Barbell Shrugged - The Man That Adds Mass and Muscle to Athletes of the WWE w/ Rob McIntyre, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #454

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

“Bodyweight Bundle” Save 66% using the code “bodyweight”   In today’s episode the crew discusses:   Rob’s start as a college strength coach How hard it was to learn about strength before the internet Being a sports performance and strength coach for throwers in college The transition from college sports to WWE How do you handle elite athletes and their terrible schedules What is the best way to build size and strength Creating the One Ton Challenge And more…   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Rob Mcintyre on Instagram   TRAINING PROGRAMS   Host the One Ton Challenge at your gym: http://shruggedstrengthgym.com   One Ton Challenge   One Ton Strong - 8 Weeks to PR your snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench press   20 REP BACK SQUAT PROGRAM - Giant Legs and a Barrel Core   8 Week Snatch Cycle - 8 Weeks to PR you Snatch   Aerobic Monster - 12 week conditioning, long metcons, and pacing strategy   Please Support Our Sponsors   Paleo Valley  - Save 15% at http://paleovalley.com/shrugged   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   PRx Performance - http://prxperformance.com use code “shrugged” to save 5%   http://kenergize.com/shrugged use Shrugged10 to save 10%   Masszymes http://masszymes.com/shrugged use Shrugged to save 20%

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Rob McIntyre is on the show. We're going to thank our sponsors again at the break. Make sure you get over to barbell shrug dot com forward slash body weight and save 66% on five programs using the coupon code body weight. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Rob McIntyre. Hard Knock South.

Trainer to some of the strongest humans in the world. The original creator of the One Ton Challenge. Welcome to the show, man. This is super fun. Hello. We have a bit of a history. We met in San Diego, which is really awesome. You're John Cena's trainer.

I trained with him for a long time. We enjoy lifting weights. It all worked out. I got to come to Hard Knocks, take your amazing test of strength, the one-ton challenge. Now we're turning this thing into a fun sport. Dude, where did you find the barbell?

When did this journey begin for you? That's a good question. I was always interested in strength and uh i don't know an exact age or moment but i was always just kind of wanted to be stronger i guess and you know i started messing around with stuff but by the time i was a teenager 15 or 16 i was more into it than most people my age. I was voraciously reading everything I could get my hands on. Were you like a strength magazine guy?

Was that where you were getting all your information? Kind of, but I knew something was missing. And I was really frustrated, even as a kid, not really knowing that much. Like, okay, this three sets of 12 thing, I've read that 100 times. Like, this isn't right. These people look insane. And then started to slowly find, like, translated Soviet stuff. And, you know, this was the 90s, so it was kind of fresh.

Yeah, all the cool stuff I know has been from books. And I guess maybe magazine-wise, when Muscle Media 2000 came out in the early days, I don't know if you remember that. I remember that. Yeah, I do. No? That was – okay, well, let me tell you about it. Yeah, let's hear about it.

All the magazines did the same thing. And, you know, everyone danced around. Didn't talk about drugs, really. But you knew there was something going on. You know, even as a kid, I knew there was something. Like, people don't look like bodybuilders normally. No matter how hard I try. Then Bill Phillips, who had written a book on steroids published a magazine called muscle media 2000 and um got really interesting people to write for it like uh that's where most

people first heard of like charles poliquin and um dan duchesne who did a lot of like keto stuff in the 90s and stuff like that and uh some like their articles pulled no punches and some were really dirty about like ecstasy and steroids and some were you know interviews with uh bodybuilders who wouldn't use their name but like look here's a cycle i do here's what's really going on so for once was like the truth, and it spurred other magazines to start approaching the subject. And not just that, it was the truth about like,

oh, some of these people don't even know, aren't smart about training. But at the same time, it would have a really good article on training written by someone who knows something instead of just the standard magazine writers that was the same thing over and over as a kid did you were you like oh i i obviously have to do steroids to be good at this

or did it like push you away from it or did you like no i never wanted to look like a bodybuilder necessarily it was interesting like i mean still to this day, I find, you know, steroids fascinating, but I never had that urge because I think as a teenager, you're doing fine, you know, and like you make gains all the time. So I wasn't. You can always add five more pounds. I've always been interested in truth, you know, and how things really work. Like, and that's part of the reason i've gotten so into training like don't just tell me what to do i want to understand why right so since you know reading that you know led to other things led to like reading more poliquin stuff and then like

weird soviet stuff that i could barely understand and you would just find things over time and you put it together. I would even go to libraries and look at like every exercise science book they had going back to like even early 1900s stuff, reading Sandow's book, you know, from back in the day. But I got good at taking whatever, okay, there's one page in this 200 page book that's worth anything. So I read the whole book and like, there it is.

And you know, you put those things together and over time start to figure out what the real deal is with everything. What was the basis to a lot of the Soviet books you were looking for? Was it Olympic weightlifting, just muscle growth things? What was like the thing that interested you in that research? Was that all butt John of this stuff that you brought over and translated? I think a lot think a lot of it was you know back i didn't know that back in the day but um thinking

back that had to be some of it yeah my strength coach growing up was really good buddies with him so we had all that stuff growing up oh that's awesome yeah it was awesome it was that and then like even i mean i remember reading in a little part of powerlifting usa a blurb like a two-page thing by a guy named louis simmons that seemed like a guy no one was listening to but he was saying the stuff that kind of made sense and he would mention where he got his information from and i would go to those sources, which was old Eastern block training stuff, you know, and try to understand how he was interpreted for powerlifting and all that.

And, uh, but no, it wasn't, it was just because the, um, Americanized training at the time was pretty much dominated by bodybuilding. I guess before it was dominated by weightlifting, if you know the whole Bob Hoffman, Joe Weider battle and all that stuff.

But like I said, it was too much show. You know, it was just like well-written like pump-up articles and stuff. And so when you read more scientifically factual stuff, which the Soviets were way ahead of us on strength, and it was just very refreshing to hear a different perspective. So it wasn't necessarily just for Olympic lifting or anything. It was just the pursuit of strength or, you know, even muscle growth and stuff. When you see it like, oh, there's actual science.

They have pictures of cells and stuff, instead of, like, this routine will get you so pumped that you won't know what tomorrow is, you know, and all that. So I just was more drawn to that instead of just the, yeah, fire me up for the gym kind of stuff. Was that just, like, you intrinsically just thought being strong would be fucking rad, or were you, like, training for football and wrestling and like high school sports?

I played sports, but I was enjoying the pursuit of strength more, I think. And yeah, I just thought it was cool. I thought it was cool how you could change your body. And I was always pretty strong. I was, you know, a skinny skinny kid but strong for my size so maybe i naturally took to it and then you know i did pretty well i wasn't anything crazy but pretty well for a high school kid you know and um so yeah i just was more interested in that than the sports themselves i think no at what point did you figure out that you wanted to to do this as your your your full-time

gig that i was really hesitant about that because i was really into it but i was worried that if i pursued it it would ruin a hobby of mine you know because then it becomes a job but i know about that yeah i actually what my strength told told me my my entire life he's a mechanical engineer and i always ask him like you do this for fun why don't you want to do it for like your actual job and he was like i think it just it would kill my passion i don't want to do it yeah so yeah yeah someone uh told me that i i where was i i was at the university of georgia and they were in the sports department and everything and they uh said i could volunteer and the weight room the the guy running at the time was interested and I was like, I don't know if I want to do that because, you know, and they pretty much like, just shut up.

You're really good at it. And like, you're good with people and all that. So I did. And I realized quickly that like, I had a lot of, a lot of book knowledge better than some coaches but i had no experience and so i'm like okay actually i need to do this as much as possible to get the reps in yeah um were you going the the strength conditioning route for college at all like did yeah work in college yeah i mean was that like uh what did what like what was your degree in or did you um yeah i did exercise science for uh a few years and so by that point i was already working in the um string conditioning department and i realized it was going to take me an extra year and a half or two to get out of school,

and I was like, all right, I need a faster way out. So I switched to psychology, and that's what I graduated with. That's nice. Just because, not that I doubted the exercise science stuff or anything. I already was established enough, and people wanted to buy my time, and I couldn't sell it to them because I had to go to school. Yeah. And people wanted to buy my time and I couldn't sell it to them because I had to go to school. And, you know, I was already, there was a moment in a class where it was something like an example of a machine that, I can't remember what the machine did, but it was like a pneumatic one-arm pressing thing that involved rotation. And the teacher said every top shot putter in the world uses this.

But I knew three of the top five, and no one had ever seen one of those things. And I was like, okay, I see there's a giant gap here, and that's why I'm having trouble applying any of this between the you know the books and the real world how did you know all them well like what was the circle that you're running in in the strength world that allowed you to know so some of the most powerful athletes in the country it just so happened at the University of Georgia there is a coach Don Babbitt he's a very good throws coach and the training group he had assembled so there was the students and there's also a group of you would say professional athletes that were training for the olympics and um at that time i happened to be there was an incredible assembly of um shot putter discus

javelin all that stuff so i was exposed to a lot of that stuff very early yeah and it actually spoiled me because my the lowest level athlete i ever worked with for a long time was a division one you know college athlete like no civilians or anything and then it was like olympic athletes so i didn't i'm not still not great with regular people because you know i that's what i was used to and um so i just i just understood that stuff like early and like that's what i was looking for like i've always been interested in like the extreme level of stuff and um so like okay well these people are the best what do they actually do let's let's see what the commonalities are and all that so it's like

you could both coach and study at the same time then that exposes you to other coaches and other athletes from all over and um you know it just starts building that thing. Was that like the first time you found the Olympic lifts, working with throwers? No, I had messed around with them before. Personally, I've never been great at them, but I'd use them. I guess that was the first time I used them in training, you know, because they, that's in the throws world, they're very common, obviously. And just when you see that,

it just gives you a different perspective of like, oh, these two guys are joking around on who can clean more and they ended up at 420. And that was just a joke to them. Like, that's interesting, you know? And it spoils you real quick to like oh that must be a decent level of performance and then you think you should be able to do that and everything your idea of average is very different but um it's really cool to see like it it you know in a gym if

someone benches 500 pounds that's probably the most anyone can do in that typical gym. Yeah. But that's kind of required in some of those sports. And not only that, they'll do it as not a specialist just because they're casually benching. And then they'll go, you know, jump over a box that's taller than my head. And they weigh 280 pounds. You're like, okay, that's what a real athlete is. Yeah. pounds you're like okay that's what a real athlete is yeah so i just i like that world and i like the uh seeing what you can do with human performance and i've always been fascinated with people with gifts like that you know because it is different than the rest of us yeah physically

they're total freaks yeah genetically it just fires off i think i mentioned it earlier too in the car on the way up here but uh reading the book sports science like radically changed my whole idea of athletes when it gets into like the percentages of if you can do x or you're born this specific way yeah you have this percentage of being in the nba or this percentage of being a swimmer like michael phelps basically has a genetic disorder that could almost kill him, but he's like one centimeter away from, I can't remember the name of the disease right now, but when you get it to that top level,

like that level of explosiveness is insane. How do you, when did you start to get into like program design? Because I feel like so many people, especially in like the coaching world, they start out with gen pop and those gen pop people get better. Some of them turn into good athletes, then more athletes see what they're doing.

And it's like a slow progression, but starting at the top, how do you even one start to program, create programs for top level athletes like that? And then, I mean, even having the confidence to be able to go in and say, I can take the top quarter percent of the world and make them better.

Well, I was, I both had confidence and also had spats of imposter syndrome, you know, where like, I would think I would see someone still to this day, I see people and I just, for some reason, think I can make them better. Like, I don't know what it is yet, but they're missing this thing and I'm going to give it to them, you know. And at the same time, I'd be like, holy shit, he's getting on a plane right now and he just trusted me. Like, that's his entire career. Like, I'm not good enough for this. Like, what's going on but it's programming wise i guess it was uh i was never married to one system and so to this day i'm still very open to

ideas and stuff like that yeah and um i guess i was familiar with enough that i knew when to like apply certain things i get i mean that's the trick right is knowing we all know strength tricks and stuff and different ways to program but when do you do it and with who like that's the trick to me and um i just had a pretty good sense of like, okay, bands on the squats, it needs to be this volume. And like, you know, I could kind of figure out, it needs to be for this many weeks. You need about this many weeks to unload for competition, but you have to peak here,

but you have to peak again four weeks later. And I'd coordinate it with their coach and like, hey, does this sound right to you? And they're always like, yeah, sounds great, go. Yeah, they don't know. They just wanted to be good. So, you know, it's, uh, I just, you know, of course, looking back, I would do things different, but also looking back, if I really think about it, like that wasn't so bad, you know? And, um, so I just had a wide, I think a big toolbox to pull from at the time.

Yeah. You mentioned Louie earlier. Did you follow a lot of the West side stuff for a while? No. Um, I, again, I kept it like as a drawer in the toolbox, you know, and I would, I would pull from it. But, um, if you weren't the general principles of, you know, Westside, Ganja, whatever you want to call it, are of course very sound, but the exact stuff he

was doing was for powerlifters. Yeah. In suits, on drugs, you know, and so all those exercises are for like, well, only if you have to worry about the top half of the bench press and stuff like that so there's things you can pull from that like i love to this day i love using bands because of the acceleration aspect and all those kind of things and you can take even older athletes are starting to have joint problems and like you can still do full squats but just unload certain parts of it yeah and um

there's a lot of use to that so something simple is like i love simple solutions to problems where it's like oh yeah just throw bands on you completely change the dynamics of the exercise so you if you have like let's say you have, I'm making this up, 25 variations of bench press. Well, if you just throw a band on, now you have 50. Because you could do all those variations with bands. And then you throw a different level band on, now you have another 50 or another 25. Then you do reverse bands. You know, like, so it's a very simple and dirt cheap way to get a lot of different variety.

But again, it's just knowing when to apply that and with who. And then you take that sport in consideration, what stage they're at, if it's speed they need and all that. Yeah, that's where I actually wanted to go with the next one. When did you start to get comfortable talking about speed or power i guess strength is an aspect of it but when you start to get into speed i feel like that's another entirely separate world that they're correlated but also very different in explosiveness and getting people moving yeah usually they have a specific speed coach that's more sports specific, but you're helping people with that.

