Written by Ryan Brown
“You are being lied to.”
I remember seeing that quote on Jim Wendler’s website once referencing the abundant fads and fallacies of the fitness world.
Perhaps more so than any other industry, the fitness and strength community is rife with numerous quick fix, shortcut solutions that may offer some short-term relief but eventually fall short of correcting the real problem. Obviously, I am more than a little biased, but I am proud to be a part of something providing the type of service and information that can help remedy those problems – Juggernaut Training Systems. Another Become Unstoppable Seminar has come and gone. More minds have been freed and have seen the light, or in our case, the Dark(side).
I fancy myself quite the seminar/clinic/certification veteran. I have done six CrossFit certifications, USAW, and several others that you don’t get fancy pieces of paper for. I used to attend so many that my buddy Waylon and I would go to see the same speakers and coaches over and over just so that he had an excuse to leave his wife at home, and we could go party and lift weights for a weekend.
It was at one of those seminars that I first met Chad. We spoke for a while, and then a few weeks later he shot me an email: “Hey man, I am thinking of growing this website thing. Want to be in on it?” Being one of the most O.J. (original Juggernaut) of them all, reflecting on the latest Become Unstoppable Seminar, which also happened to coincide with the 5 year Juggernaut anniversary, I not only look to what I saw over the weekend, but to what I have seen over the past five years. Back when I could say fuck and Greg Nuckols wouldn’t edit it out (editor’s note: you’re welcome for this one). It is exciting to see how far the website has come over the past five years. Juggernaut Training Systems has been able to present a great wealth of knowledge and training ideas to millions of people.
Just as the website has grown, so have the seminars. The first seminar featured myself, Chad and Brandon. In our presentations were were basically shooting from the hip. I felt like the biggest benefit came from the coaching stations. Through feedback from attendees, we have been able to improve every time, and will continue to do so. Our speakers have improved in quality of presentation and professionalism. We cover every aspect of training for strength, weightlifting, conditioning, movement, and nutrition. This time we also prepared handouts for each of the attendees to better follow along with the presentations. Dr. Quinn and I even had a powerpoint presentation. The mix of presentation/speaking time and actual time at the stations was pretty spot on as well.
Recalling the weekend as a coach, I don’t want to harp on what the other coaches were coaching, and since I was coaching I didn’t have the opportunity to be coached in the snatch by National Champion Colin Burns, in the clean by the Coach Sean Waxman, or any of the other all star lineup of coaches that were on hand coaching in one of the 7 coaching stations. If you want to really know what Alex Viada thinks…. Then read some Alex Viada shit. This recap is mostly to outline my own personal struggle. But, real quick for you guys that want bulletpoints from each speaker in your seminar recap:
1) Chad and Brandon – Pillars of Powerlifting Success
Lift weights, many of them, many times. There are no magic tricks and no shortcuts. Just do the damn work. Chad uses a great pyramid analogy that helps you understand exercise selection that I won’t expand on, because I know that he has written on it extensively.
2) Alex Viada
EVERYONE will benefit from being in shape. It is not good for anyone to be out of shape. He also discussed many commonly misunderstood ideas about energy systems. He already has some great articles on this site discussing energy systems and his “hybrid” athlete training ideas. You can check that stuff out HERE.
3) Sean Waxman
Do you think that you are doing a high volume squat routine? Are you doing 11 squat sessions per week? Then you may not be doing a high volume squat routine. Sean also hurt everyone’s feeling real real hard by telling us how strong tiny Asian women are. Also, you are probably too tall to be a world champion in your weight class, so get HUGE. Sean is a great weightlfting coach and you can check out some more of his stuff HERE and HERE.
4) Dr. Mike Israetel
Priorities in Nurtrition. 1- Calories, 2- Macros, 3-Timing, 4- Food Quality, 5-Supplements. You have to dial in your nutrition in this order. Dr. Mike has written on this, as well as published YouTube videos that discuss it extensively. Watch them and get your intellectual on.
