Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 6: Max Out Day

Episode Date: May 15, 2016

This week, the guys discuss Max Out Day, the quest for PR's and all of the complex issues that arise when maxing out... Such as: what music to listen to, nose tork, and puking for PR's. To accompany this episode, we are sharing our personal Spotify workout playlists so you can get on our level....   Here's the links: Tommy's Massenomics Workout Playlist Tyler's Massenomics Metal Playlist Tyler's Massenomics Rap Playlist Tanner's Massenomics BonerJamz MegaMix Check it out below, and please LIKE and SHARE on Facebook..... and don't forget to give us a 5 star review on iTunes!

M-M-M-M-M-M-M-Massanomics Welcome to Massanomics, the world's strongest podcast. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Massanomics. Make sure you go visit massanomics.com. There you'll find the rest of our powerful content. While you're there, check out our store and buy yourself some of that sweet Massanomics gear. and buy yourself some of that sweet massonomics gear. Do I need to test?

Yeah. No. No, I'm kidding. You're fine. I had to know something changed. Okay, welcome to Massonomics Studio. We're here today. I am Tyler. Next to me is Tanner.

Hey, everybody. And across the way is Tommy. What up? Today we're going to talk to you guys about max out day. Maxonomics? Maxonomics. Talk about maxonomics. Really this is where everybody gets all their bragging rights, right?

That's what they say. You don't get to say you benched 500 pounds unless you did it once, right? Mm-hmm. unless you did it once, right? Do you guys also, let's say you benched 450 five years ago and then fell off train. Do you still say, like, what's your bench? 450. If you hit it once. It depends on who's asking you.

People that don't lift at all ask you that all the time. They say, oh, how much do you bench? And then i'd probably say the most i've ever did for one you know a real legitimate single you tell them that number and then like well how many times did you do it like well once i mean like that's that's i'm not sure what you're asking anymore even yeah but yeah i would usually pick the number my best and i have the luxury right now of all my numbers currently are my best, so I don't have to lie. That's actually, that's exactly where I'm at too now is like, for me, it's just, I'm still at that point where I'm new enough to where it's just, it's PR city all the time.

Every time I max, it's either, you know, if I drop some significant weight, like body weight, things may be the same or may only go up a little bit, but I'm still at that point where like you just, the gains are just free at this point, you know, as long as you're showing up. It's really nice. Tanner's fuming mad over here right now because he's grinding. Are you at that point where you have to really grind out to get yourself 5, 10 pounds? Oh, yeah.

If I can get 5, 10 pounds on anything, that's like, I mean, that, you know, you don't want it to be, but like a year's worth of work five ten pounds oh yeah if i can get five ten pounds on anything that's like i mean that you know you don't want it to be but that like a year's worth of work if everything goes up if all three went up 10 pounds you know that's not bad like i suppose to you know i've heard it talked about before is that you know when people are you know if you're at the point where i'm at now you're uh you know it's i just had a well shit what was it like like front squat i max out on front squats this week i had like a 40 pound front squat pr which is ridiculous considering the last time i had max out in front squat was four months ago you know it's just it's that's

pretty awesome it's part technique part strength and maybe a bit of bad timing when i did it the first time the last time but still 40 pounds on the pr is freaking ridiculous so if i did that every four months for the next five years things are gonna set the world on fire front squat 800 pounds um but i i'm sure that slows down and it gets it gets frustrating when it. I did have that with my bench this summer. I had lost a lot of body weight and I got on it and my bench was the same like six months later. And I was freaking just furious. But then I had to tell myself, well, Tyler, you've been doing CrossFit. So you're not probably getting much stronger. And you definitely are not benching.

So I don't know where in the world I thought my bench was just supposed to go up, having done one six-week bench cycle in six months. But I eventually got it back together to where it was like, you know, at the same weight. But it was super disappointing right away when you're used to everything just skyrocketing. Yeah, part of that is you just have to get to a point where you have to be realistic. I think everyone gets that spot. It's like, why? Why am I not getting better at this? And you have to say, well, have I really been training it that hard? And if you haven't, then that's probably the reason why you're not getting better at it. Yeah. And that's, that's where I'm at is I've, I've tried to get better at every single thing

and I'm not training every single thing, at least not frequently enough to get awesome at it. But, um, back to, back to max out days. Like when you, when we talk about it, obviously, do you know, like how frequently do you test as far as in maxing out Tanner? Yeah, I not very often, hardly ever. The way I go about it, I'm with power lifting. I'm not maxing out regularly. I'm not actually going up to a hundred percent of one rep max very often. I prefer to, uh, as, as far as competing in meets goes, there's two schools of thoughts probably.

Either you train your max beforehand and you literally hit that max and then you're like, all right, I did 500 squat in the gym. So when I go to the meet, I want to hit a 500-pound squat. If everything goes good, that's what I should do. But that's not what I do. I prefer to always have some left in the tank or like finish the day and be like, all right, I got that, and I think I could have done more. And then that way you get to a meet and you feel good that day.

That's when I anticipate hitting like a personal record, ideally, is at a meet. And you usually try to hit that like second or third lift you know things go well early on you first lift never first lift is always should be easy something you know you can yeah yeah something you could do for like three reps is a good good uh uh gauge or they say something you could wake up at two in the morning like you've been in bed give someone loads of barbell for you and says, in five minutes you've got to do this rep. Pick a weight that you could do that at.

Shit. Which that might be extreme. I'd be like, I don't know, 135 might be hard to squat at that point. Yeah, I can hardly tie my shoes when I wake up. So I'm not maxing out very often. I kind of do some singles and doubles. Once I get close to a meet, I start doing more of that, you know, and I don't even know if I call it maxing out because a lot of those times I'll still be doing some working, you know, working sets before it,

even, you know, and if I'm really saying I'm maxing out, I, a real max out day for me, I'm trying to get as much as possible on that one rep so i don't want to work too many sets and reps before that like it's like but you also have to do enough you have to find like the perfect balance of how many you know how much weight you have to do and how many reps and to get get the most out of that one rep i always find that too like when i'm trying to like warm up for a one rep max i I either don't warm up enough. You know, I don't have enough workup sets to it or I totally overdo it. And I get, I'll get like one max effort attempt, like one time where I know I'm really giving

all that I have. And after that, that's it. So whether, if I hit that, if I go, if I had to do that same weight a second time, it's over. I wouldn't hit it. There's just nothing I can do. And that's when it basically means I built too aggressively on my way up to it. I just got smashed before I was going max effort. Or when I try to avoid that, usually it's after that session.

Next time I try to max out, I'm like, well, I'm not doing that again. And I barely even get warm, and then I shit the bed too. What about you, Tommy? What's maxing out look like for you? Is it something you do in the gym, or you try to save it for competitions? So I'm kind of the same way in that I don't max out very often. Bench, you could say push a little more while we get closer to that 100% range just because it's

not i mean you could not so taxed it's really not you know you could have a pretty heavy bench day and you might be kind of sore the next day but you know two three days later especially you're basically moved on completely yeah uh whereas you know a max effort deadlift or squat day could just completely kind of wipe you out so i'm i really am kind of like what tanner said just kind of wipe you out. So I'm, I really am kind of like what Tanner said, just kind of that same, um, school of thought of just kind of building and training through the year or yeah, through the year. And even, um, if I know my squat, if I know my sets are going up, I can kind of still gauge where my single or my one rep max would be at. And if it does get closer to a meet, um, like this last year, I went went a very very long time without even getting probably to that without even to that 90 mark so i really is it's actually at the point where i'm like i

don't even know what my one rep is uh you start to get kind of you know you test the water a little bit to see where you're at and uh it does feel good to you know kind of gauge it based off of what you've been doing for programming and to know that that is somewhat accurate and you can you can use that as a tool to really help you pick the best lift and same thing with deadlift too i don't i don't push that one um as far as a single i don't push that too often uh sometimes depending on the time of year and where i'm at i might just want to be like hey i want to see what's in the tank here what do i got and and that that might be it and you know when it does come to getting pumped up for that for that single it is you know first you come to getting pumped up for that single, it is –

first, you've got to make sure – sometimes you just have it set in your head that, yeah, I'm going to get this today. It's going to be a heavy max out day. And as soon as the weights start moving, you start to realize, like, no, this isn't happening. And there's no point pushing it. You're just – you're not going to get anything out of it. But assuming you are feeling good, you know, you've got to have the music playing and everything's got to be kind of – you've got to be able to block everything out

and just really get zoned in. When, when pushing max effort, there's only one question that needs to be asked. Um, do you go with the gangster rap playlist or the death metal playlist? I, I, I've, I've got myself trained that I can do a little with being in our gym. I like to let other people run the music. I don't normally want that to be my thing, but if I'm really going balls to the walls, max out, it's usually pretty heavy metal for me,

you know, like smash your head through the wall and the crap like that. What about you, Tommy? And I usually go, I've got, I've gotten through a lot of stages and I'm at the point where I just need lately.

I've been really on this dub steppy i just need something just really messed up sounding just way too loud way too crazy something that just feels like it's pushing you over the edge it's it's so disorienting it is just just attack me from all sides and let me see if i can do something about it that's where i'm at i go through waves is like the go-to song though it's like right now it's like that's the song i need you know and then a few months back i've i've like i've used it i've used it all like there's nothing left in that yeah that song like i've used it all up yeah i need to wait three or four years and come back to that one we are going to do here what we're going to do eventually is probably

maybe we'll get it done by the time you get it added up or we get this episode out. But what we'll do is we'll set up me, Tanner, Tommy, and the professor. We'll get a Spotify playlist together. And we'll make them public. So if you guys want to get up on our vibe, you'll be able to search for Tommy's Masonomics workout mix. Oh, yeah. And you can hear the craziest dubstep. I usually go. I have two playlists.

I have one that is the just dirty dirty gangster rap and then i have some just super super intense metal so um it should be a fun little project and uh and you guys can check some of that stuff out so so tommy you get your dubstep on and you go you go to do your deadlift stuff. Anything crazy ever happens when you're maxing out? You ever shit your pants? You know, I haven't been there yet. I'm not saying it's not possible. I just haven't had it yet. I'm trying to think if I really had any.

It will happen, right? Everybody understands that that's going to happen, right? I think, yeah. It's just to get you to sign up for that when it comes with it. But I don't think I've really had anything besides just complete disappointment. I don't think I've had anything too crazy happen on a max out day. Ah, yeah. Like, it doesn't have to be necessarily a max out day even for me to.

Like, it doesn't have to be a one rep max. Some days it's like I could be doing a set of 10 at a moderate weight. And that's like enough to make me feel like I might shit my pants a little bit. Or like I get done lifting a lot of times. And, uh, the safest bet is to take a shower pretty,

pretty, pretty quickly. Once I get home, I was, uh, I don't remember if it was a recent episode or if it was an old one I was listening to Mark Bell's Powercast and they had a guy on this week

he used to have to stuff his underwear he'd roll up toilet paper give himself a man pond for when he'd lift he'd seep a little bit ladies and gentlemen this is our second poop conversation on the Mass Anonymous podcast I've never shit my pants trying to lift that heavy.

