#013- Stu Locke- How to Survive Death

Back at it! The man joining me on this episode is Stuart Locke, a long time competitor and coach for powerlifting and former collegiate rugby and football player. We get into some common powerlifting topics, the psychological aspects of injury and recovery, and his close call with death around one year ago. This was a wild one, and I hope you enjoy! You can follow Stu on Instagram @stu_kodiakbarbell for his content directly, and thanks again to him for joining me!

For guest inquiries please email @moretolifepod@gmail.com <3

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I started lifting weights in high school. So I finished my junior season of football. And uh, you know, I did very well. And then I was like, eh, you know, probably like go play in university. The unfortunate reality is, and I've talked about this at length, uh, you know, 11th grade is probably a little bit late to declare that you're gonna go play football to college. And so I was like, all right, well, I gotta lift weights and I gotta get as strong as possible. So I just started running Westside Barbow for Skinny Bastards by Joe DeFranco. Uh two years later, I went from 161 to 231. I reported for training, reported to training camp at 231. Um, and then, you know, I had always been reading like the FTS stuff, right? Like teenation articles. Um, so I always kind of had power lifting in my background or in my periphery, right? And this was right when the Lillabridges were big. So I was obsessed with you know, Eric and Ernie Lillabridge. Um, and I thought it was just the coolest thing ever. And I ended up playing uh two years of football in college, two years of rugby in college, and I was training like a psychopath the entire time. Um, you know, I was doing Olympic lifting uh for a lot of it, and then I ended up having a traumatic brain injury in my halfway through my senior season uh of football. And then after that, they're like, Yeah, dude, your brain is soup. You cannot continue to play contact sports. And I was like, All right, well, I'm already the strongest kid on the team. And there's a sport where you just lift weights and don't hit your head, so I'm just gonna do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's I think that's slowly like what powerlifting is becoming, and like I I think it's great. Uh like for instance, my my girlfriend, she played college soccer at Central, actually, and she tore her meniscus uh three separate occasions, and she like tore her ACL, her knee is fucked up, man. Like, yeah, for real. Like, she's had it repaired three different times, and um, so she like medically retired from soccer, and she was like, I just don't know like what my thing is gonna be now, you know, like especially because college sports, like especially division one level, like that is your life outside of obviously being a student, like that is most of your identity, like at that time in your life. So, like I think powerlifting is super cool because it's like very easy for someone to go from like that and then like losing their thing to like powerlifting where it's just like you could go to a meet on any given Saturday and find like a 12-year-old lifting with his 45-year-old dad in the master's category, and they're like, it's cool, but like there's also people that can, you know, you can go as far as you want with it, really. So, okay, that's cool. Did you play football and rugby at this or at the same time or different yeah?

SPEAKER_02 2:38

So, how it worked is uh so I played in my freshman year, um and uh I ended up like flunking out of all my classes because it was like you let the monkey out of the cage and he doesn't know what to do. Um, and then there are, you know, and I'm sure your girlfriend can speak to this as well, there's academic requirements for yeah maintaining your scholarship and stuff, and I lost all those, and I was like, well, I'm not gonna fucking just go out and do this for the love of the game. Um, and uh rugby was like technically a different subset of student athletics, so it didn't have the same um academic requirements, and they'd still help you out and stuff, but it didn't have the same academic requirements. I was like, okay, well, like I've played sevens before, which is like a subset of rugby. Um, so I played two seasons of that, but the second season I was team captain. Um and then I was actually squatting next to our defensive coordinator because he's his name's Devin Murphy, awesome guy. And he's like, Yeah, you're like really big and strong right now. Like, do you want to come back and I'll give you your scholarship back? And then you can just play again. And I was like, Yeah, sure. He's like, Do you want to play interior D line? Because I was pretty big. The time was probably 255, 260. Um, I was like, Yeah, I'll play three tech. Um, and then I went back and then uh winter camp, I was defensive line, and then they switched me to fullback, and then spring camp was all playing fullback, and then come fall, they were like, Yeah, we need you back on interior D line. And I was like, All right, so I had to go from I had been dieting down so I could play fullback. And uh then they tell me like 12 weeks out of training camp, they're like, Hey, we need you like report like 270. I was like, Okay, well, I gotta go down, I gotta go from 234 to 270 in 12 weeks, so let's just pack it on. And so that's kind of the temporal association was like freshman year football, um, and then sophomore and junior year rugby, and then senior year uh football. But I also like I played rugby every summer as well.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

That's cool. Um what is like the I have a I have a friend who actually uh he just started recently playing in like in my hometown from the UP in our hometown, we have like a rugby like club kind of thing, and they they set it up to where there's like a few teams around the area that they play together. Like the way he explained it to me is that like like watching it, you're like, oh, it's like football, but then you get there and it's like this is nothing like football, like at all. Um I guess like what were some of like the big adjustments you had to do to like adapt to a different sport like that? Because I I know it's a lot more uh rugby's a lot more like laterally based instead of like football where it's literally just like down the field.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Like how is that what was so I mean I was uh I actually adapted to it quicker than most people typically would just because like in high school I played offense, defense, kickoff, kickoff return, punt, punt return. Like I played the whole game. Yeah, and uh so like I had a bunch of experience carrying the ball, I had a bunch of experience tackling and playing defense, and really like the only things that you kind of have to get good at is um you have to understand set piece, right? So in rugby we have these things called set pieces, right? So it's like if you're gonna run a play with the backs, that's a set piece. If you're gonna run a play with the fours, that's a set piece. If you have a scrum, that's a set piece, if you have a line out, that's a set piece. Um, and like getting used to scrumming is totally different because the pressure that you experience is like really, really overwhelming, right? So, like my in my um in my sophomore and junior year, I played loose head prop, which is one of the front row. And so you've seen like in rugby how they just like push like this and try to push each other off the ball.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Um, which eventually moved into offensive and defensive line in football. Um, and the pressure that's created from the scrum, right? Because if you have, you know, I don't know, 900 kilos, a thousand kilos on each team, because there's eight players in a scrum all pushing towards each other, the front row are the ones that bear the brunt of that. Yeah. So the pressure is like overwhelming because you have right five people behind you pushing you into the other team, and then they have five people behind them pushing them into you. Um, so your neck gets super jacked up, like your thoracic erectors have to be super, super strong, and you have to be very isometrically strong. Um, and then the only other adjustment was like rucking, which is kind of fun because you essentially just like run in as fast as you can and try to blow someone off the ball. Um, the only big adjustment was like once you're on the ball ground, you lose the rights to the ball.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

So it's like once you go to ground, you have to place the ball, people have to ruck over you. Um, and then just this idea of like not always running to space, right? Because let's say I have the ball and there's you know four or five people behind me. If I commit a defender and offload, you know, I make the game line, commit a defender and offload, we're still facing this way. But if I run sideways and I feel like I can take the corner, I've cut off all of these people that are outside of me, and I may not even make it back to the game line and I've fucked up all of the players behind me. So, you know, just just understanding that it's like you gotta run it straight and dealing with the pressure of a scrum and dealing with the pressure of a ruck or just dealing with rucking was the only real adjustments. But other than that, it's like it's pretty similar. And if you're a good football player, you'll be a good rugby player. And I would also make the argument that like football players make the best rugby players.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yeah. Um, did you did you have anything that you you carried from like your time at rugby uh slash football to powerlifting? Like even in terms of like mindset or like approaching competition, like is there anything you can give me on that?

