The Get Strong Show: Mastering the Deadlift

Carl:  Welcome back to Super Human Radio. We have a great show planned today. We’ll be joined by Coach Wade Johnson as we do the second installment to The Get Strong Show: Mastering the Deadlift. This is a Christmas gift, a holiday gift from Coach Wade Johnson to you as he goes through the three big lifts using his reactive wave approach.

Wade Johnson, how are you, brother?

Coach Johnson:  Merry Christmas.

Carl:  Before we start the show I have to talk about something. You and I text periodically in the morning and recently you sent me a text and you said something to the effect of, “This is what old strength dudes do.” What time did you get up that morning?

Coach Johnson:  I think that particular morning was 4:00 a.m.

Carl:  Then you get up and have something to eat to be in the gym at 4:00 a.m.?

Coach Johnson:  I was just getting up at that time. I got up at 4:00 simply because the last couple of weekends have been brutal, and my weeks as we’ve talked about are always pretty full and days are fairly long. So Monday and Tuesday I went to bed fairly early. Probably I was asleep by 9:00 and I’m just not an eight-hour guy. I just generally will never sleep that long. I have my alarm set and everything but I woke up at 4:00 and I was wide awake.

Carl:  So you had some pulled pork and a small Full Throttle drink and a cup of coffee.

Coach Johnson:  Yeah. First thing I do is when Abby – my dog – and I get up, we both go to the bathroom, I turn the coffee on, I get 4 ounces of pulled pork out of the fridge and warm it up just a little bit, and I generally have a little small Full Throttle. I know there are a lot of people hissing out there about the energy drink. Walk a mile in my shoes and then we’ll talk about it. I got to just have something to get me rolling so I’m eating the 4 ounces of pulled pork and drinking the Full Throttle.

I check messages and stuff like that while the coffee is brewing. Once I get that done, I start warming up and head downstairs to train. I think that was the last of you who were telling me you were headed to train and that’s where I was headed – it was down in the gym.

Carl:  I believe that that’s the day that you posted a picture of you squatting 725 or so, right?

Coach Johnson:  Yeah. I’m getting into the full gear now and getting wrapped and getting used to the compression of everything where I’m having to hold the weight a little longer. It’s been three years since I’ve done anything like that, so there’s a little bit of adjustment.

That morning I got up, went down stairs and started warming up before everybody else got there. We squatted probably until about 8:00.

Carl:  As we get into this mastering the deadlift segment of the reactive wave training approach that you have developed over the years of your own endeavors of being a world-class power lifter, I still come back to the fact that I’m amazed at how much you warm up and how you warm up. I think that a lot of people get into the gym and they start doing things that are not classically considered warm-up type movements by you. You’re grabbing very, very light weight and just moving the body. That’s all you’re really doing.

Coach Johnson:  That’s one of the things I think I can attribute. But the first and foremost thing I should say about my longevity and strength is just being blessed. There’s question that when God put me on the planet He said, “You’re going to be a strong guy and this is what I made you for.” In that aspect, number one, I’m extremely blessed. I think by doing the things that I do, it has trained me to stay strong, to stay supple, and have the work capacity.

At my age it doesn’t seem like any big deal to me, but people still remark about the amount of volume that I do because I’m in the gym more than three or four times a week. I think what it’s done is it’s made me work in the manner that has kept my conditioning high especially being a large person. There’s been nothing super major. I’ve had my share of injuries but most of them have been kind of nicks and scrapes and nothing that’s really kept me out of the gym.

Carl:  Let’s start with the warm up for the deadlift. Interestingly enough, you’re doing things like leg extensions and hammer strength seated, leg curls, and pull-downs, which one would not look at those. Give your warm up for the deadlift day.

Coach Johnson:  When I walk down in the gym, this is the first thing I do. Most of my stuff is plate loaded. It’s very basic, very simple. I do have some pin select machines but they’re basic machines and then it’s basically barbells, dumbbells, and free weight. But we have a plate loaded leg extension. It’s a plate loaded combo leg extension leg curl. It was something Wes and I bought early in the days of the Ogre Compound because I was getting the most bang for my buck at that time. I put a 50 pound plate on that and I’ll do 25 reps.

