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https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-fgknq-147a195

In this riveting episode, we are honored to have Stuart Locke, a renowned expert in the field of strength and powerlifting, join us for a comprehensive conversation about the art and science of building strength.
Episode Highlights:

Powerlifting Insights: Stuart shares his wisdom on powerlifting, discussing techniques, essential practices, and what it takes to excel in this demanding sport.


Strength Development: Delving into the core of strength training, Stuart explains how to develop and maintain strength effectively, whether you're a competitive athlete or simply looking to enhance your physical fitness.


Training Frequency: How often should you train? Stuart breaks down the ideal training frequency, offering guidelines tailored to different goals and fitness levels.


Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE): We explore the concept of RPE, discussing how to gauge your exertion levels accurately and use this awareness to optimize your training.


Neuroticism in Training: Stuart opens up about the mental aspect of training, examining how neuroticism can affect performance and offering strategies to maintain a positive and focused mindset.


Q&amp;A with Stu Locke: We address listener questions, diving into various topics related to powerlifting, training philosophy, recovery, and much more.

Join us for this enlightening conversation with Stuart Locke, as we explore the multifaceted world of powerlifting and strength training. Whether you're an aspiring powerlifter, a seasoned athlete, or someone interested in improving physical performance, this episode is packed with insights that will equip you with the knowledge and motivation to reach new heights in your fitness journey.
Don't miss this opportunity to learn from one of the best in the field. Tune in now!
 
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Alright guys, welcome back to the Davis Fitness Method podcast.

I'm your host Stephen Davis and today I have Stu Locke with me Stu Locke is an Incredibly intelligent individual as well as a super strong 1 and I figured who better than Stu to have on and talk strength.

Stu, for those who don't know who you are, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, maybe some of your background?

So my name's Stuart Law, Canadian by birth, I was born in Toronto, grew up in the United States.

I am the head coach and managing partner of Kodiak Barbell.

So we, we coach power lifters, all kinds of sports athletes, and also do nutrition.

What got me into lifting weights was I was a 2 sport collegiate athlete.

So I played both football and rugby in university and then that's what kind of led me down the rabbit hole.

That is tower lifting and I've been coaching powerlifting at least in some capacity since 2015.

But it has become my life's magnificent obsession.

I spent a lot of my day consuming content around it

And it has given me, an incredible life and something I'm very grateful for.

How do you think you kind of ended up falling in love with, you know, powerlifting?

So, I think it honestly came about, just as a byproduct of love playing sports for such a long time.

So the 1 cool thing about sports is, you have rules, you'd have a very objective outcome of like you either scored points or didn't score points and the other team or scored more points than you or less points than you.

And it, you know, there's this, there's this degree of like indifference about it, but I really appreciate it where it's like, it doesn't model come up to be shared.

Also, if the other team wins and you lose, it doesn't matter because you caring more about it, where are you thinking that you tried your best?

Doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, if you fail.

So, I found powerlifting was the closest analog that I could find when it comes to came to kind of barbell sports, right?

So when you think about Olympic lifting, it's not so much absolute strength, it's a lot more technique.

And a lot of guys are limited just based on technique.

It's not necessarily the strongest that win in Olympic lifting meets.

It's the most technically skilled who can then display the strength they have.

And then strong man, you have a huge variety of events, you know, revolving events.

And you can have the strongest guy in the world or swinging over the world's strongest man.

And if he's getting a bunch of events that he's not naturally good at, he's not going to win.

And, you know, CrossFit is obviously just being fit.

And then I was like, okay, the only thing left that's like truly objective that I have is probably power lifting because it's very basic rules and it's, did you lift this weight or did you not lift this weight?

Did you pause the bar on your chest when you bench and press it back to lockout.

Did you hold the bar at lockout when you deadlifted?

And that objectivity I found is, pretty closely mimicked the kind of indifference or callousness of sport.

And that's what really attracted me to it.

Cause I was like, Oh, it doesn't matter how bad you want it.

It matters, you know, how hard you've worked for it and how much effort you put in.

And then the beauty of it is because it's a, it's an individual sport side team sport.

You don't have to worry about other people letting you down.

