachments or like our fiber makeup that's a wrap our parents

gave us what we have but we can add muscle and we can get better at the movement. So that mass jack component, that hypertrophy component is super important, whether it's a weightlifter or a powerlifter. Even Ed Cohn, the guy I talked about, used to have off seasons, and basically it was just bodybuilding. If you ever see the guy, he looks like you. He's super muscular. I remember watching him in Flex magazine.

It was him and Dorian Yates who used to be Mr. Olympia. They had the two. They were comparing the two. And his back was as big as Dorian Yates. He was massive. So, like, right away I knew that, you know, bodybuilding was important. You know, like, oh, I saw your back yesterday. I was like, that's why.

And that's why you could be. I've never seen a strength athlete that did not have a massive back. But that just told me, you know, add some muscle, get them stronger, you know, don't have a weak spot. And so all my athletes go through phases. So your hypertrophy program is a strength and then hypertrophy, like, cycle? It would mainly just be hypertrophy for the mass jack. And, like, it's straight. Like, it's going to look very similar to traditional bodybuilding it's going to be high rep squats

i even like i heard you talk about german volume training you know i love german volume training my athletes hate it but i've never i've never had an athlete go through german volume training that did not pr two to three weeks after the German volume was over. In strength work? In strength work. They do – we do German volume maybe four to eight weeks. Stop it two to three weeks of traditional strength, and then three weeks they would PR their squat, pull, whatever. Is the German volume that you do, because there's two different kinds, there's the advanced one, which is 10 sets of five,

and then there's also the 10 sets of 10. We do 10 by 10. 10 by 10, yeah. Because we do so many fives. Yeah. It's like we want to go away from you know i like i call it the accumulation phase go away from what we normally do and it's lighter so we don't we give the joints a break and just it's really just metabolic stress mechanical loading and muscle damage without the joints getting crushed i remember my very first time doing german volume training. I was on the bobsled team. It was our off-season.

Yeah. And they wanted all of us to put weight on, obviously. Perfect time, yeah. So it was right at the end of the off-season. We just started, and I remember seeing the program. It was 10 by 10, and it was back squats. And for me, the percentage was 315 at the time. It's a beast.

And it's three seconds eccentric, which is, for those of you who don't know what that means, it's just three seconds down, zero pause at the bottom, one second up. Yeah. And it's three seconds eccentric, which is, for those of you who don't know what that means, it's just three seconds down, zero pause at the bottom, one second up. Yeah. And it's for 10 reps. And I literally remember that was my first time ever doing German volume training. I don't think I'd ever done more than like a five by five. And now I'm doing a 10 by 10. It's brutal.

With eccentric load. Yeah. I could not sit down on the toilet without grabbing like the wall or railing. Did you throw up? For like three days. No, but it was gnarly. And we did leg curls for a 10 by 10. I don't do 10 by 10, but I always have them do leg curls after.

I'm not going to have them do like, you know, good mornings or anything because there's smoke. It's too much. But like leg curls or something simple is what we do. Poliquin back in the day, that's a lot of his. That's where I got it, man. German volume was like that too. Right.

You go back squat, leg curl. Yes. Oh, I can't. Dude, I was pretty jacked back then, and we only worked out Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Well, you're also doing that speed work, the pushing. We did all the speed work too. And so you're going to look at all the sprinters in the world. But only lifting Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

That would be fine when you're sprinting and pushing bobsleds. And you guys are young and just jacked in it. You're obviously awesome athletes anyway. But the thing I was going to say about the other, we either do jump and volume or we do this wave training. And if there's females listening, this might be the thing for you. So we do a wave where you start, you work up to, let's just say, you do 80% for three, you drop down, do 65% for 10, add a little weight, do another triple, add a little weight, do another 10,

add a little weight, do another triple, add a weight, do another 10. So basically three by three and three by 10. I tell you that works better for females and here's why. If you've ever coached a girl, here's what happens. They'll go through 10s and they'll set PRs. They'll do 10 RMs. They'll go through 5s, hit 5 RMs. The minute you go to 3s and 1s, nothing's happened.

That's the same in CrossFit, too. Right, same thing. For women in CrossFit. By doing some waves like that, you guys might, you know, by getting the body used to that absolute strength phase earlier on and throughout the program, there's a good chance the females will see better results. Yeah, that's – it's always been a problem for me as an owner of the gym,

for people who want to compete and all that. I have these girls, like we'll do 20-rep back squat program in the gym every – we do it like twice a year, and we do it for usually about six weeks. So you find your – for those of you who don't know, 20-rep back squat program, it's – Yeah, it's like – I like to tell people it's about 60 to 70% of your one rep max back squat typically. Yeah. And it takes a lot of heart, a lot of balls.

And for girls it's like 80 to 85% of their max. It's crazy. It really is. But add 1% and they can't do it for five. It's insane. Insane. Yeah. Or young, young boys might be similar to it, but it's, it for 5 it's insane or young boys might be

similar to it but it's totally like that but we do waves for females all the way through and then there was still of my entire team there were two girls who I struggled to get strong for a minute so what I did was try phasic training and I really added that eccentric

isometric and then concentric I really focused on each component of muscular contraction, you know, by themselves. Caldeach, shout out. It's not my idea. But really, does anybody have any ideas anymore? But you just mix and match everything else. I know. I like to tell people that all the time, too.

It's like, hey, man, like everything's been already done kind of. Yeah. So, like, you're stealing a little bit. It's fine. Just give a little credit. Like, no one's going to say. I always give credit. No one's going to say. I always give credit. No one's going to say anything.

No one cares. No one cares. You know what I mean? I take Louie Simmons. I take Pulligan. I take Caldeets. I take Coach Joe Kinn, the Carolina Panthers. Yeah.

