#154： Strength Training for Everyone with Matt Reynolds
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness Podcast, we discuss the story of how Matt Reynolds opened up one of the largest barbell-based strength gyms in the country, Strong Gym in Springfield, MO.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast we've had mark
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ripetale on the podcast the author of starting strength but what a lot of people don't realize
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is that you can get certified to be a starting strength coach it's pretty rigorous and there
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are a few starting strength coaches around the country and one of those coaches a guy by the
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name of matt reynolds he's a co-owner of a gym in springfield missouri called strong gym it's one
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of the largest barbell based strength gyms in the country he's a former powerlifter himself
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strongman competitor and he also does online coaching i've been doing some coaching with him
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online and i've seen some significant progress with my strength training since i started with him
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so i want to get on the podcast to discuss his story of how he opened up strong gym because it's
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really it's a great inspiring story for entrepreneurs out there completely bootstrapped
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operation but then also we get into some details and some nitty-gritty about strength training so
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how barbell training can help if you're an endurance athlete if you're a trail runner obstacle course
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racer why you need to incorporate strength training to your programming we discuss why strength training
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or barbell training is a great stepping stone for someone who's completely out of shape never
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exercised and they need to lose a lot of weight why barbell training is a great way to start that
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process we also discuss the prehab and rehab you can do to overcome and prevent injuries that often
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occur when training and we also discuss the psychology of strength training how do you get over those
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plateaus right you how to lift weight you don't think you could lift but your body can actually do what
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you can do to psych yourself up so a lot of great information if you are a strength trainer i think you get a lot
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out of it so without further ado matt reynolds and strength training
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all right matt reynolds welcome to the show thanks for having me man all right so matt is actually you're
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the first person i've had inside my closet studio to do the podcast how does it feel this is the first
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time i've been in a closet with a guy maybe my entire life so yeah so um anyways matt is uh i got
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matt on here he is actually he's a he's a strength coach owns a gym in springfield missouri called strong
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gym but he's also does online coaching um and he works a lot with mark ripito we've had on the
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podcast before with starting strength and so today we're going to talk about uh matt's story of how he
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got into strength training how do you open up this amazing gym that is one of the largest strength
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gyms in the country um and then we'll get delve into some like strength training questions and
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helping the guys out there get stronger so matt tell your story how did you get to become a strength
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coach what's the story that got to the point before you opened up strong gym sure well uh that probably
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starts with i was very painfully average in junior high and high school and uh you know i was just a
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normal guy i was a smart kid i was skinny kid played a lot of sports um was always usually the the
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last starter on the team um you know and there were two or three other people on every team that
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were better than me um that didn't start and so i just worked hard and and so i think part of who i
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am now as a pendulum swing into kind of the strength conditioning world uh came from the fact that i just
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was really probably unhappy with being average and so uh i i started to fall in love with with strength
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training my senior year of high school um just did it for sports and again wasn't great at sports and
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and seemed to be a little bit better at weightlifting than i was sports and uh so got into
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that and uh got out of high school wasn't good enough to to play anything in college but was
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unbelievably competitive and so um needed an out for that competition and so shortly after i graduated
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high school i actually found uh an article actually by dave tate who runs elitefts.com uh called how to
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bench press 600 pounds i didn't think that anybody in the whole world could bench press 400 pounds so this
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this whole 600 pound thing was new to me um and i read the article and it was about power lifting
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basically and it was this introduction to power lifting and so uh i was 19 years old it had been
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1998 somewhere in there 1998 1999 and uh realized like hey there's a sport where the goal is to eat
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tons of food and and get really big and really strong and so um that really appealed to me so i i got into
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power lifting uh come trained for power lifting did my first competition in 2001 um and and did okay you
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know it was just kind of still average and uh slowly got better and better and and by the 2005 or so i
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had i'd achieved my elite status in a handful of uh of weight classes and so um and so it was about
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that time in 2005 i graduated college um and started teaching school and started uh working as a strength
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coach at a big 4a high school in missouri and and so a big piece of this with the strength coaching
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side is uh you know i've always been interested in this stuff and i read everything i get my hands on
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you know everything that louis simmons wrote or all the stuff that the the soviet uh coaches you
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know pre uh communism falling wrote and you know they came over and either stuff had been translated
