Barbell Shrugged - Why Strength is King w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #532

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: Can you be too strong? How do you develop maximal strength Why strength builds your conditioning Increase metcons times without doing metcons Best methods for inc...reasing functional strength   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   PowerDot - Save 20% using code BBS at http://PowerDot.com/BBS    InsideTracker: insidetracker.com use code “shrugged25” to save 25%   Fittogether - Fitness ONLY Social Media App   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Shrugged family, this week on Bob Ross Shrugged, we are talking about why strength is the number one thing you need to get better at everything. If you want to get better at med cons, get stronger. If you want to get better at getting stronger, get stronger. Once you're stronger, you should probably try to get a little bit stronger. That's how important we think getting stronger is. But before we get into the show, where we talk about strength for the next hour, I want to thank our sponsors. Over at Inside Tracker, our friends today more than ever, it's essential that we do all the right things to keep our bodies healthy. InsideTracker is the ultra personalized nutrition platform that analyzes your blood, DNA, and lifestyle to help you optimize your body from
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Starting point is 00:01:12 They're going to be checking my blood. They already have my DNA. I don't know what they're going to do with it. But they got the inside look of your boy. And I'm going to go find out everything that's going on inside my body. Where I'm deficient. Where I'm optimized. how I can get better, and I'm really excited about it.
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Starting point is 00:01:55 you know what a cookie is, that equals butter melted with sugar. Yeah, multiple types of sugar. Sometimes there's sugar in the form of chocolate chips. Sometimes there's sugar in the form of chocolate chips. Sometimes there's sugar in the form of white macadamia nut, white sugar, brown sugar, name it, M&Ms, all in the cookie. If you melt the butter, it holds everything together. You bake it, it's delicious. You know what none of that sounded like? Vitamins and minerals. That's right. It's Christmas season. Vitamins and minerals are not around. They are not available anywhere except Organifi because I need a supplement for them all. The amount of family, the amount of goodies flying around between the neighbors, the neighborhood right now,
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Starting point is 00:04:47 they brought a yogi in, the greatest yogi of all time. She's over on the West Coast. She's like super yogi. I even checked her out on Instagram. She's doing all the poses. Check it out. If you're struggling with your mobility like all of us are and you're looking for a fun place to learn, right now, the Fit Together app, that's F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R. They are in the middle of mobility month over there. The yoga teacher's putting a pose of the day up.
Starting point is 00:05:09 You take a little video, you can win some cash at the end of the month. How sweet is that? All you need to do, head over to your app store right now. Download the Fit Together app,
Starting point is 00:05:18 F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R. It is a fitness friendly, fitness focused, only fitness people on the app app posting workouts, posting yoga poses. They've got a monthly challenge that they do. It's super awesome. And we enjoy working with them because we like fitness. We don't like pandemics. We don't like gym closures. We don't like seeing people upset about fitness or politics or vaccines. That's
Starting point is 00:05:43 like the new one. None of that stuff is over there. You know what's over there? Fitness. People working hard, people getting healthy, and that's why we love it. Mobility Month, they're in the middle of it right now. Fit Together, F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R. Make sure you go and download it today. Friends, why strength is king.
Starting point is 00:05:59 Let's go. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Bash. Today on Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Bash. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we're talking about why strength is king. Before we get into that, I think we have to do a decent job of trying to define what strength is. And this is actually something I am very curious to hear your guys' opinion on. When we talk about strength, what does that actually mean to you? Because as we've discussed many times on this, the biological tipping point of where you start
Starting point is 00:06:32 to get injured, that clearly is not the goal of what we're trying to do and getting better at things. But when you start to look at the big lifts, where do you think people should be just as a baseline for health? And then when you start to see the real like lifestyle performance enhancing pieces of actually being very strong, if we were to kind of start with just the big lifts and go from, I don't know, kind of like, what should you squat? What should you power clean? So you have like an actual metric of understanding strength. Clearly that's going to get into building muscle. And then why having muscle, you know, parlays really into better conditioning, losing fat,
Starting point is 00:07:18 building muscles, strength. And then for the people that want to go chase their doctorate and get jacked olympic lifting um where um where do you tell me what your thoughts are doug i want to know what you define the word strength as as like a big high level topic um well that's radically different question than all the questions you just asked right before that i don't know that was like laying out the whole show but when you take out the when you start to just say strength is king that's a big topic so how do we define strength
Starting point is 00:07:54 i mean it's just the foundation for all movement like you have to be strong enough to to contract a muscle and move a bone. Like with strength, everything is dependent on how strong you are. Whether you're trying to move quickly, well, you got to be strong enough to move at all before you can move something powerfully or quickly. So it's just like the base level of all movement. If you can't move or you can't do something well,
Starting point is 00:08:20 if you apply more force to that movement, well, you might be able to do that movement just a little bit better. If you can get stronger, it just makes everything easier. Whether it's body weight movement, whether you're trying to lift an external object or throw something, just strength is the foundation for everything. There is a point of diminishing returns. Like if you're a baseball player and you throw 90 miles an hour, if you take your bench press, we'll say for the moment, and it goes from 225 to 250, are you going to throw a baseball that much harder? Maybe in that case, because you're not
Starting point is 00:08:52 that strong. But if you're already benching 350 and you're throwing 97, if you bench 400, are you going to throw 100? I don't think so. Not in slow down. Not in that case. Yeah, you're already strong enough for the task. And so at that point, there is value in training these other aspects. I think if you just train more strength, there's a point of diminishing returns where just getting stronger and stronger and stronger forever doesn't help, which is why you take a guy who benches 700 pounds, he's not going to throw a baseball like a major league baseball pitcher because strength isn't the limiter in that case. But strength very often is the limiter in many other sports.
Starting point is 00:09:32 If you're not talking about complete max speed and you're talking about just raw strength, if you're a powerlifter, weightlifter, strongman, well, then sky's the limit. Just the strongest person wins. So it's a goal-dependent question like like many questions i i used to think about mma as being you know that that's a healthy balance kind of like being a crossfitter like you got to have so many different qualities and strength is certainly one of them uh if you're wrestling with somebody it just it really is helpful to be stronger than the other person as far as raw strength goes and so i used to think about you wanted to have a professional mma fighter squatting or deadlifting um two and a half times body weight to be like to be strong enough to kind of operate at a pro level certainly
Starting point is 00:10:16 you could be stronger than that um and i think having one or the other is for raw strength numbers is is good where like i deadliftlift 25% more than I back squat. And so it's tough to say they have to both be the same because they won't often be the same for most people. But that was my standard for MMA, which is a very mixed sport, two and a half times body weight. Travis, you have a standard for it. You squatted two and a half? That's like a 500-pound squat for me. That's fucking crazy.
