Barbell Shrugged - Training Tactical Athletes w/ Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash and Dr. Mike Lane #851

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

In this episode, Doug Larson, Dr. Mike Lane, and Coach Travis Mash break down what it actually means to train tactical athletes such as police officers, firefighters, military personnel, SWAT teams, cadets, and first responders who may be called into high-stress physical situations at any time. The conversation starts with the Enhanced Games and the reality of performance-enhancing drugs in sport, then quickly shifts into the tactical world, where "second place" can mean getting hurt, losing control of a situation, or not making it home. Mike explains why the first step is always a job-task analysis: Is the athlete a cadet preparing for a career, a police officer who is always "in season," a firefighter working 24-hour shifts, or a military operator cycling between deployment and training blocks? The team digs into the practical training model: tactical athletes need strength, aerobic capacity, anaerobic conditioning, mobility, grip, durability, and the ability to stay calm under stress. They discuss why training should usually be total-body, spread across the week, and conservative enough to avoid unnecessary soreness or injury while still building real capability. Travis explains how velocity-based training can keep athletes powerful without constantly maxing out, while Mike highlights exercise selection that "coaches itself," like front squats, goblet squats, kettlebell swings, thick-bar work, carries, and push presses. The big takeaway: tactical athletes do not need bodybuilding workouts or random hard training, they need specific, repeatable preparation that makes their body a reliable tool under pressure. Links: Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, Doug Larson here. And this week, I'm Barb Bell Strug. We're talking training tactical athletes like police officers, firefighters, military, SWAT, first responders, and more. All essentially people that have no idea when they're going to have to perform. They don't know when they're going to get attacked. They don't know when the house is going to burn down. They don't know when they're going to have to suddenly run full speed to chase someone down on foot. And with that in mind, Travis, Mike and myself, we break down how to train someone who wants to improve their strength,

their conditioning their mobility, their power, etc. all without causing so much fatigue that they underperform when it actually matters. They have to essentially be really well trained and yet fully recovered at all times. So if you are or you train tactical athletes, the show is for you. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell's show. I'm Doug Larsen here with Dr. Mike Lane and coach Travis Mass. We're going to dig into training tactical athletes today.

But first, a quick note on the enhanced games. I watched a little bit of it. I saw I saw Thor drop that deadlift. I saw West Kitts hit a big cleaning jerk. but you said one guy was real close to a world record of waylifting yeah overall he's not to be like he's um he's he's a he's an olympian anyway so that dude is a mac no matter what and like i love his whole family

bode he comes you know they're Canadian and their their whole family it's like three generations of waylifters and like he's incredible you know he's like man he's like drug-free you know not now but like when he was a waylifter you know Canada is very much like us They get drug tested all the time. And, like, he was, he was going tit for tat. Like, he was, you know, like, won the top five in the world, no matter what at all. And he had a, he had a really good shot at meddling in the Olympics, if not winning.

So it wasn't surprising. There wasn't one thing, though. So he had a real, he tried 182, which would have been a world record snath. And it was super close. But for some reason, he only cleaned and pressed. Like, he did a clean and then a strict press. And he only went like 115, which is weird.

So there must have been an injury there, you know, with the jerk or something. But anyway, and then with kids, did great. He did a 185 snatch, which looks super easy.

And then I, Cleaver at 220. So there's a math of PR total was at 405. Yeah, huge. Yeah, he killed it. But other than that,

it was kind of like very mediocre. There was only one world record broken. That was a swimming world record. It could definitely lean people to like, is assumed it's probably true that even the Olympics is enhanced. Yeah. I mean, I got to imagine. I actually look and see like who is in the Olympics and who actually signed for the enhanced games. But I'd imagine once you sign up for the enhanced games, it's kind of like cats out of the bag.

Like you really can't go back the other way. Even if you say, well, you don't have to do steroids, but like they kind of suspect that you probably would be doing steroids. And so like going back to the Olympics after the fact is kind of off the table. So the best people aren't competing in the enhanced games because they want to like stay clean, so to speak, for the Olympics, I would imagine. There's that too. So it's hard to say. And I really wonder, you know, like, Bodie, now he's young enough where he could have, he was definitely young enough to at least be, you know, get ready for this next Olympics. So I feel like he definitely took, you know, he wanted to take a crack at making some money.

And I don't blame him because they were making, if I'm not mistaken, a salary as well. So up to like, I don't want to exactly. rate but like 150,000 plus, you know, what's equivalent to monthly make an 150,000 a year. So, so, you know, yeah, I don't blame them. I saw, I saw one person post. I haven't seen a whole lot on the hands games total, but like I did see one person posting, like, here's all the enhanced games records and here's all the like world records from the Olympics, et cetera.