But I have, well, I'll tell you what. First time I ever went down and met Tanner down at the Massanomics gym. We're going, we're lifting. And Tanner's a big, big heavy lifter. And I'm middle of the road. So, we're putting some weight on. And I'm just lifting. And I get through a set

that was felt hell hell a lot heavier than it was and i get part way up and i'm lifting this big dark gym and nobody else is you know it's just me and tanner and a couple other guys and i don't know any of these people it's the first time they've ever seen me and i get there and i start standing up this weight and all of a sudden i just i i made the lift and i think it might have been just the last little boost that i needed to hit it but other than that it is a problem at like if i'm lifting at crossfit gym because there's women around yeah we don't have that people with standards yeah there's there's normal people around and uh and that gets a little bit unnerving. You're going heavy.

It's actually the Olympic lifts that get me the most because it's an explosive movement. You've got to be fast. An explosion. You can't always keep the door shut. A lot of things happen in the middle of an explosion. So it seems like both of you guys really don't um maybe don't test strength that often you just work on work on building it and for me it hasn't always been that way you know

in the beginning you can and i i was right there guilty of it that i would probably try to max out it's been like oh three weeks let's throw as heavy a weight as we can on and and go for this again but there comes a point where if you're taking a day off of training volume to just train a heavy weight, you're really not getting enough work in to actually grow your muscles. So you got to think of that almost as a week of where you're not actually gaining strength, you're just testing it. And I almost wonder too, if, you know, the reason that happens when you're early on is because you're gaining so much strength. So yeah, is that like, you're working sets are gonna be your pr from a couple months ago you could max out once a month and realistically be setting prs for a pretty

decent amount of time in the beginning i mean we get every once in a while we'll get kids you know like high school kids that'll come in and it's just makes me so damn jealous at how easy they can recover and how strong they get so fast you know these guys will come in and they're just never sore and every week they're moving more weight than they were the week before and um you know and i'm just suffering trying to get through my working sets you know just grinding it out but um it's always interesting to see like you know me it seems like because of so many different things that i that i'm trying to do at the same time which is terrible don't do it um is that i i do end up i'm like always kind of maybe testing something at some point um you know with the crossfit stuff is it you know everything kind

of cycles through and and so we'll be doing you know in the last week and a half like 10 days i've you know pr'd my front squat i've pr'd my clean and i've pr'd my snatch and it's like you know to a lot of people it's like well what are you what are you doing trying to pr that stuff and um with the olympic lifting what i've found is that it seems like the way that i train it and i'm not on a program specifically right now, but the way I train it is I just start working heavier, you know, I just I get what feels good. And I hit that a few times, and I add more weight, and I just keep going until I fall apart. And then I tear the weight back down. And then I, you know, build waves back up. So sometimes there's just every once in a while, and that's the way it was this last week is there's there's just a day where you know what i'm cleaning the weight feels good i'm five pounds short of my pr right now and i'm just gonna slap another 20 pounds on it and see what happens and

then you know then you feel beat up and beat to hell for the rest of the week for having done it but um and it's it was the same thing with snatches, you know, some days, some days you can't get within 20% of your max. You just don't have it. You know, it's a mobility or, or, or whatever you just mentally, sometimes it just doesn't click with you. But, um, and that's the thing that I had, I had heard from, uh, you know, Travis mash, he's, um, owns mash elite performance and now they train pretty much every type of lifting but he's an old school power lifter and um he says with the olympic lifting is that what he does is he keeps his guys like every day they're training above 85 percent of their max and um and that's because your your nervous system will respond to that differently and you i suppose you couldn't do that with squats or dead lifting could you yeah i think there's there's a difference. We talk quite a bit about powerlifting.

We talk quite a bit about Olympic lifting. And I think with the max out thing, I can't speak to Olympic lifting because I don't do it. But I can just see or rationalize why it makes a lot more sense to do that a lot more often and how your body is able to do that. And I think because there's so much mechanically going on. Yeah, it's like so technical. When Tanner was in the garage doing some lifting, that was part of the issue Tanner had was that, you know,

he could move the weight so easily. You know, the weight wasn't heavy enough, almost wasn't heavy enough for him to have to do it really perfectly. Right, yeah. And with power lifting, you know, with squatting, heavy back squatting, Yeah. And with powerlifting, you know, with squatting, heavy back squatting,, because they are so small, are so specific, people do load those up so much heavier. So just even for me personally, the mental part of just trying to get ready for that much weight is almost as much of a battle as just getting the physical of handling it. When you guys set up, do you know, at least I have a really hard time with this mentally when I'm going to max out, say a squat. When I stand up with that thing, I kind of almost know right away, depending on what my initial reaction is.