Basically, I have four movements that I do and I’ll go from machine to machine until I do three cycles. But just to explain what I do, I’ll do 50 pounds for 25 reps, 75 pounds for 15, and 100 pounds for 15 with the leg extension. I have a hammer strength seated leg curl. Usually whatever is left on on the machine is what I do and it will range from anywhere from 50-70 pounds usually and I’ll do three sets of 15 with that.

Then I have a plate loaded pull down and I usually always use the neutral grip pull down. Occasionally I’ll do 50 pounds for 20 and then 75 and 100 pounds for 15 reps. And I have a hammer strength deadlift machine that we use as a shrug machine and almost always there’s 140 pounds on it, and I’ll do three sets of 20 for that. It takes me – I don’t know, it just depends. If I’m there by myself, if I get up early enough and I get down there, how quickly I’m moving. Like right now it’s winter time so I’ll turn on a couple of heaters and do a set of leg extensions. I’m doing all my morning stuff the gym up and rolling. But in that time, in about 10-15 minute time I’m going to do these 12 sets. As people are coming in, I’ll do a couple of sets of very light reverse hyper just to give me a stretch and pump some blood, push some fluids into the spine. That’s what I do to prepare simply to get ready to train.

Carl:  The hammer strength shrug machine, is that the thing that you grab the handles in a neutral? It’s kind of a cantilever and you load it on the sides with the plate. I never knew that that’s what that was.

We’re going to go into the next round of movements as we prepare to master the deadlift, which is a very, very important movement and one that I will start getting back to. This morning I was in the gym and someone had the bar loaded with 225 on it and I went over and I did 15 reps with 225. The whole time I was doing it I realized I was anxious because I’m waiting for something else to snap in that leg and I’m like, “Okay, I have to be very, very cautious.”

But you know what, when they take those rats and they cut one of their hind limb muscles, the other one super compensates and get strong. So I got to believe that over time (maybe a year or years), I should be able to take the muscles that are still connected in my left hamstring and get them to do some of the work that the other ones that are no longer connected will do. So I do want to master or re-master the deadlift.

Give your website, Wade.

Coach Johnson:  You can find me on Facebook. I have a personal account and so does Wesly. We have a forum, www.WeightliftingDiscussion.com. You can find the forum there and that’s for me and some of the guys that train at the compound. Some online guys post their training.

Carl:  Reach out to Coach Johnson if you’re looking for someone to help you master some of the deadlift, the bench press, and we will also be doing the squat next.

It says here that you rotate the front squat biweekly. Is that a warm-up movement or is that one of the heavy movements you started doing?

Coach Johnson:  Both. Let me explain why. I know a lot of people and I’ve referenced Nathan – this young man from Egypt that I’m coaching – he’s one of these guys. He’s a naturally gifted puller. He is so stinking strong and scary. He comes in, he puts a plate on, and does X amount of reps until he gets to his working weight. He just keeps adding a plate until he decides whatever his working weight is going to be. That works for him.

For people that pull well and that is a lift that they excel at, that has traditionally always worked. I am not a gifted puller. I never had been. I’m built to bench and I’m built to squat. Deadlift has always been my albatross of the three lifts. When I came in and I warmed up with 135 and worked that to my working weight, I just never responded. I never showed any real progress.

I always noticed two things when I get to a meet. Everything I do is: how is this going to transfer to the platform? How is this going to help me lift more? How is this going to help me increase my total?

My conditioning was such, by nature how I trained when we get to the deadlift on meet day, I would be somewhat flat, somewhat tired. It can be a long day. But I always noticed also that I always deadlifted better in the meet than I ever did in training. A lot of people say, “That’s great. That’s when you need to have it the most.”

I looked at it a little deeper. I need to do something that’s going to improve my conditioning, but how do I improve my conditioning while making my deadlift better? If I’m squatting in the meet and my deadlift is better then how can I address these issues?

I know a lot of people who have front squatted and they’ll front squat heavy as an alternative to deadlifting as method to increase their deadlift. Because of my Olympic lifting, I thought, “Let’s go with the front squat and let’s see how this does.” All of us that are built like me have seen a substantial gain in our deadlift by doing this front squat.

