Grab your pre workout and turn up that volume.
It is time for a new episode of the Power Lifters Den with your
host Cam Smith. Hello everybody, Welcome back to
another episode of the Power Lifters Den.
I'm your host Cam Smith and today I want to bring on someone
who's sort of a legend in the multiply space powerlifting, Dr.
Derek Wilcox. Why don't you introduce
yourself? Well I don't think I've heard
legend before, so thanks for that.
Not sure it's justified, but I'll.
I'll take it for today. Yeah.
Derek Wilcox, North Carolina. I competed in the pro ranks for
low over decade. 15 years total experience in powerlifting
before I retired several years ago.
I was born with joint dysplasia. That kind of cut my career
short. So if I wanted to be able to
walk and do anything else, I kind of had to stop lifting
weights with commas in them. Mostly known for being the
lightest guy to squat 1000 lbs. You know, about a decade or so
ago now and former world record squat 935 lbs at 181.
And yeah, got a PhD in sport Physiology and performance.
Sport scientist by trade. I'm a coach with Renaissance
Superior ization. Have been also for about 10
years. Married another coach from
Renaissance. She's pretty amazing herself
with a bunch of jiu jitsu World Championships and MMA World
Championships and championships of kicking my ass.
Yeah. So that's, that's we'll get
started a little bit about your your educational background.
I know you have like the PhD and you've been competing for years.
So I kind of want to know kind of when those two things kind of
align to kind of become what you are.
Well, honestly, the academic side of everything that I went
through in my career was completely self-serving because
I wanted to learn as much as I could about Physiology and
anatomy and bio mechanics that I could become the best strength
athlete that I could. And I was primarily in
powerlifting. I did compete in some strongman
shows and Olympic weightlifting and Highland games still to this
day off and on. So I I enjoy all of it.
But powerlifting is really where I excelled that.
So I focused on that more and that was also where my goals
were when I was a kid. I was in high school carrying
around an all time world's records list, and you know that
that world records list from Michael Soon was void of any
excuses. It was the body weights and the
heaviest weights lifted for each lift.
There didn't matter. The Federation didn't matter the
circumstances didn't matter what their mother's maiden name was.
It was just a number. And that's what I really loved
about it. And that's the whole reason I
chased the numbers that I did. It didn't make any sense for me
to to compete unequipped. I did that once just for fun
because I got got to lifting the meat for free.
And but I mean, I, I had heavy unequipped and numbers are
minimally equipped. I usually say if you put a belt
on, you're equipped. Sorry, unless you're completely
butt naked with a bar that was made in 1937, you're you're
equipped. But but yeah, I finished
exercise science courses and my undergrad ended up graduating
with a religious studies degree, but I still got all the
prerequisites to go get my masters in sport kinesiology,
which was the East Tennessee state.
And then I went on to get my PhD there as well as sport
Physiology, an amazing sport science program.
I could never say enough good things about that program.
They are there to fix the big issues and strength and
conditioning that most of us who have experience in the way room
see in strength and conditioning, especially on the
collegial level and and youth athletes as well.
So shout out to them. Yeah, that's great.
So kind of going into your PHDA little bit, I know obviously a
lot of them are research driven. You have to spend time with a
lot of other PHC members and things like that.
Maybe tell us a little bit about what your PhD studies entailed.
Well, the biggest thing, I guess, for powerlifting
relations is my dissertation. I worked with a disabled
powerlifter, did a case study on him a couple times actually, and
it was measuring the effects of waving intensities during
mesocycles or blocks. And we measured his bench press
velocity because that's the only event they have in the same
powerlifting or pair of powerlifting, which is coming up
soon in France. Everybody go check out that the
the numbers lifted there, especially in the lower weight
class categories are astronomical.
But we were able to get him in really good shape.
And we monitored his bench press velocities before every push
day, which was twice a week. And we also measured his grip
strength on a grip dynamometer and before every single session
the exact same way, the same warm ups every single time, the
same everything just for reliability purposes.
And we were able to find really consistent trends on his ability
to perform going down after heavier weeks.
And then also the recovery timeline after the heaviest
weeks of the block. It was it always took longer
than most people realize. It would take up to two weeks
for him to come back actually to baseline after a really hard
training. Excuse me, but yeah, he, he
dropped 30 lbs. He increased his bench press.
His range of motion increased just because of the weight loss.
So he was moving the same weight farther.
And in bench press that makes a really huge difference.
It was, it was really successful in general.
It was it was a cool deal. Yeah.
That's a really cool study. And I think with kind of the
scope of powerlifting and kind of if you kind of translate into
like a clinical trial or maybe like a case study, like you
said, they're very few and far between in the war.
The powerlifting, there's a lot of Sports Studies and just
different sports and things like that and even like
weightlifting. But I feel like powerlifting is
one of those areas that's often neglected in that field.
