Barbell Shrugged - Training After Time Off and Finding New PR’s Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #585

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   How do you train when you only know old PR’s Why taking it slow is the best plan of attack How to move towards new personal records What is RIR and RPE Why you don’t need to chase the athlete you were and focus on the athlete you are   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, we are talking about how to train after taking time off and how you can get back into the gym in the most safe and effective manner, increasing gains, not losing too much of what you had before. But look, I just had a baby this weekend and let me tell you something, I'm going to be taking a little bit of time off. Probably not like total sessions, but the intensity and the volume, it's going to be way down because sleep is going to be a little weird. And yeah, that's real life. And in your real life, there's probably going to be times in which you have large gaps in your training and how you come

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I am the best sleeper now that I have a little baby around. magbreakthrough.com forward slash shrugged. Use the code SHRUG10. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner. Doug Larson. Coach Travis Mass. Today on Barbell Sh shrugged i'm andrews varner doug larson coach travis mass today on barbell shrug we're going to be talking about getting back into training when you do not know what your old prs are and how you can create or you know what your old prs are you have no idea what

your new prs are and how to come back from taking a little bit of time off um getting back into strength training bros i gotta tell you yesterday, I ran wind sprints outside, barefoot, Squat University, Kelly Starrett, you'd be proud of me, barefoot on the turf. Do you know that these kids these days, they don't even have to worry about running down a soccer field and sticking their foot into a big hole in the ground and rolling their ankle. They run on the most beautiful fields.

This new turf thing, the fact that kids get to play sports on these things is incredible. I agree. They are so lucky that this is just the norm. You know, you know, it's real quick. I just want to say like,

have you noticed a lot lately that people are picking on uh squad university no way yeah i just you know well sounds like it happens it happens regularly you're always you're always talking about how he's he's yeah people but what's what's the what's the latest oh they're just you know weightlifters get mad at him talking about weightlifting power powerlifters get talking about, you know, I'm talking about powerlifting. And like, how does he know he's never done XYZ? I'm like, man, the dude has put out so much free content with so very little expectation. Here's a great question for you, sir.

I have a real question. This gets to the heart of what you're talking about. You were the strongest man in the world do you think if you didn't pursue the education side but you hung on to all of your performance stuff from back in the day you would be as successful as a coach as you are like if all you talked about was like this is what i did when i was an athlete and how cool I was no you should pay me would I be as good as of a coach or would I be able to be a successful financially which what are you talking about I guess they're relatively the same question not really I feel like I could I think with you know my accolades I could do well you know I could get people to trust me to coach. Yeah. However, I would not be as good at doing what I do.

Do you at any point feel like you were the strongest person in the world so long ago that it no longer is who you are? Oh, yeah. Because, yeah, I don't even remember that. It's a different person. Yeah. Yeah. One hundred percent.

Sometimes I go on podcasts and they're like well where'd you i'm like do i have to talk about crossfit i don't want to talk about yeah crossfit like i yeah i went to regionals and it's cool like i get i just i i'm so far removed from that person that was like training like that and in that mental space that I'm like, man, I wish you just, I wish I could own, not wish. Cause I could only talk about it,

but there's like a, such a different frame. 100%. You know, the only thing I can say that gives me an advantage over people like say, you know, the, the late Don McCauley is that I know what's going through their mind.

I know how, you know, world champion thinks. I know what they're afraid of. I know the mistakes they're about to their mind. I know how, you know, world champion thinks. I know what they're afraid of. I know the mistakes they're about to make, you know, normally, you know,

I don't want to lump this, you know, every champion into, into a bubble, but you know, for the most part I can help them really what I want them to do is avoid a few pitfalls. And then that's what they can also learn how,

you know, the, the two things they can learn a world champion to it from a former is the mentality of competing. You know, when you're competing and you're in the two things they can learn a world champion from a former is the mentality of competing. You know, when you're competing and you're in the back room, how should you handle that situation? And two, avoiding, you know, some pretty big pitfalls in your life. But other than that, you know, like I'm much better of a coach, 10 times better because of what I've learned over the last 10 years than that.

It totally seems to me that the best coaches have lots of practical experience that they've been around the sport. They've competed, they've had some success. They don't have to be a national champion or a world champion or anything like that to like, to have a pretty good understanding of how to get better and how to get regular people to be better. In the case of Aaron, like he's highly educated and he, and he has a lot of experience. Maybe he's not a world champion type guy but he's i don't think he's also out

there making the claim that like this is how to be a world champion specifically he's just telling people good general advice to improve their training and to totally to move well and to hopefully uh you know reduce potential injuries and and to get stronger but he's not talking exclusively to world-class competitors. He's talking to the population at large. But he also coaches, like, the U.S. world's strongest man. Let me tell you this. So he does.

