Barbell Shrugged - Richard Sorin: Generational strength w/ Richard Sorin, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #610

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

Over 40 years ago, back in 1980, a school teacher named Richard Sorin was sweating over a hot piece of hand-cut welded steel in a small 2 car garage. He had already taught the scholastic weightlifting club that morning, followed by AM bus duty, 8 hours of gym class, PM bus duty (for extra money that was used to eventually start his business), and then the jogging club for the teaching staff. Following the school day, he would tear across town to make it to the steel yard before it closed, strap steel to the roof of a 1974 Toyota Land Cruiser, and drive back across town to get started with his new business and dream... Sorin Exercise Equipment.   You see, he loved to lift weights, and with a background of collegiate track and field and national level Olympic weightlifting, he knew his way around a weight room. What he did not have, was access to any super-strong, customizable, sport specific weightlifting equipment. Nothing on the market at the time was good enough for him. He was tired of the bar being set so low by weightlifting equipment manufacturers, so he did the only thing he could think of. He made his own.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   Strength training before information Developing a strength focused mindset The difference between old school and new school strength athletes How strength is the primary focus for improvement in life Reflecting on a life in strength   Connect with our guests:   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Mentorship Application: https://bit.ly/DDMentorshipApp   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

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, we are hanging out with Richard Soren. A little while back, we went all the way down to hang out at a seminar, Zach Abinesh's seminar that he was running at SorenX. And we had actually been down there at the beginning of this year. We interviewed Bert. So being able to get into Richard's office, see the museum that is SorenX again, and see really like the insight to what strength training looked like way before the internet, way before people had tons of answers,

way before it was like easy to get information on getting strong, way before Barbell Shrugged was able to give you all of the coolest information from all the coolest people. There was guys like Richard Soren getting to work in garages after laying bricks all day that were just big strong angry mean men like like real savages and uh to see the progression of everything over the past uh couple decades as well as you know going through all of the phases that strength training and competing has been he He's been through the rise of big power lifting, seeing Olympic lifting take off, CrossFit, so many different ways that people are lifting weights and learning about training. It was very cool to get his perspective and really see a lot

of the things that he thinks are missing in today's world because of all the information, as well as what he thinks is so great about it. He is the original creator of SorenX, started selling gym equipment, and then it has now blossomed into, with the help of his son Bert, just a phenomenal business with phenomenal people, and I love getting down to go see everything that they have going on, including the museum of all the old weightlifting gear. So hope you enjoyed this episode. Before we get into it, we got to make sure we thank our sponsors. Buy Optimizers. At some point, we've all been sold a big lie, including yours truly. It's called the protein lie. Starting in the 1980s, supplement companies began pushing massive

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Do you feel like the bodybuilding era of strength training, in a way, took away from what you guys were doing of just pure getting as strong as possible and not worrying about maybe the aesthetic side or like it was just purely about how much can you lift. And then all of a sudden kind of Arnold comes through and changes it into this like beautiful, aesthetic Mr. Olympia, you know, seven, eight times in a row. Z7? Something like that.

Well, as was mentioned out there, I mean, I trained in the most dungeon-like gyms. Yeah. And Big Dave was Big Dave. I didn't know he was Dave Draper that I trained with. And when all of a sudden he got into bodybuilding and he disappeared it was the media wasn't at that time widespread enough where you knew where he went yeah he just went somewhere we think he went out west so years later i finally got to talk with him he goes i know you i said how would you know me yeah sir and he explained to

me i go you gotta be kidding me uh the i loved so much the idea of strength and i guess i would call it functional strength you ought to look you'd be at least as strong as you look and the bodybuilding end of it while i appreciated it because a lot of work went into it i never really caught on to it the closest i came was uh probably in the 80s when i was around cas casmeyer and he he was And he was strong. He was functional. He was an animal. And he really, I mean, I walked through a restaurant at the Playboy Club in Great Gorge, New York, World's Strongest Man, where he ripped his peck. But he walked through a restaurant and i heard this this sound and i said what the heck's going on and it was people looking at him and dropping their forks just shocked yeah wow yeah i mean how much would that ever happen yeah so whereas i never really i never i went to one bodybuilding contest

ever it was in brooklyn new york and it was bill pearl and to me he was a real guy you know he used to dress up like an old-time strong man and yeah he did a lot of strength feats and and i enjoy i i really enjoyed that but i was not a follower of bodybuilding i did at best what i would call power bodybuilding and and if you do power bodybuilding you'll you'll get both you'll get a good physique and you'll be strong as you look yeah um so growing up i was very fortunate to have a strength coach and my strength coach. Whenever we'd go to NSCA, even back 20 years ago, back in my teens, we'd always go over to y'all's booth and he would always talk great about you. He knew he knew Bert, but he always from my memory from 20 years ago, kind of positioned you as like a grip strength specialist in a way.

Is that is that accurate? Were you like the grip guy at some point or you mentioned you mentioned straps a couple times today and about how people just don't have the grip strength anymore that seems like it's always been is that like really important to you grip strength specifically if if anything is remembered about me it was a lot to do with grip because as as a youngster i didn't realize I had anything special, any gift of levers that were different in my fingers and whatever. But I always remember my mother would say, I would just be playing with it, and I'd squeeze her, and she'd go, ow!

She goes, that hurts so bad. And I got thinking. I said, well, maybe I do have something of a gift in my hands. And I pursued it. And I got aware of watching some feats at strongman shows and stuff. And I said, gee, I could do that. And as I got into it, and then some people learned about me, they would send me different challenges or tell me about things.

