The GREATEST Powerlifter of All Time: Ed Coan

Hey guys, before we get started, I have a big announcement. I'm writing a second book that will be dropping January 2021. The title of the book is Rebuilding Milo, the lifters guide to fixing common injuries and building a strong foundation for enhancing performance. I wrote it to be the Ultimate Guide in Solution to your struggles with injury and pain that we develop in the weight room. Now over the next few weeks, I'm going to drop more information on the book and even ask for your help in voting on the cover. If you want to learn more about the book, you can head on over to Amazon.com and just search Rebuilding Milo. The pre-order button is actually already up. I am super pumped for this book and I know you guys are going to love it. Without further ado, let's get to today's show. What's up podcast listeners. Thank you so much for checking out today's show. This is Episode 96 of the Squat University podcast. The goal with each and every one of these shows is to bring you as much value-packed content to help you move better in the gym and in life. Decrease your body, say it's in pain and help you reach your true athletic potential. Today's podcast is sponsored by Barefoot Athletics. Here's the deal. If you want to lift big weights with great technique, you know you need the right shoe. For those of you out there that like to lift a flat sole shoe like a chuck tailor, you need to check out the ursa's shoe by Barefoot Athletics. They have a super wide toe box that allows you to naturally display your toes out and use your foot like it was designed. No more cramming your foot into a narrow toe box and smashing your foot into an unnatural position. And yes, a chuck tailor is a very narrow toe box. Now I've been lifting in the ursa's for any of my non-alemic lifts for the past couple of months now and I just absolutely loved it. They're extremely comfortable and they're not going to break your bank like other lifting shoes will. They're very affordable. If you go on to the Barefoot Athletics website and that's B-E-A-R like the animal and use the code squat-u, you can get 10% off your order and that's for anything else on their website. Also on their website are the correct toes which I've been wearing a lot and if you listen to my prior podcast with Dr. Ray McClanahan on why most of our shoes suck, we talk all about the correct toes and how they're very helpful at improving just foot stability which can then help us in our technique and our performance. Now for today's show, you guys are in for a real treat. This is one of my favorite episodes I've ever done. My guest today needs very little introduction. If I were to ask you who the best baseball player is of all time, many of you would say Baybrooth. The best basketball player of all time? Of course it's Michael Jordan. Well when it comes to powerlifting, there's one name that is overwhelmingly associated with greatness and that's Ed Cohen. So you guys are going to listen today to Ed Nies' conversation. It's a long one and we dive into so many different aspects of training, injury, resiliency and how to structure your training program so that you can not only lift big weights but do so for the rest of your life. So onto today's podcast. Ed I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your day to come on today's show. It's truly an honor to have you on. Oh it was a pretty easy choice. I really enjoy everything you do for everyone. Thank you so much. That really means a lot. Now for the listeners out there, I'm sure 99% of them know of your incredible powerlifting career. Setting over 71 world records and performing some of the most amazing feats of strength like squatting a thousand nineteen pounds weighing only two thirty six. But I really wanted to dive in and talk about today. Isn't as much about what you accomplished on the platform but the tactics and strategies used to lip what you did for such a long period of time. When I was getting ready in researching for this podcast today, I came across a quote you had recently where he said, "If you truly love what you're doing, you'll find a way to do it forever." And that's where I really wanted to start. Can you share your approach in philosophy to training and competition? What were some of the things that you did that really made the most important impact on your longevity in your powerlifting career? I think well I grew up in the era where bodybuilding was number one and then it was powerlifting. Powerlifting was really second class and weightlifting was even underneath that which was a shame. And we didn't have all the chains and bands and the crazy gear that they did today. Monoliths and you name it. And even all the fancy routines. So everything was pretty basic but I used to read a lot and I read a quote from Albert Einstein that basically said, "There's genius and simplicity." And so a program could be so simple to look on paper but when you start adding up sets, reps, weights, exercises, assistance exercises that truly help you and not just for cosmetic sake. The type of how long your programs are going to do it be and you factor in all the sleep and nutrition stuff afterwards. It's not as simple as it seems. And I think a lot of that got thrown away where people tried to make the routine so difficult and hard to understand that they thought trashing you and doing so much volume without the, let's say you would say assistance exercises now for the lifts but they can also be said that they're correct correction exercises and longevity exercises. So my basic philosophy was I wanted to be big and strong because I was a little runt. I was 5 foot 11, 98 pounds when I fresh my year so I was afraid to go out for a football so I went out for wrestling. There was a wrestling class there. And then after I saw pumping iron, I decided I wanted to be ironed. I couldn't be ironed. Ironed was too tall. I met him in person. My head was right in his chest. So I tried to be Franco and he was a strong guy. And so I really like what he did and as soon as I started lifting and I tried to deadlift and squat, I was like, oh my, this is feels good. And I just went with it and I saw cast lift on TV when they used to have it on TV. And I just said, well, if you could be that big, that's strong. Not have to pose on stage and worry about your diet quite as much. I think I like this thing. So I just ran with it and I just kept going. I didn't know how to train at the beginning. I would max out my squat twice a week and bench and deadlift and until I hit 500 pounds in squat, I just kept going up. And it was a total good morning. But thank God I didn't get hurt at that time until later when I usually most of my injuries came from overtraining. And that's just ends up as long as you don't get hurt too bad, you just end up learning your own body, what you can and can't do. But I didn't want to do so much volume in the main lifts that it took away from the little bit of bodybuilder in me that wanted to be big and strong. So I only did exercises real heavy for all my assistance that complemented my body type, let's just say. And I went by feel and how it looked. If it felt good and was smooth, it was in. If it didn't feel right, it was out. So that's pretty much how I came up with my routine. You know, every single compound exercise I had, like in the squat, if I tried front squats, did work out. I have little short oapalopal legs, a really long and wide upper body. It just didn't feel right. High bar close stance, Olympic lifting squats, I could use more weight and it would put more stress on my quads. I liked it, it felt good. Those two exercises in the off season, I would follow them just like a would a regular in season regular squat program. Close grips, inclines, shoulder presses, bent rows, deflected lifts, deficit dead lifts, all those big heavy compound exercises. I made almost like a meat training cycle in the off season. Because I wanted everything big and strong and then all the other little stuff was usually just like a little pump or heavy sets of eight to 10. I wanted to make my body and do an impenetrable suit of armor wherever you hit. There was a big chunk of muscle but strength that worked in my favor and it just worked out for a really, really long time. Yeah, that's interesting. You said that, you know, certain lifts just weren't right for your body. I feel like today you see a lot of people try to group like everyone needs to front squat or everyone needs to do this specific style of squat. And really like you mentioned, your body was very different than Arnold's body. So it's tough to say that one size fits all especially when it comes to certain compound movements like the squat. Even though the squat as a whole isn't exercise that I believe that everyone should train. There's obviously going to be different idiosyncrasies and differences in the way in which we go about training it. What were some of your favorite ways in which you would you said you'd find assistance. exercises to meet your different left. I know you talked about like your stiff like a deadlift. If we're talking about the squat specifically, what were some of the things you would do? Would you follow up if you had a high bar back squat that day as your main compound lift? What were some of the assistant exercises you would throw in afterwards? What sort of was your structure of your training