Barbell Shrugged - The Rights, Wrongs, and Essentials of Increase Your Squat and Deadlift w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged - #475

Episode Date: June 8, 2020

In today’s episode the crew discusses:   Foot position in the squat Biggest faults in the deadlift Increasing Mobility and Stability in the Squat Biggest faults in the back squat Proper progression for increasing squat Starting position of the hip in the deadlift Accessory movements to fix faults and increase strength And more…   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.magbreakthrough.com/shrugged - use coupon code SHRUGGED10 to save up to 40%   http://onelink.to/fittogether - Brand New Fitness Social Media App Fittogether Purchase our favorite Supplements here and use code “Shrugged” to save 20% on your order: https://bit.ly/2K2Qlq4

Shrugged family, we got a fun one for you today talking about squats, deadlifts, and the biggest flaws that we see in our members-only group as well as answering all of the online courses on nutrition and mobility, eBooks, programs, and macronutrient calculators to get you strong, stronger, strongest, and get you a little bit fitter along the way. Make sure you get over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash store and use the code shrugged at checkout in which you can save 10% on everything in there. Today, I want to thank our sponsors over at Fit Together, the brand new fitness app. Right now, I'm in the middle of putting up 30 days of bands because I am on the road at my in-laws up in the beautiful state of New Hampshire. And my wife didn't let me bring my whole garage gym with me, but we packed the bands

away, which is really cool because not only do I have 30 days of bands going up on the Fit Together app, but we're also going to be selling bands starting on 6-22. We're going to be giving away 130 pair of them for free. More on that later, I promise. But the Fit Together app has been really cool because every time I go on Facebook right now, terrifying. So much politics, so much just anger and meanness. And all I really want to do is watch people work out. I just want to watch the fitness. That's what I go to social media for, not to be pissed off, not to be angry,

not to be mad. And the Fit Together app has been really cool because it's just fitness, just people working out. It's incredible. So go to your app store today. Get on the Fit Together app,

F-I-T-T-O-G-H-T-E-R, Fit Together. And you can download the app for free. Come find me at Anders Varner. I've got cool workout videos. All banded. 30 days of bands going up every day right now. I'm really stoked on that.

And it's a really cool thing just to get you out of all the negativity of Facebook. I also want to thank our friends over at Organifi. Organifi.com. Home of the greatest greens, the reds and the golds, the juices to deliver all the vitamins and minerals that you need to stay healthy, happy, keep all the systems running. Immune system talk right now is like the highest level of importance. After the COVID, people are wondering how do they get healthy? Go to Organifi. Just make sure you're getting your vitamins and minerals that's what keeps everything moving forward in your immune

system and you need to have all the vitamins and minerals trust me I'm like not at home right now so being able to travel with these containers and get them while I'm not in the most optimal scenario for nutrition is is super awesome. So get over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. You're going to save 20% on your purchase. And let's get into the show. Welcome to Viral Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner.

Doug Larson. Coach Travis Mash. I moved. I moved to the garage. I'm in the gym. This is as close as it gets for everybody listening at home. I'm in the gym, not you. Today we're talking about deadlifts.

If you heard my pre-show rant, you'd realize I need to get back in the gym. Cabin fever has kicked in. But we want to talk about squats and deadlifts today because there's so many different variations, so many different stimuluses that you can give your body. High bar, low bar, foot position, toes in, toes out, depending upon kind of like where you're at and who you're listening to. Everyone's right. And we want to talk about why they're right and how you can figure out what the best position for you and your training can be depending upon kind of your goals and where you're going.

Mr. Doug Larson, tell us about back squats. How do we get people having a better conversation about some of these bigger kind of issues with squatting? High bar, low bar, that's always a big one that people love to get all ranty about. A silly one. Right? Tell me what you think about when you start to look at people and assessing squats. As far as assessing? Well, I like to take a very simple approach.

If I have a brand-new athlete, I don't like to give them too much instruction right off the bat. Usually I just say, hey, just do a squat and just kind of see where they fall. If they if they naturally are doing 99 of it well like i might i might have actually screwed them up by saying okay here's what you're gonna do you're gonna go like this and like that like this like that and then now like now they're thinking about all these things and they're they're like wait like this like they get like the analysis paralysis thing so at first i like to say just i should i demo the movement. I go, go like this.

I squat them down and I say, you try it. And I just see where they, what they happen to do. They might do two or three or four things. Correct. And then there's only like one or two things that you need to tweak. And so usually that's where I start, have them do whatever's natural to them and then make little tweaks, figure out what like the kind of the weak link in the chain is one most important priority.

And then just focus on that one priority. That's usually where I start. And then you can, there's way more details and minutia that can come after that. But I think that's the easiest place to start. Travis, you do use something similar. Yeah.

You know, you know, lately I've been really working on increasing my assessment skills. I talked to you last week. But every person I talk to when it's all said and done, they just say take a PVC pipe and do a close grip overhead squat, and that pretty much tells you everything. And so that really, yeah.

So, like, I would just tell them, just like you, you know, take this PVC pipe, hold it at shoulder width, straight arms overhead, and then I would just say just squat and see what happens. Because if you start teaching them, number one, you know, you want to see what's going to happen naturally. Because if you start teaching them, you know, they'll do what you're saying, but it might not be what's going to happen in class if you're teaching a big class. So like, or yes yes paralysis by now so

it's a great point so yeah i would just say you know show get shows me that and then you know obviously most people can't even do an overheads you know close grip so i know where to start you know if they can't do that then i'll just do a bodyweight squat and then um just the same as you though don't really tell them how many people walk into your gym and you tell them to do a close grip overhead squat and it actually looks like something that resembles a close grip overhead squat? I mean, you know, I have an unfair advantage because most people that come to me, they're pretty good, you know.

Olympians. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. You know, but most, you know, like if a normal person from Louisville, North Carolina, comes in my gym, rarely. But like you get someone like a Ryan Grimland comes in and does it out the gate, immediately I know. He's 15 years old and can do it.

Start salivating. Yeah, I might. This dude can move. I know I got something to work with. Yeah, I actually wonder how much the back squat is the proper assessment tool for even – I mean, an air squat, Doug, kind of what you're saying, like just, hey, do this, sit down, stand up. Because I feel like every time – or I shouldn't say every time. A lot of times when you put a PVC pipe on someone's back or a barbell or whatever it is,

they get freaked out, and they think they're supposed to be doing something way more than they're supposed to be doing. They all of a sudden go from, oh, I'm just sitting down, and they could probably do it pretty well, to now, oh, now I'm lifting weights. And that whole mindset shifts to they start thinking they're doing it wrong immediately as soon as there's an implement on their back or wherever you're at. If it's a front squat or wherever it is, a front squat would be a terrible thing with a PVC pipe. But I can't do it at all.

It's so weird. I can do like this without a PVC pipe. pipe the pvc pipes in my hands i'm like this i don't know what happens yeah i actually you know every gym in the country basically uses pvc pipe in warm-ups and assessments and i at at some level, it's the safest tool, so it's a good tool because safety matters. But you also really lose the stimulus of being able to actually understand the movement by having something that weighs a quarter of an ounce. And you're never going to find your midfoot with a pvc pipe you'll never be off balance you'll never have to actually like i know we're supposed to be talking about squatting but i when i see coaches teaching uh like snatches from the power position in a warm-up with a pvc

pipe and i'm like you're never going to teach them to move under the bar or to jump with when they can just front raise the thing over their head really fast but you can't teach them the position of the power position and that's about it you can say you can teach them like grip width and power position and then that's about it yeah i yeah the pvc pipe i started to get away from that a lot just because it was so it's too light you got to have something your body's got to be forced to think about what it's moving around um and putting a barbell on someone's back is is a great way because you instantly see them go oh i'm lifting weights like i need to something, but they don't know exactly what to do. And I think that that is the part that I recognize right away. The thing in the assessment is, I think you can see training age as soon as you take a barbell and set it on someone's back.

And typically that's the thing that I actually think about more than even their movement is like, what happens when you hand them a barbell? And if they have that little look of fear in their eyes of like, oh, now, now I'm lifting weights. Like, all right, I know where this conversation needs to start. And it's at a very, very basic level of, hey, let's just sit down. We're all going to be okay here. And you're, you know, 99 out of 100 times when you see that, like, little look of fear pop into someone's face, they're going to have, you know, 99 out of a hundred times when you see that like little look of fear pop into someone's face, they're going to have, you know, lack of depth because they don't have the kinesthetic awareness to get their hips below their knees. Their knees are probably going to

cave in probably because they don't have the glute strength to drive their knees out. They probably sit way too far back in their heels, lacking mobility in their ankles. There's like, in that one little look, I feel like I can read a human and their training age and pick off almost all of the things that we're going to see down the line just by handing them the bar and saying, put this on your back. I'm with you. Travis, how often do you guys low bar back squat

for your weightlifters? Never. You know, like, maybe if I thought they had weak hips, which how your weightlifters never not you know like maybe if i thought they had weak hips which how many weightlifters have weak hips but um so like never because like you know you got to balance uh if you ever talk to sean waxman which you have he's been on the show hadn't he so much yeah you have to balance like the load of the squatting and pulling and pressing with, you know, what's important, snatching clean jerks.

So when you go low bar, obviously things get heavier. I'm like, is it worth it? You know, I don't think so. You know, but I'm not saying it's a law, you know, because, you know, we had the – there's one girl out there who's like, kills it. She's really good. She's low bar squat.

I forget. I'm blanking out. she low bar squat so it's obviously possible but um you know i don't know yeah yeah i think most power lifting like has turned into kind of it's not like some super low bar i feel like everybody has kind of regressed to the to some sort of hybrid position of the bar where it's not a perfectly upright vertical torso um but it's also not halfway down their back like like it was when the gear was a big thing in power lifting like movement matters more than especially when you're doing it raw. I've never really put on some big giant squat suit, but movement matters in strength more than,

um, more than anything. If you're, if you're doing it raw, you need to have a relatively high bar so you can sit all the way down and, and stand up and still be strong. Right. So I would just say, you know, I don't know.

Most people, when they think, you know, low bar, I think, God, this always gets me in trouble. But when you think about the way that it's been taught a lot by, what's that, like, what's the dude? A starting center, you know, like they teach the whole, yeah, the whole sitting back more. And like, so people immediately go to that. But you don't have to.

You don't have to change anything about your mechanics. Because really all it did was just shorten that one part of your body. And that's all it really did. It shortened your spinal flexor moment. And that's it. It made it easier on your back. And that's all it really is there's no magic it doesn't do anything you know if you get pushed over and you're more

horizontal with your back then you know then you're probably gonna you know it's probably gonna be more range of motion in the hips therefore a little bit more hypertrophy in the hips but that's if you let it push you over but the goal to me is still going to be you know stay as upright as possible because like most great pilaters will find that once you get to a certain point it won't be your quads it will be your back is what beats you is you'll be able to squat you know thousands of pounds of your legs but your back won't be able to handle it so it's the minute you lean over you just lengthen it more so the best thing is to keep it short front to back as much as possible what are um in in training uh i anytime most people ask me about this question like which one's better i always just say if you have to test and being the strongest

you possibly can be on a single day you probably want to roll the bar about down your back about an inch and a half and cheat a little bit not cheat but like you're going to the levers are going to be a little bit more advantageous for squatting a little bit more weight if you need to get an extra 10 pounds roll the bar down a little bit but do everything the same keep your torso as upright as possible keep your belly as big as possible and um you'll probably eke out an extra 10 to 15 pounds but every other moment the bar should probably sit on top of your traps and you should work on your position and and being as strong as possible unless you're a power lifter then you know spend time you know practicing that want to be key yeah um the other i i wanted to bring squats into this because when watching my daughter move um i am always amazed at what

babies can do and the positions they get in and where they're strong. And the world would love us to believe that like when your knees go valgus, so you stand up in the squat and your knees start to go towards each other, that if you listen to Instagram, your knees are going to explode when you do that. And now when I watch Adelaide stand up from the ground without using her hands, her knees are basically touching the ground in a, like the knees come together. They're basically laying on the ground. And then she does a squat basically on the inside of her ankles and stands up. And it is the funkiest looking thing that she has that level

of flexibility and babies are clearly way more flexible than all of us they don't have bones yet um but why do we freak out about so much if it to me it i i whenever i see her doing things like that i'm like us old people got it all wrong. We just stopped moving well. We should be able to do all this stuff, but we just stayed stationary and got too worried about ourselves and we lost all of the ability. But why do we freak out so much

about the knee valgus thing and is it really the worst thing if your knees come in? Because I've seen some Olympians in training halls where they go and stand up front squats and their knees cave in a little bit. I wrote a big article about the very thing about like, you know, when weightlifters do it,

here's what you would want to assess though, is like have them do it under submaximal loads or have them jump and land. Now, do they have the ability to control their knees under normal circumstances? If they do, then it becomes a whole different thing. You guys ever had Zach Long, barbell physio, on your show, Doug? I don't know.

