Barbell Shrugged - Viewer's Choice: Top 5 Barbell Shrugged Episodes

Episode Date: December 9, 2015

ft. Cory Gregory, Andy Galpin, Eleiko, Window Of Gainz, Julien Pineau

Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Best of Barbell Shrugged continues this week with your top five moments. That's right, you voted and we listened. Up first, we have Julian Pino of StrongFit. If you recall this episode, we talked weaknesses. Julian found ours, and then he smashed us. I hope you enjoy it. All right. Thrilling. And we're back.

We're going to be talking about plugging holes in your pyramid. Yeah, basically. I like the way you phrase it, but yeah. We're here with Julian of course and yeah metaphorically speaking we want to talk about how is it that

you identify these holes plug them yeah and send Adley's on their way that was an aggressive plug that was like yeah

I mean Julian's an aggressive plugger I mean he doesn't he doesn't like candy coated or anything like that. We learned this firsthand today. No lube coming from this guy.

No candy-coating. Lived in Brazil. Sean's going to have to bleep that out. Sorry. All right. So what are some of the biggest holes in the average and or elite CrossFitters game? Okay. So in the last episode, we were talking about the critical mass.

So looking through that prism, basically, what I see, the biggest issue I see in CrossFit is the planes of movement, really. Because everything in CrossFit is up and down. So I know when a CrossFitter comes here, like, for example, the lats will be very strong from all the pull-ups. But in a frontal plane, so like pulling toward them is going to be fairly weak.

There's no more chest activation in CrossFit. For example, it's a humongous problem because you need the chest to also stabilize your shoulders. So it's so much work toward the shoulders. And you want really cool looking pecs. Well, I mean, who doesn't? But there's not a lot of benching or pressing of any kind in the same plane as the railway. There's really not even in the sagittal plane. the all the dips are keeping now oh yeah pick even on the dip so you lock out the tricep but there's really no chest activation in crossfit at all

so that's a humongous hole because um between the lack of rowing and now the lack of chest activation you have the entire um entire structure that does not stabilize the shoulder anymore. Like the serratus is basically very weak, if not, if inexistent and everything. So on top of all the work on the shoulder, now you have nothing stabilizing it. So that's a major issue. So a lot of things that I do is I use the decline. I don't like the bench press. I don't like the bench press that much because it puts too much pressure on the pec minor, which is already overused in CrossFit.

So I like to use a decline there with a bar with dumbbells to get the chest activation going so I can stabilize those shoulders. Obviously, that has to go with a rolling because we don't want the interior tilt. But a big, big issue that I see with CrossFitters is they have no shoulder stabilization. So they cannot stabilize overhead. They don't have the trap structure to stabilize their shoulder. They don't have the chest. They don't have the trap structure to stabilize their shoulder. They don't have the chest. They don't have the lats.

So of course you have so many shoulder injuries now in CrossFit. You don't have nothing. You have nothing. Nothing is putting it in place. And again, the shoulder is a floating joint. There's nothing holding it together. So now you don't have the rear delt.

You don't have the traps. You don't have the lats and you don't have the chest. Well, there you go. That's why you have the shoulder. Sounds like a lot. And that's why you see so many. What do you have?

And so how many labyrinth tears in shoulder, how many? That's the main problem you see is shoulder now. All the time. I've told you. But Julian, the bench press, especially that damn decline press, isn't that just not a very functional thing? I mean, it doesn't look as cool as all this other shit. That's when the mindset is really at play.

Yeah, and you can't put it in a med con and it's not easy in a class setting to have 12 people doing decline and it's not cool and you don't sweat

and you don't feel like you thrashed yourself. I understand all those things but there is, again, and you don't have to do it every day but there is a moment

where the safety and health, like healthy does not seem, seems to be very underrated in CrossFit. Let's put it this way. It's like, I'm going to thrash myself,

and I'll deal with the pain no matter what. And I'm like, but that's not a high-level athlete mentality. If you want to survive long enough, you're going to have to do things correctly. And being stronger means you can last longer. Like, my coach is 70 years old, and he still squats with me. Who's your coach up here? That's my coach up there. How much is is 70 years old and he still squats with him.

How much is on that bar and what is that gentleman's age? At the time he's 61 years old and that is, he's 60 years old and that is 496 on the bar I believe. So a 60 year old man squatting about 400 pounds. And by the way he weighs 162 so that's a triple body weight. 500 pound squat, 162 and 61 years of age.

In the gym, leading to this, he had done 512 for a double. Yeah. And then that's someone who they lifted 550 for, I don't know, four reps, I think. Again, he weighs 162. He's 5'5". I mean, tiny guy. I'd imagine he doesn't feel like he's getting older the same way the other 60-year-olds feel like they're getting older. He probably feels better than us. He's 72 right now. He doesn't feel like he's getting older the same way that other

72 right now if you came into the gym you would give him like early early 60s He has a smallest legs but he can move Yeah, I mean and his back is strong and everything is strong and if you look usually strong people stay Younger longer, let's put it this way, or at least get older or a lot better. You don't need to be put in a home

if you squat triple body weight. Exactly. You're doing just fine. You'll last a lot longer. Well, I'd say muscular strength is the thing that's going to

determine your quality of life from, I don't know, now until you die. Yeah, and again, this is not about being a bodybuilder. This is not about getting bigger and everything.

It's just putting the right muscle in the right places. They don't always show muscle like the biceps or the chest and everything.

Sometimes it can be small muscle or even toward the hammies or stuff like that. But keeping your structure strong in the right places will allow you to last. And the mentality

in CrossFit right now is a short one. And picking well-reasoned exercises to help you address those maybe the sexiest exercise but they are what you need to do i guess yes and again you don't have to do it all the time doesn't have to be in the medcon but to me there is like a side program to crossfit that is needed right now to compensate for the lacking for the huge holes there is in the pyramid we We need a side, call it whatever you want, accessory, strength program on the side of CrossFit

to plug the holes. Call it whatever you want. I don't care, but those exercises have to be done. Again, not like crazy, only one set, once a week, but just do your due diligence. I love your reference to the Dorian Yates principle. Warm up for one set, go out for one set, move on. It's easy.

Just once a week. This isn't something you have to do after you work out every day. Yeah, exactly. Just once a week principle. Yeah. That's it.

It sounds easy. It's like you're on a medication. What is the most effective dose for you right now? Does it have to be the maximum dose? You still have to take it seriously because most people

will do it after they make corn. They'll do a set of rows. I'm like, no. Because remember, there are numbers I'm looking for i want that 50 on the rows i want that 50 percent of the one rep so you're gonna have to take it seriously as a strength program the way you look at your squatting you're gonna treat that the same way so i want you to go out there and decline correctly always great form but challenge yourself to that and that's a little bit the problem with the movement specialist is usually it's the five pound pink dumbbells and then they're going to teach you to move i'm like

okay the next stage is i'm going to make you decline 90 pound 100 pound dumbbell and everything for six reps you go but you're going to do it correctly just like the mindset you are on the five pound dumbbell i want you to do that with 100 pounds doing correctly great form once a week and then we move on. You have to take it seriously. It doesn't mean you have to go crazy with it, but you do have to take it seriously. Anybody who's struggled with movement once they got close to their snatch 1RM knows the effect of load on movement.

You can't just pretend you move well if you haven't done it under load. It's like a fucking totally different thing. Exactly. That 90% always kills you. We've talked about barbell rows. We've talked about barbell rows. We've talked about decline dumbbell presses. Or barbell. I want the dumbbell rows because that's pulling in neutral. And then left versus right.

Dumbbell rows is very important. You got a number for that too. I want about 30% of your max deadlift on the dumbbell row. That's a one-arm dumbbell row. I think that's more than people would guess first. Yeah. I have fairly high numbers. If you're a 200-pound guy, it could be like a 200-pound dumbbell.

Yeah. Yeah. My deadlift is around 620, and I do 190 for five, six reps, around 200, so that's about right. You know what I mean? I'll give a shout-out to Jim Willard, too, who years ago said one of the markers of performance, if you could grab onto a fucking heavy dumbbell, 150, 200, 250 pounds, and do those rows, if you have a grip problem, a deadlift problem,

a back problem, a bench problem, doing that shit tends to fix that. Yeah, it does. Matt Kroc popularized that as well. Kroc rows, yeah. And so I have the decline. The Z-press with dumbbell is an important one. You know what I mean?

That's for, again, to activate the upper back correctly and things like that. And you were talking about a percentage of jerk for that, right? Yeah. Basically, I think the total weight on your Z-press would be about like two. Your jerk should be, so the max weight times 2.5 should be roughly your jerk. So if you use 130, I'll give you at 300. That's about right. Okay.

So what kind of resistance have you gotten from CrossFit athletes for doing quote-unquote bodybuilding exercises? Exactly that. The first thing I get

is I don't do bodybuilding. That's the first phrase I get. I'm like, I didn't say you should oil yourself with a bikini and go on stage. You don't need to get up there

with a bayonet hammock on your crotch. Exactly. Because that's bodybuilding. They don't understand. Bodybuilding is going on band of hammocks on your crotch. Yeah, exactly. And then go there because that's bodybuilding. They don't understand. Bodybuilding is going on stage and posing. I didn't say that. Bodybuilding is building your muscles so they look a certain way.

I didn't talk about that. I just said muscle building, which is not bodybuilding. It's not the same thing. If you have, let's say you have weak biceps, right? You do the keeping pull-ups and even strict pull-ups. They just don't build the bicep. They build your forearms. They build your back, but they don't build the bicep. They build your forearms, they build your back,

but they don't build the bicep. Well, guess what? You're going to have to do biceps curls. Because if you don't, you're going to create, like I have a problem with my bicep, your brachialis is going to start to give you a problem. You can get a tendonitis in your elbows really fast because you have an imbalance between your tricep

and your bicep and stuff like that. Well, then go do biceps curls. Do one set a week. Jesus Christ, this isn't bodybuilding. Bodybuilding is like doing 35 sets every three days you don't have to have the plain rice

and chicken breast either none of that shit chill with the whole like functional movement bullshit a keeping pull up is not a functional movement to build your lats

it's not I'm sorry but I love I'm not saying we shouldn't do keeping pull ups but that idea that CrossFit

only does functional movement bullshit the sumo high pull is not a functional movement I'm sorry like we shouldn't keep pull-ups, but that idea that CrossFit only does functional movement, bullshit. The sumo high pull is not a functional movement. I'm sorry. A rowing machine is not a functional movement.

Treadmill running is not a fucking functional movement. I mean, not to be a dick, but fuck, man. I mean, if it is functional, why are you running on a fucking treadmill for? Yeah, and so,

so again, like doing one set of bicep curls a week is not making you a bodybuilder. But so I get a lot of resistance from doing isolation work. It's like, no, they want everything to be done in a compound movement and in a medcon. But I'm like, okay, look, if you were perfect physically and you would react perfectly, you could do compound movements all day and you'd be fine.

But welcome to human nature. None of us is perfect. And we're all going to have different ways. If I make two people squat the same way, one will get a huge ass and one will get huge quads. So should I just stay there and leave them just doing the squat? No, because one, I'm going to have to go toward the quads. The other one toward the posterior chain. If I don't, create imbalance.

They're going to get stuck. They're going to get hurt. I'm not doing my job as a coach. So I will deal with whatever I have to deal with, with whatever exercise I need to deal with. It's basically an open source like CrossFit was supposed to be. CrossFit was whatever works. Really.

Okay. Well, isolation works. And just because Glassman, being a libertarian, refused to follow the Russian path or all that stuff does not make it wrong for me to do so. And by saying that, I don't imagine you're saying, okay, I like isolation work, and so I'm going to do every single shoulder raise there is

and every single bicep curl and every single tricep extension, every single calf raise and every single whatever. Exactly. You're finding the key log, as you said. You're finding the muscle that's not firing and you're isolating it on purpose to fix the problem. On purpose to make it fire. And then if six months from now we get the biceps firing and then they fire on all the other exercise, then I'll stop doing it.

That's fine. But maybe it's something that is built in you that they just don't fire properly, so we might have to continue. Maybe we don't. Maybe it was just something, a weakness that we fixed, and now we can move on. It depends on the athlete. But I will not make you do biceps curls just because it's not CrossFit. That to me is ridiculous. If you need to do something, I'll make you do biceps curls just because it's not CrossFit. That to me is ridiculous. If you need to do something, I'll make you do that.

I guess what you're saying is there's a lot of functional movements that just aren't in CrossFit. Just because you don't see it prescribed there doesn't mean that you can't use it in your training. And there's a lot of functional movements that are great, but they will not allow you to develop your body completely. We're not machines. It doesn't work like that. For some people, the clean and jerk is enough. Great. For other people,

it won't be enough. Some people, they do clean and jerk, they get a massive back and everything. Other people just get quads and triceps. I mean,

just, you know, whatever. It's just, the same movement will not develop two different people the same.

Some people will develop imbalances here, weaknesses there. Everybody is different. And so, the idea that the clean and jerk, oh, it does everything.

No, not for everybody. Well, they make tools in all sizes and shapes and for all kinds of applications for a fucking really good reason. Yes, exactly. Not every tool is right for every job. You can't just have one big fucking wrench in your house. Yeah, and so that doesn't mean you shouldn't do clean and jerk. But I'm just saying the clean and jerk might be not enough for your real dealt. So now what?

So you're going to do more clean and jerk to get more real dealt? I'm like, that just is the wrong mentality to all that. Look, the clean and jerk is great, but in your particular case, it's not doing this. Maybe it does for you, but it's not doing for you. So let's address that issue because your base lacks this. So I don't go into the argument with the CrossFaders because I'm like, look, you say whatever you want.

Your base lacks this, either you listen to me or you don't. But you're going to come to see me before or after surgery. It's up to you which one. So you can just keep going. You'll pop something. And then you come to me because now I have more work because you're even more fucked up than you were before. But to pay more for it was a plus for you.

Well, not really, but yeah. Sometimes not worth all the fuss to deal with those problems, of course. Yeah, and so what I do is not really fancy. It's not programming like, oh, my program, you know, like Outlaw, when they were like programming sends this person and this person to the games. I'm like, bullshit. There's no programming that is sending anybody to the games. If you're saying that, you're an asshole because you're selling something.

It's not true. The athlete is going to put the work. The athlete has a talent, the work ethic, all that stuff necessary maybe to go to the games. And your programming is going to help. But your programming is not the one sending the athletes. Your job is only to remove the key logs. That's all. I'm just helping. I'm playing the whole. I'm building a better base.

That's all I do. I just want to make sure that you can exploit your talent and that you won't break doing so. That's it. That's it. So it's not fancy. It's not the top level programming and all that stuff. But even the top-level programmer, that's why I'm going to work with CJ and Invictus,

because it's great to have all that volume and everything. But if your base is not built correctly, the volume will break you. Eventually, in every sport, once you get to a big level like NFL, and major league baseball, basketball, et cetera, it becomes a game of recruiting. And then primarily the strength coach's job is to keep athletes healthy,

to keep the best players playing. Exactly. So just your job as a coach is, I mean, me or those guys, is I'm going to make a good athlete and I'm going to give it to the position coach so he can make them better. So I have to give them someone that won't break, that can actually do whatever is required. So that doesn't mean specific movements.

Like, unfortunately, you see a lot. Oh, it's just, I'm going to make you, my coach is to make you better at football. No, no, no, no. That's a football coach job, to make you better at football. My job is just to give you to him, healthy, capable, and physically capable of playing football at a high level. Then he makes you better at football. Kind of like you develop a durable athlete, and then they make a good football player. Football player. But I make a durable athlete, and then they make a good football player. Football player.

But I make a better athlete. Right. You take, and then you make it into a football player. But if I start to train you as a football player, and then I give you to a position coach to make you a better football player, nobody took care of the athlete part. And that's a problem.

And that's what I see in CrossFit a lot, is like, well, we're going to do those movements. And I'm like, you need a high volume of training for CrossFit. It is what it is. But if I can't build a correct base, the high volume will break the athlete. And so that's that short term mentality you see more and more where the volume is getting greater and greater because the games are completely insane. And so for people to be able to handle that, they're going to need a side program to build a correct base so they can handle the volume. CrossFit is going to need enough season. They're going to have to understand that part. You're going to need a side program to build a correct base so they can handle the volume. CrossFit is going to need an off-season. They're going to have to understand that part.

You're going to need an off-season. You're going to need to heal. And you're going to need to build a correct base. And have a mental break from the suffering. That too. So you're going to have to treat it as a sport. What do you consider it to be now? Is there not kind of the season March-ish through July-ish for the Games competitors?

And then everything else is the off-season? How do you view it right now? The Kill Cliff has a competition in October. Okay, so you get off the games, you get August off, and then you're back in training September.

That's not an off-season. Oh, we've seen athletes compete the next weekend afterwards. No, but that is just insane. So does that have more to do with the individual athletes choosing to do other competitions besides?

I think the culture of CrossFit is still very new, and they still have that teenager mentality of, I'm just going to party hard all year, baby. So I see a competition... It's fucking great when you're a teenager, dude. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes in your 30s.

And it's a stream balance, right, coach? And sometimes you get arrested, too, in the process. But it's still that mentality of... That healthy is very underrated in crossfit and they still have that mentality i'm just going to boast to the world and i'm just going to thrash my body and i'm going to show how tough i am by doing a competition every three weeks and i need to compete to get better on everything and then okay and then when you're every single training session competition but so great athletes get away longer with things like that but when

they break they break uglier than other people. So if a coach is listening to this right now and they have athletes that have that mentality, how do you handle your athletes so they can kind of model after you? Do you have any suggestions? Ask for an off-season. You're going to have to take two, three months, at least two, three weeks off CrossFit.

And I would like, honestly, six weeks, eight weeks, whatever, but off CrossFit so we can... That doesn't mean no training no no no no no like mentally stressing we have to stop it's not just the outside it's the inside stuff you have to stress the hormonal system all the time the adrenaline glands require time to recover after all the grams they're short it's gonna take nine weeks for them to recover. So is that mostly strength

work, skill work, intervals? Yeah, a lot of skill work, strength work, depending on how beat up you are from the games

and everything. You're not trying to push your numbers up if it's just strength work. You're just basically practicing

some skill movements. Yeah, and let's see what this year is going to be like. What do we need this

year? You look at the games. Okay, so what did you lack? What do we need to work on this year? Every year, you're a different athlete you you got

stronger or certain things hopefully you got better so now what we move out do i need to for example last year for me was to get val healthy that was it because your shoulder was a problem your hip was a problem i just wanted to get her healthy now that i've done that i can start to focus on certain issues like the snatch uh making her a little bit stronger, a little bit explosive. But I couldn't do it as much as I wanted last year because it would have meant not taking care of her health first, which was no way for me. No matter what, even though she has a

short time period, I didn't care. I told her I'm going to fix her shoulder first. Once you can do all the CrossFit stuff without being in pain on the shoulder, then we can move on. Move safer, move better, move faster. That's just the way it is. So move safer was I'm going to fix the shoulder. Now that the shoulder, then we can move on. Move safer, move better, move faster. That's just the way it is. So move safer was I'm going to fix the shoulder.

Now that the shoulder is fixed, I can go to move better where the shoulder is in the right place. We can work on those clean and jerks. Now I can make her better at other stuff. But first, I'm going to make you healthy. And we did. And I should know that your favorite weightlifter,

your favorite strength athlete is doing this. You watch Ilya Nelya or somebody crush a world record clean and jerk at the Olympic Games, guess what? The guy didn't do anything for about a year afterwards. A year and a half

he took off after the Olympic Games. A year and a half. The guy was rowing. He weighed 185 when he came back to training. Oh yeah, 185.

He lost 30 pounds. He was just rowing every day because he's a guy that has to move all the time so he was just rowing. He weighed 185. If Ilya Aelin can do it for a year and a half, you can do it for eight weeks. And guess what?

He came back and fucking looked better. And won the Olympics. One weight class above. So what would the average off-season look like? I mean, we kind of said skill, work, strength training. But are they reducing how many days a week they're training? No, because those guys like to train all the time. So mentally it would not work for them.

But for example, I would take one and do I need to, is there something I need to, like for example, at the game that we saw that is really glaring, something which you just couldn't do. Matt Fraser climbing the rope and everything. So let's analyze that. What did you like? Was it like the open grip?

