Barbell Shrugged - The Roll of Skill Development for Improving Fitness and Longevity w/ Jordan Syatt, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash #754

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Elite Powerlifter, Precision Nutrition & Westside Barbell Certified coach, Jordan Syatt is well known as Gary Vaynerchuk's personal trainer. Jordan began Syatt Fitness, his online fitness coaching business, from his dorm at the University of Delaware in 2011 and has become one of the industry's leading experts in strength training, nutrition, and behavioral psychology. One of the only people in the world to deadlift 4x his own body weight, Jordan's work has been featured all over the world including a variety of media publications such as CNN, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, Men's Health, Men's Fitness, and Schwarzenegger.com Work with RAPID Health Optimization Jordan Syatt Podcast Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family this week on Barbell Shrug, Jordan Syatt, one of our like good friends from many years of watching him grow. By the time we had met him, he had already grown. One of the very, very first kind of like social media, internet content creators. He was doing it out of his dorm room way back in the day. He actually plays an audio recording that he's kept of the late, great Louie Simmons asking him if he could come to Westside Barbell to train. He's got a 4X bodyweight deadlift and probably mostly known for all of the nutrition content that he's put out with his close to million followers or something insane on Instagram. More importantly, though, we've hung out a couple times.

And every time I see Jordan, he's just a happy human being and always makes me happy to be around him we've hung out in new york a couple times just seen him around at all of the the fitness events and many of these things were kind of in that pre-covid thing when everybody was traveling having fun going to events and doing all these things and then man all of us started having kids and then uh that slowed down a lot too so having him back on the show was fantastic i always feel like i'm just like talking to a And then, man, all of us started having kids. And then that slowed down a lot too. So having him back on the show is fantastic. I always feel like I'm just like talking to a buddy of mine when Jordan comes on and we get to catch up just because we've all been in this game for so long, which gets into

the exact reason for this episode of skill development and the things that we continue to be learning and working on in our own personal training just to keep the fire alive just to keep the stoke alive when we are learning how to do this for coming up on 30-ish years now of training it's not it's not easy to keep doing the same things over and over and over again so how do we create little gains in our brain little goals that we're able to latch on to that we want to keep striving for that isn't just how do we deadlift more how do we squat more how do we bench press more like the the big normal thing. So really awesome conversation. Jordan talks about learning how to do the splits, which is something I think about all the time, actually. I'm just

not sure if I'm capable of handling that level of pain in the initial phases of it, but always a pleasure having Jordan on. Really, really enjoy his presence and it's a great conversation. So as always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That's where Dr. Andy Galpin has a free eight-minute video on how you can unlock your true physiological potential. It's a step-by-step guide, really on exactly how we make the best in the world better here at Rapid Health and Performance.

You can access that free report over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Beautiful. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Marner. Doug Larson, one of my favorite human beings of all time. It's a disaster that it's been roughly four or five years since we've hung out in person or on the podcast. Jordan Syed, how are you, sir? I'm great. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I appreciate you both. Thank you. This is probably the strangest intro to a podcast, but today we're going to be talking about why you just can't talk about fat loss anymore. This is like just a little background. When you were in

college, you wrote Louie Simmons a letter, I believe, like an actual letter. No, no, email. It was an email. I wish it was a letter. That'd be a cool story letter. No, no, email. It was an email. I wish it was a letter. That'd be a cool story. If you still had it, that would be so sick. I still have the voicemail. Rumble it up a bunch and be like, dude, before he died, he sent the letter back to me. Check this out. I'm going to pull this up really quick.

This is from December 1st, 2010. This is Louis. Fantastic. Come on. Play. This is Louie. Come on. Play on speakerphone for me. Gordon, this is Louie Sims of the website Barbell.

It's around 7.30, 7 in the evening. Sorry I'm calling so late. But I'll try you tomorrow, sometime after 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning. And, you know, we'd like to have you come here. I explained a little bit on the telephone. Then I'll give you a little bit of information.

It's pretty simple. You just come here and train. I will be teaching you the technique, and I'll teach you the science behind the West Side System, which is actually the old Soviet system. Yeah, he just goes on and on and on in classic Louis, but I will never get rid of that voicemail ever. I love it.

Yeah, he could probably leave you a voicemail with more information in it than you're just like, I guess I don't need to come to West Side anymore. I'll just keep this voicemail ever. I love it. Yeah. He could probably leave you a voicemail with more information in it. And you're just like, I guess I don't need to come to Westside anymore. I'll just keep this voicemail you left me. But one of the, one of the very interesting things, obviously the Westside connection, but is that you were like one of the very first blogs that really came online teaching people how to eat and lose weight. And now we're what, 15 years later? Why is this topic so frustrating now that you're just, you're kind of at the end? Have you said everything there is to say about losing weight? You know, I'm not going to be like so pompous and arrogant to say that I've said everything that there possibly is. But I think what I've seen in the industry is that it just keeps cycling

between pendulums of extremes. So like it's on one hand, like, like it was, if it fits your macros for a long time and then it goes to like, no, it's like super clean eating. And then it swings to something else.