Yeah, there's just not a giant market for, it's not an Olympic
sports kind of a niche thing. So I had the resources and the
time and a wonderful team around me that really was into that.
So I was, I was very blessed with those people, especially
because I was competing during grad, grad school.
That lightest 1000 LB squat that I did was during my master's
program, and I was competing all the way through up until about
the last year of my PhD. Yeah, they they were really
cool. It's great to be in a sports
science program as an athlete because they respect what you're
doing and they support it. Yeah, definitely.
I feel like for me, like I did my masters in bio mechanics and
luckily enough for me, it wasn't, it was actually probably
the easiest year of college for me.
So it didn't really get in the way of anything.
And at the time, I was still playing football.
So powerlifting wasn't necessarily in my like big
scope. Like I was still starting to
compete and I was training hard because I mean, every football
player's favorite part of football is actually lifting.
And if they tell you otherwise, they're lying.
But yeah, so I do know people who have continued on further
education, have done their PhD, and I just know that it can be
intense and long hours and it could be stressful.
So maybe what were some of the things that helped you be able
to compete at such a high level with balancing that sort of?
Program. Well, I tried to to do my best
to pick competitions that were in the less busy season, the
beginning and the end of all the semesters.
Masters and PhD were absolutely madness because we had athlete
monitoring projects going on with every single team that our
program worked with, which was over a dozen.
So we've got people coming in for pre and post semester
athlete monitoring assessment. So we bring all those teams in
and they all go through our lab doing isometric mid thigh pull
testing and jump testing. And we have to have people doing
hydration and it's, it's a giant team effort.
And on top of all those end of semester projects that you have
to finish up, you also have to go and go into the lab at 5:00
AM to start calibrating for those lab tests as well.
Yeah. And now I guess my, my next
question would be from, from that point from once you had
your PhD, maybe from just freshly out of school to kind of
now, what are some of the biggest things that you've
applied to your coaching and your powerlifting career itself
from school? It's a really good question.
Most of it is taking the knowledge from the education,
understanding the nuts and bolts and how the gears turn in the In
the background. It's a white box approach.
If you've heard the white and black box approaches, the black
box approach for those who are listening is basically what I
call old ball coach syndrome, where we have an input of, well
this is what my coach did in 1978 and we won the state
championship. And if we do that now, we should
win a state championship on the other side of this and don't
know why it works. It just works.
And then the white box approach is actually, it's not white.
It's transparent to where you can actually understand what's
going on during that process and you can make more educated
decisions and informed decisions, hopefully that still
result in the state championship, but you can maybe
save some injuries or maybe enhance the process to be more
efficient, things like that. So the education side of that
was absolutely vital. And with my experiences of
training at a high level for powerlifting and, and trying to
do all kinds of other things, I understood primarily what it
felt like. That is such a huge, huge
benefit for any coach. When you have actually walked
the walk and you know what to tell your clients, your athletes
or whoever you're working with what to expect to feel, that's
when you get really good buy in because they're like, OK, this
guy is for real. Because I'm, I'm feeling this.
And not only did he tell me I was going to feel like this,
he's telling me why exactly I'm feeling like this and when it'll
go away. So, so I think that's, that was
the biggest attribute because you have to bridge the gap is
what we always talked about in our program, bridging the gap
between wisdom and knowledge. And you put those things
together because most people only got one if they're lucky.
I think the, the wisdom is something that only comes with
time. Obviously, I'm in the sport
time, being around the sport time.
If you're not at an elite level, if you're surrounding yourself
with elite athletes, you can pick up that wisdom and, and
kind of use that for your own. And that's something that I
personally do because I mean, I've been in the sport for only
about four years, which is basically nothing compared to
some of these people who've been doing it 20-30 years.
And I think what kind of not sound arrogant, but what kind of
separates me apart from maybe other coaches quote, UN quote
that are in this space that are my age, that they're not around
some of these people who have done these crazy lifts and have
been around other people who have set world records.
And I think that's the wisdom aspect of it.
And I think another thing that makes a great coach is obviously
the knowledge, having the background, the education,
because just because you can total 2400 doesn't mean you know
how to teach someone to do that. Very, very true.
Like some of the greatest sprinters in the world, they
they just have genetic gifts. You can't teach that for sure.
But funny enough what you're doing with doing all the
interviews in your podcast I was doing, but in private for a
long, long, long, long time. The first thing I did when I
came to East Tennessee State was, you know, I was surrounded
by incredible professors, but most of those professors were
coaches at really high levels internationally, like Olympic
level coaches. And not just once or twice, but
many times over. Meg Stone still has the NCAA
record for shot, but from 1976. I mean, that is as elite as it
gets. She was in the Olympics twice.
So the first thing I did was I sat down and I interviewed all
of them. And I wanted.
It's not just to understand them because I really want to get to
know them in general. Yeah, You know, that's just fun
because you get to meet really cool people.
But as an athlete looking for competitive advantage, as a
coach looking for competitive advantage, I wanted to see what
parallels all went with their methodology and their
experiences. So when you can do that, you get
exposed to more and more people. It's kind of, it's almost like a
filter because the more you're exposed to, the more parallels
that you can find in successful people.
And that's where the truth really lies and how to succeed
in life. Yeah, absolutely.
And that's kind of you basically just kind of put words onto my
mindset of why I started this podcast.
It wasn't just, I mean, it was just something that I randomly
one day said this would be interesting.
And then kind of as I started going through, I was like, this
is really good to pick up on wisdom, knowledge, obviously
meet new people, but also get to share some of the thoughts of
some of these people who have put different totals and
information and different areas of the sport.
And I think that's one of my favorite parts about this
podcast in general is being able to learn from these interviews
and more than just getting my name out there.
Sure, Yeah. And hopefully all the people
that are listening as well. Exactly.
So let's dive a little bit into your actual career during
powerlifting. I know you had the world record
squad at 181 right at 9:35, and then we're the lightest to squat
1000 at 198, correct? Yeah, weighed in 194 for that
one. Just just an extra couple pounds
to to stick it to Jason Coker from a buddy from First Pro meet
back in the day. I love that guy to death.
So I I do know the the person who was able to kind of chip
that Tony Creatura, He he did that.
I was actually at that meet. So that was pretty cool to
explain. Oh, no way.
Yeah. He.
That's why I honestly had no idea that that had happened.
I've been out of the circles for a while.
Yeah, so he did it at 181. And I was like, that's just
insane. Really.
Yeah. Holy crap.
And but yeah, so let's talk about maybe you said you are
primarily, primarily multiply and I looked on open pile of
things. So you had a few single ply and
a couple raw. But maybe what was the draw to
you for multiply with someone that kind of studies the body so
much that, you know, I feel like from my point of view, if I were
to guess, seeing what your qualifications on paper would
be, I would think, oh, that's a raw guy for sure.
That's funny. Well, first, the the environment
was very, very much multiply when I started.
I mean, I graduated high school in 2005 and I started really
paying attention to powerlifting and probably 2003 or so, the
biggest game in town was the WPO.
And that's all multiply. That was as extreme as it got.
I mean, people were cutting weight and doing all kinds of
crazy stuff. I mean, the culture was insane
and there's still plenty of that going on today.
But that was, there was no raw division.
Like if you signed up for, especially for an APF meet
there, there wasn't a raw anything.
That was just kind of the tradition of powerlifting.
You could go to a meet and lift without stuff, but you were
losing competitive advantage. But yeah, another thing outside
of my education, anatomy and all that stuff, I love Motorsports.
I grew up in North Carolina. I moved back here recently in
the last few years and that's always been kind of ingrained in
the culture down here. I especially love drag racing,
but any motorsport and if you, if you look at interviews or
stories and all that stuff, they were always trying to find
different mechanical advantages. And I looked at powerlifting in
the same way. I'm not just learning how to
train my body, I'm competing in a sport.
A sport has specific tasks that are included in it, and there
are parameters in that rule book.
So I looked at it like I was a NASCAR crew chief or any kind of
crew chief. I was looking for every
advantage that I could find, and that's part of where all the
sports specific techniques that I used when I was competing came
from. It wasn't.
So, you know, I could post a video on the Internet and have
everybody be happy at my squats. No, it was complete fucking
opposite. Yeah.
Like I, if people looked at my squat is like that shouldn't
account. It was like I just did my job
really well. Yeah.
Because they think it's unfair. And you know what, I hope it
fucking is. Fairness is something that's
it's an absolute illusion. There's no such thing as a
training level playing field in any sport or anything in life.
So you need to get over that quickly if the whole purpose of
training is to make things unfair because you'll be better
prepared than your opponents. You can start with the the same
rule set and all that, all that stuff.
But there's looking for fairness is completely insane to me.
Nothing should be fair. Yeah.
And that's kind of, I kind of like that analogy that almost to
me, the first thing I could think of is like when you're
playing just pick any sport, but the better the equipment is,
like you get a better pair of cleats, it's going to help you.
Why? Why wouldn't you use it if it's
allowed? Exactly.
And to me, it was multiply powerlifting because there's so
many extra variables tossed in. There's so much more to learn.
There's so much more to tweak. There's so many different things
to adjust. And not just in your technique,
but how you wear the stuff. You can turn it around
backwards. You can do all kinds of wild
stuff, but you have to have the mind to do it.
You can go through, you know, trial and error, which most of
us do and did. But if you have a specific
understanding of how it all works, and I mean that, that
takes a high level of intelligence.
And I've traveled around to lift with as many people that I could
that had all kinds of crazy experiences and tried all kinds
of crazy stuff, and I was able to learn from them.