You know, so stuff like that. What happened for people that didn't see it? Okay, so Mattzier lost the games basically on that on that flipping the pig rope climb workout um flipping the pig is open hand so i'm sure that destroyed his grip then he got into uh rope climb and uh he had four to do and the fourth he couldn't so he tried like three four five times and he had to sit uh looking at the road not being able to climb watching everybody else go by him and that's basically what cost him the game he was ahead by 100 points by then and he ended up in second place after that workout why because his grip could not handle that supinated open hand strength and so something like that that would be the first

thing i would look at he said look we have to look at your grip and your lat engagement on stuff like that so it would be a lot of testing on the rope pool and stuff like that but that would be a priority how come you couldn't uh deadlift those fucking um kettlebells in the last that has to be looked at is the problem that your grip was so bad you couldn't have a grip or is it because you really couldn't deadlift in that you know with in a neutral grip with the weight by your ankles instead of in front of you? Are you so dependent on your lower back that you can only lift

if the weight is in front of you? Can you not put your hips and lift in that particular position? Was that the problem or was the grip the problem? That's what I would like to know. What gave up? Or maybe it's your head

because you were already gone because you knew you lost. But I would have to look at that first. And now we're going to fix that no matter what. Then, are you healthy or not? would have to look at that first. And now we're going to fix that, no matter what. Then, are you healthy or not? So let's fix this and everything. And so let's say he's healthy and just a grip problem.

So first, we fix the grip. We fix the deadlift. And then we move on from there, basically. But I would have to look. I go like that. His first health. And then after that, what cost you? And then you start to decompose.

What needs to be done? And that's what the off season is for cardio comes back in six weeks so I don't have to worry about that but first you're going to have to back off

a little bit especially the mentally stressing because right now he's so stressed that guy I would back him off on the stress level

mentally go hike for three weeks you're not allowed to touch weight I just want you to go hike and sleep 12 hours a day for three weeks then we're going to

sit down take a look at what happened, see why you fail where you fail, and then we're going to devise a point to fix that. And then this is your normal training, and then we'll move from there, basically. One last question before we go, and that is for the average crossfitter, for the average weightlifter, somebody who's not, you know, they don't have a season really. What would you tell them that they need to add to their training? We said, you know, once a week, throwing these things.

But the average person, what is it they can do to help, you know, increase their longevity? Yeah, they will have to sacrifice. Like if they train, let's say, five days a week and they do five main counts a week, they'll have to sacrifice at least one. Okay. To put, maybe once a week they can do the assistance work depending on what they need. They can shove it in one day. If they can't,

then you shove it in two days and then you'll do your medcons only three times a week instead of two. But in the long run, it will make you better. You can't get away with five days of medcons

if you have glaring weaknesses and think you're going to get better. I know they think that way, but the fact is it won't happen. It might take a year, it might take 18 weeks, but then you're going to hit the wall

and now it's going to require more work to fix it than if you do it from the get-go i mean like by the way you know shoulder pain every morning that's not normal if it takes you 10 minutes to get out of bed and you're 28 that's not normal right just so stuff like you have just be honest on the issues you need to address there is a way to do this so don't worry you don't have to freak out about but when there's an issue address issues you need to address. There is a way to do this. So don't worry. You don't have to freak out about it. But when there's an issue, address it. You have to own your training. Look, this is not working.

That doesn't mean you're a pussy. That doesn't mean any of that. It just means there's an issue. Just address it. Time to make a better decision. Put it down. Look at the critical mass. Look why.

What are you lacking? Put that back in. And so you do it twice. Now you fix the problem. So now can you remove that or not? Can you lacking put that back in and so you do it twice now you fix the problem so now can you remove that or not can you just put it into one day can you increase the volume but you cannot increase the intensity at the same time so just on the training do it nice and slow but have like a year-long period instead of that six weeks mentality or i'm gonna kill the squad for six weeks okay and then what yeah i mean have a short-term goal but also mid-term and then the long term but

understand that there are priorities that needs to be addressed otherwise you will break you and stop thinking it's okay to be in pain all the time it's not not i mean some pain is normal but fix the problems first if the pain comes from a problem that you're not addressing it's going to get worse not better that's for sure i actually have one more question for you it's a good question shut up jerk it better be good yeah better be good we've been in the pain cave joanna you go to the pain cave when you go to your dark spots when you're pushing that sled you're carrying the yoke when you're carrying a stone or whatever what do you say to yourself some things that might help other people when they are now getting used to what it's like to suffer and still with a smile

on your face it's a heidegger who said you have to burn the questions. Burn the questions. And that's the true thing. I'm at a stage where I don't ask myself why I'm doing it. I don't have to do anything. There's no why. I'm just going to take that weight, and I'm going to go over there with it. Simple. I burn the questions.

Burn the questions down, baby. That's the true way to be able to train and everything is burn the questions. Love it. I like it. I like it a lot, yeah. Boom. Thank you, Julian. That's it.

It was a joy, man. My pleasure. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for coming on the show. Yes. Next up, we talk about the power of squatting every day with former coal miner, fitness model, bodybuilder, powerlifter, and businessman, Corey Gregory. Enjoy.

March in Ohio can only mean two things. Bitter cold and the return of a true strength tradition. The Barbell Shrug Team has ventured to Frosty, Columbus, home to a multi-sport fitness event as big and bold as its legendary name says. This is the Arnold Sports Festival, a massive four-day event that plays host to more than 50 competitions, 18,000 athletes, nearly 200,000 avid fitness fans, and of course, some of the biggest names in strength. We've come to town to give you a taste of the madness. Weightlifting, bodybuilding, strongman,

CrossFit, endurance, and physique. Whatever your industry, passion, or fetish, you can find a 100-gram dose of it right here. There's no greater circus showcase of strength and fitness in the entire world. The lights are bright, the stage is set, and we are all oiled up and ready. It's time for Barbell Shrug Baby.

Welcome to the Arnold. And we're back with Corey Gregory. Do you know what you're doing? Who has gone from being lean, sexy beast to big, fat power lifter to lean, sexy beast plus power lifter. How did you do it? Yeah, man. You know what's kind of funny is kind of when I got ripped back down,

I started doing this kind of run of different magazine stuff. I'm at nine covers right now, which is pretty cool. My goal was ten. It's on my list. You got me beat. I've only got three. Oh, man. Was it Power Magazine?

No, Muscle Fitness. I was in a tattoo magazine once. That's pretty cool. I'm on zero. So I basically got like pretty shredded up and I was like man, I gotta find a way to get both of these going. And I think the CrossFit community's figured that out a lot

too. I mean, a lot of dudes are strong and shit. Louie told me all the time there's a lot of 200 pound benchers but a shit load of 600 pound deadlifters. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. You probably aren't going to the CrossFit Games unless you deadlift over 500. Yeah, agreed. Probably close to 600. Yeah, I agree, 100%. All the guys I've ever messed with, they're that strong.

And so my thing was— They've also spent a period of time getting big and strong. Yeah. That's where people miss. They just want to do the workouts they see them doing now. It doesn't work like that. And so my thing was, you know what? I need to find something in the middle somewhere.

And so I just bombed out of powerlifting meet. I tried to make 81. I cut 15 pounds. Me and Tony Ramos from Westside went down to a big meet. I've never bombed out of a meet. That's like one of the most humbling. It sucks, man. Dude, it's awful.

I think it's good to bomb out one time. Yeah. No, it was good. I drove six hours. So you never want to do it ever again? I drove six hours and bombed out. And so I was pissed, right? So I get home and I'm like, I was good. I drove six hours. So you never want to do it ever again? I drove six hours and bombed out. And so I was pissed, right?

So I get home and I'm like, I'm online. I'm like, man, I got to figure this shit out. One, I want to get stronger because obviously I'm weak. I just bombed out. Two, I want to be leaner because I got all these opportunities with my brand now to be on covers, do all this stuff. And so I was like, start searching online. And I found this guy named John Bros. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. John's a man. Yeah. Oh, that's my dude now. So just like any of these other guys, I read his article and I just reached out to him. I said, hey, man, I'm going to be in Vegas. I'd love to learn from you. We'll link to that article, too.

It's really good. Yeah, the T Nation article. The one that says, and this was my favorite thing. He goes, if somebody captured your family and said they were going to kill them unless you squatted 500 pounds, would you squat once a week or would you squat every day? Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.

And I was like, this is my kind of guy. I'm in. Well, it's true. I mean, I'd be like, I'm not squatting at all.

People look at the program, right? And that's really important, but they're missing all the mental factors that if your mind controls your body and your mind is underdeveloped, under-trained, and you're sitting in your fucking cushy gym, you're not at a Westside place. You're not at a place where somebody like John is showing you what's possible. You cannot get that level of performance.

I don't give a shit what kind of magical program you got. It's not the program. You got to have this part, too. I hope no one's hearing this thinking, like, I'm going to do five by five every day. Heavy. Seven days a week. We're going to give you a little bit more detail right now probably. Yeah, absolutely.

Before you get too froggy. So, you know, I just started looking at that. And one thing, I don't really like traditional cardio either. It drives me crazy. So I was like, my real cardio is when I'm done training, I go to the track and I lunge 400 meters. And so it helps with all 400, 800 meters. I've done up to a mile.

I did a mile. You've lunged for a mile? With a 40-pound vest. That is legit. I'll tell you what, one of my first CrossFit workouts back in 07, I was like, I'm just going to log on to the website and do a workout. It was like 400 meters

lunges. I was like, oh, that's so easy. 100 meters in. I don't think it's easy because to run around 400 meters for me is like, fuck, I don't want to run around the track one time. Jesus. Is there anything else I can do? But I think that's all.

400 to 800 meters, lunches, sometimes weighted. I mean. Yeah, I went three quarters of a mile with 80-pound vests. I don't build your legs. A mile with a 40-pound vest. But almost five days a week, 400 meters, and I do like 11, 12 minutes and knee to the ground, and I'm moving, right? So I was really dedicated for about a year of that. And so it made my connective tissue really strong. I was going to say that's going to make your hips feel great.

Yeah. Wasn't Ronnie Coleman that's famous for doing parking lot lunges. He would always do like 135 or 185 for like a hundred meters or something like that. He would do like, yeah, he would do, I see him do 185 to 25 or distances. So we, you know, so I got into that and plus i'm gonna start doing it i call it lunge monday again i'm gonna call it right now i'm gonna text you tuesday this son of a bitch is gonna pull something off a bone yeah he's gonna be hurt as sure as the sun's gonna goddamn rise tomorrow this guy's gonna be hurt tomorrow yeah that's true i basically i hashtag it lunge university and the reason why i call it that because i'm you're listening to guys like you.

I'm listening to Robert Kiyosaki, Donald Trump. So I'm listening to my headphones while I'm lunging. So I'm getting two birds with one stone. Because I do a podcast, too, called 13 in the Prez. And I do it with Maurice Claret. And so we talk about all kinds of stuff. He's a really unique guy. The Maurice Claret?

The Maurice Claret. From fucking Ohio State? Yes, sir. That's one of my training partners. Man, that guy's got – He's awesome. Mike's like, who's this athlete you speak of? Because I never watched American sports with the footballs.

Oh, he's a sad. This guy's an incredible athlete. And his story is so, it's Wikipedia, that bitch. You guys should have him on. He's awesome. Oh, I get it. That's a done deal. He'll be here today signing autographs, actually.

Oh, sweet. So he's infamous and famous all in the same regards. You know who I'm saying this story. I love him, so anyway, so I said, you know what, we've been having these amazing conversations like, and I'm not taping any of it. So we started it just a couple of weeks ago and we've got great feedback. And basically I'm giving people information to use while they're doing their lunges. So anyway, so I'm on this lunge kick. People think I'm nuts, which most of the shit I do and it's going really well. And I'm and my metabolism is through the roof because of it. And so then when I come on a John's thing, I'm like, well, shit, if I start squatting every day,

that should help raise my test levels. And then I lunge for conditioning. I'm like, I might just be on to something. So here my ass is. Every morning I get to old school, and I'm taking a squat. And I go triples up to a single. It takes about 20 minutes. And I do front squat five times a week and back squat twice a week.

I never had a pair of Oles before. AJ Pappas from Reebok sent me a pair of Oles. He's a friend of mine. I was like, let's roll. It's a different world. If you've been just in regular training shoes and you've been squatting and then you throw on weightlifting shoes for the first time, it's like, people go, should I do it?

I'm like, what? To Doug's point earlier, to be clear, you're building a high level of squatting skill with this. You're not just crushing yourself with sets of five, five, five. You can't do it. You get the volume from the lighter things that are still harder shit but not beating you down. And then a lot of front squats, which are also a little bit easier to recover from than the back squat.

Because you're not loading up as heavy because you're not that strong. But relatively speaking, it's hard as fuck. It feels maximal. That's what matters. John says you go for what strong. But relatively speaking, it's hard as fuck. It feels maximal. That's what matters. John says you go for what they say a comfortable max, whatever that means, but you're going for a daily max of some type of weight. And what I like about him is he's like,

you know, your body lies to you. And I'm like, well, tell me. It does. He says, you know what? Get to 225 and tell me how you feel. You know, like every day I walk in, I'm like, okay, day 195. And I'm like getting under the bar, and I'm like, okay, day 195. And I'm like getting under the bar

and I'm like, oh, I'm warming up. And then boom, PR 350 on front squat. You're like, it happens all the time to me. I actually like calling it the technical rep max. Yeah, there you go. That makes sense. Because like people, I think people will recognize

when their form is breaking down before. Absolutely. It may, you know, people force through some pretty bad shit. It's not the one I'm going to hang my spine on the platform every day. Right. But you know, I have through some pretty bad shit. It's not the one I'm going to hang my spine on the platform every day. Right. But, you know, I have minimum weights I try to at least hit.

So if I'm front squatting without a belt, I want to try to hit at least – and I do a lot of pauses I stole from Cloakoff. Basically, I'm like – Pauses are the shit, dude. I'm a mix of everybody, dude. I pull conjugate with, you know, Louis style twice a week. I'm doing John's everyday squat thing, but I do mostly pause work until the meet day. And then I go back

to chucks and go wide. That's kind of been my science. Yeah, it works amazing. So whatever I can back squat in Oles, I can do 100 pounds more wrapped up in chucks

and a meet. Really? So I can back squat 455 in Oles right now. But you can use I'm about the same. But you use It doesn't matter

what shoe it's about the same. 20 pounds. People understand how important it is to make things harder. If you can squat a, because you. I'm about the same. But you use. It doesn't matter what shoe. People need to understand. It's about the same 20 pounds. People understand how important it is to make things harder. If you can squat more like that, don't necessarily do it. You do the thing that's harder in the gym because it's going to make the other thing grow more. Absolutely. As I was saying, the great thing about this kind of training, you're not beating yourself up with volume.

No. The biggest thing people don't understand is you talk about your body will lie to you. Fucking really amazing book, man. I'm really impressed with The Rise of Superman. Okay. That book is so awesome because it talks about how much extreme sports athletes have pushed the limits because to do a massive jump, you have to align so closely with the state of flow and you have to master that and get to that every fucking time you jump.

And the magic happens right on the edge. The problem with a lot of people in the gym is that they don't know how strong they could be. Yeah. And there are tiers of lying actually too. Like you get, I'm 300 pound squatter. I can never get to 400 you go to west side now you do 500 or somebody else maybe you do six seven there's all these tiers we keep looking for ways to break through absolutely this john's program is a great way to break the fear that show you

you can be strong that big front squat loses its ability to scare you after a while oh dude i mean i'm not scared to like i'm gonna front squat 40. I know it. It's just a matter of when, 100%. And then my goal was to be 198 and pull conventional and raw squat 600, drug-free, lifetime drug-free, and I think that would be a cool thing to do and have some upper abs. Not lower abs, upper abs. No, but at least upper abs. But I think that those things and the volume,

I don't do a regular leg day anymore. The volume is in the lunging. So, I mean, and I get to the point, I tell my athletes, I train some NFL guys, they're friends of mine. I'm like, look, if you can go 400, 800 meters and you're not even tired, you're going to be breaking arm tackles like crazy.

If you do that, your legs are probably muscular and fit as they need to be. Oh, dude, and they just put so much blood in your legs. That's actually a really common thing with, especially with people in the CrossFit and weightlifting both, is there's so much just squatting, not enough lunging, period. I agree. And then you may not want to lunge with a lot of weight. And like what you're saying, it's like use it for your conditioning.

Get that blood flowing through there. That's what it is. Activate your glutes. Activate your lower back. I mean, every time I've had lower back problems, my glutes were weak. I mean, 100%. That's another thing Louie does a lot of. Most of the stuff he's doing is easy, light, high rep stuff.

People don't realize that. Yeah, you lift heavy for maybe 20%. The other 80%, yeah, it's 8 to 15 reps at a time. And the volume is carefully regulated. Louie's not going to let you do dumb shit in there. Everything's mathematically set. So he pushes the intensity as hard as possible, knowing Louie's not going to let you do dumb shit in there. Everything's mathematically set. So he pushes the intensity as hard as possible, knowing that you're not going to do this endless sets because you think it's going to make you better.

To control the sets. I think go out and push that prowler, wheelbarrow, the walking. The best thing is the hip squats, where you just sit there and walk back and forth. Yeah, he's big on those right now. I did that yesterday. It burns like a mother.

Yeah, I loved it. Oh, it's cool. So I think that that kind of set of set the, kind of set the stage for me then to say, okay, now that I've got this kind of figured out and then I'm doing my upper body splits usually in the afternoon or often in the morning, wherever, like, which is mostly golden era type stuff. You know, I still need to look aesthetic for whatever I'm doing. And then I was like, now I got to figure out my nutrition now kind of from CrossFit. I really just dropped my grains out, but I didn't limit my calories. And I've always ate kind of high fat, like Mario DePasquale, but I just didn't do the

loads. Like they kind of teach in the anabolic diet. So I really just said, you know what, I'm going to eat fruits, veggies, uh, meat, eggs, all the basic stuff. And then when I feel like shit, I'll just have a cheat meal, but that could be a month. Yeah. It just depends. You know, I mean, when I'm at events like this and stuff, I'm not as careful, but you know, so I just basically had set myself some guidelines. And as I squat and lunged and didn't cheat as often, my weight started coming from like 95. And I'm like, I'm getting ready for this FitnessRx photo shoot that just came out as my hundred. It documented my documented my first hundred days of squats.

And I usually shoot it like 170, 175. Well, I'm like 187 and I'm looking like way different. And I'm like, damn, got some going. Yeah., I'm like 187 and I'm looking like way different. And I'm like, oh shit. Damn, got some going here. So I shoot at 184. Not only do I shoot at 184, I squat 405

and always in the shoot, which I was barely if I could walk into a shoot in the old days. I mean, I'd be peeled, but I was a mess. Wow. So here I am.

My performance is good. I'm looking good enough to still be on the cover and I'm 14 pounds heavier than my last shoot, which is a shitload for a drug-free guy. From a lower body perspective. It's too good to be true. You'd pay a lot of money to get that from a bottle. Dude, of course, right?

You're squatting. You're front squatting five days a week, back squatting twice a week. Pretty heavy. Low reps. Yeah, low reps. Triples up to a single, then I go on. So you just work up to a triple or to a single and then you don't do drops or sets.

Now, John talks about doing back off sets. I don't really do those. That's kind of where my change is because then I'm going to something else.

So like this morning, for instance. So he wouldn't say go do 400 meters lunges. No. That's like, you replace that volume, the drop sets

with the lunges. He's not adding that part to the lunges. A lot of crosswords make the mistake of adding things to more things. So you've got to be

taken out of something else. You've got to remove sometimes. Yeah, that's like my version of it, basically. So if someone wanted to like, hey, I'm going to try this out, you just work up to a heavy single, heavy triple. Really quickly, too. 20 minutes. 20 minutes, you're moving. And then you go do your lunges.

Yeah. Yeah, it's not that bad. And then you've got upper body day. So like a lot of people, if they don't have to, like I have a little gym everywhere I look. So my story is a little bit easier than that. But you got, most of the people will do lunges in the gym maybe 10 minutes and then go to their split. So if they're at 30 minutes and then they go 30 minutes on chest or back or whatever they're training that day. So the way I set it up is I go, if we pool, I'll usually stay and pool at the gym.

And I'll usually, like I had I had a bunch of PRs lately. I just pulled 495 standing on three mats conventional, which is a good pool for me. Then front squat at 375 this morning, which is a PR for me. As John likes to say, I'm really crushing PRs, dude, all over the place. It's been consistent. How many hours a day are you training? I would say total maybe an hour and 45 minutes. You're not going to the CrossFit Games.

