Barbell Shrugged - Who Is The Most Complete Strength Athlete? Strongman, One Ton Challenge, Oly Lifter, or Powerlifter w/ Travis Mash, Ryan Fischer, Anders Varner, and Doug Larson — Barbell Shrugged #424

Episode Date: November 6, 2019

This episode starts with a recap of the recent trip to Eleiko HQ in Halmstad Sweden. The guys made their own barbells, took a cold bath in the North Sea, sat in steaming hot saunas, ate delicious food, and trained at the baddest gym in the world. It was an experience unlike any other.   The second hour, recorded in Copenhagen Denmark is a heavy discussion on training, strength, and a debate on who the most complete strength athletes in the world.    In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, Anders Varner and Doug Larson discuss:   Making the best barbells in the world   Eating Swedish cuisine and how healthy the people are in Scandinavia   Why One Ton Challenge athletes are the most complete strength athletes in the world.   Bringing the One Ton Challenge to CrossFit Halmstad   What is takes to be a complete strength athlete    And more…   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   20 REP BACK SQUAT PROGRAM  __________________________________ Please Support Our Sponsors   US Air Force Special Operations - http://airforce.com/specialops   Savage Barbell Apparel - Save 25% on your first order using the code “SHRUGGED”   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   WHOOP - Save $30 on 12 or 18 month membership plan using code “SHRUGGED” at checkout   __________________________________ One Ton Challenge    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.    “What is the One Ton Challenge”   “How Strong is Strong Enough”   “How do I Start the One Ton Challenge”    ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs-strengthathlete -----------------------------------------------------------------------   ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► 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

If you're going to be in New York, come hang out with us. We've got two trips planned for the remainder of the year. We're going to be in Winston-Salem hanging out at MASH Elite Performance doing tons of shows. There's a rumor Juju Mufu is going to be in the house. I hope he does the overhead squat splits on the chairs thing. It's going to be super rad. Going to go kick it with Travis. We've got a bunch of video, a bunch of podcasts we're going to be doing.

Life is so good. I'm excited for the end of the year. Also, we're in the middle of a one-ton challenge launch. Had a bunch of people reach out wondering when to start the program. We are going to be starting the program with an eight-week back squat cycle starting on Monday. That means you need to get over to one-tonchallenge.com forward slash join. Get registered.

Snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench. It's a one-year-long program, eight weeks per lift with a four-week peak cycle at the end. Basically, if you enjoy doing those six lifts, snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench, I guarantee you are going to PR all of those lifts, starting with your back squat, starting next Monday. That's the 11th of November.

Make sure you get over to OneTonChallenge.com and before we get into the show, I want to thank our sponsors. Our friends over at Organifi.com All of the most delicious greens, reds, golds. The pumpkin spice is so legit. I'm about to go make one right now with almond milk, which is so delicious. I put a little bit of collagen protein in there. Unbelievably good.

So get over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged and make sure you save your 20%. Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. And then our friends over at Savage Barbell making all the swag for the one-ton challenge. Savagebarbell.com forward slash shrugged. Get swag in your life. They got all the phenomenal t-shirts that say Savage all over them. So when you walk in the grocery store or the coffee shop, everybody knows who the strongest person is. Savagebarbell.com forward slash shrugged. Get over to OneTonChallenge.com forward slash join. Be a part of

the One Ton Challenge. Coach Travis Mash wrote the program. He is the strongest man in the whole wide world. Snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, bench, 8-week mesos for each lift plus a 4-week peak cycle to get you to 2 000 pounds for males 1200 for ladies one ton challenge.com forward slash join and we're gonna get into the

show literally i can't have like large quantities of food in my house all right welcome to barbell shrugged i'm anderson my man douglas e larson yeah travis smash and ryan fish are hanging out we're here we're in holmes no're in, what is the name of this town? Bastad. Bastad. Bastad. Is that the correct pronunciation? Most likely not.

One thing that's so awesome when you travel with a group with three families, four families considering Colton and Fisher to be our road roommates now, when you need a house with that many people, you end up in the nicest place now. Yeah. When you need a house with that many people, you end up in the nicest place in Sweden because you have to find a house that's got six bedrooms in it.

Oh, it's beautiful. Did you see that house on the left when we rode to the beach? Baller. That was crazy. Dude, the like back deck house. It literally was like

an architecture magazine house. Baller. I had no, when we walked down there, Ashton was like, oh, that's a nice house. I was like, yeah, it's pretty've asked when we walked down there ashton was like oh that's a nice house i was like yeah it's pretty nice when we walked back like the back house is just open glass and like exactly like it looks like this like southern living and i see those things all the time like on instagram and i'm like no one lives in that house like it doesn't exist

they're still yeah that guy's 37 what about about the house in Miami that we stayed at? Remember that? That's the only true mansion. Oh, the Miami Coke mansion? Yes. Wait. Hold on a second. What?

You were in the drug dealer house? Dude, I don't know. We were in Miami Beach a couple years ago. We did a speaker series at Wadapalooza, and so we hosted all the speakers. We just got a big Coke mansion on Miami Beach and just put everyone in the same house. It was sick. Yeah, we had a tennis court and a basketball court and a hot tub and we had like 30 people staying in one house yeah that's great i was there for that it was gangster that was dope

yeah um dude we're gonna spend uh half an hour here you guys gotta hop on a train you're headed to croatia yep and then you guys are headed to par. Let's talk about the story of these two deciding where they're going to go. Hold on. It's like we're going to go to Croatia. It took you three days to figure out. There's nothing better than putting two guys that basically don't need to be anywhere with enough money to only get in trouble in Europe and say, hey, where are we going to go? Well, Fisher and Colton only bought one-way tickets. He only ever buys one-way tickets.

But by himself, you probably just know where to go. When you put Colton here, he's like, I'd love to surf, bro. I'd love to surf. I mean, what a great story, though, that these guys have gone all in on the thing they love, fitness. I mean, this guy, I am 100% convinced he went all in. He was willing to give his very life for fitness, and then because he chased his passion,

he went against the grain. He did what everyone told him not to do. Now he's made a beautiful life for himself to the point where he can buy a one-way ticket and then spin the globe and say, I'm going to go, oh, Croatia. It even got so out of hand, you guys almost went to Tokyo.

Where was it? It just got out of hand. Name the number of countries that were on the list of potentially. There's at least 12. I heard Morocco. You guys wanted to go to Egypt. I liked Morocco and Egypt the best because it was direct flights, and it was very smooth, but cold wasn't feeling it.

Well, we were even a disaster trying to figure out what we were going to do. Originally, we were just going to go to Copenhagen for the next four days and float around. And then the guy that was hosting this entire trip to Aleko, Joachim, was like, you know you can get to Amsterdam for like $75. And we were like, really?

How is that possible? And then from there it was like, oh, and another $75 gets you to Paris. We're like, well, we got to go to Paris. And all he did was really take all of our plans, just throw them in the air. And then everybody had 15 different things. He pissed on everyone. But, you know, I would rather have gone to Amsterdam personally, but my wife loves Paris so much.

Romance game. I want to see the look on her face when she's back in Paris. She's going to be another member of the MASH mafia. It'll be exciting for all you guys, too. Yo, what was this trip recap, man? This has been, I think I said it yesterday to the group after we finished the one-ton challenge, but I never, ever knew that we could lift barbells when we were really, really young

and figure out how to do it well enough that someone would fly us out here to film a documentary about how to make the best barbell in the world. Thank you. That was an insane experience to make that barbell. I had the emotional – I was talking about it to a couple people, and I was choking back tears because it was just like, what am I doing here? How did this happen? I've never – It seems so small to somebody else, but to be in there and make the world's best barbell.

Yeah, imagine if you walked up to somebody that didn't care about lifting weights or they were just, like, casually exercising. You were like, I flew to a Laco and made my own barbell. They'd be like, oh, really? Is that, like, a hammer strength? Is that, like, a curl machine? You'd be like, you know what just happened? I just flew back in time and painted the Mona Lisa with Leonardo da Vinci.

That's what just fucking happened. How does that sound to you? I love the look on our faces. We all look like little boys. I was even 46, and I looked like rock. You know, my five-year-old mom. Yeah, right? And they were like, we've never made a barbell ever.

And then they put it on the rack. We're sliding the sleeves on and oiling it. And I was like, it was literally like we were painting it was like is this good is this good please tell me i'm good please tell me i'm good i'm so insecure right now i don't want to mess my barbell up with my with my only 30 minutes i have on here i would be super sad if i if i left this conversation today without talking about like how important it is to just say yes to more opportunities yeah and be able to put yourself out there more right because i genuinely enjoyed that experience even more having met travis mash who i've never met before ever and he's like the usa weightlifting

coach and now it's like i'm making the world's best barbell with my country's best lifting coach yeah with one of my friends who i was been around forever totally aka anders and then like this whole thing literally happened like a week ago i was in lake tyler and you're like you should come to sweden and i was like okay yeah yeah i'll go to sweden and i haven't done a trip yet not one time yet where i haven't met at least one person i was like super happy to meet and it changes the whole thing because eventually, by the end of the year, I'll have met like 20 people that I really, really like. And God knows where those relationships will take us.

Yeah, I see people all the time when they talk about podcasts. I'm like, well, we do ours online. I'm like, well, what about the other 23 hours in the day that you just don't get? What are you just sitting at this breakfast table or going and jumping in the freezing cold water and saunas and like there's just you just don't get any of that there's no time to kill where all the actual ideas and hanging out and like the the really good meat of every conversation happens everything i've ever done that's been super successful almost let's just say everything but a majority of my ideas

have come hanging out with Doug, and now you guys, and Barbell Shrug, you know, I just get together in a room full of like-minded people, and we start talking, and my brain literally lights up. It's insane. Yeah, you're right. Well, it's so easy when we're at home, and because we're working, and, like, we need that time because if you looked at my emails right now,

you'd probably be like, Anders has not worked. Can we not talk about that? But you need that time because if you just hit the coffee shop and then you show up to the CrossFit Games and do five shows and go home, it just doesn't work. There isn't the break from the day-to-day, and you don't ever get that creative piece. I mean, dude, just even as a gym owner,

we walked into CrossFit Homestead yesterday. They have like five gyms inside their gym, all with a different vibe, all with a different everything. Unreal facility. All of Lakeo. Everything is almost like the Lakeo Sports Center in that gym, in that CrossFit gym. That gym is one of the best gyms I've ever been in.

Oh, yeah. Laker, everything, super clean, very professional, nothing but platforms. Everything's just like perfect. Absolutely perfect. Everything's super organized. There's nothing out of place. That back room was so cool. Yeah, and they're still building it out even more, they said.

They've just taken over the MMA space, so they have that very back section. There's still cool. Yeah, and they're still building it out even more they said. Because they've just taken over the MMA space. So they have that very back section is still more they're going to do. I'm like, I told them too, I said,

this is the top five gyms I've ever seen. And maybe number one, but I don't want to be emotional and just say number one. But like, I'm pretty sure

I can't think of one yet that's ahead of it. Yo, by the way, if you don't know what we're talking about, like we videoed everything. We're doing a documentary, so to speak. It's going to be on YouTube.

If it's not already on YouTube, it's going to be on there very, very soon. If you're just listening and you can't picture what we're talking about and you don't know what Aleko is and all that, you definitely need to go on YouTube, search Strugged and Aleko. We did some videos years and years and years ago that were very similar. Go watch those ones because those are dope also but the new one with the brand new facility that Aleko's made in the last year and a half is just so legit

one thing we should talk about I think is like yesterday when we did the one ton challenge at CrossFit Homestead is like how many people number one set PRs how many people were having like the best time of their life. And one thing that no one ever talks about,

everyone wants to talk about programming or technique. Granted, that's nutrition. All these things are super important. But what they don't talk about, because no one can really put their finger on it, is how important putting a lot of awesome people in the same room, how important that is. Totally.

