Barbell Shrugged - David Weck On Locomotion, Squatting More, & The Bosu Ball

Episode Date: May 17, 2017

If I were to tell you that using a BOSU® ball would help you squat more, would you believe us? Yes, we are talking about that half dome stability ball thing that sits in the corner at the globo gyms of the world.  Before you write off the BOSU® ball to the same category as the Shake Weight, you need to watch this episode. In this edition of Shrugged, we interview the inventor of the BOSU, David Weck, and it turns out there is more to this tool than meets the eye. David has dedicated his career to understanding biomechanics and how to help athletes move better. While his tools and methods are certainly unique, they are also every effective. In this episode we dive into all the experiments and practices David has explored and how he is helping professional athletes with his method. You'll probably learn some things you have never heard before and you get to see Doug bitch slap him in the face. Multiple times.  Enjoy the show, Mike

The biomechanics was always driven from sort of this advantage. How can I find advantage? And so, and I've been looking forward to this, to show you guys this. Okay, so. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson and Kenny Kane. And we are here at Weck Method with David Weck. Where swingers are welcome. We found out.

We found that out. It's a swingers club. Before you go any further, this guy, he's the asshole. That's him. We found him. We found him. Finally, after all these years. All these years.

Oh, oh, oh. Now I get it. I'm a little slow on the draw. I know. I get him. We found him. Finally, after all these years. All these years. Oh, oh, oh. Now I get it. I'm a little slow on the draw. Okay. Yes. I am the asshole. He invented the Bozu ball. Yes.

The ball that sits in the corner. No, but for a lot of crossfit gyms, a lot of functional fitness professionals and strength coaches, it's something that they really are not in big support of. And it's something that was real big back in the day, and then it kind of went off. Well, in my world, a lot of people stopped adopting it. You go into any gym, you definitely see the BOSU ball. It's amazing.

And, in fact, we were hanging out with Ray Regno. Ray is amazing. I think it was maybe Tony Blower first. Yeah, Tony's mentioned you as well. We were having breakfast with Tony, and he was talking about the Bosu ball, and he starts going off about it. I was like, what the fuck are we talking about? Are you for real?

And then he's like, just talk to Ray Regno. I'm like well i respect ray regno ray knows what's up so then uh kenny's got four spears kenny's got some fucking balls i'm going there's something i don't know but ray showed me some stuff that i was like oh this is this is actually really helpful yeah we talked to cj martin too and he's like oh you're gonna interview david dude you're gonna have. Yeah. Like, definitely go talk to that guy. So here we are. Here we are.

I love it. If you would have told me three years ago, we'd be talking about BOSU balls. I'd have been like, get the fuck out of here. Correct. Correct. Yeah. And that's, yeah. So, all right.

So first the earth cooled, and then there was the BOSU ball. And the BOSU ball. All right. So the BOSU ball hit the marketplace at the crest of this, you know, pendulumic swing all the way to the side where, you know, stability balls were everywhere. It was all the rage. It was, you know, that's what you had to be doing. And the bozu ball hit that wave.

And so it was a very opportune time to launch the product, okay, because it was just, you know, you go see the Lakers, okay, they buy it. The Yankees, they buy it, right? You know, all the devils, they buy it. And so it was very easy for me to sort of create this mountaintop momentum of, like, look, don't trust me. Look, the Yankees use it, you know, that type of a story. And so that's what hit the trainer market. And at that time CrossFit wasn't really in existence yeah I want to I want to touch on one

thing further because I want to make sure that people know that this show is not about the BOSU ball no no yeah yeah we're gonna talk about yeah please please thank you you have many different products that you've developed over the years and you focus on many aspects of strength conditioning I'm I'm not just a product guy okay so and we'll get off the BOSU ball as soon as we possibly can. I just want to cover this before someone goes, ah, these guys sold out to the BOSU ball. Hang on. Makes sense. I get it.

I think thematically, too, it's important to frame. This is something that a lot of our listeners and viewership pivoted against. And now, I think the starting point for the show is that, hey, this might be a useful tool to enhance and improve the very things that you love to do. Yeah, well, the only thing that I would say is I'd take – All right, thanks for joining us. Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute.

No one gets out alive, okay? So I would take the might and the probably and put those somewhere else, okay? It is. Okay, it is. It took me a long time to figure out that which harnessed the full utility of it. Did you take vocabulary? Did you take the core language upgrade? Why?

What did I say wrong? No. You said it right. I said it right? No, that's what you're saying right, yeah. Well, I sort of make up words and stuff, but as long as the point gets across, it doesn't fucking matter, right? So anyway, it basically is a useful tool because it provides a unique stimulus that will help

you squat better. Now it's going to help you move better, run better, which is, that's my emphasis, but it helps you squat better. It also helps you press better now it's going to help you move better run better which is that's my emphasis but it helps you squat better it also helps you press better and we i don't know let's talk about a lot of other things and maybe we can get back to that because i don't want your viewers to tune out right because i this is a huge opportunity for me everything that i do is strategic right now because i know what i've got i've got some gold that's going to change things. And to talk to you guys, no bullshit guys, right? I mean, are you a bullshitter? He is, actually.

Only in social settings. Okay, right, right. But are you a – aside from the bar with her, are you a bullshitter when it comes to training? I'm a truth seeker. Correct, correct, right? And so that's all I am too. And the Bosu ball got a bad rap

because from a marketing's perspective it's very useful that 30 ladies jump up and down and sweat and like it because when you go into target it's a 55 year old woman who's buying the product okay it's not the guy who's in walmart looking for deer piss because he's going hunting he's not buying a bosu ball she she is buying the bose ball okay the that's the that's the big consumer market and it's a business right you guys are into the whole business of helping crossfitters be in business and to get back to sort of that crest and crossfit really wasn't you know it wasn't formed at that time way back in 99 right it wasn't crossfit that and what crossfit in 99, right? It wasn't CrossFit then.

And what CrossFit did was CrossFit came in at an opportune time when sort of the bullshit had reached a certain crest, and CrossFit just said... It's the peak of bullshit. The peak of bullshit is when CrossFit really came along, and CrossFit said, all right, well, we're not going to bullshit anymore. Like, we're not going to bullshit anymore. Like, we're not going to bullshit. How many fucking reps did you do?

Like, we're not going to do this silly choreographed dance step that we're going to change next week because you're bored. That's what CrossFit was. And if you look at the sort of the underlying Bible, right, of CrossFit, it makes perfect sense. It's 100% functional and real functional and varied and you know constant stimulus and it boils down to like if i'm going to train a firefighter well i need him to be able to do things right i don't need him to be good at a whole bunch of

stupid stuff so that's what crossfit that's's where, and that was the magnetic draw of people like you guys who, like, this is what you care about. A guy doesn't start a CrossFit box because he's a businessman. A guy starts a CrossFit box because he loves to snatch or he loves to do whatever he does like that. Wad for time. Wad for time, right? That's what he likes to do, right? That's why you do it. And so you have this rabid community of people who are so dedicated to it,

and it creates this culture. And it's the niche that's – you need a niche, otherwise you're nothing. If you want to turn yourself into like Procter & Gamble, well, you don't have enough money and momentum to do it, right? The generic bullshit, you've got to appeal to a small group of intense people. It's all Malcolm Gladwell. Read his books. Okay, that's it.

Good. Now you understand. So that's what CrossFit does. I have a great appreciation for CrossFit because of that. And then there's the bashers. If you succeed, then there's always the bashers, okay? And with the BOSU ball, what happened with the BOSU ball was it was misunderstood because you see people doing stupid things on it. And you see a lot of people doing things that, you know, there's utility in it for them.

They're having fun. They're getting fit. They're sweating. And there's a very unique thing that I want to talk about, just the unique property of it. There's a unique training stimulus that nobody cares about, but it's very important. That's not understood. And so it looks sissy, and it looks bullshit from the outside. And it's everywhere. If you went to the Nebraska County Fair and you said BOSU, everybody would look at you with a blank stare.

But if you said blue half ball, more than 50% of those people who don't exercise go, oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, I did my ankle therapy. Oh, yeah, yeah. So it's everywhere. So when you're everywhere, you're the punching bag for the category because you symbolize it. What happens is a guy like Eric Cressy does a scientific study on stability training, and he uses a Dynadisc, which is fundamentally different, proves that, you know, okay, well, the athletes got slower from doing just very limited blah, blah, blah.

And then the title of the article is BOSU Ball Suck. Right? Now, here's what makes a BOSU Ball special, and it deals with Tony Blauer. This is why I like Tony so much. Four spears. Four spears. Spear.

Hey, Tony is brilliant. Tony is brilliant, okay? I like being around him because I like being around people who educate me. So Tony's whole thing is the threat response, right? The reality of threat response. So 25 years in the dojo doing your wax on, wax off doesn't mean shit when it's a surprise attack, okay? And Tony's really at the forefront of that. Well, guess what? You're standing. You're standing. I'm standing. You're sort of standing. You're standing. mean shit when it's a surprise attack okay and tony's really at the forefront of that well guess

what you're standing you're standing i'm standing you're sort of standing you're standing there's a threat of falling right now right here right now and you're not your lower brain is saying okay i'm going to protect you from that so you have a threat response to imbalance and what the bosu ball provides that nothing else does is a stable unstable okay that means that i'm on this undulating sort of thing but i'm not in danger i can step off and i can jump up and down which means i can load it with more than my body weight which means i can commit everything to it and i have no fear in my lower brain it's not it's not about the upper brain it's the lower brain that's the thing that's really governing what you do right so what we're able to do is we're able to down regulate that response and that's why athletes find it useful because my it's my reaction response that counts

the reaction time you can't really do much about that it is what it is but the reaction response if you can stretch a second and you can like we were talking at lunch you can get there first well then you win right so that's what makes it truly unique and the fact that you can jump up and down means that women can sweat which is fantastic because now you know we can sell a lot of them and i can get i have my time well the thing the thing that got me uh in the very beginning was just doing a squat warm-up on it yes and just the the uh the process of activation and the compression you were talking about correct correct and so you have the different phases of

your workout that you put together and you start off with was it's a general warm-up than a compression yeah so basically the the whole first part part of my session with an athlete has to do with the preparation and the core strength that's going to bridge the big core strength with the coiling core strength that we're going to develop at the end. And I'm going to prime your body to get more from what we're going to do later. So I'm going to prime your body. And the compression stuff just happens to be unique because you're tapping into the resource of the adductors

in a way that is not possible any other way. And it's an untapped resource for us all. And if you think about it, we come from tree climbing ancestors. And if you think about climb the coconut tree, what do you do? It's wide hips. It's narrow feet driving to the center line. Okay? It's skeletal transmission of force that's engaging the adductors.

If I'm on 2D pristine, which I am, you are, and we have been for the last, you know, however many years, there's clients and people who haven't stepped off 2D pristine in a decade. Right? I mean, it's just two dimensions all the time. and people who haven't stepped off 2D pristine in a decade, right? I mean, it's just two dimensions all the time. So that repetitiveness, if you're not actively training the nervous system and then the musculoskeletal system to sort of do that well, there's a beat-down effect. And by engaging this surface, it's an instant stimulus to the nervous system

and the structural aspect of training the adductors, engaging them. That gives you better carryover. And you guys felt it. I felt it. You felt it. My feet are lighter, my glutes are engaged, and I'm balancing the balls of my feet. Oh, and by the way, I can perform a better squat. No, I can see why Ray liked it.

I felt it immediately. That's often something that's very difficult for me and my coaching team to communicate to people that are squatting is to turn on the insides of the legs, get those adductors firing. It's a very foreign thing for people to feel. I'll typically get people in chain fondant positions lying on one side and elevating a leg towards the ceiling to kind of at least create that neural awareness. But that takes a lot of

descriptions, 80s references that 2% of my population gets it and about 1% effectiveness. Whereas, you know, sometimes just getting people moving with something that they're going to feel immediately is the conduit to the thing that you're trying to do which is awareness so that you can get to the thing well and also here's the thing is the adductors you can really only target them and train them with an oblique force from the side so it's the difference between pressing a weight and flying a weight right so i mean it's fundamentally different you can't get so any kind of adductor work that you're going to do is oblique which is not the function of flexion extension, right? And functionally speaking, the adductor really isn't, it's open chain when it's pulling in.

And I would call it flexion more so than squeeze, right? And then when it's on the ground and you're squatting up, it's an extension effect, right? So you're driving to the ground, the adductor's a big extensor. You're pulling it up and flexing it it's a big flexor and it's not engaged the way that it can be in anybody i don't care if you can squat you know and snatch perfect if you're fucking rich froning you can benefit because now you have a way and it's the resistance it's it's elastic it's an isometric that's elastic. And I love elastics. I do a hip flexor thing with the elastics. Elastics are faster than gravity.

The nervous system, right? We want the fast twitch fiber. We want the type 2A to say, fuck it, I'm going to go with you guys over here. I'm not going to hang with those guys that are slow. You don't have to point to me. I'm still fast. No, no, no, no, no. Well, you got faster.

That was just a reflex that relates to my running. So it's a very unique and extraordinary thing, and I invented a new BOSU ball for it. It's firm. It's dense. It's rigid. It's different. So it's okay to still hate the original if that's what you need to do.

You know what I mean? The new one fits in my belief system. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so here's what's so wonderful is today in this day and age, because of the social media and the leverage ability the truth has a real you know it's like it sprouts up and now it's like oh the light is shining on the truth so everybody can see it whereas you know you go back in the 80s there was the conventional wisdom had the momentum and there's no way to break through it no way to break through it and you know how many you guys i started my exercise for training was bodybuilding that's what i did it was you know

what is monday monday is bench day all over the world that's what monday is thursday what's that well usually it's bench day right it's bench day you know it's monday is bench day. And in the 80s, Monday was fucking bench day. Like, nobody didn't bench on Monday. Well, because if you miss any other days of the week, at least you got that. Yeah, and leg day, well, maybe I'll get the abs. Forget it, never. Why would I do those, right? You know, that's Wednesday, throw it in.

But so we all started with that. And then in my high school program it was the nautilus circuit right arthur jones who revolutionized the whole deal and created the industry the machines that you know crossfit is like the fucking terminator uh like what's his name the character who's the anti-terminator t1000 john no john john what's his name connor john connor john connor that's crossfit crossfit is john connor right fuck the machine right John, no, John, John, what's his name? Connor. John Connor. John Connor. That's CrossFit. CrossFit is John Connor. Right? Fuck the machine.

Right? So, you know, Arthur Jones and his Nautilus circuit, you know, this cam to resistance and no injuries and it's so simple to administer. We'll just call it Skynet. Skynet. I missed it. That was the thing. Skynet is the organization that made the Terminators.

Oh, okay. I just learned something. You tried to take me down the Terminator trail I'm going to go all the way Right, right, right I couldn't even remember John Connor John Connor, SkyNet was the organization Okay, right Nautilus is SkyNet, CrossFit's John Connor

Wait a minute, is that Was Arnold Schwarzenegger in that movie? I don't remember. So that was sort of our evolution, and I remember doing the Nautilus thing. Even at that time, I was like, this is bullshit. Monday's bench day. It's fucking not Nautilus. So that was sort of the strike of conditioning, and now it's all –

the word functional has been bastardized, but now it's functional. Now it's, you know, now it's moving your body, moving things as opposed to, you know, sort of this individualized, you know, one piece at a time and not integrated. And it's all based on bodybuilding. Aesthetics kick ass. I mean, that's what, you know. Well, that's number one. Well, listen, when I was 13, 14, you know, when the hair was starting to grow, right? That's when I would look in the mirror and I would curse my parents. I'd be like, I got my fucking freckles from my mother and I got my skinny legs from my dad.

This sucks. And I wanted to transform my body. And I used to read, you know, Tom Platz had the legs. Oh, my God. I used to read that i'd go on vacation and i would you know vacations were time you know when you buy more magazines than normal right and i would just look at these guys right you know i want to be like that and even like professional wrestling like you know big john stud like he was just too bulky like i like tony atlas you know

because he had like that 20 inch waist you know so for me it started out as aesthetics and the athletic side of it was you know sort of a byproduct and then it shifted you know once once i had the hair then it then it shifted to more of the athletic emphasis but in the transition there for me it was just insecurity with the way that i look and so that was that governed my training and the reality is most people's about what they look like. Totally. Most people. You know, when I invented the Bosa Ball, and I'm telling my friend,

he's a sports agent, and I'm, like, telling him how great it is, and his wife comes down, and she's got the laundry basket, and I'm like, oh, yeah, check this out. You know, it does this, that, that. And she goes, balance? I care about my butt. What do I care about balance? And she walked out of the room.

You know, because it's reality. It's reality. But the new compression stuff when you swing a kettlebell with the compression you light a fire in your i'm gonna say glutes because it would be sound funny if i said it the other way fire in your you can connect the dots you get a fire in your glutes unlike anything else and my ass used to be flat and now it ain't okay chicks dig it chicks dig it and they do i was teaching a thing and it's a group that i you know go to somewhat regularly annually and i'd say you know the ice was broken we'd been there for you know five hours and i say yeah my glutes man and one of the girls is like yeah you know we were talking about that so anyway it's misunderstood so let's back up so you got you starting bodybuilding but

i kind of view you as a like a biomechanics functional anatomy type person at the moment to absolutely to just categorize you like how did you get that background all right so basically it's it's it's again it's physical inadequacy that if i train the way that a guy who's bigger faster stronger than me trains well then i lose because then it's physical inadequacy that if I train the way that a guy who's bigger, faster, stronger than me trains, well, then I lose. Because then it's just an arms race where he has the advantage. So I was always looking for the edge. And I looked for the edge on the field and in the weight room. So I was always, I was the kid, 15 years old, going through microfilm to find an article about plyometrics that was three paragraphs long and it took me

two and a half hours to find like i was that kid i was reading gray's anatomy like you know i knew all the you know the metacarpals and the metatarsals i could name them and stuff like you know like i was a geek about it because performance was everything to me that's what i cared about and i was so afraid of failure early in my life before i was free to be this weird guy that i am now like when i was in the you know in in the in the in the regular construct you know my arm was with sweat all the time i had all these like ocd thing you know we gotta go up the staircase a certain way otherwise everything's gonna collapse and so like i i fortunately i'm not burdened by that

like and i'm weird right and do things very differently but the biomechanics was always driven from sort of this advantage how can i find advantage and so i and i've been looking forward to this to show you guys this okay so i i had been doing this spiraling action because when the paradigm for running is one up, one down, if you wind and whip, then you get that congruency of the muscle fibers, origin, insertions, right? So it costs me less energy to wind and whip than it does to saw back and forth, right? So that's a straight and that's a spiral.

And I cover more distance in the same amount of time. And force, you know, the power is the force divided by the time, but we often forget that there's a multiply by distance as part of that equation, right? So this right here, there's been a lot of world records set with this strategy, and I taught Tyson Gay that because he was supinating on the downstroke, which you don't want to do from just a biomechanical standpoint. That's going to pull you off the center and it's going to release the power of the lat too eccentrically and then pull it down. So I did a ton of this stuff, right?

And I study fight and flight. Fight is subjective. Flight is objective. So you have to anchor to flight, but you have to understand fight. And I studied Tai Chi. Tai Chi Chuan. Supreme Ultimate Fist is the translation. And this reflexive fist sucks for punching.

Because it wasn't designed for punching. It was designed for climbing. Well, not even designed. Designed is the wrong word. It was functional for climbing. And it's functional for holding a stick. But without a stick, it's a terrible position right there's no stability and the dip joints are vulnerable because it will collapse into itself

and break structurally if you condense it or close it by the way folks if you're listening yeah then you go watch the video yeah yeah you gotta also have a bunch of other stuff at the beginning of the show uh where david is demonstrating a lot of stuff so so basically in in the in the in the grand old days of old before history it was survival that's what you're competing for and if you don't have a stick in your hand or a stone in your thing then you're fucked you lose right so it was very functional to do this when we stopped climbing but empty hand when we compete for money, power, and fame, and survival's, like, way down, now we box and do things that aren't going to kill us.

But if I arrange the hand like that, now structurally that sucker is, like, it's unbelievable. And I was watching Floyd Mayweather against Shane Mosley, and it was the second. Can you... I'll put it in your hand. Well,ley, and it was the second. Can you – I'll put it in your hand. Well, no, no. What I'm saying is can you describe it in a way that if someone's listening,

they might know what you're doing with your hand right now. He's making a fist. All right. So basically this is a different kind of fist. We call it the core fist. So basically what I'm doing, if you were to – if a listener, right, if you're just listening to this, if I snap my finger, the middle finger is going to come down and the

last digit is going to be straight okay so what you do is you want to separate the distance between the thumb and that middle finger as far as you can and don't worry that it's gonna sort of angle off so you want to basically get the cuticle of the middle finger past or equal with the lifeline or whatever the hell that line is you know at the base you know in from the lifeline or whatever the hell that line is, you know at the base, you know in from the thumb So that's the first triangle and you got it in some people's hands do it easy and some don't So you get that thumb far away from the middle finger now the ring finger comes down Straight through the last digit and it envelops over the top of the middle finger and it's deep to it

So that means that it's lower down and the knuckle the second knuckle is lower down and now you've got to spread the thumb out and you got to keep the middle finger in the middle and now the index finger folds into that crease between the thumb and the middle finger with its last digit straight and you're spreading that thumb out spreading that thumb out and you spread the pinky out spread the pinky out and now what you do is you wrap it i can put it in your hand and it's going to feel incredible so you wrap it and now i have three triangles wrapped by the thumb and if that actually it's unbelievable that feels like a different fist it feels like a rock or a club and it you know dog so and and and wait till i put it in your hand. Okay?

So here we go. For the listeners, it's like a Wu-Tang. I am. Wu-Tang fist. It's a Wu-Tang fist. Right there. Now I'm going to go here, right? So for the listeners, watch the video. So we're going to bring that index finger in.

Now you're going to wrap the thumb, and you're going to do your best to wrap that. Okay? Now your neutral alignment is this to here that PIP joint the second knuckle or second digit on that middle finger to the electron on process the bone of the elbow is your neutral alignment if I hold the stick I have the same neutral alignment if I make a fist it straight so that's not neutral right okay so hold that really to feel what you got right yeah you got something there yeah all right now hold it tight don't let me flex it so now am i pretending or am i putting pressure i'm putting pressure right so now take it out shake it out make the one that you walked

in with right now hold it as tight as you possibly can watch what happens ready gone right yeah so that's the kind of that's the kind of weird stuff that i like geek out about i think doug and i are like i mean i spent 12 years in martial arts i'm like in my head just trying to unglue that like the times that I'd spent sparring, like, okay, wait. Yes. Okay, but. How quickly can you go there? Because, for instance, MMA, I've got to be ready to grab simultaneously and getting my hand in that position.

Yes, it takes a lot of practice. But it's practice. Well, here's what it is. It's here to there. It's here to there. Here here to there here to there it's and now i show you my wu-tang punch that's an ancient chinese secret so basically it's as fast it's as fast as as this once it's trained which takes a long time yeah a lot of effort and some hands don't ever go there i love martial arts so, kickboxing, Taekwondo when I was young and all those things.

But what was the context? Why did you show us that? So let me think. Oh, because of the biomechanical sort of geekness, right? How are you into biomechanics? And I show it to you just because it's so unexpected and it's just biomechanically it's a superior arrangement of an empty hand for the purposes of making a fist. And there's a corollary to it here that you do this and you do this, right? And with this, I don't know if this is going to work, but I think it will.

I'm going to do this, Mike, okay? So you've got to get this on camera. All right, so I'm going to put my hand here, and I'm going to put it up against my head here, and you're going to hit me in the head. Ready. I'm going to let Doug do this. Okay, Doug, you're going to hit me in the head. With all your martial arts background, you're going to hit me.

I'm going to put the mic down for a second. Kenny, you want to help out? You're going to hit me in the head. Sure. Why don't I have my phone for Instagram? Hold on, hold on. Do you need me to do color for this? We're going to put this on the phone too.

I don't know what's happening, but we're doing it. Okay, so for our listeners who are audio only, David is preparing himself to get bitch slapped in the head by Doug. This is the point where you stop listening on audio and you pull up YouTube. This is why you don't listen to the show. You watch it. Okay. What I'm going to do listen to the show. You watch it. Okay. What I'm going to do is I'm going to set myself up.

You're going to give me a nice healthy bitch slap. Healthy bitch slap. Healthy bitch slap. So give me a bitch slap. Okay. Am I intentionally hitting you on your hand that's protecting your head? The idea is that I'm. Okay. If you want to hit the other side, you can do that.

OK. No, I got you. I got you on the left. OK. Give me a hit. Give me a hit. Give me a hit. OK.

So now, Doug just went with, I think, four consecutive pretty good bitch slaps. Yeah, pretty good bitch slaps. She's calling the authorities, okay? All right, so here's what happened. So here's what happened when we did that. This structure right here, anchored against my head here, makes the force hit this triangle, and then it goes around the circle.

So my brain inside is not concussing back and forth so my brain is it's just chill and what my brain is saying okay do it slow motion here's what my brain is thinking right i'm here hit me slow motion right my brain is going that that's what my brain is saying that's an opportunity because you're committing yourself so again it's just the geekiness of biomechanics that gets you there and the free time they say idle hands right all the states of consciousness contribute you know when you don't have to go to work in the morning well you know you think about how to like punch things better oh god not only think about but you know i mean i've aggregated hundreds of thousands of reps like i like that little thing if i'm if i'm watching my kids at this at the skate park like my son's skating the skate park and i'm just sort of standing there and you know maybe texting or

whatever and watching them i just go up to the fence and i just take the pole and i just like bang bang bang bang bang just hit it with the middle and i just take the pole and i just like bang bang bang bang bang just hit it with the middle knuckle this thing is boned up like and these are boned up so that like you can't hurt me here you kick me in the shins i'll cry like a sissy all right you get me on the ground you get me on the ground i'll cry like a sissy but this stuff here this stuff This stuff has been trained. It's just like snakes. Older steel. All this stuff is really interesting, but let's switch out and go on to a new category. Perfect.

You were showing us earlier some stuff with the ropes. You were talking about rotation, and then you were showing us some stuff with running. If you watch the video version, David was showing us a different kind of running technique that we had never seen before and a lot of those concepts were really um coming out of the fact that you were saying that everything's not so sagittal play and a lot of it is really based in in rotation specifically so could you kind of dive into those topics perfect let's take a break and then and then hit that perfect sounds good you talk to yourself in the shower no i sing and i No, a lot of ideas come to me in the shower. That's true.

A lot of, just I guess it's the water in the air or something, the negative ions or something. Like I get great ideas in the shower. It's just a place for, I've just gotten out of my sleep and now it's, you know, boom, good idea. In the shower and driving my car. Okay, yeah. I think it's doing tasks that are pretty much automatic. Yeah. And it allows, it gives you enough free space.

Yeah. When I ride the train, I just work the entire time. What else are you going to do? Sure. You're trapped, so why not just focus? Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Yeah. Trapped.

All right, we're back. We're back. What are we talking about, Doug? We were earlier, we saw you showing some of your running techniques. Can you walk us through that and how that works and how you came up with these new ideas or methods? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So basically I'm a big word guy, right?

Like I make my own little meanings of words and stuff. And the word Bosu came both sides up to describe this thing. And then in 2004 I met Buddy Lee, who's a jump rope, you know, former Olympic wrestler. I remember Buddy Lee. Yeah, Buddy Lee. As a matter of rope, you know, former Olympic wrestler. I remember Buddy Lee. Yeah, Buddy Lee. As a matter of fact. That dude could jump rope like crazy.

Oh, dude. No, I mean, listen, I can admire athleticism. And I was in New York. We were both teaching at this conference. And he was a million miles an hour. And so I'm looking at him like, wait a minute. He's not jumping the rope about half the time. The thing's whizzing around him, but he's not jumping it.

He's fooling us all. No, no, no. It's part of the thing, right? It's just shh, shh, shh. Yeah. And so what I did was I was like, ah. And he gave me one of his ropes, and I took it home. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to get as good as Buddy,

which will never happen. You'll know what he's talking about. If you get on YouTube and look at Buddy Lee jumping rope, it's fucking crazy. It's crazy. I want to say he was like a former Olympian in wrestling. Wrestling, yeah. That's right.

He's super athletic. Yeah, super athletic. So anyway, so what I did was my great innovation was don't jump through the thing. Just learn how to whiz it around your body every which way, and that's what I showed you guys is there's basic patterns. It's calculus as you were doing the patterns yeah at first I was like uh-huh yeah maybe I can learn that a couple minutes and then you got into more advanced stuff and I was like okay that's that's actually a different thing yes exactly and so basically it's the sideways one

that you saw what what a jump roper does is because they're not training for carryover necessarily. Like, you know, a boxer's training for carryover, and your custom auto had Tyson swinging, you know, side to side without jumping because that's where the athletic – the conditioning and the timing is the jump, but you get so much more athletic benefit from the roll when you're not jumping. And you were using a straight rope. Yeah. You weren't using anything with handles. Is there a reason you were doing that? Well, yes.

Or can you do the same thing with a handled rope uh here's what it is you can every rope has its own sort of you know weight density thickness etc so it creates a frequency so they're all different unique to themselves what i like is we train with this rope rope without a swivel and so what we're encouraging is the supination and pronation and the figure eights so if you have a swivel then you have to be more talented to make that really come off because the swination and pronation and the figure eights. So if you have a swivel, then you have to be more talented to make that really come off because the swivel and the supination, pronation don't always jive unless you're good.

You need a little more sensitivity to it? Well, what it is is by not having the swivel, the rope's going to do what your hand does. And the rope is just feedback. That's all it is, right? Who gives a shit about the rope, right? I want to be good when I'm not with the rope. Like the rope is the tool

that's going to make me ancient Chinese secret. You ready? I'm waiting. So master, master, you know, 80 year old master

in China, I don't give you a secret, right? The secret is fucking train with the weapons. Put a stick in your hand, put a fucking rope in your hand,

train for two years, you'll kick the shit out of the master if you're any good. Because now you know how to move, you have the feedback. But, if I teach you empty hand, tan a fucking rope in your hand, train for two years, you'll kick the shit out of the master if you're any good, because now you know how to move, you have the feedback, but if I teach you empty hand, tan sao, ban sao, tan sao, ban sao, I could be at it for three years, I still won't know what the hell I'm doing, now, now, now you're my student, right, you're under me, you're uki, you're uki, I'm master, so if you train with the rope, it's like downloading athletic intelligence. Bang.

And all you have to do is just get good at some basic patterns. So what I'm doing is with that sideways roll that I was doing, it's basically a jump roper would do what's called the Texas twirl, where they would sort of, you know, make it go around in a circle. But I'm training. And so I want the event to happen. The event is when I shift my weight and make that the right left shift. And I want it to be so timed and integrated that every ounce of my body is able to jolt with maximum pulsing power force with the minimum amount of

effort and the rope teaches you how to do it. So it gives you, it downloads this like incredible software. And so that process, I changed the acronym from both sides up to both sides utilized. So now it's the right, it's the left, it's the upper, it's the lower, it's the hard, it's the soft. And then my study of Tai Chi and Feldenkrais and Rolfing, that gave me sort of the soft side, the yin side. So in the Western culture, what we have we have gravity and ground reaction and we're in

the middle and our goal is to be bigger faster stronger kick ass in the east they have heaven and earth and man in the middle it's the same exact thing but their goal is to you know stay centered and live to 900 and you know just be still and so it's sort of this yin and yang approach and so by understanding that and understanding you're drawing insight from the softer side now you have a sensitivity that allows you to discern gradations of force so if it's just grit your teeth go max you can't tell the differential between the little subtleties but if you get it to quiet and still and that stuff now you're you're sensitive to it you can feel the difference and now you can start to make sort of that intelligence program it into the stronger stuff to iron out things that you just

weren't even aware of so it's all about the awareness and that process of training with the and then i did a lot of stuff with a stick staff and clubs because again it's fundamental it's the feedback and it's elemental swinging and throwing. That's what made locomotion possible. You can't walk around with big cats unless you've got sticks and stones, right? You ain't going to do it. And then you discover fire, and then it's, you know, now I'm not competing with the cats anymore.

Now it's you and me. You know, the other hominid who can control fire, that's the arms race. It's the arms race, right? In race right in 2001 space odyssey you know i get a thigh bone and i hit you on the head doesn't matter you're bigger anymore right and and check this out your left hand right the left hand is the sinister hand it's the one that the nuns used to beat out of you right you're not allowed to be lefty perhaps is it a vestigial thing from a long long time ago when, Stronger was coming over the hill and I offered the olive branch, you know, don't kill me, don't kill my kids, I'll be your servant.

And then you can take my women anyway. And then shake on it and now, boom, bang, sneak up on you with the left hand. Just like Doug did. Exactly, exactly. The earth, the meek shall inherit the earth it's it's or doug will if you have a disadvantage if a disadvantage then it there's an incentive to get creative there's an incentive to to do things differently so with the running technique it's basically a long long time

ago i decided okay i'm i'm studying balance but balance what the hell is that right so anchor everything and measure it by locomotion So evaluate the study of balance by you know how fast are you getting and then that's it's so objective So easy to stay on target right not get confused And so that was the you know the foresight that I had is like okay measure everything by locomotion and so I by locomotion and so I study locomotion and it's about the tensional balance so it's the distribution of the ground loading force throughout your body that creates the most efficient transmission that matters right because it's all just body weight and if I have to compensate for some imbalance well now I can't

optimize power so Usain Bolt could run backwards and beat me but to be him his own best he has to have tensional balance and his running form which is considered in you know poor is actually excellent when you understand it and that um rotational power is the other thing so it's tension of balance and rotation because like we were talking earlier, it's everything, even the individual muscle fibers rotate. So it's all rotational. So you can think of a linear projection of a mass or you can think of like a linear function, but to do it linear requires that everything's rotating

just because it always rotates. So reconciling this rotation right to left because it's always just a shifting of weight that's that's where power comes from the the sagittal stuff that's the brace in the core that's the weight evenly distributed that's the head in the middle the shoulders level and that's strongest and most functional for picking up something heavy let me pause you for just a sec i know not everybody has gone to the video yet and again we've said this probably the sixth time of this episode if not the 14th time to take a look at

some of the videos because some of the movement you were demonstrating was certainly unique i'm i'm an expert level i'm an expert running running coach and that certainly I've never seen anything like that. However, one thing that our listeners can sort of relate to is that idea of core on, high heel recovery, getting a decent knee drive, using gravity, falling forward. Those are themes that are very deep within our community. You were demonstrating something that was showing a combination of like rotational planes, which if you look at any high level runner, historically, with a drone overhead or any kind of camera overhead, you're going to see plenty of swivel and rotation. So I think some of the conversation that we've had in the last 10 or 15 years about minimizing that rotation is a little bit ridiculous um and i happen to be close with um dr romanov and some of the pose advocates and everything and and i i do principally believe in some of the rotational stuff but if you are only listening i've only listened yet what dave was doing was a combination of like a Velociraptor and the Dougie.

All at once. That's fantastic. And that's what it was. I mean, your legs were like coiling and then your arms were like loose and kind of snapping. And then, you know, just from anybody that's read Anatomy Trains or anything like that, like you can kind of get what you're getting at using, you know, fascial forces and all that kind of stuff to be the contralateral spring to propel one forward.

It's like I've never seen anything like it. And one of the points of us doing the show is to try to stay open to new ideas and concepts. It's fascinating for sure. My wife is a world-class runner at one point. I'm interested to show her the video. She would be like, what is going on? I'm like, I don't know.

Maybe we'll try it after you have the baby. Yeah, and there's some things to unpack there. So basically everything boils down to balance. So when you're running, you're actually not falling forward. And technically we're all falling. Like I'm falling right now when you're running you're actually not falling forward and technically we're all falling like i'm falling right now you're falling and gravity doesn't care if it's your feet or your face you're falling right so you obviously have to harness that force but the moment when it matters the maximum impact force has to be balanced because it's about maximum force to and from the ground so the concept of falling forward, it's not actually

accurate. And if you watch the best, they're not falling forward. There's a propulsion and their head in distance, their head is actually raising as they travel through the air. So if you were falling, you would think that the angle would be going forward and the head would actually be dipping down. But it's a boom, boom, and it's an upward force. And if you look at the study by Peter Weyand, where he basically codified the concept that, look, it's force to and from the ground. And it's a vertical force.

And if you think about it, once you're past acceleration and you're upright running at a constant speed or getting faster, or holding the speed, if there were an ice slick as you're running along you wouldn't slow down much you would still be going because it's a vertical force that's making it all happen so it's the vertical force that matters and the vertical force is balanced and it's a head over foot rule well not even a rule it's a law because that's the anatomical biomechanical balance.

And so the coil is the way that you're going to harness the power of the lats. And it's really an ipsilateral understanding to get the contralateral result. And what I do, it looks crazy. It looks weird. It looks, I mean, I get it, right? I understand. I mean, it's a velociraptor doing the dougie. Yeah, it's weird.

It's weird. But the thing about it is it's a philosopher after doing the dougie yeah it's weird it's weird but the thing about it is it's faster so and it's and it's and it's relative that aspect of it is a very new discovery because you know 30 000 hours in you know on the 30 000th and first hour the next discovery is pretty profound compared to the discovery 10 hours in you know what i mean so when when you and it came from what hitting swinging when marlon bird taught me how to swing a baseball bat and oh aha and literally within within minutes i had a new running technique for distance you know my focus always been sprinting right and for distance you i think if you look at the kenyan ethiopian women you see perhaps perhaps the greatest efficiency in terms of the stride. So it's basically a very tight angle at the forearm and humerus,

and it's a pronating sort of roll to the midline, and the idea is like it's head over foot, and it's just this lot of rotation happening, but the rotation is this Grachowiczian spinal engine rotation, meaning the shoulder. It's an underhand figure eight with the shouldersky and spinal engine rotation, meaning the shoulder. It's an underhand figure eight with the shoulders and overhand figure eight with the hips. So as the one side shoulder comes down and back, the same side hip is coming up and forward. And it's a mechanical thing.

Just because we have a curved spine, the frontal plane flexion creates the counter rotation that gives you a longer stride length. And then you're able to land on top of it so there's a lot of just misconception because if you try to look at it still it's all weird and you know pawing back is not what you want to do but that's what it looks like and front side mechanics so this new way that looks crazy velociraptor stuff it's i mean it's a huge front side mechanic and fascially it went when you're here you get you get more i get it i mean i get it anatomically it's it's it's it's weird it's weird but ultimately nobody ultimately opinions don't count doesn't matter right ultimately what's faster is faster sure so that's that's how it'll

play out yeah yeah so as far as lower body mechanics go you you i feel like when i was watching you do the run, which again, go watch the video to see what the hell we're talking about, the easiest thing to notice at first glance is that your arm movement, your arm mechanics are different. You talked a lot about lat engagement and how that plays into it. You talked a lot about how in order to have your head over your foot, you had to be in this kind of shifted stance.

I'm not sure how to describe it. You can touch on that. But as far as lower body mechanics go, is it really that much different than regular running, or pose running, or any other running styles? Yeah. So basically, your objective is to lift your foot up is your objective.

So you don't lift your knee up. You lift your foot up. Because if you lift your knee up, all of a sudden you're behind it. Right? So you're intentionally, if you're lifting up your knee, you're getting your hip flexor involved in taking away from your hamstring? Well, here's the thing is I happen to disagree with the idea

that you want to curl the hamstring. So that's not what you actually want to do. You know, fall forward and curl the hamstring is, it doesn't make a sprinter faster for sure, okay, because none of them do it, and the curling, the ham, the hamstring, it's, the hamstring's job is basically this, it, it is driving the, the, the, the leg down, but it really is this moment when it matters of this, it's almost like an isometric jolt, and it's boom, and then and then it's done right and then you want it off so it can fly through very fast without any restriction as you lift the foot up you don't

think about you and what you want to do is think extension through the toes lift the foot up knee will knee's going to look like it's coming up but the knee you want to think in terms of pulsing forward and that that side bending is going to give you the mechanics of a higher hip and all the best do this so i mean it's you know you watch the video and of my 30,000 hours in studying movement 7,000 of those hours are you know video review i mean it's just you can't understand something unless you can see it right and there used to be a debate that when a horse gallops, all four limbs don't leave the ground, right? And then, you know, somebody created a picture of it where it's like, well, they do. So the lower body mechanics is basically with the lower body mechanics, the intent is you've got to get your feet up. That's your intent.

In no circumstance do you flex the toes. You want to have the toe extension. And then the real intent is lateral to medial. So fourth and fifth metatarsal is the initiation point for a good runner. Whether you're distance or sprinter, it's the fourth and fifth metatarsal right behind the toes that has to initiate. It initiates before the moment of maximum impact, right? So you're receiving it there because structurally you're leveraging the power of the heel forward. Big toe, second toe, third toe tie into the talus on top of the calcaneus. For people listening, the heel bone

is the calcaneus and then the bone that floats on top of that is the talus. So you have two stories in the foot. And so what you have to do is it's fourth and fifth metatarsal and it's a pronating roll out through the big toe and your your your reflex is to flex the toes so any sense of imbalance or any efficiency you have this little prone thing and so that'll create the plantar fasciitis and the shin splints and all these problems especially if your your shoes are cantilevered up and that's going to promote a flexion at the toe. You know, a flat or neutral is less excitatory for flexion of the toes. And these are reflexes that are working against you. So for the lower body mechanics, really what you want to do is don't mess with the width of your stride.

So the head over foot, it's an upper body adjustment with the lats and the frontal plane that's going to make the alignment, and your width of your stride is what it is allison felix has bow legs and she crosses over the midline with her feet right and other people have a little bit wider gait so you don't mess with the feet except for the fact you gotta land on fourth and fifth metatarsal if you're distance, by the time that moment happens when you're maximum loading, you're past the heel. So you get a propulsive heel strike and you need to rely on that skeletal boom to create the endurance and the speed over endurance. Now a sprinter is going to be moving faster. It's going to be more leveraged. So the heel's not actually going to hit

as a sprinter, but it's the same exact foot mechanics that is really the focus of the lower body with the correct intent so high knees and butt kick and all that it's just the wrong intent it's not it's not going to yield the best result and i would argue that a lot of people who are cued to do certain things actually don't do them so you're're succeeding despite the cue because some of the best sprint coaches in the world cue you to brace your core and keep the center line and don't have lateral deviation, and that's wrong.

It's just fundamentally wrong. Well, I mean, yeah, take a look at something like the drag step as an innovation. The Jamaican start out of the blocks? Well, I mean, yeah, you take a look at something like the drag step as an innovation. The Jamaican start out of blocks? Yeah. I mean, it's so counterintuitive, but then when you look at what it's doing, it makes sense from a physics perspective once you analyze it in a much more deep way. But it's just interesting.

Yeah. For me, it's the most fascinating subject because it's the most universal and it has the greatest degree of carryover so if you know locomotion is sort of the foundation for everything because motion is the thing for every you know for all animals and the very first animals were sidebenders right so frontal plane is first so the i would say like principally and we're getting yeah i may be far down this, but like by focusing on that fourth metatarsal, there's a lateral quality to that which initiates a fascial response. So you're going to get a quick turnover just from what I'm trying to interpret you saying and from what I watched. It seems that you're going to get a good sense of elasticity to work the turnover. So you're less reliant on both the hip flexor and the hamstring,

effectively kind of relaxing those muscles. And then if you're integrating the upper body with that and the timing is right, then you can use the fascial chains to kind of like quick step. Well, it's skeletal and then myofascial. So the skeleton is strong laterally, and that's where you want to take all the slack out of the system so the muscles aren't working. It's the connective tissue.

And that's really the secret. That's the game is make that. And it's the harmony, and then it's the pulsing action to create more force faster to get you harder on the ground and then off the ground faster. Because the more time you're on the ground, the more the forces sort of get stuck in your body. Right? The reason why that punch, you know, is so devastating is because it doesn't push at the end. Right?

It's boom. So it's not in me. It's in you. Right? Whereas if I punch and push, well, it's not in me. It's in you, right? Whereas if I punch and push, well, now it's in me, right?

So same thing with the ground is when you pulse it correctly, have the timing, right? You're hitting it harder, but there's less stress on the body. So it's really weird. Yeah. No,

it's not weird. It makes, I mean, well, it's weird from a, from a, from what would be a conventional elasticity. I mean,

Louie, I mean, a lot of people that have, I mean, the concept of taking a basketball and letting it bounce twice and figuring out two reps when you're doing these things is about the maximum amount of velocity under heavy loads. I hadn't heard that. That's cool. Yeah. It's a very clever. Louis Simmons, you're saying? Yeah. Okay, yeah.

I've read so much of Wednesday and so many of it. I didn't know that. No, but one of the principles that he uses, he took a basketball and let it bounce and just observed it and then noticed that after the second bounce, it lost so much more return. And then that is in part why you see a lot of doubles in some of the conjugate training system. I love it. I love it. That of the conjugate training system. I love it. I love it. That's a side. Yeah.

No, I love it. We should have you just go visit Louie. You and Louie would love to hang out. Here's the thing. One of the things that I use from Louie Simmons, and I've seen a lot of his stuff, okay, a lot of his stuff, train wide to capture everything inside. I got that from Louie simmons and it's just like so beautiful and the lats what's wide right what's wide it's the lats that's your core muscles right

that's bo jackson i want bo carrying the ball is the lats right the glutes for your upper body yeah yeah and think of the bridge right structurally is the hips to the shoulders yeah it spans the whole thing and think about the origin of the lats right the origin of the lats is the most fibrous densest tissue in your body it's massive lumbodorsal fascia or thoracolumbar fascia whatever you want to call it it's this mat and it's an origin it's a muscular origin so lats are like lats the big three right the glutes are the biggest the lats are second adductors are third that you know adductor magnus third biggest so a lot of people when they discuss sprinting they do talk about the lats the thoracolumbar fascia and the glutes

and the serape effect which you can go google and learn about and about how that that um that oblique pull that you get from one shoulder crossing down to the contralateral hip does cause a lot of rotation, and that's what people use to help spring themselves forward when sprinting. Have you looked into any of that? Oh, absolutely, yes. So, Serape effect, the issue that I have with Serape effect, okay, is that I get much better results and have much more power everything works better when

i train rotation ipsilaterally so serape is like that's gravy that's coming along for the ride is structurally correct and everything's happening but if i train serape i'm not training the most bang for buck and i'm not i'm really if i'm training serape well then i'm really not training the most bang for buck and i'm not i'm really if i'm training serape well then i'm really not training lat it's much more anterior focused and you know doing this kind of stuff and so that doesn't yield the same productivity that the ipsilateral it's the spinal engine it's the shoulder down and back the same side hip up and forward and the 10th and 11th rib is the central axis of that rotation and when you understand that changes the game like you're faster when you start training it that way so the serape effect it's all correct there's nothing wrong about it but that you don't want to invest

in that training because it's the lat and it's the frontal plane so the rotation is initiated by the side bend and if you think about swinging or throwing, it's pronation and supination. If I supinate, like I hold a bat listener, put a bat in your hand, a stick in your hand, both hands, hold it the way you do, and then swing it. When you draw it back and the top hand supinates, you're coiling. That's winding the lat. And the other side is pronating, and that's unwinder, you know, creating a long coil. And then when you swing it through, your shoulders have to change. You watch, you know, the moment of impact for a baseball guy.

It's, you know, massive side bend. It's massive coil. That's where the power is. And it's actually not safe to rotate without side bending. And that's why you had this big craze about you know the anti rotation training okay well you know can't rotate and you got to resist the rotation well it's really not a very effective way to train it you know it's not it's not that productive and side bending without transverse is very bad you know if you hold dumbbells and go side to side well you're the

idiot in the gym who's gonna have big problems right so it's the perfect blend and ratio of frontal with transverse that magnifies the power of sagittal and makes everything come together very cool um so to to since we're we got to wrap up the show here really soon i want to touch on one more point so we mentioned louis simmons and thereby we automatically start thinking about powerlifting lifting heavy lifting heavy weights, et cetera, et cetera. And we were talking about deadlifting earlier. Yeah. And one of the things that you showed us, and again, go watch the video, was that when you were deadlifting earlier, you were not pressing through your heels. You were letting your heels kind of kiss the ground.

They were floating just a little bit. And then as the weight was coming off the floor and you're going through into full extension, you were plantar flexing coming up on your toes. So was that just a unique technique you would use in certain cases or is that an infallible statement that you never ever want to push through your heels when you deadlift why were you doing that okay so so basically the the reason why i'm doing that is because that particular lift is designed for the athletic carryover okay so so that's that's why it exists this isn't designed to make you a better deadlifter necessarily it's better no athlete well with a with a straight bar a barbell you can't you can't do it right you need a trap bar trap bar because you have to be in the center right and so and what we're doing is we're it's all based on the principle of tensional balance so spine and

shin angle congruency is your fundamental guide to tensional balance for loading the ground. So if you watch the great athlete as he's cutting and he's driving. So when you say athletic care, are you talking about sprinting, running, agility? Is that really what you're? That's the foundation for the athletic care. Like, you know, none of this stuff is going to help you hit a baseball if you can't hit a baseball, right? But if you can hit a baseball, this stuff is going to help you hit a baseball further, right? So it's the global gross motor movement that locomotion

running agility jumping those are the things that we're after right and when we say athletics okay and throwing and swinging speed and power but that particular deadlift is the idea is i want to harness and leverage the power of the heel which is connected to the posterior and you need to harness it to get the posterior not make it anterior based i want to leverage that forward as far forward as i can because that's how i'm going to create the most spring right and the most fascial return and skeletal you know stability so that particular lift is the the 45 stance and then balance on the green dots the fourth and fifth metatarsals and then match the spine and shin angle so it's not a hip hingey deadlift and you pull with that straight up and

you can actually lift heavier weight this way with a trap bar than you can by conventional means it's very strange but you can and what we do with our deadlift again since it's athletic carryover nine inches off the ground or trap bar handles off the ground, that's not the rule. 6'5 doesn't pull what 5'5 does in my gym. Right. You know what I mean? Like, I don't care. I want your hands just below your knee.

That's where I want you. Right? Because I don't care. I'm not competing in a deadlift. So this is completely different. This is not for powerlifters. This is not for weightlifters. No.

No. I mean, you might want to play with it as something that you might add in your training at some point. That's a good question. I don't know if you would or not. I mean, I'll play with it now. What's interesting, though, is just with the mechanics, with the rotation, I have to give it up. Like, I mean, just in, in kind of like seeing that and as we're having this discussion, I was playing with that position and feeling my adductor magnus turn on as I was getting out of that position.

Now we can teach people with a, with a regular barbell to turn those very muscles on weighted in the heel with a little bit of internal, um, um, uh, femoral rotation. But that's very difficult to teach people.

And it's interesting. It's interesting. It's a different way to do it. I just keep saying it's interesting. Well, think about this. But it is. I mean, I was like, okay, well, this is actually working those posterior muscles on the toes on a deadlift. Well, that's never really been said in a book.

Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting thing. Something I've been considering lately is how do we get people as strong as possible, fast as possible, and everyone's using a barbell. And, you know, powerlifting, weightlifting, we use barbells. But it might not necessarily – if we got rid of all equipment and then we asked ourselves how do we get better at this thing with modern technology and we didn't have all this tradition behind us, would we even go to a straight bar barbell or would we be using like what you're talking about right now? And so I think there's an opportunity to look at it through that lens and then also keeping tradition as well, but learning how to integrate this properly.

Here's what I would say, and this is what I told the strength coach, is if I'm looking to build mass, well, there's really nothing better than a back squat. If I want to put the slabs of meat on your body, I think a back squat because it has that eccentric component first. So I think it's superior for building mass than a deadlift where it's the other way around. And are you really doing the fully eccentric on a deadlift or are you letting gravity do some of it too? So I think it depends on your objective.

But if you look at a deadlift in and of itself i can tell you exactly how it originated there's two guys sitting there in a grain shop on friday and they're bored shitless and they got three hours before they close the shop and there's an axle wheel out in the back and it's like hey you think you picked that up yeah ten bucks says you can pick it up there boom you got the deadlift right and now because of the competitive nature of men, and York Barbell decided that, you know, nine inches is where the hole is. Okay, well, that's where we are. If you want a deadlift, that's the rules. And, you know, can only compete apple to apples. How much weight could you pull if the thing was, you know, I remember the leg press, the universal thing when you were in the gym.

And you were seven years old, and you stacked that sucker out because you only had to just bend your knee you know straighten your knees an inch it leveraged leverage right right exactly exactly we used to we used to go in there and like you do 850 pounds right right so so so that that deadlift is basically the the derivation of this was allison felix high school coach um bear strength and she's a sprinter barry uh barry what's his name he he um yeah sprinter he he did a deadlift routine with her it was basically five or fewer pulls concentric only you know you you you wait five minutes rest and you immediately follow with plyometric and it's just the genius formula and then ryan flaherty is one of the best speed guys in the world his innovation was well You wait five minutes rest, and you immediately follow with plyometric. And it's just the genius formula. And then Ryan Flaherty is one of the best speed guys in the world.

His innovation was, well, let's do it in a trap bar, right? It's just better, right? And then my innovation is basically, well, do the same exact recipe, right? It's the same baking instructions, but now let's do it through the green dots so that we create more carryover. The green dots, for those that haven't seen your poster are what you said earlier was pushing through the fourth and fifth metatarsals which is essentially like where you're you know where your uh your little toe your pinky toe and you're in your second toe connect to your foot yes just behind the pinky and and third at fourth toe so

fourth toe fifth toe pinky that toe next it was right behind that. And the reason why they're green. The ring toe. Yeah, the ring toe. That's right. The reason why they're green dots is because if you start telling people, okay, well, it's behind your pinky, you know, meta-tart, meta-what, you know, and they were originally green circles. But circle is not as good a word as dot. This guy.

He thought the whole thing through. Cueing, right? Cueing, right? I'm a best idea wins guy, right? So the green dots came from Cal Poly with Coach Chris Holder. You guys know Coach Chris Holder? No. You know him?

I don't know him, but I know all of them. All right, so he's genius. You guys have to set up a show with him, and he has to tell you guys about Qigong for sports performance. All right? I was actually looking at doing Qigong myself. Okay. All right.

So you need to talk to Dr. Holder, Taoist priest Dr. Holder. Perfect. So I'll give you his email. I'll give you his phone. He's a must for you guys, okay? A must for you guys. Cal Poly is the first institution that incorporated weck method because i've known chris because of our mutual interest in the asian arts and medicine we've

known each other for 10 years and we geek out on a level that you know most people just be falling asleep with so we have that relationship and then his assistant coach, Chris White, who was a Bosu hater, by the way, okay, you know, circus tricks, bullshit. He saw the deadlift on, you know, on video, on Facebook or whatever. He saw it. He's like, okay, that's interesting. Like pulling on the balls of your feet in a deadlift, seeing how much weight was lifting. So he started doing it. He started succeeding with it. And his athletes his athletes started succeeding with it fewer injuries because there's nothing in the lower back he's like hey holder you know can we go down and see weck so and holder holder holder and i didn't really you know we didn't really converse so much about the strength and conditioning we conversed about chinese stuff yeah right so so holders like yeah so we set up this meeting they came down for two days in december and it fucking i mean it's epic they they went up it was winter break and holder is super smart and he was athletic and white is like a fucking stud okay and he went to cal poly so he's a genius don't let stupid people in there so they they don't. They don't exist. So basically, White spent the entire Christmas break training all the things that I taught him, the deadlift, the coiling core, the compression stuff.

And he's an athlete, so he could feel it. He's like he's faster than he's ever been. He jumps higher than he ever has. And so it was enough to convince them that, okay, we're going to implement this with our team. And so what it did was it gave me the benefit of implementation with 250 athletes. Like, I'm good one-on-one, but you tell me to prepare the buffet for 75? Like, oh, shit, how the fuck am I going to do that, right? So they had sort of the experience in that organizational time management.

How are we going to actually teach all these guys? And that's where Green Dots came from. Because Green Circle. Circle. Takes me a long time. What the fuck? It's a circle? No, it's a dot.

Get on your dot. So it was those guys who came up with the cue. And literally, I text back and forth. We have this top secret little Facebook group that nobody knows about except for now. Where we share these ideas and videos. We go back and forth. secret little like facebook group that nobody knows about except for now that where we where we share these ideas and videos like we go back and forth and every day we're sharing it i mean white just he he texted me and and look posted the video today i did one today and yesterday so we're constantly sharing the ideas and so i mean and it's the result rules so that's you know all i care about

is the result if pink panties made me better i wear pink panties i don't care right why why do they do drugs right why is there a drug bore because it makes you better it makes you better right um quick quick question before we shut down what are those big rubs for oh those big rubs so okay so that gives you man strength that stuff over there it's a special kind of strength yeah so so man strength yeah exactly like if you just like again like my goal with my little inadequate you know smaller weaker slower body like i don't want to feel intimidated like if i go to prison like you know you know the joke sounds like you're counting on it no no no no no no but have you have you know the joke. It sounds like you're counting on it. No, no, no.

Have you heard the joke? Guy goes into prison. Pulls out his green dots. Green dots help you get away. He goes in. This poor guy didn't... Listen to the joke. He goes in. The little cell.

He meets his cellmate. 400 pounds. He's big. He's badass. First thing the guy says, the little cell, right? He meets his cellmate. He's 400 pounds. He's big. He's badass, right? First thing the guy says to the little guy coming in is, what do you want to be, the husband or the wife? Okay, that's an interesting choice. Those are my options, husband or wife, husband or wife. All right, well, I'll be the husband, I suppose, okay? I would pick husband, probably, as much as I wouldn't like either one. But, so the guy says to him,

all right, well, get over here and suck your wife's cock. All right. So, and so that's the sort of... There's no right answer. Right, there is not a correct answer. So, that's sort of the existential, like, you know, my competitive drive.

And, you know, if God were handing out the cards, I'd be the biggest, baddest motherfucker on the planet, right? But I'm not. So I just want to feel very comfortable against a guy who otherwise could kick the shit out of me. And I want to be able to, like, block it and then run the fuck away. Like, you know, just so I don't get... Sounds good.

Well, you know what? We're going to run the Spartan Beast at the World Championships at the end of September. So, and, I mean, Kenny's a running guy, but Doug and I, you know, not so much. So maybe we could. My time is past the best. Maybe we could play around with your training methods to prepare. I think that would be fun. I think the – here's what it is.

It's an investment in driving up the five, up and down the five. So it's a pain in the ass, but let's do this. Let's schedule some sessions where you come down here, and I'll put you through sessions, okay, on the path to independence so we don't have to, you know, spend fucking 45 minutes, an hour and a half on the five, right? Three or four sessions will get the job done in terms of that, and then we'll just touch base,

and the technique of it will take a little bit of time to get, but the exercise lays the foundation so the nervous system will be able to adopt it. So let's do that. Sounds good. That'll be an amazing project. And then let's potify or whatever the hell. Do you able to adopt it. So let's do that. Sounds good. That will be an amazing project. And then let's potify or whatever the hell. Do you want to run the race with us? No, because I don't want to do the obstacles.

I'll run in between them. I don't think they're going to let you do that. For every obstacle you skip, you've got to do like 30 burpees. I know, I know. You'll just be a burpee machine. So you have to do the burpees and the obstacle or just get the burpees? You can skip the obstacle if you do all the burpees. Or if you fail the obstacle. So you have to do the burpees and the obstacle, or you just get through the burpees? You can skip the obstacle if you do all the burpees. Or if you fail the obstacle, you still have to do the burpees.

I don't want to dive under cattle prods that are going to shock me. I'm a lazy guy, right? So people ask me, do you run? Well, no. I sprint all the time, but I don't really run. Plus, you've got to rethink diving, it seems like. What's that, diving? Or another sport.

Oh, yeah, right. Exactly, yeah. Idle hands, right? That another sport. Oh, yeah, right, exactly, yeah. Idle hands, right? That's another way to backflip. All right, if people want to find out more, I mean, what are you working on? So you have the Bosu ball. You talked about how it could be useful. I would recommend a gym have at least one to play around with, if not more.

The clubs are cool, too. So if people want to know more about what you've got going on and how it could be useful to them where do they go all right so you go to weckmethod.com that's where it is but w-e-c-k w-e-c-k method.com here here's the thing is like my training is so like up to date so i'm putting together the education that's most current because october 2016 is when the like the game changed for me and then it was like oh okay you know don't look at anything before now now it starts right so that's what i say every six months i know i know and everybody right so so i think it's basically the way it is is anybody listening to this write david at weck method.com reach out to me personally because I guarantee you want to squat more.

You want to be better at that. I guarantee you this will get you the results that you want. And you don't want a bottleneck in your gym, so you need to get a lot of them. But, like, the idea here is that this is a movement, and I am bending over backward until I get, you know, weckmethod.com up to, you know, okay, now it's just easy. So anybody who's highly motivated and you want to do that, you know, I'm a resource. I'll video call.

I just want people to get better because that's the proof. And what I said to Ray Regno, when I reached out to Ray, because Ray's a real open-minded guy, and, you know, he didn't slam the door in my face, I said, Ray, listen, here's the deal. I'm going to give you a BOSU ball, right? I'm going to give you this new BOSU ball. Here's what you're going to do with it. If you do it, you can keep it.

And if you don't do it, well, then I'll take it back. Does that sound like a fair trade? And we're going to touch base every Friday. So I'm going to come over every Friday at 8 a.m., and we're just going to have our little hour geek out session, compare notes, see how you're doing with it. And it worked. He uses it.

And now he has six of them, and he teaches people with it. And for me, you either use something because it has utility, or you don't, right? You buy a toothbrush, you actually use it, right? You buy some exercise gizmo, you can stop using it most of the time, right? A barbell, you'll never stop using it. You're never going to stop using it. You know, the phone, you're never going to stop using those things because they're utility. And that's what, especially what the new BOSU ball is. There is value in it, unlike anything else, to make you

better. And I'm not some salesy guy. I'm giving this software away in terms of coiling core. You can do it with a dumbbell, do it kettlebell, barbell. You know, landmine's awesome for it. I want to give the software away. Make people better on a new paradigm. Give it away. And I happen to have a proprietary product that offers something. It's all great.

I'll monetize that way and then monetize with the education. So that's really, you know, because this stuff isn't so simple and it is counterintuitive in a lot of respects but again like it's faster so who cares right just get over it it's faster you know don't need to make fun of it you don't need to hate it just accept the fact that it's fucking faster and learn it like that's you're stronger you're better whatever so that's it's fucking faster and learn it. Like that's, you're stronger, you're better, whatever. So that's, it's the fruits of more than 30,000 hours of geeking out. We went to lunch. You know how fucking nuts I am. Yeah.

No doubt. Fuck. Awesome. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, David. And I look forward to training. Yeah. Me too.

Me too. Yeah.