Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 273: Mike Tuchscherer

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

Big Mike of Reactive Training Systems is the godfather of RPE based training as we know it and one of the brightest minds in powerlifting…. so naturally we ask him about F-16 Fighter jets, 3-D printers, and tell him pirate jokes. The Strength Co: https://www.thestrength.co/ Fusion Sports Performance: https://www.fusionsp.net/ MASS to save 20% on all FSP supplements Spud Inc: https://www.spud-inc-straps.com/ Texas Power Bars: https://www.texaspowerbars.com/

You know, thanks for what you do with your podcasts and all the rest. You're doing a great job. Hope everybody keeps tuning in. You get a lot of good info, a lot of insights, understandings on how to get strong, how to stay strong, how to use your strength. You do a great job, dude. You make things better than they are in real life, I think.

If you don't follow Massanomics, y'all do it. Social media, website, everything. Massanomics! Massanomics! website, everything. Massonomics. Welcome back everyone for episode 273 of the Massonomics podcast, the lifting podcast about nothing recorded live from Western Northeast South Dakota. My name is Tanner. And my name is Tommy, the land of Grassonomics, Tanner. Grassonomics. It is official at this point is it not grassonomics is now a thing grassonomics is a thing we were playing the long game building an audience off

of massonomics for years all so we could finally switch over to grassonomics yep and we did it it worked just like we talked about it was successful i hope right smash hit i mean we're talking about our future selves but i gotta assume uh I assume we'll be listening to this on Monday along with everyone else and be like, yep, we nailed it, didn't we? We did. So we did have our new drop. That we didn't talk about last week like at all. No, until the very, very end.

So we had the Grassonomics. Which I am proudly displaying here. Greetings from the high plains on the white tee. Grassonomics, a massonomics joint. We got the, we got Mount Rushmore with some fat clouds blowing out of them. Spelling the words high plains

and the smoke. We got a buffalo. We got a pheasant. We got a biker smoking while he's riding. Yep. And it says greetings from the high plains. It's a beautiful shirt, Tanner. It is a great shirt. And it is on the white tee. And you were pretty happy with the white tee weren't you this is the first massonomics white tee i've actually we've had a few white tees yeah we've done the but i i've never got them just because they were all for shirts i mostly already had and i didn't need

another one right you know you got to draw the line somewhere that's right tanner when we have all these new releases you do have to draw the line otherwise each of us would have a hundred shirts we would so yeah i guess i drew the line at white shirts and this is my first one i was like damn these are better than i thought yeah yeah good shirt great shirt we had that one we had the eight bit party time so we've had the eight bit series around for a little while we had eight bit power lifting eight bit strongman eight bit highland games and those were all part of our 8-bit strength series well so we just uh transitioned over or also included our live easy series yes so that's a subtle piece of the the shirt if you look close on the other ones they're all i don't know what you call those on the top. The little icons.

Is now a Live Easy series on the 8-Bit Party Time, which also a very cool shirt. It is. On the black tee. That's one of those when you see it in person, it really, really gets you. I only look at it on the computer screen for so long, then they finally arrive at your doorstep.

It's like, oh, this really is a shirt now. It is real. And then the other new shirt in the drop was the Masonomics Vars new shirt in the drop was the massonomics varsity tee in the red on the red tee with the big uh arched massonomics across the front and that's it's classy it is classy it's one of those timeless pieces it is it is a classic piece and then the other piece of the new drop the wild card yeah the wild card the limited edition thing that everyone was everyone was so we had conspiracy theories going around on what this is yes there's a lot of speculation i don't think anybody knew outside of our very deep inner circle of what was coming and

it was the jonathan old ham bacon and beer bells air old ham dunk flag yeah the mashup no one knew they needed yes uh and that one was lit is limited to what we produced for this release so maybe those are all sold out by now they're gone they're gone they're gone they're gone so now that we kind of hit you with our ads we should probably hit you with one of our advertisers let me tell you about some of our advertisements for today today's show is brought to you by texas power bars familiar good I? You're about to even be more familiar because Buddy Caps first started lifting weights in the 60s, the late 60s,

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with an intent of changing them for the better. In 1979, Buddy bought his first lathe to begin addressing the known issues. In 1980, his passion, drive, and purpose now had a greater mission. Buddy set out on his own to make what he believes was the greatest bar he had ever seen and trained with, and the Texas Power Bar was born. It was strong

as a house with the best knurling, and it was maintenance-free. Hundreds of state, national, international, high plains, and world powerlifting records have been and continue to be set and broken on the Texas Power Bar. To learn more, visit them at texaspowerbars.com. Tell me I'll also be happy to report that my meet this week

and they did officially put out there that we're benching we're squatting on a texas squat bar we're benching on a texas power bar and we're dead lifting on a texas deadlift bar the perfect trio of texas power bar bars you said oh no i don't know how to use those bars wait Wait, I got every one of them. We have them all. Are they red, though? Because that does make a difference. No, I've read through quite a bit of the USPA rulebook. Sear coat finishes are not allowed in competition. Also, we are competing out of a Go Strong HD combo rack.

There again, I say, ah, Go Strong HD combo rack. I already know my exact field you said does it glow in the dark because if it doesn't i'm a little impartial to it the warm-up room is three go strong really yeah who has all these um it's alberto is it oh yeah yeah is this well is it albert or he runs squats i to say that right because I would feel stupid. It's Albert. Albert. I added the O.

The O is silent and doesn't exist. It's just Albert. Albert Alvarado is his name. There's an O at the end of his last name. Yeah, that's where I got confused. I was putting it in the wrong place. Albert runs squat to death apparel and he puts on this Black Hills Classic. Okay.

Okay. Yeah. place albert uh runs squat to depth apparel and he puts on this black hills classic okay okay yeah also like in the uspa rule book the warm-up the weights and bars in the warm-up room there's restrictions on it they cannot put bumper plates in there um almost like they they have to use like the comparable bars and stuff which i think is good because you know sometimes you go in the warm-up room and it's like oh this is not the same your brother talked about doing a usa pl meet in north dakota where the warm-up room was on olympic bars you know so a different diameter was yeah and really and bumper plates really that's all the warm-up room was and then they went heavy deadlifters even get to go right i mean if you're deadlifting if your

opener is around 600 like it's going to feel way different in the warm-up and also like and then you go out in the 29 isn't the limit on bumpers around 600 yeah like probably depends on the kind of bumpers but true yeah yeah i guess yeah it does depend on the ones yeah yeah interesting i didn't realize that so that was my note on texas power bars that's what i was talking about right yeah very cool we got a lot of stuff to cover this week tommy we do a lot and a lot of just not enough time we've got a ton of stuff to open i'm looking at that fat stack there's sacks aplenty yeah or just our our segment of our our ongoing series of listen to Tanner and Tommy.

Let's just do one right now because I got a lot to do. Yeah, this is a section one of Tanner sack. And this kind of follow up to the last two weeks. Now, Tommy, last week we had cock sauce. Oh, what? This week. Oh, more sauces. We have Uncle Gary's mustard tw twang handcrafted barbecue sauce

and uncle gary's dry rub and this you can buy on uh grant's website yeah the strength co okay the cock sauce is not to be bought on the strength co that is through the cocks cock sauce's website i had that wrong that's actually a correction from last mustard twang. Wow. Okay. I do love mustard. That's a very, it looks to be a mustardy based,

uh, it does appear to be very mustardy base. I'm holding it up right now. And also his dry. I like, I do like the label. The label is very cool. Yup.

Oh yeah. Let me see that. Would you say it's cool beans or this is very cool beans and kind of a, kind of an old school, cool kind of way. Yeah. Um, damn. Uncleary's barbecue

recipes dry rub so you'll have to try that and uh see what your opinion is on that barbecue sweet yeah someone i wasn't aware of the rules uh i should actually i told you this in the gym one day tanner someone sent me a dm and i should i should give this person credit for what they edumacated me on here. It was... Boy, this was just long enough ago that it's going to be hard to find it. Not there. Not there. Boy, okay, this is going to get really boring.

Either way, someone educated me on the rules of barbecue sauce in the Carolinas. I believe they said Eastern Carolina, Eastern North Carolina is more vinegar-based. Western North Carolina is more of your tomato-based. And this person said the heathens in South Carolina go with mustard. So here we are going full circle. Straight from the heathens. Straight from the heathens themselves. The depths of South Carolina.

Yes. Did you see that World's Strongest Man went on this week? I did. I actually caught just a little bit of it on TV too. It was on TV? I saw some of it on TV. Oh, I didn't know that any of it was aired on it. Okay.

