Barbell Shrugged - Westside Barbell and the Conjugate Method w/ Louie Simmons - The Barbell Life

Episode Date: July 14, 2019

Louis Simmons is an American powerlifter and strength coach. He is noted for developing the Westside Barbell method of training and applying it to powerlifting and other sports, as well as inventing several pieces of strength training equipment. Westside Barbell is a private, invitation-only, elite training facility in Columbus, Ohio that was created by Simmons. Simmons is one of only five lifters to total Elite in five different powerlifting weight classes. He has totalled Elite in various power-lifting organizations.  Minute Breakdown:   0-10 – Using box squats to increase olympic lifts 11-20 – Low Bar vs. High Bar for increased strength 21-30 – Why the best coaches in the world all come to Westside 31-40 – Velocity training with bands 41-50 - Programming using band tension 51 -60 - The importance of assistance work  61 -70 - Why you don’t need to work on technique   https://www.westside-barbell.com Westside Barbell on Instagram   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% on green, red, and gold juices at www.organifi.com/shrugged   WHOOP - Save $30 on a 12 or 18 month membership using code “SHRUGGED” at www.whoop.com   One Ton Challenge Weekend   August 1st - 4th   Find your 1rm in the snatch, clean, jerk, squat, dead, bench.    Add them up to find your One Ton Total.    The goal is 2,000 pounds for men and 1,200 for women.    4 days. 6 lifts. 1 goal. 1 Ton.    http://live.onetonchallenge.com   “What is the One Ton Challenge”   “How Strong is Strong Enough”   “How do I Start the One Ton Challenge”   --------------------------------------------------- Show notes: https://shruggedcollective.com/tbs-simmons --------------------------------------------------- ► Travel thru Europe with us on the  Shrugged Voyage, more info here: https://www.theshruggedvoyage.com/ ► What is the Shrugged Collective?  Click below for more info: https://youtu.be/iUELlwmn57o ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Six days a week, Shrugged family, we are lighting it up. The brand new Shrugged Collective is here. Jason Kalipa kicking it off with the Business of Fitness on Monday. Tuesday, Real Talk with Ryan Fisher. Barbell Shrugged, Doug Larson and myself. Anders Varner Thursday. The Muscle Maven with Ashley Van Houten. Friday, Dr. Sean Pastuch makes his appearance with Active Life Radio.

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for you to do this at your home gym to join in on the fun. The leaderboard is going to be open Thursday, August 1st through Sunday, August 4th. The One Ton Challenge. You've got six lifts. Snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench. In those four days, go lift as much weight in those six lifts as possible. Get them on the leaderboard and see how you stack up against the field. Go to live.onetonchallenge.com to register today.

That leaderboard is going to go live on Thursday, August 1st. You have until Sunday, August 4th to get your numbers in. It's going to be the most fun weightlifting competition you've ever been a part of happening in your own gyms. You don't even have to wear a singlet, but you could because they're cool. Let's get into the shows. Thank you for your time. We'll see you guys next week.

You're listening to The Barbell Life. Well, we have a huge episode coming at you today. We've got none other than the great Louie Simmons on the podcast with us. Now, if you've never heard of Louie Simmons or Westside Barbell, just stop whatever you're doing right now and go look him up. Now, while Louie is most known for training ridiculously strong powerlifters, he's created monsters in all sorts of sports, and now he's starting to make some waves with his ideas on Olympic weightlifting. There are a lot of weightlifting coaches out there that hate on Louie,

but you have to admit that he produces results. Well, a little while ago, Travis and some of the team members took the trip to Westside Barbell, and this podcast was recorded when Travis was on that trip. Now, Travis and the team said that the lessons they learned from Louie completely rocked the way that they looked at training. So this is one that you do not want to miss. Travis and Louie get into using the conjugate method to get weightlifters strong. They talk

about ways that Louie has had experienced lifters now setting PRs in just half an hour with him. And they talk a lot about the power of assistance exercises for targeting and attacking weaknesses. And really quickly, I just want to remind you that we're still in the launch phase of Travis's new book called No Weaknesses. It's all about how to deal with the aches and pains that athletes face, as well as maximizing recovery and using assistance exercises to help eliminate muscular imbalances. Now, No Weaknesses also comes with a 30-point test that you can use to pinpoint your unique muscular imbalances so that way you can quantify your imbalances and attack them with precision. Now, muscular imbalances, look, they are a huge source of injury. And that's what this e-book is about.

This is about keeping you injury-free, that you can train longer, you can work harder, and you can avoid getting hurt. Now, if you want to check that out, it's over at mashaleak.com slash no weaknesses. We launched it a week ago, and one quick notice, we will be going up on the prices Monday night, September the 12th, about another week. So go ahead and grab it now while it's at its lowest price it will ever be. Again, you can get it over at mashaleak.com slash no weaknesses. And now we'll get to our podcast as Coach Travis Mash sits down with none other than the great Louie Simmons. Hey, guys, what's up? Here's another episode of the Barbell Life. And today we have one of my, you know, who I would consider my mentor, the guy I've looked up to like any powerlifter of my you know who i would consider my mentor the guy i've looked up to um like any powerlifter

of my era you know we we grew up and we learned by reading all of his articles in powerlifting usa i've pretty much read all of his books i have watched his videos from back in the day and um he truly inspired me to be a better powerlifter and he also inspired me to be a smarter one and so it's louis simmons uh all of you know him he's west side barbell he is uh i would say undoubtedly has affected more people in the strength conditioning world than any other coach at least that i know and so um you know it's even like my heroes like Joe King look up to him. So, you know, he's a legend. So you don't have to agree with them, but you should definitely respect him. And if you want to be the best, I would definitely learn something from him because,

you know, a lot of very good strength and conditioning coaches listen to him. And if you're not very good, then maybe you should consider, you know, listening to him and if you're not very good then maybe you should consider you know listening to him so louis thanks for being on my show i appreciate you thank you very much yeah so um we brought you know this weekend um we've already only been here a couple days so far but i brought my uh my wife i brought jackie bigger one of, probably my best female lifter on my team. We brought, let's see, Frank, Caleb, Rebecca. So we brought a crew to come up here and learn from, you know, one of the best coaches in America. And we have been blown away. And so I know, let me start by saying this.

I know a lot of you coaches out there, you know, a lot of, I'm talking to weightlifting coaches right now. And I'm talking to some of them who I would consider my friends. And I know there was a lot of negative feedback about the book he wrote. You can say what you want. And yes, you know, has he coached, um, weightlifters before? Maybe not, but I'll tell you this in two days, I have learned more from him and I've learned from any coach in my entire life we um you know Jackie who's you know she's she's worked with all the great coaches in America now and she is blown away and so excited she can't get enough of what we've learned here and a video that I'm going to put up very soon you might have already by the time we air this you might have already watched it

but in one session with him she improved her power clean by five kilos and not only improved it but the way that she improved it like you know it wasn't like a barely did she you know how everyone says is this a power clean it was super high and super easy and super fluid and um another thing another thing that you know i hear a lot of negative feedback on is that bands or chains will, you know, will mess up the bar path or watch the videos. I can tell you that the bar path wasn't affected whatsoever. You can watch it with the bands on, you can watch it with the bands off. Nothing was affected, but what was affected was the speed of what she was doing it. And, um, we used the contrast method, right?

You know what you call it, Louie? So she started by doing, you know, multiple sets of three on some, with basically every minute on the minute roughly. Before that, she did 25 squats. Yeah, before that she did. Yeah, before that, we had her and Frank on the, and I did a few on the box squats and, you know, doing it super wide. And I know a lot of people are going to say, well, it doesn't mimic, you know, the catch of the clean or the catch of the snatch.