I believe that, and no one wants to hear this, but like, if you're not that fast, you're never going to be really fast. And some have said that like most of your speed is developed by age 16 or 17. And if you think about it, you've never had someone say like, I was doing okay, but at 18, I took speed training seriously. Then I became a world level sprinter. Like, no, you're already going to world championships for juniors, probably at that age, you know?

And anyone who's been around Olympic lifting long enough, you know, pretty quick watching someone do it early on of like they have something. Not so much. Their form's great, but they just can't move fast enough. And that's it. You can improve it, of course, but you can't improve as much as strength. I don't think so. Yeah. so I think that again me being spoiled I was already handed

pretty gifted athletes I learned over time I guess I was always comfortable with it but I never wanted to get in the way of the sport so there were certain things I wouldn't do just because I was worried about volume and everything. You can certainly improve speed and improve vertical jumps and all that. But I don't know if I was ever uncomfortable. Yeah. The first time I ever saw somebody really, really fast,

I was like 10 years old trying out for an AAU baseball team. And they lined me up to run to first base against this like sort of pudgy kid that I was like, I'm going to wax this kid. He's kind of chunky. I'm not losing to a chunky kid. And he beat me so effing bad. And his name was Dave Wright. And he played third base for the New York Mets for like 10 years. It was an all-star and I was like oh no wonder you kicked the shit out of me that day because you are different you might have been pudgy but all that turned into muscle and then you hit a lot of home runs against the best pitchers in the world Dave Wright I hope you're

listening I learned what speed was literally that day I was like dad I'm not cut out for this that guy's way faster than me and he's not even in shape. They're different human beings. When you, I guess some of the first athletes that you started to work with, were there any, like, super freaks when you were throwing that you just were, like, dying to get your hands on? I was never, I was more at that time into paying my dues, so to speak, than, like, dying to get my hands on. They came to me, and that's's when in terms of the professionals like i was never like trying to sell myself to anyone

yeah um but i remember the first day watching uh two guys that were near 300 pounds like i literally walked in the weight room to meet with the coach and they were standing in front of a box. I don't know how tall it was, but significantly tall. I'm like, oh, they're ribbing each other trying to see if you can jump on the box. But it wasn't just that. They were facing away from it and jumping and spinning to land on it. And like the size of humans they were, they shouldn't have been able to do that. I was like, all right, this is awesome.

How did you kind of stay away from like i asked you if you if you like fell into like doing louis stuff um but how did you kind of create your own system i feel like it's a really common path for coaches to find a system for me it was crossfit and then learning that structure and then kind of leaving that structure to create like my own ideas and how did you stay out of other people's ways of thinking at such an early on and like in a way having the confidence that you were creating something something that was unique to you that you deemed worthy because I don't think I would have thought that my program was worthy for anyone if I didn't have, like, somebody else's ideas backing it almost. I think because I had read so much spanning so many decades of, like, you know, like you said, I looked for old books and stuff.

You started to see, you know, things that work, things that don't. And how, you know, as we were speaking earlier today how little we know and so there are these principles that seem to work and um i knew that no one could be right 100 like no matter how confident just using louis example he may be he can't be 100 right because there's people killing it that aren't using his system yeah um i loved the way he was thinking because he was thinking and like actively seeking out new methods instead of doing old ones you know and um you know i i messed around with stuff i'd have people go through west side training if they were like hey in the summer i have nothing to do i want to do a

powerlifting contest okay let's try this you know and then i would like put someone else through a you know more traditional training program and then like be taking notes on like who's uh doing better and stuff but then you also learn that like um just logically like how much speed work does an already fast person need to do you know for like in a powerlifting sense for a squat or something are you wasting your time and because again if you just take the population that you read about powerlifting these are normal people with normal jobs that got into powerlifting a lot of times maybe they played a little football or something but they're not you know super high level athletes or anything so again it's the the prescription like who's the patient or the client so i would i always had things like that

in the back of my head well like for this person is this really the best idea? Or do you want this person maxed out when they have a job to do that they make money from? And I think it's just because I had a wide enough base that I knew there were so many possibilities of what could work. And how nothing seemed to work for everyone. When did you start training people whose bodies were the reason they made money uh my early early 20s because i remember someone saying asking me how old i was and i told them and they were really surprised they're like i'm gonna listen to someone younger than me and then i and then they stopped them so they're like yeah i'm going to and to someone younger than me. And then they stopped them. So I was like, yeah, I'm going to. And they're like, yeah, keep telling me what to do.

And so, you know, that part I didn't like. Like there's, I remember telling people, like, yeah, you know, maybe not me. No, no, I want to hear your ideas. Like they were really interested. And so, you know, it was different levels too of like, I would, some people i would just watch them work out and i would go to their coach and be like i don't know if this is the best thing for them

you want to try this and like stuff like that some people i would do more direct stuff with and uh you know everyone everyone's different yeah and so it was it was a lot at a young age. But again, like I think I had a, you called it confidence, but I was also not confident enough to know I didn't know everything and to be open with like, I was always checking. I mean, to this day, like, is this the right thing to do? You know, and always like second guessing in a way, but not second guessing to ruin myself, but not being like, no, man,

you do this. I guarantee a gold medal. Like, I was very, you know, and I listened a lot, like any other coach or, you know, someone I would meet or anytime there was a chance to meet a coach from another country, like, what are you guys doing? Like, what's the training look like and i'd look at it and see you know that like um i mean that was something that was other countries um especially central europe and further east tend to stick to the same system that's always worked while the u.s there's no real system you know it's kind of just a mess of all this amazing stuff but no one's like organized it really yeah and um which is good and bad their system is very good for people who match that system but then um there's very little ways to adapt and when you get those, sometimes they're like question things like,

what, no, I have to squat this many times a week. No, you don't. What, are you insane? Like, you know, really, like they, because they've never stepped outside that, you know. How do you deal with that pushback from your athletes? Usually it's, if you can just, just, you know, the, in the worst case, just try it.

If you don't like it after a few weeks, then whatever. But, um, nothing I would do would be too radical and crazy. You know, I'm definitely more about trying to get the most out of someone's training than trying to get them to do like these wild things that are way outside their wheelhouse and especially if it's a professional athlete you're not going to take them and completely start them from scratch because something got them to where they are yeah so if you're like well you're doing everything wrong we're going to do it this way like yeah you made the all-star team last year and like well what do you what are you really trying to do there you know yeah so um it's just you slowly like you know five or ten percent at a time if you

think they're doing a lot wrong because usually they're not going to be open to that much but okay just try this and like hey that's not so bad okay now let's try this you know and just you're strategically making little tweaks rather than just overhauling programs from day one yeah because i mean i don't think that unless it's like a deadly program like there's no that's too much of a shock to people i mean even non-professional athletes like if someone asked me about training how do you train now okay well why don't you try this i'm not going to sit there and be like well you need to try this completely opposite thing one that takes too long for me to tell you about two it's if you're enjoying what you're doing like if it ain't broke don't fix it but maybe tweak it you know until you've redone it eventually you know i'm always

curious how how coaches find the balance between giving people what's kind of physiologically the most beneficial and then what's also psychologically the most motivating for their athletes like how do you find that balance that's that's a really good question that's something that i deal with a lot um one thing is like uh you you kind of judge someone on whether like okay you've been doing the same thing for a while because either you are uncomfortable with change or you're scared that's one thing because you're just waiting for me to tell you to change you know that's why you hired me so like well i can't do it myself so tell me to change so i can do it and um or uh just that as long as you can show success you know like you're not going to it's like someone who let's say they

go to the gym six days a week and they're pretty jacked or whatever if you tell them like okay let's try four days a week and um if they can try it and realize that they're not going to shrink and they maybe feel better then you win like as soon as you get that one little thing, you know, if you can like take away someone's pain or help them move better or help them get a little stronger, you know, and most of the time the people that I see are, especially with the wrestlers, like there's a lot of places they could go. So they're going to have some success no matter what.

