Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Greg Everett on How to Start Olympic Weightlifting (and Why You Should)

Episode Date: July 6, 2022

I’m often asked about Olympic weightlifting. Specifically, I’m asked about lifts like the clean and jerk, snatch, and power clean, and how to incorporate them into a more general strength training or even bodybuilding program. Should you even include Olympic-style lifts? What are the benefits of Olympic weightlifting? Can it increase your power, speed, explosiveness, and athleticism? Is it dangerous? All that and more in this podcast. I wanted to get an Olympic weightlifting expert on the podcast to help answer these questions. So, I tagged in Greg Everett, owner of Catalyst Athletics, which is a USA Weightlifting National Champion team and a huge educational resource for Olympic weightlifting content. Not only is Greg an accomplished Olympic weightlifter himself, but he’s a coach at the world championship level. He’s also an author of a dozen books, including Olympic Weightlifting, the world’s best-selling book on the subject. So I was happy to have him join me for an interview. In this podcast you’ll learn about . . . What Olympic lifting is and how it differs from strength training, bodybuilding, and powerlifting Reason to do Olympic weightlifting (and who shouldn't do it) How to learn the Olympic lifts and how to get started with it How Olympic lifting affects explosiveness and athleticism Olympic lifting’s safety and danger compared to basic compounds (and what to do to avoid injuries) Programming considerations (and how to progress) Body fat percentage sweet spots for performance And more . . . So if you’ve ever wondered about Olympic weightlifting, what you might be missing by not doing any Olympic lifts, and how to get started with Olympic-style weightlifting, listen to this episode. I think you’re going to enjoy it! Timestamps: 0:00 - Legion VIP One-on-One Coaching: https://www.muscleforlife.show/vip 5:03 - What is Olympic weightlifting? 7:23 - What are your thoughts on Olympic weightlifting and athleticism? 9:34 - How can people benefit from Olympic training? 13:43 - How can we start Olympic training? 16:51 - What are some safety tips for Olympic weightlifting? 19:51 - What is the best way to learn Olympic training? 24:24 - What are some Olympic training workouts? 27:49 - What is the relationship between intensity and volume? 33:38 - Do women and men recover differently? 35:41 - How can we work these exercises into our routine? 51:47 - What body composition is best for Olympic training? 53:57 - Where can we find you and your work? Mentioned on the show: Legion VIP One-on-One Coaching: https://www.muscleforlife.show/vip Catalyst Athletics: catalystathletics.com Greg’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catalystathletics/

Oh, hi there and welcome to Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for an interview I did with Greg Everett on Olympic weightlifting, which is something I'm asked fairly often about and I don't have much experience with and I don't have much expertise with it. So I wanted to get somebody who knows a lot more about it than I do to come on the show and talk about it, talk about the big lifts that I'm asked about, at least like the clean and the jerk and snatch and power clean and talk about how to incorporate these exercises into a more general strength training or even a bodybuilding program and why you might want to consider including some Olympic lifting in your program if you are doing strength training or

bodybuilding and why you might not want to. Pros and cons. For example, some people say that you should do it to increase your power, your explosiveness, your athleticism. Is Olympic weightlifting actually better than just traditional strength training for that, for example? And so those are a couple of the things that Greg and I talk about in this episode. And if you are not familiar with Greg, he is the owner of Catalyst Athletics, which is a USA weightlifting national champion team and is a huge educational resource for Olympic weightlifting content. He's also an accomplished weightlifter himself and a coach at the world championship level. He's the author of a dozen books, including Olympic Weightlifting, which is the world's best selling book on

the subject. So if you have ever wondered about Olympic Weightlifting, if you've ever wondered if it might be for you or what you might be missing out by not doing it, or if you just want to know a bit about how to get started with it, how to incorporate it into your current fitness regimen, then this episode's for you. Before we get into it, how would you like to know a little secret that will help you get into the best shape of your life? Here it is. The business model for my VIP coaching service sucks. Boom, mic drop. And what in the fiddly frack am I talking about? Well, while most coaching businesses try to keep their clients around for as long as possible, I take a different

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Hey, Greg, welcome to my podcast. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for taking the time to come and discuss something that I haven't written or spoken much about. I would say I've done so little that it's just basically I've done none. I've tried some things here and there, but this is Olympic weightlifting I'm talking about. And this is why I haven't written or spoken about it,

because I don't have any firsthand experience with it. So I thought that it would make for a good discussion and it would make sense for me to get somebody like you who knows a lot more about it than I do. So here we are. And I thought a good place to start would be just describing for listeners what Olympic weightlifting is, because I'm assuming a lot of people listening, they've heard of a snatch or a clean there. They've seen people doing CrossFit things as they would probably think of them, but maybe don't really understand even what the discipline entails. Sure. Yeah. It is a very much an obscure sport still in the U S although it's grown a lot in the past, you know, eight to 10 years, but it's one of the original, uh,