And it swings, it's like going 360 degrees at all times constant pendulum swings and the reality is if you can find the middle of that just like where where it's sitting still you're good and and i feel like i'm at a point where i'm just constantly fighting against all of these extremes and i'm just burned out i I'm tired of it. It's like, I, if you follow the basics and you stick to the basics, I'm sure there, there can be more things added to anyone's repertoire for sure. But I've said it so many times I'm done. I mean, these extremes are just different methods that, that resonate with different people and different personality types, et cetera. But

it's all calories and macros at the end of the day. It's just different ways to go about doing that. And the carnivore really works for me because I love meat and I fucking hate eating vegetables. And so I make progress with that. And that method works for me. And so I preach that it's the best. And then someone else, different personality type, different archetype, thinks and gets different progress with a different method.

Then they go down that rabbit hole of saying it's the truth, light in the way of fitness and health. But it's all the same principles, though. Am I right? It's exactly right. And you touched on a really interesting point where it's like what works for one person, that person then thinks that's the way. It's like, hold on, like just because this specific methodology worked for you, number

one, doesn't mean that another methodology wouldn't work equally as well for you or for someone else. And also like, let's get down to the deeper reasons of why this worked for you. And when we really pull all the, pull all the curtains away, we can see that it all boils down to the exact same things. Yeah. Interesting thing here that, uh, that maybe you guys have noticed this as well, especially with the influencer space. Good marketing means, and good business really, it's like being super niche. If you can be super niche, it's easy to get an audience. I have an audience.

It's easy to sell stuff. It's easy to create a business and make money and the whole thing. I've seen people, they make progress with a certain method, and then they go preaching that that's the truth, the right light in the way. Say it's macros. I go, I did macros and it worked for me, and now I sell macros and I get a bunch of followers and I make a bunch of money doing macros. And I wasn't a fitness professional before, but now I've been in the industry for many years.

Maybe I have a podcast now. I'm interviewing lots of experts. I'm learning as I'm building this business. And then a couple of years into the business, you realize, oh, the thing I've been selling actually isn't the truth, the light in the way. It's just one way to do it. And then you start telling people, now I really figured it out. There's lots of ways to do this, guys.

You could do this and you could do that and you could do the other thing. And there's a bigger world out there. And then now the audience is like, oh, well, they're not selling the one specific thing I'm looking for. And they kind of seem almost unsure of themselves now because they used to have it all figured out. But now they realize they don't have it all figured out because they're smarter, which is a paradox. And then they actually lose traction and they lose faith in their business a little bit. They go, man, this isn't working as well as it used to. I don't know what's going on. And it's because they lost that conviction that the one method that they had was like the way to

do it when they realized that, oh, there's more than one way to skin a cat 100 yeah i uh the first time and maybe not the first time but uh one of the more more the podcast that we did with um my gosh what the the olympic weightlifting guy uh john which hold on a second i know hold on he's he's an older guy he's an absolute legend in what we do and i'm drawing a blank right now um john i want to say he's out of denver no um my gosh my my meathead self is is is dying trying to find a name um but he was when we were interviewing him and he was like i have seen the keto diet four times now in my career yeah dan john dan john oh yeah and um and i was and it was the first time somebody of dan john's stature that's just been in the game for 40 years and was like yeah like every decade i have to answer the

same questions to the same yep stage of person coming in that is finding nutrition and finding and they're like oh my god low carb do you know how good i feel it's like yeah it's because you chopped away you know 30 of your calories incredible what will happen it's even happened in the short time that CrossFit's been around, which hasn't, isn't that long. It's been around for like 20 years, really like in the mainstream limelight,

they went from zone, which is basically macros to paleo, which is quality. So they went from quantity to quality and the back to back to quantity. So they went from, they went from zone, which is basically macros to paleo, which is,

which is just clean eating. Like you were saying, Jordan, and then back to macros, which is called macros, to paleo, which is just clean eating, like you were saying, Jordan. And then back to macros, which is called macros. They're future macros. So the pendulum has swung, even in that very small niche industry. It's all just different names for the same systems. That's exactly right. Yeah. So what does have you the most fired up right now in your own training and, um,

and coaching side of things? So, uh, two things, and I know, uh, Doug's going to appreciate this with that ADCC on, I'm sure Doug, you got your black belt recently. I'm just been obsessed with jujitsu for the last like five years. Uh, just got my purple belt a little over a year ago. Um, but also, I mean, it's funny. I hesitate to say this because I talk, I talk about it a lot right now on my social media and no one cares or very few people care, but mobility, like I'm

obsessed with mobility right now, dude. Like I'm obsessed. You doing neck exercises in a video, man, it must've been like three years ago. And it was, I thought it was like the most impressive, like you ever just like come across something like, I wish I could do that, but I'm probably not going to put the work into being able to actually do it. I'll just observe and admire from afar versus try the neck mobility stuff that you do. But I know there's a video of you also me creeping on your Instagrams. You learned how to do the splits. Yeah, doing the front split. How long did that take you? Dang, really? Wow. From December until May. Shrug family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidalthreport.com,

you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs.

That means the inside out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. And then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward.

I really, really hope that you're able to go over to RapidHealthReport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidhealthreport.com and let's get back to the show. So like December of 2020, yeah, no, no, not every day. So one time a week, front splits, one time a week, side splits, one time a week, pancake pancake it's three days a week but dude it's intense it's like it's it's like i'm lifting in these in these ranges it's i'm not just sitting there doing static stretches like i'm lifting i just finished walking through this i want to front splits while doing overhead dumbbell press what do you what do you mean no all right so like so it's funny like if you think a lot of people think um even just like a body weight stretch for example would be is

unloaded but if you really think about it and you're doing a stretch and you feel tight like you're loaded like your muscle is low especially when you take it to that end range and you're putting gravity and your body weight on it like like you're loaded. It takes a long time to be able to do a, a, a significant range of motion and hold it passively without it being loaded, without feeling that like tension. Right. So even though you think it's, it's unloaded, you're actually loading it. So very simply, like I can do a hip flexor stretch, for example, where I'll, I'll, I'll show you a picture right now of one I literally just did 30 minutes ago.

This one's devastating. I get in this hip flexor stretch with my rear foot elevated, and then I have a barbell on my back, and I'm doing contract relax here. So I'm driving my back knee into the block for 10 seconds hard. And then I'll try and elevate it off the block for 10 seconds. And I'll repeat that for about a minute. And then when I, when I relax, I'm letting that weight push me down. Here's another one that didn't see that. That's like Kelly Starrett's couch stretch. Yes. Your back leg on a yoga block with what looks to be like 55 pounds

on your shoulders yeah yeah and you're doing like frc contract relax super intense you want to cry and then and then here's another one that i this is how many just names i dropped i know wow you've been studying look at this guy gosh It's like we've interviewed everybody in this industry. Did you text all that to him earlier today? You're like, dude, say all these cool names. People think you know so much. Tell everybody how many friends you have. Don't ask him what FRC means.

I got it. Discredit him in every way. Look at this guy. We interviewed them the first time I met you. I got it. Discredit him in every way. I got you. Look at this guy. I got you. We interviewed them the first time I met you. They're awesome. They're awesome. Yeah, they're really awesome.

Yeah, they're incredible. And then this is like an ATG split squat with an SS bar over it, just like bouncing at the end range. Got single-legged mornings with the SS bar. So it's loaded stretching is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. But that last one makes you brutally sore, too. You mentioned the ATG stuff.

We had the knees over toes. I've done that before. We had the knees over toes guy. He's awesome. Yeah. I would love to know more than just being able to do the splits. Have you noticed – how does your body feel having like crazy range of motion? My back feels so good. And it's crazy because I didn't realize it. You know how when people like

are super out of shape, and they don't eat well. And all of a sudden, like they just change their diet, start working out. And all of a sudden, they're like, I didn't know how bad I felt type of a thing. Until like, now I feel good good now I'm in a position where it's like I had no idea how uncomfortable I was until now I have this range so even something like putting my daughter in her crib every night like I've got to do basically a Jefferson curl to get over the the top of the crib and lay her down and I for the I remember the first time i did it after months and months of doing this all of a sudden i was like i feel great like i stood up and i didn't like do this at all i didn't lean back i was like oh i just leaned over put her down stood back up and i was

like that felt amazing it's sort of like you when you're someone you're reading really good writing you don't notice any bad like you don't even think about poor grammar or anything because it's good writing but as soon as there's like a spelling error or a mistake you're like oh like that was bad and i all of a sudden have good writing now with my back for example i don't notice it anymore and i didn't realize how much energy it was taking out of me throughout the day. And I think the, the simultaneous coolest part of that is number one, the result, but also it's three days a week. And it's what I, I hate static stretching. I love heavy lifting. So I get to do what I love to achieve these results. And I it's amazing. I'm obsessed with it.

Have you noticed, uh, sorry, uh, have you noticed a difference in breathing patterns? Because I know that that is like a massive piece to kind of like being at these end ranges and then just getting your system to downregulate so that you're not, it's not that you stop feeling the pain, but it allows your body to at least trust that you're not going to get injured doing the thing that is extremely painful. Yeah. I mean, I've had to work on that a lot. And I will say, you know, when you first start lifting, when you first start lifting, like

the pain can be intense when you first start working out, even like something ridiculous. Like when you first start back squatting, when you first start, it sort of hurts your back, the bar on your back. But the more you do it, all of a sudden, the bar doesn't really hurt your back anymore. You just get used to it. Same thing with this type of stuff. At the first, probably six weeks, I was in immense, an immense stress response. Anytime I got near my end range, like I was, I got tight. I was breathing. I was holding my breath through it. And then as i got more used to that not even necessarily improving my range but as i got more used to it my body became more used to it