There's a lot of times i'll i'll step back from the rack and go oh shit you know and i and i'll drop down in the hole and just can't move it not even an inch whereas you know 10 pounds prior which at at that weight is that's a minuscule percentage but at 10 pounds prior the thing moved really well it's just like mentally you feel it in your head when you stand up like god damn it this was heavier than i expected but i think max outs or or heavy one reps they're they're always like i'd call it a self-fulfilling prophecy yeah like it's and even before i get in the rack and it's has to do with all these other things we're talking about the music and the environment and

uh you're just general mindset and everything and if all that's rock solid and you kind of know you're going to do it, be able to do it even before you get in there and under the bar, you've got to, like, 90-some percent of the time you're going to do it. Like, deep down in your gut, you know that gut feeling. If it tells you you're going to hit it, you're usually going to. And any time I ever have that feeling where it's like, ah, maybe this is, like like five pounds too much right now or something like that it's i i don't know if i've ever got it when i've really had that feeling yeah

when you have that hesitation you've kind of already beat and i've had those where i'll grab the weight off the rack and i'll be surprised at how light it feels yeah and you're like oh shit it's on now like this thing's moving yeah and i think i think preparing mentally to be in that state when you grab that weight like that that's got to give you a huge advantage. And the problem is you don't test often enough. So how do you put yourself in that place unless you're just doing that with your working sets every time? Like, got this. Feels light.

Let's go. That's a – I don't know. I fight with that a lot. Not as much as I did when I was really, really new. My wife, though, she still has it where if she knows how much weight is on it, it will get in her head and she'll be like, I can't do this. I just can't do this. Whereas if I load weights for her and just don't tell her,

she'll just PR all the time. There's a lot of it where you'll add five pounds and a weight that before she nailed like it was nothing, just can't even move. And that's because she knows it's heavier. If you start sneaking weights on people, I really think that everybody put up a lot more than they think they can. That's something I like at powerlifting meets. Because in the gym, we train with pound, 45 pound plates and then you go to a meet and they're using the kilo, 25 kilo plates and they're red and they're thin and they weigh a different. It looks different.

It feels different. And no one knows how to add by 55s and everyone knows how to add by 90s. And I don't even know what the other plates weigh. Yeah. Yeah. We know what those red ones are and the rest of them, I don't even have any idea what any of them really weigh. So when you walk up there, you never know.

Like 405 never looks like 405 or 495 doesn't look like 495. There's some circles on that. We'll try this. Yeah, it is always funny, too. When I first started looking at some of that powerlifting stuff, I'd see these people lifting. I was like, well, that doesn't look that heavy heavy there's only maybe like eight inches of plates on yeah you know and on crossfit you know the crossfit bumper plates that were the you know 405 with the 405 like when i did when i deadlifted at our gym um you can hit 500 pounds but i think it was maybe 50 to do 505 we had to tape a two and a half pound plate to the

top of each bumper to the side that was the only way to do it or you got to band it around the outside edge just a deadlift and then if the weight if the bar which you don't have the best bars in the world if you lift it up in the bar dips which it will at that weight if it bends a little bit you're just going to start losing weights off the end because you can't get a collar on it. Shit will just start falling apart on you. I suppose the best way to do it for us would be to have a couple bumpers and then some iron

in the middle to make it work. But yeah, I'd see that on some of the power lifting stuff. I don't know what the math is here. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it's always kind of neat. How do you prepare it then? Do you know?

Like at powerlifting meets around here, do you put in your weight by kilos then? Yeah, you have to submit everything by kilos at all of them. So there's a lot of conversion charts laying everywhere. Yeah, everywhere. Bunch of dumb Americans. Yeah, and nothing is like you're used to your 300 or 315 or just even your 45s and your 25s, whatever those break out to be.

You're used to those numbers, but there's always that number that's either two and a half pounds too heavy or two and a half pounds light, and there's just never that one that you're used to. It's not 315. You're going to do 318.5 or something. Yeah, but it's not 405. It's 402.4 and 407.3 whatever it is i don't know i think 402 is too light 407 is really like i've never

done that one yeah that's why that's a good opportunity too to get uh a fractional one going into the my first meet this year i on bench i i knew pretty much had a one-pound PR locked in the bag. I was going for more than that, hopefully, but I was like, I know I'm at least going to be able to get that one pound more on this one. With those damn kilos. I saw a shirt that was kind of funny. I don't remember who makes it, but it said kilos with a question mark, and then it said, I lift in LBS.

And the pounds was in uh red white and blue like that's badass um the thing about it though is once you start getting up there you know 600 pounds is a way cooler than what's what is that for kilos like 400 maybe four something uh 2.2 should be like 660 is 300 kilos yeah so that's just's a bigger number. It's automatically cooler. Yeah, that's true. That's true. But then you got, once you get familiar with some of the kilo numbers, you got even more like these threshold numbers. You know, like with the pound numbers, you know, 315 is a cool weight.

365 is a cool weight. 405 is a cool weight. And then, so you've got those. And then when you're doing the kilo, you got some other ones because then 200 kilos kind of a cool weight. 405 is a cool weight. And then, so you've got those. And then when you're doing the kilo, you've got some other ones. Because then 200 kilos kind of sounds cool too. You know, 440 pounds or whatever that is. And then 300 kilos is a cool number. So it throws in a few more exciting ones in there too.

I always wonder where they have, like, I'm sure places, well, obviously places do. But like, where are these people having all these kilo plates here? You know, we're here in South Dakota, never been anywhere to any gym where they have kilo plates. Have you? Other than the competition. We have kilo plates, but they're not the calibrated ones. We have some old York 25 kilo plates and stuff.

But yeah, no gyms locally that I know of have, they're so expensive. That's the thing. They're just crazy expensive. Those Aliko calibrated or Vermont Colons are are like they're also all like pretty much you know if you're going to get kilo plates here they're competition plates yeah you know for the most part and yeah they're just more expensive I've looked into it for bumper plates because I thought it'd be fun to tinker with to practice for like competition you know throwing and so you kind of

know what it's like but Jesus I mean it's twice as much it's like around five bucks a pound or more yeah yeah it is it's like like those avanco ones or elico i they're more than that even and it's like you have to take out a second mortgage to be able to buy a set of plates and that's and that's not even counting the bar like yeah a competition over a thousand over a thousand dollars yeah yeah those aleko bars are you know even like their onlyli bars are, I thought about buying one, but I figured I'd buy this kind of beater that I got now. But, you know, those Aleko bars for, they're over $1,000, but they basically will last you forever.

