Mm-hmm

... ramp up, ramp up, ramp up, so at no point are we ever throwing it.

I don't think that per- makes for a productive set, personally.

Like I like to have people on hamstring curls in particular flex at the bottom.

I, like I get this shortened position.

Maybe that's less stimulative.

I think it makes for a better set if you do at the top of the hamstring curl, you actively flex your hamstring, as if it was a bicep, and you were trying to have a bicep peak.

[laughs]

... of obese." [laughs] Like-

Kirsty has been cracking up.

She keeps getting this lady in her feed that are like, "Are you a lesbian?" Oh my God, I love this lady.

[laughs]

So there's... [laughs] This lady's so awesome.

I hope she comes into your feeds as well.

Just this butch lesbian lady, super lean, and she goes, "Are you a lesbian with anxiety who wants abs, and you've tried every program and none of them work because nobody knows how to program for lesbians with anxiety who want abs?" [laughs] She's like, "So if you want abs, follow my page-

[laughs]

Shout out the GOAT.

[laughs] Um, and we're, like, trying to move more eggs into that online coach basket- Mm ... to kind of do what I do under, uh, our umbrella, right? Mm-hmm.

Um, and one thing I'm, like, really excited for for you is to have a little bit more time and mental resources to commit towards your training.

Mm-hmm.

'Cause I always like the idea of a coach being their own body of work, right? Mm-hmm.

Like, we talked about it on last episode of, like, yeah, there are coaches that, like, all of their eggs are in the, "I care about my athlete's results.

Now is the time to go at it." So, like, having this, like, later in the session thing of just being like, "I'm excited to crush my tricep extension."

Yeah

... what they built, and it's gonna work.

It's like, "Oh, this works way better." And it's like you're getting a false sense of progression, or not false sense of progression, but you're fulfilling your capabilities.

And then like you said, there's always this really hard wall you hit where you're lifting kinda the most you can with your base, and you're kinda bit in the ass by not having that concurrent base building or that emphasis on base building or reverse, vice versa.

Someone will come to me, and they were running an expression program or, like, some, there's some things where it's like what you were running was perfect, and I get to look way better than I am because it flowed really well into maybe what we do.

Maybe I provided a little bit better fatigue management structure, and you had habitually been not expressing.

Mm.

Right? There's like they're, you're wired a certain way, and I think that, you know, the, the human brain is like extremely...

Mm-hmm.

There's benefits to both.

But I think that introspection and, like, okay, if you're in a bad s- like you, viewer, large lad, if you're in a bad slump with your training, um, I want you to sit down and be like, "Well, what is it that I want to get out of my training? Like, what really do I care about?" If you're like, "If I'm gonna be perfectly honest with myself, oh, I don't care about my squat.

I want to have big arms," but your training is a squat program, of course you're running into issues of mentally checking out.

Of course you're not jazzed about your sessions.

On some level, you know that's not the way to you, what you actually want.

So if you first start with being really honest with yourself of, like, what is it that you care about, what is it that you enjoy, those are the two things, and then your training should reflect that.

[laughs]

Even Johnny Bryant is leaning away from some more of his, like, old-

He does it less now.

You, like you can definitely see it's a little bit less.

He's like, he loves his varied methods, and he treats the bench as a power exercise, so like maybe there's a little bit more argument there.

But across, like, tested power lifting, overweight work doesn't really...

Like, maybe you gotta like...

You're like, "Oh, but Jen Thompson does walkouts." Well, what about everybody that's squatting more than Jen Thompson, right? Like, we should look to the average, not the outlier.

[laughs]

Yeah

... never gets used.

So I'll put my...

I'll drag a bench over there, and I'm so tired usually by that point in the workout, like, yeah, I'm gonna be on here for a while.

It's not that I'm doing [laughs] that many sets.

It's that I'm dead tired from usually doing, like, heavy squat and a heavy hinge first.

So it's like the pacing slows down.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Like, got fairly technical fairly quickly.

But the pushing yourself aspect was something that was, like, took a long time to learn.

And then the same thing of, like, how to be an athlete, how to understand the system.

Good athletes make systems look crispy.

Bad athletes make systems look like shit.

Even if they're a great system, you know, a bad athlete will make it look bad.