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into english or they came over in the 90s and and started to teach here and i just love that stuff
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it just it just and i it never wore off i mean it wasn't just a it wasn't just this phase i went
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through and so um so yeah so i i just i love coaching so i started coaching 2005 and and it started
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with mostly high school kids um and the interesting thing about that is that high school kids a lot of
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times are the toughest thing to coach i mean they don't listen very well they don't eat enough
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they don't sleep enough um you've got kids you know i had eighth graders who were pre-pubescent for
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sure um i had kids smack in the middle of puberty i had kids who had been way out of puberty and you're
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trying to deal with all of those kids 60 of them at the same time in in the same weight room and so
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um so we did that and then at the same time i continued my competitive career and so i in 2005 i switched
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over and started competing in strongman like the what you see in in world's strongest man
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and uh won my pro status in 2006 at utah strongest man won that actually um won the pro card with the
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same at the same show that brian shaw who is now the world's strongest man we won at the same show
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and uh competed on the strongman circuit for for a few years there uh 2008 open strong and open
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strong gym with really no um delusions of grandeur just wanted a place to train for for power lifting
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and strength training well let's let's talk a little about the your gym because uh it's different
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from a lot of it's not a it's not like a power lifting gym right where like it's grungy and like
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they're playing pantera like and it's not like a nice big box gym where they have a spa and all that
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stuff they don't have like you guys are focused primarily on barbell training but barbell training
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for soccer moms or soccer dads uh so how did how do you make that a viable business because most people
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aren't really into barbells if they go to the gym they're going to do machines so what did you do to
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turn strong into one of the largest gym strength gyms in the country sure yeah i mean you're exactly
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right and the reality is uh i didn't know it was going to be able to do this i didn't know we were
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going to be able to be successful and so as we have worked and uh we we really focused on a couple
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of things we focused on correct training so strength training with barbells and that really
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is the same thing that most powerlifting gyms do but you're right the difference really comes in in
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all of the other stuff so uh there are tons of great powerlifting gyms in the country but they're
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exactly what you said they're they're in a warehouse there's no air conditioning there's no heat there's
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no showers they're grungy they're dirty and so so we looked at how can we make ours better and so
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we ended up uh opening up an unbelievable 15 000 square foot state-of-the-art facility super clean and just
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had an incredible focus on customer service and then look the reality is this i have an unbelievable
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staff that buy into what we do and so i have a staff that most of my staff that work for me now i mean
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from the the guy lowest guy on the totem pole all the way up to my managers started as interns for me
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they all have exercise science degrees the colleges sent them over they they got passionate about what we
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do they see that the results that we get like what we the way we train works but it works in an
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atmosphere that's appealing to business professionals and soccer moms and so now you've got this gym
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that's full of people who are in their who are in their 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s and they all
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deadlift and they all squat and they all bench press and they all press and they train in a similar
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style that the powerlifters do so at lunch today you were telling me that one of the things you take
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pride in about your gym is about the the amount of people who can deadlift a certain way tell us like
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what the average weight that people are deadlifting at your gym yeah so so one of the things you'll
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hear a lot of gym owners or or even i would hear high school football coaches say is they would they
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would brag about their their strongest guy right so i've got a high school football kid who who
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deadlifts 600 pounds and who squats 500 pounds and and the reality is that has nothing to do with
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your program that kid's a freak he's gonna he's gonna squat 500 pounds in any high school in america
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and and strong is really no different i we have some i mean some of the best powerlifters in the
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whole world are at our gym but if they weren't at our gym i mean i'd like to think that some of our
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atmosphere helps them and facilitates that but the reality is they would be some of the strongest guys
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on earth with or without strong and so for for me what we really like to to be able to brag about is
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that our average guys we have we have 100 guys that deadlifted 500 pounds so a 500 pound deadlift is
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entirely average at our gym um a 300 pound deadlift for a female that is an average deadlift for a
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female we have a handful of females that deadlift 400 pounds and i'm not talking about girls that
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look like they're going to step on a bodybuilding stage girls that look like guys that that uh you
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know that read art of manliness we're talking about we're talking about soccer moms we're talking about
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ladies who are 36 years old who drive their minivan to the gym drop their kids off at school and they