SPEAKER_02 8:19

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So I think the big thing was like I was very grateful. So in Canada, uh, the way that we do football is a little bit different, right? So obviously it's like a different sport entirely. It's three downs instead of four, 12 players instead of 11. The field's much bigger. Um, but in Canada, in America, you can just play high school football and then go play in college, like that's very standard. Um, but in Canada, you have to play club football in the summer. So your season typically starts like mid to end of April, and then your high school season will end in November, and you're playing the whole time. So you're playing like 16, sometimes 20 games a year. Um, and the club team that I played for, we were called the Scarborough Thunder, and like we have more CFL and NFL alumni than any other team in the country, like super, super good, and they had this huge culture. Um, and they would always tell us like be the hammer, be the hammer, be the hammer, not the nail. And uh it was just this idea of like aggressive and violent intent towards whatever you do, and it has to be one focus. You cannot be thinking about X or Y or Z. And if you're gonna fuck up, fuck up at full speed.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Let's just be aggressive, yeah. That's that's something because I uh I played I played uh football not really growing up at all. Like I played one season in like eighth grade just because like I didn't play any sports at that time and I was like, I'll try football. Um because it's like it's a big team, nobody really gets cut. Like you might you know you might as well you learn you learn things. Um but then I ended up coming back to play varsity football my junior and senior year, and that was like the biggest thing I learned because like coming from not really playing football much growing up, and like there's these people like in my grade that were maybe I had been into lifting for like about a year at this point, like consistently going to the gym and stuff, and there were people that were like not as big as me, not as strong as me, but they were better at football only because they just did not care. And like that was one of the things I really had to like. It's such like a mental barrier that I had to like get over in football. Like, uh, when I played like linebacker, we we like our scheme was like very simple, like we didn't have anything like crazy zone drops, man-to-man coverage. It was like make a step, and if you're gonna go, go, don't hesitate. Because like one of the biggest misconceptions I see is like people being like, oh, like the people that are the most aggressive in football are usually the ones that get hurt the most, and it's like, yeah, kind of maybe, but like also the people that are scared running half ass into a running back who's running full ass into them, like that's how you get screwed up. Like if you're gonna hit somebody, like hit them hard, wrap up, and like that's it. Like that was that was one of the things that was crazy.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

Our coaches always our coaches always told us too. They're like, I've never been fucked up on the way to go fuck somebody up. And I was like, okay. And the and the thing too is like, you know, the coaches that I had, you know, in Scarborough, and even plenty of the coaches that I had in college, like they'd all played in the CFL, right? Like, we had a bunch of CFL alumni on our coaching staff, and they were like, you know, they played long careers, like eight, 10, 12 seasons in the CFL, and they were always like, yo, if you're gonna fuck up, fuck up at full speed and just be aggressive. Because if you're aggressive and in the wrong spot, typically good things happen.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

That's yeah, like it's like, yeah, might it be, you know, a play action play, and you accidentally blitz the quarterback at linebacker, sure, but like that lineman's fucked up. Like he's on, he's blocking you and not the lineman anymore. So the play is gonna get disrupted. Like, it's better to do that than just hesitate, take up like a square meter of grass that nobody's running to anyway, and just like be a practice dummy. Like, yeah, you know, you might as well do that. Um, yeah, and that's that's something that I that I feel like applies really good to powerlifting because it's like you know, you approach the bar at a meet and it's your third attempt. It's like, yeah, if you're focused on literally anything else besides that dumb barbell with those steel plates, like you like you're fucked. Like you need to focus on one thing, and that's your technique that you've been doing for whatever 16-20 weeks consistently, and it's like you have one goal, and it's literally right now, in this moment, in these 60 seconds, it is to move this weight and then get off the platform.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

Like, yeah, yeah, and it and it in and a lot of people like they just you know what I always tell people is like above 80%, maybe two queues above 90%, one cue and above like 95% is like just go, like don't even think about anything, just go. Because at this point, like if we have not ingrained your pattern sufficiently going into that third attempt, like there's no amount of queuing during it that's gonna make a meaningful difference.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Yeah, yeah. That's that's also super important. Um like you hear all the time how it's like when you're under like severe pressure, or like you know, you're really really nervous about something, like you will revert to your instinctual practices. And like, for like if you're a power lifter and it's like you haven't been training to comp standard in training, like what do you think is gonna happen when you get out there and like you have straight tunnel vision and like you look at the judges, you see all the people in the background, you're like, Oh, like I'm gonna drop this deadlift because I've dropped every single deadlift in prep because I don't lock on my deadlifts. Like, that's just what happens. Like, I see so many like missed rack commands in competition, and like it'll be a perfect squat, you know, 20-pound PR for someone that's never done a meat before, and then they're just like oh, there it goes. That was it. Yeah, yeah. Um I was gonna get your thoughts on a couple of uh powerlifting related things. Um I'm like two and a half weeks out right now, so like these things are like interesting to me because they kind of apply to me too. Um first thing I wanted to get your thoughts on is accessories at like high intensities leading up to a meet. And by leading up to a meet, I mean like a block out or like you know, six weeks or less ish. Um do you think it's you know it's something that it's like it gives you something to recover from, or is it kind of unnecessary damage or is it situational?