I saw Luke Richardson, The Future. He was running. Wasn't The Future this year. He was running the future this year he was not the future this year and who was he running against either way it was really weird i'd never seen it happen the first thing they do is they pick up uh um it was one of those loading met or one of those medleys they're picking up like those giant barrels and anvils yeah so the first one they pick it up like the anvil and they set it on like the platform when they're running yeah and the way he threw it down you you know, he takes off around,

kind of throws it down and the anvil got caught on his belt, popped it open and his belt flew off right before the yoke. So he had to go run, grab his belt off the ground, put it back on. That's bad luck. It was kind of a,

it was a weird thing. Like you don't see that happen. But he did get hurt. He did, yes. He did get hurt and he was out for, so the future has to wait at least one more year for sure. The future will stay in the future

but uh tom stoltman won though tom stoltman won i'm not particularly surprised about it i guess i don't think anyone should be really that surprised ryan shaw got a very close it came down to who was gonna they had the stone off with those two guys i saw before that was going on where it was at and i'm thinking like ah the one year i told tanner don't you've said brian shaw enough years and it's burned you and then yeah he had a he had a great yes tom won brian very close to winning got a close sec uh tom i guess was just a little better honest like brian had a great year in my opinion tom was just uh is tough that's probably one of those things having youth on your side and drawing come down it's funny it comes down to the stones too because brian

formerly the best at stone tom currently the best and probably the best ever at stone style so it's like well brian has like the perfect wrong guy that he has to go beat at stones at the end of yeah there's not many people that he would that he would not want to line up against and yeah he and then maxine boudreaux from canada got third uh you know the two other america bobby thompson and trey mitchell both made the finals so i really like to see that that they were both in there um luke richardson made the finals and i i uh luke stoltman made the finals you meant to say luke stoltman right or yeah luke stoltman made the final finals yes i said richardson the first time. Okay, yeah. Yeah.

And I like the Stoltmans. They are both entertaining. They're really cool. We got to figure out a way to get either or both of them on the podcast sometime. I know. Like to get that Scottish thing. That'd be fun. You know, the one other comment I would make about it is sometimes I get thrown. Actually, two things.

People that say Brian Shaw needs to retire. The dude just got second and barely not first. And like, oh, just hang it up, man. I'm like, if he wants to do it, keep going. If you're having a performance like that, I guess it shows like, hey. Because he was, like you can look at his play scenes, having a tough time the, I guess it shows like, Hey, like if he, cause he was, he was like, you could look at his placings having a tough time the last,

what? Three or four years. But he still made the finals every year. He was still like the top 10 best in the world. Yep. So it's like, if he enjoys it, like,

why would you like, why is it like after a year like this, you got to think like, that's gotta be really refreshing. Right. Yeah. Or I should say, I mean,

I think he's still disappointed because it would have been huge if he would have finally got the fifth he may have actually retired after if he would have got it here but now i'm assume he won't but just where people are like oh come on dude just retire i'm like i don't know like you're competing at the highest level still like competing not not just being there yeah and the other thing that sometimes throws me off, and I know I've mentioned this before, take something like the Olympics. And Olympics is the extreme. People cheer if...

I'm trying to think of an example of someone from another country that's very popular. Usain Bolt's probably like... Usain Bolt is the one. And I suppose this goes against my theory that people generally cheer for the people that are of their country Usain Bolt may be the one

anomaly there where it seems like to be universally loved I don't know if the 100 meter dash this year I don't know who the best United States representative is but say they're going up and it's like a coin toss of who's going to win between who and Usain Bolt.

I want the USA guy to win. I'm like, Oh, pretty much every time. Yeah. Like the only, like Usain Bolt, he's just so like,

I can't not like the guy. Like that's Usain Bolt is kind of, he's having too much fun and he's so positive. It's like, that's where you draw the exception. But almost every other time it's like, no, I don't want that.

Usain Bolt is kind of the hole in my point. But you're talking about like the one out of how many athletes but i guess what i'm getting at is it's always kind of like how little people like in world's strongest man country yeah and i guess brian shaw is a little bit polarizing the way that some people some people really like him maybe some people just don't like him so much but the way that so many u.s people like actively cheer against brian's like i don't want brian shaw to win his you know it's like it's like really he's like the usa guy and like still the best you know right i'm like why do we want the scottish and the british and the canadian guys to beat him so bad like to me i'm like i kind of want the usa guy to win whether you're a giant brian fan or not I'm like um but I guess I do kind of I I have a good respect for him so

maybe it's different but I don't know I find myself wanting the USA guys to win but that doesn't appear to be very common in strongman I know and it's at least not for the US I think the UK people they all want the UK people to I think pretty much every other country wants a guy to win like no one else, right? Right, right. Yeah, it is weird how that goes. I don't know why that is. Yeah, where it's like there's probably just as many USA people

cheering for Tom Stoltman as there were Brian Shaw. Probably. And maybe it's just because the pool of athletes is so much smaller. Right. I don't know. Maybe if they made it really obvious obvious like this guy has an american flag this guy sure is a giant american flag like back of the shirt like it even yeah is but it's just um i don't know why that is i don't and i don't even know if it's a good thing or a bad thing but

to me it's a weird thing like it's well it's like the one time i feel like people aren't on yeah in america at least on their countryside yeah it's like the more extreme example of this is when we go to the arnold and mark henry calls out uh uh cheer for our troops and he's talking about mikhail shivakov yeah a russian yeah he's like oh served in the russian army it's like let's hear it for our troops it's like but whose troops like i don't know what the russian army does, but isn't there a lot of things where maybe that they're like

trying to actively not be on America's side? Well, isn't Russia historically one of the countries that we... We were in a Cold War with them for like 40 years. Not that long ago. And some people said that never actually ended too.

Right, right. I'm like... And that's like probably uh someone probably told him after that like yeah probably that's the wrong time to use that yeah yeah i know that is the funniest one yeah because he did it every year we'd go to you every single time and it's like and i get like he does seem really cool and mikhail shivnikov like i like to see him do well and stuff too but there is a certain point where I'm like, are we cheering for the Russian troops here?

You said, I did not go to Kuwait to cheer for this. It's like, let's hear it for the Taliban. And I was like, Tanner, that's when you make your political stand finally. You say, Mark Henry, that's it. I'm shutting it down.

It just does seem a little like i just always wondered if someone afterwards was like oh that doesn't yeah maybe isn't like that's not the correct use of what you're saying over at massonomics was in the national garden was very upset by what you said he was deeply offended uh was there anything else you noticed from world strongest um i didn't get enough time in california yeah i didn't get enough time to really watch uh a ton of stuff yeah you know there's a lot of rogue all over everything there was some massanomic shirts in the crowd there was some fans which is cool too you know like yes still isn't a huge spectacle by any means it was still limited though

because california had or you know they had literally this was like a lot of people said Still isn't a huge spectacle by any means. It was still limited though because California had, or, you know, they had literally, this was like, a lot of people said this was like the first event in the state almost. It still would be really cool if it is in America again next year, if it was like a major spectator. It's supposed to be in Sacramento. Next year it is too, okay.

So that would be cool if they could somehow figure out how to make it a fun, entertaining, major spectator thing. Whether that's doable or not, I don't know. It'd be cool if they could somehow figure out how to make it a fun entertaining major spectator thing whether that's doable or not i don't know yeah i i it'd be cool if it was it would be fun to go and um oh weasel our way big travis would be the other note big travis didn't make travis ortmeyer friend of the podcast did not make the finals he had a a hamstring tear so i think he probably didn't do as well as he wanted to but he um i don't know he's back there competing after like a 10-year hiatus so that's pretty awesome that is and i think he's planning on being back again next year and uh terry holland's retired too yes that was also noteworthy there big terry

quite the career yeah he's a good guy too uh tanner we have to read an ad here all right do you want to guess who it's by uh is it the strength co or is it sputting? Yeah, there you go. Today's show is brought to you by spud ink and the fat tricep strap. The thickest strap handle we've ever made. The spud ink fat tricep strap is designed to build your forearms and make your everyday exercises like pull ups, face pulls and push downs excs excruciating and because it's built from a nearly indestructible nylon webbing this strap will last a lot longer than your grip ever will check out the uh spudding fat tricep strap online at spud-ink-straps.com awesome it's like their shortest description for any product they have they usually have very large descriptions it almost threw me off how short it was

um i think for the sake of time the big box the big part of the sack maybe we'll wait for after our guest for that but i do have oh that is a big box you have there i'm not sure what that even is tanner that one will maybe save for a little later here. But this, you know, we ran the competition on Instagram of who had the, what did we call that competition? It was, I don't know how we phrased that. I haven't seen this thing. It was. The Posterize Me Contest?