What sports do you coach people in? Throws? Professional wrestling? Now it's all wrestling. All of them are wrestlers now? Yeah, they've completely wiped out everyone else. Before we go too far, getting away from throwers, because we've got to get into wrestlers,

who's the coolest, maybe not coolest, who's like the most powerful, baddest thrower that you've ever worked with we were like that guy because reese hoffa is on your garage door he's like one of the the main throwers that i've known in my life reese was awesome because he um i i watched him come up from being a student to go to the Olympics, being a very good student, athlete, and everything. I mean, in terms of Christian Cantwell, in terms of raw strength, I never worked with him directly, but he had a 640 bench or something like that. That's a good start. Good job.

A big guy where like um you see him and you're like oh yeah okay now i get it he should have been six four you know um everyone kind of had a different thing you know there's some were like big and strong like that some were uh just really like quicker but most shot put, for example, you need to bench around 500 or better. You can get away with 450, 475 if you have a certain technique, but that seemed to be the standard.

Yeah, you said 6-something, and I was like, what's the point of diminishing returns on opportunity costs for increasing your bench press once you're past four or five six hundred pounds do you really need to go past 600 pounds best throws like i don't mean to talk for christian but i don't think that his best personally was when he was the strongest

you know but still like he was always super strong, you know, but I'm not going to say that came easy, but he is the frame that like that, that wasn't the challenge it might sound like, you know, for some people. But I mean, those guys, like I remember working out with a friend of mine, he was a thrower from Canada, a shot putter, and he had just taken his, you know, come off like three month off season. He wasn't training at all. And, like, it was around 365 or so we figured he could bench on the first day.

And within six weeks, it was back near 500 pounds. Because, I mean, he was a 530, 550 bencher at the time. And you just see that, like, oh, yeah yeah i can't keep up with you like i'm doing the same workout you're doing and you're every week making these gigantic leaps yeah you know did you ever get any pushback from the the coaches that you know strength training because there was a i guess an idea that strength training would make you slow um or was that never a part of the throwing world no because you have to have a certain amount of strength and mass to move the ball or the implement itself you know

i feel like it's more like a part of the baseball world where the baseball is so light that you don't need to be that strong i know very little about the throwing world so i didn't know if like they they got if there was like any pushback on just like we want more speed and athleticism versus size and you know what in in a way it's like every other sport like the the russians had it down to like um i mean i read some of their stuff they had it figured out that and they're they're not correct but they tried to figure out like what your bench press needed to be and different lifts needed to be to throw a certain distance and then they even have like what um drugs would

increase each lift what percentage wise like you know 5.63 percent to this lift you know and then eventually an 8.73 increase in shot put distance for a female 12 point whatever for a male like it was awesome like it's it's not right because the sample size is too small but like that's the kind of like detail that they were working yeah under but um there's not pushback it's not right because the sample size is too small, but like that's the kind of like detail that they were working under. But there's not pushback. It's like any other sport where like if there's success, like in baseball, if someone started lifting weights and started hitting all these home runs, then everyone's going to start lifting weights. And that happened in the throwing world like back in the early 60s maybe. So it wasn't ever – it was like football.

It wasn't a – you need a certain level of strength and size to even play. So there's not that much pushback. There's different coaches have different ideas of more work on technique versus strength. But it's one of those things where that's not really an issue for most of them. Like, you're going to have the strength. Yeah. So, yeah.

Dude, you work with wrestlers. That's, like, the coolest thing ever. I think growing up as a kid, did you watch wrestling growing up? Not much. Come on. I definitely watched wrestling. It was the best. Yeah.

But, yeah, all those big giants on TV holding their arms up, body slamming each other. When did – did you start with Cena? Was he, like, project number one? Partly. There was – he was, just because we were – he went off and became a wrestler. I was a strength coach. And then we kind of, I had moved to Florida and he lived on the other side of the state.

And I would visit him and in a friendly way make fun of him because he had gotten kind of weak. And he was all show and let's go. Weak for him, not weak as a normal person. He doesn't look weak. 500 pound back squat and uh smaller yeah so i hope this doesn't mess us up there we go good yeah you're good got a compressor going that's good um so uh i started to kind of work with him a little bit, I'm trying to remember, and a few other people.

And then the WWE had implemented their wellness policy, and they were looking to somehow implement strength conditioning, but they didn't know what they wanted. This was before the Performance Center or anything like that. So then I took a group of their developmental wrestlers and started working with them. And they would add groups as time went on, the ones that were closer to going on TV. And then I guess just the word spread and then other people on the main roster would get in touch with me and all that. So then, you know, they did their whole thing.

They built the thing in Orlando. And so I did with them for like three or four years. And then by that time, I had, you know, just people coming to me asking for help. And again, I think it was my base of knowledge, being able to pull from like bodybuilding or Olympic weightlifting and everything in between that helped because, you know, not everyone, the Olympic lifts are kind of hard on the body and they're not for everyone so i'd be able to help someone who was like i really want to get better at the olympic lifts or like hey i just want to not get hurt and look awesome okay treat you like a bodybuilder you know so just having the that span of abilities i think helped yeah and again not being married to one idea and And yeah, I guess that's the easy way. I'm going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors over at Organifi. The green, the red, the gold.

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And back to the show. How do those guys handle training when they're doing shows like every day, multiple days a week, they're all banged up from the actual performance, and then they have to train and travel and the whole deal? You know, sometimes traveling takes just as much of a toll as the shows themselves, but everyone has a different strategy. Some people who, some of them who don't have families will train more at home, you know, and maybe like, okay, if I'm home three days a week, I'll try and get most of my training in there and then train once on the road. Then some people reverse it. Like, no, I only like to train on the road because I have a wife and kids.

I have to, you know, spend time, have to spend time with. Get to. Get to. Bergeron. Yep. Yep. I've all said that. Total stuff.

We remember learning things from him. So, you know, and then it's just the level someone's at there's i have people that are like i want to be as strong as possible and i have people are like i just don't want to get hurt and so you know and then there's everything in between but you treat it like there's certain times a year where the schedule's rougher so you just kind of adapt to that of like okay this is uh this is gonna be off season because you're in europe for three weeks you don't know what kind of gyms you'll get to so work out if you can if you can't you can't you know and um but they all have to be pretty independently minded and motivated you know the ones who really want to like get bigger or look

better or something like that the uh do you do much of the injury like recovery injury recovery um rehab yeah rehab work with them um i always tell people don't go to me for early stage rehab i consider that like a physical therapist yeah um but i certainly do like later stage stuff and all that. And so, you know, you see a lot of injuries. I mean, it's all sports, so you're bound to have to do some of that. Yeah. You know. Yeah, a lot of people come to you with quote-unquote injuries, but they're not actually injured.

They don't need surgery. People are just banged up all the time. So you're always working around something. Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of the job, too, is figuring out, like, oh, is this something we can solve today or, like, help make better? Is it something we have to wait out, you know? And so you're just, and it's just convincing people, like, it's a weird span of ages too like the young people feel more invincible and you're trying to get them to build good habits of like you know you're you're going to mess up your back eventually like it's like a elbow and a pitcher or something like that so you're trying to build good habits and

show them the importance of you're just maintaining certain levels of mobility and stuff that they're like no i'm fine you know because i don't feel anything. But everyone's, it's the culture is a lot different than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Like it's shifted a lot. Yeah. You mentioned elbows and pitchers a second ago. You got crossfitters and shoulders. You got soccer players and ACLs or sprained ankles or whatever it is. Like what are the common injuries that professional wrestlers face?

Backs are the biggest. Backs and knees. Some of which I think are preventable. But just like there's never going to be sport that's injury-free because the nature of sport is pushing yourself. And the nature of wrestling is falling down for a living. So there's some unpredictability that's going to happen. And it doesn't necessarily mean like off a ladder through a table.

Sometimes it's the, just landing a little wrong. You're like, oh, there it goes. You know, then, you know, a lot of people don't realize they're doing these matches. Then sometimes going to sit in a car for two hours and driving to the next town. So, you know, you've been really active. You're banged up and then you're just in this little seated position as a large man yeah you know i saw andre the giant in that documentary sitting on an airplane that guy had it he did not have an easy life he's way too big to be sitting

on a normal person's airplane you can't ride coach when you're seven four whatever he is um dude cena's life changed a lot, though. You're talking about he's got a bad back, one, but when he is at the beginning of his career and he's on the super hustle and he's not flying in nice planes and he's in the car, that's a brutal thing for a strength coach to be putting a program together for. It's a lot harder when you don't have the amenities. Yeah. So I try to encourage people like you know because i don't see a lot of them they're

on the road and stuff so there has to be a lot of independence because it's not like they can go back to you know a central hub where they all are you know unless they happen to live in orlando or something like that so um i try and teach them like what they could do on the road or how to think for themselves like is it should you really go squat right now if your back's fired up you know and like to hopefully make a smart decision about when to train or to give something another day or something like that and um but it's almost a requirement of the job to be able to do that, to kind of judge for yourself because you don't have that many people

to bounce ideas off of or a team doctor that's going to necessarily tell you to stay down because he might be at the arena, but you're not going to see him in the random gym you go to later that day. Yeah. The one-ton challenge. You're the creator. Where did it come from from when did you start putting this thing together wait actually did you guys call it the one ton challenge back in the day or is it one ton club one ton club right so you guys can own

the one ton challenge name thank you um i was starting to question whether that was actually something that we developed or if that was actually his thing i I think I called the one-ton challenge from day one. The first time I learned about it, when we got on the plane. It was a challenge. It was a challenge. It says one-ton club on the garage door. All right. But I just assumed it was the challenge, and then you got in the club.

Gotcha. Go ahead. Gotcha. Yeah. Semantics. gotcha gotcha yeah semantics um i was just trying to come up with uh you know i always like the record boards up in gyms and stuff like that and um so we which we have a few different ones but i wanted something that was like okay what's kind of like a semi-inclusive thing that's hard but not that hard to get into? So you have the classic super total, bench squat, deadlift, and the Olympic lifts.

So I just kind of worked off that. And I had a few different ideas because I wasn't sure if I wanted the Olympic lifts in there. But then when I started doing the math, just because of, you know, not everyone can do those. Like I figured out that like, you know, if someone has a bad wrist and they can't catch a clean, unless like most of the guys I had were strong enough that like, oh, they could take a token clean of like 150 pounds and just, you know, do a really shitty catch

and it would still count so um i just kind of i've always been interested in like those weird strength formulas and trying to find like commonalities so i somehow settled on uh i was telling you today i still have my notes i saw them the other day on like oh yeah that's why I was throwing around different lifts and everything. And I figured that would work good for my population. And then, like, I figured out a body weight ratio for females, you know, where, like, again, with the population I was working with, you don't want, you didn't want, you know, the divas at the time they were called to be too big and fat, so you weren't trying to just get the most weight. I think the number was like if they could do seven times their body weight, that was the equivalent to the one-ton club or something like that.

We run it on 1,200. Pretty much spot on. So, yeah, it just worked out, and it became something that is achievable for most, I'd say, most decently athletic males over 200 pounds. And you can certainly do it under 200 pounds, but it gets tougher as you go down there. Yeah. And then people have fun kind of strategizing about it. They're like, okay, my deadlift's awesome, but I'm terrible at this, so I can make up for lost ground, you know, and all that.

What weight were you when you hit your 2009? What I weigh right now, 195. 195, yeah, same thing. It was about 200 pounds. Yeah, it was, yeah, 195 in 2009. That was pretty much where I'm at, just a little bit stronger, a little bit meaner, a little bit more motivated, more really. Dude, we think about these numbers a lot.

We have numbers. So if you put together the reason I think that the challenge is so cool. One, obviously, Hard Knock South. So sweet to be able to come down and do all of it. But over the four years or three years from when I did it to when we kind of created the sport of or started rolling this thing out and putting programs behind it, 500-pound deadlift. If you spend enough time in gyms and start lifting at a decent age, you should be able to pull relatively close to 500. 300-pound clean, 300-pound jerk, 300 pound jerk 300 pound bench 400 pound back squat

5 4 3 3 and then snatch 200 it's 2 000 pounds yeah it's kind of like we call it the textbook ton yeah if you were to do it as is the lowest possible way to get into the club and you just lifted weights to a specific number everyone should if you went on the full journey of strength, you should be able to get to those numbers. Yeah. You know, and again, it does change if you're a smaller guy or something like that. Um, but yeah, I think it is achievable. And like I said, it wasn't something I made to be easy or like all inclusive yeah and and that's okay even though today's world we all want to be inclusive but it's okay to just like not qualify for something and because and um i agree sorry and gotta get stronger in uh in my gym like there's there's

big strong guys that aren't in it just because it's not their thing they've never tried or whatever and um they're more maybe they're more into the bodybuilding side and that's fine too aren't in it just because it's not their thing. They've never tried or whatever. And, um, they're more, maybe they're more into the bodybuilding side and that's fine too. Like there's a lot of ways to be successful. I think lifting weights and it doesn't have to be just like, if strength isn't your thing and it's not going to be fun for you,

then don't do it. Yeah. Do something else. But you can take aspects of that and like, like, well, 500 pound deadlift would be cool you know and work that into your training or whatever but yeah i've um i have all kinds of

stuff i haven't like i have some crazy number charts with like strength levels for different sports like i came up with and like night sleepless nights of like number psychosis where like like all these different levels and stuff, but I haven't found a way to implement them yet. Are you at all interested in getting back into the field events, the throwing events, and working with those people? I'm open to anything. It's just whatever time allows.