The rotation is we will have one week where we will squat singles. We’ll work up to either a max single or just a heavy single depending on what’s going on where we are in the cycle. In the following week, we will do a heavy set of triples. We’re not trying to do a set of one each week. We’re just warming up to a certain weight and going on to another movement. There is a reason.

One of the things that I’ve noticed is that if you don’t stay upright in the front squat, you're going to use all your lower back or you're going to dump the weight. This trains us to stay as erect as possible when we’re deadlifting.

Carl:  If forces you to get deeper into the deadlift using your legs as opposed to leaning forward with your back.

Coach Johnson:  Right. You’ll learn to stay tight, stay erect, and you’ll learn how to make those muscles work. It’s not enough to pull in a deadlift. If you watched any of my videos or if you listened to me in the past, it’s not enough to pull up. The weight is in front of us, so by nature of that, it’s going to want to pull us onto our toes, pull us forward, pull the shoulders and chest down. So we have to pull up and back. That’s what’s going to make the weight come up in a straight line or even up and back a little bit.

The real good deadlifters you’ll see from the bottom of the shin up into the top of the knee, you can see where the bar scrapes their shin all the way up. We’re trying to pull up and back. By nature of doing that it also decreases the range of motion. The shorter the range of motion, the more weight lifted. 

Carl:  I actually thought about wearing hockey shin guards because my shin gets so banged up. It’s funny because when I told Alisa I probably won’t be deadlifting much any longer, she said, “Oh, good because your legs look so horrible!” They do. The front of my legs looks disgusting.

When the bar first makes contact, it takes a divot out. Then there’s this long scrape all the way up the shin. I love deadlifting but the pain of my legs afterwards where I scraped them is really something that I have a hard time dealing with. In a competition, could I wear shin guards?   

Coach Johnson:  It depends on the federation. I’ve been the chairman of the board for the SPF for a while. At one of our annual board meetings, just in this day and age with blood and everything else, we created a rule (most federations have it as well) to where you wear a knee-high sock. That will help protect it. People would wear braces. Some federations allow shin protectors especially for training. Anyone who has seen my knees – shins especially – I’ve got the little divot permanently in each one and it’s just never going to go away. 

Carl:  Then you move to the trap bar. Is that right?

Coach Johnson:  Yes, that is correct.

Carl:  Why not just do traditional deadlifts? Why do trap bar deadlifts?

Coach Johnson:  Here’s why. For the guys who are not naturally gifted pullers or they're gifted pullers, we tend to just train the lift way too heavy. There are going to be guys out there who will be shaking their head and that’s fine. I’ve done all sorts of different things to try to get my deadlift to move.

I’ve trained with Steve Goggins and I’ve watched him pull 300 kilos in that 661 (for those who are counting). I watched him do a triple like it was 315. I think Steve could swing a golf club and if he focused, it would help his deadlift. That’s not to diminish because there’s no one that trains harder than him. That doesn’t diminish anything.

Carl:  I watched him bench press and I’ve watched him deadlift. The guy pec presses unbelievable weight. He leans so forward on his squat you’d think to yourself, he’s got to have a bulletproof lower back. It’s unbelievable.

Coach Johnson:  That’s where his bread and butter is. It looks like a country ham on each side of his spine when he was at his biggest. When he lifted 275, it was one of the craziest things I’ve seen. I’ve seen him squat upright in training, but that’s his bread and butter. That’s how he gets down in the hall and gets it done. My point is, Steve is one of those guys who technically is sound and just physically gifted to pull.

A lot of us are not that gifted. So the thing with the trap bar – you got a more ergonomically stable point to pull from. That’s where we pull our heaviest weights from.

We pull with two different bars. I have raised handled trap bars and flat handled trap bars. We do a four-week wave. We will do raise handled trap bar first. Week one is singles heavy. Week two is triples heavy. That is followed by the flat handled bar and the same method is used. Singles one week, triples another, and then we rotate that in and out.

