Barbell Shrugged - Squat University, Mechanics of Strength, and Rebuilding Milo w/ Dr. Aaron Horschig, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #541

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

Dr. Aaron Horschig is a physical therapist, strength & conditioning coach, speaker and writer. After graduating with his bachelors in exercise science from Truman State University in 2009, he then went on to receive a doctorate in physical therapy from the University of Missouri in 2012.   Past patients have included professional football players from the NFL and CFL, minor league baseball players, European professional basketball players, Olympic weightlifters, numerous NCAA Division I & II athletes,  international level youth soccer players, CrossFit athletes and youth athletes in a variety sports.   Buy Rebuilding Milo   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   Rebuilding Milo the book Why you should lift barefoot Why doing the big lifts properly yields the highest return Why you overthink accessory work The missing links between mobility and stability   Squat University on Instagram 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 Shrugged, Squat University, Dr. Aaron Horschig is in the house and we are talking about his brand new book, Rebuilding Milo. This interview goes super deep. We talk about a ton of things, strength rehab, Olympic lifting, mobility, stability, and everything in between. It's an absolute honor. And also, Rebuilding Milo goes on sale. You could have pre-ordered it. If you saw my Instagram stories, Rebuilding Milo is on sale now. So you can head over to Amazon, type in Rebuilding Milo. Also, the link is in the show notes.

Make sure you get over to Amazon, order the book. I got mine. It's literally like a 10-pound book. I think it should be a textbook in every PT and strength coach library. You just have to have this book to be qualified to coach people and make them stronger, make them healthier, and heal them when injuries occur. Rebuilding Milo, Dr. Aaron Horschig, Squat University. Let's get into the show. I'm Anders Varner.

This is Barbell Shrug. Doug Larson's in the top left. Travis Mash. Dr. Aaron Horschik from Squat University. Welcome to the show. That was the official intro even though what we just did was way cooler. I just thought people should know this is an official thing now. Yeah, we're talking about Nelly. We were talking about Nelly. Three Six Mafia. If you get on the plane and you land in Memphis, three, six mafia should be there. St. Louis, Missouri, Nelly should be there and Ludacris should be in Atlanta.

That's how I feel every time I get off the plane. If it was like a real movie, that would be like, oh, Nelly picked you up and you're going to Club 112. You must be in Atlanta. Jermaine Dupri is going to be there.

It's going to be awesome. And if I go back to LA, Tupac should come back to life. Right? That right? For sure. Well, the problem with LA is when you drive up the five It's going to be awesome. And if I go back to LA, Tupac should come back to life. Right? That right? Well, the problem with LA is when you drive up the 5 and you get closer to LA, every single exit, you know people got shot because you look at them like, oh, that's the Compton exit.

That's terrifying. Like, oh, Englewood exit. That's next. God, do not get off the interstate here. This is terrifying. I heard all the people got shot there. Did you guys watch that movie about NWA? Yeah!

I love them growing up. I love them growing up. This is totally what you thought you were going to come on the show today. Talk about, right? Hey, if we're talking 90s hip-hop, I'm game. That's my jam right there. Call Galpano. Bring him on. Let's go.

Galpano's a shocking amount about rap from the 90s. You can tell from his YouTube videos. It sounds like 90s rap. His dog's name is the Ghostface Killer from the Wu-Tang Clan. I love it. They call him Ghosty. I just got finished training, and I had some Wu-Tang on today, and I was just thinking, oh, no, my neighbors,

they're not going to appreciate this at all. They do not want to hear Triumph right now just blasting out of my garage for 20 minutes. Dude, how does it feel that you're helping Travis Mash get through grad school to get his PhD? You're like the number one resource. Yeah? You're one of the top three, you, Lane, and, of course, Andy.

And that's an honor to be grouped with those guys. Those guys do such amazing work. So just to hear my name even mentioned with those guys is still crazy to hear. All three of you have been pretty profound. What were you saying a moment ago about training one of the strong men? Yeah, so I've been fortunate enough to work with Martins Lises, who was the 2019 World's Strongest Man. And just like any strength athlete, I mean, no one goes through life

just 100% feeling great all the time. So he's had his own injuries over the past couple of years that sort of just culminated to the point where he couldn't compete much anymore. And he's actually one of the smartest athletes that I've worked with in that he knew it was time to take a step back and address all the things that were going on so that he can be as strong as possible returning and actually, you know, kick some ass again. So we've been able to work together for a long time and uncovering a lot of the movement issues that a lot of people up until this point had just tried to be addressing the symptoms of pain, which is what, in large

part, what our medical community is set up to do nowadays is just treat symptoms. And so taking a little bit more of a movement-based approach, and we've been really successful so far. Is he going to go back after you? He is going to. So we started working together just over dm and email at first just because he was in california at the beginning of uh everything with covid going on but he was able to come out in the middle of the summer we worked together for an entire weekend and then we've just been going back and forth ever since just you know tweaking his programming trying new things um it didn't help that he got hit by a car halfway through.

I saw that. I missed that. He's incredibly mobile too, by the way. But go ahead and tell them about the car. That's what surprised me the most about that dude. Did he win? No way the car hurt him. The car hurt him enough to take him out of the 2020 World's Strongest Man.

But, yeah, he's – I mean, I don't want to see what that car looked like. Didn't he also set the deadlift world record recently or something close to it? I'm not sure about that. There have been other strongmen who have done amazing different deadlift records as of recent. But Martins is an overall great athlete as far as the things that he's capable of doing he's a very well-rounded athlete i think you're talking about the is brian um other american brian shaw he did he did a really heavy deadlift but like elevated you know like

it was like off blocks or something but the two still the two top dudes i think are going to be um it's going to be the two big guys that are about to box. Oh, Thor? Yeah, Thor and Eddie Hall, yeah. Yeah. I think, as far as I know. I don't know. I think – I think I'm thinking of Thor, actually.

Yeah. Thor? Have Thor did the – what is it, 1,100-pound deadlift? Yeah, like he beat him by like one kilo. Like 11.02, I want to say. Chipped him. Eddie Hall had done 1,100. Yeah, when Eddie Hall pulls 1,100

and he collapses at the end and blood's squirting out of his nose and all this, and everyone's like, God! Freaking out, and they pan over to his wife. That's the real story right there.

She is terrified. She knows what's going on with him, and that is one of the scariest looks. You don't ever want your wife to have that look when you're doing something. Our team looks way more like he moves more athletically than i feel like the other guys like you know what is he doesn't seem to be quite as like you know if you talk about top end strength he doesn't seem to be like you know the guy who could win a powerlifting

like eddie hall might but like but he just seems super athletic. What is your take on that? Well, and that's the thing too is when we're talking about world's strongest man, it's not necessarily who can be the strongest in just one event. It's similar to the CrossFit Games. There's a lot of different tests of strength and agility and things like that that over the course of an entire weekend culminate with the winner. One of the things, if you actually go back with when he won in 2019, and even some of his earlier events, he's a great technician. He's a very, very smart athlete. So

you'll see, for example, I know in one of the squat events where they were having like, I don't know, 750 pounds or something on their back. And there was a lot of guys who were having a difficult time actually getting to depth because they're so stiff. They're such big guys. Martins has such great control. I mean, you watch him right now. If you go just type in, you know, Martins Lisi's squat on YouTube, you know, you'll see a lot of his stuff. He has a great looking squat and it's fully controlled all the way to the

bottom and back up. And he focuses on the little idiosyncrasies of lifting, taking a good breath, a brace, perfect squat, great foot control. And I'm talking like when we were working together, 60 kilos on his back, the exact same way of moving every single time. Because he knows that the way in which you practice changes or allows you to carry over to how you want to compete. Sort of like talking to Eddie Cohen,

he's always talking about the way in which you move lightweight will dictate how you move heavyweight. And I know for sure Martins has that approach, and it carries over to the way in which you see him compete. It's really awesome to see. I just plugged that in, put his name in and put squat. And the very first thing that popped up was him doing 500 pounds, but he's like, he's low. Like you would see it in a way left to be low,

like high bar back squat all the way down. He's wearing socks and shorts. Like he looks super mobile. Did he do Olympic weightlifting at all? Uh, no, he he'll do a little bit of Olympic weightlifting here and there, but he's never, I don't think he's ever competed in weightlifting. Wow, I figured for sure. He's just been a very mobile guy. I mean, squats, high bar, I mean, how many guys do you see

that are in that type of strength realm do a high bar squat technique? Why does he choose to do that? Since low bar is basically known to be a method where you can lift heavier weights? The way in which he explained it is he knew that a high bar would carry over to being a more of a well-rounded athlete because it allowed you to be in positions that would carry over to different um other other lifts as much so he trains it but in a competition he would still choose low bar because in competition he'll still reps as large yeah obviously depending on the type of rig that you're using because in strongman you're not just using you know just

a barbell you may have a full axle or something like that across your back the positioning is not going to be i mean it's going to be around that mid area you know it's not going to be that super low position which i think is going to be more specific to powerlifting. Is he the first elite strongman that you've worked with? He is the first elite strongman. I've worked with other strength athletes in the past. Like strength athletes, like weightlifters, bodybuilders? Weightlifters and powerlifters are my forte, just being in Olympic weightlifting for so long.