He does. It's like, yes, he's talking to this, like, giant group of people with things that they can help, but also coached the U.S. world's strongest man. So that's a thing. Exactly. I ask him all the time questions. And I would definitely be considered, if not the best,

one of the best weightlifting coaches in America with 29 team USA athletes. At least once a month I message him asking him questions. And so let me tell you, all the people talking shit about Aaron, here's the thing. Not one of those people will ever be a world champion like I was. Not one of you will be. Because the world champions, instead of looking for something to talk shit about somebody, they will say, what can I learn from that person?

Like, you know, his world's strongest man was that guy's name. Martins? Yeah, yes, Martins. And so, like, you know, those guys will seek him out. I don't know his whole name. I just know the cool part. Right, right. We will not be on the internet talking junk.

I'll be like, what can I learn from that guy? And I will absorb everything I can, you know. And I'll take what I can. You know, I won't agree with everything everybody says. I won't agree with everything anybody says. Let me say that. But I will look and see what can I learn from them, and I will use that. And every world champion is like that.

There you go. I think that's like the only way to get to be the world champion. I mean, Cena used to say to me all the time that he would listen to everybody. But as you listen to everybody, you start to learn who knows what they're talking about very quickly. So you still listen, and you still still are friendly and you're still nice and you still respect everybody, but you don't have to implement everything that everyone says to you. You develop this framework for understanding like, oh, that guy has really, really intelligent thoughts.

I should listen. And then you also recognize that guy's just full of shit he doesn't know what he's talking about at all that was the that was the bruce lee model of martial arts like before mixed martial arts was a thing bruce lee was kind of like one of the first widely recognized mixed martial artists where he he wasn't just good at karate he he thought all the disciplines had something positive to bring to the table and his whole philosophy was just you know learn from each discipline take what is useful discard what is useless and then make something that's truly your own the same thing with yeah yeah that's right no one can remember his name like man you

got a rough name brother like you have to be world champion yeah if anybody's ever gonna remember that name it's got to be because you won the world's finest man yeah i i find even with the number of conversations that we have on the show and mash you've got two shows as well like you never run out of cool people to talk to and like you may know what someone's going to say or how they're going to and like you if we talk to lane you know he's going to talk about calories in calories out as like yeah number one thing that matters in life like it that tape is on on on repeat but every time i hear him i learn something new as 100 like like like carbs and fats it doesn't matter. Do whatever. That's the last thing I learned. Last time I heard him talk. That's the big takeaway.

Yeah. And someone like Aaron, like his book is still sitting right there. And I open it all the time to just look at it. And I don't even read all the pages. I literally just look at it. And I go, just by looking at it, I feel like I learned. I'm like, wow, I'm not even prepared for the presentation that he's laid out in this yet. You learn so much more in looking at his book

and seeing how it's laid out and the information and how he actually structures the book. That's the stuff I look at. I'm like, wow, that dude is so good. I've used this stuff, this new Adley monitoring tool. A lot of the range of motion and stability portion is, is based on his concepts and in that very book. Yeah.

So anyway, that's all I want to say is come on, quit talking junk about someone who does so much and asks so very little. The dude makes the zero. He's got over a million followers, maybe 2 million at this point. It doesn't do anything but sell an awesome book way underpriced he has a ten dollar he has like a ten dollar squat book and like a four his book dude it was so cool

i texted him the other day i took adelaide to the bookstore which first off dads if you need like two hours to just go burn and give mom a break take them to the bookstore yeah we'll get all the kids books it's like the greatest two hours of all time. There's endless things to look at. Diesel dad advice. You get to grab all the books, spread them all over the place, and then

dad just scoops them all up and puts them in the someone else restacked these. Oh my God, that's a diesel dad hack. We need a book. How to spend a good day and not lose your mind with your child. But I like, I totally brought her over to the fitness section to just like, look at all the fitness books.

And there was rebuilding me, Milo. It was so sad. I had to take a picture and send it to him. I was like, dude, you're here. You made it to Barnes and Nobles. How sick. You know what you didn't see there is a book by one of those people talking shit online. That's what you did not see there.

We should end the show right now. What we didn't see was an entire list of your tweets while you're wasting your time on the internet. While you were taking a shit and talking, talking crap while you're talking shit to Aaron while taking a shit. Aaron just lost another bestselling book. His mic drop was number one on Amazon, the biggest marketplace in the world yeah so he's really

worried about what you're saying does he get on there and reply to these people once in a while but too many people yeah a lot of the meme accounts you know most of them are some of them are kidding but then there's every once in a while there's like an athlete that's just that's mediocre talking when you have that many followers you can't pay attention he doesn't i would you lose your mind because yeah what's you know several million people are reading your stuff somebody's gonna look at his stuff it's like you have 70,000 comments you're like huh he does a good job, man, of responding to a lot of people. The dude is so nice. That's what makes – people talk junk about other people.

It doesn't bother them. I'm like, yeah, it's just part of it. But talking junk about him, it makes me mad because he's so nice. Yeah. He truly wants to help people. 1.7 million followers. Yeah, he doesn't care what you're saying, bub. Yeah.