I did real well at it. and about me, they would send me different challenges or tell me about things. I did real well at it. I was the first in 17 years later, again, certified on a number three gripper, which is a benchmark for the world. And there's some things, I have a grip area outside, which I'm very fond of, of things that still haven't been done again. So for not having huge big hands, I had a gift, and with a bit of training, it really went over the top for quite a while. It was a long ride, like 20 years that I really went after it. I had a pretty severe wreck, and these fingers are numb,

so I can't really do anything grip-wise anymore. But I met so many fine people and so many people that found something that they could do simply at home for not a million dollars and engage it against someone else. Oh, you did that? that well i did 37 and a half you know yeah it's it's the love for it and it's the the spreading what's in your heart and handing down to others do you think part of the reason that people are using straps and things like that more prominently these days other than just it just helps you get a higher total uh is that they they don't do manual labor like they used to people aren't like

laying brick for a living or or doing doing like things with their hands all day long they're they're they're typing you know it's a digital world now i think that's part of it and i think I think the influence of – I was told by a gentleman who broke a world's record. I said, how could you be so much stronger 10 years later than you were when I last saw you? He goes, it's all about the technique, how you do things, and your equipment. And the weakest part on most people, I did a lift that still hasn't been exceeded. I did a raw lockout, six-inch lockout with 1331 barehanded. Yeah. And I said, well, I don't have the world's record deadlift, so maybe there's people who are going to do a lot more. So we held a little contest with some prizes not too long ago,

and there was people all over the world trying this thing. And the highest we got was 900 pounds without straps. Now, if you're tied to the damn thing, you know, and I went like, gee, could it be that different? And I guess we found out because there was a big prize attached to it because I wanted to know. Yeah. Was that a decent thing or was I just an average guy? Yeah. Or was I just an average guy? So grip to me was very important because it was a road to meet other people that were my heroes as well. Can we cycle back to just kind of who you are and what Sorenx is for people that just aren't familiar with you or the company or the equipment, et cetera? I was a five-year-old kid that received for Christmas a barbell set from my parents.

And when I was asked to bring in your most favorite thing to show and tell, I loaded up that little barbell. It was like a 20-kilogram barbell? No. He's five years old. No, I know. Ten little barbell. It was like a 20-kilogram barbell? No. He's five years old. No, I know. Ten pounds, baby.

Oh, gotcha. But it was like a little tiny. Gotcha. Yeah. Someone rolled in like a York barbell, dude. Your parents were like, you're going to be huge one day. And I loaded the thing up. I'll never forget putting it over my shoulder. My mom got me as close to the school as she could to drop me off.

And that thing felt so heavy. Carried it across the parking lot. Sure. But that was my favorite thing. I identified with that. I got to see Hercules when I was seven years old. That's the original movie poster out of the theater. And watching that and what he was about and how he did things was a real inspiration. And I was in an area growing up where if you burnt the gas and went to see these people,

you got to learn a lot. I was near Andy Jackson, Burr Barbell, York Barbell. I lifted for the Keysby Eagles. Up north, it was a lot richer and more dense on strength than it was down here. I came down here, and there was nobody. How hard was it to lift weights or, like, find a group of people that were lifting weights? Like, I think about, like, Louie, you know, laying brick all day, doing construction all day. Then he comes home, and he's got, like, three guys in his neighborhood that just happen to want to back squat with him at 5 o'clock every single night. Was it you by yourself?

Did you have a group of people? I always trained alone when I first started. And I used to hike across town to a friend of mine's brother i'd pay him a quarter and he'd let me use his barbell well i did it so much i got strong enough where they didn't want me around so they suggested that if i went out for a track that it would be, you get a letter sweater, and you're a real cool guy. So, I was a young kid. I said, well, I'll go out for track.

But I never, my first love was always lifting and training. And the track, I was very good at it. I won scholarships everywhere. Yeah. I was very good at it. I won scholarships everywhere. And I always, I never, which really kind of makes me think, I never put together the lifting and some of the sports-specific things I did lifting, how they directly affected my throwing. No one ever told me.

I never really thought that. But I love to do both of them. So it kind of magically went together. I noticed when my squat went up, my throws would go up.

When I gained a little weight, a muscle, I threw further. This is shot and discus? Yeah. Well, I threw the discus, but when I received the scholarship, they had me try the shot put, and I did as well on the shot put, just picking it up in college. I never threw it before. If you went to South Carolina, we're actually at Soar Next right now. as well in the shot put, just picking it up in college. I never threw it before.

You went to South Carolina. We're actually at Soar Next right now. And USC is like kind of one of those hot spots where a ton of strength coaches come out of here. Well, yeah, a ton of strength coaches and a really fine track team. Yeah. Burt really never got the opportunity to lift in high school but when the summer when he graduated and he was training with me and around our stuff he walked into the USC weight room one day and they say hey kid what are you doing here and he says, well, they let me lift. And Larry Judge, who's a very fine track coach, he said, you know how to clean?

I said, yes, sir. Well, he cleaned 250 for five. He goes, you're on the track team. You have hips. Good job. You have hips. You can do this. And as a walk-on, he went to Olympic trials.

I mean, that's a long way from not being really an athlete in high school. It was there. The genetics were there. The heart, when he caught on and saw the value that he liked what he was doing, that's all you need, that little push. We're sitting in your office right now, and we saw you basically have like a weightlifting museum in the room next door, in the very large room next door.

I didn't realize your office was going to be filled with so much memorabilia and just weightlifting history as it is. This is incredible. Well, Bert is more sanitary than me. He likes a nice, neat room that he can move fast and whatever. But you have to remember, I've been training over 60 years, and every little bit that's in this room is like holding my family close because I grew up as an only child.

And it's the things, I could look at a picture and say, God, that was in the Elizabeth YMCA. And that was the first time I did the Highland Games. And that belt was the last belt ever worn by an American that set a world record in weightlifting. And I was there. You were talking about that earlier. Yeah, and I was there to see him wear that belt. That's one of my most valued things I owned.