SPEAKER_02 14:36

So I think the biggest thing, you know, to always take into account when it comes to stuff like that is like how conditioned is the athlete. So it's always gonna come back to your baseline level of aerobic conditioning because that's ultimately what's gonna dictate your ability to recover from things, right? We and you know this very well from school, we walk around in aerobic metabolism. And if that system is not sufficiently developed, all the metabolic processes that come as an adjunct, right? Us shuttling waste products out of a cell, us shuttling nutrients into a cell, all of those things do not happen as well. And so, and even like our mitochondrial density, right? Like so many things happen as a byproduct of this aerobic metabolism or having an you know a sufficiently developed aerobic metabolism. Um, and so what I typically say for people is the only time I really deload accessories on people is the last two weeks of the meat. But you know, they're going from like RP eight to nine to RP six to seven. So you're pulling them back a bit, but also you know, RP seven is still like pretty hard. Yeah. Like that that's still pretty difficult. But uh the the thing that I always kind of have to explain to people is like RP six to seven doesn't mean every single rep moves the exact same speed and you finish it and you could have added 25 pounds and 10 more reps, right? So it's this very fine line of like they need to understand what the absolute max is in terms of that exercise, and then they work a little bit backwards from there. But you know, what I would say for you in this circumstance, how much do you weigh?

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Uh 225 right now, competing at 231. Okay. So what I would say is you're two and a half weeks out?

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Yeah. Um just shy of three weeks?

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Two Saturdays from yeah, but it's Monday. So Okay. So this week keep your RP or keep your accessories at RP eight to nine, next week go to seven to eight. Week of the meat go six to seven. Sweet. I have a pretty easy taper down.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

Yeah. I have a I have a coach right now, and that that's kind of what he gives me. Like I have I have uh this week is uh actually it's nine to ten. Um but it's like it's like sets of eight, uh, which is like the reps have been going down, and then yeah, I'm assuming this is gonna be my like my last for real training week, and then it'll be like RPE goes down, stuff gets slowly taken out, shuttled out, tapered down, kind of things like that. Okay, yeah. See, I I was always wondering about that because like you know, physiologically, the people that are the most trained are the people that detrain the fastest. So like I I I was always curious to see, like like obviously I would never like pull accessories from somebody, you know, four weeks out, but like I wondered if it was like you know, having accessories in there, would that just make them, you know, more so like would that do more damage than good, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Yeah. So I mean the big thing is um uh like Zat Syorski and Tudor Bumpa and all of these like Soviet sports scientists, like many, many moons ago, um, and I'll just say generally the Soviet sports scientists because I don't remember who specifically did this research, but they uh figured out how long it takes qualities to decay, right? So they they were like, yeah, like aerobic capacity will drop in three to five days, right? Like whatever will drop in, da da da. Do you know how long it takes to lose limit strength? A month. Yeah.

unknown 18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Now your technical proficiency, your you know, other things may decay much more quickly than that, but the actual strength itself, the the maximum contractile, you know, ability to produce torque at the joint, that takes a month to decrease.

unknown 18:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

That was that was kind of something that was uh I I had learned we were we talked about detraining and um just tapering like the differences between them in my exercise physiology class. And they it basically said that even at one third of maximum intensity, like that is enough to like keep your peak strength, as long as you know you're keeping your technique and your frequency and stuff up at the same. Like and I feel like that's super empowering for people that are like going through injuries, especially like little injuries, like little tendinitis or something, where it's like you might have to step back for a few weeks, like you're probably gonna be fine.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

Like, yeah, yeah. And and the thing too is like I remember because I know the research you're you're referencing, and it's like I think they did like one single at RP6 once a week, and that maintained your strength. Yeah, it was it was like very, very, very minimal. Yeah. Um, and I think people get like really frazzled, but at the end of the day, it's like if technical proficiency maintains, it doesn't actually require that much to keep your strength.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Yeah. Um do you have any thoughts on I I I've seen this happen uh more recently, just more on like social media and stuff. And I I was curious to get your thoughts from a physiological perspective or just like anecdotally what you've seen with your clients, um bracing in between reps of like let's say just for example a set of eight on squats and they do like the first two or three on one brace. And then like, you know, they do two more on one brace. Like, is that something that you would like say, hey, don't do that, or is that something you just kind of like allow?

SPEAKER_02 20:05

I think it's load specific, right? Like I remember I did an am wrap in wraps, which is gonna challenge your brace even more. Um, at I think it was 650, and I think I did like eight or ten. And like I had to rebrace every rep because I couldn't not, because if there was any reduction in spinal rigidity, what would have happened is that those wraps would have forced my leg straight and the bar would have gone over my head. Right. And I think it's it's mostly a function of load because what you can get away with at, you know, let's say you're a 500 pound squatter and you're doing a set of eight at 335. You can get away with a lot more compared to a 900-pound squatter and you're doing a set of eight at 725. Yeah. Right. So I think a load is going to be the ultimate determinant of that. And what I will say as an adjunct to that, um, it's whatever you've practiced. Okay. I would say most people, most of the time, we should probably rebrace, rebreathe. That said, if you're used to doing the opposite, whatever you do more consistently, you're gonna be better at. I don't know that it really matters to split hairs, but I do train my clients to be like, don't take one breath and do a bunch of reps because then you're also just gonna get lightheaded and feel weird. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Um I know your thoughts on this already, but I want to ask you in person to have in this this uh episode, and that would be do you have thoughts on straps on deadlift training? And uh in terms of someone who you know might complain and say that it helps because their hands hurt when they deadlift, and uh the people that just kind of do it. To do it.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Yeah. So what I like, my rule with clients is you can put on straps if your hands are tearing. Right? It's like if if you actually just can't hold on to the bar because you've torn your thumb or whatever, yeah. I have no issues. Use straps. What I would say, as a general rule, most of the time, is people, especially with hook grip, mixed grip, I would say, is less of an issue, but especially with hook grip, like that is a skill you have to practice. The more touches you have on that skill, the better that skill is gonna be. And there is something specifically to be said about what hook gripping uh at max intensities does and how it deforms your hand, and you need to have practice with that. And uh, you know, what I'll tell people is you're gonna like the more total reps you have with hook grip in a session, or the more total reps you have with grip in a session, the better your grip is gonna be. And if someone's hands are torn, yeah, you can use straps, but also like there is a strong correlate, and I had this conversation with my buddy the other day. There's a strong correlate between people who use straps on everything other than their top set and people who drop deadlifts when they're tired in a meet. And so, you know, my my the point that I would make in that is listen, I know what I tell my clients at the end of the day. I have an opinion on it. If other people want to use straps in their back downs, etc. Whatever. You're not fucking paying me. I don't care. If you drop a deadlift in a meet, you are never allowed to use straps again. Because you have shown that that leads to a failure in the meet, and the only time it matters that we're strong is in the meet.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah, that's I I don't use them. I I pull mixed and I don't use them uh for deadlift training, like literally ever. If I'm doing like comp deadlift training, like SLDLs or something, like sure. Um, but if I'm like I like I don't know, I just feel like I lose part of my technique because if I pull with uh like my versas, for example, if I pull with versa grips, I'm pulling hook, hook, or double overhand grip. And I feel like it like kind of pulls me out of position.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Well, your body is used to a certain level of pronation and supination on one arm versus the other, and your brace is set on that kind of asymmetrical lap position and potentially on that asymmetrical hip position, and you have tons and tons of reps in that position. So now when you put things back to neutral, that's not a pattern you've developed. Like I can't I can't pull with straps on anything other than like RDLs because it just feels off because I'm used to pulling hook. Like I and the other thing too, and and you know this very well from school, there's this idea of like irradiation, right? And if you're trying, right, when you squeeze your hand, you know, you have co-contraction all the way up the chain in your lat everything. Yeah, and if you have a more muscular biased deadlift and you're training a ton of reps without that irradiation, then when you go to do it, it's just not gonna feel as good. But grip also and squeezing onto something also affords us this opportunity to be stronger because we have irradiation. And what I would say as well is some people, uh, you know, if you're doing really high deadlift frequency, like your hands may actually get chewed up, right? Like Olympic lifters, you know, they may be snatching or clean and jerking five, six, seven times a week. Yeah, your hands are gonna get torn up and they use straps, and that's fair. But I don't know that I've ever seen an Olympic lifter on a world stage drop a snatch or a clean and jerk, you know, either in the turnover or off the floor. So it's like that's fine. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

So it's just it's just kind of like uh uh if it hurts you, obviously that's gonna be a no-no. But like, you know, if if like like you said, like obviously you literally cannot pull hook grip with a torn thumb. Like it's it's it's just not gonna happen, especially if you're at like any sort of relatively high intensity, not to mention you're never gonna want to pick up a deadlift bar again. Yeah. Um so I was curious about this because you've been in the game for a long time, and um I think one thing that people when they either see people powerlifting or they envision themselves powerlifting, um, they always think about like the well, I I feel like it's a very dangerous sport and people get hurt a lot. Like, do is that a misconception that you see?

SPEAKER_02 26:45

I think uh I think that so they've actually done research on this.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

And for hours practiced of the sport, I think Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting are like at the absolute bottom.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. I mean, what I've seen is uh can't remember where I saw, but I think it was like per thousand hours, it's like 0.5 to one. But then you look at like a contact sport like soccer, basketball, it's like eight, nine. So yeah, I was just I was just considering like how would you have you ever had to do like client onboarding with somebody and they're like, well, I've just heard that powerlifting is dangerous. Like, what are some things that you would you know sell that as?

SPEAKER_02 27:28

The funny thing is, you know, a huge component of my job is in this kind of post-surgical rehab space. So it's people who have gotten hurt lifting, and they understand that and they're fine with it, and they want to get back to strong, right? And so, you know, for them, it's like they've kind of accepted this. And I think it's if you're scared of getting hurt lifting weights, then don't lift weights. Like it's you know what I mean. Like no one's forcing you to do it. You can go to a Podys class, you can do yoga, you can do high rocks, you can do, I don't know, run club. Like, I don't care. You can do anything you want to move your body, and if you're scared of lifting weights and you think that it's gonna be this massive, deleterious thing, it's like, okay, no one's making you, but if you're gonna do it, like there's an inherent risk, but the inherent risk is very low. And then people look at me and be like, oh, well, look at what's happened to you. It's like, yeah, dude, I had 10 years of contact sports before I even started powerlifting. Like, you put super physiological amount of hormones plus massive amounts of weight plus additional external assistive devices like wraps, yeah, things are gonna fucking tear. Like that's that that's gonna happen. Because I did not make good choices before I started powerlifting.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Yeah. I also think there's like a huge uh psychological aspect of it too. Because if like if someone joins powerlifting and they're like, oh, I'm scared that I'm gonna get hurt, like they're the people that you gotta watch out for that are gonna get hurt because they're gonna try to overcorrect themselves or they're gonna constantly sandbag, and then in a meet, it's gonna like something's gonna build up, and then they're more you know, responsive to like little aches and discomforts coming into the gym.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

So well, it and then and then there's the there's the thing, right? It's like I don't know if you learned about this in school, but this idea of like top-down modulation. Uh no, not directly. Okay, so it's very interesting. So essentially what happens, right? So we have this no-susceptive stimuli or this noxious stimuli, and then that travels through the spinal cord up to the brain, and then the brain makes an interpretation on that pain. And it either it puts it in one of two buckets. It's either this is a big problem or this is not an issue at all. If we put it into the bucket of this is not really a problem, we have um like analgesic stimulus, right? So we now produce endogenous opioids and we have a down risk regulation of that no susceptive stimuli, and you actually experience less pain, right? So you you you have a reduction in pain in that area. But in these people who are kind of revved up, freaked out, scared to begin with, that top-down modulation occurs, and then it goes to the brain, and the brain says, This is a really big deal. And then you have these people freak out when they like they felt their peck tweak one out of ten, and they're like, Oh, I can't bench for two months. It's like you're fucking fine, dude. Even if you did tear your peck, it's six weeks to get back to baseline in terms of like healing whatever tear you had. Like, no, you're fine.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Yeah. Um on top of that, is there anything you've taken away from like your personal injuries and applied it to like how to approach injury from a psychological perspective? Because I'm assuming, I'm assuming that you know, the more you get hurt, the better you are at responding to getting hurt.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Yes. And so, I mean, the big thing is I always tell people is like time's gonna pass either way, right? You you're in this injured state, the prognosis based on your issue is six months to get back to normal. Time's gonna pass either way, and you have one of two choices. One, you either make the determination that this isn't that big a deal, I'm gonna nail my rehab, I'm gonna push on the things that I can push on, and all these six months will pass either way, and I'm gonna be much better for it because I will have worked on whatever other weak points I have. Or you can bemoan your circumstances, you can cry over what you've lost, you can cry over the fact that you couldn't do what you did before, and you're gonna make your next six months a living fucking hell. Only one of those has you end up better at the end. And the the the the negative response, nine times out of ten, leads people to quitting. So it's like, okay, if you want to quit, you can respond like that, but I don't think you want to quit, so shut the fuck up about it.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