Carl:  What is the advantage of using that raised handle? It’s just a couple of inches off the ground, isn’t it?

Coach Johnson:  About three inches. There are a couple of reasons. One is it allows us to overload the pull and we’re going to pull a lot more weight with that than we’re ever going to pull with a straight bar. But by nature of where the hands are, you take a tremendous amount of stress off the lower back. It’s not unlike the decline bench for the flat bench.

Always understand if you choose to do this method that the decline is not about the number, it’s about the consistent work. All that is is assistance – developing pressing power to increase our pressing on the flat bench. It is the same principle with the trap bar. We’re going to build to use way more weight, especially repetition work or even singles for that matter, than we’re ever going to be able to do with a straight bar. It’s the same concept with the decline.

In my heyday, I did 605 for a triple on the decline. There is no way without a shirt that I could touch 605 for one. But it ultimately pushed me on to where I benched over 700 pounds on the flat. 

Carl:  Do you think that the trap bar is a better alternative for me with my left hamstring injury?

Coach Johnson:  Absolutely. To anyone that has any kind of injury that has been serious but can still pull. A lot of people pull with an alternating grip. When they do, that creates imbalances. The longer we do it, the more that imbalance becomes prominent. With that inverted grip where you're ergonomically in the best position to pull especially raised handle, there’s a certain amount of stress that is taken away and your body pulls equally. Because of the raised handle, we’re going to be able to pull more weight. So we’re developing pulling power that is going to help us pull more weight when we go to the competition pull.

Carl:  Do you go right to the competition pull after doing the trap bar pull?

Coach Johnson:  That is correct. Everybody has their own warm-up method, whatever they do to warm up and get ready. But we front squat first trap bar and then we go to our competition pull.

Carl:  Your body pretty much had some stress supplied to it here. Are you going to go to your competition pull using very heavy weight?

Coach Johnson:  No. We have a percentage weight program that we use, just some basic numbers. The wave itself is short. It’s a five-week period and the volume is higher. As we add weight each week, we pull a few sets of weight from the load that we use the volume load. The idea is not unlike a meet, you're pretty exhausted. You've done two movements and you're tired.

I said this before. When you're tired, when you're exhausted, and you still have to make a lift, form and technique carry you through. It doesn’t matter if you're tired. If you execute the form in the correct manner, that’s going to carry you through.

We’ll use a sub maximal weight and focus on our form and learn to be more dynamic. It’s not at 50%. It’s a higher percentage. And the work is hard. But we’re not in the 90-95% range where pulls almost never.

Carl:  When you say this is a five-week wave, it starts out light and gets heavier or it starts out heavy and gets lighter?

Coach Johnson:  It starts out light and the volume will be exceptionally high. Our first week is 15 singles and it will diminish.

Carl:  Why do you call it singles and not rep? Are you putting the bar down? Are you putting the weight down?

Coach Johnson:  We will execute the lift. The deadlift does not have a centric and concentric movement in the lift. You have to overcome inertia to get the weight going.

We’ve done our rep work with front squat. We’ve done rep work even with singles, toward doing multiple sets with the trap bar. We’re already in a state of fatigue or pre-exhaustion. We will do short rest intervals. The first week is 15 singles. It’s no more than a minute rest between sets. So you really have to focus on form. You really have to focus on being dynamic.

We have all seen better form results from this. Because of the work that we do in the frontend, when we do go to test, when we do have a heavy session, we’re in better condition than everybody. We have yet to have someone fail using this method. Everybody continues to hit PRs.   

Carl:  We’re going to talk more about how this cycle plays out, how many times a week you're doing this, where this fits into, and the original discussion about the bench press.

What else are we doing in alternating this from the floor competition pull wave approach here? Is there anything else we need to add to it?

Coach Johnson:  There are a lot of mini waves going on, so the stimulus is close in proximity but it’s always changing. Let’s start at the beginning. We front squatted, we have trap bar deadlifted, we’ve done our first week of competition pulls. The first three weeks of that mini cycle – after that we have a percentage we’ll use and we will add chain to the bar.

