The Future of Powerlifting with Kyle Young | Episode 12

In this episode of UNRACKED, we sit down with Kyle Young, CRO of the USPA and one of the coaches for Team USA Powerlifting, for a deep dive into the past, present, and future of powerlifting.

We go deep on Kyle's training philosophy around spine mechanics, breathing, and bracing, as well as foot, ankle, hip, and shoulder function. Whether you’re a strength coach, personal trainer, sport scientist, or powerlifting guru, this session is packed with actionable insights you can take straight to the weight room.

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UNRACKED is a live conversation series from BridgeAthletic where top coaches break down the training systems, methods, and philosophies that drive performance at the highest level. Hosted by Bridge coach Cooper Napoli, the show pulls back the curtain on how elite coaches think, adapt, and solve problems in the trenches.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Hey, what's up everybody? I know we're we're kinda all trickling in here, uh, but as you guys are are arriving to the episode today, I would love to hear where you're from in the chat. Um always one of my my favorite parts of the episode, so go ahead, let us know where you're from, and we'll dive into it in a second. I'm sure we got a lot of coaches kind of coming from from sessions this morning and such, so Rob, welcome, dude. As you folks are trickling in, let us know where you're from. New Orleans, uh Oregon. Nice. I'm in Vegas for uh for a conference, so doing it from the hotel room today, not my not my usual setup, but love it. Very national crew. Yeah, got a good national now. Got some Canadians, yeah. Welcome, folks. Sick. Well we're gonna we're gonna get it going. Um just to let you guys know a little bit about us, right? Unwracked is a live uh conversation series from Bridge Athletic. Uh Bridge provides coaching tools to world-renowned organizations like the Atlanta Falcons, Naval Special Warfare, University of Arizona, and Westside Barbell. Uh they provide very same tools for coaches like me and you to use in our communities, deepen the training experience there. So um Unracked is like our free conversation series uh that Bridge puts on. We we break down systems, methods, philosophies that drive performance at the highest level. And really each episode is designed to take you inside a specific approach, kind of like how things are built, how things are applied, and how you know everything is really evolving under we're real world conditions with coaches that are like actually doing something meaningful in the in the arena there. So the only kind of disclosure here I gotta read is uh views expressed by our guests are their own and don't necessarily reflect the position of Bridge Athletic or our partners. Um today's guest, all right, Chief Relations Officer and Director of Education for USPA, where he also served as uh Team USA head coach from 2021 through 2026. Uh he's the founder of uh Dream Team Performance and has spent decades working at the intersection of elite coaching, education development, and business leadership. Uh Kyle consults with elite athletes, coaches, and gym owners nationwide on training, strategy, and program development. And uh with powerlifting being one of the fastest growing sports in the world, I think uh Kyle's one of the best equipped people to kind of let us know how we got here, what we're doing now to build the future of the sport. And uh yeah, Kyle Young, welcome to the show, man. Appreciate it. Horse, brother. Um, so I kind of want to start today, you know, getting a little bit more understanding about you know your background and you know, obviously you've you've coached at the world level. That's not something everyone is gonna get to do. Um and I'm really curious like how you built, you know, your your skills to step up and and take that role.

SPEAKER_03 3:09

Yeah, so uh starting way back early on in my career, I was just a little guy in gym and I got my first personal training cert because I wanted to better understand what I was doing. Um we're talking like 20 years ago, right? So um a lot of there's a lot of information out there. There's even more now with Instagram and you know social media and all this stuff, but a ton of information, a lot of it didn't quite seem right to me. I'm looking at some big dudes in the gym and I'm like, this doesn't really look right. I'm getting all these different bits of information. So let me dive in, let me get my my certification, let me start learning. Then that led to, hey, maybe I can quit doing construction and other stuff and make some money at this. So, like a lot of trainers, I walk up to one of the big guys in the gym, probably bench press like at 500 pounds, right? Horrendous form. And I'm like, hey, I think I can help you. Followed up with the how much do you bench question? I'm like, uh, 225. When you can bench 500, you come tell me something. And I think there's still a lot of that out there with strength athletes. But I realized there was a lot to learn, and mostly my approach to big strong athletes. But fast forward went from there to working in a gym as a personal trainer to becoming a um lead trainer, fitness manager, rode the ranks pretty good through there, was Konar a CrossFit Gym. During that time, I was still just very interested in studying and learning everything. And I was trying to get as many certifications as I could. Um USAW coach, CrossFit coach, I fell in love with strength as an athlete. I was trained to get my black belt, training kickboxing, jujitsu, all kinds of things. But um, for me, ultimately, everything I did fitness related, CrossFit, you know, no matter what it was, it led back to strength. Um, did my first powerlifting meet, had no idea what I was doing. I was the annoying kid who walked in, wrapping my own knees, didn't know where to be, what to do, asked everybody in line, like, hey, do you know when I should warm up? A lot of people were like, get out of here, kid. But also, a lot of people, the the sport of powerlifting is pretty cool. I see it all the time at meets now. Um, pretty helpful. You obviously don't know what you're doing. Go over here, do this. Um ultimately I fell in love with strength. And I've worked with so many athletes, um, pro fighters, pro ball players, strong men, obviously most powerlifters, but enough athletes to know that the stronger we can get people, the better base we have, then I can send the crossover out for their gymnastics training, right? For their Olympic weightlifting. But a strong base, I don't care what you play, table tennis, a strong base is going to keep you injury free and excel at performance. Um, so fast forward, a lot of coaches probably know me from my my years at uh Kabuki Strength. I was on the side of Kabuki Strength before it was even a company, before they had a duffalo bar and a shoulder rock in Portland, Oregon. I remember sending some of my athletes there, I had my own gym, and I started cross-training there when it was still elite performance center for my competition prep.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

Fast forward, I remember going to, I think it was their second certification, and that was a big game changer for me because I realized, and where I'm going with this is systems. I realized that even though I was a national champion, had uh coached a couple world record holders at this point in time, I had so much information up here and I couldn't display it well, right? I didn't have a good way to take in information either. It was a lot of in-person training and it was great, but there wasn't a duplicatable system. I took the first and it wasn't even um kabuki strength still at the time, it was Duffin Movement Systems. Um the information was okay. Yeah, I think it was seminar number two, and I was blown away, um, pretty open to knowledge, but thinking I knew everything, and I learned some new stuff, but the simplicity of having a system, step one, step two, step three, to be able to duplicate it and share that knowledge. I came back to my gym first time in many, many years and made some massive changes to what I was doing in coaching. Um got out of the fitness industry, closed that down, uh, that chapter in my life, started to work for Kabuki part-time um as a coach, sales. Um that led to some interesting uh times, meeting a lot of the strength coaches. I was blessed to be a strength coach, but also on the sales side. Um got to meet every single Major League Baseball uh coach throughout a couple years of spring training, got to see some really cool facilities and talk shop with a lot of the top coaches um outside of just coaching strong athletes and powerlifters. So um stayed with them up until the the company changed and eventually they shut down fast forward a bit more, uh went went uh more in depth with the USPA, helping them with their coaching and education program, um uh among other things, international referee, team USA head coach. At the same time, I moved to Houston and started Dream Team Performance. So that's kind of how we got here where we're at.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

I love it, dude. That's that's so cool. And I mean, I think a real testament to just like how long it takes to be in the room with those people, right? Like the relationship building and you know, a lot of it done through you know education and like you know, mastering the craft, like with the gear and you know, all that stuff that you guys were doing out of kabuki. That's uh that's badass, dude. I appreciate uh you sharing all that stuff. So I I kind of want to dive into like kind of a little bit of like what you just talked about, but like really like the the history of powerlifting itself, and you know, from your perspective, like I feel like the sports had parabolic growth um, you know, over the last decade probably. Um but I'm I'm really curious, like, you know, from origin to like now, like like what has shifted to make this like so in the mainstream?

SPEAKER_03 9:18

Social media, I would say for for one, right? Yeah. If you look at training in the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, like I remember um getting a download from Elite FTS, you know, from from Dave Tate, like and and I I used half of the um paper in the gym to print it. There was no video to go watch, right? Back in the day with competition, you didn't know what people were doing, people weren't posting on Facebook. Um, you know, go back even further to date myself with strength training a bit, but like flip phones, you weren't recording videos and uploading them on Facebook, and before Facebook was a thing. So now the younger generation just has so much more in front of them, good and bad, right? And I can easily share and and train with friends and you know, whatever across the world by by uploading. So I really think that was the biggest growth. Um, the female population is probably number two, where it was a mostly definitely a male dominant sport, and it was just something meathead guys did. Women have fallen in love with strength training. Um, and they know they're not gonna get bulky and they want to be proud and strong, and it's it's super awesome to see that growth going even faster, I think, than than the rest of the uh population.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

I love it. Yeah, like you, I mean, you mentioned kind of the good and the bad with with the social media element there. Can you can you go a little deeper on that?

SPEAKER_03 10:44

Yeah, for sure. So um I uh I don't have a big social media following. Um I should put more out there, but it I I wrote on the coattails of Kabuki's strength for so long. I personally just don't like social media, it annoys me. That's why I try not to be on there that much. But one of the annoying things is you can go on and not to knock uh you know coaches. I was actually talking with a client yesterday um about uh uh a friend who started training with a new coach. And if you look at their social media, it looks huge. But how do they, if they're if they're promoting their social media brand that much, how do they have time to really run spreadsheets, data, track things? They're a social media influencer. Unless they work with three clients, they really can't put that much time into coaching. And a lot of youngsters don't see that. They're like, oh man, this person has 250,000 followers and they're big and strong. I always say it like my fighting background, uh, some of the best fighters I know couldn't teach you to throw a punch well at all.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_03 11:44

It's not because they've been hit in the head a lot, right? That's that's not why. Yeah, they're just a stud athlete and they have no idea how they got there. And if they're truly a stud athlete, teaching a more mortal human to have some skill, you you're you're on two different starting places. Um probably my biggest complaint. My second would be um so much conflicting information. I see youngsters start a program, and before they see it through, they're on to a different program or a different coach or a different follower. They haven't even built their athletic base yet of you know, two years, five years, whatever may be. Every six months they're on to something else. And it's really hard to figure out what you're doing if you're always trying somebody else's theory and methodology. It's great to learn, but there's so much bad information that's free and that people are paying for out there.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

So yeah. Yeah, I hear you on that point. And and I think like the philosophies that obviously like stand on their own two feet under some serious scrutiny are obviously the the the ones that are working, but like, you know, I I feel like what I see on the social media side of things is like everybody kind of has this lift that they suck at, or you know, whatever, and you know, like you said, they'll they'll try ten different things and and and see what works, and and then maybe none of them work, you know, for that athlete and such. But like then you look at guys like you know, like a John Hack or like a Colton Engelbrecht, and it's like you guys are like crushing all of us, right? At all three. And like I'm like kind of curious like to dive into a little bit of the X's and O's and like the systems that that are working, like you know, for for for us for us mere mortals, I guess, so to speak. Like, like how do you feel like you can address that element of like, hey, like somebody sucks at this lift and we need to bring it up, and you know, these are not like the world-class athletes here, these are you know normal folk like me and you.

SPEAKER_03 13:45

Yeah, so one thing that comes to mind, um I'll go somewhere with this, but to jump back to the the previous question or statement we were on, we used to see this at Kabuki Strength a lot, and then with USPA at in-person seminars. And let's say you have uh uh you know a smaller guy or female, doesn't really matter, but you know, a guy five, three, hundred and forty some pounds, and they're trying to lift their deadlift like Thor is because they idolize Thor, right? Like, yep. Cool, you want to be big and strong like him, and you're probably strong for your size, that's great, but you're kind of two different humans, right? I see a lot of bench press guys under 200 pounds trying to bench press like a dude who weighs 400 pounds, Julius Maddox, yeah. You probably want your technique to look like somebody your size just from leverages and other things. So when we get our our base down, um that that really has to be number one. If we don't have a good technical base and we're always jumping around chasing somebody else's technique and form, the other X's and O's aren't gonna work really well. I used to tell people um in the kabuki strength days, we're gonna hit you with a one-two punch. And that's really what I do with Dream Team still uh working with athletes. If we can tweak a couple things position-wise, I don't like to talk technique, same thing for some people, but if we can tweak a couple things in your position, and now immediately you're moving better load, safer longer term, and then we can hit the home run by adding good programming on top of that. Now the X's and O's are gonna work, right? Now we're really, really getting somewhere. And I think that's missed a lot. Um, people just jump right in and think a new program or a new bench volume is going to um to save itself. Now, yeah, so my main point on your question, um, I I always share this with all coaches, so excited to see some coaches try this outside of just powerlifting who are on the call, right? But strength sports and even um, you know, uh others uh as well for their own technique is where do you sneak that in? So I've got a very good eye for movement. I feel like that's one thing that God blessed me with as a coach. Yeah, some coaches struggle with seeing things, and the only way you're gonna get that better is more time. I think all coaches should be looking at their own technique. I'm one of the coaches to say coaches should have coaches, and most of my career I've been coached. I'm not currently getting coached, but up to a little while ago, I I was.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:24

I like to view everything on video from warm-ups to top sets. That's a very underlying utilized tool that everybody can do. Coaches, right? Yeah, as long as the school can do it. If I can utilize my phone and show them back slow-mo or real time, we're gonna see things a little bit different the second time, right? So the technique hack I have is one, you have to get better eye for movement. You don't have to be as good as me, because here's the hack. Try something slightly different. And this hit me uh a long time ago with working with a client, and I noticed because I tracked data that all of a sudden our secondary bench day, where we would do some close grip and some other things that wasn't related to comp competition, all of a sudden, let's say she has a 185-pound competition bench, all of a sudden we're doing 185 for five to six reps close grip. And I'm like, hmm. So I ask a question like, hey athlete, did you notice X? I'm like, cool, guess what your new competition grip whip is? And they're like, it blew my mind when I heard it from they're like, but I can't. What like can't you?

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:38

Well, I thought that powerlifting misconception, I thought I had to be as big of arch as possible and really wide because that's the powerlifting grip. I hate hearing stuff like that. Well, this is the class fit stance, yeah. So even if you're working with football players and you have a suspicion, hey, I think this athlete's too wide, sometimes they just don't buy in because we're strong and we're meat heads, right? So we think we know better. Coaches, try a different stance, do it on the secondary day, sneak it in there, sneak that grip in on a day where it's not a primary movement. If you like speed work, try it on their speed work. If if you track data and that starts excelling at a faster rate than their normal strength training is, then you ask the athlete the question, all of a sudden it's their idea to try the new position. They've bought in, and you're just the smart coach behind the scenes going, I knew it. I could have done that. And here's the other cool part. If you're wrong and their squat stance isn't better by this small adjustment, you didn't mess with their main strength day, and it was worth a try, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I I I love that because you know uh I had some coaching with a guy, uh his name's Adam Miller, and he um he's kind of talking about like, look, like maybe this gives you the best mechanical advantage uh over the bar because it's a short distance or whatever, but it's not the best biomechanical advantage that you can secure, right? And that comes through a lot of experimentation and you know getting getting the most amount of muscle to kind of contract against the bar there. So to kind of to kind of go back to what you kind of initially said there, that stuck out of my mind is like this this concept of position, right? And and what that means. And and from my point of view, with like what you said, it's effectively finding the physics-based element here of like where are we getting the most amount of output with the best kind of like you know, bio biomechanics that we can there. So, like, can you unravel that like coaching eye a little bit that you're talking to, having having that gold standard of and in terms of position, like what you're looking at, what you're looking for? Um, let's start there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:55

So the the next great hack that I'll give all coaches and athletes um listening to is this is why you have to see yourself. Even if you're getting coaching, in my opinion, even if your coach is in the weight room with you, and I know some schools and high schools and whatnot, you can't have a phone, so it is what it is. But in a perfect world, if one or three coaches are working with 20 athletes in a football room, right? In a weight room, you're never going to get personal one-on-one full attention. There's gonna be times and eyes aren't on you. And if coach is telling you something, or you're coaching yourself, and you're like, hey, I know that in my deadlift, I set up with my shoulders rounded and my head forward, and we need to break that habit so I have better spinal alignment. If you're not viewing that until you're top set and you're like, man, that feels bad today. Let me look at it or let me wave coach over. You just lost all of the opportunities to fix that, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:46

So my hack, it has to start with getting eyes on the movement, whether it's your coach, video, yourself, a friend, doesn't really matter. There's even some AI apps that are coming out and you know whatnot, pretty cool to at least tell you, like, hey, your knees caved in. You may not have felt that. But deviation of position. I wish somebody would have gifted me this early on in my career because I was chasing perfection. And I say this to my athletes all the time: deviation and position. A good example.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:16

Say this is my bench press, my elbows are underneath the bar. I'm pressing well. Is it perfect? Maybe, maybe not. We're not gonna go down perfection right now. Good rep.

SPEAKER_02 21:29

That's exaggerated.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

My elbow started in good position. On the way up, it changed, it deviated from its initial position, and here.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Right.

SPEAKER_03 21:41

That's gonna lead to problems in my shoulder if I do that enough times. Yeah, but power output just went through the floor, right? So even if it was just my eight sets of two speed work at 50% with bands, I'm not producing as much, even if I don't go up and wait, I'm not producing optimal output. Optimal horsepower into that barbell. So I'm not getting optimal results. Another way I like to talk about it that I think makes good sense for everybody is in my setup. Right? So I start with pretty good position, I unrack the bar, I move things, and I know I'm exaggerating here, right? But I move things around, including my head and my back, and then I set back up. If that movement, if that deviation of position did not elicit a benefit, stop doing it. Right? Taking four steps back in the squat. I ask athletes, did that help you? Well, no, then don't do it. It's a waste of position, it's a waste of time, energy, and effort.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:45

I like lifters to lift robotically. When you're on the football field, look like a Heisen Trophy winner. That's awesome. When you're boxing, flow and move. But there's times when we should be completely locked down and look like a robot. So again, coach doesn't have to have the best eyes or the best tech in the industry. Was there a deviation of position? And then I like to talk metronome with that. A beginner athlete, they might be all over Hellenback. Can I just start to shorten up that movement? So now pretty soon we're looking at a half inch of deviation under the barbell versus they used to have four inches when it gets heavy. We're headed the right way. Their power output's going up, they're getting stronger.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

So yeah, and I'm I mean, that that that's a really cool way to think about it there. But like when it came to like getting a pitcher to throw accurately a 100 mile per hour fastball or you know, what what what whatever um you know pitch they were throwing, like there's the element of just slinging it and getting as much velocity as you can, regardless of the technique. But then there's like, okay, we got a back 20% off, so you don't like need Tommy John in like you know a few months here. And like I feel like powerlifting is it's it's the same thing as like throwing a pitch in that regard. Like there's what your body can do, and then there's what your body should do. So like, and it sounds like you know, those things as an athlete gets more advanced, they kind of tighten up and be eventually, right? Elite athletes make that one and the same, right? Like the efficiency and the output are are there.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

So like how they do this, but that should be the coach's ultimate goal.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We hope they too is a very important caveat there. Um, but I'm curious, yeah, like on the journey from like beginner to pro, like, you know, to um, you know, like these elite totals, like what do you find is kind of some of the stuff that like you're you're specifically working on with your athletes to like get them to that level? Because obviously, like from my point of view, I see there's a massive difference between putting a thousand pounds on your back and putting 500 pounds on your back and putting 200 pounds on your back, regardless of what like you know what that is in terms of like your relative strength and such. So like I'm curious, like, how are you handling those like world-class lifters compared to your more beginner ones?

SPEAKER_03 25:23

Um, for any of my elite lifters on here or or listening, you guys can plug your ears real quick. Some of the pro fighters that I've worked with, uh pro crossfitters, um, best I've I've been blessed to work with, you know, obviously a large handful of the strongest athletes in the entire world. My own company, Kabuki Strength Team USA, sometimes they are the hardest people to work with because they think they know, right? Yeah. And they think, well, this is the way I move. Unfortunately, a lot of these elite athletes um coach themselves and are not good at getting coaching because after a while they're just like, this isn't working for me. I don't want to do it that way. So coming on as a coach, what Team USA taught me um probably the best gift as a coach I learned from it. I tried to meet people where they're at before, but sometimes we have to change our verbiage and and and trick them into again the the close grip versus wide grip, right? Sometimes we have to let it be their decision. Unfortunately, a lot of the top athletes across multiple sports, if they're already at that world-class elite level, it takes a serious injury for them to seek help. And it's unfortunate because we would want them to not have a serious injury, and hopefully they never do. But a lot of them, when they're beat up and banged up and they keep running headfirst into a wall, it's like fine, like, okay, I need other eyes on this, right? I need something else. So beginners are awesome because they're hungry and they want to learn and they listen, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:57

And that's that's a real thing for all coaches, whether you're elite, just getting in the game, you know, you've got to find a way to talk to your athletes. When I was a young baby coach, I wish somebody would have helped me with that. There's so many athletes I know I turned away because I just didn't say it to them the right time, the right way, or forced an answer that they weren't ready to hear instead of meeting in the middle and agreeing to work on it, right? But the second part of that, I I really truly, that's why I'm such a stickler on position and deviation of position. Head position in the squat's huge for me. And I don't care what weight you are, right? You could be a volleyball player. This movement is excessive. To me, some days we're just tight. So here versus here, I'm probably gonna be okay with that for even the best lifters in the world. The heavier weights we start to handle, especially when under stress and fatigue, and again, this could be a volleyball player squatting 300 pounds as a one-ret max. If they're at the end of the season and they have life stress, family stress, right? Their brain's not in it the same, they have a bunch of physical stress from the season going on. We might allow a little bit more deviation, right? But we have to tighten that up because that's when injuries happen and they get hurt. Um and then really just sticking to systems. And I still teach uh the the same way um that I truly believed when I stepped in that first duff and movement system, breathing and bracing, spine mechanics has to be number one. Then I look at foot, then I look at hip and shoulder complex.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:32

And throughout all those, if we maintain good positions when we lift, even snaps, clean and jerk, whatever it is, now we can really utilize our coaching skills. If those things aren't dialed in, it doesn't matter how good or how uh new the beginner lifter is to the world elite, we really can't dial things in until they start moving the same way every time.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

Okay, yeah. Well, can we on so you said spine mechanics? Then I believe was it was it uh shoulder and then it was ankles, feet?

SPEAKER_03 29:07

Uh uh breathing bracing spine mechanics, number one. Yeah, foot is next. Foot was next. Then hip and shoulder. And the reason I look at foot next is think about how much we're doing in the gym.

unknown 29:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

We bench press, we're using leg drive. We overhead press, push press, split jerk, leg drive, leg drive, leg drive, boxing, leg drive, wrestling, playing pool in a pool hole, right? Pickle is popular. Anything but ring gymnasts are pretty much using your feet. Somebody tried to tell me equestrian once, and I believe you, but I would also argue your feet are in stirrups, you still have something pressing you, you get it, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:44

Yeah, you're you're you're using them.

SPEAKER_03 29:46

Right? And that's why that's so important is energy transfer.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay, well, let's I I want to unpack each of those. So, like, talk to me about like the spine mechanic side of things. Like, you know, obviously sloppy head position sounds like it's one of the first things to look at, but like what are what what what is the point B that we're looking for here?

SPEAKER_03 30:07

So neutral spine, and that's gonna change in two positions, and I know a lot of people will argue this in the strength realm, and that's fine, I'll die on this hill. Um, one that we can agree on though is bench press. Okay, if you can have a massive global arch, yeah, you'll probably have the opportunity to put up more weight because you have a shorter range motion. Most people, if they did a three-board press, right? The board presses, they're gonna lift more. So if I can flat back or arch that much, I'm probably gonna lift more. Yeah, so but then when we look at things like uh I'm working with uh a former CrossFitter right now, she's dipping into the the power lifting realm, super strong. Overhead press, a lot of weightlifters, especially coming from CrossFit. Um, I don't ever make it to sound like I'm bashing CrossFit because I I came from that background, so I get to a little bit, right? And I was a W coach and owned a CrossFit gym. So reminding people of that, but a lot of CrossFitters, I feel like they're overhead weightlifting, they're trying to add too much arch in. And sometimes again goes back to my my certain point. Like they're looking at some of their idols who they like to watch in strongman, and they're looking at a big dude put up a big log, and they're like, hey, if he does that overhead, it's okay if my overhead press looks like this. Well, yes and no to a certain extent, right? So there's those couple places where we know we're going to agree or disagree on spinal position.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

Sure, of course.

SPEAKER_03 31:37

The deadlift is another one. A lot of big polls right now start sumo or conventional with a fairly rounded upper back. And I've worked with a couple of them that are all-time world record holders, and they refuse to try something different because when they did, their deadlift went down at first. I promise if they stuck through it, they would have a more rigid spine in the future, they would be able to lift more weight. So those two areas make it difficult for some athletes and coaches going back and forth. But ideally, what we would do is hold neutral position. And it's so funny when I tell people neutral spine and they stand up for me and they're in a pretty good position. And then they go to squat and they're here or here. And I'm like, stand tall, be neutral. They get the bar off their back, whether it's heavy or not, it could just be the bar. They get the bar off their back and they show you awesome standing posture. Yes, you cannot stand like this with a thousand pounds on your back, it'll fall off. There's gonna have some sense of forward flexion, but always looking for our best neutral alignment. Fighters get this really well. I used to demonstrate this in person. So any wrestling coaches on here or guys have done MMA, yeah, if I get snapped down and I can get somebody's head, they can be twice as strong as me and they can't do anything. I've demonstrated before with like a 300-pound dude in the audience. As if I let him break my head and upper back posture, I can't stand up. If I lock in here and let I'll pick him up and walk him around the room, yeah, I didn't immediately get stronger. So I love that drill. I didn't take a magic pill. Nope. I didn't do an awesome three-year training block. I just changed my spine mechanics and immediately got 3x stronger.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and I, you know, you you mentioned kind of an interesting point of like athletes kind of overextending versus flexing, and and if they've patterned that neurologically, right, then they see kind of like this massive dip when they do it a different way. So do you think it's literally just a neurological patterning thing? And it's like, hey, like you just haven't done it this way, but over time, like if the ceiling was 980 pounds, well, now the ceiling is 1020, but you're gonna probably dip to 960, right, to get there. Is that kind of like what you think about it?

SPEAKER_03 34:04

Yeah, and with lifting big numbers, you're always gonna have a little bit of uh in some of these positions momentum and shorter range of motion, right? So if I can yank the bar off the floor and it gets a little momentum, that might help me. Where if I stop the yank and I really take tension out of a bar on deadlift and then stand up, at first I'm not gonna have a huge heave in the bench press. Well, you're sinking the bar three or four inches lower than if you just kept your belly big, but you're getting momentum, so your body's used to that momentum. We take the momentum away, you're gonna get stronger and you're gonna be healthier, but it dips down. And with spine, um, I've helped so many people with back injuries. Uh, I I had a long-standing back injury that was able to do some cool stuff. I deadlifted my top deadlift in the gym with straps, it was 805. I think I hit it at like a two, two ten body weight, something like that. Break, yeah, that's awesome. Um, so I I've got grip problems, I can't match that on the platform ever, right? But but talking spine mechanics, pretty strong for a guy my size. I'm not breaking all-time world records with that, but I can move some weight.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:07

To do that and a bunch of cool stuff on an uh a spine that was injured from many years of fighting, not knowing how to lift well. And the original herniation was from a car crash, so not anything cool.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:19

Training with good spine alignment. Yes, I did have to have back surgery and the disc finally ruptured, but instead of having it at the time of the injury, I was able to have a really cool career, do some fun, heavy stuff.

SPEAKER_02 35:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:31

Um, for 10 years with that. I don't want to see athletes lose their career, right? Have to quit boxing. Um, college, they never made it to pro ball because of a back injury because they were lifting stupidly. That's the other reason why me, I truly believe it's number one, but keeping the spine safe because it sucks to have back surgery. I know I've been there.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

I I believe you. Having not had it, I not not something I want to experience myself. But I, you know, now I have questions about, you know, you kind of see some of these like working other positions, right? Like non-neutral spine positions, like things like a Jefferson curl, things like a reverse hyper, things like, you know, all these accessory movements, which obviously like I think it goes without saying, like, you're not loading probably as much weight as you are, axial load with, you know, as the power lifts. But like, how do you think about that non-neutral spine, that rotation, that extension flexion based work in the context of the big three?

SPEAKER_03 36:33

Yeah, so uh, you know, it really goes to uh sport. Um, I think something else that I wish I would have stuck with earlier. Um I heard it early on, but I got a little wild in training things. The rule of specificity, right?

SPEAKER_02 36:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:47

If I'm training a powerlifter, but that also becomes being a good coach and listening to their goals. If the power lifter, regardless of age, is like, I want to be the best in the world and I'm gonna dedicate everything for the next five years to lift as much weight as humanly possible. I don't care about uh performance-enhancing drugs, I don't care about my livelihood, I'm gonna quit my job, like I'm going all in. Yeah, they're gonna get a little bit different treatment than somebody who's even 90% that crazy, and they say, Hey, I'm going all in, but my ultimate goal is to be able to um still play with my grandkids in 10 years. Okay, so oh now you added some life goals in there. Cool. So now we can play with a couple other things that I'm not gonna say might take away from our top end strength, but if that's truly all I care about is top end strength, especially with like powerlifting, the big three, I'm gonna do everything I can, and anything that gets in the way is a useless exercise. Or if somebody's like, cool, I want to be big and strong, but I also want to have good cardio, and I used to do CrossFit and I like it. Okay, well, now I have to keep them entertained, plus a life goal, plus a strength goal. They get more variation of the things that you talked about. Um it's easy for coaches to go down a rabbit hole. So I I want to throw that out there too. When we talk spine alignment, I I yes, I said neutral spine is the absolute best for force transfer. 100% I'll die on that hill. But I also am not stupid. I've trained strongman. You cannot have a neutral spine and pick up 500-pound rock up off the floor. No, it's not a thing that exists. You can't even pick up a 100-pound sandbag with a neutral spine. It's not a task that can be done. So, in that instance, again, I go back to specificity. What are we doing? If we're learning to deadlift, let's deadlift correctly. I don't need to do a deficit deadlift with as much weight as possible, if I'm only a power lifter from my toes, standing on an eight-inch box. That's not a drill I ever need to do to risk my spine, in my opinion. Now, somebody that wants to play with sandbags, yeah. A golfer that needs rotation, even though they powerlift as well, if I never give them rotation, yeah, I'm not gonna do it under an 800-pound squat, right? But if I never let them play with wood chops, sandbags, I'm doing a disservice because that's their side hobby, and their main sport is powerlifting. So once we understand the secondary goals, life, fitness, movement, right, then we can play a little bit more. You're beautiful. A guy that can pick up a 500-pound rock probably has a massive deadlift, and that's the other thing people don't think about. Dudes that are picking up those Atlas stones that big, their deadlift, they may not be the world champion, but they're probably pulling all of 800, some of them with straps, nine, nine hundred, thousand on the right barbell and right plate setup. So 500 pounds might be about 50 percent, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 39:41

That makes it a little safer doing awkward movements. Sandbags are a great place for everybody to start with that, um, because it's the fatigue and the awkwardness that's gonna limit the amount of weight. But yeah, training, you know, and then as coaches, again, I don't care if you're coaching football, MMA, jujitsu, volleyball, powerlifting only. Sometimes it's cool just to make your people athletes. I was talking with uh uh an all-time world record holder the other day. I was doing some box jumps in the gym. He's like, I need to add those back in. It's really fun doing some something athletic. Yeah. Yeah, it's okay to do stuff, right? Yeah, make athletes good at being an athlete.

SPEAKER_01 40:20

It's cool. I love that, dude. Cool. Well, so that I feel like that that's a good spot on spine. Like, love to transition into now talking like foot-ankle complex. I know. So I'll tell a little story here, too. Is I remember you specifically kind of talking some channel with with Kabuki about like that that um you know eagle talent, eagle claw with the foot. I remember I was like 19, 20 years old, and I was like, huh, okay, well, I'm gonna go try that in the gym today. And lo and behold, you know what you're talking about. And it added some weight to my squat. And so, you know, that was something I kind of encouraged people to do, but like that was really my starting point with with learning a lot of that and you know, mobilizing the feet and and doing all these different things. So I really want to hear, you know, kind of your thoughts on on this element and wherever you want to start, man. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_03 41:10

Yeah. So the foot, right? Got my shoe here. I still wear very minimalist shoes. This is what I train in, it's what I walk around in. Um, it's my thing because I believe in the foot being strong to do its job. I think mine was a little bit easier because where I trained kickboxing so many years barefoot, yeah, and training and fighting wrestling barefoot, I was doing a lot of strong work. But that doesn't mean my foot was doing its job correctly. I was blown away in the first seminar. What I actually I was okay at breathing and bracing when I went through the first uh seminar with Kabuki I was talking about before I became a coach with him. My footwork absolutely sucked. And I remember I used to be an equipped lifter, so squatting is super right, and my squat stance, way out here, super wide, like a lot of guys was a young west side fan. Push your feet out as hard as you can. And not that that's a bad cue, but it gets misunderstood. You can push your foot laterally as hard as you want to, for all I care. Same thing in a sumo deadlift, too, it's way out here by the plates, but not to the detriment where your foot starts to roll.

SPEAKER_00 42:13

Yeah, good luck if that does, too.

SPEAKER_03 42:15

And it's crazy because I still see some equipped lifters and I can see their toes coming up in big squats, thousand-pound squats, and they're rolling to the outside of their foot. It's a recipe for disaster number one, but let's go back to power output, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:28

I would love to see even a really good hockey player. It'd be dangerous. So I'm gonna be careful with what I'm saying here. Let's put them in a squat rack with some really good uh safety spotters and and some put raise the arms up, but I want to see somebody squat their max back squat on ice skates. And we'll even let it let it be a hockey player or a speed skater who lives on those things. It's not gonna happen. Yeah, it's not a stable enough platform. I love extremes talking with coaches because sometimes they just don't think or talk to their athletes about that. The bigger and wider the flatter the foot is, the better job it'll do. The other analogy I always give, um, and hopefully this helps one of the coaches uh on here explain the importance of foot to somebody one day. Think of the the big drag cars, right? Our top fuel dragsters with those monster tires that are as tall as I am sitting here and you know, two feet wide. Imagine if we put Prius tires on that vehicle. It's never even gonna leave the line. The tires will actually blow up before they like it there, it can't. There's too much power. Yeah. We have these big, strong engines, right? We're athletes, our legs, we we we dominate in the weight room, and then we're stuck on ball tires with bad alignment. That wouldn't work for a race car, but we don't pay attention in the gym. So, simply to close out foot, here's another place where coaches don't pay enough attention. And I feel like all you have to do is just record the foot. And sometimes there's a lot going on in a squat. I've literally put photos. On a very short, like those little tiny desk tripods right by somebody. Zoom in right by the foot, and then you can watch the rest of the squat and then show the athlete, I'm telling you, your heels coming up. And they're like, Oh my god, I never felt it. Yeah, look, it came up a half inch, right? Then we get into shoes too. So many people think that weightlifting shoes are squat shoes. It's funny, it's one of my pet peeves like powerlifting isn't shouldn't actually have been called powerlifting. It should be strength lifting. There's no power output, there's no there's no speed demand. The slower I grind something out, the less power I have. So Olympic lifting is a power sport. Anyways, yeah, yes, yes, I agree. Yep. They're weightlifting shoes. They're not squat shoes. They were designed to catch the snatch and the clean in the bottom of the squat.

SPEAKER_00 44:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:48

They also think that it'll fix ankle mobility. What's crazy is if you raise your heel up and you always squat in those shoes, year after year after year, you might have actually decreased your ankle mobility, not increased it. Yes, it can help some people squat deeper. Yeah, and they mask problems. I've pulled uh all-time world record squatters out of their shoes because you cannot see what's going on in a really hard, flat weightlifting shoe. And you look at them without their shoe on, you're like, you squat 830 pounds and you can't squat 225 with your foot flat on the floor. Imagine again you're feeling what we'll do. Yeah. And for our our ball coaches, right, or like track coaches on here, we are all lifting in the weight room. And the principles go back to the same thing, right? Yes. If I can get you stronger in the weight room and you have good technique and a good program, you're gonna run faster on the field, right? A lot of athletes have been through ankle and foot trauma too. I know I've broke this one a couple times. Yeah. Uh ankle, foot's been broken multiple times, kicking. I don't know how many sprains I've had. Yeah.

unknown 45:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:57

I should probably pay attention to the stability of that joint, right? So we need a little extra care and feet.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

That's that's interesting. And I'd love to get into the training interventions because an element that I worked with a lot of my high school football players, right? Was hey, we like and I I learned this kind of from like the West Side geared lifting, you know, just equip equipped related stuff, is like going and like sprinting in a cleat is like putting on a squat suit. You know what I mean? And like, boom, you're like taken off and like it's better. But if you feel like you are like piss weak, super fucking slow, and everything's really weird when you're barefoot, there's a disconnect there between brain, brain, and feet. And and so we started doing plyos barefoot, we started doing, you know, uh a little bit of like barefoot sprinting, barefoot running, and then kind of adopted cleats, you know, as the closer we we got to the season. And man, we were dropping most kids. The average was like three-tenths of a second every three months, was dropping off the 40 for like everyone. That was the average of the team. So like I like swear by this stuff, and I'm very passionate about it. Now, what do you kind of think in the context of powerlifting? Like, how do we strengthen that? Is it as simple as just saying fuck the shoes, you know? Or are we doing like you know, something like really specific, really different with that?

SPEAKER_03 47:18

Yeah, for most people, again, the cool part is it goes back to specificity. It's like like breathing and bracing. We we skipped over this, um, which is totally fine. But the concept like working with uh I do collaborations with Tupud, um, and I was just at AthEx, um the CrossFit games. Most people don't know how to use a belt, and that even we're talking some of the best powerlifters as well.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

Yeah, dig into it, man. Yeah, I want to.

SPEAKER_03 47:45

Oh, I should never use a belt. I just wrote an ebook um that'll be out here pretty soon for uh for two pood. And there's four studies, three or four studies in there, good collegiate-backed studies that show when the abs, core, oblique, slow back, even they tested multiple parts in different studies, are hooked up to electrical device and we can read the activation. There's more activation when you wear a belt. So I don't care if you're a baseball player and you're doing squats on a safety squat bar, even if it's only 225, if I teach you to use a belt well and you have good foot mechanics, the power output through your quads is going to be better. Now, when you go to crack home runs, you're stronger. I I just I don't understand why we miss some of these things in the world of strength and conditioning. Let's look at what the best athletes do well and let's mirror some of their stuff, right? You don't have to be competition plates on a on a power bar, but you should squat, probably like a weightlifter or like a power lifter, right? Yeah. So same thing goes to the foot. People think that, well, I I need to do something extra. And sometimes, yeah, if it's ankle injury, something like that, you do. Sure. The correlation to the belt is spend more time in the belt. And most people spend less time in the belt because they want to get their core stronger. Well, we're already doing so much in the gym. Most of my power lifters um don't do a ton of core training because they're breathing and bracing well with a belt on, and they don't need to have a strong crunch. We don't do this while deadlifting, right? Yeah, I need to be able to hold a rigid position very, very well. Yeah, we're doing that. The cool part about how do you get your foot stronger, get your shoe off and train barefoot. Bin over rows. I love hearing plyos and sprint warm-ups. Like, yeah, just do the things you're already doing, do them better without protective equipment on, and your body's forced to do its job. Sometimes there needs to be intervention from a coach because we can have bad foot mechanics and you need to the athlete. This part of your foot needs to be pressed down. But just do the things you're already doing better with less supportive gear. Then you put the cleats on or the squat suit. Yep. Ceiling just got raised again.