day? Well, I'd make the high bar back squat or high bar close stance squat. My main exercises, exercise, I would probably do one leg press slow and controlled and then I always get leg extensions and leg curls. It kind of like was like dotting your eye and crossing your teeth in a paper you wrote for school. It was like just enough so I had a little more balance in. I know a lot of times leg extensions and leg curls, some form of them are used as a rehab exercises. So it always made my knees feel good. I think one of the big things that we can take away from that is a lot of times we can sort of get on the different spectrum of how people train. You get some people that are very, very isolated and then you get some people that would they call them more functional training. Like you're only going to do the compound lifts and really it's sort of that blend in what works best for you. Like you said, you felt knee extension to help your knees. There's not a problem with it as long as you feel like it fits into your overall training objective. It's not as long as the lifts are still going up and you're healthy then it obviously works. What I did at the beginning is I looked at a medical journal. My dad was an administrator at University of Chicago, hospitals and clinics and I was in the office and I looked at a medical journal and I was actually kind of ADD when I was a kid so I was really introspective and so I would observe a lot and that's where I learned everything more from observing than anything else. So I looked at a magazine and opened it up and it showed a whole bunch of different MRIs in it of hips and these were all people of comparable size, weight, structure. But all the angles on the hips were just slightly different and that was the premise of the article. So that made the difference between a high bar, a low bar, a closed-dance, a wide squat, how far you point your feet, what heels you would wear in your shoe. So I just decided, well the only way I'm going to figure this out is if I try it myself and I went by feel and then doesn't look smooth as I'm coming up. Is there any like lag point or shift or anything that doesn't look normal and then boom I could correct it. And it only takes you all that much to correct something and people don't realize that. People try to go from a closer stance to a wide stance than a medium stance than a closed stance and instead of making tiny little incremental changes to find that exact spot they keep on going back and forth. So a tiny little incremental change won't feel that much but it'll feel enough where you feel if it's right or wrong. A big change will always feel wrong right away. When you have an athlete that's trying to find their ideal squat stance, what type of things are you are you playing around with? I just look at them from a front side view. I see how their knees track. I see if they're able to open up. You know you said a doctor's. I said I described that to make Mark Bell laugh years ago as your tape. A friend of my Doug Furness who was a good 275 pound lifter the second guy in total 2400 and the first guy 275 the lowest body weight at the time. He played football for a university at Tennessee, rode rodeo, wrestled everything and he could do a 510 to 75 with abs and monstrous legs could do a full straight out split and put his head on the ground. So he used to teach me how to open up more and when I tried to open up I pushed my knees out but I didn't like the torque that I felt on my knees and I could still go forward. I didn't like that. So he said no you got to open up higher. So that's when I started to open and concentrate on you know just that little at the beginning and you don't even have to sit back next his end your hips go boom boom just like that it feels perfect. I've done that with people that fix their backs and fix their knees because you know proper movement with the proper exercise is actually a corrective therapy. So true so true so many times people want to want to break down and say well I see this problem let's go do all these corrective exercises. Yeah there's not that that's a problem because sometimes it's needed but sometimes it's as little as just giving a few different cues and changing up the way in which you're starting a movement and if you're if you're starting position in squat in the first little movement like you said just opening up a little bit isn't on of course you're going to feel off and not have that ideal movement all the way down. I think the push out your knees was more from Luis Simmons and Westside because with how wide they could sit up in a monolith and the equipment they had the squat is way different. True so you like almost I mean obviously you say you know open up your tank but really opening from the hips and driving your hips wide rather than the knees that worked yeah right at like that's notorious it's not just crank open I never even it was just perfect it was like sitting like a baby sits then. Yeah was there anything that you would think about with as far as your feet and how you're using your feet because I feel like that's one thing that a lot of athletes we put shoes on and we automatically think that our feet are doing what they need to be doing but often creating that stability and gripping the ground with the feet I feel I have been something that's been very helpful for athletes. There was something someone said about the Ed Cohen wiggle and I used to do that in the squat and a deadlift where I wiggle my hips but I'm moving my feet at the same time finding that exact spot that like boom your whole body is lifting the weight. I remember it starts it either it starts here and goes down but then it has to start below we go back up again too to make everything right in the middle. Yeah I remember speaking with Dr. Stuart McGill on my podcast and he was just raving about the Ed Cohen wiggle and he'd say that the way the deadlift you like the deadlift one yeah. Yeah can you expand it on why sort of the wiggle and getting so stiff was so helpful for your technique. I was taught to be tight if I just walked up to the bar and grabbed it my position wasn't as perfect and it could be just because of my like I said my short legs and long long upper body but I didn't feel tight enough I didn't feel like I was into the bar as soon as I as soon as I pulled like that everything tipped forward and I didn't like that so as I pulled the tension out of the bar and held that tension that's when I just pulled myself in like a stake coils till my hips were closer till I felt to push on my quads till I felt my last lock up and then all I had to do was pick up my sternum my sternum as soon as I picked up my sternum that locked in my back immediately and then I was I was ready for lift off no matter what I did it was ready I've actually gotten that position got really really tight and had seven sixty come off the ground three or four inches without even trying to pull. Wow yeah I think that's a big thing a lot of young lifters don't realize is how important it is to be stiff and to get tight before they even attempt to pull the weight they often think of the movement pattern and they're not thinking about the positioning of getting under the barb on how important that is to the actual movement like you said that 700 plus pounds started moving even before just by getting in a good start position. Yeah you got to start right to finish right and especially in a deadlift if you don't your hips are going to rise if you pull too much your hips are going to rise if you don't pull too much so that's the ideal spot it's like in the squat the best the best thing to help a squat out that fixes everything wrong with your squat is a pause squat you have to control it on the way down you have to stay tight in the hole when you come up with it after you get an up call everything has to push at the same time or else you tip over so it's a really good teaching tool in the deadlift it would be like a deficit deadlift would fix everything it teaches you how to pull more and if you're out of position you fall forward immediately another thing with how you how you do it with your feet you could do it with your hands on the bench by pushing against the bar and we're going your back into place. The same way all that retraction. Now you talk about the deficit deadlift how higher you often setting your deficit for the deadlift? Two to two and a half inches anything more didn't transfer over enough because it didn't it didn't simulate the deadlift as much anything higher would then then just be just a regular stiff like deadlift it wouldn't be a conventional deficit anymore. Gotcha. And on your pause squats how often would you recommend athletes pause for? Does that seem something like the small and in some athletes you get they go like a good 10 to 20 seconds which is almost like a good 10 to 20 seconds which is almost like a good 10 to 20 seconds which is I think I think the going too long takes away from the stretch reflex a little bit more I don't think you get it the same way it's just enough just stop like a bench as long as it stops you're good to go and your brain has to boom go again and get it up it's got to it's got to recalculate itself to come up with because it's it wants to it does not want want to stop on the bottom. Especially with a heavy load. So if but if you if you wait too long, your brain has to calculate, recalculate, recalculate, and