The Dad Bods and Dumbbells Podcast
The hosts Mitch and Bart discuss fitness, fatherhood, and guy stuff to help men live a great life, have fun, laugh, and get a little more fit in this weekly Podcast.
The Dad Bods and Dumbbells Podcast
Strength Coach James DeLacy talks the Latest Science in Strength Training vs. Hypertrophy
James DeLacy shares his expertise on strength training for parents and athletes, revealing why less can sometimes mean more when it comes to building strength.
• Former strength and conditioning coach for professional rugby with a Master's in Sports and Exercise Science
• Father of two young children who fits training around family life in his garage gym
• Acquired the Lift Big Eat Big brand in 2021 to deliver quality strength programming
• Advocates stopping sets 2-4 reps short of failure for optimal strength gains
• Explains velocity-based training where 20-30% velocity loss leads to better strength results than training to failure
• Recommends consistency with even minimal workouts rather than skipping when you can't do everything
• Emphasizes technique development over adding weight, especially for beginners
• Creates programs with ranges to allow for auto-regulation based on how you feel each day
• Suggests variety in training to prevent injuries, particularly for older lifters
Check out Lift Big Eat Big training app, Sweet Science of Fighting, and for coaches working with athletes, visit performance.education.
https://sweetscienceoffighting.com
https://performance.education
To Learn more about GLP-1s and Set Up a TeleMed Call with Solutions RX, use this link:
https://solutionsrxaustin.com/solutionsrxaustin-dadbods-and-dumbells
To Learn more about James and Mona De Lacey's Strength Programs, visit:
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Visit Barton's Training Website: http://teambryanwellness.com
Welcome to Dad Bods and Dumbbells. My name is Mitch and Bart's sitting over here and can't speak into the mic. Hey bud, can we start over? Sorry, three, two, one. Welcome to Dad Bods and Dumbbells. My name is Mitch.
Speaker 2:And I'm Bart.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for listening, liking, subscribing and being a part of our podcast. Dad Bods and Dumbbells Big shout out to our sponsors Lift Big Eat Big. We love them. Check them out. They're teaching us how to be strong and awesome and be able to win all the powerlifting competitions. Check out Lift Big Eat Big and Solutions Pharmacy. Solutions Pharmacy is our one-stop shop for anything we need with weight loss, hair loss, problems with your penis, all that kind of stuff that goes along with it. And make sure April 12th coming up is the Texas Whiskey Festival here in Austin, texas. Make sure you get your tickets. They are going fast at txwhiskeyfestcom. That's txwhiskeyfestcom, but today is a special day because we have our own very own Lift Big Eat Big coach. His name's James DeLacy. He is a former Romanian rugby player.
Speaker 3:He currently owns Strength and conditioning coach. He currently I definitely didn't play.
Speaker 1:He currently runs.
Speaker 1:You can fact check all of me when I'm done. He owns and runs Sweet Science of Fighting and Lift Big, eat Big. He has a Master's of Sports and Exercise Science, published many things in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. He has a career applying sports science coaching knowledge in a professional and international rugby league ie the coaching piece, not the playing piece, and the union and basically this past decade is what he's been doing. He currently specializes in combat sports preparation, general fitness training. He has two kids and an Olympic weightlifter professional and coach, mona, and he is BART's strength strength coach.
Speaker 3:welcome to the show, james thank you for that interesting introduction.
Speaker 1:Anything you need to uh correct that I got wrong or said wrong no, we've already done that.
Speaker 3:We covered that. Strength and conditioning coach not player for the rugby team?
Speaker 1:yes, of Romania. Yes, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:I don't think you've mentioned that Mona is actually his wife too, which I think is an important fact. Oh yeah, I just said she's an Olympic weightlifting coach. People are like who's that?
Speaker 1:Mona is his wife, so they crush, lift Big, eat Big. Together they do a lot of cool things, but the bet I think probably the biggest thing that you are is you are a father of two. Yes, so tell me, father of two under two, right?
Speaker 3:Well, officially maybe two months ago but now it's two years and two months and the other one is coming up to seven months.
Speaker 1:Okay, so babies Very, very young. So how has fatherhood changed with two?
Speaker 3:It's crazy. Most days we try to fit our training in when we can at home. So we have the garage gym now, which is actually pretty sweet, so we just literally go into the garage. We take both of them in there with us. Mia runs around and does her things. She has her own little barbell as well. She was actually lifting five kilos over her head the other day five kilo barbell just snatching it at two years old. So she's stupid strong. So we try and train, we do all that and then it's just honestly, it's just doing every day that you know the same routine try and get work around the nap times and all that, and then try and get work done with these two at home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, are you? I mean, I know a lot of what you do is online coaching. Do you do any in person, or is it really just like out of the house, both of you? Or do you have online coaching clients and people any in person? Or is it really just like out of the house, both of you? Or do you have online coaching clients and people that you work with?
Speaker 3:it's all online. It's mainly you're my, only one of my. I think you're my only one-on-one right now. Okay, because the rest I've just. We've got our training apps. I've made it more membership based so it's easier on myself. So, and a lot of it, like the training app for sweet times of Fighting and Lift Biggie Big are the same where the programs are on there. But there's like a discord community. So if someone needs help with whatever's in the program, then that's pretty much they can contact me in there and I can help them there. But it's easy that way, right? So I'm not having to go change things all the time and do whatever. So everything's like that. And then some one-on-ones here and there, but mostly just through membership on those training apps gotcha okay.
Speaker 2:Well, hey, uh, you know a lot of men get you know congratulations they. They got a family, they have kids and all of a sudden, like even if they had some discipline in their 20s and 30s, it kind of lost it because all of a sudden, obviously you got to keep these kids alive, you got to keep them busy. You can't keep them not crying and, you know, breaking things like, and so they, they fall out of the habits. What?
Speaker 2:have you learned within yourself, but also obviously just you know working with people and and educating people on kind of the discipline of being somebody who's focused on strength as a father the biggest thing you talk about, like training wise just like I always did more mindset discipline versus, uh like specific training man, it's tough because mona and I we've always just trained.
Speaker 3:We've never, we've never not, we're never not trained. I don't think you could probably count, like, if we've had weeks off in the past, how many years you probably count on one hand, if we ever had like a week off, if that's. We've always done training, whether we travel somewhere, whatever. So it's kind of just been ingrained in us. Even if we have the kids, they just come in the gym with us and do it. I think that the biggest thing with that I guess you could say in discipline, where I think most people do go wrong, is they try and go all or nothing and they go. I'm gonna do this exact program. It's five days a week, it's an hour, whatever each time, plus commute, and it's like that's for anyone who has two kids knows that's pretty much impossible because you've got you know, kids will be unpredictable, you know, sometimes you just can't go, for whatever reason.
Speaker 3:So we just try and make sure. Okay, we try and make sure we get in the gym when we can and when we can. We just try and make sure we do essentially the bare minimum to get something done, and then we can do extra if we want, and that just means focusing on something that's going to give you the results you want in that, say, 30 minutes, and then if you've got extra time, you can do the other fluff stuff you maybe want to do. So if you're going to go do your squats or whatever, you hammer that hard and then maybe after that, if you've got time, you can do some other accessory stuff. But as long as you're just like nailing the big rocks initially, if you don't have the time, you're still going to get it done. So that's been the biggest thing. Sometimes we'll just go in and just do one thing.
Speaker 2:Right, there's a lot of people who will think, well, I don't have time to do my whole workout, so I'm not going to go.
Speaker 3:Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:I'll do it tomorrow. You could have gone there, warmed up, done three sets of squats and went home, and that would have been a heck of a lot of a better, you know.
Speaker 3:You probably would have gotten more out of that than most people's programs to be honest.
Speaker 2:All right, so talk about just Lift Big, eat Big objectives and how you know people are engaging. Obviously you talked about like the membership base, the Discord connection, all that kind of stuff. But how are you kind of solving people's problem with it with the lift big, eat big?
