Barbell Shrugged - Programming Macro, Meso, and Microcycles Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #577

Episode Date: May 17, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   How long should a macro cycle be? How long should each training block focus on a specific goal How do weekly cycles play into a full training program How to fluctuate intensity in your programming The benefits to long and short term goal setting   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

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leakygutguardian.com forward slash shrugged.aky gut guardian dot com forward slash shrugged friends let's get into the show welcome to barbell shrugged i'm andrews varger doug larson coach travis smash in the house today we are talking about how you write workouts and how you program for a year to reach long-term goals how you break down mesocycles in the four to eight-week range, as well as microcycles and how you build a training block. But before we do that, Travis Mash, dude, you were just in the Dominican, but before you got there, we had a little scare, bud. We got to tell the people what's going on in your world.

Well, Monday, I was feeling like it was a stressful day, number one. A lot of things were happening. Not only am I in school, but some things were happening at my school, some racial things. Wait, hold on. I don't know about this. I don't know that I can go into detail because I think they're doing it. It has nothing to do with me.

Let me say that. It has to do with another sport, but I don't know the details. All I know is that there's some accusations and that there's there is an independent investigation happening um but it's yeah as none so but it was just it was just stressful they're probably settling it all on twitter right it well yeah and so which is stressful to me because you know i feel like i've yeah you know my whole life has been something i've never had me because you know i feel like i've yeah you know my whole life has been something i've never had to worry about because i feel like you know i love all my

athletes no matter who they are what they look like yeah so the fact that i was kind of in this thing i hated but anyway it's just a whole athletics department or is it specific teams it's well specific team uh women's basketball so so yeah yeah. So it's hopefully – I don't know. I don't want to say one way or the other. It makes us just see what the investigation turns up. Because obviously if there's a problem, they need to correct it. Yeah. If there wasn't, then they need to correct it.

Either way, something needs to be done to move forward. You know, it's just the world right now. You know, America is in a transition period of like, you know it's just the world right now you know america is like in a transition period of like you know no longer can we pretend that there hasn't been you know racial issues so we're we're forced we need to be to face these things and deal with them which is good so yeah i think all in all when this is you know all said and done we will be better as a country you know but yeah it's hard so just circling back to the original point you got you had a uh minor heart attack or a heck of well and then how did this how this tie into it were you so like that was like the uh the final straw of the day we had

a coach's meeting and it was stressful and um on my way home that night i had a lot of pressure and so i um you know what i just decided to go get my blood pressure checked. And it was super high. Like, you know, I normally have super low blood pressure. And so not only was that, you know, completely sky high, you know, for me, it's even worse because I'm normally, you know, particularly low. So, you know, I was like, man, I'm going to the Dominican the next day. So I decided, shit, I'm going to go to the ER right now

because I don't want to get in the Dominican Republic and have a heart attack. So I went. And the thing, one more detail, it had been building. It was like four to five days in where I'd been feeling this pressure and just kind of ignoring it like men will do. But then it was peaked on this day, and I was like, man. So I went to the ER, and they did an EKG, and that didn't show anything.

Thank God I got a chest X-ray, and I did blood work. And so the long story short is I didn't have a heart attack, but I've got some majorly elevated blood pressure, so I need to deal with that. So I'm going to get a stress test hopefully early next week and just need to deal with that. So I'm going to get a, you know, stress test hopefully early next week and just start to deal with it. But I've already, like, it's already down because I've, like, started to eliminate things that I don't need to do.

And so I recommend, you know, every man, you know, we try to do take on everything. But like, you know, if it starts to affect, if you can't, you know, get healthy, if you can't find time to do the things you need to do to be healthy, then you're doing too much. Yeah, dude, what's your training been like? Have you, this project that you're working on? Terrible. You were in a pretty good rhythm there for a little bit. I was, you know, and like the thing is, is that I do, like I've, I've done so much, you know, I've coached so many people for free and i love them all and i if i could i would but like i'm slowly cutting that out not because i don't like them

not because i want them to pay me just because i can't i don't i can't do it right now i can't fit it into my life and like you know i'm not gonna die just to coach someone free so like so i've already started doing that um yeah it just it doesn't make sense i don't know what happened in weightlifting for some reason over the last six years there's been this movement to like you know we want our athletes to have an advantage and i still do but like it's the only sport in the world where the coach you know does this thing for free for free in hopes that maybe you know people will buy other things or something. But it's just, it makes no sense.

And like Power and Grace, Smiths Arnold, that dude charges every one of his athletes, whether they are Olympians or whether they are, you know, brand new. It makes sense. It's for his time. You know, if he's not coaching them, he would be with his family. Like, it just makes zero sense. Do you actually notice the buy-in of the athletes that you coach for free to be,

are they just as compliant in the training and working as hard as the people that pay? Cause you've got an entire online team. Yeah. No, like, but there's, you know,

like the, the Jordan, um, you know, I totally just went down. Oh, Jordan, no. But there's, you know, like the Jordan – I totally just blanked out. Jordan Cantrell. Yes, he's for sure. He's been – you know, I've been coaching him for free for like, gosh, about, well, this whole block, you know, this whole four years, you know, this Olympic block. And so he's very compliant.

But for the most part, no, I do not feel, you know, I feel like I was, I actually know I was talking to a new client of ours that runs a CrossFit gym. And we were talking about the old days of CrossFit in which like the competing side was super, super important. It was just like all the marketing, the more you went to regionals, the more CrossFit gave you attention, the more they brought the camera crews in. And they were like filming at our gym, you know, a couple times a month. Like we had all this like free press about our gym. And as we, as like CrossFit grew

and like general population, America started showing up just looking for fat loss and looking to just get in shape. And like the vibe has to change a little bit and you go downstairs and you look at all the people that don't pay because they're your, your, they're your competition team. Um, you also realize that you're paying them because they're also your coaches, but their goal is to go to regionals.