Yeah, yeah. Um anecdotally, I had a back injury about a year ago, a year and three or four months ago. It was last January, and I was like literally like the strongest I had ever felt, and going into like what I was hoping was gonna be like a really huge block, and I came into training one day doing like high bar squats or something, got done with my set, and I literally could not bend over. Yeah, so um it like really scared me because never like like I like I said I didn't play football like all through grade school and stuff, so I never had like any serious like contact injuries, never had any I I've never like broken a bone or anything. So this was like the first thing that like really, really struck me. And for like a little while, I was like I was really torn down, and my it was going into actually a prep for collegiate nationals. I was like 12 weeks out, so I was like, I can't wait to go to collegiate nationals and squat 300 fucking pounds after I just squatted, you know, 550 at RPE six, like week two. So I was like, this sucks. So my my whole thought was I'm gonna get to this prep, I'm gonna do what I need to do. I ended up actually totaling my PR at collegiate nets, like even still like with this back pain. Um, and then like after that, I kind of just took the summer off and I was like, I'm gonna come in the gym, I'm gonna get my stuff done, but I'm not gonna push it because I want to get better. But I feel like just anecdotally for me, I felt like that made it worse because I was almost scared to get back into the gym and like scared to load up weight again. So I I was wondering if you've had any experience like that where it was kind of like you use that like reverse psychology kind of thing. Like, if I'm gonna get better, like I need to do it.

SPEAKER_02 33:42

Yeah. So before I did both of my knees, uh in 2019, uh May of 2019, I tore my left quad, lateral quad, so vasus lateralis up into TFL, so both TFL and lateral quad involvement. And then five months later, I did my right quad, exact same injury. Um and what I did is that I did the star method. So star method is essentially you go in the day after you get hurt, and you do the exact same movement and you start with the bar and you accumulate a hundred total reps. And then the next day you come in, you do the exact same thing, and you add maybe 10 pounds, maybe 20 pounds, and you just keep doing that until you're up at I don't know, 225 or something, but you're adding weight every single day based on pain tolerance, and pretty quickly you're back. I think seven weeks after I tore my left quad, I squatted like five fifty for eight high bar, right? So I was like pretty much back to pre-injury strength. And then my first, even in the session that I got hurt in, I think I squatted before I did my second set. I was meant to do like a five by five at like six sixty or something, six fifty-five or six sixty in ramps. And I got through my first set and it was like RP six, and I was like, all right, 6645, RP6, like I'm fucking good. Um, and then I got hurt again, and then I did the exact same thing, right? Which is like I just got back on the horse immediately because I could not let this the mental stain of this injury linger because then I'm actually just not gonna push myself. And you know, when we when we come to these difficult circumstances in life, it's like you're until death, all defeat is psychological. Like you fucking cannot get scared of stuff. You can be nervous, you can be anxious, but you cannot be fucking scared.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Yeah, I um in terms of like me for myself, like looking back at that, I'm glad I made mistakes, I'm glad I did what I did last summer or whatever. Uh, because now that I know that like oh shit, I can actually just start pushing again as long as I'm like, you know, moderating my pain, like making sure that nothing's going seriously wrong. But like looking back on it, I mean I took maybe four or five months off of squatting anywhere above sixty percent, and I got this much better. So I was like, oh damn it. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 36:18

Like, yeah. Like, I mean, and even when you look at this this idea of like the biopsychosocial model of pain, right? Um so it's sensory, cognitive, and effective, right? So sensory is the actual like no susceptive stimuli. Cognitive is your appraisal of the pain, um and effective is like fear of what the pain could mean, how long it's gonna stick around, etc. But each one of those three components, like they're all equally weighted. So 70% or you know, 66.6%, or whatever the fuck the math is, is not even the actual no-susception. And when we look at chronic pain, they do nothing to the actual like modulation of no susceptible stimuli. They do nothing, they only deal with cognitive and effective because they understand if that comes down, the actual no-susceptive stimuli becomes less intense.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Yeah. Um could you break down uh kind of what happened to you? Um which time? I know the time, the time, brother, the time. Um I know like I I mean you you just talked about a couple of your injuries, and those are like for real, like those are pretty significant injuries. Like you you dealt with them, I mean, from where I'm standing, you dealt with them really well. Um did you get surgery at all, or no? Was that just yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:47

So yeah, so in 2024, I ruptured both my patellar tendons, medial and lateral retinagulum on both knees. Uh uh, and then I six hour surgery reattached both patellar tendons. Um, and then I was in leg braces for 10 weeks, and I relearned how to walk, and I spent two weeks in impatient rehab, and then in 2025, I was coaching a rugby drill, and a kid ran into my outstretched arm and the bicep tendon like that, and then I ruptured my distal bicep tendon, which ended up in the ICU stay. God dang.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Yeah. Um, but no, I I was curious to hear about um I I I just watched your video like whatever, three or four days ago that you made where it was literally the laundry list. So I was wondering if you could kind of go through that uh and just kind of give a synopsis and how you got back to like where you are today, lifting and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 38:40

Yeah, so essentially what happened is I'm coaching this rugby drill. Kid kind of trips as he's moving in one direction, runs into my outstretched arm, 210 pound kid running into an outstretched arm. Typically the bicep will go. Um, and so I got in the next day for NMRI. They're like, Yep, distal bicep tendon's ruptured, retracted 6.6 centimeters. I saw the ortho's PA that day. By the grace of God, I had Kevin Kaplan, who's the ortho for the Jags. Um, and he's like a friend of a friend, and so he's like, Yeah, absolutely, I'll do your surgery. Two things, two weeks to the day of the injury. Um, I had my surgery, and interestingly enough, that morning I woke up with like uh two things. One, this like overwhelming sense of dread that something bad was going to happen. But two, this belief and understanding that like I was probably gonna be fine. Um, and about two months before I had had the injury, we had met this kid, his name is Bubba Hendricks. He actually wrote a book about it. Um, met this kid at a wedding, and he had died on the operating table. He literally like flatlined, died on the operating table, went to heaven, had a life review, and then literally was revived and came back to life like crazy, right? And his book was released, the book talking about this was released the day of my surgery, and my wife had ordered it. And I got the Amazon notification, and I look at her and I was like, I'm really worried that what happened to Bubba is gonna happen to me. And she's like, You're fine. You've had surgery before, you're fine. No, that wasn't correct. Um, and so um Buddy Scalder drives into surgery, the whole workup. I'm super fucking anxious. I tell uh the anesthesiologist, his name's Pete. Um, he's like, Yeah, dude, that's fine. I'll give you a little bit of Xanax. And then I was like, I'm good, whatever. And uh so they wheel me back. And in my previous surgery, they'd induced me, meaning they put you under anesthesia and give you propofol before you go into the operating room, right? They just induce you in kind of the other room and then they wheel you back once you're all fucked up. I was on the operating table before they induced me. And I'm like, oh, even with this Xanax, I am super freaking out right now. And uh so I was like, you know what, guys? Let's pray. And I made the entire surgical team hold hands and pray before the surgery, and then they induced me. And what happened was my whole family, and we now know this, uh, has a genetic mutation called RYR1. So you remember very well from school how you have these cal the calcium ion channels. Yeah. So in RYR1, when you're exposed to cevofluorane, which is a type of anesthetic, all those calcium ion channels in your entire body all open at once and they don't close.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

