Post by Admin on Jun 23, 2006 13:19:05 GMT -5
A Unique View of Travis Mash
By Jim Wendler
For www.EliteFTS.com
www.elitefts.com/documents/travis_mash.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most of us know Travis Mash for his record breaking performances in powerlifting. But there is more to Travis than just squatting, benching, and deadlifting.
He is an accomplished football player and Olympic lifter and has spent time at the Olympic Training center training under Dragomir Cirscolan. He has also studied with some of the premiere strength coaches in the United States. I have personally known Travis for three years. In this time, I’ve gotten to know him quite well. There is much more to him than his big lifting and easy going nature.
Here’s a glimpse:
EFS: The first thing that I want to ask you is how the hell did you get involved with the Olympic Training center?
Travis: The honest truth is that when I graduated, all I cared about was lifting weights. At Appalachian State University, we did a ton of Olympic lifting. I was pretty good at it so I decided to move to Colorado Springs. The first day that I was there I got a job at the World Gym, and believe it or not, Wes Barnett, a three time Olympic athlete, was also a part-time coach there. What luck!
EFS: There is a lot of finger-pointing in the United States about the lack of success in U.S. Olympic weightlifting. Do you think this is warranted?
Travis: Yes and no. I would say no in the regards that our athletes are drug tested out of meet all the time at least once per month. Other athletes from around the world are tested only at the meet. We all know that those tests are easy to beat unless you are just stupid and come to the Olympics loaded to the gills. Also, our athletes did not start training at the young age that their competitors did, which is a huge disadvantage. Olympic lifting is such a complex movement that learning at a young age is a huge benefit. You can use your prominent years to concentrate on getting stronger and more explosive. I would say yes in the fact that we continue to train the same as we have for several years with no results. I truly believe that if the U.S. Weightlifting Federation would open their minds to some of the concepts developed by Louie Simmons, then we would benefit greatly.
EFS: What have you learned from Dragomir Cioroslan?
Travis: I have learned the importance of focus and mental preparedness. I don’t know if you know this or not, but Dragomir hurt himself badly before the ’88 Seoul Olympics. He was lying in the sun after a hard practice and fell asleep. The bad thing was that his back was against fresh snow, so when he awoke, his back was frostbitten. He was hospitalized for six weeks prior to the Olympics but still received the silver. He envisioned himself doing the lifts over and over while lying in bed, and from this, he was still prepared to take on the best in the world. After I heard that story, I knew I had a long way to go and still do.
EFS: Is there anything that you took from Olympic weightlifting and applied to powerlifting and vice versa?
Travis: The importance of technique and explosiveness are priceless. One thing that I notice in powerlifting is that many top name lifters look so uncomfortable completing the lifts. If you ever have the pleasure of visiting the OTC, you will be amazed at the level of precision and confidence at which the athletes perform their lifts. This is where volume (prilepin's chart ) comes into play. You have to perform the lift enough times that you could do it in your sleep, and you should do it under different circumstances (e.g. monolift, no monolift, walkouts, SS bar, buffalo bar).
I am going to give a big secret away right now so here goes. At every meet that I have ever been to, lifters are complaining about the platform, the bars, and the judging. And guess what? I always maximize their emotions. For example, one time a competitor of mine, whose identity I will keep confidential, came off the platform complaining about the stability of the platform. I told him that I totally felt it too and could hardly stand up. Well, the lifter went on to bomb out. The moral of the story is that there will never be a perfect platform, perfect field, or perfect court. So practice for all conditions.
EFS: Do you think that the Olympic lifts deserve all of their praise or all of their criticism?
Travis: I think that the Olympic lifts have their place in sports training. But in my opinion, I would use the power clean and maybe power snatch because the full lifts are just too hard to coach, especially at bigger schools. When you have 115 guys on the football team alone and each with their own level of skill set for Olympic lifts, I don’t believe that it’s possible to teach them the proper form and technique well enough for them to benefit from it. Basically, it all boils down to force = mass x acceleration. If you train using the Westside template, that is one of the bigger aspects you always concentrate on. I will agree that the third stage of an Olympic lift (basically after the bar has passed the knees and on) probably generates the most force of anything that I can think of so power cleans or hang cleans would be great.
