Episode 9 - How Strong People Actually Train (Powerlifting Truths)

Today we're gonna talk about getting strong. And so let's clear something up. Because the internet has completely lost the plot on what strength training actually is. Let's get in this. All right, so I'm gonna throw out some behaviors and you tell me is this smart training or just dumbass energy, all right? Okay, prioritizing single leg lift work over the full lifts. Man, that's gonna lead with something. Easy, can I get a layup? Prioritizing single leg lift over the full leg. The full leg. Yeah. Well, I don't know what the false is, but false. False, okay, there we go. There we go. I like that. Smelling salts during warmups. No, no, no, no, no. Man, see, I feel like there's never a bad time for smelling salts, you know? All right, calling Miss the lifts, training makes if they were close enough. No, false. You can fall. Okay, hitting a max single every Friday, just to see where you're at. False. Okay. We gotta know, okay. What about missing lifts and training on purpose to prove you can come back after a miss? Worse, I've never heard a worse idea in my life. I've never heard a worse way to train. Making women's t-shirts in an apparel brand is the worst. Also worse, yeah. It's one thing, it's one thing, it's one thing, it's one thing, it's the unisex. All right. Maxing out after a bad night of sleep to build mental toughness. Terrible, terrible. Worse idea. None of these are good. None. What about standing on a bossu ball while you're doing stuff? Maybe if you have roller skates and a bossu ball, I'm gonna check, green, green, green, green, green. Not roller blades, that's a balance. Yeah, you need to get the quad wheels going there. Rapper round, you know? Yeah, gotta go right around the size of it, you know? Yeah. Talk about the women's t-shirts when I said, unisex shirt, remind me. There was a, man, it was these sandals, someone was wearing, oh no, shoes. There's this particular shoes, if I remember, with my finger the name, but I'll let you know. But this guy, those working for us, Caffin and Keele's was wearing them. And he was like, yeah dude, they're, I was like, those are women's shoes. You can't, don't wear those. And he's like, no, they're unisex. And I said, no, they're not unisex. They're unisex, they're unisex, they're one sex. They're women's, those are women's shoes. Like that's what's going on. They're not unisex, they're unisex. They're unisex. How would you mix that up? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, all right. And that was last day, he wore high heels. Okay. With me today, one guy who spent most of his life under a barbell, we have Tom Callis, the elite power lifter, world record holder, Jim owner, and a man who's been squatting over 500 pounds since he was 16 years old, which explains a lot. Yep. And I'm Daniel Lear from Cafe Niquelos, Jim owner, coffee dealer, and your friendly moderator who's gonna ask you questions and tell you while you're wrong, welcome to not in my box. And for the record, I squated over 500 pounds three times in my entire life. And they were all around the age of 32. So. Really? So how many years were you squatting before you hit it? Oh man, I'm in Iced Ducson. Oh, I mean, I started squatting in high school, but not really training like a lifting, you know, wrestling team, we go to the weight room. I threw shop put in discus, we go to the weight room and did some squats, right? But training like actually like focusing on, and then, you know, after high school, I got into CrossFit, I was pretty young and so I was squatting just kind of when we were doing that type thing. So the slow bill, I probably squat it over 400 pounds in my mid 20s, early to mid 20s. But then it was not pretty strong. What's up? Strong squat for a crossbutter at that time. Yeah, not bad. I mean, double body weight, you know, see you something there. And then when I was training weightlifting, I pushed my squat up a little bit more. And I think I, like 230 kilos, like 508 or something like that. And I had that for about three months. And then, you know, so. Yeah. All right. Before we get to too far, we want to see how, you know, how broken you really are. So just give a little sneak peek into how you think here. Squat, high bar or low bar? Low bar. Okay. Strap, crime or a tool? Strap's not wraps, strap straps. Tool. All right. We've re-owned one of those two things. Okay, training it better alone or with the team? Team. Well, of course, I don't know who anybody says alone, they got bigger problems, man. All right. True or false? If you don't feel beat up, you didn't train hard enough? False. Oh, interesting. People get strong and like feel good. Yeah, it's possible. I mean, it depends on the athlete. But if you're really into a part of the thing cycle, your bones should hurt. But outside of that, like, you don't necessarily, I'm sort of, doesn't necessarily equals strength. I agree. It's just like getting people sweaty and like breathing hard. Yeah, I can make it so much fun. Cute doesn't make a good workout. Right. No, I agree. You want to make someone sorry, just have them do 400 meters of walking lunges. That shit works every time. Yeah, right. Yeah. All right. The worst sentence in sports in strength sports is trust the process. False. All right. You got to trust the process. I think it's the worst. What is the worst that what is the worst that the worst is it'll be there on meat day? Oh, really? What do you mean? Is there's automatic that you're going to get hyped up and then, oh, then then you'll get stronger because you decided to. Like, it'll be there. I mean, it's the worst. No, yeah. Yeah, maybe. All right. So we've established some emotional damage, talk training. So