That's a big thing when you look at the context of that yeah that that's all that we did um yeah it really was all that I did was just it was non-stop you don't have friends you don't do anything a lot of times I didn't have a school to train at either I wasn't going to somebody's class it was me at on my back porch with concrete and AstroTurf training whatever time day and night and you just train train train all Throughout the week and then Friday comes you get in the car go somewhere you
compete all day Saturday Sunday you drive home Monday it's back to school so what was it about training that made it Trump that I think I was probably as far as I was going to go in fighting at the time it for me to go to from where I was to the next level would have taken me several years and then going to the gym Especially when you're young it's like the progress happens really quick and it's addictive and then I I did see that as I got stronger in the gym all my kicks got
stronger my punches got stronger I could fly through the air I could do flips everything else improved so it's it's an immediate gratification basically going to the [Music] [Applause] gym it's time to sit down keep it real And cut the [ __ ] welcome to table talk all right guys we're back with another episode of tabl talk my guest today is Clint Darden he was on one of the first podcasts I don't know the number probably should 36 okay so back again you're in the states so film some content doing the podcast I'm just going
to jump right into this and say uh thank you for coming out but I want to talk about strong man just right out of the gate because that's a topic that we have A lot of requests for and so with strongman and how do you set the training up yeah everything or actually let's let's digress just a little bit what is your background and strong man for those who don't know um began competing in 2001 and in 2003 I turned Pro I was the first American to earn his Pro card in 2003 um so I
took a year off there just to kind of graduate because I wasn't I was Doing a lot more training than I was studying so I took a year off to graduate and just stronger I came back and competed for a year in 2004 um in the states and then I moved overseas to Cyprus with my wife and then from that point on opportunities opened like crazy being the only American in Europe I just began training absolutely everywhere so I campaigned uh competed 2004 to 2009 somewhat Semi-retired went in the direction of powerlifting weightlifting and then
kind of came back into strongman uh at the age of 39 what pulled you back ah man probably really dumbness to be honest I I was just training just to be in shape really and there was a local competition in Cyprus and they kind of begged me to come back and just enter the contest and then they began having uh Master's world strongest man again For those over 40 and that became really really enticing so then I got invite to that and uh I just went to that just to have fun ended up doing really
really well and it's a huge addiction to get there and and finally you know I'm already turning older and grayer so I can't compete with the 25 and 30 year olds anymore uh but to be there around a bunch of other guys who also have wives kids house Payments um all the stresses that we have in our daily lives that are still at there training competing and then you just get to be around all the other athletes and that's really all you can think about after that is getting back and getting back how did you
get into strong man um okay so I began My First Love and sports would have been martial arts M so I competed in martial arts and I ripped my entire Left director I got kicked across the left side of my back once and uh so I began lifting weights for rehab and then like a lot of people who begin lifting weights to help you with another sport you end up deciding that I like lifting weights a lot more than I like whatever sport I was playing so I began just lifting weights all throughout hold on
cuz you were competing a lot yeah I mean I competed um I mean like one year I competed 46 times in a year so there was A lot of tournaments Saturday Sunday you know I'm in St Louis on Saturday I'm in Memphis on Sunday come back home uh I'll train three to four days during the week and then Friday me we skipped school got in the car drove to Denver competed there and the next weekend might have been Atlanta Orlando fly to California New York Boston um and everywhere in between so so when I put
that into context you know it's that you like the training more Than you know the kickboxing that's a that's a that's a big thing when you look at the context of that that that's all that we did um yeah it really was all that I did was just it was nonstop you don't have friends you don't do anything a lot of times I didn't have a school to train at either I wasn't going to somebody's class it was me at on my back porch with concrete and AstroTurf training whatever time day and night and you
just train Train train all throughout the week and then Friday comes you get in the car go somewhere you compete all day Saturday Sunday you drive home Monday it's back to school so what was it about training that made it Trump that I think I was probably as far as I was going to go in fighting at the time it for me to go to from where I was to the next level would have taken me several years and then going to the gym Especially when you're young it's like the progress happens really quick and
it's addictive and then I I did see that as I got stronger in the gym all my kicks got stronger my punches got stronger I could fly through the air I could do flips everything else improved so it's it's an immediate gratification basically going to the gym and then you start learning these little formulas like all I all I have to do is eat seven meals a day with a protein a Carbohydrate and fat drink a lot of milk drink a lot of water and I'm going to grow as long as I work hard in
the gym so and that's that's the horrible thing about anything is when you know you're not getting the progress that you want and you don't know what to do to fix it but when you're young all I have to do is eat and train and it's a simple recipe especially when you're young so it's it's immediate gratification you come in the gym in powerlifting Sometimes you don't know what to do but then that one guy comes along and says look man all you need to do is get on the reverse hyper all you need to
do is get on the glute ham Ras all you need to do is take your three board press and add 60 PBS to your three board press and you're going to see everything Skyrocket you start killing yourself with those exercises so that's the way I felt in the gym and then I kind of got to a point with training to where everything Just kind of stalled out after years and I went from 15 154 lbs natural so i e 306 natural over know six seven years something like like that but then it's kind of like
what do I do after that but I I I we used to have these Milo magazines um and I picked up one of those and I was I remember being 306 PBS on December 26th one year the year 2000 I weighed 306 man I was fat and uh I went out weighed 306 because I wanted to Weigh 300 lb and the next day I went out and converted my easy bar easy curl bars into Farmers lock implements just began I bought a tire just began doing strongman stuff to lose weight read about in a magazine
a local competition 45 minutes away went competed took dead last on every event um and I told I told my mom and dad I said the people who beat me on those events will never beat me again on a single event ever and they never have since then but I think strong Men was the first point to where I could realize I could take the love of lifting and I could throw in some athleticism that I had from martial arts and combine the two and it's been the first sport that I found where I can
combine athleticism with lifting so when we go back how are you laying your training out to be able to do that because it's easy to find training on powerlifting weightlifting bodybuilding strong man it's just and back then it was even more So than it is now it's a giant void well the only the only reference material I had for lifting in the gym at that point to get stronger were some VHS tapes of Westside barbell mhm so that's all so I train just like the VHS tapes that I that I had you know you go
every week on lead fs.com for the new articles that would pop up you would read all three or five of those and memorize I would print them out highlight them and uh I just tried To copy everything I saw on the westside videos and then it was just on Sunday I would go out and do all the events and it was just basically Max separate whatever implements that you had course we're going back 2001 nobody had implements now every has everything indoors air conditioned carpeted I just whatever I could find I went outside and and
trained I went and picked up tires picked up just raw rocks Um and my parents were so far they were they were behind me 100% so when it came to like what do you want for your birthday well for my birthday I wanted a set of Atlas Stones so I got set of Atlas Stones back when nobody had Atlas ston and I bought 10 I took my suburban and drove up somewhere in Illinois it was like a 6our drive so I drove and he loaded 10 stones in the back or in my in my Suburban