I constantly talk about stuff from the 70s from Pat O'Shea. Totally. All the time. Brilliant. Yeah. Bill Starr. I mean, even our boy from Starting Strength. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, anyway, he got most of that from Bill Starr. And, like, you know, I'm not hating on him either. You know, like, we're all just taking and then trying to make it a little bit better and then bringing other ideas. Then it does morph. You know, like, my program does not look like Louie Simmons. You know, and my program does not look like Charles Pulligans you know, and my program does not look like Charles Pulligans. It is morphed into my own creation using ideas from them.

So. What do you think of like the Russian and the Bulgarian methods of lifting? Now you're going to get. Super high volume. Super high volume, you know, with. And if I'm right, a lot of these Bulgarian lifters, they're lifting like three times a day, like an hour a pop, right? Like they'll snatch.

No. Go take a nap, clean and jerk, go take a nap, and they'll squat later in the afternoon. You know, on my website. Am I right about this? Almost. There's different styles. So I talked to Piros Dimas, who's a Bulgarian.

You talked to him? Yeah. Now, luckily, he works for Team USA. Really? I didn't know that. So I sat him down. I would love to meet him. He told me everything. So I wrote an article about, like, here's the real Bulgarian method.

It is very similar to what you said, but it's more snatch, clean and jerk, snatch, clean and jerk, snatch, clean and jerk. It's like, you know, snatch, clean and jerk, squat, snatch, clean and jerk, squat. Multiple times a day. Three times. You were right. So it's like, if you read the article on my website, you'll see exactly. But if I'm remembering, it's three times Monday, three times Wednesday, three times Friday, two on Tuesday, two on Thursday, two on Saturday, one on Sunday. Dude, you've got to be wrecked.

I mean, here's what people don't know, though, is that most of those guys start when they're young. And by the time they get there, they have this huge background. So they might have started three times a week for one hour. Then they went to four, five, six. Then they went to two. And they live seven days a week. Yeah, seven days a week. Oh, my God.

But now here's the other part of that. But it is also like five sets of one. Yeah. No, they mainly work up to like a 1 a.m. ish for the day and stop. And so it's like if they're hurting, they might work up to 85% for one. But if you looked at the total volume, it might be very similar to anybody else's program because the key to that program would be auto-regulation. Someone like me or you would probably die because we would be trying to beat everybody in the gym

every single workout, and then we would get hurt. You've got to be able to say that's enough today yeah and pick your battles no win you know probably i bet knowing peter once twice a week he would you know they might pick a fight and like say all right see who's better at snatch and cleanser but not every day most of the time they're just working on their movement and he even said that they would take their weaknesses and then they would go after they were done training they their movement. He even said that they would take their weaknesses and then they would go, after they were done training, they would go somewhere else and work on pulls or work on whatever they were weak. There was a lot

to it. There was a lot to hear from the athlete. A lot of it had to be from the athlete themselves being semi-smart and doing a few things their own. He's a three-time gold medalist. I remember watching his videos. Oh my god, he's insane. Jack, like medalist. I remember watching his videos. Oh, my God, he's insane. Jack, like you, too.

You can see through his singlet, his abs. Yeah, he was insane. And a great dude. He tells us, you know, my goal is to take Morgan and Ryan and morph towards something similar to that over a long period of time. Yeah. Because I had Morgan when he was 11. So by the time, you know, next Olympics rolls around,

I will have had him for 12, 13 years. So I will have been able to give him this background. I think that's a big problem of why the USA doesn't win more medals because a lot of these other countries, especially China, they get them so young. I'm lucky. And they're lifting for 15 years. It's crazy.

I'm pretty confident I could take any child that had decent genetics and I will at least get them on Team USA for youth and junior. Almost every kid. And then to be the top senior, that's maybe different. But guaranteed, it's just so much easier. Yeah, if you come to me, you're going to have these misconceptions of what you think a snatch looks like, what you think a clean and jerk looks like. So we're going to have to have this period of you trusting me, you're going to find me, then you're going to trust me,

and then finally, you know, three or four years from now, okay, you're going to completely trust me. But, like, if I get you, if I got you at 11, you'd be like, I don't know anything. You're a clean slate, so you trust me, and it's easy to develop you. Like, Morgan and Ryan have been super easy. You know, now they're both, you see, Ryan's 17 and Morgan's 16, and they've had moments where I had to pull them off and say, no, we're not doing this.

But very few. But mostly they trust me. I mean, why wouldn't they? They've won everything. They're breaking Pan Am records, and they're fresh kids. A lot of times in CrossFit, a lot of people, they want to love lifting so much, but they just don't have the overhead mobility. Right. It happens all the time, especially for gym owners.

They have these people come in. They're like 40, and all they want to do is snatch. Yeah. They've already had 40 years of bad mechanics and posture and all these different things. What are some of the things – because I can tell you right now, everybody listening to this, there's a bunch of people out there like, yeah, that's me. I have bad mobility. And every time I talk to the coach, he's like, do more snatch balance because you can't do a snatch.

Or do a bunch of mobility and then we'll talk or whatever. So what do you think? All right. Number one, some of you – I'm going to be honest now. Some of you, it's not going to happen. I believe with that one. I tell people all the time at my gym, I'm like, dude, it's great you want to do it. But it's not going to happen.

