Barbell Shrugged - The Future of Barbell Shrugged with Anders Varner

Episode Date: April 4, 2018

Say ‘Hi’ to Anders Varner, the new host of Barbell Shrugged! Anders crushed it co-hosting a bunch of shows with Mike and Doug in the past few months and will be taking over as the main Barbell Shrugged host. Doug will remain as co-host and Mike will focus on his new show, The Bledsoe Show, which is part of the Shrugged Collective. In this episode, Mike passes the torch to Anders, and we dive into how Barbell Shrugged was born, what gets us fired up to keep recording shows, the future of Barbell Shrugged and Shrugged Collective, and much more. -Mike, Doug and Anders ----------------------------------------------- Please support our partners! Thrive Market is a proud supporter of us here at Barbell Shrugged.  We very much appreciate all they do with us and we’d love for you to support them in return!  Thrive Market has a special offer for you. You get $60 of FREE Organic Groceries + Free Shipping and a 30 day trial, click the link below: https://thrivemarket.com/shrugged How it works:  Users will get $20 off their first 3 orders of $49 or more + free shipping.  No code is necessary because the discount will be applied at checkout. Many of you will be going to the store this week anyway, so why not give Thrive Market a try! Organifi is another great company with whom we’ve chosen to partner.  They offer a premium line of health supplements you can use to optimize your body.  Doug and Mike use their products everyday and highly recommend you give them a try. If you’d like a discount you can use the code “shrugged” to instantly get 20% off your order, click below to check out their supplements: https://organifishop.com Strong Coffee: Code: BBS20 for 20% off Strong Coffee! ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Barbell Shrugged helps people get better.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Barbell Shrugged here: Website: http://www.BarbellShrugged.com Facebook: http://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast Twitter: http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged Instagram: http://instagram.com/barbellshruggedpodcast

You guys are in a much more professional transition right now, Strug Collective, and anytime we're in some sort of transitionary period, we have this ability to kind of reflect on the past and this shows growth and the impact it's had literally on a generation of athletes and coaches. What does that do to you? Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Mike Bletzer here with Doug Larson, Andrews Varner. We're hanging out here in Encinitas at Physical Culture 101.

One of our favorite gyms to train at. Got cool shit here. We're going to here in Encinitas at Physical Culture 101, one of our favorite gyms to train at. Got cool shit here. And we're going to be getting into, we're going to talk about what Barbell Shrugged has done for all of us up to this point, where it's at and where we're going in the future. And we've got some really cool announcements for you. And first, we're going to drop our sponsors because they're super legit. Support the show. They support us. they support us you

support them it all goes in a circle that's how it works it's all good shit um and we only partner with the best of companies so first is organifi they uh have awesome green drink red drink uh plant-based supplements across the board um i enjoy them every day for sure i say this on every show but red drinks my favorite yeah drink that shit every morning with breakfast it's delicious i've gotten into the a good habit with the the green drink in the morning um it just makes me feel better i don't know i don't know what it is i don't know what's in there but it makes me feel good and i trust that they're doing their research they have their sweet proprietary blend um you look at the ingredients

everything's nice or healthy, and I drink it. I feel better. I'm getting all my vitamins and minerals, and I feel better about the day. Look and feel better. That's all you need. Boom. Yeah. I kind of treat it like my multivitamin.

Exactly. I don't just take a multivitamin. Who takes pills anymore? Well, I take plenty of pills, but just not multivitamins. That's right. When I thought about supplements in high school, I thought, like, you take a multivitamin that's what you do and now like no one ever mentions a multivitamin yeah it doesn't seem like i feel like i'm already likely with the way that i eat they eat pretty well i'm getting like the basic vitamins but but like in

the red drink and the green drink like it has a variety of nutrients but it's not just like a list of like synthetic vitamins well that's the trouble with vitamins in the past is that we thought we had figured out the game and go, oh, we got vitamins and minerals. And we're like, oh, what about phytonutrients? And now it's like, what about all these things? It's like, you know what? What if we just took the plants and we powdered those and just ate the whole thing and let it be what it is?

So that's one of the things I just love about that. Our other sponsor being Thrive. Shrug 20. Yeah, Shrug. Is it Shrug 20? No, justugged. Is it Shrugged 20? No, just Shrugged. Just Shrugged. 20% off.

Hit it, Anders. Organifi.com. Use coupon code SHRUGGED. Save 20%. Just go to the website. Organifi.com. Yeah. Shrugged.

Nailed it. Get it. Try it. Let us know what you think about the product for Sheezy. All right. And our other sponsor being Thrive you think about the product for Sheezy. All right. And our other sponsor being Thrive Market. I'm super excited about these guys because not only are they looking out for your health, but they're looking out for the health of the planet.

And they're looking at what are we going to be doing in 10 years from now. Super, like, future-oriented, whereas a lot of companies are just kind of, like, burning things as they go. These guys are really trying to change how we shop and the things we're putting in our bodies only the highest quality ingredients possible so um and we're we actually with both companies we know the people running it and they are just they're great people doing good things in the world yeah we did a show with drew from organifi we did did a show with Gennar from Thrive Market. So if you're interested in learning more details about either of those companies, you can go watch those full shows. Great companies, great missions, great people.

I highly recommend you go watch those episodes. Go to thrivemarket.com slash shrugged. You get some free food. You get free shipping and a month of free membership. And, yeah, check that out. You get $60 worth of free organic groceries is what you get specifically shipping and a month of free membership and uh yeah check that out you get 60 worth of free organic groceries that's right specifically yeah so when you're shopping from that link you're gonna get uh some free stuff as you go you'll also spend some money yeah it's gonna be great you're gonna love it you'll love it shows up right at your door

it's a lot of food that you probably are not gonna be able to get at the grocery store i know that for a fact because i even live somewhere where the grocery stores are great, and I still can't get everything I want. And Fry Market does a really good job of filling that gap. All right, guys. We have a huge announcement. Boom, boom, boom. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

Anders. Huge day. It's a big day in my life. Big day for Anders, yeah. It's graduation day, right? Anders is graduating. You need a cap. As you can notice, Anders has been co-hosting with us.

We've really enjoyed him. And we have decided that Anders will now be hosting the show. Sounds awesome. Yeah. Sounds so weird. A new host of Barbell Shrugged. A new host of Barbell Shrugged. Stepping into some big shoes.

Well, sandals. I won't be painting my toes right off the bat, but the footwear, I might go sandals. But thanks, guys. This is really cool. I can't wait to dig into what this means, not just to me since the day you guys launched, we're literally the hub of the most elevated conversation that has really ever transpired in fitness from the people that you guys interview. I mean, we're interviewing real PhD scientists on the nerdiest things that exist.

And we're also getting coaches that are in the, in the trenches. And man, I've literally from 2010, when I opened my gym, and we're also getting coaches that are in the trenches. And, man, literally from 2010 when I opened my gym, there was never like a time where I couldn't just have a question of where I was supposed to be going in my training or in our coaching, our programming, and you guys didn't have somebody on that was already at the highest level of that subject that we could just kind of listen to that episode, start implementing some of their ideas and really get the highest level of conversation in an area that you're very interested in. And you guys are and have been for the last six, seven years, the facilitators of that conversation.

So the fact that I get to facilitate that conversation going forward is the highest of honors. Yeah, thank you. And I want to point something out to everyone listening that Anders actually has a very similar background to Doug and me. He competed in strength sports from a very young age. You opened up a CrossFit gym in, when was this? 2010. 2010. He's been in the trenches uh and then you've also gone on and you're you're with movement rx and teamed up with dr theresa larson doing some really extraordinary things in the field so uh he's been through a lot of the same stuff that doug and i have been through so it's not it's not like we're just dropping somebody in who doesn't who hasn't been in the shit you've been in the like socal cross been in the SoCal CrossFit space, weightlifting, powerlifting.

You've been in it deep, and you went to school for this. This is your world. Yeah, it's great. When you guys started, you guys were kind of on the East Coast, and we had this whole SoCal scene out here. And when you guys entered into it, I remember seeing you guys at regionals and I was like oh sick like Barbell Shrug came out west like we have this

whole thing going on out here like they're gonna they're gonna dive in so it's been an awesome two years of seeing you guys really get yourself into our community and now it's home. It's been so fun Speaking of regionals you competed at regionals multiple times.

Yeah, so four times my gym CrossFit PB, San Diego Athletics. We put 70-plus athletes into the regional in five years. We coached Kenny Leverage at the games one year. Man, it was when CrossFit was in its, I say, infancy. Right about when it took off, we opened. I almost opened my first gym in 2007, actually. And then there was a girl. We went to grad school instead of opening a gym. And yeah, that didn't work out.

So I moved out west like every lost boy does. And there's something there. There's something there. I got to go to pacific beach um but yeah i opened a um i opened crossfit pv in 2010 and it was pure performance i think back in the day of crossfit it was so man so aggressive so in your face and i was trying to be the best and um i think that outside of all of the things that i learned like um just crossfit really gave me this platform in which i could take all of the ideas that i had had about

strength and conditioning and apply them to something because it was never a sport of strength and conditioning right and i finally had this framework like when i found crossfit i had already been squatting and clean and jerking for 10 years from high school training and having really good strength coaches. And CrossFit showed up and it was like, oh, oh, you want to play back squat? Like, I'll play back squat with you. Hell yeah. And it gave me a real reason to not just be a good athlete, but learn everything I possibly could and apply it to myself, our members. And, man, just so grateful for the

CrossFit community, what Greg Glassman created. And since then, I have just continued to try to learn as much as possible. And it's led me away from CrossFit, although that is still like the basis of the education system and where I got my chops. But as we've all kind of gone through this process of how big and strong and fast can I be? And now how do I maintain all this for the rest of my life and never have to worry about health? I listened to a podcast that you were on, Doug, the other body of knowledge, and talking about how much of a gift it is that we just don't have to worry about being healthy. Like we're in shape. We've built this savings account of health that is incredible.

And we just don't have to do that. And I want everyone to know how fulfilling life can be when you have the physical freedoms, when you understand what quality nutrition is, when you know how to train. And if you hit a roadblock in your training, you still have to keep going. But there's just different options. And there's so many ways that you can attack strength and conditioning. Mine was so much from the performance side for such a long time. And now I teach movement and strength training from a rehabilitative side. And there was never a point in my life where I thought that that would be something that I was super interested in.

Like, why would I want to help? That's for doctors. No, movement's for everybody and the way you express movement people get hung up in in kind of the the nitty-gritty of your expression of movement and my focus is let's just get into those principles so we can empower people to move better and really create good habits and behavior changes that lead to long-term health you're the host now which means you got to put up with all the pressure. I mean, I'm going to throw you some questions that we didn't talk about before the show.

I've lost some hair over the years. Mine's already gone, so I'm in. You're like ahead of curve. Six-year gym owner, dude. We're freaking out. Two businesses later. You've built capacity over time. You can deal with the pressure.

Yeah. The hair's gone. We've already thrown that out the window. So let's go. I'm ready. All right, man. Where do you want to take the show? What do you want to do?

So we're going to kick this thing back a little bit. And we have to go back to the days in Memphis because I think that the story of Barbell shrugged. And there is no chance you were 27, 29 when you started the show? No. What was I? What am I now? You were two years, six years ago. I was 26 when I opened the gym.

The show is six years old, so I was 30. 30? Yeah. And you were 20. I was 28. Yeah. There's no chance that you guys, when you threw the microphone on and turned the camera on, that you thought, one day I'm going to be the number one podcast in fitness and health.

What's going on back in the day in Memphis, Tennessee at Faction Strength and Conditioning? Dude, we were doing the grind. We were in the gym making it work. We were trying to run a business. Yeah. And we didn't, like, I didn't start a business on purpose. I opened a gym on purpose. The business was by accident.

And, you know, over the years, I had to really come to grips with, oh, we have a business. But, you know, we always were looking for, I was like super, super blessed because I had Doug in there, I had Chris Moore in there. And, and everybody had been doing the strength and conditioning thing for so long. All of us have been training and learning as much as we could. Like for, it was three of us that were, that it was our lifelong passion of health and fitness and strength and conditioning. We were having all these fantastic conversations in the gym. But, yeah, we were coaching and training and trying to get people to the games and to nationals for weightlifting.

We were doing our thing. It was fun. We had strongmen going on in the gym. We had powerlifting. We had way too much in retrospect. We had all the things. We had all the powerlifting. We were one of the few. We had way too much in retrospect. We had all the things. We had all the strength sports. We were spread way too thin.

And, you know, part of it is we were just passionate about strength sports, you know. And, you know, we had all been, you know, steeped in the science of things and trying to bring that out to the average person. And when we got to, you you know we were having really great conversations and we'd go to competitions and have great conversations and uh you know we had this intern uh ctp chris norman and he was interning at the gym he was finishing his exercise science degree at the university of memphis where doug and i had graduated and uh he plugged in he said uh and i'd been listening to podcasts at that

point. He said, hey, have you, you know, have you checked out Rogan yet? I'm like, nah, nah. He's like, I think you'll find something there. So one, you know, after two months of him badgering me about Rogan and finally listening to Rogan, I go, oh, podcasts can be where the fuck you want. Like there's just no strength and conditioning show yeah so yeah like chris moore and i started podcasting and things we never published like

we met up once a week started recording um and that that turned into saying let's actually do a show let's video it too yeah and uh and doug joined us for uh uh to kick off barbell shrugged and we we recorded episode one uh two or three times and the one you see posted was it was not like the first try and there's a little too much alcohol on the very first try it didn't really go anywhere every time how come every time like in your 20ss, where you have a good idea, like, let's try it. We should get drunk first. Yeah, let's mix scotch and tequila with this whole situation. It'll make it way cooler.

People will love us. Yeah, I think we had alcohol on the show for the first few shows. And then after that, we were like, you know what? This isn't working. Let's try to keep our brains turned on for this. And, yeah, so when we started the show, it was, for me, you know, we have Faction Strength and Conditioning, home of CrossFit Memphis. We had been operating that gym since 2007.

So we're five years in. And, you know, I was continually looking for a way to, like, do something new and do something fresh. And when I looked at the podcast scene, I go, look, know i was continually looking for a way to like do something new and do something fresh and when i looked at the podcast scene i go look nobody's doing a good an entertaining strength and conditioning show in fact i didn't see anyone doing strength and conditioning period no crossfit no strength and conditioning i go all right like we can be that show super easy yeah and we'd been talking to other crossfit gyms in the area in the South. And

I had done some weightlifting seminars for CrossFit gyms and I was just talking to these guys and I was like, wow, they really could use this information. So yeah, we kicked it off and, you know, it was a hundred followers. You know, I had like a hundred friends, 200 friends on Facebook at the time. And doug's probably about the same and we started posting the show we just started sharing it and you know i think a lot of times you know i've been to conferences where like business conferences we're talking about like who has a youtube following and podcasts like what's your what's your magic secret i'm like just start posting it's like there's nothing sexy about it and it's just like we just started posting and it was for me it was emotionally

challenging to say look man we're gonna record ourselves yeah uh for an hour and then we're gonna publish it and like we're claiming that you should listen to us fucking talk for an hour that's kind of like a weird thing to do yeah it's not it's not normal there's a pretty egotistical there has to be yeah yeah so yeah that was that was uh you know what what our world looked like at that time and when i when i looked back i was like we were actually pretty narrow-minded and uh and it was good yeah it was good it was perfect super locked in but you also had i think one of the things that's so awesome about the team that you guys have had. I mean, Doug, we train together all the time.

Now, there is never a day where we walk into the gym where I'm not like, Doug's probably going to come up with some half-assed workout. It is like the most thought out, locked in, like your expertise. Well, maybe not even expertise, but you you're like gen yeah i i actually never really know i just kind of i'm gonna pick something up today i'm gonna move a little bit but when we train together like everything is so dialed in and the complexity and simplicity i guess you could call it of training with you has taken my understanding of movement and just the process that we or or you go through,

and I just kind of follow along. But where did all that come from? You have a master's degree in exercise science, right? I do. Yeah, I was pretty lucky early on to have a really good mentor. That's really where it came from. You know, I was always interested in health and fitness. And I thought I wanted to be a Navy SEAL at one point when I was like 13, 14 and i started researching it online because i i had read this uh a couple of books that made it sound really cool and uh really what i ended up figuring out that i was really attracted to the training that navy seals did specifically like the boot camp style training when they go through buds and it's just like you know endless push-ups and pull-ups and dips and swims and runs and you know and mike actually went through a lot of that because he went through went through buds so he can tell you more about that but i was i was really interested

in quote unquote being a navy seal but really i just thought the exercise was really really cool i didn't actually want to like go to war and like you know like you know do all the do all the other things that they do after they qualify to be a seal through that i was just getting paid to work out yeah there was only an industry that did that and so uh but i found a bunch of their workouts online and i had done gymnastics when i was really really young and so doing pull-ups and dips and push-ups at high volume just it was a really good connect for me at the time before i learned how to squat and deadlift and clean and all that but um i started there and then i was about 14 i met a strength coach and he and he taught me squats and deadlifts and cleans and

snatches he actually had learned from learned from Bergner 20 years ago. So I actually met Bergner for the first time when I was like 17, 18, 19 at strength and conditioning conferences. So I was just kind of in this world really, really early. He taught me how to program. He taught me how to write the workouts. He taught me all the barbell movements. He taught me kettlebells. I had already done gymnastics, and he happened to have gymnastics rings in his gym.

It was essentially a CrossFit gym before CrossFit was a a thing i didn't learn about what crossfit was for another 10 years or more but i had a lot of experience uh in that world and so yeah like with with riding the workouts and whatnot now like i've just i've just always done that yeah i remember riding my workouts my girlfriend's workouts my friend's workouts like back in junior high and high school like when i was when i was super super young yeah and i actually really missed the boat on programming and teaching programming and and whatnot for crossfit because i totally took it for granted this is like a huge mistake that i made was i was like why is everyone asking me about the work it's just so obvious how to write workouts like i didn't think it was special i just thought everyone knew and people didn't know it's like

it's like i didn't even believe them like it was like what do you mean just just you know what to do go do it like it didn't like i remember mike talking about like it's all about the programming and i was just like who doesn't know how to program i don't understand like i was living in a bubble yeah having having only trained with a handful of people in high school with this one coach and then and then same thing like college graduate school like in a smaller and smaller exercise physiology exercise science bubble where everyone knows how to train everyone knows how to write workouts friends or personal trainers like living in the fitness industry not realizing that wow there's a lot of people out there that don't know how to do any of this and they would they're happy to go to a seminar where you teach it or

yeah or what have you so i've been fortunate to know programming and movement you know essentially my whole life yeah very very fortunate we uh one thing i love about being in the gym working with people um when you meet people along their fitness journey you rarely at the beginning realize that they're all in this transition phase and a lot of times you're taking somebody well me currently from injury back into the ability to train or you're going from you know someone that needs to lose weight to get healthier one of the most interesting people i've ever worked with had a stroke in my gym and literally that transition period i was sitting in a hospital with him that night and he was like well what do i do

and i was like i don't know dude but we should start training when you get out of here because that's all i know how to do and i think it'll help and now the kid can go play golf it doesn't really affect his life but you guys are in a much more professional transition right now shrug collective um and anytime we're in some sort of transitionary period we have this ability to kind of reflect on the past and this shows growth and the impact it's had literally on a generation of athletes and coaches yeah what does that do to you blows my mind right yeah um you know i think a lot of times like i've been asked the question you know when did you feel like you got big or you made it or something like that and

i don't think i ever got that feeling yeah and um and they're looking people are looking for like a point like when you hit 30 000 followers was that was that the thing you know or something like that and i'm just like man it was just, I think we really focused on what we were doing. And then one day we started getting messages like, wow, this is really incredible. Wow, this changed my life. This changed my perspective. I think, I mean, there were a lot of, like, micro moments. I remember being at the Arnold Classic once, and I'm standing next to Chris Moore, and this guy comes up who had discovered

Chris, like us, and then he read Chris Moore's book, and he's like, dude, you changed my life. The guy was 68 years old. Oh, wow. And I'm sitting there going, fuck, dude, we're in our early 30s, and that's a pretty incredible thing to see happen something that we created impacting people who could be our grandparents and parents and um that i think that's when that was probably one of those moments where i was like man we're on to something yeah and i think for me what really drove most of it was my curiosity i i think initially it was like, oh, I think I can help people. And then maybe 20 episodes in, I realized I didn't know shit. And then I got really curious.

And one of my core tenets now is I let curiosity be my guide. And if I ever find myself not being curious, I fucked up. And I got to get back to that because everything just gets really bland if I'm not following the curiosity. And so what's been really great for me personally doing the show is a few things. I got to meet the best, the best coaches, the best scientists, the best athletes, the best coaches. I'm real stoked on that. The best scientists. The best athletes. The best everybody. And for every person you've seen on the show, we've met 10 other people that are the best at what they do. And we've got to mix it up.

And we've interviewed people. And you get to see an hour of it. And we had like two or three days of it. Like going to see Joe DeSantis up in Vermont. We produce an hour or two hours of shows. But we spent two or three days waking up, working out with him in the dark and in the snow. And like, it's just fucking rad. And I personally got exposed to people. And, and I, this is something I talk about is I, how that impacted me was I first was looking for what they were doing. I was like, what are you

doing? What are you doing? That is so special. And then they would show for what they were doing. I was like, what are you doing? What are you doing that is so special? And then they would show me what they were doing, and it was cool. And then I kept on seeing the same thing. I'm like, all right, it's not what they're doing. It's like, why are you doing it? It's like, oh, it's really important why they're doing the thing. Like, where are they coming from? Like, you know, what's the underlying principle?

I was like, why are these guys getting stronger and these guys getting stronger? But it looks on paper like they're doing something different. Oh, but they're abiding by the same principles. And so I really got to discover the principles of strength and conditioning and nutrition. I'm like, oh, this is getting very principle-based. And then I hit another level a couple years ago where I felt like, I was like, oh, the principle. I think I got a good handle on the principals at this point. And then what I started noticing is like, all right,

what's really setting people apart is like, okay, what they're doing is cool and fun. And then the principals, all right, they're abiding by these principles. So what they're doing is working. But why is it that that guy's doing so much better? Yeah. And then I really got into like, how they're being like, it's not what they're doing. It's like, how is a coach being with their athletes? Does he care? And is he paying attention? And why is that true?

So I really started digging into, I'm not even as interested in what someone's saying anymore as I am, how are they being? Because when you start meeting really high-level people, a guy like Paul Cech as an example yeah I don't care what he says it's like it's how he is it's like how he's being that like impresses me the most and I think that's had a huge impact I mean I think anytime I get to share space with somebody who is just on another level I get elevated to some degree um and then one other point I want to make on this, on how the show has impacted me over the years is,

I mean, I think it was obvious to me on like show one or two, is I walk out of the room and I remember having this conversation with my wife too. And I go, I have got to clean my shit up because I I'm pretty loose on a microphone like I one of the things that I really pride myself on and the reason I think it it works from what works for me is just being authentic and vulnerable and sharing what's going on for me and what I really think and what I'm really feeling and if I'm doing shitty stuff on the side it's gonna seep into the show and so I actually one of stuff on the side, it's going to seep into the show.

And so I actually, one of the biggest benefits of doing the show for me was just cleaning up my, just the things I was saying, the things I was doing, and just how I was being in life because I understood that more and more people are watching this thing. And I want to be, I want to make the world a better place. I don't want to make it a shittier place. So I need to be who I want other people to be too. Everything in, I guess you could call it, eight years of owning a business now

and then having this amazing opportunity to talk into this microphone to everybody, I have learned that so much of what we do is just self-development. And you see, there's no way at 27 years old, when I was trying to be the largest meathead in the gym, that I would be able to have a real conversation about strength and conditioning and health and longevity because my ego drove everything that I did. And now I'm so open to maybe I don't know what's right. But this person that I'm talking to happens to be the absolute best at what they do.

And you have to live that life. And if you're not living that life, it's very obvious. Like if Paul check comes out and he's eating a bag of cheetos and then starts talking about your chakras you're like i don't know dude like that's not gonna work um so you do have to live that life to be considered or not even to be considered but the authenticity shines through he wasn't eating yeah he was not eating you're not saying paul was doing that you're saying if he did something like that then that would be incongruent and that would be weird and then there would be a disconnect there. But getting to you, Doug, there's a couple thousand people

that have followed your programs in their strength and conditioning journey. Flight weightlifting, strugged strength. How many times did it take you guys to get that one down? Strugged strength challenge. Strugged strength challenge. Yeah, muscadine challenge, barbacini, shredded, road regionals. We had a bunch of programs. Unreal. challenge um yeah muskane challenge barbacini shredded road regionals we had a bunch of programs unreal what um what does that feel like when you know that there's thousands of people

that have come through your programs and you've impacted them along their journey wherever they are now they can all go back to flight weightlifting they can go back and find those programs and the gains that they made over that nine months that year and you've had a direct impact in on endless people's fitness journey yeah we've impacted many people online in those programs and prior to that you know i personally trained a bunch of people i trained a bunch of my friends we ran the gym for many many years and then we just basically took all the lessons we learned from training people in the physical world in person and then just scaled those things online to affect more people and uh it's a phenomenally fun journey like like you guys were saying earlier about you know people coming and saying like you changed my life like yeah some people listen to the show and

they come and say that we changed their life but the people you affect in person you have a personal one-on-one relationship with that you can actually be there every day to like tweak and perfect and you know manage and adjust their programming and the people online that you deal with on a daily basis like those people you're more likely to have an effect on those people because you're working with them one-on-one. Those are the people that, you know, they inspire me to be a better coach because I want them to have the best results for themselves. And it's phenomenally fun to train people. It's something I've always loved to do. I've always loved like teaching people how to move specifically. Everything else is kind of a side project, like teaching them nutrition is,

it's necessary. It's kind of fun, but like really I love teaching people how to move specifically everything else is kind of a side project like teaching the nutrition is it's necessary it's kind of fun but like really i love teaching people how to move and so you know doing online training programs where we're teaching people how to be better weight lifters and how to move and how to get really good performance results is just phenomenally fun for me yeah the um the bledsoe show as as the shrugged collective do we want to take a break and then we can get into that well i haven't been he's the host i have oh shit i'm sorry oh fuck i already when when we get back we're going to talk about the future of the shrug collective and uh where we're all going and what the vision is of barbell shrugged and the bledsoe Show and all of the young, fun talent we're bringing into this group here.

Brad, let's do it. Thanks, guys. Thanks for watching the show. If you'd like to learn more about how to improve your snatch, clean, and jerk, we have a free 55-page e-book you can get at flightweightlifting.com. It has sample programming specifically for weightlifting, weightlifting how-to technique videos, and other tips on how to improve all of your lifts,

go to flightweightlifting.com and you can download that e-book for free. Download it now. Welcome back to Barbell Shrugged. That sounds pretty awesome. Feels pretty awesome. I don't know how it sounds. You say it better than me, that's for sure. There it is.

You had more excitement in your voice. You've been beat down over the years. We got fresh blood. Upgrade, upgrade upgrade it's true though i'm not i'm not beat down but like it's it's cool to bring in people you know six years is a long time right and uh and uh yeah changing it up is a really positive way of uh getting things moving yeah it's that felt pretty good i'm excited. Yes. But as we unravel some of the past and the transition going forward, the Shrug Collective is taking over.

We've got a whole network of up-and-coming podcasters, people that are bringing really high-quality content to their specific fields, and the Bledsoe Show being one of them. And also, tell us about the shrug collective what what's what's your vision of this um this this huge transitionary period for for you in the show and the network yeah i think that um i'm so stoked to be able to highlight other people. I think that it's a big disservice to stay small. And I think a lot of times people will stay small to protect themselves.

And I think that it's actually not an easy thing to do, to go, look, I want to step away from this thing that's getting a lot of of the limelight and say look let's let's open it up to a lot of other people and I think that when I look around and we see what's going on in the world of strength and conditioning health and fitness in general there's a lot of brilliant people out there that really deserve to be heard and not just for them but I think the world deserves to hear what they have to say and uh i i really um i think with the shrug collective what we're what we're moving toward what we're doing is we're going to be giving you content every single day and when you're looking for a trusted source the same reason doug started technique wad way back in

the day is look you go online and you you go look at barbell snatch technique. You're going to find garbage, lots of it. And so the same thing is happening out there, like podcasting and vlogging, all this stuff. There's a lot of content just getting out there. And it's all beautiful. It's all really good. And we want to cultivate a situation, cultivate a network where we're highlighting the best of the best. And when you want to get the real information,

we want to get the thing that's actually going to help you out, this is where you go. And the Shrug Collective will provide that. So if there's any doubt in your mind, like, oh, I don't really know what to do about nutrition, da-da-da, well, we're not going to put anyone on the program that is full of shit. It's going to be really high-quality stuff across the board. And it's also going to expand the topics.

We've been very strength and conditioning-oriented over the years, coming from weightlifting, CrossFit, MMA, powerlifting, strongman, all this stuff. And I think that as we get older, we're all evolving and finding that you know there's there's other things that contribute to strength other things that contribute to health and fitness aside from what's on your plate and what's happening in the gym and so i'm really uh looking forward to be able to explore those topics good um as well the and to put bluntly even though you kind of already said this like we have this Strug Collective. You're not the host of Barbell Strug.

Anders is now the main host for Barbell Strug. Totally. But you, Mike Bledsoe, are still around. You've got the Bledsoe Show going on. You're helping run the Strug Collective. You're doing many things inside the company and with us. You're just not hosting Barbell Strug, but you are still very much a part of things. Yeah, I'm going to be around more than ever, in fact.

So you're actually going to get – I'm going to have more interaction with you because I'm going to be covering health and fitness topics on the blood so show it's going to be going right into this channel um and this actually frees me up in a lot of ways to go find the best of the best so i'm traveling the world right now i'm hitting different spots finding looking under rocks and logs and in in dark alleys for, you know, the best of the, you know, things that we've never heard of. I mean, how many times on Barbell Shrug did we find somebody that's training in a garage somewhere that had really special knowledge? And we are just at the. I feel like Julian Pinault is like the first guy that comes to mind.

Julian Pinault, but like, you know, a lot of people, if you weren't a hardcore powerlifter, you didn't know Louis Simmons either. People were afraid to go there, but we had a way in, and we got in, and we talked to those guys back in like 07 before everyone knew who they were. I'm going to be looking around. I see that as what I do exceptionally well is go find the things that people aren't talking about yet. So travel around doing that. And then just looking at ways that we can elevate the Shrug Collective as a whole, looking and talking to people who want to have their own podcast that I think will be a really magical fit looking for companies that, you know, they may create really amazing products, but they don't have like a big voice or marketing engine just yet.

And, and also just, yeah, finding those guests for the different shows. And then for me, my own personal curiosity, like I was saying on the first half, I'm a really curious person. And I think that that drives my life. And being able to go solo one-on-one with people, I'm going to find some really interesting things. And a lot of this is just for me, but I love being able to share it with all of you. And so I'm really interested to see what happens. My personal interest is going to the edge, you know, and going, hey, there is this thing over here. You should come check this out. And some people, you know, may have a hard time seeing things at first.

But as we have all witnessed, you present it. Oh, it works. It works. It works. All of a sudden, it's now popular. Anything that used to be at the edge of people's reality or even over the edge of people's reality becomes mainstream in a matter of time. And I pride myself on being an innovator, early adopter, going out, finding those things, and then bringing that I guess a couple of the traits that in the few years we've known each other that have really stood out is just the connections you have, which stems from the way you make people feel when you're in the room. You're always present. And that leads to a very high level conversation because you're not faking it when you're here.

You're genuinely curious. But that curiosity also pulls you in different directions and your exploration over the last couple years has taken you through and it's all fitness and health ish related but you're looking for what's happening at the highest levels of everything and it's not just in the fitness field and that's a lot of where for us to just only talk about strength and conditioning with you is not utilizing your skills the best way. We need to find the best people in all of these fields so that we can bring them into one place. And that's really what the collective represents is nutrition, strength and conditioning, you know, mindset. Where are all of the best people so we can get them on one network and

influence as many people as possible? Absolutely. And what we're really interested in, my interest is how do we increase people's quality of life? Really, at the end of the day, how do we make your life as fucking cool as possible? Wake up every day excited, feeling good, mind clear, body strong, injury free, and just being able to do the things that you want to do. That's what I'm interested in. And, you know, we will be posting the blood show show, which is health and fitness. But yeah, I found that, you know what, if I really want to improve my quality of life, sometimes it's not another hour in the gym. Sometimes it's learning how to have a better conversation with my, my partner, or, you know, exploring some spiritual aspects of my life

or, you know, maybe I shouldn't be, uh, spending my money this way. Or like maybe I could, maybe I could change my relationship with money in a way that's way more healthy for me and empowers me to be able to do things I want to do instead of feeling like I'm a slave to it. So there's a lot of things that I've discovered over the years that wouldn't normally fit into the normal confines of the health conversation, but I think every single one of those things impact your health and fitness. Now, with the shows I'll be posting, that'll be health and fitness really on that, but I'll be exploring all those topics on the Bledsoe Show. So the Bledsoe Show will be health and fitness on the Barbell Shrug,

Barbell Collective. Shrug Collective. Shrug Collective. Yep. But you have other episodes of the Bledsoe Show on your own channel that are not necessarily health and fitness, even though they might be. Yeah, it depends on how broadly you want to categorize health and fitness. But, I mean, I see every aspect of my life.

When I do things consciously, it's in order to make my life better. And I don't do things and I'm not really having conversations that I'm sacrificing my health so I can achieve this other thing. It's like how can we really have it all and do it in a way that makes sense for everybody? What is the most authentic you in every aspect of your life? Yeah. That's where we're going. Barbell shrug, buddy. You ready to do this?

Yeah, yeah. Where are we going? Dude, we're back traveling the world. I love it, man. Interviewing cool guests, talking about strength and conditioning, health, wellness, nutrition, the whole deal. I love it we um i'm so stoked to get involved into the network of people that you both have built and uh you as the person that schedules shows talks to all of our guests makes this whole thing happen um what are what are some of the areas i know

what i'm excited about but where are we going what what's kind of the angle that you're – not even an angle, but who are you excited to talk to? What genre of movement and where in the strength and conditioning community are you looking to? Yeah, well, first off, so me and you will be the main hosts for Barbell Shrug still. We'll be traveling the world doing our thing. But we still have a couple of other people that will very frequently be on the show. Dr. Andy Galpin is still going to be around. Love having that guy around. One of my best friends in the whole world. Same with Kenny Kane. He'll be around on occasion. Travis Mash has expressed a lot of interest in co-hosting with us as well. All three of those guys are like tip top, very

brilliant, brilliant, brilliant human beings. Andy, exercise physiologist, muscle physiologist, PhD professor, just genius level scientist and with a ton of experience in the world of strength conditioning and weightlifting, et cetera. Kenny Kane, brilliant, brilliant coach. Same Travis Mash, one of the best coaches in the country, but more weightlifters into the weightlifting world championships than any other coach in America. And he's like 44 and still front squats like 500 pounds.

He's a savage. He's a monster. Just an absolute monster. We've got some awesome co-hosts that are going to be still coming on with us as we travel the world. As far as content, again, more of the same. Hey, I'm going to pop on sometime. You might co-host.

If we let him. We have a busy schedule coming up. Email us. I'm not completely gone. Don't forget about me. You know, I just want to get back to doing our thing. I want to interview super awesome coaches. I want to talk about how to get stronger, how to move better, longevity,

just general health, man. Back to just hanging out, talking to really cool people. The thing that, oh, man, that not everybody gets to see, that not everybody gets to see is we show up like an hour, hour and a half before, and we get to hang out with these people. And if it was possible, which it might be in the future, to – We can do it every month. Yeah.

It's our show. But the conversations that we have before. You can't make it better now. I know. That's what's going to happen. You're going to make it better. I'm going to be like, ego is going to come up. We're going to keep it a secret.

We're going to keep it a secret. Very first Instagram comment. Thank God he's gone. But the hour and a half that we show up and we get to train with these people and really dig into the movement pieces that they're bringing into the world. I mean, um, just in the last month, the 45 minute tour that we took through Paul check's house, the ability to go and hang out at deuce gym. And we're doing all kinds of, um, you know, crawling and cartwheeling and just learning

from people that are really exploring like their specialty. Um, and then we get to get on the show. It's really awesome. And, man, the thing that excites me the most is how we can take these general principles of strength and conditioning and go find where these principles are being applied maybe in the MMA world, maybe with the special ops people. There's just so many categories of people that are training for specific things, but using the principles that we're talking about on the show every single week. And it's endless. It is literally endless. I mean,

you can get into every sports specificity and man, deadlifting goes a long ways yeah we can we can talk about these things forever in every capacity of life yeah you're right about that i remember i remember being about a dozen shows in the barbell shrug and then we're going oh fuck man are we gonna run out of content are we gonna run out of things to talk about and then 50 shows later like nope yeah there is so much to learn so many things out there that's purely us just not truly understanding how deep that rabbit hole goes oh yeah and the diversity at which how many rabbit holes there really are like if the show's done anything for me it's like i had i was lucky to have that background from a very young age and been in this industry kind of my whole life but then what the show has really shown me is through the

diversity of guests i've learned so many other fringe aspects of strength and conditioning that I didn't get growing up. I got real deep on a few awesome topics growing up. But through the show, I've learned so many other little things that just weren't a part of my upbringing. Yeah. We have an incredible opportunity to just talk to the smartest people and find out what motivates them. Getting back to the why, I mean, we sat down to lunch with Brett Contreras about a month

ago, and he was talking about all of his PhD friends that everyone knows, everyone reads their papers, they're literally leading every conversation in strength and conditioning, and I was like, you've interviewed all these people, right? You're like, not one of them. I was like, man,

we have some real work to do. We've got to hit the road. We've got to go talk to the people. There's tons of people out there that we have yet to get to. In the internet and the podcast, the YouTube channels, it has taken strength and conditioning from these garage gyms where the really strong people didn't want to

talk to anybody. You guys, specifically with Barbell Shrugged and the internet as a whole has just opened up the education and we're just at the tipping point of where's this thing going in all of the all of the areas um yeah it's really exciting i was having uh i was having breakfast this morning with john wolf of on it and uh max shank and uh just shanks shanks the future too didn't even didn't even I was having breakfast this morning with John Wolfe of Onnit and Max Schenck. Schenck's the future, too. This is how my life rolls. I didn't even plan to see either one of those guys until like 12 hours ago.

I was like, oh, I guess we're doing this now. And those guys are both doing revolutionary things in strength and conditioning. And in conversations with those guys, I realized, oh, we just got started in the world of strength and conditioning. And in conversations with those guys, I realized, I was like, oh, we just got started in the world of strength and conditioning because information is just now getting shared, and there's so much that's not been shared yet and things being discovered. And coaches are now young enough. There's enough young coaches that have been exposed to mass amounts of information that we're now being able to mass amounts of information that we're

now being able to build on top of that that just wasn't happening before because there wasn't an exchange of information before and it's strange to think that barbell shrugged pre this conversation was in a way holding barbell shrugged back in that now we have the freedom to go find all the people, and we have enough avenues. We have the people. We have the channel to get all of those people their voice and get this information to the people. Well, that's what's exciting about Shrug Collective is we have a collective of hosts looking for it.

So before it was just a few of us. Now we're going to have a team and team of teams to be able to go out and just gather that information and share and disseminate and find what's best. Because there's going to be sharing amongst the shows. There already is sharing amongst the shows happening. And we're going to see the things that are actually resonating. You were talking about Andy and Kenny. And, man, I wanted to interrupt you you so bad but that's not what hosts do good hosts don't do that um but both of those guys but both of those guys i've only hung out

with them in person two or three times but both of them had such a massive impact on my journey as a coach and where when i met them well not even met them but when i found their voice through you guys's show um like i didn't know that there was people like andy galpin i had no idea and i didn't know people studied the things that i was just like doing because i thought it worked and then all of a sudden he came in and was like this like definitive voice not just like oh yeah we're like kind of playing with these back squats and this reps like no no no how about the smallest muscle fiber i know everything about it i know how it reacts to every type of training and i was just like oh wow like this that's a rabbit hole like i need to get lost in that and we have access to

that that's incredible and then kenny kane i don't know if there's a better human being that is as selfless and genuinely interested in being a master coach. I think he might be like the Jesus of fitness. It's unreal. we all kind of a transition point in my life was when I was leaving, um, the CrossFit world and that methodology and trying to figure out like where I was going to go. And he was developing the positivity project. And I sent him a Facebook message and I was like, I'm dealing with this in my brain emotionally. I don't really know where to go. Like, what do I do? And out of nowhere, he gives me a call and talks to me for an hour about just the long road of coaching and how your job is not CrossFit it's about being a master at what you do and really digging into your clients and understanding their goals

and their motives and it was just such an awesome voice to hear at a time from someone I had never met in person and just has like a massive impact on the community as a whole just because of the way they live their lives. And I can't wait to get those guys on, one, to have the conversation about how they really influenced me. I wouldn't be standing here without both of their voices and to have them on the team like just wow killer yeah and we haven't done a lot of shows with with just the crew lately where like me mike andy and kenny

just the four of us and that's something i want to do moving forward is a few more shows with with just me you andy and kenny because those guys have tons to share like they're they're great to have on for interviewing other people but like interviewing those guys like especially like man like every show we've ever done with either one of them, but right now I'm thinking about specifically with Andy, Andy smashes. Andy is an incredible teacher. Like, Kenny, if I differentiate the two of them, Andy's an amazing teacher and Kenny's an amazing coach,

and those aren't necessarily always the same thing. Certainly, Kenny can teach and Andy can coach in some capacity, um andy is very very good at delivering content and information he's a professor that's what he does he speaks to his students in front of the class for hours and hours every single day he like he knows all the content the order in which it should be delivered how to explain to someone who's a brand new beginner and doesn't really understand it yeah it's great analogies great powerpoint slides like he's a very very very good teacher so interviewing him on the show is always just really really easy you guys ready to do this yeah still excited so where can they find you mike bledsoe you can go over to the bledsoe show.com i'm traveling the world you can see where i'm going to be at on different dates and doing some

events seminars all that kind of stuff. Listen to that show. You know, I was talking to my friend Daniel Schmachtenberger the other day, and we were talking about who? Daniel Schmachtenberger. You just said that. Go listen to that show. Yeah. But, you know, what's going to set it apart from a lot of other things? And my job, I see, is to challenge the traditional way of doing things so that,

you know, it's like, why are we doing these things? Are we doing it just because that's how it's always been done? Is there a better way? So really, you know, tinkering with that.

So some taboo subjects and whatnot, but I think that, um, I found some rabbit holes where I've made some changes that were not so traditional that have enhanced my life tremendously. And so I'm still looking for more of those nuggets so I can share that with the crowd. So go over to TheBletzoShow.com. Doug?

Yeah, yeah. We're hanging out. All right. Where can people find you? You can find me at DougLarsonFitness.com. I've got some seminars coming up. I really have been missing educating in person, both from a one-on-one

teaching class or personal training perspective and from hosting seminars and teaching a group of people who are interested in a very specific topic. So I've been talking with Andrew, I've been talking with Travis Mash,

with Andy Galpin, with Aaron Horsick over at Squat University. I've been talking with a bunch of people about doing seminars, a lot of them in 2018. So if you're interested in that and you want to come to one of those seminars

or just see what else I have going on, you can go to douglarsonfitness.com. Also, if you have questions for me or suggestions for seminars or anything like that, you can reach out to me. Just DM me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson on Instagram.

And in the spirit of today, you can find me here every Wednesday talking to you about strength and conditioning and the most elevated conversation in the game. I'm excited to be here. I appreciate all of the listeners that have been a part of this for the last six years. I understand this is a massive responsibility to continue this conversation, and I look forward to the opportunity. So thank you guys. Thank you for just being great friends, being open to opportunities and change in this transition and man, Shrug Collective, let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Looking forward to it. Thanks for making it all the way to the end of the show. If you liked the show, which I know you did, please go share it on Facebook, Instagram, or whatever social media channel you happen to be loving at the moment. Pinterest?

Twitter? Tumblr. Tumblr. Share it on Tumblr.