S3:E12 - Gus Cooke | Wolf’s Den

Please welcome to the show.

All right, what do we got here?

People from all over are coming to see him. Hey, hey, and welcome to the show that punches you in the face with information. Welcome to The Wolf's Den presented by Enterprise Fitness. My name is Mark Ottobre, joined by my co-host Adrian Faranda. Today we are going to delve into the world of powerlifting. With founder and owner of Lifters League, Gus Cook. Gus is from Brisbane in Queensland and is the coach to legitimately probably the 3 strongest females in Australia, having 2 of them represent actually just yesterday at Wildcats and the Big Dogs comp. So, well, Gus, welcome to the show.

How is Melbourne treating you?

Yeah, good. Weather's a bit miserable, but Well, that's Melbourne for you.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I was in Brisbane just recently and I noted that a lot of the streets don't make sense in Brisbane. You probably— our layout in Melbourne is a little bit more, I think, friendly.

Yeah, I think it's the other way around.

I don't know about that, but let's move forward from that. How was your day yesterday at Wildcats?

Yeah, big day. Definitely gets the competitive juices going, making you itch to want to lift and just having so much inspirational lifters just lifting such unfathomable amount of weight.

You had two females in lifting?

Yes, so I had Joanne, Joanne Grogan, who's a bit of a veteran in powerlifting and asked me to coach her coming into this comp, and Michelle Latham, who's been with me for about a year and a half now, and yeah, it's really moving up the ranks.

Yeah, so the, sorry, the first competitor, Michelle, is it? You've had for, how long have you had each?

I think Michelle's coming onto 2 years now. And 8 months with Joanne Regan.

Right, so with Joanne, 8 months, that, I mean, is that a, that's not necessarily a long time in powerlifting.

But we achieved quite a lot. I mean, she was postpartum. And so we had a lot to work with, with new, with, she had 3 other kids, a newborn. And she's a complete inspiration because she doesn't train with anyone either. So she gets her son to come out and undo the rack and spot her.

So she does it all on her own. How old is her son?

He's late teens or something. Yeah, so she's very inspirational 'cause she does it all on her own. And I have to coach her. She lives here in Victoria. And so we do it all online.

So with Joanne, like, I mean, she's been there 8 months. She's what, just to give kind of the viewer some understanding of what level these girls are at, what is their squat bench? Like what do they squat bench deadlift yesterday?

So Joanne squatted 215 kilos.

215.

215.

At a body weight of?

74.

Right.

And so yeah, nearly 3 times. And 115-kilo bench and a 205 deadlift.

It's quite, quite some numbers there.

Yeah, very strong.

Yeah.

And Michelle, she got a 220 squat, a 95 bench, and a 200 deadlift.

Now, is that your jam? Is your jam like working with people who are at an elite level versus working with people who just want to get generally strong? And also just on that, 'cause you also coach Sarah Rainbow, who's obviously over the 75 kilo mark and she's obviously incredibly strong. I mean, just for the viewer again, what are her numbers?

235 squat, no, actually 240 squat, 157 kilo bench press.

Jesus Christ.

And a 255 kilo deadlift.

255 kilo deadlift, holy fuck. So I mean, in saying that, like, is it your methods, have you found that they're just, they work, 'cause it seems like you've got 3 of the strongest females and obviously success leaves clues. What have you found that is different? I suppose let's start with this. What do you find that's different between coaching a powerlifter male versus a powerlifter female?

They're easier and but more complex, I guess. They're very, a lot more compliant, a lot more open to suggestion. Um, but their biology is more complicated. Men, when they listen to you and want to be compliant, um, which they all are, I guess, in a way, in a sense, but I mean, who are willing to put themselves through a bit of pain. And I find girls are more tolerant of that. Um, yeah, it's the main thing that comes down is the, uh I guess the, just their biology that makes it a bit different than men. And I guess some of the comparisons there is that in a way they have to train harder. I find they have to train with more volume, more intensity. And yeah.

[Speaker] So we just noted, just briefly skimmed the surface on, you've got the psychological factors. You've noted there that's quite different as in females or women are more compliant and open to suggestion in terms of what you do with your programming in terms of technical lifts and all that. Whereas men can have a bit more, resistance. And then, but you've spoken a little bit about the physiological factors. So you said there's more volume that you give to females. Can you give some examples of like, what would say, for example, Michelle or Sarah or any of the high-level competitors that you've got, what are you starting them with versus like, what's your methodology to start them and then peak them?

Well, I guess maybe, It depends on what perspective you take from them.

The approach I took with Michelle is very different than I take with Joanne.

Why?

Well, there's experience levels, where they're coming from. Joanne has a lot more experience. She has 12 years of competitive powerlifting, but she's also postpartum. And so there's a lot of other things too. When they go through that, I mean, a bunch of different hormones are going through their body and We gotta see what impacts those are having on various lifestyle factors. Because most of the time when you— getting these athletes to train is not a problem. They'll train to their heart's content.

It's—

I find a big difference between me and what I've seen perhaps with some other coaching methods is that I try and put a big focus on, I guess, everything else. Like I look at their sleep, I look at their how they move, their posture. I look at their nutrition very deeply, closely monitor their body composition. I get a lot of biofeedback about, about mood and fatigue and recovery and their clarity, their mood. And all these things give me a bit of an idea about possibly what's going on inside and possibly how much stress we can put the body through.

Let me throw the question in a different way, right? There's a lot of girls who deadlift, a lot of guys who deadlift, right? Not a lot of like girls who are deadlifting the numbers that your competitors are deadlifting, getting into the 200-kilo range. So I suppose like we look at that, I mean, are they, and I'm just gonna throw some things out so you can correct and then kind of chew it the way you want to. But I mean, are they deadlifting, obviously not every day, but is there like practice work involved? I mean, what is the sets? Why? 'Cause I mean, having 3 of the top and you've had other female lifters who've been very successful with your methodology. What is it that's making these successful versus like everyone else who are kind of, you know, some, some aren't getting any success, some their lifts aren't, they're not moving, they're not budging versus like your methodologies.

I guess I take a very holistic standpoint with all this.

So I break down every factor of like, rather than just purely looking at their squat technique, I actually break down to their body weight squat and actually look at the function of how their feet work and how the hips move and how they utilize their diaphragm and all these things is that once I start compiling the next level up all the way up to a competitive level barbell squat, we have hopefully covered every underlying factor that could make them weak or injured or whatever those things are. And so we address those issues by isolating all the, all the problems that we have in the accessory training, then start to apply better technique and then accumulate more skills. So frequent practicing, which they would, like for a bench press, people ask me how many times they get to bench press a week. It's like 4 times a week because it's a skill aspect to it. It's like shooting a basketball. You have to shoot every day to get the practice. And example of some of the best bench pressers in the world benched every day. 'cause it's again, a lot of skill aspect. So there is a lot of skill work involved.

With the lady who'd been coaching prior or powerlifting for 12 years, is that skill not refined?

It needs constant work. So it's one of those things that you do lose it if you don't keep doing it. And she took 2-year break as well. And I've been watching her for quite a few years and I noticed things that we could have addressed that would make her even better. And sometimes you don't see it until you strip it all the way down, then bring it all the way back up.

I suppose, sorry.

So even as their skills going up, you're still keeping the frequency high.

So it's not like, it's like, okay, we've got that skill there, we need to practice it less.

It gets really refined. I guess when you come into any sport, like you squat, and for most of the population, for most of the population, it's fine. And fine's okay. But with, the level these girls are at, it can't be just fine, it has to be perfect.

Like every inch of it needs to be—

I mean, millimeter difference in your movement, like the way you got your hand placed, the— if you see a, like a wrist roll in a squat and that's you tumbling forward. So those refinements, I mean, every detail, the way the clothes they wear, the way we wrap their knees and exactly how much revolutions are we gonna do and how are we gonna place it across the knee? How are we gonna place it across? Their wrists around their wrists. So everything, nothing's left to chance.

Every aspect is just practiced and refined, yeah.

'Cause if you just look at, you know, the force, you know, mass and acceleration for force production, I mean, with that much weight, as soon as you have moved your center of mass slightly forward with 200+ kilos on your back, or for some of the guys going to 300+ to 400+ kilos, I mean, they have to be really strong to get out of it. But when they're at the absolute max, You can't make a mistake. And so those are some of the things we gotta train for as well. We gotta train for possible mistakes. But when you're at the absolute limit, like it is a grinding max, then no stone unturned.

With these girls, in terms of the way you lay out the program, let's say you took it, you know, you've got your 8 months lead in time to Wildcat's biggest comp in powerlifting. Can you run us through like what is phase 1, phase 2, phase 3? What does it look like? What is your intent? Are you going in with "Right, this is your weakest lift, let's get this up," or versus, "This is your strong lift, let's make it even better." How many times are they training? Are they training multiple sessions a day? What does that actually look like in terms of the practical application?

So we have to do a lot of, I have to do a lot of planning. I have to map it out between day 1, day 2, and it's different for everyone.

So what I prioritize is gonna depend on their goal or what the goal is too.

And I also have to be quite, I have to give them a lot of feedback on their goal, making sure that it is realistic because sometimes they can overreach, and that's good, we just got to put it in better time frames.

So, once we do our first assessment, we look at all the things that are possibly going to cause a problem to getting them to their goal, or what are their biggest limiting factors. And I try to only aim for no more than 2 or 3 things per lift. And then I put it in the order of what is I guess the most fundamental to the most specific and giving myself enough time frame. So I normally leave about a 6 to 8 week leading period to just be highly specific to competing. And so all the time I have before that is start to plan out what are the— some of the things we have to work on. Now with Joanne, she had a lot of experience with back pain in the past. And so that was gonna take priority over everything. And so, and The feedback I did get from her is that, you know, one of the first comps she had to—

she'd done, you know, quite pain-free.

So I tried to increase back resilience, and that was going to be the start. And working off a lot of Andrew Lock's and Stuart McGill's work to try and address her back issues and trying to build conditioning. And actually got her to get some conventional deadlifting, which she actually— where she hurt her back in, but I know it was going to have such good carryover to her lifting. So it was phasing, I guess, looking at building those— that back resilience. Then I knew she had to put— she had lost a lot of muscle. So the next part of that was to add enough hypertrophy work to—

if we can just pause on that note, you say back resilience, right? So what is that like in the first phase? Are you getting her to deadlift? Are you avoiding deadlifts? Is it just like hyperextension, reverse hyper? What is the the kind of plan there?

Well, following off McGill's principles is, you know, I start with the basic isolation work, making sure that she's breathing correctly and all the— and moving correctly. Your hips are moving, she's utilizing her feet properly so that we create the most stable platform possible. Then we start to introduce stability exercises. So I do a lot of renegade rows and and kettlebell swings and all things that had to utilize, get her to utilize her hips better, create stiffness of the core. Then we start applying small amount of load. So I gotta do frame deadlifts. So then we started—

What are frame deadlifts?

So it's just like a farmer's walk, but instead of a farmer's walk, you just pick it up and down. So it's like a trap bar, but you start with a higher, higher grip. So it's just an introduction so they can keep the spine quite in a neutral position and start to load the spine to start build muscle hypertrophy around the spine. And then we bring it down to a trap bar deadlift and get a lot of volume through trap bar work.

I find we can get a lot more—

there's a— I find there's a lot of benefit to doing trap bar and conventional hypertrophy work. I find this client tends to build a lot of, again, a lot of strength around the spine to protect it long term. But her main lift, we still focused on sumo, sumo deadlift for her competitive for her competitive lift. But there's always a lot of carryover from doing trap bar work, and that was kind of the stages we built to build that, build that resilience. It's basically putting yourself in a position that teaches her core stiffness, utilizing the hips properly and breathing properly, and so on.

Now, in terms of the actual programming, uh, with the programming, are you like undulating the reps? Are you using kind of like a Shako method or a Westside, or like, how do you actually put those plans? Is it like intensification accumulation? Like, were you giving more volume one month versus more intensity and ramping that up?

It's the same thing, especially with these elite guys. It's that it more— it depends on where we're heading. So all these methods, I kind of— I guess you would have heard from Andrew Lock is that I use them all. They're all in my toolbox, and there are various coaching methods in different phases. So all these phases I'll lay out. I use actually as an example, I probably use the strength and conditioning approach where they have preparatory phase and competitive phase and then they use their subphases like general, specific, et cetera. And that kind of guides the direction I'm going to take with in terms of general athletic development compared to high specificity. So when I have those categories, I start to try and come up with my objectives for each phase. So what's going to be these underlying things, whether it's gonna be, again, muscular hypertrophy, skill work, technique work, addressing back issues, creating more core stiffness. So once I move through these phases, I create the objectives for each that are gonna kind of layer on top of each other.

And then I have to get more specific.

So not everything's gonna get addressed, but the core foundations are gonna support her lifting the most. We'll get her to her goal. And then once we finish that comp, again, then it's time to look at the next comp, and which gives me— it's not for a while now, so I've got a few more extra months to work with to try and, again, build these foundations again and create these phases. So with all the intensification kind of rep cycles and wave— waves and stuff like that, I'm more specific with that coming into the last 8 weeks, 8 to 12 weeks, where I kind of have a set plan where I accumulate as much volume as I, as I can tolerate, or their maximal recoverable volume. And I usually just use a lot of biofeedback to try and get an idea where that is. And then as we come into 8 to 6 weeks out, it's now just about getting the nervous system ready to lift heavy. They've built all their strength. Now we just accumulate the intensity, And that's different for everyone. So like I found females generally need a longer intense intensity phase where guys can get away with 2 or 3 weeks. I get away with by doing 2 or 3 weeks. Most of the girls, I gotta go 4 to 6 weeks. Right.

And what challenge, were there any, would you, sorry, I didn't wanna cut you off.

Yeah, so with Joanne, so just to get it right, she was 8 months postpartum and it was from, that's when you had her to consult.

So today, yeah, from today, I think it was 14.

14 months. So it would have been, yeah, like 6 months or something.

Yeah, so she had a baby in the 6 months that she competed.

Yeah, it's incredible.

So we're just talking about this on the last podcast, Dad Bod 2.0.

Yes.

And, um, yeah, kind of like how guys will make excuses, I've got kids now, I don't have time to train. She's gone less time than it took to make the baby to going into a high-level powerlifting comp. Yeah, I really—

it's just incredible.

Yeah, that's amazing.

What challenges? So one of the things that I suppose does come up sometimes is, you know, I'm squatting well, I'm deadlifting well, and I'm benching well, let's say the technique, but the numbers just don't seem to come up. What, I mean, this is, it could be different for females and males, but what are the common reasons that you see why people get stuck at, let's say a number, let's say it's, I don't know, 230 deadlift, right? They get stuck at that and they can't seem to, to overcome? What have you found?

Well, again, it depends really on the individual again and why that's happening. I guess we say from a— what the most common thing is from, let's say, from a female perspective, it's headspace. It's their mentality, the way they approach the bar, or they're more an anxious person. It's just trying to find that, I guess, mental sweet spot. That, you know, keeps their negative thoughts out of mind and staying focused. Michelle's an excellent example of this, is that she does really bad in training with her deadlifts but does brilliantly on the, on the platform.

And there's nothing questioned about how she trains or anything like that.

I work on her mindset, basically, and that's Actually, all we've been doing in the last probably 4 to 6 months.