And then I've worked with a lot of powerlifters. I worked with JP Price price who squatted over a thousand pounds out in kansas city we worked together um i was fortunate enough when i went up to canada for a seminar uh kelly branton who at the time was uh chasing that thousand pound squat and was a multi-time uh canadian national champion got a couple uh second and third place medals in the ipf worlds um prior in years past so yeah um yeah i've always thought athletes too just a shout out to him like he's always my go-to he's helping me with one as we speak so one of my top uh female weightlifters yeah i've always thought the strongmans were like

the biggest freaks because they had to be so athletic it's like power lifting they just stand in place and do the thing um But man, if you kind of carry one of those stones all the way down 50 yards or whatever it is, you have to be a monster, like very athletic to be able to get that stuff done. When you're working with those guys, how much does that like athleticism kind of almost surprise you when you see them move? Yeah, well, and that's the thing is, you know, we often think of power lifters, you've got just your three lifts. And in Strongman, there's so many different implements and variety of lifting that you're doing. So you need to have more skills within your bag of things that you can pull out.

So you have to have great single arm, single leg stability. You have to be able to walk with an implement. So, you know, things like that, that creates sort of a well-rounded athleticism. And I think often whenever you're only training in powerlifting, right, and you're only doing bench squat deadlift, you get really good at those lifts, but sometimes you can have, and you can develop weak links within the game. Sort of like if you were to look at a pyramid that maybe has a couple blocks in the bottom that are just pulled out as a whole, your structure is not as stable or as structurally sound as it could be. And I think in strongman, you sort of have to be very well rounded and build that base from the ground

up to really excel. And then not only excel, but stay there for a long time. As with any athlete, you know, we've all seen the athlete that maybe makes, you know, a huge spark and whatever, you know, weightlifting, powerlifting, CrossFit. But then within a year, they're sort of gone. They sort of fizzle out. And often, it's because the strength that they do have just isn't supported by enough structural quality movement. They don't have a firm foundation. That was me, I think.

Honestly, when I got to the tip top, it was hard for me to stay there because, like, you know, I think I won. I broke it comes record in 2004. And by 2006, I was a mess. Like, my whole body was just, you know, I got a question. It's good that you're here because there's, like, lately I've been looking at athletes, especially strength athletes. And you got weightlifters, powerlifters. You have strongman. And so, and one thing I have, I find a common of like the champions is that their, their approach and their emphasis on technique is superb. However, then there's two sides.

Then there's the person who doesn't do that, who I think is terrible. But then I think there's a third person who obsesses over it so much that they cannot allow themselves to do well. So like, have you found that to be true? I personally haven't met so many people that to such a degree, they value the technique that they never push themselves past it. Now, are there those people out there? For sure. I'm not denying that. I feel like a lot of athletes have that innate desire to push, push, push,

because they're always looking performance wise to put at, you know, add five more kilos on the bar. That's how we're just, yeah. That's why we're athletes. We love that performance. So often it's more or less a, let me reel you back in a little bit than, Hey, it's okay. Put a little bit more weight on, you know, weightlifting. I've noticed like I've had like right now i have one a guy who's actually near you right now and uh you'll know i'm talking about him i've been very clear with him you know that i've had one and i've had a female i'm not gonna say her name maybe two females that like honestly can't get past like they obsess so much over technique yeah even when it's beautiful and even when i show them on

video it's beautiful they can't just say they're obsessing over something they can't just roll on be like look you're doing good so therefore they never get past a certain point because they have this this glitch i mean like if the biomechanical patterns are perfect and like you're symmetrical it's perfect there's nothing else to say and so like um powerlifting i don't find it i find the opposite i find most people don't pay enough attention and matter of fact americans right now make me super mad because i feel like you know that what is that russian guy's name who's absolutely amazing and his attention to detail is absolutely flawless and really and i love it going more you know more than anything this dude i'll think of it a second is by far the best of all time like he's just raw has totaled

2300 i mean none of us have done that not even eddie and so uh but this dude's attention to detail is perfect when american you have all these really popular instagram famous powerlifters you watch the move and it makes me so max it's terrible and i'm like man get off instagram and go you know go see squad university and learn to lift and you maybe you'll beat this russian guy who's you know two weight classes below you you know and then you can talk but like yeah i i think where the magic of being a great lifter is finding that connection right wanting to be perfect but also knowing you need to push your body in that at our highest level lifts, they're not always going to be perfect. There's going to be small, you know, I shifted a little bit or I caught it just a little bit off balance and that's okay.

Know that it's on a max lift, but if you have that approach for every single lift, like 30, 40, 50% on up, we're approaching the barbell to make a great, perfect looking lift every time that will bleed over into the way in which we're taking that 90, 95, a hundred percent max effort. And when you can find that, uh, sort of connection between pushing enough to where we're continuing to progress our weights, but reeling ourselves back in enough and having that desire to perform a perfect rep to where I'm not getting too sloppy with my working weights during training. I think that's where you find sort of the magic of being in perfecting our performance potential. Yeah. I want to rewind it just for a second. We didn't really introduce you

to the audience and we haven't really gotten to that. your account is so popular i actually have gone i already know who you are yeah so i but i do want to rewind just a minute and not only just hear your background but i want to hear what it was like to you know go from just kind of being a regular dude to growing this big platform and this huge following and just what the ride was like. Yuri Belkin, by the way, just so no one. Okay. Okay. I'm done. I'm done. I had to say it. It drive me crazy. Last word. Go.

So for those out there that don't know who I am, my name is Aaron Horschig. I'm a doctor of physical therapy and all around just strength nerd, I guess we'll say. My background is in exercise science, undergraduate degree, and then got my doctorate in physical therapy. But ever before I got there, I was an Olympic weightlifter. So I started competing in 2005, back when CrossFit was still in its infancy and we didn't really know what it was. I was there in those days. I was hanging out on the message boards. Oh yeah.

So Truman State University, a small school in Northeastern Missouri who Travis knows, Dr. Alex Cook. That's my professor too. His professor. He was at Truman State and he was our professor and our club coach for the Iron Dogs. Awesome. Good. Prior to that time, I had been exposed to weightlifting a little bit through high school. So I felt very fortunate. I went to Eureka high school here in St. Louis and my coach actually had bought a bunch of a Laco bars after the 96 Olympics.

Our high school had like 10 platforms, a bunch of a Laco barbell from Atlanta Olympics. Your high school had like 10 platforms, a bunch of Aleko barbells. From Atlanta Olympics. Your high school. Because after a lot of those – You're like Bill Gates having the internet just at your high school. Exactly. So I felt very fortunate.

I started learning how to do cleans when I was like 13 years old or so. So when I got – I never really knew too much about Olympic weightlifting competition wise because back in the early 2000s, it was still very, you know, a very niche sport. It was very, you couldn't walk down the street and say, hey, what's your clean and jerk to someone that looks athletic and they know exactly what you mean. So I got to college. I see the, you know, the Truman State Iron Dogs and they're like, hey, you know, we train all week long and then we compete sometimes on the weekends and weightlifting.

And I'm like, sign me up. That sounds amazing. So instantly fell in love with the sport. And then when I got out through physical therapy school, I decided I sort of want to route my profession to where I'm helping other people like myself who always wanted to be a great weightlifter, but just always continuously experienced aches and pains. You're not a single weightlifter in the world that goes through an entire year and something's not aching. You know, a knee pain, a back pain, shoulder, because you're continuously pushing your body day in and day out because you love competing.

So I thought, well, now that I have this background in weightlifting and now I have the knowledge and experience being a physical therapist let me sort of combine the two and it wasn't I just didn't start speaking to the world early on you know I had a lot of years sort of in the trenches working with athletes developing my own knowledge base because a lot of people don't realize like once you get out of school and you have your doctorate, that's your time to start learning, really. You just got your diploma to start learning. You don't know everything at all.

Not that I know everything else. I feel like that's the time you start debating Travis on Twitter. Yeah, exactly. That is not the time to start working. That is when you immediately start talking smack. I get slaughtered like all the rest of them. As soon as you get the piece of paper, go to Twitter. I shred so many early PTs, it's sad.

This one dude, I pretty much cut him in half and hung him out to dry. Come on, man. You can't debate me with your opinion. You don't coach anybody. I coach people, plus I have the research. You look like a fool, man. Aaron, I actually want to get your thoughts on that like there's a part of the culture of physical therapy almost where it's like nothing is safe enough

almost like where some people go way overboard it's like it's nothing but like but like rotator cuff exercises and banded stuff and like squatting anything bilateral is bad for this and bad for that it's like this is a part of the culture at some level. Like, why do you think that that is still a thing? Yeah, I definitely feel a little bit like the black sheep of the physical therapy world in that I was more of that strength conditioning realm weightlifting realm before I entered the physical therapy profession. And like you said, Travis, like, Twitter physical therapy world is just obnoxious sometimes. I mean, I put up a tweet the other day and I was just like, you know what? As a physical therapist, chiropractor, athletic trainer, you're a medical provider. I believe that it's a fundamental ability. You should be able to perform

a great looking squat, deadlift, and a kettlebell swing. Just basic fundamental movements. I'm not saying you have to be a world record or you need to be able to be in a power lifting meet but you should be able to show competency in basic loaded movements and twitter pt just blew up at me and was basically saying like oh you know just because i didn't tear my acl doesn't mean i can't treat people with acl tears or yeah probably not like that yeah Yeah. Um, it's, it's interesting, but as far as the physical therapy profession, you sort of see different realms of things. You see some people that don't understand loaded movement. They don't understand what the body is capable of. I would, um, make an analogy of if you're in the NASCAR Formula One world, you don't get a mechanic that works

at Jiffy Lube to work on your car. Well, a lot of the physical therapists in the world today are mechanics that work at Jiffy Lube. They do a great job with your regular normal aches and pains, but they don't understand really how that translates into a high performance machine, which is an athletic body. And every single person should have the capability to perform basic movements loaded like a squat or a deadlift. And I think the reason that we have such an issue with like, and this is obviously getting off on a tangent, but I mean, every single one of our grandparents, how many of our grandparents can squat all the way down body weight