Those guys are having to train like six hours a day to stay competitive. But that's amazing. I think you can fit it in in shorter periods. You have what most people want, strong and look good at the same time. I think you can fit it in in a shorter period of time, but because I have a lunch break that the whole crew is training, I take longer. But really, I think I could fit it in an hour and a half if I really had to. It's that I'm doing accessory work at your extra GHD

work, extra sled work, just cause I can. You do that before or after your lunges? After. So everything, so I try to do, and I don't eat breakfast before I train either. I don't do it just because of some science thing or I just feel better when I don't eat and train. So literally I like to go in on, I take my salt, which is our product. I drink some water, boom, I'm right in the gym, right to the squat rack. That's why one of the things I'm kind of popular for right now is my Snapchat, um, which I don't know if you guys are on that or not, but I get up every day. Terrible using it. Yeah. So that's my hardest social media. Yeah. So I get up and I, I, I, you know, usually try to say something motivational and then I say, now wake

your ass up and get to the gym. And then I get to the gym and like, I got these kids hitting me up, all this stuff. And it's like, I'm kind of like their alarm clock. Cause I'm up at 4am every day. So by whoever they get up and they kind of, and I had so many kids come to the booth and say, dude, it's so motivational. I'm laying, feeling like a mess in my bed. And most of them are college kids too. So who knows what they're getting into? And then I look at yours and you've already, it's two hours later, you've already squatting. You're yelling at at me to get the hell up and it's just one of those things like I've kind of got into but it's a mentality of no matter how I feel that John says your body lies to you man I'm right to the rack bro and I'm ready to get it nice I love it yeah so that's cool fantastic dude shit

yeah see we were when we when you guys first talked to me he's like hey you know we could talk about muscle for him a little bit I was like well we'll talk about it but I want to talk about training that's what I'm passionate about you got us all thinking like yeah what can we incorporate into our experiments ourselves no it's I got a feeling you and I are going to be talking about training for a while dude it's unbelievable I tell you what I've never my lower

back has never physically felt this strong before I mean I was like a 425 conventional puller it was awful I pulled in chucks because that's what Louie told back has never physically felt this strong before. I mean, I was like a 425 conventional puller. It was awful. I pulled in chucks because that's what Louie told me to do. I was a much better sumo guy, but you know, I put Oles on, I saw Dimitri. So you're pulling Oles too. Oh wow. It makes it harder. Well, but it does it for me though. I feel so much faster out of the bottom, like crazy.

Like it jumps off the floor for me and it, not 500 pound to jump off the floor, but like I did 405 for 10 reps and it just seems like it just boom, boom. I have a smoothness to it. My stance is this close. Frog stance. I pull with my heels almost touching. Wow. It's unbelievable. With the Olympic shoes. With the Olympic

shoes. Three quarter heel or a half inch heel? Full lifters. Full lifters. That's probably the most unique thing you've said out of all of your training secrets. So my quad, I don't know if it's because of stance. That's what I'm thinking. This guy's got probably a quad that's working here. So basically, it's like when I line up and I go to pull in them Oles,

it's like I'm working right off my VMO and just boom, and it just feels like it jumps off the ground. Like a cold spring down there. Yeah, that's really – when I would get in chucks, it just felt like shit. I mean, I could never get comfortable. And so literally, I mean, I'll probably pull 550 at my next meet in Ole's close stance.

And I mean, it's a hundred and some pound difference than my old convention. I feel like the big, I feel like I want to watch him snatch. Yeah. Do you do any ollie lifting? I just started.

So I just cleaned, cleaned 275 the other day with John. I never even know how to do a hook grip. I mean, I'm really like novice at that. Yeah. So John comes in and I'm, I'm like, dude, I tried to pull off, or I tried to do cleans. Is John here? Yeah, he is. Oh I'm really like novice at that. Yeah. So John comes in and I'm like, dude,

I tried to pull off or I tried to do cleans. Is John here? Yeah, he is. Oh, I haven't seen him at all. Yeah, he came by the booth yesterday. So he came in early. You should go talk to him.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I love it. He came in and we, he came to, and he came to the muscle farm gym and then he just got off the plane. I was like, dude, I was like, man,

I tried to like clean 225 the other day and I was trying to use a hook grip and it just fell out of my hand. Like I know I'm doing it wrong. Oh yeah. So he comes over and a lot of people because I'm pretty vast in my training, they just I tried to like clean 225 the other day and I was trying to use a hooker and it just fell out of my hand. Like I know I'm doing it wrong. So he comes over and a lot of people, cause I'm pretty vast in my training, they just expect me to know, but I never really mess with that world at all. So he's like, he's like, you know, teaching me grinding it in and mostly this hand. And then, so I take 245 and I clip it and I'm like, pow, pop it over my head. And he's like, well shit dude, what's your clean max? I'm like, it's

like 265. I can fucking miss 275 15 times probably. He's like, you, dude, what's your clean max? I'm like, it's like 265. I fucking missed 275 15 times probably. He's like, you're going to, dude, I fucking smoked it. I caught it high. I was like, oh, shit. I mean, if you're deadlifting that amount, 275 clean should be easy. Yeah, so then I was like, fuck it, put 300 on. And I caught it in the bottom, but I didn't have a belt on. I usually, I don't know if I should or shouldn't, but I only have a power belt.

It'd probably get in the way more than anything. But I caught it. Yeah, it's probably, maybe I only have a power belt. I'd probably get in the way more than anything. I caught it. This fucking guy probably cleans 400. I caught it kind of forward. I was trying to rock it back into a pause squad because I knew I could get up because I do it all the time, but I couldn't get it. I was like, no, I'm not going to let this motherfucker

go back down, but I couldn't get it through. I just missed it, but I almost did 300 the other day, which was cool. Awesome. Perfect lifters mentality. No, fuck this. I'm going to do it. Yeah, John smoked 315. It was like, boom. it but I almost did 300 yeah the other day which was cool awesome perfect mentality like no fuck this I'm gonna do it yeah John smoked 315 I mean like it was like boom you know he talks in kilos I'm not there yet so I'm like he's like probably like 140 kilos yeah it just smoked it just boom boom fast as hell it's another level of discovery for it man like this is the next thing I bought some jerk blocks dude it's a wrap oh dude we have we have mostly weightlifting instruction

yeah I'm sending you that. No, dude, I love it. All that stuff, I think you're going to love it. Dude, I love it. I just want to be powerful. I mean, because there's another thing is every year about this time around, it starts to get warm out, I want to dunk a basketball again. That was like one of the most athletic things I feel like you can do.

And so every time I start wanting to work on plyos and box jumps, and so I can't palm a basketball, so a lot of the guys throw me an alley-oop or whatever, but every time around this year, my kid's nine years old. He thinks it's cool that his dad can still dunk a basketball so a lot of the guys throw me an alley-oop or whatever but every time around this, my kid's nine years old, he thinks it's cool that his dad can still dunk a basketball. He don't care about

the magazines anymore. He's used to that. You got this good total and you're running the business, you're former core monitor, you can dunk a fucking alley-oop pass? Yeah.

Fucking shit, dude. But you know what's so funny? Yeah, but check this out though. What? Chris is like, what am I doing with my life? So,

let me set this. You know what? Can you tell dick jokes? No. Fuck you, yeah. I got that. But let me set it up, though. The reason why I think I'm like this is I was a six-man on my basketball team.

I didn't play college sports. Athletically, I'm okay at a lot of stuff, but I'm not necessarily great at anything. So that's why I'm good at this stuff. You know what I mean? But I just almost went elite. I got four covers shot before they came out. I was always the guy like on the outside, you know? So it's like one of those things where I just kind of like do a little bit of everything.

I'm almost awesome at everything. Yeah. That is the goal, Chris. That's the goal, baby. But you know what? I enjoy it and I look at it as a goal. You know, it gets me off the couch, man. Because I need to be like focused on something. And if I don't, here's where I struggle. And I think a lot

of people struggle, maybe this, if I don't have something set, I'm wandering, man, I don't do very good. One, I get upset with myself too. I'm not very productive. I mean, my low end production is still pretty high, but I mean, I just not focused and I can't stand it. So if you don't pick the challenge or pick the event or pick the personal, I have to. I got to do this. You plan everything off that. That's the pump. That drives your progress. And it all starts in the gym first. And then the rest of it falls.

So if I come in the gym, and I don't have to have a PR every day, but if I have my goals set up like I want to front squat, back squat this, I want to dunk, I want to do this, and I'm working towards that, it seems like the rest of my business just flows, man, because I'm just tuned in. And then I feel like I'm doing it at five in the morning. If you want to compete, not compete against me in weightlifting, but in my business, you got to get a jump. You better get the hell out of bed or you're not going to catch us. I mean, we feel strong about what we're

doing. Muscle farm doesn't sleep. I mean, I mean, it was cool. I mean, early, early in this interview, uh, you mentioned something about like Arnold being inspiration, like when you're younger. And, uh, that's one of the reasons we're all here. Yeah, of course. It's because we've been coming here since 2007. It's like,

we're all kids. 2002 or whatever I came out first. Arnold was like a big piece of inspiration for all of us. For everybody. Yeah. First thing I ever did.

First thing I ever did, concrete weights, my fingers through in my buddy's backyard, Arnold presses. The first fucking exercise I ever did. I'm like,

what do I need? Giant shoulders. Well, do that. The first exercise I ever did. I'm like, what do I need? Giant shoulders. Well, do that. That's how you get them. Absolutely. So it's like, it's funny. I mean, this guy like inspires all of us. We were younger and we all come here and we're all doing something in fitness. And I think he's like the guy that made it real. He's such an OG. If that guy can make a successful career out of being a fitness dude, I may not do exactly what he's doing, but he kind of paved the way. I only now fully appreciate it. We all grew up watching fucking Predator going, please, Lord, one day let me fight the Predator.

I would have been jacked in the jungle. I only now appreciate that this is a guy born as an Austrian farm boy. Dude, his story is unreal. I won't say nobody, but just a small farm boy. And that vision to see, kind of like what you're saying, you got to see what direction you could go.

And every day, remind yourself that you can do it it if you're not doing the everyday reminding strengthening your mind thing out of sight out of mind probably the most important reps you're gonna do yeah i'll tell you what about arnold is what's so cool is obviously we signed a deal with arnold which no one thought they could ever do and so yeah i'll tell you the story about it's pretty phenomenal so i'm literally on the golf course which i love golf i'm not that good at that i'm trying to get better at it. So now I'm thinking like, I know you're fucking full of shit. Your definition of not quite good. Probably I'm not a scratch. That's what I want to be. So let's put it that way. So anyway,

I'm on a golf course and then we're in Phoenix and it's snowing. First of all, I'm pissed because it's like this time of the year and I'm going to Phoenix to be warm and it's snowing. So we're sitting around and one of our investors goes, Hey, you think you'd want to work with Arnold? We're all looking at each other like, what the fuck are you talking about, dude? No. I'm like, so how – telling me the deal. He's like, well, my sister's married to Tom Arnold, the actor. Like how random is that? He's like, don't call him for this.

So his last name is Arnold and Arnold's first name is Arnold. It's a wrap, dude. It's a wrap. For him. So he says, you know, we're doing like 70 million in sales at the time. We got a lot of momentum. He's like, I'll call our, you know, Tom, he puts him on the phone right there. Tom says, I'll call Arnold, see if he'll meet with me with you guys. So I'm thinking, Oh shit, snowing in Phoenix, which is random as hell. And, uh, we're, you know, maybe have a

connection with Arnold. So they set up the meeting and we, you know, we, we basically put the Arnold series together before we even met with them. I had the bottles. It looked like to us, we feel like we're Nike, and we feel like that's the Jordan brand if you look at it like that. If you look at the way the logo is done, that's the Jumpman. It's Arnold's iconic pose. Oh, wow. The branding, as you can see, we set it up like that. So I knew he was being impressed with that part because it looks gangster as hell.

But the key was Arnold comes in the room room and we're in his office in Santa Monica and it's like movie posters and a life-size Terminator and dude, total shell shock. I'm in Arnold's office and he's about to roll. I want to go there. It's unbelievable, right?

So I'm sitting in there and you're just waiting on him. I wasn't really that nervous though and I'll tell you why because I feel like I've been working my whole life for an opportunity like this. I am not coming out of this room without being fucking Arnold Schwarzenegger's business partner.

Because I'm not going to get this shot again. You got one chance to not, you know, drop the fucking ball, basically. Yeah. So Arnold rolls in and he goes, he says, you know, hello, hello, whatever. And he goes, so why am I doing this? And he just shuts up. You're thinking, oh, fuck. The OG of all OGs just said, you know, it's time for you to.

And I said, and I started, I led with this because I've always lead with training. I said, man, I'm tired of watching kids text in the gym. They don't superset. They don't know shit about the golden era. And I said, I believe that if you trust us with me, especially us with your fitness likeness, I'm going to rejuvenate it all. I'm going to bring back the hard training. I'm going to teach people how to eat. We're going to go get the files from Pumping all. I'm going to bring back the hard training. I'm going to teach people how to eat. We're going to go get the files from pumping iron. We're going to re,

you know, put them back out there. I said, I think we can make some real dynamic stuff happen. And he kind of just started, I could tell I got his attention. Right. And so I was doing something with bodybuilding.com at the time. And I had a trailer for this get swole plan. They got kind of popular on bodybuilding.com. And so I was like, Hey, here's kind of like some of the stuff we do. So he takes my laptop and he's looking at it and I went to have some porn here. So I get to, I go to kind of get it and he kind of like says, sit down. I'm still watching. And I'm like, all right, cool. So he's engaged, you know? And then, uh, some of the guys said, look, we're already selling in a hundred countries. They start hitting with the business, which obviously he's a businessman too, but he's

engaged in the fitness big time. I can see it. He's not, he's not posing. He cares a lot. He cares. And he, and once he's in, he's in. And so he goes, you know, he's talking, he's asking me some more questions. And then I was on the cover of fitness RX with my kids that month randomly. It was the first time it had ever really been done. I got three of my kids hanging off of me. It's a, it was a really cool issue. One of the investors had bought it at the airport. I didn't even know he throws it to Arnold in the middle of of the meeting and so this is the alignment of the circumstances is unbelievable right so arnold looks at me he goes this is really cool and obviously in his accent i go well when you say that it's even extra freaking cool right so

so and what was really cool is he opened it up and it was all done at old school so it's a retro 1970s gym so he's getting the feel of really talking his language now big time and so you know what he put his glasses on he's looking through the magazine and he wears glasses he did at that time i've never seen him do it again i thought he had a red mechanical eye yeah yeah he does he's like this fucking eye come on i gotta zoom in i can't see the so he uh you know He's looking through it, and I can just tell I got him engaged. And he's definitely,

he's feeling what we're talking about. And we started hitting him with more and more business, and I could just see him feeling it. And it was just, the coolest part was he pulls out this poster. So I'm sitting from me to you, Mike, away, and he pulls out a poster, and it's like a pull-out thing of an ad thing for me.

And he goes, your abs kind of remind me of Frank Zane's a little bit. You're like, Holy shit. What'd you say? What the hell is going on in my life right now? Man, you really impressed me.

And your abs look like Frank Zane's. How do you do it? And I was just like, I was fucking sitting there going, my mind is fucking melting and coming down my nose. Yeah, it was, it was unbelievable. And so, you know, once we got off that, and I think he realized, like, I could talk his language. You know, I do all the interviews with him.

Like, he knows I know the deal on that stuff, right? And he's been like that ever since that day. The guys in the business got, you know, my partner Brad's an unbelievable business guy. They got all the numbers done. Literally, we walk out of there, and I look at Brad Brad, I'm like, oh, it's a wrap, dude. I think we got it. 20 minutes later, he called, said he's in. And so that was a really cool. And he told us before we left, when I opened my Rolodex and it's a big one, it's serious. And I'll be in and I'll be engaged and I'm, and I'm excited. I want to be involved in the process of

the flavoring and what we put out and the training and you can interview me and you just tell me what you need and it's really like that holy shit man he came to old school he came to old school i interviewed him for an hour and a half i just released it on bodybuilding.com it's unbelievable oh wow i'll embed that in the actually uh i was checking that out the other day yeah i saw i saw it post up yeah it's unbelievable yeah so i mean yeah so arnold's a g dude and when you Here's what I take away from Arnold. Anytime I'm around him, your brain just goes like this. Because he's accomplished so much in his life and his vision. He talks about it constantly, creating that vision and seeing it and feeling it and knowing what it is.

And I just try to follow suit. You do it every fucking day of your life. Every day, bro. Every day. Every moment of it to remind yourself what really matters to you and how you're going to get it. Dude, 15 years ago I was selling programs to get in. That's not a lot of time.

to get into the Arnold. Yeah. I would tell people, you're the guy at the door. I'm the guy at the door selling programs to get in. And I'm like, ugh.

Yeah. No, I don't want to buy a program, Corey. Ooh, go away. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm that kid and I'm thinking, man, I just can't wait

to get in the expo after I get this free expo ticket. I mean, I could have paid 10 bucks, but I was trying to get the experience. What year was that? 2000. 2000.

Okay. We started coming in 2007. I remember my first exposure to Expo Hall. I was like, what the fuck? I was in shock, man. There are so many hot chicks here. Awesome. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, that was like, if you want to increase your testosterone once a year. And a lot of bad protein bars, too. Yeah, yeah. Especially in 2007. He got really excited and really stopped up. Yeah. That was unbelievable. So I mean, that experience was, experience was cool, man. I mean, that's why when I talked to Jim Lorimer, he had no clue when we signed up for the diamond sponsor and just signed Arnold a couple of years ago. And I told him the story. He's like, ask Lucy, who's been with him forever. And she's like,

I remember Corey. I remember he's like, so you got one of our, your starts here. I'm like, yeah, man, it was a big, it was a big, I remember Corey. I remember. He's like, so you got one of your starts here. I'm like, yeah, man, it was a big deal for me. It's awesome. It's pretty cool. Being a local guy, I mean, this is just a big deal in general. Yeah. So, yeah, so that's been a wild ride, man. Where do you see the Arnold Classic going in the next five, ten years?

Because the thing that impresses me is that this has been going on a long time. Yeah. And this thing just keeps getting bigger. Yeah. There's fencing. There's everything in here. It's international. What's the next step for this? That's where they're growing. I'm going to Arnold, Australia

next week. They got Brazil. They got South Africa. They're going to Malaysia. Arnold is a good example. Arnold says, I'm going to have the biggest event on the planet fitness-wise. Now let's do it on every continent. Are they going to have weightlifting and gymnastics at each one of these?

I think that's what they're heading towards. And you guys may not know this, but Arnold is actually my favorite weightlifting meet every year. Oh, that's cool. We've been coming since 2007. Most years, almost every year, I've competed or coached. Sweet. Sometimes both.

I think it's one of the events that gave it a lot of initial more juice in the new pop culture of fitness. Like it's coming back quickly because it got its foot back in the door here and it was right alongside Strongman and everything else. And it was a really great well-run event every fucking year. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us.

Dude, come on, man. I couldn't wait. I love hearing your story. That's amazing. I'm still going, I could ask all this, but no. Yeah, I was going to say, I think we're going to be talking training for yeah dude I'll come on

whenever you guys want I'll have it I love it this is great I really at the end of the day I want people to know I live and breathe the gym I love it

it's my passion I can't get enough of it and I'm passionate about helping people so like we talk about if you follow me on social media at Muscle Farm Prez

on Instagram or Twitter I'm leading with training I want you to get better. And that's when I see these kids come up to me and tell me their squat went up or this the man. I love it. What's your Instagram? Because people need to follow your stuff.

Muscle Farm Prez, P-R-E-S. Both of them are. Instagram and Twitter both. I'll have one more. I have one more. What do you tell the kid right now who's thinking, I want to so desperately be a coach? People are telling me, just get a fucking job and go to school, do whatever. But I believe in this.

But they don't feel like anybody's on their corner to back them up. What's like the quickest punchy thing you can say to them that they need to take away from this? You got to find out. I really went towards my passion. I mean, 100%. But it didn't just jump right to it. I think there's so much instant gratification. Like, they see rap videos.

And I watch all those, too. But you can't have the Bentley overnight. People don't realize it took me 15 years to get here. I mean, it is a long time, but it isn't, right? It started with $20 an hour. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's a lot longer than people want it to be. They don't want to put the time in.

After you've done the 15 years, you go, wow, a lot happened in that time. There's no way it could have happened faster, really. You see that after the fact. I wanted it to happen faster. But when you're the kid and you see the guy that's doing it, you go, I want that tomorrow. It doesn't happen.

It's like you've got to put in years and years and years. And lots of mistakes. I didn't even get the muscle farm opportunity until I was in business for 10 years. There you go. That's it. Plain and simple. And then. Keep pushing, baby.

Keep pushing. You might not even be ready for the opportunity. It comes when you're ready. And then you've got to be able to recognize the situational awareness. It's a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes people. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes people, yeah.

I've gotten in situations where it's like, man, I'm glad this didn't happen a year ago. Yeah, agreed. Because it's like there's no way I would have been. After the situation happens, I'm like, I would not have been ready back then. It's hard, but you've got to keep that in mind too when you feel the acute heartbreak of the thing not working out now. That's a lesson that's going to fuel the next thing that needs to happen. Yeah, absolutely.

I appreciate the time, guys. I started to listen to you guys lately and I was really hyped to be on here today. We loved having you on. It was great. We're going to have to do a part two. There's going to be a lot of people going, hold on, man. Tell me more about exactly what you're doing. There's going to be some more questions. Also, just give people a little bit more insight to what MusclePharm is, that it is

a griminess to it and some people might just not know that. Sweet, man. What do you do when you've got a vicious case of the pre-wild poos cooking you break out the neon it's time for the hot tips chris's hot tips for the ladies and the fellas chris's hot tips for the ladies And the fellas. And the fellas. What's up, everybody? Chris here, back with edition 2.0 of my hot tips.