So you said for her, Michelle, the biggest challenge was mindset?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The way she, and that's trying to figure out. So I'd done a bit of research on neurolinguistic programming and started breaking down, or I had to try and figure it out. So I had to try and figure out where those good days are and what is going on. And what worked out was that we needed less hype and that she would come into our gym and ask everyone come support her and then miss her numbers. So I said, headphones in, don't get anyone's help, don't get my help. You know, even though normally I tell everyone to come get me when I do heavy lifts, I was like, just do it. And so I never got to see much of her lifting coming in, but she hit her numbers. Because she had zero pressure to do so. So her sweet spot was to just reduce the pressure and reduce the—

interesting.

You said for females usually it's headspace. What have you found for males, reason why they get stuck with numbers?

It's a tough one. There's a— there's a— can be a lot of reasons why. What are the top 3, I guess? Well, I've got one lifter now who tends to give up in there, give up lifting. So this is where I guess a second skill aspect comes in. Like, you can be strong, but learning how to grind a lift is also different because you're overriding every natural instinct to protect yourself and stop lifting. And we have to teach them to push through that, push through those, push those barriers. And the instinct is strong. So in some people to just stop because it feels again, they're trying to protect themselves. So I go through a lot of mental talk because I guess it comes back to, comes back to mentality again, because everything else, everything else in terms of like technique and all that stuff, those are, yeah, a lot of underlying factors, but that's just normal. That's what I have to, have to do. But I guess where I hit big roadblocks. It's, I think, a lot of mental, a lot of mental game.

You think maybe programming for and periodization and this kind of stuff is almost a little bit overstated in terms of the factor for not improving?

In some cases, like, you can't— you can if you have the perfect program, but their lifestyle or other factors impede that, then you have to work with them with what their capacity is. And that will come down to prioritizing the specific things that are gonna either prepare them for a competition or get them ready for a competition. So Michelle's a truck driver and she has all sorts of stupid hours where some nights you only get 4 hours of sleep, 3 hours of sleep, and then some nights you'll get good sleep. So we had to be quite, dynamic with the programming for her. So getting in what is important, and this is where I've also experimented with finding out what the minimum effective volume and intensity needed. And surprisingly, you can get away with very little, like very, very little.

How do you figure out like these, these numbers, which, you know, quite frankly seem insane really? It's like, you know, you're gonna squat 240 kilos at 54 kilos, whatever it is, right? You know, I mean, even for your own, like, you've squatted, what, 360, right? So, you know, how do you figure out when you're going to squat 365 or 370?

It's, it's a combination of two things.

There's, um, so I guess as a, as a, for me, for me, for me, um, and I guess for advanced clients is is looking at their experience, that, that's one. The other aspect is, I guess, the art of coaching me, seeing 10,000 squats in my life, knowing when they move a certain way, I get a bit of an idea about where they're heading. And then data, lots and lots of data. And I guess a lot of it has to be— have to rely a lot of, like, there is, I guess, a lot of subjective data because I have to watch their lifting give me an idea about how it's going and all their kind of biofeedback or— or with this thing called autoregulation, which kind of use a kind of reps in reserve kind of methodology where you can kind of get a gauge about where they are. I'm currently experimenting with velocity-based training to try and give me a bit more accurate, more objective—

When you say velocity, by just how fast the bar moves?

Yeah, so GymAware have some good products where you attach a tether to a barbell and you're able to get their velocity. And it's the same thing where actually a great analogy was that programming is like a map. You got point A to point B and you can draw the best line to get there. Then when you get feedback, it's like radioing in. What's your position? And you get an idea where they are, then you adjust their position back to the map. And then after a while, check back in, kind of get the radio position, and then you kind of adjust to make sure that get from point A to point B. What I'm starting to find with velocity-based training, and I heard this analogy on a podcast where it's more like a GPS system. I know where they are at all times within a 1 square meter.

They can't lie to you.

Exactly.

Like, oh yeah, I'm doing well. Okay, define well.

Yeah.

'Cause that person's well might be actually, well, well, he's sleep deprived or well, he's working around the clock. Whereas when you've got that actual number of velocity, you've actually gone into the red line now, we need to bring it back, get that recovery, get that rest on. And then now we can, as you said, GPS, that's, I like that a lot. What I wanna do now for the viewers is I wanna take a quick break and I wanna be back. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna get Adrian under the bar and Gus is gonna start tweaking him.

And we're gonna continue this conversation.

It's gonna be a bit of a dynamic podcast and hopefully get Adrian up to a 280 kilo squat or thereabouts. Yeah, not really, but anyway, we'll see you after this quick break.

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Welcome back to the Wolf's Den. We are with Gus Cook, powerlifting coach to some of the strongest people in Australia. So he's going to be taking Adrian and see what Adrian can do with his squat today, maybe even get a one rep max. All right, Gus, I'll I'll let you take it away. What's the first steps?

Well, basically the first step is to just see how the individual moves. I'd start with a bodyweight squat and then get them under the bar. So let's start with just a bodyweight squat. Now, generally what I'm looking for is I don't really give anything back first. I kind of just assess and see what's happening and then start look at some of the major things that may impact his lifting so that we can be very efficient with the teaching.

Anything obvious? I mean, Adrian, the body weight, so for those obviously listening to this on podcast, it looks to me a pretty good body weight squat. He's pushing his head down a little bit as he does it. Hips are coming out nicely, knees are freely over the toes, feet look like they're moderate. Well, what are you seeing in your eyes? Are you seeing anything that I'm not?

No, it looks actually, it looks really good. So I guess with the next step we take, sometimes I will get them to change their foot position to see, I guess, their hip mobility. So I'll get you to point your toes straight forward.

Adrian's toes were pointed out, now we're just getting him— I'm just saying this for the audio— now his toes are almost dead straight. And from doing that, he looks a little bit tighter. Everything looks a little bit more, which I don't know, Gus, is that what you're after? Do you want him to be a bit tighter like this or Yeah, so it's just a bit of an assessment of the hip.

You can see it does struggle to get more down to depth. There's a little bit of a pelvic tilt, but not much, and it's not nothing that's unsafe. So I'll compare to the barbell. So let's get under the barbell and see how that looks.

So Adrian's just walking to warm up now with just the bar. We are using Eleiko bars. Shout out to Eleiko, our unofficial sponsor of the show. They don't know it yet, but they're going to pay us some big bucks soon to be a sponsor. They're probably not. But anyway.

Okay, rack. So you can now— you can start to tell he definitely squats in squat shoes. You start seeing his feet start to rotate out. We're just going to try a couple of things. Let's try wider stance.

Yep. So Adrian did that first squat, his feet were rotating all over the shop. So Gus already—

So not very, not, you don't have quite a stable platform to work off. So I always like to work from the feet up.

He goes with his squat. It's nice and tight. What are we seeing here, Gus?

So now I'm looking at like, now we've got the foot and it looks a lot more stable. I get a little bit of an internal rotation. Of the knee, but doesn't seem to be overly bad. It's only on one side. So could have one weakness on his right glute.

He looks very like he's struggling a lot just to hit that with his stance.

Yeah, he is.

So we've got a little bit of hip stiffness, but not something that I would probably want to jump in straight away. I would want to add some load first and keep getting more information.

And this really is just a squat, or this technique is to just a powerlifting squat, to be able to handle as much load as possible.

So in this instance, like I think wider stance would suit him, especially if he's gonna squat in bare— with bare feet. As he, again, this rotation doesn't seem to fit your hip mobility, but then now it's exposing one weakness on the, on the right side here, which may be a problem when we put some weight on. But it's best again, get more information. So let's put on a little bit of weight.

You want blues?

Blues.

Putting some blues on. Alrighty. Get the pink. We've got the pink, what's it called, uh, clips to match Adrian's purse that he carries around with him. 60 kilos on the bar. I'm gonna do another squat assessment with a little bit of weight. Before, we just went to the bar itself. The bar was 20 kilos. Now doing an assessment with 60 kilos.

Let's go there.

Yep, that's fairly neutral. Feet are neutral. Feet, as soon as he moves, his toes turn out. Uh, Gus, his head keeps pointing down. Do you have a problem with his head position?

