Grab your pre workout and turn up that volume.
It is time for a new episode of The Power Lifters then with your
host Cam Smith. Welcome.
Ready back to a new episode of The Pile Lifters Then I'm your
host Cam Smith and today I wanted to bring on the White
Rhino, the world's strongest bodybuilder.
Stand up for Ding, Why don't you introduce yourself?
Thank you for having me on, brother.
Yeah, I will lift her myself since we tired.
You trying to stay ahead of Father Time these days.
Touch that. A reasonable wait every now and
then. Not as often as I used to.
And without hurting, that's my goal, yeah.
So I was doing a little bit of background search to kind of
just try to figure out where I want to go and I want to know
where the name the Rhino came from.
And I I only found it on one article from an interview with
Mark Belbeck in the day. I think it was like maybe early
2000 tens. So if you want to just tell
everybody where that name came from.
Yeah, that was Flex Wheeler. I always wanted to lift heavy
and he was trying to get me to not do the power lifts and
bodybuild. And so that was just a nickname
that you put on the. It's always stuck, ever since,
ever since they mentioned it in Must be a development magazine
back in 2010 kind of stuff, yeah.
So I know over the years you've kind of done both bodybuilding
and powerlifting, kind of like a blend between the two.
What do you think was the biggest approach difference for
you when you were like whether you're prepping for a meat or a
show? Well, initially I thought
lifting heavy weights would make me bigger.
That was a lesson I didn't learn for many, many years tonight.
I since advise against that. I don't think that that heavy
singles or double s or Pickles are any way to get huge, and
it's a great way to, you know. Potentially get injured, to be
honest with you. We saw that with Dorian Yates.
He talked about the same problem and squatting heavy and
eventually had to get away from that and get into bodybuilding
style movements, tax squats, leg presses, etcetera.
A lot of folks thought I was bodybuilding and power lifting
at the same time, but at the peak of my career I would do one
and then the other I would go back and forth and when
bodybuilding I would utilize all of the evidence based guidelines
for hypertrophy. I would do more volume, more
frequency I would. Do more range of motion, a
little shorter rest periods. Now I've since I think the
literature is pretty convincing that you still want to keep two
or three minutes between sets. So flex generally kept me at 90
seconds. But we were free contest and so
I think that may have may have helped at least a little bit
amount of calories. I was burning in my workout so I
didn't have to do any cardio and then powerlifting.
You know, I I started decreasing the volume and frequency and
increasing the rest periods and increasing the loads and of
course practicing the the powerlifting movements.
What Flex convinced me of in 2008 and 2009 and I started
training with him was that I had some overdeveloped body parts
from powerlifting. I had some really strong front
delts, really strong glutes and spinal erectors from squatting
and deadlifting. But because of the lack of range
of motion and volume, the quads were underdeveloped and the
chest he felt that it could be much better.
Back was also really strong. I always did a lot of chin ups
and rows and deadlifts and so he he would not let me bench
squatter deadlifts and he would have me do a greater range of
motion, slowing the movement down a little bit and doing.
A larger variety of exercises that would kind of give me
hypertrophy in those muscles that look best on stage and so I
I prospered them under that tutelage.
Of course, when Flex Wheeler tells you to do something that
you're well advised to listen. He's extremely experienced and I
end up getting my pro card under flex.
And then I moved over to Sacramento and spent a few
months with Mark Bell and end up setting a world record and
powerlifting under Mark Bell. So.
I guess the, the moral of the story is that I had been
competing for 25 years, over 20 years at the time and it wasn't
until I I really, I think fine-tuned my approach, reached
out and got some great coaches that I was able to reach
finally, finally reach that pinnacle of competition in both
sports and when. So obviously hypertrophy you
want to kind of learn how to grow the muscle.
And it's as a certain point like when you're building muscle or
building strength, the muscles respond differently to the
different movements and all sets and reps and things.
So kind of when you were kind of going into a meet prep with Mark
Bell, what are some of like the major takeaways you had from
Flex that kind of helped you out along your journey and
powerlifting? Well, you know this is power
lifters den And so some of the advice that I give strong men
and power lifters. Is is something that Eddie Cohen
also said to me one time he only competed.
This was probably, I think this was in his book, The Man, the
Myth, the method. He only competed twice a year in
powerlifting and in between competitions he would spend a
number of months doing hypertrophy trip and that for a
number of reasons, a bigger muscle could become a stronger
muscle. There's more.
I guess we could say you end up developing muscles that you
might otherwise not if you're just doing the powerlifting
movements because there's more variety, you know, it seems like
for your delts and lying hamstring curls and things like
that, that you wouldn't otherwise do.
He did a lot of behind the neck presses.
He did single leg leg presses. It's good to do some unilateral
work, of course. And so the bodybuilding in
particular also increased my cardiovascular fitness.
You know, I think that Westside and Louis Simmons was big on
GPPI, never trained under Louis. But I trained under Mark Bell,
who trained under Louis. And I worked with Matt Whittamer
out of beat training in Cincinnati, who trained under
and competed with Louis's group for over 10 years.
And they were big on doing getting a lot of cardio in
Louis, I guess would oftentimes tell newcomers who couldn't.
Keep up with the workout that they would have to spend a
couple of months just getting in shape, just dragging sleds and
doing volume and you know just getting their heart rate up and
just getting in shape and that's neat.
