Barbell Shrugged - Useful Fitness Standards w/ Dr. Mike Lane, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash #819

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

In this episode, the team breaks down what it means to build and maintain essential fitness, the baseline level of strength, endurance, and resilience every person should strive for. They discuss how to train efficiently using the minimum effective dose, balancing work, family, and recovery while still progressing. The conversation covers the principles behind durable fitness, how to set meaningful performance standards, and why consistency and movement quality matter more than perfection. They also explore the foundations of long-term athletic development and how to build capable, confident humans from youth to adulthood. Work With Us: Arétē by RAPID Health Optimization Links: Dr. Chris Perry on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family this week on Barbell Strug, Dr. Mike Lane is coming back on the show. And today we are talking about standards for your health, thinking into kind of a bunch of arenas. And then we spend a bunch of time at the end of this thing talking about youth development, how we think about this stuff with our own kids. It's kind of like a massive topic amongst the group on how to train your kids and get them all the athleticism and good habits and all of those fun pieces. So jam-pack show, as always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That's where Dan Garder, Dr. Andy Galpin, are doing a free lab, lifestyle, performance analysis,

and you can access that over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Marvell Shrugge. We got it right, Colton. I'm Anders Varner. Dr. Mark, Mike, Lane. Dude, you guys can't see him listening to Barbell Shrugged on the way to work right now.

This dude has a sick push broom right on his upper lip, right now that clean out a garage if you were dragging him by his feet. It is so fresh. Today on Barbell shrugged. For all your parents that have businesses, have to go to work, how do we do all of the fitness things in some standards of health? Break it down, my man. What do these parents do? What are they supposed to be tracking here? So like anything else, this kind of happened organically. We've been doing a lot of testing with the, what is the Department of Criminal Journalist's Training Center here? So we work with the police and they've got their pop standards.

And then obviously helping our ROTC cadets with their training programs and they have to pass the AFT. So hence, you know, the military, just like the police, they have standards, just like firefighting. And thinking about that and how that applies. So my wife and I, we had our first and only child in December and, you know, now carrying the child around and gaining tennis elbow on. short order from holding her in so much of an isometric realizing that yes when we're putting the fun back in a functional fitness what are we really talking about as far as benchmarks and you know

a couple things and you know i don't know how much anders is shared about his own but we both unfortunately went through the loss of our parent a parent and so i lost my father back in july i was in the room when it happened it was you know as brutal as one of suspect but we should all hope to be so lucky that we can be there for each other at the end and my father was going through lung cancer treatments. And during those treatments, he needed to get blood transfusions a couple times. And there are three people out there that donated a pint of themselves that allowed me to have what was likely a couple more months with my father, not even overlooking what all the different medical professionals did with trying to give him chemotherapy and obviously trying to beat the cancer.

Like I am super gracious to everyone that put in those efforts. And so what can I do? And I was thinking about like, okay, how can I think about my own fitness, not just, you know, as a means to be able to play and have a good experience and allow my daughter to do things physical with me, but also what can I do to just kind of be a, you know, be a better person. And so I've obviously started donating blood, you know, I'm three pints down myself. So I've at least paid it forward and I plan on continuing that out. And that's an easy thing to do.

You know, we can debate whether or not donating to certain causes is ethically appropriate and otherwise, but the simple reality is pretty hard to find a downside to you donated blood. Like, that's just going to somebody I'm never going to meet, don't need to, and it's only doing good. And since we do all this first responder type of and combat athlete testing, one of my thought processes is, okay, well, how much, how in shape do you need to be in order to do CPR for a person? How in shape do you need to be to help people out in those situations? And they've done the research. So, you know, you need to have, it's typically a metaboptimand of somewhere around 20

milliliters of oxygen per kilogram with body mass. So it's a brisk walk. Now, of course, if a brisk walk is your VO2 max, you're not going to be able to perform CPR long enough that you can really help save a person. And this is adult CPR. So my thought is like, okay, we want to make sure that's below our anaerode threshold. So talk about a good reason to always keep your VO2 max in the 40s. because if you know grandma goes down at the family get together something happens you're the person that can step up and maintain chest compressions until the real first responders the EMTs and otherwise get on the scene so that was kind of what started this kind of iteration when you're not sleeping because you know you're feeding the baby in the middle of the night and trying to go back and kind of thinking on it so that's kind of where i've started and kind of where i'm going down the rabbit hole so feel free to join me like alice what do you want to

kind of further go into um let's dig into uh like the easiest one um minimum amount of training like strength training that someone needs to do uh one of the one of the we've we've all been in this industry so long that's like um i think it's one there's the analysis or paralysis by analysis where people just go it's too i don't have time to just take on like five days a week an hour a day so they do nothing. And then the other end of the spectrum of, I'm going to do three hours a day, every day of my life,

and give up everything so I can be in the best shape. Like, where's the sweet spot? You know, and I think one, we need to make sure that we're contextualizing the conversation of what we're looking for is the minimal effective dose, as opposed to looking for the optimal dose, because you can always train maximum. Anyone can go stand in the sun

until they have an absolute crimson sunburn. But our goal is to think about what's enough that we're going to at least keep our tan, if not improve it, and then what's essentially tanning at the fastest rate before we start flirting with sunburns and blistering. So the nice thing is, in general, the signal you create from resistance training lasts for about 72 hours. Shortest 48, 72 is a good number to go with. So if you figure that means every three days, day four, your muscles aren't really having a reason to build more muscle mass outside of the normal hormones you've got. floating through you. So we're talking two sessions a week, essentially. And when we think

about it, we just want to make sure that we're recruiting everything. So it's a pretty simple baseline program twice a week, something compound lower body, something compound upper body pushing something away, pulling something towards you, and then doing at least one and preferably more approaches to failure. So that program stripped down to its bare minimum. You could do that in half an hour, especially if you're doing things that are relatively low skill. You know, if you want to put somebody on a, just warm up and then take a good set of push-ups to failure, warm up, take a good set of body weight low rows if pull-ups are not where you're at yet and take that to failure. And that's enough that you're checking the box to at least maintain.

And yes, you're not going to have a whole lot of aerobic fitness behind that, but we'll get there obviously as kind of the next jump. And then with a lower body, yeah, I think everyone here loves squatting, well, rephrase, has a complicated relationship with squatting, but understanding it's effectiveness and usefulness for carryover to just about everything in life. But, you know, this is where if you just only have time to go to the gym, turns out you don't have to warm up near as much on a leg press. You can just go on there, just put on some weight and jam the heck out of it. Or even on a smiths.

You don't have to worry about balancing as much, especially if you're sleep deprived as I am. As you're going throughout life, you don't have to worry about all the different balancing components to it. Now, power training is awesome. but if you're already really beaten down neurologically as in you are not recovered you're not sleeping that's a very high speed high skill movement and obviously coach mash can elaborate on that and the complexities thereof so we can just go deadlift something heavy do bench press shoulder press because shoulder press is awesome because let's face it um i'm not afraid of the man that can bench press me off of him because i've already put him on his back i'm afraid of the man that can

military press me because that means he can pick me up off the ground and ragdoll me. And that is a very different situation. And then same thing. Just doing a bunch of pull-ups. And if you can do a couple sets of pull-ups and not everything has to be in the same session. This is where the nice thing about push-ups, you can rise and shine, hit the ground and go, the more recent Batman trilogy, just hit the deck and start doing them.

Pull-ups, you can just have a pull-up bar somewhere set up and you go, the lower body, that has to be typically a little bit more deliberate. it. But if where you're at is just bodyweight lunges gives you good stimulus, that's fine. We don't have to get too intense. We don't have to get that elaborate with our programming. Because as long as you're working hard and you're doing it consistently, that's probably 80% of your results. That lasts 20%. That's good periodization. That's good programming. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the RTA program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garland and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the

world's most elite performers, award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Arte is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan. It's not physique transformation and pre-imposed pictures. Artee is something completely different. Arate is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently.

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What about just like basic strength standards? Like, not to necessarily be a world champion power lifer, but just like for optimum health, like how many pull-ups should you be able to do? How much should you be able to bench press relative to your body weight, you know, two times body weight, deadlift, et cetera. Now, that's a great one. So when we think of it, it's a sigmoidal relationship, meaning at a certain point you're so weak, it doesn't matter. And then at a certain point, you're so freaking strong.

Being even stronger isn't really giving you a big return on investment. It's that middle ground. So I would honestly say, for your average person, if you can do a pull-up, and I'm referring to a pull-up, not kipping, not butterfly strict and otherwise, you are already in the point where congratulations, going from one to two is definitely giving you a return on investment. But going from zero to one, that is the whole like, okay, you have to have a solid amount of upper body pulling strength. So I think that's a great threshold to go with. Now with pushups, the body is a barbell and some are loaded heavier than others. So if you're a really skinny light individual, that might not be the best indicator. I do think body weight relative on lifts

are a great way to look at it. You know, for your average individual, if you can bench press your own body weight, that's pretty sufficiently strong. Beyond that, now, of course, you're not, you're going to get tossed as alignment. You're not going to have a good time in a lot of other sports that require obviously large performances. But I would actually say the better indicators that overhead press. And if you can take half your body weight and hoisted over your head with two hands, you've got a decent amount of strength as kind of a general baseline. And then, of course, it's important that when we think about a body weight relative,

if we're talking about a 400-pound human and they can't press 200 pounds overhead, that's still 200 pounds. That's a pretty good raw number for your average person. Of course, but relative to their weight, it's not as impressive. but just the same is if you are a 100-pound individual, you know, an empty barbow at the two and a half on each side would be that military press. So I think it's useful to think of it in twofold. You know, one is that relative strength and then two is absolute.

So if we think about just deadlifting strength, take for example, we'll go to firefighting standards with their CPAP. They drag 175 pound dummy. That's part of it. And mind you, they've got to run upstairs with hoses on their back. They're wearing the full gear. A lot of different things. Like they're held to a really high standard. And at the same time, we look at round the average American.

The average American is not wearing a buck 75. So if that person who passed the firefighting physical fitness standards, and that is again, not nothing, but that 175 pound dummy, they can move. But if you make it 176, you might as well super glued it to the floor. That means if they are coming to save someone my size, I'm done for. So hence, absolutes useful and so is relative. So if you can deadlift 225, it might be a better way to think of it as which one's lower. Is it one and a half times body weight or is it 225 and that should be what you're going for?

And that's more or less throwing out that deadlift number. Because let's face it, you find a hundred pound female like in deadlift 225. That's not like a legit, you know, power lifter and that is their focus like Doug brought up. That's someone who's legitimately strong because that's over a two times body weight. So actually just kind of recalibrating the best in the conversation. probably that threshold is probably 185 or again at least body weight whichever number happens to be higher mask could you imagine a day where you couldn't deadlift one and a half times your body weight never been you would you would have to be so obese i just you'd have to be

400 pounds 500 pounds yeah i remember my first deadlift like i mean it was like well over two times body weight the first time my favorite part about watching you raise your children is at some point in their life, they're going to be like, when did you first have like a double body weight deadlifting? Like when I was four? No, I'm literally out of the womb. They're going to be way ahead of me. They're going to be.

I was watching a Bill Casmarer documentary on YouTube. And I think the first time he ever tried deadlifting, I want to say it was 600. He was just like never lived a waist before. It was the first day he'd ever seen a barbell. It's like some guy was like, you should try this. And he was like, okay, just keep putting weight on it. full like 600 pounds

I mean I didn't do that but some people are just wrong yeah we were at football camp and they were doing a the local high school coach happened to be they they played football together at Appalachian State

and we were at App State and so my football coach and them were friends and they were doing a power to meet and they were like do you want to jump in I was like I'll jump in and that's how I started so I just did a power of team meet

I was spur and I won and so like maybe I can be good at this yeah I was like maybe I like this more than football but yeah so that's how it all started and at the same time at the same time

your best athletes are the people that had a really high baseline or whatever activity we're talking about and then had really high response right your best marathoners your best power lifters your best Olympic lifters those are people that already had gifts and then when they started training they started making awesome progress on top of that it's just yeah that there's so many varieties of that that's what i remember the most when uh me and dug all went down to jamaica um was when johan was talking about how he didn't even know he was

fast until he was like the fastest in the world yeah he was like yeah i played cricket my whole life. Cricket. Like, well. You have to do some crazy race and be everybody. Yeah, and it was, and then we were asking like, why do you think all these people are so fast around here? And he was like, because we don't know that we're running hill sprints all day.

Like, they play tad from the day that they're born, running barefoot up and down hills and mountains. And if you don't know that that's, that there's flat ground, it's the fastest person that can get up the hill over and over and over again. I would like to believe him, but I grew up in mountains much deeper than those. That was not the case. I don't know. That's all of it.

The strongest man in the world. It's kind of the same. Kind of the same. The mountains I grew up in were way steeper than those, and I was nowhere near the fast man. The body's a little bit leaner than yours. That dude was unbelievable.

So, totally. Have you guys heard the the Casmeyer lifting? I believe it's in the Auburn Weight Room story? No. So one of the stories because obviously Bill Casmeier are just comically strong and able of doing all things.

Supposedly, he went into the Auburn weight room when the football team was training. And one of the guys is squatting. He's squatting like 315 or something like that. And Kaz asks if you can work in. It's like one of the linemen. And one of the linemen, of course, is like giddy. Like, oh my God, me and Kaz are about to lift together. Like, this can be sweet.

You know, puts it on his back, walks it out. And then proceeds to behind the neck press, strict press it for 10 and then racks it back up. And just like, well, me and Kaz are training. together. You know, this bitch slapped you. That's what happened. You just got slapped. That's okay, though.

It's Bill Kazmi. But back to what you said, Donovan, you know, there's such a variety of, you got the people who were born unbelievable. And then the people who responded, but there's different levels. Like,

I've been around people who were genetically, you know, gifted maybe more than me in strength, but yet I responded much better than they did to training. And it's to like, People don't understand how important both of those are.

Like, I know Ed Cohn, for example, I feel like I was a better responder to training than he was. But yet he was so far ahead of the game. Like the minute he started, he was like the elite in the world. And like the minute I started, I was good and better than most. But I wasn't elite in the world. But my response to training was much faster. And so, but like, it's the way those two, you know, and it's every sport, taking Michael Jordan. Like, he had genetics.

He responded so well to his own, you know, training in basketball or Kobe Bryant, you know. And then it gets really dirty at the same time because Ed Cohen was training off of the best education and information of the time, the best equipment and technology available at the time. And hence, you know, you're coming up when obviously, you know, we talk about West Side Barbell was not just on the scene, but that's when they were doing a lot of things of improving the training. And, of course, nutrition keeps improving and everything else. And so it's incredibly, that's why it's so important to have those conversations about the individual in the era. And at the same point, as you guys, we all unfortunately know that, remember the first month of lifting weights when you did the math and like, oh, my God, I'm going to bench press 500 pounds in like two years. I exactly so remember that. Yeah.

I remember doing that equation and be like, oh, I'm going to win. Yeah. I mean, you got to 500 pounds. It just took like a decade. It took several years, not one. Yeah. But, and therein lies the, you know, part of the diminishing returns in the baseline as well. And I think that's another thing that a lot of people can get upset about, not upset about, but it can be things that work contrary because there are low responders.

There are people that are going to go in there, follow the basic outline that I threw out there and make no progress or very long. Mind you, sleep, nutrition, stress, all of those are very much so influencing the response are going to make. But let's say all those are in line. Well, that's when we can be talking about, yeah, those. there are those people that really, no wonder they glommed on to the Arthur Jones hit Jedi approach that one set to failure, that's all they literally needed to make progress. And I know for myself, and that's where you and I are different aside from, yeah, I wish I was that strong, is the realities of, I've always been someone that's had to do a lot more total volume

in order to push their strength and order to push their muscle mass. And I'm not saying that obviously, Coach Mash, we know you're trained, but the amount of, you know, high intensity work that you do in order to make that progress is not something that everyone else is going to respond to partially because the loads are so high you can't do a lot of volume there but then partially because of fiber type people that are really type too they don't need a lot of work sets to make a lot of progress people like me that are long distance runner by fiber type yet somewhat power athletes by build are in this weird like well guess we're doing seven work sets of squats today in order to make progress hurt our loins and bite the pillow and the higher

of the volume you need to get the stimulus to grow, the more likely you are to get injured as well. So, like, the guys that respond really well to the training and to the drugs, which we've talked about with respect to bodybuilders for a long time, the guys that respond to the drugs just seem to dominate the sport. But the more volume you do, the more, this is the more time under the barbell, which means more likely you are to get injured, which means the more likely you are to have a shorter career and not actually, you know, hit your peak and be on top of the world. I feel like I've discovered that more than ever now. On this comeback, is I'm doing, you know, higher intensity, but way less even than I did before.

