Episode 86 with Chad Wesley Smith – Powerlifting, Strongman and Jiu Jitsu

September 08, 2021

Chad Wesley Smith created Juggernaut Training Systems and is one of the most accomplished strength athletes in history. With a background in track and field, Smith took his 2 collegiate national championships and continued his success in powerlifting and strongman. In today’s episode, we discuss Chad’s transition to jiu jitsu. We discuss strength training, jiu jitsu and managing the variables so Chad stays healthy and becomes more athletic and powerful on the mat.

Episode Highlights:

Chad’s Accomplishments in Collegiate Athletics, Powerlifting and Strongman
Experience coaching world class jiu jitsu practitioners.
His transition to jiu jitsu practice and competition.
Coordinating his training between lifting and jiu jitsu.
How his training changed when he began his jiu jitsu training.
Dealing with the humbling experience of being the new guy in the room.
Chad’s thoughts on strength training for combat athletes
and much more!

Stay in touch with Chad here:

@chadwesleysmith

Juggernaut Training Systems

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Chad Wesley Smith:

Corey Beasley [00:00:01]: Hey guys, just Corey Beasley with fight camp conditioning. I’m here with Chad Wesley Smith from juggernaut training systems. Chad, how you doing?

Chad Wesley [00:00:09]:Doing pretty well. Thanks for having me.

Corey Beasley [00:00:10]: Yeah, of course. So guys, Chad’s background is in power lifting, explosive sports. You are a shot putter in college, right?

Chad Wesley [00:00:19]:Yeah. Shot put then powerlifting and strongman. Then power lifting and strongman. And now Jiu Jitsu, I guess.

Corey Beasley [00:00:29]: You’re working your way here. That’s cool. So, I mean, what’s your power lifting background? What are some of the things that you accomplished? Because it was pretty significant.

Chad Wesley [00:00:39]:Yes. In powerlifting I start competing Ra like without a supportive suit, an important distinction to make for people. I squatted 970 pounds, benched five 67, deadlifted eight 15 total, 2325, which at the time of doing it, I think was the nineties total of all time. And since then I’ve gotten knocked down that list quite a bit. Maybe down to like 16th or 17th, but not too far down. So did that in powerlifting previous to that and shall put I was a two time national champion of the NBA. So kind of small college stuff, but through 63 feet, 10 inches in college, competed one year as a post-collegiate through 65 feet, seven inches, 20.0 meters. And then also dabbled in some strongman. I won my professional status, which I’m still waiting for the, for the checks to start rolling in on that. But won professional status in strongman in 2012 by winning amateur nationals.

Corey Beasley [00:01:52]: Crazy. And then now you’re a Gi. What made you made that change?

Chad Wesley [00:01:59]:So I first got exposed to, to Jiu jitsu right when we started juggernaut. So late 2009, we started was kind of on a hope and a prayer with no clients to start with zero clients. So the other plan I would suggest to people, so we were like cold calling places and I remember one of the first people that we talked to is this guy at OS Muay Thai. And then he’s like, oh yeah, come over and you can tell us about what you do or whatever. And we went and he was just a dick to us like we’re two days in and this guy is just an asshole to us. And they’re like, Oh man, this is not what I expected. And then call up, a guy at Gigante Brazilian Jiu jitsu, which was in Costa Mesa. And he says, come on over and tell us what you do. I show up and I walk in and it’s a six, seven, 250 pound Brazilian dude and Fabio Villella. And I told him, like I can help you get stronger and be better conditioned for Jiu Jitsu, more resistant to injury, all this stuff. And I was like, you want to come, try it out for a week or two. And then we kind of see where you go from there or if you like it, tell your students all this stuff. So Fabio comes two weeks later, he brings [Inaudible 00:03:31]who runs like the biggest Gracie Barra in Texas. Now I think maybe even the biggest Gracie Barra in the world. Gracie Barra west chase. Alexander A. Santos who was coaching up with a Babalu at the time again back early 2010 now, in a couple of other guys and that over the course of late 2009 to 2012, ended up with me doing strength conditioning for Pummelo Boho, Kron Gracie, Victor Estima, Felipe Pena. And guys were coming from other countries and other in other states and other countries. Like Felipe Pena, Hosanna ADCC absolute champion. He would come from Brazil before worlds for like a month or six weeks, and he was just a purple belt and then he won or worlds came back the next year. Brown Belt Wins Brown Bell Worlds, and now he’s arguably the best grappler in the world ADCC champ last year. So guys like that and there they would always be like, telling me, Oh, shed, come on man. Like, come on, you got smashed. Everybody, like, come onto the roll with us. Come on we gone smash them. And I was like, I can’t do, I can’t risk hurt my elbow and my shoulder or something for power lifting. And then as power lifting and stuff can continued and just keep working on the business and juggernaut really just got kind of bored of, of power lifting. And that’s before why I did. I did strongman and everything. And it’s a very tedious sport. And like, yeah, you can learn to love the process of it and all that and really that minutia detail. But I grew up, being an athlete, playing, doing track, playing football, playing basketball, doing all these, this more dynamic endeavors and powerlifting, I’m just kind of bored. So Borden and sort of beat up from it not injured per se, but you put 900 pounds on your back enough times. Like she just doesn’t feel good. So early 2017, I tried to start ramping up for a meet and just couldn’t get into it. So I was like, all right, I’ll taking a break. I’m doing whatever training. Sounds interesting that honestly, I just trained very inconsistently for about six months. Maybe once or twice a week was much more focused on the business of, of Juggernaut and powerlifting doesn’t pay the bills. My mom would always ask him when I’d go to powerlifting, like, well, are you going to win any money? And I said, no, mom, I make money. So not from powerlifting but because of power lifting. So we’re just focusing more on the business at Juggernaut podcasts going on the YouTube all that stuff. And when we decided to move out of our physical facility August, 2017 and I was like, all right, time for a new challenge called up my friend Philipe Della Monica, who had worked with for two or three years as his strength and conditioning coach. And I was like, I want to do Jiu Jitsu. And he said, oh, shit finally come on man. And Philipe is the head professor at Gracie Barra headquarters here in Irvine. So went from my introductory class fundamentals all that stuff. And Yeah, just been training pretty consistently ever since about end of August, 2017.

Corey Beasley [00:07:15]: That’s good. So when you started you come in from I mean the opposite end of the spectrum, right? We’re talking about as high as strength and power can get to roll in Jiu Jitsu. So when you did that transition and you started training, like how things go, what’d you learn? What shocked you? I mean, you have a pretty vast experience when it comes to strength and conditioning. So I’d imagine you understand where you were at?

