Barbell Shrugged - Why Low Bar Back Squats for CrossFit Athletes Help You Get Stronger w/ The Garage Games Guys - EPISODE 32

Episode Date: November 1, 2012

http://www.FITR.tv Why Low Bar Back Squats for CrossFit Athletes Help You Get Stronger w/ The Garage Games Guys. On this episode of the Barbell Shrugged crossfit podcast the guys are joined by Justin Metts and Simon Nickerson of The Garage.http://www.CrossFitGarage.com We discuss upcoming their upcoming CrossFit competitions for The Garage Games. For more episodes of the Barbell Shrugged podcast visit http://www.BarbellShrugged.com

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we talk about the Garage Games 1, the World Wide WOD, Programming at the Garage, High Bar vs. Low Bar Back Squat, with special guests, Justin Metz and Simon Nickerson. What's up guys, it's CTP and you're listening to Barbell Shrugged. Make sure you check out our video versions of all these podcasts on our website, fitter.tv. In all of our video versions, we include Technique WOD, which is our series of technique instruction videos for CrossFitters, free previews of some of the seminars we put out, and then sometimes come out of the studio and have special video segments, such as cooking in the kitchen with Brandy that one time and out in the pool with Lucas, and who knows what the next thing will do. So make sure you check out our website, fitter.tv, and watch the videos as well.

Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson and our guests, Simon Nickerson and Justin Metz. These guys are coaches at The Garage in, what's the town? Woodstock, Georgia. Woodstock, Georgia, real close to Atlanta. It's in the Atlanta metro area. And we're going to talk a little bit about some of the stuff that's coming up.

You guys also don't just run a gym, but you also run a bunch of competitions. So we're going to talk a little bit about Garage Games 1. And you want to talk about the Garage Games 1 convention, Simon. Absolutely. What's all that about? So the cool part the Garage Games 1 convention, Simon. Absolutely. What's all that about? So the cool part about Garage Games 1 this year is we're moving it inside

so we don't have to deal with any more snow or sleet like we usually do. But we're adding a convention component, and we're going to have speakers come to the competition and speak in between sessions so the athletes will get to learn a little bit while they're competing. We're going to have people talking about mobility. Doug's going to be actually there on Saturday talking about that. And we're going to be talking about how to expand your gym's reach in the community, how to build that community stronger, and just several other

pertinent topics to gym owners and athletes during the weekend. What other, what other topics are you looking to have? So we'll probably be talking about food quality. We don't have anyone nailed down yet, but we are talking to some very, uh, very good folks about that. So food quality, community reach, community building, uh, mobility, all very important stuff for sure for an athlete or gym owner. How many, how many, is it going to be like an all-day Saturday, or is it going to be like, you know, how many speakers do you think you're going to have? We're looking at having about a half dozen speakers.

Okay. Is this for anybody and everybody that's there, or is it a totally separate event just kind of in the same venue, but you have to pay for it separately, or is it free, or how does that work? For one, we're going to include it with athlete registration or spectator tickets so if you have either one of those you're in okay yeah very cool very cool thing we're trying to help uh just help build the community we we love this thing we want to see it get bigger and better so that we think this is one way we can do it it's just something for people to do kind of in the downtime in

between events yeah absolutely in between watching Rich Froning jump over Dan Bailey. Okay. Which will happen. Again. You'll plan the wads accordingly. How can we make Rich jump over Dan? That'll be it. We're noodling.

Give it time. Noodling? Jump out with the fish? You guys also have something called Worldwide WOD. Yeah, we have Worldwide WOD. There's also a second component to it that we've added this year that's going to be a little different. Worldwide WOD, of course, is just an online competition similar to the Open in that you submit your scores, you get ranked, and winners are picked. We're not picked, but decided.

We don't pick the winners. But Resolutions is actually going to go out into the gyms. So rather than everyone submitting their scores anonymously online, you're going to be able to go to a gym, do the exact same events that everybody across the whole country is doing, and then get ranked from there. So it's a little bit less intense than a normal competition. It is going to be athlete-judge.

The competition will probably be a little smaller. But you will get to see scaled beginner athletes, and there will be RX athletes as well. But you'll get to see how you did compared to everybody in the whole country. When does that start? That's going to be – we're setting up gyms to host it now. The competition will be January, mid-January on the 13th. Okay.

How do, how do, uh, if you own a gym or, you know, coach at a gym, how do you get involved in that? You can just email us games at crossfitgarage.com and, uh, we'll set you up and get you ready to host a competition. How many weeks is that going to go for? Just one. It's one day. Everybody does the same thing on one day. Scores get rammed into our system and then we. We're going to go for? Just one. It's one day. Everybody does the same thing on one day.

Scores get rammed into our system. You're going to have several events in one day? We've got 30 on board right now. If you're in Mississippi, Kentucky, or Louisiana, you can just call me. 901-331-6417. That's dangerous, dude. Damn. That's an X's number by the way

so how do you guys uh so you both are coaching at uh at the garage in woodstock and simon you do a lot of programming yeah i think i'm getting a phone call yeah i do most of the program this isn't live nobody heard it's my mother somebody loves you well what are we talking about programming mother okay so simon does most of programming at the garage yeah and we've sort of done something different um one of the owners wes harper? Yeah, and we've sort of done something different. One of the owners, Wes Harper, and I have spent many weeks talking and working out a strength program for our beginner athletes. Most of our gym is they're novices or intermediates at best.

We don't have a whole lot of established athletes come in, which is great fun to work with those folks because that's where you see the most change, right? And an athlete that is coming off of 10 years on the job and dealing with the family and all that stuff. So the basic structure of our programming is that we have a strength component every single day and then we have a Metcon every day, not really life-changing stuff. I guess the biggest difference would be that we don't hit, you might go a month or two months without snatching or without doing a squat clean and jerk. And the reasoning behind that is just that we're not looking to build an athlete in six weeks or in eight weeks. We're looking to

build an athlete over a year, two years, three years, right? So if somebody comes in and they say, I'm going to the garage, I'm going to CrossFit Games next year. Yeah, we may do something a little different for them. They're probably not going to wait a month before they snatch heavy again. But the way it works with beginners and the way we've seen it through our experience as a gym has been that it's okay to have big lapses in between those movements because there's just so much to cover so one week we'll we'll do three weeks of strength training and then one week of skills we'll do that twice same thing and then change it so you do you do three weeks of strength training and then one week of skills

so that's kind of like your unloading week that's what it sounds basically yeah the skill the skill week also also uh it'll end up being high rep sometimes we'll put double unders or muscle ups in there and you'll see that for three or four times during the week depending so you're talking about that being on the strength side of things right instead of the strength metcons always stay we also use that uh skill week to do really heavy metcons because greg glassman likes to say you want to blend, blur the lines between strength and cardiovascular conditioning. So that's a week where we can actually take some time and do that and put some two 25 cleaning jerks in with air squats and pull-ups and that sort of

fun stuff. So you guys, you guys are programming for this for, you don't have like a beginner's program. You're not talking about a beginner's program. This is just how you program for the gym. This is the whole gym. Yeah.

Fundamentals is a separate separate operation okay um and you guys do have fundamentals do we just started it just when i got up there so about well it's been going on for about a month now it's something that the gym didn't have before and it's something they've been trying to do so how do you guys structure that um it's three weeks nine classes three days a week and they're just building on each other first week most basic then intermediate and more advanced movements third week so i had some experience we did two we uh two yeah two weeks down where i was at before and i think any more than three weeks people just lose interest and um but i think any less than two is definitely not enough to get all the information people.

What do you guys do, isn't it? Four weeks. Ours is four weeks. Twelve sessions total. Okay. So how many sessions are you doing in a week? Three. Three?

Okay. So pretty much the same thing, yeah. How big are your classes for the fundamentals yeah you have a cap on fundamentals no no we'll just we'll just pull more coaches yeah we have to yeah we've had some really big fundamentals classes lately like we just yeah like you said we just pull in another coach if needed we've had classes for fundamentals in the evenings that are 35 people wow yeah yeah that's the biggest thing for us is just we want to make sure that we have a low ratio yeah of coaches then you've got a bunch of coaches we'll have like four coaches

in those classes yeah yeah yeah we're lucky because we'll we have our we have our people who are designated to be coaching that night and then doug and i'll be hanging out and then if we have to go out there or try and pull somewhere else we're already there to do it it's nice when you have that problem it's like oh I have to go coach you got that many people there's too much money can't count it all

just people just a whole lot of fitness do you guys do a two week free trial or anything like that? No. No trial? No, you come in for an intro class, and then we'll put you into fundamentals right after that. We do have a living social thing that we just started

that will be over by the time this airs, so it's cool to talk about. Are you already having like a good or a bad experience with it is that why you say it like that depends on how you look at it yeah we've gotten a barrage of of emails and phone calls already it just started yesterday yeah it sold fairly quick yeah i think that's a i think it's a really interesting topic and it's probably going to be different for you guys because and you're you're in such a cross dense city yeah and everyone knows what it is there in memphis it's still kind of so there's

a lot more people doing crossfit but there's also a gym on every corner right it's like starbucks quite literally so probably that you're probably gonna get a lot of people just just a bunch of deal seekers basically so you may not get a good conversion out of that what what uh looking to see we'll see it's like oh we had a hundred people show up yeah what uh we kept four of them what's the price on your that living social what was it i don't remember what what did eric put it at it's 49 for a month yeah and what do y'all normally charge for a month 174 with no contract okay y'all do contracts at all? Yes. We do now. Just because we had so many people that wanted an auto draft.

Yeah. So it makes it a little easier and you don't have to come up with a bunch of money up front. Gotcha. You guys do the same thing though, right? But you guys actually have like 18 months, right? What do you mean?

Yeah. You do the auto draft too. Yeah, but we don't do month to month at all. Yeah. Okay. We promise to only do auto drafts. Yeah. I don't't think we have any you don't have any cash people right now no no the only people we had cash at any time is because like when we first opened up i did cash with people with maybe five yeah and they were kind of grandfathered in and so that's what

we're trying to exist anymore really yeah yeah you don't want to be a bill collector you want to be a coach and yeah no gym so um so have you guys ever run a deal like that where you ended up with a bunch of groupon collectors i would do it all the time yeah how to work out for you or what usually ends up happening uh well like he said it's not super saturated here in memphis so we get a lot of people that come in from groupon that have never heard of crossfit before and so that's good because we expand into a market that otherwise would never hear about us yeah and then we actually get a lot of people that come in from Groupon that have never heard of CrossFit before. And so that's good because we expand into a market that otherwise would never hear about us. And then we actually get a pretty good conversion off of it. We lower our fundamentals by 75% on price, but we never discount membership for anybody at all, ever. So we get a good conversion from Groupon, and it's totally worth it for us to discount the fundamentals

because if they do sign a three, 12- or 18-month membership, we easily make our money back compared to the money that we lost, quote-unquote, from discounting fundamentals. And we get people that do sign 12- and 18-month memberships that come in off Groupons all the time. We made a mistake with Groupon like the first time. And that was years ago when they first approached me and they, we ran like a $20 deal for like, you know, it was like two free, it was like two weeks of free training or two weeks of training for $20. Oh wow.

And what ended up happening is that attracted a whole different type of client or a client that wasn't going to sign up for membership so what we learned what i learned from that is you basically have to try and negotiate with coupon and living social or whatever to get the highest price possible they're not going to want you know they've got that price point where they know you know if they do this much volume they'll be able to make more money but you know they make the price too low then we won't want to do it so like i've been on the phone with those guys several times just trying to push the price up like another ten dollars or or something like that and i think the higher you get that number the better the conversion is going to be i think a lot of people who are going to end up

joining anyway a lot of times like one of those living social deals or groupon deals will end up being just what kind of pushes them over the edge like i've been wanting to do that then they see it's like well perfect opportunity i might as well do it now and so a lot of those people will end up showing up and that's really good but you know if the price is too low then yeah and i think what 49 sounds like y'all might do well with conversions there because i have a hard time getting Groupon to go over. What was our last one? We had a 49, 59. I want to say 59, 69. Something like that.

60 bucks. Yeah. It's hard to get them to go any higher than that. 20 bucks. Can I still get that deal? Yeah, that was like three years ago. It didn't help that the picture they put on that advertisement was like a picture of a fitness studio and it was like a bunch of girls on aerobic steps steps with like the foam barbells, like lifting them over their head, like smiling.

And they show up and it's like, this is not. I haven't looked at it. A bunch of sweaty guys. I haven't looked at it like in detail, but I'm pretty sure our picture is just a picture of a female's abs. So I already know how that works. And whatever's above the abs. I don't know. Guys and girls like that.

That's good. Girls want to be that and guys want to be around that. So perfect marketing for you. You're going to be disappointed when they walk in and see the two of us. Probably. Where the abs at. All right, let's dig a little bit more into the programming at the garage. How has that evolved over time?

You just told us what you do currently, but what have you done in the past, and how have you changed it, and how have you tweaked it? Yeah, in the past, we used to do it very much like main site, or like most gyms. When we started four years ago, it was main site most of the time. That was before you were. You just straight copied off whatever main site was doing, and that's what you guys did too? Yeah, most of the time. And that was before I actually got to the garage.

This was just back when it was starting up. But it ran very much like Mainsight would in that there would be a Metcon on this day and a Metcon on this day. And today we're just going to show up and do a strength move, right? We'll do seven singles of this or five doubles of that. We didn't start throwing in the strength on top of the Metcon until fairly recently, about a little over a year ago, we started doing that. And that was the biggest, we saw the biggest benefits from that. You can read anywhere on the internet that that's a bad idea. You don't want to go right from doing three sets of five back squats

into a 10-minute Metcon. But the reality is you're adaptable enough to get through that, and even novices are going to be fine with it. Yeah, I don't understand why a lot of people are opposed to that at all we've never had an issue with it yeah no and I think I think from the clients perspective psychologically like some if a person's brand new and they come in they do seven singles and then they go home and they're a 42 year old woman that's been working at a cowling firm for the last 15 years and hasn't done anything and they do like practice reps with just the bar and tens and they do seven singles she feels like she didn't do shit yeah and she wants

to have her heart rate you know go through the roof and really feel like she did something and sweat and all that stuff so especially somebody that i think clients like having a little bit of a matt kahn even if it's short after the strength work they want to get their butts kicked yeah i mean you are absolutely right about that yeah it's a big selling point people strength training while some of us may see it as the more important aspect um because you can't do anything if you're not strong obviously but if if they don't have that metcon if they don't have that fun that excitement that burn that community i mean it builds bonds right when you're sitting there looking at somebody laying on the floor after a workout they love that so it's definitely important to keep that in yeah yeah i also find

i said this in an earlier podcast too is um find that people want to set prs on the strength side of things it's like an intrinsic thing they they want to do it for them and they want to beat their previous record but when you get to the conditioning side of things they want to beat the next guy yeah yeah yeah so um i think you're gonna it's almost like you're appealing to them in two different ways and they're gonna push themselves really hard so um and we we discussed a little bit about on the strength side of things so you do do like, basically you don't do Olympic lifts for like three weeks at a time and you throw it in. We definitely do. Yeah.

We'll see it. Um, you'll see an Olympic lift every week, whether it's in a Metcon or not. So within, I do three weeks of a strength move in a Metcon and then one week of a skill in a Metcon. And during that three weeks, there's at least one Olympic move, uh, whether it's a squat cleaner, a full clean or a full clean and jerk or whatever and then during that skill week i like to put in heavy stuff so one time we put in super heavy back squats and wall balls that was it was something it was difficult

for sure but even during that skill week you'll see um olympic lifts just because they're in the metcon and they're in the metcon heavy too we don't mess around during that off week gotcha so it deloads but it doesn't more on the power lifting side of things does it deload not necessarily a total rest you were also trying to integrate more clinics too for people that want to get more into that so like just a day of nothing but just weight lifting technique things like that a couple hour session or something like that and other clinics as well between mobility um running running we're trying to get into that um and we've got a couple guys that are that's kind of their area of expertise we're trying to do free clinics for members and stuff like that maybe once a month

i think is what we're trying to shoot for i know you got you guys have both said that your styles are very different you know maybe briefly talk about like your background versus your background and kind of why you guys have differing styles and how you work around that you know being in the same facility head first yeah lots of conflict we um yeah well actually i know we both we both fought a little bit of MMA. You came from swimming, I guess, originally, right? You've read my bio on the website. Simon Nickerson was it. I really came from a completely different, just regular globo gym.

I worked at a regular globo gym when I was like, I't know 15 or something like that my first job so I was just really into the whole bodybuilding aspect of it or whatever I remember you talking a little bit about that the first time you were on the show yeah so what episode was that you know episode that was a couple episodes uh 18 18 is that long ago? God, time flies. I am. Yeah, so I'm much weaker than I was then. Especially in the legs, right? Yeah, especially in the legs.

No, actually, that's something we need to talk about. Is it because Simon was programming for you? He was, yeah. He's got him and his brother both have tree trunks for legs. And me and one of the owners, we have much larger upper bodies. And it's probably just from me doing nothing but bench for the first five years of my training. So, yeah, Thursdays was leg day. So I just didn't go in. I remember people skipping that all the time.

My shoulders are sore from Wednesday. I don't want the bar on my back. The traps are killing me. So, yeah, so, and that's pretty much what it was. But we actually, yeah, me and one of the owners, we did Operation Tree Trunk. So, yeah, patent pending on that. We still make fun of them. Yeah.

It's all right, though. So we're planning on breaking their legs, him and his brother's legs, and then we're going to do nothing but work lower body for six months. I think I should just do leg transplant. Yeah, just literally put a cinder block in the quad. No, yeah, so I've actually had a lot of gains in legs recently because it's always been my weakest point, so that's what I've been focusing on for me personally.

How often do you squat? I think I was actually talking about chris moore uh about that the other day or i'm squatting three times a week now uh-huh um so once front once back and then um and then i normally do like i do full lifts you know full olympic lifts yeah completely so i normally have a um either overhead or or in a full clean or whatever a heavy session of that which is i kind of consider the same thing i'll do work to triples or sometimes even fives and lifts not that often because those just suck but um but yeah so i'm squatting because it's hard. Yeah. Too difficult. So, but yes, I mean,

my weak legs aren't quite as weak as they were previously. So definitely seen a lot out of it and not quite as freakishly strong as, as the Nickerson kids though in the lower body. So one thing Justin and I have taught you, we've talked about it a little bit just cause we somehow end up in the car for long periods together. But I'd be interested to hear. No hand holding. None.

It's a stick shift. I got to work. What? This is not that kind of podcast. But one thing I'd like to hear more about is what carried over from your Globo Gym days that still either has shaped your training or has molded it in that it stays, it stayed with you or that you've shook it completely. I think I've had a complete paradigm shift. Yeah. Cause I wasn't worried about anything. I mean, cardio or running or anything like that was just on the treadmill for five minutes to get my heart rate up before I started lifting. And I wasn't worried about being strong at all. I was just worried about looking swole.

Getting huge. Yeah, getting huge, bro. When I stepped into the ring, I wanted to beat the guy before I ever fought him. He's just so scared of your rippling muscle mass that he wouldn't even fight you. Yeah, exactly. He's like, all right, look, I tap.

You see these softball shoulders? It does make me laugh on like mma guys who are doing like a bunch of bodybuilding stuff i'm like yeah you got so much energy in the day you should probably practice use it on something more useful can i fight you please yeah for a lot of money but it's completely different now so i really could give two craps about what i look like obviously. You totally let yourself go. Yeah, I have. Yeah.

So, yeah, so I'm just worried about being as strong as I possibly can. The only thing that I have positive out of that is that I've got pretty strong overhead and pretty strong pressing ability from all those years of just being ingrained. That's good. Okay, well, what about you? What's your background? I pretty much came from swimming. That was the sport that I took most seriously in high school.

And jiu-jitsu and MMA followed after that, but I probably still dedicated way more time to swimming. So swimming was a total paradigm shift, but for a different reason. It's because we would put in tons of hours and swim thousands and thousands of yards. The longest practice I ever did was a little over 13,000 yards in three hours. Does that make you fast for a hundred breaststroke?

I don't know. Maybe. We have a whole podcast on that, actually. If my old coach is listening, yes, it does. He's not so it was i'm not gonna call him about it either it was a total shift from tons and tons of volume and if you want to get better you have to hurt and you have to hurt for a long long time to you know three sets of five right fran wait a minute, two minutes? That's what I can work out for?

Sounds good to me. I mean, coming from that kind of mindset and having that kind of work ethic has probably helped in the sense that everything now just doesn't seem so bad. Yeah, exactly. There's no workout where I felt absolutely wrecked more than what I did to myself in swimming.

I believe that. Mental toughness was a huge gain and a big carryover. I've seen a lot of guys from swimming backgrounds be able to just do a 15-minute Metcon, and it's like they're in a different zone than the average person, I guess. Yeah, you do learn to turn yourself off. Yeah. Just shut everything that doesn't need to be used down and go. What about lifting?

Where did you get your lifting background? CrossFit. Oh, really? Yeah, none at all before that. I mean, we would occasionally do something sort of haphazard with swimming in terms of strength and conditioning conditioning but I didn't start lifting anything I think I could back squat like 135 when I started CrossFit just absurd yeah how often do you back squat now usually twice a week once or twice or a

squat period not just back squat but squat yeah I would say no more than twice okay mm-hmm I mean probably not enough but i was gonna say you said before that you're a big fan of low bar versus high bar back squats you know i'm gonna elaborate on that why why are you such a big fan of low bar yeah i like low bar for uh all the basic reasons like it's a little less stress on your lower back you get more posterior engagement because you've changed the angle of your back and stretched your hamstrings as far as they'll go and that sort of thing but really what i've seen from clients that i've that i've taught is that when you put on put the bar on their back low they actually learn how to use their posterior chain you put it on them high and they tend to stay in

that zone of of quad engagement I go along with that. I feel like people would naturally squat the way that we're trying to get them to squat if the bar placement is a little bit lower. That's actually a really interesting point. I hadn't really thought about that. Bam! Brain explosion.

What? Are we supposed to learn on this? Is that okay? We're supposed to teach the audience. No, really, I think that's a great point. I wasn't paying attention, actually, because Ashley stole the coffee. And I'm all jacked up now. You were crying on the inside.

Yeah, I was like, what, squat? Yeah. No, I'm a huge fan of things where if you can get somebody to do what you want them to do automatically, like just change the position of the bar rather than trying to sit there and explain, no, it's like this, not like that. fantastic i'm gonna use it yeah rather than going through a whole physics lesson with them yeah just put the bar low yeah i like uh i like low bar for people who have knee pain you know my knees hurt i'm like you may not want to push your knees forward too much so low bar is going to be much more better for that yeah absolutely people have flexibility issues who might want to try and keep more vertical shin

something like that low bar is going to be much better too so but there's also reasons i like high bar um high bar is going to be what you're going to see in crossfit competitions so yeah i think it's a much more similar movement for Olympic lifts and for... Regular air squats. Yeah, if you watch people air squat, they're not doing the power lifting low bar back squat when they go down. If they are, they're probably not going as fast or conserving as much energy, I don't think.

But playing devil's advocate on the low bar too, like you said. Most people that come in, the main issues that they have is weak posterior chain and i think that's true if somebody's got weak hamstrings they probably need to start with a low bar you guys do any box squatting with the low bar or you just low bar no box oh box squatting no we don't we don't mess with the box okay i think i was talking to you about it one time before, all the different things that people use, the chains, the bands, and all that stuff. That's cool once you get to a certain point,

but for most people they can just do simple strength stuff and they're going to keep getting stronger as long as they keep putting load on the bar. Yeah. Doug introduced something that was pretty cool to me in regard to like low bar back squatting is sitting someone down on the box and starting them at the bottom to teach them how to squat that way like you can set them up perfectly in the bottom and then have them engaged to come up so a lot of times people they'll go down real well and as soon as they change direction you know their knees dive in and you know they do all sorts of stupid stuff but if you

sit them down in the box all right your feet will be here move your knees out and then have them start from the bottom that works well too what kind of load are you going to put on somebody when you start them at the bottom like that oh the barbell okay yeah if you're teaching or nothing or nothing we we do mess with that occasionally uhat therapy where you're against the wall. And then that unloaded. We'll do that with some clients that just can't get things right at the bottom. Yeah. So you don't ever load it up on new clients or novice lifters.

On a box squat? Like a heavy box squat. We'll do some decently heavy box squats sometimes. We're not going to have them pause at the bottom and readjust things. Not at an intro session, though. No. No, not in fundamentals. No.

No, no, no. Shoot, even six months into an athlete being at your gym. Yeah, they might see a box squat. So we haven't been doing a lot lately, but we've definitely been through phases where we would focus for a month or two on a low bar box squat. I think it would be really beneficial for people. Kind of like what you were talking about is it teaches them to engage their posterior chain. And sometimes people will kind of dive down, catch the bounce out of the bottom,

and there's nothing wrong with that. I love that. But teach them to pause and take their time and then drive and get their hips involved. It can be a lot different for them. Yeah. Like most things, I just view it as one more tool. Using a box to teach somebody how to squat or starting them at the bottom or any of these things,

it can be safe for anybody if you're there coaching them to do it the correct way. But that concept of reverse patterning, I've got a lot of value from, and it's worked out really well for me. I use it for lunges and split squats and squatting and push-ups, like starting people at the bottom and putting them in position and having them come right up out of that perfect position because now they know right where to go to when they go back down whereas if they start at the top they don't know where to put their feet and they're like is this wide enough is that wide enough i don't know but we sit them down then you can say this right

here is a vertical shin that's how wide your feet are going to be just stand up and it's right the first time instead of having to play with your foot position or play with your stance we we really are pretty much talking about a beginning situation so like someone further in a training or someone obviously it's an i guess an olympic lifting i guess you would most olympic lifters you're going to see high bar back squat yeah i remember i remember first uh starting crossfit and i come from weightlifting background and then, you know, the teaching, uh, you know, sit back, back, back, back, back, back. And I was kind of confused about that at first. And, you know, don't let your knees go forward. And, and, uh, because I come from that background, that's, I'm going to squat low or a high bar

almost all the time. Um, and, uh, I, I do low bar like three months of the year and that's just to save my knees and my knees will start getting achy it's like okay i'll start a cycle with low bar and that'll make my knees feel better and then i'll go back to high bar back squats um yeah if you're olympic lifting i think high bar is definitely the way to go um and then i'm not really familiar with any olympic weightlifting coaches that do a lot of low bar besides riptoe. Yeah, I was about to say, since we are on that, why don't you give us some rip impersonations? Oh, boy.

On the spot. That's a lot of pressure right there. Oh, I can't even think of my favorite one. Well, I'll say if we're going to talk about the low bar back squat, I'm probably going to want to sit up right here, right behind you. Just make sure your hips go back. That way you're in the position for that hip drive. The hip drive.

I love it I don't even know what that's like is that like a Ned Flanders like a little drunk drunk Ned Flanders like the sexually abusive uncle or something alright drive your hips back further back

hips further back do you guys do high bar at all no I never program high bar but we do have athletes that come in high bar back squatting and we don't tell them not to either so yeah and it depends on things like i said earlier if they're if they're rolling to their toes if i walk in and see some somebody in my class is high bar back squatting and their feet are terrible and their knees are too far forward and their shin angle is wrong, then if I can't fix it in the high bar position, then I have no problem moving them to a low bar.

If everything looks good, then I'll leave them where they are. And you personally do nothing but low bar. You don't do any high bar? No, I don't do any high bar. You don't feel like that would help your Olympic lifts? Maybe that's why I'm not very good at this CrossFit thing. I should probably start. Yeah, that being said, he's actually got some pretty good numbers

in the CrossFit community for lifting. And that's what we were talking about. Have you ever done a high bar? Yeah, but not to do a one rep max. Just like warm-up sets with it. Just to see what you people were on about. What do you clean? 3.25.

3.25. Is that more of a power clean or do you catch that at the bottom? That's a bottom. Power is like 3.15. Okay. Do you do any front squatting? Yeah. Do you carry that all the way to the bottom or do you kind of like treat that kind of like

or you kind of catch a bounce out of the bottom when you train front squat i try not to bounce at all i like to be solid and stay down there and not destroy my knees i feel like i put a lot of pressure on them if i'm bouncing yeah oh yeah you definitely put pressure on your knees if you bounce out of the bottom i'm tight and i mean when it comes to competition time anything pretty much goes right you can let the back go on the deadlift and you can get real sloppy with things if it helps get the weight up but yeah yeah when it comes to training i stick to i try to stick to being a little more rigid and safe you feel like you can get lower in your front squat than your low bar back squat you feel like it's like two totally different i mean they are different

lifts but you feel like that's true you feel like it's actually different you feel like it's like that much different or as far as like uh the way your hips move as far as my depth i mean there's a clear depth there's a clear difference in where my hips are in terms of uh proximity to my feet but depth doesn't matter i can get all the way to the bottom in either one of them do you go all the way bottom and a low bar back squat no i'll hit just below parallel okay but in the front squat you're saying it's it's just you go much deeper probably yeah yeah okay so you are training the depth now that's kind of what i was getting out like with a high bar a lot of times is getting getting a little

bit deeper with more weight so you're going to be limited on on your front squat weight so your front squat's probably nowhere near your back squat my back squat's not very good oh is that is that is that like the the straw that broke the camera he doesn't know he's talking about all this low bar crap so you clean 325 what do you back squat 395 oh wow so there's been that's low bar that's low bar there's been an interesting shift in my training here i've been doing tons and tons of fives with low bar so my low bar five is at 370 and my one is at 395 so it's very close my front squat to 360 so that's so that's actually impressive for somebody who only low bars kind of yeah i'm like those numbers don't make sense um yeah that's what i'm thinking i feel like you should be like low bar back squatting like 435 if you yes at least if you're if you're cleaning if you clean 325 and you're front squatting with 360 yeah yeah you should be well into the mid

fours this is why i like to base my information on high-bar and low-bar back squatting on my clients that I train and not a weirdo like me. It works much better. The data is actually you can actually use it. He is, Simon, in the couple months that I've been training with him, he is kind of a freak of nature. I mean, he doesn't never wear shoes.

He snatched 250. I noticed at faction games, you're running around barefoot. He snatched 250 not long ago barefoot. Oh, man. Just, you know. That's legit. No wraps, no chalk, just. It only took me like 18 tries.

There was an epic video about it, though. There was some knee. That's funny. Yeah, so. Yeah, but he hardly ever wears shoes. I didn't. No. Yeah, he hardly ever wears shoes. I didn't. No, no. Yeah, he hardly ever wears shoes.

He did this morning out in that cold grass dew, though. So whatever you're doing is working. As long as you don't encounter a low-bar back squat in a CrossFit competition, you're fine. What are you talking about? I low-bar back squat all the time. Are you guys going to program that into the Garage Games competitions now? Low bar. Low bar, back squat, one rep max.

Five rep max is what you should do. That's what I need. It's your program. See how many you can do five of. That's how you pick winners. But you've got to snatch it up over here. Heck, what are you talking about? Who said that?

95% for max reps. You'd smoke everybody. Everyone would get two. You'd get seven. He's sandbagging that's right have you have you played with chains or bands at all uh bands a little bit yeah i like to uh i like to hang kettlebells with bands from the barbell to do uh press and overhead squat those are two of my favorite oddball movements i like the ben bench with that. That sounds hard. Have you not done the bands with kettlebells on the bench?

I've done it on the bench. Like the bamboo bar. What is it? Louie Simmons does something like that, too. Yeah. We've got a big PVC kind of floppy bar that people hang kettlebells up with the bands, and it just wiggles around the whole time. Yeah.

So picture that in an overhead squat, and it's all sorts of fun. On a balance board. Yeah, on an indoor board yeah yeah on an endo yeah i saw that video of you by the way overhead squatting you claim to fit yeah the overhead squat on the endo board nice legit i'm good at really skilled stuff i'm not real strong or my conditioning's good at stupid like circus tricks in there i'm pretty good at the circus you got the pistol on the kettlebell handle and all that good stuff nice i don't know actually i've never tried that i'm afraid i'm gonna hurt myself that's we did actually i was scared to death we were doing

one-arm handstands or whatever on kettlebells trying to oh yeah picture stuff or whatever right probably the scariest thing i've ever done in my life you're gonna wreck yourself yeah you just eat that kettlebell i did it there's a picture of it that's it that's enough don't even try to act like i didn't do that all the time so you haven't done much bands but you've done so the band training you've done has just been like stability stuff not actually not actually like banded back squats yeah i've done i haven't done banded back squats in months but i did do a cycle of that or a period of that cycle is not the right word because that's i don't do cycles um but yeah i did some some banded back squats for a little while

okay i'll just be curious a guy like you has a back squat that that you can get five reps i would like to see like a heavy band um heavy band and low reps like maybe like two to three reps like as heavy as you could go you know like big blue bands and and you know 200 pounds somewhere you're getting like 450 pounds at the top yeah i think the last time i did it interesting this was back when my five rep was somewhere around 340 and i put uh i think i put 345 or 335 on there and green and blue bands and did triples so you had a green and a blue yeah that's a lot of tension that's a lot of tension none of your numbers make any sense i'm trying to tell you guys. I want you to come train with Chris. See, I wish Chris was here for this conversation. You need to come train with Chris

one week or something. I think it'd be interesting. Another trip up here. I want to train with you guys when we're here, but it's been kind of a whirlwind trip. It was a bad weekend for us for doing any of that. I'm barely functioning right now. I know.

We can tell. Third day in a row, no sleep, tons of coffee. doing any of that i'm i'm barely functioning right now i know i'm like we could tell i'm like third day in a row no sleep tons of coffee uh this is actually first day this was day four and i've broken down so honey i'm sorry it's my fault i broke out the french press and the the illy so it's too much of a it's too good yeah well i do i didn't have to make an announcement that i i officiated my first wedding last night so you did a good job yes golf clap for it that's good so that's why that's one reason i'm not functioning too well i used up all my good speaking skills last night so i was like all of them all all of the speaking do you do you let's drink so like afterwards somebody yes somebody was like you should you should give a speech i'm like i just did the whole thing like i just married people but you should i'm like i

used it all up i'm tapped out no more oh and then we stayed out till the wee hours and then woke up for this we didn't we had plans to go out yeah we ended up in could have come partied with us yeah we probably should have but um just ended up passing out i don't know so if any of you crossfitters are getting married i'm offering new services of vaccine strength conditioning and i'll come down as well. Yeah. Justin, he'll DJ the wedding. I'll be the officiant. We could start like a whole new thing. We should. CTP, yeah, he filmed it last night.

I was the best man. If anyone needs the best man. Doesn't one of you guys do photography? Lisa. Oh, yeah. Lisa Mack. We could have like a whole CrossFit wedding team. Needs to happen.

You don't even have to have friends with the plug-in best man. Fitter wedding. There you go. That's right. I'm pretty sure. to have friends with the plug-in best man. We know lots of people. We can bring people. Even if you don't have a bride, we'll provide one. CrossFit order brides. That's right. We could be a non-profit.

That way I can get ordained and we can start a church. Not a cult. we're already close enough to being yeah yeah some some girl that uh some girl the the bride the bride girl this chick that wedding did not go well use the name michael the bride's sister got up and you know she doesn't do crossfit or anything she just knows who we are she's like she's like yeah my sister joined this cult and yeah i do have a client up there that uh that's become pretty good friends with and she's uh she is just adamant about crossfit being exactly like religion and i haven't sat down with her and gotten everything but yeah it's yeah she keeps talking about it.

There are some similarities. Should we bring her on the podcast? Yeah, she could totally be on the podcast. That'll be how we get her into the group. You hear that, Farmer? We're going to lose some clients over this? Or some listeners? I don't know.

We might gain some more. Who knows? Drinking the Kool-Aid. Isn't that where it came from? Yeah. I plan on doing that one day. Starting a big compound and having everyone live there and we just drink kool-aid every day you're not gonna call it jim jones are you and then one day i'm gonna drop some poison and that's jym jim jones oh man that's a genius business name could you imagine the marketing power

it's intelligent about that. We should do a movie. So I'd love to backtrack. Maybe we should get back on topic. Yeah, what are we talking about? If we're talking about my DJ, Garage One, I'll be DJing the event. Are you? There you go. Nah, not really. Kind of.

We'll have all stuff out there. So we'll actually have professional. So you can hear stuff. So it's not just a bunch of people on megaphones like most CrossFit events. So hopefully that'll be a little bit of an improvement so everybody knows where everything is so uh the garage games won this past year y'all changed venue i didn't this this past year was the first year i didn't go it was outside and it was frigid and and that's a nice way to put it yeah i mean i've been garage games and competed when it's like snowing and sleet it was actually snowing calves are cramping up and guys doing cling and jerk ladders and there's literally

snow coming down on the bars awesome it was yeah that was fun i ran i ran an event in green did you do that barefoot no no i considered it but then i decided i didn't want to be that much of an idiot so i went ran an event in green bay it was 32 degrees and sunny in january january 7th and then in february i'm thinking this is going to be total cake it was 30 and cloudy and snowing and sleeting a little bit like wait a minute i was just it's not supposed to be this way i don't understand the weather can we talk about that for a little while talk about the weather talk about the weather excellent podcast guys best episode ever well i think it might be time to wrap things up before we get on the weather all right we'll we'll actually sign off here and then we'll start talking for another hour after this.

We're like, oh, man, we should have said that on the podcast. What about airplane food? What's up with that? Another awesome topic. 90s comedian here. That's right. All right. Doug, you got anything?

What's your plug? My plug for the day? I actually haven't thought it out, but I guess I'm going to talk about mobility at the Garage Games 1 event. So if you want to get a few of my thoughts on mobility ahead of time, or if you're not able to make it out to that event, then you can go to the Fitter Shop and check out Maximum Mobility, and you can see a video of the seminar I did here from a while back. Go for it, Justin. Yes.

Plug, I just really want to talk about the garage games one and uh worldwide wad so the gym resolutions i think it's kind of a cool event it's going to be um i'm a little bit different um from some other competitions that are nationwide or whatever what's uh if i want to get learn about that what what's the website i need best thing to do i mean there's different people that are over different regions or whatever the best thing blanket wherever you're at just go to the garage games website garagegames.com.com yes isn't it the garage games.com it's yeah if you want to go to garagegames.com you'll actually get to a software development i know don't go there let's say the garage i've done it before. I'm like, what the hell?

The Garage Games. Do you guys make cool games? I just use the Googles. Yeah, or Google it. Yeah, Google the Garage Games. Google's the best way. Thegaragegames.com. Yeah, and if you're an affiliate and you want to get in

and host one of those worldwide-wide resolutions events, then you can email us, games at crossfitgarage.com. Bam. Very cool. Also, something not like, I guess, kind of a sales point. It's not, it's probably going to be the cheapest route for any gym to maybe do their first event because there's not going to be like, oh, I've got to come up with all this and this and this and this. The only thing you really got to overhead. Yeah.

They're going to get a percentage of all the profit and, and really all that has come up with his insurance if they don't have it. So. And if you're doing, I think if you doing an RRG, I think RRG is actually pretty good. Most gyms are already probably going to have that coverage. Yeah, you just got to let them know that you're going to do one, I think. That's about it. Simon, you got anything? Or you kind of already did it? That's it.

GamesatCrossFitGarage.com If you live in Woodstock, you should probably train at the garage. At the garage, yeah. Did you know we had a gym there? CrossFitGfit garage.com there you go all right so go train there um and i want you i want you to go to fitter.tv fitr.tv and sign up for our newsletter so you can keep up with uh all the new stuff we're doing later guys rock and roll you bet

top fellas boobies