you end up using too much back. Hmm. The thing I like most about pauses, I feel like it causes an athlete to slow down obviously, but they really have to focus on their positioning and maintaining their tension. Because two times or two often I see athletes that I'll just drop and just bounce out of the bottom and in doing so and going so fast, they lose that stability that's so important. And then you'll see issues like the good morning squad and saving stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sometimes you have to slow down the process so your brain can calculate how to work it. You go too fast and never ends up. It's like overspeed running down the hill. It doesn't it doesn't work out. Yeah, but yeah, so it but and you get and you get good mobility out of it. If you're going low enough to stay in that position at a certain spot, a spot that you normally wouldn't go and stay in there for for for a pause with a load. That's important part. Everyone everyone could do really, really fast stuff with really, really lightweight and not have a breakdown with form. But when it comes to heavy weight, I never try concentrated on speed. I concentrated on explosion. And that's kind of what Fred Hadfield used to teach me. And so I could practice being explosive, even if it was a heavy, a super heavy weight, as long as my brain may be give everything I got at one time and use every muscle fiber and everything else I had in my body, then it would definitely move faster. If not, and you just did a rep for a rep for the sake of it, it's not going to calculate the same way. So basically moving with purpose every single time, every single time. That's like I said, every single exercise I had had a purpose. What is your purpose for doing concentration curl? What is your purpose for doing grip work? Or like I said, calf work. I used to do a ton of calf work when I was younger too. Mostly seated calves I figured, you know what? When I'm in the bottom of the squad, I'm seated. When I start off my deadlift, I'm seated. So let me just try to do these. I don't know if they worked or not. You gave me pretty calves and I never had a problem walking stuff out. Yeah. Well, that's a big thing when we talk about walking things out. I find that the large majority of injuries occur in a lot of problems, especially in the squad occur, not actually during the movement, but during the walk out and walk back in from the rank. And obviously doing a lot of the movements were very vertical. When you're dead lifting, when you're squatting, you're in that vertical plane of motion. We often don't train, especially with our assistant exercise. You don't do anything forward and backwards. I mean, that's why I love doing like farmer walks or suitcase carries like McGill would do them or the upside down kettlebell. So if you're not moving with intention all the time during your walk out or you're walking, you know, during your walk back in, it leads your body open for injury. I practiced my walk out very well. I had no problem walking out to 10, 19, no problem. Just take your time. But if you want to practice your walk out and make it right, you've got to practice your setup underneath the bar getting everything tight beforehand. Too many people walk it out. They think they're set and then they go and they try to get tight. You should all where to be so tight where you should your body should not move up and down. That means you just loosened up and you can't do that. You cannot do that. What are some of the cues that you like to teach a young athlete when they're getting under the barbell. Do you like pulling down on the bar, squeezing the bar break the bar with your hands? What are some of the cues that you like? Squeeze the bar, pull it. I actually tried to move my back into the bar more than I did pull the weight down. If I pulled the weight down, I could always pull the weight down. But I wanted my back to fit into the into the bar exactly where I wanted it. So I would just move and wiggle and get it tight and move my hands tiny little increments to make my triceps and elbow move where I wanted to. I never really concentrated on pull the bar down. It was more pushing my back into the bar to make it one piece. Gotcha. I think Brian Carroll used to acute that really like wedge yourself into the bar. Create those lifters wedges. What Brian said, I think that really made sense to me. But just getting your body stiff and tight with the bar still in the rack. The same way you would wiggle down to the bar for a deadlift. That start position is so key. You used the weight of the bar as your tension as a means to get tight. Yeah. Now I know you mentioned working on your walk out. And I feel like I've read somewhere before that you would really focus on every single rep. No matter if it was the barbell or your lightweight 135 pounds on the bar, 225 on the bar. You're going to perform the exact same. Get under the barbell, squeeze down, two steps out, set your feet, sort of walking through that exact line of what you want to do in competition. Can you expand on turn your mind? Every time I could still walk up to the bar and get set at the drop of a dime with no weight on it. The exact steps, the exact way I put my hands on it, the exact way I gunnered underneath it, the exact way I wiggled my upper body, my lower body, my feet, everything is still exactly the same. So there's never a bad variable to it. You know what it's going to be like. You know how to set upright and you can make it feel a certain way to make it right in your head. What the only other thing I did is most people when they got tight, they squeezed like their whole upper back and their traps and I actually when I pulled myself into the bar, I made my lower lats pull into my spine too. So from very, very top to very, very bottom, all the muscles were pulled into the spine. So there's no crack or loose, loose link in the chain all the way down. So even if I went like this and it was super heavy and I leaned over forward, this would still be like this, it wouldn't do this. Yeah, well a lot of people they don't think about how important the lats are for creating that torso stiffness. I mean those muscles run from all the way down at the pelvis and attach onto the humerus and if they're pulling in tight and creating that rotation, the internal rotation for the arm, they're also creating that torso stiffness. So there's huge and creating that just upper body stability for the lift. Yep. If you have a bad shoulder, you can walk around fine. If you have a bad knee or a bad ankle, you can walk around fine. If you have a bad back, you can't walk around anywhere. So where do you put the bar when you squat on your back? What do you lay on that's your stability when you bench? Your back. What do you deadlift with? Your back. I made my back like a fricking, it was a, yeah, it was a brick wall. And obviously that's one of the most common injuries I see in every single strength athlete. We lift our power lift across it or strong man. We see the back injury overall is one of the most obviously not just common but just debilitating. And I just, I need back. The corner under right there. Yeah. How there is you people when they have back surgery can come back? That's, I mean, that's why we have Dr. Stuart McGill. That's so true. And often in our society today, we're not told that back surgeries are often a bad thing. You hear the, you know, the commercials, oh, here's this non-invasive back surgery. You'll be back to kayaking and all that stuff, you know, in a week. And it's ridiculous. And the long-term ramifications of surgeries are very, very horrible for a power lift or just strength athlete in general. Did you change his everything? All your motor, your motor patterns from, to your brain are completely screwed up immediately. Yeah. And finding that you said Dr. Stuart McGill after finding his stuff early in my physical therapy career just, it was a game changer. Yeah. Yeah. Did you deal with, did you deal with back injuries while you lifted competitive? One time I went too high off a deficit and I strained the Iliosecral ligament. And that was really, really bad. And no matter what I tried to do, I couldn't get it to heal. So all I did was rest it and I hit 20 minutes of stem three times a day for blood flow and it ended up finally healing itself because I wasn't messing with it. Everything I tried to do just kept aggravating it. So I was like, I'm not going to, adjustments not going to help it. Stretching aggravates it. What can I do that's going to help it where I could just lay down and not aggravate it again. So I just started stimming it and it got better. It got better. You know, sometimes you got to, you got to heal yourself a little bit. You got to do a little bit of thinking for yourself or else you become a sheep where your, your therapist is great but or your doctor and there comes a point where when you're at home, you're not there two or three times a week. What do you got to do? You got to get that feel back for yourself to learn how to heal yourself in little different ways. I always did that. I, there's always little tweaks here and there when you handle heavy weight. Of course. And the heavier you're getting, it's going to be more of a tweak than it was before. Definitely. I know that's a big thing that I really try to preach with Squire University are just ways to empower