You're going to put a lot of time in and you might be able to get close. Yes. You spent 40 years getting all jacked up. Yeah. I get you a typical CrossFit guy, 40-year-old, goes in there three times, four times a week for an hour. So I get you four hours the entire week. The rest of the time you're going to sit at your desk and continue ruining your posture. And you're asking me to make a change. It's just not going to happen. And then I'm going to say, like, why continue ruining your posture and you're asking me to

make a change it's just not going to happen and then i'm going to say like why like why does it even matter why don't we just do some squats some pulls you know maybe bench or do uh you know i don't know or incline bench with dumbbells it just doesn't matter i can get you more muscular in shape feeling better moving better without that, I think we really do a disservice because of the way we sit at desks to our overhead and to our hips because we sit there flexed. I would recommend, number one, getting a standing desk, at least one that here in Sweden we noticed that they can sit down or stand up.

That would be, and you can adjust the desk. That's ideal. That's ideal because standing all day creates other issues, but up and down, up and that would be and you can adjust the desk that's ideal that's ideal because standing all day creates other issues but up and down up and down would be perfect but like the overhead man it's gonna be tough but like all right so but if i could let's say that you had really good genetics and i could do some things i would definitely number one start with every single day i would like do something to increase the body's temperature maybe jump rope double unders or you know ride a bike,

then I would do body tempering. Have you ever heard of Donnie Thompson, the body tempering? I've heard of his name, but I don't know about body tempering. You should find out. It's awesome. He takes these really heavy metal instruments. It's like

a foam roller on steroids, is what it is. It's just so awesome. And it just completely, I tell you, Kelly Starrett likes it, but it really crushes your tissue and it takes your fascia, makes it a little bit more pliable, allows you to move better. It also changes the strength sensors a little bit, gives you just enough time to where you don't hurt so bad, to where you can move a little bit better.

But start with that. Then you pinpoint. I love doing some band traction. Once again, a lot of Donnie Thompson. Donnie Thompson is not a PT. He's just a big power lifter. He didn't have money to go to a PT. He figured out all this stuff, and now the PTs love what he does.

But doing some band traction for your shoulders would be a good one. But body tempering the thoracic spine, using bands to get the shoulder joint a little bit more mobile. So body tempering is like a particular type of instrument. Instrument, okay. It's heavy. It's almost like I take this 100-pound metal roller. Oh, I've seen this thing. Okay, now I know who you're talking about.

The ex-wife. For all of you that are listening, Google Donnie Thompson ex-wife. It's the giant metal cylinder. It's the best thing ever, man. If you can get somebody to do it to you that knows what they're doing, it is the best.

For me, I front squatted, see, in 2016 was like the last heavy thing I've ever done. But I front squatted 250 kilos, 550. And that same day somebody rolled me out big time, and I had no pain for that training session, and I was able to lift like I used to lift for one session. Yeah, that's great, though. So I did a big front squat.

So if you had the time, the coaches and the people that would help you do that, mobilize the joint with some of some heavy jump stretch bands. And then, yeah, then I would agree doing some overhead squats with just a bar or a higher frequency. And then it might not happen though. But that would be my formula to see if it could. But if it

couldn't, it's okay. I'm totally fine with that. And actually there was a part in that whole piece there where you said, I can make you do some incline bench and some of these other things. I can make fine with that. Actually, there was a part in that whole piece there where you said, I can make you do some incline bench and some of these other things. I can make you look good and make you feel good and give you some longevity of life. With that, you might not want to answer this, but what do you think of all of the ridiculous amount of CrossFit stuff that is going on out there?

Are we talking drugs now? No, no, no, no. I'm talking just the prescription of exercise. Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about the longevity, the Charles Pulligan conversation. No, no, no. No. Oh, definitely.

Like today, for instance. Yeah. Today is the 20.1 workout. And one of the guys in the barbell shrug, Anders Varner, hopefully you guys know who that is. That'd be weird if you didn't. But he did the workout.1 workout um and you know one of the guys in the barbell shrug andrew's varner hopefully you guys know who that is that'd be weird if he didn't but he did the workout yeah and he wanted i mean i wanted to do it today too and my bad knee like after after too many olympic lifts at this point in my life i can feel myself start to compensate and it's not for me in my mind it bothers me because i'm like you know what you don't need to do this you probably shouldn't be doing it because now you're putting you know some injury on the other side but i would

never even think that all this high rep and all this stuff was even a big deal until i had an injury right it's a big and now when i do it i can feel it yeah so maybe even if you can't feel it you are putting a lot of jarring on your joints and i don't want to say anything bad about crossfit my whole life came from it i program for all the gyms around the world. But I think that there is a way to program in a healthier, more science-inspired way. And I do think that, in my opinion, most gyms should be doing probably three days a week of bodybuilding and two days a week of a lot of this Olympic lifting and a lot less volume of Olympic lifting. You got me sitting on the edge of my – I agree.

There shouldn't be 80 snatches in a fucking workout. Let me tell you this. Let me start by saying the positive. Obviously CrossFit has done so much for all of our lives. Absolutely. None of us would have these amazing jobs. Power lifting, Olympic lifting, strongman. We're not saying anything negative right now.

No, we're just saying here's how you could get it better. Yes. If you really do – because he's saying that he wants to take CrossFit and make it more health and fitness. Glassman. So if Glassman really wants to – He's upset about what happened. Oh, he is. The evolution of it was not what he saw.

Right. But this workout today, it contradicts that statement. I was a little bit surprised by today's workout. Yeah. It's insane. It's just the epitome of overuse. Overuse is what causes all of your joints to start hurting. That's exactly what

you're doing. I think they should do this. Here's my solution. Instead of just hammering them with criticisms, which I'm not. I started with a positive. I gave them my negative comment. Now here's my positive. I would go to someone like Andy Galpin, a physiologist, and be like,

what makes more sense for the human body? And if you want to do this for the athletes, let's say that you want to keep the athlete side of it and be like, look, we're going to kill you, but you're going to make it to the games, and if you win, you make this big prize money. That's totally different because there's nothing healthy about powerlifting either at that level.