Your goal is to run a good business. And those goals, that triangle is not in the position because you've got people that are only interested in competing or in creating and being around competitors, coaching people that are only interested in losing a little weight and looking a little better naked and having a better life. And there starts to be like some conflict between here's these people that are put on the pedestal that take up like 90 of your time where you're writing personalized programs for every single person and making sure nutrition and lifestyle and relationships and all this stuff is like

perfect for them yeah and then you go well wait a second you're actually just losing you're taking all the money and all the resources and all the everything and then we've got this actual group of people down at the bottom or underneath that that are like actually paying the bills right and make up 95 of your gym yet i'm paying all these other people to take all the resources and it's like the lack of alignment is why i wanted to know what like where those things because that that lack of alignment is why i wanted to know like where those things because that that lack of alignment starts to beat the crap out of you when you're a coach and it's so hard that's how it was with our powerlifting team across memphis you know 10 plus years ago we still had powerlifting we looked at it it was like 90 of the complaints

and frustration that we had in the gym and the conflict was with the powerlifters and or you know mixing with the crossfitters and the powerlifters feeling like they they deserve more and need more space and they had about 25 of the gym or so we looked at the revenue and it was like three percent of the revenue was powerlifters yeah we're like we're like god man like 25 of the gym and most of the complaining and we barely make any money on it i like power lifting i love having them here they're friends of mine but eventually it was like we just need to do something about this and we had a gym open up that was actually a good well-equipped powerlifting gym that wasn't very far away we basically just told the whole team hey you guys are welcome to cancel

your memberships no penalties and go transfer to this other place that's actually a better fit for you anyway yes match we've been doing this nice way of saying get out it's a nice way of saying for sure yeah um we've been surveying a lot of the diesel dad um people that are in our facebook group and and talking to them too and like it's it's super funny going from like this high performance world to really meeting people like us now that are trying to make all this stuff work like people that may have recently had a heart attack because they're under a bunch of stress and haven't been training right um and and actually like we think performance is so cool because we've been in this world for so long and like going to the olympics is the

crescendo moment for the weightlifters you've been coaching for right whatever it is going to regionals going to the games going to all these crossfit events but when you start to actually talk to people like they're not that's not where they're at like that is like the tiny i feel like if i was to open a gym right now like a brick and mortar thing there would be no talks of yeah PRs and and crazy performances you're like yo the PRs you made it here three days a week for another week right you're doing it you you ate enough protein this week I'm with you on all this it's crazy plus I've you know I did the thing on now that i've got uh you know sandra from denmark is going to the olympics so like um i did that thing so i've checked i've checked that box yeah like

yeah i don't need to check any more boxes like you know i've got 29 team usa athletes nobody cares anymore like yeah i've made it so wrapped up into like the the marketing of how great people could be that you don't realize you're like your message starts to alienate so many people right they're not for me they're not for me they can't help me they can only help this person that's yeah like that you start to position yourself as like unattainable to be coached. Wait a second. I actually make all of my money helping these people. These are the ones that

everyone thinks are cool. Those are the biggest drain on your time and energy and resources and most of the time. Agreed. People just don't care. There's a new a group a weightlifting group out there who's like doing really well and they have zero great lifters they just do a really good job of teaching uh their videos are nice and they used to annoy the shit out of you didn't they

yeah they said a little bit like i'm not sure that they're really good but i don't know who they are but i know that gym that used to just help people produce no great athletes. I'd want to choke them all the time. Like who, who, who are your people? It bothers me. A bunch of healthy people that show up every day. I feel like that's the area I need to get to.

Like, you know, I've proven my point. Like no one can say I haven't produced athletes. I've produced more than any other coach since 2015 when it comes to team USA athletes so like i've proven my point i've got nfl i've got nba i've got major league like i've done my thing now it's time to start teaching and like diesel dad really did you know like seeing those guys really did influence me to like you know what am i doing i feel like that is the area that needs the most help and they care the most and the way that those dudes like interact in the facebook group yeah

that was like i'm like what am i doing like this is these kids these people care like it's rad anyway um dude i'm giving them a free shout out because this is like the coolest product i've seen come my way in the longest time. And I really hope we get to work with them. There's a company making swing sets right now that has squat racks on them. The entire, it's called Swing Sesh. People go to Swing Sesh right now. I have no financial backing in any of this, but I would love to watch this company make all of the money. So swing set for your kids where you can do squats. The entire swing set is built around a gym basically.

So like there's a pull up bar with multiple different levels. There's squat racks built into it. There's all the stairs are built box jump heights. They've got dip bars. I talked to them the other day and I was like, if you guys put a landmine attachment on here, it's literally like the greatest invention I've ever seen in my life. Because wait till I start working with them somehow.

The amount of content I'm going to be doing sitting outside, getting jacked in my neighborhood while the kids are running around the freaking swing and the slide. Holy crap, am I excited. This looks awesome. I'm looking at it right now. Yeah. My kids would love this.

What a great name. It says Swing Set. It's called Swing Sesh. Yeah. I'm like the perfect target market. I am Set. It's called Swing Sesh. Yeah. I'm like the perfect target market. I am the person that needs the Swing Sesh. I love it. Swing Set.

Look at that. Home gym. Right in your backyard, dude. You can go get bronzed, scare the shit out of your neighbors all at the same time, and look like parent of the year. Yeah. I don't ever see any of my neighbors. I'm so country.

Your backyard would be gangster. Yeah. Rock would be back there climbing on stuff. You'd just be front squad so heavy in front of them. It'll look like I'm training those kids up for something, like, crazy. Exactly. Yeah. Maybe set a platform up in front of it.