The weight lightens up from what we were doing from our competition pull. We’re adding some accommodating resistance. That’s Westside barbell. The weight is light enough that we can be very dynamic from the floor and then the weight gets heavier as you pull the chain from the floor. We’ll do three sets of two with that.

Generally, we’re not progressive with the bar weight. We’ll be progressive with the chain weight. It’s all by feel. If you're having a great day, we keep adding chain, and if it’s tough then we have a minimum amount that we agree to keep on there – and that’s what we do. It is not for the faint of heart. I’m not going to BS you. It is a hard and difficult session. But if pull is something that you struggle with, this is going to make you a better puller. You will come out of this stronger without question. 

Carl:  Do the chains that you use have a specific type?

Coach Johnson:  These chains that I have you get from a wire rigging company. Some of them will sell to the public. You just have to call. I’ve had people find 3/8 and sometimes even half-inch chain at a local hardware store. Ideally you’d want a heavier duty bigger chain because of the weight, but if that’s what you can get, the idea is to add some accommodating resistance. That’s really what we’re after here.

Carl:  What about assistance work?

Coach Johnson:  A lot of it is depending on time. This is not something you can just blaze through because everything is heavy. If I have the time, generally we follow that up with a kettlebell stiff leg deadlift. It’s light and high reps. I’ll do three sets of 15. The heaviest kettlebell I have is 88 pounds. I’m a big, strong guy. I’ve done kettlebell swings with an 88. No problem. But at that point, you're in a pretty good state of fatigue. So we’re just flushing blood into the lower back and into the hamstrings. From there, if we have time, I’ll do some prone leg curls and I always try to do calf and tibia work, and then we do ab work.   

Carl:  What do you do for the tibia? You do weighted toe raises or something?

Coach Johnson:  I actually have a tibia machine.

Carl:  I’ve seen it. It’s real small. It sits on the floor.

Coach Johnson:  It’s one of those things that a lot of people overlook. Every gym and every school from high school on should have a couple of this for their athletes. All of my lady clients that train in the evening just baseline fitness – they're not competitive athletes – they use the tibia at least once a week. 

Carl:  I’ve heard some things that if you don’t train the tibia, you can get something called compartmentalized distress of the leg where the calf and gastroc are so strong that you got to get pain. It’s painful for a while.

Coach Johnson:  This goes back to when we have Wes on the show where you find these muscular imbalances. It’s like people that are so quad dominant, which is one of my problems early on when I began competing. I was such a quad dominant squatter. You would think it was because I pulled conventionally at the time that I’d be a great puller. But when it came to really hitting a bigger weight, my squat went into the stratosphere and not so much my deadlift. That was one of the imbalances that I had to work on. But that’s exactly right.

The big thing we’re looking for is conditioning, keeping those ankles supple for support when we’re lifting, and because we train so many different athletes. With the women, if I had to walk in those heels I’d be screwed. Those ankles have to be supple and they have to be conditioned. As you said, people will train their calves and train them a lot. I suggest that you do. But if you don’t do that antagonistic movement – just like training your forearms, everybody does the wrist curls or wrist roller.

Carl:  They don’t do the reverse.

Coach Johnson:  We have bands in the gym for that for your fingers where you just push out, push out, push out. Nothing hard. We don’t want to create any imbalances, and that’s the reason why we do the tibia. If you don’t have one, get one.

Carl:  Also, you do ab work. Do you do ab work just on this day or do you do ab work every workout?

Coach Johnson:  If I do it right, my biggest issue now versus when I was competing all the time is simply schedule. When I do it right, I will do at least 100 reps daily. If I don’t get it in the morning, I will get it in the evening.

Carl:  Will you do that broken up in sets of 20 or you do 100?

Coach Johnson:  We’re always looking for that magic bullet. I’m going to tell you something: it does not exist. I don’t care if you do a steroid enema. If there’s no magic bullet, you have to put that work in.

They ask, “What do you suggest?”

I suggest you do an ab movement that you’ll actually do.

“Is that as good as planks?”

I don’t care. If you do planks, do them. If you want to do crunches, do them. If you want to do leg raises, do them. What counts is that you get that work in.

That’s the first thing we’re going to skip. There are so few people out there saying, “Hey, I can’t wait to work my abs.”

