Barbell Shrugged - Using Accommodating Resistance to Add Size, Strength, and Muscle w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #511

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

This week only, save 20% on the 20 Rep Back Squat Program for functional fitness athletes using the code “20rep” at checkout. Sale ends Friday.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   What is accommodating resistance? Why accommodating resistance is so effective How to train weaknesses using accommodating resistance How to use progressive overload with accommodating resistance What tools can you use for accommodating resistance   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   This week only, save 20% on the 20 Rep Back Squat Program for functional fitness athletes using the code “20rep” at checkout. Sale ends Friday.   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa ———————————————— Please Support Our Sponsors   Legion Athletics Whey Protein, Creatine, and Pre-Workout - Save 20% using code “SHRUGGED”   Fittogether - Fitness ONLY Social Media App   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes

Shrugged family, we're back and I'm all jacked up. We got back from Arkansas last Wednesday, epic trip. We got to hang out with my boy Matt Musgrave from Walmart. He is the one in charge of buying all of the performance nutrition products that you see in the stores of Walmart. That's weight loss, that's getting jacked, that's protein, that's pre-workouts, that's creatine, and it's Barbell shrugged

training programs now, which is super exciting. And to go and celebrate, of course, we had to go out to dinner. We had to go and train. We got a sick lifting session in with him. You know how strong that guy is? He front squats 275 by five and got, he's got the perfect, like, you know, when you see somebody with the upright torso and you go, dang, I wish I could squat like that. That's the way he squats. It was so rad. And then we got to do all the business with all of our business friends down there that are helping us put these products on the shelves and making everything look so pretty and getting everything set up for walmart.com, which is so rad because then we'll

be able to sell to you guys and make this product go even faster throughout the world and catch such a buzz. Even if you're not in San Diego, LA, Palm Springs, and Vegas, which is the test markets that we're opening in, the 20 stores are in SoCal, Palm Springs, LA, Vegas. But we're going to be on walmart.com, which is so rad, because anybody and everybody, and it's like the greatest way for you to support Shrugged and support Walmart, get people healthy, strong. We're so excited about it. But then we had to go biking. We had to go biking. We had to go mountain biking because mountain biking is like

living in Cal in Northwest Arkansas is like living in California and you have to go surf. That's just what people do there. So of course we made it about an hour and a half and then your boy decided to try and be cool i actually didn't even try to be cool at all i just wanted to go and do what the other people were doing and i went first and i didn't see how steep it was and if you go over the tiny little jump the lip on the jump kicks the back end of your bike tire up and then i was about to go downhill on one wheel the the front wheel, which means I'm going over the handlebars and I'm terrified. So what do I do? Like the amateur

first timer I am, I pump the brakes, which means you're 100% going over the handlebars. And your boy fell eight feet all the way from the top of the tabletop down to the ground. That's like an eight foot gnarly drop right onto my shoulder. I thought I ripped it right off the socket. Turns out because being strong is important. Just a really, really nasty sprain. I haven't put my arm over my head in like three days. Uh, I guess since Tuesday, so that's like five days. Um, and it hurts, but I'm getting better. And if you want to kind of check out some of the stuff that I'm doing, I'm kind of documenting the rehab a little bit on my Instagram page

so you can come hang out with me at Anders Varner and check it out. But what an epic trip. We got to hang out with the FitOps crew, Matt Hesse, Harrison. They've got a 450-acre plot of land that they're building out FitOps in right now for all the military vets, getting them training certifications and just building out like a university, which is so cool. We'll have that show coming for you as well. Um, but they're big plans, but things are so, so rad. I had such a blast on there. I want to thank everybody. That's a part of this process of getting Barbell Shrugged on the shelves into Walmart and helping all the Walmart shoppers get strong, lean, athletic,

happy, healthy, and teaching them how to eat well, train well. Strength and conditioning is coming to Walmart. So cool. I also want to tell you about the one week long sale that is going on on our site right now, barbellstruck.com forward slash store, the 20 rep back squat program, my favorite squat program of all time is up there. This one is based off the old program in the book Super Squats, which was written for a bunch of power lifters and bodybuilders. But this one is written for the functional fitness athlete. So you crossfitters out there that struggle doing high rep wall balls, guess what? I've got the answer. On top of that, you're just going to get giant legs. Your quads need to be trained. The muscle fibers in there need to be under, have a ton of time under tension, and you need to be able to get strong, lift heavy loads for a long

period of time. It's perfect for CrossFitters that struggle getting strong and don't know why their numbers aren't going up. It's probably because you're just not putting in the volume work that you need to get your quads and your glutes growing. So get over to barbell shrug.com forward slash store. That is where you find the 20 rep back squat program and use the code 20 rep to zero rep all one word at checkout, we'll save 20%. And you're gonna get super huge. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Smash. Our screens are a little backwards today. I almost got that wrong. I almost went Travis first because

that's where my eyeballs go. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we're going to be talking about accommodating resistance as much as we want to do these shows for you. Today's for me, fellas. Today's for me because I have these beautiful barbell shrug bands in my garage hanging up on the wall right now. And for most of my weightlifting career, I never really used them. I always thought that they were just pretty little ornaments sitting in the corner of the gym that some people use for mobility. Some people use to, you know, sometimes they put them on a bar

just so they could act like they were stronger than they really were. Well, now I'm in my garage and I've been doing this EMOM aesthetics program, trying to cram as much awesomeness into 20, 30 minute blocks of training that I possibly can. And I wrapped a band around a deadlift bar and things have been different for the last eight weeks. And now I want to take a deep dive into accommodating resistance, specifically into bands, how people can use them, what they can expect, kind of my experiences over the last eight weeks, because I feel like it's radically transformed the way that I pull weight off the ground.

I feel healthier. I feel stronger. My low back doesn't get lit up the way it used to, pulling for high reps. Doug, when you think about accommodating resistance, there's a lot of different ways that we can go, but what is kind of like the high level reasoning behind why accommodating resistance happens? Maybe a little bit of the history of kind of like, we can kick it to you, Travis, to talk about how Westside used to do it when they really brought it on the scene. But Doug, when you think about like accommodating resistance, what immediately pops into your brain and how people can start to conceptualize bringing additional pieces of equipment into training to make them stronger? know what that is. It basically just means that you're intentionally trying to match your strength curve. You have a bunch of weight on the bar, usually, and then you also have band resistance.

That way, the bottom of the movement is lighter than the top of the movement. And so, for some exercises, you're going to be much stronger at the top than at the bottom. Like RDLs are an easy example. If you're doing good mornings or RDLs, when you're fully bent over, you're not nearly as strong as you are when you're partially bent over. So you can use a band to match that strength curve. If you have 300 pounds on the bar and then another 80 pounds of band tension, then you can match that strength curve really, really well, which gives you more muscle tension, which gives you more time under tension, which gives you potentially better results. It also teaches you to accelerate throughout the entire movement.

Like a lot of times if you're doing a squat or whatever else, like once you get through your sticking point, you're kind of just cruising to the top. Not really. You're still putting forth a lot of effort, but not the same way that you would be if you're trying to do like a jump squat. Yeah.

Jump squat. You're going to accelerate the whole time. A regular squat, you're going to, you're going to push as hard as you can through your sticking point. And then you're going to just make sure you, that you get to the top, but you don't want to go too fast because you're not trying

to get 400 or 500 pounds on your back. You're not trying to pop your heels off the ground and do a jump. There's benefits with the bands for speed, acceleration, and just raw strength in general. Also,

at the bottom, if you have a knee issue and the bottom of a front squat is, is like the kind of the stickiest spot, like it's good enough to front squat, but, but not good enough to like do one rep maxes where, um, where the bottom to take off joint stress or to make it easier for a variety of reasons. So there's the raw strength aspect of it. And then there's also like the potentially like you use it in rehab settings and, you know, get it returning to play, things like that. Yeah. Mass, when did you find – when was the first time you started wrapping bands around bars?

I'll tell you. It was 2001, uh i'll tell you it was 2001 i think yeah exactly 2001 i remember in the west side documentary the first time they showed up and it it seemed like it like just changed the whole game it did and how people were lifting i mean it did for me you know you know there's mixed reviews out there but you know for me it totally changed the game. I'm not so sure that it changed the game for the same reasons. And sometimes I think if people understood the truth about Westside Barbell, I think it changed the game for the same reasons it did for me.

Like Chuck Vogelpoel did not ever do a typical dynamic effort day. Like he would always go heavier and heavier. And he would end up almost doing max effort twice a week. It ended up what it would be. It's a huge game changer for me. Wasn't it, Doug? Arthur Jones, the dude who invented

Nautilus equipment. Pretty sure that he was one of the first people to actually bring accommodating resistance to it. If you look at the way the equipment is designed, it's designed the same way. It's like if you look at the way the equipment is designed, it's designed the same way. It's designed to fit the strength curve, accommodate resistance. Those cams that they designed, that's the whole point behind that.

So it was a huge game changer. I think one of the things that people don't talk about as much as they should, I think, is that using accommodating resistance to, for post activation potentiation. That's, that's what I did. Dig on it. Go. I want to hear. What I would do is I would like. For people that don't fully, that haven't gone back in the shows or they may be new listeners.

What is the overall principle of post activation? To put it simply, it's just like your body remembers the most recent weight that you lifted. And so like, and it's firing the muscle fibers based on that weight. So like if I use the blue bands, potentially they're about a hundred pounds each. So if I use, you know, 80% of my bar weight, regular bar weight. Then I add the bands and say now that's another

