Massenomics Podcast - Ep.39: Julien Pineau StrongFit

Episode Date: January 2, 2017

  This week's episode features Julien Pineau of StrongFit. We were extremely fortunate to line his schedule up with Tyler's Epic Massenomics California Trip and get Julien on the podcast. Julien has been a very busy man lately, and has been traveling the world teaching his training philosophies and principles. This is definitely one of our favorite podcast conversations we've had yet, and we are very excited to share it with our listeners. Find Julien at StrongFit.com, and make sure you share this episode with all of your friends. Watch this episode in full color video...     Or check out the super-high quality audio version below.. Make sure you LIKE the Massenomics Facebook page... If you don't already have a closet full of Massenomics gear, go to the MASSENOMICS STORE and load up on swag... Also, please CLICK THIS LINK TO GIVE US A 5 STAR RATING ON ITUNES... Click this text to follow Massenomics on Instagram... Vote Massenomics for President in 2016... Have your barber shave our logo into the side of your head.. Maybe get a Massenomics tattoo while you're at it.    Or you could sign up for our email newsletter at the bottom of this page. Stay Strong, M

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. Find Jackson, find accent, French accent. There you go. And I'll have my...

See, we have a feminine perspective, the female perspective. That's right. That's perfect on the podcast. We're only going to be the big, strong guys. When she laughs, it's good. We'll know. And I'll have my accent like,

are you from Minnesota or something? Detroit. I just do it for the ladies. It see she's laughing i'm telling you it works i'm gonna i'm gonna leave that again um everybody welcome to the massonomics podcast i'm here with uh very special guest uh julian pinot of strong fit how's it going julian it's good you actually said my name right so starting well i like like it. How many different pronunciations have you heard? There's a few amongst the countries I've traveled. Yeah, they look at it and they go, yeah, you over there. So you've been basically traveling the world lately.

Yes, I have. Yeah. It is a good life. Yeah. So you just came from Canada. Tell us like what you've been doing kind of with your, it's the seminars mostly that you've been up to. Yeah. Seminars and coaches weeks. So I train the coaches. And so we have the seminar first or two day seminar where we have a lot of coaches, few athletes also.

And I'm starting to get PTs and chiropractors and people in the field of strength strength and conditioning coming to me and then during the week we do like a coach's week so which is much smaller group like five to seven people where i actually can go into more depth about what i do assessments how i see imbalances where i see the injuries coming from i'm a movement specialist so i do strongman and powerlifting and everything. But my base is as a movement specialist to fix human movement. So not pro athletes, not just powerlifters, not just strongmen, not just CrossFitters, CrossFit game athletes. I want to find a system that so I can fix everybody and not just the pros, basically. And that's kind of the gist of what you've been doing with your seminars.

You've been going, it's, you know, you'll spend a, how long are you spending in some of these places? A week, usually a week, maybe two weeks. Yeah. And then do you usually get to come home for a little bit? Nope. Or have you just been, boom, boom, boom? Just one to the next. Yeah.

So we've been to a lot of countries in Europe. Then we, so now it's, so I was in New York and then Toronto. And now we're going, I'm going to Dubai. Then, shit, where am. And now I'm going to Dubai. Then I'm going to Europe, London. Then Utrecht, that's in Holland. Then Germany. And from there we go to Australia. And from there I'm going to Dubai.

Then Israel. Back to Dubai. Then we're going Tokyo. Singapore, Hong Kong. Bangkok. Then we go to Russia. Then we go to Scandinavian countries. Something like that.

I lost count after that, honestly. I think you've just been naming places for the last bit. I know. Yeah, she has big eyes because she's following me everywhere. So she's like, oh, is that where we're going next? Yes, Jane, that's where we're going next. I'm telling you now. For what I remember because I kind of forget half of it. What's that life been like? Jane, that's where we're going next. I'm telling you now. From what I remember, because I kind of forget half of it, but yeah.

What's that life been like? Oh, it's awesome. Yeah? Yeah. I want to be the most interesting man in the world by the time I'm 60. I'm shooting for that. You're getting there. You're getting there.

That's what I'm shooting for. Has that been an interesting – had you done traveling like at a – have you ever traveled at that rate? No, not at that rate. Never like that. Those, by the way, those are mostly traveled at that rate? No, not at that rate. Never like that. By the way, those are mostly countries I've never been to, so it's awesome. I'm discovering as I go. Are you kind of scheduling these things like that, like almost with a little bit of intention?

Yeah. I've never been here. I'd kind of like to – Well, it's been – honestly, it's been very crazy because I did my first two seminars in July right before the CrossFit Games, and then it exploded from there. So we said, hey, let's do a few in Europe, because, you know, London,

and then suddenly people were like, why don't you come to see me? I was like, okay. And then before you know it, it just blew up. And so we've been behind, I mean, chasing this more than in front of it, honestly, for the last, well, like since July. And so we have not been organized maybe necessarily the best way ever.

God knows Richard is only one man. He's trying. He's doing everything he can, but he's only one man. And so maybe next year we'll be a little bit more organized. But like right now, it's like, hey, do you want to come? I'm like, sure. Never been to Russia. Sounds awesome.

Yeah. What is that? You know, things blew up fairly quickly for you. Very quickly. I mean, what were you doing? I talked about this off the air, I believe, but, you know, Scott McGee, who was our guest here a couple days ago, said I was supposed to tell Julian you're welcome for him discovering you. What cast bump, man? Totally.

How did you come into contact with him to begin with, like before you were on the pod? The first time I met Scott, and literally he discovered me in that sense, he brought Lindsay Valenzuela, he brought Valerie Vauborle to my gym because he saw me probably on Facebook doing some strongman stuff. But at the time I was in my gym in Torrance. I mean, I did a few strong fit competitions. The first big one was at Ronnie Teasdale's back in Main Street. I did a competition there where I introduced strongman movement to crossfit I was really one of the first ones and uh then he saw me on facebook

so he brings me those athletes then he realized I was doing a little bit more than just uh strongman then they go oh so you actually help athletes and then and then so he invited me on the on the podcast the podcast podcast and then where i met armen because actually scott was not there that day oh okay yeah because he was uh i remember he was uh that's when they had that crazy shooting at santa monica yeah he was doing swat team swat team shit yeah and so i didn't get to meet him i was like really you bring me here you're not even here okay i see how this works it's like is that because i'm french is is that an accent thing is that like i get it and um and so then we uh then i met our men that day okay and then we hit it off and then after that i went i went back on the podcast podcast like i

don't know a total total of 10 times i think and then um so i started to get a certain level of acknowledgement from that. And then eventually I got on the Barbell Shot podcast. That was in August, so a year and a half ago. And it's one of those before and after moments. That changed everything. Because I was steadily growing up until that stage where struggling. Like when I opened my gym, no idea how to do business.