It’s tough on deadlift day because we’re front squatting, we’re trap bar pulling, we’re pulling from the floor, we may be doing chains. But when you do your assistance work, superset a set of 10 or set of 20 abs. Doing something is going to equate way higher than doing absolutely nothing.

Carl:  What about grip work? Obviously there are a lot of guys out there with strong backs but the weak link is their grip, so they lift with straps. Training with straps, first of all, is it appropriate to do? What about grip work? Should we be doing independent grip work as well?

Coach Johnson:  That is really dependent upon the lifter. I’ve got a couple of guys that do have grip issues and this is where I want to caution you. Everybody runs out and gets those grippers and all that kind of stuff, and that’s great. I’m not discouraging you from doing that. But if you think it’s because you can close the number two captain to crust, if that’s going to eliminate a grip issue with the deadlift, that doesn’t always coincide.

Ed Coan who is arguably, probably thegreatest powerlifter of all time, who has monster hands, couldn’t close the number two. But I saw that guy at 220 deadlift over 900 pounds.

Carl:  Grip strength is position-specific. In other words, when you have your hands let’s say neutral, you may have one grip strength but when you have your hands up either pronated up or down you may have a totally different grip strength.

Coach Johnson:  We’ve had to do some things that are very unorthodox. There are guys out there that will listen and that have read my writing or have listened and it’s gotten back to me. Technically that’s inaccurate. Let me tell you something about technical accuracy. If I can get the guy’s form to where it keeps him from getting injured and I had to do something inaccurate and it adds 20 pounds to his lift, you’re welcome to call me whatever you want to because my job is to get results.

We have to do things sometimes that are not what is typical. My training, while it’s steep in the basics, there is some things that are unorthodox. I don’t know how many people actually use the decline or actually use the trap bar. Some of this stuff is old school like it was old school before we knew about old school. It’s not necessarily dinosaur training – that’s a different ball game.

The bottom line is we have found ways to improve and make the most of the training time that we have. As far as grip work, we do a couple of things. As opposed to just isolating the grip, isolating the grip, we’ll use a Rolling Thunder. It’s kind of a strong man grip implement. It’s a two-inch handle and it is on a rotating handle, so you can only have the thumb and fingers down. You can’t cheat and curl it or anything like that. By nature of how it rolls that weight will pull your hands straight down.

I’ve got video that I’ll post later. People have a tendency when they squeeze that deadlift bar to really squeeze their hands. What that does is that isolates all the muscles in the hand. Those are tiny, tiny, tiny muscles and that’s great for about a 5-second burst, but if you’re grinding out a big deadlift it might take 7, 8, 9, even 10 seconds to lock out and then you have to hold it long enough and show control to get a down command. Those muscles will fatigue really quickly, the hand open up and hope opens up and you lose the lift.

I always tell people, squeeze from the forearm. You’re squeezing the hand into a cradle. If you do that, if you’re sitting at your desk or in your car and you learn to squeeze that forearm and squeeze your hand into a cradle, there’s no fatigue going to your hands. You’re putting that stress into the forearm where there’s a lot more muscle tissue and there’s a lot more endurance. So I’ll put weight into a power rack. As opposed to doing something crazy like 200 pounds over what someone can pull, will work within 100 pounds of what the goal weight is for their pull for that cycle and we’ll rotate it in and out.

The weight just moves enough to where they lock out and will hold it for a five count maybe a ten count and do only a couple of sets. It doesn’t take a whole lot of work. If you’re doing enough – with all the pulling, we pull at the trap bar, we pull competition, and then we’re doing some weights where we’re doing chain work, if your hands hold up, that grip is going to come along. But learn to cradle. Learn to cradle your hands versus squeezing that hand.

If you learn to cradle, now we’re creating lengths and you shorten your stroke. If you squeeze that bar up into your hands to get into the proper pulling position, you’re increasing the range of motion.

Carl:  Even if it’s just an inch. You’re right. I want to talk about how often do you train the deadlift and how do you work it in with the bench press workout that we talked about in the last session?

How often do you train the deadlift?