the average everyday athlete to sort of take control of their situation and understand, hey, there's things that you can do at home. You know, if you're feeling this aching your back, if you're feeling this aching your hip or your elbow, there's things that you can do that's going to help you recover and bounce back without having to, because not not everyone has a good physical therapy. Not everyone has a good doctor to go to. to. You know, it's tough. What we do have is we have really cool social media and Web MD and other guys that you could just watch a freaking video of the Google. Yeah, very true. So, you know, take a little control of your own self and be responsible. You know, it's sometimes it's as simple as do a couple stretches. Do a stretch out your groin, stretch out your hamstrings, stretch out your quads, stretch out your, you know, your hip flexors. And if there's a tight area in there, do some light stretches or some light movements that you could Google go to YouTube and learn how to do that might fix your knee or your ankle or your especially your lower back because all that is connected to your lower back. I learned a long time ago to make my adopters really damn strong because I knew that controlled a lot of things that were going to happen in my hips and then my lower back. What type of things would you do for eye doctor strengthening? I would, you know, sit down in like that lotus position and I would put weights on my thighs and just do addoctor stuff that way. It felt better than a doctor machine. Yeah, but I could control it especially on the way down. I could control it in little increments and get tight so I could activate what I wanted to and not use everything else. A lot of times I think people try to rush too many either assistants or rehab corrective exercises and they do them too fast where other things jump into do them instead of what you actually want them to do. It'd be like if a guy tried to do a heavy curl and just kind of go too fast all the time. Well, you're not using that much bicep anymore. You're just going to fuck up your shoulder. Yeah, I mean, the same principle is for lifting goes for rehab as well. And if you don't have intention with the way in which you're moving, you're not getting the most out of you, not being the most optimal, the most efficient, especially for talking corrective exercises for fixing an injury. You're getting it's a chance is the main thing. Definitely. Now, I know you mentioned that when you had injured your back that one time, the one thing that really helped you is just taking a little bit of time off and allowing your body to heal up. I know too often today, we still have that mentality and some athletes that no pain, no gain sort of push, push, push. And then what happens is that a big injury comes to where it really takes them out for a long time. How often did you or do you continue to see sort of that? Oh, my, my elbows injured or hurting, but I'm still going to push. I'm still going to continue lifting through that really good pain free exercises. There's always another exercise you could do that probably won't aggravate it or hurt it as much. So you concentrate on it. Just think of this. If my injury gets worse, I might not have to be able to lift again. There, that should solve all your problems. So four weeks of not doing tricep extensions and using a little bit of ice or massage or whatever is going to solve a lot more problems than when you need elbow surgery and you can't bench anymore or even hold a squat bar. That's so true. I think a lot of times athletes are in the mindset that if they don't do a certain exercise for a certain length of time, they're just going to lose all their progress. That's because they're usually it comes from insecurity. It's like, you know, like they always say, you know, trust the process. But I never had a problem. You know, there was a time when it would if I leaned too far forward in the squat with a heavy weight, I'd pop a calf, some strands in the calf. Well, the next week I knew that if I try to squat again, it's just going to grab and repul. I'd go with a high bar close stance squat. That way, I didn't lean forward and I didn't put as much pressure leaning forward on my calves. So I would just switch the exercise for one week. I'd be healed. I could go right back to doing what I did. It sounds like the big thing I'm taking away from from this is your approach was trying to become a master technician of what you were doing. And almost as if you were becoming a technician of of a NASCAR or something like that. When if something's not right, you're tuning it. You're changing something up just a little bit. You're not just trying to continue to push, push, push every single day. And if something feels off, you just continue to push the next day and it'll get better. You're always trying to tweak and change things up a little bit. I'll tweak it before I decide to push too hard. Yeah. Because if it feels wrong, you're going to do two things. You're going to get hurt right away or you're going to create a bad motor pattern from doing it the wrong way and you'll end up getting hurt. One thing that I saw on your one of your Instagram posts, I think was saying that you want to be able to lift your lightest weights like they're your heavy weights. That way you approach everything exactly the same way. Well, you just what you just mentioned before about the perfect setup. Everything has to be right right when you start in every single lift you do. No matter what it is, I don't need to care if it's your curl. Yeah. Everything has to be set. You have to feel right in order to do it. If you're off balance or one foot in front of the other or one's not pointed out far enough or you got to bar lower on one side with a light load, no problem. With a heavy load, something is not going to happen that's going to or something's going to happen that's not going to be very good. That's very true. I get a lot of people that will make the comment because I like to say that those who chase perfection in their lifting with their technique end up winning in the end not only are they going to find what their body's potential is because they're moving as optimally as possible, but they're also setting themselves up to have the long gem being their career by decreasing the risk of injury. You'll get some people on the other side of that will say that that idea of trying to chase perfection almost cripples people's end result. That they're crippled by the thought of perfection. What's your thoughts on that? Well, I had a quote out that said, "If you have four or five training cycles a year and you make a little progress, each training cycle and all these little exercises and your technique, if you do it for a long enough period of time, all that adds up and you're going to be pretty damn good." So my thing was I never said, "I want to lift and I'm going to lift this much at this meet." I set up the training cycle based on what I did previously and these are the gains that I can expect that were doable or realistic. Then I went with that and then I do it again and then I do it again. But it wasn't just my squat bench or deadlift that went up. It was my pause squat, my high bar closed-down squat, my closed grip, my incline, my shoulder press, my bent over rows, my stiff legs, my deficit deadlift. I had them all go up the same way. Now let's say if you last for just five years which is really quick, it goes really fast and it takes like three years to lay down a really proper base. Even though you're getting stronger, bigger, the insides are different than the outside. It's just going to take a while. But if you just did that for that long, look at everything that is strong compared to where it was and you can look at the rear of your mirror and you can't even see where you started. You're so far already. Now I lasted for 28 years and made a lot of gains for 25 of them. So where I started, I still remember my first meet. I still remember everything about it. All my mistakes I made in training, a lot of them happened for a reason. It was either overtraining or maybe I was too tired. I didn't eat enough or I didn't drink enough water and I pulled some or tore a little something. I came back from all that. The biggest injury I had was when my knee blew and I set up too fast and put one leg out farther than the other. So on the way down, I was standing in front of the train waiting for it to hit me because I felt that need going in and in and in and I had a mid-tend and wrap rupture of my pathologist completely snapped in half. I dealt with with an athlete who had that similar type injury. He was a powerlifter out in Kansas City. His was a little bit worse because he had patellar and quad tendon and an ACL, MCL PCOs. One of the worst I've ever seen. He ended up with almost a year of physical therapy. He did end up being able to come back and squat. I think he's up to like 315 now, but he was at like 65670 before. If he's at like that with full range of motion, then my cousin operated on me and he said, "Well, I've used the best search sutures that I know in the Mantine and any other spot I didn't like to look at. I put sutures in there too." So you're fine. He goes, "This is your therapist, Mike. therapist was a guy named Mike's the Kennesuit Work Form. He goes, Mike knows how to get you to where you're mobile and you're healthy enough