Travis Mash Powerlifting

Travis Mash
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Kelly: [0:00:04] Hey everyone, I’m Dr. Kelly Starrett.

Juliet: [0:00:06] And I’m Juliet Starrett.

Kelly: [0:00:08] And you’re listening to The Ready State Podcast.

[music]

Juliet: [0:00:16] This episode of The Ready State Podcast is brought to you by Sleep.me.

Kelly: [00:00:20] Everyone should know that we live in a really cool mid-Century modern house.

Juliet: [00:00:24] I think they already know that.

Kelly: [00:00:26] Everyone has a deck. It’s so cool. It’s a small house. We love it. But it has zero insulation and zero heating. 

Juliet: [00:00:32] Zero heating. All these houses originally had radiant heat in the floors and ours doesn’t work and we have heater problems so our house is really cold.

Kelly: [00:00:39] Most of the year in the summer we’re killing it, but in the winter right now, it’s killing us. But guess what? You have been utilizing your Dock Pro in a different way. And what is that?

Juliet: [0:00:49] Yeah, so normally for I would say nine months of the year I keep it in the low 70s and I sleep beautifully. But at this time of year, I’ve actually been turning it up pretty high before I get into bed, like in the 90s, so that when I get into bed when it’s so cold, it’s super warm. And then I program it so it turns down to about 80 degrees, which is what I’ve been sleeping at over the winter.

Kelly: [00:01:12] Which is super cool for me because you actually get so mad before we go to bed sometimes.

Juliet: [00:01:18] Because it gets so cold.

Kelly: [00:01:18] You actually are mad and you kind of shout at me. Not anymore because you jump into this really warm-

Juliet: [00:01:23] Really warm bed.

Kelly: [00:01:24] The control is remarkable. I’ve even had because the room is so cold—I grew up in Germany with the window open. Sometimes snow would come in my face in the winter. I love that. But I’ve even had to go up a few degrees.

Juliet: [00:01:36] It’s nice to sleep in a cold room. But there is a limit.

Kelly: [00:01:39] We always talk about how hot we sleep but if you’re a cold sleeper, it really makes a difference to be able to modulate the temperature and find your ideal temp. And you can see that.

Juliet: [00:01:49] And it’s awesome that it can be flexible depending on the seasons that we have. So head on over to Sleep.me/TRS to learn more and save off the purchase of any new Cube, OOLER, or Dock Pro sleep system. Go to Sleep.me/TRS to take advantage of our exclusive and wake up warm and refreshed every day. 

Kelly: [00:02:08] Bam. On this episode of The Ready State Podcast, we are bringing to you one of my favorite current working coaches on the planet – Travis Mash. Travis has been in strength training for 21 years. He’s been working with athletes, strength, speed, and athletic development for 15 years. Travis has worked with athletes and non-athletes of all levels: NFL, Olympic hopefuls, to seven-year-olds just starting out, to even 70-year-old seniors seeking increased mobility and less pain. Travis is a published author for several strength and conditioning journals and continues to work with several universities like UNC Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, Appalachian State, and Wofford University. He’s a current, or was, Powerlifting World Champion and has held the all-time pound for pound World Record in Powerlifting. He’s also an Olympic hopeful in weightlifting and recruited by the U.S. Men’s Bobsled Team. Having been a World Champion, Travis is able to share his champion mentality with his athletes and non-athletes alike. 

Juliet: [00:03:01] So there were a lot of really cool things about this conversation with Travis, and he is obviously such a nice and smart human. But one of the things I loved learning about was his obsession with flywheel training and how he’s trying to figure out ways to get it into youth sports, specifically to prevent ACL injuries. So we talked about that. And I know you also are obsessed with the flywheel.

Kelly: [00:03:21] It’s true. We became friends after we had a kind of common experience with a joint replacement. But I have been following Travis Mash for a long time. He is just a super well-known, really competent and accomplished coach. One of the things that I love that he’s continuing to do is grow his own skills. He just wrapped up his master’s, about to start a PhD. And he’s really interested in athlete monitoring because he is seeing now, and we had this conversation, everyone is working really hard but we don’t really know what the inputs and outputs are.

Juliet: [00:03:52] Yeah. And the other thing I loved hearing about is he’s got three little kids and how he’s training his little kids and set up his basement to be like a play space, training space for them. And it was just a really cool, fun conversation. So welcome, Travis.

Juliet: [0:04:07] Hey Ready State listeners, if you like what you’re hearing, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes to help others find our show. Travis, welcome to The Ready State Podcast.

Travis Mash [00:04:17] I’m so excited to be here. Kelly’s one of my favorites, as everyone knows.

Kelly: [00:04:21] Oh man. I’ll tell you what, Juliet preemptively got on, she’s like, “Don’t get on and start just nerding out with Travis.” She was like, “I know you want to get on and talk about Olympic lifting and styles of training.” She was like, “But we need to understand how you came to being one of the most influential coaches in my life.” And I’m such a consumer of the way you coach and teach and I’m such a fan. Can you talk about your journey on your way up to being one of the world premier weightlifters in the world?

Travis Mash [00:04:51] Man, it’s been such a journey. I’m from a very small town in the mountains of North Carolina. Nobody would know where I’m from. Nobody has been to where I’m from and you shouldn’t go there, probably.

Juliet: [00:05:03] It might not be safe?

Travis Mash [00:05:05] No, it’s probably not. Not unless you have an accent. You better get a North Carolina accent real quick if you go there. So the journey’s been long. I didn’t grow up with a family… I didn’t have a daddy who was a doctor and a mama who was a lawyer. Both of my parents were very hardworking and they encouraged me to pursue definitely scholastic endeavors. But anyway, when I graduated college—I went to Appalachian State University—on  a whim I moved to Colorado Springs because I wanted to pursue weightlifting. Back then, there wasn’t a CrossFit on every corner. And so there wasn’t that many choices. So the Olympic Training Center was there and Wes Barnett was a two-time Olympian who was coaching at a gym in Colorado Springs. So I literally went there and hadn’t even talked to him. Just drove there, showed up, asked him to coach me. I was blessed; so lucky. I look back, if this was one of my children doing what I’m about to tell you, I would be freaked out. But I had $200 to my name, drove everything I owned out there, didn’t have a job, and then went there, met Wes Barnett, and luckily, the owner of the gym where he was training was being trained by him and asked me where was I going to work and I’m like, “I have no ideas.” He asked me if I needed a job, and I said, “Yes.” So he gave me a job and then on the way to my car, one of the trainers there, Ryan Mitchell, said, “Where are you going to live?” And I’m like, “I don’t know.” And he said, “Do you want to live with me?” So literally within the hour of making it to Colorado Springs, I had my coach, my job, and I had a place to live. And so the journey began really right then.

Juliet: [00:06:55] So couple follow up questions there.

Kelly: [00:06:56] The universe needed you. The universe needed you.

Juliet: [00:06:57] So what timeframe is this because it was obviously pre-CrossFit and I know what you mean. I mean now if you want to learn how to Olympic lift you can go to any corner.

Kelly: [00:07:05] You can buy bumper plates at Walmart.

Juliet: [00:07:07] Big Five.

Kelly: [00:07:08] Yeah. Big Five.

Juliet: [00:07:08] So what was the timeframe and then given that your parents had emphasized education so much, how did they feel about this jump into weightlifting?

Kelly: [00:07:19] And that’s full transparency from Juliet who became a professional river guide and me who slept in a car and kayaked. I mean we get where you’re coming from. 

Travis Mash [00:07:27] My mom was unenthused. And I don’t blame her. As a parent, I don’t blame her. I kind of hope I’d take a little bit different approach as to voicing that opinion, but when I was leaving, she was very calm. She just said, “I’ll see you…” What did she say? “I’ll see you within a month.” And I was like, “You’re probably right,” I told her. “But I’m going to go.” It wasn’t a month. I remember calling her the day I got the job and the place to live. “I don’t think it’s going to be a month, mom.” I don’t blame her. There was nothing back then. Why would she want her son who just graduated college to run out to Colorado Springs to pursue weightlifting? What is weightlifting? Is it benching? People don’t even know what it is. Now they do.

Kelly: [00:08:11] In North Carolina, didn’t they have a weightlifting gap year?

Juliet: [00:08:13] Yeah, weightlifting gap year.

Travis Mash [00:08:14] 1997 by the way is the year.

Juliet: [00:08:17] 1997. Okay, so quick backstory: Our little daughter Caroline was actually lucky enough to go to that Olympic training center last winter for a camp. She plays water polo. And so she stayed there for four or five days. And it’s been fun to talk to some of our friends because we have some other friends who also have trained there, mostly weightlifters.

Kelly: [00:08:36] Bobsledders.

Juliet: [00:08:36] And bobsledders. And when she moved into the dorm room, she called and said, “Hey, mom, this place is like a prison.” But anyway, I love that I’ve been on that campus and I don’t think it’s really changed probably since you were there in 1997. But it’s also a bit of a fortress. There’s a guy at the gate and it has the huge Olympic rings and fences all around it. I mean did you literally pull up to the guy at the kiosk and you’re just like, “Hey, I’m a weightlifter?”

Travis Mash [00:09:02] No. To clarify, I did not start training. So when I drove to Colorado Springs, Wes was coaching at the World Gym. That was the detail I left out. He was coaching at the World Gym in Colorado Springs. So no, I did not. They would have told me to leave. But a year later, I was invited to train there and so I did train at the Olympic Training Center.

Juliet: [00:09:27] That’s so cool.

Travis Mash [00:09:28] But it was a year later. I had to do a little bit of training and a little bit of competing. That was amazing too.

Kelly: [00:09:33] You obviously knew you had some talent because you just don’t show up untrained. I mean Coach Burgener long time ago said, “No one just does body weight over hip squats for sets of 10.” This doesn’t happen unless you’ve done it a lot. Tell us how you got into weightlifting because people don’t understand now with the changes in CrossFit and the internet and what you can buy and the Olympic lifting shoes at Walmart and all these things, Olympic lifting was one of the last true amateur sports because you could actually do this in your basement garage, kind of get strong, work out the technique, get a video, get some VHS, cobble together from Coach Schmitz they sent you in the mail. Something happened.

Juliet: [00:10:12] It was so small. It was so small.

Kelly: [00:10:13] How did you get into Olympic weightlifting, Olympic style weightlifting?

Travis Mash [00:10:16] Well, I played football. I played football at Appalachia State University and I think I had one of the, in that time, I think my strength coach, now that I know what I know, was definitely one of the best in the whole country.

Kelly: [00:10:29] Amazing.

Travis Mash [00:10:29] Mike Kent was my strength and conditioning coach. Gosh, he taught how to squat, he taught it properly, he taught snatching, clean jerking, and he taught it, he had a very good systematic approach, and the way we did it was very detailed. The only exercise where he didn’t really govern technique that well was bench press, but he was very honest. He said to us that with benching, he literally thought it was of zero value in football; he only did it for our egos. He’s like, “If it makes you feel strong, you’ll probably be strong.” Be he didn’t care at all about technique on bench. But whatever. But he taught me pretty good job. To be a college strength coach in the 90s, he did a great job of giving me the base I needed. And he was very honest with me too. He was like, “You’re not going to play in the NFL,” which I was well aware. I was lucky to be at Appalachia State. But he said, “But you’re really strong; you’re stronger than the other people on the team.” He said, “I think you would give weightlifting a really good shot.” And so it was him that encouraged me to go. And then I took, before I went out there, I took my level one. Back then it was the club coach, it was from Glenn Jones was my coach or was my teacher. And he was the one who told me about Wes and about him coaching there. And so I just went, man.

Kelly: [00:11:49] That really resonates. I think about my own athletic experience as a paddler and flirting with the idea of slalom and someone saying, “Hey, I think you guys have talent and  you should give it a shot.” Really just like someone saying, “Hey, I think you could make something here.” One of the things that I think is extraordinary is that you were a really good athlete playing college football. One of the things that I think is lost in modern, the fetishization of the gym and hyper specialized people become very early, they oftentimes don’t have time to play actual sports. Do you think that’s a detriment to Olympic style weightlifting or how much do you encourage your athletes now because you are really one of the best coaches in the world grabbing talent early and developing them. But you came from a different platform. Is that a benefit to play sports or does that hinder you or is it always a tradeoff?

Travis Mash [00:12:41] I think it’s a little bit of all that. I feel like specializing too early is a complete detriment, I believe.

Kelly: [00:12:48] What do you mean by that? Define specializing too early. I think people hear that a lot. We fight with it with our kids and water polo and swimming and all that stuff. But can you define what you mean by specializing too early in sports?

Travis Mash [00:13:00] If I had to define it exactly, I would say before 14. I think that when you start committing year-round to one sport before 14, you lose a lot of athletic characteristics that you would otherwise develop, like proprioception and just kinesthetic awareness. You’re losing all that. Just how to move, man. How to move your body through space. You lose it. You get used to doing one thing. And I feel like you just lose a lot of advantages you would otherwise gain had you not done that.

Juliet: [00:13:31] I want to put a pin in this kids’ athletic thing because I have like 40 questions for you on it. But before we get to that, at what point did you switch from being an Olympic lifter to competing in powerlifting in which you became multiple time World Champion and you’re like the strongest man on earth, basically? 

Travis Mash [00:13:52] I was.

Juliet: [00:13:53] And so tell us a little bit about that transition.