Yeah, the Posterize Me Contest, I guess, where in the comments you had to describe how you picture yourself before a big lift and whichever comment got the most number of likes. We were working with Andy, Big Andy at Skinny Idiot Studios, and he was going to make your vision come to life in only the way that Andy can.

And in this case, he brought Corn Fed Highlander's dream to life here big eddie and should i should i read the the caption yeah you can read the caption so this was the winning submission when prompted for how he likes to picture himself before big lift he says i like to imagine myself as the monster in any given power rangers episode the rangers have just beat me up and the witch throws down her staff and yells make my monster grow then the gym is filled with smoke dust and debris and i rise larger and stronger than ever and uh this is this is really good uh there's a i just there's so many details here i'm just taking it all in

yeah there's isn't it? Rita Repulsa. Did you ever watch the power Rangers when you're a little Tanner? A little bit, dude. One of my, one of my, but it was certainly around for sure.

Youngest memories in my entire life. Earliest memories, earliest memories. I can remember I was a little, little kid watching power Rangers. I remember seeing on TV for the first time thinking in my little kid brain, it's the craziest thing I'd ever seen was a little, little kid watching Power Rangers. I remember seeing it on TV for the first time, thinking in my little kid brain it's the craziest thing I'd ever seen. You know, and they have their –

God, it's been so long since I've seen Power Rangers. Their Zords? What do they have there? I don't remember. They transform, do their whole thing. Right. And then they have, like, their big machines that come – You're thinking of Transformers.

Well, nah. They have their machines. They all go together to form, like, a mega thing or something. Yeah, they have their little big machines. You're thinking of Transformers. Well, no. They all go together to form like a mega thing or something. Yeah, they have their little machines that come out. Yeah, I don't remember. Dude, I remember getting done with that and going outside and I had a trike. I remember riding my trike because that was the most comparable. Dude, I had to have been like three. Like for real, this has to be one of my earliest memories of my life.

And Power Rangers somehow got that. You know what sticks out about Power Rangers to me is like um i don't think kids do this in school anymore but i used to dress up for halloween yeah and i don't remember a year kindergarten through fifth grade that at least a few kids in my class didn't dress up as a word to power ranger yeah probably the red one that did yeah the red one it did make me feel cool growing up that uh kind of the kind of the edgy Power Ranger was Tommy. You know? Ah, Tommy.

Yeah. You know, he was the, was he the Green Ranger? And then the white one. Yeah. The white one eventually. White. Yeah. Yeah.

And I do remember the Power Ranger movie coming out. I probably would have been, I don't know, third or fourth grade. And that was pretty bomb at the time. So how was Andy's? It's good. It's good. So I can hold this up. I don't know how much of this you can actually see on the camera. That's Big Eddie up at the top there. Yeah, Big Eddie up at the top. I believey's uh it's good so i can hold this up i don't know how much of this

you can actually that's big eddie up at the top yeah big eddie up at the top i believe it's reed repulsa saying make my monster grow you got some different the power rangers down here you got the massonomics kind of like flag burning in the debris with all this other stuff you got all types of gym debris are all sites of uh rock and debris going on it's a really cool scene. Yeah. It's great. So we're going to send this to him. I guess I'm going to have to roll it up in a tube. So Eddie, this will be on the way relatively soon once I figure that out.

Once you figure out how to ship stuff in the mail. Maybe I'll ship it in an old Texas Power Bars tube. It'd be way overkill. That'd be good. Okay that was that um i'm wondering do we need to get big mike on the horn soon or um we got about well technically tanner we got about seven six minutes until we normally get there but should we do a can quick we usually yeah we should stay refreshed while we're gee golly will occur this isn't what's in the can this is also i know what the flavor is but this is what's in the can for me too tanner i don't

know i've never had this oh i can smell is it a cherry coke i'm feeling cherry coke i did have multiple people on instagram tell me that this is one of the flavors we've been missing okay so um i'm not i can't single out one specific person because over the last month i have had many people say why haven't you guys done this one yet so okay are we ready tanner i donned my uh functional and aesthetically pleasing blindfold aesthetically pleasing it is there you are upside down nope i found that i oftentimes i put this upside down nope it is all direction i'm trying to decide for the power lifting meet when and i'll be able to wear the the headband when the good times for that will be is there a bad time oh this has a smell well it just depends

on what i do with my hair the headband isn't is less necessary if i put uh it in a ponytail right i think you'll get this tanner i feel like you could maybe i just maybe i just know too much it doesn't smell fruity what is that flavor i do that's it is a flavor isn't it yeah gosh i'm gonna know this for sure i can't it's not a fruity flavor to me not not in the traditional sense no damn it what is that it's not a vegetable either though tanner if that's like it's not um it's not celery if that's dang it it's like a very familiar flavor it's a very very distinct flavor too uh-huh let me think let me take one more sip here and then i guess i'll just have to wager i can give you a clue if you need a clue

and i don't even know that i love this flavor but i recognize it for sure i'm with you on all those i you better give me a clue because i feel i'm gonna be ashamed by now. Lots of sprays and lotions are scented, this flavor. Is it coconut? Ding, ding, ding. That's the one. I don't like it. Yeah, it kind of feels like drinking suntan lotion. I'm not a huge coconut fan.

Coconut's really, like about as coconut as I get is coconut shrimp. Yeah. And that's like when I have that once every three years, that's like my limit there. So this is a coconut LaCroix. Coconut LaCroix. Yeah. Of course. I'm stupid for not just knowing that without a hint, but because it obviously tastes like coconut, very coconutty.

It has to be one of their strongest flavors, doesn't it? Yeah. For a LaC la croix this is very strong that's true good point um don't like it i'm not completely confident i'll be able to drink this whole thing that's it is not kind of a lingering yeah kind of a lingering taste in there it's almost like a thick taste yeah there's something a little extra at the end it doesn't leave you with that crisp refreshing high i don't like coconut flavored stuff though no i think they taste like shit i don't think it tastes like lotion yeah like around here you coconuts don't exist so your exposure to coconut around here is in lotions and spray what's the

very coconutty flavored like is a pina colada is that yeah kind of like that yeah and i don't like pina coladas either more like penis if you like pina And I don't like piña coladas either. More like penis a lot. If you like piña coladas, don't like them. Song ends there. That's as far as we get there. Something, something, flip flops. Is that Jimmy Buffett? And getting caught in the rain. Is that Jimmy Buffett?

I don't think it is. I don't think it is. No, that can't be him. We've got to find out now. If you like pina coladas. Oh, tastes bad. It's cold. Escape by Rupert Holmes.

Is that what it is? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. If you like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain if you're not into yoga and have half a brain and it's by who robert or rupert holmes and it's called what uh escape i'm sure everyone listening right now is like oh yeah of course come on everyone knows that it's like yeah classic i feel like that was uh put out in the 70s it's it's got that vibe doesn't it i'm gonna say like 75 i don't know um 72 71 uh i think you're wrong actually it's uh according to this it's 79 79 okay just caught the 70s before you know before the 80s

took over and before big hair took over tanner yeah well coconut sucks yeah this gets um whoa i give this like a two yeah i was bouncing between a one and a half and a two yeah that's props to lacroix for making something pretty flavorful but bad choice on this one you know there's people that like this flavor though i know i don't know why people like it i put it in our car the coconutty flavor is very artificial tasting yeah it always does it always does you put it in i put in the cart my wife was why are you getting that we're not gonna drink it and i. And I said, I have to do it. People insisted.

I have to do it. It's what the people want. She goes, well, it's all yours. Well, here's two of them. It is all mine. Here's two of them. All right. We should do one more ad quick, huh?

Okay. Do you want to do it to him? I'll do it. I'll do it to him. I'll do it to him. Today's show is brought to you by The Strength Co. The Strength Co. operates starting strength affiliate gyms out of southern california they have a staff of experienced starting strength coaches that know the best

way to develop strength through the barbell movements grant the owner of the strength co is a marine and he is passionate about obtaining quality american products and labor for all aspects of his business the strength co makes premium made in america barbell equipment including their machine and coated plates also have some mustard on their site too The Strength Co. makes premium, made in America, barbell equipment, including their machined and coated plates. Also have some mustard on their site, too, in case you're... Uncle Harry's. In case you're inclined to go into Flavortown. Their plates are functional, easy to handle, accurate, and made to last a lifetime.

The Strength Co. plates have become the go-to choice for all members at Massanomics Gym. Check out their plates and all their other Made in America equipment online at thestrengthco.com. That's thestrengthco.com. That is barbecue sauce, not mustard, correct? I mean, I think it's barbecue. It's a mustard. Yeah, mustard.