to start again. You know how to get strong. You guys just put your heads together and make up what you want. Just don't get hurt." My physical therapist ended up doing his doctoral thesis on all my stuff because he had videos every session we had. It was great. What did you get back to doing after therapy? How long did it take you to start building? I didn't prepare on my back on purpose for six months. When I walked back under the bar, it was like I was back in my mother's room. It was so perfect. Because I had trained my body like what we talked about, setting up and walking up to the bar. Everything was exactly the same and nothing felt different or weird. It didn't feel weird. That motor pattern had been ingrained so often that it just was naturally come right back to it. Yeah. What I tell youngsters is the most important advice is take your time. Yeah, once you once you get it right It's set it's set for life. You won't screw up anymore You won't you know overtrain is the other issue. There's so many different training routines at different champions and record holders that have used So it's only it's technique for your body and It's not overtraining you pick pick in the right numbers everything I always did was doable In my mind it was doable on paper. I would make up that that routine for that cycle and write it down 30 30 damn times So I knew every week go to pan the next but was doable Yeah, I see I see a lot of athletes nowadays it can obviously in our social media world There's good and there's bad and you you get the bad part is just there's just so many options People are overwhelmed sometimes. They're like well this athletes talking about this method this athletes talking about this method And do I train this many days a week or this many days a week? And it's it's tougher them to side a sort of find this simplicity and is almost so over complex as far as Looking for someone else to help them too much You know I can I could put my pants on in time I choose by myself That's part of getting dressed do the same thing for yourself. There's certain things that you you have to learn by yourself And you can't copy someone's style all the time Unless it feels perfect That's you know finding your own spot. I know all that stuff would pick in the right numbers Your your your right technique and all that stuff I guess that would we'd have to pay someone $50 now because that's called self-regulation or whatever I think the biggest thing is just becoming your own coach You know I always tell athletes get that phone out and just video yourself and watch yourself and then you know It's all it takes for finding from the right from the right angle. I have so many people sent me videos Because I don't do a lot of online coaching I'd have to spend so much time Because I'm so nitpicky and I think I have such a conscience that I was born with But so it would be hard to do there's some guys that do a great job. I know like Bryce Lewis and Mike T do a phenomenal job as a few other guys I Don't have the programs to do that. I've just maybe I'm just lazy, but So I just have people send me videos. I said from a front-side view. I want to see what you squat and dental star I can correct that and they just make a little numbers Suggestion boom. It's done. Now you're your own coach What is some of the things that you see the most commonly as far as problems in the squat and deadlift that you get video sent to you? the The main thing is they don't pick up their sternum Everyone locks in their upper back and squeezes it tight But if you don't pick up your sternum enough once you do that and lock your back if you don't pick up your sternum It's not locked. So if you pick your sternum up And every single exercise we do you feel your back lock up your shoulders are back everything set all the muscles on your back tighten up Now you're set to go That's the number that's the number one thing The other the other thing is a lot of people take like in the squat They take an Olympic lifter bar position with a power lifter stance. It's sooner or later. You're gonna fall forward And you can't lock up your lower lats as much as you want to if you have a high bar position Makes sense You can't use as much button hamstrings as you want if you have a hard bar position If you try to with a squat stance, you will definitely tip over and fall So little just little things like that then you then you just gotta teach them to open open up a little bit And then it's done the right those little cues alone make like five different things happen to where you don't have to say Well, you know a new trainer would say well I see a weakness and you know and will name off five different muscle groups with all these little exercises You're supposed to do when all it is is either you know open up your cane adopters and pick up your sternum Squeeze the bar. That's all it takes and a lot of other things happen just because of that you want Charles Pollock when you should call it like if you had a fight the thumb in the eye As soon as you get that thumb in the eye, it's all over with so that one cue causes a lot of things to happen you can't do Accurl without picking up your sternum you can't do it over head press without it You can't do a correct bet over row without it It just feel what it does when you do it and then you'll know right away. I got to pick this thing up Yeah, I mean, that's a perfect cue as far as Your ability to stabilize the core do you do or did you do a lot of course stability type work as assistant exercises? No, I just didn't squat in deadlift with with a belt on a lot in the offseason that that helped me a lot more you know do a heavy set of shrugs and do pause squats with no belt um, I think that's gonna develop your core more than anything whether they're trying to do little exercises that isolate things You squat in deadlift without about do a heavy set of shrugs if bent over rows without a belt a good morning without a belt Then you'll you'll teach yourself how to brace, but then everything Pass to work together. It's not like oh, I got pretty abs. I got pretty oblique No, then all of a sudden your rectus abdominis kicks in with controls so so much, but you can't see it So for most people they don't think about it So I think it would come close would be like a complete Straight leg deadlift with your arms way and back you all the way up to Get everything going and do it really don't jerk it. That's how people used to hurt their lower bags Don't just you know don't do Sit ups with a straight leg because you know if you don't jerk it and keep your arms back and go slow Everything gets worked But there's not a lot of other exercises. There's everything to make you look pretty But we're not talking about pretty Exactly. I mean it's the thing is just going back to the basics I figured if I could lift the most weight way possible In all these exercises that I would look pretty damn good anyways. I wanted to look like I was strong I wanted to look like a silverback gorilla. Yeah, I wanted someone to look at me and go holy shit That's what I wanted. Yeah, well you said that when you were young Bill Kazmire was was one of the year Your people your heroes that you looked up to as far but they what they looked like But what they could lift as well Bill Kazmire the look and I wanted Frank those back. Yeah I think the mark of a good strength athlete is what their back looks like Yeah, you see all the Chinese lifters what they look like without their shirt. I want to know something It's like oh my gosh. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's like I think every power lifter and Lifter in the whole world is getting physically aroused from looking at those pictures But what the Chinese do is they make themselves really really strong At to be getting of a Chinese cycle then it's it's not about technique at that point You can't lift you can't lift a lot of weight if you're weak You can have perfect technique But you're not gonna win very true I think what you mentioned before about lifting beltless sometimes is something that I think a lot of power lifters need to hear In in my training of a lot of them that come into me for injury as a physical therapist time and time again, we get to the point where we're trying to add more weight and We'll be doing something even maybe even 50% 50% of their old one are at max and they'll say hey, can I go grab my belt? And I'll say way too early I think we think that that belt is something that needs to be used for every lift And really when you start lifting Without the belt for a long period you're gonna strengthen your core much more so that when you do put that belt on You're gonna be able to exceed far what you were before You know a KK's line. I build my own fucking belt. Yes. I gave him that line. Thank you Yeah, we're in Australia and I told him a story about there was a Lifter from the Ukraine and the IPF named Yuri Spinoff a heavyweight You know taller not real wide not real hippie but he had a big belly sticking out, but it wasn't a regular belly This yeah, it was yeah, you could hit it with a sledgehammer And I asked him he tried a 947 without a belt And I said why don't you use your belt a belt and he goes I'd build my own belts And that was from straight-legged sit-ups with someone holding his legs down With a bar like a front squat a regular power bar across his Neck holding it with 275 on it going all the way up and all the way down without a problem. Wow He built his own belt and on the way down on the way up. You didn't see any of this Nice and nice and straight nice and locked in so my thing was I had to make my my whole core Ab reason or region To match my lower back Yeah, if not there's gonna be a breakdown How would you go about your training and your cycles with using a belt would there be times where you would say hey Tuesday we're doing high bar back squats. I'm gonna go as heavy as possible or hit this number without a belt and then I would just I would just plan on doing a whole beltless training cycle. Okay, an entire cycle of it. Yeah, I think there's a lot more uh over time than if you just try to do it once, then it gets all sore. No, you got to do it a lot more times to make it part of your body and really strong. I mean, I still got a chunk this big on my obliques that's all muscle still from not even going heavy because it won't leave. - When you would be-- - I had both hips replaced and I didn't have lower back problems. Ronnie Coleman was so mad at me that I could still squat and deadlift because when I had hip replacements and he didn't, I think that had to do with the fact that his quads were so strong, but his abductors and hips were weak. So right away when he had the hip replacements, it is lower back broke down. - Yeah, well, I mean, and that's a big thing is a lot of people don't understand the connectivity between the hips and the low back. We assume that low back issues are low back problems. And often that there's such an association between if you have weak hips or immobile hips and there's too much stiffness there, that low back is going to move. If you're not strong enough in your hips or stable enough, that low back's going to move. So we got to go both. - Doing what you do, I know I could do it just a little bit, but you could pick out people that you know are going to have problems later on in certain areas. Just on their structure alone, if they don't do this or too much of this, this is definitely going to happen. - Yeah, definitely. When you would be going through a training cycle leading up to competition, where you know you're going to be using your belts in competition, at what point would you put your belt on during the training day? - I would, you know, we always say offseason and stuff, but there's not really an offseason. It all blends together because it all has a purpose and that's for the competition. - Mm-hmm. - So I would have a lighter training cycle where it would be without a belt. Then the beginning of my next training cycle, I'd start without a belt, but when I got into, got into heavier sets of fives, I switched to wearing a belt. And then after I got through that and the heaviest part of it, then I was ready to start in season. And I just wouldn't wear it as tight, 'cause I wouldn't, a lot of times I wouldn't start off my, when I got to be my biggest and heaviest, I didn't start my cycle off at high reps because there's, it would just ruin me. It would just overtrain me right away. You know, I could do, I could do 700 for 10, which is a loose belt on, and that's before sleeves and walked out. - Yeah. - So if I did that stuff and then it would just, it would complete destroy me. - Yeah. Going back and seeing what it was like. - It would just blend in right away. - Yeah. Going back and speaking about KK, like you brought up your line to him. Obviously he's one of the most well-known deadletters in the world on using a slightly rounded back. And I know in speaking with Dr. Stuart McGill, he would talk about how, obviously, the neutral spine would be ideal for most people, for talking about resiliency at a spine. But he does bring up the idea that there are some elite power lifters and some elite strongmen that in order to create as much leverage as possible, they have a slightly rounded curvature, they lock it in place and then try to move as much about the hips as possible. What was your take on that idea of having the slight round in how it applies to the deadlift and the wheel staying in your free? - KK and I went over it there. He asked me some questions about it. And I said, how does it feel? - Mm-hmm. - And how are your lifts? He said, fine. I said, then that's fine for you. As long as you're locking in your lats and picking your sternum up, sometimes there's gonna be a little rounding. Sometimes it looks like it's more rounded if you have a ton of muscle up there too. - That's very good. - I mean, do you see something that Stephanie Cohen put up on there on her side with me deadlifting? Oh, looks, I'm way more rounded looking than I really am. 'Cause if I was that rounded looking and for real life, I wouldn't be able to pick my sternum up at all. - Sure. - So it's just locking it up, filling those lats, squeeze, picking that sternum up and make sure, you know, the duffin, everything is braced. Just lock it up. I never believed in, you know, push your abs into the belt. No, that caused me to have a sway belt back. And I didn't like that. I knew that was boom. My plan went lower back would have popped. There's gonna be a natural little bit of push anyways. That's why they used to call it. That's why you use a belt is to have something to push back against it. - True. - I mean, in the old days, they used to call it a herniabelt. Basically, that's what they used to say. - Yeah. - So as long as you pick everything up, lock it up, and then squeeze your set. - And then squeeze isn't just the top abs. You gotta squeeze down into your balls. - Well, I think the big thing is, is the distinction between having that locked in back and maybe it's got a slight round also because of the amount of muscle on your back. But is there a difference between a locked in spine and a moving spine? A spine that as soon as you start to pick up the weight, that back just flexes more and more and more. - It caves because you don't have enough to back it up, enough surrounding stuff to make it strong. Because of the way I squatted, 'cause like I said, my short legs longer off the longer torso, I would always lean a little bit more than most, but everything would stay locked and it didn't break like that. - Yeah. - That was the most important thing. As long as the shoulders didn't roll forward and they stay back, you're fine. Now you gotta chance to push off because your back is your platform and your platform did not break in any way, shape or form. - When you talked about earlier that there were different injuries that you would sustain throughout your career, but each and every single one of them, you tried to learn something from. You tried to take something away. Besides, obviously we talked about the low back injury. Can you point to any of the big injuries that you had were just smaller aches and pains that made your life a better place. - Sure, I saw those things. - When I was 20 years old, I tore a pack but only a big chunk of muscle. That's 'cause I thought, well, two times a week mentioned it's great. What if I throw in another day, just for a medium day? I was doing at 180 pounds, a 20 years old raw. I was doing 435, so for sets of four and five, and then I blew it. It just popped. It was just, the rehab afterwards was just, mostly just flies. Straight arm flies really, really light halfway up or all the way down, halfway up and just pump, pump, pump, and never stop. There wasn't a lot of other thing 'cause it was just a muscle. It was maybe a little bit more stretching on my own, but there wasn't a lot you could do. It's just time. You're gonna have a chunk of missing. Another time was I tore a little chunk out of the, what's the inner part of the bicep low? - That breaky already, Alice? - Yeah, I tore a little chunk out of that, death of the thing, 'cause after a while, I got so big and strong, but my wrist mobility didn't. So I couldn't rotate my wrist out anymore. It was rotated in, and when you're rotated in, like a bodybuilder, when he does a concentration curl, it flexes the bicep. So I felt, and I dropped the bar. So all the tendons still there. I just lost a little chunk of muscle. Give me a good beat. - Well, I know you mentioned that you were benching twice a week, and you're like, "Oh, it's just throw a third day in." - Yeah. - It was too intense. - Yeah. - It was a way too intense. - I think a lot of athletes think. - I was hitting all these heavy assistance exercises too. I put in all these heavy duty compound exercises to make up for lack of volume in the big lift, but I didn't wanna have a weakness anywhere. I wanted everything to be strong. - Yeah. - I think too often. - Pardon? - Sorry, no, you can go. - I think you can get strong, fairly quick, doing high volume and stuff, but in the long run, unless you start doing some assistance exercises, some bodybuilding stuff in a heavy way, you're gonna have some gaps there, they're gonna cause injuries. - Yeah, I totally see that. I know, especially in the world of weight lifting where I come from, we see a lot of athletes that they try to take more of a Bulgarian approach. I guess they'd say so they're squat, snatch, cleaning jerk, and they do that constantly. There's not much variation, there's not much assistant exercise, and then you get a lot of these athletes that may make crazy progress at first, because they're doing a lot of the main lifts at high intensity, but eventually they find stagnation, and they find plateaues in an injury setting. - Yep, you gotta, if there's a weak link, it's gonna show up on heavy stuff, not on light stuff, or all of a sudden you're gonna say, why does in this field write anymore? Well, you're not in the right mode, better than anymore, because that weakness, I describe it like this. We all have a strength up here inherently in our body. We all the weakness like this down here. If there's too much of gap of a gap in between, that's when an injury gets caused, and there's too much imbalance. So if this strength keeps rising, and this down here doesn't, then you get an injury. So, Austin's should be made to bring this up to this level. Then this level can go up high again. - Hmm, makes total sense. I mean, that's a big reason why I talk about how, Obviously being your own coach, understanding what your imbalances are, but obviously working with a good coach or a good physical therapist, I can sort of point out to some athletes, hey, here's where you're lacking. This is a big issue. And if you concentrate on this, even though you're not very injured right now, you're still a healthy athlete, this is going to help set you up for future progress. Or if it's sometimes those small injuries can be a reawakening for them, to cause them to take a step back and really focus on like you said, building back up that imbalance. Yeah, if you know, I have a lot of really cool therapists and doctors on my phone. You know, Andrew Locke, Tony Rogers, Rogers Reset, Jordan Schowell, those two guys went to school together. And I have some other people that I can call that I can send to the video of, and they'll say, oh no, you see how you're doing it this way and you're using, you're using your shoulders to pull this rope, you're not using what's torn there that you want to rehab. You've got to do it more this way. And I don't know how to change it all in my car. I certainly don't know how to do, I have a limited amount of physical therapy and doctor knowledge. I'm going to go to someone and those more, I think it makes you, it's going to make you a better lifter and you don't use it. I think you're a damn idiot. Building the team around you. There you go. Someone always knows more than you. Yeah, I'm a huge proponent of going out and, you know, taking your own ego and throwing it out to the side and saying, hey, what can I learn from this person? What can I learn from this person? Even if you've been in the game for so long in this specific area, there's always something you can learn. And often sometimes I think we let our ego get ahead of us and then we don't, we almost close ourselves off to learning something new that could be beneficial, you know? The biggest problem is people, instead of training, they test. Let me see how this feels with this huge amount of weight. And I'll, they'll keep going up to all of a sudden. There's too much of a breakdown or an injury. Well, you already screwed everything up then. If you know, if you know, there's something wrong at the beginning, correct that first. When, when you were going through your long career as a competitive powerlifter, how often would you compete throughout the year? Twice a year at the most. I enjoyed training more than I did competing. That's, that's what I originally did. I went into human training and then I just started developing from there as far as being able to compete or thinking I was good enough to compete. But, you know, I liked the, the, the worlds would be in like late November, early December in the IPF at the time. And I had already, all this time, so the end of June mid mid July to work on my weaknesses. And I freaking love that. Yeah, I love that part. It's just the process. Yeah, it was great. And I got to learn from myself because I, I wasn't an idiot. I would just take, I would take my time. What's weak? What exercises do I know that work that will get me to this point? I didn't, I know like the West Sideway was, you know, rotate your exercises every three weeks. Well, you, you do feel difference and you do get stimulus. But I knew that if I wanted to get my incline or my close grip up, then I had to do inclines and close grips. If I wanted my upper back to get stronger, I knew that Benover Rose really well for me. And the way I did Benover Rose with no belt into the upper four hundreds without straps too was I never touched the ground until it was so heavy that I had to. And by doing that with no belt, there's a big core exercise right away. So your back, your back and your abstract are developing at the same rate, but they're learning how to work together. That's important. That's important. People don't realize that how everything starts in your brain. And if your brain doesn't adapt to that load or that exercise, it won't work. You just have really pretty abs. Well, that's the thing I always tell people is that you could do all the core stability exercises you want to shred your abs. Obviously a diet goes into a lot of that to see your abs. But, you know, you see a lot of these fitness influencers today and they're like, do these V-ups or these Russian crunches or, you know, rotations. And a lot of times it's like, hey, if you just do these strength training exercises that we wouldn't think is core. But if you do it with intention and good technique, it is a core exercise and not only is it a core exercise, but it's something that's going to lead to better performance in your main lift because you're using your core in a full functional manner. You're using it in relation to your hips. Like you said, that brain body connection. It's going to set down a base that could possibly keep things healthy for the rest of your life. Look at someone who is a gymnast for years and years. And even though they don't train that much anymore, you can look at that person go, they used to do something because they still have that base core strength that won't go away because it's set. Definitely. Yeah, that's huge. What's your training program look like? No, it is. My mom had a history of osteo and rheumatoid arthritis. So she had a lot of different replacements and feet and hands were screwed up as far as, you know, her fingers and toes. So that's really why I had to have two hip replacements. But I can still squat and deadlift. Over the years, I developed some tears. Partial tears on my shoulders. It's funny. Both shoulders have the exact same partial tears. Super spinatus. A little bit of labor and subscript tendon linearly. So I'm dealing with that. I can't really grab the bar high once you in the squat. So I'll either do safety bar squats or if you saw the video, me just using straps holding on. I did see that. Yes. I actually liked that because your core has to balance you huge. Yeah. And it makes the exercise really hard. And I don't have to use, I could go up to 400 pounds like that to a pause. Watch with no belt. And then if if my core has to work harder, I don't have that belt to push off of. That means my legs and my hips have to work harder too. So you can get just as much work out of 400 if if it was 500. Definitely. I like doing stuff like I like doing stuff like that that doesn't hurt. I went and got some stem cells throughout my body. 20 million each shoulder and some some more throughout my whole body. Wow. I'll add a place biocellerator in Colombia. How's that going? They're like the world's leader right now. Yeah. And I had interarticular shots. I had a ton of inflammation already and those shots cause a lot more inflammation, which they say is good because it is the stem cells run to it. I think I just had so much inflammation, so much pain for so long that it did not work as much as I like. But I noticed some relief. I noticed some a lot of relief in the systemic one. I had just 50 million Iveed. I felt better the next day. Like I could no brain fog. I could hear a pin drop. I could have I could have wrote one of most art things overnight. That's how it was unbelievable. Yeah. So the next time I go back, we're arranging it to where I get some like direct injections right where the tears are because I saw a guy whose whole left side was paralyzed from his stroke for four or five years earlier. So all of a sudden being able to bend his leg that he couldn't bend and raise his arm up all the way. The day after because he got stem cells with me the day after he was able to do this. So I saw some other people some really good stuff and a friend of mine I went back there with who had it done. He had some chronic tendonitis in his elbows. And he's more of a pumper. He likes to work out and get a bit. He loves his arms and he couldn't get an arm pump, cousin it with curls. The very next day he used the seven and a half pound dumbbell and got a huge pump in the gym right there. And he was just it was so he was so happy. So I'm going to try a bunch of that and I have some more rehab stuff that I'm doing for a little bit more mobility range of motion. Yeah. But I just do what I can. Life is life. It's going to I will adapt and do it a certain way. I don't like the way my packs are looking like little like plan of the ape titties. So I just do what I can to do a lot of reps. And when the time comes I'll be able to come back a little bit not to compete just to be able to have like no pain be able to function and do some exercises I want to do like bench again. Yeah. And and I'll be a little bit happier. I here's one thing I do think. I think the way you lifted and from when you were young to how you bought your major base and how you trained if it worked is something you should go back to at the end that your body remembers because you were built a certain way. Definitely. I mean it just goes back to the the quote that I started off with that if you truly love what you're doing you're going to find a way to do it for life. Keep doing it. Keep doing it. Man well I got to say it's been about an hour in this conversation has been nothing short of a pleasure. It's been great learning. You you are fantastic at asking questions. I really mean that it never stopped. It was great. I really appreciate that. I've been trying to practice my conversational approach for podcasting. It's tough, but it's frickin' excellent. There's one thing I wanted to end with. There was a quote, I think it was a poem by Bill Casmire in the book that Marty Gallagher wrote. It was on the back cover. Yeah, and he goes, let's see, the line was about you and he said, "He shares his limitless knowledge with others so that they can achieve their goals for he has the heart and the mind of an educator." I think that so truly came out today and I want to thank you for sharing all of your knowledge with everyone. I know the people that are going to be listening to this. I mean, we've got young kids straight out of high school that are first getting into power lifting and weight lifting too. We've got professional and then we have people that are in their 50, 60, 70s still trying to hold on to doing the things that they love. I know that the information that you're sharing today is going to be helpful across that entire spectrum. Yep. And if we can get those older guys to be able to do those exercises correctly, they don't need a lot of weight, but it's going to help them live a happier, healthy life where they don't need a walker and a cane and they can jump out of it. I can still jump out of bed, no problem. Yeah. Despite having two hip replacements, I can still jump out of bed, do all kinds of things without a problem whatsoever. That's what I want. The next step you and I are going to do is I'll probably fly out there on a Friday night because it's only St. Louis or Drive. Yeah. And we'll just do a whole Saturday shooting of cool, cool ass videos. That would be amazing. I would love that. We could do so much to help other people with that. Yeah, because when I do a seminar, I hate regular seminars unless it's like pure medical or pure like diet stuff, if someone just gets up there and talks, yeah, you sleep. So I run everything as a workshop and I coach everyone hands on the whole time running back and forth. Then at the end, everyone is used to my horrible humor and see that I'm just a regular guy. Now they're ready to ask the questions that they really want to know without hesitations. And that's when we start learning. So I'll have people that come in that don't live. I've had some strength coaches come in that don't that aren't lifting, but they want to watch how I coach. So then I'll bring them and have them stand where I like to stand and say, watch this. See this right here? Okay. And that's what you and I can do. We can help a lot of people. I think so too. We'll get it on the schedule and go from there. I know one thing I always said is there was a quote I said that I want to be 85 years old and so squatting a barbell who's with me. And I know that. No, I'm going to have two plates on there. Yeah, for sure. You'll be a little bit stronger than I will be at 85, but we'll still be both squatting for sure. Just smiling. That's what would be. Yes, we will be. All right. Well, let's see here. For those out there that want to find more information about the things that you're doing and learn from you more than this podcast and a little working, they find that. Just go to my Instagram and Neil, most of the time, like I said, I watch videos for free all the time and just give that one or two little corrections and help you out. Last week there was a kid I think he's in Pennsylvania. I gave him my number to have him call me so he wouldn't make the mistakes. I talked to him for a half hour on the phone. It just be nice. You know, if you go the history of time in all sports and you talk about really, really guys that were really good at what they do, nobody really talks about the guys that were dicks. That's so true. Just be nice. Yeah. Your legacy lives forever. People remember you in a nice way and it's a call to give the giving because it makes you feel damn good. That's so true. Man, and that's before before I go, I want to thank you. I'm not just a squad, but for every exercise. I mean, I watch what you did with Martin and how perfect his squad looks. It looks great now. He's doing so much better. He moves like he's an athlete. Like it's just another like it's not like a squad. It's just like a normal everyday body movement that he could do like when a kid squats down a little baby. So good job. Thank you so much. I see a lot of crossover from your approach that you have to to Martins as well. I mean, being one of the greatest power lifters of all time in Martins being the 2019 world strongest man. A lot of times people think that, you know, they're going to have an attitude or they don't want to talk to anyone else because they know too much. And both of you guys have approached education and just talking with other people is such of a humble demeanor. And I think that a lot of people connect with that. And you're able to not only do great things, but you're going to take a lot of people to do great things as long. People are going to follow you. Thank you. And what's harder to be in a good coach is you've got to learn how to get through to each and everyone different person. Some people you could raise your voice to a little bit, some people you just have to look at him and say, "It's done." Yep. Women are very easy because they're very anal. And if you tell them something technique wise, they could get the technique down in a heartbeat, as with someone who's a doctor or a computer programmer or something like that. And the other people you got to go through and just show them a little more and make them slow down the process. I did an article for Weeter One Time called it 10 Second Rep. So many seconds. This is before anybody came up with tempo training years before. And I said, "Just if you want to learn how to correct your squat bench, deadlift or any exercise, go down really, really slow. And then all of a sudden you'll be able to correct yourself on the way down with a little wiggle or this or that. And when you get down in a hole, you can come up as fast as you want because in your perfect position, do it." Yeah. I had an athlete last week and she was dealing with an issue with her knee caving in on the ascent. And a lot of times it's very easy to say, "All right, well, let's go do this correct effect for that. So let's go do this correct effect for that." And all we did was, "Hey, let's get out of your shoes." And I want you to do a five-second tempo descent and just slow, slow, slow, and feel, and cognitively feel for every single small nuance on the way down. Are you maintaining that control and that stiffness in your left hip compared to your right hip? And in doing that alone, she's like, "Oh, wow. I could feel all of a sudden. My left hip was giving out as far as that torque at the very bottom." And I'm like, "There you go. Sometimes we go so fast. And then we skip and we miss that. And that's why you're caving in on the start. Just slow it down. You go too fast to where your brain doesn't pick it up that fast. Exactly. And then you have to move at the same speed. If they don't, you're going to boom out of the groove immediately." Yeah. I mean, I think that's one takeaway. People can take from this podcast is sometimes it's just slowing the thing down, going back to the basics. And in doing so, it's going to have large payoff, not only in your immediate success as a powerlifter strength athlete, but long-term longevity. If you do the basics and you trust the process, good things are going to happen in the end. 100%. The only other doctor I got to give him a shot at is Dr. Bullhite's hour. I think I was like the first power to start sharing his stuff online. So he owes me a lot of money. But because he has to work on injuries with all these fighters and at Jackson Wink that are so different from anything anybody would ever expect. He had to adapt different styles and learn exactly what we talked about is find a way to get healthy to make it better. So like I said, I follow all you guys. It just takes a second to just say, sit back and read. Yep. That's what it's all about. But I want to thank you very much for what you do for our whole community. You're so welcome. Thank you so much again for being on the podcast. Everyone listening out there, I want you to take a screenshot of this podcast where you're listening on your phone, share it on social media, tag. It's the Eddie Cohen, correct? Or just Eddie Cohen on Instagram. I think it's Eddie Cohen. Okay. And Squat University Tag Y. There you go, Eddie Cohen and Squat University on Instagram. And we'll say thank you for listening and sharing it. Until next time, guys, happy squatting. That's it for today, class. On Squat University by Dr. Aaron Horshig for more exclusive content. Log on to squatuniversity.com.