Small gym in PV, then moved to Torrance. No idea how to do that either. So I made every single mistake you could make. Yeah. So struggling, struggling, but you know,

like better every year. You know, one step at a time, you climb the tallest mountain. So that was the thing. And then the, the barbell shrug happened and then he just went,

and then he exploded like literally exponentially on a weekly basis. How, how did you, how did you manage that, that rate of demand on you? I didn't. Did it just all of a sudden people were kind of clamoring to either be coached by or at least be… But it was weird because me, when I did the Barbell Shrug, I knew it was going to be important.

Because I was like, I'm going to be able to put my stuff out there for like an hour straight, which ended up being two episodes. So it ended up being three hours where I can explain my system. And I figured when they see the system, they'll apply it and then that'll be it. I never expected this to be about me. That was never the point. But then suddenly the guys were like, oh my God, that system can work. But then it turned toward me as well. I'm a very private person.

mais ça m'a aussi tourné vers moi. Je suis un personne très privée, donc c'était très étrange pour moi de passer vers ce genre de succès. Pas de fame, mais de succès de cette façon. Et donc, soudainement, il y a eu tellement d'emails. Quand il est sorti, il était le dimanche soir, le dimanche matin, à 6h du matin, je vais dormir et je regarde mon téléphone. right the wednesday morning six in the morning i go i go to pee and then i look at my at my um phone i'm like whoa what is that and there's like a hundred email i opened the first one it says zach evanesh yeah and i was like nah it can't be that that kevin ish and he started the email saying you're my brother you know um brother in ireland everything and he goes three pages and

i'm like oh shit i guess i'm gonna be all right and then he gets email after email after email entire day like my instagram facebook everything explodes and they're like oh my god i was like and it's weird because i'm like i'm the same guy that i was yesterday but i'm not not anymore yeah and i got i got emails like i didn't realize to this day it's amazing the the effect that podcast had the sweetest email i still remember it was a guy in south africa and the the email is six lines long and he's like i live in rural south africa i have a nine uh i want to take kids and train them to go to the olympics i have a nine to five job i hate it i. I want to do what you do. Help me.

And that was the sweetest email to this day I ever had. You could read the guy going like, I hate this. I hate my life. I want to help people. I want to do what you do. Just tell me how to do it. I live in rural South Africa. I was like, how the hell do you get the YouTube over there anyway?

But it was the, that's when I was, that's because at first i thought it was just going to be a system about training people and then it turned into uh it can change my life which at first i was like no that scared me i mean almost scared in the sense of like i don't do that i i don't want a responsibility of you know being that guy like so at first i was like whoa whoa that's not what i was doing and since then it's been a lot of that actually a lot of uh changing i mean i won't say changing life because it sounds so arrogant but uh that that changed everything what i think too though is that like some of the things you talked about on that first podcast i i'm pretty sure it was the first one um was the uh you know the the burn'm pretty sure it was the first one, um, was the, uh, you know,

the, the burn the questions thing. That's the second one. That was the second one of the second one. Gotcha. So, and that, that was the thing that I had, I believe that was what I had heard first. And, um, at that point in time, you know, I had started training doing CrossFit just to kind of, uh, stop being fat. And, uh, and in doing that, um, I was kind of getting at this point where like every single day i'd go in because i did it i was showing up and i was going hard but every day i did have that voice in the back of my head that was like why the fuck are you doing this yeah why how long like like you know how much this is gonna suck like right before you know how much this is gonna suck

why are you gonna do this how long how long do you think you're gonna be doing this like are you gonna do this five years you can this every fucking day for five years. What the fuck's wrong with you? And that went on, and I had kind of heard you talk about that, and I was like, all right, fuck it then. That was it. Anytime those times come, those thoughts come in, it's just done. That's it.

Fuck them. Time to get after it. You got to jump. Yeah. So that was pretty powerful, at least as far as that was the part that really caught my eye. But it took me a long time, too, because I remember, like, for me, it was one of those moments, it was squatting. Like, I've avoided squatting forever because I'm not good at it.

And so I had my coach, Sam Alduenda, who was a very famous powerlifter, like a master, like a world champion. And he would make me squat every Tuesday. Masters like a world champion and he would make me squat every Tuesday And I remember going under the bar like in a you know in a darkest pit of hell like every time like almost feeling depressed like I'm about to squat and Last thing last place in the world I wanted to be was under that bar and at some point I asked myself then What are you doing? Either you squat or you don't but why you know, what are you doing? Either you squat or you don't, but why, you know, what are you doing? You're going to go under 200 kilos with that mindset.

What are you doing? And I was like, and then, you know, you have to make that decision of, okay, either you do or you don't, but there's none of this, none of that weird, you know, like, oh, I do it, but I, you know what I mean? And so I was like, okay, then make a choice. Make a decision. Choose something. And I was like, okay, then I make a decision choose something and i was like okay

then i'll move forward and i'll burn every single question i go but the second i did that it changed everything like my squat i suddenly i was like okay then i can't wait for next week it changed everything but i had to go really to that point where i looked at myself going dude what are you doing yeah this is the last place because literally i went under i remember it was a 440 i had to do set of four and it was the last place on earth I wanted to be. And I was like, this can't be. No, that's not the way. That is not the way.

I also noticed you had a post on social media recently. I don't know if you had written it, but you had shared a post regarding intensity. Do you remember that? Yeah, Sarah Lugman wrote it. Actually, I shared it because she went with me at my seminar in Graz in Austria. And she writes very well. So I asked her to write whatever she wanted. And that was basically what she learned from me during the seminar.

And me pushing her that hard and everything was the same thing. It was the idea of pushing in a smart way. People pass what they think they're capable of. So she can tell you because she did it. And because I wanted to show to people they're capable of so much more than they think they can. Like your mind stops you way, way before you truly go into that dark place. But if you do it correctly, which is what I call the low W. W is for weight bearing.

E is for eccentric. W is for weight bearing. E is for eccentric. S is for skill. If you lower that to almost a zero, you can push to a ridiculous amount of intensity, far beyond what you think you're capable of, but yet come back the next day not being in pain. Something that's not heavy. No, it can be heavy, but it's not on your joints

because it's not weight bearing. So I can put a lot of weight on the prowler, but it's not directly on your structure. So it's not going to hurt your joints because it's not weight bearing so i can put a lot of weight on the prowler but it's not directly on your structure so it's not going to hurt your joints the next morning low eccentric means you're not going to be sore as shit yeah and low skill means you have no reason for stopping you just have to go just have to go so i'll destroy you i'll make your soul bleed but then that's where burning burn the questions because you're going to do it that one time and you're like yeah and. And then you're destroyed. You come back the next day, you go, oh, I'm not hurt.

But now I'm going to make you do that. Then you come back this week. Then what's your reason for stopping? So I'm going to push you further into it. Then the week after that. Then the week after that. Then the week after that. And then you're going to be six months in of reaching this ridiculous amount of intensity levels where literally you crush your soul every single time.