Travis Mash [00:13:53] It was an easy decision. My father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. And so that was right around 2000. So I had to make a choice. Do I keep pursuing this dream and not talk to my dad his last few months of his life or move home? So it was easy. I moved home. And like I said, there still wasn’t CrossFits anywhere near me. So I decided you can powerlift anywhere. If there’s a gym, you can powerlift. I don’t feel like it’s in me. It helps to have a coach. It’s not as necessary as weightlifting, I think. So I was able to start squatting, benching, deadlifting. And luckily, I met Louie Simmons early on. And while I was in Colorado Springs, I should have mentioned, what really encouraged me to pursue, further my education, I met Charles Polquin while I was out there. He was with Dr. Leahy and Champion Health. Dr. Leahy is the guy who patented active release technique. And I met that group. And plus, T-Nation was there, all in the same building. I was exposed to those incredible people. And that’s what made me want to really push my education much further because Charles was so smart. And so that put me on that path. But then going home, meeting Louie Simmons. I definitely wasn’t committed to doing everything west side style because I think there was a lot of holes in their approach. But it was a good influence. He would always handle me at meets and help me out and so would the other group.

Kelly: [00:15:23] Amazing.

Travis Mash [00:15:23] Yeah. I started doing that. It was the WPO. It was the first and only professional power lifting league. So it was good timing. So started there.

Kelly: [00:15:35] Those are as good roots as you can possibly have. I was just hanging out with Derek Woodske and he was talking about just giving me Charles Poliquin stories. Someone who never met Charles, the legend. I fortunately did get the chance to squat with Louie and I put it in my special stuff I got to do as a human being on this earth category. 

Travis Mash [00:15:55] Yeah, me too, man. Getting to hang out with him. And when I first called him and the dude picks up the phone, blew my mind because he was legendary. By the time I finally had the courage to call him, he was already a legend. I just assumed that some secretary or somebody would answer for him, but it was him, and I almost froze up and hung up because I was so scared. But I talked and he talked back and we became the best of friends. I don’t know why he liked me so much because I would compete against his legendary Chuck Vogelpohl, his claim to fame as far as athletes, and I would beat him. But he would always be super nice and help me even though Chuck hated me. But he didn’t. 

Kelly: [00:16:38] Louie was into big athletes that went fast.

Juliet: [00:16:38] I know Kelly has a question in the que but I know for Kelly there’s something about the strength and conditioning community. The same thing happened to Kelly when he was a young coach. There were four or five people who just actually picked up the phone when he called and talked to him and I think it kind of changed his life and so influential. And I noticed Kelly tries now to do that, he tries to answer the phone.

Travis Mash [00:17:04] He does that.

Juliet: [00:17:04] And talk to people. And he doesn’t have a gatekeeper. He just tries to be available. And I think it’s because it was so important that some people like that did that for him too at that phase of his life.

Travis Mash [00:17:15] Kelly reached out to me when I got my surgery out of the blue to help me. Nothing in it for him. He’s like, “Try out this machine of mine.” And it saved my darn life. What’s it called? I still use it.

Kelly: [00:17:29] The Age Wave.

Juliet: [00:17:30] The Age Wave.

Travis Mash [00:17:30] Yes. It saved my life. I was in so much pain. I’m a very loyal person and the minute he did that he has my unending loyalty because he just out of the blue, what a nice, in this era we all know, it’s so very rare, humans like that. So it’s definitely a special person.

Juliet: [00:17:52] That’s cool. That’s a cool story.

Kelly: [00:17:53] Well, I just want everyone to know that it was my excuse to be like let me slip into one of my hero’s DMs and be like, “What’s up, coach?” And I think I can actually get you lifting again because you’re actually important to the community. And you bring something up, both of you, just the accessibility of the world’s greatest coaches, and something you did which was so remarkable on faith, driving to Colorado Springs, knowing you were going to be humble enough to show up and work hard, but that faith gets lost a little bit sometimes with  young coaches, hustling and needing to go there. It’s pretty remarkable that there’s a generation of people that just reach out.

Travis Mash [00:18:32] Why is that? Back when I was young, we just-

Juliet: [00:18:36] Show up.

Travis Mash [00:18:36] Go there to learn from each other and now it doesn’t happen as much as it should. 

Juliet: [00:18:40] Yeah, it’s gotten complicated and it’s complicated.

Kelly: [00:18:44] But if you’re listening to this and you’re a young coach, it definitely makes sense to get in the car, coaches there, show up and show up early. I mean if that coach is at 6, bring him coffee at 5:30 and people will show you all of their work and they’re so transparent. But you just have to show up.  You can’t just phone it in and ask questions on email. That’s so lazy. 

Travis Mash [00:19:04] Show up. I know, man. I just wish, you have people online and they will accuse you of things and they will attack you, which drives me crazy when I’m always like why don’t you just visit and see? Come hang out.

Kelly: [00:19:20] I’m happy to show you what I mean.

Juliet: [00:19:21] Yeah. Come on over. Okay, so I want to just switch back to the education topic because I know you’re getting your PhD now and what is it in? And if your mom is still alive, is she stoked that you are getting a PhD?

Kelly: [00:19:36] Because I know that Juliet’s parents were stoked when she went from raft guide to internet professional to attorney. And my parents were super stoked when I’m like, “I’m in a doctoral program,” and they’re like, “Ah, you’re not a dirtbag boater.”

Juliet: [00:19:49] Anyway, so I just wanted to find out about your PhD. It’s so cool you’re doing that.

Travis Mash [00:19:52] Yeah, my mom is definitely glad that I didn’t listen to her. She says it a lot, which makes me feel good that she meant it. Yeah, she’s definitely glad. It’s been a challenge. I finished my master’s. My PhD will be in human performance and I’m looking to go to that University of Auckland out of New Zealand that John Cronin, his program. It was the one that Dr. Andy Galpin is the one who recommended I go there. And it’s really cool because it’s all research based. So you pick the topic, which my topic is, I love athlete monitoring. Really what you’re looking at is fatigue monitoring. So we’re going to look at different ways to monitor fatigue and possibly tie in to… I’m really digging the old flywheel now. So I just did this paper, finished this paper for Kabuki that I put a protocol and believe it or not, I thought it would be easy, it took me months because there is just noting out there. People are just doing the flywheel, they’re just kind of winging it. But I finished I think the first of its kind where I listed all the different inertial loads, sets, reps, intensities, using the linear velocity versus angular accelerations. So look for that to come out, it’s going to be really cool.

Kelly: [00:21:14] You’re such a nerd, coach. And I love the flywheel. Shoutout Kabuki.

Juliet: [00:21:18] That’s true. Kelly is obsessed with the flywheel.

Kelly: [00:21:20] I had one of Wes’s early editions and it really is one of the reasons I got my knee back so fast because I was able to do the appropriate amount of gnarly eccentric loading.

Travis Mash [00:21:28] We talked about you this last week. We talked about that. So yeah.

Kelly: [00:21:34] And just everyone—this is your greatest fear, Juliet—but BFR and flywheel together is the gnarliest thing on earth. And Lisa’s shaking her head because I’m always like Lisa, let’s go get a bicep pump and she’s like no. 