Speaker 3:yeah, so the. So we actually acquired lift big, eat big in 2021. It was an as an old fitness brain I don't know if you ever used to read like old fitness blogs back in the day, so probably some familiar ones back in the day. Oh, I mean, like eric chrissy's old blog. Yeah, brett contraria's back in the day he was blogging t-nation bodybuilding forums like the golden era of fitness back then.
Speaker 3:So lift big ebook was one of those blogs back in the day that had a really, really big following and they kind of just fizzled away. So they do end up selling it. So we ended up acquiring it just because I really liked the brand and it was something that I could just apply more marketing stuff to it and it was working at the time. And then, uh, with the app itself I mean even with the programs in that we kind of kept all the old stuff in there because a lot of people just like them like there's people searching for those old programs just because they. I guess that has a legacy to it.
Speaker 3:But for the actual program itself, for us, it's for us to deliver olympic weightlifting specific programming. So mona has a lot of olympic weightlifting stuff in there so you can help the weightlifters. We have just just general strength and size stuff, because people are always looking for things like that to do. Um, what else do we have in there now? More general strength stuff, hypertrophy stuff. I'm slowly going to be adding some more, I guess, performance sports, performance based stuff in there. So obviously the brand is centered around lifting big and eating big, but trying to add more and more things in there to, I guess, get a broader audience, because, just from what I noticed as well on on our facebook, there's a lot of people in there that are, I used to say, sporting athletes or doing other sports, not just lifting and using lifting to help complement their sport there. So just adding more stuff like that in there too and just trying to get so spread to as many people as possible.
Speaker 1:So is it? I was going to ask the demographic. You kind of mentioned it already but are you dealing with generally people newest into strength training or understanding bodybuilding or whatever that looks like? Or are you dealing with already kind of conditioned athletes that are at that space where they just need to go the next stage? I E probably what where Bart's at just trying to get better in this area that he's not excelling in Probably just before that, the stage before that.
Speaker 3:Mostly, I think, most people who are actually, funnily enough, a lot of the old followers, I think. Because the brand is so old, they've kind of moved on from what they were doing previously and their dad's now, or they're older and they've kind of like lifting's not as big. Now they're trying to just be quote-unquote healthy, yeah, or not be so beat up. So it's kind of a range or a mix in there too. So, yeah, it's a lot of them, but the idea is that we cater for I'm gonna say cater for everyone, but just get people that like to lift and want to actually run a program that actually makes sense.
Speaker 2:Most of the time some of the old programs on the app that were done from the original owner probably don't make too much sense but people love them, so we keep them in there and we just leave them in there, just kind of add more on top and that that takes me to something that, uh, I came across and, uh, there, you know, there's a funny um on facebook, there's a bench pressing group and they all.
Speaker 2:I got on it just because I was like interested to see what people were talking about. And this whole group is like all about the Ohio State Buckeyes power matrix, which is that like eight, five, three, one, one, one, five. Like you know, it's just this power matrix that you kind of do until you've kind of mastered those reps and then you move up a little bit. And what is your thoughts on you?
Speaker 2:know, I think everyone's looking for that, that thing that is going to like make them strong or make them, you know, like kind of get them the next level, but like it's so much more subtle than that. I mean, just just put pushing weight up and down, you know, adding more weight, all that kind of stuff, you know, is gonna, you know, for a lot of people just leads to injury and overcompensation, like what. The question I guess I have is is what are your thoughts on that's, like those types of programs that are kind of like from these old, you know, strength and conditioning football programs?
Speaker 2:or places like that that kind of still exists. I mean, it's probably 30 years old or something like that.
Speaker 3:I'm sure it's still. I'm sure it's still used no-transcript the first thing I'll preface it with just because something's old doesn't mean it's not good or useful. So, like I mean, everything now is inspired or influenced from stuff done 20, 30, 40 plus years ago. Most of the time it's just been rehashed and repackaged. A really good example is like Knees Over Toes, that's just repackaged. Poliquin it's exactly the same, just different names. Marketed better, well marketed in a world where now you have social media.
