Barbell Shrugged - Training for the Weightlifting World Championships w/ Travis Mash - 291

Episode Date: December 13, 2017

Travis Mash has spent decades studying the barbell. He is one of the few people  to bridge the worlds of powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting and athletic strength and conditioning. Travis was a World Champion in powerlifting. He competed in a world-class level in Olympic weightlifting. He has coached professional Olympic weightlifters alongside Don McCauley and Glenn Pendlay at Team MDUSA and now coaches the most successful weightlifting team in America. Travis started his path as a weightlifter, he was also a World Champion in powerlifting, breaking the world records twice, with huge total numbers: 2410 lb. and 2414 lb. Nowadays, Travis coaches lots of weightlifters and this year (2017), he had the team with the most weightlifters in the world championships: Nathan Damron: 94 kg  —  Snatch: 160 kg; C&J: 200kg. Jordan Cantrell: 85 kg  —  Snatch: 155 kg ; C&J: 192 kg. Brian Reisenauer: 56 kg  —  Snatch: 114 kg ; C&J: 139 kg. In this episode, we covered weightlifting drug testing, olympic rivalries (USA vs. Russia vs. China), American Youth World Champions: Harrison Maurus and CJ Cummings, Bulgarian Weightlifting training, self-love, and much more.   ► Download our free 54 page Olympic Weightlifting Training Manual at:   http://www.flightweightlifting.com  ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Barbell Shrugged helps people get better. Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including Shrugged Strength Challenge, Muscle Gain Challenge and FLIGHT Weightlifting. Find Barbell Shrugged here: Website: http://www.BarbellShrugged.com Facebook: http://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast Twitter: http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged Instagram: http://instagram.com/barbellshruggedpodcast

You were asleep when you did it. I was asleep. You actually did it? Yeah, I did a snatch in my sleep, and my hands went up, and I hit her in the face, and I wake up because I hit somebody in the face. She woke up because she got hit in the face. She wakes up crying, and I'm just like, fuck. That's good. We'll be right back. Welcome to Barbell Shrug, I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson, Dr. Andy Galpin.

We're here in Anaheim, California for the Weightlifting World Championships. And we ran into one of our favorite weightlifting coaches, and that's Mr. Travis Mash. What's up? Thanks for joining us today. I'm so excited, mainly just to hang out with you, but we'll podcast too. Of course. If I got a podcast to hang out with you, that's what we'll do. By the way, this is the first show that we're Instagram-living.

So if you're following us on Instagram, then you have the benefit of getting some of this content ahead of time. How cool is this? Oh, yeah. So make sure you follow us. Yeah, make sure you're following us. You never know what we might be posting. It'll be a surprise. When Mike Bledsoe says that, you don't even know what that's worth.

Yeah. One thing I want to mention before we go any further is we have a weightlifting guide that's absolutely free. It's 50 pages of gold. Where do we find that, Doug? It's at flightweightlifting.com. Flightweightlifting.com. It's free now? Yeah.

It's always been free. Oh, okay. There you go. The flight guide has always been free. The flight weightlifting, the program, of course, is not free. But the flight guide, just the e-book, is totally free. It always has been. Oh, cool.

And it's a lot of information. It's got a ton of great information. Actually, I think it's too much information. I thought it was special because I got it for free, and I was like, oh, thanks, guys. I thought you got hooked up. No, cool. Well, geez, I don't feel special anymore. You're not as cool as you thought.

My wife tells me that every day. I think you're cool, though. Thank you. And, Travis, we've had you on the show several times before. Several? Several. Three, four, maybe. Three or four.

I think this is four. You might be one of the most interviewed guests on the show so far. As I should be. You're up there with Rich Froning. I'm cooler than Rich. No, I'm just kidding. And you run Master Elite Performance out in North Carolina. Right.

You coach tons of youth and a lot of weightlifters, a lot of people playing different sports. You're just making them bigger, faster, stronger, all that mess. You've got a couple athletes here, right, at the World Championships? We have the most of any other team in America. I have the most of any other coach in America. Who do you have here? I have Nathan Damron, Jordan Cantrell, Brian Reisenhower.

Can you give us a basic idea of what their numbers, each of those guys, so that we can have a little context? How big are they? What are they lifting right now? Brian Reisenhower, I think people guys, so context. How big are they? Brian Rosenhauer, I think people enjoy this the most. He's 56 kilos, so that means he's 123 pounds. And he snatched

251 pounds, which is 114 kilos. And he's clean injured 139 kilos, which is 306 pounds. So that's pretty cool. Snatching double, well over double body weight. Yeah. He's an amazing lifter.

He just got ninth in the world yesterday. So we're pretty happy. It's his first international competition. So top ten at the world championships is pretty darn good. Yeah. Jordan is probably the most improved weight lifter in America. I mean, not probably. 100%.

He's increased. We've been working together 26 weeks, of which his total has gone up 28 kilos, improved weightlifter in America. I mean, not probably. 100%. He's increased. We've been working together 26 weeks, of which his total has gone up 28 kilos, which is, even for me, that's... You said that earlier, and I had to stop and do... Me too. Working 26 weeks and up 28 kilos. 28 kilos. More than a kilo a week.

Wow. Which is like two pounds, more than two pounds every week. At this level, that's unheard of. Yeah, because he was already good, but he went from being like a podium 85-kilo lifter to he's at the world. So it's been pretty crazy. Now he's looking to break all the American records in that 85-kilo class, which is Kendrick Farris. Right. And Oscar Chaplin, so he's looking to do some big things.

And then, obviously, most people know Nathan Damron, the freak squatter, squats, you know, what do you do? 320-kilo squat with 704 pounds, back squat, high bar. High bar, Olympic back squat. And he's 185 pounds? No, he's the 94 kilos, so he's 207. Okay. What's he squatting?

Triple body weight. Over 320 kilos at 704. 705. Three What's he sweating? Triple body weight. Over three. 320 kilos, 704. 705. Three and a half. Ex-body weight. Three. Those are my three years. It's like putting that on my shoulders.

I'm like, oh, yeah, that was good. I couldn't even roll that if it was on a wheel. Those two, Jordan and Nathan, are both 21 years old, so it's pretty impressive. They've got a long future, so we're excited. Yeah. So how do you treat those guys? How do you program for those guys? What's the conversation you're having with them?

How is it different for those guys at the highest level versus the rest of the people that you train? All three of those dudes have a very different program. I think when an athlete's starting, you can be very basic. Everyone can be on the same program, but as they advance, it's important that a coach out there becomes very specific. So when he was Jordan, you said that's made those big leaps, right? Yeah.

So when he showed up, did you do an assessment or a test, or how do you figure out where he's at? What are the numbers you're starting to – what are you looking for when you're trying to individualize this program? Well, first off, I'm going to ask him his opinion. I think once a lifter has been training you know, training four or five years, it's very important that they have, you know, feedback. So, you know, I'm listening to him, what works, what doesn't work for him in the past.

And then we do a muscular imbalance test. And so I get to know, like, you know, where are they weak, you know, their squat compared to their snatch, clean and jerk and all that. So we start even more than that, you know, the back squat to front squat. Ratios and all that. Yeah, ratios. Ratios and shit. I can pinpoint where they're weak.

What should someone's ratio of back squat to front squat versus deadlift be? Do you have a rough idea that you can spout? I think, you know, like so you take a back squat, you know, normally it should be about 70% of their clean and jerk and about 60% of their snatch. Oh wait, their snatch. Yeah, 60% of their back squat. Yes, and 70% of their back squat.

And so deadlift and back squat should be as close as possible. Everyone is like no one in the world is like perfectly balanced. I've heard though that Rich Froning, of all the people, is as close to muscularly balanced as Pop, which makes sense. But your goal is to try to get them to as close to perfect as possible.

The cool thing is when you have numbers, it's quantifiable, is that you can look and see if there's improvement. And that's all you're looking for, improvement over time. Were any of you guys, your max back squat and your max deadlift close to even? Oh, no way. No. Yeah. No, no, no.