Starting point is 00:10:47 I got to get stronger. I fought MMA at 170. My best deadlift was 210. Oh, deadlift. Yeah, it said squat or deadlift two and a half times bodyweight. So I hit two and a half times bodyweight with deadlift, but I never hit it with squatting. My best just Olympic- style high bar back squat
Starting point is 00:11:05 no belt no wraps no no anything I was 195 kilos so 429 so over over double body weight but I never quite got to two and a half on squatting but I did on dead lifting but that was always like my goal like I want to get to right around two and a half times body weight and then after that most other MMA fighters can't do two and a half times body weight especially i wasn't even fighting pro i was just fighting amateur for fun so i was never i was never the weaker fighter i think ever i was always i was always stronger than the other person uh and so just getting continuing to get stronger i feel like was my uh was the path to being a better mma fighter at that point you're strong enough so you can just maintain that strength and you can work on all
Starting point is 00:11:44 these other qualities that right um on the on the spectrum of how good you need to be like my strength might be in the for for the level i was fighting at locally and all that like might be you know 90 i'm in the 90 plus 90th plus percentile you know but um you know maybe these other qualities maybe maybe speed maybe uh maybe, maybe cardio, maybe just pure technique, maybe strategy. I'm not, maybe in all those other categories, I'm not 90th plus percentile. Maybe I'm in the 60th or the 70th or the 30th, depending on what the quality was. So at that point, there's an opportunity cost. If I keep training strength and I need to recover from training more strength, you know, what's the, what's the downside of, of not training these other qualities that might actually help me out
Starting point is 00:12:27 more. Great. I always say, you could easily say that strength is your ability to overcome gravity and whatever task you're about to perform. That pretty much sum up everything, you know, whether you're running, jumping, punching, you know, gravity acts on your body, acts on the barbell, acts on whatever you're doing, and you got to overcome it. If you get better at it, you know, that's a good thing. But I agree. Like being strong in weightlifting is important, but even in Olympic weightlifting, it's not always does the stronger guy win. It's the guy who lifts the weight better.
Starting point is 00:12:59 You got, you know, people who are like Morgan and Nathan who are super strong, and they lift really well. And then you've got people like Tom Sima I used to have or Isaac Logan who, like, man, they can – Isaac is literally clean and jerked multiple times more than he can front squat. Like, you know, a couple – one or two percent more. That guy's so fast. He's so fast, and he's so good at what he's doing. He, like, defies what everybody thought a weightlifter
Starting point is 00:13:24 was supposed to look like a decade ago. Yeah, he's so good at what he's doing. He defies what everybody thought a weightlifter was supposed to look like a decade ago. Yeah, he's tall and skinny. Super tall, super skinny, and then he's just under the bar. Under the bar and fast and just tough and just moves like an athlete. He's just athletic. So I'm curious about what Doug says. I think the standard, most strength coaches would say that you need to squat
Starting point is 00:13:44 two to two and a half times body weight. You know, they all fall in that range. They all, I'm curious, like, where is the real, you know, top end? If there's studies that have been done, I haven't seen anything. I've often asked people like, you know, but I believe, I do believe there is a point, but I would like to know what is that point really you know like uh is that but definitely there's a point where like if you're only focusing on strength you're wasting time because like there's all these other qualities like football like if you get a two and a half
Starting point is 00:14:15 times body weight then like there are other qualities you probably should focus on but i don't know that like if you know do you get worried about it getting too strong? Would it slow you down? I don't know. But, like, I would definitely say that it's a good time at that point to shift the focus to, like, you know, sprint mechanics, sprinting in general, jumping, you know. But until that point, until you're, like, by worrying about sprinting and you're really, really weak, I think you're missing all the low-hanging fruits of getting strong. Yeah, with studies on agility, the people that have the ability
Starting point is 00:14:51 to produce the highest ground reaction forces, like vertical force pushing into the ground, they're the best at agility and speed. Like with little kids, if you're on a junior high soccer team, you can test strength on all those kids and have a pretty good idea of who the fastest kids are sure really you have to be fast to to accelerate oh well yeah i okay i got you saying like all the kids that have have give them
Starting point is 00:15:17 a kettlebell let's go they just jog and they just do cardio like that that's valuable in many many ways but as far as speed and power goes um you know, you have to be strong first. Like, kind of like Ben Bergeron says with CrossFit, like, strength is the price of admission. You have to be strong to a certain level first. Like, if you show up, if you were a triathlete or, you know, a marathon runner or something, like, all the way on the endurance end, you have great cardio, but your lifts are, you're back squatting one-time body weight, you're 175 pounds and you back drop 175, and then you want to go into CrossFit versus a powerlifter,
Starting point is 00:16:02 or especially a weightlifter, but we'll say powerlifter for the moment. Maybe you're powerlifting, you squat 500 pounds, and you're coming into CrossFit. I feel like barring both these people could have mobility restrictions and whatnot from their sport. That's common in both cases. But if you have a very high level of strength like a powerlifter versus a very high level of endurance, and then you both come into the CrossFit world at the same time
Starting point is 00:16:20 and you train CrossFit for a year and then go compete, I think the powerlifter is going to do better in CrossFit. I can tell you the strength. And the cardio person, they already have the cardio, but the strength for them takes forever. It's going to take a long time to develop. Well, there's a lot of things they won't be able to do, like grace. They won't even be able to do that.
Starting point is 00:16:40 You can teach somebody. If you can't lift up the bar at all, then you can't compete in that sport. You have to be strong enough. And then you lay cardio over the top of it i can teach aj roberts in three months how to do a muscle-up i can't teach somebody in three months how to squat 1200 no fact did it ever yeah i i saw a 300 pound aj roberts do a muscle-up in his third month of training with me, and I was like, the ring is going to break. We are going to rip the ceiling straight out of the studs on the floor right now.
Starting point is 00:17:13 But somebody that is 160 pounds, that is very mobile and very skinny, is not going to squat double their body weight, much less. I've never actually seen something more impressive, just not AJ's health at the time. That was not impressive. But when he walked out 405 and just hit like a set of eight, and that man couldn't bend over and touch his toes, but the way that his hips had been perfectly grooved to back squat,
Starting point is 00:17:39 it was the strongest thing I had ever seen. The bar didn't even bend on the outsides because he was so wide. But then I had him do a farmer's carry to the end of the block and back, call the ambulance. Here we go. We got a cardiac arrest on our hands here. Sure. Yeah. I think a lot of those guys, one thing they don't listen to with Louie is work capacity. Some of them do and some of them don't, but'll know the guys who don't you know that's too bad because even in powerlifting i think a lot of people lose on the deadlift because they're not in shape and they're tired i've watched it happen so i was i was going to say this this is a cool
Starting point is 00:18:15 analogy uh martin rooney asked if he's like known to have produced the most uh first round draft picks of any other strength coach in the world and And so like, and by that, I mean, he gets people ready for the combines. And so that was his specialty. He used to be, he started Parisi with Bill Parisi and he's still the VP as far as I know. But anyway, so I said, Martin, what do you think is the most important traits for getting someone fast? And so he broke it down into like five categories. He said, there's relative strength, of course.
Starting point is 00:18:46 He said, normally, if you want to know who the strongest dude, you know, that I'm training is, is I had them do max set of strict pull-ups. And the dude who can do the most pull-ups is probably going to be the fastest or one of the fastest. And then it's going to be mobility because you've got to have range of motion to, you know, you've got to meet certain angles to create enough, you know, force against the ground.
Starting point is 00:19:08 So mobility, then it's going to be obviously the movement of sprinting. So you've got to know the mechanics of sprinting. Four is absolute strength. So it is, you know, very important. And then five would be the confidence that they would present on their ability to run fast. So like you said, so here's the thing. So if you got someone stronger at a squat or even a deadlift, you know, odds are that as long as the relative strength stayed the same or got better,
Starting point is 00:19:36 mobility stayed the same or got better, mechanics stayed the same or got better, their confidence was high, they just got faster. So but you'd have to to it was like a puzzle you work on this you work on this you work on this you work on this and you just see like you know what he would do is assess them when they first came in and see of those five qualities where's the most low-hanging fruit and focus there yeah i also you know when you we talk about powerlifters and we joke about aj it was one of the coolest experiences ever in my life as a coach and training partner because you never get to see somebody walk into your gym. That's 300 pounds.
