Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth
2874: The Best Variations to Explode Your Squat, Deadlift and Bench Press
06 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What are the best squat, deadlift, and bench press variations for strength?
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All right, look, we're going to talk about hacks that will explode your strength. The squat, the deadlift, and the bench press. We got five of them. We're going to cover them right now. Let's get to it. Let's go. Ooh, the main ones. Yes. First, we should cover why it's so great to get strong at those lifts. Yeah. They are the power lifts. They're not perfect by themselves. I want to be clear.
It's good to do lots of other things as well. But if you get really strong on the squat, deadlift, and bench press, and you have some good programming with other exercise, you've got really good overall general strength. You've got a lot of things covered there.
Well, it's the foundation of pretty much all pursuits in fitness. Even athletic, aesthetic, health, longevity, no matter what your pursuit is. You get strong in those lifts. That lays a very solid foundation for whatever the thing you're going to pursue for the rest of your life or whatever you're going to move in and out of if you decide to change your mind through it.
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Chapter 2: How can box squats improve my squat performance?
There's a couple of reasons. One, you're changing directions. Two, that slight change in directions temporarily makes the weight heavier. So if I'm lowering with 135 and I squat up the 135, that changing direction is actually because the momentum actually makes the weight more.
I've seen the formula before for the physics breakdown on that. It's significantly more. Depending on the speed. So if you're dropping down, lowering in a squat at 150 pounds, like you're saying, for that moment of changing direction, your body is feeling like two or three times the weight. I don't remember what it was. Maybe Doug can look that up.
It depends on how fast you're moving the weight because that momentum makes a big difference.
A lot more force on the joints to contend with.
It is. And I'll be straight up. Box squats, I did probably as often with my clients as traditional barbell squats. Probably as often. In fact, I will say this, and there might be a little controversy around this. It's the one exercise I would say is interchangeable with the squat, meaning you want the benefits of a squat. You want to do a safer version of it.
Yeah, it's lowered risk factor.
Way lowered risk factor. Now, from a strength perspective, I'm going to say this right out the gates. When I implemented box squats into my routine— I added, it was a big number, it was like 30 pounds to my barbell squat over time from doing the box squat. Just the ability to sit, pause, stay tight, come back up. I saw immediate improvement in my traditional squat from doing that.
Now, recommendation for height of a box. Because the limiting factor of a box squat is the potential range of motion. So if you take a standard kind of box that you see in the gym or like the Westside barbell squats that you see, very different than the range of motion that somebody who has a full range of motion for a squat can do.
Well, you want it exactly where you want to generate the most force for that bottom position. So wherever that range is for you specifically that you're trying to optimize. I guess for some people, you could go a little lower. You're trying for a fuller range of motion. You can work on that with the same just lowered position with the box.
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Chapter 3: What are the benefits of using belt squats?
Yeah, I drove down. Yeah. Yeah, it's a long drive, man. And it's funny because every time. You drove? Yeah, every time we do now. Well, because, dude, flights right now are so dumb. And it's like, dude, it takes forever to get through security. And, like, there's delays and, like, all over the place. I don't know if you guys noticed. Like, you've obviously just, like.
Why are there delays everywhere? I don't know. It's just, it's like.
Because they had all the, whatchamacallit, all the protesting and stuff.
Yes.
Again, we went through that whole thing with, what are they called that worked there?
Oh, the TSA. TSA. Why are they protesting? They're protesting or striking. Whatever.
Striking is what I meant. That's what I meant. Strike, yeah. Same thing. They went through that whole process again. You didn't know that just happened again? No. Yeah, that happened again. So there was, so yeah.
We were avoiding all that, yeah. So we just. So you drove for 12 hours. Yeah, I know. Basically, it's, like, eight hours, dude. Is it eight hours? Yeah. Oh, that's a long drive. Yeah, well, I mean, we cut it to, like, seven. Five's, like, my limit. Yeah. We took Waze. Like, Waze has taken us on so many. I've gone, like, I want to say at least six different ways down there now.
Like, and it's all through, like, Central Valley, desert, and, like, all that. Like, so it's been weird, you know, like, finding all these new paths to get there. Yeah. Uh, yeah, we, we went down there and then just, just hung out and I actually took the boys to the gym. Uh, and I think I might've brought this up on another podcast, but yeah, we got to work out.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the alpha-gal syndrome spike?
Yeah, what's the allergy increase to red meat in the last decade?
Chapter 5: What are the implications of strokes in younger adults?
Do we know?
Chapter 6: How can I improve body composition after strongman training?
Oh, a lot.
Chapter 7: What should I consider when bulking or cutting?
Is it a lot? Yeah, because of alpha-gal mainly. So it's gone up 1,000% recently. Whoa. 1,000%. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, Doug, look up alpha-gal.
Well, there's like a heat map over the U.S. of where they're getting reports of it. It's pretty-
Pretty alarming. Yeah. Look at this. Scroll down, Doug, because you can see the last there's massive spikes in positive test results for alpha-gal antibodies over the last decade. But I read in an article that was something like a thousand percent increase. So it's like suddenly exploded all over the place. That's crazy numbers. Yeah.
So they're now trying to potentially look at it as a bioterrorism. Yeah. Yeah, like maybe someone did that. Yeah, there you go. Alpha-gal on the rise, the alarming growth. Oh, there you go. 3,000%. Adults 25 to 49 had an increase exceeding 3,000%.
That doesn't sound like a natural occurrence. 3,000%, dude? Yeah, yeah. So weird, right? Well, so weird.
What state's most common? It hasn't been in California yet, right? No. It doesn't need to. It's on its way. It's already.
It's on its way. It could be me. Does it make any big difference? Well, it's just the Lone Star ticks. I don't know if it is starting Texas or like the Midwest. I think it's coming up.
It's all the south where all the meat is eating.
Conveniently. Conveniently hitting the south first. I'm going to be going to Yellowstone. I need to be careful. Not really.
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