That guy, he helped me in writing the article. There's some theories that when weightlifters do valgus, it's actually a second, you know, stretch reflex. They'll be coming up, they'll go in again. So you get the stretch reflex from the bottom, get the stretch reflex from the, you know, especially the adductor magnus, you know, you'll get a second one, which the adductor magnus is also huge for hip extension as well. So there's that theory. And the, the you know just the key is like under normal loads can they you know maintain you know proper knee alignment and they you know most of them can they're super strong so that would be the difference but if you can't you know as we get

adults if you can't do a body weight air squat without showing valgus then yeah then the studies would say that yeah you're at risk of an injury so most younger girls you know yeah i think it also comes back to the conversation we were having last week about mobility and stability is like you should be able to get to that range of motion to a degree right and be strong there but it's not the optimal place for your knees to be to lift maximal weight. So can you practice it? Sure. If you want to get strong in that position, it doesn't hurt your knees.

The valgus? I don't know. The studies would say it probably does. I was about to say, hold on. I was about to say, it will over time start to wear because your knees should not be squatting in that angle. But doing it once, or if you're front squatting and your knees come in a couple inches, you're not going to go to the hospital the next day.

You should not practice it over and over and over again, especially at load. Um, but Oh, we lost you. Uh, can you hear us?

Oh, Oh, there you're back me yeah yeah you went silent for a second oh that was the smartest thing i was i could have said we missed it my neighbors must think i'm nuts today in the garage screaming at my computer um yeah if if your knees go in you're not going to go to the hospital. You're not going to blow your knee out right away. But you also should be able to stabilize your knee in a really optimal position, which is it tracking over your toe, which gets us to the largest argument in the entire world. Our dear friend, Mr. Kelly Starrettrett told us to push your knees out and a lot of people don't like hearing that uh i remember uh who's now i can't remember his name he's out of socal he's got a weightlifting team he's really really smart he's got a lot of great lifters um it'll come to me in a bit. Is he trying to max aid it? No. He's the Asian.

That sounds so terrible. Bob Takano? Takano. And Kelly Starrett got in a good debate about the knees out. Where does the knees out thing come from? Obviously, Kelly was like a huge proponent in saying drive your knees out when you're squatting. But where's a little bit – like just where's the disconnect and the people that say no knees over your toes and driving your

knees out um for optimal strength optimal position um what's a little bit of the the argument behind each side of that well there's you know like the valgus is in there's is out and so like you got to you're at risk too it depends on what kelly was meaning like a lot of people take his what he says out of context is like you know is he saying you push on your your knees out past your like small toe well i think that's what it looks like when he squats because he's a giant yeah i mean the visual of when he does it it doesn't make sense right i'd have to see but like most studies would say that valgus or varus is not the best thing you know i think most of what kelly's getting at is

that uh you end up driving your knees out and on a very basic level when you're talking to most people when you drive your knees out it turns your glutes on. And he wants you to be strong from the hip. He's not saying drive your knees out from the knee. He's saying drive your knees out because it'll turn your butt on and it'll make you a stronger person. And then as everyone does, it has to keep going. So now it becomes a cool fest to see how far you can get your knees out and now we've got people lifting on the outside of their outside of their feet and they're in a bad position from there and that is going just like you're saying if your knees get too wide it's just the same as if your knees are going too far in over time you're going to put additional wear on the joint that just doesn't need to be there

but if you i know i know multiple people that have done that like they're super dedicated crossfitters they've been training for a long time and they they try the excessive knees out thing then they they start like feeling like i feel like i'm tweaking my knee because i'm pushing it out so far beyond my toe where i'm just twisting my knee the other way that that definitely happens like i've experienced some of that myself yeah mike mcgoldrick good friend of ours who you know he went to crossfit games years ago. Like he, he experienced the same thing and just eventually was like, I'm just going to put it right over my foot,

like right in line and not go any further. And I see, I see why people, I see why the emphasis is there because a lot of people, they do, they do end up having their knees dive toward each other. And if you get to end range like that, where you're, where you're in a position where that you can't control, then yeah, you are tearing up your knee you're you're putting stress on your acl and and whatever else uh i think the original comments from from strength coaches was push your knees out so they don't dive in like get back to neutral and then we we took that a

little far i mean i've asked kelly in person, can you push your knees out too far? And he said, no. And I was like, really? Like that you can't do it too far. And he said, just push them out as far as you can. I was like, well, some, for some people, for most people, it's probably good advice. Just, just focus on pushing your knees out. But for some people that can go much further, there's no, there's no added strength benefit to have a shin angle that instead of being mostly vertical is lopsided to the side, to the outside. I don't think it's going to make you any stronger, and I don't really think it's going to protect your knees any more

than just being straight knee over toe. No. Your knee is supposed to just hinge mostly. But I also wonder what stage of talking to him was that do you remember like when when you guys did that i mean that was probably five years ago yeah i wonder if it was still all mobility at that time where it just was like it doesn't matter we're going mobility we're gonna mash the joint we're gonna mash the tissues and it's it's going to go wild or if that's like if he would still say that we talk a lot i talked to him a lot i talked to him last week and he's never said that to me you know but i'm not saying that i don't know his view i'm gonna

ask him now i feel like a lot of what in the the new i don't even know new maybe the last two years since ready State became his new thing and he released the Mobility WOD Level 2 course. Like when you're the mobility guy, you have to talk about mobility. Right. But if you're the mobility guy and you have to start talking about stability, it's kind of off-brand in a way. Like you want people to do the thing that you're,

you're talking about. So he's constantly saying, push your knees out. I don't know. I don't know. You know, Louie Simmons said the same thing. He would say spread the floor,

which is that's what, you know, spread the floor means knees out. And so I think a cue that's worked better for my athletes is like, if you think about rooting your toes, you think about your big toe, little toe and your in your heel like digging in the ground like it's being rooted like a tree and then screwing

corkscrew and so external rotation versus abduction and like what you get then is you get a nice firm knee without excessive varus or excessive valgus and so yeah that seems to be the better cue well another piece that comes into that is foot position so how do you decide where the right foot position is for people because if your toes are super forward that's mr kelly starnett's thing too it's easier to get your knees outside of your toes and into a suboptimal position or in a position that may cause some knee injury if your toes are straight forward like he says to do it right i think it's really a body type thing yeah exactly uh go ahead travis i mean to cut you i was just you know like um if you're if you're training you know athletes like football players that are linear athletes then there might be some

you know as far as specificity there might be some advantage you know, as far as specificity, there might be some advantage to, you know, feet straight ahead. But when you're talking about a weightlifter, you know, the goal would be, or even I'm assuming a CrossFitter, the goal is to be able to go as low as you possibly can with as vertical torso as possible and let that be your guide. You know, I think a good place to start is about shoulder width is where that is for most people. But then it depends on anthropometrics, like the way your body, you know, aligns in the different, you know, femur to torso to shin, et cetera.

And then also the way your hip is designed, you know, your, you know, the hip socket. Some people have shallow hips. Some people have, you know, have deep hips. And then, you know, some people's, you know, set of bones are formed like this and some are like this. And so, you know, but that all that science aside, who, where can you squat the lowest with the vertical spine that that's your guide? Yeah. I really feel like it's going to depend on a few factors like if you're a basketball player

and you're seven feet tall and you're you got super long legs and super long arms there's basically no chance especially if you play basketball like you maybe if you tape your ankles for games and you're always doing a bunch of bounding like a lot of basketball players have no ankle mobility at all so they got they got the long lanky body type and no ankle mobility like those dudes are not going to squat close stance toes straight ahead and hit full depth in a good position. It's just more or less impossible. It's just not happening. But if you take someone who's super short and they got short legs and long torso and, and really good ankle mobility, then yeah, of course those people can squat close stance, um, with their toes

completely straight ahead. And then there's a whole spectrum in between. Most people that preach closed stance, toes straight ahead, they have a bunch of weight lifters that are built like weight lifters and or that they themselves are built like that. Kelly Stratt's built like that. You know, Squat University. Yeah. Walking Christ.

He moves so well. His name, Aaron. Aaron. Aaron. Aaron Horsley at again squat university he he's same deal he got long torso great mobility he squats close stance feet straight ahead like he has the ability to do that uh i have i have very good ankle mobility and i but i have long legs and a short torso and i can't i can't squat really well like that without my knees hurting even if they're in a good position. It's just like my knee will be four inches beyond my toe, and it just doesn't feel good. But if I widen my stance a little bit, I toe out a little bit, then I can squat full depth, ass to grass, no problem, pain free.

So I think just finding what's going to work for your body type is the most important thing. If nothing works for your body type and you have, like, legit mobility issues, then you need to fix those mobility issues. And or, you know, if you're seven feet tall and you got long limbs, then maybe you should just be playing basketball and not worrying about doing full-depth squats and trying to be a weightlifter. Like, maybe you just need to find a better sport. Kettlebell deadlifts.

I will say, you guys know Ryan Horn. He's a Wake Forest basketball strength coach. Every single one of his guys squats deep. They have seven-footers. It's pretty impressive. Now, he's got a very good methodical way of teaching them. They don't just go deep. They do it perfect.

I'm talking about neutral spines. Yeah, Ben Bruno just posted a video of Myers Leonard, who's like a seven-footer, trap bar deadlifting, 455 for a set of 10. He's like seven foot tall. When you think about how far you have to move that weight, like I'm little compared to a seven-footer, and I don't know if I'm hitting 455 for 10, let's be honest. And to think that you'd have to pull it like five foot off the air,

off the ground every time you deadlift it, that's an insane amount of weight for that big man. It's all relative, though, and you think about their attachments. If ever the best deadlifter in the world was six foot seven, Gary Heisey pulled 925, thisifter in the world was six foot seven gary heisey pulled 925 uh this was years ago at six foot seven so where you look at lasha you know lasha six seven monster yeah what's lasha doing in captivity you can't hold that man down i'm sure he's doing whatever he wants like the country georgia i got people feeding out grapes

yeah that's how he's getting his carbohydrates. She says, I'm going to be like, yeah. More women. Yeah. More women. Yeah. Well, it's good because I want to talk about deadlifts as well. I have never trained sumo deadlifts ever in like a training

block at all. I've never really even practiced them. Um, I've coached them only in the manner of getting people deadlifting, um, without that, that have some sort of body issue or mobility, and they can't get into a startup position that looks appropriate. Um, so I'd love to take a deep dive just into, uh, like a lot of the benefits of the sumo deadlift and comparisons, um, like the pros and cons compared to a conventional deadlift, uh, coming from the CrossFit world, there's never a day where it's like, okay, we're going to go 21, 15, nine sumo deadlifts and, uh, burpees. Like the sumo deadlift just is never talked about. Uh, it's never really used in a competition. So, um, in my career as, as an athlete, it was just something we never practiced. Um, what are,

what are some of the major benefits of of doing the sumo deadlift over conventional really the only difference is is your leg is like uh it uses the quads a bit more and the back a bit less and you know with conventional you use the back a bit more and the quads a bit less really like if you look on if you look at the mg's from each it's about equal so it's like um so it's really dumb and not cheating like if you look at the EMGs from each, it's about equal. So it's really definitely not cheating. And if you think about it – I just like to say that. You don't have to put the bar as far.

Yeah, I mean – Most world records are done conventional. Most of them are not done sumo. Right. I feel like part of that – Sorry, go ahead. I would just say if you were cheating, every single power on earth would do it.

Like I would have done it, but I was much better at conventional. So, you know, then a sumo guy could say I'm cheating because I'm doing conventional. I think the whole cheating thing comes from the fact that like – like Steffi Cohen is a good example. She moves that bar like two inches. Good, yeah. Jacked.

We're not taking anything away from you stephy you're amazing that's like saying that that someone who can who dunks really well and is seven foot tall is cheating they're just the best person for the job exactly exactly what i have body time he's got the perfect body time yeah i so tall yeah well i mean on the same note like most most of the world records are done conventional because most people that are good deadlifters have short torsos and long arms and they can pull conventional really really well like they they can use their back because they have that shorter lever arm and so they're just better at deadlifting like the people that are

good at typically squat and bench like when you have a long torso and shorter arms you're good at squat and bench press but you're not as good at deadlift and so you do sumo deadlift so you can have a more vertical torso and use your quads which is what you want to do like when you're when you're squatting that's why the squat so well so they're kind of just modifying the deadlift as best they can to fit their body type but the people that need to do that are never going to be the best deadlifters because they're the guys that are not seven feet tall already yeah i actually when i was coaching people found it so much easier because you're always going to get somebody that doesn't really understand like a hinge position is a tough position for a lot of people to get into that

don't that haven't been in a gym for a long time so you tell them to send their butt back and the first thing they do is bend over with their back and you go well that's that's just a bad thing you have no tension in your glutes and the back is a little rounded. It's a super soft position that's just waiting for somebody to get injured. So we would take the sumo stance to get them to just sit back a little bit more. And it's a much squattier position. So you don't have to start all the way at ground zero and make them feel like an idiot on day one where it's like no we're just gonna here's the wall send your butt back you're gonna be on the outside of

class so you can put them in a sumo position and and get them in a much better pulling position than with a wider stance because they can sit down put their hip put try and drop their butt a little bit lower between their heels, find the bar, and then just stand up. But having that more upright torso in that position just helps somebody that has a lower training age do a deadlift without being scared and having to worry so much. I mean, if you're a general athlete athlete then you don't need to pick between the two you don't need to say like i'm gonna do conventional i'm gonna do sumo like low bar high bar all that all that stuff like if you just need to be a strong athletic person then you need to be

strong and athletic in many different positions and situations amen you know if you're an mma fighter or or i do jujitsu i used to fight mma like you're gonna be in all kinds of funky positions yeah your feet aren't always gonna be right under you like in the perfect spot um i think there's a lot of value in just not treating them as you know like a binary thing like you gotta do this one or that one it's like you should be doing all kinds of different variations of squatting and they're all gonna help each other at some level yeah even as a power lifter i think like i always have you know there's there are always times like the accumulation you know phase i'm going to have them do the opposite and so like

so if you're conventional you'll do similar and you're similar do conventional i think there's a there's pretty good merit for saying that when one goes up the other one does too because one is normally the the reason you're not good at one is probably the weak link you have in the other. So I did it. It took pressure off that position because a lot of times injuries occur because you're in the same position doing the same thing day in and day out. So it would give you a little bit of a break in that position too. I remember one time I was playing college football

and I was like stalled out on strength and then i switched in a bunch of low bar back squats and a bunch of heavy quarter squats like i'd take my one at max on high bar back squat and i would just quarter squatter for max reps or i could get like eight or ten or twelve of them and so i was just getting used to that weight on my back and moving it up and down and then i was doing low bar back squats heavier than my high bar back squats and then you know four weeks later. And then, you know, four weeks later, I actually didn't PR, but then four weeks after that I PR and then four weeks after that I PR it again. And not just on one or two things, like I PR basically all my lifts, my deadlift, my front squat, my back squat, et cetera.

My snatches, my cleaning jerks. That was actually the first time ever that I, that I snatched a hundred kilos. I had two, two full size plates, so to speak on the bar i was so stoked about it and i feel like high bar or sorry low bar back squats and those heavy quarter quarter squats were two of the things that really helped me break that plateau you know back in 2004 or 5 what do you guys think is like the um as far as doing a deadlift versus like a clean deadlift are there any differences it's a trick question but i'm curious what is the i actually was going to bring this up to you because i um when we were in sweden as soon as i started deadlifting it was the first anytime i'm around you i always just want to go bang cleans and snatches.

It was the first time I'd ever like deadlifted with you and you immediately looked at me and you were like, your hips are too high. But I've always deadlifted there and then I got all self-conscious and I was like, man, I just shouldn't deadlift ever again. No. No.

Right. Your hip position in the deadlift is much more clean looking. And I would imagine, I mean, you just pulled, what, 450, 500, 550, something like that the other day? 540. And your hips are still in what I would consider to be like a clean setup, which is for you probably a much more powerful thing. I've just always had a higher hip

position and now i don't know but i shouldn't say now but since sweden i thought about it and should i drop my hips lower to get stronger it just depends on what you're strong you know so i wrote this book about you know deadlifting and so what I did was I looked at the research, and then I literally surveyed over 100 athletes and coaches to ask them their opinion of, like, is there a difference? And, like, I've got the numbers. It was really crazy. Like, at the end of the day, it's absolutely zero difference

is what it ended up being. It just ends up being, like, you know, if you're a high butt, you're just high butt you're just saying you you know your quads are weak and like i really want to put the emphasis on my hips and i want to i'm going to assume and that your back is a lot stronger because now it's you know front to back it's a lot longer so you're going to have more tension on your back so it just depends you know it depends on you know where you're the strongest and you know what are you trying to do are you trying to do?

Are you trying to strengthen your leg? I probably need to change it. I probably need to change it because my back isn't as strong as my legs. Well, then, yeah, I would definitely just do like, you know, otherwise if, here's what I would say to you, logically, if high butt is where you're the strongest at pulling, why not do that in the clean? Are you trying to put yourself in a weaker position in the clean well no definitely not well why i always look at when i was when i'm coaching people i always look really even it's almost at their shin more than their back or their hips and keeping a

more vertical shin because you're working on that hinge position like there's going to be a little bit of a forward knee um but that was always like kind of my my test are we in a decent position for pulling so i always have had just a more vertical shin position and when you drop your hips down your knees have to come a little bit forward. And that was always how I differentiated in my own brain, differentiating the two. Um, and now I'm going to go into deadlift cycle. Now I got to do it. Corey Gregory wants me to front squat or wants me to pull 500. Anyways, I might as well do it with a new position. I would just say, if you think about the deadlift, here's the thing is that the exact same joints are going to be worked as squatting. It's still going to be your spinal extensors. It's still going to be your hip and knee extensors.

So why not put yourself in the most advantageous mechanical position as if you're squatting. So like I just squat to the bar and then perform like a quarter squat, you know, like, you know, I don't, if your butt's real high, that's not a very strong advantageous position because you're forward probably and there's a good chance when you have the vertical shin that the first as soon as you start to pull it the bar is going to drift because you've done multiple things like uh you've definitely increased the angle from your arm to

your torso and so being able to keep the bar closer becomes harder. Yeah. Biomechanics. So, but, you know, just based on what you're trying to work. But I would find most – Do you always go double overhand or do you mix your grip? I mixed it the other day because this joint, like, on my hand is really taking a beating.

So I went over under just because this – Wait my hand is really taking a beating. So I went over under just because this hurts my little – Wait, from what? The hook grip hurts my whatever joint that is. Wait, you don't know the thumb joint name? Yeah. You're in exercise phys class right now. I know. That's messed up.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Freaking academia. They can't teach you anything seriously so normally though if i were going to max out it'd be double overhand hook how have you not lost a thumb all the weight you've lifted in your life yeah i think a lot of people now when i first did it there was uh one person had done it prior to me so So I can't claim, you know, that it was a, what was the dude's name? It was a big dude from Minnesota. Oh, Brad Gilligan was the first.

And then I did it. And then I showed, then I showed Steve Goggins. And then Steve Goggins pulled 880 like that. And then now everyone started being like, oh, this may be a good thing. Because, you know, what it does is it allows you to keep your arms long. The minute, you know, you subordinate your grip, there's going to be bicep engagement, which puts you at risk, number one. Yeah.

Number two, it's going to, you know, if you pull the bar up higher, you got to stand up further. When does it start to be a bit of a risk on your bicep? Like, my best pull is 475, and I have never felt like I was in any risk. Is it like you hit 600 and you really start? There's like man strength, there's like Anders strength, and there's like real man strength. And we probably – I'm never going to pull 600.

I don't want to pull 600. That would be terrifying to me. Travis is like, I might be able to get you there. Pretty soon. But if we – yeah, like does the the average sub 500 deadlifter need to really be concerned with rupturing a bicep tendon or is it that just something probably not yeah it's it's a it's a it's a real man strength like top 10 or top like one one, 100% of humans that really need to be worried about that. I would assume that everyone's biological tipping point is slightly different,

but I would assume that, you know, if you're not going to put in the volume of deadlifting to get you past five and 600, then probably not, you know, it's the person that's going to really push their own biological tipping point. Cause then, you know, not everybody's tendons are built the same. So, you know,

if mine would pop at 800, it doesn't mean you, you, you're good until you're 800 deadlifts. It depends on your biological pinpoint. Have you ever popped one deadlifting or seen that? I've never even seen it. Not deadlifting because I do double over in the hook,

but I was doing a, um, well with other people. Oh, that's gnarly. Oh, you've seen people pop them deadlifting. Oh do double over in the hook but i was doing a um well with other people oh that's gnarly oh you've seen people pop them deadlifting oh yeah massive like complete ruptures that's terrifying yeah just like a stick you know like oh yeah that's so gross. Is that mostly people, like, starting with a bent over, kind of snapping their way into position, snapping their arm out straight,

and it's getting that high rate of loading? The one that, you know, I am thinking about, no. He was literally just pulling. It was like a very slow, steady, methodical pull, and it just popped. Now, the odds are that's um you know the person i think about probably was taking steroids and so you know there's that factor too that you know that they're going to get stronger than their tendons and you know and ligaments are capable of hoisting that very well could have been the thing but i don't know i can't i don't know the guy personally

so i can't you know but i'm assuming that that had something to do with it but it was just a slow methodical pull and it was the most gnarly like I almost threw up because I heard it and saw it at the same time. He just heard snap like so loud and then you

saw and he drops it. He looks at it. He's like, you're like, you almost like goes into shock. And I'm like, Oh man, like never will I sumo. If I never will I supinate if I don't have to. Yeah. I talked to Magnus Samuelson, old strongman competitor, uh, right after he tore his bicep

and he had just like this nasty, huge purple scar, like from the middle of his forearm to the he tore his bicep and he had this nasty huge purple scar from the middle of his forearm to the middle of his bicep. My buddy goes, Doug wants to arm wrestle you and he goes, oh, now's a good time. I tear a bicep. All right. Lucky me.

I have to prove my strength now. He probably still beats all of them. He probably would be like – If he had – I don't know. I don't know what happened with the torn bicep at the end of it. If he hadn't, it would have been good. Dude, would you guys – some of the, like, strongest power lifters in the world,

some of the best deadlifters, they do it. And I've seen some really large rounded backs there's a couple people that have very rounded backs and their thoracic spine um can we talk a little bit about that because i bet there's some confusion if you were to go and watch um the best in the world do it you would see a few funky things and the best in the world aren't always the people we need to be learning from. But what's going on when you see those big rounded backs with gigantic deadlifts? You're just, all you're doing is shortening the spinal flexor moment. And so you take a little bit of tension off your back, especially if you're conventional. That's advantageous because that's your biggest force that you're trying to overcome is at the spine. So when you round it, you shorten it, and it becomes a little bit easier.

However, there's not a lot of research out there that says the rounding of the thoracic spine is a bad thing. However, Dr. Stuart McGill would say it's probably not the wise thing to do over and over and over. So therefore, I teach it, you know, I want a person to be as neutral as possible, you know, unless you become the elite of the elite. But hopefully you get the point. You know, when I pulled 815, I had a neutral spine. spine you know i never let my back around no matter what i was doing and so and i i've never had any back problems but of course you know it's hard you know it's hard to say just because maybe i was you know maybe i have a genetically stronger back but you know i would i would err on the side of stewart mcgill's what i'm saying you know in a roundabout way i was erring on the side of

stewart mcgill is always a good thing. Smart. Yeah. I definitely think in training, all of your reps should be perfect reps. But once you're in competition, you're just trying to post whatever looks good on paper. Like if your form breaks down a little bit and you round your back or whatever else,

you don't want to get injured. But I also don't think that if you do it one or two times that you're likely to get injured assuming you're not training like that all the time like i put up a post about this maybe a year ago where i i posted one of my pr deadlifts from from a long time ago and i was talking about how you can see that i did round my back a little bit and i remember i remember doing it thinking like holy shit my back is rounding right now but but the weight was moving and it was a lifetime PR and to just fucking keep pulling I didn't feel like I was out of position in the sense that like I was in a dangerous position but I wasn't in 100 perfect position either so I was kind of like towing the line a little bit between okay is this safe enough and is it worth it in this situation to just keep pulling

and maybe risk an injury? I didn't get injured. It was totally fine. But I did round my back under the heaviest load of my life. And I'm happy that I did it. Back to training, right back to perfect technique. Right. That deadlift is like 99.999% perfect.

I've watched that video so many times. And when you wrote in the post that it was like suboptimal, not perfect, I was like, I got to watch. I don't see it. It was still so pretty. That is ridiculous. Well, yeah, I think that the biggest thing that people need to realize is in that is that your thoracic spine and your lumbar spine are very, very different pieces that are all called your spine. And your thoracic spine is a mobility or has a lot more mobility than your low back. You should be stabilizing your low back where your upper back is where you rotate and have flexion and you're able to load it a little bit more.

You don't really want to be loading it. But if you do it, you don't want to be loading your low back. You want to be loading your thoracic spine in that position. And that's if you see those people, they've trained it in that manner for a very long time and they've gotten incredibly strong there and they're trying to shorten bar paths and take every quarter percent advantage that they possibly can. World records. Yeah. Yeah.

I wouldn't set it down. They set the world record that day and then died the next day. They'd be cool with their life. So there's a very big difference between you going to the gym and thinking like, Oh no, I can totally round my thoracic spine. I saw this. The really strong guy did it. And you should not, you should focus on having a perfectly neutral spine, building that position because it's going to transfer over to everything else. And then if you want to be the strongest deadlifter in the world, you should probably find the most

advantageous positions for your body type to lift the most weight off the ground because it's they're not the same they're not the same beasts and no matter who you are what you do your lumbar spine should not flex at all and you should definitely not round in that position at all that is where you're going to come into some serious serious problems. I agree. Stuart McGill would say that the back is like a capacity thing. So like what Doug said, he made the best point is that because he trains

in that perfect neutral position, when he got out of position, he still had the capacity to do so. However, if you train with a rounded back all the time, you're basically pouring your capacity out and then you go to do it and then you get hurt so you spend the majority of your time in a very neutral very strong position yeah when you see people doing the the like very head down um deadlift staring at the ground the whole time where do you where do you kind of want people's head position to be i'm always like looking at the horizon i don't really have like that like

super head down um it always looks weird it looks very unathletic to me well i mean a dog i think does that don't you doug do the that type of deadlift where it's kind of like eyes down or is it how do you do it uh yeah I usually look at the floor about 10 feet in front of me and then as I as I stand I kind of just look straight ahead straight ahead so like so in that same so I wrote this book on pulling and I asked that question too and it was like you know there's zero studies as far as you know the whole neutral spine thing too like what's neutral for me is not neutral for Doug yeah like you know there's zero studies as far as you know the whole neutral spine thing too like what's neutral for me is not neutral for Doug yeah like we know we all have three curves anyway you know we have the cervical you have you know we have the cathartic you have the lumbar and you know

so we have all these curves anyway so like it's hard to say what is neutral but there's zero studies to say if i go into extension in the cervical spines then it hurts anything you know so my thing would be is like you know i are on the side of looking straight ahead to slightly up you know tends to work you know for the most deadlifters so i did you know once again 100 people as i surveyed them asking this very question then i also went and looked at like that i took like i forget it was like 50 different you know world championship you know deadlifts and looked at where they were looking and the majority was

looking out and slightly up however there were some world records set at like what doug said which is 10 feet out in front and coming up as you come up. At the end of the day, it's like you do whatever works. There's no rule that's going to say that one's going to hurt you and one's going to not. But in my gym, I teach eyes straight ahead and slightly up, you know, just because that's the way I did it. Yeah. I used to look at the ground years ago, and then I started getting neck trouble.

Like I'd look at the ground, and like my lumbar spine would be totally flat perfect and all that but but i noticed that at max load my shoulders would roll forward just a little bit and i would be looking at the ground and i started getting like every time i go chin to chest my fucking neck would start hurting and then it started hurting me in jujitsu and wrestling and everywhere else and and deadlift was the number one thing that really aggravated in the weight room once i started getting into a better shoulder position and and a better neck position a lot of that pain started to subside so it's not just about having a a lumbar curve that's that's a big thing to focus on first but there's but your your neck position is important yeah totally yeah and the way i set up, I don't set up with the higher butt.

I set up more like this. Obviously, looking straight ahead is going to keep me neutral anyway. Whereas if you do have a higher butt, then looking slightly down is going to be neutral too. But with my weightlifters, because there's weightlifting being taught too you know straight out it seems to be what most coaches would go with because you're kind of going to go where you look and a lot of times looking down a bar path will tend to like go out and back you don't want out at all ever so yeah but there's no like things gonna hurt you

when you are setting up uh in your foot position are you do you teach people sitting back a little bit more on their heels just in a pure deadlift uh than you would in say like a clean going back to kind of what we're talking about like a clean setup with the lower hip or like a more dynamic movement like a clean where being explosive um like really on your just a more athletic thing than just pick as much weight up off the ground but um sitting a little bit further back in your heels is going to give you a little bit different leverage on the bar and keeping your weight back instead of getting pulled forward does cheating it a little bit or do you just need to be stronger i say i teach whole. It's just push your feet through the floor. A lot of times

when people think heels or habits is you're too, you've distributed weight too far because no matter what you want to do or think about or try to do, the center of mass is always going to win out. So wherever the bar is over your foot is where you're going to, you know, bring your weight. So if you start by back, your body's going to shift to the center of mass regardless. So that,

that, that momentum starts shifting forward. So there's a good chance. Everything starts shifting forward, like bar path, everything. So by like just pushing where you're going to be pushing is key. However,

you know, I don't, you know, definitely don't say ball of the foot, regardless of weightlifting or that, because if you start on the ball, then there's a good chance you're going to get shifted forward too. But just think about pushing your whole foot through the floor. It tends to, like, keep people, like, balanced

and, like, they can grip the ground with their feet better and then they're more in alignment with the center of mass anyway so but you know there's no law do what you want but that yeah seems to be the best i also think being being just a little bit round in your thoracic spine um you can bring your hips just a little bit higher you can extend you can extend your hip just a little bit more when you have that little bit of round if you're like perfectly locked in fully extended um you're going to be bending your hip just a little bit more and this this is small details here but if you can start with a slightly more extended hip then your range of motion at the hip joint where your prime movers are

functioning is going to that range of motion being shorter is going to make the lift just a slightly bit easier depending on who you are depends on you know if you have a week back you know well it depends on where the bar goes you know are you able to keep the bar in you know off the floor or is it going to drift forward but just forward you know that's a bad thing no matter you know what range of motion you're shortening so the bar will win out because center mass you know if it goes literally one centimeter can be the difference in making a weight feel easy or making it feel heavy so there's that lots of variables to consider dig it travis mash where can people find you mashalead.com or uh if you want to get some serious knowledge, go to LinkedIn.

Coach Travis Nash. Doug Larson. Wait, what is it about the LinkedIn? You're checking out of the Instagram, huh? The professionals. I really love the – no, I like Instagram too, but, like, LinkedIn is just like I'm talking to other coaches. The conversation is deeper.

And so, like, you know, We're talking about things like this. For those on Instagram, it's more of a bro thing. Totally. It's younger. I like LinkedIn. Yeah. Doug Larson. You can find me on Tinder.

Doug will see Larson. Ooh. We never throw Tinder in the mix. What about Tinder? Dude. Got TikTok, Instagram. Look, we are some old-ass men with wives and kids. Could you imagine the dating scene right now?

Man. Like, how do you date? The number one thing that you wake up in the morning for at 22 years old, and they take it from you. You're like, oh! I'm risking it. I would totally risk risk it there's no way you could keep me in the house got the gym down but i'm going to that random person's house right now and we're gonna trade bacteria whoever just dumped their girlfriend like march 15th and then was like

fuck it i'm signing up for a gym membership i'm'm going to get in shape. I'm going to meet a hot fitness chick. They're like, nope. Gyms are closed for the next year. Fuck. Now you're only dating. That's it. That's your girlfriend. Have you ever did, I assume

neither of you did any online dating, right? No. I never did it, but I was standing in line at a bar or like a restaurant in san diego um waiting in line at the bathroom and some dude popped his phone out and i was right behind him and he popped on tender yo it is like the fastest baseball trading baseball card trading website you've ever seen in your life. He was just like, just fucking shuffling right. I couldn't believe how fast.

I could not believe that you could just, I mean, there was, he wasn't even seeing people. It was like, it was like the most primal. What is right? What does that mean? That means I'd like to bang you.

That's right. Right means I'd like to do you that's right right means i'd like to do you left means left is a no-go left means you triggered something in my brain that said like our immune systems wouldn't match up well and i learned that through a one one hundredth of a second of communicating through you to you through tender it was insanity the speed at which you could date it was like he's gonna wake up with like the most jack you didn't know what that muscle was on your or that joint was on your thumb well the in whatever internal rotation muscle is on the inside of your thumb let me tell you his is the most internal rotators of the thumb you've ever seen in your life because that dude if there was a world record of swipe right he was it yeah

don't you guys agree though that like i would like to make this one point is that like that the dating is like hunting right is that you take away that thrill of the hunt you go out and yeah it's like you're you know if i were gonna hunt a deer i would be in a deer stand i would be all in my camouflage yeah so you go to a bar and you're just in your camouflage looking for your kill got your crew right and like you take that away and now it's just like i don't know i this is not appealing to me this whole but you know I like the thrill of the kill. Like, my wife was the hard kill. It took me forever to take it down.

But I got it. That was three months. Three months. Yeah. First Lady Fitness was not letting Anders Varner have his way. Three whole months. Insanity. Dude, you should definitely go

be a comedian. I would go. I would pay all the money. I couldn't imagine. Dude, you know what's the most terrifying thing to me? This should be terrifying to you too, Travis. You should be freaked the fuck out about this. Some dude is going to come to your house, and

he has never, ever had to call your house line and get through you to get to magnolia he'll just be texting her he'll just be texting her no no no no no no you will call the house line remember how terrifying that used to be yeah oh my god now they just text that little creepers out there texting away. Let's see what I can get Adelaide to do. You don't go through the front door. You go through the garage.

And there's a squat rack in there right now if you want to get inside. I'll take them to the mountains and show them where they can easily be seen. You may find a nice piece of dirt up here in the mountains where I lay you down forever. Forever. And no one will ever know. And the people up here, they won't tell me. Don't help me dig it. Don't help me dig the hole, man.

Oh, my God. Online dating is so crazy. Just swiping right a billion pictures an hour. He didn't even know. He was just going by hair color. Blonde, blonde, blonde. San Diego. didn't even know. He was just going by hair color. Blonde, blonde, blonde, San Diego. Couldn't even imagine. Well, I'm Anders Varner.

You can find me on Instagram. I'm on Tinder, unfortunately. Find me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I love that you got us going on Tinder. I'm Anders Varner. I'm Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged. Get over to

barbellshrugged.com forward slash store. And bundles. Oh, man. We have so many things coming out. E-mom aesthetics just popped. It's a beautiful program to get you super jacked,

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