in every seat every crevice you could imagine and then I I drove Back and then unloaded them and then I was so beat up on Saturday and I had to tr train stones on Sunday uh one year for Christmas I wanted I wanted a Conan's wheel that could be converted into a viking press and it had to fit inside of my truck inside of my Suburban to go pick it up and I so I drove the guy made it I drove to pick it up 3 hours got it all in my truck drove back 3
hours and it's Saturday and all I can think about is Sunday I'm doing con 's Wheel I'm doing Viking press I'm so I get home my mom says Nope goes under the Christmas tree we're waiting for Christmas so I packed everything inside the living room wrapped everything under the Christmas tree and it sat I'm sure it was a surprise it was killer to get up and look every day yeah you know it's a Conan's wheel you know it takes up half the house but and I had to wait two months just to unwrap it to
go out the Next Sunday and train it but man I'll never forget [Laughter] that so then how did the training evolve probably not much for a while I mean everything was still you know you lifted two to three times a week and then you went out one day on the weekend and did all the events you know because I may have only had five different events to train you know as far as implements so it was just you know I Would lay out a plan this week I went this stone for this many reps but
there was no there was no real you know thought process into it at the beginning but nobody had thought process the only thing I knew when I picked up for martial arts is if you want to be good you got to get in your car drive and train with somebody else so there was a guy 45 minutes away I would be at his house at 7:00 on Saturday mornings we Would load Atlas Stones uh log press he had a car that you could flip it was the old old days so whatever anybody wanted to do
you jumped in and did it no matter how beat up you got uh St Louis was a 4-Hour drive away so I would go up there and train with uh Willie Wessel and and his entire crew and they be they begin at 8:00 so I remember going to the gym showing up and my dad went with me so we were eating breakfast till like 6:45 4our drive so when was this was he still Powerlifting at that time or was he completely will he had stopped powerlifting and was doing strong man at the time okay so
but they they are so much like I walked in the door at 8:30 or 8:00 7:30 and there was a whole crew that had already finished their full gear squats in the monolift at 7:30 on a Saturday morning you know and there was another crew waiting to get in the monolift at 8 o' you know so if you Weren't there when everybody got started good luck you're done for the day but you know you drive up there you jump in the crew if if they're squatting if they're deadlifting that's what you did if they're loading
Stone super yolk tire flip you just jump in there and do everything that everybody's doing and you just watch and listen and and you know there's one guy good at Stones you know why is he doing threes why is he loading to a high platform why is this Guy loading to a low platform you know the one guy that's good at grip what else is he doing so you just you start asking questions and um trying to remember everything that you can but and then you go back and you do whatever you can and I
just I beat myself to Pieces because this guy did all of this and this guy did all of this so I went back home and I had to do all of that and all of that and slowly deduct and figure out what was crap what was real what was Going to work for me and what wasn't how do you figure that out because at the same point you're doing a ton of stuff trial and error I I don't I don't think i' I don't think I really figured things out till probably seven eight years ago
when I could really sit down and kind of see the the full picture and that didn't really come until I began working with other people and I began having to see the full picture for other people how long have you been working with people I was designing I mean I was working with my parents when I was 16 so I'm I'll be 47 in a few days um I began designing the training programs for the people who'd come and train with me at my parents house I mean that was 2002 2003 something like that and
I've been working online see my son is 16 I began working with him when he was born so I've been working with clients online for 16 Years but I would say the last seven years is when it really got me that you know to be able to see the full picture you know that I don't have to go 100% that I don't have to use this method or that method you know there's there's more than one way to skin a cat um to start thinking about I mean most of my clients now are entrepreneurs they
work high-end very stressful jobs they have kids um and they they just they want to pick up a book and say I you know I saw This somewhere so that's what I'm going to do and I Lear so many people coming out with ebooks and I'll buy I try to buy an ebook every week and read it and I'm I go through the book I'm like there is no way anybody can do that program except them there is no way um uh I can't and the perfect example for that is what's his name Nate he
was here special forces guy Oh my gosh I'm feeling so bad that I can't think of his name but he came out with an ebook and I bought it and I realized that real quick that nobody can do the conditioning work except him but yeah you know I didn't learn that for a long time um a lot of guys writing books for8 pound athletes and you know you come to realize that the guys who weigh 300 can't do the same programming as the guys who weigh 198 you know the the the 50-year-old a the 50-year
old strongman Athletes can't do the same programs as the guys who are 250 and in just you know the regular open category so I've just after working with so many people I've learned to put things into a lot more perspective and try to make it work so if you were to give me an elevator pitch on your training philosophy what would that be I I think the big word the the big thing that's that's changed everything for me is the word it Depends um two words it is it is uh I think I I realized
that I hated people that would come on Instagram and say this is the solution your back hurts these three things right here do it the real expert and we've we've learned this through training and working with special needs children people always ask you what's the one thing I can do to to help my child what's the one thing I Need to do to fix my child what's the one thing I need to do to build my deadlift and the answer is it depends because the real expert looks at everything and says well the real answer
is it depends I can't give you the one simple thing it depends on everything from who you are mentally physically uh what your injuries are what your sleep is like you know a lot of a lot of my clients that I work with their 80% intensity is totally different from Someone else's 80% intensity and that has to be taken into consideration um so how do you anchor that to be able to know when you're communicating with them that it is 80% it takes a while with with look watching them on video so it does take
a go good solid four to six weeks of sitting around and looking around and I'm telling you to you know put 80% on the bar and I'm looking at you and you just barely moved or you got a double with 80% and you almost got a nose bleed you know that wasn't 80% you know so for every individual client it needs to be adjusted a little bit um I think most of my clients that work with me will that come from working with other coaches they generally say the same things I hurt less I'm still
making progress and I'm having a lot more fun than I used to those those are the three things how do you intake them or not intake but then how once they come to You because you kind of know how they were training right but then what's the basic plan that you're going to put them on for you to start to accumulate the information you need for them to progress usually we one is super simple I mean if you wanted to see somebody squat you would okay here's a box let's see a box squat let's add
a plate and let's just okay I do it again because you've done that with me on squats you've done that with me on on bench Press do it again and I I can see you just judging me and figuring out what's going on so it I will put them on you know whatever's the most simple I ask every client what works for you and what doesn't you know can you tell me what works for you because if you know that there's a certain exercise that just absolutely works for you every time or if you say
low volume works best for me over high volume most people always say oh Max effort works best for me and Immediately I'm thinking no it doesn't it absolutely doesn't you know you're 53 years old Max effort is not where your bread and butter is going to be well how would they Define what that is when you ask them I don't know that's what I've got to figure out but you know if they say these three exercises are absolutely 100% no I'm not going to do them then why would I just why would I work or
