Posting my my shaved head training videos and they're like you need a new name it's like Mr clean's jacked brother Mr unclean it's like the man of many names because it's like at that point training started to like something clicked in my head and everything started like popping off so it's I guess it did help aerodynamics yeah did you realize because this one of the one of the things I can't stand is when sweat Gets in my eyes just it's always been that way and with a shaved head becomes a problem yeah I didn't realize
there was a problem until I did it yes and that's [Applause] [Music] why it's time to sit down keep it real and cut the [ __ ] welcome to table talk guys we're back with another episode of TBL talk today my guest is Patrick Maguire top 10 powerlifting total from 21 to present and I'm going to ask you how long you've been competing so we will go into the deep dive of all that but your best lifts are 1014 in wrap 635 7716 and 2342 when I was speaking to you yesterday I screwed up because
my brain sometimes inverts numbers but it played into your advantage because I was giving you a 1041 right just put the sexy in sexy it's fine yes ex exactly where it's It was funny because after that you know I'm driving back I'm man I need to obviously I need to look at I need to look into my notes like how did I screw that up right cuz it's a like who squats 1041 it's going to be 1050 right and you kind of said something about that and um so I looked it up and that's just
inverted the numbers a little bit good thing I didn't do it with the bench because we had 536 oh I was doing that more when I was a team so before we kind Of get into the training and your history and the training and all that other kind of stuff I have some fun questions to kind to put out there the first one is the Penguin thing right because everybody that I've talked to I said ask him about the Penguins right which meant I also had to go to let me open this up GPT right
I don't know [ __ ] about penguins you know either so what's the deal with the Penguins so you know how When you go on Instagram you see someone lifting something and their caption is either like the devil said you can't handle the storm and I replied I am the storm and you see them like benching 315 for reps or something but then then you come across a video of mine and you you're like I can't count how many plates there are on the bar is there is there seven plates is there eight plates let
me check the caption and then it's ad Deli Penguins participate in Necrophilia and you're like that's not helpful MH so it's kind of like a joke where it's like people take themselves way too seriously in in powerlifting and they're they're here to be they're they're trying to be hard they're trying to be like it's it's hard work I'm I'm putting my nose to the grindstone and I'm just like I'm just here to have a good time and the best way that I could find to to kind of make fun of that is is it's it's
almost like a two-fold Thing because uh back in the day dominici had this thing where it was like um it wasn't his don't be scared homie but it was uh it unless it's on the platform it doesn't really count so I kind of adopted that if it's not on the platform might as well just be 135 so all my training videos especially leading up to me where you can start to see like you're at 80% 90% you can pretty much project someone's next three attempts on a platform based on their Training videos leading up to
a competition so if there's any sort of competitive advantage to knowing hey I guess Andrew house is going to go for a 1014 on the American Pro or um or Craig Foster is going to go for like a 1048 at the ghost Clash 3 based on what their training videos are like you go to my training videos and it's like well Penguins participate in prostitution with Pebbles and you're like well I guess there's no use in trying to find a Bill bellich competitive advantage to looking at Patrick's videos because you know he's just going to
give me penguin facts and honestly I ran out of penguin facts and I was like you know what Penguins don't have thumbs Oswald cobblepot probably doesn't have a driver's license the penguin from the Batman so it's like oh so you're going all over the place with the Penguins there yeah yeah so I I ran out of penguin facts and and I was like well Now I'm uh someone brought it up at my gym uh John Randall he was like where' the penguin facts go because I I got super serious for for a while because uh
my Coach Joe suvin was like M you're you're kind of avoiding a lot of tough subjects in your life and you need to kind of take a step back in your personal life because your body can't tell the difference between physical mental and emotional stress so you're avoiding a lot of things which is Causing a lot more stress and it'd be better for your recoverability if you um like one of the things that I should be doing that I haven't done in a while is go to therapy uh my biggest total increase was uh I
think it was 2019 to 2020 or around that time um it was between being in the the summer of my last year of college and I was able to sleep 14 hours a day and go into um therapy all of my numbers popped up and that's probably the Best period of my my my lifting progress and I really need to get back to that but um I got really serious in my Instagram captions and I was taking myself way too seriously and and and everything I was like let's get back to my roots let's have
fun with it again and now I'm bringing up facts about like um the black footed cat which is like a one pound cat but it's also known as the deadliest cat on Earth because it's got the highest kill percentage on its um When it goes out to hunt and right now it's quaca it's it's just a marsupial that looks like it's smiling all the time so yeah you know how to use chat GPT no AI is going to rule the world well I know but I just if if you need them I just pulled up
a hundred penguin facts you know so you can just keep sticking with the Penguins if you want to but the take there's a few takeaways there I want to pull away from kind of going off script is from what you're Saying the for the competitive lifter the only thing that really counts is on the platform yep which can be seen in a lot of different ways and I think sometimes people when they hear that they get like all butt hurt and offended you know like what do you mean my lifts don't count and it's like
well they kind of you know and it's the whole training process leading into that accounts when you make statements like that do you do You get some of that push back I'm not big enough to get some of that push back yet you don't have to have that many followers to still have a couple [ __ ] that are going to say something stupid something to say I'll meet them on the platform where that falls and the the second part of that aspect was you'll keep and a lot of lifters will use well Instagram predominantly
at this Point maybe it's Tik Tok but I don't follow it enough to know is their training lock yeah right and there's there's a difference between keeping a training law to kind of document what you're doing yeah and to where it becomes obsessive yeah to the point where it can become I choose my words lightly because I can say too serious yeah right but that too serious is going to depend upon who that individual is and how do they Classify what serious is because some aren't serious enough yeah you know where others can it can
cross that line which it kind of sounds like you know what that is because sometimes I don't think people realize that if you make a post you know there's it takes longer to make the post than people think even if it's just like a training log post because you're thinking about what you're going to write you know you're thinking about What you're not going to write and you're kind of reanalyzing the whole the whole thing and for most lifters most of that whole thing wasn't really good right and you don't want to put all that
out because then you look like a victim you know and all this other crap but it's the truth and so it typically ends up is this long dialogue which really nobody cares about except a few people yeah and where what it really should be from the selfish standpoint is you Should be able to go back and look at that say okay I'm five weeks out this is when I was five weeks out yeah which that alone it's hard to do because you got to figure out you got to scroll and find it then you can
compare you know and have it in there but I don't see that very frequently yeah you know you see the the good days that are overblown the bad days which are excuse oriented yeah you know and kind of goes from that but I can see how you can get stuck in That rabbit hole but the Penguins help cereal helps like I didn't know that fruity P Fruity Pebbles was cat food right no no it's a Lucky Charms yeah lucky yeah the marshmallows yes yes chocolate cereal is the worst too the chocolate chocolate cereal it's like
they basically put some chocolate powder on cardboard and said if we make the milk taste like chocolate milk you'll eat anything out of it yes and that's the marshmallow Theory as well yeah yeah Because I did see that one so these are these are the fun things that I have here right from the jump of the whole thing the um some of the other ones I had have [Music] our I may not have the time right but I think it was nine days ago is that about when you shaved your head uh was it nine
weeks ago it was one of the it was it was uh just before August it was at the end of July yeah so it obviously you Shaved it was a joke right that you shaved your head to become stronger right but I'm just going to lean into it like it was serious like most people on YouTube and Instagram would do like you shaved your head be able to become stronger and so the first question is did it help did it make you stronger the funny thing is is it did I've I've got a group chat
with all the guys in the 2300 podcast that's uh Shane Hower Craig Foster Justin zoto and FRG Arius and I started posting my my shaved head training videos and they're like you need a new name it's like Mr clean's jacked brother Mr unclean it's like the man of many names because it's like at that point training started to like something clicked in my head and everything started like popping off MH so it's I guess it did help aerodynamics yeah did you realize because is one of the one of the things I can't stand is when
sweat gets in my eyes just it's Always been that way and with a shaved head that becomes a problem yeah I didn't realize there was a problem until I did it yes and that's why I'll throw a hood up when it's really [ __ ] hot or find some something that's they're it's all stupid you know if it's a hat or whatever it's going to be I'm trying to find the the least stupid thing that I can do to keep that sweat especially on the top lifts because that that's where it seems to happen yeah
like you unrack A squat you're getting ready and then all of a sudden boom like [ __ ] yeah for some reason that's the one thing I can't tune out is that and then it's meanwhile the whole rest of your body is just a [ __ ] mess of sweat anyhow but it's the one thing so is that why you're growing it back no no I'm just being lazy about it I'm going to shave my head once a month yes so just re recalibrate the the headedness M um well if you let it go too
long and this I know from Experience it's a pain in the ass to shave it again you know it's that's the shaved head are you new to this whole shaved head thing yeah the first time I ever did it yeah okay so I'll educate you a little bit so you're gonna have first off I had to shave mine because the hair was falling out and you're in denial of all that until and this was pre social media and nobody ever took pictures of the well we didn't take pictures of the meats that we Competed in
somebody would and they would just end up like on this Counter West Side and I'm flipping through them and somebody took a picture where I was getting under the bar right and it's and it was just like oh God you know it's is it time for the wraparound you know or do I just shave this whole thing off and I can you know what the wraparound is yeah so I considered well maybe if I did that it would be more it would be more Professional looking but the way I was losing the hair was like
dipping into the back of the wraparound so it would be like a reverse beard you know on my head so then that went through but the die hards will say oh it's not that big of a deal you just shave it every time you're in the shower or I'm very forgetful so no it does not happen I don't have the shoulder Mobility to well I don't I mean this one's [ __ ] so I got to do it all with One hand which leaves a spot like over here that I Can't Get Right which somebody
else this just becomes a huge pain in the ass is kind of what I'm saying where if you have the discipline which is so screwed up because we're going to talk about how discipline place in training and I'm sitting here saying I don't have the discipline to shave my head every day every time I get in the shower where but after a while when it really does start falling out then you Kind of run into this mess because it start it's growing back in you're like man it's going to come back this time it's all
coming back this time and then no it doesn't so that's my advice there so obviously it did not make you stronger where the opposite was Samson would be true right yeah like if you just let it just grow all the way out yeah that the beard will do that the beard will do that so we got the cover With the perard if you could have an unlimited supply of anything for the rest of your life what would it be time oh that's a good one that's a good one my when I first saw that one
I was thinking money because at least with money I could buy everything except [Laughter] time if you were arrested with no explanation what would your friends and family assume that you have done kidna a penguin doing what kidna a Penguin there have been when I went to the ghost Clash um one I was I I was I was telling some people I was like oh they they've got this penguin exper where you can go in and and um you can pet Penguins you can feed penguins and stuff and they're like do not under any any
circumstance come home with a penguin they need specific habitats and we cannot provide that don't steal a penguin do they bite I mean I don't know [ __ ] about penguins even though I looked It up on GPD I don't I don't know they they don't really document that much but they do have like weird teeth things on the inside of their beaks help them like eat the Krill and stuff I did read that they drink salt water which when I first saw that when I'm like well yeah du I mean when you assume yeah
they got this gland in their eye that helps them filter out the salt water so it kind of comes out as as like tears when they're Swimming because you can't actually hydrate on salt water if we drink too much salt water we get dehydrated so yeah and that would be true with the Penguins as well yep biology like I said I don't know [ __ ] about penguins so I'm going to the the Instagram penguin power liting expert if you could eliminate one in your daily routine what would it be and why oh I've been
I've been trying to do that Um I I recently lost my job the uh the week of the ghost Clash 3 and I've I've really been diving into this question for my own purposes which is why I want more time because um um I'm finding that even though I don't have a job right now and I'm doing like gig work like Uber Eats just until my new job starts up um I'm not finding myself with lot of free time like I'm still working like 50 to 60 hours a week doing Uber Eats or or um
doing audiobook Narration and uh the thing that I would I've I've been trying to get rid of is my social media usage I have parental locks on my phone so I can only be on Instagram for 15 minutes a day Facebook for 15 minutes a day and recently YouTube for only 15 minutes a day and that's still 45 minutes every day that I'm basically bleeding out of I could be writing a book because I've got a a powerlifting ebook that I've been writing got one chapter left to rewrite And I've got a fiction book that's
that's kind of like my excuse to not go to therapy or journal and like if I get frustrated just kill off a character serial killer stuff but um I've got a lot of like aspirations and and things that I want to do like um at the uh ghost Clash 3 I I bullied Alex user in letting me be on the the microphone and call the deadlifts for the uh uh High dots females and Craig and I took over and we were both Shirtless it was a fantastic time and uh as I was going to the
um um the the lifter after party which is which is not an orgy it was just a dinner at a uh Dave and Busters um I was like I could do this for a living I could I could do this and that's how I started pursuing uh audiobook narration so um if I just get rid of my addiction to social media and all that and and become less of a consumer and more of a producer then I'd be better off and I I'd have less stress Because you're always comparing yourselves with with other people with
other lifters um you look at social media and you're like people just exist and they get money like you see a lot of um if if you get down in the rabbit hole you'll see a lot of attractive females on uh Instagram and all the comments are you just sit around you want some money so you show your tits and that's I mean some of them it's like that but a lot of them there's like you said it takes a Lot more to go into a single post like it'll take days and days and days
and it takes a um skill set in order to produce things on social media where it's uh it's almost like looking at the box from a different angle making sure that you can really capture the audience otherwise they're just going to keep scrolling because um social media has made it so that we have the attention span less than a goldfish so like I think um uh the study said that the the Uh average American attention B's only about 15 seconds now thanks to like YouTube shorts Instagram reals and and Tik Tok so um and we
end up Doom scrolling we're like oh 10 seconds here 10 seconds there suddenly we're we're taking a dump for five hours and and there's a missing person's out and we're just like oh I'm not actually missing I just need a flush one thing I found is if I went to make a post and that was just the intent Yep then there was always looking at [ __ ] before making the post just subconsciously and then making the post and then you know making going back and seeing if the post actually spell errors typos or whatever
it's going to be and what should have taken five minutes per se you know ends up being 45 minutes and the strategy that I used was when I upgraded my phone I cut my old phone and we have multiple lines on the account because of kids and stuff Like that but I don't even know if you need multiple lines because the trade in on the phones typically sucks yeah right so it's like okay screw it I'll just keep this and since I am an apple ecosystem and have the cloud the Mac Cloud when you upgrade
the phone it's basically a clone yeah right so then when it cloned the other phone I took all the social media off of the phone that I use that has a text and everything else and then kept it all on The cloned phone that stays in my bag or whatever it is so now I have this a parental controls never worked for me because I would just [ __ ] overwrite it with the password and just kind of go but now I have to physically like oh [ __ ] I need to go grab that
phone and be able to do that and you wouldn't even need a different line because most of the time you're posting you can or you could just use the hot spot on the phone that's actually activated so any dead Old phone could become like that social media phone the only time it's ever really sucked for me is if I travel because I really don't want to carry around two phones right so then I'll take it's usually Instagram is the only one I give a [ __ ] about you know I'll put that on for that
time period take it off but that out of all the strategies that I've tried and I've tried to make it so the whole screen's just black yeah you know I've tried all everything that Everybody else has kind of tried in every one of them you find ways to hack through it go through this is the only way I haven't been able to hack through it and get it done and then it also forced me to write the post in notepad right so that's just a copy and paste so I'm not actually writing the post on
there which was cuz now it's open postum done right it's working go and go that route where it is it's a rabbit hole and What's interesting is we know it and are aware of it and still get caught up in it y right so the majority of the people aren't even really aware oh yeah you know they're just doing it it's there's been times with my youngest who what is he now like 20 but when he was younger so four years younger just be laying on the couch rolling through snapchat or whatever the [ __
] he is Tik Tok and I'm just watching right because I'm intrigued you know Because it's like boom boom boom boom boom then like and you after watching this like 45 minutes it's it's so fast I'm like how do you know which ones like why are you liking the ones that you're liking because I don't see any change boobs you know what I'm saying well I'm not seeing any change like I'm not seeing like a stop it's just like the [ __ ] is this right because in my brain I'm like if I can figure
out what that is then shouldn't we be able to get more Likes yeah you know to be able to help the algorithm or whatever it's going to be and he didn't [ __ ] know like I just like that one like okay you know made no difference whatsoever didn't help at all the last odd question I have that you could be if you could be transformed into a kitchen appliance which one would it be and why that's a tough one um I don't use a lot of kitchen Appliances probably like I'm stumped on this one
I had a hard time too right I had a real hard time too cuz I'm I'm I'm thinking cuz I I was using a rice cooker every day and then um I was Finding I was missing a meal every day so I've I transition to doing stove top uh rice for my meals every day and I pretty much only use a stove top and an oven um but blenders exist too and then there's air fryers which i' I've never used one but I feel Like it's a fad right now or a uh almost like the
uh pressure cooker back in the 9s um I don't know I went with after thinking about it I went with a dishwasher because they typically last longer and nobody really uses them that much so being like the introvert that doesn't really want a lot of attention or to be around a lot of people yeah but they have the rights to vote now Um uh I probably a coffee pot why is that because because everyone needs the will to live sometimes don't they you need you need that fix right yeah I'm that fixed yeah that we'll
go with that that works so now I'm GNA jump into you know how you got into the sport and your your background you have you played High School football right and there was bowling as well yep which was in there um if if we go younger than High School say junior high or Elementary School what sports did you participate in um through Elementary School I played ice hockey soccer and basketball um and then as um well when I was in first grade through fifth grade I lived in Belgium and um so I had a lot
of options through the uh International School System uh to play lot of like uh club sports like um ice hockey and and soccer and and um basketball just through the school they Because they had a lot of students they they divvy us up into uh different teams but how did they select those options was it just random or was it kind of like old USSR stuff uh not USSR stuff well I mean they would push people to where they felt they were the most genetically inclined to succeed at um I I don't think they could
have gotten away with that the uh the school I went to when I was was in Belgium was um the International School of Brussels So like Um we'd have like Nigerian princes um and uh like EX on mobile Mogul uh one of my buddies uh one of my brother's friends actually I I I looked him up on Facebook and I'm like oh he l a coup in Angola cool so um I don't know if they it it was a very my dad was a uh a government contractor and we would move all all around and
um so we got into the school system on I don't know the the specifics but uh it was it was a very rich school And then when we moved back State Side to New Hampshire uh I went back into public schools and um I kind of dropped out of the uh the soccer and the basketball and I really focused on on ice hockey but ice hockey's uh it's a team sport that's very individual uh individual focused so you get a lot of big egos in ice hockey and it's like the whole it's like you get
one really good player on a team and the coach is like this is my my Golden Goose let's just Make sure this guy gets the pucks so that we can win doesn't matter who else is on the ice let's just get them the puck and I was like like my um and when I finally got into high school hockey um I I was I was uh my center and the I think I was either right or left wing it's been it's been too long but they were both First Team all state and my role was
to just protect them almost like the Goon from uh the Goon M with uh was it Sean William Scott Slap Shot is that what the oh was the Goon yeah um and uh coach would be like that guy and I'd be like all right I'm like I'm I'm GNA try and put him over the boards um but uh my junior year it's like I was on on I was on the the starting lineup my freshman year and as I progressed I kind of got pushed back and back further and I got less less playing time
and I've got this like hyper fixation with optimization of time and and metrics and um I was like I'm not really having fun with this anymore so I um I was getting ready for college coming up and my my middle brother um who's three years older than me he got a scholarship and now for a brief word from our sponsor of today's video hi I'm Patrick and you mother thought I'd actually get a sponsor for this video huh no look at me who would do that so I'm sponsoring my own video and I'm poor so
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control of your well-being Summer's here and so is the heat I've spent most my life training in unconditioned gyms and I know most you that are training in Garage gyms private gyms black Iron gyms know what I'm talking about when I say the Heat sucks it kills your motivation to go to the gym it kills your performance but it doesn't have to if you keep your electrolytes up that's why today's episode is sponsored by element element is a tasty electrolyte drink with everything you need and nothing you don't this means lots of salt with none
of the junk no sugar no colors no artificial ingredients no gluten no Fillers no BS it contains an electrolyte ratio of 1,000 mg of sodium 200 Mig of potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium element can help prevent and eliminate headaches muscle cramps fatigue brain fog sleeplessness and other common symptoms associated with electrolyte deficiency right now element is offering a free sample pack with any drink mix purchase get yours at drink element.com this deal is only available through the tabl talk link to the Rochester Institute of Technology for robotics because he was on the robotics team
so I joined the robotic otics team which would have meant that I couldn't do ice hockey and uh so I dropped out of that but I could do bowling so I joined the bowling team and um I I did bowling for my senior year of high school but I did uh football for all four years of high school I almost dropped out of football the first after the first practice because I I had really bad nutrition and Uh I was puking on the side of the uh the field and I was like I don't want
any of this my dad was like if you don't do football you don't do hockey and I was like I really want to do hockey cuz it was still freshman year and I was still enjoying it and um that like as I've grown up I've I've noticed a lot of times my dad hasn't let me give up and and let up for a lot of things easily so like um like the biggest instance is is me wanting to uh quit football cuz I was I was puking I had eggs like 20 minutes before football practice
a lot of cardio and and stuff and I was a fat kid so um I just had a very bad time and um he was like you can't quit this if you quit this it's gonna start a whole habit of quitting things and um so I ended up doing football all four years had a great time still in contact with some of the the guys that I played football with um but that that really impacted Me growing or maturing I guess is the word Because um now when I'm in the gym I don't it's like
I'll have a I'll have like an 8x3 programmed and I'm like I really don't want to do that so let's just do one set all right maybe two sets I'm halfway to halfway so I guess I'll do three and four sets I'm halfway there so I might as well just do one more set and then I'm like I'm over halfway there so let's just finish off the rest of the eight sets and I'll be good so it's like it's it's giving me this Avenue and this This mentality where I'm able to kind of trick myself
into being more successful because I don't give up on things easily yeah my parents were the same way where it's don't if you start it you're going to finish it yeah you know which when you're younger you're like starting everything right then kind of sucks but as you get a little more mature that you think twice before you're going to start something yeah right because then you're you're processing a little bit more like Well if I start this and it sucks you know how bad do I really want to deal with how long this could
suck for you know and it just puts another little bit of a layer it's establish L values I suppose yeah and the reason why I ask about you know early childhood Sports and development is when you're dealing with you know top strength athletes or any top athlete across the board there's there's different periods of time as we grow you know as kids to Where certain attributes have more developmental the developmental Windows you know to be optimized if it's coordination visual Acuity explosive strength endurance so forth and I probably need to brush up on what those
time frames actually are yeah but when you go back and look and once you get to high school a lot of that's kind of you've already passed a lot of that yeah um but you get down in there younger you can start to see a lot of the parallels Where it comes into where you know ice hockey football um one of the other ones you said were explosive based Sports yeah you know so we if you're in the sport long enough you'll see lifters that can grind weights and lifters that can just explode with weights
yeah and we try to teach all them you know to have the compensatory acceleration you know maximum forces but some people while it's still important to do that some people you're not going to see it Displayed as you would with others like there's some lifters that will just blast a lift yeah you're like oh God he's got 75 pounds more on you put 30 more on Boom they're just smashed right and a lot of that I attribute to how that early development was you know during that time frame and with a lot of these qualities
as you get older they diminish yeah you know as well but which an interesting side topic was one of the debates against you know like the Dynamic effort method or stuff like that like either you have it or you don't and I can agree or disagree with that but what I look into that is let's say that you do and you can't enhance it past 20 or whatever age you might be able to stop it from decreasing and so then it maintains because if you lose that ability to produce that Force output even a little
bit you're kind of screwed especially if everything else is kind of dialed in With all that at what point during this entire process did powerlifting come into the picture or not powerlifting at what point did strength training become a higher priority than training for sport that's a good question um so I'm I'm the youngest of three and um like taking a step back and kind of like putting us into archetypes my oldest brother was the strong one uh he ended up going to the the Army and and being Like the the health nut and he
can do like half marathons and marathons like that but he was really into lifting in um high school and uh and college um my other brother is the smart one and then I was the third one so I'm I I kind of developed with this concept of um I have to be better than them so I ended up graduating high school with a 40 got my degree in math but surpassing my oldest brother who's the the strong one or the the healthy one was was really the tough Part because it's not like you can you
can uh as we go through lifting we learned that sometimes more isn't always more so growing and and training for like football I mean ice hockey they didn't let me bench more than 100 pounds and um we would have uh we would have they called it Dryland but it was just going to the gym with a personal trainer personal trainer was like there's no way that you could be benching over 100 pounds and I was like I [ __ ] show you Um but um training for for football my freshman year um my mentor who
was the uh I played center and the the the varsity Center at the time we got really close and he taught me how to snap the ball and everything and um every I think it was Friday uh my football team in the offseason we would have um gym sessions and our our high school gym was pretty bad it was like one bench two squat racks and a bunch of um dumbbells so it's not like the uh the the high School gyms that you see nowadays Where It's Like Oxygen training and everything where where there's really
pushing the the athletic Endeavors of their their students but um um I think when I was in when I was a freshman doing in high school uh I benched 185 for the first time and so I started training with the football team a little bit more intensely and I think I hit a a 200 lb bench and at at the time uh my oldest brother was always going to the gym once He turned 16 got the his uh driver's license and every summer pretty much the entire summer we'd go to the gym we'd wake up
we'd have breakfast we' go to the gym we'd come home we'd watch way too much TV drink too many energy drinks you know too things and um go to sleep and wake up at 10: the next morning just rinse and repeat and that was the summer it was awesome lots of lots of Pokémon and stuff but um that really developed Uh I guess Nostalgia is not the right word but it it I I get really intuned with um uh habits and and personal cycles of of um daily routines that's the that's the word I'm looking
for so um by the time when I quit uh ice hockey I found myself I had a driver's license I uh my oldest brother introduced me to this uh little known guy by Ronnie Coleman and um I was like Arnold Schwarzenegger Ronnie Coleman I want to be better than both of them so I um I Started doing two a days because I was also playing around with um uh this this whole time optimization thing we spend way too much time sleeping I'm I'm a I'm a dumb teenager at this point I'm like is there some
way that I can sleep less get more time out of things so I I I looked up um uh polyphasic sleep cycles and uh there's a sleep cycle where you can sleep 6 hours a night take a 20 to 30 minute nap uh throughout the day and you've got that much more time or you Can sleep 4 hours at night uh and then take two 20 20 to 30 minute naps throughout the day and the more 20 to 30 minute naps you take throughout the day um the the more optimized your your day becomes and
the the uh a lot of the people who do the ultradian Rhythm uh polyphasic sleep where they don't do any big sleeps they don't do like two or 4 hours they just take 25 minute nap I think I it was every 4 hours I never got down to that point but um I got down to The point where I was sleeping four hours at night and taking two um naps a day so I would wake up in the morning and go to the gym before uh school and I would do a uh Arnold Schwarzenegger from
I think it was like muscle and braa I do Arnold Schwarzenegger uh Training Day I'd go to school eat all the things um and then I'd go back to the gym right after school and i' do a Ronnie Coleman training day and that went further and further and then when I graduated high School I started doing it in the summer and uh I got to the point where I was feeling a lot of pain in my um my forearms uh whether it was ton ntis from football or I really noticed it on the preacher curls
and I got to the point where I was able to preacher curl 45s on each side super strong and um I asked the uh the I guess the staff member at the gym that I was going to I was like is there any way cuz I I used to get my wrist wraps for um football to kind of Protect the wrists any sort of uh wrist tendonitis thing and I was like is there any way that I can do that for the gym and he was like you know there's this guy uh who goes to
the gym his name was Brad Parker he's like he's he's a powerlifter he's the only one here in this gym and he uses wrist wraps and uh I I'll ask him where he got his uh he got them from inzer and I'll ask him where he got his from and uh I I'll send him your way and it was right after my 18th birthday and and I I met him in in the locker room and uh the the staff member was talking to him and uh Brad was like well is he a [ __ ]
and I was like I don't think I'm a [ __ ] he was like then come bench with us and uh that was the first time I hit a 300lb bench was the uh the Wednesday after that and uh it's I've been powerlifting ever since so it it's been like a a transformative process where I kind of I always really enjoyed seeing the bar go Heavier and heavier and heavier like I think I have a um back when I was I think I was 16 or 17 um I have I set my profile picture to
me squatting 405 on a Smith machine and a Taylor Swift T-shirt with a barpad and I'm like can we just scrub this from all of all of all of memory because no but it's like if I hadn't done that I would have never gotten to the point where someone's like you're not doing it right you need to you need To do it better you need to squat in a regular rack with a bar Smith machine is is not going to be cutting it for you you need to learn how to actually lifts properly and learn
the difference between moving weights and lifting properly and uh so it's it's been a it's been a long process I don't even know if I answered your question you you did but how did you go about training or because one of the questions that I'm sure that you get and anyway that's in this sport Gets is when should I do my first meet you know so what was the Catalyst for you doing your first meet and then how did you train for that first meet um so about so so I started my first powerlifting training
session if you can call it was in August and um Brad was super uh involved with uh RPS the revolution powerlifting Syndicate um we I ended up uh meeting Jean and and knowing Jean personally uh through Brad and and helping out at meets and um that November um the there's not a lot of powerlifting in New England I mean there is now but back in 2014 I can't really tell you if there was any like Meats there was the uh RPS Boston power challenge but nothing in New Hampshire so um I think what happened was
I think Shauna Mendelson was having a powerlifting meet and Brad was like Hey Jean this federation's doing this let's have a meet the same week weekend and let's get as many Lifters as possible to kind of be like no this is our territory mhm and uh it was only a push pole meet and I signed up as a 114 female multiply and it's still listed in in open powerlifting for some reason as my only multiply numbers uh but I was raw and um he he kind of Brad was like you need to do this meat
we need as many lifters as possible so he kind of popped my cherry like that and um I was I what happened to the squad on that meet oh no a push I'm Sorry yeah yeah yeah yeah playing just the tip with powerlifting at that point Y um and then a year later the the same meat happened again and they expanded it uh it was a full power meat and um that was my first uh full power meat I was always like oh I'll do a meat soon I'll do a meat soon and then when
push came to shove I was like I'll do the same meat it's it's like right in my backyard there's no travel involved I can just stay in my dorm room and then drive out There uh the day of so it was it was a pretty easy meat to to get ready for but the way that I trained for it the first meet I I was like oh powerlifting that means lift heavy all the time right so I would max out my bench max out my squat max out my deadlift every time I went to the
gym and then wondered why I impinged my shoulder MH and then I took a week off and they're like there's this thing called a de lo where you basically just go to the gym and bodybuild for a week And then suddenly you feel better and I was like wow this feels like cheating so there's like a method to the madness right and uh and then um after that meet um Jamie ma from Fair Haven Fitness uh he' been coaching the the team that we we kind of had it was uh Granite City barbell and um
he would send a program to Brad and Brad would kind of disperse it throughout throughout the uh the members of the team and it was it was like it was basically a Facebook group Of guys who would sometimes train together in Brad's mom's basement and um uh that was like the first program we ran but um I kind of modified it a little bit for myself because it was rpe Based training and uh I personally don't like rpe Based training I would turn if it was an rp8 I would use 80 80% which is I
mean you can get away with doing that as a beginner lifter but as you progress further and further further you can't do 80% for like a 4x4 uh and not piss blood in the morning um but um uh that was I would um I would train seven days a week and it would be squats on Monday bench on Tuesday deadlift on uh Thursday and I would no dead lift on Wednesday bench on [Music] Thursday no I don't remember what it was I remember I would bench on Wednesday Friday and Sunday and then I would do
squat B Squat and deadlift on on the Other days interspersed and um I got to the point where I was at I think it was 8 uh I was trying to qualify for the Arnold with that um and I I I qualified for the elite day but not the pro day uh where I came in second to Kevin McHugh and um oh was it it was like a 750 squat five something bench and a deadlift uh 605 yeah so 1885 yeah yeah and I think the qualifying total for the uh the pro day at the
Arnold was 1910 and uh so I I Followed the uh um Jam's program up until that point and uh the weekend after that uh 1885 meet uh the uh it was either the third or fourth iteration of the the gate City Gauntlet which was is the first meet that I ever did I was like I'm not going to compete this time I'm going to help run it I'm gon I'm just spot and load and uh Greg Panora had just blown his quad off and he was like I'm still going to bench I I got to
be the Centurion for my my uh my Forces I got to lead the Army um and uh the meet director was like Greg heard that you benched 545 as a teen and he wants to he wants to get to know you a little bit so we're going to have you handle him at this meet for the first session of of the day he's doing only bench and he's got like five handlers because he's got stitches in his leg right now but um you'll be his go-to Guy and um after that meet he slid in my
DMs um as as all coaches do sliding into Their athletes DMS a little differently nowaday but um he was like I think you got similar genetics to malanichev and I want to help you get there and um at the time I was I knew that I needed a shift in my programming and uh it like a week before Jee rlack was like you know I've gotten to know you over the past couple years I can coach you too and I was like um you live in Pennsylvania and if I need extra help and like need
a pop out and need Hands-On help I don't think that I can really feasibly go out to Pennsylvania and and train with you and get those Hands-On fixes so I went with Greg for about seven is years and then um about I guess I've been with Joe Sullivan for about two years because I I I I started noticing you see like John hack Chad penson little guys like um Dawson Windam um I was goingon to say Shane hunt but he's big now um all these little guys who should not be able to tickle super Heavyweight