Last week after 14.2, we got a lot of feedback that people didn't quite do as well as they thought they would do. The question is why? Well, I will tell you. Look to the first priority. What was your key mistake? I would say not enough neon and perhaps not diversified enough. Look at me right now. We're going lululemon headband, bright, neon shirt, bright, shorts, yes, underwear, bright blue and sexy as f- You're ready. Neon orange on the shoes, the Nano 3s. For that, you're ready-

Dude. Hold on. Hold on. One sec. You want to silence that piece? One sec. Andrew Ager. Hold on. Let's see. Hello? Hey, what's up? Yo. Hey, we're filming a video right now.

Oh, are you guys doing the 14.3? Yeah. Is Chris getting hot tips again? Of course. Filming them right now. Here, here he is. Hey, what do you think about this? Do you think it's enough tape? You do know that's not Kinesio tape, right?

What the? Well, yeah, I think it's 14.3 or so. I just really wanted to be prepared, you know? Is that duct tape? Yeah. Well, I think Kinesio tape is a little bit more expensive. I think it's a little bit more expensive. I think it's a little bit more expensive.

I think it's a little bit more expensive. I think it's a little bit more expensive. I think it's a little bit more expensive. I think it's a little bit more expensive. I think it's a little bit more expensive. I think it's a Kinesio tape, right? What the f- Well yeah, I figured 14.3 were so, I just really wanted to be prepared, you know? Is that duct tape? Yeah! Well I think, I think Kinesio tape might be a little more effective, but it looks like you will not be de-gloved, so I wish you the best of- It's functional, no?

It's very, it is very functional. I would say put it all over the shoulders and the lats as well, and maybe wrap your knees with it, and put the knee sleeves over. Just don't duct tape the smile. Don't duct tape your smile. That's your best feature. Thanks. We'll chat soon.

Best of luck. Crush it. What? Best of luck. Crush it. Hey, see you later. Peace. I thought Andrea made a lovely point about the Kinesio tape.

I don't know if there's any evidence that shit really works, but why not? I say tape it all. There was a lot of torn hands in 14-2. Yeah, wrap that sh- all around your hands, wrap all your elbows, wrap your knees, slide your knee sleeves over your your tape knees and tape the knee sleeves. Whatever you can get away with, do it. Who cares if it doesn't work out? You'll feel like it's gonna work. That's another opportunity to get more neon too. Yeah, if you go neon f-. Neon tape, neon knee sleeves. That's two birds, one stone situation.

You will crush this thing. Tip number three. We told you last week about the dangerous phenomenon that is the overhead squirts. A little more about your pre-wad poop this time. You want to make sure you've got at least an hour between the last poop you're going to take before the wad and the actual wad itself. So poop, get all warmed up. You don't want your pre-wad jitters to turn into the pre-wad shitters. You don't want pre-wad shitters. It's not gonna make you nervous.

Not again, hold on. Dude, it's Julie! Hold on, hold on. That's Andrea. Hello? Hey! We're filming a video right now. You're on speakerphone. I just got off the phone with Andrea. She said you guys are filming the hot tips. Yeah, Chris is filming them right now. Okay, I need to know. Should I wear my Nano 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0? Nano 1, 2, or 3. I guess that's really, that's an easy question. I guess it's three. Three's fresh. I would say, duh, threes. Yeah. Come on, Julie. Duh. I thought you were a med school student. You should know these things. Neon her the better. Neon, plenty of neon.

Isn't Julie lovely, folks? The only exception to that rule, though, is if you've got crisp, new nano ones in the box still, you probably wanna break those suckers up. Yeah, Jason Kalief is actually a big fan of the one point of those. He prefers the ones. Tip number four, proper foam rolling technique.

Obviously, if you're sore, you're a little clunky, you gotta roll out the soft tissues, but the problem with foam rolling is you lay out you're sore, you're a little clunky, you gotta roll out the soft tissues. But the problem with foam rolling is you lay out on the ground and you get all, you know, you gotta rouse yourself after that. You get all bored and fucking sleepy. So I would do prop up your foam roller after you're done. Just like we're kicking a field goal. We'll go three steps back. We'll go to the side. We're gonna plant our left foot really firm and kick the sh- Three, two, one.

Oh, that was a good one. What's up? Is it going to be hard? What are you doing here, Michelle? Here's the time for the hot tip segment. Sweet. I'm glad I made it. We're just talking 14.3.

It's very intense. We have four awesome tips. We need a fifth one maybe for one. It's very important. Do you have any top secret tips, tactics, moves, or tricks that you can use to get the ball rolling? I'm going to go ahead and do it. I'm going to go ahead and do it.

I'm going to go ahead and do it. I'm going to go ahead and do it. I'm going to go ahead and do it. I'm going to go ahead and do it. I'm going to go ahead and do it. I'm going to go ahead and do it. I'm going to go ahead and do it. I'm going to go ahead and do it. We're talking 14.3. It's very intense. We have four awesome tips. We need a fifth one maybe for warm-up. It's very important. Do you have any top secret tips, tactics, moves you can share with our audience? Absolutely. The warm-up's crucial. It is very crucial. And take it from me, I've been there. I've been to the games a few times, so I know what I'm doing.

Oh, do you now? Yes. Do you want to hear what it is? I do. It's my little shuffle. A shuffle? Yeah. You just got to shuffle. I got to see that. It's my little shuffle. A shuffle? Yeah. You just gotta shuffle. I gotta see that.

You gotta shuffle like this. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Yeah! Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Fantastic. How you gonna go? Yep. Is the sound effects are also key?

Yes. And side to side, lift the leg up a little bit. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Yeah. Am I doing it right? Yeah. I feel roused already. Yeah, you're ready.

Yeah. There's so many more tips we could share, but man, that's probably plenty. We leave you it right? Yeah. I feel roused already. Yeah, you're ready. Yeah. There's so many more tips we could share, but man, that's probably plenty. We leave you with one crucial, crucial final message. No nanos, no neon, no rep, son. You can train all you want, but if you don't eat, you're not going to get any stronger. Coming in at number three, it's time to enter the window of gains.

Window of gains? We're no pigs. Three, two, one. We'll keep everything we just said a secret. Welcome to Barbell Stroke. I'm Mike Bledsoe, standing here with Doug Larson, Chris Moore, CTP behind the camera. We've got Charlotte behind the other camera. Multiple cameras. Oh, we've arrived.

Finally. Today, we're going to be talking about post-workout nutrition. I've been waiting so long. We're going to cover the food, the different types of workouts that you're doing, and the different types of nutrition you might need afterwards. The mistakes you're probably making. All the mistakes you're making. We're going to cover all of them. Let you know how dumb you are. No, we're not going to do that.

Yeah, so we're going to cover all that. Before we go any further, go to barbellshrug.com. Sign up for the newsletter. What if they're already on barbellshrug.com? If you're already on barbellshrug.com, you should. What link should they click? All of them. Test them out.

See which one's your favorite. There's all sorts of stuff you can click on on there. All kinds of knowledge. There's stuff for e-books. There's stuff for recipes and whatnot. New article every day?

Is that right? Depends on what you want. It's there. Yeah, whatever you want. There's something for everybody. Search. Not really. If you don't know,

just use a little search window. It's not for everybody. It's only for you. I promise. If you don't know, just use a little search window. It's not for everybody. It's only for you. I promise. If you type in clown penis in a search box, something different will happen. We just saw the Easter egg on the side. We now got to create like a page. The clown penis page.

All right, before we lose all of our audience, we want to talk about post-workout nutrition today. Mainly because I'll post, not this isn't mainly, but this is why I think we should talk about it. I'll post my post-workout meal to Instagram or something like that. And people are like, oh, sweet. And then they post theirs and then tag me back in it. And I'm like, what is that? I'm like, that looks like about a third of what I've been eating. And they're like, I'm on the gain strain. I'm like, no, you're not. It what I've been eating. They're like, I'm on the gains train.

I'm like, no, you're not. It's what you would eat a 63-year-old. It's macaroon cheese. I've got my 2% milk. It's either not big enough. Story of your life. I'm looking at it. It happens a lot.

It's not big enough, or it just has the wrong stuff on the plate. They're like, I'm going to totally recover. I'm like, what are you recovering from? Does anyone feel like they're missing a big opportunity? It's the most important meal out of probably all the meals you're going to eat the whole day. And you have basically full permission, especially if you're gaining weight, to just fucking go off the rails and just eat whatever the hell you want. And people don't do it for some reason.

The window of gains. The window of gains. Once that closes, it's all over. Yeah. Yeah. You missed the window of gains. You screwed up, man. I don't want to be that guy.

Don't be that guy because you might as well just start the day over. Just go take a shit, jump in the shower. It's probably the most important thing you do, and it's the first thing that you overlook as you rush out of the gym to go do whatever else you had planned for the day. Yeah. So, yeah. So, we kind of covered, usually, they're not big enough, or they just have the wrong stuff

on there. And then, there's a certain amount of protein, carbs, and fat you're looking for. Probably not so much fat. What else? You want to eat like a big bowl of country gravy after you train? And while you're consuming your post-workout meal, you need to be dancing. That's how you know if you're doing it right. That's how you know you're doing it right.

Death punk. How do you know what your plate should look like, Mike? You look at all these terrible meals on Instagram. What should it look like? It should be a lot fuller. Like I'm one of the typical jerks that has an empty, fat, heavy plate. Because, again, I like my salt milk country gravy. Maybe I have to do my heavy deadlifts.

What should be on there? Mostly carbs and protein. Like Doug was just saying, it's your opportunity to eat as much as you want, probably. Especially if you're trying to get big. Like, don't worry. This is not the meal that's going to make you fat. I promise. If you want to eat a ton of carbs, this is the time to do it.

The type of carbs you want to have is probably rice, oats, quinoa, potatoes, all that kind of stuff. Ice cream. You know what? It is one way of going about it, but it's not. That's after your post-workout meal. Yeah, that's – That's the dessert to your post-workout meal. It shouldn't be your meal. That's not an ideal way to recover.

And only if you're trying to gain as much weight as possible. As much weight as possible. But actually, that's a good opportunity for people that are trying to lose weight too. It's your opportunity to actually eat some carbohydrates. Yeah. Like if you're super low-car carb most of the day eating borderline paleo meals where you're eating meat and veggies and a few nuts and seeds and whatever,

mostly protein and fat, and you're going to eat some carbohydrates, this is your opportunity. Post-workout is the best time to eat those carbs because you're going to actually take the carbs, put them in your muscles, and you're not going to convert them to body fat. You're not going to get fat at all off those carbs. It's only going to give you more energy and help you get stronger and build muscle mass.

So if you're ever going to be not afraid. Or keep the muscle mass you already have as you lose weight. If there's ever a time to not be afraid of getting fat, this is the one time where that definitely doesn't have to be on the table for you. You know you're going to utilize it for greater good. And real quick, I've cut carbs out of my diet for post-workout before, just as an experiment. You know, it's like one of those things, all the literature says eat carbs post-workout. And I was like,

okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to play around with this paleo thing. For about 30 days, I cut out all that stuff, stopped doing the post-workout shakes. And I was like,

oh, I think I feel fine. I didn't really notice much of a difference. And then when I added it back in, I was like, holy shit, I feel amazing.

So it's one of those things like over time, you may not notice the effects of it because it's like slowly you're just getting less those things like over time you may not notice the effects of it because it's like slowly you're just getting less and less recovered, and you may not pick up on it. It's kind of like sleep. It's like sleep, right?

Some people think they have six hours of sleep. They go, well, I feel fine on six. I know some people say eight, but I swear I feel better on six. Then when you try eight, then you see the difference. Yeah. What about you just mentioned a good point, but if I'm trying to lose fat, do I still maybe try to go less carb after I lift weights? Just because I think this is now the time to ask that.

It does differ. Different types of people, I think, respond a little bit differently, but I think it's still a great time to do carbs right afterwards for a few different reasons. But we can go in the science of that. But you did ask earlier, I didn't finish it. It was like, what should your plate look like? It's like half protein, half carbs. That's the easiest way to think about it. Yeah.

If you just cut your plate down the middle and put meat on one side and some type of starchy, dense carbohydrates on the other side, like Mike said, like oats or rice or potatoes or what have you, that's the easiest way in my mind to know you're doing it right. In addition to dancing. We'll be dancing. Meat on one side, carbs on the other side. Will you also be going, oh, God, this is a lot of food. Will that also be the way you know you're doing it right?

If it seems like too much food for you, because you're probably not. You're probably under eating. That's one of the big problems. If you don't feel really tired after you eat, you probably didn't do it right. This is all said in the context of your whole day. This is one meal out of your whole day. So if I say half meat, half dense carbohydrates, starchy carbohydrates like I just said, then we're thinking about that one meal in the context of the rest of the day. So that means that the other meals you are eating healthy fats

and you are getting fiber and whatnot through meat and vegetables and antioxidants and all the other good things that you get from fresh vegetables and fruits and whatnot. So this one meal, if you're looking at it, you're going, whoa, I don't want to like just eat protein and carbs. Like what about healthy fats and what about vegetables and what about all these other good things? Well, you're going to get all that stuff, but you're going to get it at the other meals throughout your day. You're going to get it at breakfast and dinner and whatever, not in the post-workout meal. Yeah. This is a take within the context, kind of setting it up is you already eat really well and the majority of your day you're eating paleo ish lots of vegetables

lots of high quality meats and fats high protein high fat fruit yeah high protein high fat the vegetables all that stuff and then this is the opportunity to do like the denser carbs so uh doug can you explain the recovery side of things, we're talking about post-workout nutrition, but, you know, people are like, oh, I'm supposed to do this, but why? Like, why are we doing carbohydrates and protein and how does that work together? Are you a friend of the fancy science stuff that goes on? Like in my cells and whatnot? Yes, on a very physiological, maybe even cellular level.

Yeah, we'll talk about a little bit of that. So, in the window of gains, this ridiculous term that we just made up check out the hash tag window of gains basically what that means is right after your workout's over you know you have like 30 or 60 minutes there's no actual like definitive cutoff point but that's typical what people say just to get you to eat right away and during that time time, say I eat a meal post-workout within that 30-minute window versus waiting two hours. If I eat it right away in that 30-minute window versus waiting two hours, I'm going to take more of those carbohydrates and actually store them in my muscles as glycogen, as opposed to later on where I'll store less of those carbohydrates as glycogen. If they didn't go to glycogen. That means they went somewhere else.

The assumption in that case is that they got stored as body fat. So the same number of calories, the same number of carbohydrates eaten post-workout, you're going to use for good versus later on, you're going to use for half good and half not so good. So good is it's being stored in the muscles, glycogen. Not good is, all right, too much time's passed. You've missed the window of gains.

Your insulin sensitivity, the ability for your body basically to store those carbohydrates, the sensitivity to that has gone down. And so if you wait, wait two hours or four hours or however long, and you're not doing it in the window of gains, then you're going to not have that sensitivity and that a lesser percentage of the carbohydrates you eat are going to be going into your muscles, which is a good thing. And, well, sorry, a lesser percentage isn't a good thing. The fact that they're going into your muscles is a good thing.

So if you wait, a lesser percentage are going to go into your muscles and that's not a good thing. So you want to eat as soon as possible. You don't have to immediately jump off your wad and slam the shake, but have 5 10 15 minutes that should be down the sooner the better like the easiest way to to handle that is just to have like what i do is i usually drink a protein shake with some carbohydrates in my case i just take pure dextrose like not a proprietary blend i just add straight up dextrose which is glucose just pure sugar to my workout shake. That way, during my workout, I'm getting some protein and some carbohydrates during the workout. That way, by the time post-workout shows up, I already have all that flowing around in my system.

It's already being digested. It's already in my bloodstream. It's already being fed to my muscles. That way, if I want to go home and make dinner and it takes me 90 minutes to get a meal, well, that's really meal number two. I'm just eating again the post-workout or excuse me the the during workout shake kind of makes up for the fact that that i'm not going to be able to eat an actual meal right away when i get done training that means i don't have to bring food with me to the gym which is kind of nice but for the person who's doing wads or crazy met cons and they're not going

to drink a shake during just right after school uh well first of all i'd encourage them to drink a shake during and if you don't want to drink it during your metcon you don't necessarily have to some people don't don't really tolerate a milkshake during it's like what isn't that shake exactly because it's a light it's a light not very rich let's finish this so steve's gonna call you a pussy for stopping to go get your drink oh yeah trying to catch your breath aren't you there tom so what you want to do in that case what you'd want to do in that case is uh either drink your shake like right before where you're not actually in the metcon when you're drinking the shake that way uh during your warm-up during your strength work you're drinking your shake and then by the time the metcon comes you already have something again kind of in your system that way

during the metcon you have to take a break and like go get a drink of your shake especially if it's a short metcon it's 15 minutes you don't need to like stop and get a drink you'll unless you're me i will have to refuel to stave off death five minutes into whatever i'm doing right yeah i got 30 good reps in the tank coach and i gotta refuel go ahead yeah i mean you always got to consider that if you if you eat something it's going to take you know 30 to 90 minutes for it to like really kind of start to get into your system so if you drink a shake right before your workout that means you know you if you only have a one hour workout really it's really just getting into your system right about the time that you're finishing your workout and

so as a post-workout shake that's pretty ideal really it's like it doesn't have to take an extra 30 or 60 minutes to start digesting it's already available for your muscles right then and there so timing is even better yeah so for me you know, I don't really do a post-workout shake specifically. I drink a shake during my workout, and then I eat as soon as possible right after my workout. How soon into it do you start drinking it? Is it the whole time you lightly sip the same shake? Yeah, right about the time I start warming up, I just start drinking my shake. And by the time I'm about halfway done through my strength work, usually my shake's gone.

And then that's kind of nice, too, because by the time I actually get to my post-workout meal, there's been an hour, hour and a half in between where I didn't drink a shake, finish it, and then try to go eat a meal. There's been some time where I've gotten hungry and there's some room in my stomach. That might really help the people who afterwards they really struggle with even getting a shake down, even getting a light plate of food. Some people with appetite is just not there. Yeah, for me, I like doing the shake during the strength work, warm up, strength work.

And then once, like for five minutes before a conditioning session, I just switch to water. It gives your stomach a chance to clear. Personally, yeah, I need to be feeling nice and light and clean. And then immediately after that, I drink a little more water, but then I switch back over to a post-workout shake for sure yeah and actually on that note with the mentioning water i like to drink my workout shake and then the rest of my workout crush a bunch of water that way when i get to my post-workout meal i don't i'm not thirsty and i don't have to drink

a bunch of right a bunch of fluids a bunch of water that don't have any calories i can just use all the room in my stomach for a massive meal where water's not getting in the way, so to speak. So we want sugar. You know, dextrose is one form. There's different supplements out there that have some carbohydrate in them. But what I find is a lot of times they just don't have enough. So buying like a big tub of dextrose can be really helpful. Yeah, go to Now Nutrition,

the big orange containers that you see on Amazon. Those things are clutch, man. All their line, right? Like a 10-pound thing of dextrose is like, I don't even remember, it's 20 bucks or something like that. It's really cheap. It'll last you an incredibly long time.

It's actually cheaper on bodybuilding.com. Not plugging, just saying. Okay. We'll find the greatest deal, and we'll link it to you, folks. But it's probably the best source of of sugar that you could get it's just it's pure glucose that's as far as sugar goes it's probably like the healthiest sugar you could be eating it's not it's not a very slope doug

every other variation of sugar is not quite as good for you as as glucose not saying it's like a healthy thing necessarily long term if you crush it all day long, but post-workout, glucose is probably the best sugar that you're going to want to consume as a during-workout shake sugar. So for me, I vary the carbohydrates in my drink depending on the type of workout. If I'm just doing strength work, I guess we can go— You mean the amount? Yeah. So we can talk about ratios a little bit so like if i'm doing like strength work i'm looking at like sometimes like a one-to-one or two-to-one ratio of carbs to protein because i'm not burning

up a lot of glycogen like uh when i'm when i'm doing a lot of how much do you know to put in there like grams wise useful scoop for oh yeah i mean the scoopers have 30 grams i use a 40 gram scooper and so like i can like just say okay it's half full or a third you know two-thirds or whatever you don't have to be extremely precise i'm not weighing anything but i do have a scooper that's 40 grams and so i can kind of i i do 40 grams of protein and then i do another 40 grams of dextrose or something like that uh but like if i'm doing just strength work and i'm keeping it under sets of five and the volume is relatively low i do like a one-to-one to two-to-one ratio of carbs and protein.

But the moment you start getting a longer endurance type workout where you're working out for hours on end, that might shift a little bit if it's more of a conditioning workout. If you start to do hero WODs, you might want to add maybe a three-to-one ratio of carbs and protein. Two-to-one is probably still okay if you're you're average wide or where you just need some extra carbohydrate. You're doing more in squatting, but you're not doing anything too crazy. You're your average CrossFitter doing the workout of the day. Yeah. So the amount of reps you're doing, that would be your volume, could dictate how much sugar is actually in your drink or carbohydrate.

