Barbell Shrugged - The Single Thing That Makes the Squat the Most Effective Exercise for Strength w/ Dan John, Anders Varner, and Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged- #482

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

Dan John has spent his life with one foot in the world of lifting and throwing, and the other foot in academia. An All-American discus thrower, Dan has also competed at the highest levels of Olympic lifting, Highland Games and the Weight Pentathlon, an event in which he holds the American record.   Dan spends his work life blending weekly workshops and lectures with full-time writing, and is also an online religious studies instructor for Columbia College of Missouri. As a Fulbright Scholar, he toured the Middle East exploring the foundations of religious education systems. Dan is also a Senior Lecturer for St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London.   His books, on weightlifting, include Intervention, Never Let Go, Mass Made Simple and Easy Strength, written with Pavel Tsatsouline as well as From Dad, To Grad. He and Josh Hillis co-authored “Fat Loss Happens on Monday.”   In 2015, Dan wrote Can You Go? on his approach to assessments and basic training. In addition, Before We Go, another compilation akin to Never Let Go became an Amazon Bestseller.   In early 2017, Dan’s book, Now What?, his approach to Performance and dealing with “life,” became a Bestseller on Amazon. Hardstyle Kettlebell Challenge became available in September 2017, too.   In today’s episode the crew discusses:   Simplifying complex systems for strength The importance of gymnastics and tumbling for adults Throwers, Special Operations, and Olympic Lifting The importance of writing books for strength and conditioning What separates the squat from every other exercise  The importance of the hands in maximal strength And more…   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Shadow Creative Studios - Save $200 + Free Consult to start you podcast using code” “Shrugged” at podcast.shadowstud.io   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.magbreakthrough.com/shrugged - use coupon code SHRUGGED10 to save up to 40%   http://onelink.to/fittogether - Brand New Fitness Social Media App Fittogether   Purchase our favorite Supplements here and use code “Shrugged” to save 20% on your order: https://bit.ly/2K2Qlq4    Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Shrugged family, Dan John on the show today. This dude is a legend. He's written multiple books, probably best known for simplifying this crazy world of strength into these simple little solutions that make a massive difference in the longevity, health of your joints. Today we talked to him for almost two hours. The guy has a lifetime of strength and I'm so stoked that I was able to talk to him. Record it, bring it to you on Barbell Shrugged. But before we get rolling, I want to thank our friends over at Fit Together. I'm going to be giving away a massive deal for programs to anybody that gets over to Fit Together right now, signs up, adds me as a friend at Anders Varner, and joined the Barbell Shrugged group.

So you can get in by downloading the Fit Together app. It's go to your app store. It's F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R, Fit Together. You can find that in all of your app stores. Once you download the Fit Together app, find me at Anders Varner. Find the group Barbell Shrugged. Inside the group, I'm going to be giving away a massive, massive package

for tons of free programs to one lucky winner. And right now, since we just started this partnership, there aren't a ton of people in there. So you have a really good chance of winning a ton of programs and getting super swole on the cheap, like for free, by just joining the fit together app.

Uh, so get over there right now, come and hang out with me, find me a fit together. Also, I want to thank our friends over at Organifi three years running. I actually took mine this morning. I took three of them yesterday,

the green, the red and the gold, just like I was supposed to, just like the package says. Uh, if you are not getting the micros that you need, trust me, not many of us are. I'm still in quarantine. North Carolina just got hot and I just got home, which means I'm not going out and getting as much shopping done on a daily basis,

which means all of the fresh vegetables that I typically try to get in my life, it's just not happening. So I need a supplement to help. That is what Organifi comes in because they have the most phenomenal, most delicious green, red, and gold juices to ensure that I'm getting all of the micronutrients that I need in my life. What is a micronutrient? That's a vitamin. That's a mineral. You need them to help with your immune health, digestive health, all the systems that our body needs to function properly. And you probably just don't get them as much as you need. That's why Organifi is here.

The green, the red, and the gold. And you can get over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged right now. That is where you're going to save 20%. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Get over there right now. Save 20% on the green, the red, and the gold. You take the green in the morning, the gold at night, the red in the middle of the day. That's the sunrise to sunset. I like to call it the shrugged stack because that's

what I've been taking forever, like three years now. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Save 20%. Dan Johns on the show. Let's get into it right now. If we're at a park and you bring 600 pounds of equipment, you've got to carry that out, which would be a good workout. Kettlebell, TRXs, push-ups, whatever. And then by the equipment that shows up, then I put together a workout and coaching things. Oh, wow. It really helped me work with, for example, the military, certain school situations.

And what I began to realize, and by the way, you're only there because you want to be there and you want to bring something. Dan Martin used to bring egg salad sandwiches. You might bring Crystal Light plus some dumbbells. But if you don't show up, we don't have crystal light. So we all start to rely on each other. Oh, that's cool. And it allows me to practice my skill set because, like, Travis, you've never trained with me at my gym. So if I say the name of an exercise, a warm-up thing, well, you don't know what it is.

So I have to practice in real time teaching it to you. Yeah. And then what that does is it whittles away sometimes all the extra nonsense if you've been working with somebody for 12 years you can kind of just go like this and you know like you're not my weightlifting me pull it high and back to you well that meant a million things to me you know right but if you're it's your first day with you and i say pull it high and back to you, you're like, what? So that's –

This, this, this. Yeah. So all of a sudden – then I moved to five days a week. And then recently we've moved to a Saturday because people who are working want to do it still. So I went – and it's free. So I went – hell of a businessman so but it really helps me really helps me when you're in a team setting you get this sounds

weird but you get lazy with your language sure you know if you say you know when I used to coach I would say ace you, relax, middle stretch. And 11 football players knew what I was talking about. But the next school, that might be called B999. But you get lazy in your own language. I do. And so it helps, I think, as a coach to work in situations that make you challenge you to come up with some new ways of saying it. I work with a couple of deaf people. Boy, I tell you, eye-opener.

Yeah. When did you start to recognize that as a skill? I feel like one of the things that as soon as I hear your name i instantly associate the simplicity at which you deliver the message and i just look at it or i hear it and i go oh yeah oh well how long did it take him to whittle away all the crap to just say it like that the first time i heard you speak i felt like i got hit in the head 15 times over the hour because it was just like oh oh i'm too stupid and smart all at the same time to just get the message to somebody the way that they need it to simplify things i think you need two things one i think you need a system first you need a place to put things. Now, I guess it's like, you know, I don't know

what I'm about to say very well, but the difference between a cook and a chef, you know, if you're going to put out a cookbook for someone like me, a five ingredients, slow cooker book, right? You got to give me the five ingredients. You got to be absolutely consistent. Every page has to look like the one before. But when you work with the chef, you can just say, oh, here's some turmeric or something like that. I don't know. Here's a dab of this and a dab of that. Yeah, yeah. Right. And here's some blueberry essence. So I think what we have to do, we have to be a little bit more like cooks, cookbooks, where you have to have a system. And in the book, you also have to tell people that, you know,

these are the knives you need. And so what I do, like I have that little movement matrix, push, pull, hinge, squat, load and carry, and then the isometrics are planks to go along with it, and then the grinding movements, and then the anti-rotational one-sided movements and then the more ballistic stuff and it kind of goes like this well the reason i did that was to challenge me to find where my gaps were in in my coaching so by just putting a piece of paper and wrote push pull hinge squat loaded. And then writing those things down, I realized that I had massive areas where I had,

I always joke with young coaches, you had 27 different presses a week in your program and back squat. Right. So you don't, you need to work on more adaptions, you know, and this. I'm quite the opposite. I might have 27 squats, one press. Yeah. And what's good about that is, but Travis, there might be an area where you're consistently, ah, there's,

there's a problem here and the answer to that problem might just simply chart, chart that out. Try to have a system and then if you can, have a good friend look at it and go, hey, this is real good, but like I'd say to you, Travis, you're working with shop putters and you only have one press, which might be good.