It'd be savage. Militia out in the middle of nowhere. All right. Is Rock hitting EPRs lately on his clean jerk? No, we're getting him ready. out in the middle of nowhere. All right. Is Rocket in EPRs lately on his clean jerk? No, we're getting him ready. Like, we're doing a lot of just snatching, cleaning jerks, getting him ready to compete.

So I think we're going to compete this summer. So mainly just getting him ready. Like, here's what you do. You know, wait for your down commands. You know, you have to, you can't bend the elbows. So like, working on details right now. I can't wait. That's like one of my favorite YouTube videos is watching the Klokov videos when he was like a little kid.

Yeah. You could tell he was like just super raw, but at the same time, just already having fun. Savage. Doing crazy stuff. Yeah. He and Bear Boat, they do a lot of crazy stuff. Yeah.

I love the wrestling. All right. There you go. We're going to do our macros, micros, mesos. Let's talk about it. Those are three big terms. What do you think about macro cycles, macro cycles, meso cycles? Because we're going to back this thing down from the highest one,

the macro cycles, meso cycles, and micro cycles. Doug, can you break all those words that I'm having a hard time even saying right now into actual concepts? Yeah, there's a little bit of crossover there between each one. The way that I tend to think about them is a micro cycle is kind of like your weekly template. Meso cycles are a period of weeks. I typically do like four week blocks, but you could do four to eight, four to 12, something like that. You could call that a meso cycle. And then macro cycles, usually people think about those as being a year, but they could be four to eight four to twelve something like that you could call that a mesocycle and then macro cycles usually people think about those as being a year but they could be four years like travis talked about olympic training blocks right um or like for like for emom strength as an example i kind of have like a weekly template which is the micro cycle portion

of it and then there's four week under weekly undulated period periodized mesocycles and then three of those mesocycles have a progression for a total of 12 weeks which i consider to be for imam strength a macro cycle so it's a it's a 12-week macro cycle four week with three four-week mesocycles and then each week has its own its own structure which are the micro cycles so basically it's just different duration training programs yeah that's a big picture of it i totally agree the macro is just the big picture and the the mezzo is like the not quite so big and then the micro is like you know it's just it's just like you know when you look at like business

the same thing yeah the micro things look at the macro things the macro being the big picture if you're an olympian you try to look at it in four-year blocks. But then, like, so right now, like, this is impossible. I can look at it in four years because they're about to change the weight classes. They're about to change the way that they choose their athletes. So it's – you can have an idea, but, like, you know, there's no way. It's going to change is what I'm saying. Because as soon as they announce, like, the new weight classes, how they're going to pick, you know, the people, that'll all change.

So, you know, you just do your best and try to look at it for years. What you could do, though, if you're doing Olympians is like, you know, here's my goal in the first year. Like my goal is, you know, depending on if a person is like super efficient or they're super strong and not very efficient, you can focus on getting stronger or moving better. You know, that could be your main goal in year one. Year two would be to like, you know, start to like ramp things up.

Year three, you're going hard because you're going to be competing a lot. So now they make you compete at two international meets every, you know, like every like six-week block – or i'm sorry every period it's like uh like 12 or 13 weeks you've got to compete twice so it's pretty intense yeah the thing that i noticed oh go ahead sorry bud i was gonna say usually macro cycles are kind of based off of like one really big picture goal like if you're if you're a weightlifter then your weightlifting total is your macro cycle goal for sure but then the individual mesocycles along the way, they get much more specific in their, uh, in what you're trying to, yeah. And their intent where if you're, if you're super off season, you don't have any

competitions coming up for a while and you need, you want to bump up a weight class. Maybe the goal of that mesocycle is just to accumulate volume and put on muscle mass. But then as you get closer to competition, you know, maybe you have like a, a more snatch focused cycle. If you, if you, if you feel like your, your snaps needs more work than your clean and jerk. And then as you get closer to competition you know maybe you have like a more snatch focused cycle if you if you feel like your your snaps needs more work than your clean and jerk and then as you get closer to competition it kind of evens out a little bit where the intensity ramps up and you're doing more of the competition specific movements and strength and your one rm really is a focus but it'll shift along the way depending on what your specific goals are depending on when you're competing and what you need to work on. We do like, there's like four main blocks, four mezzo blocks. The first one being accumulation.

And what they'll do accumulation is like I do nonspecific hypertrophy would be a great way of saying it. So instead of necessarily just snatching clean jerk, I'm probably going to do stuff from the hip, from blocks, you know, complexes. It's going to, and I might not do just completely back squat. I might do unilateral squat one day. You know, so, like, it's going to look nonspecific, but we're going to accumulate that volume and get that person ready.

We're probably going to, you know, pinpoint individually what a weakness is. So if a person is weak, getting under the bar quickly or timing, like if their weakness is getting under the bar, then you would probably do things from the hip or high blocks. If it's timing, we're going to do like no feet, no hook. So that would be block one. And here's the thing. It might be more than one. Here's what we've noticed lately if i pinpoint accumulation or transmutation as being something that really uh is a positive influence on athletes you know on their results i'll do double you know like i know with with ryan of late we doubled up on accumulation we doubled up on transmutation which transmutation is more of a specific hypertrophy block meaning

it's higher volume it's going to be it's going to look more like a specific hypertrophy block, meaning it's higher volume. It's going to look more like a traditional program, but it's much higher. But he kills those two blocks. Like if you notice, he's totaled over 300 two weeks in a row now, and we're in transmutation, which shouldn't happen. So I can more that, or I can be smart and double that up, and we did. And so now it's really accelerated. Yeah. So then we go into a realization, which is now it's more of a traditional,

you know, let's take this hypertrophy that we've gained, you know, let's take all this volume and now let's start to ramp up the intensity. So the, then the reps, you know, the sets and the reps will come down and the intensity will start to creep up.