If that's what you want to do, which I wouldn't want to kill my athletes either, but whatever. But if you really want to make people healthy, talk to someone like Andy and say, what is physiology? Don't have people – don't have special forces people making the workouts. Have an exercise physiologist. Have a physio, exercise physiologist. Have you ever seen a healthy Special Forces person 10 years after they retired?

I know. One of my best buddies, my college roommate, he was just on my podcast. They're all limping around. Yeah, man. Those dudes are crazy. They're designed to be

the elite of the elite. They should not be programming for the 40-year-old accountant who's never been in the military. You need an exercise physiologist. There's so many out there. There's the 40-year-old accountant who's never been in the military. You need to exercise physiology. There's so many out there. There's the Andy Galpins, the Greg Knuckles of the world who could tell you how to get them in shape and strong and looking good and feeling good without hurting them. So go to someone like that and get some good feedback.

Well, the longer you've been around all this stuff and you've been around it, how old are you now? I am now 46. I started when I was 11, 35 years. Ten years longer than me. Right. And in my 33 years of life, I have seen – okay, so we go into like my high school years and everybody was looking in magazines and it was the bodybuilders. Sure.

The Ronnie Coleman's. Absolutely. The Jay Cutler and it's all that mattered. Right. Then I got to college. Sure. The Ronnie Coleman's, the Jay Cutler. And it's all that mattered. Right. Then I got to college. And even my senior year of high school, I would say people really wanted an athletic build. CrossFit wasn't really happening yet.

Right. But people wanted an athletic build. I graduated high school in 2005 and then college from 2005 to 2010-ish, 2009 to 10. So around that area, CrossFit was just getting started around 2009, I want to say, like when 10, when competition was starting to get going. But even before it started, people wanted an athletic build. Sure. Then CrossFit started, and then people really wanted an athletic build. And they wanted to prove.

300. The movie 300 made you guys popular. Oh, my God. So actually, the movie 300 inspired a lot of the success I have today. Yeah. I mean it made me interested in CrossFit. I saw that. They said they did the CrossFit workouts.

I'm like, what is this CrossFit thing? I don't remember them saying CrossFit. I do remember them saying that they were trained by a man named Jim Jones. Right. And Jim Jones, a.k.a. Mark Twight, and he has his own certifications now and his own philosophy and he actually broke off of the Greg Glassman philosophy and they didn't like each other for a while yeah

sounds typical but yeah regardless I remember everybody's like okay that's the body I want and I remember just looking him up immediately on the internet and I remember he had an online he had an online subscription service right and i never forgot that like when people talk you ask me like what made you start chalk online i'm like

it was jim jones when i was in fucking that's a good freshman year of college and i was like you know what he has an online program people love chalk i'm gonna do that but that's that was that's my business uh little piece there on that. Right. My business inspiration. There we go. But throughout this time, I saw the Jim Jones things. I saw the 300 movie. And then after that, it kind of got into where we are right now, which I believe is actually drifting back towards bodybuilding again. I do too. I think it's drifting back towards bodybuilding.

I think you're well on your way. I think some of your thoughts and your future goals is on a really good track. It's something I predicted two years ago. I'm like, people are going to go back to lifting weights and doing some cardio and going home. I don't think they're going to want to get to the giant bodies like they used to. There's still that rare percentage that – Well, they're not going to unless they use lots of steroids anyway. Yeah, yeah.

There's still that large percentage – not large, very small percentage that wants to get as large as possible. But now I think we're going to see people don't want to give up on the cross-up because it is fun and it feels good. They just don't want to get killed. They don't want to get fucked up. Right. And now they're like, you know what? I really like this bodybuilding stuff. Right.

And I miss the bodybuilding stuff. Me too. Yes. And we all miss everything we haven't done for a certain amount of time. Absolutely. Right? I'm 100% with you. Yeah.

So like if you power lift and Olympic lift for 10 years, then you're like, I don't know. You go to the gym and you just body build. You're always like, oh, that sounds so boring. You know, like doing your body building and Olympic lifting career. Then you go lift. Like for me, owning my gym for the last five and a half years, being in there all the time, and my knees started getting worse, I got a membership to the 24 Hour Fitness. And loved it.

And I went there and I always talked shit on it and I worked out for an hour and a half. I went from machine to machine. I did my thing. Got a massive pump. And I was like,

whoo-hoo-hoo. This is great. You look in the mirror, you see you got that pump that you might get by doing one of your crazy CrossFit workouts, but you're not dead.

Yeah. You know, you feel good. You leave there feeling better than when you walked in. And I go into it with a different philosophy. Instead of three sets of 10, you know, sometimes I'll have a three sets of 10, four sets of 10 style workout. Right. And at the end, I'll be like, you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to hit 100 tricep extensions. Beautiful. Or pull downs or something, and I'm going to get the fuck out of here. That's beautiful. And I'll have these little pieces, or I'm going to be, you know, say I'm going to hit 100 leg curls, and then I'm going to get out of here. Or 100 lateral raises, and I'm going to get out of here. And I would never think that way before. It would always be a set, rest, set, rest.

So now I think that what we're going to get into now is I think we're going to get into a lot of this interval bodybuilding stuff. I'm with you. I think 100% we're moving that way. I even think bodybuilding is moving that way because now they have the traditional bodybuilding where there's these monsters that people just like to go look. They like to go to the zoo and look at animals. Then they have the classic physique, which is more of the – It's getting bigger now, the classic physique. It's getting – see, it's satin morphing.

So now you've got the dudes who are doing the physique who look like the classic. I think the physique is what most people want to look like anyway. They want to look like the awesome dude on the beach. Basically, they want to look like you. They want to have the abs, have some shoulders and arms, decent legs. What's funny is all of the weight classes have actually – they've all bumped up. So like the physique has turned into classic and the classic – Classic has turned into the old and

now the old is more freak show is an absolute zoo yeah so it's like those dudes are like you go it no it's a circus you go there to see stuff that you will never see yeah except there that's why i love the arnold or mr olympia it's like it's not that i necessarily love bodybuilding i it's a freak show you go there and you You go there and you see humans walking around and be like, are you human? Really? Yeah. And no matter how many drugs you take, there's still some genetics involved in some of these people's bodies. You don't look like Ronnie Coleman without having

amazing genetics. Johnny O. Jackson is one of my favorites because we competed and he did powerlifting too. That's the thick little black dude. Right. He was super strong. Huge. I remember his chest was massive.

Massive. And I remember sitting there because when he first started powerlifting, I was offended because he was saying he was going to come and dominate powerlifting. I'm like, no, you're not dominating powerlifting. But welcome to the show. But I saw him and I'm like, I'm going to beat him, but he looks damn cool. I wish I looked like him. Yeah, I remember seeing him in magazines.

That was probably my favorite person. Yeah, me too. Like body-wise, he looked insane. And he had like a very sculpted face. He just looked mean. Yeah, but he still looks – you know what? Like if you did straight bodybuilding, it's what you would look like. You would look – because he still looks human, just awesome.

Like he doesn't look like Ronnie Coleman per se. Because he was like – He was all bucked up now. He was competing against me at 220. So he wasn't that big. But he was – his back was just like – it looked like people took – they took mounds of muscle and slapped it on like you would clay on a sculpture. It was crazy. He's gnarly looking.

Yeah. Why do you think that Ronnie is as bad as just from all the reps, you think? Yeah, and going so heavy and just like, you know, I think a lot of bodybuilders could get away with a lot. You don't have to go so heavy. You could. Here's the thing. Here's what we know about hot pressure.

So you can get out your pen and paper if you want. But Cutler was always known for going lighter. Right. Are they the same age? It does not matter. They're relatively the same. Because he seems okay. Yeah.

I saw him at a thing recently. There's no point in doing 800 pounds on squat. I mean, I'm empowered for telling you this, but here's the thing. The most important part to getting muscle would be this. This is the pen and paper part? Go to as close to failure as possible, but leave like one rep in the tank. And the key is like going as close to failure without going to failure as possible and trying to repeat it one or two days later. So the more frequently you can do what I just told you to do, the more muscle you put on.

So if you go to complete failure, it's going to take you four, five days to recover. So you go almost. And that is the key. That is the latest research, and that is 100% truth. And then the other one would be metabolic stress, the pump that we all enjoy. And then the three would be muscle damage, meaning when we feel sore. But what do you mean by the pump that we all enjoy? What do you mean by that?

Like literally, it's called metabolic stress. Oh, just get the biggest pump you can. The pump is really something. But you're going to get a pump by going almost Like literally it's called metabolic stress. Oh, just get the biggest pump you can. The pump is really something. But you're going to get a pump by going almost to failure, no? You are. But there's two. The failure is also mechanical loading. So in going to failure, there's two components of that.

There is the mechanical loading, the amount of weight. You do have to slowly step the weight up higher. But you can do that, that going to failure with say 60% or 65% for 10 to 15. Or you can go 90% for 3, 4. It's the same.

However, it's not the same on your joints. Like Ronnie would do that 85, 90% going super heavy for lower reps. Whereas someone like Cutler might do 75% for 10%. And that's the same thing. If someone was to do a couple months of strength training where it was five reps and under but heavy as fuck the whole month, you think that person would put the same amount of weight on as if they did 60% for 10 to 15 the whole time? Yeah. I'm positive that's what they would do.

Yeah. Because you know what's interesting? When I was in school, and I'm not challenging you right now, but when I was in school, I did an exercise physiology degree at the University of Utah. It was a good school. And they told us if anything under the five rep range was considered strength training, and it wasn't really any sort of hypertrophy. They taught me the same thing, but it's not true. So so it is now will five and under get you stronger yeah it will

you know because you're getting you know you're getting your body used to lifting the heavier loads and they're getting it's getting efficient at lifting every low so yeah you're getting stronger but you're not adding more muscle you know you're just getting more efficient heavier loads you know the as far as adding muscle mass mass, all that really matters is going to near failure as often as you can. That is really the key. So here's where I'm getting really excited now. All right, cool. So, yeah, if you do what you've been talking about, that would be key.

So now what we're talking about now is a lot of the science stuff back in the day is no longer accurate. Totally fine. Happens all the time. Some of it's true. Some of it's not as true. But it's not all the time. Some of it's true. Some of it's not as true. But it's not like completely rubbish. I think it's fine though. We find out new stuff we move on. Right. Adapt to new ideologies.

No big deal. Correct. The only thing that sucks is when someone doesn't want to accept the new thing then they're wrong and they're annoying. As far as I'm pretty sure, let me shout this one dude out. Chris Beardsley is you probably don't know him. He's from the Great Britain. But like Chris Beardsley is a guy. if you want to know just about hypertrophy he's the go-to he's funny because he's this little squirrely dude chris beersley's just super smart doing all the

research so he's the guy he's the go-to all right well okay so now we have someone who's doing less reps super heavy we have someone doing hypertrophy training. And then at the – how often would you say someone needs to take a deload week? I would like what you said, what Conroy might have said. I like going hard, hardest, deload three. So I like what Conroy – I'm pretty sure that's what Conroy does. Week four, higher intensity but not necessarily as high volume. That's the way I roll and it keeps rolling like that. Cool. Now,

I went to Boulder, Colorado just very recently. We talked about this. And then I went to, you know, Phil Heath. Of course. Yeah. Mr. Olympia. I love bodybuilding, believe it or not. So, I went to Phil Heath's gym. It was called, I forget what it was called.