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walk in and they deadlift 350 pounds that's what they do um and that's that's i'm really proud of that for
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sure so i mean what i mean what's the secret i mean if it sounds like you know deadlifting 500 pounds
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like that's a goal i've had for a while uh haven't been able to reach and i'm hoping i can get that
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with your with your coaching i've been doing but what's the secret sauce i'm sure there's a lot of
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guys out there that they want to have a 300 pound 315 pound bench you know 405 pound squat uh you know
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500 pound uh deadlift it sounds like you don't have to necessarily have the genetics for you can train
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this i mean what is the secret sauce is there a secret well i mean there's there's no there's no
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magic pill it's it's form programming atmosphere right so form here's the deal starting strength
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is the best thing ever put out ever for form um every single person that lifts at our gym that
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comes in that's a novice does a starting strength program we teach them how to low bar back squat we
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teach them how to deadlift correctly we teach them how to press we teach them how to bench press
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um it's the most authoritative piece ever put together on how to lift and so everything we do
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even when someone comes out of novice programming so you know you hear that that name starting
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strength well it's just it's it's for absolute beginners and it's it is great it is it's great
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for absolute beginners but the form the method that we use doesn't change as you become more advanced
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and so then outside of that it's we start with very basic programming programming should be simple
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hard and effective and so uh programming is often way too complicated in the beginning programming
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should be we're going to add a little bit of weight on each lift every single workout that's it
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right and if that if that works why would you do anything else like if you can come in and add five
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pounds to your squat three days a week why would you not do that right and so people get in a hurry
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to not do novice programming and that's a mistake right because they compare it to other sports like
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i don't want to be a novice basketball player i want to be an intermediate or an advanced
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basketball player but the reality is that the best type of lifter is the novice lifter because
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you can get better every single workout and so then as they move out of that progression we just
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still have simple slightly more complicated progressions for our intermediate and advanced
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lifters and then when you take somebody who's lifting exactly correct over a long period of time
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and you put them in an atmosphere where the strength standard is hey a 500 pound deadlift really
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isn't that impressive now look we celebrate pr so if we i have a i have a 79 year old lady actually
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she turns 80 in two weeks uh she's 80 years old today she deadlifted 105 pounds for five reps she's 80
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right so we celebrate that as as much or more than a 700 pound deadlift because a pr a personal record
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is a pr that's huge for somebody and so when you're in an atmosphere that celebrates prs along with this
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same atmosphere that cultivates correct lifting correct programming simple hard effective work
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that's our people have an understanding that anything that's valuable is going to take some
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work it's going to take some effort and so um the easy way isn't the way that works like we don't
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we don't uh walk on purple treadmills and read cosmo magazine that's not what we do at strong right
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we squat let me so it sounds like consistency is a big thing i know one of the things that i've got in
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trouble with is that what you just said that like i don't want to be a novice like i'm doing the same
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thing this is boring this probably isn't working anymore so there's this idea that i have to do
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something new and sexy and like some kind of crazy i don't know weird auxiliary exercise to actually get
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something going um and i just stopped doing the programming is that one of the big mistakes you see
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people making with strength training yeah absolutely not only that you see it with with trainers and so
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the hard thing to get across for for trainers is to you have to be able to continue to motivate your
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clients to do essentially the same thing every day for a long period of time so you know day one they're
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going to squat they're going to press they're going to deadlift day two they're going to squat
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they're going to bench they're going to deadlift day three they're going to day 50 they're going
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to squat they're going to press you know and so very quickly the the concept of we don't even like
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the term trainer i don't i don't like to be called a personal trainer i'm a coach i coach form you think
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about it more like if i were a sport coach i would be coaching form i'm not here to count reps i don't
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go three four five that's not what you're paying me to do and so being able to motivate somebody
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to stick with the basics while the basics work is huge i mean that's a big motivating factor
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people get bored and they want to move on to something else and so a good trainer can still
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add some variation to programming we can we can change up the conditioning a little bit we still
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do conditioning we push the prowler we do things like that that kind of allow people to sweat allow
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their heart rate to get up they can put themselves in great cardiovascular shape and and it gives them
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enough of that variety that they can stick with the program and then here's what happens somebody
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comes in and they say look here's my goal i want to run a half marathon in six months right now i may
