S3:E1 - Sebastian Oreb Q&A on the Wolfs Den with Mark Ottobre

Welcome to the Wolf's Den. My name is Mark Ottobre. In this episode, we are going to be doing Q&A with Australian strength coach and the world's best strength coach, Sebastian Oreb. And we've even got Sebastian Oreb cookies, and also not just that, Wolfpack cookies as well. So the crowd's ready to go. They've got their Sebastian heads ready. So kicking us off with the questions is young James Kelly.

Like Mark mentioned earlier, you've taken out the 110 kilo division. In powerlifting. Is there any other milestones you've set for yourself that you'd like to take out before it comes to an end? There's definitely milestones. They're not necessarily records, but there's numbers that have been set for me, you know, by the Lillie Bridges, and that was to squat 400 kilograms. That's probably my first goal that I believe is amazing, and I also believe is achievable. Actually, I'm lying. There is another goal. The world record for the log press. Is 187 kilograms. I know I'm quite far off that, but I got to Australian record with 8 weeks of training it, and that was 161 kilograms. So I guess before I'm done with training altogether, yeah, I think it would be pretty cool to hold a world record. And that's probably the exercise that I believe that I'm closest to gaining a world record in, so That'd be cool. And it's a cool lift as well, the log press, even though it's not my sport, which is even cooler. Which actually, I'm gonna go off on a tangent now, this is the reason why I did it. It's testament to my training method. People ask what my favorite exercise to build pushing strength, you know, whether it's a punch or whatever it is, and I say the bench press. The exercise that allows you to shift the heaviest loads will ultimately make you stronger. So this is an exercise that I train a lot of, it's the bench press. You know, just to show how much carryover it had to other angles where you're not arching, you're not cheating, you're not using wide grip or any levers or anything like that. I went and got an Australian log press record, as I said, 8 weeks of training the event. So, you know, bench press. Hello, Seb. Obviously everything's about training at the moment, but I guess my question is, uh, with your team and what you've built and everything you've got, what's next for you? I guess I like to think, I like to know what's next as well, you know, like with what I had, it just kept on getting better, my team just keeps on getting better, you know, I was able to, it's like people say, what, how did Thor Bjornsson come to you? And it's like, I don't know, like a lot of people come to me because of Thor, But Thor came to me, not because of Thor, Thor saw something in me that he liked. But now currently, I've achieved a lot of great things with powerlifting. I've achieved a lot of great things with strongman, even other sports, NRL, you know, UFC, even fitness modeling, which is purely aesthetic focused. So I've got a lot of diversity with the athletes that I coach. It's hard to say, as unprofessional as this sounds, I've never planned for any of this. Something that, you know, a lot of successful people say is, "If you fail to plan, you're planning to fail." I couldn't have planned for what I've done if I tried. It would have been absolutely the worst, the last thing that I would have thought would have happened. You know, the people that I've had the opportunity to work with and train with. And I just think if I continue to remain active, as active as I am, more opportunities like this are going to present themselves. I know already I'm very close with a lot of the high-level strongmen in the world, and that is largely, you know, it's only thanks to Hafthor Bjornsson, you know, that I speak to and help and work with a lot of, you know, the top 20 World's Strongest Man competitors in the world. You know, these are huge names. Unfortunately, sports like that aren't as famous as, say, tennis, F1, boxing, UFC. You know, the strength sports, unfortunately they don't get the credit that they deserve. I guess, you know, money talks and people in the world don't want to put the money towards it, unfortunately. Hopefully that changes. But yeah, I could not tell you, to be honest with you. I can't, I couldn't have planned for what I've achieved so far. And all I know is I'm just going to continue to remain active as a coach and as an athlete. And I'm sure more will come my way. Second question for you. You've created all these successful systems, um, and obviously for a lot of us we work with gen pop and we do body composition. What type of, like, obviously nutrition plays a role in that. Where do you, like, where's your nutrition system? And so we work with nutritionists, um, we had a team dietitian, and I'll always have someone that I'm aligned with. It's not my expertise. A lot of people You know, when I started my business, they basically said, "Well, when you're developing your business," I listed all of my services, and it was hugely based around strength. Building muscle was also something that I'm good with, rehabilitation. And someone said to me, "You need to have fat loss in there, otherwise you're gonna lose a big portion of the market." And I thought, that's like, I kind of don't really care so much for fat loss. You know, I hate nutrition. Not because I don't understand it. I just hate what's associated with, I guess, the different methodologies that are going around and how they're all poo-pooed and the arguments that are associated with it around the world. You know, if you're a clean eater, you're a moron. If you count your calories, you're a moron. There's all of these authorities that have put their foot down and said, you know, if you don't follow my method, 'You suck,' kind of thing. And I just thought, you know what, you guys keep your nutrition, and I'm going to stick with what I know works, and that is strength gains and what I'm good at. So basically, I've specialized. So when it comes to nutrition, I absolutely understand its importance, and I follow a very strict nutrition plan currently. But I don't sell the product, I don't sell the service, and if you came to me to work on my team, I would line you up with a nutritionist that I believed you would work well with. But I absolutely value its importance. Um, hey, with your system for the female athlete, I've had a lot of success with it, I really like it. How did you come up with that, and have you changed it in the last couple years? Okay, so the female athlete, that's a program that I developed with Hattie Boydle. So Hattie Boydle, when we developed it, it's it's a program very similar to what she followed when she became number 1 in the world in 2016, at the Federation WBFF, as a fitness model. So we came together and we utilized a lot of the training systems that we basically created a 12-week program based on how she trained. So actually, you know, if you were to look at her training program 8 weeks before she came first in the world, that's not it. That's basically her doing the final touch-ups and everything like that, the things that she needed to specifically work on, but it was a 12-week program that we developed based on the training systems that she followed to make her the best in the world. That's how it was invented. Uh, so do you use circuits for most females, or— Yeah, with the strength, especially if they have an aesthetic focus to their training, then we love circuits. We love strength to achieve all of their aesthetic goals. So typically we don't prescribe You know, steady state cardio. I go for walks actually, so that's not really, I don't know, this is what I hate with the same with the nutrition, everything like that. It's like, oh, you like, it's semantics. Oh, you do do cardio, you walk. Okay, whatever you call it. My opinion with cardio is just however you want to train the heart, you know, and things like running and cycling and swimming, you know, if you like doing that, go for it. I prefer, using exercises that are going to shape your body as well. And circuit style of training is fantastic for that. Now I'm gonna go a little bit deeper on that. The way that I developed a lot of my circuits was for my professional boxing athletes. In particular, I had one fellow, his name was Junior Talipao. He was the under 70 kilogram champion of Australia. And he was on The Contender. So if anyone's seen the TV show, The Contender, Amazing fighter. But what was even more amazing about him, he came to me, he's Samoan background as well. So it's really easy for him to put on size. And he's my height. So for him, he, I started with him at 80 kilograms, and he had to cut down to the 70 kilo class. And I had to convince him to back off the cardio, because I didn't believe it was the best way to train, to achieve his goals of fitness specific for his sport, which was, you know, to last, 10 or 12 rounds in a boxing ring. But I had to provide him with some kind of stimulus that would increase his heart rate, so he felt that he was improving his fitness and his endurance. So we did, half the time we trained together was strength-specific days, and the other half the time was circuit-specific days. After training with him for his 12-week prep, you know, I saw him with his shirt off only the first week, and then after that, all of his shirts were just getting looser and looser on him, and he was, you know, he just started getting skinnier and skinnier, and it was just, you know, he was dieting and he had to cut 10 kilograms. Anyway, come fight day, I was at the backstage and I saw him with his shirt off hitting pads, warming up, and my jaw dropped. I was just looking how his body looked, and I thought, dude, you look freaking amazing. Why didn't you tell me? He's like, what the hell would you want me to tell you? You know, I look amazing, you know. And it was like, this guy had veins popping out of his body, the muscularity was freaking awesome. He looked how you wanna look. If you're a guy, you wanna look like how this guy looked when he was ready to fight on stage. And so basically I used that program and I showed, you know, the first guinea pig model for that was my sister-in-law, Dini J. She said, "I wanna train like an athlete." So I thought, "Let's do it." So we got her training the same way, 2 days of strength, and 2 days of circuit style of training, which was whole body circuits. And as a result, she got strong and she looked amazing. You know, as I said about Junior, for the girls, you look at Dinny and the girls would say, that's how I wanna look. In fact, I had a lot of business from my females and I guess Hattie was one of them, that saw the work that I'd done with Dinny and said— But she was really strong as well. Dinny? Yeah. And she still is really strong, yeah. We were able to, back then when she was doing that concurrent style of training, which was strength and circuit style of training, she wasn't as strong as what she's, what the strength level that she got to. That was specific strength work, and only specific strength work. We didn't do any other cardio, walking, or circuits, or anything. When she got to 140 kilo squat, as a 50 kilo lifter, and 160 kilogram deadlift, as a 50 kilo lifter, like, little pipsqueak, really strong, and looked amazing. But that's, interestingly enough, how we developed the method that, that actually the Base Body Babes follow. That's, that's my wife and Dinny J. They're sisters, and they run a female-only business, and their whole model is based around a 4-day-a-week split. 2 days is strength work, 2 days is whole body circuits, Based on how I trained Junior for his fights. And we applied a lot of those methods for Hadi as well. And, you know, refined it, more specific to exactly how Hadi trained. And that was a specific product that Hadi and I produced. How you going? Hey. I was back at your Level 1 a couple of years back, and you mentioned how you have a constant battle with penis elbow. Yes. Do you still struggle with that? And have you found any way to kind of help you get past that? Yeah, sure. So, so just to clarify, that's not tennis elbow and that's not golfer's elbow, okay? It's penis elbow. And it's specific to low bar squatters in particular. And it's basically pain in the brachialis that presents when you lift heavy and you have the bar extremely low on your back and you have to support a lot of that weight with your arms. And it doesn't discriminate. If you're a strong squatter, you have to hold a heavy weight on your back. You know, all of my athletes, and that's how I program my strong squatters, we have penis day. So that's the day after you squat, you rest, and then it's gotta be an upper body day after the lower body day. So that's why we can't do a bench press straight after we have a low body specific day, because your penis elbow is suffering. Just so you know, so it's right here. This is where the brachialis sits. And if you ever have an athlete that are low bar squatting, quite heavy, you can prod them here. I'm being quite gentle. I don't know if you've been doing any low bar squats, but if I wanted to be a prick, I could jab him really hard with that and it hurt him. It wouldn't feel nice, right? I don't know how that felt, Jassem.