Man, it was pretty – it was a cool gym. It's in Colorado, correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was like Arm Blaster or something like that. Something like that. Something what a bodybuilder would name their gym. Yeah. And he was in there working out actually.

I saw him on the treadmill just walking uphill and he was fucking jacked. I want to go to Colorado now. And he has a sign out front that says, Phil Heath's parking spot. Anyone who parks here will be crushed. That's what it says. It's amazing. Perfect.

I took a sign in front of it. I took a photo in front of it. Anyway, when I was in there, I trained with his trainer. His name is Waddy. Yeah. Do you know this guy, Waddy? No, I do not know Waddy. All right. Well, Waddy trains a whole bunch of know this guy, Waddy? No, I do not know Waddy. All right.

Well, Waddy trains a whole bunch of other guys, and he used to train him and everything. So I trained with Waddy. It was super exciting. And I asked him. I was like – because we were doing – the first thing we did, the very first thing, we did hamstring curls as part of a warm-up. Right. Of course, they're going to pre-exhaust. Yeah.

Dude, we started with like sets of 30, and it was 21 style. Right. Halfway down, halfway up, and then full leg curls. We were just getting pumped. I need to do that, but yeah. But on top of the fact that we were— Is that that 10-10-10 thing you were saying? That's the new 21s?

Yeah. So we did that with hamstring curls, but he also was adding resistance with his own hand for all these— Dude, it was brutal. Oh, so you're having the resistance. He's trying to pull it down. Yeah. Yeah. So we were pulling up and pulling down and then like different phases.

It's that. And then we did a whole bunch of hack squats. Hack squats. Yeah, yeah. My favorite for our project. It would be like 10-second eccentric, like 5-second concentric. Man. For like sets of 10, immediately into RDLs with these big different eccentrics and concentrics.

Regardless, right? We did all this crazy shit. And at the end of the day, I said, you know, how often are you doing stuff like this? And how much are you switching it up? Are you guys ever doing percentage work ever? Right. And he said, man, every single day we switch it up. We do something different every day.

Yeah. And I was like, so you're not technically trying to get stronger? No. No. And then I was like, well, fuck. How do you know when it's not going to work anymore? So my question to you would be if you're going to be one of those people who goes in the gym and you do something constantly varied every single time. Not saying CrossFit, but like I happen to do that crazy hamstring cycle, and then the next week I do 100 for time, and the next week I do a 5x10.

Right. When do I know – because there's a lot of people who go in the gym, and they just follow a whole bunch of different shit. It works for a long time. Right, totally. Will that work forever, or do they need to feel their own body's deload week, and then go back into it, or should they, do you think everyone should be with a pen and a paper

writing down everything they're doing? When it comes to hyperdivision, no, I think he's exactly right. If it comes to strength, he's wrong. If it comes to, if I want to increase my squat, I'm going to have to squat, and I'm going to have to have, do I have to have percentages? No, you could go, you could do rep maxes, RPE, RIR. There's lots of ways other than percentages, but you're going to have to eventually go to threes and ones.

You're not going to do all this craziness and then all of a sudden test your one RIM squat and it go up unless you're a newbie, you know, under two years of training. But once you're like me, that would not work. Wow, I'm loving this conversation. But hypertrophy is guaranteed going to work because all you have to do is, like I said, really all you have to do is go to failure as often as possible, as much as possible. And it's all that matters. It's all that matters. What do you think about training frequency? As often as you can. You want to be able to recover just enough to do the next.

You don't want a complete recovery. You want to recover just enough to. You want to still be a little sore, but when you warm up, it goes away. That would be perfect. That when you're still a little bit achy and sore, but the minute you start moving, it goes away, that would be optimal. So do you think it matters if someone trains five days a week or seven days a week? Or four days a week? Yeah, it does.

I think, you know, obviously you've got to take in their lifestyle. Do you have a wife that yells at you all the time? Because stress is stress, whether it's weightlifting or whether it's stress at home. Do you have five kids? Do you have a wife that yells at you all the time? Get the fuck out of that room. Seriously. Go marry her.

So if you have a lifestyle like you where you can pretty much do what you want as frequently as possible. But if you go too much and you can't recover and you do hit that threshold, that's not good. You can go backwards. So it's all about optimal for the individual. So you, as trained as you are, let's say you started doing bodybuilding. You probably, let's say that your knee is, we got your knee fixed and you're ready to go. You could probably do legs at least three times a week. Okay.

The average person couldn't, but you could. I do it twice a week now. So you could easily do three. All I cared about was getting you huge, definitely three times a week, upper body three times a week. And you could break it down into muscle groups. You could do arms because it's so small multiple times a week. You can. You can.

You know, you got like look at CT Fletcher. Literally does arms every day. I would say Louie Simmons probably does forms of arms almost every single day. He does push down. Every time I see him, he's doing some kind of – Are his arms pretty big? For a 70-year-old dude, yeah, really big. He's scary looking.

So, yeah. I've never seen him in person. I hope that you come to Columbus, Ohio and see – You've got to come to Arnold class. Just come to Arnold. They're coming. The Barbell Shrug guys are coming. Okay.