That'll get them a long ways, but then we stop. Add in more. By going into a system of any kind, and I do, I hate to say it, but think cookbook. we stop. And so that's... Add in more. Yeah. By going into a system of any kind, and I do, I hate to say it, but think cookbook.

By having a system, it challenges you to go. And so you send me your great cookbook and I need a smoker, a barbecue, a slow cooker, a George Foreman grill, and an oven to make this meal you just told me to do? I'm not going to do that. Yeah. And then this part two of my job is to take whatever equipment you have

and apply the same principles to what you – or your goals, especially equipment, and then be able to log that into you. When are you going to write another book? I think I've read at least – I've got two of your books right on my phone here. I love – Have you read 40 Years with a Whistle? No. That was the one I just saw on your site, but I haven't seen that one. It's funny.

It doesn't sell at all. I'm going to. Now it will after being on Barbell Shrugged. Best seller. I'm going to now you will after being on Barbell Shrug best seller I've read Never Let It Go is a really good one and I've read there was two I've read

I gotta get to my library but Never Let It Go was one of my favorites and oh Mass Made Simple you know the nice thing about so what I tried to do with 40 years is I first, I've got this, I jokingly called the 10 commands with coaching. So that's part one. And the 10th commandment

is remember your mentors. And those came before. And then the second part is I tell you how I learned weightlifting. The 42 years now as a coach, and I started lifting lifting in 65 so I go through all the people who taught me and it's funny because I was at my reunion and someone had read 40 years and they said well I didn't realize Dave our ninth grade coach had such a huge impact on me all they could remember that he had a big nose and I thought to myself and that's why I write books and you're an idiot. Hey, tell me, Dan, what was it called again? 40 years, what? Who were a couple of those mentors coming up?

Well, okay. So Coach Freeman taught us what he called the Southwood program, power clean, military press, front squat, bench press. Hey, for middle school, junior high, come on. Of course, it would be Dick Notmeyer who taught me the Olympic lifts. He charged me 25 cents a week to train 15 hours a week. When I first met him, I weighed 162 pounds. Four months later, I weighed 202 pounds. Do you guys know track and field at all?

Yeah. I do not. Okay, look. In high school, I weighed 162 and threw the discus 170. What I needed was an engine, and Dick Notmar taught me Olympic lifts. And a funny story. My brother Gary just got married, so he hadn't seen me in a while. And I walked in the house, and he looked up from the kitchen table and went holy shit because you know I went from being a

look not a little boy but you know just a typical high school kid to you know these traps like this and big eyes and big ass big spider actors yeah, of course, when I went to Utah State, which was the hot, better discus throwing, Coach Ralph Maughan. So I've been very lucky. So I had a great Olympic lifting coach. I had a great throws coach. Certainly Dave Turner. He's a local guy.

He'll never be famous. I talk about him in the book a lot. Just one of those guys. He had a weightlifting club at a junior high. It's called Hercules. I competed for them my whole career after uh sports college and uh uh three days a week he opens the gym which is just the back room and he has about 50 boys do the olympic lifts and you know um and his workout lasts one hour and those kids go on and do really well,

the discipline. But, again, you'll never – he's one of those great coaches that makes a huge impact, but you don't – I just bought him. Is that your primary clientele, mostly junior high, high school kids? Oh, no, no. My clientele is all military and all professional teams. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah.

I don't – which is why when yeah and there there's i can only talk about some of it in limited capacity and it's not like i'm trying to be like that guy i'm not being all 007 or anything but you know it's it's like tiff my wife tiffany will tell you uh sometimes because of agreements i'm not allowed to tell you where I'm going, but it's not, it's not all James Bond. It's to protect the families. Because sometimes I'll go, if you can zero in on where I am, you also know where the families of some people are, and that's not something we want.

Yeah. No, totally, totally. Is that interesting? Did you just kind of fall into that with the military crowd, or was that an active pursuit on your end, like you wanted to be involved there? How did that happen? It happened in 98. We were getting a lot of guys injured, and these guys came around

and just kind of started talking to me because I had basically an intentional community of sorts in my backyard, highland game guys and early strong men would come and train with me because I do things a little different. And what I didn't realize later is that two of these guys were vetting me. And one of the reasons the guys liked what I do is, you know, if you're going to put a thing up on your wall this is what I'd say any jackass could be a problem finder I want people who are problem solvers and I

pride myself as a problem solver if you're getting hurt out in the field doing something I I liked it, we can do the following. Okay, we need to add more – if it's football, we need more tumbling. We need to be smarter about mixing overhead work with – we need to be – whatever the injury is. If people are getting hurt out in combat pulling hamstrings because of the certain thing these guys have to do, well, let's change the way we train.

And that's literally where I came up with the concept. I shouldn't have used his name. I call him Litvinos. It's either a squat or hinge. I know, exactly. Or a squat or hinge followed by a sled pull. And I shouldn't have used his name. It's a true story.

John Powell told me me but the freaking hammer throwers have turned into a bunch of that it's like a highland game guys I mean I used to love highland games I loved them and then it became a track meet in kilts they are and they it used to be you'd show up and there'd be a 56 pound weight that was a blob of iron that had a chain hammered into it, and then, you know, this crappy little handle. Now people complain, so is this a Mobius 4,000 56-pound weight? It's like, oh, God, you guys. Come on, man.

Back in the day, I had to do some crap, man. One time we had a hammerhead that had to have been this long, and it was a piece of – so we had a metal pipe. That was the handle. Oh, yes. There was no – None of that going on. Oh, my God.

It was one of the greatest workouts of my life, man. Hey, tell these guys about the – you know, in your book, you talk about the OG Litvinov where they do the 405 for eight front squats followed by the 400-meter sprint. Yeah. Sergey Litvinov. Listen to this, boys. Yeah.

So John Powell's at the 83 Worlds. In fact, it's one of his worst competitions ever. And you know what, Travis, let's get back to this story because there's two things I want to come back to. Okay. He was watching the other guys train, and he realizes something. He'll never be as strong as Deleese, the Cuban thrower. He's just in the weight room looking.

He goes, there's no way I can keep up with these guys. And then he looks over at Sergei Litvinov. Now, this is what John told me if it's not true. And by the way, you can never believe anything the Soviets say, so don't listen to them. Stop listening to the Soviets. Can I get an amen? What John told me is he front-squatted 180K.

Now, I got it wrong in the book. It should have been three 96, but 180 K for eight reps. And then immediately he did a 400 meter in about 75 seconds. And he did that three times. Wow. Yeah. Here.

Did you hear that? Did you want to, you understand how incredible that is? Yeah. Like I can't even fathom that. And I can front squat a lot of weight. But the key to the story is this. Yeah. Like, I can't even fathom that. And I can front squat a lot, wait. I'm like, yeah. But the key to the story is this.

He combined the squat with the run. And then I experimented with it and realized that, like, for American football, I call it, you know those gear changes you have? Okay, the tight end's coming at me. We arm fight. I'm keeping my outside leg free. The running back's coming this way then i sprint then i turn myself into a missile right gear change gear change well if your sport or activity demands gear changes swap teams you're laying down you jump up you sprint gear change right there's gear changes and so what i did is i began to use that one the weird thing is

is it made my discus go farther and remember if the shot that goes farther you're right if the discus goes farther you're right absolutely and that's why track and field and swimming are such important sports to kind of hang around because when you get success when something improves there whatever you did even if it's stupid it's is right like when barry ross quit having his sprinters jog and they try to do this they do these weird little walks to get themselves in shape he says you can do anything but you can't jog or you have to walk as fast as you can well the kids are just fl. All that flailing gets them in shape. I need to share one more lesson of the 83 world.

This is – absolutely. Keep going. Yeah, man. It's another day where I'm just going to have a perma-smile on my face while you talk. I told you. Tell stories. It's my favorite thing in the whole world, listening to stories.

So in 83, John Powell went to the Worlds, and he said, you know what? Qualifying distance was so short, and it's a number, okay. But here's the thing. He didn't make it because he had to throw at 9 a.m., and he had never trained at 9 a.m. He was an afternoon pro. But he said, I knew I could do it without a problem. I could throw that distance any day of the week. You can't at 3 p.m. He was an afternoon pro. But he said, I knew I could do without a problem. I could go that distance

any day of the week. You can't at 3 p.m. But not at 9 a.m. And I sat back there and it completely radically changed the way I coach. So we have like the state track meet in most states. And you'll get a schedule.

You've got some time. You've got about 6 to 8 weeks. And you look at it and you see that the men's,'ve got some time. You've got about six to eight weeks. And you look at it, and you see that the men's, the boys, the boys' shot puts at eight in the morning. Well, how many of your shot putters, okay, and I'll be as honest. None. None. So here's what I did. First thing I would talk to them is about their morning bowel movement.

Now, you're all going to laugh. No, that's important when you're lifting weights in the morning. But if Luke Bailey's got to get up, and normally he gets up at 6.30, mom makes him breakfast, about 7 he has the urge, takes care of it, goes to school, and at 8 o'clock he's sitting in his classroom like this, you know, writing down Shakespeare. At the state meet, he needs to have his implement weighed in by about 630. At 7 o'clock, when he's usually doing his business,

he's probably sitting around the bullpen with all of his competitors all trying not to look at each other. Is that the same thing? No. But it's still the same time. So what I would do is I would ask i would ask first off i always ask the principal and then i would clear it with the teachers and all i would ask is at first one thing we would begin to take sugar-free orange flavored metamucil uh early to train them to be able to

have a bowel movement almost on command about 4 30 or 5 o'clock okay right and command at about 4.30 or 5 o'clock. Okay? Right. And then at about before school started, at first it was very simple. It would be like if you're a hurdler, I might ask you to jog one lap and do a few stretches. And that would be it. So we're talking about you wouldn't even have to shower after that. Right. And then at the time, just practice being ready to go at eight o'clock sure what i discovered is if it if you're if it was 12 2 4 we didn't need to do anything for that that everybody was okay

at that but the eight and ten o'clock slots yeah we needed to have some discussions at the ten o'clock one i would say if you normally do this for a warm-up, double it. Yeah. That was all they needed. But if they had the 8 o'clock slot. So, I mean, I can tell you a million stories about how great of a coach I am, and they're all true. But the best coaching I ever did was when one of my athletes, Eric,

shouldn't have won the state championship. On his first throw, he was so nervous, he told me, he could only remember one thing. The first thing I ever taught him was to pick up your right foot. And he threw a 33-foot personal record on his first throw at the state meet, crushed his opponents. But I also reminded him later that his opponents would have probably beat them if they didn't all have to poo.

Yeah. So we did. Yeah. Obviously, he did a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and that's what we all pray for at the biggest competitions. Right, when you need it. But at the same time, he was probably the only person ready to go at 8 o'clock in the morning the

fact that he was nervous was unusual in the competition because usually everyone's like this yeah there's so that i hate to say that john's failures in the 83 worlds led to him being the oldest person ever to medal at the 87 worlds four years later he took the silver at age 40 which in track and field no way yeah that's about the same as weightlifting if you do that at weightlifting it'd be unheard of at 40 and those are similar you know they're also you know they're both going to be like that speed strength or faster you know velocity so yeah that's incredible yeah so coaching throwers you mentioned training deaf people the armed forces um and and you have this like system this structure built in but if anything it sounds like you have no problem just being incredibly flexible

around that system and and tailoring it to pretty much anybody. Let me share this with you. If you're going to work with me, the first thing I ask of you is I want you to work with an underserved population. So Taylor Lewis, who works with Stanford now, he specializes in a terrible issue called cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that's very difficult but no one wants. He was able to prove in a study that strength training helps cardiovascular tests for people with cystic fibrosis. Without doing cardio, weightlifting made them better at the cardio tests.

I like to check that out. That's cool. So I throw that out to you. Here's the point. If it works for the cystic fibrosis population, can't we sort of guess it's going to work with – and then I also like to work with the top-end people too. And here's what I figure.

If it works for someone with cystic fibrosis and it works for an elite athlete, then we can kind of guess it's going to work for everybody else. I learned more in strength. I coached a wheelchair basketball team and I've had four clients in my life that were recovering from strokes and, or I shouldn't even say recovering. They had strokes and then I became their trainer. Some of them recovered well. Some of them just had strokes and were getting by. I don't think I've ever learned as much in such a short period of time as you do when you're watching somebody whose brain does not, like the first step of that was me actually

trying to comprehend having a brain that didn't really communicate and fire to my body. You can't understand that when you're an athlete. You've relied on your brain and your body talking to each other for so long that then you look at it and you go, what do you mean? What do you mean it doesn't work? Like it doesn't fire? How do we? And then you can start solving problems from there. It was really tough. But see what you said? You said solving problems. You know, any idiot can tell me, well, these guys are hard to work with. Yeah, no kidding.

Really? Really? Thank you. Solve that problem. I always argue I had an all-female sophomore weightlifting class, 30-plus girls age 15 at once with me alone. I learned more about teaching tension and focus because wrangling them in because they had to talk about every single thing.

And you can't be strong if you don't have the mental focus and the physical tension. Right. If I'm talking to Travis while I'm trying to deadlift 275, I don't have the physical tension. I'm not safe. And, boy, so I learned some things from them. My friend Ann, who's deaf, she's really good about this.

You know, so when you – Ann took my – we got to know each other when she took a kettlebell course for me so I had to be very good about facing Ann and I had to be very good about not using my mouth so much man I would be exhausted by the end of those days but I was a better coach

that's awesome I want you to tell them about when you had the class and you had limited class and you, you know, you had limited equipment. There's like, you set up three barbells at three different weights, split the boys up. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Sure. Well, you know what? I can go all day. I love this man. You guys ever lifted weights together? Not yet. Oh my gosh. Even with nationals being in Utah?

I was at the meet. You were at the meet? Yeah. I've been to Salt Lake like three times. I know. Next time, just call me and we'll do something. I will for sure. My knock, I find the Olympic lifting almost, it's like Highland Games.

It's unwatchable. That's what – the press-out rule. No one knows what a lift is. We're at the National Masters meet. We're looking at the 65-year-old age division, and they're redlining some poor bastard who had – blew his shoulder out as a kid. He's got 30 pounds of brace here, and he does that.

Oh, no, that's a press out. Yeah. It's like I just – Dan, do you know that in America – boy, I'm not going to go on a tirade because this is about you, but like in America, we are tougher on that dumb rule than if you go to the world championships, you won't see any of that. It literally has to be like

this to get a lockout. My thought is, what advantage is it to press out? Zero. It's harder. It's harder? Yeah. It's the stupidest rule. Okay, let me get to my setup for the way. Yeah, yeah. So if you're working with groups like

65 at once, so what I do is I set up stations. You can do it a number of ways, but let's just do it this way. So what I like to do, especially with American football, so we're going to do front squat and then bench press, hurdle walkover, a tumbling run, and then power snatch. And we're going to go, we going to do 3-3-3 If I have seven front squat stations, what I'll do is I'll just put the natural weights up. It can be.

So we could have, if we have some people, we might have to have the empty bar, 45 pounds. We could have 65, 85. We could have 95. We could have 115, 135, 165. If we had these bumpers, 35 and 25, so that's 165. So it was two big plates. Right. And then 185.

