Grab your pre workout and turn up that volume. It is time for a new episode of the Power Lifters Den with your host Cam Smith. Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Pile Lifters Den. I'm your host Cam Smith and today I wanted to bring on Connor from Conjugate Strong. Connor, why don't you introduce yourself? Well, I'm Connor Karowski. I am a multiply power lifter and strength conditioning coach.
I work primarily with high schoolers, but I work with, you know, wide, wide variety of people. As far as powerlifting goes, best numbers are in 1040 squat, 766 LB bench, and then 775 LB deadlift. And yeah, that's that's about me. Yeah. So I guess to get started, we'll talk a little bit about your career. I was looking on open power from before I saw on there your first meet was in like 2016. So you've been competing for about 8 years. Have you done primarily multiply
since the beginning? I know you have a couple raw meets in there, but kind of from there, when did you kind of get into a gear? Yes. Like I kind of fell into powerlifting. It wasn't something that I sought out that kind of just found it, you know, in college, one of the guys who was training at the college weight room there, his name is Matthew Sherfinski. He's a real strong raw lifter. He put up a, you know, 22K plus raw total.
I think at 275. He was sort of the middle of the road there with his weight class. But I, I found him in the weight room and I saw what he was doing and, you know, he introduced me to the whole, you know, powerlifting in general. I didn't know it was a sport at the time. They're really only familiar with like, you know, your traditional sports. I played football, I played, you know, soccer, never wanted to play baseball, wasn't interested.
But I tried everything else. And, you know, I, I sort of back and forth on whether or not I wanted to compete. And then I kind of dabbled in with a little bit of, you know, a few push pulls. Someone sanctioned, you know, maybe one or two that actually were sanctioned that ended up on open powerlifting. And then I found single ply and I did one single ply meet and the guys I was training with at the time, they bought me a pair of inter predators.
So that was just kind of my my gateway into multiply and I never really looked back from there. So yeah, most of my competing has been multiply, which I think was fairly uncommon at the time that I was actually getting into, you know, powerlifting it. I mean, it was for all intents and purposes, it was kind of dying at that time. Like RAW by that time had really taken over and and you know, quick equip lifting was, you know, kind of falling to the
wayside. I think it's kind of bounced back a little bit, you know, back into a little bit more of the mainstream with things. But at the time, yeah, I think I just liked it because it went kind of against the grain. And yeah, so multiply was way to go for me. Yeah, it is funny because that is about around the time when like the raw boom kind of started. And like you just mentioned, I feel like Multiply is starting to kind of get the love it deserves again.
Yeah. So I you mentioned you started off with single ply kind of from from your experience of doing a little bit of single ply and multiply, what what makes you like multiply that much better? So I usually tell this, you know, people as they're kind of getting into gear and they're asking about, you know, should I make a pit stop at single ply?
Should I try this first? I think that the difference between going raw to single ply is less than sort of the big change that you go from single ply to multiply. You know, I remember putting on that was an OK raw bencher. It was an OK, you know, it was an OK raw lifter in general. It wasn't anything, you know, write home about, you know, at the time. But you know, I was, I was naturally big. I was naturally fairly strong. And I put the single play stuff on.
And while it was difficult, while it hurt a little bit, I didn't find it incredibly challenging. Like I took to it quite well. But when I made the jump from the single play to multiply, I mean, it just it felt like a completely different world. And it was it was much harder to use. The room got a lot darker while I was using it. I need to adjust to that. But like, well, I mean, you're getting into, you know, multiply
stuff right now. And and I mean, you maybe experience that same thing where it's like, you know, if if you put on briefs before versus putting on an entire suit with straps up and wraps, it's like you keep going lower in the room, the lights just darker and darker and darker. Getting comfortable with that is scary, but I like that. And yeah, it was just it, it, it prevent it presented, you know, more of a challenge And I, I like doing hard things because
they're hard. That's, that's just it just type of first name. I like if I, I know I work in the gym, you know, all day. That's what I do. I go work with, I work with the kids. So I'm always doing something physical, but I was kind of telling myself like, if I wasn't doing this, there's no way I'd be able to sit in an office at a desk all day doing stuff. I have to do stuff with my body, have to do stuff with my hands.
I just, I just like it. And Multiply offered that opportunity to do something harder that was already hard so. Yeah. And for me, that's kind of something that I was considering at first too. I was like, should I maybe try out single ply? Because I'm a very narrow stance, like low bar squatter. So that's something I could kind of emulate, ease my way into. And then I was obviously being around John and just being up in New England with Multiply kind of just getting some good
traction. I was like, now we're just going to go right into it. And so I had some second hand gear. I don't know if you know, you probably Rodney Woodward, he, he sent me a pair of briefs like I put it on my story, sent it in like 2 days. Like the community was just great and I'm having a blast with it. But definitely some struggles, like for example on the squad, like I said, I'm very narrow. So going from narrow to wide and then from low bar to high bar is
just a huge difference at first. Yeah, yeah, it's, it is.