25%. I'm at 105%. At the bottom, I can survive that because it probably deloads to either zero or almost zero. Now you're at 80-something percent. That's no problem. I can come up and as my

strength gets you know as the strength curve gets stronger the bands come back but my body knows that 105 it has felt the 105 so then when i take the bands off and then i actually go 102 it's not that bad because it's firing 405 was that simple enough like yeah you know so if you put more than your maximal amount of weight on the bar your body thinks you do have to lift that an insane amount of weight so it recruits as much muscle fibers as possible to lift that weight to survive lighten the load and all of a sudden you have a hundred percent of your muscle fibers firing but you're only focusing on 80 of of the weight. It really is about recruitment. You know, like, I mean, really like almost everything is about recruitment, you know, you know, how many of those units can I recruit? And so, um, you know,

the bands help to get that firing. There's a lot of things too, like, you know, based on what Louie said is like the kinetic energy being stored because it's pulling you down too so that's another thing is that your your eccentric is it under normal circumstances unless i'm trying to go slow it's going to make the eccentric faster and so um you know that you know that excessive speed or you know or that you know more speed than normal is going to create more of a you know stored kinetic energy which turns into you know more recruitment more firing more explosion more power out of the hole and so it definitely does and so um it i would pr all the time like that i would i would do what he would say i was i would do whatever the the um west side you know they would say whatever, 60%

bar weight, X% band weight. I would do whatever he would say, eight sets of two. Then I would keep going, either doubles or singles, pretty heavy with a band, take the bands off and do another set without bands. I would PR like that

a lot. Bench pressing, squatting, not so much deadlifting. I didn't do as much with deadlifting but um i used them with deadlift i just never took them off and kept going so yeah the acceleration sorry the acceleration component i think is is a very novel thing if you look at force production the basic physics like forces mass times acceleration right and all we normally are able to change is is the mass on the bar how heavy the weights are yeah so that's that's one component influencing the amount of force production that that's happening but the the acceleration piece with bands now becomes an option as a variable where you can keep the mass the same and then alter the

acceleration and then increase the force as a result. It's tough to do that without bands. Chains and bands are kind of our only really, really good options there. Yeah, the thing that I've noticed the most in that is I am super – after you've deadlifted for a billion reps like we all have, your body just gets comfortable with the laziness that you don't realize you've developed over the years, which is really like a speed and acceleration through the entire movement when you're kind of freaking out, you're super dialed in. But once I take weight off the ground, I know that after I get it to my knee, it's going up. I don't have to worry about

that. That part of the lift and that to me ends up leading to like a lot of just like low back stiffness because I lose my back a little bit. Like I'm, I'm, I'm kind of like losing my air. It may be just 5% of, of worse form than what I'm taking it off the ground. But when I have the bands on there, I have to fight through that movement the entire time. And that's right about when the band starts to kick in is just below the knee. So I feel like I'm getting this, like the, the normal weight coming off the ground is heavy-ish call it 225. But then right about the knee is where the band kicks in. And I have to refocus almost every single time because you're able to slow the movement down a lot. And as you, as your training age gets, and you've done it more and more and more,

like especially people that are doing Olympic lifting, they can feel the weight coming off the ground and know that they're going to finish the rep, you know, or, or make the weight. But when you're in a deadlift, it's kind of simple. Like you see it come off the ground, you know, you know how it's going to finish. You know what it feels like. When I started adding the band in, I felt like I was doing a regular heavy deadlift and then also combining it with a really heavy RDL, which I had never really felt before because typically by the time it gets to my knee, I get to go a little bit slower. I know I'm going to finish the rep.

It's already fast, even though it's really me slowing down. I just know that the weight is going to go up. And that's been a really important piece of it. When I watch the videos, when I go back, I feel myself and can see myself actually moving with intent and moving fast through the entire movement because that band starts to rip at the bar on you. It gets really heavy yeah if you've never done banded deadlifts bands can kick in really hard if you've never done it before it can be kind of unexpected how much yeah kick in like i did a i did like double mini bands over a bar on deadlift one time and i had a 100 pound place in a 45 so i had 335 on there thinking you

know i was a 500 pound deadlifter or whatever at the time and uh you know i look at 335 and i go no problem easy and i went over to pick it up not realizing that i was going to put like 200 or more pounds of band tension on there and i was at the top going to be you know 10 over my max or whatever it was and i and i i did unexpectedly a very, very close to a banded one rep max. And the next day, like my prime movers, my glutes, my quads, and whatever else were totally fine. But my upper traps from that much weight pulling down on my shoulders, that was the part that was totally unexpected. I was so brutally sore for many days off a single repetition.

Yeah. Excessive stretch is what you got. Yeah. And I feel my upper back when I'm dead. So I don't have the setup in here really to be able to do it on squats. I don't have like 100-pound dumbbells to be able to strap, light bands too when I'm squatting. So I'm really kind of just – I shouldn't say stuck because it's awesome.

I've been doing it for eight straight weeks. It's like my favorite thing. Anytime I train with anybody right now, I'm really kind of just, I shouldn't say stuck because it's awesome. I've been doing it for eight straight weeks. It's like my favorite thing. Anytime I train with anybody right now, I'm like, we're doing banded deads because I need you to experience what I'm experiencing. I lit some people up on Wednesday. Just lit them up. That piece in my upper back keeps my posture so much better using the bands than when I'm doing a regular deadlift. Like I don't know, upper back, traps. I feel a massive amount of strength coming in that area,

in which I typically don't. Just because I know when I'm going to make the weight or I'm lifting such heavy weights that I just need to make the rep. I'm not really thinking about the hypertrophy side of it or what muscles are working or am I using the best posture? But once that band kicks in right at your knees, you have to. A lot of people will criticize because it will like it will slow it down versus like if you had so if you have 335 pounds in the bar you know you're going to be able to pull it faster if you take the bands off but they're forgetting the recruitment factor the fact that you're trying to

pull it as fast you're not teaching your body to fire as it gets stronger which is exactly what weightlifters want to do. And like a lot, one of my, one of my athletes, Ryan Grimsland, who is like, he's my, he's the 18 year old phenom is like, he loves bands. And so, and of everyone I coach, he's seen the most improvement in the last year. He's like, you know, he's, he's borderline almost ready to total 300 at, you know, weighing 167 kilos. And so that dude, like, he's got his pull, his went through the roof. Like, he did – he's definitely over 500 pounds, weighing 148 pounds, and did, like, this massive, like, 700-some pounds off blocks.