and just sit in the bottom of the deep squat? How many of our grandparents struggle if you were to say, hey, here's a 50-pound box. Can you put this on a high shelf? Grab it down low, hinge well, pick it up, and put it onto a high shelf. And it's because we've approached so many of these different things like deadlifting and squatting. We think it's an exercise movement first that only people do for

athletic pursuits. And we don't understand that it's a fundamental thing. It's life. Being able to do a squat is not an exercise first. It's a fundamental movement. Being able to hinge and grab something and pick it off the ground, that's a deadlift. That's a basic fundamental movement that you should have competency to be able to load. And when you do, it translates over to much more than just athletic performance, but it creates a fundamental baseline of movement that translates over to the way in which you're going to live the rest of your life. And can you believe me to believe that this guy was like trying to tell me, you know, I have my son, Rod, doing, you know, some weightlifting and he's,

he's really good. And like, this guy's trying to tell me about those videos. I love it. And he's trying to tell me about the growth plates love it and he's trying to tell me about the growth plates and i'm saying are you referring to the epithelial line that one the one who's really good at taking vertical forces that one the one that's not very good at horizontal or torsion that guy because i know all about it man and it's very good vertically and that's such that's such an old myth that lifting is bad for kids i mean so all right i've tried oh i use your stuff too by the way to argue with the guy anyway go ahead people will say it about weightlifting but nobody says it about gymnastics i was just like that's a big dog always yeah

look at the look at the epidemiological studies of injury risk gymnastics has such a high more injury risk oh yeah it does it's crazy and whenever you look at the actual i love gymnastics by the way for anyone that thought i was dogging on gymnastics yeah some of those like nine-year-old girls do when they're doing l-sit rope or uh rope climbs for multiple reps you're like hold on a second over there girl what are you doing whatever i want yeah i was just climbing the rope. No big deal. When you actually look at the research, you'll see that there's extremely low injury risk, especially to growth plates for young children weightlifting, because they often have great

coaching and they have people that are going to make sure that they're following the rules and not just horse playing in the weight room. If you look at the research, the number one injury sustained by children while lifting is because they drop stuff on their feet or their hands, not because they, you know, blew their ankle out or, you know, they have a growth plate fracture. Do you know how we sustain growth plate fractures? We play football, baseball, and basketball over and over and over again. And we're jumping. The forces sustained on your growth plates during repetitive jumping cumulative is much more than doing a couple squats with some lightweight.

Yeah, I totally agree. That was what I told him. Deceleration and change of direction. The forces on your knees are going to be so much higher than doing controlled squats. No doubt. You know, I posted that video of like, you know, when I was debating this guy. So I took all these videos of, of little kids playing pop wonder football and little kids, you know, playing soccer. And I, soccer and i was like this is okay and i had like you know where a kid's getting hit from the side in the knee you know laterally in the knee and then another kid is uh getting you know just getting tackled by a huge dude twice his size i'm like so this is okay this these horizontal you know force that's fine but me with this very controlled five kilogram barbell,

that's dangerous. There's no logic to that, man. Stop. Stop what you're doing and just get off the internet and think about it for 10 seconds. And you'll be like, oh my God, I'm an idiot. That's what you'll say to yourself. If you actually look at like all the medical associations out there that actually say that lifting is completely fine for kids. It's astounding. It's like every single male clinic. Yeah. Yeah. They say lifting is completely fine. As long as you're using appropriate loads, great technique, which sounds like the exact same recommendations for just lifting as an

adult. Exactly. And't that crazy? Like all sports should be able to be done at all ages, you know, safely and with the proper loads. That would be the only two things. Like I just don't understand how this thing got demonized. Yeah. So you have that side of the profession, right?

We talked about that just like doesn't understand high-level athletics. And just like if you have knee pain, all right, sit on the bed and do this little clamshell and let's do ice pack, cold pack, dry needling, cupping. And, you know, we don't understand movement. We don't get people up and moving and squatting and single leg squatting and deadlifting in clinic. You know, those are things that we need to have as a part of our rehabilitation, if we're actually going to fully get people back to living a life that they need to be living. And then you have another side of the profession that basically doesn't believe that there's anything such as a, there's no bad movements. It's just the movement

you're not prepared for. And to a point, I understand it, but they're very big on like Jefferson curls. And not like a Jeffersonerson curl like let's stretch your low back which i that's another tangent but loaded movement of the low back and that is a big no-no and i agree 100 i was telling you on that so definitely i mean there's a lot of research that shows us that loaded movement of the spine over time is what leads to the delamination of the disc and the eventual injury. And it's something that we need to teach people against. You know, it's whenever we're lifting big weight, we want to be able to stiffen the spine and move about the hips. And that leads to lower injury risk and improved performance so we have

two sides of of the conversation whenever we're talking about lifting mechanics of spine the spine needs to be stiffened and it does not we do not want to see movement of the spine um i 100 can you dig into them because i actually feel amazing when i do jeff curls. I don't do them that heavy. I don't do them for a ton of reps. You're not doing them heavy. Yeah. I just do them to like feel good and they feel great. Like everything loosens up. I breathe.

I do all, it just makes me feel good. And then we had Stuart on and he was like, no, no, don't, don't do that. And now you're saying,

no, Anders, you're not that smart. Stop. Let's dive into don't do that. And now you're saying, no, Anders, you're not that smart. Stop. Let's dive into the science of that. So if we look at the spine, it's a very flexible rod. And Dr. Stuart McGill likes to use the idea of like a fishing rod, right? It should be very, very bendy.

But in the same sense, if we're trying to load the body and pick up weight, we want it to be stiffened so that it does not buckle so it has to be very bendy to be able to do you know to bend over tie your shoes to be able to extend back and put something on a high shelf to be able to do any of the you know latest dance craze yeah um your spine is you know to be able to be on tiktok right you gotta be different if you're doing the b on TikTok, you need mobility. You've been killing TikTok. I appreciate it.

I appreciate it. So again, whenever we want to pick up a weight or place a load on the body, we want to limit movement of the spine. So the spine sort of lives by this equation of power equals force or load times velocity. Now, if you're performing something like a golf swing, we're having a lot of movement at the spine. Think of, imagine Tiger Woods swinging a golf club. There's a lot of velocity at the spine, but there's very low load. I mean, the golf club he's lifting is not 10 pounds. It's a very, very light club. And if power is remained or kept at a very low level, the spine can remain very resilient.

What happens is that if we mix the two, velocity and load, things start to happen. So let's think about the power lifter now. He's trying to pick up 600 pounds. If he goes to pick up 600 pounds and he limits back movement, so he locks his spine in place and then moves about the hips, we have very low power because we have a lot of load we have a lot of force on the spine but there's very low velocity

because anytime the spine is moved there's velocity right so if we have low power the spine is able to maintain resiliency long term and that's why you see a lot of very old power lifters who are you know extremely strong is because they've used good technique for such a long time they can pick up 500 pounds at 80 years old. Right. That's the goal. That's the goal. What are your thoughts on, oh, sorry. I thought you were done. Go ahead. No, I'm sorry. So whenever you mix the two, so if you're doing a deadlift in your back rounds, not starts in a slightly rounded position, but when it moves through more flexion, exactly. Cause that's, We all just did it.

I was the opposite. No, I made my back hurt, so I went back. So when we have movement, we have velocity and a lot of load. That is the injury mechanism that slowly delaminates the disc and leads to eventual things like disc herniations and plate fractures and things like that. So it's a power generation of the spine. Now, if you're talking about a very lightweight Jefferson curl, so for those out there that don't know what a Jefferson curl is, you basically start at the top and you are flexing, moving every single part of your spine all the way down. So it's like an RDL, but moving your spine. If it's very, very lightweight, which is what the Jefferson curl was intended to be, if you have to talk to people who do a lot of them, it's more of a stretch for the low back.

So when you're doing that and you feel fine, is it the worst thing ever if the load is kept low? Probably not because- And the speed of it. And the speed of it because you're kept under your current capacity. But what happens if that, if you start going heavier and heavier, which some people have done, is that you're kept under your current capacity. But what happens is that if you start going heavier and heavier, which some people have done, is that you're starting to increase the force. So you now have a lot more load times velocity. So even if you're doing something that's very low velocity,

you're still having velocity and load. You're increasing power generation. So you're just increasing your risk of injury long term. So if we're going to do a Jefferson curl, and it's just something that you enjoy doing, you like the feel of it, just keep it very, very light. I don't have a big problem with it. Now everyone's spine is different. Some people have a spine that's very bendy, right? We look at a yogi. Their spine is more like a willow branch and it can bend and bend all day long. Exactly, like Travis. And then you have some people whose spine is basically like a thick branch. And if it bends a lot, it starts to eventually, you know, find injury. So,

there's no set amount of reps or weight or bending that eventually leads to an injury in the spine, but the mechanism remains the same. So whenever we are talking about lifting mechanics, we want to, as much as possible when lifting load, maintain the stiffness of the spine and move about the hips. And what you'll notice also is that in doing so, if we're talking performance goals, you will have better performance power production out of your legs. Because as Stu says, core stability, proximal stability enhances distal athleticism and power. And you can see this just very simply. Let's say you're doing a push press. Do one where you're just completely unbraced. And then do a second one where you take a big breath into your

stomach, you brace your core like someone's about to punch you in the stomach. And then you go. Instantly, you feel this increase in power and strength. Because you started from a solid foundation of core stability. Taking a quick break. I want to thank our friends over at PowerDot. Right now, the people that literally saved my shoulder, I'm going to tell you the exact user experience that you're going to have when you buy this. You can go over to PowerDot.com forward slash BBS. You're going to save 20% by using the code BBS at checkout. This thing is going to come into the mail. You're going to order it online. You save 20% using the

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That dude saved my life. In 2004, early 2004, I was told that I was close to paralysis. And so I was like, okay, it's time to retire. And I took one shot. I was like, let me just check out this Stuart McGill guy everyone talks about. And then, of course, later that year, I went on to break the world record. And then again in 2005. But it was definitely things.