There were coaching stations on the Snatch, Clean, Jerk, Squat, Deadlift, Bench Press, and Movement. I can’t tell you too much about how the other stations were going because I was busy coaching during those, but with the coaching lineup that was on hand, I can only imagine that it was pretty awesome.
If you are a member of the #waroncarbs, cardio kills your gains camp, or the max effort mafia, then hopefully you will have found the ideas presented to you to be somewhat enlightening. It is always be tough when you discover that you have been duped by a charlatan or have made yourself drunk upon Kool-Aid of a false prophet.
Now we can begin the story of my struggle.
YOU ARE BEING LIED TO.
I know that we are making some headway in the fight. At this seminar I noticed a marked difference in the way the average attendee was breathing and moving. Whereas last year, when I people walked into my station and I said that we were going to work on breathing people looked at me like I had a dick on my forehead (editor’s note: you’re welcome for this one too, Ryan). However, I still saw the guys foam rolling before the first presentation, and the guys who would take one whole station off so that they would have an hour to stretch and warmup before they snatch. How bad does your life suck if you have to warmup for an hour every single time that you want to squat?
Really bad. That is how bad.
Quinn and I presented on the Darkside Strength Movement protocol: a system for reteaching people to move – the same good word that we are regularly preaching on JTSstrength.com. I am sorry if it hurts your feelings, but the fact of the matter is that your muscles aren’t tight. Stretching and foam rolling in fancy ways are not going to fix your problems. You need a system of movement regression and progression to give your brain the ablility to effectively manipulate your body.
I feel like all of our articles preach the same thing, yet recently on Chad’s Facebook Q&A he still had 10 questions on what stretches to do for various ailments.
Let me put it this way; If I walked up to you and put a gun to your head and then blew your brains out, then your body would fold and flop to the ground. Your head may lay all the way to your shins. Where are your tight hamstrings now? Why, when your brain has lost control, do you suddenly gain tissue extensibility (until rigor mortis, obviously)?
Maybe that is a bit harsh. Dr. Quinn uses a bit more mellow of an explanation, describing how the body acts when under anesthesia.
The first thing that we do in our station every time that we teach it is find someone who has “tight hamstrings.” So far I think that we are batting about 1.000 on discovering that tight hamstrings aren’t the problem. Check out this video to see the example of what we are talking about.
We can do the same thing with the shoulder. Check out this neat internal rotation trick that shows how silly your sleeper stretch is.
Another neat trick is this rockback position. As I say in the video, if you can achieve greater than 90 degrees of flexion in your hips without rounding your back in the quadruped, then we know that you have the sufficient length in your muscles and mobility in your joints to squat. If we are going to fix your squat, you must re-learn these ranges of motion. No stretch will do that.
Let’s face it. People who love smashing the shit out of weights don’t want to come to the gym to breath and roll around. That is why all this silly stretching shit has gotten so popular. Somebody thinks that if it hurts it must be working, which is about the dumbest shit that I could even think of. We use some of these tests to demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution and to create some buy in. Then we begin to teach breathing in the 90/90 position, moving in the quadruped, and so on.
Emancipating minds from mental slavery with the same good word that we are preaching in:
The Best Damn Squat Mobility Article, Period
7 Habits of Highly Effective Movement Prep
Every video on our YouTube
The #waronstretching and #waronfoamrolling and #waronwastingyourtimedoingsillyshit is real. You need to choose your side.
Ryan Brown is the head physical preparation coach and owner of Derby City CrossFit / DarkSide Strength in Louisville,Ky. Ryan’s focus is on correcting and perfecting movement/motor patterns to get the most out of his athletes. He has competed in CrossFit, Powerlifting, strongman, and currently Olympic lifting. His clients include; elite level power lifters, national level Olympic lifters, pro MMA fighters, college football players, HS athletes, CrossFitters, old broke people, and pretty much anyone else who wants to do something better. Website, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter
