This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade and that is 511.
I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California and have used their products ever since.
From their incredibly strong yet light footwear to their cut uniforms for both male and female
responders, I found them hands down the best workwear in all the departments that I've worked for.
Outside of the fire service, I use their luggage for everything and I travel a lot and they are
also now sponsoring the 7X team as we embark around the world on the Human Performance Project.
We have Murph coming up in May and again I bought their plate carrier. I ended up buying real
ballistic plates rather than the fake weight plates and that has been my ride or die through
Murph the last few years as well. But one area I want to talk about that I haven't in previous
sponsorship spots is their brick and mortar element. They were predominantly an online
company up till more recently but now they are approaching 100 stores all over the US.
My local store is here in Gainesville Florida and I've been multiple times and the discounts you see
online are applied also in the stores. So as I mentioned 511 is offering you 15% off every
purchase that you make but I do want to say more often than not they have an even deeper discount
especially around holiday times. But if you use the code SHIELD15 you will get 15% off your order
or in the stores every time you make a purchase. And if you want to hear more about 511, who they
stand for and who works with them, listen to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with
511 regional director Will Ayres. Welcome guys to episode 49 of Behind the Shield podcast. My name
is James Gearing and this week I'm very excited to bring you the man behind the 531 system,
Jim Wendler. Now if you have ever done CrossFit inadvertently you've probably been part of that
system. If you're a serious strength trainer, a power lifter, you've probably used this framework
before but I've used it myself through the CrossFit realm and then also specifically I'm programming
it now as well. So I was very very excited to reach out to Jim and discuss his philosophies on
training. What I didn't expect was the amazing spectrum of topics that we would discuss along
the way. So as well as strength training we touched on all kinds of things like how amazing his
parents are and their philosophy on life, how he was almost killed in a motorcycle accident
and all these different areas. So I'm going to keep the intro very short. This was a longer
interview because we just kept talking and talking and it was incredible. Before I go again please
rate the show on iTunes, give us five stars, give us a review that lets us know how we're doing
and then again share, share, share, share. The more you share the more we can get the words out
of these incredible minds and start fixing people from the ground up. So without further ado I
introduce to you Jim Wendler. Enjoy.
All right well welcome to Behind the Shield Jim. First question I always ask everyone is where are
we finding you today? As in where I am right now? Yeah geographically yes. Oh I am in Ohio and I'm
just sitting in my house and I was actually just listening to dark film that's what I what I'm
doing but yeah we're in a small town in London, Ohio and it's a beautifully overcast slightly
rainy day and things are good. Sounds like the typical Ohio day there. My wife's from North
Canton so yeah I've been there a few times. Well that's completely gray up there all the time at
least a little farther south we have a little sun but it's not like in Orlando trust me you guys are
you know I used to live in Arizona for six years or so and I used to pray for overcast days because
I think there's like 340 days of sun in Arizona so it's like the overcast days were beautiful you
know so it also helps when it's not 115 and the sun blared on you either. Absolutely I know when
we go on vacation you know some people go and they're disappointed if they don't get the sun
well when you're from somewhere like Arizona or California or Florida it doesn't matter you know
like you said almost wishing for some colder days that the novelty of putting on a sweatshirt for
example. Yeah well I mean you're from England right so you know everything about damp dreary
days too I assume. Yes yep yeah if you can maintain a positive outlook in England then
then you can do it anywhere. All right so were you were you born in Ohio? I was born in Arlington
Heights Illinois which is just outside of Chicago and I grew up in Prospect Heights which is a right
next to Arlington Heights so it's Bay it's northwest of Chicago maybe 25 20 miles or so so I grew up in
a very very populated area and then I went to school in Colorado and in Arizona and yeah so I
you know I went to Kentucky I was at University of Kentucky in Lexington for a while and then moved
up here to be part of Elite FTS and then ventured off on my own I stayed in London.
Oh brilliant and what your family unit what was it like what did your parents do?
Both my parents are teachers my dad taught at my high school and was the athletic director there
my mom taught BD behavioral disorder and learning disorder kids for oh brilliant yeah forever so I
come from a you know long line of teachers and athletics was just a normal part of our life
my parents my dad is now how old was dad I don't even know 72 and he still
races bikes somewhat competitively I guess best way to say it um he played football college football
and everything so training my mom still works out seven times a week and lifts believe it or not
she's almost 70 I'll just tell you know my mom always said she's always been she's been 29 for
like 30 years now so that aspect of life even though it's not exactly what I do but that kind of
of uh how do I put this it was just part of our daily routine even as a kid growing up
and uh you know the best example I give people is on Christmas if I we if I had a training day
we didn't leave for Christmas dinner until training was over does that make sense brilliant so it was
just yeah yeah so just part of your daily routine regardless of what's going on it didn't matter
what was going on or you know that was part of the day and everyone had to train so that's you
know I'd talk about the strength of habit and you know growing up in that that kind of world
you know it served me well I guess that's what I said so obviously don't take things to the
extreme like I did but uh you know I'm very happy for what they gave me they were the best parents
alive trust me you know uh never they always supported me no matter what they supported me
through the shit times too when I was an asshole uh you know when I was in I'll give you an example
when I was in high school you know obviously I played sports and I trained and stuff and
was you know always lifting always but I also played in a like a punk hardcore band that wasn't
that good and that was a completely different world than sports and they completely supported that
and I played drums and if you know anything about bands the drummer is where you practice
you know I'm saying you're not the guy moving all your equipment all the time generally speaking
so they had a you know they were completely cool with the band coming over once a week or so
and uh you know banging on the instruments which knowing what I know now must have been
fucking horrible because you know I pay the mortgage now and I don't like I couldn't imagine the racket
that we cause so they've always been very supportive no matter what I did so as long as
I gave it my all and you know was a good kid they would pretty much open to everything so
Sounds like a great parents you know what what do you think what do you think is is one of the
factors or are the factors that create that mindset in your parents that even in their 70s
they don't look at themselves in in what we society regards at 70 which is you know case
flows of medication and you know inactivity well they've been active their whole life so like I
said it's kind of their habit but I think part of it is when they were tired my parents weren't the
kind of people who one were addicted to their work you know a lot of people and this is not judging
anyone but you take away their work and they they kind of die and that's fine because that gives them
life there's nothing wrong with that but they were never truly addicted to their work and number two
is they're never sat still even like I'll give an example is we have to schedule everything around
their schedule they're always going places and I'll give you the best example is one one time I was
in college I called up my parents and my mom is all kind of sounds weird you know I'm like well
where are you she's like oh we're in Budapest and I was like what the fuck like what how when why
didn't you tell me like oh you know we just wanted to take a trip and so they've always stayed active
and not just you know obviously uh training wise but their brains they're always reading
they're always going places um they you know once they retired and the kids were out of the house
you know it was their time and uh anyone who's a parent understands that for basically
you know at the minimum 18 sometimes even more depending on your you know what your kids are
doing after high school you're a parent and I mean they're still our parents today but now
they can have some time to themselves I think that's something they've really lived up to they
want to make the most out of the time that they have and my dad always jokes uh I mean they're
always going places when I say always I mean I bet their home one weekend out of month and uh
that's not even exaggeration my parents did a great job of saving and investing
and uh that allows them a lot of freedom and uh my dad always jokes that he's not gonna leave a penny
from me or my sister he's like well I earned it you know you didn't earn anything so and I totally
respect that it's his money and it's his life and it's my mom's life and they're doing an awesome job
together they're like the ultimate boring team that's why you know so that's brilliant they don't
get caught up in a lot of the bullshit either they just kind of live and and uh let the world around
them do whatever they're just happy to be alive and want to experience stuff oh that's amazing
they're having adventures together so I'm assuming their marriage is still really strong
yeah I mean shit they were married and I don't even know how long have my parents been married
40 years now yeah yeah but at least 40 some odd years now so
well that's that's amazing it's funny my grandparents uh my granddad was 99 he actually
died of cancer and my grandmother's still alive and we're about to have her 100th birthday and uh
when they moved into their community when they were god I don't know early 90s maybe late 80s
my grand what my granddad remarked he's like it's nice here but the problem is it's full of old
people and they were all in their 70s and 60s yeah and I think uh I think that's something to be said
you know you are who you hang out with and sometimes like here's a good example is when I
I had a uh spinal fusion surgery and uh at you know we you have checkups every so often and stuff
and just sitting into the in the waiting room if that doesn't inspire you to do a shitload of rehab
and get on your feet then I don't know what will because it's just a mess of fucked up people and
some of it is legitimate and some of it's on themselves for not doing the things that they need
to do and I looked around because you know the waiting room and then a big osteop you know
you know osteopedic I guess what you say uh waiting room is just chock full of people with problems
you know from knees to backs to shoulders whatever and most of these people didn't do anything just
barely got up and walked around and that really inspired me to get off my ass so uh but I can see
man if you're surrounded by that day by day it's easy to to fall into that trap yeah absolutely
absolutely now have you ever heard of foundation training by a guy called eric goodman no no okay
he he uh has this not even a system just a real basic movement practice almost looks like uh
pilates and yoga had a baby but it's all either standing or lying down super simple but it's
basically reversing the the damage from sitting you know which even as an athlete we do a lot
and uh I tore my back about three years ago and used hit use just this movement practice that was
it and healed my back to the point where I was able to deadlift you know heavier than I ever had
before um and I went out and got certified so that's something for you for you to kind of look into
if you want as far as the rehab side because I was blown away at how well it worked it's the you know
I I coach athletes now I work with athletes uh especially high school kids and but I still do a
boatload of stuff on online and stuff like that and the one thing I always tell people is if you're
going into a surgery going as strong as you possibly can uh because this is when I I trained
as much as I could leading up to my surgery and it took me a while to get the surgery so whatever
but I walked a half mile like 12 hours after my spine was fused oh wow and uh by three months I
was completely healed and the doctor was blown away and you know part of it is you know my parents
see this too is you every time you train you know it doesn't I'm not talking about hardcore
social media training that's what I call it that's when you just go crazy
but you you build uh interest like you wouldn't bank and it's building interest for times when
when things get shitty uh my wife is a good example that she gave birth to our son six and a half
years ago or six no six years ago and her bounce back was easy like you know within nine months
you know six months or even probably even she already had her her six pack back and she was
running and squatting doing everything and it was from all the two decades prior of training her
ass off that you get some you build some interest so when you do have that downtime or what things
should hits the fan so to speak uh you're able to recover much better um so I really think that
I'm not uh the rehab that I did a lot of it was done beforehand if that makes sense
yeah absolutely I think they refer to it as prehab now yeah but it wasn't you know funky
movements it was just running jumping lifting running jumping lifting you do that for enough
time that when you know it it helps us just put that way beyond belief and seen it happen
more times than not to for just to be a you know one-off coincidence so but uh yeah I'm
incredibly impressed with my parents you know they we still go hiking sometimes and they're
fine they went to the uh they hiked through the amazon forest oh really yeah and they hiked up to
uh machu picchu uh so you know there's something to be said just about getting out and just moving
uh so whatever okay but yeah all right but yeah I feel right now my back feels better than it ever
has and you know you hear all these horror stories like you'll never be the same and I feel like a
completely different person so you know whatever anyway yeah I mean that's that's exactly it though
I mean I know I had uh Matt Chan the the uh CrossFit athlete who's also a firefighter um
on and the same thing I mean he was in such good condition he had a near-death experience he came
off a mountain bike and the handle went right into his uh into his leg and severed his is not the
actual main femoral artery but the next branch from that and the doctor said if he wasn't in such
good shape he would have bled out and died right there in the forest so yeah I had a uh motorcycle
accident I got hit uh on a motorcycle and I didn't have a helmet on didn't have anything on the guy
was going about 60 70 miles an hour and just crashed right into me and uh I don't that's why
I survived now that doesn't guarantee you survival because all it takes is one big truck smashing
india and you're dead but uh the way that I was hit it was a huge difference because I knew how
to tuck and roll uh because I got dragged 100 feet on the highway and 100 yards I should say
about a football field length and uh yeah uh you know I I got up and walked out of the hospital
you know but I was you know obviously very lucky in some sense and then obviously I'll give you the
good about a month after I got hit I was still covered in bandages you know I was bleeding
everywhere I had road rash like you wouldn't believe my wife and I were driving on a trip
and we stopped at a somewhere to get some food and some guy asked me why I was all bandaged up
and I'm like wow I got hit by a car I was on my motorcycle and he's like man you're so lucky I'm
like what fucking world do you live in we're getting hit by a fucking car lucky like he must
have a shitty life but I mean I understood what he said but at that time I was just frustrated
because obviously I was pretty fucked up uh but I yeah I really think just uh ironic you know the
all the neck work I did uh paid off because I was able to tuck my chin uh into my chest and you know
save my head and uh that's a you know I didn't roll around like a rag doll either so I think
it's a little depressing so you're good you go I mean it all pertains to what you know what I
want to talk about anyway which is uh resiliency you know whether it's um physical or mental um so
I just want to scale uh pull back just for a moment so when you were younger what were the
sports that you played in school uh well when I was uh you know really young we did uh obviously
baseball was huge track was massive uh football when I was started when I was like 13 or 14
um so I was a little older when I started playing football uh ran cross country uh played basketball
and in high school I did football obviously I played basketball for a number of years and I ran
track through the discus that was my big big event in track that was a huge uh I ended up going
downstate and being all state my senior year in discus so uh but the primary sports were you know
football and track and a little bit of basketball okay so what did your your strength training look
like back then I started training when I was in eighth grade so I was about 13 years old
and uh we my dad worked at the high school and I wasn't obviously in the high school then uh I was
in junior high so he would take me over to the high school three days a week and he looked me
because I was I was badgering him for like a year and a half or something two years to get in the
weight room and he told me you know not yet just play sports and we obviously we ran cross country
and did track and stuff like that and I did push-ups and setups and chin-ups and stuff like that
uh and then he finally caved uh probably just me you know he just wanted to shut me up I think
and I'll never forget exactly where it was he said if you start this you will not quit
and he made it very clear to me that this was not going to be some you know a couple week venture
and I was done so we started off I think just on the old and this is probably dating myself an old
nautilus machine for like two months or so just did this you know there's all kinds of different
machines on an old nautilus machines there's tons of them and then after maybe month and a half two
months we just went right to squats deadlifts benches inclines you know curls stuff like that
and uh so you know at an early age everything that I did was geared towards athletics so it wasn't uh
you know I didn't have any grand plan I would just you know I kept a little notebook and made
notes about how much I lifted and I'd just try to lift more the next day or do something you know
like that and we didn't I didn't have any books or anything you just kind of
just did what you thought you did and uh you know I got I was taught how to squat by uh reading the
the signs in the weight room you know they have the
illustrations yeah that's how you learned you know and uh about halfway
through my eighth grade year the guy who would end up being my training mentor
uh said one word to me he said uh or one phrase that you should probably do some straight leg
deadlifts and I was like okay and then I you know I didn't talk to anyone I was nervous because I
was around high school kids and they were much bigger and then it took me about another six
months or a full year from when I started training that my mentor actually started uh realizing that
I was serious and uh kind of took me under his wing a little bit and I was like okay I'm gonna
do this and uh kind of took me under his wing a little bit um and I asked him why I always tell
the story I said why did it take you so long you know years later I said you know you didn't talk
to me for a whole year he said well I wanted to make sure you were serious because he had helped
so many people uh for so many years and they would come in for a couple weeks and leave so it just
starts becoming an exercise and just frustration you know yeah you spend all this time helping
out and then they don't take it you know they take it for granted and then pissed you know piss it off so
uh so at that point by the time I think I was a freshman you know around that time I started
uh programming a little bit right you know understood that you know things have to be
in balance a little bit but at that point we started adding box jumps and uh bounding
at least we added uh hang cleans uh and that's that was it most I mean I probably benched for every
30 or 50 sets of squats I did I probably did one set of bench we weren't very upper body oriented
and that's probably my one thing I would maybe change you know because I my upper body has
always been the weakest and my lower body has always been the strongest but you know from an
athletic point of view it makes sense um but we did a shit ton of jumping and a shit ton of running
and a lot of squats and a lot of cleans that was our big thing and so even from an early age that's
all we did was how to get better at football how to get better at track that was it that's how we
trained and I didn't have any aesthetics goals really I don't didn't really care but you know at
the same point I was in high school I was pretty thin you know I had like eight percent five percent
body fat I was just fucking shredded all the time so you know never really and that's you couldn't
eat anything you wanted back in those days today everything is so complicated uh but we also you
know to give you an example is I charted my running and I think outside of sports practice
because of our physical education classes you're gonna run at least six miles a week five miles a
week you know just as part of your regular day-to-day activities in school and uh you
you know that adds up over time you know we ran a mile we our mile was part of our junior high
work in PE so you know I'm saying so uh it was running was just part of life and uh you know
this day and age it's completely back ass words um so you know I actually have and I don't know how
I have it my parents somehow got it the all the mild times from when I was in seventh grade I
think from all the boys in our junior high and I think the average time for the mile and this is
like 60 kids maybe 60 boys time of mile was like 730 or something wow that's the average that was
the average yeah I'd have to go back and you know check it but it was under eight minutes well under
eight minutes that's for about 12 year olds yeah 11 it was uh six seven eighth uh I think was six
seventh and eighth yeah that's very impressive but yeah and we had uh I ran to 536 or something
down uh in seventh grade and that was you know people like uh were you in good shape and I was
like I guess but I just ran like I was scared to death that's how I ran like I didn't want to
fucking lose and I you know when I ran cross-country the first couple times you run you don't know really
how to run you just kind of go out there and run and then whatever you finish you finish and then
I started getting competitive and I just fucking would run as hard as I could for as long as I
could that's just there's no it was like uh Steve Prefontaine you ever read anything of him um the
great run the name rings a bell but I know I have not read his stuff yeah he's like uh fuck pacing
man I'm just gonna run and uh but anyway it's that's when I knew I was different I think
is I remember we were running cross-country as you finish the the uh when you finish the race they
give you a popsicle stick to give you the number that you finish because there's so many kids that
you know run cross-country you have three or four schools and there's a boatload of kids and I
remember I was neck-to-neck with this one kid and they had the popsicles you know at the finish line
and I fucking dove head first to grab on that thing just to beat the guy and my dad was I don't
know if my dad ever said anything to me but I know now knowing how my dad is he must have been
terribly proud and uh but uh yeah and that's one thing I always you know just working with athletes
today the the amount of rain bomb that one can do today with kids is much lower and I I believe
and there's no science to back this up it's we simply just don't have the foundation of fitness
with kids it's not the kids' fault it's it's the adults' fault uh about you know how this happened
so yeah yeah and I agree 100 my my little boy's school he is uh 10 now so he's fifth grade um but
I'm the elementary school I've always been very very impressed they it's kind of an extra
curricular thing but they have a thing called morning mile where if you drop drop the kids off
early they get to do some laps before they even start class and then now they've actually put
PE back every single day so now they do they can run around more so I don't know how much he
actually runs during a week but I bet if I put a Fitbit on it would be several miles probably
yeah and that's you know it doesn't have to be crazy um but I think that's uh you know we I have
a 13 year old who does this just about the same thing they have they're uh if you're not in a
sport if they're in a sport they practice generally in the morning uh as part of their quote on you
know their physical you know PE period uh and if not that's when you can train and they have you
know lifting and running and stuff like that it's not terribly comprehensive nor should it be but uh
you know I it's it's similar to like learning a language they always tell you you know the
best age to learn language is between and I'm just making this up let's just say five and ten
and after that little window it's harder for you to learn another language yeah absolutely yeah I
think that's kind of similar to some of this stuff physically is if you get in that window
it doesn't have to be the super soviet secret thing you know where you know your volume must
be 60 percent every Wednesday of what you did on Tuesday you know and sled drags must be done
but I think that if you have that base of fitness and mobility and even gymnastics like movements
it's it's funny because we do some gymnastic movements with the football team as part of their
warm-up and I don't have any way of quantifying this but the kids who can do cartwheels
better are generally the kids that play better yeah absolutely I mean you know the the I think
the fundamental thing that a lot of people miss is just movement in general so if you can you know
walk on your hands or yeah roll or any of those things it's just gonna it's gonna uh create a
different uh learning curve in your body which will translate to the skills that you want to do
on the field yes yes and uh you know the best group of athletes I ever worked with
in the weight room and the easiest to coach corrections were male cheerleaders because they
all had gymnastics backgrounds and they understood where their body was in space so if you tell them
listen you need to open up your knees a little bit more on the squad or push your butt back or
they instinctively knew how to do it because they had they know where their bodies are
yeah gymnasts have such amazing control over you know every kind of plane it's incredible yeah and
it's really awesome and ironically they were the hardest working guys I've ever worked with
uh now granted this was at Kentucky and you don't know anything I didn't know this either is
University of Kentucky for about 10 years won about 10 national championships in the cheerleading
comps so there these kids were not just guys who decided to try out for the team yeah these were
some of the best yeah these you know the recruited kids who knew uh before they work and they made
no apologies like yeah we're male cheerleaders yeah but look look who we get to hang out with all
day well exactly when people make fun of him like dude I get to hold girls asses all day what are
you talking about yeah like you guys have to hang around sweaty dudes it sucks so but uh go ahead
I'm sorry no it's okay I was gonna say so we've talked about um you know your journey threw up
to that point so how did you get into the competitive powerlifting uh well you know since
I've been 13 this is I've just been obsessive okay about strength training I did as my uh since
my dad was the athletic director he would get uh training magazines sent to him you know from uh
especially through track track and field was huge where I was so we'd always get all these track and
field magazines so you uh read a lot of articles I saved and read everything I could from there uh
so all the way then I went and played football in college and my education continued there as
far as strength training I was very very very lucky to have a strength coach by the name of
Dan Worth at Arizona when I was there and Dan was I probably drove him nuts he probably fucking hates
me you know he doesn't hate me but I know I drove him nuts because I would ask him a million
questions and I would always say can I try this and he always in a way he probably hated it in a
way it was nice because at least some kids wanted to come in there and kick ass and try new things
where other kids had to be forced and I totally get it um but he allowed me to experiment with
some different stuff and uh so by the time I got out of playing football I had accumulated a shit
ton of knowledge at least at that point I had and I've always loved training I just love it
and that was just part of the deal so you know after I started stop playing football I knew I
needed I wanted to keep on lifting obviously and that seemed like the next step because
it's just what I wanted to do you know I don't know and from there I was you know I trained at
Kentucky and then I met Dave Tate at Elite FTS through my work at Kentucky and then you know I
had no idea I was not very familiar with powerlifting to give an example the first time
I bought a powerlifting USA the top 100 list is always in the back and they rotated every month
every month about what weight class and so the first one I got I think was in the 242 weight
class at the top 100 and I'm looking at these numbers I'm like holy shit I had no idea there
was squat suits and bench shirts so you know I had no idea they even existed so I was like holy shit
like you know I thought I was strong I benched 400 I squatted close to 700 and I was like wow
like I suck I thought I was kind of strong and these guys are freaks you know I had no concept
of it so you know but anyway to make a long story short I had met Dave and then at that time Dave was
uh you know running Elite FTS but he's also hosting a big meet every year that was just
even today people call it the most perfect meet was run smoothly it was at a great venue
um everything was perfect the warm-up room was good so he said hey why don't you try and do the
meet you know so I registered and I did fairly well me and my training partner at the time Kevin
Deweese who is uh trains firefighters now he's a firefighter who does their uh their training
they recruited him to do all their stuff anyway uh that's how I got started I just kind of got the
bug and did that for a number of years and then you know once I reached my goals I kind of want to
do something else and I'm back to what I was doing prior to uh powerlifting and just a little more
movement athletic oriented I guess best way to say it and I feel better and I'm 42 now and uh
you know my best years of at least as actual weight lift that are behind me I totally accept that
uh you know football has taken its toll uh and obviously powerlifting has taken its toll and
truth be told is you know I just know in my heart that to do to get to a top level because I'm not
terribly talented requires a tremendous amount of sacrifice on a lot of and I'm just not willing to
do it just like I'm not willing to walk on to a division one football team and go through all
this shit again and just not in the mentality um so I still train my ass off and uh I started
volunteering at the high school last year the local high school here for strength coach and it's been
awesome we uh we are now six and oh after winning only three games last year and I'm still training
three games last year and we were able to completely change our offense to a downhill
run style offense which we we throw maybe one or two passes a game so it's not like we're we're
sneaking up on anyone we just have we just line everyone up and we just you know bulldoze people
and it's been awesome working with these kids they've you know I think it's important
if you have the time uh to give back um especially to your community it's easy to go online and make
dumb videos and all that stuff but I think the real the real uh change can happen on a personal
level uh because these kids get to you get to interact with them you get to know them
um and coaching online is completely different than coaching in person so I think we got about
50 or 60 kids that I work with from you know from eighth grade all the way up to senior in high school
and uh the just seeing the physical change and seeing the you know you give these I'll give you
an example with 14 seniors who have endured some shitty seasons they've had some tough seasons
and now you're able to give them a positive you know going away party basically and also the head
coach Kyle is a friend of mine and being a head coach in high school football is uh you don't do
it for the money trust me it is an unforgiving job in which you're uh you know every day there's more
shit you have to deal with and seeing him succeed has made it's it's more about them than other
people than about me and it's nice to do that I guess so yeah well it's fun I heard you say this
I think it was um I don't know if it was with Mark Bell's interview but you were talking about the
same thing and I actually had this on my list to to underline because what you said is something
that I say a lot myself is you know we have these slogans and you hear like make America great again
all this stuff and just like you underlined and there's a bunch of people sharing stuff on
Facebook or Instagram whatever and then not walking out their front door and actually changing their
community so I think that by doing you know what you're doing and I actually coached you guys
free classes at my local CrossFit gym I don't get paid for that either um you know that's how you
you make this place better is you start in your community you walk outside your front door yes
and you fix fix and help people that you can actually physically touch well I think the part
of the frustration is and I'll give you this is kind of a hard hopefully I get this right is
I tell people all the time don't try to change the world because you're not going to do it
you change it by being a good parent okay I always say if you want to change the world just raise
good kids so I'm not my my initiative I guess or goal is never global it's always stay local stay
within your house make sure your house is kept in order you know that doesn't mean clothes are put
away it means that you know you're taking care of your kids and making sure that what you're doing
is perfect and then you know helping out the people in your community as much as possible because
it's like the you know the ripple effect of the butterfly effect I could put up a post on Facebook
or something and it may reach more people but it's not going to do as much good because
uh you know let's say I help kid x now kid x is going to help his kids you know that's how you
that's how the positive movement starts it doesn't start by trying to be global it's just stay
local and then the effects would be far-reaching because I'll give you know the the guy who mentored
me Darren Llewellyn just one guy at a high school you know and he influenced me and now I get to
influence everyone that's from Darren that's from my dad and Darren that's it they didn't try to you
know change the world so to speak they just gave what they could to their uh you know the people
around them and then that that becomes far-reaching I think people get intimidated when you you know
trying to change the world because like well can I really I mean what am I going to do
it's not about that and maybe they get a little frozen you know because like there's nothing I
can do I can't uh you know I can't influence legislation well that's not your job your job
is just to raise good kids and if you don't then try and you know teach coach mentor something you
know try and help people out and uh you know it it does take up a lot of time but uh it does give
back uh tenfold and the other thing too is you know I have a talent I'm not dumb I'm not going
to be totally humble all the time you know I'm always trying to learn but these kids could
benefit from it and I'm sure there's other people that could probably do a better job but there's a
lot of people could do it a lot worse too so yeah and I think that's another great point as well
is a lot of people don't do things because they're fear of perfection or lack of yeah
instead of just getting out there and just you know that's I remember there is a significant
point in my life when I was at playing football in college where I decided I'm going to stop
caring about failing if I fail I'm going to fail probably and that at that point everything
changed in my life everything I stopped caring about failing and I just that's just what happens
like you know when you play football I don't know if you've ever you're from England so I doubt it
because football we play real yeah you guys place but in football the coaches are there especially
when you get to a higher level of college there's no bullshit and they will fuck and put you right
in your place no matter who you are or what you do okay there's no coddling at all maybe it's
changed I don't know but holy shit you fuck up you are going to be dealt with and in fact my coach
in college if you fucked up a drill twice you're out you don't get to do it anymore
you know because you're wasting everyone's fucking time and that's just how it was and
what was that where was I going with this oh shit man I braided yeah fear of failing so yeah you
get scared because man what you know coach gonna yell at me well you gotta take a chance and I think
people are way too scared to get yelled at or criticized like someone sent me a nasty two nasty
emails today already it's like man what am I gonna do like I'm I don't care I get a I get a lot of
criticism but let's just say I get a hundred good things sent to me but then two or three really
mean evil shit sent to me instead of concentrating on the two or three things you know I'm just you
know good I'm doing some good here I'm helping out and they know people don't see that nor do I care
I really don't care if they see it because I'm I just see the the help that I'm giving and I you
know it's not like I'm carrying cancer here but it's really awesome to see the kids change and
uh seeing my own kids develop so yeah but and I think like and like you said you're you know
you're being a leader in that respect and teaching the kids that you teach to to do the same thing
but again if if if other people see what you're doing and do the same thing now you become part
of this big patchwork quilt yeah of you know good things and then eventually you take a step back
and you have changed the world you know and that tiny you know the other thing is like if you asked
me to tutor math like I'd be horrible like I just so you know help with what you're good at whether
or not it could be anything and uh I think that's a you know like I would expect my mom for example
like here's a good example my mom's not gonna strength train the local high school team but
what she did was she uh cooked meals for the homeless for like 20 years that's what she did
and because she was like she loved cooking and that's what she was good at so she did
what she could you know and uh so uh it's just a matter of you know you help out with what you can
and luckily I'm enabled you know the business allows me a little more flexibility than a nine
to five job and uh so that that certainly helps too all right well transitioning a little bit to
helping I'm gonna kind of testify myself so I have inadvertently or unknowingly been doing your five
three one system for several years I got into CrossFit uh that nine years ago now um and it was
it was in there I know the the programming you know um the the the main site use and then the coach
at the first actual physical gym I went to a few years later and put it in but with with the CrossFit
thing I'm realizing now unless you're there every single day which is kind of not the point of you
know doing a hard CrossFit thing you miss you know some of your programming you're kind of spotterly
uh training the way you're supposed to so very recently I mean literally about two months ago
I revisited it just on my own separately from my training because I've got some uh stuff I'm doing
within the fire department it's going to be very challenging at the end of the year so I wanted to
add a focused strength training component to my my training um and I was blown away by two things
firstly the simplicity of it and then secondly how it didn't take a huge amount of time because
as a firefighter and anyone else is listening that's in the first responder position you know
we are we don't have a huge amount of time a lot of times we're sleep deprived so I find a much
more success with a very uh compact training routine than something where you're going to
spend hours and hours you know in a gym so for the guys that don't know I haven't heard what five
three one is could you could you tell us what it is and then and then uh kind of elaborate why
yeah well you successfully I'm going to uh go off on a tangent real quick the reason uh
firefighters or I think they call them leos and now on the internet uh little
enforcement officers uh they often have to train like athletes okay because much of their physical
demands are similar to let's say a football player who has to be fairly strong has to be kind of quick
has to be able to do uh be in shape for lack of a better term does that make sense yeah absolutely
mobile basically everything you kind of have to have as an athlete but when you train an athlete
you don't just squad them every day and hope for the best there's a variety of things that you need
to do so because of that your strength training has to be very efficient because you have to do
all this other shit too it's not just about lifting being stronger is great but you also have to be
able to run you have to be able to jump you have to be able to move you have to be able to do skills
practice you know your actual work that you do on the field does that make sense yes so the program
itself is kind of built for people that uh now you can always customize it in different ways
but it's it's a root basis in athletics or at least that's how it started now things have
evolved over time that you can now uh customize it to however you want um so basically it's perfect
i'm not saying it's perfect it is a good choice uh for people in that arena um we worked with
everyone from uh you know older gentlemen to power lifters to athletes to just regular dudes who want
to get strong because there's a wide variety of people that can that can be helped and i'm not
of course i want i believe in what i do but i also believe that there's a million ways to skin a cat
but that's why i set up the program uh with the five principles that i preach and if you apply
the five principles to your training i believe that you're going to get better okay and going
back to your original question like what is the five through one program it is a one it is very if
you're going to do the strict program or some of the variations it's very black and white for the
main lift okay does that make sense uh no of course there's always variations in there that we do but
for the most part the program is built around um knowing exactly what you're going to do on
every given day and so i think that's one of the big reasons why it helps a lot of people because
for most people that start lifting they just go in there and there's wing it and winging it will
work for a while you know just like if you just run around for a while you're gonna get in better
shape but at some point usually you know a couple months six months or something you're going to
come to a standstill you don't know where to go from there and that's kind of what i try to do
for people say hey when you go in this look at your paper this is what you do okay so they have
a plan now like i said i'm not saying it's perfect but at least having a plan will get you
99 percent of people will get better because they have a plan as long as it's rooted in some
some common sense so the five principles that i base everything on so every time that i work
with someone or develop something i go back and say does it stay true to these five principles
if it doesn't then i have to change something so it's always start too light that means we always
we never go balls to the wall with uh volume or intensity relationship when i am progress slow
so we have continued success for a long period of time the majority of time we use basic compound
movements now of course there's always room for assistance work in isolation but we base the
we base the majority of the workout on compound movements we believe in settling setting uh
personal records now this can happen every day or this could happen once every six weeks uh it just
depends on what you're training for how you set it up in your age and stuff like that and number
five was recently added two years ago is balance now balance doesn't mean you push as much as you
pull okay you've you know if you do 50 reps of pushing you gotta do 50 reps of pulling that
doesn't mean by balance it doesn't mean your hamstrings look the same as your quads balance
means that that uh you you train multiple components uh at the same time and when i say
multiple components that's really not a great way of saying it that you address other needs in your
training other than strength so for the majority of people at least these three things need to be
addressed regardless of what you do i don't care if you're a football player i don't care if you're
a soccer mom or if you're 60 years old or whatever is some kind of strength training
some type of aerobic or conditioning work and some kind of mobility or flexibility or movement work
now how those fit into your training is going to be dependent on your goals and who you are
but at the very least you need those three things now if you're an athlete you obviously need speed
work and you know agility work and skill work but at the very least those three things need to be
addressed and i don't when i say balance too it doesn't always mean you if you spend an hour
lifting doesn't mean you have to spend an hour stretching it just there has to be some kind of
balance within there it's like i call it making a stew okay you don't just throw a pound of
everything in the stew and hope for the best so when there's a lot of meat you have to put in
maybe slightly fewer vegetables excuse me vegetables right when there's a little bit of meat
maybe you can add some more vegetables uh basically like that if you have uh you know whatever you get
the point and so i think of the problem that people have generally with training especially
for people that have multiple components like an athlete or a firefighter is they dump everything
on at once and they don't understand that there's a price to pay for everything that you do so for
example let's say you're a cross-country runner strength is important but it's not the most
important thing okay so you're not you wouldn't ask that guy to lift four days a week he could
lift two days a week and he'd just have a little sprinkle of strength training to get him good
okay with efficient movements and efficient training and more his time could be spent on
running form and some speed work and obviously running you know actually running now if you take
a power lifter he's obviously doesn't need to run a marathon but he needs some type of aerobic capacity
uh to help him recover for health uh to help lower his uh resting heart rate between sets so we can
recover better between sets so he might only need three or four days a very easy you know
riding a bike or walking or something like that for so his ratios would be completely different
yeah and i think that's important for for you know all of us in our profession to understand too
is you're going to have that within the police service within the fire service you're going to
have your um you know ex linebacker who is 300 pounds and is also a policeman and he's going to
train very differently than the triathlete 160 pound please i'm going to try definitely but it's
going to have the same uh it's going to have the same components just uh in different uh
different measures i guess yeah yeah exactly so exactly um so i want to touch on something else
as well i have you uh heard of julian panot no no okay he's he's from his uh organization called
strong fit um but he is very big on the the strongman training again for for putting the
balance back in um especially with cross fitters that have the weakness in the posterior chain
from all the kipping and the olympic movements um so it's a lot of sandbag carries and sleds and i
noticed in your uh five three one forever your kind of revised program how you've you got emphasis on
sled work and vests and things like that so what what made that change uh well the the hard thing
to do when you when you i'm very i'm a real stickler for understanding and programming uh there
is a price to pay for everything that you do okay and it's hard to quantify some of that stuff when
you put it in part of a program okay so when someone says uh hey i want to add sandbag carries
well if you add something into your workout guess what you have to do
you got to take something away it has to be accounted for and so that's hard to quantify um
the that's the reason why barbell training is so easy to program is because it's easy to quantify
you have weight and you have reps and your volume it's it's just numbers it's math okay
okay uh with a sandbag and stuff like you know it's hard to like how do you incrementally load it
what's you know what's the the price that you pay does that make sense uh so it becomes uh
very difficult to to program as far as uh especially in the written word that's
obviously easier when you're there in person because you can you know we i have every kid i
train i have indicators you know that i know hey we need to back this kid off hey we need to back
you know we can we can push this kid um and that's easy to do in person but you know the main goal of
when you write a book is you're trying to help people out and especially people that don't
know anything you know uh my target audience are people that generally there are other they do
other jobs and they need to be they need to be i don't want to say spoon fed but they need to
like this is what i do does that make sense because i it's the same thing as when i go and get my truck
fixed don't just uh show me what i need to do i don't need to know all the ins and outs because
i that's not my job uh same thing with the guy who does my taxes just tell me what i need to do
so uh i think with like the the weight vest i had done the weight vest for quite a while
but as part of my back rehab i wore my weight that's quite a bit to strengthen my back and my abs
uh and then i used that as part of my uh what i call my physical uh movement gpp stuff like that
and it was had a profound effect on me now the trick was how do i include this into the training
program and you know i'll give you an example in the early 2000s kettlebells became really big right
right now everyone jumped on the kettlebell bandwagon and it became that or nothing when the
reality of it is it's a good tool uh as part of a total training program but how do i incorporate
this into my regular workouts and that's where all the work comes in um and that's why we included
as part of our assistance we we have assistance categories now that allows you to track uh certain
volumes and stuff like that does that make sense yeah so all that little stuff now we
because now we program the assistance work and the supplemental work and the main work all that
stuff is all programmed now all that shit can now fit in and now you have a way of organizing your
training um and the problem is is this happened again with the whole kettlebell revolution there
was a lot of things like the sandbag became big and all this stuff the issue that i had with every
one of those people was they never took the time to to put it as part of a total training program
it was just the program does that make sense to you and it drove me yeah it's like it's like when
you see someone say squats three sets of ten it's like well what does that fucking mean you have to
give me something i have to know and even as a kid i understood like well what is that like is it
all the same weight are all the sets hard or all the sets easy you know so you need to i had to
find a way of kind of quantifying it and understanding about how it fit into the total picture as an
example uh if your goal is to become a strong fast athlete kettlebells are fine but they certainly
they're not the meat in your stew okay there's there's much more efficient and better ways that
have been proven for 100 you know 100 years of and you know getting stronger and uh and faster
and all that stuff however they they still do work but how do they work within the context of
the total program and that's where a lot of that work came in and it took years to figure that out
and you know so i guess that's the best way to put it is it takes time when something new is
brought in you just can't just jump on it uh because at some like i tell everyone who's in
this industry at some point you got to lay down your spear and say this is who i am this is what
i stand for and within that you have to have like my five principles you have to have and
uh a core belief that you believe in and really believe it not just you say it you don't give it
lip service and then that within those core beliefs though you have to be able to change enough or be
flexible enough to include other things and understand your training and programming enough
to account for those things and uh you know with uh so i guess that's it just takes time it you know
part of it was the back surgery and part of it was man you just you can't you can't just give me
an like a new thing right like and say well here you go i get it takes years of experimenting to
figure like oh okay i see where this now how this affects this or the train effect that one has when
you use this so everything that needs to be accounted for yeah no i i agree wholeheartedly
because i've been on you know i'm 43 myself so i've been on a journey and i was an athlete ever
since i was a kid as well um and you know all you hit the nail on the head all these implements are
fantastic tools now i don't just do sandbags i don't just do sleds it's all you know part of the
grand plan but there's also things that i used to do like um you know the olympic lifting and stuff
that as a fireman which is my main thing is to be able to you know do my job well and protect my
family if god forbid something happens uh so i do you know do martial arts as well so does it
pertain to those two now being able to do a full olympic snatch i'll do it when it's programmed
you know if it's in in um i'll work out in the gym that day but that's not a focus of mine but the
strongman sandbag stuff simulates very very very closely me dragging someone out of a fire so that's
the kind of stuff that i do a lot more than yeah and uh you know like i said before your training
has to be very efficient and you know the way that i train the kids here it the actual program they
use took about two years to work with and i liken it to like getting a big slab of marble that you're
going to chisel okay you have to be smart enough and honest enough and drop your ego enough to chip
away anything that's completely pointless now the the problem is the smarter that you get the more
that you can rationalize anything right you can you know i could probably rationalize rack pulls
and side laterals is the only two things you need to do you know does that make sense so when you're
training for something specific and you have other means to do or other things to do uh whether it be
outside of the weight room or you know like your life uh in your job and stuff like that or if you
have other components to train like an athlete you have to be brutally honest and chip away
everything that doesn't really isn't completely needed because you have a very limited amount of
time to train uh does that make sense to you no it does completely especially with so yeah so then
you you know you weigh everything it's like well is this really going to help is this for you got
60 kids in the weight room at one time is this something that's logical and is this really going
to help is the time spent working with this is it going to pay off and if the answer is no you just
fucking leave it and uh we whittled our training we only do seven movements that's it not in one day
throughout the entire year and what are those seven movements we squat we bench press we trap
bar deadlift we dumbbell squat we do a dumbbell straight leg deadlift or we use the trap bar we're
starting to do some different stuff with the trap bar we're straight like this but a straight leg
deadlift and we do some kind of dumbbell pressing or dips depending on if the kid's light enough you
can do dips and we do some kind of row or chin up all right so i classify those as uh same because
it's a pulling motion i really don't care what they do and you know the only things that we don't
program but the kids do on their own is uh neck work obviously for football and we do uh 100 plus
face pulls every training day that's on their own that's what they do but ours are seven main
movements and uh so anyway to make a long story short the reason why we i worked with this took
me forever to figure out and simplify but uh what ends up happening is the kids get very good at
these seven movements now if anyone's ever coached young kids it's a pain in the ass because they
don't know how to do anything so if you throw a shit ton of exercise at them they're going to
get good at nothing okay so it takes a long time for them to get used to squatting and deadlifting
so that they do it correctly all the time and bench pressing and doing all this other stuff okay
so now as part of an athlete though the good thing is one the kids know how to do the exercises
two once the adaption occurs they rarely get sore anymore which is what i want i don't want them to
get sore because they have to run they have to jump they have to do other skill work three after
nine months or eight months of training in the off season where we're doing all this stuff once
you transition to the end season training we can still train fairly hard without the kids ever
getting sore that's a huge thing because right now now i will say and this is just the details is
for the end season training we cut out all barbells squats and we did that because we have a
you know maybe most of our kids play both ways they do a shit ton of running because that's
the practice that's just the way it is and it saves their hamstrings so we cut out the barbell
squat during the season we trap our deadlift because we have found that we can train at a
lighter percentage of the one rm and still make great strength gains on the trap bar so that's
our main lower body strength movement and we kept in the bench press because we only most of our
upper body work for our football players is not for strength it's to build size we call building
the armor build the armor we kept the dumbbell squat in because i think it does great things
for our hips it allows the kids to get reach greater depths and we've never had any hip
problems or any depth problems because of that i believe it also does a great job of iso isometrically
training the arms and upper back because all are like i'll give an example when we first started
the dumbbell squat and once the kids got used to it we had kids these are high school kids that
were doing the 100 pound dumbbell with six chains on top of it draped over that's 232 pounds for
sets of 10 wow squad we had kids do 100 pound dumbbell squat for 50 straight reps
all of our freshmen in order to graduate you know to strength training they have to do 50
pounds for 50 straight reps and they all do it so but what ends up happening is now we are
our is our seventh game tomorrow and we yesterday or yesterday yeah yeah yesterday we trained the
trap bar heavier than we ever have in the eight yeah so we're able to maintain our strength which
is positive during the season because this is when typically you know the football season is a long
season it's a lot of battery and you start getting tired and your body starts getting run down well
now that our kids are stronger now than they were when we started this season and that's a huge huge
thing going you know when you walk out in the field you know that you're stronger than the next guy
yeah absolutely for confidence especially so now with the quick question with the the dumbbell
squats how are they holding the dumbbell uh like a goblet i guess you know you're holding your okay
so by the chest yeah okay um and you know the other the good thing about that is we can dumbbell
squat during the season still get the hip mobility working and it doesn't really tax the legs
because you know how heavy you know even if you're going to the extreme by hanging chains off that's
still just 230 pounds it's not like you're putting 400 pounds on your back and we really did that
because of the hamstring work uh we cut out because your hamstring gets so tired from all
the running so this was a big big big uh deal to me was cutting out the squat because the squad is
usually the the foundation of most athletes training and so it really i hemmed and hawed over
this for months like you know should i do this should i do this and i finally said fuck it you
know what's the worst that could happen you know we won three games last year anything we do now
is gonna be it's gonna go up so uh and so far it's been great so our heavy trap bar days on monday
wednesday is uh bench work and dumbbell squat we do movement work every day we do gymnastic stuff
every day and then on saturdays after the game we do all uh just really easy mobility work
and you know movement stuff and uh that's it so brilliant yeah we got a trap bar in
in our station funnily enough and for everyone listening doesn't know what that is it's like a
uh hexagon bar with with handles and you stand inside so when you're deadlifting you're holding
with your arms by your side which i think especially for for people that aren't familiar
with the deadlift movement i think it's a great first go-to before you transition to a straight
yeah and you know i you hear all the time from powerlifting purists that the that's not a deadlift
these kids aren't power lifters either uh so i don't really i will use you know the best tool
that i can the most efficient tool that i can and from my point of view i have to there's one guy
for 60 people like i have to make the coaching easy because i you know it's one thing to be one
on one with someone it's another thing that you got 60 kids you got you know a million different
training levels and you got to coach them all and you have you know and so you have to be very
efficient with that too you know what's the easiest thing that we can uh allows the kids to get the
most out of it without you know me giving individual because if i spend 20 minutes with one kid
then what about the other kids you know it just doesn't work very well so yeah yeah now i agree
100 now i just want to underline the four exercises that you have in the 531 that i've been doing so
it's the military press which is a standing shoulder press the the deadlift which i actually
have been using the trap bar for the programming for you and then we've got the bench pressed and
then the squat so very very simple movements and then you've got four week cycle where it's uh just
three sets of of different percentages and then you got a deload set a deload week in the last
week is it yeah we've changed you know there's now there's a couple variations we usually go
six weeks and then a full deload uh and that that has changed a little bit um but what we do is um
as a coach things are a little bit different because plus i'm like i said i use indicators
and uh we will put a deload wherever i think we need it and we'll you know that is uh
just something you have to kind of have the experience to do um and then we do our deloads
a little differently um but the same concepts basically apply um but we have every on the third
week that's our test week and i don't we don't test like we don't want our m and we just make
sure that they're able to hit five strong reps with the last set okay if they could do that
they've earned the right to move on to the next phase uh where they increase their weights if
they don't we back them off and we build them back up um which gets people all frustrated like why
didn't you know we can't go up strength is not linear at a micro level like if i looked at my
strength training from the time i was 13 to the time i was 30 okay and if we took a big macro
look at it right it'd be a great line going up right does that make sense like on a bar graph
it looked like a hill now if we focused in really close there'd be all these dips and dives right
does that make sense yeah so what you know what ends up happening is some of the you know i tell
the kids you have to train at the weights that are appropriate for your strength level that means
you do what's on the fucking stage kids got their own paper every kid's got their own workout
i you know that's i don't know how much paper i've gone through since i've done this anyway
so you know i'll give you an example we had a kid who's uh his bench plateaued after about six or
six or eight months or something so we backed him back down and i think his at the top he did
i think 215 for four and he couldn't get his fifth rep so we backed him off a couple cycles
and he ended up after he came back around to 215 he did it for eight that's so the problem is i
think a lot of people is they they push too hard with stuff that they're not supposed to do does
that make sense and i tell the kids over and over again is on that third week i check everyone's
sets and make sure that they can hit five strong reps there if not when we back them down the kids
get frustrated from the beginning because they just want to be like their friends and
you know keep on training and stuff like that and use heavy weights but i tell them all the time it's
not about the train effect isn't about how much weight you lift it's about the it's a package deal
with everything that you do and everything your weight has to be in your volume everything has to
be appropriate for what you are at that time and as an example here's a the best example of some of
the what i believe to be some of the stuff that you're doing that you're doing that you're doing
to be some of the stuff that kind of it's i just don't think it's right is a lot of times people
say when you begin a training program then you periodize it and look at it you always do a ton
of high volume work at the beginning right and then you you taper off that's just a classic model
well when i was in college i remember just sitting around thinking about this i'm like why would i do
the most amount of work when i'm least prepared and that's at the beginning does that make sense
no it doesn't it doesn't make sense yeah and i was like you know i was just fucking baffled at this
i mean i just couldn't believe it i'm like well that's when i'm the least in shape so i asked a
guy who's now uh i'm not gonna name drop but let's just put it this way he's been on esv on a shit
load of times because of the athletes he trains it's the best way i put it so i i i happen to know him
and i asked him and he said you're exactly right he calls me jimmy you're exactly right jimmy and
so what we ended up doing is the the first three or six weeks it depends on the this pertains the
kids that already know how to lift okay this is not a true beginner is we have a very moderate volume
okay because we they're i'm not gonna put your kid in the fucking fire you know because uh it's the
same thing with running i'll give you an example this is common in college football you have the
you know off season then you have your full season and then you take a couple weeks off and then come
january they have what's known as morning conditioning okay and morning conditioning is
nothing more than beating the shit out of kids it is fucking horrible everyone pukes it's just
that's just the tradition okay well when we started running we started running very early
we started running in march and the kids were all worried i'm like trust me you're not gonna i'm not
gonna put you make you throw up when like i'm not gonna prove it to you that you're out of shape
because you're fucking out of shape you know it i know it so what's the point of throwing all that
shit at the kids making them so untired when it doesn't do you any good so we just and every
single day and i swear to god this is true the coaches come up to me is like i can't believe how
little running we do and how little running we did and the kids are in phenomenal shape phenomenal
shape the best shape the kids have ever been in and it's the same thing as i talked earlier
about my parents is we just ran earlier and we just kept things normal and it's about develop uh
uh getting interest right you're just you're just accumulating wealth um over time does that make
sense to you so all the running that we did in march and i guess the another way is you know helped
come here but we never ran them to death ever i always made sure the kids as soon as there was
a drop off we backed off a little bit you know during the session stuff like that it got to the
point and i if i told you how little we did you would be amazed i think for the first
three weeks we ran i think 1200s or something 10 100s that's it maybe 16 at the most and at their
own fucking pace i said just don't jog i want you to run what about rest periods they're on your
own just run it got to the point where we were able to run for 37 minutes straight of not just
running but of calisthenics between the running and the kids never got like throw up or just like
you know anything like that and so we just built it up over time now isn't another example is let's
say we threw a shit ton of running at the kids early on what do you think is going to happen to
strength training it's going to diminish and so everything has to be in balance so uh anyway to
make a long story short the best way to always tell the kids is we don't cram for tests around
here we studied a little bit every day okay and we a little bit every day pays off in the end so by
the time the game rolls around they feel okay they don't have to kill themselves the week prior to
get in shape we're already in shape we're good uh and you know when the kids start asking questions
like sometimes it keeps like coach the weights are really light i mean they're not supposed to be
like they're not supposed to kill you and i tell them we climb the ladder and the ladder is like
a hundred hundred runs up right my goal every day is to get you up one more run that's it
as soon as i make you puke or make you so sore you don't want to train i knock you out right off
the ladder knock down one rung off the entire ladder and it does no one any good so i call it
social media training we don't do social media training here where they you'll see a guy training
and you'll say oh shit that's you know he's fucking going crazy right you're like oh man that's
that's just a snapshot of what he did that day it's not about the 12 weeks or 16 weeks or the
20 years he's had prior uh and you know i tell i told the coach this Saturday i said i guarantee
100 that every team that we will play have trained harder on one day than we ever have
but we train longer for a longer period of time than anyone else has i guarantee it because we
started two weeks after the season and the kids were incredibly committed all the really i'm not
i don't want to take that much credit because the kids showed up and did the work all i did was sit
around you know and drink mountain dew that's all i did and the kids were on track i just heard them
you know herded them where they needed to go and i was like i'm not going to do that i'm going to
where they needed to go but the real testament is the kids just coming in and you know they went on
blind faith with me too you know here's a new guy coming in i'm just trying to help out and they
just bought in hook line and sinker some of them from the get-go some of them took a little bit of
time but uh you know the kids did a tremendous amount of work and you know as well as i do
it's easy to train hard for a week it's hard to be consistent for a year or two or three years
or whatever so you know yeah well i think you hit you hit the nail on the head another point that i
really a want to drive home regardless but beef ironically we talked about this a lot in my last
interview last week with a guy called casper vandermulen who's a kind of like a mental coach
kind of like a mental coach breathing all that kind of stuff but it's the same thing he was like
if you just do the practice for a few minutes every day after a while it's going to become habit and
it's like you're talking about you know if you go for a run i use this example with him last time
i used to go for a run and redline and then you know be miserable instead of take it down 20
and then all of a sudden i'm jogging through the the forest going wow look you know this is beautiful
and feeling every breath that's going in my lungs and feeling the sun on my face and it's only a
small percentage less but that's the difference between not wanting to run again and then wanting
it's a difference between you training the next day and so that's why like when we run like when
we do our our serious running once we get you know in fairly good shape i tell the kids no more than
80 that's it just you know i want you to run hard but don't don't strain and we had all the linemen
do six this was we didn't test i didn't have any conditioning test because i think any kind of
testing is kind of dumb it just wastes a day of training but as part of our workout uh we did
the kids did 16 100s the linemen and they finished under 16 seconds all of them did and that was just
part of their training and now that's what they call the old miami mile that's what the university
of miami i think used to do and the kids all did it and these were you know there's some 300 pound
kids in there uh that ran that and they were fine and uh that wasn't there but to understand we never
ran that it's just consistent work pays off in the end and the funny thing about consistent work is
it pays off quicker than you think you don't need to spend it it's not going to take a year
to get better you'll get quicker faster because you're able to recover better
you know and funny is at this point in time even though these are high school kids and everyone
thinks high school kids can recover from anything well that's a bunch of bullshit that is a fucking
pipe dream made up by a bunch of retards kids especially athletes man there's a lot of demands
on them and physically especially once you start playing a sport uh it's easy to coach from the
sideline you know when you're not running when you're not getting your head pounded in and your
head scrambled uh so our major thing is even within practice like i work with the coach we
uh have plans for what the amount of reps the kids get and at this point of time you know we're seven
games in it's all about fatigue management uh because that we know the kids will show up and
beat the shit out of the other team like they've proven that so we don't need to beat the shit out
of them during practice so at this point in time it becomes about restoration fatigue management and
i talk about being efficient in the weight room the coaches have to be super efficient in the
coaching so that doesn't require 30 reps of some kid right on a plate to get it so he gets it a
couple times and he understands why he does it and that that is becoming a better coach has become
the more efficient coach so now we can manage fatigue easier and i have indicators i have weight
room indicators i have on the field indicators that i look for and all the kids and after
uh we train and after we do our warm-ups and stuff i go to the coach and i tell them exactly what i
think and for the most part you know he's 100 on board yeah i just want to kind of pull that
into the the fire and police as well is if you're not going to that max you're not killing yourself
then if you like the fire station for example we're working out and then we might get a call
halfway through the workout um yeah we're gonna yeah if you're fucking in a bucket exactly exactly
but you can as you said you can get to that 80 every single shift and then you know six months
from now be so much stronger and you know not adding to that stress of the nervous system that
we already have from the sleep deprivation and the the alarm state that we're in anyway
yes and uh but uh it's it becomes it's funny because as you get better and better at this
uh it's just i'd laugh because you know i i james when i tell you that there's there's there's
people that studied probably more than i did and there's people that are way better at what i do but
my obsessive i don't know if i have some kind of obsessive behavior but this is all this in heavy
metal is all i think about that's it like i'm and so even from you know let's i i'll give you an
example i read some guys said hey i've been doing this for five years you know come contact me for
training and i'm not downplaying this so just understand this i guess i am a little bit i'm
not going to name names and i was like when i did this for five years i guarantee within those five
years and i did more work than this guy did as far as in the weight room and obsessive studying
okay i was only 18 i didn't know shit when i was 18 now okay does that make sense because i'm like
god i thank god i'm not 18 year old jim trying to train these kids because i'd be a fucking
nightmare now every time that i like it took me two years to write the forever book because of
all the research and all the little stupid shit i had to figure out and it's just very
but every time i got in it i think there's maybe a two or three or gap between my last book
every time i write something i just give it all i just throw it up all in the paper hopefully
you know i always think well where am i going to go from here and i always get a little nervous
and then before you know it if you just stick with uh how do i put this if you just work and
process and just keep doing and trying to evolve the the changes that happen to you i'm not talking
about physical change i'm talking about thinking about stuff is absolutely remarkable because i'm
farther along now than i was when the book was released as far as understanding stuff and it
just is awesome process of never it's it's knowing it's uh believing in something and then evolving
within that context and uh so i don't know how many people will listen to this that are actually in
the industry but uh i don't i don't know what your target demographic is yeah it's it's pretty uh
pretty broad spectrum now so we have everything from you know fire and police all the way through
to trainers and yogis and all kinds of different people so yeah it's it's important that people
understand that uh it's the process of trying to figure out problems that's the most important
and now don't get caught up in trying i don't know how to put this the right way it's if you
do the work things will evolve naturally i guess the best way to say it and you'll you'll become
better and it's the more that i get into this and you start understanding stuff a little bit
better you realize like holy shit was i wrong about this or my god things haven't changed in
100 years you know there's a book i have it somewhere on my library here written by george
hackenschmidt who the hack squad was named after you know the original barbell behind the back
deadlift yep and i think it was written like in the early 1900s like 1912 if you read that book
you will fucking laugh your ass off because 99 percent of what he's saying still holds true today
like everything like if you only had that book to go by you'd be fucking awesome well that's what i
found that's why i did this you know started this whole thing was was deconstructing you know as
as you and i are pretty much the same age when we were young weight training you know unless you
were had a mentor that was open-minded like yours weight training was going into the the gym with
all the machines and doing your peck deck and your preacher curls and then your nutrition was
old you know fat as a devil so you want to have boat loads of pasta you know and then you kind of
get to this point now and all those fellow 40 year olds are on meds for god knows what and morbidly
obese and you're like okay this clearly wasn't the right advice because none of this stuff's working
and as a paramedic i you know stick tubes down people's throats and see that none of this stuff
works so when it comes back to the basics kind of like this conversation we're having right now you
realize that you know really picking something up putting it down carrying it dragging it pushing it
eating things out of the ground the way it grew it's pretty pretty basic when you when you take a
step back and i think you have to allow yourself to put your hands up and say all right you got me
i was fooled yeah but it's okay to you know own that mistake and then and then look for you know
what have you learned and what do you think are the right things now in 2017 yeah it's it's almost
it's almost like uh the best way i try and kind of look about it is we kind of know what works
we just don't know the exact ingredients all the time and now there's always there's always going
to be big breakthroughs coming here and there uh but i always you know when i was a kid uh our
offensive line coach when i was in high school was a huge nebraska huskers fan now i don't know if
you know anything about american football but that's where strength training for sports started
outside of track and field track and field were squatting benching deadlifting in the 50s okay
they were 40 years ahead of everyone else with training was the shot and discus guys in in
america and overseas but anyway the the birth of strength and conditioning as we know it for
athletes birthed itself at nebraska with boyd epley and that's an awesome story i'm not going to get
into it but if anyone's interested read up on boyd epley and so anyway uh mr golden jim golden
was his name uh he's an offensive line coach at wheeling high school when i was there he was a
huge nebraska fan he'd always go to the nebrad the nebraska huskers would have a big football camp
for high school coaches and stuff and he would go there and learn stuff and he got hold of an old
nebraska huskers uh husker powers tape and it was boyd epley training his athletes and uh showing
what they did and why they did and stuff like that and this i got this when i was a freshman
or sophomore in high school now what's funny is their main lifts back in the day were the bench
the squat and the hand clean and then they would fill it in with accessories now if you don't
really i don't know how much you know about nebraska football nebraska football in the 80s and 90s
pretty much steamrolled everyone i mean everyone and over the years uh things got a little more
complicated with strength training right and i think the rationale was for years the strength
coach was kind of known as the dummy what did he know i think over the years the profession
tried to make themselves smarter than they were or sound smarter or you know include all these
fancy new things because make that prove to the 80s and the coaches that they were onto something
different but back in the day nebraska trained very basic they ran they lifted heavy weights
and they got bigger muscles and you know they always stretched and did agility work
and those teams back in the 80s and 90s were fucking tanks everyone was a tank and you know
there's a million reasons why i'm sure other than just strength training but not millions but there's
probably other reasons why but if you look back at those old tapes man those guys just got strong
and they were very fast and explosive and they weren't doing anything revolutionary as far as
we know today back then it was and uh you know things have obviously changed in nebraska over
years it's unfortunate but uh you know i talked to dave tate about this one time it's like you know
maybe you have to evolve but don't evolve when you don't change for the sake of change i guess
is the best way to put it because sometimes the same things you know hold true uh now the game
has changed a little bit however uh you still need to be big you still need to be fast you still need
to be strong you still need to be agile you know powerful stuff like that and i think sometimes
we we evolve or change for the sake of it um and you see it in this profession all the time and
it's unfortunate um but uh that's one thing i've always tried to you know i have always keep the
principles in mind and i always have to keep an anchor around my waist to say is this really
what's needed i mean do we really like i you know i had uh when i first started helping out the kid
started helping out the kids would ask me all these questions and i said well can you do 20 chin-ups
like no i'm like why the fuck do you need to do this then and they get all depressed i'm like can
you run a six minute mile no well then why do you need to do this can you squat uh perfectly 400
pounds no well then what do you see what i'm saying and uh even with uh when i first started
you know the head coach would ask me questions some stuff i'm like dude the kids can't do push-ups
don't worry about it you know we have to you know we got to have some kind of basic plan and uh to
get these kids you know just in general shape and i think i'm not don't take that always literally
but the fact is sometimes you gotta back up a little bit and uh understand that uh you know
let's say i have a firefighter come in who can't uh i've had this happen they can't even do a full
squat with their body weight like what do you really need them to do you know uh do you need
some fancy program and they just need some basic work yeah exactly and you certainly don't want to
be adding load if they can't even move with their own body weight that doesn't need this fancy
program either just get them doing some calisthenics and get them moving every day and uh we see with
eighth graders all the time i mean the problem with eighth graders is uh you know whether about
13 or 14 years old is the discrepancy between one and another guy is gonna be huge we got kids who
could lift 400 pounds uh three you know 350 400 pounds is as eighth graders just walking really
yeah and then we have kids who literally can't pick up a trap bar and that's and that's a huge
difference you know yeah exactly especially on the field one's gonna kill one guy's just like
playing varsity and just knocking guys over the other guy's like his pants don't even go around
them you know they're supposed to be tight and they're they're hanging off like clown pants
that sounds like me when i was a kid so uh that really forced me to understand fitness uh at a
more basic level is because you know for years and years you're working with uh higher tier so to
speak athletes or people who have backgrounds and you forget like holy shit uh you know while it's
nice to be able to squat these kids these kids you know we can't do it kids can't do a push-up
like what do you expect them to do you know yeah yeah and we see that a lot in in the crossfit gym
you know people walk through and again the tendency is and our gym has again evolved very very well
to the point now where people are very um uh cognizant of of not adding load and getting
people to really scale movements but you know they they can't do a good air squat and they're
wanting to learn a snatch okay well we need we need to just you know you're gonna hurt yourself
i mean this is very very simply put if you have that weight all the way from your center of gravity
you're gonna snap in too so why don't we work on just you know putting your butt down by your heels
first and then we'll work on on adding load once you get that down you know the big things i get
kids to do is body weight movements once they can do some of that very basic bodyweight stuff and
learn how to jump and land um and then we start with the body weight squats and dumbbell squats
and stuff like that then the changes if you're patient enough for six weeks and really just
pound the the basics home uh with the sophomores now with when they were freshmen last year for
six weeks all we did was dumbbell squats and push-ups forever and the kids were getting
frustrated i'm like wow too bad you know suck it up kids and now they are they are absolute machines
could be trained right through the season uh because they weren't really playing much obviously
they're freshmen absolutely now i wanted to just touch on one thing about five through five three
one and then and then you know get on with some wrap-up questions so we can let you go you've been
extremely generous with your time um but an area that i've really loved about the five three one is
i mean the lifts are great and i'm noticing you know the exact uh increase that i should but the
accessory work is forcing me weekly to do strict movements and i'm changing it up a little bit i'm
doing the the the pull-ups and dips for example i'm doing on gymnastic rings and and just uh giving
myself some variety but i'm finding that that is is you know making a huge difference in my body
even if i wasn't doing the actual main lift that was programmed as well so um you know what was the
the the thinking behind that did you see that that was lacking in those movements and it was
important to add the accessory work as well uh you mean the assistance work uh sorry yes the
assistance work well the the big thing that uh changed uh was one i needed a way to quantify it
okay because i'll give an example if you're doing boring but big which is the main lift
and then you do uh five sets of ten with that same main lift after the main work does that make sense
okay now if you're doing that you can't do the same assistance as if you just did the main work
in a pr set uh because you did so much supplemental volume so we needed something to uh something has
to give because we do more volume with the main work now we have to do less assistance okay
but i needed a way to quantify all that so that took a lot a lot of time and so what ended up
so what ended up that was just me going through the process of thinking but the big thing was if
you did for example boring but big nine times out of ten you're going to get much bigger
and stronger especially for you know a beginner or intermediate because it's just your there's a lot
of work okay a lot of squats a lot of deadlifts a lot of benches a lot of presses um and what ended
up happening was you start working with kids and younger population and you realize it'd be great
to look you know squat all this stuff but they have no muscle mass uh and that's where a lot of
the assistance work came in was uh was to develop muscle mass and uh so it became a big driving
force you know i always you know we talk about uh building armor for the football players you know
the thing is i always say we athlete the lower and body build the upper uh because the kids lack so
much muscle mass in their upper body and the muscle mass generally has to be put on before we gain
strength um now there's always a few guys out there who you know 160 pounds and bench 400 and
people use them as examples but for the most part if you're gonna have a strong upper body you're
gonna have a big upper body as far as muscular wise okay so i needed to find a way to to instead
of saying i'll just do some assistance work and here's some ideas to say well when you do this
type of main lift and supplemental work then you have to do this and uh it ended up you know for
years and years i worked with people that were generally fairly strong and then you start working
with people who aren't strong and big and you realize holy shit like things have to change a
little bit so that just became a process of me and broadening my scope and working with different
people uh you know if all you do is hang around people who who can do push-ups till they're blue
in the face uh you know you're training ideas and perspective change then you come with a kid who
can't even fucking jump on a 16 inch box that's a whole nother realm of training and then you
realize that there's a huge amount of a population that can't do some basic stuff like that
and uh so that just became that kind of came as far i mean i've always been fans of you know the
the dips and the chin ups and the rows and stuff like that but understanding how to put them into
a total training package rather than just say do some was really just a result of one me
working with different people and b just becoming better at programming and understanding the
program and understanding the give and take you do a lot of this you do a little this
you do a little less of this you can do more of that just i'm making hand motions by the way
which if there was a video component yeah it would really it's really bad fucking radio right now
all right well we're going to transition to a few uh short questions then um so the first one i know
you uh you mentioned that you were in a band so what is the name of your band oh uh it is called
locust whip which i don't even know what it fucking means we just kind of uh star you know
chose a name and uh i actually talked to the drummer yesterday and when i as a kid i played
a bunch of concerts you know one of my old band you know they weren't we weren't very good but
you know as things changed over the years like we used to have battled the bands uh twice a year
at school we could play this we could play in our uh during lunch periods we would get those lunch
periods off uh several a couple times and play for the school uh we'd have talent contests there are
different communities uh part of our old community would have you know at the jewish community center
they'd have the battle of the bands stuff like that uh but i haven't played live in forever so
we want to play one live show in 2018 i think it'd be awesome uh so um you know that's one of my
bucket list things is to because i in a live setting i would play guitar and sing
uh on the record stuff that we do we record a bunch of stuff i do the
the uh you know vocals guitar and bass and i do all the sound effects noises and stuff that we
put in to add ambiance so to speak uh so i think i've always played drums in my other my other
teenage band which again we weren't terribly good uh so to be up front and uh to sing while i play
guitar is going to be a totally different experience so i'm excited you know the the
the thing that you know as you get older uh you get more mature and stuff like that but i still
think you need that teenage drive that you had and i think i've kind of had that uh with lifting and
music and uh i still have that uh that love of just doing stuff you know i have never lost that
as i've gotten older i'm still a kid on some things at heart so we have a couple uh we released a new
song i don't know maybe a month ago we've got uh three new songs i think we recorded that i have to
dub all the other you know the vocals and stuff like that we already recorded and uh it's just a
you know obviously uh we're you know we're not going to uh make any money but it's something i
love to do and uh you know i you know it's funny people always say follow your passion
right and the problem is is sometimes my passion doesn't mean talent i could never get money off
music but that doesn't mean i can't enjoy it uh warts and all so uh you know the other thing is
i don't know if this makes sense i i always hated being a critic i think being a critic is the
fucking pussiest job in the world i really do i think uh just standing on the sidelines i'd rather
uh someone go out and do something and and not be very good but at least they did it and i think
that takes tremendous amount of balls uh to do it so you know i'm a big fan of music and i've
listened to a shit ton of music uh every day i'm always surrounded by music and you know it's easy
for a band now you hear a band play like ah these guys suck it's like well you know what did you do
like where's your band and uh i just didn't i don't think that's fair um you know uh so i just
taught myself how to do some of this stuff and i just love it and uh i don't do it for anyone
but myself and the drummer i work with who's amazing joey uh it's just something to do you
know and uh i don't i don't want to lose that part of me and i can't because it's just i go
fucking crazy you know well i guess like it's the same thing that you said with your parents you
know i mean if you wake up every day and you want to play and you want to you know fight and you
want to play music and you know go do handstands or whatever the hell it is then that's still that
trial and you're probably still going to be doing it you know well into your 80s and 90s i mean uh
yeah the rolling stones are still doing it right god they gotta be holy shit but i sure i saw wires
behind one of their heads the other day though i don't think they i think they've been uh
reanimated well i don't know how uh anyone can do any more drugs because uh i think keith richards
took them all i mean that guy yeah he's like lemmy for motorhead like how is there any meth left over
yeah well the ozzy osborne yeah holy shit i mean those guys they have a their biology is so insane
you know some people take a snort of coke and they die you know these guys
just fucking mainline everything and just like uh we'll see what happens so yeah that was funny i
saw ozzy osborne in japan uh god was it 2001 and it was right when he was being treated for you know
i guess the effect yeah well they had him uber over medicated and i know never forget he played
didn't even make it now i think he played like 54 minutes or something and at the end he goes
all right thanks for coming and make sure you drive home safely and i'm like that's the queen
of i mean the king of darkness right there telling us the driving safety tips you know what's even
that's when you know it cracks me up because when i was a kid ozzy osborne was the devil
you know black sabbath and member ozzy took the bite off the bat and everyone hated him he was
the worst thing ever and then you go to any major sporting event and everyone plays crazy training
iron man and oh what a great guy you know how awesome and it's just so funny over the years
you see the you know same with elvis elvis was the most hated man alive uh in the 50s and stuff in
60s and then uh nowadays he's like a national treasure you know he's just faces on a fucking
stamp uh you can get him to marry you in vegas yeah yeah so like whatever uh i don't know even
one of the kids came up to me yesterday is that may i listen to crazy train every single day like
man that would have gotten you uh sent to the principal's office uh 30 years ago yeah that's
crazy because again it's just a song i mean his little you know his dramatization of things were
a little extreme but compared to the stuff you see now compared to the bloody video games now it's
absolutely changed yeah yep so yeah all right so just quickly is your music available online
can people find it on youtube yeah yeah we do uh just upload it to youtube and stuff i think
we're gonna release you know i know this shows my age i want to release a cd because i'm a
i buy everything still physical i think it's an i'd like to have a physical copy with artwork
and lyrics and stuff like that i know it shows my age but i buy records and cds still to this day
uh and even if we just do a short run of 250 cds uh that's something we want to do and uh we
actually went into the studio last year and recorded i think four songs three which i think we're
going to use and then i have a 12 track in my basement with mics and stuff that we record
everything else down here and it doesn't sound pretty but our music isn't pretty so we don't need
you know some fancy computer fucking program we record everything live we don't you know do any uh
i mean i dub dub the bass over everything in the vocals but i mean everything is from start to
finish us playing live which you know to the people that don't understand most people bands
play in snippets and then they just piece everything together they just punch in so uh we play everything
so sometimes we may have to play a song eight fucking times which is very frustrating especially
when the song's like seven minutes long uh or you know you know gosh screw it up on six minutes
and 50 seconds yeah well if you think about like the first black sabbath album was recorded
everyone live except for the uh i think they dubbed the vocals and dubbed the guitar solos but
everything else was live and they recorded it in like two days and it still stands up today and uh
and so you know i like the warts and uh you know like oh he kind of screwed up here it's like well
yeah that's how it goes sometimes people fuck up it's a big deal like not every drum hit and string
needs to be perfect and i don't think it should be you know the music i like should be ugly and
i'm not looking for perfection absolutely all right so another quick question um if is there
a book that you recommend to people doesn't have to be about what we talked about today but
oh boy uh i would say the by far the best thing i read is an author named james elroy who uh he
wrote the book la confidential which was released into a movie uh i don't know maybe 15 years ago
or something uh it was a big time hollywood movie but his writings are by far the he is like every
even though he writes uh prose it's like every line is pure poetry it's best writer i've ever
seen in my life in fact i haven't even read all his books i've got a couple books i've saved so
i don't waste them i don't want to blow my load so to speak so uh if you could read one author i
would recommend james elroy i mean it is just uh every line is like a chainsaw to the to the
stomach it's just beautiful poetic hard nose uh noir fiction i guess the best way to say it
and uh you know i'm not a big fan of big cities i don't like new york or la or chicago or anything
like that but it's all most of his stuff takes place in like the 50s and 60s in la and uh it's
got that kind of uh you know guys wearing suits you know being uh you know one's ever a good guy
or bad guy everyone's just kind of in the gray area you know and uh it's just really fun stuff so
uh it's a good you know i recommend you know i get asked a lot like you know what do you read and
stuff and i said you should read whatever you want to read i don't think it's terribly important
what you read it's more that you read because i think everything in our life right now is being
just shoved down our throats we never have to think and with reading you have to formulate the
story and the the images in your head that's a huge difference between being just uh sitting on
the tv you know watching tv where you really have to do no work yeah yeah i saw my son was exactly
the same thing and like you sit and watch a movie that you don't have to imagine even what the
characters look like because it's already been cast but when you sit down and you know out and
wherever you are and you open a book you have to imagine every single part and it's it is and
people to argue oh well if you look at someone reading a book they got the same facial expressions
like nobody haven't their brain is working so much more yeah you put on a uh you know one of those
uh electrode things that uh you know i don't know the brain that's got to be yeah it's got to be
insane and it's always fun too when you read a book and you see the movie like that's not what
he fucking looks like are you kidding me especially when they make it badly have you ever read a book
the beach by uh alex scarland i think the author's name was yes and uh they made it with decaprio
they butchered that book butchered it yeah not every book uh even la confidential even though
it was a tremendous movie and that they had great actors you know you can't not everything translates
uh from print to screen and i get it because you you know i talked to my wife the other day about
this is you know because of reality tv i think that just to preface this everything in the world
is like uh succumbs to nature and nature always seeks one thing and that's balance or homeostasis
does that make sense yes for example when we had the high carbs in the 80s what was the what was
the reaction low fat well the reaction was after the high carbs was the acons oh you mean diabetes
and well the the the reaction to that was no carbs fucking carbs are the devil right oh i see what
you're saying everything wants to balance itself out and with the advent of reality tv which is
the lowest form of fucking shit i've ever seen in my life is now and it drove out most you know uh
uh most tv now the the response was now we have epic storytelling in the you know breaking bad
dexter uh the shield um you know all these different shows right so you basically have
a backlash against all these shit tv shows with some of the best tv in the world so that makes
absolutely yeah that makes so much sense because at one point you know even the bloody uh discovery
channel and nat geo from the only place you could learn to you know watch watching a bunch of people
going in storage units what the hell happened but what ends up happening was really funny i talked
to my wife about this yesterday is how limited a 90 minute or two hour movie is to tell a story
when now you have seven seasons of walter white and jesse and breaking bad and you develop their
characters and there's so much richer and forward it's amazing and then you were like you watch a
movie it's like well it's only 90 minutes like we're like i'm gonna get fucking done in 90 minutes
yeah and especially when they remake the damn movies over and over again you know i mean
blade runner's coming out yeah i saw it uh you know it's like when they remade ghostbusters
ghostbusters to me is probably one of the greatest movies ever made because it still holds up
in 2017 as it did i think in 1984 i saw that movie in the theaters uh ghostbusters i just i think it's
still fucking funnier than shit i think the performances are great and they it's one thing
to make a movie that's complete shit you know and then you remake ghostbusters like why would you
make one of the greatest funniest movies ever made with you know some of the three of the smartest
artists comedians you know who are just perfect for their roles uh you know and uh it's got
obviously money has something to do with it but you like are you that limited on ideas you know
when you got guys and i think that most of the great writers went to these serialized tvs uh shows
like breaking bad and dexter and stuff like that uh because they're able to tell the real good
stories rather than just getting you know shit shut down your throat for 90 minutes of visual
effects and crap like that so yeah well it seems like some of the best movies now are the ones
based on true stories as well there's one called the only the brave that's coming out and it's about
the the granite mountain hot shots they were the the 19 firemen that were killed uh in a forest fire
but it's not just about that one event it's about their whole the whole uh evolution of the crew and
you know the impact they made on their community you know that's a that's a story that's amazing
and you can tell it pretty well in 90 minutes um and i think that we're seeing more of those come
out now because it's a story people actually want to hear yeah rather than uh just uh you know it's
i remember my oldest son wanted to see transformers one of the transformers movies and i don't know if
i've ever been more bored in my life i was the other day i hated it i had no idea what was going
on because i didn't care and uh it's just this you know it's like uh it's like a girl with like
fake tits and fake lips and all this makeup on it's like yeah but once you kind of remove the
shit then what do we have left we have nothing and uh but you know i'm not you know people want to
watch it that's they're right i don't care i'm not uh i'm just glad that there's not you know
there's other stuff i can choose from so yeah all right well speaking of that um because my next
question is going to be that anyway so is there a movie or documentary that you do recommend uh
documentaries get a little weird now right because they're always got some weird political stance
and you can frame anything you want so i generally stay away from that stuff uh mostly
because i don't care about the issue they talk about i'm like i don't care like it sounds kind
of apathetic in a way but it's not it's just i know the guy's got an agenda uh like michael
moore who's just the turd of the world and uh anyway uh but i don't know like i i would recommend
you know obviously the the basic tv shows that everyone you know the like i said before the
breaking bads the dexter dexter's there's a i think it's belgium there's a show called witnesses
and that's the english translation which was fucking out of this world it's since you know
it's subtitled but it was just an amazing kind of uh they call it like i guess nordic noir
um you have uh i think you can really what is it what is it i watched uh harland corbyn's the five
i think that's his name uh the other day um so i'm more and then i guess the other the movie that i
would tell or the series of movies i tell everyone to watch are the rift tracks movies now rift tracks
started out years ago as mystery science theater 3000 which was on comedy central and uh all it is
i'll now mystery science is a little different than rift tracks but you'll get the point is they
would watch these one two robots you know obviously fake robots really and one guy would sit in the
movie theater and you'd see their their silhouettes and they'd watch the worst movies they could find
and just rip them apart and the commentary is absolutely hilarious it's edgy it's political
it's there are all kinds of different literary references that you have to kind of look up
sometimes and then uh that went on the sci-fi channel for a number of years and then it got
taken off you know they ran it ran its course and then the the originators of that not the
originators but some of the guys from that mystery science theater 3000 now do rift tracks and you
can get them on i think amazon prime or something and you can actually download them from your from
their site and you watch a movie and they comment with you you know comment on the the stuff that's
going on and is absolutely priceless if i had to go to a movie you know go to a desert island that's
all i would watch is rift tracks is the okay i'm at the yeah if you have amazon prime they do uh
some live shows that they they they did you know they did uh they do popular movies they do really
bad movies but some of the stuff is absolutely priceless like i sat down with my dad one day
and i just put one on and he's not prone to laughing or just just kind of the same stoic
face all the time and i just hear him belly laughing like holy cow what is this you know
so i'm a big fan i was when i was a kid i loved mystery science due to 3000 i used to tape them
all the time that shows my age right i use a vhs tape and press record same age as me like i said
so yeah so uh but i love rift tracks that's one of my favorite things now there's a new mystery
science theater that came out on netflix and it's fucking horrible okay i got through 20 minutes of
it and the new incantation is really not that good it doesn't have the same kind of uh flair
as the original so i'm just glad the original guys are still doing it not the the original
original guy's not doing it but whatever that's that's just talking points right now so yeah all
right so we'll rift tracks i would definitely check that out um uh okay one of my last questions if
is there a guest that you would recommend to come on a show like this to talk to the first responders
oh boy uh boy
i guess if you can get brad arnett uh brad he is uh used to be the strength coach at the university
of minnesota and then he moved to the university of arizona he was not there at arizona when i was
there but i met him after i had got done playing there if that makes sense and uh brad is now runs
his own private facility in wisconsin and i think he's got two locations now it's a-r-n-e-t-t uh he's
he's one of those guys that keeps things in perspective and he's always looking for different
things i guess best way to say it but he trains a shit ton of people uh from all age ranges and
i'm talking from you know junior high all the way up to the best players in the nfl that have been
there for since they've been freshmen let's put it that way the next so since they've been kids
they've gone to him so it's not like he's just hopped on to an nfl guy and and uh you know
reap the rewards of the you know the natural talent i guess that's what i say so uh but brad
is kind of like the uh the guy to go as far as i'm concerned and the thing is he doesn't have he
doesn't you know preach from the rafters he doesn't have a huge i don't think any social media presence
if at all and keeps to himself but he is insanely knowledgeable about everything
and he's just a good dude and that's you know in this industry the more that you're in it
you know there's a lot of fly-by-night guys and then there's a lot of guys who are kind of assholes
and brad has always been great to me and he's always uh i don't know how to put this uh he's
been in the trenches for a long time and he's not afraid of saying what's true and not afraid of
calling out the bullshit either all right well thank you for that i will definitely yeah put
him on the list there um all right one final question before uh we just talk about where to
find you in the books um what do you do to decompress when you're not in the gym or coaching
uh well there's obviously the music thing and uh love to run on my motorcycle i love that even
i still ride even though i got smashed uh i just like spending time with my wife and my kids
that's really uh besides the music stuff you know i'd like to be involved and i like to
you know it's just a matter of listening and and uh trying to be a good dad a good
uh friend and husband to my wife stuff like that uh i like being with my friends i don't have like
you probably you know you have people that you know and then you have like your core group of friends
and uh i just like being with them and what's funny is i'm a very anti-social private person
and all my friends respect that and they understand that and uh that's when you know one of my best
friends is matt rhodes who was at elite fts i think he's still there but he's a strength coach at uh
moorhead state i we hang out a lot because he lives fairly close you know a couple hours away
and uh he's friends with a guy whatever i'm not gonna and he's like man uh i think you'd really
get along with him jim he said because uh you guys are exactly alike i'm like well if he's like me
that he'll have no problem never meeting me
but uh i'd listen i love sharing my time in my my life with people that i love and that's i just
like having experiences even if it's just sitting around playing legos or running around the
backyard or uh you know playing board games with my wife it's uh just trying to enjoy my time
because you never know you know my wife and i have endured some pretty shitty times together
and it makes me appreciate all the little stuff and uh like when i got hit on my motorcycle my
wife was i think six or seven months pregnant imagine getting that fucking phone call from the
hospital god no like you're you know your husband almost died today you know you have to come out
and get him she's like oh shit uh so but you know it's just one of the many things that happen
they just realize that there's more to all this than uh making money and uh uh you know
being famous or whatever else you know i don't have here's the best way to say i have no
issues with uh my mortality i don't want to die but i don't have this strange urge to keep things
living on in my name because i understand that i'm just one tiny drop in this ocean so with that in
mind i just try to enjoy the time that i do have and uh because it's gonna be all go away real
quick and uh so i just uh i don't know let's put it this way when i laid i was laying in the ditch
after that i got hit by the car and i was i thought i had was paralyzed uh everything fucking hurt i
thought i was gonna die and uh at no point did i think i wish i would have done work more and done
this all i could think about was oh my fucking wife my kids my friends i just want to hang out
with them and you know so there's no reason to be sad about it i just want to be happy and uh
we don't do anything grand we don't go on these big trips ever we just kind of you know we live
our lives we have our business and we try to enjoy things as much as possible so uh you know
it could be could it could be as simple as uh us watching a tv show and just laughing or doing our
own rift tracks thing and stuff like that so there you go yeah i love that i love that answer and
that's something that i totally subscribe to as well that you can have so much joy in just
you know watching watching your child playing with a toy and they don't even realize you're
watching them but you're there you know in peace saying if i died right now i'd be happy yeah and
uh you know i will say you know i remember at my very first apartment when i was 19 years old i got
my very first apartment i remember thinking you know if i could work from home and write and do
stuff with train i'd be happy that's the ultimate goal it took a long time to get there but if you
could at 19 tell what kind of life tell myself back then what kind of life i had i couldn't even
imagine how awesome it is so uh now granted to be happy requires a shit ton of effort let's put that
away uh you don't get happy without fucking being miserable for a long time and working
and that's like you know everyone says be happy and enjoy yourself well the way to do that is
suffering for you know a lot of time uh you know people that come on this industry you know i tell
them you know for three years i made eight hundred dollars a month it was fucking miserable like that's
miserable fucking life you know and i just kept going and kept going and then when the opportunity
came i was prepared uh the best i used to tell people this when i first met dave he was you know
elite fts was not what it is today but it was still pretty big and uh he asked me because he knew i
had an english background he said do you have any articles that i could put up i had written
articles for years on my own preparing for that i had stockade of articles for him and uh that's
what you call knowing the opportunities there and they're prepping for it so it's amazing how the
opportunities always come to those who are prepared right so exactly isn't there a quote about that
like yeah opportunity favors the prepared yeah so uh you know there's an old saying that the master
will reveal itself when the student is ready and uh you have to be you have to take it upon
yourself to do everything possible to be uh to be ready for that opportunity and that happened to me
literally in football that's how i got on the field was being completely and uh insanely prepared
for something uh that i had no idea until about two minutes before uh before my big chance and i was
like holy shit so all those years of training everything paid off in that one little moment
and that's what's got me on the field for three years was that one stupid fucking moment that i
could have you know just sloughed off or and then i could have bitched the rest of my life about
not having the opportunity to play football but that was it so yeah awesome all right well i
another another opportunity or you know achievement that we've done today is this is by far the
longest interview i've had on this podcast so far so which is it was just amazing because i was about
to you know when we started i'm like okay we're going to talk about strength training and and then
we've come over you know so many different uh subjects from you know music and and serving
your community and it's been a amazing conversation so i've really really enjoyed it so i hope it's
not too long man i apologize i get a little oh no no there's there's no such thing as too long no
i'm always you know wary of that's what my wife says hello so so the closing one then is uh because
i want to make sure that that we really underline this whole thing so where can people find the
books um you know the the websites all the the arenas that you uh you have out there the uh the
home website is www.i think uh jimwinder.com or just jimwinder.com you'll find it um you just type
my name into google it'll be the first link i believe uh most of the books with uh exception
of the last one are on amazon most of the books with the exception of the last one are on kindle
too i'm on facebook i have you know my regular jimwinder page and i have the uh my business page
that's the big one i'm on instagram i don't i post maybe once every two weeks or something i don't
know how people post every day i'm not that exciting and i try not to be anyone who i'm not
you know uh so uh at least when i put something up i try to make it something quality uh we update
the blog maybe once or twice a week depending on you know time and stuff like that we have a newsletter
that goes out but we maybe do one a month we don't uh drown people out with that stuff i don't think
that's necessary and i think it's annoying and we i just try to give as much as i can uh especially
you know as i get a little bit older you know i'm not putting up any videos of me squatting 900
pounds or anything like that i just that's not who i am right now and uh so i just try to help out and
hopefully at all levels you can learn something that's the main goal is to keep on passing the
knowledge on so brilliant well i mean you're helping the kids that you're coaching you're
helping a random british guy that moved to america and became a fireman so your work is out there
helping all kinds of people and uh now through this podcast as well you know you're reaching
out to all the people are listening which is listened to in about 200 countries now so you
may be you know reaching people in napalm or you know that's cool kazakhstan wherever so it's
pretty cool well glad to help man thank you for the opportunity to do this i really appreciate it
i'm too lazy to have my own podcast i don't know what to talk about but thank you for having me
and best of luck and stay safe stay fit stay happy and enjoy and i hope i hope this whole podcast
business thing takes off man i hope it keeps on going for you well i appreciate it let me know
when you finally decide the date that you're gonna do the uh the live show and i'll share
on my media too okay thank you very much