Starting point is 00:20:09 I can squat over a thousand and just actually say, Oh, you just start assessing problems. And you're like, Whoa, this is so wild. I can't believe somebody like you walks on this earth. So it was really, really cool. The fact that like – and we talk about like the top end of strength. Like at the time, the strongest person on the planet, heavyweight, the squat's 1230 or something like that, something just freakishly insane. And the show being about why strength is king. Well, that's probably too much, but I also see people, um, on the exact opposite end of the spectrum that may have taken like one day off that turned into a decade and you look at them and you can actually like, as they age, start to see their
Starting point is 00:20:59 muscles like wilting away. And I think that one of the most important factors when it comes to just living a quality life, um, most people that are listening to this show are probably in the gym or are there in the gym already. They, they understand strength is important, but, um, man, the muscles are not really like they're there, but their biggest function is to make sure your joints are moving in a proper range of motion and that your loading patterns when your brain talks to your body are like doing the right thing so you can live without pain unless there's been some traumatic experience your muscles are just supposed to move your joints in a manner that allows you to not be
Starting point is 00:21:42 in pain and then go perform your life and one of the most terrifying things is like when I see people that are, call it our age in their 30s, 40s, and you can see that they just haven't worked out in a year. And if you gave them a barbell that would just had their body weight on it and you had them move, it doesn't go well. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to to understand where that story goes when you just keep playing it out day after day month after month until the person's 50 years old and you know that the only thing coming their way is joint pain doctors dead and then a really slow, painful death to the end, which is really depressing.
Starting point is 00:22:27 And I think that that is like, but when I was in my 20s, I never thought about that because strength to me meant like, I just want to be jacked and I want to go beat everybody in CrossFit. So I got to be stronger than everybody. And now that like 10, 12, 15 years has gone by and i have to reassess what my goals are of like what is strength well if you could squat your body weight you can probably get off the floor and that's a really really important thing when you talk about defying gravity of like dude i watched my grandma granted she's like 93 she's like super old but i watched the i've fallen and
Starting point is 00:23:08 i can't get up in front of my eyes and it was terrifying i never saw she went to go turn right in the rubber on her shoe dug into the ground she's so lucky she didn't break a hip i just watched it like it was in slow motion and she couldn't get off the ground. And I was like, holy shit, this is terrifying. I just watched a 90 plus year old lady fall to the ground and there's no way she's getting up. And nobody listening to this show is 93 years old. I totally get it.
Starting point is 00:23:38 But I think it's really important to understand like at the most basic level, your muscles are there to get your joints moving properly and to be able to like to have the amount of strength at a bare minimum to just get yourself up and off the floor for the rest of your life. Like Doug, I think you were, we were joking around last time we were at Lenore and I was like, I want to be 80 and I want to be the strongest person in the home and I'm going to squat 315 and all the other old ladies at the home, they going to love me and you were like if you can squat 315 when you're 80
Starting point is 00:24:09 you won't be in a home and that's super true yeah if you're jacked you don't have to worry about going to the home because you'll be able to take care of yourself right that's a that's a real life thing yeah I actually talked about that when we interviewed julian pano he said that his coach who is like 70 something uh is still power lifting and still squats like 500 pounds or some insane number for a 70 year old and i said that to him i was like i was like that dude's not going to the home anytime soon he was like no way he can jump on the table he's fine yeah Go to the home just to be king of the jungle for sure. You want ice cream right now? No.
Starting point is 00:24:49 Yeah. Well, like old people, to go into this topic a little deeper, like old people, they're not going to the home because their cardio is low. Yeah. They're going to the home because they can't do basic functions. And doing a basic function like sitting know like like sitting down the toilet and standing back up and and getting ready for bed reaching reaching you know cans of soup on high shelves etc like those those very basic things that's that's mobility and range of motion
Starting point is 00:25:16 and strength right that goes yeah those are the two qualities there like motor controls like it's all in there as a part of strength in this in this conversation but there's a lot of research people focus on cardio a lot yeah but i i think that's in many ways misguided they really should be focusing on on strength and then if you're an older person like that guy who squats 500 pounds compared to someone who doesn't train at all like his cardio is still going to be better than that person if he can jump on the table that means he can run a hill sprint which means that he can probably run a mile just fine. Yes. I'm totally with you.
Starting point is 00:25:48 There's a lot. The latest research would say that muscle mass is going to be the biggest indicator of longevity of life, more so than the cardiovascular, which is what the cool thing is, is one of the things I'm about to study. I start back to school on Tuesday, and one of the things that we're going to study in this next class is going to be that very thing, is that muscle mass equals longevity more so than cardiovascular. So it really shoots in the face the literature of the past or the cardiopulmonary people that just absolutely love running.
Starting point is 00:26:23 And nothing against – I think you should do do both especially if you're reading spark you know there's a place for both but there's definitely a place for strength and as you get older that becomes more important because you know like you said if you fall you got to be able to get up you know get in and out of the shower get in and out of the car like if you want to do things independently you got to be able to move your body yeah so i feel like as a like as a strength coach or just somebody that's like obsessed with how the body moves and watching people in a way like sometimes creepily move and i just like judge them from afar i'm like god no like when i see my grandma fall it's not like oh man grandma fell i look at it i'm like
Starting point is 00:27:02 oh my god grandma's not strong enough to get off the ground. Like, oh wow. There's a study out of Brazil that says if you can't get off the ground without your hands, you have six years to live. And that probably happened to her like five years ago. Like, oh wow. Like there's an entire system of thought and a lens I feel that I, we all view human bodies through that when I see people that aren't strong and they're limping a little, I'm like, when did you stop? Why did you stop? You shouldn't have stopped because that day that you stopped and then the next day when you continually stopped and then two years later and and it's typically something that is out of their control and their doctor unfortunately says well you need to rest until it feels better and you go oh and in a way this is super my dad's getting a a new hip and i'm, I just, I want to, I have for many years, I like dad, dad, we got to get in the gym. Like, remember you taught me how to lift. Now I have to reteach you
Starting point is 00:28:12 how to lift. Cause it's like, dude, your hip didn't just magically get bad. You stopped. What happened? Yeah. And I, I kind of like look at his his body sometimes and i go man like i i need to get you strong again in the same way that you did when i was 13 like i'm looking at you the same way now like dude it's time to get jacked like i don't care that you're i just loaded him up with so much protein i came home and i was like dude i need you to drink all of this and eat all of this because I cannot. When is he getting his surgery? July 13th. He needs to be working out now so the recovery is better. This is actually a gigantic coronavirus problem right now is that
Starting point is 00:28:59 there's no gyms open. And he was getting in very good shape for it and started training again. And then they shut all of the gems down and he was like, what do I do? Where do I go? And, um, yeah, so he started doing like a lot of just manual labor around the house and movement, mobility stuff, just like natural stuff, but we don't have to talk about him that much, but it's, it's, it's very interesting and very near and dear to my heart right now to talk about strength and why it's so important for the rest of your life to just pick up a kettlebell and be able to sit down on a full squat because you're the musculature in your body is not designed just to be shredded, to get girls that's for like eight years of it. And that's an awesome eight years.