It's really interesting, you know, it, it, it, it, it heightens your, you know, so your, your internal awareness like you have, you have to be so much more aware of what's going on in terms of like lifting, because like you can miss groove a raw lift and sort of get back up and you know, be a little out of position, but you get half an inch out of position with some tight gear on and lifts over like you're not, you're not getting back up. So I like that challenge.
I like it being kind of scary in that way. Yeah, and, and for me, like my first time in the suit was last Sunday. And I mean, it went very well, like surprisingly well. But I was kind of talking to John. I was like, it's kind of interesting because time almost freezes when you're in the gear and you can actually make like the little adjustments that you need to to kind of stay in that position.
Obviously, as the weight gets heavier, it can be a little more difficult to make that adjustment. But when you, like you said, when you're raw, you can kind of just muscle fuck something sometimes if you need to. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's yeah, it's fun. I love it. Yeah, so I'll be doing my first multiply meet in September down at Shawna Mendelsohn's gym, so I'm excited for that. Awesome. Yeah. It'd be good to meet. It'd be awesome to meet. Yeah.
So we'll dive into a little bit about the the conjugate. So maybe let's start off about kind of where you first heard about conjugate and what kind of made you fall in love with it? So I went to school for seven years for college. College, I got my master, I got my bachelor's and not once throughout my bachelor's did they ever talk about, you know,
conjugate training. You know, if if you're in sort of a sports science track or kinesiology track or I was in, he was called applied Health Sciences is what my, you know, bachelor's is technically in you know, you take a class for the CSCS. Not once did they mention, you know, the word conjugate. They may have talked about, you know, concurrent periodization, but it's probably a single
paragraph. And so I didn't learn shit about it in in college, which is one of the things I kind of stress to, you know, a lot of the athletes that I work with are interested in going in, you know, the same sort of path you they want to go, you know, previous strength conditioning coach or they want to be, you know, an athletic trainer or physical therapist, But it all sort of falls under kind of the
same umbrella. And, you know, the biggest thing I tell him is that you need to get experience doing stuff. I've learned more, you know, about lifting outside of school than I ever had in school. School sort of laid a really good foundation. I understand how to look at things, you know, you know, I kind of read everything the way I would like research. Like how much support does this actually have? And a lot of the shit we do in the gym doesn't have like actual like scientific evidence.
There's like foundational stuff underneath it that we can kind of extrapolate. Like, yes, this works probably because of this, but nobody's doing studies on people like us. So we kind of have to, you know, take that plus, you know, take the science plus the anecdotal stuff and put it together and, and come out with what we think is probably the best. And that can change person to person And conjugate affords us the ability to make changes often to it.
It's not, it's not a program where it's not a program to begin with. It's it's sort of a train of thought. It's a toolbox that, you know, individually, I can change so many different variables to fit, you know, whatever problem we have to solve, whatever problem we have, you know, to hit whatever strengths we need to. And I think that's where people sort of get bogged down and that where they're like, what you have to do it the way West Side did it and Westside did an incredible job.
But there are so many tools outside of that that we can continue to add in to, to, to get where we need to be. And it just not that that is why I like conjugate. That is, you know, I've learned more about it, you know, reading on my own how you see a bookshelf back there. Some of it's my wife's, but half of that half of those are mine. There's a bunch more on the bottom, but you know, in the gym is where we're learning the most. I've travelled, trained with a lot of really smart people.
And then, you know, just bouncing ideas off of people talking to people or, and that goes back to sort of that, you know, I understand the scientific basis for what we're doing and how things sort of work in the body. But that anecdotal evidence of the people who are actually squatting 1100 lbs, you know, 1200 lbs, what are they doing and how does that stuff line up to actually, you know, apply it in my training, in the athletes that I train?
