 How do you grind properly by throwing a TLC album that's not what it was Is it what it was yeah, we grind no, that's not it at all my mind's telling me no But my body My body's telling me. Yeah, we said a bunch of followers. That's our Kelly. That's our Kelly by the way So that's bumping water. That's bumping grind You're listening to barbell logic brought to you by barbell logic online coaching where each week We take a systematic walk through strength training and the refining power of voluntary hardship How do y'all welcome back to barbell logic? This is your producer Trent again and welcome to the second episode in this month's rebroadcast series today We're going back to another oldie but goody. This is an episode that originally ran at number 27 And it's called embracing the grind So if you haven't noticed the theme yet We are going back to the basics of training which as I said in last week's episode Sometimes we can all be guilty about over complicating this stuff and from time to time loose touch with some of the fundamentals of training And one of those fundamentals is simply effort you know, I caught myself at the gym the other day doing some heavy presses I was doing heavy triples and On the third set. I was really starting to feel the fatigue in my torso everything was feeling crazy heavy and I missed the third rep I Gave it a good hard fight or so I thought and I let it back down and put it back in the rack Well, I figured I'd at least try to grind the thing for three or four seconds Probably not a full five, but at least a good three or four seconds. I'll go back and check my training video Nope, I tried to power through the thing for maybe like one second before I let it right back down to put it back in the rack Now I'm not gonna argue and I don't think anyone else would argue here that every rep needs to be a total bone-on-bone grinder But watching that video made me realize that man, you know my sense of what Effort feels like subjectively during the set has gotten miscalibrated a little bit I've been doing a lot of volume work lately Haven't been hitting some real heavy PRs, especially my upper body work in a while And so now I know going forward into the neck next time I do it heavy set that I'm gonna have to bear down and give Those reps a little bit more effort And probably get somebody to yell at me in the process that always seems to help All right. Well, that's enough blathering for me. Let's get to the episode. This is episode number 27 embracing the grind Welcome to the barbell logic podcast. I'm Scott Hamburg and I got of course Matt Reynolds with us today And we're gonna talk about grinding here in a little bit. Yep But first man, we wanted to talk about some friends that have been helping us helping us out with our supply You know, it's not easy finding all these whiskies, you know I want to give a shout out to my boy Jason He is the manager of the International Wine Center Brown Derby International Wine Center Springfield, Missouri That is one of the better liquor stores that have ever been to in the country And I know they're like a top-10 wine liquor store, but they've got an incredible selection of whiskey And I have got some Jason has hooked me up with some great whiskey over the years And so I'm very thankful for what he's he's done for me. He knows we've talked about this that I Don't even think we've mentioned this on the podcast. I can't stand the secondary market in whiskey You can but you know these bottles of whiskey they're free market of you. Yeah, I know but the problem is that they said that the problem is Well Free market would be they would sell for for the what's supply and demand would demand that they sell for right on the shelf But instead they retail for you know, a hundred bucks hundred five bucks hundred fifty bucks Whatever and then they're people paying a thousand bucks two thousand bucks for these bottles of whiskey So I can't stand it so What some people might not know is the second you crack open a bottle of whiskey it's worth zero sure and so Jason at International Wine Center at Brown Derby International Wine Center, which by the way is where Bass Pro shops started The guy that owns Bass Pro Bass Pro headquarters are here in Springfield, Missouri Actually, our wives right now are taking our kids to the wonders of wildlife museum It got started in the back corner of a Brown Derby Johnny Morris the owner of Bass Pro his dad Owned the Brown Derby and now there are about I don't know 40 locations here in Springfield, Missouri Some of which are super super nice international wine centers the nicest one. There's some super sketchy ones that are you know the Hobos for the aristocrat buying the aristocrat vodka. They need serve to yeah, they've got it. Yeah, so again supply and demand But Jason's done a really good job of make sure he knows that any bottle that I buy I drink I'm never gonna put a bottle in the secondary market So he knows and I told him like the rule is you sell me a bottle of something cool I will open it up and we'll share a drink together here in the store. And so he's done awesome He's been a great guy. So I just want to give him a shout out. I'm not getting I don't get anything from that He didn't pay for that International Wine Center. I just wanted to give a shout out We do a lot of whiskey here. And if you were in the Springfield, Missouri area by the way They they do some online stuff Contact them and ask for Jason till the Matt Reynolds and you and so thanks Jason. Thanks And you guys have been awesome for me. He's got more bidders than I've ever seen. Oh my god The bidders are awesome and again my favorite. I've talked about those a couple times the brown Walnut or the black walnut bidders In an old-fashioned. It's just absolutely incredible. So shout out to those guys. We're gonna talk about grinding In the past we talked about yeah, it's like college age Not that kind of grinding that kind of grinding. Do you know that the okay nevermind? Go ahead. Well, no, it's fine. I'm not gonna go there. So I was gonna tell a story my wife and I but I don't say in our early years The full the fully clothed grind story, but I'm like, oh, I'm not gonna tell the story Well, you're I'll be trouble do that and be a virgin. Yeah, we were the You just blew my mind. Sorry. So a couple episodes ago We talked about you know things that cause people to fall out on your progression You know pitfalls right and one of them is not knowing how to grind and so we we've got enough to say about this We can make a whole episode. Yeah about it. How do you grind properly? So take it my throwing a TLC album? Is it what it was no, that's not it at all So that was your go my mind's telling me no, but my body my body's telling me We just had a bunch of followers. That's our Kelly. That's our Kelly by the way, so that's my owner. That's bumping grind Okay, so grind for real You need to be able to move the bar so slow That you might actually shit your pants. Yeah, you can't tell it's moving. Yeah, so Let's let's start with what people think is going on So before we like joke about it and talk about the real serious part of this I taught my mom who's 63 had a had a deadlift. She's not listening to this So it's because I'm already saying bumping grind by our Kelly But I taught her how to deadlift and she had great form She had actually was I was really surprised how good her form was and it got her up to her first 100-pound deadlift she did a hundred pounds and Start to pull the bar and the bar moves incredibly fast all the way to lock out and the whole time is moving She was she said oh my god. Oh my god. It's so heavy. It's so heavy. It's so he's talking She's talking during the thing and and she said it back down and she's a son son. That's so heavy, right? Indicator number one if you can talk it's not heavy Yeah, right and I said so I stopped and of course I've had lots of out-of-town clients and clients over the years The same sort of thing and and I think here's the thing that we have to understand 100 pounds for my mom who was 63 is the heaviest thing Maybe that she's ever picked up and definitely the heaviest thing. She's picked up in four decades Yeah, if you're not doing what you do what we do. Yeah, you go get a friend with you know, of course hundred pounds, right? The thing is is the bar speed Told me that it wasn't heavy and when I say it's not heavy I don't mean just not heavy to humanity in general I mean it wasn't heavy to her, but because it bar move fast That's not a grind. So our brains are built with a governor like an engine is that says If it starts to move slow put it back down, right? It's like an oh shit factor, right? But we have to learn how to overcome that and when the bar moves insanely slow We keep pulling or we keep pushing or we keep squatting or whatever it is And so we have to learn how to grind because at the end of linear progression Everything is a grind the first rep is usually decent grind and the second rep is a big grind and the third and fourth and fifth are Insane right grinds, right? And we can't continue to make progress and we can't get that refinement that we talk about every episode Without learning how to do this. So if you have been coached by me This is most easily learned on the deadlift because the deadlift starts at the bottom I tell my clients. I've told I told every person who's ever been coached by me. I want five Full Seconds of grind before you put the bar down So they start to deadlift even I tell them even if you're positive that you can't get the weight I still have to have a five full seconds of grind because I need an appropriate stress To be able to recover from and then adapt to get stronger and my body doesn't know to benefit from that You benefit from it. Of course you benefit from it, right? Like it's a it's a huge oh my body doesn't know if I hit the weight or not The only thing that knows that I hit the weight or not is my is my brain is my own psyche is my own Confidence factor and so if I pull on 700 pounds Which is which is near my max 725 is my my max I pull on 720 700 pounds And it stops at like mid-shin to be able to barasti, you know two three inches below the knee and I grind and shake Yep, and the bar just won't move and I grind on it for two three four or five Okay, it's not gonna go and I set it down six seconds, right? My body adapts to that yep You'll get stronger for that But if I pull on 700 pounds it feels like it's not gonna break out the floor feels like it's gonna be too heavy I put it back down. There was nothing to adapt to That's the problem. Yep That's why we have to learn how to grind and so you tell these people I mean I've heard you've told me I've heard you tell a hundred people five full second five seconds of full effort Yep, and they'll start the deadlift and you count back five four So so that's a that's a big deal. So your training partner needs to count for you Yeah, I'm four three another thing. I tell people it's like you can't quit. I'll tell you when you can quit Yep I'll tell you want to put it down. It tells you know if somebody's been training And I've been coaching them for a little while that'll work Yep The five four three two one thing helps better for people that are helps more for people that are newer into training if they trust me I can tell them, you know Put it down and they'll put it down and they get their good grind in And so every lift has a spot that's tough Right, it's typically when one extents her hands off to another Yeah, like so in your deadlift there's a hard spot like you know a little over your mid-shin Yep, where your quads are kind of done working and it's handing it off to your hamstrings. Yep, and that's hard It's no man's land. Yeah, those two muscle groups are not at their most efficient at that place. It's kind of interesting It's kind of funny for all the years. I've coached. I've never actually considered it the way you're saying it But you're exactly right. It's when when one muscle group, which is that kind of the major force in the lift Disapates and hands off to the next muscle group and there's obviously overlap. Yeah, that's where the sticking point is Yeah, so where's the sticking point on the bench press at the bench press is when your pecs are handing off your triceps That's exactly right. That's exactly when it happens, right? So in the beginning it's all like pecs and front delts and then there's transitions away from the pecs and front delts into the Triceps and at that point where it transitions. That's where the sticking point is. Yeah It's in it's sort of normally two joints main the way I see it as two main joints in the lift like in the squat It's a knee in the hip, right? So you're you're almost out of your knee extension Yep, and then you're in your hip extension. That's the hard spot. So you're your hamstrings Yeah, you're handing it off to your glutes your hamstrings are handed off to your glutes Yeah, and so there's a hard spot in all these lists. So press has one, you know About your hairline and maybe a little but maybe a little higher. Yeah, that's what you're how what your arm links are so all of these got a hard spot and That's okay. It's okay, and it's okay for the bar to move slow. What's where it should move so by the way If it if you miss it if you miss it at other others at another spot. It's a form issue. That's right or you or psychological Yeah, so I had I went through a spell on the squat where I would get about five inches off the bottom Which is that spot. Yep five maybe eight, you know, I don't know five to eight inches somewhere in there and and it literally felt like the floor Disappeared like there was nothing to push against it wasn't that I didn't grind. I couldn't yep And I have a friend his name is Dick Gordon, Jr. He's in Tulsa, Oklahoma He's a guitar teacher and he's a savant and he's a straight-up full-tilt boogie genius. Okay, he used to he used to he's he's a He's a psychologist. He used to see patients They lay on the couch and do the whole damn thing and he got tired of it because people were evasive And he's also a fantastic guitarist and he decided well, I'm gonna teach guitar lessons So when you go take guitar lessons from him, you're not getting guitar lessons that guy's tearing your brain apart Because you can't hide. Yeah, right. So I'm gonna tell my guitar. I'm gonna tell my guitar story. This is my grinding story so when I came to him I was already an okay guitarist okay and He has a yeah, he wrote all of his own materials and so I got to like chapter 7 of these materials he wrote and I'll never forget I got to exercise 7c and I would play And he would put on like a click track or look a drum track and you just play with the drum track and I would stop He said looks kind of you know when you play music You can't stop like you can make a mistake with this But you know people are dancing people are listening you got to go on man The drummer still drumming the bass player still you got to play all right from the top three two Play play play and I get to the spot and stop. He's like look man. You can't stop Can't we did again stop? He said go home go home practice this. Don't stop. Don't don't stop so Went home came back Next week and he said we're gonna play this and when you get to that spot man He's like no make a mistake drop the guitar, but you pick that mother you don't stop and He fired up the little drum track, you know, and I started playing this exercise and I stopped And he took his glasses off and he rolled his rolling his office chair over and he got like an inch from my nose and he said Did your parents not give you much validation as a child? I'm like, I don't know what that means But the guy's got broke me like a glass Man, I cried and cried and cried and how old are you? 34 I Don't know something like that and so we talked about it and and I and I found we finally Spend enough time on it that I we I learned that I when it when it got hard. I literally couldn't see anything right page went blank. I couldn't even see the music and Had some root and like some fear of failure or something like that, right? You know, so I just wouldn't even do it, right? And luckily I'm I don't know I'm sharp enough or whatever that you know Most of the time stuff's not hard enough and I can just skate by and do better than a lot of folks and never get up against that So I was squatting and the floor would disappear like I couldn't even push you know grind hell like I couldn't do anything And I called dick. I said man, you know, this is what's happening and described it to him. He says the same thing, dude Remember, I'm gonna go yeah Remember he said here's what I want you to do he said And that in that liminal time like when you're getting ready to when you're when you're in bed and you're not asleep yet But you're relaxed and you know you're in that kind of liminal space, you know, he said I want you to visualize That place where it gets really hard as a membrane It's like parallel to the ground And he said when when you're when you're relaxed and he said I want you to picture yourself Pushing and pushing through that membrane And so I want you to do that every time that you're you have nothing else to do. I want you to visualize that and So when it gets hard You push to that membrane and it's just a membrane. Yep. That's all it is And you just push through that. That's good And I went back the week next time like I don't know I was on a four-day split at the time I think and so I didn't it wasn't you know the next day or whatever sure I had a little bit of time And I could push yeah So anyway, I don't know if that's everybody's problem, but there's stuff going on sure there's a lot of you know 90% of the time people Just are quitting too early. You know, they're just quitting too early But sometimes we have to practice that mentally we have to go through the mental exercise Like what am I going to think? What does my experience going to be when I'm squatting here? How am I going to do this? Because if you try to figure out how you're going to grind when you're when it's time to grind it's too late Yeah, right too late. You've got to visualize it. I think through it now the idea of the membrane You know like a drum head. Yeah, you're gonna push up through that with that squad Are you gonna pull that bar up through it with the deadlift? So useful and you have to practice. You know, what am I going to do? You have to visualize it and think about what am I going to do when that happens? What is that going to feel like and how will I deal with it at that time? You've got to practice that when the bar is on your back. So when it's on your back, it's too late. Yeah, that's good Yeah, it's it's weird because there's this if you practice the other thing Which is failing Then you set the motor pattern to fail, right? Which is what happens to a lot of people, right? So how often do we fail squats? How would you fell a squat not supposed to I probably fell a squat once every 18 months. Oh Well, I do more than that, but yeah, but that's okay once a year once every six months Whatever it's just like that. It's like it's pretty rare You know like I probably fail a deadlift more often more Mentally and it doesn't break the ground if the deadlift comes off the ground. I Usually finish it. I probably miss two deadlifts a year that come off the ground that I don't finish I missed one Not that long ago Where was that was that the strenuous life thing? I think so okay? No, I pulled that let's see I pulled that it was it was the time before that I don't I don't remember so I put We were in Tulsa I pulled six 55 and got it to mid shin and felt like I strained for five seconds I put it down and when I watch the video I was trying for one second right down. This is the problem That's why you have to have somebody counting right five four Three right they've got to go through that because you're you're you have no concept of time when you start to strain so It's not okay to miss You have to learn how to grind through the things right you gotta learn how to grind through the stuff now I miss more presses and everybody's gonna miss more pressing anything else because press is so It's so much harder to keep over the middle of your foot what's that one for you every three months I mean there are times yeah I mean and putt not only that but I program you know that I program press starts a lot And so a press start is essentially a program press miss. That's really what it is right so a program a press start which is say Five percent to seven percent over your actual max after you're done with your press Main press work terrible you take it out of the rack It's really heavy and you try to press it and you and of course it grinds at your forehead level and you grind and grind and grind And it comes back down you know fails and you rack it and what's weird is usually like the third week People actually press it and hit a PR. They accidentally hit like a five percent PR Yep, and so I'll miss that sometimes because it's easier to you know to kind of misgroove a press a bench I now misgrooving something different right like if that squat gets ahead of you know gets out over your toes or something You know there ain't no grinding. Yeah, there's no grinding Although it's one of those deals where I rarely misgroove a squat to the point that I fail one. I rarely groove one correctly, right You know screw follow them right or a press, you know, you throw it out ahead of you You know, that's right down and then you hit it again But yeah, the thing where you start to grind on any grind for one second You decide you can't get it let it come back down you don't get to decide like you your brain doesn't get to decide Right when you miss your body has to decide when you miss and what you what what is amazing? One of the things we've actually learned from CrossFit from guys like rich fronning is they realize that their brain is actually limiting factor with That's right. It's not your body your body will go further So make your body grind as long as it possibly can push through that membrane right and push if it misses It's because your body actually miss not because your brain allowed it to miss not because you gave up on it So that five seconds of grind becomes an enormous it is something that it actually it's probably if we can point to a singular thing that is is the Thing that happens during this refining process that makes us better like that's the thing right right when people when you learn How to grind on a deadlift for five six seven seconds Something changes in you right when you blow your first blood vessel in your eye Right, right when you shit literally shit your pants for the first time and look like I understand those you guys are listening to this thing You're like I've never blown a blow to the slum I've never show my pants I don't want to show my pants. I don't want to blow like yeah Me neither and I totally get it right and it still happens insanely rare It's not like this happens like every week. This is not like a standard thing that happens But like if you've been training for two or three years, and you've never accidentally shit your pants a little bit You've never sharded You haven't strained right everybody sharts a little bit if you're a female and you haven't pissed yourself It's like an R. E. M. Song right? Yeah, right? Yeah, if you haven't if you haven't had some incontinence from straining On a heavy deadlift or heavy squat you probably haven't actually strained enough right especially if you've had kids Especially if you've given birth vaginally to kids like you're gonna know when I had kids That's what I really started right of course right? Yeah, I mean there's you Even if you don't blow blood vessels in your eyes any time I do a parallel to me I blow a little blood vessels in my eyelids I have little dots of red little red dots in my in my eyelids because of the strain and so when I get really heavy weight on my back and squat like a 500 pounds doesn't do it for me. It takes like 550 or over I've described this a couple times before I take the weight Out of the rack and I walk back and the second I start my descent Usually there's music playing. It's that a meat, you know, so it's got loud metal music as I start to descend The music drops an octave right like it's you can hear the you know the beat and it's It does that yeah And then my eyesight interest so the first thing that goes as I start to descend in a squat is my hearing and The next thing that goes is my eyesight So I can see fine at the top as I start to descend it all turns red and in the bottom It goes black and I can see nothing so in the bottom It's almost like you're at the bottom of the ocean where there's like insane pressure The sound is really weird you know and And you can see nothing and then as you come up out of the hole in the bottom of the squat The octave starts the key starts to raise in the music and the site starts to come back and at the top I can see again, and I put it back in it's usually still I can see red by the time I rack it back and it's the route Yeah, I get red. It's weird and so get tunnel vision like it closes in from the side Yeah, which I mean, you know, then it'll sometimes I'll go completely black. I can't hear anything Yeah, like people are like, oh, what song do you want? I don't care. Yeah, I don't care Yeah, I don't Barney. I don't care like I can't hear anything. Yeah, that's why we yell all the time You know, you're yelling at your client and everybody around is like, oh god, this guy's terrible. Yeah I can't hear you or anything. I get in trouble more than anybody at the meets because I'm yelling at every client Like I'm trying to talk to my lifter and you can't talk to him. You have to scream I know you got a screen on the platform So I'm 20 feet away. So I'm screaming at them trying to get it and I understand But like I really don't care what everybody else thinks I'm a lifter to complete the lift And so they they you know, they've got to be able to hear my voice my voice has to be loud So this five-second grind thing is a big deal Being able to learn how to grind is the most refining thing you can do in the process of the end of LP and And going in your intermediate training. So y'all be be honest with yourselves be brutally honest, you know, did you give it everything? Think about what was your experience like as you failed? You know, you know, if you had a sharper shooting pain, okay, I'll give you that one maybe sure But but if you're just like gosh, you know, I don't think I can do any more well Then you probably didn't grind right? What was your experience? So when I said when I actually was able to sit down and get some distance from the lift and they say what was my experience? I realized like psychologically I felt like there was nothing to push against Well, then that gave me some information, you know, I can do something with that and by the way I'm like a middle intermediate by time I start to have those experiences I didn't have those in my 11th week of LP, right, right It's like, you know set five of whatever miserable shit Reynolds gave me, you know, right, but Yeah, it's a brutally honest. I was gonna say it's important to be brutally honest and vulnerable, right? So if it's okay like still we all still sometimes give up early We just have to recognize that it's not not okay to give up early, right? So if you give up early be honest with yourself and say, you know what I watch the video I felt like I strained for five seconds I strained for a second and a half That wasn't enough and next time I have to know if I don't have somebody counting down for me It might feel like you have to strain for 10 or 15 seconds to actually be five seconds There's a time warp when it's heavy. That's right. You can't you can't get it So the key is everybody's gonna make this mistake Everybody's gonna have times where they don't pull hard enough or long enough or whatever give up early on whatever rep That that in and of itself is not is not a huge problem as long as you recognize it when you do it It's that you know to work on the thing like oh, you know what I felt like I strained that long I didn't brutal honesty brutal honesty Well, there's another episode guys Check us out on Facebook Instagram We've gone through all these handles. You guys know what they are, but please tell a friend share it episode That's that's the thing that we need the most. Thanks for listening So we are drinking the finest whiskey we've had so far on this Podcasts we're drinking arguably 25 year-old Talisker. You haven't tried it 25 year-old Talisker scotch about a $800 bottle of scotch Still smells like Band-Aids So good And the interesting thing about this scotch is that one of my clients the only client I've ever had there was a Personal training coaching client that decided at one point that he hated me Well, I mean this guy actually wants me dead He bought that bottle for me for Christmas a few years ago And so I drink it all the time because you know, I can't stand the dude that bought it for me So It's like making out with this girlfriend or something. Yeah, I mean yeah, it's a it's you know It'll be a blood boil to tell the story so I'm not gonna tell the story but yeah, I trained a guy the guy was you know good buddy of mine and Decided one day that he hated me and so, uh, you know I got a handful of people that hate me and I you know the interesting thing about the handful of people that hate me is that I'm the common denominator So I'm you know, I'm polarizing and I'm good at making people hate me, but Talisker 25 year-old scotch What do you think? Mighty complex. Yeah, it's really good. It's just so it's so good You know the sulfur in the Pete really does smell or I'm sorry the iodine in the Pete really does smell like Band-Aids did when I was a kid Yeah, so when I smell this stuff, it smells like it smells like a Band-Aid box from the 70s And then and then you taste it and it's got of course to get the sugar in there And then on the end of this thing. It's just like cam for my tongue. It's like somebody just rubbed like yeah, like Vix on it or something Yeah, that's good. That's good. That's a very good Yeah, very good description comes in a beautiful box and it's all and the the bottle isn't wow Did you see this bottle like it's just awesome? So beautiful bottle comes in this uh, you know get the wooden so stopper padded Yeah, wouldn't stopper awesome. That's what happens when you've got a you know, thanks. This is a twenty eight dollars a hundred dollar $28. Well, I don't know. What do you think for a pour of that? Oh, yeah based on what was in the bottle Yeah, but if you go to if you go to you know, that'd be that'd be a hundred and fifty bucks at a restaurant It's good. Yeah, but you know, you know the rule. It's all it's all open, man I know you're born sure with sure with everybody. Okay