Ep. #929: Greg Everett on How to Start Olympic Weightlifting (and Why You Should)

Mike Matthews: Oh, hi there and welcome to muscle for life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for an interview. I did with Greg Everett on Olympic weightlifting, which is something I’m asked fairly often about. And I don’t have much experience with and I don’t have much expertise. With it I wanted to get somebody who knows a lot more about it than I do to come on the show and talk about it.

Talk about the big lifts that I’m asked about at least the clean and the jerk and snatch and power clean and talk about how to incorporate these exercises into a more general strength training or even a bodybuilding program. And why you might want to consider including some olympic lifting in your program if you are doing strength training or bodybuilding and why you might not want to pros and cons.

For example, some people say that you should do it to increase your power, your explosiveness, your athleticism. Is Olympic weightlifting actually better than just traditional strength training for that, for example. And so those are a couple of the things that Greg and I talk about in this episode. And if you are not familiar with Greg, he is the owner of Catalyst Athletics, which is a USA weightlifting national champion team and is a huge educational resource for Olympic weightlifting content.

He’s also an accomplished weightlifter himself and a coach at the world championship level. He’s the author of a dozen books, including Olympic weightlifting, which is the world’s best selling book on the subject. So if you have ever wondered about Olympic weightlifting, if you’ve ever wondered if it might be for you or what you might Be missing out by not doing it.

Or if you just want to know a bit about how to get started with it, how to incorporate it into your current fitness regimen, then this episode’s for you. Before we get into it, how would you like to know a little secret that will help you get into the best shape of your life? Here it is. The business model for my VIP coaching service sucks.

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And let’s see if my one on one coaching service is right for you. Hey, Greg, welcome to my podcast. 

Greg: Thank you for 

Mike Matthews: having 

Greg: me. 

Mike Matthews: I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for taking the time to come and discuss something that I haven’t written or spoken much about. I would say I’ve done so little that it’s just basically I’ve done none.

I’ve done, I’ve tried some things here and there, but this is an Olympic weightlifting I’m talking about, and this is why I haven’t written or spoken about it because I don’t have any firsthand experience with it. So I thought that it would make for a good discussion and it would make sense for me to get somebody like you who knows a lot more about it than I do.

So here we are. And I thought a good place to start would be just describing for listeners what Olympic weightlifting is, because I’m assuming a lot of people listening, they’ve heard of a snatch or a clean there. They’ve seen people doing CrossFit things as they would probably think of them, but.

Maybe don’t really understand even what the discipline entails. 

Greg: Sure. Yeah, it is very much an obscure sport still in the U. S. Although it’s grown a lot in the past, 8 to 10 years, but it’s one of the original Olympic sports. Like weightlifting and wrestling is what you go back to when you look Olympic history.

And the modern weightlifting is it. We only compete in two lifts, the snatch and the clean and jerk, and both lifts take a bar from the floor to overhead. The only difference being that the snatch does it in one continuous motion, and the clean and jerk is going to bring that bar from the floor to the shoulders and then from the shoulders to overhead.

So you’re going to be able to lift more weight in the clean and jerk than in the snatch. More people are probably familiar with power lifting. The distant cousin of the sport, which is you’re competing in the squat, the deadlift and the bench press. So it is similar to that format in that a lifter gets 3 attempts at each lift.

So 3 snatches, 3 cleaning jerks, the highest. Or heaviest of each is added to produce your total and the total is how you are ranked in terms of winning, losing, whatever. So that is the sport of weightlifting or Olympic weightlifting. And of course it is used or variations of it are used by a lot of non weightlifting athletes, specifically to.

Produce better results in their sports of throwers are notorious for including them football to some degree, variations like power, clean, or even power jerks. Things like that can be used sometimes. And then, of course, CrossFit is co opted the lifts and use them in various often kind of unconventional ways.

to the more, more traditional approach. So it has gotten out there a lot more and it’s something that is in some format accessible to just about anybody, if they’re interested in doing it. 

Mike Matthews: And what are your thoughts about it’s use specifically in athletics you’ll see. A lot of people talking about if you want to be more explosive or if you want to be able to generate power, then you want to be doing at least some Olympic weightlifting, not just bodybuilding or even powerlifting.

Greg: Yeah, there’s a huge amount of athleticism involved and I don’t mean to beat up on powerlifting by saying this, but there are more complex motions. They involve a lot more speed and power, mobility, balance, stability, all these different characteristics that Apply to essentially any ground based sport.

So in particular sports that are reliant on, leg and hip power, explosiveness, strength, things like that. So again, football throwing even things like wrestling or, any kind of grappling or fighting sport. I see some golfers even. Oh, that was the next thing I was going to say, actually is, people really underestimate the importance of the legs and hips and something like golf, because it seems so upper body dominant.

And a golf ball, it’s not like golf ball weighs 45 pounds or something like that. And people forget that explosiveness applies to much lighter weights too. So you have the building of basic strength. Yeah. Of the explosiveness of the legs and hips, but the really underlooked ones are the ability to productively absorb force, right?

So you are not just lifting a bar up, you are having to receive it on the shoulders or overhead and do it in a way where it is totally controlled, totally balanced and stable, and you’re having to absorb that force. while maintaining posture and you correct positions rather than just getting crushed by it.