Speaker 3:And he'll give all the credit to Poliquin too, when he gets on the podcast he'll talk about Poliquininn reaching out to him and all that. But yeah, it's. Yeah, exactly so it's a cooler name to hear knees over toes. Yeah, so everything's pretty much just repackaged. Regarding I'm not, I know you remember you sent me the graphic of that. I'm not familiar with the exact, exact protocol and program, but regardless, honestly, the strength training hasn't changed too much, I think. Just the influences kind of switch around a lot. So obviously, west side was a massive influence through I mean, it still is now, even through a lot of college football. College football is a different world, though, and when you say Westside, you mean Westside Barbell.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Westside Barbell. It's like a classic kind of training gym that really like bred some of the strongest people of all time right Like they were doing something different than everybody else, yeah, and they were really focused on geared powerlifting, so wearing they were doing something different than everybody else.
Speaker 3:And, yeah, and they were already focused on geared powerlifting, so wearing the suits and, uh, all the equipment to basically lift the biggest numbers possible, and a lot of that is still massively influenced. A lot of strength conditioning, a lot of college I mean college football is in strength conditioning is kind of its own I'm going to say its own world. It's completely different to anywhere else in the world. Honestly, a lot of it is completely retarded compared to the rest of the world.
Speaker 2:Well, I feel like you know, it's all about push right, because they don't want to hurt themselves doing deadlifts. So I still have heard strength and conditioning or just talking to college athletes who never deadlifted, they only squatted and, you know, sled pushed and bench pressed. Because that was where the you know pushed and bench pressed, and because that was that was where the you know you, it was kind of like, well, that's where your power comes from. I'm. You're obviously not pulling anybody, you're pushing people, but it's it. It seemed to me like aren't we missing an entire posterior chain here? Well, they're usually doing power cleans and stuff. Well, okay with that too, so that's substantial and romanian deadlift.
Speaker 3:So that's the thing, right, because people get caught up in at least in strength conditioning world the exercises. You know you have to do this exercise, that exercise. But in strength conditioning the exercises don't matter as much as what is the adaptation you're trying to get from the training and then you pick the exercise that's going to give you that adaptation or allows you to at least do the exercise to get that adaptation. So if you're like I want to get as big and strong as possible and then you're sitting there doing kettlebell, one-arm snatches or something it's like, well, the kettlebell is probably not a good idea or not a good tool to do that, and that exercise probably isn't a good tool to do that because you can't load it heavy enough. It's one implement, it's more unstable than a barbell.
Speaker 3:So you're probably better off doing something like a barbell variation because you can load it heavier, you're more stable, you produce more force, you get stronger. So then it just becomes an idea of those are you get out of this idea of these are bad exercises, these are good exercises. You're looking at exercises based on what you want to achieve from the actual exercise. But I mean even coming back to your original question around what's what's changed in the strength training world. I mean, change it back to your original question around what's what's changed in the strength training world I mean change.
Speaker 2:It's almost like, just like the subtleties of what they're figuring out from like you know what is too much, what is not enough, you know, just like what seems to work yeah, there's actually some really good research recently on like velocity-based training.
Speaker 3:So where people will measure the speed of that, the barbells moving, just with different devices, and you'll see that typically when they talk about velocity loss they're talking about the percentage decrease in the speed of the bar during the set. So typically if you're doing a set of eight squats, maybe in the last few reps you start to slow down. So what they do is they'll take their first or best rep for the speed and then they'll see how far essentially, or how much velocity you lose and you have a cutoff right. So a 40 to 50 velocity loss. So say you moved at one meter per second for the first one, you had 0.5 on the on whatever rep it was, and you cut the set. That'd be a 50 velocity loss.
Speaker 3:And they're finding, okay, 40 to 50 is really good for building size because you want to be able to get as close to failure as possible. And then, but the problem is you don't get the same strength gains as you do is if you stop at 20 to 30 velocity loss. So for people who are looking to maximize strength development, you're trying to essentially just be super consistent with being maybe like two to four reps shy of failure Most of the time. Sure, there's value in doing some grinding reps, because you're going to have to if you're competing in strength sports like powerlifting. You're going to have to do that at some point. But most of the time you're trying to spend your time further away from failure and that's where you're going to make your best strength gains, and so it allows you to train more, not get so beat up, especially on heavier compounds.
Speaker 2:And this is hard for people to understand. Now, this is absolutely built into the program that you were and so this is really cool. I'll give you a little backstory. So he basically created an Excel document, like with four weeks and there was a progression and there's four, there's four days of training. But he wanted me to video not just the first set I'm doing of the, of the heavy set of three or five or whatever it was. Oftentimes you want it like let me see that third set, Let me see that.
Speaker 3:So, so that you can start to see, you were like I'm just looking at bar speed a lot, yeah, bar speed.
Speaker 2:And he wanted me to like go down, pause for one or two seconds and then explode up as fast as I could so that you could see. You know how was. How was I adjusting that weight? How much power was I getting at the bottom of that of that movement for squats or bench press or deadlift? Um so, and that was interesting, and I didn't, I don't know that that thing you were just talking about, about, like you know, I'm from the bodybuilding world.
Speaker 3:You're like okay, yeah, you're trying, but why? Why aren't we going a little? Why?
Speaker 2:are you grinding out two more reps? You know I could do it, yeah, and but you're living, you're? You kept me in a window of like we're really developing what sounds like kind of the neuro strength, of like just power out of the bottom, explosiveness, and then letting the body recover and and and adapt to that type of thing. I also gave you a range too, if I'm not mistaken, which I always pick the top.
Speaker 3:I know, I know I figured that too, and I was like well, at least for your deload week, I'm not going to give you a range.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're like do this.
Speaker 3:Okay, but the idea is right with the range. It gives you an opportunity to auto-regulate your training. A uh no, not so new to the gym, who have done it for a while, kind of understand a little bit of how their sets feel. You can use that range to help set up your day based on how you feel. So, for example, I gave you an rpe and the range. So if it's like eight rpe, you're like two reps short of failure. And then they give you a range of, say, whatever it's, 75 percent, whatever those numbers are. You can kind of be two reps short of failure anywhere in that range Because obviously on the day you're never going to be, you're never going to be like 75% means I can get, you know, 12 reps or whatever it is, but you're never going to go into a day and always hit 12 reps as your 12 RM for that.
Speaker 3:So the range gives you a little bit of wiggle room to be like, oh, today I don't feel so good, I'll hit the lighter ones because that's where my rp sits. Or damn, I feel really good. Today we're going to use the top range, you know, and it's kind of unjust and that's. That's the thing as well, and I think I think you were doing as well in the program but it was okay because it was kind of going quite well is where every week, you're trying to add the weight in that range and get to the top, whereas you don't have to always be adding weight to get to the top. It's if you're consistent.
Speaker 2:If you're consistent in those ranges, it doesn't matter, because you know you're averaging whatever it is percentage, uh, that way yeah, there was only one time with the bench press where it's like it was the first day we did it after squat and I didn't. I went a little bit. I went to the top of the range yeah, I didn't get the third rep, yeah, and crushed, but then we pulled back a little bit. I went about seven pounds lighter the next time back, hit that one and then within a week or two I was back to what I would you know what I missed a couple weeks ago and got it easily not easily, but like, felt like I could have gotten a fourth rep in there, uh, pretty easily. So anyway, yeah, I was, it was it's been interesting kind of following your program for about two months now and we got two months to go before the before the event.
Speaker 2:Hopefully they haven't started lifting yeah, this guy, this guy getting back to mitch, uh, one of my favorite things that happened recently was I had a. I had a workout birthday party so mitch went to. Whenever we did lift atx and mitch, we just put 400 pounds on the bar and mitch kind of just picked it up until he lost balance and just kind of fell. But it was like 400 pounds without even a warmup. I sent it to you and you're like, okay, impressive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the issue with me is form. That was like my fourth deadlift ever, my fourth rep.
Speaker 3:Your fourth rep ever. Ever you ever done? Yeah, I've never done. You just put 400 cold yeah.
Speaker 2:Dude, what the hell.
Speaker 1:I mean cold. Yeah, dude, what the hell? I mean it looked bad, though. I mean my back's hunched over you put. You put it on uh, instagram, which I gave you approval, and I appreciate that.
Speaker 3:Did it go viral? No, not, not, I mean viral for us man I mean like my brother's, texting like dude.
Speaker 1:Your form sucks, you know um, but it's the. I always say it's the farm strength. You know, I grew up in indiana, so we're bailing hay, you know.
Speaker 3:Whatever I've got the farmis Strong program, too, on the app. Oh, that's cool, that's cool.
Speaker 1:Well, I think what's cool is my wife's actually very good, has great form. She likes to lift too, and so, like when I was sending you videos of my workout with deadlifts, which is basically my first real workout- in deadlifts I was.
Speaker 1:You know she was critiquing my form, but it's. It's getting to the point where, um, I don't, I don't think I'll have a problem, it's just I want to make sure that I'm not going to hurt myself in the, the, my lower back especially, and so I think towards the end, I finally got some, some better movement from the hinging part of my hips. You know, um, but as far as that goes, I think, um, bart and I did, uh, uh, arm workout or bench workout, sorry that you had set up, and I was so confused, first cause it was in kilograms, I had no idea how much I was benching. And then, on top of it, yeah, cause I'm an idiot, but he's like it's just 2.2 times. I'm like it's too much work to do math, man. So all that to say, I didn't understand Because I've always done the.
Speaker 1:They called it the Nebraska pyramid when I was in school. It's the same exact thing with the Ohio State strength thing Is. Ultimately, I always associate strength with adding, adding, adding. So the change for me was like, how am I supposed to bench 400? If I'm sitting here for two seconds and blasting through it, when I should just put heavy weight on and I'll get stronger. So like it's almost like a reverse effect, that two to three reps that you talk about, you don't want to give it all, but that two to four reps that you can still do at the end with before failure, um is, is that an understanding of someone who's a novice, just like me? I'm a novice in deadlift. I'm really kind of a novice in squat to the leg side. So is there something that I can do from a from a very beginner standpoint? Yeah, I have a lot of strength, but what is going to give me, what is going to maximize my potential to get myself to those big numbers that I want to get to, especially in this competition, in literally two months?
Speaker 3:For you, it would be just dialing the technique in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think probably in general probably would be a good one for, because a lot of people I'm the average man, I would say I'm the dad bod of the group. So, what would you tell a man? Yeah, such as me, coming into this competition and making sure I'm ultimately going to do the right thing and hit the right numbers, that I need to with the good form so I don't get dinged. I ask Bart all the time, does that count as a rep? I don't know.
Speaker 3:You, I ask, part all the time. Does that count as a rep? I don't know. You have to. You have to practice probably more often. I mean, it's, what you're doing isn't normal, because you're going two months into a competition right from pretty much being you, so it's kind you're probably gonna have to do it more often. But you have to be a little lighter initially and just get reps in and get it, because people, people think when you're just doing I'm just doing squat, bench or whatever else, it's like you know, it's simple, they're just simple movements, but there's more nuance to these movements that make them quite technical than people probably realize.
Speaker 3:I mean, we went to the slack on the bar bars and when we talked about pulling the slack versus stuff like that, like the stuff that people need to learn, like a lot of people just don't know these things because then it's not like kind of readily taught or anything like that.
Speaker 3:It's kind of stuff that you learn to pick up as you learn, as you go through, and it's just getting these things nailed down so you can actually progress heavier and heavier without being folded over the bar or whatever you're doing, and eventually you will be able to grind with heavier weights. But for newer lifters you also don't have that ability anyway. They're just not newly trained to be able to push. That's why newer lifters can go into the gym, smash it one day and come in the next day, smash it again, smash it again, because they're never really reaching that high, high output that more advanced lifters come in and they do say 90% for like 10 singles or whatever. They're going to be wrecked for the next few days because they're actually able to. You just say push hard enough against the bar where it's causing some kind of adaptation for newbies. Yeah, it's not going to be there, so it's more.
Speaker 2:Failure of a newbie is like there's just so much instability and like just there's, there's, it's like oh, I just can't do it so low versus somebody who's like a trained lifter comes in and like puts three plates on and like takes and like really like uses all of the muscle and all the stability and all that has a.
Speaker 2:there's a great point, yeah, uh, because I mean I was telling him I'm like if you could just pick up 400 pounds, like with zero technique, like I mean james could probably get you to 480 in two months with just like by getting you know, just by putting some you know, getting you know, just the technique down, I mean the best example, the best example program is most people will know it will be Jim Winless 531.
Speaker 3:You don't even touch, you don't even go near your max for months. In fact the whole program, if you do it as originally written, you don't go near your max ever. You literally work off a training max. So training max for anyone who's listening is essentially a max you can hit any day of the week, sick. No psych up anything like something. You just go into the training room, do a warm-up and hit um and then you take 90 of that as your actual working weight. So you're literally like, literally like. If your max max is 140 kilos, maybe you go in the gym you can do like 130, and then you take 90% of that. You're working off like under 120 kilos. So that's like 20 kilos on your max. So you're just moving weight fast, just consistency, month, month, month, month, month and you're slowly increasing weight month to month, month but you're like way off the maxes and it's just that consistency leads to eventually people hitting new prs well, that's such a, that's such a different way of thinking about it.
Speaker 2:Like the, the layman, like person that trains, it wants to just like improve their max, is going to assume like you thought yeah put more weight on the bar, and I think that was, that was the misleading aspect of the matrix that that I was using for a little while too, and and it works. It works when you first start, because that's a new stimulus and also you're you, you're staying away from your one rep max.
Speaker 2:That one, that that three sets of one is not your one rep max, but eventually you do that and then you move up a little bit five pounds and five, and eventually it is your one rep max and you're trying to do it for three sets with bad form, because if it, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're at 97% of your max, you might get it once, you might get it twice, but if that, that third time, there's probably something that's not quite optimal in terms of your technique to be able to do it again. And anyway, I think that's that's one of the challenges of understanding how important it is to be, you know, add a percentage of your enrollment max that you can really develop form and consistency and power that also doesn't lead to injury. Yeah, because that's one of the things. I mean I've been doing this for two months, like I am less injured now than I was two months ago, and we're also doing a lot of variety with yeah too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's a big one that's a big part of, I think you've told me because I'm older you know at 50.
Speaker 3:Because you're old. Yeah, you know, like if you just ground.
Speaker 2:oh look who's coming, here comes the kid If you just ground, you know if you've you got to get your score like which would be an option, which could be an option, especially if I was like 25 and just you know, built with rubber bands and magic um, but you're adapting to probably what I need, which is a little bit more variety and we can build the volume through other ways.
Speaker 3:Right, so I can. Yes, it would be nice to be able to bench, say, three times a week, so we can really dial in the technique of your bench. But it's kind of like you know at what cost for you in particular. So it's okay. So we'll do bench. We'll do a variation with close grip. So changing the grip width is enough to kind of give some variation. Doing body weight movements like pushups to get volume, using dumbbells, all those things will, you know, ideally carry over to the bench, but they're just gonna keep you healthier in general, which means you're gonna progress as progress.
Speaker 1:As soon as you start having niggles, then your progress goes to shit, and then you have to start over again so you see your shoulders feel pretty good, because that was always the worry about bench was hey my shoulders are bad. I don't want to mess them up, and so coming into this and making sure you're good is good also technically as well, with the bench right because you have to make sure you have the shoulder shoulder blades pinned back and that's where you're going to get.
Speaker 3:You know, the shoulder's going to come back when you bench, versus most people kind of just lie down on the bench and then they're just kind of like your shoulders forward and they bring the bar down their shoulders like stuck here, you know, and that's when you get into problems that's interesting well, uh, I appreciate all the detail to to this.
Speaker 1:I think I think anybody who's interested in learning more about what you do and how you do it because there's a lot of technicality to it, there's a lot, lot of understanding, a lot of pieces, which is really cool Check out Lift Big, eat Big and try a program.
Speaker 1:I think for me, I wish I would have started six months ago and really gotten into it, because at that point then I'd be a lot healthier and I'd feel a lot more confident going into this powerlifting thing. So we'll see what two months can do. But I think from you know I always try to find humor in everything, so tell me some like is there any funny story that you can give us about anything you've done, whether it's the strength and conditioning for the rugby team, any anecdote that might be a fun um story to grab from somebody that is learning? Maybe it's a weightlifting something that happened in your strength program where it's like some guy tried to do something and they failed miserably, damn.
Speaker 3:I'm trying to think now I don't Something funny that happened. Man, athletes are just funny in general just because they're like. Some of them are so stupid, but some of them are very serious.
Speaker 2:I'm going to put them in the same thing.
Speaker 3:Damn. I can't think of anything. How about this one?
Speaker 1:funny or horrific? How about what's the most horrific injury you've seen?
Speaker 3:live, live, yeah we had a, a sevens. So when I was with Romania we had a sevens warm up competition for the Olympic cycle. And so we're, yeah, we'reup competition for the olympic cycle. And so we're in. Uh, yeah, we're in amsterdam for the first competition. We only got two weeks of preparation. After these guys are playing 15s, the first, what 10 seconds of the first game, our player comes and he steps, he goes down. His foot and ankle was literally like turned, oh like Like. Literally the foot is not in line with the leg. Like he literally just like snapped that whole thing Snapped the foot Like fully snapped the ankle off, basically Just like I was like oh, that is disgusting.
Speaker 1:Within, like the first few minutes of it, the first 10 seconds, the first round.
Speaker 3:I was like holy shit.
Speaker 1:Before any like. Is it similar? Did you ever you watch American football at all?
Speaker 3:Yeah, my daughter, Did you ever you watch American football at all?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so my daughter loves it. Remember Jack Prescott. Yeah, his foot was like dang.
Speaker 3:It's similar to that. It'll be. It'll be very similar. I mean that recovery is almost impossible. It seems like he did, though he recovered. He's playing against stuff.
Speaker 2:So, yeah it's debatable whether or not he's recovered. Oh yeah, it will never be the same. It will never be the same, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, hey, James, I appreciate your time. I appreciate you taking away from your family and your business. What is something coming up for you that you want to promote or endorse in anything like that? You got coming Nothing coming so much.
Speaker 3:Just check out Lift Big, eat Big, the training app, sweet Science of Fighting. For any fighters out there that are looking for training as well, and for any coaches who work with athletes, check out performance dot education great.
Speaker 1:We'll put in the show notes so you can check it out there. That's really cool, well, thanks so much for taking the time. James um bart, do you have anything else to add?
Speaker 2:I just want to say it's been, it's been a pleasure, you know, working with you. I I didn't know what this is going to be like. I have online coached people for fitness and that kind of stuff, so I just was going to be interested to see how we were going to communicate, how effective it was going to be. I probably text you or WhatsApp, but I send you a lot of WhatsApp. And you're very responsive, which is really great because I can send you a video and within within a few minutes, usually you're like watch the video.
Speaker 1:Text me back I mean that's not the right form, or hey that?
Speaker 2:looks great or keep you know, whatever, but some sort of, and that's that's absolutely like huge versus. Like you know, do an entire workout and then the next day. Next day like oh that wasn't what I wanted you to do. You're like oh well great, so anyway, just uh, you really professional. Great job on all that so far, and I've got two more months with you until the competition. So, knock on wood, we're going to stay healthy, get stronger and kick some ass.
Speaker 3:We're going to push this month a little more. I love it. Let's go.
Speaker 2:I'm on a deload week right now, so we're just chilling out. He's going crazy over there Two sets of everything, pretty much enjoying my 45-minute workouts in and out of the gym.
Speaker 1:I love that. Well, thanks so much, james, and it's something to remember everybody who's listening even coaches need coaches, and I think that's the main piece and theme of everything we're doing here is you need a coach, you need a mission, you need a goal. Those things are going to help you progress and be better, so we appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening to Dab Bods and Dumbbells. We will bring you a new episode every Thursday. Thanks for listening, liking, subscribing. Have a great day, Sweet.