 What I've noticed in the past with both myself and my clients is that when you come back from times like this, if you've actually continued to train or exercise or whatever you want to call it but with some consistency, I bet many of those people will come back and set PRs. In LP, three sets of five sort of PRs, then the ones who didn't and just let themselves get really out of shape won't set PRs. 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. Welcome to the Barbell Logic podcast. I am your host, Matt Reynolds, and I'm here with my good buddy. Rarely do I have somebody on the show that's bigger and more jacked than me, but today that is not the case. I have Michael Wolf on, the Wolf. Welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me back, Matt. It's great to be here. Not your first time, although it is your first time under quarantine being on the show. So really, I wanted to have you on the show because you are one of those people, like most many of our listeners, who you've been training at a gym in Austin for the last few years. And now that we're in this sort of lockdown, you're at home in your apartment with your pup chops, and you don't have much equipment and you're doing the best you can. And so I wanted to have you on the show today and let's just talk about training at home under kind of suboptimal conditions. Yeah, it's obviously a very good topic for now. And the good thing about it is you get to set a new quarantine PR every day, if you want to. That's right. That's right. It's like home gym LP all over again, and you're just like, set a new push-ups PR or a new air squats PR. So yeah, you have been training at a public gym. When did they close down? How long have you had to train at home? It's funny because I had been training for a meat that was trained real hard. And I actually part just bad luck and part my own pushing too hard. I sustained a couple of not major injuries, but enough that I kind of had to revisit, well, whether I was going to do the meat and I decided not to do it. And I took a week and a half off from the gym right before this all happened. So I was coming off and I have not done that in 15 years, other than, you know, when I had a surgery or something. So I was coming off a week and a half off and then the gym closed the first week of March, which was before they were required to, but they just felt they had been implementing stricter cleaning policies and they were even closing midday to do a full gym clean. And then the day I was going to go back, I think it was like the first Monday in March, like the seventh or something like that. They decided to close down. So at that point, I already hadn't been to the gym and a week and a half or two. And starting back up had to start back up with what I had at home, which was what, what equipment did you have at home at the time? At the time, I just had two kettlebells, 16 kilo, which is 35 pounds and a 24 kilo, which is 53 pounds, which for somebody like myself, who is, you know, a 700 dead lifter creeping up on just about a 500 bench. It's not a lot of weight. Not a lot of weight. It was kind of mentally very easy for me to tell myself, Oh, it's, it's so light. It's not even worth doing anything. But I also realized that if I did that for an extended period of time, I would just get so out of shape that coming back would be brutal when this was all over. Sure. So I definitely want to spend some time talking about the workouts that you've done at your house. But I actually want to back up a little bit before that and talk to people who literally have nothing. I want to start there. They're the most dire situation because they don't have any kettlebells. They don't have any dumbbells. They have no equipment whatsoever. You know, the question is, where do you start? If you're that person and you have nothing, what do you start with? That's that is the hardest question, because if we're, if we're strength coaches and we're talking to people who are interested in the pursuit of strength, you can't, you can't optimally load strength with no external resistance, right? It just there's no intensity. There is no intensity. We're already dealing with a very suboptimal situation, but at the same time, again, if you, if you do absolutely nothing for four or six or eight weeks, however long this lasts, you are going to be in really bad shape when it's all over. Like even if it was just going to be five days, I'd say, don't worry, you'll be, you know, you'll be fine. Come back, but if it's going to be six weeks, seven weeks, who knows? And you know, your air squats and your push-ups and stuff like that, they're going to be a lot better than nothing. So the way I think about it for all of these, whether it's no equipment or limited equipment, I still think about how can I best work the same basic movement pattern? So instead of thinking like, all I've got is barbell squat, barbell press, barbell deadlift, barbell bench press, and chin up or pull down. I think what is the movement pattern that's at play there? What is my body doing? And how can I closely mimic that or as close as possible, mimic that with no equipment and then a little bit better with limited equipment? So a squat is still a squat, right? That doesn't really require a lot of creativity. Now, I've got some people who have had no equipment, and they're holding, they do some air squats, maybe the first day to kind of get into it. And then they're, you know, their wife or their kid helps out and they'll do, they're holding their wife or their kid like front hold. Yeah. Some of them tried piggyback and they said didn't work that well, which makes sense. You know, we've all messed around with that at like the, you know, a picnic or something and you can all fall over. But yeah, the people are front holding their wife and their kids to add a little bit of resistance. I mean, we're pretending that it's a heavy triple. No. But is it better than an air squat? Yeah, probably. Yeah, and is it slowing down D training? Probably, probably for sure. And so most people, even those who don't have any equipment at all, I have first off, do you have a handful of clients like this at your training right now with Barba Logic, who don't have really hardly any equipment at home? I've got one or two. Yeah. So I have maybe six. And, you know, it's been interesting to see what they use. So I've got clients that are using 50 pound bags of dog food. I've got clients who have used like the five gallon Kulligan water containers, which is like a giant kettlebell because it's got a handle in the middle. It's kind of interesting. You got to really do the splits. It's a big time sumo kettlebell swing if you're going to do something like that. But you know, you can find things are heavy. I've got a client who found some big rocks like it's a Midwestern guy and you know, like found some, you know, big, heavy stuff tires. I'm gonna say a spare tire, spare tire works really well. Like any of those things you find that's just heavy, right? Anvils or stuff out in the shop. Those things tend to work really well. So even without equipment and remember, this is how people quote unquote trained before 100 years ago, you know, like for all of human history, up until maybe the early 1800s, when they started to invent these things, then that's, that's what they use. They just use like the normal stuff they could get their hands on. So it's working okay. And like you said, it's not, there's no way to continue to incrementally load the weight. That's the hard thing. But you can certainly continue to work the muscle groups and the full range of motion as best you can, using the same sort of standards that we've always used. And because intensity really isn't the, it isn't one of the things that we can change. It isn't one of the variables that we can change. We can just continue to sort of LP with volume with with more reps or more sets, you know, more total work, or even things like density more work in a in an amount of time, are all things that that have worked pretty well. I haven't gotten to to anybody where I'm playing with density yet. But one thing I have done with a lot of them was either no equipment or they're using something improvised like they're holding their kid or, you know, a tire or whatever. I've used tempo with them. Yeah. Yeah. So you know, if you if you take that, you know, you've got a 10 gallon jug, and you know, it's it's better than nothing, but it's still only way you know, what is that weight? 80 pounds? Yeah. Yeah. Whatever it weighs. It's not it's not heavy for a guy who squats 300 or whatever. But you make that squat descent five seconds. And then you know what, a set of eight isn't that easy. That's right. That's exactly right. Yep. Yeah, I've used I certainly I have clients that have pull up bars, chin up bars in their doorways, but a lot of them don't and they're doing inverted pull ups like on the edge of their dining room table, or a countertop. It's kind of been interesting to see that certainly dips on the on the back of a chair, right on the two chairs put together work pretty well. It's a pretty good chest exercise. You can get your hands up on books and do bigger range of motion push ups, things like that. So those body weight exercises are the first place we start for people that literally have nothing and we grab whatever odd implements we can that are heavy, right? Yeah, I have a guy who he's got he's got one kettlebell now, but he didn't for the first week. And so he was using he putting towels like around his table or closing the door in a towel and he was kind of rowing that way. Yep. Just do what you can, right? So then you get to the next step, which is really where you were when you first got put into the quarantine and that is you had a kettlebell. And so you started to make videos for us that have been incredibly helpful. I've used them a ton with my clients. You went out on your deck out on your concrete deck with your kettlebell and you started to go through lots of different kettlebell movements to just do the things that we talked about to work the most muscle mass through a big range of motion as best you could. And what are some of those movements that you're utilizing and that you feel like work better maybe than others? Yeah, it's funny because a lot of the stuff I thought I would never use again on a broad scale. I've been in I was in kettlebells before I really was into barbells and now it's all all coming back really useful. So I like to still think about the the basic movement patterns. But the kettlebell kind of kettlebell is interesting because it crosses so many movement planes. Yep. But it doesn't always neatly fit like you can do a kettlebell goblet squat where you pull the thing close to your chest and just you can weight load a squat that way that kind of fits neatly into the squat pattern. But with a kettlebell you can also do a kettlebell clean. A kettlebell clean is different than a barbell thing because it's not just like a close vertical line up and down you kind of swinging it out and then catching it back in so it's kind of you know it's kind of a deadlift pattern it's kind of a squat pattern it's kind of a pulling pattern. So I like the clean and then once you learn the clean you can go into the clean and press. So you can actually get a kettlebell and if you have a heavy enough on or you do enough reps it gets quite challenging. You can work the press pattern once you learn how to get it into the clean rack position you press from there. So that really takes care of our overhead pressing movement. You've also got the snatch kettlebell snatch which first you learn the high pole and which is also gets you a little bit of upper body pulling. Then you learn how to snatch. So you've got you know some more of that kind of leg and arm upper body and lower body synergy going with the kettlebell snatch. Sure. And even the basic swing like if you can't the hardest thing to make harder with all this is the deadlift right we can kind of figure out a way to load squats pushes you know the deadlift it's like how do you load a deadlift if all you've got is 35 pounds. Well you could do like a 20 second tempo. That's ridiculous but you know what doing a set of 20 or 25 swings which maybe you're not going to do on day one if you're deadlifting 225 but even if you're a stronger, stronger person doing a set of 20 or 30 swings even with like a 16 or 24 kilo kettlebell. Yeah, it's obviously not incremental loaded strength but it's it's a pretty challenging movement for the similar to the basic deadlift pattern. So I really like the swing for that. Yeah, then I saw was it yesterday in the last couple of days you were doing some kettlebell good mornings, which probably put significant more moment on your back than kettlebell deadlift would right because you could actually get the thing up closer to your neck or head in that area and then go down and it's it's a pretty intense movement as well. Yeah, one of the things I found doing the tutorial, I was like man, I'm just doing a few reps and I really feel my hamstrings. Yeah, because I did the tutorial before I had used them in a workout. Yeah. So I was you know, I was holding it to my chest and doing a good morning. And it's even even though obviously you can load a barbell heavier the fact that it's in the kind of front loaded, you're having to hold it close to you as another little bit of challenge at the upper body has to work a little harder. And then you lean over and get that moment between the bell and your hips and you're like, gosh, you know, my hamstrings are really being pretty seriously loaded there. Yeah, yeah, it's a pretty good movement. So the other thing that I've done with my clients who didn't have any equipment, the first thing I had him get was I had him get a kettlebell or a couple kettlebells. And and the other thing I actually really like is is some of those bands that originally were called jump stretch bands a bit rogue and everybody makes them now like all the all the equipment manufacturers make their own bands and and you can add quite a bit of resistance that way as well. So you take a mini what we call a mini band, which is the one that's maybe a little wider than a half inch and you can put it around your thumbs and behind your back and you do pushups with the thing. It works pretty well to kind of load pushups. You can do the one of the thicker bands work pretty well to also do banded good mornings and and it's not that hard to actually just put the band around the back of your neck, especially if you put kind of a towel around the back of your neck so the the rubber band doesn't pull on your skin and then still hold the kettlebell and just put the band underneath your feet. I'm sure it looks incredibly goofy if you're standing out on the back deck, but you're talking about that's a pretty that's a pretty hard good morning to do with but the band around your neck and the kettlebells sort of cradled up against your chest. And so there are a lot of movements that you can do with those bands and certainly there's tons of stuff you can do with the shoulders and internal rotation, external rotation, lateral raises. You can do rows. You can do tricep pushdowns. You can stand on it and do banded curls. All of those things work pretty well. I've had people, you know, take the thin one and step on one foot and do lateral raises, yeah, tricep overhead stuff. One of the things I want to clarify though, I've I ran into this so I quickly learned I had to clarify this is the bands that you're talking about are this like single looped. It's like an ovular single it's like a giant rubber band. It's literally like a giant rubber band because I had some clients tell me oh I got some bands and I was giving them this kind of stuff and what they meant was single tube with handles at the end. That's right. Which is a different set of logistics that you can do different things with. Sure. And then there's actually the bands that are probably my favorite. Again, I can make a case for any of them being more useful than the other depending on what you're trying to do. The ones that I like are the ones where you can either put them in a door jam or loop it or, you know, loop it and tie it to a post. Yep. And then it has two separate handles on two separate leads that you can kind of control independently. So I've been starting to do stuff like chest presses, rotations, banded because you can you can load those in a horizontal vector. That's right. I have to something that's like waist height and then I can kind of it's kind of like a cable row. Yep. So I've been able to do some rows with those. So those are three different types of bands you can get and depending which type you have you can do all sorts of different things with. That's right. So then I've got some clients that have some TRX straps or some gymnast ring straps that will attach often to like a door post or the top of door or pole and there's a lot of stuff you can do there as well with body weight movements. Basic curls, basic triceps, rows and rows and push-ups off of them. That's exactly right. And you can do some extra, you know, we hate to say the word core, but you can do some extra core work. You can kind of do walkouts or lean outs where you kind of mimic, you know, the barbell or wheel roll out. That's exactly right. If you're if you're gymnasty enough and light enough, you might, you know, you might be able to do ring dips or you're probably not going to have something to attach it. I'm to try to try your muscle ups, but that's right. Something like ring dips might be possible depending where you can hang them. Yeah, try to head a client that did those just the other day. So those are all really good options for people who don't have much and you can probably procure some of that stuff relatively quickly and relatively cheaply, right? I know that the next investment you made, next purchase you made was with loadable dumbbells. You got you got dumbbell handles that were loadable so that you could incrementally load those and I think those are incredibly versatile for training at home. Yeah, I had a bunch of clients get the kind of their fixed ones where they come with, it goes up to 50 or 70 pounds and you kind of click something in. Yep. I got ones that you can plate load and I got the specifically got the ones with longer handles so I could load more weight on. Now I'm still waiting for some more plates to come so I'm currently limited in how much weight I can use but they're super versatile because they're designed to not only be able to load a bunch of weight on but also they spin so if you want to do something like dumbbell cleans and snatches you can with the individual handles you can do that or you could just use them for traditional stuff like curls and presses and I've been starting to use them for floor presses. Yeah. I've done them with kettlebells and I did a tutorial that's up on the YouTube channel with kettlebells but I like the dumbbell better for floor presses. Yep. Kind of doesn't doesn't sit and bang on your wrist. Did you get some good clips for them? Some to make sure you hold the weight on this. The only thing that I found is a lot of times people will spend some money on a nice loadable dumbbell set and they have the old spring collars or or even I mean you've got to get a really good set of collars are going to hold the weight on especially if you're going to be going through a big range of motion with them. Yeah you definitely don't want to rely on spring collars or or a cheap clothes are caught like the knockoff. Yep. At the very least get the the good version of the one that kind of like locks closed. Yeah the HGs. I actually happened to already have a set of what are they called lock jaws. Yep. That was super useful so those don't budge at all. Yeah they don't yeah I've got the aluminum it's the new you know Rogue Bot the the company Oso that's got those they had the the clip that folds down and I liked those I mean they they won't move at all they'll tend to take your finger off they're almost like a mousetrap if you're not careful when you undo those things but when the the aluminum ones that Rogue Bot Oso that made some changes to the design and now they got some really light aluminum they're not cheap like 50 bucks for a pair and I've got a couple pair of those they don't move at all but you start getting just like we talked about I mean it starts getting relatively expensive pretty quick if you're not careful and so figuring out what to do with what you've got is extremely important. Yeah so that's actually a good topic to talk about like what if you if you're on a you know a budget like most people are especially now you know if you still have a job you're worried about it you know what do you want to get if you're on a budget and it's really going to depend on how how strong you are right. Yep. So if you're if you're pretty new to this and you're not that strong and I probably say just get like a 12 and a 20 kilo kettlebell. Yep. You know that that will probably cost you you know with shipping maybe you know $200 or less and you can do a lot with it the reason I say to specifically it's very hard to tell somebody just buy one kettlebell even though that's what the when at least when I was learning about it 15 years ago that's what the kettlebell people I'll just start with one kettle and it's like but if we're trying to train a whole body you get a kettlebell that's appropriate for your pressing it's going to be too easy to swing. That's right. You'll have to go challenge if you get one that's challenging enough to swing you won't be able to press it. That's right. Yep. So I like to try to advise people to get to you know if you're newer you'll probably get a 12 and a 20 if you're a little strong or maybe you'll get a 16 and a 24 and if you're real strong maybe you'll get a 20 and a 32. Yep. Like if I could have started with a 20 and a 32 I would have been a little happier than my 16 and 24. Sure. So that's kind of a good place to start for you know 150 to $250. Again if you're if you've literally been laid off work and you don't have I mean you have almost no money I think the cheapest thing you can do is go up to Lowe's or Home Depot and buy a couple of 50 pound sandbags which costs nothing literally cost a few dollars and bring them home and stick them in a duffel bag duct tape them together put them in the duffel bag and as long as you got a decently heavy duty duffel bag which most people have in a closet somewhere then you've got a pretty good implement to press to squat to swing and you can you can mimic a lot of those movements and it's pretty easy to get a hundred pound one you can almost make like a 50 pound version and a hundred pound version and get a lot of work out of that as well and you're talking about for less than 20 bucks and so for those of you listening to the podcast right now you're like man I've been laid off and don't know when my next paycheck is coming I can't afford $200 to even go get a couple kettlebells like we got I got you I understand I've been there before right then you certainly can can make do some things with some other makeshift objects like sandbags or again heavy bags or heavy heavy rocks or dog food bags things that you already have around the house you'd be surprised at what you have that's relatively heavy and the other thing about that is for for those who aren't in super urban environments all the stuff we've been talking about with the kettlebells the dumbbells and also with the really cheap stuff that you can get like a sandbag if you've got a backyard or if you're you know a little suburban or or or rural you can do all kinds of carries farmer carries over the shoulder carries front-loaded carries fireman care like if you get a hundred pound sandbag shoulder carry you know a hundred feet in each direction you're getting the decent you know a strength and conditioning effects from stuff like that and you know you do five of those passes and then you do 20 kettlebell swings and then walk into one of those and then you do some squats and like you're gonna burn out in like 20 minutes sure yeah i always liked uh you can turn that into a competitive thing even even if it's just you right too you can time the time yourself so i would i just love taking a just a handful of odd implements this is when i first started training strawman and i didn't have any strawman equipment i would just you know i'd had a big rock and i had some sandbags and i had some you know it's like whatever and i would set up a and a spot to finish like maybe it was a big countertop or a table or maybe it was just to throw it over a pole or something and you'd set your timer and here we go three two one go and you'd pick up one object and you run it down and you know put it on the table you run back you get the next one you do it again and you take keep your time and the next time you do it you got to beat yourself that's the that's the that's the deal and so it brings in a lot of that conditioning aspect and i think i just think it's a lot of fun and at the same time we know it's slowing down the detraining effect that you would be you would be deep into if all you were doing right now is sitting at home eating junk food ordering doordash and uber eats and and watching netflix you know so i i think we have a responsibility to continue to do this and for those of you that are listening i would assume the vast majority of people that are listening to this podcast train because the podcast is called barbell logic so you know it's about training but if if you have you most of us have put in a lot of time and and for some of us years and for some of us decades in training and what a ways to sit at home and do nothing right and so honestly for people like you and people like me who have spent most of our life focusing on getting really really strong maybe even at the expense of some of the other physical attributes it can be a nice change of pace to train the other physical attributes for a change and what i've noticed in the past with both myself and my clients is that when you come back from times like this if you've actually continued to train or exercise or whatever you want to call it but with some consistency you'll come back to the gym and yes you'll be weaker but you won't be weaker very long and often you'll come back and listen most people are going to go back to the gym in another month or two months or however long it's going to take and we're all going to start lp again right because that's what we were going to because like people haven't trained and i think what people people are going to find out is that the ones who continued to train while they were home or exercise and do the best they could with some consistency i bet many of those people will come back and set prs all-time prs in lp three sets of five sort of prs things they've never hit before in their life and the ones who didn't and just let themselves get really out of shape won't set prs they'll get stronger again they'll come back and they'll get stronger they'll get back to 90% that's right and then to switch it up again that's right and the other people i think you know good percent of them will set prs and that's actually a really good point i don't know what percent of our our listenership is kind of the more advanced lifters who have really focused on strength at the you know certainly to the to the specialization degree and sometimes to the expense of other things but what this has done for me i've been lifting for 20 years but i would say it's probably only been the last 10 or 12 that i've really specialized and focused on strength uh it used to be i was i would say you know at certain point i was reasonably strong and more balanced and i've let that slip to focus more on strength in the last 10 years and i've actually found them enjoying getting back to that you know little more conditioned not just in a single mode you know do some sprints on the bike but you know do some kettlebell circuits and i'm like you know this might be something that i i come back to doing once a week even after this is all over because i'm actually finding that i'm enjoying doing that stuff again yeah i i thought about this too yesterday i was thinking as i was programming for clients i wonder how much of this stuff will keep you know these some of these body weight movements there's so many people doing push-ups and um chins which we do pretty much anyway but dips and kettlebell swings and things like that like how much of that will we keep and i think some of it is i obviously i want to be very careful when choosing my words carefully it i don't know that you're healthier but i bet you feel healthier you know i bet your range of motion i bet your joints feel pretty good i bet your range of motion your shoulders feels good i bet your you know your your resting heart rate is lower i bet your blood pressure is down a little bit so some of those markers that certainly people would attribute to being quote-unquote healthier i think it it helps with those things and so you know then the crazy thing is it doesn't take very much time so as you go back here in another few weeks or few months back to the gym and start training heavy again how much of that time is it going to take to add some of that stuff just in at the end of your workout 10 or 15 minutes 150 minutes twice a week yeah that's not very much for a pretty good benefit and again i every time i train this way i always come back like man i feel good when i do this i just feel better you know like i just feel like my my again i don't know if it's my cardiovascular system is actually healthier it's just my energy systems are more efficient right i'm not sucking wind is hard right i feel like my blood pressure is a little lower i feel like my heart rate i know my heart rate is a little lower like all of those things and it just seems like i feel better i think to myself why can't i just go in the gym and train heavy and then do this stuff for 10 or 15 minutes the answer is i can you can do that stuff yeah i agree even without without trying to get outside of our expertise into the into the medical stuff i think even if it even if all we stipulate is i kind of just feel better when i do this for 15 minutes right you know once or twice a week how much how much higher quality of life do you have when you feel better that's right how much more motivated are you to train when you generally feel better how much more motivated are you to like go for that pr that maybe you would have challenges because you generally feel better you know i feel good today i'm going to go for it right so i think even if it's all even if it's just the psychological aspect of it we could make a pretty good case for it that's right and i think maybe it's the most important piece of that right like we know we probably can't prove that doing push-ups and dips and body weight movements are going to make your bench press go up not not from a physiological standpoint but from a psychological and sort of field standpoint it it matters and i think the strength community in general has sort of shit on that stuff for years as saying like listen like that doesn't that doesn't really matter and the reality is is we've done this you and i both i mean we've been strength training for decades and we've both been and we've been coaching for decades at this point and to look back and say you know i've noticed that when my clients enjoy what they're doing feel healthy feel good don't feel beat up right their training is better their strength training is better and i think you're right i think that um you know that that emotional psychological thing that happens with training this way can be very beneficial and so you know that certainly there are two ways you know you've got the old adage of you know is the glass half full or is it half empty i think if we attack this with you know what like i don't have heavy barbells and weights a lot of you guys don't out there i do by the way i've got a sweet home gym so this that's why i had to have you on the show because i'm like uh i don't you know i've been programming for people but i'm like i'm yeah i can just go in there and train with my sweet bumper plates and my in my uh in my ball bearing bars and but listen as much as we talk about how how good this stuff might be i still am jealous yeah sure of course of course but you know what at least i don't live in that hat anymore where i wouldn't even had room to do what i'm doing that's right and you probably have coveted right now so that's the other that's the other thing if i live here so you probably dying of uh you know tuberculosis like symptoms so uh yeah man i i think there's a way to look at it in that glass half full is you know i don't have the things i really want to train with right now but i can still do a lot of these things i can feel really good about about myself i can feel better and i i'll bet it carries over to other things too right going in and just saying like look you don't have anybody right now breathe in you don't really anyway because you live a life of freedom but you don't have anybody breathing down your neck being like you know michael wolf you got to be at work at this time you got to be at the gym at this time you got to do this at this time and my guess is is that the discipline in in being consistent with exercise will carry over to a lot of other things in your life as well to your online coaching to your to your creating content and putting it out there on the internet to you know just to reading to making yourself better probably to taking showers and putting real clothes on and brushing your hair and stuff even when you know that the only person that's going to see you is chops and so i would imagine there's some carry over there it's a person that's right he's literally your best friend because he's the he's the only human you've seen in a while chops the dog right he listens patiently to all my rent that's right and he's always excited no matter what like you when he sees you he's always that's the best thing about a dog right like you're you just you know you can leave your dog locked at home for two straight weeks which you shouldn't do but if you show up there he is they're excited see i have a gate in my i've got to keep a gate in front of my office because my uh my little boxer like or my boss and terry likes to come in here and mark her territory she's like listen i know you think it's your office but i want to make sure you understand that it's mine that it's and they don't ever do that don't be anywhere else but in my office because she wants to know she wants me to know it's hers to her office so so i gotta put a gate on my friend so one one point really resonated with me so i just want to bring you know just for a moment you talked about how you know a lot of people in the strength industry have kind of shit on this stuff and i will to some extent admits it even being one of those people now i don't think i really truly shit on it but there's a i think there's an extent to where we we've got so caught up in trying to convince people to do what we consider to be real strength training because there's a lot of people out there who would say under ideal conditions you just need push-ups and sit-ups and pull-ups or whatever and we do need to educate against that because that really isn't true but i think sometimes we get so carried away in trying to get people to do what is best or what is better that we uh lose sight of how maybe some of that other stuff can to to in a certain context not as the only thing or the main thing but in this certain limited context can still be good that's right that's right i think i've been as guilty of that as as as others so sure this has been a good a good reminder for me yeah certainly me as well i know in my early in my early days i was i was much more kind of drew the line in the sand and said this is what you do and this is what you don't do and it's crazy as i as i've as i've become older and hopefully a little more wise and and also a little more beat up from all the years of actual competitive strength training for myself and and training hundreds and thousands of coaches or hundreds of thousands of of clients i realize that there is benefit to some of this stuff and so um but you're exactly right you cannot get strong without barbells and weights like that's how you get strong but that doesn't mean that the rest of the stuff is worthless and that there isn't some some piece of this that can make you feel better and and you can enjoy and that's the other thing i've said this before in the podcast i'm not in the business of crushing dreams man if people want to people want to go jog five miles and they love it they love jogging five miles like man let him go jog five miles it's fine like it's is it going to compete some with the strength training yes it is right but for some people for most people the reason that we're doing this especially once you're out of your 20s and maybe early 30s and you're not you're not records chasing anymore like why are we strength training in the first place except for quality of life improvement i mean isn't that the primary reason we do the thing like sure we all want to look better and we all want to be jacked and we all want to be strong and all those things but ultimately even all of those things are really contributing to quality of life improvement and so if we can let people do some stuff that makes them feel better so that their their quality of life improves let's do it let's not throw out the barbells and the like i can tell you this when the gym's open back up barbell logic online coaching is an online coaching business that utilizes barbells it's in the name of the business but it doesn't mean that we aren't going to do the other things so when the gym's open back up we'll get back to squatting we'll get back to deadlifting but i hope there's some lessons learned here on some of the things that we can do to sort of branch out and feel a little better and have a little better range of motion and a little more health and in cardio vascular fitness for sure yeah there's there's a great quote i remember reading from last year i read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land which is like a so award-winning sci-fi novel from like the 60s um and he had a line in there where he said only the extremes are logical but the problem is they are absurd that's right that's right so it's kind of like that you know we have to we have to stand on our principle that you need barbells and weights and a bench in iraq to get strong but standing on that that's the only thing that anybody in the world should ever do that's right puts you in a slightly absurd place that's exactly right yep agree yeah and you don't take it so far to the other side where you say well just do whatever feels good all the time or you know if you want to get strong just as long it doesn't matter you know how you lift or what your programming looks like or what the form is like we all of those things matter and we we've staked our careers on those things um but it's not the only thing that matters right and it goes far beyond the weight room as well we've talked about this before like certainly i'm sure you know there are people in your life including your including chops who are probably more important to you than your back squat and for me too right and um and so there are things in life that matter more than just strength training strength training is extremely important to us we love the voluntary hardship aspect of it and that's a lot of what this is too with the training at home like that you are you are choosing to do a thing that's voluntarily hard when you don't have the thing you're used to like you don't have the bar bells and the weights and so i think a lot of people who are our listeners and our fans will walk around kind of with their chest puffed up like yeah i do voluntary hardship i back squat and dead lift all this weight and that is super impressive and and it's something to be commended but when it's not there do you still choose voluntary hardship yeah it's almost a test of it's a it's a you know psychological voluntary hardship to make yourself use a 20-kilometer ball in your own body weight and that's all you got to still find a way to get to get out of breath you're not used to getting out of breath to still find a way to get a good workout in with something you're not used to is it it's a different time that's right that's right love it dude well hopefully the training keeps going well uh i'm excited to see what more you know it's depending on how long this lasts and hopefully it lasts not very much longer but if it does i'm interested to see what you come up with because i know as time goes on you're going to adapt to the movements that you're doing right now out on the back deck with the kettlebells and stuff it'll be interesting to see what you start to go like okay i can tweak this a little bit i can do this a little bit make these changes to connect to continue to increase the stress which is really still a goal right and by the way i i meant to say this i was thinking before i even interviewed you on this was that you're seeing a ton of stuff right now online on on social media especially about you know these these these homework outs which are great i'm super glad everybody's doing that stuff and it's great to have access but if if we're picking home workouts like it's a crossfit workout in a hopper right oh what what home workout am i doing today that's that's not training and i think we would argue that while training isn't optimal in the position that you're in right now in the equipment that you have you can still train you don't have to exercise the thing that makes it different for us and different for you is that we are still systematically adding more stress every single workout and while we can't systematically add more intensity every workout necessarily right now because not everybody has access to that incrementally loadable weights you can do more reps you do more volume you can train more often with more frequency you can train you can get more work done in a period of time you can slow things down and do tempo like you talked about like there are lots of options to continue to incrementally and progressively increase the stress absolutely that is probably something we should have led with that we're we're still trying to make this training to the largest extent we possibly can that's right understanding their limitations we're still trying to make this training and not just random exercise and we're still trying to have a systematic logical approach to progressions whether they be a difficulty progression a volume progression a density progression that's what we're still trying to do and what you've noticed what i've been posting like i've been posting just single lift tutorials and i will continue to do that until i get as many out as i think aren't necessary but what i'm going to start to do after that is combinations like instead of just here's a kettlebell snatch like okay here is a swing into high pull into snatch into windmill yeah if you've already kind of exhausted yourself on that try this combo yep and things like that yeah we like uh we've i've been doing a lot of like 30 seconds on 30 seconds off or 20 seconds on 20 seconds off and going through a basic maybe like a three movement circuit so 20 second kettlebell swing you know 20 second kettlebell press 20 second lunges uh and then a lot you know and then maybe i'll even do like a sit up or something core and then go through it and 20 second press and go through right around again and so just trying to figure out some of working some of the antagonist muscles and and things are sort of fun to to play around with and so i there's lots of weight lots places to go yeah i didn't know how granular you wanted to get on this but that's i i love for for our population of strength focused but not not only uh kind of target workouts um i love that like the two to three move circuit me too i think it's perfect it's it's it's low enough on the like your heart rate won't get crazy high for so long that you can't use any kind of resistance and you're just doing cardio but it's enough of a heart rate challenge that it it just in terms of like perceived general difficulty makes up somewhat for the lighter weight that you're forced to that's right that's right yep it's good so i you know i don't i don't get into these eight move circuits where you just know elevated for eight minutes at a time because we're we've moved too far away from strength training which is what we're trying to do that's right but you know you just do one thing at a time with a limited weight you're kind of just not working hard enough right very vague general level right yep agree the two to three move circuit i think is a great sweet spot for most people agree and and then you can also even in in that you can then rest three to five six minutes and then do a different two to three movement circuit right which works really good get nice full body work are you doing mostly full body workouts right now are you splitting up between upper and lower i'm not splitting it i'm doing all full that's kind of what i figured and how many days kettlebell is a main tool that tends to be like the way you kind of have to do it right because everything can you know anytime i press i have to clean first yep you know where do you categorize a snatch is that upper or lower yeah it's mostly lower but there i mean if you do if you do three sets of 12 snatches with a 24 kilo kettle that's right you haven't done those in a while you feel your upper body like immediately sure it's hard to categorize it i've been doing full body workouts and another another way i've been playing around with it is adjusting the rest period like for a three move circuit if you're in great shape you can go boom from one to the next yep you could do a 20 second rest between each movement and a two minute rest or three minute rest between the whole thing so you can also you know it's still a circuit but you have a little rest between each movement and big rest between the whole set so yep there's there's lots of different ways that you can play with that awesome are you training three days a week four days a week how often you go every other day so i've been it's been sporadic for me only because i've been finding that when i film tutorials i do better doing like 10 or 15 at once instead of like one or two per day so then you're saying i'm gonna film tutorials and train and then i only have to film just so i don't know if i should count that as right right right i'm basically going for four days a week okay got it so it's like every other day plus one yeah is kind of how i've been going for it so doing four days a week so of total body yeah makes sense well thanks for being on the show man i hope you you guys got some good practical takeaways we'll get away a little bit from the depressing stress talk and actually get into the practicals of what we could actually do and so let us know what you're doing if you come up with other great ideas of things that you're using for weights or movements around the house for those of you don't have all the equipment that you need please send us an email questions at barbell-logic.com and in the subject line put put train at home and we'll read those on the air and give good examples of how to train at home so dude thanks for being on the show how do people find you words is instagram the best spot instagram is probably the best spot right now it's at wolf underscore strength there you go but i did just i started this youtube channel because of this i had you know it's i had a a bunch of videos from like 2013 to 2015 up on my personal youtube and then i actually just on accident got like 600 subscribers from that so i thought about continuing it on that one but it's my personal one so i just didn't want to mix it so the youtube channel is wolf strength to separate words no doubt or underscore where all these 30 tutorials are up so you can you can subscribe and is what you got 30 of them up there now yeah i don't know if i could name it like you know if we were playing like a like if it was a board game at home like scatter glories or something and you had to come up with 30 kettlebell movements i don't know if i could write down 30 kettlebell movements i know when i'm programming for my clients i type for those of you guys that don't know like when you're when you're programming on in true coach the software we use i just type kettlebell and then i see all your stuff come up and i'm like ooh this one and i'm like this is great and i watch the video i'm like yeah this is awesome so yeah so for the great kettlebell movements to learn how to do those basic movements at home check wolf out what is the youtube channel name is it awful also wolf strength it's wolf strength two words no hyphen or underscore or anything and there are dumbbell and a few body weight up there now so it's like 22 kettlebell perfect and i'll be adding as we go so by the time you look at this there may be more but the youtube channel is wolf strength and the instagram those are the two best places uh instagram is at wolf underscore strength because some bastard already had wolf strength we will uh we'll link both those in the show notes today for sure so you guys get to training out there do what you can don't just exercise don't just pick those exercise programs out of the hopper or pull them off it off of instagram or social media actually think about what you're doing and making making sure that you're adding stress every single workout be a a group of action people of action and get out there and actually do it uh you'll be surprised at how much better your training will go when you get back into the gym and you add the squats and the deadlifts back in so thanks for being on the show man we will talk soon if you guys love what we're doing please give us a five star review on itunes or any of your favorite podcast uh hosts what do you listen to you listen to podcasts on what what app do you use when you listen i use the apple you do i'm an overcast guy i don't i just i don't i like overcast and what they do is when there's dead just automatically when there's when there's dead dead silences like just even like one second of silence it sort of automatically cuts that out so the flow is better i you know i haven't been super thrilled with it so what is it called overcast i'm overcast i love it i love overcast i i can't i'm not a big fan of the uh of the itunes actual like podcaster app but they're the ones that create the ranking so uh go in and say nice things about us if you can and we will see you in a few days thanks for listening