It says barbecue sauce, but yeah, it's a mustard-flavored barbecue sauce. Okay, okay. I guess we're splitting hairs there. Yeah, it's more saucy a little more saucy than your standard mustard saucy sweat i'm getting a pretty bomb collection of sauces in my fridge right now let's i know i'm instead of talking about barbecue sauces i wish you would have talked about 100 bills if you like like. Or like... You know, I've really started to look at... I'm really into gold bars.

I've really started to have an appreciation for gold bars and just gold bars start showing up for us. Different various sizes. Years. Purities. Yeah.

Conditions. I'm really super into those right now. So alloys. Just send us some of yours. I've gotten really into precious metals, really in general, Tanner. It's like... Gemstones. Diamonds. I've gotten really into precious metals, really in general, Tanner. Gemstones.

Diamonds. I'm really into diamonds, especially like large, clear. Just jewelry in general. I'm collecting, selling. Should we try to get our guest on the horn? I think we should. I'm hoping he answers. I'm not guaranteeing anything.

Has he been maintaining radio silence? has he been maintaining radio silence he has been maintaining radio silence but I've got faith in Mike I guess it wouldn't be the first time we couldn't get a hold of someone would it wouldn't be the first sure it won't be the last it's all about batting the averages over here fingers crossed

don't have a high level of confidence right now buddy the elf what's your favorite color you can't trick us big mike we know that's you my plan is to troll you guys this whole podcast well we're going to have a little competition to troll you guys this whole time.

Well, we're going to have a little competition to troll each other harder then. We are excited to have you on, though, Mike. This is Tanner talking, and then Tommy's right here, too. What's up, Mike? Good to talk with you guys. Mike, we like it that you kind of, it's a funny thought to us that you're you know kind of aware of Mastonomics on the internet

and stuff because all we do is silly nonsense and then you're kind of like the opposite you're the super knowledgeable intellectual guy and it's like it's almost opposite don't you think

well I have carefully cultivated a reputation and never had intellectual guy. And it's almost opposite, don't you think? Well, I have carefully cultivated a reputation and never had any fun. Is that right? It's taken a lifetime to ensure that that's the case. I know. One podcast, that's ruined. That's okay. Would you say that that's

a common misconception? That people... That you're more fun than what people might give you credit for? Would you say that that's a common misconception that people, that you're more fun than what people might give you credit for? I don't know about fun. But so Liz used to be surprised at how much I swear. So somehow I've cultivated this reputation of being really straight-laced and polite all the time, which, I mean, hey, politeness is nice. But I don't know.

Sometimes you just got to use the F word. You could almost put that on a shirt. Politeness is nice. You know, just one of those really obvious say shirt. Politeness is nice. Just one of those really obvious sayings. Politeness is nice. RTS. Profound shirt's on there, right? Mike, I made up a joke earlier today, and I wanted to try it out on you.

What does a pirate call a physical education program in school? Oh, I don't know. R-P-E. Dang, Tanner, coming through with the bangers over here. How do you think it played? Hey, I should have seen that coming. Yeah. hangers over here how do you think it played hey i should have seen that coming so rpe uh rate of perceived exertion is that the correct uh um art what what would you are you the godfather of rpe and powerlifting? So they tell me. I guess I was probably the first one to use it in the way that we commonly think of it now.

I mean, I think people use kind of versions of it, less formalized versions of it before. You know, like the idea of leaving a rep in the tank is not, you know, is not new. It's definitely not something that I came up with. I think the idea of, you know, that being a gradient is, at least to my knowledge, something that I came up with. I didn't personally hear about people I didn't personally hear about people using kind of a reps and reserve model to regulate training loads before I started talking about it, which would have been like 2005 or something like that. Do you get like a royalty then every time someone says RPE on Instagram or uses it in a program that's not yours? Actually, they're all mine. So if you use RPE in a program, then it's mine. And the athlete who's using it is my athlete too.

So I coach everyone. Well, you say coach everyone, and that seems kind of true now at this point. RPE is very widely used now. It's kind of crazy it's it almost feels more unusual to see someone not using rpe in some way than it does to see them using it yeah yeah i would agree with that is is there a difference in what is the difference um between rPE and reps and reserve. To you, what's the difference there? So in most normal cases that you've encountered in powerlifting, there's not much of a difference. But there's a few edge cases,

and then especially if you go outside of repetition-based barbell stuff, then the differences are more noticeable. So clearly, if you're doing a farmer's walk, there's no such thing as a rep in reserve. You know, uh, if you're doing, uh, weightlifting, um, the concept of reps in reserve doesn't make a lot of sense. Um, so like those are things that we're only familiar with, but even in more of a powerlifting, bodybuilding sense, if you're doing multiple sets with short rest intervals, to me, it starts to break down a little bit. Like the reps and reserve matching up with RPE quite the same way doesn't make as much sense. So imagine that you've got like 80% on the bar and you're doing triples with short rest

intervals. So for most people, everybody's a little different on 80% stuff, but for most people, 80% triples is going to be like your first set's going to be like five reps in reserve or something like that um so really low rpe but as the sets go go on um you may not feel like the rpe goes up that much but you know that fatigue as it sets in like your reps in reserve would start to drop and kind of the the parity between you know say a seven rpe and three reps in reserve starts to break down like it can feel like a seven rpe it can the bar speed might read seven rpe but if you were to continue the fatigue just hits really fast you know and so you might actually have like one or two reps so there is a little bit of a breakdown that happens but it's

kind of more on some of these edge cases that's interesting I understand that yeah that does make sense I was not aware of that before to me I always just pictured them almost as the identical thought process but that makes a lot of sense in most normal cases, they're pretty much the same. And I don't know that the difference is so stark that we need to have internet arguments

over which one is better. Hello! We might need to do that. What about, so if we could agree that in the case of power lifting a lot of times those two ideas are comparable but what about people that are continuing to train in uh fashions that don't use rpe or uh maybe some auto regulation principles in them is is that a mistake in your opinion? Yeah, definitely. If there's one thread that runs through my whole coaching career, it's individual differences.

Every time I look, I spot that most people do respond more or less average, but nobody responds entirely average. And those differences matter if we're trying to make an ideal training program. Look, if this just isn't that important to you, then you're probably not listening to the podcast about it. But by all means, just do whatever you know whatever stock non-auto-regulated program like it just doesn't matter at that point but if this is something that you care about then conceivably you want the most return on your effort and at that point i think it's worth putting the effort into an all regulated program.

Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Um, when, when you first, like when did you first, uh, learn about or start utilizing RPE either for yourself personally or, or when you were coaching someone and when you did come across it or start, did you know right away that immediately like, Oh, this is, this makes total sense. Everyone should be utilizing this. Or was it a progression of you learning that throughout your own lifting career? It was kind of a light bulb moment for me.

Like this would have been 2005 or so. I was coaching my air force Academy team. So I don't know, I had a dozen or so lifters that I was coaching at the time. I was all in person. And I mean, I was obsessed with training stuff. I mean, I still am, but you know, that's all I could focus my attention on was like reading everything I could get my hands on, you know,'s all all i could focus my attention i was like reading everything i get my hands on you know reading from lifters and reading you know the books that you know everybody recommended that you read right so i remember hearing lifters talk about like leaving a rep in the tank and you know this was kind of a landmark concept oddly enough i think people were familiar enough with it

uh like for the competition lifts but in particular like with assistance exercises with your bodybuilding work and stuff like that like hey guys you don't actually have to take every set to absolute failure like oh really and what a crazy idea yeah and so like this was like they were talking about it like hey leave a rep in the tank and you know it's not that much different to your training volume but your recovery will be a lot better and so on so i've been reading some kind of conversations online about that idea. And this was also in the era when, whenever you would ask somebody,

Hey, what books should I read about? If I want to learn about powerlifting training, everybody would say, Oh, you got to read super training. So when you say, when we're saying like 2005,

where are you, where are you asking online? Let's see. What was big in the powerlifting world then? Gosh. Well, Elite FTS was a big one. They were one of the ones who would like talk about training and, and like be open about it in terms of seeking out the answer.

I mean, they have their perspective, you know, the suppositions that they're starting from, but everything else, well, not maybe not everything else, but much of the rest of the stuff that i was encountering was like here's the workout of the month in powerlifting usa there just wasn't a whole lot of conversation about the theory you know so um louis articles in powerlifting usa and elite fts and gosh gosh there were some other places I guess T Nation was big back then

I'm sure there was other stuff as well, Dr. Scott's forums I've never heard of that one Is that Fred Hatfield? Are you serious? Well I don't know if it's like his forum or if it's just,

uh, uh, well, you know, no. Okay. Look, man,

I'm, I'm not attached at this point. Like, I don't, I don't know what's reasonable and what's not, but yeah, Fred Hatfield ran, uh,

dr. Squat.com. No, I don't even know about the website. I've never heard of that. I've never even heard anyone talk about that before. about that before no man it was it was awesome there were tons of smart people who uh who were there too and um you know the man himself was there and you could ask him questions yeah you know i remember i remember picking his brain several times, which is pretty cool.