EFS: What did a typical day at the OTC consist of?
Travis: I was mainly a day lifter because I never fully bought into the sport. I just couldn’t get as fired up about the two lifts. But I will give you an example. In the morning, we did power cleans, front squats, abs, and hypers. Then we would go to sports medicine, eat, and rest. In the evening, we did a full snatch workout, snatch pulls heavy, abs, and plyos. We went heavy and hard much of the time. It was basically a progressive overload type of training with 6–10 sessions per week. I saw several guys broken down and hurt. I personally feel that they train like Eastern European countries do without the extreme supplementation! (Is that politically correct?) I feel that they could benefit greatly if they worked with Louie. Recently, I fooled around with some Olympic lifting and broke PRs my first day. So the whole lift specific thing was kinda shot in the ass I guess.
EFS: I know that you also played college football. Where did you play and what position did you play?
Travis: I played for Appalachian State University. I played receiver at first and decided that I hated taking the ass whipping. I later moved to outside linebacker and did alright. But, I simply went through a terrible wild stage and quit like a dumb ass, which is something that I will regret for the rest of my life. This is part of what drives me in powerlifting.
EFS: What was your attitude towards strength and conditioning when you played football? Did you always love training?
Travis: Man, I have always loved strength training. I guess the fascination with what a person can do with the human body has always blown me away. Probably the coolest example of this is my future wife Julie, who is training for bobsled competition. She had about a 15” vertical when we started training and a year later is nearing 30”. I am so fired up about that. I have never in my life seen that dramatic of a turn around.
EFS: Were you allowed to structure your own training in college?
Travis: Hell no! Coach Mike Kent was in total control, and at the time, I was glad because I didn’t know shit.
EFS: Name five things that you did in the college weight room that helped you become a better football player.
Travis:
1. Plyometrics
2. Olympic lifts
3. Deep squats
4. Posterior chain but not as much as we should
5. Mental toughness—our coach was a demon so my mental toughness went through the roof.
EFS: You mention that your coach was a tough SOB. What kind of things did he do?
Travis: Mike Kent was this crazy man, but he was awesome. One of his biggest goals in the weight room was to test each athlete’s mental toughness. One of the ways that he would do this was to have us perform different supersets on Fridays. Each week we had no idea what was coming, which shot anxiety levels through the roof. The supersets were also a great way to promote some muscle growth through hypertrophy but mainly it was torture. One of these supersets was three sets to failure on the hack squat. I saw several teammates throw up and pass out. This was actually banned by our athletic trainer because it was sending an enormous amount of players to the trainer room.
Another one was towel pull-up supersets with pull-downs. The first set wasn’t too bad, but the second and third were hell and seemed never ending. He would also having you do weight well above your capability. He had a rule that if your grip slipped, then you started over at set one. I remember crying! At the end of all of this, he was probably the most loved and respected coach at Appalachian State.
EFS: I heard that you have or had a 35” vertical jump. Is this true or just a myth surrounding you?
Travis: Believe it or not, I can jump. I could actually dunk when I was younger. I still can jump though. I can touch the rim flatfooted any day, and I am 5’7”. I think that I take this vertical thing personally. Short man syndrome or something!
EFS: Moving onto powerlifting…you’ve obviously had great success in the sport. And it’s obviously not the huge paycheck that is driving you to succeed and break records. So what is it that makes you push the envelope?
Travis: This is a great question! What drives a human to want to do things that haven’t been done, shouldn’t be done, or some say can’t be done? I have read books by Lance Armstrong and Michael Johnson and watched videos by Ed Coan, all to try and understand myself. I’m not comparing myself to these guys in any way. But, I just have this burning passion to push the line between human and something else. The way I see it is that we are here on earth for a simple blink in time, and I believe that each of us is given a gift of some type by God. It is up to us to take that gift as far as possible, and then do good things for others with the success that comes.
Everyday of my life, I am restless with myself. To me, the clock is ticking for all of us to send echoes in time that say, “Hey, I was here and I gave ever ounce of myself to prove to others that nothing is impossible if you want it bad enough and believe in yourself.” This year my father passed away, and of course I went through a very tough time. Truth is I still am going through a tough time because I have refused to embrace the whole thing I guess. After all of this, I started wondering what the meaning of life is and man I was struggling big time. Lately, after praying a ton, it dawned on me that loving and supporting my family was number one. Taking my athletic gifts to a whole new level and hopefully using that to help others was second. I don’t know what will happen at the Arnold or my other competitions this year, but I will say this. I am going to lift with more heart than I ever have before.
EFS: Your lifts continue to grow. What have you done recently to move your lifts even more?
Travis: I think as you mature as a lifter you come to realize that “balls to the wall” all the time isn’t all that good. Last year, I trained insanely. Those around me can attest to the craziness that went on. In one session, I benched 535 raw, two-boarded 585 raw, three-boarded 815 with a shirt, full benched 735 for one, and then did 405 for eight reps. Why? Good question because I am still feeling the consequences. I have simply learned to listen to myself. I am using a chain squat routine kind of like Phil Herrington but with a bunch of tweaks. I think that I have learned to increase squat and deadlift at the same time by allotting equal work to both.
EFS: You have more hands-on knowledge than any lifter I know and have a ton to offer other people. Is there anyway that people can use you as a resource, coach, or trainer, or for a seminar?
Travis: The biggest goal that I have in the future is just that. I am going to offer consultations on strength training. I plan to do seminars, on-line and in-person training, and motivational seminars.
EFS: You recently spoke at a conference in North Carolina. What did you talk about?
Travis: It was cool because it was Loren Seagraves of Velocity Sports, Gayle Hatch, the famous Olympic weightlifting coach, and I. Loren was awesome! I learned more in one day about sprinting than I had learned my whole life. Many of his concepts are parallel with Westside concepts such as explosion, hip strength, and posterior chain importance. However, he isn’t familiar with the principles, but hopefully he learned more about the concept and will be open in the future to new ideas.
Right now he uses the workout program designed by Gayle Hatch. In my opinion, it isn’t practical for most colleges and high schools because athletes should learn the Olympic movements at a young age to get the benefit from the exercises and minimize the potential of injury. It took Shane Hammons a month with a broomstick before he could perform the movements with a barbell. How is a strength coach going to teach a hundred athletes to snatch, clean, and jerk in the short amount of time that is allotted by the NCAA and high school class times?
I gave my seminar on integrating Westside with Olympic lifting but only the basic movements of Olympic lifting like the power clean or push press. I also talked about beating the plateaus in the bench press and my new chain squatting routine that seems to be working. The room lit up when I talked about the chain squats because it allows max effort squats to be performed safely while giving many of the advantages of box squatting without compressing the spine. Altogether, most of the crowd was digging Westside over Olympic lifting.
EFS: How can people reach you in regards to training, seminars, etc?
Travis: I have two new websites—Mashmonster.org and MethodXSP.org. The first one, Mashmonster.org, is for my true powerlifters and strength athletes, and the second, MethodXSP.org, is for the strength and conditioning world. I have been working with several college programs and athletes for a long time. Now it is my career, and I love it! Both sites are new and evolving each day. The whole process has been very exciting, watching the whole idea become reality. The biggest difference in my website is that by the end of June, I will be filming all of my workouts and many of my training sessions with athletes. I will be posting all of them in their entirety on my site. This should be a great source for strength coaches, athletes, and lifters to learn new ideas and watch me be my own test subject.
Anyone can email me at travis@mashmonster.org. Thanks for this opportunity to share with the Elite faithful more about myself and what I am doing.
Copyright© 2006 Elite Fitness Systems. All rights reserved.
