Barbell Shrugged - Training for Health vs. Performance. What is the Difference? Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #581

Episode Date: May 31, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   Goals setting and how it difference What is health and how to train for it Why you are overthinking fitness goals Why performance is so hard to train for Creating sustainable goals and a lifestyle that supports it    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, in today's episode of Barbell Shrugged, we are talking about training for health versus training for performance. What is the different goal setting and how it is different based on your health goals or performance goals? What is health and how you can train for it? Why you are overthinking your fitness goals? why performance is so hard to train for and creating sustainable goals and a lifestyle that supports performance and health at the same time. But before we get into the show today, friends, you need to get over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. That's where you save 20% on the green, the red and the gold juices. And those juices are the most delicious juices because not only do they taste delicious, but they are loaded with the vitamins and minerals and the ashwagandhas that your body needs to function optimally. Check it out. If you are

listening to this on a Monday, today is Murph. And you think about the beat down that your body is about to go through. Well, what do you think is in charge of recovery, right? You got to get the carbs, you got to get the fats, you got to get the proteins, all of that plus some good sleep. Well, what do you think runs the system that allows you to be healthy? That's right. All of those chemical and hormonal reactions are always triggered by enzymes, which are triggered by micronutrients, the vitamins and minerals that you eat in your food. And if you are not properly fueling your body, you probably aren't getting all of the micronutrients that you need to have optimal performance or health. So how do you do that with a busy lifestyle where you can't be eating organ meat and you can't be eating salad at every single meal?

Guess what you need? You need a supplement. And if you're going to supplement, you might as well supplement with the highest quality green, red, and gold juices from Organifi. And because you are a Shrugged listener and you are so radical, you get to save 20% by going over to Organifi.com forward slash Shrugged. That's Organifi.com forward slash Shrugged where you save 20%. And we also have to talk about our friends over at Bioptimizers because Mary, I don't know her, but she wasn't getting enough sleep. And every night she struggled with poor sleep and restless legs. But then she made a small change. And one month later, everything was better. And it was

all because she started taking Magnesium Breakthrough by Bioptimizers, the only organic full-spectrum magnesium supplement that includes seven unique forms of magnesium. Mary left a five-star review saying, I'd give this 100 stars if I could. That's more than five. A hundred. Within one month of use, I went from daily struggles with restless legs, constipation, and poor sleep to no struggles with any of that. I know it sounds dramatic and far-fetched, but it's true.

And Mary is not the only one getting better sleep after taking magnesium breakthrough. Amanda says, I fall asleep much faster and stay asleep now until normal waking hours. You have a customer for life. And Bill, Bill says, on the first night of taking magnesium breakthrough, my deep sleep jumped two hours, which has been the highest reading so far on my Oura Ring. Listen, if you're having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, one of the best things you can possibly do is start getting enough magnesium. But please do not run to the storm, buy your first magnesium supplement you find. Most magnesium supplements use only the two cheapest synthetic forms. And since they're not full spectrum, they won't fix your magnesium deficiency or help you sleep better. There are actually seven unique forms of magnesium and you

must get all of them if you want to experience its calming sleep enhancing effects. That's why I recommend Magnesium Breakthrough by BiOptimizerizer simply take two capsules before you go to bed and you'll be amazed at how much better you sleep and how much more rested you feel when you wake up for an exclusive offer to shrugged listeners you can head over to mag breakthrough m-a-g-b-r-e-a-k-t-h-r-o-u-g-h.com forward slash shrugged and use the shrugged 10 code during checkout to save 10 that's mag breakthrough.com forward slash shrugs friends i take this every night i sleep beautifully it really is an awesome product we have a full show coming out with wade one of the founders uh here in the next couple weeks and uh i love their magnesium product mag breakthrough.com forward slash shrug friends let's get into the show.

Welcome to Modern Bell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Smash. Bros, I'm out on the balcony at the beach today. No, I'm jealous. Life is good. Life is good. It's not that you guys don't know. You can see.

We made it to the beach. A little drizzly today, which means little diesels inside. She's dying to get out anytime she sees us either on a podcast or me on a meeting it is like it is like a full out attack for her to get on zoom is super like that it's it's like the number one priority yo when you see the waves out on the East Coast, do you think back to San Diego where you had pretty decent waves and just kind of makes you sad? You can't really surf out there in the same way?

Yeah. I think I told you this on Monday. I went surfing or Sunday when we got here. I wanted to create this t-shirt brand when i was in san diego called the three wave minimum because that was like the mark for me of did i have a good day did i catch three waves it's like nobody ever has a bad day if you catch three waves it's like it's like you check the box for being stoked. That's awesome.

Right. And that, that became like the, like if there were waves, I would just grab a board and just run from my gym three blocks. I'd be in the ocean, catch three waves in 20 minutes and be back and go train. It'd be like a warmup. But now there has to be like a legitimate storm sitting off the coast to be able to pump waves into this place. But on Sunday, I caught three waves. It was phenomenal.

You did? There you caught three? Yeah. I mean, it's so different. How big are these waves? I mean, we're literally looking at like it could be nothing. It's just wind. There's nothing.

So, friends, I promise you today we're going to talk about health and performance and similarities and differences in your training and nutrition. But so the reason that on the West Coast, all of the waves, the current comes like from Hawaii basically up to Alaska and then pumps down the coast of California, which is why the waves are so good in San Diego. It's also why the water's freezing cold all the time because that water's coming from Alaska. And on the East coast, it basically follows the same thing. So it comes up from Florida and it's, but it's super warm because it comes from the South, but then it actually like around North Carolina and Virginia starts to move away from the coast. So the current goes up and then over to like London, basically it's higher than that,

but that direction, it goes to Europe. So all of the actual like natural waves don't pound into the coast here like they do in San Diego and all the waves are actually moving away towards Europe so the only way for there to be legitimate waves here is for there to be a storm sitting off the coast which is why hurricane season is when most people enjoy surfing on the east coast but if there's a storm that like sits off the coast here I was out here like three weeks ago and we actually had a storm that came through during the night and there was like 100 miles offshore and it was just pumping real waves into the east coast i felt so it was

amazing yeah i'm looking at the stream how it works so it all moves out towards europe yeah it may even go all the way up to scandinavia it's like it's destination iceland it kind of breaks off and goes like iceland scandinavia um and a little maybe a little bit of um of uh britain like you said yeah yeah uh but that yeah because it like cones out yeah it comes it starts with a really it goes straight up the here, and then it gets wider as it gets towards Europe. Thank you for fishing, though. Dude, have you ever been offshore here? Yeah.

We need to get us all together on an offshore trip now that we have a place out here because it's like – it's so – dude, when you get out into the actual Gulf Stream, I want to say it's like 100 miles out, maybe a little bit less, maybe 75 miles out. The water turns into like the most beautiful, you can just see, it feels like you can see like a hundred feet down. Like it's so pretty once you get out there.