That's what bodybuilding did for me and the bodybuilding was my
GPP because you do more frequency and volume and more
sets more reps, increase cardiovascular benefit and
there's a carry over for that to where when you start
powerlifting, I think Coke Lab said this.
Years ago that his dad would make him do a lot of cardio in
the offseason, and he hated it because his strength would go
down. But then when he started
increasing the weights and decreasing the cardio going into
a competition, he could train with more frequency and volume
and still recover better. And his strength would come back
quickly. Minded, too.
There was only seven weeks. Between when I got my IFPB Pro
card, it's 200 and 46248 pounds on stage.
It was probably one of the most shredded conditions I was ever
in. I always hate to say with the
body fat percentages, but I was shredded. 7 weeks later I had
put on 35 pounds. Oddly enough, my legs had
actually shrunk nearly an inch because I went from doing all
the volumizing leg pressing movements with flex to, you
know, to a greater range of motion.
The squatting 800 to barely 90 degrees with Mark Bell.
And so I put on over 35 pounds in seven weeks and was able to I
could obviously set the world record in powerlifting at that
time beating constant Constantinops 275 total.
And you know, so the strength comes back very quickly.
It really does. So I I would I don't want people
to get discouraged. Power lifters in particular that
if they spend a few months doing hypertrophy training, two
months, 10 weeks. To get the conditioning, get
the, you know, all the variety of movements, potentially add
some muscle that it could be a good thing.
I think it's when I started working with Hoffthor Bjornsen,
he was £440. I brought him down to under
about 395, mainly because the blood work showed that we had a
little bit of fatty liver, we had a little bit of insulin
resistance, you know, all the things you'd expect drug and
elevated the blood pressure higher than what we would like,
all the things you would typically expect from someone at
that weight. And so I brought him down and we
corrected a lot of that in his blood test.
And then when I took him back up, we implemented a few things
that would decrease the fatty liver progression.
Those things in particular were one, we got him a CPAP, which is
huge for his blood pressure. 2. We introduced choline into the
diet, which is good for the liver, very good for the liver.
NAC and Tudka probably very familiar with your audience and
a single cysteine and Tudka is very good for the liver.
We started taking 10 minute walks after every meal so we
could partition glucose into the muscles for glycogen storage
without the need for as much elevated insulin to do that job.
And vitamin D3, who's a key component of that he had a
deficiency in that we also decreased.
Overall fats and particularly saturated fats.
When you have a what we call an isoenergetic, you know, an equal
calorie amount of saturated fat versus unsaturated fat, you see
a progression in fatty liver much faster and so we would
introduce salmon. We would use just a lower fat
overall. Had to cut down on things like
bacon and butter and use things like leaner meats.
You know top sirloin or bison was one of the OR 96.
Four ground beef from Trader Joe's is always a good choice.
Just basically decreasing saturated fats overall and
increasing a little more fiber intake and mostly from fruits to
be honest that it tends to be easier to digest particularly
those large quantities of food that they have to eat.
And so I. Ultimately, he was able to get
back up to 4:40 and had a much better blood pressure and didn't
have nearly the compromised biomarkers, the blood test that
we were looking at. So that's kind of my speech on
bodybuilding versus powerlifting and how you should manage to how
you should periodize your weight at least once or twice a year,
come down to a reasonable body fat percentage and look at your
biomarkers and make sure you're healthy.
I think it's a reason why I was able to compete until I was.
I mean, I set a world record when I was 44 and I'm still here
at almost 56. I'm still in great condition.
I don't have any health issues or my joints are recovered
obviously because I'm not lifting as heavy, but I still
have a reasonable amount of weight for my age and obviously
I'm not lifting what I used to lift.
But I'm a little more careful with my joints these days.
Yeah. And for so for me, kind of going
back to what you're saying about Eddie Cohen's approach with
doing what it one to two meets a year and kind of increasing the
volume in the offseason, that's kind of what I'm leaning towards
more now. I'm doing a lot more volume with
my work, trying to get my work capacity up kind of with the
lines of a GPP. And the goal is to not only put
on the muscle mass and do more hypertrophy based movements in
the offseason, but kind of have my conditioning up so when it's
time for a meet or to prep under those heavy loads, I'm I'm
really more comfortable under them.
Yeah, that's great. Yeah.
And and I like, you know, as we always talked about, I like
things like sled drags, you know, concentric movements.
I don't like to do a ton of steady state cardio.
I feel like it thins me out. And so I'd rather do something
under a little bit of tension. I do a couple of hit sessions a
week on a on on a bike, you know, on one of those assault
bikes. I really get my heart rate up
high. Bodybuilding leg training will
do that to you. Anyhow, I had like yesterday.
I was dying. Yeah.
So that's a hit session and you got to be careful how many of
those you do a week because you can develop quite a bit of
fatigue. So I think all that's smart.
I think that we should as power lifters.
I mean we love to to be big and we love to lift a lot of weight,
but really cautious about our health and I think if we do
enough. You could get our heart rate up
enough, consistently enough, and eat, as I mentioned, with
Phosphor's diet. I think we can, you know, stay
healthy, watch our blood pressure, watch sleep apnea, you
know, get a blood test and look at blood thickness, your RBC,
hemoglobin, hematocrit, donate if necessary, those kinds of
things. I have a high blood pressure
quick fix kit in my vertical ID book.
I have a high blood sugar quick fix kit.
I have a high cholesterol quick fix kit.