Talk junk on him more. He doesn't care what you're saying, bub. When you get to the point where the number on your Instagram only moves when another 100,000 people follow you, you're not reading comments. No, you're laughing. And if you are writing comments, you are screaming into the abyss. All right, so these are the days of getting in the bag of shit. Now you're going over that tangent, my bad. Yeah, well, I wanted to tell you guys about my running sprints because my ribs right now are so lit up from getting after it.

And because we're interviewing him tomorrow, knees over toes guy, I went and did a bunch of backwards sprints. Man. What time are we interviewing knees over toes? I don't know, in the morning. don't know in the morning sometime that's yeah sometime in the morning 11 something like that uh but he's got me going he's got me going backwards now it's so rad yeah it's summertime so i'm uh i'm going directly from training into the sauna when it's super hot it's the best part about the summer

i don't use the sauna in the winter when you think you would want to be in warm climate but it doesn't get hot enough yeah those infrared saunas in the winter time they they barely get above like i'll be in the 30 minutes i want to be sweating yeah they're fairly sweating yeah it gets like 122 or something like that. It's warm. You got the big one. Yeah, I got the big one. I got the five-person sauna. Yours probably takes two hours to get warm.

Y'all can keep this up. Yeah, it's like between an hour and an hour and a half. Hot tub sounds dope. We'll get a hot tub someday. Next time you're here, definitely hot tub. I get in every night. So on my way back to the beach, all I can think of is I get to go on my back porch and get in my hot tub tonight. I was excited to come home from vacation because I love where I live so much. Anyway. On my way back to the beach, all I could think of is I get to go on my back porch and get my hot tub tonight.

I was excited to come home from vacation because I love where I live so much. Anyway. I love it. Yeah. Bros, coming back from taking time off, how do you recalibrate the amount of weights that you should – or what weights you should be using total volume how do uh look we encounter this question a lot especially with uh these these new clients that we're taking on which many of them have not been actively pursuing the barbell and are looking to get back into shape after some time off and many of them because of the era of strength athletes that we are, many of them are ex-CrossFitters that were training like super, super hard

and had really good numbers. And then Doug will write in the program, 80%. And they're out there trying to lift 80% of what they were doing when they were 28 years old. And they haven't lifted in five years. And I think that it's a really cool conversation because so many people end up taking gaps off, especially with the people that we're working with. That you become a dad or something like that. It's like three years passes by and you haven't slept and eaten well and all this stuff happens to your life.

And then you go to get back into it and you have no idea where to start. Right. Doug normally starts it off but i definitely have a since this go ahead man sounds like you got something yeah you're a rock if i if i were you what i would if i'm the person starting back an easy way to do it you know if you're going to do a percentage-based program what you might want to do is is like one movement, like a squat, and work up to a pretty heavy 3RM. You know, like don't try to go all out, but try to get, you know, maybe to a 9RPE 3RM back squat. And then take that and look at what that's guesstimating your 1RM at. And there's lots of formulas. You can Google it, you know,

estimating my 1RM with reps. And then, you know, based on what it says, look at what your other maxes were and take that same percentage and apply it to all your other maxes. That's the best. You don't want to, like, start your thing out by maxing out on 10 different movements, but you can do one, you know, like a back squat, and then guesstimate everything else. Otherwise, just start with, like with a rep max type workout.

It might be better. And stay at 8 RPE for a long time and get those movements back. That's what I would do. Yeah, I was actually going to say the RPE is likely the best place to even do it. Plus, I think one of the coolest things that I do now is I try to lift lightweights and make them feel really heavy. Going slow, you're saying? Yeah, go slow, move really well.

There's just so many different ways than just focusing on, like, what is your old 1RM and where you're at in comparison to that person today. And then getting back into it, you just – like, the most important thing is just being consistent with it. And I think that that mindset of like just doing it, no matter what the weight is, like even if you're out there just moving an empty bar, cause that's all you have in your garage, like get up and go just get comfortable doing the thing. If you're coming off a big break, the hardest thing is going to be getting in there three

to four days a week. Like that's going to be the number one issue is that your body is just, it's not even your body. It's more like the routine of your life is not accustomed to being in the gym or training or blocking out 30 minutes a day or waking up early and doing it. So if you are going to be successful at many, in any real capacity, no matter what the, what the widget is that you're trying to be successful at the, your ability to eliminate variables and only focus on one specific goal of show up. Like if it's a gym, just show up. Adding what is the perfect 80%, it's kind of an extra step that it matters, but it doesn't really matter today.

