Iron Culture

Walter Cariazo joins Omar and Eric Helms on Iron Culture to discuss his decade-long journey in powerlifting. He’s won the 93kg National Championship twice and the 105kg National Championship once in Canada and has had the opportunity to represent Canada twice at the IPF World Championship, most recently in Lithuania in June. In this most recent competition, he was a dark horse for the podium, as he placed 4th in the 105kg class, getting the opportunity to pull for the bronze medal position, which would have secured him a spot in the first World Games in 2025 to include the raw division. While this in and of itself is worth highlighting, most impressively, Walter has continually progressed in his decade in the sport, despite a busy, demanding work and life schedule. He is a full-time medical radiation technologist, in addition to working as a videographer (you may have seen him on Omar’s YouTube channel) and photographer. The perennial lifelong lifter, Walter embodies the spirit of iron culture as a “blue-collar powerlifter” who is optimizing his lifting pursuits within the constraints of life - approaching the pinnacle of the sport while doing so.

A long lifting career comes with plenty of ups and downs, so we’re accustomed to hearing stories about setbacks, comebacks, and perseverance from our favorite lifters. These setbacks can take many forms, but Jared Maynard’s extraordinary story exists in a league of its own. Over the course of a few short weeks, a rare autoimmune disease took Jared from being a young, strong, healthy man in his early 30s to being on life support in the intensive care unit. With survival odds worse than the flip of a coin, Jared fought his way out of the ICU and started training right away. The major difference is that his training program involved re-learning how to eat, sit up, and roll over before he could focus on squat, bench, and deadlift. Barely more than one year removed from life support, Jared was back on the powerlifting platform setting PRs and deadlifting over 500lbs. In this episode, Jared shares his incredible story with Omar and Dr. Trexler, and talks about how years of lifting likely saved his life and set him up for a remarkable recovery.

00:00 Not talking crap about our guest today as part of our Iron Culture apology tour

02:12 Introducing our guest Jared and his journey

10:40 The potential recurrence of mononucleosis and Jared’s plan if it does

14:49 Treatment and testing modalities

21:52 The crucial role of lifting in Jared’s journey and the gradual process of recovery

32:13 Restoring activities of daily living 

41:25 Jared’s mental challenges and stoicism

50:40 Getting back into training and competing a year later

1:02:08 Setting the example to motivate and the recalibration of perspective 

1:12:11 Jared’s study of stoicism

1:15:35 Where to find Jared and what’s next for him

Instagram @jared.rebuild_stronger https://www.instagram.com/jared.rebuild_stronger/

Rebuild Stronger Website https://www.rebuildstrongeronline.com/

The most dynamic Iron Culture duo is back in action. In this episode, Omar and Dr. Trexler talk all about pain, injury, and factors that impact the relationship between them. Back in the day, most lifters were all-in on the “Cartesian” or “biomedical” model of pain, which posits that pain is a simple, reliable indicator of damaged tissue causing nociceptors to send a “pain signal” to the brain. Nowadays, the “biopsychosocial” and “fear-avoidance” models are all the rage in the evidence-based lifter circles. These models are a major upgrade, but there are still some pervasive misunderstandings and misinterpretations of these models in the lifting world. In this episode, Omar and Dr. Trexler try to provide some clarity on the matter using research, anecdote, and a decade-old textbook on Dr. Trexler’s bookshelf.

The trio is back, and this time to discuss the science of saturated fat. For decades, saturated fat was widely blamed for a dramatic rise in rates of obesity and heart disease. In recent years, that narrative has been challenged by proponents of increasingly popular ketogenic and carnivorous diets. For many, the back and forth on this topic is dizzying, and confusing. Fortunately, we have Dr. Trexler to walk us through several recent studies to help determine if saturated fat is actually inherently more fattening than other fat sources, either via its impact on energy expenditure or appetite, and then how it plays out in the real world, and finally, to discuss what you need to know, and what - if anything - you should change about your diet.

When people think of “good coaching” in the evidence-based community their first thoughts are often related to whether or not the coach is up to date with the science and whether they use pseudoscience in practice. So does that mean that every coach from the 1990s and prior was a bad coach? Is good coaching actually determined by the methods you use, or something else? Can you be a bad coach while also being up to date with science? In this classic duo episode, Omar and Eric dive into the key qualities they think good coaches possess, and explain why the methods you use are not the same as the skills of delivering, implementing, adapting, and communicating them or the motivations behind your efforts to do so.

One of the most common recommendations a personal trainer or dietitian might make to someone embarking on a weight loss journey, is to drink more water. It’s a basic behavioural recommendation, like going on walks, eating more fruit, vegetables and lean protein, adopting a consistent sleep schedule, and engaging in regular exercise; all solid recommendations. Being hydrated is certainly important for health, wellbeing and performance, but is there actually evidence that drinking water will aid weight loss? Tune into this deep dive by Dr Trexler as he breaks it down and explains why drinking more water is great advice, but probably not for the reasons you think.

00:00 Please send us your sugar-alcohol protein bars

08:29 A segue to the topic: some alternatives to sugar-alcohols and what do if you catch Trexler eating a bunch of protein bars

MASS Research Review https://massresearchreview.com/ 

14:21 The throwaway line: drink water to lose weight

Chen 2024 Water Intake and Adiposity Outcomes among Overweight and Obese Individuals: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38612997/

Khil 2024 Water intake and obesity: By amount, timing, and perceived temperature of drinking water https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38662725/ 

35:07 Trexler’s biggest takeaways from the article

42:50 Tying it together with some Iron Culture lore

50:26 How much water do you actually need to drink?

Yamada 2022 Variation in human water turnover associated with environmental and lifestyle factors https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36423296/

1:03:15 Meal pre-loading? 

Parretti 2015 Efficacy of water preloading before main meals as a strategy for weight loss in primary care patients with obesity: RCT https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26237305/

Van Walleghen 2007 Pre-meal water consumption reduces meal energy intake in older but not younger subjects https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17228036/

1:07:38 Closing out

Powerlifters use techniques to milk every last kilo out of their bench press, including wide grips, tightly wound wrist wraps, leg drive, and – the most hated technique in the comment section – an arched-back to reduce the range of motion. Indeed, it can get so heated in the comments it likely even influenced an IPF rule change last year. But how many kilos does an arch really give you? How many bench pressers did this rule change impact, and was there really a need for the rule changes? Further, why do we apply a different standard for what is considered “cheating” to different lifts or athletic movements, like technical manipulation in high jump, or weightlifting? In this episode you’ll get the full complement of the Iron Culture themes: we discuss the current culture around the IPF rule change and contemporary perspectives on arched bench press, the history of the clean and press in Olympic weightlifting up to 1972 which has some very interesting parallels, and finally a recently published study which attempted to quantify how much an arch increases bench press 1RM.

00:00 Intro to an episode about when Powerlifting was Powerlifting

03:33 The good old IPF and their regulations

08:40 The bench press rule change

15:23 The motivating factor for the rule change

20:01 Trexler’s technique and thoughts on the rules

Barbend article: https://barbend.com/ipf-bench-press-rule-change-2023/

26:22 The history of Olympic weightlifting and Powerlifting and the change in rules

38:39 The Fosbury flop and the perception of different movements and innovations

44:52 Athletes finding ways to maximise performances within rules 

57:16 A recent study on arching in the bench press

Bartolomei 2024 Flat-Back vs. Arched-Back Bench Press: Examining the Different Techniques Performed by Power Athletes https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38551927/

1:05:38 The nature of the fragile ego and the final point on the perspective of the spectator

Fresh off of their successful doctoral defenses, Lauren and Kim join Iron Culture to discuss all things menstrual-cycle related for lifters! Dr. Helms had the pleasure of mentoring Kim, who recently completed her PhD at AUT, in which she surveyed and monitored the menstrual cycle symptoms of resistance-training women, and also led an intervention of mindfulness-based yoga to see the impact on menstrual cycle symptom severity. These findings are complemented by Lauren’s PhD research, recently completed at Stu Phillips lab at McMaster University, where she looked at muscle protein fractional responses to resistance training in women during different menstrual cycle phases. Covering both the applied and mechanistic side of the equation, this Roundtable discussion led by the Erics gives you the cutting-edge low down on whether or not menstrual cycle phased based training is all that it’s hyped up to be.

We’re back with another trio episode, and in this one, the hosts dig deeper into the Trex-lore. Eric Trexler has been training since his early youth, but only recently has he struggled with his fitness, and health and even had to rethink who he is as a lifter, due to lingering pain. Pain and injury are complex and multifaceted, but the body is resilient and often heals itself with time. But what can you do when nothing seems to work? When you seemingly can’t change your circumstances the only thing left is to change your perspective. Join us in this episode as the hosts share these perspectives, with a collective experience of over 50 years under the bar.

To complement the recent appearance of Dr. Wes Goodman, we now have the founder of N1 Education, Coach Kassem Hanson to join us on iron culture to discuss applied biomechanics and anatomy for bodybuilding. We discuss the limitations of research, what might be considered fundamental features of effective hypertrophy exercises, common mistakes and misunderstandings of applied anatomy, individual differences and more! Join us in this discussion of bodybuilding functional anatomy and learn how to take your, or your clients training that much closer to optimal.

00:00 The Erics introduce Kassem and the topic

Iron Culture Ep. 273- Biomechanics For Powerlifting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB6_fIlx8EA

05:09 Why and how Kassem is ruining resistance training for the youth

10:43 Kassem’s background and what he does

19:00 What the technology is actually measuring and their limitations

27:13 Exercise selection principles

40:43 Working around structural limitations and injuries

47:27 Getting into the weeds of exercise selection for hypertrophy

1:00:08 The application of biomechanics research for training

1:06:30 Making the leg press more glute or quad focused

1:16:33 Considering and balancing different variables

1:25:12 An insight into an N1 study and a quick discussion on lengthened partials

1:32:32 The application of biomechanics principles and research

1:42:15 Closing out this conceptual discussion and where to find Kassem

Kassem 

Instagram: @coach_kassem https://www.instagram.com/coach_kassem/?hl=en

N1 Education

Website: https://n1.education/

Instagram: @n1.education https://www.instagram.com/n1.education/?hl=en

N1 Training

Website: https://n1.training/ 

Instagram: @n1.training https://www.instagram.com/n1.training/?hl=en