I have to go just to see him. And you'll see not only him. You'll see him. You'll see all these freaks. They're coming. The Barbell Shrug guys are coming. Okay. I have to go just to see them. And you see not only him. You'll see him. You'll see all these freaks. They're on Classic. You'll see the best strongmen will be there. The best weightlifters will be there. The best powerlifters will be there.

It's like everybody under one roof. Everybody that I love and I think is cool is there, is under that one roof. Crossfitters go. You'll see some of the best crossfitters there. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Wow, that's really, really good stuff. I love to hear different things like that.

And I know that you wouldn't say anything personally without having some science behind it. No, I won't. No. I am really excited about that. Everything I say, like, you know, like I said, you know, if you doubt me on that, go to Chris Beardsley. He's got the research. He's the researcher. Or he's taken, like taken and done a meta. A lot of times him or someone like Greg Nichols,

they'll take all the research out there, and they'll do a meta analysis, and they'll do meta research, whatever you want to call it. They'll take them all, lump them together. They'll throw out the bad ones, keep the good ones, and they'll say, here's what all of it says. And that's what he does, Greg Nichols does. Those are some good go-to dudes.

Another thing that they were saying at this place in Boulder at Phil Heath's gym was that supersets were more for bodybuilders who are on their cutting phase versus bodybuilding phase. Do you agree with that at all? I don't know. It's just a random question I wanted to answer. You know, the reason that we do supersets as – my way to do bodybuilding too, by the way.

I just love supersets because it gets me in and out faster. That's what he was about to say. That's all I care about. The key to – I would say this. Probably you could really focus more if you did a set and waited two to three minutes. It might work a little bit better. Because you'd be able to lift more weight. Yeah, yeah.

You might lift more weight for the 10 reps. But other than that, for guys like us or my weightlifters, we superset a lot just because they don't have an hour for just bodybuilding. So it's like a 15-minute slot, so they got to get it done. Let's go with maybe the top three things that you've learned in the last... That's a lot. I'm going to say last like five years, just the recent stuff

that you wish that you could have applied to your younger self. I mean, because I know there's some stuff now that you're done powerlifting and lifting and all that. And you've probably did some dumb shit back in the day. A lot of percent. Right. I wish I would have focused more on. It doesn't have to be three.

No, I've got so many. Number one, I wish I would have known this about. I wish I would have focused more on – It doesn't even have to be three. No, I've got so many. Number one, I wish I would have known this about hypertrophy. I wish I would have known that I did not have to go so heavy to increase my muscle size. I feel like a lot of OG people say that. Yeah, I wish I would have known about asymmetries a little bit sooner so I could have maybe prevented my hip issues. You mean like unilateral work? Yeah. But, you know, knowing how to pinpoint, you know, knowing when I needed to would have

been awesome. I wish I would have, you know, I was pretty good at nutrition, but it was too late. It was like, you know, like when I started really winning, you know, I had nutritionist, but it was, you know, I wish I had done it sooner and eaten a little bit better and understood nutrition a little bit sooner. Did you feel totally different with a different diet? Oh, yeah. That's when I started winning. Yeah, I was crushing everybody.

When I started eating better, I recovered. I'm a guy like this. I was not born like Ed Cohn, stronger than everybody in the world. I was strong like you. I was stronger than most. But I had to do everything right, sleep right, eat right. And so that last little bit of understanding nutrition and knowing what I needed was really good. Without diving too much into it, 10 seconds, what was the difference that you made on that?

Were you eating everything and then you started eating specific macros? Right. I started eating specific macros and I started eating foods that were better. It gave me more energy. And I didn't eat so many carbs when I wasn't working out. So I wasn't fat. I was super lean. You earned your carbohydrates.

I did. I earned my carbohydrates and like i was you know fat does not lift if you look at the best um normally in powerlifting the best lifters are in that 100 kilogram class and they're sure i mean johnny o jackson's there yeah so like i was there at and we were all super lean chuck vogelpool and we were ripped and so fat does not move weight you know maybe those heavyweights can bounce up their bellies or something, but for powerlifters, it does not help. So if I have, say I'm 15% body fat. Let's say we're both 5'7", and we both weigh 220. I'm 15% body fat, and you're 8.

You have more muscle, so you have more potential to move more weight. I wish I would have understood that sooner. But besides that, mainly understand hypertrophy, understanding asymmetries, knowing how to pinpoint those weaknesses. That would have been awesome. And knowing I didn't have to go heavy so often because I was, like, ridiculous. Even when I did dynamic effort, it would turn into maximum effort. And it was stupid.

One big one I'll say because if there's someone out here like this, one big one that might have – there was two big things that probably helped me get strong really fast, but ruined me and didn't give me, I would have been stronger longer had I not done this, but I did a lot of good mornings and it does help. If you're a strength athlete, good mornings are the bomb because eventually hip extension is what you got. You got to have a strong back. You got to have really good hips to be able to stand up.

And so when I got my good mornings to 405 for sets of five. That's a fucking nasty good morning. Well, yeah. It was strong, right? If I'd stopped there, it would have been perfect. So then I was already well into the 700s in squats, raw and feeling great. But then I kept going because Chuck Vogelpul was going. And so next thing you know i'm doing 600 good more a strict good morning and so i think that was probably one of the reasons why you know i have hip and back issues is i just went too far as knowing

it would have been good to have a coach to say stop you know and then the other one was using too many bands on benching i think uh it really hurt my – it helped me. My raw bench wasn't as good as some people, and it got it to – I did a 530 raw bench, so it was one of the best in the world. But I'm pretty sure that hurt my shoulders because I just got so extreme and so heavy with those bands. Those would be the two things I would not do. All right.