You may reproduce this article by including this copyright
and, if reproducing it electronically, including a link to
www.Elitefts.com
By Jim Wendler
For www.EliteFTS.com
www.elitefts.com/documents/travis_mash.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most of us know Travis Mash for his record breaking performances in powerlifting. But there is more to Travis than just squatting, benching, and deadlifting.
He is an accomplished football player and Olympic lifter and has spent time at the Olympic Training center training under Dragomir Cirscolan. He has also studied with some of the premiere strength coaches in the United States. I have personally known Travis for three years. In this time, I’ve gotten to know him quite well. There is much more to him than his big lifting and easy going nature.
Here’s a glimpse:
EFS: The first thing that I want to ask you is how the hell did you get involved with the Olympic Training center?
Travis: The honest truth is that when I graduated, all I cared about was lifting weights. At Appalachian State University, we did a ton of Olympic lifting. I was pretty good at it so I decided to move to Colorado Springs. The first day that I was there I got a job at the World Gym, and believe it or not, Wes Barnett, a three time Olympic athlete, was also a part-time coach there. What luck!
EFS: There is a lot of finger-pointing in the United States about the lack of success in U.S. Olympic weightlifting. Do you think this is warranted?
Travis: Yes and no. I would say no in the regards that our athletes are drug tested out of meet all the time at least once per month. Other athletes from around the world are tested only at the meet. We all know that those tests are easy to beat unless you are just stupid and come to the Olympics loaded to the gills. Also, our athletes did not start training at the young age that their competitors did, which is a huge disadvantage. Olympic lifting is such a complex movement that learning at a young age is a huge benefit. You can use your prominent years to concentrate on getting stronger and more explosive. I would say yes in the fact that we continue to train the same as we have for several years with no results. I truly believe that if the U.S. Weightlifting Federation would open their minds to some of the concepts developed by Louie Simmons, then we would benefit greatly.
EFS: What have you learned from Dragomir Cioroslan?
Travis: I have learned the importance of focus and mental preparedness. I don’t know if you know this or not, but Dragomir hurt himself badly before the ’88 Seoul Olympics. He was lying in the sun after a hard practice and fell asleep. The bad thing was that his back was against fresh snow, so when he awoke, his back was frostbitten. He was hospitalized for six weeks prior to the Olympics but still received the silver. He envisioned himself doing the lifts over and over while lying in bed, and from this, he was still prepared to take on the best in the world. After I heard that story, I knew I had a long way to go and still do.
EFS: Is there anything that you took from Olympic weightlifting and applied to powerlifting and vice versa?
Travis: The importance of technique and explosiveness are priceless. One thing that I notice in powerlifting is that many top name lifters look so uncomfortable completing the lifts. If you ever have the pleasure of visiting the OTC, you will be amazed at the level of precision and confidence at which the athletes perform their lifts. This is where volume (prilepin's chart ) comes into play. You have to perform the lift enough times that you could do it in your sleep, and you should do it under different circumstances (e.g. monolift, no monolift, walkouts, SS bar, buffalo bar).
I am going to give a big secret away right now so here goes. At every meet that I have ever been to, lifters are complaining about the platform, the bars, and the judging. And guess what? I always maximize their emotions. For example, one time a competitor of mine, whose identity I will keep confidential, came off the platform complaining about the stability of the platform. I told him that I totally felt it too and could hardly stand up. Well, the lifter went on to bomb out. The moral of the story is that there will never be a perfect platform, perfect field, or perfect court. So practice for all conditions.
EFS: Do you think that the Olympic lifts deserve all of their praise or all of their criticism?
Travis: I think that the Olympic lifts have their place in sports training. But in my opinion, I would use the power clean and maybe power snatch because the full lifts are just too hard to coach, especially at bigger schools. When you have 115 guys on the football team alone and each with their own level of skill set for Olympic lifts, I don’t believe that it’s possible to teach them the proper form and technique well enough for them to benefit from it. Basically, it all boils down to force = mass x acceleration. If you train using the Westside template, that is one of the bigger aspects you always concentrate on. I will agree that the third stage of an Olympic lift (basically after the bar has passed the knees and on) probably generates the most force of anything that I can think of so power cleans or hang cleans would be great.
EFS: What did a typical day at the OTC consist of?
Travis: I was mainly a day lifter because I never fully bought into the sport. I just couldn’t get as fired up about the two lifts. But I will give you an example. In the morning, we did power cleans, front squats, abs, and hypers. Then we would go to sports medicine, eat, and rest. In the evening, we did a full snatch workout, snatch pulls heavy, abs, and plyos. We went heavy and hard much of the time. It was basically a progressive overload type of training with 6–10 sessions per week. I saw several guys broken down and hurt. I personally feel that they train like Eastern European countries do without the extreme supplementation! (Is that politically correct?) I feel that they could benefit greatly if they worked with Louie. Recently, I fooled around with some Olympic lifting and broke PRs my first day. So the whole lift specific thing was kinda shot in the ass I guess.
EFS: I know that you also played college football. Where did you play and what position did you play?
Travis: I played for Appalachian State University. I played receiver at first and decided that I hated taking the ass whipping. I later moved to outside linebacker and did alright. But, I simply went through a terrible wild stage and quit like a dumb ass, which is something that I will regret for the rest of my life. This is part of what drives me in powerlifting.
EFS: What was your attitude towards strength and conditioning when you played football? Did you always love training?
Travis: Man, I have always loved strength training. I guess the fascination with what a person can do with the human body has always blown me away. Probably the coolest example of this is my future wife Julie, who is training for bobsled competition. She had about a 15” vertical when we started training and a year later is nearing 30”. I am so fired up about that. I have never in my life seen that dramatic of a turn around.
EFS: Were you allowed to structure your own training in college?
Travis: Hell no! Coach Mike Kent was in total control, and at the time, I was glad because I didn’t know shit.
EFS: Name five things that you did in the college weight room that helped you become a better football player.
Travis:
1. Plyometrics
2. Olympic lifts
3. Deep squats
4. Posterior chain but not as much as we should
5. Mental toughness—our coach was a demon so my mental toughness went through the roof.
EFS: You mention that your coach was a tough SOB. What kind of things did he do?
Travis: Mike Kent was this crazy man, but he was awesome. One of his biggest goals in the weight room was to test each athlete’s mental toughness. One of the ways that he would do this was to have us perform different supersets on Fridays. Each week we had no idea what was coming, which shot anxiety levels through the roof. The supersets were also a great way to promote some muscle growth through hypertrophy but mainly it was torture. One of these supersets was three sets to failure on the hack squat. I saw several teammates throw up and pass out. This was actually banned by our athletic trainer because it was sending an enormous amount of players to the trainer room.
Another one was towel pull-up supersets with pull-downs. The first set wasn’t too bad, but the second and third were hell and seemed never ending. He would also having you do weight well above your capability. He had a rule that if your grip slipped, then you started over at set one. I remember crying! At the end of all of this, he was probably the most loved and respected coach at Appalachian State.
EFS: I heard that you have or had a 35” vertical jump. Is this true or just a myth surrounding you?
Travis: Believe it or not, I can jump. I could actually dunk when I was younger. I still can jump though. I can touch the rim flatfooted any day, and I am 5’7”. I think that I take this vertical thing personally. Short man syndrome or something!
EFS: Moving onto powerlifting…you’ve obviously had great success in the sport. And it’s obviously not the huge paycheck that is driving you to succeed and break records. So what is it that makes you push the envelope?
Travis: This is a great question! What drives a human to want to do things that haven’t been done, shouldn’t be done, or some say can’t be done? I have read books by Lance Armstrong and Michael Johnson and watched videos by Ed Coan, all to try and understand myself. I’m not comparing myself to these guys in any way. But, I just have this burning passion to push the line between human and something else. The way I see it is that we are here on earth for a simple blink in time, and I believe that each of us is given a gift of some type by God. It is up to us to take that gift as far as possible, and then do good things for others with the success that comes.
Everyday of my life, I am restless with myself. To me, the clock is ticking for all of us to send echoes in time that say, “Hey, I was here and I gave ever ounce of myself to prove to others that nothing is impossible if you want it bad enough and believe in yourself.” This year my father passed away, and of course I went through a very tough time. Truth is I still am going through a tough time because I have refused to embrace the whole thing I guess. After all of this, I started wondering what the meaning of life is and man I was struggling big time. Lately, after praying a ton, it dawned on me that loving and supporting my family was number one. Taking my athletic gifts to a whole new level and hopefully using that to help others was second. I don’t know what will happen at the Arnold or my other competitions this year, but I will say this. I am going to lift with more heart than I ever have before.
EFS: Your lifts continue to grow. What have you done recently to move your lifts even more?
Travis: I think as you mature as a lifter you come to realize that “balls to the wall” all the time isn’t all that good. Last year, I trained insanely. Those around me can attest to the craziness that went on. In one session, I benched 535 raw, two-boarded 585 raw, three-boarded 815 with a shirt, full benched 735 for one, and then did 405 for eight reps. Why? Good question because I am still feeling the consequences. I have simply learned to listen to myself. I am using a chain squat routine kind of like Phil Herrington but with a bunch of tweaks. I think that I have learned to increase squat and deadlift at the same time by allotting equal work to both.
EFS: You have more hands-on knowledge than any lifter I know and have a ton to offer other people. Is there anyway that people can use you as a resource, coach, or trainer, or for a seminar?
Travis: The biggest goal that I have in the future is just that. I am going to offer consultations on strength training. I plan to do seminars, on-line and in-person training, and motivational seminars.
EFS: You recently spoke at a conference in North Carolina. What did you talk about?
Travis: It was cool because it was Loren Seagraves of Velocity Sports, Gayle Hatch, the famous Olympic weightlifting coach, and I. Loren was awesome! I learned more in one day about sprinting than I had learned my whole life. Many of his concepts are parallel with Westside concepts such as explosion, hip strength, and posterior chain importance. However, he isn’t familiar with the principles, but hopefully he learned more about the concept and will be open in the future to new ideas.
Right now he uses the workout program designed by Gayle Hatch. In my opinion, it isn’t practical for most colleges and high schools because athletes should learn the Olympic movements at a young age to get the benefit from the exercises and minimize the potential of injury. It took Shane Hammons a month with a broomstick before he could perform the movements with a barbell. How is a strength coach going to teach a hundred athletes to snatch, clean, and jerk in the short amount of time that is allotted by the NCAA and high school class times?
I gave my seminar on integrating Westside with Olympic lifting but only the basic movements of Olympic lifting like the power clean or push press. I also talked about beating the plateaus in the bench press and my new chain squatting routine that seems to be working. The room lit up when I talked about the chain squats because it allows max effort squats to be performed safely while giving many of the advantages of box squatting without compressing the spine. Altogether, most of the crowd was digging Westside over Olympic lifting.
EFS: How can people reach you in regards to training, seminars, etc?
Travis: I have two new websites—Mashmonster.org and MethodXSP.org. The first one, Mashmonster.org, is for my true powerlifters and strength athletes, and the second, MethodXSP.org, is for the strength and conditioning world. I have been working with several college programs and athletes for a long time. Now it is my career, and I love it! Both sites are new and evolving each day. The whole process has been very exciting, watching the whole idea become reality. The biggest difference in my website is that by the end of June, I will be filming all of my workouts and many of my training sessions with athletes. I will be posting all of them in their entirety on my site. This should be a great source for strength coaches, athletes, and lifters to learn new ideas and watch me be my own test subject.
Anyone can email me at travis@mashmonster.org. Thanks for this opportunity to share with the Elite faithful more about myself and what I am doing.
Copyright© 2006 Elite Fitness Systems. All rights reserved.
You may reproduce this article by including this copyright
and, if reproducing it electronically, including a link to
www.Elitefts.com