And if you got, you know, over time, you might move to 205, and everyone slides up. So what you do is you just stay with those natural weights. And so I do 185 front squat for three when i'm sliding over the bench press travis does his one third uh 185 for three uh the other guys are spotting me on the bench then i walk over to the hurdle walk over to my tumbling run do my power snatch come back i do a set of two come back do a set come back through Come back, do a set, come back through. Do a set of one, come back through. And what happens is that the whole time there is everybody's moving.

And the nice thing is I can stand there by myself like this, and as long as we're moving, we're good. When I work with large groups, I get away from everything. I hate percents anyway, but what I'm trying to get is as much volume. This is with the younger athletes. They're going to improve with what's probably the most ignored thing in our field, repetitions. Totally. Yeah.

Repetitions used to be the answer to all questions. Now I look at some of these training programs that these boys doing, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, three sets of three. And by the way,

that's, that's fine. But I just don't think that's enough reps for a 14 or 15 year old. I agree. They need practice. You know, right. Just like any other sport.

Typing, writing, talking, debating, cooking, practice, practice, practice, practice. You mentioned tumbling a couple times. Is that actually a part of your – it sounds like real GPP training.

Yeah, I'm a huge believer that when I worked at the one setting, we had two full days a month. Every other Wednesday was a tumbling-focused day. And that's where I go over somersault that's the forward roll shoulder shoulder roll cartwheels both ways um I used to we used to call cartwheels for distance but the gymnasts have another name for it I don't remember um you can do you could do like monkey rolls it was in the in the wrestling room you can do monkey rolls you can do uh that's where we would do bear crawls superman crawl uh probably spider-man calls uh gi joe crawl um just oh handstands uh handstands against the wall headstand family um backwards rolling and the idea was i think the best preventative for shoulder injuries is tumbling because you

learn to roll. So I observed, they said we had, when I got there, they had a real problem with shoulder injuries with the running backs. And they were doing these little band exercise like this. And I thought, you know,

not to be an asshole, but that's just a bunch of shit. And what happened is you can see it on the film with the one boy, clearly he's being tackled as he's going down, he reaches for the ground and, and no offense, you've got two people on top of you. What do you think you're going to do? One arm, push up them down the field. No, roll with the tackle, stay in the play.

And so most injuries in football and shoulders very often come from stabbing the ground and popping it out the back. So by teaching them to roll, but there's another thing. So you've got your X's and O's, okay? And on paper, you're going to block me. Good luck on that. Okay. so if I get knocked down and roll back up, well, you did your job, but I still made the tackle. So what it does is it allows me, you don't have 11 defenders now, you have to block me twice

because I'm going to roll and jump back up. I might do a backwards roll, flip back up, be back in the play. I might leap a backwards roll, flip back up, be back in the play. I might leap over a blocker and roll and make the tackle. Do you know Ethan Reeves? Oh, I love the man.

Yeah, yeah. I figured you sounded just like him. That's what he would say. I just talked to University of Tennessee chat new to just the other day. That's where he is now, right? Yeah, yeah. Wise choice, Wake Forest. Real smart. that's where he is now right yeah yeah yeah yeah hey good wise choice wake forest real smart see yes he's still yeah i mean they've still done good though i mean like i don't know sometimes you just need to change everybody including ethan i think if you're

anywhere too long you get complacent yeah maybe so maybe yeah so they're still doing good i don't know if it's the recruiting or if it's the coaches, but I like both. I try to stay neutral in that area. I like Ethan. I love Coach Oregon. We just hung out, so I'm neutral. I try to – what is it?

I'm Sweden. Is it Switzerland? Switzerland. That's right. That's right. Everybody needs Switzerland. That's right. I feel like that calisthenics – or not even the calisthenics,

the tumbling side, rolling, that has to be – I mean, we do that stuff when we're kids, and it makes a lot of sense. And somewhere along the way, we completely lose that skill. But let's be honest. Okay, I'm 63. The most dangerous thing in my home is the floor. Right. Yeah.

When you come train with me, you'll see me up and down off the ground. Every workout every day I do groundwork. I get up even if it's just getting up and down off the ground because you know, I, in a sense I should fear the floor. Well, okay. So that's a lifetime. I teach my kids to tumble because I want them at age 85 to have one more option when they slip right and then the other thing is that your vestibular system it once you start tumbling the first time you do it you'll probably get nauseous in fact my interns used to always vomit when they try to do

it the first day and the kids would think it was funny, but I had to remind them that I gave them six weeks of teaching and they're getting it today. But that idea of crashing to the ground, rolling and jumping up, up here, man, you're doing this. I'm not saying you're concussed, no, but you're spinning around and pretty soon after a few times of doing the big leaping shoulder rolls, you pop up, and it's like, oh, I'm not dizzy. I'm not freaked out. I'm okay.

That's where I want you. We're going to take a quick break to thank our friends over at Shadow Creative Studios. Go talk to my boy Yannick, what they have going on at shadow creators right now. They are taking your podcast from an idea to live in two weeks. That includes setup, branding, logos, cover art, and more. It's an easy process. All you do is record the episode and upload everything else is done for you. And perfectly produced episodes show up on all of the podcast channels. There's a simple payment structure and they can even help

the sponsors to make your show profitable on day one. Not many people can do that. Trust me. And podcast ad revenue in 2020 is expected to be over $659 million. That's so much money. That's a lot. I don't have $659 million. That's how much companies are spending on podcast ad revenue. That's four times more people listening to podcasts every week than watching the Game of Thrones season finale. That's a legitimate stat. A billion people watch Game of Thrones. 50% of all homes are podcast fans. Use the code SHR shrug to save $200 and get a free consultation with my man Yannick over at shadow creative studios. Go to podcast.shadowstude.io. That's podcast.shadowstude.io. Podcast.shadowstude.io. You're going to save hundred dollars plus get a free consultation using the coupon code shrugged and i want to thank our friends over at bioptimizers if there's one mineral you

should be worried about not getting enough of it's magnesium magnesium is the body's master mineral powerful over 300 critical reactions including detoxification fat metabolism energy even digestion is influenced by the presence of magnesium. There are two big problems here. Magnesium has been largely missing from U.S. soil since the 1950s, which explains why it's estimated that up to 80% of the population may be deficient. And most supplements contain only one or two forms of magnesium, when in reality, there are at least seven that your body needs to benefit from. That's why i'm excited to tell you about a new magnesium product that i've been taking now called magnesium breakthrough it's the ultimate magnesium supplement easily the best i've i've seen or experienced with all seven forms of this mineral i'm even more excited because it's back in stock

magnesium breakthrough has been selling faster than the company who makes it. Bioptimizer has been able to keep up with. It's already sold out a few times. And due to the supply shortages with everything going on in the world, it could very well be sold out again shortly. That's why we were able to arrange for some stock to be set aside just for Shrugged listeners. Seriously, with the volume discounts combined with our 10% custom code SHRUGGED10, you can save

up to 40% off select packages of Magnesium Breakthrough. Pretty amazing value. And as promised, that deal is only available on this specific website at magbreakthrough.com forward slash shrug that's M-A-G-B-R-E-A-K

T-H-R-O-U-G-H dot com forward slash shrug that's m-a-g-b-r-e-a-k-t-h-r-o-u-g-h dot com forward slash shrug mag breakthrough dot com you won't find this deal on amazon or even the company's own website and it is exclusive to barbell shrugged listeners we've also completely revamped their checkout process it's much friendlier and easier. Magnesium Breakthrough is the most effective magnesium supplement on the internet. The whole thing. Say goodbye to having to buy seven different

bottles of magnesium to get the complete dose. Go to magbreakthrough.com forward slash shrugged and use the coupon code shrugged10 to save up to 40%. Shrugged fans, we're getting back to the show. I'm totally with you. I almost got kicked out of my daughter.