That's good stuff right there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that pretty much sums up all the questions I have right now. It was good. That was a lot of information. That was a lot of good stuff. Is there anything that you want to shout out right now about projects that you're working

on or maybe some of these products that you sell or anything? Or just want to shout out the website? Go to masselite.com and there's lots of books like The Mass Shacked. You know, for your audience, I feel like they might dig that and uh some some cool ways to get stronger and to mainly to add some muscles and so you can look like you ryan yeah go to masterly.com go to instagram at masterly performance and find out we got all kinds of new stuff especially for strength conditioning you know if you're into you know any kind of sport you have kids um we're really targeting those people, but we have powerlifting,

weightlifting, strength and conditioning, some CrossFit, bodybuilding. Is it Coach Mash? Man, not for you, but if you don't know me... Oh, it's Mash Elite. It's at Mash Elite. MashElite.com. It's the Instagram I was talking about.

Oh, Instagram is at Mash Elite Performance Yeah, mashelite.com. Mash Elite. It's the Instagram I was talking about. Oh, Instagram is at masheliteperformance. Mash Elite Performance. Okay. Twitter is – here's where I messed up. It's at mashelite on Twitter. At masheliteperformance on Instagram. Okay. So I'm going to do better.

You can't change it now, right? Not quickly. And like with me, it takes two. You probably could. Well, I tried to get Ryan Fish on Instagram – or on Twitter, and I couldn't. So I had to do – A different one? I'm Ryan Fish on Instagram or on Twitter and I couldn't so I had to do a different one I'm Ryan Fish on Instagram

and then my Twitter is Ryan P Fish oh good so you're a little different too yeah but I love my Twitter game is pretty good actually

like when I'm rolling on there that's really my favorite I like it more than you can just talk shit it's like a quick little one liner that's right

that's right and I can get to the point quickly yeah and I love like having some educational debates. I always say I debate on there. I really love to teach people on there. I'll sometimes go do Q&As or somebody else.

These coaches love telling on other people. They send me videos of people doing stuff incorrectly all the time, wanting me to crush people. Yeah. So it's fun. I love Twitter. Yeah. I just started it like literally just a couple months ago. Me too.

And I, and I do, I only write, I won't, I'll probably go a whole week sometimes without writing anything, but it'll just be like this one thing that just like gets me and I'll just go and I'll post it. Yeah. And the key there would be like,

you know, once you post it, like keep checking so you can get involved quickly. Yeah. You start getting involved. Yeah. All right, cool. So we got you on Twitter. We got so you can get involved quickly. Yeah, you start getting involved real quick. All right, cool.

So we got you on Twitter. We got your website. We got your Instagram. I think that's about it right now. Yeah, man. I look forward to you. I'm so glad I met you. It's been my – I would say of the whole trip, that's my highlight is getting to know you.

Oh, nice, bro. Thank you. Same. Actually, same. Yeah. We're going to Jamaica together. Let them know that. Yeah. In a month.

Yeah. All right, guys. Well, this is another episode of Real Chalk that you guys are absolutely going to Jamaica together. I don't know that. Yeah. Yeah. All right, guys. Well, this is another episode of real chalk that you guys are absolutely going to love. If you ever had any questions about training, I think we just answered them. So just make sure that when you guys watch this show and you tag us because you like it,

that you don't just tag me, but you also tag your boy mash elite performance. Thank you. And let us know that you both love that. You loved both of us, not just me. And, um, if you guys have any questions, I'm sure you got, you guys can DM him and he'll answer you back. And let us know that you loved both of us, not just me. And if you guys have any questions, I'm sure you guys can DM him,

and he'll answer you back. And you can also DM me anytime. So I'll see you guys next week. Thank you. Real chalk over and out. Real chalk over and out. Real chalk over and out. Real chalk over and out.

Real chalk over and out. Real chalk over and out. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's show with Mr. Travis Mash. That is definitely going down as one of my all-time favorites. I love drilling people that are as smart as him with just as many questions as I have. And not only questions that I want to know the answer to, but I know a lot of these questions you guys really want to know the answers to. So because he has such a crazy depth of knowledge in all the things that we like, it's amazing to have him on the show.

And not only that, he is Team USA's weightlifting coach. He has a bunch of powerlifting records back in the day. He knows so much about hypertrophy and weightlifting and powerlifting. Oh, man, I love that show so, so, so much. There was a point in the show where we did reference a little bit of that interval bodybuilding kind of futuristic thing that's going on. And if you guys don't know that I have created a bunch of books that actually are that style, you guys can go check them out on jimryan.com. That's G-Y-M-R-Y-A-N.com. The reason I called it jimryan.com is because everything started with a gym. I started Chalk and then from there, the podcast and all these books and all

these programs and all these nutrition challenges and all these things. So I just think Jim Ryan's so fitting. But anyway, you guys, as listeners of Real Chalk, you guys get to go on there and get 25% off all of the books by just using code REALCHALK in all capital letters. And then also my challenges that I have on there, which is the carb challenge. And I have a new one coming up. It's going to be called earn your carbs challenge. It's going to be a little bit of like an introduction to keto cycling is going to be on there. So it'll be similar to the Carb Cycle Challenge, which has already been, you know, huge and it's all over the place. But now it's going to be a keto version of that, where you'll have days that are very, very low, and then days that are very, very high. So it's not true keto,

but it's kind of like a cycle. Really, really excited to introduce that. It's going to be just in the next, probably the next week or two here. And then other than that, my man Travis Mash, you guys check out his website, Mash Elite Performance, and he has all his stuff on there, and we talked about that during the show as well. So again, thank you for listening. I hope you guys check out my website. I hope you guys check out Travis' website, and I will see you guys next week.