For me, having a shorter torso, like, my deadlift was always so much easier. So my back squat was always, like, 80% of my deadlift. Yeah. So I was probably the opposite. Mine was close. Yeah. Yeah. Close?

Yeah. Perfect, then. You're one way. I'm the other way. And you're right in the middle. I was dead. I was perfect. That's a good balance.

You were what? My back squat and deadlift were even. 805. Because you had the deadlift world record, right? I had the total world record and the squat world record. But I did not have the. And your squat was? I've done 950, you know, equipped.

I've done 805 raw. Right. Yeah, for people that don't know who you are, like, what is your background? Like, how did you get into all this? I know you've been on the show many times, but we definitely have some new listeners since last time you were on the show. Can you give us a brief bio? I was a weightlifter.

Scrum, just go watch the old show. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, leak it. But I was a weightlifter first, and then my father got sick and had to move back to North Carolina. I was in Colorado Springs at the Olympic Training Center. I found a coach out there. Left college, you know, when I was done with college.

I moved out there because I wanted to pursue weightlifting after football. And so it went really well. You know, I got good really quickly, you know. And then my father got sick, so I chose to move home. Back then, like all you guys listening, you know, we didn't have a gym on every corner, a CrossFit on every corner, where I could snatch a clean shirt. There was like

maybe six places in the United States we could do it. So I just started powerlifting because you can do that anywhere. So I started doing that and that probably was a blessing. I just didn't know it, but I was a better powerlifter and then from there I won the world championships three times

and broke the all-time pound-for-pound total record twice. And what did you lift at what weight? I did 2410 first in total. At what body weight? I was 100 kilos, 220 pounds. And so then I did 2414. And then that was it. So, yeah, pretty good.

And then back to it. Yeah, 24. I mean, so you're averaging 800 pounds over the three lifts, so squat bench deadlifts. Yeah good. 24. You're averaging 800 pounds over the three lifts, so squat bench, deadlift. Yeah, pretty much. Almost 4X. You're like a perfect circle. I did a 970 squat,

700 bench, and then almost 800 deadlift there. I've done 804 in competition deadlifts. Did it break your heart to be so close to 1,000 and not be able to get 1,000? Yeah. Rub it in, Andy. I squatted 1,000 multiple times in training.

Oh, sure you did. Yeah, exactly. Video or video? Nobody was there. I was all alone that day. How'd you know? Yeah, how'd you know that? Oh, let me guess.

This was before video, huh? I tried so many times in competition. This wasn't there. Yeah, how'd you know that? Oh, let me guess. This was before video, huh? I tried so many times in competition. This wasn't there. Yeah, 30 pounds. Which, you know, 30 pounds when you're squatting 970 is not that much. Yeah. Percentage-wise. It is, but it isn't.

I mean, there was one time I was so close. I was in Detroit, and it was, I mean, I was up, and I'm thinking I'm already celebrating. I'm already thinking about how much shit I'm going to talk and then dude it just stopped I'm like what has happened but they have it

wow so then you got back into weightlifting and how long have you been coaching weightlifting now since 2013 I think I met I met Mike at I think it was 2013 in Dallas, right? It was like American Open. American Open.

That was the year that we all got iced in. Yeah, I got nice. So there's like a big ice storm. A lot of people couldn't make it in. And a lot of us like like I got there days before the rest of our crew. So we were supposed to shoot a lot of video. And instead, I just ended up hanging out with Travis the whole time. It was great.

It was fun. I didn't even make it in. No. No, he was the only one there, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I was the only one there. It was meant to be. It was meant to be. Actually, we had a great time.

Yeah, and then when I met him, I was mainly strength and conditioning and just playing with the weightlifting. And then from there, I just have no idea what happened. But it happened. That's a pretty quick. So you said 2013. And by 2017, you already got three people at world championships?

Yes. How the hell did you get in? How did you get these people? How? I think that if you're a good coach, whether it's strength and conditioning, powerlifting, if you can motivate people to be better than they even think they can, I think it doesn't matter the sport. So I've always had the ability to make people better.

Plus I know the science, which a lot of weightlifting coaches don't. And so I had those two advantages. And I was a world champion. So when you're working with athletes and they're wanting to be a world champion and you can empathize with them and be like, this is what it takes. I know you can do it. They know I'm not lying because i know what it takes and so it just all that just forms a really unique culture of winning and succeeding and they know i love them a d you guys have had a d on a bunch and you know she

knows i mean i love my athletes i think that's important i think that lacks a lot and unfortunately for coaches they don't they they love what the athlete can do for them but they don't, they, they love what the athlete can do for them, but they don't really love them. Like I don't need an athlete to do anything for me. I've done my own, you know, I just want to help my athletes get to that next level. And they know that. And it just is a unique culture like that. So yeah.

Programming wise, you were saying earlier that we kind of lost there. We kind of started, got into that, but we didn't finish it though. So you're looking at the assessment of their muscular balances, right? And then how does that conversation evolve from there to where you're actually starting to put numbers on your page? Well, I mean, here's a great example. Let's say that somebody can squat 700 pounds,

and they're clean jerking 370. Yeah, just let's just say for example. Yeah, so there's a problem. You know, there's a big imbalance. So I really don't need to worry about absolute strength. I need to worry about, you know, obviously there's a technique thing. You know, they need more practice. So I know I know then that more of the volume needs to be focused on the lifts themselves. However, on the other hand, you take a guy like Tom Suma, who's on my team.

Like if he squat, if he front squats one hundred ninety kilos, he's probably going to clean and jerk 190. Yeah, I know that. So that dude, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, is there really a reason for me to do a ton of snatch and clean and jerk, or should I just focus on squatting? Yeah. Focus on squatting.

Right. So, like, you know, just too many coaches have a set plan. You know, like, you're going to do this plan if it kills you. You know, I'm like, I'm going to make it. Instead of making the athlete fit my plan, I'm going to make my plan fit the athlete. I want to go on their strengths and weaknesses so I can guarantee

get them to the next level. Too many athletes come and because they don't fit this certain mold, they get thrown out to the wayside. They go somewhere else and all of a sudden they're killing it because that program fit them. Just tailor your program to the athlete.. They go somewhere else and all of a sudden they're killing it, you know, because that program fit them. So, like, just tailor your program to the athlete. Have there been times where you couldn't figure out what the weak link was,

like what the main weakness was that you needed to fix, and then you eventually figured it out? Sometimes because there's variables that are hard to quantify. Like, you know, there's absolute strength, and then there's technique, but then there's, like, mentality. Like, how do you quantify that? You know, like, you take an athlete, what's going on in their brain?

I tell you, this is a good one, a big problem with today's athletes is they have a real tough time visualizing things. So if I tell them, for example, to sweep back, stay over the bar, so they're going to be trying to think about that when they're lifting. Whereas I would have visualized what my coach is saying, and then I just lift.

And so it's easier if you can visualize and you go lift. So it slows you down if you're thinking, obviously. And you can't have that and wait with you. So, like, today's population, your book, Unplugged, is beautiful. Like, they're, you know, they have so many computers and phones. They have no imagination because it does it for them. So they can't see. So many of my athletes, when I talk about visualization, I have to give them a class on it.

We have to work on that because they cannot see. I could, when I was an athlete, I could not only, I could see it, feel it, hear it, smell it. We have to work on that because they cannot see. When I was an athlete, I could see it, feel it, hear it, smell it. I could lay in my bed and visualize to the point where I was sweating because I was competing. Nowadays, they can't do that. I wonder too if it has something to do

with mirror neurons. For instance, I actually find it to be really easy to watch somebody do an activity, and then I can just copy it. And I think I have, like, for me, I just have maybe more mirror neurons, or I can access that more easily than the average person, and I'm sure visualization comes in handy with that as well. So I wonder, you know, and I don't know if, Andy, if you know anything about this.