And the final block will be competition. It's like, you're going to be looking. Then normally those last three or four weeks, I don't program necessarily percentages. It's going to say like last warm-up, opener, second attempt. We're going to start to be super specific. Yeah.

When we were, I guess, in like like two areas of of understanding the the macro cycle of it uh when if you're looking at like a a crossfit year and and taking everything off of whether it's the regional which are coming back this year the games um or just being someone that wants to do really well in the open, it's really important to be able to kind of understand where the energy systems are and what you actually need for that specific competition. So if you're playing CrossFit and you're trying to be good at the open, your goal is likely to be in the best shape possible to perform at your highest capacity in an 8 to 15-minute workout, maybe like 6 to 12, something

like that. And in order to be able to peak in those areas, you're not going to start your training a year out going hard from 6 to 12 minutes. What you want to do is be able to build as strong of a base as possible in weightlifting and as big of an aerobic capacity as possible, which means you're going to be sitting on a rower, on an erg, on some sort of conditioning piece and getting long intervals on that. So you're going to be working on one end for basically one rep max speed technique, everything that's going to be under, say, 30 seconds, as hard and as heavy as possible or as fast as possible and then on the other side you're going to be building as much aerobic capacity as possible

so that as the year progresses you start to build that in and for us it was always like a really big strength cycle olympic lifting cycle like we i don't know what exactly your program looks like but i'm willing to assume that it's very similar to what our off season program looked like, where it was just pure Olympic lifting, pure strength, speed, power, and building that as much as we can.

Like the goal is in really that off first strength cycle in the off season is to build to one rep maxes and everything. And that's usually like a 12 week long period from there. We'd go into, well, how do we extend that out from like the strength speed to more strength endurance which would go into like call it a three to four minute window of basically for us it was a 12 week 20 rep back squat cycle um along with

keeping the speed power stuff with the olympic lifting so that would always be the the speed power stuff with the Olympic lifting. So that would always be the speed technique work beginning of training sessions and then moving into, um, a higher rep, higher hypertrophy phase for the strength endurance. Um, and then as the, as the aerobic training,

uh, started to reach its end, you'd start to really move that closer in. So instead of rowing for call it 30 minutes, now you're working on higher paced intervals and getting into that like 20 minute range. And as you start to get closer and closer to the season or whatever you're trying to peak yourself out, you're bringing that window in so that six to 12 minutes really just becomes how do we get really comfortable

dealing with that pain inside those, those windows? Because at some point the strength speed stuff, Olympic lifting, um, one RM, two RM, three RM stuff that you kind of top that out.

So you got to move inside there, start to build as big of a base as possible and strength endurance. And, and then at some point you just go well now it's time to sit and deal with some pain and you have to go and build build that six to twelve minute capacity so that by the time the open shows up you're mentally prepared to be able to deal with it i think that's a brilliant way of looking at you know i would 100 agree with crossfit some one thing in the past of when I write programs for someone who does CrossFit,

the thing I come against is like when I'm in that beginning stage and wanting strength and aerobics, like they're still wanting – like most CrossFitters still want that traditional Fran or they still want – and I'm like, it's just not the time. And so you fight them on that, you know, cause they're still wanting to do those crazy workouts and I'm trying to explain to them now is not the time. And what they don't understand is like, when you're doing that, you know, you know, like list training that,

you know, low intensity, steady state, you know, you're, you are setting yourself up to be much better down the road at that lactate threshold work. because you're building capillaries that's going to make it much easier to usher those lactate and make them into energy versus like becoming acidic and shutting you down yeah um the the thing that i think i i talk to most people about now because most of the the dads that are on our program are less interested in, you know, performance metrics and more lifestyle metrics. And when we start to lay out like what these people actually need and where they're going, I think what we end up talking about even more than

sets and reps and how we write the program is like the personal development side of actually envisioning who they are six months from today. Like once they lose the weight, what are they able to get? It's really easy to kind of lay out. I shouldn't say really easy. It's really easy because we've done it so many times, but to think about how you write a specific training program. But for people that are almost on like the, are not breaking even in their health and don't have consistent habits and routines built in to their day-to-day life, I think that that's one of the most important pieces of kind of understanding like a macro cycle of training or setting yourself up for success over an entire year is starting to like put some actual like pen to paper and and realizing like

what would you like to do would you like to be stronger okay like what does strength mean to you in 12 months after you've built habits and and to be able to like work yourself into some sort of personal development piece so that the training program is just part of showing up every day and and you know following workouts that other people have written for you is very simple but we can only write those workouts and we can only write that training plan or nutrition plan if you can tell us like where do you want to be what What does it mean to you? And like really attach some like feelings and emotions to what it, what it means to accomplish that goal. Um, it's really easy in the CrossFit world because there's the open and you go, I want to beat last year. Okay, cool. Like you've already, you've already started showing up

to the CrossFit gym and you're killing yourself every day. Like in, in your world, Travis, it's, I want to go to the Olympics. Okay. We're, we're all bought in to, um, exactly what we need for, to go to the Olympics. We know the weights, we know relative weight classes. Um, but man, there's, there's this whole group of people that we're coaching now that aren't interested in those things and it's super fun to talk to them and go hey uh we need to know why you want to lose 20 pounds yes like then we can write a workout and a nutrition plan to go along with that and you can help remind them why they're doing it like if you're trying to lose weight to play with your kids and you slip off the wagon you might remember why you're doing it. Yeah.