Yeah. And I feel like that's what I've seen with a lot of the great coaches is they, they do have that fundamental background in the education are read up on the material. But it's also the experience of either if handling 1100 lbs yourself or being around someone who kind of can experience that and kind of seeing how they react to it and things like that. And I think another thing with Conjugate that people often overlook is that it has so many modalities to other sports, like
different types of training. It's not just powerlifting. Yeah, absolutely. And it, it, it makes, it makes so much sense, you know, especially at the high school level, like the high school that I'm at right now, we have, you know, I'd be willing to bet that at least 50% of our athletes are at least two sport athletes, which creates issues for
offseason training. But conjugate affords us, you know, once I've you sort of laid the foundation of the system, like everybody understands, OK, when we're focusing on speed, it is fast, you know, just the basics of it. No matter what, you know, sort of we're doing in there, as long as we understand the basics, they can kind of hop in
whenever. Whereas like if we're running, you know, like an offseason schedule that's like that, that is, you know, we're going to do a block like this and a block like this that builds off of that previous block. That makes it really difficult to progress them. Especially if I've got A2 or A3 sport athlete who's only going to be with me, maybe, you know, three times a month. Like, you know, three times a month for a power lifter isn't a lot to grow. Wouldn't recommend that for
anybody. But for a high school athlete who is incredibly active, who's got 567 practices a week, they've got, you know, workouts with their, you know, their hitting coach, and they can only fit in three times a month, we can still get stronger. But we have to be really smart about it. And that's what Conjugate sort of allows us to do is we can hammer the things most efficiently, you know, in the small time frame that we're given. So I love it for the high school
athletes. I mean, it just makes so much sense for it. Yeah. And, and for me in college I did football and wrestling. So I mean, football is kind of like one of those year round sports where it's football, you got the season went to, you got your, your training and spring, you got spring ball. So, and then wrestling kind of would start towards the end of football season and it kind of trickle into spring ball.
So kind of having like we would, we, we ran one year, we ran like a triphasic program and it was kind of, it's a great program. I love the style of it, but it was kind of hard to hop in if I had to go to a wrestling practice that week. But I think the conjugate allows you to. Obviously it's structured, but it's not progressive in that kind of way. Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah. And then so I remember seeing your post from the other day about kind of setting up the
different forms of AR and stuff. I guess from personal experience, maybe if you had to pick, if you only had to use bands or chains, which one would you pick? Chains are more fun. I just, but I, you know, I, my favorite days of the week are of my speed days specifically like dynamic effort lower. I love, I love speed squats. I love squatting against heavy bands, doing box squats against heavy bands. So I'd probably pick bands. I think bands are probably a little bit more versatile in the
long run. And if we are looking at, you know, rate of force development, that would choose bands over chains almost any day just because we're going to get a little more of a dynamic loading, you know, pattern with the bands versus, you know, every three inches. I'm going to add what it's like two 2.2 lbs or something or 1.8 lbs. I don't know what it is with chain. So I mean, it's, it's a very linear loading versus the bands. I mean, it's it's kind of more
exponential. You know, the further you stretch them, the way harder they're going to pull. But yeah, I'd probably choose the bands. Yeah. And, and kind of going into that a little bit more too, obviously some people will just use the bands and just we'll say, I don't know, like 500 versus Blues or something like that. Then other people will measure every week personally. Do you do measure the bands every week or do you measure them on certain time periods?
Or what's your opinion on that? So I've got, you know, kind of a, a mental, you know, spreadsheet of like these bands are sort of this much. I always do carry. I've got a deer, a crane scale in my bag all the time. So if I ever get curious, I got brought it out two weeks ago. So I was pulling against bands that just felt heavy and they were on a platform that I've never used them on before that was just a little bit more narrow than, you know, the
normal deadlift platform. So I was curious what they weighed at the top. So I pulled it out then. But at the end of the day, that's still Deadlift plus monster minivans. It's not deadlift. It's not, you know, 900 lbs, It's whatever it was plus the bands and that's it because, you know, they're very well at the bottom. They might be 100 lbs less than
they are at the top. And while they do provide a very good training stimulus that, you know, limits fatigue based on it and gives us generally the same training effect as straight weight, It's not straight weight. And I do, I do not like it when people reported as straight weight, but it is what it is. I'm not not the police. So yeah, and I guess with conjugate as well, How do you feel the recoverability is compared to some of the other modalities of training? It can go both ways on the
spectrum. I mean, depending on how well thought out the program is and how how well the athlete and if they're working with the coach can respond to fatigue, it can either be really, really good or really goddamn terrible. You know, it's one of the things with like having a set program in front of you is, you know, a lot of people will look at, well, if I didn't get the whole week done, it's a failure.
And one of the one of the things that, you know, I try to work with my athletes over time is like, you know, if we have to make adjustments and drop things out because we are just tired, It's actually something I did the day at the gym. That's OK. Like there there's the, the nice thing about conjugate is if it didn't work out right now, we probably have time to make sure it fits somewhere else, you know, even even when we're peeking for a meet.
So I think as long as you have the ability to kind of take, you know, a step back and look at things with a broader lens rather than like, I have to get all six of these exercises done today with this much weight and just say, well, it doesn't matter if I don't don't get this done today, I will get this, you know, look at it, you know, broader scale. I'm trying to think of what's going on with this. Yeah. As far as recovery.
So, so if you can respond to that fatigue and and appropriately adjust your volume, which should be something that happens regularly conjugates. Awesome. And like I said, I had to do that today. I went in, I was supposed to a floor press today. I worked up to, you know, 6570% and decided that this was not the day to push a heavy floor press. And if I took all the weight off, I put it away and got a quick pump and then I left the gym because that that that is what my body said would be
appropriate today. And you got, you got to pay attention to those signs because if you don't, that's when you know bad shit happens. And if you want to be in the sport for a long time, forcing stuff, you know, like that consistently, probably not a good idea.
Yeah. And I think one of the bigger things too with conjugate is with the especially with the Max effort days is the auto regulation and kind of knowing where you're at because everyone knows how much missing can throw you off or just absolutely blow your load. And especially with kind of the constant changing variations where you might not hit that same variation for three months or even a year, depending on what it was.
So being able to kind of auto adjust and kind of make the right decision that training days going to lead you down the road for who knows how long. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And I think that's one of the big, you know, misconceptions is like, you know, people think you're Max Seffer and they immediately like, OK, well, we're turning it up to, you know, it's an RPE 10. And, you know, that's one of the things I I very often have to stress with, you know, my athletes is like, you know, let's just, you know, eight and a half, nine is probably appropriately leave that extra,
you know, jump in the tank. Like we we don't need to completely destroy ourselves on this movement. What we're doing is just steadily pushing that ceiling up and then build it afterwards with the the accessories. And as long as you can consistently do that, your recovery will thank you. If you know, if you're not going to RPE 10 every week, like people, like a lot of people in, you know, the conjugate side of things want to kind of dog the RPE thing. But like we use it, we use auto
regulation very often regularly. Like, no, I think it's important to have a conversation like how we actually define intensity, you know, when it comes to intensity and effort there because the intensity on a Max effort day is going to be different than the intensity in the effort on a dynamic effort day. But you know, it's, it's not always, you know, that RPE 10 and it can't be no pro, no program can survive on that. Yeah.
And so kind of more with the RPE scale, I know obviously there's RPE, there's percentage base, there's like reps in reserve and kind of generally speaking, like an RPE 8 usually is around 2 reps in reserve. But I kind of want to hear your opinion on maybe what some factors would be that would make an RP8 necessarily not to reps in reserve for just kind of that
difference? One of the big things I think would be the type of constraints you're going to put on either yourself or your lifters in regards to form. SO11 of the big differences I have when I'm training traditional athletes, so like football players versus power lifters, is the power lifters. I give them a much smaller sort of space to deviate from kind of ideal form.
I want my powerlifters to be technicians because at the end of the day, at the end of a cycle, at the end of a, you know, a, a peak, we are training to be experts and, and incredibly, you know, technical at three things. Three things. It's, it's only three things. You know, all the other fancy shit, like it's great that you're good at it, but there are only three things that we need to be really, really good at. So specificity doesn't matter
there. But with the traditional sports players, the football guys like they don't need to be the best at those three things. They need to be generally strong. They need to be generally explosive. You know, they have to have generally good agility, general good endurance in the weight room. But everything that they need to be specifically good at is out on the the the field.
So with the power lifters, one of the things that we'll do is, you know, the RPE 8IN effort wise might actually be like a six for the day if if we actually put that there. But their form, you know, if I grade them and has to be like an
A minus or above. So I think that's, that's one of the things where like that RPE scale kind of gets shifted because if I, I want, I want my lifters to be technical and I want them to look really good at what they do, you know, not only because it, it, it makes things more efficient, but also reflects back on me. Like, I don't want them getting away with stupid shit because then people look at me and they're like, well, he's a bad coach and that's not what I
want. But I think, you know, putting constraints on that where it's like, OK, well, you're going to work up to a top double today. And you either call it if you have perfect reps at that true RPE 8, or you call it when your form starts to break down enough where you can look at it. And I have them. I, I generally want all of my, you know, athletes to, you know, video their stuff and look back
at it pretty quickly. If you look at that, you know that squat, that bench, that deadlift, whatever we did and it doesn't look good, you either fix it up right away or you're done for the day because there's there's no sense in ingraining core or bad motor patterns movements into the lift where we want to be absolute technicians at. So I think that's one of the ways where it kind of shifts
that RPE away. Yeah, and, and for me, especially getting new into gear, I think one of my, my bigger struggles right now is kind of being able to determine what an RPE is, because obviously if I break down, I could probably muscle it, but that's not the point of the gear. I got to learn how to use it. So maybe what are some of the things that you kind of look for can kind of help someone like me new to it? That would be, I don't know, be able to like be like, all right,
that's probably an ache for you. So I mean, again, it's it's, you know, the RPE is going to be, you know, it's a
self-assessment. It's, it's hard for somebody else to come in and say, hey, that that looked, you know, like an RPEARPEA because you know, like you said before, like when you're especially when you're lifting in gear, you know, time moves in slow motion and you might get done with the lift and look back at the video and, and be pleasantly surprised at how quick it moved, But it felt like you had a house on your back.
And that's that makes, you know, kind of assessing things difficult, especially if you step away from the bar, you know, you're seeing stars, you're having trouble breathing and you watch it and you go, well, shit, like did I actually try that hard? So I think it always needs to come back to, you know, the lifter, how you're actually
feeling. And and that's always what I'm going to defer to, you know, especially if I'm there in person with somebody, you know, the first thing I'll like, even if it looks a great, I'll typically ask like, well, how did that feel? And if they can't confidently say, you know, really good, like then then we adjust, you know, sort of the aim of the rest of the day, you know, with that main movement, like maybe maybe we're done, maybe we take a
smaller jump than we plan. Maybe we take that same weight again and clean it up in, in, you know, in your case where you're getting into sort of this, everything essentially becomes uncharted territory. So you can sort of look at it as like, you know, you often see like guys like where they drop weight and they're like body weight PR everything's a body weight PR. You look at it like that. And you know, in that sense, like any improvement that you can find anywhere in it has merit.
I mean, it has, it has worth and it's worth, you know, celebrating even on a small level where it's like, if you can be a bit more patient, you can find a little bit better position. If you can, you know, figure out just a little bit better line with your bench shirt, you know, I think that stuff should all be, you know, really looked at and and like I said, be celebrated along the way.
So yeah. And I think one of the things that's kind of tricky and kind of something that takes experience with the gear is like, for example, I mean, I took before I took the the triple S 700 on Sunday, I did buy triples at like 617 and I was going loose straps, loose everything. Like it's under my raw Max. And I mean, it was moving, but it still felt heavy because it's basically my raw Max. So I was like, all right, let's
make a jump. And then I was going to go one to three reps and we tighten the straps a little bit. So it moved a lot better and it moved probably just as fast, if not faster than the other sets. So that's what's kind of the tricky part about being able to adjust the gear. And like one set could be 5000 lbs lighter, but the gear was looser so it moved slower than when you crank the straps.
Yeah, yeah. And like, yeah, I mean, especially when you're squatting in like, you know, an LUP with the with the the cords on it. Like now you've added depending on how many different, you know, sections you have, you know, it comes standard with three on each side. So you've added six more variables that you not have to control for that you need to probably control for every single time you get back underneath that bar. Still loosen up just a little bit in between, you know, every
set. But it's that that's that goes back to that. Like, why do I enjoy multiply? It's that, it's that additional, you know, set of challenges on each one of the lifts. You know, it's it's like people want to say really the gear does all the work. Well, it's like, yeah, like we might have that cheat code, but we're still playing on fucking expert mode. So it's still, it's still just as hard.
It just kind of resets where you're, you know, you know, homeostatic point is in in it. So you know. Yeah, and you use overkill for your gear, right? Absolutely. Team overkill all the way. So what's it kind of been like working with them and kind of what are some of the things that you really enjoy about that company? So I can confidently say, you know, it's there's, there's going to be a wait time on it. Like I'll put that out there upfront.
Like, but you know, Rudy makes the best gear that I've ever used and I've tried most of everything. There's so many different things out there that there are some things I haven't tried. And if I haven't tried it, I've got athletes you have and they've given me their feedback on it. But the wait times are so worth it that, I mean, that stuff works. It works so damn well. I don't know how many pairs at the bins behind me here are full of just old gear.
I don't know how many pairs of predators I have back there. Just trying to find the perfect size. Just get hooked up with overkill and get, you know, put your order in, be patient. It'll show up. It'll fit you better than anything ever has. But with it being, you know, all that, all that custom versus ordering a stock shirt or stock pair of briefs off of insert shelf and yeah, you can get those, you know, customized. That's an extra step that they should just do upfront.
But you know, with everything being custom, it there was, you know, some unique challenges and it like I was so used to picking up, you know, STP knowing generally how it would kind of react. And then when you get in kind of a custom shirt that's made truly for your body size, there's a bit of a learning curve there. You know, it's in any gear,
there's going to be one. But once you sort of figure out how to make that thing work and your patient along the way, you know, sort of the same process you're going through just learning the gear in general. I think if you have something that is truly customized to your body, it cannot be beat. And you know, the material that Rudy has sort of sourced out over however many years he's been looking for the perfect
stuff. I am, like I said, I'm, I'm never used anything better, but the, the material itself just reacts so well to what you've got to do with it. So yeah. And. Like for example, like you said, the the LUPI know that's made of like a duck trap like that you'd buy it like a Harbor Freight. And I know some people like live and die by their canvas. So obviously you've experienced both. In your opinion, what kind of makes the canvas like the better
option? So I've, I've squatted in, squatted in a Poly, I've squatted in the LUP has squatted in, you know, straight canvas. I think if you have a canvas that truly fits you well, there is going to be nothing that is more supportive than that. If you are, you know, it's the canvas is going to bind up. It's, it's, it's not going to give you the same sort of, you know, stretch that a Poly will because the material just doesn't stretch.
But you know, when I put that canvas on, it feels like my hips are just made out of fucking steel. Like, like seriously. And, and that was even, you know, when I put on the first time, I put on a, you know, an OG Leviathan, you know, the ends are one like, you know, I felt I felt that same difference. The thing I really like about the overkill canvas is it's thinner. So it's it, it doesn't find up. It doesn't roll up as much in my
hips. I get a little bit more, I get, I get way better, you know, range of, you know, I don't want to range of motion, but kind of mobility in the suit and I can work it better. But you know, canvas in general versus kind of that that middle ground with the LUP where it's canvas here, it's canvas there, but you got basically Polly on the sides. I had went back to it once or twice, you know, after I had ventured over to canvas before.
I was, you know, with overkill and everything and it felt like I had nothing on my hips. You know, it's, it's just, even if I cranked the, the strings as hard as I could, it's still just, it did not match the supportiveness of actually having canvas around everywhere down there. So, and I, I don't think there's any way to truly appreciate that until you, you actually feel, you know, a good fitting canvas
suit on your hips. So it's that's they tell people if if you're on the fence, you know, dive into it, lean into it, get a canvas suit. It will it it'll it'll probably be a little bit better than whatever you use it anyways all. Right, I'll keep that in mind. So up up Dex for you kind of how's how's the training going? Maybe like what's what are you looking for next? When's your next meet?
So training has been weird, you know, ever since I moved back to Wisconsin. I was living in Indiana for the last four ish years. We moved back over a year ago. So I've been here for quite some time. It still doesn't feel like it, but ever since I moved back, I have sort of had to travel around the state to get in with, you know, different groups. I trained with the Wolfpack crew down at Wolfpack Barbell in the southeastern part of the state.
And then I go out to town South of Madison called Stoughton, that Primal strength and fitness, and trained with another crew there. And I sort of bounce back and forth. And where I live just West of Milwaukee, there's a small gym out here. It's called Winter's Edge and there's there's a handful of guys in there that have lifted in gear and there's a good strong raw group there that'll help me with stuff throughout
the week. But training has been sort of, you know, PC because I have to travel to these groups to get, you know, help in the gear to get, you know, access to a mono here and there and people who know what they're doing with the
bench shirt. I've had to get, you know, creative in terms of when I put stuff and how I actually position the training because if I'm going to train, you know, heavy Friday nights and Sunday mornings, like Friday night training is going to affect Sunday morning training. So I have to position things appropriately there and then throughout the week, making sure I'm have enough time to get between here and the high school and get all my stuff done.
It just, you know, normal people problems with work, but without the additional help that, you know, people would have, you know, a steady gym 1015 minutes away from their house. So I, I've had to sort of, you know, split up like do I get true dynamic days anymore? Not really. I don't get to squat and, you know, squat and deadlift on those days. I might get to squat sometimes if I get access to a mono with people who know what they're doing on like a Thursday, but I can't count on it.
So usually, you know, I've got a squat day, a deadlift day, and then when I need to travel and get my shirt, I do that and the schedule just kind of flows. I used to joke, you know, when I was down in Indy that, you know, my training, even when it was, you know, on kind of a strict schedule is kind of like, you know, throwing dark darts at the dark or in the dark. Like where it's just like, I know, I know where I have to go, but there's this this kind of shroud that just cloudies
things. And like I I'll hit, you know, bullseye occasionally with it and I'll get close most of the time. So yeah, it's training is a little weird up here, but it is what it is. I make do. And I finally did bomb out and we're down to Florida. But I'm actually turning around pretty quick here. I've got to meet in August. I'm going down to Owensboro, KY Jason Lawson is putting on SPF Pro Cup and it's like the first one that I think that he's calling this. I've done one of Jason's meets
before. He runs incredible meets down there. Jason's awesome. So you're a good chance to travel down there. He does meets in Tennessee and and Kentucky down there, but yes, that's the next meet that is August 3rd. So I'm just under 5 weeks out. So it's, you know, nine weeks between meets. Here is something I wouldn't let any of my athletes do. And when and if they see this, know that, you know, if you ask me, the answer is also going to
be no for you. I just again, I'm throwing darts in the dark here, so. Yeah. So you you mentioned the the meet that perfect storm. Obviously that that meet was a big meet and they just, I think the judging was held pretty strict. But I think the biggest factor that you clearly could see affected almost every lifter there was the weather and just
the the pure humidity there. And so kind of knowing what you knowing that is always a possibility to meet kind of where some things that you maybe took away from that meet. So I, you know, at a certain .1 of my training partners looked at me and he did point out that I was not dying like most of the other guys there. And I think we talked about this briefly last week, you know, just texting back and forth.