And so when you look at especially contact sports like football that’s massively important, but even just for simple day to day orthopedic health and things like bone density and connective tissue strength and durability, that stuff contributes to, all these aspects of leading kind of a healthy athletic life of long duration.

Mike Matthews: How much additional benefit do you think there is though, for let’s say now just a lot of people listening are, I think they would consider themselves at most maybe lifestyle bodybuilders. Maybe it’s not the exact term that they would use, people who are in the gym, maybe three to five hours per week and they train hard and they’re fit, but they have a lot of other things going on in their life as well.

And this is an important part of their life, but it’s not everything. And so these are going to be people who, let’s say, are doing a fair amount of compound weightlifting. They’re probably doing some sort of hip hinge and horizontal and vertical press and using fairly heavy weights. Do you think that in some of the ways you just mentioned, or maybe other ways these people could benefit materially by including some Olympic weightlifting in their program, aside from maybe just having fun if they enjoy it, 

Greg: Which is a good reason to do it.

Actually, it truly is. And people I think overlooked at a lot of times is that you should be enjoying your training. More than you don’t enjoy it, at least, it should be a net enjoyment. That is a legitimate consideration. I will preface this by saying I’m truly not a weightlifting evangelist.

In other words, if people are interested in the sport or the activity recreationally or for athletic training, I want to do everything I can to help them, learn how to do it well, help other people learn how to do it well, whatever the case may be. But I’m not going to insist that everybody does it, or, pretend that it is critical for every single person on earth to do as some would have you believe.

So that being said, yes, I do think there’s potential for people like you described to benefit from it. Aside from the fun aspect. Even just from a, an intellectual slash psychological sort of approach the complexity, the difficulty of learning and developing the capabilities really appeals to a lot of people and often surprisingly so to themselves, you will find people who were, grew up not athletic, not really doing anything like that.

Even exercise wise, And they’re introduced to weightlifting and this does happen a lot with CrossFit and they fall in love with it because of that process of learning. And it’s this really long term kind of incremental growth. But that is very easily measurable, right? So they’re not guessing.

Am I getting better? What is happening here? We can. Ticket off on a tape very easily with numbers, but in terms of actual physical characteristics, yes. And no. So I think for some people, if you have very limited time, and you’re not someone who picks up athletic motions very quickly and relatively easily, it may not be something that you want to pursue simply because it will take some time investment up front, to develop the motions well enough.

To be able to really benefit from them in training, right? There’s certainly a learning curve there. And that period of time when you’re learning to do the lifts, you may be getting some benefits in terms of mobility and balance and stability and just kinesthetic awareness to be sure, but you’re not going to be getting any significant kind of.

Explosiveness or power or strength from it. If you’re, say, lifting a PVC pipe or an empty bar, right? So there’s a level of commitment that would be required. And I sound like I’m discouraging people from trying it. And that’s not my intention here, but. If you can find an extra 30 minutes in your week, for example, give yourself 3 or 4 weeks.

I’m going to learn how to snatch or at least power snatch, or I’m going to learn how to power clean and then start incorporating those things into, say, a day. You’re doing deadlifts well, once you warm up. And do a few sets of power cleans first and then move into your deadlifts, for example. So you can integrate it fairly well without committing a ton of extra time.

If it’s something that interests you and you are looking for the kind of benefits that it can offer. 

Mike Matthews: Where would you recommend that people start? What would be what if you’re just give people one exercise to see, Hey, if you want to see if this is for you, start here, learn this. 

Greg: The power clean is going to be the kind of simplest and most accessible.

It’s going to have the least mobility demands, right? You’re not trying to hold a barbell overhead, which is tends to be a big issue for a lot of people, especially who don’t have a background and kind of overhead athletic movements. Yeah, the catch is, it’s tough, right? Anything overhead is going to be tough for a lot of people right out of the gate.

But the power clean is going to introduce you to all the aspects of Olympic weightlifting, right? You have an explosive pull from the floor, right? So you’re getting all the leg and hip power and strength, learning to brace your trunk a lot better. So you’re controlling your spine, learning how to maintain proper posture throughout a motion balance, all these things manipulate and implement.

Yeah. With your body to, to maintain this, proper motion and balance, understanding where your body is in space at any given moment and learning how to control that very precisely. Honestly, it’s fun, right? Is if you. Are in that rut. I think a lot of people get into with the more bodybuilding approach to fitness or even just, kind of body comp.

It’s boring to me, at least. I do my share of it these days as I get older, of course, and there’s a paradox, right? Because boring training 

Mike Matthews: ultimately, if you just care about efficacy. It’s pretty boring. 

Greg: Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. It there, there’s a lot to be said about routine and consistency over time, but it is nice even just for a mental break to get a little bit of variety in there and to learn something new.

Every, every, year you squat bench, deadlift, and then do some, bodybuilding type accessory work or hypertrophy work, it’s nice to go in and one day a week, say, Hey, I get to be super explosive and athletic and feel what my body is capable of. I think that’s wildly enjoyable for a lot of people who may otherwise never be exposed to something like that.

Mike Matthews: Anybody who has played any sports, if you just remember the process of acquiring skills in a sport, that’s, yeah, that’s one of the things that makes it, it keeps you coming back, right? 

Greg: It’s incredibly rewarding. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, 

Greg: exactly. And it’s it’s very rewarding for any of us to see our body composition improve.

If we’re trying to lose weight, get leaner, grow some muscle, whatever the case is. So if you can continue doing that, if that’s your goal, and then also, add, A couple kind of more performance oriented goals, even just if they contribute to your, whatever you do recreationally, whether you ride bikes or you hike or you rock climb or whatever, it’s fun.

It’s enjoyable. It’s adds another dimension to your day to day life. I think that a lot of people are maybe missing without recognizing that they’re missing it. Can 

Mike Matthews: you talk to us about safety? I know that’s a common concern. Maybe not so much with a power clean, but just with Olympic weightlifting in general.

I know a lot of people they feel like warned off of it because they’re concerned that it’s much more dangerous, so to speak, than just doing your basic compounds and bodybuilding stuff. Sure. 

Greg: To be fair, it certainly has the potential risk that, that is greater than there’s more going on, of course, but it’s actually, I think it’s like the, Third lowest rate of injury of any summer Olympic sport which is very surprising to people.

People, they see a snatch or clean and jerk and they just assume that everybody’s knees and backs explode at some point. And it’s couldn’t be further from the truth. And so the way I explain it is it’s really like any other physical activity. If you are properly prepared for it, it is totally safe. And you look at, say, just your basic sort of bodybuilding routine.

People get hernias doing that stuff all the time. They hurt their backs. They hurt their shoulders. They hurt their elbows. They tear a bicep. Does that mean doing curls is dangerous? No, of course not. It means that for whatever reason they were not properly prepared or they weren’t executing correctly.

Something along those lines turned an activity that is, is not inherently dangerous into something that created an injury. So can you get injured doing power cleans? Absolutely. You can get injured, walking down the sidewalk. I’ve seen people break their ankles, stepping off a curb. And so the real key is.

A proper progression. And that means making sure you have the foundation of mobility and stability, trunk control, postural control before you try to do things with heavier weights. Now that the chances of somebody injuring themselves, power cleaning a 15 or a 20 kilo barbell, or, 35, 45 pounds slim to none.

I’m sure someone could figure out how to do it, but that’s where you’re going to start, right? It’s just like everybody else when they started squatting. They didn’t load up 315 on the bar and just go for it the first day, or if they did, that’s probably the last time they ever squatted 

Mike Matthews: Or they’re just a super freak.

And now they’re in the NFL or something. I met a guy, just funny little tangent short who his first deadlift. He rep he ever performed was with 405 and his form wasn’t great, but he did it. And then he went on to pull into the sixes and sevens. He was just a freak. 

Greg: Yeah. Some people are naturally suited for specific activities, much more than the rest of us are.

That is a fact of human beings. 

Mike Matthews: Anyway, so back to what you were saying. Yeah, that of course, makes sense. And I think a good follow up question to that that I’ll get which I don’t have great answer for. Because again, this isn’t an area that I’ve really looked that much into is okay.

So then what is the right way of going about learning this? Should you get a coach? Should you Can you just go about it on your own in a safe and effective way? Should you be working on camera? These are some of the questions I get asked. 

Greg: The perfect situation is that you have a really qualified coach right nearby.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Greg: Like physically there with you. Yeah. The chances of that are pretty low. Unfortunately, there are far more Olympic weightlifting coaches in the U. S. now and internationally than there have been in kind of recent years, but certainly there’s a massive variation in quality and experience and ability.

And so you do have to do your homework. If you’re looking for a local coach, do your homework and make sure it’s somebody that really knows what they’re doing and speak to them and make sure that they understand what you want to accomplish and they’re able to help you with that.

So that’s perfect situation and it’s that’s the most expensive and difficult way to do it. Of course, the next best thing is, there are so many folks. Free online resources or very low cost resources from books to video, to apps and all these different things that will both help you learn the lifts on your own and then provide various types of training programs that incorporate them.

Of course, catalystathletics. com, my website, you can find pretty much anything you need for free on there. And then. From 25 to 45 bucks, get something that’s going to be more in depth to teach you step by step, literally from step 0, never even seen a snatcher, clean and jerk to be able to perform them well enough to start incorporating them into training.

So that would be the next best thing is just. Some kind of resource like that is created by, again, an established, experienced, reputable coach, not someone who happens to be really good at social media. Because there’s a really critical difference there when it comes to learning something like 

Mike Matthews: that, their body composition also isn’t isn’t a good I think that’s Index of their ability to get you in great shape or teach you how to be good at weightlifting or anything.

Greg: Absolutely. And that’s a really important point, especially when it comes to skills like that is even someone who was a very successful competitive weightlifter. And this is true for other sports. Very often the best athletes are the worst coaches because they have this natural ability. They never truly understood the process.

And they often don’t remember. What it was even like to be brand new, the way I talk about it is, a great athlete can teach you what works for them. A great coach can teach you what works for you. And so that’s what you’re looking for is not necessarily a coach who was a great athlete. Having been a weightlifter at a decent, kind of national levels is a good idea, but you don’t need a world championship.

Weightlifting coach, you need someone who is very good at working with the type of people, that, that demographic that you fit into, if someone only works with world championship level athletes and you’re like, Hey, I’m a 45 year old insurance broker. I just want to learn how to snatch for fun.

That might not be a good fit because they may not have the tools really to help someone who isn’t a naturally very talented weightlifter. 

Mike Matthews: I ran into that learning golf of all things. Actually, I was getting some lessons with somebody who was working with like I think they were competing at the state level probably, I don’t know, 17 to 19 years old, really good golfers.

And I wasn’t anywhere near that level. And he really didn’t know exactly what to do with me actually, because he hadn’t worked with somebody who wasn’t good so long. So he basically just told me that. So he didn’t want to keep taking my money. He was just, was like, I actually don’t, I don’t think I can serve you really well.

Yeah. 

Greg: Which is commendable because not everyone in that position would do that. They would just keep taking your money. Exactly. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. What does the programming of Olympic weightlifting, like what are the workouts look like? Because it’s often very different than bodybuilding or powerlifting programming, which is what people listening are going to be more familiar with. 

Greg: It is night and day from a typical bodybuilding program. We look at bodybuilding and we have body part splits okay, I’ve got leg day. I’ve got back and buys. I’ve got chest and shoulders, a weightlifting program is essentially the entire body every single time you train. Now, that doesn’t mean we don’t train different aspects and different motions and positions each day, but it is a full body.

Training program every single time you’re in the gym. So the simplest way I can break it down is that you are going to have, of course, the competition lifts, the snatch, the clean and the jerk and variations of them every day you train and then you’re going to have kind of the primary supplemental lifts, like back squats and front squats and Pulling exercises, so deadlift variations, or what we call snatching clean polls, which if you’re not familiar with that, it’s imagine a faster deadlift that ends up elevating the bar past the waist.

You’re trying to really move that bar as high as possible and then you’re overhead pressing. Sort of things push presses or snatch, push presses, overhead squats, that sort of thing. And so you’ll, let’s say, a typical athlete of mine at the national to world levels is training 5 to 6 days a week.

Probably 3 of those days are what we would call the big heavy days. That’s where you’re going to have. A snatch or a clean and jerk pulling exercises, squatting exercises, and then a bunch of accessory work, trunk strength, stability stuff, unilateral leg things like, unilateral hinge or, step up lunge, that kind of thing, whatever upper body kind of pulling and pushing accessory stuff.

And then another two to three days will be somewhat. Lighter, easier days where we might be doing more technique or speed work, just overhead work versus more squatting and pulling oriented stuff. We have to allow the body to train hard and recover a little bit within the week.

Not completely, of course. So that’s where that variation of the intensity and volume comes in day to day and getting that variety of movements. So when people who have not done weightlifting before see a weightlifting program, they just panic that’s what people have sent.

They’re like, what do I do 

Mike Matthews: with 

Greg: this? I don’t know. Because you think about it in in a typical strength or bodybuilding program, maybe there’s 1, yeah. Big heavy barbell exercise. 

Mike Matthews: And you do it first and 

Greg: yeah. And so they see Oh my, I got six sets of snatches. Then I’ve got four sets of poles and then I still have to squat.

And then I have accessories after that. It can be very daunting, but of course it’s like anything else, right? You have to work up to that. You don’t take someone day one and throw 500 reps a week at them because you’re just going to bury them in the dirt and that, metabolically they’re just never going to recover.

So this is advanced thing. You start off, you may be training only three days a week and you maybe only have two to three exercises a day versus, four to six, for example. 

Mike Matthews: And what do the loads do? Look and how let me rephrase that. So that’s the intensity side.

How do you think about the relationship between the intensity and the volume? And the reason I asked that question is again, a lot of people listening are going to be familiar with in their own training, they’re going to be looking at the intensity in terms of percentage of water at max, of course, and then they’re gonna be looking at volume, probably mostly in terms of like hard sets per week.

So if somebody says, Hey, I want to, Grow my lower body. I want more. I want a better lower body and I’m a fairly experienced weightlifter. I’m going to push this and do 15 to 20 hard sets for my lower body per week. And in terms of intensity I’m going to, I’m going to, the lightest loads are going to be maybe 70 percent of one rep max.

And I’m going to, I’m going to work maybe all the way up to 95 percent of one rep max. And so how do you think about, and when you’re programming Olympic weightlifting, Are you looking at that in a similar way where you’re looking, for example, how much volume you’re providing for major muscle groups over time to make sure you’re not doing too much?

Does it not really work like that? 

Greg: No, it does to a large extent. And the volume and the intensity are the two biggest elements that we’re trying to manipulate essentially. And so what you’re trying to do is find the optimal volume and kind of average intensity and frequency for each lifter, because it varies immensely and it’s going to vary, based on biological age, training age, weight class, right?

So the bigger guys and gals are Typically going to be, have to use lower volume than the smaller ones, even because 

Mike Matthews: the intensities are higher. 

Greg: It is it’s a biological issue, right? So a larger organism takes longer. The, all the processes take a little longer. That’s why you typically see, the real small weight classes, the little tiny guys and gals.

They can train much heavier, much more frequently for longer stretches of time than they’re like, say super heavyweight counterparts typically. And oddly enough, it seems counterintuitive, but the, those biggest lifters tend to be the most fragile orthopedically. It really seems like it would be the opposite Oh, these tiny little people, how are they not breaking in half?

They’re really technically much better suited for the sport. So that those, the smaller weight classes are the ones that lift much more weight relative to their body weight. The supers, the bigger guys lift the most, in absolute terms. But relative to body weight it’s nothing compared to what, the, those first 3 or 4 weight classes will do.

But in any case, you are. Are looking to yes. Find the optimal volume. We don’t really think of it in terms of body part per se. It’s more kind of movement oriented, right? So squatting volume versus pulling volume versus, overhead volume. And some of that is affected too by orthopedic issues.

Hey, can this lifter, Not do as much say overhead volume because of a history of wrist problems or elbow problems, so you have that on top of everything else with lifters at the same competitive level. I have such a broad range of programming approaches because it’s really experimentation.

For example, I have one lifter who. Either back squats or front squats to a heavy single every single day. She trains, so she’ll work up to the heaviest single she can and then we’ll back down and then work up to the heaviest triple she can every day that approach kills other people, right?

And it’s not effective. At all. It’s totally counterproductive. Other lifters, they’re going to respond better to, some volume in the squat. So maybe we’re going to do sets of fives or sixes, maybe even the occasional 10. And so it really is very athlete dependent. And that’s the trickiest part of coaching, in my opinion is having the patience and kind of the confidence to, to diverge from what you’re accustomed to and experiment with new approaches to best suit each athlete, rather than saying, this is my training program and it either works for you or it doesn’t.

It sounds like it’s 

Mike Matthews: Like rearranging a puzzle again and again, where there is a way that it all fits together, but you have to figure it out. 

Greg: It’s true for bodybuilding too. Like you look at these champion bodybuilders, there’s a huge range of training approaches for those guys too.

You can go back to the Mike Menser and Dorian Yates kind of stuff where it was. Super low rep, maximal intensity. And then you go to these other guys who were doing sets of 50 and 60 and, things like that. So the more you do this stuff, the more you realize how much of a range there is among people who even appearance wise.

Strike you as being very similar, people respond to things so much differently. And that’s the struggle, but it’s also the interesting part of it. I think, 

Mike Matthews: Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general, and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even?

Who might want to learn something new word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. Have you noticed any major differences in performance recovery or anything else between men and women? 

Greg: Would say generally speaking, women tend to recover a little bit better than men. And I couldn’t tell you exactly why, but I do think that at least part of it is that because of the hormonal difference men are more neurologically efficient, meaning that let’s say, take a 1 rep max. From a male and female, that female is going to be able to do more reps at a given percentage than the male.

Typically, none of this is true across the board, but what that means is that every rep that male is doing. Tends to be more difficult, right? And I think that’s a big part of that recovery issue is that what they’re doing is digging them into a deeper hole, biologically, metabolically, however, you want to say it versus the women.

And I actually coach. Exclusively women now on my, my elite lifters, I coach everybody on the lower levels and I have found that they are easier to work with in a number of ways for me personally. I just, that’s the dynamic, but they’re tougher than nails and they will I more often than not, I have to reign them in rather than push them. And I think that plays into that ability to just do more in general and they’re able to do it because they’re able to recover a little better. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. That’s I would say commonly observed in the body comp space as well. And like you mentioned, it’s certainly at least partially because of the hormonal differences, like the higher estrogen levels, for example, contributes to that.

And what about now? Programming. So let’s say somebody listening is interested and they want to try to work some of this into what they are doing. You mentioned earlier, you could maybe do a little bit of Olympic weightlifting, do a couple of sets of maybe A clean or a power clean or something like that before your deadlifts and are there any other just best practices that that you’ve seen work for doing this kind of hybrid approach where you’re doing some strength stuff?

Meaning like some, basic compound lifting stuff, a little bit of bodybuilding stuff, and then also a little bit of Olympic. 

Greg: Yeah. And I would say the number one thing is look at it as grouping similar motions, right? So for example, if you have. The power cleaner clean on your deadlift day is the most obvious one, right?

You’re pulling a bar from the floor. So you’re, you have those similar pulling motions. If you are, you have a day where you’re straight, you’re doing some like pressing strength, bench press overhead, press incline bench, whatever. And then you’re doing your delt tricep bodybuilding, Sort of thing.

That’s the perfect day to add some, jerk related exercises. So power jerk, split jerks, push presses, things like that. Not only are you building on what you’re already doing, you’re also then setting yourself up to recover from it best through the week. All right, so if you do deadlifts on Monday and then Tuesday you come back and you do cleans or power cleans and you come back on Wednesday and maybe you’re doing squats, those squats are going to feel a lot tougher because you didn’t have kind of that break with the hip and leg motion in between that you’re accustomed to not to say, of course, that you can’t do it.

But it would take a lot more kind of complex manipulation of things to make it work best for you. And the other part of that is you definitely want to do anything technique and speed oriented prior to your more basic strength. And then prior to the more bodybuilding or accessory sort of thing.

So you’d want to start the day with some kind of Olympic lift variation, then go to your main strength lifts. Your compound lifts then go on to your kind of more accessory oriented things. 

Mike Matthews: Can you explain why? Just because I could, I can imagine some people concern like isn’t that going to take away from my deadlift performance, for example, or the overhead press or whatever their big lift or two of that workout normally is.

Greg: Possibly, but not likely. And certainly not once you’re conditioned for it. And so the way you look at it is this. If you’re going to do a deadlift, let’s say your best deadlift is, 225 pounds. You’re not going to start at 225, right? You’re going to warm up to that with progressively heavier weights.

So look at those power cleans as part of that warmup process, right? They’re going to be considerably less heavy than whatever you’re deadlifting. And as a consequence, they are not going to Produce significant fatigue for that deadlift. And the other thing you have to remember is that you can look at that and this is the typical experience is basically a priming motion, especially because you have that speed element involved.

You are basically encouraging your body to access more motor units to learn how to use them more efficiently, which means that you have them available. More available for that subsequent strength lift. Now, if you spend an hour doing power cleans and then go to deadlifts, yes, you’re going to be tired.

If you are using a reasonable approach where you’re working up to a weight and doing 3 to 5 sets of power clean doubles or triples and then going to deadlifts or similarly, doing some. Jerks and then going to presses or bench press you’re not going to see a performance degradation and very likely you’re actually going to see an improvement at least again, once you get accustomed to that new program, 

Mike Matthews: when you say doubles or triples how difficult are those final reps.

So is that second or third again, because I’m just thinking for people who are more accustomed to body comp training. They’re going to be thinking with reps and reserve, for example, I’m going to end most sets, with one or two good reps left. Maybe my first set out of four will be like three good reps left.

How do you think about the difficulty? And if you want to give an example, even obviously for people to, to figure it out for their programming, they should go to your website. For example, I’m sure you have some resources that would help them work it out for their strength and their level, but let’s say someone can deadlift.

225, let’s say for that. That’s their one rep. How might that look? Because, when I hear doing a few sets of doubles or triples, if I imagine, okay, if I were doing sets of deadlifts putting 95 percent on the bar and going for sets of 2 or 3, I do that. Once every training block or so.

And so I do four sets. I that’s hard. That’s definitely fatiguing. 

Greg: So it’s going to depend right throughout a training block or a cycle, just like with essentially everything else you were trying to progress from start to finish. Meaning that at the beginning of that cycle, if you do say four or five sets of three, it should be relatively easy, right?

So you are. Definitely going to have two to three reps and reserve every single set. Okay. Now, if on that fifth set, you theoretically could eek out another three reps, it probably would be really hard to do, double the amount of sets, but you could probably do it. But, each week over the course of whatever you’re doing, notwithstanding some periodic backoff weeks, most likely, by the time you get to that, we’re probably going to be working up to A, a single max set of three, for example, right?

So maybe on week one of a four week mesocycle, we would do triples with 70 to 75% of one rep max for some kind of Olympic lifting variation. That second week, maybe we’ll do 75 to 80%, and in that third week, we’re likely going to just continue working up as heavy as we can to try to establish a new three rep max.

And it depends on the movement. It depends on what else is happening in the program. There may be times when we don’t actually want to go to a max, but we want to say, I want you to try to hit 83 percent or above for 3 sets. Right when we started at, say, 75 percent on week one, and then that following week after that heaviest week is going to be a D load week, a back off week where we go really light.

So 65 to 70 percent maybe for doubles instead of triples, even because we want to reduce that volume too. So certainly that the overwhelming majority of your reps should be. Completable well, right? So what we don’t want to see is people going in there and saying, Hey, I have 5 sets of 3. I missed the 3rd rep on 3 of those sets.

It’s too heavy for you at that time, right? It may be that you just don’t have the technical proficiency yet. So you’re not consistent, but that means that at that point, you have to keep it lighter. Until you develop that consistency so that you can start pushing those weights a little more.

Cause the tricky part with weightlifting is that you have both the technical side and kind of the basic ability side, the strength and the power versus say like a squad or a deadlift, it’s less technically involved, which means limitation really is just the strength. So with a, say a snatch, it could be a strength limitation or a power limitation, or it could be that you’re incredibly strong.

You have this huge strength reserve, but technically or in terms of mobility, you’re not capable of making these weights. And so that again now I’m going down a rabbit hole. That’s going to affect your prescription too. So you may see someone who’s doing triples with what looks like an extremely light weight, but because they’re limited technically or with mobility, that’s just what they have to work with at that time.

And the goal over time is to get more kind of that quote unquote, normal level of effort. It 

Mike Matthews: sounds like it also would probably be reasonable to look at. So let’s say you’re getting further into a training block and your two or three sets again, let’s just go back to this example of somebody, they are doing a hybrid type of program here.

So let’s say they’re going to start there. What was normally their pull day or the day that they deadlifts. Okay. They’re going to start with some. Olympic weightlifting. And in the beginning of this training block, the Olympic weightlifting isn’t challenging enough to cause any issues. And if I were to, speak for myself, so I do four sets of dead lifting per week.

That’s what I do right now. And I probably could get away with adding A little bit of extra work in front of that, but as I got further into the training block and that extra work got more difficult, it probably would be appropriate to at least consider then reducing maybe some of that, that maybe dropping one set off the deadlifts if the opening Olympic sets are now pretty hard.

We’re doing, twos or threes and with anything above 85 percent is probably where it starts to get difficult. 

Greg: Yeah. And of course, that is one of the most important. Parts of programming too, is that you are essentially, through the course of a cycle, you are starting at higher volume and moving towards lower volume.

You’re starting at lower intensity and moving towards higher intensity. So just as a rule, as the intensity increases, the volume has to decrease. As you said, so maybe you start with 4 sets of deadlifts and, 4 or 5 sets of power cleans at the beginning of that you do that for 3 or 4 weeks.

And then that next 3 or 4 week block, you drop that down to maybe 3 sets of deadlifts and 3 sets of power cleans and then you might even, say you’re doing triples in the power clean that 3rd block. Maybe now you drop to doubles in the power clean because you want to continue moving that intensity up and, maybe you drop your reps in the deadlift too.

You can do it different ways if you want through a whole training block if your goal is to maintain the same number of reps, you’re going to have to reduce the number of sets, but you can also look at all the peripheral work too. So if you have a deadlift, I presumably is not all you’re doing that day.

So you’re probably doing some other accessory work. So you can look at the volume of that too, and start bringing the total volume down without necessarily changing the volume of one specific exercise. Yes. So it’s, it just becomes an issue of prioritizing, are we really pushing my deadlift strength this cycle?

Or am I more trying to maintain that while I push other things? In which case I can be less concerned about reducing that deadlift volume and push this other stuff. I hope that makes sense. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. I find that my, my hips and my lower back can only take so much to between the dead lifting and also squatting.

Even stuff like, like a T bar row, if it’s unassisted or a barbell row not that is particularly stressful in and of itself on the lower back, but when you add that in addition to everything else, sometimes I will swap it out, sometimes I’ll just put it in and say, ah, it depends how I feel.

If I don’t like how it feels, I’m just going to do something else. 

Greg: Yeah, and that’s all part of it too, right? Is learning how to manipulate exercise selection to also account for kind of that overall intensity. And so it’s you can look at an exercise and say this is 70 percent of max. But what is the exercise?

Because, a max effort back squat is a very different effect on the body than a max effort overhead press, the squad is creating far more systemic fatigue than that presses. And so it’s you learn over time what you can get away with and what you need to change and how much you need to change it as you progress through that training cycle.

Mike Matthews: And for people listening, you should also be thinking with your diet. I’ve found that when I’m cutting, for example for the first four to six weeks or so, I don’t notice too much of a difference, but then I do start to notice a bit of a difference. And where I notice it first, usually is actually in my sleep.

My sleep just gets I have a harder time staying asleep. My sleep quality goes down. And then of course, everything goes down from there. And. I don’t track but I’m familiar enough with the foods I like to eat that I know my calories, the range that they’re in and so forth. And I don’t naturally have that big of an appetite.

And so I will tend to under eat, not overeat also because I like to stay lean. And that is one of the unfortunate realities of staying lean is you have to tend to under eat, not overeat, or you just get fatter over time. And so that’s something else that yeah. I’ve had to pay attention to in my training and just something to keep in mind for listeners that it can have a big impact.

I wish it weren’t the case, but it just does. 

Greg: Oh, we all do. People really underestimate the influence of lifestyle factors. On not just training, but as you said, the body comp and performance it’s the sleep is the huge one, right? Everyone, I get a full five and a half hours a night. That’s terrible.

The under eating or the huge fluctuation of eating day to day, where they’re way over eating one day and then panicking about it or getting super busy and distracted the next day and not eating anything. And that makes it extremely difficult for your body. to recover from training to have that consistent sleep and without the consistent quality sleep, nothing functions well, like you, it’s impossible to get through life optimally without that.

Mike Matthews: Another common dietary mistake that I see a lot of people making is. Under eating throughout the week, so they can then overeat on the weekends. And it might even be planned. And as far as body comp goes, it might even be planned well, meaning where it allows them to basically just maintain the look they want.

But again, what they don’t often realize is at what cost, where now you’re basically in a deficit Five days a week and then in this excessive surplus two days a week, which just as you mentioned, as far as recovery goes and as far as negating the negative effects of a calorie deficit goes two days of egregiously overeating just doesn’t do much for you when most of your week is in a restricted energy state.

Greg: Yeah. It’s like trying to drive your car on fumes Monday through Friday, and then add an extra tank on Sunday. It doesn’t work like you have to have that fuel and those resources the whole time consistently, or at least as consistently as possible. One last question 

Mike Matthews: for you regarding body comp and performance.

What do you see, having worked with so many athletes, is there, Does there tend to be a sweet spot for performance purposes? And the reason I asked this is a lot of people I’ve worked with, and I understand myself, even I just said, I like to stay lean and I’m willing to sacrifice some performance to look a certain way.

But a lot of people I’ve spoken with over the years, they didn’t quite understand just how big of an impact body comp can have in how they perform in the gym. I also outside of the gym, energy levels, sleep, all the rest of it. So I’m curious what you’ve seen working with high level athletes. 

Greg: There is a sweet spot, but it is totally individual.

So in other words, people are, they, I get that question a lot, actually, what body fat percentage should I have for the ideal performance for weightlifting? And they say, I don’t know it’s totally dependent. So the biggest problem I think is you have people who want to be leaner. For appearance purposes, then suits them for performance purposes and as you were saying, to be consistently lean you’re running pretty low fuel most of the time, right?

Or you’re striking an extremely delicate balance. And you have 

Mike Matthews: to err on the side of under eating. You’re never going to hit, you’re never going to hit your total daily energy expenditure on this. So you just have to intentionally try to be on the lower end, not the higher end. 

Greg: Yeah. And I think my answer really upsets a lot of people and I always feel bad.

I was like, sorry, but in my experience, Body composition is influenced overwhelmingly by just genetic predisposition. The leanest people I’ve known and worked with throughout my life are the ones who live on pizza and cookies. And it drives me and everybody else crazy, but it’s like the repping out 400 pound deadlifts, right?

There are factors. Beyond our control that influence a lot of these things, right? It’s just like in weightlifting. Certain people are born very quick and explosive, and some of us are not. And there’s a very real limit to what you can do in training to positively influence that trait.

And so like with body composition, any time you are. Trying to dramatically change what is your quote unquote, natural composition. I think it’s going to negatively influence your performance in particular, trying to get leaner because again, you end up in a deficit at least too much of the time to really fuel that performance and the recovery that you need for what is ultimately an extremely physically demanding activity.

And so again, strike a balance. What are your priorities? Is performance your top priority or is appearance your top priority? And it should be a totally individual choice. Obviously. I’m not here to tell you which one is right. It’s whatever you want to do, but you do have to recognize that whichever one you choose is potentially going to negatively affect the other to some extent, and it’s too greatly varying stents person to person.

Mike Matthews: And if you want it to prioritize. Performance. Maybe you can speak to the athletes you work with. Is it mostly just eating to appetite and not definitely not intentionally restricting food or restricting calories? Or is it more methodical in maybe having a meal plan that has them consistently in a slight surplus?

And then you do have to take periodic diet Breaks in the reverse sense of alright, we’ve been eating well for some time. We’ve put on a bit too much body fat. Let’s bring it down a little bit and then get back to the slight overfeeding. Basically. 

Greg: Yeah. And I think Most, all of my lifters pretty much track macros and have a plan where they’re trying to hit a certain number of which makes sense.

Mike Matthews: Just because it has such an impact. 

Greg: Yeah. And it just makes it easier if it’s allowing them to be consistent. And like you said earlier, You’re not going to magically hit your exact perfect number to support your activity that day. It is all estimating and it does vary day to day greatly, even just based on things like stress outside the gym.

But I think typically weightlifters under eat, right? People really underestimate the physical demand of it. At my peak as a competitive lifter weighing 200 and, 31 pounds I was eating almost 6, 000 calories a day, but that was because I was a naturally light person who was forcing myself to be at this much heavier body weight category.

And so I think especially with a lot of the female lifters, they tend to under eat because they tend to be scared of eating too much and gaining weight. 

Mike Matthews: Or do the, or they just don’t have the appetite. I hear from many women who struggle even with body comp, they’re just not naturally very hungry.

So they always feel like they’re force feeding themselves. 

Greg: Yeah. That’s how I felt too, a lot of the time. And so it comes down to, doing supplemental protein shakes and things like that a lot of the time to, to ensure that you’re filling those gaps that the appetite is leaving. Or the lack of appetite, I should say. 

Mike Matthews: Hey, this was a really informative interview. I really appreciate you taking the time to do it. Those were all the questions that I wanted to ask you. Is there anything else that is still in the back of your head that we didn’t cover that you think we should? 

Greg: No, I think really what it comes down to is if people are at all interested, these days, we’re so fortunate to have free, easy access to so much information.

And despite all the kind of silly stuff and, misleading stuff out there. There’s such great quality information. If you take the time to do your homework and check your sources, so get out there on the old internet and spend some time looking at this stuff and playing around with it.

And I think that nine times out of 10, people are really going to enjoy it and find that it’s something they want to incorporate on a regular basis. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I totally agree. I’m I’m inspired to look into myself actually. So you’ve done a good job. Why don’t we now just wrap up with where people can find you.

You mentioned earlier, but if they didn’t catch your website and any anything else you want them to know about specifically. 

Greg: Sure. So catalystathletics. com is my primary website. That’s got, literally like 2000 videos, hundreds of articles, a full exercise library with all these Olympic lifts and their variations and supplemental stuff training programs.

95 percent of it is free. If you’re interested in getting the, my, one of my books or guides or whatever, you can find that there too. And then on Instagram is where I’m most active. And that is just at catalyst athletics. And then I finally succumbed them on tech talk now too, but it’s all the same content that I put on Instagram.

I haven’t done it yet. Yeah, it’s I fought it, but which is a mistake. I’m the one 

Mike Matthews: making mistake. You’re no I’m agreeing with you, but I just 

Greg: have such a bad attitude. 

Mike Matthews: I know social 

Greg: media. I know too 

Mike Matthews: long. I know my excuses. I don’t actually, it’d be a little bit probably wouldn’t be the best use of my time considering the various different things I’m already committed to.

And so my solution is hiring somebody to help with my social media and really work. With, just, I have somebody who works on legions stuff, a couple of people, but somebody specifically just to work on mine, because as there’s a lot of work, there’s a lot of just mechanical kind of logistical behind the scenes work that goes into making an account worth following.

It’s not just getting on camera and saying some things like it’ll happen, but I have to get, I have to get some help first. But hey, thanks again for doing this. This was a great interview. 

Greg: My pleasure. Thank you for having me again. 

Mike Matthews: I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don’t miss new episodes.

And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people. People who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn’t like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, Mike at muscle for life.

com muscle F O R life. com. And let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about. Maybe what you’d like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I’m always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.