It really depends. I find head position helps with tightness of the erectors. If it's not pulling the center of gravity, center of mass forward, then I find it's okay. 'Cause people tend to fall where they're looking. If overall the best position, I guess we say what the best scenario is, is having a neutral position so that if you move your torso in a way, your head should move with it. But again, some people, find it more comfortable looking forward, and if it doesn't impede their lifting, I leave it. I will experiment to try and get them to do it, push up. If you find that they're falling more forward than usual, I'll get them to lift their head a little bit higher, and that really gets the erectors really tight, create a little bit more stiffness. So now what I can start seeing with a little bit of weight on there, we got a bit of losing a bit of trunk stiffness, and that's also causing some of the tilt of the pelvis. So From here, I'd want to have a check of basically how—

So Gus is just putting his hand on, just if you want to talk us through what you're doing.

So I generally just feel like putting my hand on their obliques. And then when I just get them to breathe, I won't let them know what I'm doing yet. So just take a big deep breath in, as deep as you can, and then breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Now as deep as you can. OK, there we go, we got it. And breathe out. So basically I check if they're first utilising their diaphragm to breathe. It's one part of the equation that helps maximise intra-abdominal pressure by reducing the abdominal cavity size. And you can generally feel that when they take a breath in, you get a slight expansion of the obliques. That kind of confirms that He is doing it, could be better, definitely could be better. So to try and improve it, I'm gonna get you to take a deep breath in through the nose. But this time I want you to imagine from the bottom of your stomach to the top that you're filling a barrel of water that fills up through here. You'll feel the stomach, you'll feel the stomach expand.

Just, Gus is putting his hand right into Adrian's stomach, feeling how he's breathing and seeing if his obliques are basically getting stiff as he does it. I'm going to jab him as well because I want to jab him.

So now this time you take a deep breath in the same way and then you're going to brace like someone's going to punch in the guts.

So there we go.

So breathe in, leave that air in. So take a deep breath in first and then brace. Hold the air in.

Good.

Relax. One more time. Deep breath in, brace. Good. So this is definitely gonna be a lot more tighter 'cause generally what people do is they tend to focus on building tightness around here, but they forget to build pressure through the lower back. So there is a couple of exercises, we'll do one, just do it here. So lay on your back.

So this is one of the first things to do is teach people how to breathe and—

Yeah, it's definitely very fundamental. So I'll get you to bend your knees. So it was like the 90-90 breathing method. Normally you put your feet up a little bit high, but this works fine. So I slide my hand under their back. And when I tell them to do the same thing, so take a deep breath in. And then this time when you brace, try and stop my hand from sliding under. So my hand can easily slide under, so you're not bracing quite hard enough. So let's do that again. Deep breath in, now brace. Brace, brace, brace, brace. Good. So now this creates 360 degrees of pressure. When you people try to brace through the stomach, it's like a, it's like squeezing a balloon like that way and expands outwards through the stomach, which then causes you to extend the spine in the squat. So we want to kind of align the ribs and pelvis in a way with this technique to get them to feel that we create this equal force right around. So that we create pressure through the lumbar as well as through the abdominal wall. So now we have this.

And also by doing that, you're pulling the ribs down and allowing for over hyperextension, thoracic extension as well.

Exactly. So now we're hitting multiple things. Yeah. So stand up.

Because then you don't even have to cue ribs down because, you know, people overflare the chest often on a squat and they're kind of up here. And that obviously is the opposite of when you wanna brace, but you're doing this anyway, 'cause you're bracing.

[Speaker] Yeah, so I guess that'll be the more fundamental way to approach the extension is to address the breathing and the bracing around here. Then you could down the track use the ribs down, 'cause I still use it as well. So, but that was also just a, I guess, a mental cue or reminder. To bring yourself back into that position. So when we come back to squatting, it's sometimes easy to achieve this laying down, but it gets a little bit harder when they stand up because they go back to their old methods. So they take a breath in, once you try and brace against my hand a lot more, a little bit hard, so start again. Remember, ribs down, drive through here, deep breath in, brace. Good. So you can use a dowel as well, so I can kind of put my fist against there so I've got something to brace against.

If you're watching this on YouTube, if you're listening to this on YouTube, if you're listening to this on iTunes, do take the time to check out our YouTube video of this because I think you'll get a lot more out of the visual explanation of this. This is quite fundamental cue, so make sure you check us out on YouTube at Enterprise Fitness and remember to subscribe.

Cool, so let's get back. Okay, actually, one point to also remember: once we've achieved this, to the braces, this is what you'll do when you're from the start. So you take a breath in and then brace. Now remember, it all moves as one. So instead of your hips moving back and your chest staying up, everything from the hips up moves as one, as well as your head, as well as your chest. Okay, so let's get back under the Adrian under the bar, 60 kilos again.

We have an assessment of his squat. Videoman can get in.

So big breath in through the lower back.

Gus is making sure that he's bracing correctly.

Move, move in your torso forward.

Nice. Good. Effortless.

And even on the way up, still hold it down. Brace, brace, brace, brace, brace all the way through. Good.

The only thing we've really fixed here is his brace, and already looks so much faster and more effortless. A lot less movement, unneeded movements.

Rack. Now we've got some of the fundamental stuff. You can see that the head position does play a role in the way you move forward just a little bit as you start to ascend from the squat. So I would suggest yeah, keeping your head in a neutral, in a more neutral position. So let's load a bit of weight in.

What are you guys going to jump to? Oh, you guys make the changes as I commentate where we're jumping to.

Are you okay with another 20?

Yep. Are we going to put a belt? 20, not 20, Adrian, not agreeing. Do we want a belt on him? Sleeves?

No, let's keep it, let's keep it all off. So again, when this When assessing, kind of wanted to be as much of you as possible so that we can start to use these other aids. I don't mind wrist wraps and stuff, that's just more protective of the joint. Everything else should aid your lifting, not be a reliance on it. So if you start to see breakdown, then let's try and address the intra-abdominal pressure losses or anything like that rather than just relying on a belt.

And Adrian, how did you find that breathing technique different to what you've done in the past?

Yeah, smoother. It felt light. Probably just thinking of everything moving as one. That was probably a big difference as well.

Have you ever used any breathing methods like that?

Yeah, I have.

Yeah, but not at the lighter weights necessarily. You usually use it at a heavier weight?

No, more so at a heavier weight. Yeah, it's probably more when focusing on strength training. In the past, I'll be focusing on breathing and bracing, but what I've been training is more high volume. So you're kind of breathing through the sets.

So this wasn't so much different, but just a reminder of—

Just a reminder of, yeah.

I guess when I'm teaching it, I teach that version first, master that before learning to be more dynamic with it. So, all right, let's have a look.

100 kilos, how many reps?

Let's go for 5.

5? 5 reps, nice and tight under the bar.

Remember that wider stance I want you to take.

Good, keep your head up, keep your head up.

5 reps, 100 kilos. Adrian racked it in. What are we seeing, you guys?

Oh, so still seeing that, you can see him— so now started looking more of his feet again. Again, I always try and— like, you see a lot of other things, but I always want to come down to the most fundamental parts. Again, like I said, the breathing, the feet, as they seem to control, they control majority of what the body does. So we're getting now, I can see the heels starting to raise. So we're getting a lot of the toes are doing a lot of the work to try and stabilize. So you're gonna be a little bit better. The wider stance is gonna help you, which is why I got you there to try and drive those hips further back. So I use a cue, it's called a tripod foot. And that try to imagine that 3 points of your foot here, under your little toe and your heel.

So Gus just pointed to it, yeah, the bottom of the big toe, bottom of the little toe, but not the actual toe.

Not the toe, the heel.

The heel of the toe.

Yeah. And that those 3 points have to maintain a kind of a symmetrical balance between all 3. So you're getting a lot coming through the front 2. If they load a bit more, then we start to get scrunching of the toes, which we should actually see them a lot more relaxed, but your foot being more active rather than the toes trying to scrunch.

So you don't really like the old T-Rex claw the ground and twist?

That is, that's something that you would work on top of the tripod foot. So each 3 points create stability first and maintain center of mass. The claw and twist helps with external rotation, external rotational torque. So that starts to help activate the glutes. A lot more as well. But the fundamental part is that we've got to get the stability of the foot right.

Let's just say, can you claw the ground with your feet? So like a T-Rex, so like really claw with your big toe in. So is that— see how his big toe's in, is that counterintuitive?

The problem with the big toe doing it, so the claw has to be imagined that it comes from the ankle to the heel, not the toe. So when we push down on the toe too much, That one? Yes, it either starts to get leaning forward or elevates this part, so then we end up getting supination of the foot.

So we don't want an overly supination of the foot, we want that heel of the big toe planted into the ground?

Yes, the toes should be relaxed and spread to take as much surface area as possible, and that the contraction of the foot or the grabbing of the foot is only driven through here. And what you would see— yeah, so what you would see is actually the same muscles activate if you were trying to activate your tibia. All right, you'll see a bit of contraction through here, this will drive down, and the heel, the arch of the heel would start to contract upward. There's a— you can usually use a bit of feedback, you can put like a rubber band under that part and get them I can start pulling on it a little bit while he's squatting. And that gives a bit of feedback about what he should be doing. But essentially what we're trying to achieve here with your squat is that we're gonna try and maintain those 3 points and to change the center of mass to try and accommodate, to put more weight through the back of your heels is that we're gonna focus more on the greater hip, more hip dominant squat.

Have you ever used any like a toe separator?

No, I haven't used that, no. So let's try this with a bodyweight squat.

Adrian uses them all the time. What are they?

What are they?

Oh, they're little like, you use toe separators.

Yeah, little foam blocks.

They're paying ours, but you can use them because I got it from a chiropractor. You put little like wedges in between your toes and use them as toe separators. And obviously chiro is big on it to make sure there's more function of the actual foot and how the toes are structured.

That's interesting.

So yeah, you can get it from like chemist, toe separator, put them in your shoes, no one can see it. As I said, Adrian has a whole stack of them at home when he does his nails.

Okay, so we're going to try and have more of a hip thrust. Let's do with a bodyweight squat first. So let's take that wider stance. Now it's going to feel like your torso is going to come forward a little bit more, but I want you to imagine like someone's got like a rope around your hips and that someone's pulling those hips back as you lean forward. At the same time, someone is pulling rope over your toes, but we're going to put more focus on that. The hips are going to constantly try to sit back, and then you maintain the balance by trying to get your knees over your toes. So lean forward, hips back. Good. Up.

He looks very tight when he's doing this.

Good.

And again, doesn't look effortless. It's having to focus, and his head still comes down when he does it.

So let's focus on those 3 points now. That we're maintaining balance through those 3 points and pushing through those 3 points.

Good.

Okay, let's get onto the bar. I might take it back down to 16 and build it back up.

So when he was doing that, his big toe was coming up. That's not ideal, hey?

No, no, but essentially he's still achieving what we're trying to, trying to address.

But mastery would be the toe would be down as well. Yes. Yeah. So he's got some work to do. So we're back at 60 kilos. Going to practice that from the feet. This is what you mean by working the lift from the ground up.

Mm-hmm.

So 60 kilos, 5 reps. Off we go, Adrian.

Let yourself lean forward, hips back, knees over toes. Push through those 3 points.

Good.

Imagine loading that back heel more. Good, push. Big breath in, brace, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, push through. All right, rack.

How's that?

How's that feel? How different does it feel?

Yeah, yeah, it's good. It's, um, it feels more like Yeah, like I'm sitting back.

Do you feel weaker at this point in time?

No, no, it feels— it still feels solid. Like, yeah, just having to brace and focus a lot more as well.

So I think we can work with this technique so far. There's still a couple of little things, but we'll just keep reminding the current cues we're working on so far and see where we can get to.

Some weight?

So we're putting on back to 100?

Yeah, let's go up to 100.

Awesome, awesome. Gus, you were saying before about RPE and RIR and this kind of stuff. I just wanna talk us through, like you're saying, that's kind of base knowledge, but firstly for the purpose of this podcast, what are RPE and RIR?

So it's a rate of perceived exertion of, or in other terms, like autoregulation, where you can get to start getting a bit of feedback about the intensity behind what performance the athlete is putting out. This tries to give me an idea, basically trying to convert those numbers into a percentage. I have a bit of a chart where you can correlate the amount of reps they did, the RP or reps in reserve feedback, and that gives you an idea about what we call a peaking index. So this peaking index is a bit of information on their readiness of themselves or their nervous system or where they should be in their training, whether we can go heavy or not, but not everyone is good at it. And some people can't feel their reps in reserve. So there's various methods where we can just say, give me a, you know, give me pushing the limit, hard, challenging, moderate, easy. And then I have to extrapolate kind of what that might turn into in terms of a peaking index. I find the more reliable way is to pair that with a video. 'cause my eyes are a bit better than what they can feel. And that's just from years and years of experience. So I get everyone to film all their work as well. But the more now accurate way, which I'm experimenting with now is the velocity-based training, which is purely objective, purely objective.

Yeah, amazing.

So—

How much one of those devices set you back?

2.5 grand. Yeah, they're not cheap. So—

But worth it if you want to pursue to the elite.

Yeah, I think it's definitely—

So that's more your GPP phase you're focusing on RPE, then when you're going, saying, going to your specific and kind of intensification phase, so leading into comp, is that when you go percentage-based?

I use both. Okay. So I go with both percentage-based and RPE-based at the same time, but the focus is on the percentages and then the RPE gives them an intensity that should be kind of, should be feeling, gives me a rate of, gives me an idea of their recovery and how they're progressing session to session, whether it's declining or increasing. If it's increasing, then it's like, okay, well, we've got more room to improve. So generally you should know, have an idea about where that RPE is, where it should be. So by the time we get to testing round, we're actually a lot closer to what their actual potential is rather than 'cause if you go percentage-based and they improve better, well, then you're kind of missing that potential out that you can't really, really test. The more advanced they get, you can get away with more, I guess, just purely percentage-based, but I still will add it. And it really depends on the method you're using. If I'm using a Russian, kind of a Russian method, I don't need as much, I guess, adjustment, constant adjustment. But I have a tendency to find that those programs are, style of program is pretty hard on the athlete as well, but it works on submaximal numbers that they can get for huge amounts of volume. They'll never miss a number, but it's just a lot of work. So yeah.

Adrian, are you back under the bar?

Let's do it.

100 kilos this time, work back up.

Remember, we're taking that wider stance. Yeah, we were breathing through here and through the low back. Deep breath in, hips come back, you lean forward. Good, brace those abs right through. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, push through, push through, push through. Good, keep your head up, brace. Push. Rack.

Very good. Looks a lot more effortless than the last 100. Those little cues that had you go, I'll grab that.

Yeah, good. That's, um, it's a bigger focus on kind of, yeah, the— I'd say the most exhausting thing is holding the tension.

Yeah.

And bracing the entire time at the moment. So it's more focusing on those, uh, technical points.

It's just a waste. It's a waste of energy if you have anything loose in the body. I mean, that's where energy will dissipate. So you have to really direct it to the barbell.

It's almost like the more high level you are, the less wasted movements there are.

Yeah. Every part of every joint has to be assessed.

It's like the weight feels light enough, but it's harder.

Yes.

I just want to grab that so you So the weight feels lighter, but it's harder. So the actual coming out is easier, but you've got to hold that tension.

Yes, I do say that to clients quite often, is that, you know, weights, weights don't get heavier, you get better, basically. Or, you know, you're going to hold tension.