You guys should do the diesel dad, like, total. Like, you know what would be cool is if we did, like, you did, like, maybe a clean, not necessarily a clean, a clean, a front squat, and maybe a bench press or a strict press. And then you did a 40-yard dash, a one-mile run, and a vertical leap. It would be so much fun. Because here's the thing. And then you did a 40-yard dash, a one-mile run, and a vertical leap. It would be so much fun. Because here's the thing. Everybody my age is trying to look and feel like they did when they were in college. You know what I mean? And so, like, those are the things that you used to do well.

And so it would be cool to, like, you know, to measure those. I just gave myself the idea. Athlete number one. Yeah. I'm just going to like, yeah. Cause you know, that's, you always think about like college, I felt so fast and athletic and I was playing college football and I just felt, you know, indestructible. And so, but yeah, that's like the coolest question when, when we started asking people like where, where they're at and how, like why nutrition matters to them. And, you know, coming from the performance world, it like, it, it makes so much sense. Like, well, there's a

game at the end of the year that I got to go play and I want to do well in it. So this is what I have to do to go play the game. Well, yeah. But when people don't have a game, uh, one, we have to make deadlines up. You have to make fake deadlines that we create and say by this date we have to do this thing and most of the time we're six months out we've got like 30 pounds to lose or we've got some sort of strength metrics that matter yeah you go i know this works because we like this is how nutrition works this is how strength work this is how this is how the game is played. You have to, you have to be ready on game day. But, um, I think that that's where a lot of people run and run into problems is they lose, they lose that deadline. They lose the game day. And it just seems like, oh, that's six months out. That's not a big deal. But if you can,

if you can set that deadline of when you have to go play uh it makes it it makes it important to say in this six months i have to accomplish x and um and then being able to write a plan for that makes writing programming much easier it makes writing nutrition much easier we have a graph that shows you you're specifically on track to get exactly where you need to be by getting there. Or not. Yeah. You know, or you're not on track. I think that that is brilliant. I think whether you're doing to lump everything in one. So whether you're doing like your diesel dad, like us who are trying to like feel and look healthy, trying to feel better and trying to, you know, look a certain way, you know, whether you're that, whether you're a CrossFitter, a weightlifter, you know, whatever you are,

you come up with your goal that's at the end of this, like a year. Normally, you know, even in weightlifting, we're still looking at on a year to year. I know like at the end of year one, I want to achieve X. And so then you think about what are all the variables that I need to target. You take those variables and instead of of trying to do everything at once, you have a focus. So if I want to be, say I want to weigh 220 now, I want to be 200, but I want to be leaner.

So I probably want to spend the first few weeks possibly adding muscle. So then when I cut to 200, I'm going to look good. So first block, let's get stronger. Let's reach some of these strength goals. Let's add some muscle, not too much. Let's start to learn to track our macros. Let's understand that we might be in a surplus, but it's only 100 or 200 calories a day.

Then now you're in control. So then the next block, all right, now let's get chiseled. I'm already tracking. It makes it super easy. So now let's cut. Let's go 100, 200, under. already tracking. It makes it super easy. So now let's cut. Let's go 100, 200 under. But you can't do it all at once. Well, dude, I'm actually super interested because you have a bunch of college kids.

And the hardest thing to do in college is to have good habits because, let's face it, you have like four hours of commitment every day. Can you just show up and give me four hours? It seems really hard in college. Like you're actually doing something. And then all of a sudden now you've got a bunch of old dudes on podcasts. We got like 17 hours of commitment each day and we're trying to find 30 minutes to go get jacked. It's like the exact opposite. Do you talk to them about getting out of bed in the morning? Maybe you shouldn't sleep till 11 p.m. every day.

Absolutely. Why don't you take an 8 a.m. class and learn how to set an alarm? Step one, set alarm. 7 a.m., get the F out of bed. Don't drink on a night where you know you got to lift it. I've only had to do this once. If it's considered a weekday, try not to go to the bar. Try.

I rip my guys apart only once in the whole year i've been coaching now only once did i rip them as a team and yeah one saturday the majority of my team was hung over i'm just gonna be real and like they looked terrible and one poor guy i'm not gonna call anybody out one poor dude looked like he was going to die. Was it Matt Winninger? No. Oh, he's my favorite. He's my favorite college kid.

Matt's a seasoned veteran. He's not going to do that. No, it was Matt. He knows how to pick his spots. It was Matt that led these people down this dark road. Of course. He brought the amateurs with him. He brought the amateurs and the one poor guy.

Someone's got to be in charge of team culture. He's totally in charge of that. of course he brought the amateurs with him he brought the amateurs and the one poor guy someone's got to be in charge of team culture he's totally in charge of that and so this one poor dude was so sick and i made him squat anyway until he threw up i made him do 10 by 10s on the morning proud of him like that yeah and so like then i just ripped them apart i'm like i was like there's nobody in this group right here that really wants to go to the Olympics. So let's actually talk about your real goals. You just want to be kind of horseshit. Good.

Maybe I'm not the coach for you. I get, I ripped them apart. I was like, I don't coach horseshit. I coach greatness. And so maybe this is not the thing for me. Let me know.

I'll talk to you on Mondays. That was the only time I had to do that. But like, it only takes one. And I'm not even telling them. I understand it's college. It's not realistic for me to say, don't drink at all. You want them to go out and

party a little bit. I want them to live. You got to build that testosterone in them. They need to walk into the party well deep as a weightlifting team. Squat Saturday morning. Friday night's not the night. It's also important as coaches to put that stake in the ground that says we we squat on saturday mornings every morning every saturday morning you're allowed to go do whatever you want on friday night but

there's gonna be a big old bar on your back on saturday morning no matter what no matter what so i've only had to do it once the poor poor guy. He was so pale, this kid. And he's one of my stronger athletes. I'll just say this. He's my strongest squatter. That's all I'm going to say. How many kids show up to school, though, that have just been strong but don't have the habits and –

Oh, majority. Yeah, they've just been strong, and they've lifted weights from 14 to 18, and they show up to you, and now you have countless things that you have to start to implement into their lives. Where do you start? Sleep would be the first, making sure that they're looking at their sleep patterns. The goal is that the first step, I want them to pick a time that they go to bed. That's step one, and that'd be consistent. Don't tell me, well, I want them to pick a time that they go to bed. That's step one. And that'd be consistent. And so knowing, and don't tell me, well, I had this exam. You knew you had that exam for a month,

you know? So like be studied, like be prepared. And so to pick a time, you know, preferably, you know, eight to nine hours at least is what I'm looking, but not more than 10. It's like that sweet eight to 10 hours for college kids. so pick that out then step two would be let's go to nutrition you know which is a harder one the hardest thing is nutrition is getting them to freaking eat is getting them to literally eat matt weininger once again comes majority of the time it'll be six o'clock at night he's like man i haven't eaten all day i'm like food's free bro you already paid for it free yeah get your ass out of bed there's never going to be another time how is he not hungry i don't know man i just forgot he's got three hours of stuff to do

he i'm gonna tell you this he is the freakiest athlete i've ever coached because the thing he does the majority would kill someone like if i had eaten and lived like he did, I would not have been even remotely a good athlete. And this kid is still beating the majority of people in America, like not eating. Like I don't even know how he like is alive because he doesn't eat enough calories to like keep him alive, you know? Like, so to step to him, but now we're slowly making changes with him. I will say this.

Ryan came into school school like very disciplined, lost his mind a little bit. Girls. Yeah. He met his girl, but they're still together. And now they have like leveled out. She's a good athlete too, though. She's a great volleyball player,

and now she's going to do weightlifting too. So now he's got his act together. He's back to like watching what he eats. It's all aligned again. It's all aligned. A little bit of freedom in his life he blew up last yeah like he he came into school and he killed it and then he read lines he read lines but we got him we got him together now do you implement like uh team breakfast in the morning and making sure everybody stays together so that they're they're all kind of holding accountable? No, that's a really good idea. The problem is that, you know, the different classes, like somebody might have an 8 a.m. and like, I got to be

careful. Like you'll say that I say, okay, team breakfast is 7 a.m. every morning. For some people that works, some people, you know, it depends on their study habits and what time they've chosen to go to bed. So if I do that, I'd have to back up and say, everybody has to go to bed at this time. Which I could, you know, it's just like. Yeah. And it's more like weightlifting where you really have two things that matter, snatch, clean, and jerk. And all of the tested events happen in under 20 seconds of total energy output. How do you break down into really mesocycles of what's important?

In CrossFit, it's relatively easy because we just kind of look at energy systems. Right. But in weightlifting where the energy system is just one thing yeah it's very very short how do you how do you creatine phosphate phosphate how do you create a system yeah yeah like if that was like the crossfit you'd have people for six months just sitting on a rower but not doing any strength work almost until they until you backed it all the way down to go one rep max. But how do you separate individual four, eight-week, 12-week cycles so that people are periodizing their training

and at the same time kind of like focusing on different aspects? We still have to – if I get them some endurance and we do increase the capillary system a little bit, like that's going to help them recover. So there is a benefit to doing some endurance training early on. You know, you don't obviously you got to be careful not to be that ever to be a majority because, you know, that'll make them slower. Yeah. You're going to train the nervous system. So the majority is going to be fast.

But then what we would do is divide, you know, is look at the quality of strength so that you know there's speed strength stress speed accelerated strength there's starting strength which i heard that they're thinking about changing the name of starting strength because it's kind of misleading to like um explosive or so i forget what the ripitos changing is he didn't do that that was brian man is like talking oh gosh yeah yeah yeah starting strength is like okay so starting strength is a quality of strength that is laid out by the velocity people like brian man coach brian man yeah starting strength the book is like something different but okay starting strength is like is like um at velocity of 1.3 meters per second or faster in the weight room.

So the thing about changing it, which is probably a good idea because of what just happened right there, it gets confusing. And really it's the rate of, you're looking at the rate of force development is really what you're talking about. How quickly can I go from zero to a hundred, you know, is what you're looking at.

So you take those qualities of strength and you see where they suck and where they don't. You see, like, is this person efficient or are they strong and not efficient? You look at all these different qualities. Reactive strength, are they elastic? Can they produce force under load or not? And so once you have all these characteristics, then you can develop it personalized for the athlete. Like example,

Ryan is pretty, pretty balanced. And so like for him, it's a matter of spending quality time, working speed, you know, quality time, working strength, you know, he's, he's super efficient. When it comes to his movement, it's probably the best. I mean, I'm obviously biased, but I think, I think he has the best movement in the game, you you know minus he could probably get a little bit better at the jerk as far as movement but so like you don't have to work as much on movement and so the key is you know work on strength work on quality of speed but however then you take an athlete like morgan

who is incredibly strong so then you want to like you still want to take periods of time to get stronger because once he's developed that efficiency level, like we do a score, it's an efficiency score, where I look at their squat and their deadlift as compared to snatch and clean and jerk. And once they've developed a certain coefficient, that's probably what it's going to be, especially because Morgan's about a decade in.

So it is what it is. So there is going to be a time morgan's about a decade in so like it is what it is so there is going to be a time where i get him strong because even though it would by some people's standards he doesn't look efficient he is and so if his squat and deadlift go up so will his snatch and clean yeah we'll just maintain that that coefficient so like that's it you just look at different way more it's way more micro than say like CrossFit. How much are you implementing like, for lack of a better term, like plyometric type stuff where it's just rebounding?