And it was basically all the world records from the Olympics were higher except for one, as you said. And they were just like, they basically were implying, but like the natural athletes still have the edge. And I was looking at that going, ah, I don't know about all this. Like, I don't feel like this is a fair comparison. To make the case for drug free is actually better than doing whatever the hell you want. Yeah. Yeah. It would just be the same thing as I was talking about Marion Jones's record, like right after she said it. Yeah. See, the test didn't have the ability to actually detect what she was taking. Right. When she passed the test. Then years later, you got her. And it's a cat. What did she take? That was the clear.

the Balco stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Balco. And that's like, you're right, there's the financial incentive. So do you go for the money now, or do you hold off competing the Olympics, which does not mean they're clean. It just simply means that they know how to pass a drug test, which I'm not saying is a very easy thing to do, but the reality is for sprinting,

it's kind of an understood thing that if you're juice to the gills, you're actually going to be retaining water, you're not going to be as fast as you could be. Right. If anything, perhaps these are the individuals that don't have really good guidance. Right. And, you know, just so when I speak, I want to make sure I'm speaking out the right orifice. Like, if Usain Bolt did everything drug-free, that is plausible.

If Usain Bolt has perhaps one of the greatest pharmacist of all time that allowed him be so successful of all time, because every other athlete that's beaten his times or been slower, like really close, They all tested positive at some point. It's a point of an understandable conversation. And again, not to denigrate what he did, it's still faster than I'll ever be outside of being on a bicycle going down a hill. But there's still those realities of like, if you want pure sport, play in your backyard. Yeah. Yeah, totally agree.

So, yeah, I think with, you know, with sprinting, though, that obviously, you had, you know, been Johnson. And so we know that it's a part of it, but how much it's a part of it, it's hard to say. You know, like, well, in the Olympics, Lasha, with memory serves, he failed a drug test. He did for a number of years. Yeah, he popped as a junior. And proceed to absolutely smash his junior records. Yeah. So what was he taking?

Who knows? The thing is, is when you have a state-sponsored program, like Georgia or China, like, you know, that's the state-proneyshire. programs they want to win because they want it to they want it to be a reflection of their country so you know they're going to do whatever they can do you know to to win otherwise why would they do a state special program so and then you know now a lot of the chinese here even um blue which is one of my favorite he popped as well so it's like yeah yeah well uh speaking of doing whatever you need to do to win uh this shows about tafco athletes and yeah second second second in a military situation or any any tackle situation means you're you're actually hurt for real hurt

or possibly dead yeah um so um well those guys often are enhanced themselves and probably for probably for good reason i hope they are no not always of course um mike i know you have a lot of experience with tactical athletes i've trained police officers and a handful of operators and military guys but uh never really specialize in in tactical athletes uh Travis i know you've spoken at some of the nsaa tactical events and and have worked with a handful of people yourself. But I'll kick it over to you first, Mike. When working with military populations, tactical athletes, SWAT teams, police officers,

or you can even go more specific and tell us who you worked with. How do you structure their training? How do you design a program for someone who really could be called to duty at any time? Yeah. And so therein lies exactly the first thing you have is your North Star, which is are they perpetually in-season, like a career police officer or firefighter, are they a military personnel

where they kind of have an in-season, off-season of deployment, or are we dealing with someone who's a cadet? So this is essentially their only pre-season they're going to have, and then they're going to have the next 20 years to be in-season. And so you kind of have the idea, then are we teaching to the test? The military has their standards with the Army has the AFT,

or yeah, the ACFT, they're moved to the combat part from it. You've got fire that has, depending on where you're at, they've got their own typical tests that they're going to do. That's pretty cool and brutal, anaerobic gauntlet of doing a lot of task-oriented tests where we're at in Kentucky. Police have to do POPS testing, which is five different tests, testing a variety of fitness components that they need to pass in order to graduate. Now, of course, fire does a really good job.

of being relatively specific. The Army is kind of a general, like if you're in good enough shape, you'll pass everything. Then, of course, different areas have higher standards. And the same thing with police, it's like, okay, you're in general shape. But you can't standardize like, hey, we're going to have a 250-pound dude who's chemically enhanced and you have to literally, you know, wrestle him to the ground and apprehend him in order of the past graduation because you need how many of those guys? Yeah.

Like, hey, Bob, do you mind going out to East Kentucky? You got to go and beat on some cadets to make sure. that they can pass because I don't think you're going to be able to pay Bob enough to have to go do. They actually call that Red Man where they have them go in the gear and actually do simulated combat. So back to it, how frequently then if we're in season, are we going to be on shift? Are we fire? Where are we like a 24 on, 24 off so we can like essentially finish our shift with a workout? No, we got 24 hours to recover.

And then we're going to be back on shift. Or are we police and we're just, we've got two weeks of third. two weeks of second and two weeks of first shift. So our sleep's also getting jacked up in there. And effectively, how do we organize this? Because we can't be, you know, the old school, you know, college bodybuilder, bro, like we're just going to you chest day be nuked and not be able to even give, you know, grandma a hug until Saturday.

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And like, if I'm not mistaken, you're in Kentucky, Louisville's program, their police program is considered the best tactical program in America. At least that's what I was just, yes, it was just last week. I was doing some research because we're, luckily and we're excited about working with the Winston-Salem Police Department. And so in doing my research, Louisville is considered the go-to program as a now. I don't know with you being up there if you're familiar with that or not, but I definitely want to, I'm going to spend more time looking into what they're already doing.