I PR'd on two lifts. Oh, oh yeah and i don't even compete anymore and i'm way older i like to announce i pr'd my lunge and my bed and my bench i want to announce his lunch i saw this dude 418 pounds with my own eyes i told him last night i was like you know when he put it on the bar deep down i'm like not only is he not get it, he's about to get jacked up. I'm about to get jacked up. And he smoked it. He smoked it. I was like, there's a moment.

Anders isn't even surprised. Watching this shit, dude, happened for a long time. There's a moment in the video he does like the the right leg goes back and that one looks smooth and the left leg goes back and he goes to stand up and for some reason in the camera angle the right one just looks like he did a lunge like it doesn't look that impressive but on the left one uh something with the camera angle or the way that your foot comes up no it's harder you're like hanging out in the air for in the air on one leg with 418 on the bar and it looks so freaky like you should screenshot that specific picture

with your leg it looks like you're like peeing on a fire hydrant if you have that video it's a i've not been doing very many heavy deadlifts lately anything over even 350 and i i went out there and and for fun pulled 190 kilos 418 pounds and then i got done having had having had just had the experience of feeling what 418 pounds feels like mash goes fisher just lunged that once on each leg and i was like but how cool is it also as a weightlifting coach? Like, there's a 16-year-old girl in there that is just mashed. Oh, she was insane. She moved beautifully, and she's so strong. And there's people like that in every gym.

Her mom already talked to me yesterday. She's actually coming to America to train with her team. Her name's Alyssa? Alyssa. Yeah. She's amazing. I'm 100% convinced I can definitely make her. The cool thing is, more beautiful news, is not only is she Swedish,

but she has dual citizenship. So she has American citizenship. So it's easy to steal her is what you're saying. Yeah. Normally it's kind of complicated. As soon as she's 18, I'm like, never mind. Easy. He'd train her.

He'd definitely train her. He would definitely invite her to talk. I just wanted to train her. I'd talk. I'd say, yeah. And then it's kind of cool when we travel and, like, the fact that because of the internet, podcasting, all these things that we do, that the fact that we're able to, you know, encourage and inspire people from around the world.

You got people in there that, you know, have read my books, watched your videos, listened to our shows. It just, I never get used to that. I'm never just like immune to the fact. Dude, I got to meet one of your actual weightlifters. Yeah, Gabriel. That wasn't named Morgan. Yeah, that wasn't Morgan.

Dude, that guy's fast as hell, by the way. Yeah. Woo, and he pulls under the bar. Oh, yeah. Like, you just blink and you miss it. My favorite thing watching – Yeah, his under the bar is insane. Yeah, watching real Olympic weightlifters is like, when they come off the floor and you're like,

wow, that looks like a really heavy deadlift. How the fuck did he get under that? And they're like, yeah! Just like straight under it. You're like, whoa. Yeah, from the floor to the knee, it looks like a 1RM. And then from the knee to the hip. Yeah, 1RM deadlift.

And then from the knee to the hip, all of a sudden, he's just under the bar. It's so funny to be like, at this point, you're like, no chance. And then he goes, oh, whoa, that looked easy. Yeah, like, the bar only comes off the ground a foot and a half,

but he only needs to be a foot and a half to get under. He's so fast. He honestly looked like 10 more kilos he could not 1RM deadlift it. How often do you actually get to meet your athletes that are, unless it's on a world stage,

and then you show up and it's all business, but you never probably get to hang out meet your athletes that are unless it's on a world stage and then you show up and it's all business but you never probably get to hang out with your athletes once in a while they'll visit like Louisa and Sandra came to America my two Danish girls they came to America I got my there's a boy from New Zealand Isaac he's coming to America so once in a while they come visit but you know I think I never get to go to their home. Yeah, one of the guys that was lifting with the gym owner, I can't remember his name.

It was a Swedish name, so I don't even feel bad about it. He said that he did your Hib 100 program, took a week off, and then started Squat Gains, which you just launched. Oh yeah, I know exactly which one you're talking about. The guy with the mustache, the big guy? guy yeah three or four months of everybody just doing all of our friends programs and the fact that yeah that

they've done both their programs that's pretty cool that's the coolest the coolest part of this whole stuff is when you get to go out like you meet your athletes they're on your programs you never actually see where this stuff goes. And I don't know about you guys, but when I make a product, I want so badly that it helps somebody. You know, I don't want to, yeah, it's awesome. I've got to make money to support my family. But I want so badly that this actually helps

and to know that my work is actually doing something good in the world. And you see it. You're like, my God, this is awesome. It's working and making people's lives better. Totally. Even when you make something and people tag you on Instagram and you see it, but you don't get to feel their presence and see the big smile when they come up and they're like, dude, I did that.

This was really cool. Instead of PR. Yeah. Yeah. It's really sweet. Do you want to talk about how much penis we saw in the sauna? Oh. Wow.

Not just any penis. Very old penis. Very old penis. Old, uncircumcised. Sagging. I mean, literally, there was penis on the bench. Every seat that we sat on had previous penis. Laying their penis.

Previous penis. Hot, sweaty, laying their penis. All those old dudes are home right now going, what was up with those American dudes all wearing shorts in the sauna? You know what, though? There seems, there's something. Colton brought a camera in. That's right.

He had a camera in the sauna and everyone was naked. Colton did have a camera and that old dude said shit. Doug quietly goes, Colton, I think you should make sure you're only zooming in on us. And there was that dude just sitting there. He's just staring at his wang. Like nobody's ever brought a camera into the naked sauna. The lady said it was equally as saggy in the female sauna. My favorite part was Doug.

There was an abandoned towel. So Doug came up and sat by me on this abandoned towel. And the old dude comes back in.'s like is that my towel oh i still hear your towel i thought it was abandoned and he took it put it on i was like gross so for you guys who can't see like what happened and like obviously this was like a couple days ago, but you would get in the sauna, and then you would walk out, and then you would walk literally into the ocean, which looked like Titanic. It looked like you were going to find Leonardo DiCaprio's body down there.

It was so cold. It was so cold, right? But you were so hot from the sauna that it needed to happen. Yeah. However, when I saw a naked body go in it seemed significantly colder like when you see someone's wang hit the water as they walk in balls at first yeah like it just seemed a lot colder than me keeping my shorts on yeah this spa was like out on the the end of a long dock over the water it was it was the dopest setup yeah my wife is like

a spa fanatic when it comes to saunas and stuff like that. As soon as I saw it out on the water, I had to reach out the window and wave because I knew she'd be so stoked. When you just walk down the stairs into the ocean, it's pretty rad. Once you got sick of hanging out in the hot sauna or the freezing cold water, they had a nice, just temperature, little hot tub out on the deck. You could just hang out and watch the sunset. That felt so good after the cold, cold water. Why does America just, like, fucks with us? We don't have cool saunas and all that cool stuff.

We don't have healthy food. No. We don't have, like, charming places to live. No. We have, like, they're just like, dude. It's just, it's like mass consumption of everything. America is like being on the radio in your car. It's just like a constant commercial.

And you're just like, how do I get past this bullshit? Seriously. America would find a way to take that beautiful place and dump something to the ocean. Wait, this is way too healthy for the environment. There's got to be something we can dump. People are actually working on their souls out here we should ruin it yeah quickly by yeah when um even even animals are dying like a deer would be like walking by and just die for no reason you're like jesus what happened oh my god it drank the water in the stream that came from the nitroglycerin my favorite part so far like you assume that people

don't understand who you are and they'd be like so where are you from you're like the united states and they're like they roll their eyes i know yeah we know you're from the united states like i felt really stupid because i went america and they i heard them ask something else i'm like usa i they literally roll their eyes yeah we know man even i felt even more even lower when they were like you know our animals have their own doctors i was like oh yeah that's right they have free health care they have free health care and the animals have to have health care too it's it's when you guys hear they have free healthcare, not people, animals. Yeah. And our animals have free tickets to watch fucking the movie Saw. Yeah.

Because everything to them is so terrifying, and then that meat goes into our bodies, and it's fucking fucked. That's what their life is about to be. That's why they're all tall and beautiful. They are so beautiful here. Dude, we walked in. This guy, Johan? We walked into it. Yeah, we walked in.

The guy that was sponsoring the trip for malayco we walked in and everybody was like fuck is everybody's six three and gorgeous here like six seven dude we met so tall yeah i i know i i looked at fisher i'm like you think we're considered like midgets here yeah because we're both like five five five seven actually when anders has his hand on his daughter, it's me to Johan. The ironic part is they make the nicest weightlifting equipment in the world, but weightlifters are not 6'7". Yeah, totally. None of them look like they should be weightlifters.

Right. I've been thinking that the whole time. I'm like, why are these really tall, thin, you know, thin guys making weightlifting equipment? But it's awesome. It's the best stuff. The story is awesome. You guys, I'm sure, have either heard it or are going to hear it. We had waffles.

Yeah. The waffles. Exact same as the knurling on the bar. And they made waffles before they made bars. I made an interest. I don't know if you guys, when you guys interviewed him, did you guys talk about Bill Bowerman? Because his whole thing started with a waffle maker as well. Oh, no. Oh. with the shoes yeah well i knew we we did talk about it

but we didn't really go into depth there's something about the waffle shape that yeah it does really well it's a cool reference yeah yo match what we got coming up this year we got you got cairo coming up in in march you got tokyo coming up this summer junior worlds was it junior worlds yeah we got the arnold classic um we'll be first i think? Yeah, we got the Arnold Classic. We'll be first, I think. No, okay. So we got Junior. Are those over Lapidol? Cairo and Arnold?

No, they're close. So you got Arnold, and I would probably fly immediately to Egypt, which it could change, you know, because Egypt just got popped. You know, I think six more people just got popped, so they got kicked out of the Olympics. So, you know, there's rumors that maybe it gets changed. I hope not because all of us want to go to the Olympics. The juniors got popped too?

Huh? Yeah. Do what? In Egypt in March, it's junior worlds, right? Entire federation of Egypt is gone. Juniors is 20 years old and under. And they got popped too? All the 12-year-olds are smashing steroids?

Literally the entire federation of Egypt is done for a while. How many people need to fail for the entire Federation to be done? I forget. It's like X amount in a year. It's like three or four, and they just had six more. So three or four and everybody's done. So like a third has to pop before they're just like, okay, we get it. Everyone's on.

You're on. Is that going to mess up our trip to Egypt? I hope not but you know let's talk about something important here yeah i know like we're all planning on going to egypt and having a good time watching great weightlifting but for sure it'll still be somewhere it's the junior worlds but who knows it'll be a good time too because uh you know next year obviously is the olympic year so the even juniors even though you're thinking 20 and down, those are future Olympians. Some of them are going to the Olympics, and it's a gold event, which means it's a very important event for scoring points.

Roby points it's called. It's very important for scoring Roby points. So people will be going ham is my point. They're going to be going for broke. You'll probably see world records or bomb outs. If there's any sport I don't understand how you get to the olympics it's olympic weightlifting they change it every year every quad there's a new system to it and just get one and stick to it so normal people can enjoy the sport i just got an email for the 2020 to 2024 quad of the new ways and i couldn't read it i was like i

can't do this right now. Like I started shaking It's been so incredibly just like you're gonna have to be on the road so much you get a divorce Yeah, don't get divorced. None of your athletes are going to Olympics, right? It's been insane. Like, you know making people compete internationally Six times in 18 months is what just happened because what I've been through. And it has been very tense. And my wife, who's so gracious.