Olympic sports, uh, you know, kind of like weightlifting and wrestling is, is what you go back to when you look at kind of Olympic history. And so the modern weightlifting is we only compete in two lifts, the snatch and the clean and jerk. And both lifts take a bar from the floor to overhead. The only difference being that the snatch does it in one continuous motion and the clean and jerk is going to bring that bar from the floor to the shoulders and then from the shoulders to overhead. So you're going to be able to lift more weight in the clean and jerk than in the snatch. More people are probably familiar with powerlifting, you know, kind of the distant cousin of the sport, which is you're competing in the squat, the deadlift and the bench press. So it is similar

to that format in that a lifter gets three attempts at each lift. So three snatches, three clean and jerks, the highest or heaviest of each is added to produce your total. And the total is how you are ranked in terms of winning, losing, whatever. So that is the sport of weightlifting or Olympic weightlifting. And of course it is used or variations of it are used by a lot of non weightlifting athletes specifically to produce better results in their sports. Throwers are notorious for including them football to some degree, you know, variations like power clean, or even power jerks, things like that can be used sometimes. And then of course, CrossFit has kind of co-opted the lifts and use them in various often kind of unconventional ways in addition to the more traditional approach. So

it has gotten out there a lot more and it's something that is in some format accessible to just about anybody if they're interested in doing it. And what are your thoughts about its use specifically in athletics? You'll see a lot of people talking about, well, if you want to be more explosive or if you want to be able to generate power, then you want to be doing at least some Olympic weightlifting, not just bodybuilding or even powerlifting. Yeah, there's a huge amount of athleticism involved. And I don't mean to beat up on powerlifting by saying this, but they're more complex motions. They involve a lot more speed and power, mobility, balance, stability, all these different characteristics that

apply to essentially any ground-based sport. So in particular sports that are reliant on, you know, leg and hip power, explosiveness, strength, things like that. So again, you know, football throwing, even things like wrestling or, you know, any kind of grappling or fighting sport. I see some golfers even. That was the next thing I was going to say actually is is you know people really underestimate the importance of the legs and hips and something like golf because it seems so upper body dominant and so you know the a golf ball it's not like golf ball weighs 45 pounds or something like that and and people forget that that explosiveness applies to much lighter weights too so you have the building of basic strength, of the explosiveness of the legs and

hips, but the really underlooked ones are the ability to productively absorb force, right? So you are not just lifting a bar up, you are having to receive it on the shoulders or overhead and do it in a way where it is totally controlled, totally balanced and stable. And you're having to absorb that force while maintaining posture and correct positions rather than just getting crushed by it. And so when you look at especially contact sports like football, that's massively important. orthopedic health and things like bone density and connective tissue strength and durability, that stuff contributes to, you know, all these aspects of leading kind of a healthy athletic life of long duration. How much additional benefit do you think there is though for, let's say now just a lot of people listening are, I think they would consider themselves at most maybe lifestyle bodybuilders. Maybe it's not the exact term that they would use, but people who are in the gym maybe three to five hours per week and they train hard and they're fit, but they have a lot of other things going on in their life, but it's not everything. And so these are going to be people who let's say are doing a fair amount of compound weightlifting. They're probably doing some sort of hip hinge and horizontal and vertical press and, and using fairly heavy weights. Uh, do you think that

in, in some of the ways you just mentioned, or maybe other ways these people could benefit materially by including some Olympic weightlifting in their program aside from maybe just having fun if they enjoy it. Yeah. Which is a good reason to do it, actually. Right. It truly is. And people, I think, overlook that a lot of the times is that you should be enjoying your training more than you don't enjoy it, at least. It should be a net enjoyment. So that is a legitimate consideration. So I will preface this by saying I'm truly not a weightlifting evangelist. In other words, if people are interested in the sport or the activity recreationally or for athletic training, I want to do everything I can to help them, you know, learn how to do it well, help other people learn how to do it well, whatever the case may be.

But I'm not going to insist that everybody does it or, you know, pretend that it is critical for every single person on earth to do as some would have you believe. So that being said, yes, I do think there's potential for people like you described to benefit from it, aside from the fun aspect, even just from an intellectual slash psychological sort of approach, the complexity, the difficulty of learning and developing the capabilities really appeals to a lot of people and often surprisingly so to themselves. You will find people who grew up not athletic, not really doing anything like that, even exercise wise. And they're introduced to weightlifting. And this, this does happen a lot with CrossFit and they fall in love with it because of that process of learning. And it's this really long term kind of incremental growth. But that is very easily measurable, right? So that they're not kind of guessing, am I getting better? What is happening here? I mean, we can tick it off on a tape very easily with numbers,

but in terms of actual physical characteristics, yes and no. So I think for some people, if you have very limited time and you're not someone who picks up athletic motions very quickly and relatively easily, it may not be something that you want to pursue simply because it will take some time investment up front to develop the motions well enough to be able to really benefit from them in training. There's certainly a learning curve there. And that period of time when you're learning to do the lifts, you may be getting some benefits in terms of mobility and balance and stability and kind of just kinesthetic awareness to be sure, but you're not going to be getting any significant kind of, you know, explosiveness or power or strength from it. If you're say lifting a PVC pipe or an empty

bar, right? So there, there's a level of commitment that would be required. And I sound like I'm discouraging people from trying it, and that's not my intention here. But if you can find an extra 30 minutes in your week, for example, give yourself three or four weeks, I'm going to learn how to snatch, or at least power snatch, or I'm going to learn how to power clean, and then start incorporating those things into, say say a day you're doing deadlifts. Well, once you warm up and do a few sets of power cleans first and then move into your deadlifts, for example. So you can

integrate it fairly well without committing a ton of extra time. If it's something that interests you and you are looking for the kind of benefits that it can offer. Where would you recommend that people start? Like what would be, if you're just give people one exercise to see, hey, if you want to see if this is for you, start here, learn this. The power clean is going to be the kind of simplest and most accessible. It's going to have the least mobility demands, right? You're not trying to hold a barbell overhead, which tends to be a big