I train very hard very often. I do, I do a lot of just general conditioning and muscular endurance work. I really like to lean into just being warm while I'm training. Like, you know, Wisconsin. It's, it is 60s and raining out today, but that's not what it has been lately. You know, even when it's 90 plus I will, I will just lean into it. I'll have a warm cup of coffee on my way to the gym and just show up just sweaty and I'm, I'm ready, I'm ready to go. So I, I like, I like the heat.
The biggest issue with that meat was just staying hydrated on top of it. I mean, there was no way to truly catch up your hydration. And even if I had walked in the, you know, back and put in an IV, there would have been no way to keep it up with just how warm it was. And that no fault of anybody, you know, putting on the meat. The meat was run, you know, spectacular.
It was just warm. And that's what you need to expect going to Florida. But yeah, my training partners and, you know, I pointed out is that you're doing fine. I just a little sweaty. But yeah, the hydration was the hardest part there. And you know, I don't think I think I handled it, you know, fairly well. You know, kind of it bit me kind of in the ass on deadlifts. Strength wise I felt fine. But you know, by the time we got to deadlifts, I had been sweating so much.
You know, I've been putting fluids back in, but I was sweating so much that the sweat had dripped down my arms and it had been sitting in my hands so much. Then my hands were prune. It's no matter how much chalk I put on there, if I I go to grab the bar and the bar would just,
it would just take the skin. There's, there's nothing I can do about it. They were just so my hands are so moist that it was like this just gross slurry of chalk and skin that would just slide right off my hands every time I grab that bar, you know, above like 600 lbs. So I'm lucky to have got my opener, but I just couldn't hold on to the goddamn bar that day. It just felt strong. And yeah, I just, that was the biggest thing, so. What are your what are your goals for this Pro Cup?
Go in and do better than I did, you know, five weeks ago, you know, I, I initially getting into powerlifting, you know, kind of felt like I wanted to come in and move through it as fast as possible, But that changed, I don't know, fairly quickly. And, and I recognized that this
is a very long process. So my approach, you know, over the last, I guess, you know, five years has shifted way further over into, you know, just continue to have fun, make improvements everywhere, any, any and everywhere you can along the way. Show up, do your thing and you have time. So like, excuse me, like I didn't squat my best at the Florida meet. I hit a 1 LB bench PR, which was cool.
But like it's you know, I deadlifted 70 lbs under my best when I felt strong enough to PR the deadlift. So I just the main goal for the Kentucky meat is just go in and do better than the last one. I'm not trying to force, you
know, a perfect day. I know, I know if the stars aligned, I know what I'm capable of on a perfect day, but I no longer want to go into a meet assuming that I'm going to have a perfect day because those you might get one of those a year and I, you know, I'm sure shit, it's not going to end up on a meet day. So I'm going to go in.
I'm going to have a very solid plan, one that makes sense, one that's safe, that pushes the boundaries enough where I can walk away feeling like I accomplished something good and you know, baseline do better than the last one. Yeah. And I think a kind of a recurring theme that I've noticed, especially over the past several episodes with all these top level, super strong lifters that have been in the game for a while is the
longevity. And that's becoming something that's more recognized and powerlifting, especially within the multiply community because you're handling these insane loads. So what are some of the things that are important to you and maintain that longevity? You know, being being smart while I'm actually training. So you get, you know, you're in a group, you're working up in weight, you take a heavyweight one that, you know, maybe you didn't expect to take that day. And it moved really well.
And you kind of look around and and, you know, everybody's saying, well, you got another jump. And, you know, this my heaviest squat of this last, you know, prep. I got up there and it was, you know, it was more weight than I'd ever free squatted, deeper than I'd ever squatted it. And I did it with no wraps. It was, it was an actually perfect day like that. That was the day the stars aligned for my squat. And I, you know, looked around the gym.
I, I said, well, you think I have another one? And a lot of guys said yes. And then I found, and I found, you know, Matt, the guy I mentioned earlier, he was my original training partner. We trained together down at Wolfpack occasionally every few weeks and, and very pragmatic. He's very, you know, just like, don't do anything unless you have a very specific reason to do it. And I found him and I said, what do you think I should do? And he said, don't take the jump.
So I took all my shit off right away and I did not take the jump. But that was a smart thing. And I think that's the thing that people need to, you know, understand that like, you know, just because you can, just because you have the ability, just because that plate is sitting right there next to the mono, doesn't mean it has to go on. And especially if it's going to be at the at the expense, you know, at the expense of, you know, your quality or your standards.
And that's a big thing. Expressing my athletes is like, you know, you're you're the only person, you know, going through the movement that can hold your standard to a certain level. No, nobody else, nobody else can force you to work to a certain standard. You're the only person that can do it. You're also coincidentally the only person who can lower that standard. And once you start lowering it and start making, you know, these accommodations for yourself and these excuses for
like, well, that was shitty. And you just you create a cycle where now you just continue to allow really bad work to come in. So if you just keep the standard high and and don't force things, but just gently push them overtime you gently push them, which I think is foundational to, you know, the way that West side ran the conjugate program was, you know, you called it the plan where it's just 2 1/2 lbs each side. Take that 5 LB PR move on.
So you apply that same sort of idea where it's like keep the standards high, do everything to a really high just quality and that will just increase your longevity and pay attention to your body. You're generally going to have, you know, warning signs. You see people who are, you know, tearing hamstrings and tearing biceps like this. This stuff, some of it is acute. But a lot of this stuff.
Is going to have warning signs like just it it takes like 10 minutes to go through like mobility work like like even really good mobility work if you're very focused, like 10 to 15 minutes is all it takes while you're watching whatever you're watching at night, you know, just on television, just sit down on the ground, do your damn mobility work, stretch out, just pay attention to your body, sleep like it's it's all like
super basic stuff like. And I think people often will overlook that for like flashy shit. And you know, they're trying to find like these quick fixes when it's like the quickest and best thing you can do is listen to your body and react appropriately to it. And if you don't know what to do, find somebody who does. And yeah, so it's just, yeah, hope that answers the question. I probably not carried away there.
Yeah, and kind of touching back on the like you said, when you have a job, you don't necessarily need to take it. Like especially for me who's getting into gear option, I'm going to be handling heavier loads than I ever have. And like the the 700 on squat, like, yeah, it moved well, I could have probably made a bigger jump, but that's still 60 lbs more than I've ever had on my back. So why, why rush things? Just slowly chip away at it. Live to fight another day. Yeah, yeah.
And you got to remember that like your, your body has never experienced that load and it's never had to recover from that load before. So we have like, you know, and, and I'll, I'll admit, I thought we were going to see more injuries with the band shirts. And I, you know, not kind of
what I hope, I hope we don't. But you know, with so many people getting into the band shirts, you know, over the last few years, you saw just the spike in like the average kind of bench, you know, where it's like, you know, I'm not, I've got my own thoughts on them. But you've got people who couldn't bench, you know, within 200 lbs in a Poly of what they're doing in a band shirt whose bodies just aren't conditioned to handle the weights.
And, you know, that's one of the things that I kind of worry about. As, you know, I get, you know, often I'll get raw lifters if you come to me or like, OK, I want to get into gear, can you help me? And one of the things that we do is we, we gently, you know, push them into it. It's not like, OK, I take a £400 squat or we put a suit on and it's like, I expect you to squat
600 today. It's like, I'll be surprised if you can take 400 down in the suit and make it look good because not only do you have to put your Max on the bar, you also have to focus on 10 other things now. So yeah, being slow with it and, and just, you know, take, take the small PRS with everything you do find merit, find value in
the small things along the way. And you know, don't, don't lose sight of the broader picture because you're so hyper focused and you've got blinders on just just with what's on the bar. Yeah, definitely. It's important to kind of focus on the not like, not like the end goal, not because obviously you want to live forever if you could, but kind of focus on the long term instead of, oh, what am I going to do with this meet? What am I going to do next week on the Max effort?
It's more important, like, how's my total going to look 10 years down the line? Yeah, yeah. So I think we can kind of wrap things up here. So I'll ask you my final question. If you could give a new power lifter or someone going into their first meet a word of advice, what would that be? Oh, have fun first. I mean just and you cannot set expectations set set goals for yourself.
But if one of those goals or one of those expectations is not to have fun, you probably aren't going to last in the sport and you have to enjoy what it is. Especially since none of us are making actual money lifting weights. But if you, if you are truly not enjoying this and treating this sort of as a chore every time you do it, you're not going to last. So make make sure that you enjoy the process. That's that's really it. Have fun. Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I feel like that's been something that a lot of people have put some focus on, some emphasis on. I mean, we, we all did this to have fun and lift weights with our friends and it's a hobby. It's not a it's not a career. So definitely think that's a very important aspect of it. Yeah. I wanted to thank you again for taking the time. Come on, it was my pleasure. Absolutely, thanks for having me.