numbers tickling super heavyweight numbers and I'm like there's something that they're doing that I'm not doing so I need to hire one of these guys to tell me what I'm doing differently but do it as a big guy because there's there's definitely something and it turns out it's cardio and a lot of other things so um I lost track of the question well so if I'm going through and look at the periodization style the the very first Times before you met Greg would you say that was just basic linear like long period linear periodization or
was it blocked out a little bit more like when I say linear I would talk Western method 12 weeks starting at like you know 70% or 60% and working volume decrease in intensity was it was it that or was it blocked out a little bit differently the first because I'm seeing three phases here yeah right so how would you define because you you know programming now Right so and the it's all linear it's all blocked and it's all kind like so if once you really know all this everything is what it's a hybrid of everything
else but in layman's terms if you were to just Define them in the most basic premise how would you define those three different tiers um so you're asking how my different coaches have coached me throughout the yeah so in that first phase right typically people come in in that first phase it's just that basic Linear old school type what was it that or was it something different it was 1020 life okay so it's 1020 life that so that was Bryant's yeah yes okay so that's more blocked yeah okay and then that moved into Greg and
was that more conjugate or was it more blocked fifth set fifth set okay so that's kind of the same block type of aspect just with am wraps and better D loading yeah and then now it's so it's pretty much been blocked the whole time Yeah okay so what have been some of the major changes in each one of those phases so like from phase one to phase two right trying to qualify for the getting up to that 750 then from that 750 to a grand like what were some of the changes that were applied that
had that outcome um so when when Jamie was coaching us it was less of a a one-on-one thing because we weren't paying him uh at that point He was just doing it as a favor because we help him uh we were helping him run the meets that you would have in um uh locally like New Hampshire Vermont and mass uh at the time so so he was doing us a favor by sending us a program uh which happened to be 1020 life and then when I started with Greg uh it it got a little it
started off a little more Hands-On and a little bit more missionary positioning where um uh if you've heard him talk about him coming Back from the stroke it was very I learned how to squat better by squatting more I learned how to re I learn I relearned how to bench by benching and stuff like that so the uh the first iteration of his program before he was like you know [ __ ] it we're doing fifth set it was um it would be like squat with uh maybe a buck Squat and then uh paw Squat
and then another Squat and then you were done or it's like bench wide grip bench uh Spoto press lson Press and then you're good so it was like you're just benching a million sets and then he was like we're not we're not retaining uh clients or lifters so uh we're going to do something a little more fun something that makes a little bit more sense to the average person where the the earliest lifter and and the later later lifter the the more uh experienced Advanced lifter is going to be able to progress on the same
program um everyone got the same program because It was only 20 bucks a month through train heroic and um he he he kind of developed this uh Facebook group where he taught like the ogs what he was looking for like what cues you should be using uh what it looks like when things break down so uh while I was with Greg I basically got seven years of um coaching experience because I was breaking down the other uh lifter videos and being like hey this is what's going on here's how you need to adjust that um
so once He did that because at one point he ended up having over 200 clients and as a as a coach you can't you can't watch 200 videos of three lifts of every single lifter every single day um looking at and remember what each lifter needs to do uh like I think a lot of the uh the modern coaches have maybe 25 lifters so having 10 times more than that you can't do that so you've got to basically have a team of experienced people knowing what's going on um so a Little bit more emphasis and
more handson or it wasn't really Hands-On at the end personalized yeah personalized uh and a little bit more cycle based and I had a little bit of a different program on there um because I needed to De uh delad more often uh like in the uh in the train heroic that Greg had it was every fifth week was a D Lo but I needed every fourth week to be a D Lo and um as I progressed right before my last meet Before um it was my last meet with him was the American Pro one and
I was de um I was training every third day so my weeks were nine days long and I would only train three days every nine days and um that was I was a lot more rested I was able to kind of um uh push a little harder but I'm not sure if I got about as much uh progress as I I I needed and I was like if you look at other lifters who are similar sized and similar total to me like Dan Bell he'll Train two days a week where like every other week he's
squatting or he's deadlifting but he's benching one day a week or at least that's that's what I've heard and um and I was like there there's something that these little guys are doing because they're able to progress like John hack just got a 2,300 total I'm like I'm a little nervous he's going to pass my total which should never happen should never let someone half my size total more than me um and Then you you there was a meet where um everyone was like who's going to win is it going to be Dan Bell or
John hack and then Chad penson won I was like so these little guys they're progressing but um Gregs it was I got more cues and I got I got to see what um I I learned what trackable factors were like fatigue learning what fatigue ratios were and how fatigue progresses through a block and and listening to my body a little bit better I know when my Body is like Hey we're gonna we need to slow down a little bit take a D Lo otherwise we're just we're going to implode from the inside out things are
going to start hurting and um I always felt like going into Meats I was always um I don't want to say the healthiest person there but I I I was basically the most not ready is the right term but least injured going into powerlifting me where joints felt better yeah because I had that that frequent D Lo um um but it Was still a a I don't want to say old school kind of method where we're still looking to move as heavy of weight as um uh fast as possible and control is kind of there
but if you can row 300 lb for sets of 12 you're going to row 300 lb for sets of 12 um it doesn't matter if you've got all the body English in the world you're moving 300 lb and it's it's everyone talks about you don't want to Eagle lift and then there only talking about squat bench and deadlift where you Know the eagle lifters where they'll load up 17 plates on a squat and they walk it out and they're they're looking like a a a a bowl of Jell-O just their stabilizers aren't there they break
at the knees and they lock it out and they're like yeah squat PR or like they're they're benching and I I don't even watch Jim fail videos anymore I don't like the bad Juju but like you'll see the deadlift where they look like a like a dying cat and they're Like yeah I locked it out but well all your all your discs have popped out your back and it's like that ego lifting you never really hear people talk about eego lifting when it comes to doing your accessories so like I can um leg raise I
can single leg raise the entire stack on whatever leg raise machine we have at the gym but I don't because it's not productive for me I can I can lat pull down I have lat pull down the entire stack plus like I think it was like four 30 lb chains that I threw on top of the uh uh laat pull down stack at my gym and the entire machine was bending and Boe and the gym owner was like that doesn't look super safe and I'm like yeah but I'm doing it for sets of 20 um
but it's it's it it wasn't productive lifting and and recently with with my new coach Joe Sullivan and uh a bit of uh gentle bullying from briani Terry who's my nutritionist um they've kind of changed the way that I see the accessories Because um when I was programmed accessories I get rpe and rpe I I have a LoveHate relationship with rpe because it's a catch22 but I'll talk about that later but um when I first started with Joe he he wanted to basically audit my accessories as well he's like well are you doing them right
and he was like you are not straining enough when you are doing your accessories you're basically sandbagging your accessories and um I Was like all time to buckle up and then the next four training sessions I puked every time he was like there we go we're we're doing it right now and as we've gone through I hit a um a PR of um 300 lb single arm row um I I basically had to build a dumbbell out of plates and and handles and stuff at my gym and I sent the video I was like isn't
this cool my coach was like that is the most dog [ __ ] lift I have ever seen in my entire life you need to take a step back And abs absolutely reassess the way that you are doing everything in the gym I want you to max out of of your your single arm row should only be at about 70 pounds not 300 [ __ ] pounds it's that's not productive at all you're you're ego lifting you're not getting anything you're just taxing your CNS there's difference between training your CNS and training your muscles your
muscles aren't really getting stronger your CNS is just getting more acclimated To it who cares you can throw 300 lb I don't and he he implemented this thing he wanted me to Tempo everything so it's a 0132 or he gave me a 013 Tempo where um you basically at the uh if I think about it um the O is the explosion basically the contraction of the muscle um uh one count hold at the the the peak contraction kind of hold that squeeze and then a slow Ecentric a three count Ecentric and I was going through
that and I was like there's There's a piece missing from this and um I don't remember if it was Joe or Bri or someone mentioned that um or or if it was squat University while I was Doom scrolling while taking the dump once but um accessories are uh stretching under a load I think it was Dawson Windom actually and I was like oh and and then I kind of like brainstormed how I'm going to be doing this and I I developed this like 0132 methodology where I've got that 013 Tempo but at the peak Stretch
I hold it for a two count and then doing that and then suddenly like as I continued doing that I was like my joints hurt less like I have this thing where my chest can get really tight and I've I've got anxiety and and sometimes I'll be like I have chest pains wonderful now is the time but it's actually like my chest is just super tight and super cramped and and I benched heavy this week or like I had my elbow up on while I'm driving and and I've got a lot of tightness in my
chest and if you go anywhere and you're like I chest tightness they're like you're dying and um I don't like doing that but um like I uh implemented the 0132 and I'm like I don't have tricep pain anymore I can actually do things overhead uh my my bench descent like in the past my bench descent people are like is this is this slowed down or anything and I'm like no I'm just really slow at the the Ecentric and you've got The whole variable of time under tension that that develops when when you're lifting heavy of
of once you get to a certain point you can only withstand the pressures for so many seconds and like if you if you take a video of a am wrap versus a really hard set where you're taking your time with everything am WS tend to have the little Nuance of you're supposed to get as many good reps as possible but that's just like asking a dude how big his dick is and he's always Going to OV exaggerate and you're going to get more reps than you probably should be getting but they're going to be ugly
as hell so developing bad habits like that through am wraps like that and not being accountable enough towards myself uh I develop bad habits but with the uh the the um 0132 stretching under a load kind of idea I kind of got rid of a lot of the aches and pains that I have like I had um back when I was 19 uh when I was prepping for the the Um the meet where I set the alltime teen teen raw bench record um every time that I would bench over 500 lb I would have to
go off in the corner and be in the fetal position because I had such bad bicep tendonitis and my rotator cuff was so inflamed and I would have to like like curl up in a ball and cry myself until I was ready for the next set where all the pain was gone and take an ibuprofin just to make sure that that I didn't hurt and then now I can bench I I Did a 2x3 at 500 paused yesterday and then I went to the zoo and and nothing nothing hurts and I'm I'm just cool I
pad right now the way I would summarize what you just said is if you're looking at a probably the easiest way to do this if you're looking at a Training Day there might be one or two exercises that are at the very top you know after a warmup that you're training the movement right and that movement is going to have Correspondence to your main lift it's normally the main lift or mechanically similar lift or something like that and once you move out of that category then you're moving into you're not really training movement anymore you're
training muscles M right so then that's where a lot of the bodybuilding principles should come in you know like what you're talking about there because when I would see like the ridiculous one arm row you know the same thing or even Pull downs and stuff like dude you're just trying to train your lats here yeah right so there's better ways to optimize this you're going to have to use less weight right which to the lifter at the time they don't want to yeah right but they also don't understand the risk that comes with that the
systemic fatigue that's accumulated um you're actually probably not even hitting the muscle that you're think you're hitting because you've taken a what could be more of an Isolation type movement and made it a compound movement you know very shitty cheating concentration curl can become a very good you know shoulder lat movement right so or it can just work that one muscle and if you just work that one muscle that added fatigue drop because who wants to accumul at fatigue through that [ __ ] no you know you're already accumulating so much and I explain it
like a video game power bar right so like you go into and I could break this out through a whole training phase but you have so much life in that right or or so much energy left in the life that you have like so you should go into a meat and you should have like three lives but as the meat goes you should be able to accumulate more lives right right just like in a video game but in that training day that energy bar gets increased with every movement you do every set you do and
if it's the squats are really hard you know And it's triples or whatever it's going to be you might suck 60% of that life out of that which means you only got 40% left yeah for the rest of the [ __ ] right and if and that might be the way that the coach or you want to have it structured right but what happens if it takes 80% yeah right or on the other side what if it only takes 20% but once you once you're dead you're dead you know so if it is that 30%
left and now you're doing all that high stimulus High Fatigue accessory type of stuff then you're you're you're in a deficit you know so if the energy bar could go negative you're going negative which means that next training day you're going to not be back at that 100% yep you're going to be maybe 50 or 60 now you take that over a 3- week phase or a four-week phase then the D Lo is maybe not even going to work yeah you know because there's a balance with all that one of the easiest ways to control
that Balance is what you're talking about and probably most likely and I would say certainly get more muscle growth y you know from that and it's a hard thing man you know it's just for powerlifters to really kind of grasp because normally the default would be if that first movement sucks 70% 80% you just don't do anything the rest you're done yeah you know maybe couple body weight movements and then you're the [ __ ] out of there which isn't a bad Call yeah right but mitigate injury yeah but if there is enough left in
there to be able to do those other things that are going to help the conditioning and help joint uh strength and stress and all that it plays into that and but it's it's a tough one especially if the person's already strong yeah because they can equate that to being why they're strong yeah right so it's how were you able to not get caught up in that yeah and it's it's doubly hard Because if you're stronger than your coach you're like yeah but I'm stronger than you so like do I have to listen to what you
say and uh I made a post about that last night I'm like I've um I my ego has a black eye right now because I was like I squat a th000 pounds what what what is an 800 pound squatter going to teach me what is what is um I don't know how much briani um squats but she's probably going to yell at me for not knowing but uh they they completely Restructured my squat because I was I was folding forward on my Squat and getting on my toes I I I added in squat shoes and
it's it's almost like a completely different movement but um going into the American Pro 3 I was I was like I don't really know how this didn't go I squeaked out a a 13 Squad and I was like Yay I'm still strong a little bit but um implementing new cues and and when I was benching I uh like a lot of times Joe was like hey are you Using the lat q and I'm like like what lack you he's like you don't have You' you've never been told how to engage your lats on squats I'm
like no I just balance the bar there and then he was like what do you do with your hands on bench and I'm like I hold the bar he's like oh we we basically have to take a step back you lift like an elite lifter but you're not so we need to we need to basically go back to ground zero and look at form on everything so like I Added new hand cues on on bench the I I learned a lot of what I bench from Jean slack uh through the time that I got to
know him before he passed and um so I'm really good and grounded through my feet but I had no idea what to do with my hands and it's like uh spreading the bar and bending the bar two different cues that uh Engage The lats and Enga and uh put the elbows in the right position and um like going about things in a whole different way and uh it's you can muscle Through a lot of things but you don't want to that that [ __ ] hurts MH and that's when you get injured and like good
form means good health good totals what also means not falling out the groove halfway up oh yeah you know and so that that all kind of plays into it well yeah um one of the other things that is hard for people to really understand and comprehend is how you starts typically how you're going to finish yep right and on the bench you Can see this a lot you know they just take it out and go oh [ __ ] like we nothing's stacked you know nothing's really set up that way and I don't think these
should be Advanced principles you know I think all these things as soon as somebody commits to you know I want to go down this path should be implemented in there the same way that any other technique is implemented in any other sport that you ever do yeah funny how powerlifting Seems to be an outlier with that where every other sport you're learning the skill aspect of the sport or they'll take they'll take one skill aspect and break it down into segments you know and then build it back out which good coaches do you know in
powerlifting but a lot of times it happens later and i' I've heard many say it's not worth doing that because as they get stronger it will just happen naturally and I'm like nah not a my Experience you know a shitty squat will become a less shitty squat if it's a little bit stronger but it's still a shitty squat now under heavier load yeah which can create more chaos more damage you know over time and if they are genetic out Li are really really good at it well now that's in a lot bigger weight now you're
starting to deal with an ego of what do you telling you only squat 400 pounds you know I squat 900 pounds like shut the [ __ ] up yeah you Know when you can put that and some to some degree there's some truth in that as well right because weights feel different you know in certain segments you know it's 800lb squat is going to feel different than a 400lb squat oh yeah you know and a 900 or a th000 is going to feel different the bar moves differently yeah much differently and the the brand of
the bar ises too MH yeah so with your YouTube and with the clients that you Have you're for lack of a better way to define this you're you're education based right so you're trying to help people understand you know periodization and just the basic principles behind what we're talking about here so if it's some that's new to the sport and you know from some of the videos I saw on your YouTube channel there's there's no [ __ ] in there you're not trying to sell people [ __ ] it's just straight up Here's the things
that you need to know and which sucks because what's you should have a million followers with that type of content but you never will because that type of content isn't in the margins yeah and people are attracted to what's in the margins where did you find the best place to start with those people with that demographic as far as just educating them on basic training principles Beyond a set as a Group of repetitions and you know it's not like personal trainer stuff but they got that but now they're going to start branching off into instead