issue for a lot of people, especially who don't have a background and kind of overhead athletic movements. Yeah. The catch is, is tough, right? Anything overhead is going to be tough for a lot of people right out of the gate, but the power clean is going to kind of introduce you to all the aspects of Olympic weightlifting, right? You have an explosive pull from the floor, right? So you're getting all the leg and hip power and strength, you know, learning to brace your trunk a lot better. So you're controlling your spine, learning how to maintain proper posture throughout emotion, balance, all these things kind of manipulate and implement with your body to, to maintain this, you know, proper motion and balance, understanding where your body is

in space at any given moment and learning how to control that very precisely. I mean, honestly, it's kind of fun, right? Is if you are in that rut, I think a lot of people get into with the more bodybuilding approach to fitness or even just, you know, kind of body comp. building approach to fitness or even just, you know, kind of body comp, it's kind of boring to me at least, right? I do my share of it these days as I get older, of course. And there's a paradox, right? Because boring training, ultimately, if you just care about efficacy, it's pretty boring. Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent, right? There's a lot to be said about routine and consistency over time, There's a lot to be said about routine and consistency over time, but it is nice even just for a mental break to get a little bit of variety in there and to learn something

new. Every year you squat, bench, deadlift, and then do some kind of bodybuilding type accessory work or hypertrophy work. It's nice to go in and one day a week say, hey, I get to be super explosive and athletic and feel what my body is capable of. I think that's wildly enjoyable for a lot of people who may otherwise never be exposed to something like that. Yeah. Anybody who has played any sports, if you just remember the process of acquiring skills in a sport, that's, yeah, that's one of the things that makes it, it keeps you coming back, right?

Well, it's incredibly rewarding. Yeah, exactly. And it's like, it's very rewarding for any of us to see our body composition improve. You know, if we're trying to lose weight, get leaner, grow some muscle, you know, whatever the case is. So if you can continue doing that, if that's your goal, and then also, you know, add a couple kind of more performance oriented goals, even just if they contribute to, you know, whatever you do recreationally, whether you ride bikes or you hike or you rock climb or whatever, it's fun. It's enjoyable. It's kind of adds another dimension to your day-to-day life. I think that a lot of people are maybe missing without recognizing that they're missing it. Can you talk to us about safety? I know that's a common concern. Maybe not so much with a power clean, but just with Olympic weightlifting in general? I know a lot of people, they feel like kind of warned off of it because they're concerned that it's much more dangerous, so to speak, than just doing your basic compounds

and bodybuilding stuff. Sure. Well, to be fair, it certainly has the potential risk that is greater than, you know, basic barbell lifts. There's more going on, of course. But it's actually, I think it's like the, has the third lowest rate of injury of any summer Olympic sport, which is very surprising to people. People, they see a snatch or a clean and jerk, and they just assume that everybody's knees and backs explode at some point. And it's, couldn't be further from the truth. And so the way I explain it is it's really like any other physical activity. If you are properly prepared for it, it is totally safe.

And you look at, say, just your basic sort of bodybuilding routine. Well, people get hernias doing that stuff all the time. They hurt their backs. They hurt their shoulders. They hurt their elbows. They tear a bicep. You know, does that mean doing curls is dangerous? No, of course not.

It means that for whatever reason, they were not properly prepared or they weren't executing correctly. You know, something along those lines that turned an activity that is not inherently dangerous into something that created an injury. So can you get injured doing power cleans? Absolutely. You can get injured walking down the sidewalk. I've seen people break their ankles stepping off a curb. And so the real key is a proper progression. And that means making sure you have the foundation of mobility and stability,

trunk control, postural control before you try to do things with heavier weights. Now that the chances of somebody injuring themselves, power cleaning a 15 or a 20 kilo barbell or, you know, 35, 45 pounds slim to none. I'm sure someone could figure out how to do it, but that's where you're going to start, right? It's just like everybody else. When they started squatting, they didn't load up 315 on the bar and just go for it the first day. Or if they did, it's probably the last time they ever squatted. Or they're just a super freak and now they're in the NFL or something. I met a guy, just funny little tangent short, who his first deadlift rep he ever performed was with 405.

And his form wasn't great, but he did it. And then he went on to pull into the sixes and sevens. He was just a freak. Yeah. Some people are naturally suited for specific activities much more than the rest of us are. That is a fact of human beings. Anyway, so back to what you were saying. Yeah, that of course makes sense. And I think a good follow-up question to that that I'll get, which I don't have great answer for because again,

this isn't an area that I've really looked that much into, is okay, so then what is the right way of going about learning this? Should you get a coach? Can you just go about it on your own in a safe and effective way? Should you be working on camera? These are some of the questions I get asked. The perfect situation is that you have a really qualified coach right nearby. Yeah, like physically there with you. Right. The chances of that are pretty low, unfortunately. There are far more Olympic weightlifting coaches in the US now and internationally than there have been in kind of recent years.

But certainly there's a massive variation in quality and experience and ability. And so you, you do have to kind of do your homework. If you're looking for a local coach, do your homework and make sure it's somebody that, that really knows what they're doing and, and speak to them and make sure that they understand what you want to accomplish and they're able to help you with that. So that's perfect situation. And that's the most expensive and difficult way to do it, of course. books to video to apps and all these different things that will both help you learn the lifts on your own and then provide various types of training programs that incorporate them.