About the six-month-old at home, basically. Yeah. And my wife finally looked at me and she said, that's enough. And when she said that, I'm like, yeah.

Yeah. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of money, too. Yeah. Traveling internationally every couple of months. Oh, yeah. It adds up.

Oh, 50,000 we've spent in the last year on weightlifting traveling. When you're talking about the athletes, me, everybody, it's been insane. Yo, that's no better way to travel the world, by the way, than be able to go to these cool competitions, be around fellow weightlifters while you're going to Thailand and Tokyo and Egypt, Cuba. Guatemala, yeah. You've been on constant jet lag for 12 straight months.

I really have. It's got to the point where, like, even coming here, I was just like another – I wasn't excited until I got here. I'm like, wait, this is like the best trip of my time here. Well, it's been the best trip because we got to bring our families. Our families, our friends. How often – I know you haven't been able to bring her much of your stuff but how often in the last I guess ten years or eight years of the show have you been able to actually bring the family along last time we came to Sweden Marcia came

with we didn't have kids but yeah since I've had three kids I haven't brought my kids on any trip and how often I've ever brought marcy since you've been here this is the first one at all this is the first one first one yeah so it's been fun having her here i don't feel so guilty you know we're going to paris it's like her favorite spot in the whole world yeah well having adelaide here has been i mean having ashton here is awesome but i think she kind of understands like what we do for a living she actually like understood and then we laid in bed after she feels really bad for you yeah we laid in bed after night one after we made our own barbells and she goes so this is your job yeah and i was like yeah i mean we work really hard

like you can tell like we're up we're at it we're on we're performing all day long she goes no no no no this is the coolest job that exists in the world and i was like oh yeah that too yeah for sure like i saw you laugh your ass off all day all day your job you were basically like a kid in a candy store on christmas morning and you saw the easter bunny all at the same time for 12 straight hours yeah and you got all the halloween candy but having adelaide here, Adelaide walks into the gym yesterday, which is, like, our dojo, and then we're, like, holding microphones, and everyone's listening, and everyone's doing this thing that we like.

I think that that's just, as a new dad, just, man, if we could do that more. Your kids just don't have the opportunity to, well, they'll have plenty of opportunity to screw it up, but they will grow up in an environment where they see just a lot of love in their life. And they'll see their dad going for it. Hopefully all of our kids, Fisher, one day when you meet your bride – He might tomorrow in Croatia. They will have endless possibilities. You know, they want their goals, their dreams won't be shut down by,

you know, a dad or mom who's like, oh, get a real job, you know, stay on a safe path, you know, don't be a doctor, be a nurse. Like, you know, nothing against nurses, but I'm just saying. What I mean is, you know, like a parent killing your dreams because they want you to be safe. And I get it. As a dad, like I want my son's daughters to, you know, have a good life and to make money and have a good family. And it scares me, you know, them taking a risk. But, damn it, I want them to take the risk.

Well, you mentioned it earlier about one of your coaches. I know Fisher's story. I mean, Doug and I have talked about it a ton of times, from sleeping in gyms to really having no clue kind of where a meal is coming from in your life and what's the cheapest way to get food to go steal it from the hot bar at Whole Foods. Like, yeah, there's going to be some really janky parts of your life. Right. But you've got coaches back at mash elite right now wondering

how they can be coaches on the world stage right and people hit me up all the time it's like well how do i make it in the business and you go i don't know but if you wake up and lift weights today and you make it so fun that everyone wants to be around you that'll help that'll help and you should do it tomorrow and the day after and And then 20 years later, maybe someone from Aleko will call you and say, hey, can we come out? I think an important part of that equation is you've got to be so passionate about it that you're willing to share everything you know with the entire world. You want them to know.

There's so many coaches out there that, oh, why do you tell them all your secrets? I'm like, number one, is there really a secret? But I want to die. I want to be on my deathbed knowing that I've shared this passion I have, this thing that I've spent my whole life on, this thing that I've done even though people have told me you're crazy, get a real job. I want to share it with the world,

and I want to think that when it's over that I've made it just a little bit better. I mean, don't you guys? I think that's a solid point. Growing up, I started when I was about 14, 15 years old. I met a strength coach who just taught me everything that he knew, and he never asked for a damn thing. I feel an obligation to teach people what I know about fitness because I was so lucky to learn it at a young age.

Now I just have many aspects of my health more or less handled. I'm never worried about my health. That's a really nice thing to be able to – that's a nice feeling to be able to have that I'm not worried about my health more or less handled. I'm never worried about my health. And that's a really nice thing to be able to, that's a nice feeling to be able to have that I'm not worried about my health. I know other people that like, they just, they feel like they just don't know what to do. And the anxiety of being unhealthy and feeling hopeless,

like you don't know what to do, has got to just be brutal. I don't have perspective on what that feels like, but it's got to be bad. And every decade that goes by, that gets more and more. Right. And so I feel like I just have this obligation to share it and our availability to have access to information is getting better and people are getting worse that makes no sense

to me at all 15 years ago i was sitting on dial-up internet for 15 minutes trying to get a forum you click on t-nation and like you'd go eat lunch and come back and it would be a page would be loaded and then it was like you got to read this article and you never ever forgot it i remember i was just literally talking to travis about articles i read that i literally can't forget because it took so long for the page to load and like now it's like you know i could look up anything about anything and find the information like typically for free and i like what you said about like i want to make sure everybody knows everything. Imagine your parents died tomorrow.

You'd be really upset if you didn't tell them you love them, right? No doubt. If you died tomorrow and you didn't tell everybody about what you love in your life, I equally feel the same. You know, I'll tell you guys something. This is going to make your day, I think. But I was at my wife's. She's an artist.

And we were at her professor who taught her at Wake Forest. He had an art opening, and he said this. Here's what he said. Every boy, girl, every man and woman should either make art, write, or now in our case, vlog, podcast, because when you're gone, you will share this with your family. So yeah, we're going to spread the word, but think about how much information

that our kids can go and listen to us on podcasts, on videos. My dad, who's passed away, I would give anything to hear his voice one more time, and now our children will be able to read our thoughts listen to our thoughts look at our instagrams somebody interviewed me the other day actually last week right before we came up here and the entire angle that he wanted or the only thing that he wanted to talk to me about actually was like leaving a legacy because like exactly what you just said,

we get to lay down every week, 60, 90, 120 minutes of like legitimate conversation about this single thing that we've been doing forever. I know that you actually went and interviewed your family though, Doug, like that's,

that's high on my priority list of sitting down and seeing if I can put my mom on my, or you actually did it. I did my mom too, yeah. Which is hilarious because. And hers was good. Yeah. Your mom's not normal.

She's amazing. That's funny. But yeah, to be able to, you know, I left home when I was 14. So my sister was 11. I don't actually know my sister. Like my parents have been divorced she went up she went and played d1 softball being like one of the best softball players in the country for all of her high school career and all this stuff and i have no idea

like what any of it meant to her and like where she's at now. And the only way you can do that is really to sit down and just crank out like three, four hours and walk through life. Like I remember very little of my childhood of like having a sister because I, I, it was like life started when I left and then she became an only child at 11 and our experiences, even though I consider us to be like incredibly close because when we're

together i feel like we are the same people and that she's a badass lawyer i just happen to be like the badass lawyer but i do strength conditioning and um when we connect we're like on the same page about everything but when i think about how she got there, I have no idea. So the idea of laying down three, four hours with her on podcast is like high on my list. It would take my mom about four days to get through. She'd be like, is it working? Am I cool right now? Is this awesome?

But there's like a real thing to be able to lay down kind of that legacy of just where you've been and where you're going and what the hell is important to you. Adelaide can hear I mean none of us know what if we walk outside and die.

Fisher was talking about going to Egypt he almost wouldn't have made he probably Well I mean look at Chris Moore like Chris Moore passed away and his kids have

many many hours of hd video and high quality audio of their dad saying every opinion he's ever had and they have it forever this conversation literally makes me want to have even better words every time i podcast now because now i'm thinking of it in that context yeah that's pretty important imagine that now like we literally have a thousand percent we're gonna be heard it's not always uh unicorns and rainbows because when adelaide was born and not sleeping at all and screaming i'd get on here and be like i almost shook her to death i almost killed her yeah she's gonna be like god damn it oh man my dad at that stage in life i wasn't sleeping what if you had something like this of your parents from 30 years

ago i would say that would be amazing yeah i would listen to my dad every day i want to see he was a really good dad i would give anything and we just didn't because my parents like you guys were divorced i didn't see him as much and we didn't get close i mean we didn't get super close even though he was a great dad until the last mother was alive and so like what i would give you know he was he was dying in the last month that's why i left um colorado springs is because he was dying that's right i remember that yeah so shit now i feel like shit because i have to leave now no good but i i think that stuff like that it makes trips like this even cooler because man i feel like people don't go through life and live real experiences and have real stuff like this that they care about. So the fact that we get to come here and bring our families,

I mean, having our families here has really had a massive impact on just the entire trip just because I have a dream in my life that we will take all of this strength and conditioning, we'll build our network and everything that we're doing to a point where, like, when it's time for adelaide to learn european history she doesn't have to go to school we can just go to the museum we can move to europe for three months agreed and i don't have to we you can go the school route and have somebody tell you but like tomorrow let's go live it i'm gonna find out what the the lube feels like and we can

provide that experience to her way more than someone saying, hey, the Mona Lisa's over there. Do you want to go look at it? And that's what I think of success these days, and I don't have to – we can do – create life the way that we see fit. That's important to us. Right. For sure.

You want to take a break or you want to shut it down? No, let's take a break. Fish and Colton are taking off. We're going to go say goodbye. Take a break. Back in a us. Right. For sure. You want to take a break or you want to shut it down? No, let's take a break. Fish and Colton are taking off. We're going to go say goodbye. Take a break. Back in a minute. Right on. You heard him last week, Lieutenant Colonel Kearns of the United States Air Force Special Operations.

If you have not heard that show, go back and listen to last Wednesday's Barbell Shrug. Friends, I have never met such a amazing group of human beings. They're humble, they're quiet, but once you get them talking and once you start to build rapport, what these gentlemen do in the special ops of the United States air force is absolutely unbelievable. The amount of opportunities that are going to come your way, the training that you're going to get every single person that goes into the special ops with the Air Force is designated their own trainer, their own recovery staff. They're basically on a professional sports team. The difference is they're combat athletes versus professional football players or hockey players.

I had the pleasure of working out with them. I got to hang out with them. I went on a 10 mile hike slash run through Tahoe with them. And Lieutenant Colonel Kearns is a phenomenal human being. He is the spokesman for the group because he's just such a good dude. And man, I really had no idea what all went into being a part of the United States Air Force Special Ops. But after spending time with them, the PJs, all the people that are just involved in the Special Ops there, it's a phenomenal opportunity. It's an amazing career. And if you are interested in being a part of the fitness training, being the elite of the elite, it's time to go over to airforce.com forward slash special ops. You can reach out to a recruiter recruiter through there.

We have tons of information that we're going to be putting out involving the air force, uh, throughout the remainder of the year, as well as into next year, we're building a great relationship, a phenomenal cause to be working with the armed services. And the Air Force really is just at the highest level of performance, human being greatness. I can't say enough great things about the people involved in that organization and the special ops guys just they live an amazing life an amazing career serving their country so airforce.com forward slash special ops or reach out to recruiter today also our friends over at whoop whoop.com i heard joe rogan shut their whole

uh internet down which is hilarious uh because they've been using the WHOOP as their metric on the Joe Rogan Sober October for 30 days and using WHOOP to track all the metrics of their sleep, their daily strain, their workouts, and how they're tailoring their intensity towards their results that are a part of the band. If you are not doing that, it's phenomenal for the functional fitness athlete, for the strength athlete, tracking your daily strain, understanding how to use that information to tailor the intensity is a very important skill. And your HRV is probably one of the most telling things and it tracks that like 100 times a minute. So get over to whoop.com.

Use the coupon code shrugged. You're going to save $30 on a 12 or 18 month membership. Whoop.com. Use the coupon code shrugged to save 30 bucks on a 12 or 18 month membership. Back to the show. We're back from our break. We took a five-day break.

We kicked Fisher out. Fisher's gone. He went to Croatia. Yeah. Now we're in Denmark recording the second half of this amazing show. Right. You just got done training. Yeah, you just got done training.

I was the slack, not fitness person this week. I haven't trained in four days. I can't really say a lot. I'm drinking coffee with Jack Daniels. Well, you just went to train with Team Denmark. So I earned my Jack Daniels. Who you train, which is rad to say. It is cool to say.

What goes on in Denmark? What's the difference between international athletes and your American national athletes? I mean, other than the fact that my athletes are in my gym and they're not a lot. I probably think that's my favorite thing to do is coach the international because I think for me it shows me that the entire world is the same, exact same.

The barbell makes us all equal. I get to hear their goals and dreams, and it's the exact same as people in America. Growing up in a place where there wasn't a lot of like diversity it's just cool to see people from the same light it's like the barbell just makes everybody the same the barbell life yeah the fight under the bar is the same the aspirations are the same the you know the struggle so to speak is the same yeah it's all the same it's cool when you talk to someone in Denmark about trying to – this is the last five months before their last big competition to make the Olympics. Yeah.

And so it's just funny to talk to them and have the exact same conversations I will be when I'm talking to Jordan Cantrell about making the Olympics. Because there's so much strategy. Do you go 89 kilos and get a bigger rugby score that's going to go up to 96? Do I go on up to 96? It's the exact same thing with them. Yeah, it's not just about being as strong as possible. You've got to play the game.

It's all relative to the other people. It's a massive game. And this year, this quad is way more of that than last quad. Last quad is pretty much, you know, be one of the strongest people in this weight class. And you might go. This time it's like, you know, go be the strongest person in this other weight class. And maybe that will earn you the right to be in this other weight class. It's crazy. I love watching the videos.

I think it's Lulu the lifter. She's the six-footer. Yeah, six-something. Six-two probably. She's tall. That's a large weight lifter. A six-two lady is a tall weight lifter. She snatches 100 kilos. Does she snatch 100 kilos at Worlds?

98 kilos. What was the American girl that set the world record at Worlds? Oh, yeah, Kate Nye. She did 112, 112 kilos. That's 2.45, right? Right around there, 2.46? 2.46. Just above.

Good Lord. I can't snatch that. Kate Nye is just. If Kate Nye needs a training partner, we're probably about the same. Kate? She's actually way stronger than me. Do you need a training partner? I'll move.

No, I won't. He'll use your barbell. I bet I'm stronger on a girl's barbell. Been so much. Only one way to find out. Grip it and rip it. Right? Yeah.

I love watching the Lutler. What's her real name? Louise? Louisa. Louisa. Yeah. Because the gym she trains in looks like it's in a basement, and all they give them is one barbell and a stack of plates on each side,

and your job is to go make it to the Olympics. Or we'll kill you. That's the job. Yeah. And when you look at a lot of the American, like, we were just at a Lego, which is above and beyond. But you walk into, like, a lot of the CrossFit gyms now, and they're just so nice.

I remember my first gym, the one CrossFit PB that we built, was, like, the jankiest. It was, like, four platforms, some rubber on the floor, and you don't really need a lot. You just got to have some work ethic to get after it. Even in our gym now, it's kind of fancy in parts of the gym we own now,

but in the back, I kept that same culture, that dungeon. Keep it grinding. Yeah, man, you get it too nice, and then it's just like Rocky. You know, in Rocky 3, where he gets beat up, and then he has to go back and get the tiger again so he goes back to the trains with apollo creed yeah you got to go back to the to the roots once you start getting all the other modalities once once you once you have you got your norma text and you got your heat and ice bath and you got you got all

all these other tools and things in the mix then you start spending more time doing those things right it's just it's just more to do and you stop just relying on you, yourself, and the hard work you're putting in with the barbell. At some level, it can turn into a distraction if you let it. I've never even heard that, but that's a great point. It's like all these fancy, shiny things. When really, if you would just sleep, eat, and train correctly, you're golden. Yeah, we had it all figured out.

It's all right here. It's easy. Then we mess up, and we're we're like well this little shiny thing over here butterfly you gotta have it you gotta have it yeah and there's there's the all those things that is mentioned like there's total value in all those things and those things are rad right but if you if you let them distract you from the core of what you do which is which is lifting heavy damn weights eating all the food and making sure that you're properly recovered by getting enough rest, then it can be a distraction. Of course, if you use them properly, they can give you that little bit of an edge. But if you don't use them properly, they can actually distract from the main goal.

I love it when someone's like, yeah, man, I partied all night long, so I'm going to get my Normatex. I'm like, what is that going to do? You don't deserve the Normatex, man. Matter of fact, you get away from the Normatex. Yeah. I know, like sleep. Well, I only slept two hours, so I'm going to go do this little shiny thing over here.

No, that won't help you. No. You messed that up, man. Well, I was wondering if there was a difference. It's not that Europeans are born with an ability to snatch, clean the jerk, and it's just genetically in them, but when we were at Halmstad, it seemed like... When we do the one-ton challenge, it self-selects people that are already interested in Olympic weightlifting, which means you're already interested in squat, bench, and dead as well.

You've already been lifting for around three to five years. You've already done a lot of this stuff so you probably move decently well but i was very very blown away by how well everyone moved in the gym and i was just wondering if across for homestead yeah everyone you've moved beautifully and it was like i wonder what the when you walk into the gym like what the conversation is. How do they start? Do people walk in with a relatively high training IQ from something they're doing in high school or something they're doing in college? Is fitness or lifting weights a part of the culture here?

Because there aren't many gyms where we're at right here in Copenhagen. But in Sweden in the one gym that we were in, it seemed like there was already a really high training IQ. Gorgeous gym too, by the way. Yeah, it was phenomenal. And everybody seemed to, I mean they had two kids in there that were like ballers. One I'm trying to actually recruit.

Straight up, mom already taught me about sending her over. I think really at the end of the day, I feel like they have about the same as far as like what age they're introduced to the barbell. I just think that it could be one, you know, there might be genetics, because it's like Sweden, they're not so mixed in genetics. And so maybe just in that area we were in, probably just genetically have really good, you know, probably shallow hip sockets.

Yeah. They move well. And then two, I really believe that was a gym that didn't allow people to progress without being able to do the movement, which that's all. In my gym, the guaranteed way to get fired as a coach is let me see somebody doing something that they shouldn't. So if you have them doing a snatch and i know good and well they cannot do a back squat fired you're you're fired

because movement is the key so i hope everyone listening hears this it's like if someone can't do an air squat do not put a barbell in their hand and have them do a snatch well hold on oh yeah okay don't have them do a snatch so i thought you were about to say like don't have them do a back squat it's like well yeah so when do you introduce that stuff because the mobility is and you go into a crossfit gym everyone's on day two of their fundamentals learns how to snatch correct but if they can't what i would you know personally you know this is just what i would suggest i would instead of like teaching them to snatch i would have them do a simple overhead squat with like a pvc snatch i would have them do a simple overhead squat with like a pvc pipe i would have them do a front squat with a very light barbell i'd have

them do a snatch grip deadlift and a military press and that would tell me if this person could jerk snatch front i mean uh cleaning jerk so that would tell me everything i need to know yeah they couldn't do those four then you might want to automatically start thinking about regressions and getting them ready to do those four things yeah they couldn't do those four, then you might want to automatically start thinking about regressions. You're getting them ready to do those four things. Once they can do those four things, then they move on to do the movement. I had this thought last night, actually.

Nothing like being in the weightlifting world where you're laying in bed thinking about snatching, cleaning, jerking, progressions. Not your wife naked. On vacation, in bed with your wife, thinking about snatching. But it was if there was like a prerequisite and this kind of maybe go back it goes back to what i was talking

about of like what goes on in high school or in middle school or elementary school and the pe programs in europe or just maybe not in the united states because our our physical education programs are on the decline like it just isn't funding for it. But the number of people that are just jumping in general as a prerequisite of have you jumped a thousand times in your life and landed correctly? Because if you can't do that, then Snatch is way, way beyond where you need to be. I'm with you on that one too.

Because I think if kids would just go out and play. I grew up on a 900 acre farm. I just would go play and then I would jump off a fence and then naturally You can't land. Yeah, right. Landing's scary for some people. You're better at that and you learn how to do it because

I did it over and over and over and your body's like I better figure this out so this little kid doesn't get killed. If you jump off like a four foot fence and you go knees first, you're in trouble. Yeah. It's going to be bad. Land on your toes, knees move before your hips do. You're not going to land well.

You learn to figure it out because, oh, this doesn't hurt, so I'm going to land this way. I feel like a lot of CrossFit gyms, they position or claim to be strength and conditioning gyms, but they're doing strength and conditioning to do CrossFit. They're not all the way doing strength and conditioning to do CrossFit. They're not all the way doing strength conditioning to be a super well-rounded athlete, which is why they don't teach jumping and landing mechanics

because they're not teaching people to play volleyball and basketball and football where they're doing where they're sprinting and running and cutting and jumping. However, you're asking them to. You're asking them to run a 400k. You're asking them to do box jumps. You're asking them to be a football player yeah but you're not teaching them those basic mechanics so you really you know just just more needs to be done i would well i think i if if you position

crossfit to people just as a sport only it makes a ton of sense right but you don't go play the sport every single day right you got to go train sport. And then you find a time in the future that you actually get to go play. So running a CrossFit program should be strength and conditioning for three to four months. Right. Then go play one weekend. And then go into another three to four month training block where you're doing strength and conditioning, jumping, teaching.

I mean, you could do box jumps, but you don't need to do 100 of them in a row. No. Do you want to know the gnarliest story I ever heard? We were on our honeymoon. Teaching. I mean, you could do box jumps, but you don't need to do 100 of them in a row. No. Do you want to know the gnarliest story I ever heard? We were on our honeymoon. Nah. We were on our honeymoon, and we went to South Africa, and we went on safari. And there was two male lions that were like our guide, whatever they're called, the tour guide.

We were talking about how lions fight over territories. I'm scared right now. Yeah. Where is this going to go? So the box jump thing is what spawned this. So I asked our guide, like, how do they decide who won the battle between the two lions for all the territory? And he goes, well, there's really only two ways that the lions decide when the fight is over. And one of them is they bite the Achilles tendon and sever it.

So you've basically crippled the other lion so it can't ever fight ever again. It becomes the loser forever because it can't react. And the other way is that it bites the testicles off of it so that it can no longer breed ever. And I was like, wait a second. We've got a bunch of crossfitters out here just tearing their Achilles in half. And that's how lions decide who wins the territory. Like, that's the gnarliest comparison of, like, if you are doing a box jump and you tear your Achilles, you basically, it's the equivalent of a lion biting your balls off. Like, I instantly drew that conclusion.

I was like, we should stop doing box jumps for high reps right now. We had a guy who was like the premier divorce attorney in Memphis, trained at our gym. Great dude. But early on when he was training with us, he was doing box jumps, and he's a super athletic guy. So he's rebounding at the bottom and jump back up.

