Barbell Shrugged - [Velocity Based Training] How to Use Velocity Based Training for Strength, Speed, and Performance w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash and Dan Garner Barbell Shrugged #636

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   Louie Simmons death and impact on the strength world How to use velocity based training for hypertrophy How to use velocity based training for max strength and speed How to use velocity based training for functional fitness athletes What lifts should and shouldn’t use velocity    Connect with our guests:   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   Dan Garner on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Mentorship Application: https://bit.ly/DDMentorshipApp   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we are talking velocity-based training with the two-time national champion, coach of the national champion, the Noah Ryan University weightlifting team. Yeah, that's our boy Travis Mash. Travis is wrapping up his PhD here in the next couple months. And one of the big pieces that one of the components of the athlete monitoring PhD that he's doing is velocity based training and how it's impacted his not only his team, but his own career, and how he incorporates that into the amount of wear and tear his athletes are going depending on what phase of training they're in

right now and because louis simmons died recently one of the very first people to discuss velocity based training whether it was using bands chains um they had a tendo unit with it which they were using back in the day before technology really kicked off in this um but very cool that it was at west side and that was one of the first places that travis was able to see it when he was training really kicked off in this. But very cool that it was at Westside, and that was one of the first places that Travis was able to see it when he was training at Westside and befriending Louie and having him as a mentor throughout his life. I'm excited to do this.

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Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mast, Dan Garner. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we are going to be talking about velocity-based training, one of the big things that Mast has been doing while getting his PhD. And we can't get into velocity-based training without talking about our buddy, Louie Simmons, who just passed. Mast, I want to kick it to you. And you're the one that probably had the most of a career, the most interactions, and a little bit of just kind of, man, what did that guy do for your life? I think, you know, what he's done for me, he's done it for everybody. You know what's funny?

I think about this. Not only has he done it for me, he's done it for everybody in the strength of the world, even if they hate him. Guaranteed, even if you hate that man, you're doing something that he talked about that you wouldn't have been doing had it not been for him. Guaranteed, even if you hate that man, you're doing something that he talked about that you wouldn't have been doing had it not been for him. I can't think of anyone who's affected the world of strength more than Louis Simmons.

Just run through a big list of the things that Louis brought to the table. It's a lengthy list. He was a super innovative guy. He was in it for decades. Right. Before I go, I want to clarify the things I'm about to say.

He read it from other people. He just popularized it. But you talk about the dynamic effort, which is working on – he always talked about force equals mass times acceleration. So he talked about the acceleration part as being, you know, the dynamic effort forces being max effort, which, you know, you know, Prillipin talked about the max effort years before that,

along with other people. But those two things, you know, the conjugate, making sure you're changing, you know, often to make sure that you're not, you know, your body's not adapting to the stimulus. Yeah. Think about all the machines, reverse hyper, even you can say the glue hammer is of course it's debatable between who actually created that thing i think people argue between the three or four people but uh

bands chains so accommodated resistance um let's see what else am I forgetting? GPP sled work type stuff. GPP, yeah, GPP sled work, work capacity. I mean, so it just goes on and on with what that guy has done that all of us use. But definitely dynamic effort is like probably, well, and the max effort, because I use both all the time in weight so in weightlifting has changed my life the most. And with everything you just said, it's also important to mention without any like super formal education or anything like that, like this dude was so brilliant that I was able to come up with these concepts, probably in the absence of like theoretical mechanistic knowledge in a lot of cases, just the way he was able to build and collect data and learn from the

people before him. And he did a good job at crediting the people before him too. Like he would always mention that like, yeah, I read this here, or this has already been available over here. This equations from this, like he never actually, even though he did invent a ton of things, he never really tried to steal anybody's work. Which was something I think a lot of the industry can learn from. There's a whole lot of copying and pasting, whether verbal or written, that happens in our industry. And he was the man in that respect to be able to accomplish all of that,

but then also not to keep it a secret either because he could have had his West Side Barbell secret methods, never sold a book, never popularized it, never talked, like none of that stuff. He didn't just come up with a lot of this stuff, but he made it popular and he made it cool. And that was awesome. And he did it in his own way.

He never like conformed to what, you know, society thinks you should be like, he was, he was always rough around the edges, but he got it out there. He was, he was,

he was giving away free information long before any of this long before elite FTS. Of course. I mean, I guess you could say that we all owe him for like all the people now that do give away so much free information, whether it be elite myself, you guys, I mean, juggernaut, like he's the one who showed us that, you know, giving away the free information is a great way to help the industry.

And in turn, normally that helps you, you know, with your bottom line as well. And so, you know, we can even say like Verko Shansky did, would any of us know that man to the degree that we know him now? Had it not been for that dude talking about him. If you go on his website, I mean, like he still, he sells Tudor Bampa, like all the great, you know, exercise scientists before us, that dude made popular. So like.

Yeah, Mel Sif. Mel Sif, totally. Yeah, yeah. exercise scientists before us that dude made popular so like yeah mel siff mel siff oh yeah yeah yeah or uh bud charnagar the guy who translated the russian manuals like nobody would have known that dude ever had it not been for we talked about it even though you know later they hated each other but you know yeah let me tell you guys the coolest Luis Jimenez story. Like, I was at – and then we can move on because we'll keep it to the 10 minutes we talked about. But at Wake Forest, I was there when Bud's trying to go. And, hey, what's the great weightlifting coach from Louisiana? Oh, man.