Yeah, that was 50 years ago, is that what you said earlier? Something like that? It was in 68. Okay. Yeah. When you are, the library that you guys have upstairs as well, how difficult was it to actually find information on what you were doing? Like once weightlifting was in your blood and you realized this was the thing,

how do you even go about finding a book? I mean, we were talking about it earlier, like Bill Pearl's Keys to the Inner Universe Encyclopedia on Weight Training, Volume 1. That book's 50, 60 years old, isn't it? It's been here a while. But that book was just returned from Alex Good, who now trains everyone in our gym, in the arm farm. His arms are over 20 inches now by following some things in there

and some of the tricks we showed him. And it's all in here. You just have to have the desire and the resolve is what everything in life's about. The resolve to do it. To want to sit there. You go upstairs and you look at the magazines.

You'll see a hundred bookmarks I'll put in one magazine. And I could memorize things very easily. And I could just think back, oh yeah, page 47 in Iron Man, July 1969. It said this. That's why it works yeah it's there we just have to use it yeah it's more it's more people communicate more now through different means and they're they're of a different cut of cloth. They are. Yeah. In what way?

What do you mean? I could tell the first time I meet somebody by the look in their eye what they're about. And I used to see it a fair amount, but I don't see it much anymore. And I don't know if that's like taking a bulldog that used to be the most fierce animal and breed him into something that is just, you know, a roly-poly drooling thing. It's not the same animal anymore it's called the same thing but it's just not so people just don't have like the fire like the drive they used to have we don't we haven't had stress or hard times on kids kids get up and they're going to get breakfast whether

they earned it or not they're going to get stuff for christmas whether they earned it or not. They're going to get stuff for Christmas whether they earned it or not. All these things they never really knew am I going to get to eat tonight as a rule? Or parents are so trying to protect them with so many things, which is showing love, but when you get out there in public, it's sharks swimming around. You're not going to show them how to live at a little bit higher rate before you let

them go out by themselves. That scares me. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't see what I call just hard, old-school, tough guys much anymore. They look for the easiest way. They look for the excuses. It's not my job.

I take the trash out. I do whatever it takes to do to make this go. It's what it is. And I don't think it's anyone's direct fault. It's because the times have changed. It's too easy. Yeah. And everyone's 10 foot tall and has a giant sword when they're on the Internet.

If you're getting my face face-to-face, you've got a problem. It's different. They're not accountable. They're not – their life doesn't change whether they're good or bad, so why be good? So this is actually really interesting to me. I have three boys. I have a 3-year-old, 4-year-old, a 6-year-old. Anders just had his second kid.

We're literally talking about this on the way up here. It couldn't be more timely. Yeah, we were. We were basically saying that like we we want to treat our kids really well and give them good lives but at the same time we don't want them to be soft how do you find that balance like when you when you were raising burt like how how did you ensure that he had a great childhood but at the same time like was it was a rugged tough individual with resolve that could that could face the world

i decided long ago that i was going to do everything I could to prepare him for life. I loved him dearly and it took thought. I would put situations together that would include him, that he mattered, things were uniform, that each time Pops did this, he was going to pretty well do it the same way. If you vary from day to day, well, I was on the road two days. When I come home, I know you've been a bad boy, but here I'm going to take you out for ice cream because I feel guilty. That doesn't work.

You've got to be consistent. I introduced him to people at all levels in life. I introduced him to things that I love that would keep us together long after playing catch in the yard. I set up things that were challenging more so than probably his years but that if he sucked it up he would have great success and know it and uh I think today I go like oh my god I should have been put in jail probably for exposing him to some dangers in life or situations, hunting or fishing or whatever. But I did.

I wanted him to get it from me first in the best possible way so that he could feel important. For him, now he's writing recipes to cook food. Well, what I saw before was grandma puts it on the plate, puts it down in front of him, and when he's done, she picks it up and washes it. What part did he have in it other than eating stuff that grandma gave me? Let him pick his own food. Let him clean his own plate. You know, he's young, he's jumping and running around. Let him get you and show you respect by getting you a glass of water. Yeah. We don't, we don't have World War II or World War I or Korea. We don't have stressors on us.

Our parents, I had to really pitch in as a young person. I watched myself since I was age nine. I couldn't leave the house. I used to watch down the street all the kids play, and I couldn't leave the yard but I had to do that so my parents could work to make enough money to live in a house and eat so kids stay or not that way yeah you know they they they just have not been exposed to that or exposed in the proper way. And when that gets bred out of them, it doesn't set well in my heart. Yeah, yeah.

It's a really tough balance in wanting to make people, especially your kids, happy. And at the same time, being in business, being an athlete, being under the bar, all these things you have to force yourself to extend yourself beyond where you're currently at to create something of value, whether it's your life, your business, whatever it is. I feel like it's very challenging to balance those two things of wanting to make someone happy, especially your kids. To grow, you have to be in an uncomfortable place. And you, and then you value your elders more if they help you move to that better place. Yeah.

If you're always in the same place, no matter what you do, you have no life. And you have no guidance. You have no – Bert, when he was a little boy, he loved – I collect knives, and he loved this one pocket knife I always used to use. And finally, he convinced me to use it. And my heart's beating out of my chest because he was just a young little, little chap. And he walked down to the back of the yard. And I kept watching him, watching him.

And he came back like this. And he looked at me. And I said, what's the matter? And he went like this. And he was cut pretty bad. And I said, what's the matter? And he went like this and he was cut pretty bad. And I said, well, wait a minute. I said, daddy's busy right now. Let me finish this and then we'll fix it up.

And he went from utter panic to, well, dad's not worried about it. I'm going to live. Yeah. So I'm about to have an anxiety attack. So I bandaged him up the best I could. And he took the knife and he says, maybe we need to put this away for a while. Yeah.

He decided that. Right. It wasn't a pretty thing. Yeah. But it was a learning thing. I was going to say, on a similar note, where you've had this passion for training your whole life, you have kids, of course you want to share that passion with your kids,

but then there's the balance of pushing it on them, making them do it, and then they resist, and then they don't want to do it. How did you strike that balance where you could share your passion without pushing them away you could make it you could make anyone do anything for a period of time but the chances of it succeeding once you're not around is not going to work because you're the one you're the you're the hammer and they're the anvil you're the hammer and they're the anvil. You're the one beating it in their head. With Bert

I so love lifting. So love it so much. And he wasn't particularly interested. So I wasn't going to force him. Anything else he was doing I kind of went around the edge and he liked hunting and he liked camping so anything he needed to build forts

or whatever he had hunting and he liked camping so anything he needed to build forts or whatever he had that where he could next time dad came over he would have a fort built or he had a snare to catch me with or something but um it i just lost the train of thought for a second. So you didn't force it on him. He said through high school he didn't really train, right? No, how it worked was he came up to me one day and said, Dad, all the other kids have allowances. You think I could have one?

I said, well, I said, how about if we do this? If you come in and train with Dad, I'm going to give you $5 each time you train. Dang, he started out as a pro? That's right. Professional. Day one. And for a young guy, that was a lot of money. Well, the first two months, he wore me out.

I mean, I was penniless. Because he came in that gym every day and trained. And then one day he came in, he looked at me, and he went, Dad, he says, you don't have to pay me anymore. He says, I like this. Because he was starting to get some muscles. People were starting to remark about it.

He was getting better at kickball instead of the last one picked. He was the first one picked. And he internalized if you put it, throw that bait out the right way, they pick it up and they run with it. You're not going to carry them your whole life. You're going to influence them, but it's going to be good or bad.

And you're going to have to really plan what to do. It's not spontaneous. I always try to be way ahead of the bubble on that. I used to read. He didn't like to read. I didn't like to read. But my dad figured out what I liked to read. He bought piles of strength and health magazines.

He bought me Outdoor Life, Field and Stream, whatever. And I learned to read through that okay with him i used to read to him hunting books and he could half of the books he could recite by but he started to dream what the old school guys on in georgia on the plantations, how they hunted on horses and all. And that's what he moved to. Because I knew later in life we'd probably get to do that together, which we do. And that he would, if you're busy in the outdoors, you're not going to be hanging around the streets getting in trouble.

Yep. you're not going to be hanging around the streets getting in trouble. So in many ways, that extra effort was spent in the best of intention. Yeah. When you kind of look at from when you started training and started taking it really seriously, There's been many eras. In my strength training 25 years, the CrossFit thing, that era, you could call it maybe maxed out. Obviously, the games are going to be here forever and the gyms,

but that era that swept through for 12, 15 years. But you were around for the bodybuilding era, a huge powerlifting era. All of it. And how were you mentally seeing something that you loved shift into this bodybuilding aesthetic thing? And then go all the way into multi-ply crazy powerlifting. Where did you find yourself in each of those eras as you had your own take on it so early in the game and then saw kind of like this like someone take it in a completely different direction or or in their own direction to

create these sports I had I had a maximum length of time since I started so early to see it all and see the originators of each of these things. Yeah. Okay. And then I saw how those groups functioned. You could tell a powerlifter, I don't even know who he is, from a bodybuilder,

just the way they carry themselves, the way they look, all these things. Now, taken to a certain level, like I said, I went to Bill Pearl because he was a strong guy. He was an honest man. He believed in nutrition. He lived a clean life. And he had it all. But now to see it grow, I could judge to myself whether I wanted to be part of that or not.

And there were some things, like if you gave me tickets to certain contests, if I had to walk, I would go. And there's other ones. I just don't see how that ties into what really physical culture or iron is. Yeah, like some of the new bodybuilding stuff, it's not new, but it's like much more like the guys that aren't physique athletes. It's like they wear board shorts. They're not doing legs. I'm like, how is that a sport?

How is that the guy? When I see that one, if I had come through and seen all these different eras and then you see how they kind of get chopped and sliced and find a little place for everybody, those are things that at times just tweak me and I'm annoyed by it. But I also realize this game is to be played forever and it's always going to shape and reshape itself. It will reshape itself and just like the pendulum is going to swing back and forth

and maybe when it's on the outside of its arc I'm not real pleased with it or interested, but I have enough faith in strength training or working out or whatever that it's going to come back and be the thing that I feel like there's been a huge push into just a pure strength. Like, let's just lift weights and have fun doing it. It doesn't have to be the sport. It doesn't have to be. Well, doing something is better than doing nothing. 100%.

Okay. Yeah. We're talking from, like, just a purist standpoint, I guess. Let's say, let's go back 40,000 years. The first level of communication ever was when a man traced his hands on a cave wall. Well, those hands were, I guarantee the tribe leader was the guy that could lift the biggest rock with his hands. Yeah. Or carry the heaviest log. Yeah.

Or thrust a spear into the bully mammoth or whatever. So you see how the communication of strength goes. Yeah. What's going to stick and what's not. It is ingrained in us to lift things and big things. You don't want a small hamburger. You want a big one. You want a big paycheck.

You want a little one. You don't want a big car. You don't want a little one you don't want a big car you don't want to it's it's ingrained in our mind that that's how the pecking order of life goes you know why why are all the giants alive and all the super big tall strong men so popular because they're different and they they're they're bigger than life That's what you aspire to be. That's what I think drives a lot of it. And you're not going to get people sitting on a machine pushing air and reading a dial.

It's going to kill something in their heart that for 50,000 years has been around. You know, why does a dog circle three times before he lays down? He doesn't do it because he likes to. It's because that was ingrained in his ancestors to protect themselves before they lay down from other animals. So I think it's a lot the same with us. to protect themselves before they lay down from other animals. Yeah. So I think it's a lot the same with us. I could hear one particular set of weights we have out here,

and it's like music. And the young guys I'm teaching, they can't wait to hear that sound. They don't want to hear rubber. They don't want to hear a clunk. They want to hear that ring of that plate. Yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about. I mean, when I owned my CrossFit gym, we had zero metal plates in there.

The first time I went back to, like, Gold's, and we were lifting, and you squat, and you rattle 315. Oh. Metal hits your ears, and you're like, I haven't heard that in, like, a decade. There's nothing like it. And now I just, like, I have, like, rubber plates at my house, but it's like, I need to get metal plates. It's so much cooler because it's just a different, like, the whole different vibe.

I don't think that's going to go away for a long, long time. Yeah. That need, or if I could, how many people would give up weightlifting completely if there was a thing that you could press a button for five seconds and build muscle? Yeah, some would go to it. It would be the swing of the pendulum. But how many would say, screw that. I want to be with my buddies banging iron.

Yeah, there's more to lifting than just getting the result, than just getting fit or just getting muscle. It's like my whole social life. It's all my friends. It's what I do to hang out. It's good for my mental health. I train. I just feel better the whole rest of the day. I enjoy it while I'm there.

It feels good to me. There's so many other aspects. I think there's some people that are destined to be at the highest level as far as the world champions and the record setters and everything. But I think a lot of them, thinking about Brandon Lilly, he was a super great power lifter, but he was a lost soul, and he admitted it. And when he got in a terrible accident near death, it was the time he came in on an IV to Summer Strong. And it changed his life.

Now he plays the guitar. He's lost 100 pounds. He rows. He works out. He hunts. He's picked up archery. I was looking at his Instagram earlier today. He's doing jiu-jitsu also.

He lives a life. He says, I have a life now, but I'm involved in all these things. He tries to do the best with his bow. He rode 100,000 meters in one day, 10 and a half hours of rowing on his birthday. That's pretty good for anybody. You know? But he says, I didn't care

about my family. I didn't care about anything except getting those records. Well, let me tell you, the trophies don't matter after a while. Half the time, you don't remember what you won them for. It's the people you met it's that pain or that exhilaration you felt when you lifted a big weight you know or to overcome your own fears in front of other people wow that's out there

you know one thing if you miss by yourself, but you got 500 people watching you, you better suck it up if this is what you say you're going to do. I think a lot of it is in the psychology of lifting and training and doing. That's why I like to have my stuff around me because I'll look at something and I'll get thinking I'll come up with a whole new concept that applies to what I do yeah you know those six erector sets right there that's you have erector sets right there I haven't seen an erector set and they're from the era when I didn't even notice that sitting right there. I haven't seen an erector set in so long. And they're from the era when I...

I didn't even notice them sitting right there. There's like the original erector set over there. And those are from the years when I started, about seven years old. That was my favorite toy. Yeah. And everything out there is sitting right in that box. That was the base. That was the base. That was the base.

That got me thinking, how can I make this beam? Well, I could put two of these together, but I need a certain plate that's universal. When I was a kid, I was thinking this. It wasn't about building toys. It was about thinking about different ways to do things. Or looking at a bottle and saying, what 10 other things could i do with that bottle yeah you know and and just being around this stuff stimulates my mind to think out of that box more than i think the average person and it seems like you've infused that that culture of of

innovation and problem solving into the company here like you guys are responsible for many innovations in the strength world. Many of them, I don't know all the details there. I'd actually love to hear from you some of the innovations that people kind of see everywhere now, but really you guys originated. It was always easy for me. It was my drive to make because i love lifting but i wasn't thoroughly happy with the equipment you know it's supposed to be hard but it's not supposed to be dangerous or or take

a half an hour to get a workout done you could do in 10 minutes so i tried it with bert and he is magnificent with it on how to think out of that box and say okay if i have 100 players in a room and i have an hour set forth that i only could train now time is at a premium so to put a pin over here where you don't have to move 90 degrees or bend over and you could slide it from here to here that's huge there was back the the benches were narrow they weren't reinforced there no wheels. These are things I added on back in the day. There were no cambered bars. There were, everything was single station. It wasn't multi-use pieces.

The power rack was two pipes close together with holes drilled in it and those were sold as isometric miracles to cover up really the advent of steroids and uh and the first thing i did i took i took a power rack at the ymca in columbia and cut it apart and put it that wide apart where you can work out inside it as the modern day power rack there it it seems simple and it is simple if you get it yeah well I think that it comes down to like understanding nuance and just the number of reps you get you start to see the holes and And how have you kind of like maybe even I assume you're very aware of the nuance that you can look at something and look at a bottle and see 10 different products that it could be or look at a problem in a weight room and quickly figure out how to fix it.

Does that skill of like understanding the nuance of how gyms flow and having the experience, do you still notice that you can like walk into any gym and look at, look at the way it's set up and realize there's still so many things that you need that you can create to, to make it better? good bit i would i would go first to the potential customer and i would just ask to just sit and watch them do their thing for a workout and i would take all my notes and with some i would even give them a summary of what i felt a lot of them didn't like that. But it was what I saw through fresh eyes. And then when the job was done, I would actually take an extra day and watch how they trained. And I said, you know, if I made that at 90 degrees, they wouldn't be walking in front of each other. Or if I put the dumbbells on the platform, they wouldn't have to walk across the room times 100 and lose 100 minutes of training time. They could just bend over and pick up the dumbbells from 30 to 60s

and get their warm-ups done. And putting it together that way, I guess they say it's form follows function. In many ways, most of my stuff is that way. How long did it take before you kind of created the power rack? Like how long had you been training and, like in a way, just been on inefficient squat machines in gyms they said the first power rack was made by bob peoples uh who was a great deadlifter he was he held american record he weighed only 181 pounds he pulled 734 i Yeah. But he made a power rack, and he would do lockouts,

and he would do shrugs and did different things. That's the first one that they say was available. It was made out of 4x4s. It was close together. But that's where the concept of something like that came. York jumped on it, and like I said, it was at best you'd just use it to take squats out of, and everyone realized the idea of isometrics is good, but only at the point where you're pulling at. It doesn't make you stronger above or below that point. Yeah. But when it was made better and moved apart,

now you can get inside and safely train, and you can do shrugs and pulls and all this other stuff. So each piece was dissected and say, what's the good thing about it, and what's the bad thing about it? And I used to use 74.5 square feet when I used to lay out rooms to to estimate them per piece of equipment well if the bench is doing one thing and it's occupying 74 feet square feet in a room now it's at a premium. I wish that 74 feet was filled with something you could do four things with. Or you have a base, which is our base camp rack,

that you could hook a neck machine to and have one on every single rack instead of one that everyone in the room stands in line to use. When you are, I guess, where do your interests lie? Like where is your curiosity at now? I imagine at some point it was like really digging into training programs and writing, and then it gets into equipment and business. What's piqued your curiosity and what takes a lot of your brain space nowadays? Well, my retirement age is five years ago. Yeah, you're still here.

But I'm still here. I was in a really terrible wreck a few years back, which gave me a lot of problems. But I still, last week, I worked out four days a week. Yeah, you pulled 500 this year. Nope. Did not happen? No, I did 500 for 49 years. And the 50th year, I didn't realize that I had a bleed in my stomach.

And my blood oxygen dropped down to seven, which you should be dead from 17. And I was in the hospital the day after I tried that 500 pull. I got halfway up. But then I said to myself, well, I wish God gave me the gift of 50 years. But he gave me a darn long run at it. Yeah. So I'm back doing deadlifts on the barbell i bought when i was 12 you know still working at them i'm not using a lot of weight but i'm doing them yeah

doing a lot of yoke carries i'm doing a lot of things that functionally what i'm gonna need to be able to get around at 70 years old. That I still want to hunt. I still want to be able to hang with. I've never been around people my age. I don't know what people my age do. I've been around athletes and young studs like you all. And that's all I.

I took a nap one day and I thought I was going to die. And Bert goes, Ted, people take naps. Yeah, but it was during the daytime, and I lay down and fell asleep. I have shit to do. I'm not supposed to be sleeping. And he goes, people do that, Dad. They don't run like, you know. Your battery's allowed to recharge. So I've been isolated in many ways,

but the joy of setting my clock saying, okay, 430, when that thing rings, if I could get out of this seat and get that belt on, I'm halfway there. Yeah. And I'm going to do a little bit today. That's my favorite sound. We can hear back there. I immediately turned. I was talking about it.

Yeah. That's the metal place right there. I'm not sure if the mics are picking that up or not, but we can hear the clanging of the metal weights in the background. There's someone going 225 for about 10 over there right now. Sounds beautiful. But no weights sound like those. Yeah.

I just love it. Yeah. I don't think I'll ever tire of it. I think there's every way in the world I've tried to convince myself to go feel that pain that's going to be associated with it. You know, 60 years of doing anything, you run out of ways to fool yourself. Did you notice different stages of your life? We're talking about we're relatively new parents.

He's got his oldest is six, mine's three. And at this stage, training has taken a wildly different shape compared to 14 to 32 um maybe 35 um have you noticed a lot of like the consistency of your training has obviously always been there but how your training mirrors your life and what you need and and having the ability to be mature enough to not go be killing yourself well when it doesn't match where you're at in life if i want to live longer there's things that i know are going to wear out sooner than others i study people i study medicine and stuff like that and everyone has problems with their hips and their bone density and stuff like that when they get to my age. So I'm doing things that are still strength-related,

but they address those things. I do a lot of carries. I figure if I could carry, let's see, an afternoon, I'll do 620 feet of carrying 340 pounds. Yeah. I can carry a bear that far hell i'm happy yeah you know or in theory yeah but saying that's gonna give me another year where i could do something else i love which is hunt yeah and by doing that i'm having success again by getting closer to be able to hunt a quality hunt and walkaways and all this other stuff I know that every time I go out there I'm not going to set a record anymore

or I'm not going to be known for anything but it's valuable enough to me to keep doing it and tweaking it and like you said adjusting the volume or the station yeah to to what's going on and i tell you don't be i was never a follower ever and it could have been good or bad but i was a thinker if i didn't see the value in something, and they couldn't show me, and I couldn't rationally say, yeah, I'm going to get a mohawk. I just didn't do it. Yeah. What does hunting, I assume there's some fishing in there, there's some, like, sport fishing books you have up in here. What does that mean to your family?

I didn't get to ask Bert. He's obviously got a big hunting passion. Bert, we just started Soar Next Outdoors, and he is around the best outdoor, and they are athletes now. Cam Haynes is the ultra marathon. I saw you have a Cam Haynes barbell now, right? Yeah, he runs a marathon every day yeah and he's finding that having a specific training regiment for archery really helped him yeah you know and people that are spending a thousand dollars on a

bow are are they don't want crappy results and if you're not in shape and you can't climb the mountain you're not going to kill the sheep yeah so we're trying to show them better ways to get that feeling that they want success you bring up such an awesome point like in in so many ways we feel like well we just can't take strength and conditioning. Like, how much further can it go? And then you realize, like, oh, there's, like, potentially millions of archery people out there that just have no idea how to train for their sport.

They have no idea of strength and conditioning principles. And what happens? They fail. Yeah. Not because they can't shoot a bow or buy a bow. Their body lets them down. Their body lets them down. The hike in is too much.

The hike out is too hard. Absolutely. I can't carry this deer quarter out or whatever. So if you look at it like one thing helps another. I mean, I look around this room. It's just like I could do all kinds of stuff in here. And then the memories of stuff that I've done in those pictures throws it right back in my brain and say, you know, I was thinking about that piece 20 years ago, and no one understood it or needed it.

But now they need it, and this is why. To study, always be open, having things around to integrate with and look. I mean, to... Tinker. To tinker. Yeah. To tinker. So that's probably the reason that you hang on to all this stuff for many, many reasons. But part of it's just to spur ideas for you?

Always is. Mm-hmm. Always is. reasons but but part of it's like just to spur ideas for you always is always is i mean i'll look at that poster and i'll just i'll think about my mother i'll think about how it smelled in that theater how the people reacted to seeing somebody that looked like that first. You're talking about the Hulk poster, the original Hulk? The Hercules, yeah. Oh, sorry, Hercules. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And what's my favorite grandson's movie? That. That's awesome. Since you're pointing in the direction of the Hercules poster and the guy right next to it looks like he's about 10% body fat, 240, and has a really bad attitude.

That was pretty close. Two pounds off. Yeah. What do you look at when you see that dude? How old were you in that picture? 36 maybe. So about half your life ago? Mm-hmm.

What does that picture bring up? I wish I was that again. Yeah. I wasn't rich. Does that guy know the story that's about to unfold in his life just from lifting weights? He was going after it, would not quit. Yeah.

And I don't know as you get older, do you get wiser or more mellow, or does the levels of your physical ability change? But being bulletproof and with passion, you'd have to kill me to beat me. People would give up before they would want to deal with that. I wouldn't want to deal with that at all. And that was just an average snapshot. I was getting ready to do something. Well, I never looked like that.

One, I never got to 242 or 238, whichever side of that I was on. I'm going to give you the extra two pounds of muscle. But there are moments, like, you the extra two pounds of muscle um but there are moments like from the the super early days of CrossFit where I like had no I remember my only thought when I opened my CrossFit gym was I suck at everything but this gym thing seems to be like I'm okay I should probably just go do that like everything else had just kind of like i'd never wanted to go back to the job i had just gotten out of school and broken up with a girl that i dated for so long that was in the shitter like everything i i sold everything

except 50 pounds of clothes and the next thing i did was ask my mom for 20 grand so i could just put half of a floor together to put some squat racks on it and it's like I don't know why the gym itself I decided like I just have to go do that thing but there are like a lot of pictures that you can go back to and just put yourself back in that place of like I don't know why I'm supposed to be doing this thing. I have no clue why lifting weights is going to be it. But I'd rather just be broke and basically living in this gym on the floor forever than to have to go back to where I was yesterday. Well, what it gave back to you was consistent, whatever that was.

As I said, consistency is so important and it was giving you something that maybe you were missing you're missing that challenge you're missing feeling healthier we did we became involved first level when crossfit was, and we built all the first racks, all the rigs, because there was a better way to do it than welding pipes to your ceiling. I did that one. You know? But the thing was, I didn't understand CrossFit, and I was still a hardcore lifter then,

and I didn't really sit down and say, wait a minute, let me think about this thing. And what really kind of changed my mind, the year that Kevin Yoxall won the NSCA Strength Coach of the Year Award. He was at Auburn, and they won national championships. And I'm going, this is the guy that's at the door first in the morning for morning workouts, you know, until I screwed him and got there earlier. Boy, he got mad about that.

I said, where you been? But anyway, I said, Coach, let me ask you a question. I said, what do you think about CrossFit? And he kind of deer in the headlights looked at me and blinked his eyes. He goes, what's that? Now, you're the best coach elected in 29,000 members, and you don't even know what CrossFit is? I said, well, this is basically the premise, what they have.

Oh, he goes, that's just our prep stuff. It's by a different name. He said, I've been doing that for years. He didn't call it CrossFit. Yeah. But believe me, CrossFit was borrowed from something or somewhere. It didn't just poosh. Totally.

I was thinking for a while, fat fit. There's a lot of big guys out there or football fit or whatever. Not just cross fit. People are too diverse to be hammered into one little peg hole. There's a lot more. I get so excited. A young man came in here the other day with his father and grandfather. I don't know who they were, but I just wanted to show them around

because they had interest in the museum. And by the time that little guy left, he came in just bent over and weak- and frail and like no one was listening to him so he's just waiting on his granddad by the time he left he could have been wearing a cape like superman because i showed him ezra's lifting belt and i showed him the pictures of ezra at six pulling 110 pound deadlift and and how he helped his granddad when I was hurt to lift for me and and gee look at his shoulders on you you could be really strong and all sudden he started standing up straighter and when he left

he was a different person yeah and I wouldn't be surprised one day he'll come back and he'll tell me a good story about what happened. Yeah, I think there is something just super primal in our DNA about being strong. It is. You can watch. You're not – when people start – when they give credit to being weak, I don't want to be here. Yeah. I don't want to be weak.

Weakness is not an option. Yeah. You know, earlier we were talking about being soft and raising kids and trying to make them tough and whatnot. You know, I like to think of myself as tough, but I also know that I'm soft in many ways. And running a business of all the things I've done has been one of the most challenging things I've ever done. I wrestled and did weightlifting and did MMA and fighting and all that. And running a company has been more challenging than almost all the athletics that I've ever done.

And if someone's watched this show or listened to us for 10 years, it might just look like it was easy. They see the success. They see the results. They look at Sorenex and they go, wow, those guys are doing amazing. But they don't see the struggle along the way. We touched a little bit on this earlier when we were talking during lunch about it wasn't always easy. You started this thing from the ground up. You bootstrapped it. and you had some tough times.

I'd love to hear more of the story of how you went from nothing to this amazing company. I had a neighbor down the street that was a welder for a large construction company. He was always tinkering with stuff. I did little projects, but I wasn't in into it and every week he'd come down and he'd show me a different tool that he used on the job and he says when you do something that makes some money you need to buy this well why buy it so I

did and then he finally started to show me how to use saws and do different things that I wasn't really adept at and one day he says you need to buy a buzz box welder Lincoln welder well he goes well I'll show you and starting from that and one of my best friends said, he said, I saw you in November laying on the ground with your pants on fire because the sparks caught. You wouldn't even stop to even put it out that you were that intent on doing that. And he says, if they knew who, I guess, our people are, what it took to get here, they'd be floored. It was a labor of love, and I would have given anything to do it.

If it was just an idea to make money or start a business, I never would have made it. I used to wait 9 o'clock at night and a kid I trained in my garage, he worked for a chicken place. The chicken that was left over, he would bring, if there was any left over, at 10 o'clock at night on his way home. And he would hang a bag of chicken on my door. And there was a bag of chicken I'd get to eat.

And if there was no bag of chicken, tomorrow's another day. Yeah. You know, and to risk everything you have to sell your house, to not take a salary at all. Just work every day and catch all the crap that comes down the pike, and you're responsible. They work and get paid, but it's my head on the block. To go through that, it took more than just a casual interest in a business or making more money. The passion tied together with the talent,

and there was enough people that would follow me along the way that we built a tribe, a tribe of loyal people. Now, I can't reach out to everyone every day, but I go out and shop every day and try to talk to everyone I can. Or I don't care who comes through that door. They are welcome here. They thought enough to come here and visit us. And I'm going to take as much time with them. Half the time, I don't want to know who they are.

I just, they're all the same. They're brothers in iron. Yeah. You know, and many good things have come from that. Mm-hmm. Was there ever a time when you weren't quite sure if the company was going to make it? Yeah. Yeah?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I lived for a year and a half in a room with everything I owned in a way smaller nest. And squeezed by, you know, hand to mouth

and a few people. And that's why still some of the friendships with other vendors are still there because they believed enough in me that I was going to make it one way or another and that I would be good for my word. And that just thrills me. And if anything, I try to be loyal to those who have been good to me. Tears come to my eyes when I see our guys lift on their stuff

when they've been hot and sweaty all day. But when they're lifting on that, they're learning, this is what I create. And they understand it. and then they make it better because you know the other day i was using that rack and if we made it this way it would feel better then they're living it too they're being part of it there's a piece of me all over the country on every delivery i went on you know and to to go there there's not many certainly in this day that have the gumption to do that yeah um on the other side of that was there any point where um you very

quickly had a lot of success and you like something caught traction like wildfire and you just grew really fast and it was like really really fun well you're good the first big job I had an opportunity to do it was the hardest thing I hardest thing and the best thing I ever accomplished in my life and long story short it shouldn't have happened it shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have come through. But I went for the biggest fish in the ocean and caught him. But now once you catch him, what are you going to do with him? You've got to pay the bills. You've got to front the money.

You have to get it done on time. You have to do it to spec. You have to do all these things. And the impossible was there were a lot of people against me at that time as far as competition. And to be alone, basically alone with five, six other people, was incredible. We did things that you couldn't convince me people could do,

but we did it. Because everyone stuck together, we believed in each other, we believed, and this was a thing we had to do. So once we did the first big room or super room, everyone said, well, gosh, if they could do that, they could do anything. That's where it really started. Yeah. I think we're supposed to go do a Q&A right now. he could do anything that's where it really started yeah I think we're supposed to go do a Q&A right now

okay I see Zach out there doing that I could talk to you for a couple more hours this is the second time we've we need to come back with a videographer for the record and go through the museum I want to hear a bunch of the stories about all the stuff you have in there so the audience and people that follow us can actually see what we're talking about

it'd be really fun that would be a good thing too like i said then then it won't sleep yeah the um yeah we're we're east coast based now we've traveled twice this year both of them have been to here and everything you talk about in the culture of this place i feel like we walk in and it's just a bunch of people that love lifting weights and putting good information and products into the world it's great it's it's a worthwhile endeavor if it needs to be 38 year old's opinion matters i think you did a great job thank you um where can people find more about sorenix do you do social media oh yes we we have a not soaring X you specifically I'm old school guy I'll put a few blurbs out here there I'm not a political guy but I know right and wrong and if I see something that is really doing damage to others, I'll comment on it.

But, I mean, I don't know where I have 5,000 friends on Facebook. There you go. Came from, but they came. I think I have, like, really 15, but 5,000 on the Internet. They came from somewhere because I didn't know how to get to them. All right. What is this, tournex.com? Yes. There you go. Doug Larson. All right. What is this, tournex.com? Yes.

There you go. Doug Larson. You bet. On my Instagram, Doug Larson. Richard, dude, I'm stoked to be here. I appreciate you taking the time to sit down and talk to us. Like I said, I've been aware of you guys for some 20 years now, and I'm really happy that you guys have had the success that you've had. I know it wasn't easy, but thank you for being so welcoming to us

and accepting us into your home here. Yeah. Very welcome to be with you. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrug. Get over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash diesel dad where all the busy dads are getting strong, lean, and athletic. And for everyone, we're going to be in 2,000-plus Walmarts on the shelves of Performance Nutrition.

So if you walk into a Walmart starting in November and you do not see Barbell Shrugged on the shelves in the pharmacy, go to the Walmart right next door to it because we'll be in that one. We're literally in every other. There's like 5,000 Walmarts in the country. We're in about 2,200 of them. And we've got programs and products on the shelves. So get over to Walmart. Get into the performance nutrition section.

We're super excited for November's launch. And we'll see you guys next week.