of doing ebook type training which some good some bad but understanding what that ebook philosophy what the philosophy was behind that ebook I do think that's a good test for a lot of people that are trying to understand the process is now most of those books are pretty easy to find yeah I mean you still should Support the author and put all that out there but they're pretty easy to find if that that's a task that I like to have people do like go through them and try to Peg you know which type of periodization
this kind of Falls in or dissect it stuff um Bramley Alexander bramley's done this with you know his YouTube channel he's taken some of these things and broke down a lot of these training ebook philosophies into Oblivion yeah you know which is good Because nothing's ever perfect right so to the authors out there you shouldn't get butt hurt you know if something gets exposed that's not perfect because you can't make a perfect program um but it's a good exercise to do to be able to learn to help learn right because a lot of people just
if they're not interested they're not interested but I assume people you're are interested so where where's your tier one if you're trying to teach somebody about this training Process um what's the question when you go to educate people on periodization right just in general and Broad what where do you start um so the beginner lifter is going to experience a lot of things that the advanced lifter is not going to experience you still got newb begin gains in there mhm so linear periodization doesn't work entirely it works up to a point like if you're at
if you're doing a percentage-based um Linear periodization where every single block you're adding 5% eventually it's going to be calling for you to do 110% for sets of two and that's just not possible um that that's going to cause a female athlete uh going on my experiences from what I've seen they're going to be like I can't I can't squat 110% what's wrong with me and I'm like it's 110% why would why would that even be on your program as a training day not even on the platform and um So I for a beginner lifter
I'm looking at uh what's a program that's going to make sure that they're making progress without blowing their Joints off because when I started lifting I was maxing out every day when I went to the gym and I'm like why do I hurt all the time but I was kind of making progress but the injuries and and the uh not like super bad injuries but the the process was kind of mitigating a lot of the gains that I could have made where if I used a Different process like I personally believe that one of the
best um programs for a beginner lifter isn't necessarily like the fifth set or the 1020 or the Juggernaut or the cube or um any of the the modernized programs that that like Dawson Windam deathgrip Derek and Joe Sullivan have out there uh because those uh assume a level of uh uh experience in the sport and the only program that I've seen that doesn't assume that is 531 where you're going to it's going to find It's going to make sure it's got blocks and make sure that you're making progress but eventually the program's going to stop
work working for a lifter and instead of running it again and running it again and again and again until their their eyes are bleeding because they're failing every set that's when when they Plateau on that program that's when they Branch off to the more advanced programs like like the fifth set or or any of the other ones that I Mentioned before and um it then it gets to like a a a gray Zone where you've got these I don't want to say old school programs um like uh like like 102 F set and Juggernaut where
they've been around for a while and and they've they've got a proven track record record versus a lot of the newer programs that are utilizing um timed rest periods and uh undulations in the D loads where you're not Del loading a single lift at or not de Del loing all The lifts at the same time uh kind of like adopting the princi from Cube method but also applying the new Time dress period making um uh uh fatigue ratios and and all the variables out there hypoxic response and um um uh neurological response to stimulus and
getting into the more and more sounding like a nerd than than like an actual powerlifter um so like when when I produce content for for YouTube I'm Like what did when I was a lifter starting to get into the sport what do I wish that I had and you'll go out there and in the niche of strength Sports and powerlifting uh you've got guys who are super fun to watch like Juju ju Juju yeah Juju juji M uh he's a little John call yeah he's a little out there and I'm not gonna I'm not going
to put a horse head on myself and strip down to uh boxer briefs and and uh do front flips all around uh to try and explain Hey here's what linear periodization is um but I've got a lot of information from my experiences my research and a lot of the people that I've talked to cuz like um one of the best things that a lifter can do is help out at meets because you meet a lot of people like um i' I've talked with tone barboso uh before he passed Jee rlac before he passed um Vinnie
disenzo he's still alive um not even when I talk to dies but like Katrina bellisa Rita West um Like all uh Mindy Underwood a lot of these these lifters who though they're not rewriting the record books now they cemented that they were the greatest of their time like Rita Rita West for the while was like the Undisputed greatest female powerlifter out there and now we've got um like um Amber who was in here yesterday benching like she's the greatest now and I got to talk to her because I had all these experiences where I grew
myself in the sport and now I'm here because I've been I've been able to take advantage of the opportunities that have been been presented to me and the easiest opportunity that's going to be presented to someone is hey help out at a meet everyone is desperate for spotters you're not going to get in a judge's chair real quick not that anyone actually wants to be in a judge's chair that's like that's like joining the Supreme Court and saying all your Everything you say is is a is a dead verdict and no one's going to complain
about it it's uh I forgot the question again I have this bad habit of going off the where you start on explaining periodization to somebody that's just getting into this because it's there's different phases of how people stumble in yeah right but there's there's definitely a distinct Mark to where it's I really I love this I want to be good At this yeah and they want to start trying to figure out what's going on yeah right so so explaining fifth set or not fifth Set uh 531 there's so many fives in powerlifting um I mean
sh is it really is some of the girls are fives out there too but um explaining 5 through because it's it's basically the most Bare Bones program out there you start off you do five at 70% 3 at 80% One at 90% you progress you add five pounds you do that again and you're like This is this is linear progression and then you you note how the next block after a D Lo it increases at 75% for five uh 85% for five 92 and a half or 95% for one progressing through that and be like
notice how that's progressing through that eventually it's going to break down for the lifter they're not going to be able to do that again you can either recycle that do a down undulation and go through it like that or you can go onto a different program Like fifth set where you've got the uh meso cyclers micro cycles and it's it's basically like three or four week blocks then you take a D Lo then you've got a uh pivot into a different kind of um weak point and you you progress through that you make sure the
weak points become strong points before addressing the weak points that develop because they're they're not the weak points anymore and you your weak points the strong points and you're constantly Trying to put out a bunch of fires at a different point and um eventually you get to a point where you're like all right person's strong how do we progress through that and and you basically just talk through uh the different ways that you go about progressing things what what weaknesses show up so like if someone is having a lot of knee pinch on their squat
a lot of people don't really know what's causing that it's it's a uh imbalance between their quads and their Glutes firing while they're squatting so like how do you fix that well you make the knee pinch even worse by throwing a band around the knees or you increase the um the stabilizers or you increase the glute by doing like reverse hypers or doing um good girl bad girls doing um uh hip thrusts stuff like that make sure that the glutes are strong enough especially if their squat is much higher than their deadlift and because that's
going to show them knee pinch but I mean If you look at lifters whove set alltime World Records in Stacy Burr's alltime world record Wilks she had a bit of a knee pinch going on there as long long as it's not egregious to a point do you fix it most of the time yes but sometimes it's no but only if it's going to be their last meet yeah yeah so if if we dial this all back how do you explain to them what that 100% is to actually use as the base for all the percents
that Follow for instance in 531 it's going to be defined is take that number and automatically pull 10% off and then use that number so that 70% really isn't 70 it's 60 right so it's this is the first mistake I see a lot of people will be making and it's as a beginner it probably doesn't matter because they're going to get stronger so fast that it's really it would almost be a disservice to stick to a straight linear program that's not going to have any ability for It to you know undulate based upon technical changes
they may make but as it progresses through that still becomes that becomes the one pinpoint that everybody's been trying to figure out and that's where RP comes from that's where R comes from all these things come from trying to Anchor what that actually is yeah where you know old school is going to say that's whatever that number was in a meat yep right but The meat head that lifs in the meat can think well I had 50 left you know so do I add the 50 that I could have done on that day you see
what I'm saying so if you just hammered the 1014 and you know it was easy and everybody that knows you is like man you had 40 more pounds does that mean it's 1050 or do you stay that's where the first and you peaked for that yeah right so there there should be a difference between a training Max and competitive Max which I'll let you kind of get into that as well and the greater that variance is the better it is for the lifter yeah where I think one of the highest I think I've ever seen
was Chad Wesley Smith I think was around 15% wow you know which is that's crazy you know and granted and that was raw right I see bigger when you're dealing with gear because sometimes the gear you you're using different gear on the meat day than you would use otherwise but but that's a Huge thing that needs to be defined and talked about because if you know on the extreme end you got a multiply guy that's got a 20% variant so then he's going to use that number and then the majority of his training that's going
to happen before the last six weeks is going to be in briefs only that's that's probably well over the max of what they could do in the briefs only yeah but on the raw side you're still dealing with um in the 50 60% range probably not that big of a problem yeah the 80% range now you're in the 90s and you're in the 90s for more than four week you could be in the 90s for 10 weeks yeah but not know that how do you go about navigating those conversations patience um with a newer lifter
their competitive Mac especially a lifter who hasn't come to me or hasn't had a coach before their competitive Max is going to be a lot closer to their um gym Max because they've a lot of times When they come to me they haven't had a peak before and um I just recently had a client who came to me and I was like all right so when's your next meet and he was like it's this many weeks out and I'm like we have just enough time to run a peak you're going to get no gains out
of what I'm giving you but you're going to have the uh Central ner system gains going onto the platform he ended up uh pring all three of his lists and he was like yeah I really like this program I Don't know where all that all that strength came from and I'm like that's from actually peing your your lifts differently so a newer lifter um they're going to be closer to uh one to one with 100% being close to 100% but you never really program over 95% and then there's the um the uh neurological factors that
really come in once you hit 95% that's when all the bad happen start to rear their head they can be as pretty as as phof facet with their squat all through Training but they're doing 50s 60s 70s and it's looking really good once you throw 95% that's when like the knee pinch comes in that's when they start bending over that's when their their knee path is wrong when their when their their ankle Mobility really rears its head and you're like all where this starts is probably going to be where their 90% is like on bench
um I call it cardio arm syndrome because you've got a dominant arm that you use more often and You've got more fatigue in that arm so it's going to above 95% it's going to be the one that kind of lags before it locks out and I see it time and time again and I'll see people opening on the platform they've got that cardio arm and I'm like they're going two for three at a Max at this meet so stay close um so seeing that in their training uh need the the training videos in order to
see that um but I generally don't program above 95% unless we're in a peaking Phase so if they're getting closer to a meat and they're they're um one of the easiest Peaks that I uh kind of use I I use um basically the peak that uh Greg had me use um because it's a little bit more straightforward and it's more cookie cutter is like week one is a 3x1 80% week two is a 2x1 at 90% uh week three is a 1 by one at 100% plus or minus 5 pounds and then once you see
that uh what that with that accumulated fatigue going into the meat you can base All of your numbers what you're going to go on the platform like uh if you want to be aggressive 95 100 and 105% of what you hit in that uh third week of training and then you've got the back down so you get the super compensation where you're doing a one by one at 90% 1 by one at 80% and then a 3x1 at 50% and then you compete and people are like I feel like I'm just wasting my time in
the gym at this I'm like don't worry about it you'll enjoy it on the platform It's going to be good but uh training Maxes once they have that first meet under their belt then you can really dive into it it's like what you can play around a little bit like generally I'll do for a training Max will be somewhere between 90 and 95% unless they're a brand new lifter and you're able to play around with 97 and a half or 100% um but never really get above 85% you can only go about I think it
was six weeks uh I had An intermediary coach in between Greg and Joe um that I respect a lot but we didn't really meld well um and he used RP Based training so he'd be like hey do a do a uh 2x3 at rp8 or nine I'm like cool I'm benching above 500 today so I would go um six weeks in a row benching above 500 hitting new PRS every single week and then I'm like oh I tore my PEC cool so you can only go above 85% is around where the threshold is uh before
your CNS starts to kind of Break down and and kind of mush around and and you really increase that that risk of injury and um so I kind of tell them I'm like you're you're not as strong as you are as you are on the platform so kind of take a step back and realize everything that you're doing in the gym might as well just be 135 it's like if you're if you're a truck driver and you get caught speeding every single shift that you're working but you get paid hourly does that make sense it's
Like no so taking a step back being able to develop more stimulus and and really adapt to the training a little bit better because you've used less weights because when when you do it takes about 200 reps to develop good muscle memory so if you're doing 200 reps and you're doing it with a broomstick you're going to develop good muscle memory and it's going to reflect when you're doing 95% or above so if you're doing a lot of your training at like 60 to 75% you're getting a lot of good reps in and you're not
going into those bad habits so really pushing and being like hey I want to lift heavier doesn't really make sense all the time sometimes it's necessary but only when you get close to a meet so the only time that I ever have myself or anyone go above 95% is when you're on the platform because that's when it counts and I haven't had any push back on that yet but um yeah I think I C well not necessarily It's the caveat that comes in all that is if they're if they're in that phase with the Newbie
GS or you know somebody is a new client of yours and their squats just a mess yeah right so then you clean the squat up and it takes a little bit of time but you clean it all up that can add 50 pounds to their squat really really fast and so that has to be integrated in you know to the train first off you you need to understand that it's going to stick yeah because it Can it can regress and that doesn't get talked about very much because some people would just assume it's going to
stay that way but a lot of variables May that happen for that one day but that has to for that level lifter something has to kind of be built in to accommodate that right so do you have some people will use an wraps to be able to do you know to accommodate that because if it's a triple then they do an AM wrap and it's like 15 yeah you know There's there's some strength there that was accumulated that you're not aware of so it's what tools will you use to kind of gauge that or is
it just the other way would be just to watch the actual set of five and it's this week it was hard this week was hard weight's increasing this week's a complete joke but the squat looks totally different so how do you go about analyzing that for one and then increasing the load if needed or or Not I um when I when I run into that where there where it's obvious that their lift has really increased by a lot I take a look at the ppin chart and I kind of push the boundaries a little more
so like uh I think the the middle thing is like a a three to six reps at like 80% I I usually have it pulled up because I I don't have the memory bandwidth to memorize all that um but I'll kind of be like all right so what If they can do eight with this this this data range and I kind of push it like that and then I'm like all right let's let's kind of take a step back what if they do a 6x4 instead of a 3x6 and kind of increase the weight like
kind of linearly progress that to the point where all right now they're showing that the the reaction to the uh stimulus that I'm looking for in their training so I can adjust to that and then I'm I'm like all right we're here we can kind of stay Around here we can kind of like Thumbtack this is where they are and and then kind of push them hey you might want to compete a little bit earlier so we can reset the numbers because every time they compete they can reset their numbers and that's really where all
the bad habit show where that above 95% comes and rears its head and you're able to reset everything and be like all right fresh new training program we've got new Maxes let's look at what you're Going to do and it's going to look completely different than it's it looked before because we've got this new data and we know where your strengths are we know where your weaknesses are we know where you need to be working on because you've got this going on so let's work these muscle groups and stuff like that I'm going to repeat
that back to you because that's actually really good you know so I want people to kind of take this away is a takeaway correct me if I Misunderstood anything that you're saying there and so if you start to see something like that you're going to look at prant chart you're going to see where they fall in that chart most likely they're not going to fall on the higher end of that chart now if they do that that will be a followup question that I have but under the assumption that you just laid out there they're
not so what you're going to do is you're going to make that next week you're going to push Them more to the higher end of that chart but you're still staying within that 10% range of that chart um which is a it's a really good idea you know to be able to do that and because that still keeps them in that threshold that's going to protect against what I mentioned earlier that is this temporary is this for real you know what is that um now if it's falling on that is that correct in what I
just said yeah and can push even a little bit Further even too if if they if they're at the top end of that perpin chart and they're still not showing the the adaptation to the stimulus you're not seeing the breakdowns that you normally would see at certain weight thresholds then you can push it a little further and you recognize they're beyond the point of this single section of the prolin chart so we need to reset the numbers soon yes but you you go there first yeah before resetting the numbers As you will this maximize that
higher end then yes it did and it did for more than just one day one training session then you can go to that next number right that next bump up right you're not going too bumps up yeah you know I could pull the chart it would be cool people to see but it search it it's very easy to find it's everywhere um and even even with the push backs of that because there's a lot of criticisms of that as well it doesn't apply to powerlifting It's Olympic weightlifting d d d d da it applies enough
you know to be a tool I guarant progress yes it applies enough to where I can sit here and say all the same complaints about it that everybody else does but the fact of the matter is if if it's covering within one standard tation plus or minus of the bulk of the people you're ever going to work with it's good enough like nothing's going to be perfect and that kind of I'm still going to get into this RP Type of thing is it to ask how you kind of manage that because that that's always kind