She's not even two. Kicked out of gymnastics class because the teacher came over and said, hey, this is the kids' class. You're not supposed to go that hard in the paint, Dad, because I was over there tumbling with them. I love that stuff. And you get on some gymnastics floors and everything feels good. But so many adults just lose that ability to go inverted and do a handstand. It's crazy.

Well, here's another thing. How long can you hang from a pull-up bar? I have the standard of at least 30 seconds. Because if something bad happens, that 30 seconds gives me time to go over and help you. You're hanging from a bridge. I mean, I'm talking about real life. That 30 seconds might not be enough, but at least it gives you a little.

I would say monkey bars, anything that climbs or crawls, I like in a program. Me too. So any kind of vertical, any kind of horizontal, that just – and like I used to tell my students, you know, if gas that's lighter than air gets in this room, the best crawlers survive. And if gas that's heavier than air gets in the room, the best climbers survive.

Either way. Either way, it's not a bad idea. It survived. I agree. I love with my son. I think Doug does the same, but you know, I start all my kids at one in gymnastics. Well, we have this crazy virus that can't go, but, but normally they go start at one, one years old. And, and my rock is like, now he's only five, but they're, he's, they're wanting him to compete.

Of course he gets, he can't legally until he's six, but they already got him on the team teaching him. But he's so important for whatever he wants to do, you know? So I work with this very famous baseball player, and he tells me that he thinks his advantage is he never played year-round baseball. He did gymnastics and bicycle racing. So once you've fallen down a hill ass over tea kettle getting hit with the baseball is not that big a deal and once you learn tension you know once

you learn to make yourself tense like gymnasts do you also learn how to do that and it's interesting because he thinks those are the two skills that most major leaguers don't have enough of yeah i think that skill that we that and i'd love to kind of hear your thoughts on just the the broader term of athleticism but implementing stuff like that into a program for people that may not have a background and are just learning tumbling or you know brain and body connectivity at a later age well what age are we talking here are we bringing in a like general population that's going to come in and they're they're entering the weight room for the first time and in their late 20s and you know they're trying they come in thinking they're going to lose weight and they're going to join this program and it's going to be great and they're not realizing that they're already way behind yeah that's you know my daughter lindsey uh she wants me to buy this six or

seven hundred dollar tumbling mat that we'll put right there right and uh because she feels that for any women who come here she thinks that tumbling is the best fat loss thing you can do. Now, the fact that you generally throw up a lot when you first do it, she's probably right. Immediate ROI. But also, too, it's like they all say, there's that bizarre exhaustion you get. You know, we would only tumble on the long day. We'd only tumble for about 40 minutes. But if you've ever tumbled for 40 minutes.

Yeah, that's a long time, man. I mean, we also did a bunch of practice handstands and did buddy stuff and then crawls. You know, I try to swim through. Funnest thing we ever did was bring in the high jump mats and have everybody do flying somersaults onto the mat. Yes. Watching your offensive lin to do that. Jeez, that's –

Not fun. But you're right. And so what you need to do with this concept of, you know, what are you going to do with this group of – how do you deal with people who are untaught in the physical skills? Yeah. You don't want to move into tumbling. You know, that's kind of the thing I noticed.

You know, I like the kettlebell people, but sometimes I find them a little bit. That's enough. Okay. But. You're a kettlebell person. What do you mean? I guess you are everything. You're like barbell kettlebell.

We're definitely kettlebells. I think of you when I think kettlebell. Sure. But they fall in love with this Turkish getup thing, and it's like, that's nice that you do the Turkish getup. And the Turkish getup is a great assessment tool, and there's some real value to it. For one thing, you move on the ground.

And if you have an issue somewhere, by working around your particular physical issue we might discover some great things having said that it's not the answer to all questions you know when when i knock you on the ground in the fist fight don't turkish get up back up you know just roll and get back in i would say please do do that and then see what happens as i'm kicking your face yeah yeah so um so it is difficult now what i guess what i'm trying to say is there's a real value then in teaching like the turkish getup but in the turkish getup i've taken a few parts and taught people in this position now, take the hand and

we're going to go into a shoulder roll. And so that's what I've discovered. So what you need is you need a system. So you take the Turkish getup. There's a part of it. It's basically in that transition period when your left hand, your left knee, your left foot are on the ground, your right foot's on the ground. Your right foot's on the ground. And if you go like this, you throw this hand through, and you're in a perfect position for a side roll. And so I'll teach that to people, and they'll go, oh, what did I just do? I say, ah, you know, it's great.

A judo roll, a martial arts roll. But the idea is that roll is that position, the neck, you know, you're protecting your skull you're rolling you know you're rolling on the earth like you're a wagon wheel that's what's going to save you for slip on ice right instead of going ah you know protect yourself yeah or getting in it or if you How you bring unschooled people into the varieties of human movement, that's – and especially when people have such negative connotations with physical education, exercise. Yeah.

Dan, have you heard of this book? These boys are going to get sick of me talking about it. Have you heard of Spark, the book about how exercise makes you smarter? It's an awesome book. I'm not sure I can get smarter, but let me see it. No, I don't know it. Here, put that back up again, okay? Oh, guys, so this is the camera that has the telephone in it.

Travis, make noise so you come up first, okay? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so this is the camera that has the telephone in it. But, Travis, make noise so you come up first, okay? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yo, yo, yo. All right, okay. All right. It's awesome. So it talks all about how important – so let me – long story short, in Naperville, Illinois, they did this study, and that school in Naperville that did this study competed.

There was this big worldwide test that was given to see what countries were the most advanced. America, in general, was like number 20. We weren't that good. But this school was like number one in the whole world because they entered on their own to see what they would do going against the world. And they destroyed everybody, China, Japan, they won. But what they had implemented was they were going to, they were doing PE before school started, but as mainly like cardio, tumbling, gymnastics and running, and then they were crushing their test scores. So then it led scientists to start studying and understanding that the hippocampus is what produces a lot of this thing called the – what is it?

Oh, dude, there's like a neurotropic factor. I totally blanked out. I'll tell you something. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the hippocampus produces that, which is what produces more neurons, which produces better connections. Anyway, it's the bee's knees. Well, you know, in Finland, kindergarten is organized play all day long. That's all they do.

The kids show up and they play. And their thought process is letting those kids play and invent their own games, communicate, figure out strategies for things. Oh, yeah. That is more valuable than, you know, it's like we're celebrating my grandson's birthday today. And he's in the first grade. He reads at a level higher than I was in the third grade.

His math skills, he knows multiplication tables, which I learned, which I learned what third fourth grade but here's the thing so and not to rip on Danny's same name as me but okay so you beat me learning multiplication tables but outside of you know sets and reps I rarely use them what about those other skills that they're not doing anymore he doesn't know how to play one foot off the gutter i don't think he knows how to play hide and seek uh hide and seek and tag are very good these are games hide and seek and tag are two games that one i hate to say it but shit down, those are the games that are going to keep you alive. Yeah. And those games probably are older than our, well, I would say they're probably as old as our use of language, if not older.

I love it. That's how you get fast. Yeah. And remember there was that one kid in the schoolyard who was phenomenal at tag. You could never get it. And, you know, he had all those abilities you know i'll get these questions sometimes about damn what do you do for agility nothing by tag uh what do you what do you do for this god for god's sakes go play tag and if you really want to find out about yourself go play hide and seek you know you're going out

there in an environment with someone trying to find you. You're trying to make yourself as small as you can, as dark as you can. Oh, dude, I'm incredible at hide and seek. I'm just going to say it. See, I'm getting a little tired of you bragging here. I want to see it. I want to see. We're not going to lift weights together.