And I feel now I'm back is the last of my worries. Like I never have back pain. It's definitely thinks, you know, just following his principles, he would definitely say, don't ever stretch the low back, you know, but, but, you know, if you feel the need, I would go light, but he would say, if you want to move, move about the hips. Yeah. And the reason we say don't stretch the low back is because often when people are dealing with back pain, they feel like they need to stretch something because they get a little bit of instant relief. Now, the reason you do that

is because when you're stretching your low back, like pulling your knees to your chest, you're actually activating stretch receptors deep within your muscles that change that brain body connection, your sensation of pain. So you get a little bit of instant relief of pain, but what you're not doing is fixing the underlying whys. And a lot of people, especially strength athletes, we find pain because we are flexion intolerant. So bending loads leads to more and more pain. So just a simple test for those listening or at home watching this. If you were to sit straight up in a chair and then grab your hands underneath the chair and pull straight up with a good neutral posture and just pull straight up as hard as you can to try to smash your spine straight down.

Do you have any pain? Yes, no. Now slouch round your back like crazy and pull up. And a lot of people will then experience pain when their back is flexed, rounded, and then they add that compression and load, they feel pain. Well, what that shows us is that your back is flexion intolerant. And I don't need to know 100% the specific anatomy underlying that is generating the pain. But I know from a movement perspective, that flexion motion with load, which is you mimicking by pulling up on the chair, that is leading to triggering your pain. So for you to pull your knees to your chest to actually stretch your low back, you're pulling into your exact trigger for pain, which is why a lot of people will end up doing knees to chest. They'll feel like stretch. They'll feel better just for a slight amount. And then 30 minutes later, they've got knee pain again.

Or some people, like I was talking to Brian Carroll, he would do, you know, he was like, well, I should do back, the hyperextension. That's what I was going to ask you about. Can you talk about that a little bit, the reverse hyper and what your thoughts are on that? So the reverse hyper, it's, if you talk to most in the powerlifting community, because Louie Simmons is just a, you know, a stronghold in that, they'll always say, oh, well, Louie, you know, did the reverse hyper and it cured his back pain so i got to do it too that's uh first and foremost should be the first red flag just because something helped someone does not mean it's right for your back because everyone's a little bit different unless everyone has the exact same injury in the exact same exactly yeah so what does the reverse hyper

do well on the very bottom when your legs under, it provides a little distraction of the low back. And then when you kick up, there's a lot of engagement of the posterior chain, glutes and hamstring, and then the erectors of the low back. They're working to extend the low back. So you have sort of flexion with distraction and then extension. So you have a lot of muscles that are activating at the very top. For some people, this will help them. I'm not saying it's not a bad thing. Some people do find relief with this, but there are a lot of people that this could be one of the worst things for them. And especially if someone is flexion intolerant, when they pull down under and you're getting that distraction at the very bottom, that's actually creating a trigger. Again, I talked to Brian Carroll, doing the reverse hyper felt okay. 30 minutes later, he was on his stomach. He could barely even walk. So for a lot of people, first and foremost,

if you're dealing with back pain, the first thing you have to do is a proper evaluation to find your movement trigger, your individual reason for generating pain. And we need to then craft together a treatment program to address each one of those. And a lot of times it has to be for more of a stability emphasis, especially for a lot of strength athletes in doing things that help stabilize the spine. And then also addressing things like hip mobility imbalances and things like that. So I think that the reverse hyper wallet does have its place. I think it's definitely used as like a catch all machine. When in reality, we need to first understand, well, why did my pain even start in the first

place? What's my movement evaluation? And then crafting together a plan that addresses all those movement problems. That's how you get out of pain and you build back capacity and resiliency to get back to what you want to do. You know, Stuart McGill, he's been to my gym or the one I sold in Louisville. And he showed us actually if you're going to do the reverse hybrid, if it's something that can actually help you, he showed us a technique where I definitely agree with what

he said versus like, you know, Louis. And I'm not, obviously, everyone knows I love Louis Simmons. He's done probably more for the industry than anybody else. But it doesn't mean he's right about everything. And so like, you know, they'll purposely move into flexion extension flexion in the torso while they're doing, you know, obviously with, you know, at the hip as well. And so he, you know,

Stuart taught me to be up on my forearms and to like lock down the scapula and to keep, you know, to brace around with my spine as much as possible. Therefore getting the majority of the movement from the hips versus like from exactly exactly so that's something that like blaine sumner who most people know you know powerlifting world who's squatted over a thousand pounds i don't know he's a beast he's a beast when he does the reverse hyper he props himself up basically his pelvis is on the end of the back so that when he does it, and he also does it in single leg too. And again, what you're doing there is limiting a lot of twisting action as well. You're sort of bracing even more.

And the load, of course. Exactly. The motion is being placed across the hips. Again, what we're doing with this is we're trying to mimic how we want to move whenever we're lifting weights. I don't want your back to move when you're lifting weights. I want you to your back to move when you're lifting weights. I want you to stiffen your spine and then move about your hips. So the reverse hyper, if done in that manner, sort of structures the movement quality in that way. Yeah.

A lot of this falls in line with Greg Cook's joint by joint concept. How much do you subscribe to that? What do you think the pros and cons are? And maybe give a brief explanation of how it works. Yeah. So the joint by joint approach is probably one of the most impactful concepts that I have ever learned in my physical therapy and just strength and conditioning practice. So for those out there that don't know what it is, basically, yeah. Yeah. So when we look at the body and this is great cook strength and conditioning coach, Mike Boyle sort of wrote of

this a lot in the past years and years ago. It's the idea of looking at the body as a linked system. Like you mentioned, the kinetic chain in that each joint or joint complex has a very specific role to play and connection with the rest of the body. So your feet, your feet are naturally some of the most mobile joint complexes in the entire body. There's many, many bones, muscles, ligaments all together. But technically, whenever we want to do any movement, we need that foot to become stable. When you walk and that foot hits the ground, it needs to all of a sudden become a stable structure for you to provide basically a foundation for the rest of your body to move on top of. The next is the ankle. The ankle needs to be mobile.

Now, obviously, there's some people that have hypermobility there, and we see a lot of issues with sprained ankles and things. But for a large part, the ankle needs to be mobile and sometimes finds that it becomes sloppy and it becomes stiffened. Eventually, it has a propensity to become stiffened. The knee needs to be very, very stable. The hips sort of one and both has to be mobile and stable. The low back needs to be stable. The thoracic spine needs to be mobile. So you see this sort of connection up and down the chain of stable

foundational structures in mobile joints on top. And what we find is that a lot of problems within the body can be related to how that joint disobeys that rule. So we find that the foot often, it needs to be stable, but often what do people see issues with? It collapses over. It becomes unstable. The ankle, like I said, needs to be mobile, but it becomes stiff. The knee needs to be stable, but what do we find, especially like in weightlifters, it becomes unstable and caves in. The low back needs to be stable, but it has a propensity to being unstable and moving too much. So it allows us to understand sort of from a, you know, back off perspective, the different roles of those different body parts. And the reason that it's so helpful is not just to understand that, but to understand the connection.

So the low back needs to be stable. Well, what's the joint above and below? They're very mobile joints. If you lose mobility at the hips, it directly impacts the stability of the low back. So for example, if someone's going into a deep reception of a clean and their low back loses stability. Now it may not be a huge cave over, but they've developed pain because we have small micro movements in the low back. Our first sense is, well, low back needs to be stable. Let's start doing some core work. But if we never look at the hips during our evaluation and find out that I'm missing 15 degrees of hip internal rotation on my right side, I'm never going to

fully stabilize. I'm never going to provide full authentic stability to the low back because the next time I put myself into a position where I'm going to butt up against that hip mobility problem, the low back will compromise its stability. So stable structures will always break down in the presence of stiffness at joints that need to be more mobile. So that's why whenever we're talking about fixing technique issues, we have to understand the connection between all different other parts of the body. So it's called regional interdependence. I don't like to use that fancy word because it just, you lose a lot of people right there. I don't want to use the ivory tower speak, but if I can say, Hey, your knee bones connected to your hip bone,

people understand that. So when we're talking about fixing technique issues and or pain, it all makes sense. Because let's say I have someone with knee pain. The last thing I do is look at the knee. I look at everything else. I'm looking at the hip and I'm looking at the ankle and I'm looking at their feet. So if someone comes to me with knee pain, the first thing I say is get out of your shoes. Let me see a deep squat. Take off your shoes. Let me see a single leg squat. And I'm not looking to see if they can do a perfect Astrographs pistol, but I'm looking for what the quality of their movement looks like. So if I have someone that has right knee pain and I tell them to do a single leg squat on the right side and instantly I see their foot caves over, or maybe they can't get as far and then they have

to lean to the side. Well, right there's a dead giveaway that they have a movement problem that's underlying that knee pain. So then I check it out. I take it down and I say, all right, well, let's do some breakout screens. Let's do a five inch wall test on each side, close chain ankle mobility. I want to see how much your knee can go over your toes with your feet staying flat on the ground, which is squat or a deadlift. So they get down there and they're five inches from the wall. They drive their knee over their toe and they see, all right, my left side can touch my right side. Oop, I'm about four inches away or I'm four inches forward. I I'm missing about an inch of ankle mobility compared to my other side. Cause again, I'm not looking for whether or not we have amazing mobility or not, but asymmetries and side-to-side difference in mobility, what it does

