Treat Your Training Like a Stock Portfolio (w/Graciano Rubio)

One percent of what you’re actually doing is about half your results. If you really think and you get real picky about it, that typically holds true. If I go to the gym, it’s not the warm-up that’s making me stronger, it’s the hardest set and it’s the hardest part of those hardest sets that are really driving the results.

Welcome to the “Barbend Podcast” where we talk to the smartest athletes, coaches, and minds from around the world of strength. I’m your host David Thomas Tao and this podcast is presented by barbend.com.

Today I’m talking to weightlifter, CrossFitter, pro strongman, financial advisor and coach, Graciano Rubio. Best known online as the Wall Street weightlifter. He’s also the owner of CrossFit ValleyView.

In today’s episode, we discuss his strength background and why you should treat training like an investment portfolio, especially when it comes to something called stop-loss. Along the way, I also get on a high horse about competing. You’ll just have to listen to find out more. Now, let’s get onto the show.

Really appreciate you joining us. You are perhaps better known online as The Wall Street Weightlifter. You got to explain that name. Where did that come from?

It started out, I took a job at Merrill Lynch as a financial advisor out of college. At the time, I just needed something catchy as a better way to broadcast that. I was sitting in the office one day and I thought…I forgot what we were doing, but I thought, “Man, I got to change it to something.”

The common one that you see is people put two words together where it’s like a positive one, Donuts, and Deadlifts. They all follow some type of format like that. I said, “I got to come up with something better than just using my name.” I got the perfect one. It’s going to be Wall Street Weightlifter.

Amazing.

I had a handful of them.

Do you still work in finance? Is that still accurate today?

Yeah, I own an RA now. I left, started my own company. I own a registered investment advisor. I do that as well.

OK. You’re also a weightlifter.

Correct.

All right. Give us a background. We know just a little bit about your finance background. We can get to that more. That’s the Wall Street part. Let’s talk about the weightlifting part. Tell us about your background in strength sports.

I started out like most people. I just started lifting weight to get stronger for football, and then once I started doing that, I enjoyed that. I probably say I enjoyed lifting weight more than I liked playing football. I continued that. Once I got done playing football, I always wanted to be involved in strongman.

Once I got done with that, I would [inaudible 3:09] around for a little bit. It’s a difficult sport to start when you don’t have people around you that do it.

I was lifting weights for a while and then ran into a guy in college that had competed in strongman and that where it started. I started in strongman. I did that for three years or so, became a pro strongman, and at that point, decided I’m still young and flexible and fast, I should give weightlifting a try because it’s a fun sport.

It’s enjoyable, but I want to do it before I get too old and I can’t do all the positions of it, before I return back to strongman.

Tell us something about your weightlifting career? How long have you been competing? We must know you for…We came across you on Instagram and I believe it was when you were first put on to our radar by doing Isabel at 300 pounds or something like that, challenging Dave Castro or commenting on him and he highlighted you doing Isabel.

Was it 300-330 pounds, something like that?

It was 330.

30 snatches were timed at 330 pounds, we’ve never seen anything quite like that before, but do you compete in weightlifting? Or are you just training weightlifting at a CrossFit gym?

No, I don’t do any competitions.

You don’t compete?

No.

Why not?

I started weightlifting as a challenge, like it’s a new sport to learn. Coming out of strongman, where you doing stuff that’s real heavy all the time, it was a way to still hit big lifts and still challenge yourself, but not having that run-down feeling all the time, of like heavy yoke. Some of the harder movements that your beat up for days afterwards.

I view weightlifting like I view golf. It’s very demanding in the technical aspect, and that’s part of the thrill of it. It took me a long time to move from doing strongman to being halfway competent at the lift. I never wanted to give it the full effort that I think it commands to be able to compete.

OK. What are your PR lifts, training lifts? Since you haven’t competed, everything’s a training lift. What’s your body weight? I would encourage you to compete. That’s one of my goals now, is to encourage you to compete. I’m a little biased because we’re the official media partner of USA weightlifting.

I’m at a lot of weightlifting competitions, doing commentary, but what is your body weight? What are your training lifts? We can extrapolate that to see if you’d be competitive on the national stage. My guess is the answer’s yes.

Oh, my best Ness is 375, and my best clean and jerk is 425. Right now, I’m about 250.

To put this in, let’s put this in weightlifting terms. You’re a super heavyweight in weightlifting terms. You’re above 109 kilos, but you could probably cut down to 109 kilos if you needed to. You could probably get under 109.

I’m used to 105 for strongman.

Yeah. These are lifts that we’d be competitive on the national stage in weightlifting. After this recording, I’m going to follow up. We’re going to get you at a competition. I’ll personally sponsor you because those are some big boy lifts. You can do some damage at nationals in the 109 or in the 102s.