Is technology impacting mirror neurons or imagination? I don't know about mirror neurons specifically, but the kinesthetic awareness is falling off. Yes. I am the exact same way, and you're pretty much like that too. A lot of people are where I can very much see a movement and replicate that. Me too. I'm very much like that.

I can watch the UFC and see someone do something that's brand new to me and just go to practice and just do it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It just makes sense. But, yeah, we are having a major problem with that. Of course, this is a part of the book too. What we put in there is the ability to mirror those things is going down because we're so focused on the wrong.

This is the motor control, motor learning people talk about, internal versus external cueing. And that's effectively what you're saying. I think I read you posted something about that. The connection between external queuing is being compromised. People are having a really hard time with that. Chris Moore, I know actually I've heard you tell a story doing the same thing in the shower.

We're about to tell Doug Larson's shower story. Shower story, you ready? But Chris Moore used to – We used to be roommates. I know all about what's happening in the shower. Used to joke about this all the time. Me and Chrisarson's shower story. Shower story. You ready? But Chris Moore used to... We used to be roommates. I know all about what's happening in the shower. Used to joke about this all the time. Me and Chris used to shower together. Natasha still gives me shit about this all the time

because I'll be in the shower. Or like whatever. It's not even necessarily a visualization. I'll be in bed, you know, just like whatever happened to do it. Chris was always hitting that. And I know you've done... I used to be in the grocery store doing that. Oh, yeah.

And then shadow boxing boxing I do that everywhere all the time he'll be sitting there talking to you shadow boxing and if you think about the tens of thousands of repetitions in your life you've taken like that when you get into the squat rack you've done this literally in your head or in the grocery store

so many times those are so many extra reps that actually count oh yeah well when I first started weightlifting I fell in love with the sport or so many times. A million times. Those are so many extra reps that actually count. Oh, yeah. Well, when I first started weightlifting, I fell in love with the sport. And I remember going to bed at night, having a hard time falling asleep because I was thinking about snatching. Yeah. And during that same time, I was dating Ashley, who's now my wife. And I remember hitting her in the face, like backhanding her hard.

You're visualizing this? In my sleep. You're practicing? Looking forward to the day when I can execute. Once I get married, I can hit her. It's legal now. I remember waking up and knowing that I had just smashed her face. Oh, because you were asleep.

I was asleep. You actually did it? Yeah. I did a snatch in my sleep, and my hands went up, and I hit her in the face, and I wake up because I hit somebody in the face. She woke up and she got hit in the face. She wakes up crying, and I'm just like, fuck. It's good you got that story on video now so the judge will know that's why I hit her in the face.

I was snatching my sleep. Good strategy. I once pulled a gun in my sleep as well. And so we've changed some rules about how I sleep. No more guns. No guns around you, man. No Rambo knives in the bed. Nothing anymore. The moment when I broke my first world record,

I had lived that moment so many times. How I would feel, how I'd react, the crowd, what I would do afterwards, the judges. It was almost like it was not as cool because I'd done it too many times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I won, I'm like, yeah. And then I'm like, yeah, all right, cool. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, nowadays it's really I won. I'm like, yeah. And then I'm like, yeah. All right, cool. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but, yeah, like, nowadays it's really tough. What was the next day like? After you broke a world record, like, you worked so hard for so long to accomplish this big thing. And then the next day, are you, like, are you still motivated? Is there a void? Is it weird? Like, is there a sense of, like, what do I do now?

Like, what's it like? Weren't we talking about this? Yeah. You can go as far or not as far into that because it got pretty kind of deep yesterday. It was bad, like, you know, like come Monday especially. Like, you know, I celebrated, like, you know, I just won a lot of money and I was a world champion.

So maybe the next day wasn't so bad because I'm partying all weekend. Yeah. Come Monday, though. So this was a Saturday. Sunday was still all right. Come Monday, like, so this was a Saturday. Sunday was still all right. Come Monday, like, I was physically, like, hurting. My whole body had trouble getting out of bed. I had, like, literally zero energy.

So I went to the doctor. Well, you lifted, like, 2,400 pounds, and then you partied for two days. What the fuck do you expect? Well, I go. I couldn't figure out why I was out of energy. I go to the doctor. All that whiskey didn't help me recover.

Yeah, I know. It should. Beer should. So I go to the doctor, and the dude would take this test and like, he says that I'm depressed. And I'm like, and I'm like, and so there was definitely a moment of depression because here's the thing. If like, if you didn't know you were depressed until the doc told you you're depressed, now you're depressed.

I never, I had never been sad in my life. I mean, you know, someone dies, you're sad. But I never had experienced depression. Things had gone very well up until then. And so that moment, though, for a while, it was pretty bad. Because if this one thing is the center of your universe, if you think breaking this world record is like going to

be the answer for all your problems, which is what I thought. All I cared about was breaking this record. There was a moment, there was a girl I was dating and her dad died. I didn't stay with her and support her. I'm like, I gotta go. I gotta compete. And I had, at that

time, couldn't even understand why she was mad at me. I'm like what you know I'm supposed to stay it's so selfish yeah you're so focused on I was very focused on this one moment and so I broke it and you know the sky didn't open up you know like the clouds didn't part you know I'm like and I'm like wait it was not near as like cool as I thought you know I hear about this a lot with people in business as well. It's like, oh, when I make this amount of money, I'll be happy. And they make that amount of money, and then it's never enough.

It's never enough. And, you know, things like squatting, you know, 1,000 pounds and making a million dollars actually doesn't solve any of your problems. Never. So, you know, there's things in your life you're going to have to deal with. That's the key. And, you know, you can hide behind your life you're going to have to deal with. That's the key. You know, you can hide behind sports. You can hide behind your business. You can hide behind a lot of things.

And so, you know, it was good for me because here's what happened. I broke the record, got depressed. So instead of, like, trying to deal with things, what I did was just, okay, I'm going to break it again. So I broke it again, and then things got real bad, you know. So I got super depressed, and, like, it was a, you know, it was definitely a moment in my life where I had to make some changes. And so, you know, it was good, though. What got you out of that, though?

Because that second one was a long, long funk, right? It was a long. Like, matter of fact, like, it was a, I mean, I lost all my money. Like, lost a home. I've never told anyone this story, but I'll go ahead and tell. I don't care anymore. I have nothing. But, like, I lost my home that I bought.

Lost my car. I was broke. And so that was a time I met my, who's now my wife, which is crazy, because I was training super hard. So she met me. I was losing my mind. She had no idea I was losing my mind. I was training super hard so she met me I was losing my mind she had no idea I was losing my mind

I was broke but I was training super hard I was like I don't know what else to do this is what I do so I was training hard I was jacked bait and switch

he was telling me yesterday he's like when I met my wife I had washboard abs like two years later here it was the old bait and switch to me it was like coming to grips with like um you know

a faith and it's for me yeah yeah it was um you know getting to know god and like being grounded on in things i mean whether you believe in god or not it's not that's not what the show's not about that but what it does do is there's a lot of good stuff i learned you know like caring about others more than myself i tell you this here's what i of good stuff I learned, you know, like caring about others more than myself. I tell you this. Here's what I hear all the time. You need to love yourself, you know. If you can't love yourself, you can't love others.

I've never had a problem with loving myself. I'm very good at that. I think most people are good at loving themselves. But, like, when you start doing stuff for other people, it's amazing what it does for you. I talk about, like, there's a friend who asked a question on Facebook. He's, like, talking about networking. Like, what do you do to network? I'm like, you know, for me, networking is like, when I met you, I didn't even

know Barbell Shrugging Time. I just knew I loved you. Like, I knew this dude is, like, something about him. And so I ended up networking with people I care about. Like, some people that I met you. And within seconds, you and I are like the best of friends. Met you, best of friends. And so like when you learn to like really care about people,

you don't have to worry about networking. You don't have to worry about like, you know, I got to go out and make connections. You just, when someone sees that you really sincerely care about them and that you want to do for them, you know, more than you really care about what they do for you, man, your whole life changes. You know, I know with my wife and my kids, like, my wife knows good and well. I love my wife so much. And, you know, like, if I can't do for her, then none of this other stuff matters.

If I have to work so much, I neglect my wife. Then this is something that's gone awry. So I need to back off this because that's what's important. If you do that, your whole life will be affected. You could be broke and feel rich if you develop, you know, learning how to care about people, you know, sincerely. Yeah. Let's take a break. And when we come back, I want to talk about your velocity-based training

and why americans are making a comeback in weightlifting why russia sucks yeah thanks for watching the show if you love weightlifting and you want to improve your snatch clean and jerk you can go to flight weightlifting.com we have a free 54 page ebook it has sample programming videos on how to improve your technique as well as tons of other videos on how to improve your technique, as well as tons of other tips to help you improve your weightlifting. If you want that book, go to flightweightlifting.com. We're back with Travis Mash.

And on our break, we got talking about a little bit. We are going to talk about the velocity training. And I do want to talk about why Russians suck. But, Andy, I want to hear about the study that you're doing here. So we're at the World Championship. Oh, yeah. So the best weightlifters on the fucking planet are lifting. So you have taken advantage of this situation.

That's kind of what I do. My life is take advantage. Good. Particularly when sleeping and just other no no we you know our lab is just five or six miles up the road here and so we're able to because of Travis

and a bunch of other really awesome microtone and with USA Weightlifting and all everyone else to support to put together a project where we're collecting a bunch of biopsies from a ton of the Team USA members and I can't say who or I can't give you any details for violation of confidentiality, but then also a bunch of the really high placers at American Open. And it's going to be the first study really ever to look at muscle physiology of high,

not only weightlifters, but really high power, high velocity, high force production athletes, and specifically the females. So we know almost nothing. It's something crazy, like 72 ever female athletes have been biopsied. Wow. It's really tremendously small. It's like three soccer players, four hockey players. I mean, it's really horrendously bad numbers. And a biopsy, for people that don't know what a biopsy is,

you're going into their leg, usually, in this case, and pulling out a chunk of muscle and looking at it and analyzing it to see what their fiber types are percentage-wise. I don't know. You can tell us more about that. But you're taking a piece of muscle out of someone's body. Exactly. Looking at it. We dive in there, grab some tissue, bring it out, and then we'll get a couple of hundred, if not a couple thousand, fibers out in that segment.

And we'll get a couple of hundred, if not a couple thousand fibers out in that segment, and we'll pull muscle fibers. We'll pull them out one by one and then put them under our $800,000 microscope and do a bunch of analyses of fiber size, fiber type, fast twitch, slow twitch, things like that. So cool. It's a good example of we just presume weightlifters have a lot of fast twitch fibers, but we really haven't done it. And there's been a couple of studies that have been done for on weightlifters, but they were done with literally,

I think the sample size was five or six people. Yeah. And it was, it was fry. Was it, were those our samples? Actually that our study is one of the nine, one of those four.

And then we had nine subjects and we weren't even good at the weightlifters. You know, we're like, just because, just because, yeah. Yeah.

Just because something's intuitive, like, like what you just said about weightlifters, they probably have more fast-twitch fibers or whatever, that sounds like it should be correct on its face. But then when we got tested for our myosin heavy chain and type 2X fibers, we had almost none of the fastest fibers, and they had almost all been converted to the mediocre middle-of-the- X fibers. We had almost none of the fastest fibers, and they had almost all been converted to the mediocre

middle-of-the-ground, middle-of-the-road fibers. That's one of the things we found. That actual method that we used to test that has long actually been sensed to be erroneous. It's not actually the right way to measure the whole thing, which makes the whole thing off. It's not the right way to measure distribution. It measures other things.

We just didn't know that at the time. So it's measuring the wrong thing. And the 2x fibers, the super fast fibers, actually really don't exist. They do, theoretically, but we find less than one out of every thousand fibers are 2x. So had we gone back and biomedicine us now, you would find none.

That's what our results show, that all the people that had trained had none, but a few people that were sedentary did have some. Like Fry used to call them couch potato fibers. In one of your podcasts you talked about that. Those are actually 2A2X hybrid fibers, not true 2X fibers. So we now know that those that showed up as 2X were really 2A2X fibers. They're miscalculated.

2A2X. Yeah. Of course. But here's the fun part. My whole life just changed hearing that. Because I have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about. But this is why this is so exciting. The only person that has ever been published or the information's got out,

the only person that's ever of any kind of speed, strength, or power athlete, anaerobic athlete that's been biopsied, an accurately fiber type, was a guy named Colin Jackson. This is a project I worked on as a doctoral student, and he was a world record holder in the 60-meter hurdle, 110-meter hurdle, and he was 24% 2X. Jeez. I remember you saying that on my podcast.

He's the only person that's ever been found to have those fiber types, but, again, he's the only person that is a strength and speed and power athlete that's ever been biopsied. So this is why we're so excited about this project. So this is kind of groundbreaking. It's like saying your mom's your favorite mom. Right. If that's the only mom you ever had.

Yeah. Right? Right. So I'm interested to really see the results. If any of these people have that, if it is truly something unique to speed athletes rather than power or strength athletes. I think you're going to find a range. We're going to see. Like we talked about earlier, you're going to find athletes that

look very slow and then they're very fast underneath. Some athletes are going to be very explosive upwards, not so much downwards. We're interested to see, are you getting these numbers through strength or through speed? Or through a combination? I think it'll depend on the person. I mean, I'm just guessing.

And then the interesting, the really interesting thing, again, would be what the females look like. Because traditionally, females are thought to have more slow twitch fibers than men. But we have, again, almost no data on that.

And we don't have any data on female athletes. Once again, I think, my friend, Coach Spencer Arnold, he's got two athletes, Jordan De La Cruz and Jesse Bradley. He's been working a lot with velocity with those two. But, like, you've got two athletes.

You've got Jordan. I mean, Jordan, whose vertical leap is, like, still unbelievable. Unbelievable athlete. Jesse, amazing vertical leap. And, like, Jordan is still right now ranking higher. I mean, yeah, Jordan is ranking higher than Jesse. So like that right there told me,

well, obviously you don't have to have that amazing power output to be a great lifter. You better be a good athlete and have timing and speed underneath. So like, yeah, it'll be interesting. That's one thing to keep in mind as we go through stuff like that is,

you know, fiber type is important, but there's a lot of factors that go into human performance. Way more than just one physiological variable. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of great Chinese lifters whose rate of force development is not that good. I mean, it

looks like a deadlift until they type in some gun. Good in spite of. You could be looking at sports cars and saying how many cylinders is better. It's like, well, it depends on the track, and it depends on the weight of the car. Yeah, yeah. And what you do with those cylinders. And if you punch the gas at the wrong time, it doesn't matter.

Yeah. Right. All right, so let's hear about this. So what's up with the Russians and the Americans? What's going on? Don and Carly and I, and Vin, you know, there's three. We have three coaches that are considered, like, you know, senior international coaches from National Elite.

And we talk a lot about, like, being tired of hearing about, you know, Russian, even Chinese, even though I respect a lot of what, you know, China's – they're trying to hustle to do the best they can with their athletes. But, you know, it's like comparing apples to oranges, you know. Like, give me a bunch of drugged-up athletes, and I'll show – I'm going to look like the best coach in the world, but, you know, it's like comparing apples to oranges. You know, like give me a bunch of drugged up athletes and I'll show – I'm going to look like the best coach in the world, but I'm not. I gave them drugs.

I'm a great, like, druggy. I'm a – You're a dealer. I'm a great drug dealer, you know. And so, like, you know, we hear – unfortunately, here's why I love Andy, is the only real research that's ever been done for weightlifting, it was pretty much Russian, like 1970s.

It's good that finally in America, I believe, without a doubt, our exercise scientists are better, or is good at least, but I think they're better than Russian. Here's why I say that. If you look at America as a whole, look at the Olympics. Only in weightlifting do we really get beat. As a whole, we destroy at the Olympics. We dominate.

We dominate Russia. We dominate China. China's way bigger than us. So don't tell me that they're, you know, dominating us. They're taking drugs and weightlifting. So that's all. That is all. And you were making some predictions earlier and had some evidence to support that in terms of, can you tell us

some of those? Well, at this World Championships, drug testing is at an all-time high. Here's why. Waylandine is being scrutinized big time right now. Because of all the collapse. Way too many. China's not here right now.

China's not here. Russia's not here. There's multiple teams that are not. Not because they chose not to. They got booted because of drug tests. Right. So it's not like I'm just like, yeah. So that validates what I'm saying. I'm not just some bitter coach.

They're not here because they take drugs. Right. At a team level. It seems really weird that in weightlifting we would be so far from leading the world, but then in powerlifting we do fantastic. It's because all things are even. Right. Right.

The amount of drug testing is the same, meaning, like, even, like, USAPL, you know, they're, like, considered the drug-tested federation. I mean, they only get tested in competition. And they say that, oh, we do some out-of-meat testing. They're like, do two. I mean, shoot, man. Nathan Dameron got tested twice in four days out of meat testing my athlete yeah so like don't talk about how to meet testing unless you do a ton

of it so they don't and so like everything's even so then the competition becomes even you know i know when i was powerlifting you know and i was it was professional a lot of the guys got tested positive a lot of the weightlifters so they they came to powerlifting because at the time it was professional. And we dominated them. They weren't even close. They were getting my autograph because they were nowhere near me. I'm like, they weren't within 300 pounds of my total. So don't tell me about you're such a dominant athlete.

You're not. Russia's not. Maybe we shouldn't be borrowing all of our programming ideas from them. Exactly my point. I just get so sick of American coaches. They're like, oh, Russia, we love you, Russia. You know, like, what? They're not even here, man.

You know, they're testing positive so much. What can we do in America in connection with guys like Andy? Like, dudes like that, I have no doubt, are smarter than anyone in Russia. So, like, I want to know what he says so I can apply it to my athletes. Because I'm really good at what I do. I know he's good at what he does. So the information I get will be directly applicable to my athletes. I have no doubt that we'll start winning.

Like, now we're already at this one. We've only had two people go. We've got a seventh and ninth. Way better than ever before. Yeah. Because these dudes coming here and knowing there's a good chance. Well, we watched the guys 69 yesterday. And what was the guy doing? 9th. Way better than ever before. Because these dudes coming here, knowing there's a good chance they're going to get tested. We watched the guys 69 yesterday,

and what was the guy doing? No, we watched the 56 kilo men, the little dudes. And the guy that won, he snatched what he snatched? 129. Two weeks ago, he was snatched a 140. He was posting videos at 140. So he comes here and is at 129. Those 11 kilos lower than his PR?

Yeah, that's a big gap. They're afraid. They can't be taking coming in here. They the one that's winning. Does 11 kilos lower than his PR? Yeah, that's big. That's a big gap. Yeah. They're afraid. They know that they can't be taking coming in here. They're going to get popped. Yeah. We're going to have, fair to say, we're going to have the most medals in World Championship this year than we've had.

It's our goal. Or at least top eight. More top eight than it is. We'll definitely have that. But, like, you know, there's a few people that have a really good chance of medaling. Of course, they've got to do it. But if, you know. Who are our best hopes? a few people that have a really good chance of meddling. Of course, they've got to do it.

Who are our best hopes? I would say Harrison Morris, CJ Cummings. They're both 17. They both got a chance to win? World titles at 17. I don't know about win, but they got a chance to meddle. The same weight class? No, one is a 69, one is a

77. Harrison is a 77. Both of them have very real chances. Both of them already have youth world records. Yeah. Not American records, youth. World, yeah. Both of those dudes hold the senior American records. At 17.

They're unbelievable. Killing it. Oh, CJ had it at 16, right? Or 15, he had that record? Yeah, he got it at 15, I'm pretty sure. And then Harrison got his. Then they both got another one at 16, and now 17. So CJ is going to do, we were in the training hall a minute ago,

and one of his people that helps him is saying he thinks he's going to do 190 clean and jerk at 17 years old and 69 kilos. However, Harrison is going to snatch 160 and clean and jerk 200, just one weight class up. At 77. And those are Kendrick Ferrick's numbers, two weight classes below. 77 will be Oscar Chaplin's. Which he already – and get this. Yeah, so some of the best Americans of all time are already getting beat. Oscar's the man.

Like, he was my first person I was like, that guy's awesome. He was. In weightlifting. And then a 17-year-old kid is, like, wrecking, you know, taking his wreckers and wrecking the floor with them. Yeah, wiping the floor with them. You help Coach Harrison? I am really close with his coach.

His coach, you know, Kevin Simons, is brilliant. So we. With the games twice? CrossFit games twice, right? CrossFit games twice. So that dude, you know, Kevin Simons is brilliant. So we. Went to the games twice, CrossFit games twice, right? CrossFit games twice. And so that dude, you know, I have a 14-year-old who's probably, I mean, I would say he's probably the strongest 14-year-old in the world right now. I mean, he squats 500 pounds and he's 14.

How big is he? What sports is he playing? He's a weightlifter. Only a weightlifter. That's it. His parents, this is how. I was just, I had this idea of like a 14-year-old that squats 500 on the football field. Oh, yeah.

And just like. Fullback. He's like running at me and I'd be like, yeah. So would I. You got to stand off to the side. I play college football and I agree with you. I would fuck that. So I've told him that if I die, I want Kevin Simons to be his coach.

He's that brilliant. He wants to quantify things. A lot of American coaches, they program a certain way because their coaches told them that. Or they went to a certain school and this professor told them this is the best way. They never thought to maybe improve or get their own ideas or continue learning.

And Kevin is like a diehard I want to learn learn every day guy and that's who I want yeah my guys yeah speaking of uh continuing education and learning more and more every day like you have a ton of experience been doing this for a long time like you you were world-class world record holder at one point like what do you do day-to-day to to learn more and to get better yourself you know okay so like listens to barbell shrug I do listen to barbell shrrug. I do listen to Barbell Shrug. Lately, I get that a lot. So what are you reading? Lately, I'll pick the topic of e-book that I want to learn about.

So I just wrote this velocity-based e-book because I wanted to get deeper into the research. So it forces me to get deeper into what I want to learn about. You write a book about something you want to learn about. I want to learn about. Oh, all right. If I want to know all about hypertrophy, I write a book, Mass Check, about hypertrophy. If I want to learn about... Do you give yourself a deadline, though? Oh, yeah.

I find myself, I want to write an e-book or something like that about a subject, and then I find myself so far down this rabbit hole that I find it even hard to even finish. At some point you've got to start writing. I don't give myself. I don't make. I ask Lauren and Rebecca, my two partners, for them to give me a deadline. And I never miss a deadline because I'm a goal-oriented dude. So if they say, dude, on this day, it's getting done.

No matter what I've got to do. So that's what I do. Lately, a lot of Brian Mann's research because of velocity-based training. Before that, you know, it was a Bertravee. So what was the dude? Oh, my God. Who's the big dude, a Bertravee guy? Brad Schoenfeld?

Yeah. That episode just came out? Yeah, we just posted an episode with him that did fantastic. That episode absolutely crushed. It's episode 289. Go listen to it. It's like one of our best responses to any did fantastic. He's shocking. That episode absolutely crushed. It's episode 289. Go listen to it. It's like one of our best responses to any episode ever.

He's great at taking really deep information and translating it for the layman to understand it. Yeah, he's okay. He's all right. He's all right. It's just the best episode we've had in years, but whatever. Yeah, he's okay. But that's, you know, I've been spending lots of hours in that. You know, he's okay. But that's, you know, I've been spending lots of hours in that. And, you know, it's cool. It really, every time I've, now lately, I'll write a book

and I'll tell my athletes what I'm writing about. And they're like, oh, man. They know that, like, something new is coming. Yeah, so, like, if you look at, like, I used to be his coach. And so, like, if I were to send him, when I will, you know, one of my programs now, it will totally look completely different of what I did back then because I have evolved. And I refuse to like – I just published a book this year about the mass system.

It took me forever to where I'd actually commit to certain protocols. And now I've got certain protocols. I have outlines that I'm confident in. Brian Mann at University of Missouri has published a ton in this area. So if you want more detail, you guys can go there. But can you give us more of the practitioner version of – you're using velocity instead of, like, percentages to program, right? No, we use both.

So, like, let's say that you want to focus on absolute strength. You know, there's absolute strength. There's accelerated strength. There's speed, speed, strength. And then there's absolute strength. There's accelerated strength. There's speed, speed, strength. And then there's starting strength. And so, you know, like all of us have certain goals when we're programmed. Let's say you use percentages. The problem is this, is that day-to-day, your one rep max will vary either 18% up or 18% down.

It could go either way. So that's a 36%, you know, curve, man. So you can't, so what you think is 80% might very well be 90% or it might be 70%. I've definitely had days where I'm like, oh, lift 85%. I'm just like, what the fuck? I get it all the time when I use percentages. They're like, I couldn't do what you programmed. So I understand because, you know, for whatever reasons,

stress in our life, the endocrine system, it's just not on par with that. So a little bit of context here. You get a program from your coach that says, hey, you're going to do three sets of five today at 75%. You go in that day and say your max is 100 kilos. 75% should be 75 kilos. But that could actually be 118% or that could be 82%. Right. So you could be way stronger or weaker.

So you could still use percentages. You could still do whatever you want. You might use bar speed as a guideline to let them know if maybe they should chill out. It should go a little bit harder that day. So like how do I measure my bar speed? Well, there's tons of stuff. There's Gym Aware. There's Open Barbell.

Open Barbell is a very good way to do it. And it's maybe $200 that you'll spend. Or there's a very cheap way. And you just put these on your barbell. And as you're squatting or dead lifting or clean jerking, whatever you're doing, it's going to measure how fast the bar moves. It's an app on your phone.

Yeah, app on your phone. Yeah, or your iPad. It goes directly to your computer, whatever you want. Whatever you want. So there's a way to measure that's pretty easy, quantified on your phone. Like, what does the programming look like? If I'm going to do, you know, a couple sets of squats,

like, what do you write down? How does it look? Squats is easier. You know, like, the snazzy cleanser, I feel like Brian needs to do more research on that. Yeah, he's mostly in squat. Yeah. Squatting is easy.

He's a powerlifter, though. Yeah, he's a powerlifter. Give him a pass. Yeah, I know. He doesn't really understand things, so. I mean, I've been on both sides lifter, though. Yeah, he's a power lifter. Give him a pass. Yeah, I know. He doesn't really understand things, so. I mean, I've been on both sides of that, so. But he's right. He's right. I love you, Brian.

Yeah. But, like, you know, you take a squat. Say that your goal is 80%. Well, that's probably in that accelerative strength fit, which is where most power lifters live in that, which is between, like, normally between normally between like 60% and 80%. And the bar speed needs to be somewhere faster than 0.5 meters per second, slower than 0.75 is where they should be.

So let's say that I program 80% and you go to squat, and then your bar speed is 0.85. Probably should go up a little bit. That tells you you're moving the bar so fast that it's not actually heavy today. No. Heavy enough. Yeah. Didn't Louie always say.8 meters per second for dynamic effort was optimal?

Strength, speed. That's where he was staying. He would live in the strength, speed phase. So if you thought you were doing accelerated, but all of a sudden now you're strength-speed, well, now you're really not getting the trait of strength that you want. Right. So, like, go a little faster. It's too fast or it's too heavy.

Yeah. But now, on the other hand, let's say that you do your squat and, you know, you're doing 80% and now you're at.4, it's time to back off. You know, maybe that day would be a good day to work on technique, you know, or, like, recover. Yeah. But it's not in the cards that day would be a good day to work on technique, you know, or like recover. You know, but it's not in the cards that day. So it's a great way of teaching. I'll tell you what it's really good for.

It's brand new coaches. So, like, I can see that. We've all been coaches and into it long enough to know today's not the day. The bar's moving slow. The dude's at 80%. It looks like a max out. Let's cut it off. But new coaches, they don't know. And I'll tell you another good thing

is like teaching athletes how to understand what does fast mean. Or teaching athletes. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, teaching athletes, let's say that you say, I want it to be more explosive. What does that mean? Like if you've never squatted, what does that even mean? But like if you say, I want it to be.8

meters per second. And they do a squat and it's at.6. Push harder. You wouldn't believe how athletes think they're going fast. I've cued an athlete in the middle of their squat and said, go faster. And they picked up speed on my verbal cue. So, obviously, they don't know how fast they're going. Well, I remember going and watching, I mean, it was probably 06 or 07, and going and watching the American Open.

It was my first major competition. I went with both you guys. Yeah, we were all there. Oh, yeah. Birmingham, Alabama. We came in with a handle of crown. Probably not crown. Probably more like Sailor Jerry.

Something worse. Well, I think my mom gave it to us. Probably not crown. Probably more like Sailor Jerry. Something worse. Well, I think my mom gave it to us. That's probably what it was. That's how my mom used to get us to come hang out. Yeah. Bottles of whiskey. That's a true story. Yeah.

The carrot. Yeah. And then take inappropriate photos of us. We will not let that surface. Yeah. I remember going and I remember my coach or our coach, Brian Schilling, telling me, hey, go faster, like lightning fast. I'm like, I am.

And then I remember going into the warm-up area and watching Kendrick Ferris jerk. And I go, oh. That's fast. Got it. And I immediately, I, that's fast. Got it. And I immediately, I remember going back in the gym the next week and being faster. Just because I now know what the fuck that means.

Exactly. I literally told all my students yesterday, I said, all of you are going to PR next week. Like, what do you mean? You're here right now, you're all going to PR next week. You know, it's about teaching intent. That's what, in my book, that's what I, you know, explained. It's how to teach, you know, new lifters intent. And's what, in my book, that's what I, you know, explained. It's how to teach, you know,

new lifters intent. And when I say fast, I mean fast. There's actually some pretty interesting research that shows if you're trying to develop speed or power, the intent to move the bar is actually more important than the actual bar speed. Yes. So even if you don't move it any faster, the intent to go faster will lead to further increases in speed.

Dr. Hadfield has been talking about that for years. Yeah, right. You know, compensatory acceleration or at least trying. Right. Hadfield has been talking about that for years. You know, compensatory acceleration or at least trying. Right. You know, he talked about that forever. It's the intent of trying to push it. It's an accelerated strength, which is where,

that's where Prilipin would have told you is, you know, where you need to live. You know, it's about taking a heavy weight and going as fast as you can. And as long as you're pushing as fast as you can, you'll get the desired outcome. Yeah. So let's take maybe a squat.

That may be an easy one. What's the normal velocity of the barbell supposed to look if I'm trying to get faster, and then if I'm trying to get stronger, and then maybe power, whatever? You know, like faster would be that, you know, what Louis said, you know, strength, speed, and speed, strength. So if you're going, if you're trying to get faster and the barbell's going less than 0.8 meters per second, it's probably too heavy.

You need to go, yeah, and there's a lot of research out there that says if, like, you're training sprinters, if you're wanting to keep them fast, you should live in that, you know, either strength, speed, speed, strength. Because a lot of times when you're in that accelerative and absolute strength phase, what happens is that your antagonists and agonists are working together, and you don't want that. You want the antagonist to cut off as much as possible when you're sprinting because if they're going at the same time, you'll move slow

because they're not releasing. So when you're in that stress speed and speed strength, they're not being recruited. Only your agonists are being recruited. That's a key aspect of athleticism. I think it's very underlooked. It's hard to even think about how to train it specifically, where we typically think about we want to have very strong muscle contractions,

we want to be fast, we want to be powerful. But oftentimes, especially in more agile sports where strength isn't as much of a factor, if you're playing soccer or basketball or something like that, the athletes that can relax the quick go from a strong muscle contraction to a very relaxed muscle to change directions or whatever. Those people are very fast and whippy, and they look athletic. But I don't know how to train that, though. How would you train something like that? If you know what happens versus on velocity. Like, I know that

at .75 meters per second and lower, I know that now both your antagonist and agonist will be recruited. And so I probably don't want to live, even though those are important, I should probably spend less time there and more time

at the speed strength. There's a guy I'm training for Taekw and more time at the speed, speed, strength. There's a guy I'm training for Taekwondo. The dude should have been in the Olympics last time. He's in the Olympic trials, the final fight, and is winning. So he's going to the Olympics and throws a kick and breaks his tibia. I know. And he's the nicest kid. Bernard, shout out to Bernard.

So, like, we can't put a lot of weight on him because he's a lower weight class. So we're staying in that speed, speed, strength and velocity. Can you help me? No. I don't want to make him slow, for heaven's sakes. Taco knows nothing but speed. You'll hear people argue all the time about strength versus speed, right?

So people say, well, getting stronger doesn't make you actually any faster. Some people even say, hey, if you, for example, the argument always against powerlifting was that actually you learn to be slower. So if you're a runner or a sprinter, it makes you slower. That's not true. Do you think moving in these wrong strength, speed, speed, strength areas and practicing too much at a low barbell velocity is explaining some of that?

Or is it all garbage? Well, here's the thing. For the first two years, as long as you get your absolute strength better, all that stuff will get better. After two years, it's very important that you look at the sport and then you become specific. The sad principle. You need to then,

if you're a fast sport, focus on that. But the first two years, man, just get them strong. Don't really worry about velocity. But, well, there is a point of velocity, too, that I don't know if Coach Mann talked about. But say that you're a high school coach and you're in a big gym. You've got 30 people. There's one of you.

It's a great way to keep people safe. Like, let's say that I want them to do a clean, you know, max triple. But I'm worried about, you know, we all know that there's two big injuries, you know, that could potentially happen if you're teaching weightlifting, and that's the elbow to the knee, break the wrist, or the back. So I just say, look, three-run max as long as you're at 1.3 meters per second and faster. The minute you get to 1.3, cut it off.

Guess what? Now you've got a bunch of coaches and their machines. You're using velocity to be a coach. And so the athletes are like, 1.3, I'm done. Here's my max. You can measure that too. I can know that they're getting strong. Six weeks later I can do another three-round max, say 1.3,

and I have that data to go against. And they're not coming up to you saying like, oh, no, I can do 10 more pounds. No. Because you can look at the data, you can look at the numbers and say, no, no, no, this says that you're done. And now it's not you against them. It's like you're both just going off what the computer says. Hell no, you can't.

Yeah, you're right. You know, there's no debate. I'm not just being mean. It's so funny. Athletes are so funny. Do they not think that I want them to be as strong as they want to be? Right. I want them to be.

I'm trying to get you to the Olympics, bro. I want you to be stronger than everybody in the world. But you're not capable that day. And this is a way of me showing you why. Like, your bar speed is too slow. It's not going to happen. So, clean and jerk, like, 1.3, 1.4, and then snatch is like 1.5, 1.6? Yeah, 1.

Which is cool because, you know, that is one way to do starting. You know, starting strength is like anything above 1.3. And so, like, it's a good way to do, which, of course, you know, Coach Mann and I talked about that, and he's unsure of that. But, you know, it's a great way to train as fast as possible. The snatch, I tell you what, too, snatches, if you want, like, pure power and major velocity, do snatches from blocks from the mid thigh. That's where you get the most.

So you can use this for speed and strength training. What about the rest of the workout? Like any assistance work, hypertrophy training? Is that just back to just normal everyday lifting? You know, it's a great question. As far as I've gotten, he's mainly using it for either the limpet lifts or the main power, the squat benching and deadlift.

You could. I mean, you could. The main reason I'm doing it is because those, I usually use accessory movements for hypertrophy. That's what I do. So, like, velocity doesn't become as big of an issue. It becomes I'm trying to get X amount of time and attention. I'm looking for some metabolic stress, metabolic stress. So it's a little bit

different. When I do the snatches, clean and jerk, squats, there's a specific intent I'm after. So it's more important to use velocity for those. What if you're like, okay, you know what, I want to start doing some velocity stuff. I'm going to get gym wear or something else. I'm overwhelmed though. I don't really know what's going on with this stuff. I'm going to get gym wear or something else. I'm overwhelmed, though. I don't really know what's going on with this stuff. Of course, buying your book would help. Yes, because it's very simple.

If they wanted to use, like, all right, I just want to collect data on one exercise a day every time I train. What exercise should they pick? What speed should they be at? How would I get started? You could pick any of them. You could pick all the – Try kickbacks?

I mean, you can. Okay. And I'll, you can. Okay. And I'll tell you another thing that's super important is I would be – I would, if you can, if you want to do velocity-based training, I would take individuals because here's the thing. Everything I've told you today is like a mean, you know, like an average. So try to get more data on individual athletes. There's a dude from Florida State

they have the most amazing track team out there. And they do some crazy stuff with velocity. They can pinpoint you can do like a 70% back squat and based on how fast you go because they have so much data they know that you're probably set for

a good chance you're going to do 100 meter PR. It's crazy that you're probably set for a good chance you're going to do 100-meter PR. It's crazy that now the gym is specific to the track or the field. They also have three full-time sports statisticians that just collect data. That's not even their strength coach. It's an impressive setup. If you guys ever get Coach Ken, which is the Carolina Panther strength coach, they have one dude set up if you guys ever get coach ken which is the canada bantha strength coach joe yeah they have one dude that all he does is data yeah it's just for you

know a 40 person football team one dude his whole job they have the uh they use gps tracking so it's insane yeah that's where sports are going yes numbers quantify you know as much we were talking earlier like this is a good point it's like you know in your program if you can't answer the why you're doing it it's probably shouldn't be doing it man it should be a reason if you ask me anything i'm doing i invite you to because i like talking about it i'll tell you exactly why and if i can't i'm probably gonna be like my bad i'm gonna take that out of there yeah so can you talk a little bit more about the assistant stuff because that's one mistake i know that I made when we were weightlifting,

is I would snatch, clean and jerk, front squat, and then I'm like, everything else is stupid. And just for years I didn't do anything else. It sounds Bulgarian right there, yeah. Yeah, exactly, right? Just unfortunately I wasn't nearly as strong or did anything like that. But which one should they focus on? How much?

Well, I talked to Piros Dimas. Three-time gold medalist. Three-time Olympic gold medalist. And he started in the Russian system where they used variety. And then he switched to, as he got older, he was in Albania. And then he went to Greece. It was all Bulgarian. And so

he agreed to do it. And he said because he'd done all the Russian stuff, he was prepared for it. He said he watched a lot of people get hurt. He doesn't like the Bulgarian system at all. This is coming straight from the gold medalists. So, any of you out there now that are like, oh, Bulgarian system. Number one, you're probably not really doing the Bulgarian system.

Unless you're maxing out three times a day every single day, you're not doing it. We had Max on. Max Ada told us. Max Ada said eight times. I mean, well, he said, Pierce said three. Yeah, yeah, whatever. We had Max on. Max Ada told us. Max Ada said eight times. I mean, well, he said Pierce said three. Yeah, yeah. Whatever. It's a lot. It's a lot. You're probably not doing it. I love it when an American lifts once

a day and they don't even do snap. They'll do a clean jerk and a squat and call it bogey. No, you're not. Not even close. You're just having fun and showing off on Instagram. You're not even doing it. Doing the accessory movements, it's not always about being applicable to the snatch and clean and jerk.