And, like, it's the bands. Like, it's all that we've changed and it's really increased the speed of his pull where it counts which is through the middle you know side note you're that boy hit puberty about three weeks ago yeah yeah he is you posted a video of him the other day i was like oh that's a man that boy's got the extra juice rolling which is terrifying because he already cleaned his front squats like triple body weight. He was doing it before he had any testosterone in his body.

Our goal is that he knows what CJ Cummings did at that weight class. We're about to surpass that. That'll be a big moment because the goal for him and Morgan both, they want to be considered like Harrison and CJ.

And so the thing that they have is harder for them because CJ and Harrison exist now. When CJ and Harrison were coming up, no one like that existed. And so people saw them earlier. And then with Morgan and Ryan, they exist already. So they got to overcome things that – Because they're here right now. Yeah, you got to be stronger than that. When I do these, when I'm doing the Band of Deads,

I get so damn sore in my hamstrings, like so damn sore. And is it because of the eccentric portion of having to control the movement? Like I think the deadlift specifically is one thing that just the eccentric portion of having to control the movement like i think the deadlift specifically is one thing that just the the eccentric portion of that movement gets bastardized so much that even even in powerlifting where you have to lower the weight like a crossfit people just drop the weight every time um and in powerlifting you you follow hold on to it but you just basically you're just falling with the bar that's all you're doing you're not controlling it at all the eccentric portion but if you did that while you were standing on two bands that bar is about to get ripped out of your hands and you have to control the eccentric and it's getting better which means my body's getting a little bit more accustomed to

the to the workload um but you know if you've never done it you got to go grab a band right now and and load it up because your hamstrings are going to be smoked doug why do you think that like i'm curious like he's right like you know the eccentric the bands definitely rip my hamstrings apart and they're like nothing else like i'm actually not sure about that i haven't had that that same experience that i that i can really think of where my band where my hamstrings were more sore than normal oh because of the bands right when i do rdls i mean you're actually your start position when you deadlift doug i think it's slightly more squatty than mine like i think my hips are a little bit higher i

wonder if it just has to do with how you lower the bar and how you lower your hips to get the bar into that rdl position yeah i don't know i'm kind of thinking out loud just i'm with you though and it wrecks me like it trashes me i swear it's the pulling effect is like you know there's never a time where it's not pulling on you. Because, you know, all right, I get it. So, like, when you stand up in the RDL, there's a time where, you know, when you're fully contracted that the weight is kind of like it's not pulling on you anymore because you're standing up.

But with the bands, it's always trying to pull you over. So your hamstrings never get a break. They're always being pulled. I mean mean i'm just guessing you know but uh well we talked a little bit about also kind of like the speed of the eccentric being really important in hypertrophy and i can't think if you're just doing rdls with no bands on the bar you can control the weight so much easier like it's a slower tempo that you go down with in fact i think most of the time if you were to program a tempo and you always slow the descent of the bar in an rdl because you're like waiting for that stretch but and when you have the band on there it speeds the movement up even if even if it's just a couple degrees or a couple –

like one standard deviation faster than it normally would be. But that descent is – it's got to be just ripping your hamstrings apart while it's in there. I've noticed my hamstrings – I haven't been sore in my hamstrings and unless i intentionally i'm doing a ridiculous amount of split squats or something like that where it's just i'm going and doing lunges and my hamstrings are just they get lit doing doing these banded deads it's every single time like i just feel like i haven't done any specific hamstring hypertrophy in my whole weightlifting career and i just found it eight weeks ago yeah i think it's by far the best you know one thing that we hear just the other day someone was saying

you know why i don't know why people do deadlifts because there's no eccentric component but like uh there should be you ever wonder why like why is it because we don't know why people do deadlifts because there's no eccentric component, but like there should be. You ever wonder why, like, why is it? Because we don't do it. It doesn't mean that there couldn't be. And so like, you know, I program eccentric. And now on everyone, I never have someone, I never just write deadlifts. Now I always put the tempo in there because I want there to be.