The squat program. Tall guy. Come on. Anyway. I'll say when I think of it. Yeah. He was there and Louie was there along with JL. I was there. So I'm sitting with these dudes and then, you know, those guys have their camp over there. And then all of a sudden, man, I thought for sure at the Wake Forest in the Disney Clinic that we're about to have an all-out fight because Louie started challenging them.

You know, whatever they were saying, he would challenge them. J.L. Oldsworth, who was at the time a monster, he was challenging them. It was the craziest thing. They still talked about it in Winston-Salem. It looked like, I mean, would you ever guess there's gonna be a fist fight at a strength conditioning clinic it was that's one yeah that's one thing that i actually feel like um hatch gail hatch sorry yes is um is really um strange about getting older for me is like one, I always assumed I would meet Louie and now I can't ever.

I assume that we would just all be in center or be in Ohio and go to the Arnold and then go lift weights and West side. And we would just do it and do shows. And now that will actually never happen. But like when I think about like, like, like Soren, like soren's an old man that guy's gonna die one day yeah somebody has to like make sure that museum keeps going

somebody has to make sure that west side like all of that knowledge keeps going and one thing that like when i think about that generation of like really strong humans that was like pushing the limits on what was possible is like they didn't do it because they had all the information. They were doing it because they were so tough. Like they were all like bricklayers during the day. And then they would come home and Louie had like a hundred pound plate welded to the barbell. So your first set was 240. Most people don't squat 240 pounds, but if you go to Louie's garage, you're going to squat 240. Pops has a picture of himself. He's not worried about his diet. He's not worried. He looks like a 32-year-old monster that's 240 pounds and just trying to be an absolute savage. And it's because he was

moving concrete and bricks. And then at night he would go squat and there was no, it was just like, what are you doing? I'm moving as much weight as possible. And I'm eating as much food as possible because this is just how you get it done. And those people aren't going to exist that much anymore because we have almost too much information flowing around they don't have like we don't have to work that hard to figure out how to be smart about what we do like we all kind of know what's going on when when it was just louie finding people that were like coming out of jail with bad attitudes that wanted to be mean he was like yo come to my garage it's totally cool to be mean in here and when you're mean outside i'm gonna make sure you're the strongest person in that fight like it's a bunch of bad people that he was training back in the day

and they just wanted to be strong and they worked really really hard by the way i'm talking at um at the summer strong this year. Look at you. I know. Yeah, I'm excited about that. Yeah, it's a big honor, I think. So just letting you guys know. I don't know if you'll be available, but I'd love to have my homeboys there. Yeah, we'll be there.

Let's hop in the car. Let's make it happen. I know. It should be, like, awesome for shows. We told Bert we were coming. When is it again? It is May 20th.

Whatever that weekend is, we'll see. I'm super excited though. I've always wanted to be taught there because it's such an honor to do that. You got a big deadlift to pull that day. Make sure you get a couple of lights

in you, buddy. I think it's May 21st andlift to pull that day. Oh yeah. Make sure you get a couple of lights in you, buddy. I think, oh, May 21st and 22nd, you know, that weekend. Love it. Right on. That's where we're next. Dude, but one of the things and why we started the show talking about Louis was a lot of the speed work that he was doing before anybody was doing speed work. And it was actually something that when I first started like hearing about

Louie coming up and listening to him talk when when he was calling out barbell speed. I didn't know that that was a thing. That was like the first time I had ever heard calculating bar speed and adjusting weights not based on can you lift it, but how fast is the bar moving? Me too. Was he the first person to introduce you to that concept? Oh, 100%. It's training and there's technology and all that. He was the first person to introduce you to that?

Absolutely. He was the very first. And, you know, honestly, I thought it was silly. I'm like, you just need to go heavy. And now I'm like, it's the most brilliant thing in the world. It's like, you know, no doubt that a big part of why my athletes are succeeding right now is that no doubt. And, you know, and the fact that you'll probably never see a miss at our gym. If it is, it's a very technical flaw, like from a snatch. But you'll never see a miss squat or a missed deadlift because i know

the answers like i know if they're going to make it or not there's no guessing you know how you know how important that is is to like not have to you know ryan who i think is a future olympian to not have to risk him missing because it's so hard on your fatigue and like you know and the injury potential is the highest when you're going to miss a weight so like you'll you'll never see that from it thanks to louis bringing the world you know velocity truck family some very cool news coming out of walmart you didn't expect to hear that i bet uh ageless male protein was selected as one of the very few products in the entire performance nutrition category. So the entire shelf with all of the supplements, Ageless Male Protein, the Zone, the Pump, and the Shred were chosen to have rollback pricing to begin the new year. What that means is Walmart pretty much never

does sales, but they do these things called rollbacks, and they select a very, very few products in each category, pretty much the ones that they think are going to absolutely crush in the new year, in the hot time, and they chose us, which is super, super cool. So 2,200 stores, Walmart nationwide. The Walmart near me, I don't have it. And that's annoying. That means it's a whack Walmart. But the Walmart near you probably hasn't because we're in over half of them. So you can get over, get to the performance nutrition section in the pharmacy, Ageless Mail, Pro-T, Zone, Pump, and Shred. Make sure you get over there. Look for my face on the box. Pick up some supplements and get your new year kick started

right and friends i'm so stoked we have rollback pricing whoever knew that that was going to be a thing at barbell shrug yeah how are they doing it when you when you started training there or not when you started it was a tindo unit you know yeah i mean at west i've been to west side and they had the tindo units is all they had which which was, you know, it's nothing like we use now, but it's like one of the little string units you hook to the barbell, and all it does is just register what the person does. It doesn't, you know, with GymAware, it sends it to a cloud, and I get all this data, and I can track all my athletes.

The Tindo unit just tells you, you know, 0.7 meters per second or 0.5 meters per second. It just told you what you do and just helped you make sure that you were staying in the zone that Lily was, you know, having. She was big on strip speed. It was that 0.75 to 1.0 meters per second was the biggest focus, I think, for her. Didn't they originally start doing dynamic effort stuff

because they were you know decades ago trying to do max effort twice a week yeah and everyone kept breaking yes but he still wanted to get enough reps on on the competition lifts and so they switched out one of the days with dynamic effort so they could still get um 100 effort full force put into the bar but with lighter weights so they didn't all break. Right. That's exactly what he tried to do because he was wanting to get the volume in without, you know, killing everybody. Because, you know, like it was really, I mean, like because, not really because, but, you know, he did not have a formal education like Dan said. So, yeah, he was, it was really just one big,. What's up, Barbell?

All those athletes were just experiments. And that's okay. I've done the same thing. When I was first a strength coach, whoever unfortunately trained under me at that point, I was guessing. And so, as was he. But then he learned that if he wants to keep his good athletes healthy,

then you've got to figure out a better way. In some ways, not, not having that formal education as well allowed him to, to try new things. Like there's, there's a downside to, to getting a formal education where you quote unquote,

know what to do. It kind of, it kind of puts you in a box in a way where you, where you don't just, you don't just observe what's happening and then, and then try what, just try the next thing because you already think you know what's right. I found myself in that trap before where something's not working, but in my head, I'm like, but this is the way it's supposed to work.

And I'll keep doing it, and I still won't get results from it. But there's this block oftentimes where in my mind, it is supposed to be the thing that works, even though it's objectively not working. Like the, the education that I have is actually, actually limiting my progress in some ways where we're a beginner. You know, oftentimes beginners will come into an industry and they're the one that disrupts the industry because all the people that have been in the industry know how it's supposed to go. And the new person comes in with fresh eyes and doesn't know the way it's supposed to be. And then they're the person that actually shakes things up and, and, uh, you know, potentially and potentially makes an impact that an educated person otherwise may not have. They're the exception to the rule.

Not every beginner is just going to come into an industry and innovate and take over. Most people that don't have an education are going to come in and just not be good. But every so often, someone comes in and they have a different method because they don't know the way it's supposed to be done's like mr knees over toes guy right now and his 1.5 million human beings on instagram went up like a million people on rogan million people started following him again yeah i mean and then people hate the guy you know like him and squat university out there trying to help people and then they get hated on the most million and a half people following you someone's gonna be mad at you you can't there's one dude

out there this one little little guy is out there and he makes his living on talking about those two dudes i'm like why don't you talk about something that you actually do my man instead of talking yeah this this is there's a physical therapist guy out there all he does is talk junk about those two people i'm like man what what about you big boy what do you do oh you don't do anything that's what you do good job so like you know that's what i love about andy you know andy andy's very clear in saying that just because there's no research doesn't mean that it doesn't work it just means that there's no research yet and so like all you know when you talk about scientific you know literature and the research has been done all that's helping you do is

eliminate certain things it doesn't mean that those are the only things that work you know if something hasn't been studied if you know and then there's we all know too there's been plenty of learning more the more i go into things is that just because the study's been done doesn't make it right because you get to look at the study who is it done on was it done on like three boys out of college who don't know how to lift weights you know like the whole if you look at like um does it clean for example it's a big argument all the time should you use the clean or hang clean, you know, with strength conditioning? And like you will say, well, this study over here showed that it didn't work. Oh yeah, it was done on three boys that were hungover who have never done a clean before.

So yeah, it doesn't work. And you don't know how to teach a clean. So of course it doesn't work, man. It's like when I have clear data showing 100%, it does. Two boys, two average white boys from my town, I didn't recruit them in, went from 35 inches to 40 inches vertically, two at 40, doing nothing but weightlifting and velocity-based training. So obviously something happened. Anyway. No doubt.

Man, with the amount of experience you have in this, I'm glad you kind of prefaced all of my questions that are coming here with that because you've got a ton of experience, obviously both research-based but also experience-based as well. And I've got none in the world of velocity-based training. So I've got some newbie questions for you here that I just love to hear your thoughts on.

