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 wanted to bring up the
creator of fifth set Sweet Burns.
Why don't you introduce yourself?
My name is Sweet Burns. I'm a powerlifting coach slash
writer. I live in western Pennsylvania.
I'm originally from Eastern Pennsylvania, Philadelphia area,
but I live in Western PA now. I'm in a gym called Keyhole
Barbeau and coached the powerlifting team there and been
a writer for Elite FTS for a number of years.
I would say eight or nine years at this point.
That's awesome. So I think to start off, I kind
of want to talk about Keyhole Barbell.
I was watching a little bit, a couple of videos and saw that it
was, it was in the church. I know religion's a big part of
your life. I kind of want to know maybe
where the name came from and if the church was kind of something
you stumbled upon or something you had in mind the whole time
or. Man, I believe in God's
Providence. I think that was part of his
plan. I can't really take credit for
it. At the time I was, you know,
maybe not living the life that I should have.
And some will say something LED me out there.
I had these dreams. I was having these recurrent
Keyhole dreams for a long time and that's where the idea for
Keyhole, the Keyhole stuff came from.
I had a company called Keyhole Restoration before that, and
then when I was opening a gym, it was obviously going to be
called Keyhole Barbell. So I ended up moving where I
live now in Apollo, which is like a little town in Western
Pennsylvania and the sticks in the middle of nowhere.
And I'm from the city, you know, I moved from North Philly to
Apollo, PA. So I went from being around 6
million people to like 1000 or 2000.
And I bought the building purely on the fact, the square footage,
like I just basically looked at online.
I was looking for what was the biggest square footage I could
find, what the biggest buildings I could find.
And I started to see there were a lot of churches on the market
at the time. This was around 2010.
So I started specifically looking for churches.
I was like, yeah, that'd be kind of appropriate.
I mean, I live in a church, you know, I'd be the closest thing
to a castle I could ever get, you know.
And so sure enough, I I was going out to Western PA and
looking at various churches with a realtor.
And she had a plan to, you know, show me this place.
I wasn't even really interested. I wanted to look at this
Methodist Church in a place called Unity Township.
I looked at it and I was like, yeah, this is the place.
This will work, right? You know?
And I was ready to make an offer on that.
She's like, on the way back, just let me just stop and show
you this other place. And I'm like, I saw the pictures
on the listing. It looks like crap.
And sure enough, we pulled up outside and I was like, what it
was, just mind boggling. The size of the building was so
big and I had like a bell tower, you know, and it's like over
9000 square feet. And so when we walk in, I'm
like, you know, like I'm waiting for the catch like this.
The yard needs to be done a lot of it needs a lot.
You know, it needed a lot of stuff right from the gate.
And it wasn't set up to be a house either.
But as soon as I walked into what was at the time, the
fellowship hall, like it had been closed down.
It was on the market for like 2 years.
As soon as I walked in my front, I was like, this is it, This is
the gym. That's a big deal, Barbara.
And sure enough, it was. And I moved in there like maybe
a few months later, and it's been off to the bases since
then. So I guess it's been 1213,
thirteen years or so. That's awesome.
That's definitely a unique spot in a.
It kind of goes well with like who you are and what you stand
for. So I think you kind of you, like
you said, kind of led you to there.
So it kind of seemed to work out, I guess backtracking a
little bit more into like what got you into the sport of
powerlifting, bodybuilding kind of maybe some some early not
like what am I looking for like mentors and maybe kind of some
whether some books or you got a specific person that kind of
jumped you into the life. OK, so I started lifting at a
super young age, man. Like, I mean super young,
probably 12. And that was just because I was
interested in pro wrestling. Like that was what was on TV
late night, you know, like regular TV.
You watch it like 2 in the morning, like Paul Cogan and
stuff. And so I remember I asked for
like a weight set for Christmas one year.
I got it. It was like the sand weights,
you know, and and I just took it really seriously.
I did what it said on the box like just which was like I
forget what it told you to do, like you had to do at least 10
reps or or it wasn't going to help.
So I did everything for like 10 sets of 10.
I did like ten sets of 10 bench and ten sets of 10 shoulder
press every single day for probably like three years before
I started and I'm Rose too but I didn't even really start
training legs. So I was about 15 or 16 and I
had a rough upbringing, you know, I mean I was thrown out of
schools and I got, I was on probably my 4th high school and
I got a teacher that was a teacher coach named Jim Davis
who had like power powerlifting program at TCA, which was the
name of the school and just maybe 1996 to give you an idea
at the time, 9595. And so I noticed that I was like
and I had noticed prior like earlier in life that I was
stronger than other people because of lifting weights.
You know, like I realized, like, I remember there was one point,
another kid I worked with in my neighborhood worked out with, He
would come work out in my basement with me.
And his brother was like way older than us and way, way
bigger than us. And like we used to call him
Captain Kingman, you know, to give you an idea what he looked
like, he was just like this big like CRO Magnon looking dude.
And we got him in the bench press with us.
And I'm doing my like ten sets of 10.
And the kid, Chris was doing his, he was like a little less
weight. And then like with my weight was
on there. And then his brother was like
going to try and game one time and he was going to jump in with
my weight. And he literally just like,
couldn't get it. Like he's like help.
I can't get it off of me. Like, we had to pull it off of
him. And I was like, it was the first
moment where it like, clicked. I was like, this works, you
know, Of course, as a kid I'm like, I've got to be stronger
than everybody. And so I didn't, I didn't stop
lifting, but I got in a lot of other trouble.
I did wrestling before I got kicked out of one school that I
was in did did pretty good with wrestling.
And then eventually I met Jim Davis guy, the coach who was
like a teacher coach. He got me into where it was like
competitive where we would there was records in the school for
bench records and stuff. I benched like 300 lbs.
I was 16300 lbs actually when I was 16.
So like that was the best thing I'd ever done in the school.
But there was another kid who was like a huge kid and he was
pretty close and he ended up like beating it a couple times.
So that really pushed me. And like, what happened was they
would announce over the speaker in school, they'd be like the
the bench press record has been broken by whoever.
And there's this kid Bryan, who he was very close and he would
break the records on a couple things.
It was also like at a debit record too.
And for a while he was close, like around this time.
And every time he would break it, before they would announce
that he had beat me, Coach Davis will come and like, pull me out
of class and be like, yo, do you want to try?
And you know, Brian, Brian broke your record.
You want to try and break it again before they announce it.
And then they could be waiting to hear.
And then it would be like, it would say that I broke my own
record. It's like he would never get it
And like, it got him more and more frustrated.
And I think that the coach was trying to motivate him to keep
going. But instead eventually he just,
he quit. And by the time I was 18, I
betched 400 lbs. That's crazy.
Yeah, so it was it was cool. Yeah.
And I was pulling 600 lbs. Like, you know, my squat wasn't
anything miraculous, you know, it was like 5 or something like
that. But for a guy in my size at that
time, that's still pretty strong.
I was about 200 lbs so. Yeah, it's funny.
That's what got me into the powerlifting side of it, and
after that is when I pursued Bodybone.
But what were you saying? Yeah, that's funny.
Like I'm like the complete opposite.
Like I'm I'm just starting to approach 400 on bench.
I just hit six on deadlift, I think on Halloween actually.
But my squat, my squat's just been always my lift like and
cleans too. But I mean I don't do that
anymore. I'm not.
I did call it football, but I'm no longer and I'm still a
powerlifting athlete. I guess if you want to call that
an athlete, but no. But I I so my coach Kirby
Goodrich. I don't know if you've heard the
name. I believe he uses some of like
the 5th set methodologies for like bench especially and I feel
like I've been getting a lot out of it so.
That's. Awesome.
So I'm, I'm ready to dive into some of the I guess starting
with the creation of it, but definitely get into some of the
details. But I guess before we get into
that, talk about a little bit about maybe some of your
competitions when you decided that coaching was more of your,
he thought was more fitting of a role for you and things like.
That absolutely. So by the way, I got to mention
I did always did power cleans always, Even through
bodybuilding. Even into my 20s, I was doing
power cleans and then eventually I went to prison.
I was doing power cleans in prison.
I never stopped doing power cleans until I was probably in
my 30s. So it was something that I just,
I always like held it. I felt like in order to be able
to actually perform, you better be able to power clean, insanely
heavyweight, like probably, you know, close to as much as you
can press. Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, yeah. So basically I started to do
competitions in high school for powerlifting.
They were like the AAU, whatever high school, whatever you do for
that. That gave me some exposure to
that sort of competition that I liked when I was still young.
I started doing bodybuilding, but so I had ones I got out of
high school and I just, I felt like, see, at this time you also
got to keep in mind 1998. No one cared about raw lifting.
There wasn't. There wasn't raw lifting.
I mean, technically people would compete raw, but they were just
that meant you took off your suit and belt and they, you
know, I mean it was like you were doing it to be a hard ass.
In fact, I remember being at a meet and like we had shirts that
other people on the team would use.
It was like community shirts and and I was like, they made me
like I couldn't press as much with them on, you know?
And I remember Kurt saying to me, like, that's OK.
He's like, that's called a raw. That's what hard asses do.
And I was like, dude, that was like a moment.
A switch flipped. I was like, that's right, I'm
raw from now on. I continued that for quite some
time, obviously into my 40s. But then I then I got interested
in the bodybuilding bug sort of bit me.
I wanted to, like, I felt like I was able to dominate the
strength stuff very easily, even at a relatively low body weight.
Because, I mean, I'm tall, I'm 6/2, so I was not a large guy
when I was hitting those numbers.
I was, it was kind of like, how's this guy doing this?
You know, like, so I had, I must have had a decent amount of,
like, speech strength, just genetic speech strength, you
know, the ability to like turn on those motor units.
And I think that's something that over time, maybe less and
less, you know, as you get older.
But definitely in the beginning it gave me like coming out of
the gates. It gave me like an advantage in
that way. Bodybuilding taught me how to
control my body. That's really, it was a it was a
spiritual practice for me. It was like an aesthetic
practice, like being in calorie deficit was intentional
suffering. It was like something that I
could, it was like medicine for me, you know?
I mean, at that time of my life, I was just mentally, I was in a
state of chaos. Like I was studying, reading as
much as I could. I was remember I was studying
Nietzsche at the time. Like, if you can think of, like
coming in their late teens, living on their own in an
apartment, like reading Nietzsche and lifting weights,
that was. That's basically where I was at.
And I did my first bodybuilding competition.
I was a team and I won for my class and I was like, as soon as
I start, I wasn't sure if I'll be able to handle it the whole
time, you know? But I was like, I'm not going to
embarrass myself. At least you know what I mean.
But I didn't know if maybe getting on the stage I wouldn't
be able to handle it. But I was like, wait, this is
good And I liked it. Like as soon as I did it, I
realized I liked it and all the build up to it and so forth.
So I did a number of contests over the next seven years and
got to like a top national level.
My best finish was 10th place as a super heavyweight, not a
national level contest, so that's pretty good.
Yeah. That's awesome.
Yeah. At that time too, it was, it was
different than it is now. It was highly competitive at
that time. Like these the guys that the
Super heavyweights were basically look like the top pros
in terms of conditioning. Now you know, this is the era of
like Craig Titus and you know, I don't know if you remember if
you followed bodybuilding at all, but during that period it
was very, very intense, very competitive.