So I was always saying like that principle is like kind of like bodybuilding style training. It's like we're going for maximum tension in the muscle. Like, you know, I mean, you can do 12 reps and not feel a thing, or do 5 reps and the whole thing's screaming. That's where the difference comes from. Same thing here, yeah, we're bracing, keeping tension, not to waste energy, to work on the skill, to be able to push more kind of thing.

Yes, so where to from here?

A bit more weight.

What's a bit more weight?

What are we going to go? You happy with another 10 on each side?

So from the start to now, basically the biggest thing that's been changed for Adrian is, if I'm seeing this right and assessing it right, the biggest thing you've changed is actually his feet and where he drives the motion from. Before, he was driving the motion kind of in a general plane of, you know, things weren't working in unison. His knees would pop forward, then his hips, and his feet really weren't— he wasn't thinking about his feet. Whereas now, what he just did then was the first thing, his ribs down, he's braced, he comes out, hips and knees are moving at the same time, he's externally rotating from the hips, and he's bracing is that, and his feet are glued down as well. So there's a few things that you've changed, but I suppose the key things for the viewers at home is you actually started from the feet, get the feet working. And then probably the biggest thing that I noticed was knees and hips moving at the same time. Is that fair?

Yes, yes. And it's always best to address the fundamental before addressing like the knee, not just in the side of the problem. It's just trying to look at fundamentally where that's been caused.

Heel that's collapsed or arch that's collapsed.

Exactly, it's always the fundamental cause, hips are the second. So it's addressing that first. And then we can use, even then still going, we can use a bit of mental cueing to even position it even better.

So I think I'm finding tricky is the, 'cause I'm used to clawing as well. So I've been scrunching too much, getting that, just trying to recue and get that knuckle. Into the ground and rotate out.

Yeah, you want to get this right, that bit right first, then you can add on that down the track. But I find getting the stability and balance between those 3 points is more effective first.

You probably tell from the use of the lifting shoes, that's where I'm forcing, trying to force my weight forward as well.

Yeah, and that's to maintain your style of squatting, very, a lot more quad dominant. Yeah, so this position is anatomically more favorable.

Yes.

For you without shoes. So the shoes were just kind of something to allow you to be— to squat the way you wanted to squat. This way works a little bit better with your—

Feels much more comfortable in the hips as well.

It's good.

Probably stop wearing high heels now as well.

All right, this is set number— we're doing some— if this is a working set, it's probably already second working set. 120 kilos. What are we doing, 3 reps?

Yep, let's go for triple.

3 reps. Under he goes, steps out.

Good, remember those 3 points, deep breath in through here. Good, really drive through those points, maintain those 3 points and then push through the earth, push, push, push. Head up, brace through here, brace through here, brace, squeeze it tight, Squeeze it tight, squeeze it tight. Push, hold the tightness, hold the tightness, hold the tightness. Push through.

Good. 3 reps, 120. It started to be a little bit of a grind.

A little bit. So I was just, I was going to say something before, but it's this chasing, it's like pushing them to as far optimal as possible. And generally when I come to competition, I'll start pulling more to a functional position, what's going to be. Functional for competition. So you may be a quad dominant squatter and that may be always so, but optimal will always improve your functionality. But functionality won't train the optimal position. So I always work back towards what's anatomically more optimal before coming back to more, again, what's functioning. When you look at it in the lens of what's optimal, it's basically what's optimal for handling being Most weight possible, that creates the most amount of tension, stiffness, the reduced range of motion, least amount of energy expended, and the most end range of all anatomical positions.

So with that said, would you get Adrian actually wider? Would you get him in—

and again, it depends if we get breakdown. So we could go wider if we get too much breakdown, then we either can address an underlying issue that doesn't address it straight away, we still got to get him actually physically squatting. So then we might just bring him in a stance where he's able to maintain these principles. Now, if we were to then go back up to when we start to comp prep, we've got to get to something what's actually the most strongest rather than optimal. So you're kind of working within, within that range when I'm changing, playing around with people's technique. And then we start to find our sweet spot over, over time.

So where to from here? Is that Is that a day for Adrian, or are we going to go a little bit heavier?

Well, it's a little bit what you want to— if you want to try this on a little bit, maybe a single.

Yeah, we'll go single, double, single.

So we've got 120 now. We just did, uh, we did 120, we did 3 reps on 120. What are we jumping to now? 140. So we're taking the greens off, putting the big blue fella on. Aidan's going to do a single at 140. No sleeves, no shoes, no belts. Excellent. Whack that on. We're resting, what, 3-5 minutes?

Yeah, yeah, let's give a little bit, a little bit longer. Yeah, don't drop it on me. I tore my pec. Oh yeah, let's talk about it.

You tore your pec, so you competed recently.

Yes.

And how'd you go, first of all?

Not as well, not as well as I had planned. I wasn't as confident. I'd been out of it for 2 years. Got into a car accident early in the year, which I was prepping for Pro Raw. And so it just kept putting me out longer and longer. What were your biggest challenges coming back from the car accident? I guess all of it was stress. It really turned, it was a really stressful time. So I got hit by a truck at a red light and I woke up in hospital. Apparently I stopped breathing on the scene. They cut me out of the car, had to resuscitate me. And I woke up with amnesia in hospital. And with a lot of my admin staff on leave, there was no one really to operate the business. And then at the same time, we got hit with an eviction notice. So it was a, I think the biggest thing was more managing my life, managing my stress to be able to put a prep together. So it's been a very, very tough year. Had a few coaches come on and off, which really throw the balance off. But after I came back from holiday, I said, I need to focus on my training. It's the one thing that keeps me, I guess it's what I love to do. And so I managed to put the prep together. It wasn't the most optimal prep. So I didn't feel super confident with the technique, especially at that level, everything's gotta be, my squat has to be perfect.

You're squatting 360 kilos, you want it to be ideal.

So after some comparison, you know, I wasn't able to hit, I actually wasn't able to hit depth in my squat, what I would have liked. And so, which means I bombed out. So I went on all 3 lifts and it's the worst performance I've ever had, but I've learned a lot from it. In terms of how I need to prep and all this stuff. And it was just hard to get a really good prep to get a lot of skill work in it. It was like I was strong, but I wasn't proficient.

Strong, you weren't ready.

My body was strong, but my technique wasn't, my skill wasn't there. So I still ended up with like a 350 squat, 215 bench. And I finished on 280 deadlift. I hit 310.

What's your best ever? 310?

305. I went 310 and just slipped out of my hand at lockout. So, and the grip has been a big problem.

And you tore your pec, how'd you tear your pec? You tore it benching?

Yeah, benching. So the Wednesday after the comp, I was actually redoing my velocity profile, which with velocity-based training is tracking I guess your intensity of your lift to the velocity, you're able to draw a linear line to be able to generate a formula of what's gonna work for that specific lift to work in the optimal training zones. So it's another solution to percentage-based training. Also, I was graphing my new, getting my data points and only had one more data point to complete the linear line and I tore my pec on that one. So I was under a 190 bench and coming down here, I had a little bit of cramping for the last month coming in my pec, but this time it started to cramp and then continue to cramp. And then I could feel it going, tearing down here.

Do you have a spot obviously or no?

No, I was doing well. I was feeling really strong. I was still feeling really strong.

It was just the cramping that got you?

Just started to cramp and then the cramp turned, I felt it turn into a tear. So it cramped and then cramped really hard. And then I felt it just come through there and then I ended up dropping the weight. Just behind my head onto the— wow, onto the face savers. Yeah, onto the face savers. Yeah, saving my face. Yeah.

Can we, can we get a— just cameraman, can we get a, like, a look at that pic? Are you able to show us what a tear looks like? It's always an impressive sight looking at, uh— so you get the bruising straight away. It really does bruise up better. And what is the— like, you've got it, like, through there. You said it was a full 40 centimeters or what?

Yeah, so 50 centimeters long, 40 millimeters deep, and also tore the tendon.

Wow, that's a bit of information there as well.

