In this episode, 10-time CrossFit Games champion Thomas Miazga joins Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, and Dr. Mike Lane to share the extraordinary path that took him from a childhood shaped by cerebral palsy to the Paralympic Games, elite adaptive CrossFit competition, and beyond. Tom reflects on discovering freedom and athletic identity in the water, qualifying for the 2008 Beijing Paralympics just 18 months after returning to competitive swimming, and how a devastatingly close miss for the London Games eventually led him toward coaching, CrossFit, and a new definition of what was possible. The crew also digs into the practical side of training an adaptive athlete: building strength around the individual, managing high upper-body training volume, using stable equipment to create safe loading opportunities, and prioritizing training economy over unnecessary technical complexity. Tom explains how CrossFit transformed his independence in daily life, helped him become a 10-time Games champion, and continues to fuel his pursuit of HYROX, Ironman racing, and long-term health. Most importantly, this is a conversation about refusing to let a diagnosis, a scoreboard, or someone else's expectations define your potential.

Dr. Sean Pastuch sits down with Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, and Dr. Mike Lane to talk about what he's learned the hard way about chronic pain, discipline and how to get back to training pain free. Pulling from his new book *Live More, Hurt Less*, Sean breaks down why so many lifters end up organizing their entire life around avoiding pain, and how that strategy inevitably makes training less fun than it used to be. He shares his own story of dealing with seven years of debilitating neck pain, and how nothing changed until he finally had a compelling reason to change it. That meant hiring a coach, getting serious about sleep and nutrition, delegating the stressors he was carrying, and making recovery the highest priority in his life. The conversation digs into how the story you tell yourself, the things you do every day, and the people you surround yourself with either reinforce your limitations or help you take your agency back. Sean gets practical about how to actually talk to doctors so you can get what you need, as well as how to set real expectations between coaches and clients. The team also gets into what ethical sales actually looks like in coaching, why good coaches need to screen for real commitment, and how the best practitioners stay directionally correct without pretending they have all the answers. If pain, fear, or stagnation has made your world smaller than you want it to be, this episode lays out a framework for rebuilding capacity, getting stronger, restoring confidence, and getting back to the things that actually matter to you.  

In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, blood flow restriction specialist Dr. Michael MacPherson joins Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, and Dr. Mike Lane to break down how BFR training can be used for far more than post-injury rehabilitation. Michael explains how strategically restricting blood flow creates a hypoxic environment that increases type II muscle fiber recruitment, metabolic stress, and cellular swelling—even when training with relatively light loads. The result is a powerful tool for building or maintaining strength and muscle while reducing the mechanical stress placed on joints and connective tissue. They also discuss limb occlusion pressure, why cuff design matters, and why modern BFR protocols don't need to be brutally painful to work. The conversation expands into practical applications for athletes, lifters, and anyone looking to improve performance or recovery. Michael explains how BFR walking, cycling, leg curls, Nordics, plyometrics, and even passive recovery sessions can be incorporated into training, with walking protocols as simple as 10–15 minutes at roughly 30–60% limb occlusion pressure. The team also explores how BFR may help athletes strengthen commonly neglected areas like the hamstrings without adding significant training fatigue, making it especially useful during heavy training blocks, travel, injury rehabilitation, and return-to-play programs. Whether you're trying to add muscle, protect irritated joints, improve conditioning, or address weak links without piling on more heavy loading, this episode provides a practical framework for adding BFR to your training.

In this episode, Doug Larson joins Coach Travis Mash and Dr. Mike Lane to break down what it takes to build a scalable strength and conditioning program for police officers. Mash shares his new partnership with the Winston-Salem Police Department, beginning with a six-week, 15-person pilot designed to refine onboarding, testing, training, and ongoing monitoring before expanding to roughly 600 officers and support staff. The team explains why tactical fitness must be built around a job-task analysis: officers may spend hours sitting in a patrol vehicle, then suddenly need to sprint, grapple, drag a person, or make a high-stakes decision while wearing a vest and duty gear. The conversation covers how to assess reactive strength, tissue readiness, total-body power, relative strength, aerobic capacity, and repeat-effort conditioning without injuring or overwhelming the people being tested. They examine why generic standards like a mile-and-a-half run or 175-pound dummy drag may not fully reflect real-world demands, how a larger fitness reserve protects situational awareness under stress, and why cardiovascular conditioning can be a survival skill, not just a performance metric. They also discuss the mobility problems created by long hours in a patrol car, including restricted hips, shoulders, and lower backs, and how loaded mobility and heavy isometrics can help tactical professionals, and aging athletes, stay capable, resilient, and ready when the stakes are highest.

In this episode, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, and Dr. Mike Lane break down everything athletes need to know about protein: what it does, how much you actually need, and how to make it work in the real world. They dismantle the myth that the body can only use 30–35 grams per meal, explain why protein needs should scale with lean body mass and training goals, and show how distributing protein across three or four meals can support muscle growth, recovery, and performance without obsessing over a narrow post-workout window. The conversation then compares animal and plant proteins, whole foods and powders, whey and casein, and the potential role of collagen for connective tissue. They explain why the calories accompanying a protein source matter (beef ribeye, chicken breast, lentils, and peanut butter deliver radically different amounts of fat, carbohydrates, and fiber) and how your choices should change when gaining muscle versus losing fat. From ready-to-drink shakes and egg-white blends to pre-bed protein and workout-day carbohydrates, this episode provides a simple framework for hitting your protein target while adapting the details to your body, schedule, and goals.

Dr. Eric Trexler returns to Barbell Shrugged to break down one of the most misunderstood subjects in fitness: how the body adapts to dieting, exercise, and energy restriction. Eric, a Duke University researcher with a PhD in Human Movement Science, joins Doug Larson, Dr. Mike Lane, and Coach Travis Mash to explain the constrained energy expenditure model, why cardio does not always produce the linear calorie burn people expect, and why the context of your diet matters. They cover metabolic adaptation, under-fueling in endurance and weight-class athletes, and why the body creates more friction as you get leaner or try to train hard on a fixed calorie budget. The crew also gets practical about fat-loss plateaus, "weight-loss resistance," diet breaks, refeeds, and reverse dieting. Eric explains why tracking errors often masquerade as metabolic problems, why getting extremely lean carries real performance and lifestyle tradeoffs, and why slower timelines are often the smarter move. He also shares what the research actually says about using refeeds and diet breaks to preserve metabolism and why aggressively beginning recovery after a hard diet may be more effective than dragging out a reverse diet. Whether you are cutting for a weight-class sport, chasing a physique goal, or simply trying to lose body fat without losing your mind, this episode will help you make better decisions with your nutrition and training. Links: Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram

In this episode, OG Barbell Shrugged crew member Alex Maclin joins Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, and Dr. Mike Lane to talk nutrition for jiu-jitsu, combat sports, and high-performance training. Alex shares his evolution from overweight beginner to Olympic weightlifter, nutrition coach, and four-stripe brown belt, explaining how his personal nutrition shifted from fat loss to strength, aesthetics, and now athletic performance and recovery. The crew breaks down practical fueling strategies for grapplers, including why total calories come first, why carbohydrates are king for high-intensity scrambles, and how protein, hydration, sodium, and nutrient timing all affect recovery and performance. Alex explains how to eat before training, what to use during longer or hotter sessions, why tournament-day nutrition must account for adrenaline and digestion, and how caffeine can help or hurt depending on arousal. Whether you train jiu-jitsu, CrossFit, weightlifting, or just want to perform better, this episode gives you a simple framework for eating like an athlete. Links: Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram

In this episode, Doug Larson, Dr. Mike Lane, and Coach Travis Mash break down the real-world science of training for aesthetics: getting leaner, building muscle, and looking better without losing sight of performance, health, and longevity. Mike opens with a wild DEXA scan story about breast implants and body composition testing, explaining how implants can skew lean mass and bone density numbers. The takeaway is simple: body composition tools are useful, but only when you understand what they are actually measuring. The crew then moves into the big rocks of physique change: nutrition, training volume, cardio, consistency, and choosing a style of training you can actually sustain. Travis shares how endurance work, reduced alcohol, better hydration, and family-wide nutrition habits helped him get leaner, while Doug and Mike explain why diet is usually the fastest lever for fat loss and lifting is the signal that helps preserve or build muscle. Whether you love bodybuilding, powerlifting, CrossFit, martial arts, climbing, or just want to look good and feel capable, the message is clear: train most days, eat mostly whole foods, and build habits you can repeat for years. Links: Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram

For years, one of the biggest criticisms of CrossFit has been that, Given every workout is different, it's difficult to measure and track training stress in a meaningful way. Dr. Jerry Mangine joins Doug Larson, Travis Mash, and Mike Lane to discuss a decade of research aimed at solving that problem. Jerry breaks down how his team analyzed every CrossFit Open workout ever performed, developed equations to quantify workload across different movements, and created a system for classifying workouts based on total work performed and the rate at which athletes complete it. The conversation explores why some workouts produce specific adaptations, how coaches can better manage training stress, and what the future of CrossFit programming might look like when workload can finally be measured objectively.   The discussion expands into broader athletic performance, including the impact of body type on CrossFit success, critical power testing, VO2 max, lactate tolerance, gymnastics versus weightlifting backgrounds, and how AI may soon automate performance analysis across sports. Jerry also shares his vision as founding director of Kennesaw State's new Human Sport Performance and Well-Being Research Center, where researchers are developing new technologies to help athletes and coaches make smarter decisions. Whether you're a CrossFit athlete, strength coach, sport scientist, or simply interested in how performance is measured and improved, this episode offers a fascinating look at where athletic monitoring and training optimization are headed next. Links: Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram

Peptides have exploded in popularity over the last few years, but separating legitimate science from marketing hype has become increasingly difficult. In this episode, Dr. Kyle Gillett joins Doug Larson, Dr. Mike Lane, and Coach Travis Mash for a deep dive into the world of peptides, growth hormone secretagogues, GLP-1 medications, and emerging therapies that may shape the future of performance, recovery, body composition, and longevity. They unpack what peptides actually are, which compounds have meaningful clinical research behind them, and where caution is still warranted, especially when it comes to growth factors, angiogenesis, and potential cancer-related concerns. The conversation covers BPC-157, TB-500, Tesamorelin, Retatrutide, Selank, PT-141, myostatin inhibitors, mitochondrial peptides, and the next generation of obesity and metabolic health drugs. Along the way, the group explores practical questions athletes and health-conscious individuals are asking every day: Can peptides help recovery? Are there compounds that improve cognition or libido? What are the tradeoffs of GLP-1 medications? And how close are we to drugs that can meaningfully increase muscle mass the way GLP-1s improve fat loss? Whether you're curious about performance enhancement, injury recovery, healthy aging, or simply trying to understand what all the peptide buzz is about, this episode provides a balanced, practical look at one of the fastest-moving areas in modern health and performance. Links: Doug Larson on InstagramCoach Travis Mash on Instagram