So are you talking about like entire bot like rigor mortise type skeletal contraction? Okay, okay. So yeah, continue.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

So entire body goes into um essentially failing muscular contraction, right? That it's kind of this weird in-between, but um that requires a huge amount of ETP, which requires a huge like produces a huge amount of heat. And then also you immediately start to get rhabdo. So then, because you know as well, the vast majority of the potassium in your system is held within your muscles, then you start to get this massive influx of potassium into the bloodstream. So, you know, Pete, who's my anesthesiologist, by the grace of God, he caught the reaction in the first like 60 seconds. He saw my CO2 go through the roof, which means that I'm obviously having a huge metabolic event. And uh he's like, fuck, this is malignant hyperthermia. And so he runs across the OR and he has to go to this malignant hyperthermia. It's called a crash cart, and he has to mix this medication because it doesn't come pre-mixed. And he has to mix this medication, he has to come back and he has to give it to me within the first couple of minutes. Because if you don't, fatality is like 90 or 95 percent. Even with him giving me the medication, my uh temperature had gotten up to 108 degrees Fahrenheit. And they're like, all right, he's in hypoxic respiratory failure, we have to keep him intubated. Um, and he's going through this essentially metabolic storm where everything is breaking down. By the grace of God, I make it from the uh surgical center to the hospital, which is about a 45-minute drive. Um, and on admission to hospital, my potassium was 7.6. So potassium of 7.6, like your chance of a cardiac event is like a hundred percent. Like they're just waiting for your heart to stop. And they wouldn't let my wife see me until they got my potassium under control because they're like, this guy's gonna code and you can't watch your husband die. Yeah. And so they give me a huge amount of insulin, huge amount of carbohydrates, that pulls the potassium out of my bloodstream. And then uh the doctors come out and they're like, hey, this is what's happened. Um we're gonna have to keep him sedated for a couple of days until this reaction wears off. Um, and he'll be good to go. Transfer me to the ICU. The first day, things are starting to not be good, but they're not bad. Right? My creatinine kinase is now at you know 19,000 or something, and which is pretty high. But they're like, you know what? He's in acute kidney injury, he's starting to, you know, develop uh. Kidney failure, but we're flushing him with fluids, and he should be okay. The Thursday, so 24 hours later, in a small percentage of cases, you something you have something called resocrudence, which is the reaction comes back again, but worse. So this reaction starts up again 24 hours later. And this time it's like worse than the first time. So they're giving me dantrolene, which is the which is the antidote. It's not controlling the reaction. And my temperature's now got on up to 108 for the second time. And there's so much intracranial pressure that my eyes are starting to push out of my head. And so at one point, they're like, he's probably going to die. And they had the social worker from the hospital come and talk to my wife about last wishes. So they're like, Does he want to be cremated? Does he want to be buried? Do you want us to do like, do you have a DNR order? Do you want us to try to resuscitate him? What do you want? And um they ended up having to put me on this like exothermic cooling suit. So they essentially wrap your whole body in this thing called an Arctic sun. And then it pulls heat away from your body. Um, but my temperature was like 108 for a while. And then they have a conversation with my wife. They're like, hey, uh, his temperature was high enough for long enough that he might be brain dead. Because we he may have cooked his brain. So they're like, tomorrow we're gonna wake him up and see, but he might be brain dead, in which case you can make the determination to keep him on life support or not. And uh at that moment, she kind of had this, she was kind of gripped by these visions of like me dying, all this stuff. And she was like, All right, well, and we're very religious. She's like, This is a spirit of fear, this is from the enemy. Um, and so she just starts praying, praying, praying, praying, praying, praying. And the next morning, uh, my body's like destroyed. Like my creatinine kinase is now like 90,000. Um, I'm in end stage kidney failure. They talk to her in the morning, they're like, hey, like we're gonna wake him up a little bit later, but uh he has to go on dialysis. Like his his his kidneys will not be able to handle this. Like he's going to he's gonna need a kidney transplant if we don't put him on dialysis. And she called my buddy Skyler, who is the one who dropped me off at surgery, and they didn't tell him fucking anything. They were literally like, Yeah, we're just taking him to the hospital out of an abundance of caution. And so he hadn't heard from me for a couple of days, and he was like, Oh, he's just recovering from surgery.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:27

And uh my wife calls him and she's like, Hey, like, you need to come right now. And he had been in Jerusalem over the summer because he'd been doing aid work in Palestine, and he had gone to the church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is where Joseph of Aramatea's tomb is, right? So the tomb that Jesus was buried in. It's a very holy pace in Christianity. And he got this little bottle of anointing oil, came home, put it in his cabinet, forgot about it. And then she calls and tells him this, and he's like, Oh my god. And so he comes immediately, drives from Kingsland down to Jack's, and uh he prays over me, he anoints me, and he's like, God, I know I can't do anything, but I need you to save my friend. And they did blood work four hours later to confirm that I needed to, like, that they were going to be putting me on dialysis, and my creatinin kinase had dropped by like 20 or 25,000 points in four hours. And then they wake me up to make sure I'm not brain dead, and I'm not brain dead. And then they do blood work another four hours later to confirm that I don't need to go on dialysis. My creatininkinase dropped another 20,000 points. So in eight hours, my creatinin kinase dropped 40,000 points. Um, and then the next day everything normalized again, my creatinokinase dropped probably another 10,000 points. Uh, and then I woke up the next day. So that's what happened.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

Dang. And how how was that like how was the transition from that to like where you are now? Like you get out of hospital, you're like, I don't know what this was. It must have been God that just saved my life. What am I going to do now?

SPEAKER_02 48:07

Yeah, and it was uh it was a very interesting one because for the first couple of weeks, like they uh I think the technical term for it is like post-critical illness or post-critical care PTSD, where it's like you just your brain, like you cannot come off of like flight or flight. And it was the fucking worst thing of all time. I could not sleep for more than four hours. And my wife was the exact same way because she watched me in a coma for six days, and uh I could not sleep for more than four or five hours, and I was just fucking exhausted all the time. And the and the other thing too is like when your body gets cooked like that, you essentially end up with metabolic damage, right? Like all of your cells had this huge, massive inflammatory response, and so like even your mitochondria are not producing as much ATP, so you're just generally exhausted. Um, but then you know, I kind of started to realize and I started to talk about my story, and people heard it and they reached out to me, and then I started to have these great conversations, you know, about God and faith with these people, and uh, you know, the fruit of the fruit of that circumstance was very, very, very, very positive. Um, and by the grace of God, by the time I left the hospital, my kidney function was the best it had been in probably three or four years. Um, you know, I ended up getting pneumonia from the ventilator, my lungs didn't have any scarring. Um, I ended up with this thing called uh disseminated intravascular coagulation, which is essentially like a critical illness thing where they're like, you're probably gonna fucking die. Um that resolved. Um, I ended up with a massive blood clot in my left arm because my D dimer was so high. That resolved. Um, I didn't have any lasting neurological deficits. Um, literally, like aside from my bicep looking a little bit funny, like I have no lasting effects from the entire thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:08

That's that's why like that is like I mean, I I I hear stories about like injuries or like surgeries, and like there's complications, but that is like so much further beyond. Like you're thinking you're going. I mean, obviously, you had these terrible thoughts, like you kept saying, like you could not shake these thoughts, but like you're going in for a surgery that is relatively you know bicept tenor repair. Like the it's it's not even like we're we're touching any like major arteries, or like there's a femoral fracture that's impeding the femoral artery, or like you know, like any risk that is associated with this surgery is associated with any other surgery, but just at higher risk, even. So it's like it's like it's just crazy that like all of this thing, just this monster of metabolic damage, like out of nowhere, just like I mean, uh essentially pounded you into a hospital bed for a week, and now you're here with a funny-looking bicep. Like, yeah, like dude, that's wild.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

Yeah, well, and and yeah, it's crazy, crazy experience.

SPEAKER_00 51:26

Yeah, I mean, thank you for sharing that because I of course I I didn't want it to be like anything where it brought up memories or anything, but uh I'm glad that that's what counseling's for. Okay. I'm glad that you can talk about that because I I think that's very important for people to. I mean, you know, it doesn't have to be the first thought in your brain when you go to do anything, but obviously, like to come to terms with it and to accept the circumstances that you're in, and especially to accept the outcome, it seems like you're doing well now. So that's good.

SPEAKER_02 51:55

Yeah, well, and it was one of those things where like when I got out, like, because you're detoxing off all the shit, right? You're detoxing off of propofol, you're detoxing off of fentanyl, you're detoxing off of midazolam, which is this other horrible benzo they give you. Um, and you feel like you're gonna fucking die. And like I smell, and the grossest part was like I went to kiss my wife when I got home and she's like, You smell funny. And I was like, What do you mean? And I smelled myself, and I smelled like chemicals. Like I stank like chemicals, and I would have these night sweats every night for weeks, and like you like you feel like you're gonna die because you're actually like pretty close to death, even though you're no longer critically ill. Um, and I had like a couple of nights where I felt really bad going to bed, and I was like, you know what? If I go home and meet Jesus tonight, I've had a pretty good life, just take care of my wife.

SPEAKER_00 52:47

Yeah. Oh, that's wild. Um, yeah, uh hot like the main reason I wanted to ask you about that is because um shit happens to everybody in their life, and what I hope with this is that if anyone were to watch any five minutes of this or any other one of my podcasts, they would hear this and they would be like, oh, okay, so uh this pector that I just had that I just had surgery on, and now I'm not gonna be able to lift heavy for three months or whatever it is, like it's not that bad. And not only is it not that bad, like I'm gonna be fine. It's not it's not it's not that bad, but I'm still not gonna be as strong as I was. It's it's not that bad, and I'm gonna be fine. It's just gonna take time that would have like passed anyway. Yeah. Like, um, so are you are you like back? Do you like do you just do you still do powerlifting or I know you don't compete anymore, but do you still like training?

SPEAKER_02 53:55

I do like yeah, I do like fun stuff, right? So it's like I uh I mean I have a very basic program, which is that I do barbell overhead press one day and dumbbell incline as my secondary, and then upper accessories, and then the other day I do barbell incline and dumbbell overhead press as my secondary, and then I do accessories, and then I do a hack squat day, you know, posterior chain, and then I do uh RDL, and then I do anterior chain. It's like pretty basic four days a week. Um, and I just you know anywhere from eight to twenty reps and try to progress on a week to week and month-to-month basis, and it's great. I mean, like I got out of the hospital, I was 233 pounds, um, which is the lightest I'd been in probably 12 years. Um and then it was probably six months and a couple weeks, and now I'm 260, which was right around the weight that I was when I got hurt. So 27 pounds back, zero loss of strength. I set uh overhead press PR this past week and set an incline PR. I inclined 225 for 20, I overhead pressed 225 for 10. So you know, hack squatted four plates for 12, like that pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 55:07

Nice, yeah. Um I know you made a video on this about um dealing with uh being at the end of your competition days. Um is there any advice you could give people who like who are feeling like they might be on the verge of that, like for any multitude of reasons?

SPEAKER_02 55:33

If your life is full enough and you have enough friends and family and other things to keep you occupied, you know, like hobbies, etc. Uh you can bow out gracefully, or you can essentially kind of making it a living hell, and you might have your last two or three meat experiences be fucking miserable. Um what I wish I would have done is the meet before I got hurt with my knees, uh it was like a ride the lightning meet, right? Like I tore my hamstring three weeks out. I still like black and blue down the whole back of my leg. I still ended up setting a total PR. It was a five-pound total PR over what I had hit before I had had all my injuries, like five years prior. I was able to compete with my uncle, who's 65 years old, right? Like all of these, like you know, kind of like showing myself I was back and I could get back from literally anything. And had that been my last meet, I would have been like, that's that's the perfect beat, right? Maybe it's not the numbers I wanted, but that's the perfect beat. I got to spend time with my family, my wife got to see me compete at a high level again, and uh, but I got greedy, right? And and when people are not willing to accept, it's like, hey, like this might be the end of the road, and they want to push forward. The psychological I don't know, misery that results is pretty extreme, but you're gonna know when it's time to go, and it makes a lot more sense to just accept it and bow out gracefully than to just ruin the end of your career and have it be miserable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:11

Yeah, that's that's interesting. Um I know like in terms of you know the grand scale of sports, powerlifting is something that you can pretty much do it forever. Maybe not at like a high level, but you know, like you stay healthy, you stay consistent, like there's a pretty decent chance that you can compete at a high level for you know ten, fifteen plus years. Like most of the you know, people that are doing worlds right now are like well into their thirties. So it's like it's it's it's good to see that, but then also it's like some people it it just might not be in the cards for you to you know compete that long, and like that's fine. Um one of the biggest things that uh David talked about when I talked to him, he was he was just like you're gonna realize uh after you know whenever you end up stopping powerlifting that it's like nobody really gave a fuck how much you squatted, and like if your uh whole identity is like you are a power lifter and nothing else, like it's gonna be so much worse than someone who like competes at a high level but also accepts that like they have a life outside of it.