I mean, you can treat them like shit. You can drop them, you can throw them around, but they're a lifetime warranty. They'll never bend. They'll last forever. And I will own one someday. I just have to get good enough at it to need it. I do kind of like the old, I don't remember who said it, but somebody had the philosophy where they bought all the nicest shit.

They had the nicest bars, the nicest weights, the nicest shoes. That way, if they suck, they can't blame their gear. Take all the other excuses out of the equation. That's where I'm at now. It's like, well, this isn't really that great of a barbell that's why i'm not setting the world on fire yeah um so what about mislifts any like tragic miss mislift stories any total meltdowns i hate missing lifts it screws me up mentally so bad that i i try to do whatever i can to not get myself in that situation.

So over the last two years, I haven't hardly attempted maybe just a couple that I've missed. I don't know if I've ever had any really terrible bailout situations that I can remember. Nothing too terrible, though. But I just hate them, so I just try and stay away from them at all costs. Yeah. And that was the one thing I really focused on like the past probably seven, eight months is just not missing lifts. And you know, the big thing with, with not testing too often is just grinding through making sure you're getting your sets. Cause that's where your strength is coming from. And, uh, you know, when you can go a very long time without missing any lifts lifts it gives you a lot of

confidence going into things just because you have it built in your head that i got this i'm gonna get it um but yeah there's still i guess with the exception of i know there was like one day where i was really sick and i still pushed it and it just wasn't there and you know there's that disappointment but there's also that excuse that i was six it's always like now but this you know we did have one guy though that at the gym he had that thing happen when you don't have any collars on there this was on bench and he can't quite get it and it uh we had he had a spotter there and everything uh and actually this is the day that the local newspaper was doing a story on the gym. So they were in there with their cameras, literally sitting there,

like two reporters videotaping him. And he was going for like a max bench or, you know, was real close to his one-run max. So really, you guys, you're just, you're trying to get some footage of somebody lifting something heavy. You're like, okay, let's load it up. We're going to look great here. Yep.

And he goes and he can't quite get it. And, you know, there's like a little miscommunication between him and the spotter you know maybe one thought that he should grab it then the other one thought he didn't want him to grab it or whatever and but anyways what happened is he couldn't get it up and one side dipped down and it makes me laugh just thinking about it it's so embarrassing because no one wants that to happen to themselves you know you feel embarrassed for the person but it can happen to anyone but the half the plates slide off of one side and then it slams the other side and and it didn't like they didn't all fall off each time so there was like four like loud crashes and then he's sitting there with an empty bar and then

you just kind of rack that and it's like you just feel bad you know it's just this no one wants that to happen to themselves and fortunately they did not use that footage yeah someone's got it i was picturing the story in the paper the next day being like gym full of idiots the worst gym yeah that's um yeah that's wild see i've uh i don't i don't train bench much at home i don't train it much at the gym because i still train mostly at the crossfit gym for now which will probably change as i switch kind of my program to a little more strength-based stuff but um i'm gonna get some spotter arms for my rack at home because i'm just worried of that happening or the problem is is that for me if I'm

I'm okay with pushing to failure I suppose at least in working sets because I feel like that's you know where the where the butter's made but um and and I'm I'm okay with like just really really pushing the limits as far as moving weight but I can never do it on bench at home because I figure my wife will come home and find me dead on my bench. But also if you saw my bench out there, the actual bench is terrible. So that needs an upgrade too. But I'm also used to lifting.

I squat high bar and use bumper plates in the garage. So I'm okay with squatting without a spotter. And I noticed you guys usually have spotter with your squats most of the time yeah all the time yeah the concept of spotting without our squatting without a spotter is like completely foreign is that wild and it's because we've never had an opportunity where you can dump them like it's if you dump 400 pounds at a commercial gym like you're either breaking something or someone so you just have had to have a spotter yeah and i suppose you know if you if you do miss a lift squatting squatting low bar where you're a little more forward you know if you're not able to get it up it you might

ride that thing might ride you all the way to the ground whereas at least if you're if you're high bar and you're a little more upright like i can just separate myself from the you know it can go over my back and i just move myself forward and yeah with a low bar upright, I can just separate myself. It can go over my back, and I just move myself forward. Yeah, with a low bar, you've got it locked in so tight with your arms and everything there. It's not as easy to just get out from underneath of it. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing.

I've missed plenty of back squats, and that's the nice thing is squatting outside the rack on bumpers is then I just bail. That's why it was funny. The first time i went down to the to that massonomics gym i was like am i supposed to spot this guy i mean he's lift we're lifting again am i supposed to spot him i'm just gonna hope he doesn't need help yeah i don't know how this works yeah um yeah because other than you know really other than bench pressing i don't ever we never have anybody spot when we squat because shit, we just drop plates for fun. Even if we drop plates right now where we're at, you'd probably break concrete, maybe break some weight, and you'd probably break two people's legs

because they'd be standing right next to you because we're that tight on space. At a powerlifting meet, they usually give you a lecture beforehand that at all costs don't uh be dumping the bar on a back squat they're like actually the first one i went to this year they he made a point he kind of was yelling at everyone he's getting fired up about he's like if i see anyone dumping a back squat when it's not absolutely necessary you're gonna be out of here and never lifting here again you know just because it's dangerous with the spotter for the spotter i suppose at that it's just a spotter issue and i suppose at that point you've got a spotter really you know i've seen something seen at some of those meets where you've got spotters that are

basically under the weight pertineer i mean they're at the end of the bar they're oh yeah they're like right there so if that if it goes all the way to the ground you lose a foot and like that that meet you the meet and chamber where you have multi-ply lifters it doesn't matter squatting it doesn't it doesn't matter what yeah how strong of people you have or how many people you have squatting when a thousand pounds drops as free weight it's gonna kill someone yeah exactly like you're you wouldn't have a leg left like i can't even imagine what that would do yeah that's wild i've never I've really never thought about it. I always thought it was kind of crazy at meets. Like, well, why don't they just move everybody out of the way?

But because a lot of the meet with the wide stance, the low bar, where you're a little bit more forward over your knees and toes, that you can't separate yourself from that weight. Even if it just drops and goes thud, you'll be under it. Every meet I've been at, the spotters are so good that if you miss something, they're up on you, all of them. The minute it stops stalling and you start going down, you don't even have a chance to dump it.

If you've lifted long enough, everybody knows, like, the weight will come up, you'll hit your sticking point. And you'll either, you'll stop, you might stop and move slowly through it. But nobody, if that weight moves down even just a little bit, nobody comes back out of that. So you can tell right away, nobody's got to tell you anything. That weight moves down, grab the damn thing. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. I do kind of like the, you know, they had the animal cage down at the Arnold this year. And those guys, they had it set up with the big, what do you call it?

What's the rack? The monolith. The monolith. And then they had the big old straps underneath them and the spotters there so it's a pretty safe i they make a monolith attachment that'll fit on my rack in my garage and i have no use for it and i just want it because it looks fucking awesome that that uh first meet i did this year was it's the first time i got the opportunity to do a meet in a monolith and they had the straps and everything like that too and it's cool it's like a cool feeling being able to squat out of that and you don't have to step the weight out no you

can if some people a majority of the people around here are so used to stepping it out that they still do but i just was dead set on utilizing the monolift so i didn't step it out and i i it was some people struggle for that to be comfortable for them but i love i loved it you know i think it'd be great yeah i like it a lot i have trouble when i like if i'm backing out a heavy squat for some reason i i can never back out straight and so i always seem to be like clang it off the rack you know and yeah and that's uh and when it's heavy that's a that's a real that's a problem getting bounced around when you're moving backwards but um what one other story that i just it just came to me and i don't know if maybe i brought this up on a previous

podcast or not but even if i have i'm going to tell it again just because i like it uh at the last meet we're at one of the members of our gym he was doing his third attempt deadlift and it was a pr form is the most he'd ever done before and i've seen this on video happened multiple times you know you'll come across it on facebook but i'd never seen it in person before so i was just i was pumped he uh got about halfway up it was getting slow for him he kept going uh but then he puked like and it was like red gatorade puke like spraying out of his mouth and he never quit quit going up and he locked it out and like, and then just casually set it down, like wiped his mouth.

And, and I, and I was like, that was one of the more exciting things I've ever seen at a meet. You know, I was so pumped up for him. I was jealous actually. I was like, God, I, I feel like I don't work hard at all. I've never like explosively puked and finished a lift before. That's awesome. I've actually, I've only seen, I've seen a video.

There's a video. I'm sure everybody's seen it. Some, some poor girl deadlifting, but she, I don't know what this, what this puke was like, but this girl that deadlifted on the internet was like project. She threw up all over everybody. It was like a six foot stream and it was, there was a lot of same deal. Red probably like pre-work stream. Same deal with Red. Probably pre-workout, just right out the door.

That's wild. That's really wild. I've seen people, not in person, but popping nosebleeds or it looks like blood out of their eyes. Out of the eye socket. I get horrible bloodshot eyes from heavy squat days. When I get home, I look in the mirror and I'm like, oh my God. Like I'm just wrecked. The wife wants to know where you've been.

Just working out with a whole bunch of dudes. Yeah. You guys ever, so you guys never had that though, the nosebleed thing? I haven't had that yet. You just got to be pushing so hard for that. I think, yeah, the pressure you have to have built up is just something that. When I see somebody, you know, at down at the arnold they had i don't remember who it was but somebody popped a nosebleed during their during their deadlift like a thousand pound deadlift you know and they had uh you know you just feel sorry for their belt that's all i could

think of is like that's that pressure came you know that pressure is being pushed against their entire inside of their body it just worked its way out of the dude's face yeah you know i'm pretty sure that pritchett that american he he was he did over a thousand this year he was the first american because he did he lifted like the attempt before brian shaw yeah and his face was just beet red and i'm sure i'm pretty sure i remember right he got a nosebleed and then it looked pretty vicious yeah yeah that's badass if youed, and it looked pretty vicious. Yeah, that's badass. If you've never seen it, go to YouTube, search for Rogue Elephant Bar. And, dude, that thing makes me feel like a man. Like, I want to go out, and I want to freaking deadlift.

Yeah, you watch that little one-minute video or something, it's like, all right. Yeah, yeah. So, one last thing I wanted to touch on. You guys and I see powerlifters do it a lot. I do also. I have seen Olympic lifters do it as well. I've never done it. Let's talk nose torque, gentlemen.

Yeah. We like getting a little torquey. I've seen it as far as like the little capsules, but I think that's probably a little pricier way to do it. But you guys just got a jug of nose torque laying around. Tell me what that's all about. Tanner? That, uh, we went to our first, our, our, any of our first exposure was,

that was our first power lifting meet and everyone's doing it there. And those, a lot of people have those little snap capsules and those are relatively strong. I've tried one of those before, but,ose Torque brand is what we started using. It's a little, I don't know, what is it, like a two or three ounce bottle? Yeah, it looks like a bottle like ibuprofen. Yeah. It's basically like ammonia, right?

Yeah, it's almost like smelling salts. Smelling salts, ammonia or whatever. And the first time you do that, you can't even describe what it feels like if someone hasn't done it before because it's not really a smell. Yeah, it's more like a sensation. It takes your brain into caveman mode.

It's like someone crawled you and punched you in the front of the brain, and then you just got to run through a wall or something after you do it. I picture the little gas waves are like two little claws that creep up your nostrils, and they grab your brain and rip it to the front of your skull. It's a pretty intense feeling. Now, we are going to preface this for Tanner and Tommy's moms that this is not drugs.

It looks like they're doing drugs, but it's not drugs. I did have someone actually comment to me. They saw a video on Instagram of someone doing it. They're like, is that okay to be putting that on there? And I was well it's not yes i think so i guess i never even thought of it as like a is it i mean it is a performance enhancer it's just not illegal so so so you're saying it's not

so much a smell as it is an experience yes and it's unpleasant right i mean is it is it i don't even know if i would say it's unpleasant i don't know to some people they've described that but yeah if you're just sitting here and you smell you'd be like yeah that's very unpleasant but usually when you're at the point of wanting to smell it you're already at such a you're jacked up and you're ready to take it to the next level it's kind of like you know if someone came over here and pinched me on the arm i'd be like okay that's really annoying why did you do that but if you're right before you're about to pr something someone pinched you on the arm you wouldn't even feel it so it's just you got to be in the right mind state for it too yeah and part of its effectiveness is even before you do it before you literally

smell it you're already getting yourself in that just because you know you're going to smell this in a couple seconds you're like you're getting yourself amped up yeah to me it's all part of that mental thing where you feel like you're about to throw yourself off a cliff and that's just what really takes you there. It's not something I wouldn't – I do not recommend doing it all that often. You don't want to do every set, like run over to the nose torque, shake it up. And besides even like a meet, in like an eight-week training cycle, if I take two smells of noseorsetork that that might be about

it and that might not even happen it's it's just something that i try to reserve for absolutely because it's like i want to know that i can get this and not have to be reliant on anything you guys ever had to have at the gym like a like a nose torque intervention on somebody like like all right dude we gotta talk because this is getting out of hand. You do know some people hit it a little harder. You're nose-torquing before you warm up. There was one guy who's not a member. He just came in. He's come in a couple times, and he hadn't tried it before,

and he was just doing arm curls, and he's like, I just like this. It's like, I might buy some of this just to have at home. Just fog the room and go nuts. If you had a stuffed up nose or something though, I've never tried it, but I, yeah, I never thought of that.

I don't think there's any choice. Do, um, I'm trying to think of what I was going to ask about. Oh, do, uh, like I,

I, when I see people that, that, that do the nose torque, they like, it seems like it is so intense that they don't really get that close to it like have you ever seen somebody accidentally or not know what they're doing get a little close and go a little deep yeah like with ours a lot of times

when if it's a fresh bottle all you need is the cap so you shake it up you like activate it inside there and you unscrew it and you just put the cap which has nothing in it it's just an empty cap it's just had some yeah and that's like more times than not that's more than enough but once you get towards the end of a bottle like they only last for so long they get worn out and then you really got to like stuff your nose in the bottle but then i had gotten i had replaced it you know we usually only have one bottle sitting there at a time and the old one was getting old and run out you really had to get your nose in it tight to get much out of it and i'd replaced it with a new one and a couple people didn't know that like i should almost i need to have a sign like warning warning this is new like this is only

a couple weeks old so they were like gonna get like real tight in the bottle like that and it's brand new and that yeah i think the one like that, and it was brand new. I think the one guy that said that it caught him by surprise, he actually had to sit out a few minutes and not do his lip because it just kind of sent him back a little bit. It'll bring tears to my eyes quite a bit when I get a big whiff of it. Now, is it a liquid powder? It's like liquid rock, and there's liquid in it that'll leak out i know if you if you don't close it but there's something there's you know i don't even want to

know it's part of history it's just the magic bottle it's my magic way of doing stuff so and does it like evaporate is that how it wears out or is this is it the same is it the same consistency at the end i think it evaporates a little bit. I actually didn't know there was liquid in it until the one day I shook it and the cap wasn't on. I had this terrible sweat and liquid all over my hand, and that was my learning procedure there. So, kids, use your nose torque carefully. Well, I think that'll do it for today. We covered a lot of things, and it's actually probably a topic we'll revisit again. It was kind of fun chatting with you guys about this.

Anything else, guys? Do you think we should run down real quick the question you asked me at the very beginning? If someone was to ask you what your maxes are, our answers to that. Yeah, what are your maxes? Okay, I'll go through my Olympic lifting and my powerlifting maxes and and how i'd answer that so what were we doing today hang cleans um zero pounds because i can't actually hang clean correctly so i would call that zero pounds but i don't know i've done like 275 of that before like a kind of a reverse curl hang clean is what i do means tanner's strong as shit well and he doesn't know how to hang clean is what I do. It means Tanner's strong as shit. And he doesn't know how to hang clean.

Snatch, I've never done one in my life. Zero pounds. And what else would I clean? A snatch and a jerk? That's about it, yeah. Usually cleaning jerks, the same thing. But in my garage, I'm too tall, so I can't train my jerk at all.

So I just do cleans and I call that my Olympic lifting is cleaning, and I'll jerk in the CrossFit gym from time to time. So I guess I've strict overhead press like 250, so I should be able to jerk that. It would count, I assume. If you did that, they'd be like, that is idiotic that you did that. I always thought that because I did things like the CrossFit way, where basically it was like a clean and press,

and that's actually what the Olympic liftic lift used to be the clean and press and now with it being the clean and jerk you actually um you can't do any press out so like same thing with your snatch or that like you have to jerk where it comes off your chest and you have to go immediately to full extension of your arms and any press out or any if it comes out and comes in just a touch is a is a red light yep so i'd give it zero pounds then so my so my olympic lifting total should be right around zero that one's easy to add up but let's talk your power lifts here i think this is going to be a little bit better for you power lifting squats my worst worst uh worst lift uh my the most i've done in the gym before is 535 and the most i've done

and that's in knee sleeves um and the most i've done at a meet before is 546 i think and that's in knee sleeves i've also done 546 in knee wraps but i that was sandbagged i think in knee wraps i could have done about 570 or so i just just, I'm pretty unfamiliar with wraps. That's kind of uncharted territory. Uh, bench press the most I've ever done in the gym for like a touch and go is four 55. And you know, I call that just going down to your chest and it's not pausing there at all. It's just touching it and back up. I've done four, four 55. And then in a meet uh a good rep i've done uh 441 which is 200 kilos and then deadlift in a meet i've pulled 638 or 639 whatever it comes out to in the gym i've pulled 635 and i've i've done 645 with like a hitch before it wouldn't count in a competition, but it would count them like a strong man event.

So that's where I'm at. What about you, Tommy? Strongest lip. Well, snatch never done it. So I don't know what that one is. Uh,

a clean and jerk. I have hit a two 25 in that in, I think two days of ever getting to experience it. So maybe that, maybe that's all I got. Maybe there's a little more, I don't know. So that's what I have there.

Um, squat. I have hit hit a 450 in the gym um 440 in a meet uh 440 it's somewhere that low 440s in the meet as high as i've got there uh bench i have hit a 315 in the gym but a good touch and go in a meet is like that 299 300 whatever those fancy kilos equal to be and then deadlift my biggest lift there would be like 460 462 right in that area and i'm like probably i'm well i'm heavier than you tanner so i'm like the heaviest person and i'm probably about 290 295 you're also six six yeah yeah and i'm tall yeah but uh so but my lifts actually like for for body weight really aren't that aren't that great in the grand scheme of things but um i can clean and jerk my i guess i haven't really tested my jerk but i just hit a clean pr of i think it's 310 right 310 or 315 i don't remember it's 310 um finally here this last week which that seems like

a lot to me that is a lot i i'm pretty i'm pretty sure i can jerk that just because my overhead stuff's pretty strong like i can i can like push press 300 pounds so um i'm not that's a lot yeah yeah so there's not a ton of people that do that i don't know like i know overhead stuff is just kind of a it's not like i got good at it because i worked hard at it it was just kind of something that i've always just kind of had um snatch i just hit finally hit 225 on the snatch this last week too um that was it that was a big deal for me um it took a long long time of fighting with that weight to finally get there fighting just under that weight to get there um but as far as like the the power lifting lifts um my bench press is i think the most i've ever done is 335 and that's

recently you know that's um my back squat is was 405 i do i probably want to test that soon because i've had made a lot of progress with my front squat and stuff so i do think if i tested my back squat it'd be a little higher but most i've ever stood up was 405 and that was maybe a couple three months ago um and deadlift is uh i think 455 is the most i pulled and i was super bummed out because it was like after six months of training my deadlift stayed the exact same but i'd lost like 35 40 pounds of body weight at that time it's like well something's got some changes here something's got to give so how long ago was that that you did pull that that was a while ago now that was probably like four months ago just like based off the time that you were there lifting

with us and seeing your other lifts I bet you could pull more than that like today and I don't practice dead lifting all that much just I don't know there's only so many hours in the day I don't I I was running some of my what I might want to do for training stuff by tanner and i he basically said well that's probably pretty fucking crazy tyler because i was like well here's what i want to do i want to do like i i want to at least get like three full days or four days really of olympic lifting in or i could do three days and just double them up. I'd like to do the CrossFit stuff three days a week, but I probably would need like three days a week of powerlifting stuff too, just to get general strength. So I was like, well, I'll go morning and night,

two days a week. I'll build in one off day and I was still running out of days. And so I'm either going to suck at some things I want to be good at, or I'm going to totally crash and burn by trying to do this deal. But I'm trying to put together a program for myself. I just don't know what the hell I'm going to do. But it's tough. There's only so much a guy can focus on getting awesome at at one time. That is true.

So, well, good. I think we got a lot of good conversation in today. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Tyler, you can find me on Instagram at Tyler F. and Stone. That's Tyler E-F-F-I-N Stone. Tanner? Tanner, check me out on Instagram at Massanomics. Tommy?

You can find me at Tomahawk underscore D. And don't forget to hit us up on Facebook. Find the Massanomics page. Like us. Like our stuff. Go to Massanomics.com. Buy some gear. Buy yourself a hat, shirt.

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