[laughs] Probably should've mentioned that at the start of the video, but [laughs]

Yeah

... once you set the goal.

Get the goal genuinely.

Hold yourself to a high standard.

Don't start fudging your dumbbells to be a little higher, turning them into the, "Oh, I, it's full range.

I hit my chest." Turn them so you can get a bigger range.

Take a little longer to get that to a high form standard, 'cause it's like the w- I've mentioned on here, right? The worst feeling in the world is to hit a PR and then watch back the video and then hem and haw whether you can count it, rather than just being able to enjoy it.

[laughs]

[laughs] I was like, "Should we just scrap this episode already?" [laughs]

Uh, no.

No, it's good.

It's good stuff.

I don't know.

I just, I meet, I-- Like, when I meet people, I'm like, man, you do this every day.

I'm surprised you aren't a...

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think they're appropriately rated now, especially 'cause I think, um- Big laws was really big on those as his, like, primary grip metric, and that's kind of permeated.

Like, now Hafthor does them, everybody does them.

Yeah.

It's kind of permeated.

It's like, okay, now they're not underrated if you're in, like, the right circle anymore.

Yeah.

Mm

[laughs]

Like yes, I understand research.

That just means percent on the bar.

Colloquially, colloquially, Jesus, uh, words can have multiple meanings.

You talk to anyone in the gym, what they mean, like this is my least favorite thing when people correct me.

Actually, intensity is percentage.

Holy fuck, just academically.

Yeah

[laughs]

Made it out in one piece.

Oh, knock on, knock on wood.

Um, yeah, but it's like, but like even you and I, like, get into a peaking phase, that's a frail immune system.

If I'm around someone that's sick, I'm getting it, even though, like most of my life, I've always prided myself on having a stout immune system.

So it just cracks me up when people like put on their like meat recap like, "Just, you know, got super unlucky, happened to get sick." Especially, you know, as I understand it mechanistically, guys on like PEDs, that's even...

There's additional drivers of why that's gonna be the case.

Yep.

And I don't know if doing this, like, overly super long hamstring bias-

Is reinforcing that pattern.

Like, basically we could screenshot Max's pull and as it's passing the knee, we didn't like the position, so he wasn't anchoring his hips very well.

And we had just been trying to attack that purely from a cuing perspective of just like, "Try this cue.

Try this cue.

Work on it." And we made some progression, but then we would, like, the second Max didn't think, he would revert back to it.

Um, Max mentioned the other day, he's like, "Well, maybe I'm over..." Like, again, we know, uh, like, slot two exercises bleed really heavily into slot one, right?

Um, I'm really-

Yeah

... than the proximity to failure, which we all agree proximity to failure matters.

So, whatever, like, a bunch of people were like-Like, would you disagree with a doctor? And it's like, y- yeah.

And somebody hit me with, like, a weird analogy where they're like, [sighs] "This is like a day trader in... like, disagreeing with a professor of economics." And it's like, y- yeah, so if, if the disagreement was about, like, what to do with your specific portfolio, I'd be really interested to hear the guy that focuses on that, like, micro scale-

Yeah.

You know? It's just a choice.

It's safe.

It's available.

[laughs]

... just completely off the rails.

He's like, "All of you are learning bullshit.

You need to get into Eastern medicine and holistic health if you ever want to actually help someone.

Uh, blah, blah, blah, something, people, like, think your kidneys do something, but it's really your chakras." And it was really funny because of all of the teachers in the department were, like, off to the side of the room, uh, watching this, and you could see, like, which ones were, like...

thought this was, like, a s-...

They're like, "Oh, shit.

You heard it, you heard it here first on Logan-

Yeah, I, uh, I feel like that was like-

like-You know, I, I'm not educated in really any sport other than lifting weights.

Um, but I was...

I don't know, I- the restricted rules do just, like, catch my eye.

I'm just like, "Ah, I think it's cooler." Yeah, but that probably applies to anything.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, like, there's a lot of arbitrary restrictions.

Mm.

Mm.

Or maybe strength.

And like you kinda select it out month by month.

Yeah, I, I- Rather than just following, like, on the rails 60 to 100 progression? Oh.

Um, second topic.

Hmm.

Sports before lifting and how they affect training.

Mm.

Mm.