And so Dave Palumbo was something of a mentor to me,
Greg Kovacs, also a mentor. These were like mass monsters.
They were, this was the early 2000s mass monsters.
It was a period of time where it was just like, let's see how big
humans can get. Dave was like 5-7 and 315 lbs
with NO0 body fat like stage ready at one point.
And I mean I got up to about 3:30 but I'm 62 so it still was
a far cry from him. And Greg was 63 and he would be
over 400 lbs in shape just. And he did.
He did some. I was just talking about this in
a question that I answered. He did some of the most
impressive, most insane lifting I've ever seen human being do.
Still to this day in my life, I've never seen it will come
close. Like I'm talking 7 plates on
incline for reps. That's crazy.
Dude, just like wait, what? Like how?
Like your head that doesn't understand, like if this doesn't
compute, it doesn't seem like and going to buffets with him.
Like walk behind him, it'll be like walking behind the white
Godzilla. He would have two plates in his
hand and his little wife would have another plate and his lats
would just be like hanging in front of me.
I'm like, I can remember thinking the only reason I got
so big was because of surrounding myself with those
people. But I realized I was like no
matter how big you get, you're still small.
Yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of where I'm at.
Like the the two guys I trained with, I trained up at Evolve in
Worcester and one of them is 665350.
And then I don't know if you know who John Ropo is, he's he's
like 511, but he's like 320 right now.
So. So I'm, I'm 62, like 2:45 to
2:50. So I'm like, I'm larger than
your average person, but you hang around those people, you
just feel like a child and and the amount of food they eat is
just absolutely insane. Like, I'm like, how are you not
sick to your stomach all day? It's something that like I'm
trying to learn to eat and like, I want to get up there.
I'm thinking I'd be like a good 275.
But I think past that point like I I couldn't hang.
Dude, you got at a certain point it becomes, that's the job, is
eating like every like showing up to of course going to the gym
to great. When you weigh over £300, that's
the only part of that you don't hate.
But the rest of it is just eating and being a misery and
pain. You know, like everything hurts.
It hurts to move. Like you know, it's it's it's a
process. And then like I said, I would
take enzymes like 3 * a day to help with digestion and like it
was kind of a lot of it will be liquid.
I did the chicken shake diet for years and you know, just
anything I could do to help with exactly what you're saying.
Digestion, you know. And now I'm now I'm old and you
know, I still, if I don't keep my foot on the brake, like I
feel like my body wants to be large still.
So like, I have to like for example, I was 240 for last the
whole last year I decided I would stay in that range, 240.
I got down to 40. I hadn't seen since I was like
like in the era we're talking about like pretty bodybuilding.
And then I just basically I do now, I do three days a week to
four days a week of deficit and the rest of the time I eat in
surplus and I'm up to almost 270.
It's just it's just the body just wants to keep doing it.
You get to a certain point like it's like a program, you know,
it's like it just wants to be that size, like how many spaces?
Yeah, it's funny. It's kind of like something
that, kind of like, it's like every like 20 lbs you gain, your
body gets comfortable like 10 lbs lighter.
So you kind of got to, you keep on bumping up and then letting
it come back down. Because I got up to like I was
like 253 a couple weeks ago and like that was like the heaviest
I got. And my body was just started
like rejecting the weight. I dropped to like 243 like in a
week and a half. And I was like, what?
What happened? It's like my body's, my body's
just not ready to be there yet. But slow, slow process.
Most people won't get there. You have to have that.
You have to have a certain mentality to get to crazy body
weights that are like beyond what your normal what you would
want from hunger, you know. And like my my screen name.
Now we're going, I'm, I'm dating myself here because there was no
real, like Internet as we know it now.
It's like basically like chat rooms and e-mail.
You know what I mean? So so basically my screening was
300 lbs of death and that was like straight through for like 5
years until I was I probably went from I was 176 and 1/4 at
the bodybuilding show the first one I did so I was a middle
weight and and then at my heaviest I was probably 280 in
contest shape so that's like 330 offseason it's.
Like a whole nother human, yeah? Exactly.
It's like another person you're carrying around.
Take double. And, I mean, I felt like it.
It still, you know, it makes a big difference.
I used to fantasize about sleep like I'd be, like be like
leaving the house at like noon and like just be like, I can't
wait to go. That's going to feel, to lay in
bed. Your body's just.
It's so expensive to move, yeah. It's like an OverDrive,
overheating and like now everyone every like everyone
pretty much 275 plus it's like they got a CPAP and they got to
make sure their rooms like 5° or they're not going to be able to
sleep. Yeah, yeah.
I didn't. We didn't have Cpaps back then.
I do now. Thank God.
But yeah, that was before the era of everyone having a CPAP.
Like, dude, I had issues with that for so many years before I
realized like, oh wow, it's probably 2015 before I got a
CPAP and I wish I could was 10 years earlier than that.
I thought you that much because it made a major difference for
me. Yeah, for sure.
I mean like I feel like I said, everyone has one now and they're
very easy to get and it's just another tool to help you get
like recoveries. Recovery wasn't as prioritized
back then. It was just keep going pretty
much go till the wheels fall off and now it's let's see how long
we can keep the wheels on the track.
So I feel like the mindset shift has kind of been a huge part in
the elevation of both powerlifting and bodybuilding.
Oh, for sure. I mean, like there was
definitely that you better do your due diligence to recover,
but it was more like you better not skip a meal.
Well, you better not get less sleep thing you're supposed to
get. Yeah, stuff like that.
Like you better not get up early.
You better not walk across the gym fast.
It was stuff like that. Like if you do cardio, it better
be under 3 miles an hour. Anything like that.
That was the Those were the rolls back then.
Yeah. So I guess we can start getting
into a little bit about fifth set.
Kind of what? When did it first like come into
play? Where did the name come from and
kind of what was like the the vision with it?
So fist set was, well, I'm going to have to back up a quick
second here. So I went to prison when I was
young, in my early 20s, and while I was in prison, I was in
state prison for a few years while I was there.
That was where I developed fist set.
So I had access to books that people would buy me and send me.
Because you're allowed to, like, send people books.
You just have to buy new ones that are in jail.
And I had access to everything that was in the library, which
was minimal, you know, But I had already been interested in
sports science and what the Russians were doing and stuff
like that, you know? So, like, that was something
that, I mean, obviously at this point we're far into my lifting
career. I'm probably 10 years in.
It wasn't like I just started lifting and then went to jail.
So I was already very, very well invested.
And it was like, it was part of who I was.
And yeah, I trained really hard in jail.
That was basically like training and writing.
I've always been the two staples that hold me together, you know,
in terms of things that I can control myself anyway, you know,
those were like mechanisms. They were coping mechanisms for
me. So I focused on what could we do
with what we have available here.
I wrote about it in the books, the coaching manual covers.
That's probably the best if you want to learn the story of first
set. That's the most information and
background that you'll get. The prison that it was in and so
forth. I've actually, you know, thank
God I've had the opportunity to rent the prison that I did my
time and like because it was closed for human rights
violations. There were all sorts of issues
there. Man.
It was bad. Bad deal with bad place.
And to some someone private bought it and I saw someone just
somehow happened to come across my path that I was able to rent
it for photography. And I am a photographer.
So I was like OK so I just set up like I was doing a photo
shoot for the day and I went and I'm actually I've been working
on a book about that whole experience and process.
But that's where in that prison is where the origins of first
set lie. And from there I got out and I
continued to try to. I mean, I tested it and kept
really good records with people that I had that were my.
I had like a training group in there of about nine guys.
And so it was like, you know, when you're pretty jacked in
jail, everybody's like, all right, what do we do?
So I had a group that was basically that was my group.
And you know, some people would fall off like they would abuse
them until they were just, you know, it was kind of survival of
the fittest in that way. So to be fair, at first, it was
probably people that had better genetics that survived.
So for the first batch, everything wasn't optimal.
And I just kind of whittled away.
I played with it and eventually I got out to where I am now in
Western PA and I had a full team of people to work with and coach
lifters online, you know, probably since 2010.
So it's a long time at this point and throughout most of
that period I've had anywhere up to 30 lifters that I worked with
individually. So like, that's my full time
job, you know, Even when I'm not working with someone at the gym
at the moment, I'm doing coaching or teaching using
various resources that I have for online.
Like I'm sure you've seen some of my coaching videos I did for
Elite FTS for bench press, things like that.
So those things are the main reason.
The main benefit to me to make those is that I use them with my
clientele. It's cool because I'll be out of
meeting. Someone comes out to me and goes
like, hey, you don't know me, but you taught me how to bench
press. And I'm like, Oh well, great,
you know, cool. I love hearing stuff like that.
I love to be helpful to people that I don't have in my sphere,
my typical sphere of influence in the way we might normally
think. Like, I don't see them
day-to-day or we don't have any real interaction, but they still
are able to benefit from something that, you know,
something that I did, which is that that's a great feeling for
me. That's the best motivation to
continue to do this. That's really the only
motivation I have to continue to do this at this point is that I
want to help people. I want to see them do good.
And, you know, so that's the beginnings.
That's how it started. It progressed eventually.
I wrote a book. My friend Vinny Vicenza, you
might have heard of him. He benched 603 weight classes
raw. He read the book and he was
like, can I show you? He shows to Dave Tate.
And I was like, yeah, and he shared it to Dave.
And Dave was like, dude, first. It was like a whole process that
I won't get into behind the scenes of us of interviewing and
questions and and stuff. But you know, I mean, I love
Dave. He's a great guy.
I love Elite and what they stand for.
It's been a good partnership with them from the from the
outset. And yeah, they they made the big
a big difference in terms of that book taking off the first
one, which the first one was just not for people that wanted
to do power after meets and not have a coach.
You know, because I I would coach at meets and and some of
the stuff you see is like mind boggling dude.
Like you see I feel so bad and you don't want to go up to
strangers and be like listen, do this, you know, I'm always
there. I got offer if someone wants
help, but they see just avoidable mistakes that it sucks
when someone trains for six months and they get, they get 4
minutes on the platform and they blow it, you know, six months of
training and it's just it's just avoidable stuff.
So the whole point of that book was just to make a pared down
method of training a version of this set, even not even the full
version, because even then I was using sequence system and things
like that with my own clients. It was meant to be just a
simplified version. And that book did amazingly
well. It was very well received, and
it made it clear that people would at least listen if I told
them the rest. And that's when I did a
subsequent sort of update called Evolutions, which was just
basically everything that had happened since, you know, jail,
for example, like this. The changes that were that made
it more a little bit more sophisticated and slightly more
effective for especially for certain groups.
And yeah, so there was that. Then I eventually did the
coaching manual, which is a textbook for the certification
course. I have a good number of
certified Festech coaches, you know, throughout the United
States and different places that run the method with their
clients. And like you're saying, even
even it's people that use other methods too, having that, like
your coach might work something in where they understand
something about the methodology because it's it's a complete
methodology. You know, it's a, it's a
globalized training system. It's a holistic approach.
It's not like, oh, we'll just do this, you know, it's it's
everything effects, everything else.
If this, then this, if this, then this.
It's, you know, it's sort of an equation in that way.
Yeah. And I feel like that's kind of,
I guess, kind of similar in like the way of Conjugate, I guess is
like there's so many approaches to it.
But the overall idea of it in terms of the structure and
methodology and the approach like you can be used in so many
aspects. But as long as you're following
like the the pillars of it, I would say it's going to work.
And like I feel like especially in powerlifting, like you, if
you, if you train your movements properly and then you train your
accessories like a bodybuilder, I feel like you see the most
success and kind of touching back on your point of like
seeing someone at their first meet or like seeing someone
there without a coach or trying to do it on your own.
And like, as a coach now, it's like you want to go up to them
and like, but you don't want to sound like you're trying to
preach or you're just trying to make a quick buck to hire them.
It's like you want to help them and it's kind of an interesting
dilemma. Yeah, it is.
It's yeah, see, I you know, look, I'm not definitely not
trying to find clients that meets, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I'm like a waiting list. So but if.
But if I see someone who needs help, of course I'm going to
help them. You know, I'm going to ask
people with me to help, you know?
Hey, come on guys, let's talk to the person.
They don't. You know what I mean?
I just The thing is like that's how the sport was to me when I
started. That's how everybody was.
To me it was very different from bodybuilding in that way and
that everybody was really psyched to try to help you, you
know what I mean? And whereas with bodybuilding it
was more like people. Yeah, it's like side eyeing each
other and like sizing each other up, you know, It was very
psychological, whereas this powerlifting, it was more of a
like, let's see if you can break yourself in half to do it.
Yeah, it's great. Like you can hate some guy and
you're still clap for him. Exactly, yeah.
Even if someone's competing with like in your same weight class,
same age, you still want, you don't want to see them fail.
Like powerlifting, bodybuilding, it's like it's like the same
side of the world, but in terms of like competitions that it's
just so different. Totally, totally, totally.
There's like, it's great, man. Like I've seen in powerlifting
meets, like when there's groups of people that are together from
different teams, You know, it'll be like some group from West
Philly, you know, these days that I know, like know them from
West Philly. And then they'll be like this
Catholic school team and like and then like you'll be like
that people. Then like, you know, like
people, well, well, people. And it's like it couldn't be
more dramatically different between these different groups.
But everybody's like, yeah, yeah, everybody would help each
other. Everybody would cheer each other
on. You know it is, it's a it's a
weird thing. It's like we're all the same in
this way. It's like this thing we have in
common that no one else does. Yeah.
And. That's what I love about the
sport. It's just the environment.
It's awesome. Like even just outside of
competitions, just training, like everyone's there supporting
each other and it helps everyone grow, I guess.
Kind. Of iron sport iron sport gym
while I'm out here visiting and that's my old stopping ground.
Where I used to they had. We had total night on Friday
night where everybody would try to total in the gym.
It's a strongman Saturdays. Everybody's in the parking lot
doing all this stuff. I came up with that man like
with that very tight gym environment of people like a
family. But I didn't mean to cut you
off. I was just.
No, you're good. I guess more into the
methodology of fits that what are kind of some of the the main
pillars of the the method. So it is.
It's a percentage based method of training.
OK, It's a concurrent model for periodization.
So in that way it's similar to to West side or conjugate or you
know 531 is concurrent. So we're training multiple
capacities at once. We're not just you know working
on one characteristic like say power or what have you
hypertrophy or strength or you know.
So we're concurrently training multiple characteristics, but
we're doing so in a graded manner where it's rotated and
like so for example in the MSM sequence system, which is that
is my opinion on the ideal macro cycle model for powerlifting.
So essentially you're starting far out from the meet in like a
mezzo one that will be more emphasis on volume on assistance
work like. So assistance work might be
mechanically similar, movements might be really higher, much
higher volume. That would be something like,
you know, safety bar squats or front squats or something like
that, right. And that would be done after the
main work. The main work protocols also
rotate and they gradually crescendo in intensity.
As we get closer, volume of course gradually drops
throughout those mesocycles. Intensity of course increases
and that is surmounted by a peaking cycle which is begins 44
days out from a meet. The peaking cycle there is a
sort of there's a taper, but first there's a peak and then a
taper of course. So the idea is to preserve the
capacities that we've developed throughout the course of the
some of the previous macro cycle and also drop central fatigue
during that last period there. So you're able to express that
level of fitness being strength, strength being that that
characteristic of fitness that we're trying to express that
power that they meet. So there's that and that's a
that's like a high level overview of of how it works.
There's a ton of specifics if you have any specific questions
I don't like. For example, MSMS are a big
staple. Maybe that's something I should
touch on, which is mechanically similar movements, but that's
what we call secondary movements in a fist set.
And the reason for that is not just because you want to sound
fancy or something, but because it's it's a priority that we
prioritize movements that are mechanically similar to the
competition left right for reasons of dynamic
correspondence between those two.
Things that are more mechanically similar tend to
have better dynamic correspondence than things that
are even if they train the same muscle, you know it's like so
you can do leg extensions and leg curls and it's not going to
give you the same carry over into squat as front squat is you
know what I mean? So and that's that's my feeling.
So and also gradually or I'd say to generalize, make a
generalized statement about MSMS.
They are typically a reduced range of motion version.
If they're not, if emphasis isn't dramatically changed, like
front squat changes usually pretty dramatically from a back
squat, although they're mechanically very similar.
The load being in the front changes the mechanics a good
bit, you know the load a good bit where the load is
distributed. And so in other movements like
for example at deadlift, we might do something like block
pools for bench press, we might do something like board press.
And the reason for that is you've been doing so well.
I'm sure you've seen plenty of bench press injuries, right?
Where do you think most injuries occur during a bench press on?
The chest. Yeah.
On the chest on reversal, right. So of course when we're far into
a workout where we've already done a good amount of intense
volume, we can just leave then or you know something that's
also going to be very, very mechanically similar.
