Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 328: Aaron Horschig of Squat University

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Big Aaron Horschig of Squat University joins us for this one. Is there such thing as perfect squat technique? Can you warm up too much? Most importantly, is Lifter B really better than Lifter A? Find out answers to these questions and much more. Juggernaut AI: juggernautai.app and use code MASSENOMICS to save 10% The Strength Co: https://www.thestrength.co/ Swiss Link: https://www.swisslink.com and use code MASS to save 15% Spud Inc: https://www.spud-inc-straps.com/ Texas Power Bars: https://www.texaspowerbars.com/

You know, thanks for what you do with your podcast 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! Masanomics We are back for episode 328 of the Masanomics podcast the lifting podcast about nothing my name is Tanner and my name is Tommy

Tommy we've got a doozy this week real doozy we're just knocking off these cool special guests one after another last week we talked to big John Hack this week we got to big uh big john hack this week we got big uh dr aaron horsig of squat university so uh it's been quite the roller coaster right yes hasn't it let those good times roll yeah um before we roll too much into those good times i wanted to tell you a little bit about um the strength co and i'm just going to tell you a

little bit all right please Co. Please do. We'll try this. We haven't done this in a while. Grant Brogy was born in the late 80s, nearly two decades after Buddy Caps began lifting. In the late 90s, Grant's brother Jordan bought him the new Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Grant's love for weightlifting began. In 2001, Grant joined the local YMCA and began training with weights.

In 2009, Grant discovered the book Starting Strength, and in 2012, as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps, he began teaching Marines this method. In 2017, Grant opened his first gym in Costa Mesa, California, and the Strength Co. was born. In 2020, during a major iron shortage, Grant sought to bring back quality manufacturing of Olympic barbell plates in America.

His innovation, adaptation, and can-do attitude brought about the greatest plates made in decades. The plates were accurate, anti-fragile, and instantly became the go-to plates of hundreds of lifters at the Massanomics gym. So make sure to check out the Strength Co. plates. Head over to, I don't know, the Strength Co. and get yourself uh i would

get we've talked about it before that the 10 pound plates are some of our favorite but i would get a full set of all the plates that you could get there yeah do them all and then today's episode is also brought to you by spud ink straps and i was going to pick out a particular product to talk about today. Let's go with... I'm going to go with the Pole Sitter Magic Carpet Sled. So this is similar to what they use for the Army Combat, or what the new Army Physical Fitness Test is. This is the one that they use in that. So you could get this very same one that they

use um it's the one they use in the acft testing standards uh so if you're in the army it would be great to buy this to to train with we probably have quite a few of uh uh military listeners out there army listeners and the pole sitter is made to lead the pack with the sleeker and easier to load bumper plate loading pin the pin is reinforced by two added to lead the pack with the sleeker and easier to load bumper plate loading pin. The pin is reinforced by two added support strips. The addition of the loading pin allowed the tie-down strap to be moved to the front of the sled, so the pressure is taken completely off the securing strap. The handle strap is built and eliminates the need for the two-piece of equipment,

like in some some other pulley uh some other sleds are set up so i wish i could show you a picture of it i can't it's a very nice looking sled it's reasonably priced instead yeah i'll just paint i'm trying to paint a word picture on it uh check it out and they also have several other different if this isn't the exact weight sled you want they have several different variations some more portable than others check them out at spud ink decks uh spud dash ink desk straps.com and make sure to order over 75 worth of stuff and that way you get free shipping so you almost can't afford not to do that gots to do it yeah so thank you spud ink and the strength co more to come on the strength co a little later in the show, possibly.

Stay tuned. Yeah, that's a little teaser for what we might have in front of us. So we're getting it started early today, Tanner. Oh, yeah. This isn't our normal broadcast time. No, we're on an afternoon show. The sun is out.

It's a nice July day here in western northeast South Dakota. Weather update. It's nice out. Yep, you know it's a special day, special recording time when over tommy's shoulder here there's sun coming in behind that little crack of window you can see it just hits a little bit different in here you don't get that every day i've been in uh today i've been in minnesota north dakota and south dakota really yeah man kind of did the whole tri-state yep you just state triangle you left you're on just

vacation just sitting in the sun and you came home early just for this podcast it's actually uh craziest thing i went golfing after all this you had to go i did enjoy there was a little there was a lot of uh a lot of comments in the discord regarding you being on a golf course yep yep uh theshields were smashed. And everyone's like, ah, you stinker. You got us. They'd be like, oh, you found the loophole. Oh, another one knows about the loophole. You can just do it with the golf balls.

Nothing we can do here. So, yeah, I got to do a lot of worry-free vandalism, which that was a lot of fun. Can't beat that. I did golf 18 holes. Were you sore sore at all did you actually golf all 18 yeah were you sore at all the next day i wasn't sore until so i i had this thought several times today i kept going i golfed yesterday and today i kept going oh my right elbow feels like i have tendonitis in it and i completely like I completely kept forgetting about why that might be. And the 10th time I bumped it on something,

I was like, oh, wait, it's got to be from golfing. Because I went there on this trip, my elbow didn't hurt at all. You know, it's not something crazy uncommon. You know how you get a little elbow pain from lifting? There's always one of those little nagging things. Yeah, and today I kept being like what did i do like it wasn't bothering me last time i benched at all and then it was literally like the 10th time i thought about it today because i keep forgetting and then you do something and you're like ah that's why is that

annoying and then i was like wait that has to be from golf there's no way that that's not i'd say a hundred percent yeah uh but i kept i wasn't other than that no not not sore at all good uh yeah yeah there's no just that one little tiny pinpoint thing and it's completely minor and we'll just go away in like a day but well that's what you think well this could be with me for 10 years that'd be another favor that golf did for me. The collateral damage of a work golf trip. Yeah. I didn't there. We golfed along a lot of roads. There was a lot of roads,

pretty close. Nobody hit any balls into the roads. Just you're with a skilled group. I guess skilled group of golfers there. That couldn't be true. If that I was there and I managed, it made me appreciate actually, cause it,

this is the last time I golfed since a year ago when I did this event so I forget uh what it's like and now really thinking about that guy's shot that did hit my windshield that is a really bad shot like I just played 18 holes of golf I'm terrible at golf I never play and I didn't hit a single shot that was that bad yeah there is no way like like i mean you would almost have to be standing completely the wrong direction usually if you slice it most people know they slice it so you compensate for it right a certain extent right um not saying it's not possible but usually you know what you're getting into there yeah it did make me realize though that that didn't happen at all like me being as bad at golf as i am and it real like it wouldn't have been a thing like

not there wasn't a single shot i had that that could have happened that far off course and i only lost i did 18 holes of golf this is a pretty tree area i think i only lost four golf balls really and like for me good like i was like hey that is a win uh huh uh i even play golf a little bit and i could very easily do that yeah because i bought a i don't know if it was like five sleeves of three so it's like 15 balls and i was like i very well could use all of these for all gonna need all of these could hit like four in the water on one hole you know potentially it wouldn't be crazy for that to happen so i was most impressed with myself that i only went through like four golf that is pretty good yeah yeah so that was my highlight of my golf game oh yeah um you also got to didn't you did you get

some knowledge imparted on you oh yeah so that's what i wanted to talk to uh talk to everyone about really so have you read the book extreme ownership before you're just aware of it? Yeah, I'm aware of it. I had, I'd gotten the audio book of it and I got about halfway through and I mean, it's more of like a business kind of book and it didn't, I didn't feel like it pertained to me. It's a whole lot about like working in teams and things like that. It's about relationships within a business. Yeah. And for me me especially for half of my job i'm working alone and the other half of my job i'm working with you tanner and yeah i just like uh this it's more so about connect with me larger teams honestly it's not even really about the and i didn't when i listened so i quit i got

like halfway into the book and i quit um there wasn't anything in there that i found like bad or anything i just feel like if i'm listening to a business book this one just at this point in my life doesn't feel super applicable to me so I'll listen to a different one so yeah I did not finish the book yeah so I went through the whole thing and then um we had a had a speaker this weekend that it wasn't Jocko and it wasn't uh Babin the other guy that authors that book, it was someone else that works. It's like Echelon front, I think is their company that Jocko owns. That's like their coaching company. It was one of another Navy SEAL that works for them. I assume. Okay. So he wasn't, yeah, he wasn't, I was curious if that was also a Navy SEAL. And, uh, so he had a lot of

similar stories to what they talk about in the book. And he's really well spoken. Did he say, I want to get it out of the way? Does anyone in here ever served in the armed forces? And you stood up and were like, yes, sir. That, there wasn't a, it was a hand raised scenario. Oh, he did ask though? Yes, yes, yes.

And there was maybe like, there was probably 50 of us there. And I think there was three or four three or four of us that had but we didn't i i liked that it didn't it wasn't it wasn't like a sticky no it wasn't like a big thing that we had to discuss about a lot but um it was uh oh just that is going back to extreme ownership though i just thought it's interesting like because i don't necessarily buy into a lot of the, I don't know, like pre-scripted business environment coaching and stuff like that. Corporate business talk.

Right. Like in some of these seminars even where I'm like. So where you have a whole meeting and everyone's just like shaking their head like, yep, we're not doing any of this. Yes. Yes. Very good. Okay.

Let's get this over with. And that's kind of my feel going into anything like that. Any of it at all. And I guess I would say this was better than, you know, this was above average. Would you say it felt a lot more no nonsense? Yeah, it did. It did. And it's still like, if you're just going to run one of those coaching,

a company like that, that's training businesses and their employees, like you've got to kind of come up with these cat, you know, you've got to have like, you have to have like your marketing things and things have to be branded to you. Otherwise it's like,

well, what do you do? Right. So I get, you have to do that. But I guess if you take some of that with a grain of salt and then like some of it's not too bad i guess what i would say is that i have a pretty i have kind of a negative perception of those things and this was better

than you walked away feeling like you didn't actually waste your time this was better than and also what i liked about the book is the navy seal stories were interesting and that's half the book at least so i'm like at least're going to go back and forth here. You know, how it applies to the business world is just, of course, not as interesting of a story as how, like, what these Navy SEALs did in Iraq. How you led this attack squadron. It's like, all right, but back to that guy

that couldn't get his work done on time. Yeah. Dammit, Jim. At least half the book is actually kind of captivating. A release from reality. Right, right, right. So that's my take on extreme ownership. All right, that's your critical review.

If you want to know more about what extreme ownership actually really means, you'll just have to read the book for yourself. It'll probably be straight from the horse's mouth, right? Yep, yep. But have you ever listened to Jocko's podcast at all? No, but I've heard him like I've heard him on Joe Rogan before. Okay. He's been on there.

Yeah. Okay. Isn't his big thing waking up at like 4 a.m.? Isn't that always? Doesn't he take a picture of his watch every day? Yeah, that is him, right? Yeah. Okay.

I don't know if he still does that or not. I know at the time he was big into that. Yeah, that sounds right. I've never really listened to much to his podcast i maybe caught it here and there on a couple things but i'm not real super familiar outside of this yeah uh charismatic though i think i think the people that like him really like him yeah for sure so that is extreme ownership do i recommend it maybe it's like about as good of a good of a recommendation as you can get around yeah so we have the trick uh drink spotter trick shot videos channel uh contest still going on they're funneling in we're only two and a half days in yep and we've got

quite a few submissions so i think today there's maybe two or three more that popped in so uh we won't go through all of them in detail, but we always just like to give an update on any active contest that it is going on. We have enjoyed a lot of the submissions so far, but we look forward to more. There's still, as we sit here, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, at least four more days that people can get one sent in. There's still plenty of time to get one sent in. If you're listening to this as it comes out, though, go and all those because uh there's going to be a lot to look at and of course the

winner gets to win the uh gold 24 garrett 24 karat gold plated drink spotter and that is real 24 karat gold plating that's not just there's been speculation that is in fact plated with real gold and then runners up will win the caution uh must-keep-drink-spotted-in-this-area-drink-spotter-caution sign, which is also for sale now. We don't have gold drink spotters for sale on the website, but you can go buy that metal caution sign on the website. Can never be too safe. No, safety is never an accident when you place it first.

Or you place your drink in the right spot. And I love gold okay we also we've been talking some about um running a meet yes here but i don't know do we want to talk about that now or maybe we'll talk about that more later too we got here we got about five minutes maybe we should just do uh we should jump into supporting our supporting members yeah let's do that because we got i also have a can here oh well let's do the can um try and decide how i want to do this because this you know we're not going to do a full we've done this one before okay we've done this one before so we won't do a full what's in the can okay but this is a very special can

i'll see if you can remember it if if you can remember this thing oh do you remember this i remember something with a top like this i think you had a blindfold on and this would have been we for sure had these when we recorded in there the other room which was was that a year and a half two years ago probably and this is still from that original like this yeah i've never i've never finished these things so are they good i mean it's water it can't go bad can it but i mean how come you didn't finish them i actually didn't realize they were in the back well we've been my wife has been getting groceries the last few times typically i get groceries and she's had a bad habit of not getting sparkling waters and so

the beverage is getting very cleared out yeah and i'm digging in there and i'm like oh there's that uh like korean uh flavored milk in here yeah we have some hoose juice we have uh a cake flavored ugly water and two of these well these these uh although i don't like this foil top over it's totally excessive isn't it yeah we have a s Pellegrino dark morello cherry and pomegranate. And because it's so fancy, it has to have a foil like yogurt top over the top of the actual can. The foil top doesn't even like come off all that well. No, not very easily. But yeah, it's water, so I can't imagine it goes bad. We'll see if it still has bubbles.

It's just flat oh yeah it's not super bubbly no it's not like lacroix bubbly i think i would have got the cherry of some sort uh yeah yeah i mean i don't know what i gave it the first time yeah but i'd give it three and a half i'd say right around there yeah pretty good kind of tastes like cherry cola so that's never a bad thing i'm still kind of thrown off by the somewhat lack of carbonation i don't know if that's due to the age or that's how the brand actually is but yeah maybe it has maybe it does lose some after a certain point very well could um all right oh you had some yeah supporting our supporting members so number one uh big steven big uh waffle

iron jim he competed in a track meet this week yeah i forget he's done multiple of these right he's done it before and i even said on the discord i was like where do these exist yeah i never knew that you could just go do adult track meets and some people made the comment that they think you can do college track meets if you just like sign up unaffiliated what really yeah big nate said you can what that's a thing that'll let you in i don't know i i i would dare to test that someday i just it seems hard to believe that'd be fun like is there an age limitation well and how many events are ncaa sanctioned with like oh and also this sporting event is open to the public as well doesn't that seem crazy yeah i get track is a little different because you're sort of competing against yourself but big nate linked it in discord so later i'll do my homework and look into that and check and

follow up maybe someday we'll do a collegiate maybe both of us will go do a collegiate track meet as a it's a real test of skill and then uh big carp supporting member he had uh kurt locker who puts out a lot of uh home gym reviews home gym information he had Kurt Locker, who puts out a lot of home gym reviews, home gym information. He had him over for a gym tour of Big Air Carpenters gym. And then coincidentally in the same week, Big Keith of the Discord crew had Glucks Gym over for a gym tour of his gym. So we had two, not one, but two Discord members

getting their gym featured on other YouTube channels in one week. That's exposure there. That is. And then... It must mean the people that like Maths and Amics have very fine tastes in gyms. Fine tastes all around if they like Maths and Amics, I would assume. That's true.

Then last, of course, certainly not least, is is big grant we mentioned there'd be more strength co-talk big grant is getting married uh do you think it's not just big grant big big d and big grant yes together it's a family affair yes uh big grant and yes both supporting members uh are getting married this weekend like to each other they're not both getting married like they are getting married to each other. Yes. Yes. I suppose that's important. They met in the Discord six months ago and they just hit it off ever since. Wouldn't that be funny if they met in the Discord? That's actually not how that story went, but it would be very funny if that was the case.

Like, oh, we both live in Southern California. But we met in the Discord. In the Mastodonics Discord. Well, we did have people meeting up in uh from the netherlands in our discord just true just yesterday yeah they were yeah that's true and there are some pockets of the so they did have a meetup no i think they were saying or they were planning them yeah i think yeah they're planning one but yeah um but there are pockets of people in the discord in certain parts of the country that have a pretty good concentration. Yes. Yes. But big grant, big D, congratulations on your wedding.

I think they get married Saturday or Sunday. So, yeah, we're recording this one. A couple days. Yeah. Congrats, guys. Cheers. We'll drink a couple of sparkling waters from you from South Dakota. Yeah.

We'll put on our finest bolo ties and celebrate from afar. Yes. Bolo ties and cowboy boots. Traditional wedding attire. So so that's our supporting our supporting members segment it's a relatively new segment to the show we do it uh to give back a little bit each week we have these supporting members that support the show financially and you can do that as well if you want to head over to our website and you can uh sign up to become a supporting member as well and then you never. Maybe you'll get on this segment.

You can listen to the podcast live each week when we record. There's a discount code. Join a Discord of very like-minded individuals. Very active like-minded individuals. We do random things. Like we sent out membership cards a couple months ago. And we've got other things planned. So get signed up now so you don't miss out on any of those future.

If you've been waiting to sign up, now's the time. Now is the time. No time like now. That's right. Okay. Should we get our guest on? Let's do it. All right.

Bye, Discord. See you, Discord. Okay. So we should get him on. Did you say we should get him on the old horn i think so okay so we're doing an elaborate prank where we just line this up months in advance to not call him well it's almost happened before but it's not going to happen today. If I can... Here we go. We're getting them on the old horn. Hello?

Hey, Aaron, is that you? Yes, this is Aaron. You are live on the MathSnomics podcast with Tanner and Tommy. What's up, Aaron? Awesome. How are you doing? We're doing great. We're excited to get you on. Do you prefer Aaron, Big Aaron, or Dr. Aaron? Just Aaron's fine.

We usually call everyone Big, so it's a title of honor around here. I gotcha, I gotcha. So we might call you Big Aaron sometimes, too. No worries. I appreciate having you on, guys. Yeah, we're excited. We've been hoping to get to you for a long time and we're pumped that you're taking the time. We've got a whole laundry list of questions to talk to you about. Awesome. I'm pumped to get into it. All right. We honestly do, in your case, we do have a whole big long list of questions. And I think we're just, we're not going to get maybe too much into your origins and stuff like that.

I think people can listen to that, some of that stuff on other podcasts. And I think we just got a list of interesting stuff we want to go through. So we're just going to fire some stuff at you. Let's do it. All right. Um, so when you started squat university, uh, actually I've, I said, we're not going to talk about the origins, but one specific part of that origin, your name. Was there any alternative choices you were considering at the time? Or did you know? I mean, I assume you had an idea what you were going to do, but did you know the name was going to be Squat University? Or did you have other choices in mind?

You know, I really, I probably threw out a couple different ones when I first started. But actually, funny story, Squat University was actually sort of the tentative name of my very first book, The Squat Bible. story, squat university was actually sort of the tentative name of my very first book, the squat Bible. Um, so it was sort of going off of that. I was going to name sort of what I created at social media as also the brand of my first book. And then I sort of switched that up and just kept squat university. So it, it all sort of just stemmed from the idea that the squat was sort of this fundamental human movement that I think we had gotten twisted thought thinking that it was the only the exercise that was the big thing to concentrate on and not

to move well first before you move big weight so it was that idea that the squat was one of those fundamental human movements that was inherently flawed within a lot of people and then when you do reprioritize the squat, it allows so many other different movements and exercises to sort of fall back into a place. So that was sort of where the idea of Squat University came from was not only just the movement, but then also the idea of trying to help educate people in a way that, you know, you could take that information from the ivory tower that so many people try to talk down to others, use a lot of higher level language and things that don't really create a lot of empowerment because it's,

they overcomplicate things, but still try to take that understanding, but give it to the people, I guess, in a way that's easily digestible that they can then take and become empowered, actually make a change in their life. That makes sense. So with what you said with the squat in particular as a movement that maybe some people were – that doing that properly or being able to do that properly can build into other things. So with that in mind, would you say the squat fundamentally as a movement is more important than a deadlift or would that be a bad assumption to make from that? bad assumption to make from that? I mean, I would say this, the squat is a, we got to think about it as a movement before an exercise, because that's the thing a lot of people get twisted in, or just concentrate on the exercise before movement. If we're talking about just movements, then we're going to break the deadlift sort of more so into the hinge, in which case, they're all just important fundamental movements that we should have capable of us as humans.

just important fundamental movements that we should have capable of us as humans. However, I will say as we age, most people maintain the ability to hinge as we sort of pick up anything off the ground in a hinge. However, if you ask 140 to 50-year-olds, hey, perform a full depth movement squat, just sit down as deep as possible, you'll see a lot of people struggle with that. However you tell them, hey, hinge over to pick this box off the ground, you'll see a little bit better competency within the deadlift hinge motion. Now, when we're talking about the exercise, obviously there's a lot of variation that goes on with it because I don't think there's any golden rule that says you have to barbell back squat. You don't have to, you know, straight bar conventional deadlift from there. There's so many different variations, but in which case I would still say, in my opinion, the squat is one of those pillars, just like the deadlift. I don't

think I would exclude it completely from anyone's training program. Yeah, that makes sense. And it actually works out good because squat university just has a much better ring to it than hinge university or straight bar university. It just rolls off a little better. Oh, good. A great coincidence. Oh yeah. So as a physical therapist and what you've done with squat university, you know, your actual clients that you do, have you ever come across any or many issues that someone's personally having that you ever just ended with feeling stumped or felt like there wasn't a resolution for, or there wasn't a way to actually make it better? Does that ever

happen? Oh, for sure. I mean, I'll say this. I mean, every single person that comes to me as a patient has an injury that is a puzzle for some reason. And I'll say a lot of the people that are coming to me now, they've already tried other options. They've gone to other physical therapists, chiros, athletic trainers, doctors. They've tried to do as much as possible, yet it hasn't worked. So that I'm sort of their next or last resort, just because I have people right now that are traveling to me from all over the United States or all over the world sometimes.

So there are those very puzzling cases. In saying that, I also really enjoy puzzles, because it keeps me on my toes. And's, it's interesting. You know, I'm not just seeing grandma with a total knee replacement, in which case the rehab from a physical therapy standpoint, isn't extremely challenging. I mean, it's get the motion back, load the motion, get them more functional. You know what I'm saying? But if someone comes to you and they're like, I've had this back pain for eight years and I've tried three different physical therapists, two different chiropractors. I've had five different cortisone shots. There's a lot that goes into that to try to unpack. Now, I will say I have found with the methods that I have learned from others, and again, I'm a big proponent of trying to acknowledge those that I have learned from, you know, just because I'm only, what's the line? I'm only a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants who have come before me. So I've learned a ton from people like Dr. Stuart McGill, Kelly Starrett, Gray Cook, a lot of those bigger names within the physical therapy or even strength and conditioning field.

field. In saying that, because I've learned so much from these people, I feel like I've gotten to a position where a lot of my patients are able to find good success. But in saying that, there are always going to be people that do leave you sort of puzzled. Sometimes it takes much longer than you would hope to sort of find that solution. Sometimes there's a lot of bumps in the road. I was trying to tell people, when you come to me for an injury, like it's rarely going to be, especially if this is a long time injury, you've dealt with this for four or five years. It's not going to be, all right, here's our intervention. And then you're getting better, better, better, better every single day. Like there are going to be bumps in the road. Every rehab is never going to be 100% perfect. So there are instances where, you know, I'm stumped or we, we change things up or we're changing the presentation

sort of as the person goes and maybe gets back into lifting. And then there have been those cases that, you know, unfortunately we, we do as best as we can. And physical therapy just isn't sometimes the best route for some people based on their injuries. And unfortunately, that's when we know, you know, there are other options and different solutions for people's pain. And sometimes it is something that doesn't include physical therapy. I've seen, you've had several videos with Travis Ortmeier recently, and even some other, you know, what you might consider your more average lifter or your everyday lifter. And it seems like they come to you and they have, especially in the case of Travis, like these pains that have been nagging them,

like you're saying for years. And it looks like you do like two little tests, you adjust one thing and then boom, the pain's gone. Like how common is that for you to have like people that have had these nagging things forever, there's just a few little things you can tweak and you can more or less fix it on the spot, it seems like. I would say it is fairly common within the way in which I approach an evaluation. Now, when someone comes to me with some sort of a complaint, there's different patterns and things that I'm listening for within their words that they're telling me to describe their injury that leads me to the different tests that I perform. And again, if I've seen 500 athletes with anterior hip pain going into the bottom of the squat, there's different patterns of things that you see.

So you sort of know when you're going along to tests, okay, this is what I find with this test. This is usually the exercise that I'm going to give because I know exactly what this test is showing me. It's going to give me the results I'm looking for. So, you know, a lot of the things that I do, I try to tell people, I'm not the smartest physical therapist in the world, But what I understand are principles and patterns of how the body operates under load and sort of what different things we can do to find the right puzzle pieces. And for me, example, I see a lot of strength athletes. So I see a lot of very similar issues. I am not seeing a wide variety of athletics. So you'll find that a number of different injuries within strength athletes sort of fit within different patterns. We see a lot of

flexion intolerant low back issues. We see a lot of instability type issues. So a lot of the things that we're doing, they seem sort of simple or obvious, but you'd be surprised how many practitioners these people have often gone and seen. And that's not the route that they take. But that's also a big reason why I try to show the process to so many people to be like, hey, if this is something that you're experiencing, try this test. What did you find? Try this intervention. And what did you find with the retest? Because the thing that we see a lot of days with our social media is it's like, hey, you have back pain, here's five things to try. And that's not how true rehabilitation from an injury actually works because you have to

individualize a treatment. You can't just throw a bunch of random things at the person and assume that it's going to fix just because it worked for someone else. So it comes down to the evaluation. And sometimes there are certain things that I'll look for that sometimes, you know, with the test retest, the answer isn't always extremely complicated. Sometimes it's fairly straightforward and then it's just being very diligent to maintain what we're doing and then slowly reload the body. being very diligent to maintain what we're doing and then slowly reload the body. Okay. That, that, that makes sense. And you, you mentioned how you work with quite a few different strength athletes. Tommy brought up Travis Ortmeier and, uh, seen you work with other really high level strong men, power lifters, people like Martins or, uh, Julius Maddox, uh,

just a bunch of, you know, what I would consider to be crazy strong individuals. Is there any, um, any particular individual or particular thing you've seen any of them do, uh, with your working them that just really blows your mind, uh, just where showing how they, some of these guys really, or, or women really are kind of, um, you know, the built different, yeah, built different or the, you know, freaks of freaks, uh, you knowaks of freaks in a positive way, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I would say a lot of these really high-level athletes are freaks as far as their abilities. A lot of the strongmen, they're extremely athletic. I mean, to be able to see someone, for example, Martins,

I mean, when he came to me, he was only at a like light 320 pounds. Um, I mean, so he beefs up much more when he's getting closer to world's strongest man. I mean, the guy is extremely, extremely athletic and extremely knowledgeable as well. I mean, these aren't just your run of the mill sort of big, dumb athletes. I mean, they're very educated, mill sort of big dumb athletes. I mean, they're very educated, not only in technique, but, um, you know, how to approach training, um, how to approach their body. They understand the nuances of training and how important technique is because they know that, you know, the smallest differences in their ability to handle big load could be the end of their career, you know, if they're not doing it right. Um, but I mean, things that have blown me away, for example, I work with JP price out in Kansas city,

who's, you know, one of the few people to be able to squat a thousand pounds. And, um, I mean, JP, when I first started working with him, I mean, he was big JP. So he was over 400 pounds before he sat him down. And, um, I had him during our evaluation, just perform a single leg squat. And again, when I'm testing these really big guys, I'm not looking for them to perform a pistol squat. The idea is looking for, is there a big difference in single leg stance, stability side to side, and just your ability to control even a partial single leg squat. And I mean, JP almost busted out a full depth Astrographs pistol squat. And you're just looking at that and you're like, that's a 400 pound man doing a pistol squat.

So there's a lot of things that surprised me as far as those go. I've recently, I say recently, for the past almost two and a half years now, I've been working with Mirabai Chinu from India. Her and her coach and a couple other people fly over from India a couple times a year. And she lifts within the 49 kilo weight class. So very, very light. And she clean and jerked a world record in her weight class, 119 kilos last spring leading up to, or I guess it's been, yeah, last spring. So 2021, the Asian championships, clean and jerked 119 kilos. last spring so 2021 the asian championships clean jerked 119 kilos so it's just crazy sometimes to see the the strength of someone that's you know barely over four feet tall i mean she's she's very

very small yet her strength is so great so it's really really cool and a uh a pleasure to be able to work with people like that you you work on people with, you know, we talked about movement, movement or, you know, movement patterns and optimizing them or improving them, getting them better. And obviously the squat is a big focus here. Is there anyone that you've worked with or that you watch that in your mind has what you would consider particularly perfect squat technique? I mean, that's a good question. I think the thing to understand too is that perfect is going to look different for everyone. And the reason for that is because a high bar is going to look different than a low bar squat.

Someone who has very long femurs relative to their torso is going to look different than a low bar squat. Someone who has very long femurs, relative to their torso, is going to have a very different looking squat than a Chinese athlete like Liu Zhaozhen, who's got a very different torso-to-length relationship and is almost sitting vertically in the bottom of a deep squat. Um, so perfect is going to look a little bit different for everyone, but in that sense, there are a lot of people that I've worked with that just have excellent, excellent mechanics. And a lot of them are the Olympic lifters that I work with. Um, for example, uh, Chad Vaughn, who is my coach programming wise for Olympic weightlifting that I've worked with him for a while, um, has a macula technique. And it's almost someone that like I try to emulate whenever I touch the barbell. So I've done a couple of videos with him where we are coaching other Olympic weightlifters and technique, but fundamentally the squat as well. And one of the things that Chad always preaches

is for an Olympic lifter, so for anyone who's also participating in CrossFit and trying to do a lot of the Olympic lifts, the ability to sit down and just sit ass to grass in a deep pause squat comfortably, almost relaxed within the hips a little bit for a long period of time, 10 seconds, if not more, is a trait, a quality that is extremely beneficial for an Olympic lifter because it shows that they have the capacity and the efficiency to sit down in that very extreme position so that when they do snatches and cleans, they can get into that reception much easier because they own that position better with the squat sort of sets the fundamental foundation for it. And one of the things that Chad will do sometimes is during

different things where he's doing talks, he will sit with maybe 300 pounds or more on his back, and he'll sit down, ass to grass, and just have a conversation down in that position with that much weight on his back. It always blows my mind because it's such a beautiful thing when you see great weight moved with excellent technique. Yeah, I'd be in a tough spot if I had to do that. Yeah.

So we have a couple little, we'll call them games, that we wanted to play with you here today. And one of them, this first one that we'll play, it's kind of an either-or scenario. We want you to pick one or the other. Okay. And this will be a fun format. You'll probably recognize the format in a way.

And I think you'll get a laugh out of this. So, and it'll lead to a couple of follow-up questions kind of about some social media stuff and that sort of thing that you have to deal with with just having as big of an audience as you do at this point. So you pick, we're audience as you do at this point so um you you you pick you i i we're hoping you'll laugh at this this this is fun okay uh you have to pick

one or the other and you have to pick which one of these is um um more impressive more impressive would be the the terminology we'll go with so okay lifter A, he's a scratch golfer, and he squats 500 pounds. Lifter B has bowled a 300 game, and he also squats 500 pounds. Which one is more impressive? I mean, you have to go with lifter B every single time. I mean, hands down, lifter B every single time I mean hands down lifter B always wins so so by default there you're saying the bowler yes okay all right all right another test here lifter A lifter A used to be able to bench 405 in high school uh lifter B shadow boxes between

sets in the commercial gym. Oh, man. See, that's tough because I do see a lot of people that used to say, you know, I'd have to go again. Lifter B every single time. Okay, well, we'll test you on one more then. So Lifter A, read the book Super Training from cover to cover. Lifter B has listened to every minute of the joe rogan experience podcast every episode the funny thing you would say that because i actually have been listening to the joe rogan podcast before this earlier today so i'm gonna have to go with lifter b

okay and the thing about that is you've invested a lot of time when you get through every joe rogan episode yes that is true. That is true. So you weren't kidding. You went Lifter B straight through there. I really did, yeah. I have to say I love the fact that you guys brought that one up because that is probably – the post that you guys are referring to is probably my most enjoyable social media story to tell yeah so for anyone that maybe there's someone listening that's not aware of this but would you what what was the

original post okay so this was this is a couple years ago and for anyone that followed school university every every once in a while usually every day but sometimes i'll mix it up i'll one of my posts will be uh like a tweet that I'm just capturing the post and I throw it up on social media and then we talk about it. So a written meme, I guess you would say. And the message behind the post, actually I'll just say what the post said first off. It was, if I remember correctly, like lifter A squats, 650 pounds, I think is what it was. And there's a little hip shift, a little knee cave in training. And then I said, lifter B squats 500 pounds and it looks immaculate

in training. And I said, both are impressive, but lifter B is more impressive. What are your thoughts? And you would have thought I said, powerlifting is the stupidest sport in the world. Like that's, that's how the internet took it. And there were like, I mean, there were people I had never even heard of that were like making YouTube reviews of it and like having these long discussions and like, what was Aaron saying? But, and I was like, wow. Of any post I had made before, and again, by this time, I've been posting for years things that were saying the exact same thing. But not quite this exact format before. Not that exact type thing. And really, a lot of it spurred, which is really funny, from a conversation I was having with Ed Cohen just prior.

And we were talking about how Ed's like, I would make every single rep look the same. I would make sure that my technique wouldn't break down. Technique's the most important thing. And I was like, yeah, that's interesting because I see a lot of really strong lifters that will, they'll push through a lot of technique issues and training, but they won't really worry about it as much because there's the idea that, oh, it's, I'm, I'm more concerned with how much weight's on the bar. And they sort of set themselves up for the short-sighted approach of lift more weight now, but not care about my technique. And in the, in the description of the post, the big thing of the post, literally the first line was,

I'm not telling any of you guys, these two people, what their one-rep maxes are. I'm only saying that in training, this is what they lifted that day. And one person stayed within their technical capacity and one person didn't. I'm not talking about competition because obviously in competition, the person who lifts the most amount of weight wins. So that's obviously more impressive. I'm clearly talking about in training, which one of these qualities is of the most important factor in its technique over the amount of weight so that when you work your butt off in that aspect, you get better long-term outcomes. But obviously, most people don't read the copies. So it just sort of blew up. And it

was sort of interesting because I just like reading the comments sometimes. And yeah, there was a lot of people that were like, you are the worst thing to ever happen to powerlifting. Some people got it and they're like, oh yeah, I agree. And then other people were like, this is stupid. You're an idiot. So it was a fun day on social media, needless to say. Yeah. It's one of those things. I remember when the post came out and like not really thinking twice about it. I'm like, Oh yeah, it's on brand with all of his other stuff.

It makes sense. And then like all of a sudden I was seeing memes pop in and it's like, are these memes about that post? Like, I don't even remember it. I had to go back. It's like, okay, yes, they are referencing this lifter A, lifter B thing. And I guess I was surprised how like heated people got about it. And my takeaway was, I guess everyone's like a world-class competitive power lifter,

the way they feel about this. Like, it's just everything is, nope, the absolute amount of weight is the only thing that matters was like the big takeaway it seemed like people had. First off, there were people literally making t-shirts saying like lifter A and lifter B on it. I'm like, wow, this like literally one tweet was like spurning people to like make money off a meme. And then also the funny thing too, is like people were really getting into it in the comments as far as they're like, well, if someone can squat 650 pounds with a slight knee cave, then I'm sure they can rep 500 pounds at least five times. And I'm like, well, we are reading into this way too much, guys. And then I was like, people that were really getting heated, I'm like, you realize I've been saying this exact same thing, maybe in

a different line of way of saying it for the past five years. This this isn't new if you're new if you're new to following squat university maybe this is the first time you've heard me say technique matters overweight especially in training but other than that i was i was sort of blown away so it was a a funny uh a funny post for sure do you think there's anything that lifter a could have done to bolster his resume perhaps like had lifter a in addition to the 650 with suboptimal form maybe if he also ended world hunger then would you give it the nod you know you know what the funny thing too is like i work with a lot of lifter a's you know what i'm saying like the people that have the problems are the people that are reaching out to me i don't have people reach out to me that have

like excellent technique like people reach out to me that have like excellent technique. Like people reach out to me because they're wanting to fix things. So like, here's our, our sub caption, lift or a squat, six 50 with a slight knee cave in, in hip shift. Yet after his set, like does this corrective exercise to try to work on fixing himself and in getting better. So he knows that he can do it better next time. That would have been perfect. You know what I'm saying? Something like that along the lines. Because no one is perfect. No one is perfect, especially if you're a competitive athlete. We're always working and striving towards getting better. But we're always going to have days where technique doesn't

work perfect. But in that same sense, we don't just go, oh yeah, it's fine. I'm just going to continue pushing through bad technique. The goal is to always strive to become 1% better and work on cleaning things up. We even take injury risk out of the game because there's a lot of people that'll say, well, there's no evidence that technique leads to injury, which I disagree with. But just take efficiency standpoint. You ask any high-level athlete, does technique matter? 100% they're going to say yes. I was just talking with Julius Maddox the other day. You brought him up earlier.

Julius was talking about how at anywhere north of 85% to 90% with any type of training, you're going to see technique falter. It's not going to look 100% perfect, but the more you can keep those problems at bay and minimize those issues, the more efficient you're going to be in your power production and the decrease you're going to have of a bigger injury. Because he knows that if you're at 85, 90% plus, and you have a bigger technique falter, and then it continues to propagate and get worse, there could be one wrong move and that could be the end of your career because you sustained a bigger injury.

Because that happens when you're pushing big weight. I talked to Jen Thompson the other day, 11-time world champion powerlifter, one of the best bench pressers in the game on the women's side. And we were talking about the discussion of technique and she's like, wait, there's people that say technique doesn't matter. You know, no elite lifter is saying that

technique doesn't matter. So when you see a lot of these posts and there's people in the comment section are like, no one cares about knee cave or hip shift. You talk to an elite power lifter or weightlifter and you ask them, do they care about those things? And they're going to say, of course I do. They happen for sure when you're under big weight, but there's things they're trying to minimize and cut down so they can be more efficient and decrease the risk of injury long term. Is there a, say, it doesn't matter if this is lifter A or lifter B or lifter C in this scenario. It could be lifter Z even.

It doesn't matter if this is lifter A or lifter B or lifter C in this scenario. It could be lifter Z even. Is there such thing as prior to training or actually even just throughout the week, could a lifter be doing – is there such thing as too much mobilization work or too much warming up prior to – Oh, definitely. Okay. Definitely, yeah. That's a funny thing I also get sometimes that you'll see on the social media world.

Because I advocate for making sure that we're priming our body well to perform well. So I advocate and teach people different warm-up things and things to do to perform well. And I like to think of warming up like if you were to go to a nice restaurant and pick something from the menu. You have an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. You don't pick something from the menu, right? You have an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. You don't pick everything off the menu. So the last thing I want people to do is walk into a gym and do 40 minutes of warming up. I mean, I even think 25 to 30 minutes for most people is going to be too much because you're just wasting your time. The idea when you go into the gym is to prime your body to perform as well as possible. And as a side effect, there's a

decreased injury risk while you're training. So you got to ask yourself with everything that you're doing, is this going to help me perform better? And for some people, it means they need to do X, Y, and Z. And other people, they need to do A, B, and C. So everyone's warmup is going to look a little bit different. And at times that same person may need to add different things and subtract different things as they go throughout a training program in near competition, because their body's going to change. The coach may want to tweak different things. They may have little tweaks along the way. So the warmup is going to change a little bit, but the idea of warming up too much is definitely a potential for some people because A, they're wasting time. I see some people, I've been to some gyms before, where you see someone

literally foam rolling for like 15 minutes and they don't even get up and start moving and touching a barbell for 35 minutes. That's way too long. Other thing you'll see some people doing is way too much stretching in mobilization. The idea is we want to do mobility work that allows you to get into the most advantageous positions for your training. I'm not trying to create Gumby out here either. So especially for a powerlifter, stiffness to a point is a performance enhancer. If I get a powerlter too loose, they're going to not have the sufficient stiffness to maintain structure under tremendous load. So if a power

lifter is doing 30 minutes of mobility and stretching, they could actually be detracting from their performance. So it's all about the individual, what they need and, um, you know, the task at hand. But yeah, definitely you see some people on social media, they're like squat university wants you to warm up for 30 minutes. I was like, I've never said that, you know, but in the same sense, like I don't want someone to walk into the gym and just grab the barbell. Because while that may work for one person, a lot of people would benefit from even 10 minutes of doing something specific to what their body needs to prime a little core stability, get their hips maybe a little bit more open to hit a little bit more advantageous positions in their squat. Something what they need. And again, what Julie's Maddox does for

his bench press warmup may not be exactly what Jen Thompson needs for her bench press warmup, but either way, I can promise you both of those elite bench pressers are not going into the gym and grabbing the barbell and just starting to bench. They're doing something to warm up. Yeah. And we touched on the social media stuff and and this may be just purely a function of say you have two million followers you're gonna there's a certain fraction you're gonna experience a lot of uh you know negative comments 0.1 percent of two million is a lot of people right exactly so maybe that's just a function of it or um because whether it's like the lift or a lift or b thing or maybe it's uh feet and shoes

there's some polarizing things that people like to take and run with um a what what do you think do you think it is just a function of your size or is there anything else there and also do you ever get to feel defensive initially about any of that or do you just i mean is it just like well all this is just all engagement you know it's i mean it's it's growing that's a positive yeah no those are great questions um so first off like why why does it even occur i mean for sure i would say because of the size i'm an easy target i mean anyone that is got a bigger following whether you're you know a big name athlete or a social media presence or like i mean for example you see celebrities they're in you're a big name athlete or a social media presence. For example,

you see celebrities. They're in a lot of these different magazines. You'll see checking out a grocery store. I think anytime you have a bigger brand name, there are going to be people that just naturally want to talk about you and use whatever you are creating to also bolster what they're doing. I have people all the time that would just like stitch some of my videos on TikTok and just completely say the opposite of what I said, but they're using my opening video as a way to draw people into what they're saying. I think the second thing that goes along with the lines is a lot of the stuff that I talk about is injury, I guess, prevention, injury, rehab, things that affect the body from a pain and

injury perspective. And, you know, in the world of what I do, so physical therapy, which I'll also include people that are in the medical field or chiropractic field, you know, there are a lot of different opinions. I mean, you go to one physical therapist, they're going to maybe say something completely different from another physical therapist. For someone that may not be in the field, you may not realize there's a lot of different opinions when it comes to the best practices for dealing with things. So sometimes you will make a statement that a lot of people agree with and a lot of people have benefit from. And there's going to be that one person that's like, you're a freaking idiot. I've read all

these science and you're disproven and you're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they'll use that and just sort of go off that. And there'll be a very big voice in the opposite direction of what you're saying. I mean, I see that all the time. There's people, for example, I'm a big fan of a lot of the work that Dr. Stuart McGill has done. And if anyone has been in the powerlifting world, they know of Dr. Stuart McGill because he's been around so many other higher level strength athletes and taken them from the worst place in the world back to competing at a higher level and setting world records. I mean, Brian Carroll could barely walk without pain and then squatted 1,306 pounds years after working with Stu. So not only have I seen his work actually take hold and do amazing things with

other people, the science is there. I see it in my own work every single day. And yet you'll see some keyboard warrior who makes memes for a living say, well, don't listen to someone who does pig spine research back in the eighties. Like he's an idiot. And I'm like, seriously, like you're going to say something like if you even break it down, only 10% of McGill's work was even on cadaver spines. And anyone who even understands science knows that cadaver spines are the only way that you can do an identical research taking certain types of loads on 80 different spines. You can't do that with human research. It's completely unethical. So it's interesting from that standpoint. So I think right now I've got maybe five or seven meme pages that exclusively make content

that shit on me, which is really, it's funny. But I think the second part of your question was like, do I get defensive at all? And I'll say this, when I first started, it was a shock. I mean, you think about it, when you're trying to make content to help other people, you feel like this is your calling, that you're here to try to make the world a little bit better place. You want to step into the social media world as being a brand, as being someone who's talking to other people and trying to help others out in the best way that you know you can. And when you're making all this

content, then you start seeing people that are saying this stuff. At first, it can be really weird. And I understand why so many people have mental health issues because of social media. I mean, literally, I have social media accounts that I can see their comments that are literally like, fuck Aaron Horschig. You know what I'm saying? To most people, that would be very discerning. And I understand why it would give a lot of people anxiety. They wouldn't want to make content. They would want to fight back.

They'd want to make posts and be like, oh, this guy told me to fuck off. I'm going to show you Why he's wrong? I don't do that I literally like my whole approach to social media is like If i'm trying to make the world a better place and try to help other people I'm going to try to bring kindness. I'm going to try to bring generosity I'm going to try to bring education into what I do. I'm not here to try to engage combat or make, you know, those type of,

of posts because I know like that would bring me so much anxiety to always be on the defensive. You know, I, there are some people that are really good at making those type of posts. I mean, Lane Norton, I love Lane. I mean, he's very good at it. I could not do what Lane does. Like it would bring me so much anxiety to constantly be on the defensive to try to argue against these people that have, in my opinion, completely the most ridiculous claims in the world, like I mentioned earlier. So really, I don't even concern myself with it. And one thing that also helps me in why I feel like I've taken a little bit different stance is when you look at the people that surround you in your group, right? Supposed

to be like my wife, my family, my friends, people also within my field that I hold at high esteem. So Dr. Stuart McGill, Kelly Starrett, you know, all the athletes that I work with that are, you know, some of the most elite athletes in the strength world. When I talk to them about things like this, and they're just like, man, screw those people. Like, keep doing what you're doing. Like, you're doing great work, you're helping so many people, like there's nothing wrong with what you're doing. If I have those few people that I hold in high regard and who I trust and who I look up to, if they're telling me like to keep doing what I'm doing and that they approve of what I'm doing, then who the hell is some meme page with a couple thousand followers that is putting out hateful content? Who is that to me? It's nothing. It literally just goes right over my head.

I see it, I move on, and it doesn't affect me at all. But I know for a lot of people in the social media world, that's tough because a lot of people, the way they speak to others, like it gets at them and it, you know, that's why I think we, we see a lot of mental health issues within people that have, are not addicted to, but are in social media big time, uh, because it's right up in your face all the time. So I think if it weren't for the way in which I approach it, I think a lot of people would, would be in a little bit different places because yeah, I mean, like I mentioned, I think there's at least like five to seven meme pages that are literally straight. Like that's all they do is you can just see it's squat you, squat you, squat you.

And it's really funny because it's like, man, this is what I do for my life. And, you know, it's just straight hate, hate, hate. But it is what it is. And, you know, it doesn't faze me at all because I know in my, I guess you'd say in my heart of heart, the way I'm approaching things is with good intentions. I'm here to help other people. I'm here to help athletes get out of pain, improve their technique, and reach, you know, be able to lift big weights for the rest of their life. And I think when you approach things with the right intention, people that try to, you know, naysay, you know, it just goes in one ear, not the other. Yeah, that's a good approach, no doubt. And, you know, it'd be hard for some of those people, you know, if you if they had the opportunity to hear you say that

what you just said, and then for them to still keep their nasty stuff, you know, and like, there's different lines too you know some stuff i i assume you see some things and you think okay that's actually funny you know like some stuff isn't like oh for sure you know some there's different lines you know like taking just like right cheap shots or like right even somewhat clever right oh yeah i mean when i saw people like make a t-shirt on like lifter averse lifter b i was like i should have actually thought of that first that's a good idea like yeah like there's there's stuff like that like i mean if you can't laugh at yourself you have you have an issue you know what i'm

saying so like of course i i think some of the memes are are pretty funny um and other ones are you know just i feel bad for the person almost right that they're sitting there and thinking about me most of the day. Your rent-free headspace. Exactly. Okay. We've got – should we jump into over-under time? I think so. Okay.

We've got another game we like to play. If you believe it or not, Lifter A, Lifter B was made specially for you. I appreciate it, yes. This next game we do play with every guest that we have on. This is an overrated, underrated game, and it's relatively straightforward. You have your druthers to elaborate as much or as

little on each one if you want to, but you just can't ride the line. You have to either land over or under on each one. Topic number one, and these are all hand-picked for you. Topic number one, overrated are all handpicked for you. So, uh, topic number one, overrated or underrated Tupac. Oh gosh. I love Tupac.

So I'm going to say Tupac to a lot of people. I'm going to still say he's underrated. Um, because I think if you look at a lot of his songs, I mean, I'm a huge nineties hip hop fan. So I would say I, I'm a huge 90s hip hop fan. So I would say I'm a huge Tupac fan. Underrated. One of the greatest of all time. Is 90s hip hop your favorite genre or what is your favorite genre? For sure. Yeah. So 90s hip hop. Who is the best? Oh gosh. I mean, when you look at the best, I mean, there's so many different people, but I would say like top five.

I mean, I would put Biggie, Tupac up in there. I do enjoy a lot of things like sort of older school, like Wu-Tang Clan. Man, just any like boom bap rap is what I would just listen to on shuffle all day long. Awesome. That's a good Mount Rushmore up there then. Okay. Yeah. Overrated or underrated underrated bfr training so i would say that's a tough one because i see sort of both lines of it i'm going to say it's still underrated because i still think a lot of people don't understand bfr

i think some physical therapists overrate it because that's all they do and they don't understand BFR. I think some physical therapists overrate it because that's all they do and they don't actually load the person. But I'm going to say it's underrated for the fact that a lot of people don't understand its uses and how practically helpful it can be for recovery, for modifying training load on someone. And if you're cool, I'll take a little segue and dump down the rabbit hole with this. You have your druthers, remember, to elaborate as much as you'd like. So BFR is simply a way of modifying how the body perceives load. So whenever you're sticking the different pads on yourself, the tourniquet-like straps, and you're fastening them tight, basically it shuts off blood from going into the limb or shuts off blood returning as much.

But there's very minimal blood supply, basically. It's going to trap it in that area. What it's going to do is create a hypoxic environment because then you can't get new oxygen to and from those muscles. Now, the body senses this low oxygen environment and basically thinks that it's working much harder than it really is. So it's going to respond in a number of different ways. Your heart rate's going to increase. You're going to create, there's growth hormone increases. You're going to increase the amount of fast-twitch muscle fibers that you're going to recruit.

Whereas usually with low load exercises, you're going to primarily be recruiting slow twitch muscle fibers first. So it sort of flips how muscle fibers are being recruited with low load activity. So for someone that maybe, let's say they could usually squat a good amount of weight, but because of a knee injury, they can't squat heavy. Maybe they just tore their ACL. So they're going to physical therapy and it's like the second week and they can barely do a body weight squat. I can put BFR on them and have them hold like a 20 pound kettlebell and their body is going to respond as if it is

much heavier because we're basically tricking the brain into thinking the muscles are working much harder than they really are. So it allows us to decrease the amount of atrophy that we see post-operatively and give us a good training stimulus even when we're not using really heavy load. So for an athlete that's just out of an injury, they can't maybe load as much. It allows you to optimize the training process, the rehab process. So I don't have to just do two pound ankle weights. I don't have to just do body weight movements. I can make the body think I'm training much harder without actually putting a load on the tissues that can't tolerate it yet. So that's the first thing it does with that. Let's say also maybe you're a master's level athlete and you used to be able to squat three times a week and you can't really recover

from that type of training as much anymore. There's research showing that if you were to take two of those days and turning them into BFR days where you're only using maybe 30% of your one rep max, you can still make good progress in your overall one rep max training by just having one heavy day in two lighter BFR days with only 30% of your one rep max. So it allows someone that maybe doesn't have the capacity to train heavy as much as they want to anymore as they get older, they can still continue training and making progress that way. So it allows us to optimize the training for an older individual. There's also ways in which we can train BFR to help recover a little bit more efficiently. So Chris Duffin, I'm sure a lot of your listeners have heard of Chris. He's the head of Kabuki Strength. So when Chris was doing his grand

goals campaign and trying to squat 1,001 for three reps, he would use BFR post-training. And what he would do is he would pump the BFR cups up to 80% of total occlusion. And he would put those on and just sort of relax for five minutes. And he'd put the Mark Pro device on, so the E-stem device, and just sort of get this natural pump in the muscles. And he would put that on for five minutes on, five minutes on, five minutes on, five minutes off. And what that's going to do is sort of flush the system. But also, I think you're going to see some hormonal changes as well with growth hormone and things like that. So it can be really helpful to optimize the recovery process versus maybe just relaxing and doing nothing or it's pretty similar to doing maybe another active recovery workout but

obviously you're just completely relaxing so i think there's a lot of benefits to bfr but not enough people know about it yet um which is why i try to show it every once in a while i've written a couple blogs on it and i have a longer YouTube video on it. But I will say for the practitioner sometimes, in my situation, I have seen people overvalue it because I've gotten that ACL, post-op ACL athlete at like four months out, like 16 weeks out, and they haven't even squatted a barbell yet because their PT has only had them do BFR.

So BFR is only in the rehab world a segue to allow us to optimize loading when we can't load the body because it would be too much on the tissues that would then spark the injury process again or make things worse. So eventually we got to get back to the point of putting weight on the body. So in that case, I would say it's overrated for, for some practitioners. That makes sense. I, a couple of years ago, I did tear my ACL and had it surgically repaired. And my physical therapist did have me doing BFR training and, um, but at 16 weeks out, you said, no, no, no, we did use it as a gateway though, you know, or as a, um, interim idea. I would say it is a quite uncomfortable feeling at times though to get used to with training oh it sucks like it should not be fun like if you're doing vfr like that's what i try to tell people the first time doing it i'm like imagine the worst

leg pump that you've ever had like if you've done a set of 20 squats before or like you've pushed a prowler or something like you're just like your legs are pumping so hard think about that but sustained for like the next 10 minutes times 10 like that's what bfr feels like it sucks yeah it does okay uh good answer overrated or underrated socrates socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates

Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates

Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates Socrates No, you're just catching our South Dakota accent trying to pronounce my Greek names. Yeah, Socrates. Yeah, great guy. Excellent quotes. I mean, I think his quote, it was the first line of my book, The Squad Bible.

No man should have the right to go without finding the true strength that his body is capable of. go without finding the true strength that his body is capable of. I mean, that's just one of the ones, the quotes that I feel has been the most impactful is the idea that you don't have to be a competitive athlete, but I don't think there should be a person that goes through our life without really pushing their body. Strength is for everyone. It doesn't matter if you're a competitive power lifter, if you're a 40-year-old gardener, if you're a 65-year-old grandma. All these people should be training their body to some capacity because I do find that that's the way to find your overall best self mentally and physically to live the life that you want to live. That's good. Who is Milo? Who is is milo that's a great

question so um for the follow-up question yeah yeah so so milo is uh coming from the ancient uh story of milo of cretan which is sort of goes back to the fables of how traditional periodization started so uh ancient greek uh philosophers would tell the story of Miloš Krýtan that at a young age, he would pick up the calf. So he'd pick up the calf and then he would pick it up and walk around with it. And as the calf grew in size to a full-grown bull, so did his strength grow. So he was one day walking around with a bull weighing over 900 pounds. And I think as the story goes, he walked it down to the Olympic stadium,

walked it around the stadium, killed the bull with a sword and ate it in front of everyone. So that part was not really included in the story that I used in my book. But the idea was part two coming. Yeah, exactly. But a funny story, actually this the story of milo he actually died i think he like got his foot his foot trapped like in an old tree stump and like wolves ate him i don't think many people have ever heard that story before um yeah i know but uh as

far as like rebuilding milo so that was the title of my second book was the idea that Milo was sort of this historical figure that sort of led to the idea of progressive overload strength training. So that was sort of the figure that a lot of people associate with like, this is why we strength train, this is how we strength train. And it's both science and story, because that is the only way to build strength is to progressively overload. However, a lot of people sort of push against this envelope, sort of like a double-edged sword in that they will push more than their body can recover sometimes. And in doing that, do find aches and pains. So the idea with my book was we are rebuilding Milo. I want everyone to be able to find their true ability to

become their own version of Milo and rebuild into that using the different things that I would give you to. If you have back pain, try these different tests. What did you find? All right, here's what you're going to do to sort of put together your own individualized workout program to then do your own rehab so you can get back to lifting big ass weights, which is what a lot of people love doing. For sure. Okay, so that's who Milo is. We know that now. So this is our last overrated, underrated topic, and then we'll wrap up right after that. So we always save the best for last

though. And this one's kind of worth everything. So overrated or underrated Natty Light. Oh man, that was our drink back in college. So I'm to say if you were to ask me when I was back in undergrad, I would have said underrated is the best drink in the world. And you can get a 30 rack for like $11.99. Guys, right now in my mid-30s, I'm going to say it's very overrated. I haven't had a Maddie Light in years, and hopefully we'll stay in the place where I don't have to. So if you want a cold one, you're not reaching for a 30 rack of Natty Light anymore? I'm not.

However, I will say this, though. A couple years ago when they came out with the Natter Day flavor, I was pleasantly surprised. So that one was actually underrated. Okay, that's an insider tip then. But there is a certain level of convenience of having 30 beers in one pack. That is very true. That is very true.

Most times when you really need 30. A lot of times 24 isn't enough. You need 30. You know? Okay, good news. It looks like you passed overrated, underrated. So that's a great accomplishment. It looks like you passed overrated underrated. So that's awesome. Great accomplishment. It was a fun game. Yeah. And we know most of our listeners probably already know where to find you in squat university. If you just Google it, you'll see anything,

but is there anything else? I don't know, maybe that you got new or anything in particular that you'd like to mention as far as what people should be checking out? Yeah, I mean, just keeping up with all the stuff that I post on social media. I've got a couple of big things coming up that will be made known within the next couple of weeks to months that should change the game for a lot of people who are tired of certain weightlifting shoes that they may not enjoy. So big news for that coming up soon without mentioning too much. But besides that, yeah, just keeping up with the squat.

You try to post on almost every social media platform. So if you're on it, I'm probably posting content there. All right. Well, we'll stay tuned on that little tidbit you dropped there. We really appreciate you coming on. This was a lot of fun. I would say next time you talk to Travis, we're kind of buddies with him over the years. Make sure to tell him you're on the

Massonomics podcast. It'll probably get a laugh or two out of him. We'll definitely let him know. Aaron, thanks for coming on. It was a lot of fun. Thanks a lot, Aaron. Thanks so much for having me on, guys. You bet. We'll see you. Alright, see you. He got those cool beans. He got the cool beans he got the cool beans he got the cool beans indeed that was fun yes that was good he knows his stuff doesn't he yes he um i think we got him on a couple of those over under

you know he probably didn't he probably didn't see tupac and natty light coming from a distance probably not blood flow blood flow restriction we got to learn something there didn't you say when you would do blood flow restriction the guy would usually put it around your neck and just really yeah i'd be like i should you're gonna feel a little slight pressure in here yeah that's a kind of an unorthodox way of doing this head blood restriction but my knee is what we're working on we would do it so no blood we'd do it around my heart yeah let's really test this thing really progressive technique at the time get your heart the biggest pump it's ever had and here we are today and now you can squat again so can't can't argue with those results no that was fun though i think

uh mr squat you yeah horsing is someone we've had on our list for a while yeah he's been kind of elusive yeah but we've been waiting a while for this one but we tracked that son of a gun down you can't run from us give us enough time that is the massonomics podcast motto there there be people that at times you know there's all these people they're like wolves and lions you know they they just can run so so fast but we can run so far we're the that human stalker that yeah we're whatever animal goes for a long time it's the human you know they just keep following the other animal tires out that's actually here we are we're kind of the energizer bunny of uh podcasts aren't we it's pretty good comparison yeah so we don't know who's next but just be on the lookout

it's going to be somebody good we'll we'll we'll outlast all of them that we will okay i wanted to tell everyone about something else speaking of we there was some decent training talk in there and uh it reminded me about uh a little bit of training i wanted to talk to you specifically about and that's juggernaut ai um and you want to know more i assume so come with me for this ad if you want to lift i need your clothes your boots and your individual weak points on the major lifts juggernaut ai totally individualized training so it can be used by everyone from beginner to advanced lifters including tommy and myself both using juggernaut AI, totally individualized training so it can be used by everyone from beginner to advanced lifters, including Tommy and myself, both using Juggernaut AI.

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m-a-s-s-e-n-o-M-I-C-S and that'll save you 10% off for the lifetime of your membership at Juggernaut AI. Thank you, Juggernaut. I'm going to read you a little ad here too, Tanner. That's about our good friends at Texas Power Bars. Buddy Caps first started lifting weights

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Okay, so we were going to talk about our meat that we're potentially working on. I knew we had one more thing on the list. So there isn't a meet yet. But we've mentioned this on the podcast. So we're going to talk about our meet. It doesn't exist yet. It doesn't exist. But we're going to talk about it. But it could exist, though.

We've thrown this idea. Outside of the podcast, we've talked about it quite a bit. But we've also talked about it on the podcast even a little bit. But we're considering hosting a powerlifting meet or helping host one here right in western northeast south dakota in aberdeen and uh we're still not sure if it's going to happen yet or not but we're looking into it we're doing a little more back end stuff and we could make it happen if we do it would probably be approximately a year from now we'd be looking at like summer of 2023 it'd be a uspa meet we probably know that much we'd have uh uh big dave from big north dakota dave would come down and help with you know he's the official meet director and we

would help out with uh some of the other stuff that goes along with that like venue some of the equipment those dirty details all those dirty details that aren't directly related to lifting and we've talked about some of that stuff and um i guess what uh the exciting part to us is if we could get a lot of uh like our discord crew for example a lot of our long-time massonomics listeners followers friends if some of those people are able to make the trip to say be in this meet or just participate in it, you know, to be a part of the action, whatever that entails,

to hang out, to have fun, do partying beforehand, afterwards, any and all of that stuff. That is what could make it a lot of fun. Yeah. That's where,

uh, cause it's not just, just a meet. It's also the official meetup for, uh, all these people we've never really got to meet before, other than maybe there's been a few we got to talk to for a minute at the Arnold. But this would be a chance to have that offline Massanomics meetup.

But there's a lot of work that goes into a meet. There's anyone that's ever been a part of any meet before gets that, a powerlifting meet. And we haven't quite crossed that bridge yet to decide that we're full-on going to do that you know they're just running just if it's just a local meat and it doesn't have any of that aspects that we're talking about before like of this massonomics community um i don't know if that's a rewarding enough for us to want to do it put all the work that goes into it, which, you know, some people do want to do that. You know, they're passionate about it.

People that do that. Yeah. Those people are amazing. But there is a lot that goes into it. And I don't know if it's, you know, if we, if I get the full satisfaction out of it, if we don't have this element of it being like just this like mass economics community event. That's I mean, yeah, that's that's is what it'd have to be this massonomics party right right because that could be great because seen happening too i i mean at its worst if that didn't happen that well like at its worst we'd probably what we'd

have is a good meet yeah and there's nothing wrong with that but at its best it could be so much fun and in which case then i'm like oh that's so. Yeah, we've had this conversation a lot of times, especially over the last few months. It's happening more and more. We're like, ah, we need to decide. And that's what we keep going back to. If it goes as good as we think it could, it'd be so much fun. And then it turns into a yearly thing.

You have to do it. If it doesn't go quite that good, it's still going to be a fun meet. And it's going to go good. And everyone's going to have a good time. There's going to be good equipment for everybody to all good and it'll be a good day but uh it just starts to be it's too much work for just that honestly it's a lot of work for just that yeah yeah but we're already two guys that are somewhat strapped on time right right already right um it just it yeah and it just wouldn't be we wouldn't be able to, it wouldn't make sense

to prioritize it enough at that point, you know, because, you know, people say, I don't have time for this. I don't have time for that. Well, we probably can make time for it, but under those circumstances, we don't probably want to make, you know, push other stuff around to make that time for it. Yeah. Yeah. Push everything out. of our other obligations right goes on hold to do this if if that's all so more more will be to come on that one way or another we just don't know what that we really probably don't know what that is yet but we'll uh we'll keep everyone in the loop it'll be interesting for people i think and if something does happen i think it could be a lot of fun yeah it could be pretty potential meat a year from now yeah it could be cool beans i would say wouldn't you very cool beans yeah maybe that's some of the awards we would get out

as some bags of cool one bag of cool beans for you two for you yeah oh double cool beans for me pound bag of cool beans for you yeah yes so stay tuned on that okay do we Okay, do we have one more ad? We do have one more ad. Should I dig in? We better hit them with it. In 1995, Maurice Big Mo Huffman founded SwissLink. He had a partner based in Switzerland, and their mission was to bring authentic Swiss Army goods to the United States

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Thank you, SwissLink. Yeah, thanks, SwissLink. Get out there and buy some swiss link you can't go wrong nato fuel cans baby everyone needs a nato fuel can or two in my in their life if you ask me yeah i 100 agree and then uh once you've finished buying stuff from our sponsors head over to massonomics.com and buy uh some of our stuff we've got a pretty good collection of shirts there on our website if you haven haven't ever checked those out. Yeah.

And you've never bought anything. Boy, that store is just waiting for you. Yeah. So please do. If you're, if you've been listening for a while and you haven't supported yet and you're looking for ways to support,

that'd be a great way is buying something from a shirt. It's great because not only do you have another piece of apparel you can wear to cover your skin, but if you're out in public and someone sees it, you're kind of officially part of a club together. That's true. You're in the club. And just the other day at a park here in town, I was sitting there and I saw a guy walk by in a Bench Heavy t-shirt. And you're like, damn, that guy must get it.

I was like, that guy gets it. And then I'm like, yep. That's kind of crazy because the other day I went to a park and I wore a bench-heavy t-shirt tanners. Come to think of it, it was you. Okay, okay. I hadn't put two and two together, but it was actually you. Yeah, the timing works out. Yeah, it checks out.

Our storylines match up. Glad we solved that mystery. And if you don't want to, maybe you're not into wearing shirts that's weird but if it is the case you could support us by becoming a supporter before you get there we do have lower body garments too that's true so yeah hopefully you're into lower there's some people that don't wear upper body garments but most of them do wear lower body yeah so we do have you covered too yeah buy a pair of our shorts uh don't buy our hats of course yeah we didn't say any headwear no and then we've got several different flags and banners that can go up in your gym or your Yeah, buy a pair of our shorts. Don't buy our hats, of course. Yeah, we didn't say any headwear hats.

No, and then we've got several different flags and banners that can go up in your gym or your bathroom or your bedroom or wherever you like to put those. But if for some reason all of those items don't fit you just quite right, if that's not the right time, then there's the supporting membership. Yep, and you can't go wrong. That fits everyone. That fits everyone.

One size fits all. Yeah everyone one size yeah one size fits all there's an option there for everyone and to do that you go to massonomics.com join you'll get access to the super exclusive but ever-growing massonomics discord community which gives you the ability to listen to the first half of this podcast live every week you also get a inside look at what's going on at Masonomics and access to some of the hottest Masonomics memes being pumped up by the community. That's true. There's a bunch of, like, if you're just an Instagram follower, you won't even catch half of what's going on

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You can follow me at Tanner underscore Baird. But like we said just make sure to follow massonomics see you