Yeah, that's from working on the weekend.

Yeah, so, and also the master psychologist that you are, uh, you didn't tell—

so I refrained from posting anything about it, or even because I was wearing a sling as well.

I just refused to—

I was wearing it when they went— when my girls weren't around, but I didn't want to freak out my competitors, 'cause that's all about them focusing on the day. And I didn't want them to think that my handling was gonna be impeded. So I didn't say anything about it. One of the girls got wind of it and I just tried to play it off as, it's just grade 1, just a little tear, it'll be healed in a couple of weeks, it's fine. So—

It's actually quite severe, this one.

Yeah, it's quite bad.

Yeah.

Especially when a tendon wants to tear. Tear.

So yeah, um, it kind of shows you the, like, the, the mastery of coaching there. Like, you played into every aspect. It's, it's awesome.

Oh yeah, it's so much involved.

All right, we get Adrian under the bar.

Yeah, let's do it.

This should be fun.

140 for a single.

Keep it tight and stick with it. Okay, let's move over just a little bit.

So let's focus on that tension.

Deep breath in through the hips. Take your time. Load those 3 points and keep pushing. Now push, push, push, push, push, push.

Good, good. How was that?

It was heavy.

Yeah, it was good.

What did you say?

I was really— I was too busy trying to make sure he doesn't hurt himself. But yeah, it looks smooth, like from the top. No head movement, no shoulder movement coming forward, held your tightness right through. So good base to work on. I know it always feels hard when people first do it like this, but again, it's just another— just practice and it will start to feel a lot more natural, especially that amount of tension. It's actually pretty quick, people adapt to it pretty quick.

Heavier, or what are you calling that?

I think it's up to you now. Do you want to put a little bit more?

Ooh, what do we think? What's that, 140?

What do you reckon is max? What do you reckon is estimated max with no belt, no sleeves?

Oh, with that, he's definitely got a 160 there. Yeah, it felt, I concede that to you, it felt hard, but it was smooth. Any breakdown and it's just like I was saying, well, just stick with it. Stick with the technique, don't try and find an easy way to get up because any other way is not easier. Every other way makes it harder.

Yeah, I love it.

I'm gonna definitely use that cue point, like stick with it 'cause you're locked in sometimes you're at the bottom, it's like, oh, I could probably force a bit more tension through that side and that's when it starts to go all pear-shaped.

Yeah, exactly. Gotta trust the technique.

Yeah, that's right.

And this is what we do, so it's like in programming, it's just, repetitiveness when it comes to those last 4 to 6 weeks of just, just learning how to compete. And I mean, it's actually to a level where we actually sit down with the individual at their seats and the person that's gonna wrap is wrapping, the person who's gonna get them ready for the bar is the one doing it. We have the soft suits on, we're chalking them exactly the same, we use the same equipment, same bar, we find out what bar they're using there, we make sure we have that bar on the monolift. We're practicing the warmup routines, so like what kind of jumps they're gonna take. Learning to, and again, practicing a lot of singles, especially when we're coming closer because that's what we're training for.

So mental preparation as well as physical.

Yeah, it's a big, big mental aspect of it with training as well. Yes, yes, there's carryover physiological adaptations and the skill adaptation to it, but it is, people forget how much of just a mental game and skill-based strength training is. All the strength is gained basically all in the past and those last preparations, it's all about just getting their body and mind ready.

Right, so with these jumps now, if we want to go to heavier, we go 150, 160, or you just go straight 160?

Let's go 150 and try 160.

Yeah, let's go 150. And what are some of the, uh, the go-to programs like that you find yourself— like you mentioned before that you utilize the Russian methods, uh, frequently. What are there other methods that you utilize?

Well, it's one of those, again, like I said, having a toolbox. And so it's normally a hybrid between a few. Um, I find aspects of different Areas apply well to different people and to elicit different responses. I always found it a bit of an art form. So actually I came across a bit of information from Christian Thibodeau and Charles Poliquin. I did a bit of work on it too with personality profiling.

Yes.

But also have found as quite a strong carryover to strength-based training and their nervous system potential and how they're able to peak and how they're able to deload and what kind of volume they can handle. So I've adapted their methods 'cause it kind of explained a lot of the things which I couldn't really explain, which only seemed to be from my years and years of experience with lifting. And it kind of explained some of the things I was seeing. And so like, how can I see this more? And the good thing about having a specific powerlifting team, which are only athletes on my team who actually compete, 'cause I'm people who train at my gym, I'm able to run kind of experiments, large-scale experiments. So I started with the different types of profiling and put them in categories. And I did this for the last comp and I was, some of my ideas, which some of my thoughts, what I thought would work for specific profiling types worked a treat. Like I was able to very accurately predict.

So using like the Braverman test the way he suggests or?

Yeah, bravenesses when I got them all to do that. But I still grouped them to be part. So yes, I put them into category 2A and 2B and all this stuff, but I put 2 all together and 1s all together. I didn't worry about 3 'cause we don't, I don't see any type 3.

GABA.

Yeah, I don't see many of them doing powerlifting.

They're doing yoga. Stretching, breathing.

Netflix.

Netflix.

Yeah, so type 1 and type 2.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Acetylcholine and dopamine.

Dopamine, yeah. But yeah, had a strong relationship, was able to know when, what kind of training to do, what kind of reps to work with. They do, type 1s do well with very low reps. They don't need as much volume. They can peak about, I say about 3 weeks out and still hold their peak right through the comp where type 2 had to hit their biggest numbers closer to the comp as part of, part of A, their psychology, number 2, they detrain very quickly as well. So I find that they lose their peak a lot faster. And I could see the discrepancy beforehand and other programming methods I use on a large scale where you'd find this category of types of people are quite fitting into this. So sometimes I program individually. If I think I can program as a team, I'll put them in a team and run a series of programs together. So it depends on how we're gonna put the training 'cause I find training as a team far more effective in terms of producing a superior result over just individual coaching. But individual coaching is very much needed at the start of athletes, of an athlete's journey journey to learn, but then they have to create independence and stop being codependent on a coach and learn to adapt their own training.

Shout out to Christian Thibodeau, I actually spoke to him the other day. Oh, cool. He's out in Melbourne next, we should have him on the Wolf's Den. Oh, that'd be awesome.

I'd love to see that. Yeah, I saw him speak at Swiss.

Oh yes.

That was really cool.

Are we up to the next?

Yeah.

Next lift? 150 for a single, here we go, Adrian. those other people who train at my gym, I'm able to run kind of experiments, large scale experiments. So I started with the different types of profiling and put them in categories and I did this for the last And we bombed that, so Max is, uh, 140. Yeah, 140.

You had it, had it.

Had to stick, had to stick with, stick with a little bit longer.

Yeah, you could have had it, definitely.

So you just lost his sticking power, and then I started, felt like I was starting to come forward again on the toes.

Yeah, this looked like he was just trying to regain, but again, it's the same thing, like generally, you know, it was cool to do it here, but when you implement a new technique It wouldn't go so heavy, but generally implement a bit of volume.

For the purposes of the YouTube and the podcast, we just wanted to give the viewers a—

see if we could eat shit.

Yeah, just basically. Funkery.com or something. Yeah, exactly. I would have liked a bit more of a spectacular end to that, might have got more clicks.

Sorry, I'll try.

Just do it again. Don't spot him this time.

See if we can fold in half.

Yeah, yeah.

No, very good. So I suppose just final thoughts on this. You said you were studying physics and the scientific mind.