Juliet: [00:21:47] She likes it.

Kelly: [00:21:47] But she’s down, she’s down. We strap on the cuffs and die on the flywheel.

Travis Mash [00:21:51] We’ve used the BFR with the belt squat but not the flywheel but we’re going to. And then I’m going to try to find a way, not like a huge research protocol, but I would like to look at my athletes and see if I can come up with some better ways to prescribe BFR and the flywheel together. But we’ll see. 

Kelly: [00:22:13] So you’ve got this education thing, you’re talking about athlete monitoring which I think is amazing. Juliet and I are, actually Lisa, all three of us are wearing Oura Rings. And even though we are most of the time are trying to do, we know what it takes to get a good night’s sleep and manage, what people don’t get is that I believe and I think you’ll share this is that everyone’s working as hard as they can work, and the difference now is who can address to the stresses more effectively. Because I have a team I work with over in Cal and they’re swimming just as hard as USC, they’re swimming just as hard as UCLA. Everyone’s got a weight training coach. Really, it’s all these details about how can the athletes show up as fresh as possible and do the most work as possible, which is an old Pavel saying. I mean so what are you seeing as keys in this athlete monitoring piece because you’re not just talking about it, you’re also coaching world class athletes still. Where are you seeing, because I think the average person who’s not a world class athlete could benefit from understanding themselves of inputs and outputs and stress and readiness.

Travis Mash [00:23:20] I just learned probably the most valuable lesson of my entire career within the last month. We had the Senior World Championships were just a few days ago, like a couple weeks ago, and we did terrible. And I knew that we were going to do terrible too because I monitor so well, it gave me a darkness, a foreshadow of darkness. But there was nothing I could do about it. It was too late. Here’s what happened, is this athlete, Ryan Grimsland, who’s incredible. And we’ve been competing eight years together. And we have never had a competition where we did not PR something. So we have eight years streak. And then the Senior Worlds come and I knew going into it, I knew the meet before it we kind of limped in and we got a PR but it was lucky and he was struggling. Sleep was struggling. He was struggling to be enthusiastic about training. It was a classic overtraining. It wasn’t overreaching. But it was straight overtraining. There was nothing I could do about it. It was too late. By the time I found out we were a couple weeks out and I’m trying everything but we’d gone too far. So the point being, doing even better monitoring. I just assumed that a 20-year-old, that we would be able to do as many meets as we wanted. And in the history of all these young athletes I’ve coached, it was only until they were past their junior years, which is after they’re 20 years old, where you’re starting to worry about maybe only peaking twice a year. But I was just one meet short, man. It opened my eyes even more to get more detailed to correlating sleep, correlating stress. Here’s the problem, Kelly, is that nowadays we have so many things to worry about it. Used to when I was young, you’d go to high school and maybe get bullied, but you’d get to come home and get away from that bullying and talk to your mom and dad. But now with social media, kids are dealing with stress all the time. And you’ve got the blue light messing up their sleep. It’s becoming harder than ever to make sure that you’re giving the optimal amount of stress and not too much. Anyway, that was on a tangent.

Kelly: [00:25:32] I just want to shoutout or point out that you did work with this person when they were much younger and you caught them when they made this transition to be able not handle the kinds of volume that they used to. Most people have no idea what it’s like to actually coach someone for a decade and actually grow and change with them. I would say what happened to you all is a normal feature of the system where you hadn’t seen it enough times to anticipate it. So I mean it’s really interesting.

Juliet: [00:26:00] Could we press rewind a little bit, and could you tell us what things are you monitoring and what do you think we have the capability to monitor well right now and what do you think is… I know we’re all not motioning some things where the technology isn’t quite there yet. So one of the things, obviously Olympic lifters aren’t doing this, but I know there’s pretty universal feeling that all these things monitor how many calories you burn in a workout. And I think everybody’s of the agreement that that’s all BS, that none of that is accurate. But what are you monitoring and what do you feel good about knowing the data is correct?

Travis Mash [00:26:33] I feel a subjective questionnaire is really good as long as it’s matched up with… We use a jump every day. We use a depth jump of 45 centimeters every single day. And it’s preceded by the same warmup. We do a 10-minute group warmup then we do a 10-minute individualized warmup because everyone is different and then they do 45-centimeter depth jump. I chose the depth jump because it looks at the neuromuscular system more so than just the muscular. I mean, yes, the counter movement jump, but I feel and I think most would agree that I think the depth jump is more neural.

Kelly: [00:27:12] You’re jumping on a force plate, coach? You’re jumping off of something 45 centimeters tall?

Travis Mash [00:27:19] We have a jump mat. But from now on, we’re going to use the GymAware because the jump mat is definitely not as consistent as using the GymAware. As long as you use it properly. Because the gym wear with the tether is a measure of distance and speed. And so it’s more precise. Plus, it’ll monitor, it’ll put the results in the cloud. Easier for me to monitor the results long term. So that’s what we use from now on is just the 

Juliet: [00:27:49] That’s cool. 

Travis Mash [00:27:51] Yeah. I wish a force plate, Kelly.

Kelly: [00:27:53] I like GymAware because I like simpler and democratized. Juliet and I are always talking about, we’re like this technologies’ great, but it’s $10,000 a person and it doesn’t scale, you need 17 of them, athletes don’t like it. 

Travis Mash [00:28:05] I love the Philosophy is my favorite.

Kelly: [00:28:09] I hammer on that. I think one of the things that I appreciate about your coaching is that you are a speed-based coach, that you need to be able to generate power and wattage. And that really guides a lot of my decision making about positions that we think transfer more effectively because they handle force not just strength, but speed and power as a piece. And so really seeing that decay, I think it’s cool that you look at that and it totally aligns with the way I feel about it.

Travis Mash [00:28:38] I just wish we had more time to do something. It wasn’t until three weeks out that I realized what had happened. It was a combination of things. He was struggling to sleep, which we dealt with, but by the time we dealt with it, the damage was kind of done. And he was dealing with stress with the roommate, he was dealing with stress in general, and he wasn’t communicating with me. And so we made a lot of changes to make sure that never happens again.

Kelly: [00:29:03] It turns out being a human being who competes is tricky.

Juliet: [00:29:08] And it confirms my hypothesis that all kids under 20 are made of plastic and then once they turn 20, they are no longer made of plastic.

Travis Mash [00:29:17] Yeah, you’re totally right. 

Juliet: [00:29:20] Hey guys, we just wanted to take a little break in this podcast episode to actually tell you about one of our own products and that’s our Ready State Virtual Mobility Coach.

Kelly: [0:29:29] Yeah, the app literally is the first place you should go if you’re trying to feel better, if you’re trying to solve an old movement related problem, if you’re just trying to just not be as sore from your workout.

Juliet: [0:29:41] There is so much going on in this app. We have a mobility test that is comprehensive and designed by Kelly Starrett himself.

Kelly: [0:29:48] It’s pretty good. 

Juliet: [0:29:49] So you can figure out what your biggest limitations are and start to work on that. There are sports specific mobilizations if you want to try to lift more or run faster. There is a pain area. And we even have a ton of bonus content. You can do challenges around squat and ankle and a bunch of other specific body parts. So you can just generally get more supple and awesome.

Kelly: [0:30:10] JStar, you’re killing it. You should talk about this app more often. We started the original mobility project back in 2010 trying to help people solve problems for themselves. We think that every human being should be able to perform basic maintenance on themselves and we want you to be able to engage in self-care in a really reasonable, responsible way. One of our favorite parts of it, daily mobility. You have a 10, 20, 30-minute follow along with me if you just have a ball and a roller and think you want to feel better, move better, play along. I mean we really feel like that’s the base camp practice and you can add in what you need.

Juliet: [0:30:42] We’re really proud of this and what we’ve created here and we think you should give it a try. Head on over to thereadystate.com/trial and use code Pod 20 for 20 percent off your first month. And just FYI, including your two-week free trial, that’s literally six weeks for $11.99. You can’t beat that. There’s so much amazing content to help you feel better and move better for $11.99.

Kelly: [0:31:06] In the words of our podcast producer: bananas.

Juliet: [00:31:12] Okay, so one of the things I want to talk about with you, Travis, well, all three of us, is that for better or worse, one of the things we all share in common is a joint replacement. And sometimes I’m less excited to talk about that because I feel like it’s the worst marketing we could ever do for training and being strong and athletic. But yeah, tell us about… I know you had your hip replaced. Tell us about the journey of that and recovery.

Kelly: [00:31:40] Let me preface this by saying that I’ve never seen anyone have the hip replacement and then do what Travis has done with his hip replacement. Travis is basically going to Mars every day. I’m like moon, that’s cute, let me tell you my friend who’s going to Mars on his hip. 

Juliet: [00:31:54] And I will say it is cool. I think even the physicians these days are shocked about what’s possible. I don’t think even they knew what’s possible. So yeah, I mean tell us a little bit about your replacement and recovery and what you were able to do afterwards and are still doing.

Travis Mash [00:32:07] Well, you know, I believe that what caused originally just the way that my hips are designed. I have deep hip sockets. That’s really good if you’re a powerlifter because depth becomes an issue. It wasn’t so good for weightlifting. I feel like probably my years of weightlifting were rougher on my joints because I was forcing a depth that probably wasn’t as natural for my body. But that’s just me guessing.

Kelly: [00:32:35] Let me pause for everyone. Load, speed, volume at those depths. Just so everyone understands, we’re talking about cleaning and jerking 200 plus kilos regularly. Those are big impulse loads on the hips, just so we’re clear.

Travis Mash [00:32:51] They are. And then the squatting. My best in competition squat is 970. And so I’ve done over 1,000 in training a few times. It’s a lot, lot of abuse on my hips, which I don’t regret. I would rather look like Frankenstein when I’m dying and live my life versus have no surgeries and have done nothing. Who wants to live like that? 

Juliet: [00:33:17] I’m with you.

Travis Mash [00:33:18] So I don’t regret any of that. So yeah, what I did is go too far though. I let it get too far. I was in Turkmenistan and I could barely walk, Juliet. I literally let it get to the point where I was crippled. And then that was enough. I finally was like that’s enough. I felt like I was 90 years old. I got home, scheduled the appointment. My doctor was amazing. And the recovery, Kelly led me through. He gave me parameters to stick within and then I did my own programming for it. But it was like, I don’t want to exaggerate, it was like 18 weeks and I squatted 230 kilos, 506. It was like 18 weeks post surgery.

Juliet: [00:34:01] Did you tell your doctor that or just keep that to yourself?

Travis Mash [00:34:04] He found out.

Juliet: [00:34:07] He follows you on Instagram?

Kelly: [00:34:09] Crippled in Turkmenistan.

Travis Mash [00:34:10] He called me into his office because he had witnessed a video. He’s like it’s a bad idea. He wanted to do x-rays and MRIs. So but then when they went to look at the joint, he said it was perfect. He said the healing was even better. He said that the pressure must have caused a greater response. And so he was super excited. But he didn’t know, he really didn’t understand how I was able to withstand the pressure. But it did. 

Kelly: [00:34:44] Well, Wolff’s Law… Everyone, the original Wolff’s Law is when you challenge a bone it gets stronger. That is Julius Wolff, 1800s. And you flex the bone a little bit, osteoblasts come in. So it’s not a surprise that you systematically, you didn’t go from zero to 200 plus kilos at all. Just so everyone’s clear. Every time in our family, we’ve had some surgeries and Caroline’s broken ankle and how we loaded is a little bit different than the average bear. And when we go in, they’re always freaked out and then they’re always like we’ve never seen healing like this before.

Juliet: [00:35:16] So one quick story for you. Similarly, Kelly, for his knee replacement, worked for this really OG but very good surgeon in the Bay Area called Dr. Vail. And a friend of ours actually works for the pharmaceutical company that supplies the implants, so he has occasion to interact with Dr. Vail on the very regular. And so once Kelly started doing big things on the knee replacement he would show videos to Dr. Vail. And I think Dr. Vail was like, “Don’t show me that. I don’t even want to see those.” I think he was like… I’m sure on some level thought it was cool and then it can be so anxiety producing for those guys that are like, “No thank you.” 

Travis Mash [00:35:51] Or maybe we should look at rehab closer, is my thought.

Kelly: [00:35:54] Yeah. Well, if you’re hearing this, just understand, there’s a couple things. Moving well, being strong, taking care of your tissues, and really that all matters. And that the bar has been set very low on most orthopedic surgeries in terms of what we expect of people. And everything that you and I did and everything we’ve done with Juliet is always within the parameters of tissue healing. We’re not stressing, you weren’t being a cowboy, you weren’t taking risks, you weren’t… Tony Hawk recently had a bad femur break, the skateboarder, but he started skateboarding on his leg very much too soon. And lo and behold, he had a non-union. So his femur hadn’t grown together. And he was like, “I overdid it.” What I want everyone to know is you didn’t overdo it. You never overdid it. If anything, you were so conservative as to let yourself get to a place where you could actually do that safely. And that’s what I want everyone to understand. 

Travis Mash [00:36:47] Yeah, I was definitely like it was introducing a little bit more and a little bit more stress and movement, being able to move through a range of motion with proper movement and obviously let pain dictate as well. I didn’t squat into excruciating pain. I let my body give me the ideas necessary to make proper decisions.

Kelly: [00:37:10] Let me ask you this: It certainly has made me a more empathic coach and understanding, especially working with, we’ll put in quotes, “older people” like myself. Juliet and I are approaching 50. It’s easy to work with mutants. You cut off their arm and it grows back the next day and you’re like, oh, let’s go on. How did your experience here change or did it influence how you thought about the development of athletes or working with athletes across the age spectrum?

Travis Mash [00:37:34] It definitely opened my eyes to I wish I would have looked at movement a little differently throughout, even when I was powerlifting, I wish I would have probably considered being able to move in all the different vectors and planes of motion a little bit more. But other than that, the problem is, is specificity. As a powerlifter, it’s just part of the game. You don’t want too much movement because then, makes you weaker. You want just the right amount. But I was still probably moved through the different planes a little bit more often. But I think it still would have happened probably the same exact amount. I don’t know that doing any of that would have mattered. But maybe. I don’t know. Anytime you do it in the extreme, you’re going to get extreme results. It’s just the way it goes. So yeah.

Juliet: [00:38:26] I couldn’t agree more on living your life and taking risks and trying things and doing cool things and dealing with the consequences.

Kelly: [00:38:33] We’re getting it better now. We’re showing people how to keep an eye on what’s important. 

Travis Mash [00:38:39] What would you do differently, Kelly? I’m curious. What would you do? Would you do movement and strength training differently?

Kelly: [00:38:46] I think one of the things that happened to me, so I had a bad crash. That was the thing that… I put my femur through my tibia going way too fast. I was racing a stranger on some race skis and it was my fault and I just slipped out.

Juliet: [00:38:58] What he would do differently is tamper his male ego, right?

Kelly: [00:39:02] Mmmm. You don’t get something for nothing, baby.

Travis Mash [00:39:04] Exactly. He’s right.

Kelly: [00:39:07] But what’s interesting I think is what I have done differently is I’ve leaned even more into the tissue physiology to support these healing phases and so it made me a lot more conservative with when I work with people in terms of really understanding what our goals were in terms of the kind of healing phases. But being able to turn the dials all the way up so that nutrition and sleep and stress and loading and all of those things were maxed out so that people could either heal at the rate of a human being or less. And what we’ve been doing is asking low level healing people and tampering down their capacities to heal. So people are healing at these subthreshold rates. And they were like, oh, that must be as much as you can get out of it. And that really makes a difference when we’re dealing with girls who had ACL injuries at 14 and kids who’ve at these little Tommy John surgeries. We really have to think differently about how much we can get back, and turns out, a lot.

Travis Mash [00:40:00] I agree. Yeah, I would have definitely done more. I wish I would have had more monitoring of my own. I would just go and go and go and there was no really cutoff. There was no goal every day. Every day was just to go heavier and harder versus having moments where I looked at speed versus always that one RN. That’s a lot. Only folks who are absolutely strength, eventually that’s going to turn out bad, poorly. And it did. 

Kelly: [00:40:27] And that was the old motto, was really outwork everyone. Everyone, if you’re listening to this, the old model at the Olympic level seriously was train as absolutely hard as you can and then get injured and then back off and then we’ll get a little bit further next time. That was the conscious methodology that was handed down to me on the national team and we realize now we’re like, wow, we probably missed a few steps in there.

Juliet: [00:40:48] We’re a lot smarter. Yeah.

Travis Mash [00:40:49] There’s a lot of things we’re missing, man. What is the guy that took over British cycling and changed their whole approach to everything? I feel like there’s so many things that a lot of us are missing. That’s one of the things that we’re trying to do right now, is to think we’ve got a year and a half before the Olympics in 2024. And if we really have this goal of not only going there but medaling or potentially winning, we’re going to have to do every single thing. As far as they would even look at the soap they use to wash their hands to prevent sickness because we got sick. That’s another thing right, before the Worlds we also got sick. Several people got sick. And so it was like lots of little things that we’re going to dial in, in the next year and a half to where some people are going to consider obsessive and that’s okay. 

Kelly: [00:41:35] We’re on the team, coach.

Juliet: [00:41:37] Okay, so I’m so excited to talk about this subject with you, which we talked about briefly at the beginning, which is kids’ youth development, youth strength and conditioning. But before we do, I know you have some kids and that you train with them. So tell us about your kids.

Travis Mash [00:41:51] I have three small children. I have an eight and a six and a three-year-old girl. Looks like the girl’s going to like weightlifting more than the boys. She’s turned out to really be good. She’s only three. But then I have a 20-year-old daughter but she didn’t get the benefits of what these guys have gotten because she was born when I was not as smart. So I was young and stupid. Sorry, Bailey.

Kelly: [00:42:11] I say that to my oldest kid too.

Juliet: [00:42:12] So I literally just talked about this on another podcast but it is a subject I’m obsessed with so I want to get your take on it. But one of the things we experience all the time is parents calling us in various sports. Our kids play water polo but it’s been in every sport, saying, “Where do I get sport specific strength and conditioning for my kid?” And because they think their kid’s a mountain biker so they need to get special kind of curls that other kids don’t have to do and a special kind of whatever. But it is interesting because I often say, “Hey, there is a CrossFit gym on every corner and every kid is weak and needs to get strong.”

Kelly: [00:42:49] Coordinated.

Juliet: [00:42:50] And coordinated and there’s so many other things. But to me, that’s the easiest way to do it. But sometimes it’s hard. People really have these mental blocks to any kind of strength and conditioning and they hear rumors-

Kelly: [00:43:00] That it isn’t specialized.

Juliet: [00:43:02] That, A, it isn’t specialized and that, B, the kids shouldn’t pick up a barbell til they’re 18. So I mean so are you seeing those same misconceptions and what are you trying to get out there in the world about that?

Travis Mash [00:43:14] It blows me away that it still exists. You know, Avery Faigenbaum is a researcher, he’s led the way as far as research on youth development. And none of that’s true. The whole growth plate thing is so far from the truth. Matter of fact, it’s completely the opposite. It’s compressive weight is actually pretty good, it actually helps in the development of physioline is what we’re really talking about, is when the body leaves a part of the bone and it’s kind of soft so it allows for you to develop and get bigger and taller, and as we get older and we reach maximum height, then it closes in and it hardens up. And so compression is actually pretty good. It’s like torsion. It’s like planting, cutting, and turning. That’s where things go wrong. So if you really don’t want a growth plate injury, then don’t play soccer, football, or basketball, which I’m not saying that. I’m not saying that at all.

Kelly: [00:44:08] Year round. 

Travis Mash [00:44:09] It does not come from the force where something like a lightweight is placed in your hands and on your back. It’s the best thing for that. So I just wish people would read and find out the truth and not just listen to something they heard 20 years ago. It’s amazing that stuff is still out there because information is available at a rate that’s never been seen before in mankind, but yet the problem is the bad information is available. So it’s a crapshoot. If people read the right stuff. Just go to the science. Don’t listen to some quack blurbing out a bunch of misinformation. 

Kelly: [00:44:54] We have two daughters, as Juliet said, that play water polio, and they both have cannons-

Travis Mash [00:44:58] I love water polo, by the way. 

Kelly: [00:45:00] It really is amazing.

Juliet: [00:45:00] It’s a rad sport, right?

Kelly: [00:45:02] One of them is 14 and a goalie and she can drive passes all the way down the pool in front of the cage at 14. And people are like, “How does she do that?” And we have this other daughter, a senior who just had a cannon. And people are like, “It’s so amazing how hard they can throw.” I’m like three words: muscle snatches. The hip and muscle snatching their whole life, do you think this is an accident? And those same people are like, “Whoa, Olympic lifting is dangerous.” I’m like, “Define Olympic lifting. What is it you think you’re saying?” And let me tell you what I mean. Just like we say, show up and it is so interesting to see this conversation because Juliet and I are so passionate about it. We have a group of women, young girls, coming over to lift at our house today. They’re all water polo players.

Travis Mash [00:45:44] Awesome.

Kelly: [00:45:45] But where is the disconnect for parents where they’re suddenly, they’re like, oh, weightlifting is bad, I need very sport specific planks, which is what it ends up being, planks and lunges. And then all of a sudden, kids go to college, and they’re expected to be college students, play a college level game, and be in the weight room. Holy crap, that’s a lot to pick up as a freshman. 

Travis Mash [00:46:05] If they’ve never done it before. It’s insane. Here’s the thing: If I were to post a video of my son playing tackle football at eight years old, nobody would say a thing. They’d be like, “Oh, that’s awesome.” I could show a video of him tackling some kid and just crushing him to the ground and some dad would be out there, “That’s right! Yeah!” And then I can post a video of an empty, five-kilogram, 11-pound barbell and they could be doing an overhead squat, and somebody inevitably would be like, “Oh, you’re going to mess up their growth plate, you’re going to stunt their growth.” I’m like are you stopping before you say that. Think about that. But science aside, man, just think about I think most of us know force equals mass times acceleration. So you’re really telling me a five kilogram barbell being held in my hand only acted on by gravity at 9.81 meters per seconds squared is worse on me than some little kid running into me at full speed and hitting me? You’ve got both of our speeds, both of our accelerations combined. Come on, man. Stop to think about it. Anyway.

Kelly: [00:47:13] I so appreciate that. If you could wave your hand and make every kid who enters, let’s say gets to high school, what movements are essentials for those kids? Because I think one of the things is-

Juliet: [00:47:25] Regardless of sport. Movements that would be valuable for every kid in any sport to be competent.

Kelly: [00:47:31] Because I have my own things that I teach, I’m like these are my non-negotiables, this is what we work on, and we can make it games and gameified and play, but it’s non-negotiables. What are your key elements for to high school and maybe through high school?

Travis Mash [00:47:44] I would say the key essentials of movement: squatting, benching, lunging, working through rotational movements. I don’t really care about what they’re doing it with. They don’t necessarily have to have a barbell or a kettlebell. As long as they can squat properly and then loading it and if they can lunge properly and they can load it, and if they can hinge properly, load it, and if they could push and they could pull, then I don’t care what they use as far as the instrument. But preferably I would say front squatting, overhead squatting, and then a trap bar deadlift, if I had to choose. If they could do those two things, it would be definitely advantageous as they grow up. Obviously cleaning and snatching, but I’m biased. But if they can do the front squat, overhead squat, they can do a trap bar, deadlift, I feel like they can have a big, they’re going to be ahead of most of the kids.

Kelly: [00:48:41] I love it. Again, we just reiterate to everyone, we snatch a lot in my family. We sent up Caroline to-

Travis Mash [00:48:46] We do too, obviously.

Kelly: [00:48:48] We sent up Caroline to a local Olympic lifting club and the coach called me, Jasha, and was like hey-

Travis Mash [00:48:54] I love Jasha Faye, by the way.

Juliet: [00:48:56] Yeah. Great. Human. Great program.

Kelly: [00:48:58] He has some magic going on up there. It’s Marin Heavy Athletics everyone, just so you know. Shoutout to really a magical program. But he called me and said, “Hey, there’s a young kid in here whose parents said that he’s not allowed to snatch. Are you okay with your daughter snatching?” And we were like if she doesn’t snatch-

Juliet: [00:49:13] That’s why we’re sending her there.

Kelly: [00:49:15] You’re fired.

Juliet: [00:49:16] By the way, funny story for you. The reason that she went there, by the way, is that at one point – well, Kelly doesn’t think it’s funny, but I do. At one point, I told Kelly because Kelly has sometimes the pendulum has swung so far the other way because he doesn’t want to be that dad, he doesn’t want to be the guy coaching his kids or whatever. But one time I said to him, “Okay, that’s great, but our kids need to lead into their adult life having gained some benefit of Kelly Starrett being their father. So you need to coach them. And they can’t leave here until they are competent in all the Olympic lifts and whatever.” So I said, “Okay, so you need to start coaching Caroline.” And I think it was just partly her age. I think she was like 12 or 13 or whatever. They did four or five sessions and every time she would end walking in the kitchen crying. So then that’s when we were like it’s time to outsource. So that’s when we outsourced Caroline’s Olympic lifting to Jasha and his team. And anyway, it was amazing. And now she’s mature enough and she can lift with Kelly, it’s fine. But sometimes you’ve got to outsource.

Kelly: [00:50:16] And I want to put this out. You should be able to coach anyone, anytime. That doesn’t mean your children. I think if you’re an elite coach, you should be able to coach children, and simultaneously, sometimes that’s not… Because I seem to do very well with the other kids in the neighborhood, but just my little weak, soft kids. They were so soft.

Travis Mash [00:50:33] Dang, man. My kids, my oldest boy, does not like me to coach him. He’s very vocal about it. And then my three-year-old daughter won’t have it if I don’t coach her. Every day I get home, she’s like, “Let’s go downstairs.” She’s only three too. It almost makes me cry every time that my little three-year-old daughter wants me to go downstairs and teach her how to lift weights. I’m like, “Let’s go.”

Juliet: [00:51:] Yeah, you’re like dreams can come true.

Kelly: [00:51:00] I have to tell you, it really resonates with me, there’s been times when I’m lifting with my daughters, it’s cold and dark, we have the lamp on our side, and I’m like there are a billion dads on the planet who would be killing… And then with all four of us training together, I’m like holy crap-

Travis Mash [00:51:16] I love it.

Kelly: [00:51:16] Can someone see the magic of what’s happening? Juliet is slaying it, my daughters are out there crushing it. It’s super bonkers. One of the things that I’m really proud of and I want everyone to hear this, is that you should send your kids away to college, they should know how to exercise. They should know how to handle basic barbell implements, or goblet squat, or basically know how to train. Your kids should know how to cook, they should know how to go to sleep, and they should know how to train a little bit. Our kids now, there’s a great CrossFit near us, Tamalpais CrossFit, and they both… We’ll send Georgia, who’s 17-

Juliet: [00:51:51] That’s Tamalpais

Kelly: [00:51:51] Tamalpais. Sorry. I’m missing a tooth right now, everyone. Tamalpais.

Travis Mash [00:51:57] He has an excuse.

Kelly: [00:52:00] And we’ve sent Caroline and Georgia—Caroline’s 14, Georgia’s 17—to this adult led class and they both are competent to move and jump in and modify and load appropriately. And I’m winning as a coach dad.

Travis Mash [00:52:16] You’ve done your job then.

Kelly: [00:52:17] And last night Georgia and her boyfriend are out lifting at like 7:30 at night.

Juliet: [00:52:21] Yeah, that was cool. That was cool to watch. In gloves, it was so cold. 

Travis Mash [00:52:22] A tip I would give is what we did is we turned out basement into… they think it’s a playroom, but it’s not. I have the jungle gyms on the roof, I have the climbing wall for the wall, they have barbells. They think it’s their playroom, but they’re training. They don’t know it, but they are. They’ve got a rope that they climb, the battle ropes. So it’s just what they think is playing is exercise. And I would say to parents out there, that’s the key, is making it fun. If it’s work, then it’s not going to be… I lifted weights because I loved it, it’s what I did for fun. That’s the key is to make it a place to go to play.

Juliet: [00:53:09] I was just going to say we call that, we came up with a phrase which is peppering your environment, which is just where you have stuff around everywhere that’s fun and you can play with and it’s there so they’re more likely to do it because it’s right in front of them. 

Kelly: [00:53:21] My kids have always had a slackline in their life, always. Slackline. 

Travis Mash [00:53:26] I hear that tooth.

Kelly: [00:53:27] You can hear the tooth, everyone. One more thing is that… Let’s move on. I’ll come back to it.

Juliet: [00:53:33] We’re nearing the end of our time but tell us what you are looking forward to, what you’re up to. Since we’re getting to the end of this year, this will probably be released in 2023, but what are you looking forward to, what’s 2023 have in store for you?

Travis Mash [00:53:49] Well, I finished the flywheel protocol and it would appear that it’s better to monitor the flywheel with the linear velocity. So what we’re trying to do is Kelly and I have talked a lot about the soccer teams and the volleyball, the travel club teams that never seem to get to train. I would really like to make flywheels accessible to those teams. And so I’m working with Kabuki and GymAware to come up with a solution to where I can get… I would love for those teams to be able to get five or six of those flywheels and have their athletes at least train once or twice a week with the flywheel so we can slow down this whole ACL epidemic. So that is my goal for next year, is to find out ways to get that flywheel to those travel teams. And the reason why flywheel is because it’s easier to coach. It’s not like a barbell on their back. And then less risk of injury by a barbell on their back. So I’m hoping I can get that to be more accessible for teams out there. So I’m talking to a few of the bigger travel teams now so we’ll see what happens.

Kelly: [00:54:56] Great. Travis and I basically sent 100 texts back and forth about-

Travis Mash [00:55:00] Micro dosing.

Kelly: [00:55:01] We called it strength couplets or we called it skilled conditioning. We’d choose two or three things and say how are we going to get enough dosing into our kids in season because they’re smoked from school, they’re smoked from their sport demands, they still need to do some training. That’s what he’s referring to.

Travis Mash [00:55:16] That’s what I’m hoping, that they’ll be able to use the flywheel to slow down the ACL.

Kelly: [00:55:20] That’s a great idea. Everyone understands, it’s basically a wheel with a strap and the wheel is a big metal wheel and when you start to pull on it, you can create a ton of momentum. That wheel starts to spin up and then it whips back in the other direction at the end and you have to break the wheel and start again. So if you’re moving slowly and you’re weak, it doesn’t move that fast. And if you’re super strong, same kid’s on it and they can generate a ton of force and a ton of deceleration force. So it meets you wherever you are. It’s really cool.

Travis Mash [00:55:47] Yeah. And any inertial load it overloads the eccentric, which you won’t get like if you’re lifting say a back squat, the eccentric will be the same as the… Actually you just won’t even work the eccentric as hard. Because normally, you’re about 20 percent stronger eccentrically to create force than concentrically. So if you’re just using a back squat, you’re leaving some eccentric force that could be generated. You’re leaving some in the tank.

Kelly: [00:56:15] And you can grab this with a handle and let the handle go at any time. It’s pretty great. So I can’t wait to read this thing and let us know how we can help get this thing out in the world. I think you could solve a lot of problems. If we just had every kid doing single leg squats on this thing, holy moly.

Travis Mash [00:56:30] Beautiful. 

Kelly: [00:56:30] Beautiful. 

Juliet: [00:56:31] Travis, where can people find you on social and the internet and learn more about you and your programs?

Kelly: [00:56:36] And get coached by you?

Juliet: [00:56:37] And your coaching and everything awesome you’re doing?

Travis Mash [00:56:40] Mashelite.com. You can also have a series on…. Most of the information-

Kelly: [00:56:44] That’s mashelite.com everyone. Say it again.

Travis Mash [00:56:47] Yeah, mashelite.com or go to gymawear.com and you can read most of my content as far as education based is on GymAware now. I’m partnered with them to do their education. So you can go there and read all my articles and watch my videos. 

Juliet: [00:57:06] And we didn’t even have a chance to talk to you about it, but you also participate in two podcasts of your own. So people can listen to those.

Travis Mash [00:57:14] Oh yeah. The Barbell Life and Barbell Shrugged. Most people know the Barbell Shrugged and then mine’s the Barbell Life. Or if there’s any young people out there, I’m a coach at Lenoir-Rhyne University in weightlifting. Come be a weightlifter. 

Kelly: [00:57:29] All you need to do is have less than $200 in your pocket, show up.

Juliet: [00:57:32] And then you’re like, done.

Kelly: [00:57:32] And I guarantee you, you’re going to be in.

Juliet: [00:57:33] Career. World Champion.

Kelly: [00:57:35] Show up, everyone. Show up. Go knock on the door. Don’t text and email and ask a question. Show up in person if you can.

Travis Mash [00:57:41] Show up. But you better have a little something when you get here. Be clear, I had some talent. So don’t show up as a scrub and expect me to be all welcoming. But yeah, I’ll give you a hug, but not let you on the team. 

Kelly: [00:57:57] Fair enough.

Juliet: [00:57:58] Awesome. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. So fun.

Kelly: [00:58:01] Thanks, coach.

Travis Mash [00:58:02] Thank you guys for having me on.

[music]

Kelly: [00:58:09] Thank you for listening to The Ready State Podcast. If you like what you’re hearing, check out all our episodes here or at thereadystate.com. And be sure to subscribe or leave a review on iTunes to help others find our show. 

Juliet: [00:58:20] Check us out and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @thereadystate.

Kelly: [00:58:26] Until next time, cheers everyone. 

 

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