Barbell Shrugged - Sean Waxman On Leadership, Weightlifting, & The Growth Mindset

Episode Date: May 24, 2017

Our guest this week is as humble as he is accomplished. You can tell as soon as you walk into his facility, which just so happens to be one of the oldest weightlifting gyms in the country, that you are stepping into a historic place. We are taking about Sean Waxman. Sean has been a coach and athlete in the sport of weightlifting before it was even popular in the US. He has been a player in growing the sport to where it is today and has trained with and coached some of the best athletes in the sport. In this week’s episode, we dive into what Sean is doing to create elite-level weightlifters, his coaching and leadership style, and the history of the sport of weightlifting. Enjoy the show, Mike

You should be in shape to train all the time, you know, because otherwise, what the fuck, you know, what are you doing? So there's no off-season. I mean, your was respectful when we were in class. It was one way, and then when we were outside of class, it was another way. Yeah, far out. So, and I think the people that were able to manage that change stayed in the inner circle, and those that weren't, you know, he just kind of disregarded so you had to know like what hat to wear and when and uh we were all able to figure that out

but uh yeah i mean he parties party like with the best of them man Man. But, yeah, it was great. What a rich, vibrant time for me at that. You know, learning the seeds of knowledge were being planted. Well, they were planted already. They were being cultivated at that point. It was great. Awesome. It wouldn't change anything. Awesome.

Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike'm mike blitzer here with doug larson kenny kane and uh we're in la at the uh i believe this is this is the oldest yes weightlifting gym in la well i think it might be the oldest uh only weightlifting gym in the country uh as far as business goes. Yeah so this is Sean Waxman speaking here and you've been coaching and involved in the sport for a very long time. Very long time. And we've come to find out all your secrets. No secrets. Yeah and you were, we spoke a couple years ago and one of the things that we talked about was how you embraced the CrossFit thing that popped up. And what a blessing that's been to the sport. Yep.

And so I'm excited to talk to you about talking to somebody who was very open-minded in the beginning, and who also has a lot of this tradition in weightlifting. Sure. So, yeah, it's a real pleasure to be here hanging out with you. Yeah, we – it's great. I mean, I hate to be a downer, but, you know, the last time you guys were here, Chris was here. Yeah.

And I ran into – Chris and I spoke at Reno when – I think it was the Americans at Reno. And he was at the Starbucks and he was waiting for his plane. You know, he had some time and went by and it was a crazy line. And I was like, fuck it, I'm not going to wait in line. So I saw Chris and we were talking. And he was telling me about his, it's interesting. He and I saw weightlifting in an artistic way.

Yeah. And he was talking to me about the stuff that he was doing, writing and filming. And the thing that really impressed upon me was the way he saw weightlifting as an art form. And some of the things, it was, I haven't, I've never heard anybody else talked about weightlifting like that. Because that's how I think of weightlifting. I just actually put out an article, one of my old articles, Art and Science of Weightlifting. And I talk a little bit about, you know,

the artistic component of weightlifting. And he really got that. It's too bad, you know. I know it's a bummer to talk about that. But I really liked him. I thought he was an interesting dude. I know you guys loved him. I didn't know him well enough to love him, but I liked him a lot.

He is missed. Yeah. But I just wanted to mention that to you guys because I was really taken aback by all that. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so good contribution to the world in a short time here. Yeah, he put out a lot of amazing stuff in a short period of time. Yeah, I'm really thankful that he was able to write as much as he was able to

and do the show for as long as he was. You guys, it was – it evolves into something different now. It's still great. It was a different great back then. It's still great now, just a little bit of a different great. Yeah, that's absolutely true. Yeah, so you've been in the sport of weightlifting. We were just talking about John Garhammer.

We were talking about basically weightlifting in the United States. Yeah. And you know some of the guys and are friends with some of the guys that they know the most about the history of the sport. So a lot of that's been passed down to you, which is pretty cool. Yes. And then you've been through this CrossFit wave, and you've taken athletes to nationals, to worlds, and that's a huge accomplishment. And I am curious, because there has been an evolution,

and the lifts have changed, are there any new trends in the movement? Well, you know, physics hasn't changed at all. Are you sure? I'm pretty sure. Wait a minute. I think there are some subtle differences in technique. Subtle, maybe, but nothing earth shattering. I think where the biggest differences are now is in programming. I think the programming has, when I say evolved,

I don't mean it's improved. I think it's morphed into the situation. For instance, we have, the Soviets have had this captive audience for decades, and they were able to really figure out ways of getting their athletes to perform in ways that they wanted them to perform because they had the tremendous subject size, and they controlled all the variables. And they were able to develop a system and research based on that situation. Now, I think that situation exists in China now, probably nowhere else. So I think you have, with the changes of the socioeconomic changes, political changes throughout the world,

has changed really what you can and can't do with a weightlifting program. So I think that inevitably you have to change the way that you work with athletes if the environment that they're in has changed. So I think that we're a country like the U.S., for instance, we're very we're different than most other countries we're trying to compete against. Yet we've seen like we're beating our head against the wall a little bit by trying to use some of the same process that other countries use. What are the differences here in the United States? Well, I think very often we don't get athletes at the at an early age like other countries, 12, 13 years old.

Sometimes you do. I think that many of our athletes are working. They have jobs. I think – look, I'm not one of these guys that say, well, we suck because of drugs. But, I mean, drugs are more available and as part of a program in a lot of other countries that we compete against, which I don't think is... How can you prove that? Yeah, that's a different show.

I mean, there was a ton of guys and girls that popped the last couple years in the world. Some of that's political. Some of that's actual. Don't believe everything you see. But even regardless of that, I mean, my whole, I mean, I've been, for the last year, I've been really engulfed in asking different questions about solving this problem. I think that drugs solve some very specific problems for training.

They affect certain systems of the body in a certain way. So I'm looking at it, I look at it a little bit differently. I say, well, let's not look at it from a point of view of the drugs are, we can't do this because we're not on drugs i'm saying well what do drugs do what problems do they solve well how do you solve those problems without drugs so i'm saying we gotta we gotta think a little bit differently about how we prepare our athletes and I think look the our systems respond to stress so if you positive negative right so drugs are a positive stress they create a positive stress in the body well how do we recreate that stress without drugs and

then how do we support that with the proper with the proper training so I'm not I'm not convinced that you can't compete with people on drugs. I think that you can't compete with them if you're trying to train in the same processes, using the same processes they use. I'm saying let's figure out a process that works for us. Right. Trying to adopt their program when they're on drugs is dumb. Or if they're doing it full time. Right. Trying to adopt their program when they're on drugs is dumb. Or if they're doing it full time.

Right. Or, you know, just fill out, fill down the blanks. Right. I'm saying, let's look at the problems that we have to solve and let's come up with better solutions on that. So I think that there's way, you know, one of the great, if you get into the weeds a little bit, but one of the things that drugs do that's really great is you can sustain levels of strength without having to push strength. So you develop, you know, a good base of strength and you can maintain it without having to kill yourself with developing, with keeping that up. So, for instance, you only have a finite amount of energy that you can expend during the day or training cycle. You have to use it up with the exercises that you need to develop

to solve the problems that you need to be solved. So if strength is a problem, then you have to constantly stimulate strength gains in order to not lose it. If you take it away, you lose it. So if you're taking drugs, you can develop a strength base and you don't have to do much to maintain it and you can focus all your energy on static cleaners.

So I'm saying, well, maybe we have to think of different ways of developing and maintaining strength levels because that's what you need without having to exert a ton of energy. So maybe it's timing of when the intensity is high in the squats or duration. Maybe it's 10 days of high intensity. Then you have a residual effect. You'll have a 30-day residual, we'll say, off of a 10-day intense loading.

So then you'll have the benefit of that strength for X amount of time. Then you can, you know, you can maintain that strength during that time. And then when that time's over, well, you hit it again with a little bit of a stimulus. So be smarter in how you dose the components of the training instead of just squatting. I squatted every fucking day, you know, sometimes multiple times a day. I was strong. Big squat.

I needed, in reality, I didn't, I had enough strength, but I never, I don't think I got enough snatch and clean and jerk to bring my snatch and clean and jerk up. So I'm saying, you know, how do you manage the two? Certainly, you can manage strength by doing things that make you strong all the time, or you can do them in a shorter period of time with a higher intensity for a shorter duration and then continue to feel the residual effects over time and then again introduce that stimulus so i'm talking like i want you got to think about these problems in a little bit of a different way yeah do you have a specific example i mean you're talking somewhat conceptually about well how to how to squat alongside snatch and clean and jerk yeah Yeah, I mean, I think that the elongated blocks of similar stresses,

I think athletes without drugs can't handle. So I think that if you create, well, create, well, first of all, like you say, you know, athletes that have a, uh, predisposition to being strong are going to be better suited for this type of process. Um, if you're a hard, if you're a hard gainer in strength, it's going to be definitely much more difficult. So selection of athlete becomes hugely important. But I think that clean athletes have to have a higher average intensity of squatting than athletes that are taking drugs. I think that as a whole, they have to – so I think if you look at the – like a mesocycle, like a year,

I think the average intensities are probably similar to athletes that are taking drugs. But if you break it down into parts, I think there are times during that training, that mesocycle, where the average intensity is going to be way higher. Higher peaks. Higher peaks. Higher peaks for shorter periods of time. Gotcha. So I think from a 5,000-foot view, I think that's what has to happen.

And not just in the squat, but everything. I think the intensity of everything has to be higher generally to maintain that strength stimulus. You just can't do it throughout the whole year. I think you've got to manage those intensity peaks very carefully. And the variables that you use that can't ever change is speed and quality of movement. So you push the athlete until speed and quality of movement starts to get affected, then you pull it back. So you're monitoring speed and quality of movement, pushing the strength.

That starts to diminish, and then you back off the strength. Back it off. Interesting. Until you can find rhythms in your athletes. And this is going to be different from person to person. Yeah. That's the other downside is it's a little bit different. But you have a, you know, but the concept.

You find the average, though. Right. A lot of times if you're coaching a lot of people. Exactly. Gotcha. You find the average. Sean, let me make sure I got some of this, like what you're talking about conceptually right. You're talking about dosage, strength dosing.

But snatch and clean jerk, too. Right. But then coming off of that, and then are you talking about dose some strength, then hit them neurologically with the demands of the snatch and clean jerk. And then just conceptually, I'm hearing that as like you've got a mesocycle, and then in one part of that you're like, let's get them strong. Now let's make sure that their coordination, timing, speed, all those other pieces. Yes, but you don't totally take out the strength component.

You still keep the intensity of the strength high. You just greatly reduce the out the strength component. You still keep the intensity of the strength high. You just greatly reduce the volume and the frequency. Okay. So they still have to feel that 90%. Right. And I think that you just have to be careful. You have to place it at the right times. And that's going to maintain that that level of strength

that level of of of strength that you need to lift to improve the the stature clean and jerk especially the clean and jerk really when talking about strength so do you have kind of a standard template for a year-long macro cycle or meso cycle whichever you prefer and and then you you you tweak and alter it just a little bit depending on the lifter and what you're trying with that lifter or is it unique to every person i have a process that i follow um you know the process could be implemented based on the situation so uh a less qualified athlete athlete that's that's new to the sport that's still. So this stuff is only for advanced athletes.

So how we develop athletes from year one to year six or year five is pretty much, you don't have to worry about any of this stuff. I think that's a good thing to note. Yeah. Right. What a new athlete is. Right. Because there's a lot of athletes that have been training six months and think they're advanced.

Yeah, no, no, no. You're not advanced. And they're listening to you right now going, okay. Oh, let's go. Let's go. I want to dig into this a little bit further. So training weightlifting for five or six years. Yes.

Not crossfitting. No, not crossfitting. Although it's interesting because I have one of my top weightlifters, Caitlin Hogan, you know, is very good in lifting big numbers. But she hasn't been weightlifting – I don't think she's been weightlifting for two years. Do you still program for her as if she were a beginner? No. No.

So she has different things. She's special. Would you say that? She's – right. She – well, but she's – she's – well, I guess – I don't know if it's special, but what she needs is different and uncommon than most people that have been doing it for only two years. We just don't want her getting a big head.

No, she's not going to get a big head. That's for sure. I just think that every situation is a little bit unique. Yeah. The other thing, too, is if I had my druthers, I would train her a little bit differently than I am right now because I want more preparation with her. But just the way things are and our time that we have,

we don't have, like, we're all is coming up and Pan Am is coming up. Yeah, the competition cycle. So you don't have the luxury of just saying, oh, we're not going to do Worlds. We're not going to do this. Right. So it's – so that's a different type of management process with horror. But with the – with beginners so with beginners the whole process is about

developing technique consistent technique and that takes years um it's not about chasing numbers you know it's not about it's about how uh the number is the numbers increase only to bring out the next technical error. It doesn't matter what the weight is. It's just we increase the weight to bring out the next technical error, then we fix that error. So you're never really trying to find a one-rep max and snatch with a new person? You get to competitions.

I mean, you have to. But if you're talking about what you know, what's the purpose? What are we doing here? You know, what's your goal? My goal is to develop consistent technique at the heaviest weights possible. And then once the technique becomes consistent, so the errors that occur during that time are conceptual errors, not knowing what to do. They haven't developed the unconscious process of their technique.

Once the technique becomes consistent, the errors are due to weakness. They're making a mistake because they're not strong enough to do this so then the training becomes not about developing technique it's about finding the weakness and fixing the weakness so a little bit of a different conceptual approach to developing athletes and then to athletes that have already developed consistent technique. Then they're chasing numbers. Like we're chasing numbers now. We're not chasing technique because technique's already there for the most part. That's the conceptual model that I follow. And, you know, where you are at the end of that five or six years is really going to determine who you are as a weightlifter.

At the end of that time, if you're barely qualifying for nationals, you're not going to be an international lifter. Maybe you'll make an international team here and there. I mean, if you're at the end of that six years, if you're qualifying for international teams, then, you know, you're going to be a little bit better than that. Yeah. So, because in that first six years is where that development occurs.

And if you stop developing during that time, then you're either really not talented or your coach is bad. So if you have a really talented athlete and they stop progressing, big progress over that six years, then there's a problem. So, I mean, over the first year, it's about 25% improvement. The first two, perhaps the first three or so years, it's about 25% to 30% improvement over that three years. And then it goes down a little bit, 20%, 15%, 10%.

But, I mean, even 10% is a huge. If you can improve 10%, it's huge. Oh, yeah. So maybe in the sixth year, it's a little bit under that. But if you're doing this for three years and then you're improving 2% a year, something's wrong. So we look at that, too. Sometimes you have to hold an athlete back.

Sometimes just because they can doesn't mean they should. Right. Just because you can clean and jerk 180 doesn't mean you should, maybe, especially if you're snatching 130. You know, there's a problem there. So let's not worry about the clean and jerk so much. Let's figure out why there's a 50-kilo spread between your snatch and clean and jerk. What are the ratios for snatch and clean and jerk, in your opinion?

Well, I think in that six years, I think early on, I think the snatch is going to be a much higher percentage of the clean and jerk, in your opinion? Well, I think in that six years, I think early on, I think the snatch is going to be a much higher percentage of the clean and jerk. I think as you get closer to that six years and you start to get balanced, you're going to be about 80%, between a 78% and 82% snatch and clean and jerk, roughly. Super heavyweights might be a little bit different. They're always different. But I believe early on the snatch should be higher because you're developing technique.

The strength during that time is going to come from improved coordination. You're going to get stronger because you're just more coordinated. Yeah. And I think that you don't have to worry about pushing strength all that much, I think. So I like to see the snatch and clean and jerk here year one. And then as we get to year six, we start to get it a little bit further away. I like to see the squats improve. The strength leads, the numbers in the squat lead the clean and jerk.

So I think if you want to improve the clean and jerk, you push the squats, and then you get enough strength here, and now you push the clean and jerk. I think that's good for longevity. So you can, if you're strong enough for the clean and jerk, you're not going to beat yourself up. You know, if you're always on the red line, you know, then clean and jerks, every one you do, if the effort is really tremendous for every clean and jerk you do, I mean, that's, you only have so many lifts in you.

You know, so you got to, if you have enough general strength, if you have enough general strength to handle the clean and jerk, then it's not going to beat you up. So I think you got to be, that's why I say you got to be careful about what you do based on how strong you are. That being said, you can't spend all your energy and saying, I want to, you know, I'm clean and and jerk at 100 kilos and I back squat 300 kilos. Well, maybe you spend a little bit too much time on the back squat.

Yeah. What do you need to improve your clean and jerk? 400 kilos squat? I mean, if it's not happening, if you're at 150% of your back squat to clean and jerk and your clean and jerk isn't going up, maybe it's not your squat. Maybe you should focus on something else. So in the first couple years, you were pointing out that first you've got to figure out what to do,

and then once you know what to do, you've got to be strong enough to actually be able to do it. Yes. And you were saying the focus isn't necessarily on strength, and kind of the underlying assumption there is that you're talking about squatting heavy, squatting above 80%, 90% when you're referring to strength. But how much, and you can correct me if I'm wrong on that point, but how much kind of general development are they doing in those years as far as just like general assistance work, overhead sets of 10,

shit like that? A ton. And even now, I mean, there's times during the year with all of my athletes, advanced, not advanced, we do a ton of assistance work all the time, all through the year. The first thing I saw when I walked in was someone doing dips. Right. We do a ton of bodybuilding. Shoulder presses.

All year round. Could you give us some examples of some exercises that maybe some weightlifters are leaving out that you would find here? Yeah. Any bodybuilding exercise. Curls, dips, leg press leg press leg extension leg curl uh bench press uh i don't know you name it we have a guy doing lateral raises lateral raises uh anything to all that because first of all it doesn't it's not tiring you. It doesn't beat you up.

And it hits some of the smaller muscles that might not get some love on some of the big exercises. Grip work, wrist extension, calf raise, things that you just don't necessarily get during regular training. Plus, the maintenance of muscle mass is important, especially in heavy training. You're training, exerting a lot of energy. Assuming you're eating enough, you need a different type of stimulus to keep that muscle growing. Yeah. Plus, you know, if you're training in the one to three rep range all the time, you're not really creating a ton of hypertrophy. So I think hypertrophy is good to a certain extent.

We monitor our weight. We don't want people more than two kilos above their weight class. So that's something that we monitor. But it's also therapeutic, you therapeutic, especially for the joints, your local blood flow. So for recovery purposes as well, it's really important. If you're not doing assistance exercises, then you're really missing a key component to development

and health and longevity and weightlifting. And I wasn't always that way. I mean, I wasn't – that wasn't – None of us were. No. Until we got hurt. And – or, you know, I talked to other coaches that are much better than me years ago, and everybody's bodybuilding.

Yeah. I'm like, well, okay. I mean, you got guys going to the Olympics, winning medals. I don't. Right. So maybe there's something to be learned there. And then you start thinking about it a little bit differently. Like, of course it makes sense.

Right. Yeah. You know, of course it makes sense to do other things other than stash a clean and jerk. Yeah. And you cycle it just like anything else. I mean, they even run. Well, actually, the athletes that aren't going to nationals, I mean, they'll be running. Yeah.

Long runs, soccer, just games and things like that. Get them outside. It's great to get outside because you're fucking in here all day driving me crazy. Trust me, I know. Yeah. Let's take a break real quick. I want to hear more about how program design has evolved.

Yeah, yeah. All right, so today we're talking about the number one exercise that you probably are not doing that will help you pull under the bar faster when you're snatching. Alright, and that movement is… The muscle snatch. Woo! Alright, if you've never seen a muscle snatch, Mike's going to give you a quick

demo so you know what we're talking about. It looks kind of like a power snatch, but it's not quite the same thing. You'll see that once the bar gets to Mike's hips he does extend his hip aggressively but after that he kind of is just standing up. Once the bar gets to his hip he kind of just stands up aggressively and then uses his arms to pull it overhead. He's not extending and then coming down and catching like you would on a power snatch. He's obviously not getting all the way into a full squat. So really one of the benefits here is that Mike's aggressively pulling with his arms to get the bar from his hips to all the way overhead. So if you're a person that has a lot of trouble continuing to pull on the bar to pull you

under the weight, then muscle snatches are probably a very good option. So one more time, Mike's going to do it one more quick demo. Now that you can see, or now that you're aware of that, and you'll be better able to see the pull from the hip to overhead, you can see that Mike's not doing a power snatch. He's doing a muscle snatch, which is distinctly different. Beautiful. All right, you can think of this very similar to how you think about pull-ups. We kind of have two distinct variations of pull-ups. We have strict pull-ups and we have kipping pull-ups and they're used for different things. So you can think about a power snatch or a regular snatch as being a kipping pull-up. You're trying to get as much momentum

as possible on a kipping pull-up where you get that momentum then you kind of float up to the bar a power snatch is very similar to that where once you get to here and you get that extension the bar is kind of weightless as you pull yourself under and you kind of pull your your body underneath the bar a power snatch is more similar excuse me a muscle snatch which is what we're talking about specifically on this video is more similar to a strict pull-up on a strict pull-up you're hanging under the bar. You don't produce any momentum by getting a kip or any amount of swinging. You just use your muscles strictly to pull yourself all the way up to the bar, or rather vertical, obviously. And then for a muscle snatch, it's similar.

You get a little bit of momentum, but once you get to here, it's all arms pulling on the bar to pull the bar overhead. You're not pulling your body underneath the bar, you're pulling the bar over your body with your arms. So again, if you're a person that has a lot of trouble with pulling on the bar, then this is a good movement for you. We don't often teach it to beginners so much, mostly because beginners, they often pull too much on the bar with their arms and they're not using their legs enough. Whereas once you get some experience under your belt and you become more intermediate, we find that some people, they worry about their leg drive too much. And then once they get to here and they're kind of fully extended with their legs, they kind of just fall under the weight and they're not pulling on the bar enough. And for those athletes, muscle snatches tend to work

very well because they have the leg drive, but they're not using their arms enough. And so we give them a drill with muscle snatches to make them use their arms a little bit more. And then hopefully ideally in the end, you're using your legs to their full extent, and then you're using your arms to their full extent where the legs drive the weight up and your arms drive you under the weight as fast as possible and if you can do that then obviously you can snatch as much weight as you possibly could so that's one specific way that we like to use muscle snatches for our lifters all right so you saw mike before doing basically a full muscle snatch that's probably the most common version you can do but there's many other variations within that.

If you look at Mike right now he can basically pull just from a standing position. This might be something you would do more like in your warm up. Just with an empty bar like that where he's doing just kind of like a modified overhead press. Press? Press? A modified overhead. We like to press around a modified overhead press. You like the press around here. You press a lot of weight.

A modified overhead press which has a lot of external rotation, has kind of a side benefit during it's super strict like that. You could also pull from, oh actually you could even do it from there. You could do it from squat and quad if you wanted to. We do this in our warmups a lot. Or you could do it from the hang if you want to do it from the hang. So he's just bent over in the hang, get to that power position and pull. He could do it as a stop snatch where he starts with the bar on the ground where he's at mid shin and

he pauses above the knee or below the knee and then finishes the movement. So you can still do a muscle snatch from any other position you want to. You can do it sitting if you wanted to since you would just be sitting and pulling like that very similar to the standing version we showed at the very beginning. So lots of different variations. In the next section we're going to come back and talk about how to do each technique specifically. Alright so how do you do a muscle snatch? So if Mike pulls the bar up and just stands there normal with a snatch grip. We'll talk about the arm mechanics first.

So again part of the reason we like to do muscle snatches in addition to simply working the muscles that you're going to be using to pull the bar overhead is that it gives you a really good bar path. So if you look at Mike from the side as he does a muscle snatch, he does it just like it would snatch. Elbows up and back and then he rotates over top and the bar stays very close to his body. You can't really do, especially a heavy muscle snatch, with the bar getting out in front of you. For all the people that loop the bar in front of them where they have kind of straight arms and they do that big loop, once the bar gets heavy, you know, if Mike puts the the 15s back on, the bar is not

going to be able to get away from him because the further away from him the bar gets, the heavier it seems to be and it gets a lot harder. So it'll correct itself simply by adding a little bit of weight. You'll automatically want to keep the bar as close as possible, simply because it's way harder not to do it like that. But if you're doing a regular snatch

and the bar's essentially weightless as it's passing this area and you don't really have to pull on it very much, then you don't really get that instant feedback like you do on a muscle snatch specifically where you're having to pull very hard with your arms. Alright, so that's how your arm mechanics will look. As far as your lower body mechanics, again, if Mike does a demo from mid shin where the bar would be if you had plates on it, all the mechanics of the snatch remain the same

as far as first pull transition and second pull but if he doesn't slow motion he gets to the power position here then especially again if he's doing this heavy he's going to get the full hip extension but his heels are going to stay on the ground and then from here once he's basically all the way standing up straight his arms take over, his hips stay locked out straight, he's squeezing his butt together nice and hard that way he doesn't re-bend because there's no pulling yourself under the weight during a muscle snatch. There's only pulling the weight over you.

That's one of the key distinctions. So, if he does that a little bit faster, kind of like half speed, you can see he stands up and then gets to a full locked out hip, knees, ankles not really locked out, but hip, knees, and then heels on the ground, and the arms take over and he drives it overhead. The common mistake is that people will get here and they have a hard time not getting back under like a power snatch. So really keeping in mind that you need to keep those glutes squeezed at the top is going to keep you from re-bending.

So squeeze all the way up. Once your knee and your hip gets straight, it stays straight. So you get to here and then you just stay there and pull arms only. Alright, so when should you do muscle snatches? You have a couple of options. Warm ups as we said, doing it with an empty bar it's a good way to just get ready to go do you know heavier snatches when you're doing the full movements you also can do them as a main lift or you can do them as assistance work depends on what you're trying

to do if you if you want to include them as a main lift a good day to do that is a day where you still want to get a good workout but you're trying to probably have a little bit of a lighter day you don't want to go for a one rep max snatch you might go for a 3rm muscle snatch where kind of by default even with 100 effort you automatically are going a little bit lighter your 3rm muscle snatch might be you know 150 pounds versus your full snatch which might be 225 or whatever so it's a it's a good way to automatically go a little bit lighter, but still get some really solid work in. Or you could do it as assistance work. After you do the main lifts, your snatches and your cleans, your jerks, your front squats, back squats, maybe in some of your other assistance work like your snatch pulls, your snatch high pulls or whatever else you're doing that day. And now you're on to doing the

other things in your workout that are kind of less important for a weightlifter but are still important like pull-ups and weighted push-ups, maybe you're bench pressing, whatever, you could include three sets of five of muscle snatches as assistance work. Mike also has another unique example that some of the advanced lifters could use. Yeah. I like to do like a five rep max on muscle snatch, then do some drop sets, so drop down to 5 or 10% of that 5 rep max. And I'm going to then basically pre-fatigue the shoulders a little bit like Doug was talking

about. Minimize the weight, but maximize the effort. So it'll be really difficult, but you're not going to put yourself under a huge load. Then do some work off the blocks. So if you have trouble really getting underneath the bar, you're going to pre-fatigue the shoulders a little bit so that way you really have a max effort pulling underneath the bar, but you're not going to go real heavy doing it and you're able to train getting under what feels like a heavy load.

So it's a really great way to kind of train getting underneath the bar without going heavy and it's a great way to build up shoulders specifically for snatch. Alright, if you like this video you can also go to barbellstrug.com, click on the technique wad tab at the top of the page. We have more videos just like this in the library. Also we have a free 50-some-odd page e-book that you can download at flightweightlifting.com. It has examples of programming for weightlifters it has examples of frequently asked questions that we get from our

weightlifters it also has links to a six-part video series that we have for snatches and for clean jerks so it's an awesome resource doesn't cost you anything and you can get that at flightweightlifting.com we'll see you another day so Sean, right before we were going to break, you were talking about sending your lifting athletes out for runs. I'm assuming that's for like mitochondrial development and the ability to endure sessions. Yeah, it's to improve recovery. It's a different stress that they're not used to.

I think you – I think it serves a lot of purpose. I think, first of all, weightlifting is done indoors constantly. So getting them outside into the sun is actually useful. Right, right. Get some vitamin D. Right. There's that benefit, I think, from fitness. It improves fitness. Right. There's that benefit, I think, from fitness. It improves fitness.

Right. I think one of the things that we lack is fitness. I don't think as a component of the when people think of developing weightlifting in this country, I don't think they think of fitness. Although I think now with CrossFit it's interesting because we're getting athletes that are freaking fit. Most of my girls that I have have come from CrossFit. We didn't have to do fitness stuff with them that much. We have to maintain it throughout the year. But they came in fit.

Do they manage volume better? Oh, yeah. They recover better. They manage volume better. Their body weight is correct. They're not fat for their weight class. So they come in prepared. Which girls are fat for their weight class. So they come in prepared. Which girls are fat for their weight class?

I'm just kidding. On a similar note. I have done in my gym. I can't speak for others. On a similar note, I've heard people talking about training UFC fighters. And the guys that are trying to get in shape for the fight don't do as well as the guys who get in shape to train for the fight. Well, because you're exerting energy in the wrong direction.

If you're trying to get into shape, it's different than training for your fight. So it's a different thing. And there's no reason for a weightlifter to ever be out of shape. I don't care. Or any athlete, for that matter. I don't mind weightlifting. Because then you have to exert energy to get into shape to train.

You should be in shape to train all the time. Because otherwise, what the fuck, what are you doing? So there's no off-season. I mean, your season ends when you retire. So, or I shouldn't say that. I mean, after a certain amount of time, you should take time off. But not a day, like months. You should take, you know, a couple months off.

Right. Give your body a chance to rest. But even then, you're not going to let yourself go. Right. You're not going to sit on the couch eating Cheetos the whole time. No, no. You're going to do something. What I like, you're going to do anything but weightlifting.

I don't care what you do, but it can't be nothing, to your point, but run or go. Don't hurt yourself, obviously. You don't do stuff playing flag football. But something that – Don't do anything dumb. Crazy dangers. Hiking is great. I love hiking because you're outside, you're in nature. So speaking of things that aren't weightlifting, you talk about running,

but how much do you do as far as like sprints and plyos and box jumps and explosive training that's not barbell oriented? So it's a good question. And if we were closer closer it was more convenient we would do it more often but right now i don't for a long like distance running it's okay to go on the car you know run on the on the road well for sprints we try to limit doing it on the concrete because it just tears you up there's a track not not too far away, but now all of a sudden you have to make a fucking appointment to go on. You've got to be kidding me.

So we don't do it as often as I'd like, not because we don't want to. It's because of a convenience thing. So if we had a track in here, they'd be doing it all the time. So very often they'll sprint before training. They'll sprint or jump just a little bit more, like a general warm-up. Then they'll sprint or jump just to get a little neurostimulus, and then we'll train. But I wish we had better access to a track and a field

because they'd be on there all the time, especially in the early part of the training year. You know, Sean, it's funny being back here after being away for some years. And we go back a long time. Not that I'm like a super lifter at all, but I very much have studied it and respect it and love it and appreciate it. One of my favorite things about you is your total commitment. And I'm sure some of the camera is catching some of this,

but just listening to you talk right now, and you've evolved your coaching practice. When I used to come in here, Sean was fucking living in here with the dog. Yes. And, I mean, this is seven, eight, whatever it was, seven, eight years ago, and doing lifting when people didn't think that lifting was cool, and having the balls to go, I'm going to open a weightlifting gym and go, okay, what's the successful business plan for that? They're like, well, there are none.

What were you thinking? So then you come in here, Sean's just like in the back with some sort of application that transcribes Russian text to English, trying to understand like all this russian stuff and then he comes out like harold crazy he puts it under the ball cap and he's like abjad i've said blah blah blah he's got tapes of the bulgarians in 88 this is when the bulgarians were cheating but they're doing amazing shit in their training sessions and they're like hitting you know 10 10 kilo marks.

But it's just really interesting to see what you're doing just as far as like accessory work and all that kind of stuff. You know, because I find that sometimes coaching in general, people get very stuck in their evolutions. And that's like taking the risk that you did. There's a lot to get stuck on. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. You do yourself and your athletes a disservice by staying stagnant. Every two years, I go through all my books and everything that I have.

It's crazy. I mean, I should have taken a picture of it. Next time I do it, I will. But, I mean, it's huge. And I reread it. All the books, not cover to cover. I mean, some of the things aren't relevant, but I reread all these things. And in two years time, you've had enough new experience that the same thing is going to

have a different meaning to you. It's going to reveal something different. And I think it's really important. And that's including, that's not including the new things that, that come in. And so I think that that's how I stay. I stay thinking about that. And plus I, I read, you know, I try and I try to read other things as well not just weightlifting and science men's health um and i i think that experiencing getting outside of the gym has been helpful too you know just looking just going down outside and watching life happen right it these, all these different stimuluses will help you create different views of the same things that you always think about. So I think it's not just the specific information, but I think opening your mind for different stimulus is going to help you create different reality. So that's what I try to constantly do.

I'm constantly trying to figure out ways of stimulating my brain to create different ways of looking at things. So you've done this for a long time. You're super experienced. Even with all that experience, is there someone else out in the world that you consider to be like a mentor or someone else out in the world that you consider to be like a mentor or or role model yeah a ton ton of people i mean my coach bob tucano and john garhammer and gene holloway nobody knows but she was very valuable and you Brose and Mark Cannella, my peers, people that I came up with,

J.P. Nicoletta, anybody is a mentor, really. If you can have a conversation with them and learn something for them, they're a mentor. Travis Mash and I have had nice conversations about it, about weightlifting. Anybody. I don't – I talk – if anyone wants to talk about weightlifting for real, not just, you know, bullshit fanboy stuff, I'm happy to talk.

And, you know, you don't know what you're going to pick up. Everybody looks at things different. And even a novice, if they have an interesting question, they're seeing things through a different lens than you are. Maybe they're seeing it from an angle that you haven't looked at it. It's hard. When you do something a long time, it's really hard to not have blinders. So I like talking to people that haven't been in it a long time

because they might see something a little bit differently and have a little bit of a different insight into something that I don't have. So let's go. I mean, let's talk, you know. So Bob Takano was one of your coaches? He was my coach. Was your coach? Yeah, he was my coach.

And John wasn't my coach. He was more coach? Yeah, he was my coach. And John wasn't my coach. He was more my educational mentor. Bob was that, too. John Garhammer. Yeah, John Garhammer. But Bob, I came out to California because of Bob and because of John. So I wanted to be a weightlifter under Bob, and I wanted to learn the science of weightlifting on to John.

So I coach differently than Bob does. But he That's a world apart. Different, not better, not worse. It's different. For the listener, we're going to have Bob on the show

here in not too long. Along with John Brose as well. They'll get his perspective. Your personalities are radically different, you and Bob. Very different, but we have a similar attention to detail. We all have our own experiences.

Our coaching is a really a combination of our experiences is what you get. Bob was, he was great. You know, he was very giving of his time. And he's not really a guy that does that. You know, I would show up early every day, every day for, I don't know, eight years or however it was, and he was coaching some of the sport teams at Van Nuys High School, volleyball, things like that.

And he allowed me to sit there and watch and ask questions for like an hour, hour and a half every day, Monday through Friday. And that was, I mean, you can't, I mean, that's a double PhD. Yeah. So, I mean, all those hours. And he was really, you know, he was really generous that way. And he taught me how to be a weightlifter. He taught me how to be a coach.

Although we coach differently, he taught me how to be a coach. He taught me what's important. You know, what are the things that are most important? He taught me that, you know, the importance of science in weightlifting. You know, it's not just random acts out there. There's a plan. And the plan is a plan of stress management. You know, I got that from him. You know, I didn't know anything when I came out here. So I owe him, you know, I owe him a tremendous amount.

And I learned from things that I don't want to do from him too. So it's just, you know, we all learn. And I'm glad that he's still doing it, and, you know, I'm glad that I can – we don't talk as often anymore. Obviously we've both different lives, but, you know, we can talk at any time, and, you know, we've kept a good relationship. Now we're competing as coaches and business owners. I want to kick his ass all the time because we're both competitive, and he wants to kick my ass all the time.

So now we have a different relationship. But I owe not everything, but I owe a tremendous amount to him. So he's an interesting interview. He's a different cat. Yeah, we're all looking forward to that for sure. And Bro's is a really good interview. So he's going to be. Yeah, we're going out to his place in Vegas next week.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I just came back from that. I taught a course out in Vegas and hung out with him, stayed with him. He and I have really good. We go way back. So it's clear that you've put time into this, everything from leaving your life back in New York, coming here, and just going, okay, I'm going to sunny California. I'm going to study the science of this thing.

I'm going to be a lifter. And now 20 years later. 24 years later? 24 years later. You know, like this is – I know, right? Weight lifting is actually a thing. And you struggled through the point of convincing the CrossFit world. Not that they needed convincing, but there's a lot of technique involved in this thing.