Starting point is 00:29:45 But for the rest of your life, it's important to be super jacked. Not because you're out in the game trying to find a mate. It's because your muscles move your joints in a specific way. If you don't keep moving them in that specific way and you don't have your brain trusting your body
Starting point is 00:30:03 that they will move in that way, little nicks and dings are going to happen. Pain starts kick in and then once the pain kicks in your brain says we're not going to keep moving that way it hurts like that and then you rewire everything you do and now you just walk with the limp and you don't even know how it happened and it was the wire that said we're not gonna we're not gonna land on that leg that much because that one feels weird and then a decade later now you've got a hip surgery and you just go shit because there's you have to get in there and figure out like what the issue is it's not just nicks and dings your muscles are there to move your joints in a very very specific manner and having the education to understand that is probably one of the best life skills that i could ever imagine there's a go ahead i'm sorry referencing referencing max
Starting point is 00:30:52 shank and his five minute flow idea like i think you should you should adopt that idea for max and make sure that you spend at least five minutes every day where you're moving all of your joints through every range of motion that you possibly can actively like you're you're doing you're moving all of your joints through every range of motion that you possibly can actively, like you're, you're doing, you're doing like active hip circles and arm circles and wrist circles and everything, everything else. Uh, that way all of your muscles are, are firing to their end range, you know, under, under low load and all of your, all of your joints are hitting and range in, in all directions. And that's not going to make you more mobile if you're trying to aggressively get more mobile in any particular way.
Starting point is 00:31:26 But I do think that as far as longevity goes, keeping that practice will have you hang on to all of your available range of motion and keep your motor control at least stable for the long run, or at least you'll decline less slowly as you get older. And then also, one thing I wanted to say a few minutes ago was, Andy has a study that he's quoted on the show before, Andy Galpin, a muscle scientist, where they looked at many different markers of health and performance regarding longevity. And he said that in their study, the thing that had the highest correlation to longevity was leg strength.
Starting point is 00:32:09 Overall, like the blood markers and whatnot, more so than blood glucose levels and how much higher HDLs are, LDLs, cholesterol, on and on and on. He said leg strength was the number one predictor.
Starting point is 00:32:29 That's exactly what I was saying like right when you walked away is that yeah that um that that's one of the things i'm about to study this summer well starting tuesday is is that longevity is more tied to you know muscle mass and strength than it is necessarily any of the other markers so i was also going to say that not to mention that movement and being strong how important it is to any of the other markers. So I was also going to say that, not to mention that movement and being strong, how important it is to the brain. Like, you know, there's a hypothesis out there that the only reason we need a brain at all is movement. And so without movement, you don't necessarily need it.
Starting point is 00:32:59 And you're given a brain so you can, like, you know, learn to your environment. You need to know where you're going, what you're doing away from things is to keep you alive and then and like there's a there's a thing called a sea squirt and it's in the in the ocean it's a little you know fish type animal and what it does you know when it's born it swims and it has a brain a very small brain but it has a brain and then it latches on to something, and then the brain dies. And it survives.
Starting point is 00:33:27 I thought the brain stops moving at that point. So my point being, yeah, is that the brain, especially the cerebellum, the cerebellum is like, that's what helps us, you know, like ride a bike. It stores those memories. Now there's research that says it stores, you know, conscious thoughts as well. So like when you learn something, that's the way that the hippocampus stores that information. It puts it in the brainstem, the cerebellum, and then the basal
Starting point is 00:33:56 nuclei. So you have to keep moving to keep that area of your brain strong and firing and forming now that neurogenesis forming new neurons so you gotta keep moving lifting and lifting is even better because the more complicated the movement the better the the more it alerts the brain to wake up and get bigger and stronger do you guys we were talking about old people and now i want to talk about really really really young people because we own some of those as well do you guys think about this with with your kids and watching them move and like uh outside of just we send them to gymnastics to learn how to tumble and stuff but do you
Starting point is 00:34:33 i guess it's impossible for us not to watch everyone around us and through the lens of movement do you guys think about this stuff with your kids? Oh, yeah. Like teaching movement patterns? Yes. Are you kidding me? Yeah. I'm trying to set my kids up for success. I want them to have the ability to do whatever they want. I'm not going to push them in either direction.
Starting point is 00:34:55 But I want to do – right now, even at three and five, it's GPP. No matter what you're doing, you're preparing them for something, either a shitty life or a good life. And so I'm trying to prepare my, you know, all my kids for a successful, healthy life. And so, yes. So the way they squat, like I will, if I see bad movement patterns, I will tell them and I'll tell them why, cause I don't want them to think I'm just on them. And so, yeah, 100%. Call me what you want. I feel like my parents and probably my in-laws really thought that I was like abusing Adelaide at the beginning because every time she would crawl somewhere, I would just push her over and like constantly just like pushing her over,
Starting point is 00:35:39 forcing her to stabilize herself more and more and more from like day two every time she moved somewhere i would just knock her over not hard people stop don't call child protective services on me they're gonna get you for sure now um but i can hear the comments now i i'm constantly forcing her to climb stairs with her her off leg just because like i feel like you know these things you understand like how the body wires movement towards a certain place because it like it's it's all mapped to your strong coordinated side and if you don't do that next day one day you wake up and you're 12 and you only have a right arm you only have a right leg that's strong um i think that one of the coolest things that i did was trying to learn how to brush my teeth
Starting point is 00:36:26 with my left hand that shit took me three months to feel comfortable how to brush my teeth my left hand it's not like my left hand is jacked i just gotta i gotta figure out all the movement patterns fine motor patterns over there it's crazy try and wipe yourself with your left hand terrifying by doing that you're saying if you ever have a stroke, you will probably recover way faster than most people. People who are like super normally right-handed and that's all they ever do, you know, especially men, have a really tough time recovering from, you know, a stroke because they have to learn to use their right brain.
Starting point is 00:37:02 They've never done it. So obviously the you know there's not a lot of strong connections synapses happening yeah so it's a hard recovery for them but people who are like you know brushing to their left hand wiping with their left hand whatever have a much better or artists because they're normally right brain anyway they have a better chance of recovering just fly yeah um yeah i the the thing with the little kids i just see so much moving like i always wonder i'm like when you see a kid with like their they're like little kids they don't know and their feet are pointed out i'm like
Starting point is 00:37:37 what happened why are your feet pointed out point them straight yeah stop watching your parents walk around the house come to my house watch me walk around barefoot there's no feet out in this household stop it i bet kelly starrett does the same thing for sure oh yeah he's like you notice it's like when morgan walks in the gym if morgan had like a little limp one day you'd be like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa settle down you watch him every single day if he sneezed inappropriately you'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Settle down. You watch him every single day. If he sneezed inappropriately, you'd be like, back up, back up. You did not brace your core right there.
Starting point is 00:38:11 That is risking back pain. Morgan, get your ass over here. We need to talk about your deep core right now. 100%. But then, so we've talked about the super old people. We've talked about the super young people. And now we can talk about the actual people that are listening talk about the super young people. Um, and now we can talk about the actual people that are listening to the show because their goals are
Starting point is 00:38:28 kind of like the big four, right? Like they want to lose weight. They want to get, they want to get lean. They want to get stronger to put more weight on the bar, build muscle. And then they want to get into Olympic lifting or builder conditioning. Uh, those are, those are kind of like the big four buckets that we can put people in so where does strength come into um the conditioning aspect we've talked a little bit about it but um one of my favorite analogies kind of in crossfit was like a 20 pound wall ball is uh not that heavy if you can do if you can back squat 400 pounds and you see people that can back squat like 135 and it's like 25 percent of it yeah my bad um so just in in general like how does strength play into conditioning uh i think it's huge you know um i think the the hardest the two hardest
Starting point is 00:39:22 qualities to build as a crossfitter are going to be strength. They're not hardest. They take the longest. And then aerobic conditioning as well. It just takes longer. So I think a focus on it, especially if you have really good aerobic conditioning, I think it's a huge focus.
Starting point is 00:39:39 It should be the minute, wherever your season ends, if you're a CrossFitter, it's going to be like the CrossFit. Most people, it's just the games, the normal games for everyone, the open, I guess, or for the freaks, if it's the games or whatever. But the minute you're done, I think you're focused to be on strength in aerobic capacity and start building it. And, yeah, it's going to make – if you're weak, it's going to make everything harder.
Starting point is 00:40:03 It's going to make Grace harder, Isabel to make grace harder is about harder all those movements gonna be hard but like you take someone like aj if he does it if he's able to get his aerobic conditioning you're talking about him using 10 or or less to do these movements obviously it's easier so same thing when i did the grid a lot of things were easier like we did that like uh what was it 405 uh for 10 or something on front squats and or it was something you know 225 sorry yeah that's a lot so there's 225 for 10 for time and so i won because it was a small percentage of my 1rn so yeah the shorter the time domain the more strength is a factor and crossfit as far as as far as the entire spectrum of time domains in in sport from you know from running 100 meter sprint in less than 10 seconds
Starting point is 00:40:50 to to doing um you know ironmans that take many many hours you know crossfit's more on the on on the fast end where you're most of the time you're doing something that's like 5 10 20 minutes long relatively short on the whole they do some longer things in some competitions. But for the most part, it's short time domains. And if you're competing in a short time domain, then strength is going to be a larger factor than if you're competing in a long time domain. Cross is mostly short.
Starting point is 00:41:19 I don't think that it should be overlooked that – and I actually want to go right into Olympic lifting next because like as a segue to this, it's not a mistake that Tia, Claire, Toomey, and Matt Frazier both won the clean event. Of course, yeah. every single year and it's not that's why I think Olympic lifting is so awesome because power lifters are going to lift significantly more weight and have larger bodies probably more muscle mass
Starting point is 00:41:56 but combining it all together into an actual like functioning strong human probably the best display of that and how it all combines into total athleticism like it has to be olympic lifting it has to be the most complete strength sport in my eyes i agree and like and i i dare say that if you really looked at strength that most of the really good weightlifters are going to either beat or be the same anyway as a as a
Starting point is 00:42:23 power lifter you take morgan show me a power lifter, I'll go out and squat him. Good luck on that one because he's high bar. People start comparing apples to oranges. They'll be like, well, this power lifter squatted this with a big power lifting belt with knee wraps or with a super thick knee sleeves. Morgan squatted 605 with a flimsy little weight lifting belt and some reband knee sleeves. Big difference. Yeah. And he squatted 605 with a flimsy little weightlifting belt and some you know
Starting point is 00:42:45 rebound knee sleeves big difference yeah and he squatted super deep so if margaret morgan wears the big thick belt gets a really big knee sleeves drops the bar down his back winds his stance and barely goes below parallel he's gonna crush those dudes i mean i can say that because i was a world champion powerlifter yeah i can tell you right now, Morgan would spank their butt. I also think Morgan, it would be, we're not going to do this, Morgan. I know you're listening. We're not going to do this. But we could put Morgan on a rower for like two straight years
Starting point is 00:43:15 and build his like super high-end aerobic capacity, and he'd go to the CrossFit Games. Believe it or not, he was actually a really good CrossFitter first. Of course he was. He's freaking jacked. not, he was actually a really good CrossFitter first. Of course he was. He's freaking jacked. Yeah, he can already do strict muscle-ups. He can rep out the kipping like crazy. He can do handstand walks.
Starting point is 00:43:33 Yeah, because at this point, he's already the strongest person in all of the CrossFit games, without a doubt. So now all you got to do is go build aerobic capacity, work on some anaerobic stuff, and just periodize that out for the year, for the next two years.
Starting point is 00:43:46 Not that it's going to be easy by any means, but he's 16 years old. You could take the strongest kid in the world, or maybe not in the world, but definitely in the country. You can take the strongest kid in the country and just say, okay, go breathe better. Go learn these basic gymnastics movements. And sitting on a rower is easy. It's just practicing breathing and building that system. I hope he doesn't hear this. I don't want to give him any ideas.
Starting point is 00:44:13 You'll make a lot more money, Morgan. You'll make a lot more money. Nike is calling you right now. Unless he gets a gold medal in the Olympics. Dude, wait until Morgan's on the Wheaties box. Yeah, right. That would be the coolest thing ever. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:44:29 We all just did our best Olympic weightlifting pose on the platform. It's always a snatch for me. I never do like a jerk. No one's doing the jerk. No one's walking through the grocery store practicing their form and doing a jerk. I'm always like. I'm always out to the side yeah that was when i knew i was in probably a bit of a psychotic mode of lifting weights too much when
Starting point is 00:44:51 i walked to the grocery store and people would catch me like dude i do it all the time and when i used to play basketball i would be like yeah in the grocery store. And I'm sure people are like, what is he? Oh, call, call 9-1-1. He's just lost his mind. Right. What do you, it's like when you go to the grocery store, like, oh, what do you think you're going to get for dinner tonight? I don't, I don't know. I'm kind of focusing on my third poll right now. Yeah. So the turnover, I'm probably going to get the Maddie Rogers snap. I'm probably going to simplify this and just go get some eggs. But right now, I'm really focusing on my third poll. But, like, thinking about – when you think about it, like, I've been looking at a lot of, like – instead of just going to these meets, what I started doing last year is, like,
Starting point is 00:45:38 trying to understand what separates people, you know, in the weightlifting world. Like, why is, you know, Kate Nye, like, why is she ruling? And, like, at the end of the day, she's stronger than everybody. Like, she's stronger than her competitors. Like, I saw her squat 420 pounds, high bar, super low. I saw it. She murdered it. And, like, she's just, you know, stronger.
Starting point is 00:46:01 You look at, like, Shakesha Johnson, who was on the up and coming in that 71-kilo group. She's been squatting over 400 pounds. It's been a while. And so, like, they're stronger, man. And, like, or you look at, like, you know, Hunter Elam. She's strong. And the people beating her are stronger.
Starting point is 00:46:19 It's just they're strong. You don't see that many weak weightlifters winning. Yeah, and nobody at that level is like sitting there like man i really got to work on my technique i mean you have it and they're wrong i why yeah nobody's working on their technique it's so hard to change and like by all means i'm saying you know and i'm i love working on technique but like you know as you're getting as you're working on technique, get strong and get as strong as possible. And I do believe I'm going to,
Starting point is 00:46:49 I'm in Louie Simmons camp when I say this whole got to be an efficient, you know, lifter is, is retarded. Cause I'm watching it. I don't see what they're doing. I've done the math. I don't see, there might be one in a million. Like I have, you know, of all the people I've had, I can name two. I've had, um, uh, isaac and i've had tom sumer otherwise and they were not the best they got beat my strongest athletes morgan nathan ryan dominate and that's just the way it is man and like you show me show me where i'm wrong i ever you go go to the world championships see who wins ask them what they squat it'll be more than everyone else. Nine times out of
Starting point is 00:47:26 ten. It'll be either the strongest of everyone or one of the strongest. And I feel like Morgan wins before they even step on the platform because he's in the back three days before doing like 600 pound back squats and every kid in the country
Starting point is 00:47:42 is sitting over there looking like, I don't want to fuck with that dude. Why do I want to put my singlet on right now? This is stupid. So what do I need to get second? Yeah. Yes. Like if I was 16 years old and Morgan's back squatting 602 days
Starting point is 00:48:00 before the biggest meet of his life, I would just look at my coach and be like dude i don't have a chance i don't have a chance nobody nobody that's watching morgan squat 648 hours before the biggest meet of his life is over there going so what kind of like will you check out my bar path no they look at that kid they go oh we're screwed that guy's a giant they're like should i gain weight or lose weight this is not working yeah that's exactly what i'm wondering how do i get out of this weight class as fast as possible literally i watch the other kids when he normally he does a really big front squat and it's more than like these kids could ever dream
Starting point is 00:48:42 of doing and i watch their soul leave their body and you just see their shoulders drop their heads bow and then it's like well then they're like why am i even doing this sport because if you're in this weight class that's a darn good question why are you more people yeah they feel so good in their home gym but i think that's also like a a really good like piece of understanding strength like the people you keep around you like your gym that's just part of what goes on like we're strong the strongest man in the world is your is your coach and that's just the expectation in here that you're going to be strong it was fun squatting with morgan the other day we i went to his house and I made
Starting point is 00:49:26 rounds this week. I'm going to Ryan's today and we front squat together. We tied, but he beat me. He squatted faster. I was mad. He loved it. When it comes to probably the biggest bucket, we love talking about weightlifting
Starting point is 00:49:41 because these people are just such freaks, but the majority of people, if you ask them what their real goals are, it's going to be like, I want to drop 10 pounds or I'm trying to lose 15 pounds. I want to look like I lift weights more. And if you go online, you know, Travis, you mentioned it earlier of like, the internet's probably going to tell you, you need to go run, like get your cardiovascular system better. Like why is muscle or building muscle and building strength so important to the fat loss conversation? You're talking to me?
Starting point is 00:50:15 I'm kind of talking to Doug. I thought he was directing that at you. So I was, I was holding back. I feel like it's hard on the computer. I don't even know where you guys are at on my screen. Yeah, we're all in different spots. Yeah. Regarding fat loss, I feel like training for fat loss is very similar to training for muscle mass. Like when you're gaining muscle mass,
Starting point is 00:50:38 you're doing a lot of resistance training and you're eating in a caloric surplus so you can put on muscle mass. But then when you're losing weight, you need to in a caloric surplus so you can put on muscle mass. But then when you're losing weight, you need to eat at a caloric deficit and then do more or less the same, you know, not the exact same volume of strength training, but a high volume of strength training to preserve and keep any muscle mass that you already have as you lose body fat. If you want to do some cardio to help, quote unquote, burn some calories that that certainly can be helpful but if you're if you're a person who wants to lose weight and you just start doing only cardio you're not doing any strength training and and you're in a caloric deficit you're going to lose fat and
Starting point is 00:51:14 muscle at the same time and then you know what how we how we used to describe it was that you'd end up being a smaller version of your fat self way less but your body composition doesn't change that much but if you're if you're lifting weights you're eating at a caloric deficit and then you're doing some cardio to supplement your training and and your uh nutrition then that's great but it's not necessary like if you look at look at bodybuilders there's a debate should should you do cardio to to lean up for competition some people some people don't do it at all and some people do some of it some people try and do a lot of it but there there's there's a spectrum there nobody stops lifting weights and nobody doesn't focus on
Starting point is 00:51:55 the diet it's just assumed oh yes obviously that you know diet and lifting is 90 of this equation and then do i need to do extra cardio on top of it or not? It's a supplement. It is not the big picture. It allows you to eat more. If you enjoy eating, then you should probably do cardio. If you care less about eating. There are people, I know when I was competing,
Starting point is 00:52:18 eating was not, it was just something I did for my sport. It literally was so different, my mindset towards eating by then. So I would have probably gone with not doing the cardio and just eating what I needed because I didn't really care or anything other than eating. I just wanted to do whatever I needed to do to be the best at the sport I was doing. So I would probably just say what calories do I need
Starting point is 00:52:42 to get to where I want to be and do that because the cardio just wears you know, wears you down. And now it's going to compete, you know, with the strength training. So, like, I would think you'd be better off without it unless you're just super fat and, you know, you only had a short amount of time, then you might have to do it to, you know, to make up time, I guess. Yeah. If you're trying to put on weight, the way I like to think about it is if you're putting on weight, rather even more specifically for what I'm about to say, if you're trying to put on weight the way i like to think about is if you're putting on weight rather even more specifically for what i'm about to say if you're trying to get stronger which that getting stronger building strength is correlated to getting bigger and building muscle
Starting point is 00:53:14 mass of course but if you're just really focusing on getting stronger then your nutrition needs to support your training training training is like is the key there you're not gonna if you just eat more you're not gonna get stronger you might get bigger might get fatter but if you're you will get once you specifically get stronger um you you have your lifting component and then your nutrition supports the lifting right trying to lose weight it's it's the opposite your training supports you nutrition nutrition is the most important part of of getting. And then you need to have some training to support that. And then, again, I recommend mostly metabolic resistance training. And then you can supplement on top of that with some cardio.
Starting point is 00:53:53 But losing weight diet really is the big focus. And then your training supports your diet. Well, lean muscle tissue is really expensive too. Like in order to build muscle and repair muscle tissue metabolically it just takes a lot more energy and the only way you're going to be able to do that is to lift weights tear muscle down build it back up and now instead of your body just looking at all the food you're putting in as storing and it's like now it actually has work to do and rebuilding cells it's one of the coolest parts that i like to think about in lifting weights
Starting point is 00:54:26 because I'm probably not going to set any new PRs or anything anytime soon, maybe for the next 100 years. But what I do think about a lot is the fact that every single day, I have to force my cells to wake up and go get stronger. And that's like a really important thing. And now your brain and your body actually have this really big conversation of like, damn it, we got to keep up with this dude. How do we get stronger?
Starting point is 00:54:55 And the way that your body does that, taking the energy that you're putting into it and rebuilding cells, rebuilding the muscle tissue, and kind of don't have to worry about yes if you're eating a ton of food like the amount of processed food or something like that that you're you're taking in but if you're just eating like a you're going to hang out at some set point in which you you don't really have to worry too much about putting on a ton of excess body fat if you're lifting weights just because priorities are to build muscle and repair your body and just metabolically it's going to be significantly more expensive.
Starting point is 00:55:34 You're going to burn way more calories by having to repair muscle tissue and build muscle tissue than storing all those extra calories as fat. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Right. Dr. Tim Jackson I'm trying to tell my body every day you're not good enough you need to get it going you need to you need to wake up dude i hit 50 bent rows this morning at 135 and then i hit 50 reverse flies right after with the 10 pound weights and if you do them with with the dumb or with the the bumper plates instead of the dumbbells, it's cooler, and it looks cooler.