Are there like certain base, like foundational principles that you kind of like check boxes with for like clients when they first come on, like how do you ensure that that person is going to be successful in the long run while they're working with you?

So it actually first comes down to kind of the psychology of the athlete and the psychology to lifters.

So I've gotten much more comprehensive with my intake process as time has gone on.

And in fact, the intake process that we have now currently at Kodiak, which is with me and all the other coaches is a two-part intake.

So, Jem, who's my wife, does their actual kind of like injury history assessment, all that kind of stuff.

And she's the 1 who starts to first vet them out and see where they're at from kind of like a psychological perspective as well.

And so she's the person that 1, gives us their entire injury history, you know, exercises, on-treatment care, two-step like that.

But she's the person that'll tell us like, Hey, You know, this person's a little bit more neurotic.

You know, this person's likely going to have a hard time with adversity and training, et cetera, et cetera.

So, you know, essentially I have a couple of preconditions for someone to be able to work with me.

1, they have to be, especially with kids, we have people coming on is they can't be, they can't be super high on neuroticism, right?

So neuroticism is like 1 of the big 5 personality traits is essentially like how strongly, you will have a negative response to an external event.

So let's say you're walking to work and you trip and you spill your coffee.

A non-neurotic person would be like, well, that sucks.

I'll just mix pre-workout and I get to work.

A neurotic person would let it ruin their day.

And I'm sure you've had plenty of personal training clients like that as well.

And so, you know, in order to be successful in powerlifting, especially in long-term, you have to be pretty low in trade neuroticism and oftentimes we get people who are very skilled lifters and come to us and they're high in trade neuroticism.

And it's about putting, you know, systems in place to help decrease that neuroticism.

But that's the first thing is like, they can't be super neurotic.

And then after that, like they have to have a baseline level of competency.

And I also like just based on the cohort of clients that I have now, I don't really attract more beginner lifters or beginner athletes.

We do have a place for that within the company.

And in fact, you know, a fellow Seattle resident Kyle McKee's the guy that does that, right?

So Kyle's the 1 that handles are more, beginner lifters.

And he's the guy that handles, you know, the newer people.

And then they are essentially in the Kodiak pipeline.

And then based on where they get to as a lifter, they can be shuffled around between the coaches based on their need.

But, yeah, I mean, the baseline level of competency is like, can you perform some kind of spot, some kind of bench, some kind of deadlift, and then you can progress based off that, but it's not like you need to, you know, slot 500 pounds in order to work with us or anything.

It's literally just, can you kind of make it look like this and then we can figure out

And then you just can't be super neurotic.

What, so I know with all these and you have court, like full blown courses on each 1 of these lifts.

But are there things that people could focus on?

Are there main things where people fail inside of these lifts, like squat, bench, and dead, where if they prioritize some of their time and energy, they would see more benefits than, I don't know, like typical accessories.

Because like a lot of people, like, they think they're going to improve their lockout on their bench by putting a block on their chest or, you know, various things like that.

So I think from an overarching perspective, I think the easiest, the easiest way to express how most people fail is a lack of repeatability.

So it's, you know, we can go down the rabbit hole of like this person feels here and this person feels here and et cetera, but at its floor, power lifting is 3, 1 or like 3.

Singles of squat, 3 singles of bench, 3 singles of deadlift.

And if you want to have a high degree of success in the sport, your first, your second, your third attempt, all of those lifts should look reasonably similar.

And you know, if there's 1 piece of advice I can give any person that's getting into kind of powerlifting for the first time, is that if you're doing a set of 5, rep 1 needs to look like rep 2, needs to look like rep 3, needs to look like rep 4, needs to look like rep 5.

And you need to figure out what you have to change in your technique and what you have to do differently to increase that degree of repeatability rep to rep.

But the lack of repeatability time and time again is what I see kicks people in the ass, And the easiest way to increase that repeatability is through increased frequency, right?

So you know, if you're doing, let's say 1 squat a week, 1 deadlift a week, and then 2 presses a week, the chances of you having a relatively refined squat pattern is probably going to be low, right?

You know, it's going to be a full calendar week before you're back to that day.

Again, it's going to be a full calendar week for you back to squatting.

So the chances of it being a nice 1 are pretty low.