And we didn't really cover what the protein does. So we're talking about post-workout nutrition. It's all about recovery. It's about, it's about, uh, feeling good after you work out and prepping for the next workout, even if it's the next day or two days later, like the faster you recover, the better. And the more you recover, like the sooner we're talking about the window of gains, the sooner you take advantage of that, uh, of your post-workout nutrition, the, the higher you're actually going to get in your recovery on both glycogen reuptake and then also with protein synthesis.

You want to get into what the protein is actually for during the workout and then after as well because you're talking about sipping on protein during and there's something that happens there too. Sipping on that protein. Sipping on the sip. We're from Memphis. The two main things there, if you're having sugar and protein during your workout

and or post-workout, they're similar, but I tend to want to gravitate towards a during-workout shake and then a post-workout actual meal. In that case, you're going to break down less protein. You're going to break down less muscle mass. You're going to get less sore. Your muscles are made of protein.

Yeah, your muscles are made of protein. There you go. You're going to break down less and you're going to get less sore. Your muscles are made of protein. Yeah, your muscles are made of protein. There you go. So you're going to break down less and you're going to probably build more. So if this is baseline... And by the way, we learned from Dr. Andy Galpin that you don't have to break down muscle to build it up. Totally unnecessary. You don't have to. So trying

to minimize the breakdown is actually a really good thing. Yeah, if you as an example, if you are here at baseline, you break down some muscle mass and you dig yourself into this big hole, it might take you four or five days to come out of that. If you have a good amount of protein and carbohydrates during your workout and right after your workout, then maybe you don't dig yourself into quite as deep of a hole

and maybe you're fully recovered a day early, which means you can go train again. And the difference between you know taking four days to recover or three days to recover is a lot especially if you add it up over the course of your life oh god that's a lot it's different when you're being an advanced awesome athlete and still being at the bottom of the whiteboard to add up all that accumulative better quality work and better feeding over the course of one year your body looks completely different everything's different over the course of a year you know i year, I'm not even going to attempt to run the math on that, but you're going to get dozens of more workouts. And so that's so many more opportunities to gain a little bit more strength.

In that example, if you put on an extra pound on your back squat every single workout, well, if that's dozens of workouts and each workout's worth a pound, well, that's an extra 30 pounds you put on your back squat simply because you've recovered better. And this is a major factor into helping you do that. That's a good thing. Are you saying that the window of gains can lead to a lifetime of gains? As Usher and Little John once said, eat in the window. Eat it all.

Eat it all. Till the sweat drops down your bones. Oh, eat, eat, eat, eat. That's the other thing we say is there's all the good scientific reasons why you'll feel better and feel better and recover, but then there's just the habit of if you're thinking about how you can quickly give energy back into your body after working out, then that habit is what's really, really powerful. That stacks up. I mean, in the course of a year, you're going to be a lot different because of that.

Yeah, I like to think about workouts as practice. You ever heard of HER? that. Yeah, I like to think about workouts as practice. You ever hear about the 10,000 hours? When someone accumulates that 10,000 hours, then they kind of master that task or something like that. You always said it was squats, right? The person who squats more than you has done more squatting than you. They just found a way to get the work done. Now, your job is to find a way to get the work done.

It's going to take some while to up to that right the same thing as nutrition like it's not that you had something magical today that you added to your protein shake it's that for now a couple years the habit and the ritual is you think a lot about how much calories you need and when you're going to do them and how to match that with the amount of effort you're putting out so that's the thing that has a really good impact on your body well transformational impact on your body yeah i i do go ahead dog you were going to make a point i was going to touch on something that has a really good impact on your body. Well, transformational impact on your body. Yeah. Go ahead, Doug. You were going to make a point.

I was going to touch on something that we brought up earlier when you were talking about ratios of carbs and proteins and how much to get and all that. The easiest way, I think, for me to figure out how many carbohydrates, how many grams of protein someone needs, and then I'll convert it out of grams here in a minute, is for a strength athlete where you're getting that kind of two-to-one carbs to protein, which I think is a good ratio for most strength athletes, about 20% of your own body weight, so if I'm a 200-pound

guy, 20% of my body weight is 40. If I get about 40 grams of protein, and then since it's two-to-one, I could double that, so that would be 80 grams of carbohydrates. That's kind of the minimum for me as a strength athlete that I would want to get post-workout. So 40 grams of protein, 80 grams of carbohydrates. That's shy of 500 calories. That's probably the minimum. You could certainly go beyond that.

And if you're talking about protein powders and whatnot, depending on your scooper, you can just look at it. That's a scoop or two depending on the size of your scooper. You don't have to measure this in any fancy way just eyeball it and just take a big scoop and put it on there plus five whatever grams is not gonna make a big deal yeah the most important thing is that you did something you you ate something that's the most important thing you were focused and you tried yeah the difference between nothing and a big pile is an enormous difference. You just want to make sure that you get a big pile of food in some capacity. That's really the big thing.

Have I ever gotten exactly 40 grams? Probably not. It doesn't matter. I like that John Brose way of saying it. If you tried, it was a plus. If you didn't fucking try at all, negative. Start again. Do better.

Next time. So you don't have to hit those numbers exactly right. Just make sure that you're getting something post-workout you find that most people underdo it once even after they listen to this episode they're gonna think oh i'm gonna go do the window of gains and then they still like i certainly if they're trying to gain weight scared of carbs certainly if they're trying to gain weight it's more common to underdo it than to overdo it like you should think holy shit i'm about to make myself so fat when you're trying to gain weight until you get the hang of it. Once, once

you've, once you've like gained a bunch of weight a couple of times for whatever reason, and then you've maybe leaned back down and then you've gained some weight again and you're, you're good at that. And you, you're kind of a professional gaining and losing weight for whatever reason. You know, like I used to weightlift and I would gain weight for weightlifting and then I would, I would fight MMA and I would, I would lose back down so I could have my fight. And then I would gain weight for weight lifting and I would bounce back and forth all the time. And eventually you get good at making those, those adaptations. You don't have to eat so much food. Like you feel like you're going to get fat because you know how much food is going to

take and you know that you're not going to get fat. Likewise, you know how much food that you're going to have to not eat to lose weight without losing all your muscle mass. And eventually you'll, you'll get good at it. But initially, especially if you're trying to gain weight, you probably should feel like I'm eating too much food. If you're eating too much, you're probably doing it right. I think that's a great way to guide is if you feel that emotion, you're probably getting to where you haven't been.

And because you are feeling uncomfortable, now you're getting something done. You should be outside your comfort zone. You should be outside your comfort zone. That means you're doing it right. If I'm trying to maintain or if I'm not trying to put on too much fluff, I adjust my carbohydrates by how much fat I'm putting. First off,

I've been doing it long enough. If I do a big, long conditioning session, I know I need more carbs. If I do a strength work, I need fewer carbs. And then I can kind of track the trend over time

by I just look in the mirror. You could get fancy and do calipers or something like that but I can go oh I'm not as lean as I was two weeks ago I should probably cut the carbs back post workout or if I'm starting to get too lean and what I mean by that is like I start getting too lean and I can tell them my tell us what it's like to be

too lean if I started getting too damn lean well here's what I do for that problem. You're saying something important. Well, what I'm saying is like,

there's a level, when I start getting too lean, my performance goes down. And I know that. I know that like, when I get to a certain point, You probably stop having

your period too, don't you? Well, your hormones do take a shit when you get too lean. Strength athletes know that. But you get too lean, like, yeah.

That's the Melissa Etheridge window of gains. Now you know you? Well, your hormones do take a shit when you get too lean. Strength athletes know that. But you get too lean, like, yeah. That's the Melissa Etheridge window of gains. Now you know you're not, now you just know you're not recovering enough, though. Like,

if you start getting leaner, it's like, okay, my recovery's not as good, but I might be liking the way I look better. And so, I think that's a good way

to adjust the carbohydrates. So, even if you're trying to be leaner, it's good to do the carbs afterwards, but you need to be tracking what happens. And if you're doing too many carbs, you might be getting fluffy. So you just need to keep backing it off. You're asking people to do a thing that's

actually really tough to do. And that is, you know, my dad told me to do that one time. I asked him when I was a kid, like, do you think I should like do this? I was feeling fat, like 10 years old. He told me, just look in the mirror. You like what you see? You're okay. If you don't, well, he left it hanging there. I go, oh, I thought that life lesson. If you don't like what you see in the mirror or if you see changes, good or bad, that's your first indicator. You got to get comfortable looking at yourself. If you can't look at yourself, that seems like another problem that's going to

displace these other worries you have in the gym. You have to be comfortable doing that first and paying attention to what's happening with your form. That is quite a bit of a tangent, but I kind of want to talk about it. I'm good at tangents. Another tangent. No, I mean, like, for all of our, for Muscle Gain Challenge and then for our Barbell Shred

and Barbell Bikini, we ask people to take photos of themselves. Like, oh. This is a big, I want to brought it up. It's a huge thing to do. And it's not for us. It's for the individual. Like, you got to be comfortable looking at yourself and then making a judgment, I guess. But you go, hey, am I going in the right direction or not?

And a lot of times people go, oh, I don't feel like I'm getting any better. It's like, do you have any objective data? It's like, well, no, I didn't collect any because I was embarrassed. Because the way you feel is not that accurate. Right. Yeah, exactly. So it's like you need to take a photo before, photo after. You can do body fat testing or something like that.

But a lot of times people want to get leaner if you're not measuring. And measuring can be just taking a picture, putting it up, and comparing it to last month or six months ago or something like that. If you're not doing that, then you have no idea what's going on. And the only reason we're tuned in and it's easy for me to go, oh, I i'm getting leaner or not because i've been watching it for 18 years i've been paying attention to what's going on as i eat different types of food as i train differently i think it's just like when doug said if you're not if you feel like you're doing too much that's a good sign that you've broken through a pattern you're doing something new and if you know the numbers and you know what you should be hitting then you're you can be reassured you're in a good spot if you pair that with i'm not comfortable looking at myself and watching closely what's

changing, but now I break that. Now I'm just in the routine of paying attention. I know what my weight is. I know how I'm looking. I can see that I'm slightly different, but in a good way. I can reassure myself that I'm right on track every day. You start doing all this, now you got your shit nailed down. You know all the data.

You know what's going on. You will not be surprised by one day waking up being bigger, smaller, weaker, whatever than you thought you'd be. You're on your shit. This is what you should be doing. These are key habits. I used to graph my weight in Excel, so I always knew if I was gaining or losing, especially when I was doing the bouncing back and forth between weightlifting, where I was competing either at 85 kilo or 94 kilo, depending on how far along I was in the process of gaining weight,

and then losing weight back down to bite at 170. So that's a big swing from 94 kilos, which is 207, down to 170. I don't go back and forth probably a couple times a year in some cases. But now what I do is on my iPhone, if you click on the health app. And if you're on iTunes, you are not seeing this.

You're not seeing this. You have a health app on your iTunes that comes with your iPhone. Just click on health data, body measurements, weight, and then add data point, and then just plug in your weight. It timestamps it, and then it automatically graphs it for you. I didn't know it did that. It couldn't be easier.

Dude, yeah. I'm going to use that for a week, and then I'm going to fall out of the habit. Then you can see it'll graph it over the course of your week, and then you can click on month, over the course of your month, over the course of your year. It's just right there. It just tells you automatically where your weight is going, and it does it for you.

It's super easy. I'll include that in the notes, too, because that's a really handy tool. I'm sure there's something else that'll do it for you on Android or whatever. I've evolved to the point where I just go off of how much my wife wants me. That's how I guess my nutrition. You've gone through all this science and all these years of training. There's many factors there. Does my wife think I'm hot or not?

Let me guess what the answer is. In your mind, you think it's always, oh, yeah, she wants me. She's trying to jump my bones all the time. I guess you're doing just fine. You're hyper-lean enough, right? Is that what it is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of graphs, though, I feel like your wow when he showed that was like way fucking overdone.

Like he just showed you like the new Tesla or something. It's because you can chart your weight on a fucking iPhone. Whoa! Well, it's because it's dummy proof. If you can just type in the code to get into the phone, you can track your body weight. It's pretty automatic. You don't have to set anything up. How about now?

Say wow again. Whoa! I don't have to set anything up i mean i don't know say wow again all right with that we're gonna take a break when we come back yeah we'll figure out how much some awesome questions i answered how much uh doug's oh yeah we got a bunch of questions from instagram we're gonna answer at the end we're actually gonna answer questions we try to do this early like back in episode five or something like that we're getting around to it every time we don't we're like, oh, we don't have time for the questions. It took us 173 pilot tries.

177. This is 178. After episode five. Oh, yeah, I did reference five. Okay, we're back on the map. Oh, quick math. This is Tim Ferriss

and you were listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrugged.. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter.

You're in for a treat now. Next up on the top five, our longtime good buddy and resident research geek, Dr. Andy Galpin is here to blow your mind with science. Before the show started, we were all bullshitting out here in the backyard. Shocking. It was like two hours of pregame for the podcast.

Shocking, yeah. And we just started talking about different things. And we were like, oh, man, we should just turn this into a myth-busting episode. Yeah. And so, I don't know. I'll kick it off with one of the ones. And this really isn't a myth-buster, but people go, oh, you know, I don't take it because I'm not trying to put on weight right now. I'm like, creatine.

Supposed to cycle on and off, bro? How do you suppose to cycle off, bro? You know, so easiest way to think about it is there are four macronutrients, carbohydrate, fat, protein, alcohol, right? Yeah, which we're drinking. The easiest way to think about creatine is it is a fifth macronutrient. Okay, it's not right, but it makes you think of it that way. And so I always ask students, do you cycle on and off protein? Do you cycle on and off

fat? Then you don't need to cycle on and off creatine. Having more substrate around is a good thing. Yeah. Carbohydrate causes you to store excess water. If creatine, okay, let's talk biochemistry. Let's have an argument over it. Maybe in the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Carbohydrate does the same thing, arguably more. So whether or not you're taking it, it's such a bad understanding of what the purpose of creatine is. So the whole game of water. What is the purpose of creatine? Yeah, so it's really effective for about everything.

In fact, there is more work going on in creatine in Parkinson's patients, in cognitive function, in neurological disorders, And there are in strength, power, muscle building. People have stopped asking that question since we were asking that question 15 years ago. Yeah, I mean, I asked it in eighth grade when I was taking creatine for the first time. Yeah, it's that well-known. We've just stopped asking questions. And the clinical significance of creatine supplementation is just extraordinary. It's really, really promising stuff. So it does wonders for mental acuity and for people who might have brain and neurological issues.

What about for strength? I actually put creatine in the health portion of my classes for that reason. Not the performance? No, because we know the performance questions. That was answered fucking 15, 20 years ago. And we wrote a review on that in 2000. We do, but everyone doesn't. Just state the obvious for a second and tell us what creatine is for.

It's very, very, very effective. It's dirt fucking cheap. It's almost free. We are going to get this out of him. So what does creatine do for performance athletes? The easiest way to think about it is the way that you make energy in your muscle. You make this molecule called ATP.

Think of it this way. Whenever you break a bond, it gives off energy, right? Like a relationship bond? Yeah, any bond. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Yeah. It gives off energy, right?

Yeah, it does. So there's this molecule called ATP. Most people have an idea what that is. It breaks apart, gives you energy. Creatine is very effective at re-synthesizing ATP so you can re-break it and get more energy. It happens to be the easiest chemistry way to get it. It allows you to fuck more shit up. Yeah, so it allows you to make energy really, really, really fast.

So for strength and power movements, it allows you to do a few more reps or a little bit faster more frequently. If you do that every session, you do it month to month and year to year, all of a sudden you've done 10 times more work. It'll make you maximally strong and maximally fast for a few extra seconds.

If you can go at maximum 100% full speed or maximum 100% full strength for a full six seconds, maybe it'll stretch it out to seven or eight seconds. Or think of an example if you're going to do a lot of really heavy sets. So you're going to do five or ten sets of one or two. Maybe it gets you another set, which is adding to cumulative work. Yeah, I tell people it's not what you do in any one time. If today you're just X percent better. It's one little fucking sliver better because you took creatine.

Over the course of five years, you're fucking obese. So the majority of the research, again, years ago showed for strength and power development, it's very effective. Right. So as an example of what you just said, if you're doing a 95% snatch every minute on the minute, maybe normally you could do three or four sets before you start missing number five, missing number six. Well, maybe if you take creatine, you can hit number five and hit number six, and then you miss seven, eight, nine.

So recovering in between repeated bouts of heavy or fast movements, it'll let you go for a little longer. So snatch ladders, clean ladders for crossfitters, that's a fucking awesome supplement. Yeah, and it's actually what people don't appreciate about creatine is it's actually what they call an intracellular buffer. So it's actually going to, think of it this way,

it's going to block the accumulation of acid. So it's actually very effective for endurance. We're going to go down that route too? We can get there. Do it, do it, do it. Go, go, go, go. Finish all the creatine benefits first, Doug. This is the biggest myth bust of all. It's like a dual one right there. We can run down the muscle and the lactate one.

Okay, we all do that. Do it, do it, go. So what do you want to do, muscle or lactate first? Well, finish creatine, finish creatine. Well, so okay, so here's the creatine. A lot of people assume that acid is causing fatigue, and it's just not. It's just not how it happens. But it's not helpful. So actually, creatine works as a very good buffer for acid.

So it's very good for a short anaerobic two, three minute, a minute, 30 seconds is hard. So if you're doing Fran, creatine is going to help your Fran time out. Yeah, and so that's the probably unappreciated aspect of it. Yeah. Especially the clinical stuff we also talked about. So it helps with power output. Yeah. And it helps with mental acuity.

Yeah. So if you're a cross-fitting rocket scientist, is there any downfall to taking creatine? It's really, really cheap. It's really effective. No real side effects at all. So what's the negative side effects of creatine? So the slide in my class that shows up says, here are all the negative side effects. You ready?

Next slide. That's it. And yet there are journalists that have written negative side effects, right? I saw one in a newspapers two months ago. Journalists, not scientists. So journalists. Yeah, exactly. So here's the deal.

And people always say, I read this in the paper. I read this. Entire football team gets compartment syndrome or it makes you blow. So let's talk about what's happening there. By the way, we're untrained. It's 115 degrees outside and we did way too much. That had nothing to do with it. It was the creatine, you son of a bitch.

Or the entire football team is juicing. It's 115 degrees outside, and we did way too much. That had nothing to do with it. It was the creatine, you son of a bitch. Andy, we've got to get our guys tough. Or the entire football team is juicing, and that's way more likely to cause— Well, they're all hungover. It's not the creatine. Yeah. It's not the creatine. Andy, let's answer this question. The practical thing for the audience, like, okay, I should get powerful.

I should extend my maximum power and all that shit. What should I do, coach? How much does that take? When? What's your expert opinion on dosage? So the basic idea is somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.03 grams per kilogram. It usually rounds out being about 3 grams to 5 grams for a 170-pound person, something in the neighborhood. I would never suggest calculating it.

Just 3, 4, 5 grams. What about 100 grams? Is that better, coach? Yeah, take a scoop. Most creatine bottles have a 5 gram scoop. And if you take too much, what can happen? What dangers lurk in our creatine bottles?

What do you mean by too much? If you're supposed to take 3 grams and you take 5, what's the worst thing that can happen? They've actually done up to tenfold. It's not that big a deal. If you go obnoxious... You probably shit your pants, I imagine. It's not that big a deal. I mean, if you go obnoxious. Probably shit your pants, I imagine. I mean, and you may not have heard this, but there's a speculation that creatine does cause a little bit of myostatin inhibition.

Oh, geez. Don't even get me started. Just real quick, but there's a theory that if you were to take up to 60 grams a day throughout the day, like spaced out. Let me tell you where that theory is not coming from. It's not coming from people that are measuring Milestat, and I can tell you that. Nobody that does that work is saying that. No, that's no.