I mean, I remember a regionals. I loved it, but it was funny because you used to have a sign that would say. Oh, boy. Castro was pissed at me. It's in there. It said, fix your shitty lifting technique. And there's a flag, and it says, fix your shitty lifting technique. And there's a flag and it says, fix your shitty lifting technique. Yeah, it's in the other room.

And one of the only times I've ever seen Sean, like, mildly apologetic for anything. He just came back. I think I might have been the next person to talk to. You're like, Castro leaves you and you're like, I got to go. Fuck, man. I got to go take the flag down. You know, it's like, it was like like I brought another one that didn't say that because, look, I Dave, I like Dave Castro a lot. And, you know, he I asked him, I was I mean, think about it.

I had another I had a competing business to and then he and I asked him, can I have a booth at regionals? Right. And he said yes. And that's never happened before or since. So I felt terrible at the end. And I profusely apologized to him and Coach Glassman about it. And it was a poor judgment on my part. But what's so funny is the two of them would say,

they would use that vernacular and language, I feel like. Right, but it's their – Never heard it. It's not from them. It was from me from a competing – but it was great. That was great for Southern Californians. I thought. For CrossFitters who, like, hadn't had much exposure to Takano or to you

or, you know, like any of the guys doing the thing or to Coach B. You know, there's just not – there wasn't a whole lot of, like, really quality lifting coaches. So that, like, that lit a fire under people's ass. I remember being in here and it was, like, Ryan Fisher, Ronnie Teasdale, Adrian Agar, you know, like, Dusty was – like, people were just coming in going, how do you do this thing? Yeah, it was pretty crazy. It was really interesting, and that's like, when you look at how they've come,

and your attitude towards coaching was different than it is now. Can you kind of, like, break down how your evolution as a coach is and how you handle athletes at this point. So I realized after a few years that this is a marathon and not a sprint. So I'm an excitable guy. At least I used to be much more. But and, you know, I especially with coaching, it's it's all out. You know, it's it's it's all I put everything into it. And and I come from football and other sports where, you know, it's a big dick swing contest.

So and it's a different the coaches speak to their athletes in a certain way, which Conor never did. He was total opposite of that. I had a really good example of somebody that was really not leading by his words. I led with my words and

try to squeeze out every inch of motivation that you can buy with words. And it's not sustainable. You know, I'm working, especially when you're working 12, 14 hours a day. How much energy do you have? I mean, at the end of the day, I'm like, Jesus Christ, this is not sustainable. And it culminated a few years ago.

I got so sick at the end of the year, I had to go to the hospital. I was sleeping. I was sleeping, I was coughing up blood, and I was like, what the? And I went to the hospital, and the doctor's like, well, when's the last time you slept? Like, more than a couple hours.

I don't know. He's like, go home and go to sleep. Wake up in the morning, and tell me, and if you're sick still, come back in. I went to sleep. I slept I don't know how long. I woke up like, oh, okay. I don't feel so bad.

Genius. So I was like, okay. Next level. I've got this episode. There's this guy, Dr. Kirk Parsley. You know what episode it is? You should just listen to the show. No idea.

Okay. I'll listen. I Parsley. You know what episode it is? You should just listen to the show. No idea. Okay. I'll listen. But it was just – and I realized at that point, all right, I got to change what I do or how I do what I do. I don't want to change what I do. I want to change how I do it. And that was kind of, that started the evolution. So, you know, every, like when I was, part of it when I was an athlete, which was a big problem for me, I lived and died by every rep.

I mean, you ask to Connor, he'll tell you how many desks got thrown around and shit got broken and things that came out of my mouth when I missed a lift. I mean, every lift was like going to make or break my career. And I started when I started coaching, that's how I coached. And you can't do that. So it's a lesson I should have learned from Bob, uh, and didn't, uh, I had to learn it for myself but uh i just was able to take a step back and let things evolve instead of me having to you know when you cook you can't just constantly turn it heat down and heat up heat down and heat up you got to just you find the temperature and you let it cook and then every so often you peek under the lid and you stir it a little bit

you taste it okay it needs a little bit of this blue that you put the lid the lid and you stir it a little bit. You taste it. Okay, it needs a little bit of this, a little of that, a little of that. You put the lid back on and you let it do its thing. You can't constantly be fucking on top of it. Do you think coaching women has helped you evolve? Oh, yeah. Because women aren't going to respond to that. I had every intention. I was coaching guys.

That's it. I'm not coaching anybody else because I'm a guy. And, I mean, I just didn't think – and I trained with some amazing women. But I just didn't think that – I thought maybe women were fragile. I don't know, stupid old school stupid shit that, you know, dumb guys think. And then I started to get women. And then Juan Martinez, who coaches with me, he would tell me early on, he says, no, no, no, women, much easier to coach.

And Takano would tell me that too. He says, Takano just, look, the shit that I put Takano through, no woman he ever coached put him through any of that. So it's just they're easier to coach. They're easier to coach. They don't, they, and they're more coachable. And they're tougher.

They have a higher pain tolerance. They take care of their shit outside of training. At least in my experience that I've had. And they're, I mean, I guess the biggest thing is they're generally just tougher because their pain tolerance is higher.

And they don't, they don't, they just train. They don't, that's it. They don't do anything else. They just train in here. They don't bullshit. They don't talk. You know, they don't have bullshit conversations. They get to

work and they get it done. I'm not saying my guys are the opposite of that. I'm just saying that generally, they're easier to deal with. The difficult part with women is the menstrual cycle because you've got to work

around that. But other than that, it's easier. Does programming shift for that? Yeah. Yeah, it does. How do you shift your programming for women in their menstrual cycle? You have to take into consideration that women respond a little bit differently, but generally their coordination is going to be affected and their strength is going to be affected.

So you have to keep that in mind with what you're seeing. It might be it's not necessarily that the programming is off. It's that they're right in the middle of their cycle. So I think cycles within cycles. Cycles within cycles. So I think you have to, if you can. So like right now we have Nationals coming up, and if girls, if some of them are on their period, you have to,

you can't train all that much because they have to, the last three weeks before a competition, everybody's kind of doing the same thing. So you have to just be careful about how much you push them and understand if they're missing or if they're a little bit off that they're still okay. It's just, you know, after a couple days they're going to be fine. Yeah. And there's some – women generally need a little bit more upper body strengthening work, so more pressing and more upper body – because generally they're weaker in the upper body,

which is easily fixable. Certain other small accommodations, but for the most part, I mean, it's all snatch, clean, and jerk. I mean, at the end of the day. But anyway, with women, the communication style is different. You don't need to use the whip and the chair. You don't have to. They're going to do what they have to do. So I started to do that with my guys as well, and I got better results.

So instead of leading by fear, you lead without fear. I don't know what the opposite of fear is. You could say it. I don't fear. I don't know what the opposite of fear is. You could say it. I don't know. I don't know what it is. I just led with a little bit more of a... Sean, do you lead with love? No, I don't lead with love.

You live in California. I say that. I don't lead with love. That's funny. I don't know what I lead with, but it's not anger. He's like, fix your shitty lifting technique. Lift with love. That's my next one.

The Waxman way. That's my next battle. That's your book, dude. Lift with love. That's your book. Oh, shit. What's up. That's my next powder. That's your book, dude. That's your book. Oh, shit. That's great. So I was very fortunate to have an awesome coach growing up,

and he was a mechanical engineer. His name was Mark Real. Real? Mark Real. Where are you from? He was in Washington, Washington. I grew up in Vancouver, Washington. Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah. He's actually the guy that introduced me to Lou and Bud and all those guys. He took me around to NSCA when I was like late teens, early 20s, whatnot. He knows all those guys. Yeah, great guy, but he was a mechanical engineer. So a lot of my lifting background from day one was like force time curves and graphs of knee angles and looking at research papers, very similar to John john garhammers and so when i got to college i did my senior project on the biomechanics of

snatching i read a lot of garhammer stuff i read a lot of dr schilling stuff who ended up being our weightlifting coach me and mike's weightlifting coach in graduate school oh really um the you know awesome experience for me like getting getting the perspective of weightlifting from a person that that is kind of like-minded in the sense that data and graphs and physics just made sense to me. So I'm curious because you said that you came up with Bob Tucano as kind of your coach. And then on the more academic science side of things, you were interacting with John Garhammer. So what did you learn from from John specifically that you think was influential to you well just to back

up a little bit so Bob has a really good science background he's a biologist so and I got my undergrad biology and physical education so we had that in common too so from the the science of the programming stuff, the physiology stuff I got from Bob. So the technical, how the forces are created, what are the correct forces, all that stuff I got from John. When you have a more granular understanding of the thing that you're trying to teach, I think it adds a greater ability to communicate. So I really got the granular element of weightlifting technique from John and the granular elements of programming from my own education

and speaking with Bob and talking to him about why are we doing this? Why does the page look like this what does that tell us so with John understand once you understand you know at this point what's happening you know what's what's going on what are the forces that being created you know what you know it it's it's binary you know as far as this this is what's supposed to happen at this time. And we're constantly trying to recreate this situation. So once you understand what all that is, there's not a lot that changes. So there's not a lot of problems that come in where I think that it gives you a deeper understanding on how to create the the the technical elements that you're trying to create if you have this deep understanding of the biomechanics of weightlifting

why this is a good idea and this isn't you know it's a good idea you can explain it you can have a theory okay i i think this is going to be a good idea. It's not based because I'm just pulling out of my ass. I'm saying, well, I know that from my deep understanding of this, if we make these adjustments, we're still going to fall within these ranges possibly. Let's try it. Let's experiment.

You're not shooting from the hip. So I think that same thing with understanding programming. You're not going to say, well, I'm a week out from the meet. My athlete is feeling a little bit weak. Okay, let's do five sets of ten in the back squat. You're not going to do that. So it's just having a basic understanding is enough to make some better decisions.

Having a deeper understanding, you know, is a way to make some more of the refined decisions so I think that that's where both of them have influenced me in to where I am now how much do you I want to experiment how much would you say you person the percentage of programming and and things like that are is an experiment and how long were you coaching before you really started experimenting? Or how much would you recommend? Because I think some coaches experiment a little early before they really get the reps in. Yeah, I think that experimenting is maybe not the right term. I think that you have to make a decision at some point, right? I'm going to decide this is how I'm going to,

this is the direction I'm going to take this cycle. And then you see what the result is. And then from that, you say, okay, is what I like, is what I didn't like. What do I need? Here's what I didn't like. Here's the result that I need for the next cycle. What do I have to change? So I don't know if that's experimenting more than it is evaluating results. I think, look, you get into some situations where you have everything you've tried doesn't work.

Then you have to, you know, you have to maybe make a decision. I mean, we're going to try something just out of the ordinary. Yeah. So that doesn't happen very often. I don't remember that ever happening, actually. Because nobody's a snowflake in weightlifting. It just doesn't exist. So everybody's kind of the same. And they're going to respond very similarly to the same stressors.

The more talented, if you have a really talented athlete, it makes you look better. And it helps cover up some of the bad decisions you make. But still, we're all made of the same stuff. So I think that you don't have to just pull shit out of your ass all the time. I think if you follow some basic, you know, some basic concepts, you're going to be okay. And less is always more.

You know, you don't have to be the smartest guy in the room and prove it with your programming. You know, sometimes it's pulling back and doing less is going to help you. You know, very often athletes are not prepared because they're not, because they're overtrained. And you fix that by pulling back a little bit. You know, so I think that the problems aren't, I guess,

we don't have unique problems in weightlifting for the most part. It's all the same shit. Right. You see the same problems. Same problems. Okay, we know that

these 10 things are solutions to these 10 problems. You know, I look at athletes, you know, lift, you know, athletes that I'll see once or twice a year. And you know what they look like before. And you see them again, and you're like, you know, the problem's not fixed.

Yeah. Or there's another problem now. Right. Which is less of a problem for me than the same problem. Right, right. So, especially in a developing athlete, you know, you get to a certain point where you want to see this. If you're seeing the same mistake happen all the time, you got to ask yourself what's going on. You know, is the athlete not capable?

Is this it? You know, they can't get any better? Or is the coach not making a good decision in the development? Yeah. Look, sometimes the answer is this is all you got. This is the athlete. This is as good as they're going to get. They're not going to get any better. But if they're super talented and they're 17 years old

and they're not improving, that's a red flag. Something's up. Something's up. Gotcha. One last question before we go. Social media. Yeah. How do you debate my existence?

Tell me about it. No, but Sean genuinely hates it. I know. I'm not a – I don't know who hates it more, you or me, but like... It's a necessary evil.

I'm a private guy for the most part and it's been difficult for me to... Like, the decision... My original company was called Pure Strength. And then the decision

to change the name of my business to Waxman's Gym was really difficult for me Because I knew that, well, I mean, there's only one Waxman You know what I'm saying I've only met one What's that? I've only met one

That's right, so there's only one And I was really uncomfortable with that Because I knew what that meant. And so, you know, this is kind of Bob. It's related. You know, early on I was writing a lot of articles and getting into fights with, you know, with other coaches on the Internet and this and that. That's the best.

Yeah. So Takano told me, he's like, look, if you want to prove what you do is right, you want to prove how good you are as a coach, coach some fucking athletes. Yeah. I said, okay, let's do that. And I stopped all the nonsense. So, look, back to, you know, the social media thing, I understand it's – but that little – that time in my life is – it boosted my popularity, which is a crazy fucking thing.

I mean, I hadn't done anything other than be a lifter in the sport at that point. And all of a sudden, now people can say, oh, Sean Waxman is a top coach. I'm like, I haven't fucking done anything. But I'm a top coach because I have, what, 10,000 likes on my stupid whatever? So it just, I realized early on,

I'm like, okay, this is something that I'm going to have to mitigate. And it's uncomfortable for me to do it. I do it because I have to. I don't like sharing myself with the world. I don't mind sharing myself with the people inside these four walls. I don't mind sharing myself with my team or my friends.

But I have a problem sharing myself with some fucking jerk-off that I don't even know. It's Waxman's circle of trust. It's only so big. Are we in the nest? I thought we were in the nest. I get it. Listen, fucker.

I get it. But turn the table on that. I'm grateful that somebody gives a shit. Do you think that the popularity gained you enough athletes to play with? No. No. I think what gave me the athletes to play with was I was the only game in town. Yeah.

And I was good at what I did because I was good at what I did because the athletes were leaving here doing better. Yeah. Not because of what I put up on social media. You know, I trained all these top CrossFit athletes, and I would go to local meets, and we'd beat everybody, and these CrossFit athletes would be better. And I got popularity because I was good at what I did.

That's how I started the business because it was only me, and I didn't know anything. It wasn't on social media when I first started. My social media was when this person goes to an event and does well, wow, you look really good, what do you do? Oh, I'll go to Sean Waxman. Okay, great, that's what I need to do. So I felt I built enough of a base with that to be able to tolerate

being able to talk about this gym on social media. What I don't get is people that don't know shit from Shinola and all of a sudden they're, you know, they're, they're putting out here, take my certification, do this, you know, and they don't have, they don't do anything. I'm like, well, what the fuck is that? So, but it's the nature of the beast. I mean, then I look at, well, what are they doing? Maybe I need, maybe I need to do some of that because, you know, they don't coach anybody and they have 20,000 more followers than I do.

It's crazy that this is the world that we live in, in weightlifting. But, again, I'm grateful for anybody that gives a shit about what we do. I can't even – it boggles my mind that somebody across the world that's never seen me gives a shit about what goes on in here. But I'm happy. I'm happy. But it's just I'll never get comfortable with it. So what is your actual handle?

Shell, what's your actual handle? What's your actual handle? Do you know it? Which one? For anything on social media. Well, it's Waxman's Gym. That's hard to forget. But I have a personal Instagram that I don't – it's not under my name. I've never posted on it. I don't know the – Cheesy McNuggets. You don't know the lock-in. I don't know it's not under my name. I've never posted on it.

I don't know the – Cheesy McNuggets. You don't know the lock-in. I don't know the lock-in. That's so you, dude. I don't know the lock-in. I don't – I have the gym manager, Neil. He does all that stuff.

So anything that's posted Waxman Gym is him. It's not me. My own personal page I'll post stuff on Facebook But I don't know How to post on Instagram I'm not even I'm not lying

So Neil does all that And he shares it You know Does all whatever The fuck you gotta do But It's Like I look at what you guys do

You know You built That Your online training business Yeah Incredible like I look at what you guys do. You know, you built your online training business. Yeah. Incredible. Like I looked at you guys early on. I'm like, holy shit, these guys.

I mean, you guys have some experience in weightlifting. It wasn't like you could get some schmuck off the street. But I was like, how come I can't do that? I want to do that. I don't really want to do that. But I'm saying, you know. Sure, call me up. I know.

It's amazing to me that, you know, people want any of this. Like, any of it. They're paying for this stuff. It's fantastic. And it's CrossFit. You CrossFit CrossFit definitely is the reason but like in anything else you get the good with the bad now there's so much shit

that it's tough to wade through the shit pipe to understand what's good and what's not good but you gotta take the good with the bad but I mean social media is here to stay unless it changes. I mean, I just don't even know what my – I don't know what the impact is that we do

because I really live in a fucking bubble. I really do. I don't – like when people – I see people – like the thing that trips me out, and I don't know if when people, I see people, like the thing that trips me out, I don't know if it trips you guys out because you guys are popular enough. Like you go somewhere, are you Kenny Kane? You're like, what the fuck? What did I do to you, you know?

So just. We're going to go to therapy after this. Like that trips me out. That still trips... Like, you never met the person in your life. You know, my dad's a construction worker. My mom was a teacher. Not rock stars.

It's regular folk. Went to work every day. Nobody knew... The neighborhood knew them. But we went to Florida. No one knows who the hell they are. So that's what you get used to. So I'm just not used to that.

I understand why celebrities, real celebrities go nuts. Oh, yeah. I do understand. And I don't even. I'm not a celebrity. I'm just saying. I can understand the, you know, they're following them home, and they're, like, looking with lenses,

and they know what color their baby's underwears are. That, to me, is crazy. Like, someone coming in here saying, oh, you're Sean Black, and they talk to me like they know you is, I'm happy. I'm glad. But it's just, it's a little unsettling. Yeah. That's all.

I'm glad I asked that question. This was great. So if someone sees this show, are they welcome to come? Everybody's welcome. I'm not putting my problems on other people. It's my issues that I've got to deal with. That's why we're going to the therapist. No, I'm happy.

I love it. I love it. I just – I don't – I'm very good at separating my problems from reality. So, you know, I grew up in a different, you know, we grew up in a different time. Yeah. Where people didn't have access to you. All that stuff. So now having access is part of the whole gig.

Right. Yeah. And if you don't want it, don't do it. Do something else. I could be a construction worker. No one's going to know who the – I mean, I could be the best construction worker in the world. No one's going to give a fuck other than the boss. But, you know, here, if you're going to be among the better coaches in the age of social media,

people are going to know who you are. And if you have to be comfortable with that, or at least fake it. So I think I fake it pretty good. For so long. Oh, it's so funny. When somebody comes in to the gym that I don't know, like a new person, I hide. And I'll wait for Neil to deal with it. It's just such a retard.

I can't even. All right. So if people want to follow some of your training or find out more about how to come train here or I'm not even sure what all you have to offer. Is there a website? Yeah. So waxmansgym.com is our main website.

We're on Facebook at Waxman's Gym. I actually wrote something down that I didn't memorize. Do you want to share your personal phone number? Yes, I do not. I think Coach Bergener gave out his phone number on the show. I was like, I don't think you know what you're doing. Don't do that. I mean, talk about a rock star.

He's the rock star. Wow, he's nuts. His wife must be thrilled. It's his way of getting out of yard work. Yeah. So we have a – we're doing a coaching – I guess it's a coaching certification. And it's a little bit of a different – a little different slant. So I wrote it down because I just – I didn't have an elevated pitch for it.

So I kind of sat down and wrote it. Sean, this is so you. I know. It's designed for sport and fitness professionals at all levels. It's a teaching fix to the Olympic lifts. It includes all the info, progressions, tips, and tools we use here at Waxer's Gym for their own athletes. And the emphasis is on being –

Someone calls you. Well, it's the president of weightlifting. I can't believe I'm going a house He's messing up your pits Dude Phil Hedges is calling Hang up on him Do you want me to answer Put him on the show I can't

I can tell him housekeeping's here I can't Hello housekeeping I'm sorry Phil I gotta do this to you That was amazing Couldn't have been better Any of the other people

Fucking barbell shrugged. Emptiness on simplicity. Just blame it on us. And uniformity. I am going to blame it on you. Yeah. We're good at that. Jesus Christ.

I've waited. Never mind. So that's our big project that we're really developing. So gyms have come to us because they just need a unified approach to a process to teach it. There's no process. They have coaches doing different things, talking about it in different ways. So we have developed a process on how to not only to teach but present the Sachin Cleaner Jerk, how to implement it into the program, for coaches.

You know, it's not a bro fest where you're, you know. Right. It's just how to develop these techniques for anybody, not just weightlifting, but for fitness. And, I mean, fitness is a huge market, and because of CrossFit, everybody wants to lift a barbell now. Right. So we're going into health clubs. we're going into CrossFit gyms,

we're going into these gyms and teaching them our method and process on how to implement the snatch and clean and jerk into the program, whether the goal is to lift big weights or it's to implement implemented into a fitness program so we're happy with it and we're happy with how it's coming out so we got that and if you guys want to train with us online we have our online team that we remote team that we that we do and that's available on our website as well. You can click on remote programming. So we do that and we have

a nice little following there and it's periodized training and just like we do with our athletes just I'm not, you can upload videos and the whole thing so it's probably similar to what you guys do except you guys do it for a lot more people.

Maybe. Who knows? But, yeah, we have our store. We got our T-shirts and all that stuff. Instagram is Waxman's Gym as well. And that's where you can find me. Or you can come to California and check us out. Well, Sean's hiding.

Well, I'm hiding. And Neil figures out you're okay, then I'll come out of my cave. Awesome. Thanks for joining us today. This has been great. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much. You bet.

Thanks, Sean. Thank you. Classic. Thank you, brother. Good to see you, brother. Always.