If you were to squat 2, 3 days a week, and it doesn't necessarily have to be with or you don't necessarily have to put a bar on your back.

You know, you could do, you can do a high bar 1 day, you can do goblets flat the next day and you could do a hack squad on the third day.

But just like getting consistent exposure to those patterns on a more consistent basis is going to increase our body's awareness of how those movements work and our body's ability to put itself in the right positions in space.

And the same thing goes for the bench and the same thing goes for the deadlift, right?

Most people, most of the time, how I used to train all of my general population clients is they did some kind of squat 3 days a week.

They did some kind of inch 3 days a week, and they did some kind of pressing 3 days a week.

And that would differ, you know, and it would change over the course of the week and it would change over, or, play room to play room.

But giving them that consistently high exposure to that and this consistently high frequency allowed them to assign that pattern a lot more quickly, cause it's going to be 2 days or maybe a day before you're back doing it again.

And I think frequency is, is a very misunderstood concept.

And I think for us, like, you know, I'm, I'm sure you were much the same as like a lot of the first programs that I read were on bodybuilding.com and you're like, fuck, you know, chest day and back day and leg day and arm day.

And then I have to take 2 days off and then I have to repeat that cycle again.

So a lot of these kind of foundational tenants for understandings of how people's feet programs should be is based on like incorrect first principles or like faulty information that is setting kind of our ideas surrounding it all.

And so what I would say is like, frequency is going to be the best thing.

Increasing repeatability is going to be the best thing.

And if most people like, I'm pretty confident in saying like, if you had a, if so, you had a guy that gave you total general population guy, I'd never trained before, If you gave them a high frequency model where they're doing those things 3 days a week when they're seeing you in person, within 6 months they would have developed a high degree, enough degree of repeatability that you could put a bar on their back, you could put a bar in their hands and you could get them to deadlift and they would be fine.

So each 1 of those patterns, 3 days a week.

And again, you always want to be conscious of the fact that we wouldn't want to be going heavy 3 days a week with each 1, but like, you know, just like I gave you an example of like what I used to do with a lot of my general population sciences, like day 1, they would do SSB squat to a box, right?

And then they would do like machine flap rests and then they would do like a kettlebell bed lift.

And then day 2, they would do like, what squats, dumbbell flatbadge, and, you know, maybe an actually dumbbell REO.

And then day 3, they might go and do hack squat, you know, or like a gobble box squat.

And then they would do, you know, maybe like a Smith machine flat press.

And then they would do like, trap bar deadlift or trap bar stiff leg, right?

And so, and essentially all you would do is like, the more accessory type of them is actually starting with, right, so like if you're doing gobble squat, you're probably gonna be doing sets of 12, sets 10 to 12, or a little bit more reps, a little bit more per your feet.

And then the heavier, more easily lovable stuff like the trap or, or the SSB or whatever, you're going to probably have those lower rep range.

And then, so what naturally kind of occurs over the course of the week is you have a combination of higher rep range stuff and lower rep range stuff.

You have a combination of heavier and lighter stuff.

And so it's not that they're having like a really hard time recovering from it because in actuality like each session is almost stressing them in a slightly different way and the big thing too is especially with newer people their ability to recruit enough muscle to cause fatigue is actually pretty low.

And that's the thing that a lot of people forget, right?

It's like fatigue is not really something that we should take into account with like we're trainees or general population trainees because they don't know how to motor coordinate well enough to cause fatigue in

At what point would you begin to worry about fatigue?

Like, is there a certain amount of weight somebody's lifting where you're like, okay, now like maybe you shouldn't be dead lifting 3 days a week.

I mean, I think what it comes down to too is where your starts, where you're going to end up.

And what I mean by that is like, if you'd have someone who from the outset has been exposed to like 2 to 3 hinges a week, their problem, that's where their base has been built from the start.

And when we start to worry about fatigue is more so like when we start to start to track subjective markers of fatigue, right?

You know, when, because you have trained general population people in person for quite some time.

You know, those are the questions that you ask when they're warming up.

Like all the little questions, because you're starting to calibrate to figure out where they're at session.

And in actuality, like, dude, with general population clients that like squat less than 2 plates, bench like less than a plate, deadlift like 2 plates.

I deload them like every 6 to 8 weeks maybe.