SPEAKER_01 49:51

Yeah. Yeah, because I I think it's the difference of get it's like getting something out of the cleat, getting something out of the suit. The biology still has to like be able to lean into that. You know, you have to know how to work that gear. So that's uh yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_03 50:06

Excellent. All the way back to my original point though, right? Like the fundamentals, and these fundamentals get looked over, not to knock Instagram again, but like kids see the next flashy thing on Instagram, they're like, oh, he's big and strong. I'll follow his program for 30 bucks. Well, yeah, it's cool, but it's not addressing anything you're doing wrong, and you're gonna hit the same ceiling, and you could have taken an old west side program or a uh 531 or smallov and probably got 50 pounds as well, but you're still gonna be the same crappy athlete, just a little bit stronger. Sorry, not addressing the phenomenal issue. So love that you jump into hip and shoulder, those are actually not to um uh take away from them, but they're actually really easy. I've seen, and I I say this at all the USPA seminars, uh private seminars I do. We spend so much time teaching breathing and bracing, and then a little bit less on foot, and then we get to hip and shoulder, and everybody's like, Did we not have time for that? I'm like, No, you you did it well. You already you fixed it because here's the thing giant ball and socket joints, right? Yeah, giant ball and socket joints. This one's more complex because it floats on the ribcage. However, when we're here doing our thing, if this is organized and stable and the foot is stable, now I don't have this thing going on. I've made a video about it multiple times, and I know some of my athletes like to use it. Um, so if they're they're listening, my bad, you hear me yell at it again. The the band around the knees, I think is the stupidest thing in the gym. I think it's the stupidest warm-up. Yep. Your knee doesn't bend this way. If it does on the football field, you're not walking off.

SPEAKER_00 51:43

Okay, yeah, good luck.

SPEAKER_03 51:46

Yeah, that doesn't help your ankle or your hip, right? People think it does. When we're squatting in the gym, we're not doing abduction. The glute medius does not do this when we squat. No, right? It's a stabilizer that helps keep our hips from shifting. So it needs to be an isometric contraction, not a huge contraction. So if we quit putting the band around our knees and we just address the foot, the hip is instantly more stable. If we stabilize the weight on our spine, the hip is immediately more stable. If we have stability all the way up, now the shoulders are also more stable. So if we address those basics well, and then we just watch position, pressing overhead, throwing, hitting, whatever we're doing, now things are quite a bit easier.

SPEAKER_01 52:41

So yeah, and it, you know, I I I think um I'd like to dive into the biomechanics maybe of like how how does that spine position like impact the femur and the shoulder and obviously like the rib cage element there? Because I think that's a really important thing for coaches to know and understand. So like what what do you got on that front?

SPEAKER_03 53:03

Yeah, so looking at um uh a squat real quick.

SPEAKER_00 53:07

Yeah, please.

SPEAKER_03 53:08

We change we change the lever, right? We change the lever point of when this is rounded forward, if I'm looking straight down and I drop this off my shoulders, it would be in front of my feet.

SPEAKER_00 53:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 53:22

And yes, I cannot squat a thousand pounds perfectly upright, but here's a pretty good position, right? Yeah. If I'm here, I'm pretty upright. This is probably over my arch.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 53:34

I gave the lever a different point. Unless you're in an SSB bar where the weight is in a different position, or like a long chamber bar, but that's designed to make things different. Same thing, we'll talk about in the all the pulls real quick. Deadlift, my snatch off the ground, my clean off the ground. If I'm here on my tippy toes, my shoulders on my own body are acting as weight. My spine is not assisting me, it's putting more weights onto the barbell, right?

SPEAKER_00 54:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:05

So the biomechanics are either gonna assist you or they're gonna get in your way. And it's mind-blowing how many people I see that just don't have a good rule. Like, and this used to be the old coach and me, so I get it. I'm gonna fix your foot, I'm gonna fix your shoulder, I'm gonna fix your bar path, I'm gonna fix this, I'm gonna fix this, and I'm bouncing around the body like a pinball machine to what I see. If I saw you deadlift right now, I might pick five things apart in my brain, because I have ADD, might still bounce around like a pinball. However, I'm just gonna take that information and go, cool, what's my checklist? Breathing, bracing, spine mechanics.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 54:39

I've got so many athletes so much better. And then the cool thing is like, wow, all of a sudden, his hip, his shoulder, her this, her that is no longer an issue because we fixed this and it went up or down the chain, and immediately other problems got corrected. Now I just sound like a great coach because I said one thing and fixed five problems versus pinballing trying to fix everything.

SPEAKER_01 55:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. It's like it's like, yeah, okay, I've got like the shoulder impingement thing. Well, is it just that you like are overextending your thoracic spine with everything that you do? You know, and it has actually nothing to do with the shoulder at that point.

SPEAKER_03 55:18

That's just where you're don't know how to seat your shoulder because you're trying to catch or snatch here. Yep. Yes, you're gonna have shoulder problems.

SPEAKER_01 55:25

Yeah, yeah, good luck. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I I I I love I love kind of what we're talking about with that stuff, because I I do think that the shoulders and the hips are like the feedback mechanism for it, like your hands, your feet, and how well your spine is kind of actually moving in that space. So, like, you know, you you mentioned the bench, obviously, like looking for that arch and you know, kind of finding that. Like, but do you feel like there's a scenario where like a neutral spine bench, if someone worked it, could in theory be pressing more because of that that nature there, or no?

SPEAKER_03 56:03

Yeah, um, for sure. And uh working with uh Dr. Snell, he was out of uh Portland when we were with Kabuki. We were blessed to be able to work with him. A lot of my own um personal training, uh physical training, was with uh with him. He did all my injuries, stuff like that. He had a big belief that if we spent more time in a neutral pressing position, the athletes' shoulders would be healthier. And as long as they also pressed in an arch, they would get better, right? So it'd be like a power lifter pressing wide grip and close grip. Well, maybe you should just have some flat back time, right? Um, a lot of people on the floor press, and I'm not right or wrong, most of my athletes, if they're gonna floor press, I'll let them arch. But a floor press can be a great time just to go flat back. You already are killing leg drive. Let's kill that, and now let's just press harder, right?

SPEAKER_00 56:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:54

Getting outside, I really like the idea of this. Is the the way I used to coach in my CrossFit gym. I'm gonna look at what weightlifters do, and I'm gonna match them for our weightlifting. I'm gonna look at how strong man pick up rocks, and that's how we're gonna do our sandbag work. I'm not gonna run like a power lifter. I'm gonna try to match the stride of a marathon runner. I'm looking for all the specialty sports. I feel like, and this is one of my gripes with uh with CrossFit, what I saw personally, and not the organization, but with the methodology of coaching, coaches kind of want to bastardize weightlifting and deadlifting. And like so a lot of CrossFitters have kind of a okay deadlift and kind of an okay clean, but they have never really mastered either. Yeah, that's just this hybrid thing that they do for a bunch of reps, and they're really not that good at top end strength. And when we get them on on the clean, snatch or deadlift, and if we got that better, everything goes up. Their wad times, their recovery time, their injuries go down. It's it's it's crazy, right?

SPEAKER_01 58:02

So you look at Matt Frazier and and Tia Toomey, and it's like they they had dominance for years. I think it had something to do with the fact that their uh you know weightlifting background um was like pretty essential to their success there. Like, because at the end of the day, like you know, you kind of mentioned it like, yeah, 500% or excuse me, 500 pounds is 50% of a thousand-pound squat. Like, well, okay, if you're doing an am wrap with 225 on snatch and your best is friggin' you know, 405 pounds, like it's pretty much a lot less work.

SPEAKER_03 58:37

Yeah, yeah, your power outputs through the roof, um your time under tension's less, you're not grinding things out, you don't even have to dip into your engine yet. Um but on that same note, I also think there's a time back to your question. Um, the Jefferson deadlift, the sand band. Like if I want to be a good pressing athlete for my entire life, even if I compete in powerlifting and I want to until I'm you know done on this earth, but I really like pressing and being a strong presser, I should probably dumbbell press, I should probably fat flat back, I should probably floor press, I should definitely overhead incline. I just need to be good at the art of pressing, right? Fighters, I love my fighters to be pressing, but a lot of coaches don't again think of specificity. If I shoot from here and I'm coming up to your jaw, even if we're the same height, yeah, that's an incline press. Yeah, used to make my fighters do a lot of incline pressing. Sometimes we're punching from bad positions. This is not how we bench press, but sometimes I punch from there, right? Yeah, so getting in that position and pressing from a cable machine, a lot of coaches would be like, What are you doing over there? That looks stupid. Well, their bench press is already stronger than the other fighters, they got strength. Now we're keeping shoulder healthy and training for the things that actually happen as an athlete. Football players, rugby players, wrestlers get in some really funky positions sometimes that they have to fight out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:06

It's just their sport, it's life.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:08

For sure. Yeah, and I I think this this plays into, you know, kind of one of the the last questions I've got for you here, but like oh it has to do with accessories, and I'm kind of like forming this as a as I talk here, but like you're talking about sp you talk about specificity a lot. And I think a lot of things that people shit on powerlifting for, you're like, that's the frickin' point of the sport. So don't let's not like conflate variables here, right? Um so so you know, like, like, like the thing that stuck out to me that I'm I'm remembering is like, hey, glute mead, not really working on a squat. We don't need it to. It should be isometric and such, right? But to your point, like that you just made, like, you're probably gonna want to do some kickbacks. You know, you're probably gonna want to leverage that tissue at some point if you want a healthy hip over time. So, like, as we start to think about accessory work and you know, the the the overall like underlying health of the athlete, right? How do you kind of look at like an annual cycle and then like what are you kind of laying out in terms of considerations for all that work on the back end that isn't necessarily powerlifting specific?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:18

Yeah, so a great place to uh to follow up as another resource, um, not to plug myself here, but please do the uh the online coaching certification that we have um with with the USPA. I've done private uh seminars and other stuff as well, but as of right now, if a coach is like, hey, where do I want to follow up with this? There's even if you're not coaching powerlifting, there's some stuff about in there the uh about reading the screen in a powerlifting meet that you know football coaches may never use, but um athlete arousal, game time, a lot of things will truly carry over. Back to my point of as coaches, right? If if we really want to make athletes strong, I know too many uh track and ball coaches who are like, well, I don't need to train my athletes that way, they're not a powerlifter. They don't need to arch. Okay, but and and to answer your question, there's a point in time for that. I don't care if they're throwing javelin, if I can make their press stronger, if you have them pressing, they will be a better throwing athlete, right? Yes. If I can make X happen through their deadlift, even though you guys don't deadlift that much, I know they're now a faster sprinter, right? I know certain things. So there is a time and place for that. I feel like that's why I like to highlight that when I had my CrossFit gym, I sought out the best of every area because I want to make them move like that. That's how I make a hybrid athlete. That's how I make the best athletes in the world. Then we get into the programming side of things. So in that seminar, uh, it's a 20-hour online course. In that seminar, I teach uh programming in it, but I teach I show four different um athletes. Yes, they're all competitive uh power lifters, but the strength program could literally be taken from that and put into a football program. You have one that's injured, one that's one of the most elite uh lifters of all time, one that's um just a master's athlete who's busy. Um, and then I had one other uh example in there, I forget what it is. So we're taking four different types of power lifters. When you look at the programming, you can really work wonders with people because of the time. It's easy for us because I can tell an athlete, hey, you're gonna compete in the summer, or you have worlds in November. It's even easier when you're working with your football athletes because you know when the season is, right? They can't go up and say, hey, coach, I signed up for a competition next weekend. No, I know that the games are, guys, right? So furthest away is when we get to play. The closer we get is specificity. The other great hack that I'll leave you with on that, and I really try to point home from all my coaching, thousands and thousands of coaches through Kabuki Strength and the USPA is we don't just pick random accessories. I'll talk squat real quick here. If I have an athlete who needs a stronger upper back, I might start with a zombie front squat far away from competition, whatever it is. Yeah, because they they're gonna drop it. Yeah, but that's not gonna get them that strong because I cannot load it that much. Then maybe I go to an SSB squat, then maybe I go to a tempo up squat, then maybe I go to a pause squat. Yep. I wouldn't do is say, hey, we're gonna do sled work, plyos, then leg press, then hack squat, and then competition squat. They're too far away. Point being, when I look for accessories, how can I load it close enough to the sport? The example of zombie front squat, SSB, well, that's not how they compete, but it's great for offseason, they're still squatting. They're gonna get better results from that than a quad extension, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:54

So yeah, totally. Okay, I love that. I love that because you know what one thing that I think, you know, if we're looking at like the conjugate method and like Westside, you know, stuff specifically, not saying West Side does this wrong, I'm saying that like coaches apply it wrong is like just fucking any variation they can think of. You know what I mean? And it's like, hey, like actually the difference between a regular you know competition bench and a two fingers in is actually pretty significant. You know what I mean? And like the the the like layers of detail there where it's like, yeah, you just use seven different bars, but like you know, like that kind of I've seen it rob athletes of that like top end strength. Like, yeah, maybe you are better at pressing, which maybe for an athlete on the field gets you into those weird corners. But for a power lifter, right, you're missing you're missing the point. And it's like, yeah, for my football guys, I'd rather have them hit 315 on six different bars than I would say, like you know, 335 on a straight bar by putting extra time into that. Right. But that's so different from powerlifting. So like I really love the layers of specificity. And like that, I think is like probably the main thing that like I've taken away, you know, today and that like kind of confirms it is like, dude, like you gotta get as close to the sport as you can. And I I think it's uh yeah, curious to see like why a lot of coaches pick what they do. And a lot of times you you see it kind of doesn't work. So I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:23

Well a lot of times too, it's because they're like, well, I just because I did. And that's where I'm excited to uh I'm probably giving a teaser to the coaches here and people who listen to this later on. Um that's where I'm excited to get some of uh you know the best coaches powerlifting programs onto bridge and some of our variations on there. Sometimes I just need a variation. I'm like, man, I'm throwing everything at this person's quads. What am I gonna do? And I see another coach doing heavy dumbbell front rack step ups. I'm like, oh my god, I've been coaching for so long, I forgot about it. So it'll be cool to see some of the football coaches. Maybe they're doing quad extension leg press superset because they don't know what else to do. And they're like, I've never even seen a zombie front squat before. I love it. So when we get that released, it'll be really cool as another resource for the track coaches, the football coaches um that are that are on bridge software now.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:13

Yeah, hell yeah. No, I'm I'm I'm definitely excited about you know kind of our budding partnership here, um, you know, and and and to get more of that stuff on bridge and in the coach's hands. Like I think like, you know, in terms of my questions, like where I'd like to wrap up so that we can, you know, get into everyone else's questions here. Um like from you you mentioned a lot about like loving data and loving tracking data, and I think that ties neatly into like what a lot of bridge can do. But um like I'm so curious because you know, I think track and field's got its own set of data points. I think football has its own set of data points, basketball, its own set. Like what data do you find to be most important for powerlifting? And how do you kind of incorporate that into like making database decisions uh as you evolve through the program?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:04

Yeah, so um we we chatted a lot of strength and powerlifting related stuff here. Um the the future of powerlifting, I think is what uh we called this this episode, if I remember correctly. And and just to make sure everybody's listening feels like we got there because I I think we we did uh head that direction and talked a lot of things, but and this isn't to knock any coaches who are still stuck in a spreadsheet, or um, I know coaches uh I take on athletes sometimes are like, well, I just uh put it in a Word document. And and we're old school meatheads, and that kind of is okay because if the person doesn't want to get on Excel, doesn't want to get on bridge, doesn't want to use the other app software's out there, they have a flip phone, they don't like to be on tech in the gym, they want to be that's fine, there's a place for that. But I always ask the coaches, well, how do you know their data is? Well, I like and and yes, if you have a good spreadsheet for yourself and you know how to pull reports, you can probably track it. But hopefully everything's named the same, right? Hopefully you have a coding system. So for coaches or listening out there that haven't taken that that plunge yet, it'd be awesome to see them on bridge, but there's plenty of softwares out there, like you have to have something that tracks your data. Look at cars these days, right? It's not a 1950 rebuilt muscle car. There's computers for a reason and they go faster for a reason. To me, it's mind-blowing the lack of data and tracking that strength coaches do, and not just powerlifting, strongman, CrossFit for sure, uh, football coaches. And again, yes, sometimes it's hard because you have a hundred kids and they can't have cell phones, and how do you track their data? The computer school doesn't have enough money for iPad. I get all those things, so we have to think outside the box. But the second biggest thing for me would be velocity data. And I really wish all coaches, I wish it was just something our sport would get over and adopt and just become the mainstream. I'm blown away that velocity data has or velocity-based training has not quadrupled, went 10x, even faster than the rate of strength uh sports and and powerlifting growth. We can't just keep going on how we feel. I hate RPE.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:19

Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:21

I look at an athlete and I'm like, put 50 pounds on the board, like, coach, I almost died. No, you could have hit that for eight. I don't care how it feels today. You're just fine. We're going up. The more data that we have, the more important decisions we can make. The less data we as athletes and coaches have, the less decisions we make. And then if we can have everything tracked in a software, because it's 2026, yeah, we don't have to be great at coding or or get on AI to have it make us a spreadsheet when your software can track all of our data. Pretty simple.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:54

Yeah, totally, totally. And I I mean I'm I'm really curious, like uh, you know, from your point of view, like obviously I I make the episode title, right, Future of Powerlifting, then then drill down into some more prescient things. But uh I I mean it sounds like you think the future, right, really is tied to uh excellence in like tracking data and excellence in understanding like what that means in the context of the of the sport. So like beyond that though, like what what where is the sport kind of like going on a trajectory that that we need to be ready, obviously like with something like bridge, right? But but like what else are we thinking about in that respect?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:33

Yeah, so um the USPA has done a pretty good job of this the last couple of years. Um there's a a new uh software that I can chat a little bit about because it uh just got tested at a meet in California. So um people probably know that uh that it's coming out there. Um but even like back to the the softwares we use on the platform, they're old and they're archaic. To me, it's crazy. Um the sport of power lifting is until it gets more, I don't want to say showmanship, but like until it starts to become more of a UFC event where you're tracking the lifters and there's a story behind it. It's not entertaining to watch. There's a reason when you look at the Olympics, everybody's watching the sprinters go against each other, and the way that the ball is dead. It's sad, but it's true. It's a slow sport like powerlifting. So until we make it showier, and what's crazy with the IPF, right, uh taking away the athlete celebrations the other day, like, are you serious? Dude just squatted 900 pounds and he can't be hyped about it. It just took him, you know, 20 years to get there in his life, right? You know, so ridiculous. He started lifting at 15 and finally hit it at 35, right? But that's a big thing, and then when we can show more technology, I cannot wait for the day when powerlifting adopts more technology in the in the rules. And it could already be there. I talk velocity a lot. Velocity companies can easily put it up there, they track millimeters. So the coach and the athletes like, I did not double dip that bar. Well, it stopped and then sunk five millimeters and went back up. We're not overriding what the referees are saying, or you know what, they call downward motion. If it comes to a pool or a jury, let's look on the screen. There was no downward motion, that's all the red lights were for. We confirmed the NFL's done this for a long time on instant replace, right? Yes, so I think that's gonna be the future of powerlifting. Coaches need to buy into it, athletes not need to buy into it, and federations need to. We're stuck in the the 1980s in our sport, and to get the growth we need, we need to come into 2026.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:43

And I just I just can't believe, you know, that a that every meet, every ref is perfectly locked in the entire 12-hour day potentially of a meet. I just can't believe that.

unknown 1:13:55

Right?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:56

To be honest with you, it takes time for referees to get good. Like I was in the sport for a long time, and I I didn't start refing as good, even though I was a great coach and good athlete. Like, yeah, it took time watching that, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:10

Yeah, it's a skill. Yeah, absolutely. And I do think that tech will allow that augmentation to happen in a way. I I love what you're talking about there, and I I I hope you guys, you know, with USPA stuffs are you know starting to adopt as much of that as you can because I I do think it makes it more exciting. I do think that like all the little things that go into it become a lot clearer because at the end of the day, like an untrained eye, I can go to my local gym and watch that. Yep. And it's like, no, you can't. At least not at the LA fitness, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:41

Well, it gives them something to talk about too. Like, oh my god, this guy moved a deadlift at you know 900 pounds at this speed. This guy moved 880, but he moved it at this speed, which means he's not stronger, but his power output, he's a faster, more explosive athlete. If you want to know more about him, he ran track in college. Like it gives an announcer stuff to talk about. Um I really think that's the direction we're gonna go. And it's what the sport needs to get money for the lifters to be able to get paid to be an athlete too.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:13

I love that, dude. Yeah, that's that's that's cool stuff, and I appreciate you kind of expanded on that. Um, definitely want to get into you know some of the questions that folks had here. Fire away. Um, and so the the the first one here, when talking about foot placement, you mentioned claw foot. Is that spreading the foot? Okay, like you know, like like toes spread it. You know, I I think explain that concept and and and that'll be helpful there.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:36

Yeah, so great question. There's a reason. I probably started there with with what you said you learned and got off different topic. Wide shoes, flat shoes, big toe box. That's the best thing you need. Our feet are stuck like this a lot, and we need them more.

unknown 1:15:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:51

The cheapest example of that is my car tire analogy.

unknown 1:15:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:54

If you beef up the engine in a sports car, add turbos to it, most likely to get any traction, you're gonna need wider, flatter tires that are sticky. Our foot's the same way. Our shoes have done massive damage to our feet as a society, especially women. I feel bad for it when I talk like high heels and ladies' boots aren't meant to be cool, right? That even guys' dress shoes, you got this pointy foot. Ladies got their foot jammed into this beautiful, taint, dainty little shoe. It's not helping them squat more. So, yes, the claw is equal contact, two points here, one in the back. Sometimes we like to talk two points here, two points here. The idea being it's always flat to the ground, never coming up on any one of those points. The wider, the flatter, the grippier, just like a car, um, performance tire, the better.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:48

Love that, love that. All right, next one. Um there's someone who it sounds like wants to get in the ballpark of where you're at in terms of you know career and things. Um, so and so far they're going or they're moving forward and going back to school to finish a kinesiology degree. Like, what do you think should be their next steps? And um, maybe this is you know more generally like a you know career path, like what you know, what options do you feel like are on the table for folks?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:15

Yeah, number one, I would say uh stay humble. That's probably one of the things that helped me. I see so many cocky coaches, and I I I like confident, cocky athletes and coaches to an extent, but if you oh, I don't need that, I I already know that. Okay, there's a lot to learn. I've been through so many seminars, and sometimes it's like I just don't want to talk like this educator. I don't like how they talk to the crowd. I didn't learn much else. Well, I was still humble and open, so I learned something. So, number one, stay humble and open. Number two, volunteer as much as you can. I've done so much free work from um uh youth football clinics, right? I'm not a football coach, I'm not gonna teach them how to run drills, but I volunteered to be next to a guy that gave me an opportunity and I handed out gator aids and was at the first aid tent.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:04

Um, I started at Kabuki Strength volunteering. You start as a referee volunteering, and like it's got me so many places because people are afraid to work these days. So stay humble and open and volunteer and continue to learn. And I really think it was a lot of the just volunteering, like it led me to being in a place to potentially become team USA head coach, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:27

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I I hear you there, and I I I will second that. Like the um, you know, there's a local high school near you that I guarantee understaffed, doesn't have a lot of money, but would grow their athletic department tenfold with some great strength and conditioning training. Um, and you will have so many bodies, so many different things you can go do. And like, yeah, I second that wholeheartedly. Um so so so love what you're saying there. Now, going into um I think it's a pretty unique uh question here. Like, although O2 data is commonly examined during aerobics, have you collected data on oxygen saturation or um heme activity during powerlifting?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:12

I have not, and I would love to, but that again goes right into what we were talking about the future of powerlifting. Um I was just talking with a guy, uh, I cannot remember the name of his company, um, does uh so has a breathing apparatus, and obviously marathon runners and swimmers are like the prime target. And it was cool because he was at, I think, the LA Fit Expo. And I know that giant out-of-shape power lifters and strongmen, if we could increase their aerobic capacity, they're more rested between sets, they recover better at night, right? Yeah, there's multiple benefits, and again, being an athlete goes a long way. Even if your only goal is strong, the more athletic, and even if we cut out cardio and other stuff, the closer we get to a competition. That's what I used to do when I was fighting before a powerlifting meet. I just wouldn't go to class the last two weeks. I would just sit there, right? Yeah, as soon as the meet was over, I'm back in class. Yeah, cardio sucked a little bit, sparring rounds sucked. So there's definitely a place for it. You would even see a lower resting heart rate between sets, which means they're less anxietized. I was talking about an athlete that with that here in person last weekend, watching their heart rate go up in between squat sets when stuff got real heavy. If they have better O2 capacity and their resting heart rate is down, even if it spikes, it's still at a lower level. That's going to help us upstairs. The benefits are 10x. It should be studied way, way more. It could literally be another part of the future of powerlifting.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:41

So well, I think there's such a unique thing here with uh if you look at a lot of the best bodybuilders, Phil Heath, incredible basketball player, really, really strong cardio base. Eddie Hall, Thorb Jorensen, I think one of them is a basketball player, one of them is a swimmer. Like, there's a lot to this. Even even uh Mitchell Hooper was a marathon runner five years before he came world strongest man.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:04

I'm telling you, there's something to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:06

Yep. And and and so that cardio base matters a lot. My take on it, because I've actually done some NIERS data on on myself and kind of like looked at like what was going on on like max effort-related work. Like, if those capillaries are not able to force blood through like easily and especially under tension, like you are creating internal resistance as well. So if the blood is not moving efficiently, especially under something like a max effort, like you might literally have more mechanical work being done, like on uh uh on that level, like intracellularly. So so there's there's some unique stuff with this. I think that's a great question. Um, I think we kind of know loosely that that better cardio is always gonna help, but like to actually get to a meaningful prescription, you know, I I I think yeah, there's a lot of work to be done. So so I love that.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:54

But one of the problems with string sports is um there's just not the money in it, you know. Even there's more money in in strongman than there is powerlifting, weightlifting a little bit from the Olympics, but let's compare this to like soccer.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:10

The amount of money that's in football in Europe is ridiculous. You go into some of them, like you know, the the amount of money that goes into training Formula F1 drivers, like their athletic billions. What what what's why don't we get that in in our sport? Well, individual athletes don't want to do XYZ. And unfortunately, if I take you know my soccer players and I get them from a 275 squat to a 300-pound squat, the whole team got a percentage stronger, they're a little faster. 300 because of their sport is probably enough. And I hate to say that, but I've seen that even in Major League Baseball. Like, well, it's good enough, and this is our sport's standard, so they're in the realm. Yeah, but we got them here, so even in the sports where there is money, strength doesn't need to be too extreme, it's good enough. So there's not enough money to go into that side of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:05

Yeah, and I, you know, I I think Ben Fukulski was one of the best things that ever happened to bodybuilding just because he took a data-driven approach to you know running the sport, and and I think that like, you know, the the the more you know years we get under our belts, of course, that's always gonna get better, but we need like an a freaking flux moment for powerlifting, and and yeah, I see no reason why it can't be as popular as UFC, something, you know, something of that nature. So totally agree. Tech will take it there. Tech will. Yep. Agreed, man. Agreed. Um, someone asks anyone to study under. Who do you think are like some good folks in the industry for people to go uh learn about powerlifting?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:43

Um I don't have I usually have a good list. Um uh one of my favorite coaches out there to follow, uh Gus Cook out of Australia. I've coached him uh multiple times. Uh he was the last coach I was working with. Um my life just got too busy. Um, that's why I'm not currently coaching with him for my own training. Um more so than people, I would say go study systems. Um I just uh yeah, I have a I have a hard time recommending a lot of bodies right now, and maybe it's just where my brain is at as a coach.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:19

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:19

Um study West Side, study the stuff that we did at Kabuki. Yep. Uh Rudy Cadlubb and I are trying to revamp um some coaching and education uh with a company we're starting up called Kabuki Legacy. I don't know where that'll go, but if it starts heading in the right direction, we'll be revamping some of the other digital stuff that just doesn't exist right now. But the reason I say that is study systems, go read 531. Um, go read uh Tudor Bompa's book on uh periodization. Look at systems. There's so much hype and buzz of what people are saying to sell stuff right now. Go look at proven systems, yeah, and then look at what the systems do similarly. If you pull from those, you're on to something.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:03

Yeah, and and I I think every single system, regardless of whether it be football, baseball, lacrosse, powerlifting, weightlifting, right? Like any of these things, we're all using the same left and right boundaries, folks. It's law of accommodation, it's Schmalhausen's law, it's all these different like biological left and right boundaries. We've all got the same ones, but the specific expression, like on the field or on the platform, is like where there's some nuance. And that's where the actual training science begins, right? But if you don't understand those left and right boundaries, like you might be missing, you know, the the the forest for the trees here. So yeah, I I completely agree. Like Zatziorski, Sif, right? You mentioned Bampa, um, Louis Simmons, like all these folks. Like, people have been there, done that, and it's well documented. And I just wish more people were willing to pick up a textbook and just read it.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:59

Well, and I think that goes back to one of my earlier points where like I get frustrated with social media now. And I think one of the reasons I don't like to post a lot on social media, I'm gonna start doing more stuff on YouTube, um, is because all and this happened when we were at Kabuki's strength. I got so mad around the time TikTok came out. We were doing um lives and um Instagram TV or whatever it was back then, and these awesome five-minute videos that were very deep in depth, had awesome information for coaches, and then all of a sudden reels came out in TikTok, and the algorithm supports, in my opinion, stupid funny stuff that's 10 seconds long. And I just drop a knowledge bomb and TikTok just well, Instagram won't push it, right? Same thing even for YouTube, like it's it just it doesn't get pushed in the algorithm, and that's where I feel like coaches are now becoming entertainers on social media, and that's why I send people to the principles and why I say, hey, instead of looking for the next shiny thing, and social media is really good at showing us the next shiny thing that it thinks we want, right? Yeah, stick to what works breathing, bracing, spine mechanics, foot, hip, and shoulder. Yeah, study some different programs, take from that. You know, at the end of the day, strength athletes, you know, for powerlifting, it's the big three. But for coaches, we can add weightlifting in there and we can add overhead press in. So now we have whatever our big five, but literally it's strength training with a barbell. You can only squat so many different ways. And if you spend more time trying to figure out how to squat and less time actually squatting, you would have just got stronger by going to the squat rack and squatting. I'm sorry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:38

And yes, there's nuances, but it's so easy to get lost in the shiny things that the world shows us now and feel like do something, just go squat more and do it. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:48

Yeah. No, dude, I I I I hear you. I agree. And I'm you know, I'm at a conference in Vegas right now. Um, and and one of the speakers was like How many of you went on Instagram or TikTok to Go learn something in the last month. And everybody was like, nope. He's like, did you go on YouTube to do that? And like everybody raised their hand, you know what I mean? So, like, you know, I I think that long form education, like, if I'm going to try and learn some concept, I am certainly not like, you know, maybe I'll go reference a post somebody talked about if I happen to see it, but I'm going to YouTube. So, you know, I I I hear you. I I I I'm right there with you in terms of getting more content on that platform. Um, and yeah, I think that that's a that's a great way to to explore that like you know, continued learning stuff in in that element. Um, and then, you know, thinking about like this next question, I I think this is pretty cool. Like, do you think there should be set equipment standards throughout powerlifting feds? For example, only using a Texas bar for deads, monolith versus rack for squats, and bench width slash height. Um, and like how do you think that that that should be? I know I've actually got a pretty strong opinion on this for sure, so I'm curious to hear what you say.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:04

I do, and you know, that's what makes um our our job hard, um, you know, even with uh the USPA going out to um sponsors like Gatorade and other people that can help us excel the sport to get these youth athletes in front of more Nike and things like that to give them more opportunity um to raise the the sport up. But we've diluted our own sport as a group of powerlifters, and I hate to say that, but it's like you you have a guy that gets upset with a rule over here with a powerlifting organization and they go start their own organization. And then some of his lifters follow him over there and then they get upset and go start another one. I forget the number of powerlifting organizations um in the US. It's something stupid like 60.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:51

It's so stupid.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:52

There's a couple reasons why powerlifting is never gonna be in the Olympics. I hate to say that, but it I just don't think it ever will be. And one of the reasons is outside organizations like the Olympic Committee and companies like Gatorade and you know, uh pick your your your poison are gonna look at it and be like, you guys can't even decide on your own sport. And you know, me and you could go start our own weightlifting organization tomorrow if we want to and disagree with the way they do snatch and clean a jerk and say, hey, we want to do it equipped. We want to see what guys can do in briefs.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:26

We could, it probably wouldn't go anywhere, but it would dilute the sport. So the other problem is you'll see, and this is where our own sport hates it itself. Like lifters and coaches and organization um leaders will be frustrated at too. But you look at the all-time world records. Well, I can go do it in an organization that lets me squat high wearing a different kind of suit, and you're gonna say that's the best squat ever at 220 pounds. It does should it beat this guy's, but the sport has accepted. And yes, some of those get so much criticism online they get turned over. But um in in I I heard somebody the other day say there should just be an untested organization and a tested USPA is the biggest combined. Um but you can't really like you can respect something done in the IPF, especially if it's the heaviest squat ever, because they did it on a tiny bar. I don't understand. It's like technology. Why we all don't use a deadlift bar and a squat bar? That's it's in the name. Like it wasn't there in 1970 and it wasn't until the late 80s when Buddy Caps created the first deadlift bar, right? Why it's not widely adopted, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:36

Well, neither were fucking rubber tracks at the you know 1940, whatever Olympics with with Jesse Owens, right? But guess what?

SPEAKER_03 1:31:42

They're here, and records are higher. So I think it's a big problem in the sport for sure, and it's unfortunate.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:49

Yeah, yeah. And I, you know, uh look, if we want to stay in like, you know, prehistoric lifting, we can make a category for that. You know, like, but like nobody's gonna want to watch that compared to you know, like the the freakiest stuff we can see, right? And and I think that that's like, yeah, I'm I'm definitely on board with like, dude, use the equipment, man. Like the the these records should be kept by like the studious people that like want to like preserve the history of the sport and everything. But the you know, Louie, I think Louis Simmons, you know, said it best, like if they're you know, they came out with single ply and he was like, hell yeah, we're doing that. They came out with you know multiply, and he's like, we're doing that. If they had 7,000 ply, he would be like, fuck yeah. So so so I dig it. Um you know, and yeah, I I I like your response to that. I'm I'm I'm on board with you.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:43

Uh unfortunately it would really take the whole community to come together. It really would. Like, we would have to start fighting, stop fighting each other as powerlifters and want to all do something to better the sport of strengths.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:56

Yeah, it's like, yeah, we we don't need to make enemies out of anything. We can actually just collaboratively work on this, right? And and get it better. Probably not gonna happen, but um, we can we can hope.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:06

Um strong people in the room with too many different egos and ideas is never a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:10

Yeah, dude, I 100% agree. And yeah, I think that is like, you know, kind of part of like why we are so excited to partner. Um, you know, uh is because you guys do have that mission. We have that mission as well. Um now, last question here from the crowd. What's the best method to manage volume with assistant lifts?

SPEAKER_03 1:33:28

Yeah, um I would have told you something really flashy back in the day. Um went back to my spreadsheet and my calculator and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, it's interesting how much life changes as a coach. Um I feel like the pendulum really swings. The new coach, I had no idea what to even do, so the data wouldn't have told me anything. I just tried to kill people. Then I got soup, I learned more and I got super data driven and thought there was a magic answer. And studied and trained and tracked data for years and years and years. The amount of data I used to track on some of my CrossFitters, I don't know where I had the time to track volume on 17 different, like, well, how many legless hair uh rope climbs have I given them in the last month for their grip volume? Like that doesn't need to be studied, that's not gonna make them better. So my answer to come full circle where I'm at now, and what I would tell all coaches now is very simple. Time. It's it. What I mean by that is right, if we're in the football room, how do I manage the volume of their ex their secondary lifts? Well, if I only have them, I'm helping a friend, a client of mine, um, with uh some lifting at her at her school. What do you have time for? If you have 45 minutes, don't worry about tracking their volume. You don't have enough time to give them too much, right? You have their main lifts that you have to get through in a short amount of time, which means they're going fast, you can't even give them adequate rest period to squat as much as possible, then you're down to 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:03

It is what it is. Get them through as much as they can. If we're not in that setting, most power lifters that I find, or athletes training outside of a school setting, their life is the dictator of time. Unless they're single and have no job or they're not doing anything else, I might have to kick them out of the gym on hour three. Most people aren't going to want to be in the gym that much. So they're that and how they feel that day is also gonna auto-regulate the volume that I give them. I know I've managed too much volume for an athlete. When they say, hey coach, I was in the gym for like three hours, I can't get all this stuff done. Cool, that's what I needed. We're now dropping the the volume back by like 25%. Yeah, as we get closer to competition, if I am using a good system like bridge or you know, whatever to track my athletes, then it's really easy to drop that back a little bit, but we have to know ultimately. I I used to say how much is maximum recoverable volume, and we really chased that for a while at Kabuki on main lifts and secondary lifts. The problem is as people's life changes, they get in a new relationship, they have kids, they get a new job, they move. All of those things just changed your magic data point, so now you have to redo all of it. Yeah, if they're getting beat up in the gym, they'll probably tell you, coach, I can't keep going at this rate, I'm dying. Too much volume. Let time and recovery dictate for you. It will tell you.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:35

Yeah, and I love that because you know, no, no plan survives first contact. And in addition to that, like if we really look at like what it takes to have this like perfect data-driven setup, like the Bulgarians and the Soviets did that, and they also like slaughtered a bunch of athletes in in the process, you know, between like the 50s and like the 80s, 90s, even like we controlled these people's lives so much that like a lot of these athletes were just freaking depressed because they actually had no self-expression anymore, and like more data, more data, more data. There's a there's a guy at the conference here, his name is Austin Stout. He he works with a lot of bodybuilders and and and such. And like, dude, like what where you're talking about like the lifestyle, like this the subtle change, the allostatic load, right, that this person is under, like you you just can't like people will become so like there's certain brain types that'll be like psychopathic, neurotic about like every little detail here, and that is like the worst possible thing you can feed into as a coach. And then there's your athletes who like probably don't lean into it enough, right? And so it's such like a person-to-person element, and you know, I you're you're speaking to your mastery of the craft, I think, with you know the art of coaching side of things, you know, in and knowing that you know that this this time element is kind of like the 90% effect um variable here. So so I love that, man. Cool. Yep, excellent, brother. Well, I think that's gonna be it for us today, folks. Oh, as always, like really appreciate everyone for carving time out of your day to come do this, especially you know, on uh on a Tuesday morning. Um, so this was a ton of fun. Kyle, thank you so much for your generosity and you know being here, man. And um, what a what a fun episode. That that that that that's one of my favorites we've done.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:21

My pleasure. I love coaching coaches. Um, it's been my all-time favorite thing. I love working with athletes too, but coaching and giving back to coaches. If I could have learned a lot of this stuff early on in my career, who knows how much better everybody would be and and where I would be at today. So it's my absolute pleasure to be able to get back.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:37

Yeah, dude. Love it. Cool. All right, folks. Thanks for being here. Have a wonderful rest of your day. And uh, that's it. We're signing off later, folks. Appreciate it. See ya.