And, like, I know now I can progress at a very steady rate if I just hit, you know, a certain number at a certain, you know, velocity. And then I do most of my, most of my volume is machine training now. Like, so I will go only my minimum to, like, squatting or deadlifting. Otherwise, the majority stuff is either machines or less dangerous type movements. And it's been perfect. I wish I'd done that when I was younger. And therein lies the other thing for individuals. There's nothing wrong with front squatting over back squatting, with safety bar squatting

instead of back squatting. A lot of folks, now if you're a power lifter, there are basic rules of how you, you know, your grip with that you can do on a bench press, you're where the bar has to be placed on your shoulders for the squat. But if you're just someone who's just training along the lines we're talking about, find the movement that's the most orthopedically comfortable. like I'm not going to denigrate someone because they trap bar deadlift we don't need to get into old sumo deadlift is half a deadlift bro

but it's like hey I think that's one of orthopedic you're talking about inches yeah inches matter mash it's the reason why I wish I was you know what let me just bring this up like you know there's this guy and I think he's from Australia and he's like a very average powerlifter at best and all he does his whole thing on Instagram is like he's crapping on the sumo deadlift now let me go in preferences by saying i'm not the sumo deadlifter if i could i would though but like but i you know it doesn't work for me my hips aren't designed that well and it just doesn't work and so but my point being he was talking about um half fours big 1100 you know

i guess he did 1120 something deadlift awesome and then he uh he was talking about recently too there was also like an 1100 or a thousand bound umo death deadlift he said oh this looks so stupid And I'm like, and I'm looking, I'm talking, you're talking about like five inches difference, man. That's what the difference is stupid and not stupid. Meanwhile, the dude doing the sumo has got no straps on. I'm like, I'm like, what are you talking about? There's really some human out there that says, oh, five inches is the difference in, you know, being silly? Anyway.

So I'm like, this guy is just silly himself. Unfortunately, it's outrage porn. It's the things that are going to generate look. and clips and create that and the attention economy we live in has its unfortunate drawbacks but I think kind of you know you go

and you try to give the best information and at the same point it's like the old fights over geared versus raw lifting it's the equivalent of like are you an enthusiast of the high jump or a pole vault they're throwing themselves into the air and if they miss the match it's going to hurt now of course the ballpark

they can go a lot higher and do things that yeah And hence, like, the tested versus untested lifting. Like, the only difference is the pole, we're like, I think they're a pole vaulter now. Like, they're jumping a lot higher. Like, we can't, unless you follow them in the bathroom, you can't see them use the pole, so to speak. And so you're kind of like, I think they're pole vaulting. I don't know.

I think there's a really good high jumper. And either way, it's more like, first and foremost, that's their choice to deliberately get that strong and to do these movements. And why do we care about other people's performances and strength metrics, unless you're going ahead. I do not know. under very specific rule sets. I mean, yeah, if you want to do the all-conventional only deadlifting powerlifting, I'm sure there is going to be that organization starting overnight. I feel like if you just say it, it's going to start to exist.

But it'll also be the one that only can do underhand grip benching. But again, back to the basic ideas of just building that strength, by putting the heavier load in your hands, by putting the heavier load on your back, you are no matter what going to be having a positive effect on the strength of your connective tissues and especially your bone mass. And of course, if we're doing that through a nice, large range of motion, we're going to have better joint integrity.

We're going to have more, we're going to have stronger muscles and probably better coordination, especially if it's something that is like a barbell squat in that we're not going to be using the rack to stabilize. Now, the greater muscle mass still has to have carry over, meaning we still have to be doing our general activities of daily living. And that's going to carry over to everything that we're hopefully trying. to develop. Now, of course, if you get to the point where you're no longer responding to the training of that really one heavy set, that's when we start using a second heavy set. And that's

when you can start playing around with just the old school five by five Bill Star Strongest Shall survive. You can look into other different types of programming. Unfortunately, too many people try to get too complex too quickly. Like, the less the variables we're doing, the more we're going to figure out what's going on there. And so, do you guys want to keep talking? about the strength are you guys ready to go and move on to the road i'm loving this i just i just think i love where you're going with this you know they want to talk about lifting more we will like you know as related to keep going kids though i would like like what you're saying sounds very familiar to like you know avery faggombom the guy who like oh yes great research

that's my god i love that guy and like if you're raising kids out there you should definitely know who every faginbaum is i wish i could get him on the show I've reached out, but, like, he hasn't responded back. But if you happen to be listening, I'd love for you to Travis at, you can email me, Travis at Risendoor Sports.com. I would love to talk to you, but I read all his stuff, and I try to apply it to my kids as much as possible. But there is just anyone out there who's a parent and has kids, without a doubt at this point, Smith training gives him such an advantage, like athletically, coordination, like any,

And if you continue to do it, you will stay ahead. You know, the studies would say this gap you're creating will stay that gap as long as you don't stop training. But it just seems like nowadays, if you're not training your kids, you're probably leaving a lot of room on the table you could have been, you know, you could have created this big gap. Well, and I'm glad you bring that up because, you know, specifically with my daughter, I'm following essentially a Soviet model. So we've got her in swim lessons pretty soon. We're going to be starting just obviously simple low-level gymnastics and otherwise with her because I have no interest in making her an insert sport player. If she wants to be an insert sport player, that sounds great.