Starting point is 00:56:08 Because you've got big wings flying. It looks like you're flying. You look like a dinosaur, like a pterodactyl. Wah! You look like Lou. Lou does that in the training hall. Yeah. But you wake up every day, and you tell your body,
Starting point is 00:56:20 today we've got to get a little bit stronger. We're going to tear some stuff up. You're going to have to repair this. You don't really have to worry about putting on a ton of extra body fat. And if people, I think if you, you know, when you think about the, the like idea of recon for people that are maybe in 20, 25% body fat and just really actually need to lose weight. Like if you just up your protein intake and give your body the thing that it needs to, to build more muscle and start eating, you know, your body weight in grams of protein a day.
Starting point is 00:56:50 One, you're not going to be as hungry. So you're going to be losing more fat cause you'll be eating less to like, you may eat the same number of calories, but now your body's redirecting it because you're working out and, and it's got work to do every single day to rebuild uh it just the calories go to a different place instead of just storing them because you're not using them your body is like a turns into a machine it's got
Starting point is 00:57:18 work to do every single day when you start tearing down muscle and you got to rebuild it. Yep. Sorry. We did the thing. Go for it. No, you're up. I forgot. So awkward on Zoom. I hate not hugging you guys.
Starting point is 00:57:42 I think my neighbor just heard me scream into the computer that I hate not hugging you. It's gone. 9-1-1. That's actually one of the worst parts about this. I'm totally a hugger and I hate not hugging you. It's called 911. That's actually one of the worst parts about this. I'm totally a hugger, and I can't hug anybody. If I didn't live with my wife or I have physical contact with another human being, I'd be driving myself crazy right now. It'd be awful.
Starting point is 00:57:58 I'm so physical touch oriented. Me too. I hugged Coach – I went to Coach Ken's house last week, which I'm going to get tomorrow. It was so much fun. I hugged his wife, and then she was's house last week, which I'm going to get tomorrow. It was so much fun. But I hugged his wife, and then she was like, oh, I'm sorry. I forgot. And I'm like, well, I don't care if you don't care. And then she was like, well, I care.
Starting point is 00:58:13 I'm like, oh, I'm sorry. It was so awkward. I'm like – Sorry. Sorry. That's why I didn't hug you. You just hugged me. Yeah. Did you notice I wasn't hugging you? My were on my sides yeah you're squeezing me like a bear
Starting point is 00:58:29 hug i feel like that was the first today's been like the first real like i don't know where to look on zoom to tell you that i'm kicking the show to you that's the easiest part about this in real life is that we all just actually have a conversation, get to look at each other. I'm in the top right. Doug's top left. Travis is down. Oh, really? I have, like, whoever's talking, I have that. Ah, I see. Oh, I got you.
Starting point is 00:58:53 Travis, what do you consider to be the minimum you should be training? If you're a regular dude, you're in your 40s, you want to just be healthy, but you want to be pretty strong, what's like if you're trying to do the minimum on purpose, minimum, minimum effective dose where you're getting some progress, you're not aging too quickly, but, but you just don't have time. How do you structure low volume training? I always say three days a week would be good.
Starting point is 00:59:19 You know, um, it can happen. I've even watched powerlifters, you know, because powerlifting for the most part, for most people, it's not professional. They're not able to make a living. So I've watched people like Chuck Rogelpoel, you know, go through busy times in their life and they go to training less. And so they do fine,
Starting point is 00:59:39 but it's not obviously optimal because you're not going to get the frequency you normally would, but you can do it. I think we talked a little bit last time about like you could do more of like a lower upper total body and you could still march forward. I like four days. I think four days a week at my age especially is good. I think any more than that becomes hard because, you know,
Starting point is 01:00:07 I was writing a schedule out as I'm on orientation yesterday, and I was getting bored. I'm trying to think about how I'm going to schedule my life. And, you know, it gets a lot. When you really look at it and you prioritize, you put X amount of hours per thing, you know, eventually right now in my life, it does end. Like, you know, people say, well, you can always make time.
Starting point is 01:00:31 Well, in this instance of my life, if I put the hours I want towards all the things I want, like, it does end. And so then you do have to make decisions. I think four days a week is good. I feel I could be – I could get to where I could compete, which is my goal next year is to be powerlifting one more time. I think I could at least get to where I could compete against the best in the world with four days a week.
Starting point is 01:00:53 I think three days a week for the average person would be fine. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree with that. Like three or four days a week, I think is ideal. You know, if you're,
Starting point is 01:01:02 if, if strength isn't a big priority for you, you don't have a reason to be excessively strong. You know, if you're, if, if strength isn't a big priority for you, you don't have a reason to be excessively strong. Like you're, you're a white collar guy. Like you'd sit at your desk all day long. You, you don't play any club sports. You're not going to jujitsu and wrestling with other, with other full grown men on a regular basis. You want to be like normal, healthy, um, and kind of well-rounded. I think, I think for those people that have lesser, lesser goals, um, you can get by strength training like once or twice a week. Again, if you're on any big
Starting point is 01:01:30 strength goals, like the difference between not training at all and training once a week is, is, is monumental. It's, it's, it's huge, huge. And so I think once a week is like the bare minimum. You can, you can maintain some, some youth and athleticism if you're training. You know, it's got to be a good workout, total body and whatnot. You got to be able to put some time into it. But once a week, I think you can get by on that. And then, you know, from there on out, it's just every day you add, you know, you add a second day, a third day, a fourth day. Those have other benefits for sure.
Starting point is 01:01:59 But I feel like you can get by on strength training once a week and then maybe doing cardio once a week as like the bare, bare, bare minimum. Again, if you're in this situation. I would imagine there would come a time where you would plateau with that. Oh, yeah. Maybe plateau the whole time, basically. Yeah. But you're not regressing so quickly.
Starting point is 01:02:19 Oh, that's what you're saying. If you weren't training at all. Right. Yeah. It's hard for me to think like, you know, think like maintenance i like i need to think like that i do need to shift my brain into that i'm always thinking how do i like i get so bored like i just want to that's a problem i have i get it i need to talk to somebody i need to talk to a counselor but every time i train you know like like, you know, like, yeah.
Starting point is 01:02:46 I haven't front squatted 400 in a month. She's like, what? Can you just explain now you do that one time? My brain immediately goes to, like, could I be, you know, how close could I get to being, like, one of the best, you know, in the world? It's immediately where it goes to my brain. And then people are like, well, are you talking about masters? And then that makes me mad i'm like hell no i'm not talking about that i'm talking about everyone like you know i'm like louis simmons in that i'm not going to do
Starting point is 01:03:11 masters like i will refuse i want to go against who's the best that's not the best in the world if i win the masters world championships like i just took advantage of some old man is all I did. I'm not doing that. And then, then it goes, I spiral out of control. My buddy, Chris,
Starting point is 01:03:33 you guys have met and you've actually stayed at his house. Yeah. He always, cause he's, he's kind of like moved on and like, he does. He doesn't, it's funny. Cause we're so different now.