is it changes the way that your body's being moved. And when you place a load on your body time and time again with a movement problem, every single tissue in your body has a set biological load tolerance that it can tolerate before tipping into injury, before finding pain. So let's say you were missing that little bit of degree of ankle mobility on the right side, and we found out that was the only issue. Hips looked completely fine. Well, every single time you go down into a squat, all of a sudden you're shifting side to side a little bit, and maybe not even a big degree to the outsider's perspective. But when you're shifting side to side a little bit. And maybe not even a big degree to the outsider's perspective. But when you're missing ankle mobility on one side, that knee joint all of a

sudden is taking more load more quickly than the other side. So the tissues then around the knee become overloaded and eventually they slip into pain. Now, if I went to a physical therapist, chiropractor, athletic trainer, and I say, I've got some knee pain. Most of the time, the first thing I do is they look at the knee, they poke around the knee, and they're trying to look at your quad and things like that. If they never look and address at that missing ankle mobility, while they may be able to take away your pain in the short term, with whatever they're doing some strengthening exercises, maybe they just tell you to stop squatting, right? So you take away the trigger for pain. Well, all of a sudden, you're starting to feel a little bit

better. Maybe they did some dry needling to that, that those specific tissues that were really inflamed and you're feeling better. Well, the next time you go back to squatting, if you didn't address that limited ankle mobility, now you're just pushing right up against that exact same problem that you were dealing with before. And you're, it's just a matter of time until you overload that area and eventually pain ensues again. And this is a good question for like weightlifters. And this is me being selfish. This is actually for my own team. But like, do you find that with weightlifting, you know, because it's so much overuse, it's like that people develop, you know, like not knee injuries, but like, you know, the common tendonitis or just, you know, is there anything within a program that you feel should be consistent pretty

much throughout to help avoid that? I think there's, there's two things. First and foremost, I think single leg lifts as far as an assistant exercise goes a long ways. Just doing some single leg squats. And I'm not saying pistol squats because you tell a power lifter to start doing some pistol squats and they're looking at you like you're speaking French. I'm saying like a touchdown squat. Like you stack up a couple 20 kilo plates, you hinge at the hips, you have good stability, you're out of your shoes,

you tap your heel down to the ground like you're tapping an eggshell, you're not breaking the egg, you come back up, do 15 of those two sets, your glutes are going to be burning, you're working on your knee control, you're working on your foot stability. And all of a sudden, adding in that single leg work, not only is going to expose if deficit side to side in your ability to control your body, but it sort of allows you to work on making sure that those imbalances that often occur, because we're always on two legs, they're not going to get big enough to where they create. I mean, what about pistol squats? You know, like, I mean, I have a lot of weightlifters, you know, who are amazing. So like Ryan, you know,

Ryan Grimson, he's going to be able to do pistol squats all day. So like, is that should, is that something we should do? I don't think it's necessarily something you have to do, but what I'm looking for more so is the control. So for example, I love doing me personally before squats, I'm going to do two sets of maybe five to eight reps of a single leg squat, just off of a bench. So a bench is what, 18, 20 inches high, just down, tap and back up. And I'm just working on the control. I know I have the depth to do a full pistol squat. What I'm looking for is just to work on solidifying the control of the body, tempo, exactly, and whether or not there's a different side to side. Because if I can be like super wobbly on one side and the other side feels solid, what do you think is going to happen to my body if I get under the load and now I'm placing increased weight on my body, if I'm imbalanced side to side in my control or my mobility prior to lifting,

that's just going to be overcomplicated the more load I'm putting on my body. This is brilliant. You mentioned doing it out of shoes. Is that something weightlifters should be doing frequently is getting out of their lifting shoes and lifting barefoot? Get out of your weightlifting shoes as much as possible. Now, certain gyms have certain requirements, and certain gyms won't allow you to be barefoot. Yeah, those I don't like those gyms.

So if you can't go find a new gym, but if you can be barefoot, be barefoot as much as possible. The thing with shoes, most shoes are very, very narrow. And if you're like, oh, well, the Nike 2s are wide toe box. No, they're not. Most shoes that we wear today are extremely, extremely narrow. What they do is they jam your big toe into the rest of your body. And if you actually, I mean, try this right now. If you jam your toes together and then try to move your foot side to side, so pronation, supination,

you'll find that your foot will actually pronate a good amount if your big toes jammed in. But spread your toes out like crazy, like your foot was designed. If you look at a baby's foot, the big toe is really, really out to the side. The toes are the widest part of the foot. And then from there, keep your toes wide and now try to pronate your foot over. It won't go. It's because your foot is designed to be a very stable structure, but the toes have to be in a good place. Increase the moment of inertia is what you're doing.

I'm a barefoot guy. I'm walking around the neighborhood barefoot all the time. I have the most jacked feet in the whole joint, the whole area code. Yeah. And people look at me like I'm nuts. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Doug. Do you think it's beneficial to have like toe spreaders that you wear when

you're barefoot that push your toes apart? Oh, you got it right there. The dude has them on the desk. I promise I clean these before I set them up. Let me give you guys two bits of advice. Because of Aaron, you know, I started squatting barefoot, and it was a huge difference. And then I took my son, Rock, out of shoes

and started having him do his weightlifting, you know, barefoot. It has been the biggest. It takes away me having to cue so many things. Like, automatically, he started getting it. When he went barefoot, for some reason, whether it was, you know, you have a ton of receptors on the bottom of your foot you do whatever neurologically it totally changed the way he did lifting and and his old man dad i'm not as good as he is but like it definitely helps it's a definite it's a um win for people i've been squatting barefoot for the

past year now and i can't tell you how much better my technique feels because I'm allowing my body to feel the ground. I mean, we always say grab the ground with your feet, feel the movement that's occurring. And when you're out of your shoes, you can feel every tiny movement. And when we're talking about squatting, any movement that's occurring at the feet has an up the chain response. So if that foot collapses over, whenever you're ascending out of a squat, your knee, it's starting to shift in that amount, which then changes your hip that amount, which then changes your back that amount. So if I can sense that from the very beginning, I can work against it into build a stable foot. Yeah. So the correct toes, like you said, Doug, there's a couple of different products on

the market, but correct toes is the one toe spreader to my knowledge that is meant to be worn while you move. It's not meant to be like something you like wear like while you're sleeping. And the reason for that is because we often think about our foot stability. I got to do a bunch of these little like physical therapies, you know, toe scrunch scrunches and foot drills no you need to put your foot into the proper alignment the way your foot was designed toes in the widest position and then you just need to move yeah i my whole life changed when i broke my big toe and trained through it instead of letting it heal properly and i developed one of the most beautiful hip shifts you've ever seen in your life

because I couldn't – like my ankle stopped going where it was supposed to go. The knee stopped going where it was supposed to go. Everything shifted over to the left side. And it was all because I trained through and just basically taped my toe up, blocked that entire side from moving properly. And next thing you know, two years later, I just had a problem that was almost, I mean, I could fix it if I put the time into it, but it was like, eh, this is too big of a problem. I'm just going to back the weights down. I don't need to

do this anymore. And what was the other thing for, you said there was two things for the, for the weightlifter. You said the single leg squat. Yeah. I feel like it'd be great for weightlifters to do just general self-maintenance or self-checks of their mobility, doing simple things. And these are things that I share all across social media for free. Like if you look on my video on YouTube, how to fix a hip shift, there's a test called, remember that one I sent you? What is it? You're just laying on your back, side to side, let your hip fall out. And what we're looking for is, is there a difference side to side? Is there a big

mobility imbalance? Because like I mentioned, as a weightlifter or powerlifter, we are always on two feet. We're never doing things single leg. So if there's an imbalance side to side in mobility, it means that while you're lifting and while you're loading your body, you are asymmetrically loading one part of your body. And while your technique may look adequate to an outside observer, there's small things going on deep within your body that over time lead to those small aches and pains. I'm not talking like you're going to tear your ACL in weightlifting. That's an extremely, extremely rare thing. But what happens is that we have these small aches, my left knee sort of bugging me, my right hip. And it's because of these small movement issues. Like I mentioned, the last year I've been squatting without shoes, I haven't had

a lower body issue in the past year. And for gosh, all my years of squatting before that, maybe every couple months, just something would be a little bit achy. My right lateral hip, maybe my left knee, you know, something would just feel a little bit achy and I would do different things to work on it. But really, because I i was able to expose there was a lot of stability issue and it wasn't like i wasn't showing drastic knee cave but just the smallest micro movements over time lead to macro trauma that's sort of the idea behind this movement-based approach you're wearing your correct toes while you're squatting also? Yes, I am.

Now, it's because I'm not wearing weightlifting shoes. When I'm ready to do cleans and snatches, they won't fit in a weightlifting shoe or it'll be extremely uncomfortable. So I am then taking them off, put on my regular socks and squat. What about knee flexion? So you think that's a good model for weightlifters? You wear your shoes for snatches, clean jerks, and then when you squat, take them off? I would say yes.