Of course, CatalystAthletics.com, you know, my website, you can find pretty much anything you need for free on there. And then, you know, from 25 to 45 bucks, get something that's going to be more in-depth to kind of teach you step by step, literally from step zero, never even seen a snatcher clean and jerk to be able to perform them well enough to start incorporating them into training. So that would be the next best thing is just some kind of, of resource like that, that is created by, again, an established experience,

reputable coach, not someone who happens to be really good at social media, right? Cause there's a really critical difference there when it comes to learning something like that. Their body composition also isn't, isn't a good index of their ability to get you in great shape or teach you how to be good at weightlifting or anything. Absolutely.

And that's a really important point, especially when it comes to skills like that, is even someone who was a very successful competitive weightlifter, and this is true for other sports. Very often, the best athletes are the worst coaches because they have this natural ability. They never truly understood the process. And they often don't remember what it was even like to be brand new. The way I talk about it is, you know, a great athlete can teach you what works for them. A great coach can teach you what works for you. And so that's what you're looking for is not necessarily a coach who was a great athlete. I mean, having been a weightlifter at a decent, you know, kind of national level is a good idea, but you don't need a world championship, you know, weightlifting coach. You need someone who is very good at working with the type of people, you know, that, that demographic that you fit into. You know, if someone only works with world championship level athletes and you're like, hey, I'm a 45 year old insurance broker. I just want to learn how to snatch for fun. That might not be a good

fit because they may not have the tools really to help someone who isn't a naturally very talented weightlifter. I ran into that learning golf of all things, actually. I was getting some lessons with somebody who was working with, I think they were competing at the state level, probably, I don't know, 17 to 19 years old, really good golfers. And I wasn't anywhere near that level. And he really didn't know exactly what to do with me, actually, because he hadn't worked with somebody who wasn't good in so long. Uh, so he basically just told me that he was, I was, so he didn't, he didn't want to keep taking my money. He was just, was like, I actually don't, I don't think

I can serve you really well, which is commendable because not everyone in that position would do that. They would just keep taking your money. Exactly. Yeah. What does the programming of Olympic weightlifting, what do the workouts look like? Because it's often very different than bodybuilding or powerlifting programming, which is what people listening are going to be more familiar with. Right. It is night and day from a typical bodybuilding program. You know, we look at bodybuilding and we have body part splits, like, okay, I've got leg day, I've got back and bys, I've got chest and shoulders. You know, a weightlifting program is essentially the entire body every single time you train. Now, that doesn't mean we don't train different aspects and

different motions and positions each day, but it is a full body training program every single time you're in the gym. So the simplest way I can break it down is that you are going to have, of course, the competition lifts, the snatch, the clean and the jerk and variations of them every day you train. And then you're going to have kind of the primary supplemental lifts like back squats and front squats and pulling exercises. So deadlift variations or what we call snatch and clean pulls, which if you're not familiar with that, it's imagine a, a faster deadlift that ends up, you know, elevating the bar past the waist. You're trying to really move that bar as high as possible. And then your overhead pressing sort of things. So, you know, push presses or snatch push presses, overhead squats,

that sort of thing. And so you'll, you'll, let's say, you know, a typical athlete of mine at the national to world levels is training five to six days a week. So, you know, probably three of those days are what we would call kind of the big heavy days. That's where you're going to have, you know, a snatch or a clean and jerk, pulling exercises, squatting exercises, and then a bunch of accessory work. You know, trunk strength, stability stuff, you know, unilateral leg things like, you know, unilateral hinge or, you know, step up, lunge, that kind of thing. Whatever, you know, upper body kind of pulling and pushing accessory stuff. And then another two to three days will be somewhat lighter, easier days where we might be doing more technique or speed work, you know, just overhead work versus kind of more squatting and pulling oriented stuff. So we have to allow the body to kind of train hard and recover a little bit within the

week, not completely, of course. So that's where that variation of kind of the intensity and volume comes in day to day and getting that variety of movement. So when people who have not done weightlifting before see a weightlifting program, they just panic. That's what people they've sent. They're like, what do I do with this? I don't know. Well, because you think about it in like in a typical strength or bodybuilding program, maybe there's one, you know, big, heavy barbell exercise and you do it first. And yeah. And so they see like, oh my God, I got six sets of snatches. Then I've got four sets of poles and then I still have to squat. And then I have accessories after that. It can be very daunting, but of course it's like anything else, right?

You have to work up to that. You don't take someone day one and throw 500 reps a week at them because you're just gonna bury them in the dirt and that, you know, metabolically, they're just never gonna recover. So this is a kind of advanced thing. You know, you start off,

you might be training only three days a week and you maybe only have training only three days a week, and you maybe only have two to three exercises a day versus four to six, for example. And what do the loads look like? Well, let me rephrase that. So that's the intensity side. How do you think about the relationship between the intensity and the volume? The reason I asked that question is, again, a lot of people listening are going to be familiar with in their own training, they're going to be looking at the intensity in terms of percentage of water at max, of course. And then they're gonna be looking at volume, probably mostly in terms of like hard sets per week. So if somebody says, Hey, I want to, I want to grow my, my lower body, I want more,

I want a better lower body and I'm a fairly experienced weightlifter. I'm going to push this and do 15 to 20 hard sets for my lower body per week. And in terms of intensity, uh, I'm going to, I'm going to, the lightest loads are going to be maybe 70% of one rep max. And I'm going to, I'm going to work maybe all the way up to 95% of one rep max. And so how, how do you think about, and when you're programming Olympic weightlifting, are you looking at that in a similar way where you're looking, for example, how much volume you're providing for major muscle groups over time to make sure you're not doing too much? Does it not really work like that? No, it does to a large extent. And the volume and the intensity

are the two biggest elements that we're trying to manipulate essentially and so what you're trying to do is find the optimal volume and kind of average intensity and frequency for each lifter because it varies immensely and it's going to vary you know based on biological age training age weight class right so the the bigger guys and gals are typically going to be have to use lower volume than the smaller ones even is that because the intensities are higher it is it's it's a biological issue right so a larger organism takes longer the all the processes take a little longer. That's why you typically see, you know, the real small weight classes, the little tiny guys and gals, they can train

much heavier, much more frequently for longer stretches of time than there's like, say, super heavyweight counterparts typically. And oddly enough, it seems counterintuitive, but those biggest lifters tend to be the most fragile orthopedically. It really seems like it would be the opposite. Like, oh, these tiny little people, you know, how are they not breaking in half? Well, I mean, they're really technically much better suited for the sport. So the smaller weight classes are the ones that lift much more weight relative to their

body weight. weight classes are the ones that lift much more weight relative relative to their body weight the supers the bigger guys lift the most you know in absolute terms um but relative to body weight it's it's nothing compared to what you know the those first three or four weight classes will do but in any case you are are looking to yes find the optimal volume um. Um, we don't, we don't really think of it in terms of body part per se. It's more kind of movement oriented, right? So kind of squatting volume versus pulling volume versus, you know, overhead volume. And, and some of that is affected too by, uh, orthopedic issues like, Hey, can this lifter not do as much, say, overhead volume because of a history of wrist problems or elbow problems? You know, so you have that on top of everything else.

With lifters at the same competitive level, I have such a broad range of programming approaches because it's really experimentation. You know, for example, I have one lifter who either back squats or front squats to a heavy single every single day she trains. She'll work up to the heaviest single she can, and then we'll back down and then work up to the heaviest triple she can every day. That approach kills other people, right? And it's not effective at all.

It's totally counterproductive. Other lifters, they're going to respond better to some volume in the squat. So maybe we're going to do sets of fives or sixes, maybe even the occasional 10. And so it really is very athlete dependent. And that's the trickiest part of coaching, in my opinion, is having the patience and kind of the confidence to diverge from what you're accustomed to and experiment with new approaches to best suit each athlete, rather than saying, this is my training program and it either works for you or it doesn't. It sounds like it's kind of like rearranging a puzzle again and again,

where there is a way to, that it all fits together, but you have to figure it out. Well, it's, it's true for bodybuilding too. Like you look at, uh, you know, these champion bodybuilders, there's a huge range of, of training approaches for those guys too. Right. Um, you can go back to like the Mike Menser and Dorian Yates kind of stuff where it was super low rep, maximal intensity. And then you go to these other guys who were doing sets of 50 and 60 and, and, you know, things like that. So the more you do this stuff, the more you realize how much of a range there is among people who even appearance wise strike you as being very similar. You know, people respond to things so much differently and that's the struggle, but it's also the interesting part of it, I think.

That's the struggle, but it's also the interesting part of it, I think. Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general, and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even who might want to learn something new, word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. Have you noticed any major differences in performance recovery or anything else between men and women?

I would say generally speaking, women tend to recover a little bit better than men. And I couldn't tell you exactly why, but I do think that at least part of it is that because of the hormonal difference, men are more neurologically efficient, meaning that, let's say, you know, take a one rep max from a male and female, that female is going to be able to do more reps at a given percentage than the male, typically. None of this is true across the board. But what that means is that every rep that male is doing tends to be more difficult, right? And I think that's a big part of that recovery issue is that what they're doing is kind of digging them into a deeper hole, biologically, metabolically, however you

want to say it versus the women. And I actually coach exclusively women now on my, you know, my elite lifters. I coach everybody kind of on the lower levels. And I have found that they are easier to work with in a number of ways for me personally i just that's kind of the dynamic but um they're tougher than nails and they will i i more often than not i have to rein them in rather than push them right and i think that plays into that ability to just do more uh in general and and they're able to do it because they're able to recover a little better yeah yeah that's um i would say commonly observed in the body comp space as well and and like you mentioned it's certainly at least partially because of the hormonal differences like the

higher estrogen levels for example contributes to that and so uh what about what about now programming so let's say somebody listening is interested and they want to try to work some of this into what they are doing. You mentioned earlier, you could maybe do a little bit of Olympic weightlifting, do a couple of sets of maybe a clean or a power clean or something like that before your deadlifts. And are there any other just kind of best practices that you've seen work for doing this kind of hybrid approach where you're doing some strength stuff, meaning like some basic compound lifting stuff, a little bit of bodybuilding stuff, and then also a little bit of Olympic? Yeah. I would say the number one thing is look at it as grouping similar motions,

right? So for example, if you have, you know, the power cleaner clean on your deadlift day is the most obvious one, right? You're pulling a bar from the floor. So you have those similar pulling motions. If you are, you have a day where you're, you're from the floor. So you have those similar pulling motions. If you have a day where you're doing some like pressing strength, you know, bench press, overhead press, incline bench, whatever. And then you're doing kind of your delt tricep bodybuilding sort of thing. That's the perfect day to add some, you know, jerk related exercises. So power jerks, split jerks, push presses, things like that. So not only are you kind of building on what you're already doing, you're also then setting yourself up to recover from it best through the week.

So if you do deadlifts on Monday and then Tuesday you come back in, you do cleans or power cleans, and you come back on on Wednesday and maybe you're doing squats. Those squats are going to feel a lot tougher because you didn't have kind of that break with the hip and leg motion in between that you're accustomed to. Not to say, of course, that you can't do it, but it would take a lot more kind of complex manipulation of things to make it work best for you. And the other part of that is you definitely want to do anything technique and speed oriented prior to your more basic strength and then prior to the kind of more bodybuilding or accessory sort of

thing. So you'd want to start the day with some kind of Olympic lift variation, then go to your, your, your main strength lifts, uh, your compound lifts, then go on to your kind of more accessory oriented things. And can you explain why, just because I could, I can imagine some people concern like, well, isn't that, isn't that going to take away from my deadlift performance, for example, or the overhead press or whatever their big lift or two of that workout normally is? Possibly, but not likely. And certainly not once you're conditioned for it. And so the way you look at it is this. If you're going to do a deadlift, let's say your best deadlift is 225 pounds. Well, you're not going to start at 225, right? You're going to warm up to that with progressively heavier weights. So look at those power cleans as part of that warmup process, right? They're going to be considerably less heavy than whatever you're deadlifting.

And as a consequence, they are not going to produce significant fatigue for that deadlift. And the other thing you have to remember is that you can look at that and and this is the the typical experience as basically a priming motion especially because you have that speed element involved you are basically encouraging your body to access more motor units to kind of learn how to use them more efficiently, which means that you have them available, more available for that subsequent strength lift. Now, if you spend an hour doing power cleans and then go to deadlifts, yes, you're going to be tired. If you are using a reasonable approach where you're working up to a weight and doing three to five sets of power clean doubles or triples and then going to deadlifts or similarly,

you know, doing some jerks and then going to presses or bench press, you're not going to see a performance degradation and very likely you're actually going to see an improvement, at least again, once you get accustomed to that new program. When you say doubles or triples, how difficult are those final reps? So is that second or third? Again, because I'm just thinking for people who are more accustomed to body comp training, they're going to be thinking with reps in reserve, for example. end most sets with one or two good reps left. Maybe my first set out of four will be like three good reps left. How do you think about the difficulty? And if you want to give an example, even obviously for people to figure it out for their programming, they should go to your website. For example, I'm sure you have some resources that would help them work it out for their strength and their level. But let's say someone can deadlift a 225. Let's say that's their one rep. How might that look?

Because when I hear doing a few sets of doubles or triples, if I imagine, okay, if I were doing sets of deadlifts, like putting 95% on the bar and going for sets of two or three. I mean, I do that once every training block or so. And so I do like four sets. That's hard. That's definitely fatiguing. Right. So it's going to depend, right? Throughout a training block or a cycle, just like with essentially everything else, you were trying to progress from start to finish, meaning that at the beginning of that cycle, if you do say four or five sets of three, it should be relatively easy, right? So you are definitely going to have, uh, you know, two to three reps in reserve at every single set. Okay. Now, if on that fifth set, you theoretically could eke out another three reps. It probably would be really hard to do, you know, double

the amount of sets, but you could probably do it. But, you know, each week over the course of whatever you're doing, notwithstanding some periodic back-off weeks, most likely, by the time you get to that, we're probably going to be working up to a single max set of three, for example, right? So maybe on week one of a four-week mesocycle, we would do triples with 70 to 75% of one rep max for some kind of Olympic lifting variation. That second week, maybe we'll do 75 to 80%. And in that third week, we're likely going to just continue working up as heavy as we can to try to establish a new three rep max. And it depends on the movement. It kind of depends on what else is happening in the program. There may be times when we don't actually want to go to a max, but we want to say,

I want you to try to hit 83% or above for three sets, right? When we started at say 75% on week one. And then that following week after that heaviest week is going to be a deload week, a back off week where we go really light. So 65 to 70% maybe for doubles instead of triples even, because we want to reduce that volume too. So certainly the overwhelming majority of your reps should be completable.

Well, right. So what we don't want to see is people going in there and saying, Hey, I have five sets of three. I missed the third rep on three of those sets. Well, it's too heavy for you at that time, right? It may be that you just don't have the technical proficiency yet, so you're not consistent. But that means that at that point, you have to keep it lighter, right? Until you develop that consistency so that you can start kind of pushing those weights a little more. Because the tricky

part with weightlifting is that you have both the technical side and kind of the basic ability side, the strength and the power. Versus say like a squat or a deadlift, it's less technically involved, which means limitation really is just the strength. So with a, say a snatch, it could be a strength limitation or a power limitation, or it could be that you're incredibly strong. You have this huge strength reserve, but technically, or in terms of mobility, you're not capable of making these weights. And so that again, now I'm going down a rabbit hole. That's going to affect your prescription too, right?

So you may see someone who's doing triples with what looks like an extremely light weight. But because they're limited technically or with mobility, that's just what they have to work with at that time. And the goal over time is to get more kind of that quote unquote normal level of effort. It sounds like it also would probably be reasonable to look at. So let's say you're getting further into a training block and your two or three sets, again, let's just go back to this example of somebody, they are doing a hybrid type of program here. So let's say they're going to start their, what was normally their pull day or

the day that they do their deadlifts. Okay. They're going to start with some Olympic weightlifting. And in the beginning of this training block, the Olympic weightlifting isn't challenging enough to cause any issues. And so if I were to speak for myself, so I do four sets of deadlifting per week. That's what I do right now. And I probably could get away with adding a little bit of extra work in front of that. But as I got further into the training block and that extra work got more difficult, it probably would be appropriate to at least consider then reducing maybe some of that, maybe dropping one set off the deadlifts if the opening Olympic sets are now pretty hard. We're doing twos or threes and with anything above 85% is probably where it starts to get difficult.

Yeah. And of course, that is one of the most important parts of, of programming too, is that you are essentially, you know, through the course of a cycle, you are starting at higher volume and moving towards lower volume. You're starting at lower intensity and moving towards higher intensity. So just as a rule, as the intensity increases, the volume has to decrease. So as you said, so maybe you start with four sets of deadlifts and you know four or five sets of power cleans at the beginning of that you do that for three or four weeks and then that next three or four week block you drop that down to maybe three sets of deadlifts and three sets of power cleans and then you might even you know say

you're doing triples in the power clean that third block, maybe now you drop to doubles in the power clean because you want to continue moving that intensity up. And, you know, maybe you drop your reps in the deadlift too. So you can do it different ways. If you want through a whole training block, if your goal is to maintain the same number of reps, you're going to have to reduce the number of sets but you can also look at all the peripheral work too right so if if you have a deadlift i presumably is not all you're doing that day right so you're probably doing some other accessory work so you can look at the volume of that too and start bringing the the total volume down without necessarily changing the volume of one specific exercise so it's it just becomes an issue of prioritizing, you know,

are we really pushing my deadlift strength this cycle, or am I more trying to kind of maintain that while I push other things, in which case I can be less concerned about reducing that deadlift volume and kind of push this other stuff i hope that makes sense yeah no that makes makes perfect sense uh you know i find that uh my my hips and my lower back can only take so much to between the deadlifting and also squatting um even stuff like like a t-bar row if it's unassisted or a barbell row not not that that is particularly stressful in and of itself on the lower back, but when you add that, it can be in addition to everything else, you know, sometimes I will swap it out. You know, sometimes I'll just kind of put it in and say, it depends

how I feel. If I don't like how it feels, I'm just going to do something else. Yeah. And that's all part of it too, right? Is learning how to manipulate exercise selection to also account for kind of that overall intensity. And so it's like, you can look at an exercise and say, well, this is 70% of max, but what is the exercise? Because, you know, a max effort back squat is a very different effect on the body than a max effort overhead press. You know, the, the squad is creating far more systemic fatigue, um, than that presses. And so it's, you, you learn over time kind of what you can get away with and what you need to change and how much you need to change it as you progress through that training cycle.

And for people listening, you should also be thinking with your diet. So, you know, I've found that when I'm cutting, for example, for the first four to six weeks or so, I don't notice too much of a difference, but then I do start to notice a bit of a difference. And where I notice it first, usually, is actually in my sleep. My sleep just gets, I have a harder time staying asleep. My sleep quality goes down. And then of course, everything goes down from there. And I don't track, but I'm familiar enough with the foods I like to eat that I know my calories, the range that they're in and so forth. And I don't naturally have that big of an appetite. And so I will tend to under eat, not overeat. Also because I kind of like to stay lean.

And that is one of the unfortunate realities of staying lean is you have to tend to under eat, not overeat, or you just get fatter over time. And so that's something else that I've had to pay attention to in my training. And just something to keep in mind for listeners that it can have a big impact. I wish it weren't the case, but it just does. Oh, we all do. People really underestimate the influence of lifestyle factors on not just training, but as you said, the body comp and performance. The sleep is the huge one, right? I get a full five and a half hours a night. Well, that's terrible. The under eating

or the huge fluctuation of eating day to day, you know, where they're way over eating one day and then panicking about it or getting super busy and distracted the next day and not eating anything. And that makes it extremely difficult for your body to recover from training, to have that consistent sleep. And without the consistent quality sleep, nothing functions well. It's impossible to get through life optimally without that. Another common dietary mistake that i see a lot of people making is under eating throughout the week so they can then overeat on the weekends and it might even be planned and as far as body comp goes it might even be planned well meaning where it allows them to basically kind of just maintain the look they want but But again, what they don't often realize

is at what cost, where now you're basically in a deficit, like, you know, five days a week. And then in this excessive surplus two days a week, which just, as you mentioned, as far as recovery goes, and as far as negating the negative effects of a calorie deficit goes, two days of egregiously overeating just doesn't do much for you when most of your week is in a restricted energy state. Yeah. I mean, it's like trying to drive your car on fumes Monday through Friday and then add an extra tank on Sunday. It doesn't work. You have to have that fuel and those resources the whole time consistently, or at least as consistently as possible.

One last question for you regarding body comp and performance. What do you see, you know, having worked with so many athletes, is there, does there tend to be a sweet spot for performance purposes? And the reason I ask this is a lot of people I've worked with, and I understand myself, even I just said, I like to stay lean and I'm willing to sacrifice some performance to look a certain way. But a lot of people I've spoken with over the years, they didn't quite understand just how big of an impact body comp can have in how they perform in the gym, also outside of the gym, energy levels, sleep, all the rest of it. So I'm curious what you've

seen working with high level athletes. There is a sweet spot, but it is totally individual. So in other words, people are, they, I get that question a lot, actually, you know, what, what body fat percentage should I have for the ideal performance for weightlifting? And I say, I don't know. Um, it's totally dependent. So the biggest problem I think is you have people who want to be leaner, um, for, uh, appearance purposes, then suits them for performance purposes. And, you were saying, to be consistently lean, you're running pretty low fuel most of the time, right? Or you're striking an extremely delicate balance. And you have to err on the side of under eating.

I mean, you're never gonna hit your total daily energy expenditure on this. So you just have to intentionally try to be on the lower end, not the higher end. Yeah. And I think my answer really upsets a lot of people. And I always feel bad. I was like, sorry. In my experience, body composition is influenced overwhelmingly by just genetic predisposition.

The leanest people I've known and worked with throughout my life are the ones who live on pizza and cookies. And it drives me and everybody else crazy. But it's like the kid, you know, who walked in day one and started repping out 400 pound deadlifts, right? There are factors beyond our control that influence a lot of these things, right? It's just like in weightlifting, certain people are born very quick and explosive and some of us are not. And there's a very real limit to what you can do in training to positively influence that trait. And so like with body composition, anytime you are trying to dramatically change what is kind of your quote-unquote natural composition, I think it's going to negatively influence your performance, in particular, trying to get leaner. Because again, you end up in a deficit at least too much of the time

to really fuel that performance and the recovery that you need for what is ultimately an extremely physically demanding activity. And so, again, strike a balance. What are your priorities? Is performance your top priority or is appearance your top priority? And it should be a totally individual choice, obviously. I'm not here to tell you which one is right. It's whatever you want to do. But you do have to recognize that whichever one you choose is potentially going to negatively affect the other to some extent. And it's to greatly varying extents person to person. And if you wanted to prioritize performance, I mean, maybe you can speak to the athletes

you work with. Is it mostly just eating to appetite and definitely not intentionally restricting food or restricting calories? Or is it more methodical in maybe having a meal plan that has them consistently in a slight surplus? And then you do have to take periodic diet breaks in the reverse sense of like all right we've been eating well for some time we've put on a bit too much body fat let's bring it down a little bit and then get back to the slight overfeeding basically yeah and i i

think most i mean all of my lifters pretty much track macros and have a plan where they're trying to hit a certain number every day. Which makes sense. I mean, just because it has such an impact. Yeah. And it just kind of makes it easier if it's allowing them to be consistent. And like you said earlier, you're not going to magically hit your exact perfect number to support your activity that day.

It is all estimating and it does vary day to day greatly, you know, even just based on things like stress outside the gym. But I think typically weightlifters under eat, right? People really underestimate the physical demand of it. You know, at my peak as a competitive lifter weighing 231 pounds, I was eating almost 6,000 calories a day.

But that was because I was a naturally light person who was forcing myself to be at this much heavier body weight category. And so I think especially with a lot of the female lifters, they tend to under eat because they tend to be scared of eating too much and gaining weight. Or they just don't have the appetite. I mean, I hear from many women who struggle, even with body comp, they're just not naturally very hungry. So they always feel like they're kind of force feeding themselves.

Yeah, that's how I felt too a lot of the time. And so it comes down to, you know, doing supplemental protein shakes and things like that a lot of the time to ensure that you're filling those gaps that the appetite is leaving or the lack of appetite, I should say. Yep. Well, hey, this was a really informative interview. I really appreciate you taking the time to do it. Those were all the questions that I wanted to ask you. Is there anything else that is still in the back of your head that we didn't cover that you think we should? Uh, no, I think, I think really what it comes down to is if people are at all interested, these days we're so fortunate to have free, easy access to so much

information. And despite all the kind of silly stuff and, you know, kind of misleading stuff out there, there's such great quality information if you take the time to kind of do your homework and check your sources. So get out there, the old internet and, and spend some time looking at this stuff and playing around with it. And I think that nine times out of 10, you know, people are really going to enjoy it and find that as something they want to incorporate on a regular basis. Yeah, I totally agree. I'm, uh, I'm inspired to look into it myself, actually. So you've, you've done a good job. Um, why don't we now just wrap up where people can find you? You mentioned earlier, but if they didn't catch your website and any, anything else you want them to know about specifically. Sure. Uh, so catalyst athletics.com

is, is my primary website. That's got, I mean, literally like 2000 videos, hundreds of articles, a full exercise library with all these Olympic lifts and their, and their variations and supplemental stuff training programs. 95% of it is free. If you're interested in getting the, you know, my, one of my books or, or guides or whatever, you can find that there too. And then on Instagram is where I'm most active. And that is just at catalyst athletics. Um, and then I finally succumbed. I'm on Tik TOK now too, but it's all the same content that I put on Instagram.

I haven't done it yet. Yeah. It's, uh, I fought it, but which is a mistake. Yeah. I'm the one making the mistake. You're you're, uh, no you're uh no i'm agreeing with you but i just have such a bad attitude i know social media i wait too long i know my excuse is i don't actually be a little bit um probably wouldn't be the best use of my time considering the various

different things i'm already committed to and so my my solution is hiring somebody to help with my social media and really work with you know just I have somebody who works on legions stuff, a couple of people, but somebody specifically just to work on mine. Because as you know, there's a lot of work. There's a lot of just mechanical kind of logistical behind the scenes work that goes into making an account worth following. It's not just getting on camera and saying some things like it'll happen, but I have to get, I have to get some help first, but hey, thanks again for doing this. This was a great interview. My pleasure. Thank you for having me again. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did

subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and

constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.