first of all I want to know why they wouldn't do them because they suck they Don't know how to do it you know or they just they hate it because if they hate doing the exercise and I tell them to do it every single week they're only they're going to halfway do it or they're not going to do it at all they're just going to tell me they did it and they're not going to do it but uh just trying to read the videos and get an idea of what they're doing how their recovery is
going how much feedback they're getting me because a lot of Clients will just get to the end of the week and say I'm done ready for the next one and then I've got clients that will send me an hour and a half of video and I'm just like I don't need an hour and a half a video m i don't need I just you know send me what you think is important send me what I think is important and any questions that you have make sure that I know that um but usually after three weeks
I can have a pretty good idea you know that You're really weak here you really suck here is it is it all Technical and I get a couple clients that will just their technique on everything is perfect it's fine but you know everything else is maybe it's mental maybe they don't know how to Road maybe it's every week is I'm just going to work up I'm just I'm gonna do five by five why are you doing five by five I don't know it's a good number other people did it I read it in a book
um I think that most people benefit from Me because they need someone to lay down structure and and I think I mean learning from the conjugate program I think that is the biggest thing for me with with the the conjugate system let's say not the program but the conjugate system is to be able to look at things as the huge picture of of of everything how we're going to get there you know it's not every week we're just going to keep going up we have to rotate things um and in strong man it's even More
important because if you got if you still got a squat press and Pull and then if you got to add five events on top of that well you're working in the mental physical and Technical portions of all of that you're free absolutely fried so if you're doing you know five if you're working on log press and Atlas Stones uh and deadlift and you're beating your biceps up and your backup and everything else you've got to have two of those three of lifts that are on The scale of like a three out of 10 you know
you can press one of those really really hard but most everybody just goes to the gym I'm going to work as hard as I can on everything and I'm going to wonder why I'm beat up after a few weeks so if I can lay down some kind of structure and have some kind of vision over what they're going to do over the next month the next eight weeks the next 12 weeks the rest of the year then most people really really benefit from that Because they don't know how to have any kind of structure which
blows my mind because how how can these people be business owners and they know how to run a business very very well but they can't sit down and look at their own training and say I need to have a plan you know I need to learn I need to study and I need to have a plan on what I'm going to do in the gym you know and you don't have to know the best exercises you know but You have to be able to analyze what's working for me and what's not what's beating me up
and what's not what am I making progress out of and and and what's not and then how do I continue to rotate that that's that's always blowing my mind somebody will you know making a half million dollars a year owning their company are you looking to boost recovery enhance your sex drive and improve performance in the Gym do you think your hormones are out of whack and you're tired of getting the runaround from your doctor you know things like your hormones are just fine stop lifting heavy weights etc etc etc I know what that feels
like as I been down that road most of my life this is why we've partnered with mer Health mer health is a premium tella Health platform that specializes in hormone optimization and preventative medicine ensuring a better quality of life mer Health offers a table talk panel tailored for our listeners featuring comprehensive tests like total and free testosterone sensitive estradi and advanced markers like lipoprotein a and igf1 these comprehensive panels of up to 84 carefully selected biomarkers allow you to identif ify areas of enhancement and maximize your physical cognitive and sexual performance it's much different than
the panels you may get from your doctor choose between self-service Options where you can select lab panels based upon Decades of experience or opt for guided optimization with your own health coach start with a detailed breakdown of your labs and receive personalized treatment options both over the- counter and prescription visit mer health.com TBL talk and use the code TBL talk to get 10% off your first order mer Health isn't just about Better Health it's about empowering you to take control of your well-being easily easily If if not multi-millions but they can't figure out to put
together you know their training program and a lot of clients they'll hire me because they don't want to spend any other time they just want a recipe they want to walk in the kitchen with a recipe on their phone and say all I have to do is this this and I'm going to be successful but they're still going to need a certain degree of personal accountability to be able to know if they're recovering or Not absolutely and man oh man you're G to be fired up before the day gets going um people won't tell you
they're getting beat up you know if I was in here training with you and you saw me come in the door you know and you saw all my training sessions you like man he's beating the heck out of himself or really he's just not CL not training hard at all but I'm doing this through a computer and whatever they're willing to type out to me so nobody really ever Says man I'm really beat up and I'm really worn down I'm overtrained until they've been that way for like six weeks and then they'll finally admit you
know I'm really beat up so I constantly try to push that conversation of how are you feeling what's your recovery like are you sleeping okay is is there something hurting you know is there is there an exercise that you would just love if I never asked you to do that I keep asking you to do every single week and the Answer is almost always yes I hate these these good mornings suck I hate the Box squats or I hate front squats or why did we stop doing why did we stop doing front squats I love
the front squats why didn't you tell me that whenever we were doing them you know or my sleep is terrible my newborn kid is keeping me up all night work is is crazy it's crazy hot outside this is what I do let me change it for you what whatever I'm getting you Is not the only way to get from point A to point B we can pick out a million ways to get to where you want to go you know just tell me what's going on and then we can switch things around and make it
happen have you been able to speculate what's going on or what's going to happen before it happens because you can do that in a personal setting like the people that you train with at your place you can Tell you know when they walk in but it's a whole another thing when it's online I I had a a client um really great guy so I think anytime you preface a story with but he's a really great guy gu you know something good is coming um I worked with him for a solid six weeks before I realized
that I'm giving him seven days worth of programming and he's finishing them in three days so like every three to four days he's like I'm done I'm ready I'm like How did you train four times in three days you know so you don't ask a lot of questions about personal stuff right at first so after about six weeks you tells me that he is uh manic depressive and he sleeps on average 14 hours a week so this absolutely helps him thrive in his business that he owns because he get super creative and will just work
nonstop but then he's training two and three times a day so he might be doing a Full squat session in the morning and a full bench press session in the evening and the next morning he's deadlifting again and and then he's doing an overhead press the next evening and then he's like I've done the whole week what else am I going to do and he's still just zooming I mean just brain is going like crazy so he's like I've got to have something else to do so we go through all that like why didn't you
tell me he's like I just don't tell people that Why not because this is important it's really important and for someone like him and I worked with a lot of people who are manic depressive one of the biggest things that we figured out is most of them love doing Max effort stuff like crazy everything and they will Thrive for short periods of time for months off just going in the gym and either maxing on every lift with singles doubles or triples or they'll do something bodybuilding style hitting Failure on every single set but the higher
the harder that I push them the higher they go up into that state of mania eventually the farther they will fall into that state of depression and they will stay there a lot longer so I would I would work with him for a month six weeks and he would just be flying out PRS every training session which is twice a day and then just all of a sudden I wouldn't hear from him for like Two weeks he's like I'm sleeping you know he said I can't move I just can't leave the house I don't want
to see any sunlight nothing so what I've learned is even a simple ex a simple program sort of 531 based where the ideas we're only going to push real real hard on one set and I would like you to kind of temper that based off a training Max so I'm not going to let you go nose bleed crazy they're they're less happy with doing a 5-31 kind of program but if I can keep Them even on their training they never go up and Peak into a full state of mania and they never end up falling
into a full state of depression because I found that the harder that I pushed them in training the faster they got into depression so I would like to think he was my he was my huge turning point for learning about I've got to ask more questions with everybody that I work I've got to ask personal questions you know what's Work like you know what's what's your family like you know is everything okay with your wife your kids your business is there anything you need to tell me about your psychological help and I've learned that everybody
that I work with has an issue every single person especially the men have some sort of issue and they don't talk about it they won't talk about it for whatever reason for some reason they just they look at I'm in the gym because I'm a tough guy And I'm around a bunch of other tough guys and I go to the gym to be one of the tough guys in the gym with the rest of the crew so I'm going to go home and I'm just going to Bear you know hold it all inside I'm going
to go to the gym and release the demons you know after I've had a rough day and then I'm going to go home and and what and what they don't realize is that for most most people they're using the gym and that intensity to cover up something and it Just continues to get worse until it gets really really bad and they swing the other direction but I I think working with him was definitely one of the one of the key things definitely one of the the points in in in my business life where I learned
a lot more about I've got to care a lot more about every individual and what's going on outside of the gym just as much as I do what's going on inside the gym how do you build that trust when you're online Takes time I don't I think most people realize they can trust me I think most people who come to me now are like this is a guy that I trust um a lot of my clients pay me because I don't say anything I've had Olympians come to my gym and train because I don't say
anything you never know they were there they come and they talk about drug use you never hear a thing about it I can't tell you how many guys I've had in The finals of World's Strongest Man Podium finishers and they go back online and there's never a coach # Clint Darden it's never there so a lot of those guys pay me because I don't take the credit I don't have to say I know this about so and so I know this about so they know that when it's said to me to dead end that's as
far as it ever goes so I I I get a lot of referral from people hey I heard you work with so and so they told me they worked with you um Can you help me out but it's it's hard I think if the more that I've opened up about myself and the more that I can share man it's been a rough day with my son you know you know because I'm writing an email it might be three or four pages to every client every single week you know and I include Family Photos you know
every single week with you know what's going on most of my clients know you know my son's doing this this week and my son Said my son said the word bacon last week went to Waffle House and my son Saidi want bacon you would have believe we got bacon you know and for most parents that's not a big deal but my son said I want bacon we got bacon and every single one of my clients is going to hear that my son said he wanted bacon didn't eat a bite of it but he said I
want bacon so we got to we went to Kroger yesterday here and he said I want Roblox and he went and got a little gift Card from Kroger a little Roblox gift card and he he holds it up and he said I want to go to Yaya's house which is Grandma's house so he can some he will find a computer and sign into to whatever and he thinks we're going to use this gift card to buy something I don't know I guess he probably can but you know those are little things to most parents but
to me it's a big deal and all of my clients will know that these little things are important to me and I Think that helps them to see me as a person as a father as somebody who gets excited about the little things you know who also says man I've had a bad day I've had a rough it's three o'clock in the morning my son has screamed all day long my wife hasn't slept in three days because she's working you know I can open up with them a little bit they can open up with me
rather than just here's your program send here it is send so I'm thinking I'm Hoping that over time I continue to build trust with a lot of people so to go back to the the the programming of the strongman and as it progresses obviously it depends right on the person it depends um but once they start to become intermediate or higher intermediate how does that rotation begin to unfold for the training as they as they become more as you understand more about how to Play the game how to play the sport I mean you're no
longer teaching the fundamentals of football these kids have been on the field for a while and they have an idea when a play called what to do so I can what you have realize am I looking at someone who just needs to get stronger that they're very very technically efficient on all the the the implements the strong men implements they know how to play the game but they've just got to get stronger and It's hard to convince those people that just want to play the game that we've got to go back and work on your
squat your bench press and your deadlift and we've got to do some shoulder raises and a bunch of the dumb stuff that nobody wants to do abs and glute hams and things like that um but at the same time you know we can we can narrow things down to where you're just having you're just working really primarily on your squat on the back burner we can shift it Over to a front squat paused front squats things like that uh and we can spend you could do an event every day you know four sessions a week
you know so we may be looking at doing a lot more things instead of overhead press instead of beninge press we have a log press day with a board press as an accessory or a slingshot press as an accessory um you get a lot more flexibility on things that you can add in there and it Just not be super strict and the smarter that they get the more that I can write on today's plan the goal is so if they have to walk in the gym and call an audible if something feels if the knee
feels funny if a hip feels funny my elbow feels funny or it's just all of a sudden today's the day I feel strong it's a PR day then go for it you know but let me know that way we can make adjustments next week so the the better that they get you know beginner Intermediate Advanced the more I can give them a lot more freedom to kind of go in and if you you going to make an audible call on the day you can do that the more we can focus on just the events or
the more we can focus on just the lifting because a lot of the the elite athletes that I work with there's really not a lot of squat overhead press and deadlift most of it is the Implement it's playing the game and and harnessing that skill and then we may do a squad as A secondary exercise and it won't even be that hard I mean you go back and and you start thinking how many how many YouTube or Instagram videos have you seen of you know the top 30 world Strongest Man guys killing themselves on a
squat anybody watching this just think about how many strong men post a video of them killing themselves on a squat you don't see it you watch them do some fun deadlifts you watch them do some fun Overhead presses but you don't see them killing themselves they don't have to you don't have to every event that you do is lower body based and if you're doing a ton of deadlift work you're doing all the strongman events the risk to reward ratio of really pushing the squat is pretty high so what would be an example of a
goal for a day um I hear you freaking say it all the Time mental physical and Technical so every single training session has to have something um usually I I enjoy some sort of core lift and the offseason that core lift is almost always going to be a squat a press or a pool and then we'll do something to build that and then we try to finish off with a strongman event well I like the example that you gave that you know if if they have here here's the goal or goals for this Training session
and then if they're intermediate and they have some experience they know they know how to regulate everything around those goals right so is that something that you'll put in there for each one of their training sessions I do my absolute best to um well I mean you've seen elah my training partner in here but you know if I have a a client who's going to a gym and what if I wrote down log press for the day and they get to the gym and There's a group of guys over the log they've got one log
you know what else are we going to do well also you know the point of the day was to do something to improve your log this is the thing if if Saturday night for Friday night for me is to go outside and it's Atlas Stone night it's Atlas Stone Training Day what's the point of that day to go outside and do Atlas stones or is the point to go outside and do something to improve my ATL Stones and that's what I want people to think about if it's beninge press day and we say today's bench
day is it really bench press day or is it the day that you go out to the gym and you do stuff to improve your bench press because if you saw me bench press and I'll try to bench press on on Sunday you're probably going to look at me and say man why are you even bench pressing you need triceps and you need shoulders and rear delts and lats you need to quit Pressing all together because you're I mean I can raw press like mid2 200s maybe so why am I worried about a 500 lb
shirted bench you know other than I just I want it and I like it so you're going to say dude you you got to work on a bunch of therapy stuff so the idea if I really wanted to make progress is to do stuff that makes it better so if if it's log press day and you get to the gym and the logs covered up you should know that hey you know I could do incline Dumbbells I could do incline shoulder saver uh yeah inine incline shoulder saver press and that's a big one with all
my clients is the freaking incline shoulder saver all my clients should have a shoulder saver especially if you can do a close grip incline shoulder saver your log press will go up and if you're beating the heck out of your back with yoke and Farm armors and Atlas stones and then the you know the regular standing log press you might make better Progress by doing incline shoulder saver than you will by pressing on the log what it takes it takes an intermediate lifter at least to know that hey we can do other things and it
takes a coach who will sit down and say okay here's another option for the day because I know sometimes when you get to the gym that log is not always open the deadlift platform is not always open what if you can't deadlift towards until the end of the training Session what do you do before that well we're going to be 45 minutes of lats before that we you know there there's always a plan A and A Plan B and I tell people this all the time there there are four different variables of what a coach
is so you have a coach he's just a coach he shows up and he cares and and that there's value in that for me most of the time it's my dog on Monday and Friday nights he's there and he cares whether I'm training Log press sandbags Atlas Stones he's there and he cares uh you have a good coach which is a coach who shows up with a plan that's not my dog so you have someone who shows up you know we're here to coach the kids we're we're here to help with the basketball game here's
the plan for the day here's the plan for the week the month for the season that's a good coach you have a great coach that shows up with a Playbook about this thick so he knows that there's so many Ways to get done what needs to get done he opens the Playbook and this is what we're going to do and this is what we're going to do now the the elite coach is the one who has a Playbook this thick and he knows the exact moment the exact time when to pull out each individual Play
to work work for that situation right then and right there I'm not there yet I don't think I'm at that Elite level yet with the clients that I work with but that's what I want to do I want To go from being a great coach with a thick Playbook to an elite coach that knows exactly when to play every single play to make it work for that client and that situation so how do you go about refining your skills to get there I buy every single book that I can and read it and I'm trying
to constantly analyze because I get feedback from my clients on a weekly basis so I try to get a general idea what did I ask you to do that was the plan I want you to tell Me what you actually did and how you feel and then I want to analyze that video and then all I'm doing is trying to figure out what was the difference between what I asked you to do what I hoped you would do and what you did and what the outcome was and then how do we refine that then I'm
constantly trying to build a base of knowledge on the differences between what I asked you to do and what the outcomes were so the next time I I ask you to do something The goal is the outcome the goal is never for you to do what I ask you to do the goal is to get a great outcome so if I ask you to do this and you're doing that but you're still getting the great outcome then I need to continue ask you to doing this I need to ask you in a better way but
that that's going to come down to me mhm my wife wife is always telling me I've got to write an ebook and I keep saying no she's like why I said because everything I will say in That ebook is going to be copyright everything is going to be copyright every video I've watched every ebook I bought I buy 50 ebooks a year I mean minimum whether it's training or or or programming or sports science or anything I bu I sign up for all the the train heroic stuff anybody's got a a log press program or
and really all I do is I learn what's crap you know I learned the difference between what's good and somebody just wrote something down and Nobody can do that nobody can do what they're asking you to do um but what I become good at is looking at every single book and saying you know what this page right here this week of programming right here would work well for this client over here right now and then six months down the road I may see another client that's in the exact same situation in their training maybe they've
got to make uh progress in their stones but their hips are beat up from Everything what do you do if I I look at every every almost everyone who has set a world record in Atlas Stones over the last 10 years they train Atlas Stones twice a week leading up for that nobody comes out and says they're they're training at Stones twice a week well what do you do for your squats what do you do for your deadlifts if you're a strongman do you just stop training squats and deadlifts for the 12 weeks leading up
to that for the you can't you Can't do that so what do you do how do you PR program that how do you effectively program some kind of something for your legs some kind of something for your back that doesn't beat you up and then everybody worries about you know Atlas Stones I'm going to tear a bicep what's going to kill my back that's not the first thing that goes on Atlas Stones if you're training them twice a week your hips are the most important thing is if you want to set a World record on
Atlas stones or a PR you need to be doing something for Atlas Stones twice a week and you'd be getting someone to work on your hips at least once a week because your hips the sockets everything are going to beat up like crazy but it took me a long time to realize that and I had to have a couple of clients going for World Records before I realized you know what their hips are getting beat up so then you see me out for a couple of years training Atlas Stones every Monday and Friday night realizing
man I've got to put on some Gateway briefs I'm using a whole lot more imp uh U linament on my hips my hips are hurting like crazy what can I do to change that you know and I mean so for you what what was you had to change the biggest thing was was backing down on all my squats I had to back off whatever I would normally do for Sets and Reps I had to knock off at least 10 if not 15% off what I would do so the intensity came down a lot and that
sucks because I don't want to knock the intensity off anything so for me I came up with a front squat program and actually it's based off an old travish Mash front squat program or squat program um of some really long paused front squats in the hole so like like week one is like a 7c PA you work up to a Max single and it doesn't mean Max Intensity but it's a single for the day with a 7sec paw in the hole so you've got to sit there with that perfect posture upright um in that bottom
front squat position and hold it for seven seconds and then you're going to come to the top and before you rack it you're going to hold it in that position for 13 seconds so you've hit your max single and then you drop off somewhere around he suggest around 25% I can't do 25 I knock off 40% that's what I found most Effective for everyone else and then I'll add a mini band on top of that and it's three sets of three with that weight and each rep is still done with the pause in the bottom
and a hold at the top and if you've got bands on the bar and you're standing in a front squat position and you're holding that position I've got a harness for 13 seconds for every rep that you do it's eyeball popping it's crazy hard and you find that all the muscles in your glutes Anything that's weak or screwed up is going to start twitching anywhere in your body so I've got clients that'll be my hamstrings were killing me my glutes my my back was just on fire and it picks up all these little weaknesses that
nobody even really knew was going on with the athlete and then you you continually decrease the paws in the hole you are you looking to boost recovery enhance your sex drive and improve performance in the gym do you Think your hormones are out of whack and you're tired of getting the runaround from your doctor you know things like your hormones are just fine stop lifting heavy weights etc etc etc I know what that feels like as I been down that road most of my life this is why we've partnered with mer Health mer health is
a premium telea Health platform that specializes in hormone optimization and preventative medicine ensuring a better quality of life mer Health offers a table talk panel tailored for our listeners featuring comprehensive tests like total and free testosterone sensitive estradi and advanced markers like lipo protein a and igf1 these comprehensive panels of up to 84 carefully selected biomarkers allow you to identify areas of enhancement and maximize your physical cognitive and sexual performance it's much different than the panels you may get from your doctor choose between self-service Options where you can select lab panels based upon Decades of
experience or opt for guided optimization with your own health coach start with a detailed breakdown of your labs and receive personalized treatment options both over the- counter and prescription visit mer health.com SLT talk and use the code tabl talk to get 10% off your first order mer Health isn't just about Better Health it's about empowering you to take control of your well-being decrease the Pause at the top and we continually see that their Atlas Stones go up they're using a much lighter weight than they would normally use for a squat they're working on their posture
Ure their overhead press goes up because when you're standing tall at the top of that front squat and you got the bands pulling down on you um it just starts getting your legs locked in your upper body you learn to lock in your upper body that way you're you're ready to Drive with those legs uh when you're ready to overhead press you're ready to explode out of the hole with an atlas stone with a sandbag uh with the super yolk coming out of the floor with uh with Farmers so you can do it hard and
effectively efficiently without beating yourself up how long will that run I've got a 12we program but I've really found that taking that 12we program and cutting it down to somewhere around six is probably A lot more effective um I've generally found that looking at the long-term programming of 12 weeks with anything is less effective with me programming them it might be more effective with someone else I want to take some responsibility so it might be more effective the way somebody else views you know they're peing but if if I can find something that works in
a cyclical manner four to six weeks I prefer to run that twice and the second time I run it we've learned From the first time we've run it what adjustments we need to make on the second time we run it so we're not getting down to the final stage if you've got to go set this you know PR on Atlas stones and we're still learning about the process for you I don't know if that makes any sense yeah are the other core lifts rotating in that same block yes but if if you're going for if
you're training for a PR in any event really that has to be your main focus Um and and and the percents drop off everything else um your body's just not going to take it and and that's when you see someone at like the Arnold or usually someone at World's Strongest Man that is the beauty that you don't realize that these guys have done every everything they can to get a little bit more out of those events on on that day or that given week and that's so freaking hard to do is it too much to
specialize on more than one event I Don't think so um you just okay I let's say you look at your week as a 7-Day week and you're looking at it as a a seven band equalizer in your car you know I mean you remember the old Alpine radios we had in the 80s and the 90s in our car and you had to go get the you get the little CD players and you had little you put the little EQ in there so you have to look at each day uh it's kind of like you know
the EQ adjustments or it's an or it's an Exercise for that day so if I take the Basse and crank it all the way up everything else next to it all the other frequencies next to it if I continue to push them all the way up eventually I'm going to blow my amp I'm going to get distorted sound coming out of the speakers so the higher that I push up one exercise or one day something else has to be pulled down to balance that out because if you start driving something up and going nutty on
it You've got to understand that you're going to pull back so that's when you know and if you understand hey I can't I've got to push on these three events that I've got to make serious progress on you've got to do a couple of things you have to realize again mental physical and Technical so and the point of improving it is not just train harder but train smarter so you can focus on the technique part of everything you could work with me on the bench press With a plate and make my bench go up 50
pounds in a day by saying dude Clint you you forget to tuck your elbows you've been benching for 30 years why aren't you tucking your elbows and it's going to click that I'm just not tucking my elbows you can improve my lift by making me go lighter I'm going to recover more on that day so I can push harder on the other days or I can spend a whole lot more time doing every recovery method that I can think of ice bath heat Massage whatever it might be um and I think that's where a lot
of athletes get in trouble with going to the extreme of doing whatever they possibly have to to recover or to get ahead when you realize I'm not as far as ahead as I need to be to compete with the other guys and they start taking risks um and I know that because everybody's done it including myself so with the recovery modalities when you have those in there are they phasic as well or is it always in I Learned this from you and I don't even know if you said this on video or if you told
me is but you were saying something about I think foam rolling or something it's just like putting a Band-Aid on an injury so it's only going to help you for a certain amount of time because if I if my hips hurt and I can foam roll and get rid of that hip pain well I'm going to go train just as hard as I was before you know if if my back hurts and I can take two ibuprofen and I can go Squat and deadlift I'm then that's what I'm going to do and I'm going to
go Squat and deadlift I'm not addressing the problem that caused that so I'm going to continue your training and when that stops working I'm going to foam roll a little harder I'm going to take another ibuprofen and that's going to be what gets me through that so I definitely think you you have to figure out which recovery modality works best For you and then you have to be honest which one is really working best for you and the assessment process is is a big thing I try to tell all my clients that I've got a
client coming today so he's going to he's dropping by the store here today in a few minutes um his wife is a professional race car driver not a Top Fuel dragster but one of those cars just down from a Top Fuel dragster looks like a Top Fuel dag comes with a really big point with the tiny Wheels on the front And the Giant on on the back that's what his wife does I can't make him understand he sends me a text message the other night that he finished the squat program for the day and his
legs are dead and he can barely walk so you got to massage it you got to stretch your quads you got to stretch your knees stretch your ankles get your back going and his reply was I'm on it tomorrow so I can't get him to understand that his wife will change the Oil on her car every time she goes down the track but he can't understand that because he went and trained and killed himself in the gym that he needs to do therapy work before he goes to bed that night that he needs to heat
and Ice his knees that he needs to do whatever you know put an e stem on his quads and his knees that are hurting you know here and there that his back is killing him what did you do to make that better try Something figure something out and do it that stuff like that just drives me insane that people can can figure these things out at one point in their life but they can't put it together in the gym especially when the gym matters to them because I don't think I have any clients that the
gym is just something they go and they do I just go to the gym every client that I have the gym is important they can no longer a afford to fail at being in the gym and I mean guys That grown men that can't bench two plates but going to the gym to them means a lot to them personally there's nothing on the line there's no money there's no contracts there's no sponsors nobody's watching it's them in their basement 5:00 in the morning before the kids wake up and to them they contact me because they
can no longer afford to lose this training means a lot to them and they'll do whatever it takes and when you start spinning your wheels for So long and you're not recovering you have back pain you have knee pain you have shoulder pain you're not benching what you want to bench you'll do whatever and I I think that's those are the people that I I continue to get the best results out of because they are willing there it's like their back's against the wall they feel that way anyway um so those guys it's not hard
to convince them go out it every night and do 100 tricep band Pushdowns get the blood back in your elbows your elbows hurting your shoulders hurting and your doctor told you to wait three weeks before you trained again I don't think that's the solution let's figure out what you can do to get it moving you know those guys you know go buy a um they go buy a Donnie Thompson bow tie you know they don't have any problem buying what's the new the f8 not the Widowmaker but there's a single ply kind of slingshot Catapult
something that you wear that's like a half beninge press shirt kind of thing they have no problem picking up one of those because it might allow them to train and make the progress that they need it might allow them to recover and you just continue to try things until you find something that works and that's that you can do there a lot of things that work not everybody can work a 16 hour day and they come home and fix an ice bath I can't do an ice bath we don't Sell that much ice in cypers
it's too freaking hot you know but um you know I I I I think just having maybe someone like me who I've got 20 different ideas on how to make something work so if you haven't found a solution I'll find one now would there be any point in time where the training is going to downregulate because they're so beat up the goal is they shouldn't get beat up yeah so if they've if they've gotten beat up it's my fault um I have a Client that competes in there's a new natural strongman Federation based out of
England uh they a couple and it's a it's a legit natural drug testing and the weights are serious the athletes are serious it's really really impressive uh bavos is his name um and he competed a couple times earlier this year and just it one of those things leading up to the meat where if things could have gone wrong they went wrong little things with work money job just little things start Going wrong and you know he went and did a competition and he thought he was going to do really really well placed top three or
something and he make it like fifth or sixth so he comes home and he's like man I'm really these guys are younger than me now they're so strong they're so fast I don't know if I can come back and and compete against him and he's got another competition in four weeks Another World Championships in four weeks um and it was not a tested Competition so now he's entering the competition against untested athletes and the weights are even heavier and he's like I don't know what I'm going to do maybe I shouldn't maybe I shouldn't go
and I'm trying to explain to them if you get an invitation to this level of competition and you ever say no they're never going to invite you again because you said no so I suggest you focus on being at the contest and you let me take care of everything else so the training For the next four weeks was really 60% intensity at most one maybe two lifts including a gym lift at the gym at at most and it was just walking through it two to three days a week cut out almost all of the strongman
events because he knows how to do the events he knows how to do the events we just got to go in the gym and not get him more burned out he shows up and the whole week before the competition he's like man my muscles are full everything is full I'm pumped Everywhere and he's got this hunger of you know I'm ready to kill people kind of attitude he took third or fourth I don't I think he took third at that non-tested World Championships and then of course now he's back I'm back and ready you know
but I've learned from a lot of people that sometimes the best thing you can do is don't do anything just rest and you know your old Meatheads you still got to come in the gym I'm going to come in the gym when I Want to do something but it's it's got to be really really cut back and reserved what you're going to do how hard you're going to push it um I mean this is the same thing if you're working with football kids on the field except you're generally working with people in their 20s and
they can pretty much take yeah being pushed really hard but if you if you had a group of of 40 year olds playing football you would probably at some point be like you know what you Just need to rest today you need to show up and you need to walk through you know you need to get your ankles taped to go get some rehab done and you need to just walk through a couple of really light snaps and no touch snaps and and that's what we really try to do once anyone once I realize they're
already beat up because I I think your hormone levels in all directions start changing anytime you go through a really really stressful Situation life whether that's training clients that go through divorces business anything like that and I generally found that however long that you've been overtrained or overstressed it takes about three times as long for your body to return to normal so once you realize man I've been overtrained for three weeks we may have another six to nine weeks of trying to get you back to feeling normal so going in the gym and pushing hard
is just because you Think you need to push hard it's not because you really need to push hard I don't know if that makes sense how have you navigated your own training over the years oh man I think pain and injuries has have taught me more lessons than anything else um how so well let's I I think the last time I was here I think I mentioned to you that I I I considered retiring and I asked your opinion if I should keep going because I still want to go to Masters World strongest man again
and just like that you said well are are you okay do you think you could be in a wheelchair and I thought I remember saying I don't know I really don't know um and then I went back that was 2019 so I go back home and this sucks to even talk about I go back home and I didn't qualify for Master's world Strongest Man laid down a plan that I was going to get up to 300 lb Around Christmas that way when the season started I could push the events really hard and that would drop
me to like 285 so I would go into World's Strongest Man being 285 instead of 260 and things just didn't work that way um I began having severe back pain the kind of back pain where you're laying in the floor in tears and if I had a knife I would have operated on myself uh so after months of going through that and things stopped working My wife bought me a reverse hyper put it out on the back porch uh I I get my doctor to order an MRI I go get the MRI done um and
in Cyprus they don't email all the photos from the MRI to your doctor they give you a little USB drive and you take it home with you and the guy who reads the MRI sends his information what he reads it to your doctor so then I go to the orthopedic surgeon and of course I went straight home with my little USB stick And stuck at my computer I'm looking looking on my spine there were thousands of photos and I tried to look at the one photo that looked like something I'd seen on TV you know
the one thing that I thought I could read and I'm looking like man everything looks the same I mean top to bottom from neck to you know everything looks the same it's and I've just got like a muscle or nerve issue we're going to fix this with some therapy so I get to the doctor and I Tell him that and he's like you know what you're absolutely right from your neck all the way down to your sacrum it's the exact same every single one of them is messed up every single disc was uh herniated bulging
what's it the stenosis uh the degenerative dis degenerative disc disease uh and bone spurs there were five or six things just and it was top to bottom every single one and he's like we've got to fuse you from L1 to S1 and We're going to operate from the back and the front and I'm just sitting there with my wife and I'm just like the only thing I can think the only thing I can think about is but I got to squat on Wednesday how am I going to squat on Wednesday if you're telling me I'm
got to have surgery as soon as possible nothing else hit me other than I'm going to squat in two days and I so okay I said okay well after surgery we're Talking about I'll be back 100% in six months and he said oh no no no no you're probably never going to ride a bicycle again you're never going to be able to do anything athletic again I said what's the point I didn't come in and say I was in pain I came in here and said I could barely move my leg and my gym lifts
are going down and I want to know why I can deal with pain so we're going to find a different solution so I went to another uh neurosurgeon she looks at everything The exact same way and she's doing all these little electronic test and there was no nerve conduction in my leg from the knee down so she says the same thing and uh my wife finds a third neurosurgeon in another city and we eventually went and saw him and we're sitting down I walk in the room and he looks at me and he's like what
sport do you play I'm like well compete in the sport of strong man but at the Elite level not just a little local thing and he said well you're Masters you're with the old guys and I said yeah he said well so you need a 770 deadlift and I'm looking like and he said really you need about a 700 lb deadlift to be able to just play with those guys and I said yeah and he said I think those days are done for you I don't think you're ever going to pull 700 again but I
think it's possible that over the next several years if everything works out well you Could pull 660 so I'm listening and he went through every nerve conduction issue and he couldn't explain how I could walk he said you're walking for some reason I don't know what's because I can't feel my you can touch my leg I can't feel it I can't move my toes nothing and we sat down he said look you can get under a squat bar or pick up a deadlift bar or a super yolk and your spine's going to shift and You
never walk again he said but you could also step out of bed tomorrow go to stand up your spine's going to shift and you'll never walk again the chances are the exact same whether you're squatting deadlifting or getting out of bed so my suggestion is we don't look at surgery we start running some high does cortisone medication and we get another MRI in 6 months and you start going to physical therapy and do whatever you can and we'll just go from there I said I'm Sold and then over the months my continued to get worse
and worse and worse depression really set in I can barely walk I can't I mean I could pull like 315 maybe something like that like M nose bleed going hard just can't get my legs to work and uh finally Lily and Aaliyah my training Partners set up a consultation with Dr Seth so I I meet with him online and it's really wild because I was his coach when he was in High school so it's really weird now to see him where he's at and uh we had some really eye-opening conversations and and the one that
got me was he said how much can you deadlift I said I might can pull four plates he said how much can you deadlift every single week and know that you're not going to be hurt and I said three plates said okay you can pick up 300 lb your back is not weak how many grown men with severe back issues can pick up 300 lbs really not many he said Well your back is not weak then so he said and made a big L list of of exercises and things that I could do which I
did maybe 10% of them to be honest um but the big thing was picking out which exercises in the gym set off my back more than anything else and avoiding the things that irritated me the most and trying to figure out what exercises that I I can do that don't sit off my back that don't set off my hips That I can push um sadly enough the one exercise that sets off my back more than anything else is box squats with the SS Yol bar and tons of bands and that's that's that's my absolute favorite
thing to do so there there are still times where I will do a good three- we cycle of box squats with the SS Yol bar and triple blues and just face turned purple and I'm just like I know I'm going to be screwed up tomorrow In the in the next week and it's going to take some ibuprofen to get through this little 3-we cycle but I'm going to enjoy every single second of it while I'm there but going through all those little things and the steps and and and you know everything kind of being done
and you're not going to walk and the realization of this could be the last time I LIF so I better be freaking smart about this I better be either willing uh to accept the fact that I'm never going To walk again or I'm going to be smart enough to make the smartest choices I can possibly make in the gym because I really want to train again tomorrow you know more than competing more than getting back to compete I want to train I want to go in the gym and do something I don't care if I'm
pulling two plates I benched I missed a 235 bench a few weeks ago but I benched 225 and got off the bench and yelled and screamed I really don't care what what the weight is on The bar I don't care what the how heavy the atlas stone is that I'm lifting but I want to go out there and I want to train hard I want to feel like I'm there in the moment and I'm going to celebrate when it's done done that's what I want to do more than anything else I got to use the
restroom real quick that works four three 2 one are we done selling this I'm done I'm done I'm done I'm done guys this is the new Elite fs.com box squat box box uh it weighs 73 lb I'm told it weighs 3 lb you've got your story I've got mine he says three I say 73 uh this is absolutely amazing guys no joke um you can box squat on this I'm going to box squat on it tomorrow this sucker is strong ridiculously strong and it is light guys no joke you can carry This anywhere put this
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your first order meric Health isn't just about Better Health it's about empowering you to take control of your wellbeing all right what are some of the other things that you've had to train around and through uh uh other than just general injuries there's a lot of little things that's happened over the last couple of Years that I think probably only you know about um I went outside I went outside inste an atlas Stone PR on a Monday night like just 100% everything I had yelling and screaming what I'm done pissed off headbutting stuff before I
did it um set a PR and then the next morning I woke up with just a severe Peck pain way up in my Peck I'm like you know I've gotten Sore you know on a PE from uh from lifting Atlas on before squeezing and pulling and you just stuff hurts everywhere and uh you know the next morning I was sore like man this hurts the next day it was still sore and I'm taking ibuprofen I'm taking cortisone start developing a cough several days go by I'm coughing up blood I'm like well man I must have
really pull something have some bronchitis or something and it was it was winter time and Six weeks later I'm still coughing up blood and still taking pain meds for the chest pain um getting dizzy and then it kind of hits me I have a pretty good idea what I've done I need to go get a blood test done there's a good chance I've had a blood clot and an embolism so I go you don't have to have a doctor order blood work and Cyprus you just show up tell them what you want and it's cheap
so I went in I'm like I want a d dier test and he's like you sure I'm Like yeah I just need a regular D dier test and just email me the results so I go in his office his place is 3 minutes from my house I go back and get my car and as I'm walking back into my house my wife's phone drink he didn't call my phone he didn't email me the results he didn't call he called my wife's phone and said you got to get Clint to the hospital now so I don't
know let's say like 300 was like the the high end range and I was over 7,000 and this was 6 Weeks after the fact so I get to the are and we run everything and and I had a pulmonary embolism and was just training through it so I had blood clots all through my legs um that had went up and got itself into my lungs um getting that looked at and taking care of was a huge issue that was a big scary thing when you realize that that was you know if it would have went
through the heart it could have been a heart attack if it would have went to The brain it was a stroke but it went to the lungs and stopped there and I just thought I was sore um that really changed probably an idea of I've got to take better care of myself a little bit and there was nothing I did to cause this but I think there were several other friends and and I hate to say names but you and I have mutual friends that went through the exact same thing at very similar time periods
and Didn't make it um and that was that was tough to deal with on the mental side how do I get through this because every time I go to push in the gym now or then I was thinking what if there's another class and I knew I had other clots in my legs you know I'm taking injections and pills and everything else and creams and now I'm always wearing socks that look Goofy and you know so that was a big mental thing just to Kind of get around what's going to happen you know and I've
heard you talk about tearing your PE off on the bench and how you got over that just by visualizing the worst thing that's going to happen second of the bench and it just rips off you know so I just I I took a lot of that visualization process of just you know I meant through six weeks of having a pulmonary pulmonary embolism and just thought it was I was coughing up blood because bronchitis or Something I didn't know I wouldn't go to a doctor why am I going to a doctor bad stuff happens there um
the big thing I don't think I haven't talked about and I haven't mentioned anywhere so only close friends know this and I emailed you from the hospital um I I had a few weeks last year where I felt bad just laying down the floor heart feels funny maybe it's stomach acid I don't know breathing funny out of Breath you I'm training in the gym doing box squats and I can no longer just run people out of the gym on a dynamic effort box squat session I was always real good at that and doing my sets
30 seconds rest and just flying going going going my face is turning purple I'm getting fat I'm trying to do cardio watch my diet nothing changes you know I stay the absolutely just I'm just fat and out of shape going walking every night just nothing's working and then uh It was uh an October last year I woke up I had trained obviously Max effort every single day leading up to this uh I said a deadlift PR and a log PR on Sunday Monday night I went outside uh Another Log all right guys thanks for watching
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