And I I take a deep dive into all those things and I put
things in a kind of a hierarchy of most important, the least
important. But I also expressed that it's
all multifactorial. There's no one quick fix for any
of those things. And if at any point it becomes
necessary to to get medical assistance and to take a blood
pressure medication for a short period of time or.
If you use to dala fill to for to help with blood pressure or
endothelial function or BPH, you know benign prostatic
hyperplasia. If there comes a time when all
of any of those tools are necessary to achieve your goal
without compromising your health, then by all means.
I think people should use every Ave. available.
Yeah. And I do remember a few like
years back, I was watching the, like the seminar you gave at
Thor's gym about the vertical diet.
And that's kind of when I learned like I guess the pillars
of the vertical diet. And I feel like now you can kind
of see the translation of it into the world of bodybuilding
and power lifting. Everyone's eating bison and
rice. Sleep is being prioritized way
more. I guess one of my questions
would be is obviously with C paps are usually for larger
people. What?
What kind of goes into deciding whether it's something that
would benefit someone? There is a a questionnaire you
can just download off of the Internet called the stop STOP
like a stop sign stop Bang Bang stop bang questionnaire and you
can take out of a self-assessment.
Generally speaking if you snore and wake up tired you probably
have something degree of sleep apnea.
It has to do with nectar, so if you're a large athlete or even
a. Like Jordan Fagenbaum from
Barbell Medicines only £198. He wears a CPAP.
He has a thick neck and so that can influence you know, the
airway if you hold your breath at night.
Obviously if you don't have a significant other to monitor
that for you, there is a what's that called?
You put that on your finger that it measures your oxygen, the
pulse oximeter. You can actually get one of
those off of Amazon that hooks up to your iPhone and it'll do a
reading every so often in the morning.
It'll show you whether or not your oxygen levels have dipped
down. You know, I would say anything
below the 90s would certainly be something to warrant an
intervention if you're snoring, holding your breath.
If you're oxygen levels are dipping at night, you may want
to look into getting a CPAP for apnea.
A lot of power lifters I've discovered over the years and
bodybuilders, they can't afford or don't have a doctor or
insurance to get a sleep study. Those can be quite expensive,
1500 plus dollars. I think it's compelling enough,
particularly if you have elevated blood pressure or if
you're waking up tired all the time, which absolutely affects
your performance and your recovery and your insulin
sensitivity and all those things.
I think it's compelling enough to where I would suggest that
they get a CPAP, a secondhand CPAP, whether it's.
From Craigslist, I've created a relationship with someone who
rebuilds, refurbishes Cpaps, use Cpaps, cleans them, changes out
the insulation, and then provides them to my clients.
And so I I send that information out to my clients and so they
can get a CPAP relatively affordably on Craigslist.
About $400. Nowadays the Cpaps are very
comfortable. They used to be, well they used
to be Cpaps continuous positive airway.
Now they're by Paps where you when you exhale, they relieve
the amount of pressure that's coming into your face lot more
comfortable. And then they have these, they
have an auto setting on the newer models that'll interpret
your breathing during the night and it will give you the air
that you need and not more than you need.
And so they will adjust its pounds of pressure or however
they determine that. So those are the things that
that you know I would I would suggest that you think about
getting a CPAP for app is going to be a huge.
I don't say this about a lot of things.
I've been in the business a long time.
I'm kind of a communion the old guy when it comes to fancy new
things. But with respect to CPAP and I
first started using one back in 1993 when my body weight started
getting north of 240 pounds. Remembering I was 140 pound
freshman in college, so I was a skinny kid.
So it took me many, many years. That was an 85.
So it took me 8 years to get up north of 240.
And then I started having problems.
And then I I got a C pap. It's life changing.
And that's a word I don't use very often.
I'm telling you, within a day or two I went from falling asleep
in the car, driving to work in the morning, because you're just
exhausted, you know, all the time.
To having just an enormous amount of energy and then you
want to mow your lawn, clean your gutters, wash your car,
it's extraordinary. So I know I'm trying to sell it
here, but I can't emphasize enough what, how big of an
impact that has. And that's why I, I focus on it
primarily because all of my clients.
Yeah. And for me with having my
master's and biomedical engineering, like a lot of my
study this year was on my devices.
And when we kind of went into Cpaps, I was like, this could be
something interesting because I know a lot of power lifters and
bodybuilders use it. And my grandmother actually just
got one this past year and it's the one that has the adjusting
airflow. So I kind of like nerded out on
it and like looked at all the basically read the manual for
her and it was. It's really interesting to see
how just small adjustments like that can drastically improve
sleep. Yeah, for somebody with severe
apnea, you can reduce your blood pressure by up to 20 points by
implementing a CPAP. Same with the RBC, hemoglobin,
hematocrit, elevation. A lot of that could be due to
sleep apnea. So before you start donating
blood every single month, a lot of guys do that.
They get a General practitioner that's just chasing normal
ranges, and then next thing you know, people start donating over
donating, and they end up with anemia.
They end up with low ferrets, and I'm a lion and they're
exhausted and they can't figure out why.
And that's just because they're dumping blood too often.
They don't really have. Polycythemia.
They have what's called erythrocytosis, which is not
dangerous. It would be similar to someone
living at elevation and then and those folks probably shouldn't
donate. And you should always get at
least a ferritin, probably a full iron panel, because
ferritin can be a kind of a transient inflammation marker
that might not actually be looking at your stored iron if
you have some other. You know, like an elevated CRP
or bacteria or virus or injecting, you know, gear that
isn't filtered correctly. All those things can can cause
inflammation and and that might give you a false reading for
ferritin. Yeah.