As far as your application of velocity, because, you know, from my understanding, it's a great way in which you can gauge readiness at the beginning of a workout. But then previously, you just mentioned it as a way to get more work and more volume done, Louie would use over the course of a given session. So when you're using it, are you only using it to gauge readiness, or are you measuring velocity at multiple points in the session? On every single point. Even when we do max effort, we're going to use velocity

because I'm going to set a minimum that they can't go below. So, like, you know, I could say I want you guys to work to 1RM on the squat, but you can't go below.35 meters per second. I know that they'll never miss. You know, like, to miss, especially with experienced people, say Ryan, like he's going to have to go.2 or lower to risk a miss. So if I say work up to 1RM,.32 three, five, no chance he's missing. So no matter what they're doing, there's velocity is going to come into play. Okay. Um, and like with, with multiple

points throughout the workout, are you looking at like peak velocities or are you gauging mean velocities as well? Or how does that break down across the session? Uh, if they're doing weight, you know, a little bit of weightlifting, you know, snatching, clean jerking If they're doing weightlifting, snatching, clean jerking, they're going to do peak because all that matters is how fast is the bar moving in that power position. When you extend in the second pull, we didn't know at that point how fast was it going because the average doesn't really matter because we've all seen a Chinese lifter, it looks like they're dead lifting, then all of a sudden they create a little power at the tip top and they're able to get under it so all that matters is the top and it's in uh with weightlifting you

know i have to be clear it will depend on height it will there's several variables in that depending on height it'll depend on like how long person's been training you know how good they are at the sport because like ryan doesn't have to pull it as fast as been training you know how good they are at the sport because like ryan doesn't have to pull it as fast as say like you know i would have to pull it you know i would have to pull the heck out of it to get under it because i'm old and can't move that well so you know it's very individual when it comes to weightlifting so peak velocity will be the the main concern but then everything else like squatting pulling pulling, you know, pressing, that's mean velocity. We just need to know the average. Cool.

So then in terms of individual variance there, because like you getting a different speed than say like Ryan or something like that, the individual variance thing would be like, is everybody measuring their velocity based off of a percentage of one rep max? Is that how that's being done? No, we do a force velocity profile on, you know, like whatever movement I'm going to have them perform velocity on, we're going to do a profile. And so I'm going to start it. I would recommend doing at least like one rep at 25%, one rep at say 35, and then maybe jump to 45, then 50, 55. Do a little bit because you want to get that starting. There's several different categories that Brian Mann and other people have determined,

which is like starting strength is like 1.3 meters per second faster. Then there's speed strength, which is 1 to 1.3. Then there's stress speed, which is like to one point three then there's stress b which is like 0.75 to one meter per second then there's acceleration which is where most of us spend our time when we're doing hypertrophy which is 0.5 to 0.75 and then anything below 0.5 meters per second is absolute strength and so you'll need to do a profile on whatever movement that you you know you don't have to but i would recommend because like the more especially when you're dealing with you know high level athletes you

know people who i hope will medal olympics someday every little bit counts but if you don't want to do that there's plenty of you know if you google velocity-based training brian man has tons of like here's averages so you could go out there and get a list, but I recommend doing profiles of the individual. Okay. So that's not based off percentage of one rep max at all. Then those people are doing profiles depending on where they fall on that chart. Well, you are, I mean, like, well, the thing is that you do, you know,

you take your, you know, you do work up heavy at the very beginning when you do your force velocity profile, say like like 50 of your max and see like what's the speed and see the correlations so like when i when i um prescribe you know intensity and volume to somebody it's going to say like for example they'll say i'll say four sets of five reps at 75 at 0.5 meters per second or faster. And I might say you can work up as long as the barbell trap stays at 0.5 meters per second or higher. So it's both because, you know, the key is making sure

that the daily intent is met. It's like, you know, if I want them to do four by five, it's mainly I'm wanting some hypertrophy is what I'm after. But if they're not feeling good that day and it's like 0.42 meters per second, then, you know, I'm either going to do one or two things. I'm either going to cut, you know, the volume and intensity for that day or I'm going to send them home, do some light bodybuilding and go home.

Because the big thing, here's what's important to everyone. Every single day, an athlete's 1RN varies 15% up or down. So it's like a 30% swing that you can have. And so you might want them to do 4x5 at 75%. That very well might be 4x5 at darn near 88% because there's social media that's stressing people out. There's blue lights they don't sleep at night oh the physiology that we talk about with you all the time you know their gut health is terrible and so on that very day you might be driving your person into the ground and

so you know which also the other side of that intent is like when you say four by five, if I'm feeling good and I give them a number to shoot for, it's like if you do four by five, shooting it between 0.5 and 0.55 meters per second is way different than just doing four by five, 75%, because I don't have to go that fast. You know, I could easily just do it and have zero intent behind it. But like when you do it and you're trying to push it as fast as you possibly can, which is what – that's compensatory acceleration, another one that Lily made popular, even though Fred Hatfield,

he's the one who coined that term years ago. But it's a big difference, and the results are way different too as far as what that's creating when you know when you're using 100% compensatory acceleration how much are you able to compare the subjective and like feelings of how fast they're moving the bar or whatever it's called say they're squatting 315 pounds well I've stood under 315 and felt like I was going to do it for 20 and I felt like I was going to do it for 20, and I felt like I was going to do it for maybe one, depending upon a host of variables. But are the subjective ratings on how they feel and the objective ratings on how fast the bar is moving,

do those often line up, or are they not lining up most of the time? That's a beautiful question. So we do both. Every single day, my guys, they'll fill out a subjective questionnaire prior to training. Now got anyone listening for coach, I would keep this questionnaire short, like two to three minutes, because if it's long, they're not, no one's going to take the time. They're going to get, they're just going to get through it because they're trying to train. But you know, if you ask questions like, you know, how many hours did you sleep last night?

How many meals have you had today? You know, on a scale from one to five, five being I'm completely stressed out. How stressed are you? If you ask those questions, like, and then compare it to the velocity readings, here's what you're going to find. Number one, how long a person has been training. So their training age is going to show. And then it's going to be individual.

Like Ryan, his subjective answers are going to 100% nearly match what the velocity is saying. Other people, it's not. So, like, you learn to know your person. You learn to know, okay, I can never turn this person loose without velocity because they're going to lie to themselves. Like me, honestly. I would, you know, I'm going to say I feel great no matter what.

Even if inside I'm literally bleeding out, I would say I feel fine. And I would try to squat heavy. You know, but Ryan is very good about, it's not going to happen today and he goes home. I really wish I had some sort of system. It's like owning a gym, you think you're just going to be training all the time, and then you're training all the time, and you're owning a business, and they just don't. You think they go well together, but they don't at all.

I would love to have had so many of these systems that you're building. You wake up, and now you're at a 5.30, 6 a.m. class, and then you've got two privates, and then all of a sudden it's 2 o'clock, and now you're staring down a 90-minute, two-hour-long training session thinking you're doing something good for yourself. And you're just like grinding through day after day, but you're not doing anything. I know, man. And readiness is so easy to measure. Literally, all you have to do is, like, on the very first exercise, you look at 85% and see how fast they're pushing it, you know, or even 80.

It needs to be, you know, it needs to be, like, 80, 85 to get a really good readout. Because neuromuscularly, things change as it gets heavy. And so, like, and then you can tell today is a great day or it's not. And then you know, and it's 100% true, man. You know, if you don't believe it, you can do another's a great day or it's not. And then, you know, and it's, it's 100% true, man. You know, if you don't believe it, you can do another rep if you want to, but it's going to say the same thing. And then you can make your decision. And what we do is if they're 10% slower, we're going to do some bodybuilding.

By bodybuilding, I mean metabolic stress. We're going to try to avoid a lot of muscle damage. We're going to do things where, you know, when the muscle is lengthening, the load is lightening. So like, you know, band pull-throughs, band rows, something that's going to just give them a pump or eat. That would be also a great day to do some blood flow restriction and send them home to recover. But Brian Mann is the one who recommended that. That's been a home run because, you know, it activates a little bit of the healing process. You hormonally it's going to activate a little bit of you know the good stuff like the testosterone the things that help you recover but the main thing is just take

your butt home and recover and don't do more more damage are you setting uh goals for each lift are you fluctuating those throughout like a season or are you kind of staying in the same ranges throughout the year? Oh, definitely. Because you have to be really strong and then take a ton of time off. We are going to fluctuate big time. Yeah. So like in squats and pulls, um, when they're like six weeks out and are farther, like 15 weeks, you know, we're going to let them go a little bit harder in the squatting and pulling, so we'll let them go down to, you know, 0.32, 0.3 meters per second.

But then when they're in that six weeks and in, they're not. It's going to be – they're not going to go any slower than 0.4 meters per second. Like, for example, at the Arnold Classic, two days prior to Ryan, you know, totally 320 kilograms, he did what, I mean, people would arguably say he did his 1RM. Even though I know good and well it wasn't, he did 200 kilograms, which is the most he's ever done, but he did it at 0.4 meters per second. So what I had told him, work up to one rep at 0.4 meters per second.

Just so happens that was, you know, one RM. Even Coach Sean Waxman, he's like, do you think that was a good idea? And he's asked me that during weigh-ins, the rise of weigh-in. I was like, Sean, how heavy did you guys work up to? And he said, we worked up to 88% for two singles. I was like, so you guys went heavier than we did. You know, it's just that my guy is incredibly strong and yours isn't. You know, so like, so like it's all relative, you know, like, and then he goes on to like,

all it told me the minute he did 200 kilograms at 0.4 meters per second, you can hear me in the background say they're in trouble. And I was like, they're doomed. You know, you're not going to beat this kid at this point. He's in incredible shape. It's a great way of me measuring the taper process. Did the taper work or did it not?

That's why we do a front squat at 0.4 meters per second every single time at a certain point in the taper to see are things clicking or are they not? They were and they did yeah so yeah does which exercise you choose to measure velocity change per phase or are you always keeping it the competition lifts uh no we no we measure front squats back squats um deadlifts

you know even push press multi military press, every single lift. Some people will measure like Ben O'Rourke's. We don't do that. Even though maybe I should. Why not? Mainly the things that I think might lead to more fatigue than others, like pull, deadlifting. We totally believe in deadlifting, and Ryan is an incredible puller,

so I just need to make sure that he's not going to go so heavy that he might hurt himself. Well, isn't that like a transfer of power thing? Like there's an athleticism side to creating the speed on the bar. Doing a barbell, a bent row would be like – Yeah, exactly. Like what are you doing? You're not transferring that much power from like lower body to upper body. Yeah, and nobody's going hurt nobody's gonna like try

to max out in a row you know like so like i don't have to worry about them doing something stupid so that's the reason why i try to i just pick the exercises where i'm worried that one of them might try to go too hard you know pulling squatting and then of course the limitless snatching cleanser can umking, any of those variations. So, and then also with the snatching and the cleaning, I'm just trying to, you know, see, like, certain patterns is the main thing I'm looking at. I try to develop individual patterns with, like, when Ryan is looking really good, how fast is the bar? When Ryan is looking really poorly, you know, how fast is the bar when Ryan is looking really poorly, how fast is the bar moving. And with Jimware, whether you're using the Flex or the Jimware, I can go online at the

cloud and I can look at that data over several months and see trends. And I can develop correlations. And the thing we're doing is subjective questionnaire. If you track data long enough, you can develop some really good, like correlations, meaning like a sleep, for example, I can say when certain athlete only gets five hours of sleep, you know, three days later, this is what happens, you know, which, you know, Dan knows way more about correlations than I do. Like, I'm just, I'm a rookie at this. Yeah. I was actually thinking, because when I'm looking at fatigue and performance monitoring, I'm looking at things like cortisol, testosterone, testosterone to cortisol ratio, TNF alpha,

IL-6. These are all things in the literature, plasma glutamine, glutamine to glutamate ratios. These are all things in the literature that I can look at physiologically to identify one's fatigue state and therefore their performance readiness. And, you know, I was actually wondering if you guys have ever actually kind of connected any of that in the past, like any kind of lab work to velocity, that would be a very cool area of research that the future could go into to see, you know, how sensitive one is to another.

If there are early predictive values and late predictive values i think that that would be a very cool thing that's a u.s weightlifting u.s weightlifting if you're listening right now you know call phil i mean they're getting there oh yeah phil's retiring yeah he's uh i didn't see that yeah and there's some other there's new people that they're making a run at the ceo which i have one that I hope does, and so we'll see what happens. He's done a great job. He's done a great job. Hats off to Phil Andrews.

Yeah. Andrews, yeah. Yo, have you ever written a full training block with velocity as opposed to percentage? Like a lot of people, they might write, say, a single session you're doing, you're doing snatches or whatever, and it know do three at 70 percent do three at 75 two at 80 two at 85 one at 90 percent like that type of um language would be might be in there something that was like you know a 3rm at you know 0.6 meters per second and then a 2rm at 0.4 meters per second

or whatever like give your written a training block like that or it's all it's all velocity based instead of percentage based yes we did you know like i wrote that book um bar speed which was years ago and so that that has a program in it it's just velocity and then every program i write now has both it's got like there's um velocity in this percentages so i write that way for people that if i end up you know know, deciding to sell it, that if in case they don't have velocity, they can go to percentages, which is, you know, I feel bad now. Like, I feel like we have such a big advantage competing against people who don't use velocity. And there's some coaches out there who just don't want, they don't believe it. They'll be, they'll say, Oh, I've been doing this so long. My eye, I know how fast things are. And like, there's so many studies that have come. They do not.

You do not. If you're listening, you're counting milliseconds and real and real speed. That's good. You're not, you're not, you're not that good. No offense. You know, I've been coaching down here 30 years and like, I know better. I would never say that because it's a lie. You know, you're just fooling yourself and what you're doing is you're saying, I'm too lazy to learn this new thing because now it's not that, you know, it's not that expensive. And if you have an elite athlete,

you want to get to that team USA or you want to get to the NFL, you want to get to the NHL, you can afford it. If you can't, you shouldn't be coaching, you know, like shit. You need, these people deserve the technology. With, with velocity based training, you saying like, it's a, you've got an advantage over people who don't use velocity based training, which is super, that's super cool. But there's always that flip side. Have you seen anybody over-apply it? Like, as I know in the world of nutrition, people can really almost get excited about something and over-apply a concept. Is there any, have you ever

seen an example or a coaching scenario where people have almost maybe got too excited about velocity and tried to track it for absolutely everything. And then it kind of uses, loses its utility. I don't know, man. I have it, you know, there's in, in the sport right now there's four of us I know of that used it a lot. Like me, Spencer Arnold, there's a little Fleming. And then there's a Kevin Simons all use it. And like, we all, our athletes are absolutely killing it.

So, like, you know, Smith-Straight had three Olympians. Kevin Simons has got, you know, two of the best up-and-coming girls in all of America. You know, I've got – I've had 31 team USA athletes. So all of – Will Fleming's got Coach Mary, who's absolutely destroying, you know, the heavyweight class. So, no, I have it. You know, there might be someone

out there that i don't know who's using it or is improperly applying it but like if you apply it right all it's doing is telling you you know how someone feels it's all it really is it's like it's just helping you avoid unnecessary fatigue that's all it is what about that i kind of sorry i kind of i would say over applied at one time just like um just myself not coaching anybody else but when i was i was probably 21 or so it was like maybe my junior or senior year in college and i did i did three four week blocks in a row and andy kind of mentioned this the other day um he put on social media a while back and then then he also talked about on on Huberman or Lewis Howes one of the more recent uh shows he was on talking about this like three by five concept where you do you know three to five days a week

stealing other people's stuff galloping come on bud I got this from my strength coach you got from somebody else and that's kind of how it goes but uh so anyway uh what what i was originally told was like it was uh you know this is great there's like a special russ and spets not training program and like this is what they do over there to uh to train but not be so fatigued that way because they could get the call at any moment to go into battle and they don't know when they're going to get the call and so they got to train but they can't be all beat up so anyway that's the lore behind it but what i did was going into probably my junior year of college football uh in the off season i did three four week blocks where i did all speed reps

for everything yeah every every single thing that i did whether it was bicep curls or crunches or hanging leg raises but of course you know you know, front squats, back squats, deadlifts, snatch, clean and jerk. I did, I did three to five reps for everything and speed reps for all of it, for everything. And I broke all my PRS for everything,

for all the, for all those big lifts. Um, at the end of the first four week block, I didn't, but at the end of the eight weeks and the end of the 12 weeks, I smashed all my PRS. Um,

I felt fantastic. Like just like going, going into the gym. Like I felt like I wasn't too beat up from the session before. And when I left, I felt like I felt very like light and fast and whippy. And I wasn't too beat up. I was always excited to go back. I didn't have very much joint pain. And I just felt explosive and fast, like ready to run sprints for football.

I wasn't trying to put on weight in this instance, I wasn't trying to get lean. Uh, I was just trying to be fast and explosive. And so doing fast and explosive, everything, you know, again, everything, everything like dumbbell overhead press doesn't matter. Like I'm, I'm doing 70 ish percent and I'm doing three to five reps and I'm, I'm, I was purely going off feel and I was just doing, you know, as fast as I could and I felt like the reps were slowing down then I would cut the set and I and I would just you know wait and then do it again you know you don't need a full recovery because you're not going to like true fatigue so you don't need like a three minute rest before you go back into it um you know if you do three

reps at 70 for fast reps like kind of like Louie with dynamic effort like you're not resting three to five minutes for 12 sets because you're only doing three fast reps and uh man i it worked phenomenally well for me i felt i felt very good i broke all my prs and and i had very little joint pain and my motivation was really high so yeah i'd say i'd say i over applied it but at the same time my results were so great that i don't know if i did over-apply it. It worked for what I was trying to use it for. It sounds like it worked great. I wouldn't say over-apply. That was the first time I snatched 100 kilos. I was like, fuck yeah.

I've been trying to snatch 100 kilos for a long time. Back when I was, again, this was 20 years ago, so I wasn't as technically good at snatching as I am these days. But again, man, it had me break a bunch of plateaus so it worked at some level and it was really fun I think the thing is that it what it does it puts the intent in there so like you're not just doing three by five at 70 you're doing three by five trying to hit the speed it changes the game Like, anytime you put that in there, like, you know, doing a rep at 75% without velocity is way different than doing 75% with velocity. Because you have athletes that are trying to make sure they hit that certain speed.

And so, like, it just changes everything. You know, like, the rate of force development is going to change. You know, I would have said of force development is going to change i you know i would upset the the motor unit it's going to change because you're saying the body to you know go as fast as you possibly can versus just go it's a big difference we'll do it dude and i did it right after you know like a like a hypertrophy block i used to like do like the ronnie coleman workouts from bodybuilding magazines back in the day but like those workouts you know it's like five sets of 12 on back squats and then five sets of 15 on walking lunges and like you're throwing up in the trash can before you're halfway through your leg workout and that's like that's something to do for

sure and we used to do it all the time and at some level i loved it some level i hated it but right after that going into these speed only workouts you know you're not throwing up it's like it's not intimidating you're like fuck dude got to like go to failure on back squats for the fifth set in a row. Like it's all, it's all fun because you're just moving fast and it's not beating you up. You're not, you're not, there's not going to be any of the, like of the suck. You're not going to, your legs aren't going to be burning. You're not going to be breathing hard. Like it's, you just,

you stop and rest anytime you get slightly tired. And so like, uh, motivation wise, like it's easy to jump into those workouts. you know they're going to be fun and you know quote unquote easy right i would even say that leads me to like one of my other points is like you know it makes sure that the hypertrophy you're getting is specific so like you know there's velocity loss so if i'm doing bodybuilding i'm going to you know what you're probably going to do the first rep to the last rep is going to you know the speed of the first and speed of the last I'm going to, you know, what you're probably going to do, the first rep to the last rep is going to, you know, the speed of the first and speed of the last, it's going to drop probably 50, 60%, which is 60% is like where you're failing, you know, is what that's happening. And like, the only thing about that is when you're doing that, you're getting a lot of hypertrophy,

but it's going to be a lot of slow twitch fibers. And like, you know'm with with um ryan i mean i'm going to be very particular about how what muscle we're gaining and so we're looking at we're trying to keep it no more than like 20 percent velocity loss 10 to 20 at most which is what is where we stay and so like we're trying to keep them fast which sounds like probably you were like 10 to 20% at most. And so therefore, like muscle that you're adding is very specific. And so like, that's a big part of like, because I can't, I don't want to gain a ton of unnecessary weight. Like if he gets up to 80 kilograms, you know, and he's moving slowly, what good is that? Zero.

So like, you know, because we're pretty much already maxed out that 73 kilogram you know muscle mass he's already maxed it out as you can see he's huge but it's good muscle obviously you know his vertical lead didn't change his jumping has gone up so yeah that's important as well yeah i mean it's obviously good for for ryan in his situation he's a competitive weightlifter he needs to be explosive and whatnot. But like kind of based on what I said a second ago about it not beating me up, like the older I get and, you know, as you get older, you kind of lose speed and power first.

Like old man strength is kind of a thing, but old man speed is obviously like laughable almost. Like old people aren't fast. And so like as we get older and older, like I'm, you know, I'm approaching 40, Travis, you're approaching 50. Like we're out of our prime at this, and we're trying to just be healthy. But doing some amount of speed work, just for a regular person who's just not a competitive athlete anymore, just keeping some of that speed work in the program just helps you not regress in those areas that often fall off quickly for older people. And again, it doesn't beat up your joints too,

which is also great as you get older. I would say it's more important for an older person really, is that because like, I wish I'd had velocity the entire time I was an athlete because I would avoid so many unnecessary injuries, you know, like trying to go heavy when there is no point in me going heavy, which was all the time. But now as you know, as older person just trying to be healthy,

that's the only way I will train. The only way I'm going to squat is with velocity to avoid me because I'm still a fool. I'm about to be 50, and I'm still an idiot. I'm still going to try to go to max. But I can still have that same intent and same drive, but what I do is just say instead of like going to 1rm 1rm at 0.5 meters per second and so like it gives me a whole something else to push

for and like where i get nowhere near a miss and so i don't limp away from a training session i can walk away yeah very unlikely to compensate as well like you're not hitting you're not hitting failure both from an intensity or from a volume fatigue point of view. And so you're likely to do technically perfect reps when you're doing speed work almost every time, like just more first reps as Louie would say. Which brings me to another point. It's like, you know, as a coach, you do need to –

if you're not careful, like say when you have your athletes and you say they're doing like a clean, for example, or a and you're adding velocity you got to be very careful because what what it will cost sometimes is an athlete to do something that's not very technically sound to get their speed so that is where i would be very careful too if you see yeah i would add a velocity and a technical you know you know application as well so if technique breaks down no matter how fast it is you should stop it yeah so because you get them competing you get two two young bucks competing and then you know they're gonna do whatever they can to get this velocity up at that point that's where you do have an eye and you can see okay this dude's

lost his mind so um all of the athletes that you're coaching like you're in a sport that really self-selects for people that have like extremely fast twitch right so if somebody that's more normal say me that's been doing like crossfit for a decade and a half and is like really trying to be as average as pop, like increase the level of average you basically are across all the time domains. Right. Um, how does that change kind of like your,

what your approach would be using velocity because your athletes really have to focus on that. Whereas somebody that's like also needs to be able to go run a half marathon on a whim wants to have a different kind of like training stimulus would that change your approach to how how you implement velocity so i would definitely look at the velocity losses i was talking about and like you know you'd want to push an athlete like that to say 40 you know you know they're they're gaining muscle and they're getting used to working while they're tired and while they're you know

those metabolizers are in there hurting and burning like they can still work through that but like but i'm still not going to go 50 60 percent and risk them missing and getting them hurt you know doing some kind of squat workout so yeah i still like it's just the intent changes the intent changes the the amount of velocity loss that i would allow that will change but nothing else will daily readiness i'll still test that you know um and a big one too boys is this if i want to see if what i'm doing is working like using it as a progression versus like you should like i don't know that you'll ever see me max out ryan again, you know, until after the Olympics. And if he wants to do powerlifting, maybe, but I doubt he'll ever go to a true one on end in the squat or

the pool. I will, I will progress with either one or two ways. I will either pick an absolute number and we're just going to hit that same number every six weeks, every 12 weeks to make sure it's getting faster, you know, or I'll say work up to at 0.4 meters per second and watch that number jump. But so like, yeah, even with a CrossFitter, somebody who's, you know, no matter what they're doing, you can, you can monitor progression without having to worry about risking a miss because, you know, even CrossFitter is no point in them missing a deadlift. You know, that's dangerous no matter what.

Yeah. Dan Garner, where can the people find you? Dan Garner Nutrition. There it is. Travis Mash. Speaking of Travis Mash, I haven't seen you front squat 400 pounds in a long time, buddy. I can still do it, but it's barely. All right.

I've been losing weight, too. I don't want you worrying about all this velocity stuff. If I don't see just like a straight up meathead front squad out of you every once in a while. If I miss four or five of front squad, I'm probably dead. Like I'm pretty sure I could do that one more time, even after dying.

So I'm pretty sure. So yeah. Oh, to this game that we just, we're never gonna not be able to play at that level oh

I got since we've dissolved out velocity match five for Jim O'Hara they are great I love them

so yeah Doug Larson right on on Instagram Doug Larson I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner we're barbell shrug

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