Barbell Shrugged - The Conjugate Method: How to Implement Max Effort, Dynamic Effort, and PR Every Single Day w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #513

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

This week only, save 20% on the “Boulders for Shoulders” for functional fitness athletes using the code “boulders” at checkout. Sale ends Friday.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   What is the Conjugate Method? What is max effort day? How to implement dynamic days? Why it is important to PR everyday Is the Conjugate method the best program for maximizing strength?   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   This week only, save 20% on the “Boulders for Shoulders” for functional fitness athletes using the code “boulders” at checkout. Sale ends Friday.   ————————————————   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   Fittogether - Fitness ONLY Social Media App   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we're talking about the conjugate method, which you may or may not have ever heard of in your entire life. It's kind of the system for how some of the strongest people that have ever walked on the face of this earth train. And it was invented by Louis Simmons talking about max effort days, dynamic days, and this fun thing that they like to do inside the conjugate method, talking about PRing every single day to build confidence so you get ready for the platform and how you can use these tactics and these strategies and this training method to get strong and who it's best for. Before we get too deep into it today, I want to tell you

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Let's talk about some conjugate method. Let's get after it. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner. Doug Larson. Coach Travis Mash. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we're going to be talking about the conjugate method. Which is fantastic.

Because I don't really know that much about it outside of the high-level basics. And I've watched the West Side documentary at least 27 times, maybe a little bit more. I wish I could just be on the West Side, like on a plane watching the West Side documentary on repeat over and over and over again because I feel like I learned so much on it. But now I got the man, Travis Mash. You wrote a book on the conjugate method didn't you yeah is it a plus to weightlifting i did yeah so well i mean i i used it how i apply it to balance the two yeah yeah doug larson when you think about the conjugate

method what uh what are some of the the high level pieces that you that pop in your mind kind of on on the speed and max effort stuff? Yeah. I mean, conjugate is heavily associated with Westside, of course. I don't think you have to copy the exact like Westside templates so I have something that looks conjugate. But in my experience, conjugate has been, you know, over the course of 20 years of my training, has been one of the more successful

templates or models that I've ever followed. Not just because it got me really strong, and I made a lot of progress with it, but it also seems to actually be, compared to many other ways of training, less likely to beat me up. Like you're lifting heavy, you're lifting fast, you're doing enough falling to make really good progress. But I always walk away from conjugate blocks feeling really good. I'm never beat up. I'm never too tired throughout the week. I'm always excited to show back up for the next training session. So conjugate is kind of – I wouldn't say it's my base,

but it's kind of always – it's a structure that I continue to go back to time and time again because I know that it's going to make me feel good and it's kind of always, it's a structure that I continue to go back to time and time again, because I know that it's going to make me feel good and it's going to give me progress. Then I'll kind of get bored with it after, you know, months or however long. And I'll go try something else for a while, depending on what I have going on in my life. And what kind of, you know, if I have competitions coming up or if I happen to be hurt from jujitsu or whatever it is, but I know I can always circle back to something that kind of looks very conjugated and it'll it'll give you progress without really beating me up too much yeah mash what did you uh first start doing it

were you like on in on the early days when louis started putting this stuff together and then you adopted a lot of it well I you know I started out you know being a huge fan of ed cohen i'm still am and like so i started out with linear periodization just like him i modeled everything after him and it worked really well to a point and then um you know then i just needed something different i felt um mainly if i have to be honest like it just west just, Westside looked cooler. You know, the conjugate stuff just looked fun and exciting. And, you know, say what you want. That's a huge part of training if you want to train for a long time. So I just like the fact that you changed a lot.

And it wasn't always squatting, you know, 4x10, then 5x5, then 5x3, and then max. You know, I like the fact that you were going heavy and something all the time and you know i love the bands and chains it just was so cool i remember i remember going to lowe's hardware and buying my first set of chains i felt i had the most fun that day in training and like that's something people don't talk enough about it just it totally made training so much more fun it just looked so hardcore here i am you know powers i'm already pretty strong hearing the chains clang it's just it's awesome it's like it adds to the vibe of the gym hearing the chains clang yes yeah and you see bands and you're like what is going on is this a science experiment? Kind of, yeah. Well, how is a block in the conjugate method actually created?

I personally have – I've never followed the actual system. I've watched it and kind of seen the high-level principles, and I've had many conversations with AJ Roberts about it when we were training together. But what are like the high level principles of kind of the max effort days and how the dynamic days play together and how you would structure kind of like a week and then a month and then a training block? Well, they do it in the three week the three week waves and so it goes up up up back down up up up back down and uh they don't really have like you know a necessary deload except that the first week is less than the others um but yeah they call that what is the pendulum wave and so it's in three week waves but like if you look at west side if you really go

there there is no no one template. It's like everyone kind of does a little different. Their infamous morning and night crews are always battling each other and trying to do better than the other, and they all go a little different. But if you look at some of them, if you look at the most structured type of conjugate, it would be like they would literally have a uh a speed you know strength which is super fast and then they would have their strength speed then they would at which is like the normal it's what most people think it's more of the you know around the 60 percent total you

know weight with band chains and bar weight and then they would do a circa max which is like it's pretty darn heavy those weeks really to really push you know their you know competition maximums and then they end up with a speed another speed block and then they go to the competition so but if you ask chuck vogelpool he would know any of that he would just be like we have their dynamic days and we have our max every days and every day is heavy no matter what so so there's kind of get how kind of how conjugate got developed was they they were going heavy multiple days a week and it was just crushing people and so one of the one of the heavier days at one point uh got switched out

for uh the speed days so now instead of lifting that you know, 100%, now you're doing 12 sets of triples at 60% or whatever it is. As fast as possible. Going on acceleration. Right. Compensatory acceleration, which is where the chains and bands come in really, really nicely with those lighter weights so you can keep accelerating. But it doesn't beat you up nearly as much as lifting close to your max multiple days a week. Especially once you're lifting over 5, 6, 7, 800 pounds, you can't go heavy a couple times a week especially you know once you're once you're you know lifting over five six seven eight hundred pounds you can't go heavy a couple times a week no and well and maintain your your joints so uh the same way that you can when you when they're lifting lighter i think you

know a lot of people back in the day i know i would watch videos of chuck and like on his dynamic day he would end up with like massive amounts of bar weight and chains and bands. It would end up totaling well over 1,000, you know, 1,100 pounds. And so then I would try to match that or beat that all the way here in North Carolina. You know, he's my competition. But I look back and I wonder, maybe I was just watching their Circa Max, and it wasn't all the time. But mine ended up being way too often.

But then again, Chuck was pretty beat up too. So it's hard to say, you know, like what really happens. You know, I've trained OSI, you know, with those guys, but I've never, you know, not all the time. So it's hard to say what happened there all the time. You know, from what I heard, if you're trained with Chuck and, like like if you tried to beat him even on dynamic day if you try to stick with him he would just keep going until

he ended up with like heavier or more volume or whatever that's interesting when they when they start to talk about balancing like the max effort the dynamic days and and the idea of fitness i feel like the idea of fitness is a very broad term when you start talking about powerlifting versus what CrossFitters understand as fitness. But Doug, you were talking about how people just get so beat up, but how did the dynamic effort days, outside of just not lifting at max effort every single day,

which everyone knows is going to just beat the crap out of you, but how the dynamic days play into, you know, that idea of fitness with them and, and being able to stay under the bar and staying, being able to train. And that's, those dynamic days are really like their GPP training yeah kind of in a way like being fit as a power lifter is different than being fit as a cross

fitter as an example like crossfitters look at doing 12 sets of doubles you know every minute on the minute and and not think it's that crazy but in in travis knows this better than i do like in power lifting culture you know you're the common, more normal thing to do prior to conjugate was, you know, you do your heavy set, and then you rest for, you know, three, five, 10 minutes, or however long it takes, and then you do your next heavy single, and then, again, Travis may know more about the details in the, in like the powerlifting circles, but a lot of guys, they go to competition and they're not fit enough to perform at their best for the entire day. And so when we implement a dynamic effort and you're doing, again, like 12 sets of triples

every 60 to 90 seconds or whatever it is, well, now when you're in competition and you're taking attempts and maybe you have to follow yourself and you missed maybe whatever whatever um you are used to to this this faster paced training because you've been conditioning yourself for every single week leading up to competition plus they have a big focus on work capacity which which is a big mistake most power i think a lot of weightlifters and power doesn't make a huge mistake of not doing any kind of work capacity. Because, like, you'll see it. Like, you know, you'll get in a battle at a weightlifting meet. And because everyone now is getting so good, like, you might take an attempt.

And next thing you know, now you're 12 attempts out. So you got to, you know, go back, hit a bunch of attempts on the warm-up platform, do your second attempt, go back, hit several attempts on the warm-up. do your second attempt go back in several attempts on the warm you know it's just because everyone's close together and so like and if you're not in shape that kills you because basically you're doing waves at your competition and so if you've not prepared for that which you know we do like then you're in big trouble and powerlifting i see people all the time they would get to deadlifts, and they had zero left, which is a damn shame. You've done three singles in squats, three singles in bench, and you have no energy left? I mean, come on.

I used to get so – I mean, I was beating them. I was about to say, you're just smashing them on the deadlift. Yeah. That's totally cool for you. Oh, yeah, dude. I love when – if you go to a world championship, it's a real one. You know, even WPGO is a faster pace. But if you go to an IPF world, it's fast.

It's like two to three hours and you're done. You've squat, benched, and deadlift. I love that. That's a perfect pace for me. It's just like boom, boom, boom, boom because I was in shape. You know, I was never going to get tired because I squatted three times. You know, come on. Yeah.

That's part of the reason we structured the one-time challenge the way that we did. We just, you know, Anders wanted the time domain of all six lifts hitting a max, like to be about the same as a basketball game where you could have spectators for like a two-hour show. And so we did six lifts, 20 minutes each, and it's two hours total. You did all your weightlifting, snatch, clean, jerk, and squat, bench, and deadlift in a two-hour window. That's so much better than waiting around all day long. Oh, yes. It's been a pile of lifting meets where you are there the entire day.

It's like you got to get there early. You got to check in. It's all like at 7 in the morning. You start lifting at 8, and then the blast person finishes deadlifting at like 6, 15 p.m.,'re just like what am i doing here all day sucks no i love you know i love the element how some people on the one-time challenge will do it and see how fast they can do it like i like that i'm hoping you guys just had james townsend on on your show yeah that guy for reek he put up like a 20, 200, 2270, something like that, in like 30 seconds. Yeah. He's such a good dude, too. I can't believe people like him

walk on this planet and they don't play in the NFL. How was he just barely good enough to make it for a little while in the NFL? I really sincerely believe what he said. I think he just wanted to, he needed to go and do other things to be a better he was really focused on wanting to be a good dad and a good person said. I think he just wanted to, he needed to go and do other things to be a better

he was really focused on wanting to be a good dad and a good person. And I think he said the NFL just did not lead it wasn't conducive to all that. No, it was around that culture of craziness. Yeah, of craziness. And so I believe it. You know, anyone else ought to be like, I don't know.

But like him, I believe he ran a 4-3 laser time 40. I'm sure he could have played in the NFL if he had wanted to. I love that he's a nationally ranked weightlifter in the US and power cleans everything.

And power snatches everything. That's how beast he is. It's almost like, I remember watching him when he was trying to do CrossFit in the very beginning of him getting out of the NFL and moving into gym ownership and being an athlete and all that still. And he was doing like tap and go power cleans at 405. And I was just like, how?

People like you exist? He powers at 425. You understand that? And he's like, he's a nice 6-kilo guy, so he's like, what is that? 211. 211. No, 211. 211-pound dude, which is a good-sized dude, but definitely not extraordinary.

And he power cleans 425. And he's like 6'2", 6'3", right? Yeah, and 6'1", 6'3", right? Yeah. He's a big, tall dude. 6'1", 6'2". I don't know. Maybe. I don't know.

He might be 6'2". He's big. Taller than me. Way taller than me. So, yeah. And his 4'25 Power Clean was a true. It wasn't one of those like, is it power or not? BS.

It was like he barely bent his knees. It was insane. I just didn't know how good of a dude he was when he had him on. I love that guy. Those of you lifting at home or listening in your car that can't see Travis Mast's face while he said power or not, it was like a slight little dig at everyone on the internet while he did that.

I'm not going to name some names, but there was a guy the other day who did a snatch, and it was a legit, it was a beautiful snatch, but it was way below, and he's like, power or not. I'm like, man, what? Come on, man. Wake up.

All right. Number one, if you have to ask. It's all about people hitting the button. Yeah, if you have to ask, that's a problem. Yeah. Quick question. It's all about people hitting the button. Yeah, if you have to ask, that's a problem. Yeah. One thing I – Go ahead. Quick question.

So like a typical structure for like a single day's workout, it's either going to be you're building up to a max or you're doing your dynamic effort stuff. And then after that, as Louis says, like 80% of what they do is all spatial exercise, which basically means like bodybuilding style assistance. It really is. You're going to do your heavy lift,

and then you're going to do five sets of eight to 12 of, you know, T-bar rows and, um, dumb incline dumbbell bench press and maybe do some, some leg curls. And then you're going to do, um, all of the work capacity stuff that you talked about. I know Louie likes like, you know, the wheelbarrow carries and farmer's walks and sleds and whatever else. Um, but for weightlifting, does it, does it, in your programming,

that's conjugate oriented for weightlifters? What does the structure of a single day look like in comparison to that? I mean, it's still very similar. I still, I still am almost doing like lower, upper, lower, upper, you know, like, so like on a typical day, this is typical, like Mondays are going to be like, that would be your dynamic day, I guess you'd say. But I don't really do dynamic with snatching or cleaning jerks

because they're dynamic, but you can't do them non-dynamic. However, so I guess what I would consider it would be like a volume day and then on fridays it's max effort that's for sure it's a it's a version of the snatch or clean and jerk and um but sticking to monday it would be a snatch and or clean and jerk and then it would be like your dynamic efforts you know squatting we're doing a lot of that now that I'm starting to get the velocity equipment because it really helps me quantify what I'm after. And then we do the same thing, pulling, just like at Westside. You know, now he's switched to doing five sets of five.

It's so crazy. It's not like the ten triples and all that. It's five by five because I think he's doing it you know for time's sake you know like um trying to help you who's doing that louis like he's five by five now he's still with us you know focused on speed and so um which it does you know 12 triples can really you know eat up the day so um we got a face-off going on with the little one you know the one thing that i love about uh the conjugate method though is the way that they they mix up the max effort days and in the ways that you're doing bench press whether it's to two boards three boards four boards

um and and just the variety of exercises that they bring. And the idea of PRing every single day and kind of building that winning attitude into the training. I feel like that piece of it is something that because you're mixing up the focus lifts or squat dead bench in so many different ways with so many different additional tools, whether it's bands or chains. I think that there's a ton of value in that, that people can take with them and you can, you can have your focus lifts and your, your overarching goals, but the ability to go into the gym and do something every single day that you've never done before is a really powerful way to think about your training so that you, you get comfortable setting PRS on a daily basis and, and becoming comfortable with building confidence that you can always set a PR. Uh, and that, that structure is just built into the training, um, through the variety that they, they bring to the exercises.

Um, did you notice any of that just in your own training of like that added confidence by doing so many varieties and so many different ways of, in a way, doing the exact same bench press, just mixing it up as much as possible? Yeah, it really helps your competition time. Like, you know, especially he coaches the elite of the elite in powerlifting. And so you're going to be in situations where you're going to go after big numbers at these meets. And, like, you're either going to be chasing a world record, so it's something you've never done, or you're going to be trying to, you know, beat your opponent.

So you're going to be in situations where you're going to have to put weight on the bar you've never put on there. And you don't practice that mindset. Some people just can't handle that. I've coached weightlifters who cannot – if you're at a competition and you put one kilo above something they've done, they just go to hell. If that's the case, you're in trouble, man. The max effort really helps shape the champion mindset. And if you look at the great weightlifters right now, I think Kate Nye comes to mind.

Like she – her coach has her do the – you know, definitely max effort. A lot of people are iffy on the whole, you know, dynamic day. And I've come to realize that, you know, dynamic days are good for people who need it. So if you do a force velocity curve and you say, okay, you're really deficient in speed, then it's a great thing for you. However, if you're someone who's naturally fast, I think just doing negative volume is probably the best thing. But in Kate Nye's instance, she doesn't need to do speed, but they do max effort. And it shows, man.

She can put any weight on the bar and she's confident and she consistently is hitting you know weights that she's never hit in competition i think that comes directly from you know the you know the the max effort is just being there on a regular basis and saying i gotta lift more than i've lifted ever today and when you're saying that effort for Kate and I, she's a super high-level, very good weightlifter, one of the best in the country. The best.

Easily the best in the country. When you're saying she does max effort, Dave, when you say that, how is that different than just she's a nationally-ranked weightlifter who just does one-rep maxes routinely in training? Isn't that what most high-level weightlifters do? No, they don't. You look at Jordan Delacruz, and she never goes heavy in training. They maybe once in a block, once or twice, go heavy.

And so they save it for the competition. And she's done really well. I think something cool for the audience, last year's Pan Am Championships, like I decided I was going to spend my time trying to figure out why certain people are incredible and why certain are not. So I took like four really good weightlifters and interviewed them and their coaches and asked, you know, like, what's your programming like? You know, what's your, you know, like what is your weight class, your views on training? Anyway, the only thing I found was, you know, like Bodie.

If you guys have seen that guy from Canada who's on Freaking Believable, he snatched 182 the other day, 400 pounds at 96. He consistently is climbing. But the thing is their mindset and so and only really the majority of people who are at that tip top were consistently going fairly heavy you know um kate nye bode those are two of the ones jordan was one that you know doesn't go heavy very often who's doing pretty good but um you the majority, the ones who go heavy at least a lot, I feel like do better in competition.

They're just more prone and more suited for going heavy. They're not afraid because they do that on a regular basis. But no, there's several out there who might you know, they might touch their maximum once or twice, you know, that entire block. Whereas, you know, Fridays we're going to go heavy. It might be a triple, a double. It might be a complex. And that's another way I'm different.

And in my book, that's what I said. You know, I'm different than Louie because, like, you know, conjugate to me is not going to be like a different bar. Or I'm not going to use bands on cleans or snatches, even though I'm not 100% against it. I just, you know, I need to see more studies and I'm not going to risk my athletes until I see more studies. I will say this though, while we were at Westside,

one of my top athletes, Jackie Biggers, now it is Jackie Simeone, she's married. She did some dynamic effort cleans and took the bands off and did a lifetime PR power clean. I saw it, and it was a pretty big – it was like a five-kilo jump. So it wasn't like a one-kilo. I'm hyped because Louie's near me jump. It was a pretty good one. And so I saw that in my own eyes.

I'm just not willing to risk athletes you know until i know a little bit more in like safer ways but um changing definitely conjugate to me is be you don't have to be quite so dynamic like he'll you know he'll go from i think one thing that hurts him sometimes is his lack of specificity like change is one thing but like if you go a whole block and you only use a safety squat bar and you go to the meet and use a regular bar it's gonna be different you can see it in the lifters they don't look stable that's a it's an interesting point because when you add that much variety to your training yet your competition lifts are done on the basic barbell, you almost, there's also a balance

that you have to keep between variety and the lifts that you're testing. It's like, you may be able to get a great training benefit out of doing sandbag cleans, but if you're an Olympic weightlifter, you should definitely use a barbell. Like, a safety squat bar, andbell, like a safety squat bar. And like the camber bar, like all of those bars have a great training effect. But you have to spend

time using that same implement. So the balance between those two. How often did you mix up the actual implement that you're, you know, using in training versus going back every week to the barbell just to make sure you're still staying comfortable. Oh my, oh my dynamic day. I, I might have used a different bar,

like a Buffalo bar or a safety squad bar, like once a training block in the early. Oh yeah. And then on dynamic day, I use the squad bar like once a training block in the early and then on dynamic day i use the squad bar the competition squad bar that we were going to use yeah and then uh i would do but but on my max every day sometimes i would do a little bit more often a safety squad bar yeah buffalo bar i do like the buffalo bar or the you know shout out to chris duffin his duffalo bar is awesome um but just because it takes pressure off of your shoulders. If you're a really good power lifter, you're benching a lot,

so you're starting to get a lot of tightness in your shoulders because your pecs are getting bigger. So the Duffalo or Buffalo bars are a lot easier on your shoulders. But specificity is the one that kills it. I know Chuck, when he would compete against me, I would be like, all right, if he gets it, it's going to be a good battle. But odds are it's 50-50 if you're even going to get a lift in. He looked so uncomfortable.

So he'd open up with a world record. Literally every time he would open up with a world record and just getting it out of the rack, it looked painful. And then he would stumble around. He'd have to re-rack it. But if he unracked it and he sat into that perfect groove and he finally got to the bottom, he would definitely squat it. It was a big if if he was going to be able to stand it out of the rack.

And so I think it would have behooved him to do more specificity. Yeah, I want to go back to when you were talking about maxing out every single day and trying to set a 1RM and just my experiences with that. Because I used to, for a long time, that was really, especially when it came to the Olympic lifts, because I hadn't really – I basically only did them to know what my max was.

Because in CrossFit, that was like just okay this is the max when that event shows up this is I know where I can be so it was I wasn't necessarily thinking at the time early on and training about like how to actually get stronger in the Olympic lifts it was just loaded up and let's go and one that I, that it wasn't even so much the weight every day of, of maxing those lifts out, but the, the consistency at which you miss lifts when you are maxing out every day, um, that really sucks. That really starts to beat you down because you get to a place where I, my sweet spot was always in the like 85 to 95% range and, and doing waves in between those.

And just because of the type of athletes slash the relatively low level of strength compared to many people, like I would say, I would say you're like really strong compared to many people. I would say you're pretty strong compared to most people. Well, like a 95% snatch to me, I think it's because of the CrossFit overall level of fitness that you bring to lifting. 95% sounds like a lot, but I was, I was able to be very consistent in those rep range or in those percentages. So going from like 85 to 95, it got heavier obviously, but I was very confident that I could just make those at any point in time, because in a way when you're doing CrossFit,

you'll, and you're, you're training for competition. There may be a day where you have to do like a 15 minute workout and then go max out your snatch. So you kind of train your body to be really strong and confident inside 90% all the time. You just have to have that kind of capacity to be able to walk over and have quality form and clear your brain to be able to go and do that stuff and be confident to know that you can hit a big number. So those, those ranges in the 85 to 95%, those were perfect because I was so confident over the bar. But I remember going back and why I stopped doing the, the more maxing out two, three times a week or maxing out like snatch on Monday, clean and jerk

on Tuesday, and then doing all the accessories and conditioning, which is because I got so tired of missing the same lift because you just can't PR off the floor every single day. And I wish I had known about the conjugate method at the time and like kind of done the research into that because it opens up the ability to, you can have your sweet spot in which you're getting the majority of your volume. So for me, that would have been some intensity levels, somewhere in the 85 to 95% range and waves over a training block inside there, and then building it out, um, toward, towards like, uh, uh, some time that I'm going to peak for, um, competition or whatever it is. But had I known and had I at the time known that, oh, I can try and set a PR from the high hang, or I can take this from below my knee and still

set a PR and still max out every day, it would have solved the problem of my meatheadedness of wanting to max out every day, but also been much more methodical in how I do it and the ways that I do it so that I build the confidence instead of taking it from the floor every single time, missing the same positions every single time. It just being a little bit too heavy every time and kind of the mental beat down that goes into, well, I'm just stuck at two 30, I'm stuck at two 35. And I try it next Monday. I'll just rip it off the ground again and see what happens without really putting the time into the technique work or the position work and, and actually building some, some real strength throughout the entire movement. And I think that that's something that

is super beneficial. You know, they do it in powerlifting with squat, dead and bench. But even for people that are in CrossFit or people that are in Olympic weightlifting, and I'd love to know how this transfers into the Olympic weightlifting side, because that piece of it, I wish I had known. And you learn these things, obviously, as you just grow and develop a larger knowledge base but that that piece of it alone I think would have just catapulted my early days of Olympic lifting because I didn't understand that I could take I could still be a meathead and want to PR every single day and lift as heavy as possible, but I just had to do it from different positions. Friends, we are going to take a quick break to talk about my friends over at Bioptimizers.

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Even with the Bulgarian system, which West Side, half of it is Bulgarian and half of it is Russian. What he did, he tried to take both groups to get the perfect scenario for American weightlifters or powerlifters. The thing about Bulgarian, one time I had a chance to sit down with Piros.

I was like, Piros, can I just – this evening, because it was at the Pan Am Games last year. I was like, can I have an hour or two of your time and let me ask you questions about the Bulgarian system, really? Because, you know, he trained under one of the top Bulgarian coaches. I wrote an article about it. And so I said, what was it really like? So he tells me.

He's like, they really miss. Who are you talking about again? Piros Dimas. Oh, Piros Dimas. Yeah, he trained. Even though he was in Greece, it was a Bulgarian system. It was a Bulgarian coach who had left Bulgaria, and now he's in Greece.

And so he tells me how all this does. He even got to train with Naeem Suleimanullah some, but it was really him and what was the other? Oh, Cox's Feeling. And he taught me about the differences in him and Cox. They were really good friends. And how it worked, for it to work well, you couldn't miss. Like if you did the whole I'm going to miss five times practice, you'd be dead.

Because you're training three times. Let's say like Monday you train three, Tuesday twice, Wednesday three, Thursday twice, Friday three, Saturday twice, Sunday once. So if you're doing, if you start missing all the time, like how long will that last before you're just in a hole? So you just work up to your daily max, and you learn to auto-regulate. And so you know good. We all know deep down. When we hit 85%, we deep down know if that day is going to be good or not. We all do.

But we lie to ourselves, and so we keep going. I feel good. I can do it. Whereas he would get to 85 85 and it felt like slow you're like cool he might hit one more call it for the day because they still if you look at if you train three times a day even though you only work up to a daily max you did that three times and so if you look at all the volume you did it's still a lot of volume it's still a lot just like the Russian program. But you spent more time in that 90% range,

which even Prilipin himself said, like, if you want to get strong, learn to spend as much time as possible, 90% and above. But you can't. You have to know how much can you as the individual spend there. It might only be once or twice a block, or it might be quite often, or it might be a lot. That's the individual part that comes out of it. Is that something you see a lot with high-level lifters, is that they're actually capable of recovering quick enough to stay inside 90%?

Is that a universal thing of really high-level weightlifters? No, it's not. But that's what Kate and I, that's the reason why she's the top girl is because the way they set the Olympics up this time was like they had to compete. It was like twice every six months you had to compete two times. So basically every 12 weeks you're going. And, you know, you could say, well, I want to, you know, you could, you only needed four really good meets, but you can't risk it.

Because what if you kind of go easy, but then you bomb out? So now you're in the hole, right? So you pretty much had to push every single time. And the people that could do it the most often were the ones who did the best. Like Kate Nye is by far and above the number one girl in America right now. She's won Olympics. Yeah, she's a gold medalist. She won the world championships last year. And so, you know, that girl, she was just able to perform and perform and get better

and take the heavy lifts and take the heavy lifts more than anybody else. And so she's the top girl. Well, how often – so with Morgan and – oh, man, I'm forgetting his name. What's the other freak? Ryan. Ryan. Yeah, he just did the – Both of them.

Both of them. Did you see the 170 clean? Three weeks of each other. So funny. He did the 170 clean from the 374. He weighed 70 kilos that day, 154 pounds, and he cleaned 374 from the hip. I've never seen anything like it. And he said he's feeling like he can do 180 clean and jerk.

Yeah, that's because it's seven. Hey, bud, that's called testosterone. And being 18 years old, congratulations. You got there. He is incredible. I have a fun story to tell you. I have to do this because I had a mom in my gym

the gym that I go to here the private group texted me about pre-workout or she posted in the group about pre-workout or she posted in the group about pre-workout because her her high school football son is um all of all of his friends are talking about like c4 and she's like i don't really want to know if i want my kids taking it and i i could i couldn't help nobody gets into a public forum, really, and is like, you should give your kids C4 for sure. You should load them up. It's just not socially acceptable, right? Everyone's like,

well, maybe just a little caffeine. And I'm like, let me tell you what's going on here. This is the general gist of it. If you mix those chemicals around just a little bit, you know what you're doing? It's called crystal meth. And it's awesome because it's legal. You can just go buy it at GNC right across the street. You can get hooked up. I have a bunch of it at my house that I'll give to you. But it's also probably not the greatest thing to put into your body.

So I was like, look, mom, you need to – you personally need to experience what pre-workout is going to – yeah, is going to do. And pre-workout is going to give you little creepy crawlies all the – Did you give it to her? Yeah, I totally gave it to her. What'd she do? Did she take it? Yeah, well, she made her – her and her son came over to the house um to pick up the bottle this on sunday i'm so excited to hit him back up because i was like look mom you have to try it because if you don't try it you won't know

what's what's going on when your kid starts tweaking out and almost poops himself the first time he takes it it's just part of it he's gonna love to love it. He'll love it. She's going to freak out. So I was like, it's not really doing that much. But at the same time, don't throw me under the bus and say that it's not cool and it's not doing anything because as soon as he takes it, something's going to happen. There's definitely going to be a reaction inside your body, and your son is going to tweak out for a little bit.

He's going to love it. He's also going to be a dick pump. Yeah, he's going to tweak out for a little bit he's gonna love it dick pump yeah he's gonna love it i always like to go back and take my first hit of c4 it'd be awesome i love it i love this stuff way too much andrew's actually circling back to what you were saying about uh pulling from the floor and like trying to hit the same numbers every week and missing it over and over and over again it's actually one of the parts about conjugate that i really really like is especially when you start talking about specialty bars and chains and bands etc etc it's like when you go for a max you have if you have you know if you have a safety squat bar and you

got one medium band and two chains you don't know what your max is you have no idea you might know like a rough range maybe but you don't have any psychological barriers in the same way that if you've been like trying to put you know three plates on on the bar forever and you have like two plates and 25s and a bunch of change and like you can't you just can't get over the hump the psychological barrier of putting all three plates on or four plates on or five plates on whatever it is it wears on people where they're like god i've missed this so many times they're kind of just used to missing and they have that that psychological barrier there where when you when you switch it up and it's a new movement every single week

every week it's like a total clean slate you just yeah so you can't lift it anymore and then you write down the number i actually feel like that's something that just is i snatched 225 uh like actually now right before quarantine it was the last time i dropped into a gym and hung out with people um and but i did it in like the funkiest way because of some imam setup they had and i had i was just stacking tens but after you get past like two or three tens i don't know what the hell is on the bar. And I just went and was just lifting. And last round I had like a 45 and a 15. And it just – it was like stacked out.

It probably looked – if you took a picture and put it in black and white, it would look like there was 500 pounds on the bar. But I had no idea. 225, it never felt so light. Like I just snatched it. I know. Because you don't have the two wheels sitting on each side staring back at you. And you're like, oh, that's 225.

That's supposed to be heavy. You don't have that mental. I totally agree with that because now when i like we did a show on banded um accommodating resistance stuff like when i when i lift with the bands i have no idea what i'm lifting i have no clue i know what the bar weight is but the bar weight's light like never do i think a 225 235 deadlift is heavy but when you throw a purple band on there i have no clue i kind of want to do the test and just see how much weight i'm actually lifting but at the same time it's nice to just go don't mess it up today is just heavy yeah

and it's it doesn't beat the crap out of me so i'm gonna stay keep doing this if people would that wanted to do conjugate would if they would like test if they would do that force velocity you know test and see where they lie you know are because some people should go heavy a lot like if you know if you're not very good like if you're if you max out at and you're in the speed of your 1rm is like 0.35 meters per second and that's it and you can't do any more, well, then you need to spend quality time, because you have a lot to give. If you get to where you're doing 0.18 meters per second for a max, then that dude's good at maxing out. That

means he can grind through. And then again, but then looking at speed, they get the speed strength, and they're at 55%, and they're hitting.65. Well, they're not fast at all. So if you could just find out where your weakness is, I have found 100% there is low-hanging fruit. Because even with JC, my young powerlifter who's absolutely incredible and the most jacked 17-year-old you've ever met in your life. But we found out he wasn't very fast. And now his everything is skyrocketing.

Like his squatting, his deadlifting, his benching has gone through the roof because we've targeted – because he went fast. He could grind like nobody's business he could not you know push lightweight fast so there's a deficit i'm actually super interested in how you use the gym aware software and and knowing the the bar speed because i feel like when louis created this whole thing um and and started actually implementing the method he was just using his eyeballs to see how fast people were moving and saying that's fast or it should be faster but now you've got an actual metric to seeing how people are getting yeah to quantify um the speed of the bar with the amount of weight on the bar and and you don't have your dynamic days become much more um kind of you can test them and use them as setting another PR in the gym.

But when you can quantify dynamic days, that's a massive asset to being able to coach people. Huge, man. Like being able to do that, it's like it's so awesome to be able to quantify what's happening. The only problem with Westside method is like it just is not so they kind of like try to fit everybody into this you know okay we're gonna do speed day and we're gonna do max every day but what if i need more of the one or the other you know that's the problem that they you know like

some people need to go ahead they don't need to go heavy like i truly don't need to go heavy i just like to but if you know if i was if i were coaching me i would say okay we're not going heavy for a while we're going to really only focus on speed like we're going to do speed twice a week we're going to do two dynamic days of squatting two dynamic days of upper body because i'm really good i can i can i can grind at a 0.18 meters per second, so I don't need it, but I just enjoy it. But yeah,

if you could quantify it, then you can really do the perfect conjugate method. And I think you'd see way better results. Cause you know, they've, they have tested the conjugate versus other methods. And like some methods have, have like,

you know, barely, you know, beaten it. But like, I don't think, I think if you used velocity, I don't think any other method would beat it. Like I'm almost certain like it would beat, you know,

undulating periodization, linear periodization. I think it would beat all those methods because you're pinpointing the weakness of the person, but we'll find out. That's definitely one of the things I want to do in the next three years while I get my PhD is see if you quantify it, would it rule? And I do think it would. Yeah, I think that that's something a lot of the CrossFit people can take with them.

People love talking about hammering your weaknesses in CrossFit and doing these things that you're not good at so they become strengths. And when it comes to lifting, like when you look at the majority of strength programs that people are doing in their CrossFit classes, it really is like this templated, okay, we're going to snatch for doubles today. They don't put any thought or work into positions um or speed with lighter weights uh that's something i've gotten a ton of benefit out of is just even even using lighter weights but really focusing on how fast you can get under the bar and your your movement around the bar and the way that you're connecting

to the barbell and really being able to feel yourself pulling all the way through the movement. And those dynamic days, granted, I know a lot of people are a lot of coaches are up against a one hour long time block or working with general population people that this stuff may just, they may have no interest, which is totally understandable. They're just trying to get some fitness in for the day. And that's, which is totally understandable. They're just trying to get some fitness in for the day. And that's, that's totally great. It's, it's something though, that I think if the coach has a quality relationship and has really good buy-in from

their athletes, even in a group setting to be able to take position work or speed work and teach people what's going on. That way, you know, you don't have to go in and say, oh, today we're doing the conjugate method, but you could take the general principles of a dynamic day and do position work and, you know, maybe squatting instead of just saying, we're going to build to a heavy double or triple for the day. Now you can, you can put them on some sort of EMOM-type format where you're having the conversation of we're moving as fast as possible today. And, yeah, it's impossible in almost every gym to change up the – to have enough bands to get to a class of 20

or to have enough chain or enough different bars. But to be able to take that stimulus and change it throughout a training cycle, yet maybe every Monday is a max effort day or every Friday is a max effort day. But on Wednesdays and Fridays during a squat block, you're able to just change up the way that you do it. Everyone's got enough box jumps to be able to do some box squats. Everyone's got enough tools in there. If they're the deadlifts,

you only need one band for each person or for each squat rack that you're doing. I think that coaches taking these methods and using some of the principles, it doesn't have to be so thought out, but to be able to get that to your clients, they'll be able to see a massive return on their time and energy in that hour long thing. If you're actually putting together like a eight to 12 week training block instead of just throwing workouts up on the board and saying, go squat.

A simple way you could do it. I think Doug's got to wrap it up soon. A simple way you could make it conjugate for the individual in a big class is definitely on max every day. Let me give you an example. On max every day, say you have a group because there's always, you know, you obviously can't do it per person, but there's groups of people who are not good at getting out of the bar.

I say, so today we're going to do a three rep max clean or snatch, whichever. And the group that is not very good at getting out of the bar, you're doing it from the hip. And so you guys are terrible off the floor because you have the bar swing in front. So you're going to do a pause at the knee, really focusing on getting the bar back. And you guys are like really bad at horizontal. You know, you're throwing your hips into the bar and pushing the bar horizontally. You guys are really bad at horizontal. You're throwing your hips into the bar and pushing the bar horizontally. You're doing no contact.

You've individualized the class quickly. Everyone's doing 3RM. Everyone's doing 3RM. Snatch or clean. However, the group that sucks at this are going to do this. That would be an awesome way. I think it would be easier to do it with Max every day than any other day.

That's my two cents. Coach Travis Mash, tell the people where to find you. Mashandlead.com. Go buy my book Conjugate. Doug Larson. Right on. Find me on Instagram. Doug with C. Larson. I'm Anders Varner

at Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to BarbellShrugged.com forward slash store. That's where the programs, e-books, nutrition, and mobility courses are to make strong people stronger. We will see you guys next week. This week, friends, boulders

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Organifi.com forward slash shrug for the green the red and the gold leave all the pumpkin spice to me you don't get it don't get it right now don't do it save 20% at organifi.com forward slash shrugged and then make sure you download the fit together app f-i-t-t-o-g-e-t-h-e-r fit together on all your devices friends we'll see you on wednesday