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or may not think that's a great goal but i'm not going to shoot down their dreams on day one i'm
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gonna say let me show you how strength training will make you be a better half marathoner and what
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will almost always happen is two or three months into the program they get so addicted to getting
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strong they kind of forget about the marathon thing and they go you know what like actually i'm kind
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of thinking about you know what i kind of think i might want to do a powerlifting meet in six
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months what do you think about that i think it'd be great right it would be great because if you
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mail in an entry form on a powerlifting meet your training level goes up a notch because now you go oh
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my gosh i'm not doing this just in front of my coach i'm doing it in front of a whole group of
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people and so man there is nothing cooler than seeing a 75 year old lady doing our first powerlifting
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meet that's great right and and the reality is it's better for her than running a half marathon
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it's more healthy it's less impact on our joints and so part of that too is just knowing what
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knowing how to work with people we do low impact exercises we don't we don't have them doing high
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rep jumping we don't have them do um you know you know they're not doing stuff that's going to get
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them hurt we don't put them in vulnerable positions and that's where we have a this constant commitment
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to come back to the main barbell list because that's where the biggest bang for your buck is
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well uh speaking on that that idea of strength training for half marathons uh are do you do you train
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people who that's what they do like they do long distance running uh and how can strength training
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help with endurance you know endurance uh sports sure yeah we we train it all the time and we get
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people all the time especially with uh this uh culture right now of of um you know spartan race
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type things i mean and and i love that that outlook i mean people that are training for something like
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a spartan race i think you had joe de seno on at one point um you know that that's an incredibly
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tough thing to train for and so if you think about it like this let's let's take something really
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simple like endurance bicycle ride right we're going to ride our bike i'm going to be endurance i'm just
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going to go ride my bicycle right so it's not complicated at all and so i can go out and let's
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say i can ride i'm going to ride in a certain gear let's say let's say i can squat 100 pounds i'm not
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very strong squatter 100 pounds my legs aren't really strong and i can ride at 17 miles an hour
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in a specific gear and let's say that in that gear five i'm riding in every stroke of the pedal
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represents 20 percent of my max leg strength right and let's say i take that person i take them off the
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bicycle and i get them in the weight room and i take their squat from 100 pounds to 200 pounds
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which still isn't that strong but i've doubled their leg strength now what percentage is every
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stroke on the pedal it's not 20 anymore it's 10 so now now every stroke it's easier every single
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pedal stroke is now easier for that person because i've got their legs stronger which means
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they can now ride in a gear that allows them to be more powerful and ride faster
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or they can now because they're only representing each pedal stroke being 10 of the strength they
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can now ride longer twice as long even right because i've doubled their leg strength so
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for endurance athletes the hardest thing to deal with with endurance endurance athletes is to get
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them to either stop or cut back on their endurance training for a season and listen right now is the
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perfect time here we are we're going into holiday seasons right we're going into winter time and so it's
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not easy to go out and run trail run when it's when it's 30 degrees outside or 10 degrees outside or ride
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your bike so now would be a perfect time to to keep continue to do your endurance training say once
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a week but get in the weight room and get strong three times a week and then watch what happens when
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the springtime comes and and here's what you'll notice your first couple rides you'll feel a little
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bit out of shape because you put on some additional muscle and your cardiovascular system isn't there
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but your cardiovascular system comes back extremely fast it's the quick the most quick thing gained
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piece of fitness gained it's also the quickest thing that you lose so this is why if you're in great
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shape and you go on vacation you go to cancun for 10 days you just sit in a pool and drink margaritas
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and come home your conditioning is not very good all of a sudden but it doesn't take very long to gain
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it back strength is the exact opposite strength takes decades to build but then it doesn't go away very
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fast right so it i mean like a long long time so i could probably you know i've bench press i don't
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know 450 pounds i could probably not bench press for two years and still lay down and bench press
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300 pounds right well 300 pound bench press is still fairly strong but if i got good at cardiovascular
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conditioning didn't do anything for two weeks and came back and tried to do it i probably wouldn't
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be that great for the first workout or two so when that endurance athlete comes back and gets back on
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their bike or back on their trail running or back on whatever the first workout or two isn't going to
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be great but by the third fourth fifth sixth workout they're going to be better than they were before