We're going to hide and seek. I still play. My kids're going to hide and seek. I still play. My kids and I play hide and seek. Folks, I just want this to be public right now. Travis is calling me out on hide and seek. Absolutely. Mine is drawn, son. Michael and Isaiah.

Here we go. Tag's coming back. They just launched a brand new TV show about professional tag. They're going crazy. Tag's real. I'm so with you on the whole agility thing. It's so overplayed. All the parents.

You know what I did then? When I was really big and more in the strength and conditioning, less in the way of the game, I had a ladder and all these crazy things just so the parents would see it. They'd be like, oh, you do agility. Oh, yeah, I love agility. Then they would leave.

I would never use any of that stuff. You know, like we're not doing this ladder. I mean, if you want to play on the ladder, come in early, do what you want. But, like, we're going to do stuff that actually works on the field. No one throws a discus at me. There's no need for me to do agility. You know? Right.

And in American football, really, your eyes are so much faster than your feet. You know, if you read – you know, if you know the scouts, if you know your playbook and you know basically what they're trying to do, you watch the way the huddle breaks and you look for those subtle human signals that I'm getting the ball. That's agility. Yes.

To me doing this is a thousand times faster than me moving my feet all over the place. Going like this. That never happens on the field. Exactly. And if I can, if I can have no false steps, I beat the guy who runs a three,

four 40 who has 50 false steps yeah i was going to ask you if you had to choose between squat a front squat a deadlift or a carry and that's you can only choose one of those three movements to do for the rest of your life what do you choose well only from my experience the carries i knew you were saying because that's what it did for me yeah why let's hear it but you know the front squat was the thing that got my body weight up the front squat is the career changer when i was 17 18 and then the loaded carry was the career changer in fact i think i even have the journal right here. I got my lights on, so I can't see it as well. Sorry, guys. He actually has no pants on.

Amazing. Where did you get that from an hour ago? Amazing. Amazing. So that's just for me. But again, there's no scenario where you have to worry about that. But back in 2002, I wrote that thing, and I said that there's three kinds

of weightlifting. Putting weight overhead, picking it up off the ground, and then carrying it for time and distance. Funny thing is, I still feel pretty good about that as the basics. Now the upside of squats, and this is something I've only come up to understand recently, is since you're not

gripping it, since it's not grip dependent dependent that's where the muscle gains come from and that took me years to kind of wrap because you don't grip it you get more gains yeah so okay here lean body mass actually deadlift grip dependent when you do pull-ups grip down snatch clean deadlift grip dependent right when you, clean, deadlift, grip dependent. Right. When you squat, so just you know about homunculus, man, right?

That weird little drawing with the big eyes and the big hands. A lot of our nerves go into here. Right. So if we're relying on our grip strength, I just think that it becomes much more of a nervous system adaption. But when you do squats, you're going farther than you could, especially with high rep squats, than you could if you relied on your grip. So that's, I mean, this is something I only thought about in the last few weeks because people keep giving me and I think it's a false dichotomy I don't like binary I don't like either or so what's better deadlift or squat and it's

like well you know I you can get really strong with a big I mean really freakishly strong with a big deadlift but you can almost get freakishly strong with a big back squat and then and so that's what that's what got me started on this. And then I thought about, yeah, but if you want more lean body mass, more mass, why do squats work better than deadlifts? And that's what ran me down that road. I think that might be right, yeah. I guess, I mean, I can see that.

I guess the squat would go through a little bit more of a range of motion. I might play something into that. Do you choose the, do you take the carries just because of the, you're actually moving and the way your pelvis and it's more functional in a way? So I've moved to a phrase called moving planks recently. So I'm a big believer in tension, okay? Now, as an Olympic lifter, you need to be at the right level of tension. As a discus thrower, it's going to be a little bit less.

The snatch and the discus, they tie in together. But one of the things we have to teach people is to be able to hold tension while moving. Yeah. So that's why I like the overhead squat so much I always have because I've got to be tense tense tense but I'm also sliding between my thighs to squat right yeah so gobbled squat very simple brilliant exercise whoever invented it the idea of a moving plank there. So if you do one-handed, what I call suitcase carries,

that's one-handed walks, your whole body has to plank up. I love that. Put that load on the inside. So these are moving planks. So for me, I like the concept of when you do a bear hug carry, I call it anaconda strength, but that pressure that you have to have inside your body. It's the worst.

Those carries are the hardest. Yeah. You have to stand there and get all the benefits, but the second your feet start to move, you have to do twice the work. It's like what Stu McGill found out with the yoke carry it's impossible to do a yoke carry you can't do a yoke carry it's physically impossible do we do so then he studied how the muscles worked and realized that the qls began to yeah steal energy they were stealing power from all over the body and And it's like, that's what I want my athlete to be.

The word fit means knitted. The more knitted you are as an athlete, so that I want an athlete who every time they take a step is, or even in the air, still, you still got to contest with this person, even if the feet are off the ground or just one foot. So, you know and when you throw uh there's no loss when you're airborne you know just that's that's my thought i know that steven gill is like just for our listeners um if you teach athletes like he

actually found that it helped athletes change directions by doing these yoke carries because of that very reason when he's talking about so it instead of doing ladders, if that's what you're doing, if you do it, if you like it, do it. But if you actually want to get your athletes faster, be able to cut, do some of the yoke carries. And if you can't afford yokes, I use the Dave Draper TrueSquat. So that's that little – it's a – Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

A little blue thing. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The little blue thing. Oh, yes. So if you can't afford a full cage, you can do the barbell and do it. The only thing you have to be careful of, you've got to make sure you've got – I'm not a big believer in collars, but in this case, you really need locked-down collars. Why no collars?

I teach you Olympic lifts. I think that I like the fact that if you do it wrong, the weights slide off the bottom. It makes a lot of noise, and I can go, yeah, that's not what we want. Immediate tactile feedback. I like it. Yeah. Yeah.

So sometimes – so I live here in Utah. Just over there is the largest rattlesnake den, I think, in the world, Mount Olympus. That's where they come and live together in the winter. Oh, my God. Hiking. Yeah. So one of the things I like about rattlesnakes is they have this little

rattle. And they let you know. And very clearly, you know, don't be't be stupid get away from me I'll kill you you've been alone there they'll never bother I don't like what we call the illusion of safety that's in the weight room so I like the old-school squat racks now maybe for power lift you can tell me something else I'm fine with that I love I teach weightlifting. What are you talking about?

Yeah. So I like ones that are independent, and if you do wrong, they get knocked over and you have to stand there. I like things to look dangerous. That's one of the reasons I like kettlebells in the high school setting. Kettlebells look dangerous. They don't look friendly. You know, the athletic director will buy all those three- and four-pound weights with padding on them.

We don't want those. I want the weight room to look dangerous. I want you to be afraid when you snatch that the weights could come off so that you stay inside you know that's my theory you can disagree with it no i don't disagree i totally i totally agree look you guys keep talking i have to go sign a letter of intent with a girl that's coming i don't know if you know i'm starting a new weightlifting program at lenore ryan that's why he's got a collar shirt on right now well i, I'm looking all fresh.

What school? Lenore Ryan. Did she go to Lenore? Yeah. Yep, she's going. All my guys are going there. I know. Why do you think I'm going there? So, yeah, it's in Hickory, North Carolina. Lenore Ryan. Lenore Ryan. It's Lenore dash. Small liberal arts college in Western

North Carolina. You're not in Ashland. Where are you? I'm in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, but that's in H North Carolina. You're not in Ashland. Where are you? I'm in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, but that's in Hickory. We're moving to Hickory. It's in between here and Asheville. It's an hour from Asheville. I've spent a lot of time in North Carolina. My niece lives there.

Wilmington is there. I know you've got to roll, but if I get a chance, I'll visit you. Y'all have a good time. Right on. See you, Travis. Right on, man. I wanted to get back a little bit to creating the core stability.