Awesome. I'm going to be all about going for it. But what do we know? We know good generalized movement. Knowing how to swim is just a good hedge towards avoiding drowning. Doing gymnastics is a great way to know how to move your body in space. and if you fall, to fall in such a way that you're not going to end up going to the ER because we've got a concussion, because we've got a broken wrist, because we've got a broken leg, et cetera.

And then as she gets to be older, Doug's going to appreciate this. As soon as I can, I'm getting her in jiu-jitsu. And the reason for it is, hey, I did all the three. Yes, exactly. She's going to learn how to encounter another human being and know how to interact if you happen to get yourself into a physical altercation. If she has a mouth like mine, she is going to need to know how to defend herself. At the same time, it's just good because that's going to give her confidence about everything she does throughout her given life.

Now, the other components, when we think about keep going in that Russian or Soviet model, is one, she's going to play a team sport. So she knows how fun and challenging can be to work with groups of individuals towards a common goal. And she's going to play an individual sport. So hence, Jiu, that's builds it in there. Because you're alone. When it's you and the other person, it's time to go. There's, yes, you do have your team there, but it's not you on the mat. And learning to navigate those stressors and do that when she's,

young so the stress is not super high. She's going to be exposed to aerobic sports, you know, whether that shows itself as soccer, as swimming as a basketball, that's fine. She's going to be in a strength power sport. Whether that's softball, rugby, et cetera, we'll find out. And she's not going to specialize until she's on the far end of puberty unless it wants to be the good old-fashioned gymnastics, figure skating, wrestling, and of all things, diving. Those are the four you really have to specialize when you're young. And if you don't do it, you're never going to make it's Olympics. But judging from the athleticism that she's getting from both sides of the family, unless she's a massive outlier on both sides, she's going to be a

really good participant and a great team player. So again, just making sure when you think about those kids in the development, you know, what's the big issue in the U.S.? Over-specialization in kids at a young age? You know, these parents that have their anxiety that think they need to get into the hunt for a D1 scholarship, it's easier to get a college scholarship on your Academics. Academics. It is on athletics. Exactly.

And can I get an amen? Oh, definitely not as cool. Oh, 100%. And let me give you this. If you took that money that you're giving to all these travel sports and saved it, you would have your scholarship. It actually drives me really insane when I hear people doing the like over specialization on very small kids. It's like, um.

I, you, when you live in a bubble like we do of being able to communicate with like really smart people on athletic development and then you leave that bubble and people are like, my kid plays travel T-ball. You're like, what? Yeah. What? What happened? That's, I hope one of my best friends is listening to this because he does travel, coach, pitch, baseball. And I'm like, what in the world? Why don't you just light your money on fire, buddy?

Like, this is going to just, like, you'd have more entertainment value. watching it burn in front of you. God of money. Like, no chance. What are you doing? But I never realize how much you live in a bubble because all the coach is like teach a kid how to move, build the confidence, go run really fast as hard as you can all the time.

My favorite one is like when people are doing like skill practice with like a seven-year-old. It's like, no, no, no, no. What you need to do is practice swinging as hard as you possibly can. and we'll worry about all the skills and all the fine-tuning and all that. Right. This little tiny window where you get to go do it as hard as you can every single time and never worry about how straight it goes. And then one day, just figure out, your body goes, oh, I keep doing it this way to make

the ball go straight. Got it. I remember my sister and I had to be the catcher, so I remember it very well. When she was like nine or ten-ish, she was a D-1 softball pitcher. and didn't even play that much. She was turned into being a DH. But the coach that was teaching her how to pitch kept going, you just sit down here.

And I was like, man, that sucks. And he go, she's going to throw it as hard as she can every single time and have no idea where it's going for the next two years. And I was like, man, this can not be fun at all. And sooner or later, she figured out how to throw it straight and then got to go play college sports. It's like, that is, you have to, there's no amount of skills that can teach you how to throw a hundred.

You just have to be a gangster and try and throw a hundred. And even if you do everything right, you probably aren't going to throw it 100 because you don't have the right parents. And that's just the sad bad thing. And like, don't blame your child and don't blame their coach. Go look yourself in the mirror and your wife. And be like, that's our fault. You know what I mean? And that's cool.

Like, my son's not going to throw 100 miles an hour. He's going to be super strong, but he's not going to throw. And that's okay. And like, you know, at rise, where I coached, we have one guy, this boy James, who just signed it several million dollars. As an 18-year-old boy, he got drafted to the major league early. And like, he's an anomaly. But guess what?