I’ve been mulling it over. I’ve been on the fence about it.

It’s also more accessible because of the American Open series. There are more events that allow you to get some experience on the stage with the rhythm of competition leading up to larger national meets. USA weightlifting has done a really good job at that. My apologies. I didn’t do my research. I didn’t realize you were just a non-competitive, really strong guy.

That’s interesting to hear. Do you coach yourself or do you have a coach? Do you work with a coach?

No, I coach myself. Everything I do is self-taught.

Oh, man, I know there are some weightlifting coaches out there that are going to listen to this podcast. They’re going to hear these numbers. How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?

30.

They’re going to hear these numbers. They’re going to be like, this is still a pretty young guy. They’re going to be reaching out to you. They’re going to want to mold you. They’re going to squeeze that extra potential out of you. Oh my goodness. Even my mind is racing. We can get this guy snatching 400 pounds here at some point.

Appreciate that background. One thing that I want to come back to Isabel at 330 pounds. It put you on a lot of people’s radar. I’m sure your social media following grew like lightning after Dave Castro posted that. How did you get that sicko idea in your mind to do Isabel at that sort of way?

It started during quarantine. My wife and I own a gym. It started being with everything going on, because we’re in California. With everything that we had to do to stay running, we were just on a time crunch. I obviously don’t have more time in the day. I got to get more weightlifting done in less time.

A lot of my workouts would be, I get to a certain weight, and you’re getting to the end of your day, you’ve been dealing with different stuff all day. I’ll put weight on the bar. I’m going to do one every minute for as long as I can. I did that workout quite sometime after quarantine had started. I started out, and then I randomly thought, “Let me do another heavy Isabel.”

It progressed just as a more necessity. Hey, I only got this much time to lift, so let’s warm-up, get there, get this workout done and move on. Then I did one at 330, that’s the heaviest one I had done, and I think Dave Castro came into our gym because we’re buying some duck hunting fields.

Dave Castro, he loves hunting.

He dropped in because we’re next to some hunting grounds for duck. He dropped in. We talked for a little bit. This is around Christmas time, so most of the gyms are closed. We’re the only one around this, anyways. He swung by. He checked out my Instagram from a couple of days earlier and saw that I had done that 330.

He put out the challenge if anyone could do it in 20 minutes. My previous one was 28 minutes. When they put the challenge out, they didn’t realize that that was 28 minutes after a weekend of heavy drinking. I did that first one, it was one of those days where you’re not really expecting anything out of the day, but everything just kept going really well.

All the weight felt light, moving well, and that workout just turned into. He put the challenge out for someone to do in 20 minutes. I said, under better conditions, I can get 20 minutes. Then I, once a month or so, would do something to move myself closer to it, and I’ve eventually got it down under 20 minutes.

What’s your final time?

19:58.

Right there on the cusp.

Yeah, I had my strategy in line. I said I don’t care about going any quicker. I just got to get this under 20.

Did you have any failed reps along the way?

No, the 30 straight makes.

30 straight makes. That’s a pretty high percentage of your max, actually, I should say.

Yeah, it’s up there.

OK. That’s certainly something that got our attention and got the CrossFit and weightlifting community’s attention. Have you done a heavy grace? Have you tried it with clean and jerks?

I did 300. It was under 10 minutes. It was nine-something, but I haven’t gone real heavy on it.

You haven’t competed in weightlifting. We’ll talk more on that. Let’s assume you were to do that, maybe I’m able to convince you. I don’t know, you seem like someone who will march the beat of their own drum though. What other strength feats might you want to do or might you want to accomplish outside of the norm like a heavy Isabel, a heavy grace, something you have your eyes set on?

The next one I put up a 500 for 25 back squat?

Unbroken?

Unbroken.

What is your current rep PR with 500?

I’ve done 10, but I could have done more. That was quite a while ago. That’s probably eight years ago or so. I got that idea because I’d seen Tom Platz decades ago. He did the 500 pound squat for reps. That’s been in the back of my mind since I started lifting weights. That’s such a crazy…

What did he end up getting? Was it 20 reps?

23. That’s been in the back of my mind since I first started lifting weights and heard about it. That’s the craziest thing. That’s such a crazy feat because of everything involved in being able to do that. I’ve always wanted to do it. It’s just a month ago, I started working on it.

I’m going to get back, and I’m going to hit that before I’m done lifting, to be able to say I was able to match, something that Tom Platz did.

What is your all-time max, one rep max in the back squat? Not that there’s necessarily a lot of folks can do out a much higher percentage of their max for many reps than others, but just for context, what is your max back squat?

The heaviest I’ve done is 606 for 3. I haven’t squatted over that week.