Right. And then I want to get tangled up with some giant tuna out there. Yeah. Crush it. Rip it. Eat that thing as soon as I catch it yeah you ever think about what a tuna is you ever think about a tuna i think it's like a legitimate nature made submarine torpedo yeah underneath the water just like a trained assassin and all it does it's all purpose

is to just be like a legitimate torpedo and just go annihilate other fish yeah we're out there trying to wrestle that thing i love it what do you think of it dude the ocean is so gnarly it's so big out there i think the north there are so many rad creatures out there great for like thought you know it's like we're in california it's great for surfing and that's how you guys get your spiritual thing on but like the the coast is so beautiful like i've been to california and the waves are awesome but the beaches aren't nearly as beautiful as the beaches in north carolina maybe i'm biased but those white sandy beaches in carolina are beautiful the The Outer Banks.

Yeah, no, they're gorgeous. I didn't know until San Diego. On the East Coast, I just assumed all the beaches kind of looked the same. They're relatively flat. They're sand bottoms. And for the most part, depending upon where you go, where I'm at right now is a lot of like beach homes. And then if you're in like Atlantic City, it's tons of like high rise hotels.

So like, but in general, like the beaches are structured about the same. It wasn't until I got to San Diego that I was like, damn, all these beaches have like their own thing. Like if you're in Pacific Beach, it's like a family-ish, younger, younger type of person beach. But if you go to Blacks, Blacks is this majestic, crazy, awesome cliff thing that you've got to

go on a two-mile hike to get down to. Then once you get down there, there's a nude beach which is wild. There's a is wild never sold on the new beach oh you think you're you think you're sold until you dude ashton and i this is so funny ashton and i went and did the full walk one day at black's beach and on you get down there and it's like 80 of the dudes are 80 of the nude people are older dudes yeah there was there was like a community of people it was like probably the nude beach community and there was one 60 year old lady that had at some point in her life gotten, like, legit fake boobs.

And, like, her whole body looked like she was 60, except two pieces of her body. And they were, like, 25-year-old. You just focus on that. You just focus on that. That's when I would die and laugh, and it was so funny. We were like, look at that lady. She looks like she's 60. but two parts of her body look like

she's 25 look her husband when the lights are off presence so happy he's so happy when the lights go off he can imagine whatever he wants oh it was so funny you'll see some crazy stuff of black speech ah bros let's talk about performance and health um man let's kick this thing off talking about talking about health and how you set up your training for it what are like the what how would you even define training for health like what what would your goals be in in the overall concept of training just to be healthy i really think for for pure health it just comes down to feeling good and being happy right at that at the deepest level people just want to be in good shape so they can do the

things they want to do pain-free and have the energy where they're not just run down all the time yeah performance is about winning yeah health is about happiness. Right. The two. I think a good way to define it would be like, uh, with performance, you're trying to push things as close to overtraining, which is like breakdown. That's basically, you're pushing as close to systemic inflammation as possible without going over. Whereas general health, you're not getting anywhere near it. You're focusing on range of motion. You're focusing on on nutrition you're focused on being strong enough you know to do the things i want to do and maintain as much muscle maybe build a little bit that would be the difference i think yeah i feel like i feel like maximum recoverable volume is the performance side of

things and then with with the health it's like um what's the right what's the right term here it's like the um whatever the minimum is to get a benefit. That was what I was going to say. The minimum viable product or minimum effective dose. Effective dose. That's it. There it is. Minimum effective dose, right.

60-plus years of strength and conditioning experience here. We had a hard time coming up with minimum the thing we've struggled with the most doing the little the smallest amount possible isn't there like a number it's it's somewhere like if you have a decent strength training background and your goal is to just maintain the amount of muscle that you currently have for the rest of your life you only need to be doing like 20 or so of the total amount of volume that you've done like you literally need to just kind of like wake up and remind your body that you have glutes and like the only problem is eventually your physiology starts to deteriorate and so that 20 becomes you should do more like yeah that's going to go up

as you get older unfortunately so you gotta think of that yeah if you're you know 35 or younger i totally agree but then as you get older that has to go up yeah the i i think it's a really interesting thing to to think about the the really long i mean we look i talk to dads all the time now because of our like the the diesel dad group and the biggest misconception that like all of them just want to be strong and healthy it's like and and what does that boil down to is they want to lose body fat they want to have a sustainable way to eat and they want to look like they work out and so many of them like buy into this idea that you have to be like training so much in order for that to happen and actually setting up and and trying to understand how little you really have to do in order to reach that specific goal. If you're able to get your nutrition dialed, then like the actual weight

training piece of it really is like, it's such a small amount of volume that you truly need to be doing. I mean, if you can get a couple days a week of getting below parallel press pull do some carries do some lunges um and do it at a relatively 80 to 90 percent of whatever a perceived max effort would be you're going to get there for pretty much all of your health goals i totally agree with that. Recently, when I got so busy last semester, I didn't really lift, honestly, since February. And then I started back at schools out, and I benched one time. And then on my second time benching, I benched 341 pounds. And I'm like, I didn't even lift for three months.

So then I'm like, shit, man. Maybe I don't need to do near as much as i think i do and so yeah which is well this is also a thing about like long-term performance right it's like the the majority i would love to know the actual numbers if you guys do but like when when i think about like how strong do i have to Well, it really depends upon how much I value doing that specific thing. The last time I can't remember his name, but

in our original group of Diesel Dad people that came through, we had a dude that could squat like 500 pounds following the program. He front squatted like 315 or something like that for a double and I was like, I'm not letting that guy come in here and just do this. So I had to go front squat 315 or something like that for a double and i was like i'm not letting that guy come in here and just do this yeah so i had to go front squat 315 for a double but i hit it and it was heavy as shit yeah for the most part it's like if you need to be strong and you have a decent training background

your brain will allow you to be really really strong whenever you need to. Right. As long as you're putting in the volume and the consistency over time. Honestly, I think I could do two reps a week of front squat and, like, still front squat 500 pounds. We were joking about that on our team call last week, actually, that Magnolia – if Magnolia gets married at 30 years old, how old are you going to be? I'll be 80, probably. You might not be able to.

At 30 years old, yeah, I'll be 80. We don't know if she's getting married at 30 years old, but we're guaranteeing at 80 you'll be able to front squat 400 pounds. Make that 76. All right. Sorry. 76. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right before walking her down the aisle, we're going to load 400 pounds up and have you get after it just so that

guy knows. I think I would have to be dead to not be able to front squat 400. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. There's some certain things in my body that does not go below and i never go below a 400 pound front squat no matter like because not only did i not train like i was as hard on myself as i could possibly i didn't sleep i was averaging four hours of sleep it was just terrible and i still did not go below a 300 bench or 400 front squat so that's as weak as i think i could possibly get

so and it's about just the consistency right like i i never really want to push myself to that 315 double until someone does it and then i go oh i wonder if i can still man up and make this happen but for the most part all of my training i think that strength numbers are really, really cool. And people chase PRs, which is great. But I think that the real magic of strength training for health and longevity happens in, like, the 6 to 12 rep range at moderate weights. Where, like, you don't, like, set one relatively easy. Set two, a little bit harder.