here's the question every cross-fitter, Jim Broin, watched up athlete eventually asks is how do I actually get strong? And this is where the confusion sets in. What do we want? Do we need linear progressions based on percentages or just adding five pounds forever? Do you need to do the Bulgarian method or conjugate the Hatch squat program or Windler is a low bar back squat or high bar and vibes? Everyone's convinced their method is the method. And everyone else, they're soft, stupid or leaving gains on the table. But don't forget, two things can be simultaneously true. Their method can be right and they can still be soft and stupid. So today we're going to break it all down. Was an average training week look like for powerlifting, versus weightlifting, volume, versus intensity, maxing out and training, deadlift frequency, variations, conjugate, Bulgarian methods, and which ideas actually transfer and which ones are just internet folklore? So Tom, let's paint the picture here. What does an actual week, still say an average week, if we have to pick a time around of meat, we'll say that there's not a weightlifting meat or there's not a powerlifting meat coming up, right? We're called it three months out from the next competition. All right, so paint the picture. What does a week of training look like for a, we'll say a mid-level powerlifter, right? So maybe someone will take that, someone who's been, we'll take 28-year-old Danny, right? Someone who maybe did some squatting and stuff in high school on their sports teams and then they've just started powerlifting. They did a couple of meats, you know, for the past couple of years, you know, maybe if they're 200 pounds, they're squatting around, you know, 475, 500, something like that. They're kind of on the upswing still, you know, a lot of meat on the bone, but not necessarily a novice, right? We're just talking like someone trying to push it a little bit. Like, was an average week look like as far as, you know, number of training days, what kind of lifts are they doing in those training sessions and so on? Okay, I got a really short answer and then a very long one that just might just take an hour. Yeah, I know that's what I, in general, for the setting that you, the picture you painted, I would probably put them on a 5-B program. You'd have like a bed, call your bench Monday, you're, so I base the programming off of the main movements, right? So upper slash bench Monday, Tuesday, be your lower and deadlift hamstring based. Wednesday, you might have like your weakness day. So maybe if you're back, it's kind of weak or, you know, you could throw into some arms that day, just to kind of keep you moving. Thursday, you know, shoulder overhead day, maybe with some light chest incorporated, if chest is again, is one of your weaknesses and there's some weaknesses we can address in a lighter format, along with a overhead day, and then Friday would be a squat day. And as the meat prep went on, you'd probably lose some of those days, typically sometimes three, you'd end up training three to four times a week, as you're kind of leading up to the meat. Now, as far as like strength variance, so if you, the picture you painted, I would base it off you. Oh, let's, let's, let's top in there a little bit on those. On this, this might take a minute. So with that, I noticed the squatting on Friday, right? And I'm assuming this is kind of based off a Monday through Friday routine. I know that's not necessarily ideal, but that's just kind of how most general goes. Right. And so that's the case. I find that interesting. So why the squat on Friday instead of, so I would think the squat on a Monday, or earlier in the week, could make more sense based on the fact that it's a more taxing movement, then say like the bench press. And so squatting after a week of you beating me up might be more challenging, or am I you struggled to hit higher numbers compared to like benching on that last day? So am I, am I a soft idiot or, or where are we out here? No, no, it is two different kind of ways to look at it. I get what you're saying. Like, could you be, okay, I'm day five in now. I'm tired, dude. Well, if I beat the sh** out of you for the first to four days, I probably didn't program correctly. The reason why we do squat Fridays is because typically meets our Saturdays or Sundays. So what we like to do is one to two weeks out based on the athlete will be your last heavy. So then it gives you exactly, call it seven days, eight days, you know, depending if you're Saturday, Sunday, lifter, it gives you eight days to de-load. If you need a week off of your heaviest lift, or sometimes I'll take two weeks off. And I won't squat heavy for two weeks. And I'll take three weeks off deadlift just because I get so taxed doing it. Now, it's a different type of taxing. Like you're saying, I'm going to be so sore. You don't necessarily get as sore. You were more worried about a CNS recovery. Correct. So it's a muscle recovery, and especially in the nitty-gritty of the prep. Well, soreness doesn't matter. People need to understand. Because once, if you're just sore, muscle, sore muscles, once you warm up, it doesn't. You're going to perform just as well as before. Right. Whereas it's the CNS is the problem, right? Like I remember the people ask sometimes like the difference, how you like training as a competitive weightlifter compared to like just training crossfit or whatever, right? And it's like, well, doing just like crossfit, more, you know, like I might be sore. And like I'm looking at these stairs, like it's going to hurt to go up them. But that's fine. Training as a weightlifter, you know, we're talking nine sessions a week type of a thing. It's like, no, like I look at the stairs, like I'm not convinced. I'm physically capable of getting my body up them. Right. Because my central nervous system is so shot like you, it's all I can do to put one foot in front of the other. You know, I'm like a day to day basis, right? And so yeah, so not as much as the soreness, more of the idea of just like, you know, are people going to be, are there CNS going to be fried out or not, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's going to, it comes down to just basic recovery. I mean, I mean, simple food, rest, supplementation. And if you can hit those things, your CNS is fine. And a real easy way to tell them like when you're lifting heavy, especially in the powerlifting world is if I'm squatting and let's say I'm shooting for 754, double that day and I hit 675 700 is my last warm up and I'm like shaking. Yeah. That's CNS. Now I can hit the weight, but it's going to be a lot harder because everything is shaking. So now I have to work on stability as I'm shaking all my way down to parallel to come back up. So until, hey, you're, you're not ready for 750. You can don't do it. Is that why on every Tuesday and Thursday you program in a number one accessory work, the shake weight or the top toner? Yeah. Because then you could get used to it. So then if it surprises you, hey, I know this movement. I'm familiar with this. There we go. Get down this road. This was this was my warm up. Got it. Very good. So now let's take a let's take a day, right? Well, we'll say deadlift deadlift slash hamstring day, whatever. So within that deadlift workout, you know, like take us through what a day would look like on that deadlift day as far as you know, are there? I mean, you're going to break down, but like are we doing the full movement? Are we doing variations? Are we doing both? How many accessory work, you know, accessories? Are we doing other than the tug toner and the shake weight? Yeah, after those obviously are done at home in the privacy of your bathroom, you come into the gym typically, maybe like a five to ten minute incline warm up, just to warm up the legs, especially out here, because in December, it's nice to just kind of get a little warm before you start actually moving. We really prioritize accessories before made movements, because the issue is if you do move, you do a little warm up and then made movement, you're like, I don't want to do any of this anymore. It's like apps. Like you got to do them first. Well, you're never going to do them. Right. So we'll do a lot of like single leg stuff, activation stuff, maybe like a lot of step ups, just get some firing, some pull-throughs with the cable or a band, some lying leg curls, some RDLs, anything kind of like that. I like a lot of like the banded pull-throughs, the cable pull-throughs, just to get those hips firing, maybe like a belt squat, wide, try to get things moving. So I'm usually probably five to eight exercises deep. Then I start deadlifting. And depending on the athlete, if you have a weakness and I can address it to a week's out, I'm going to address it. Now, in the picture you painted, if you didn't have a general weakness, I would probably lean because of lack of experience onto doing more straight barbell movements. Because I like, we really like the variety of the compound movements, so like a deficit deadlift, a trap bar deadlift with which West Hades. But a banded deadlift, a rack pull. We love the variations to work on weak points. But if someone's just not that familiar with the barbell, I'm like, yeah, I've done two minutes. Well, yeah, I've done 30. So you're just not, you need to learn the barbell and then build the strength with it. So we can like, okay, we don't need to put a lot of variance in your compound lifting. I need you to get better at lifting, deadlifting this straight barbell. So it'd probably be a lot of warmups and then just kind of hammering, maybe, depending on the cycle you're in, the rep ranges. Usually you're right around 75% of the low-interrupt ranges up to like 95 throughout the 12-week period. So over those 12 weeks, does the volume change in the accessory work as well, or just in the main lift? Are we talking, when we're 12 weeks out, I imagine higher volume as far as rep counts. And so what do rep ranges look like from 12 weeks out, and then compared to like, call it three weeks out? So the accessories won't really change because we've always done accessories anywhere from the lowest eight reps to 20 reps. Generally, you're in that 12 to 15 rep range, and that's kind of where you can get the cardiovascular benefit, the muscle building, right? And then strengthening your little weaknesses with single leg stuff and the program. As far as the compound movement, you'd be doing probably a lot of rep ranges in the, it's called 12 weeks out in the 20 to 24 rep range. So you do that by doing an eight by three, a six by four, a five by five. So you'd get around that upper or middle about 20-some reps, 25-ish. And then as you call it three weeks out, depending on the athlete, you might be ready to hit your heavy a single of the prep. Now it's not the single you want. Like if you really want to squat 500 at the meat, I don't need you, unless it's a confidence issue, and like, you're like, dude, I'm just not confident. I need to feel it. I need to feel like, okay, fine, fine, if you got to find, let's just do 500. You need to feel that bad. Like you could do it, but typically I'll hold them back and be like, hey, what if we smoke 485 or we smoke 490? We know 500 is going to be there. And we might hit that for three sets of one, three weeks out or two weeks out. Like, hey, you're ready. We'll de-load the week after you hit, you know, depending on the athlete, sometimes I'm like, I need to feel my opener. I typically talk people out of that. No, you don't. You know what your opener is. You need to do like 50% for a five by five, three by five. You just need to move blood until almost the day of the meat. So you'll get into that up like middle 20s, rep ranges. It'll come down to like 16 to 20, eightish weeks out. And then when you're in that two to four week rep range, we're doing singles or doubles, but we're not 100%. We're not testing. Because we're still building. We're still learning the patterns, learning the movements, maybe tweaking a couple things. So it's like, it just really depends on the client. But that's in general. That's how we would program it. So within each set, we're not doing big. We're not doing sets of 10 sets of 12 on the compounds. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of keep those kind of like five or six reps at the high even under, especially in preps five and under five. It's a five. It'd be the most reps you'll ever do. Typically to be a six or four or an eight by three. And then you'll have three to four minutes between us. That's why you're at the gym for a few hours. Did you like in a meat, you got to mimic the meat right practice how you play your you might be 10 or 12 deep in a lineup. Okay, that's 10 or 12 minutes. Yeah. So your view used to lift in every three minutes, you're going to get real cold when you're wait time triples. So it's like you have to practice how you play. You're like, yeah, my wife's like, okay, you're squandering four, you'd be home at 730. Yep. Yeah. It takes a while to get to 800. Yeah. I mean, I have to wait 10 minutes because if I rush it, one, I'll be fatigued and two. It's not how it's going to be in the meat. Yeah. Also, yeah, you need more than you need more than a two minute clock between 645 and and seven under pounds, right? Right. That's the thing. Like, at the lighter weights, you can get away with a little bit more. But as it gets the heavier it gets, the more rest you need. And to a certain point, okay, it's like, it's funny. You can say it's all relative, right? Yeah, but it's also not, right? Meaning like, okay, it's like, okay, if you're squandering, okay, I'll speak from my experiences instead of projecting. Like, if I'm squawting in the high 400s or low 500s, I'm not making 100 pound. I might make 100 pound jump from, you know, I'm like a 135 to 225. But like, that's probably it. Like, once I'm over 300 pounds, I'm not making these massive jumps, even though that may only be 50% of what my max, it doesn't matter. It's still 300, so 300 pounds, they're still, they're still room for error that you don't want to, don't want to mess with, right? We see that, we see that a lot as people will try to keep up with us on Fridays. And then everybody can before feeling good, we're squawting six, seven, eight plates all day long. Right. And it's like, hey, you squawed three, 15, why are you going two plates to three plates? Right. There's a lot of, there's like 30 pound jumps in there. You need to hit that. Well, I don't want to be, no, it's not annoying. Like you, it's, it's, it's not relative, but it is right. You need to do it's relatively right for you, not because Tom doesn't, I mean, it doesn't work that way. Right. And then once it gets to do a certain weight, you got to take smaller jumps anyway, no matter what your max is, right? And so that's kind of how it goes. Interesting, you talked about accessory first. This is something I'm going to relate this a little bit to the cross side, but where a lot of gyms, and they, if they were a lot of people, if they're doing two parts, so program, if they're doing like a strength, and then also the MetCon afterwards, a conditioning piece afterwards. Traditionally, you see people do that strength aspect first, right? And I think part of the idea is like, Hey, you know, yeah, you just, you warm up for it, you do the strength while you have more energy, and then you can get tired. I think you're also the kind of tired, right? Right. And I'm at Con. In a MetCon. Right. Now, we actually, this guy's Seth Page is on, he shows sometimes one of the panelists, and he's like a big ad. He had talked about, Con, I used to do two pieces, even in a gym and the class and this thing. And we're kind of like, I don't know, man, like we've done that. But then I feel like we're just going through the motions. We don't warm up properly all this. And he was like, no, I do the other way. Like they do their conditioning piece and then follow it up with the strength work. That's how they do it most of the time, right? And I was like, man, see, like normally that's the exception, not the rule. Like maybe people do that occasionally, but they usually hit the main lift first, right? And so I think that a lot of people, I could be wrong, but my belief was anyway from what I've seen is a lot of powerlifting kind of does that same thing. You know, warm up, get loose, do the main lifts and then do your accessories at the end. But you do the offstool. You do those accessories first as almost part of an extended warm up. And so you don't find that that hinders your ability to put out on the big lifts. I used to. So that's what I thought too. I'm like, I just need to be warm. I'm 25. I could do whatever I want. I mean, I don't need to do nothing. I could just touch my toes and I can go squat three, 15. I'm telling you. Yeah. But at a certain point, it's like I started training with my business partner now, Jacob Ross. And he's like, just try doing your squat workout backwards. And I'm like, listen, dude, I know what I'm doing. Okay. I'm like, I have multiple more records like Jacob. That's not how power works. And he's like, you are dude. But I'm like, yeah, I'm stronger. You know, what he's talking about? And he's like, he goes, as you get older, you're going to need more injury. And you're going to want to be warmer throughout the movement. He goes, and you won't be weaker. Everybody thinks like, oh, I'm going to do my accessories. I'm, but time to get to my squat on be tired. Well, yeah, if I do lying leg curls to lie vomit, I'm probably not going to have a very good squat day. But if I warm up correctly, so he would teach me how to like warm up like we would prehab. Yeah. Then we would train accessories in a smart fashion to work on weakness and instabilities. And then by the time I went started squatting, I'm like, oh my god, I feel, I feel great. Like you know, sometimes you put a plate on the bar, you're like, oh, it's going to be one of those days. Yeah, for sure. For sure. And then some days you're like, this is nothing. And then we would get to a point where I would warm up for called 30 minutes of prehab and accessories. And I would do double plate flips until I hit 700. So in four sets, I'd go, I'd go one, three, five, seven hundred. Yeah. I'm done. And I felt great. I'm like, I could do 180 pound jumps because I was so warm. Everything was good to go. I was firing. And I was strong enough to do it. Sweet. This actually makes sense. You know, I've noticed I will say one thing. I'm 41. And one thing I've definitely noticed as I do a little bit older, which I don't feel like I'm old, but like definitely training, I feel different now. Training age is old. Training age. You know, I mean, 20 years, 25 years of lifting. Totally. And you know, a big part of that is just how long it takes to warm up. That's like the biggest thing. And honestly, it's funny. Like that's why I do the class at my gym. Like I don't work out. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why, but I don't train on my own because like, I don't warm up as much as I should. I know I just know this, right? And if I do the class, like I'm doing everything we're doing, so I'm telling me what to do. I do the full warm up. I feel better. But even then, a lot of times when we're like starting the workout, I'm like, man, I can't wait till six minutes into this thing. Because like I just know, like, you know, four to six minutes, like, I'm okay now. Like I got some blood flow. I got some snow field fluid. You know, like my joints feel good. My joints are cool. All right. My muscles. I'm warming up. Whatever. Like I just know in in five or six minutes into this thing, I'm going to be loose. Like I'm not loose yet. It's safe. I'm safe to work out. I can get in the positions I need to get. But like my muscles aren't firing. And I think that's a misconception a little bit as well as they get in warm is about it's like, okay, yeah, heart rates up a little. Maybe you broke little sweat. Maybe not. But it's like, you know, I went through the I've got the mobility, right? I've got the range of motion. My joints are good. You go through the range of motion. But that's different than your muscles being ready to push. Because you know, getting stronger. Um, every noise thinks it's all about bigger muscles, more bigger, more better. And look, I'm all four bigger muscles. But the biggest part about getting stronger is what happens on the on the neuro side, right? And on the on, uh, on your brain actually convincing your muscles to fire. The muscles that you have getting them to fire, right? Like the percentage of your muscle fibers are actually contracting. You know, well, your body's trying not to, right? Walking up stairs. It just wants to use the minimum possible to conserve energy. You should never know when you got to run from that bear, right? And so like convincing your body, like no, dude, like we got to we have to all work together on this. We need more of you guys to to contribute to this to this joint moving. And I think that's the biggest part. I know that again, like warming up, it's like I might fail, feel a little bit loose, but it's different than my muscles being prepared to all contract, right? Yeah. Yeah. That muscle firing is a big deal. Like for me, it's like, it's not make a break, but it's like, I'm gonna have a good day. If it's firing, if it's not, you're like, I'm gonna grind, I'm gonna have to grind. I gotta go somewhere dark right now. Yeah. Because this is going to be a very hard squat workout. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah, you don't have that immediate fire in that warm up and take your time to do it correctly. You're like, Oh, great. It's gonna be one of those days. You know, I think doing the accessories work first. That's a big part of that, right? Because on non the accessories, you are a kind of, if not isolating muscle groups, just focusing on muscle groups more. And therefore, they're required to fire because they can't rely on, you know, it's like during a squat. If your quads aren't really pulling their weight that day, maybe your hamstrings and glutes can kind of make up for a little bit, right? You have other muscle groups that are just gonna contribute a little more. Whereas in a lot of the accessory works, that's not the case. You're zoning in on one muscle group and one movement pattern. And so that that group has to has to get on board with the program. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. And that's why we do it first, too. Because when you can make stuff fire and two, you get to, and also like as an athlete, especially like in the picture you painted, it's going to be, you know, you can still build this strength. Like, yeah, we need to be better at squat. But if you could, if you could single leg RDL better and more muscles are incorporated, more things are firing like, right, it will eventually transfer. Like you just, you have to keep at it. You know, I mean, there's, there's a lot of specific strength and general weaknesses. You see in power with, and that's why things tend to tear. So would you say that, you know, talk about where does this actually a little further down leading right into it? Where does strength come from? Is it more of a tonnage or neural adaptation? You know, are you looking for more of a hypertrophy or more of a nervous system response? Or does it depend on where you are in the strength cycle? Yeah, I don't depend a little bit on where you are with the straight cycle. I mean, like, we talked about neural like the central nervous system, right? That firing as well, being able to be recovered enough. And it's like, you have to recover enough, but you also have to train your body enough to squat, to bench, to deadlift the weight, because you can't go and like, okay, I want to squat 500, but I haven't, or whatever, you've never squatted 500 like, okay, we're going to take you with four for a while, four 25, four 35, four 40, then I'm going to reload you back down to 425 and have you do it again. And then we're going to slowly creep up. So that way, you kind of can negate all the issues of that CNS holding you back as opposed to like, hey, you're just not strong enough. And that's okay. But typically it's not a strength issue we see with it's either form breakdown because the little muscles are, you might just not be that good with the movement with that barbell yet. We can see that versus, okay, hey, you're, you're just not recovered. Or you didn't train properly. And that's why you see the power that you're shaking on meat day. You're like, well, he's really sending it today because he's ready. Yeah. Well, that's interesting because also, you know, I think that there's the misconception about getting stronger as far as like the muscles versus the tenets and ligaments and bone structure, right? It's like a lot of times the muscles are going to adapt in your body. I mean, it's like, it's like the mom picking up the car off for baby. Right. Like your muscles are probably a lot, they have a lot more capability for contraction than what they're doing. But your body's guarding that because one, it thinks it's not necessary. And that's why you got to lift these heavy ass weights to convince it that you are in fact going to die if it doesn't work harder. And then also because you're, you're, you're soft to your connective tissues and your bone structure may not be ready. And people think of getting bigger stronger muscles, but I'll see your skeleton, right? Like you have a new bone structure every six to 12 months. And if you're lifting weights, you're going to have stronger bones, right? And ligaments and tendons will get stronger as well, but they lag behind the muscles. And so, you know, kind of holding someone at that weight for a little bit, waiting for their body to fully adapt is definitely going to be, you know, injury prevention. Yeah, it's huge. I injured prevention. I got real lucky when I was coming up. Like I almost, I always never looked like I could do what I could do. Right? Because any guy in the lineup next to me, if I'm 10 deep in a flight, I'm the smallest every time. Like when we went to California, I don't know if it was the meat you guys took me out there too or not, there's one of its mean next to work Larry wheels. Yeah. I was squatting in the Larry wheels of squatting. And it's like, that's a man. Who's that kid next to me? I mean, it's me just chilling like, oh, in the animal, in the animal thing, squatting eight in the animal cage, the Arnold thing. Yeah, like I don't like no one like I don't that's why, you know, it's like, do you want to look like you can squat 800 or do you want a squat 800? I don't want to look like I want to look like I squat 1200 squat 800. Yeah, right. Yeah, like I want to like you want both, but like in powerlifting, it's not for sure. You don't have, I mean, yes, you have some, you have the Dan Bells, you have all these, these big refrigerator looking dudes, but a lot of them, you mean like a deadlift guy, and you're like walking on the street like, he might work out and he pulls 800. You're like, yeah, well, how does that even, I don't understand that. Yeah. So like to have the mix of like the strength and the size is kind of for me, I've never had that. Like I have a decent amount of size, but you look at me and you're like, oh, you'll squat five, maybe six is legs are big. But I'm like, yeah, 15 years ago, I did that. Like it just, I never, I've never looked my part. Right. Yeah, sourlifting though, you know, because your strength, your strength, your training for strength, you're not training for size size will come. And we're gotten bigger, but it's like, what's, what's specifically are we doing? And actually in a perfect world, you don't get bigger, you just get stronger and then you just keep wrecking house in your weight class. You start getting too much bigger now, you got to change weight classes. Now, now you're probably the weakest guy at the next weight class up, right? Or if not the weekend, I'm saying, at least you're not, you might be king at your weight class, all of a sudden you're going against a bunch of guys, the way 25 pounds more, like that's, you know, there's going to be a delta there for a little bit. It's going to take some time to make up. Yeah. And that's what people struggle with. They struggle to, and it's tough when you see the younger power, but they're like, well, I want to stay in my class because of it. I go, isn't the goal to get as strong as possible and kind of as big as possible in general with working out. I know we're being super specific on this ago. But do you want to squat? I would be like, I would tell them like, Hey, you want to cut weight? Do you want to squat 500 at 165? Or do you want to make sure like, and then maybe get it? You probably won't because you're cutting, you know, the **** you're doing. Or do you want to squat 550 at 198 and dominate? And we're just going to keep chipping away and forget about the scale. As long as you're not sloppy, you know, I mean, like, yeah, forget about the scale grow. And then people are hindering their growth to stay in the way class. And I fought that because I, you know, I was training for world record. So that was my excuse. But I kept myself in this weight. These weight classes for years that I was growing out of. And I was doing hard cuts because I'm like, I have to fit this box. I have this is my box. If I go into this box, it's too big of a box. Like I can't do it. And eventually I'm like, I don't care. What am I 214? That's not even a weight class. Don't care. I'm lifting. And then I have my best meat ever two years ago. And I was just walked in at 214. And I squated the best ever. Squatted bench down. I'm like, Oh, this is what I've been missing. Yeah. Quit trying to hold yourself back. Right. And that's what that's what people do. And if you're in my excuses always, if you're going for a role record, I get it. But if you're going in the sport to lift more weights, you can't hold yourself in this box. So one thing that's interesting to me that's different than from in power lifting than in call it weightlifting is in weightlifting. I don't think anybody has starts with their opener at a weight that they have not completed in training. Right. Because you got three pamps, a snatch in the cleanage, especially a snatch a little more precise, you know. Although I do think earlier, we were talking about squatting and stuff. I do think that the technique in squatting and powerlifting in general is underrated. I think a lot of people think that, you know, you're just like try harder and it works. But most of the time when people fail a squat, like a one-up max is a skill set. Right. Like you don't fail the squat very often. Like very, I mean, I'm going to phrase this a little better, I think. It's very rare that you fail a squat because your legs aren't strong enough to move the bar. Right. Most often you fail because you get out of position. You get either, you know, levered forward too far, you get to your toes, you're, you know, whatever, something's going on and you lose, you know, the bar only has so much room forward and backwards that it can go. You need to stay over your mid foot, right. Like that's basically how it goes. If it gets too far one way or the other, that's just it. You're f***ing right. And then people are like, oh, I felt that you're not strong, you know, well, but strong enough. It's like, well, maybe you weren't strong enough, but maybe your midline wasn't strong enough. Your legs are probably good. That's the probably not that you couldn't push because you're out of position, not because the weight was too heavy. Yeah. And typically, I'm not going to say a majority. A lot of the times it's core. Always whoop for say it hips up. And it's like, I need to, I'm like, I'm teaching try to teach people like, hey, shoulders up and chest up out of the hole with the bar because people get heavy. Like, oh, I got a really lock in. Like, well, where were you four sets ago? What are we doing with the bar in 135? Like what you look at me when I squat? I'm like, I'm like, I squat 135. Like, I'm taking 800. Like, yeah, I might not have the ammonia for the warmups, obviously. But like, I will do, I will get in the headspace of like, yeah, backstab. Like I go through my checklist in my head. I'm like, you don't just all of a sudden start checking stuff when you're five sets deep. What are we doing? Try to make every rep look perfect from an empty bar all the way up. I want them all to look the same. And also on 135, I'm trying to move that thing as fast I can. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. With. I'm also trying to move as fast I can when it's heavier. It just may not, may not happen. That's the goal. I'm trying to move it as fast I can, right? Yeah. I'm back to your point. It's typically never a strength. Typically, it's never a strength thing. It's always formed. And it's just like, no, it would, what I always say is good. Because yeah, strength takes a long time to build. But form, I could we could fix that in about four minutes. If you listen to me, you'll come back and get it. You already being like, yeah, I know what you did wrong. Just doing I say, so it's like, it's way easier to fix. Yeah, absolutely. It's back to the, you know, I know you got to go here in just a few minutes. We'll try and get this wrapping up here. But basically, I was going to get into a little bit the in a powerlifting need a lot of times. You might go out there and you're open or might be a weight that's heavier than you've ever squatted before. Right? Not if you're my client. No. No. I mean, that's the thing. That's what we see, though. Is you're like, hey, dude, whoa, have you ever done that? It'll be there. It'll be their training day. It'll be there on me day. That's what's these, I might, you see it. And they're like, whoa, that was really hard for your first. What are you going to do for your second and third now? Like you just, that was everything. Fail. Yeah. Typically, we don't, we definitely don't program for that. I always, my general rule is worst. Sorry. You feel however you, how do I wear this? What you could triple on your worst day? Got it. Oh, really? So if like, that's what that's what I go off, especially if they're an experience. Now if they're like a 20, 20 meets, 25 meets in, I can kind of push them. But it's like, oh, you want to squat 500 today? Well, you're going to start with four. Well, I know I could do four. Well, how many times you know I meet twice? Yeah. We're going to listen to Tom of this. We're going to default to top. Like it, yeah, like you could hit that in your worst day because people get nervous. Oh, no. And then you're like, Hey, it's four or five pounds. Remember? Oh, yeah. This is easy. Cool. So is the goal a whole lot of times away? I would look at it for weight lifting in a way is, you know, okay. So you're, you have your opener, like bank one, right? Like bank and opener on your second attempt. Perhaps we're going for a neat PR. And then our third attempt, maybe we're going for a all time PR. That kind of one way to look at it. Yeah. Yeah. An ideal situation. The first one just let's get it. Let's shake the nerves. Usually first squats are hardest because everybody for majority people squatting is the hardest, right? So they're kind of nervous. It's a crowd. You know, if they're not too experienced and then like, okay, hey, okay. Now I know I hit four, four, four, D last me. Okay. Hey, we're going to go for four, four, six. And now I know I have two shots at it. Right? Yeah. So we get it. And they're like, Hey, okay, you got 20 pounds in the shot in the bank. Maybe let's call 30 pounds. I'll probably only give you 15. So yeah, I know he hit 446, but we're going to go for 60. Well, but I got 475. We have to bench and deadlift. There's like, there's another part to this. And then there's another part after. So that's where like the good coaching is like, that's future. That's future Danny's problem. Yeah. That's not my problem right now. That's lunches problem. Like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, trust me. Like you want to, if you can go for nine for nine or five, like you didn't try hard enough or your coach knew exactly what they were doing. Yeah. And I forgot. Because a three for nine is really not fun. Yeah, it sucks. Well, it's better and two for nine. Then you're bombed out. Then you bomb out. We're like, I'm doing double it. They only know. Yeah, it's because you didn't get any other lifts. You ever bomb out of a meat, Tom? Once once. Yeah, but my only caveat is I went, I missed my opener. So I'm super smart. So I go, obviously I missed that. I'm going to free take it, right? Give me the world record on my second. So I took the world record twice and I missed it. And I was at the knee and Dan Bell drinks beer and pass out. I'll tell you why there's something to be said for like getting two cracks out of though. Yeah, but normally the balls just not the strength. They're the former. Normally the time for that is if you are so like, wait, let me meet you go to clean a jerk, right? And you are behind and you know what I mean? And so then it's like, well, if I know what I need to hit to win. And so instead of going partway there and going on my third attempt, like, let's just put there and I'll get two cracks at it. And if I don't get it, whatever, it wasn't going to, you know what I mean? Like, it's how it is. I don't hate it. I kind of like that. It's like, let's just go for it. I'm not going to go for second. I'm going to go for gold. And if I mess up on the way there and I get forth, hey, I tried. Yeah, for sure. All right, I'll get a get you out of here. And I got something to do. So quick answers here, lightning round. What is the worst lift to miss in front of people? Squat. There we go. Yeah, because you ended just like in a ball on the ground. What do you do? Help me. Help everybody. Yeah. All right. What is the best out excuse for miss lift? You know, can you blame the judge at any point? Or do you just have to use half to own it? There's no way out in a competition. Yeah, sure. Judge. Yeah, hell yeah. I don't know what they were looking at. Yeah, that guy's not wearing his glasses. All right. Most overrated accessory movement. Barbell hit the rest. All right. What are you doing? Yeah, what are we doing? Yeah, they tied up. Okay. Belt on warmups. Yes or no? 50% of above. Yes. 50% of above. What about belt on bench press? Top sets. Yes. In a meat because the the soreness from the squat can make my lower back cramp up. So I'll belt up during the bench to make sure I don't cramp up. And I don't over fatigue before deadlifts. So yes. There we go. And I have a squat belt. The bench belt in a deadlift belt because I'm busy. Three belts one guy. All right, oh, what is this? Who's the strongest person you've ever seen that trained completely wrong? I wouldn't know if I would say wrong, but damn bell. Okay. We'd go out drink all night. He'd have half a Jimmy John sub sandwich. I have four PM. That's all he would have in his system. He'd squat a thousand for three. I'm like, I know God says we're created equal, but I go, this isn't fair. No. Yeah. I think that comes around to, um, you know, sometimes if you're just not smart enough notes, a bad idea, he's got that done. All right. Well, that's it. You know, Tom, I definitely appreciate you coming on again. If you've listened the entire episode arguing with an empty car about volume intensity and deadlift frequency, congratulations. You're one of us. Make sure to check out Tom Callis for powerlifting program and all things strength and go buy some coffee from caffeine and kilos.com. If you like this episode, send to the coach who maxes out every Friday while blasting dirty, Euro house music and still sucks. All right. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Not in my box. Awesome. Thanks for having me, Danny. Yeah. Thanks, Tom. I appreciate you, man. All right. Later, brother. Yep. Thank you.