I think that's, like there's a, there's like a speculative mechanic about like lateral compression, like the old Nori video where him and that guy were like, "Put a sandbag on the side of your hip," and that has a lot of impact on your mobility, and like posterior expansion of ribs.

It's, it's super speculative stuff.

Who cares whether it's real or not? Just a potential like, okay, you breathe well on your side, it might be good for this posterior ribcage expansion type of deal.

Um, and I think last block, I didn't peak my variables as much as I should've.

Yeah, you didn't ramp...

So Max, by that means for those of you that aren't like super regular, Max always ramps up- Uh, his, like, strictness outside the gym as it's necessitated by the training cycle, so it's like really early bedtimes, never, ever missing any meals, never missing any water.

Like, all of that stuff is locked in by, like, three weeks out from the max to, like, the highest degree possible.

[laughs]

And it's just, like, some 175 pound dude with, like, his ass in the air benching, like, 250 telling me my bulking tier list is completely retarded because pizza is high.

Uh, the other one is he was like, "How are sandwiches in the B tier but, uh, pizza is in the F tier? It's just cheese and bread and meat.

It's the same thing." And I was like, that is the dumbest shit I've ever heard in my life.

They're in completely diff- What the fuck are you talking about? This is the most pseudo-intellectual fucking darn point I've ever heard in my life.

[laughs]

Uh, I mean, Max and I will both say most of our best sessions happen with some warm-ups feeling bad, because it really makes you, like, do things better.

Like, if you, if you figure out, "What am I doing wrong? Let me get my technique right.

Mm.

But someone who's training hard with good tech, I'm like, "Mm, you've put like serious thought and effort into that." Doesn't really matter how much is on the bar.

If someone's got like 185 and they're doing like nice looking squats- I remember Tyler, before I talked to him, I saw his workout, and I was like, "This dude knows what he's doing." He was, like, doing, like...

He was just doing some benches, and he was, like, setting into his arch, and it looked good, and he was, like, maintaining tightness.

And then he did, like, good form, weighted pull-ups.

Uh, and then, like, I don't know, some kind of, like, dip and then some kind of row.

Mm.

So a very slight like forearm flex to keep your knuckles, because the second your knuckles start rotating forward is when you lose it.

[laughs]

And I would, like, inflate my numbers by, like, touch and going my bench.

I'm like, oh, it took me so long to under- Like, you need to think of it as a sport.

Even if you're like, "Powerlifting isn't a sport," well, first of all, sh- that's the dumbest argument ever.

Like, ping pong is, is technically a sport.

If ping pong's a sport, powerlifting's a sport.

Suck my dick.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, residents-

I think it's very illogical that belt cleans aren't allowed.

You're wear- allowed to wear figure eights, you're allowed to wear a deadlift suit, you're allowed to wear a squat suit.

You're allowed to hitch.

You're allowed to get your overhead above your head by any means necessary, but you can't let it get contact with your belt? It't make a tremendous amount of sense.

Uh, there's a l- there's a good bit of evidence to suggest that the first lifting belts were actually invented to put the barbell on for, like, old-timey circus Strongman.

I think that's where the term clean comes from.

Uh, but-

Yeah

... you push through, it means a ton.

Or you're just like, "This is gonna get me a bunch of Instagram views," and that's why it means a lot.

Like I see some of these guys that like genetic phenom, great leverage, uh, deadlift bar, strap, pound plate, uh, figure eights, and it's like based on their celebration after their 700 deadlift it means a lot to them.

But it's like, dog, it took you like three months to go from 600 to 700 like this.

How could it mean that much to you? [laughs] That's crazy.

It's so-

...

[laughs]

Uh, Billy, we love Billy.

He gives us a good discount on our gym membership.

Billy's the man.

Billy [laughs] has the funniest, weird like gym hierarchy philosophy of all time, where he's just like, "Man, Max and Sam are the strongest guys at the gym, and they're humble." And he never, he never stops saying that.

He's like, "It's so crazy that they're humble." And at first I was like, "Why does Billy say this over and over and over?" And I gradually got to know Billy, and it's because Billy has like a philosophy where he's like, "If you're the strongest guy in the gym, you have the green light to just be a dickhead." [laughs] Like, because you're the strongest guy there.

And he's the gym owner.

The number of people who have like shot called the World's Strongest Man to me-