It doesn't matter nearly as much as just getting to the gym for 30 minutes. It doesn't matter nearly as much as showing up and just committing to working hard three to four days a week. All of those numbers and stuff will start to make sense and your brain will remember what it feels like to be at an eight for RPE

and actually maybe in a little while want to test something really heavy. But for the most part, eliminate as many variables as possible and just commit to the fact that you're going to walk in the gym and lift some weights and move them well. And your body will remember what heavy feels like pretty quickly

i think the first when you're first getting back into it all you really need to focus on if you haven't been training for for many years you don't need to worry about what your one rep max is or you know what you don't need to do a 3rm like if you're testing that's one thing but you don't need to like consistently train 3rms for the first two weeks back to training there's no there's no real point doing that like doing basic hypertrophy and just basic steady state cardio when if you haven't trained in many many years is totally fine it'll doing basic 8 to 15 set or rep ranges per set and just going for like light jogs is a great way to do the first couple weeks getting back to training if you haven't trained in a long long time and then as you as you feel like your

general um your general fitness is improving and your you know your joints feel good and you're not too sore and like you kind of you kind of have a more more of a handle on how you're feeling over the course of weeks then you can start incorporating heavier lifts like you start doing fives and then threes and then maybe maybe heavy singles after you know four to eight weeks you don't need to do it right away you don't need to do it at all depending on your goals but if you're trying to get back into like heavy lifting you don't need to do it the first week you can do it on week five just move yeah i never like right now you know i had a tough semester i already talked about that but now as i into it, I'm definitely not doing any type of,

like, you know, percentages. Number one was getting back in there the very first day. I think that's the hardest part is get your ass in the gym. And you're going to be sore. You're going to be sore, and that's okay. And then two would be, I think, the second hardest would be getting consistent. And then third would be, I think that after you get those two things down,

three would be, all right, now let's start talking about some you know some goals because certain people me being included if i just go in there to move then i'll probably eventually fall off the wagon but if i had some some goals you know like and like it shouldn't be the same like i cannot be shooting for an 805 back squat it's not i don't have no way could you imagine. Could you imagine? I mean, I can. I've done it, but not now. No, not now. Sometimes I think about 400. I'm like, I bet I could get there.

I know I could get there. That's the problem. The problem is I don't want to do the things that would take me to get. That's quite a 375 at your house. The only difference between that 375 and 400 that i did your house it's like three months of really giving a shit right and i'm and i don't have that kind of time to really give a shit about that i just want to move and have fun and just just work out look good naked and so those are the goals you got to be concrete with like i think i i recommend if you're a dad like number one have

a movement goal like you know like i would do like a simple assessment of movement. Like, even if it's a simple, like look at an overhead squat with an empty barbell and see how deep you can go with, with a, with a perfectly flat back and the knees tracking out over the toes. And then, you know, look at some like, you know, uh, how much hip flexion you can get, meaning like that's your hamstring length. Like look at some simple, you know, mobility goals. And then, you know, have some really concrete goals of movement as well. And then two, some cardiovascular, which is – I'm talking about myself, by the way. I'm not preaching to anybody.

This is me preaching to Travis. Having some cardiovascular goals. Right before the show, I just did 20 minutes on the bike. Joe, hold on a second. Sweating. It Get looking lean. Just trying. So having specific cardiovascular goals. And then, yeah, you can have some strength goals.

There are minimums I always want to be at. But I don't have any. I don't think it's possible. But I'd like to see. And then the minute I see these things happening, just have to cut it. But see, could I go through like six months of being a powerlifter again, get to those numbers without losing? I would like to know. The reason is I'd like to see if I could do that so then I could tell my athletes, you know, it's possible.

Because right now, like if I say like to do the things I did to be a world champion it's not healthy it's like you know you're laying you're grinding your teeth like I mean I would wait I would like literally wake up gripping my sheets with all my might and grinding my teeth just angry and I'm like what am I mad about did you feel like you got to the end and you were like cool I, I did it. And then walked away? Or do you feel like you kept getting pulled back to, well, if I can't squat 800, like, what's my value in life? No, I just, you know, the only thing I would say is I was definitely ready to be done,

except, you know, like most people, there was a bit I had in me, this really big one. You know, like there was a time where I should have done something that I think would have not be touched even today. So that bothers me a little bit because, you know, even single ply, I could have easily – there was a point that I should have squatted 1,000 in single ply.

I should have benched almost 785, and then I should have deadlifted in the mid-8s. You know, so that hurts me because that's a pretty big it was massively higher than what I did and so that kind of hurts. Other than that, but then when I Drew and I were talking about with the kids and I think about the

fulfillment that those kids bring me I'm like, I'm good. There's a little part of me that's still an athlete that says, dang I wish you would have done that one more. I started getting hurt. I bet there's a lot part of me that's still an athlete that says, dang, I wish you would have done that one more. But I started getting hurt. So I bet there's a lot of athletes out there that could say the same thing. And I keep coming back to that.

I'm sure Ed Cohn could have totaled 2,600 had he not got hurt so many times. So it's just maybe part of the process. That's part of the reason I think what Aaron says, we were talking about squat university earlier and like how – I don't even want to say he's controversial. he's controversial for some small percentage of the population most people think most people think he's great uh including myself um he basically tells people how to train safely that's like his his primary gig yeah and i'm i'm with you like i stopped fighting mma and competing in weightlifting because of injuries. I wasn't ready to stop.

I had the energy for it. I had the motivation to do it. Just my neck hurts too much. My shoulder hurts too much, on and on. And eventually it just became obvious to me that competing was not the right choice for me anymore because I want to have a somewhat functional body decades down the line. And so I decided to stop. But what Aaron promotes is, is healthy, safe,

you know, relatively pain free training. And that's, that's good advice across the board. Yeah. And I would say if I'd listened to someone like Aaron and even Ed Cohen, his philosophy on competing was good. It was solid. But if I had somebody like, say that Ed Cohen was my coach, Aaron was my PT. And I listened to those two guys. I have no doubts, number one, I would have competed longer, and I would have gotten much higher. I wouldn't have gotten there as quickly. Because I did, you know, like I came back into the sport in 2001. By 2004, I was the best in the world by far.

And so, like, that's really fast. Had I listened to someone like Ed Cohn and like Aaron, maybe it would have been 2006 or 2007, but I would have done a much, much bigger number, and I wouldn't have gotten this hurt nearly as often. I mean, I'm sure eventually you're going to get hurt because you're pushing it too much, but it would have been like one big injury instead of a bunch of little ones that derailed me. I would have much rather had just one big one. Yo, what's the most deconditioned you guys have been?

Right now. Right now? For sure. I mean, like two weeks ago. Before I started. Yeah. Now I'm in great shape. No, not in great, but I'm not as bad as I was two weeks ago.

Yeah, this is – I mean, think about it, man. I pushed it to the point where I was having heart trouble. Like it was, yeah. I was in the worst shape of my life, like physically just because, you know, I got overwhelmed, but I'm learning to manage my time better for this next semester. You didn't just straight up stop training though. You were still doing something. What were you doing? No, really?

Like the last time I trained was when you guys were here and then she just went haywire and i thought you were doing your 20 minutes a day no matter what oh yeah i was looking back maybe around march it was like early march but i i didn't do anything significant since february i did a little bit of the 20 minute stuff maybe in march but then and then then it went to zero it's just like like this semester like that physiology class was just brutal on me along with and then athlete monitoring i loved it so much that's what really happened yeah it's really i got it so into this thing that like it became a drug i even told that i like you are a drug dealer because like it was so cool that i couldn't do anything i just i would come to

study physiology or come to like do or i go say hey i'm gonna work out but i was like but i'll just do this one thing for 30 minutes and then three hours later i'm still working on this project and but it's cool though it's gonna be cool but it almost killed me yeah i think that the worst i have been probably in the last 20 – man, we're coming up on – this will be my 25th summer of lifting weights, which is so crazy, is six months after Adelaide was born. And I wasn't even out of shape. That was like right when we went to Jamaica.

I was still in like good shape, but i was in the most out of shape i think i've ever been i was the most i was the fattest i'd ever been for sure it was like 205 and just soft like the we moved across the country with a new with a six month old seven month old and it was like put on 15 pounds of just shit it was so not prepared for the lack of sleep and all of that um but i was still training uh at least four days a week and then i was running i was running trails pretty consistently because of summertime in it was summertime and then there was like a, there's like a trail park around here. That's so rad that I don't live near anymore. It's like a

20 minute drive, so I don't get to do it anymore. But, um, yeah, I was still in great shape. I was just fat. Like I just put on a bunch of weight that was just gross. And, uh, worst detraining is like everybody else's like ultimate goal because i watched you swim like a damn fish i saw you meet another guy that was super young and jack so that's like i think that's uh that's that's really what the goal i think of everyone's training life should be is develop the largest base of gpp that you can possibly do. And what that means is that every day you're not really focused on any specific aspects of performance, but just performing well. And then if somebody were to say, Hey, do you want to go run a half marathon? You just go, okay. And you're confident that you can go do it and if somebody wants to go sign you

up for an olympic weightlifting meet and say hey do you want to go do this you go well do i have two weeks you go oh yeah oh okay let's go and i'll go snatch one 103 105 something like that freak there's nobody else on earth that can say these things but you i would love to i would love to do an anti-gapping like dissection or what does he call it like the the fiber that was yeah but what i'm saying is i feel like that's like what crossfit yeah i feel like i feel like if you played crossfit for long enough you should know how to do these things and if you grew up in an athletic background, you should know how to do these things. I think this is like. No,

like bro, there are at least like they're NFL athletes that could not do what you just said. Like, Oh, give me two weeks and I'll run a marathon. Like, bro,

you don't know how amazing that is. Like, that's why I look, maybe I'm like, you are like what I strive to become now later in life to be able to, Oh, you want me to do a marathon? Yeah. Give me two weeks. What? Give me. So this is like, you are like what I strive to become now later in life. To be able to be like, oh, you want me to do a marathon? Yeah, give me two weeks.