Coach Johnson:  I train it once a week.

Carl:  Why don’t you use twice a week like you do with the bench press?

Coach Johnson:  Remember with the bench press we’re trying to increase the pressing power and minimize the impact to the shoulders. We train flat heavy on Monday and then we’re able to train heavy again by nature of the decline angle which really takes a lot of the shoulder out. Because we’re using the back and the legs when we train squat, we use the same rest period in between 72 hours from squat and deadlift.

Carl:  Give me a model of what it would look like. Start out with a basic week starting with Monday. What do I train on Monday? Do I train bench press on Monday because I’m going to train it again on Thursday?

Coach Johnson:  I train bench press on Monday, then squat is on Tuesday, Thursday is decline. Monday to Thursday, being 72-hour rest period between the two events, and then Friday we deadlift. Again, that’s 72 hours between the squat and the deadlift.

Carl:  We will talk about the squat on the next session because obviously that’s the last of the three movements. The reality is that while you’re not training the deadlift twice in a week you are training some of the core muscle groups of the primary movers twice week because of the squat.

Coach Johnson:  Yes. That is correct.

Carl:  Do you think that if you didn’t do trap bar work and front squat work, you could front squat work on squat day and actuate those muscles a second time during the week?

Coach Johnson:  I guess you could for me because of how we squat. Keep in mind we do our competition squat and then for assistance we are generally doing one to two types of other types of squats. We’re pushing the threshold. I’m not going to kid you. When you see this on paper a lot of times it doesn’t look like much, then at the end of that work week the volume is very, very high and I feel like that is something that has always been missing in a lot of the traditional training protocols. There’s simply not enough volume. You can get strong but you don’t have the conditioning that will keep you where you’re conditioned for the rigors of training over a long period of time.

That’s one of the things that is really missing – having that conditioning. It goes back to how long I’ve been able to stay in the strength game. It is simply due to being in a high state of condition for strength training.

Carl:  Do you do any traditional a cardio like walking on treadmill and stuff like that?

Coach Johnson:  I don’t walk a whole lot just simply because of a knee injury that I have. I do do it but not often. I use recumbent bikes primarily. I generally will do 20-minute sessions, two to three times a week. A lot of it is based on time, especially as I started dropping weight. I’ll do two to three cardio sessions a week that are strictly for cardio.

Carl:  Interesting. Obviously that’s part of the conditioning equation.

Coach Johnson:  There’s no question. This is a conversation that Louie and I have had. He’s like me regardless of the training. He said, “You’re doing the cardio for the heart, that’s just for living.” I understand doing a bunch of cardio can be diminishing the strength and everything. But look at Louie, look at how long he’s been in the game and that guy has had every conceivable injury and all the other craziness that we’ve heard stories about. But he does cardio and he does cardio because that’s what it takes to keep him as healthy as possible.

Keep in mind that these are four sessions. I’m in the gym on Wednesday and Saturday because I do Olympic lifting and I do my auxiliary work and maybe potentially we do a show on the auxiliary stuff because that is a crucial part of my conditioning and my prehab/rehab work.

Carl:  What about the whole discussion about things like chiropractors and stuff like massage, do you subscribe to any of that?

Coach Johnson:  Let me tell you a quick story. Early on in my career, we’ve talked about when I was a pec-delt bencher and I injured my shoulder. I was very, very concerned that I had injured my rotator cuff. My training partner at that time is a massage therapist and he encouraged me to see a chiropractor friend of his. At that time I was still very green in the support. I was like, “Oh, chiropractors quack, etc.” It got bad enough to where my shoulder pain would wake me up in the middle of the night and my bench has stalled for months and I was like, “I need to find out if this is injured truly and what I need to do.”

Reluctantly I went to the chiropractor and he said, “Let’s test the rotators. Let me do a couple of movements and that’s going to tell us if there’s damage. Without x-ray, without you going to a specialist, I’m not going to be able to tell specifically what’s going on. But let’s do some basic test.”

He did some movements and some resistance and he said, “This shoulder is nice and snug. Let me lay you out.” He was looking at my spine and said, “It’s not there.” And he lays me face down and he said, “Now I can see it. It’s not your shoulder, it’s your neck.” He did the typical neck crack but he did a couple of other things with my shoulders. Immediately I could breathe better like it opened up my nasal cavities.

Carl:  I’ve heard that before.

Coach Johnson:  From that very moment my – one, is I was able to sleep. It wouldn’t wake me up. You’ve known me for a long time. I’ll have stuff on me that hurt and I’ll just ignore it. It’s like, “Whatever!” That’s the price you pay for you know trying to squat 1000 pounds. This would be to the point that it would wake me up. Immediately had a tremendous impact on me and that’s when I started developing the method on how to become a lat bencher. I’ve been a different bencher since that point.

A friend of mine is kinetic therapist chiropractor and he’s even certified in acupuncture. That was imperative when I was training for the 2400 total. I was out there once a month sometimes twice a month getting adjusted and getting worked on and getting massage work. It is crucial. Wes would stay on me being a massage therapist as well. He would treat my tough areas, my forearms, my traps, and my lats. He was constantly working on me.

Carl:  That’s interesting. The next discussion we’re going to have we’re going to do the squat. After that we can talk about some of the other things you think are missing from these three prong discussion we’ve had so far so that people can have a complete 10,000 foot view of what the reactive wave program is, how it works and how they can train for these three lifts. I think it’s amazing. I think this is fantastic.

I’ll tell you what I really like about it. The level of sensibility that you trained with, the attention you give to things like warming up, the attention that you give to things like cardio, the attention that you give to things like making sure that you’re not training too frequently really speaks to a long whole view of this. And with that long whole view you can get to any weight that you want. You’re not trying to get there this year, you could get there in three or four or five years. But you’ll be able to train for three or four or five years consistently and keep building on that foundation.

Coach Johnson:  I completely agree with that. I’ve trained a young man that’s basically family – just to give you an idea. If I’m with him at an event or a function or whatever the case may be, and he is introducing his family, he introduces his father first and then he introduces me as his second father. I’m as close to him as I can possibly be without him being my own flesh and blood. I took over his training when he was a sophomore in high school. He actually turns 25 in the next week or so and I trained him all the way through college and he currently trains with us in the morning.

I told him: “My goal is immediately is to make you better at the sport endeavors that you have currently. But more of the foundation that we lay down now – when you hang up the cleats whenever that may be, when you hang up the wrestling shoes whenever that may be, you still want to be able to be fit. You still want to be able to lift weight and you still want to look and feel a certain way. I don’t want you to be that guy that when he’s 40 in the gym that can’t bench press 225 is talking about what he did in high school. I want you to be able to talk about what you’re capable of doing when you’re 40.”

That is what the training is. It’s just like we talked about last time: be the tortoise. I’ve got a lot of my online guys will have on their YouTube channels, eat the elephant. When they start getting cranky or when they start getting impatient I’ll remind them, “Eat the elephant.” It is not strength. It is not a fast process. It is not.  

A lot of times gangs will come in spurts or bunches. For four weeks you’ll hit PR and everything and then for the next three months you got to work your ass off and you make no movement at all. Be the tortoise, that rabbit never ever once wins the race. It never happens. If you get in a hurry that’s when things go awry, so you have to be methodical. You have to be like Brandon Lilly, 365 strong. You have to be strong every day of the week, every week of the month, every month of the year. You have to be consistent.

I’ll say this again, the premise of strength is really simple but it’s really effin’ hard. It is not an easy process and strength is a very selfish and demanding – for lack of a better word – mistress. It requires your attention and focus at all times and when you don’t, that’s when we run into some problems.

Here’s some science for you people that want to deload or take time off. This is science. This isn’t theory. It isn’t hearsay. Within three days, 72 hours of inactivity atrophy begins and strength loss occurs. The body is meant to be in motion, so do the things necessary. If you’re hurt, train around it. Do rehab work. Do whatever you can but if your goal is to be better, you must be doing something. You have to be in motion.

Carl:  Wade, thanks so much, brother.

Coach Johnson:  Always good to be with you, Carl. Merry Christmas to you and Alisa.

Carl:  Same to you.