It's what allows you to snatch and clean and jerk for longer without getting hurt. So, if you have a weak link, you know, like a girl's, a lot of times girls are really strong, hips down. And so they can heave weight above their head, but they have no business getting there. And so then you'll get a snapped elbow or hurt shoulder. So when I do upper body work with my females, not necessarily because I'm trying to make them snatch and clean and jerk more. I'm trying to make them be able to snatch and clean and jerk without getting hurt. Because if I can train someone for five years without injury,

that's just as good as this other person. But the other person gets hurt, we still won. Yeah. So there's a lot more to it. You know, everyone's like deadlifts, for example, which that's such debatable. They'll be like, we don't deadlift because it's not applicable to snatch, clean a jerk, lies. But anyway, it's not always about it being directly correlated to the movement.

What are some of the systems? Sorry, it's interesting that they say that about deadlifts because they don't make the same argument for a million other movements that are totally completely different than pull-ups, snatches, and clean and jerks. I mean, they don't think that the pull is the correct velocity. But, like, you know what you said earlier? It's not necessarily about how fast it's going. It's about your intent with which you're moving it.

There's so much research out there that just says, hey, if I'm pulling as hard as I can, I'm getting the outcome I want, but it just doesn't look it. I'll tell you what. Here's where I knew that they were all wrong. I saw Travis Cooper when I was with Muscle Driver USA.

He had hurt his back. So squats really were affecting his back. However, he had qualified for the World Championships, so he had to find a way to train for the World Championships. All he did was snatch, clean and jerk and deadlift. He did a ton of accessory movements programmed by Zach Greenwald. I think you guys have had him on. And that dude set a PR without squatting at all.

So don't tell me that deadlifts don't work. I saw it. I coached him, and I saw it happen. What are some of the accessory movements that you like? Because you were saying earlier you do front raise, like delt raise, lateral raise. What other assistance do you do? I tell you, gosh, I'm doing exactly what I told you not to do earlier. But I do love the Chinese.

Let me tell you why. They just look cool. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you've got to love Lou. They're all jacked. He's jacked. You know what? Lou could make millions doing a Bruce Lee movie.

Oh, my God. I hope that wasn't a racist comment. I'm just being real. That dude is so jacked. I would watch all of his movies. Teach him a few kicks. That doesn't sound racist at all. That sounds like I want to watch his movies. That dude is so jacked. I would watch all of his movies. Yeah. Teach him a few kicks. That doesn't sound racist at all. That sounds like I want to watch his movies.

Yeah. That's okay. He's so impressive physically. But when you watch the Chinese. I don't think four white guys should decide what's racist and what's not. Fair enough. Yeah, we don't have the right. But last year when I was at the gym.

Did you just presume I'm white? Making assumptions. You're privileged. Yeah. We're privileged. Yeah. We're at the Junior Worlds last year, and the Chinese team came in, and I was all excited, you know? Yeah. And they were doing so much.

They would do their snatch and clean jerky. They did so much bodybuilding. They were doing, you know, they were doing back raises, like lateral raises, front raises. They were doing dips. Weighted dips. Probably wouldn't do dips, but, you know, too much muscle damage occurring there. But, in my opinion, front raises. They were doing dips. Weighted dips. Probably wouldn't do dips, but too much muscle damage occurring there.

But in my opinion, it works. Clearly. That's one thing I remember Louis Simms saying, that they tried everything over the years, like trying to get better, and they got hurt a million different ways. And after a while, he realized that they do one or two heavy lifts, either their max effort thing or their dynamic effort method movement for the day, and then after that, it's all spatial exercise,

which is essentially bodybuilding. So do we. Obviously, he's the first person I heard that, and so when I saw the Chinese doing it, I'm like, oh, man. Louie Simmons has been saying this for years. I've written about it a million times. The Chinese have ripped him off. Those motherfuckers.

Everyone rips him off. What about things like leg extensions, leg curls, calf raises? Do you do any of that stuff? Leg curls, I'll tell you what. We found because weightlifting is so quad dominant, you're going to get a weakness at the knee. A lot of weightlifters have knee pain, and if you'll do some leg curls, a lot of that knee pain will go away.

There's an interior-posterior imbalance going on there. The quads are way stronger than the hamstrings at the knee joints, but not necessarily at the hip, but at the knee joints, but not necessarily at the hip, but at the knee joints. RDLs can't take care of that. That was one of the things I had issues with is when I started weightlifting, I had knee issues from so

much running, and I'm weightlifting and I remember Brian put me on glute ham raises. He's like, you need to fix your hamstrings. More glute ham raises, and sure enough, it was weeks, and I was like oh wow this feels way better now blue ham raises are one of my favorite for a lot of reasons just make sure that if you're doing it for that purpose um we kind of blew past that whole knee joint versus hip joint thing make sure that's all you get excited the hips are extended when you do your hamstring curl or else it's going to be still a hip dominant

thing so if they're both flexed you're both bent in, or else it's going to be still a hip-dominant thing. So if they're both flexed, you're both bent in both places, it's still going to be working across the hip joint, and the RDL, things like that. So giving some attention to doing it across the knee joint is very, very, very different. If you're like, oh, I do hamstrings all the time, and I still have this problem, make sure that your hips are extended and forcing to work across the knee joint.

There's a good technique on that that I made years ago, if you want to Google it. Yeah. Nice plug. I would recommend it. There's a good technique quad on that that I made years ago, if you want to Google it. Yeah. Nice plug. I would recommend. All right. Bring it back.

I would recommend like a seated band leg curl. The closer you get to competition, the way less muscle damage. Yeah, you're not going to get so sore. It deloads as you increase. There's not that eccentric loading as you're doing your negative. Right. Yeah.

All right. Shut it down. Where do people go get your book? Oh, go to mashelite.com to get everything. Everything. Everything. Mashelite.com. That's it. That's your Instagram too, right, and all that stuff?

Mashelite performance on Instagram. Yeah. What's the velocity book called? Barspeed. Barspeed. Yeah. Keep it as simple. Yeah, Barspeed. Barspeed. Keep it as simple. Yeah, Barspeed.

It's done really well. Thank God. I was a little worried when I wrote it because, you know, it's kind of a foreign concept to a lot of people. But, you know, we've done – I put out a bunch of articles trying to, like, give people, like, a little bit of insight on it. So you get that at matchlead.com. It's all free.

You'll start to understand it more, and then the book will make more sense. Right on. Do you have any programming stuff on the Match Lead? Oh, yeah. Tons of free workouts. Yeah. So we get a, you know, I got to say this.

The coolest moment of my coaching career, we were at dinner the other night with, there was a bunch of people from England. Oh, yeah, yeah. And they're like, they weren't talking. And then I finally started talking to them. And they started talking like crazy. Like, look, we got to tell you, a lot of us in England do your programming.

And I'll tell you what. I was like, I've never been so like, what's the word, like humbled in all my life. These people across, I'm 44 years old. I never would have guessed when I was in college that somebody in England would be doing my life. These people across... I'm 44 years old. I never would have guessed when I was in college that somebody in England would be doing my programs, and they're really good. That was the people here for World Championships. For the World... Yeah, the people at the World Championships.

Just like some English dudes. Yeah, and I called my wife, and I was almost in tears. I'm like, I can't believe it. These people from England, world-level athletes, are doing my programming. So, yes. There's a lot of free and not free workouts. He's got kids to feed, folks. He's got kids to feed.

Yes. Awesome. Thanks for joining us today. And for you watching us right now, go over to iTunes, subscribe, go over to YouTube, subscribe to everything Barbell Shrug. And don't forget, please remember, please remember, flightweightlifting.com. If you want to read about some weightlifting technique, programming,

pretty much just anything you might want to know, we'll cover it slightly in that book. We'll cover it slightly. You'll get all the information you ever wanted, or at least some of it. And also thank you to Rickard and Eric for letting us hang out at the Aleko booth and

give us a place to do our show. Always appreciated. Love those guys. Yep, yep. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks Travis.

Thanks for sticking with us all the way to the end of the show. We know you loved it. Go over to Facebook, share it with your friends. They should be seeing

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And it just started a whole firestorm. It was awesome. You need more work to do.