Barbell Shrugged - The Road to A 4x Bodyweight Deadlift W/ Stefi Cohen

Episode Date: June 21, 2017

This week on Shrugged, we are talking to one of the strongest, intelligent and most athletic women we have ever interviewed. At a bodyweight of 123lbs, our guest this week, Stefi Cohen, pulls a 445 pound deadlift, squats 370 pounds, and benches 205 pounds. Stefi is also an accomplished and competitive Olympic-style weightlifter competing as a 53kg lifter, snatching 87 kg and clean and jerking 105 kg.  Relative to her bodyweight these numbers, needless to say, are impressive.   In this episode, Stefi shares the specifics of how she uses the hybrid strength training method to chase down a 4X bodyweight deadlift  and lift impressive numbers in the squat, bench, deadlift for Powerlifting AND the snatch, clean & jerk for Olympic Weightlifting, all while keeping injuries at bay. Aside from lifting really heavy weights, Stefi is highly intelligent and is currently pursuing a degree in Physical Therapy. Stefi, Dr. Galpin and Doug discuss how assess scientific literature and research and then explain some of the science behind the difference of hypertrophy (muscle-building) and strength training and why the “lifting weights makes you bulky” myth is entirely false. Hopefully this episode puts the final nail in that coffin. Do your part and be sure to share this episode with the next person you hear say that. If you want to learn how to get really strong in the 5 major lifts, squat, bench, deadlift, snatch, clean & jerk, listen to this episode. Also for you ladies out there who want to get strong and challenge the status quo about what it means and how it feels to be a strong woman, absolutely listen to this one. Enjoy the show, Mike

And also from a recovery and work capacity standpoint, like, let's say that, you know, you can only deadlift 100 kilos, and your best clean is 90 or 95. Like, that's gonna feel like a lot of weight, relatively speaking. Whereas like, if you can pull 150, 160 kilos, and you're, you know, you're just trying out for 100 kilo cleans relatively it feels it feels lighter and you have the ability to recover faster from those cleans it doesn't feel like a max effort every time that you're doing it Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bletzer here with Doug Larson, Andy Galpin. And our guest today is Steffi Cohen.

And you're an incredible lifter. You lift a lot of weights. You also have a really cool story. And you came through soccer, Venezuela. And then you made it to united states and uh and i i saw you go uh come into the scene on instagram was a year or two ago that's when i really noticed first i was like holy shit this chick is strong it's a good job could you tell us what uh could you tell us what your numbers are yeah like body weight and best numbers? Yeah. So I compete in the 123-pound weight class in powerlifting and then 117-pound in Olympic weightlifting. In powerlifting, my best numbers are 370-pound squat, a 205-pound bench, and a 445-pound deadlift so far.

Jeez. So you're rocking like a 3X bodyweight squat and then that i mean that deadlifts like three and a half something like that i'm going for a four-time bodyweight deadlift i've been actually dabbling between the 123 and 114 class in powerlifting my last meet i did terribly on so let's not talk about that but i did compete in the 114 class and i mean had i hit the numbers that i could would have been i think pretty close to a four-time if not four-time deadlift yeah four-time bodyweight deadlift there's not many people in the world male female any weight class that have hit a 4x bodyweight

deadlift that's that's really impressive yeah in fact do you have any idea how many people are out there that have done that no actually i'm not sure'm not sure. You know? I have no idea. I've seen one person do that at the Arnold. He was a 181. He pulled like 800 pounds. Tall, lanky dude. But even when I was watching that, I was thinking, I don't really recall ever seeing a 4X times body weight deadlift before.

I can't imagine how many females either. If ever. That's a huge number. Are any of those records in any divisions or organizations? Yeah, so I held the squad and total records or world all-time records for about a month before they got broken again. But I did it. I did it. Who was it?

I don't know. You want to take a tire iron to her knee? Yeah, right. Nancy Kerrigan style? Are you older cats out there? Yeah. Half the audience is like, who is Nancy Kerrigan? What?

Tonya Harding, what? That was amazing. What about your weightlifting numbers? My weightlifting numbers I've hit in training, an 87-kilo snatch. What's that? Oh, that's good is what that is. Something. What?

105-kilo jerk. So 90 kilos is 198. Mine is about 7 pounds. So you're at 190, 191, something like that. 105 clean and jerk. So 90 kilos is 198 minus about 7 pounds. So you're 190, 191, something like that. Yeah. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah. And you're studying physical therapy at the moment. Yeah.

How's that going? It's rough. It's rough, but it's 100% worth it. I just started my third year, so the first two years have been, you know, a journey. They say, I don't know if they say that for like every grad school program but they say that in the first year they bored you to death the second year or no they scared you that scare you to death there you go they bore you to death and then i don't know what the third one is but you'll find out i'll find out i'll find out what the third i can't tell you actually i've been sworn to secrecy. No, it's been good.

I mean, it's amazing for me as an athlete to be able to have access to all of these, the professors and the information that I get and to be able to understand things at such a deep systemic level. So it's been great in terms of training and just for general knowledge. It's rare to find somebody who is going is going after, uh, the education you're going after and also has this athletic background because you have, you know, being in a shrink sport and shrink sports, that gives you a lot of extra information that a typical physical therapist isn't going to have and vice versa. And then you also come from soccer where there's, it's a field sport. So it's a completely different world there too but to be honest with you like i um physical therapy school they don't really teach you specifics of like

training or sports or how to specifically treat sports injuries or how to make a person an athlete or how to make an athlete a better athlete like we don't really cover that in school um pt school gives you the base the bare basics and a really solid great foundation from which you can derive a lot more knowledge and i think like all of that i mean you probably know like all of that those studies you do on your own like you buy your own books and it all stems out of curiosity i think that's like the most important factor for driving knowledge and improvement like how curious are you like how many questions do you have that need an answer and how many books do you read on your own time and

are you applying those concepts to yourself to people around you like there's been many questions that i've had that you know i've been wanting to about my own training or maybe people that i'm coaching that i want answers to and i try to talk about it with my with my um classmates or even my professors and honestly i've been disappointed in some cases because they don't, they don't think about application. They might understand, they understand it really, really well, but can they apply these concepts? And in some cases, if you're not practicing, then, then you can't, because you haven't even thought about that. Yeah. What, what got you into powerlifting? Um, Hayden actually, um, before powerlifting, I was only doing Olympic weightlifting. I had a Cuban coach who had me training, you know, two times a day. I was squatting nine times a week.

I was back squatting every day, front squatting every other day. It was a very like Olympic weightlifting specific, like no accessory exercises, just snatch, clean and jerk, snatch, clean and jerk. I did that for about three years. And then I met Hayden and he was into, he's been into powerlifting for a while. So he said, Oh, how about like, do you, do you want to just like max out your deadlift? See what you can hit. And I think in my first time maxing out my sumo deadlift, I hit a 300 pound deadlift and he's like, you should do this. You're going to be good at this. Yeah. I mean, Hayden's strong as fuck too. this you're gonna be good at this yeah i mean hayden strong as fuck too like you're over there like squatting 600 pounds raw right at least

640 yeah i mean hayden uh you were used to train with the our all of our good friend travis mass and then that's kind of how you got into strength sports as well not to turn this into an interview from across the room but just to add context we're not so concerned about you anymore let's talk about you we'll have just a strong dude done a lot of power lifting and so that that was that was a good match coming in very very strong you know dating hayden now who also is very very strong good strength background so so you you came in and you you realized that man like first first try ever i'd deadlift well over 300 pounds maybe i could be really good at this.

Exactly. Yeah, I think that when you're choosing a sport, I mean, you know, you, for me, I've been competitive in sports since I was eight, starting with soccer and making a national team and stuff. But before soccer, it's not like I just did soccer and I was immediately good at it. Like, I wouldn't any other sport. I tried a bunch of sports. I tried gymnastics, basketball, karate, baseball, like

when I was younger. And I kind of like discovered that I had a talent for this sport, that I have that potential to be good at it. So kind of like the same thing happened with powerlifting. I tried a bunch of things I did. I ran half marathons. I tried Olympic weightlifting, which, you know, I'm decent at too. But then I found powerlifting, and I figured I have the right proportions. I'm suited for this sport. I think I have the potential to achieve great things. How old were you when you first started lifting of any kind? 21.

21. You didn't lift any weights? 20, 21. No, nothing. Wow. And even in soccer, we never lifted. Right. And then how old were you when you – so you started at 21, and then when was your first competition? That year, probably.

I think I competed like a few months after I started. And that was weightlifting? Weightlifting. Wow. Okay, so you went through a couple years of weightlifting where you snatch, clean, jerk, squat more or less every day. And then now that you are deep in the powerlifting world, how has your training changed and evolved over time in this new sport?

Yeah, so I love Olympic weightlifting, so I didn't want to give it up, which is why I started training hybrid. So I started, um, we found a way to program both into our training in a way that wouldn't, um, mess either one of those up for us. So I started adding a lot more just dead lifting bench and squats, um, at a higher intensity than I was before. Cause when I was doing Olympic weightlifting, it would be maybe 80%, 85%. You know, you treat your squats as an accessory lift. The snatch and the clean and jerk are your main lifts. So ever since I started doing powerlifting,

I've been focusing a lot more on strength and getting those numbers on those three lifts up. And kind of I've let snatch and clean and jerk go to the backseat for a little bit, just especially because I'm not competing in them. i still training train them every once in a while so being really proficient at snatch and clean and jerk and having a lot of experience with those movements and the mobility to those moves before coming to powerlifting then focusing on like true raw strength in a variety of ways did you see did you see your numbers and weight lifting go up once your your raw strength numbers from powerlifting went up yeah i'm huge amazingly like the first time that i stopped doing olympic lift i think i took like a three or four month break from snatching clean and jerk just

because i personally i was really burned out i felt like just i could not do snatch clean and jerk anymore so i focused all my energy on powerlifting. I did a few powerlifting meets. Got really hooked into it. And then I came back after, I think, the weekend of Reebok Record Breakers last year in November. And I came back to the gym. And I'm like, you know what? I feel like snatching, cleaning, jerking. And I didn't think about it at all. You know how you tend to, like, overthink so much, snatching, cleaning, jerking?

Oh, this is the right technique. Like, is this what I'm supposed to do? Whatever. So I just came into a gym and i kind of like trusted that i've gotten stronger and that i had the strength to to pr that day and i ended up hitting like 10 kilos a 10 kilo pr snatch wow and a five kilo pr clean and jerk that day like my snatch had been stuck at the same number forever and i feel like i've i had the strength but i couldn't commit to it i don't know and kind of having that strength surplus really gave me the confidence that i needed to hit that number that day i think so how did that experience change your beliefs on strength and

power and training um well i think that strength is never a weakness you know i think that's a great quote yeah no one ever complained about being too strong exactly right exactly you can never be too strong and i think that focusing on strength and and um getting your pull and your squat up will lead to having better confidence when you when you do snatching clean and jerk and also from a from a recovery and work capacity standpoint, like, let's say that, you know, you can only deadlift 100 kilos, and your best clean is 90 or 95. Like, that's gonna feel like a lot of weight, relatively speaking. Whereas like, if you can pull 150, 160 kilos, and you're, you know, you're just trying out for 100 kilo cleans, relatively, it feels, it feels lighter lighter and you have the ability to recover faster from those cleans it doesn't feel like a max effort every time that you're doing it

i heard someone say one time i thought this made a lot of sense at the time there's a lot of power lifters you know if you squat 700 then you can probably you can probably clean you know 350 or whatever it is like maybe maybe half your squat but just because you clean 350 does not even mean anything close to you that you can squat 700 so So because you can do one, you can do the other, but because you can do the other, it doesn't necessarily mean you can do the one. It's not, it's not reciprocal like, like that. Are you talking about, um, clean and squat? Did you say, or did you say deadlifting and squatting? Sorry. Um, in that example, I said, I said squat, like a powerlifting squat, just lifting the ability to move 700 pounds.

Like if you can move 700 pounds, then moving 350, even if it's not a movement you're proficient in, probably won't be that difficult. But if you can move 350 on a clean with perfect technique, that does not mean you can move 700 pounds no matter how you position yourself or what type of squat it is. Of course. Raw strength just goes a long way is the whole point. Exactly. Yeah. So in your case, you're competing in the 123s and the 114s. Is that what you said?

In powerlifting, yeah. All right. Between those two. Okay. So you're trying to be quite small. And you've got to be super lean to be that small. You've got to be really strong, of course, to hit the numbers that you're hitting, 3X bodyweight squats. And you're shooting for 4X bodyweight deadlifts.

How do you stay as strong as possible while hitting weight? While making weight for competitions yeah um well i try to train the heaviest possible without you know making it too hard for myself to cut when i have those meats coming up but um i think it's just a matter of like having your nutrition in check like eating the right things in the right amount the right proportions and nutrient-rich foods, getting your sleep in check, and, of course, having a program that makes sense. I think that even if you're cutting, you still have the potential to make strength gains,

even though you're in a calorie deficit. So I'm going to ask a really, really hard question, but just because I'm very curious. Could you just give us a sample week of your training and then of your, as much as you can about your food. So what's a normal week when you're trying to do your hybrid powerlifting slash weightlifting and then the food? Okay. Yeah. So hybrid is basically, um, it's a progressive overload program, kind of like a daily on July spiritization. So what that means is that, you know, we start with, um, high volume, low intensity squats at the beginning of the week. So we'll start doing maybe 70% for sets of six on the first day. We squat four times a week.

Then the next day, it'll go up to 75% for sets of five, then 80% for sets of four, then 85% for sets of three kind of thing. That would be the month progression, right? No, within the week. Yeah, so within the week, like we hit... There's your daily underlining. Yeah, exactly. So within the week like we there's your daily under lighting yeah exactly so within the week we'll hit those rep schemes in squat um a little bit similar in in bench and deadlift but not exactly like that but kind of that's that that's what we do we um modulate the volume and the intensity of the lifts during the week right kind of like in a positive slope.

And what was the second part of the question? The food-wise. So then what would you be eating during the week? Some examples. You said as long as you have your nutrition in check, you're fine. But what does nutrition in check mean? So for me, I mean, you just have to know where your maintenance level calories, what your maintenance level calories are and take it from there. For me, I try to stay at maintenance like if i'm

far away from a competition or even slightly higher given even a little bit of a surplus so that i can recover faster but um it's just a matter of like knowing exactly how much energy does your body need to maintain that amount of mass right so you can that way you can maximize your training but without getting too big at all exactly so without getting too far and if you go too low in your calories then the training goes down and the injuries go up right exactly exactly it's all about energy balance at the end of the day i mean you just because you're lifting weights and just because i'm trying to get as strong as possible that doesn't mean that i necessarily uh have to add on mass because at the end it's energy balance right if i'm not in a

calorie certain a huge calorie surplus at least probably not going to put on a significant amount of weight and especially for muscle you know how girls think that just because they start lifting then they're going to get like huge and all muscular and stuff and that really is not the way it happens the complete opposite is the truth like i've been trying to get swole for the last two years and trust me it's a lot harder than it actually is it's really hard to put on muscle. Yeah. So. I imagine with the hybrid approach, you're trying to get really strong at five things, right?

And so that's a lot more things than most people are trying to build strength around. Is there a decrease in injury in that case? I think a lot of people probably assume because you're doing more, you're putting more stress on the body, but you're having to program intelligently and spread it out differently. Does that variety help prevent injury over time? Or do you find that that's actually be a challenge? Yeah, I think that having variety in your training can definitely decrease injury risk, especially because you're not, you know, you're not overusing or overdoing any one particular exercise.

But more important than that is kind of like finding that or making sure that your program has like an optimal load. And that's just basically kind of the stimulus or exposure that results in tissue strengthening. Just enough to result in positive adaptations in your muscle, but not so much that it'll result in tissue breakdown. So it all comes down to how much can your muscles tolerate and how fast you can recover from those workouts. So I think we program in a way that's smart that won't put people at a high risk for injury. And that's at least what we found. You're just trying to get a little bit stronger every day. Exactly. Versus like you're not trying to dig a really deep hole exactly just not overdoing it just making sure that that people can recover from those trainings fast enough to not put themselves at a high risk for injury

are there are there any times after competitions where you're not training like that where you're just like you know what for for a couple months i'm just going to do some some metcon crossfitty things or or just you know dorowler pushes and strongman stuff? Or is it like that every week? Or is there a variety depending on when competitions are for you? Yeah, for sure. So I like to treat my competition schedule in seasons. And I think that one of the things that is commonly overlooked is the fact that powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting are just like any other sport.

You can't just, like, do it 365 days a week in a competition style mentality. Like I think it's important to go through phases where you're not training specifically for Olympic lifting or powerlifting and you should just do kind of like general, um, style of training. Like you said, CrossFit is great, strong man or whatever, just something to get your heart rate up and work on your endurance and your work capacity rather than just be so kind of focused on three, five movements, whatever kind of start planning my training schedule around that, have a phase where I'm as general and I'm just focusing on endurance, feel good, working on muscular imbalances, working on holds that I've seen in other training sessions that I really see that I need a lot more work on. And then from there, kind of like start building it up as the competition approaches. I'd actually love to hear your thoughts on muscular imbalances.

So have you found any imbalances over the last year? And how have you fixed those imbalances? We all have muscular imbalances. I mean, there's not one person that's just like built perfectly. So, I mean, have I found any muscular imbalances personally? Yeah, for you. She's like, except for me. Except for me.

I am built perfectly. Like side-to-side asymmetries or just one lagging muscle group that if you fix that weaker muscle group, your entire lift would probably go up, things like that. Yeah, for sure. I think that one of the biggest things

that exposes what your weaknesses are and what you need to work on is your preferential lifting style. So to give you an example, I am really good at sumo deadlifting but i suck at conventional so like what does that mean i mean i it could be um anatomical like just i'm built in a way that that is just biomechanically advantageous for me to be in that sumo position that's one reason and the other reason could be you know muscle or muscle preferences like

my quads are probably way stronger than my hamstrings and my glutes, for example, as opposed to someone that lifts conventional that has a really strong glutes and hamstrings, to give you an example. So what does that say to me? That means that I should probably, in my off season, do less sumo and do more conventional

to strengthen my glutes and my hamstrings. Right, so during or getting close to competition, you're focusing on your strengths, but you don't address the weakness until you get out and away from the competition. I do some conventional deadlifting too, as even when I'm in competition schedule, but I think that the off season's really a really good time to focus on that even more. So if someone was going going to they thought about doing hybrid they're like great i actually love power lifting and weight lifting i want to try both what would be some of the mistakes that people would make just jumping into it and how how should they not or how should they avoid it and you mean if they jump into our hybrid performance yours or they're

gonna make up their own like they got so inspired by you to do both they decided i'm gonna make my own power lifting weightlifting program. In other words, why should they listen to you instead of just make up their own? Let's take a break and then get into that. Okay. Awesome. We're back with Steffi. And we were on a break and you were wanting to dig into something.