Starting point is 01:03:40 Cause you know, he doesn't think about that at all. He care less about lifting heavy. Now he's like, he's like like what else do you have to prove i'm like i don't have an answer to that question all i know is i want to go you know i like lifting heavy i just i love you know i love lifting with someone and dominate i love it i love them looking at me and being like why are you that much stronger than me as an old man my mom and dad are better than yours I don't know and so I gotta get over that
Starting point is 01:04:10 I love being strong you don't have to you just have to I'm not ever like the strongest person in the world but I love being the strongest person in the world, but I love being the strongest person in rooms. Yeah. And,
Starting point is 01:04:28 um, you don't ever have to not want to be the strongest person in the room. Um, I think that the thing that I have become more comfortable with is that when I don't have to play, I'm just preparing for the day in the future that I don't know is coming when I get to play. I don't have to go front squat all of the weight today
Starting point is 01:04:52 and prove to myself that I'm really strong. I just want to stay healthy and strong enough so that when there's a bunch of people around and people want to load one barbell up in the middle of the room, maybe I'll win. I like to load that barbell and be like, of the room, maybe I'll win. No, I like to load that barbell and be like, I'm going to dominate everyone's motherfucking asses.
Starting point is 01:05:09 This is what I'm doing. Well, you're also, see, I feel like that mental side is like, you want to edit that out. My wife's a killer. No,
Starting point is 01:05:16 you're not going to post a video on Instagram of you front squatting three 15. Yeah. Like you're just not going to do it because in your brain, you think someone's watching that going, Travis got weak. And you would never want that. Yeah. I don't give a shit if someone thinks I got weak
Starting point is 01:05:33 because I will come to your house and snatch with you tomorrow. And there's a chance you'll probably beat me. But you'll have the most fun having a battle royale with me you've ever had in your whole damn life. I'll make that the most fun training session of your whole life me you've ever had in your whole damn life i'll make that the most fun training session of your whole life we'll turn pearl jam on from 1998 and raged we'll
Starting point is 01:05:50 listen to one song black over and over and over again it'll be a soulful beautiful snatch session one whole hour snatching clean because i'm not jerking anymore i'm not fucking my shoulders up hanging out with you yeah it'll be a blast though we'll have so much fun yeah um people go out and put some muscle on your body if you get old it'll help you if you're a little baby you should get pushed over that way you develop core stability your body knows how to move we're all getting crucified i know i don't care i hope that i hope child protective services here's that part it's so funny airs is pushing his child yeah every day every time she tried to get across the room when she started crawling she'd be like aiming at something i'll just take her legs and pull her back life is hard it's not gonna be easy dude to be you're the nicest guy i know and the most controversial
Starting point is 01:06:42 normally those two don't flow together but but that's what makes you so unique. I mean, argue with me. Like, try and tell me. I'm not. Yeah, I know. Nobody – you can't because that's how you – who's going to have a stronger core when they're four years old? The kid that got pushed over when it was two days old? Or the one that's been babied the whole time.
Starting point is 01:07:00 Yeah, because your brain teaches you how to move. That's why. I got to tell you, before we close the show, we got to get Christian thibodeau on the show if you're around him no i'd love to oh okay i've only been following him for like 15 years on bodybuilding.com i love it he literally talks about like throwing his kid and like getting into land you gotta he will make you sound like a soft parent is all i'm saying like you need i love like hearing him okay i'm gonna make sure i message him next so yeah next week right yeah i don't think that it's like even remotely like a bad thing it's it's your brain has to recognize that it's got to stabilize itself so how do you do that you just i'm with you frank
Starting point is 01:07:45 i just don't tell anyone i'm afraid but you're not afraid to say that it's not it's not even aggressive if you understand like i well first off i had to i mean my parents and my in-laws i had to try to get them to explain that this is just this is a good thing and now she skateboards before she's two years old because she's not afraid she's got balance not a problem i love that oh dude i'm so jealous i'm teaching my son to ride a bike because of you doug you know i saw yeah i'm like three years old i'm like crushing all right man this weekend we're riding bikes man yeah it's like my five-year-old learned how to ride a bike. He already was on a balance bike all the time,
Starting point is 01:08:31 and we just had never taken the training wheels off and just said, hey, go try it. And he tried it and just rode immediately. That's what Ryan did. We were like, damn, we waited way too long. He was like, okay, see you, and just rode his bike away. And not that we never asked him about it or tried anything. He was kind of resistant to and that didn't really seem to have much interest so we didn't push it on him but then our three-year-old was like uh i could do that we took the training wheels off and popped
Starting point is 01:08:56 him on he did the same thing just rode right away no no real learning curve they just smashed it this weekend it's on bears riding riding. Travis, I had the funniest thought in my brain on post-activation of all time in that Adelaide was in I was doing front squats in the gym and then she was in here as well and as soon as I was done, I racked the bar
Starting point is 01:09:18 and we went outside and just picked her up and I did a thruster and threw her in the air and fucking launched her. Yeah, I'm sure you did like oh we're too many muscle fibers we've got way too many muscle fibers right now yeah all potentiated way too high dad way too high you guys ever seen that guy who he photoshops kids into dangerous situations no he has one like that where he he Photoshop's kids into dangerous situations? So he has one like that where he looks like a dad's throwing a kid up,
Starting point is 01:09:52 but the kid's like, you know, 10 feet above the dad's head. But he'll Photoshop kids like, you know, sitting on the counter, like next to like an open flame on the gas burners. And like the kids will have like knives in their hands, like big chef's knives. Or they'll be like, you'll be standing on the edge, like the very edge of a 2,000-foot cliff, just looking around. I would love to do that. Photoshop's kids are in the greatest situations.
Starting point is 01:10:13 My mom would die. I would love to put that of Magnolia holding a knife or something. My mom would come off the mountain and whip me, I'm sure. She would be so mad. I want to do that so bad now. Coach Travis Smash, where can the people come and hang out with you? Masterly.com, baby. Doug Larson.
Starting point is 01:10:38 Oh, go ahead. Masterly Performance, sorry. LinkedIn. Oh, LinkedIn. You're trending in personal trainer all the time. I'm too hot on LinkedIn. Too hot. Too hot. I'm hot with the business pros.
Starting point is 01:10:50 Yeah. I can't believe they turned social media or your resume into social media. It's so funny. They sure did. I like it. It's less bull crap that you get on the other. Everyone's so professional. It's just discussion.
Starting point is 01:11:02 You don't have that once in a while, but rarely do you get the guy arguing. He has no idea what he's talking about. It's awesome. I just Googled that guy because I was going to send you guys some of those photos. There's a great one of a dude. He's driving, and he has a cup of coffee in his hand, and then he has his one-and-a-half-year-old baby standing on his thighs with the baby's hands on the steering wheel,
Starting point is 01:11:24 and you can very clearly see they're on the freeway. He has no hands on the wheel. Oh my God. My mom. They sent me that dude's name. I got it. I'm going to do that. He's got two new followers.
Starting point is 01:11:42 Doug Larson. You bet. Find me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. You bet. Find me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're Barbell
Starting point is 01:11:49 Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Get over to Barbell Shrugged dot com forward slash store. Programs, courses,
Starting point is 01:11:56 nutrition, you name it. It's all in there. We're going to get you jacked, build some muscle, lose some body fat. We will see you
Starting point is 01:12:01 guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. Make sure you get over to the Fit Together app. F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R, Fit Together and all the app stores, insidetracker.com. Use the code SHRUGGED25 to save 25% by optimizers.com forward slash shrugged. That's where you can save up to 40% on select products and organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Friends, it's like Christmas week. We got one more show before Christmas. I hope you have a blast. I hope you're around all the family.
Starting point is 01:12:31 I love you. I hope you're around all the loved ones. I appreciate you. We'll see you guys on Wednesday.

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