Does it all the time, but ended up completely all the way and half tearing his Achilles. You hear like the gunshot. Boom. Pow. Oh. He falls on the ground, and Bledsoe runs over there like, fuck, like the attorney.

We're getting sued. Yeah. The attorney tore his Achillesilles and the first thing he said was i'm not going to sue you and bledsoe goes oh thank god okay all right let's get you to the hospital i can see bledsoe like don't say i'm sorry because that would mean i admitted fault i did that i messed up like no we're not going to do this um but yeah getting back to it i feel like that that really is if more people talked about strength and conditioning in the CrossFit gym and then just set up a group thing so that they could have a weekend in which they're competing in a CrossFit event as the sport,

it eliminates so many of the problems because you don't have to snatch clean and jerk to 100% every day or build to this crazy heavy weight or everyone has to stick to these percentages like you can just teach sprinting mechanics and you can teach jumping mechanics and if you handle that baseline in the first three four weeks of a 12-week training block yeah you might not have a pr every single week but at the end of 12 weeks you've developed four weeks of this massive base of athleticism. In the second phase or the second month, now you can go back and it can be, let's add a barbell, and we're all going to be at 70% to 85% for twos, threes, fours, stuff like that, or even squats, getting into tens, like having this higher volume base. And then we can peak it out in month three where everybody gets to go play a big event

or goes to a local competition in-house stuff. That's where CrossFit needs to go. CrossFit has done an amazing job of bringing the barbell to the world, making the world more fit. All of us have benefited from CrossFit. Now the next stage is how do I make sure that these people coming to these facilities end up getting fit and not hurt? Or getting what, you know, they're going there to get in shape.

How do we make sure that they get that? Well, it's on such a, I shouldn't say decline, but it's in a way flattened out on growth. And it's really hard for people when they come in and you're like, am I going to get injured? Everyone says I'm going to get injured. It's like, well, no, you don't have to get injured. Yeah. But if you do something, even if it's sprinting and you do it 100% every single day, you're going to get injured. Like if you went and played pickup basketball, that's the gnarliest sport there is.

If you go do anything as hard as you possibly can without having a structured approach to it you're gonna get injured yeah you're back to being an athlete yeah part of being an athlete is getting dinged up yeah you know you don't have to catastrophically tear your acl yeah that nothing like that has ever happened to me in the crossfit space no but but yeah i get dinged up all the time even though i train fairly conservatively because i i train conservatively but i also train as hard as i can within that conservative yeah you know headspace yeah i did weightlifting and powerlifting exactly like some crossfits are trying to do where you do go all out and like now i am like i look like frankenstein i take all my clothes off which i'm not gonna do don't worry do

it but like i've got so many scars because i train like that. And it's a great way to get strong really fast. But it's not a great way to sustain that health. But you trained all the way to being a world champion. To be the best. You weren't trying to just be fit and have fun and feel good. I was not. You were going all the way. And I was well aware of what I was doing to my body and did not care.

But my point is. Once you're trying to win, it's not about health. No. I'm trying to win. I even said in one interview that, hey, I don't care if I die. care so so like but my point is trying to win it's not about health no i'm trying to win even if i'm if i think i even said when in one interview that hey i don't care if i die you know like just i want to be the strongest yeah so my point being is like if you're doing the same thing to get fit there's a problem that's all i'm saying yeah like don't train like i did to get fit it

will not make you fit you'll. You'll be fit real quick. Yeah. And you'll be awesome faster than you would have, but you'll also get hurt, guaranteed. Yeah. There is no doubt that injuries come. Yeah. A big injury, especially CrossFit. I think my, if you were to ask, like,

what the biggest goal in training that I have is, it's like if someone shows up and they want to play, I can go play. And you can. Any day. I admire that about you. Any day. But in order to do that, you have to kind of hang out in this, like,

90-ish percent range every day. And don't go above that. And try not to kill yourself. And that's the thing that I loved about the CrossFit Homestead doing the one-time challenge with us. It's like we only talked to them, like, a week and a half before. And we had, like like 40 people show up, and everyone was like, bam, let's go.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I admire that about you. This is the best time to tell you. When we were in Jamaica, you swam. You raced Jay in a swim, and you crushed him. In the ocean. In the ocean, in the ocean. And then you can still snatch and clean jerk.

Hunter was talking shit. I had to go. That was the most I snatched in like three years. Right. Because I missed 95. Hunter McIntyre. Yeah. But my point being is that you can do all these really cool things with anybody and at least look like you know what you're doing.

Yeah. Even if you might not be an Olympian. But, Don, I saw you snatching this week. It was really good. I saw you swimming. It was really good. I saw you sprint against – Johan.

Johan. I wrestled another Olympian this week. He wrestled an Olympian. And so was my point being. He's just like – that's what I think most adults want to be like you. The idea that I – and, yeah, we just finished doing it. I mean, we basically went on a long bro hike. But we just went on – did the Spartan World Championship race,

the 10K up the mountains. And I really love the idea of the sportsman. Right. Like, yeah, I do it pretty much in the gym and and you train, and you try and stay strong and do all that. But it's like if you really want to go play CrossFit and I really want to beat you, there's a decent chance I'm going to beat most people. You are, yeah. If you want to go lift weights, you're going to be stronger than most people. Yeah, you beat me in cleans.

I did beat you in cleans. Enjoy that. That was a huge day. Enjoy that moment. That will not come again. Travis came over to me and was like, should I cut it off? Should I make it look like I can't do it? I was like, yeah, just give it to him. Then we went over to the deadlift bar.

It was like hundreds on the inside, hundred on the second plate, 45, 40. I was like, guys, I'm out. Travis had like four more lifts after me. I was like, I'm checking out. I got to back to it to take care of it. But you had me on the one lift and you got that. Yeah.

It's on camera. Coolest picture of the weekend. I would embrace that. If you need any more slightly above average athletes on your weightlifting team, you know where to find one. Yeah. These days I'm trying to figure out like how can I still do like a decently high volume where i can i can be in pretty damn good shape have decent muscle mass like look good low body fat percentage all the things but be able to do that volume and like absolutely minimize joint stress yeah does that mean i'm just doing like lunges and push-ups all the time not 100% of the time

but it's like that's that's kind of more what my training looks like yeah doing you know like heavy sets heavy quote-unquote heavy heavy sets of eight and ten like kind of more like a bodybuilder ish for for front squats than you know than heavy singles all the time multiple days a week i'm not doing squat when i tore my bicep tendon in the beginning of this year i remember laying in bed and like i'm totally freaked out by taking any pain pills whatsoever. Like Tylenol would be pretty much the biggest thing that I'd feel comfortable taking. And I'm totally not freaked out. I tear. Which is funny because Tylenol is the one that I don't take.

That's the one if you want to kill yourself by taking too much, you take a lot of Tylenol. Well, Advil or whatever. I actually took NyQuil just to help me go to sleep. I didn't really take like a pain pill. I just wanted to sleep. Because I remember laying in bed and I was just in so much pain, and I was in such agony just laying there. It just hurts.

I was thinking, I wonder how much weight I could still lift if I could still train with one arm. They might have to chop my whole arm off for this. It was just like, I never, ever want to be in this much pain ever again. It's just injury sucks. But that's a good – on the other side of that, that's a good perspective of realizing you are in a ton of pain, but there's still a lot of stuff that you can do.

I was ready to go train with one arm for the rest of my life. There's plenty of people out there that all of us have watched do really well on some crazy athletic things with just one arm. Dude, what's his name? Logan Aldridge? Logan, yeah. Have you ever trained with him? No.

He lives out by me. We've got to get you out, dude. He attacks barbells. Wes Kitts walked up to him at the first one-ton challenge and was like, dude, you're a savage. He attacks barbells with one arm, like way more aggressively and with way more intent than the majority of your athletes,

not your athletes, but the majority of athletes that walk into, like, any CrossFit gym, weightlifting gym, whatever it is. There is, like, a serious attitude when that kid starts lifting weights, and it's so impressive. I watched him do, like, doubles at, like, 200 pounds for clean and jerk, like, rack, and then he rides it down with one arm to the ground, back to the rack, overhead. Maybe I could deadlift 200 pounds with one hand, probably,

but I don't know if I could clean it. There's no way. Have you ever – 245 or something like that. Have you ever done a one-arm snatch? I have. What's your best? I've done 200 pounds.

Oh, I hit 135 one day, and I was like gangster. 90 kilos. I did 90 kilos. Oh, there you go. 198, barely two. Nope, he lied. Yeah, I did lie two pounds. This brings me back to a lot of things you were saying,

trying to sustain health and fitness. That is my favorite part of why you guys do this one-ton challenge. There are six things. See, a lot of times with weightlifting, if you do weightlifting long enough, hard enough, it's calming because it's just overuse. I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but if you snatch and clean,

you can squat every single day the rest of your life. If you guys ever meet Piers Demos, he is a mess. His wrists and just his body is wrecked. And that's what happens. He doesn't care. He's a three-time Olympic gold medalist. He does not care. But my point being is if you want to sustain health,

I do love the fact that this one-ton challenge you came up with because they do so many things. It's like one day I can do a snatch, one day I can do a clean jerk, or I can do a clean, one day I can do a jerk, or today we're going to squat. If you were to rank the sport, the strength sports. Oh, get ready for this answer. I'm ready.

How would you rank them? I'm going to throw the one-ton challenge into the mix. We're not fully there yet. But if you were to throw the one-ton challenge in, but you got strongman, Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, CrossFit, and then say one-ton challenge. You got five of them. What's the context for ranking them? Who's the most complete barbell athlete? I've been waiting for someone to ask me this question.

As God is my witness, the one-ton challenge is by far my favorite. Let me tell you why. I want you guys to know that's listening to the show, these boys aren't paying me anything to say this. But I've always thought that the one-ton challenge, super total, whatever you want to call it, is complete. Here's why. It's because powerlifting is incomplete because there's not quite enough athleticism. So it's hard to say strength athlete.

Yeah. And then weightlifting sometimes, I've watched plenty of people who are like not very strong be one of the strongest Olympic weightlifters because they're very technical. Yeah. They're fast. But when you put it all together, that dude, the dude who lifts the most in that, is strong, athletic, fast. He has a lot of balance, coordination, mobility. Yeah.

That's my guy. And I think that's better even than, you know, the strongman is because they can't move. I mean, they're big and strong. They can move pretty good. But, you know, Bryce Shaw is not going to do a beautiful snatch. No, it's not going to be pretty. No.

Might be the most, though. No chance. Lasha will spank Bryce Shaw. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you think? Other guys are similar size. Yeah, what do you think Eddie Hall is just snatching? It's not going to be pretty.

I don't think Eddie Hall is going to snatch much at all. I don't think he's got the movement to get a lot of weight on his head. He might clean a lot. I actually think about it a lot because I always put Strongman at the top. No chance. Because they move so many strange implements. Yeah. It's not a normal, like, I think that in order to move the

Housafell Stone 50 yards and then running. It's awesome. It's super cool, but I don't think that, like, you put, if you gave Wes Kitts the stone and said put it on top of that podium over there. He figures it out. You think he figures it out? I think 100% he figures it out. You think he figures it out? I think 100% he figures it out.

You think he's athletic enough to get there? Especially if he took what they took, 100%. I'm just being real right now. Are we being real? Is this safe? Are we in the safe zone? For sure. Yeah, 100%.

So we're competing against ourselves over here. Why one-ton challenge over high-level CrossFitters? I mean, because it's not not – There's too much conditioning, yeah. I don't consider them strength athletes. Strength endurance, you know. I think the West Kitts is probably the best one-ton challenge specific person in the country. Right now?

Right now. Because, I mean, he came out and squatted like 650 or something like at the games. Yeah. The coolest part 650 or something at the games. The coolest part about doing it at the games, nobody had seen strong, like Wes Kitt strong. That was so savage. I think his coach told him right before, he was like, make it look good, make it look pretty, but don't do it.

I was there. So Dave, I was there when we were talking about him going out there. Because then they're like, are you sure you're going to do this? And he's like, no. Because he just did really well in Peru. Yeah. Literally, basically. One pan am.

Got off the plane, got right back on. So when you're casually jerking 400 pounds in front of CrossFitters, like all the crazy CrossFitters, the ones that travel all the way to Madison, Wisconsin, to watch all the good CrossFitters, like all the crazy CrossFitters, the ones that travel all the way to Madison, Wisconsin, to watch all the good CrossFitters. And you got Wes Kitts, and he squats like 6 1⁄4, 650. They've never seen that before. The CrossFit people just do too much conditioning to be that strong.

Matt Frazier is the strongest CrossFitter, and he cleans 385, 395, maybe 400 on a great day. And I have a 16-year-old that would beat that. So it's like, Wesley's power cleans that. Yeah, yeah. You got guys that are in the 500, like 473 – 476 he did at Pan Am. A 73-kilo lifter, power clean 418. So it's like –

Yeah. Those dudes are strong. And, like, you know, Fisher is amazing. We saw him do that at lunch. But they're just not in the league of a strength athlete. They're strength endurance. Yeah. You can't be good at CrossFit.

No, and be, like, as strong as Wes Kitts. I'm so excited I asked you this question. Yeah, you got me pumped up. Because I think Fisher could be a great strength athlete. I would love to take Fisher. When he was, like, 18. Even now, if we could fix his knee, I would take him right now. I think I'd ask him, do you want to be a great weightlifter?

Well, he went to nationals in college. I think I could have easily – I could crush with him. Yeah. But like – You've got to fix this jerk so badly. I've been trying to fix this jerk for years. I think I could. Not anymore, but –

I think there's a lot we could do. It would take a few months, but I think I could. And like – but my point being, yeah, the one-ton challenge just fires me up. And that is why i want to get behind this yeah you know yeah what do you think about the fact that weightlifters don't bench um can they learn it and be good at it yeah i think that's a huge mistake in most cases let me explain is like if uh for some reason you're a guy like uh jared fleming you know yeah totally and so um if you're him you probably shouldn't bench because he's got just enough shoulder mobility

to get into the overhead squat position. He can't even miss behind. So that's where he's at. Then there's people like Hunter. One of the things that we did was bench press a lot because she was so hypermobile that she would miss behind. She would miss behind. It wasn't the bar path.

Sometimes it was, but the majority, she would catch it, and you're like, oh, perfect. that she would miss behind she would miss behind it wasn't the bar path you know sometimes it was the majority she would catch it you're oh perfect and she missed behind she had no stability so i think a majority especially females should and there's even more than just you know than just stabilizing the shoulder joint yeah also is that a lot of females will get super strong in their legs and they'll be able to you know fling heavy weight above their head and their bone structure their ligaments their tendons aren't prepared for it and you'll get injuries like we had uh rebecca gurdon who was one of my very first weightlifting athletes actually broke her wrist simply because she was able to get more weight above her head than she's capable of holding so her wrist snapped and so so they need to do some upper body movements

like bench pressing to stabilize the joint, to stabilize the shoulder, and to strengthen the ligaments, tendons, bone structure that they're going to use. What do you think about when ladies come out of gymnastics? I guess guys too, but most of the ladies in this example, they come out of gymnastics and they have such great mobility everywhere, shoulders included. But then they also have a lot of stability and a lot of strength overhead. They got handstands, handstand walking, back handsprings. Like there's so much they do overhead already where they just show up to be a competitive weightlifter.

And all they need to do is learn the technique. Everything else is already there. The mobility is already there. All they need to do is just learn how to do it. That's the person you want. Like I think I'm going to give everyone a secret. If you really love weightlifting, if I were you, I would hook up with my local gymnastics studio and say, hey, can I start a weightlifting club either in or beside your gymnastics place?

And then as soon as an athlete makes it to the level that they can't go any further, take that person and be like, hey, let's try this weightlifting thing. Most people don't do gymnastics after 12, after high school or college. And most of them tap out. They have, what is it, level 10, 12, whatever. So you make it to level 8, and they tell you, look, you made it to level 8. Congratulations. You're not going 9.

So they're like, hey, I got a place for you. You still do sports. You still represent America. You know, you're not going to, obviously, you're not going to the Olympics and gymnastics. But let's try this weightlifting thing. See what happens. Yeah, once you get above, like, 5'5", as a female, you're done. But you have basically the same body type with all of the athleticism built in.

And even going back to what we were talking about earlier, you're running and jumping all the time. All the time. And it's, like, the most basic skill to being able to move a barbell well. Yeah, running, jumping, you're stable. Was Maddie a weightlifter? Maddie Rogers? Yes. She was a weightl yeah running jumping yeah was maddie weightlifter maddie rogers yes she was a weightlifter i know pope was a weightlifter you mean were they gymnastics oh sorry yeah were they gymnasts before weightlifting yes maddie was kristin pope

was elissa richie kate nye kate nye i don't know about elissa but i think i can't commit but i know kate nye maddie rogers well one thing see. Those are like the darlings of weightlifting. Yeah. A couple of them. They're like top of the food chain, and they start in gymnastics. Why? In gymnastics, even when you watch the Olympics and they take off for the vault, they don't run well.

They don't run well. Is it because of the springs and the floor? Do you have an answer? You have more of a gymnastics background than I do. Yeah, I'm not sure why they run the way they do. They all do seem to have the same type of run. Yeah, a straight arm run. Yeah, it's like a performance as they're running.

They're running to look good. Except they don't do what you're doing. They don't have that nice, you know, bend at the elbow. It's like straight. It's like they're – it's crazy. It is weird. I always think they're – yeah, well, she's such a savage. Savage. Who's that? I always think they're – yeah, well, she's such a savage.

Savage. Who's that? Simone. She just won like her 26th medal or something like that on a world stage. She owns gymnastics now. She does. It's no longer USA Gymnastics. It is Simone Gymnastics. Dude, she did – I'm not even smart enough to repeat whatever move that like just went super viral on Instagram.

I saw it like 100 people reposted it. The freak show she did up in the air. She did three moves that have never been done. I'm 99.9%. It was three that are now named after her. She was the first human on earth to ever do these three moves at a world championship. Who's got the balls to pull that out? I'm sorry. three moves at a world championship. Number one, who's got the balls to pull that out at, I mean, I'm sorry, who's at the world championships?

Who's got the balls to do that at the world? Dude, we used to go, Ashton and I used to go to adult gymnastics class at night. And you would think that we would go to the adult class and be like, ah, let's do some tumbling, which is basically like rolling, and then let's get you on the bar and swing around and feel good about yourself. And then if you wanted to do like a backflipip they would put you on some of the apparatus to get you comfortable going you know backwards without breaking your neck without killing yourself and suitcasing and all that and then at the end for the last like 10-15 minutes would actually put

you through like a small piece of the strength and conditioning that some gymnasts do and it's not what we do for strength and conditioning at all it's like the most intense hardest body movements like i remember they gave us the runway for the vault and it was like sit on your butt and get to the end as fast as possible and you'd have to like scoot your butt and like 10 steps in of me scooting my butt down the my abs were just so lit up and then they would get uh they'd have you just for shoulder stability they'd get you on like the parallel bars and instead of going and doing like full dips like everyone does it's like just do the scap retraction and presses and dude i would be so lit up the next day of just it's so hard to do the stuff that those they do for their the training piece not the skill piece yeah if you're a crossfit coach if you go watch

like my kids are in gymnastics right now i have a four-year-old that's in gymnastics if you go to gymnastics class and you watch the little kids do class a lot of times they're not really i mean they are doing gymnastics of course but they're really just doing kind of low level strength training yeah and a whole lot of it but the you know the five six seven eight year olds they're not doing gymnastics like you see on the tv when you watch the olympics no they're doing stuff that your clients probably could do right in a lot of cases they're they're doing it's all just a bunch of a unique core training and assistance work and shoulder stability and holds and isometrics. And you can pick up a lot of ideas for stuff you can do with your clients because at that level, when you're watching six-year-olds,

they're doing things that your normal, I just got out of college football player can still do. Right. Hopefully. And it's super beneficial. Yeah. Well, I mean, you talk to someone like Coach Joe Kinn at the Panthers, and you'll be surprised how many people get to

i mean what i'm about to tell you is crazy we'll get to division one athletics and can't do push-ups correctly can't do pull-ups correctly so it's surprised they might be able to there's a good chance they might not be able to do things and like that's that's the sad part i think that's where we need to attack health and fitness is like People need to be able to do push-ups, man. General body awareness. How many people are doing that? If you're doing dips, how many people are thinking about anything besides

the tricep piece or the chest piece? Nobody. Not the shoulder piece. They're just banging it out. You push to the top of a dip. What happens if you keep pressing? Well, your hips come up. Right.

And then if you're a real gangster, you go into a handstand because that's what happens if you just keep pushing. Who's a boss? Massive boss. Stuff like that. To be able to control your body like that. But gymnasts make it look so easy because they've been doing it. You do it every day, and it's not a big deal. And you see the little kids doing it in the gym, and you're like, whoa.

I used to be able to do that. My mom owned a gymnastics gym. I used to be able to go into the gym and do that. And then it's like, if I tried it now, I do the kick up and hope I land on my hands properly handstand. I don't do the press to handstand, to control to control to straddle to back down to the ground in an l-sit you know a fun fact for you guys i was talking to martin rooney um has he ever been on your show never on the show we'd love to have him for warriors you just gotta get it you know he was you know for the longest time he's too busy crushing it is what's going on he is hard

to get a hold of me and andy gave a talk in like 2010 at NSCA and there's like two big open rooms and Martin Rooney was in the other room giving a talk at the same time as our talk.

I mean, me and Andy kind of threw our hands and we're like, no one's going to come to our talk. He's got 7,000 warriors next door.

He is the innate ability. Luckily, we still have like 400 people there but initially we were like, I hope someone shows up. When I went into... Wait, hold on. Did you finish your story?

No. So he tells them – you know, he used to – at one time, he had the most first-round draft picks of anybody – of any strength and initiative coach in America. So he would take – you know, you graduate. So you go to Wake Forest. You're done playing. You go to him to get you ready for the NFL combine.

Is he still a North Carolina guy? Yeah, he's right on the road. We've got to go hang out. I've been telling you guys. We've got to go. So anyway, so I ask him about speed training, and here's what's crazy, is that one of the top five elements that someone needs is required to be really fast is relative strength.

You know, the barbell is awesome, and it's a part. Absolutely, so this is by far a big part of it. But here's the key. If I take you, Anders, and I say, let's get you faster. If I get your absolute strength up and I keep your mobility the same or make it better, I make you technically in sprinting better or the same. And then the relative strength part gets better or or the same. And then the relative strength part gets better or stays the same.

Then absolute strength controls whether you get fast or not. Did you get how it goes? Can you define the relative strength piece? I don't know if everybody's going to control your body weight. Relative strength is just how you move your body. So pull-ups is a great way, like strict pull-ups, like chest-to-bar, strict pull-ups

is a great way to indicate who's the fastest guy on your team so if a guy can do like you know 10 15 or even 20 strict chest to bar pull-ups if he knows how to run at all and if he has a you know a base level of absolute strength and uh yeah the and his mobility is like at least optimal or like a little bit better that guy is gonna be your fastest dude every time if you weigh 200 pounds and you front squat 200 and his mobility is at least optimal or a little bit better, that guy is going to be your fastest dude every time. If you weigh 200 pounds and you front squat 200 pounds, you're not going to jump so high.

But if you weigh 200 pounds and you front squat 500 pounds, you probably could jump pretty high. And you can move your body well, and you have good mechanics. You're probably going to jump high. Yeah. So there you go. If you're a strength and conditioning coach, here's a little fun fact. I did not know that Martin Rooney had that many athletes. The number one.

Pretty sure he still, even at this point, he doesn't even do it anymore. Pretty sure he has had more first-round draft picks than any other strength and speed coach in America. I didn't even know he was a speed coach. I went to perform better, and that dude had a room of 300 people just banging out, working hard, and he was smashing. He's the dude who gets you so pumped up, you just go to a brick wall and you hit your head over and over. You're like, please, because you're just like, I'm so jacked, I don't know what to do with myself.

I'm a warrior. He's that dude, but he's super smart. He was a physical therapist. Then I guess where he really learned to sprint, he was a bobsledder. Yeah. A really good bobsledder. And then he is the one, really, that Bill Parisi, Parisi Speed School, built his, you know, that's Martin designed all the programs, you know, did all the sprint training, you know,

along with, like, learning from Lawrence T. Graves, the great speed coach. But, like, yeah, he's the one who put a lot of – he's still pretty sure, like, as of, like, two years ago, he was still the VP of Parisi Sports or whatever it's called. But, like, he's amazing. When you have the doctor thing next to your name, that really, like, sets you in an interesting class of the coach. Right. Because you're so specifically dialed into that thing that you coach.

Yeah. Plus you have the training background. It really just elevates your game so much. It does. It says, look, I can do all these things. Yeah. Darn it, I just realized. I was telling you I want to do my PhD.

I'm so glad I just half tossed you a bone there. Yeah, but like – Because I didn't know if that softball was going to be... if we were allowed to talk about it yet. No, I'm allowed to talk about it. We're working on something really cool where part of it is me going after my PhD, which I'll tell you more about it soon.

It's finalized. But I thought I would be the first one, but I won't be. I thought I'd be the first guy who's a really good athlete, who's also coached really well, who's going to be a PhD. Who else?

Martin Rooney. Oh, shit. He's a darn good athlete. He was a collegiate athlete. He was a javelin thrower. He's going to be a PhD. Who else? Martin Rooney. Oh, shit. He's a darn good athlete. He was a collegiate athlete. He was a javelin thrower. He does have the PhD. He did bobsled. PT.

He's an awesome coach. He's a guy who's PT, PhD. Not only are you not the first one, but you're not even the first one in your own state. That's tough. Dang. Oh, well. I dominate North Carolina. You got to go above and beyond, dude. MD, PhD. There it is. Oh, well. I dominate North Carolina.

You got to go above and beyond, dude. MD, PhD. Yeah, there it is. There you go. Just spend the next decade in school. You saw all the books. Yeah, yeah. Dude, you just went up and got to hang out with all your weightlifters.

That was fun. It's been an epic. Dude, you come to Europe and all the people show up. It was great. It was, you know, we're in Denmark now for the final leg of this trip. Yeah. Ten days. Wait, the first lifter who showed up, what was his name again? Gabriel? Gabriel. Gabriel was

in Sweden. He's a Swedish weightlifter? Swedish. He was a Swedish national team member. So he came to our one-ton challenge, hung out with him. Fast as fuck. Pulls onto the bar. He's absolutely stressed. He's got to go up. No need to work on speed in his case.

Just sucked into his head. Sandra and... I like how you said it. That's what it looks like. Sandra and Louise are incredible, both weightlifters. They're both police officers, too. Their job is they're police officers, which is funny. I can definitely see Louise because she's 6'2 and super muscular.

But, you know, Little Piglet is a figure. Little Piglet. What a great name. And before all the women out there think I just called her Piglet, that's her name on – that's her chosen name on Instagram. I did not name her that. But, like, she's like – I don't know. She might be 5 – I don't think she's 5' tall. But she's like, I don't know. She might be five.

I don't think she's five foot tall. But she's only 121 pounds. She has the perfect body for Olympic weightlifting. She's got short femurs. Her torso is 80% of her body. Yeah. So we got to get it strong. You were like, she has the perfect body.

I was like, really? You go for weightlifting. I was like, oh. Well, that's also nice. Short legs. Long torso. Short arms. So, yeah, I think we just met at kind of one of the regional training centers here in Denmark, and it was beautiful and had a great time.

They did really well, which they shouldn't be. So I'm a little bit mad at myself. So right now they're in a huge strength phase. So their legs should be dead, and they both did really well today. So that just means volume just went up for them. I was hoping they would be crushed. They weren't, but they will be. You always got to weigh

what you say to your coach when he's like, how are you feeling? You feeling pretty good? And you're like, yeah, I feel good. And he's like, okay, doubling your volume. You're like, well, wait, back up, back up, back up. I was just being nice. You should start eating a lot then because now things got hard. Yeah, Louise seemed to be like she's taking a beating, but like Sandra did well.

She just clean and jerked a kilo more today. No, she tied what she did at world championships. So I'm like you should not be there. You will not be there next week. So enjoy the weekend. Enjoy. Go ahead. Eat some danishes.

Yeah. Do you have any other European weightlifters? European? Well, you know. Who else do you. Eat some danishes. Yeah. Do you have any other European weightlifters? European? Well, you know. Who else do you train around the world? All right. So that's where we got to go next. We have the two girls in Denmark.

You know, we have Gabriel in Sweden. We have Sarah in London, Great Britain. That's right. Who's like, let me define it. So here's what she does. Like, she's got her own program. It's like she just came to America, and I coached her while she was in America. And now I continue to support her training coached her while she was in America.

And now I continue to support her training and help her when she needs it. Yo, is she coming over to the States anytime soon? Well, the goal is that she comes. I want her to move there is what I'm after, but we'll see what happens. It's what we're working towards. Just because. We can get her a green card. She can marry Fisher.

Totally. They'll breed. They'll create a super athlete. Superhumans. A little one, but a super. I want can marry Fisher. Totally. They'll breed. They'll create a super athlete. Superhumans. A little one, but a super. I want the first one. Yes. I'm like Rubble Siskin.

Simple paperwork. You can have them. She comes out. We need to do a show with her. Yes. And then we can go down and do a Martin Rooney on the same trip. That'd be dope. I mean, Sarah would be awesome. Yeah.

Joe Ken in November. We're going to go to Winston-Salem in November. Perfect. That's our trip. And then we have, I have several in Australia,

two in Australia, one in New Zealand, and for sure it's for right now. Which city in Australia?

Melbourne? I feel like I forgot. I think I, Sean Rigsby, who's like dual citizenship for Ireland.

Mostly. I don't know. In Australia, I don't know, but I'll find out. But, yeah, this guy, this boy just won the Australian Youth National Championships. Nice. So Jasper is his name.

Jasper Hope. Shout out to my man Jasper. Yeah. So then the boy in New Zealand is really good. He's coming to America for a month, next month. That dude is the fastest kid ever. He is so fast. Like, just wait.

He has no second pull. Gabriel is fast. Deadlift. No needed. Deadlift. Overhead squat. If he can deadlift it, he's going his way under the bar. Yeah.

Yeah, that's my international goal. What does professional weightlifting look like in, just say, here in Denmark? Like, the girls are cops, and then they're also a national team. So what countries can you live in where you can actually just weightlift? Not many, is the sad thing. America, and that's only for, like, four people. Yeah, that's, like, very few people. It's hard.

You know, like, the girls are saying, that's like very few people. It's hard. You know, like the girls were saying, you know, they're cops. You know, Sarah in Great Britain, I support her. She has her own little company that she gets support from. Great Britain doesn't give her anything except she travels sometimes

to some competitions. They'll help pay her travel. I'm not sure about Australia and New Zealand, to be honest. You know, like in Canada, they do a pretty good job. You know, like my man Bodie, who's a 96 kilo amazing athlete. So I think they do pretty good about helping them, but not like we do in America. So shout out to –

Well, it's crazy. It's insane to me. Yeah. I mean, it's insane that there's potentially dozens of CrossFitters that only train. Right. Like, you could be top, call it top 50 in each. Like, you coach, but you have enough sponsorship dollars and enough of an Instagram following that most of the people can just do that.

They don't have to go be cops. They don't have to go work some other job. Sarah would be in that category too, and so would Hunter, Hunter Elam. She's got enough sponsorships. So would Maddie Rogers. The state doesn't have to fully provide it, but how many people are able to just be weightlifters? Still only a few.

Yeah, it's such a small number. It's a little bit more that way, but not as much as CrossFit. There's a big component of it that comes down to the actual athlete themselves. How much effort do they put into the business side of things? Are they reaching out to sponsors and crafting deals and making offers? Like, hey, here's how me representing you is going to benefit your business. Right. A lot of people don't do that.

They're kind of just hoping sponsors reach out to them and give them a good deal. And that you're never going to win if that's the game you're playing. You have to do the work yourself. And a lot of people do, but a lot of people don't. Well, is it also something where – I remember something about swimming. It was like if you won the gold medal in swimming, you should be a millionaire. Yeah, it would be the same. If you win the gold medal.

But if you win the silver medal, you're basically a coach for the rest of your life. Like the difference in the two is just – I remember it was – Yeah, huge. Not Michael Phelps clearly because he's way above and beyond. But even like winning the gold to get on the Wheaties box. Yeah. You're set for life. Assuming you won't make good decisions. There's a lot of instant financial gain, like instant financial from a gold medal.

But we've yet to do it. We've had bronze medalists, but we haven't even set a silver medal. It's happening, though. This next Olympics, unless everyone gets hurt or something terrible happens, they're going to be silver and possibly gold medals. Yeah. You've got AO3 coming up. Yeah. What are you going to do there?

AO finals. Finals, sorry. It's going to be pretty awesome because let me tell you, yeah, anyone who's near Utah should go to this because here's why. The up-and-coming Pan Ams, the senior Pan Ams, is the last gold event for this olympics and so people at the ao which is the last place to qualify for the panams will be going ham because this is it if you don't make it to panams odds are you're not going to olympics so your your dream

ends that day so it's like december 7th that weekend of december 7th so yeah if you do poorly that weekend your dream ends that's for ao finals, if you do poorly that weekend, your dream ends. That was for AO Finals? Yeah, AO Finals. In Salt Lake? Salt Lake City. And so, like, people are going to be throwing bombs. So people are going to be hitting some massive numbers we've never seen before.

And some people are going to be bombing out. Straight bomb out. Getting killed and hurt. Not killed, but people are going to get hurt. Yeah. It's it. There's no point in leaving it, no point in leaving something in the tank. Like you emptied the tank in December.

Does Morgan have a chance of going to this Olympics? As the coach, you don't have to jinx it or anything, but is there a possibility? I'm going to be honest. I have high hopes for him and Ryan. I think I have two years. This year for 2020? For the

Olympics, is that what you said? Yeah. Oh, no. No, they're out of contention. I mean, they can go show up at AO, the finals. They will be there. And really jack some people up. And they're going to do that. And so they're going to end some dreams, guaranteed, at the American Open. Poor people. For the

20 and unders? Or just for the Open weight class? Everybody? I have a feeling. My goal, you know, super cocky. What I mean by that is this, is that, yes, I mean, my goal for them is there's numbers that we've all set for both of them that, you know, when and if they hit these numbers, which he's already, Morgan's already hit the clean and jerk. So now we've been working on the snatch.

If he hits the snatch along with the clean and jerk, then we're thinking about hitting, yeah, I think he'll – You're talking about American records? You're talking about like a base number? Well, he's going to hit world record numbers for youth. I'm talking about totaling 350 kilos as a youth is our goal for Morgan, which would send people – would send seniors not going to the senior Pan Ams, which will end their Olympics.

That's like a 190, 160 for him? We're hoping 200, 150. 200, 150. It's bold to say it online, which will end their Olympics. That's like a 190, 160 for him? We're hoping 200, 150. You know, it's bold to say it online, but that's the goal. I don't know what's going to happen, but he's already cleaned 200, and we're well on our way to jerking 200. So we still have a few months to do it. Right on the fence. 16 years old.

And, you know, Ryan is right on the fence. Our goal is a total of two. What is the long-range goal for Ryan? Because he looks like Morgan when we met Morgan. He looked like a little boy. Ryan hasn't fully developed, but he's just starting to look like a man. Yeah. Like he's starting to develop like the jaw that a man has.

Yeah. But Ryan still looks super young. Yeah. What weight is he going to finish at, do you think? You know, I think we'll make the move to 73 soon. I don't know when. I think by the next Olympics, maybe we'll be somewhere between 73 and 81. Right now he's at 67.

It just depends on a lot of things. Number one, it's going to depend on where does CJ go. So, obviously, if CJ CJ stays 73, then – CJ is such a savage. Yeah, he's a savage. And so I'm hoping – the goal is I hope CJ moves up to 81. So if he does, then we go to 73. I think we're fine there.

Morgan, 109 is, you know, where we're going to – you know, she'll end up in Wes Kitsy's weight class. So next quad is going to be tough. It's a showdown. Yeah. Well, Wes said he's moving back to Tennessee. He's not staying at Cal Strength next year. Yeah, he's already made a –

Well, two years after 2020. I don't know if I should – I mean, he told us on the show. Oh, good, good, good. Yeah, so he's already told – that was part of the deal when he went to Cal Strength is that after this one quad, then he would move back and start a family. They would be near –

they would be close to their family in Knoxville, Tennessee. Yeah. What are Morgan and Ryan's full names and Instagram handles if people want to go check out? The 16-year-old Decker, Decker and Cleans, 440. It's Ryan, you know, Morgan is Morgan McCullough and is at MadList15. And Ryan is at Ryan Grimsland. And so, yeah, they're both incredible. And you post about them all the time on Matchly.

Yeah, just go to Matchly.com and look it up. Savages. One of them will be the first five posts. Every day. They do crazy stuff. When you set up their training, I know it's like a big thing at Westside, like the PR every day. We're doing something new.

We're doing something that really pushes you to feel what it's like to win every day. This is a great time to ask this question. And how do you set that up with them? Because every time I see you make a post with those two on there, it's like another PR, another PR. And it might be a complex. It might be from blocks. It might be from the high hang.

It might be something. But, dude, how do you keep those guys moving in that direction like it's so gnarly that every day i feel like i feel like i get hurt watching them get strong because i'm like dude i'll just take it all it's so much i'm beat up i'm over trained watching it mashes instagram my theory is between 16 and like 22 is the time where you should lift them hard because their you know integral system is at its heightened levels you know and then i think i think sometimes our coaches do it backwards so it's super easy right now then at 22 they really throw it on them when things are starting to level out i think it's a bad decision but like um you know so when i go hard though

here's the thing let me explain like you know if they like uh if morgan says my hip is tweaked he's he's not training like all right you're taking a week off instantly i'm like because we are looking so far out you know so i'm really gentle and like uh nerd nurturing to them so you have to have them in house right so i can say you know if i see them like limp or i see them like grimace then i can say you're done today because number, number one, I want to save it for when it counts. And number two, I want them to be healthy when they're done because I love both those boys. So I'm really wise about that.

But, yeah, we have benchmarks. Like Ryan just hit a 115-kilo snatch from a block. That's gnarly. What's he weigh? He's a 67-kilo, so he's 148 pounds. That's so gnarly. So gnarly. What's he weigh? He's a 67 kilo, so he's 148 pounds. That's so gnarly. So gnarly. But he is clean injured, and he has snatched 126 kilos, which is, what's that, 276?

277. Yeah. But they're about to do both of them. Because they're hitting all these benchmarks, like Ryan is hitting squat PR after squat PR. Yeah, when you see Ryan, I see a lot of the videos of him. And if my eye sees it, yours definitely. But there's a lot of stability stuff down at the bottom. He's so flexible.

Yeah. And he's so fast under the bar. Do you guys spend a lot of time working on that bottom position to make stability down there? There's a machine that he uses at a chiropractor. You know, Dr. Gray has been my lifetime chiropractor. There's this machine, AllCore. It's called the – and listen, this is important. AllCore is this stability machine they've been using.

And, like, Ryan had all kinds of issues from CrossFit. He broke his hip doing CrossFit when he was a kid. Yeah. And so it's caused him to, like, spin, turn. Yeah. All these crazy things that have now gone away. Yeah. Like, he did a front squat squat pr which he used to always

twist didn't twist at all yeah and like yeah so this stability machine creates a lot of like stiffness around that lumbar spine which is where you want it which has really helped that one machine normally you don't see that in like a big burst yeah of strength because of the chiropractor yeah this is one machine that 100% was a huge bump in his performance because he started doing it. So, yeah. Well, it's super important for really good lifters to have that stretch reflex at the bottom.

It helps you bounce out of the hole, get into a better position. For people that are listening, if you ever watched an Olympic lifter get to the bottom and it looks like they just totally disengaged their body and like snap out of the bottom, there's a stretch reflex at the bottom that just propels you out like your muscles come back together gives you a little momentum and you pop out much easier if you do are not comfortable please don't go and try it because you'll blow your back out it's not worth it but when i see him he's clearly absurdly strong and i used to

just notice there'd be like yeah like that little twist at the bottom. Yeah. And then he would spring out. He was so athletic. But he was missing the bounce because he wasn't stable. So he would catch it, stop, pull up, and made jerks impossible. So now he's so stable at the bottom. He's catching it, meeting the bar strong, coming right up out of the squat.

It's really been a game changer. It's the all-core. Once again, I don't get a dime. I'm just telling you,. It's the all-core. Once again, I don't get a dime. I'm just telling you, if there's an all-core machine near you, you should do it. I get no money for you doing it. Don't if you don't want to. I've never heard of that.

I've never heard of it. Some things out there I think are voodoo. They don't even work. But I promise you, the all-core guarantee works. Swear by it. Well, you guys started working more intensely with Kelly recently too. All right. That is the nicest guy on earth.

This kid is like – when I got my – We just hung out with him for a little while. It was awesome. Spartan Worlds. He doesn't owe me anything. And, like, I got my hip replacement. And out of the blue, he reaches out on Twitter. And he's like, man, if I can do anything for you, let me know.

I love what you're doing to, like, help the strength coaches of the world and, you know, with youth athletes. And sure did, man. He helped me so much with my recovery. I'm pretty sure I recovered from hip surgery faster than any man on earth, and I owe it big time to him. Yeah. I appreciate that.

I'm really stoked for the new ready state. Yeah, yeah. The guy changed the game. Yeah. He changed everything. Yeah. He's got to go do it again. I wouldn't doubt him.

He sure helped me. I front squatted 506 and it was just a few weeks. I don't want to exaggerate. I'm pretty sure it was 20 weeks after I got hip surgery. I front squatted 506. I beat Morgan after hip surgery. It made him mad. He's about to take that over.

I love that. Thanks, Coach. You're still front squatting with the strongest in the world. Yeah, I know. Fellas, this has been just an absurd trip. I got this little 15-month-old on my lap right here. Do you want to say something? Nope. She's running back to mom.

Dude, Sweden, Oleko, made her own barbells did a ton of training on the greatest equipment in the world hit paris for two days 48 hours in paris saw all the things hanging out here in uh copenhagen denmark you got to train with your lifters you got to go hang out at the gym we went to all the sights and sounds of this unreal place and uh we got a 6 a.m. out of here tomorrow. Yep. Sure do. Back to the U.S., 24 hours of traveling. More flights ahead of me.

We're not partying, though. Yeah. Go big or go home. No. What do you got coming up? AO Finals. AO Finals. Jamaica.

Jamaica coming up, so check that out. Yes, I have Jamaica in November, the AO Finals in December, which is huge. Jamaica. Jamaica coming up, so check that out. But, yes, I have Jamaica in November, the finals in December, which is huge. When are people going to hear about the PhD? Like details. Within two weeks. Beautiful. Maybe within the week. I got to talk to one person one more time.

That's all I can say right now. Beautiful. There you go. Where are we going in 2020? Let's wrap that up real quick. We're going to Egypt? Well, that depends. You ask the IWF.

But as of right now, I think we're all going to Egypt to watch the Junior Worlds, but it'll depend on what the IWF does. We're going to Switzerland with stronger experts. Going to Switzerland. Totally want to do that.

Olympics. I was going to talk to you all about something. I'm going to put pressure on you now because we're on air. I'm thinking about going to, doing an Australian,New Zealand tour. It looks like the gyms are already in line,

so I feel like we could probably do it. Done. We can make that happen. It's like the easiest thing. Sweet. Ashton, she did a semester abroad in New Zealand. It's like every year we're like, we're going to make it. We're going to make it.

We're going to make it. Plus, we have a really good audience out there already. We'd be welcomed instantly. I think their governing body is going to help us. Oh, dope. We'll talk about it later. My little brother lives in Melbourne, so he would love to have us come and hang out. We've got a place to stay.

It's the one place I haven't been that long ago. The whole thing? Yeah. I'm going to Outback. So all you crocodiles, you better be hiding. Let's roll. Get after them. Yeah, man.

It's been super cool. You've got all the ladies hanging out, doing their thing. Kids are hanging out. They can all grow up together. Teach them how Yeah, man. It's been super cool. You got all the ladies hanging out, doing their thing. Kids are hanging out. They can all grow up together. Teach them how to be strong. Life's happening exactly like it should be, which is a pretty epic thing. What is it you tell Adelaide? How strong are you going to be?

So strong. So strong. I tell my four-year-old every day, today's the strongest you've ever been. Yeah. And the smartest you've ever been. Strongest. Every day I tell him. Strongest.

Beautifully ever been. I got so many compliments on've ever been. Strongest. Every day. Strongest. Beautiful. Strongest you've ever been. Yep. I got so many compliments on this hat because it says strong is happy. Strong is happy. It's hard to.

It's one of those little. Yeah. One of their little mantras. Raise the bar. Strong is happy. It's beautiful.

I agree. On brand. Mash where people can find you. Go to mashlead.com to check out pretty much everything I have and then if you want to

check me out on Instagram mashlead performance. Right on to check me out on Instagram, Masterlead Performance. Right on. Check me out on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. One-ton challenge. Snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, bench. 2,000 pounds for you males, 1,200 for you ladies. Testing the lifelong pursuit of strength. Get on the free

leaderboard and you can go download our brand new e-book, Making Strong People Stronger. Head over to onetonchallenge.com. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're the Shrug Collective at Shrug Collective. You can find us every Wednesday. Barbell Shrug.

We will see you next week. That's a wrap, friends. Make sure you get over to the One Ton Challenge website, OneTonChallenge.com forward slash join. Program starts on Monday with an eight-week back squat cycle. You're going to PR your back squat in eight weeks. Imagine knowing what that's like. Well, now you do. Go get signed up.

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