This happens a lot. We take a break and then it's like, oh, yeah. That's what I think I was going to say. Yeah. I wanted to briefly mention when Doug asked me it's actually a little bit closer just like okay when Doug asked me a question about like how do you stay in a weight class while also trying to maximize strength and a point that I really wanted to bring up is that there's two things that are the main drivers for strength increases one is

hypertrophy and two are the neural adaptations that come with strength training. Okay. So it's, it's common to see, let's say like a huge bodybuilder, huge muscles that is not strong, right? Like you can have hypertrophy without the neural adaptations, without the strength improvements, how your program is designed is pretty much what's going to determine if you get stronger or not. Even though it's well known that a muscle with a higher, bigger cross-sectional area, a bigger muscle, has the potential to become a stronger muscle just because there's more muscle fibers there for motor units to innervate. But you can have increases in strength without the increase

in size. And that is what we know as the neural adaptations. And basically what that is, is how well can your brain control the timing and coordination of your muscles at that point to perform a skilled movement? So like, are they, is that connection coordinated? And how is the frequency of that firing from your brain is pretty much what's going to determine how strong that contraction is. So that's just a point that I wanted to bring up. What do you have to say in terms of muscle physiology? You want to fill us in on neural adaptation?

Well, yeah. The other portion of it actually is the individual muscle fibers themselves can enhance their contractility without getting bigger. So the neural adaptation is funny. I'm being a muscle guy. I like to give all the credit to muscle, not the nerve. Fuck the nerve. Yeah. What did it ever do for us?

Yeah. But your point is the same where these are some of the things that allow you to produce more force without necessarily having to be bigger. Exactly. So the nerves are more efficient. We have an increased synchronization. So the right ones fire at the right times. The penation angle, so the angle at which the muscle connects to the bone can change. And this is going to have a tradeoff between velocity and force.

So if it moves in a certain direction, it'll contract faster. The penation angle changes based on how big it is, you mean? Based on training. On training. Yeah, as a result of chronic training. Okay. And how you train probably influences how it changes as well. And then the fibers, I mean, you're deepening up into the physiology, the sarcoplasmic reticulum, which is what releases the calcium that allows the muscle fibers to contract. That is thought to actually

increase its calcium sensitivity. The contraction velocity, all that we've seen in our lab change as a result of strength training. And I think one of the fun things that we've always wanted to do is to compare a powerlifting or weightlifting type of training compared to a more hypertrophic or bodybuilding thing. And we haven't really been able to do this, but I would almost guarantee my career that the strength-based training would actually allow the fibers to enhance their sensitivity of the calcium on the troponin that will increase the

contraction velocity so all that to say you're totally right is my point that you can train and be very very strong and powerful without actually having to make the muscle bigger which is really important for weight class folks like yourself and any of the athletes that Doug and I work with. But I always say this is also a point for anyone who wants to get stronger but doesn't want to just look bigger. Like there are a lot of physiological mechanisms that allow you to get that strength goal or power goal or endurance goal without adding any more bulk to your frame if you don't want. I feel like we need to edit in like a list alongside you guys as you're just saying that it's like words to google it's like sarcoplasmic reticulum calcium troponin

tropomyosin crossbridge go google all those words get on it hunter we don't have time to do you do anything around here yeah gosh what's the budget for this guy too much uh so to change the other so the other day on on your instagram you were you were showing uh like a half kneeling um good god what was it called uh windmill uh like yeah half kneeling windmill uh and you were making the point that you can get more range of motion but you have to lock that range of motion in place by strengthening the end range you want to dig in that topic a little bit awesome yeah sure on stretching and stuff. Yeah. So basically what I said in that post is that stretching without taking your body through that range of motion and utilizing that new range of

motion is like typing a lengthy word document and never clicking save. Like your muscles are not just, it's really, really hard to change the length and tension of your muscles and of your fascia just by stretching. It's really, really difficult. So we know that muscle length and tone is also modulated by your nervous system and by your brain and how you can control that one muscle is active and the other muscle is relaxed so that you can get into that stretch position, right? So essentially, I like to incorporate active, more active stretches and active movements that in which I put my body into the range of motion that I want to achieve and just kind of like consciously activate certain muscles and try to relax certain muscles so that I can lock in that range. And the second important point about stretching is that you need to be able to stabilize in that range of motion in order for you to be able to use it.

So I think that a lot of people fixate so much on mobility and like increasing range of motion. You see like people with the bands and CrossFit gyms for like 40 minutes before their workouts, mobilizing and increasing range of motion, increasing range of motion, yet they're still getting injured. Because really there's no research that says that more stretching leads to lower risks of injury at all. So can you increase the range of motion? Great, good for you. But can you stabilize in that range of motion?

Because a loose joint, a lax ligament, it's not going to do you any good if you don't have stability in that motion. So we always want to have that proximal stability if we want to keep injury risk low. Another important point about stretching is that I think it's important to see if you have discrepancies from one side of the body to the other. Because then you do really want to spend some time stretching that. For example, if you have one hamstring that's tighter than the other, I think one that's pretty common for people is um hip internal rotation like if you sit down like

this and then you try the other side you're gonna see that you have one hip that's like super locked up and that's something that you really want to address with um joint mobilizations or even some some degree of like static stretching did i answer the question what was my question i don't even i don't know it doesn't matter but there's actually there are some people that would argue yes you did more towards your point that the ability to increase muscle length is almost nil uh in other words like there's strong discussion that you really can't change the length of the muscle so any improvement in range of motion is actually coming from a connective tissue and that also appears to be extremely unlikely because it is such a non-plastic tissue.

So most of it then is termized to be coming from the neurological aspect of it, which is why PNF stretching is so effective acutely, right? You can see changes of 10%, 20% within seconds, right? This is why reciprocal inhibition works so effective, right? This is why when you're stretching your hamstring, contract your quad, right? Because then you'll take advantage of gold detent organs, things like that, and you can see much more effective. But to your, I think if I'm understanding what you're saying correctly is,

that's all well and good, but then at that point, you still need to then make it contract. Yeah, you have to lock. But under some force. Exactly. You have to lock that range of motion in with some kind of active movement yeah like even if you're you know you're trying to increase your hip flexion like you stretch it here this is great like look at how much how much motion i have here but can i lock it in no like it falls ah i see so like can you actively hold that position

and actually um i don't know if you've heard of dr andrew spina oh yeah sure he's a functional range condition guy. So I love what he's putting out. So I'm actually flying to Toronto next weekend to sit down at his seminar. It's a three-day long thing. And I'm really, really excited to see all that he has to say about active stretching and that kind of stuff. I don't have that much information now. I'm just going to go ahead and guess since you're a young female that you're super mobile and flexible.

That's debatable. Okay. I am more flexible than Hayden. That's for sure. Oh, yeah. Come on. Look at him.

Look at that posture. He's terrible. He's tech snacking right now. So I'll just want to know, could you walk us through, cause I'm sure you do some stretching, some mobilization. What's your,

your warmup or stretching look like? Are those separate things? How do you work that into your training? So I usually, your your warm-up or stretching look like are those separate things how do you work that into your training so i usually um i start my workouts with um a dynamic warm-up so basically kind of like uh lunges for lunges with like rotations and um side-to-side lunges you're allowed to do that power lifting yeah i thought all that was illegal nope well you don't do anything side to side no way no way no you just you know yeah most people just say you have to like stay right right otherwise you lose your all your gains yeah yeah totally no so yeah i just incorporate some dynamic uh dynamic stretches at the beginning of my workout and if i'm feeling tight maybe at the end just kind of like a little

feel good a little stretch at the end okay so you normally don't do any static stretching no normally not i've gotten into pilates lately right and i actually love it you know i think that a lot more no one likes it until they try it and have you done it right now you never done i'm afraid you have never done it i'll get sucked in oh seriously it's fun yeah kind of it's horrible yeah like your hip flexors and stuff you're like oh i'm dying and you're like a minute and a half Seriously, you would. It's fun. Yeah, kind of. It's horrible. Like your hip flexors and stuff. You're like, oh, I'm dying. And you're like a minute and a half in.

It's awful. Oh, I should probably do it. Yeah. Why did we mention Pilates? It's just your work, how you incorporate stretching and stuff into it. So Pilates is, I've been incorporating Pilates for maybe two, three times a week. Now that I'm in the off-season of training, I have time to focus on the things that are important that I don't always focus on when I'm preparing for a meet.

So that's an amazing way to increase stability, especially off your hip and off your trunk, while at the same time getting into positions that give you nice, safe stretches. So what are your thoughts on just incorporating range of motion work into your workout? Like if you were doing chin-ups with just like a 10-second hold at the bottom of each rep or doing pec flies with the intention of getting a deep stretch at the bottom of the movement or, you know, pause squats where it's a seven-second hold at the bottom of the range of motion of a full-depth high bar Olympic-style squat or like a front squat,

things like that to increase range of motion while while getting strong in those end range positions yeah all of that is great as long as while you're let's say you're doing the seven second pause at the bottom of a squat as long as you're not relying on your ligaments to hold that position you know i see people kind of just like sitting down and then just like boom they just kind of relax in that position that That's not necessarily good. You shouldn't be relying on ligament or even bone to hold a position. You should always kind of stay active in the position. But I think it's a good way to go about it as long as you're not just basically relaxing.

Well, I mean, you see a lot of people will pause squat. Yeah. It's almost like they're like relaxing at the bottom. Yeah. It's almost like they're like relaxing at the bottom. And then it shows up when they're squatting with speed because you can, it's like they're skipping steps. Right. It's like a bounce out of the bottom all the time. And in weightlifting, like it's great to catch a bounce out of the bottom on a snatch or a clean, but it's not what you want to do every time. It's not what you want to practice.

You want to be very strong at the bottom, which means you have a lot of tension throughout your entire body in that position exactly yeah exactly spot on yeah so if i have short hamstrings you have short hamstrings yeah they're like super short how do you know because i mean they're right here she's calling like from here to here oh he just got called out yeah yeah no but say i have tight hamstrings what do do I do? Like if that's something that I think is a limiter, is there what exercise or stretch would you have someone do? You can do kettlebell, double kettlebell.

What's this called? I'm looking for it. Like a Romanian deadlift. Straight leg. Like a single leg. With a locked up. Yeah. Stiff like a deadlift.

Yeah. Or just on like an RDL, like really stretching out those hamstrings and going to end range, maybe like in a deficit even to kind of like gain some length. Should I hold at the bottom or just kind of be active? Honestly, I don't know what the consensus is.

Like what does research say of like what is more optimal? I can tell you research is not going to have a good opinion. There you go. Yeah. So I guess it would just be preference. I can you hold it or or maybe do both do some with a hold do some without a hold what is what what do you feel that feels good that day huh i think yeah i want to circle back what andy was asking before the break is somebody wants to get in or is it doug me it was me don't give him credit who's getting the credit first and then i told andy oh that's right now i'm gonna ask it um what uh someone wants to get in the like they're a weightlifter or a powerlifter and

that i think a lot of people especially if they come from crossfit have interest in being strong in all five lifts what is is the, what is the initial approach on that? Obviously that could work with you. Um, but you know, a lot of times people are just going to like start diving into it. What are the common mistakes that people are making, uh, when they're trying to get strong at so many things at once? There's always the overdoing effect. The more is always better, no pain, no gain syndrome that most people have that they think that, you know, oh, I just need to do more of this and more of that and more of that when, honestly, that's not necessarily the case

and that's not the way that we program either. Like we're very methodical in the way that we program and the way that the workouts are scheduled. And I think your question was more like, why should, it was the better question. Why should they, why should they listen to us instead of just like doing it by themselves? Right.

And I think it, I see why you like that question better. Yeah. Right. It's a good question. Um, and I think it boils down to, you know,

like you said, evidence or literature doesn't always have an answer for everything. And I don't think there's an answer of, is it a better training method to incorporate the five lifts in one if you're trying to get better at Olympic lifting and powerlifting? There really is not an answer. But what I can tell you from experience is that it does. And so I think part of our credibility is the fact that we've successfully

been able to partake in both sports and compete at a high level in both sports without getting injured and while making progress for two years, which is how long we've been together in competing and running hybrid. So I just think experience combined with basic understandings on strength and conditioning and physical therapy and exercise physiology, I think it's a strong combination. So with hybrid, are you literally doing all five lifts in a week?

Yeah. Or how does that look? Yeah, so with hybrid, you'll have the squat and deadlift frequency is pretty high. And then you'll be doing some kind of snatch, some kind of clean and jerk twice or two or three times a week so squatting what was it four days a week benching three days a week or something or four actually how many days a week do they bench in hybrid okay yeah so yeah right so three days a week you're pressing you're masking up and then uh one one day a week or so snatching one day we could clean yeah and in different variations we like to add in

complexes so that you know so people aren't so that forces people to stay at a lighter loads and not necessarily max on those lifts and really get the benefits from the higher intensity and volume of the squats and deadlifts and really get strong while at the same time they're practicing the skill and motor patterns of snatching and clean and jerking at the same time so earlier you said that more is not necessarily better which is something that people say a lot on the show seems to be a recurring theme from many of our guests so how would somebody know if they were doing too much um they're not making progress in training they're constantly injured they're training they're complaining about lack of motivation

like they're mentally checked out in training i think those are the three main factors for just doing too much i feel like sometimes if people aren't making progress they don't go i'm doing too much they go i'm not doing people aren't making progress, they don't go, I'm doing too much. They go, I'm not doing enough. Exactly. I got to, I got to ramp it up again until they get injured. And then when they get injured or, or like they just totally lose motivation,

then they're like, okay, now I think I'm doing too much. Then they try to pull it back. You have no idea how many times we get emails like, Hey, so I'm doing CrossFit in the morning, weightlifting in the,

in the afternoon. And then I'm doing powerlifting. Do you think I can add those emails too? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've got a lot of those too. too and we're like and i'm hypochloric right that too i'm like keto yeah right and i'm like no actually i think that you should do the complete opposite how about you just do one right for a little bit yeah just so speaking of injuries you you were injured some at some point over the course of the last year and you you've been battling back from that where you're at with that now yeah so i'm pretty much i don't want to say 100 but maybe you know 95 98 um i had a little back strain at the beginning of the year in january i had just come back from taking a whole month off i was traveling in japan

took a month off and because not because because I wanted to, but literally there were no gyms open day in the, um, in December, which is, you know, new year's season, everything closes like 10 days before 10 days after. So we were pretty much, we were pretty much forced to not train, which wasn't that great. But so I came back. I think, I think that I started pushing it a little bit too fast as soon as I got back and just started having some some back pain and because I was preparing for a huge meet at that time I had the US Open the USPA US Open in April and you know there's money involved and there's recognition involved and I kind of really wanted to compete and even though I knew that it wasn't the best thing for me to push past the

injury I still did it and I honestly looking back at it I don't know it wasn't the best thing for me to push past the injury, I still did it. I honestly, looking back at it, I don't know why. I think the best thing to do when you're injured is really listen to your body and give your tissues enough time to heal. Because that's the only thing you have control over. You can't control how fast you're going to recover, right? So you just kind of have to take a step back and wait until you feel better. What was your rehab process? So basically I stayed away from any squatting and deadlifting

and started focusing a lot on single leg movements, braced movements like stuff when I'm holding on to benches or the wall so that I don't have to stabilize that much in my trunk. I added in the Pilates, which I think that really, really helped me. More so mentally, I think. I felt like I was doing something that was benefiting me, that was good for my health. And also, I mean, it's made the symptoms a lot better.

I was seeing also a chiropractor at the time, pretty religiously, two to three times per week. So I got soft tissue work in and mobilizations and that kind of stuff um but i think the main point was that i didn't just stop training didn't just stop going to the gym um because i think it's way harder to get back in if you you kept the habit exactly i kept showing up to the gym and doing whatever felt okay whatever didn't exacerbate my symptoms at that time. Yeah.

And then you attacked your rehab from a bunch of different angles. It sounds like. Yeah. Yeah. That's, I think another huge mistake that make is like, oh, I'm just going to the chiropractor or I'm just doing A, B, and C. When really, when you have a specifically a low back injuries, which are so nondescriptive and it's so hard to identify what the problem is, you probably should then therefore attack it from a bunch of different angles.

Exactly. I think a lot of people, I mean, when,oug and i were running the gym it was extremely common to hear people they like hurt their thumb and then they're like i can't come train you know it's like and they just sit on the couch and uh it's like it's just just moving and having your blood flow and it's going to help recovery. Just the super small basics, even if it's going for a walk. But a lot of times people suffer an injury and just completely shut down. And people will do that over an ankle or something, but your back, which is involved in everything, you pretty much can't do anything without hurting it,

and you were still really active, it sounds like. Yeah, exactly. I have a postdoc in my lab right now, Irene Tobias. She's a powerlifter and a crossfitter slash triathloner. Wow. Yeah, so she's all over the place. I do it all. And so since she has been in my lab,

we have actually gotten really sort of interested in the female athlete, particularly the female strength athlete. And again, by we, I mean I forced to become because she's driving it down my throat how we never study females and these type of athletes. So I'm very interested to hear your thoughts on training for these strength and power sports as a female versus a male. Should you train differently? Do you guys train differently? What are your thoughts on that? So speaking from a completely anecdotal standpoint, just from my own experience,

Hayden and I follow the same exact program that we've written, and we train the exact same way. And it's yielded really really good results for both yeah but i think that you know the main thing would be to understand what holes in training you have so an example would be i have a way weaker upper body than hayden right relative right relatively but that's you're going to see that always in females in females exactly so maybe um i needed to to increase my upper body and benching frequency up so that I can catch up. And then the other one is how much volume can you tolerate?

So it's been proven that guys have a lower tolerance for volume than females. Generally, yeah. Generally speaking. So, you know, for me, I can withstand a lot more volume and I can add in more lower body exercises, more upper body exercises without getting injured and recovering quickly. Whereas Hayden sometimes needs to, or guys would need to take a step back in that volume and, and really make sure that they're recovered before the next training session. Yeah. So the sounds like the core of your program is identical, but then you may be doing a few accessory things at the end, add more volume for you and add more upper

body. And then he may be taking more recovery. Exactly. Right. So I feel like a lot of people talk about, you know, this is backed up by science and you've got to look at the research, et cetera, et cetera. But I feel like, in my experience, if you haven't gone through graduate school, then you haven't spent a lot of time actually looking at research. Most of the coaches I know that talk about science and research have never looked at a scientific paper ever before.

Right. You guys are the exception to this. Like, you guys have looked at a lot of research. You guys both are, are into research and some, in some respects. So I'm curious for people that have never looked at any research before, like how would you get start actually reading real scientific research on

training? How would you start reading research? Yeah. Where would you start? How do you, how do you do it? Like if someone's never done it before, like what do they do?

I think you first need to understand the basics of research and understand statistics, I would say. Right. Because like all of these papers are open for interpretation. Like you can read that paper and I can read that paper

and I can get to a completely different conclusion if either of us doesn't understand how to read the paper and what those numbers actually mean. So I would say

first understanding statistic and research and what those numbers actually mean. So I would say first understanding statistic and research and what a standard deviation is and what all those terms that come up in those papers mean and not just kind of reading the abstract, jumping all the paper and then just reading the conclusion and concluding the same thing as the author. So yeah, I would agree. I would say that actually specifically to your question, Doug, if you're the really the average everyday person and you really don't care, what I would say is don't waste your time. Just don't even start because you're going to get tracked. You're going to say the wrong thing. If you are someone like us who's interested, then you can learn these things. There's a bunch of

websites like ResearchGate where people can go to, and these are generally a bunch of free PDFs that authors are putting their stuff up on. So for people like you that are interested, you can go there. In addition, there's a lot of people who are putting out a ton of infographics on Instagram or websites and things where they're taking research and they're breaking it down into like a fairly user-friendly version.

Yeah, those summaries are killer. Yeah, I mean, YLM, Sport Science is great at that. Brett and Chris Beardley's um thing those are all fantastic you know who started an amazing amazing compilation of articles greg knuckles yeah greg yeah eric cressy and who's the third one and helms no it's mike it's that's uh well sort of yeah the daily angiolating period guy so they started uh it's called mass monthly applications Monthly Applications and Strength and something like that. And they basically, you buy a subscription and what they do is they take all of these complicated research and they put it in ways that you can understand it. They've got those.

There's Alan Aragon's got the same thing. He's had for like a decade or more for forever. Those are all places to start for the general person because you're very good. There's a great paper or a couple of papers I love to make this point. Two classic studies I use in my class and what they did is they want to look at muscle recovery and their version in this paper, they were referring to muscle glycogen. So this is the sugar you store in your muscle. So you burn that during a workout right and they want to look at whether or not i gave you protein or protein and carbohydrate at the same calorie total both cases right and see which one enhanced muscle recovery or did they and in both two papers from two different labs how do you measure muscle recovery the muscle glycogen okay so how quickly

the muscle glycogen came back so you biopopsy them before, biopsy them afterwards. And both papers showed no difference in muscle glycogen recovery between the protein group and the protein and carbohydrate group. Okay, now that's the indisputable fact, right? That's what's proved. But the fun part then is what's the title of the paper and what's the conclusion at the end? So now this is entirely true. This is a great example of you and i could

both look at the same piece of data and have completely opposite conclusions and both be 100 right so for example i read that and i went oh okay that to me means i can add protein to my carbohydrate drink and it won't harm my recovery The title of the paper was basically protein does nothing. Because the protein didn't add to the recovery. And so I'm like, well, this, you could either use this to justify that protein is not doing anything. Or you could use it to justify that you can add more protein and you'll be fine. Right. And so that's what you mean when you say like, don't read those conclusions.

Because the author is going to make that choice for you. And then you're like, oh, okay, great. Looks like I don't need my protein that was all bullshit it was all a lie we proved you don't need protein post-exercise and but they weren't looking at muscle growth or repair or information or any of these other things we know protein does so be very very careful with those things and let that up to the scientist is basically what i would say and also i think an important point is that just because there's an article, just because it's written in a journal, just because someone made a post about it,

doesn't make it 100% the truth. For sure. For sure. Very true. I think that, like, what is evidence-based practice to you? Yeah, so evidence-based practice in my mind is a combination of three things. It is the sciences, a portion of it. It is your own personal experience, your own knowledge of your own body and training. And then the third is the science as a portion of it. It is your own personal experience, your own knowledge

of your own body and training. And then the third is the expert opinion. So actually, I just had a, my last Instagram post was about this

and we got berated. People were like, oh, anecdote is not a part of the tree. You're like, you're a fucking idiot. Like you're an idiot if you don't think

that your own 20. That's an anecdote. We don't know he's an idiot. Exactly, right? So the point of the post was, it was actually Brett's post, and I re-put it up, but the point of the post was a scientist, in my case, ignoring

what Doug and Mike, as practitioners who have spent more time with actual individual athletes than I have, it would be as foolish for me to ignore their 20 years of experience as it would be for them to ignore my 100 papers. So we're both making mistakes on that end. Evidence-based practice to me is a combination of both of those two plus, okay, well, what I found works for my

individual athlete and myself. Exactly. I couldn't agree with that more. Yeah. Well, it's funny with wanting research to back everything up because it's like I apply that to strength and conditioning. I want research to back everything up. But then in the whole rest of my life, I don't apply it to anything. Right. Totally. It's like when I'm pulling out into traffic, I know I shouldn't pull out in front of that car. And there's no scientific paper that tells me I shouldn't pull out in front of a car because I might get hit.

But my anecdotal evidence says I pulled out in front of a car one time and I got hit and I shouldn't fucking do that anymore. Exactly. And so it's really interesting how it only applies in one field but then across the board for every other category of your life nobody brings it up yeah and now mike did a great job because i think his uh daily undulating periodization study one of the first ones was in power lifters i believe but i mean you're talking like one or two training studies so that i guess means you don't train because you don't know what's scientifically shown or not so we're taking we're making inferences based on what we were trying to see. And we're just trying to help guide people in a direction and say this is what's probably going to work as a starting place.

But you got to remember, like, your physiology is way different. So you may have to make a decision that we don't have any clue about. Exactly. Which I think your hybrid program is a good example of because technically you don't have a single study to prove that thing works. Exactly. And you never will. So I guess it's a sham. You're a charlatan.

Yeah. No, of course. Like you're showing right now you are proof in the pudding a little bit that says like this can work here and this is how we've done it. And you've shown some pretty good success, I guess. Numbers are pretty decent. I suppose. For a girl.

So what's next for you? What do you got coming up? In terms of competing? Yeah, just competing or training or anything in this world. Where are you going for lunch? Like what? Oh, just kidding. Tacos?

I don't eat anything. Oh, right. Celery? Negative calories. Just celery, carrots. Water? Water sometimes. Good. Oh, right. Celery? Negative calories. Brethrenium. Just celery, carrots. Water? Water sometimes. Good.

Mental toughness. Good. No, I have my eyes into a couple of competitions this year. The biggest one for me is going to be Record Breakers by Jesse Burdick. I was there, like I said, last year, and it was an awesome meet. It was really, really well run. Really fun, too, with cash prices and stuff um so that's one like the biggest one that i have what do you do with your money when you win it what do i do with it yeah i feel like i feel like

money that you win is spent differently than money that you know you just get oh for sure i go straight to little lemon blue lemon straight to littleululemon. Lululemon? Straight to Lululemon. He's as a bank. Hold all my money for me. And they never go back. Weird. There's actually a black market for Lululemon. Really? What?

In Venezuela? On the dark web? In Venezuela? No, not in the dark web. Oh. You use Bitcoin to buy all your Lululemon on the black market? On Facebook, actually. I've resold tights that I bought for $60 for $100. Really?

What? Based on the patterns, people go... We're missing out. There's a whole world out there of obsessed girls with Lululemon. Gary Vaynerchuk was talking about this at one point. He said that the average person could, in America, make $80,000 a year simply by using eBay. You just go on eBay and you've got the app now

and you can just go around scanning things. Oh, and see what people pay for. You can post it on eBay and when someone buys it, you can just go pick up the item and ship it to them. It's nuts. That's not shocking. If you don't have a job, there you go. No one can stop you from doing that.

Is that covered in Barba Business Podcast? we're doing a whole episode next episode yeah fantastic yeah and he he was also talking about there's shocking how much shit is laying around your house oh yeah if you just put on ebay like you could probably make 10 g's real quick just from random stuff in your house people on ebay i mean people are just looking for anything. How many cabinets of Lululemon do you have? Honestly? Yeah. I'm a little bit ashamed of that. Good.

That's why we want to hear it. Honestly, my whole wardrobe is pretty much Lululemon. But just because I don't know how to dress in any other thing. I swear I try. It's safe. It's a safe place to go. Exactly. You buy Lululemon, you look good.

You just buy a tie, buy a shirt, and it just looks. Everything matches together. You don't have to think about it. I've tried to shop in other stores, and I end up looking like a clown. You see me outside, and you're like, what the hell are you wearing? Just nothing. It doesn't go. I can't make it match.

Well, you're not going to unmatch any of the three of us. Yep, you're safe here. None of us have any fashion sense. That's true. Unless we put on Lulu, then we look like we know what we're doing. Yeah. No. Where can people find more about what you've got going on?

What's your Instagram? You got a website? Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram at at Steffi Cohen and at Hybrid Performance Method. And then the website's the same, www.hybridperformancemethod.com. I have one little pseudo final question before we cut out of here. Is there any advice or tips you would give to any females listening that like to strength train or kind of getting started? Anything you want to say? How to get into it?

Or whatever. Whatever message you'd like to send to the female strength and powerlifters and weightlifters out there. I would say just do it. There's so many, uh, benefits to strength training for women, like ranging from, you know, just more muscle mass equates to, uh, more calories that you can consume because you have more active tissue. You get to eat more. You get to eat more. That's really important. Also, more chocolate decreases your risk for osteoporosis, so it makes your bones stronger.

And it's a great way to burn fat, burn calories, exercise without having to be just stuck on a treadmill for 45 minutes. It's a lot more fun. And then you have the whole community aspect of it. I think it's one of the things that draw me into it that you can get into with strength training if you go to a CrossFit gym or a powerlifting gym. Okay, second and follow-up question then. Is there anything for guys who are coaching females that you're like, hey, don't do this, don't do this, do this? Or any advice for the CrossFit coaches that are coaching female athletes, the men coaches? I would also say listen to your client, especially if it's female and if she has any type of concerns, listen to her.

Don't just ignore what she's saying. If she's scared of building muscle, don't just put up with it. I think that it's really important to educate them, the educational component. Explain to them why they can calm down about that particular thing or explain to them what are the benefits of strength training and what are they really going to achieve with it, not just disregarding what they're thinking about it. Right.

What about during competition or like on the platform right before, do you like to be addressed or treated a certain way that you think like it's different than anybody else or? I think it's important, especially for guys who coach girls to understand that emotionally we're a little bit more unstable than, than guys. And we, we, we really do need that like emotional support before a competition,

especially because we tend to get a little bit crazy and just be there for be there for that girl and and and be kind of be strong for her in that time of emotional distress so what can they do to provide that support does he literally mean just like physically being there or anything in particular and emotionally just like calm them down um encourage them and tell them that everything's going to be OK, that they're doing a good job, like positive reinforcement, all of that stuff. I mean, definitely it's not easy. And Hayden can tell you, Hayden, who's my coach, that it can get really tough, especially sometimes if you get too down on yourself or you're extremely like worried about a competition. He gets frustrated as well. But it's really important to just kind of like keep that positive commentary going like come on you can do this like

you're gonna do great don't worry about it and i think it's part of coaching not only for a girl i think for a guy too if you're a coach you should be providing that for your athletes yeah yep thank you great advice thanks teffy