You know, Brian Carroll, Laura Phelps, a lot of guys from West
Side, and so many other people around North Carolina.
I learned what worked for me and what didn't work.
And that's the other thing, because everything's so specific
because of my joint problems that were born with, I couldn't
wear my equipment the way a lot of other people did, like bench
shirts. They basically just didn't work
very much for me because my shoulders were so trash and I
couldn't like Jack the shirt down or or do anything like
that. My shoulders literally come out
of place. So we all kind of have the cards
that were dealt, you know, and you have to figure out how to
play that the best you can. And that's, that was the whole
process. So figuring all those things out
and finding your competitive advantage of things that you're
good at, accentuating them, that's what sport is.
That's the beauty of it in any sport, but especially with
multiply powerlifter. Yeah.
And specifically with multiply, like the biggest thing you can
do to get better is be in it more.
And for, for me, like I'm doing my first multiply meet in about
3 weeks. And I mean everything, it's been
going great because I mean, I have a decent base, which I
think is another thing that we could talk about and that's very
important. But I think a prime example with
the whole limiting variables and different variables is yesterday
I was going for a bench PR and I was, I, my, one of my first
attempts was 465 just to match what I did previously at the
beginning of prep and I almost missed it.
And then fix, fix the shirt a little bit, threw on 20 lbs and
literally launched it. It just shows that the one
little tweak, one small thing and one little adjustment can
change the whole game. And I think learning to be able
to do that on meet day is probably one of the most
difficult things. Definitely, yeah, absolutely.
Because every time you put on equipment, it's just a little
bit different than the last time you did it.
Yep. So you never know exactly what
you're going to get. But when you get the experience
and you pay attention to how you put things on, like if you put
on your your bench shirt with your palms up or palms facing
each other, palms down, all these other different things,
there's those are all variables that go into.
Drastic changes in how all that stuff operates.
So it it's no longer just, I didn't feel strong today.
Where I feel real strong today is like, doesn't really matter
that you feel great. If you don't have everything set
up, if you're not intelligent about the process, you're not
going to be consistently good. You might be good every once in
a while because you get lucky. Yeah, but it takes a whole lot
more than just being strong. Yeah.
So what are some of those things for you that was maybe some
pointers or some things that you kind of stuck with that helped
you limit the variables on whether a day-to-day basis or
the meet day itself? Well, one was managing body
weight, especially with equipment.
If your body weights all over the place.
And I know the the ends or leviathans now are kind of
adjustable and there's a few other suits that are probably
adjustable now that helps a lot. But I mean the suit that I
squatted my first 1000 LB squat in.
I had about a 6 LB window that if if I was below that the suit
was way too loose and I couldn't hardly squat anything.
If it was above that, my legs were numb and I couldn't squat
anything. So I hadn't have that nailed.
Perfect. Cut all the weight and then
rehydrate to exactly the right place.
And then making sure that you are consciously putting on your
equipment the same way every time, but try different things
farther away from competition, like putting, you know, like the
the hand position when you're putting on your bench.
Sure, you can try all that stuff away from competition time, but
when you get close to competition time, everything
needs to be exactly the same every single time.
So you know exactly what's coming and then managing your
warmups and how to put the equipment on, when to put the
equipment on. How are you?
Are you watching the attempts of the flight ahead of you?
Are they equipped? Are they unequipped?
Unequipped flights go exponentially faster than
equipped flights because there's no knee wraps or whatever's
going on. So you have to to manage all
that stuff. So it's way, way, way, way more
complicated because there's so many more variables at play.
But that's what I loved about it.
If you if you could get a handle on those things and you were
intelligent about it, you had an advantage.
It's not fair. Yeah, Yeah, if you could.
Yeah, Like you just said, if you can nail those things down and
there's nothing from those variables that's stopping you,
then it you're in for a great day.
And there's, there's so many multiplied meets of people just
going either 3 for 9:00 or or bombing out.
And it probably comes down to just the variables.
It's not the strength. I mean, obviously there's
sometimes there's the conditions with maybe you didn't rehydrate
well enough or the meat's too hot and or there's just things
like that. But I think the the people that
succeed and get to 3rd attempts and successfully is the people
that can control those variables to almost not be a factor.
Yeah, definitely. And that consistency was
something I was super proud of, especially with my squats
because if you watch my squats on video, they they never look
like they're at depth, but that's because the videos are
from the front. Yep, if you look at them from
the side, it actually looks a lot different.
I had judges, multiple judges in my career, and this is one of
the biggest compliments I ever got.
They were excited to give me Reds on depth because they'd
seen my lifts on the Internet before and they said May.
I could not believe that you were actually getting to
parallel from the side when I was actually looking at it up
close. And I'm like, how about that?
It's a weird deal. I never, I bought, actually, I
can't say never. I bombed out once in my entire
career. I don't know how many meets I
did on squad depth. And that was a really awkward
deal where a guy that who was running the meet had never
competed, didn't lift weights and he didn't know me.
I, I came in to weigh in, I made weight and I told him what I was
opening with on squat and he's like, I think you should lower
that. I was like, what?
You don't why? Why are you saying this to me?
This doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
We've just met. You've never seen me lift.
And he said I think you should probably lower that by about 100
lbs. And I was just losing my mind
and guess what? He was a side judge the next day
and he told me I was 1/4 of an inch high on my squats.
But aside from that really weird experience, I never, I never
bombed out on squats because of depth.
So and I probably more than those record squats, I'm more
proud that I had the number one ranked squat in my weight class
for five different years internationally.
Yeah, to me, to me, that was really cool.
Yeah. And it's I'm glad that you said
that too because you can never judge a multiply squat from the
front. I mean, we like to post our
videos from the front, but I mean, just knowing how physics
and camera angles work, if you watch vertical shin, you're not
going to be able to tell because that angle is just so different
and you can see it in person, but oh, that's good.
And then you watch a backup video and you're like, was it
good? So if you're not there to
experience it, then you can't really comment on that.
And I think that's kind of one of the biggest.
I mean, don't get me wrong, there's plenty of high squats
out there still. But.
You can't just all these Internet warriors and just
judging all this equipped stuff when they have probably never
even seen one in person. It's just mind boggling to me.
Yeah. And especially with multiply
stuff, particularly canvas suits, they are so thick that
there's, you know, at least an inch of material in it.
When you're wearing briefs and a canvas suit that's raising that
crease up off of your hip. And if you have an X-ray, you
could actually see where the femur is in real life.
But that really throws off the perception, especially from the
front. But is what it is.
So I guess we'll talk about the meat that you squatted, the
thousand. Maybe tell us a little bit about
the prep going into it kind of when you decided like, hey, I
wanted to be the lightest 1 to squat 1000 kind of what what the
thought process behind that was? Sure.
Yeah. That thought was actually
something that happened around 2006, I think.
So that was eight years before I did it.
I had just seen Sam Byrd take that title, and I don't remember
who who had that before him, but there was a lineage going all
the way back. I mean, of course.
Oh man, The guy that did it the first time in a meet, Why am I
spacing on his name anyway? Back in the 80s.
I can't think of it either. Yeah, but the first time I
remember hearing an early name of someone being the lightest to
squat 1000 lbs was Fred Hatfield.
He did it that I think at 264. And then it took a long time and
eventually with Chuck Vogel, Paul, maybe that's who Sam took
that from, I'm not sure. But then it was Sam.
Kurt Kowalski did it as well. And single pie, which was
bonkers. He was 275 or so.
But there was a super cool lineage and Jason and Coker was
in there for sure. Can't, can't forget to mention
him. But to be in any list with those
people, people I really looked up to a ton was super cool.
And then I I was just able to think, you know, if I stay
healthy, if I do this right, with the way I'm progressing
with, you know, hopefully not being delusional, it just seemed
like something that I could do. And and my buddy will flattery
was like, yeah, I think you're right.
And he was damn near the only person that thought so.
But that was just enough to help me really go after it.
So that meet day was a really, really hot day in Bristol, TN.
We're in a National Guard Armory.
There's no air conditioning. We had the doors open and it was
like 90° and training had gone really well.
Had an overkill squat suit. It was custom made.
That was the one with the the like 6 LB window of body weight
that I could be in. I was a little bit lighter than
I wanted to be, but it felt good enough.
And that 1000 LB squat was actually the second attempt.
I opened at like a low 900 I think, and then jumped up to
1000. And with how training had been
going, I thought it was going to fly.
And I start to come up out of the bottom and it feels like the
ground is splitting beneath me and it's because my shoe blew
out and the carpet was stretching under my feet.
So I'm having to try and finesse 1000 LB squat and slowly come up
and not push too hard to where my shoes just going to come
apart, where the the carpets going to rip or whatever.
And I'm just kind of like gradually sliding up into
lockout. And my whole plan that day was
to go after the 198 record, but I wanted to get that 1000 LB
squat out of the way. So I loaded up 1060 on the third
attempt and I I tried to go up there and I couldn't even take
it out of the rack because my shoe was split around the heel
and, and that was that. Yeah.
I mean, that's, that's crazy that you're still able to pull
that off. And I would have been terrified
if I saw the the ground split like that.
Yeah. That it, it was one of the
things that was very unique to me, which sounds weird to say.
So I feel like a douche all the time when I'm talking about
stuff like that. But nobody squatted as wide as I
did aside from Laura Phelps. That I knew of because I was
almost touching the sides of the monoliths.
And I'm 57. When I have all that weight on
me, I'm five feet. Laura started off closer to five
feet when she was there. But, you know, the heaviest I
ever saw on her back was like 800 lbs when she attempted it.
Yeah. And it's it's just a different
dynamic when you have a good bit more weight on your back.
So I didn't have anybody to go ask like, hey, when this
happened to you, what did you do?
Yeah, there was because nobody had ever done it before.
So you're, you're just kind of stuck there, left to, to figure
things out. So I eventually, you know, had
to ditch the Chuck Taylors, which are the ones that split,
and I had to go get metal squash shoes.
There's those $200.00 shoes, and they were finally justified to
spend $200.00 on them because I couldn't live with anything
else. Yeah, they they worked out
really good and I still have them today.
That's cool. So the, I guess the training
going into it and maybe over the years, what kind of modalities
or kind of different influences that you use for like your setup
of your, your training blocks and things and maybe how that's
evolved over the years? So much training it seemed like
got simpler and simpler over the years.
I trained less and less the stronger it got.
And that was from learning lessons by reading things that
they've put out, talking about Chuck Vogel, Poles training and
all the guys at West Side and all the injuries that they had
and how crazy they were going all the time.
So it's great to have people out there on the, the cutting edge,
you know, pushing the envelope and doing all the crazy stuff so
you can learn from it. You know, hats off to those
guys. And getting the to meet Dave
Tate on the his Table Talk podcast was pretty awesome.
Yeah, we got to talk about a lot of stories off camera that, you
know, it's stuff that I'd heard growing up in the sport and,
and, and sharing a lot of commonalities with people that
we knew, but it was, it was super cool.
But as far as my training, I, I started off like most folks in
powerlifting. I was doing all the West side
stuff. I read all the articles doing
circum boxes, using the bands, chains, the box squats,
absolutely everything that I could do.
And I built up a really good base with that.
The bands specifically, I think have a really cool training
effect because it's, I don't, I honestly don't think it's for
the reasons that they were said to have been done.
Because we talked about over speed eccentrics and that's an
interesting concept, kind of like depth drops and
plyometrics. That's that's another form of
over speed eccentrics where you're having to contract to
absorb force in the muscle to where you can stimulate more
type 2X type muscle fibers. But the the more important thing
to me with band training is that it turns off the inhibition to
slow down at the top of a Rep for fear of taking flight on
things like a squat or losing the bar, like pushing the bar so
hard that it will come out of your hands at the top of a bench
press. And when you take away that
inhibition and the bands keep everything anchored, you can
accelerate all the way through a squat or anything else, just
like you're going to try and throw it or push it as far up
into the air as you can. And I think the accumulated
training effect of that over time has a massive, massive
benefit. But I did start to stall a
little bit with my actual unequipped strength by doing
that. And I started doing higher
volume training and I would take periods of time where I'm doing
10s and fifteens and then I'd come back and I'd be a little
bit stronger. And then the stronger I got and
more advanced I got, I noticed that there was more of a lag
between doing high volume work and then eventually being
stronger on those higher intensities, the twos and threes
and fives and things like that. And that was around the time
that I started becoming more familiar with Doctor Mike Stones
research block periodization in the Western model of that Yuri
Verkashansky. Dr. Yuri Verkashansky from the
Soviet Union was doing the exact same thing in Soviet Russia, but
in a different language. So you had kind of this
double-blind research thing going on with probably the
coolest thing that I think has ever happened in sports science
because you had two guys that were working with tons of
athletes and developing these training programs and training
studies and finding almost the exact same thing.
They had different words for like the phases and mesocycles
or blocks or your transmutation phase or competition phase,
specificity or specialization phases, accumulation or general
preparation phases. All these things were super,
super similar, but they were the same, You know, it's and they
didn't know about each other until I think the 90s and they
were doing this from the 70s on, but I digress.
I was learning more about how those training programs went and
I was like, wait a minute, I've been doing kind of a really dumb
version of this for quite a while and seeing some progress.
If I really organize my training, look at my endpoint of
my meet day plan backwards, I can go through all this and
hopefully have some predictable results.
And that's really what started to happen.
And the more in depth I got into that, the more I was able to
increase the the effectiveness of planning training.
Yeah. And that's when I started
learning. OK, well, if I'm actually
monitoring myself and understanding my fatigue and how
that plays in the performance and recovery and all those
things, everything started getting really easy to make
progress. And that was, that's not the way
that's supposed to go, right? Like the, the higher level you,
you get, you're supposed to work harder and harder and harder.
And if you're winning, you work harder.
If you're losing, you need to work harder.
And that's, that's always the mindset.
But if you're not a beginner, that doesn't apply anymore.
You have to figure out what the smartest way to go about things
does. And that a lot of times it means
not training as much. Anybody can train hard.
Honestly, everybody can flip that switch on if they're going
to go anywhere in life and do something really hard because
you get a big endorphin rush and then adrenaline rush from that.
You get all the reward things from your from your endocrine
system. But nobody wants to sit around
and do research. Yeah, nobody wants to be
hardcore about reading a fucking book, you know?
But that's the stuff that really sets you apart if you're,
especially if you're, you're coaching yourself.
And I think another point on that too is it kind of in a, in
a shortened way, it's almost like obviously once you get to
an elite level, like if you can just be recovered and be injury
free, there's nothing stopping you.
Yeah, yeah. And you only need enough of a
training dose. Now say dose intentionally is
just like a medicine dose. You only need enough to make
progress. You don't need to Max out the
dosage and then be mentally tough and fight through fatigue
all the time. Like, you just need to get
create enough of a stimulus to make progress.
And if you're staying on that conservative side, you minimize
your injury risk. And it's very much tortoise in
the hair. You'll eventually pass a whole
lot of people because they're going to start popping things
off that should have stayed attached to where they were.
Yeah. That's a great point, but
tortoise in the hair. I like that because I think the
biggest thing in powerlifting is longevity and that goes for all
strength sports. I mean, you look at strong men
and some of the best athletes are almost 40 years old and
right, 20 years ago you'd say a 40 year old is an old person.
They're not an athlete, they're not competing in sports, but
those are the people that are lifting the heaviest weights on
the planet, so. Yep, definitely that.
That accumulated training effect, if they can stay
relatively injury free, is absolutely massive.
And by the time you get to 40, you do start to have what's
called the the old man strength kick in and everybody talks
about that little man shake my hand really hard and, you know,
crazy grip strength. There's physiological reasons
for that, like your connective tissue actually becomes more
efficient in transferring force. Your muscle can be exactly the
same strength as far as contractile force.
But if you are more efficient with a stronger tendon between
your muscle and the joint that it's moving, you exude more
force. Yeah.
So that's that's where old main strength kind of kicks in.
Yeah, that's, that's pretty cool to think about because I mean,
like you said, if it's you can have a very strong muscle, but
if the the supporting tendons and tissues around it aren't
going to allow it to maximally transfer the weight, then it's
what what you got to just do it with time.
Yeah, definitely. And you, you can't, you can't
skate by that in the least, Yeah.
So I think one of the the last topics I want to talk about was
kind of how I found out about you.
One of my friends, Connor Boyle, he used.
Oh, cool. Yeah.
So he was obviously like a a 198 savant.
Like he loves trying to be in that weight class, trying to get
the highest deadlift and all those things.
But I found out about you through him using you for a
water cut. So I kind of wanted to maybe
talk a little bit about what kind of got you involved in that
and maybe how that operates for you?
With water cutting in general, yeah, yeah, sure.
I've given lots of talks on that for sure.
And I think it's it's getting better.
But there's some of the worst misinformation that's out there
on water cutting protocols can most of it ends up coming from
different sports. People used to cut like
bodybuilders back in the day. And the timing was all off.
The electrolyte balances were all off.
People would start water loading like a month out and like, Jesus
Christ, what what is going on? And I tried some some silly
stuff early on, like if you're going to coach water cutting,
you better fucking done it a lot and you better screwed up a lot
of things over time because you need to know.
What's wrong and what's right? Not just by what's in a book,
but by the feel. If you're feeling specific
things during a specific portion of the water cut process, you
need to be able to point that out and with your communications
with the client slash athlete and prevent them from having
anything catastrophic happen first and foremost.
But also you can change the approach.
And every single water cut that I've done for anybody has always
been different, The timings different, the circumstances are
different, the environments different.
People retain water in different ways just from genetic
variability and their environment.
The tap water that they have wherever they live is going to
change the variables there and lots of other things on top of
that, just for example. But again, I learned how to do
that and I studied the, the endocrine system related to
water and sodium regulation specifically for competitive
advantage. That's where all this came from.
I, I heard and had been taught by, you know, Brian Carroll, who
wrote a really good book on it, Laura Phelps, Al Castle, A lot
of people that I was around when I was competing, especially
early on in the, in the pro ranks of powerlifting.
And I, I learned all the different methods that they
recommended doing and they were all pretty different.
They had commonalities, which were those parallels that I
talked about earlier. So I really stuck to that.
And then I started studying the Physiology of it a lot deeper
and I started trying to figure out, OK, so if we're going to
start loading water, what's the best time?
How long does it actually take for the hormones in your body to
respond And actually be stimulated by the water loading?
And how long does it take for when you cut that water off or
if you taper it to actually recognize that that's happening?
Because all those timing aspects are incredibly important.
And then the same thing goes to sodium.
But when should you add in sodium and when should you cut
it out? How fast is the reaction of your
aldosterone and your kidneys going to recognize that that's
there and not there? So playing with that over the
years and then understanding like you don't really need more
than five or six days maximum to have a huge water cut and and
saving people from, you know, water loading for two weeks and
not having sodium for a month. And like all these horrible
things that only increase your injury risk and help may even
give you a seizure or a stroke, like people do it that badly.
So that's why I started talking more about it.
The talks that I give, I always start with this is an incredibly
bad idea. Don't do it.
But when you do it, try to use these guidelines because I don't
want you to die. Yeah.
Or, you know, go into kidney failure and have to go to the ER
because a lot of people have done that too.
So going through all those scenarios and it's always
different for 24 hour weigh insurance, 2 hour weigh
insurance, mat side weigh insurance, like for jiu jitsu,
like you literally go weigh in, then you walk out to go fight.
Yeah, all, all those things change the variable so much
because of the timing aspects. Those hormones are changing over
the course of hours, not days. And it's you, you kind of have
to to call everything on the fly, especially in the last
couple days of a water cut because everybody's different.
But it's always high stress. And if you can avoid it, I
definitely recommend it. Yeah.
So I, I do have a few questions, maybe specific questions, like I
guess one of the first ones is with it, if you're doing it
online and kind of obviously you need to know a little bit about
the athlete, but do you use previous data from other
athletes that you've done to kind of guide you?
Do you have like AI guess like a database and of sorts to kind of
give you the the markers and things like that that can help
you correctly guide them? Not specific data points.
I have the experiences, I understand the process.
It's more I don't know. I've done this with so many
people at this point I couldn't even like pull out specific
examples. But it's definitely the
experience part. So being exposed to different
trends and I pay attention to people's language a lot.
If I think people are missing food or changing water intake or
their the timing of that's not right.
It all all effects things differently.
So it gives me more insights on what to ask them directly.
I have them my my water cut clients checking in at the very,
very least once in the morning, once at night, and then the day
before, basically talking all day because it's a very, very
sensitive procedure and you need to stay on top of everything.
Like I can't say that I'm taking data points from previous
people, but I understand the human aspect.
That's the art of coaching. It's just like anything else.
Yeah, for sure. And I guess another thing would
be kind of what what's like your your limit.
Like it doesn't necessarily have to be a poundage because
everyone, like you said, everyone works differently, but
maybe sometimes where someone's wanted to go hire you, but
you're like, this is just not doable.
Like what are? What are some things that
signify that? Well, that that's kind of, it's
kind of about those like the seminar talks that I give, I
tell people this is a terrible idea, don't do it.
But when you do do it this way, or at least don't do it these
other horrible ways, I try to at least help people not make
terrible mistakes For two hour weigh insurance.
My basic guidelines are don't cut more than 5% body weight.
That seems to be a, a pretty moderate.
I mean that that's still risky in general, but I've seen it
succeed plenty of times versus not succeed.
And it's so silly because the, the success rate that I've had
with these people and going to competitions and the leading up
to it, I'm like, there's no way this person's going to have a
good day. There's just no way.
And then they send me a message back and like most of the time
they hit PR somehow, like 3/4 of the time.
And like that shouldn't have happened.
You got lucky somehow. But for 24 hour weigh insurance,
I'm usually OK with doing 10% or less body weight.
Like that's, that's kind of a standard number.
I've gone all the way up to 15 or 16.
I didn't want to do it, but they were going to do it anyway, so I
tried to keep them from dying. Format side weigh insurance,
like 2 1/2 is usually recommended because you can kind
of chug some water and some some electrolyte supplements after
that to make up for it. And you're doing OK because that
that up takes super fast. So those are just general
guidelines, but everybody's very, very different.
Yeah, I think it's, it's really cool to kind of be the the
different like aspects of it, the different type of signs and
the different strategies that kind of go into putting on a
best day, like kind of just with multiply and being able to
change variables and give yourself a competitive
advantage. Yeah, definitely.
I mean, that's that's what it's all about, right?
And the, the culture in jiu jitsu and grappling sports in
general is cut crazy. I mean, just insane stuff.
And that's where you find some of the mentally most mentally
tough people that there are. But that's it's almost like you
have an inhibition to being smart about the process, like
you're just going to tough through it because and that's
really admirable, but there are better ways to go about it.
Some of the fighters that I've worked with over the years have
been kind of along those lines. You have to pull them back.
It's like, no, no, no, you're, you're three or four days out.
Don't go running 10 miles in your Sonic gear.
Like we, we have a timing aspect of this.
You'll you'll be fine. Well, I think, I think we can
kind of wrap things up here. So I'll ask you my final
question. If you could give a new power
lifter or someone going into their first meet a word of
advice, what would that be? Have fun, enjoy the people, take
a conservative attempts, get in the meat and then pass that.
Enjoy it because everybody's nervous, everybody wants to do
well, and if you can't enjoy the process then you're not going to
last. So have fun.
Well, I wanted to thank you again for taking the time to
come on. It was my pleasure.
Oh, it's an honor, man. I appreciate it.