But what it does mimic is the pull of which, you know, Jackie would definitely be served better with a better pull. And it obviously works. And two, it would definitely be served better with a better pull, and it obviously works. And two, it also addresses a weakness. A lot of weightlifters, which was in your book, are very weak eccentrically. You know, and it's going to help, you know, learn to, number one, when they relax in the bottom, have to learn to contract the hips, which the hips normally don't work at all for weightlifters because they bounce out of the bottom. And so the hips never really have to come into play to get the bar started. And so it was interesting to see how weak they were off the box.

And if nothing else, do it as an exercise to strengthen a weakness. We can all agree that that's very important to longevity of the career. Let's say, pretend that you don't want to believe that it'll help her pull that's fine but you have to agree that if there's a weakness if you strengthen the weakness if nothing else it will you know that will prevent injuries because there's a weakness in the body so i mean i sound pretty on point right now i'm pretty on point but actually the hips the reason we do box squats is to build hip thrust for the explosion part of the pull, the second pull. Right. And I promised you, I promised people that I would break their clean record in one half hour, and I do it every time. I see people can't break, I watched a woman crying on

a video, said she hadn't broke a record in a year. It takes me one half hour to break, you had two people and they both broke two records in one half hour. And they weren't rookie lifters. No. Jaggy's one of the best in all of America. And that's after 25 squats with a combination of band weight at 75%, and plus then 15 pulls at a combination of 70%. Then they broke the record.

So basically 40 sets. Yes. And then the record was broken. She actually broke it twice because she broke it and then broke it record. So basically 40 sets. Yes. And then the record was broken. She actually broke it twice because she broke it and then broke it again. And really we could have kept going, but, you know, like you even say, like leave it in the tank. I would say five more Ks. Yeah.

But we like to be trained optimally, never trained minimally, and never trained maximally. Trained optimally. I love the word. And I've always, one of the several things I've taken away from you is it's about optimal performance. It's about optimal mobility. It's about everything being optimal and nothing ever too extreme. I'd like to say one thing.

I know it doesn't bother me if people criticize me. I train two Olympic gold medal sprinters. I train a UFC heavyweight champion. The top five rugby teams in the entire world use our program. I train the only team in the Premier League. I won 26-0. The only team ever. Richards won five titles. I've worked with NFL teams. They give me 40 ballplayers. If you can imagine a salary of 40 NFL ballplayers, I did it with the Browns, the Seattle Seahawks, and Green Bay

Packers. You, thank God, Travis, are the first one that would bring me a weightlifter. They must be priceless. They're too priceless to bring to me because something may happen, like make progress. Right. You know, I can say this because I'm a weightlifting coach too, is that it's weird how it would appear that in America, the weightlifting coaches are the most prideful coaches I've ever seen. I mean, like he said, the Olympic coaches, matter of fact, Ohio States,

you know, one of their track coaches was here this morning. So that's okay. You know, Joe King, the Carolina Panthers, you know, head strength coach, he'll come, you know, he makes, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, but he sees that, you know, he sees the value in Louie Simmons, but we, you know, a sport that is not producing, I mean, I'm calling myself out right now, we are not producing, but we think that we've got it, maybe, just maybe, we need to look in the mirror and say, what we're doing is not working, so if we keep doing the same thing, guess what,

it's going to be the same results. In 1981, the latter part, I broke my lower back for the second time. I couldn't lay down for 17 weeks. I said, I must be a better way. So I went to Bud Chacon again and got all the books. And Bud says, well, these books are classroom books. And I said, that's exactly what I need. I need to learn my true sport.

All the methodologies that I use for my sport, which has broke approximately 140 all-time world records. There are four world record holders in my gym currently. It came from weightlifting methodologies from the old Soviet Union and the Bulgarian. It's a mixture. It's all weightlifting methodologies that I use for my sport. People say, well, what a conjugate system work. It came from weightlifting from the Dynamo Club in 1972. A lot of people say, well, what a conjugate system work. It came from weightlifting from the Dynamo Club in 1972. And a lot of people don't know, but the Dynamo Club also had 46 sports, not only weightlifting, but it contributed to Dr. Medvedev and Verfrashansky ran that as long as A.S. Primlum.

Many people have heard of Primlum's chart. Primlum was a junior national coach for soviet union for 75 to 80 and a senior coach from 80 to 85 he had some of the strongest weightlifters that ever came out of russia and that's how he came up with his charts which immediately i've started to follow primlam's charts and it changed my my complete career back in 1982 see now yeah in the the records that you speak of breaking that's not even coming you know even scratching the surface, the records that you speak of breaking, that's not even coming, you know, even scratching the surface of the records that have been broken because people use your principles. Like me, I read your stuff. So I didn't have a coach.

I'll be honest. I never had a powerlifting coach. So the closest thing I had to a coach was him. I will say this. At the meets, he always helped me like you know you um watch i don't know if you know this but in 2004 when i broke ed cohen's all-time world record you're in the background with me it was the coolest thing i gotta show you the video but like um no one else ever coached me but but him and so you have to attribute the world records i broke i have to give credit to him because no one else helped me only person i had to read or go to was him so and i'm

no i'm not the only one you walk in any powerlifting gym in america pretty much i would say at least 90 and you will definitely see elements i would say a hundred percent you will see elements that only way they got it was from him you know you see somebody doing a good morning you see a box squat you see a band you see a chain you see mean, you're going to – they came out of four press. You know, a dumbbell tricep extension. You know, I can go on and on. You know, jam presses came from him. So he's being really modest when he talks about the records that he can attribute to Westside Barbell.

Especially overseas. We're bigger overseas than we are in America. We're huge in russia huge in finland huge in australia huge everywhere huge in ireland you've seen you know the weightlifter in ireland that does these principles and you can i saw him snatch 396 and geez um and clean and jerk uh around what 490 or that's what 96 i think it, at 220. Yeah. Yeah, all West Side Methods. He backs me up when people badmouth me. Yeah.

I know, I know. I'm not going to argue if anyone didn't want to do it. I thought it was very funny, like, the way you responded to John Coffey. It was very, yeah, your response was very elegant and eloquent, I guess. Eloquent, not elegant. There's nothing elegant about it. I truly don't think, I mean, John's not here to defend himself, but truly don't think John's not here to defend himself, but I don't think John ever read my book.

You read my book. Those are not power lifting exercises. Those are weight lifting. I never mentioned low bar squat. That went out 25 years ago. We carried a bar in our traps like everybody else. It's a strange how things are. I know Chuck Vogelpool was the first one

that I saw to do like,, do like, you know, he just carried the bar like every, you know, like a weightlifter would carry it, which then I was like, sweet, because I always hated the low bar because, you know, it hurt my shoulders, and so I was like, I'm just going to squat like everyone else. And so it really helped me with my bench. My bench was able to shoot up because I didn't crush my shoulders from doing low bar. Yeah. You know, the squat is critical.

People always come here. I say, I promise I'll break your clean record. Nine times out of ten, I do it. Nine times out of ten, they can't recover if they do a full clean. I realize right away that weightlifters have no squat. That's why I suggest the box squat. I mean, Chuck Vogelpoel's never done a full squat. Dave Hoff's never done a full squat in a gym.

Yet they are the greatest pound-for-pound squatter in the world. Dave did, well, Chuck did 1180 at 264. And then Dave, his training partner, did 1210 at 271. So we have the two greatest squatters. And I predict I will have a 165. We just squatted 890. He will become the greatest squatter of all time. And if you go overseas over at C's, what the hell is his name,

the world record in 132s is in Ireland it's 749. I can't think of my boy's name. And then 806. I do that all the time. That's our guy. It's all west side. That's awesome. Well, I will tell you this morning when I was here, you know,

I don't want it to all be about, like, look what he's done. But, like, I have to say this. This morning in the gym I saw two girls who run track at Ohio State, one of which has just graduated who's about to sign a pro contract, you know, his first, you know, track and field. I saw an MMA fighter. I saw the Ohio State track and field i saw an mma fighter i saw the uh ohio state track and field coach i mean all this morning not to mention all the battles i saw my buddy jason coker the crazy that's your crazy uh adopted son pretty much and so um but it was

and i'll tell you this too is like this morning reminded me of the mentality I had when I was a competitor. And I swear I don't know what it is, but I had lost that until this morning. And when I go back, I will tell you that things are going to change. For some reason, I've just been in weightlifting so long, I've gotten soft. I'll take full responsibility. But the minute I walked in Westside Barbell, I don't know if it's the culture, the people, the music, Louie,

whatever it is, I changed and it was like I was 30 years old or 25 years old again and I was I just wanted to win and I wanted to you know, I wanted, my wife said chill out, she could see my face changing but that's the, that is that is the atmosphere that you guys

need all weightlifters need right now it's so soft i'm gonna be honest i'm gonna call out my own sport we are soft when we go to the gyms i mean just the looks on our face or somebody walks in front of us when we clean the dirt we're gonna cry about it that is so soft you know if you're a competitor and you're a winner and you you want to be the best and you want to be an olympic champion you're going to not be soft you got to be hard there should be nothing that can get in your way nothing that can stop you from being the best you know but it's just the culture in america has gotten weak and i will say at west side barbell there is not and it wasn't just the powerlifters it was the dong girls i mean mean, the girls are like, it's a different, if you haven't been here, even if you don't like them,

pretend you do, come here, visit, and just watch and just experience the culture. And the culture alone, if you don't learn anything that I learned, which is fine because I enjoy beating all you guys, but if you don't want to learn what i learned just look at the culture and learn about that coaches it's not about you it is about your lifters you have to be unselfish i go to great means this gym costs me over fifty thousand dollars a year and uh this is a private gym and i bring people no one pays me anything i pay everything i pay for records and uh uh you know and the idea my whole gym was about one thing making west side barbell stronger when someone breaks a record it's like

putting two more bricks on top of the wall for you have to crawl inside right and that's all my my whole life is about making people stronger or run faster or beat people up you know i will say this every um obviously i saw a lot of my old friends some of the parrots was like like jason and every last one of them was talking about how they could break the next record like jason now you know he's you know he's my age and so he's beat up he's worn so now his goal is to he thinks at 181 that you know he has a good chance of breaking the the record so he can get on that daggone board and that board is like everything to those lifters. I mean, that's all of them they talk about.

It's just chalk. It's chalk. But to them, it's blood. It's got to be. Yeah. And so they were all talking about how they want to. The big guy, the 308 that was in there this morning. The tall.

Yeah, he was talking about like he was thinking about going to super heavy because that number was a little bit less than Dave Hoff's number at 308. So he thought he would go up to super heavy because he'd have a better chance of getting on the board. It's all they talked about was how do I get on the board. And you saw one of our 900-pound deadlifters. You know, this is common. We've had four.

Our top, you know, back strength. Olympic lifters need back strength. Our top 10 deadlift average is 866 pounds. Top five is 890. I've had seven women deadlift over 500. One of them is a 148. But I thought you couldn't teach people deadlift. Right.

It's what everyone said. Yeah. And, you know, we'll get into training later. It's all about volume. You're the best. How do you do it? You're the best deadlift coach that people have said suck. I mean, I don't know what else to say.

But, yeah, I saw the dude who deadlifted 900. And, you know, also the look on people's faces. Like, they were there to do work. Like, nobody really smiled. Like, people were there to do work. Everybody had the same look. It looked crazy. It was like they were robots.

Everybody walked in the gym with the most scowled, like serious, focused look on their face. You know, the track girls did the same program that the powerlifters did, you know, for the squat before they did their general conditioning for running. And it's the same thing. You wouldn't know, other than being tall and skinny, you wouldn't know they're track girls.

Yeah, even the MMA guy, that dude. I tell you this, you know, if you don't believe that Westside is all about volume, this dude, I tell you this, you know, if you don't believe that Westside is all about volume, this dude, when he got here and when he put his gear on and started to go to work, he did not stop moving and he didn't talk to one person. He didn't do anything until he was done. And then the dude was a nice guy, came over to me, hey, you know, nice to meet you. He was such a nice guy. All right, so the first big point I want to get, you know, enough of me pointing my finger. I'm a little jacked right now, so I've called everyone out, so I'm sure you all hate me.

But, look, I still love you guys. I'm just, I'm jacked, so forgive me. But it's the accessory movements that, you know, you said at least 50% of your work should be accessory movements. And, you know, a book I reference a lot is the Managing the Training of Weightlifters. It distinctly says in there that as you become proficient at weightlifting, you have to do at least 50% of training consistent with assistant work. And because, you know, why did Primlin have a chart? If you look at primal's chart he

talks about weights now our average training weight is 80 much like the chinese uh if you were to look at my training and it models exactly the chinese program right uh even though i'm a power lifter but you know 80 weights well the optimal number of lifts per workout would be 15 so we pay attention to the optimal actually for us we normally do the maximal right and um because you want to grow from minimal to maximal if you can handle the program but why does he have like for instance um you know well we'll say the maximal at 70 is 24 lifts and 80 is 20 and above 90 is 10 well the whole problem with olympic weightlifting or any sport you have to raise volume so how can you raise volume if you had to stop at these numbers the answer is spatial poles facial poles and

squats that's what they would do you know a lot of people talk about nam sulman said all they do is clean jerk snatch clean jerk no they did not uh one day he would do for instance around 24 poles the next day about 24 classical lifts. Then 24 pulls. Next day, it switched back and forth. Some days, he didn't do any classical lifts. So, you know, before you talk about the Bulgarians, do some real research and find out. I had the Olympic weightlifting team doctor for the Bulgarian weightlifting team here with me. We had huge discussions.

I've been very fortunate having people like this. The Jamaican track strength coach for the track club. I mean, I have people like this come see me. I just want you guys to hear that. That is the best Dragonville coach in the world came here. But we don't want to. The string coach. And he was amazed.

He watched an 18-year-old girl jump on a 55-inch box, and he just could not believe what he'd seen. That's pretty impressive. I mean, yeah, it kind of hurts my feelings a little bit. Yeah, the blonde you saw this morning could jump on 55, too. Yeah, well, I saw how explosive she was, so it doesn't. You know, and a key to weightlifting, I was telling Travis, you know, you had said why watch the squats. But, see, I monitor everything.

Why does a car have a tachometer? You know, we'll say your car shifts to 2500 2500 why not 2000 why not 35 why not 42 because there's optimal horsepower so when you train you need to have the bar should be at optimal bar velocity and so i know that for speed strength uh why do i use our our the greatest weightlifter 780 cases of highly qualified weightlifters. 50% of their training was between 75 and 85%. Right. So I read that and said, well, if it's good enough for them, it'll be good enough for me. Right.

Because this is 82 and what was the rap? You're not even old on me. But the rap was power lifters are slow. Right. And I go, you know what? We are. And this is what happened. I said, yes, we're slow.

By doing speed strength training you know all 24 squats every every week we became very explosive and then after a year and a half i realized the problem with weightlifters they can't lift slow weights right and by that as barbells become heavier of course velocity slows down and so and you have to produce greater force at that point that's that's hill's equation most of the speed that's right yeah they have no strength speed so i mean i've seen guys do sets with and jump 10 pounds they can't do a single i have to yeah right okay and that's when i realized that they had to be able to lift heavy weights and they could not do that one lack of strength

but how do you get it? Through spatial means. One spatial mean is what you saw this morning by using the bands. Right. Because an enormous amount of bands will slow the barbell down. Right. And so if you've got a 300-pound power clean, that's one max. But I can give you five ways to break that record, your strength record, not with the power clean.

Right. Because you just can't not with the power clean. Right. Because you just can't come in and power clean over and over like people do because that's called the law of accommodation. If you repeat the same activities, the same training weights, the same volume intensity, you go backwards. I mean, I totally agree. You know, even in our gym, you know, the biggest thing is, you know, changing. You know, when I say conjugate, like I'm very broad in that term, you know, but biggest thing is, is, you know, changing, you know, you, um, and, you know, when I say conjugate, like I'm very broad in that term, but, you know, but like we change everything,

even the way we squat, you know, we change, you know, we might front squat, but then we might do a pause front squat. We might do, you know, we might do, um, a back squat. We might do a five second eccentric, but it's completely always changing the way we max you know is going to be we might do a um complex where it's like a pull to uh you know but we don't just snatch clean jerk all the time you know we and we do try to work on weaknesses and i'll tell you that jackie does the best job of following the program as you can see even you agreed her work capacity is through roof and she was able to you know today she was able to roll through the workout really good and i didn't know if i tell them but the record she hit was a was 100k a 220 pound you know clean power clean and i mean she caught it super high yeah which was five kilos above her all-time best and when she did 95 kilos it was like one of those borderline things and she smoked

like she is jackie is 100 sold and sold, and she's my best athlete. I have no doubt that Jackie will be on the podium at the American Open, and I have no doubt that in four years she's going to be going for the Olympics. That's my goal. That's my goal for the Olympic weightlifting sport is for Travis to get people qualified for the Olympics and get a medal because we excel. A lot of coaches don't like me because I said, I did not say that they're not good coaches.

I said they're adequate technical, technique coaches, but they have no idea about how to make someone stronger. And I had, I was at a seminar one time and you were there too, Travis. And the gentleman said, strength doesn't matter. Strength doesn't matter. Why do you have weight classes? Why want a 123 lift what a super heavyweight does?

This is insane to me. Because, I mean, a lot of people don't give that analogy, but if you don't give that analogy, how are you a coach? Like, if strength doesn't matter, why does the little person

not lift as much as the heavy person? Because they're not as strong. They're way faster. I guarantee they're way faster. And maybe better technique. And always better're way faster. And maybe better technique. And always better. The little dudes are always better technique.

And they obviously can't lift as much because the bigger dudes are stronger. We emphasize small lifters must be much stronger in the legs and hips, you know, because they have to make up for small errors in technique. Where a large man, because of large mass, can correct a a small error with no problem but like a thinner person has to be very strong to correct error so we train smaller people slightly different than larger that that brings me to another point with accessory movements you talked about like you know putting people in awkward you know positions yes and you know this morning you know i've had some very specialized the russians when Russia, at first I read about Vary Borzov,

and they say, Vary, what do you need? He was Olympic champion twice in sprints years ago. And basically, he would say, harder, harder workout. That's all we would ever say. So they would come up with a new exercise like that. That's where the Kaplan glue came from. Him and Alexis came up about the same time. And so, like I told you this morning, I have special machines.

I mean, you know, guys, I've said this at Olympic lifters. about the same time and so like i told you this morning i have special machines right i mean you know guys i've said this at uh you know olympic lifters you're not going to the county fair you're trying to go to the olympics i totally agree you can't just have a pair of freaking weightlifting shoes and think that's going to get you there but and and people say well well we live on these 80 of our training is based exercise. I have a stat person. I've done people, a girl that could not qualify for a hip tap line for six years. And, you know, it's a 26-year-old girl. Our coach brings her in, tells me the problem.

I got her nine weeks. First meets qualifies for hip tap line. I never ran track. I don't know anything about track, but I know power and strength. And so I know how to do these things. So that's how we operate. Can I say this too? Like this morning,

um, when the, after they did, um, the, the squats and then they did the contrast methods with the cleans. Then they, he started putting them on, you know,

the machines he's talking about. One was the belt squat, um, which they, you know, the belt squat is amazing. Like, um,

which we're actually going to get a belt squat machine. I know we're so excited because it's so versatile. Like, for example, Frank did, you know, did the belt squat, you know, with doing the neck too, and his little neck is so sore, like he couldn't handle it. But the girls were doing it. Right. We do good mornings with a neck harness.

We do power cleans, push jerksks while with the belts around your waist now people say well i've always people's always said me well why would you do that well this is why because i watch russian world champions do it so i copied it yeah i watched the chinese do things i copy it if i was to say to do a snatch grip deadlift until you uh you're back rounded and continue until you couldn't go to the ground they would say i'm completely crazy coach fang says the very thing i i've read the exact same coach and i was coach fang said when you squat you should incline forward because you're going to be bent over somewhat forward right because what gives out basically in those it's actually the back not the legs now i said i've said exactly even with uh with me you know when i was a powerlifter it was never i never worried about my legs not being able to squat the way he was like could my back support

it or not so when i tried a thousand first time i was just like i just hope my back can stand up one thing you must recognize why do you miss lifts you know this book will tell you why it'll tell you the most the 10 most reasons you you'll miss a lift and so read the back of this book and find out one of them is incompletion of a back extension right all right so you notice when the guys got off the bands they had back extension they'd never had before and this is literally in probably 20 minutes even me too like you know it really launched like after i took the bands off like i mean it left my hands yeah i hit my yeah i hit my chin my chin and it was not light it wasn't

because it was so light it was because it just my pull was able to accelerate and a much greater and a much higher point so and those i was going to say before i don't want to forget those machines so we went and we found that some of them were weak on the um the belt machine some of them were weak on the uh inverse type however i will say for the bit you know the the one that we were able to do the most was the inverse hyper so our hamstrings and glutes yeah the inverse hyper. However, I will say, for the big, you know, the one that we were able to do the most was the inverse hyper. So our hamstrings and glutes. The inverse curl. Yeah, the inverse curl.

The hamstring machine. We were able to do pretty good on that. You know, even, and Jackie was able, he said she did better than anyone's ever done the first time. But what they were super, as a whole,

weak on was the reverse hyper. And some of the things that we were having them do, just their low backs. And evidently, I can say, I've done a poor job of preparing their low backs because they were all weak um all right you know i didn't realize when i done it i have 11 patents and that when someone wants to improve i would come up with a way to make them improve i come up with a new machine and invariably they would pull more or squat or bench right but also i realized that these machines what they do they have where it's hard for you or me you know if your guy pulls

them dead lifting i know why people miss you know if it's at the knees it's lower back your hips are far away at the top it's glutes can't get off ground it's normally knee flexion abdominal work right all right so when but these machines they evaluate your strength. Right. So like we found out when he put his top girl on the reverse hyper, she was very weak in lower back, blew her lower back up. She's touched muscles she'd never touched. She did. And on a hamstring machine, the inverse curl is the most fabulous hamstring. It makes gluteal hamstring obsolete. Yeah, it sure does.

So I can evaluate people's strength with these spatial machines where no one else can you know you can put cameras on them forever you're not going to tell what's really missing the weights right i mean um that was what's cool because you know in the gym i'm always trying to visually find the weakness but the the machines quantify that they leave no doubt they're like um you know jackie by the way just walked in the room we've been talking about you the whole time about the and so but we found that her low back is just is just super weak and so if you think about this the low back is the pivot point of everything in weightlifting the snatch the clean the jerk and so um imagine if now i target that low back what's going to happen you know uh many people and weightlifting this came from weightlifting in the Soviets.

They would call it a web. And this web consisted of if like a 110K lifter would have to back squat so much, he would have to front squat so much, he'd have to burst jerk, actually close grip bench back then 418. And it was a web. And how many lifts could he possibly do in a month's training? And so if you did this web, and that's how we train our powerlifters. I talk about it in my bench and squat manuals.

If you look at the web, if you cannot do the adequate amount of weights at a certain percent, or if you can't front squat, you know, it was 628. A front squat, bottom, 628 got you barely past. So if you couldn't front squat, you know, you're not a good lifter. You were missing part of this web. That's awesome. It's in a book called Fitness for Life by Bargoya, and it's a very, very good book, but it's very, very hard to find. Well, you found it.

I found it. Thank God. I researched. What has a history what history is the greatest of lifting weightlifting right it's been going on forever right you know the russians have all came up with all this type of research and so i constantly refer to the russian training as far back as 1937 or even when periodization began i use weight periodization greatest periodization I've ever seen.

A lot of people have never heard of it. But like for teen sports, for instance, if you want a rugby team to squat 400 pounds, all you have to do is train your weights with 25% band tension at 50, 55, and 60, so it would relate to 75, 80, and 85. With those weights of maximum acceleration. Vigilant wave, right? Yes. You have the ability to squat 400 pounds the force to knock you on your butt right and you know so i like nfl ball you want your

lineman to squat 700 be able to do that if they train at 350 and to uh 420 they will have uh at a maximum acceleration about 0.8 meters per second at least at 0.8 or 9 they will have they're developing the force of a 700 pound squat right so you say well big deal uh no let's lay here uh if a guy can squat 700 pound one time but if what have i got you do 24 exertions of 700 pounds that's why the pinching wave is far superior also right and the cool thing about you know for football you know i want to throw this out for you smith coaches. I don't want to spend the whole time throwing down on my colleagues, but so the, is that you're able to do, you know, like work at, you know, 700 pound percentages without killing them, you know, because they got to play in the game. Have your readers heard of force equals

match times acceleration? People ask me, what book should I buy first? And I say, a physics book. Has anyone thought of Newton's Laws of Motion? I did see your beginner physics book over there. That's right. Very important. How do you increase kinetic energy? By increasing velocity or mass? You know the answer to that. It's velocity. And you need to know these things that's why i use bands over speed eccentrics right faster down faster up you don't believe me drop a basketball

how high is the band still down how high is about right and that ball the last elastic properties of that ball is much like the soft tissue in a body that that's why my track girls they do 200 leg curls every day all right i make them walk on tires why i saw it you saw i saw actually a couple of your people here did it yeah i it thickens the ligaments and tendons and that's where that's where the kinetic energy because uh ligaments and tendons it takes very high reps for those to yeah you ever watch a fat person run a marathon say how they do it reusable energy in a soft tissue wow that's exact it's human locomotion and reusable energy in the soft tissue. Wow. That's exact. It's human locomotion and reusable energy.

All right. So let me ask you this specific question. So since we're still on accessory movements, if you were a weightlifting coach, like throw out some accessory movements that, you know, you think. Obviously, it'll be dependent on what are some of the ways. But just throw out some common ones you think we should do. You have to push the back raise.

I had a coach here, and they had a lifter, and they said he only did 25. I was doing 225 for five in a back raise, and they were doing 95. That's all they could do. And I'm going, like, this is insane. I was 50-some years old. And actually, the guy was bigger than I was. You did 225. Only other person I've ever heard doing that would be Alexia.

I know that he did 100 kilos from you know rats but we can't i watched him in 1970 the world champions here in columbus ohio my friend jimmy benjamin national champion he's competing against walmart bazanowski wow he became the police coach i went up there and watched walmart and i think he was he's probably taller than me i'm 5'5 right 148, I watched him do 100K for sets of five in the back race, all the way down and up with an arch. Wow. And I'm going like, because he had a 386 clean. It might have been right around the world record.

And he was a split cleaner at that time. People actually split clean back then. And my friend Jimmy's best was like 347. And Jimmy could match him in the hang clean, but he couldn't match him in the full clean. Right. And that was why. You know. He had a greater amount of absolute strength. My brain is going crazy. Alright, so back raises. What are some others? A back reverse hyper is absolutely, but why would you do back raise? People don't know what, you know, I've heard, here's one of my pet peeves. A great book I saw said you don't need a reverse hyper.

You don't need a glute hand. Why are you nuts? People need these exercises. Why would you not need them? That's what I want to know. Why wouldn't you need them? Yeah. I mean, I don't understand it.

I will say this. Let me, before we go on. If you have a weakness, you know, say you're a weightlifter and you snatch, you clean and jerk. If you have a weakness and you've been snatching, clean and jerking for, you know, five years, you're not going to improve that weakness of snatching, clean and jerk. I mean, you've already been doing it. Like, use your head. You've got to target that weakness.

Yes. You know, Bonachok, I'm sure a lot of you have heard of Bonachok, the shot put giant, you know, world champ, trained about 11 world. He has books and one of them is called Transfer of Exercise. And what he says is like a friend of mine, Sakari got bull farm you've heard of bull farm i'm sure strongest jim and finney they do all of our stuff and you know and then we trade records back and forth world records but he said it does no good to be strong in the wrong exercise which absolutely means the same thing so as as a lifter or coach uh you what i do i look at

as a piece of pie like like jackie here when jack if jackie came to me for a while i realized right away i could look at her and see and it it came out true her very lower back is the weakest thing on her correct jackie you'd say so when jackie would get done that's the first thing she would do i would get the biggest piece of pie on her lower back. And if her traps was the strongest, that would be the last thing I'd train. I'd train the least amount, but I'd still train it. And then why would I do that? Because I eliminate muscle imbalances. We don't have any injuries.

We don't even have sore. These people are ready to go to me today, you know. How do you feel? I feel great. You got any pains? No. That's true. The only one that was really talking about hurting was the guy who didn't follow your direction.

That's one guy, doesn't follow, and he's always banged up. Yeah. It's living proof that I like it because it proves to me that our stuff works. A funny story. My friend, Jason Coker, who will be like a brother for my life. And he even said, you know, he's talking about, oh, this hurts. And I was like, you know, Jason, you really should listen to what Louie says. And he's like, Travis, I even know I should listen to Louie.

I know he's brilliant. I'm just too dumb. Is what he said. He said, I am too hardheaded. And I'm like, all right. I mean, what do you say to that? All right, man. But the other people who had listened to him, everyone was fine.

That MMA guy, that dude, I've never seen in my lifetime. We've got a lot of them. I've never seen anything like that. Yeah. I had a stat person. He did an internship here. He actually stayed. Like a lot of interns, he stayed.

He's been here like four or five years now. Like Tom that runs my business, actually. But he came and saw what his job was. And this is with track people it's with fighters and this was lifters i had him graph the amount of barbell training we do and amount of system exercise we do 20 with a barbell and 80 small special exercise these small spatial exercise in my opinion is the most important and um you uh you know the chinese i don't like the word term bodybuilding but they say at the end of every workout they do two bodybuilding exercise you see them doing dips see them doing side bends you see them doing it at the olympics you know you where everyone else is you know doing just snatch clean jerk those dudes you know i'll say this i when i was at the junior

worlds and they walked in number one my mouth dropped because of how awesome they looked and number two they killed everybody and number three they were the ones in the back doing all the special exercises you said which you said should be you know like um you might deload you know for power you might deload squat bench and deadlift but you don't do deload, you know, for powerlifting, you might deload squat, bench, and deadlift, but you don't deload the special exercise. Right. You know, everybody drops a system exercise. So if you did back raises or you did high pulls and it raised your lifts, why would you drop them before the most important events? It made no sense.

I realized this way back in the 70s. They say, oh, you got to drop extensions and, you know, drop backward. So I did. I'm going to meet. I felt like an empty blanket, you know. I didn't either. After I read, you know, you said i did i'm going to mean i felt like an empty blanket i didn't either after i read you you know you said that in the power of the usa years ago and so neither did i and so because i know before um before i was turned on to you i would i don't know what i was

doing i was just i was thinking i was following just some um basic periodization and i would do what everyone else did at the last maybe four weeks I would just squat bits and deadlifts and I would always feel terrible at a meet and so then when I did what you said I felt you know jacked and ready to go and became a world champion um years ago Travis you know you know Chuck Vogelpoel you know I had some answers I had three world record horse and squat and three in the bench in the same gym you know some total Greg Penora broke about seven total world records Hoff's got a bunch we got you know we're killing but we're going to the meet and we're all about 100 pounds off our best lifts and i'm going like well i know i'm not

choking yeah and i never seen chuck none of these guys choke i go why our the squad training was unbelievable our squads contest can you know can always went up but the bench might be there and the deadlift wasn't. And this didn't mean everyone. I mean, my bench might be good and, like, Tate's bench was off. So you never knew. It was a crap game. And so I said, why? And, I mean, I had to figure this out.

This is driving me crazy. So a year and a half I studied, and I came up with delayed transformation. Right. It came from Bert Proshansky from track and field and some weightlifting. Medvedev, the Russian weightlifting coach. That's the one. And the Bulgarian weightlifting coach. Well, there's a big feud about who came up with it.

But basically. The one that Medvedev is, the one I've read, came up with. Like most people call it super compensation. A lot of people call it that. Beat yourself to death, then recover and become awesome. This book is called Delayed Transformation. You're right. Okay, it's the same thing.

All right, so what I do, I do a double delayed transformation. And I know I've watched weightlifters, and I believe they do it. I believe they do it like I hear all they take near-world records two days before in a training hall. I have no idea why. It'd be like, why would I mike tyson two days before beating up sysadmite well i will say this you know almost all like um but all the good ones even china and russia even though you might see that they they have definitely dropped volume somewhere oh yes uh i think they do it for a middle they try to psych out the other countries well they do a good

job yeah they do and man job. Yeah, they do. And Manan Suleiman, they would have Nam come in. He would power clean more than his competition could actually clean. That son of a gun. And so then they would decide at the last minute, as you well know, they might push two lifters into another weight class because they know you couldn't beat him anyhow. But my delay, this is what changed my gym dramatically. I use a double delay transformation 28 days out we won't train

we'll make sure we only train at 50 with the bands which is a joke for my guys 21 days out uh that's when we take it's called circa max we take a record on a box squat we always and we never miss they never miss they break a record all right um and then 14 days out they'll do 75 percent of what they did on Circa Max Day. Seven days out, the little guys will do, you know, some sets with about 50% of their squat with no bands or anything on a box. And then they go to the meet and they constantly break all their records. My last guy, 800 squat at 165.

You know, you talk so fast. Now I finally got it. So after seeing you writing down, you talk so fast. Oh, I'm sorry. After seeing you write it down, you talk so fast. Oh, I'm sorry. I know I do. Now I'm from the south. Okay. We're slow.

Okay. All right. You want to run this again? No, I got it now. Okay. But this is absolutely important. And it came from track and field and weightlifting. All right?

It works for anybody. And I gave you guys examples because we're on a microphone yesterday. A.J. Roberts. A.J. broke three all-time total records, put 455 pounds on his total three years here. His best lift, it was 28.55. His best lift is 29.30. He could easily broke the all-time, it could have been my top lifter, which I have, Dave Hoff. But I'm going to give you examples how accurate

this is on the circa max day this is 21 days out he um he did um he did 740 pounds on the bar and 440 pounds a band that is 1180 pounds at the at lockout we have a lot of band tension in the bottom as they found this morning right all right four weeks before that we did a strength phase where i consider strength more band than you can use weight so he did 700 pounds of band so when what week is this where this is about a month or five or six weeks before the circa max okay okay we'll do circa max a year because we go to two meets you know i like to go only two full meets and then maybe a bench me or push pull and then two strength phase of four massive extremes of super maximal workouts things they've never done right all right so on the on

the memory now memory now on the strength uh phase they use more bands than they can use weight so we load up 700 pound of band, which is way harder than 700 pounds of weight. And then he made 510 pounds of weight. So that comes up to 1,210. So remember with the 440 bands, 1,180. AJ's got 1,205 pounds of meat.

I showed you my circum actually. I was at the meet when he did that. I was coaching at that point still but i saw it this is i mean how close can you come this is retardedly close um my my last boy he went from i promised him he came here 800 squat topping the top there is right now in the 165s anywhere um currently an 880 total 1880 total. Top there is in the country. I got a question. When you did 700 bands, what would you call that?

Would you call that speed, strength? No, that's strength, speed. Slow strength. The velocity is actually around.4, maybe around.4 meters per second. All right. I think that's what you guys got to do because do because like i said when you get to heavy

weights they can't they can't move look i know this is a podcast and i'm supposed to be the host but i'm taking notes too this is about me too it's not just about you mostly about you where are we at here all right so um the strength speed the is where we ended yeah and see so most of our training is for speed strength so i mean if you got a calculator and you take, now we're doing 25 lifts. So, if you take 85% of 1210 times 25, that's his quad volume. Right. Add that up, someone. It's enormous.

Now, and we do 21 deadlifts. Yeah. Well, for around 80%. All right? Yeah. So, see, and the deadlifts are bars already loaded immediately go from the squatting to the deadlifting so it's enormous amount of barbell volume on that day very high volume moderate intensity it's 75 to 85 percent 72 hours later

is our is our max max effort day right and the only difference between what I do and I think you should do, we do one max. We'll rack pull or low box squat with a spatial bar or a box, stand on a box or whatever we do, but we max out. The volume is very low. Right. Like I had a kid that had a 900 deadlift, but, you know, this would be a record, but he squatted right at 1,100, 1085. Right.

So it's a high-volume day for speed day. But when he pulled 805 standing on a mat, which is an all-time record, basically, if you look at it, it's like 405. He did 405 for one, then like 515 for one, 605 for one, 705 for one, and 805 for one. So you're talking 15, 23, 28. It's likely to be 3,000 pounds. Right. And have you heard of the rule of 60?

This is a weightlifting. The workout, the next workout should be 60% of the volume of the other workout. Oh, yeah. I've heard you say that. I've heard it from weightlifters. It came from weightlifters. why see ours is probably the rule 35 because we make much larger jumps that's the only way you guys make you know no smaller jumps so you're going

to get a lot more sets in there but our jumps are enormous and it's over within 10 minutes right but so all my point is uh i would have weightlifters i'm sure you could do two max efforts on max every day. It could be a pull and a push. That's what we do now. Yeah, exactly. Good. That's what I would do.

Because you could handle it. But then it's in all that assistance exercise. Right. And then the assistance, you still keep that volume high. A lot of people think on speed day we do less. No, no, no. I mean, we do as much as we can on both days. I will say this you know uh jackie does the most assistance work of anyone in my gym and she has

seen the most improvement than any other athlete i mean you know she she came when she she came to me in march it was march of this year it was um when muscle driver you know their thing fell down and so she came to me having set zero records in a year there. And so she came to me, and literally she's, so March, now it's what? It's August. And that time, her clean and jerk has gone up 15 kilos. Her snatch has gone up 10. So you got 25 kilos in, you know, six months.

Is that even six months? April, May, June, July, five five months she's going up 55 pounds and that's a lot and weightlifting that's that's a lot but basically kind of a mirror of our our type of training right right i said my 65 800 squat 1880 total i promised a world record in a year right in one year squats 890 world record and he told 2080 that's the fourth biggest total that's what we wanted total and that's what we wanted to total, and that's what we totaled. Right. And got more in them.

So we always make a plan like that, but it's exactly the same. Exactly. You're doing great. And like you said, she does all the assistance. All the assistance. My guys, the more assistance they do, it's my strongest guys. Yeah, she'll go multiple times. She's lifting anywhere between six and ten times every single week.

Way more than the other people. She just has got to – number one, her work ethic is higher, and number two, she just listens better than the other guys. It's crazy, and she's going to probably go to the Olympics. You know what I see with the squat? Now, if you look – you know this name, the 150 to 70K Chinese kid. He's enormously strong. He's going to lose Lou Zhaozhong.

Yeah. You know, I want to see him in front squat at 573. He's got a 457 clean so far. Okay. Now, Nam Suleiman had a 435 clean years ago at 132, and he routinely squatted 528, the books I've read. So look at that ratio. But mostly in this country, they front squat 10 pounds more than they clean.

That's not what we're trying to do exactly we're trying to be strong everyone thinks that our gym is on steroids but we just actually work hard yeah that's a compliment yeah and i do i thanks you know you guys and so um but yeah our guys are all strong jackie's very strong um she squatted you know this is a high bar olympic style you know 341 and 63 kilos so you know of course i've been accused by this uh what a major team just came here i went a year ago and talked to him it's a national team sport i won't say who it is they looked at me and i know what you're thinking that you know we're going to come down here and i'm going to give them something that's how we get strong well then they sent their son

down here yeah okay and he works out and the coach come down and the coach apologized and he bought 20 000 orders of equipment they found out there's a little bit more going on here than what they think i know man it's so stupid i mean even me as a power like i broke records in the ipf the usa power thing uspf i went wherever i'm just trying to be the strongest so yeah that's stupid if you think it's all about drugs i follow this stuff i'll beat anyone i'll if i want to i'll come back and beat him now i mean you know and i'll follow his his uh methods well yeah i want to bring up a point because um uh you know we know why do people take anabolic steroids because it makes you stronger and it makes your recovery my system is the greatest i believe the greatest strength system in the world. I mean, I've had, you know, I wrote a book review for Dr. Verpozhansky.

I did seminars with super training, Mel Siff. So a lot of people think, Dr. Zasazorsky said I've got a 99%. And, you know, and so it's pretty, you know, these people, and Dr. Romanov. As a compliment. Dr. Romanov, a running expert, thinks this is the greatest thing since, you know, Russia. And so that's a compliment to me. But the weightlifting coaches don't. Exactly. That's what I don't understand.

But wait, we're losing. But what I'm saying is, so if you can't take anabolics, I have the greatest strength training in the world. Why wouldn't you do the strength training? Seriously. You said this morning it was the next best thing. But you know what? You just made a great point. Like, you know, as weightlifting coaches, and I'll be the first to admit, I complain too.

You know, we complain about the other countries taking steroids. Well, if being stronger is not important, then why would people even take anabolic steroids? To make their technique better? No, it doesn't do that. It makes them stronger. You know, my rap is, see, I'm not criticizing. I never would criticize. I barely got out of high school. I wrote more books than i've ever read not really but that's

not true i've seen a bunch here but you know i i just i realized a lot of things i lost my concentration but i realized a lot of things about training and you know it's it's not what people think it is no it's definitely not no it, it's awesome. What we did today was awesome. I finally come to sense this here. You know, everybody, the waiters will complain about competing with everybody else, and they can't get a person qualified for the Olympics. But yet we dominate in gymnastics. We dominate in swimming.

We dominate in beach volleyball. You name every sport, we dominate. Track and field, swimming, gymnastics, everything. And I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Basketball. But this is how I look at it. If you've got a great team, you've got a great coach. You've got a bad team, you've got a suck coach.

That's true. That's why I'm here. I mean, I hope we can change the face of America. I love Olympic weightlifting. And I'm going like, why can't we get, why can't we have a medal? It's just insane that we don't. We compete against that. We compete against the Finns, the right, everybody.

We compete against worldwide. You've been to WPO. It's everybody. Everybody's everybody. And who wins? Westside. Yeah. Well, Travis, too.

Well, I guess I'm Westside. Exactly. He beat a Westside. But I used your methods. But one of our guys beat you. Yeah, you know. I was hoping you wouldn't remember that. Joe Bills.

Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, yeah. But you know what I'm saying. Son of a gun. But that's, like I said, iron sharpens iron. Yeah. When Travis lifted, I wanted him to get better. Because the better he gets, the better my guys got to get.

You were always super good at that. My guys wouldn't have to get better. Right. Chuck Vogelpoel made me better. Like, I saw the videos. If you think I wasn't watching those videos, you're crazy. I was watching them, and I was sleeping at night, almost bit my teeth in two, grinding my teeth. I was so angry that he was stronger than me until I was, you know, better than him.

And so then he would try to beat me, and then Joe Bales did. He got lucky. But, gosh, there was a point i was going to make okay here's my point and so the biggest you know criticism that they'll give is like what does louis simmons know about weightlifting sure can he teach snatch and clean and jerk i'm not saying he can do that am i i'm better. Like this morning, he was putting us through his methods. And, you know, Jackie was doing it, and I was coaching her technique. I was, you know, we made some, you know, she missed only one time all morning.

It was just a technical flaw. I taught to her, and then she went on to break it two more times. And so, but here's the thing. You know, they don't, from the Carolina Panthers, don't come to him to learn how to play football you know the jags half the nfl team oh i was half the nfl teams dallas cowboys ohio state they weren't here this morning to say hey will you teach us how to sprint or teach us how to throw the shot they're saying can you teach us how to get stronger can you teach us how to get stronger? Can you teach us how to be more explosive?

Can you teach, you know, we have this weakness. Can you, you know, give us an idea how to overcome this weakness? That's where you guys are missing the point, man. And like, I'm talking to my buddies now. Like, I'm talking to my friends. I know I'm jacked up on coffee and I've, you know, criticized you guys. But the truth is, a lot of you dudes are my best of friends that I'm talking to. You know, get past the fact of snatching clean and jerk. You guys have got to get past that when I say this now.

Like, it's not about him trying to teach you snatching clean and jerk. It's about him trying to give you anything, any, if you can learn one little thing, man, that's something that you can use to make your athletes better. And if you don't listen, you know, don't blame anyone else for your athletes sucking so bad. Like, if a guy like Joe Ken, who's two times in a row voted the number one strength coach in the entire world, if that guy will spend his time to come up here multiple times to learn something, don't you think that all of us can learn something from this guy? Because I know I have learned a million things in two days.

So I was just kidding when I've been throwing down so much on you. I'm all hyped up. My wife says I'm being a jerk because I feel like I was when I was a kid again. I promise you I'll come back down to earth. But please learn. My books actually basically have a disclaimer. I tell you that I don't know Olympic weightlifting technique, but that doesn't matter.

You're adequate with weightlifting technique. You're way subpar with the strength. I'm writing a track book. Now, I've trained two Olympic gold medalists. The only thing that runs on me is my nose and my mouth. I do basically know how to run. I say I'm not a technical track coach. I have a lot of technical things.

By top track people, they get the credit for it. But in track, there's too many injuries. And I show people how to get injured and how to run fast, and it works. I just had two people in Olympic trials. You know, and one's in the hurdles. No, I cannot do hurdles. And the other was in the 400. You look like a hurdler.

At 5'5", you look like a great hurdler. Yeah. About as good as me. Life's a hurdler to me, dude. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. So, today has been great.

I'm seeing we've... Oh, one of the points that he made. You can say, look, I've been up here, and in two days I've got all these notes. And so it might be one or two things to learn. But one of the things you talked about is, like, you know, the best way – even a lot of you guys talk about this already. The best way to get stronger is to increase volume. You've got to do it somewhere. And, like, you can't just say I'm going to snatch and clean it more and more and more but like using you know the accessory movements the machines you've talked about that is the way

a very healthy way to get stronger and the cool thing about what we did today like the reverse hyper it's not going to leave jackie beat up tomorrow literally she will feel better tomorrow his attraction you know i wrote about leonard zazatinsky the olympic champion in 1664 you know the soviet and he broke all these records and all of a sudden he didn't go anywhere and he couldn't understand why and he got in his logbook and he realized that his average weight intensity percentage was slightly down and his volume had slipped down so they pushed it back to where it went was before and went right back to breaking records that's how important it is and in 1996 one of the guys that's helping the olympics down there he's talking to me on the phone you know i don't remember his name unfortunately you're just like me i'm terrible

yeah he goes i know where we don't know how to squat because we squat all the time and we can't squat and he said you guys squat one or two times a week and you're more regular in the squad and i go and what i watch i've heard some people we squat six times a week you squat like girl girl scouts what's good is it doing you you know you'll be a lot better off to pull a sled or do our restoration work walking in the bell squad like some of your athletes right and only squat twice one workout must be for super speed, and one must be for max effort. Anything else doesn't matter. You know, like I talk about my sprinters,

and a lot of sprint coaches have people run at 80, 85, 90%. Why would you do that? The definition of a sprint in Webster's Dictionary is to run as fast as possible for a short distance. If you had a race car that went 100 miles an hour in the eighth, why would you take it to track and go 90, 95, 85? You'd want to go 101, 102. Right. And so you want to go all out.

That's what max effort is. And max effort means one. Max effort is singular, not plural. When you do heavy triples, it builds strength, endurance. Constantly work. And I want to bring up another point that we're going to do tomorrow. We're going to do a lot of special exercise, right? All right, yeah.

Isometrics. You have to do isometrics. I'm glad you brought that up. When the bar gets to the first pole and the barbell basically doesn't go any farther and you do the second pole, as it slows down quasi where it's barely moving, it becomes isometric. That's where the greatest muscular force has to be exerted. Right. And you can't do it so or if you watch uh jackie for instance she'll bang the bar

out there so fast with a 100s of a second yeah so if she did five lifts she's getting five 100s of a second work there right but if she did five holds for four seconds she'd get 20 seconds of work at the most critical point like the chinese do a lot of pulls from that area off boxes right which we do too exactly great yeah but my point is you got to work in these these dead areas that's where you got to put the work right and anyone uh you know if you don't if you're not doing isometrics you're crazy because isometrics undoubtedly proven through research will strengthen the joint of that you you know, the angle of the joint that you're working. More than any other, more than concentric, more than eccentric,

isometrics will strengthen that portion of the movement. If we want to test anyone's strength, it's tested isometrically. That's how it's tested. Right. Strength is measured isometrically. Awesome. So, I know you got you know aaron's filming i don't want you to stay too long there was one more point i want to cover is that with weightlifting now here you cannot deny what we're about to say now is that this is that if we

really want american weightlifting to get better we're going to have to learn to get into, you know, the community better. We got to learn to recruit, you know, at a younger age, you know, uh, the best that we can. Now there are outliers like Jackie, or even, you know, you can talk about Klokoff. He started at a much, you know, he was one of, you know, one of the few Russians who started, you know, a little bit later in life. But like the goal is to get these kids started you know younger ages and um i'm probably not gonna give my ideas away on this but we're going we're coming up with something really cool that we're gonna do you know he's helping me with giving me the ideas that we're gonna do to um you know get the kids involved and you should do the same thing yeah you know coaches i don't

want to beat a dead horse but you know about the technique thing. My guy Tommy shows me. I get on the internet and I watch all the things. It's where I learn all these things, watching the old tapes and new tapes and so forth. And I was a Chinese kid. I think he was seven, eight years old. I know, yeah. And he weighed 67 pounds and he clean jerked 167 pounds. Yeah.

Okay. So if an eight-year-old child is doing these lifts, it can't be that complicated. Yeah. Get this out of your head get you know it's not a beauty contest it's not gymnastics or ice skating where you start at a number and you subtract it's who lives the most weights yeah and i'm into technique because i work i've got good friends or secondary uh black belt in jujitsu you know carters carveli trains all kind of mma guys or cowboy serrani it goes on

matt brown it goes on even you with the way you coach you know squats and you're for you're very big on technique i mean you were coaching the heck out of them on technique so we're not saying it's not important but technique is absolutely important but you know i i talked to coach i won't bring up his name and said what do you do during the week but i do this at this he got the third we work on technique i go what yeah we go the week? I do this, that, this. He got the third. He goes, we work on technique. I go, what? Yeah, we go in there and we do this on technique. A real weightlifter learns technique at 8 and 10 years old. You never work on technique again.

You were talking about him. He just works on strength. You learn to break. It's like a bike. Once you learn it, you can ride it. You can ride it forever. It's not to be done when you're 19 years old. If we're not careful, we're going to put it into the minds of our lifters that the lifts are much harder than they are

if all we say is like oh the the technique or you're off you know one millimeter i mean like man just lift dude lift you out when i talked to cloak off you know i was i asked him i'm like you know what is the technique that the russians know, teach? Or, you know, do you guys go over position one, two, and three? And he laughed. He's like, no, I did that in the first two years. And then we just got strong. That's coming from Klokoff. I mean, that's coming.

And that's not him giving me a seminar like he gives you guys. That's us sitting down as friends and having a few drinks. And then him saying that. The truth. That's what Ben Tabasik will tell if you read the Sylvia Sports recovery books. It's exactly how it has to be done. All sports were done the same way. And in 19 to 21, their term was polished.

If you wasn't polished, you were gone. Right. You know? And over here, like you were talking, everyone doesn't start the second pole at the same position on their legs. Right. Because you have different torsion links, different leg links. Arm and arm links yeah so you can't say there's a perfect technique you just can't amen there is no perfect that's right you know i talk to top track coaches all time you know i got great uh rapport with top track coaches and and this is what they say because the two

greatest runners in the world from 100 meters to four is uh johnson and bolt johnson runs straight up and down short stride bolts very tall and normally tall it makes very long strides he covers the track in 41 steps instead of 43 to 45 like every everyone else all right how do they excel strength right because track running 90 you have to run down the track is that just overcome gravity vertically only 10 to go down the track so those two men were exceptionally strong and so they had tremendous ground force minimal ground contact and then their strides was absolutely differently but they were totally michael johnson can squat over 500 pounds they were totally different technique but they were the greatest because What you do, you work on

technique, but don't change their style. That's the last thing I'll say. That was a great show. Thank you so much for being on the show. I've said it before, but this is by far, at least, whether you guys think it's the best show or not, I had the most fun, so I'm happy.

Thanks. Well, I don't know about you, but my mind is just reeling after all those knowledge bombs this may be a podcast that you want to listen to over and over and over again because louis brings the heat for sure well head on over to mashleek.com uh check out more from travis mash remember the prices go up soon on no weaknesses so if you want to grab travis's guide to injury prevention head on over to mashleek.com slash no weaknesses. Again, that's mashleek.com slash no weaknesses. Well, thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.