And the deload would just be like switching to a different style of programming.

So the first 2 or 3 weeks, so they're not still going to have a decrease in weight.

But I think the, the idea of fatigue just in general is really like it's really, really overstated and its effects are really, really overstated in an acute sense and are really overstated in kind of a chronic long-term sense.

Let's say we put together a really good training week for Steven.

And we figured out, you know, a great collection of exercises that are going to get you stronger on a week to week basis.

And every week you can come in and you can add 5 to 15 pounds on those exercises.

Let's say at the end of the block, at the end of 4 weeks or at the end of 5 weeks, you are up 30 or 40 pounds on all of those exercises.

That also shows that even under a high degree of fatigue, because at the end of a block fatigue is supposed to be the highest, even under a high degree of fatigue we were able to perform well and we were able to hit a PR.

So it's likely that this idea or concept of fatigue has really been played out or overplayed by people.

In actuality, most people, most of the time, can train with small modifications for an extended period of time without needing to take

If we are trying to build people with resilience, or we're trying to build people who can handle a sufficient amount of work, treating them like they're broken and that they need to take time to rest every 3 to 5 weeks, isn't as bad as we'd do it.

Yeah, I've heard Shallow mention, there's like a 30% window where it's like you don't want to go like 15% below or like 15% above too quickly or for extended period of time because you'll A, either detrain them or B, like potentially like overwork them too quickly.

So kind of staying in like that range, right?

Like there's some, you know, I guess thought process where some people believe where, Oh, you need to take time off from actual like pure strength work and move more towards like volumes.

I would say that if you think that it's true, it's

So I mean like the, the big thing that I think a lot of people forget, when it comes to training in general, is that like the psychology matters a ton and the psychology matters, I think, a lot more than people want to give it credit for And it's like, if you think something's going to work, then it's going to work.

Like the placebo effect has a greater statistical significance than pretty much anything else.

Is like, I always love to tell people the story of like In the seventies, they had a bunch of college aged males and they told them that they were taking steroids.

And they progressed the same as people that were actually being given steroids.

So like, the athlete's belief in a system is going to capture a lot more than pretty much anything else.

I think with a lot of this stuff, it is here in Wiseguy, right.

And when they talk about these kind of concepts of fatigue, right?

And it's like, you read science, you practice the sport training, right?

And the big thing that they refer to in science and practice of sport training is in a lot of things that have unbelievably high volumes, right?

So you look at someone who's doing, you know, the Russians used to do 13 training sessions a week, early to lift it.

Bulgarians used to do 13 training sessions a week early to lift it.

And then you look at people who trained to Casela, like those people are having like 10 to 14 sessions a week.

So it's like when we're talking about modifying intensity, all those sorts of things, this more applicable to stuff that's really, really high intensity like that on a very consistent basis over a very long time than it is to something like powerlifting where people are going to be training.

So 10 hours a week, 12 hours a week, maybe.

And it's just like, You know, I think a better way to look at it is just like, if we could design training in such a way that it eliminated the need for a consistent deload, what would training look like?

Because you said that you gave that, that 30% rule that shallow top.

You don't want to go too light because then you'll detrain.

You don't want to go too heavy because then you'll, you'll, cause undue fatigue.

So we can also just use that as kind of like a guiding precept or an idea regarding training in general, which is like most training should be in that kind of like

to 80% range in that kind of RPE 7 to RPE 8 range where it's like, it's meaningfully difficult, but it's not so much that you're smoke leaving the gym, right?

Like the average lifter should leave being like, you know what?

Like that was a hard session, but I feel pretty good.

I'm I can like go home and I can eat and relax and I can train again tomorrow.

That's probably going to lead to better long-term results than trying to apply and then misapply, it's kind of like esoteric or difficult to understand concepts from Russian sport training literature that might not even be translated properly.

So like, so for somebody who's like, okay, well they hear this, okay, 30% up down, whatever, and let's say you, maybe for a period of time or not, they're not maybe doing like their sumo dead off the floor, but maybe they're doing like a, a block pool or maybe they're doing like a deficit pool, how do they know, okay.

Like with the block pool, I should be doing X amount more or with the deficit, maybe with a pause, like I should be doing this much less.