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they before they started strength training right so awesome that's great so because we often get out
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whenever we publish things about strength training we often get the comments that this is going to
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ruin my endurance training but uh yeah it's great that strength training training can actually
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supplement and even make you a better runner and here matt another question we often get uh from
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readers who are they they want to start they read our articles on the site about fitness and strength
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training they want to get started but they're they're like i'm really out of shape like i am obese
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like that i i don't know if i can do this any advice to those guys so they just get started right with
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barbell training even if they're you know a couple hundred pounds overweight i mean is that something
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barbell training can help yeah i do i actually think it's easier than what what you will tend to
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find is people don't know what else to do so they start jogging and so it's not a great uh thing on
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your joints for a 400 pound man or woman to go out and start jogging around the neighborhood right
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that's pretty tough on your knees and ankles and so what you'll find is that you'll gain a tremendous
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amount of cardiovascular fitness from just barbell training theoretically if you weren't doing
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anything you started riding your bicycle you actually your squat would go up for the first
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week or two but after that first week or two riding your bicycle doesn't make you any stronger
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but strength makes everything better for a long period of time so if i want like if i get to take a
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kid that says hey i want to increase my vertical jump how do i increase my vertical jump well i can work
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with him and teach him how to jump correctly and within the first two or three sessions i can get him
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within 95 of a correct jump then what then how do i increase his vertical jump i have to get him
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stronger it's the only other option right so it's the same thing here i can take somebody who is really
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out of shape what told what we call totally detrained like they haven't done anything they haven't walked
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they haven't run they've sat on their couch they've eaten a bunch of junk they've never done anything and
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i can take them and bring them into a weight room and i can teach them how to body weight squat they
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might not be able to put a barbell on their back on the first day but you know what i can probably do is i
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can probably sit them on a bench or sit them in their dining room chair and teach them how to squat
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down correctly and not get on their toes and not get into their knees and be safe for the knees and
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teach them how to body weight squat and then i can take a barbell and i can teach them how to deadlift
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an empty barbell and then i can take them on that same empty barbell or even something lighter a very
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light barbell a 10 pound barbell and i can teach them how to press and that's enough on day one thanks
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for coming in come back in two days and what they'll find they'll get done and they'll go i don't feel like i did
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very much and then the next day they they text me or call me i'm actually kind of sore you go i know
00:21:12.320
you haven't done anything in 20 years you know and they come back two days later and we go up a little
00:21:16.660
bit more right and what you'll find is for for those people they will lose a tremendous amount of fat i
00:21:21.340
mean especially people who are really really morbidly obese they'll lose a tremendous amount of fat gain a
00:21:26.120
tremendous amount of muscle gain a tremendous amount of cardiovascular fitness their blood lipid profile
00:21:30.700
is often better after just a few short months of only barbell training of no cardio of no cardio if i can just
00:21:36.600
get them to basically cut out the mcdonald's and cut out the fast food and quit you know stuff in their face
00:21:40.540
with junk and just start barbell training then they make lots of increases and then we start to add in
00:21:46.100
those additional steps all right now we'll bring in some cardiovascular work um so you know matt we've had
00:21:51.560
rip on the podcast um actually that's kind of funny can you tell us how you met rip uh because it cracks me up
00:21:57.660
every time you tell me the story because for those of you know like rip is a character um and i love
00:22:03.880
matt's story about how you met mark ripito so share that with us matt all right so so i actually rip had
00:22:09.640
a coach that was his olympic lifting coach that i knew before i had never even heard of mark ripito
00:22:15.080
so i just knew this guy and he was an olympic lifting coach he's a fairly well-known olympic
00:22:19.140
lifting coach and and i had one of my workout partners a super strong kid actually one of the
00:22:23.260
strongest kids probably that's ever lived the kid uh he deadlifted 800 pounds when he was 19 years old
00:22:27.620
and uh we ended up sending him down he had gone to to kansas university we needed an internship for
00:22:33.700
his exercise science degree and we sent him down to wichita falls athletic club to what is rip's gym
00:22:38.820
i just didn't know it was rip's gym i just thought it was where this olympic coach coached and so uh
00:22:43.380
he got down there and um he uh he calls me back and he said hey um i saw the best coach i've ever seen
00:22:51.760
today and i said what i said yeah it's this olympic coach that you're working with right no no no it's not
00:22:56.460
him it's a it's actually the owner of the gym and he said and and remember this kid is smart this kid
00:23:01.120
has his is finishing up his degree in exercise science he's an extremely advanced weightlifter
00:23:05.600
very very smart very intelligent kid he said i worked with a girl for for two hours on how to
00:23:11.260
squat correctly and she could not get it and this guy who's the owner of the gym he literally sticks
00:23:16.860
his head out the window out of his of his door of his of his office and just barks like three words
00:23:21.860
at her and she does it right immediately right and i said what and he said yeah i'm telling you this
00:23:26.380
guy is he just he's the most efficient he's got the best eye i've ever seen i said what well who is
00:23:31.540
he and he said well his name's his name's mark ripito but they call him rip he's super weird he uh he
00:23:37.320
drinks mead from a horn he's in a norse mythology and that's pretty much that that's really who rip is
00:23:41.580
and so um i was writing for for some online magazines bodybuilding.com and stuff like that at the
00:23:46.260
time and uh and i had done some interviews with that olympic coach and so i i called rip and a couple
00:23:51.800
days later and and introduced myself and he kind of knew who i was from the interview i had done with
00:23:56.340
his coach and said hey i want to i want to interview you um i'd like to just talk to you about coaching
00:24:01.040
and and what you do with underweight high school kids i hear that you're really good with underweight
00:24:05.380
high school kids he said you know it's actually interesting that you'd ask um i'm actually writing
00:24:09.140
a book called starting strength and so he was smack in the middle of the book it was still i think a
00:24:12.320
year from coming out um but he wanted to be able to start promoting it and and i think i did one of the
00:24:16.660
first interviews he ever did um that that article that interview is still in his lobby and it's just
00:24:22.220
so you go in the gym it's sitting right there and it's uh it's uh and you can still find it online
00:24:25.880
well i'm curious so you know um one of the things that i love about rip because i i went down there
00:24:30.700
did the videos with him right and that's i was amazed like that was the first time someone actually
00:24:35.080
sat me down and told me how to lift because i know in high school i did the usual typical strength
00:24:40.620
and conditioning and the coaches basically just say okay there's a squat rack there's the bench
00:24:45.800
that's it um and i learned a lot of bad habits that way but i'm curious what makes for i mean what
00:24:53.440
what makes rip such a good coach you're like what should people look for if they're wanting to hire
00:24:57.720
a coach to help with their their strength programming what makes for a good strength coach
00:25:02.680
sure well i mean there's a handful of things one of them is that the coach has done it before
00:25:07.180
right so not just coached it but have they actually been under the barbell because you you have to ask
00:25:13.440
man it is hard to get under three sets of five of heavy heavy squats and you're asking something
00:25:19.980
that's not just physically demanding but extremely emotionally and mentally demanding of your clients
00:25:24.320
and so if you haven't been there if you don't know what it's like to get under the bar and think i don't
00:25:29.180
know if i'm getting through this set or if you if you haven't gotten there and go like i i might pass
00:25:34.180
out on this or i might i could die right if you haven't been there how can you ask that of your
00:25:39.060
clients so one is have they been there and then two is uh you know charlie munger has a quote that
00:25:44.480
that i love where he says i i've never met or heard of anybody in my life who didn't totally and
00:25:50.520
completely immerse himself in books right and so another thing that makes a good coach is this this
00:25:54.420
guy who wants to constantly learn it i don't care how long you've done it one of the things about rip
00:25:58.620
my favorite thing with rip i i see rip at least once a month we do seminars together uh one of our
00:26:03.620
favorite things to do is we go back in his hotel room after the seminars we hang out we have a drink
00:26:07.260
and we talk about the stuff we're reading so i mean here's a guy who's coached for 40 years right
00:26:12.120
barbell training is owns one of the oldest longest standing single proprietorship gyms in the country
00:26:18.500
the most well-known strength coach of all time and the guy is still reading everything he can get his
00:26:23.400
hands on to be a better coach every single day and so that's one of the things that makes a great
00:26:27.260
coach and then and then from there there are some actual kind of genetic pieces that are hard to learn
00:26:31.940
a great coach is a great communicator and one of the things that makes rip so great is he's a great
00:26:36.460
communicator both in person with spoken word and with written word if you've ever read starting
00:26:40.680
strength or you've read you've read the articles that he writes he's really really good at
00:26:44.500
communicating he's efficient and he's effective at communication and so a good coach has got to be
00:26:49.160
able to do that with their clients when when i'm watching you squat and we're going to go do a session
00:26:53.660
here in a few minutes right so i'm going to use the fewest words i can to fix your squat that makes a
00:26:58.900
great coach so if your knees aren't going out and i want them to go out i'm not going to say
00:27:03.300
okay brett what i want you to do is i want you to get your knees out that was way too many words
00:27:07.660
i have already told you knees out so if you're in the middle of a set here's what i have to say
00:27:12.720
knees or at very worst knees out and they go out and so you've got to have somebody that
00:27:19.740
understands has the content knowledge anatomy physiology biomechanics and then is able to
00:27:25.280
communicate what you're doing based on a model we have a model starting strength has provided that
00:27:30.480
model for us we know what a squat is supposed to look like we know what a deadlift is supposed to
00:27:34.020
look like if i know the model if i know the anatomy if i know the physics i can then watch you squat
00:27:40.780
and compare it to the model and if it doesn't hit the model exactly and it probably won't it's going
00:27:46.080
to be off a little bit i know what to say efficiently to fix it that's what makes a good coach and some of
00:27:51.520
that is experience i mean it's just experience well on that same line i mean what you've you've
00:27:55.900
you've spent your almost your entire career coaching right whether it was 60 kids in a single
00:28:00.640
gym or now with your gym that you have now in your online coaching i'm curious what your in what
00:28:06.620
your idea of an ideal student i guess we'd call them i mean how do you be is there are there traits
00:28:12.240
that a coach a coachable person has yeah they'll do anything i say i've got a kid right now um he'll
00:28:20.520
hear this and he'll know who i'm talking about i got i got a college kid tall red-haired kid who
00:28:25.200
literally will do anything i ask and will never question it right and and look you've got a lot
00:28:29.780
of trust in your coach to do that right i'm not saying you should do that with with all of your
00:28:32.960
coaches you got to make sure you've got a great coach but i have a kid who never complains right
00:28:36.900
as a matter of fact this kid squatted he had rotator cuff surgery about six weeks ago and five
00:28:42.680
days after rotator cuff surgery he was in squatting we put a safety squat bar on his back which is a
00:28:46.960
little bit different kind of bar that's got a yoke he can hang on to and it protects his shoulders
00:28:50.340
and the kid squatted and so one of the things i'm looking for is is somebody that walks in
00:28:54.280
and says hey you know what i don't know what i'm doing um i've read up enough to know that you
00:28:59.900
know what you're doing and so i just want you to tell me what to do i'm not going to complain i'm
00:29:04.720
going to do it and so you know i've had a lot of clients like that that that come in and they're
00:29:08.400
just their man they're joy to work with and then what what will happen over time is you develop a
00:29:12.140
camaraderie i mean you spend a lot of time with your clients right so i i am really close friends
00:29:16.540
with all my clients all of them um and so you know i've got that same 79 year old lady she's the
00:29:21.280
organist at her church when she has a concert i go to her concerts right we've developed this
00:29:25.600
friendship because we spend a lot of time together every week and so but i've also had clients that
00:29:29.440
walk in and every single day when they walk in their first thing that they tell you is they
00:29:32.720
complain about something or they call in every every other workout right and so consistency is huge i i
00:29:38.780
had a lady that i had for several years it was a great great athlete i mean she she had no genetic
00:29:43.440
skills as an athlete whatsoever but she never missed a workout and so a lot of times we talk about
00:29:49.320
i talk about blue collar days in the gym and so those blue collar days are days that you absolutely
00:29:54.120
do not feel like training you don't want to train you don't want to go in but you go in you take your
00:29:58.720
time card you take your punch card you time you clock in you get your work done you clock out and
00:30:03.620
you leave those are the days that make you better right so everybody has the days where they go in
00:30:07.780
everything feels great and everything feels light and they're hitting prs everybody has those days
00:30:11.760
those don't make good lifters great lifters people who make incredible changes to their body are the
00:30:16.700
ones who will never ever miss now there's caveats all right you wake up and you're running 102 degree
00:30:21.560
fever you shouldn't go to the gym but outside of that like you know you got the sniffles your stomach's
00:30:26.020
kind of hurting or you're just achy or sore walk in the gym punch in your time card punch out get
00:30:32.400
your work and that makes a great client so matt one thing i've encountered with barbell training is
00:30:37.700
that at a certain point when i started getting really heavy with the weights uh injuries start
00:30:42.320
not really injuries just weird pains happen um and we just published a post of yours about bicep
00:30:49.680
tendonitis it's something that i've struggled with with the the low bar squat i'm curious besides the
00:30:55.520
some of the stuff that we've we talked about on the website do you emphasize like prehab or like rehab
00:31:01.860
uh in in your your programming that you do with your athletes sure we do although i'll say this that
00:31:08.300
the best prehab is just correct barbell movement right so if you do a press correctly an overhead
00:31:14.640
press what some people call a military press what we call the press if you do it correctly you will
00:31:18.580
not hurt your shoulders so if we are having shoulder issues while pressing there is a problem right and
00:31:23.520
at that point yes we have to rehab sometimes and we will do prehab there are things that i do that i
00:31:27.820
just sometimes they just make me feel better right so there there's a lift called a face pull where you
00:31:33.180
take a high cable like a tricep rope and and you pull you you stand away from it and you pull the
00:31:38.800
bar back towards your temples and it's just a really good it opens up your shoulders and makes it feel
00:31:43.100
good on your rear delts do i know if that helps my shoulders any for my press i don't know but it
00:31:47.100
makes it feel better right so a lot of times prehab what we call prehab which is you're not really
00:31:51.740
hurt but you're trying to keep yourself not hurt is a lot of times i think more mental rehab becomes more
00:31:56.900
of an issue of how to deal with soft tissue and we deal with that all the time too so we see
00:32:00.560
bicep tendonitis all the time you see muscle strains all the time hamstring muscle strains
00:32:04.760
bicep muscle strains pec muscle strains i tore my pec uh september two years ago now so just just
00:32:09.960
over two years ago and we have methods to fix all that stuff right so um for us we have found that
00:32:15.880
an aggressive being aggressive with the injury will often help it a lot more than letting it sit
00:32:21.100
around if you've got and if you just think logically if you have a muscle strain which is really kind of
00:32:26.000
a small muscle tear um and you do nothing right so if you call your doctor physical therapist
00:32:31.880
whatever they say oh don't ice it don't do anything for two weeks and then come in and we're going to
00:32:35.560
start doing some isolation movements what happens in those two weeks when you're icing it is it's
00:32:39.580
just going to scar just gonna scar up right it would be much better if i could actually safely move
00:32:44.880
it through a full range of motion and pump a bunch of blood into that muscle because that blood
00:32:48.980
brings nutrients in it and it fixes it right so um you're exactly right in strength training um it has
00:32:55.320
a very low injury rate like surprisingly low injury especially compared to other sports when you look
00:32:59.600
at it compared to say soccer soccer is super dangerous right but there is a there's a pendulum
00:33:04.940
swing here and i have to have this conversation with my clients sometime when they hire me they are
00:33:09.560
almost always very very weak and unhealthy and so then we spend let's say six months seven months eight
00:33:15.680
months together and they get pretty strong and healthy and then they have to make a decision
00:33:20.600
when they get pretty strong and healthy do they want to stay pretty strong and maintain their
00:33:25.080
healthiness or at that point have they been bitten by the competitive bug and do they want to get
00:33:29.420
competitive and do they want to do power lifting or strongman or olympic weight lifting or or whatever
00:33:33.340
that is and at the point they decide to be competitive we're going to start swinging the pendulum
00:33:37.360
away from healthy again and back to a little bit unhealthy like nobody would argue that playing in the nfl is
00:33:42.940
healthy it's not right but rarely does somebody say oh you shouldn't play with the nfl because i mean
00:33:47.660
you know maybe we're getting that way with head injuries but but it's it's so that's a decision
00:33:51.900
you have to make the reality is as you're as you're moving from very very weak to generally strong the
00:33:57.820
chances of you being injured are very very low once you've been generally strong and now you're getting
00:34:02.340
to an advanced level of strength like where you can compete and do well at at competitions then you
00:34:06.920
absolutely start running the risk of of injuries and so outside of that we're looking at just really basic
00:34:11.740
so yeah we'll we use lacrosse balls and we use foam rollers and we definitely use massage i'll tell
00:34:16.280
you this massage is significantly better than than lacrosse balls or foam rollers i mean significantly
00:34:21.200
better because you get that lateral shear from their hands so you can't when you when you roll on a foam
00:34:26.260
roller it just smashes you you're just smashed but when you have somebody's hand that can move
00:34:30.540
laterally or like across the surface of your skin that's really what you're looking to do because we
00:34:34.840
need to bust up that scar tissue and adhesions and places where the skin and the tendons and the fascia are
00:34:39.640
sticking to muscle where it shouldn't be stuck to and so we want to be able to to really kind of
00:34:44.640
rip that away so it's almost like combing out the like like a female's tangled hair so she had tangled
00:34:50.500
hair and her hair was all tangled you're trying to comb it out it takes a little bit of pain and
00:34:53.520
some lateral shear you can't just mash on it and have all the tangles go away and so yeah we see that
00:34:57.960
stuff all the time and it's just bicep tendonitis is a big deal most of the population by the time
00:35:02.800
they're 40 years old have some form of a herniated disc in their back that's a scary word for most people
00:35:08.060
they think like oh i have a herniated disc i can't do anything there are four clear grades of
00:35:11.940
herniation grade one is not a big deal grade two is really not that big of a deal grade three is kind
00:35:15.760
of nasty and grade four means you're going to have surgery on it right but most people have a grade
00:35:19.940
one or grade two herniation and we can work through that and get through sciatic nerve pain so so uh another
00:35:25.800
aspect of strength training that i'm encountering i think we're going to talk a little about this today
00:35:29.480
during our workout because you sort of mentioned it is the psychological aspect of training because
00:35:34.960
there's a certain point when you get heavy right and you you squat down with that bar and you're
00:35:39.440
like i don't know if i can get this up or when you're in the middle of a bench right and you're
00:35:43.820
like you have that one rep uh that's it's really hard to grind to get out but you have like two more
00:35:49.380
to go um is that at that point is this the strength training becomes more psychological than physiological
00:35:56.060
yeah definitely probably the if there were a fourth thing that i was going to tell you would be
