Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 406 - The Conjugate Method ft. Jesse Burdick

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

Today we are talking about all things Conjugate! From it's roots at Westside to how Mark Bell and Jesse Burdick coach it today. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Support the show by visiting our sponsors! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project podcast hosted by Mark Bell, co-hosted by Nsema Iyeng and myself, Andrew Zaragoza. This episode is recorded on June 30th and it is with our BFF, our big fat friend, Jesse Burdick. Jesse Burdick has been coaching athletes for tons of years. He and Mark trained together at Westside. So today we got deep, deep, deep into the conjugate method. So if you've ever had any questions or if you ever

just wanted to know more, we literally break down the entire method from squat bench and deadlift accessory work, different tools that they can use in the gym, just all kinds of stuff. So really, any information that you guys are curious about, you'll probably hear it here on this episode. I'm really excited for you guys to check out today's episode. So I'm going to try to get out of the way as quick as possible. But you guys know we absolutely love MindBullet. We take it pretty much before every single podcast. It helps us really get into the zone, helps us formulate our sentences a little bit better,

helps us cognitively, helps us just be in a much better mood. And we really want you guys to experience that. So head over to mindbullet.com right now at checkout, enter promo code power project for 20% off your order. And, um, that's just for the single order. So you guys can easily get the subscribe and ship type type of setup. So you won't get 20% off of that, but you'll get 20% off any of the other orders. We really want you guys to see what this feels like. So again, head over to, uh, mindbullet.com at checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your order.

And yeah, that's it for me. So ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy this really, really informative, awesome episode about the conjugate method, Westside Barbell, powerlifting, all the good stuff with our boy, Jesse Burdick. All right, cool. So today we're talking about conjugal visits. Those are always fun. Oh no. The homie in the pen needs some help.

I can't wait to visit you guys. Well, you keep leaving us. I know. It's not cool. Out here in Bodega. I'm stocked up, though, on Piedmontese. I got a lot of hot dogs and a lot of burgers. Prepping for being here for a bunch of days. I got a lot of hot dogs and a lot of burgers prepping for being here for a bunch of days.

Ate a bunch of hot dogs yesterday. You guys want to go on a sick recipe, an amazing recipe? Let's hear it. So you just take the hot dogs, cook them up whatever way you want to cook them up. You know, you can boil hot dogs or you can cook them up in a pan. Then you chop them up and heat them up you know you can boil hot dogs or you can cook them up in a pan then you chop them up and cook them heat them up in a pan and then uh throw cheese on top of them and then throw some mustard on top of them and it's like the most amazing damn thing ever and if you wanted to like go chili cheese dog you can like you know you can get more into it and make some chili, dump some of that on there. But it's, uh, it's amazing.

Yeah. Mark straight ruined me. Um, I was, I was fasting for the day and he walks in after like a, I think it was a photo shoot, but like photo shoots for Mark is basically just like a hard ass workout. And he's just sitting there like chomping away. I'm just like, oh man. And he's like, Hey, you want to try one of the Piedmontese hot dogs? I'm like, yo, I've never actually tried them.

Sure. I'm addicted to them. Ruin me. I'm like, oh my you want to try one of the Piedmontese hot dogs? I'm like, no, I've never actually tried them, sure. Same. I'm addicted to them. Ruin me. I'm like, oh, my God, they're so good. I really do need to put like a – but the thing is it's like I hate straying away from the flat irons. You know, because like if I'm going to put it in this big order, like I might just do like all hot dogs just so I don't run out. I got a question for both of you guys.

When you cook a sausage, especially like a hot dog, why does it get bigger? But when you cook a hamburger, it gets a lot smaller. Dude, that's a question you got to ask Jake. Like I have no idea. The riddle. You broke in SEMA. Maybe, no. It's probably like if you boil it well even if you fry

it does it still get bigger or only yeah i think i think even if you cook it like if you even cook it on a grill like a hot dog will expand and get bigger a sausage will expand and get bigger all the way to the point where like it will pop but you could you could literally have like four you could you could only fit maybe like three hamburgers sometimes in a frying pan but once they start to cook a little bit you can fit an entire another hamburger in there mysteriously i mean i think you know it like oxidizes or whatever and some of the fat gets cooked off or something but i don't understand why the hot dog gets bigger oh okay eggplant effect it has a yeah it has a casing

right right so that might fill up with heat exactly like so inside is cooking and expanding into the casing but if it had a case probably the same thing it probably you're onto something that sounds pretty pretty good i don't know pretty good theory because like my rebuttal would be like even if you were to chop, like, the hot dog or the sausages and then, like, fry those, they still plump up. They still, like, turn into, like, little, like, almost like saucers. Oh. We need to get a doctor on here.

Maybe Burdick will know. He's pretty fat. Yeah, we should ask Burdick. Yeah. We should ask Burdick. Any hoot. For more information. Burdick, he gave me his email, by the way, so I'll give you that.

Okay, cool. Sorry about that. No, no worries. For more information on Piedmontese, please head over to piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E dot com at checkout. Enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two-day shipping. What are we talking about today, y'all?

We're talking about some lifting. We're talking about some power some power lifting we don't talk about lifting anymore this is a fitness podcast and we don't even talk about that stuff i know i figured uh you know for today we would uh dive into some you know some lifting stuff some straight up you know power lifting stuff maybe even talk a little bit about the West side method and, uh, how it's different from, you know, regular training. Maybe somebody that's listening, uh, has been doing some periodization for a while. Maybe they want to switch things up or maybe somebody just wants to be more informed on some of the West side stuff where we're going to, so we're going to get into talking about box squats, training with bands, training with chains.

And I think in SEMA, maybe he feels like he can't add that much to this conversation, but I think he can add a tremendous amount to this conversation because I've seen you do box squats, and I've seen you utilize some stuff from Westside. And then also I think it's also interesting. I don't really recall seeing you doing like a lot of speed work before, but you're an extremely explosive athlete that doesn't seem to lack speed. So it'd be interesting because I think that people sometimes they think like, oh, you train this way and then you're going to get this training effect and this is the only way to do it. is the only way to do it. But there's certainly more ways to do it. Normally, if you make yourself stronger, especially relative to your body weight, then you'll be super explosive for your sport. If you just simply make yourself stronger, in most cases, sometimes you can go too far and make yourself strong. And maybe like, maybe the word clumsy would kind of factor in there where you're not moving as athletically

as you once did. Like I did to myself through years and years of powerlifting, I made myself, you know, super tight to the point where it's, you know, more difficult to even just do something as simple as like running or running sprints because the hip flexors are tight, quads are tight. Things have really locked up. But I didn't train for sport. I trained for training. I trained for lifting. And so it was a little different.

So I was willing to kind of make some of those sacrifices. So in SEMA, have you utilized any type of speed training in your workouts as it pertains to like bench squat deadlift. And, uh, if you, um, if you did, how did you utilize it? Well, I did. And I, I, I did it not using, you know, bands or chains. I mean, I did do some of that. Um, but it wasn't nearly as much as like, like smoky and you guys would be doing, all I would do is like, I would move the percentage down to maybe let's say 55, 65%. Um, and with the same idea of like, when you are programming bands and chains, right. And you're doing like doubles and triples. And I would just try to, uh, move it as fast as I could. But for example, on something like the squat, I wouldn't, I wouldn't necessarily squat down fast. Um, I would kind of squat down slowly and then explode out of the

hole. Once I get to my bottom position. Um, and I know that like when a lot of people do speed work, they do both the eccentric and concentric fast. Um, but on squats, I wouldn't, I would control the eccentric, um, and then explode through the concentric. Uh, when I use like speed work for deadlifts, um, I would still control the descent, but I would do the same type percentages, same type of load. And I would just move as fast off the floor as possible. Um, and even when I did speed work with potentially pause deadlifts is the same kind of idea where I would pause either. Once I got the bar off the floor as possible. And even when I did speed work with potentially pause deadlifts, it was the same kind of idea where I would pause either once I got the bar off the floor, or if I was doing pauses from the knee, I would pause from the knee, and then I would explode through that next point. But again, it would be with pretty light load. So, I did do a lot of

speed work, but the speed work didn't, I think it would have been obviously better if I maybe added some bands in or maybe added some chains in. But to be perfectly honest, one of the main reasons I did it was because some of the times I would train at other gyms, I'd just be too lazy to add the bands and chains onto the list. I would just be too lazy to add bands and chains. So I'd just be like, all right, let's get this speed work in without it. Did you utilize any of that as like practice work since the weight was just lighter? Like when you did it here to keeping it like, you know,

60% where you're just like, well, cause the weights are light. Not only am I going to try to explode up with them, but I'm going to use this as an opportunity. Cause a lot of times when we do speed work, we do a lot of sets, you know, you might do six sets or you might do all the way up to 15 sets sometimes and so it's an opportunity to get that first rep correct did you kind of use it for that as well just a technique perfection kind of thing yeah because it didn't like fatigue me too much it didn't make me too tired um like i would have a day where i would move some heavier loads and then i would have a day where i would move some lighter loads sometimes it'd be for a day where I would move some lighter loads. Sometimes it'd be for speed work.

Sometimes it'd just be lighter loads, um, for like box squats or pause deadlifts, et cetera. But, um, yeah, it, since it doesn't fatigue me too much, it's still allowing me to train the movement, but not beat myself up. And I think Patrick Mahaffey, I think that's the big thing. Um, When people like that, that helps people with training that conjugate so cool for because you're not going, like you're not maxing out every session, so you're able to recover well. But I know conjugate

itself goes much deeper than just adding a little bit of speed work in. Like what I what I think I'm really interested in is like, because a lot of people, maybe they don't have access to a lot of bands or chains, um, or maybe they do have a band, but like with you guys, what would be, I guess the, you know, some of the biggest concepts from the conjugate method that anybody can take and add to their training to get some benefit if they don't have all the nice equipment or things that they could use at home. Yeah. Number one thing I think is what you mentioned is controlling the weights and then moving explosively. I think anybody that wants to have their lifts transfer over well into a particular sport or anyone who's trying to, you know,

be a little bit faster or more explosive, even just gain some strength. I think that once you're warmed up for the most part, unless you're trying a different protocol, because you're maybe messing around with some bodybuilding type training. I think that as soon as you're warmed up and you feel good, you should try to always explode in everything. And again, that would matter depending on what other methods you're trying to utilize. If you're trying to do bodybuilding or something, then, and maybe you wouldn't explode into them. Maybe you would control them more and flex into them more and try to use some more muscle. But I think what you said is right on the mark. And I know that you haven't done like tons and tons of training year in and year out where you dedicated

a particular day to dynamic effort work. But most of the time when I've seen you squat or seen you do any lift, it's usually fairly explosively, especially on the deadlift. And I don't think you can, I don't think you can train that enough to teach yourself. Like I'm going to move really, really freaking fast with this weight. And if we go back to, you know, Dr. Squat, um, that's what he was proposing was this idea. He called it compensatory acceleration. And basically, you're just trying to move the weight as fast as you can, regardless of how much is on the bar. Now, when it comes to your everyday average person that doesn't have access to bands or chains or doesn't have these particular fancy racks or benches that they can hook bands to

they just want to use a little bit more weight you know jesse and i for a long time have been suggesting that people use around 50 50 is a good starting place just as your warm-up set to kind of just get a feel for it but realistically the newer lifters need a higher percentage because they can't really draw on the same amount of muscle fibers and so on as a more advanced athlete. And then in addition to that, if they don't have bands or chains, then they're going to want to use a higher percentage all the way up to, I think, 70% and sometimes even a little higher, but just start with half. But again, the weaker that you are or the newer that you are, you know, half of a hundred pounds is not going to be very much weight.

And it's going to be hard to get a training effect off of that. It's not relative. So you'll have to use a slightly higher percentage. You might have to use 65 or 70 pounds, which would be 65 or 70%. What's up Burdick? Yo, boys, how are we? What you got for us over there, buddy? Coffee. Oh, hey.