SPEAKER_02 58:23

I learned that from Dan Bell, dude. Like, you know, perfect storm is an hour and a half south of us. We would go down and train with them, and bro, this dude's like living his best life. He's like out drinking beers, you know, he's fucking going on motorcycle rides with his buddies, he's like drinking beers during his workout, has got a big old dip in, right? Doesn't give a fuck, and he's just having fun, he's just shooting shit, and he's the best dude, man. But for him, it's like he's like, yeah, powerlifting is just one of the things that I do. And uh, you know, even like when I saw the best football players and the best rugby players, the ones who actually had the hardest time progressing were the ones who took it like serious to the point of neuroticism where it would actually cause them to perform worse. But like, I mean, bro, there was a guy that I played football with in university, and he would get high and drunk like the night before games. And I'm not talking like smoking weed, I'm talking like hard drugs, like Johnny Manzel. He was the number one receiver in the country. Bro, and it's it's one of those things where for him he's like, bro, he's like, I'm fucking good, whatever. And it just I think it actually allowed him to just like chill out and do what needed to be done. Yeah. But like, bro, yeah, nuts.

SPEAKER_00 59:44

Yeah. Um, I've I I've had like a a good um like a healthy conscience in me, knowing that like if I have to travel and like there's not a powerlifting gym close to me, I'm like, it's okay, like it's not my life. Yeah, is my first bench session back probably gonna suck? Sure, but like I'm gonna be okay. Like, this is not my entire personality, my life hinges on more than just you know moving a barbell up and down and like whatever it may be. Yeah. Um, and then I I have I have one more kind of like programming question. Um is is there any way that like SBD would make it into, you know, one, two, three or other would make it into uh just like a basic hypertrophy crep program that you would make for a client?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:38

Yeah, because they're fun and they're easy to progress on. And if number on the bar goes up and you go from squatting 225 for 10 to 315 for 10, your legs are gonna grow. Yeah. Right? And it's and it's one of those ones where some clients might be totally fine with just doing machines, right? And optimizing lines of pull, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Some clients are like, I just kind of want to do these things and progress on these things. And like, I have, you know, general population kind of lifestyle fitness clients, they all squat and bench press and deadlift because they like squatting, bench pressing, and deadlifting. You know, and it and it's like, you know, could a more externally stabilized hack squat, blah, blah, blah, blah, be a little bit more beneficial? Sure. But at that point, we're talking gradations of a few percent, right? It's like, okay, it might be 90 versus 95% in terms of total muscular output, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like it doesn't fucking matter. Yeah. Right. What matters is that they enjoy the program and they can consistently go in and add weight to their mains and their accessories, and they're bought in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

I also I also kind of see that they always have this like devil's advocate where it's like, yeah, you could do what is optimal, but like if you don't train at the same intensity, it's no longer optimal. No. So, I mean, you know, having a client that might want to barbell squat just because he or she wants to barbell squat, it's like, if you're gonna train hard at a barbell squat, like I would rather you do that than sandbag a leg press three times a week. You know what I mean? So, okay. I I was kind of wondering, I kind of assumed that you were gonna, you know, agree on the same kind of thing, but I was curious to see like where you kind of drew the line, but um, yeah. Uh okay. Um, I have I have one like closing question for you. Because I mean, I know I said keep it to a half hour, been going for like an hour. I don't give a fuck, dude. Whatever. All right, that's cool. Um you made a video on this too, but again, I I uh I want this to be in there, and I think it'd be a good note to end on. Uh if I had to give you how to have the best training session, go.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:52

All right. So starts the night before. Right? You're gonna make sure that your last meal uh has a sufficient amount of protein, high degree of carbohydrates, um, you know, make sure you have some micronutrients in there too, so you're not your stomach's not bloated the next morning, you can't take a shit. Uh you're gonna get up, first thing you're gonna do is slam a liter of salt water, maybe add some coconut water in there so you got your potassium. Uh, you're gonna wait, you're gonna have your breakfast moderately sized. Um, and then you're gonna on the way to the gym, you take two liters of coconut water, and then you know, two or three of those Gatorade sticks or liquid I've used or whatever. You're gonna mix them together. You're gonna drink half it on the way to the gym. You take a pre-workout. Um, and then, you know, as you're going through, you know, your general mobility and stuff, you're gonna be thinking about what you're doing on your main stuff, right? Okay, what are the cues that I'm thinking about? Right? And all the while you're doing this, always, always, always be listening to music, right? Music that's a BPM of higher than 140 is going to have a performance benefit, right? So you want to get yourself in the zone and you're thinking about the things you're doing. Oh, and you're visualizing it mentally, right? You're rolling out on the foam roller, you're like, I'm gonna unrack my squat, I'm gonna make sure my upper backside, I'm gonna make sure that my brace is on, I'm gonna take two steps, I'm gonna take a gather step, I'm gonna make sure I re-squeeze my upper back, rebrace, and I'm gonna make sure that I, you know, hinge enough to hit depth or whatever. And you're running through 10, 15, 20 mentor reps before you even get to, you know, unracking just the bar. And then in all of your warm-ups, make sure your phone's on airplane mode. You're filming your warm-ups, you're looking at what your warmups look like, you're looking at where you have deviations and breakdown and technique, and you're taking that into the next session or next next set rather, and you're just focusing on exquisite, you know, technically perfect reps. Um, and then by the time it gets to your top set, things should be ripping and run pretty good. And then uh what I always tell people for top sets is uh always listen to the same song. Always listen to the same song. And the longer you listen to the same song, the better it works. So for me, for probably six years, my one-root max song was Carrion by Parkway Drive. And uh, because once your brain hears that and it knows that it's it's temporaries associated with some kind of max effort, some kind of intense movement, you're gonna get that neurological upregulation, that dump of adrenaline, all that good stuff. And then you do that, and then you know, finish the rest of your intra workout carbs, get into your accessories, high BPM music, ideally have a training partner. That's gonna be your best training session ever. Thanks, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:33

That was awesome.