The best way to navigate this is when you're dealing with police forces, you're dealing with obviously very rigid command structures where obviously you get into the police forces. to the, you know, some are more old school, some more, you know, bleeding edge. And so the way it's set up in the state of Kentucky, Lexington, Louisville, and Highway Patrol, all have their own academies develop their own cadets. Every other municipality in, and or county, in the rest of the state, all of their cadets literally do their training right over there. Oh, great.

And so everyone there has to go through the same 20-plus week of classroom, defense. defensive tactics, PT, shooting, every other thing, training is literally right there from where I'm doing this right now. So I, we know that's relatively homogenized in that we know what they're doing as part of their program, like how they've got that set up in the blocks. As far as what Lexington and Louisville, PD and Highway Patrol, they still have to pass Pops testing. But of course, how you go about that allows that flexibility. And then once they get into their career, now it's do they even have access to a gym as part of their training center? So the Richmond Police Department, so that's Richmond, Kentucky is where I'm at right now.

Those folks, you know, there's a number, there's anything from like a 24-hour fitness to like a legitimately good bodybuilding gym called the Richmond Athletic Club. We've got the campus training center. So like there's opportunities. The Eastern Kentucky University Police Department, they're given one hour of essentially personal. time to literally go train like they want them to go work out that's what the same here they're given one hour during the shift to go train right and it's then of course you're into that weird situation of there's no coercion that you have to go out or you have to go work out would it behoove them to be useful

absolutely but of course you know yeah how they train and there lies another issue is you get the individuals that go more bodybuilding bro style which is cool, but that's not building necessarily the amount of work capacity and anaerobic endurance you need in your actual profession. Even aerobic. I mean, you know, there was, I don't know if I really want, one of my former, I think even Doug knows, former athletes, Rabbit. You remember my athlete named Rabbit and Jacob Wyatt? Well, he's the police officer now. And like, I love this kid.

And I'm so proud of the man he's become because, you know, he was young. like most of us he was you know cocky and arrogant but like uh he's really grown into a good man and now he's a police officer in greensboro and he was involved in the you know a shooting and so um and like it was it went on like this whole ordeal went on for a long time so i was just thinking i'm glad that the guy was in the condition because you know he was chasing the guy around and he was running not to mention his heart racing you know you know the guy is going to be brandy a weapon at any moment. So they have to be prepared for so many things.

They've got to be powerful and explosive. They've got to be strong. They've got to be aerobically and aerobically. I mean, like, they've got to be. If they want to, if they want to get home, if they want to have a really high percentage of getting home every night, being super conditioned is a big part of it. Yeah, that calm under stress has got to be something that's like very tough to prepare for.

Like I've never been like, I've never been in a, in a highly physical situation where I was actually scared for my life. Like actually worried I was going to die. Like that panic and how your heart would just elevate naturally and like and then have to actually go perform and run and sprint after somebody and tackle them and like not just have tunnel vision and be holding your breath and tense the whole time. Like jujitsu trains a lot of that. But like in a real world scenario like that where like where someone actually might

pull a knife on you or shoot at you or whatever like would be very difficult to do until you've actually been there and done that. Totally agree. That's part of the reason why the Wisconsin the Police Department wanted to work with me. Well, it's at rise. You know, we have jiu-jitsu and wrestling is right beside the athletic performance.

And so they wanted both. And so they get to come here. I will, of course, one day I wanted to talk to you guys about, too, is blood testing for those guys. But, you know, I will do their assessments. I will set up their programs, along with, you know, they have, right now all they have is,

one lady who's she's awesome and they've got this little teeny room for over 600 employees and so it's just they're just not prepared and you know I met this lady at a wellness it was like a wellness convention and we started talking and they were wanting to do these upgrades but you know it wasn't quite in the budget yet but I'm like well we already have the space the facilities you need so it just kind of worked out so we'll we'll have jiu-jitsu they'll have the assessments. And then we can also use online programming because as we all, you know, they're spread throughout. So they can't always come to rise. And so, but I can make sure that they're getting a good program based on their own needs, no matter where they are. So we're super pumped

about it. And one thing that Doug brought up there and is worth revisiting. If you guys have read any of Dave Grossman's work, so on combat is a great one on, we will say unaliving people. is another really good one so that we don't mess up the search criteria or whatever on this. And it's interesting because it gets into, like Doug alluded to, which is that fight or flight response, that huge epinephrine drop. And those of us that have played sports have had that go wrong. Like,

way too ramped up. And, you know, this is the kid that swings of the fastball that bounced first on the way there. Because they're just so amped and they just freak out and go. Or, you know, five feet behind them because they overpulled a heck out of it because they were just nervous.

And of course, you can understand when you go that far, if your body's not used to it, and that's where they do sim munition, they do, you know, the Red Man, they do the actual high speed, like, you're going to get punched in the face, man. So you need to know how your body's going to respond. Sure. And of course, it's one of those situations where, yes, it's a, yeah, you either win big or you lose horrendously. in certain situations like that. So hence, if you don't have the physical fitness to do certain aspects,

there is no, you will rise to the, you know, all of your expectations, you follow a little of your training. And so, you know, the mindset of working with the incredible instructors they have over there and the other folks that I've been lucky enough to work with in my career, it's like, we never want your body to be a limiting factor. You know, you've got the tool, you know, and your body is a weapon. Your body is a tool, and that's how you solve. your problems and if you're not strong enough fit enough and etc there is no like huh let me go

back to the drawing board to figure out how to do that better next season so yeah you know one time oh sorry good i was gonna say on a uh a semi-related note like to what you just brought up and then what i brought up earlier around uh actually getting hurt and and kind of having that that panic response you were thought you you brought up some munitions and it made me think of this time uh actually did this for a bachelor party That was a very unique bachelor party. Yeah. Where is this going?

We went to a place where they, it was a shooting simulation type experience where they put tasers on us. And we, and we did these shooting drills in these, like in these warehouses where when you got shot, you got fucking zapped. Like you got tased like hard. Like hard enough where I had like second degree burn like bubble,

like the bubbly, like the clear bubbly blistered skin afterward from where I got for right, where I got fucking electrocuted and after it happened the first time or two now now all a sudden it's not like a calm fun experience anymore like you're fucking jumpy like you're like panicking jumping like you hear you hear something or you see something like ah fuck fuck you don't you don't want to get fucking zapped again or in the in the case of the world you don't you don't want to get shot like if you got shot and like then all of a sudden you hear something behind you you're gonna fucking turn to shoot and hope it's hope it's the person

you're supposed to be shooting and And I really did. Like my heart rate got up and I fucking, my breathing got up. And like I wasn't moving calmly, slowly, smoothly, smoothly, smooth as fast, all that stuff. It was like, I had to really focus to not like be so jumpy that I was moving 100% full speed every time I turned. Right. That's what, you know, that's why I was so proud of Rabbit is like he was, he was so nice to this individual at first. He's like, look, come tall to me.

And then he and he was trying to get this guy, you know, trying to call him. him down the whole time until and he was trying to get the guy hey let me check you for a weapon that's all and the guy would not you know would let him check him and then he went into this room into as he as rabbit is kind of following him around he went into this um like utility house you know one of the standalone where you might put your tools and and then rabbit was like get the then he pulls his weapon he's like get out of get out of there man man, show me your hands. When the guy comes out, he's got like a machete in one hand and a, like a pipe in the other.

And rabbit was still calm. He's like, put that down or, and he's like, or I'm going to F and shoot you, you know. He was, he tried so many times and like, then the guy comes running at him and then, well, then. Yeah, I know. I know. Got to do it at that point. And then he's got these people commenting like, oh, you should have pepper sprayed him. I'm like, buddy, give me a machete and you pepper spray me and see what happens.

You know, like, my eyes are going to hurt, but your head's getting chopped off. You know what I mean? Like, that was a terrible situation. It is a terrible situation. And just anyway. And that's, I don't mean to be glib and or trite about, you know, folks when they're in those situations. Yeah. You know, there are, you just, this is not speaking, this specific context, but obviously there are officers that have made.

bad choices. Yeah, there are. Yeah. There's officers, and that's the problem is you go in with not enough force, you don't go home that night, but, you know, they're, I guess that person's still alive. You go in there with too much force. That person is definitely unalived, and then you're in a number of issues with legal. They fire at you, you fire at them. Like, there's a lot of great examples of that. And then a lot of people don't understand the fight or flight response, don't understand that at that point people are pulling the tool that they think is the appropriate tool, and hence physical fitness is not in penicia. It's not going to just stop any of these type of situations, but at least gives another tool.

And that's where there's no ethical way to do that research. Like, hey, we're going to have these cops that are really out of shape. We're going to have these cops that are in great shape, and they're going to put them in life or death situations and see who are the ones to make the better choices and look for the reoccurring themes. It's, you know, we're kind of, we're armchair quarterbacking it. But at the same time when we're thinking about, hey, hence the, if you see them bringing a weapon towards you, you've got the distance. I have never been pepper sprayed in my life. My goal is to keep it like that.

I've never been tased in my life. And my goal is also to keep it like that. And you do hear examples of people that, you know, you see the videos in line. People get in tased and they just walk right through it. Yeah. And if they do have a weapon in your hand, it's like. I know, man. And another thing, this guy had a thick coat on.

He had like a, like maybe a rain jacket, which is another reason why, you know, talking to Ravi, he's like, you know, I consider, because you see early on he's got his taser out. But then he looks and he, you know, after looking at the raincoat, he knows it probably won't. There's a good chance it won't work. And so let's just shoot him in the face with it. But, you know. So at the end of the day, you know. Yeah, he went home to his wife. And that's what I care about.

How can we give these people more tools so they have the better opportunity or they have the opportunity to make better decisions? Right. You know? There we go. And so first. Well, that's the, hence why the physical fitness. Like, I do make the joke on occasion of like, can you imagine being a guy misbehaving in, like, was it, Arlington, Texas in the early 2000s and uproles a Ronnie Coleman. Like, you're not immediately thinking, I'm going to fight this cop.

You're like, can I run or do I just like immediately lay down? Like there's no. I'm just cooperating. Yeah. It's right or free. You're not going to be right response anymore. Can I see a double buy, you know, before you take me to jail? But, you know, there is something we said about the physicality.

And that's the thing is I've been around like your best, a lot of the really good like SWAT and like the high tier operators. Those are the folks that are, and I do not mean this to be driving. They're built like duck. Like they're an in-shaped guy, but you never look at him be like, dude, man, that guy's got like an 18-inch neck. Like, I don't want to fight with that. Like you will see the cauliflower ears that gives it away on occasion, but they're really mobile, really fit dudes. Like we've got two guys over there that I've got 50 pounds on, easy. And if I wanted to feel the floor in less than five seconds by a guy that's, again, one of them's got a pony knob too.

I don't want to get toxic masculine here. I don't want to get beaten up by a guy in a ponytail. But like they're black belts in multiple martial arts. They're retired career police officers. They're over there instructing to make the next generation better. And so, but they're physically fit. They've got a great aerobic capacity. Their body weight strength is really good.

Yeah, their absolute strength is they're not going to deadlift 500 pounds. But they're deadlift 400. At a guy that weighs a buck 70, like that's still a good number. Mm-hmm. And they just know what they're doing. And that's all, you know, that's the thing. Like, Connor McGregor, like, if I, if I didn't know him, wouldn't scare me. But then, you know, it would be a horrible mistake of my part because he would beat me to death.

You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, sorry. Also, you really shouldn't be ever be like in a physical altercation, best case scenario, as a police officer, as a military person. Like, I was talking to the buddy who's a Navy SEAL and I was like, what do you guys do for hand-to-hand combat? And he was like, not that much. He was like, the person who wins the hand-to-hand combat fight. who's everybody shows up first with a gun.

Just like I say, like the purpose of your pistol is to fight your way back to your rifle. Like really it's about, it's about weapons. Like you shouldn't be, you're not boxing anybody as a Navy SEAL. Like you're, you're there to, to shoot people. Ideally, with the element of surprise and to not be shot back at in the best case scenario. Totally great. Now, I will say that for police, they feel like that happens more with them. Yes.

They're always getting these drunken brawls, you know, and having, you know, You can't shoot a guy if he doesn't have a weapon. It's because, you know, well, I guess you could, but you should probably shouldn't. No, you should. Yeah, let's not escalate if we can help it. But I think at the same point, it's really, it's an important thing for folks to think when you turn the conversation to firefighting, most firefighting is not what people think of the cliche, full gear, barely into a burning building.

It's a person has had some type of an event. a family member or themselves, you know, they cannot move themselves. And you got a 300-pound person jackknife awkwardly around a toilet in a bathroom. Yeah. And you got to pick up, you know, a limp human being, get them out of awkward positions without hurting yourself in the process to then start the CPR to then go ahead and do the other components there for the health. Or, you know, it's a bad car accident. It's all of these things that do require a certain amount of strength. Sure.

You're not physically capable of moving people in awkward positions. You know, give me a 400-pound barbell and I'll pick that thing up cold any day of the week. But you put a 300-pound person on the ground and tell me to pick them up off the ground. It's so awkward. Yeah. Right. Yeah. They're all just loose and floppy and all awkward.

And then you're thinking about a firefighter. It's like the thing is, I guess to bring it like, you know, for our listeners, like, you think about what is this person going to do? Firefighter, you know, they, they have aerobic capacity. is very important. Then they've got to be so strong, you're going to hold, you know, anyone who's ever sprayed one of those,

I guess the hoses. Like, that's pretty, it's pretty hard. And so then you got to drag, like you said, somebody who's completely, you know,

incapacitated, you've got to drag them out of danger. And then meanwhile, you've got to be able to stay calm when you can't see it all, there's smoke above your head. Like, there's so many elements that's important for them to be in.

And you're already encumbered. encumber to start you're starting off with 60 plus pounds strapped to you you know it's not us in gym clothes no running around dragging our partner across the gym floor because it's fun right you know or if you're fighting wildfires that aren't going to be put out for many weeks or months like you can just go on all night long like the the Pacific palisades fires that that were happening a while back like all that all those California like Pacific Northwest wildfires like i'm here australia had those fires a couple years ago that they were just they're insane and like the the the um amount of people that are out there fighting them is like so so radically fewer than are needed to actually

put this thing out in a timely fashion which means you're gonna be you're gonna be out there for 20 hours a day for for three months and you need to be very enduring in order to do that it's not like an hour workout you go home and you get your post workout shake and you take a nap like you're out there all day man right so it's important that these guys have a lot of tools you know when it comes to being in a physically fit it can't just be strong you can't just be aerobically fit you can't just be you know have a good lactate threshold you got to have all all those things so it's important to identify just like it is with anybody like you somebody's just trying to get you know if you're 45 years old trying to get fit like you got to find out where are you

know where do where is what element you need to focus on the most you know and then target those and then you've got to be able to monitor and then ongoing test. So that would be the first key to any kind. Get back on the program. Sorry, it's the job task analysis. And so you look at the wildlife firefighters. If you're talking about being out there and you're going to cover over 10 miles on uneven ground and not including the legit being on a saw, being on this other people who equipment to go ahead and, you know,

create the brakes and otherwise that you need, if you're somebody that's used to only walking three miles a day do you think your legs are just going to handle an extra seven miles of back country you know scrambling up whatever ridges and otherwise like no like you need to have that work capacity your body has to be used to that sheer amount of volume of work you know and then go ahead you know earlier you were talking about how we both were talking about how you need to be able to train hard of course and improve your fitness but also like you could be called at any time to go do some some real activity like that one of the first times I ever had any type of exposure to anything that was kind of closely to what we now would call velocity based training or vbT was

you know 20 25 years ago when the story I remember hearing from my strength coach at the time was that this is what the russian spatsnots were doing because again they were the military guys that might be called at any time to go do something and they called it three by five training which and he's actually popularized at this point where you're basically doing three to five reps for set not to fail, your velocity-based training style where you maximum acceleration, minimum, soreness, fairly low volume, but like lots of frequency, lots of intensity, full speed, and it doesn't beat you up. And I remember thinking like, oh, that's kind of like what Louis does on dynamic effort days. Like I had some exposure to those methodologies back, those methodologies

back then. And that was like the first time I ever really experimented with velocity-based training was because of this same concept that we're talking about now. So anytime I'm in a situation, ended back on H-T-Fi MMA, and I was, they had a high volume of other training, but I still wanted to lift weights and maintain muscle mass and be explosive and whatnot. Like, I was kind of resorted back to that way of thinking and those kind of core concepts. Yeah, it's just a big story acceleration is what you're talking about. It's like you can either you can either lift 75% for five reps or you can lift 75% for five reps as fast as possible. Those are two different like workouts, two different outcomes as well. you're probably going to get two very different adaptations as well.

Yeah, jogging 100 meters and sprinting 100 meters is not the same, right? That's the most brilliant way of saying it that, you know, yeah, exactly. You can either jog 100 meters or you can sprint all out 100 meters. And so there's definitely going to be two different adaptations from that. And so the thing that Louis was missing is like, you know, he was one of the first people to use velocity. But he only had like one. You know, he had the, what were those old? Meetatendo.

You know, that's right. But now that, you know, a lot of us have access to multiple doses. It's really, when you take, like, an athlete and you say 7% for 5x5, and you're telling them to stay for squatting, for example, around 0.6 meters for second on all those, it's a totally different response. Even on, you know, like after the set, you can either be like, like, it barely bothered you or it's going to be like you're almost ready to throw up if you push those reps as fast as you can.

So definitely, definitely like, you know, as far as recruiting those high threshold motor units, nothing beats it than that. And that's the thing. It's the intent. Hence, polyometrics are great because you always tap in your biggest, most powerful fibers or heaviest load you can do.

But the other thing is it's a good old submaximal load and maximal velocity. And within that, when we think about, you know, the volume, the 5x3 or however what you want to set it, it's just a good baseline. And that's where, you know, this is where you get more into the science of it, which is I like the idea of like, hey, as soon as you have that velocity loss of 20% from that first set to whatever, you're done. Because that's when those biggest, most powerful fibers aren't able to recover in time.

Right. It could be poorly metabolically developed. They can not have enough, you know, glycogen stores. either way, you check the box. So let's move on. Right. That's what sucks because if you got a really in-shaped athlete, their speed work might end up being 10 plus sets.

But you can have that person that's obviously in poor condition, and they really can only handle three sets. And then by the third set, they've had that 20% drop off. Like, you have checked the box. You don't get more point for filling it fully in. So move on, mitigate your fatigue, and get on to the next exercise. Right. For those guys, what I do, like, in,

to the same 75% for 5 by 4 by 5 let's say which is a very typical something I might actually prescribe is if you're crushing 0.6 on the last two I'll say go up you know and to the point of where you dip slightly below it then we stop and so because if it's like if they're never even getting 20% lossy loss you might like not be giving them enough of a you know of a load to induce any type of adaptation so for those guys I won't make sure I leave some wiggle room to go up or down, you know, based on the results of the velocity. I would stick with it and not change the load if I'm talking about, like, if I'm working

like with alignment, because if I know you can go for 30 sets in a row without losing velocity, like you're ready for every damn offensive series you could put on. But that's probably an overkill at that point, though. Exactly. So like we've got other things we need to focus on. Right. But if I'm dealing with it all along. But if I'm dealing with this tactical athlete, it's like, dude, your next shift is coming up in 24 hours.

Like we'll modulate the load a little bit like you threw at the end or next time we come in there, we're going to increase the load in general. Right. Or try to go higher, yeah, try to go stay at the same velocity, but try to, you know, increase the load. Nothing really changed, you know. Yeah. It's just your, you got to make some type of of a change. Yes. So Mike, back to the needs analysis.

This, you know, firefighters come in all shapes and sizes. So if you got the 175 pound guy who's trying to lift the 300 pound guy who's wedged between the toilet seat and the wall and he's standing with barely any space to bend over and he's kind of an awkward position, like he's not going to be able to move that guy. So he has different needs as a firefighter than the guy who's already 245 and but like a little bit overweight and like he's going to go fight the fire and the, for the wildfires where he's up hiking the hills all night and he's going to be dead. So there's different needs for different people. Can we just walk through a few scenarios and talk about if you're training for a space. specific thing, how to structure your week as an example? Yeah. So, you know, kind of now let's get meta, not just your needs analysis, but the needs analysis of where you're working. So if you happen to be a firefighter and you're volunteer firefighter, first and foremost, thank you for volunteering

to be a firefighter. That's freaking awesome, dude. Like, I'll volunteer to like help out with Little League sports. That's burning buildings. Thank you. So in that type situation is, you know, be realistic of like, who am I working with? If I'm going to, if I show up and it's like, it's like we just see a group of guys that look like mash and I, it's like, sweet, we had a bunch of strong dudes, but we might not have a lot of guys that are conditioned. Right. So maybe what I need to focus on is my conditioning. You know, if I show up and it's a bunch of guys that are built like Doug, like, maybe I should push my maximal strength so we know we got another guy. And then same thing.

If you're, I believe it's a smoke jumper for the individuals that are actually like literally like parachute in ahead of wherever the fire is and like they do the hardcore stuff of like, you should know kind of a little bit of your unit, potentially, and you can think about where your guys has strength and weaknesses, where is your individual strengths and weaknesses. And now, don't get me wrong, it's a situation where your weakness shouldn't be so egregious like, yeah, Bob over there is a 900 pound deadlifter, but he's got a 30-minute mile. Like, no, dude, you're going to die. Like, you can't scramble up if something goes bad to get into the right position to not get overwhelmed by those fires. So you at least need to have those threshold.

then if memory serves for wilderness firefighters, and we can correct this in post if necessary, but I think you need to have like a VO2 max over 45, meaning you need to be able to turn out, you know, an eight-minute mile easy before you. Yeah, I wouldn't want to get in there with like a 30, you know, VMI. You know what I mean? Like I would want a 45, you know, 5 max.

But then at a certain point, it's like once you have like you're, you can deadlift 400 pounds. Like you've got a good base level of strength. Then it's like, okay, where would me emphasizing certain levels of my fitness, help me professionally, and then help my team, help my group? And then at the same time, because, you know, go SWAT. There's the person that they kick in the door and that person be big. But the guys that move fast and otherwise, they are, for lack of better term, a more sleek build. So where do you naturally gravitate?

What does your group really need? And how do you make everyone better? So once you have that analysis, okay, then it's kind of what do we put on the front burners? What do we put on the back burners? If we know we've got maximal strength where we need to be, we follow some VBT, we hit our minimum values that we need there. And then we go hard metabolically. Maybe we are strong, we are fit, but our mobility is crap. So getting to that person in that awkward position like, yeah, the key is, Doug, if they're there, you have to lift with the jerking twisting motion.

And then make sure you have all the air out of your lungs. chyphotic as possible. That's how you really make sure you get your workman's comp. So in those situations, like maybe what we do is we have the heavy lifting, you do your conditioning, but all of your accessory movements are all emphasizing big ranges of motion, kind of like thinking quasi-nees over-toe guy type stuff. Oh, we're just trying to increase your tissue lengths so that if you do get in compromised positions, like you're going to be okay. If I had to go do jiu-jitsu tomorrow, I know I do not have the shoulder-moving. hip mobility that I'd want to have for a sport like that.

I got enough for powerlifting, but that does not mean much. No, that's a terrible example. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a good example of like you just need to have enough to do your activity. Right. And then going into overkill might actually make you a slightly worse athlete in that sport. Right. But if you're thinking about wilderness firefighting, yeah, you might need to know how to boulder.

And bouldering while you're, you know, you have a chainsaw strapped your back in your food and everything else. So you're talking 50-odd pounds of weight on top of your body itself. You don't want to be that big. So. And do you prescribe like very conservative training given that they have to be ready to go at all times? Like I remember hearing somebody say a while back that like the firefighter station that they were working at like they had banned playing basketball. Like you're not allowed to play basketball because so many guys had sprained their ankles. And like all these all these firefighters are spraying ankles like can't perform at their best because they're all, they're all hot.

they're all hobbling around. Yeah. There's ones that we know that and powerlifting because, you know, people hurt themselves doing it with suboptimal technique. And, you know, like, it's, that is a, and there's a problem we also have with the cadet training is like, no, we can't back spot them. They're going to get hurt.

It's like, no. And saying the concern about deadlifting, I would rather deadlift a barbell than have to fight a 200 plus pound individual chemically enhanced. Right. That is very, very much so, incentivized to not go to adult time out. Like, no.

So when we're, you know, when we're looking at these individuals and we're thinking about like, okay, like, how are we going to train this total body and dividing that stimulus up as evenly throughout the week as you can. But if you know, you're going to have 48 hours off, we're going to go hard. Like, because we can afford to be sore the next day because we're, we're not on call. We're not on shift. We got the next day to recover even more. And then we go right back into it.

So I like to think of my training never as like, we must, we squat on Monday. Unless you're listening to this at home and you're not tactical, you start your week on your feet. You can end it on your back, but you start it on your feet. So Monday, we're doing lower body. Right. But for all these folks, it's total body. That way we're dividing up the same amount of stimulus if we did a more upper, lower, traditional split.

So they're never getting a huge amount of volume all at once and said we're dividing it up. Instead of doing one giant meal, we're doing it. doing three smaller meals during the day. I agree. You know, there was a time where I had the chance to work with the, you know, the Marines and the Marines, for all that they don't know, they're the ones who are in charge of all the embassies throughout the world. And so the thing is, is that the average age for these young guys is like, if I'm not mistaken, it's like 19.5 years. I mean, they're very young. And so what was happening, they decked these things out.

All of them have got some really cool places to work out at every embassy in the world. However, the injury rate was through the roof because there's nobody there. You got this 19 or let's say 20-year-old, you know, with all these cool toys and they're getting hurt. So what we're able to do is take like the, you know, the minimum velocity thresholds for all these different movements. Say like, you know, for the squat, unless you're a power of the truth, normally at point three. And for the bench press about around point two. Same for deadlift, around point two. The, and then the overhead press is about point two as well.

And we were even able to come up with it for a pull-up, believe it or not. But the thing is, then we sat like, they could not go below certain velocities. Any one thing that was even coming close to like, you know, a terminal velocity was that's where you're going to get hurt. So it really did wonders for ending these injuries. And so it was super cool to be a part of something so simple as, and the cool thing is, is that since they started using velocity, all their information goes to the cloud. So the officers they report to can see, you know,

did they listen, did they adhere to these protocols? And so it really helped to shut down these injuries. It's, I mean, there's these good max out all the time. They got mad about that, but kept home from getting hurt, which is the most important thing. Within that, I think another big thing is with your exercise selection is picking one of the movements that kind of coach themselves. Right. So like what would be a great one. Exactly.

Front rack, kettlebell squats squats, like, nothing is idiot proof. But boy, howdy, if they're going to drop that chest and just slam the knees into their thighs, like they start to figure out some feedback. But we've all seen some back squats where they need. needs our kiss. And, you know, their back looks like my dog having a bowel movement in the backyard. And it's just like, oh, buddy. Yeah.

You can't do that with an overhead squat, though. Right. Overse squat. As soon as you dip your chest, you drop the bar. And so I love, even for our guys here at Ryan's, the young guys, we mainly 90% of the time we're doing front squads to avoid these, you know, young guys trying to impress us with their 315 pound back squat. So, like, be some,

out of trouble. And I would also say that this is where, as much as I love deadlifts, this is where something like an RDR is probably a better sport, or just the good old kettlebell swing just to teach the hinge. Sure. But we're not trying to, because, I mean, how many guys you know because of that hamstring, they're not going to get a good start position without having to have at least a bit of lumbar flexion. Or just do a double overhand deadlift and that eliminates it. Not even a grip. Just double overhand. Make the hand be the limit. factor door it's a now we're going to eliminate in top of dangerous load so there's lots of ways you can do hey i'll do you one further that's where you know there's something to be said about thick bar

oh yeah out of rata because that's life like my forearm is way closer to a thick bar than it's ever going to be to grabbing a normal barbell like when you're dealing with humans it is kind of cool though with both like fire gear and with a bomb suit they actually have the straps on the back so if you do got to pull your buddy out you got a good grip to go and drag you know you got to drag a person out of there you're grabbing wrist you're grabbing ankle or a small push press or a military press it's like it's way safer than a bench press you know like and the odds of injuries are super low you know like and a push press is so much more in my opinion the NFL should do away with like the bench press for reps and like it's number one you're on your back but like a push press

because it starts from the lower body. It's generated from the floor up, which is where anything, so a punch starts from the floor. Anything that's awesome in the upper body is generated from the lower body. So I love the push press. I'm sorry,

did you just throw out the idea of removing the American press? I did. And I love it. I held the world record in the bench press, and I still think it's not it. It's like as far as the athletic tools, probably not a, I mean, it's okay.

It's a tool. Exactly. Yeah. Most of the people raising their butts up and honest crap, it drives me insane. Just do a push press. All right. On that note, we're going to wrap it up.

Dr. Mike Lane, where can you find you? Yep. So Mike Lane, PhD on Instagram. All right, Crossrow's Mass. Matchellead.com. There's plenty of stuff on there about the bench press. I hate it on it.

It's not for athletic performance. Yeah, for sure. Wait, what was your world record number on Benz? I did 705. But then it got beat 10 minutes later. All right. We're ready for 10 minutes. I still were a record.

You had it. Very cool. I'm Doug Larson. We are barbells. I am Doug Larson on Instagram. Douglas Lee Larson. We are Barbell Strugged on Instagram. Barbell underscore shrug.

If you want to work with Dr. Mike Lane, Coach Travis Mass, Dr. Andy Galpin, and the whole team at Rapid Health Optimization, you can go to Aretealab.com. That's A-R-E-T-L-B-com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.