And you're going to have to come at that stage where you're going to have to answer the simple question is why you're here it's not for me you have nothing to it's for you but why are you here because when that sprint comes in and i say go and you're going to have to give me 100 knowing exactly what the what the consequences are which means you're going to be cramping rolling on the floor face first on the pavement trying to roll your quads on the pavement for 10 minutes because the pain won't stop because you started cramping and it's getting worse and you know it's coming too and the harder you go on that set the worse this is going to be now we're going to see why you're here but it's that amount of pain it's it's ridiculous and yet you're going to be like, I'll come back next week and I'll go harder.

The thing that I found with doing those types of things is I think I lack the frequency, like what you described. And I suppose a lot of people do. It's like, you know, I'll be able to go pretty hard, but then, you know, it sucked so you don't do it again often enough. And I think that's where I have a, at least personally, I end up having a hard time being able to get used to that pain and push that line, you know. But that's where the decision comes in.

That's the thing is you set it up once a week, but every Saturday you're going to do it. And you'll have not that good sessions, but once in a while, you're going to go into that place where you'll pass out for 10 minutes. You'll have to take an hour nap, at least 30 minutes. You'll have to reboot your brain because you'll go in places where you go, I am not functioning. Like, Armin can tell you, Scott can tell you. Like, they had to.

I remember a guy after, I think it was Armin. He had to stop the car. Like, he was driving. He had to stop the car, went into 7-Eleven, got like two liters of Gatorade and sugar and everything. And he was like, this was the most ridiculous thing I've ever felt. And I was like, yeah, I know. That's exactly what I want. And because there's that moment

where suddenly it's just, it's you and you. Like there's no, there's no more excuses and no more bullshit. There's no more questions. And you're going to come back and you're going to do it next week.

And then you're going to do it the week after that. And that, there's a moment where it's, you know, like you're going to have to face that. And if you can go through this, you can learn for life in general how much further you can go. Just once you make peace, literally with that discomfort, you can go so much further. And as far as a coach, how do you introduce somebody who's maybe new to feeling that way? I grab a stick and then I keep hitting them. It's a pretty common thing, I think, in CrossFit, in the general population,

where you may have a few people that maybe, it's not that they're not trying, but maybe they just have never trained to a point. They don't expect to hurt like that. Because they come out of place of fear. They think if I push that hard, I'm going to hurt, right? Because that's really what's stopping people. It's like, I'm going to hurt myself if I do this. That's the first thing that goes through your mind,

which is, by the way, a trick. That's just your mind trying to make you wuss out of it. You go like, oh, that can't be safe. No, that's just you trying to make you wuss out of it you go like oh that can't be safe no that's just that's just you trying to avoid this so but if i can make you do this in a way that the next day you come back and you're not broken then you'll go huh okay so it wasn't that bad i guess then you come back next session and so this does not happen on one session it happens over time and time and time where you're you're able to introduce

notion of intensity to normal people and that's exactly the point of that is i want to take the intensity that is reserved for those pro athletes and introduce people to it if i do that with snatches and kettlebell swings i'm going to break you yeah why because snatches is high skill high eccentric full snatch high weight bearing so i know i'm going to break you. Why? Because snatches is high skill, high eccentric for snatch, high weight bearing. So I know I'm going to break you. So I need to lower the waist to a point where I can – so the system applies to anybody. I can take grandma and I can push. Short of a heart attack, I'm not going to break her.

I mean I think a low rate of casualty is acceptable. But – Not everybody is going to live forever. It will motivate the other people it's all good um so you can if you do it just that way so you have to be smart about it that's all that's a little bit always been my problem with crossfit is a choice of exercises have to be smart because if i make grandma do that with snatches she's going to be broken for a week the next time she comes to train she's going to back off and she has to because now she was in real pain, not discomfort, actual physical pain.

So it just has to be done in a smart way. But if you do this correctly, over time, you can introduce that notion of intensity with everybody. It is not reserved for the top people. That was the greatest thing with CrossFit is introduce real training to normal people. I want to introduce real training to normal people i want to introduce real intensity to normal people and with that you know that that covers a lot of the um not a lot but but some of the the mental things that you're you know that your program is kind of is kind of about what about um from a movement standpoint um you guys talk you talk a lot about you know the uh you want to explain kind of your principle,

like the key log, what you're looking for with people. Okay. So we have to, that's, how many hours do we have? Like the idea. I fly out tomorrow morning.

There you go. Okay, cool. So we got all night. I have as many as you do. Yeah, my truck is stuck in the field out there anyway, so we're good.

So you see, okay, so let's, let's start at the beginning nobody's defining movement let's talk about a movement first like reglassman defined fitness nobody defines movement there's a huge gap that you see and that's what i see for example with the pts and when we think about the body we think about joint positioning okay think about evolution for a second evolution is driven by necessity, right? That's really the motor of evolution is necessity. How do we survive?

You know, the best specimen will survive forward. And so that means movement drives joint positioning, not the other way around. But if you look at the PTs, they look at joint positioning and then talk about movement second. Movement drives joint positioning that's evolution 101 if you understand evolution you understand that it's movement first can i sprint and based on that the most successful specimen will move forward deciding basically the evolution of the human body so that means we have to start with defining what movement is. And if you look at movement pattern, really you have four. You have a pull, a push, a hinge, and a squat.

Those are really the basic movement pattern that we have. Push, because you want to be able to punch, push things away from you. Pull is climbing a tree. Squat is jumping. Hinge is sprinting, if you want. A sprint is a perfect hinge, right? So we have to define everything based on movement first. That's my conversation with PTs. un sprint est un bon point donc nous devons définir tout en fonction du mouvement c'est ma conversation avec les PT

cette conversation sur la rotation externe quand vous vous déplacez ils mettent la flexion, ils mettent l'arme en avant et ils disent que vous devez externellement vous tourner pour mettre le bras dans le bon endroit alors donnez moi un mouvement dans la vie où vous êtes plus fort avec votre doigt en dehors que quand vous vous mettez, êtes-vous plus fort avec votre doigt en dehors Then give me a movement in life where you are stronger with your thumb going out than going in. When you punch, are you stronger with your thumb going toward the inside or toward the outside? Inside, definitely.

When you press dumbbells, are you stronger toward the inside or are you stronger toward the outside? Bench pressing, swimming, throwing. Give me one athletic movement, one movement, forget athletic, one movement in life where you are stronger going toward en direction de la rotation externe que de la rotation interne. Pas que je puisse... Exactement. Donc, le seul mouvement que nous avons, c'est celui que PT nous dit de stabiliser le poids en avant. Même si dans un mouvement de poussée, il n'y a aucun autre. Donc le problème avec cela, c'est que quand ils parlent de flexion comme ça, ils parlent de rotation externe, qui est en direction de la poussée.