Oh, man. I can't wait. I can't wait for the comments. All right, so let's go down the buffering track. So tell us about lactic acid and what's correct about that and what's not correct about that. So almost nothing is correct about lactic acid. That is common. So what's the theory, first. So almost nothing is correct about lactic acid. That is common. So what's

the theory, first of all? Tell us all about the bullshit. Let me go back to 1880 or so Germany. 1880? Let me tell you kids a story. Oh, shit. I want to tell you guys how lactate... I'm so glad it's going this far back. So this is what happens when you drink scotch and you're a real science nerd. You look these stuff up and you end up buying

paperbacks on Amazon for $3 that went out of publish 100 years ago. Anyways, the original work on lactate came um from deer stags so sounds hot yeah they hunted what they realized is when we find when we kill a stag and it's been hunted there's a lot more lactate in the muscle all right it's been sprinting for its life therefore lactate must be causing fatigue and that that's what we're talking about. 120 years later, we still have that same idea, even though 60 years of science has showed us quite the opposite. In fact, lactate is probably the single most preferred fuel source in your body. If I IV'd you right now, put glucose or sugar in one of your arms

and put lactate in the other, your body would pick lactate as a fuel. Not only does it not cause fatigue, it's an incredibly powerful form of sugar. That's essentially what it is. It's one step away from sugar. And your body much prefers that. There's a guy just down the road, actually. So how do we produce lactate? Can you put all that in a pill form? I'll take it. Yeah. Inject it in my arm. So I'll make this real simple for you. Sugar is six carbons. When you go through this process called glycolysis or splitting sugar, it gets broke into two separate three carbon molecules. We call those pyruvate, pyruvic acid. Remember this stuff? Now? Yeah. I remember when I was younger taking pyruvate for this reason, but then is that effective? No. Okay. Go. Close. So now we're at two, three carbon molecules. We want

to metabolize or break those bonds like I talked about earlier to get energy. Well, if I don't have enough oxygen to send these three carbon molecules down the road through metabolism, there's actually hydrogen floating around. And so I bind a hydrogen to that three carbon molecule. That is lactate. It's pyruvate with a hydrogen on it. That's all it is. So, in fact, what lactate is, it's a pyruvate that is held because if you're not familiar, hydrogen is it. That's all it is. So in fact, what lactate is, it's a pyruvate that is held, because if you're not familiar, hydrogen is acid. That's what pH, potential hydrogen, right? So lactate actually is pyruvate that is holding onto acid. It's stopping you from becoming acidic.

So the more lactate you have, the more you are stopping yourself from becoming acidic. That's the point. It's capturing it. Yeah. And so the easy way to think about it is, and I ask my students, okay, so if you could think of one thing in the world, you had all this H plus floating around. What do you think of that binds really well? And you don't have to know chemistry to know this answer. What binds really well to hydrogen?

Oxygen. Oxygen and makes? Water. Water. Fantastic. So now I've got pyruvate with a hydrogen attached to it, and I want to get back to pyruvate because pyruvate's sugar, I think of it that way.

What am I going to do? I'm going to take a big, huge, deep breath and bring in? Oxygen. Right. Fantastic. I'll bind that oxygen to that hydrogen. I'll make water, and then I send my pyruvate through as a metabolism. So lactate actually

is a fuel. It gets sent to your heart, actually. It gets sent to other muscles. It gets sent to the liver. It's a fuel, and it's blocking you from becoming acidic. It's tremendously important. Why the mistake? Is there a correlation between fatigue and lactate? Of course.

I always laugh because some asshole killed a deer and came up with this whole thing that we all just buy as undisputable fucking train and truth. You know how I learned this lesson? Actually, fun story. During my doctorate, we had to take our comprehensive exams and one of the guys on my list was a guy named Per Tesh,

who's one of these original researchers who did bodybuilding, fiber typing years ago. And his question was, you have eight hours. Tell me about lactate. And I was like, okay, feel like 30 minutes. And I was done. And I got a huge lecture form about all this stuff and go back and find this, go back and find this. You don't understand lactate. You're going to have a doctorate in bioenergetics. You don't understand this single most misunderstood ion or enzyme. Boom, lesson learned. So instead of calling it lactic acidosis or whatever,

a lot of people call it metabolic acidosis because it's more technically correct. So when people discuss doing lactate intervals or something like that, that uses that term, what's the correct way to talk about all that? How do you use it when you're talking to athletes? Well, here's the easy way to think about it. In the end, it doesn't matter. Call it whatever you want. As long as you're communicating what you want your athlete to do, it doesn't really matter if you have the right terminology. So you can call it lactate. It's the easy way to think about it. In the end, it doesn't matter. Call it whatever you want. As long as you're communicating what you want your athlete to do,

it doesn't really matter if you have the right terminology. So you can call it lactate. It's the same thing, putting yourself in a state of really high lactate. Well, that's actually happening. It's just not the cause of fatigue. So call it lactate. That's why I always laugh when people call it Metcon. That's the CrossFit term.

I always want to respond, can you explain to me a type of conditioning that's not metabolic? It's all metabolic conditioning. Just might be a different metabolic pathway. Yeah. But they're usually referring to It sounds cool, Andy, okay?

It sounds fucking cool and that's why we like it. It's not even a different pathway. It's the same one. You don't have to have evidence for everything, Andy, okay? Not everything has to be in your fucking

scientific ivory tower. We like the word Metcon, dude. We like the fucking word Metcon, okay? And wad. We like to blow our wad, okay? Is that so bad? Is that fucking bad with you? I don't jazz people back. It doesn't matter.

As long as you're communicating with your athlete, it doesn't matter. So what's causing the fatigue? So that's a great question. We have no idea. No idea. That's a sign of somebody who's telling you the truth. When you ask them a question, they go, I don't know. Well, we certainly know this. Enzymes.

Those are things that make energy. They don't know. Well, we certainly know this. Enzymes, those are the things that make energy. They don't work when they're in really acidic environments. Great example. You guys make guac, right? Of course, there's some right over there. Oh, God. You take your avocado, you cut it in half, open it up, right? And what's the main macronutrient in avocados?

Fat. Fat. Delicious fucking delicious fat. Yeah. What happens when you put oxygen around fat? Oxidation. Oxidation. Same thing happens in here.

The tabbing on the avocado. It's literally the same process. It's being oxidized. It's radical oxidant. It's oxidative stress. That's all the same word. Okay. So what do you do to make your guacamole not turn brown? Pour delicious lime juice all over that shit, homie. And what's lime juice? Citric acid. Enzymes don't

work in acid. So if I put your muscle in acid, it doesn't metabolize your fat. If I put I put your muscle in acid, it doesn't metabolize your fat. If I put your guacamole in acid, it doesn't metabolize that fat either. It's literally the same thing. So how do we metabolize fat? What's the most effective way to metabolize fat? So I shouldn't inject lemon juice. You shouldn't inject lemon juice.

I actually get asked that question a lot. What if I drink lemon juice all day? I'm like, fantastic. It doesn't. What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you, kid? I don't care. Oh, you're a weirdo, man.

Just eat it. It doesn't matter. So what's causing fatigue is the question. Acidosis does not help. I was thinking Dr. Andy said never eat citrus fruit. There are other things with the way that the muscle works. So remember that ATP molecule I told you? There's a thing that suggests that maybe that phosphate,

so it gets broken into ATP, which is trisphosphate, into diphosphate, and one more phosphate. There's an idea that that one additional phosphate or inorganic phosphate causes fatigue. There's a bunch of ideas, but the real answer is we really, really don't know what's exactly happening. There's an idea that it's actually central. So the neurological system is shutting you down before muscle actually wants to shut down. Protection. Would that be what people call CNS fatigue? Oh my god. That's a worse one than

lactate. Oh my god. Another myth. Let's do it. I was throwing it at you. Go for it. There is no question that the neurological system can sort of get overwhelmed and shut down. What is CNS fatigue? Explain that briefly.

What do people think it is? So the basic idea is- Before we bust it, we got to say what it is. Yeah, is that the central nervous system can be trained independently. What's the central nervous system? So that would be basically your brain. What is your brain? The spinal cord and your brainstem.

Your nerves run into your muscles and tell them what to do. It gets frustrating sometimes when people come to me and go, oh, I was experiencing too much CNS fatigue. I go, I saw what you did for training. You didn't suffer from CNS fatigue. If you were nature, you'd be fucking dead in two seconds. It would be through with you. Evolution would take you out with that talk.

There's no question that the spine and the brain will sort of fatigue in that fashion, but muscles getting a whole lot of fatigue there too. The basic idea that irritates me is people think you can train your spinal cord or your brain to fatigue, but your muscles completely fine. And that those things can be trained independently, that there's a central, it's not my muscles, my central nervous system. Wow. Take intro physiology class. There is no central nervous system training that trains muscle differently than it trains central nervous system. You got fatigued, you got fatigued. Fantastic. There, it's no, there's no difference there. It's, it's, uh, again, it's one of those things I just go, uh, roll my eyes when coaches sit. As long as you're communicating the right

message, I don't care if you understand the physiology, if you're programming. It does make me wonder sometimes whether coaches are using that terminology to explain to athletes, knowing that it's not the exact right thing. Well, they probably don't, but who cares? It sounds sexy, and I guess as long as they get it, no harm, no foul. No, I mean, you get the idea of like, and I won't mention a name here, but a friend of ours I remember one day was like, it was an off day, and he was like, oh, I'm just going to do a bunch of really heavy deadlifts.

Just train the central nervous system so my muscle's fine tomorrow. And I was like, whoa. Repeat that. You to do a bunch of really heavy deadlifts. Just train the center nervous system so my muscle's fine tomorrow. And I was like, whoa! You're going to do heavy deadlifts so you don't train your muscles? No, no, no, no, no. That is not how it works. Have you deadlifted before? Yeah, that is not how it works. I usually get really sore. Yeah, that's not there. And then the

other one was the muscle. Yeah, we don't know why people get tired is it because we're too fucking jacked andy well this happens a lot with mma fighters and boxers uh and they actually believed it at one time with baseball players and that's you know it sounds like a muscle bound argument like if you look at that ass and i all you gotta do is go back to like the 70s and 80s and baseball players want to lift weights and the coaches are like no no you'll get too muscle bound but barry Bonds fucking nails home runs.

Why are steroids important? Why would you even do it to hit dingers? Why would you want it? It's the fatigue thing that Doug and I were talking about earlier, the idea that if you get too much muscle, well, you're going to get tired faster. That's such, again, a very bad understanding of how physiology works on any level. The idea that having too much muscle is bad. What did you say earlier?

Really? Watch the CrossFit games. Yeah. Those dudes are buff as shit, and they have amazing work capacity, and they're mobile. Yeah. Shooting holes in all those arguments. I feel like people watch MMA, and they see this one dude who happens to be buff, and he happens also to be out of shape, and then they say, because he has muscle, he's out

of shape. One fucking guy. Instead of. He presses too much before a fight and ruins it for everybody a great example jake ellenberger one of the guys i work closest with he is you know his biggest uh professional issue is you know he gets a little bit tired he's had some fatigue issues and he's really really really uh muscular he's unbelievably powerful and so it's like man all this muscle this muscle this muscle like man you muscle, all this muscle. Like, man, you just don't get it.

We were talking earlier. I'll give you three arguments on this. Number one, just look at the athletes. Look at a George St. Pierre. Look at a Sean Shirk. Arguably two of the fittest guys. Sean Shirk is like the jackest dude. They're so unbelievably jacked, but they never get tired because they train that way,

because they're genetically different that way. Bob Sapp gets tired because he's huge because he's just huge. He doesn't fucking work out. And he doesn't train. Yeah, he doesn't train. You can be strong as shit and muscular, but also do your conditioning, man. The problem is these guys are big and they fatigue quickly because all their training goes towards getting big,

and none of it has to do with endurance. That's the fucking problem. That's the problem. Training is imbalanced. Think of it this way. So without making math too crazy, take an athlete who's 6'5", right, and they're 100, say they're 200 pounds. Asia Bartow.

Well, he's heavier than them. 6'5", 200. So say they have 150 pounds of muscle on their body, just to make numbers easy. Now if I take somebody, instead of making them 6'5", make them 5'8", put the same numbers on them, they both still have 150 pounds of muscle. But why is it we look at the 5'5 guy and, oh, you're too muscle-bound, you're going to get tired?

He's got the same amount of muscle as that guy. He's just distributed differently. He's just hard to take down. Yeah, like it doesn't make any sense. In addition, the last comment I'll make on that is, any idea where at in your body metabolism or the way that you produce energy, do you know where that physically happens at? I'm going to guess the muscles. It's in muscle, yeah.

So if you want to produce energy, you need muscle mass. Plus, it still does that force stuff. Well, you get the argument. Well, look at the endurance athletes. You never see a super buff endurance athlete. Because they train like shit. They also run a bajillion hours a week, and they don't eat, and they don't train, and they're genetically really, really good at that. None of them are strength training for hours on end every week they do it you know they touch it

a little bit and you have a nature nurture issue there where the really high level ones are really good at that because they've been built to have a certain mass to tendon stiffness ratio you know they're able to produce a whole lot of force with very little energy um to get there so it's just a really silly argument well how, how does that work? That's something we don't talk about very much on the show at all. Yeah, so. We do talk about stiffness, just not tendon stiffness. I'm so stiff right now.

This is one of the issues we work with the UFC guys on a lot. We don't talk about snap to give you a Mark Verstegen. Yeah, yeah, right. Pop, bang, yeah, whatever he does. The issue is there's a lot of ways to produce. So in my lab, we study muscle at the single cell level. So we pull one muscle fiber. We take a biopsy.

In fact, I've taken a biopsy of Mike. Your first muscle biopsy. How was his touch? Was his touch gentle? Well, his tissue resembled something of an older woman. Something like that. He had to take two out because he didn't get the first one in and I was like

no Andy you gotta push more this way no I remember the needle's like halfway in and I'm like I think I'm there

and he's like you're not in you're not in and I'm like every I can't tell you because I can feel how it's supposed

I knew how it was supposed to feel how many years I've been waiting for you to tell me that I'm in you know it because it's that weird

like pressure like not a pain but like oh god what is that and I remember for some reason I'm looking at his face. I'm not looking at his leg, then I'm jamming this gigantic knee. As you go, that satisfying last push into the hole. You're not in, you're not in, you're not in.

You're in, you're in. All right. Clomp, snap, snap in, get the fuck out. We study muscle at one cell at a time. You petted him after. Is it okay? You want to try again? So we published all this research on what happens on one cell at a time,

and then people make these extrapolations to whole muscle performance. And we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. There's a lot more muscle than one cell. There's the connective tissue. There's the connective tissue around the entire muscle. There's the tendon and ligament. And one of the things that we do with the MMA guys is we try to test and tease out their muscle force versus their tendon and elastic response. Because they're different.

So somebody can be really, really strong but poor elastic. I'll give you an easy example of how we do that. So I'll make them do a vertical jump from a static squat position. So I'm going to take the tendon and elastic component out of it. No counter movement. Start from a half squat straight up. And then they get to do a counter movement. They get a dip and drive.

And then I make them do the same thing off of a box. In fact, I got this from old. This is my research. Yeah. Old, old stuff from Bud Charniga. Yeah. His old translated stuff on their numbers. The old Russian, what the number should be.

And we use that. And so you jump off of a box. And now we're looking at how you land and go back up. So now it's really elastically driven. And we want to look at, and shocking enough, a lot of these guys produced a tremendous amount of force. Jumped really, really high from a static position. But when I had them give a counter movement, they didn't jump any higher. Which you should jump way higher.

And so my mini reaction is we've got to work on more reactive, explosive stuff. That's my weakness too. I can sit down in the bottom, like on a low box and jump and then not really jump that much better. You know, that's why it's one of the things that it'll make me perform better is just doing more of the reversing. And how funny it is, my whole life, so I was a competitive weightlifter and my always sort of joke was me is if I couldn't front squat something,

I would just clean it and then try to front squat it because I could clean almost as much. I tell people that sometimes. I'm like, I actually know a guy that can clean more than he can front squat. They're like, power clean or clean? I was like, clean. It took this dumb, dumb draft years to figure out. When I was working with these guys actually,

I went, maybe I should do some more pause squatting because I am very bad at producing force. I rely entirely on my elastic response. That's why box squatting is good too. Exactly. And so now I started doing that stuff and wow, the gap got much, much better. But that's how we use sort of the idea that there's a lot of things producing force that are outside. Your mommy, all the research, like that's the last time I did research.

But it's how you can use research and science to actually help performance a little bit. So some of these, we had them doing a little bit more, and we're just talking not like a 24-inch box jump, you know, like off of a 4-inch or 6-inch thing, landing and going. And in their sport, it's sort of like, okay, imagine a guy's pressing you in the cage.

You got to back up a few steps and then lunge back at him. You can't do that right now because you get sort of stuck in the hole. You got no elastic. We did that and then lunge back at him. You can't do that right now because you get sort of stuck in the hole. Yeah. You got no elastic. We did that and now their life's, I mean a week.

Speed is really important. When I did my thesis, one thing I did, I borrowed Louie Simmons weight releasers. I went up there and trained for a week. I said,

hey dude, I'm doing my thesis. You mind if I take your equipment out of here and just never come back? That's the kind of guy, that's why anybody that talks shit about Louie,

I go, look, okay, you can have your ideas but the guy is so kind. He just let me take his shit and go back to Memphis. That's the kind of guy, that's why anybody that talks shit about Lou, I go, look, okay, you can have your ideas, but the guy is so kind. He just let me take his shit and go back to Memphis. There's a story where we did jump squats. You lowered a certain percentage of your max. These weight releases would hit the ground and the weight pops off the barbell.

You just fucking jump. We had this awesome thing. I wrote a little thing and I got money from the NSCA. Wearing a t-shirt. God bless those guys. What the fuck are they doing now? They gave me a couple grand. I bought a- Getting sued. What was that thing? No shit, right? What was that thing we bought? Oh, I've been in some fun meetings with the NSCA. Wearing a t-shirt. God bless those guys. What the fuck are they doing now? They gave me a couple grand. I bought a...

Getting sued. What was that thing? No shit, right? What was that thing we bought? Oh, I've been in some fun meetings with the NSCA. What was that thing we bought? It's a barbell suspended in an apparatus where if you let go of the barbell, the circuit opens.

It catches the bar. The thing catches the bar. So you can jump with weight and land with your body weight. It's really cool. What we found is it didn't matter how much weight you added to the bar. We thought, well, these things, people use this shit. What's going on? You lower the weight, it kicks off and you jump.

But really that didn't matter. What mattered was the speed at which you lower. You get down quicker to stretch things. And that's the part that irritates me whenever I work with my students that are coaches or other coaches. They're like, well, you know, we just did this actually. I had John Cronin from New Zealand up in our lab. I almost went to work with him, man. Yeah, and he had visited Cal and he went to Stanford and all these other places.

Then he came down to us, and he was like, you guys are the first people that actually are actually using any semblance of science. Because he went up there, and he was like, the coaches were like, well, you know, we're coaches. We're not researchers. We don't read that shit. Bullshit. And he was like, and I was like, well, this is how we're doing it. We're trying to, you know, and there's tough, and you can't be both for sure. But you can't just pass off the researchers.

Wow, this is, they don't know what the fuck they're all the researchers boy they've never lifted before they don't know like yes yes we have we're trying to do shit like i was talking about hey get out there with your lactate and your goddamn system fatigue like that that's that's what they go do like it'd help if you learn the evidence it'd be very good for you if you learn something i mean i mean you gotta let the evidence build up over time, too. Absolutely. The other mistake, because the other side of the coin is people find one study, and they, you know, that one, like, you're looking at that one cell or something, and they extrapolate it out to the entire human body. Yeah.

Yeah, so on and so forth. So there's got to be that happy medium. No. It's good to look at the research. You know, if there's been 60 studies done on this thing, and it's all in agreement, and, you know, it's been peer-reviewed and all that, then that's good. But on the flip side, people take single studies, take it way too far. So you've got to be smart about how you read those things.

It's the edifice. You've got to wait for a wall to be built of information before you can really make it. Yeah, exactly. You take one thing, you go, okay, maybe there's something here, but you wait until there's really. But then you still have to be very, very, very careful about taking a basic single cell or whatever, oxidative stress, and applying it to the human condition. There's a big, big, big jump there.

Also, if you're not a researcher, but you are very experienced and you understand research, then you don't necessarily have to read the part of the research where they're interpreting the data. Not that you can't read it, but you don't necessarily have to read the part of the research where they're interpreting the data. Not that you can't read it, but you don't necessarily have to read it. You can read the methods and the results and look at the data, and then with your own experience and intelligence, you can interpret the data however you see fit. You say, oh, I understand why that happened like that.

Oh, that makes sense about what I've been doing, what I've seen in the world. Read the methods because... If you only have a little bit, don't read the abstract conclusion. You have to look at the actual data. You don't just in the world. Read the methods because... If you only have a little bit, don't read the abstract conclusion. You have to look at the actual data. You don't just read the abstract. You don't just look at what the researcher wrote as the conclusion.

You have to do it yourself if you really want to know what's going on. That conclusion might have some bias. I published a paper three or four years ago called Guiding Coaches Through Science. It was for coaches, and the idea was that. Can we get that link?

We need to have that link off of our blog. We'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes on the website. You know what? My first piece of advice, what to do with the introduction,

throw it away. Don't read it. It's not information. Methods. It's what you do so you can start talking about what matters. You've got to do this

awkward rambling. You're trying to sell. You pick 10 random articles, you reference them, you throw something together that works. Well, for us, it's grant money. We're trying to convince people to pick 10 random articles, you reference them, you throw something together that works. Well, for us, it's grant money. We're trying to convince people to fund our

work. So it's not for you guys to read. Don't read the intro. If you are brand new and you don't know shit about that paper, then you can read the intro because it'll fill you in. But again, if you're experienced and you already have a lot of intelligence about that area, then you can probably skip it. But be careful because the intro is guided. I'm trying to convince you why

you should read my paper. I'm not giving you like the full unabashed, here's all the stuff, here's the pro. I'm giving you like a very. It's not unbiased. It's a sales pitch. It's a sales pitch. It's selective referencing. Read the methods. And there are certain parts you just throw out.

Don't read. Read these few results. Here's how to get to them. And then the discussion, just like you said, throw it out too. Because this is speculation. I think it maybe happened because of this. I think it happened because of that. Maybe this happened.

Hell, I don't know. Who knows? So don't read that shit. Exactly what you said. Read the results. You make your decision. Boom, out. Yeah.

By page two of your discussion, you're like, what else can I say about this shit? Get through research. And you don't take, like you said, you don't take that one paper and be like, okay, that's it. I'm now going to take X. Right. Whoa. Come on, athletes. Let's jump off the cliff.

That actually happens the most with supplements. Oh, God. They're like, there's one study, and then they want to take, I mean, that's what I do. You took that lizard shit after that. Yeah, and it works, but you know. Deer antler piss. Hey, bro, I read the study. Should I be taking deer antler?

Yeah, one or two studies doesn't really do it. We were talking about creatine earlier. There's been fucking hundreds, seven hundreds, a thousand. Creatine, bro, I read the study. Should I be taking durian? Yeah, one or two studies doesn't really do it. We were talking about creatine earlier. There's been fucking hundreds, seven hundreds of thousands. Creatine and caffeine. Creatine and caffeine. Caffeine, yeah. Go to examine.com and go, oh, shit.

The numbers are in the tens of thousands on that. Tens of thousands. So there's a preponderance of that. We know what the fuck we're talking about when it comes to caffeine. That's why I kind of roll my eyes when you said it. I'm like, do we really want to take time talking about this shit?

Yeah, because people are listening to journalists, and that's the problem. Yeah, it's not for us. It's for whoever happens to be listening. Yeah, it's. Three, two, one. This week on Barbell Shrugged, we visit the Human Performance Labs at Cal State Fullerton to discuss the latest sports science with our longtime friend, Dr. Andy Galpin. This is one of the top educational programs in the country,

with multiple teaching, research, and training spaces filled with some of the brightest minds in strength and conditioning. And while you don't know them all by name yet, their work will likely influence the way you train and coach at some point in the very near future. As you can tell by the goggles and lab coats, we came prepared to handle some serious knowledge bombs on this episode. So be warned, things could get a little geeky.

Welcome back to this very science-y episode of the show, everybody. We have a few more really cool things to share science story-wise, but before we do that, Dr. Andy Galpin, you're going to tell us how this field of sports science and kinesiology is kind of rapidly experiencing some big change. Tell us more about that, man. I think it's really important that people, not scientists, understand what's actually happening in the field, especially young people in this field. Young coaches, even if, I don't want to be young by age, but new in the field,

there's things happening right in front of their eyes that I don't think they're necessarily aware of. So if we sort of track the history of the entire field of strength and conditioning, we'll call it, it really started in Stockholm, Sweden at GIH, which is essentially the first fundamental starting of the study of movement. It literally started with gymnastics. So now we're talking late 1800s, around the early turn of the century. It evolves kind of a big jump into the Harvard Fatigue Lab, which is in the early 1930s or so, where they started studying fatigue and human performance.

And they weren't doing it so that they could make sports better, because sports weren't really necessarily popular then. They't doing it so that they could make sports better, because sports weren't really necessarily popular then. They were doing it really for things like industry. Labor force. Labor force, right? Why are people getting so tired? How can we help them recover better?

And so we're trying to understand fatigue. So it's a building block, stage first. The characteristics of human movement, and then what makes people tired. Very logical steps so far. That's a really interesting question in and of itself. Like, why do we get tired? like why does that happen that's a very interesting question we still have no idea yeah a bit of a rabbit hole too right yeah right um it was also for the war effort so soldiers i mean we're still if you look at world war one

we're still fighting with hundreds of thousands of people in a battlefield for the most part so conditions influence the way of thinking, too. Right. Environmental physiology kicks in. What happens? Like a tired, thirsty, hot, this type of stuff. So you sort of move on from there. And then you have the conversion of Dr. Karpovich, however you want to say it, which is the development of Bob Hoffman, York Barbell. Oh, yeah.

Where we have, okay, you shouldn't do all this heavy stuff. It's bad for your joints. It makes you unflexible, inflexible. What's the word there? Un-am. I don't know. One of them. Immobile.

Makes you stiff. Unsupple. Unsupple. And then you start demonstrating, wow, you can actually be really strong, really big, and be more athletic. Wow, this is actually good. And so what happens is you've got this conversion from lifting. Fatiguing exercise is no longer not bad for you. Maybe it's actually okay.

That realization was how long ago? In the 1950s-ish. I mean, Bob Hoffman, York Barbell, these are the ones really pushing forward where you had these, it turns out to be researchers and scientists who were saying, yeah, this is bad for you. It was almost taboo to lift weights because that would slow you down. It was highly taboo. It would muscle bind you and make you very unathletic, prone to injury. Yeah, and you have these.

As they thought smoking was good. And certainly some percentage of the world still believes that stuff. It's still persisting with people from that generation. Especially that it slows you down or something. Right. We're just scared they're going to lose their girlfriends. That's what's happening. I know it is.

And so you have with these people are developing these barbell exercises and big complex movements, we start realizing, oh, my gosh, they can do standing back flips with 30-pound dumbbells in their hands. Their performance is better. Who can't? Right? I mean, come on. You can't get all the chicks. So you have this next transition, right, where it's, okay, maybe this stuff's not too bad for you.

The next big switch is what I like to call the arnold schwarzenegger effect right pumping iron comes out bodybuilding starts being good and in the entire polarization wave yeah fitness is and and aesthetics is really the biggest transition where not only is it okay for you to lift but now actually maybe you can look better you can feel better about yourself you can have the body you always wanted that's still come everywhere all the time right it's kind of what i call the arnold was the bro the bro area right it's the evolution of bro science where it's like let's take this highly scientific approach to weight training and weight lifting and exercising so that we can get as huge as possible as fast as possible right and so it's a really it's the first time we've really started developing science for the purpose of aesthetic,

for the purpose of, I want to look better, work out better, I want more results. Prior to then, it was about these other classic physiology issues. We're cruising along good,

and we still have, that age is still alive right now. If you look at media, magazines, it's women, here's how to get a bigger butts, smaller stomachs, bigger tits. Wait, no, the guy, there's an exercise for that. Teach me same fucking bodybuilding routine and reprinted every magazine from now to any time, four sets

of 10, everything you see here and not, not very progressive. Right. And so what's actually happening right now is you're in the middle of the next big transition, right? And that big transition is sort of multifaceted, or I should say bifaceted, in fact, where it's shifting in the direction of we're now starting to realize the major health implications. Not only is it not bad for you like we used to think, okay, you can get looking good,

but oh my gosh, here are the health implications of muscle. Here are the health implications of interval training. Here are the cardiovascular benefits of high intensity exercise. Wow, and it is completely transformed what's happening at the medical level, at the healthcare level,

because we're realizing, man, maybe we should have been doing all this really hard training all along. Yeah, we talked a little bit about the last show, like we're realizing, man, maybe we should have been doing all this really hard training all along. Yeah, we talked a little bit about the last show, like healthier muscle being the foundation of healthier everything. Better insulin function, better communication between muscles and organs. Basically, everything that can function better, it will function better if the muscle's strong and healthy.

Yeah, one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself is to have a lot of muscle mass and have very little fat. Right. Like, there's very few people that have a lot of muscle mass and very low body fat percentage that are not healthy. And you're not talking about, like, freak, crazy... No, no, no.

People who achieve it via natural means, training, and healthy lifestyle, not, like, massive amounts of steroids to make the muscle appear. No. I just want to make sure that was clear for the audience. We're not talking about a 21-year-old guy, you know, going from 10% body fat

to 9% body fat. Right? We're talking about just being in a reasonable health for your age and your, your development area. If your body fat percentage is in the teens for guys, like maybe high teens, low twenties for ladies, that's pretty lean for both genders. And then if you have a decent amount of muscle mass where you look, you look normal, you look, you look athletic, you look like a, you know,

between a college soccer player and a college football player, like that, that type of athletic build, I'm not talking about being an enormous bodybuilder and being just ripped, ripped to shreds where like you're all your pain just sticking out or anything like that. But you know, people that have a good amount of muscle mass and a very low body fat percentage, they tend to be very, very healthy. Right. People that are super overweight, all of a sudden, they're not healthy. They've got all kinds of diseases that come with the disease of being overweight. Right. Right. Exactly. And so, that, you've got a decent level of physical performance. My prediction, and I've been telling my students this, the end outcome of a degree in our field is going to be completely different in a decade.

I'm predicting right now you're going to be hiring strength and conditioning coaches in hospitals. You're going to be hiring them. You're going to be getting medical insurance is going to start covering these types of things. It's going to happen. It's going to happen very, very soon. The entire industry will be different 10 years from now. The profession will be completely different in a decade. There's just no way to disregard the treatment weight,

the sheer effect that a cheap, you can do this anywhere, you can have a few weights, get stronger, and really decimate these huge trends towards disease effect that a cheap, you can do this anywhere, you can have few weights, get stronger, and really decimate these huge trends towards disease and metabolic syndrome and cancers and everything else. Yeah. And so to establish that pedigree of importance, right? So you're professionalizing the profession, right?

It's getting listed and regarded in higher esteem. The second part of what I said earlier, and I said it was kind of two parts, is the level of sophistication of the research in the field is growing leaps and bounds. Where you have labs like mine, where it's fairly unique. You don't have people that have the practical background that I have that have a lab like this. I have my students in here. You can see them up the wall. We've got more than 15 or so students who have been in here. You can see them up the wall. We've got more than 15 or so students who have been in here.

They're running chemistry and molecular biology experiments, and they never had a chemistry class. They're strength coaches. They're working, so they'll leave an elite training center. There's one in Anaheim a lot of them work at here, STARS. It's great. They're training NBA players, NFL players. They walk over

here, run some chemistry experiments, go back to class, then go back to work and train a football player. And unfortunately, it seems a little bit taboo because people go, well, these kids have certain prerequisites and this kind of other. But then again, you're ruining this sort of crossroads effect where all the magic in any area of studies with ideas and personalities of people with different backgrounds are going to mix as they're working on a topic. Yeah.

Like you said earlier, I don't have a 4.0 GPA. I barely passed one chemistry class in my life. And I run a bio. Yeah. Like you said earlier, um, you know, we're not a bunch of, I don't have a 4.0 GPA. I barely passed one chemistry class in my life and I run a biochemistry laboratory. All my students are the same way. So it's not a, you're not like, well, my gosh, science, like you said earlier, it's not like, uh, I'm just a strength coach trying to figure out strength answers. It's more like on the job training. It's like you're learning the pieces you need to know and you can do those things. You didn't have to take 10 chemistry classes and learn total generic chemistry that you're never going to use. You just came in, and you learned the pieces that are important,

and you fucking disregard all the pieces that you're never, ever, ever going to use. I mean, don't get me wrong. I love it when I get students who have had molecular biology class and genetics class. It's super helpful. Because I don't have to spend as much time training them about things that kill them in this lab, which is good. They have some basic skill.

Don't drink the formaldehyde. Yes. I've got to write this down on the board. That doesn't go on your face. Yeah. The bottle of ATP I have, don't eat it. Yeah, it's not a good thing to eat. Please don't drink that.

All right. So it's really a big transition where you're going to see a lot more research that is this combination of strength and molecular. In fact, the only way you're going to answer the questions we're interested in is to start doing that type of research and we're pretty unique in the fact that we're doing that we're getting some really awesome practical answers by studying this level of physiology yeah speaking of the practical answers andy one of the other scientific topics we're going to bring up is heart rate what you're learning yeah so with some of your evidence well what the just as a quick example scientific topics we're going to bring up is heart rate and what you're learning recently with some of your evidence.

Well, as a quick example of what we talked about a little bit earlier in terms of how you use science, I was telling Doug that a couple of nights ago, Natasha and I did some intervals on the Arodine. So 10 minutes, we did 10. It's a couple's date. It's a romantic evening. Right? What do they say? Like exercise together.

Of course. Train together, stay together. Makes everything hot. I'm'm a right champ i just get yelled at the whole time it's awful we're not good training partners but we did one minute intervals on the aerodyne as hard as you can 10 rounds one minute on one minute off brutal brutal right and i wore i never wear a heart rate monitor but i wore one to sort of show a point. Um, me, I had an average heart rate of 195 beats per minute for the 10 trials got up to like 208. Now, if you know what heart rate numbers mean, I just broke, like, apparently I'm 12 years old, right? So tech, if you don't know what that joke means, uh, how you calculate your max heart rate is supposed to be 220 minus your age, right? So technically on an exercise physiology class on your exam.

Write that formula down. Right. Yeah, that's your number, right? Well, what it's clearly showing is I'm not particularly fit. I'm not super mentally tough, and I just passed... That's not how heart rate works. Heart rate work is... Some of the best conditioning endurance athletes

have ever been around have a max heart rate of 175. I'm certainly not more fit than they are. But the point I'm getting at is that number that equation which is so well documented in science most high schoolers know that number it didn't work for me i don't that doesn't fit my physiology my max heart rate's more like 212 i've been to 212 dozens of times um. So some folks might be at 170. So 220 is your starting point. But you can deviate massively from that number. And that's just a very basic example of the fact that the interpersonal and intrapersonal differences are huge in science. It's like looking in an anatomy book and you're like,

wow, the human brain weighs 10 pounds. What does that mean? It's like saying the human foot is eight inches long. It's like, well, maybe for somebody, but someone else's foot is twice that long. It doesn't really mean anything. So the heart rate thing for you, 220 minus your age, it should be 188 or whatever it's supposed to be.

But there's a standard deviation both ways. For some people, it might be way less than that. Some people might be way more than that. So to your point from earlier, it's not about the average it's about the individual and it's everything not just in science but everything in the whole fucking world right now is is leaning towards becoming more and more and more individualized and shine in science is chasing that motif if you will exactly yeah exactly the heart rate factor a very convenient thing to keep them on if you're a student in school getting very very frustrated over the the road repetitive uh memorization of

of shit and you think that that's where your future lies and be able to spit back out facts versus just taking the time to understand what is the real core of why heart rate going up and down matters so much and there's an important point actually sort of buried in that in that i'm certainly not telling you to not pay attention to these normal numbers, because if you do, you're a fool. You need to know 220 minus range. You should start there. If you don't know that, you're going to miss the ball a lot.

You're better off starting with the average and then figuring out if you're deviating. If you don't know that, if you disregard this, if you're like, well, if none of that's true for everyone, I'm just not going to learn any of it the hell with it all. I'm just going to figure it out as I go. That is a terrible approach. You're going to make years of mistakes until you figure all these things out. Absolutely. So do pay attention to these things, but you just interpret them with a little bit of a,

instead of being like, oh, that's the fact, that's the answer, there we go. It's, okay, that's pretty good. Let me start there. Yeah. Here we go. Especially now we're in a laboratory science school. I think you have to learn the basic rules of where you're playing and what you're doing. That's why school might not be perfect, but you learn how things have been done and you

see the landscape. And once you get that level of information, then you can decide, right, this looks weird. Let me pull a pressure on that and test that. Is that true for everybody? You can't break the myth if you don't know the myth. Yeah. Learn the rules and break the rules. Put that on a t-shirt.

Hashtag. Right. So heart rate, Andy, we also talked a little bit about gaining muscle mass, hypertrophy. What's new on the scene with getting hashtag gains? Is that a 3D printed muscle in your pocket? I don't know. Or is it just happy to see me? People watch this going, what in the shit is in Dr. Andy's pocket?

He's going to tell you. Not quite yet, though. Not quite yet. Oh! You're teasing me. What is the you. Not quite yet, though. Not quite yet. Oh, you're teasing me. What is the purple thing? Go ahead, Andy. So what I wanted to bring up here is the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, we do have a

nice number of scientists out there trying to do the type of stuff where, you know, the comment I hear all the time is like, wow, these scientists, they just, they don't understand application. Yes, we do. Some of us. And we're like, no one, why doesn't anyone ever do this type of work? Well, we are. You're just not reading it. This work is happening. It's an awareness thing, right? This practical, so the example I want to bring up, I've been fortunate to collaborate with a guy. He's Facebook famous in the world of fitness, Brad Schoenfeld, out of New York. He's the hypertrophy guy, like world's guru on hypertrophy. He's a great guy. He focuses on studies.

He sounds huge. He's tiny, actually. Oh. But he focuses only, he keeps a very focused research agenda. It is hypertrophy, and that's it, basically. So we've been fortunate to collaborate with him a little bit, where he's doing a bunch of different training studies looking at hypertrophy. So he'll do an eight- or ten-week training study.

Two groups. One group will get one minute rest between their sets and one will get two minutes. Sure. One will get three minutes. And he's just doing all these things where, for example, we're classically taught, if I want to hypertrophy, if I want to get gains, I should probably do somewhere between like eight to twelve reps per set. That's your classic textbook number

5 to 8 sets of that 4 to 5 maybe even a little heavier, maybe a little lighter well Brad challenges all that and he says okay that's actually never really been established scientifically which is funny to sound because we've been teaching this for decades this is what people do

and it just keeps persisting it's not like it doesn't work but we we're saying, is it the best way? Yeah, so Brad is challenging that. So he just did a couple of different studies where he finished, and he looked at rep range. And he showed impressive gains in hypertrophy in that 8 to 12 rep range, but he also showed it all the way out to like 25 to 30 reps. Ah, so that's what people would assume is, no, you just get endurance effects from doing too many reps. Anything over 10, no,

you won't get stronger. Where, here's the misinterpretation of it. You're not, he's not saying eight to 12 is the same as 25. What he's simply saying is they both do work.

Now, the eight to 12 group or so was stronger at the end than the 25 to 30. So, a misinterpretation of science is,

ah, they both work the same. Right. No, they both work the same. Right. No. They both work the same for hypertrophy, but one of them also added these massive gains in strength.

Right. Hypertrophy means bigger muscles. Bigger muscles, right? Getting bigger muscles. So what he will say is his interpretation of data is different than how people interpret his own,

which is always how it works, right? Yeah. Like every time someone interprets my research, I'm like, no. Like that is not what I said. It's like when you hear a song, you say, oh, here's what that meant by writing the lyrics. And the guy writes a song goes, no, man, nothing like that. You're still listening

to the same fucking song. Right. And so what he says is you should spend the bulk of your training, training in that optimal eight to 12 range, but then you need to also include out to 25 and include down to five. And so he's just showing support for working across the spectrum. He's done the same thing for rest intervals. So if I do a set of 10, do I wait a minute, two minutes, same thing. Most of your benefit comes with what we teach as a textbook, but you need to train over the spectrum. We've done the same thing in terms of, I love the question of, I want to get powerful. How heavy should I lift? If I lift really heavy, it's too slow, right?

Yeah. If I lift really light, there's not enough mass for it to be powerful. And so the number coaches will throw at it is like, oh, okay, 30%. It's a little bit of mass, right, but it's fast enough to go fast. True. Well, the collective data suggests, well, that's good, but you've got to train the whole spectrum. You need to do some real heavy stuff. You need to do some real heavy stuff.

You need to do some real light stuff. Optimal power is achieved across the entire spectrum. So it's just evidence like that where there is this practical research happening. I know there's another guy in Florida who's doing a lot of these same type of things in elite bodybuilders. We're trying to answer, how is it different from young, old resistance training? Now what's it look like at the top end of the spectrum? So this is happening. There are some of us out there.

And if I could say one thing to anyone listening, we need more people like that. We need more people who really understand practical because Brad actually started for like 15 years he was a personal trainer. He got his PhD like 20 years after he graduated college. It's really refreshing to hear stories like that. People assume like, oh, I did some personal training. I can't go back and pursue an interest like going to school. Absolutely. Learning some science, learning how my muscles actually work,

and now that I know the application side. Right. Most of us are not scientists that learned application. Most of us are appliers, applicators. Applicators. Human applicators. Practitioners. Practitioners. That learned research because we wanted answers. So that is growing in science. are appliers applicators applicators human applicators practitioners practitioners that learned research because we wanted to answer so that that is growing in science um we need more

but it's getting there um the philosophy of attacking physiology from the perspective of the elite is a pretty new phenomenon and there's only a few of us doing it yeah most of the most of the sciencey research and or developments from a lab like this went towards more like the medical system where people are sick and they're trying to get better there's there's more of a you know there's more pain like quite literally like emotional physical and otherwise in that situation which tends to make people very very motivated to get out of that pain so kind of most of the efforts went towards the medical world first but now people are really starting to take all those same practices

and apply it towards people that are kind of baseline normal and they want to be as healthy as possible versus being sick, trying to get back to normal. Yeah, I mean the general philosophy of our lab is if we want to figure out how muscle or the body is supposed to function, instead of looking at a normal population, which generally in research, normal population means 18 to

25 year old male who's recreationally active. Whatever that means. What we now realize is... You mean you're a college kid because that's the only pool you have to pull from? Right. That's where the lab is? Right. That's the easiest subject to get. What? Condoms. Condoms.

Condoms. Absolutely. Recreation. Recreational user. Gotcha. subjects to get what condoms condoms condoms absolutely recreation recreational user gotcha and what we're now sort of my philosophy is that's actually to me closer to the end not the the spectrum of normal that's closer to the spectrum of sick we shouldn't be taking people who are basically physically active and can be considering that the gold standard. We should be taking it the other approach, which is let's find out, let's look at the elite athletes in the world. Let's figure out what they look like because that's where we're supposed to be. We're not trying to just get you back to not sick.

We want you to be performing in terms of life performance, health performance at the level of these elite athletes. So our contention is if we figure out what we're supposed to look like, then we can start getting closer to there. But if we don't know what we're supposed to look like, we don't know what we're going after. I do like the idea of making the standards more stringent. Like anytime you raise someone's expectations, they always gravitate towards those expectations. Anytime you lower the expectations, people just, they kind of regress to those expectations. If,

if the recommended amount of exercise from surgeon general, whoever recommends it is, is three days a week for 20 minutes at a time. And they're like, you know, go for a walk around the block. Then that becomes the standard. Everyone thinks like they're doing,

they're doing a good job. If they do anywhere even close to that, like I think we'd have a much better time or not much better time, but a much better outcome rather. If we said that that the standards were five days a week for an hour or something like that and then i could attack that argument from a million different directions and make a case for either side definitely but but in general i think having higher expectations is a good thing especially if again we're talking on the individual level. Now, we'll sort of tease it back to, I think, the last episode I was on. I think I mentioned the fact that VO2 max is one of our more significant predictors

of how long you're going to live, your VO2 max. So a classic example of what you just mentioned is – What is VO2 max for everybody who didn't watch it? So that's sort of – it's the maximum amount of oxygen you can consume, but it's essentially how your maximal fitness. So maximum heart rate, it's very similar to that oxygen you can consume, but it's essentially your maximal fitness. So maximum heart rate, it's very similar to that. So your maximal cardiovascular function. Sort of think of it like that.

So the way we normally say it is, okay, what's an average VO2 max score for a college male? And we would usually throw out a number like, well, maybe the mid to high 30s, maybe 40s. That's actually really low. So we say, no, like you, to be healthy as a 25-year-old, you should be, everyone, in fact, the guy I used to work with, Dave Kostel, one of the classic exercise physiologists, always told us, if you're under 60, you're not trained.

So 60 was him, was don't talk to me if you're under 60. But yet we say, oh, don't worry about it. Oh, you scored a 41? No, you're good. You're normal. That's actually pretty good. And so that bar is very, very good. Yeah, normal's not good.

Yeah, I'm pretty good. Yeah. I'm doing all right. I was about to say what my score was until you were like, if you're under 60, you're untrained. I was like, oh, wait, maybe I shouldn't say it. I've only done it once, like a true VO2 max test. That was when we were playing college football together like 10 years ago. And I think I got a 57.

Oh, I'm sure you're much higher. I'm not. But once I started fighting MMA, I bet you my score went up because I was in way better shape fighting MMA. I thought Doug was fit. Now I've got a – this one number tells me otherwise. Everything I've learned to date is a lie. I got a 50 50 for a football player that's a pretty normal number yeah i think 58 and a half a couple of years ago on a bike by half

whatever he said plus half that's what i got i actually think if i remember correctly you beat me by one i don't know just that or i beat you by one yeah that's probably the case you're certainly farther down the conditioning spectrum than myself yeah Yeah, absolutely. Without a doubt. Yeah, so we're learning a lot by studying this practical stuff, especially there are people doing this type of work. We're learning every day, and it's changing the way that we're training. They're changing the prescription a lot from what we thought because we're doing all this really cool stuff

because we have the scientific knowledge, and we're not being scared away and we're demystifying science. Speaking of demystification of knowledge, you want to tell people what the hell this thing is in your pocket? I will on episode two of the series. I'm just kidding.

Yeah, sure. So, I told you we want to run the spectrum in our lab. So I told you we want to run the spectrum in our lab. So human performance, a little bit of physiology, all the way down to the nuts and bolts. So what we do is actually the muscle biopsy. So we go in with a needle. We take a chunk of people's tissue, and we pull it out.

You take a chunk of someone's muscle from their leg, and you rip it out of their body. Exactly. Yes. That's basically what happens. That's exactly what happens. In the name of science. In the name of science it out of their body. Exactly. Yes. That's what happens. That's exactly what happens. In the name of science. In the name of science. People volunteer for it.

Yeah. They get paid like a cafeteria money credits or something. Yeah. You got 50 bucks one time. Here's a free six pack of chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-A. Sometimes we have a bunch of variety of protein bars we give them afterwards. Quest bars, I'm all down. No, that's too pricey for a bunch of ass biopsies.

We got the kind that got the sugar alcohol, give you the for a podcast. May I have a past biopsies? We got the kind that got the sugar alcohol, give you the walk and fart. Is that okay for your trouble? Maybe if we did AIDS or diabetes research, we could have the funding to buy Quest bars, but we're lower than that. You're holding in your hands. Also, use descriptors for the audio only audience. Yes, if you're listening to audio, by the way, you're totally missing out right now,

just like the last five episodes. And he's holding a pink shaft. Yeah, a pink shaft sort of with dots. So what we do is, oh boy. We actually do all of our analysis at the single fiber level. So that's one muscle cell at a time. Muscle fibers, skeletal muscle fibers in humans are extremely unique. In fact, I would encourage, I won't go into the detail now, but go back and look at the write-ups that myself and my colleague, Jimmy Bagley, did for the Daily.

Okay. So it's on your website. Link to it. We talk a lot about the stuff we're doing here. The new science of muscle memory. Right. So we'll talk more about, you can read more about it there. But what we're doing is we'll go through this piece of tissue.

So we rip it out of the leg, and we go through with with a tweezer and we pull out one fiber at a time. And we do all of our analysis on those fibers. So a classic thing we would look at is we would take a biopsy of Chris's leg and we would count how many of those fibers are fast twitch and how many of them are slow twitch. Basic type of stuff like that. Well, we're starting to get more detail

because we started getting athletes, and for us that was particularly MMA fighters, where we'd put them in our human performance lab and they'd blow the doors down in terms of their power and their strength and then we would bring them into our conditioning stuff and they're blowing the doors down on that and right in our classic that's another thing to challenge because you typically you wouldn't expect both things to exist at the same time happening mma and also in crossfit's happening where people are very strong and very fit simultaneously and sort of breaking rules. Right. And we're like, oh, my gosh, textbook, you're not supposed to be able to do that.

And so my question, I'm a muscle guy. Why? So I started thinking, like, why the hell isn't it happening? So we take the biopsies of these really high-level MMA and UFC fighters, and we started looking at it at the single-fiber level. So what we're doing is we're actually looking at how big the fiber is. And in human skeletal muscle, it's unlike anything else where normally most fibers in biology have one nucleus. The nucleus is what holds your DNA. It's what tells your cell to grow.

The main center of the cell. Right. Well, human skeletal muscle has thousands of these nuclei in the fiber. Well, we skeletal muscle has thousands of these nuclei in the fiber. We started counting them. We actually use a laser microscope. We make a 3D movie of individual muscle fibers. Which is super cool.

We stain it for the actin and the myosin which is what makes it contract. These are basically components that comprise a muscle cell, make it ratchet and contract and shorten and lengthen. Right. And then we actually started staining it for those myonuclei, so those nuclei. So then what we did is we were literally leaving the laser microscope lab, which is below us, and I had this file on a flash drive, and I'm literally walking back to my office. And Jimmy said, hey, I just saw a sign that the library apparently has a 3D printer.

Oh, snap. So we literally walk into the 3D printer, and I ask the guy, what kind of files do you use? And he tells me, and I'm like, really? It's the same file we have. I pull out my flash drive. I'm like, can you print this? And he pops into his thing, and he's like, yeah, come back in an hour. Man, I'm going to show off in front of all my colleagues.

Wait till they see this fucking thing. So what you're looking at is the results. So this is a single muscle fiber. In fact, this is actually my brother. This is a fiber. I biopsied my brother. I took one of his fibers. I imaged it, and then I printed it in plaster.

That's cool. It looks like a giant nerd rope. Yeah. Those things are delicious. Thanks for the scientific comment, CTP. You said you're going to give us some extra video, right? Yeah. Sharp, sharp beaks.

We'll show the real thing edited in all swiftly. Yeah, you can see the 3D movie. You can actually just check it out on my website, too. I don't know the link. Just Google it. You'll find it. It's on your membership site. Nine to nine per month.

You can look at it. Yeah. You'll find Dr. Andy's. You have to be 18 or older. You might find his porn video from 20 years ago. You might find science. Who knows what you'll find. I forgot you did that.

Dr. Andy Galpin. So some of the interesting things about this is if you see the black sort of dots. Yes. If you're listening to audio, pause. There are black dots. Right. For the audio. Many, many.

These are the nuclei. And so what we're actually able to do is count how many nuclei you have. Now, Chris, as the astute former scientist and strength coach you are. I was a former scientist. If you have a bunch of nuclei, what's that matter? I would think that there's a lot more communication and handling of information than otherwise would be going on. Absolutely. So in terms of training, if I have more nuclei, I can do things like recover better.

Because I have more control center. I can do different types of training and get better responses because I have more regulation. And more coordinated effort to do these things that need to get done. Exactly. Things are more efficient. Recovery happens faster. All this stuff. And so I wasn't really surprised when we started to find these MMA fighters that simply started having more of these mononuclei.

The case he does? Your brother? Yeah, yeah. Well. Nothing. He's working on it. His brother's working on it. Right.

So it actually gets hyper-detailed past this. brother yeah yeah well nothing he's working on it his brother's working on it right so it was also what it actually gets hyper detailed past this um doug and i were talking about some of the stuff earlier but even the shape of the nuclei you can see some of them are circular um like that sure yeah nice circle some are long some of them are long that all means something right the shape of them um we talked about the location. So this image doesn't show it, but you've got to realize that some of these nuclei are on the outside, and the movie will show this well. Some of them are in the middle.

What we know now is when the nuclei start going to the middle, the fiber is about to die. I don't know why that's happening, but we know that that's a relationship. Young, old, strength-trained, non- non-strength trained, this is all different. So the actions are different in them. So what we're trying to do is figure out, again, what makes these elite-level athletes different. And we're starting to see it at this single-fiber, single-cell level. So the more nuclear becoming present, you're observing that. And then also I think what's interesting is when these athletes have a period of detraining, they go away. Are you observing any kind of effect when they are

going away? They're not training, they're getting a change, and they come back to training. What happens because of all these nuclei? Let me bring out my model again. Okay, now, yeah, it's a classic idea of muscle memory. So if I were to do a gain phase, right, if I joined a six-month muscle challenge, right? You should because this jacket is very loose on you. Wow. Yeah, come on. Wow, you're hitting my lap.

I'm in your lap. I'm calling you gainsless. Right? Just joking, Andy. So if you were to do a bunch of training, this fiber would get thicker. Okay? It gets bigger. Well, that's a problem because each one of these nuclei can only control so much.

Are you guys worried about the thickness of my doll here? No, it's just... Production crew, come on. Come on. Keep it together. Charlotte's giggling behind you. It looks bad. I love it when Charlotte giggles behind me.

Anyways, so each one of these nuclei can only control a certain amount of area. Analogy, if you were to start a company and you're expanding across the globe, you'd eventually have to open up new offices everywhere to control everything. Get a bunch of new managers. Right. Well, you do that and that's what happens. And so your fiber gets bigger, thicker. The diameter goes out.

And so you end up having satellite cells come in. Those get developed into new nuclei. Cool. You stop training. The fiber fiber shrinks goes back to normal science well the old theory would be that the nuclei then die because that'd be a waste of resource and right what we're now thinking is that they actually stay alive for quite some time so that when you start training again those are already in place so it's easier for you to come back to that space so back back to your business analogy.

So if your company grew and expanded across the globe, you open more offices, more offices, more offices, you hire more managers, more managers, more managers, and then you downsize, you start laying off employees, but what you didn't do is you didn't sell all your buildings and you didn't fire your managers. You still have that core team. That way, if business picks back up, you have all that infrastructure in place

and you can grow big again very quickly. 100%. You get rid of the interns, you get rid of the low-hanging ones, and then you downsize a little bit, but you keep the important players. You can bring the other ones back to bring you back out. That's a super important point to make. If you get hurt, you get something to happen in your life where you're making good progress and now progress stops

because of circumstances in your life that aren't allowing you to train, aren't allowing you to cover what you want. If you have to take a break or if you take a break on purpose after a few competitions, you need some rest, you can come back way quicker and better than you think. You won't like magically just lose all this progress. The infrastructure is there to help you come back fast and probably better than before if you have a reasonable training program. Yeah, yeah, 100%.

We have another study actually launching here really soon that I'm really excited about where some folks, if you know much about this, you might be thinking, ah, well, how much of that is actually pre-genetically determined versus how much of it did you get when you trained? Sure. So we were lucky. We're very fortunate. We have a set of identical monosligus twins.

So exact same DNA. Is it the Olsen twins? No. That'd be cool though, right? It would be cool, bro. Right. So identical twins, same DNA. Is it the Olsen twins? No. That'd be cool though, right? It would be cool, bro. Right. So identical twins, same DNA. One of them has about 30 years of marathons, Ironmans, endurance events.

The other one has never exercised. Oh, man. Like the dream scenario. Literally have the best design study you can imagine. Exact same starting DNA. 30 years of consistent training we're going to bring them in we're putting them through a whole physiological gamut of testing biopsies all this stuff included we're going to figure out essentially we know that basically

everything is trainable the question is how much so right if you're naturally born say for example your genetics would give you a higher VO2 max than Chris. Right? Well, we think currently VO2 max, you got about a 20 or so percent ability to change. But we're going to find out exactly. Is it 20? Is it 15? Is it 80?

If the trained twin has got a double VO2 max, trainability is a lot higher than we think. Those are the results that will get you published on the front cover of fucking Nature magazine. You know why it won't? Because we've got a subject size of one. But, as we've learned on this show, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's very insightful to have meaningful evidence from a very small experiment size. I'm very fortunate working here because I'm not,

I don't have a lot of that pressure. We talked about it earlier in terms of publication, so I'm really fortunate. Lee Brown, the director of the lab, is also, our director of his lab he's not my boss but uh we care about doing awesome shit if that means more publications cool fine if it doesn't i don't care i want an awesome answer i want i like mma i like fighting i like this stuff i want that answer if it means i get published cool if it means i don't i don't care i want to know the answer what advice would you give to the aspiring science students and aspiring coaches and athletes out there? And if they want to learn a little bit more about science-y stuff, where would you even start? Okay, so I'm actually going to go a little bit big picture here.

Go big picture. And I'm going to force you to go back to episode 189, the one you did with Alex Macklin recently. Okay. Knowing versus learning? What's it? Learning versus knowing. Knowing versus learning. Okay, so here's what...

Be a learner, don't be a knower. So when you hear these things happen, when, for example, someone has an idea and they tell you this training program's great or this supplement's great or you should do this or foam roll or you shouldn't do this. I really encourage young coaches to step back and instead of being like, no, bro, I saw a paper show that didn't work. What you need to say is, wow, I wonder why they're doing that that way.

I wonder how it's working. In fact, ever since that meeting we had where we had this talk, I've had an entire new approach where every time something happens in my life, the first thing I try to do is, okay, I immediately want to criticize something. I play a game where try to figure out as fast as you can a reason why that person did that. So whether it's training stuff or whether it's something like, you know, I went down to the kitchen this morning and, uh, my brother had didn't do his dishes, didn't clean his pan. My gut reaction was like, you mother, like every day with you inconvenience me so much. Right. And so I, instead of doing that, I go, okay, and this is a conscious act. I go, all right, try to envision some reasons why he may have done that. Turns out he did that because my bedroom doesn't have a door. It's in the loft, and the kitchen's kind of below. So for him to clean it, he just got to bang things around.

This is 345 in the morning. So he didn't clean the dishes so that he wouldn't wake me up. Convenient. Had I yelled at him, I would have felt like a giant asshole. Right. Right? And so the same thing happens with training, all this stuff. So when someone says, I'm doing this approach or I'm doing this movement,

I like to do this variation, instead of being like, no, dude, I saw on technique wad, you're an idiot. Don't do it that way. Try to go, I want to think of three different reasons why he might be doing it that way. The same thing when young coaches read science. This thing worked. This thing didn't work.

Well, okay, maybe it worked, but try to think of another scenario when it may not work. So this may work for hypertrophy. I wonder what happened to strength, what happened to speed, what happened to recovery, what happened at this level. Getting lost in the conclusion of science can be traumatic. It can be a terrible approach. So my young coach, my advice to them when you're in class, when you're listening to audio or podcasts, whenever you're doing, when you're in the gym, try to have that approach and really don't think about, is this working? Yes or no. And just think about, I wonder why give me three reasons right now, why someone might want to do that. Now you can still disagree,

but you've gained so much more perspective and you won't sound stupid when you say something to somebody who's a scientist, like, oh, this has been shown to not work. And I'm like, really? Because I could play that game all day. Yeah, that's an amazing mindset to cultivate. What about people who want to get in touch with Andy, learn more about what you're up to, come visit you, track you on social media?

Where can they find you? Yeah, email chris at barbellshrug.com. Oh, no! I'm just kidding the social media stuff at DR Andy Galpin so like doctor but not spelled out you can do there check out

our lab you'll have to just google my name and google our lab it'll pop up put a link in the show notes to how you can get a hold of Dr Andy at Cal State Fullerton on our Instagram page every time we finish a study it it gets down there. Every time I find an interesting study, I throw it up on there. I will link as much as I can.

I know the links don't work very well on Instagram. People always ask me to put my bio. I'm not putting all the links in my bio. Just Google the damn title. It comes up. So things like that. And hopefully in the very near future, we are going to be, after many uh many many

meetings and a whole lot of work we are finally going to be getting barbara university off the ground one of these days we firmly believe that education for um the science of exercise physiology and how that applies to real training is not as good as it should be we can't find anyone that's doing it as well as we think it needs to be done so we're taking that into our own hands and we're going to be opening that probably not by the end of this year. Might do some pilot courses or something like that, but we're flying in a choice member of the

team from Australia to live here in San Diego who will be helping me and Andy run that new university, so look out for barbouniversity.com barbouniversity.com In fact, there's already some stuff up there there'll be more coming we could talk a lot about that

but it's really a couple of things I want to emphasize on barbarauniversity is a completely different change in content so it is content driven in terms of you're not going to get the same information in your four year college degree that you're going to get in Barbell University. And it will not be delivered in the same fashion you've ever seen it delivered.

So delivery and content will be completely different. I couldn't be more excited about that project. It's going to be awesome. We're going to push the evolution of what we know for it, right? Well, it's sort of silly, but it's sort of actually like getting up with the times. We're finally catching up with what you should be getting an English degree. Update the mechanism by which you can learn and get involved. That would be a part of it.

Actually, on that note, if someone wants to be involved with Barbell University, definitely reach out to us. We're looking for people that potentially might want to teach courses someday down the line or that just think that's a fucking cool idea and you just want to be involved. Just connect with us. More likely connect with Andy. I wish they'd reach out to you. Andy at barbellshrugged.com.

Perfect. Yeah, that's the best email. I was hoping you were going to give your current university address. You can do that too, but that inbox tends to get very thick very fast. He can check it through there. People are asking about midterms

and my question about my grade, all this stuff. I believe my track record is 100% in barbell Shrugged fan emails being returned. Positive. Damn. I have returned every single email I've got, which has been a lot. Some of them are very ridiculous, like, you know, I'm currently an engineer, but I want to change fields.

What should I do? Just tell me. I don't know. I've got my pen and pad ready, man. Be awesome. But you answer me. I don't know. Yeah, I always answer. ready, man. Be awesome. But you answer me. I don't know.

Yeah, I always answer. You're the man. Sounds like you know a lot about engineering. Should I be doing that? Like I said, if you have those questions, email CTP at Barb. Well, we're here to help. Well, I'll wrap it up there. Ladies and gentlemen, a very fun, science-y show.

For more information, go to barbellshock.com. Sign up for the newsletter. We'll keep you up to date on all cool things like Barbell University and future shows we've got coming out. Also, go to iTunes, Stitcher, whatnot, wherever you listen to the show. Leave us a positive comment if you think we deserve it. Of course we do. And, hell, we'll see you next time, man. Cheers, everybody.

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