Barbell Shrugged - Talking Training W/ Crossfit Games Athletes, Strength Coaches & More

This week on Barbell Shrugged we have the pleasure of welcoming Lindsey Valenzuela to the show, professional fitness athlete and current member of the Los Angeles Reign.    Lindsey is in an incredible position. First, she’s one of the very first women ever to sign onto a professional fitness team. Better yet, the Reign, and all other founding members of the National Professional Grid League, are actually coed.    That’s right. For the first time there is a mainstream professional sports league featuring women and men competing together on the very same field, or in this case, the very same “Grid.”   In competitive fitness, right from the start, men and women have both received equal spotlight and attention. The same can’t said for any other professional sports league, or quite frankly, our culture as a whole. Despite our progress, most playing fields are anything but level.    The truth is that women and men are equally capab

Aubrey Marcus might have the most interesting title of any Barbell Shrugged guest to date. You can call him a spiritual experimentalist, human optimizer, unconventional fitness junkie, and warrior poet. He’s also CEO of Onnit, a unique human performance company which sells performance and health supplements, as well as some novel training tools. They also make some pretty righteous YouTube videos, including this jewel with Joe Rogan. Watch that video right now if you’re in need of a motivational kick in the ass! Aubrey’s interest in human optimization began during his basketball career. With the help of his step-mother, a naturopathic doctor, he was able to experiment with all manner of supplements and develop a regimen to aide his performance on the court. That’s really a huge advantage, especially when you consider that most young athletes are 100% uninformed on the topic. They are completely subject to marketing spin and are left to experiment on themselves, whic

This week on the Barbell Shrugged podcast we are joined by Andrea Ager, former collegiate track & field athlete turned high-level Crossfit competitor. If that name rings a bell it’s for a very good reason. Andrea is one of the most well-known and recognizable athletes on the scene, which is actually a very interesting topic of discussion all in itself.    “You may know Andrea from her Instagram feed, where she can’t stop smiling.” I figured this topic would come up at some point during the podcast, I just didn’t realize it would be the very first thing out of Mike’s mouth. “In fact, Chris Moore has described you as, ‘Smiling too much.’”    The obvious downside of being well-known is that there will always be haters and trolls, that’s for sure. They are going to comment about you, your style, your choices, your beliefs, your mistakes and short-comings, and yes, even your smile. I was ready to take all that

This week on a very special bonus episode of the Barbell Shrugged podcast we are joined by Jackie Perez, competitive Crossfit athlete and one of the lead trainers at Crossfit CSA in Dublin, California.    If you haven’t heard about Jackie then you’re in for a treat. She’s one of the most entertaining and unfiltered guests we’ve ever had on the show. If you do know her, well, you can guess what happens next. Let’s just say you’re in for a treat.    I’ll be honest, we spent the first half of the show talking about partying, the sensual pleasures of almond champagne, and how she really doesn’t take her training all that seriously. You won’t find too many pearls and nuggets at the start, but you’re very likely to laugh out loud a few times. Enjoy the banter, but understand that this party side of Jackie is really just a ploy, a facade, a clever bit of misdirection. As we learned during the second half of the show, there&rsqu

This week on Barbell Shrugged we are honored to chat with Mark Divine, retired Navy SEAL Commander and founder of SEALFIT and U.S. Crossfit. Surprise, surprise, this show will leave you reconsidering your training, the true effort you’re applying in the gym, and the direction you’re heading. In short, its just what you need to hear.  For those who don’t know, SEALFIT is somewhat like Crossfit, only it’s more…Way more. Quite literally, this is what your whiteboard should say if the goal of the day is to prepare Navy SEALS for the rigors and chaos of military conflict. It’s also the sort of thing we should all experience from time to time if we want to be fully prepared for the rigors of civilian life. These lessons, to one degree or another, are for special forces bad asses and civilian warriors alike.  Mark’s training philosophy centers around the so-called “5 Mountains” of personal development. First, there’s the stuff any

This week on Barbell Shrugged we chat with Joel Jamieson, leading expert on combat sport training and founder of 8WeeksOut.com.    If Joel’s name rings a bell that’s because he’s the author of Ultimate MMA Conditioning, which made ourtop 10 list of books that every Crossfitter should read. He’s also the creator of the BioForce HRV Training Management System, an awesome tool that uses heart rate variability as a measure of fatigue and training readiness.    If you’re interested in performance then you really should be considering HRV. Why not?   Great programming is all about balance. You have to know when to push forward, and when to back down so you can live to fight another day. Keeping the balance that makes extraordinary results and sustained progress possible. But that’s easier said than done. Without a clear measure of readiness it’s really easy to push too hard, too soon.    Any coach or athlete worth their weig