So we're talking about some dynamic effort work, some speed work, and Simu was just kind of asking, you know, how somebody can implement it very easily, maybe if they don't have bands or chains, what are some of your thoughts? on a lot of people because people start to, again, use a lot more weight than maybe they should. And by doing that, they therefore lower their speed, lower their reps, and lower their total overall volume. So it is important to kind of keep in mind that the 50% to 60% is there for a reason.

And Mark can attest to this. If you truly go to west side back in the day when they used to do their dynamic effort days and i'm talking back in the day it was it was a dog fight to get into the bench or get into the rack or get into the monolith there was no rest you basically tried to drown people in their own sweat because that's how fast you were moving now if you look at things with people putting two, three, four bands on, chains on, and taking 10 minutes in between sets, it's blurred to the point where that's not dynamic effort work.

So if we go way, way back and start looking at what the root of everything was, those lower percentage, very low rest periods, and just higher volume because your sets were 15 were 15 20 and sometimes you wouldn't quit until somebody quit um and then you'd throw stuff in i mean very very bodybuilding style if you guys kind of guys might not know this but me and burdick used to go to war every weekend on squats and uh it was a fight and i was i was, actually, you know, I can say it now. I was actually hoping that he died underneath the bar. Because I'm like, I just want something fucking horrible to happen to him.

Because I can't keep up. I can't figure out any other way. And I kept looking at him. And he kept looking at me. And I'm like, he's not going to stop. I'm like, he's fucking crazy. And we do set after set after set. And we're both ready to puke and hit the floor looking all pale and just

looking like we're going to die. But I mean, that's, that's how you get the most out of, you know, dynamic effort work is like, I wish I didn't break his leg. Well, you know, there are some people, you know, that I've seen writing, you know, conjugate programs where their dynamic effort work is eight set. That's almost like why fucking bother to me you know along with like the dynamic effort work um i think like years ago when i started like learning some stuff about programming there was a trend within uh i would say there was a trend

with that i guess you would call it social media fitness or whatever, where they'd talk about conjugate, but it'd always be like in a negative light. Like people would be like, conjugate has all these unnecessary frills and all these things that you don't have to do to get stronger. And then as I started to learn about conjugate more, when I heard stuff from yourself and from Mark, I was like, there is a lot of really good stuff here. I was like, there is a lot of really good stuff here. And I think that the reason why people discount conjugate is just because there is a lot of stuff, but there's also just a lot of stuff to try to understand. It's like there's more aspects to it than most people want to even really try to get the hang of, like dynamic effort um and then just like how to like

max effort days and all the different types of movements that conjugate uses versus other types of programming i think other types of programming like you'll work with the spd you'll work with some simple accessories and you'll move on but conjugate there seems to be so many different types of accessories that you guys work with and try to improve upon week by week that it's just like it's hard to for for an individual to try to keep track of yeah it can be complicated and i mean i think that's also you know why well first of all the conjugate got on social media what it fucking deserves uh because before you were on social media way, way back when, anyone who didn't do conjugate or question conjugate got attacked. Like you're stupid, you know, West side's the only way, blah, blah, blah. They got literally attacked.

So they got their comeuppance when it came around and more people got on there and other people got strong without using conjugate. So, you know, they got kind of what they got there. using conjugate. So, you know, they got kind of what they got there. And, um, there's two people that come in mind that led that kind of anti-conjugate brigade. And if you really think about it, those are people who had a whole bunch of business to make and a lot of money to make off of trashing conjugate. And they did that. And that was really unfortunate because you have to go out there and, um, you know, market yourself by picking a fight with somebody. You know, it's never a never a great way to do things. In my opinion, it's an uneducated way to do things.

But, you know, conjugate kind of deserved it because, you know, I've watched the whole evolution and it's something that, you know, should not have been said earlier. You know, people are too cocky about it. and then they kind of got trashed but you know at the base of thing you don't this is a this started as a russian olympic lifting program there was no band there was no change there was hardly any movements the reason why there are so many movements is because the um the russian coaches were trying to break down the lifts and start attacking their lifters' weak point. And Louie kind of took that idea and just spread it out. And then you sprinkle in a little bit of ADD and a little bit of new stuff and some machines and some stuff from there.

And then your toolbox opens up from seven exercises to 47 exercises. But you don't need 47 exercises in order to get strong. I think anyone who doesn't understand that at this point really needs to read a book or two. But just like everything, you can complicate the hell out of things, but you don't have to

as well. Jesse, can you explain what a conjugate split would be for like a pretty case lifters just have no experience with it sure so dynamic effort is or um conjugate program is going to basically be based around three kind of days a max effort day one lower one upper where again you're working towards some sort of heavy set that can be multiple sets or that can be one set I think that's where a lot of people get tripped up on the max effort stuff you know well how many you know how many sets like I don't care just go until you can't go anymore and

that's your top set a dynamic effort day is one upper one lower and that's pretty much it and then all the accessory stuff kind of falls underneath the um rep effort or the jack and tan effort uh method if you will so usually you're gonna have four days two upper two lower one heavy and one speed or dynamic um each week and uh you know again if we go all the way back and we start to really do some reading and look at things, aerobic conditioning, specifically sled dragging was enormous, enormously important in the conjugate program. So that again, is something that's kind of completely lost on a lot of people, where people are just rolling into the gym and starting going bar quarter plate, bar quarter plate,

bar quarter plate, et cetera. And then they kind of move on. So, you know, you can ask Mark, how many, you know, how many sled trips you took around West side, you know, how many, I, you know, both Mark and I did at Diablo, I mean, it was half an hour before we even got into the gym. So there's a lot of things that kind of got lost. Um, and it's something that anyone who actually really understands and knows um just fitness in general how important you know any sort of aerobic conditioning is so that's always been a big part of conjugate but that's not sexy no one wants to hear you say that and even if you did no one's going to listen to you anyways i mean you know again mark can attest to how many times

louie told all those fat slobs about, you know, they should be doing some more conditioning or doing some sled dragging or, Hey, come in on your off day. They never do it. And then, you know, they end up being 350 pounds and they have some sort of a stroke or a heart attack or a health scare. And they're like, man, powerlifting is so unhealthy. Like, well, yes. And no, it's you know, there's always a little bit of a give and take. Yeah. The West side stuff for me, it really just helped explain a lot of training. You know, everything else made sense kind of off of the back of understanding Westside, understanding the information that Dave Tate put out there.

Dave Tate was really pivotal in getting the message out there because he talked a lot about how to actually, you know, really run the program and, and what it looks like when you're actually doing it. And he talked about like indicator lifts, you know, there'd be certain lifts that you would do and you would learn from those lifts. And you'd be like, I actually think that that lift in particular, it's hard to really know. It's hard to know for sure. Uh, but you would say like, Oh, I think that safety squat bar, I actually think that that is responsible for making my back stronger on my deadlifts because it's the only

thing that's changed in my training and everything else is pretty cemented in there. And in some cases, somebody is like, I'm even deadlifting less often and the deadlift is going up. And I think it's because of that bar. Well, now you have that bar as an indicator lift. And as that goes up, you're probably going to see progression somewhere else. And then the same thing, you know, with bench pressing, the same thing with all the other movements, we take variations of those movements, a board press, a floor press, you know, variations of deadlifts. And then you start to see a lift go up and you're like, I think that that's actually really helping. And to speak about what Burdick was talking about, about, you know, guys ending up weighing, you know, a crazy amount of weight and being unhealthy.

Yeah. Louie was always a huge proponent of getting a lot of work done in a short period of time. He wanted workouts for the most part, which later became impossible because guys started to squat 1200 pounds and stuff, but he wanted workouts to take about 45 minutes. And he was really into multiple workouts. He wanted you to work out, you know, 12 times a day. I remember when I first met him and in the first seminar I went to, he's like, you need to be training like eight or nine times a day. And I'm thinking, shit, man, there's only seven days in a week. I don't know how I'm going to, you know, I don't know if this old man knows this, but I don't know how I'm going to make this work. But he just meant like, you know, get in there and do, you know, one or two things. And even

with the main workout, he wasn't scared to have the main workout be just two or three exercises. And when you would look at what Louie would recommend or suggest, I mean, it would be extremely rare. Maybe on an upper body day, you might have six exercises, but most lower body workouts, it's like, you're going to box squat. You're going to do glute ham raises. You're going to do reverse hyper. And then you might do some sort of movement for abs and you're done. You're out. The hard part was squatting and and that was pretty much it. But yeah,

super labor intensive on like the assistance exercises and stuff like that to really try to build up not only hypertrophy, but conditioning and using low amounts of rest in between those sets. Is a conjugate responsible for all of the specialty bars that we have? I think, uh, for some part, yes, but I mean, there was a lot of, you know, safety squat bar was not invented by Louie. Uh, K-Mid bar again wasn't necessarily invented by Lou. I think the specialty bars were, um, you know,

something that people needed because they wanted to squat, but they had poor shoulder mobility or they couldn't get underneath there. Or they figured out that they just couldn't squat with a with a straight bar all the time. That's where Louie was a genius. Louie was a genius with that stuff because he wasn't like, hey, you need this bar to do my program. He said, you need this bar because what happens if you injure your shoulder or you hurt your pec or you all these common injuries that powerlifters ran into. So he was really smart with how he kind of advertised that and how he presented presented it to people. doesn't get enough credit as far as uh the increase in bench pressing in powerlifting because of him introducing and really pushing to the forefront all the specialty bars because if it wasn't for that i don't know if people's shoulders would be able to hang in uh the way that they did through all the you know through everything i mean if we just talk about mark when he was benching at his

best i mean he barely if ever i mean he could barely get under a straight bar at that those days as well so i mean if it wasn't a safety bar it was a cambered bar or it was nothing what do you think since we're talking about this for because a lot of people are now setting up home gyms um because and and some gyms are starting to close again because of some stuff that's happening yeah so if somebody's trying to set up a home gym and they want to uh get just very a very few amount of specialty bars maybe for bench press maybe for squat um what do you think would be the main bars that they should invest their money and that they can get the

most bang for their buck to start applying some of the stuff you guys are talking about? In my opinion, I would probably, again, if, you know, I always tell people to go on Craigslist because you're going to find a lot of people who are kind of selling some stuff. But if money is an issue, the first thing I would probably get would be some sort of a Buffalo or a Duffalo bar. get would be some sort of a buffalo or a duffalo bar um the reason is you can use that for bench press and squat um and it's very comfortable and you can use that without any real negative repercussions uh it translates to a straight bar really really easily like there's not much of a learning curve it should sit the same way and you should be able to move with it the same way on your back. And then after that, I would probably say a safety squat bar and or, um, uh, Duffin's transformer bar.

And again, only because that's going to take the place of a lot of different bars. Um, you know, transformer bar, you can move it all sorts up and down and you can, you know, make it feel like a front squat, make it kind of, you know, a safety bar and then some other stuff there. So I would try and look for, especially for garage gym people, you know, bang for your buck, you know, this thing needs to be able to be used on multiple different levels for multiple different things.

Something like the safety bar is awesome, but you can only squat with it or, you know, do some good mornings. So it's the same thing with the, with the giant camera bar, a safety bar is awesome, but you can only squat with it or, you know, do some good mornings with it. Same thing with a giant camera bar or a camera bar. Maybe you can do some pressing with it here and there, but you're limiting yourself when you buy those bars. And, you know, if you get to go to a cool gym and you have the luxury of having all those, then awesome. But, you know, if it's one or two bars, you know, you got to think bang for your buck. And it would be kind of transform transformer and double a bar.