Because I have a tendency to spread myself too thin. And between just training people in the gym, working just administrative stuff in my office, editing videos if I need to edit videos and all that stuff like it, there isn't that much time. You know, so I get, you know, people ask me for stuff sometimes, but if it's not like, I mean, if it's super interesting, I'd make time, but I can't just like, you know, I just don't have that. There's only so much me to go around. How do you keep track of all of your clients when they're spread out all over the world through different federations? Is that what they're called in wrestling? Federations? Well, there's only one, well row two of them now really but um they uh i made an app and

so i can program on my computer and then it goes to their phone i can see what they do you know so it just goes back to me, which was quite a project. Who knew when you started? Yeah. You developed a custom app to deliver programming? Right. Which it became a multi-year project to get it off the ground and everything. But yeah, so I used that, it made things so much easier because I was just relying on, like, I tried different things and people emailing me back spreadsheets and stuff, but

you couldn't get any data. But this way, like now people can't go without it. Like, and they, even if I say like, Hey, don't forget to, you know, stretch after training today, they'll be like, well, if it's not in the app, I'm not doing it. Like I need to see it written down in my face. And if I have to check it off, I'll do it. So that made everything way easier. There's a bunch of other businesses that do that now. Was that just not available when you developed the app, or what was the reason for doing it yourself? There was a few of them, but they weren't

up to what I wanted, or they were just too broad. So I wanted something where like, I could make a bodybuilding program or I could make, um, a weightlifting program and throw in percentages really easily, you know, and have it adapt every week and all that stuff or, and feed me back statistics and I could play with them, but no one could do that. So now I think they can, but at the time, like, that looked like the only solution. So that's what I did. Yeah. When we interviewed Cena two years ago now, something like that?

I think so, yeah. He talked about you as a coach and how just nice it is being able to have you in the corner, telling him exactly how to do. And he knows kind of like what where you're going, but has no idea how you get him there. And he's talking about how you put like you'll walk up to him, be like, OK, we're going to go on like a year long squat cycle. And I think what was the last big squat he put up like 612, was it? It wasn't 612. Close to that, somewhere around that.

Something like that, 607. So it was a lot. It was over 600, I remember that. But I guess I would love to dig into just a little bit of the numbers, how you periodize out a year, what an actual training program looks like for somebody that is an elite athlete that you also have to be kind of focused on the day-to-day but looking out 12 months and and where they go well for for most wrestlers like yeah i might have a vague idea of what that year is going

to look like but it's not going to look like. I think that's for most athletes because you don't know what's going to happen. And wrestling is even more unpredictable. The hardest thing is you don't even have a regular training place. You're everywhere, and you don't know what that gym will have. So if you're a really strong guy with a really bad bar,

and you're supposed to squat 600 for sets of three that day, you might be like, I don't know about bars you know so that throws things yeah um the most nowadays the most actual program the longest i'll make is maybe 15 17 weeks or something like that and if they make it through that unhindered i'm amazed yeah that usually doesn't happen because there's so much other stuff going on and changes in their schedule and travel yeah um so uh with cena now it's almost more difficult because of when he's filming something you don't know what the

facilities will be and if you're on a location for a few weeks, it's not like you're in a bad gym for a day. You might be gymless for a few weeks even, you know? So there's a lot of adapting. I keep it very, very simple, you know? In a perfect world, I'd use all the tricks I have at hard knocks and all the technology, but it has to be very simple stuff which you know we all know still works yeah um for him he responds best uh to like it's interesting on bench press he Bench press, he never needs to get near max to have a really good max.

If he can get 85%, 87%, more than once I was able to get his bench max up, never going over 90%. Is that for singles, reps? Yeah, for singles. I mean reps with 85% or a single max. On squats, he needed more exposure to heavy weight, but he's better. He's actually good at reps on squats. He has those giant legs and everything.

By the way, I remember seeing a chart along years and years ago that was showing peak force output at at every every five percent of a i believe it was a squat max you know so it's like 50 55 60 all the way to 100 i think the there was like a little peak right around 90 and then it dropped off just a little bit so obviously at 100 you're lifting more weight but like if the speed at 100 is slow enough and the speed is a little bit faster at 90%, you can have higher peak force output. I took that and applied it to my squatting program years and years and years ago doing heavy singles at 90% and never going over it and had really, really good success. Yeah, because I think, and you're also breaking down your technique and stuff after that, you know.

So there's a certain percent you just need to load your spine at a certain point to get used to feeling the weight, but it has to be heavy enough to be an unusually heavy load, but light enough that you can do it repeatedly and not burn out, you know. individual aspect to that like um how fast someone squats how explosive they are will like change how i'm applying to you know like for example if someone's really explosive and they take a 90 single and they get from like the bottom of the squat to the top and let's just say i'm completely making this up so this is is unrealistic. 0.3 seconds, right? Then a guy can also do his 90%, but it takes him one second. Then the more explosive guy, even though he's used more speed and stuff,

was actually exposed to that load for a much shorter period of time. So it might have actually taken less out of them than the one who had to stabilize it for that much longer. So this is the kind of stuff that you can't just look at a paper and realize like that's really a coach looking at a person and i guess just using experience and maybe intuition to be like okay i think i can get more out of this guy with more reps you know or this one needs less reps and stuff like that so um going back to your question uh a lot of cena's stuff was a i'm just trying to remember some of his best lifts but he would usually go in two or three week pushes of heavy weightsights and then backing off for two weeks. I don't even know

if he would notice it, though. Because it would be like a set or two missing or the reps going from 87% down to 75%. But the reps don't change that much. So if you're just doing what you're told

on app, it's like, oh good, it's not as heavy this week. Yeah. You kind of get the – it takes some time with anyone to feel what they can recover from, you know, especially when they're not near you. And that's why I tell people it's tough to copy a celebrity's workout because that's so unique to what they're going through. And that's not how I would train him if he lived at home. And that's not how I would train him if he lived at home. And that's not how I'd train him if he had a nine to five, you know, and, um, that's not how I would train, um, the next guy who's maybe more or less explosive.

So that's just, you have to take those basic training principles and just figure out that like, you know, know well my training partner seems really exhausted by these workouts but i'm not that tired so how can we make things work yeah how long does it take you before you start to really i guess kind of see each athlete that you're working with kind of from the inside out and like how they're really responding like month one you're not really learning too much um is it is it month three month four i know it's it's individualized but where do you start to really feel confident that you're actually molding this person into the the athlete and the body that you want them to to to be well

i actually get a lot out of month one which i'll explain um but there was a quote that was uh it's not mine but we used to throw it around that was as a professional athlete um by the time you figure out how to train for you it's time to retire you know like that's how long it takes to figure your body out but um the reality is like time changes a lot and we all talk about like you know getting older and stuff but really a 28 year old is a lot different than a 22 year old even you know and um so you're always kind of adapting trying to figure out like where that's going and then also people's lifestyles change a lot too yeah but if i've have someone for the first month like I know this isn't exactly what you're talking about, but just by their personality and stuff and seeing how they live their life tells me a lot about what we're going to be able to get away with

and what's going to work for them. And as you mentioned earlier, what's going to motivate them, you know? So in that first month, I'm pretty confident in what the next four months will look like. You know, I might take a week or two to kind of feel them out and stuff, but, like, usually I'll have a, like, okay, I got this. Like, I know exactly what we need to do, and it's going to be awesome, you know. And I'm not wrong that often, you know. Usually it's, I mean, maybe that's cheating because it's the first few months with anyone they're going to do all right.

But it's, I think just seeing how they recover from the workouts, if they're excited that they're like, wow, I was really beat. It was awesome. This is what I've been looking for. Or like, I was really beat. Like, I wasn't even sure if i'd get out of bed like oh okay that we did half of what we thought i would that tells me something so you know and then like you figure out if they're party people or whatever and like so there's a i always say the first thing you can tell about an athlete is like just look them in

the eyes and see where they're at that day and you know i i i'm not saying i go by feel a lot but i think people tell you a lot by not talking even or not even talking about training just where they are in life and that tells you like i don't know so that divorce isn't so good going so well and your kids aren't really talking to you i'm gonna lower this volume quite a bit yeah um what uh what's your training looking like these days what are you what are you learning what are you doing who are you learning from just kind of what what keeps the fire going for you right now um i'm always experimenting with stuff and um you know when no one's in the gym i'm either by myself coming up with weird like one thing i was doing was uh i have one of those stretch machines for like you know you're growing like those old guys you're learning the splits no no well i was seeing what would happen if i applied uh electricity to the muscles while stretching to max tolerance and so um so you're

putting like a like a stem unit yeah because i did some stuff on a guy's hamstrings and we got an incredible range of motion in the hamstrings in a single session but it this was all consensual ladies and gentlemen it took two people to hold him down while the current was applied because it was relatively strong. And it exhausted his hamstring. So it wasn't useful for training because it got range of motion, but he couldn't train that day because he was like, they're already beat. Did the range of motion stick? For a little bit, for a few days but i knew it wouldn't because his his nervous system was fighting back so hard that's why it took people

but um so i was trying to like do like weird relaxation stuff while in a split and stimming you know my doctors and abductors. I tried both sides to see what would happen at different pulse rates and stuff like that. And the result was it actually worked really well. But what I didn't think of was the joint integrity because it made my hip joints really sore because they weren't ready for that kind of range of motion you know and

it's also painful and not worth it yeah you mentioned the nervous system we talked a little bit earlier about it of how that's kind of like the next frontier of really trying to understand where this i guess the strength conditioning world and performance world's going um what is like a an entry point that you kind of look for with people because their lives are not hard when they're on the road or they're not easy when they're on the road and um people need to learn how to chill out before they can even start to grow and it seems like down regulation is really like a big piece and that's hard to teach because people don't want to hear it i mean they they don't mind hearing it they're, yeah, it doesn't seem that exciting.

I'm a big believer in that. I guess one thing that changed over time with me is seeing everything as a whole. Instead of separating the nervous system from the muscles and emotion and everything else, it's like something separate to to train how it's all one thing and um so i i'm i'm into getting people to you know all everyone i i work with makes more money than i will or i ever will so they're all high performers in some realm so i'm really into making sure that they're like for lack of a better term like doing the best they personally can mentally, you know, because it kind of starts with that being able to manage the stress and all that. And in terms of direct training stuff, just trying to make sure that like, you know, there's there's tricks over time and little tests you can do to see where someone's nervous systems at. And after people worked with me for a while, they kind of get like, you know, where they are.

And like I had someone come in and she had, um, she came into train and I had her on the table just doing stuff. And she was just talking about what she was going through. And after like 20 minutes of me, like doing these different tests, I'm like, you're not training today or tomorrow. Like you're way out of whack, you know? And she was like, just the way muscles respond and stuff like that.

So, you know, there's all different, like whether it's RPR or other neuro-lymphatic stuff you can do. And that stuff's all good, but it really has to start with the person and they have to be able to manage their own stress and all that but that's what really i think once you can do that and learn how to turn your system on when it needs to be on and then turn it off when it needs to be off that's when you can really get the most out of your body body and um learn to recognize that like you know if your glutes aren't firing one to recognize

your glutes aren't firing and that's a nervous system thing and not a muscle thing so figure that out yeah we start squatting you know and um i'm saying that he you know like anyone could just figure it out but you know there's but that's something that needs to be addressed and that's something i'm really uh i think i'd say in the last four years i've really slowed down instead of just throwing people like okay let's warm up and go like hold on get on the table for a little while let's try some stuff like i don't think you're quite ready to squat yeah i actually feel like one of the things that i learn probably within the last like two or three years is like going into the gym and trying to enter in a very calm space and stay there instead of like going to a top set and hitting 90 of some lift and having to be like growling at the

barbell and screaming at it like you're some wild banshee in the middle of the forest like fighting for your life it's like why can't i just go lift the weight it's the same weight yeah whether i do it in a very calm way or i have to like snore pre-workout before it and that whole thing is uh really shifted the amount of injuries i have the amount of like tension my body carries. I feel like there's just a mental shift going and trying to stay as parasympathetic as possible, lifting the same amount of weight or, you know, inside 90%. That's like a relatively heavy weight for me to be lifting. And then, but just, just do it. Eliminate the story of it being heavy eliminate the story

of all the things that go along with lifting heavy weight and the aggression and anger and all that and just nope i'm just gonna go squat that and it's gonna be great yeah i tell people you should know that like you know let's say you benched 315 pounds and that's your max and everyone's celebrating high five everyone in the gym maybe even some high body fives were thrown around i don't know but um understand that like maybe that was a peak that you trained for and that's not your normal like if someone gave you 100 bucks like could you bench 315 today like maybe not that might have been like the most you could bench and know that like your normal is 300 yeah you know and that's what you should be able to do any day you know even on a bad day i know i could at least do 300 and then with max psych up maybe you could get 315 maybe

320 something like that but kind of know where your real levels of strength are instead of just like you know i've i've squatted a lot of weight but i haven't done it in just like, you know, I've, I've squatted a lot of weight, but I haven't done it in the last year, you know, so that's not really my max right now. You know, I actually feel like I don't need as even remotely the level of warmup as well. Like, um, I actually did the one-time challenge. I was emceeing an event at a gym and I just did it but I did each of them in like four lifts just to see what I could get to I hit like 1860 or something like that you know I squatted 375 on my fourth set and it was like you just don't really need a warm-up if your body's moving well and all the muscles work appropriately you should be able to get to a relatively high number without

having this massive warm-up and this massive like is there a benefit to being able to um it's like kind of my personal experience and also like a question of um is there a benefit in training to say like you're going to take one warm-up set and then we go to 75 85 instead of like this we need 45 pounds for 10 you know 135 225 315 and like this, we need 45 pounds for 10, 135, 225, 315, and this big buildup to where you're going. But how much weight or a percentage that you should be able to hit inside just at any point in time because you're just a strong human being? Well, yeah. I mean, that kind of goes along with what I was saying. It's like, I can miss 315.

Let me get my elbow wraps though. And it has to be on my bench. And I have to be, you know, like, starts to be like, well, what can you do naked? That's really how strong you are. Yeah. You know. And then, but it's a full circle of like, well, what could you do if you just rolled out of bed? Isn't that how strong you are?

Like, well, no, I'm half asleep. Like, there's some level. There's no blood in the muscles yeah so you're right and i think that um people okay one is individual it depends on the situation but people tend a lot of people tend to want no i'm not gonna say that i would say all the good coaches they don't like to make non-committal yeah well i was gonna sayal. Well, I was going to say a lot of people. Well, you want to say something, but then you're like, well, that works in this specific situation, but not this other situation.

So I don't want to overgeneralize. So. Kind of depends. I don't know. I was going to say people warm up too much. I have a lot of information. Yeah, go ahead. But.

I totally agree with you. The other day, I had someone come in, and they started their squat sets with 315, you know, doing no warm-up whatsoever. So, I think that it's, a warm-up should be specific and targeted, you know. If you're a wrestler and you're kind of beat up and you're coming off the road, it might take you a while to warm up. And honestly, sometimes people are coming in and they're just waking up. It's not just warming up it's like okay i just rolled out of bed and got here give me a minute you know and then you know doing that stuff and i think anyone who's trained

for a while it feels the times when you can get under just the bar on squats and you're like oh my god it's gonna be one of those days and then other times you're like put oh, my God, it's going to be one of those days. And then other times you're like, put whatever on. I don't care. I'll kill it right now. Yeah. And, again, that's kind of knowing, getting to know your own system and all that. And being in the right mindset, I think jumping back to what you said, you know, in some sports they encourage not getting too worked up for big lips and stuff like that.

Because you can only do that every three weeks is what some research says. And you start to drain the adrenals. So there's like this mild level of like, as you said, just like I'm just going to go do this. And it's going to be very good, but I'm not going to scream and yell about it. Yeah. And I said it to you earlier. It's kind of that idea of like everything I do is just neat, non-exercise. I'm just lifting more weight than I normally would walking to the coffee shop,

but I'm just practicing movement. It just happens to be a lot heavier than my walk to the coffee shop, but it doesn't have to be like this, like, I'm exercising. Let's go run into the wall. No, I'm just lifting lifting weights what i do i'm capable and i'm a human being so i lift shit that's what i do you did the run into the wall thing for a long time yeah and now you don't need to do that anymore yeah it's nice it's beautiful that being said though if you're in the real world when you're coming from a job that has you sitting all day or something like that, or even my job where I stand a lot, sometimes it's hard for me to get moving for real if I've been standing around a lot. But if I've been kind of moving with people all day, I don't need that much warm-up.

So it's very individual, and everyone in my gym warms up differently. I've tried routines for everyone. I've written things on the wall, like, hey, everyone do this this week. But it's because of all the different body types and heights of people and stuff like that I get. Like it is very individualized. Speaking of your gym, tell me about your gym. You had a gym in tampa called hard knock south yes and has been talking that up for for years now i'd love to hear about

it trying to get this party we have here hanging out the whole crew johnny's hanging out move it all the way down to tampa we have so many people to hang out in tampa there's too many friends of friends going on right now for this not to be just like the bro weekend yeah it's just a uh small private gym it's a uh warehouse type thing and um like any small gym it's more of the the culture in it or the attitude in it rather than the equipment and stuff itself it's all very nice equipment and all that and i have all my little toys but um it's uh the part i'm most proud of is just the reputation it has and like you know the people that go there and um you know as someone told me the other day that they they've been going and they stopped for a while, and then they start again, and they're like, I was actually scared of it because I know that when I come in here,

I have to be accountable. And that's not that it's a mean place, but everyone there, I'm pretty open to like, I'm not a yelling, screaming type guy. If you want to come in and just shoot the shit for a little bit, that's fine. If you want to lay around and be lazy, that's fine. But when it comes time for you to work you better work so as long as people do that you know it's a pretty friendly place and it's a nice little like you know a nickname it has is the church because it's like that's where everyone comes to like talk about other problems or just say out

loud how much their husband and wife is bothering them because it's like you know the little club of people to get it you know and then you can go along you're on your way to your real world you know like that we got to go lift some weights right now we get to go lift some weights right now get to go lift the weights hanging out at fit ops foundation do you want people to follow you anywhere are you taking clients on are you interested in the world knowing about your social activities you you can follow me are you on t the world knowing about your social activities? You can follow me on social. Are you on TikTok? I'm not on TikTok.

I knew Johnny Martin was going to love that one. You can follow me, but I'm not good at responding so you can uh because i don't check social stuff that often as much as i'm into technology i'm not that into social media i will respond but it might just be a while and um yeah that's that's how i live hard knock south yep there's instagram hard knock south um i, there's Instagram, Hard Knock South. I think there's a couple different YouTube channels. One might just be my name. But you're not missing anything.

Do you still write on the blog? Sometimes. Not too much. And then I have some secret ones under different characters, but no one can follow those. Moji app's still a thing? Moji's still around. Programs?

You can get programs if you want. It's just me in there telling you how to work out and hoping for the best. Where is that thing? You can get it at moji.me, or just go to the app store. If you're a trainer, you can use it from Moji. But if you get in the App Store, you can go in there and buy workouts. And I add workouts on there. And it's pretty a little something for everyone.

But it's just me there telling you exactly what to do. And you'll get sick of my face eventually. I don't. Doug Larson. I don't think TikTok's my platform my platform it's not you nope i posted twice just to see what the hell was all about i just can't i can't do it yet dude maybe someday you can find my instagram douglas larson i'm anders vonner on all the platforms instagram facebook tiktok i'm pushing 300 tiktok followers it's a big number i actually had some one of our

listeners reached out. They said, I'm so stoked you're on TikTok now. I was like, why? I just post lifting videos all the time. I don't do Snapchat. Snapchat's out. As soon as Snapchat went public, Instagram and Facebook came in and said, Smash.

Sorry. Sorry. That's dead. Am I fine? Is that still around? No, it's not. What's your MySpace again? Tom's probably out there.

It's probably out there still. It's definitely out there somewhere. Tom's a good answer. OneToneChallenge.com, forward slash stronger, 97-page e-book, snatch, clean, jerk, squat, double the bitch, hit 2,000 pounds, 1,200 for you ladies. The lifelong pursuit of strength. We will see you next week. That's a wrap, friends.

Rob McIntyre. We finally laid it down. I've been buddies with him for like five, eight years now, I want to say. Something like that. Just super rad dude, and we finally got to hop on Barbell Shrugged and make it happen. Get over to barbellshrugged.com

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forward slash shrug to save 10% using the coupon code shrug10. We're going to have a special bonus edition on Friday of Shrug, talking to Nick Mangini over at CrossFit Surmount who has lost zero members at his gym. And the strategies they've used, the community that they've built, and a whole bunch of great information.

So see you guys on Friday.