25 reps at 500. Honestly, if anyone listening to this, if you’ve never done a 20 rep back squat set. It’s an out-of-body experience at the end of it.

Yeah. [laughs]

Adding five onto that, that’s a whole different ballgame. You basically feel like you can jump out of the gym if you can accomplish that.

Well, it’s going to take you a while to come back to Earth once you finish it.

Once you wake up after you pass out. What is your normal training week like? It sounds like you’re not competing and weightlifting, you’re not competing in strongman right now. You own a CrossFit gym. You work in finance. What does a week of training look like for you?

I’ll say I try to do six days a week for probably about an hour. Most workouts are right around the hour mark. They’ll alternate mostly between snatch and clean and jerk. Ideally, it’s probably two snatch days, clean and jerk days. Both of those days we’ll have some type of accessory lift to it, and then two days of cardio.

 Are you doing any traditional MetCons or is that cardio going to be more monostructural?

No, I do MetCons. I’ll make a MetCon just simply out of whatever the accessory work I want to do this. I have a handful of them that are pretty basic, like one is I do a lot of couplets and triplets, and I’ve done those forever.

When I first started doing them, what’s interesting about CrossFit is, a lot of them don’t realize that CrossFit just takes everything that’s been around for a 100 years and gives it a new name.

I’ve been doing that since I very first started lifting, but they used to be called supersets, or they used to be called a circuit. A lot of those MetCons are more geared for strength than they are just a conditioning portion. A lot of them are using opposing movements.

For instance, it’ll be shoulder press and pull-ups. Or it’ll be some type of combination like that where the density of work is higher, but you’re not really fatiguing one muscle group.

Yeah, shoulder press and pull-ups. That’s starting to sound a little bit like Fran right there as far as CrossFit just putting a new name on something. What are some other examples of conditioning, maybe the old is new, again, conditioning workouts that you might work on?

There’s that one. There’s a bench and bent row. I think as a high schooler, that was my favorite one because everyone in high school loves the bench. Once I do a heavy bench, you drop the weight, you add more volume in. That would be my go-to thing. You just bench and bent row, you get more done in less time.

They’re two opposing groups. That way, you’re not too tired to do either one. It’s a lot of simple stuff like that. Most of those aren’t really high-skilled. They’re basic things that you can maintain a high output with proper technique.

You’ve mentioned before on social about putting together or programming for yourself, it’s a bit like managing a stock portfolio, that’s something you do in your day job. Tell us more about that approach. If we’re looking like this, how can the investing mindset impact how we’re either programming for ourselves for others, or just approaching strength and fitness?

I’ve just started throwing out a couple of concepts like that, because a lot of these ideas related to strength training. When we move into other fields, they’re very common ways of thinking. I use the idea of a stop loss. Which in trading, let’s say you purchase a stock at $100, you might have a stop-loss set at 92.

It’s a way to be disciplined of saying, if the market is going the opposite way of what I think, I’m just going to cut my losses and move on. I’m not going to get trapped into this thing because maybe there’s something that I don’t know. I use that in terms of injuries, and allowing yourself to be flexible with your training.

If I come into the gym, I have a certain thing planned that I want to get done. Based on everything else, I should be able to do it. If I slept well, I ate well, I did everything well, I should be able to do that. A lot of times, especially as you get a little older, those injuries and those little tweaks from previous build-up. You don’t notice them at the time because you’re full of adrenaline.

In the gym the previous day, you might have a small strain that you don’t really notice and it’s not a big deal. The next day it hurts. Once you cool down, once you start moving again, it hurts. It was related to the idea of good pain and bad pain. If I’m sore, I move a little bit, I feel great.

Now, I’m going to proceed with the fashion. If I’m going through it, all of a sudden something doesn’t quite feel right, like that knee pain is something else. That’s not really something I should be working through.

Then, rather than press on with the workout, that might be a day I just do a 5K row and get out of there. Do something productive, stay moving, stay active. I can take that loss for that day and the way I think would it…I lose one day of progress.

If that keeps me from getting injured, I’m preventing myself from losing a month of progress down the road because I get hurt. That was the whole point. I’ll give up a day here if that means I avoid that time I get injured and I lose a month. If you get injured less frequently and you spend less time going backwards, then you’re going to be better off years from now.

If you’re looking at the year or 2 or 5 or 10-year mark, all those periods of time that you are able to be productive is going to add up and is going to make up for the one or two days you take off because something doesn’t quite feel right.

 It sounds like you are using the principle of compounding games, but games at the gym here.

Correct. It’s the exact same idea. A lot of times we get real focused on progression without realizing that even really, really small progression, if you’re never going backwards, adds up to huge gains down the road. Especially as you get stronger, you spend least time out of the year in that state that you’re really strong.

Because you get mentally burned out, you get physically burned out, you get hurt. There’s a lot of times were you’re like, “This month I’m just not going to train hard.” You go backwards a little bit and that’s fine, but I try to make it so there’s not a period of time that I’m going backwards.

Before I get to that point of always pushing forward, always pressing on, what do I need to do so that I can show up next session and do productive work. That might mean, “Hey, I’m not…My head is not into this today, I’m going to do a little cardio, get out of here.”

So that when it’s time to really power down and do the hard sessions that get you better, I’m a hundred percent. I’m not taking those chances of getting hurt and moving backward as a result.

What are some other principles from your day job, from your experience investing and working in finance that you think have lessons for training and strength progression?

I’ve posted a little bit about the 50 to 1 method. This is a concept that was popularized by Nassim Taleb. He wrote some popular books that are a bit misquoted. He wrote “Black Swan,” “Antifragile.” You see a lot of that type of stuff online, but he introduced this idea of the 50 to 1 principle, which is really a play of the 80/20 rule.

You’ll see pretty commonly called the Pareto Principle, where it’s the 80/20 rule, but he brings up, if you take a logical conclusion of that, and that 20 percent you’re talking about, if you apply the 80/20 rule of that, you’re left with the 64 to 4 rule.

If you believe 20 percent of your efforts, or 80 percent of your results, that will be logically deduced that you have 4 percent of your results, so it’d be 64 percent or 4 percent of your effort will be 54 percent of your results.

If you apply the principle again, you’re left with the 50:1 rule, which I think it’s a little easy to understand. One percent of what you’re actually doing is about half your result. If you really think of it and you get really picky about it, that typically holds through.

If I go to the gym, if not the warm-up that’s making me stronger, if not on my warm-up set, it’s not on this other set stuff, it’s the hardest set and it’s the hardest part of those hardest set that are really driving the result. This is something that’s been brought up by champions of different fields forever. Muhammad Ali used to say that, “I don’t count the reps until they hurt.”

Arnold, I know discussed the way that he built his biceps. If he does a set of 12, it’s that rep number 10, 11, 12, the ones that hurt, the ones that you struggle the most that are responsible for that growth. I take that 50:1 principle to make sure that I have balance between the real hard work that you need to do to get better and all the other stuff that supports it.

When I walk into the gym, my warm-up is designed to help me perform my best. The warm-up is not there as if the harder I warm-up the better it is. It’s the quality of the warm-up. I want to be able to get warmed up and moving for the important work that I’m going to do.

Same thing if I do skill work. That skill should be addressing a specific weakness that I have or a specific problem, but doing skill work on something I’m already good at and that’s not really holding me back is in fact beneficial. I view it as make sure I don’t become a volume warrior, where I’m just doing tons and tons of reps and just beating myself up.

If you want to get stronger, you have to add weight to the bar. Then on the flip side, if you’re coming in and you’re just going right to your heaviest set and then you hit something big and you roll out of there, you’re missing a lot of the other stuff that you could be doing that’s going to support you doing more of that high quality work in the future.

I apply that principle to make sure my training is balanced in that way. Like yes, I’m going to go in. I’m going to add weight, I’m going to do something harder than I’ve ever done. At the same time, I need to make sure that I’m doing all the other stuff that supports that and not making sure there’s a imbalance between the two.

If you have an hour workout, I’m not going to spend 30 minutes of warming up, 5 minutes of really working out, and 25 minutes of stretching and BSing and hanging out with everybody. I want to make sure there’s that balance in there.

Understood. I think those are some wise words that can go both ways. Training can have influence and lessons for what we might do outside the gym and vice versa.

I really appreciate you taking some of those business dynamics and principles that we might of heard about, might be a little desensitized to honestly because we’ve all heard them a bunch, and applying it to something a little more concrete in the gym into our physical training. It makes it seem fresh and new or at least gives it that fresh perspective again.

I appreciate that. Where’s the best place for people to follow along with the work you do, your training, and if you do decide to compete whether it be in weightlifting or in the future in strongman, where would be the best place for people to follow along with that?

Instagram. I put all my stuff up on my Instagram page @wallstreetweightlifter. I haven’t really branched out into the other social media channels. Instagram to me is the most positive.

It’s a home for strength sports for a lot of folks so I certainly understand that.

There’s less mudslinging.

[laughs] Oh, there’s still some mudslinging. There’s still some, I can guarantee you that. I really appreciate you taking the time to join us, to chat a little bit about your approach which some might find unconventional but at the same time makes a lot of sense. I think it’s just in many ways a reframing of some solid principles that we try and apply in other aspects of our life.

I appreciate you giving some fresh perspective on how that can apply and impact our training. Appreciate it and we’ll talk to you soon.

All right, thank you.