So I guess kind of going into like the blood levels and things
like that as like a younger athlete at like I'm 23, so I'm
still relatively, obviously I'm young in the game and I'm still
the natural athlete. So I guess kind of.
What would you recommend in terms of monitoring blood levels
for someone that's kind of not having it routinely done or
things like that? I think it's great for everyone
to get a baseline, just going to get one test, OK.
I don't think it's something you have to do all that often.
I did them on almost a monthly basis.
I was curious. I was a Guinea pig and I was
gaining and losing weight and competing so often that I kind
of wanted to see what was happening and if I implemented
some protocol to change the numbers, I wanted to see if they
were changing. So if I knew I was, you know,
utilizing the right path or protocol, I think everybody
should get a baseline. It's a mistake that I made that
when I was 20 years old. I went in and got a blood test
and I was hypogonatal. I had low T, severely low TI had
Verico seals, which is a vein that doesn't drain from the
testicles. And so it'll increase the heat
and and decrease blood circulation.
And so you can compromise your testosterone levels that way.
So and that was after, you know, I think it was nearly three
years of training. I was went from 145 to 156
pounds. I I just wasn't I wasn't getting
bigger. And you might remember from my
Iceland seminar I kind of opened talking about the fact that if
you know, if you're in the gym lifting weights and you're not
gaining any muscle or strength, you know, your your coach should
probably tell you to go get a blood test because if you're low
T you know you're wasting your time.
Same would be true for women trying to lose weight to her
hypothyroid. You need to go in and get a
blood test. And that's not to say that that
you necessarily need medical intervention, that you need to
to get on testosterone or thyroid medication.
But at least it's an indicator that maybe you need to resolve
sleep apnea. Maybe you need to lose some
weight. Maybe you're overtraining you
know under sleeping all those things you know too much fatigue
excessive calorie restriction for women in particular lack of
iodine all those things can affect thyroid.
And and so rambling on I would say that everybody should get a
baseline and historically I used to pay almost $300.00 for blood
test or north of that. And then along comes Derek from
more place more dates and starts Merrick health.
Marek health.com. And he he reached out to me and
I said what can we do about the prices on these blood tests And
he sharpened his pencil and went at LabCorp and and they ended up
getting a comprehensive panel. The one I used to get throughout
my career and over 100 blood tests over a 15 year time span
for $144.00. So that really helped reduce the
barrier to entry being cost. And it's very convenient because
it's online. You just go to
standeverything.com and click on blood test and it and click a
couple more buttons as it directs you to America Health
and they e-mail you. It's called a requisition form
that you print out and take to LabCorp, get your blood test,
and three to five days later they send you the results.
And the results are reasonably easy to read.
It shows you your score and it shows you the range, the
reference range. And so you really only need to
look at the things that are outside of that range, at least
initially. And you may need to consult
someone, but at least you'll have some data to work with and
that's that would be my recommendation out of the gate
at any age. I was working with some high
school softball players in Arizona a couple of summers ago
and two of the parents told me that their girls were decreasing
performance. We were measuring their 40 yard
laser time Sprint and they said they were getting slower and
they were tired and you know, they wanted to attribute it to
school and stress and all this other stuff.
And you know my first question was, is what's what's their iron
level? That's the most common
deficiency for high school girls who are usually in a chloric
deficit, particularly those that are training hard, but also
those that are over restricting certain foods And obviously the
menstrual period that's going to cause significant iron loss.
When I say over restricting, it means that usually girls will
demonize red meat. There's rear irons at and
they'll start eating these egg white protein powder, tilapia,
broccoli, peanut butter diets, you know, the guru diet and that
you know starts resulting particularly for athletes in
these deficiencies. So anemia.
So we've sent them in for blood tests.
Sure enough they were low on it. So those are easy things to
remedy if you know, if you're aware of them and that a blood
test helps you become aware of these things.
Vitamin D levels, obviously. I mentioned thyroid levels,
testosterone information. There's a whole host of other
markers that are of value. Obviously your cholesterol is in
there. Your blood sugar sensitivity, H,
A1C, fasted glucose, fasted insulin, triglycerides, all
those things important for blood sugars.
It's all in there. It's it's pretty, pretty
comprehensive and pretty useful. So I would suggest at least
getting a test as a baseline and then seeing where you need to go
from there. Yeah, I think I had one a couple
years ago and I I did kind of go through it and try to figure out
what everything meant at the time.
And obviously I was still in school, so I was still learning.
I do know there's multiple like signs and symptoms and
biomarkers for like anemia is pretty obvious for a lot of
reasons and low testosterone. But I guess what are, what are
some of the things for like a high hematocrit level that can
kind of show up well that might end up in a little bit of
tiredness as well that's blood thickness, might increase your
blood pressure. And again, the reason for a
blood test is because maybe you don't know.
I often will talk about like I said Mark Bell's podcast a while
back and I was talking about how LDL is an independent risk
factor for cardiovascular disease and that reducing
saturated fat is an effective way to lower LDL.
And of course, there's always some 20 something year old guy
or 30 something year old guy that's like, oh, I eat steak and
eggs and butter every single day and I feel fine.
Well, you don't feel athrosporotic plaque
progression. The average age of a first heart
attack is 65 and that's plaque that's accumulated for 40 years.
And so I'm advising people on things that are kind of beyond
their concern, I guess, at that moment.
But it it it, it's wise to pay attention so that when you get
to be my agents, you know you don't have, because you can't
reverse atherosclerotic plaque. There's no way.
Once you have calcification in your arteries, there's no
currently there's no treatment for that.
And so best thing to do is avoid it in the first place.
Yeah. And I think you're kind of a
pretty good example of longevity in the sport.
I mean, obviously you're not competing anymore, but you're
still training relatively heavy for what you've done in the past
and I guess kind of. In terms of like the training
aspect of it, I noticed you don't use knee sleeves when you
train. I think the post you just posted
not too long ago is like the belt was 600 and to me that just
seems like it would be painful even at this age.
So kind of maybe what are some of the things that have helped
you kind of maintain joint function and things like that?
Well, I had terrible joints throughout my powerlifting
career for almost 10 years. I had chronic tendonitis in my
knees and my hips to the point where I had a two different
surgeons do MRI's and told me I needed hip replacement surgery.
So most of that was overtraining and a lack of I think
preventative medicine. I say an ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure. I did a video called Keys to
Pain Free Knees on my YouTube and it it really follows a lot
of the pain and science originating out of Doctor
Laramar Mosley's explained pain in Australia, which has been
popularized by Austin the Rocky and Jordan Faganbaum from
Barbell Medicine. They do a fantastic job without
talking about pain and how to prevent it, how to rehabilitate
from an injury or pain. And and really the fundamentals
are that at some point if you have an injury or have pain, you
need to eliminate the source. That doesn't mean you have to
stop dead lifting. If you hurt your back dead
lifting, it just means you need to reduce the weight and range
of motion or utilize, you know, different exercises through the
same movement pattern that provides less load, that can
allow you to put tons and tons of blood in that in that area
that's that's causing pain. Greg Knuckles referred to it as
kinesophobia. When people would stop moving
because they had pain, it's exactly the opposite of what you
want to do. You want to keep moving when you
stop moving of course and the muscles atrophy and the range of
motion starts to decline and that's just going to lead to
more pain. And you know, Greg also said
that chiropractics and physical therapy or maybe better than
nothing, but they pale in comparison to any kind of
movement. That's what we see in the
research and that's not an indictment on chiropractic for
physical therapists. It's just that the idea that
that you can be fixed in what I call passive therapies or manual
therapies, it has minimal evidence.
What a good therapist can do is what I say facilitate movement.
They can work with you such that you have a decreased sensation
of pain so that you're able to move more freely and it's that
movement as mentioned that is the pathway to healing.
So you eliminate the source, find pain free movements and
everybody has a different they call point to the entry there as
to how much and what range of motion and how often, and then
move and move early and often. And Doctor Keith Barr has a
protocol where he suggests you do 10 minutes three times a day,
much similar to what I mentioned with the 10 minute walk or
recumbent bike for 10 minutes. I did that when I was working
with Mark Bell in 2010. I put a recumbent bike in my
room and at the hotel I was staying at, and I would get up
in the morning and I would do four.
Actually, it was just after breakfast, lunch and dinner at
the time, but I would do, you know, 40 seconds of spin against
a modest tension that would rest for 20 seconds.
I would do that 10 times and take 10 minutes.
When I got off the bike, I had a significant amount of blood in
my knees and hips. You know, you walk almost like
you had a little baby pump from training legs, but I would do
that three times a day and that's what keep ours
recommendation is just do that about six hours apart three
times a day Vastly helps with collageny synthesis and and of
course the blood flow, you know those joints, the cartilaginous
joints, they aren't innervated by capillaries.
So you don't have direct blood flow to those areas.
The way that the blood gets to those areas is through a
pressure gradient. And that only happens when
you're moving that joint and that joint acts like a sponge
and when you move it also will take the waste products away in
the lymphatic system which doesn't have a pump, you know it
needs move. Talked about this my rants as
well. And so another thing that I do
now remember I mentioned that that that was kind of pain rehab
speech there. My my protocol for pain rehab.
Another thing that I do now though, in particular at my age,
I move a lot. Sled work, swimming, you know,
anything that gets you moving a lot.
The assault bike is fantastic. I can't say enough about the
assault bike. It's extraordinary for,
especially as you get to be my age and speed becomes something
that declines at such a rapid rate.
You know, powers is just gone at this age.
The idea of me doing it and I do pliers, I do box jumps, but I
only jump up, I don't jump down. You have to watch the the
eccentric impact, especially with athletes.
But one of the big things I do now is I don't lift as heavy as
often. So when you know I'm pulling
heavy, I'll only deadlift heavy once every four or five weeks
and I won't do as many heavy reps.
I might work up to a top single, but then I'm I'm going back down
to 70% load for for reps And the way that I build my deadlift is
I use less fatiguing exercises that that can transfer.
My two favorite currently is the SSB bar box squat.
I actually like Kabuki's Transformer Bar much better.
It allows me to lean forward at more of an angle.
The SSB if you lean forward, it's going to curl your it's
going to end up in your lap. You know, that's a tough bar.
That is a tough bar. I do a little bit of it, but I
so I like the box squat, mainly because I don't accumulate as
much fatigue because I'm not reversing the weight at the
bottom and it's that it's kind of that stretch reflex.
Also because I dissipate the stored elastic energy that you
would get from a squat, the stretch reflex.
And when you're doing a deadlift, when you're
specifically squatting to transfer from to the deadlift,
you want to sit and make sure that you don't aren't bouncing
out of the hole because you don't have that in the deadlift.
And the other exercise I really like is the Cambridge bar.
Good morning off of pins or I use spud straps so it's not
quite as noisy, and I'll drop the eccentric into the straps
and you'll see that I just kind of crash it down and then mostly
do the concentric. And since the concentration
moves slow and heavy and it's kind of at the pace of a
deadlift, I'm getting a similar grind.
And so that transfers very well for me.
But it's all hamstrings and glutes.
And so those two, if I can, if I can increase weight on those two
exercises over the course of four or five weeks, my dead lift
to go up. Then I go back to those
exercises for another four or five weeks, and then I test my
strength on the dead lift in the squad.
I I use those for my workouts to minimize the fatigue and the
injury potential, or at least the accumulation of maybe
tendonitis or any of those kinds of things.
And then I always complete the workout with lots of movement.
So I might go up and do tons and tons of reps just with the band
for extensions or curls or, you know, hyperextension movement
with a little band and just and just pump out like five sets of
20 and just do 100 reps And these aren't intended to be
anywhere close to failure. They're just intended to pump a
ton of blood into those areas. And so the next day I feel
pretty damn good. Yeah, that that's kind of, I'm
honestly, that's kind of reassuring here from my
perspective because like SSB box watts are one of my favorite
movements. And the Cambridge bar good
mornings have had a lot of help. And I do like to do, whether
it's back extensions with like a mini band around my neck or like
a shit load of reverse hypers and just pump up that back and
then my back's super pumped up. But the next day I feel
absolutely great. And in the past that would be
done for like a week, right? Right.
Yeah. And then kind of going back to
I, I'm a big believer in movement as medicine as well.
I think there's a big disconnect between like physical therapists
and like the world of health and fitness these days.
And I think it's starting to get better.
I I know some people are like, this is the argument about icing
injuries and stuff or whatnot. I kind of want to hear your
opinion on that. Even the inventor of rice rest
ice compression elevation has said that ice is no longer he
wishes he'd never said that. And we know that because it
inhibits blood flow and as we just discussed the blood flow is
critical and so no, we don't ice injuries and we don't ice post
workout because that increase or decreases the hypertrophy
response. It can blunt hypertrophy for the
same reason that kind of acute inflammatory response to
training is necessary and beneficial.
It triggers the cascade of hormones that and brings a lot
of blood to the area and that's what you're trying to to the
effect you're trying to have when you train.
So so no icing immediately post training.
I was giving a seminar recently at Southern Methodist University
to their football team and coaches and I have a slide that
says things that make you weak. And on there I talk about things
like antacids, anti inflammatories, taking lots of
end saves, metformin of all things things like and on there.
I put ice in post workout very specific about that because then
one of the lineman raised his hand.
He said, well, our coaches have us ice sometimes.
They know day before game. And I said, well, that's a
different scenario. That's psychologically, if you
feel pain, it might inhibit your performance ability.
Your body's very protective that way.
Your brain is very protective of your body that way.
I didn't go into it in depth when we were talking about pain
science. We talked to Lara Malmosa and
Barbell Medicine. They they support what's called
a biopsychosocial method of pain and their psychology is is
significant part of pain rehabilitation and when you have
a some sort of pain or injury your brain will be over
protected and some of the manual therapy or ice or those kinds of
passive therapies may desensitize that signal from the
brain to the location that you're feeling pain to such a
degree that it it member again I said facilitates movement
whether that's chiropractor physical therapist or any of
those passive therapies and that movement's important And so
that's something that you might use ice for if you have a game
tomorrow and you're still feeling extraordinary amount of
pain might not be a bad idea to take an ice back and relieve
some of that psychological trauma because you know you got
a ball out tomorrow because that's the game and there's
nothing else you can do. So under those circumstances I I
recommend that people do whatever it takes and maybe and
it's largely placebo but if you think it works, it works.
We know that about placebo. It's that's a tool that that is
very beneficial to use if you're able to.
And so that's my that's my speech on ice.
Interesting enough I just had that conversation with John
Jones. You know I'm down in Albuquerque
getting him ready for the steep a Miocic fight at Madison Square
Garden November 11th. And so he was asking about the
same thing. They're not.
We should go do cryotherapy or get ice tanks and ice baths, and
I made that distinction between when and what for certainly not
post workout. And possibly if you're
experiencing pain and you want to improve your performance in
the short term that it could be a benefit.
Yeah. And I I do know that I I learned
not too long ago that kind of ibuprofen and other and says
they kind of almost work so well that it just stops the recovery
process so. Kind of what I recommend to
athletes that have have like a little bit too much inflammation
is like turmeric because it can kind of just reduce into like a
natural inflammation level. And so I found benefits from
turmeric and I actually did a project in my internship about
trying to blend turmeric with palmers because it's not
necessarily like by available in powder form as well.
So that was kind of interesting. Interesting.
Yeah. And then I guess kind of going
back into, I guess you were saying with being with John
Jones, kind of what's your approach to training an athlete
of his caliber versus I guess maybe like a college football
team? Yeah, or a college football team
would be another example. Bunny Morris.
Some people might recognize the name.
He's a legend in that appeal. Football he's.
Been a my coach at a strength conditioning coach at
Pittsburgh, I think the Cleveland Browns and then now at
Arizona. And he he said something one
time. He said that at that level
probably one of the most important thing you do is get to
the gym on time and turn the lights on.
And he said that a good coach just learns how to stay out of
the way and not, you know, not do more harm than good.
I got to be honest with you, a lot of the pro athletes that I
work with you don't. It's nothing that comes out of
the the CSCS certification from, you know, the NSCA.
Those aren't the things that you're dealing with.
These guys are already strong, well conditioned, well
disciplined, extraordinary athletes, genetically, you know,
predisposition for their sport and it's just incredible.
A lot of it is is trying to. Have them avoid doing things
that might actually harm their performance.
I mentioned strength is never weakness and things that make
you weak. It's kind of like they get
distracted by the shiny object syndrome I've been saying for
years And they said, what about that?
What about that? And these individuals have
limited physical capital and they have a lot of demands on
that capital. And so really what you're trying
to do is optimize the ability to recover and not get them to
waste their time on things that could be better spent.
Either recovering or training. And so I'm cautious not to
overload them and get them distracted or doing things that
just really don't provide a return.
Unless of course it's some of them are superstitious that
particular things they like to do.
And as long as it isn't hurting their performance, then you
going to be cautious to, you know, allow them to do the
things that make them feel good. But you know the standard thing
we think you need to be strong enough.
We think you need to have, you know, sufficient conditioning we
think you have, need to have. Obviously extraordinary skill
set and we, you know, endeavor to set up a schedule that allows
them to at least gain or maintain all of those traits,
those physical traits. And so we'll, you know, as we
get closer and closer to fight, we'll still touch a little bit
of strength, but we won't do it to such degree that it's going
to create fatigue that'll prevent them from doing their
MMA training. You know, the necessary amount
of cardio. But by the same token, we're
trying not to impede the MMA training.
And just understanding what that is and having some measurements
in place in order to to make sure that they are progressing,
they're not going backwards. You need to have some testing in
there. Whether it's a broad jump for
strength, you know, whether it's some intervals that you're doing
for cardiovascular training, whether it's swim training or
even sleds, you know how far and how much weight are you dragging
in a certain period of time. If that's going to be your test,
it should be measurable and progressive.
Or at least maintainable. And then you're talking about
your, you're not getting them injured during practice, but
that's hard. That's always kind of a touch
and go situation and damned if you do, damned if you don't.
You want them to be able to practice kind of at the speed of
the game. You know, you call, you know,
sports specific obviously without injuring them and that's
that's tough to do. One of the things we talked
about strength, we talked about speed, we talked about power, we
talked about skill. One of the things that that we
like to focus on is agility. And agility is your ability to
react to a stimulus. And I know some people think you
can train that for fighters by I think the Pi has a light board
where you stand there and the lights go off and you have to
touch the light. You know, unfortunately, about
the only thing you get better at on a light board is a light
board. The same thing would be true of
doing ladder drills for sprinters.
But the only thing you get better at is doing ladder
drills. It really needs to be at that
point very sports specific, which is playing your sport.
And So what we do is try and bring in higher and higher
levels of fighters. You know, I did a video once
called the The Real Reason Why Westside Barbell Athletes Are So
Strong. And I discussed the fact that
you get a whole bunch of savages into a room together, competing
against each other day in and day out, year in and year out.
They take things to another level.
So what I found training with Flex, he got more out of me than
I could get out of myself. It's what I found trained with
Mark and his team. We were competitive.
We would train harder to to beat each other than we would if it
was just a, you know, somebody that you were obviously much
better than and wasn't pushing you.
Things you see become. Achievable or real to you?
Although I trained with Eric's photo for years and that never
became real to me. Or achievable, Eric's photo, for
those don't don't know, is the original.
One of the original guys who pressed over 700 pounds, 722
world record at one time was Eric's photo.
He's a freak of adventure. At one point when we were
training together in my garage, I realized I couldn't even be
the strongest guy in my garage. It's very humbling, you know.
You work up to a 600 pound Max and he puts another plate on and
does 3 reps you know close grip. So anyhow that to me.
And so we start bringing in better fighters for John.
We start flying in guys that are top level UFC or Bellator
fighters that maybe a guy with the wrestling skill that's
comparable or better than John's or a guy that's a professional
boxer and so John can see the speed of the game and and.
And determine whether or not his skill set is is ready for the
ring. Yeah, that's that's pretty
interesting too because when I when I had Greg on a couple
episodes ago, we were kind of talking about like the
environment is kind of the biggest thing from West Side I
think. And like it's kind of I'm, I'm a
big proponent of I like to be the smallest one in the gym
because that means I have a higher sound to go to.
So I I kind of like that approach and I think that if you
can use that approach and you can use that approach in pretty
much any sport, if you're the weakest guy in the room or the
maybe the dumbest guy in the room, you're in the right room.
You know, for years I've been training with two different
women as part of my training crew.
One of them was Brittany Pryor, who was who I think she squatted
560 and deadlifted 565 in competition.
Raw, natural. She was a nine time Allamerican
and shot foot and discus. Extraordinarily powerful
athlete. And the other one, Jamie Wynn is
head strength and conditioning coach at UNLV.
She was also formerly at SMU as a strength conditioning coach.
The point is, is that she is focused on creating that
environment for the athletes about and even talks to them
about. You know, you can come in
dragging your ass so you can come in ready to, you know, be a
leader and help the team perform right down to the music.
She She has all of it. You know, measured and
implemented in order to try and get the best performance out of
the athletes during that hour that she's got them.
The more you invest into that, obviously, the more you're going
to get out of it. And so she tries to create the,
the right environment. Yeah.
And so I I guess a question for you would be kind of
backtracking back to the power lifting days like during a meat
prep necessarily like so the mental game can be draining
towards the end of prep when the fatigue start setting in.
What we're kind of some of the maybe like the mantras you went
by or some of the cues in your head that kind of helped you to
maintain that level of like energy.
Yeah, well I you know, neat thing about power lifting is
that you can eat all you want for most people.
I know some people try and make weight glasses, but I, you know,
I was never that far above my weight class that it wasn't a
pretty easy water country. The heaviest cyber.
Got was in the low two 80s when I was training for a 275 meet.
I did get over 300 pounds on a few occasions, but it wasn't,
you know, that's the concept with the idea of trying to cut
weight. One was for the world's
strongest pro body. But the weight classes didn't
matter of course. So I I track everything.
I have a Excel spreadsheet. I know some people like to use
apps, but I. I look at apps kind of like junk
drawers in the kitchen. It's once you put something in
there, you know it's it's out of sight, out of mind.
I have a Excel spreadsheet piece of paper.
It's just piece of paper with some boxes on them and I put the
days of the days of the month across the the top and I put
this list of things down on the left hand side and it preludes,
you know things like my supplements and vitamins and my
gear, but it also includes my morning weight, my night weight,
my hours of sleep. But I trained that day with my
top sets were and I that chart. You know, gets filled up with a
bunch of numbers and X's and check Marks and and at least I
know if I'm meeting all of those, all those requirements,
all the things that I want to do to get ready for the competition
and it's so regimented and consistent.
The time I train, what I train, I even would get the same bars
that I would be using in competition.
If I was going to go to a competition, I would make sure I
found out ahead of time. Exactly which bar is it?
An Okie bar? Is it a Texas debit bar?
You know, And then I would make sure I had that bar.
If it's is it a £55 squat bar? Because you know those are
thicker than the £45 bars and so you want to be training with
that. And so the monolith, same thing.
If I'm going to lift out a monolith, I want to know.
So I just made sure that I tried to replicate meet day.
I would time all of my rest periods so that I would have a
chair to sit in and and everything was on the clock.
And so I I just tried to replicate it as best I could.
So I got there with no surprises.
So I'm obviously extremely disciplined with my diet.
So I don't have any distractions in that regard.
When I travel, I would take my food with me.
Many times I have flown out to World's Strongest Man
competitions ahead of time to help off the war.
Or Brian Shaw. Get ready for a competition by,
you know, going to grocery shopping and setting up with an
Airbnb and just making sure they had everything they need for the
week. Because more recently I'm
working with some of the wrestlers from the women's
Olympic wrestling team and one of them traveled internationally
recently and did not take meals with her, ate something local
and got to got food poisoned with diarrhea and vomiting, lost
like 7 pounds and was supposed to be a shoe in for the gold and
ended up with the bronze. You know, kudos to her under
those conditions to still perform at that level, but.
You know, my concern obviously was the fact that she didn't
pack a rolling Coleman cooler with about 20 frozen prep meals
and just throw them on the plane and take them with her made that
problem. So I'm I'm very disciplined
right down to the meals, taking them with me, staying in a place
that's got a microwave in the fridge or a little extended stay
or something like that and just going grocery shopping and.
And not having any distractions. I I don't eat anything, but I
haven't been eating for a number of weeks before the show with
the competition because you know, why introduce something
that might cause you gastric distress or something.
Those are just variables that are controllable.
So I just, I just had all that in order.
Yeah, I think that's funny. Kind of talking about like being
so regimented. It kind of reminds me of that
the one time heard like Brian Shaw, when he goes to travel to
a competition or whatever, he'll go and buy a mattress.
If the mattress he's sleeping on isn't the right mattress because
he's so particular about the his approach, so so.
Indeed, Everything you can control, yeah, I think, I guess
to kind of wrap things up, I guess.
So I like to ask all my guests if you could give a new power
lifter or someone kind of going into their first meet.
Like one piece of advice, what would you say?
I made this mistake myself and there's so many pieces of advice
that we covered most of it. The fact that you're going to
want to ensure and have your nutrition, hydration, sleep
schedule, don't take a red eye flight.
You know all those stupid things.
Take all, take all the dumb shit out of the way.
But in one meet I opened up a brand new pair of shoes and put
it on for the first time, right before I started warming up for
my squat and bad idea. They were.
They didn't have a big enough
toe box and I have a I have bunions.
And so my feet were screaming sore and and I ended up actually
missing my opener and it was don't do anything new or crazy.
I'd say the same thing to a bodybuilder the last week.
Don't do anything fucking crazy. You know, they try and get 10%
better and they end up getting 5% worse, you know?
Or even 1% better and getting 10% worse.
Those kinds of things happen. So it's be consistent.
There's other meets to fight another day and just make sure
that you're that you're competing the same way you
practiced. Yep, that's awesome.
Practice how you play, it's a big one.
I just want to thank you again for coming on taking the time
out. It was an honor to have you on.
I hope things go well with John Jones and training camp and
thanks for coming on. Yeah, thank you, brother.
Hey, anybody needs more information?
Stan effering.com is my website and I have a nationwide meal
prep company that I shipped meals all over the country.
Monster Mash to your door at Stan Effering is my Instagram
and on YouTube I mentioned I've got a number of rants and all of
that's pretty educational materials.
A lot of free material on there is Stan Effering.
So anything you need find me on there.
Big, big big bag.