Do you want to tell us a bit about that? Oh yeah, so I always had a passion for physics and engineering right from, I remember from like year 5, year 6. I was always fascinated by space and always fascinated by the universe. And I remember asking complex questions, complex questions myself, which I wasn't allowed to ask because I was in a heavily Catholic school, and so some of those questions I couldn't ask, but I was thinking them. And so this has been a lifelong journey on just trying to have this fascination of understanding everything about the universe. And so when I got to school, I was gonna go and do engineering and decided to join the Army instead. But yeah, when I came back, I decided to take up Bachelor of Science I majored in physics, didn't quite finish, I still had a year to go, but I ended up pursuing Lifters League instead. Like I was running a side business as a coach and it just started taking off. And I was like, I just wanna keep growing this. And, but I found the, what I have learned from physics has made me, I'd put it hands down, it's what made me good at what I do in terms of not just, just in terms of just keep experimenting, keep innovating, understanding how to solve problems, not getting caught up in what people and different fads and methods that are coming out in the industry, actually testing it and seeing if it does work, knowing the difference between what is hype and what isn't, and not letting, not being limited by the standards of everyone else where things assumed you, you know, girls shouldn't lift heavy, girls shouldn't have a big bench. And then you ignore that dogma and just, you know, how can I solve this problem? I guess it's a very scientific and it's an engineering kind of way of solving problems or looking at the world.

Very good. And Adrian's done here, like where we're calling it.

Yeah, yeah.

He's done, he's calling it.

The other one I wanted to ask is like, you know, so you've got all that, that science backing. And the other thing we spoke about before is that grind factor. So when it comes to that kind of psychology part, what do you like to focus on? Like, do you have a certain point? It's like, all right, you've got this exercise mastery. Now you need a bit more. Like, where do you find that point? That it's kind of like that teetering point of like that grind or it's everything's breaking down type thing.

So a lot of it, again, all the fundamentals of the first is the skills work. The grinding part of, of strength training is one of the last things I address. And normally I'd see in about 2 or 3-year mark that that's where it becomes their next kind of their next plateau because now they're really starting to reach their potential and now they're actually hitting to the max of it and the next thing is the grind. I find there is a little bit of training you can do with it, but a lot of it in terms of getting them through the grind is a lot of talk into their mind. I think once you've done all these things, once you get to more of the elite, a lot of it's to do with mindset and you think athletes have it and they do, but it really needs to be specific and it needs to be primed. And it's like what talk—

The top 1% is gonna go.

And there's two things, it's like what talk are going in their head and what talk is happening when they lift it? What are they saying to themselves or what do they feel? And what can I do to change that language? Do I change the process all the steps towards that end mark, or do I completely change the language that's going on in their head and see very fast results with that. And then it's just practice. So I'll get them to grind other submaximal lifts. You know, let's push a front squat. It's not gonna be nearly as taxing. Let's push a deadlift off blocks, not gonna be as taxing, but they're gonna get a sense of grinding out weight. So that'll be kind of the programming we would implement to get them to start to feel how to grind out.

Not just doing it for the gram.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And grinding, not grinder that you're familiar with.

Oh, yes. Very funny, Adrian. Well, on that note, let's head back to the tables and wrap up this podcast. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. And make sure if you're watching on YouTube, you click that subscribe button and ding, ding, ding, everyone else.

Where things assumed you girls shouldn't lift, heavy girls shouldn't have a big bench. And then you ignore that dogma and just how can I solve this problem? I guess it's a very scientific and it's an engineering kind of way of solving problems or looking at the world.

Very good.

And Adrian's done standard of personal training bar none. We have trained over 250 champions in competing and in a variety of different sports as well as quite literally thousands of before and after transformations, helps people get in the very best shape of their life. And heck, we've even educated a stack of trainers throughout the world. This has become a travel-to destination. So folks, if you are in the Melbourne area, hit us up. It's melbournepersonaltrainers.com. This is the place to train. You can email us at info@enterprisefitness.com melbournepersonaltrainers.com or the website is melbournepersonaltrainers.com and make sure you check us out on Instagram as well. Reach out to us, we're here to help. And again, this is the place you wanna be if you're serious about your fitness and physique goals.

Welcome back to the Wolf's Den. I hope you enjoyed that segment with Gus Cook squatting with Adrian. Adrian, how did you find the technique in the squats?

Yeah, good.

'Cause I'm so used to lifting in lifting shoes actually to break it back down back down and just get rid of all the crap and kind of focus on the feet in connection with the ground and focusing on the lift as a whole and not like, where do I need to drive from? Like, and trying to correct it halfway through, like committing to the lift. I found that a lot better and a lot smoother.

You bombed on that 150.

What was going on there?

It's got to bring that up. That was just like, it was just probably just not— I haven't worked up to that heavy before.

You've never done low bar squat, have you?

No, I've done it maybe like 3 times.

Right, so you've never trained it, never done training socks. It's a completely brand new movement to use a low bar squat.

So it was, um, yeah, it was probably just a new weight that I haven't built onto before.

But also squatting bare feet, there's a lot of changes, there's a completely different movement. You didn't have your lifters on, no belt, no wraps.

Method of training as well, usually it's like I haven't started with a squat in a long time. Like, it's everything I've been doing is bodybuilding based, so I'll start with like leg extension to get a pump, you know, yeah, get a pre-fatigue, everything's pre-fatigue essentially.

So you're just, you're not in the, uh, the hemisphere of strength training right now, it's all bodybuilding and pushing, etc.

So it's good to bring it back as well and probably, um, you know, utilize that hip dominant squat and, uh, yeah.

What, what, what do you think you'll take away into your training? Is it the feet? Is it the brace?

Definitely the feet thing and the bracing part as well, um, probably for the, yeah, the lesser, like the lower end reps as well.

Awesome, awesome. And Gus, final thoughts?

I guess for everyone to work with someone, work with a coach. It's hard to bounce off your own ideas, too much information out there to help address certain issues that, you know, find, find someone who was also— who's going to focus on you, not just give you a link to buy a training template and follow this, these instructions. Um, because everyone is different and the method I take depends on many variables to get to a goal. So work with someone and find a good coach.

And the best coaches have coaches.

Yes, the best coaches have coaches. I regularly gone through a few coaches and I'm currently working with Kabuki Strength, and it's good to have some objective feedback because no matter what, you're always quite subjective on yourself and never your best coach.

Yes, you can't see your own backswing. Yeah. Yeah, and it's like you go to your own coaching, you do all the things that you like.

Yeah.

Or it feels good and not necessarily things that you hate. And I can testament certainly to your coaching 'cause I've spent a few months, if not over a year with your coaching. I had a torn pec just for the guys, I had a torn pec a while back, 2007 I think I tore it, small tear and I was kind of scared to, to push the numbers and with your coaching, I hit my PB, 135.5. So testament to what you do absolutely firsthand. You do very good work. And you know, I know the way you work is you get everyone to film everything, upload it onto the Dropbox, show them Instagram, you know, you're there, you get back to people. So it's great. It really is. So thank you for coaching me. But if you guys wanna check out what you do, where can the folks, find you?

Instagram is very active. I'm very active on there all the time, so you can hit me up on Muscle Nerd, which is my Instagram.

Or is that with an underscore?

Or @musclenerd—

oh, sorry, @muscle_nerd_. Right, cool.

And Lifters League as well?

Yep, @liftersleague, one word. That's my gym, and we see all our athletes on there all the time.

And so you are on the Googles.

You know? Yep, yeah.

You can look me up at Lifters League. Same thing as well. Facebook, have a website as well.

Based in Brisbane, Fortitude Valley, right?

Yes.

Yep, awesome. Awesome. And Adrian, where can the folks hit you up at?

Instagram works well. So just adrian.ferranda.

Awesome. And obviously I am Mark Ottobre. You can check me out on Instagram @markottobre. And also Enterprise Fitness. Make sure you have followed the Enterprise Fitness page, Enterprise Fitness Melbourne. And if you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you subscribe and ding ding ding. Ring that bell. Ding ding ding ding ding. Ring the bell for all updates. And the other one, Instagram, YouTube. Oh, if you're listening to this in your car on Apple iTunes, we would be forever grateful if you could would leave us a review and let your friends know, share this podcast, get the message out.

Till next time, friends, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart.