BarBend Podcast
BarBend
Learn from the top athletes, coaches, and influencers in strength! Each week, the BarBend Podcast brings together some of the world's biggest strength names across weightlifting, powerlifting, CrossFit, strongman, and more. BarBend Editor and Co-Founder David Thomas Tao sits down with the strength community's smartest and strongest minds to with a focus on their learnings through training, competition, and coaching. We dive deep on their journeys and where strength training has taken them. World record holders share their competition secrets. Coaches give their most underrated tips. And top thinkers and researchers from the realm of strength science go deep on their most promising findings. This podcast is the perfect companion for experts and beginners alike, covering a wide range of topics to keep listeners up to date on the world of strength.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Mar 9, 2020 • 33min
Kristen Holmes: How to Optimize Your Sleep
This will shock many athletes: What you do in training likely has little to no impact on your next-day recovery. The common wisdom about recovery, especially sleep, needs a major update. So we sat down wit Kristen Holmes, WHOOP's VP of Performance, to separate fact from fiction on deep sleep, caffeine consumption, foods that help and hurt sleep, muscle repair, and what tracking HRV can tell us about how rested you really are. A special thanks to WHOOP for sponsoring this episode!
Mar 5, 2020 • 33min
Margaux Alvarez: The CrossFit Games, Wine, and Long Drive Competitions
Margaux Alvarez is a 7-time CrossFit Games athlete, long drive competitor, coach, and wine entrepreneur. She's one of the most multi-talented personalities in fitness, and her future in CrossFit — and beyond — is something we had to learn more about. We sit down with Margaux to talk about training across multiple sports, strength training for golf long drive competitions, her future in athletics, balancing wine with recovery, and more.
Mar 2, 2020 • 51min
Alex Uslar: Overcoming Addiction and Creating Opportunity
Alex Uslar wears a lot of different hats with Hybrid Performance Method. At Hybrid, Alex serves as the General Manager, Director of Operations, run Hybrid Apparel, and per Instagram is also Stefi Cohen’s official 24/7 hype-man. Over the course of his career, Alex has coached thousands of athletes and competes and judges in the sport of powerlifting.In today’s episode, Jake Boly sits down with Alex to discuss his road from addiction to now playing so many critical roles at Hybrid. We also talk about hyping, and what it really takes to do it right.
Feb 27, 2020 • 54min
Joey Szatmary Podcast: Building a Home for Strongmen and Powerlifters
Building ANY community is tough. So building a space and community for people obsessed with strength brings its own special challenges. And no one knows more about that than Joey Szatmary.Joey is a multi-sport strength athlete (powerlifting and strongman) and coach who owns The Lions Den Elite Training gym. Throughout his career, Szatmary has worked with a huge variety of athletes and constantly shares his knowledge and experiences on his quickly-growing YouTube channel. In today’s episode, we talk to Szatmary about opening his own gym, training requirements across different strength sports, and much, much more.
Feb 24, 2020 • 39min
Chris Duffin: Squatting 1,000 Pounds and More Impossible Feats
Chris Duffin is an inventor, record-setting powerlifter, author, and founder of Kabuki Strength Labs. He's also one of the strongest humans on the planet, becoming the first person to deadlift 1,000 pounds for reps back in 2016. We caught up with Chris while he was training for his next feat, which he'll attempt in March 2020: Back squatting 1,000 pounds for a triple. In this episode, Chris explains the unique training approach for these records, recovery techniques, lifting for charity, and the one strength feat he regrets not completing.
Feb 20, 2020 • 33min
Rowan Minnion: Dealing with Influencers PLUS How to Recover Better for Strength
Rowan Minnion is an athlete and researcher best known as the founder and force behind Blonyx. He's especially passionate about improving athletic recovery and explains actionable — and some honestly surprising — tips about the science behind performance. (How do you optimize sleep? What's the "right" way to take a rest day, and why aren't more athletes doing it?) Rowan also shares his own ups and downs working with fitness influencers online, from successful promo to "pay to play" negotiations and getting ghosted by digital ambassadors.
Feb 17, 2020 • 53min
Ian Kaplan: The Complexity of Pain
Ian Kaplan is the current Chief Officer of Operations at Hybrid Performance Method. With a background in training and research, when it comes to synthesizing research and understanding how to apply advanced topics into the context of our day-to-day lives, Ian is one of the best personalities we've ever spoken to.In today’s episode, we talk to Ian about a variety of topics including what it means to be “evidence based,” how to interpret the latest research on pain, and much more.
Feb 13, 2020 • 35min
Eric Leija: How the Primal Swoledier Makes His Workouts
Eric Leija is a master Onnit trainer who's better known online as the Primal Swoledier. Every day, Eric posts innovative kettlebell and bodyweight flows that have helped him build a massive following; his workouts are a bit unlike anything else you'll find in the space. We catch up with Eric to talk about how he creates and programs workouts, the most overrated kettlebell movement, and lessons learned from an intense bulk-and-cut transformation he underwent just a couple years ago.
Feb 10, 2020 • 47min
Hayden Bowe: Youth Athletes in Powerlifting and Weightlifting
Hayden Bowe is one of the founders and owners of Hybrid Performance Method. Throughout his career, Hayden has worked with thousands of individuals and is accomplished in both the sports of weightlifting and powerlifting. In today’s episode, we chat with Hayden about a variety of training topics, but one in particular that we really enjoyed was training youth athletes and how to do it correctly.
Feb 6, 2020 • 35min
Don Saladino: How to Get Hollywood Ready
Don Saladino is one of the fitness world's most in-demand trainers. A specialist in strength and physique for over 20 years, Don is perhaps best known for getting some of Hollywood's biggest stars ready for massive on-screen roles: Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Ryan Gosling, and more. Don is also the founder and owner of Drive 495 gym in Manhattan.In today's episode, Don joins host David Thomas Tao to discuss building a list of Hollywood clientele, setting realistic expectations for physique and performance, and why some of the most celebrated trends in wellness can be downright harmful.