By the time you get to set five you should have to think about if you're doing a set of six like the last two reps you should have to really dig in and focus like almost thinking about how hard and how much do you have to amp yourself up to get the job done is a really good indicator of the amount of intensity that you're using the amount of load that you're using and if you have to like if you're like growling at a barbell on set one to get yourself fired up to go lift the weights, you've gone too far. Yeah. Now you're in performance and you don't need to be like, yeah, totally. I think in the most a guy should ever do if it's health is two reps in reserve

is as far. That's your max. You, your max out is you do a, you know, say you max out on front squat it should be two reps in reserve that's your max and that's as close as you get to failure yeah the older I get the more I feel like that's a good idea I feel like going like all the way to true failure all the time was like the obvious thing

to do when I was in my 20s and I did a lot of it but I do feel like it beats you up in a way that when you have reps in reserve, it just doesn't beat you down quite as much. Yeah. I think movement becomes more important

than anything for me. It's moving through all the planes of motion. You're moving bilaterally, unilaterally, you know. Right. You're training for health these days. And so the spectrum of goals that you have is much broader. Like if you're just a power lifter you really only have three goals to increase your one right max on squat

bench deadlift and if you happen to have like really tight shoulders or really tight hips and it happens to give you a bigger squat or a bigger bench press like that's great but but once you're once you're training for health then you're not siloing all of your training toward one or two very specific goals. You presumably at that point have a broad spectrum of things that you want to accomplish. You want to have – it's kind of like the CrossFit model of being kind of good at everything. You want to be mobile and you want to be pretty strong. You want to have a decent amount of muscle mass.

You want to have good cardio. You have more things you're worried about with health than performance for the most part. Absolutely. If you think about powerlifting and the whole, always so unhealthy as possible, you know, the whole goal is, it's like, it is,

it's like, you want to be able to bottom out at right below parallel. So you purposely are getting your hips as tight as possible, which is, I promise for all of you powerlifters, there's a day coming where you're going to pay the piper on that one. All of us is me. getting your hips as tight as possible, which is, I promise for all of you powerlifters, there's a day coming where you're going to pay the piper on that one. All of us is me.

Uh, hip replacement, Ed Cohen, hip replacement, Steve Goggins, hip replacement is coming for you. So, but I mean, Hey,

I don't regret anything. Like I wanted to win. I want to be the best in the world and know what that was like. And now I know what it's like. And so, yeah, that's the goal. I also think that like uh the nutrition piece uh is so different when it comes to and it's actually one of the hardest transitions that i've had to go through

myself of like re-establishing and we've talked about how much you have to eat in order to put on weight and gain muscle and like try to be pushing the limits on on strength um but once you make that transition from performance to health and longevity and in developing a program for those goals that nutrition piece and just because you can eat 4 000 calories in a day you do not need to be eating 4 000 calories in a day and i'm talking to people every single day that went from like hardcore CrossFit for five years and they were doing the partying thing on the weekends and not fully focused and fully bought into the nutrition side of things and ended up like breaking even, basically. It's like, I'm training really hard, 60 plus minutes a day. And on the weekends,

I'm having a lot of fun. And then as you start to transition into like, how do I do this for the rest of my life? People know that their training is going to tailor down. They know that they have less time. They're not going to be able to lift the same weights and the same intensity and the same speed and all that. But they've got this like trigger built in of constantly being hungry and constantly being able to eat and not adjusting the nutrition side of things. And I think that's where most people get into a ton of trouble. Like it's, and I, and I think it's because it doesn't take the, the mental and emotional intensity and focus to go eat. It's fun. In order to go and build up to a heavy double for the day,

to find a 2RM for the day, man, that stuff's really, really challenging. You have to really hype yourself up and be focused when you're in the gym to get there. It's like this extra level of intensity that you're bringing to your workouts. You don't need to do that to go sit down and eat a cheeseburger. You could do that as casual as you want. You can even have a beer and make it a relaxing moment. Next thing you know, like you do that and you're 20, 30 pounds overweight after three years of maintaining the same eating habits,

but not breaking even on, on the amount of energy that's going out by training so hard every day. And then like, if you're doing, if you're constantly going to that twoRM as you were talking about, is that you're so just like disengaging the parasympathetic and embracing the sympathetic so much that eventually even your heart rate variability is starting to get whacked. It's like there's no, you know, there's no good balance of parasympathetic and sympathetic, which is what you want for your heart.

If you're constantly going to failure and creating that stress and calling on your sympathetic nervous system every dang day over time, that accumulates. That's a big problem with a lot of powerlifters. No one, even in this app, powerlifters, if you're going to go heavy all the dang time, you're now in that group too, and you're causing thickness in the heart and not the thickness that's good. You know, like when people do triathlons and you know, their heart, you know, there's hypertrophy in the heart as well. However, that's the actual chamber getting

bigger and able to hold more blood. Whereas powerlifters are people going heavy all the time. It's getting thick in the amount of that actual muscle is getting thick in that ventricle portion of the heart, and that can't hold as much blood. And therefore, every time your heart pumps, there's less blood, less oxygen, nutrients to the body. It's not a good thing. So there's so many things to think about. Go heavy by all means.

For heaven's sakes, I'm not turning soft on you guys. I'm just saying the majority of your training should be healthy. It should be relaxed. You should be able to talk and have a good time while you train. Maybe once a week, go for it a little bit. Just the balance.

Max out Friday. We've been doing that lately. Really enjoying it. One yeah one day we pick something fun anyway right yeah that's okay it's about how do you think velocity training plays into performance versus health i think it's a great thing i think um for masters i think that would be the way to go there's a guy i trained we've become friends he's actually a dentist in germany and his name is Philip and we talk all, he's got kids and, you know, he'll send me pictures of him with his kids out, you know,

sledding in the snow in Germany. Anyway, so him, I, you know, he's got velocity. And so it allows me to develop, you know, a profile on him. And so I know when he's getting close to failure. So I can say go to a 3RM but stay, you know, at.5 below of where you're coming to failure, you know, for example. And so it allows me to make sure that, like, you know, that objectively he never gets close to failure. And it allows me to prescribe loads based on his day as well. Because, like, you know, Doug, if he's had a rough day at work, his kids are going crazy, and he's already stressed out,

then, you know, that's going to come a lot – you know, he's going to go a lot – that.5 is going to come a lot sooner because he's already stressed. So it just allows me to make sure he never gets close to ever failure and so it's been a good thing because he's when he first started working out with me his hold back was he's tried it before a bunch of times and you know it always gets hurt and so this was my way of saying well i guarantee you won't get hurt if you listen to these you know prescriptions and it's worked year in now yeah i love that because he's actually just learning a new way to view like a new frame to understand strength conditioning.

It's actually something that I think is a massive piece to the longevity of it is like finding ways to somehow keep learning something new. I mean, there's like very few ways two and a half decades into this thing now. It's going to be my 25th summer of lifting weights. I'm so stoked on that. I had that realization the other day. My very first strength coach died recently.

I sent Masha a text about it, hoping you guys knew each other from old powerlifting days. But it was really crazy because I was like, damn, you feel like you still remember are you talking about the guy that we had on our show no no no no that was like my no the guy that um i sent you the pictures his name's steve sakis he was the guy that ran the wrestling strength conditioning program at my high school oh yeah um he the reason i call the guy paul who we were going we may even be having him on

relatively close to when this is airing, but I call him my first coach because I always assumed that I lifted weights to play hockey. It was like I never really cared about lifting weights for performance. I was only getting stronger for hockey. Paul Beckwith was like the first coach where it was like the goal is only to get strong to go compete in CrossFit

now, which was a huge transition where strength was always for sports then strength became the sport which I had to actually learn how to do strong people things. Party a lot less. That dude looks a lot he looks like

a lot of fun i'm looking at the picture you sent me he's got the mullet going on he's like super deep yeah he uh he used to like i remember when so the gym that we trained at was like underneath the stairs at the stadium. And he was, he was like as wide as the door. Yeah. He walked in and when you would look all, there would be no light in the room. It was like under the, it wasn't like there was a,

so there's only one door, but he would stand in the way of the door. So nobody could get out. It was like, you were in a cage fight basically. Like all these wrestlers would be in a cage fight basically like all these wrestlers would be in the room and they would all be training so hard and i was like the first i was 13 when i started working out with these guys and he was just like this just giant

intimidating human being that was as wide as the door and like you couldn't get out you once you entered you just were trapped good okay my dad loved training with him yeah his gym back in the day that's where my dad uh like learned really how to lift weights and that dude is huge his like neck is really like or i guess that's a neck it's like straps that's all i assumed you would know but i assumed you guys would have competed against each other i think he's a little a little um older it appears like it's possible the prior decade to mine yeah i love those old school bodybuilding picture or not bodybuilding but powerlifting yeah pictures yeah you could tell they're just like there's no sport about it it's just

this tiny little group of people that are in these gyms that are and they just somehow decided they were going to be the huge dude that's what i think about uh coach ken yeah when i see pictures of him from college i'm like damn dude This is what happened with Instagram is everyone started showing up. And people like Coach Ken, those were the monsters. You see a dude with a barrel ab set up like he had in college, you'd be like, I do not want to mess with that guy. He was a beast. Yeah, playing football week for us and just banging out monstrous yeah those are

like the old school like strength magazine like that's i loved milo the magazine oh me too i used to get milo all the time and you didn't get in there and see guys like doing like the Instagram pose with tiny waist and dope abs. It was like big, strong ass dudes that were just thick. It's a different era of powerlifting than, you know, I'm embracing because, you know, I'm coaching young JC. So like, you know, I'm trying to embrace the whole new culture. So yeah, it's a different, different ball game. The kids don't, their attention to detail is less,

which is bothersome at times. It's like all they care about is like this Instagram thing. But then there's this dude that no one talks about in – Yuri Belkin in Russia who is whipping all of their butts because he is really – he's a true lifter. Like he would have been one of all this group that's out there now that I really question could have beaten. And for me to say that is, like, hard.

And so, but that dude is that good. So, he is the – I mean, I think Ed Cohn would not have beaten this guy. So, like, he's just – so, yeah, I'm just going to tangent about, like, doing form, but yeah. Mash, you are doing a lot of like weighted carries uh and and your training now as far as like changing all of the goals to just health and longevity and movement how how do you feel that plays into like your overall training you're doing it pretty much daily now with the the trap bar i like it just

it's just a great way to make sure that my core is is staying steady and i'll tell you one thing that's helped me too is like we've had a couple people who've you know on our show who have been big proponents for barefoot training and it's a huge it works like it is changing everything about like i'm at i'm squatting deeper and i'm barefoot so i don't even have the elevated heel and so for someone who has hips like mine basically cement hips on my left side i have a good one on my right and a cement one on my left um just no but like it works so like yeah shout out to squat university you you know, to, uh, um, are you squatting barefoot too?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did, uh, I did a front squat completely barefoot the whole time. And, you know,

I only went up to 170, well, three 74. And so, but yeah, it was, it was deep. I,

I started squatting. I mean, I've done it in the past, but I think since talking to Aaron, I've become, and now that the weather's nice, it makes it so much easier, but Kelly started,

sorry, that's the other guy who talks about it. Yeah. I feel like if you are very attentive to the way that you move and how your joints feel and, and kind of like know where things are supposed to be at specific points in each movement, training barefoot is,

gives you the most feedback as quickly as possible and for me I notice how much I lack that like perfect range of motion in my ankles I can still squat very well but I can feel where that catches like immediately when I'm barefoot, where even if you just give me like a quarter inch in my heel, I don't even need like a full weightlifting shoe. I just need like a tiny little bit to let my, my foot drop down. My knee will go over my toe. Everything's painless. Um, but if I, if I'm completely barefoot and I don't have that quarter inch,

it will like immediately I can, if I'm completely barefoot and I don't have that quarter inch, it will like immediately, it's like it hits a wall and there's just, it doesn't go where it's supposed to go. It's like very much something that I think about. I'm actually super stoked to talk to Ben Patrick from Knees Over Toe Guys because I want to get better at it. Like now that it's summertime and I'm barefoot a lot more and I notice these things, and I've got multiple neighbors of mine following his program now

with their jacked up knees. Yeah, that dude really is amazing. And I think that all this shoe does is if you ever thought of it, it took me only a year ago to understand like why those shoes even works. I never really even thought about it. I just knew I put it on it means quite easy but it's just like you know where as normal you're going to start at 90 degrees your foot in relation to your tibia fibula and then with your shoe on you start at like 100 degrees so just you start with a little bit more range of motion it's like sitting

like a catcher yeah exactly and so yeah on your toes it just you're automatically there it's like sitting like a catcher yeah exactly and so yeah on your toes it just you're on back there it's easy to go both player below parallel if your ankles are already you know you get an extra 10 degrees or 20 degrees depending on how you know how much the shoes elevate your heel yeah my my ankles suck and it's something that i like work on to the point where it's pain free and that it doesn't mess my knees up. But, um, I'm actually really stoked to talk to him because of like,

I know that over time my ankles are going to at some point cause a problem in my life if I don't make them better. Um, just because my knees don't track the way that they're a hundred percent supposed to. And it's like just an area that I'm very interested to learn in. How do your knees track? Well, they track over my toes.

Like the squatting form looks fine. It's literally just like it gets there, but I know that it isn't. My ankles just don't allow it to go I know that it isn't it. My ankles just don't allow it to go as far as it should. Right. Okay. So, so it might be like directly over my toes when it should be at a bottom position for as,

as low, as low as I can squat. Um, like they, they should be an inch or two over. Like I don't ever hit the four inch, uh, test on the assessment. Oh yeah. This should be an inch or two over. Like I don't ever hit the four inch test on the assessment.

Oh yeah. This should be five. I never, whatever it is, I never hit the wall. Right. From four inches out, five inches out. That just isn't. I started squatting heels elevated just to like stretch a little bit more, more quad engagement and stuff like that just a little bit

uh which i've really enjoyed but um yeah i'm really fired up to talk to ben just because he's doing really cool stuff yeah he totally is i think uh i think every every time i see his stuff he gets a little bit better and a little bit better he's just so dialed in on that one thing anyone who does that like our boy you know brett contreras when you dial in on that one thing you can really make some impact i believe contreras is definitely making an impact yeah i remember when i remember when we talked to james fitzgerald at wadapalooza a year or two ago uh well probably probably two years ago when last year um and he was saying that for for health like for crossfit he likes mixed modal crossfit type training of course but then

for people that are kind of past that or there's training for basic regular health like more or less functional bodybuilding and distance running kind of like full circle old school strength training prior to crossfit yeah was was the thing that he recommended primarily for people that didn't have any performance goals specifically. They just want to be healthy, look good, feel good. And I feel like that's a very safe way to go about it, which I think is one of the primary things he was trying to get at. Like you don't have to do all this complicated stuff that's hard on your joints. Just do basic movement patterns, hypertrophy rep ranges, tempo, you know,

some portion of the time run distance. You work on your cardio a couple of days a week. Don't mix them up. Keep it simple. You'll be plenty healthy without thinking too hard. I would say as long as you maximize ranges of motion, I agree 100%, which I think he's,

he says that because there's three predictions. A part of his spiel. Right. There's three indicators of longevity of life. One is definitely cardiovascular. One is muscle mass, and the other is movement. And so with what he says there, you get all three. As long as you're not eating like an asshole, I guess,

I know what people say, but you don't want to do that. I think you can't just eat grease every day and butter. You can if you're 25 and you work out all the time. You just won't have a performance. Performance won't be your thing. Right.

Yeah, I think that's smash butter on purpose. I eat it by the stick. What is your take on butter? Dude, I love butter. I feel like butter is – I mean, if we're talking about just general health, like you need calories from fat, and butter has calories from fat. So you can have that as long as you're not like radically exceeding your

caloric maintenance numbers. If you're not in a caloric surplus it's not going to make you fat you know basically just if you keep if you have enough protein and you keep your calories below maintenance you lose body fat if you're not above maintenance you're not going to get fat even if you're eating lots of butter and you know lots of fat in general carbs are low fat is high protein is high as long as your caloric amount is below maintenance, then you're not going to get fat. It's not going to make you radically unhealthy in any particular way. Right.

I agree. I used to, every time I would make eggs, I would lop off a big old chunk. Kerrygold is like a full meal. I think people would eat a lot less bread. They realize how delicious butter is by itself. You don't even need all that extra stuff. Just eat the butter. They realize how delicious butter is by itself. You don't even need all that extra stuff. Just eat the butter.

That's what you're really there for. Bread is just the transportation device to get the butter into your mouth, which actually tastes good. Have you had butter, just butter, playing straight to the gore? Oh, yeah. I'll eat Kerrygold butter like just straight up eat the butter. Straight to the gore. Yeah, like take the stick of Kerrygold butter like it just straight up eat the butter straight to the dome take the stick of Kerrygold butter not regular butter regular butter tastes

awful but if you get Kerrygold and you just take a bite out of the stick it's delicious I mean I have to be pumped up for that you do that I went through we went through a phase with my kids here just recently where like

they just like weren't eating anything we would give to them bro i know but but i but i did i discovered you know the last like week or two like if if i buy bread and put butter on it they'll eat it and they'll put a lot of butter on it and so it's easy to get carbohydrates into your kids if you give them any any processed, they'll eat it. That's a guarantee. The hard part is getting protein into the mix. Protein is probably the hardest, but there's a couple of good fat sources, butter being one of them that they'll consistently eat.

I'm just trying to get enough calories into my kids these days. Butter's been the go-to thing. If in the evening they're all walking around with a with a piece of bread with like you know like a quarter inch slab of butter on it you go buy to their bread and it's and it's totally delicious i'm all about butter carry go butters the shit you ever wonder if kids would ever just starve themselves so sometimes i'm like all right i'm gonna play your game i'm gonna let you not eat for as long as you tell me you don't want to eat and like let's see who calls who's bluff you know like dude my acupuncturist from san diego called us i was probably like six months ago

and she's like she's awesome but she could not be any more out of touch on what it's like to actually be a parent and how fickle kids are when it comes to food and how annoying it can be. She's talking to Ashton, and she goes, so are you guys doing a lot of bone marrows and organ meats? And I'm like, are you on crack? Could there be any bigger sign that you don't have kids? You think my one-and-a-half-year-old, two-year-old is going to eat bone marrow? I'm trying to get a chicken nugget. I don't have a cow cheek over here for you to eat. No.

I'm just trying to make sure calories go in the mouth and there's enough protein can we just make sure there's enough protein for the day bro thank god for milk bone marrow oh milk yes smash they love you know that's what they survive on though we'll make steak the most delicious juicy steak and they you know my boys go no i said now i started making fun of them you know what i can't wait till you're about 16 and i tell you that you did this that you did not eat steak you chose to eat your potato and butter and not the steak i was like i'm gonna make fun of you and then bear took the challenge he's like okay he said bear now he loves steak because i was making fun of him you know like look dad's gotta do Dad's got to do what you got to do.

I mean, maybe that's mental abuse. I don't know. But, like, shit, man. Like, steak, you got to eat. A man needs to eat steak. You just got to be able to get your protein in. That one's the best way to do it. The protein is, like, I think it's so easy for people to not,

to just not think about where those macros are coming from, like not think about the protein. And the longevity of it, like if you eat enough protein in a day, it's way easier to not overeat. Like you just got to get – not only is it like technically more satiating and all that stuff, but like you're just full. Your body, once you get 150 grams of protein in you you don't want to eat you don't want to but if you if you never give your body the thing that it wants or the

thing that it needs you could eat all day because your body's like okay we ate but we still didn't get it all right what's next we didn't get we we're still waiting we're still waiting for you to give us protein like we we are we are hunters we are supposed to go get the meat yes go eat the steak yes everything else better my sin and titan those things don't build on carbs y'all it's not a bowl of pasta that's gonna make that happen no no and that that's really where things start to get so out of control with people it's like yeah if you're training a ton and you're in this thing for performance go eat the pasta get after it like load it up eat it every night you need that much that many calories keep that performance going to be playing at the edge but man when you check out of does your one rm or two rm matter to

you in the grand scheme of life just just eat the meat and the vegetable make it taste delicious by lathering a whole bunch of carry gold on there and you got it you're going to be lean you're going to be able to eat and live a very healthy, happy life doing that. I think you can lump up all we're saying. If you did what James Fitzgerald said, if you did the functional bodybuilding, even if you just did bodybuilding, if you go and lift like Arnold did and you did full range of motion and making sure each body part is getting pretty jacked at the complete range of motion, and yet you did some cardiovascular, a bike.

I don't know about the long distance running. I might have to disagree with him on that because you see so many like repetitive injuries. If you just run, I think your best bet would be cross training, you know, because if you run every day, that's going to eventually your ankles, knees and hips are going to take a beating. It's just, that's just science. So didn't he start as a, as a runner, more of a distance guy? He's got to be pretty friendly to that.

Soccer. He looks like a soccer player. I wouldn't think he's really talking to the 250-pound-plus powerlifter crowd. I feel like distance running for anyone that's big is generally not a good idea. I do think you're right. Like the wear and tear is not worth the benefit. I would even say I would like to see the numbers. But like, you know, I started out my career working with my chiropractor,

who's my buddy, and the majority of people in his office were runners. And they weren't big runners. They're just runners. There's not too many big runners, you know. They're mostly skinny people who run many big runners you know um they're mostly skinny people who run which is awesome but they stay beat up their knees were beat up their hips were beat up their back was beat up it's just pound pound pound it's you know if you look at force equals mass times acceleration just a simple equation every time your foot hitting the ground

and you look at total volume like that's pretty brutal on the joints i mean like you know some people i think uh then dr steve mcgill would say it depends on the joints i mean like you know some people i think uh then dr steve mcgill would say it depends on the human some people can run their whole lives and get up to crazy amounts of miles never get hurt some people can't but i think a healthy way to look at it would be cross training like run a day ride a bike a day go swimming a day and like that might be a little bit more you know sustainable over time i would bet dude i would love if they had studies watching kids that ran a lot when they were really young and how that plays out over their lifetime it's like the majority of kids just mirror the way that their

parents are walking around the house if your parents walk with your feet out you should not be running right don't do it it's a great point you don't need to be going anywhere and i don't know how long it takes to fix that and i'm sure if we were talking to kelly he'd have a ton of tips and tricks and tools that you could like get your feet to not be flat and get your ankles and toes facing the right way and be moving properly yeah yeah a lot um but i i feel like that's like a should you be running is a question that almost needs to be answered before you turn 18 years old of like once those things are hardwired and those wires don't don don't do well, the last thing you want to do is go out and put four miles in your foot.

Doesn't hit the ground. Well, you definitely don't want to be out there like trying to run half marathons like that is the recipe for disaster. I think it's like anything though, man. Like if you squat every day, tons of volume,

like eventually that's maybe not so good. I think it's a great way to get strong and there's some benefits to that. But when you overdo anything we're talking about, so if I put all my apples in the running, you know, basket, that could for some people, for a lot of people, I would say, that could be not a great idea. If I ride a bike every single day, because think of your posture when you're riding a bike, probably not a great idea. If I ride a bike every single day, because think of your posture when you're riding a bike,

probably not a great idea. Swimming every day, not a great idea because it's hard on the shoulders. But if you do each of those three a little bit every week, that seems to be, if we're talking about longevity of life, that seems to be the sustainable way to go. I would recommend it. I actually want to calculate the number of it.

I had this realization the other day that like, I don't have a single training session in a week that extends out past like 30 minutes, but throughout a week, I probably have 50 doses of exercise ranging from like walking to running to weightlifting to now that it's summertime swimming to rowing to that's awesome many other things yeah and if you were to add up all of the 20 minute sessions that i put together in a week it probably probably equates to like, I mean, walk four miles a day, that's four 20 minute sessions, go for a two mile run in the morning, that's another 20 minute session, like a 20 to 30 minute workout, three to four days a week, like once you start adding those things up, the consistency and like stacking the deck in in your favor becomes so easy.

It's just really a matter of like staying on top of it and fighting to hit that like i don't even know how many i actually i'm going to calculate now how many i actually put together like 20 minute check-ins tell me guess moderate intensity curious because you know we're like my wife and i you're developing our schedules so in the summertime we're not just like guessing when we're doing what, but how many would you say, this is a good idea. This is actually interesting.

Like how many 20 minutes? My, my morning, I wake up right now and I've done this for the last couple of weeks is I wake up and I go run two miles immediately out of bed, put the shoes on, go run two miles. So that's one.

I walk at least four miles a day and that's four so that'd be five total before i even touched weights monday wednesday friday guaranteed i'm lifting weights i hope to try and get like a tuesday in but so that's six yeah so six a day wow call it five five to six a day so you're looking at roughly 40 sessions a week that are 20 minutes a piece. Well, that's getting after, I mean, that's actually our, uh, our 40, you're doing two hours a day of training. That's awesome. Yeah.

But they're like, yeah, like most of them are a one mile walk around my neighborhood or like a 20 minute training session to stay just moving throughout the day like every four hours coming in and doing a quick little session I'm going to plug in outside shut me down let me ask you this like so like on your on your walks do you ever do like some do like some work while you're walking, like social media or anything like that? I'm really just trying to really perfect. My goal is to perfect my time, use of time. Yeah.

I really try to set that stuff up so that I'm not doing anything. Like I may listen to an audio book. There's almost like anxiety involved in it and fully disconnecting, if that makes sense. It's like you, you want to be disconnected, but then you like feel like you're supposed to be doing things. I know.

That sucks. Yeah. Like, I hate that. I hate that. Like feeling of anxiety of like ah do i really have 20 minutes you obviously do it's actually wildly beneficial to be able to just take the break i agree um but like i would say probably half the time you know what is the best

one is like i i used to download audiobooks and and and listen while I was running in the morning. And I was like, this is stupid. Do I really need information coming in? I'm about to go get bombarded by 10 hours of information and talking and noise. And it's like, no, I don't. So I stopped listening to podcasts and audio books for my morning run. And my goal is most of the time to not be having information coming at me. I think it's a great idea. You know, like I've gotten to the point now, like I never get in my car unless I'm listening to either a podcast or like a lecture, you know, like I feel like I'm wasting my time. And then I started thinking I have zero defrag time. I never defrag.

And then I'm like, no wonder I gone stale. So I started spending more time of like what you're talking about where I don't do anything of that. And then all of a sudden the ideas came back and things. It is a real thing. I think of all the time of the barbell mass. When you guys did barbell business and you had those masterminds, the thing that I learned the most was,

you know, spinning and scheduling quality time to defrag and let your brain, you know, like be creative. Yeah. It's really hard. Cause there's like a, you feel like you're missing out on something.

So like that, that time that should be quiet time when you're out walking when you're out just being by yourself like i've even tried like i i recognize that like my normal one mile like loop around my neighborhood it's like god if i could just be out in the woods right now doing this walk everything would be better like just trying to be a part of nature as much as possible, but realizing that's really hard to do in, in modern day living scenarios. For the most part with this conversation,

we've been trying to separate performance from health where, where you can't really, you can train for both a little bit. You don't have to pick one or the other. You don't have to like just throw your health away and just have the biggest back squat ever. You don't have to just feel good and be happy and let your strength just fall apart. With the Diesel Dad,

I think low joint stress functional bodybuilding in a Metcon fashion, it kind of hits the sweet spot where you're getting a cardiovascular benefit. You're not beating your body up too much super time efficient where to your point travis about the distance running it's like well you could do bodybuilding and then you have a cardio component that that does have some downside if you're doing super conservative crossfit mostly focusing on functional bodybuilding type movements and not the skill related movements you're not You're not,

you're not doing kipping handstand pushups and snatches and muscle ups and whatever else you just, you're just doing basic like dumbbell overhead press, like out of, out of, out of moderate pace, like with tempo and all that, then you're getting the cardiovascular component and you're maintaining muscle

mass. You're presumably getting, getting, or at least maintain getting stronger and, or just maintaining your strength. So I feel like that's, that's the sweet spot, which is why that's how we train these days. Like I still want to be relatively strong and athletic because I do jujitsu and I still have performance goals, even though most of my goals are health. With training in the weight room, how can I be healthy, minimize joint stress,

and still perform at least somewhat well when I go to jujitsu? Yeah, totally. And like, yeah, there's certain amounts of strength too, that I do want to maintain or improve. It's hard for me. Here's another thing. If I don't have some type of performance goal, it's hard for me to go to the gym. That's me being real with you. So if I go there and I really don't think about some type of goal, I probably won't go. It's just, you know, I guess it's like Pavlov's dog. You know, like, you know, when I go to the gym, you know,

I'm used to there being something I'm working towards. So, but just to guess the key would be is like keeping those goals, you know, not to be extreme you know which is hard for me too it's like i start training and inevitably every single time i start talking about competing again and then competing leads to a whole different place yeah leads to the most unhealthy place in the world yeah i think that the the big transition and a lot of that stuff for me came right after crossfit was like uh the ability to just be inside two weeks four months of of being able to play at any point in time like that really

is the mentality of yeah like my neighbors uh and they're super awesome it's really funny they're like let's go run a half marathon i'm like okay sure do it. Like, you want to start training? Like, no way. No, no, no, never. Definitely not going to do that. Well, how are you going to be ready? It's like, well, I'm just always ready. We should just always be able to just go do it. Yeah. Like, what am I going to do? You want me to start running like six days a week? Like what? That sounds like I'll never make it to the half marathon if i train by running i'll never i'll hate it so much by the time i get there but if you give me two weeks to be ready for anything i'll be there and i'll be able to

show up so in order to build a training program around that it's like it's basically what doug just laid out which is the imam aesthetics program of like be strong have your conditioning be able to go run be able to go walk be able to go do all these little things in small doses so that you build this massive base and then take that base and aim it towards a specific goal and two weeks later you should be relatively ready to go play that's a brilliant statement i I trained this kid, Andrew McGee. He was a cross country runner when he was in high school and he was good, but he started getting these little nagging injuries because his coaches were like, all they would do is just up the volume of running, which I get it.

Up the volume of weightlifting. So I took over his training completely and we started doing cross training. So he would, he would bike some, he would swim some, and he would run some. And so overall, you know, when you look at like VO2 max and, you know, basic aerobic work, he was doing more than he was doing running. Anyway, but mainly I was just trying to say, look, it's not working. You can't do those mileages because you're getting hurt. Anyway, long story short the kid not only

was he able to keep doing cross country but he won like he crushed all of his records when he flipped to doing you know the whole I'm not telling any runner out there I'm not telling you to stop what you're doing like I'm just saying in this one instance in this individual which I am telling

you you should be looking individually and not you know big groups. It was a definite plus. It goes on. This kid, not only does he crush everybody in his conference, he crushed everyone in the state. Now he's, well, he's graduating now, but he went to Carolina. He did cross country for UNC.

The kid was a beast. Anyway, that's my story. So he was a tough cross-country kid. Dude, weightlifting, yeah. All that running, I don't know how people wake up and think that they've got to go run for like an hour

just to get it in. Some people, man, they can do that. It's in their DNA. You start studying a little bit of genetics and physiology. It's just in their DNA. They're equipped. Their joints are prepared at birth for that. And some people it's not.

However, does it mean that the one is going to be the better runner? It just means he can endure more. Yeah, actually, when it comes to a lot of that running stuff, I feel like running is like the gateway. I'm going to go get in shape because all you got to do is pick your foot up and move it faster than you did yesterday. Everyone can do that. The problem is nobody ever really looks at running as a skill that needs to be learned. The gate is important.

Yeah, it's super important. Why so many Andrew, I mean, to think about how big of a business running is, is insane to the fact that all you need to do is pick your feet up and go forward. Yeah. There should be no business involved in it.

There should be zero business. Nike disagrees with you. Nike is like you're wrong there should literally be no business in it there should be the billionaire disagrees i know right like it's kind of like soccer like when you think about how much money parents pay for their kids to go play soccer, you're like, wait a second, you're going to take this ball and kick it into a net, and we're going to find out who can do it the most, but it's going to cost me thousands of dollars a year in uniforms and cleats. We're playing in an open field. Right.

Like, we're doing nothing here. Yeah, how's that money going to? Think about that for a second. We should all just be running track right now, find out who the fastest kid is, and put a ball 100 yards away from them and say, beat everyone to it. We win.

Guaranteed. Find the fastest kid. No, you've got to pay thousands and thousands of dollars for your kids to go chase this little inflatable ball around an open field. I find this funny, and this is about to make a lot of people mad. But like, you know, the parents are like, you know, I'm paying this because I want to give my kid a scholarship. I'm like, OK, have you done the math? This kid is starting at nine years old and you're paying for coaches from nine years old to 18 for him to get a scholarship.

What if you took that same money and put it in a college fund? You would have probably given him four scholarships. I'm like, so I'm not even hating on the parents doing that. Like, do it, but be real. You're doing it because you want to see your kid be successful and to get as far as he can. It has nothing to do with the scholarship. You want to give your kid an advantage over the other kids. And, hey, now we're talking, and I can agree with you.

But don't be telling me it's for a scholarship. I think the biggest advantage that athletic parents have in life is, like, at some point in time, we've all, like us three, have been in a room with somebody that is like so obviously really good at what they do that you know what that looks like. And if your kid's not there, you just got to kind of, you go, oh, well, I have like a normal, awesome kid.

I don't need to go pay all that money for them to be slightly, slightly better but the same kid. Yes. Extraordinary. I say that now with a three-year-old. When she turns nine, watch me just forking out cash all over the place for some special coach just so she can be a quarter of a percent better be like i'm sorry guys i lied to you i think for coaching for your kids is one of the best things you can do for i agree it doesn't have to be like doesn't have to be like a baseball coach or like like i have for for my kids like they have a swim swim coach and gymnastics coach and like a reading

tutor and this on and on like the more people you can put into their lives that are that are actively trying to help your kid grow where it's kind of hands off like dad's not trying to make me do stuff it's this other third party person who has nothing to do with my my normal day-to-day life all the better yeah it's the assumption that you're doing it so you can get a college scholarship where you have to draw the line where you go oh oh, no, no, no, no, no. I know what those people look like. Yeah. Like my sister was 5'11", 170 pounds coming out of high school,

threw the ball like 64 miles an hour. It was like maybe more. I don't even know. Yeah, like she's different. How many 5'11", 170 females are walking around this planet? Your sister. You know what I mean? Like, you know, her group of friends, just your sister.

You know? Yeah. In the state, just my sister. I've always known the kid who's going to do well. From the time I – if I start coaching in seventh grade, I know who's getting a D1 scholarship. And I know who's not. And never am I wrong.

I'm sorry. I mean, that's going to break a lot of parents' hearts. But, like, I'm never wrong. You never – even I've had the kids who worked so hard, who outworked the kid who I knew was going to get it out. That is different. You know what I mean? Dude, we were talking to, like,

Cena's obviously at, like, the top of the top of the top of the game. But, like, just even talking to his seen as obviously at like the top of the top of the top of the game but like just even talking to his trainer he's like dude when people have you ever seen pictures of cena when he was like 16 years old he looked like a fully developed 32 year old athlete that had been training weights his whole life like when he got lean to go on stage and bodybuilding competitions when he was like 19 years old or 20 years old like when he was living in venice it's like that looked like a fully developed male he's only 22 23 years old and we were talking to his his, his coach, he was like, the number of genetically freaky things that happen with Cena because that make him the way he is, that you just have no control over.

He's like, if you just walk up and massage Cena's traps, it instantly gets a pump. He's so just built and gets inflammation in his in his muscles that way that he can do like a set of push-ups and all of a sudden he looks 10 pounds bigger like well if you're a wrestler that's what you need because you got 20 minutes of performing and you got to sit in the backstage you got to be able to go get jacked up real quick you know i would give this advice for the parents listening too if we're talking performance is that if your kid is the one who's not the special,

then there are sports for them. You know, go to a body weight. You know, go to wrestling. Go to weightlifting. And they still have to have certain amazing characteristics, but they don't have to be 5'11". They don't have to be 7 feet. You know, they can be whatever size they are, and they have a chance. However, they don't have to be 5'11". They don't have to be 7 feet. You know, they can be whatever size they are, and they have a chance.

However, they don't have to be special. You know, weightlifting, like Ryan Grimsland, the moment he walked in my door, I was laughing. It's so funny. Here's how much I can spot it. You know, they brought him to me because he was crossfitting, and they wanted to get a little bit better at the weightlifting movements. i brought him in to test him out and i saw him do snatch and clean and at that very moment i knew that kid would be an olympian and i didn't tell his parents that

because i was afraid i would like to scare him off i'm like yeah oh yeah i'll teach him to be better at snatch and clean jerk for how does world class sound one year later he's weightlifting i'm like yeah i actually love that story doug you told me a while ago when you first met ben How does world class sound? One year later, he's way lifting. I'm like, yeah. I actually love that story, Doug. You told me a while ago when you first met Ben Smith at Froning's Gym. And Ben Smith was just like a 16-year-old kid or something like that. I imagine those years, 17. I'm not sure how old he was, but I didn't know who he was. So he like totally like on the scene quite yet wasn't like Ben Smith yet right right he was just but he's

out there training with Rich obviously really talented but I remember seeing him like snatch like out of the corner of my eye and me like immediately looking over there and being like what the fuck who's who's that that guy's obviously really good. Yeah. The way that guy moves. That was amazing. Yeah. Who's that guy? Yeah. It's wild. I watch Ryan move and I watch everyone else. And we have a whole group of really good weightlifters, but Ryan simply moves differently.

Yeah. As if a cat, you know, he just like, he knows where his body is every second that he's lifted. It's like, it's so beautiful. It's just poetic. And like you watch other people move and they're lifted. It's so beautiful. It's just poetic.

You watch other people move and they're amazing. It's just a little different, man. I don't even know how to explain it other than athletes, man. They just do it. Athletes. They're the best. That's why they're so fun to watch. Right. And coach. Coach Travis Mash. Where can people find you?

Mashelete.com, baby. You can go to Twitter, at Mashelete. That's where it really goes down. That's where Mash is in the hot tub where can people find you? MASH Elite.com baby you can go to let's do Twitter at MASH Elite that's where it really goes down that's where I hammer people that's where MASH is in the hot tub getting after it

on Twitter yeah you watch that I love my my Q&A in the hot tub I love it oh it's so good that's what like

social media is for see that's where that's where your moment you should get some quiet and get the F off Twitter bro that's exactly what I'm talking about get some quiet and get the F off Twitter, bro. That's exactly what I'm talking about, actually, is that very thing. I can't get in the hot tub without

doing Q&A. I can't drive in my car without listening to Andy Galpin. You have a problem. Stop. Take 10. Close your eyes. Bring it to your nose. Don't fight your phone.

Doug Larson, where are the people fighting you? On Instagram. Doug Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Get over to Barbell Shrugged dot com forward slash Diesel Dad where all the busy dads are getting strong, lean and athletic without sacrificing family, fatherhood or fitness. And if you are in San Diego, Palm Springs, L.A. or Vegas, get over to the pharmacy.

Walmart, on the shelves, three programs, friends. See you guys next week. That's a wrap. I know you loved it. Get over to iTunes. Give us a five-star rating. Say something nice about me. That'd be cool.

I'll read it. I'll check it out. Maybe I'll even give you a T-shirt if you go over there and say something super radical on the old iTunes review. Helps more people find the show and we really appreciate when nice people say nice things. Also, make sure you get over to Organifi.com forward slash shrug to save 20% on the green, red, and gold juices, as well as magbreakthrough.com forward slash shrug to use the code shrug10 to save 10%. Friends, love hanging out with you. We'll see you next week.