And then, so this goes even further back, I think. Super Training used to have an email list. Do you guys even know what an email list is? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we do have to have those ourselves. We got one of our own here. No, no, no. I don't mean like the email list where somebody sends like a broadcast to an untold group of people. I mean,

this was like the ones where you can see everyone on the list. Oh yeah. You would, you would have like these ongoing conversations. Oh, no, I can not say I've ever been a part of that. Yeah.

That concept sounds really scary now. Yeah. I like it. It's not a scalable idea. But there were those things floating around as well. So, yeah, so that's kind of the information environment. Yeah. So, Mike, we've gotten the opportunity to interview a lot of people

and a lot of very intelligent lifters and coaches. You know, we got to talk to you. We've interviewed Greg Knuckles, Bryce Lewis, Chad Wesley Smith, Dave Tate, and, like, the list of coaches and everything would go on, and it's not normal for us, or it's very normal for us to listen to people talk and know they have a superior intelligence. They know a lot more about the subject than we do. Well, Tanner, we don't have to listen to them talk to know that.

We already know that. We already know that. I'm wondering, is there anyone in particular that comes to mind that you've sat and discussed training with and other things and really felt, wow, this person knows a lot more about it than I do. Like, does that come up for you? Yeah, yeah. Dietmar Wolf is like that.

He's one of the people that when I see him doing things that, like, I wouldn't necessarily do, my first thought isn't like that guy doesn't know what he's doing my first thought is like i need to find out why that's like why is this a good idea yeah and there's there's i i haven't found a thing yet where there's you know not something behind it. And, um, see, so he's a good one. Um, lately I've been talking to, uh, Robert Frederick, um, not a lot, but from time to time, and he's a, he's a, um, got some unique ideas in his face, but he's also probably flies under the radar for most people.

Um, we'll see who else is a, is a go-to. he's also probably flies under the radar for most people. We'll see who else is a, is a go-to. Jacob Sipkin is a good friend of mine. He's another one that probably most people don't know. You're naming a lot of names that are new for me that are new for us. I like, look, if there are plenty of smart people right like you know i've uh talked to dave tate since i was like a sophomore in high school you know and uh i've been super fortunate to pick a lot of people's brains on a lot of topics and of the people who you're familiar with who post things online and stuff like that and i guess maybe this just kind of shows my orientation

a little bit that you know okay i know what you're getting at kind of i know like um mike isertel is a good example yeah like i think he's got a lot of really interesting stuff to say and he says it. And if you're like, I wonder what Mike Izzardel thinks about training, you can find that answer. There are lots of smart people who aren't quite so present online.

And I enjoy picking those brains too. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Because the ones that are coming to us, you know, Mike Rizzotel,

you say that name, of course we know it and know a lot of what he does and he's up to because he's present online heavily. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that's good too, right? Yeah. I mean, man, like,

where do you want to narrow the conversation to, you know, like if we want to talk about like competition strategy and attempt selection and stuff like that, Matt Gary is a huge influence on me. And, you know, something else that we do, I'm fortunate at this point in my career that we've got a team of coaches that all work for RTS. And each week we have a tactics meeting where we get together and talk about problem cases that we've got. You know, hey, I've got a client and I just can't quite figure out this problem. And so we put our heads together and kind of put experience together and try to collectively come up with stuff. We talk about things that we're each reading as well. And that has been really useful for, you know, really for the ongoing development of everybody.

Yeah, I'm sure, especially with all that much, that, all that experience in the room at the same time. Um, yeah, I mean, that's, that's something that's, well, I mean, that's why we're having the conversation, right? Like we know that kind of continuing to, to try to get better is important. So finding some places to seek that out. Yeah. Right.

To change gears a little bit is to share the correct pronunciation of your last name. Yeah. So, okay. Yeah. We need to talk about it. How often do you come across someone that has their last name spelled the same as you?

The same, not very often. Although where you guys are at, I think it's more common well i went to north dakota yeah i i had i knew people in high school that their name was spelt the exact same as yours but they they said it tushar tushar tushar yep that is how they said it interesting yeah and i'm familiar with some that have the same name, but just they dropped the last E-R. That extra one.

Yeah, the second E-R doesn't exist. So I want to talk about it. Your name has five consonants in a row. That seems abnormal. You just got to break it into different syllables. I don't think so. I think that's oversimplifying it, though. It doesn't feel like that.

Also, the double E-R at the end throws me off. Yeah, yeah, well, good. How often do people get, you know, growing up like, I don't know what. Where did you grow up, even? Yeah. I grew up in Indiana. Okay. Let me beat you to it because I think.

Yeah. Yeah. So growing up, you know, I would run into people, you know, occasionally, you know, I spell my name. How do you spell that in a cell phone? And they look at it and go, oh my God, how long did that take do you spell that in a spell form? Oh my God. How long did that take you to learn that in school? I'm like, not very long.

It's 11 letters. You can do this. I was 13 by the time I could spell my name. Thank goodness. I know how to spell yours now just from us preparing for this podcast talking about it I actually and I won't forget it now either I think I've got it got it down down pat

and I think that's probably more than a lot of people can say yeah I mean it's one of those things like I try to get people's names right but at the same time it's like man if i was going to get upset every time somebody got my name wrong well that's why it's easier just to call you big

mike yeah uh my tea it goes a long way as well you know whatever works yes uh you just got us apl nationals just got over i assume you were coaching some people there. Yeah, yeah, it was a really good trip. What do you think is harder to do? It's weird, like the answer to this seems obvious, and maybe it is the obvious answer, but I think there's some nuance to it. What's easier to win, USAPL Nationals or IPF Worlds?

Generally speaking, if you could generalize it. What's easier to win? USAPL Nationals or IPF Worlds? Generally speaking, if you could generalize this. I have to stand by IPF Worlds. Okay. And to me, that's probably the obvious answer, but I wonder if you looked at it that way or not. So, just a little

additional context. There is kind of this segment of American lifters who likes to say that winning U.S. nationals is more difficult than winning IPF Worlds. Strictly by the numbers, there's a few weight classes that are like that, but I don't think that represents the totality of everything. And then also, I think if we're going to talk about competitiveness, we can't just look at the number one position, not even the number one and number two. You know, you have to assess the competitiveness of the entire field. And, I mean, there are definitely some battles that happen at U.S. Nationals, and some of them are, you know, comparable to what you would see at an IPF World stage. And there's a battle. And even if it's not like first to second, it's like a battle between third, fourth and fifth to see who can get on the podium. And it's like, well, if she pulls her last deadlift, then she wins a podium spot. And if she misses, lifting that's going on there, and I think on the whole, you just can't beat it.

There's some additional hoops to jump through, too, like with travel. That's an easy one to discount. It's easy to be like, oh, well, people have to travel to nationals, or people have to travel. What do you do? But until you experience it i don't quite know how to describe it you know the people often see pretty significant performance differences going that far whether it's time zone related or uh the strictness of the judging and stuff like that i mean it's just different yeah i guess you can't kind of convince me. I was on the fence.

I had heard some arguments the other way and I kind of agree with you now, I think. Yeah. I believe that just the travel alone. I think you're right. Like if you've ever been on any long flights where you are changing a lot of time, time zones, Oh, your world feels different in a hurry. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any lifter or lifters in particular that you haven't coached that you would really love the opportunity to coach or if you think if you were able to coach him you could really take him to another level that's a that's a tough question you know like

well maybe you could take off the last part of it where i say that you that's a tough question. You know, like, you're getting in trouble with that question. Well, maybe you could take off the last part of it where I say that you feel like you need to get to the next level. If there's just anyone that you think, uh, would be fun, would be really fun to coach. And we'll just assume you also mean that second part.

Oh man. No, I mean, after all that buildup, I mean, great answers. You know like i really enjoy coaching high caliber lifters of course but you know even even lifters that are you know competitive at you know a national or regional level, things like that,

taking monsters to Masters World Championships. I think it's just fun. The competitive aspect of it is fun. After such a long year there, every podcast you have to talk about how long last year was, so I got that reference worked in there for you guys. With everything going on.