He played all the sports until, like, 10th or 11th grade, he played football. He did wrestling. And, you know, he played baseball a lot. But, like, he did training with speed and string. with us at rise and like and it wasn't because he specialized in baseball he was a freak unbelievable athlete and they continued fine-tuning his skills got strong you know became really good at rotation and then now he's making millions but like the kid had he specialized early in baseball it probably wouldn't happen because he wouldn't have developed the power the strength you know the athletic

overall athletic ability to get to where he got. But I know these parents, they're just getting sold by some, you know, some dagon snake oil salesman is what you're getting sold. It's an industry and go figure there's rent seeking behavior. A couple points that I want to do is, you know, at the same point, Anders, the skill is there. The skill is first learning how to use every last muscle fiber you have in those muscles. So hence, if you always do that with intent to go maximum velocity, you think Heneman's size principle, you're going to always use all of your fibers. Now you're right. The accuracy is a

refining of essentially those smaller muscles that will help with putting the ball where they want it. And so hence the real skill is just learn how to use everything you got. And then once we figure out what that everything is, you figure out what exactly. So I would rather you give me a car with a V8 engine and a supercharger. And now we got to start working on improving our transmission and improving our steering, then you give me a freaking Formula One transmission and a freaking Pinto's engine, like, who gives us, like, where you can't go fast enough that this matters. And that's what's really cool with, like, as my daughter, she's crawling now, soon she'll be walking,

and then I'm going to be even more terrified by what she's getting into. But she's still just learning how to operate the muscle mass, you know, just kind of like, what does this do when I turn it on? Hence why she'll smack herself in the face and get very angry when she does it because she doesn't even realize what she's done. And as she keeps developing motorwise, hence with these kids of this specialization and trying to refine skill, who cares about how slow you're going? I mean, unless you're picking up chess pieces, then who cares? You just got to make sure you move them to the right square.

There's not a real advantage, you know, advantage. Because real sports, there's always an advantage to speed somewhere in there. Oh, that's the fastest person typically wins for a really long time until you're playing with all the other fastest people. unless you're like that elite fast then you're going to win whatever sport you do no matter what you soccer basketball football you're going to be this is definitely not a health standard by any sort or child development but i was listening to uh the spit and chicklets podcast during uh the stanley cup last year and it's like an hl podcast and one of the that's bunch of NHL guys, lots of personality, too many F-bombs, like too, too much locker

room talk. But one of the guys that they were talking about these like 17-year-old kids that show up in the NHL these days and they're just like absolute monsters. Like they're so skilled. And they were talking about youth development. And one of the guys goes, you really shouldn't worry about how good your kid is at any sport until alcohol and girls show up. And then if they can get through that, then they're going to be okay. But everyone might be wasting their money completely because booze and girls will just destroy it all very quickly. They can destroy everything quickly. I was like, can you tell every seven-year-old right now their parents to just relax, let time happen?

We'll see where this goes. I always say in the sport of way living, too, I watch it happen. You see, you wait until you have your best athlete. I'm not missing any names. It gets his first girlfriend and you got to survive it. praying the whole time. Exactly. And you're just surviving,

surviving, survive, and survive it. He gets past that first one, now you're clean selling. You know, but it was a rough. Sometimes I get on my page, too, still. 42 years old. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, totally. I get it, man. To touch on one more point with the joys of specialization, I enjoy the fact that we have the Little League World Series. and so in theory, you know, those are the best in the nation throughout the world, you know, 12-year-old-ish

baseball players, and then how come we see rarely any one of them ever playing in the real world series? I do. Do the math. Parents listening. Yeah. Can I get an A-N-D? There's a number of them. It's kind of funny when you see him back in the day. There's a handful of them that make it. It's interesting. Danny Almonte didn't make it. He was even cheating. He was the best. Hey.

Gas, because he was like 18. it's because when the kids mature and they hit puberty, if somebody ends up being six foot six, they're going to throw the baseball further than you're a five-foot-nine guy no matter what you've done. And I'm sorry, you know, once again, that's your fault and your mom's fault, his mom's fault. Not my fault and not the kids' fault.

You've got the reality. Yeah, development is not this chronological age and biological age are not identical. Some are going to develop earlier. Some are going to do other. And I think a big thing for folks to keep in mind is this league, when we're talking about this, this is a pay-to-play situation. Whereas once you go to pros, no, no, no, no. Welcome to capitalism, baby. You are getting paid if you can play.

Do play. So hence, now all the kids that were that good, but mommy and daddy couldn't afford travel league, mommy and daddy were smart enough to be like, I'm not getting at that rat race. I'd rather hang out with my kids over the weekend and enjoy the time because it's very finite. Now all of the real monsters come out to play. But meanwhile, my son is 6'5 and you can throw 106. Okay, I win. No matter what you did as a kid.

I think it's interesting, too. Like, my wife said this to me, and I was actually like really, really intelligent, which I should give her more credit for. She, when I was like, should we start sports for like my little, my little dude? He's like four. He likes to go climb trees and do it. all the things and she was like what's the point like you're he's going to get she's right bats he's going to get more ground balls he's going to get more of everything he actually needs by

just playing with you versus like sharing all of the time on the field one day a week at a practice and i was like right yeah that was so obvious but with some other parent being the coach who's all he cares about is his own son that he's coaching Yeah, it's crap. She's completely right. And then the potential quality of instruction you're going to be getting is there as well. At least you know when you're instructing them the fault is you for being a bad coach. Every time I look at the coaching, I'm like, can we stop talking about soccer?

I just want my kid to be tired. If you're tired, when we leave, if both of them, if they need a nap, you are, you could get a gold medal today. Please make that. I'll pay extra. Yes. I'll pay extra. yes so i can go home and chill yes totally you know let's uh i want to make sure we wrap fully on the strength standards here so we talked through a bunch of um deadlifts and impressing strength

standards um you work with military slash firefighters etc or r tc or you mentioned a couple other groups earlier like what are what are their strength standards and then um how do you think those compare to what you personally would pick. Okay. I think the first thing to make sure that with all due respect, the standards that are required in order to pass

the, it's no longer the combat, so the Army Fitness, so the AFT, and to pass what is known as POPS testing. So here in the state of Kentucky, currently, as of 2025, it is a 1.5 mile run. It is a 300 meter sprint. It is

max sit-ups, max push-ups, and max bench press. So those standards are what is required to be the minimal accepted standards. And so speaking with our commander of our ROTC regiment, obviously his goal is not to have soldiers that barely pass the fitness standards. Mind you, not everyone is going to be special forces. A number of those folks are going to be logistics, be in other types of situations that the physical fitness is not necessary.

But I've really enjoyed he's a Army Ranger. he is um the guy literally maxes the deadlift and there is only two kids in the two sorry uh students in the entire regiment that can beat him in the two mile run so he deadlifts three 45 five nine 200 pound guy and pulls out two miles in just over 12 minutes so solid solid and so his those like a six minute mile yeah wow his conversation with me that we've when we have these you know, like what we're looking forward to develop here is he never wanted to be in a situation where his fitness failed him. And that is the gentlest way of describing in a force-on-force situation where you just don't have the fitness you require. So I wouldn't worry

so much about what the standards are. I would instead hold ourselves to and turn a higher standard. Now, so I think when we're looking at that, in order to pass the POPs testing, if memory serves, they need to be able to do that mile and a half in 15 minutes, which is by no means cooking with gas. And this is in workout shorts and a T-shirt, and these police officers are going to be wearing at least a tactical vest or a bulletproof vest, wearing their equipment or their duty belt. So they're going to typically be weighed down with an extra 20 pounds.

And this is actually part of the research that we're conducting right now in my lab, which is, okay, how does that scale to decline or diminishing your performance, the 300 meter as well as in your mile and a half run when you're wearing that personal protective equipment because obviously body size has to be a big component of it as does fat-free mass and then your VO2 max going into it. So it's the, I don't want to think of it as like office space and like the minimum pieces of flare. Instead, I would like to think of it as we want to have, you know, the highest rational level of performance that we can attain. So hence, having a V-O-2 that's at least in the upper 30s, if not in the lower 40s, for someone

that's in their 30s, is probably a great place to be. You know, if we can be in our 50s, like, congratulations, you are killing it. You're in the 50s now? 52. Nice. I'm world-class, buddy. I'm superior. That's the best rating I've ever heard.

Like, usually it's like good or like bad, average. Above average, they actually write superior on there. That's a great feeling. And now go back to the initial statement about the CPR. Anders is out with his family. Somebody falls down, hey, he, you know, check the scene, do the appropriate, you know, but he starts doing compressions. VO2 max of 52, demand of only 20.

By the way, put them on a hard surface. It actually makes it easier than soft surface. Fun fact. but Anders doing his chest compression isn't it even 50% of his VOT2 max. He's not going to gas out of that in five minutes. He's going to be able to maintain those chest compressions for 10 minutes. Bingo until the, you know, the EMT shows up, you know, the police, the fire shows up and they can then get that person where they need to be.

And whereas if Anders never went on this journey for cardiovascular fitness and then that same situation falls and everyone else around happens to not be in good enough shape, if you're not in good enough shape that you can maintain chest compressions for a minute, much less if you're in such bad condition, that can cause its own cardiovascular event in yourself because you go Maxwell. Congratulations, now they have two bodies. Hence by the first part of your CPR training is check the scene. Is the person passed out because of they were electrocuted and you're about to get electrocuted too, you know, noxious gases, at least figure out what you're walking yourself into. But you don't want to add another body that those first responders also have to

take care of and hence why. What is that minimum though? What minimum V-O-2 max? What did you say? So it's depending on the surface, like how hard it is. So like you've got somebody on like a soft mattress, you'll see as high as a V-O-2 demand of like 28.2. And then if you have them on like a, you know, concrete plank. So when you push down, you get that feedback immediately. That's in certain cases, we're talking like 15. So it is markedly easier. Then of course, it's like if you can get over them and put your body weight on top, you have a leverage advantage so it's not as metabolically demanding. If you happen to be where they're up high relative to your position, it's much more metabolically demanding. But at the end of the day, by having that higher aerobic fitness and then

having obviously pretty decent pressing strength, a.k. you can keep your arms locked and use that and just general muscular endurance. You're just a human that can help other humans. I like dragging sleds because I probably was a sled dog in a previous life. That was a joke. I don't want to go in that world. Go down that rabbit hole. But it's like, yeah, one of my weird little rules in life is if life gives you the opportunity to push a car, you push a car. So if I see somebody broken down in the lane, I just pull over. I'm like, hey, man, can I help you push this out and otherwise? Because it gives me this weird form of glee. My brother-in-law was in visiting. He and I were going to the grocery store. There's a pickup truck, big old F-150 duly broken down.

And I'm like, Brian, we're going to push a car. He's like, I don't want to. He's like, I don't care. The universe has given us the opportunity to push a truck. We're going to push a truck. And so, you know, we go over and the guy's like, you know, he broke down in the middle of traffic and he's like, what do I do? And I'm like, throw a neutral, buddy, we got you. And like, boom, like pushing in my khakis at a polo and it's like, you know what? Like, it's very infrequently in life that you have an opportunity to do things that are just, again, for the greener good as someone that is not a first responder that is not someone in that type of space but it's like hey by us moving that truck out of the way one that person's not worried about

their truck and hit and now everybody else gets to where they want to be so we're not waiting on traffic and everybody's staring around until the tow truck comes up and now all these other folks lost this time on their day and who knows how important everyone else's commute is where they're trying I drag sleds every day every morning in south star my day now but i do this flight drags and i'm like slowly increasing the volume and like yes yeah universe gives the opportunity to push a push a car you push a car man like what why why why be all show and no go like it's just yeah we did we did a ton of that in high school like it was like a team building thing like two two three people on on the back of like pushing a big suburban then you kind of just like

rotate through the kids and we just push it and circles around the parking lot at the end of training like and it was like it was like a bonding thing we used to the same thing with like with farmers walks like we do like team farmers walks and it was just like it was just like a fun way to end training totally I want to ask you one more thing so what do you think minimum pull-ups then

like you know not just the one just to get in what would you say how many can you do right how many can you do right now believe you not probably probably 20

I've been killing some pull-ups but you weigh these days that's big well that's the thing I've lost weight so I was 208 so but now

I'm nice have man good number that I'm getting back in good shape. I'm pretty happy. But what do you think? A hundred percent, if you can do 20,

I can do 21. I'm sure if you could be easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just one more than two is all I need. Yeah, so I'd say the marker of like really good fitness is about 22 pull-ups. That way it's a little bit out of reach for both Anders and Matt.

Damn it. I'm going to give you that type of. One from Anders, two for me. When I was working with Mike Nelson, I, it's like one of the assessments and I did 24. and...

Oh, so it's 26. What? I'm got to keep moving standard. Hold on. So one of the assessments, I did 24 and I wrote them back and I was like, I want to do 30. That sounds awesome. And then like two weeks of just doing pull-ups and I was like, we need to change the goal here. I am not that interested.

And that's when the six-minute mile came up because that was also one of the tests. Yeah. But do 30 pull-ups. I was like, I'm not working that hard. I'm good with you around that now. So let's slice it in two ways. One of which is we can think of it for muscular endurance.

The other ways we can think of it is strength. So in the muscular endurance, if you're doing well over 10, that's congratulations. You've got really good muscular endurance for pulling muscular turn and have to have requisite strength. Now, if you can do that with a system mass of I would probably place that. one, you can either think your system mass on a pull-up is equivalent to your bench press, you've got somebody who's in shape, meaning if you have a 140-pound guy that is super skinny, and yeah, you should be able to do a pull-ups, you're very light.

But you try to, now you're going to go day one and all of a sudden strap, you know, 60 pounds to them so you can do it a system mass of 200, but that's still lighter than you are every single day. So, okay, two little anecdotes here. One of which is think of it, you have rep endurance, and then all. also kind of that maximal strength. And so if you're pulling, meaning that pull-up weight with it attached to you, where you build yourself up to it because you don't want to just strip max out on external loading pull-ups is the equivalent of your bench press.

Like you've got pretty good upper body muscular balance. And I'd say like a good, like, legit goal for most folks would be like one and a half times body weight. Like if you see somebody strap half their body weight to themselves and you do a legit pull-up, like that person has got to have some legitimate strength. yeah and whenever i was uh training strong man in st louis um i was uh we will simply refer to me as moderate size mike because big mike was 390 and so one day we decided they have an oh you weighed 390 so no no no no no the other mike weighed 390 he was a guy teaching me

how to do like log and stuff like that so he's like yeah just put the log on your belly and roll it up and like i got i got no belly log up so there's some obvious uh anatom anatom differences. So we, at the end of a workout, we were going to see who could hang from a pull-up bar the longest. But the rule was, everyone had to do it at Mike's body weight. So Eagle Gym in St. Louis, they had 200-pound dumbbells. So I strapped the 200-pound dumbbell to me and hanged from the rack for as long as I could. And there's my Missouri grammar, if you guys want to think about that word choice a moment ago. And I think that's how my arms got to be so long. Because like, you I want to talk about some, yeah, crazy traction.

But like even one of the other guys who's a 300-pounder, he's got, you know, a 90-pound dumbbell on him. And we're all just seeing who can hang on. And meanwhile, Big Mike is just like, just himself. It was actually Max, one of the other strong men that walked about 240. So he had a hundred and, yeah, 150-pound dumbbell strapped to him in order to see who goes the longest. But, you know, and that's where it's system mass, both. And then, of course, not just how much you weigh, but then obviously. the objects you're moving so yep

pull up endurance is great but if you're you know how it is you get guys that are great dead lifters but they aren't very impressive bodyweight relative like half four incredibly impressive love to meet him and otherwise exactly but you look at look at yeah sorry

yeah thank you so much where do the people find you um through uh eastern kutucky university i'm a professor here and they're more than happy to she email if insured in the program and then I am lucky enough to work as one of the coaches with Rapid Health Optimization. So if you're interested in working with us in that direction, obviously, it's another good place to find me. There it is.

Coach Mass. Mass.lead.com or you can partner me at Rapid with Mike Lane. So he's my go-to. Doug Larson. You guys are one of my favorite coaching combinations, by the way. When you guys are both assigned to a single athlete, I'm like, dude, that guy's going to get strong-ass-fuck. And I'm stoked about it every time. It's so much fun, too.

Like, our meetings. Yeah. I'm Doug C. Larson on Instagram. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner, and we are Barbell Strugg to Barbell underscore Strug and make sure you get over to rapid health report.com. That's where Travis MASH and Mike Lane are hanging out on the other side.

Rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.