I was dying to jump in because it's one of the reasons I love going out and running wind sprints so much is the forced stability that comes with actually moving fast. And I think it's something that people don't train very often is just moving at a hundred percent or just opening it up and, and getting after it. Um, do you teach a lot of just pure sprint work and having people just go? So I use the system. I want to say it was McNair. Boy, it's older. Steve McNair maybe. He was real big in Utah.

Most track coaches know the AB stuff and all that. And now, so I'm also a track coach. So I'm going to try to put my hat on both. I think there are drills we can do in the weight room. I think there are drills we can do in the weight room uh i think there are drills we can do on the track uh i think we can improve the quality of a sprinter's movements but genetics and geography are still be bigger um some kids are just born faster and if you're from jamaica the national sport is sprinting yeah the biggest i raced johan

blake in a foot race yeah he kicked the crap out of me right he is the fastest man in the world understandably but that was the cool one of the coolest experiences my whole life you know what i know what it sounds like when a deer is about to get eaten by a cheetah that's all i can say that's as that's as accurate as it gets it sounds like this bam then you go down then the deer has no chance yeah so i do think there's drills we can do i do think there's some strength training we can do but it is going to be tough to overcome dna and if someone you know if you're from southern californ California, Florida, Texas, and you can go outside all the time and go fast, it's going to be different from a kid from Utah, Minnesota.

Yeah. So, you know, you can't ignore that. I do agree with that one coach from Illinois, and his name just dropped out of my head. I am starting to believe more and more in the speed trap. You know, you put it at 10 meters apart, 20 meters apart, and you time and record and post all the numbers. Sorry, my garbage man is about to come by.

I'm sorry. You're good. I can't hear it. So you have your athletes do flying 20s. And Bob here normally does a 2.2.2 well today he does a 2.6 we all know he's dogging but all the good athletes are doing 2.1 by the way that's incredibly fast he figures out quickly i've got to come up with ways to go from 2.6 to 2.5 to 2.4 to 2.3 and so he starts to play around he figures out that running like a soccer player doesn't help he figures out that hitting 2.6 to 2.5 to 2.4 to 2.3. And so he starts to play around.

He figures out that running like a soccer player doesn't help. He figures out that hitting his heels in the ground doesn't help. He figures out that throwing your head back and forth doesn't help. Sorry about that. It's going to be a little loud for about a second here. You're good. We can't hear it. So the flying – what I like about the flying speed trap 20s and 10s is that the feedback is the head coach.

And if you start – if you should be running – you run these until you start getting slow and then you stop. Interesting is that most coaches now are finding out that the athletes at times only have three quality flying 20 meters. Three, one, two, two three which changes the way you should look at sports that you coach so if you have your wide receivers doing nines uh fly patterns deep patterns and you expect them not to dog it they physically can't do what you just asked them to do yeah you have to pull your wide receivers out a lot more and if you have a star you're wasting them on running pull them out i mean it's a read for the other team but you're cutting your own throat by having you're we yeah we actually watched johan's training session while we were down there

um i wish mash was on right now because he was down there with us and i think he ran a total of like five sprints at speed that day warm-ups probably took him half an hour of all just skill practice foot hitting the track all all that all the practice he opened it up to x percent for four or five actual runs and then sprints and then shut it down. And I was amazed because I feel like the conversation of volume in the United States is like the only thing that matters. Like we're just beating people to the ground. And then I'm looking at the best in the world and he runs five and goes home. Right.

And we had a famous american was pretty good he had four 30 minute workouts a week and everyone said he's lazy no he's a sprinter and i call that quadrant four where you only have maybe one quality at the highest levels unions can go and i'm not qualified to coach that uh i'm not qualified to coach the Chinese Olympic team. Rare error, you know. And I can't coach Jamaican sprinters, you know. Yeah. Because that is the ability, especially as an American coach,

to just be, okay, you're done. Charlie Francis, the great Canadian sprint coach, I mean, by God god if you get a chance reading speed trap and his book on sprinting you should read that about once every two three years first well there's a lot of reasons but my favorite thing is if you pr you're done for the day so if you're in the weight room and you break your lifetime best in the lat pull down for five you are finished your workout for the day is done uh most coaches i know including me would go okay let's go heavier let's try another one let's let's go win the waiver because you know who wants to win the worlds you know we want yeah

we want to prove how strong we are to the frat boys and that hot girl over there you know yeah i actually i know travis is super into the velocity based training where he's measuring the speed of the barbell you know squats and cleans and whatever else you play with that at all uh i just missed it a long time ago i don't like technology in the weight room yeah keep simple it's weird to say that i like it out on the track with the speed track, but that's only because people I know who are really good say that's the way to go. So I'll say, okay, all right, okay. But in the weight room, you know, not to rip on any of the universities I work with, but I'm thinking of one that has a long horn on their helmet.

You know, every single athlete has their own iPad. Every single lift they do is connected to the machine i think it's great my only concern is how long is that going to last before it breaks uh i went to a gym and this guy had bought he said what do you think he's had this whole about 80 television sets on the wall and they all so i have my own heart rate monitor and i can watch how i'm doing and he goes what do you think he goes this i go this he goes this is the future i go have any of these broken down oh yeah there's a few technical issues well within about they break about one a day

so you just spent you know i don't know sixty thousand dollars on that wall, and they break one a day. Where I have plates in there that Susan Northway gave me in 1991 that I still use every single day. And my grandkids are going to say, what the hell was his problem with all this shit? They'll be throwing that stuff into a dumpster, you know? Yeah. So it's just – Well, a lot of that stuff too is just about recruiting right they bring people in

it's a big wow factor and then they're you're like i gotta go there they got the ipad thing hooked up to the heart rate to the brain to the foot and honestly you know like my buddies in the nfl tell you every game comes down to five plays you know know, and that's the genius of Belichick. Belichick nudges those five plays into his direction. Yeah. He doesn't get it right, but he nudges. Yeah. Man, we're a little bit over on the hour, I promised.

I would love to stay on here. Anytime I have someone like you on the show, I just want to crack open a beer, have a cup of coffee at the same time, do all the things. Do you guys want to do this again real soon? Let's not wait 20 years. I would love to do that. Just pick a date in the next couple of weeks.

Let's do it again. Beautiful. Anything I didn't cover you want to talk about? I mean, all of it. I would only be cracking into another 30-minute conversation that we could do on the next one. I will be in touch with you very shortly, and we'll do this again. One thing I hope you're hearing,

though, I'm still trying to figure out some things. Yeah, actually, that's one of my favorite questions to ask anybody that's been in this thing for 40-something years. What are you still learning? Well, like that thing about the... okay, I don't like versus questions. I don't like binary on-off.

But this idea of when I finally figured out, I think, why squats are good for building mass and deadlifts aren't. I just found that that's been rattling around my head for a lot longer than I think. And I think so so that got me down a road and so right now I'm spending a lot of time trying to think about our relationship with our grip you know and how can I make athletes better without so we need a strong grip but we also have to train you know to not let the grip inhibit all the other things. So now I'm back to this conversation I had probably in the 70s with straps or no straps and some of those other things.

That's exactly what I was going to ask next. Yeah, so I mean, as an old school Olympic lifter, straps, never use straps. Oh, no one needs straps but then yeah if my grip is holding me back you know it's so it's kind of fun so that answer i don't have for right now the other thing we talked about it this morning we recorded a show this morning talking um and one of the points that came up and something that I have noticed, and this is something that I notice now that I don't lift as heavy or as aggressively and there is way less ego involved and I just lift weights because I love it. If needed, I have to go and clean 90 something percent because there's people around and we're at somewhere and it's something the ego needs to show up in the weight room. I can feel in my grip when I go and set a hook grip on a clean or a

snatch. I know before I even set my hips, if I'm going to make that lift, because I can feel the bar in my hands so much better. Like it's like the hook grip is set better. It's deeper in my hands. My, my like knuckles point down probably not even a measurable amount, but it feels much better. And I, I just, I know if it's made or not before my heels hit the ground or my hips are set.

