Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Stan Efferding on Speed Training and Lifting Explosively

Starting point is 00:00:00 Well, hello there, and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today. And I have a quick favor to ask. Could you subscribe to the show in whatever app you're listening to me in? Two reasons. One, that'll make sure you don't miss any new episodes. They will be automatically queued up for you.

Starting point is 00:00:22 And two, it will help boost the rankings of the show in the various charts. And that helps me a lot. Okay. So this interview is a chat I had with my buddy, Stan Efferding, big, strong, smart guy. And we talk all about speed training, which was a fun conversation for me because it is something that I haven't spoken or written much about at all over the years. And in case you are wondering what that is, speed training is based on the concept of lifting lighter weights with maximum velocity in order to increase your speed when you are using heavier weights. So you use lower loads and you try to move the bar. You're usually doing this with barbell exercises. You're trying to move the bar as quickly as you

Starting point is 00:01:14 can. And by training that movement pattern, you can then have it carry over to heavier weights and it can help you lift heavier weights better. And this type of training is particularly useful for powerlifters. You'll see powerlifters, at least more advanced powerlifters, include this type of work in their programming because it helps them increase their totals. But it's also useful for people like us who like to try new things in the gym and who want to see if we can squeeze out a little bit more muscle and strength gain and who like to experiment with time proven and science-based techniques for making our training a little bit more effective or maybe just a little bit more interesting. Sometimes it's worth incorporating something like speed training into a training block simply because it sounds

Starting point is 00:02:12 like fun. And so that is the topic of today's discussion. And in case you're not familiar with my guest, Stan, he has two all-time raw world powerlifting records. He is colloquially known as the world's strongest bodybuilder, big dude, strong dude, and as I mentioned, a smart dude who also has a lot of experience working with high-level bodybuilders and athletes. He's worked with Hafthor Bjornsson, Ed Cohn, Ben Smith, Flex Wheeler. Most recently, he has been working with John Jones, the former UFC champion. And so it's always a pleasure to have Stan on the show to share his wisdom. Also, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health and fitness books, including the number one bestselling weightlifting books for

Starting point is 00:03:05 men and women in the world, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, and Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best body ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes & Noble stores. And I should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account. And this is a great way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. And so if you want to take Audible up on this offer, and if you want to get one of

Starting point is 00:03:50 my audio books for free, just go to www.buylegion.com and sign up for your account. So again, if you appreciate my work, and if you want to see more of it, and if you want to learn time-proven and evidence-based strategies for losing fat, building muscle, and getting healthy, and strategies that work for anyone and everyone, regardless of age or circumstances, please do consider picking up one of my best-selling books, Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, and, leaner, stronger for women and the shredded chef for my favorite fitness friendly recipes. Hey, Stan, thanks for taking the time to come and talk to me again. Thanks for having me, Mike. I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. I enjoyed our first discussion. So I've been looking forward to this. Yeah, this will be great. So we can delve into this time. I'll try not to be too long winded. I have the same problem. I tend to talk a lot and I try to rein that in when I'm

Starting point is 00:04:52 certainly as a host, but even as a guest, if I don't watch it, I'll get asked a question and I've been talking for 10 minutes straight. You know what I mean? It's hard because there's so much nuance and your audience has all different needs and you want to address everyone and it's difficult. Totally. Totally. But what I wanted to talk to you about is speed training. And this is something that I don't get asked about all that often because a lot of the people in my orbit are relatively new to proper strength training and proper dieting. But this is something I do get asked about from people who are more advanced, especially people who have achieved, let's say, most of the muscle and strength that's genetically available to them. And so they're looking for ways to just try different things to keep their

Starting point is 00:05:46 training interesting and maybe to squeeze out a little bit more muscle and strength gain. And so that's what I thought that I could bring you on the show to talk about because, you know, quite frankly, sure, I could talk about it in a way that makes me sound like I know more than I do because I haven't really done that firsthand. For example, similar to powerlifting, I've done a little bit of powerlifting, but not enough to... I'd rather get somebody on who knows more than I do. Yeah. Well, obviously, speed is important. You've got to break through plateaus or break through sticking points in your lift. Breaking inertia obviously is critical for when you reach

Starting point is 00:06:30 a full range of motion for the lift as it's required in power lifting if that's if we're going to be specific, you know, pausing at the chest or hitting 90 degrees at the bottom of the squat. But once you're able to break inertia, the sticking point is slightly above that it kind of varies for different lifters. You want to develop as much speed as you can. The tricep lockout is a good example on the bench where a lot of people fail locking the weight out.