What? Give me two weeks. You weren't saying everyone could do it, though. You're pointing out an ideal. Like, this is ideally how you should be. This is the ideal that I train to and what I believe that I can do. Like, I ran 22 miles. Yeah, I ran 22 miles last year and didn't train a single day for it

just because I think that we're about to get into my real, the deep parts of my brain when it comes to training. I don't think that there's a single thing that anybody can't really physically do. Like, of course, you can't go run a 4-3-40, but you should be able to like, when I hear people say that like they don't, you need to be able to like, when I hear people say that, like they, they don't there, you need to be able to expose yourself. Like today I texted my neighbor and I'm like, you have to meet me at the pool at three 30 today.

And we're going to do 20 laps, 25 meters a piece. And you have to do it all underwater. There's no breathing allowed. Yeah. You're only allowed to breathe after the 25 meters is up. And they look at me like I'm nuts, which is rad. But I just believe that you should be able to jump in the pool and go do these things. And the only reason I believe that is because I try to expose myself to as many different weird things as possible. And because this job is so rad,

I've been lucky enough to be around people that have, like, I didn't learn underwater training by just going to the pool and doing it. Laird Hamilton taught me how to do it. Like, it's different. I get that. But that is the ideal, like Doug's saying, of like, no matter what, you should trust your own physical capacity to a point that if somebody says, let's go for a long run, you've eaten well enough. You know how to fuel your body well enough. You trust your body so that you can run well enough without getting injured.

And you understand how to pace something so that you know that you can make it. You don't have to run a marathon every day to know what speed you're going to run the marathon at. But you should know what fast feels like and do less than that. You should know what slow feels like. So you do a little bit more than that. You should be able to, over the amount of time, understand what your body feels like so that you don't hit some red line and bonk in the middle of it. Now you're going to the hospital for dehydration or heat stroke or whatever it is. Like it also is like me actively making the choice in the middle of summer to go

run trails for 45 minutes and then hop in a sauna for 20 minutes at 155 degrees. Like, people get so freaked out to expose themselves to what is going to be a very challenging thing to get through. And it's like, just go do it. Go to a point that feels uncomfortable, stay right there, and then try and get a little bit better at it. But constantly be exposing yourself to new stimulus so that you just develop a trust in your physical capacity to go do stuff. You know, man, a lot of scientists would disagree, but I believe they would be wrong. I think there's a part of science that we need to get to understanding that that is the brain. Wait, what would they, what would they disagree with that? You know, they would be like that,

you know, that fatigue is caused by lack of oxygen or that somebody would stop, you know, for some other physiological reasons that is normally peripheral, like in the body, not in the brain. However, there's a lot of, there's some, you know, science that is arriving on the scene that would say that you are right. And like, and I believe that the brain, you know, I think it has a lot more to do with, with missing weights, with not being able to finish marathons, with not being able to ride a bike more than, you know, peripheral physiological, you know, reasons such as lack of oxygen. There's a lot of, you know, theories out there believe,

but really there's not a lot of science that can tell you one or the other. There's a book called faster, higher, stronger, and it's by Martin McCluskey and it talks about that. It's like the, you know, fatigue, like, you know, when someone ends can't run anymore or can't ride a bike anymore and that it's more mental it's the brain yeah the body to shut down because it doesn't understand what's happening to it and so it's scary so i believe what you're saying is 100 right and i think the reason why most the difference between a great athlete and a not so great is more in the brain

than it is in the body same thing in life there's i think you got your donald trump oh i don't want to use that never mind scratch that scratch that caught that cold you got the dude uh what's the dude who invented or came up with amazon um bezos you got your bezos you got your other people it's like the bezos mentally can see something amazing and this other guy couldn't i think that's where we need to get to i really want to study more and more the brain and so there's also like i'm yeah i think there's a mindset that you bring to what like if somebody if your business was about to if you're about to go out of business what would you do you'd figure out a way to make it work. Yeah, figure that shit out.

Figure that shit out, right? You got kids to feed. You go figure it out. If you want to live a very physical life where you're not – I never, ever want to hit a day in which someone goes, hey, do you want to go do this? And I go, no. I don't think I can.

I don't physically can. I physically don't think I can i don't physically can't i physically don't think i can complete that no way like when we were working with the air force they were going to fly us out there and put us through like special ops training and drown proof us and all this stuff it's like if you if you get scared by that or you're freaked out by that that's on you you should be you should trust that you're going to be fine in that situation like i i don't i i truly don't understand how and and this is like a mindset of just taking it to life like you don't have to go do it all you can sit on your ass if you would like you're 100 allowed no one's stopping

you and no one gives a crap if you sit on your ass forever but right if you want to go experience this thing you got like 80 years to go create a radical experience you got 80 years to go build a dope business you got 80 years to go do as many physical possible things that you can do so what do you to do? You want to just sit there and hope cool shit happens? Or do you want to be in the best shape of your life as often as possible? Do you want to eat well so that you're properly fueled? Do you want to like read and meditate and think and act like somebody that's mentally capable of taking on hard things and dealing with the problems that come along with that, like do the work, get your ass out of bed. Like go, go run two miles. As soon as your feet hit the ground every morning, go lift weights. As soon as you wake up, like it's hard. You have

