Barbell Shrugged - Developing Explosive Strength w/ Cal Dietz and Dr. Andy Galpin - 217

Episode Date: July 13, 2016

What about Alex? We don't need Alex. We don't need Alex. This week on Barbell Shrug, we interview Cal Dietz. Coach, yeah. Coach Cal Dietz and Dr. Andy Galpin. That's you! Oh, hey!

A pure chump. A pure chump to the max. Not Cal. Cal's the man. Andy, you're alright. What are we talking about this week, Andy? I think the biggest one is the big toe glute hack. We're talking about three strength hats that you're probably not using in your training. Yeah. Triphasic training for life.

This is terrible. This is awful. What are we talking about? This week on Barbell Shrug, we interview – this week on – this week – this – I'm melting down. This week on Barbell Shrug, we interviewed – damn, what's his name again? Cal Dietz. Yeah, okay. This week on Barbell Shrug, we interviewed Coach Cal Dietz and Dr. Andy Galpin

and we talk about well Coach Cal mostly talked because he's the true expert he talked about a lot of things number one a quick hack we lost Mike

we lost him we'll try that again oh hey Alex you want to shoot the intro how long is this intro? This week on Barbell Shrug. This week on Barbell Shrug, we interview Coach Cal Dietz and Dr. Andy Galpin, and we talk about triphasic training.

Yeah, he also talked about why your big toe messes with your glute. We also talk about how to use it. We talk about the correlation between your big toe and your glute, and then sometimes how you need to stick your big toe in your glute. We also talk about how to use, talk about the correlation between your big toe and your glute. And then sometimes how you need to stick your big toe in your glute. Well, something like that. And you also talked about eating collagen or something. Yep. Eating collagen. We talk about three great strength hacks that you're probably not using. That's really what we talked about is the three strength hacks. This week on Barbell Shrug, we interview Coach Cal Dietz and Dr. Andy Galpin. If you don't know Coach Cal Dietz, he's arguably the most famous

and probably most praised college strength coach right now. Extremely novel in his assessment and monitoring of athletes and his little tricks and tips for things like activating the glute, how to identify a glute dysfunction and how to fix that very, very quickly. He also developed a really novel training program called Triphasic that uses some really old-school mentality of training philosophy, stuff like eccentrics and isometrics, but puts them in a very user-friendly, very applicable model

for anyone's goals, performance, athlete, or general practitioner. Boom. Cowabunga, dude! That was the best one! Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Hey, I see you sitting there, lonely by your keyboard.

If you want to, just whip your fingers out. Put them on your keys. Type in http://www.barbellshrugged.com. While you're there, swing on over, sign up for the newsletter. We'll send you some cool free stuff. And make sure to check out Overtime. It's a sweet place with a bunch of sweet stuff. And last but not least,

I know you're trying to find a bitchin' t-shirt to get your mom for her birthday. Head on over to merch.barbellshrug.com I use it to tell people when people ask me, like, well, you don't need to get bigger to be stronger. Really? Really? Really? I know you don't have to get bigger to be stronger. Really? Really? Really? I know you don't have to. You can get stronger without getting bigger,

but you know what? Big really helps. It really fucking helps. It's an easier route. It's way more fun. Come on. You're 330, you can move some shit. Yeah. It doesn't matter.

I think we're on. Why is everyone looking at me? Is it my turn? Because you're the host. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm your host. Yeah. Andy took over.

Take that off. Get out of here. I'm sorry. This is my chance now. You're fired. This is my shine. Go ahead. That was pretty good.

No, I don't want to do it. I don't know what to do. So now you say everyone's name. Nope. What's up, guys? Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm your host, Mike McGoldrick, here with Alex Macklin. What's up? CTP behind the camera and our two special guests today Dr. Andy Galpin and Dr. Mr. Mr. Cal Deets. Coach Cal. Welcome to the show guys. Andy's been on

several times. Cal this is your first time. I just met you earlier. Got to hear you speak at the panels. We're here at Paleo FX. There are a lot of really smart people here this weekend uh so we put a poll together we will put them through a bunch of like competitions and we found the two smartest people in the place we put them on the show right now so it's my pleasure to have you guys on who's the other guy could be a faulty test it's alex and mike yeah yeah so cal tell us a little bit about yourself so i uh i'm a strength coach the university of Minnesota. I've been there 15 years, been part of some great opportunities, just learning. I've been part of 34 Big Ten titles, 11 national championships.

Most of my methods and theories have been derived from measurable sports like track and field and swimming. So, for example, a number of years ago, I put together a triphasic method. And what transpires, these kids, between my track coach figuring this out and the methods that we place, these kids ran the world's fastest times in the 400 two weeks apart, and we're sitting here going, wow, we've actually put something together that actually works. And the big thing is those are two measurable sports.

For example, Dave is a plumber right now. I trained him for a number of years. He's one of the top backstrokers in the world. And you're sitting here going, everything we do, basically in swimming and track and field, we take out all the variables and it's measurable. So, you know, science now with Doc here doing molecular biology can tell me why the triphasic system worked.

At the cellular level, I just know it worked because I had a stopwatch. I mean, it was that simple 15 years ago or 18 years ago, really, when we started the experiment. So triphasic. Yeah. Can you give us the general kind of overview? Yeah. So triphasic is a method I came up with, been part of it.

And it's really a system. And essentially, this is the nuts and bolts of the foundation of triphasic. There's many things beyond that. But essentially, you take the two weeks, the first two weeks of training, essentially, you do an eccentric focus. Okay. And then really the next two weeks is an isometric focus and then the next two weeks have have those two qualities have set you up to move your weight faster which is more specific okay and when i say that the reason we found was that in these world-class athletes so i have two athletes that were the

same level of shot putter um they are strength levels and they were shot putters but one could throw the the weight 10 or the shot 10 feet farther than the other athlete and they even though the one rep max was like the same 440 that's what's the 200 kilos in her bench press i'm going how is that possible so when i dug in i realized that the athlete that could bring the bar down fastest and then reverse it quicker had more eccentric strength and isometric strength to stop it and then reapply force. So then I derived my triphasic training system on the ability to separate that and actually just isolate those qualities so that then I got great results. And that's when all these results from these runners and all these Big Ten titles started appearing in the results that we got from triphasic.

So what do you mean by – oh, sorry. I was just going to clarify isometric because you're not saying the two weeks you're like holding an isometric push-up position, right? No, we're holding the exact – so let's say the first week your bench is 400 and you're using 360. Yeah, that's what I do, 400. Let's just start with something we all know we can do. 135. So you're taking 360 and you're bringing it down nice and slow for a seven count.

And then you push it up or your partner helps you with it a little bit. That's fine. And then that's for two weeks of, let's say, two bench workouts a week. So really four workouts. Decentric meaning lower the weight, lengthening of the muscle. So because if you can stop the weight, then you can actually have a better chance of reversing the weight. So then the next two weeks is when, after you build the eccentric quality,

then you bring the barbell down just above your shoulders, and you're holding it at the deepest position for seven seconds. This is the isometric phase. The isometric phase. Then after that isometric phase, and then you push the weight up. There's four weeks of training. You really got eight workouts of bench in. What transpired is then when you bring the bar down and up for the concentric phase,

you can move the bar faster and you have more potential for power. Now, what actually goes on in the eccentric phase in the first two weeks is that the body remodels its tissue. So there's an immune system response. There's white blood cells. We can get into that. You're probably wrecked.

Yeah. And there's a lot of damage. But damage is good. So sometimes damage is good because it's very specific. And then you're making the tissue stronger and more resilient. So you're less likely to get injured. And then they've shown now, Doc, you'll confirm that the eccentric training has produced greater resistance against tendonitis and things like that. Yeah. It can be very, extremely helpful. Very interesting because right now I'm in an Olympic weightlifting cycle. I'm training to do a meet in about 10 weeks and

my knees just started falling apart. So my coach has me doing a lot of eccentric-only singles. We've been doing it for about two weeks now, and I actually did a mock meet today. I maxed all my lifts, and I haven't lost any strength, and I've only been doing like six or seven singles at like 95% with like a six-second tempo. So like today, loaded up the bar with 93%. Back squat, went down for six seconds, just dumped the weight, reset, did that like six times.

Sure. It's very stressful still. Yes. But stress is why we adapt. Yeah. So if we apply stress to the organism. So this is basically the triphasic model has been very successful because it's just you can load that. You can do the isometric concentric or eccentric concentric model in six weeks period in any program.

I've literally been emailed 3,000 programs. They're all different. It's just some concepts that you, all my system is is some concepts you can place into your own program. I'll be honest with you. I first wrote the book and a coach out of Canada did a great job. He read my book. He sent me a program and I actually used his programs because i'm like man he did a few things better than mine yeah but that i've been blessed because this whole system i released

it and then people have given back to me just little concepts and coaching ideas so i've been very fortunate i mean i have coaches who email me from from world champion track athletes to powerlifting and and i hate to say this um a lot of sports use it but it's not really sports specific it's what you do prior to getting to your sports specific training cycle so for example like power lifters will do it weeks 12 to 6 okay in their cycle and then week 6 to 1 they prepare for their most specific more sports yeah and the same thing if you're preparing for a crossfit competition let's say you need to get strength and hypertrophy you can do that with triphasic training a few weeks out,

and then you do your normal peaking modification for your normal weight. It's your base. It's your base. Yeah, exactly. So it's a true off-season base, the concepts behind it. But it's fairly simple. It's not that hard to implement. And people are going, wait a minute, you just move the weight slow for two weeks,

and then you hold it for weeks three and four, and then you really work at moving it. Yeah, that's about it. And there's a lot more in my book, but ultimately that's the foundation of it. It's pretty simple. And it would be something for all movements that you would do, or would you just target specific, like if you plateaued somewhere?

Yeah, so the first time I used it essentially was that I would just do the main lifts. Meaning the squat, bench, deadlifts, victory. Yeah, squat, bench, your main lifts, maybe pull-ups or whatever, or even deadlifts, but I'd probably do RDLs instead. But then you go, okay. So then me, I'm thinking, okay, I need to push the limits of humans. You've got to crack a few eggs and make an omelet. So I was just like, all right, we're going to start using it with every lift.

And when I got it, it was even more results. You know what I mean? Because here's the thing. The body doesn't necessarily just adapt to one thing in one specific area. I use this example. When I first got to Minnesota, the theory behind training, and that's my unique experience because I've trained how many different types of athletes. I wrote 24 programs a month for 24 different types of athlete, of course. So, and I didn't, you know, my wife was in the Olympics at the time, and I didn't have a lot of social life.

I'd just call her about 9 o'clock at night. She went to bed. She was at the training center. What sport, if you don't mind? My wife was Olympic champion in women's ice hockey. Oh, wow. Okay, yeah. So, my son plays ice hockey now, and he thinks he's good because he's just good at ice hockey.

I said, well, it's because I married your mother. Was she on the team the first year they were yeah 98 she was man i remember staying up uh i remember getting up like six and i like three or four in the morning to watch that before school when i was in middle school yeah and you know she had the flag after the game yeah i mean but you know ultimately so with these athletes and uh i just spent a lot of time reading and researching i can't remember where i was going with this whole deal. You had an example back from school, and I derailed you.

For the school. Sounds about right. I think I derailed you. My bad. We'll come back to it. But you're ultimately, you know, with this whole thing, just, oh, with the hammer thrower. You know, the premonition was that they don't want to do a big upper body workout. So I had this kid that came into school, and he benched 315, back squatted like 450. So he's a freak.

But what we did was we stopped all upper body training, and he got super strong. Like put 100 pounds on a squat in six months, maybe 125. He did plyometrics. And then six months in, he's like, well, I want to see where my bench is at. Maybe it's not as weak as we think. He says, okay, I feel strong. So he actually benched that day 365. And it dawned on me that there was a global adaptation because it's all neurological.

So if you get your legs and his cleans went up, and it wasn't anything special in the program. It was his squats and his cleans and his plyometrics became so powerful that you're telling me if your legs become extremely powerful, your upper body's not going to get better? And it did. Now, he was a freak. Now, that's not normal. We get that. But that dawned on me then, this neurological was so important. Well, I think it highlights an idea, though.

So you probably wouldn't get that magnitude. Right. But the same idea. You talked earlier this morning about cueing, squeezing your glutes when you bench and finding that the stuff that you're finding is the barbell velocity actually is improved when you focus on squeezing your glutes as hard as you can when you're benching right right so so the theory is that with glute with hip extension the right glute pattern or the right pattern for hip extension for your muscles to work

is that your glute fires then the same side hamstring will fire then the lower back contralateral muscle ql will fire and so this would be your right glute and then your right hamstring then your left low back yeah left low back because your low but your left low back fires because then if you if you fired your right low back you twist and you rotate when you walk right so but but when you see people walk that that maybe over stride a little bit that lean forward that tells me they got a misfiring pattern in the glute because then their hamstring fires. The right hamstring fires first. Then their left QL, lower back, and then their right glute. So that's an inverted, that's a backwards pattern there.

And then the other pattern I see is that if you have an athlete who, let's say, runs a 400 or does a workout and their back locks up, their QL is the first one to fire. Then their hamstring, and then their glute. So this dysfunctional glute pattern, I actually see it with my athletes. So I watch them run or I see them do something. Well, you were watching us walking. Yeah. You were walking around here. It's my wife walking.

You ain't using your butt, girl. So I can pick this up. Thank you. Because, by the way, the patterns, they walk. And ultimately, you're sitting here going, I literally Yeah, so I can pick this up. Thank you. Because, by the way, the patterns, they walk, you know. And ultimately, you're sitting here going, I literally was able to predict one of my athletes. I texted him, said he plays in the NHL,

said you're going to have a back problem within a month. Two weeks later, boom, had a back problem. Yeah. Because I saw, so when I look at my athletes, I see them run. I see them, I don't look at their numbers. I know who they are by the way they skate or by the way they walk or by the way they run. Well, I could see his pattern, his hip extension when he skates was had changed and when when you see that you know there's a problem yeah so he went from being a glute firing pattern to his lower back being the first

thing for hip extension and that's why it locked up he's like how'd you know man my my my glutes or my my back locks up when i skate i'm like well, well, you got a problem, and it arises. I was going to ask how you assess this because you see this a lot in CrossFit too, especially in competitions. Now, it could be that a lot of the movements we do, we're just overloading like pulling patterns and just poor movement over time. It kind of adds up. But at the same time, you see a lot of people in events,

they're in this position where you know, and I know right away because I have a lot of athletes and I've gone through it too, the lumbar is like completely seized up and they are blown up and i want to know how you would assess that if it is a movement or a firing pattern so one of the things you can do on youtube i believe there's plenty of youtube you can get on and look at glute um correct glute or correct hip extension firing patterns and it'll show you where you basically take your thumb and you can lay the athlete flat on his face face, and then put, and what you'll do is you'll take your thumb and put it on their glute. Okay. And then you take your other finger

and put it on their same side hamstring. So this would be like your right thumb, put it on their right glute, put your right pinky on their right hamstring. Yep. And then you'd take another finger from your left hand, you put it on the opposite QL. So the left lower back.

Left lower back, right above the hip in between the lat right there. You can feel that muscle in there. And then when you say pick up your leg, what you'll see is – So pick up the right leg. Pick up the right leg. You'll see the hamstring maybe fire. Or in the CrossFit games when the people – you'll see their lower back fire.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the hamstring and then the glute. So let me talk you through this. If the glute fires first, then all the energy goes down the hamstring, then to the foot so you can run, and then it goes out the upper body. Okay. And so if I'm going to push somebody while I'm standing there, if I don't fire my glute, I don't stabilize and I push myself back.

Yeah. But if I fire my glute, then I can push the person or I can pull the person because I have to fire the opposite leg glute. But so if you have the wrong pattern, so let's say the QL fires the lower back, then the hamstring, notice the energy is going into the body. Yeah. That's not good. And you explode.

And you implode. Improves. Yeah. You want the glute energy to explode out, so then you run. See, DiPietro's about exploding glute energy. Wasn't that episode one with you, actually? Yeah, we talked about that, exploding glute energy. But here's the thing.

So you see people walking, and, for example, I hate to pick on your wife, but she was walking with her hamstrings, or actually she was, but yet I think she has a lower back is how she fires her glute pattern. So when you do all these prehab exercises, if you are not firing the glute, you're ingraining the wrong pattern again and again. So you actually may be exacerbating a problem. We work on it. We work on it.

Right. So cueing. Let me give you this example. The one thing that I use people is let's just talk. One thing I do like to get the glute to fire is I like to curl the big toe. So I tell people, do an RDL. Wiggle your big toe. I just squeezed my big toe right now and my butt lit up.