Starting point is 00:06:57 The faster you can get that bar moving, of course, the better opportunity you have to lock that out. There's a few good ways to train that. Obviously, first and foremost, strength is a byproduct of strength. A stronger person is going to be able to move the weight faster, the same weight faster. But for that stronger person to lift a heavier weight through the range of motion, they still want to train with some explosive speed it's also a good way to train below your say your 90 rep max which can be extremely fatiguing but still um be able to judge kind of whether or not you're in the ballpark for top end strength by measuring you know velocity

Starting point is 00:07:43 and you can use a variety of different mechanisms for that you know put those measuring devices on the bar and that'll give you you know a good idea of when you're at 85 or 70 percent of the one rep max load whether or not you're moving it fast enough so that it will translate relatively into your top lift so i think it's really important to include some of that moving the weight fast, mostly for breaking through sticking points. I found the number one thing that helped me with speed other than getting very strong was using bands. And again, probably not to exceed 20% of the total load forces you to lift the weight heavy because once you try and lift a band slowly you'll discover how hard it

Starting point is 00:08:27 is but when you move really explosively then all of a sudden that load seems lighter it kind of trains you to to fire and explode i used to do a touch and go off a box with bands just so i could learn how to be as explosive as possible. And that really helped. I think people recognize me as being a very explosive lifter. A lot of speed out of the hole of a squat and out of a bench press. And I think that was probably one of the key components was the fact that I did a lot of... I did a decent amount of band work, but I also moved the bar very quickly in my hypertrophy training rather than grinding out slow, deliberate repetitions. Uh, I would, uh,

Starting point is 00:09:15 I would even some lifters suggest even bouncing at the bottom of a, of a bench press, just moving the bar as fast as you can through those repetitions, just get your body used to being explosive. Yeah. There are a couple of things that I want to follow up on there and get your thoughts on. First is, and is this relationship between bar speed and muscular failure? And something I've found as I have continued in my weightlifting journey, I've never gotten nearly as strong as you. I'm closing in on the three, four, five, three plates on the bench, four on the squat, five on the deadlift. However, I'll say that anatomically and physiologically, I was not built to be very strong. That's probably an excuse that has some validity to it. However, what I have noticed is that my perception, even if I question

Starting point is 00:10:17 myself from a reps and reserve standpoint, as I'm getting deeper into a set, how many good reps do I have left? And my instinctive answer is it has been trained to a certain level of accuracy now. However, I do rep max tests once every four months. So I load heavyweight on the bar. I mean, it's systematic. It's not random, just heavyweight, but I'm putting heavyweight on the bar, uh, weight that was, I hopefully it was, it was, it felt heavier at the early, at the beginning of the training block rather than the end. And then I go for as many reps as I can. And I push to my, my goal is to get to one rep in reserve and stop there. Like I'm not going to go to, or maybe zero reps, good reps left, but I'm not going to failure on a deadlift. I think that's unnecessarily dangerous. I'm not going to go to absolute failure on the squat. But what I've

Starting point is 00:11:11 noticed is that sometimes my perception of how many reps I have left is not entirely accurate. That I actually, if I had to, I could actually get one or two more than I think that I could. And, and I just saw that actually, because I just did some rep max testing. Um, so on the safety bar squat, I look at my training log and a couple of weeks ago, I had two 55 on the bar for, I was doing sets of two or three and I marked it as like a two or three, I think reps in reserve, maybe a three or four. I'd have to look at my spreadsheet, but then I just put 260 on the bar and got eight with what I would say is probably one good rep left. And so one good rep left. And so if I would have had a device to measure bar speed, that is something that it probably would have been reflected that I had that 255 on the bar. And even though I

Starting point is 00:12:15 thought maybe I had two or three reps left, the bar speed would have indicated, now you probably have more. It's just hard with those big exercises when you have a lot of muscle mass that's involved. And then your perception of the effort relating that to what it is going to take to get a couple of more reps. And so just wanted to comment on that and get your follow-up thoughts because for people listening who do have a bit of weightlifting experience, I think it's helpful to think with that, that sometimes, especially with the bigger exercises, we can actually do a bit more than we think we can if we really have to. Right. Let me unpack a few things. You mentioned that potentially going to failure would be

Starting point is 00:13:01 dangerous. I think it's unnecessary and not necessarily beneficial. It's probably not dangerous. I don't think you think on a deadlift with a lot of weight to go to absolute. I don't know if I've ever done that where I've just maybe I've done it accidentally. Yeah. Meaning missing the last rep. Yeah. Missing it. Missing it. As long as you maintain a neutral spine, you're fine I I would just suggest that it wouldn't provide you any additional benefit uh right you would incur yeah I do like the idea that that you're talking about every four months I think people try and lift too heavy too often uh even Mikhail cookplay have seminar he talked about how he really quote unquote maxed out only four times a year and

Starting point is 00:13:43 that was the two qualifiers for worlds and nationals. And that was the two competitions, worlds and nationals. So, you know, going north of say 90, 95% probably shouldn't occur as an elite lifter. When you get up to your, you know, reaching pretty close to your potential. Beginners and intermediates, of course, have a lot more wiggle room. But I just think people tend to max out too often. And that's why, like you said, a little lighter weight, maybe 85% and using the bar speed to determine what you have in terms of reps and reserve is a better avenue to pursue. bar speed can tell you you know whether or not you're dropping off you can use it as an indicator of of when you're kind of almost should be finished with your workout we use this in speed training for sprinters anything that is less than

Starting point is 00:14:38 90 percent of your max is not for speed and so if say you're deadlifting, you know, 400 pounds and you deadlift that at a certain velocity, a certain bar speed, when that bar speed drops more than 10%, you're probably done for the day. That would be a good time to wrap up. But if you can continue to maintain that bar speed within 10% of your, of your max, uh, velocity, then, but if you can continue to maintain that bar speed within 10% of your max velocity, then you can put more sets of reps. And that would be for speed training in particular? That would be for speed training in particular. And the idea is to stay fast.

Starting point is 00:15:16 Stay fast, exactly. And so you can run a 10 second 100 once you're, if you're practicing and, uh, that exceeds 11 seconds or 10% slower than your max, uh, then you're probably done for the day. You can run a bunch of 10, eights and 10, sevens and 10 nines. And, uh, but then you're, once you get to an 11, two, you're fatigued and you're, you're probably not actually training speed at that point. It's more endurance, uh, and not a good place to be. It's a lactate endurance zone. So I don't mean to switch gears and talk about sprinting, but it's just an example that I think people can relate to in terms of when your workout's done. Now, how can you increase the number of repetitions or sets that

Starting point is 00:16:01 you can do at a particular bar speed that is going to be your gpp and this is what is your general physical preparedness and this is what i where i think a lot of power lifters fall short and don't really understand uh say maybe louis simmons program at westside barbell i don't think they realize how much uh quote unquote cardio how much realize how much quote-unquote cardio, how much training, how much volume these folks do outside of their max effort days. And I, of course, benefited, you know, purely by accident from being both a bodybuilder and a powerlifter from going through extensive bodybuilding preps, where I did a ton of volume and reps and sets from all different angles, you know, two a day trainings with short rest periods. So I had an extraordinary amount of, we'll call it cardiovascular

Starting point is 00:16:50 fitness or GPP, general physical preparedness. So when I went in and started powerlifting. Can you define that term just for people who haven't heard it before? I mean, it's, you could say the definition is implicit, but sometimes it's a little bit different than what you might think. Yeah. It's just the ability to handle work, your general physical preparedness, just your ability to handle a lot of volume and sets and reps and recover and maintain your speed, like we were just talking about, your bar speed, without fatiguing too quickly. And then that foundation, you know, the more work you do, the more work you're able to do. That foundation, when then directed towards specific physical preparedness or your actual lifts, your actual power lifts in this case, in any sport, it would be a foundation of work that allowed you to perform your sport at a greater intensity for

Starting point is 00:17:46 longer periods of time so you become more competitive and so that gpp could include you know just any lift that supports strength uh cardiovascular fitness um could be things like sled drags and lat pull downs and farmers walks maybe all kinds of stuff like that. Yeah. Just the ability for you to, uh, to get your heart rate back down, to recover within a reasonable timeframe to do a next set. Uh, I use bodybuilding training. Um, I remember, uh, Clocov talked about how, uh, you know, he was a excellent Olympic lifter. He talked about how his dad always made him do a lot of cardio in the off season and he hated it because his strength would decline. But when he came back into strength training to prep for the Olympics, let's say, he would recover so much faster that he could do more

Starting point is 00:18:35 volume and he would catch up much quicker and then surpass those people who didn't have the same cardiovascular base. And I experienced the same thing when I transitioned from a bodybuilding prep into powerlifting. I was very weak. I'd lost well over 100 pounds on each lift. A lot of that's from the dieting, of course, and being at the low body fat. But a lot of it is just not lifting heavy for a period of time. But I had extraordinary level of GPP of cardiovascular fitness from all the volume and sets and reps and frequency and the variety that allowed me to shore up any weaknesses and then when i went in and i started

Starting point is 00:19:09 specifically doing squat bench and deadlift i could lift i would my weights would would uh would go up very very quickly and i would recover very fast from those workouts so i could train with a little more frequency and i've noticed a similar effect in doing cardio more regularly. Before COVID, I was doing two cardio sessions per week, 30 minutes per session, moderate intensity. Then COVID, we are not going into the office and I'm working out at home for a bit. I'm like, I'll say I'm not driving. I'll just hop on the bike and do a bit more cardio. Um, I usually have work calls I have to make. I'll just do the work calls when I'm on the bike. And, and so I just made that a thing and I lost, I just kept eating the same way. And I was like, I'll use it as an

Starting point is 00:19:59 excuse to get leaner too. Why not? And, uh, so I lost eight pounds or so and um and then i kept it in and i've kept it in i now do cardio five to seven days a week it depends like some days if i go out on the golf course and i'm on the range beating balls and walking around i'm like all right i don't need to do that plus the cardio but um and then every once in a while I'll take one day off for one reason or another, but I've noticed that just 30 minutes of, again, I'm, uh, I'm keeping it a moderate intensity. Uh, I can take calls. I'm a little bit winded. I tell people if they don't, I'm like, I'm on a, I'm on a upright bike. Just so you know, that's why I'm rebreathing a little bit.

Starting point is 00:20:37 I wouldn't do a podcast, but I still could have a conversation. So I'm not, uh, it's not high, high intensity stuff. And, uh, I've continued though, to increase the resistance, uh, on the bike or just increase my speed to, to keep it at that level of intensity. So the, the, the work capacity has gone up and I haven't pushed it. I've just like, oh, this feels easy. Now I'm going to make it a little bit harder to keep it at that's that, that four to five out of 10, maybe.

Starting point is 00:21:03 And what I've noticed is that recovery element in the gym and in between sets in particular, I recover faster and my heart rate comes down faster. And I feel like with that two and a half minutes that I get or three and a half minutes that I get, three, three and a half on the bigger lifts, I'm coming more prepared into each set. And I've made really good progress for me since incorporating the cardio. That's not the only thing. That's probably not the only reason, but I would suspect that that's contributing to it in a significant way. You said a couple of really important things there that I think the audience should understand. When I talk about cardio, I'm not talking about walking on a treadmill

Starting point is 00:21:47 necessarily. I used to think back when I was trying to gain weight to power lift that you don't run if you can walk, don't stand if you can sit, and don't stay awake if you can sleep and stuff. And that was my mantra. But I wasn't terribly fit when I was powerlifting at that time. If not for the bodybuilding periods and alternating back and forth, I would have been in the same situation that I see a lot of powerlifters in that I work with more recently. They don't have the level of fitness. And not just for health reasons, but for performance reasons, it doesn't help them long term. So you said a couple important things that i like to include one is that you use the bike so you could measure the tension and the pace so you could you could progress that over time those things are important plus it is a concentric movement so you're not loading yourself is a concentric movement. So you're not loading yourself eccentrically and breaking down muscle tissue. It becomes restorative for both to recover from and prepare for the next workout.

Starting point is 00:22:52 I'll use sleds for the same reason. It's all concentric. I can load them differently, take them for different distances at different speeds with different rest periods. And so I can see that progress over time. We like sleds preferentially over pushing prowlers again, because the prowler will have some eccentric loading. You're going kind of through your upper body. We just find that you can do more of it more often. It's more restorative. You don't feel tired afterwards. You feel fresh when you're doing pulling sleds. And then after, even on your max effort day, the days that you're lifting heavy, it really helps to go in and start doing some volume afterwards to pump a ton of blood into the area that you just worked.

Starting point is 00:23:37 It's restorative, so you're not aching when you get home. It adds some volume again, some GPP, gets your heart rate up. I think it just immediately starts the recuperatory process by pumping a bunch of blood in there. That's not cardio per se, but has some resistance component. So it, it, it kind of swings the pendulum towards not a, you know, what we would call a, you know, a competing interference. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm cautious when I use the word cardio that people think, I mean, I'm out jogging and that's just not the case. I want it to have some resistance, be progressible, measurable, um, for all those reasons we just discussed.

Starting point is 00:24:18 Yeah. Yeah. I like the, uh, I mean, I just use an upright bike outside biking. It would be preferable for obvious reasons, but I like the multitasking of I have to do these calls anyway, so I might as well just hop on the bike and do them. And like you said, I like that it doesn't get in the way of the recovery in my lower body in particular. And there's research that indicates it's probably helping actually with recovery. And it may even be helping a little bit with muscle and strength gain because it kind of mimics the squat movement a little bit. So biking is my top pick. If I weren't biking, I probably would get a rowing machine is what I would do. Rower's great. And alternatively, you could use a treadmill and walk backwards on it. And now you can adjust the angle and the speed and the time that you're on it and do repetitions there, you know, sets of 40 seconds or so with a 20 second rest. You know, those can be adjustable over time.

Starting point is 00:25:19 But we really like walking backwards on the treadmill. You see us do that a lot with John Jones. Those are restorative workouts. And then maybe even just marching on an ATP to really help pump a ton of blood into the hips and get that kind of decompression effect for the spine because the belt is below your lumbar. I'm sorry, ATP? The acronym is not coming to me.

Starting point is 00:25:42 Oh, Athletic Training Platform is kind of a name that I think Louis Simmons coined for the belt squat. Oh, okay, good. Yeah. And just hook that belt up, you know, just low on the hips below the lumbar and just stand there and kind of walk back and forth. And it really gets the hips moving and pumps a ton of blood in there without much fatigue, very minimal.

Starting point is 00:26:06 Yeah. The belt squat is a great squat alternative as well for, for anybody who, if you're having back issues in particular, a lot of gyms don't have it, but if your gym does have it, it's I think a worthwhile exercise to include. I mean, it could even be a follow-up I think too, even if you are barbell squatting. So like these days I'm alternating between the barbell back squat, the barbell front squat and the safety bar squat. And so the belt might be something that I would follow up with instead of a leg press or something, you know? Yeah, a hundred percent.

Starting point is 00:26:40 If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health and fitness books, including the number one bestselling weightlifting books for men and women in the world, Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef. Something else that I wanted to just highlight is, or actually highlight, and I wanted to ask your thoughts on it. So for people who are thinking about this bar speed, what we were talking about, how bar speed relates to how close to failure you are, and who are not going to buy a device to measure the bar speed, They're just not going to do that.

Starting point is 00:27:31 What are your thoughts on this? Something that's been useful for me is to record myself doing an exercise and see how it goes. And I'm always asking myself as I get deeper into a set, how many good reps do I have left? And then comparing that to what I see on video, then comparing that to what I see on video, where, again, sometimes I'll think that I was one rep shy of failure or two. And then I look at the bar speed and I was like, you can't know exactly, but it didn't slow down much. Even that final rep still looked pretty snappy, which can help. It has helped me just better calibrate my understanding of how close to failure I am on these bigger exercises. I mean, it's easy on the biceps curl, obviously, but it's a bit harder to tell when you're squatting deadlifting. Yeah. A hundred percent. Not going to be as accurate, but it certainly can help you, uh, judge speed or, uh, even better than that is to look and see

Starting point is 00:28:22 whether or not you're coming out of your traditional form, which often happens as the weight gets heavier. You start to change your form a little bit. You might start ass squatting and not get your shoulders and hips going at the same rate. And so that can be one thing. can feel, you know, at least an intermediate lifter can certainly feel the difference between the two repetitions, one at normal speed and the one following that might have slowed down slightly. That is maximal muscle fiber recruitment with a drop off of fibers because you've pretty much reached, you know, maximum muscle fiber recruitment. And so I use that as a marker for bar speed on the bench, even for reps in reserve or just especially with hypertrophy in telling people when you've done enough repetitions. When that bar speed slows down, you've probably provided adequate stimulus to benefit,

Starting point is 00:29:22 hypertrophy benefit from the training and when in relation to reps and reserve when do you usually start to see that bar slowing down would you say when you get into the range of like maybe two good reps uh good reps left three two to three and different people women of course they they'll they'll do three reps and look like they're at you know a 10 yeah and then they'll do five more yeah it's crazy their muscular endurance is so much better than men so and some people have slower twitch or fast twitch uh you know i i tend to peter out pretty quick i'm kind of a one rep guy and then then, you know, training with Eric Spoto, he could knock out, you know, 30 reps with the 405. So it was crazy to watch him have both that top end strength and that muscular endurance. Yeah. I, I, uh, a buddy of mine is somebody

Starting point is 00:30:17 who's just been big and strong his entire life. And he's similar in that, that bar moves fast, fast, fast day. Like it's, it's interesting to see. Whereas for me, uh, I'm somewhere in between where, you know, it starts to get a little bit grindy and it's a little bit grindier. Uh, but it is, it is interesting to see something else that, um, you, you had commented on, and this is coming back to this speed training is, is that you're training, you're training specificity here right so you want to be able to move that bar faster then you train for that specific uh element

Starting point is 00:30:53 of the the exercise or of the strength training and you know it makes me think of in golf i play a little bit of golf i don't follow it much, but I know there's one golfer in particular named Bryson DeChambeau and he does this speed training. He calls it, I believe. And he does these sessions where he's swinging as hard as he possibly can. He does some weightlifting as well. Some goofy stuff. He could do a lot better there, but he follows some guru who says he has the magic machines and the magic methods and whatever. Silly. But Bryson does these speed training sessions where he's swinging as hard as he possibly can to try to push up, try to hit PRs in terms of swing speed. So then his 80% is just a bit higher than it was. And it's worked really well for him. And some people think

Starting point is 00:31:45 that's mind blowing, but to the point of what you'd mentioned with sprinting and just other athletic activities that of course that makes sense, right? You're training specifically to swing faster. Okay. If you can break through and then swing the fastest you've ever swung the club, you've now unlocked a little bit more potential there. So then when you dial it back, that's also a bit faster. And so it's a similar kind of principle, but with weights, right? Yeah. There's a lot of things there. I wouldn't know how to apply that to golf. Speed is a by-product of strength. If like a baseball player would want to get stronger, particularly rotationally, if they want to swing that bat harder, that would be obviously getting a lot stronger in the

Starting point is 00:32:32 hips at squats and deadlifts, of course, but then also rotationally, maybe throwing the medicine ball. But what you find is that once you've developed the strength, that's the foundation. find is that once you've developed the strength that's the foundation now over speed becomes the way i think the primary way uh to develop the specific skill set uh the swinging a bat they used to put a bunch of uh what were those on the bats those big little donuts or what yeah and they found that that wasn't ideal, that actually slowed down the swing. And so you would rather use a wiffle bat. And the idea is then to swing really fast.

Starting point is 00:33:12 Really fast, yeah. Now, swinging a bat with donuts on it isn't going to make you stronger and swing faster. Squatting and deadlifting will, and the medicine ball will work. But actually practicing the overspeed is, you know, for the nervous system, you'd want to practice overspeed. That's what we're doing with John on the treadmill as well. He sprints an overspeed treadmill and it not only helps with top end speed, but it helps with velocity. It helps with how fast he accelerates.

Starting point is 00:33:40 And so it does translate neurologically into a faster fighter in the ring. Although it's not specific, we build his strength, we build his speed. And then when he goes into the ring and starts practicing, we can actually measure his speed and see that it's improved. So for a lifter, you have to remember that when you're lifting, you know, doing a speed day and lifting very fast, when you're lifting you know doing a speed day and lifting very fast uh you do want to lift much faster than you would normally deadlift a 95 that's an important point right like don't don't now constrict yourself to that normal rep tempo that you use yeah train slow you'll always be slow train fast but when you get up to 95 you%, you're still going to pull slow. Your nervous system is now educated on how to try to pull as fast as you can. Pulling fast is general,

Starting point is 00:34:32 even though it's the specific movement. Not until you get up north of 85 plus percent are you doing a specific deadlift, powerlifting specific movement. If you're at 70% doing speed reps, that's general preparedness. Even though it's the same exact lift, it doesn't teach you to grind through a raw strength, 95% deadlift, you still have to practice those. We've seen people make this mistake in the past, and I won't mention their names because some of them have been injured as a result, but a lot of people for a while there, you know, 10 years ago or so, we're talking about never lifting over 70% of your one rep max, but lifting very fast. Then when they loaded 95%

Starting point is 00:35:16 of their one rep max on the bar, their body gave out. Yep. You need both. And it's the same thing with overspeed treadmills. You still have to get on the track or practice your specific sport to see if that general preparedness can be specific for you. And how can people listening incorporate speed training into their training? So let's assume you're speaking to people who are training probably three to five days per week, and they are doing a hybrid between strength training and bodybuilding. So they're going to be doing some squatting and deadlifting and bench pressing and overhead pressing, as well as some isolation accessory exercises for, um, you know,

Starting point is 00:35:56 a lot of the smaller, more stubborn muscle groups. What, what, what would be an example of a way that you could beneficially include speed training into your kind of basic, again, strength training, bodybuilding, hybrid approach? If it's for competing in powerlifting, then you're going to want to use the little bit lighter weight and test bar speed and pull the lighter weights faster. And what if it's just for people who are just, they're just looking to get fitter. They just, you know, they're always trying to get a little bit better in their training. Yeah. Now you're talking about maybe adding

Starting point is 00:36:32 some additional exercises. I love the medicine ball throws. Those are great. And plyos. That's the next, you know, GPP exercise that I think is very good, but not just jumping up on the box, but slowly and gradually developing the strength and the, I guess you would say, the durability.

Starting point is 00:36:57 I think it's the right word. You don't want to just be jumping down off of a box and bouncing back up in the air if it's not anything you've ever done before. That's a very dynamic movement that needs progressed over time. I can remember when I had my son up at the high school here and the coach, he's 300 pounds and he's a Samoan, his mom's Samoan. He's 300 pounds. And they had them jumping over, jumping over little hurdles on concrete and landing on the other side. And he comes home after the first day of practice is my knees hurt.

Starting point is 00:37:27 I'm like, well, what did you do? And he told me, I'm like, you don't, you don't have 300 pound kids jumping up and down on concrete. You know, it's just idiotic. Plyometrics box jumps, but jumping down off of the box and then rebounding up onto another box. That's really what a plyometric is. Getting that, that stretch reflex going, very explosive. That kind of thing translates very well to any sport. We do some

Starting point is 00:37:53 of those with John as well. But it's the kind of thing that you have to very gradually build into. That's an extremely, I think, transferable movement for any sport. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Something else I just keep in mind. So in my training, a training block starts with sets of 10 on the primary, on the bigger exercises with 70 or 75% in the bar. I don't remember. I'd have to look at the spreadsheet and then 10 to 12 on accessories. But, uh, I just consciously try to lift quickly, especially when I'm doing those higher reps on the squat, on the deadlift bench overhead. And then I'm progressing over the course of four months into heavier. Eventually I'm doing twos, for example. And, um, I, I probably am not lifting the bar as quickly, but I do try to consciously lift

Starting point is 00:38:46 quickly when the weights are lighter, when I feel like I can, at least for the first half of the set on something like a deadlift really explode off of the ground, you know? Yeah. And that kind of sounded like you were describing a bit of a linear progression. That's kind of what this career I found. And, uh, uh, this is kind of the foundation of the Westside program, is that it helps to cycle some of those exercises rather than sticking with one major lift through an entire four-month period that you usually top out on those lifts within three to

Starting point is 00:39:19 four weeks. And then you'd want to cycle in a slight variation of that and keep working on your weaknesses as well because those top end Max effort lifts will start to drain you very quickly and then you'll just uh you'll just Plateau and maybe even starts to decline in the case of the deadlift that's generally what happens if you don't start using maybe blocks or maybe some belt squat assisted deadlifts and maybe some chain good mornings, just a variety. And you do chain good mornings for three plus weeks until you feel as though your progression is slowed. Then you'd switch to a different accessory exercise that was very similar to or might assist your deadlift. And if you do that and you go back and test your deadlift and your deadlift hasn't gone up, then that accessory probably isn't helping you.

Starting point is 00:40:09 And you might want to pick a different one. And that you just keep going back and testing the lift. Anything you do outside of the competition lift should make that lift stronger. And if not, pick a different accessory and eventually you'll find one that works for you. But even then, you're only going to be able to run it for three or four weeks before you have to switch to a different one and come back. You have to be patient. Mikhail Kukly, I've talked about a five-year plan that the Russians would go on. They were very patient. They would spend years developing weaknesses and strategizing and periodizing their training so that they would have a kind of a long-term benefit rather than trying to, like we do here, I got a competition in four months,

Starting point is 00:40:49 so I'm going to grind. And then you turn around, I got another competition in four months, so I'm going to grind. Long-term, I think we plateau that way. Not because I'm a genius, but strictly because I enjoyed both sports. I really benefited from those periods in which I mentioned that I was bodybuilding. I think it contributed in so many different ways to my powerlifting success. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And if I were training for maximum strength, if I were competing as a strength athlete of any kind, I almost certainly would be training differently. I almost certainly would be training differently as I'm not, and I am still able to make progress.

Starting point is 00:41:32 And again, I'm not very strong in the scheme of things. I'm strong-ish relative to my body weight. But I would say my primary goal is at this point, I understand there's not much muscle left that I can gain. And of course, that means there's just not that much strength left that I can gain. If I can't get that much bigger, I'm not going to get that much stronger. So for my programming, I am trying to change my physique much or my performance much. But that makes a lot of sense, yes, what you said that you'd be switching those main exercises out every month or so if you are training for maximum strength on those big lifts. And if,

Starting point is 00:42:27 if also you're at that point, you're probably an elite lifter. Right. And by, by any standards, I'm not an elite lifter for, for what it's worth. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:36 Well, even for, I think for just keeping this, keeping the workouts fun, the variety helps in that as well. I find it fun so long as I can keep progressing. And so I noticed it, for example, in my training blocks, what I noticed is that my reps and reserve will go up with those. So, so what was, so, so it's a weekly undulating periodization where, so I'm going to start with tens on week one, and then I'm going to do eights, then I'm going to do sixes,, so I'm going to start with tens on the week one,

Starting point is 00:43:05 and then I'm going to do eights, then I'm going to do sixes, and then I'm going to deload. And then I'm going to do eight, six, four deload. And so as I, as I go through the, those waves of loading, I'll find that as I get into a training block, what was once, uh, maybe a one or two reps in reserve for, for that weight and that many reps is now a three to four and that's progress. And that to me is fun, you know? So as long as I can make some progress, I'm having fun. Yeah. And that's kind of how Dorian went through his career. He would pick an exercise and he would progress it over the course of a number

Starting point is 00:43:38 of weeks or a couple of months and then pick a different exercise and do the same thing. So we often do that. We'll pick a leg press and then we'll pick a hack squat and then we'll pick a, you know, a Smith machine squat and maybe even a high bar angle plate SSB squat for a while with a vertical torso. And, you know, obviously what the first couple of weeks is just going to be neural adaptation and coordination that you, you know, just trying a new exercise and then you settle in and grind and try and see how you can grow that. Last week, I did eight reps here. This week, I'm going to do 10. Next week, I'm going to add a quarter or a plate. And once that starts to plateau, which inevitably will, time to pick

Starting point is 00:44:17 another exercise and start over again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. That makes perfect sense. Well, this was a great discussion. I know you have to run soon because you're going to be working on your next book, which maybe you want to let everybody know about as well as anything else that they may be interested in. Well, we just released this one. The Vertical Diet is now in paperback. It's a beautiful whole color pictures. It's an awesome book. This is the number one new release on Amazon for three weeks running now. So I'm excited to see we're up to number 25 on Amazon in diet books already amongst all the big sellers. So really happy with that release. And I'm working

Starting point is 00:44:58 on a book called Vertical Kids now. It's going to be from conception to college, how to maximize your kids' genetic potential. And it's going to be kind of to college, how to maximize your kids' genetic potential. And it's going to be kind of a step-by-step of nutrition and training, a lot of the stuff that we talked about and much, much, much more. And so my writer is coming by here shortly and we're going to start to get the table of contents together and get this thing developed and get it out there. So everything you can find on me is at stanefferting.com. That's my website at stanefferting is my Instagram and stanefferting on YouTube has all of my rhinos rants and other content that's easy to watch. There's a lot of free information out there. So if you have any interest in anything that I'm doing, that's how you find me, stanefferting. Awesome. Well,

Starting point is 00:45:40 thanks again, Stan. Congrats on the book launch. That's exciting. I can appreciate that as somebody who's done a few books myself. And great, great idea with the kids' book as well. It's something that I get asked about fairly often. And I've produced a little bit of content specifically for teenagers. The questions that I most get asked from parents are parents of kids in the range of 12 to 16, and they want to know what's appropriate and what's not. But I don't know of any book out there that is the go-to guide for raising healthy and strong and athletic kids. And so I look forward to checking that out myself. Great. Thanks, brother. Thanks for having me on again. Good talk. Yeah. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it

Starting point is 00:46:41 a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.

Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Stan Efferding on Speed Training and Lifting Explosively

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