And if you're trying to train other people with it and you have like a gym where you're bringing in other people, then you might want to look into a, you know, a trap bar deadlift. Those are nice just to get you in a different position. Sometimes I think the lower body is the one where we sometimes lack the creativity to come up with different movements. But if you think about it, I mean, there are a lot of different movements you can do for the lower body. You could do good mornings and stuff like that. Good mornings were a huge part of the Westside Barbell program. We actually just would rotate them in every three weeks. So we would squat or we would do some sort of variation of a deadlift. And if we didn't, um, then, or if we didn't, uh, you know, deadlift, then we would do a good morning. And if we didn't do a good morning, we'd do some type of deadlift. You kind of just

rotated that around. Um, but you know, it was, it was always, uh, difficult to kind of figure out like what exercises you needed and, and, uh, you know, what, what bars you needed. It was confusing in the beginning. So in the beginning, when somebody is just starting this, I think you're best off with not too many options, you know, because you end up with kind of analysis paralysis where you're like, I think I should use this bar. I think I should, you know, train this way for today. And it's like, you just have so many options where it's, it's a great thing to have. It's a great thing to walk into super training and to have all those options. But I remember how great the training was before we had all those options. We had to kind of just clamor to like one thing and figure out variations of that. It's like, oh, let's use this safety squat bar, but let's try it onto a box that's only 12 inches off the ground or something like that. something like that so for the uh the newer lifters or maybe just somebody who's never trained with bands and chains can you guys explain how using bands and chains can essentially

condition a lifter to like get stronger you know to like really feel what it's like to have 315 at the top of a bench or that sort of thing because i know it you know a lot of people will see like wow you you kind of bench 315 but with chain you know, a lot of people will see like, wow, you, you kinda bench three 15, but with chain, you know, like you didn't like there's an asterisk there. So can you explain how that can condition somebody to become stronger? So the term that everyone's going to kind of hear thrown around with bands and chains is accommodating resistance. Um, and the whole idea is the weight is going to be heavier at the top of a lift,

whether it's the lockout or the lockout of a squat or the lockout of a deadlift and lighter at the bottom. And the whole idea is it's going to let you develop speed in a lift and also allow you to be, you know, you're going to be weakest in the hole of at the squat the start of a deadlift and when the bench is at your chest so it's going to get heavier as you kind of go so it's going to allow you to fight through some more weight and then on top of that what you're kind of talking about is kind of the what louis recalled you know called the future method where you're going to start to condition your body to understand what you know know, three 15 feels like in your hand. It may not be three 15 on the bar because there's other stuff on there, but in your central nervous system, it's going to read like, Oh, Hey, this is heavier. And then also on top of that, when you're bringing the bar

down, so, I mean, we'll, we'll scoot deadlift over here for a second, but as you're bringing, you know, the bar down squat second but as you're bringing you know the bar down squat or bench you're actually loading into your muscles more weight than you think it's kind of on the bar which is therefore going to allow you to produce more force as you kind of go through the through the motion um i have got that's one of my pet peeves where it's like if you didn't bench 315 if 315 isn isn't on the bar and something that Mark and I always talked about is like, don't, don't, don't put it was this with this. It's just like, no, it's two 25 with a red band and that's just it.

So that's kind of a pet peeve for me, but you know, it will, it does help. It really does help people kind of get over because, you know, like it or not, there's a huge mental side to lifting and you know know people see three plates on the bar sometimes they freak the fuck out and um if you can get that feel for that weight and get people comfortable with that weight and comfortable being uncomfortable when the time comes they should be able to kind of execute it without really having a second thought because it doesn't register as an, Oh shit moment for those people. I think people had a hard time extracting out the information from Westside barbell. Um, right. Yeah. A lot of times, because,

because of some of the stuff we're bringing up here, it's like, it can get a little bit confusing. It doesn't have to be, you know, there's bench squat deadlift. And then what is Westside really trying to do is trying to have you focus in on your weak points. You bring those up and you become strong. Um, but I think that, you know, maybe people were, people were viewing Louie, um, as like a crazy old man. And then in addition to that, I think that people were also, um, putting him in a particular category because the lifters use gear and they're open about their use of performance enhancing drugs. And so I think those two things combined, the fact that they were in powerlifting gear when the raw movement came to be, I think much like somebody might have a hard time extrapolating great information from a Tony Robbins because they just don't like his vibe. They don't understand that there could be really valuable

things in there, just like you might listen to a preacher or something and you're not religious, but you might be missing the point that there's some really amazing information that you can extract from this individual. Who cares what some of their beliefs are, what some of their other things are. You can still extract great information. And Jesse and I, you know, going around doing seminars and, and we did a lot of powerlifting certification courses for CrossFit and things like that, you know, getting around to that community and getting around to see so many different

individuals and see so many different people over the years, we just learned, hey, look, man, you can learn from anybody. And I think that Jesse and I grew tremendously at that time because now we weren't working with the average power lifter. We were working with somebody that looked a lot different, somebody that might have weighed 160 pounds, that was trying to get, you know, better times, and they were trying to become more fit, along with they wanted a cool squat, you know, they wanted a 405 squat and things like that. But once we started to see how well it worked for those individuals, it started to even make more sense to us and started to be even easier to utilize for people. And then Jesse went on and over the years has coached pretty much every single sport you can

think of. But a lot of baseball players. And I think a misinterpretation of the West Side method is that it's for strength and that it's for powerlifting. I think it's actually better for other sports than it even is for powerlifting. I think it can work really well for powerlifting. I think it's actually better for other sports than it even is for powerlifting. I think it can work really well for powerlifting, but I think that most people who have the most success using Westside sprinkle in some type of periodization or sprinkle in the regular exercises more often when they're raw powerlifters, because we're asked to squat, bench, and deadlift. That's our job. That's what we get, quote unquote, paid for.

That's how we make our money, so to speak, right? That's how you get judged is you bench, squat, and deadlift, right? But if you're a baseball player, no one's judging your squat. No one's judging your deadlift. And so that's where the variation becomes huge. It's like, oh, I'm a Brazilian jujitsu practitioner. So it doesn't really matter a hundred percent whether I went four inches deep on my squat because I'm competing in a particular federation or whatever it

might be. Now it's like we can bring in the, it's like, Hey, let's just get your hips to be strong. Let's see your hips move real well. Let's get you out wide on a box squat and let's have you do a bunch of dynamic work to where you're moving quickly, moving fast. And we're not really breaking down too much. We're not like hurting. We're not really hurting you much. You're not going to be super West side stuff. A lot of times you don't get super sore from it. If it's new to you, you might get pretty wrecked, but in general, it's not something you're going to get really sore with. So I think that's, uh, I think that's lost. I mean, Dave Hoff has been smashing, you know,

world record weights that no one's hit ever before. And he's been doing so for like a decade. And there's a lot of other lifters at Westside that have done the same thing. And those are full-time, those are power lifters. You know, once we start to think about other people that have been utilizing Westside, I've been using it for, you know, over 20 years and I still can do all the lifts just fine. I still feel really good anytime I want to kick it up a notch and lift a little bit more weight. I still think at any time I can bench 500 pounds if I just, you know, put my mind to it and start feeling like doing it again. So I think it's amazing for like longevity and for sport.

That's exactly what I was going to ask you, because the way that you guys are. Yeah. The way that you guys seem to set it up, there is a max effort day, but it's not like when you see certain lifters doing some max effort work and other types of programs, they'll do like a 90% load for doubles and multiple sets of that on a certain day but it seems that like you know you have your dynamic days and your max effort day it's like you you kind of touch it you sprinkle it and then you get out of there is that how is that one of the reasons why like i guess it can be so good for longevity i would agree. I think so. I think, uh, you know, there, the, the, the cool thing

with powerlifting is, you know, it's just throw some weight on the bar and, you know, it, you know, if you do play in 90% plus, you're just going to get stronger period. But, um, how long can you do that? You know, what's your stress level you know how old are you there's a lot of other factors that can kind of come into you being able to do repeated 90 percent lifts on a day and then be able to recover and have any sort of a day you know whether it's 24 or 48 hours later um and you know i would always challenge people like okay cool you just did six reps of 90 plus that's awesome how do they look did they look good like if if your first 90 effort looks like dog shit why are you gonna do five more well because the program said like okay that's kind of the cool

thing with with the setup of conjugate for me is that it really explains the intent of each day. It's go until you don't have anything left. You should probably leave maybe one in the tank. But if you go up to, if you get to 85% and it looks awful, see you, man. I'm out of here. That's good. And don't go anymore because the risk to reward ratio just starts to get way out of whack and then this is how people get hurt they and then they

repeatedly get hurt and go from there and then with the dynamic effort day you know it's just it's clear it's like look we're gonna learn how to produce force with perfect form and we're gonna get a ton of volume in and it's gonna be fast and you guys should be exhausted by the time you're out of here um i think you know uh someone like mark myself someone like matt winning um you know great penora have been using the conjugate method for an extremely long time um and i think personally the the guy who does it the best is Eric Cressy, who you guys may or may not know, but he is the premier baseball trainer in the world at this point. And he just had a question asked about, you know, the conjugate system for baseball players. And he kind of had the same answer that Mark and I had is like, look, every program that I've written for the past 25 years has been conjugate influence.

It's a great program because you can move things in and out and you can focus on certain things. And for sport, you need to be able to do all these things in powerlifting. You only need to be strong. So you can just do 90% stuff, but in a sport, you need to be able to be fast.

You need to be explosive. You need to be strong, change direction, absorb force, produce force, real, all these things, be aerobic and anaerobically

conditioned, and do it all at the same time. If you're looking at a block method or something else, you may be higher or lower on one as you kind of go along, as you make your way towards a goal. But with conjugate, it all kind of happens at the same time. And that's why some of those max effort lifts may not be as gym impressive or as impressive for the grams that it as it is so you know for sport i think it's a great way to you know sprinkle in anything and everything and all the qualities of fitness that you need in order to be good for your sport but the question always kind of gets screwed up where it's like is conjugate good for sport yes is west side barbell method good for

sport and the answer is no that's for power lifting okay yeah jesse i don't think we well i know i don't know but like um i don't think we ever got your story about how you found yourself at west side barbell um so in in college as a baseball player uh somewhere around my i think my sophomore year i found um i found the internet and i found a lot of stuff about working out and i wanted to be bigger and i wanted to be stronger so naturally you know i started to do a bunch of bodybuilding and um it just so happened that the strength and conditioning coach at my school was a guy named Paul Childress, who was the all-time world record holder squat and total in the 308 class at that moment in time. And he told me, he's like, hey, man, you know, you're, you know, for a baseball player, you're doing,

you shouldn't really be working out three days a week. And, you know, you really shouldn't be doing all these, you know, peck deck and flies and everything. And, you know, I turned around and told him right to his face that he didn't know the fuck he was talking about and to leave me alone. And then about like two years later, I realized who he was and, you know, the knowledge that he had. And I came crawling back to him and, you know, asked him forgive me and uh to help me out to help me kind of learn and um to his credit you know paul's an awesome person and he you know he was just like yeah yeah i'll help you out and like for the first couple weeks i mean he just fucking buried he just completely buried me he made me hurt so so bad so that was kind of my penance

for calling him out on it but you know he started to teach me you know the intricacies of the program and you know he was paul childress has also been training you know nfl nhl major league baseball guys for 30 years at this point maybe even longer one of the smarter people that i know um so i had a really really good mentor in kind of understanding the program and what was extra special about paul was he had a direct line to louis he was one of Louis' favorite people of all time. And I really do think it's because of how intelligent Paul was. So when I ended up moving out to California, you know, my network of powerlifters was actually pretty vast. And I was able to go ahead and, you know, reach out to people. And whenever I would be able to go back home to visit my family in Pennsylvania, I would always end up spending, you know, three, four days at Westside.

And, you know, it was because of Paul introducing me to Louie, Dave and Jim. But also more than anything, I just kind of had the audacity to, you know, I was one of those people and Mark was one of those people where I, you know, back in the day. people and mark was on those people where i you know it's back in the day in the um in louis would put his name his phone number and his address at the bottom of all of his articles so one day i was just like huh i wonder if he'll actually answer if this is him or if this is the gym or what is this i called him and hello like uh is this louis he's like what's that what's that um and i was just like i was i was thrown back because i didn't um i didn't expect it and he was unbelievably gracious with his time and uh you know we developed a relationship over you know five ten years and whenever i was in town he'd welcome me in and he'd take me out and you know i got to know doris and it was amazing because

uh and and all because i uh told my doris and it was amazing because uh and and all because i uh told my original strength and conditioning coach that he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about that's amazing um go ahead yeah i was curious more um because one of the things that i don't know if it came from conjugate but i know that i initially learned about all of the benefits because of conjugate uh was the box squat and all like the different, like, well, one thing I noticed was that like, I didn't even realize during the box squat, a lot of guys would switch up their foot position. And I was like, why are you in the middle of a session switching where your feet are on this squat that you're doing? So I think the box squat is so cool because again, like I mentioned,

something easy that people can add to their home gym and add aspect of conjugate into their, into their, uh, program is the box squat and the different variations that come with it. So I want to ask you guys, like, um, why, like what would be the main benefits of that for lifters? Um, and then how can they, yeah, what kind of variations can they do with that box squat to, to enhance it for their, for their strength? Box squat, as far as I know, and it may date back even further than this, but it came from a gym called West side barbell, which was in Culver city, California. Um, and the guy's name was, uh, Ed West. So, uh, I think think he called it Westside because of his last name.

And they did box squats like really often. My understanding is they would box squat like three times a week and they just got tremendously strong from that. And they recognized not only were they getting strong, but they were able to recover from their workouts because they just didn't have that, you know, that reversal strength that's required of a regular squat, but they were still getting strong when they went to a regular squat. So they just kept using it more and more and more. And I think when Louie brought it into his program, I think he

maybe thought three times a week was a little excessive. And so he brought it back down to like one or two, depending on, uh, what the, uh, what the week called for. But I think that one of the massive benefits of a box squat is it allows you to train in a position that you otherwise would just have a lot of difficulty in getting into without the box there. Um, now sometimes that can be a crutch because like, if you're gonna, if you're trying to be a power lifter, then you better know how to squat. Like you need, you need to learn how to actually do, do the movement itself. But, um, and people can argue with me on this point, but this is my opinion. I think a box is the best way to teach someone how to squat. just, it just works really well universally because most people struggle with having good movement patterns. And most people are going to kind of lean forward at the torso because they got tight hips or something like that. A box squat, you can take anybody and you can have them perform a very upright lift, a very upright squat on a box, just as long as the box is high enough for them. And as long as

their feet aren't too far apart, you can really get it figured out. And the way that Jesse and I used to teach it is we would start people sitting on the box or sitting on a chair and we'd say, okay, you know, get up from there. Then we would like kind of make some corrections. We'd have some error correction right from that point. We'd say, okay, kick your feet, you know, towards me a little bit more away from the chair so that your shins are straight up and down. And they would do that. And they're like, how the hell do I get up from here? And we're like, exactly.

It becomes pretty damn challenging. You have to kind of force your knees out. You got to arch your back. You have to basically do all these things that you otherwise would have to do in a squat if you knew how to squat. otherwise would have to do in a squat if you knew how to squat. So it kind of almost, it almost like forces you to squat better in some, in some weird way. And then over a period of time, you can bring that box height down as somebody gets used to it.

The different foot positions that you mentioned, that's a really great observation. I remember for many, many years, people would say, Oh, you know, when you play sports, you know, your feet aren't really that wide. But it's like I beg someone listening to this right now to show me a sport where your feet are really close together. Think about sprawling. Think about trying to take someone down like in a fight or in jujitsu. How often do your feet end up really far apart? Think about somebody that's not great at power cleans, but is still pretty strong. How far apart their feet end up really far apart. Think about somebody that's not great at power cleans, but is still

pretty strong, how far apart their feet end up. Think about a baseball player throwing a ball from third base to first base, how far, how wide they get. Think about a baseball player stepping into a pitch and smacking the ball as hard as they can. Think about a quarterback throwing a 60-yard touchdown pass. Their feet aren't tied together. Their feet are going to be really opened up. Think about changing direction, playing tennis, just any sport. I mean, you're going to have – now, I'm not a fan, and neither is Jesse necessarily, of saying, hey, that happens on the field,

so let's add a bunch of weight to that and let's bring it in-house and bring it into the gym. However, I do think it's applicable, in house and bring it into the gym. However, I do think it's applicable and I do think it helps a lot. And so that's kind of the reason for some of the different foot position is just to try to work some weak areas and try to bring some of those areas up. I would say that for a lot of people that I've helped over the years, having them squat wider, like wider, wider, wider to the point where they're super uncomfortable has almost always been of benefit. However, you do need to be a little cautious. You can tweak somebody if they're not used to those new positions. Even being out an inch on

each side can really be a weird experience if you're not used to it. But I think it can help a lot of people. And most of the time, what we've noticed is it helps people even when they bring their stance back in. Since kind of bringing your stance back in, you're just less exposed. You're keeping everything a little bit more compact. And so that's some of my thoughts on it. Burdick, what you got? I think box squat is extremely unique in the fact that it's a benefit to the beginner lifter and also the advanced lifter and also advanced athletes. I think the real reason, just kind of building on what Mark talked about, is the fact that it really teaches true hip extension. In order to get yourself here and be able to kind of come through, very, very few people are able to kind of push their hips back or they're comfortable doing that or they understand how to do that.

So, thinking about the squat, you think about the deadlift, you think about it for so many people whether it's you know the elderly population or a really big population or you know advanced athletes everybody can kind of benefit from this and it's also one of those things where like mark touched upon it's not gonna have such an eccentric load to it where it's gonna just smash you and make you super sore, which, you know, if you're, um, dealing with populations other than powerlifters, sometimes those people don't want to be that sore and they shouldn't be that sore, especially if they have to go perform on a field somewhere. So I think it's extremely beneficial in those terms. I think just like anything that we talk about it's kind of got a

bad rap for reasons other than what it was intended for um it was intended to kind of be a break from free squatting to allow you to be able to squat more weight and to a certain point for people who are having depth problems or whatever and then it got blurred to the point of only box squat and then only box squat wide, only box squat with your feet turned super, super wide out. And that's the only way to do it. There's so many different ways to do the box squat and benefit from it. But people forget that again, because it's West side or die. You know what I mean? The West side program calls for this. And if that's not it, it's not a box spot. So it's fucking dumb. And there couldn't be anything further from the truth. There's so many benefits from, from box squatting. And, um, I think it's,

you know, it's one of those things where, you know, again, kind of you kind of get what, you know, your comeuppance for, you know, yelling on the internet first. Um, but I really do think, you know, when people actually sit down and think about it, they're like, Oh yeah, I see the benefit of it. It can it can really be a help more than necessarily a hindrance where, you know, some people were saying that, you know, even, you know, still to this day. We got our buddy, Dr. Sean Baker, who still utilizes box squats and he'll do, you know, 315 for sets of like 30 reps. He can squat, you know, five plates for a handful of like 30 reps. Um, he can squat, you know,

five plates for a handful of reps as well. And he's, you know, he's into his fifties. Um, and he's also like six, five or six, six, you know, so some athletes, you know, when we start to, you start to deal with athletes of a high level, uh, they're not usually short, usually pretty tall. And a squat gets to be pretty confusing. You know, you start to see someone like a LeBron James try to squat and it's like, man, that's a lot of body to try to organize. And, you know, people get, they criticize and they say, oh man, that's a crappy squat. But it's like, well, you don't really know what it's like to be six, eight, you know

what I mean? And, and to try to get all those body parts, uh, heading in the right direction. I remember Kobe Bryant used to do box squats. I remember seeing him at goals gym. He had a trainer that was really big into the West side method. And, uh, Kobe was on some commercials using like bands and chains and the reverse hyper and, and those different things. But I think, yeah, with, with the bigger athletes, taller athletes, it's a no brainer to try to get them to squat onto a box. That's, um, you know, maybe even slightly above parallel, just, just for their own health,

but they can still train their legs really well. I know the, the, the end goal would change this answer, but let's just say for a competitive athlete in power lifting, how often would that athlete want to mix in box squats to normal squats? That is going to depend on a lot of things. But if, you know, if,

if he's someone who's asking my advice, I would say that, um, you know, I try and switch up, um, uh, we have a max effort box squat once a month.

We have a max effort free squat once a month. And on our dynamic days, we'll bought to a box for two weeks and then we'll squat free for two weeks i think that again because of how lost and i'm certainly guilty of it too um people got on making sure your box squatting all the time a lot of people specifically following conjugate forgot how to squat without a box and you know they get down to parallel and they have no balance and they don't understand what to do because they don't have that box to push off of. So I would say rotating it, you know, every other max effort squat or every kind of third max effort squat and, you know, rotating

between a free and a box squat on your dynamic effort is. I think that that's not going to overload either one. You can recover from all of it. And it's just enough variance that, you know, it stays fun and cool in your head. if you're not required to do a squat you know because you're not going to do a competition right then i i really would advise that you pretty much just do them all the time especially if you have any sort of injuries you got like some knee tendonitis or something's bothering you i don't see anything wrong with utilizing them pretty much all the time. Now, if you are bodybuilding or you have a specific reason on, uh, you know, uh, on, uh, you know, you're trying to bring up your

legs to a certain way, then, then maybe it wouldn't be wise to use them. But I think, I think box squats are awesome. You know, I'm a huge proponent of them. And I just think I can't think of, and I don't know, I don't know like hundreds of them, but I know a lot of strength coaches, probably, probably at least 40 or 50 of them that I can think of that are just in my phone that I have, you know, communication with. I can't think of one of them that doesn't utilize box squats very, very often. When I went to the New York Jets, they were box squatting.

I know Coach House is a huge proponent of box squats. He's no longer part of the NFL. I know Mark Uyama is a huge proponent of box squats. And again, these are people that are dealing with athletes that are just, they're different, man. They're extraordinary athletes. They can move their bodies in all kinds of crazy ways on the field, but a lot of times they're pretty darn tall and it gets to be difficult on trying to like how to figure out how am I going to, they're not going to squat like a five foot six, uh, Olympic lifter. You know, they're not going to squat like, uh,

like a rich froning or a Matt Frazier or something like that. It's just, they're, like a Rich Froning or a Matt Frazier or something like that. It's just they're too long-limbed and not thick enough to really execute that way. And it would take forever to try to teach that. How about now that we're talking about movements that, I guess, would help save an athlete from not just fatigue but also from injury, like floor presses as far as the bench press is concerned. And then as far as the deadlifts is concerned um box deadlifts for athletes how like how beneficial would you guys say that some of those movements are um for for the pressing side of things i think again if we're talking

about athletes like uh mark mentioned you know if we're talking about pitchers or overhead athletes, whether that's swimmers, volleyball, tennis, quarterback, et cetera, you really, especially for a lot of athletes, they don't know how to bench press. Right. So I think putting in some sort of a board to stop them before it gets really fucking terrible, which is basically the same thing as a box squat, you know, stopping them before they just get this before they get beyond knees, come in, et cetera. I think those can be really,

really beneficial and it can teach people without kind of getting them hurt. Um, uh, on the deadlift by box deadlift, you mean like, um, platforms under the plate platforms, cool. So, I mean, think that that, again, kind of similar to the box squad, it can, you know, some people, some athletes, whether they're long limbed or they're just not trained very well in the weight room, they may have trouble getting down to that starting position. So starting them when they can look and, you know, exemplify a good form, you know,

why not start them here opposed to kind of starting them down here where they look just terrible, get them strong here and then try and kind of work it down. How many people did we see struggle? You know, we're talking about getting down to a deadlift bar and it sounds so common to us, but for a lot of people, it was a challenge when we, when Jesse and I would go and teach seminars, we'd say, okay, you know, try to keep your back flat. And then it would go down like, no, no, you're like your lower, try to keep your lower back flat. And then it would go down again to grab the bar and like, no, you're still there. Like, am I doing it? You're like, no. And that was kind of where,

where I came up with the idea for those wagon wheels was like, Hey, if I can just figure out a way to get that bar higher off the ground, um, then it's not like you want to have a permanent bandaid for that situation either. It's not like you're never going to teach the person how to do a regular deadlift, but if they're not asked to do a regular deadlift in competition, then really doesn't matter if they, you know, are able to move down four or five, six inches more. It may be because it might be conducive for their just general health, getting their shoes on and stuff like that in the morning. So it might be something to work on. But when you try, what I've learned is when I force myself into positions that

don't feel great for me, I usually get hurt. You know, and if I, if I have a soft back on a deadlift because the weights are a little bit too heavy or if I'm super tight and really struggling to get in position, if I'm now smashing myself or really forcing myself into position, almost every single time I tweak something. So I've learned over the years that that's not a great way to do it. I'd rather do a partial range of motion as we're talking about here. do a partial range of motion as we're talking about here. One thing that I've just, I've never really been able to figure out, and I've seen it a lot because people that I've talked to when it comes to the deadlift, it's like, um, if I rip it off the ground, I can do at least two, but get initial pull is like impossible at times. Like Mark, you've seen me do it. I'm sure you guys have coached tons of people that have struggled with just ripping it off the ground but once it gets going it's like oh for sure it's going up

if somebody is struggling with that what can they do to help fight that initial pull because that seems to be where like the again the initial rip off the ground is like the hardest point for someone like me who's still trying to get their uh you know trying to get their, you know, trying to find their way. I think most of the time that's going to be due to probably two things, weaker legs and then also poor setup. So what do we do for weaker legs? We just get your legs strong. You know what I mean? Close stance, high bar box squats, leg crefts, lunges, step ups, single leg stuff. And then form wise, I think one of the best things

that i've kind of discovered is really start especially on the deadlift is having a slow eccentric you know working with lighter weight pull to the top and then really slowly putting your putting the bar back down just kind of touch the ground and then kind of repeat that over and over and over again and the reason why that's really important is you'll figure out and you'll get comfortable with where you're most likely to pull the bar off, where you're going to be the strongest. So doing that, I've found out whether it's conventional or sumo, if we slow down the eccentric, you're going to find where your body wants to start. And then you'll get comfortable and then you'll understand where that is you'll be able to feel it and then most likely you'll be able to get back to that position a little bit more often and what about like just using bands like reverse bands uh no

i think that's going to go ahead and encourage you to rip the bar off the floor a little bit more because the the harder you yank the more those bands are going to work with you. Um, I really, you know, if, if people who are starting, you know, having problems start off the floor, it's always, you know, leg strength, uh, kind of doing those slow eccentrics and then maybe actually forcing me, putting you on something and actually doing a little bit of deficit pull. So you learn how to use your legs in the bottom. I had a lifter who ended up, you know, she ended up deadlifting over 400 pounds, but, um, she could deadlift more off of a deficit, um, than she could off the floor for a while. And that was because she just couldn't understand how to stack herself there. So we would actually go to a meet and bring a platform and have her warm up on the platform,

just so she could get that, that feel over and over and over again to use her legs. And then that, that really helped propel her. I think she ended up, you know, uh, putting another 70 or 80 pounds on, on her deadlift from 300 all the way up to like 420 or something along those lines. So classically in those situations, that's what you're going to kind of, that's where I would tell you to kind of fix things. I think when Jesse and I think about how somebody lifts, um, we're also thinking about that person, especially because, um, Jesse does a lot of online coaching. Um, but he also, you help people in person and you care about these people. And so while you might say, yeah, yeah, that was

pretty cool that you did the 500-pound deadlift, but we really got to get you away from really ripping these weights off the ground the way that you're doing it because I don't want to see you limping through here. I want you to be able to do this for a long time. So it might be something similar to maybe like hitting a heavy bag. Yeah, you want to fuck the heavy bag up and you want to like smash the crap out of it. But do you want to smash it so hard and so crazy that it's to the detriment of you not being able to breathe well, um, the detriment of your hands, like you could jack up your wrist and your, and your, uh, fists and stuff like that. If you just

went completely haywire on it, right. If you just went completely crazy and really let loose, especially if you're not a pro, like if you haven't been doing it for a long time. And I think the same thing is true of like a deadlift, a squat, a bench. Yeah, it's okay to your hips came off the bench. That's fine. Not a huge deal, but over a long period of time, we don't want those things to happen because that could potentially cause a problem with your shoulder. If you're ripping the weights off the ground on the deadlift and you're starting getting a little bit of a cat back type of thing, it's like you might be able to get away with it for a while. And some people have great genetics and they can get away with it for a pretty long time. They can pull 600, 700. But once they start getting into those heavier weights,

the problem is going to rear its ugly head and, you know, take it from somebody that, you know, tried for a long time, the bench press 600 pounds. I ended up with some not such great habits in the bench press that later on they would just, they would catch up to me. So I ended up with a, you're going to end up with a, a limit. And a lot of times the limit is just yourself. You're just in your own way.

And so you have to really constantly try to examine like, how are we going about doing this lift? Because if you can figure out the most optimal way, you should be able to, for a long period of time, make a lot of progress and not get all jacked up. I think this more so would apply to newer lifters, but especially when deadlifting, it seems that they're not really used to taking slack out of the bar before they start their pull. And then when they just start the pull, because they haven't taken any slack out, they just get pulled out of position and it just wrecks everything.

So when you were talking about the setup, how is it that you help people learn the aspect of pulling slack out of the bar before you start to pull? Because when you control the eccentrics and you get back into position, the slack usually is already out of the bar. So that's why every other pool looks so great. And your very first one looks like absolute dog crap. I,

and I think Mark would agree with me here. I completely blame this on Dan Green for the whole internet trying to rip the bar off the floor. But what's amazing about someone like him, someone like Taylor, someone like Jeremy, these people yank the bar and they actually pull themselves into position. Where everyone else in the world yanks on the bar and pulls themselves out of position and the reason that they can do it and you can't is because your name ain't dan green you ain't kaylor woolham you're not jeremy avila you're just not and that's okay uh you can still deadlift a lot you can still be very successful um what mark and i used to think

about and what we used to teach is, you know, you have a collar, uh, of the plate and if you actually pull, you should actually hear a little tink or a little, a little bit of a click. And that is telling you that you have a little bit of that slack out of a bar and then you kind of come back and then you can kind of start your process. And we would always video people who would yank the bar off and they would get into like this weird position you know and the bar wouldn't actually move until their hips were here so they would be starting here so a couple things we would do is listen you know try and get that slack out of the bar and if they couldn't really feel it listen for you know kind of that feedback

and also just more than anything starting them when that actual bar starts to move off the ground. Now, it may take a little bit more time in order for the bars to start to move off the ground, but opposed to starting in a full squat and then yanking as hard as you can, and then your hips are up here, and then the bar starts to move, just start with your hips up here. You're getting yourself into the same spot, and you can actually be a little bit safer. But, yeah, for the slack on the bar, it's just practicing that.

I think something that was really revolutionary for me personally in the sumo deadlift was actually putting a box behind me and I would kind of get in position and I would try and pull myself into position and just sit on a really, really high box. And I would try to just levitate those plates just really high box. And I wouldn't, I would try to just, uh, levitate those plates just a little bit.

And as it got heavier and heavier, they would actually not leave. And then I would just kind of get the slack out of that bar and I would be able to understand what good position was and how to pull myself in there. So, um, it's always going to be a little bit different for people. And a lot of times the background that they have coming into it is gonna um i've always any olympic lifter that i've tried to teach deadlift always kind of yanks the bar because that's what they've been taught so there's no real way to slow those people down you just have to get them really really brutally strong more than anything uh in those cases i

remember ed cohen would say that he would pull himself in a position so tightly that seven plates would just like basically start to hover off the ground. And he just felt like it was completely effortless. Now, somebody listening was like, whoa, like that's, that's pretty wild. How do you make, you know, nearly 700 pounds feel weightless? Well, you may be able to achieve the same exact thing. It just might be with a lot less weight. It might be with like a hundred pounds or 135 pounds, but that's something that that's something to work on. And I liked what Jesse said earlier about lowering the weight slow. I think that can be a huge benefit, whether you're sumo or conventional, because now you're, when you lower yourself, you've got to make sure that at the bottom, what I see Pete, where I see people mess this up is at the bottom, they fall, make sure you don't fall. Don't fall

that last like two inches at last three inches. Don't collapse onto the floor and let go of your upper back. I see a lot of people do that. Make sure you're really being super strict with it. Even if it means you have to use a lot less weight. Another thing that works really well is just to pull on weights, to pull on the bar, get yourself in a good deadlift position, set up the best that you possibly can. We want to try to have our back flat. We want to try to get our hips lower than our shoulders. So get yourself in a good position. Once you're in that good position, utilize the bar to pull yourself into an even better position. And as you're doing that, as the bar to pull yourself into an even better position. And as you're doing that, you should be able to make 95 pounds float off the ground, 135 float off the ground, 185, depending on your

strength level. But it is something that's good to practice. And you can even use, rather than thinking of like pause deadlifts, which are popular and super effective, by the way, I like that exercise a lot. But I think one of the things that that exercise teaches you, basically, is the same thing I'm talking about here, is just try to get those weights to hover off the ground a little bit by being in a good, strong position, and then follow through and finish the lift and see how that feels for you.

I think there's a lot that you can learn from that. And I also think there's not really, there's not a reason why you can't implement that right away and bring that right into your program now and start to utilize that while you're warming up for your deadlifts for the day. Yeah. Is there like slack at one plate? You know, like, is there anything there logistically, the plate itself has to be, especially if it's a metal plate. Now, if it's a bumper plate, it might not make the same noise, but the hole has to be bigger than the actual sleeve of the bar, right? For this whole thing to work out the correct way. So when you slide it on, you'll notice that there's some slack there, right? There's some give, there's some room in there.

some slack there, right? There's some give, there's some, there's some room in there. And that's the noise that you're going to end up hearing is you're going to end up hearing kind of the metal on metal, uh, the, the collar and also what's inside of the plate. And so, yeah, you can, you can pull that slack out of there. And sometimes if you have really thin plates, skinny plates, they will, um, go from kind of being like sagged, like outward or inward to being, you know, completely erect, so to speak. Hey, I think, I think about what Andrew mentioned. There's really, it really helps a lot because when you see athletes like, you know, they're doing maybe some speed work or something with lighter loads.

They won't treat those lighter loads like they would their, you know, close to max loads lift looks super different because they're moving super fast. They don't take as they don't try to take slack out of the bar, they just move fast, and it's like a different lift. So I think it's it's really, that's a really important thing to remember that maybe not one plate, but when you're starting to work like 50 60% or something, you want to treat that like it's 90, whatever you want to treat it like it's a heavier lift as you're going faster with it. And Seema, what do you do? What do you do personally with the bar bend? Because you know, you're, you're lifting some damn big weights on a deadlift of 755 deadlift. What are you doing with

the bend of the bar? Because you seem to pull the slack out. Well, I noticed the bar is pretty bent before the weights leave the floor, the bar bend. Um, I don't, what do you mean exactly? Like how do you get, how do you actualize your start position? Oh, um, I pull before I, uh, before I start bringing my hips down to the bar, I pull on the bar while keeping my arms long. So I don't like, you know, my elbows don't flex. I pull on the bar and then I bring my hips down into position and it kind of just, it just, it's like, um, what's that thing you use to, to pull the bar off the ground. I forgot the name of the deadlift jack. It's kind of like a deadlift jack. That's, that's kind of how I look at it. Um, and leverage. Yeah. Yeah. And it really helps me just get into a good deadlift position. Does a deadlift bar make any difference for you or

have you noticed a big difference between a deadlift bar and a regular bar? Yeah. A deadlift bar, because it's more whippy, it'll, um, it'll, I'll get more bend out of that when moving with heavier loads, like it'll stay on the ground a little bit longer. Um, I think, uh, with a, with a stiff bar, I can, it's, it's not hard for. I think with a stiff bar, it's not hard for me to lift with a stiff bar, but it is a little bit, I have to be more cognizant about holding position better. I feel like with the deadlift bar, I'm able to, even if I'm a little bit lazier, I can still get myself into a good position when I'm not being as... Yeah. I think a deadlift bar as the bar bends,

I think it, uh, it's going to sound weird to say it, but it's a slightly less range of motion of a deadlift because you pulled the bar off the ground a little bit. You're in a little bit better position. And you notice that when somebody does like two or three reps on a deadlift, especially with a deadlift bar and they're kind of touching and going on the

ground, it is a partial range of motion now because the bar is so bent and because the weights are hitting the ground earlier than they would if the bar wasn't bent. And Seema, are you still doing hook grip? Yeah, always. Yeah. God, how do you, just for somebody else listening, like how do you develop the hook grip? Because it, I mean, mean for one it hurts like hell

but two like i can't even get my thumb all the way around you know yeah when i watched videos on it um like uh it took me i think a good four months to get used to like the the feeling of it because it was really painful my thumbs would get really raw i think there are some smarter people out there who talk about like taping up the thumbs too, when you're, as you're getting used to it. So you don't have to go through all that pain, but I really wasn't that smart. So I just, I just grabbed the bar and I just went for it. And even as it hurt, I just, you know, I built the calluses there. So I don't feel that anymore.

And then also one thing, oh shoot, Joe Sullivan talked about it. And I wish I knew the video in which he mentioned it because, um, Jamal, Jamal said he learned a lot of good hook grip stuff from the Joe Sullivan video. Joe mentioned something about the placement of your two fingers when hook gripping that I never saw when I hook gripped. But, um, one big thing when I, when I do a hook grip is I try to let the bar hang in my hand. So like my thumb, if I can, here we go. My thumb, my thumb kind of lengthens underneath the bar and it's like the bars, it doesn't necessarily pull my thumb out of the socket, but it, it's like the bar is just sitting

here and it, it pulls there. And I got used to that too. I don't squeeze the bar when I hook grip, it's kind of like this and the bar weight just chills there. So I think that's one thing that kind of made it really easy for me, but yeah, I think, uh, Taylor will actually help Joe and Joe kind of help,

uh, Jamal and kind of down there. So I always refer people over to Taylor cause he seems to have it, uh, dialed in really, really well um and yeah i i think there's been a lot of tricks and it's one of those things where i actually wish i would have never asked the gillingham brothers how to develop a hook grip

because their answer was like do you have a hammer i was like yeah it was like just pound your thumbs until you have no feeling in your thumbs anymore. I was like, you know what? Nevermind. It's all good, man. That's real. Oh yeah. Yeah. Dead in the nail. It'll deaden the feeling, but they also, I mean, if you look at their thumbs, if you

ever have a chance to, their thumbs are like flat. What the fuck? They're flat. But if you think about it, that's going to give you more area to kind of grab on, and it's going to make your hook grip better. But also, those guys' hands are twice the size of my hands. I mean, I don't have, you know, really small mitts myself. I mean, those guys are just enormous people, so they really didn't need, you know, to hammer their thumbs. It's one of those things where, you know, that's a really, really old way of doing things.

But I wish that, you know, I had been able to kind of see a Kaler video back in the day, because I think hook grip was, you know, is obviously something that can really be a benefit. And I remember Mark tried to go through it for a long time, and he had a hell of a time. He was just like, all I want to do is deadlift 630. And, you know, I'm going to call that a win. He did it after a couple of months. And then he was like i'm never fucking doing that again that's amazing so we were talking earlier about you know like using chains to help the um uh like the hardest part of a bench box squat for the same thing

is um like what what are some things that conjugate can do to make things a little bit harder so that way when you do go on the platform without those things, you can progress a little bit, I guess, faster or stronger, better, quicker. Yeah, that's, I think, the real benefit of the Westside stuff is you can pick some stuff that's really evil and just devastating. And, you know, you'll see that programming from Jesse Burdick and you're like, oh my God, why is he making us do that? Because you could do a box squat onto like a 12 inch box and have like a three second pause, you know, if you're camping out on the box. And so that would be one way to make something harder is to, you know, try to have a pause in there, try to have, you know, some sort of change in tempo. What I used to do a lot of was good mornings. I

was really, really big on doing good mornings and I would do the mornings, do good mornings out of a rack and I would, uh, have the chains, um, the weight would be suspended in chains and I would almost always use a, uh, Cambridge bar or a Duffalo bar of some sort, because having it bent over your back works a lot better than just a straight bar. A straight bar and good mornings is like sort of weird, especially when you don't have good shoulder mobility. But yeah, implementing just different movements, trying to make, you know, what's a way to make this movement really hard. trying to make, you know, what's a way to make this movement really hard. Louis Simmons was a big proponent of really changing up stances and changing up grips at Westside.

They used to do illegally wide bench presses, and this sounds funny, but, you know, you're not in competition. You're not allowed to have your index finger out past the power rings. And so you would bench press with your hands out even wider and just being cautious that you don't pinch your hands in the rack. Or the cops see you too. Yeah, right. You got to be careful with that. And then also deadlifts, you know, you might do a sumo deadlift where you get your stance out so wide that you would put collars on the inside of the

bar and then you would load plates on there. And man, it's just like super uncomfortable. And the way that we would do these exercises sometimes, because some of them are, they're just dangerous. I mean, I remember the kneeling, the kneeling squat was one. And Louie would say like, Louie's like, Hey, look, you know, getting strong isn't safe, you know? And so we need to like the, the, uh, the worse, the exercise, the, uh, the stronger we're going to be. And I would, I would do my good mornings with my head pretty much fucking between my legs. I mean, other people would set up and try to do a good morning with me and they couldn't even get into position for it. And again, I'm not flexible at

all, but I was just like, Hey, I'm just going to make this the worst possible thing that I can do. So there's a lot of ways to make the exercises evil and torturous. What you got, Burdick? I think just in anything, whether it's lifting or athletics, I think practices should be harder than the game. Because you want the game to kind of just flow and you don't necessarily want to be thinking about it. You want to be just ultimately prepared for these things and what conjugate does or what the focus should be is weak point development. So if we know that you're, you know,

a terrible deadlifter doing what smelly was doing is exactly what he should have been doing. You know, if you have a lot of problems with getting the bar off your chest, you should be doing some positive stuff or some, you know, eccentric stuff. So we're not trying to, you know, continually throwing doing you know if you have a lot of problems with getting the bar off your chest you should be doing some pause stuff or some you know eccentric stuff so we're not trying to you know continually throwing you know lobbing softballs at you so you can you know hit a home run it's just like hey work on what you're terrible at and by the time you get get around to the stuff that you're good at you're just going to be kind of so much better. So, um, and like, like Mark talked about, there's so many different ways to, to do that, but just really taking a, an honest look at, you know, where you are week,

what needs development and having your focus be on that opposed to what you're good at and what's going to look best on Instagram. And good mornings just happened to work really well for me because my squats were basically good mornings. So I was just like, how do I, how do I get out of that position? You know? I mean, in general, if you want to make your training harder than any other lift is, you know, to do a good morning, you know, it's not a good morning as Mark. And I used to say, it's a bad week.

Oh God, that makes sense. Yeah. What about, so you guys talked about like conjugate for athletes, but you guys didn't touch on bodybuilders. Can a bodybuilder utilize any of this? I think so. I think a bodybuilder can utilize some of the methods. I think especially when it comes to utilizing bands and chains, I think bodybuilders could get a lot from it. And I don't know why. I'm not really sure why you don't see bodybuilders utilizing bands and chains as much. It really makes a lot from it. And I don't know why, I'm not really sure why you don't see bodybuilders utilizing bands and chains

as much. It really makes a lot of sense. I'm surprised that we don't have machines that have bands on them already. You know, I'm surprised that a lot of the selectorized equipment, I don't understand why that doesn't have bands on it because again, accommodating resistance and making the weight harder as your body gets into a more advantageous position just makes a lot of sense to me because then you just end up with uh you end up with more constant tension um so it would assist some of the methods would assist bodybuilding what wouldn't matter much for bodybuilding would be um like the dynamic effort stuff I don't think would matter

as much because, and also just trying to move explosively. A lot of times in, in, um, a lot of times in powerlifting, we're trying to avoid, uh, you know, having a lot of muscular tension and having any sort of like muscular fight with the weight we want to, like when you bench press, you know, I used to always think like, I just want to get this done as fast as i fucking can i want to lay down on the bench and just blast the weight up and and have it be over with and typically in in bodybuilding it's much more meticulous much much more thought out process like i'm going to do six reps or i'm going to do 12 reps and i'm going to squeeze and and uh you know flex as I go through this movement, the West side stuff does account for bodybuilding though. They, they have like most of the training, actually, I would say

the highest percentage of training is devoted to bodybuilding where at least, at least 50% of it is devoted to the repetition effort method, which is, uh, just basically bodybuilding techniques, sets and reps. Yeah, I, I, I would agree. agree. I think, you know, when Mark was talking there, I think bodybuilders want to really feel the weight through the movement and kind of make sure that the muscle activation is there as powerlifters. We don't really want to feel the weight because hopefully it's really heavy and it fucking hurts and we want to get it over with as soon as possible. But yeah, I think all the assistance stuff that we do should be, in my opinion,

more bodybuilding style stuff. But as a bodybuilder, you need not only overall volume but also frequency. So training really heavy doesn't always necessarily lend to that. So I think that that's where maybe they kind of move away from things. And you don't have to really squat, bench or deadlift a whole bunch to look awesome on stage. Uh, I think it does help. Um, and I think that's why someone like Stan, someone like Ronnie Coleman and some of the other guys who actually do lift, uh, heavy, they have a different look than some of the other bodybuilders who are on stage with them. Um, but it, you know, that also kind of depends on what people are looking for,

what the judges are looking for that year, or, you know, kind of that, that point in time and bodybuilding. But I, you can always tell someone who is a heavier lifter, their, their muscle and their kind of their overall physique looks a little bit different, but that's, again, that's not always advantageous. And that could be only in bodybuilding where, you know, classic physique or, you know, the, all that other stuff, you, you don't necessarily want to have that look. So I think lifting heavy sometimes is not necessarily used because of,

because of that, but, you know, don't ever discount a lot of bodybuilders. I mean, they come in and they want to party. They can, they can usually lift because they have such an enormous, you know, base of training and they can handle so much volume that, you know, oftentimes they can come in and really kind of smoke you. And, you know, I've had that, uh, have that experience a number of times, you know, outside of Stan, but I mean, very notably by Stan. Now I'm curious about this too, real quick, because it's, um, I don't, yeah,

we haven't mentioned it, but isometrics, um, how often because I think with people have a rack at home, they could probably do some isometric work, whether it be with a deadlift or, um, or whether it be with a bench. Um, but like, yeah, how could somebody and why would somebody want to add that into their training? I think, you know, isometrics is one of those things. If you, if you really do some research and some reading on it, I mean,

it was used, um, classically by a lot of the, um, Olympic lifting coaches and, uh, back in the day, but it was used very sparingly and the reason for that is because of kind of the damage that it can do um on your body uh i think also we have to take into consideration that you know in order to really get the most out of any sort of isometric your form needs to be very very dialed and very very important and I also think there's something to, um, you, you have to have someone teach you how to do that because it's really easy to kind of pull into the, um, the pins or push into the pins and just don't, you know, you need to be trying to pull the rack off the floor.

You need to be pushing the rack off the floor and you need to do that for five, six, seven, eight seconds. And a lot of people will pull there and they'll just kind of hang out. And I mean, you should be, you know, it should be tearing, you know, muscle off the bone, you know, in order to get the effect that you do. So I don't think isometrics for a lot of people in kind of garage gyms or, you know, kind of an individual setting is good because the effort isn't there and you don't get a whole lot out of it because people just don't understand what that feeling is like. You know, I mean, we used to pull against, you know, pins until, and the only reason we would stop is because we thought we tore something in our shoulders. That's how you get

a isometric benefit. And, you know, you would just push into a pin until it would literally just fall on you because you're just completely gassed out. So I just don't think people go there and therefore they're not going to get, you know, much out of the isometric. And then like a practicality, you know, it's just not that practical. You know, it's just not that practical. I know Josh Bryant recommends some of it. And he also has you sometimes doing like an isometric movement in between speed stuff. But Josh Bryant, you know, he's got some great training techniques and some great methods. I would say that, like, if if somebody wants to use some like holds and some different things during a training session, I would rather see people just throw in some pause work, you know, but maybe throw it in in some unconventional places. So rather than thinking

of like, oh, I'm going to use an isometric to get rid of this weak point because I have trouble locking out the bench. Maybe, you know, push the weight off your chest, get the weight maybe just a little bit above halfway and then try to hold it for like a three count and then push through. I'd rather see people do stuff like that because I think it's, as Burdick's mentioning, like the amount of force that you have to try to produce to get isometrics to work is difficult to really mimic. And it's also going to depend a ton on the individual. It's going to depend on what angle that you're on, because if you, if you're trying to push into a weight, that's like basically set up. So you're just barely off your chest.

You might not be able to produce any force. And that could be for multiple reasons. Maybe you're just not that flexible or just not that comfortable in that position. Whereas as you go up higher, you might be able to apply more force to it and stuff. So there's just like, just maybe too many factors in there to really mess with. And I would just encourage people rather than maybe thinking of that, just think about things logically and say, you know, where am I missing weights? You know, do I miss, am I really having a hard time out of the hole? Well, if I have a hard time out of the hole in the squat, maybe I should just pause there for a while. You know, maybe as, as Chad Wesley Smith points out, uh, spend more time in the positions that you suck at and you'll probably end up being better at them. Yeah. I agree. I think tempo

work and pause work can very easily get the same training effect that isometrics are trying to get, um, without the setup and kind of the know-how. So, I mean, it's a real cheap, easy way to do that. What about, I believe Jen Thompson, she'll load up a shit ton of weight, unrack it, hold it, and then re-rack it. That's a great point, Andrew. So that works really well, and that's different because the weight is being loaded onto her. She's getting the weight handed out to her.

Even if she was to lift the weight off herself, there's still some movement going on with that. It would be similar to walking out of squat. I'm sorry, it'd be similar to walking out of squat. There's another movement that I wouldn't really consider like the same exactly, but like of the same vein is like top down deadlifts, which was used by some finish lifters for a long time where they would, they would barely move the weight like an inch. And as Burdick and I have been pointing out during, throughout the podcast, you know, you're going to be strongest,

you're strongest at holding weight at the top of the bench. You're strongest holding weight at the top of a deadlift. You're strongest holding the weight on your back at the top of the squat. And so you could take advantage of these things by having weight handed out to you and doing some holds. So I'm glad that you brought that up because you can also walk out of squat. You can do this kind of bottom or top down deadlift where you unrack the weight and then bring it down under control. Somebody has to move pins out of the way though,

for you to be able to do that. You need a coordinated effort. You need three, you know, you need a person lifting, you need two people to pull the pins out from the rack to be able to make that one work. Yeah. And I mean, this isn't, you know, that what Jen's doing isn't new and she's, you know, and I mean, her husband and I have kind of talked about it, you know, that's what Dr. Squat used to do way back when he would just overload his squat and kind of take it out. It's something that a lot of people have used in their, um, in their meat preps for a long,

long time. And it's, again, I think it's kind of that reverse band future method that Louie would always talk about as well. It's just getting the feel for that weight and also getting a feel for a weight that you may not squat or you may not bench. It's just holding that. And it's, it's also, I think, uh, I think this is Chad. I quote, which is like the worst part about a lift should be the setup. And how do you kind of overemphasize being tight and getting solid underneath there? It's like, what do you bench?

I bench 400 pounds. Well, try and hold 500 pounds, and then you'll understand what a tight setup and a strong setup is. And you're like, oh, oh, tight setup. Oh, okay, I understand now. So, I mean, I think it's a teaching tool, and I think it's an easy way to kind of overload things. And I think it's also kind of a mental thing. You know, I've had, um, I've had some people, I think tiny Tiff actually walked out like 430 pounds and she's a 330 pound lifter at, you know, 97 pounds. And, you know, she was sitting there, you know, shaking, going back and forth, trying to stay tight. And she's like, that's the worst thing I've ever done in my whole life. But then we dropped it back down and gave her, you

know, 90% in the 300. And, you know, she, she dunked it and came back up. She was like, holy shit, that was so easy. So I mean, there's definitely training effects. But again, you know, we got to all these things work, but we got to figure out when they work best and what to precede and, you know follow it up with as well to really get the maximum thing out of it i don't want people to go and start you know walking out 120 of their squat and then trying to take 90 you know every week because that's just uh you know you're gonna get hurt doing that just flat period we uh we kind of talked about they touched on the sled initially um a lot of people don't have

sleds at home but obviously you know both of you guys are proponents of doing some sort of conditioning so what do you think are like some good conditioning tools that people can grab like kettlebells etc what do you think are some good ones that they can grab to help them be conditioned for being a power lifter? Um, yeah, anything. You don't even need a piece of equipment,

just go, especially for, you know, general powerlifting, just go for a walk. Um, but you know, anything that you like, I mean,

there's a lot of people from different backgrounds. You know, I remember a guy who used to, uh, be a boxer and he would always want to jump rope because that's just what he felt, what he felt really good with doing. And he was used to it.

He knew he could kind of zone out and just kind of do his thing um the sled's amazing uh because i think mark coined this term it's dummy proof i've only seen one person fuck up dragging a sled uh in my whole career um so you know who was that person can we call them out yes um well i don't know where he is at this point i'm sure you know he's a professor at stanford or harvard somewhere um but this was the kid at diablo that um he was this is you know and i i don't i don't want to really make fun of the kid but i mean he was the dumbest person i've ever met in my whole life um he he actually he would grab a sled and you know we would you'd have to kind of click the sled on on the carabiner and start dragging it but oftentimes because there's so many different things you know click to the sled or whatever um you don't always have the dragging one and he was

a football player and they were like hey go drag the sled and you know go do your thing it's like okay so he goes out there and he kind of walks past the uh the garage player and we were like, Hey, go drag the sled and, you know, go do your thing. It's like, okay. So he goes out there and he kind of walks past the garage door and we walk past and he just has the chain and it's dangling back there and it's not attached to a sled. And he walks past and then he walks and he goes out there and we're just like, Hey Derek. Like, yeah. Like how's the sled drag? Good. Are you, are you missing something? He's like, I don't think so. And I was like, look behind you. And he kind of looks, he goes, Oh, I was like, okay. I mean, you know,

if you're going to drag a sled, go drag a sled. This is also the kid that, you know, I think he pulled like two 25 or he pulled, yeah, I think he pulled like over 200 pounds, but there was like a, a plate and then like a 10 and then a 25 and he was all fucked up i was like how much weight is on there and he was just like and he and he shrugged his shoulders and he goes 200 i was like no and then he he looked at it again and he went 300 i was like no and he looked at it again and he goes four i was like i'm gonna stop you there uh it again and he goes, four. I was like, I'm going to stop you there. So we actually created a math test for him to get into the gym.

He had to pass a math test in order to get in here. And he called it. He said, coach, I'm sorry. I'm not really good at plussing the circles on the stick. So think about that again. I'm not good at plussing the circles on the stick. So think about that again. I'm not good at plussing the circles on the stick. That's a sentence that you can only hear from someone who can fuck up a sled drag. Oh God. Amazing. Yeah.

He's definitely a math professor somewhere at this point. Back to the fat guy cardio. Another good one from uh from jesse was just to walk with uh walk with some sort of weights you know yeah walk with a weighted vest or you know whatever way you can maybe you can throw some uh books in a backpack or something like that and and go for a walk so i think just throw a hip circle on i have people just walk you know for for long periods of time with the hip circle they'll yeah you make people watch me for long periods of time with a hip circle. Yeah, you make people ride their bike with a hip circle. Not your actual bike, but a stationary bike.

Yeah, I don't know if I would tell you to do that. That would probably end very poorly. Yeah. When we were talking about overloading weights, it instantly made me think of weight releasers. Those are a lot of fun. Do you guys have any of your like tools to use in the gym? Like, you know, like a weight releaser or whatever. I like all that stuff. I like the bands. I like the chains. Um, the weight releasers are fun. Um, but they're, they're not again, like you're trying to look at like practicality, you know, like what's practical. The weight releasers work pretty good on a bench,

and then they get kind of too weird on a squat or it just gets to be like not so safe. A weight releaser is just weights you put on the side of the bar, and then as you go to come down in a bench press, they come off. So it's adding, you know, whatever amount of weight you want to put on there. You can put a 25 on there or 45 or 10s. It just adds a little bit of weight to the bar. I think that's a pretty effective method.

I've always liked it. It's not very popular. I don't really see a lot of other people messing around with it. But I've always personally liked probably more so than the bands is the chains just cause it's kind of the dead weight feel to them. And they're great for other exercises when we do when we do flies. So we, we grab a hold of the handles that we would use on some of the cable pieces

that we have at the gym. We'll use hand, we use the handles and we attach the chains to that. And we do like flies or bench press or tricep extensions with that. That feels amazing. You know, if you have access to some chains, you might want to try like a floor lying on the floor tricep extension, because again, the weights are going to hit the ground. The weights are going to hit the chain is going to hit the ground. Sorry. And going to hit the – the chain is going to hit the ground, sorry. And it's going to kind of deload, and you don't have nearly as much weight.

I used to do a lot of extensions, too, just barbell tricep extensions on a bench. And I would set the chains up in a way that they would hit the ground. Because when you have the weight at your forehead on, like, a skull crusher, like, that's usually where you feel the tension in your elbows. You're like, man, that really freaking hurts. Super uncomfortable. But you could have about half of the weight deloaded onto the floor. And then the weight, you know, comes on stronger as you're, you know, pushing the weight up. So there's a lot of great spots to utilize bands and chains.

But I'd say chains are always kind of my fave. I think one of the, one of my favorite tools is a, is a bamboo bar. I think that it's one of those things where, you know, it's, it's a cheaper, easier way to teach you how to stabilize and move heavy weights because the reality of the situation is that you're not going to squat bench or deadlift in a straight line when you're getting to 90, 95% weight, there's going to be variation.

There's going to be some stuff that goes wrong. And what's cool about the Buffalo or the, um, the bamboo bar is everything is going wrong and you're learning how to kind of press through it, stabilize and kind of come off of it so i mean whenever we do like a heavier like a bench peak heading into a meet one of the um things that we would always do is just do bamboo bar it just it's so restorative for whatever reason um and it makes you just feel so much better and then you can kind of add in a little bit of the squat to it as well and it's just a really easy way to move some lighter weight you know this is kind of add in a little bit of the squat to it as well. And it's just a really easy way to move some lighter weight. You know, this is kind of the concept of underloading. Um, you're not

going to be able to use a whole lot of weight on those things. And, um, it, it, it teaches you how to move. It teaches you how to stabilize. And, um, you know, it's a lot of fun to see someone take their first ride on the bamboo bar and, you know, almost die with a hundred pounds. take their first ride on the bamboo bar and, you know, almost die with a hundred pounds. Yeah. And super easy, uh, plug, but how does the, uh, the slingshot come into play with all of this? I think it's useful, you know, everywhere, to be honest with you, whether it's, you know, you use it on a dynamic, if dynamic effort day, you use the, uh, you know, the reactive where, um, you know, if you're a little bit banged up or you just got off of a heavy squat workout or you have a heavy squat workout coming, um, use it on max effort days to kind of help you

overload, um, you know, use it for pushups again, to kind of get those reps way up there. I think it's a, it's a really useful tool. And I think, you know, the reason it was developed is because, you know, putting on a shirt, a bench shirt, um, was so time consuming and, you know, resource consuming with people and everything else. You know, you, Mark would have to have seven people around him in order to get anything done on a shirt day. And if you didn't have those people, you're kind of screwed wearing a, um, in a slingshot, you can put it on yourself and, you know, still move, you know, 90% plus weights, maybe

for multiple reps without, you know, anyone move, you know, 90% plus weights, maybe for multiple reps without, you know, anyone necessarily needing to be there, needing to help a grown man get dressed. Yeah. And when it comes to like home gym setups, if you don't want to use bands, you don't want, or you don't have access to all that, you kind of have the same like feeling with a slingshot, right? Yep.

Yeah. And years ago, um, you know, when I developed the slingshot, I have a video that's pretty much, I think it's like 10 years old because we're going on a 10 year anniversary and, um, I'm, you know, showing the slingshot. And then I have a bunch of other people in the slingshot in the video. Tim Ferriss is, uh, rocking the slingshot and messing around with it, having a lot of fun with it. And there's some other people in there. But I've told you guys and Seema, Andrew, I've told many people before. I'm like, you know, people have asked like, hey, did people believe in your project? Did people believe in the slingshot?

You know, was there anybody? And I used to say no, but I have video proof that my boy was behind me from day one because my boy, Jesse Burdick, the second he tried it out, you were like, this thing's revolutionary. This thing's unbelievable. You were like into it. And, you know, hopefully you were saying that just because you love me rather than it actually working. But I thought that was cool. When I watched the video, I was like, damn, I was like, there's my boy right behind me from day one. Well, for me, and you know, this isn't a shameless plug here, but it is,

you know, I was never really good at benching in a bench press shirt because I just couldn't get the feel right. I was again, a longer limbs lifter and bench press shirts are just not really meant for me uh so i never really got the same feeling that the bench press you know good shirted bench pressers would kind of talk about you know like oh you get this pop you get this this it's like it just fucking hurts and then i think i lock it out that's like pretty much the extent of my bench press shirt knowledge at this point i never really got the spring or

pop and then the first time i put on a swing shot i was like oh i think i understand how much the extent of my bench press shirt knowledge at this point i never really got the spring or pop and then the first time i put on a swing shot i was like oh i think i understand how bench press shirts are supposed to work now because i understand that feeling and it actually helped me become a better shirted bench presser because i was like okay i understand what i'm looking for and where i need to put this because in the shirt you would need a hundred percent plus in order to get that bar down to your chest if you get it wrong you're fucked um in a slingshot you can use it with 135 and really kind of dial in kind of that form dial in your you know movement pattern so I think it just made it just helped me understand how to bench press in a shirt but also put me in

a good bench press position to bench raw as well. And it was one of those things where I hated putting on a shirt because it took forever and it did nothing but hurt. My hands used to go numb. I would have to take the shirt off because my forearms would go gray. So, I mean, I never had a really great, great sessions in a shirt because it was just nothing but you know awful and pain for me and the slingshot kind of helped me understand how to make that a little bit better at least yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of haters out there and i mean i remember being in a group of people where like this thing is fucking stupid and you know kind of moving on

but um you know they all came around whether they liked it or not um you know also kind of moving on, but, um, you know, they all came around whether they liked it or not. Um, you know, also, as we were mentioning earlier with the box squat, you know, I think if you're not, if you're not, uh, if you don't have to express your one rep max strength in competition with a particular squat or a bench press or a deadlift, then I think it's, it's an awesome tool to utilize. You know, I think for myself personally, uh, I've been slingshot bench pressing for as long as I've invented the product and, uh, been box squatting forever. And it's just something that it allows me to continue to do what I love to do. I can still bench press with and without the slingshot never ran into any, uh, you know, major injuries that sidelined me you know permanently

from being able to do those things had had some tears and stuff had some bumps and some bruises along the way but if you're an athlete i think the slingshot even makes more sense and those same strength coaches i mentioned that implement box squatting they all have slingshots uh in their in their repertoire as well i think uh you know i mean if we really look at why everyone likes the box squat and the slingshot is because it really teaches people without having to over-teach them how to do a movement and do it correctly, and we know that the risk for injury is a lot lower. So anything that can make somebody's job easier like that,

especially in a you know, strength coach situation where you're going to have multiple athletes worth lots and lots of money, um, that those tools are always going to be invaluable. Jesse, when you have shoulder injuries and stuff too. So when you, uh, when you program something for somebody, um, and you utilize the slingshot, do you write the program more for overloading or for more like reps and sets? I particularly use the slingshot mostly for overload. I always throw out the option if I get feedback like, hey, my shoulders are trashed or, you know or it just feels awful. Like, hey,

why don't you throw in a reactive slingshot and just get through this? Let's get your reps in, opposed to limiting range of motion by putting the boards in or not bench pressing. I would rather people do reactive. But I utilize all the slingshots in some of the max effort work. And this is going to sound completely nuts, but one of my favorite indicator lists for a lot of my clients is going to be a slingshot bench press versus a full range slingshot bench press versus some bands. Over the past five or six years,

when I really started to use that a lot, we found out that the bands and the slingshot almost cancel each other out and you can almost bench press what your one rep maximum is. So it's a really cheap, easy way to kind of see where your bench is without necessarily, you know, just having to do it one way or the other. It cuts down a little bit on the eccentric pain and really forces a lot of lockout. So I like to use it. And again, it's one of those things where I use it probably like once a month, it'll kind of be in there for, um, for the bench press, uh, for the max effort bench press stuff. So, uh, I use it, you know, pretty often.

Another way to know your, another way to know your max in it too, is, is usually what you can do for about three reps, what you can do for a single and that like jesse's gym um and jesse's people have been kind of the initial like some of the original testing ground because i was like well i don't want to just test it out on my own people like that's kind of you know if i'm just if i'm only testing out on my own people i'm going to be like yeah it increases your bench by seven thousand000%. Makes your dick bigger. It does. Makes you look younger.

Yeah. You know, so Jesse's gym has been, you know, they've been utilizing it for a long time, and I'm grateful for that. Cool. No shame in our game. For 15% off Slingshot, head over to markbellslingshot.com at checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT, and you get 15% off all the Slingshots. And you can buy all of

them the code is kind of endless so uh yeah these guys know code yeah it's a cheat code yeah verdict is that a crib behind you yeah yeah yeah this uh mtv mtv cribs yeah this is this this was the office it's now uh uh baby girl's room uh so. So it's so full of shit. It's unbelievable. Is this baby going to be the same size as Tiny Tiff when it comes out? Very, very likely, yes. And she's got clothes until she's two years old in the closet over here, if you can see. There's so much stuff.

Oh, I see diapers and everything all ready to go. It's amazing. She has more stuff than I do at this point. Uh, what's the name? Uh, we're still fighting about that. I wanted, uh, initially I wanted Johnny karate. Um, but, uh, that, uh, that got nixed pretty early on. So we're, we're still trying to figure that out. Yeah, it's going to be tough. Little baby Mark running around. How about Smelly?

Smelly's a pretty good name. I'll throw it out there, man. How about Baby Yoda? Well, not baby, but just Yoda. Oh, yeah. A kid named Yoda would be dope. Yeah. I mean, that'd be just amazing.

Just as baby Yoda. I don't think Katie would be a fan of it. No. See, that's the thing. If it was me, then yeah, we could really party. But yeah, we got to run it back to Katie. And she doesn't think we're as funny as we think we are. Hmm.

What a hater. I know. Is your gym, you guys are back and going a little bit, right? Or not yet. Yeah. It's, um, you know, couple of really small steps forward and kind of now kind of hanging out. Uh, we were supposed to be able to take a couple of steps, a little, a couple more steps

forward, uh, uh, this week and next week. And that's kind of been put on a little bit of a pause. So, I mean, we're able to get back into the gym in certain capacities, um, but not completely, uh, full bore quite yet. So, um, we're still waiting for the okay to, um, do more, but at this point we're still operating and able to do, um, you know, about 80% of what we would like to. So, I mean, that's a start. How's that been for you? Cause I know, I know you were pretty bummed that you weren't able to see all the people that you were helping all the time. Yeah. It's, it's been great to see everybody and kind of just be able to check in. Um, it's been really depressing to see everybody come in and,

uh, be operating at like 60% of what they were. And I think everyone is really excited to come back and then they get a bar and their hands are on their back and they're like, Holy shit. And I was like, I just take your time and, you know, let's just build up. Let's just be happy to be here. Happy to move around. I think it's been, you know, something that we talked about. I think something that was discounted by the powers that be the gym is an amazing place for, you know, mental health. And I think, you know,

just having people back for the last couple of weeks is brightening people's moods up, um, really helped them kind of, you know, get a little bit more of a focus and start to dial in their lives a little bit better, you know, just by being able to move and be in the gym. And, um, it's been, uh, it's been awesome to just be able to have somewhere to go even and get to see some of my friends.

Cool. Hey, thanks. Thank you so much for today and enjoy the rest of your day and hopefully I'll see you in a couple days. Absolutely. My pleasure, guys. Thanks for having me, as always. Thanks a lot, bud. Thank you. See ya. That was fun. That was fun.

Learned a lot. He's Thank you. See ya. That was fun. That was fun. Learned a lot. He's got a baby on the way. Yeah. That's crazy. That's yeah. Some wild, wild stuff. Yeah. I think we got through a lot of good stuff with the conjugate system.

Again, you know, Jesse gave a really good breakdown of what it is exactly. If people are looking for some resources, you want to follow up this podcast and you want to maybe dive into it a little bit more. Jim Wendler wrote a book called 531, and Jim Wendler has written a lot of articles on the West Side Method. Look up anything from Louis Simmons. He's written tons of books on his own method, obviously, the West Side Method. And also, there is a article called Periodization Bible Part 1 and 2, which is written by Dave Tate. And it's just a summary of everything that the West Side Barbell system is and how to do it and all that stuff. So I think we covered it. I think we hammered it pretty good. We talked about the max effort work, the dynamic effort work, the repetition

effort method. You're going to, you know, do a heavy lower body workout once a week, a heavy upper body once a week. And you're also going to follow up those workouts with speed work for both the upper body and a lower body and then mixed in after your main movement of the day your main intent of the day you're that's where you're going to throw in all the bodybuilding stuff all the accessory assistance weak point training uh type of thing so i thought it worked out pretty good yeah i think um well not i think but like but like, uh, like I, Louie Simmons, I think it's called the West side,

West side barbell book of methods. Um, that's, I mean, that's for sale and it's extensive and it goes deep. He wrote it. So if you want to get it from the source, it's,

it's there online. You could purchase it. A hundred percent. Yeah, buddy. Awesome. You guys ready to get out of here? Ready to get on out of here.

Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Thank you to Pete Montice for sponsoring this episode. Um, for more information on them and the slingshot, which is at markbellslingshot.com. We talked a lot about it today. Um, check the YouTube description,

Facebook description and podcast show notes. Please make sure you're following the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram, at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where are you at? I'm at Seema Yen Yang on Instagram and YouTube, and Seema Yen Yang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark? I'm at Mark Spelly Bell.

Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch y'all later.