I think there's a couple things that go with that. As a weightlifter, your goal with the squat is to be an assistant exercise for your clean and your snatch. It is not a competition lift. It is there to support your full lift. So the way in which you squat supports your snatch and your clean. So you should be squatting the exact same way you want to be hopefully cleaning or snatching in meaning that you want to squat to the same depth. If you squat just a parallel as an Olympic weightlifter, I don't think you are optimizing your strength and your movement quality for the clean. If you can sit in a full ass to grass, deep back squat and do pauses down there and strengthen

your, your, uh, capacity in that deep position, you're going to see that carry over and solidify into a better clean reception because you've been in that position. You have the capacity down there. So especially the front squat, I would say is exactly. Right. Yeah. So if you are an Olympic weightlifter and you have the mobility to get down there, yes, I think squatting barefoot could be amazing. Um, there are some people that need the assistance of a weightlifting shoe and they can't squat deep without a lot of technique errors. So I don't think it's a yes or no. I think there's a squat deep without a lot of technique errors. So I don't

think it's a yes or no. I think there's a lot of, a lot of blend, a sort of gray area. And then some people will find that when they're barefoot, they don't lift as heavy, especially early on because they're getting used to the weightlifting shoes. Um, but I'll say this when I talked to Chris Duffin on my own podcast, who just recently squatted a thousand. We talked to him. We talked to him. Yeah. So Chris always says that the reason he squats barefoot is because it is a technique enhancer,

a performance enhancer. Yeah. Like I mentioned, because it allows you to feel every single change in your stability from the ground up. So in that sense, you know, I think it'd be interesting to see more weightlifters squat barefoot and then put their shoes on only for their main. Get ready. You're about to see a bunch of them. I would like to see, and I would challenge anyone that works for a major shoe company to come out

with a truly wide toe box weightlifting shoe. Right now, like if you do want a wide toe box shoe, the Barefoot Athletics Ursus, which, you, which is sort of a side business of Kabuki Strength with Chris Duffin, it's a flat sole shoe, but it has a super wide toe box. It's not an elevated heel yet. But yeah, there is not a single weightlifting shoe on the market that is truly natural, like a wide enough toe box, like a foot. I mean, it's going to look weird at first because it's going to look almost like a clown shoe because it's so wide. Don't you kind of want that extra stability? It's kind of like, I mean, it's kind of like wearing a weight belt, but around your feet, like to keep everything tighter, more stable.

You want the stability in your heel and maybe even a little bit into the back part of the cup area, but you want those toes to splay out. And actually what you'll find, like I mentioned, if you pinch your toes together and then allow your foot to sort of collapse over by having such a tight foot, you don't even realize it's going on, but your foot is easily unstable, much more unstable. What about doing the flex? I actually have noticed that I've rolled my ankle running with shoes that are too small like if i if i order like a 10 but it fits like a nine and a half or something i will roll my ankle immediately when i go for a run on those shoes because they're so

tight and and it takes away every all of that kind of ground surface it just it feels awful and i end up getting hurt it's interesting what about that about that, Aaron? Like knee flexion, you know, like I know because most weightlifting is done, you know, with, it's all knee extension, of course. And so we hardly, most people do zero, like knee flexion, like leg curls or anything. Do you find that that might alleviate, you know, the imbalances at the knee? I don't know if we necessarily need to do more assistant exercises on machines, but as far as knee flexion, if you're doing a single leg squat, like I mentioned off a box, just called a touchdown. And for anyone listening that wants to just get a visual of this, if you go on just Squat University's YouTube and type in like how to pistol squat,

I have a full progression that sort of demonstrates the exact technique of this. But the idea is that you're using the body through a full range of flexion and extension. So that's why I love the, the touchdown squat. Right. I mean, what about strengthening though? The only thing is that we do so much to strengthen the quad, quadriceps, but we don't do anything, you know, necessarily to strengthen the hamstrings, especially as it, as it is, as it crosses the knee, you know, like, you know necessarily to strengthen the hamstrings especially okay okay as it as it is as it crosses the knee you know like you know the quads anterior hamstrings posterior and so we

do zero you know either i guess you could say the rdl but not as it is as it's shortening and increasing strength at the knee i really think if you come from a good quality of movement uh in looking at bilateral and single leg movements. You're looking at the squat, you're looking at hinging motion. So we're looking at the RDL, the good morning. I think in Bulgarian split squat, I think you're doing double and single leg movements in all of those realms. I don't think you necessarily need to supplement with more things like a hamstring curl. I, because I think it's, I don't like to think movement or muscles, I think movements. So that's a big thing is when we're talking about specific muscles, a lot of people like, well, this is a quad exercise, or

this is a shoulder exercise. No, it's a, it's a push. It's a press body bodybuilders train muscles because their, their end goal is to create form or right they're trying to build the muscles very specifically so they love to use different exercises that are able to isolate specific muscle groups and not to say that bodybuilders don't have you know push pull days or squat or deadlift but as a whole the end goal of being a bodybuilder is to build aesthetics and to form the body to have a certain look whereas Whereas as an athlete, it all comes down to movement. What about quad ham imbalance? Even that, I really think it's basically looking at the body through a microscope

rather than taking a step back. Because I think sometimes, again, we have this idea of looking at the body and trying to analyze and be really, really close in trying to focus our camera. But in reality, we just need to take a step back and look at things. Because I promise if you see these people that they'd say, oh, they're the quad hamstring ratios off. But really, when you watch the move, oh, they can't even do a single leg squat without falling over. Well, don't fix the quad hamstring ratio with different isolated exercises like a seated knee extension or a hamstring curl. Fix their squat. And in doing so,

that hamstring ratio, quad hamstring ratio will be where it needs to be for that person. The idea of like, whenever you see a great looking athlete, Lu Zhaojun, right, one of the greatest weightlifters right now, dude looks like a bodybuilder. He doesn't do bodybuilding. Now, yes, you'll see him doing like some rows and stuff like that every once in a while, but the majority of his training is weightlifting movements. And it appears as if he has done bodybuilding because he is training movements very well.

He does quite a bit. I saw him in the trailer. He's doing some dips all the time. They do a lot of assistant work, but as far as the majority of their work. Totally. I totally agree with you. But like when they go in the back, they do a lot more assistance than anyone in the world. Like they get right. They'll do their awesome snatch cleanser. And then those dudes will spend some quality time. They got nothing to do.

What else are they going to do? Well, if I look like Lou, I would keep doing it. You're living with like 500 dudes in one big dorm room. You might as well go get your pump on all day. Lou will never go broke because all he has to do is get naked and he's getting paid, you know? So keep doing it, Lou. Keep doing what you're doing.

I love that you've had this. You haven't said anything about a lacrosse ball and you haven't said anything about like banded distractions and the whole hour plus we've been hanging out. And when you – you just mentioned kind of looking at the macro movements and all of that stuff figuring itself out. Where do you stand kind of on those – I hope we've gotten a little bit away from it as a whole of, I'm going to jam this lacrosse ball into the most painful spot on my knee and hang out here for the next five minutes until the pain goes away. Have we gotten away from that and started to

realize there's probably a little bit better way? It's all about having the right tool in the toolbox, but understanding the greater work at hand. And I'll give you better way. It's all about having the right tool in the toolbox, but understanding the greater work at hand. And I'll give you an example. Let's say I have an athlete who's having a problematic squat, and maybe they're shifting to one side or their hip hurts. I break them down. I know there's a movement issue. I see them shifting.

When I break down their body and I do some testing, and I see, oh, they're missing hip internal rotation on their left side. Well, if it's on their back and I'm raising their leg and I see, oh, they're missing hip internal rotation on their left side. Well, if it's on their back and I'm raising their leg and internally rotating and they're missing a lot of movement and maybe that pain's on the front side of their body, like a hip impingement, a banded joint mobilization for a hip impingement is amazing. So I get the band, we're doing a band joint mobilization, driving the knee out to the side, squeezing the glute, coming in, sort of gapping that hip joint. Well, we go retest and we retest and we see, oh, we were able to improve that range of motion. No longer has that pinch sensation right there. We're more symmetrical. Awesome. That banded joint

mobilization played a great part at fixing the underlying asymmetry hip mobility. Now, if I just leave it at that, I only did part of the the work I have to go back and look at the squat again because I have it all comes back to movement and then I have to then load the squat well and sometimes it depending on their where their pain's at because they've really irritated their hip they may have to do a box squat early on or maybe it's just lightening the load but or working on you know engaging the lateral hips the big big thing is when we're looking at any type of mobility tool, it all has to fit within our underlying why of coming back to the macro, coming back to the movement.

So there's nothing wrong with using a lacrosse ball into the hip. But your first question should not be how long should I do this? It's why did this area even become tender in the first area or in the first reason if I'm doing it, let's say my glutes just really, really flared up one day and you take the lacrosse ball to it and it feels better. And then you just go throughout your day, go throughout your workout and you never try to get under. Yeah. And you never try to fix why did that even get there in the first place? You're not curious. You're not asking more questions and doing more testing. That stiff area is going to continue being stiff and it's going

to continue coming back and eventually it may lead to something even bigger so it all stems from understanding the movement perspective yeah yes those things have a place there's nothing wrong with that i mean kelly starrett was one of the first people to start showing hey we can do this bandage fraction using this little crossbow it's's amazing because it allowed people. I love Kelly. I don't think Kelly's, I don't think Kelly's the problem. I think all the people that tried to beat Kelly at being Kelly turned into a crazy one. Exactly. Because what Kelly always said was test retest. It is the ultimate understanding of you need to be empowered to take control of your body. And here's some different tools. Now I've just sort of built on top of that and said, here's the right, he said, here's the tools, test, retest,

but then let's bring it back and understand, okay, well, why did he even get there in the first place? Let's try some of these other tests too, to understand how does that relate back to our movement? Because I don't want you to just feel good today and to take this pain away today. I want you to fix why that pain was even there in the first place so that you can get back to performing at a high level and do so for the rest of your life. And I feel like those are things people think that pain or medical conditions that that achy knee, that that's a medical condition. No, it's not. It's something that you should be empowered as an average everyday gym goer. You should have the power to understand how to take the first steps to addressing every single one of those aches and pains, which is why I put out so much content on just being like,

hey, back pain, try this test. What'd you find? Okay, do this exercise, see how this fits into your training program. This is something that you should be able to take control of. Because too often today, we're just suffered with so much bad information out there. We're told by some people that pain is an inconvenience to life and we need to alleve it, right? We need to cover it up. We need to put icy hot on. I need to buy these knee sleeves. Then you get the other side of things where it's like, Hey, that lifting you're doing, that's bad for you. Just stop lifting so much. You know, we're not given great advice. So what I wanted to do with Squall University was basically be that voice of reason and say, hey, I'm a weightlifter too. I know what it feels like

to have this achy knee and how frustrating it is to go through your training and not being able to do what you want performance wise. There is a better option than what you're told today. You don't just have to ask your gym buddy, hey, what'd you do for your knee pain? There is a better option than what you're told today. You don't just have to ask your gym buddy, hey, what did you do for your knee pain? There is a better option. Is that your new book? What is your new book about? Hold on. Can we do – I have one question.

I want to do the whole book. I'm really interested in like a very controlled setting. Do you ever like I guess bring kind of the vestibular system into it? I wanted to ask this when you're talking about getting your feet onto the ground. And, you know, getting people moving with their eyes closed is something that I used to do just as like a trick just to kind of take people's brains away from like, the kind of that just I know how to squat and go, Oh, really? Well, let's close your eyes and see what it looks like and see how the body's wired and those movement patterns. And then really forcing people to connect their brain to

their feet and understanding how far those messages have to travel in order for all the neurological components to actually make sense and turn into a beautiful looking squat. When you're in a controlled environment in the clinic, do you work with the vestibular system much? Everything that I'm doing technically has a vestibular aspect to it because it's your body's awareness. A lot of times we develop these aches and pains, not because we are weak, but because we don't have awareness of the way in which we are moving. So for example, that's why whenever I'm squatting, I'm getting people out of their shoes. Whenever maybe I'm doing a single leg squat, I'll have a band just pulling slightly in, sort of pulling them into a valgus. That's called reactive neuromuscular training or RNT. And it's based on the principle that

I don't want to just show you how to squat or tell you keep your knee out. I want you to feel the problem occurring. I want you to feel and become aware of the movement problem because once you become aware, then you can fix it. A lot of people, and this is a big thing, especially with people in pain, when you have back pain, there's a lot of research that shows that you automatically lose sensation and positional awareness of your spine. So you don't even realize that you're rounding your spine or letting it move as much as it really is because pain is inhibiting your sensation, your awareness of your body. So a lot of the things that I do is to bring awareness to that. So sometimes you'll see,

I love using this new exercise for back pain patients where I have just a bamboo bar on your back. And you can do this with a regular barbell, but take like 10 pounds, 10, 15 pounds, not a lot of weight and hang it off one side of the bar. It'll like with a very light resistance band. So it's sort of bouncing. Yeah. Just unrack it. And again, 10 to 15 pounds. So not much weight, but act like it's 300 pounds or 400 pounds. Cause when you stand up, if you're not braced properly, boom, that bar is just going to flip on you. You'll learn very quickly. And then just take 10 steps back and 10 steps forward. And that bouncing weight creates a positional awareness within your spine because you have these very, very small muscles deep within your spine that actually have, they're very, very highly innervated. There's a lot uh muscle spindles that can sense positional change

they're talking about the multifidi multifidi and there's a lot of very very small muscles that actually are sort of inter in between each and every single one of the the different uh vertebrae right so it allows you to become aware of these small little micro movements within your spine you do that down and back a couple of times, man, you feel like you have a sheet of armor across your back and across your core when you're done. Wouldn't that help your QLs as well? I mean, like, you know, the opposite side is going to have to like shorten to stabilize. And that's a great reason for doing like suitcase carries and things like that. And a lot of people, they say, oh, my QL is weak or my QL is tight. That's just a response

to something happening much deeper within the spine. Your QL is there to help stabilize your spine. So when you're doing a suitcase carry and you're marching, let's say you're in right leg stance. So your left leg is swinging forward. Your left QL is cinching your pelvis to your spine. So it's making sure that your pelvis stays level to allow your leg to swing through. So a suitcase carry is a great core stability exercise, a functional exercise. Because yes, it's training your QL, but it's not training it in a way like, oh, I need to do some side bends. So again, it comes down to are we training muscles or are we training movements? And in doing the movement training, if we're doing it correctly, those muscles are getting worked, but it's doing so in a way that's going to transfer over to the way in which your end goal, better quality movement.

Yeah. Beautiful. Tell us about the book. Yeah, we really could go more if you, we could sit here all day. I could go all day. I still have a list of questions. So the book is called Rebuilding Milo. So as for most people out there in the strength community, you've probably heard the name Milo before. Milo was an ancient Greek Olympian, considered by many to be one of the greatest athletes of his time. Well, as the story goes, Milo lifted a small calf to his shoulders every single day. And as the calf grew in size, so did Milo's strength until one day he was lifting a full

grown, you know, 1500 pound bull. So the story set the precedent for modern day view of periodization with the emphasis on progressive overload. And I first learned about this from Dr. Alex Cook back in college. So the idea behind it is that every single one of us are trying to become our own version of Milo. But yet we often disobey this scientific code that you have to have sufficient stress on the body and recovery for adaptation to occur. You can't just lift, lift, lift, lift, lift. You have to stress the body, you have to recover, and then adaptation can occur. And in our own pursuits of becoming our own version of Milo,

we disobey this code whether or not we're lifting too much, inviting in poor technique, things happen whenever we push the envelope. It's a double-edged sword because that same drive within us to put 10 more pounds on the bar, to do one more set, to lift one more kilo on the platform, in our own pursuits of performance, we always end up with these aches and pains. In today's society, like I mentioned, we're not really given great advice about how to take the first steps to fix these. You either get the no pain, no gain. Oh, it's normal to have back pain when deadlifting. You deadlifted 600 pounds. Of course, your back's going to hurt a little bit. Or you go see someone that says, just stop lifting so much.

Or like the modern, I mean, watch TV for five minutes. Nowadays, you're going to see some, you know, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, some pain cream. You're going to see some, you're going to see Shaq touting icy hot or something like that. Right. So we're given such bad advice about how to create a great, you know, room to, to make changes. So the idea behind the book is to say, there is a better way. And it's taking the right approach of understanding that we can screen the body, find these movement issues, and take the right steps to get out of pain. So it walks you through every single common ache and pain and a strength athlete would have. Any single person that walks in the weight room is going to want to have this in their library because we're never always 100% healthy. I mentioned I've had knee pain. I've had back pain. I know what it

feels like and it's frustrating to not have the answers. Well, this is your first step. This is your first approach to understanding and fixing that. So chapter one is back pain. And you turn to it that day, you sort of have a little ache and pain. You go to back pain chapter and you open it up and it takes you through and you say, Hey, here's some different reasons people develop back pain. So there's not a one size fits all. There's many different reasons people develop pain. And it walks you through these different, a back, you know, a disc herniation and end plate fracture, facet joint irritation. And then it says, you know what? You don't have to have Dr. Stuart McGill or Dr. Aaron Horschig in your pocket to take you through

and know exactly what specific anatomical structure is causing your pain because you can do a movement-based screen on yourself to try these different things. Try the Faber test like I sent you, Travis, right? Do this. What did you find? Well, based on these tests, your symptoms fit within this sort of category. Right. We felt asymmetry. rate evaluation, your specific movement trigger. And then based on that, it tells you, okay, try these exercises. Do this specific thing for here. Do this specific thing for here. And in doing so, it gives you a path that you can take to get out of pain and then build back a resilient body. So for back pain, not only do I want you to get out of pain, but then how do you get back into lifting? Because the last time you did cleans, things hurt. Well, let's take this bridge to performance. Let's start off with maybe doing some cleans from a high box in powers. So it

takes you through how you can then eventually get back to lifting without pain. So you can build a body of resiliency. So my whole thing was I wanted to write a book for 18 year old Aaron, who had hip fluster pain or knee pain. And I was just like, what do I do? It's just, it's frustrating because I've got this big competition in 10 weeks and I don't just want to stop training, but I'm getting all this bad advice. If I could take that book off the shelf and try the tests, maybe I would have been able to do much better at that competition because I would have only had to take two weeks of a small step back to fix the issue and then get on with what I would love to do, which is lifting heavy ass weight. So that's why I wanted to write the book to basically give everything that I tell people

in a 480 page book. That means you wrote like 800 pages. I wrote a lot. I wrote a lot, but there's, there's a lot that goes into it because it can't be a simple solution. It's a long discussion. There's a lot of things to consider because there's no one size fits all. If you're looking for a solution where it's, well, we all do this, that's the wrong book because everyone's got a little individual difference. You and your buddy may both have back pain from deadlifting 600 pounds, but it may be due to very different reasons. One person may have an instability within the spine. difference. You and your buddy may both have back pain from dead lifting 600 pounds, but maybe due

to very different reasons. One person may have an instability within the spine. The other person may be very strong within their core, but they have a big hip mobility imbalance. And until you uncovered that problem with proper screening, you'll never know. And your solution to fixing will never be as optimal as it can be. You know, talking to a lot of strength athletes, they're like, well, when my back hurts, I just take a month or two off after competition. And then eventually I'm able to get back into it. You're not winning then, bud. You calm down your symptoms, you wound them down, but you're going to go back into the ring and get punched again. Things are going to start aching up again. I want to build resilient athletes. I

want to empower and create educated athletes and coaches who can take the first steps at addressing these common aches and pains because they're not a medical problem. You don't have a torn ACL. You don't have something that's leaving you crippled on the ground that you need medical assistance right now. These are things that you should be able to take the first steps to fixing. If you don't address it, you very well could though. If you don't nip it in the bud, that will be the next step. Because if you have constant injury, in my experience, almost 100% leads to a real issue that you're going to have no choice. Exactly.