But with the bands, you know, that is automatic. It's like, you know, people aren't just going to drop it with a band they're going to control it and so it's going to create more stability i think people get hurt on deadlifts when they don't use some tempo is because you're just you're overloading something you're not creating any stability because you just have a concentric contraction and then normally you just drop it so you don't develop the stability you need to do the movement so the bands force that component

yeah I think that the deadlift you guys ever see anyone bench pressing without wrapping their thumbs around the bar and they have a lot of band tension I'm like dude what the fuck are you doing death sentence you're going to kill yourself i tell everyone i think the most dangerous movement in the gym i don't think i'm positive

is definitely the bench press it's not the squat or the deadlift it is the bench press because if you drop the bench press it goes onto your throat and then yeah people have died bench pressing more people get injured picking dumbbells up off the ground though i bet friends we're gonna take a quick break to thank our sponsors we gotta pay the bills check it out fit together those are my friends they have a body weight challenge going on right now which is really cool because i'm on the mend all i can do is really body weight stuff so body weight is where i'm at and i'm on fit together so come hang out with me and barbell shrugged is like we like took over the entire app so get over to your app store right now fit

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Let's get back to the show. They might, I guess, if they don't. Not even doing a movement they just they're not gonna die they're not gonna die the casual injury but yeah wait that happened to a guy like a running back at usc i want to say like maybe 10 years ago i'm sure it happens pretty regularly in corporate gyms but he dropped like four bills on his throat and crushed him i've dropped 600 on my throat yeah and my buddy jason coger has dropped 900 on his face yes like if you google jason coker bench press accident that was in the west side documentary, I think. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was it. Yeah, yeah.

900 plus pounds. Imagine. Crushed his face. Knocked him out. That's the thing about powerlifting is they don't have small injuries. No. There aren't a ton of injuries. But when they happen, it's like some dude's knee gets ripped off with a thousand pounds on his back. That's why equipment is terrible.

Oh, my God. Doug is looking that up right now. I totally am. Yeah. ripped off with a thousand pounds on his back that's why equipment equipment is terrible oh my god doug is looking that up right now i totally am yeah you can see that like oh oh it's it's the worst possible thing man but oh how so that's my only real experience though using them and in in like a pure strength slash hypertrophy kind of block of eight weeks, which you're catching me at that perfect time where I think I know things, yet I'm still so amateur as we talk about this. I want to start using them in squats. When we had Corey on, who actually you want to talk about how cool my morning's been.

I'm talking to you three about getting jacked right now, and then Corey just FaceTimed me me and I had to screen Corey G. Look at that. That's a huge morning. That's a great morning. He uses them every day in his like front squat training. Front squat, which I was and will be again. I had a little setback.

I did a clean and hurt my knee a little bit, which is better now. But so when I get home, I'll start back. It's yeah, they work. You know, I was, I was getting stronger. I was getting faster, which to me, the speed is more important because I'm older and like I lost speed and that's, so I'm trying to get my speed back to where it was. So how do you progress? So the way that I've been doing kind of like the overriding principle of progressive overload, what I've been doing is sticking to the same weight, 225. And then I

have a purple band, which is like an inch and a half. And that started with basically five by eight. And then I've built it up to five by 10 on a pretty good interval. So I do it in like Doug's EMOM aesthetics program, uh, which is basically every other minute I'm hitting a set of 10 for five rounds with some sort of accessory after it. Um, at some point I don't want to be doing 12, but how much band tension do you increase or is like the right way to go

through increasing the band tension do you increase or is like the right way to go through increasing the band tension? Because I feel like the bands get radically heavier than just adding five pounds to the bar. I feel like if I even just put my tiny little pink band on there, I'm adding like 40 pounds to the bar at the top versus what i would normally do in like a progressive overload like add five pounds to each side so how do you like should i start focus the next step be add 235 to the bar and stay with the purple band or do you go with higher band tension and if that's like i'm gonna blow it out out of the out of the water. I would add a little weight and start back, you know, or start back at your fives and build back to the tens, you know. Yeah.

And then there you go. That's the simplest. So adding more weight to the bar versus adding an additional band. Until it's time. Until you, like, until you get to the point where you can go back to 225, add another band. That's just, like, the simplest progression I've ever heard. I love that

though wow that's yeah that's that's what i would do because i've been going the eights were were my initial thing i thought i didn't even i had nothing to base it off of and i just went 225 on the bar purple band was like an inch and a half i don't even know how much weight that actually added my guess was that it was somewhere in the 75 pounds at the top range probably you could easily like you know stand on a scale

and like pull it to where it's going to go it's the simplest way to measure so the way that I'm doing it though I can't because I'm wrapping it I don't have blocks on the side to push against the ground. I have to wrap it around. I have to double wrap it across the top

and then stand on both of them underneath because I just don't have the tools in here. I have to put some stakes in the ground on each side of my platform and all that. So I've been wrapping it across the top, standing on the two bands underneath. So it's not weighted from the outside. It's weighted on the inside. And so I'm kind of at a point where I don't want to go into like 5x12.

That volume, I wouldn't walk for a week. Yeah. It would just absolutely crush me. I would go back. Yeah, I want to go back. So going 235 on the bar with the same purple band is a better way to progress it until I get to, say, like 265, 275, and then I can add another band on there. Then you can go back to 225 and go back to another band. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like never-ending. It's like what a simple, awesome progression right there. Like, I love simple. Something's so beautiful about a simple but yet effective progression in lifting weights. I just can't believe I went my whole weightlifting career and just found the fact that I can add a band to it. I really, for a long time, even in the gym. You know when they send you the starter kit of bands, and there's always that black one that's like four inches?

Yeah. You're like, who the hell? Why did they even make this stupid thing? Because people like me, man. You deadlift with that black band? I have squatted with the black bands on the side. Yeah. That's so stupid.

I can't believe you're that strong i would say i was never was that is insane to me i've never seen anybody look at that black band and think i bet i could stretch that i've stretched it like yeah if anybody has never seen a four inch black it's four inches right something like that crazy it's like well the blue bands and you did two of them yeah one on each side one on each side and other bands on top of that yeah i would watch whatever video chug vocal was doing and try to match it match it. It's what it ended up being. The other night, I dreamed that he and I were training together because we were supposed

to, but then he started hating me because I was beating him. Then he said if I came up there, he was going to fight me. He's like, just let him calm down. Anyway, I dreamed that he and I were finally training together. The story was nobody could train with him.

And I was like, I'll train with him. And I'm already beating him. Like, I'll train with him. I'll beat him in the – you know, like, I wanted to train with him so badly. But, you know, he didn't want to train with me. How often did you do reverse band stuff versus just regular band stuff? Oh, yeah. Mostly regular.

Like, I did reverse band was more max effort i never did it it's part of like you know dynamic day it was just like every once in a while on max every day i would use the reverse which is fine it's like there's something really fun about the reverse bands but you don't get the pulling effect so like uh it would really be good for what you said earlier doug about like if you have like a knee injury, like I would definitely use reverse bands because then you don't have that pulling component. Yet you do have the deload component. Yeah, there's a decelerative component to it where you kind of have you have regular band tension that has a strong acceleration component. And then you have chains, which even I said earlier, there's only two ways to do the acceleration thing.

I said chains and bands. Really, I just meant that there's two ways to do accommodating resistance because the chains obviously don't have an acceleration component any different than just regular gravity, regular bar weight. They fluctuate the mass,

but they don't really change the acceleration. So you have bands for increased acceleration, a regular banded setup. And then you have chains where you're fluctuating the mass throughout the movement. And then you have reverse band, which is the opposite of the regular setup, where now you have a deceleration component to it. And so there's still benefit there, but I don't think the benefit for raw strength, this is totally anecdotal and opinion-based at the moment,

I don't think a reverse band setup is going to be as beneficial to raw strength development as a banded setup, in my opinion. I will say that accommodating resistance, of all the things I've ever done, it helped my squat, my bench, and my deadlift more than any other component, for sure. Like, I was never that good of a bencher until I started using bands. Like, I benched, even when I was winning, my raw bench was like 455, which sounds like a lot. But in that world, it's like not a lot. You know, people, you know, I know at the time, jesse kellum which is one of the dudes i was chasing you know his last warm-up in the back raw would be 515 and i remember being like damn i do

you know so i started using you know the bands a lot and some people will say well bands only work with equipment and i totally disagree like because my raw bench went from that 455 to into the 500s to where my last warm-up would be 515 i remember you know at the arnold uh at the arnold classic of the wpo world championships my last raw warm-up was 515 and like and it was super easy and the only thing i could attribute that to is bands but it almost completely makes sense because if you look at the squat most people struggle getting out of the hole. Once their hips break parallel,

standing up typically isn't the problem unless you just lose your core for some reason. If you lose your belly at the top, you're screwed. Even then, you can probably fight through it unless you're squatting what you squat. Most people might be able to fight through that with slightly rounded back, but if you lose your core at the bottom, you're screwed. So most, the ability to

get from out of the hole to above parallel is the entire squat. So most people never actually like get strong in the top half. And that's me with my deadlift. Like if I get it off the floor and get it to my knee, well, now all I gotta do is squeeze my butt and push my deadlift. If I get it off the floor and get it to my knee, well, now all I got to do is squeeze my butt and push my hips through. Sure. That's easy. That's the strong part. That's where you kind of get lazy. That's when I started to, in the higher rep ranges, start to have just low back soreness or losing my core a little bit. And then the bench, once people get it off their chest and their elbows get past 90 degrees, like you pretty much make it.

Most times, if you get through that first four to six inches, yeah, you're probably going to make it. The only way to really put a massive amount of stress on that and get some sort of stimulus in the top half or in the finishing half of the movement is bands putting something on there. So it makes sense. Like it's very obvious. I never realized how obvious it was until I started doing it. I was like, this is like the thing that stopped me from deadlifting 500 pounds. Like I just didn't have the total strength to be able to do it because there was half of the movement that was operating at, you know, a fraction of the capacity of what I was doing to

get off the floor. I was just too lazy, too lazy at the top. That's interesting. Yeah, go ahead. On a, on a similar note, uh, Travis, what are your, what are your thoughts on people that like myself, I have a short torso and long arms. Like if I can get it off for deadlifts, if I can get it off the ground, then I can finish the lift. i just need to break the floor and then i'm stronger and stronger and stronger all the way to the top like you know back when i was you know competing and whatnot you know i could deadlift you know 510 but i could do rack pulls with like 650 you know for triples like no problem like my the top half of my movement is so much easier than the bottom component. But some people, they have the opposite build where they have a long torso, short arms, and they can pull from the floor.