to hold yourself accountable. You have to go, you have to want to go do the thing. And yesterday in the middle of running wind sprints, one of the reasons I brought it up, and I'm glad we finally got to, it's like there's an aggression that you're supposed to take to life. Like when you go run wind sprints or you lift heavy weights, it's almost, it gets you to like an,

like there's times where I'll just be out there running sprints. I'll like start crying because I think about stuff, how like powerful it is to be able to go hit like 100% and feel like you're flying and like, your brain is not connected to your body, but your feet are moving as fast as you possibly can. And you walk back and all those good hormones are getting released in your body. And you realize that you're going, you're at this like peak level of intensity and it becomes this like emotional

thing that happens when you're training. And I think about like my family and my life and my daughter and how grateful I am to do all this stuff, but I don't do that in my normal day. The only way for me to really get there and to really connect with a lot of this stuff is to go run, go sprint, go train, like to understand how important this physical life is and how it just pushes you forward. And you're able to build trust in your body and in your brain that allows you to go and live, like truly go live and do stuff that's hard. Totally agree with everything you're saying.

And people just are so scared and they don't trust their bodies and they get so they get pushed around a lot like they they they don't want to put themselves out there because they get beat down at work they get told to be average and fit in put their fucking little round peg into the round hole because that's what your job title says and it beats the shit out of them and then they go home and they they've got 49 of the vote like all of us have 49 of the vote we're the husbands we we're we're not going to win that battle we don't have the prize possession in the house like that's just the way life is but we get to go train and we get to go express that that physical side and like be be the savage

and there's no other place that we get to do it i don't know where else if you want to go unleash whatever that primal thing is inside us where else do you do it if you don't go train if you don't go run sprints if you're not if you're not pushing yourself past the place where you're out of your brain and you're just flying. Where do you do it? And now all of a sudden, if you can't do it and you don't know how to practice that, what the hell do you do? You just sit there and let that little creature in there just sit there and die inside you?

It's absolutely awful. And people have to get up and get off their ass and go fucking do it. And you have to force the issue in life because if you don't, like nobody's going to do it for you. Nobody's going to sit there and like just, oh, yeah, you want to go train for 90 minutes? Sure. No, it's not going to happen.

Doug back squats while he's cooking dinner at night. Like you have to force the issue that like, I'm going to do this no matter what. And it's going to make me feel alive. And I'm going to build the confidence in myself and I'm going to go live my life. Well, from a, from a practical standpoint here, like there's, there's, there's two sides of this. There's, there's having the motivation and the self-discipline to go do the thing. And then there's, if you're not doing it over and over and over and over again, there's a reason you're not doing it. Like maybe you just actually don't really enjoy it. You feel like you're supposed to be doing a certain type of exercise or a

certain type of lifting or, or whatever. Maybe you need to change what you're going after. Maybe to change the type of exercise that you're doing or whatever physical activity is to something that's really, really fun. You know, maybe, maybe you don't just do the fun thing forever, but if you're just trying to get back into it, it should be enjoyable because it's not enjoyable. Then it's going to, it's going to be an uphill battle forever. Like you want it to be fun and enjoyable. And so if

you just see yourself not doing it, not doing it, not doing it. And there's this pattern of wanting to do it, feeling like you should. And then all of a sudden you make an excuse or there's a good reason not to or whatever it is then i think you need to change what you're what you're looking to do to something that you actually enjoy so you'll actually do it that's that is a beautiful statement you see a lot of guys now switching to like you see uh guys doing jujitsu or you know going to buy you got like stevie cohen is boxing you know probably because shejitsu or, you know, going to box. You got like Steffi Cohen is boxing, you know, probably because she came into that, you know, the same place in life where all of us go.

And you're like, man, I don't want to go for another world record squat or deadlift. She has plenty of them. Yeah. And so she's like, let's do something different. Something that like, you know, I definitely am at a point where like, if I were going to compete at something,

I wished that there was something out there where it was more like I loved competing when I was playing football I loved the sprinting that Anders is talking about and I love the conditioning and the strength training I love the vertical leap changes direction I love feeling like an athlete like I could do anything I remember like going back and playing basketball one day and all of a sudden like I'm dunking like I never done before. And I'm, you know, I hadn't even been jumping per se, like on a basketball court. And I'm a whole different athlete. And that was like, I definitely remember the emotions that Andrew's talking about.

Like I remember training like that and a couple of times like crying, just thinking about, you know, this one thing, like playing college football is something I wanted so badly my whole life. And here I was. I'm at Appalachian State. I'm surrounded by – I played with two NFL football players who killed it. One two-time All-Pro, one 10 years. And I'm here.