So I think, you know, when we go, cause there's a couple of things, right.

Is when we try to mark like, and this was like a polygon, right.

was like, you gotta be able to front squat 80% of your back squat.

And you were just like, roll random numbers.

I also broke my back in 2018 and the most I've ever stiff leg was like maybe 500 for 5, but that's like what 60% or

If so, someone looks at me as a trainee without having any of that under knowledge, you're going to be like, that's a super shit at stiff ups if we got a stiff legs better, sumo would go right.

But it's like, okay, what they don't see just based on the number in the net reps is that my all PEs are that, or my level of strain or my level of relative intensity is very low.

So when we're, we're looking at these exercises, 1, the longer you do an exercise, the better you're going to get at it and the higher percentage of your actual, you want to actually be able to do.

But 2, when you have exercises that are like, like this, similar from the competition pattern, we need to use markers of relative intensity, not absolute intensity.

So when we think about those 2 concepts, relative intensity is How hard was this on a scale of 5 to 10?

7 is like, that's probably actually a working set.

8 is like, I can probably get 2 reps now.

And 10 is like, gun to my head, Not gonna be able to do another right?

Like that's what our P is and most of our training should be in that or P7 or P8 range sometimes as high as our P9 sometimes as low as our P6, but if we're using.

They're just they're going to sail to absolutely determine how hard the person needs to push, because I'm sure you've run percentage-based programs before.

And it's like this weird, shitty balance.

We're like for the first 2 or 3 weeks, it's not hard enough.

And then it gets way too hard really quickly.

And you're like, this seems like, this seems like it's inefficient.

I actually, I actually suffered my first back injury, like trying to get into a powerlifting program where I was like running these percentages like I jumped up it wasn't like the first couple of weeks but it was like as I was going through and then all of a sudden it was I didn't like actually do I don't think I actually did anything to my back but I woke up 1 day and I was like, my whole shit was seized up in like, I'd had nerve pain to the bottom of my feet, but it wasn't like, I don't think I tore anything, but it was just like, yeah, my body was like, no, no, no more of that.

So when we think about the idea of fatigue or workload or managing those sorts of things, you know, that for you, like what you just described is like kind of the basic tenants of like, what would be a disc injury, right?

So you have like radiculopathy, which is like, you have nerve pain down into the feet or like nerve pain away from the side of injury, which is in your back.

And so that typically happens because like these structures that aren't soft tissue in our body, right?

So like you have muscles and that's soft tissue and then you also have shit like ligaments and tendons and discs and bone.

And so a muscle is going to recover much more quickly than a ligament or a tendon And a disc is going to have a finite amount of ability to load place 3 or 4, we start to have issues.

And, you know, obviously like trunk stability is going to be able to affect the buffer that force into, let's say your legs, as opposed to your low back.

You know, that typically is indicative of like this person was likely, this person likely started with too much volume and you know, what we know kind of about discs over time, is that they're kind of disc issues are worse than the warning.

Just based on the, on the anatomy of how a disc works.

As it was likely that you, you over a consistent period of time, probably 3456 weeks, we surpassed our ability to recover.

And because the program wasn't tailored to us, we surpassed our ability to recover because it wasn't taking into account our individual markers of fatigue.

And then we ended up with this weird, weird kind of dissy thing that took us out of commission.

But when we think about the basics of prescriptive exercise, we have to develop, you know, that golden plan for Steven Davis, that's not going to be, you know, this per sets and percentages of reps that's like, and it's always like the fuck, the names of the programs are always insane.

It's like fucking Bulgarian death method, you know what I mean?

And you're like, you fucking hurt your back.

And, but yeah, like it's just, you know, with stuff like that, and it's like, from a chronic perspective, you're likely fatigued and you likely started to, you know, in week 678, whatever, sort of had higher percentage of reps that were a low degree of repeatability.

We started to stress structures in our body that we shouldn't.

You know, we started to dump load out of things like our muscles and into things like our structure, like our ligaments, our tendons and our discs.

And so I think the, So I think the main, I think the main thing was like, I had muscles that like had not gone through a higher percentage effort, like lifts.

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Mastering Power: Stu Locke on Powerlifting, Expert Strategies, and Mental Strength ep. 34