I actually felt it tender.

Right, okay. So I really was not being a prick about that, okay. It's crazy because so many times I have, you know, I teach a lot of physiotherapists and soft tissue practitioners and rehabilitation specialists, and they all have a solution for me. Oh, you know, why don't you try this, you know, serratus anterior building exercise? Let's try this stretch. Let's, you know, strengthen your external rotators and all these things. And I just, it's like, I've seen it before, I've tried it before, please just spare me. I'll tell you how you don't get penis elbow, is you need to periodize your low bar squatting. Okay, so if it's debilitating enough that it negatively impacts your other sport, so let's just say for Thor Bjornsson, he doesn't do a lot of low bar squatting, because his sport involves a lot of upper body work. So a lot of the times we use upper body, so high bar squats in his programming, or safety bar squats, so that it doesn't affect his arms. I've had fighters, UFC fighters, that come to me, they're on a roll with their low bar squats. And I ask them, how's everything going? How's your training? How's your sparring? Yeah, good. I just had to take a couple of days off sparring. I'm getting this elbow pain. I'm just getting hit too many times in the elbow and it's hurting to get to block. So I'll just take a few days off my fighting. And I'm sweet with the weights. You have to understand something about weight training and fighters. They're not paid to lift weights, they're paid to fight. So I was the reason why he wasn't doing the proper training. And if I was a dumb coach, I would say, yeah, cool. You know, it's all about the strength work. As long as you're strong, you'll be fine. But as a smart coach, I had to stop him from squatting. And I had to come and I had to shove my thumb in his brachialis. He thought it was a, you know, an issue that fighters get, which was floating shattered bones in the elbows from, hyperextending when they punch. It's a very common injury that he's had an operation on previously. So that's what he thought it was. But the best way to avoid penis elbow, which is pain in the brachialis, is to not low bar squat. Or alternatively, if you can't, if not low bar squatting is not an option. So for example, as I approach competition, I have to practice the squat that I'm gonna be performing in competition. My last competition, I trained specifically to achieve an Australian record. So, which was 372.5 kilograms. To get it squat, to get that number, I had to low bar squat. So actually, it's about pain management, you know. So unfortunately, at that point, the best way to manage the pain was Voltaren, you know, the day before I would bench press, and the day of my bench press, and the day of competition. That's the only way I managed it. But if you don't want it altogether, And I'll tell you guys, I'm gonna show you guys some of the techniques that we use, you know, the squatting techniques, the way I teach the squat. It's amazing, you know, what you can achieve with correct technique. And you're gonna, you know, if you guys are in the industry, if you guys are coaches and trainers, you can apply these techniques to general population because it's a fantastic exercise, and they will develop a great low bar squat. But as a consequence, they may complain of things like, oh, I don't like this bench press, bench pressing is hurting my elbows. It's not the bench press that's hurting their elbows. It's the squat. And if you're a good coach, you'll understand, you'll be able to identify these things. Cool. Hope that answers your question. Yeah, it did. I've got one more as well. Great. Do you have a preference of when you're deadlifting, stopping dead at the bottom versus touch and go? And then if so, how would you program them differently? Or if you don't use one, then, you know. Sure, they all have their time and place. So touch and go, deadlifts versus stop-and-go deadlifts, or dead stop deadlifts, however you'd like to call it. The touch-and-go deadlifts is generally a stimulus that I would use to maintain tension. And whenever I do touch-and-go deadlifts, it's not bang and go, or bounce and go, it's a light tap and go. And that's the cue that I'll give, is to imagine there's eggshells on the ground, you're not allowed to smash the eggshells. So that's still being able to control the weight, and use your muscles to lift the weight. And it's a strength stimulus for the muscles. You're not building momentum, or doing anything like that. So they absolutely have a time and place, and that's generally, you know, closer to the off-season, or when I'm trying to accumulate more volume, for whatever other response, you know, usually hypertrophy. But when it comes to the dead stop deadlifts, you know, that's the specific lift that's going to be used in competition. So that's, Generally, the start point, and even if you're not a competitive deadlifter, I will teach someone the art of being able to safely and efficiently pick up a weight off the ground and place it back down again. As I said before, a lot of people, I'm sure you guys will relate in the room, have a better second rep on the deadlift than the first. And that's because of, you know, starting with the concentric portion of the movement. So, not having enough time to feel the weight, and hold the weight, and guide the weight down on the eccentric, to set yourself up for a great concentric. So a lot of people are better at the second and third rep than they are on the first rep. The best way that you get good at the first rep is to stop and go every single time. But they all have their place. My question is on older athletes, or those that are especially above 40. Being in that age range myself, I see the way the body is changing, and then when working on strength and recovery, do you have athletes that are, or just those that are in your gym that are above 40, and are your methods different? Absolutely, it's a great question. I was shocked when you said, you know, older athletes, and then you said over 40. I thought, you know, I've just recently got, you know, a 41-year-old who didn't have a 1,000 kilogram total to this year Total 1,000, I think 1,010 kilograms. That's Luke Polly, he's from Brisbane. And yeah, he's over 40, and he's getting older, and he's still getting stronger. So, you're not at your, you haven't maxed out yet at that age. You know, I think the decline won't start until a fair bit after 40. One of my best athletes that I've ever had was a female athlete called Mary Macken. And I met her when she was 50 years old. She was 5th in Australia, and I took her in 6 months through the John Brose approach, which was maxing out every day, from 5th in Australia to 1st in the world. So obviously, 1st in the world, she was also 1st in Australia. So she was, yeah, 5th in Australia, and this is, it was 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and her. So from 5th in Australia, she went to, like, not just a little bit above 1st place, like, flogged them, right. You know, I was with her till she was 52 years old. So in those 2 years that we worked very closely together, she was getting older and she was getting stronger.

What was the sport, Seb?

That was powerlifting. Yeah, so it was specifically a strength sport. And she was also a record holder in weightlifting as well, which I didn't teach her for, but actually the strength methods that we used, she was able to build whole body strength And then she was on the board of the AWF, which is the Australian Weightlifting Federation. And to stay on the board and to remain as a judge for the Federation, she had to regularly compete. So she would say to me, you know, I'm sorry, this is interfering with our powerlifting goals, but I've got a competition on next weekend. And I would rather it if I didn't bomb. So do you mind if we just do one or two sessions, just so that I can, you know, grease up the joints, It's like, sure. She would come back after extensively getting strong with my techniques. So, you know, powerlifting, strength training, following a structurally balanced program. And she would break her previous records in weightlifting, a sport that we didn't even practice. She had like literally 2 weeks of practice at it. So getting the body strong is an advantage everywhere. She was older and getting stronger. She was also president of the, Law Society as well. So she was a highly regarded lawyer. She was a power woman in every sense of the word. So her personality had a huge part to play for her success and her progress, even at that age. But yeah, 40? Nah, you still got more. So good news for you, you can go home and know that you're not old yet, and you can also go home knowing that you're still getting better. Fantastic. Great question.

Alrighty, thank you for watching this episode of The Wolf's Den with Sebastian Oreb, this Q&A session. Please, please, please subscribe to us on YouTube to get all the episodes that are up and coming and check out the previous episodes that we've done because they're awesome too. And if your car and you, if you're in your car and you want to listen to this, it is on iTunes and also SoundCloud. Until the next one, train hard, supplement smart, and eat well.

Wash up now. Wash up now.