And then they get to the upper thigh, and they can't lock it out. That's me. The top part is the hard part. The tip top is the hard part for me. Yeah, so I feel like bands match my strength curve very well it's really light at the bottom where where i need it to be lighter and it's really heavy at the top where i can handle it being heavier but if it's really easy at at the bottom but really hard at the top and it's only getting heavier as it's getting harder then now you're not really matching your strength curve in the same way so i've heard people make the argument that

what you what the bands are for in that case is that you're you're teaching yourself to accelerate as fast as possible that way you can outrun the sticking point which is at the very end of the movement do you fall in line with that i totally agree because with bands the only two ways i used them to get stronger in the deadlift was speed day so i would do a speed day where i'd use bands and i was you know we we would say let's try to outrun the bands let's pull it so fast that the bands don't have time to catch up which is you know it's ridiculous but uh that was the mindset you were trying to rip it so quickly and so yes it taught you to get through that sticking curve quick because really it's like it's a time you

know thing it's like you know how quickly can i get this thing locked out before my muscles are done you know contracting so that that helped but then on the other end of it using it for rdls you know what it would have did is created hypertrophy in the area i needed obviously so like by doing the four by six which is funny it's like the one time i ever did like 12 weeks of the same four sets of six i never changed normally i'm you know like most block periodizations you're gonna have some tens and fives and threes so i didn't do i was four by six the entire time which um if i can what's that dude lately he's been talking a lot about that about spending more time in certain areas but anyway so so i used it for hypertrophy

on one end and then on speed on the other end so i didn't really use it for like maximal strength per se like as in doing a one rep max with bands so which totally said you know it does exactly what you're saying i needed to get stronger in that weak area, which was the tip top for me. And then I needed to get faster to accommodate the way I'm built, my anthropometrics. A lot of talking, but yeah. One thing that I also notice is the isometric contraction when you finish the movement. You want to talk about the place that like everyone gets super lazy is when you stand a deadlift up. Like they do the little overextending,

they're kind of just hanging out at the top and the weight's just like hanging off your body and just kind of like counterbalance by leaning back in your heels a little bit. If you wrap a band on that bar, it will rip it out of your hands so fast. And I feel like that is a massive piece for me that I've noticed is that when I'm standing at the top trying to reset my belly and get some air, it's just as hard as pulling the damn thing off the ground because I have no air. There's no rest. I'm trying to rip my arms off. And the only way to do there is stand there with perfect posture. And you notice that all of a sudden you're squeezing your ass at a hundred percent, just so it doesn't pull you forward and throw you across the garage. That's the beautiful thing,

man. It's like, it's going to create a lot more hypertrophy, like guaranteed those weeks in that short block. I just explained a second ago, like I've never had anything increase my deadlift like that. You know, like you went from that low sevens to 800 and more is like 725,

maybe 730. I can't remember, but 800 in one block. I've never had anything do that ever. You know, it's the dumbest thing is like, I never repeated it. Like what? That's where I needed a coach, you know, to be like, are you an idiot? Like, yeah, I am. But you know, like, I just, I don't know why I didn't repeat that over and over.

Very strong one, though. Very strong idiot. Could have been a lot stronger if I had a coach, you know. You just don't think logically. It's the listening. Yeah, yeah. So I was always, I was always, I was never, like, the most amazing strength power athlete in general.

I have a long lanky build and whatnot. So I wasn't really particularly strong or particularly fast, but in comparison to each other, I was a little bit stronger than I was fast. And so the dynamic effort days with bands, especially on movements that I was mechanically disadvantaged at, like squatting. The band tension, doing dynamic effort stuff, so max speed at lighter weights. I always felt really, really good. Like it didn't beat my joints up too much. It didn't make me too tired, so I could train more frequently. And I always made progress.

I always got faster, and I always squatted more by constantly working to accelerate from the bottom all the way as fast as possible to the top. In fact, when I first learned about bands, it was like late high school. And so in between my freshman and sophomore year playing small college football, the entire summer, I did almost all accommodating resistance for everything. Just for everything, everything. because I was just playing with it and really was just having fun with it and when I got back to college for my first week of training you know right when football season was starting my college weight room didn't have bands and I didn't bring any and so I was just squatting regular for the first time in three or four months. And like the first, the first week, every time I squatted, I felt like, I felt like I was being pulled toward the ceiling and like I had to jump because I was just, I automatically was accelerating because I was just used to it getting heavier toward the top.

And now it wasn't. And it was just like, whoop. And I just like would pop up. And then, but that effect went away after like like a single week it was amazing effect for a very short period of time but it dissipated it seemed it seemed really fast i bet you smashed though i that season too i bet your speed on the field had to have increased you know like just logically that's that that brings me to another point that you know something i've really i've never talked about this, but like if people had the ability to do a, you know, force velocity profile and figure out, you know, if, you know, you're not as fast in a certain movement, like Doug was in say squatting, like 100%, I think bands with a focus on speed would guarantee get you stronger and more explosive however if the force velocity profile you know said you're super fast you just need to do more

one rms well I still think it would help but like you know you could tell you what do you need to work on do I need to work on speed and like because there was a time where I thought speed did not work because I was already fast and so it was you know like I was a faster lifter, you know, just naturally. And so I would be like, the speed stuff is not working, but it was because it was not fitting my profile. I needed, cause I couldn't grind. So if anybody's ever watched Hayden Bowe lift, like nobody grinds like Hayden Bowe. He needs to work on speed. Like I couldn't grind.

I guarantee I was probably failing at 0.4 meters per second which is not very good you need to be able to go to like point you know 0.2 or some people your boy was saying the other day we're talking was it um the hypertrophy guy he could go like 0.2 0.1 0.18 he went in and now i can you know now that I'm older, I can do a.1. I did a front squat and got a 1RM at.18 meters per second. Yeah. But if you know who you are, and like right now I have a young kid, JC, who's 18-year-old – sorry, 17. 17-year-old who bench presses 450 pounds at 17.

And so we did a force velocity profile on him, and we found that he was not very fast especially in the bench press even though he's strong so we flipped the script and so we're going to speed and now his one rm is shot up again and so it's just a moral of the story if you can if you have the means um and you can get a tool something like my use my flex unit uh then do it and figure out there'll be a huge advantage to your lifting knowing who you are are you strong and slow are you fast and not very strong and then target what you're bad at what are the like main differences between using the band and if you were

to put chains on the bar the speed it's like you know the bands pull you down so your centric is going to be faster you know then you know with with chains this is accommodating their resistance just like adding addition additional weight at the top almost if somebody just put like a five pound plate on the outside or a five pound plate on the outside as you actually probably you probably end up actually moving a lot slower even though it makes you a little bit stronger in the second half of the lift. Probably, you know, because it is loading at the top. I guess you could consider, you know, think about going faster to, you know, to accelerate through those heavier weights. You could, but you just, it's definitely not the speed of like bands.

And the bands you can really target like you say that you know you know there's all these different qualities of strength you know stress speed speed strength you know starting strength and like you know if you can really do a big profile you can really target exactly do i need to work on uh strength speed do i need to work on you know speed strength you know which is easily defined speed strength is like one to 1.3 meters per second and um strength speed is 0.75 to one meters per second anyway you can target that exact quality strength you need to work on and bands like it makes it super easy to do just that like if you go all bands and not much bar weight at all you're gonna go real fast and so

it's super fun too by the way yeah like putting a ton of band and not much bar weight at all, you're going to go real fast. It's super fun too, by the way. Putting a ton of band and not much bar weight, you'll look like a kangaroo. I'm getting pumped talking about it. I love it. It's literally changed. Man, I feel like there's so few things that I just haven't done in the gym. Then I find this and I realize there's so much more out there to learn.

I'm going to be standing on a purple band with a whole bunch of weight attached to it and ripping on a barbell. I haven't even really gotten because I need to get a setup and I need to change some things around in here now that I know about this so I can actually do it with the squat, which I'm really stoked about because I feel like it's going to reinvigorate me learning how to squat and how to like, man, I can't wait to do like reverse lunges with bands. It's going to shred me. I won't be walking for a month. You did tell your boy that, uh, Fisher is the reverse lunge King, right? Yeah. It's just,

I feel like the band thing, you know, we, we put out our bands and body weight program and it's a great program. If that's all you have is bands, but really the sweet spot is that combination of the two. And, you know,

really using the bands and in the most optimal way is to have heavy weights at the bottom and then increase the tension as you get get up because when you're just using the bands when the when the band's contracted it's at there's little to no tension at the end um it's not until you really get a good stretch on it so to have the weight at the bottom the band at the top combine those two together beautiful i'm learning a lot it's fantastic makes me so happy so happy. I love lifting weights. It's so great. Bros, Travis Mash, tell them where they can find you.

You can go to LinkedIn. Travis Mash. I just have a video over 50,000 views on LinkedIn. Can you believe that? LinkedIn is beautiful. That's all I know. Are people supposed to be working not on LinkedIn? You need to quit working and watch my video.

So, or you go to dot com. It's, it's, I'll put a video of Hunter, the, the one where she made her first world team. And we went,

Oh yeah. It wants to see the lifetime PR in her opener. And I know a video you should put up there. I get a hundred thousand. Oh, of Hunter preparing for that squat. Yeah. Anything. Is a hundred thousand that squat. Yeah. Anything with Hunter squatting is a 100,000 view video.

Doug Larson. You bet. On my Instagram. Doug will see Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrug.

Get over to barbellshrug.com forward slash store. That's where all the programs, e-books, nutrition, and mobility to make strong people stronger. We'll see you guys next week. That's a wrap friends. I want to send a special thank you to everybody down in Northwest Arkansas. Our entire team down there. So cool to meet everybody in person. So much fun to go mountain

biking, training in person. Just everything I want in my life is business and family and friends and everything to be aligned all in one. And I can't wait to get the products on the shelf and start helping people in the Walmart world. Before we go, we got to thank bioptimizers.com forward slash shrugged. Use the code shrugged to save 10%. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged to save 20%. and get over to the body weight challenge at fit together. F I T T O G E T H E R fit together. And you can win up to $1,200 worth of goodies. Friends. We'll see you on Wednesday.