00:36:01.660
make us successful at strong is that we teach people how to strain you have to learn how to
00:36:06.280
strain and straining is uncomfortable right like if you if you do a super heavy deadlift you're picking
00:36:11.420
up something really heavy off the floor the most you've ever picked up off the floor is 100 pounds
00:36:15.200
or 200 pounds and now you're deadlifting 300 pounds that feels incredibly heavy and your mind is
00:36:21.160
you're saying put it down put it down put it down right and so you have to learn how to strain
00:36:25.660
through that so the best lifters i've ever seen in my entire and i've lifted with some of the
00:36:30.660
absolute best power lifters historically the best power lifters guys like kurt karwoski he was never
00:36:36.040
scared of anything he got underneath it was unbelievable the guy could throw a thousand
00:36:39.380
and three on his back a thousand three on his back and squat it for a double that something is crazy
00:36:45.340
about that guy i mean that's not normal right so but teaching people like it's going to be okay like
00:36:49.760
we have spent months and months and months and months making perfect form what's the worst that could
00:36:55.040
happen the worst that happened is it's not going to go up you're not going to hurt yourself
00:36:58.520
because we've taught you that the motor pattern in your brain and the motor pattern established in
00:37:02.580
your body is that the form is going to be perfect whether it's the empty bar or whether it's your
00:37:07.300
max weight and so you just decide like this is a confidence lift there's all the time of something
00:37:11.620
like a press a heavy press i yell a word this i work yell the word confidence all the time to my
00:37:17.880
to my clients when i feel like they need a boost yeah tell them like look i know you can get this
00:37:22.720
and they get underneath the bar and go confidence i yell confidence and you can kind of see them
00:37:26.440
like yeah i got this i got this that's a big piece of it and so how you take the bar out of
00:37:30.800
the rack how you're feeling going into that's why people listen to the music they listen to
00:37:34.320
in in while they're working out because they're trying to get stuff that pumps them up and kind
00:37:37.900
of gives them confidence you want a little bit of that adrenaline rush for those heavy sets so that
00:37:41.760
yeah it's it's so much mental so much of that is mental all right so matt uh we're coming to an
00:37:47.700
end here i'm curious where can people learn more about your work and can you tell us a little
00:37:51.920
bit about the the online coaching because i think a lot of people they hear like how can a guy
00:37:56.060
coach me online can you tell us a little bit about what goes on with the online coaching sure
00:38:00.360
yeah so uh first you can find me at reynolds strong i think i'm reynolds strong on almost
00:38:05.600
everything social media so reynolds strong on twitter reynolds strong on instagram i'm probably most
00:38:09.460
active on instagram facebook reynolds strong and reynolds strong.com uh email is reynolds strong
00:38:14.380
at gmail.com and then and then yeah i do online coaching so here's what online coaching is
00:38:18.080
uh i send you if you're interested in coaching send me an email you're not you know just you're
00:38:23.640
not signed up to start we're not going to guarantee we're going to take money from you send me an email
00:38:27.380
hey i'm interested in online coaching i'll send you a questionnaire the questionnaire is pretty in
00:38:30.820
depth it's going to ask about all your kind of background here how have you trained you have
00:38:33.560
injuries uh what have you done over the last several weeks what's you know what do you what's
00:38:37.720
your diet look like it's kind of all that kind of stuff it'll take you a little bit of time to fill
00:38:41.020
that out measurements height weight uh waist measurement chest measurement hips measurement
00:38:44.720
and then uh and then basically i sit down and work and it takes me quite a bit of time there's a lot
00:38:48.500
of front end work so i sit down and i really lay out a program that will work now again it's not
00:38:53.580
necessarily complicated a lot of times for if it's an absolute beginner it's going to look a lot
00:38:56.500
like starting strength and so what am i paying for if i can just get starting strength well what
00:39:01.220
you're paying for is that the your last set of every heavy of every barbell work you videotape
00:39:06.500
on your phone i mean we all have hd cameras on our phone now so you videotape your last set
00:39:10.360
and at the end of the day you you text me or email me your sets and then i'm able to break down those
00:39:15.320
sets and i really just break down the form of the set okay i see here's what's going on um first three
00:39:20.060
reps on your squat were great i noticed on four and five the bar slid forward of the midfoot a little
00:39:24.600
bit so that's why it looked harder because it didn't stay over the middle of your foot uh deadlift
00:39:28.740
your low back got rounded a little bit it's really important to get tight there um you got a belt that
00:39:33.040
doesn't look great make sure you get a better belt right whatever so um so we can start to tweak
00:39:37.800
those things and so then each time is and then there are times when if i've got clients who are
00:39:42.400
who have a big day coming up and i know they've got a big day coming up they've got to hit heavy
00:39:45.960
weights um they have my phone number and so they can text me and and in the middle of the workout
00:39:50.360
a lot of times i'll say okay here's my last set before the heaviest set can you break and so yeah
00:39:54.280
tweak this let's tweak this and then i text them right back real time and so look is it optimal
00:39:58.660
compared to uh hiring me or hiring a good coach to to work with you one-on-one in real time and yelling
00:40:04.680
at you during the set no it's not as good but but here's the deal most of us are between 100 and
00:40:08.680
200 an hour to to have us train you face to face and and online training is going to be closer to
00:40:14.960
that 100 a month for that and so um or somewhere in that ballpark right so um it's a lot cheaper
00:40:21.260
and so you know if you live in a town that has a starting strength coach and you can go to
00:40:26.500
startingstrength.org or startingstrength.com and find starting strength starting strength coaches
00:40:31.460
uh look them up in your town then you should hire a starting strength coach there are no
00:40:35.120
bad starting strength coaches and there aren't very many of us i mean there's just a few
00:40:38.280
i think there's 110 or so uh but if there's not in most cities there aren't then there's some great
00:40:44.300
options there for online coaching so i'm i'm one of them that does it but there are other guys that
00:40:47.780
are good too well yeah like i said i'm doing the coaching with you right now i'll be um posting my
00:40:53.100
progress on instagram so you guys can follow along with that well matt reynolds uh thank you so much
00:40:58.440
for your time it's been a pleasure thanks man thanks for having me i guess it was matt reynolds
00:41:03.040
he's the co-owner of the gym strong gym based in springfield missouri if you live in the area go
00:41:07.620
check it out you won't regret it it's awesome you can also find out more information about the gym
00:41:11.220
at stronggym.co and uh make sure to check out his personal website reynoldsstrong.com lots of great
00:41:18.320
content there as well you can find out more information about matt's online coaching program and as someone
00:41:24.000
who's doing it right now who's seen significant progress i can't recommend enough so go check it out
00:41:28.100
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:41:35.600
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy
00:41:39.420
this podcast i'd really appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher
00:41:42.900
help us get the word about the podcast also give us feedback on how we can prove the show
00:41:47.100
thank you for your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay