 I want to be like, this is what the t-shirt aisle smells like in Goodwill. I know that exact smell. I know exactly what you're talking about. Or like you ever been inside an army surplus store? Oh, yeah, that's unique. It has such an interesting smell. That's like the old canvas. Yeah, there's some. Yeah, it smells like World War One. 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. You're listening to the Barbell Logic podcast. I am Matt Reynolds. I'm here with Nikki Sims. It's a beautiful day here. You're in Southern California, but it's beautiful there too. It's beautiful, but oh my god, we had this crazy fog this morning. So I leave the house around like 10 till 6. And it's been foggy, that kind of happens in the fall. But today, like it was like seven foot in front of you. You can't see anything. That's crazy. And I have to like walk into an alley to get to my car. And then that was really terrifying. Because I listen to all these like murder podcasts all the time. And then I just started listening to this podcast about like just creepy. I don't know why I do this to myself. And then parking at Jiu Jitsu, it gets overloaded in the morning. So you have to park like down the street and walk through this like restaurant. It's just like that's my whole time. I was just waiting for something to just like grab my ankle or something. Scary. But yeah, it's gorgeous now. Now that that's all burnt off. Yeah, it's like it's like 60 and sunny. Oh, that's perfect. Right now it is perfect. So we've had quite a few requests. And we're not going to do these very often, but we're actually going to do a Q&A episode. We've got a lot of questions that have come in. We're going to try a little different format than what I've done in the past. We're going to do a little like five minute answer to maybe four or five of these. And then we're just going to really strictly do rapid fire or one minute or less answers back and forth and not get as many questions as we possibly can. So we'll start with a slightly longer form. We've kind of divided up the questions into what we think could be answered into shorter versus longer. So first question, question from Daniel says, have you found it more effective to rotate the supplemental lifts in waves or quote unquote, run them out before rotating the lift? What do you do? What do you like? I've done various things. I don't love to run out the supplemental lifts because that would mean that you're going to failure, which will steal from the actual lifts themselves. So usually I'll like to make sure that I'm keeping it to a point where they're not missing. Switch it up, reset, something like that. I would agree. I actually think that what I do is something in the middle. I actually like running them about three weeks in a row and then rotating them is my favorite. And it tends to be liked by my clients as well, because you can sort of almost always, you can kind of set a number on week one on a supplemental lift. And then you can beat that number on week two and then push to beat it on week three. And a lot of times I might even get like a top set of five on week one. And then like a three, right max on week two, and then like an all out one, right max on week three, I'll do that a lot of times. But you kind of always get to set a PR three weeks in a row. It's very hard on that lift. To set a PR four, five, six weeks in a row. So it becomes, like you said, mentally grueling. So I'm the same way. I don't really like to run them out. I also have rotated them. I've picked like four of my favorite supplemental lifts per exercise and run them week one, week two, week three, week four, and then repeated. And every time I repeat three week or four week cycle, I try to beat what I did the last time I did that lift. I like that as well. Yeah. So yeah, I don't think either one of us are crazy about running them out. Yeah, no. But I like that you give them at least, you know, you have to give them at least three weeks to get used to what you're doing. Yeah. Because like something with like a rack pull, you're just like, how do I do this every time I introduce them again? Well, rack pulls are so hard the first time when you haven't done them, not even before, but if you just haven't done them in a while. Yeah. You set up a rack pull, you're like, ah, this is going to be easy. This is like a way shorter range of motion deadlift. And then you deadlift 40 pounds less than your actual deadlift. Yeah, cool. I'm the worst deadlifter ever. Yeah, that's right. So, and you'll be surprised at how fast you'll get strong at those, but then you'll also be surprised at how fast you hit the wall. Yes. Wow, it actually has stuck to the pins. Good. That's right. All right, you want to roll with the next one? Okay, cool. So question from Clay, what do you mean when you say, quote, when the deadlift slows down or when you can no longer deadlift every workout? So this is going back to our podcast we did last month or something when we were talking about which deadlift track is right for you. Yep. And so really what did we mean when we were saying what do you do when the deadlift slows down? Well, for us, almost always when a client starts as a novice at Barba Logic, and even if they've lifted for a long time, they'll often start with basic novice programming. We have them deadlift three times a week and they're adding a little bit every single time. And what we have found is that the deadlift is the first one to, quote, unquote, slow down or die. It's just too hard to recover from three times a week. So at some point you'll make that transition. So usually when you can't keep going up, every single workout in LP is when we say when the deadlift slows down. And so that's the first time it'll do it. Yeah. What that looks like on paper is they'll miss reps or if they've been pulling with really nice form, they stop pulling with really nice form. And you can see like consistent form breakdown where their back is rounding or their knees are caving and it's just not looking as good anymore. It's like the deadlift, they can get it done. It's the lift where you can get the bar from the floor to the top. But yeah, either they're going to miss or their form is just going to fall apart. Yep, I agree. I also love that he kind of added also like, how do you figure this out without a coach? Yeah. And I would say like, I'm going to tend to lean towards you really need a coach. But for very basic programming questions, one of the things that I hope we're able to do in the podcast and the series that we've done in the past and talking about things like minimum effective dose is to help people think for themselves. I actually don't think you need a coach for most of the programming decisions that you need to make. Now, some people are just sort of headcases about their own programming specifically. You know, I've known lots of coaches who are great coaches who cannot program for themselves. Like they just overthink stuff and get all crazy and weird. But I do think you can do this without a coach if you understand. I'm not really talking about you. Third question, Greg asks, any recommendations for building slash buying a rack? First off, I am never going to build a rack. So that is, you know, there was a day when buying racks, they were very expensive. They were basically only made for like division one colleges and professionals. Like nobody had racks, you know? Now, everybody's got a rack, right? Like the only thing we struggle with in 2020 is the supply of racks because everybody wants one. Like the supply is low, the demand is high. But okay, backing up. Any recommendations I'll say for buying a rack and a platform to use outside so it will last with outside conditions? Anything that Greg should do to maintain the platform slash rack? Well, do racks, can racks be outside? Are they just going to get rusty? Yeah, they're going to get rusty, they're metal. But you know, if you've got a good powder coat, yeah, they'll be fine. And then I guess my next question is, what does it matter if it's rusty and it's outside? That would be my next question, right? What you don't want to do is keep a barbell outside. Yeah. That's the one thing. But I think, you know, we've got this cabin out in the rural land. We're going to put a little like rig piece mounted to the cabin outside. And it's going to get rusty. And I'm going to get those old, you know, bumper prison plates that all the companies sell now. And they're going to get that little metal hub on the inside rusty, but it's not competition plates. They're just, you know, made from RB bumper company. That's why I think they made them all for years and years and years. And I keep the barbell inside. Yeah. And that's what you do. Mm-hmm. And I think it's perfectly fine. Make sure you're on a level surface. That's right. I mean, just shim a little bit. But yeah, I wouldn't put no wood platform outside. We've seen a lot of people lift outside since COVID has occurred. And that probably is where this question has come from, is that people couldn't train at their gyms. Lots of gyms closed down. They probably didn't have space in their house or apartment or whatever. And so they did have space outside. Man, we've got guys. Have you seen the guy that is a block client that trains has lifted on his trailer? Like, oh, he's got like a flatbed trailer. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's so cool. Like, he literally has converted a flatbed trailer to, and it does fine. It's crazy to get that. It's really cool. So I've, we've seen a lot of really ingenious things for training outside. But yeah, it's not hard at all. We also, I've seen a lot of people that take squat stands instead of spot rock, leave those in their garage. Yeah. Open up the garage, carry them out, put them in the driveway, and then everything's kind of in your garage and stacked up in the corner. And it takes five minutes to carry it outside and you can lift. Yeah. And if you're just going to be doing like squat work, press work, bench work, you may not even need to put down the rubber mats. Let's say you're moving your, your stand inside and outside. When you're deadlifting, you want the rubber mats for your plates. Right. Because you're going to floor. Yeah. If you're going to be lifting your driveway on concrete or something. That's right. Yeah. You definitely want to have some sort of protective layer. But if you're going to be squatting, maybe you don't need them for benching. Just want to make sure you have a good like foot drive and your benches are going to slide. But then you can just move squat stands inside and outside. It's super easy. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. Again, if you specifically buying plates and you're buying the thick, they're not called prison plates. So if you like go to one of the equipment companies in Google prison places is probably not going to show up, although it might. Well, sir, through the back door here. They're the big thick rubber bumper plates that are made out of like recycled material that are made out of old tires. And so it doesn't matter. And so if that's what you're deadlifting with, then you probably don't need mats because you basically are lifting with mats. That's what those are. The downside of those is you can only get 405 on the bar. Yes. And so if you deadlift more than 405, as both you and I do, then you could be in trouble because you can't get enough weight on the bar. So I was just thinking getting one of the squat racks that are also a yoke would be cool. I like those. Those are fun because you can just pick it up and carry it down the street. Yeah, totally. I think that's what I would do. Yeah, I'd agree. Okay, you take the next one. Okay. Oh, I like this one. I have answers for this one too. This is from Chris. He says, I recently switched to a home gym, which is in my basement, connected to my home office, which I now use most days and have two young children. I'm finding it hard to switch over to training mode some days and wondered if you could address this issue for those of us home gym converts. Yeah, this is a big one. Yeah, and probably something a lot of people are dealing with right now. I'm lucky at this point now that my kiddos are 15 and 10. And so I'm just like, leave us alone while we train. But that obviously hasn't always been the case. I've trained for years. And so my kids have just, it's all they've ever known is training at home or train it strong. And I had to deal with the same thing when I own strong gym, my kids would come over and terrorize the gym. And I'd have to sit them down and be like, we don't terrorize the gym. So yeah, so for me, it's more of a parenting thing. I have a much harder time transitioning into training from business to training than I do from I've got kids at home to training. And one thing we may do a future podcast on is this idea of having places to work in your home with, right? So I don't do business work in the living room where the kids are playing around or watching, you know, we homeschool our kids. They have a homeschool spot that they do their schooling, right? And so some of it is just teaching them when mom and dad are in the gym, that's mom and dad time. And we could be lifting or we could be using the sex wing in there or probably we're probably lifting though. And regardless, this is mommy and daddy time in the gym. Doors closed, don't come in. Oh, what do you think? Well, he asked specifically for training mode, which like if you can get like your like what you were just talking about, like, okay, kids, this is your time to do this. And this is my time to do this. The door to the gym is closed. We'll have our own time together after I'm done here. Like maybe they can come in during your