Barbell Shrugged - What Your Weightlifting Program Should (& Shouldn't) Look Like Part 3 of 3

Episode Date: February 5, 2015

Hey everybody, Mike Bledsoe here. If you haven't already checked out our free e-book on improving your snatch, clean and jerk, you can grab a copy over at barbellshrug.com by clicking the icon for it on the right side of the page. What you're about to listen to isn't an episode of the show. It's audio from a three-part conversation we filmed a couple weeks ago in preparation for our new online weightlifting program, FLIGHT. This is part three of three and we talk about what your weightlifting program should and shouldn't look like. Registration for our online weightlifting program, Flight, is now open and will be until February 10th. For all the details and to grab your spot,

visit flightweightlifting.com. Go check it out now because we're giving away discounts and bonuses the earlier you sign up. Welcome, I'm Mike Bledsoezo standing here with doug larson from the barbell shrug podcast we have with us today alex macklin our head weightlifting coach today we're gonna be talking about weightlifting that's why we got him here and uh if you haven't checked him out yet we have two other videos we already posted this is the third video in a three-part video series the first video we talked about the journey of a successful weightlifter. The second video is the three things or the three reasons you might not be hitting that snatch and clean and jerk like you need to. Now, today, we're going to be talking about what your program should not be and what

your program probably should look like. Alex, what should your program not be? The first thing it shouldn't be, it shouldn't just be a bunch of workouts without knowing the why and what the goal or the purpose of those movements or workouts are. A lot of people just jump onto a random blog website where they're getting blog programming. It's just a huge collection, a huge ocean of workouts, and there's really no specific goal. And if you're brand spanking new, you can do that. You can improve your overall fitness. You'll get stronger. Your cardio will improve.

You'll probably lose some body fat. You'll achieve all these different things. You're trying to be well-rounded, but if you're trying to be a good weightlifter, you've got to do a weightlifting-specific program, and you've got to start that program at the very beginning of the program. You can't just jump into the middle of a program

and expect to get quality results. You also find the motivation to be a lot easier to come by if you know why you're doing things. Exactly another thing it shouldn't it shouldn't assume that you know how to warm up and recover properly as well so that's that's a big thing yeah it's got to be included as a part of the program again most people think that programming is just the workouts the weight lifting piece of it there's not a warm-up plus the weight lifting plus the mobility plus the nutrition plus everything else that goes into a comprehensive training program you know the way piece of it there's not a warm-up plus the weightlifting plus the mobility plus the nutrition plus everything else that goes into a comprehensive training program you know the way we see it the

way we see a training program is that it it helps you with every aspect of your training whether it's in the gym or out of the gym it's not just a series of workouts yeah i like having warm-ups that have mobility components that are specific to that day's workout it's like okay we're gonna be overhead a lot let's emphasize some shoulder mobility and some shoulder warm-up here. Yeah, and Doug, I mean, that brings us to the next point, is that a lot of online training programs assume that you're a dedicated athlete and you don't have any kind of personal life. You don't have a family.

You don't have kids. You don't even have a job. So they assume that you just have an infinite amount of time to put to training. Yeah, that's not the way it is for most people. Most people only have, you know, maybe three days a week on the low end, and then on the high end they might be able to train five days a week on a really good week, and they can only do that probably for like an hour a day, not two hours a day, six days a week.

It's too much for most people. If you have a family life and a real job and you can't be a professional athlete, then you just can't handle that much training volume. Realistically, you're going to have to skip something here and there. So a quality training program takes that into account and only gives you enough volume that you could actually do in the real world. Yeah, I feel like a lot of programs are like it's all or nothing. It's like, well, you could go do this general fitness class, you know, an hour, three times a day or three times a week. Or you can do this weightlifting program that's three times a day or three times a week, or you can do this

weightlifting program that's three hours a day, five days a week. And there's nothing kind of in the middle that like to serve the people who, who have busy lives. Yeah. And I mean, to go on that point too, it doesn't, most programs don't assume that you'll never fall off the wagon too. Like you'll never have to say, okay, I can't, you know, do this right now because there's too much going on. Yeah. A lot of people think they're going to do a training program and do every single workout in that training program and do all the mobility. I'm going to, I'm going to eat the way they say to eat. I'm going to do it all perfectly, but it rarely happens like that. Again, in the real world, you fall off the wagon and then you got to get back on the wagon and a good training program

will have something to help you when you fall off the wagon to help you get back on the wagon. Whether that's just a straight up having a coach that you can consult with when, when you fall off the wagon to help you get back on the wagon, whether that's just straight up having a coach that you can consult with when, when you make a mistake or an error, or you just, you know, just, uh, you get sick or you travel or something, something derails your training and you need some help getting back on the wagon. And that also might include having some type of a community, you know, a group of other athletes that are in your same situation that are also doing the program with you that can help, you know, not just hold you accountable,

but that can help, you know, motivate you and kind of drag you back into the program with you that can help, you know, not just hold you accountable, but that can help, you know, motivate you and, and, and kind of drag you back into the program when you fall off and you kind of lose that motivation, which, which, you know, ideally you wouldn't lose ever lose your motivation, but it happens. It happens a lot. And in addition to that, a lot of times people need to scale back for a week or two here and there, you know, if you're an accountant and you got to scale back during tax season, maybe you can only do three days a week. You know, it's good to have a program that has some flexibility that allows you to scale back certain weeks and then really attack it the other weeks. So having that flexibility around what you're doing versus, you know, this hard set date thing.

Yeah. And I mean, going back to what you were saying, it really shouldn't assume that you know how to work out. Like you know how to perform the movements. You know how to, you know, do the movements as the coach intended or do you have the mobility to do those movements. Yeah. There's got to be technique training. There's got to be warm-ups that help you improve your technique on a daily basis. That way you can kind of start over from square one and build yourself up the way that you probably should have done it the first time

but just didn't know how. There's confusion around movements too. I mean, you type in, you know, a snatch. Oh, yeah. Just go to YouTube right now. Yeah, go to YouTube. Type in the words snatch balance, and you're going to see five different ways to complete it.

And none of which that coach who wrote that program may be intended for it to be completed in the first place. And you waste so much time, like, just searching around for that kind of stuff. If you could just have the guidance, you would have so much more time to train at that point so and after videos are going to be some dude in a globo gym with 10 pound iron plates on it on a shitty barbell with big running shoes on he's gonna be doing it totally wrong yeah yeah and you have no idea that he is either so yeah if you're brand new you can't tell the difference a

lot of times not at all um. So what should a program be? I mean, we talked about what you don't want out of a program. What should a good program have, and what is it going to have? I mean, we definitely covered a lot of those points. It definitely should have structure. You should absolutely know what you're going to be doing that day. From the time that you walk in the door and you get ready to train to the time that you leave and you end your training,

it should cover all your bases. It should cover all your bases. It should cover your warm-ups, your workouts, your mobility, all the recovery things that you need to do to get your training back the next day. Yeah, every single thing you do in the gym, you've got to have that all written down ahead of time. It's not like you just do the weightlifting piece, like the actual heavy movements, and then everything else you kind of just improv. Ideally, a good quality training program would have every single thing written down ahead of time that way there's

no point during the workout where you're walking around wondering what to do next or where you're confused or you know how much should i rest in between this set and that set or exactly or in between you know the workout and the conditioning or between the warm-up and the workout or or what have you you should have all that map that head time that way you know for a fact when you walk in the weight room from the time you get started time you leave it's going to be under an hour under 45 minutes or an hour and a half or whatever whatever time domain you need to get out of the gym by you should have an idea of how long it's going to take ahead of time and that should be programmed in from the start from whoever made the training program they should say these workouts are going to take less than an hour

and they should stick to that and if you're like me if it's not on the paper i'm probably going to be lost so i have to have it written down. I have to. I mean, I have 18 years of training experience, and I'm basically saying I know how to warm up. But if I don't know the things I'm going to do to warm up before I show up to the gym, it's probably not going to be the best warm up. I'll skip things. I'll forget things. It doesn't matter.

My warm up is not going to be the best warm-up. I'll skip things. I'll forget things. It doesn't matter. My warm-up's not going to be that great. But if I take the warm-ups that I rode or Doug rode or something, if we take those warm-ups and I pull out my phone and I can pull up the warm-up, I'll do the whole warm-up and I'll feel way better for the rest of the workout, essentially. You should also have instruction on how to scale the movements if you can't do a certain movement or if you have an achy this or an achy that, if you have an achy shoulder, low back, knees, something like that. There should be an option for, you know, what do I do if I can't do this specific movement? Absolutely.

Or there should be some type of access to some type of a coach or other community members or athletes that should be able to help you scale that movement. Yeah. Yeah, definitely explanations on, you know, the workouts and the movements. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. explanations on you know the workouts uh and the movements yeah definitely definitely yeah in in all of our programs we always make sure that we have some type of a demo video or some type of a technique quad or some type of a video that is made specifically for that day to explain exactly what to do on those days that way there's never any confusion and also too to go along with that

is why you're doing it that's also important too because a lot of programs you know online training programs they don't tell you why you're doing it or what the overall goal is so you know you could walk up in the gym and be like i'm feeling pretty good today i'm just gonna max out not knowing that you're gonna do that next week and then you just you just completely blew everything up you know because you're now you can't do what you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it if you know that going ahead of time you know exactly what to expect and you know the reason why and that's important yeah you should know if you have a super high volume day that that okay i'm supposed to be beat up today i'm supposed to be beat up when i showed up because yesterday was a high volume

day and today's another high volume day i'm gonna feel even more beat up but that's okay because we're gonna fucking take it down a notch next week and then and then we're gonna we're gonna max you're gonna feel fantastic yeah that's a super important point a lot of times people get to the end of a deload week and they start oh i feel great so they start they start just loading weight up i'm gonna do a one rep max deadlift i was like this is not it's not the time to do that you're supposed to feel great right because we're about to go into another phase of training where you're just going to get hammered again so take advantage of what you have and it's good to have that explanation in there so that you don't make those silly mistakes or what would be silly to the coach it's not silly to you because you just don't know you

just don't know right right and i mean and then also too uh if we're talking about you know just lifestyle and nutrition it should teach you one how to eat to match your performance and your goals and also how to manage your time and your life better so that you can have time to get in the gym and train you know yeah a lot of people don't really coach nutrition as a part of a comprehensive training program they think training program and nutrition are different for some reason they're not that you can't separate those things they're not totally separate there they should be a part of a comprehensive training program so you know everyone wants to have a little more muscle mass and be stronger and everyone wants to have you know a low enough body fat percentage where

they can perform at their best they don't necessarily all need to be super lean although a whole lot of people do want to be super lean especially if you're a weightlifter and you're trying to be a competitor and you want to fit into a weight class it's good to be as lean as possible and if you're not getting some type of comprehensive nutrition program that goes along with your program then you're really kind of shooting yourself in the in the foot in a lot of ways and you're not really going to be the best you could be if you did have a comprehensive training program. Yeah, optimal recovery fits in that as well. If you're not eating optimally, the training program is not going to be as effective.

Or I find a lot of times people get eaten up by a program. They get in a program and all of a sudden it just starts getting harder and harder and harder. And the program is developed in such a way that you're supposed to be able to keep up. But what may be keeping you from hitting that goal is you're not eating enough of this or that. You're not eating enough protein, not getting enough fat or the right fats, or you're not timing your carbohydrates properly. And these are all things, if you do them well, you should be able to recover and hit the next day hard. But a lot of times people don't do that, and they can't understand why it's not working.

The program's working for all these other people and it's not working for me. What's wrong? It's not working. Nine times out of ten, it's nutrition and sleep and a lot of these lifestyle things. Yeah, it's not working because it's a lifestyle thing. In order to make those types of changes,

you have to start making changes in your own life that are keeping you from getting to where you want to go. Yeah, and sometimes that's hard to do on your own. That's why it's good to have some type of a community to fall back on. Absolutely. Whenever we do any online training programs, we always make sure that there's some type of a community aspect to the training program where you're not just following blog programming

all by yourself. You're following workouts online and comprehensive. It's a comprehensive training program, so the workouts with warm-ups and mobility and all the other stuff we just talked about, you're doing that, but you're not doing it by yourself. You're doing that with a whole group of people. You have a coach in most cases.

You have sometimes hundreds of other people that are doing that with you, and that makes it much easier to stick to the lifestyle choices that you're trying to change and stick to the diet that we're trying to recommend for you and to stick to the training program and the workouts and mobility and all the extra stuff that go into becoming a better a better athlete yeah they'll keep you on track chances are some of the things that you may be going through they have already gone through or are going through this at right now so you know having the having that group of people there and it can help you really keep you on keep you accountable keep you on track yeah and if you have questions as well they're they're there to answer those questions that way you don't just sit in there like pondering it in your head for weeks at a time.

You can just go onto a Facebook group or a forum or a community or whatever online. You can just ask a simple question and then people can be right there to help you. Right. Especially if you're losing motivation. You're like, man, I just didn't feel good today or I woke up feeling kind of shitty or my fucking cat just died or whatever. You can get on there and say, hey, something happened and I feel kind of down and they can help pump you back up.

Absolutely. And then you're back in the game a lot faster than you would have been otherwise. Yeah. I mean, our Facebook groups and our program, like the one for the muscle gain is just phenomenal. Like we do this thing called Jorts Thursday where everybody wears jorts on Thursday. Jorts Thursday. Jorts Thursday. That is jean shorts for those of you that are not in the know.

And it gets people involved in it and it just builds that camaraderie that is lacking in so many other online training programs that they just don't have that. Yeah, the community doesn't have to be this serious thing. It can be a fun thing, man. Exactly. It definitely is, especially when you and Kurt and some of the other guys are coaching. They're fun dudes that just make the community or Facebook group a fun place to be. Yeah. Yeah, and you may be wondering why we're even talking about all this.

We're bringing this up because we want to tell you we're really excited about this. We recognize that there's not really any programs out there that's doing all the things we're talking about. We thought, what is happening? What programs are out there? What are they missing? And we found that they're missing a lot of things, and we want to offer people things that they should have in a program.

And it's like, well, it just makes sense to put all this stuff in one single program. So we are creating a program called Flight. And in Flight, you're going to be able to start at the very beginning, and we're going to kind of make all the proper assumptions. We're going to assume that you don't know anything about nutrition, how you should be eating, and how to warm up and all that stuff. And we're going to assume that you don't know anything about nutrition, how you should be eating and how to warm up and all that stuff. And we're going to, we're going to assume that you don't know anything really. And we're going to start at the very beginning and help build you into a successful weightlifter. And just because we say, we assume you don't know

anything. It doesn't mean you actually don't know anything. It just means that we want to kind of start on a clean slate and build you up the right way. That way there's no holes in your game. You could know 80% of it and have a bunch of holes in your game we're going to help plug those holes that way you come out the other side as a brand new lifter that has every every aspect and every detail of the lifts kind of nailed down tight yeah i personally go back to fundamentals all the time even though i've been training for a long time you know if i have that one percent hole like you're talking about i have i still want to go back and you know maybe it's as as simple as learning how to do a glute ham raise properly again or rdl or just hollow body rocks or

something something that like a gymnast or a weightlifter who's been doing it for a while considers to be really simple sometimes those things get skipped over yeah basics are best for pretty much everybody whether you want whether you're brand spanking new or you really want to achieve mastery you always resort to the basics. But then the advanced stuff, it needs to be in there as well. But to your point, you have to know exactly why you're doing it and when you should do it. And what the benefit is to you. That way you're not just kind of doing it haphazardly and maybe that one specific little advanced technique you don't even need.

Because you're already good at that thing. You should be doing something else. You never know. So that's something that the coaches in the flight program can definitely help you figure out so uh if you haven't yet downloaded the the free awesome uh weightlifting guide that that the three of y'all put together uh go ahead and click on that link and download that guide the flight program is going to launch here in just a few days and we have many many many thousands of people that have already signed up to uh be on

the what's it called, the VIP list? Priority access. Priority access list, which means they're going to get priority access, which they're going to be able to sign up for the program basically before the rest of the big group. So if you want to get on priority access, definitely do that. How can they do that? Through the guide. There's links in the guide. If you sign up for the guide, you should get an email about signing up for priority access all right so sign up for priority access

right away because this program is definitely going to sell out especially the the top tier programs like the pro account which is kind of the the most personal individualized account where you actually get like skype calls and and very specific one-on-one um help and feedback on your list that shit always sells out for all of our programs. So if you want to be a part of that, especially then you got to be a part of the priority access. Final thing is also join the conversation below. If you have questions about the flight program or about things that you read in the guide, we definitely want to hear about it. That way we can help answer your questions and also make sure that we build in things that you want to have in the program. If you want something in the program that you think would just be really cool,

let us know and we can put it in the program. So go down below, ask your questions, leave some comments. If you're just excited about it and you wanted to say this, this sounds fucking awesome, you can say that too. Other than that, this program's gonna start here in just a few days. We hope you jump in. We'll see you then. Thanks for watching!