Yeah, with everything going on, that's the key. Right, yeah. So we'll just say it without saying it, right? Yes. In seriousness, going to Nationals last weekend, I was like, like oh man i remember how fun the sport side of this is you know it's like for a year we didn't really get to indulge that but

you know now hopefully it's starting to come back and more and more places will start to come back you know fingers crossed and uh i mean it's just it's fun to look at it that way you know to yeah you know to to try to uh place higher than you thought you would uh uh you know indulge in a little strategy and when it comes time for deadlifts and things like that. I mean, that's something that is not present, you know, in your day-to-day training life. Yeah, we just talked to Bryce Lewis a couple weeks ago, and we got to dive into that, you know, that attempt selection talk, like especially at like the national stage,

and really he kind of said the same thing, just how exciting and the different levels that are involved in it when you're competing at somewhere like Raw Nationals. Yeah, yeah. It really does make it feel more like a sport. Yeah. Which is nice. Right.

Yeah, that's kind of the same thing we said then too. Yeah, having a guy that can do some numbers actually matters now. Yeah, it actually matters. That crunch of numbers. Well, I'll tell you, if you don't mind, I'll tell you a quick story about Nationals. We would love a story about Nationals. Yeah, so I was coaching Ryan Stills, who's an M1 in the 120s. And Dennis Cornelius is also an M1, but he's not intending to go to Masters Worlds.

So Ryan expected that he would total enough to earn that spot. And he should total enough to do that fairly easily. We're thinking all of his openers should be more than enough to get that spot. And he should total enough to do that fairly easily. You know, we're thinking like all of his openers should be more than enough to get him qualified. So training had gone well. He was set up for some personal bests. He makes his first two squats, but then on the third squat,

he feels something pop in his leg and I miss it. Feels like he may have torn a quad like high up near his hip or maybe an IT band, something along those lines. So now all the careful planning that we've done before this goes out the window. careful planning that we've done before this goes out the window you know so it was neat to me on one hand it was neat to me to see like how quickly we were able to adjust and kind of build a plan on the fly so you know before it's time to bench, well, how much can you bench without leg drive? I was able to, since he kept his training log on our website, I was able to look that up and, you know, okay, so I've got a decent target for building his warm-ups and trying to time his warm-ups appropriately and everything. So we get out there and he makes three benches. They were conservative. Again, he has no leg drive but uh it was good it

was it was the right number for him to put on the bar considering the circumstances you know and then deadlift is kind of this moment of truth right like man uh porn quad or whatever it is is is it going to cooperate enough with us to deadlift how much can you deadlift no idea so we just start warming up just start pulling things and generally see how things how things are going and if you're not familiar with like how competitions work at least at that level you would normally have all your warm-ups written down and you know where you're opening in your flight and you would time it. You time all your warmups so that you get into the flow of the competition. You have a normal amount of rest so that you're warmed up, but also rested

and you're kind of in the zone in terms of the competition pacing. Well, we have none of that because we have no idea how many warm-ups he's going to take or if he's going to be able to pull at all or what his opener should be. So we're just kind of feeling it out as we go. And he was able to pull 220 kilos in the warm-up room. And I said, okay, so far it hasn't gotten any worse as the load has gone up. So we went ahead and put in 240 for his opening deadlift. And we said, okay, I think we can do at least that.

And he needed 290 to earn his national team spot and we found out what was totaled in the earlier session and everything so we knew what we needed to do we needed 290 so he goes out for his opener and lifts it and it's fine again it hurts but it's not getting any worse uh so then we call for 290 on a second, and he pulls that as well. Pretty much the same. You know, it looks like it's okay. It hurts, but not getting any worse. Now, at this point, I thought, all right, we've accomplished our goal.

He's, you know, earned his team spot. We're going to hang it up. You know, and I'm kind of congratulating him a little bit and after he comes off after that second poll and he says what do you think we ought to do for a third i'm like third why would we take the third deadlift right now and and he's like well why not you know i'm here i'm doing fine It's been, it's been forever since I've competed, not deadlifted 700 pounds. So we went ahead and called for it and put it on the bar. And then he went out for his third and he pulled that too.

And talking to him afterwards was illuminated because, you know, I'm asking him like, why did why did why did we do that essentially and uh he says you know look i don't know you never know when that might be your last attempt what if that's your last headless attempt and you let it time out you know like hey i'm. I'm holding together all right. Let's give it a shot. Now, I tell that story, and there's a number of different caveats that you have to put in place before that joke's close. No, I just heard you go for everything on the third no matter what. I know, right? It's not getting any worse with Lode.

It's not an injury that's directly, I mean, look, it's a quad, but he's stiff-legged and he's deadlifts. He's not really putting it under a lot of strain. We're also talking about a master's lifter. You know, I think my calculus would have been a little bit different if, you know, he was 25 or something. Right. But I have to respect the attitude, though, you know he was 25 or something right but i have to respect the attitude though you know and i was

telling him that like that gets the juices flowing a little bit just old school blood and guts power lifting put it on the bar and let me lift it you know so there's there's a time to be smart and make the smart moves and that's most of the time but sometimes you've just got to have a little dumb meathead and just lift weights so yeah that's my story about nationals and that's why you choose rts for all your powerlifting coaching needs we've got this little game we like to play with everyone we have on the show it's overrated, underrated and we have a special set of Mike T topics, special handshakes for you, the most important

thing to remember is you can't ride the line, you have to end up with either an overrated or underrated at the end of the question, but you do have your druthers to elaborate as little or as much as you would like. Are you ready to play? I'm ready. All right. Topic number one, overrated or underrated, the F-16 fighter. Ooh, underrated.

Ooh, underrated. How did you pick that? What is that? Do you guys have a team of researchers or something? We do. The team consists of Tanner and Tommy. And all of our interns. Yes, and all of our on-campus interns. And we did a little digging.

He's got lift shorts money. Yes, we have to put it to you somehow. It's just, otherwise just sitting here. So you do have an opinion on the F-16 fighter, though? Yeah, man, that's a badass fighter jet. So when we lived in Aviano, they flew F-16s out of that base, and

I don't know, man, it's just fun watching fighter jets. I don't get tired of it. I would try to find reasons to be on base when they would be taken off or landing, and I don't know, it's just awesome.

Is the F-16 the most popular jet ever? I have not a clue. Like what's a more popular, like to me that's, if you said name one, I'd say F-16. And then I'd say, name a second. I'd say, I don't have a second. Okay. Could you pick it out of a lineup though? It's the one that looks like the fighter jet

not on a lineup of fighters i guess i should say it's not a b-52 i know that much but well you are from south dakota so you would know that's 52 yes has your air force uh time made you familiar with elf uhworth Air Force Base at all? Have you ever been there? I've never been there. What'd they just get the contract for? What's the new contract for the new plane out there?

I don't know. It's supposed to be like 20,000 people moving there or something. It's supposed to be crazy. I would think Mike should know out of the three of us. I saw it on the news last week, but I wasn't paying close enough attention. I didn't see F-16, so I quit paying attention, you know? Yeah. Okay.

If you thought that was a doozy, just wait until we get to some of these others. Okay. Next one, though, a little bit back to normal a little bit. Overrated or underrated front squats? Definitely underrated. And I'll fight folks on that one. We see you doing them quite often and consistently over a long period of time, it seems like. Yeah.

So for me, it's a way to work around injury. Well, it started out as a way to work around injury and then has become an obsession. Like what injury would you be working around with front squats? So long story short, I had a pain in my hip that turned out to respond mostly to like shearing loads. So think of anything that puts you in a forward lane position. So low bar back squats, deadlifts,ifts good mornings stuff like that would irritate it but i seem to

be able to handle compression just fine so the front squat you have to stay very upright or else you drop the bar so front squats i could do as much as heavy as i wanted and it didn't bother anything that makes sense yeah how about How about a subcategory? How about utilizing the straps on the barbell for front squats? Yeah, that one's, that one's, uh, I think mileage tends to vary a little bit. Some people get something out of it and some people just find it really awkward. But, um, I mean, for me, I had tried it a few times before.

It was a matter of having the right straps. So I needed something that would grip the bar and not slide around too much. So I had a pair of old Iron Mind straps. Those didn't work so well. But when I used the Daisyisy chains those were great okay you know so if you get something that's like super broken in that might help you a little bit more um yeah i think i find myself um i would think of it like I have a better understanding of front squats now than I used to. I used to not program them very much. And I still can see where people don't see the utility because it's a different movement.

You would think like front squat, it should be pretty much like any other squat. But the mechanics of it are different. And it takes a little while to get proficient in a front squat. But once you're proficient, I find that it's a really good way to train back muscles without beating you up. You know, there's definitely some leg stimulus that's coming into play, too. But I've had more correlation between front squats and deadlifts than I have between front squats and back squats. So lots of times if I've got a lifter who can't tolerate frequent deadlifting, I'll have them do front squats. Because we end up training a lot of the same muscles in a lot of the same ways, but it doesn't beat them up as much.

