Barbell Shrugged - Rotational Power, Strain Energy, and Snatch Balances w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #542

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: Building a lab for strength training Rotational power for athletes Strain energy and how to train it Snatch balance for building confidence overhead How to program snatches balances] Difference in snatch balance and drop snatch Mobility requirements for snatch balance Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram ———————————————— Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   PowerDot - Save 20% using code BBS at http://PowerDot.com/BBS    Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes

This week on Barbell Shrug, snatch balances and how you can stay connected to the bar, pull under faster, get stronger and more athletic in the snatch. But before we get into it, we've got two weeks until Doug is flying into North Carolina. We're rolling out to Mashes. We're going to hop in a car. We're headed down to South Carolina. We're going to kick it at Sorenex. We're hanging out with Donnie Thompson, Spud. I think we're even going to interview the very first strength coach that I ever had in my life. My very first CrossFit coach, actually, which is really exciting stuff.

So the South Carolina, Columbia area has got a bunch of really, really smart people. I'm so stoked to get down to Sorenex because Bert's going to be on the show. They've got the museum down there of just all the old school training equipment. And we'll put a bunch of video together. It's going to be super rad. So stay tuned. We're going to have tons of updates, tons of shows coming out of that trip. And damn, it just feels so good to get back on the road, hang out with the boys,

and do fitness training, strength stuff, lift weights together. Get out of my damn garage. Before we get into the show today, talking about snatch balances, we've always got to thank our sponsors. Make sure you get over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. If you struggle getting enough vitamins and minerals in your life, this is the number one way that you can increase the amount of micronutrients that your body needs in order to stay healthy and happy. It's not easy eating all of the spinach every single day. It becomes stressful trying to track micronutrients and vitamins and minerals, and it's just a big pain, and you really shouldn't have to worry about it

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slash shrugged, using the promo code shrugged, and that there's never been a more important time to boost your immune system than today. Head over to bioptimizers.com forward slash shrugged. Now, start living stronger, healthier, the better gut biome. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner. Doug Larson. Coach Travis Mash.

Bros, we're going to be hanging out in two weeks in like real life. Cool. Thank God. Couldn't be more excited. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we'll be talking about snatch balances, drop snatches, all the mobility you need to get into good positions, staying connected with the barbell, learning how to get speed under the bar. And snatch balances are like one of my favorite

drills of all time because um it's much more about technique and speed and athleticism than having to be the strongest human in the world which makes me have an advantage over most people and it makes you look really really strong when you can snatch balance a lot of weight it's kind of like the coolest trick in the gym to me it's the coolest coolest. Travis, you're building a gym in your garage right now. We're working with some companies. What are you building? What are you looking for? What are you shopping for?

Biomechanics lab is what I'm after. It's like I want to – I'm developing a program for biomechanics where I can assess someone. And like, for example, if you're a, you know, can assess someone. And like, like, for example, if you're a baseball pitcher, you know, I can assess you, I can look at like, you know, shoulder to hip separation, you know, I can look at your, how wide you can stride out. And so I can, based on biomechanics, based on impulse, based on torque, I can tell you where your low hanging fruit is. And so I could give you some very simple things to do

to improve your game as a pitcher. So that's my goal, and to teach that. So my goal is over the next few years to, like, you know, weekly teach about biomechanics, how to assess. But meanwhile, I'm going to develop this program. That's my hope. Have you wanted to do this? Because when we interviewed coach Cassam,

that was like one of the first people that I feel like I like just went and built his own lab, like an actual lab. Right. He definitely motivated me. I'll be honest. Like, you know,

the fact that you had him on your show, right? Yeah. He's one of my favorite guests that we've had on here just because the dude just said, I'm doing the same. I don't have to go to school. I'll do my own research. Yeah. A lot of life. He's one of my favorite guests that we've had on here just because the dude just said, I'm doing the same. I don't have to go to school. I'll do my own research.

Yeah. That's impressive. Do you know how he got funding for that? No, I'll go do it. I don't know. Like, you think,

you know, I was curious about, I'd like to ask him how he, you know, got the funding to do a daggone physiology lab. Basically is what he did. So I think that's what he is. his is more physiology is what he's doing. Right, Doug?

It was pure hypertrophy. I don't know what actual technology he has in there, but every time I see his Instagram, it's got a bunch of like – force plates seem like kind of like the beginning of it. Yeah. You going to have force plates and EMG analysis and all beginning of it yeah you're gonna have that you know force plates and emg analysis and all that that's the goal yeah so and then uh to have a lot of like really cool equipment that i've listed about that i think can um you know that i could use that

equipment to say hey here's some ways like for, if you – what we talked about, you were talking about like shoulder and hip separation. Like I talked to you on Twitter the other day. I did a Q&A, hey, let's talk about rotational power. And there was a guy who coaches, does strength coaching for baseball. And he talked about the number one thing they normally work on is that, is like, you know, the front leg needs to be able to internally rotate, back leg, externally rotate. And like, I was like, well, how do you work on that mobility?

And he uses like a trap bar, like trap bar lunges, you know, like unilateral. But meanwhile, you know, they're going to internally rotate the front leg, externally rotate the back leg, and use that strength movement to increase mobility, which I've always said. You guys have always heard me say if someone has trouble getting into a very deep squat, we'll then do front squats every day, do breathing front squats in the bottom. It's much easier to increase your mobility using weight. So anyway, that's what gave me the idea.

I'm like, I'm just going to reach out to these companies and be like, all right, if I get, you know, these different products, you know, along with force plate. Yeah. How many square foot is your basement? Oh, it's, it's a 2300. Yes. 2300 square feet. It's huge.