my breathing relaxed my body relaxed not because of improvements in mobility but just because it wasn't new to me anymore so it is something i pay attention to like for example when i do um those good mornings that the single-legged mornings I was just showing you, I used to, like, even just now, I'll, like, get really tight and I'll, like, do the powerlifting brace at the bottom of it. And I'm trying to relax more as I get into that end range. Is this primarily a hip mobility routine of yours? Like, you're specifically trying to do the splits? That was, like like your end goal and so you're prioritizing hip mobility over other things or is it more more kind of a total body but like with a hip focus or what was the strategy here so it's just

to be very blunt you know the jean-claude van damme where like he'll like put his legs on chairs or something and he'll do that full side split sure are you gonna rent children up the 80s yeah are you gonna rent two tractor trailers i wish talk about like marketing like that i want to do that i needed followers so i tried to kill myself in the splits like i want a picture of me in that split holding my daughter and then god willing my next daughter and because i feel like that would be a picture they could put up in their homes when they're older. And like, they would just love that for their whole life. So I just want to do the splits. And so I tried this in 2021, just doing the side splits, I ended up hurting my my left knee, because I was doing

the side splits three times a week. This time time I hired a guy named Lucas Hardy from range of strength. And he recommended doing one day for front one day for side one day for pancake, because you get a little bit more spread out and you're not putting as much. So like my, the medial aspect of my left knee got torched during the first time. Cause I was doing a lot of contract relax in that abducted position and just, I wasn't prepared for it.

Now I I'm doing a much more balanced approach to do all of the splits, which is, um, it's funny cause the front splits came fastest and easiest. The, the side splits are taking much longer, which apparently is very common, but I just want to be able to do the Jean-Claude Van Damme, my legs out holding my daughter. And that's, that's literally why I want to do it. And then for my upper body, I'm working on a muscle ups, but not like, um, I don't want to do, I don't want to do explosive muscle ups. I want to do insanely slow, just no momentum on the bar muscle ups. I don't know if you know, Megan Calloway, she's insanely strong. This woman,

dude, like she's legitimately the strong, the muscle-ups I've seen in my life. She will do muscle-ups that take 10 seconds to get to like no momentum whatsoever. It's insane. So that's what I want to do for that. I love that too. The gymnastics stuff, the biggest thing that I've been geeking out on call for almost like probably like a year now, probably like the end of last summer, like August dishes when I really started like, um, intelligently trying to be a well-conditioned athlete. That makes sense. Trying to run a sub six minute mile. And that's like the thing that, uh, 624 is the best one, but I think I'm, I'm actually closer to like the six, 12, 15 ish range right now.

That's really tough. It's so much harder to get on a track than anybody could ever imagine. Yeah. Like you're not really allowed to go to schools unless you're like a part of the school anymore. I've had the cops like called on me and I'm like, I'm running in an oval and no one's here. Why is this like the middle school school athletic director which i don't even not putting him down but man him and i do not see eye to eye on my fitness level and my desires um but like that that's like the that's like the thing like you've got this white neo-nazi running

on the fucking back right now why does this guy have no shirt on at the middle school what is he doing oh man he might be harmless um but it's really cool when you start going to uh when you get out of kind of like the the power lifting like how much can i pick up and now it's like how do i do this other cool stuff yes you. You feel like, have you, have you gone back and like tested a deadlift? Not like the yelling at the barbell deadlift, but like inside 90 ish percent of lifetime PRs. My strength is not really affected. Like, so to be fair, it goes anywhere.

It's like the dirty secret. It's crazy. It's easy. It's not easy, but it's relatively easy to build and it did. It maintains unbelievably easy. Yeah. It's really. It's not easy, but it's relatively easy to build. And it maintains unbelievably easy. Yeah. It's really crazy. Yeah. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that because I have my own, but it would just cloud

a more intelligent person talking about it, which would be you. When you are working on a stretching program to do the splits for the first 30 ish years of your life. Did you ever think that if you took like six months and just really focused on mobility, that you'd be able to keep the same power lifting numbers or like a very high percentage of that? Especially based on what I've been told and taught my whole life, which is that mobility is going to ruin your game. It's just like, that's,

which is just so funny. Cause you look at some of the greatest lifters, some of the greatest gymnasts, some of the greatest Olympic lifters, their mobility is outrageous. Some of the greatest CrossFit lifters, like they have insane mobility. It's like,

why? And look at like some of the best shot putters, javelin throwers, like insane, insane broad jumpers, like what their mobility is insane. And they're strong as shit. I it's crazy how much that that negative influence has warped our minds, mine included. So no, I never would have thought that would be possible. Yeah, it kind of is, is it goes back to what we're talking about on the

nutrition side of things a little. It's like you have to do this diet for it to work. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. How about I just try and be as athletic as possible and as many different domains as possible, build this massive base of fitness, neurologically wire my body to be athletic and just, I'll just keep it all. And I can actually just keep getting better at things when you just put your energy towards a specific goal. And those goals just accumulate into an athletic life. I think that a really important point of this is if I had tried to deadlift four times my body

weight and get the splits and run a sub six minute mile all at the same time, I would have failed everything. But if you take a year or two years and really go hard on one thing, and then you take a year or two years and go hard on something else, and then take a year or two years, then go hard on something else. And when you go hard on the next thing, you don't give up the other thing entirely. You just do it minimally. You just slightly maintain it by the end of six, eight, 10 years. You are a freak of nature. Yeah.

And, and if you're in better shape now than like 23 years old, a hundred percent, because at 23, I could lift super well. Yeah. No, nowhere near this mobility,

nowhere near this conditioning. I mean, I could kick the shit out of myself from a, like a, I grew up wrestling. I wrestled from eight to 18 and like I could destroy myself now, like without, without breaking a sweat. So yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. I, um, go ahead. I was gonna say on the practical side, I actually want to hear more about, about how those sessions play out for you. Like you showed us on the video, some, some examples of, of the movements and whatnot.

For people that are listening and they're not seeing these movements, like take the kind of kickstand RDL example you were doing earlier. Like, what does that look like when you're actually performing the movement? Are you doing sets of 15 with a pause at the bottom? Are you doing like tempo reps?

Are you training to failure? Is there no failure at all? Is it just a warmup or is it an actual training session or just how does, how does it structure? How is it structured? Excuse me. Yeah. So those, those, the, the, the ATG split squat and the split stance, uh, good morning. Those were the first two movements of the day. There, the split squat was three sets of four reps per leg. And I did like slight pulses at the bottom with each rep. So heavy.

And then the good morning was three sets of five reps with a five second eccentric. So it's heavy, dude. And like not everyone loves it. You don't have to do mobility this way. But I love heavy lifting. So like, this is a very power lifting approach to mobility. So it's not high rep. It's crazy.

I mean, you get to the end of the set, it's been a minute, a minute and a half under tension. It's like, it's a long time under tension. And it's very slow and controlled and deliberate. But yeah, it's strength-based. It's maximal strength-based. It's pretty intense. How long did it take?

Those five reps is basically a 5RM? Or is that like if you weren't doing a stretch at the bottom and like a controlled eccentric and you're just going to bang out as many reps as you could, how many reps are you going to get? I could probably do 20 of those if i had no five second eccentric no problem but like okay because it's like it's it's my 5rm it's like i have like one rir essentially at the end of that like maybe two if i'm like going crazy or if i feel really really really good but

one rir is generally where i'm entering ending. Got it. How long did it take? I'm asking selfishly because I'm going to go do this in like an hour. Yeah, yeah, do it, man. I'm asking for myself. That's all right, Anders. How long did it take before you really felt like you understood stretching?

And I say that because when I started, like in my CrossFit career, I thought that I was like intelligently doing conditioning. I was not. I was trying to kill myself on a daily basis. And the closer I got to dying, the more my body was going to have to adapt to that proximity to death, which I considered to be conditioning workouts, doing it in an intelligent way. It took me a really long time, uh, to, to sit on a bike and actually like become one with an air bike. And it, and then all of a sudden it was like, Oh, I love this thing. Like this thing

isn't scary anymore. I can, I can totally play with my breath, the cadence. I can tell by the sound of the wind coming off if I'm really pushing myself. Did you start to have those breakthroughs of recognizing, oh, I'm starting to get really good at this thing. I'm becoming a flexible human. Yeah, for sure. The cool thing for me is I'm obsessed with it right now and I'm obsessed with it right now. And I'm obsessed with learning about it. So I'm still learning every day. But I'm having those breakthroughs every single session. And I would say it took me about, it took me about like three or four months before I really started to be like, okay, I really think I'm getting this now, especially because when I first when I first started doing the mobility work, and it's again, super

heavy, like very intense training, I approached it from the perspective of sort of like a newbie in that I'm going to get newbie gains, I'm going to go hard every single day, which I did initially. But just like with strength training, newbie gains don't last that long. And before you know it, like you're going to need to take some deloads. Like I don't have the same range every single day or even every single week. Sometimes you don't be able to like you hit you hit one deadlift number one week just because you hit that one week doesn't mean you're going to hit it the next week.

It could be completely different. So your range fluctuates as well sometimes. And so I'm learning how to auto regulate my mobility training based off of how I feel, uh, based off of, I'm, I know for, I know for a fact, if my glute ham raise, if my weighted glute ham raise improved, I was going to hit a deadlift PR. I knew that for a fact, if I, in my training, I got a new glute ham raise, uh, PR deadlift was going up. And when you're deadlifting 530 at 132, it takes a long time for that to happen. And you like you have these these tester lifts that make a big difference. So I'm starting to find my tester

moves that will tell me, okay, if I improved my range here, I know I'm going to get a personal record today in my my front splits or my side splits. Or you know, if it just feels tight during this movement, I'm going to take a little bit easy today. Like instead of going super, super hard or trying to go for a PR, I'm just going to go through the motions, give myself a good training session, but not go for a PR. So I'm, I'm still learning every day. And they're very rarely at this point in my career, do I find something that I'm really passionate about? And this is the first time and like just jujitsu and mobility, dude, I'm about. And this is the first time and like just jujitsu and mobility, dude, I'm obsessed.

And mobility is the first thing in the fitness industry in a long time that I've been really obsessed with. It's really funny how these things come across and you don't know that they're coming. And you're like, I wonder if that would like that. I work with Mike Nelson. Oh, he's awesome. Yeah.

He's fantastic. And I. work with mike nelson uh oh he's awesome met her yeah he's fantastic um and um i like any good coach like what are your goals i'm like honestly i just want to run a sub six mile like it was at 40 now it's at 41 um that's like the big thing but i also like i could do it in two years i could do it in eight months like i't care. I just really want to like chase this thing. But along the way, like I'm still doing strength training. I'm still, you mentioned glute hand raises. Like that's like one of the strangest exercises where you're like, I really want to do like a 45 pound plate for like three sets of eight. Yeah. Like I, for some reason that exercise just geeks me out so hard.

And I think one of the big things, like you never walk into like a lifetime fitness and there's like people doing things on like a GHD machine. So you're like, well, if nobody actually does them cause they're really hard. Uh, and I can do them with really heavy weights. I think that's something that I really want to chase in like the short term. Like here's my like three, four month goal. And then if I run a six minute mile and at the age of 43 versus 41, I don't really care. Cause it's like, I've got, I've got long ramps to do these things. Nobody, nobody's, nobody's chasing me and I don't have like a day to be prepared, but it would be cool in my forties at some point to go hit these goals. But I feel like if you, if you get involved into something like stretching or like doing the splits along the way, you start finding these other little tiny goals just because you're like

dedicating yourself and you start to become like kind of in that, in that like flow state where it's you don't realize all the little pieces along the way to actually get to the more macro goal. Yeah. And I mean, I never thought I'd be able to do the splits. Like I never thought that would be something I'd be able to do. And so when I, when I first started doing it for like the first month, I hated every session. But when I first saw my first progress pictures, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm like, three inches deeper. And I was like, Oh, man, like, I might be able to do this. All of a sudden, I started loving it. Which is like, if that's not the how things work, where it's like, in jujitsu, I know the first, I think jujitsu is so so difficult, because you get smashed

every day for like the first two years. And then, and all of a sudden, then a trial person comes in and then you can finally do something. And you're like, Oh my gosh, like I can finally do something to people. I think it's so many people don't go to the next belt because it takes a long time before you can ever impose your will on somebody unless you're just a freak. So it's, it's, it's seeing progress that drives that motivation. And the sooner you can see that progress, the more excited you're going

to be about it. And so that's where like I fight. And this is what I think what Louis Simmons, one of the things he did so well is I fight to see where I've improved at all times. What's my PR for today? What's my PR for today? What's my, cause if I can find somewhere I improved, that motivation is going to stay high. I'm going to be more excited about it. So it's, it's super interesting. Yo, speaking of powerlifting,

were those real numbers you just threw out a second ago? Yeah. 530 at 132, which if I'm not mistaken is a four X body weight deadlift. Yeah. Yep. You hit the four X. Yeah.

I hit the four X. Yeah. That's, that was my goal for like, where are you at dog? Where are you at? I'm not, I'm not,

I'm not hitting four X body weight weight that's what i'm not doing there no maybe you should start deadlifting i never got much above like a two and a half body two and a half you're a big dude you're a big dude yeah i was over 200 pounds but yeah but yeah it's easier the smaller you are for sure but but still that's fucking good that's really good yeah yeah that was that was one of the highlights of my career for sure oh yeah has that um i i would imagine there's other places but as the that beginner's mindset of actually uh like attacking these very strange things that you obviously suck at on day one um Um, I feel like that's where so many people actually get hung up, like, um, you know, 28 years into training now. I love that number.

I say it a lot to myself. It's like my own little pad on the back. Like, I can't believe I'm like three decades into lifting weights almost. Um, but I, when I, when I see many people that I used to train with and they're still doing the same wall balls, I'm like, how are you doing wall balls still? Come on. Do you know how many other cool things there are? You've literally done tens of thousands of these things, and that eight-foot target is still eight foot, and it's still 14 pounds or 20 like it's the same wall ball how do you keep doing those things i i have loved this this like phase

of um really going back and and kind of like the things that i thought that i knew that i was doing and going back and being a beginner in them. And like conditioning seems like such an easy thing, right? It's like, yeah, you just go out and like zone two and zone five and then do it. But when you actually like get on a real program and you follow it and you're making the like small adjustments and improvements, being a beginner is the most fun thing ever because there's just no expectations attached to it and you actually get better. You get better so much faster. So fast.

Yeah. Like we get rid of that ego part of it. It's so funny. You hit on two really important concepts, which is like, number one, you get better really fast. And number two, there are no expectations for you to be a certain level. It's very relieving to, to go in and have that white belt mentality and just be like, I I'm a newbie. I'm a beginner. I'm not

supposed to be good at this. So let's just soak up as much as we possibly can. The conditioning side is, I think that's the one I struggle the most with the pain of conditioning is unlike the pain of really every type of training is a different type of pain right yeah so power lifting has it's a lot of pain but it's super quick it's like seven seconds or so max for like a max lift which like it could be fearful of getting crushed by the weight or whatever but seven seconds of intense pain and fear. Whereas bleeding at the end of a squat, whereas like eyeball popped out. I don't know what happened. Then we have like, I don't know, more strength endurance, like eight to 12 to 20 rep range,

which that can be still accumulate a lot of discomfort, but it's not that long still. It's a little bit longer than a max effort, but not that long. Then you have stuff like stretching, which could be, I don't know, a minute to a few minutes, depending on which like, that's a long time,

especially if you're really tight and like you're not used to it. But then you have the conditioning and you have different pain within conditioning. You have the zone two longer duration. Like I'm going to try and go for an hour or two hours where it's like, it's not difficult necessarily physically, but mentally you're like, fuck, like this is painful. Like maybe you want to be doing something else.

You're trying to distract yourself. And then you have this, the pain from sprints or tempo work that is just like, it can be excruciating. So for it's so interesting how every type of training has a very unique and specific type of pain. And I really struggle with the conditioning pain. Like that's the one where I'm just, I will very quickly find a way out of it. Mine's the stretching one, which is why talking to you about this gets me stoked on stretching

because it's like, uh, when you, when you find the similarities of like, just being the beginner and you're like, oh, it hurts so bad. But now you like, um, there's, there's, there's like a spectrum inside that pain where it's like, I can hang out at a threshold that hurts really bad, but it's not like the worst it could be. And that's really where you, you're kind of in that. It's like when you think about a professional bodybuilder, they're not doing sets of like eight to 10. They're like, how does 30 sound on this? They're like, oh my gosh, 30 reps, a bench press? And you're doing half reps.

You literally just go until your arms don't move anymore. And then drink a little water, rest a couple minutes, and you go right back to RPE 12. It doesn't even exist how much pain they're going into to grow their arms and the tiniest little back muscles and all the little nuanced things. All that stuff comes with, you got to go play the game inside the game. And that's probably one of the little nuanced things, all that stuff comes with like, you got to go play the game inside the game.

And that's probably one of the most fun things about doing things that you just suck at and like forcing yourself to get better at is like the little games that you start playing inside your own head of like, I promise you're getting better at this. I promise. It's like where the Nordic comes comes in where it's like

i never thought that i would want to improve my like nordics but they're pretty awesome yeah i'm trying to get really good at them because it gives me that fire to just like keep getting a little bit better each time especially when it's something that very few other people can do it's very exciting to be like oh oh no very few people can do that all right i'm can do. It's very exciting to be like, oh, oh, no, very few people can do that? All right, I'm going to do that. Yeah, totally. It's very fun. The gymnastics thing really,

Kelly Starrout's getting brought up twice in this because I was, we were interviewing him and I was like, I wish they had like more adult gymnastics classes. And he was like, no, you don't. You wish they had a backflip class so that you could just go do a backflip, show everybody on Instagram that you could still do it. And then you'd be done. He's like,

if you really wanted to do gymnastics, you would like learn about a hollow body position and be very good at it. And that would take you like eight months to actually master these things. And then how long is it going to take you to be able to get your wrist mobility so that you can actually do a handstand? I was like, I don't have time for that. Come on. I just want to do a backflip. Hopefully I don't break my neck. Dude, gymnastics is brutal.

That was the first thing we put my daughter in when she was like 14 months and like she's going and she that and swimming. But man, such a parent, such a parent. It's she's in swimming. She does this thing called ISR, which is apparently like a lot of people get mad about it because like there are a couple videos online of kids, people throwing their babies in the water. But like, bro, she's not even two yet. And she can go in the water full on like coat, pants, shoes, and like be fully submerged,

go on her back, float and turn back and forth and back and forth until she finds the edge of the pool and pull herself back up which is just insane but gymnastics man watching the improve even just once a week we go once a week every monday it's insane the stuff that like i'm watching her be able to do. It's like, I, I honestly do wish there were gymnastic classes because man, it's, it's, I, I don't think there's a better sport for overall athletic improvement and

enhancement in strength, mobility, coordination, balance. Like it's the best by far. What's his name? MBSC Mike Boyle. Yeah.

Kind of puts that like, he's probably said it. He's probably as bored of talking about youth development as you are nutrition at this stage. But he has like, kind of like the path of the athlete. And it's like, from as soon as you can

to like seven to eight years old, like gymnastics, martial arts, dance, like things that get people comfortable and how to use their bodies and the athleticism to like seven to eight years old, like gymnastics, martial arts, dance, like things that get people comfortable and how to use their bodies and the athleticism and problem solving, then go play every sport imaginable. And you can kind of start lifting weights in there and just like moving with kettlebells and stuff.