And it became so – it was definitely emotional. Yeah, the thing that gets me the most emotional when i think about it is like how uh and and i i hope you guys have i know you guys have at least thought about this of like how awesome it is that i get to pass the the information that is in my brain from sitting on this microphone and and talking about strength training all the time onto another generation. Like one of the first times, uh, I think it had to have been you, Doug, we were talking about like the lineage of your education. It's like, well, Doug had a strength coach. I had a strength coach. That coach had a coach. Now we are the coaches to all these people. And how do we ensure that we get

these lessons and this thing through to the next group of people? And then you look inside our households where we have the most control over the conversations and you go, oh, well, my daughter's going to be a savage because this morning I asked her what the big, why ate eggs and she goes protein and I go why do we eat protein she goes to get strong and I go there's some girl that is going to meet her in the middle of a soccer field and her life is going to get ruined on that day like it is going to be really really hard for that girl because my daughter found out what protein was when she was three years old and she knows if she eats that she's going to get jacked. Like, I don't actually know if that's true.

But I think, like, we have, I mean, Riley's putting, dug in legit arm bars and countering moves at six years old. Like, you grow up with this skill that sets you apart so far in a way that is yes you have your brain and being smart is super important of course but like you also have a body and being strong as we all know changes a whole lot you can you can be less skillful and a lot stronger and still get a get a very long ways when it comes to physical capacity. Yes. Strength is definitely not a weakness. That's for sure. Like, you know, if you add skill, you know, add strength on top of skill,

then you get a killer, you know? Yeah. One thing I would like to add to what you're saying about being able to pass it on. I remember when I was young and I told my mom, I was going to go to Colorado Springs to, you know, try my, you know, I wanted to go to the Olympic training center. That was my goal. I was going to go to Colorado Springs to, you know, try my, you know, I wanted to go to the Olympic training center. That was my goal. I was going to go out there, train with Wes Barnett to make the Olympic training center.

And she told me, she says, don't you think it's time to get a real job and like go do something like X. I can't remember who she was comparing me to. And I'm not, this is not a knock on my mom. She did the majority of what she did was amazing. She turned me into the man I am. Cause you know, you know, she was the, she was definitely the dominant one between my dad and my mom. So anyway, just once a week I think back to, like,

how good it feels to all these people who doubted my choices, you know, how good it feels to, like, prove them wrong. And, like, I remember when I got there because, you know, when I left my mom was like, I'll see you in a month. Obviously not supportive of this at all. Yeah. Like I got there and within the day I had my coach, I had a job and a place to live. I went out there with only 200 bucks to my name. And this thing of, you know,

being strong, like, you know, it would consume me so much. I said, I'm going to drive across the country and I'm going to make this thing happen. And the fact that I am still, you know, now that was when I was like 21. Here I am 48 and I'm getting to tell everybody this, how to get strong. So yeah.

Yeah. So it is. And I think it's also so cool that like how many people are in strength training, coaching still at 48 years old yeah there just aren't many and the reason is because you get kicked so many times and like that's just like people's fitness thing it's like well i trained from like 25 to 32 really hard and i was in great shape well what about the rest when it got hard it was easy then what what do you do when it gets hard you quit that's that's

the that's the practice right you just stopped because it got hard great job can't wait to see that carry over to the rest of your life you just stopped no definition let's go right yeah let's go get your ass out of bed. Right. Start. That's the key to all these people listening. You know, go do it. You know, get consistent. Formulate some goals after that, some concrete. So some, I would say, objective, quantifiable goals.

And keep reminding yourself, you know, while you're doing it. All I have to do now is look at my kids. I thought I was about to have a heart attack. That's when I started training again. I'm thinking, oh shit, I'm going to die and leave my two-year-old, four-year-old, and six-year-old. Remember why you're doing things. It's different for me now. It's not to be the world

champion. It's to be the champion of these babies' lives. Where can people find you, Travis Mash? Mashlead.com. You can go to Instagram, Mashlead Performance. If you want to see me argue a lot, go to Travis Mash mashleet.com you can go to Instagram mashleet performance if you want to see me

argue a lot go to Twitter at mashleet if you want to argue while Mash has just a bathing suit on and he's in a hot tub and doesn't give a shit

about what you say and he's going to come back with research go to Twitter if you want to be made a fool of yeah go do exactly that

so Doug Larson you bet Instagram Yeah, if you want to be made a fool of, yeah, go do exactly that. Doug Larson. You bet. Instagram, Douglas C. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged. Get over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash diesel dad. All the dads are getting strong, lean, and athletic without sacrifice of family, fatherhood, or fitness.

And if you're in San Diego, L.A., Palm Springs, or Vegas, get over to Walmart. Three programs on the shelf in the pharmacy. Friends, we'll see you next week. That's a wrap, friends. Let me remind you to get over to magbreakthrough.com forward slash shrugged. Use the code shrugged10 by BiOptimizer to get magnesium breakthrough and Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. That's where you get the green, the red, and the gold from Organifi. Friends, we'll see you guys on Wednesday.