Donc dans le mouvement de poussée, il fait sens de faire cette rotation externe. Le problème n'est pas dans le mouvement de poussée. external rotation which is toward pulling so in the pulling motion it makes complete sense to have that external rotation the problem is not in a pushing motion but if you look they have no distinction between the two how can you not distinguish between pushing and pulling and there's the gap in the industry where a lot of it a lot of this was defined in the strength and conditioning through that pt system of looking at joint positioning instead of looking at motion first, at movement first. And that's a tremendous gap. And so the key is to define first movement.

So I talk about torque all the time, which is more than, because I use the term rotation, but that's actually, I was mistaken. That's a wrong, it introduces a wrong idea. It's not so much about turning the joint internally or externally. It's about creating torque torque either internally or externally there is no passive uh position for the body you're at least you're fighting gravity so you're always active so that means you're always creating torque one way or another torque is rotation based first like a like a screw versus a nail so that means you're either talking toward internal or external on every single movement and so that is the base of movement and yet it is never looked

at like this we always go after which is position of the joint i'm like position of the joint based on movement and that is something you nobody seems to talking about. They talk about movement like they take a slice of the human body and that that's the body in its position. I'm like, okay, but let's say you take a slice of a human body running. If you take just a slice, you cannot tell me if he's going forward or backwards. That kind of matters. Yeah. Because the bone, you know, like the the the will differ depending if the muscle is pulling one way or another so that's the the greater conversation is about that is looking

at movement from a torque perspective instead of just joint positioning torque drives uh joint positioning not the other way around so that's the problem is the pts have introduced the conversation basically backwards and that that has led to a number of problem for example the snatch being taught being taught in external rotation of the shoulder i'm like but no other movement in life do you push while going external rotation so how come the snatch is one the when you snatch do you pull the weight or do you push the weight you push it so it would be internal torque right you would be engaging the chest. Why would you disengage the chest

on a movement where you're pushing something? And yet, that's exactly what you're doing by forcing that external rotation of the shoulder. So now you're creating torque externally. That means loading the T-spine. That means loading the traps. That means disengaging the chest on a pressing movement.

How does that make sense? To me, it doesn't. That's the conversation with CrossFit weightlifting. When they're saying, you still need to rotate the shoulder, I'm like, no, you need to engage the pec. Why would you disengage the pec on a stabilization on pushing something?

Do you think that that's something that's taught mainly because that's a little bit easier for a beginner to say, bend the bar this way because that's an easier principle for somebody who's never touched a barbell okay but now okay so now it comes to a philosophy of coaching we are saying that first of all it's okay to teach wrong at first in order to teach right

after you know wrong first right after is that how you would want to coach your kids no like i'm going to teach you something really wrong, but don't worry, later on, I'm going to teach it to you the right way. It'll just buy us a little time and then we'll address it later. Does that sound like a good idea? No.

Exactly. And the second point is, is that how we look at the people we coach? Like, more ones. Like, you're saying is, you are not capable of understanding because I'm so much smarter than you. So, I'm going to speak really loud and really slow.

And I'm going to teach you like wrong stuff because you're too stupid. And then when you get a bit smarter like me, at the end we can have a real conversation. I can explain to you how it really works. Yeah. Is that what we're saying? Okay. So you know what my biggest problem is in the fitness industry?

Is the better coach you become the higher the level you of athletes you train i'm a good coach i train better athletes i'm a great coach i go pro athletes i'm even better i go nfl team so are we saying that normal people don't deserve better coaches because that's exactly what we say it's the same mentality of oh you're a newbie you're a moron i'm going to teach you wrong but that's all you can understand but once you start to become a bit smarter then we can go toward the right way of doing things is that how we want that sounds like school to me yeah and which i disagree you know i mean like why would you teach math the wrong way and then to teach it the wrong way later

that makes it's a wrong way of looking at coaching to me. Educate people. Don't treat them like morons. And how do you suppose, what do you suppose the best way to do that to, what do you suppose the best way to approach that is to, you know what I mean? How would you do it if you're talking like a regular normal person who comes walking in and you're trying to explain things?

Is it just simply a matter of taking more time? Educate them. You spend, you don't sell things. You spread knowledge. The difference between knowledge and money is if I give you $20, I lost $20. It's a net zero. If I share my knowledge with you, I have not lost knowledge.

You've gained knowledge. I have not lost it. Out of us two, we can come with another idea. So one plus one equals three. Money is one minus one equals zero. Money is 1 minus 1 equals 0. Knowledge is 1 plus 1 equals 3. We can educate people. When you come to me, yes, I'll spend an extra 5 minutes at every time,

and I'll explain to you why and how we're going to do things. We can educate people. Instead of being teachers, let's be mentors. Let's mentor people into becoming better. Is that not why they come to us in the first place? Or are you just interested in teaching the snatch let's make them smarter let's educate people and once you educate people you teach them how to fish instead of giving them a fish then you only need to teach them how to fish once or three times because not everybody's that smart let's be honest but it might take a while. But then they are smarter.

You have shared knowledge. You have made them into a smarter, a better person. That's the way you approach coaching. It's mentoring, not just the school system where we're going to beat the shit out of you and you're going to make a better soldier for society. Who guides school? Society. Because society needs pieces to fit, to make it progress a certain way.

But so school is not for us. School is for society to produce little soldiers so we can move forward. I'm saying let's mentor people into being humans and not little soldiers that are you going to snatch that way. You're going to do this. Let I'll give you a fish and then you come back to me. I can sell you that six weeks program was going to do absolutely nothing. Let's educate people. Let's become better people first, better coaches, and let's share knowledge.

Let's make it knowledge-based, not money-based like it is right now. And to do that, we need to understand the fundamentals of movement. So that's why I teach coaches. I don't tell them what to do. I just teach them the fundamentals of movement so they understand, for example,

that everything starts in a pushing motion it's everything is internal torque that's what you see everywhere so let's apply that to the technique that we teach is that strategy with you with you coaching coaches right now is that is that prob basically your kind of the most effective way for you to try to get this i believe so to get this out there yeah i believe so um have you thought at all about trying to do anything like you know where you are specifically teaching people how to put something out there that everybody can digest to you know how to how to assess their own movement how to do these types of things is that something you've considered or may be doing? That's because most people come to me because I've managed to fix a certain number of issues.

And so they want to know how I assess people. They want to know how I do all this. How do I fix movement? How do I see faulty patterns? First of all, what is the mindset in order to see faulty patterns? And once you see faulty patterns, how are you going to fix them and so that's what i want to do but for people to understand how to do that they have to understand what is the the the train of thought how do i get to that conclusion of oh this is the wrong pattern to do that you have to understand the principle that i follow right there is a principle first never follow a method that's a quote from r Ralph Emerson. There's a million methods out there, but very few principles. Very few principles. A man who understands the principles can make up his own methods.

Whereas a man who follows methods without understanding principles will run into trouble. The point is, don't look at what I do. Look at why I do it and how I do it. And then you can figure the rest after. Like I use certain exercises, but you can use others. The point is not the exercise, because they all jump on that like a bunch of pts like they use my they jump on the exercises that i use i'm like that's not the point make up your own stuff understand the principles i base my decisions on and so what i'm trying to teach is the principles

so then then somebody can use that template on anything on anything and they can make up their own exercise if they find a better way to do it go i'll use your stuff i i like strongman exercises because they allow me to do certain things but maybe there's a better way to do it i don't mind that at all but you have to understand the principles that are based what i do on and then once you understand that go do it but so in order for me to teach people how to assess problems, I have to first teach them principles. So that's what the seminar is for. And during the coaches week, I can do more assessments. I can show people how I find faulty patterns and how I fix them.

And so, but that'll take a year, two years. So the seminar is just the intrigate. And then past that, you have the coaches week. That's the first one. And then you do case studies. And we'll have a second coaches week. There'll be a mentoring program more case studies and then eventually a certification everything but this will take a lot of time and you're gonna have to it's not given so you're gonna have to work at it and it'll take times and everything because but the point

for me is to people to have that principles ingrained in what they do so that when they see movement they see right away where the problem starts so that they can fix the 10 different consequences that come from that underlying faulty pattern. But otherwise, you're going to spend your time fixing 10 problems and then the next 10 and then the next 10 because you never truly fixed a problem to begin with. There's a lot of these issues that you're finding. How many of them are poor movement patterns versus, say, mobility issues?

Okay, so what is mobility? The ability to move, I suppose, further through a range of motion. Range of motion is flexibility. Mobility is that range of motion while maintaining tension. That's the difference between mobility and flexibility, right? So range of motion, what is tension? It's torque. So mobility is the range of motion that you have while maintaining proper torque.

So we go back to, is it a push or is it a pull? Because that means you'll have, for your shoulder, you have a range of mobility for pulling, sorry, a mobility for pulling and mobility for pushing. You might have a range of motion that is perfect in both, but the second half to apply torque, have to apply tension, you might find that you have a very good mobility for pushing you might have a range of motion that is perfect in both but the second have to apply torque i have to apply tension you might find that you have a very good mobility for pulling but very poor for pushing so that means every time you're going to have weight overhead for example the mobility of your lats is not going to allow you to raise your hand overhead the way

you should maybe for pulling so you think you have mobility but the second you have it you try to push you don't have it anymore so what are you going to do you're going to go to where you're vous avez de la mobilité mais le second vous avez vous essayez de pousser vous n'avez plus de ce que vous allez faire vous allez aller où vous êtes bien à ce qui est vers la pousse donc maintenant vous allez éventuellement tourner mais perdre maintenant la position jointe conçue pour pousser donc vous allez essayer de vous mettre dans un mécanisme de pousse afin de pousser le poids évidemment maintenant votre position jointe est faite vous allez arrêter votre épaulé donc d'une manière oui ça se passe toujours envers la mobilité mais nous devons comprendre joint position is wrong you're going to wreck your shoulder so in a way yes it always comes down to mobility but we have to understand first what is mobility that's range of motion while maintaining proper torque so you have to define what the proper torque is and then work on increasing that

increasing range of motion will never fix the problem because it's torque that is the issue not the range of motion because you'll still move poorly through that space exactly plus by the way like talking about this range of motion you know like'll still move poorly through that space. Exactly. Plus, by the way, talking about this range of motion, you know, like everybody is doing the mashing their peg to increase everything. Have you noticed that when people get knocked out or choked out or under sedation, they can move in any possible direction?

They wake up the next day, they have not destroyed the tissue. How come? How come when you're awake, you can't put your body in a certain position? But I put you under sedation or choke you out. That depends what you like. I like to choke them out better. Please don't. How come? How come when you're awake, you can't put your body in a certain position? But I put you under sedation or choke you out. That depends what you like. I like to choke them out better.

Please don't. Sedation is... I think sedation is for pussies. But choking you out is way faster anyway. It's better for your system. You won't feel groggy or whatever. I swear. So you choke them out and then they bend like pretzels.

And yet they wake up the next day, they're not broken. How come? If the tissue is a problem, then when you're knocked out or choked out, unconscious, then the tissue should stop you exactly the same way. So it doesn't though. That tells you that problem of range of motion was a neurological problem to start with, not a tissue one. So mobility is never a problem of tissue it's

always a problem of can you apply torque or not if you cannot then your brain will stop you for reaching that particular range of motion that mobility really because it's afraid you're going to pop so everything is always a neurological thing just like pain like if pain is just pain receptors right then how come ghost pain exists know, people lose their hands two years later, they feel pain in their fingers. That tells you that pain is a neurological factor, not a physical one in that sense. There are no pain receptors. Otherwise, you will not feel your fingers in pain when you lost your hand years ago. So it's a neurological thing.

And that's what mobility is, really. It's your brain stopping you from reaching a certain range of motion because it's afraid you're going to pop. So if you can increase the torque that you create at that range of motion, naturally you will gain mobility because your body will be more comfortable in going further and further and further because it knows you're not going to pop anything at that particular range of motion. So that's what mobility is.

It's gaining torque at the end of range of motion, which is exactly what gymnastics does, by the way, and Olympic weightlifting and things like that. So a lot of the problem comes out of putting yourself, so it's a mobility issue in the sense of putting yourself into either the wrong movement pattern because you have lack of mobility or not being able to reach there because you're just not strong enough in that particular torque at the end of the end of range of motion where i lost everybody on this but that's okay i know i make sense it's all matters to me i know i'm right everybody needs to go back and listen to this five yeah i know because you can be going like what the fuck is he saying is it it's like with a french accent it sounds better but i'm still really confused that's i get people with a french accent i'm confused they keep listening because it's a french accent and they go like i have no idea what he just said but i'm gonna keep listening i'm confused pretty much throughout most of my daily life so there you go that makes things a lot better than um how does the the some of the the strongman movements what

are your if you had to pick you know a handful of just the go-to movements that you think that generally um people that maybe don't train strong fit need to be doing the rope pull is a big one yeah not the one where you yank and you're humping the rope like at the crossfit game like um body parallel to the ground and just like fast hands because it allows you to activate the lats in the frontal plane which is something in CrossFit you don't see. When we had done some of that, basically on your recommendation, we started doing some of those things. Of course, where we're from, this time of year, you just can't. Bullshit. Suck it up, dude.

I got a guy who sent me a video from Sweden. They're doing it in the snow. He was like, we can't do it. Yes, you can. Don't ask the questions, man. Suck it up. Fuck it, I suppose. Yeah, exactly. You know, it yes you can well don't the questions man suck it up fuck it i suppose yeah exactly you know it's 15 degrees when i flew gloves give the shit so um but the uh the interesting the question that i i was wondering is is how does a person kind of know what uh like what what weight range you should be working in with that you know like what yeah how far how much time should it really be hurting?

First of all, it's intensity. I think by the second set, like what kills me is people that do five sets. I'm incapable of doing three. But by the end of the second one, my chest blows up, my biceps are gone. There's no way I do the third set with intensity. So if you're doing five, first of all, you're not doing anything. You should be dying by set with intensity. So if you're doing five, first of all, you're not doing anything. You should be dying by set number two. And you should be really rethinking your life choices by set number three. Is that about it being heavy or about it being... No, it's intensity. It's like,

I want it heavy enough that you're going to struggle, let's say, like for 100 feet, you're going to struggle, let's say, at anything past... You're not going to stop, but you're going to start struggling at 50. But what want you is to go hard fast try to move your hands as fast as possible do it with intensity if you're cruising kind of pulling and it takes you like two and a half minutes to do 100 feet you're not doing shit you you should be cramping everywhere by the time you're done on the first set and so if it's if you still at 100 feet accelerating it's too light just put more weight so again 100 foot and it should really fuck you up yeah like yeah like your hands like my chest like if you have like it's gonna explode like you should have to be poked and prodded to do a second set i that's

what i do okay i grab a stick and that's exactly what i do yeah that's probably we probably were going too light we were you know yeah it still sucked oh yeah but we were doing five or six no no it should be like oh my god i hate that guy yeah french jackson and all i just you know we uh if they look at me like you know that face i'm like that was a good set right there same thing with pushing the sled then how does uh what what are your thoughts so i have a workout that i like especially for crossfitters because they lost that ability to sprint they all pace too much. And so I have about like 120 feet and I put enough weight that you have to do it

right under 12 seconds, right? So you're going to do it on the minute. So 12 seconds there, 40 seconds to rest. You're coming back. And usually by set number four, people completely give up. Like it takes them more than 15 seconds to come back and that's when I stop them.

But so I'm going to try to keep you under that 10 to 12 second range and as much weight as I can for like, let's say, 120 feet around 12 seconds. And I know when you go over 15 seconds, you're just not sprinting anymore. You're trying to squat your way forward using your quads and then that means you're done. So I do workouts like that. So actually, I will go heavy on the drag, for example.

But on the sprint, I always try to go fairly light, but excessively hard so I can get the glutes firing. Gotcha. And that was the thing that I found, at least when I pulled the rope, when I was doing pulls, I basically would fuck up my biceps very quickly. And that was the principle that I wanted to learn to apply, was to try to be able to then actually use my lats. Exactly. Which is a thing that I don't know how many people have that issue, but that is a huge issue. 85% of people cannot activate their lats the way I want.

But that was the same idea with the sprint. So that's why I make people drag first, because I'll destroy their quads. And then when they go into the sprint, they got no quads, so now they're going to have to use the glutes. So that was the same idea. Like the first set on the rope pull is to destroy your biceps. And once you have done that, and the second one, then your lats are going to have to use the glutes. So that was the same idea. Like the first set on the rope pull is to destroy your biceps.

And once you have done that, and the second one, then your lats are going to have to work. Maybe not this week, but maybe not next week, but eventually you're going to start to, you know, really be annoyed

that your bicep blowing up every time. You're going to have to start using your lats. Yeah. Or you'll have to if you're going to move the damn thing. Yeah, because your biceps are, yeah, by the second set, your biceps are shot normally. Yeah. And always, you'll notice to if you're going to move the damn thing. Yeah, because your biceps are – yeah, by the second set, your biceps are shot normally.

Yeah. And always – you'll notice like there's always one arm usually that just won't work anymore. Yeah. What about the sandbags as well? We've talked about them in the past. I like the sandbags. We fucking absolutely love them. I love to hate them.

Well, we start with love first, but yeah, we hate them a lot. Well, we start with love first, but yeah, we hate them a lot. One, how did that become something that you started doing? And then what do you use that tool for specifically? Oh, man, I use it for everything because I love the carries. I mean, I press them overhead. I squat them. We do everything. I play with them because i found the stone

to be a bit rough rough on the skin rough on the on the floor rough on everything and so i started playing with sandbags and i the feeling reminded me of wrestling of grappling a lot so i was like oh that's cool and then i use them for for everything so i use them for carries for a year and a half every single workout i finished with a 400 meter carry i did that every single day for a year and a half and it built my back better than anything else i've ever done because there's no flexion extension of the spine you just you know your erector standard tension and just start walking i gotta know how heavy you did that 100 pounds okay yeah i never really went heavier but i did it every single day because i use i use 180 pound bag and i use that there's no way you go for a minute that's what i was

thinking because i i i would you know you use it for squats and it's for me it's it's it's great to actually use my glutes because i have a really it's same as my lats that's a difficult uh i have a hard time getting them yeah and fire you cannot not fire properly it's impossible yeah yeah yeah and and you'll know right away because if you're doing it right you can be like oh fuck yeah i'm cramping everything everything hurts but we um you know when we use them um i will do carries and i had had this this benchmark in my head i was like i think i could go i think i could get around the track if i practiced a lot but then every single time I picked the bag up and I'll take, you know, I might go 40 yards, 50 yards. And then, and then.

You need to have a monster posterior chain to go. The only one I ever saw was Sam Dancer. Did 180. He did like, I think it was a 220 sandbag. And he went, it was over 200, it was probably 300 meters. It was a 220 sandbag and he went uh he was over 200 it was probably 300 meters was a 220 i can't do that i can tell you that right now i tried and i made it uh 200 meters ish he went 300 it was insane but you need so much hammies and glues to do that yeah my hammies are not strong and uh i just i could not uh walk anymore my hammies just

completely gave up the interesting thing is you're you're talking about it like it's a matter of strength and and mental for me when i yeah when i drop the bag you just whistled because i'm a bitch exactly that's called bitching out there's no question there and you know how you know it's like you drop the bag and within 60 seconds, you're like, my bag is fine. Yeah. And part of that – Everybody's like, oh, I'm going to hurt my back. No, I'm fine.

Shit, I have to pick it back. That's the thing we found with some of the – we put on our own strongman competition here this summer. And we competed in two this last year, us guys at the gym. And we had – with some of the stuff like your you know your farmer's carries specifically is a thing where um you know there's some times where you that i find i can go until it just pulls itself out of my hand yeah there's never i don't think there's a matter of quit with that no at first maybe but honestly within a few weeks of a few months of working them it'll

be just your grip gives up yep that's it you know it's it sucks but your yeah your grip you're like shit yeah the only thing i could do to make to make my farmer's carries any longer is simply to you know lock in my grip better from the beginning or or simply have a working on it or yeah but but there there wasn't anything that like i um you know i i would I never put it down and went, shit, I could have gone farther. Yeah, it's like the Yoke carry. There's a moment you're just like,

I just cannot carry it anymore. But with the sandbags, literally every time that I put the sandbag down, if I'm doing a carry, it's because I really wanted to put that bag down. I think, honestly, I reach really the failure, like on my hammies, with the heavy carries, out of the hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands I've done, maybe two or three times.

Truly. Like the rest of the time, I just dropped it. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like, oh my God, this sucks. Yeah. But let's be honest. You could have done at least two more steps.

Yeah. You know what I mean? But that also shows you how much people freak out on their lower back. Like there's that thing. For whatever, the lower back just much people freak out on their lower back like there's that thing for whatever the lower back just makes you freak out so badly you always think

you're going to hurt yourself and then you realize literally within a minute you're like shit I'm fine yeah what else do you use the bags for

as far as we talked carries what about squatting specifically I love squatting and the reason for that is I had a lot of older people at my gym that could not squat with a bar.

You know, they start squatting and you make the face. No, don't do that. You give them a sandbag. And those are people that can never break parallel with a bar, like ever. And you give them a sandbag and they break parallel and their form looks perfect. And we're going to go back into movement on this. But, like, for example, to lower a squat, you need to activate the medial head of your hammy. La forme ressemble parfaitement. On va revenir sur le mouvement. Pour baisser le squat, vous devez activer le milieu du hamis.

C'est l'intérieur du hamis pour la chaîne postérieure. Vous ne voulez pas bloquer les quads sur le squat, ça va détruire vos pieds. Vous voulez bloquer la chaîne postérieure. Vous voulez bloquer l'intérieur du hamis. Cela signifie que vous devez créer du torque à l'intérieur pour le faire. Parce que si vous aviez du torque à l'extérieur, comme tout le monde pense, pour activer les glutes, to create torque internally to do that because if you were to talk externally like the whole thing to activate the glutes that is not a for example like if i want to load on a broad jump you will

load the posterior chain not the quads if i jump off of a box how do you land you land using your posterior chain not your quads i mean yeah so uh in order to descend a squat you have to talk internally i can't go over this more but that will take another hour. So I made plenty of videos on that. But if you look at a bar, so everything for the last 200,000 years we've been lifting was between our hands. And so naturally that takes you toward internal torque because everything collapses you in. So when you squatted a stone or anything, the weight is in the middle between your hands. It takes you toward internal torque on the way down.

And then you're going to externally torque really hard to come up. So it's posterior chain, quads on the way up. That's a perfect squat. But now you take a barbell. The weight is on the outside of the bar, right? So bringing you down. So that reversed the torque toward more external.

So the barbell naturally takes you toward external torque, which is what you see people collapsing the knees out because it feels natural. It feels natural, but for 200,000 years, your body has developed

toward internal torque on the way down, not external. And so you don't know how to deal with the bar. So unless you're a good athlete who naturally knows how to compensate between the two,

an older person, a less athletic person, they have no idea how to squat with a bar because it's not a natural movement. It's not a functional movement in a sense. It doesn't mimic nature. There is no way that you lift in nature that is outside of your hands. Very little. But so the sandbag takes you into a natural movement that your body understands because that's what it's been, that's what it evolved to do.

And so that's what you have those less athletic older people. They do awesome on a sandbag. And so to me, to teach a squat, the sandbag is a better tool. What about loading? I lost everybody on this again. Nope, nope, nope. I honestly wasn't ready for you to stop that's the oh i can't keep on going man what what about loading with the

sandbag um you know it lapping it you mean no no i mean i mean i mean the load of the weight um how part of the issue is heavy heavy always heavy yeah but that's why uh so i have the sandbags that i made because uh the because the reason I made sandbags back then because I started like six years ago is because I really liked how they felt and everything but every single brand that I bought, I popped them within two months in my gym. I decided to make my own sandbag because I was doing a clean and jerk and there was still sand on the floor with a log.

I almost popped my knee so that day I was like, that's it. I'm making my own sandbags. But I made into 20 pounds increments and at the gym actually having 10 pounds increments because i wanted to be able to do everything from light yeah 20 reps to as heavy as i can so i got to the point where i could squat uh over 300 pounds sandbags so we meant we made a sandbag all the way up to 400 and i could lap it almost lapped it got so close but i could carry it so i go as heavy as i can i go from like i do with a bar so it's not as logistically simple as a bar but i go in 10 pounds increment and as from light to heavy yeah yeah and i suppose that's an issue with a lot

of strongman stuff at least the stuff we do is that like the loads are spaced out so far yeah and that's why i made so many sizes because that is a problem. Yeah. Because especially for pressing because I love to do clean and press on a sandbag. Yeah. But if you do 50 pounds increments,

you're not going to go very far. Yeah. When I first got mine, like literally the first day I grabbed it and I kind of figured out how to lap it, kind of figured out how to squat a little bit and it was, it was,

you know, pretty gnarly. But I got, and I was like, well, I'm going to try gonna try and i'm gonna try and get this to my chest and then i'm gonna try and press it overhead and i went uh the first time i finally got it to my chest after three or four tries but i got it up there and i went went for it and i went dropped it right away and i went i bought the wrong fucking sandbag like Like, God damn it. I went too big. But the thing was is actually it didn't take long. Really a little bit of practice. Actually, you know, it's not like I got any stronger within a week.

But a little bit of practice. But it's crazy how it feels the first time. Yeah. The first time is overwhelming. And you know why? Because you're in the wrong torque. Because you think you have to externally rotate. And you cannot on a sandbag because the weight is collapsing when you're in. And it shows you to you have to externally rotate and you cannot on a sandbag

because the weight is collapsing when you're in and it shows you to press overhead. You need to go internal torque. That's the only way you're going to control it. That's the only way. But that's welcome to functional movement. That is the way it works. And so if you try to apply,

to be in the wrong position because you're applying movement incorrectly, you rise right away. I cannot press this. It's impossible and then within three sessions your body is like look this way is not working let's do it that way now you're in actually in a natural state and you go like okay i can do this but like so it rectified your pressing motion by itself yeah by putting you into a more natural whatever that

means state and so that's why I like the sandbag so much because that is as functional in the sense of mimicking nature as it gets. That is why your body was as evolved to do is pressing a sandbag, not a barbell. Yeah, definitely. There's a lot of that seems to be that way with strongman movements in general is that a little bit of practice goes so far. Oh, yeah. At first, you are so confused.

Your capabilities are half what they are if you spent a month on it. Yeah, it's the awkwardness of it. It's like a barbell. It's a nice leverage. Your hands fit around it. You can position yourself. And then suddenly, you have a stone. You have sandbags.

You have a monster dumbbell. And you go, what the hell am I supposed to do with that? You have no idea how to load properly and now every single muscle in your body has to join the party. It's not pretty. It's not that smooth, pretty movement. Nope. It's a grind. It's hard. It breaks you mentally

as much as physically. But it's funny, the barbell doesn't necessarily help you with strongman movement. The strongman movement always makes you stronger with a barbell. Yeah, and I think that's the important thing that people need to know. I mean, from what about like, you know, you see a lot of athletes, you see a lot of coaches. What about like powerlifting specifically? What can they learn from some of these movements?

But first of all, like how to engage muscle properly. On the sandbag, you try this. You don't have a choice. You're going to squat engaging your glutes. It's impossible to squat a sandbag without engaging your glutes. So for someone who is a little bit too squat dominant, that'd be a great way, even as an assistance exercise, in order to load your posterior chain better, go squat a sandbag.

Because you need to squat with a bar because that's what you're going to compete with. But now maybe we can add to the program. Instead of doing assistance work that is not with a barbell, we can use a sandbag instead. That way you'll be able to load your glutes properly. Like for you, for example, you're more quite dominant. So maybe if I can, after your normal training with the bar, i can take you and now we can work with the sandbag it's gonna make you engage your glutes better your posterior chain better it's going to teach you to use those

muscles you have a problem engaging that's going to make you naturally better with the bar it's going to make you better on the on the deadlift so it's going to address those areas that you just find a way around with the barbell and so so I can introduce basically a more functional pattern in your lifting with the sandbag. I can load you differently. I can make you use your core maybe a little bit better, differently, engage better. I can do so much more with a stronger movement.

With the sandbag alone, but then pulling that rope, for example, that'll get your lats going. You're going to need your lats for the bench press. You're going to need your lats for the bench press you're going to need your lats for the deadlift so uh i'm all for that pull downs but maybe the rope pull as well can allow you to engage in in a in a more functional way where i go back to functional everybody's using the word functional now so it doesn't mean anything anymore right let's see as in mimic mimicking you know like the way you're supposed to do them the way evolution wants you to move.

That is something you're going to find on a rope pool much more than on a barbell row, for example, even though I love the exercise. A rope pool allows you to do certain things better. What do you think that the, you know, the average person who, say, just walks in, what do they need to just start to move better? I mean, do they basically just need a coach who knows more? Or is there just a principle that people can just try to apply? Well, they need to, for example, learn to hinge correctly. Most people don't even know when the hinge is. If you look at the world now with PTs and stuff, they tell you you to use your legs when you pick up something off the floor you have to use your

legs okay but that means so external torque that means flexion extension of the spine because you're you're loading incorrectly so let's teach people how to hinge first use your hammies use your glutes through internal rotation internal torque sorry we have to teach people first things first is proper movement patterns what is a push that means internal torque even overhead how to pull how to external torque how to squat how to hinge and from there how to apply that to exercise and that means strongman movement in that sense are much better than a barbell because they take you the way evolution wants you to do those movements so all my again all my other clients

were doing basically strongman movement they were pulling the rope pushing the prowler carrying the sandbag squatting it pressing it overhead but very very rarely did i use the barbell because i found that they had a natural movement that was so much better for them that using a barbell where after six months i still felt that it was not a safe movement for them to do. And my big thing for me is always move safer. Well, with a sandbag, they were moving great. With a bar, they move like shit. Why would I put them through a year, two years, three years of moving like shit?

Since they're going to progress only very little. With a sandbag, I can load them properly right away. They don't give a shit about the barbell. They don't care about competing in powerlifting. They want to move better in real life. That idea that we have to teach them with that. It's like you're trying to fit a square into a circle. It doesn't work.

Just make them better. Them, not you. It's not about you as a coach where you're so bright and you're so dazzling that you can make anybody squat perfectly and snatch. No, it's not about you. It's about them. Grandma is never going to do overhead squat. That's okay. There's other things she can do. She can learn to put things overhead correctly. She can learn to pull a rope. She can learn to carry groceries, her grandkids. She can learn to, you know, hinge properly. So she stops blowing up her hips and her knees. Those are the things that we can focus on.

Do you think with the structure of, say, your typical CrossFit gym, do you think that's something that coaches would just address from a scaling standpoint? Just say, we're going to start you out with bags. No, the business aspect has to change a little bit. We need private sessions or at least semi-private sessions. And we need to rethink the exercises that we use. We need to rethink the barbell. We need to rethink the overhead squat, for example.

I'm just using example. But we need to rethink also the way we're doing it. I'm all for the class for a conditioning standpoint. And we do need conditioning. But there's going to be some... We're going to need the private and semi-private systems so we can teach people to move correctly first. and so we've been going way more into this with with not something i wanted to do necessarily but we have to where we're starting uh to because some of my people are

doing it at their gym so we're trying to get the data to see how we're going to move the industry toward that because without the privates semi-private you just it just won't work yeah yeah i don't think it's feasible so well i julian i i think that's going to do it for today um really do you want it's i'm i'm cold so you guys have to be there you go okay i'm good i'm sure she's freezing but i'm good. So that's going to do it for us today. Julian, how can people get a hold of you? Not get a hold of you. I don't want to blow your phone.

How can people keep an eye on what you've been doing? StrongFit1 on Instagram. And then if you have any questions, just email info at strongfit.com. And then Wendy will set you on the right path. And sandbags, all that stuff can be bought at strongfit.com. As well as the, is the Optimus line still available? Still available, yeah. It cost me a fortune to make, but yeah.

That's the coolest fucking thing. It's the coolest thing ever, man. It's the coolest toy I've ever had. I bought it just so I could have it in my gym, let's be honest. I just love the thing. I kind of drool over it quite quite regularly still so uh no it's it's pretty sweet that's kind of the all-in-one thing i think we even talked about it on our podcast here a week or two ago but um but yeah check that check it check it check all

that out at strong fit um that's gonna do it for us thanks a lot for coming out thank you for thank you enough uh we gotta go drag julian go drag Julian's truck out of the mud. Yeah, out of the field. Let's try that. Fortunately, we're not the world's weakest podcast. This is Mastanomics, the world's strongest podcast. Thanks a lot for listening, everybody. Don't forget, go to our Facebook page.

Make sure you like the Facebook page. Go to mastanomics.com. You can scroll to the bottom of the page, sign up for our email newsletter. At the top of the screen, you can click on the shop of the page sign up for our email newsletter at the top of the screen you can click on the shop you can buy yourself hats, shirts

all sorts of sweet gear also there you're going to find our articles and the rest of our podcast episodes on Instagram you can follow the official Massonomics at

Massonomics and I'm Tyler you can find me at Tyler F. N. Stone that's Tyler E. F. F. I. N. Stone thanks a lot for listening everybody and stay strong

you just heard the Massanamics podcast. With your ears, you're welcome. Check us out on Facebook, find us on Instagram at Masanamics and make sure you visit masanamics.com and buy some of that sweet Masanamics gear. From your friends at Masanamics Studio, home of the world's strongest podcast, stay strong.