Chad Wesley [00:07:47]:Yeah. I mean, as far as understanding what needed to be done. I mean, I’d worked with some of the best Jiu Jitsu athletes in the world as their strength conditioning coach. So while I was coming in for me pretty detrained like from about February to July, February to June. I just hadn’t done a lot of training because I was just focused on the stuff that pays the bills more so. Even though I was strong by everyone else’s standard there, I was very weak for me. I was not coming in there ready to squat down 900 pounds and pull 800 or anything like that. So I didn’t have as overwhelming of an advantage as I could have their, if they caught me like, the day after, a week after a powerlifting meet or something. So the first day just doing the warm-up, jumping jacks, pushups, sit ups, all this stuff, there’s like a little break in the Gracie Barra a warm-up where it’s like, all right, just lay there stretch. And I was like, Oh God. Like I thought was the conditioning demands were the biggest change. Even competing in strongman and I’ve done some other Kind of just for shits and giggles conditioning stuff like as less as 0.7 seconds away from breaking the 500 meter world record on the Earth in a concept to runner. But that’s about my limit is about a minute and a little bit more of just fury and like, I run one 14.4 on the rower and then probably recovered for 20 minutes after that and strongman, same kind of stuff. Max Reps in a minute. I’d squatted 500 for 22. And that was in 59 seconds. And though I wasn’t intentionally trying to do it in under a minute, I just knew like I got to do as many as I can in a minute because that’s pretty much what I got right. That I hit the wall pretty hard after that. So from an energetic standpoint even in our five minute white belt rounds a lot to be a lot to be desired there from it.

Corey Beasley [00:10:09]: When you first started and just the warm ups where getting you, one minute is a huge shock for a lot of people I think when they first start. But when you start rolling, I know when I started to roll with just a wrestling background, it was broad. That goes a hundred percent offense, right? So you go and you just attack.

Chad Wesley [00:10:31]:Yeah. Is that just tense all the time, tense all these moments when you don’t need to be tense? And the strength and the grips are the only thing I had to rely on. So I’d be this catching a pump. And now it’s funny not that I’m experienced at all, but even when you’re in and go to the fundamentals class sometimes enroll with some of these newer guys and then I’m just like, man why are you so out of breath? Like, because now I can be relaxed for stuff at least against the other white belts.

Corey Beasley [00:11:05]: Yeah, exactly. Now your training as far as skill wise goes and you have strength because you’re still lifting I imagine. So what’s your schedule like every week?

Chad Wesley [00:11:16]:So right now I usually Bend, train Jiu Jitsu five days a week. So I train Monday nights are advanced class and do some live rolling and after that. Tuesday night’s I’ll do typically the fundamentals class and maybe the fundamentals and advanced class. But no real live training with that. Wednesdays I do a private training with one of the coaches. Thursday, same as Tuesday. So like fundamentals and advanced class. Friday, typically off of Jiu Jitsu and I think I’m going to start going into an open mat, a Gracie Barra Costa Mesa soon. And then Saturday we have our competition class. And that kind of varies in, in nature but a much more challenging class. And then lifting wise typically lifting Monday, Wednesday, Friday, maybe a little bit on Saturday. I’m trying to get back now and the, into doing some like sprinting and jumping type of stuff. But it’s all through this, through like a high low system. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday lifting days, hardest Jiu Jitsu days. Tuesdays and Thursdays do a little bit of extra capacity stuff. Like I’ll do kind of circuits on the rower and with accessory lifting mixed in and easier days of Jiu Jitsu. And then Friday, because I don’t roll usually, let’s call that a medium day. And then Saturday cause I don’t lift, but it’s a hard Jiu Jitsu also kind of a medium day. And then Sunday is totally off.

Corey Beasley [00:13:00]: Now when you’re talking about those highs and lows, just for putting schedules together for people because I’ve seen this be a huge mistake a lot of guys make is they just want to go hard every single day. Can you explain kind of the thought process there as far as splitting things up?

Chad Wesley [00:13:17]:Yeah. So what we’re really trying to do is identify high intensity, low intensity stressors and what’s going to generate the most fatigue for the athlete. And it’s sort of counterintuitive I think to a lot of people wanting to tell them, we’ll put all your hard stuff together. And but what doing that allows and this concept of you got several articles like the three part article called consolidation of stressors. And that’s what I’m talking about now is by putting all my hardest stuff on Monday, Wednesday, Friday that allows Tuesday and Thursday to actually serve as restoration and allow for recovery, like built into the schedule where if I rolled hard on Monday and lifted hard on Tuesday and rolled hard on Wednesday and lifted hard on Thursday and rolled hard on Friday or vice versa, then I’m getting beat up. I’m getting fatigued every day. And there are times where more spread out, lower and medium intensity days is appropriate and you can accumulate a lot of volume that way. And early in an annual plan or early in however the training is organized, whether we’re talking about one training cycle and annual plan, a quadrennial, whatever early in that it’s probably appropriate to do that. Especially because lifting is simple. You can just control it through percentages or RPE of how challenging it’s going to be. Sprinting and throwing kind of drills like, you could just do tempos, but that’s not really going to achieve what you want. So more using exercises that are self-regulating through what outputs they allow for. So like a sled sprint or a hill sprint, even though it might be hard to do because you’re not moving absolutely as fast from a velocity standpoint aren’t going to be as neurology fatiguing. And then the stuff with the sport practice, whether we’re talking Jiu Jitsu or football or whatever that takes a little bit more art to and a little bit more creativity to regulate. So whether you’re going to just say like, hey man, let’s just go 75% or just doing more movement drills and more specific drilling rather than live training. And that’s been something I’ve been working with my main coach, Brent Littrell. He’s a 10 planet black belt and Gracie Barra black belt. It’s sort of taking this idea of a block structure that I’ve used so successfully for lifting and training for football players. And everything and applying it to Jiu Jitsu. And there’s other unique challenges in that just because I’m a white belt so that I got to work on everything but where early if I was 10 weeks out from a tournament, those first two or three weeks were just going to do a lot of drills and kind of work on my Jujutsu movement and Jiu Jitsu agility. And then the second part of that, maybe weeks three through six or four through six, we’re going to do a lot of drilling and trying to put more focus on like actually controlling the reps of it and adding volume to that throughout. And then the last part the last three weeks, we’re going to stay in touch with the drills for the first 20 minutes of this hour and then get as many live training sessions in as we can. The same way that a football player at the start of the off season, they don’t really need a practice. A lot of football, they’re going to lift. And sprint and do that stuff. And then maybe they start going to us to seven on seven and parts of football and then they’re in training camp and they’re scrimmaging and it gets more and more…

Corey Beasley [00:17:26]: I think a lot of the skill coaches and athletes as well when it comes to manipulate in that intensity and volume and all those different variables, it’s kind of in some ways it’s a new topic for them, and how to manipulate those variables at different times. And I think it becomes tough when you have a room full of guys and everybody’s got different fight dates?

Chad Wesley [00:17:50]:Yeah. And I think for MMA it’s doubly now triply difficult because there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen typically you’re going to have, Muay Thai coach and a boxing coach and wrestling coach and Jiu Jitsu coach, strength conditioning coach and they all want to feel like they’re the most important. And it takes I think some unique personalities and unique planning, to make sure that everyone doesn’t decide we’re going balls to the wall right today, every day. And when you see guys who have been like real successful I was listening to John Donna Hare on Joe Rogan podcast and they’re talking about GSP and how Donna Hare and Ferraz had kind of served as program managers to it and overseeing a little bit of everything, which is becoming more and more commonplace in football and rugby and soccer a lot of people call it high performance director and you see there if it’s someone separate who oversees both full strength and conditioning and the sport coaches and can manage that. And with all the data that’s available now through GPS and heart rate monitors and HRV and all this stuff is great if they actually can do something with the data. And I’ve seen people who do a great job with it and people they just got a page with a bunch of numbers on it. But we got to visit the UFC performance institute back in January. And I did the podcast with Bo Sandoval who’s the director of strength conditioning. Phenomenal facility. And they are doing an incredible job and a true high-performance setting with all the fight training being managed along with the strength conditioning along with the recovery along with the nutrition. They’re all on the same page. So that’s really cool to see. Because MMA is a very young sport. And even five years ago, I was guilty of a lot of these mistakes that I’m talking about now, it’s cool for YouTube or cool for Instagram to just smash them up with these circuits and stuff, but it’s like they’re already getting smashed up all day. So how can you be more mindful of your recovery and not kind of compounding the same stressors on top of each other?

Corey Beasley [00:20:34]: Yeah. I’ve kind of started going above and below what the coaches are typically doing, asking the boys like, Hey, what’d you guys do? We hit 10 rounds today. Well either got to go above or below it, at least in my mind trying to get that strength and power development, which they won’t typically get just doing their skill work or are you going and below it and just helping them recover. And maybe it’s just the day off or maybe it’s just the movement drills to get some blood flowing. But pretty simple for Jiu Jitsu specifically, I know a lot of the stuff that we see online, they’re doing a lot of sports specific type drills versus squats and dead lifts and fundamentals from your perspective from your experience, but also working with those guys, where do you see some of that stuff, if you even do at all fitting in?

Chad Wesley [00:21:25]:So we definitely do a lot of special strength exercises with the Jiu Jitsu guys I worked with which at one time was like a group of 10 to 12 black belts who are trained together like three times a week. And when I talk about a special strength exercise, I’m looking for something that mimics the direction, duration or velocity of the sporting movement and overloads one of those components. And it’s that last part overloads one of those components that I think is lost so often when you talk about sports specific exercise or a special strength exercise, because a lot of times it’s similarly loading or under loading those movements. And then it’s like, well, what’s the fucking point? Just do, just do more of your other sport training. When I started working with a lot of guys from Gracie Barra and I had the professors for almost every school, it seemed like in all of southern California, all of Orange County for a bit. I was really surprised for the most part that they had incredibly limited general physical preparation background. One thing that they were kind of all pretty strong in was like pull-ups, but pretty much no one had squatted or deadlifted before even watching them try and sprint. I’m like, did you guys like play fucking soccer down there or something? And so things could be kept pretty remedial then. I always try and look at movement patterns rather than specific exercises. So while we might talk about the squat for one athlete, that could be high bar or a barbell back squatting for another athlete that might mean goblet squats or belt squats or front foot elevated split-squad depending on what’s appropriate for them. So we’re looking at some kind of squatting and some kind of a hip extension, hip hinge, hip extension exercise, which could be anywhere from a power snatch to dumbbell RDL or back raise or something. We’re looking for some kind of upper body pulling in and some kind of upper body pushing, which can be from loaded pushups to bench press, to overhead press to variations on that. And I think keeping things in mind as exercise classification, like a type of movement rather than front squats are the carry over the highest. And I hate seeing coaches get caught up in this and they get married to these specific exercises or modalities, piece of equipment or whatever. And I see it a lot coming from my world of strength sports where the strength coaches, those are the weight room guys, like they love to lift and everything. So maybe they compete in powerlifting. Are they competing in weight lifting? Are they competing strongman? And then they want to train their athletes the same way. And this is not what needs to be done. You might bias towards those elements or might know how to coach them better or something. And I get that, but don’t try and make Jiu Jitsu athlete, strongman, you could use strongman movements, but they’ve got to be within the right context.

Corey Beasley [00:24:49]: So for you, it’s been about a year. I mean, have you gone through any injuries, ailments, anything like that?

Chad Wesley [00:25:57]:Yeah, so the first like four or five months I consciously was like, all right, I can’t lift too hard. Like I need my energy to be for Jiu Jitsu and everyone who’s given me advice at the start. And I’ve been fortunate to know a lot of really high level Jiu Jitsu athletes. They’re saying train like you’re weak. And then so you can just be really technical. And then when it’s time to flash the strength, then I can do that. So I took that to heart, maybe too much. And I just was not lifting hard. And even when I tried to like, especially benching, I could bench and stuff all right. But trying to squat and deadlift hard, man, my hips were just fucked because I started powerlifting in 2010, June, 2017 and in those seven years, I didn’t explore a lot of planes of motion, besides has just up and down. So all the rotational stuff and this really like, deep, not particularly deep for me. A lot of times like hip fluxion and Lumbar fluxion flection and rotation together. Like my adductors would be always beat out because I can’t close my guard on many people because my legs are so big. So then I’m just trying to squeeze and kind of keep them in. So my adductors and our grinds are always messed up. And then someone would shove my leg down and I’m like, oh fuck. So that was tough. None of them I would say were injuries. But stuff just, just hurt and took a while to adapt and feel comfortable moving through just different ranges of motion, different movement patterns, different positions that I haven’t been in and in a long time though I’m still not acclimated to those and my flexibility and mobility is still probably the biggest limiting factor I have. It’s getting better and there’ll be sometimes in class where it’s like, some Berimbolo drill and fully pushed be like, just try it. Like, just for the movement. Like we know you’re never going to do it, but like, just do it for the mobility of it. And I get that and it’s fun for me to try. Brent got me doing handstands and headstands and trying to get me doing cartwheels in the morning and stuff. So that’s been a fun some fun new challenges and just kind of get to roll around on the mats, pretend like you’re a kid again.

Corey Beasley [00:27:35]: And it’s just a fun part of it right. I don’t know, I always thought it’s kind of like just hanging out with the boys get to go play.

Chad Wesley [00:27:42]:Yeah. I had two very significant hernia about five years ago. And when I was competing and simultaneously parallel to and strongman and one kind of flare up of those that kept me out a hard training and for like two or three weeks. And that was just bad timing because it was right going into the first tournament that I had nothing but kind of like training and drills for two or three weeks, my already outstanding cardio took a bit of a hit there, and I say the biggest thing is probably just more injuries to my pride and ego. And I’ll throw in the shot, put like all through high school win the league, win CIF, I go to the state. You kind of start over at the bottom a little bit in college, but it’s like you can see the path, and understand. All right I’m going to throw a couple of feet farther every, every year. And then as soon as I got in a powerlifting my first 800 pounds. Like I was at the top of powerlifting and effort after one meeting and the guy was the tide for the second highest total in my weight class in the US and like the third highest total in the world at the time. Granted Ra powerlifting was much smaller in 2010 but it was boom. Right away everyone’s like, oh shit. Who’s this guy? And a strongman, I won pro status and strongman. I’ve been competing for eight months. This is my fourth contest. So it was like the same kind of thing very quick rise and in Jiu Jitsu besides just in training and getting beat by smaller guys or tapped by much smaller guys half my size or then going into my first tournament, which was just like an Intra Gracie Barra thing. I got beat twice as you know, last it was a three man bracket and I lost the both of them. And my expectations of myself are, are always high. And I feel like to some degree everyone at our schools like, oh Chad he’s fucking huge. He’s good, he’s hard to roll with. Plus I know all the professors when I’m in class still and Professor Felipe calls me coach shed. And I could tell those to those first couple of months that people were like, why is he calling him coach? What is this? And there at the tournament and its [Inaudible 00:30:32]and all these guys and like I lost twice, O and 2 in front of them. And I’m like, man, I just feel so shitty. Like I suck at this. And that was in February.

Corey Beasley [00:30:44]: So that was your first tournament? Five, six months in? And then since then you’ve had?

Chad Wesley [00:30:52]:Yeah, probably about five months in. Two other tournaments worlds’ novice worlds. I got second there and then two weekends ago I did the international novice in Las Vegas was going on in the same time as masters worlds and I won that, we’re trending up.

Corey Beasley [00:31:11]: So for you, I mean, what’s next?

Chad Wesley [00:31:16]:Jiu Jitsu wise, maybe one in a couple weeks in Azusa, we’ll see if anyone signs up white belt ultra-heavies. So if there’s only like one other guy in the division, I probably won’t bother giving IBJJF a bunch of money, but just keep training, just trying to try to improve with that. Just having fun pretending that I’m athletic again, like, I wish that that cell phone cameras were more prevalent in like 2008, 2009 when I was really explosive and fast on the shop and all this stuff. And now the people are probably like, yeah, whatever. I don’t believe that you could do these things. So trying to, trying to recapture some athleticism, they’re doing sprints and jumps and having fun with all that kind of stuff. And just enjoying the process of Jiu Jitsu and there’s just so many details. It’s like an endless technique. So it’s a really fun new challenge. I enjoy the community of it and all that, sometime I was really expecting to get my fourth stripe on my white belt after I won that tournament. But Felipe, if you’re listening, what the hell, man? So at some point move up to Blue belt and I think then the goal become winning the masters worlds at Blue Belt.

Corey Beasley [00:32:46]: And then professionally as a strength coach, what’s next for you there? So I know you’ve got so much stuff going on with juggernaut?

Chad Wesley [00:32:55]:So about a year ago we transitioned away from the physical facility just because it gives me much more freedom of time and finances and everything and to be able to travel and do seminars and all that stuff and really reach more people in the long run because it just allows more time for me to focus on our online content, online coaching. So I get to coach some of the strongest power offers in the world right now our weightlifting coach Max has some of the best weightlifters in the US, they’re getting ready for their last world team trials a week from now, which we could potentially have three women on the world team, three of 10. So that would be pretty good. And then my power lifters are about six weeks out from nationals where we can also put three women on the world team. Almost definitely should put three women on the world team there. That’s just three of eight on the open team. And I coach some strong guys as well when people on YouTube asking like, well, do you coach any men? Yes. In fact in the only coach with four of the top 100 Wilkes rated men’s power lifters of all time, but they’re not as nice looking so we don’t put them on as many videos. So just doing that trying to teach, teach the internet how to lift weights better from technique or program design, principle based program design where we’re very mindful not to be prescriptive of this is the best sets and reps or this is how many days a week you should squat or something, but rather be descriptive about the principles that guide those decisions for us. Working on this AI coaching app right now for power lifting, which is going to be taking my big ass brain, or at least inside my big head and sticking it into their phone so they can really get truly individualized, personalized programming for power lifting the way that I would design it, but at a much lower price. So that’s cool. Then just plugging away making as much content as I can, king of content, like six, seven YouTube videos a week, sometimes a juggle life, podcasts, our main one, which is a blast to do, where we get to travel all over the country and talk with lifters and coaches and whether it’s powerlifting, weightlifting coaches or sport performance coaches. The one this week was at the Frank Wintrich who’s the director of football performance, UCLA incredible facility up there and they’re doing a great job and a group that gets all this, all this data and stuff from the technology available and are actually doing good stuff with it. Then our bonus to that beers with Chad, which is some about lifting some about Jiu Jitsu, something about whatever the fuck I want it to be about that week. I think this week’s one is with my buddy [Inaudible 00:36:06]who played, I did his combine prep back like 2012 NFL draft. He was a fourth round pick for the Raiders. I’d out his NFL career knee issues that ended his NFL career and now his transition to acting and he’s made a pretty smooth transition. They’re already getting rolls in CBS and Showtime and I mean he’s just a handsome guys as fuck that guy. But you have to be athletic and good looking. Not all of us get that I guess, so that’s fun doing that stuff. And then traveling around doing clinics. Our next, our next big event is our, SoCal performance summits. So that will be October 20th and 21st in Newport beach. So those of you who live in a less sunny and wonderful places, feel free to come visit us. And that features myself along with five other speakers. So we pretty much cover the gamut of strength and performance. I’ll be talking about program design again, principle-based program design though this examples are generally specific to powerlifting. The idea is can be applied to really any sport training. And once you understand how specificity frames creates a framework for all other decision making. We have three of our PhD holding friends from Renaissance periodization. Dr. Mike we talking about motivational and psychological factors behind diet success or lack of success as it could be. Dr. James Hoffman speaking about recovery adaptive strategies. Dr. Gabrielle speaking about micro biomes and the implications on that for general health and performance. Dr. Quinn Henoch doctor physical therapy based here and in Newport Beach talking about all the great stuff that Quinn does. If people haven’t checked him out. Clinical athlete.com really just exceptional work, has a great network of practitioners that he like, personally vetted every single one of them to say like, yes, you actually work with athletes and aren’t just going to tell someone like, oh, your knee hurts, so stop squatting. So he’ll be presenting about assess athlete assessment and, and creating rehab and return to play strategies. And then Max a team Juggernaut, weightlifting coach, he is talking about are weightlifting coaching progressions. So if you want to teach your athletes how to snatch clean and jerk, I’ll show you how to do that.

Corey Beasley [00:38:51]: Well guys, I’ll be sure to put those links down below. And Chad, thanks for hanging out in the garage and talking with us. I appreciate it.

Chad Wesley [00:38:57]:Yeah, my pleasure, man.

Episode Transcript

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Chad Wesley Smith:
Corey Beasley [00:00:01]: Hey guys, just Corey Beasley with fight camp conditioning. I’m here with Chad Wesley Smith from juggernaut training systems. Chad, how you doing?

Chad Wesley [00:00:09]:Doing pretty well. Thanks for having me.

Corey Beasley [00:00:10]: Yeah, of course. So guys, Chad’s background is in power lifting, explosive sports. You are a shot putter in college, right?

Chad Wesley [00:00:19]:Yeah. Shot put then powerlifting and strongman. Then power lifting and strongman. And now Jiu Jitsu, I guess.

Chad Wesley [00:00:39]:Yes. In powerlifting I start competing Ra like without a supportive suit, an important distinction to make for people. I squatted 970 pounds, benched five 67, deadlifted eight 15 total, 2325, which at the time of doing it, I think was the nineties total of all time. And since then I’ve gotten knocked down that list quite a bit. Maybe down to like 16th or 17th, but not too far down. So did that in powerlifting previous to that and shall put I was a two time national champion of the NBA. So kind of small college stuff, but through 63 feet, 10 inches in college, competed one year as a post-collegiate through 65 feet, seven inches, 20.0 meters. And then also dabbled in some strongman. I won my professional status, which I’m still waiting for the, for the checks to start rolling in on that. But won professional status in strongman in 2012 by winning amateur nationals.

Corey Beasley [00:01:52]: Crazy. And then now you’re a Gi. What made you made that change?

Chad Wesley [00:01:59]:So I first got exposed to, to Jiu jitsu right when we started juggernaut. So late 2009, we started was kind of on a hope and a prayer with no clients to start with zero clients. So the other plan I would suggest to people, so we were like cold calling places and I remember one of the first people that we talked to is this guy at OS Muay Thai. And then he’s like, oh yeah, come over and you can tell us about what you do or whatever. And we went and he was just a dick to us like we’re two days in and this guy is just an asshole to us. And they’re like, Oh man, this is not what I expected. And then call up, a guy at Gigante Brazilian Jiu jitsu, which was in Costa Mesa. And he says, come on over and tell us what you do. I show up and I walk in and it’s a six, seven, 250 pound Brazilian dude and Fabio Villella. And I told him, like I can help you get stronger and be better conditioned for Jiu Jitsu, more resistant to injury, all this stuff. And I was like, you want to come, try it out for a week or two. And then we kind of see where you go from there or if you like it, tell your students all this stuff. So Fabio comes two weeks later, he brings [Inaudible 00:03:31]who runs like the biggest Gracie Barra in Texas. Now I think maybe even the biggest Gracie Barra in the world. Gracie Barra west chase. Alexander A. Santos who was coaching up with a Babalu at the time again back early 2010 now, in a couple of other guys and that over the course of late 2009 to 2012, ended up with me doing strength conditioning for Pummelo Boho, Kron Gracie, Victor Estima, Felipe Pena. And guys were coming from other countries and other in other states and other countries. Like Felipe Pena, Hosanna ADCC absolute champion. He would come from Brazil before worlds for like a month or six weeks, and he was just a purple belt and then he won or worlds came back the next year. Brown Belt Wins Brown Bell Worlds, and now he’s arguably the best grappler in the world ADCC champ last year. So guys like that and there they would always be like, telling me, Oh, shed, come on man. Like, come on, you got smashed. Everybody, like, come onto the roll with us. Come on we gone smash them. And I was like, I can’t do, I can’t risk hurt my elbow and my shoulder or something for power lifting. And then as power lifting and stuff can continued and just keep working on the business and juggernaut really just got kind of bored of, of power lifting. And that’s before why I did. I did strongman and everything. And it’s a very tedious sport. And like, yeah, you can learn to love the process of it and all that and really that minutia detail. But I grew up, being an athlete, playing, doing track, playing football, playing basketball, doing all these, this more dynamic endeavors and powerlifting, I’m just kind of bored. So Borden and sort of beat up from it not injured per se, but you put 900 pounds on your back enough times. Like she just doesn’t feel good. So early 2017, I tried to start ramping up for a meet and just couldn’t get into it. So I was like, all right, I’ll taking a break. I’m doing whatever training. Sounds interesting that honestly, I just trained very inconsistently for about six months. Maybe once or twice a week was much more focused on the business of, of Juggernaut and powerlifting doesn’t pay the bills. My mom would always ask him when I’d go to powerlifting, like, well, are you going to win any money? And I said, no, mom, I make money. So not from powerlifting but because of power lifting. So we’re just focusing more on the business at Juggernaut podcasts going on the YouTube all that stuff. And when we decided to move out of our physical facility August, 2017 and I was like, all right, time for a new challenge called up my friend Philipe Della Monica, who had worked with for two or three years as his strength and conditioning coach. And I was like, I want to do Jiu Jitsu. And he said, oh, shit finally come on man. And Philipe is the head professor at Gracie Barra headquarters here in Irvine. So went from my introductory class fundamentals all that stuff. And Yeah, just been training pretty consistently ever since about end of August, 2017.

Chad Wesley [00:07:47]:Yeah. I mean, as far as understanding what needed to be done. I mean, I’d worked with some of the best Jiu Jitsu athletes in the world as their strength conditioning coach. So while I was coming in for me pretty detrained like from about February to July, February to June. I just hadn’t done a lot of training because I was just focused on the stuff that pays the bills more so. Even though I was strong by everyone else’s standard there, I was very weak for me. I was not coming in there ready to squat down 900 pounds and pull 800 or anything like that. So I didn’t have as overwhelming of an advantage as I could have their, if they caught me like, the day after, a week after a powerlifting meet or something. So the first day just doing the warm-up, jumping jacks, pushups, sit ups, all this stuff, there’s like a little break in the Gracie Barra a warm-up where it’s like, all right, just lay there stretch. And I was like, Oh God. Like I thought was the conditioning demands were the biggest change. Even competing in strongman and I’ve done some other Kind of just for shits and giggles conditioning stuff like as less as 0.7 seconds away from breaking the 500 meter world record on the Earth in a concept to runner. But that’s about my limit is about a minute and a little bit more of just fury and like, I run one 14.4 on the rower and then probably recovered for 20 minutes after that and strongman, same kind of stuff. Max Reps in a minute. I’d squatted 500 for 22. And that was in 59 seconds. And though I wasn’t intentionally trying to do it in under a minute, I just knew like I got to do as many as I can in a minute because that’s pretty much what I got right. That I hit the wall pretty hard after that. So from an energetic standpoint even in our five minute white belt rounds a lot to be a lot to be desired there from it.

Chad Wesley [00:10:31]:Yeah. Is that just tense all the time, tense all these moments when you don’t need to be tense? And the strength and the grips are the only thing I had to rely on. So I’d be this catching a pump. And now it’s funny not that I’m experienced at all, but even when you’re in and go to the fundamentals class sometimes enroll with some of these newer guys and then I’m just like, man why are you so out of breath? Like, because now I can be relaxed for stuff at least against the other white belts.

Corey Beasley [00:11:05]: Yeah, exactly. Now your training as far as skill wise goes and you have strength because you’re still lifting I imagine. So what’s your schedule like every week?

Chad Wesley [00:11:16]:So right now I usually Bend, train Jiu Jitsu five days a week. So I train Monday nights are advanced class and do some live rolling and after that. Tuesday night’s I’ll do typically the fundamentals class and maybe the fundamentals and advanced class. But no real live training with that. Wednesdays I do a private training with one of the coaches. Thursday, same as Tuesday. So like fundamentals and advanced class. Friday, typically off of Jiu Jitsu and I think I’m going to start going into an open mat, a Gracie Barra Costa Mesa soon. And then Saturday we have our competition class. And that kind of varies in, in nature but a much more challenging class. And then lifting wise typically lifting Monday, Wednesday, Friday, maybe a little bit on Saturday. I’m trying to get back now and the, into doing some like sprinting and jumping type of stuff. But it’s all through this, through like a high low system. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday lifting days, hardest Jiu Jitsu days. Tuesdays and Thursdays do a little bit of extra capacity stuff. Like I’ll do kind of circuits on the rower and with accessory lifting mixed in and easier days of Jiu Jitsu. And then Friday, because I don’t roll usually, let’s call that a medium day. And then Saturday cause I don’t lift, but it’s a hard Jiu Jitsu also kind of a medium day. And then Sunday is totally off.

Chad Wesley [00:13:17]:Yeah. So what we’re really trying to do is identify high intensity, low intensity stressors and what’s going to generate the most fatigue for the athlete. And it’s sort of counterintuitive I think to a lot of people wanting to tell them, we’ll put all your hard stuff together. And but what doing that allows and this concept of you got several articles like the three part article called consolidation of stressors. And that’s what I’m talking about now is by putting all my hardest stuff on Monday, Wednesday, Friday that allows Tuesday and Thursday to actually serve as restoration and allow for recovery, like built into the schedule where if I rolled hard on Monday and lifted hard on Tuesday and rolled hard on Wednesday and lifted hard on Thursday and rolled hard on Friday or vice versa, then I’m getting beat up. I’m getting fatigued every day. And there are times where more spread out, lower and medium intensity days is appropriate and you can accumulate a lot of volume that way. And early in an annual plan or early in however the training is organized, whether we’re talking about one training cycle and annual plan, a quadrennial, whatever early in that it’s probably appropriate to do that. Especially because lifting is simple. You can just control it through percentages or RPE of how challenging it’s going to be. Sprinting and throwing kind of drills like, you could just do tempos, but that’s not really going to achieve what you want. So more using exercises that are self-regulating through what outputs they allow for. So like a sled sprint or a hill sprint, even though it might be hard to do because you’re not moving absolutely as fast from a velocity standpoint aren’t going to be as neurology fatiguing. And then the stuff with the sport practice, whether we’re talking Jiu Jitsu or football or whatever that takes a little bit more art to and a little bit more creativity to regulate. So whether you’re going to just say like, hey man, let’s just go 75% or just doing more movement drills and more specific drilling rather than live training. And that’s been something I’ve been working with my main coach, Brent Littrell. He’s a 10 planet black belt and Gracie Barra black belt. It’s sort of taking this idea of a block structure that I’ve used so successfully for lifting and training for football players. And everything and applying it to Jiu Jitsu. And there’s other unique challenges in that just because I’m a white belt so that I got to work on everything but where early if I was 10 weeks out from a tournament, those first two or three weeks were just going to do a lot of drills and kind of work on my Jujutsu movement and Jiu Jitsu agility. And then the second part of that, maybe weeks three through six or four through six, we’re going to do a lot of drilling and trying to put more focus on like actually controlling the reps of it and adding volume to that throughout. And then the last part the last three weeks, we’re going to stay in touch with the drills for the first 20 minutes of this hour and then get as many live training sessions in as we can. The same way that a football player at the start of the off season, they don’t really need a practice. A lot of football, they’re going to lift. And sprint and do that stuff. And then maybe they start going to us to seven on seven and parts of football and then they’re in training camp and they’re scrimmaging and it gets more and more…

Chad Wesley [00:17:50]:Yeah. And I think for MMA it’s doubly now triply difficult because there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen typically you’re going to have, Muay Thai coach and a boxing coach and wrestling coach and Jiu Jitsu coach, strength conditioning coach and they all want to feel like they’re the most important. And it takes I think some unique personalities and unique planning, to make sure that everyone doesn’t decide we’re going balls to the wall right today, every day. And when you see guys who have been like real successful I was listening to John Donna Hare on Joe Rogan podcast and they’re talking about GSP and how Donna Hare and Ferraz had kind of served as program managers to it and overseeing a little bit of everything, which is becoming more and more commonplace in football and rugby and soccer a lot of people call it high performance director and you see there if it’s someone separate who oversees both full strength and conditioning and the sport coaches and can manage that. And with all the data that’s available now through GPS and heart rate monitors and HRV and all this stuff is great if they actually can do something with the data. And I’ve seen people who do a great job with it and people they just got a page with a bunch of numbers on it. But we got to visit the UFC performance institute back in January. And I did the podcast with Bo Sandoval who’s the director of strength conditioning. Phenomenal facility. And they are doing an incredible job and a true high-performance setting with all the fight training being managed along with the strength conditioning along with the recovery along with the nutrition. They’re all on the same page. So that’s really cool to see. Because MMA is a very young sport. And even five years ago, I was guilty of a lot of these mistakes that I’m talking about now, it’s cool for YouTube or cool for Instagram to just smash them up with these circuits and stuff, but it’s like they’re already getting smashed up all day. So how can you be more mindful of your recovery and not kind of compounding the same stressors on top of each other?

Chad Wesley [00:21:25]:So we definitely do a lot of special strength exercises with the Jiu Jitsu guys I worked with which at one time was like a group of 10 to 12 black belts who are trained together like three times a week. And when I talk about a special strength exercise, I’m looking for something that mimics the direction, duration or velocity of the sporting movement and overloads one of those components. And it’s that last part overloads one of those components that I think is lost so often when you talk about sports specific exercise or a special strength exercise, because a lot of times it’s similarly loading or under loading those movements. And then it’s like, well, what’s the fucking point? Just do, just do more of your other sport training. When I started working with a lot of guys from Gracie Barra and I had the professors for almost every school, it seemed like in all of southern California, all of Orange County for a bit. I was really surprised for the most part that they had incredibly limited general physical preparation background. One thing that they were kind of all pretty strong in was like pull-ups, but pretty much no one had squatted or deadlifted before even watching them try and sprint. I’m like, did you guys like play fucking soccer down there or something? And so things could be kept pretty remedial then. I always try and look at movement patterns rather than specific exercises. So while we might talk about the squat for one athlete, that could be high bar or a barbell back squatting for another athlete that might mean goblet squats or belt squats or front foot elevated split-squad depending on what’s appropriate for them. So we’re looking at some kind of squatting and some kind of a hip extension, hip hinge, hip extension exercise, which could be anywhere from a power snatch to dumbbell RDL or back raise or something. We’re looking for some kind of upper body pulling in and some kind of upper body pushing, which can be from loaded pushups to bench press, to overhead press to variations on that. And I think keeping things in mind as exercise classification, like a type of movement rather than front squats are the carry over the highest. And I hate seeing coaches get caught up in this and they get married to these specific exercises or modalities, piece of equipment or whatever. And I see it a lot coming from my world of strength sports where the strength coaches, those are the weight room guys, like they love to lift and everything. So maybe they compete in powerlifting. Are they competing in weight lifting? Are they competing strongman? And then they want to train their athletes the same way. And this is not what needs to be done. You might bias towards those elements or might know how to coach them better or something. And I get that, but don’t try and make Jiu Jitsu athlete, strongman, you could use strongman movements, but they’ve got to be within the right context.

Corey Beasley [00:24:49]: So for you, it’s been about a year. I mean, have you gone through any injuries, ailments, anything like that?

Chad Wesley [00:25:57]:Yeah, so the first like four or five months I consciously was like, all right, I can’t lift too hard. Like I need my energy to be for Jiu Jitsu and everyone who’s given me advice at the start. And I’ve been fortunate to know a lot of really high level Jiu Jitsu athletes. They’re saying train like you’re weak. And then so you can just be really technical. And then when it’s time to flash the strength, then I can do that. So I took that to heart, maybe too much. And I just was not lifting hard. And even when I tried to like, especially benching, I could bench and stuff all right. But trying to squat and deadlift hard, man, my hips were just fucked because I started powerlifting in 2010, June, 2017 and in those seven years, I didn’t explore a lot of planes of motion, besides has just up and down. So all the rotational stuff and this really like, deep, not particularly deep for me. A lot of times like hip fluxion and Lumbar fluxion flection and rotation together. Like my adductors would be always beat out because I can’t close my guard on many people because my legs are so big. So then I’m just trying to squeeze and kind of keep them in. So my adductors and our grinds are always messed up. And then someone would shove my leg down and I’m like, oh fuck. So that was tough. None of them I would say were injuries. But stuff just, just hurt and took a while to adapt and feel comfortable moving through just different ranges of motion, different movement patterns, different positions that I haven’t been in and in a long time though I’m still not acclimated to those and my flexibility and mobility is still probably the biggest limiting factor I have. It’s getting better and there’ll be sometimes in class where it’s like, some Berimbolo drill and fully pushed be like, just try it. Like, just for the movement. Like we know you’re never going to do it, but like, just do it for the mobility of it. And I get that and it’s fun for me to try. Brent got me doing handstands and headstands and trying to get me doing cartwheels in the morning and stuff. So that’s been a fun some fun new challenges and just kind of get to roll around on the mats, pretend like you’re a kid again.

Corey Beasley [00:27:35]: And it’s just a fun part of it right. I don’t know, I always thought it’s kind of like just hanging out with the boys get to go play.

Chad Wesley [00:27:42]:Yeah. I had two very significant hernia about five years ago. And when I was competing and simultaneously parallel to and strongman and one kind of flare up of those that kept me out a hard training and for like two or three weeks. And that was just bad timing because it was right going into the first tournament that I had nothing but kind of like training and drills for two or three weeks, my already outstanding cardio took a bit of a hit there, and I say the biggest thing is probably just more injuries to my pride and ego. And I’ll throw in the shot, put like all through high school win the league, win CIF, I go to the state. You kind of start over at the bottom a little bit in college, but it’s like you can see the path, and understand. All right I’m going to throw a couple of feet farther every, every year. And then as soon as I got in a powerlifting my first 800 pounds. Like I was at the top of powerlifting and effort after one meeting and the guy was the tide for the second highest total in my weight class in the US and like the third highest total in the world at the time. Granted Ra powerlifting was much smaller in 2010 but it was boom. Right away everyone’s like, oh shit. Who’s this guy? And a strongman, I won pro status and strongman. I’ve been competing for eight months. This is my fourth contest. So it was like the same kind of thing very quick rise and in Jiu Jitsu besides just in training and getting beat by smaller guys or tapped by much smaller guys half my size or then going into my first tournament, which was just like an Intra Gracie Barra thing. I got beat twice as you know, last it was a three man bracket and I lost the both of them. And my expectations of myself are, are always high. And I feel like to some degree everyone at our schools like, oh Chad he’s fucking huge. He’s good, he’s hard to roll with. Plus I know all the professors when I’m in class still and Professor Felipe calls me coach shed. And I could tell those to those first couple of months that people were like, why is he calling him coach? What is this? And there at the tournament and its [Inaudible 00:30:32]and all these guys and like I lost twice, O and 2 in front of them. And I’m like, man, I just feel so shitty. Like I suck at this. And that was in February.

Corey Beasley [00:30:44]: So that was your first tournament? Five, six months in? And then since then you’ve had?

Chad Wesley [00:30:52]:Yeah, probably about five months in. Two other tournaments worlds’ novice worlds. I got second there and then two weekends ago I did the international novice in Las Vegas was going on in the same time as masters worlds and I won that, we’re trending up.

Corey Beasley [00:31:11]: So for you, I mean, what’s next?

Chad Wesley [00:31:16]:Jiu Jitsu wise, maybe one in a couple weeks in Azusa, we’ll see if anyone signs up white belt ultra-heavies. So if there’s only like one other guy in the division, I probably won’t bother giving IBJJF a bunch of money, but just keep training, just trying to try to improve with that. Just having fun pretending that I’m athletic again, like, I wish that that cell phone cameras were more prevalent in like 2008, 2009 when I was really explosive and fast on the shop and all this stuff. And now the people are probably like, yeah, whatever. I don’t believe that you could do these things. So trying to, trying to recapture some athleticism, they’re doing sprints and jumps and having fun with all that kind of stuff. And just enjoying the process of Jiu Jitsu and there’s just so many details. It’s like an endless technique. So it’s a really fun new challenge. I enjoy the community of it and all that, sometime I was really expecting to get my fourth stripe on my white belt after I won that tournament. But Felipe, if you’re listening, what the hell, man? So at some point move up to Blue belt and I think then the goal become winning the masters worlds at Blue Belt.

Corey Beasley [00:32:46]: And then professionally as a strength coach, what’s next for you there? So I know you’ve got so much stuff going on with juggernaut?

Chad Wesley [00:32:55]:So about a year ago we transitioned away from the physical facility just because it gives me much more freedom of time and finances and everything and to be able to travel and do seminars and all that stuff and really reach more people in the long run because it just allows more time for me to focus on our online content, online coaching. So I get to coach some of the strongest power offers in the world right now our weightlifting coach Max has some of the best weightlifters in the US, they’re getting ready for their last world team trials a week from now, which we could potentially have three women on the world team, three of 10. So that would be pretty good. And then my power lifters are about six weeks out from nationals where we can also put three women on the world team. Almost definitely should put three women on the world team there. That’s just three of eight on the open team. And I coach some strong guys as well when people on YouTube asking like, well, do you coach any men? Yes. In fact in the only coach with four of the top 100 Wilkes rated men’s power lifters of all time, but they’re not as nice looking so we don’t put them on as many videos. So just doing that trying to teach, teach the internet how to lift weights better from technique or program design, principle based program design where we’re very mindful not to be prescriptive of this is the best sets and reps or this is how many days a week you should squat or something, but rather be descriptive about the principles that guide those decisions for us. Working on this AI coaching app right now for power lifting, which is going to be taking my big ass brain, or at least inside my big head and sticking it into their phone so they can really get truly individualized, personalized programming for power lifting the way that I would design it, but at a much lower price. So that’s cool. Then just plugging away making as much content as I can, king of content, like six, seven YouTube videos a week, sometimes a juggle life, podcasts, our main one, which is a blast to do, where we get to travel all over the country and talk with lifters and coaches and whether it’s powerlifting, weightlifting coaches or sport performance coaches. The one this week was at the Frank Wintrich who’s the director of football performance, UCLA incredible facility up there and they’re doing a great job and a group that gets all this, all this data and stuff from the technology available and are actually doing good stuff with it. Then our bonus to that beers with Chad, which is some about lifting some about Jiu Jitsu, something about whatever the fuck I want it to be about that week. I think this week’s one is with my buddy [Inaudible 00:36:06]who played, I did his combine prep back like 2012 NFL draft. He was a fourth round pick for the Raiders. I’d out his NFL career knee issues that ended his NFL career and now his transition to acting and he’s made a pretty smooth transition. They’re already getting rolls in CBS and Showtime and I mean he’s just a handsome guys as fuck that guy. But you have to be athletic and good looking. Not all of us get that I guess, so that’s fun doing that stuff. And then traveling around doing clinics. Our next, our next big event is our, SoCal performance summits. So that will be October 20th and 21st in Newport beach. So those of you who live in a less sunny and wonderful places, feel free to come visit us. And that features myself along with five other speakers. So we pretty much cover the gamut of strength and performance. I’ll be talking about program design again, principle-based program design though this examples are generally specific to powerlifting. The idea is can be applied to really any sport training. And once you understand how specificity frames creates a framework for all other decision making. We have three of our PhD holding friends from Renaissance periodization. Dr. Mike we talking about motivational and psychological factors behind diet success or lack of success as it could be. Dr. James Hoffman speaking about recovery adaptive strategies. Dr. Gabrielle speaking about micro biomes and the implications on that for general health and performance. Dr. Quinn Henoch doctor physical therapy based here and in Newport Beach talking about all the great stuff that Quinn does. If people haven’t checked him out. Clinical athlete.com really just exceptional work, has a great network of practitioners that he like, personally vetted every single one of them to say like, yes, you actually work with athletes and aren’t just going to tell someone like, oh, your knee hurts, so stop squatting. So he’ll be presenting about assess athlete assessment and, and creating rehab and return to play strategies. And then Max a team Juggernaut, weightlifting coach, he is talking about are weightlifting coaching progressions. So if you want to teach your athletes how to snatch clean and jerk, I’ll show you how to do that.

Corey Beasley [00:38:51]: Well guys, I’ll be sure to put those links down below. And Chad, thanks for hanging out in the garage and talking with us. I appreciate it.

Chad Wesley [00:38:57]:Yeah, my pleasure, man.

Episode 86 with Chad Wesley Smith – Powerlifting, Strongman and Jiu Jitsu

Full Transcription of Our Podcast with Chad Wesley Smith:

5 Physical Challenges to Test Your Limits