Oh, you got a monster gym coming. Yeah. Let's go. That's savage. Yeah. So it's going to be a lab. I want to put together some cool stuff for like – No, another thing.

Doug, you remember like learning about strain energy about – you know, it's really talking about the tendons when it comes to biomechanics. And so the thicker and tighter I can make, you know, say your Achilles, for example, that's a big one, the faster you're going to be. And it's such a, like, low-hanging fruit that people don't, you know, they just don't consider it very much. And so –

Dude, you've talked about pictures. You're talking about something you can actually adjust or train or influence with training? What do you mean? Yeah, like I would say strain energy is like um you take it well it could be anything but with a tendon it's talking about the tighter it is the tighter and thicker the stronger it is and then of course you know when you strike the ground how much bend is in there you take those two things times them together and that gives you the strain energy and so what it does is if my tendon is thick and strong, when I strike the ground, I'm not going to collapse at the ankle.

It's going to propel me down the track. And so it's a big indicator of who's going to be the fastest sprinter. It's like whose Achilles tendon, whose patella tendon are thicker and stronger. That will tell you more about than anything else about is this dude going to be beast the way you improve those is like one you can do um like there's isometrics you can do yes you can do eccentrics but i think isometrics a little bit better then bounding that different types of bounding is a great way of like um you know because like the isometrics will thicken it.

And then the, um, you know, the bounding takes the matrix and crosses it up and makes it stronger. And so, so that strain energy is a big one. I plan on, you know,

helping people with, are you going to have any like cool, big displays? Like one time I went and got an ultrasound on, on my neck. And like, there was like a 70 inch flat screen right in front of me. So I could like see exactly what was happening. and it was really really cool i figured out with a

weight room if you have like velocity training or force plates or whatever if you could be squatting or lifting and be able to see the readout right in front of you like in real time if you're doing your squats and you can see what your peak power is what your rate of force development is and it's all just like you're just getting this instant feedback. It would be really cool. I already have it now. Gemaware has already given me one of their top units. With my iPad, you'll get that now already with the Velocity. My goal is to

make it really cool so people can see it. Plus, in the videos for the people watching to be able to see live, here's what I'm talking about. Here's what's happening is the goal. But I think it's, it's going to be fun. I just feel like, I feel like I can affect more people, you know, in a much quicker way by doing this, you know, this type of biomechanical assessment and saying, here's your low, even with like, even with a weightlifter, like if you think about impulse,

which is nothing but it's like the amount of time that you can produce force. So that tells me that the longer you can stay over the bar in that first initial push, you know, the more velocity you're going to create because impulse is going to equal the more time is going to equal faster velocity. So like if a person can stay over the bar longer, they're going to create more velocity. They're going to equal the more time is going to equal faster velocity so like if a person can stay with the bar longer they're going to create more velocity they're going to pull it longer another thing would be like um like morgan a taller athlete a taller athlete you can't do

you should not try to do the same volume with a guy like morgan that you do with ryan because at the end of the day every time morgan does uh rep it's more work than ryan because you know work is nothing but distance and so um you know he and he's he's he's pulling the bar longer every single rep every single reps not only is it heavier it's more distance and so you know just all these little things that you could teach people with simple biomechanics and like really start to make some big changes. Yeah. And not some frivolous,

like it's not going to work. Something is going to work. Like strain energy is going to work. Yeah. The first time I actually learned about any of that was in that book, uh, the sport or the science of sport. Yeah.

Like that specific thing is when, like what, how they broke down like the 10,000 hour rule where the guy was like, dude, you can practice all you want, but the guy that's got the tendons that are tight, he's winning. They went,

they're fast. They're born fast. So figure out either. They won the genetic lottery. They just pop off the ground better, but people can. The thing about 10 is, is like a lot of people just,

you know, they never really consider that. But there's a good way to – there's definitely some ways to really improve tendon quality in easy ways, things that aren't very hard on you. Do you think people should be doing it for, like, general fitness just to – for injury prevention and not just top speed. Yeah, absolutely. If you look at, there's a dude on Instagram called Toes Over Bar. Have you seen that? Toes Over Bar

or Knees Over Toes? Maybe it's Knees Over Toes. Yeah, not Toes Over Bar. Knees Over Toe. Yeah, yeah. Toes Over Bar. What does that mean? Yeah, Knees Over Toes. That dude is, I feel like that guy is on i don't think he knows why it works like he doesn't he's not able to you know to explain but he's right

he's right he just doesn't explain it well but um yeah he's on to something are you gonna be able to get like the the track kids from lenore ryan to come down or is the school like for sure school pretty cool with everything, all of that. Oh yeah. Yeah. They really, uh, uh, can pay the athletic director. It's the best. Like she loves me. You know, she likes the fact, obviously I'm bringing more attention to the school and I have this like, um, you know, media behind me. So they, they've been super cool with me. Like they've have barely, I don't think they bought them any idea I've had. So they've been super cool with me like they've have barely i don't think they've bought on any idea i've had so they've been super cool with me so yeah yeah for a while there i feel like yeah yeah for a

while there i feel like you were just bringing an athlete constantly like every day every time i look at your instagram who's that guy like yeah and why is he squat 600 pounds already yeah like they're just everywhere right so many people are squatting 600 dude you have this track being going on they just they just all come to you but yeah i can't hear you we lost oh there you go you're back hold on let me make a note here go ahead i was gonna say how how has there been any recruiting at all have you met any new athletes lately yeah i got a state of the world two you know obviously they're two of my own that are coming i've got three new females coming this semester which is not very common not many coaches are able to pull athletes you know in the the spring semester but

so i have uh hannah is coming mallory garza and then i have uh this new girl emily stevens so i have three new coming in so it I'm way ahead of where they want it. You know, they gave me – I've done – Now I'm not like – I need to do a little bit better job there because nobody else, but I need to, you know, I could be missing some really good ones because I'm lazy.

Yeah. I'm not lazy. I just don't prioritize. You sound busy. Busy, yeah. Yeah. So just an advanced exercise physiology, which I'm a little nervous. I know it's going to be hard already. Just not want to go back to school right there.

I'm more of a biomechanics guy. I'm excited to learn it because, you know, I love listening to Andy. It's just, it's not as much of a passion as biomechanics is for me. And I'm going to take this super cool course. It's athlete monitoring.

Now, this is all about me because the GPS, we'll learn to do the GPS system and a few other things. I'm curious about what the other – as soon as they told me it's going to teach us how to use the GPS system, I was sold because that's a huge thing now. Like NFL, there are positions in the NFL that are just that. All you do is GPS monitoring and make a lot of money. So I was like, yeah.

And then, oh, yeah, sports psychology. So I'm excited about that one. That'll be – I don't think that's going to be hard. Yeah, it'll be fun. So it's going to be – the exercise phys is keeping me up at night. I think that's going to be hard. Yeah, it'll be fun. So it's going to be, the exercise fitness is keeping me up at night. I know it's going to be hard. Dude, you have so much real world experience. I feel like after having as much coaching and training experience as you have,

going back and just layering more academic, you know, more formal scientific knowledge on top of that, like you're going to have such a great perspective on what's relevant and what's not and what you need to remember. And you're going to see such a great perspective on what's relevant and what's not and what you need to remember and you're going to see something be like oh that's why this thing and this other thing work the way they do because because of this science of the concept but other people won't see it because they don't have the experience if you're 20 years old and and maybe you barely ever even lift a weight you never coached anybody like yeah the concepts aren't going to be as

relevant i feel like that's why all of the arguments happen because some kid gets out of like pt school and he's like he doesn't know what's actually important so he argues all the points oh and you go like no you just don't get it that one none of that stuff matters but you actually get to go back you're like you have a story to associate with a person yes that did well doing a thing and you go oh now i know i totally get why why ed cohen did this type of training or thing and he didn't even know why it was working and now there's science behind it yeah biomechanics was so much fun i can't tell you it's like in my lifetime that class was one of the most fun things i've ever been a part of because I had the experience.

And I'm like, that's why State of the Bar is – you know, coaches will always – there are things I've talked about, and they were correct. But at the end of the day, scientifically, it's impulse. The longer I stay with the bar, the more velocity I can produce because when you transition, you decelerate. Everyone – like the minute you go into that transition phase, there's a deceleration. It's almost like zero on the bar. There's like almost the bar is like totally not moving anywhere in the transition. Right. And so the more that I can develop, I mean, the longer I can push with my legs,

the more velocity I can create. Or like meeting the bar. Like that's another form of impulse. If I meet the bar higher, obviously, then I can decelerate that longer, which is another form of impulse. So the momentum, so it doesn't bang. It doesn't blow me up in the bottom.

If I just plummet and then the bar comes hitting me, that's a big jarring on the body. But if I meet it, I kind of flow into i'm me now you see people into it like when they catch cleans bottomed out and they have no tension anywhere it's just a bar sitting on their shoulders yeah you get one you get spit out the back if you're almost if you're lucky you get spit out the back if you're very unlucky and you catch it now you're just stuck at the bottom your elbows are in a shitty place you got no glutes turned on like it's it's a brutal spot when you you see somebody just bottomed out they have their brain is like okay well i'm here how the hell am i gonna stand up now

you see a lot more with like females when they're like really fast under the bar super athletic and then they just don't have the strength to get out of the hole. There's another, let me tell you, this is a cool one. You know, in sprinting, I love sprinting. It's because it's like, it's really, those coaches are just like weightlifting coaches because technique matters so much. So you'll have some of them, they'll just say,

hey, get strong and sprint really fast. Some of them, that's all about the technique. But like when you recover your leg you know by my my buddy um i'm not allowed yet he's he's patenting the certain thing that he does but um what it is it's all about keeping the butt the leg close you know foot close to the butt as you recover right so, and I've always been like, and he, you know, the reason it works, he's getting it wrong, you know, but it does work. So like, you know, he's saying that by using the hamstring to pull the butt up higher,

that it makes the recovery faster. But really what happens is that the closer the butt is to the leg, you've shortened that moment of inertia. So like, because the longer it is, the harder it is to move through space. The shorter it is, the easier it is to move through space. So that one was a big – that was super exciting. So I learned about that.

I'm like, oh, that's why that works for William Bradley. You know, it's because you make that thing easier to move through space. It's like when you swing a super long bat, it's hard to swing it. However, when it hits the ball, it's like blast the ball. That's those long drive guys. Yeah, but when you get a short little bat, it swings super fast. So in sprinting, you want to make that lever as short as possible to move through space quicker.

So anyway, that's so much fun i can go all day on this those long drive contest guys you got those like giant giant things there's and then as soon as they come through though yeah um when they open their hips on the ball and putting that you know putting the mass at the very end of it the part that's going to hit the balls all that's brilliant of it, the part that's going to hit the balls, all that's brilliant too. That controls – the dude that does the long drive, like the longer that the club head is, the more control they have over the ball, you know, where it's going to go.

Yeah. Because it's a bigger moment of inertia. I love watching those guys. I'd love if you trained some of those dudes. Like I sent you that video of DeChambeau, who's like totally just destroying the ball and completely playing golf in a way that nobody can touch him because he's so much bigger and stronger and meatier than everyone else.

I'd love for you to get ahold of that guy and teach him how to be really, really strong. He just swings out of his shoes all the time. Like when I sent you that training video of him they just teed up say fucking go like get out hit it as hard as you can we'll worry about where it goes later totally that's what my sister softball pitching coach used to say i and what sucks for me because i was the coach i was the catcher but the coach would be like, I don't care where this ball goes. You can only fast. You can speed and power for a little while.

And I don't care if you throw it into the next state, throw it as hard as you can. I'll teach you how to dial it in later. You're talking about windows of opportunity for youth. Yeah. There are definitely windows of where you need to develop speed and power now. So, you know like uh i think um

it was tiger woods coach did the same thing at a certain age there's like swing as hard as you can yeah don't worry about you know precision and so yeah that is definitely true another if you heard of mack mack aroy mack aroy he's like he's only five nine but the dude rory last the golfer yes the golf yeah that dude blasts the ball at five foot nine and like their their mechanics are so tight one of my like best friends is a plus two it's like a plus 2.7 handicap which means he shoots between two and three under par on a daily basis, whether just he's a savage. Right. And he weighs 160 pounds.

And I go up there and I just mash the ball. Like I hit, I hit a golf ball pretty well. Uh, I shoot sometimes in the low eighties, more likely right about 90. Um, but I can mash the ball.

I can, I can carry the ball like 300 yards and hit it pretty straight. And every time I go play with huh can your boy hit it the 160 banner yeah and i very rarely stand on a t-box and i'm not king of the jungle but when i play with him he's 160 pounds and he mashes because his hips open at the exact moment. And he's so patient coming through and keeps his hips like behind the ball. And then it's just this tiny little extra quarter of a second that he's able to stay closed before he opens his hips. And it's just technically so perfect that he crushes the ball.

McElroy McElroy. He, that dude capitalizes on one thing. It's the speed of his backswing. So, like, as Doug knows, like, if you think about the muscle spindles, like, the faster you go into a certain movement, the faster the reaction is going to be. The muscle spindles is what the stretch reflex is all about.

So when I squat, if I can control it and go fast, the more of a stretch reflex I'm going to get. McElroy, same thing. When he does his backswing, it's faster than anybody. And then the velocity of the swing of his club is the top of all of golfing. His range of motion is like very average. His velocity is way higher. And velocity is always going to trump almost everything.

It's always going to be almost more than double as important as range of motion. McElroy's swing is – I can't imagine if he punched your face. If he knows how to punch with velocity like that and rotational power, he's going to hurt you. I think that's one thing that's super cool. I mean, people compare weightlifting and golfing as just skills that you need to get better at or that are really hard to master. But they're so similar in the fact of the patience and how long you can stay behind the ball before opening your

hips. It's the same thing as staying over the bar before you open your hips and weightlifting. It's like the exact same, um, principles at play, just completely different sports. Yeah.

I love it. Rotational sports. They have gotten my interest now because of so many intricate details that you could like influence you know there's this baseball player ah dude um i'll look it up in a second but like he throws 105 miles per hour and his this guy's about to get hit by that oh no that guy take your life he's holding the freaking missile and his shoulder to hip separation is second to none the velocity of which he's coming is second to none you know because he's got more impulse because he's got more room because the minute the ball leaves my

hand you know that's as fast as it's going to be and so like the longer i can apply force the fastest gonna be so therefore like for – it's like for every inch that the hand is closer to the batter before release, it's like the reaction time just gets harder and harder and harder. Not only does this dude throw 105 miles an hour, he, like, the reaction time you have to have is, like, incredible. So, he just destroys batters. It was a great documentary. There's a great documentary

about fastball pitchers, guys that just throw hard. How terrifying it is when you can't see a baseball coming at you and you know that it might be coming at your head. Those guys

have the best eyeballs in sports, I think, to be able to actually see a ball and see the seams when someone's throwing it like their eyes are trained in a way just they've seen so many pitches over the years and then when like somebody like derrick jeter stands up there or when they're interviewing them and they're like what is it like when someone throws 103 and he goes it's terrifying that's what he said oh yeah like the hit the batters are legitimately because they can't see it your body can't act you're you're basically taking the arm angle and guessing every time you swing it's a it's a phenomenal documentary a role something that rolled this chat and talked about

yeah the pitcher yeah he's incredible. He's scary. I'm going to Google that guy for sure. Yeah, something that's really not talked about is that the pitchers – I mean, I did a stint with the Colorado Rockies in 2006 as a strength coach, and I hung out a lot with the pitchers. I was like the unofficial bullpen catcher for any time a pitcher wanted to warm up. So radical. It's like a dream. Yeah, that's cool.

And I'd go out there with, like, no equipment, just, like, a catcher's glove and no cup and just, like, catch guys throwing 97 and I caught there with like no equipment just like a catcher's glove and no cup and just like catch guys throwing 97 and it was totally comfortable with it you know if it if they were if they put it in the dirt I wasn't trying to dig it out I was just like I just stand up and let it go past me but um but it was really really fun to hang out with those guys but something that's really not talked about is that the pitchers want the batters to be intimidated yeah you want those guys to be a little scared, a little hesitant. You want to have – they're not just trying to throw strikes. They're trying to win the game.

And part of that means that you're going to throw a 100-mile-per-hour fastball right at somebody's chin just to make them a little uneasy, just to set the tone. That's a part of the sport. That's why they fight. Because as a batter, you know he's trying to intimidate you. You know, and those guys are so good they didn't get to the big leagues because they don't know where the ball's going.

Like, they can put it in the glove every single time. They hit the mitt every time. They know – they're throwing darts. Yeah. But they – when we enter who did we interview that used to play for the a's and the diamondbacks when we were on tahoe oh oh i can't talking about my kid he was eric burns eric burns and i was like dude what is it like standing up there when some guy's throwing 102 at you and you know he could he could take your head off he's like oh we really try hard not to think

about that like it's really really we just try hard to see the ball and do what we need to do uh yeah that's terrifying baseball is like it's one of the like i'm either i've all athletically i've either been really really good or sucked baseball was like was like – I mean, I made the team and got to play a little bit, but bottom line, I sucked compared to my other sports. I think I can pass that. The ball being like – my best friend beamed me one time. And literally that – and he played at University of North Carolina. He was a pitcher at UNC.

You got seams on your back. He beamed me right in the chest. I'm like – because he had such a wicked curveball, so I'm waiting for it to break. I'm like, okay, it's going to break. And then I'm like, it's not going to break. Oh, you turned the wrong way. I turned the wrong way.

He hit me right in the chest, and as I'm walking to first base, I'm like, what the hell, man? I quit. I quit. I'm your friend. I feel like I've told this story multiple times on the show, but it was one of the first times I ever met like a pro athlete, but he was nine years old.

I was trying out for an AAU baseball team, and they made me race a kid to first base, and he was like this kind of like tubby little kid, and I was like, I'm about to wax this kid. This kid's not an athlete. Like, are you kidding me? And he's like this kind of like tubby little kid. And I was like, I'm about to wax this kid. This kid's not an athlete. Like, are you kidding me? And he's like, go. And as soon as go happened, he was like five steps in front of me immediately.

And I was like, who is this tubby little dude that just waxed me in a sprint to first base? His name was Dave Wright. And he played yeah i was like ah i didn't know you were dave wright until you got uh all the accolades playing for the new york mets and it always fascinates me commercial or guys sprint fast it always blows me away i'm like yeah how's this happening you are so different we had a lineman in Appalachian when I was there years ago. He's a lineman, mind you, and super tubby and ran a 4.940. I was like,

how in the world did this big fat guy run 4.9? His ability to move his stride rate was so fast. It was like, how are you doing that? Why are you playing offensive line? Anyway.

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Save 70% using the code functional. Get over there, save some cash, get tons of great programs. We'll see you guys at the end of the show. Snatch balances, bros. Yeah. Let's get into it. This really is like one of my favorite things. For anybody that has never done a snatch balance

or kind of wondering what a snatch balance actually is, if you put a bar in a squat rack, take it out on your shoulder. So basically taking it out like a back squat, moving your hands out to a snatch grip, keeping an upright torso, sitting down basically to the bottom of a jerk, driving up, big jump, big explosion at the top, and then beating the bar on the way down and riding it into a full overhead squat. One of the biggest reasons I've used these in my lifting career, as well as programming them or working with people, many people struggle finding that connection with the barbell and how to stay connected to it the entire time. And I found it to be one of the best tools as far as building athleticism and understanding how you move your body around the

barbell and how you use the weight of the bar to get your body into better positions to move more weight. It's a really tricky process sometimes when you're just teaching the snatch to say to a beginner, to an intermediate lifter saying, pull yourself down under the bar because it just it doesn't make sense until you've had a bunch of reps but the snatch balance is a really great tool for getting people to understand how to press under the bar and and start to realize the connection that your body your arms the momentum of the, and how to use the static weight at the top of when the bar is at its highest point and weightless in the air to be able to push under it, which then later makes it easier to pull under it when you start to conceptualize how weight moves. What is just like some experience? When do you guys feel like athletes can start to benefit from,

from snatch balances and how do you guys start to put these into programs? Well, let me go. Normally you go first is what I'm waiting for you to talk. I'll go first. I'll give a little note. The times that I most commonly use snatch balances is when, if I get an athlete that can you know after you learn like the basics of the pull and all that which is totally the most important thing starting off if they can power snatch but they struggle to squat snatch like

they they they get scared they they don't want to pull themselves on a bar they're usually they they say something along the lines like i'm just in my head or something like that like they're they're they're nervous for some, then I think snatch balances are a great place to go to because it's a more controlled way to get under the bar. Like when you're snatching, you're throwing it from your hip over your head, there's a little more going on than when you're just dropping straight below it. Right. So I feel like it's a stepping stone to being able to do perfect full snatches.

I think it's even – you could even say like especially the snatch balance, because of that arm motion, the punch up, what it does – a big problem a lot of athletes have, even the ones – like I have one right now who is – he's really good. He's getting better like every day. He's going to be a really good 67-kilo lifter. But what he doesn't have is the is the snappy you know you're hearing athletes say i felt snappy today but a snappy is

like there's a pull under at the very top you set by punching up you have a very stable base in the bottom however if i rotate over and i just catch the weight that's when you get the elbow bands you get the uh athlete getting uh jolted at the bottom and you know you'll see an athlete you know take a step because they're not stable if they get that punch up and like act i tell my athletes my weightlifters to go after the bar don't wait on it to come to you like stay ahead of it and punch up and go after it and it just makes it is what makes a the difference in a good and a really, really good, you know, snatcher is that ability to punch up and brace before that weight is on you.

It was actually something for me that was such a confidence builder that I could snatch more weight than I was actually snatching. It's one of the, like if my squat was going up, I knew I was getting stronger. But if my snatch balance was moving better and the weight was going up on that, I always felt more confident standing over the bar just knowing that I could catch heavy weight. Because you're moving the bar a lot.

You're moving the bar much less of a distance distance but the speed to get under it in a good position and it needs to like you have to have it you can't throw 300 pounds up and catch it so when you go to actually snatch you go oh well if i just did 275 or 300 for one rm snatch balance like now standing over 225 245 whatever that is scary it's not scary at all and and that is where actually snatch balance i built a ton of confidence doing that lift like it suits me as like more of an athletic lifter than just a pure power strength like somebody that had to like really geek around the barbell and be athletic around the bar. Just that building confidence.

Like sometimes lifting weights is – you don't want to say it's scary, but that shit's scary. Like you're throwing 200-plus pounds over your head, and you've got to find – You can get to the top of the head. If you've ever dropped the bar just straight on your back it's terrifying sometimes almost all of us have you know yeah i dropped a good video on youtube with me doing that with like 290 yeah doing jerks dropped a jerk on my head oh yeah arnold like in 2007 something like

that a long time ago um yeah you gotta what do you think is the like a good percentage of your sorry uh a good percentage of your snatch to do a snatch balance with like 110 120 percent like something like that like a little more than your max right some people can do a whole lot more you know like ryan uh you know ryan grimsley that dude is like he's's so damn athletic. He has done – I don't want to exaggerate this. I'm pretty sure – oh, he's done 170-kilogram snatch balance, and he tried 400 pounds and almost – He tried a 182 snatch balance and almost got it. Did Jordan do one at 400?

Oh, yeah. Now, Jordan is a whole different ballgame. Look, his overhead strength is, he is the strongest. No, he did 210 or 215. I think 240. Yeah, something insane. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you know, the two strongest overhead athletes I've ever worked with, he would be one, and the other one is – oh, I'm totally just blanked out. He was a muscle driver with this – oh, Jared Fleming. That dude, his overhead strength was unbelievable. He snatched 170 kilos, so obviously he's strong. Do you ever feel like that drill or that exercise just kind of at some point loses its – like it just gets so heavy that it's almost – I mean, in a way, I feel like there's a sweet spot in there with lifters.

But if you are not advanced enough to understand the limitations, it's almost too easy of a lift to go way too heavy at. Yeah, it's easy to. And like some people are not strong at it though you know like john north he's opposite that dude yeah he's not his his overhead squat ability is like not that's actually i feel like his because his shoulder positioning when he catches the bar at the bottom of the squat which is one thing i wanted to get into if some people just i don't know if they should be doing it if you don't have a great upright torso, and it's not that you shouldn't do it, you should just be aware of how heavy you're going.

And how you're doing it. Like same with front squat. Don't just front squat or overhead squat mindlessly. Try to get it to mimic the perfect clean or the perfect snatch. So you got to think about what are you doing incorrectly? This gives you ability to do those things slower in a, in a correct way. And then you're, you know, over time,

your body will get better at it. Hunter capitalized big on what we're talking about because, because she's so mobile, she's strong. She's somewhat hyper mobile. Her overhead stability was not that good. And so we did a lot of snatch balances, overhead squats,

like, you know, push presses, like we overhead carries. And then obviously then, her overhead stability was not that good and so we did a lot of snatch balances overhead squats like you know push presses like we overhead carries and then obviously then she snatched you know 220 100 kilos so yeah it was a big payoff yeah we used to teach it a lot in just in our beginner weightlifting class at at the gym yeah um just because it's it's it's less freaky than teaching people snatches right off the bat. Like we teach snatches really light and then you can actually get people lifting overhead to build confidence in moving under the bar. I actually think there's a ton of value. I think it gets a little weird when people don't have the proper, and this is every lift, if you don't have the right mobility to be able to get all the way down but if you can do it and they teach this

at the usa weightlifting level one um as a way it's like the third drill i want to say and they that they teach in the snatch progression it goes like snatch press snatch push press snatch balance into a quarter squat and then snatch balance quarter squat into an overhead squat. Is that still the progression that they use? No, it's still, it's still, it's still in there. So, but, uh, they do, they do a snatch balance at the beginning. They do, uh, it's like, uh, you know, they teach like a, how long, I mean, I may even be wrong, but I feel like that was the progression that they used.

It was almost eight years ago. I want to say that I got my, it's totally, then it's totally changed. Yeah. I teach it. You know, I teach the level.

Yeah. It's a little bit different. We don't do any quarter squat type of thing. So, but, but yeah, this is a little different, but yeah,

still teach snatch balance. You know, they don't teach overhead squat. They teach just the snatch balance. They don't teach overhead squat anymore. They use it as an assessment though. They use snatch balance you know they don't teach overhead squat they teach just the snatch balance they don't teach overhead squat anymore they use it as an assessment though they use like you know they that's one of the assessments it's a very practical way to assess they use the front squat the um overhead squat the strict press and the uh snatch deadlift yeah so those are the four things they use to assess um do you the the difference between uh the drop snatch and uh snatch balance you do do any of it where you just don't have anybody

driving up on the bar and just pressing into i call it drop stats that you know there's a lot of different names like a drop set is like a you don't get the the usual yeah you don't get this pressing down even part it's just pressing down and so now that is like you don't get the usual. You don't get the heaving part. It's just pressing down. And so now that is like you got to be – that will teach you to be faster under the bar. I think that will teach you more because snatch balance, you can still catch it high and kind of slowly squat it down.

In drop stats, you're going to have to get there. So I think that's a – that is – the drop stats is better for teaching speed under the bar. Snatch balance is better for, you know, stability and that punching than what we were talking about. So they're both good, you know, just depends. Great tools. I hate when coaches – there are way too many coaches out there who will say,

oh, you should never squat. It doesn't relate. I hate absolutes. There's a time and a place for almost every single thing, and there's definitely a time and a place for almost every single thing. And there's definitely a time and a place for these. Do you change people's grips at all for any reason? Like if they're snatch grip normally, like I snatch collar to collar, like all the way to the ends.

But I used to do snatch bounces and overhead squats, like a little bit more narrow than that, especially if I was doing higher reps, you know, like fives or whatever it was. It would save my wrist to have them in just a little bit it was easier on my on my joints uh but do you have any any reasons like that that you used to where you alternate alter people's grips i would if they told me that if like if like higher reps like you know was causing you know discomfort i for sure would because i'm definitely not i'm definitely not the coach that's going to say work through something. You know, my athletes are very high level.

And so, like, you know, I'm not trying to hurt Ryan or Morgan or anybody like that. So if they told me, I would for sure say bring it in. Otherwise, I would prefer, oh, what happened to? We lose Anders. He gone. And so, but I really want it to be as specific as possible if we can. You know, even try to make it even, like, more, like even better than what they're doing.

So, for example, like a front squat, I want them to keep their hook grip and really work on, like, trying to make a perfect rack. And then a red squat, same thing. To make it as specific to a snatch as possible. Truthfully, I wanted Anders to hear this. Hopefully he'll be back soon. But the best way to work on mobility for snatching, not only mobility,

but stability. Mobility and stability together is that by doing either a snatch bounce, drop snatch, even a red squat on a very, very like high frequency, you know, like daily almost, and doing like pauses in the bottom with deep breaths. So don't just pause, but breathe your mobility and your stability at the same time. I promise if you're an athlete out there who's not very, you know, know mobile who's not very good at getting in strong positions in the snatch it will improve by doing those deep breath overhead squats yeah i what i mean if i had to like categorize snatch balance for many many athletes it really is like a confidence

builder and a position builder yes like it's really challenging for people to understand how to move around barbells. No matter where you're at in the journey, until you have hit many reps, until you stand over the bar, you just go, I'm going to snatch it. You're not thinking about your form. Snatch balance is a phenomenal way just to teach how weightlifting works and how you can use the weight that is not your body to move around the bar to get in a better position. And if that's you, you don't need to go heavy. You just need practice. You need reps of pushing yourself down under the bar and then finding where that sticking point is in the overhead squats. Most people, the reason I, I, uh, I'm even cautious to tell everyone as like a, an overall thing to go do it as like, if you don't have the shoulder mobility and you're

snatch balancing, or you're unable to squat with an upright torso, um, you probably shouldn't be doing it. And you should be doing it as kind of like almost like a snatch grip, like power jerk kind of set up where you're just doing it to move under the bar with heavy weight or manageable weight, and then riding it down to find that sticking point in the overhead squat, and then get to that sticking point. Keep good form in that position. Take a couple deep breaths. See if you can squeeze your glutes, get your knees to drive out a little bit, find some room in your hips, and then slowly find an extra inch or two in depth. But the idea of just jumping into throwing 200-plus pounds on the bar,

throwing it over your head and thinking something great is going to happen. I have dropped many hundreds of pounds on the top of my back in snatch balances because things just weren't moving well or I wasn't connected to the bar and if you if you jump with the bar from your shoulders and try and move it over your head it's going straight down and the only place it's going to go is your body your head going to go right through you it's not going to just bounce off 200 plus pounds doesn't just casually bounce off you. Your body is going to get punished. Bombed. Yes. And it really is one of those things that you can, I think people can gain a ton of experience in how weightlifting works and how you move with a barbell and use that weight to move

your body into a better position. I think that it's a great tool for understanding the mobility. Uh, I do think though that there's, there's a lot of, um, there is a lot of risk if you're not comfortable or you have too much weight and you don't have the proper mobility in your shoulders or in your overhead squat that you're going to be putting yourself in,

in a, in a tough spot if you miss a lift. and if you've ever been in a gym and seen somebody drop weight on their back, it is frightening. And I can tell you from dropping weight on my back, it's frightening. I don't care who you are, how long you've been lifting. If you drop 200 pounds right on the top of your shoulders. It's scary. It's scary.

It's scary. Yeah. It can hurt you. So I would say a good regression, let's say that you are the guy that can't sit with a vertical torso, then my regression for you would be like, let's go work on that first. A goblet squat is a great way to work on that. It just makes, for some reason, with the weight in front of you,

changing the whole moment arm is going to make it easy to sit straight down. So work on that by doing that on a daily basis, like a heavy goblet squat, maybe pausing, taking deep breaths, move it to a front squat. But once you can do that, you can sit vertical. Now I would start with a dumbbell or a kettlebell,

one arm at a time, and work on sitting down and then doing the presses like a dumbbell or a kettlebell. Talking about that, but kind of practicing the deceleration, your ability to actually catch weight and stabilize in the bottom of the squat. Is that just a function of being able to lift weights really well that like finding that stability in the bottom, but it's not a super, it's not like an innate skill to be able to jump weight overhead and then catch it and decelerate when you have 200 plus pounds coming down on you. Right. And meeting the bar where it's at is,

do you teach that through the snatch balance or do you have other drills? Like we were talking about when you bottom out and you just lose tension and stability in the bottom. Do you find much of that with the snatch? Yeah, of course. I think what you're talking about is like what makes people good or not good. You know, their ability to be stable in the bottom and to meet the bar strong. What we,

a cue people can use is stay ahead of the bar, meaning punch up before the bar gets there. Like if you're waiting to feel the bar coming down to punch up, you've waited too long. So punch before it'll end up being perfect timing. So that would be one. That's the cue to, you know,

timing would be like not staying up, even on a snatch balance. So if I'm going to drive up, don't stay there too long, drive up and go down. Like the timing, same thing on a snatch. You know, if I spend a lot of time like pulling up, up, up, and all I'm thinking is height, I've wasted the time that the bar is going to be still in space. So I need to like, I need to learn timing.

Like the minutes your hips and knees extend, it's a wrap that the trajectory of the bar is decided. So anything extra is a waste of time. So the minute you extend, it's time to start getting under, whether it's a punch down on a snatch balance or rip under in the snatch. So that would be, you know, that's the mental thing you need to be thinking about. And third, as far as like, you know, being stable in the bottom, making sure that, you know, that you stay ahead of the ball,

like I said, in the cue. But the base is important too. Like, do you have a good base? Like, you know, are you able to either start in a pretty wide position or are you able to jump your feet out, preferably jump your feet out, and get in that nice, wide, stable position? A lot of people, like me, I have a tough time, you know, especially now at my age, getting my feet out, preferably jump your feet out and get that nice, wide, stable position. A lot of people like me, I have a tough time, you know, especially now at my age, getting my feet out because my hips don't move that well.

So that's another one where you really got to say, you know, maybe it's not the best idea to do it because you can't get stable. You know, if you got a narrow, you know, narrow feet at the bottom of the stance is not a good thing. Yeah. You don't have stable base. You know, your body's trying to get, you you know just like our friend yesterday said you know he's trying to get stability somewhere else and so anyway yeah we have um the just a a pure safety note as well

because i've seen some really interesting gross injuries um when you are doing this if you are doing snatch balances heavy or just for the at any point in doing this make sure you take an extra couple steps away from the j clips um i have seen a thumb get chopped off in a gym from a balance uh that got uh well maybe not off but hanging by the other piece of the skin. Because if that bar gets forward, your hands are actually lined up perfectly in a snatch grip to where that J-clip is in front of you. If you get forward and try to save the bar by any means, there's not much of a difference between how high you jump that bar and the J clip that is one foot in front of you. And I have seen a thumb come off in a gym from snatch balances.

So just a fun side note to make sure you take a step away. Fun side note. Or do it on – head. Not so fun. It's a horrible side or do it off of jerk blocks is a really great way to do it, but just be very aware of your surroundings. It's not just the weight coming crashing down on you because you're throwing it over your head,

but make sure you step away. It's a, it's a not a pretty thing when you feel the weight going forward and now you're looking at a squat rack that's like one foot in front of you because you didn't step far enough away. Yeah. Yeah. I'm dumping that mess.

Yeah. I remember one time Chris Moore, when he squatted, he held the bar collar to collar. If it was like a big low bar back squat, he would grab super wide. And one time he went and racked some many hundreds of pounds. They were 600 pounds and caught like the tip of his thumb under the bar. When he, when he racked it back in the rack and just smashed the fuck.

Had to hurt so much. I don't think he was the hospital, but it was, it was pretty bad. Most powerlifters, even when i was powerlifting i had to grip out there because my range of motion was so you know destroyed from benching i had to go collar to collar and those big so but we had we luckily we had um those mono racks you know so yeah so um and and to that point what i also um one of the more important parts, and this is something that I just learned in doing snatch balance is like understanding and it transfers over to the jerk

really, really well. But in that dip, I think one of the biggest problems people face when they're doing jerks that can be practiced through snatch balances is actually keeping a vertical torso in that dip or realizing, um, what that two to four inches that you actually need to dip to create power and, uh, and strength in getting weight overhead. Um, many times we'll see people doing like dropping down six, eight inches and all that extra stuff. That totally unneeded when you're going into the jerk. And a snatch balance, although they're not the same lifts, there's a lot of carryover in between those two and how little you actually need to move your hips to be able to create power and speed under the bar. And if you do get forward, if your're if your torso leans forward, when you're doing a

snatch balance, you're going to lose it forward every single time, you're gonna be losing a ton of power. So you won't get enough drive on the bar to actually complete the rep. And when you do finish it, it's going to finish in front of you, you're going to end up missing in front every single time. So being aware and kind of like, really making those like mental connections, mental to physical connection, connecting the brain and the body in, in the dip, I think is, is just a, another huge benefit to being able to one complete the movement, but also just being aware of where your body is in space and how to, how to create power from that position.

Yeah. Good. Coach Travis Bash. Hey, masterlead.com or go on to Twitter at Masterlead. Some pretty fun discussions lately. Wait, what are you doing on there? What are you firing people up? Yeah, we did the whole rotational discussion.

It was pretty fun. Maybe two nights ago we did a Q&A on just, you know, rotational, creating rotational power. It went pretty fun. Maybe two nights ago, we did a Q&A on just creating rotational power. It went on for a while. Then another coach jumped in. That's all he does is work with baseball players. It was a lot of fun. I learned some things. He learned some things. It was good. Beautiful. Doug Larson.

On Instagram, Douglacy Larson. I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged. Barbell underscore Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged. Barbell underscore shrug. Get over to BarbellShrugged.com forward slash DieselDad100. Getting that strong, lean, and athletic without sacrifice in family, fatherhood, or fitness. Everybody in Walmart or everybody in San Diego, L.A., Palm Springs, and Vegas,

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