And he's like, and then sometime around like 12, whatever sport you played that you really liked and kind of were good at. Now you can go all in. Now you can go say like, I'm a baseball player. I'm a whatever player. Cause now you can actually go like, uh, take the athleticism from the beginning years in gymnastics, the sport that you really liked, that you care about, that you want to get good at, that you might be good at. Then you can go and pour a little testosterone and development on that in your teens and actually see if you can be good at something. I fully, fully buy into all of that. And when I tell my neighbors that my son that's three is going to be in gymnastics for the next five years. And they're like, why not like soccer? Why not baseball? And I'm like, no, Jim, that,

do you know Mike Boyle? Do you know him? He's smarter than all of us. He's trained every kid. He has Olympic hockey players everywhere around him. He has to know what's going on. The thing is like, and you could take take any gym anyone who's done gymnastics and put them in any sport and they'll do well you can't take anyone from any sport and put them in gymnastics and have them do well like gymnastics prepares you for literally every physical endeavor yeah i just when i think about it i think about like how many places like jujitsu is basically the same, in my opinion, just doing it with another person and choking and stuff. But it's like the ability to fall. Yes.

Properly. Yes. Like that to me is just a skill that unless you're doing those things, there's no safe place to run and jump and fall and land. And sometimes even like my daughter, I'll see her like jump off the bed or something and her like knees will go. And I'm like, hold the phone. Where did that lack of athleticism come from? We are redoing that whole thing right now. You are not allowed to jump and have your knees go in.

We have got to talk about this. But like they go to gymnastics, they teach them how to do this stuff. And there's, there's no other place. It's filled with pads that you can just practice jumping, landing, falling, and, and have a coach there to just control the situation. Did we talk about how important strength training is as people age. And one of the main reasons we'll talk about it is because the old line is, if you get older and you fall, falling is one of the leading causes of death, da, da, da, da, da, which it is. Like if you fall and break a hip, I forget the exact percentage, but it's a huge percentage of people will die within the first seven months after like 70 years old if they break

a hip. So yes, strength training is super important, improve bone density, but everybody should learn how to fall. It should be a standard practice for everyone to learn how to fall. And that's one of that's literally the first thing I was taught in jujitsu is learning how to fall. And it was funny because I went on my honeymoon with my wife, we were in Greece years ago now.

And I was just I was doing stupid stuff. We were in Greece. I was like hiking and I was jumping up on random huge rocks. I fell off a huge rock and I landed and I just rolled, stood right back up. And I didn't think anything of it. Cause you fall all the time when you train jujitsu every day. And my wife literally, she was like, how the hell did you do that? And I just, what do you mean? Like, how did you fall so softly and gracefully and not hurt yourself? These are things that every coach should know how to teach and every person should be learning in addition to all the other training they're doing.

Yeah. I had a great example. Doug and I were down in Bentonville and i just looked like a complete amateur mountain biking for the first time and fell off and just like as just dumb amateur novice fall as you could separated my shoulder i'm like oh bleeding and like called my wife from arkansas with my arms and a tire sling. And then you like go on Instagram and you see some of these falls that like professional mountain bikers go through. And you're like, oh my gosh, that guy flipped over 12 times, got up, found his bike and just kept going.

And you're like me one thing. And I'm like like so tight and tense and break everything. They're just very good at understanding how to get through those things because they've done it so many times. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Falling is a skill. It is. Jordan, we're going to be in Dallas in October for Dan and Andy's seminar down there.

August, sorry. Which really allows us to break this terrible streak of not hanging out in person. Let's do it. Do you know when in August it is? The 10th. Saturday. All right. Let's do it.

What's the seminar? Bloodwork and genetic testing. It's like a one-day seminar. Oh, cool. Is it in the city? Is it in like downtown Dallas? I couldn't tell you the details. I want to say it Oh, cool. Is it in the city? Is it in downtown Dallas? I couldn't tell you the details. I want to say it's Parker University.

Is that right? Okay. Yeah. It's like north slash northwest of Dallas. Either way, we're bringing our whole team down there. So we're going to have two houses. I'm sure we'll be cooking a hamburger or something. That's typical.

We should get some barbecue. Meathead stuff. Terry cooking like a hamburger or something that's typical get some barbecue meathead stuff um terry black's barbecue or something if you want that sounds delicious yeah no let me know i would love that i mean you have my phone number right yeah i got you um this is phenomenal man this brings back all the love i want to i want to give a bro hug right now but tell the people uh where they can find you and everything you're up to. My podcast, Jordan Syatt Mini Podcast. That's plenty. Otherwise, you get plenty of great

information from these guys on this podcast. There you go. Doug Larson. Dig it. Find me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. Jordan, dude, many years later. Great to see you, my friend. Hopefully, I'll see you in person in a couple weeks here. I hope so. Yeah, let me know. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner, and we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. And make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.com. That's

where Dan Garner, Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everyone can access for free over at RapidHealthReport.com. Friends, we will see you guys next week.