Good. Overrated or underrated 3d printers oh definitely underrated definitely underrated like people think like 3d printers are like you know three thousand dollars or something like that no the the very first one that i bought was three hundred dollars and yeah i mean they're way more accessible than you think and you might think i don't know anything about engineering there's a website called thingiverse and it's it's like a um i don't even know what the analogy to make but it's a search engine for uh 3d models so you can search for a stand for your iphone and it'll there's thousands of them on there you find the one that you want and you download it for free and you send it to your 3d printer and your 3d printer makes it and now you have something where there used to be nothing that's pretty amazing that is pretty

cool yeah like i mean i was making when i first got it uh my wife was the one who initially was kind of advocating and i was like what are we going to use this for and she's like well you know keeping up with technology it's in all the schools now so it's good for the kids okay all right and we get it and you know at first i'm like well i guess i'll can make a toy for the kids or something but the it's like a smartphone in that it has all these capabilities and the more you use it the more uses you see for it you know i mean there mean, there's a free CAD program. See, I'm going to go on and on about 3D printers. But

there's a free CAD program called Tinkercad. And I think it's like for school children, but I use it. Like, you just drag shapes and you can put shapes together, and, you know, you can take it kind of as far as you want, but, you know, like, at the point where you

start thinking, like, you know, it would be nice if I had a little plastic thingamajig to, to hold this in place, or to, you know, keep that, you know, from falling down down or anything like that, then it really kind of changes your perspective on some of this stuff. Yeah. It kind of reminds me when you said you just went on and just download this phone holder. Like back in the day, I remember on movie previews to show anti-priv anti privacy there'd be someone like

downloading a movie and then the comparison they'd make is you wouldn't download a car like to show you shouldn't do it with 3D printing maybe I would download a car I mean I've downloaded toy cars does that count that's right

prove them wrong it is pretty cool man I have to say Boy cars, does that count? There you go. That's right. That's busted. Prove them wrong. Yeah, right. Okay. It is pretty cool, man. Yeah. I think so. I think we agree with that.

Yeah. Last topic, and a lot of times, Mike, we like to, when we can, we incorporate something food-related into overrated, underrated, and talking about a research team. We put them to the test to do a full research across your Instagram, and we could find one post where you had something food-related. First question, do you have any clue what food that would be that we could find on your Instagram? I think so. Okay, what is it? It would have to be some kind of meat steak.

Well, I guess we missed that then. And I'll even say this. This was the very first food thing you ever posted on Instagram. Very first food thing. I don't think you'll... I have to assume you're not going to know it. Overrated or underrated? Peanut brittle.

Peanut brittle. Peanut brittle? I don't know what you're talking about. Underrated. I've got to go with underrated. Candy in general. You might think, hey, candy is already a little popular. Peanut brittle is kind of in that in-between zone, right? Yeah, that's right.

I mean, you could have it for meals. Like, you could eat it for breakfast and it wouldn't be that weird. Peanut brittle's that kind of candy where you go to, like, your great-grandmother's house when you're little and she tells you it's candy and you're like, this is not candy. This is nuts. It's like when you're trick-or-treating to give you pennies, and it's kind of like, well, I guess it's better than nothing. I also don't know that peanut brittle is rated all that high. Doesn't have much of a rating to overcome.

Yeah, there you go, right? Okay. I would file it under candy. It seems a rating to overcome. Yeah, there you go, right? Okay. I would file it under candy. It seems like candy to me. Yeah. And I would also say all candy is under rating. Well, but if we think of like candy as like a gradient, like RPE, like it's definitely on. It's an RPE one.

Like compared to, compared to let's say sour Skittles. Like a nine. It's on a different end of that scale. That is true. I think it's best whenever in doubt to refer everything back to an RPE scale. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There have been lots.

The applications are endless. Going through life, do you catch yourself thinking in terms of RPE? Like, say, you just got done going to the bathroom. You've been plugged up for a bit, and you're like, that was a 10. For me, not as much as other people. But other people do this and then message me about it. Here's the video, Mike Mike what do you rate this that was the last topic

and good news you passed overrated underrated so I have one last question for you I'm doing my this weekend I'm competing in a powerlifting meet. It's the first. Are you asking Mike for your attempt selections right now? No, not that, not that, but close.

This is my first meet that I've competed in and probably like four years or somewhere in that neighborhood. So it's been a long time. Without you knowing, without you knowing almost anything about me and nothing about my training or strength levels or anything like that, could you please give me one piece of advice that will help me in this meet and preferably something that will help add like 50 pounds to my total? It's a simple ask. Yeah, that's a simple ask. Yeah, that's true.

Gosh. I guess it would just be to have a plan that includes good timing for your warm-ups. Okay. That's something that, like you said, I know almost nothing about. Yeah, yeah. Something that I see that supplies the number of people getting wrong at lots of different levels is just really not getting that right. Just winging it or, um, anything like that. So what way do you feel like people get it wrong? Are they, are they going too early or are they waiting too late for warmups?

I think usually waiting too late and having your warmups be rushed is more of an issue. Um, I feel like i've experienced things like yes yeah i mean people think like oh well you know in the gym i warm up it takes me 10 minutes you know i can i'll wait until the other flight is you know doing their second or third attempts and i'll get started well it's going to be hard to find a rack it's going to be hard to find a rack. It's going to be hard to get the right weight loaded and everything is going to take longer and usually you're not warming up for a one RN. Give yourself more time than you think you need. That's perfect. I'll let you know if it panned out for me

or not. Great. Mike, I think that's kind of a lot of what we wanted to me or not. Yeah. All right. Great. Mike, I think that's kind of a lot of what we wanted to talk to you about today. I know people can find you on your Instagram, I'm sure, of course, or what's the RTS website if people want to get a hold of you and find out more about coaching. It's reactivetrainingsystems.com. And I'll just throw out there something that we have on the website is a free training log application.

So anybody can get on there and log their training for free. And we've got a lot of tools built into it that are specifically designed to help you put the right weight on the bar and lift it the right number of times, which is all any training program aspires to do. Very cool. I like that. Probably a good idea not including your last name in the website. Good for domain availability, bad for spelling. Excellent. Well, thanks, Mike. We really appreciate having you on on this was a lot of fun yeah thanks mike yeah it's good to be with you guys thanks all right we appreciate it see ya bye hit him with the double cool beans with the double cool beans uh big mike big mike t that was fun that was good that was really fun i

think we threw him for a loop with the f-16 really got him going on that one oh i meant to tell him he's free to use my pirate joke and he's like oh you have to send him a message afterwards like yeah i i don't want you to feel awkward asking so i'm just gonna extend the olive branch uh what did you think of that joke that was pretty good i made that up today i was thinking of things we're going to talk about yep that's good are you sure this wasn't like an elaborate ploy to tell him that joke after years you thought of it years ago and you've just been scheming to get it in front of him like how can i finally use this joke that fits into nothing else ever? Yeah. I also did really like being polite is nice.

Yeah. I feel like that could be a Mike T shirt. Being polite is nice. You should almost make that as a mock up meme. I find that very relatable in this part of the country. Yes. Yes. Truth. Tommy, we did have one more piece of

the sack we do too the sack keeps rolling that keeps rolling uh before i do that i think i'll uh read our one final ad for today just because i fear forgetting it at this point i do not want to do that today's episode was brought to you by fusion sports performance supplements tommy do you know what's in your supplements oh yeah yeah if you by fusion sports performance supplements tommy do you know what's in your supplements oh yeah yeah if you use fusion sport performance you always will fusion sp prides itself on being fully transparent never using proprietary blends and always providing its customers with top quality products biggest thing to remember here on fusion sports performance supplements is they still have the 30% off going everything on the site.

If you use our discount code, the code is mass M a S S and all caps, and that'll save you an enormous 30, not 20% Tommy, 30% off everything in your order. Uh, they also have a 30, 30 day money back guarantee. Um, they have 30 is kind of the number here tanner yeah 30 that's really like uh and just for people so didn't break out the calculators if you spend 100 that would mean you would get 30 that'd be 70 total that's i'd like to see mike to sheer do that kind of math on the fly old smarty pants over there yeah it's 30 off just like that that would be an rpe3 it would be 30 off just like that. That would be an RPE3. It would be. 30% off.

But really, that's like an RPE10 discount code. I think getting 30% off is like an RPE9 discount code, I would call it. I would too. That's a pretty strong discount code. But we did want to get back to our sack and very cool. I think what's in here is going to be very cool you're really getting me quite quite curious right now tanner especially because the sack is such a large box all the way from guess the country tommy oh okay uh can i get uh what our neighbors to the south oh south yes canada oh i forget i forget that yeah yes there is a okay so i don't know what's in here oh you don't either this is unwrapped i mean i i i know who

it's from because i did read this card here and maybe uh you want to read this card okay i always like reading the cards yes dearest tanner Tanner and Tommy, with COVID restrictions easing up, entertaining guests may be back on the table. You will now no doubt be the talk of western northeast South Dakota with these. Please enjoy. P.S. I could not risk sending mystery cans due to the extreme heat. Hopefully this fall we can do a Canadian can. P.S.S.

Is it P.S.S. or P.P.S.? What's the proper term there post post script okay not post script script okay well maybe it's different in canada though uh you will also flush the opposite you will understand they go up out of the water it goes up they go into their butts in can. You will understand why they are labeled for each of you after you open them and hold them up to the camera. What? And did it say who it's from?

I mean... No, I'm... Kyle? Yeah, it's from Big Kyle. Big Kyle Hendricks, our MathSomics athlete and longtime MathSomics supporter. This is starting to feel like Christmas because these are wrapped and our

names on it. And just a little detective work. I know what Kyle does. He does really cool woodworking stuff. He's an Arbor. Yes. And I feel like this is going to be really cool. He didn't grow it.

I've really been wanting to know what's in this. And, uh, how excited about it? Uh, it's less than a week. Okay. But I just,

you know, like, damn it. I want to to see are we doing this yeah we're this is like christmas right here christmas in june wow look at that massonomics and yeah but why did he say you'll know which one is for? Wait a minute. Wait a minute. It's, oh, because it would go right here. Right? Right. Right.

But what is that? Well, does this fit there? Oh. Oh. Wow. Just the tip. That's why this one is for me and that one's for you because it has it on our inside. This thing's really cool.

Yeah. So this is our new work table. So this is really cool. Okay, so this has been terrible audio. Okay, so we have these really really well finished boards i don't do we know what these are made out of tanner what type of wood this is uh it is for sure wood definitely a wood that came from a tree of some kind you know kyle i'm gonna tell you you need to start telling us that because you know we don't know the kinds of woods like you do yeah so it's finished very nicely the massonomics logo is that's killer

okay i i cannot in my brain get the difference between debossed and embossed you could just say this is laser etched yeah that's what i would um yeah we got the massonomics m laser etched in the lower corner of this thing and then in the upper corner for me it's the upper right corner because that's on the screen the center of the screen and for tanner it's in the upper left hand corner a little can holder for our cans have you ever had like something with this like uh that like kind of holds your can like that no not on the bottom part you're saying right yeah no i haven't it's like just a step up from it being loose like right it's there it's like yeah you can't go wild like you could shake it around it's not gonna move yeah yeah and so what we're talking about

is you know they must do that in canada yeah and all cans they have that bottom kind of lip of the aluminum before it gets to the wide part just that bottom little part that bottom taper is all that fits in here and look at this oh and this table you can put phones barbecue sauces oh it's like a display i can put my it's like my ad is that a man or a table i can't tell it's like i got my phone right here so i can tell if our guest is texting me and saying um i can't do it tonight. This card is holding up right here too. It's just incredible. Oh, man. On top of this, they have that great rich wood smell to them too.

They do. Wow. I guess these have to stay here then, don't they? Well, I'm not one to tell you what to do, Tanner. My wife was hoping this was like... You could also put the barbecue sauce in upside down and then it's really locked in. Well, that's what you do when the barbecue sauce is getting kind of empty ah yeah keep it all uh yep keep it all at the bottom yeah awesome good job kyle kyle you did it man he almost deserves

the cool beans for that one i think almost deserves the double hit him with the double cool beans that is that is pretty cool wow that's really cool so okay i see there's more in this box though tanner uh that's just paper oh it is just paper yeah like these were like separated in there and like a layer of paper i think they were i just they were packed i got them prepared for us i think okay i the logo is etched in did i i'm pretty sure yeah i sent kyle the. Did you send this to him, Tanner? No. You know I always refer people.

I know. Even though I do. We sent the logo. It seems like we're sending the logo off enough on a weekly basis now that I forget who it's even getting it now. So I do get surprised when things have it on it correctly. Really cool. Really cool beans.

What a good sack week again. Great sack week. I'll hold these up again just in case we didn't make it obvious enough for people to mine's on my lap we got going on there but so i guess we could bust this out every week when it's time for what's in the can it's gonna make it tough when we start jumping up and down in excitement though you know like it's a five jd power associates gonna send stuff flying no it's locked into this little spot it cannot fall out of here you could turn this upside down and i'm just realizing i'm still drinking this damn coconut yeah it tastes

bad how far do you finish yours no i have like probably two ounces left i don't think i can finish that's where i'm at too i have just a little bit and it's making me realize that don't want anymore oh that took me that long what is it what is it on the office when it's uh the energy drink that like the guys win the lottery or whatever and the one guy makes an energy drink it's like coconut uh it's like coat penis coconut coconut i don't think i've seen that one yeah so with uh robert california oh yeah at the very end he's drinking it and he goes oh they could have stuck with their original and left the coconut out.

Like saying he liked just the penis flavored one. Yeah. I think that's how it all went. Yeah that's what it was. I'm sure of it. I'm 5% sure of it. There you go. Tanner told us how the entire office series ends.

And then Jim and Pam got married and divorced and stuff. The end. Catch the rest on Peacock. Because now you have to have Peacock to watch The Office. Now you have to have another thing where you click on it. It's like, does this ever come up? You know what I would be excited for sometime in our life?

When I click on whatever streaming thing it is and it's whatever i click on it's there instantly when we get to that point in technology i am gonna love it because we are not there yet you know what i'm talking about yeah like i want to click on something on my smart tv or my roku or whatever is and have it just like you know how on the internet now when you click on something it just comes up like almost right away like uh and like 20 and have it just like, you know how on the internet now when you click on something, it just comes up like almost right away. Like, uh, and like 20 years ago, it's like, Oh gosh, it's going to take a while, you know, it's loading. And now things just kind of come up right away. I want that to happen on smart TVs. Like, like are you saying like you found the thing you want and you click on it and you hit play or like you're typing the thing in and

no, no, just when I click on it, I want it want it to when i hit play i want it to play that fast does yours take a long time so or yeah if i click on uh on all of our like everything's like that uh if i click on netflix sometimes and it's not a long time but sometimes it'll take five seconds or eight seconds to come up i don't know if you're gonna say like 30 seconds i'm like dude there's something wrong with no i want it to be in i don't want know if you're going to say like 30 seconds. I'm like, dude, there's something wrong with your internet. No, I want it to be instant. I don't want it to be. Like you're watching cable. You flip next channel and boom.

Yes, and it's on the next channel. Yeah. That is the one thing. Like we have Hulu. And you don't really channel surf. Because like back in the day, if you were sitting in front of the TV with cable, you can literally go, next channel, next channel. It could be like 12 minutes until you get to something again.

Yeah. And now it's like you have to bring up the channel guide because you just click on it and it goes buffer yeah go and then you look at it nope all right buffer buffer yeah go to like the next page and then there's like a buff or like you're watching something you click home you want to get just all the way back to start and it's like okay it's there like that's how long it is but like that when you're listening there it's like oh did they stop talking it's like no that's just part of that could be on the device too like sometimes like the nicer devices have better like processors so they'll load some of that stuff faster but right yeah no i do don't like none of it is instantaneous right that's what i want that's what uh uh but like the internet

when i use my pc or my mac like it goes yeah i feel like the internet is instant very close to instant i don't sit i don't click on something and go wait wait for it yeah i think that is the difference though between like for sure like smart tvs in my experience most smart tvs are so slow like that's our smart like we we have three different smart TVs. I think we have a couple LGs and maybe a cheaper one. That's like a Vizio or something like that. None of like, they're all slow.

Like, cause they put like the most garbage, like a little computer in them. They're all slow. Like I, I always have to put a Roku on it because I can't take how shitty the built-in ones are. Like it just,

yeah, it's frustrating yeah rant over do check out our new all of our new drop though and our hey i'm wearing a tank top i forgot to wear one of our new things uh yeah i got the high plains on here we got the high plains the grassonomics the varsity t and the 8-bit T, and the 8-Bit Party Time, and the limited edition Air Old Ham flag. And then also we still have a decent selection of tank tops remaining, but those are going to phase out,

and we won't have tank tops again until next year. So get yourself a lift shit tank. There's a few kind of fit kind of fat tanks, almost none. Yeah, very. A lift hard live easy tank. There's some sizes, and then there's some don't curl in me tanks left. So grab yourself some of those. Everything else on our site.

Like us on YouTube. Like us on Facebook. Oh, it's that kind of most of the stuff. I think that's okay. Tommy, where do they find you? You can find me at Tomahawk underscore D.

Find me at Tanner underscore bear. Just make sure to follow massonomics at massonomics. See you.