accessory work or something like that. But doors closed, that's your time. And then to switch training modes in your head. I think it's good to like change outfits. Like go in, have like maybe like your own little pre sometimes I have like a pre workout routine where I'm switching from business to lifting where I actually just like sit and chill and like read or something. So like my brain turns off from work and it allows me to turn on for training. So like changing outfits is helpful. Having different music. If sometimes I'll listen to music in the background and I have my lifting music and then I have my work music. Yes. Stuff like that. And then people are sociopaths, by the way, that listen to the same thing for enjoyment that they listen to in the gym. I would never listen to the things that I listen to the gym for enjoyment. There is some care. There's some carryover at my tunes. None. I have zero. None whatsoever. Not interested. No, I mean sometimes Rachel controls the music and then it's just like Justin Bieber or something in the gym. Oh, you love lifting to Justin Bieber. I don't love lifting to Justin Bieber. I just love Justin Bieber. Those are two different things. And so then when I have to lift heavy, I'm like, can you switch it over to, you know, to something else? But for sure. No, I think that's good. This is where earphones are good too. Headphones, earbuds, whatever, because it sort of blocks out all the noise of like home. Big time. It's same pre-workout meal is a big thing for me too. Like if I'm going to train, I have like the same meal that I eat, you know, an hour before, 45 minutes before, easily digestible. And I've got, and it doesn't really matter what that is for you. But for me, it's sort of signifies that this is the thing. I got an espresso machine not long ago, and I love making an espresso. And if I'm getting ready to train, especially if it's like late morning or early afternoon, I don't want a big coffee, but I do want the caffeine. And so an espresso is awesome because I'm making a little espresso. And that's kind of another little routine. It's like, okay, little shot of caffeine, doesn't fill my belly up, doesn't make me full. And I'm getting into that zone in that mode. So I think that we're hitting on the same stuff. You have to develop a pre-workout routine to get out of home mode, business mode, parent mode, spouse mode, and get into training mode. Yeah. And don't take your work with you into the gym. Like don't open Slack, don't open your email. Just, I'll even have Instagram messages come through that are, like they end up being work-related. And I'm just like, I'm sorry, I can't do this right now. This has to be my time. And you have to be a little, you just have to create your boundaries around that, like even down to your phone. But you can do it. I'm amazed at how many of my clients or how many of our clients at Block, everybody at this point has old phones, right? So you upgrade your phone and then you got this drawer full of iPhone 7s and 8s and whatever. How many of our clients utilize those phones as their gym phones? So they leave their normal phone in the office or in the living room or whatever, and they take their previous phone in and all it has on it. They use it for the camera to video. They use it for music. They use it, like that's what they use it for, because it doesn't have all those notifications on. I like that. And like how much degradation is there from the iPhone 8 to the iPhone 7 on the video? Yeah. I mean, it's not enough to matter. Your phone won't stop us from seeing what we need to see. That's exactly right. Yeah, your squad is going to suck, regardless of what you use. You can't upgrade your way out of that. That's right. That's right. Jared asks, what does training look like these days? Nicky, what's your training look like? You've actually had some kind of changes for the better. Yeah. So I've had like a tumultuous several months of training and it's starting to look really good. Like I don't even want to say that I injured myself. I don't know. Something happened where my body was hurting a lot in April, May. And so we really pulled things back. And it was just like bro workouts for like a few weeks. And that was getting like really tough for me to get excited about. But at the same time, I really upped jujitsu, which still gave me like a good physical outlet. But now I've been able to squat and deadlift again. So bench press wise, we've been working on kind of higher rep sets. Matt gives me a prescribed number of reps to hit per weight. And then we kind of pyramid our way up and reps every session, benching twice a week. And then now I'm squatting twice a week doing just kind of an LP there, but a little higher volume will kind of probably peel back that volume a little bit as that gets heavier. And then I just started deadlifting again, which I'm really excited about. Because I legit, there was a phase where I was just like, well, I guess I'll never deadlift again ever. And I was in a very dark, dark place. But patience is useful there. Yeah. You know, it's very, we've talked about this on the podcast before. It's very rare that someone is injured to the point that they can't train. And you didn't really do anything where you were like, I injured myself and just like started getting this pain in your hip. You've got some asymmetry kind of in your hip and low back. And for whatever reason, it just like the training was just exacerbating that pain. And we'd done everything we could to work around it, like change the form, you know, it tried sumo deadlifts and narrow stance deadlifts and wide stance conventionals and all the same stuff for squats. We've done tempo squats and box squats and wide stance and narrow stance. And just couldn't find a place where you just weren't having this sort of consistent pain. You know, I remember doing the phone call one day and I said, hey, like, let's just stop worrying about it. Like let's not chase numbers. Let's go in the gym and go have fun. Let's go in and like just do a volume and light and stuff that doesn't hurt. And the bro workouts were fun for the first several weeks. I remember that it was just almost like it was a relief for you to not have to try to hit numbers that hurt, you know, totally. And then of course you get to the point where bro workout start getting boring and you're like, okay, I'm ready to start. And so we started to, you know, you go in and have a day that I didn't even program deadlifts and you're like, my back feels pretty good. I think I'm going to just do a little bit and work up to 225 or whatever. And so yeah, your training's been going pretty well. I'm excited to kind of just very conservatively LPU back up. And it's probably what we'll do. We'll just do a kind of a similar, just like a basic LP. Like you said, the sets and the reps maybe a little bit different than what would be traditionally prescribed, but it's still just an LP. We're still either just going up a little bit in weight or a little bit in reps and making adjustments from there. Yeah. It's cool. I like where it's at. And now I've been like, when I first started jiu-jitsu, I was doing jiu-jitsu twice a week. Now I'm doing it four times a week. And I'm wondering how long I can preserve that while the weight on the bar keeps going up. So that'll be like an interesting thing. Because I just need to make sure I don't end up like putting myself into pain. Overdoing it and hurt yourself again. That's right. I actually told Matt this week on my true coach, I was like, Matt, you may need to hold me back here. I'm going to get too excited with my deadlifts. That's right. You got to hold me back. I need to just program your deadlift and say, if you do more than what I program, you have to remove one day of BJJ that week. So that you have this like, dang it, I really want to go heavier in the deadlift, but now I can't go Friday. No, we'll probably move really well. That's why you have a coach if you're a, that you just are addicted. We get this question quite a bit from Arbonne, which by the way, my wife loves your products. Anyway, so Arbonne, who I think actually might be a person and not accompanied on a multi-level marketing scheme, he only has access to a squat rack and a barbell once a week. How can he best progress slash train with this significant constraint? This is a question I would have answered different probably a year ago or two years ago. And I would have said, well, you can't really train, only have an access to a squat rack and a barbell once a week. But if that's really all you have, then training with a squat rack and a barbell once a week is better than training with a squat rack and a barbell zero times a week. For sure. And with COVID, I've had a lot of clients who to this day cannot for gym scheduling reasons, the gym only lets, you know, can only be at 20% capacity or whatever those things are. They're only training once or twice a week with a barbell and a rack, but I'm still having them quote unquote train, maybe exercise another couple of times a week at home. And they do body weight stuff. We get whatever we can get our hands on. They do, you know, maybe they're in presses with 50 pound dog food bags, or they get a kettlebell or two or some dumbbells. And so it's been interesting to watch actually one of our coaches, Coach Brittany, her public gym has been closed. And she is a fire person and fire person, fire fighter, not a fireman, obviously, though, but anyway, she's a fire fighter. And she can train at the firehouse. And of course, scheduling is kind of strange. And so she will work like a 48 hour shift or something like that or 70 hour shift or something. So she does a heavy lower body workout, a heavy upper body workout at the firehouse where they have a gym. And then she doesn't have access to the firehouse again for five more days. And so she's training a couple of times at home in her garage. And she's had some kettlebells and she's got like a 35 pound bumper plate that she does, you know, and we've just done the best we can. And she's been hitting PRs on the days that she goes back into the gym with the barbells. I keep seeing her on Instagram, I'm like, damn, girl, you're killing it. Yeah. And she's one who has never, this is really what I think what it comes down to as well as she is very mentally tough when it comes to just doing the same thing. You talk about doing those bro workouts that you were doing. Imagine doing bro workouts at home where you don't really even have access to weights. Yeah. It gets really old. Like, okay, man, you can only do so many push-ups and air squats and lunges and, you know, kettlebell swings with maybe a kettlebell or maybe a milk jug or, like, after a while, you're just like, bro, I've done this for six months. Or like, what can you do? Yeah. Like, I think I would like really need you to like just straight up lie to me and be like, this will get you to a 225 pound bench press. That's right. That's right. She knows better. And she has never questioned it. And she's gone out and had fun with it and done it. And she almost always goes out and does it outside. She was in New Mexico. It's never rains there. It's like, where you live and it's nice. It's just, it's just colder because of the mountains. So that's what I do, Arbonne, you know, on that one day a week that you're not selling makeup and beauty products. Do you think the demographic of our listeners knows what Arbonne is? I guess maybe a good question. I would say virtually every person who is obviously the listeners of our podcast are, you know, 91% male, but at least 75% of those guys are married. Yeah. And I would think most married guys know what Arbonne is. I have another box of, you'll never meet another person who is more anti multi-level marketing than this guy. Listen, don't write me if you're an Arbonne salesperson or any other MLM salesperson. I don't, don't even want to know because then we can't be friends. Yeah. And I've told my wife, stop buying this stuff. And my wife has never sold it. She's never been a consultant or whatever they call these people. Right. But I swear to you, Nikki Sims, every day I get a box in the mail that is from some multi, it is unbelievable how much my wife loves that stuff. She buys that crap all day. She's got like three different makeup versions. She uses essential oils, all sorts of other just, but anyway. So Arbonne, you know, do well enough, get your pink Cadillac and drive that thing to the gym and maybe you can train her once a week. Push it to the gym. I have a question. What should he do with the gym that one time a week that he's in there? She do everything. Yeah. Everything. I would say like top set of five and then like three or four back offs. That's a five after that. Yeah. Yep. That's a great question. And I would probably actually press and bench press. Yep. Totally. On the same day. So I would probably back off of the volume maybe just a little bit on each one of those, but collectively you're pressing a lot. Like so maybe you're still doing six total sets of presses. Yeah. So three press sets and three bench press sets. I would almost always press first. That seems to go better than the other way around. Not press first in the workout, but press before you bench press. Yeah. So I'd probably go squat, press, deadlift, bench press is what I would do. Probably. That sounds like a fun gym day. It's not bad. I'd keep your, you know, I'd try to just do every get as much in as you can in that one day. And then I'd do another couple of days a week where you're still like, you know, you're doing push-ups and pull-ups or chins. Go like find the rafters in your garage and do those and probably do some sprinting or like push your car down the road and find something in row. Yeah. Yeah. You just, that's right. So and that works fine. Inverted rows work really good. You can do those hanging off the end of your dining room table. If it's heavy enough, don't tip it over on yourself and die. That would be bad as well. You couldn't get the pink Cadillac. You're not responsible for that. That's Mary Kaye, by the way. I don't know if you need that. I think that's Mary Kaye. Yeah. I don't know if this is a Cadillac. Anyway, all right, let's do some rapid fire. You want to rapid fire? Let me take a water break. It makes me angry that you drink out of water bottles that have a straw built in. Are you jealous? It's hatched. I just don't like straws and I believe in them. Why don't, what? I don't hate straws. Why? I use it. The only time I use a straw is at the very bottom of my margarita after I've already drank. First off, why wouldn't you order a margarita? They bring us margarita that has salt on it, which I love salt on a margarita. And then they give you a straw. And then put a straw in it. Yeah. How am I supposed to get salt? It's super precious. So I take the straw, throw it out, obviously drink the margarita until it gets down to the last quarter inch, which I can't get out drinking it through the ice. And then I put the straw in and I slurped out the last little bit. They should really solve the straw. They should, I know, somebody should invent straw and salt. Surely they have salt, like pink Himalayan salt straws. If they have those, would you, listeners, would you mail me some of those? Yeah, that sounds amazing. I would love some pink Himalayan salt straws. And I could just, you've seen the salt shot glasses. They do make pink Himalayan shot glasses made out of salt. Oh. And you can put, you know, tequila in there, I guess. And I don't know how much it comes off of the shot glasses. That's me. Maybe they don't come off at all. I don't have any idea. So. Well, my water bottle does not have tequila or salt in it. I disagree with your water bottle entirely. She's always built in straws. Okay, here we go. I think you can do this one super fast. I will ask you. Okay. From Brian, where and how do you place a rack on the eight by eight art of manual art, art of reading? I do it fast, but you can't do it fast. I don't know what's wrong with me. Hold on. Okay. Where and how do you place a rack on the eight by eight art of manuals DIY platform? You still said it wrong. Am I saying manuals? Yeah, manuals. What's that word? It's like a panic, but on a guy. It's the overhang. Because I'm living in California and I don't know what manliness is anymore. Steven, don't you cut this out. This is radio gold. Just say AOM. They all know. Okay. Oh, here we go. Try it one more time. Where and how do you place a rack on the eight by eight art of manliness DIY platform? So two lifters can lift at the same time on each side. Right. Excellent. In the middle, sir. In the middle. Come on, man. Where else would you put it? Where else would you put it? Now, I would say, I know this is a rapid fire, but I would not have an eight by eight platform if two lifters are going to live down the same at the same time. I would have an eight by 10 or an eight by 12. Yeah. So those, those are still in the middle. That's right. And then yeah, you still put the rack in the middle unless you've got a big four foot deep rack like I've got. And then you can put the rack on one end and one person lifts inside the rack and the other person lifts outside the rack on the other side. Yeah. Those are four feet apart. That's three feet apart. It's a little tougher. Yeah. You want both people outside the rack. Okay. Oh, you got to ask me the next one because it's a whiskey question for me. Okay. Are there any whiskeys you recommend keeping an eye out that don't cost more than 50 to 60 bucks? So I've answered this type of question a lot. Yeah. What were you gonna say? I was gonna say, he already has listed a few. Yeah. He's got a bunch of these normal ones. Here's what I'll say though. This is kind of where I'm at today on whiskey. I think the best deal in whiskey, hard whiskeys to find are hard with, they're impossible. You can't find good whiskey. Yeah. Great whiskey is impossible to find right now. And so to tell people all over the United States and Lord knows who else is listening to like, here's what you should look for. You go to a liquor store that's a big liquor store and you buy their barrel picks of stuff. So they'll have a barrel pick of Buffalo Trace or they'll have a barrel pick of Knob Creek and it'll be barrel proof. So it'll be like 60% or like that's what you do. And they're almost always in that, you know, 45 to $60 range. They're almost always barrel proof. They're delicious. It's the best deal. Is it safe to say that if it has like a higher percentage that it would be better to go with that one? Because yeah. So something like, I'm always going to go higher proof, higher longer age, right? So if you can find something 40, 50 bucks higher proof, that's probably especially if it's higher than 55%. Yeah. Yeah. Get it super high. If there's whiskey, if there's bourbon that's higher than 55%, there is no such thing that's bad bourbon. Yeah. That's over 55%. So, okay, that wasn't very good on the rapid fire, but that's okay. So here we go. Question from Jordan. I haven't read this. I don't know what I'm getting into. Okay. Nice note plus question. Thanks for posting the best lifting content on the web. It's made a huge difference for me and the people I train. Well, I think Jordan, I appreciate that. Now to my question. One of the immediate changes you suggest is moving from the deadlifts to rows or chins midweek to help recover from the deadlift sessions, similar to the question we had earlier about when the deadlift slows down. Lately, I've seen some prominent strength coaches and trainers advocate using towels to do chin-ups or pull-downs, especially in senior older populations because it increases proprioception and engagement of the forearm muscles. It seems as though it fits under the train the most muscle mass principle for exercise selection. What if any thoughts do you have about this? Would towel chins provide a greater benefit? So on and so forth. What do you think? I think no because under those circumstances, you're pulling, utilizing the biceps and you're really trying to make the biceps pull. And I think there would be potential issue of maybe them trying to use the biceps more on the deadlift, which is the last thing that you want. And really towel chins, having done them, are way harder than the other ones. And so since there's going to be like a steeper learning curve, quote, physical learning curve, it'd be better to get them doing more reps at more weight than making it harder for them to do more reps at more weight by adding a towel. I imagine a 72-year-old man doing towel chin-ups. That is a badass and there are very few of those people on earth. So yes, agreed. Okay, you. Oh, I have an answer for this one too. Anyway, okay. Is there a York barbell you recommend? Someone that lives close by to the person who asks this, whose name is Ryan, lives by York. So wow, I can't read questions. What is wrong with me? You're doing okay. It's fine. There's the question from Ryan. Is there a York barbell you recommend? Someone lives 45 minutes from York so we can pick up a barbell and save on shipping. There we go. I don't know. I'm actually, you know what? You do have an answer. You said this and since it's a rapid fire, I'm going to throw it to you. But I am going to say this. I am not good with equipment questions. I am not the guy I used to be back when I was strong and I used to really, I have some real, like you hear people say this sometimes, like that they have some OCD tendencies, but I have gotten rid of most of those older in my life and I just don't care that much. And so I know that that York split sleeve old school barbell that's no longer made that was made like in the 70s and 80s, I have a couple of those and those are freaking awesome. I do anything I can to get a hold of them, but I have no idea what York barbell I'd recommend. What about you? I have one and it is the York elite Olympic training weight bar. It is 28 millimeters, which is why I love it. And it came with a weight set that I bought. So I bought their set where you can get their milled plates and a bar and it was like a really freaking good price because I think the bar in its own is like 500 bucks and then you get a whole thing of plates and it's like 600 bucks. I don't know. It's a good deal. It's got a center knurling. It's not super bitey, but since it's only 28 millimeters, I actually really like deadlifting on it, even though it doesn't have an aggressive knurling. So again, it's called the elite Olympic training weight bar and it's one of their few that has a center knurling. Nice. There you go. Far better answer than me. All right. You have to ask the next one because it's about shaving heads. Try saying you don't have a lot of experience. Not my head. No. All right. Hey, Matt. This is from Jens, by the way. Huge fan. Been listening for years. Thanks for all the great content. I'm really, I'm finally ready to accept reality and lose my hair. How do you do it? Does rogue or caps welding make any razors? He says, hope you're well and thanks for the info training related and non. I still find myself opening up. Embrace the grind whenever things are getting heavy. Best. We're about to re-release that episode. Embracing the grind, actually. Okay. So I am not sponsored by any shaving products. We're good friends with the beard brand crew, which is in fact typically the opposite of shaving. It's about growing beards. So I for a long time used Dollar Shave Club and then I ran out of razors and I went to Walmart and bought some Harry's razors. Harry's razors are the best razors I've ever used in my entire life. It was so much better. So that's all I've used for the last couple of years. I use Harry's razors. I use typically for shaving cream, I use Cremo or Cremo shaving cream and they have one that's mints and it's like, so I like it because it gives your hair just, your head just a little tingle, a little mint tingle on there. And that's what I use. And so I also, I used to shave my head for years with a clippers set on zero guard. And now I just go ahead and do the quote unquote, bigot, which I know it was a big because that is the worst brand of razor. That's just savagery. Yeah. And yeah, so get the Harry's. I love those. The downside of Harry's, Gens, if you have ladies in your house, they will steal all your Harry's razors. So now all of the people in my house have their own Harry's razors and then I just keep losing blades because which I would still rather them take their own blade for themselves rather than steal my razor and then I get it back and it's shaved. God knows what all over all of the bodies in my household. And so just go ahead and buy everyone in the house a Harry's razor and then take a sharpie marker and write on them their names and you'll be good to go. So I love Harry's hashtag not sponsored. OK, that's really good. OK, next question. There are a bunch of one rule emails that we got from the episode that you and I did and Andrew on one rule. So here are some of the one rules. We'll read it and then maybe I'll read one and then you give me any comments that you might have and then you read the next one and we'll just go back and forth really fast. OK, one rule from Eric. I haven't read any of these, by the way. So one rule from Eric. This rule came from my grandpa talking about his days in World War II when his company came into a new camp. He could tell if the food was going to be good by how fat the cooks were. He said the best cooks were always overweight. I didn't know you could afford to be that choosy when you're in World War II looking for cooks. So next time that you're traveling through trench warfare and you're trying to figure out the food is good, look at the chefs. I would think like, OK, well, how many rats do I not see because if I don't see rats in the trenches, they must be in the food. There we go. OK, this is from someone named Matt. If someone equates the quality of whiskey to how smooth it is, they don't know much about whiskey. That's 100 percent true. OK, I'm going to immediately stop saying that because I definitely... All of the ads, well, so it is in fact true that as a whiskey gets older, it tends to get smoother and that's good. But it's good because it's older and oakier and more interesting and it cuts down on all the kind of noxious alcohol fumes. But back when bourbon became like nobody liked bourbon in the 80s and 90s and everybody was drinking vodka and gins, they actually advertised bourbon as being... There was an average... I think it was Four Roses. It was wildly underwhelming. That's literally what the ad... I'm not kidding. That's what the ad was. And so people are like, ooh, that burns. I don't like... Yeah, it's supposed to burn. That's what I want. All right, one rule from Katie. Oh, sorry. I was going to say. What's something you could say to make it sound like you know a little bit about whiskey after you take a sip? You don't want to sound like a total jackass. Oaky. You could just say it's oaky. I don't know. Even if it's not. Unless it's not. If it's really dark, if you look at it and you see it and it's legit whiskiness dark, you could say it's oaky and it will be. I'm just going to say the color of things that I taste. This is not that dark. Yeah, don't use the color. If it's not that dark and you taste it, then you're typically just looking for vanilla and brown sugar and maple syrup taste like that. Okay, so I'm just going to say flavors that are anything but smooth. Okay. Yeah, and I always try to not say... I think I've said this in the packets where I try to not say flavors that sound real pretentious. You know, I don't want... It's not saddle leather. That's not what it is. Although sometimes I'll even sniff some weird stuff like that. But I'm like, I'm not going to say that out loud. I want to be like, this is what the t-shirt aisle smells like in Goodwill. I know that exact smell. I know exactly what you're talking about. Or like you ever been inside an army surplus store? Oh, yeah, that's unique. It has such an interesting smell. That's like the old canvas. Yeah, there's some... Yeah, it smells like World War One. Not the death, not the stench of death, but just like... Historical sweat. Yeah, like industrial sweat, something like that. This will be fun. One rule from Katie. Hey, a female, she says. If a bartender shakes a Manhattan instead of stirs it, nope. That's correct, Katie. A Manhattan is to be stirred. As a matter of fact, all cocktails should be stirred if possible. If you can't stir the cocktail because it has something in it that can't be stirred, it has to be shaken, then you got to shake it, right? But otherwise, you stir cocktails. Two, if an Italian bakery fills their cannoli shells upon ordering and not before, yes. I would say that would be also true. You know, we don't have... I don't know if you knew this about Springfield, Missouri, but we don't have a very wide variation of foods from around the world because we are not a very diverse society here in Southwest Missouri. We do have excellent food from a relatively white-red society. The thing that I miss more than anything else that we don't have here is we don't have a really good deli. We don't have an Italian deli. We don't have a Jewish deli. We don't have a Polish deli. And I'm sure they're... Listen, if you're listening, there are other good people group delis out there. I'm sure that they exist. Those are the three I've had that are amazing. We have none of those. You cannot buy a good prosciutto in this town. You can't buy more to deli. So good. And like when you go to a good deli and they give you a sandwich and like normally we're conditioned to ask for extra meat because you never get enough meat. But when you go to a good deli, they give you a pound of meat. Yeah. Yeah, you end up being like, this actually might be too much meat on a sandwich. You should be a little scared. That's right. All right, you're up. I don't really know how to read this because it's... Okay, this is from Bill and it says in all capitals, feature pillows equals quality hotel. I'm looking... Is feature, is that a brand of pillow? I have no idea. I don't know either. I don't know what makes a quality hotel. When I book a hotel, I just look for the stars. Yeah. That's what I book on. I think we did this in our one rule. I want them to have white duvet covers and white sheets. Oh, yes. Oh, that's a yes. If I go to a hotel and it's got like a flower, I mean, unless you're in Hawaii or something, if I went to Hawaii and had sort of like, you know, Hawaiian sort of, then it'd be okay. But for the most part, I want a white duvet cover. Yeah. Yes, agreed. I don't like it when the hotel bathrooms have like the sink outside of the shower and the toilet. Like, I don't want the sink to be in the hotel room. Does that make sense? Yeah, you know why that is though, right? And you know why that matters to you and not to me. Why? Because for people with families, if I need to brush my teeth and my 15 year olds in the shower, I can't. So that's why they do that. So for when people stay. So, you know, you just digress into your singleness. Love it. One rule from Andrew. Words to avoid when looking for a coach. Muscle confusion, mobility and functional. Yes, that's in the 101.050 version of coaching. Go for it. We got a couple from Chad. Hey, Chad, I had a barbecue restaurant. If I asked my server for outside meat and they don't know what I'm talking about, I'm leaving. I don't know what you're talking about. Chad, what is outside meat? I don't know. That has to be an area of the country thing. Yeah. There is, I have, I was raised in Memphis and there was nothing called outside meat. And of course I'm right between Kansas City and St. Louis and I will admit that Kansas City and St. Louis while famous for barbecue for both, they are two of the crappier cities for barbecue of all the ones that are known for good being, good barbecue cities. Not a huge man of Kansas City or St. Louis barbecue. But no one orders outside meat. What do you think outside meat is? I don't know. Were they raised outside? Was the animal raised outside and not in a talk? Let me tell you what I want. I know this is, have you seen the talk? There's, I don't know, taco diaries or tacos, something on Netflix. And there is a type of taco in Mexico City. Talking to you, Harry. When I go to Guadalajara here in a few months, I want you to tell me if they're called Saudero tacos. You got to look up these. They're like, they're legit Mexican street tacos and they're kind of famous in Mexico City area. And they, they're made with like all this weird meat. They're made with like tripe and belly and like cow jowl and it's all beef. No, it's good. It's like, well, you eat brisket, right? That's basically what brisket is. Brisket is sort of that sort of like belly area. Yeah, it's sort of like the front. I think it's like, yeah, the front chest. It's from like the front quarter down into the belly. Anyway, and they slow cook it in grease for like hours and hours till the meat falls apart. Then they pull it out and then they like griddle fry it. And then they put it on the double corn tortillas and put all the onions and cilantro in the hot sauce. So good. Anyway, Chad, you're going to have to let us know what outside meat is. By the way, one rule about guys named Chad. I have a picture of what Chad looks like. I know Chad's exact demographic based purely on his name. Did you know there's a place in California called Chad's Worth? This is where all the Chad's come from. I already know all about that place, having never even heard of it based purely on his name. Chad, so take a photo of outside meat, put it on Instagram and tag both of us, or tag barbell logic. Because then I want to know that. That would be perfect. Okay. He also says if a bar doesn't have Buffalo trace distillery brand available, I'm ordering, I think it's Patron on the rocks and never going back. Wow. Chad is fussy. Yeah, Chad's fussy. Lots of places don't have Buffalo trace. My go-to crap whiskey at a bar is makers mark. Yeah. Or knob. They'll have knob creek. And both those are fine. There's nothing wrong with you. One of those. All right. Let's do a couple more. Okay. So this is a two-part question. Okay. So we got some questions about, I can do a quick answer for this one. So questions about on proportional lifts. So like a deadlift being weirdly strong or like a squat being really strong compared to a deadlift. So like this guy, he's got a 260-pound deadlift and a 240-pound squat and a 180-pound bench press. Like what do you think the deal is with that? Seems about right. I think Thomas overthinks about this. I mean, really think about this for a second. He has a 260-pound deadlift, 240 squat, 180 bench, 120 overhead. Yeah. Seems about right, doesn't it? Yeah. And honestly, like if someone's just starting a novice progression, their squat's going to go up three days a week and usually the deadlift starts to get more complex sooner. So they're not deadlifting every time. So really the squat and deadlift end up kind of catching up to each other for a little while. So depending on where you are in your training and it seems like you're probably relatively new, like that's okay. Yeah, just don't, I don't worry about this disproportionate stuff very often. Yeah. If somebody's press is like less than half of their bench, we have a problem. Present. But we have a problem, right? You've had shoulder impingement for years and so there's a problem there. But for beginners and novices, you're exactly right. Like I couldn't care less. Some people come in and they've done some bench press and their upper body is stronger than the lower body. Some people come in and they're just built to squat and deadlift and so it's the other way around. You know, I've got guys like Father John Floater, one of my favorite clients. A guy's super strong at squat and deadlift and he's kind of weak at upper body lifts. I say it's kind of weak. I mean, the guy is like a 315 bench presser. So it's not like, he's not weak, but he's like, I mean, he's a 310, 315 pound bench presser, like once or twice a year and he's struggling at 295. But the guy could basically walk in and squat 550 and deadlift 600 in his sleep. Super strong. And so he's just, and then you'll see other guys are the other way around. They're just really strong presses, like it doesn't matter, just make all of them go up. And when I see the numbers of like the second part of this question is like, someone's got a 350 deadlift and a 265 pound squat, which is fine. But sometimes that big discrepancy between a deadlift and a squat, especially if it's uncoached, is like the deadlift might be moving with a back that's totally rounded. And in a squat, like that would mean that your back just isn't super duper strong. So you might be squatting and then just not being able to open weight because you keep going into flexion. So your squat is going to stall because it's impossible to stand up with a rounded back. A deadlift will keep moving because you can stand up with a rounded back. So just looking at the numbers, that could be the case. But like you said, Matt, when it comes down to it, just keep lifting. If it's going to be okay. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So we've got a similar question for Michelle. She's been lifting for a year. She was 55 years old. She started, she was 56-135. Now she's 56-145, but looks much healthier. Listen, 56-145, that is healthier than 56-135, especially 55 pounds, right? Like Michelle's not going to, she's not at risk of dying of metabolic syndrome, right? She's like, this is a thing like this, your 135 pounds when 25, you get sick, you get cancer, you'll waste away, not the other way around. And so she's done really well. She's made really good progress. She started squats at 75. Now she was up to 167 for a triple. That's strong. That's pretty strong. Deadlift started at 135, 220 for a triple now. Bench Press has doubled. Got from 55-103 for a triple and Press has more than doubled, gone from 33 to 71 for a triple. So two sets of four unassisted chins at 55 years old. I mean, that's, she's done awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. I didn't really have a big question there, but just a, that's fantastic progress. I think the question is, why isn't everybody doing that? That's right. You just stay the course, man. That's the way it works. Did you see this gas station one from Aiden? I don't know if you ever remember when I went off on this, but as for New England gas stations, which I say are disgusting, right? You're in New England, gas stations are awful. So you'll be in a suburb of Boston, you know, Tom Brady's house is two blocks away. All the homes are $19 million homes. And the gas station is a disgusting sh**hole that you would see in downtown Memphis or Atlanta. And you're like, what is going on here? And it's, it's all of New England. It's all of New England. So he said, as for New England gas stations, I enjoyed your displeasure with gas stations while I live in New Hampshire. Most would agree here that the gas stations are not pretty, but that's why we use them for gas. But see, that's not what we do in the Midwest. We go to gas stations to buy pizza and charcuterie boards. And we want nice bathrooms. And I think I talked about on that episode of, have you ever been to a Bucky's in Texas? They're amazing. Bucky's has, I bet it has 50 stalls in each bathroom. Men and women. And here's the thing about the stalls. Florida ceiling private rooms. Whoa. You know, when you go to a stall, it's got like 18 inches. And I got to look at the person's shoes and their underwear next to me like, Rose, I want to go into a stall that's Florida ceiling. That's what I'm looking for. Yeah. And that's what Midwestern and Texas gas stations are. In New England, they're just like, no, not interested. So people pull up and they're Maserati's and they just disgust me. Anyway. Okay. That's probably good. That's probably good. There you go. There's a Q and A from Nikki and I. A few a little bit longer, a few a little bit shorter, had a good time. I hope you guys enjoyed that. We'll do that once a quarter. Four times a year, probably. Yeah. That's about enough. When people pester us enough about them. Just kidding. Yeah. You guys don't pester us. And we're glad you're asking. Yeah. So you've been listening to another episode of the Barbologic Podcast. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being loyal fans and friends and family and all that fun stuff to the podcast. Really, this is one of the great joys of my life. And so thank you for listening. If you haven't given us a five star review and you like us, we would love one of those things. Helps us a lot with the ratings and showing up in the algorithms and you know, all these other people who listen to podcasts like those crazy murder mystery podcasts and then they're worried about getting stabbed in the middle of foggy Orange County. Let's let iTunes and some of these other Spotify suggest a much safer, much healthier podcast. Yeah, probably. To those people. And so we could use your five star reviews. And we will catch you next Monday. Thanks everyone. Bye.