of been a tricky one you know because like what's the difference of you know 8 RP or 8.5 RP and two R and I mean it's all kind of all the same [ __ ] when you kind of boil down into it but the questions that I've asked everybody that's worked within those models is am I allowed to get psyched up or not right you see what I'm saying like What mental state are you allowed to be in for this because that can make a big difference with that and um you know there's there's just
a lot of and what it comes down to is how is it anchored right to where for any of those things to work in let's say it's a scale of effort and we're not talking intensity percentage of one rep max but just how hard am I training my accessories you may say I want that like an eight right but your definition of What a 10 is and my definition definition what a 10 is may be vastly different so I think I'm doing an eight but I'm doing a six and until it's anchored somehow you know
now Mike tare might anchor that with velocity you know so there's there's some type of anchoring with that how do you go about anchoring what that is with an athlete that you're working with or even if it's a coach that you're working with or are you just staying Straight with the percentages with I'm staying away from your own training right now but if it's athlete you're working with how do you go about anchoring that to be able to know or do you just stay just with a percentage so when it comes to training the compound
movements the squat bench and deadlift I stick to the percentages and the prolin chart it's it's pretty much the Bible there and I can push and pull Things based on on that whole thing but when it Comes to the accessory movements and everything that comes after the main movement you never max out your curl so you can't base a percentage off of that so you have to use r PE or reps and Reserve but I personally don't like RP it's almost like a necessary evil in order to um to to program and a lot of
a lot of people it's it's an rp6 until you misgroove then it's an RP 10 or until you miss something and it's it's like asking someone how long they last in bed They're going to tell you 30 minutes but you know it's two and a half mhm so it's like it's almost useless to be like how much effort did you put into there because it's a catch 22 to if they understand the the the process then they're a really good lifter but if if they're constantly getting themselves injured or they're not making progress then the
coach is like you just didn't understand it so it's it I don't really like that factor of the rpe I personally Prefer reps and reserve and as a as a lifter develops through and learns how their body reacts to different stimulus and and how they feel the hypoxic response and which is the the burn and the pump and everything and actually feeling the stimulus which generally means that they have to reduce the weight and kind of tap into that mind muscle connection a little bit better um I like to keep I don't like going to
failure because the the amount of Recovery that you have to do when you get to failure is almost Leaps and Bounds higher than if you have one or two reps in reserve so I almost use um RP as almost like a almost like an inverted table for reps and Reserve so like an E7 should have three reps in reserve or like an RP 9 should have one rep in reserve um and I try to keep an open line of communication with my lifters like hey how's this going um I also add in the uh the
tempo the 013 Temp 013 to Tempo uh yeah that's that's um in the in the notes because sometimes I have um weird movements that I have um like uh when I program my own clients like I ask them do you want three four five five days and the fifth day is a trap because it's cardio um but so is the four day because the fourth day is cardio plus stability work and I've got this movement um where it's a uh like I I'll I'll do like uh Bottoms Up kettle bell Incline dumbbell bench where it's
like you want to you really want to Max that out you like I can I can dumbbell bench the 125s and then you've got the 20s in your hands and you're like I'm really close to failure because my stabilizers kind of suck um and it's like an entire paragraph in the notes hey here's how you do this um so I try to keep that open line of communication with my clients be like hey where where are you at where is this is is this too much is It too little just let me know so that
I can program you better it's it's not like um questioning the program be like hey like uh last night one of my one of my um lifters texted me he was like hey can we throw in um uh Copenhagen planks and I'm like absolutely and I'm going to make that murderous for you you're going to regret requesting that but you're going to be better for it so um I kind of I keep it almost like a like a floating anchor where it's if if you Have a really intense um bench day um and you're going
you're using that that power gauge and you've used 80% your your numbers in the accessories might not move for 3 months like your RP 7 when you're benching like a like a heavy 3x1 is going to be different than your um rp7 when you're doing a 2x3 so it's it's the the accumulated fatigue is is a lot different so it's it's almost like almost like an asterisk being like hey here's where it is your RP or reps And Reserve should be around here just don't sandbag please yeah one thing that I've noticed with lifters long
term is there's plateaus obviously but that's not even a really good word to explain what I'm talking about but you get to a certain total and may when you hit X total say it's 1,800 or whatever it's going to be your your your real strength if you're already able to actually display what you're capable of may have Been 2000 but the 18 was what that was was and you may float around that 18 19 for 3 years and during that threeyear time period Plateau for lack of a better word the training is a little bit
different than when it bumps up right because now it becomes if you're at the the bottom the start of that plateau in in one sense you really don't even have to get stronger you just need to be the same strength but display it Better next time out right to where you total 2300 I believe in 2019 right and it's like 2340 now so it's I could make the argument that you're kind of in one of those phases right now but when the first time you hit that 2300 you may have if if Stars aligned everything
was great that could have been like 2450 like who who knows what the top end of that could be or it could have been the last pound that you could have ever lifted on all yeah so When and this is an important concept if somebody's looking at somebody's timeline competing because you're going to see those those blocks that that kind of fall in there and one can look and say they're not making any progress and it's like h no this is they're actually making the most progress right now it just may not have displayed yet
you know during that time period And if you follow somebody that's been in for a long period of time you can actually Graph it out and see and then when that pops you know it doesn't just pop by like 20 pound it may be 20 lbs here 20 lbs there but eventually it's it pops and it's like 80 pounds or 100 pounds and then obviously the questions everybody has are like dude what did you do for this meat right and it's it's a whole are you looking to boost recovery enhance your sex drive and improve
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is Iconic and we have a plethora of apparel for women as well pay me process so with the phase that you're in right now what are the things that you're trying to optimize to be able to die in to be able to when you get on the platform in I think you said 12 weeks or So yeah something that you're able to display your strength to the highest degree so since that first 2300 total I've done a whole lot of of changing I've hired a nutritionist um I've completely changed the way I approach my accessories
I've got a new coach um and at that uh 2300 I believe I was 387 um so I'll stop you real quick and why like why did you decide to change everything after that One I just I had a gut feeling that something was wrong like the uh like I mentioned before the little guys were were competing with the big guys I was like if I their trajectory is beyond mine right now and I know something needs to change otherwise I'm going to be stuck here for a lot longer and they're going to pass me
well this is this is interesting to me right because it's still 150 pound PR when you did that where most people would think Everything's right yeah you know so what about you made you think this is not right it should needs to be better it's it's solely just looking at those other uh at that meet um you see what I'm saying in this situation you know somebody just breaks their PR by 150 lbs hit you know breaks a 2,300 lb total the last thing that you would expect them to think is all my shit's [
__ ] up I need to start looking at this a little bit better well it was actually it was um The next it like started to to set in that that I needed to change something which is when I started doing um increasing my um uh time between training sessions it was around that time when I started training every third day rather than doing um Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday it was like I have two days off in between every training session and um then I competed at the American Pro and um I got my opener
squat on my third attempt and I'm like The thing that's missing is accountability and uh so uh Greg and I parted ways after that meet and um I started with Joe and we fixed uh I threw in uh squat shoes which I I thought they were going to be a one to one change and it's absolutely not uh because the uh when you add a heel to your your foot your your foot becomes a triangle and the position of the center of gravity needs to change uh due to the geometry of of Of things uh
it's it's a point called the croid which is in the bottom third closer to the right angle of a triangle and um so you need to bring it back so you feel more on your heels a little bit better and at the uh American Pro 3 uh at the when I did the 13 squat I pretty much good morning it and at the uh was it the uh I it was a meat and nche my first 2300 total uh I had a habit my first squat looked beautiful my second squat it looked like a good
morning and Then I brought it all back together and it was all good for the third squat um my bench I think I went three for three so I didn't really have any issues there but it kept uh tweaking my pecs so after that 2,300 total I was prepping for another meat and um in the 100% week I actually tweaked my quad and I missed a th000 PB squat in the gym and uh I didn't I didn't realize it tor until I went home and I was like my leg really hurts so um I uh
I had to pull out of The meat and I was like I'm I'm really I'm peaked for this right now and uh I don't want to waste a peek and and everything that went into to peeking and and um so I did a bench only meet when up to that point I'd been like bench only is gay unless you're putting 700 lb on the bar and I'm like or if you're injured just to not make myself a hypocrite but um I uh I that's when I hit my 635 and I got the exact same injury
in my left pack that I got in my Left quad so I I had micro tears all across my left quad micro tears all across my left peck it crinkled all the way down and crinkled all the way up like I dive B the bottom third of the the the bench I was like I'll let them take it and then they got at the bench I was like maybe I can do it and I locked it out and I was like cool I'm not taking a third that's definitely not a not a good good choice
but um um what was the question well you were Getting into how you Chang the squat when went to the heel and how you had to change it now when you went into that heel and change the squad is that when you brought I'm trying to look at your body weight here and all it says is 30 plus so oh here it is so did your weight go down after you put the shoes on as well was that part of it so you go in the heel shoes did you start dropping body weight as well
at that time or were the heels before when you were trying to Keep the body weight at three what 80 or something like that yeah it was it was at I think 377 yeah 377 is the highest I un oh my my doctor gave me a pat on the back I was 387 at one point and I walked in I was at 350 like good job yeah you must feel so good and I was like absolutely not get out of here I need yeah so actually no it didn't it's a so when did the heels
come in uh after the American Pro because I knew that was all right Yep yep yep um but if you if you look at the American Pro back I had about five years where I had the same deadlift I think it was what was it eight years ago today I H my first 700 lb deadlift Y and uh that was in a push pole and then I I I basically did the tango with 700 at every single um yeah uh full power meet until the American Pro and I was I was like there's I'm having
grip issues because every time I drop the my underhand would drop the bar at lock out And I'm like there's something wrong with that I'm bloating I took up knitting to try and um uh increase the amount of recoverability I have in my hand so I can work on my grip issues a little bit better um so when I I hit the point I'm like the DraStic change that that needs to come is we need to approach body weight differently it's it's the old school methodology of math takes Mass to move Mass true but we
can do it better it Takes good Mass to move Mass so um I hired Bion Terry and um I before I hired her I had never gotten along with a nutritionist they were like you should be got two 2,000 calories a day and I was like I'd rather masturbate with sandpaper than do that they're like eat your vegetables and I'm like there's no nutritional value in those um I take a vitamin cool but um briani she has she and I have been very communicative we we've we've buted heads a lot and that's Mostly on my
part because um she wants me to be healthy and I just want to be jacked as [ __ ] but um she's been more right than wrong um I don't think she's ever been wrong but um uh I noticed I I started looking at at numbers on open powerlifting and you can kind of see a bell curve develop when you look at the body weights of people um even if you get rid of uh Sumo dead Sumo versus conventional deadlifts you see a bell curve form at around like 220 242 275 uh especially with the
griggsby of the heaviest deadlifts so I was like there's if don't look at hook RP don't look at Sumo don't look at conventional just take a step back deadlift as a whole you are better at it if you are smaller but you've also got half Thor Boron pulling 501 um we're gonna ignore Eddie Hall for this argument because he's just a freak of nature but we've got these really lean guys and they're moving their Deadlifts even better I'm like I I don't care what my total is at the next meet I just want to have
a respectable deadlift because the average squat is is like 800 now the average bch is like 500 now so I'm like I'm above that I'm cool but the average deadlift is 900 so I'm basically playing around with the high school girls at this point and I want to actually be able to be competitive in my own weight class so um uh I forgot I was talking with um Dan Bell or Garrett denim but I think it was Dan uh and he mentioned how he kind of approaches training with sleeves versus training with wraps and he
was like um you're a little you've never competed in sleeves before and you're really used to the things that you have going on in wraps and you're really comfortable in the wraps you probably get a lot out of your wraps so you should probably do a meet in sleeves and I was like okay so I really humbled I didn't humble myself The squats in sleeves humbled me um and at my last meet the ghost Clash 3 I had a pretty bad squat day um peing for that I thought I was going to be mid 9s
and I ended up with only taking two attempts at the meet um and getting about I don't actually know it was on the bar but I know it was I wasn't happy with it um and I've discovered that I have patellar tendonitis and I need to approach the the ways that I'm going about things with my knees and everything a little Differently and that I'm really shying away from certain things in my squat because I've got this patellar tendonitis and it feels like my kneecap is getting torn off every time I squat without wraps on
because you wrap up you just go tight enough so you don't feel anything um that's how people should go about their love lives but um so I I threw the sleeves on I thought they were going to be just like RS like Everyone says they are and I really got humbled and I'm like so I I knew that my total wasn't going to be big so I was like I don't care what my total is I want to compete in sleeves because you can't say something gay unless you've done it once before so sleeves are
gay yeah um if if your homie is a little little shy around the other guys and say it's gay to to be into them just know that they've done that before but um I was Like there's got to be something to these lighter lifters having a bigger deadlift than me a bunch of these really young guys like I saw a uh British uh uh great Brit lifter yesterday posted a 400 kilo conventional deadlift at 19 years old I don't know what his name is um but uh I was like these these are these are little
guys they're deadlifting more than me with the exception of Eddie Hall and um Benedict Magnus it's always the little guys You've got Yuri bin you've I could say Eric Lily Bridge uh Dan Green like all the greatest deadlifters of all time they've been really small so there's there's got to be something to that and I'm like I've got thick fingers what if I lose a bunch of weight but I got to do it in a way because whenever whenever you see the these super Heavies who are just like I am tired of being fat and
uncomfortable all the time I struggle to wipe my ass I'm like I don't have that Struggle but um they always lose like um 60 they get below 300 their squat goes to [ __ ] their bench goes to [ __ ] but their deadlift goes up I'm like so we got to do it in a way that we can do that so we took a 14mon cut from the American Pro one to no no was a six-month cut from the American Pro 1 to the Amer uh to the ghost Clash 3 where I went from
352 on the American Pro 2 platform to 328 on the ghost Clash platform and um I was lighter and we Developed this plan after that um which I was a total ass hat about but um I spoke with my Coach Joe Sullivan my nutritionist Bon T and I was like we should do we should approach body wiing or powerlifting weight class is almost like bodybuilding and we've got these gay Meats where I'm going to be in sleeves every 12 months and we've got the super cool Meats where we're we're cool and we feel good about
ourselves the the gay meets we're going to have a Lower total we're going to be in sleeves might as well be gay and be super small too and these big meats where we actually care about our total be as big as possible or big as they'll allow me to be um they won't let me be 400 unless I'm like 10% body fat which Maybe no yeah yeah um but uh wraps and heavy so I'm I'm bulking up right now I'm at like 352 12 weeks out from the American Pro 3 and uh probably the biggest
change between that first 2300 total is Completely revamping like I've added new foot cues uh I've added lat qes and um iq's for squats um I've added new two new hand cues for bench and for deadlift uh I've gotten I at one point when I was doing uh I cut down from like that 377 my heaviest was 3 387 according to my doctor I competed at the American Pro two at 352 I was able to get in position because the belly was smaller so that that change allowed me to actually get Into position and do
the cues that I've been yelled at the entire time that I've been lifting to actually perform so the biggest difference between that first meat and all the meats in between and it's like these past Meats have been like uh the little kid who's like my dad can beat up your dad my Dad's getting out of prison soon and this next meet is is when he's coming off parole and he's gonna he's gonna he's gonna take names yeah so it's Because the deadlift was 771 yeah I believe is what that was so that was the the
sleeve meat right so was is is that sleeve me or was that sleeve Meat part of the the bigger picture that that goes first and then leading into this to put you in the position that you are now leading into the next draft meet with the intent of actually having that 771 or more you know in place with the squat as the weight comes back up again yep so um at The at the ghost Clash 3 where I hit that 771 I missed 799 just at lockout and at the American Pro 2 I missed 770
779 which would have given me a 2400 total twice because they say it was a soft lock out the only um but uh the the way that the deadlift is progressing um losing losing that weight and recomping into uh back to the same weight basically maintaining the variable of body weight but changing The variable of body compensation composition uh is is really changing the way that that we're approaching the meats because uh my resting heart rate is much lower like uh last year on meat day it was 77 but now it it sticks around at
like between 65 and 67 and um so I'll be a I'll be better in a position to be recovered on the platform and not be dying and gasping for air come going into deadlifts um so I forgot the train thought that I Was on well I just I'll just bring this down where with with that meet there you know the squat didn't go as planned and this is one of those hypotheticals but you've been doing this long enough that it has validity where do you think the squat would have could have been on that day
at that two three I think it's 3:22 uh 328 yeah 328 uh the the real variable isn't about body weight or anything like that it was um how poor my patella tendonitis was okay on the day So that was probably as heavy as I could have gotten and I think I only added three pounds to that and it was it was my first ever time competing in um uh sleeves so whatever I hit was going to be a sleeve PR and it's it's I didn't really care too much about what I hit on squats because
just like talking about uh a new lifter having to get their first lift under their belt before you can really play around with the training percentages and and deal with that Data um is I just needed my first sleeve meet under my belt so that we can play around with all right so here's where we're at we have a better sense of where your squat is because I don't really go into to wraps until I'm about 12 weeks out or um the way that my uh my CNS response to to wraps is is a little
different they have to do like a week on wraps a week off wraps a week on on and off and going into the meat so it's actually 14 weeks out so um I'm going Into wraps this or I went two weeks ago took a week out of wraps and then I'm going back into wraps this week and then I'll probably be off wraps next week and all the way up until the meet but um uh so if I'm looking at this correctly because the bench is essentially about the same yeah U bench of the same
deadlift was higher had this been a wrapped me at that same body It would still would have been under your best but not as not as much as one would suspect right so with this meet it's pulling it all together yeah so that's the plan so what what changes in this last off seon have been made to get you to the Starting Gate to where that's what I call when you start prepping the starting line to be able to put you at that starting gate now in a healthier position because as I said yesterday and
this Tru any top lifter it's the whole Game now is to not is to get as least [ __ ] up as you possibly can because it's going to happen but to minimize that as much as you can so the the more fresh I guess that'd be a way to put it you can start the better the outcome would be yeah so what has been implemented in this past off off season which I don't think there is such a thing as an offseason but this past offseason yeah that you hadn't implemented Before um training wise
let's go training wise well because well let's just put a cap on this nutrition thing so with the nutrition changes I'm G to assume that your recovery is better way better you know your feels like cheating yes your brain fog is better I mean across the board pretty much everything is better with that y right so as the as your weight's going back up and the calories are coming And how are you managing that increase in calorie intake with because you're going to is there I'm going to assume there's still some [ __ ] in
there but how are you maintaining the degree of how much [ __ ] has to be thrown in there to be able to hit the calories that you need um Force feeding is a a a learned skill I believe um well it's a learned skill but it's a lot easier if it's just a bunch of crap it is it is uh so my first Meal of the day uh it it changed in the offseason because uh I was getting a bit of insulin uh resistance uh before I got my blood work before the uh the
ghost Clash which really made us lean farther into the cut and we got a bit lower than I wanted to be like I wanted to be like 340 and they were like no no no we're we're still going we'll know how low you need to be once we get your second blood uh blood tests in um I'm trying to make sure that my liver is healthy um and That my body was uh my metabolism and and liver and everything was was running up to par um so we we cut down to 328 and um coming
back up I noticed uh my my first meal of the day was a um it was three eggs and 180 grams of uh 937 beef and um and a bagel and I'm supposed to take a 10-minute walk after that meal and I I take my dog for a walk and and he's he's he's very active and I I turned him into a super toddler by Trying to tire him out with more and more walks and now it takes like multiple 30 minute walks for him to be sleepy at night um and I was taking him
for a walk and I was like the world is spinning everything's upside down I feel lethargic and um very not good and uh I texted my coach a nutritionist and they're like you are hypoglycemic you need more carbs in the morning so building up to the the point where I've got I no longer have that insulin Resistance and adapting to the changes in in my my body composition composition um yeah I'm I'm I'm still eating like 800 gram of rice a day a pound of of beef and chicken a day but I've also got a
couple of like cheater things where it it feels like cheating but it's not quite where it's like um multiple bagels with honey or crumpets with jelly at the end of the night to kind of Spike the insulin while I'm going to sleep so the body can utilize the the igf1 that Naturally gets excreted whenever you eat food and when you sleep and try and create a perfect storm of recovery um but um not really eating a lot of of of crap but um the biggest difference between the cut and the B other than the volume
of food is um having two free meals or cheap meals or refeed meals deflux meals whatever pronouns the the meals going to have these days but um I get two of those a week and but it's times differently uh than previously Like um after deadlifts I'm allowed a meal where it's got It's it's not restricted and I can have whatever I want but I I tend to go out and do Uber Eats or whatever and uh when I come back the only thing open is dominoes and I end up [ __ ] my pants afterwards
but um and then Sunday the day I guess it's Saturday now since I adjusted my week um the last meal before I go to sleep uh before the training week starts uh I get a free Meal and basically kickart the recovery process so it's less of it it's it's less of getting calories in per se it's it's getting the right calories in at the right time to um for a specific goal like whether or not it's for um recovery or um fueling for the next day like managing the uh uh the the carbohydrates because carbs
um was it it like Pro doesn't reduce the amount of inflammation your system has uh but you it's a more readily available fuel Source uh than fats and fats uh don't promote as much uh inflammation in your system so you have more fats as a fuel source on rest days than you do on training days and more carbs on training days than fats and but the calories kind of stay very similar within 500 calories um but being a fat guy probably shouldn't know that and uh it's just cool being able to it's it you you
don't expect the 350 pound guy to be able to be like hey you might not want to eat That you'll get fat sounds hypocritical yeah in in a way but you've reached this point in your strength training career that everything matters yeah right so it's food is fuel right so I mean younger super heavyweight power say pretty much get away with anything yeah you're probably going to cover all your nutrient needs in 7,000 calories a day even if it's all horeshit I I I have a hard time saying that there's going to be a deficiency
Anywhere with that many calories yeah but with inflammation energy source and everything that you're talking about those become more important when you're dealing with one of those you know Plateau for lack of a better word areas you gota you can't many can but I couldn't and I'm sure you're kind of the same way you can't go through all that and then at the end of it think well maybe I should have taken this a little more serious You know because then you look back and it's like [ __ ] it that may be the biggest
the biggest dri yeah but you don't know because it was never dialed in yeah you know before even though you might have thought that you were all in right but but you weren't because I like to say you're all in for the things you want to be all in for but not necessarily the things that are going to make you the best yeah at one point I was like I'm 100% on plan and then uh Bion and Joe were like all right write down what you're eating every day I was like huh I'm only 30%
on plan and they're like all right now you are journaling whatever you're eating every single day and this was when we just got my blood uh results back cuz they were like shouldn't be like this are you doing something different and I was I was teasing Banna because I um I ate peanut butter on a training day and peanut butter is not a everyone thinks It's a source of protein but just emphasize butter in the word and you'll understand what it's an actual source for but um I was having too many fats on a training
day which was a cardio day of all things when I was like it's barely a training day I'm just doing a bunch of bike Sprints and um she yelled at me so I always tell her that I have a traumatic experience of her yelling at me for eating peanut butter on the wrong day um not that it wasn't on program but Um it's yeah so how has the training changed I have Leaps and Bounds more endurance and the recoverability is I feel like I'm cheating um uh right after the ghost Clash 3 uh I had
a training like the first Training Day Joe was like oh okay we've got a 3X eight 525 and um and then we're going to get into our working weight and I ended up puking and passing out after 2 by8 and I was like something's not right and he was Like let's try it again the next week and that's when we discovered I had the hypoglycemia popping up and we adjusted my um nutrition in the morning before training and um we we I don't know if we just completely pivoted the way that we were going about
our training because he worked up and we we we Ste back to the mid 400s for sets of eight um it was 3x8 at four something and then we got closer and closer and closer we got to 525 and I was like I'm a little nervous for this It was one of the easiest training sessions I ever had and then I was like all right so we're done with this cycle right next week it was 5:45 I was like are you just working me to 6:05 and then I just got a maniacal laugh as response
and then eventually I hit 605 for8 and I was like this is something I could never have done if I hadn't implemented all the things that they they've had me doing like uh daily step count of 10,000 minimum a day um the nutrition and Nutrition timing and being on on it with the the the hydration supplementation and and uh uh recovery aspects um and uh really the only the only factor that um I haven't optimized to the point of Oblivion is is the uh everyday life stress uh because your body can't tell the difference between
uh internal was it emotional mental and physical stress so like your your body's going to respond to a 800 pound squat is the same way that it's going to respond To having to present in front of a board meeting or or if you're going to make a large purchase and you're trying to budget for that and that prolonged amount of stress versus an entire training block your body's going to respond the same way so if you can mitigate a lot of the uh like life stressors then you're going to be better at training your your
body is going to recover a little bit better and uh that's one of the things that um I I I Haven't done well with and that Joe's been helping me Joe and Bre both um and and a little bit of Hunter Henderson have helped me kind of accept a lot of my faults and try to fix a lot of the the the flaws and errors that I have in my personal life and um I do need to get a lot better A little bit more account in my personal life because the the discipline and accountability
I have in the gym and with my nutrition now it's like almost military Precision Precision But at home I'll be like I can I can stay up till 1 I don't have to wake up for anything when I should really be to bed at 10: waking up at whatever eight and a half hours after that is and um being like budgeting better making my own coffee at home instead of running on Duncan and doing stuff a little bit financially better and uh but uh a lot of the the training differences is outside of the gym
which is promoting my performance And recoverability for everything that's going on inside of the gym like the the nutrition and and taking a little bit more responsibility with my personal life than um I have previously and growing as a person and trying to actually be an adult than an oversized toddler well you mentioned bik Sprint and stuff like that so when you're talking that anerobic cardio aspect is is it just is it just that or With the recovery ability in the cardio and the Heart aspect is it all steps or is it also HH or
HIIT like high-intensity interval training is that being implemented with that or is it just all the step count um right now while I'm on the the bulk recomposition it's all steps but uh when I'm on the cut like before the ghost Clash 3 it was um on um non-training days 15,000 steps a day so I I have a I have a membership to my local Planet Fitness and it's real Nice watching the Patriots games um while doing getting my steps in no one's there it's empty it's awesome um but that's also when I have the
the the uh uh high-intensity bike Sprints where it's like a minute sprinting straight uh um two minutes not sprinting or or the reverse and then hop off the bike and then do 30 air squats so I'm in my squat shoes the whole time and I hate it people were staring at me but how was that the first time you Started to do this and how was it implemented because I'm going to imagine if you all all you were doing steps and then this gets thrown in what's that first session feel first off what do you
think going into the first session and then what's it feel like and then what do you think after that first session so the first session there's a note that said nasal breathing only and I felt like I was drowning and I I it was like the it was Like fall time and I get basically my seasonal allergies are so bad that it's basically um seasonal asthma so I was I was so stuffed up and I was choking and everything and like I would puke about twice every session and I was like man I could can
squat 800 900 lbs almost any day I can't do bike bike Sprints for [ __ ] this is bad but the more frequently that I did it and more that I stuck to it the easier it got and then it got to the point where I'm like why can't I get My heart rate above 140 well it's because you got in shape you know funny story I ran into that same thing for a period of time to where it was more steady state cardio and it was I don't know what maybe it's 120 or something
like that I was trying to maintain my heart at it 10% grade incline for time or whatever it was and this was going on for a long time and it was pretty easy to do then it became really [ __ ] hard to do right and it's And I had to see my doctor at the time who knows all this kind of [ __ ] knows his way around all that and I posed this question like I got something I really haven't been able to wrap my head around and he looked at me like I
was a [ __ ] idiot right and you know just reminded me that that's called getting in shape your body's adapted to that um so you have to increase the intensity if you want to be able to get in there and then it was More like or I could just Deo off of it pull back out of shape and then bring it back in so I don't have to end up being you know doing Sprint work which I I was trying to avoid you know during that time period while this was going on and your
normal training is still going on as well did you see a drop when you started it and then I assume it started to rebound afterwards because that now you added another stimulus you have to recover from on top of all the other Stimuluses that you're adding yeah so what did the drop feel like if at all and then what did that once it you got into shape how did that start to feel with the other days um I think it's more like a prolonged drop like we're still like it it was almost I've been words
um like total wise my total did drop at the last meet and I I I basically knew everything was going to drop losing body Weight it's going to make my Squat and bench go to [ __ ] and increasing that that cardio it it it took about two weeks for my everything else the training to like rebound for that and I was like is it really only two weeks to to implement some sort of cardio into making things feel better and recover faster and um amazingly it was and uh all my lifts started progressing a
little bit better I started recovering and I was able to um uh lift heavier More frequently and um when I was with Greg on Fifth set I would be able to tell all my body is feeling extra fatigued I need a Del Lo now and uh the way that Joe has me doing D loads it's it's it's more like a uh downward undulation where I'll d load one thing here or one thing there and it's usually like um it'll be like a cluster set of deadlifts will be like 15 or 8 by two with at
like 455 maybe a deficit to make It a little harder but you've only got 60 seconds rest maybe 30 seconds rest where it's like you're still getting a lot of cardio but you're not getting that CNS fatigue and so you've got the load the the volume gone down the the uh intensity is gone down so you've got a little bit of ability to recover but you're still getting cardio where like I remember what was it Dom isetti said cardio is the ability to lose gains and I'm like no it's it's the ability to um It's
uh recovery potential is cardio um so I was able to recover faster and I didn't feel like I was like when I first started I felt like I was drowning I was like Joe Joe I need I need a de lo I need a full week off I need a D Lo you was like bite the pillow we're still going in raw let's keep going you're you're a big strong boy you can do this and like as the cardio increased and I got more in shape I was asking less and less for a D Lo
and I think between the Um uh the American Pro 2 and ghost Clash 3 I didn't take a single Del Lo where it was like we just had the undulation so he was a he didn't have to adjust his program for me on a weekly basis as often and uh this current cycle I I I just took a D Lo a couple weeks ago but it was almost like we're going to take a kind of downward undulation in your training volume uh because we did a lot of intense High rep High cardio amount of stuff
and we we're we want to D Lo so That we can pivot to the heavier stuff so it's like the the D loads are more intentional because I we're not really dancing around the fact that I'm not as athletic anymore more with your squat there's there's a common factor that I've seen with lifters when the squat gets over a gr and the frequency drops right some will be twice a month some once a month it doesn't mean that They're not squatting the other days it just means that that heavier loading drops yeah while you don't
know yet because you're not completely into this prep well I guess the first question was did you notice the same thing once you got over a grand that the frequency of the real heavy squat training had to drop to couple times a month it couldn't be every week yep as it was before now do you think with this added conditioning That that same thing is going to apply or it may still apply just because of the the spinal loading yeah but would it potentially not have to apply because you'd be in better shape and hopefully
potentially able to recover from the heavier bouts for uh more frequent loading during that phase well that's one of the things that we're we're trying to figure out right now because I haven't heard of any super heavy weights in the past doing this Amount of cardio this amount of that's why I'm asking yeah so we we don't know yet but it's exciting to think that we won't have to because after I hit the uh after I did the um my 1014 I that's when I did the pullback and I did um training every third day
but now um before the ghost clash and before the American Pro 3 I was training five days a week and I'm only training four days a week right now but it's it's it's almost like spooky we can see Everything coming together and we're like we don't want to say what's going to happen we think it's going to happen things things are going to go really well but we don't want to say how well because we don't want to jinx it because it's just it's there can see the light at not the light at the end
of the tunnel but it's like a spectre looming over it's like we're about to do something cool well it's got It's it's going to be interesting to watch because It's and you know a lot of these guys as well so you've seen that same pattern to where and I I get the spinal loading aspect like I get that but there's still that other aspect of what if the recoverability was the same in that bigger guy that is in the lighter guys yeah and you brought up earlier a lot of the lighter guys are lifting the
same weights you know yeah even if it's within 100 pounds how much difference is that really on the spinal loading as Long as they're not you know [ __ ] Groove up for whatever reason yeah you would think it should apply right but so it will be interesting to watch you know it's very interesting to watch because that becomes a dilemma in itself you know as if you're if that's not the case and then you're peing for me but you know you can only handle that real heavy th000 plus squat or 950 plus squat once
every three weeks like how the [ __ ] you know that becomes its own Programming cluster [ __ ] in itself right because you got to start sooner you know all these things kind of go into play because you still need to do it yeah X number of times now it's some people I've known it's it's kind of down to once a month right so if you need to actually handle that weight five times [ __ ] that you now your Peak phase is kind of spread out over five [ __ ] months yeah and
now that creates an issue for the Bench it creates an issue for all this other kind of stuff so very interesting to see with the podcast that you're on the 2300 Pound plus podcast right so everybody on there you know totals 2300 pounds except for two except for two but what would be some of the commonalities that you see amongst those larger total guys because everybody body trains differently right so it's every guest I've had on the podcast that's top level powerlifter they're all training Differently right but there are common factors with all of them
right what are some of the common factors that you've seen uh or that you guys would that you would say you guys share uh we all have a pretty strong sense of accountability among ourselves for ourselves and with each other because we all share our training videos um with each other in we've got a group chat and um um we bounce a lot of ideas off of each Other like um Fernando Arius uh top 308 conventional deadlifter um he he showed us what his deadlift warm-up was and he took like two or three deadlift warm-ups
and then he was deadlifting eight I think it was like mid 800 pounds for reps and I was like What if I do that for my own training because I know that Dan Bell on meet day he takes two warm-ups and then he he'll open at a,3 on squats like he did at the ghost Clash um I'm like and then we look at um like Jesus ales he he posted he had a couple weeks where he was posting his his warm-ups and he was taking maybe three four warm-ups and for squatting 8 900 lbs and
so it's like we we see a lot of things like that and we we bounce ideas off of each other and we kind of try things on ourselves and we're like hey this there's actually Merit to this and um none of us really make excuses for anything it's like this was [ __ ] because my recovery is [ __ ] or like um Justin Zel's been been talking about how the best training Partners will will uh was it stand efforting once said the best training partner is going to uh put your put his heel to
your throat and make sure that you finish what you started and make sure that you are accountable for what you say you're going to do and we all we all have that and um a lot of the commonalities between our training is um well Shane Hower and Craig Foster Have a very similar training style because they trained in the same gym for a while up until uh Shane recently moved but um so it was a lot of higher reps and then Justin zotel and I we both are coached by uh Joe Sullivan and then Jesus
solz not uh Fernando Arius uh he uh he's he's got his own thing but it it's we all have a high amount of frequency I guess uh a lot of volume and uh We've bounced the IDE ideas off of each other a little Bit almost like um the the amount of volume that you put in a block is almost like the diving board stretching out before you dive into a pool of peeking so it's like the higher you put the diving the uh the diving board and further stretch it out the the more air you
can get to do more flips before you actually dive into the pool of competing so we all have a lot of um volume in our training and um all volume with a purpose so how would you define volume Sets times reps times um weight okay now you counting the accessories when you look at the total volume because it the way I would Define volume as sets times reps right workload would be sets times reps times weight that's fine um I just put that out there because people it's like intensity yeah right if you talk to
a bodybuilder the intensity is really effort but if you're talking to a powerlifter intensity we're thinking percentage of a One Max you know so it's Just it's there's no right nor wrong in how this is all kind of explain but when you're dealing with volume you know that that can be when you're saying high volume that can be tricky because if you if your last exercise of tricep pushdowns is 10 cents of 10 there's 100 reps right and that 100 reps might be five times more yeah than the number of total reps that were done
in that 90% or 80% plus block of that whole training that's Falls in within there so when You're saying the higher volume just for the listeners to kind of understand you're speaking about in the main things that count for 90% of the output yeah the squat bench and deadlift we don't we don't really talk about the accessories that much really well in because you guys have figured it out right where that could be part of the discussion if those accessories are that muscle [ __ ] stuff that we are talking about earlier Right if you're
trying to bent over a row 495 for sets of five and you're just you know it's like a it's like a really shitty looking deadlift yeah right that you're B over doing then in that case that volume would have to be added to that other type of volume because the stressor is just so high but if it's done in a bodybuilding type context it's a whole different type of block but some people will hear that volume and then think that's that whole component where You never do this but say you finished with a set of
200 crunches right so you know that kind of plays into that as well and um I guess you could say steps could play into it it's all how you want to kind of factor all that throughout that whole thing and so with that volume have you found or have you guys found that there's a threshold that you don't want to breach because if if it's too much then you're breaking the board yeah um we haven't explicitly talked about That um but with our um rep ranges uh I guess we the uh the common the commonality
is we never really go above eight or 10 reps when it comes to like a squat bench or deadlift like Craig Foster the other day squatted it's like 775 for a set of eight I think it was something like that something crazy and [Music] Um um a lot a lot of the stuff we do is is centered around um it's like the offseason quote unquote offseason training is a lot of stuff between six and 10 reps and then once we get closer and closer to meet time then it's more of like like when we're when
we're at the Starting Gate it's closer to like five four to five reps maybe three reps and then as we get closer and closer to the meat it kind of drops down and we reduce the volume increase the the load And uh we get closer and closer to one maybe 2 by one 3 by one and then I think we finish off with like a one by one and that's that's pretty common between all of us uh except for Fernando who's somehow able to compete every four weeks and not implode I still can't wrap my
head around how often he competes and it's like it's he he basically selects all the meats that that pay the most money and he goes and he wins them all and I'm Like please sir can I have some I I compete twice a year i' I'd like a penny please I just wait till you burn out right and uh he's been in the sport uh he hasn't been in the sport as long as us because he he kind of focuses he's been he was focus more on strongman stuff and um uh he and Shane are
are very uh in tuned with like everything that's going on with World's Strongest Man and stuff and uh and then Justin zoto will chime in with with the uh the Facts about the Canadian uh competitors um but I guess we all have a a vested interest in not just powerlifting uh fandom it's kind of hard to be a fan of powerlifting when you are at I I I I struggle to to be a fan of someone else in powerlifting because they're my direct competitor so I prefer the female powerlifters uh not just because they're more
easy to look on the eyes but because I'm not competitive With them and I can actually follow their stuff a little bit better um and not get competitive with it like what would be the commonalities that you're seeing with mindset between all of us stubbornness and uh stubbornness how so uh in what context um we all make a plan and we stick to it so like um Shane Hower had he had like two years worth of program He he started coaching himself and he had like two years worth of programming written down in a an
Excel spreadsheet and he showed it to me at one point I was like that is that is a very long plan I'm I'm like I barely even know what I'm gonna have for my free meal this weekend and you you've got two years worth of programming out there and it's like he made that program and he he might tweak something here and there but it's like He's basically on it and that's how he got his was it 24 something total that goes Clash something crazy um and like he has that plan Craig Craig will Craig's
stubborn and he'll be like all right I've got like a 4 by two but like one by Eight's good enough so like let me just do a set of eight at like 800 uh there's one time when he was prepping for the ghost Clash one he did 800 for 10 in wraps and he was like I just Really hate wearing wraps so I just didn't want to rap as often so I just instead of doing a 2 by eight or a 2 by4 I did a 1 by eight or a 2 by5 it did a
1 by 10 and then Justin zle he's like I'm the smallest one in here I got the lowest total I I'd be damned if I'm gonna allow this to last I'm gonna I'm gonna beat all of you guys so uh he and I are going head-to-head at the American Pro 3 and Justin um at the ghost Clash he he did bomb out but he cut down to 275 and he was going for the all-time world record that Phil Hearn had and uh in I think it was sleeves uh but for the American Pro 3 he
said that he's going to bulk up and be bigger than me just so you can say that I'm smaller than him and we're going head-to-head on the platform that's going to that's going to be super cool to see and then Fernando is just he's like everyone why do they've got sir Dave in the ABS why is everyone sleeping on me I'm I'm like Backtack Champion I'm going to prove them all wrong like we're all super stuck ubn and we've got these like visions of grandeur and somehow though we are super competitive with each other we
don't let it get in the way of our constructive not con criticism but like support of each other so it's like it's a really good community and and I'm lucky to have met all these guys uh because um New Hampshire isn't the Biggest powerlifting state in the world um the number two total is about a 2,000 total in my state so I've I've I struggle to find like-minded autistic Meat Heads to gather around and talk about powerlifting uh and what it's like and and share experiences but um I'm lucky to it's it's like social media
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have the podcast with the top lifters and then ask you what do you find are the commonalities amongst the younger lifters that you'd be working With um the younger lifters always want to lift heavier than they should they're always like why do we have to be so light right now I want to lift heavier I want to I want to hit a PR can i max out today I'm like no we've got we've got all these variables we've got fatigue I don't want to call it a fatigue ratio but like we've got accumulated fatigue we're
we're kind of driving that through this to kind of build you up and have Your body in a a position of adaptability and um so throwing a max out you're not going to do as good as you think you're going to do because you've got all this fatigue and it's also going to have to it's throwing a monkey wrench into the rest of things so it's like you can't lift as heavy as you have to be and it's it's one of those younger lifter things that I only recently um overcame myself realizing that the only
Time you have to be strong is on the platform well the reason I put that out is everybody will agree with that but the interesting thing is that everybody that will agree with that did the same thing that they're doing right so then it becomes kind of like the art of programming where what's different example I could give if it's um a strength and conditioning coach that's just working with an athlete for in the gym for Whatever that sport is they may or may not think that the bench press is a good exercise for that
sport whatever we'll leave that off the P debatable right but the fact of the matter if it's a high school kid they're probably actually the deadlift is more popular than the bench now so I'll use the deadlift in example so it may not be part of what their strength and conditioning program is but I can pretty much guarantee they're going to pull a Max deadlift in their Buddy's basement or garage at some point in time where to bring it back to the lifters that we're talking about they're even if you tell them not to do
it and it's not in their program they're probably still likely going to do it so as somebody that's got to manage the art of that program design do you stick [ __ ] in there like that just for them to be able to because you know it's going to happen anyhow but if you throw it in knowing it's not optimal you can at Least have some control over if it's going to happen or not going to happen or do you just hope that how that they don't do it um maxing out to kind of like
getting laid where it's phenomenal every time so I try to find different ways to simulate that without actually having them max out so like an AM wrap is a good tool for that you're you're still going to to failure but you're sitting new rep PRS And and like having structured uh almost like intra block Peaks towards uh a PR like like what my coach did with me um with the uh eight rep PRS on squats getting me to a 605 and like I was like I never thought I could do that that's that's phenomenal that's
awesome and recognizing the more often you PR in more different ways the better but a younger lifter is not really going to um be able to do that so I try to like keep that openline communication with my Clients like I have a client who next week um they're having a deadlift party at his gym and um he was like can I max out and I was like I'm going to change your program so that you can just know that everything after that going to not be as fun it's it's almost like we have that
power gauge of fun and it's like the newer lifters want to be as fun as possible as often as possible and the older lifters just recognize missionary position still gets the job done if not Better how do you balance um how did you balance Deep dive learning into the programming on this side and then your programming on this side right because you can go down these rabbit holes and discover all this stuff which you're going to want to implement you know almost immediately but sometimes you can sometimes you can't takes a while to figure that
all out yeah so um what are some examples of mistakes that you've made in that context of doing that if You can remember any of those does anything come to mind where you're on a set program but then you're doing a deep dive in something you see it you're like oh I need to implement that and then everything just kind of went to [ __ ] for a couple weeks um I the way I program is probably a little lazy um I'll program in six week blocks so um not not blocks but like six weeks
at a time so like I'll do the research and I'll be like I'll be really Excited be like maybe I'll do that next block but it kind of like goes into my own back burner of tools that I can use for future blocks so that I don't deviate and I don't get that dopamine Rush of I've got this new thing I got to see if it works I got to see how it works and um one of the most recent things is a slowy Centric squat or like slowy Centric anything uh building up the neurological
capacity that's not something that a lot of lifters are Going to need unless they're at the top level or if they're reaching a plateau to kind of increase the amount of time under attention that they're able to do um so like a lot of newer lifters they don't need that um well my my point ask the question is they don't need it right and it can be detrimental but they'll see it right say they're already on a plan say it's a plan that you have them doing then they see that then they want to implement
that because three of the Top lifters that they know just implemented that into their training so they need to put that into their training because that's what's trending and the newest type of thing and it goes in there where you know what you just said is the best answer you you write it down you know store it yeah implemented in that next block but that's not the reality of what a lot of the younger lifters are going to do they're going to see that or if it's a Pause deadlift or whatever it's going to be
it's going to be in that week yeah you know so with your athletes like that would fall back to the kind of maxing out like how do you navigate that aspect as well and because you already answered the question just you know file it away and see how it would Implement into the next block because it can it can have other consider like if that's going to come in something else may have to come out yeah right so how if you were to Make a YouTube video describing what I just said how would you go
about explaining that well new trendy [ __ ] that can have uh impact neural or muscular you know on the training that may exceed more than what you think it's going to being thrown into the current program that you're doing um I'd have to do a lot of research on on a specific thing and I'd probably have to pre-prepare a bunch of your mom Jokes for the intro um I'd probably take the idea uh and break it down as to when do you need to do this why is it popular right now what is this
lifter specifically doing it for like pause dead lfts were was it it was really popular about a year ago I think back when Andrew house was was bleeding all over the bar and you saw all those pictures and Instagram was filtering Those pictures out um but he was doing a lot of pause deadlifts and um the question was why well it increases your ability to get into a starting position and he was bulking up he was getting bigger than he was CU he had been competing at um like 242 275 for a long time now
he's 308 and as you increase weight you've got to increase your ability to get down to the bar otherwise your deadlift is going to go to [ __ ] um so looking at that aspect what are the Variables that this specific lifter is trying to mitigate when you want to implement this trendy new thing is it applicable to you probably not are you increasing weight yeah then you might want to implement that but if you're not if your deadlift isn't you're not having trouble getting into the deadlift position um then you don't need that um
um I I I use pause dead list for my Sumo poers because a lot of them just do subvention and pausing deadlifts makes Them have to Sumo it instead of just doing conventional but what do you mean um like have you seen a lot of lifters um they they get into the Sumo and then they just do all the conventional cues mhm you elaborate uh where it's like they they straighten their their legs out and they try to drive into the bar and they're trying to like like use their lower back to to lift the
bar and straighten up rather instead of um setting their wedge and getting their Chest as high as possible before they even break the bar off the ground they almost like trying to slam into the uh the deadlift um I feel like Kyler willam's to blame for that but he did it differently and everyone's been trying to imitate that ever since um but subvention where it's just Suma with conventional cues mhm um but uh pause deadlift you're not going to stay in that bottom position for a long time When you're doing conventional so you've got to
find a way to get into that position if you're going to hold it for a second or two the moment it comes off the floor and they slowly adjust into regular Sumo and then they get better more adapted to lifting heavier weights because more plates on the bar the more whip you've get got in the bar and uh doing the pause deadlifts gets them into that used to getting into that position with heavier weights though they have Lighter weights and then they end up deadlifting better uh because you've kind of you fixed them without telling
them you fixed them why are some of the other what's the trendy thing now I don't pay that much attention I've got too many child locks on my on my phone that I don't know either I open my phone I see some some some chick dancing and in whatever the the newest anime trend is and I'm like like follow what was I here For so you're not saying and it's not bubbling up through clients that you're working with because normally that's where I would see it from with other coaches is there's if if something's trending
it's not just one of their clients yeah it's like five of them like hey I want to do this because so and so does this or whatever it's going to be and um but what you just said about the the pause deadlift say Andrew House when he was doing that when We we were talking earlier about social media and context of those that would have been good context to be in that caption to when that was posted I don't know if it's going to have less people wanting to try to do it yeah right because
then they're just going to equate that their problem is the same as what his is even though it's probably not but they'll act like it is because that's what people do I'm strong like Andrew house yeah do the same thing yeah The um CU it's been a decade since your first meet so yeah yeah so how is because technology hasn't changed that much you know over the past decade but the number of people using it has you know so how has that influenced your own training right because I can have a lot of people on
here that are pre you know social media you know bitching about social media but there's also a Lot of people that have always had the social media yeah right so you've kind of always had you know that social media just wasn't as many people kind of posting on that you know so you can't make that argument right because it's always been there and it's been a tool that you've been able to use to help you get you know to where you are because you can build relationships with people that you otherwise wouldn't be able to
especially in a state the Size of a city right and so it's so what are some of the other aspects from that social from basically just social media in general that has helped you to become a better lifter um I've leveraged uh a one of the worst pieces of social media which is the uh the keyboard judges if you make a lift that is so undeniably clean they've got nothing to say about it so making sure that um it it's not just your own Accountability but it's you've got people who don't want you to succeed
following you just to see you fail they're going to keep you accountable too because the moment you [ __ ] up they'll be the loudest one in the room and they'll get all of their friends to surround you and be like kick you when you down and um social media sucks because they can do that but you can also approach it differently because you can have your your five finger rule of You've only got five people in your life whose opinion you really care about but you can also when someone says something negative negative about
you it's still going to stick out but and having those keyboard judges comment on your list like that squat was high that that you got a quick press command on your bench which is a weird one I've gotten um or your deadlift wasn't locked out you're ramping your deadlifts it's like they'll Find the smallest mistake you make and they'll really twist the kn KN in that mistake and if if you've got thick enough skin instead of just being like responding to them verbally or or typing l or whatever the phrase is now um I just
respond with actions because actions speak louder than words and cleaning everything up like that was that was one of the things that I did my at the American Pro I got my opener squad on my third because I missed it Twice due to depth and it looked like I mean it looked like an opener but um I didn't have a big following I didn't have a lot of accountability I didn't have a lot of um eyes on the pro or on the on the product I was putting out which was my own Squat and I
was getting away with a lot of things I've squatted 800 for six before yeah but was it good reps was it quality did I take my time did I hit depth or was I just doing it for the sake of getting a pat on the Back from the people who are going to say yes to everything you say anyway so um technology most of it sucks because um it's just taking advantage of your lack of dopamine and and your closed off nature but you can also use it for some pretty good things like spreading information
um like like you do and um using it for your own uses like you know that there's negativity going to be out there use that to your advantage to keep yourself Accountable because um I've been playing with this idea in my head that uh everyone's like why is my favorite lifter stronger than I am I'm like cuz they take more videos of their [ __ ] and they want to make sure that their [ __ ] is better quality because they know they've got the keyboard Warriors out there that's going to be commenting on everything
they do so they make it as clean as possible they're not cheating their reps so it's cleaner and Indirectly they're better for it do you film all your lifts uh I film all my working sets with uh like squat bench and deadlift and then I do one set of rest of the uh the lists um just for the sake of putting on YouTube being like hey here's what I did in a day but also nobody wants to watch me do a 3X 20 x 20 super set of cable flies and push-ups no but you can
use it for your own analysis yeah you know so take that all Aside there's there's value in that you know because it's you're going to be your worst critic yeah you know by far yeah you know and then you know if if you're you're filing it in somewhat of a logical way you'll be able to see how that squat looks six weeks out compared to the last six weeks out so forth or for your coach or to be able to see and a lot of other reasons with that the the one thing that I've mentioned
many times is that gets lost a lot of times with The lifts that are posted on Instagram is you're not really seeing everything you know you're not seeing the setup you're not seeing the approach you know if they walk out you're usually not even seeing the walk out either and you're just seeing the meat and potatoes yeah which is the Highlight Reel you know of all the other stuff that kind of happens in training with um to dial back into the rest periods because you mentioned that changed a little bit did that Change on the
main list too and to what degree um so on the main lists I'll generally have somewhere between two and four minutes of rest time between the main lists uh recently I haven't had the the rest time on squats or bench because they're more uh CNS taxing and fatiguing and Joe wants me to be more recovered but then I Implement my own I'm like I'm not going past four because I don't want to be fat and lazy and I've got my own Rules like no sitting in the gym and stuff like that but um uh he'll
have a lot of rest time things and I've almost developed like a rule of thumb based on watching the patterns that he he's implemented into my my stuff or like all accessories are 90 seconds or 60 seconds um and depending on what the stimulus is supposed to be like um the first time that I was supposed to do uh 525 for a 3x8 it was supposed to be like 90 seconds rest and Um I I didn't really notice what it did in my training at first but once I got to a meet I was like
before I when I got to deadlifts I was like I just want to take a nap I'm let me take my opener I know I'm going to drop my next two I just want to get out of here and then I was like oh I uh I can actually participate and get more than just my uh obligatory participation trophy for coming to this meet and having no competition and Um it it it really impacts it's like an accumulated amount of impact when it comes to the uh the the day because it's it's increasing athletic potential
which you you generally never put powerlifter and athlete in the same sentence but it's looking more and more like we have to be like professional athletes in order to perform like professional athletes which everyone wants to be mhm so it's it um somewhere for the squat benion de left somewhere between two and Four minutes and deadlift is the strictest one sometimes he'll like I guess a trend right now is cluster deadlifts where you'll get like 15 by one and you basically deadlift you take a step back and you're like I'm good and then you go
again um he'll he'll sometimes do cluster deadlifts and sometimes he'll do what's 60c 60c rest time deadlifts and I've got really bad eyesight if I take my glasses off I won't be able to see her face um so I I I struggle to read the clock in the room and I'm like what is 60 seconds so I just say [ __ ] it and I just I put it down chalk or I take a sip of water I chalk my hands and I go back in so it's almost like a cluster because a minute is
a lot less time uh than you think it is everyone's like oh I take like five minutes to rest but actually 15 um and it's it I'd say it cut down on my um my gym time or like the time that I've been in the gym but it's it just Like the uh uh the assault bike Sprints and Increasing cardio increased the amount of work capacity that I'm able to do and it really it it's pushed that so that I can do more in the gym and it's it uh was it deathgrip Derek said um
there's three ways to get stronger there's increasing the weight uh on the bar increasing the number of reps of the same weight and then the hidden variable is doing it with less rest time and kind of leaning into that if you if you do Like a like a 2x3 and normally you're taking 15 minutes rest you do it at 5 minutes you're not ready then you get used to it and you're like well I feel like I'm just sitting around all the time I am ready you drop it down to 3 minutes and then the
cycle continues and then you're like why am I even doing this weit anymore I'm taking 60 seconds rest and you secretly got stronger on accident were there any topics you want to discuss it didn't bring Up uh wait I got your topic list here there's like cats and dogs and Penguins so we talked about penguins don't think we got into the cats and the dogs um old school schol versus new school methodologies we kind of touched on that a little bit but if you were to like tie that up and wrap it up into how
would you define old school and new school um the biggest difference between The old school and the new school is the the uh athleticism like the the old school gym generally has one treadmill that's collecting dust but the new school gym has everyone using um the treadmills are being constantly used it almost looks like heavy bodybuilding where you're eating like a bodybuilder but you're lifting like a powerlifter but your accessories are also like a bodybuilder too so it's it's almost like a a very slight divulgence in the Pathway between those and the biggest difference in
the programming when it comes to the the old school and the new school they both have uh a lot of um emphasis on the the rep and and set schemes developed by ppin there's the adjustment probably up or down um the old school is more faithful to that prolin chart where the new school kind of divulges a little bit um but the uh the biggest difference is the timed rest periods and we're we're kind of um Diving more and more into the athletic ability of the lifter and increasing the recoverability because the old the old
saying is if you've got two equal lifters doing the same program the one that who the one who does the most to recover is the one that's going to win so the one with the better nutrition better sleep and now it's the best cardio potential is going to be the one that's going to end up winning all those to a degree yeah right because It can be taken too far yeah in all those aspects I don't think that's really a problem yeah you know in string Sports I don't think they're going to take their cardio
too far right um now I do think they can take the recovery too far you know to where it ends up they're training once a week yeah you know and and I'm interested to see if you've seen the same thing where I'll find lifters that kind of accidentally stumble into a peaking phase without knowing that they Did it you know albe it holidays or whatever it's going to be they can't get in the same amount of training volume that they to normally would and then boom they have this amazing workout so then they start to
think I don't need all that other [ __ ] you know so then they pull all that other stuff out and they end up being that person that just does the main lift working up to one heavy set then that's all they do right which is essentially how you would Peak You know for me and then months later everything starts to fall apart and they can't figure out why where it's it's it's it's funny for me to see because as I said they accidentally stumbled across the peaking block without knowing that's do you have you
seen lifters fall into that almost I've seen lifters where they'll they'll do the main movement and then they're like ah come back later in the week and I'll Do my accessories and then they'll kind of like do their main lifts and then they'll have an accessory day where they do all of their accessories for all the three movements mhm and then skip the accessory day and then have a then the next week is really good yeah they get brunch they get mimosas and they they oh I forgot I was supposed to have accessories today oops
Yeah getting back to other topics I guess I'll ask you in a different way What are on your list of topics to create for your YouTube channel that I've been struggling with that one uh pretty pretty heavy-handedly because the whole goal of my YouTube channel was to be the channel That I wish that I had access to when I first started lifting and um uh I forgot what I struggled with when I first started lifting because it's been a decade and um the the next like I guess series of uh videos that I Have planned
of that uh educational variety because the vlogging videos I just point a ham at myself throughout the day and I'm like hey this is what I'm eating and here's how I feel about things let me let me give you guys way too much information about my personal life um but the the educational things where I imply that I [ __ ] everyone's mom um the next couple ones is like breaking down the different programs that are out there because there are a million Different kinds of programs and all of them work the problem is is
figuring out which ones work the best for which person and then you get the whole stand eorting the best diet is the one that you can stick to the best program is the one that you can have the best results with stick to the best but then you get into program hopping where everyone's trying every program they make no progress for like three years and they're like I give up I'm doing CrossFit that's the biggest thing but um my next year uh I'm starting the next one that I planned is breaking down 531 which I
tried to do and then I got really off track and I ended up doing something of like uh what are the the um what are the words in powerlifting that a lot of people don't really know like linear periodization DLo training Max um the G-Spot you know the things that people should know about but don't no one explained them to me and I had to Look them up and experience them on my own um so doing a whole series so um it's I mean I basically did all the the the prerequisite research for a lot
of those videos because um I've been writing I have a eBook that's just got one chapter left uh before I publish it and it goes it's it's almost like an anthological approach to powerlifting program where it goes over like um block periodization ppin chart and then it looks at the how That the smolo squat cycle stupid and then um uh it goes into more modernized programming where it's like um it goes into 531 um Cube method Juggernaut fifth set um uh it touches on West Side for the sake of mentioning accommodating resistance uh and then
it's like what would it look like if you kind of meshed all these together in an intelligent Manner and then there's like a conclusion chapter About um like that that whole like modernized thing like what are we looking at and it it goes into like um heartbeat manipulation the uh the um sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and manipulating that in order to make sure that you are more or less recovered on certain days um so the next series of videos is going to be like beginner programs intermediate programs and then I'm like I have nothing
left I'm like how would you how would You define begin versus intermediate uh beginner is still getting those beginner gains they haven't plateaued yet so um like I like I said earlier fifth or not fifth set 531 would probably be the best program for that because it's going to stop working at at a certain point and it's going to be very obvious to the lifter when it's no longer working and then how how do you know that intermediate goes into Advance it's a great area you need to think more on that because it's it's almost
like the the whole old school versus new school where intermediate is all those um it's it's very simple but it's not basic enough for the the the Newbie lifter um and the advanced lifter it's got more variables to it so it's like um it's got those rest period manipulations and uh undulated D loads and stuff like that so like um for example like um uh Dawson Windham just posted his uh ghost training um program and everyone's got their training program Shane haer's got his training program um I think Dan Bell has a training program Julius
Maddox has his training program so it's like is the advanced lifter training program the ones that these guys are putting out these brand new top not brand new but these top lifters or is it the generalized intermediate um is the is the intermediate no longer Beginner lifter going to benefit more from doing those like the fifth set and the cube and and Juggernaut and stuff like that it's like it it's going to take a little bit more thought and and um thinking about and processing what the the intermediate lifter needs specifically to be able to
determine are they Advanced or intermediate uh before deciding which program is best for them I would say that you know to go From intermediate to Advanced assuming the genetics are that there right because that matters is and it's not really programming wise but some of the variables that I've noticed would be the ability to be realistic with themselves right the ability to understand the the the strength and the reason for long-term programming being anything more than four months you know the ability to Know how to auto regulate every single aspect of their training you know
do you need to take 135 for the bench three times or do you need to you know or do you need to trim the warm-ups because the top sets are going to take more out of there there's a lot of when you go in the gym to train even when you're training yesterday there's a lot of decisions that you're making that you don't even know that you're making yeah because that you're Advanced right and That comes through that experience and all the other stuff and knowing the difference from that and then the fourth variable would
be you know to be able to um take criticism you know with without being butt hurt about it and and be able to look at the criticism is things that could be able to help and then and then lastly the ability to ask you know for input you know on what could you know help or not help and then be able to decipher that input and this is more Psychological being able to decipher that input and if you don't think it's going to work well for you not let the person that's giving you the input
think that you're being an [ __ ] about it right because that happens to I'm sure it happens to you people are going to give you suggestions all the time right and you appreciate them all and they shouldn't be butt hurt when you say I'm good but thank you you know what I'm saying but and but because those are the Things that when I'm looking at and interviewing all the top lifters the training's different the nutrition everything it's all different but the things that are those commonalities across all of it is that you know and
they realize that this is more than just working out you know it what happens in the gym it doesn't end there yeah you know unfortunately you know and all those things happen through like a little like almost like a life cycle Like because what took you to get you there is the opposite of what you need to do now like training like an idiot until you're puking all the time you know training four hours a day on a Double Split routine yeah you know all those type of things you're making progress at the time and
there's a real weird intermediate phase where you start trimming things down but you think that you're being a puss about the whole thing and that's why you're not making Gains because now you're not really training hard yeah whereas before you were training harder than what you're training now and it everything gets turns on it turns upside down and then once you realize that it's not really turned upside down it's actually turned right side up that's when that kind of happens now how you can put that into a program or a book I don't think you
can yeah right because there's there's too many variables and then you can the Intermediate can also become so overwhelmed with all these variables that they may not need to even worry about at the time yeah like in nutrition people are going to hate me for this one but nutrition may be one that might be best implemented as they later down the path right if they're making gains eating whatever they're eating then I almost kind of see that like as P so like they can just stay clean as for as long as they can but then
when that Time comes they can flip that card and use that you know the but to get to that advanced phase you're going to have to have a full deck of cards of pretty much everything yeah and know how to use them yeah you know so it's it's a weird a weird thing to watch kind of plotting where people are but in the strength Sports most of them never make it past the the majority probably never make it past the beginner there's probably more people that enter one meet And never compete again they're all coaching
now that's that's a good point it's a good point but you can randomly just I do [ __ ] like this sometimes just go through open power ofy and just randomly just start clicking on names that are on the lower bottom and it's just like one me one me one me one me that's the majority of the people where if somebody that loves the sport part of what I asked myself is how Can we get these people to do two right because we'd have way more lifters if they competed more than one time you know
if they get two maybe three now you might have somebody that's going to last for a decade and then you know realistic Ally that's probably what it's going to take for them to be hitting the the biggest numbers and nobody wants to hear that right nor did I nor did you you know it's we're no diff the lifters today are no different Than what we were you know if you could have given me a program that was going to take my bench from 200 to 500 12 weeks I'm I'm not g to be the per
I wasn't going to be the no I'm not gonna do that yeah you're out of your [ __ ] mind like everybody's going to do that um but there's more voices today I think with more realistic advice and education yeah to be able to put out to be able to help those people what's the what's the best way for people to follow you um I'm On Instagram full Primal power and uh YouTube and only fans uh I'm just gonna leave it at that like they can go look at your link tree right and we'll just
leave it at that right and you know it's that's that's probably how you're making the majority of your Revenue right [Laughter] that's my most clicked link too is it really by by a lot 200% all right So everybody should go to your Instagram you know click on the link tree and then create their own their own only fans and they'll have I don't want to say more yeah because the profile clicks are engagement right yeah so they'd have more engagement right so um any final thoughts uh you're implying I have thoughts at all well there
are some I mean we just talked for a few hours so there's some Thoughts buzzing around in your head yeah so that's that the final thoughts are ah yeah I don't know it's like I don't know what to do with my hands like Ricky Bobby here um I don't I don't know I'll just keep the awkward silence to think you something uh oh um do I shout out my sponsors right now yeah um shout out to move weight based Out of Salem New Hampshire they're the uh company that produces my wrist wraps benched 600 lbs
multiple times in those bad boys um and they have gotten me a new singlet so I finally earned myself a new singlet that is clean clean clean 100 pound carryover singlet maybe I don't know I've been using the same singlet since 2016 never washed it oh that's nice yeah you don't you don't want to wash the gains out and also it Reveals All of my nipples when I'm Deadlifting the the old one the old one the new one the new one they'd have to click the only fans to see okay yeah all right so we'll
just leave it at that I want to thank you for coming out it's been great thanks for having Dave and we're done all right guys thanks for watching the video to the end make sure to like And subscribe to the channel and click here here here or here for more videos