In fact, you can even train path to be identical or a board press
as identical to your competition press.
So you're actually getting really good, really specific
lockout work. And in a word, I would say first
set is about specificity. Yeah, it's kind of funny.
I can now that you explain that like the MSMI can.
I can see that in my programming.
I think the the use of secondaries has been a major
improvement in my overall lifts. And it's something that I
actually use in my programming now because I've seen the
benefits from in just a few short months and I always knew
secondaries were a thing, I never really knew how to
incorporate them or what to do. But a lot of my secondary's are
like it'll be like say I'm doing SSP with chains it'll be after
my working sets it'll be two sets of 10 to a high box and
then or like bench it like let's see yesterday I did a Max one
board and then my I had two by 10 to A2 board at like 270 and
it's like you get that extra movement and like you said you
can match path which I mean even at an advanced level you you're
never going to have a perfect bar path.
So getting extra practice under heavy loads is a huge, huge
help. Another similarity with a
conjugate based model between the first set and the conjugate
based model is that we both are going to be.
And this is not not just between us, but also any effective
method of training. Conveniently, it's going to
abide by the Prolepin chart, right?
So if you look at the percentages, right, right.
So you want to meet probably in that middle range.
At least for powerlifting, I think the middle range is good
and sometimes you can even go a little further.
Now when you get towards 90s, that middle range is insane.
But as you get lower in the percentages, you can go a little
bit further in terms of the total number of reps per
session. But I like to meet or at least
get close to meeting that the lower end of that center column
for Prolapin with the main work, right.
So the lion's share of what we're doing should be the main
work. Like Burkashansky said, I think
that the most, the first movement that you perform should
be the thing that has the highest magnitude of demand.
That should. And and if if it's not the if,
if the highest magnitude of demand is not going to the main
work, then maybe that's something else to talk about
with your training. Because I think that's a that's
a fatal flaw. You know, if you're like, oh,
I'd rather work on bringing my packs up for a little bit.
It's like if you're going to compete in a sport where you
have 3 lifts, those lifts should be getting trained hard, You
know what I mean? That should be the top priority.
And so, yeah, that's basically, you know in a nutshell that's
the thinking behind this. And that is, there's a lot of
things like this that are going to, you're going to see any
effective method of training shares.
Yeah, yeah. And I think a huge part about
God. So I I didn't really.
I so I've been. I got certified through NSAM
like a few years back and I worked out like a why to just do
like Gen. Pop because I always wanted to
do like training. But now I'm kind of very
specific on being a powerlifting coach.
And this podcast has kind of been helping, teaching me a lot,
having a coach my own being surrounded by all these people
and I think being able to pick and choose different
methodologies and kind of incorporate them into your own
and see how they work. I mean obviously everything's an
experiment. I'm not a perfect coach, no one
is. But I I really like what I've
been doing so far and I I do like the use of AR and I've been
using Prolipins chart for probably as long as I've been
programming. And I think something that I
wanted to ask you about is with the incorporation of AR, how
does Prolipins chart or what have you seen in terms of
Prolipins chart coordinating with that?
That would depend on what type of accommodating resistance is
for the most part, OK, because there are certain forms that are
extremely expensive. And and when I when I say
expensive, I'm talking in terms of recovery.
Here's a rule that you can say like this is my razor, this is
the Sweet Burns razor. Every effective thing has a cost
equal to its efficacy, All right.
So remember that and think about it throughout your life and
throughout the day. You're going to see how many
times it's exactly on point that whether it be drugs, drugs are
effective, right? They are.
They're very effective, but they have a cost equal to how
effective they are and you may not always see that and you
certainly don't always see that on the front end.
Same goes for bands and you know and hyper intense forms of
training, right? So, like, taking heavy
negatives, things like that, right?
Taking like walk outs where you have like 900 lbs in your back
and you can always go out six things.
Like, is it effective? I mean, it's going to cost you a
lot and you have to weigh that out.
You know what I mean? It's like it's going to make me
good at doing walk outs, but do I need to be that good at doing
walk outs, considering how much it's of a detriment it is to
something else. So that's the way I look at
accommodating resistance. And you know, I'm a fan of
change. I don't think there's anything
wrong with change. I used them for many years.
I've written a number of articles on this topic.
I wrote an article for Actually RX Muscle magazine called.
It was called like sweet strength, speech strength or
something. It had to be like 15 years ago,
but it was basically laying out like an outline of how to like
what is an acceptable range to even start considering it.
Because I mean, I see people that can't bench 100 lbs using
bands and I'm like. Why?
You know what I.
Mean. So there is there's a there's a
time and a place for everything in.
Within the the context of FISET, the only time we use band
tension is during a peaking cycle, and all the MSMS during a
peaking cycle are just full range movements with fan
tension. So it's super specific to the
competition and it just does the same thing in terms of limiting
the dangerous range of motion after doing the heavy stuff.
So like you already might hit two singles over 90% during a
peaking cycle and then your MSM might be 60% bar weight and 20%,
you know, and these are rough figures, they're up or down a
little a band, a band tension, you know, for some a slight
volume after that like like three sets of three or something
after that, you know. Yeah.
And I feel like something that I've noticed more recently is
like I'm starting to like change a little bit more just because
the I I tried to explain it to someone of like how obviously
bar weights, bar weight, it's it's a linear, it's a flat base,
chains are a linear progression up to the top, but the bands are
exponential and I've noticed just how much more taxing they
can be, even just holding. So expensive for your for your
nervous system to adapt to that rate.
Now, do they help with reinforced development?
Absolutely. But I feel like there's a
pointed diminished return with that doesn't take long to get to
benefit from using the bands right, but it doesn't really
continue to go up from there. So that's why we typically save
it from before the meet. That's enough in my opinion.
That's enough time for for bands.
Now could you use, I would say chains make a little more sense
if you were going to use accommodating resistance
throughout the whole training cycle.
But I think most of the work, my this is my personal view.
I think most of the work that you're going to do in training
for competition should look the way that you're going to
compete. So you know what I mean?
So for squats, you should be squatting the way you compete.
For bench, you should be benching the way you compete,
you know. I mean, and I'm currently like
in my offseason right now, but I'll be starting my peak and I
think mid January because I'm competing in March.
And like I've just been doing so much SSB work and all these
board presses and I absolutely hate the SSB because it humbles
me to a whole different level. But I mean, it works and I've
seen so much progress from just all the all these extra little
tools, but you can get old. And that's all you can do.
I can't even hold a bar on my back anymore.
But like an SSD squad, I mean, I did over 800 lbs over COVID.
When we had that lockdown, I was like that was became my goal and
I was just like squat twice a week.
That was, you know, and but yeah, you can get really strong
with that. But like I said, eventually some
at some point you end up, that's all you can do.
The same is true for Dave. I'm pretty sure.
I don't think you can hold a straight bar on his back either
anymore. Yeah, and I feel like some of
these specialty bars, I've seen a couple of different approaches
to it, like specifically with the SSBI know some, some coaches
or some athletes will pretty much use the SSB until they're
like 4 weeks out just to save their shoulders.
But there's got to be a crossover to where if you're not
training the competition, lift close enough to the meet.
It's kind of the movement pattern just going to be able
to. Yeah, see, I think it's too
different. I think there's too much of A
departure from the competition left with SSB.
Not to say that you're not getting benefit from it, but for
it to be the main form of training, you know what I'm
saying? That's, I think it's it's the if
you can't hold that bar on your back, I mean you could, Like I
said, you can get strong, you can get the worst squat and 800
lbs at the safety bar. But if you can't hold that barn,
it makes you think you're going to be able to just hold it on
your back when suddenly you have to hold 800 lbs.
That's most of the stress of the squat is holding that weight on
your back. Why do you think it affects your
bench press? So I'm watching a meet like
whether or not like bench only guys compared to full power
guys. It's a dramatic difference in
night and day if you don't got a squat first.
But if you got a squat first that's hammered your shoulders
and pecs holding that weight, you don't have that problem at
all. It's all lats.
When you're with the state to squat bar, you're just bracing,
you know, it's totally different.
So I think there's Don't get me wrong, I love safety squats, and
that's mainly all I can do now in terms of squats.
So of course I do. I do the crap out of them.
Yeah. You know what I mean?
And I guess one of my, my final questions about fifth set is
obviously you do coaching, but you have programs of your own in
terms of like modifications to maybe some of their programming
or like the individualistic approach.
What kind of is one of the main differences between like if I
were to just run one of your programs or have you be my
coach? In terms of programming, what's
one of the main differences? Yeah, there's not a huge
difference. It's not.
I mean, like there's program that's going to be very similar
to what if you buy a program for me, it's going to be very
similar. What I would have you, what I
would have most people do. The difference is going to be
individualization and just sort of tweaking everything as we go.
You deal with injuries, minor things come up throughout the
course of the training year. I have at any given moment, I'm
working around a bunch of little LGS with my clients.
You know what I mean? We're making minor adjustments
here or there, just keeping people in the game and but yeah,
it's just a matter of for the most part, the programming is
not a dramatic departure depending on how far away from a
meet you are. Like it's methodized.
We have at this point, we have thousands of performances.
We have a lot of data, bigger, a bigger data pool than I've ever
seen from anyone else. I'm not trying to toot my own
horn, it's a fact. So I mean we and I didn't just
take these things and not pay attention to what I was doing.
I've kept very good records. I have very good information
like that attempt selection protocol that we use the 9097
one O 4 and one O 2/5 for bench that is I mean that's the gold
standard at this point and that came from regression analysis of
looking at performance data who failed what made them fail.
Now we're jumps greater than 8% there's a crazy deviation right.
When you make a jump greater than 8% it's crazy.
It goes off the rails wildly quickly even with weights
they've definitely done like the likelihood of going from 90 to
98. The likelihood of you missing at
98, you hit not that long ago, it's very high but you can hit
97 and one O 4, you know and that's I mean and it's these are
we're like 80% for the average person over 90 for me coaching
it. But with other people running
the method and using the attempt selection they still get over
80%. I've had people, I've had people
that run totally different methods of training and just use
the data from the peaking cycle, whatever kind of peaking cycle
they did and my attempt selection protocols and they
still get the same success. So I mean it's some of this
stuff is I mean we're different. Everybody likes to think they're
special, you know, It was an individual.
But then we have a lot more in common than we do.
That separates us and we have a much more in common than we do
different between us, you know, in terms of our abilities as
humans that we can learn from each other.
You know more than there is that whole idea of like you go to the
doctor and you got a heart. You're like, I don't know, I got
heart palpitations. He's like we're going to do an
echocardiogram. You're like, I don't know if
that's the right test for my heart though.
It's the right shut up. It's the right.
It doesn't matter what you think we are in it's weird That's
that's the sort of American characteristic that we all think
our opinion matters. Like we all think like, oh, I
have a vote like no. You don't.
Doesn't mean shit. Yeah, I mean like not when it
comes to being right or wrong. I mean your your opinion is you,
you have the right to your opinion, but it's, you know, you
don't have the right to be correct for sure.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
So it's like, there is a lot, I don't think.
I think there's far too much individualization in terms of
the way people set up programming.
And I think a lot of it is just guesswork.
And they'll have people doing things like, Oh well, like today
I started training and I didn't realize how sore my triceps
still were until I started pressing.
And then as soon as I got weight on my and I'm like, oh, and then
like, oh, here's an opportunity to pivot.
Like, they'll make a a post about here's the thing, dude.
Like, how do you not know that you're in that state of
disrepair before you get to the gym like this your first week on
this new program? Or like, there's the person
guessing that made-up the amount of volume, the amount of
intensity that you're applying to your training in a given, in
a given period of time. The thing is we can use, we can
generalize most things in training, you know, And when we
get too far away from generalizing because you want to
be like I'm going to give you really good hyper specific
programming that special attention, you're just wrong
most of the time. You know what I mean?
Because the further you deviate from that generalized approach,
the likelihood that you're wrong is goes through the roof.
And that's not to say that you don't tweak and modify little
things, but you know right is right.
Yeah, it's kind of like the whole idea.
Like there's really no right or wrong way to train.
But I mean, there definitely is a wrong way to train.
Like there's there's way too much information out there for
you to be trying this new guru shit to just be that special
guy. Just use what you've learned.
Read, read a book. Like, read a book.
Learn some things. Take some things from them and
see what like. You're still seeing what works,
but you don't make up shit like take stuff that's been proven.
I don't know about you, but like for me, whenever I hear people
say like, well, I'm waiting to see what my programming is for
my coach this for this week. Because like, it's based on what
I did last week. And I'm like, if you don't know
enough about a person in terms of their recoverability,
adaptability, motor potential, the things that you know make
them suck or be good at the sport that you're coaching them
in to the point where you have to actually adjust each session
based on the previous session. Like it's guesswork at that
point. Like it's it's madness.
I can lay out programming for someone that if I if I
realistically this is the truth. I can lay out two full meso
cycles of programming and a peak where just if this then this if
this then this right as far as that goes with V loads in the in
the mix when they're scheduled right?
If this, then this and have no issues without 100 people, 98 of
them have zero issues all the way to the meet.
You're telling me you're just going to guess on each
individual, make little adjustment.
I'm going to really optimize, right?
That's the thing, like I'm optimizing.
That's it. We got to make sure that I don't
know if that's optimal. That's the new term.
That's like a big term in coaching.
Now I got to make sure this is optimal.
You're much more likely to make it suboptimal by changing things
that have worked for thousands of people and.
For me my approach is like I so I program in like 2 week blocks
but but I have but you know. What's going on?
Yeah, I give them, yeah. Two weeks.
But I know what my plan for them is 2 months.
Down the road that's a client retention thing also right.
You don't want to give people here here's a 12 weeks of
programming and they're like, all right Bob, so there's
there's definitely, I understand there is that side of it, right.
You have to you have to sort of titrate to some degree whether
it be with the programming or with the coaching.
The way that I handle that is on the back end with the coaching
because I give direct video review to every one of my
clients. So like I I watch at least five
to seven sets of their training. I watch every session and I give
them feedback cues. We have a a movement correction
system using cues and I say need to focus on this next time
through this, this, this, this, in this order.
Boom. I have a grading system.
Might be you got three out of four on this today.
Yeah. And I'm going to get four out of
four. It means something, you know
what I mean? So there's something there is
they're getting value in that respect.
So it's not just that I'm, like, hiding what the next secret
program thing is, You know, I do know people like, you know,
friends of mine, you know, colleagues, people that do this,
that like they don't give people the next workout.
Yeah. I'm like, how do you, how, first
of all, how are you micromanaging in someone's life
that much that every time they go to the gym you have to have
an interaction with them. Like what?
I mean, I can see how if you're doing personal training, but
that's not what coaching is. Yeah, it's so different.
You know, yeah, it's a different deal.
Anyway, I'm getting a off off topic a little bit but.
Yeah. So I guess, I guess we can kind
of wrap things up here. So I like to ask my question at
the end, but I'm going to kind of change it a little bit if so.
I usually ask if you could give someone going into a new meet a
word of advice or like their first meet.
But I'm going to change it to if you could give a coach a word of
advice for maybe go into a first meet for one of their athletes,
what would you say? Have them warm up for squat
early. Whatever you think they're going
to squat, whatever you think a good time is, start 20 minutes
earlier than that, right? I think that's probably the
biggest issue I've seen new coaches run into.
And then also familiarize yourself with, with the order of
operations in terms of the various lists and so forth.
Because I've seen people go up and they're staring at the
flight list and like they have a teacher on this coach and
looking at it like it's a like it's a Rubik's Cube.
You know what I mean? Like understand what a flight
is, understand what attempts are, understand what a session
is, you know? So in other words, the the order
of operations for me, the way things are supposed to go.
So you know what to expect. Because if you don't know what
you're doing, your client is going to be terrified, right?
Because they're like now my coach doesn't know what they're
doing. You know what I mean?
Whereas it's easy. And I would say the best thing
is get there early, Like I said, start warming up.
I have people on the floor doing, doing bird dogs and, you
know, side bridges and all their activation stuff way before they
even get under the bar. And then they're under that bar.
Hit the bar twice, have clients hit the bar twice to try to get
everything done. I would say try to have your
client ready 5 minutes before their flight starts.
Awesome. Think of it that way, right?
Because if they have to wait 15 minutes, they're going to have
to wait 15 minutes between attempts anyway, right?
It's much better than having to do 2 quick warm ups and then run
up on the platform for your opener of the first lift of the
day. Yeah.
So that would be my, you know, the short version of my life.
Awesome. I want to do, yeah, I want to
do. Thank you again for coming on.
It was a great conversation to have you on and looking forward
to stay in touch with you. Happy to help, man.
Yeah, please do keep in touch. For sure.
Thank you. You got it, man.