In This Issue:
– Robertson Training Systems Updates
– Exclusive Interview: Craig Rasmussen
– Upcoming Interviews
– New Articles
– Schedule
Robertson Training Systems Updates:
Different look to the newsletter this week
I had planned on making this a standard newsletter, but after I received this week’s interview from Craig Rasmussen I decided to switch things up a bit.
Craig has been a good friend for a long time, and this interview was so good I decided to run it by itself. We’ll be back to the usual format next week.
Exclusive Interview: Craig Rasmussen
MR: Craig, thanks for being with us here today; I’m actually a little surprised Alwyn let you take the time off to write this!
For those who readers who may not know who you are, please introduce yourself.
CR: Sure. First, thanks for the interview. I’m not too sure where to start, but here goes.
I have been in the profession of personal training/strength coaching for about six years. I’m 37 years old so I guess I’m an “older” guy compared to guys like you and Eric. I have been training with weights since I was about 19 or 20. Much of that time was spent doing a lot of typical silly stuff from the muscle comics until I started to figure things out a bit around age 26 or 27 and started training much more sensibly and productively.
I am originally from Southern California and I spent the first six years after finishing college working as a middle school Physical Education and Health teacher at a public school in Santa Monica where our Physical Education program was nationally recognized. I gave up teaching to begin a new career path and moved out to the Hoosier state in 2002 to work at a private gym as a personal trainer/strength coach. I also was contracted out to a local high school and worked as their strength coach for the football and basketball teams primarily. I’ve worked with all types of people ranging from adolescents to college athletes to elderly clients.
I moved back home to Southern California about a year and a half ago and began work for Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove at Results Fitness.
MR: What originally got you into the field? You were an athlete growing up, right?
CR: Yes. I played a lot of basketball growing up and all through high school along with some junior college basketball. I also played a lot of beach volleyball during high school and during college. I was an incredibly skinny, shy kid (actually was voted shyest in my high school class) so weight training really has helped me overcome a lot of that.
I played my freshman year of college hoops at a massive 155lbs at 6’1” tall. I was so skinny I had to jump around in the shower to get wet! I originally started training to get bigger and stronger for basketball. I actually have my junior college basketball coach to thank for getting me motivated to start lifting weights. In one of our meetings he listed my size and strength as my main weaknesses and if I wanted more playing time, I had to improve them. This infuriated me and I finally decided I was tired of being skinny and weak after being teased about it by a few teammates. So I decided to do something about it once and for all.
Of course, my main sources of information at this time came from newsstand bodybuilding magazines and my “workouts” consisted primarily of bench press and curl fests. I did do some leg training since I wanted to seriously bring up my chicken legs but I had no clue at the time of how to squat (or do anything) properly since my only coach was Weider publications and what all the other guys at the gym were doing. You can also imagine that I spent thousands of dollars on about every weight gain supplement known to mankind.
Once I got things figured out (as I mentioned above, especially focusing on weight progression) I really saw instant progress and this fueled my fire and I developed an even greater passion for my own training. Once I started coaching people, I found that I really enjoyed it and had tremendous passion for it and I try to instill this passion in others.
MR: That’s great stuff Craig. Let’s talk powerlifting a bit -You’re a RAW competitor; what made you choose to lift raw vs. in a geared federation?
CR: In the very first contest I competed in I wore equipment. I wore an old Inzer blast shirt (that was too small – I think), squat suit, knee wraps, and a belt. I didn’t mind the squat suit and wraps but the bench shirt experience was just miserable to me at the time. I just like to lift without the hassle of all the extra stuff. I do still use a belt though.
I don’t have any sort of issue with guys that use equipment by any means but I am also of the opinion that the equipment thing has just gotten pretty crazy. I hear and see all the time about guys getting hundreds of pounds of carryover on their bench and/or squats and I think that this is pretty wild. I just can’t really get into that. I am more into seeing what my body of capable of without all the assistance of equipment.
That is not to say that I don’t respect geared lifters. It takes some serious ‘nads to get under the bar with the kinds of loads that these guys are lifting! It is just not my thing right now. That’s not to say that I will never wear equipment at some point and time but it will be within reason (single ply only). I just think that when someone asks you the age old question of “how much you bench?” – you shouldn’t have to put it into context as much as is now necessary. I mean, I know a couple of guys that bench around 285 raw and do 500+ with a shirt! The safety arguments (with examples like these) make no sense to me what so ever. How can it be safer to artificially add 200 lbs to your bench press? You are making your muscles stiffer with the equipment, but your bones, joints, ligaments and tendons are still bearing those loads!
So when these guys tell people that they bench 500, they have some explaining to do. Although it sure sounds impressive it is very relative. Let’s be honest: A raw, drug- free, paused, 400lb bench press is a pretty rare bird. If you take a look up the world records in the major raw, drug-tested feds you will see this to be true. The only 500lb. benches are the world records in the 242lb. classes and above.
The whole concept of what strong is also very contextual and based on your reference point. Mike Boyle had a good article where he touched on some of this recently. It can and should be qualified in many ways. How strong were you when you first started? How much do you lift relative to your bodyweight? Is it done raw? Is it drug-free? Was it done in a competition and was it judged based on the true rules of the sport? Was it an “all you” gym lift or was it helped by a “spotter”?
Stuart McRobert of BRAWN fame, proposed some good standards of strength many years ago with the 300 bench press, 400 squat, and 500 lb. deadlift done at 190-200lbs. or so of bodyweight. I think I remember Jason Ferrugia mentioning these numbers recently somewhere as well. I think that this qualifies someone as pretty strong based on the typical gym crowd. I do understand that it is not strong (and probably laughable) if you are an equipped, non-tested powerlifter. But again, this depends on what you are referencing as your standard.
From a raw, drug-free powerlifting point of view, I really like the raw powerlifting elite standards that have been set here. I think they are very good numbers to shoot for. My goal is to total raw elite by the time I turn 40 in the 220lb. class. I also really like what Chip Conrad had to say recently on EliteFTS about powerlifting. It is a true brotherhood and there should be respect on both sides of the fence of equipped and raw. We are all from the same sporting family of powerlifting and can learn from each other.
MR: Within this industry, what individuals have really left a mark on you? And why?
CR: Wow. I could make this be the longest answer of all time! I’ll try to keep it short and to people that I have met and interacted with in person. Well, my first coach and mentor John Christy (who wrote for Stuart McRobert’s HARDGAINER magazine for many years) was a major influence. I moved out to Indy to work for him after being coached by him for a few years in my own training. He taught me a lot of lessons about how to be a professional in the industry, attention to detail, etc. With regard to my own training, he taught me how to properly perform the big basic lifts, the importance of progression, and how to link effort and technique.
You and Bill Hartman, and Eric Cressey have been a major influence on how I train myself and my clients as well. The things that you, Bill and I have talked about have made a huge impact in how I think about training.
Alwyn has made me really think about training plans and not just workouts. He has taught me to be sure that I have a reason for everything that I write in a program and to be able to justify it.
I’ve learned a lot from observing Robert Dos Remedios over at College of the Canyons over the past year as well.
I had a chance to interact with Mike Boyle and Gray Cook a bit and really like how they think and they have been a major influence.
A lot of Mark Rippetoe’s stuff has made me a better coach of the lifts as well. Also, in regard to my own lifting, I’ve done some training with James Burdette (Jack Reape’s old training partner) and he has worked with me in improving my thorn in the side bench press and made me a much better technician and improved my understand of the lift.
MR: As the previous question alludes to, you’re the consummate student when it comes to this field. Please give my readers the Top 5 things you’ve learned in the past year with regards to getting stronger, losing body fat, etc.?
CR: Since I have really focused on learning and reading I have made myself a much better coach than I was several years ago. I would say that over the past year the top 5 things I have learned/re-focused on would be the following in no particular order:
1. How to effectively use Gray Cook’s Functional Movement Screen to correct faulty movement patterns. You and I had the good fortune to meet with Colts Head Strength Coach Jon Torine in person about how he uses the movement screen a couple of years ago. Alwyn has been using it for a number of years and I now have a good grasp on how to use what I find in the screen to help fix faulty movement patterns. The gist is focus on the pattern and not on individual muscles as to why something is going wrong. Sounds complicated, but it is actually quite simple once you take the time to learn the screen and realize what you doing with it. The results have been pretty cool and impressive to say the least. It is not nearly as involved or as complicated as some people think.
2. Mark Rippetoe got me to re-focus on how and why bar position on the body determines back angle on all of the squats and deadlifts. I go into this in great detail in the article that I mentioned in the next question below. I think a lot of guys beat themselves up by trying to make their back squats look like their front squats and becoming discouraged and think they are back squatting incorrectly if it doesn’t look like a front squat. You must realize that they are different exercises because of the biomechanics of the movements. They will look differently because of this and because of your individual levers.
3. Behaviors must match your goals. Alwyn and Rachel have mentioned before that instead of thinking “If I eat with this how much will it hurt me?” to think in terms “Will eating this help me reach my goals?”
4. I missed out by not using the Olympic lifts and their variants for far too long because I thought they were too technical to teach. They are fun to do and very worthwhile for some populations. I’m bummed and I regret greatly that I missed out on using them so for many years.
5. Volume drives intensity and vice versa. This is a powerful concept and you see this parallel line in many coaches’ programs. To sum it up, if you take a look at many programs you will see that they will often have a training day that emphasizes intensity and more neural gains through some type of variant of the max-effort method and a second day that has more emphasizes on volume either through the rep effort or dynamic effort method.
MR: You’ve also been getting your feet wet with some articles lately. What kind of materials do you have on tap in that regard?
CR: I wrote one for a free e-book that you put together a while back called “5 dumb things that athletes do when trying to get bigger and stronger” that I got some nice response to. I also wrote a couple of interviews up of Mark Rippetoe of Starting Strength fame that are on EliteFTS currently that turned out pretty well. I have one on tap about common misconceptions that people make with regard to exercise performance that I just submitted to be hopefully run on T-nation. I have a couple of other ideas to share ideas that I have learned from all the good coaches that I have had the good fortune and pleasure to learn from as well. I like to write things that people can put into immediate practice to improve their coaching and their own training. I hope people are able to take something from them.
MR: As many people know Alwyn is not only a mentor to me but a great friend as well. Could you give us a thing or two Alwyn has taught you since working with him?
CR: Sure. I had seen him write for years about not writing workouts but instead, writing training plans or programs. I never really thought it was that big of a difference until I started working for he and Rachel. You must think into the future and where you want to be and work back from there. You need to “chunk” long term goals down and formulate a plan to get there. Learning about proper exercise progressions and regressions has been a great help. Some of his analogies are always awesome as well. He is funny in that he thinks we know all his stuff as his staff, but I learn something new from him every single time I am around him or hear him speak. The man does his homework in terms of research and learning all the time to say the least. We always have great discussions on training.
MR: Ok, last question. You’ve been doing this for some time now, so you’ve got a great frame of reference – what is something that you really believed in in the past, that you’ve since found out is wrong?
Or, more succinctly, what’s a mistake you’ve made along the way, and what have you done to correct that mistake?
CR: This is an easy one. I tried for far too long (years) to try to use what worked for me in the past and kept trying to make it work for me when I had already milked it. I tried to progress in a linear fashion for far too long. I used up my linear gains (which gave me great results at the time) but kept on banging my head against the wall to try to make it continue to work when those gains were done working. You and I have talked at length about our mutual love for the rep range of 5 reps and I think these are a cornerstone of training, but I made the mistake of always trying to go back to what worked for me as a intermediate and beginner lifter and trying to progress in linear fashion without taking back-off weeks for way too long and not implementing appropriate/sensible variety and appropriate periodization for my needs. I now plug in deload or backoffs and sensible variety into every training cycle that I do and the results have been very good indeed.
MR: Craig, thanks a lot for taking the time to be with us today. If you would, please let the readers know how they can get a hold of you.
CR: They can get a hold of me through my work e-mail at [email protected].
Upcoming Interviews
February 11th – Brian Grasso, Founder and CEO of the IYCA (www.iyca.org)
February 18th – Zach Even Esh, Strength Coach (www.UndergroundStrengthCoach.com)
February 25th – Dave Tate, Powerlifter and owner of Elite Fitness Systems (www.elitefts.com)
March 3rd – Jimmy Smith, Performance and Fitness Coach (www.jimmysmithtraining.com)
If you would like to submit a question for one of our upcoming interviewees:
1) Please send an e-mail to [email protected]
2) In the subject heading, please list the person your question is directed towards (i.e. Mike Boyle)
3) In the body of the text, list one or two questions you’d like to have answered.
We can’t promise that our interviewees can answer all questions, but we’ll do our best to get a nice mix of questions. Thanks for your support!