I swear I wasn't thinking about it. I just squeezed my big toe right now, and my butt lit up. I swear, I wasn't thinking about it. I immediately shit my pants. So basically what I'm saying is you do an RDL, and you hold your big toe up the whole time. This is wrong. So do an RDL, hold your big toe up the whole time. Now I want you to do an RDL. Go down at the bottom, curl your toe, and then do the RDL up.

And watch what happens. Your glute fires. It does. Very nice. I love tricks. So this is just a- Hack. That's a hack.

It's a glute hack. Hasht. I love tricks. So this is just a... Hack. That's a hack. That's a glute hack. It's a glute hack. Hashtag glute hack. So I'm not sure if it's a natural reflex, but I know if you walk and your foot doesn't grab the ground, it'll slip out from underneath you. So this is why the big toe is very important. Now we hold the toe up on the way down for a number of reasons.

It also turns on the psoas because if you think as you're running and you push the big toe down, why the glute should be extended, if your foot's in the back, then you pick your toe up and it helps the psoas turn on that. Does that make sense? And why does the psoas need to turn on? To cause hip flexion. Okay.

So when the hip flexes. So there's another thing. When you see an athlete with big, juicy quads, it tells me there might be some glute problems. Or no, no. I definitely have psoas problems. I have pso or no no I definitely so exactly right so then I'll do because the glutes are due or the hamstring or that sorry the quads are doing the work that the psoas is supposed to be doing right so the quads are supposed to do extension but when now

the quads have to do hip flexion okay yeah and not knee extension then what transpires is the quad now has to over adaptapt so it gets bigger. So when I can get the psoas working correctly, whether I do some soft tissue or whatever it may be, then guess what? The quad actually decreases its size. The athlete now jumps and runs faster and jumps higher because it's functioning correctly. When the body can do its functions correctly, it functions at a very, very high level. Right, right.

So the psoas is very important because here's the thing. I found that if your breathing pattern's off, so let's talk about sympathetic breathing. When you breathe with your chest, it's a stressful breath, okay? Sympathetic meaning like when you're exercising. So if a lion walked through here, we'd all take sympathetic breaths, right? You would. Not me. I was going to say that.

There's lunch, right? But in my world, what I want to do is drive a belly breath, so a parasympathetic breath, so it's a relaxing breath. But here's what we found. Actually, Dr. Mike T. Nelson, he explained to me that the fascia from the psoas, the hip flexors, are tied to the diaphragm. So when you breathe wrong, it actually shortens the psoas. Because if all the fascia that's tied to the hip flexor, if you do the right breathing and it causes a relaxation model versus a stressful model, then the psoas can help relax better. Now, here's the catch. If the psoas is shortened and tight, the antagonist of that is the glute.

Yeah. So the glute shuts down and down regulates. It doesn't shut off. It just down regulates. Right. So there's part of the problem. So breathing can be part of the problem, too. So if a person, you would suggest, like, practicing belly breathing?

The entire time. So females, I see they try to hold their bellies in. That's not good. It's a little self-conscious. Exactly. You mentioned this this morning too about, so you've done a bunch of different testing. We'll say vertical jump, squat, I mean all the testing you can do.

And what happens when you brace really hard in your stomach and then you try to do those tests? What happened to your numbers? They all went down. Not in a good way. Not in a good way. They all got worse when I say that. Wait a minute.

Repeat that again. So you know the cue for the bracing, right? Right. Brace your core. Brace your core. Big air. Push it out. Yeah.

So what I found is when they run, they run slower. When they bench, they bench slower. When they do anything, it's not normal. That's not how – I truly believe that when you're holding a weight, let's say I'm holding 400 pounds on my back, your body's holding that the fun it's it's not normal that's not how i truly believe that when you're holding a weight let's say i'm holding 400 pounds on my back your body's holding that the way that should and if you get the right hip extension pattern then the body to move that weight will actually turn on correctly the right way throughout so it braces itself the exact amount nothing more nothing less but you have to make sure that you have the right patterns going so that helps so this is so to really connect that yeah you connect that dot, you're not saying be unstable and totally be loose and out of control.

What you're saying is don't get the stability from going through your stomach. Get it from squeezing the hell out of your glutes. Well, you start there. Yes, start there. It'll go up because you want to get the base of the hips to stabilize, and then the whole back stabilizes right there. Well, yeah. And a lot of people think that core stability is just your midsection.

It's your glutes, your hamstrings. Your knees to chest, right? And a lot of people think that, and you talked about the low back pain. A lot of people think that by doing more core work that they'll actually get rid of their low back pain. When they probably need to activate their glutes more. Yeah, there's dysfunction. That's why you have the pain, to be honest. This might open up a whole new wormhole, but what about belts then in training?

What kind of dysfunction could that create using a belt to be your stabilizer? Because that's what you see is people use that. They push the abs into it. That's what stabilizes. If they use it all the time, I truly believe that it'll cause the wrong firing pattern in my opinion so yeah so i want them to train with lighter loads without the belt as much as possible then maybe with the heavy loads you cannot rely on the belt but but you still use your glutes but then you still want that inner abdominal pressure so in my opinion um you still have to use it to hide i mean i have to let's say i mean if i deadlift seven you're

going for a max effort. For sure, yeah. But if you're just doing just reps while you're training. Yeah, like if you're going for. Yeah, reps at 500. That's another one of those examples. Yeah, exactly. It's something that everyone can do. I mean, if you're training, you know, y'all talked about hypertrophy.

If you're doing, you know, sets of 8 to 10, probably go beltless. Yeah, exactly. Because in my opinion you're trying to get that tissue you're not facilitating the tissue um you want to train the tissue so you want to get the most out of that so you get a strong core in my opinion right um some of the best core exercise i've seen as well like um yoke carries i've never seen a world strong man do a thousand pound yoke with a week i've been doing yoke carries like i love three months you said that my favorite core exercise is yoke carries.

That's so awesome. Well, think about it. If your core is weak, you'll fold like a weak log chair. We did a whole episode on that. I mean, even the one-armed farmer's carries. Even if it's strapped, like people are like, well, don't do a strap. I'm like, well, let's do more weights so then it trains your core. What are you training?

Your grip or your core now? So, you know, I like the carries and those things because those are, to me, so actually as a coach, when I watch an athlete run, I actually look at their midsection. If their midsection is all over the place so their belly button is moving, I know that the core can't stabilize the leg because let's look at the leg. If they're running ahead and the 50-pound or 40-pound limb slams back their leg, it causes huge amounts of rotational force,

a couple hundred in a split second. What exercise in a gym do I do to mimic that? Nothing. So what I found is that running tells me a lot. So the same thing with, you see the hip shaking. It tells me the SI joint has some dysfunction. There's something wrong. You need to send your athlete to a chiropractor soon

so they can get things back into place. And watch, the chiropractor gets them into place. They come back, and that stuff will probably stop. Or if it doesn't stop, then they have a weak core. And that's a huge indicator. Or let's say it's dysfunctional or there's some type of pain in there maybe. So, I mean, to me, high-speed running is the best evaluation that I can tell. So for, like, weak hips, let's say lateral movement like abductors, abductors, abductors, abduction.

What happens is that the foot they'll place when they run at me, the foot actually gets placed right underneath their hips in the middle when the foot should actually be a straight line when they run and strike. So when they're on one foot position, their foot is actually directly underneath their whole body. Yes. As opposed to being actually off to the side. Because if I were to do that right now and say take my right leg off the ground I would have to put my foot underneath my center of body to not fall. And when you're running that way that tells me

you have weak hips. But if that foot is directly underneath the hip socket then my hips are able to stabilize as this is in the port. So that's an indicator that I got weak hips. So then they need to do some abduction, abductor exercises to strengthen those.

I like manual ones where they just get on the bench and just basically, because I can fix them in literally two workouts. It's kind of like the Trendelenburg test, right? Basically you pick up one leg and you see if the hips sink, and it tells you if you have some bilateral issues. But some athletes will pass that. But when there's high force, high velocity running down the track, this tells me that now i

can spot it in you know the one percenters okay you know okay if they can't function so to me that's why running is again one of the best functional assessments i can do yeah interesting so even for non-runners you would yeah yeah it tells me a whole lot about them yeah this is a really important point because you see the same thing with speed, strength, or fatigue. Right? So especially when you start working into people that train more frequently, so athlete or not, if they're training like an athlete, same thing. If you want to look at movement, you've got to pay attention to what happens, of course, when you tell them, you know, lift your leg up. Yep. But someone who's pretty athletic that has good motor control, they can actually get away with it really well.

They can cheat. Yeah. And sometimes they don't even know that they're cheating. But what they do when they're not tired is different than when they either get tired or when they move fast or when they move heavy. And so when you start getting up to someone who's doing a lot of, whether they're an athlete or not, but if they start doing a lot of heavy things, fast things, or things that make them really tired, you've got to assess movement in those environments as well because that can be completely different.

Yeah. So that's a good example. You make them move fast, all of a sudden, wow, now I've got hip instability. It can make me get tired. Oh, my gosh, now I lose it. Or it could get really heavy. Now I see it. There's a problem, yeah.

That's got to be part of your equation. If you're going to invest the time to do a lot of those types of activities, you've got to see the danger. Yeah. Or the potential. And that's why I just look at running because I tried a lot of other assessments and i'd see it okay there's nothing there but then when they run i know they got a problem so i was like i'm not sure that standing on something telling me that there's a fault in this pattern seems to work i don't want to mention

any names but you know you're sitting here you're going right this assessment doesn't necessarily work at the high end levels for the best athletes you know and as my lecture today i talked about there were i showed people where there's seven different running dysfunction patterns from the ankle alone now the athletes didn't even know it so let's say you're running normal and then you sprain your ankle but you have to keep running you'll keep running your whole gait will change because of that ankle sprain you have to compensate yeah but you have to keep running. You'll keep running. Your whole gait will change because of that ankle sprain. You have to compensate. Yeah, but you don't know it because what are you running from? Your body just thinks it's survival.

You're running from the lions trying to eat you maybe. That's what you're looking for. But you're sitting here going, I see these seven patterns all the time. And through some basic exercises that I put together, and maybe you can post them on the website, I've learned to fix this in regards to these seven problems with some basic, simple ankle exercise patterns. Because then, again, as I said this morning,

the foot is the only thing that strikes the ground. So the foot and the hip, in my opinion, are the majority of 90% of the knee problems. So if you can make sure the hip's functioning, and then the foot, which strikes the ground, because if we ran on air, we probably wouldn't have any knee problems, right? Let's be honest with you. Or we didn't have gravity, either one but but then when the foot strikes

the ground you probably have some knee problems and i showed those pictures with seven dysfunctional foot patterns of foot striking and if you can fix those in an athlete or in anybody then your your ability to to get rid of knee problems or you get rid of some of these issues that people have when they train are right there with the foot so once you've like assessed that maybe the athlete has a glute or hip you know dysfunction um what are some things that you that you i guess specific things that you do do you i remember we talked earlier you you cue them yeah what are some other things well so like with the the glutes i often on in all my exercise, I try to cue them. Yeah, you just tell them basically. Yeah, hey, work on firing your glute.

Squeeze the toe in. Squeeze the toe, yeah. Because that seems to turn the glute on, okay? And then with the, it's tough. Like, for example, if you do a traditional step-up, one of the things that we do is we do our step-ups that are straight up and down. So the foot you're stepping up on is not in front of you by two feet or a foot and a half. It's actually right beside your leg when you're standing on the bench.

So then, because in sports, all your forces are vertical with your hip and your knee. So we actually push straight down. Yeah. Okay. Versus pulling yourself forward. Because we've never seen in sports that movement. So we always, even at top end speed or running acceleration, your knee and your hip joint are pushing down. You're just leaning.

Yeah, and then the ankle provides you with all the other force. And this is what you were talking about. Andy, you were demonstrating this earlier when you do it. Yeah, but it's his. Yeah, yeah. The traditional way is if you're standing in front of the box, you're pulling with your hamstring rather than your glute. And then if you stand to the side of the box and you put your leg on the box,

now you have to use your glute to stand up. You're in the right position to fire your glute. Yeah, now you have to consciously think about it, curl your toes down so then the glute fires correctly and everything. All forces are vertical. I've been doing weighted step-ups and box step-ups wrong my entire life. Well, it's not wrong. In my lectures, you'll see that I'll actually do a traditional for a while because I'm working

on very specific tissue, and then I transfer over to that type of movement because it's more sport-specific. Would you say the same thing about a split squat or a lunge? Yes. Yeah. So, well, in my Triphasic 2 book that's not out yet, hopefully a few months, basically what we'll do is we'll do more of the traditional split squat um with 120 percent load so i actually 120 percent of their back squat uh 90 percent of their back squat but it's a single leg squat now okay yeah so i have females

that'll do one they went 130 and they do 315 320 single leg for a split squat safety bar split squat holy shit that's strong and then i, you should see my throwers though. So you got throwers doing 700 pounds on split squat. That's scary. That is pretty scary. That's a lot. Like a rear foot elevated? No, actually with those loads,

what I'll do, I found that I like rear foot elevated at the lower loads, but the high loads, I actually found that there's a little bit of hip problems. So the SI pops out maybe. That doesn't sound good at all. Plus stress and hip extension on the back leg too, right? Again, I've cracked a few eggs.

So I first started with these heavy loads, and our chiropractor on a Monday goes, hey, all the rest of the side, something's wrong. I said, I don't know what it is, but I'll fix it. I don't know what happened. I don't know. Must have been on drinking or something. Maybe my GA did something. I don't know what it is, but I'll fix it. I don't know what happened. I don't know. It must have been on drinking or something. Maybe my GA did something.

I don't know. Assistant coach. Heavy loads, I keep the foot on the ground. But then lighter loads, I'll actually go rear foot elevated. Okay. And then, you know, so you're sitting here, you're going, then I get into more specific stuff. So my split squat will actually be more up and down,

so the knee goes forward in front of the toes. Because that, I just showed hundreds of, I can show you hundreds of pictures where the knee is in front of the toes in sports all the time so then that's what we get to the more sport specific stuff okay because i've never actually found an athlete in a powerlifting squat position oh yeah you're basically saying like the hips back yeah vertical shin yeah yeah you're you're training athletes yeah you're training athletes to move and compete at a high level. You want to train them. Specifically.

Right. I mean, sports specificity is so scary. A friend of mine, Hank Kradzianoff, he was a world-class track coach. He talked about his athlete, Nellie Cumanati. She always won second in the 100 in the Worlds and the Olympics. She always won the 60-meter World Championships, but she always got caught by somebody and he talked about how he changed her he analyzed her race took the first 50 in the second 50 timed it out then he had her start training with uh with 120s maybe 150s for for speed endurance which makes sense everyone agreed right well guess what

he actually did make her two tenths faster in the first 50, but by doing all that 150 training made her three tenths slower on the first 50. So that's how specific sports is when you get to the high level. So this is what you have to mimic and be aware of. That's just an example of specificity. It's scary, the thoughts of that. We had a similar thing happen with the UFC fighters that I work with where they were fighting three five-minute rounds, and they would love to spar four or five or up to ten five-minute rounds.

And their idea was, well, okay, when I get to my end of my third round, I want to know that I still have a whole round left in the tank. The problem was your pacing for seven five-minute rounds is totally different than your pacing for three. And so we had a problem. They'd go out in the first round, and they started getting just smashed because they weren't used to the pacing of that five-minute round. So we actually started having them do things like,

no, you're going to do three three-and-a-half-minute rounds. And I want you to be exhausted at the end because I want you to know what pace you can actually run people through. And I want you to feel. And so as they get closer to camp, now probably the last four weeks before their fight, they don't do anything in their sparring besides three five-minute rounds. They're not doing six-minute rounds. They're not doing five-and-a-half-minute rounds.

They're doing three five-minute rounds out. I want you to feel exactly what that's going to feel like. And would you see some athletes that adapted faster than the others when it came to that? Absolutely. Some of them would need more time to kind of ramp up for that sport-specific training, and then some could give them two weeks almost, and they're ready to go. I think that has to do with your genetic markers and the various types. It's definitely genetics.

Some of my athletes, they can peak in two weeks, and we found that that's optimal. And then six weeks out, they actually start to decline. But then other athletes need six weeks out to peak out. And again, that's genetics. That's a whole other ball of water. A lot of it's your training background, too, versus your training age. So one of the things we always say is a high-level athlete is not highly trained. It doesn't have to be.

You can be highly skilled and not highly trained or vice versa. Just because you're 22, you may have a training body of a 28-year-old or vice versa. So that all was determined yeah and when you we talked earlier you use uh use a thing device to like measure kind of the stress and that that and that's effect on i guess adaptation yeah yeah when they know when to push right right yeah so i mean what is that what is that yeah i want to dive into that a little yeah what's that what's that so so i i have the uh i that a little bit. Yeah, what's that? So, I have a heart rate variability device.

I use the Omega Wave. There's plenty of good ones out there. But ultimately, when you're looking at this and you really want to get to the most specific in-season stuff where you may have an athlete who comes in who's fatigued. If you train him hard in the in-season, you may affect his training or his ability to learn skill for the next week because you trained him in a fatigued state so when he's in season you actually want him to you may be instead of doing a hard workout you may do a recovery workout which might be light bodybuilding it might be a light flush bike workout to get him recovered so he can train hard tomorrow okay do you see the difference yeah so now you've only lost one day of training versus

six good days of pushing him when he's super fatigued. And I think people have taken this out of context because I'm sitting here going, in season, yeah, that's great because I need this kid to perform. But when it's in the off season, I still want to train. The kids will come in. I'm guaranteeing you the second week of my off season training, day 10 of training, which would be Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, their readings are horrible. But I'm going to push them for two more weeks. What is this reading on? This is heart rate variability.

This is the neurological system, the DC potential coming out, the brain waves coming out of the body or the brain. So it measures a number of things, and it just tells me whether they're fatigued. In a gross overview, it tells me whether they're fatigued, where their state of physiology is. So when athletes just traveled, and I'll actually do this with a number of pros where I follow them during the season, and you can see, hey, what happened last night? Oh, I flew home at 3 in the morning.

Well, you can see that there was a problem. Talk to my ex-wife. Yeah, right. Well, the story about, should I explain that one? Yeah. Well, what transpired was I had an athlete who was on ESPN. He'd probably done some things. I know he did things he shouldn't have.

He was in the national news. In trouble. Not good news. No, not good news. It was in trouble. Getting embarrassed in the national news. All-star weekend. Made it rain up in there.

He had too much fun. He's 24 years old going to Vegas. He's a billionaire. It's probably pretty fun. So I thought he'd be stressed. So this machine tests his stress levels. There was nothing. And I went, how is this possible?

And I asked him. I said, dude, you good? He's like, yeah, I don't care what's going on. It doesn't bother me. Well, a week later he comes in, highest stress levels I've ever seen. He just got off the phone with his ex-wife. Right? So how does national news affect you at the stress levels?

Not affect you because you don't care. You don't care. So it's really the organism's interpretation of stress. You see what I'm saying? And then the state at which they're in. So if you've got an athlete that's really in shape, he can handle it. He'll be less stressed because of all this stuff. But if he's out of shape and he doesn't work out, it can affect him even worse. And if he hates the workout, it's another thing.

Like one of the things and i'll be honest with you i i truly feel that aerobic base is a vital importance let me give you this example um my son who who snuck in he had a fun gym class workout with a personal trainer in town i set up there's a bunch of kids then he went to his mom's hockey camp and skated for two hours and then he snuck into the older kids grant camp so he's at five hours in the workout then he goes home i didn't think he had a good lunch he's he was eight now he goes to the neighbors and swim for four hours we call over he runs home lays on the floor i'm gonna test him because i know he's shot right yeah i gotta know right he's an olympic level athlete i'm telling you it's six to seven

days with the readings i got he was so bad in a two minute test he fell asleep now you talk about nutrition. He was so bad. In a two-minute test, he fell asleep. Now, you talk about nutrition. So two minutes. He sat there for two minutes and he fell asleep. He didn't even eat dinner. We sent him right to bed. He didn't want to eat. He was so tired.

I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to test him in the morning. We're going to see how bad and how long it takes him to recover. I know what's going to be, too. You see what I mean? Science dad. Ready? Good luck. Because my Olympic caliber athletes or anybody else is seven days and they're done. Seven days to recover.

To recover. Before they get back to normal status. That's a long time. That is a long time. Yeah. So then I test him in the morning and he's good. And I went, what the heck? You made a freak, man.

You made a freak. Well, you're sitting here. You're going, no, he's not. He can't be, right? So I call around and really, basically, the kids have such a great aerobic system for survival of the organism that their aerobic base is so good, if they're active, they heal from a lot. Now, the other thing is— How old is he, too? He was eight then.

Okay. Eight years old. So he hasn't hit puberty yet. I want to know what kind of testosterone he's eating. But here's the other factor you have to realize. You watch a busload of 25-year-olds go by on the campus, and they look like they're going to the morgue. I mean, they got bills.

People got jobs. Yeah. You see a busload of 8-year-olds. They're having fun. Yeah. There's no external stress. Right. So even though you don't think your life's stressful,

it's still stressful. Yeah. And your ability to recover. Now, even my pro athletes, I mean, they work out harder than they go golf, but they still have relationship issues. They still have all these, my son, nothing bothers him. He ain't got no credit card debt. So he doesn't have to worry about it.

So really, again, this is all part of the formula. When you look at this and how hard an athlete can train and where you can get to. So then, as we said before, six months of training or eight weeks of training you might not be able to repeat that with the athlete again because there's other other variables in there and which worked great last time may not work great this time that's why to get the high levels you need to monitor would you say that yeah i was going to ask you would you say just for like a normal person would you say that they need to be able to like monitor and measure their stress

levels or is that important? I think it is, but you know what? Once you start educating the people and you can really assess yourself, you know where your stress levels are at. So if you're in the workout and you say, I don't have it today, don't be afraid to back down today. Go a little lighter. You can even do the same workout.

Just go a little wider. Maybe even make it aerobic. And when I say that, so just keep your heart rate below 140 and do the same workout, lighten the load, reduce the rest, make it more of a circuit versus a hard interval workout. And then guess what? You're ready to go the next day versus killing yourself and you might be ugly for, you know, in poor shape for three days

before you recover. That's a huge thing I've learned in the past, you know, six months or so. Like if you don't feel it that day, it's just not that day to you. Do something very light, and you'll be ready the next day. Especially when the calories are coming down. And the food restriction comes in. That makes things even worse. If you have to take a gallon of C4 to get through a strength workout,

that's a good point. Probably not. I say that with a lot of my clients, especially when they come back from sickness. They're like, man, am especially when they come back from sickness. They're like, man, am I ready to come back tomorrow? And I'm like, you probably could, but you're going to be at 90%, and that's going to keep you at 90% for five more days. Let's just take one more day off, maybe two, and then that's only two days off that you missed,

and now we can be back at 100% for sure. So that patience coming back. And I think the biggest thing I just took from that on the stress levels was really understanding what an impact daily stressors have, especially for you adults listening that are doing a ton of high-intensity training. You've got to take that stuff into consideration. Well, okay, so I bought a $20,000 laptop. Didn't tell my wife I was doing it right, which caused a lot of stress.

You didn't squat. You didn't bench 400. You didn't squat. You didn't bench 400. You didn't squat. You didn't pull 700 that day. And, you know, she sees it on the credit card. And then I get the thing, and it's a heart rate variability device. She went, okay. She's like, okay, what's it do?

And I said, well, I don't know yet. It makes us money, man. You ever put it on your wife? Oh, yeah. You put it on her that day? Actually, no, she didn't want anything to do with it for a while. But my point is I'm sitting here going, once I start talking to the athletes and I realize, I was able to kind of predict what this machine was going to tell me by when they walked in,

I could see if their gait was changed. Because if they have slumped shoulders, they'll be more tired, okay? It tells me they're more tired. Their eye function, as they're talking to me, if they take longer to explain what's going on with them, there's something wrong. So if they're not their self, now the human, like a coach, sees this. Yeah. And you can go, holy buckets. Don't tell my wife.

I hope she's not going to listen. But I didn't need the laptop maybe anymore. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But my point is that I can pick up these cues. So then you as a person, the normal person, can say, okay, I just did this normal warm-up. I'll give it a couple more sets.

But if it ain't there, it ain't there. Back down. Because what people don't realize is when you're in those states, in my opinion, little things pop up. You tweak something because you're not functioning correctly. Does that make sense? And that is so – yeah. So go ahead.

If it's taking you 10 extra minutes to do a stretch that normally didn't take that long, like that's a sign. That's a sign. And that's so huge because if you can recognize that you 10 extra minutes to do a stretch that normally didn't take that long, that's a sign. That's a sign. And that's so huge because if you can recognize that you're not going to tell yourself, like, stop being a pussy. And maybe there's some times where that is appropriate. But if you're training, that's different. I find weightlifting is actually one weird one because I can't tell you how many days that I'd go in

and you're snatching and you're like, my God, the bar feels so heavy today. Yeah, can't lift 60%. But then you PR that day. You're like, what? The bar feels so heavy. So I think you hit it on the head right there really well is you got to pay attention to it. Sometimes you have to push through. But I think the only thing you're really going to know is years of training, times of training.

And you have to play with things a lot and get more experience to find it because it is difficult. Sometimes you don't feel good after set one, but by set five, you're like, oh, actually, I feel pretty good today. Sorry, Andy. I feel like we didn't even talk. Andy, what you been up to, dude? Well, you mentioned that

earlier, Kyle, and part of your talk too is the off-season aspect about how you have a little bit more space to play with that. I'm not saying you're intentionally trying to hurt anyone or run your athletes down, but you can super compensation was the question where in the offseason that is kind of when you're trying to maybe overtrain

them a little bit so they can bounce back more often. No, I actually overtrain them a lot in the offseason. I didn't want to put words in your mouth. No, you didn't hear me at all right. This is legit overtrain, not oh, I'm so tired. But here's the deal. If you can't push the ceiling limits of the organism,

you can only do that by taking them to extremely high levels of adaptation. So I'll push them. I go two-week cycles, and I may take five days off or four, and I go another two-week cycles. But you're sitting here going, I push them to the highest level. So, for example, in triphasic at the isometric phase, I actually see, and I don't do any conditioning during this period, I've actually had from my interns, which I make them go through the program,

to my elite athletes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. They need to understand it, right? Yeah. So I see in two weeks, I see a 12-beat resting heart rate drop. So they'll go from maybe 50 to 38, and they're doing no conditioning because the isometric phase. Which is really good, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the isometric phase, when they're holding that weight in the bottom position. Now, I do actually have them hold their breath in there. The only rule is you can't pass out, okay? But what happens is there's huge vascular adaptation because the blood pressure goes but then all this vascular adaptation that takes place causes huge amounts of um so then your blood pressure drops actually your resting heart rate is super low but then when you go to crank it up you can actually crank it up to higher levels because i call that your functional reserve so your low level resting heart rate is important and then when you're when you go to crank it up, you can actually crank it up to higher levels because I call that your functional reserve. So your low-level resting heart rate is important.

And then when you can push it high and go longer at the highest levels, that's actually your window of stress is so much greater than somebody that's out of shape whose resting heart rate's at 90 and then can only get to 160 and then they shut it down after 30 seconds. Where my elite athlete will have a resting heart rate of 38, 42, and they can go up to lactate threshold at 185, 190 for two and a half minutes. You know, I don't know if you're even aware of this study, and you might be, but there's really one of my favorite studies to reference is blood pressure. And the only training that they did, this was six weeks long, was a six-second maximal grip strength hold. And they did six of those. It's my favorite test in the world.

I know. I was going to say. They did it like three or four times a day, but it was hold for six seconds, you know, a 10-second break or whatever, six reps of that, three or four times a day, and saw anywhere between 15 to 20 millimeters of mercury drop and systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

Yes. That was the whole thing. Yep. The only training program. So your seven-second hold, I'm not surprised when you start seeing those adaptations because you put a, and I always get this question after I say that, is what the hell, how is that possible? You put a tremendous blood pressure stress on the body during isometric portion.

So this can be when you're bracing during a squat or in your case, holding at the bottom with whatever you're deadlift. What happens is so much of your musculature is contracting at the bottom with whatever you're deadlift what happens is so much of your musculature is contracting at the same time that blood flow effectively stops it's called occlusion right it effectively stops going anywhere and so your heart right out of your the the ventricle that comes out of your heart that gets the blood throughout your entire body the pressure in that area gets so incredibly sorry guys wind gets so incredibly high because it's not moving blood, and the system is telling it, you've got to move blood, you've got to move blood.

And so we'll see blood pressures, and this has been shown at least a half a dozen times, blood pressures as high as 480 over 350. Holy shit. Normal blood pressure is 120 over 80. How does your heart not explode? Now this is only, though, for a few seconds. You're not doing this for an hour or even more than a minute. This is a few seconds.

So you can get a tremendously high blood pressure. And what that then does is it gives your body the stimulus that says, we have got to improve capillary density, which means we have to have— I almost died. Exactly. We've got to do something that improves blood flow. So that means make my arteries and vesicles more plastic, I almost died. Exactly. We've got to do something that improves blood flow. So that means make my arteries and vesicles more plastic,

make them able to expand more. I will go through angiogenesis, grow more capillaries, which will improve blood flow into your tissue and get waste out. All of that can happen with a little bit. So these amazing cardiovascular adaptations from a five to seven second isometric heavy hold. Interesting. Yeah. A new type of aerobic training.

It's nuts. So when he says that, he's not full of shit. He's mostly full of shit. I've noticed that. Like doing sets of – I used to do a lot like Travis would program seven second pauses in the bottom and 15 second pauses at the top and uh i was doing that for a while and doing like sets of 10 you know things like that and i just curious out of curiosity like i wanted to test my 400 and 800 and it wasn't too bad it wasn't great but i mean for a weight

lifter who'd never done that stuff like i didn't have any problems breathing right so i mean just not doing any kind of aerobic work with the greater vascular adaption you can move substrates around yeah even even more efficiently so you don't you actually get you're in greater shape without having to try to be in greater shape is what i'm saying so i mean and then your recoverability is even greater right per set and removing removing waste yes exactly what you said earlier too about how you were such a proponent of having an aerobic base. I would fully agree with you, and I don't think anyone that thinks through this would disagree, but what people don't understand is that doesn't mean you're saying you should run for an hour.

You're saying you should have an aerobic base. Now, this is one way to get to that base, and there's a million other ways. So you need to have that vasculature. You need to have the mitochondria density. You need to have these transporters. That doesn't mean you have to hop on the elliptical for an hour. You can. It certainly will be effective.

But the aerobic base needs to be there, but now we have to talk maybe in another episode of how to get that aerobic base. Yeah, how do you do it? The one thing came from my world-class shop putters. They need an aerobic base so they can do more sets. I found out they were more aerobic set. They could do 12 sets of bench versus eight before they dropped off. So the question is, how do I do that without running five miles with these

300 pound men? And it was as simple. Honestly, I came up with this and I know there's some NFL teams using it now. I would just take 50% of squat, front squat, 50% of your bench. Oh, this is brutal. And you do singles on bench, do a single bench, front squat, single, one rep, back and forth for eight minutes. Your heart rate's at 140, 150, but you're still getting strong and getting some hypertrophy by building an aerobic base and not ruining the athlete by running five miles. So there's all these variabilities. Sounds like strength endurance work.

Yeah. That's fascinating. I wish I could, I think I'm going to build my root base just with more strength training. What was that? Like squat, bench? What was that again? Yeah, just take two exercises, squat and bench. Go back and forth.

Do singles one rep at a time. Keep your heart rate below your lactate threshold. So my athletes that I know. Yeah, important point. You're not trying to burn down the gas. You're not puffing and puffing. You're just moving. You're just moving.

Go back and forth. Don't stop. Keep it below. Like if I have lactate threshold at 170, some of my athletes, they say below 165. And you stay there and you keep going singles for eight minutes. So what's the difference between an athlete running for eight minutes at 160 or lifting weights? There is no difference for the heart.

It's the same movement. It's the same thing. It's stressing the body. If you think aerobic exercise, what does the word aerobic mean? With oxygen. Okay, aerobic with oxygen. Good job, Alex. All you got to, right? That means all you have to do to get an aerobic exercise what does the word aerobic mean with oxygen okay aerobic with oxygen good job all you got it right all that means all you have to do to get an aerobic stimulus is use oxygen it doesn't matter what you're doing right you want to say i'm going to do cardio

what's cardio mean cardio means heart okay so anytime you're using your heart you're doing cardio okay you do cardio right now is that easy enough right you need to do something that slightly elevates your heart rate and that has an aerobic component. In other words, you can breathe. And the mode can be extremely different. You talked about that earlier, too, of changing the mode based on adherence. So you said one of the more important aspects or helpful things you found with programming is giving the athlete the exercise they like.

They'll do it more often. You'll get better results. It won't be as stressful. So to hell with what you think. It's about what they like they'll do it more often you'll get better results it won't be as stressful yeah right so to hell with what you think it's about what they like and give them and and the a lot of strength athletes will will fight like why am i doing cardio and stuff but you like you said earlier was that it allows them to go like longer sets or do more sets with quality reps because if you're set if you're if you're fatigued your technique goes away your technique you know drops and you can't.

It's pretty simple. If I have an athlete I'm speed training and he can only do six reps, six 40s before he slows up, or he can do 12, who's going to get faster? Which one? It's the 12 guy, right? But you need some level of aerobic base to repeat those, and it's called repeated sprint ability. Do you see what I'm saying?

Because the aerobic base helps that recover between sets. And that's why I've had some awesome deals. Thank you. Well, this is validation to this. Mike McElroy, who listens to this, who he's on this podcast too, he will be like, thanks, dude. I've actually been fortunate. I wrote a tactical magazine or a tactical manual,

and the tactical operators gave it to their wives and they're actually getting benefit from it also because it's it's basically the same workout if you want to do the same workout during the whole week you can but one of the days first day you're under 10 seconds the next day you're between 20 and 30 seconds of high intensity and then the next day you can do the same exercises but you're doing them light and a lot of reps and it never stops so it's more of a circuit. So you get lactate training alactic training, short sprints

you get lactate training and then you get aerobic training and it's like... With the exact same exercises every time. Yeah or you can switch it up but keep it simple so I'm just sitting here and people have actually taken that and put CrossFit model in there so they push a heavy sled for 10 seconds.

And then they go to, let's say, a deadlift, like a hex deadlift. And the other days, they're doing kettlebell swings on those. So they replace out the exercise based upon the intensity of the day. So it's either short 10-second duration, it's 20 to 30 seconds in duration, or it's continuous exercise. And they think, like, cardio. No, it can be a weightlifting circuit. It doesn't matter what it is.

You see what I mean? Yeah. As long as – oh, sorry. I wanted to go back to you explaining some of the – you know, in CrossFit world they would call it EMOMs basically. Like you said for eight minutes you would do a heavy pull and then maybe a heavy squat or something, go back and forth. And the important thing there was to keep the percentages down or at least your heart rate low

enough to where it was submaximal yeah so you're below your lactate threshold okay so like what percentages are we looking at on something like that so somebody wants to try this 80 or so oh you were saying lactate threshold no no you're saying for the for the weight for the load yeah the heart rate okay so the load was roughly about 50%. Okay. So then I stay below your lactate threshold. So people can figure that out. So if your lactate threshold is estimated at 165, then you can monitor with a heart rate.

So you can do one single bench, go back to front squat, do that, keep going back and forth, and you can keep going until your heart rate gets about 160. You may need to take a little bit more rest, but you drop to 150, go do the lift and then come back. So you're just holding that heart rate there. If you don't know your lactate threshold, you can take a little more of an applied approach where, one, you can just stick with about 150,

160, 170 if you're fairly fit. If you're not. Your heart rate. Right. But that's probably going to be most people you're going to be between the 150, 160, 170 range. If you're really, really highly trained, maybe that number is higher yeah so if you don't know your exact lactate threshold that will still put you in the ballpark but the point is for this particular adaptation for what

you're trying to get out of this program it's supposed to be fairly easy yeah right you shouldn't be gassing you shouldn't be throwing up after this workout if you are you probably crossed you went through now there's times for that you're not saying not do that, but for this adaptation, for this exercise. Yeah. I would say 120 to 150, 52, 55 is a good rule. You could stay – anybody could stay in there, even my mom. Would this be part of your kind of your triphasic, or is it kind of a separate thing?

That would be the weekly sequence. That's actually to get people in shape. So I would use that before Triphasic. So Triphasic is a true off-season program. I do it in-season, but small amounts. But Triphasic is essentially an off-season. You're going to get rocked, you know, but a very specific get rocked to increase human performance.

And you've seen this work on what types of athletes? Power athletes, endurance athletes? Endurance, power lifters. I've had some power lifters email me, set some world records this year. Sprinters, mid-distance runners, football players, hockey players. A wide variety of energy systems. Energy systems and or very – it remodels the tissue, so actually the tissue is more resilient, so you're less likely to get hurt,

but you can also perform well because once you get through triphasic and then do your sports-specific stuff, you just see the results post i'm glad we came back this because i also want to ask you what about training age and experience when would you have someone use this strength program so i i just released a high school football manual and i have high school coaches just email me um one sent me an email says he's got 30 kids over 30-inch verticals. Wow. Wow. With tri-phase, 16, 17. Now, they're 150 pounds, right? Right. And then the original guy that I wrote it with was Chris Corfis.

He called me, said, Cal, I'm using the tri-phasing program with some of this ankle rocker stuff that you saw today. And he's like, I got six 36-inch verticals. I'm like, send me a video. These kids were doing vertical jump with their hands on their hips and jumping 36 inches. That's huge. And I went, that's like a 40 with other people were doing vertical jump with their hands on their hips and jumping 36 inches. That's huge. And I went, that's like a 40 with other people, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I had another coach that sent me an email, said I got 30 inch verticals. But here's the deal. Triphasic makes your hips and knees strong. And when you can make the ankles extremely functional, so your hips and knee push up, and then the ankles are the last thing that push.

You can – A triple extension. Yeah. A dysfunctional ankle can reduce your vertical by six inches, I'm telling you right now. And if you can make an extremely highly functional ankle that's very strong and powerful with the ankle rocker stuff in that manual that we do, what you can do is you can add three to six inches on your vertical. Because it's just – it's like i use this if you have a shot putter he can throw it 70 feet but if he tapes up his wrist and he can't he loses 20 feet yeah as if that's acting as like an ankle of the upper body but you're not that strong so

the shot put actually when he goes to snap his wrist is only a few ounces because he's accelerated it's not yeah so you've accelerated the body with your hip and knee, and then the calf is the final push-off. So not only when you jump higher, but your endurance, I'm sure, so if you're doing a bunch of repetitions or running, I guarantee your endurance, or you would probably guarantee anyways. I guarantee because you're more functional, and it takes less energy to do what you're doing. Right.

You see what I mean? So it's pretty simple. If the human organism can function at high levels and you get all these compensation patterns, you get all these problems fixed, It does magical stuff, in my opinion. A lot of the people probably listening aren't in a traditional sports season, so they don't have an off-season, post-season, in-season, that type of stuff. It's kind of year-round.

They might have a competition. We're working on that. Yeah, getting there. So how would or would it at all the Triphasic apply to people who are just working out for health and longevity? So let's say you want to try Triphasic. What I would do is in a CrossFit model maybe. Well, whatever model. I mean someone listens.

Well, CrossFit competitor, but then also just general CrossFitter who's not doing competition, not peaking for the Open. So maybe you're just going to do a couple strength days a week. You could literally add Triphasic into your normal lifts, whether it's an RDL, whether it's a deadlift, whether it's a bench or a squat. And then you could do CrossFit on the other days, but you could just add the eccentric phase for two weeks

to help get rid of strength in your tendons and your joints and then add the isometric phase. And isometric is always done at the weakest position. It's brutal. You know what I mean? It's ugly. Give me an example again. Well, like the bottom of the bench.

Bottom of the bench press, yeah. But for everybody, you could say weakest position. Well, no, everyone's weaker at the bottom usually, at the bottom of the bench. Bottom of the bench press, yeah. But for everybody, you could say weakest position. Well, no, everyone's weaker at the bottom usually, at the very bottom. You might have sticking points through there that are different. Gotcha, gotcha. But ultimately, you know, and then you could do that. And really you could cut triphasic down to four weeks, two eccentrics, two iso, and then you're just getting into your normal training.

Yeah, so really it's a two-week series of very specific stress that causes the body to adapt to make you healthier, and you can even train more maybe later. Or just start over. You start the phase over. You can start over. And it gets stronger. Where would the positions be for the other? Like a squat.

That's where I bench. Where would my squat, where would my, say, RDL? Your squat would be at the bottom position. Very bottom for you. Your RDL is always in a stretched position down below the knees. So I mean, I have big throwers grab 450 rdl down below the knee and hold it for three seconds or five and then come back up now they're very strong you don't get me wrong and then you can do whatever position you want whatever exercise you want but most people just starting out just use

the big exercises yeah and see the difference so basically when the muscle is at its longest point yes when it's stretched out the furthest. Because it also remodels the muscle in that deepest position. When you apply this to a lot of clients, athletes, have you seen an injury rate decrease? Yes, decrease. I've seen it as much. High school kept track, and they said they dropped 70%.

Oh, wow. Yeah, so they only had 30% injury. And if you're a strength coach, that's a big thing. Oh, my gosh. That's your job. And if you're a coach, if you've got healthy athletes, you've got more people in the game. Yeah, exactly.

That's big. If you can walk in with day one and then the last day of the season with the same level of athletes that you have and they're healthy, then you're probably going to win a few more games, let's be honest. And when you say this is definitely something that maybe people will want to try, so many people always ask, like, why have I plateaued? Yes, of course. Because really, you're getting new tissue.

And when the tissue is thicker and more dense, then what happens is your strength limitations by the Golgi tendon apparatus is because your tendon is thicker, now it doesn't register as much. So your inhibitors are actually downregulated a little bit. This is hypertrophy, what you're talking about. With all tissue, not just muscle, but yes, the tendons. A lot of people don't equate hypertrophy to the connective tissue. But that's a lot of the old powerlifters, the tendon strength is huge.

It's the same thing, honestly, with strength. So people want to give the central nervous system all the credit for strength or all the blame for their lack of strength. My central nervous system wasn't ready to go. Well, that's part of it. I'm going to take an MC4. Come on. Muscle contraction works off of three things.

Number one, you have to have some input from the central nervous system. This would be your brain, lower brain stem, and spinal spinal cord then it has to actually cause the muscle to contract then muscle actually and people don't realize this muscle doesn't cause movement muscle just pulls on connective tissue right connective tissue attaches to bone that's what pulls movement and so step number one central step number two muscle step number three connective tissue and if i'm not ready in all three of those things, I mean, we've seen all, we've seen, we were talking about Bill Casimir earlier, right? How do you rip a tendon off of the bone, right? Well, if I'm not ready to go at all three levels, if I have my connective tissue

isn't at the same level of my muscle, we're going to have injury there. It's going to be whatever's weakest is going to absorb the pain, right? So now all of a sudden, God, I got elbow tendon there. It's going to be whatever's weakest is going to absorb the pain. Right. So now all of a sudden, God, I got elbow tendonitis. There's a weak leak somewhere. Yeah. Right. And so we need to train all these things and we need to have the connective tissue ready.

This is connective tissue that is also surrounding the individual muscle fibers. So each individual muscle cell has connective tissue around it. Those are bundled together. That has connective tissue around it. That whole thing is bundled together. We call that big ass bundle a muscle that's all wrapped around it and that comes together to make what's called a tendon that's exactly what tendons are yeah and then those

things attach at a very very little point to a bone if you look at your quadriceps here's a good example all four of your massive quadriceps those huge muscles come together into one tendon. They cross over your kneecap, and it's a small little tendon that attaches to what's called your tibial tuberosity, the very front of your tibia. All of your quadriceps attach with this much area. And so now all of the force in my 700-pound squat, or 100-pound squat, wherever we're at, has to be transmitted, and it's all inserted on the exact small little location. This is our classic example of Osgood-Schlatter's, right? That disorder.

We have issue there. So my point with all that is, yeah, we have to have some training, and maybe that means we have to go slow for a few weeks of the year because we have to build sufficient muscle, connective tissue, and of course the strength and power and speed stuff will help the nervous system. But that stuff, the connective tissue has to be trained as well, and the eccentric stuff you brought up is critical to that stuff. It sounds like the same principles on a really good gymnastic strength training program.

You start with the isometrics, but the only difference with upper body is that your body weight is enough to produce that kind of stress. You probably can't do that with the lower body, so that's why you would have loading with barbells and things like that. Exactly. And it sounds like, too, this style of strength training would also be very good for somebody who didn't want to necessarily eat a whole bunch and they wanted to get stronger because the easiest way, right,

is to get stronger. Get bigger. Get bigger, right? So you want to stay the same size. If you don't want to take the easy route yeah right would you yeah no i was gonna say one caveat to this that you want to be careful with anytime you start adding a bunch of eccentric work you're going to probably get really sore really fast so if you've never done anything like this don't just go do all right i'm going to do eccentric everything hold for 10 seconds i'll do 15 reps 20 sets of every exercise i, I'm going to do eccentric everything. Hold for 10 seconds. I'll do 15 reps, 20 sets of every exercise I do. You're going to be

crushed. It's extremely stressful. If someone wants to try this Monday, try two or three sets of your main lifts. Ultimately, one thing I do is I tell my athletes to eat more jello because of the collagen and the beef tendons. That has a lot of nutrients. Or you can do

fried chicken or bone broth. The whole deal. Actually, when my third, fourth book comes out, every specific stress in my system the nutrients right or you can do fried chicken or bone broth the whole deal but so so actually when my third fourth book comes out every every specific stress in my system has a food or supplements that would back it to help you heal from the stress that's a terrible idea yeah that's another strength it's it's like yeah i so i do have supplements that match up with the system so when you look at this system you can see how the various stressors have been identified, and then you can actually take the supplements that help you support or not support the system based upon your needs of training.

Right. What the? Oh, no, he got attacked. Sorry about that. A butterfly. Just see that bat? Yeah. Austin apparently has, like, natural bats everywhere.

Natural bats. Yeah, it was a butterfly, but whatever. Guys, we're getting close to a little over an hour. Kyle, we want to be constant with your time. I know you've got more talking to do. You've probably talked for like eight hours straight today. I learned a lot. Thank you very much for coming on.

Real quick, though, where can we find more information about you? What books? My main website is xllikextralargeathlete.com. And I have my books. That's awesome. So simple. Why didn't we buy that sure mike has it he tried yeah book is triphasic training and you can find it anywhere and then i

have a tactical manual and a high school manual along with that and i'll be producing triphasic training too with mike t nelson with the most advanced methods and then i also have an exercise manual probably in a three to four months on very specific cueing based upon methods of exercise that seem to fix glute patterns and so forth. Very cool. I want to add on that if you're done. Yeah, I'm good. Actually, his website, my students have been using that for at least five years. So when our program design class, I make them go basically search and find program coaches and stuff and present them.

And his website is full of so much free and awesome information. So I want to, I don't know if I said that earlier, but thank you for that. Cause my students have been stealing your work for years. So it's really good. I tell people, I released my first triphasic book and there was a coach in Canada who, who sent me a program back that the stuff in it was better than mine. So I started using more of his stuff. And I just share information, and it actually comes back to me. It's funny how that works. Yeah, right?

It's a great website. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Very cool. Andy, not everyone knows you, but go ahead. Well, if they don't know me, they should just shut off now. Just kidding. Yeah, you can actually, I got a new website up.

I haven't told you guys about this yet. It's a secret. I'm building it right now. It's up, but it's not really live. Just my name, andygalpin.com. And I'm putting basically the entire undergraduate curriculum that I teach

online free. So it's all going up there. Also I'm going to have little tabs that are basically like ask the expert where you can go and say if you want to know like how much protein should I eat? You can ask that question and you'll get like a one a one-minute answer. Boom.

So direct your answer. And then I've got another thing on there, actually, that links to other resources like your website is on that link, where it's basically here are all the people I've stolen and learned from in the past or people that I follow, and this is why. Here's why I follow them for or this website that I like your resources for. So I'm putting all that up as a resource guide. So you can check that up there.

I'm pretty good on the – you're not very good on social. I'm not great, no. Do you remember what episode number? Andy's been on a whole bunch. Yeah, he's been on quite a few. We didn't really do a great job of letting you talk about yourself, but you've been on the show so much. I talk enough.

I talk enough. Cool, guys. What's your social? Are you on social media? Yeah, I have Cal Deets or XL Athlete on Twitter. so much. I talk enough. I talk enough. Cool, guys. What's your social? Are you on social media? Yeah, I have Cal Deets or XL Athlete on Twitter. Oh, add XL Athlete right there. And then I just opened up Instagram account. I think I just got 500 people yesterday.

I want to get with you, too, and get that document or the article that you talked about with the seven steps that we mentioned earlier in the show. So we'll try and have that for you guys as well. I think it took me a year to get 500 followers. Yeah. Took you a day? Well, yeah.

Guys, strength test a little bit? What's that? Oh, yeah. And if you haven't yet, make sure you go to shrugstrengthtest.com. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I saw that actually. It's really cool.

It's a three-day test that we build. It's got a bunch of different movements. We walk through day by day and show you how to do each movement. After you take the test, you enter your results. We send you a bunch of feedback on where we think you need to be stronger and then how you can improve. So make sure you check that out, shrugstrengtetest.com. Guys, thank you so much for coming

on. I learned a ton. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Cal.