Because if a snatch takes, if a snatch takes, it's not four seconds, it's half a second. But if you were to even break down that time domain even smaller to be able to work on these little tiny explosive pieces, how much do you do that stuff? Well, there's a thing called reactive strength where you do a box, a death jump. So I think it's 40-something centimeters, the boxes, and they step off and you're looking at ground contact time,

and you divide that by, like, how high they jumped. So you've got to have a jump mat, which we do. We have plenty of them. So you can literally get the team's RSI score in two to three minutes, the whole team's. So it's real fast to get it. So then, depending on what the score is, you can see if they're elastic or not. Because if they have a long ground contact time or it's short and they don't jump very high, either one,

like if the ratio is not good, then they need to work on elasticity. So plyometrics would be super good. Because, you know, obviously, if you're looking at ground contact time, they're taking into consideration the quickest of quick speeds. The goal is to get right off the ground, and it's a good indicator too for football coaches, speed and vertical leap. If they have a really good RSI score, they're a great athlete.

They're probably going to be super fast. They're going to jump super high. Anyway, so you look at that score, even for weightlifting, elasticity is super important because when you meet the bar, a great weightlifter meets the bar and that elastic component there, there's two – for the most part, there's two components that lead to elasticity. There's the muscle spindles, which is like the stretch reflex we always hear about. It's basically a part of the nervous system. What it does is like when it's lengthened super quickly then it tells the it tells the body automatically to like to contract so you hit the ground and then you know you bounce right up so

you see a great way to catch it clean like you see morgan catch 200 kilos and it looks effortless that's because he's amazing he's like got great elasticity yeah like by looking at that i'll see those components should i work on them should or not so like if someone is super elastic there's no point in doing a lot of plyometrics and like because you know weightlifting you know Olympic weightlifting in general is plyometric in nature however there's still plenty of people out there like ryan was not very elastic. He would catch a clean, stand up. He would never catch a bounce. He was too loose.

Yeah, there was no spring. He didn't have any pop in there. Now he does. Now he catches it, and it's beautiful because we did work on elasticity. But you do need to – that's where the athlete tracking comes in handy. You can quantify it. Also, if you're listening to this and you think you're gonna go and just jump off 40 inch box and try and rebound before you start stop don't do that yeah like that there's a lot of things going on and that's 40

centimeters by the way oh 40 yeah 40 it was like 45 centimeters not very high canada yeah it's like measurements it's like 20 inches or something. I've seen plenty of people rupturing Achilles on a 20 inch box doing that stuff. If you're not warmed up, you're not prepared. I would just start small. Play the long game on depth jumps. It's a funky one.

How high up? Jump up first. Don't jump down first. The forces are much higher in that case also travis you're saying a muscle spindle is a second ago but when you get that very quick muscle lengthening you're you're not just priming your muscles to kind of contract hard you have voluntary and involuntary muscle fibers when you get that very quick stretch all the involuntary muscle fibers also contract in addition to you consciously contracting your right other the rest of like the other 98 of your muscle fibers but so you have you have a little bit extra pull when you get that little bit of a stretch that you can't get any other way you can't

do it on your own it's the involuntary muscles that are actually doing the majority of it which is even better it's like it's faster too like in a sport like weightlifting you know having a really good mural muscular system is ultra important it helps in power In a sport like weightlifting, you know, having a really good neuromuscular system is ultra important. It helps in powerlifting too, but in weightlifting it's crucial. It's like, you know, when you do a jerk, when you do the dip and drive, having really good muscle spindles is key. It's like you'll just see somebody where it barely looks like they're moving at all, but they just have an incredible neuromuscular system that changes direction so quickly it creates all this force going upwards it's so it's it's a crucial part of being a

weightlifter yeah go back talking about macro cycles and mesocycles etc uh you know if you're doing a four week or four year block for somebody you're not going to write out four years of workouts and then give it to them be like here, here's your workouts, right? Good luck. Yeah, I'd imagine you kind of write one mesocycle at a time, and then based on what's happening, you may adjust them kind of week to week, depending on how they're doing, how well they're recovering, what their injury status is, et cetera. How far out do you write workouts for your Team USA athletes? What you do is, like like you do four years and you

put it in blocks and you have goals. So you set it up like that at first. It's like, you know, year one, during the different macro cycles I want to accomplish or different mesocycles, I want to accomplish this. And so you write out the goals, step one. And then step two, like a year. Like you would, you know, I have no problem running a year program. However, knowing that things are going to change, like it's the second they come out with like the way that we're going to qualify for next Olympics. Everything I've written is probably going to change unless I just get lucky and hit the nail on the head, which I won't. It'll be like, you know, like last time it had, you know, we had all we had all these macro cycles planned, and then all of a sudden they're saying, oh, here's the way you're going to qualify. You have to compete. Oh, by the way, I said it wrong. You have to do two major international competitions every six months,

which is like, that's a lot. So it's like four major competitions every single year you got to go to. So it's a lot, not to mention the nationals and other things you might do so anyway so that totally changed so then you gotta say okay which you know based on this so for those you got to compete it was like six times minimum of which four of them count towards your big score so then you gotta say okay i got'm going to plan to go hard at these four. However, if I mess up at one of those, you see how the variables, if I messed up at one of those, well, then that other one, now I got to go hard at it. So now things change. And so like,

it's just, I didn't see anyone in this block hit it perfectly. Like even Kate Nye, who destroyed it, in my opinion, she was rolling, rolling rolling rolling rolling and then she bombed out and she was you know she was planning on going super hard and so it changed everything so now she's got to instead of like peaking chilling out doing the next competition kind of half you know she had to like go right back to work so it changed everything that our coach had written so so you just you do your best and and that's all you can do.

And then you've got to be – the thing's got to be like a living document. It's alive. It's like if you plan to peak at, say, the senior world championships and you hit it, perfect. So then you can say, okay, at Pan Ams I'm going to just kind of like slightly deload and see what happens i'm not going to focus on it but there's just a lot of variables and then all of a sudden covid okay so then you had to like think about everybody's plan changed right all of our

plan basically you know like the danish girls i had to just basically keep you know extending their programs longer and longer because you plan plan a competition four weeks out, they'd cancel it. It was insane. So anyone who makes it to this Olympics, my hat is off to you and your team. I feel terrible for guys like Wes. It's not that everybody isn't lifting really, really heavy for a really long time, but that guy is just different. He's so large, and the weights that he moves are so big that like you're,

I don't care how big of a person you are. You just get beat into the ground over and over again. He's in his thirties. So it does suck for us because anyone who's ever met him is such a good dude. And Dave is like one of my best friends in weightlifting at Cal strength. And like, yeah, it does suck. But I'm hoping, good dude and dave is like one of my best friends in weightlifting at cal strength and like yeah it does suck but i'm hoping even though i know a lot of people might have seen his you know he didn't do so well at pan ams but there's a reason he just had a baby and so like i think come the olympics

they'll have him ready and you'll see like you know some top numbers once again and so they knew good and well going to that that you know he just needed to go to get check off. You know, like I said, you have to do these many competitions. I don't think they had any intentions of peaking at the Pan Ams last week. So, but they will have intentions,

obviously peaking at the Olympics. So now it becomes easy. You know, the macro cycle from here on out becomes very easy. It's throw it out on, you know, lay it all out, all the cards down at the Olympics in Tokyo.

Coach Travis Mash. Mashleet.com or you can go to Instagram, Mashleet Performance or Twitter, my favorite, at Mashleet. Douglas E. Larson. That's it. I'm on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. My favorite thing is when,

it didn't happen that much anymore, but Douglas Larson, My favorite thing is when, uh, is, uh, it didn't happen that much anymore, but, uh, Douglas Larson, he's the, uh, inspirational speaker. The E is really important.

I get tagged on his quotes all the time. Tons of people think that it's me. Maybe I tell him it's not, maybe I don't. Yeah, I would probably just, Oh, I didn't see it.

I'm going to back a thumbs up emoji. You should just share all of his very inspirational quotes as if they're yours. Yeah, that'd be a good way. Yeah, if you Google Doug Larson, he pops up just as much to me if not more. Is he famous, this guy? I don't know much about him other than he has lots of quotes that people attribute to him. Or rather they attribute to me. Happy birthday, Anders, by the way.

38, what a year, huh? You made it. You did it. You're a decade behind me. You birthday, Anders, by the way. 38? What a year, huh? You made it. You did it. You're a decade behind me. You know what's cool about 38? Not much. No, a lot of things are cool. Yeah, dude. Thanks. I appreciate it. I got to go surf with my daughter this weekend. There you go.

No way. Wasn't like I was out there. She was getting tubed, but we went to the beach yeah and uh yeah we actually had some decent waves and brought her out she cannot drown right call it swimming but she's the ocean's different though i don't care how much swim lessons you have when you're almost three years old a six-foot wave to a three-year-old is like a mountain coming at you. No doubt.

The ocean scares me with my kids because there's so many variables that can happen. Dude, we saw a whale. In North Carolina? Yeah, we were at Oak Island at our place. It was freaking rad.

What kind of whale? I don't know. One that spits water out of its back. No way. That's most of them. Yeah. I'm saying, is it the killer whale or the blue whale? Oh, no.

They don't let the orcas near North Carolina. I don't know. It's probably like a – I think a blue whale is the biggest one, right? It's probably like a gray whale. That's awesome, man. Those are probably like more – yeah think a blue whale is the biggest one, right? It's probably like a gray whale. That's awesome, man. Those are probably like more – yeah, we got to like watch a whale just kick it. Dude, do you ever think about the fact that a whale is like – if you put a whale in my garage right now, it would go all the way out to the street. Like they're fucking gigantic.

They are so big. But the ocean is so large that they just look like this little thing out there. Like they don't even – Until you're right beside them. Until you're right beside them. Oh, man. That thing is like a 747 floating around out there, and it doesn't know up or down. It doesn't know anything.

It just just it could go anywhere we're stuck to this stupid earth we go forwards we go backwards and most of us suck at jumping yeah we have two directions basically that they can do whatever they can do whatever they want and they're giants they're just giant prehistoric creatures and they can swallow you they can just by accident swallow you. I saw they were trying to figure out what the gut biome – I was watching National Geographic. They were trying to figure out what the gut biome of a whale looked like.

And the best way to do that, I guess, if you're a scientist, is to fly a drone right above its blowhole with a bunch of sticky stuff on the drone. So when it blows all the stuff up, it was capturing basically its snot. Gross. Whales are crazy. They're so giant.

Imagine if you swallowed that one. What's that? I heard blue whale hearts were about the size of a Volkswagen bug. Oh! You could probably swim down their aorta. That just freaked me out. Yeah.

Imagine getting swallowed because you're going to be alive. You're going to be in there and be like, I am in the belly of a whale, and I'm going to die. Freestyle. Freestyle, bros. I'm not getting out of here. What do I do? Anyway.

All right, boys. Friends. Oh, I'm Anders Varner. At Anders Varner, we're Barbell Shrugged. Barbell underscore shrugged. Get over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash diesel dad

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Three programs on the shelf. Friends, see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. Make sure you get into the show notes. We have the application link in the show notes right now. You can get in there, schedule a call. If you want to lose 20 to 40 pounds, the Diesel Dad mentorship is underway.

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