You'll be getting the MRIs next. Exactly. So this should be the first step for people to educate themselves, become an educated consumer so that if you do want to work with a chiropractor, athletic trainer, physical therapist, a doctor, you can have that conversation and say, well, I read this book and Aaron said that my knee pain is not tendinopathy. It's really a biomechanical issue because I have limited ankle mobility on one side and I have poor stability when doing a single leg squat. What do you think? Well, because so often we get people, and I can't tell you the amount of times I've heard this story of they had knee pain. So they went to a doctor,

doctor didn't even touch their knee, asked them about what was hurting, wrote him a prescription for 800 milligrams, you know, milligram of ibuprofen twice a day, and then told him to stop squatting for two weeks. And then told him to stop squatting for two weeks. And then they're like that, that's it. That's the solution. You know, or they go to a doctor that says, okay, we'll go do some physical therapy. And then they go in that person. They're like, well, um, you're very strong. Let's yeah. Let's stretch this. Let's I'm going to do some kinesio tape. Let's do a little ultrasound and maybe they do some strengthening, but it's like, okay, let's do this single leg leg press. And they never address the underlying why. So I know not

everyone has a great practitioner to work with. So I wanted to write something that could be the first step for people to, to take that, to make that change the right way. I'm getting that book for sure. When is it, when's it going on sale and Where can they buy it? So it's on sale right now. Uh, pre-sale started a couple months ago. It is going to come out January 19th, 2021. Um, yeah, so available all across the world on Amazon. So amazon.com.ca for Canada, UK, France, um, or if people don't use Amazon, uh, bookdepository.com, barnesandnoble.com. Um, but it's available for pre-order right now. And yeah, it drops January 19th. That's going to be sick.

I'm for sure getting that. Hey, how did your first book, you know, how did it, it's only on Amazon too. How did it do? I'm just curious. It's done well. You know, the squat Bible was my first book. And it wasn't, yeah, it was. So the squat Bible is a little bit different than this

book. I, like I said, this book's 480 pages. The squat Bible was basically 128 pages of you want to squat. You love squatting. Here's how you do it as fast as possible. And it sort of talks about, like you mentioned, Doug, the joint by joint approach. Let's understand that every part of your body has a specific role to take to create quality movement. So if you want to squat well, you need symmetrical ankle mobility. Here's how you test it. There's a couple of fixes sort of going through the body. A very quick read, you could read it in a weekend, but basically to understand that the squat is the fundamental move, you know, building block that I think too often we have conceptually rearranged to think is only an exercise first, not a movement. Like I mentioned

earlier in the show, how many of our grandparents can sit in a deep squat? Because when you say, hey, do you squat? We think, well, I squat 300 pounds. Not, oh, I can sit in a deep squat yeah so when we rearrange that and and get our movement of the squat down first yeah then add load and it makes so many other things better brilliant you you intro in the book i watched uh i watched you read a book today um but on on your website you you read the intro and you talk about the guy i think everybody's probably aware of this video where he's squatting 700 something pounds i think and uh both his knees blow out he tears every ligament and tendon in his knees um and you were the one that kind of got him back to squatting a year later 195 pounds at his first powerlifting meet um with that backdrop um do you follow that story kind of that that whole rehab process

with him throughout the book? Who was it? Who are we talking about? So his name is Josiah O'Brien. He's a powerlifter strength conditioning coach out in Kansas City. So the story for those out there who have not heard of this, I made a mini documentary on YouTube. It's just called Josiah's Story. Josiah Josiah was a power lifter. Um, pretty strong guy at a meet. Unfortunately had been dealing with a little bit of knee pain in the past. And like most power lifters, you have no idea what a foam roller is. You've never done a single leg squat in your life. You eat, breathe and live lifting big, heavy weights, metal blaring in the background. Right. So like rap, but yeah but yeah yeah you feel a little bit of knee pain you just turn the wu-tang clan up a little bit more right exactly there it is so i had had come

out and he did like 635 easy 645 or 50 easy i think he went for 655 on his very last attempt a feet only five pounds greater than his pr at the time and on the descent felt something snap and he tore his patellar tendon on uh his right side his acl pcl mcl his left knee buckled underneath and that's 655 pounds just had shifted just to one leg towards quad tendon of his other side acl pcl m, MCL. So massive load, his legs are pinned underneath him. People rushed to pull the bar off of him. He has to be transported to the local hospital in the bed of his buddy's truck because he can't sit with his knees bent. He ends up getting rhabdomyolysis because there was so much severe muscular damage that his kidney started

shutting down. He ended up being in straight leg braces for 12 weeks because there was so much severe muscular damage that his kidneys started shutting down. He ended up being in straight leg braces for 12 weeks because there was so much damage to the knees that the surgeons had to do so much repairing. Works with a great surgeon out in Kansas City. And he came to me the first day. He could barely walk. And he underwent over 100 physical therapy visits spread across like nine ten months and he finished that very last day he said i he goes i i got to do one more meet he goes just just for the mental clarity of being like this injury doesn't define

me so we made a plan together and worked on our progressions. And he ended up, he squatted 195 pounds. Now, to someone who had squatted 650 before, like that's nothing. But for him, just to go back into a meet that had previously crippled him and to say, you know, this injury doesn't define me, it was very magical to see. It was very impactful to see. So it was one of those things that I mentioned in the book for the sake that that is not something that happens often. It is the exception, not the rule.

The rule is that often these small aches and pains are just small things that lead us not to get our greatest performance potential. And they're nagging and they're frustrating. And we want to throw our belt against the wall because our knees hurting the third week in a row. And I could feel it on that clean. And, you know, it's just maddening that there's not a solution. They're not always going to be something that creates this massive injury, but there's things that you still have power over. So I didn't, uh, I don't talk much more about Josiah's story throughout the rest of the book, but it was there to set the precedent that injuries are things that happen in the pursuit of

great strength. They're not always massive things, but there are always going to be them. And that's one of the truths for weightlifting, powerlifting, CrossFit, strongman, is you are never going to be injury free. And the longer you're in those sports of performance, the more you know that there are always going to be those aches and pains. And the idea behind it was to say, I'm here to tell you there's hope. There's something that you can do to learn to become an educated athlete or coach to take away those aches and pains. They're not something you have to deal with to cover up or to just keep pushing

through from experience i can tell you that when you start that when achy is one thing i mean everyone gets achy you know as long as you warm up and it goes away but like if that starts to get worse steadily i'm telling you guys paddlers weightlifters if it's starting to get worse progressively that that an injury is coming and you know like i ignored my elbow years ago until my ties my tricep completely tore triceps completely tore so like listen to that stuff man if your knee is starting to get worse there's an injury coming and it could be i just watched i almost threw up and so like uh it could be just like that especially the knee it always ends up if you're a powerlifter in the squat and so like uh it could be just like that especially the knee it always ends up

if you're a powerlifter in the squat and it's you it pops when there's lots of weight on your back you just look terrible but yeah yeah try to smash where can they oh do you want to tell them social media everybody already follows you where can they find you squat squat university man i feel like it was like six months ago. I remember you making it. We just have 1 million people following the page. And I just looked before we hopped on here. It's like 1.5 million human beings following you now.

That's because he's so amazing. It's incredible what you do. You're actually one of the really good guys. And that's what makes me so mad when you have some strength coaches and athletes out there that sometimes will hate on them. They'll be like, who's a PT to talk you out of squat? Shut your mouth, man. Obviously, the dude gives so much more than anybody else.

If I have to pick one person out of the entire industry that gives the most of themselves, I got to go with you, man. So I appreciate you being on our show. I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, it truly amazes me when I see things like that. My goal wasn't just to amass the most amount of followers, but my goal is to change the game and to give as much as I can. I mean, there's not a single thing that's written in the book that's not already been

said. And the idea, I think nowadays, is everyone wants to hide behind a paywall or only give you a part of the solution. And that's not how we change the world. I mean, if you really want to make an impact, you have to give away as much of your information as you can for free. And I think good things happen as a result of that. That's why I love this guy.

Anders, he's like, this is the real, he's one of the very few in the industry that's the real good guy. Yeah. It's awesome, man. Coach Travis Mash. Mashlead.com. Go buy that book. If you're a coach and you don't buy that book, you're not a good coach.

So if you're getting coached by a guy who doesn't buy his book, you're getting coached by a bad coach. There you go. Doug Larson. Find me on Instagram. Aaron, thank you so much for coming on the show, dude. I've been looking forward to doing this again for a long time. I was stoked when your first book

came out, and I'm actually more stoked for this book to come out. I can't wait to read it. Hey, thank you guys so much for having me on. It's truly an honor. Like I said, I've been a fan of Barbell Shrug from day one. To be on and talking with you guys here today, nothing better. Awesome. I'm Anders Varner

at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Sh at anders varner we are barbell shrugged barbell underscore shrug get over to barbell shrug dot com forward slash diesel dad that's where you gotta hang out because right now i gotta go to daycare i'm probably not gonna be able to work out again like i really was gonna try to do this afternoon uh walmart if you are in palm springs san diego la or did I get San Diego in there? I think I got them all. Vegas. There, Vegas.

There it is. We are on the shelves in performance nutrition. Thanks a lot for being on here. This was awesome. I feel like we could go another hour. We'll see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. I want to thank our friends over at PowerDot.

Get over to PowerDot.com forward slash BBS and use the code BBS at checkout to save 20%. Also, our friends over at Organifi.com forward slash Shrugged. Save 20% on the green, red, and the gold drinks. And our good friends over at Bioptimizers. Bioptimizers.com forward slash Shrugged. That's Bioptimizers.com forward slash Shrugged.'s buyoptimizers.com forward slash shrugged. Save 10% using the code shrugged. We will see you guys on Wednesday.