I just know when I grab the bar. So we used to train on crappy York bars, old, old, old York bars, bad York bars. And we went to meets with the sports pals. They had those new elico bars that when you start to pull them off the ground they stayed on the ground for a few inches it seemed like and then when it hit you on the chest

it would bounce and send you vertical and I could I was good for 10 kilos more with that bell so I'm with you 100% I never really thought about the neurologic neurological side of having so many sensors in your hands and like how important touch is to the way we move well the more well i don't i have a dentist appointment but um

because i go three times a year folks because that's what you're supposed to do. I thought that's normal plus one. Yes, and then I floss twice a day because that's what you're supposed to do. But getting back to this grip thing, you know, when you're exhausted, it is – to me, I see my personal exhaustion. Last summer, I had a tough week. It wasn't good at all. I was very ill while I was doing my tour of England, my teaching tour. I teach at St. Mary's in Twickenham. Well, I was ill. I was sick, sick, sick. My my brother died I got a phone call from my nephew at 2 in the morning my brother died I wasn't doing good and the

next day I had to fill out a form and I was typing and I made so many mistakes I'm a good typist and I can fly typing but I was typing moose cap licking licks and I stopped and I it's so sad. Here I am grieving. I'm ill, I'm grieving, and instantly what do I think about is weightlifting. And what I thought about is, by God, it's true. Emotionally fatigued, physically fatigued, intellectually fatigued, my fingers didn't work right.

And I'm starting to think that that thing that Stefan Fernholm taught me years ago, where you take a pencil and you hit it on a piece of paper as fast as many as you can in 10 seconds, then you count those daily. I came up with a thing called the tap test. This would be 1998. Mike Rosenberg had a guy that's worked with it. We hit the space bar. By the way, it's still apps.

People stole the app. They're all over it. But you hit the space bar as fast as you can. You get a number. So say like on the space bar one, I'm at 82. If I'm suddenly okay, I'm at 82, 82, 82, 83, you know, heads and tails kind of thing. Suddenly I'm down to 64 one day. Don't train.

And it's weird to tell that to people, how much information I can get from that index finger tapping. Because if it doesn't go as fast as it should, it's indicating that I have a fatigued, well, maybe even neural, if your nervous system's fatigued, man, you are electricity.

My good friend Dr. Frankenstein proved that. I don't know if you read his research, but it's very good. Yes. That's a joke, folks. I have actually seen somebody paralyze themselves in real life, and you see the electricity all at once go out because it shorts and spreads throughout the body. And one,

it was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen in my life. Not by a little bit, but I also, I'm getting like kind of freaked out even just thinking about it right now. Like my heart just, yeah. But you also objectively view it you go oh wow that's like if you got struck by lightning the whole thing is just electricity inside and then it shorts and goes everywhere instead of where it's supposed to go and you can like see the electricity

like phase out through your body jesus that just freaked me out so much just thinking about that moment. But yeah, it's very, very crazy seeing. When I was young, there was this thing, it was at an amusement park in San Francisco. It was near Seals Point, but you would hold it like this, and it had spark in it. It had a level level of i'm sure this was safe we had to squeeze this thing like this together and when it touched it gave you some static well it just i think you got a prize if you held it for five ten seconds but you couldn't you couldn't because the second the two things touched and you got sparked your hand just gave up on you. Yeah.

Wondering. So to me, and we're talking about where I'm heading. My work now is very clear where I'm heading for the rest of my life. I still think the first thing that happens is the nervous system adapts. And the way to train the nervous system is through repetitions. And what we call etching, like etching on glass. You want to have a clear etch. You want to have a clear path for the nervous system is through repetitions and what we call etching, like etching on glass. You want to have a clear etch. You want to have a clear path for the nervous system. From there, we get that bizarre hormonal change that Rob Wolf calls the hormonal cascade,

which I think is a beautiful term. And then after that, I think we get those cardiovascular and every other system change. But I'm still convinced, and I've been thinking this a long time, coach's job, number one, is to clear the clear nervous system path. So this is like something that's super interesting to me, because I actually had this conversation of like, what are are we I was in a car for like an hour and a half with somebody that I super respect their opinion do you know Rob McIntyre by chance out of Tampa

he's been in college strength and conditioning for a while does a lot of WWE guys yeah okay but I was like man like the more I'm in this kind of world you just lost But I was like, man, the more I'm in this kind of world, I feel – You just lost it.

You're back. There you go. Yeah, sorry. I had to go this morning too. Yeah. We all want to keep you in the community. We all want to thank you. Yeah.

So I was in the car with Rob McIntyre, and I was just – we were down the rabbit hole, and I was like, you know, we've been in this so long that we feel like we have to keep getting smarter. But every time somebody asks me a question, I just go, well, why don't you just hit like eight to ten reps, or why don't you just eat a little bit less food? And why don't we just do these like obscenely basic things and every time i strip away all the stuff that i feel like i know to what i actually really believe is the secret to moving forward in it it comes down to eight to ten reps do them five times hit the same body part twice and eat a little bit less food. Walk in the razor. I mean, when in doubt, pick the simplest solution. And it's strange, you know, that that is so true about every aspect of life. Listen, I'm going to have to bounce into just a minute, okay?

We're going to do it again, I promise, soon. Let's do it again and make sure Travis doesn't dress up this time. I felt kind of. The man is very academic now. I would have, you know, I'd have dressed up or something. I had no idea. Yeah, no, you're good. Where can people find your website, social media, all the places?

I got two. So there's danjohn.net, and that's like the library. If you decide to print everything off you better have three reams of paper it's all free enjoy uh there's a way to google it to find out if you're like if you're a shot putter there's a million things discus even more uh and then i have a new place called danjohnuniversity.com we change it to university because i don't know i don't remember it was good reason and uh and by the way it's if you type in corona so we dropped our prices by a full third it's it's free if you go on for two weeks but so because of the virus and people hurting we dropped our prices so it's uh 29 for three months and there's a workout generator a bunch of free books out there

a bunch of essays great for great form really good people yeah and the only reason I can't get away for free is that we have expenses we we hire uh some because I work with a deaf community closed caption is very important to me uh so we hire someone to do that and we have we have a big server. So there's expenses. But I can only do so much, folks. On the next show, I want to talk about writing books. You're like the only strength coach

that still writes real books. Well, you could argue. Some people don't think I write real books. But hey, they're in the library of conscience. An actual book that you can hold in your hands. It's not an e-book. And it's not just do five sets of ten.

Now, if that doesn't work out, oh, someone's doing it. Doug Larson. Yeah, $39.95 for The Secrets, and it's a 22-page PDF with a bunch of shit. That's why I love Travis, too. Travis writes 400 page books and people scroll through the first 390 to go

straight to the workout. Yeah. Guys, let's do this again real soon. Doug Larson. Right on. Find me on Instagram. Doug with C. Larson. I'm Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged. We'll see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. Make sure you get over to

barbellshrug.com forward slash store. Use the coupon code shrug to save 10%. We have a big July 4 sale coming up. You're going to use the code freedom. You can save 30% on everything in the store. Also, make sure to go visit our sponsors. We love them. You love them. Organifi.com forward slash shrug to save 20%. Get over to the Fit Together app on all of your app stores. We're giving away a ton of programs this week for everybody that is in the group

as well as magbreakthrough.com forward slash shrug. Use the coupon code shrug10 to save up to 40%. And our friends at Shadow Creative Studios and all the podcast production that you need to get your show from zero to published. Everything you need. Podcast.shadowstude.io. And we will see you guys next week.