Barbell Shrugged - The Conditioning Tool You Probably Are Not Using W/ Aaron Guyett

Episode Date: May 3, 2017

When was the last time you did a conditioning piece that you actually enjoyed? Chances are (unless you did track in high school) you don’t find long spouts on the air dyne or rower all too fun. Neither do we, so when we met Aaron Guyett and got to talking about battle ropes, and all the practical applications they have when it comes to conditioning, we decided he needed to be on the show. Aaron is the master instructor for Onnit Academy’s battle rope program, and runs a facility in CA called Innovative results. We met up with him at his facility to talk about how you can use battle ropes in your conditioning workouts. When it comes to using battle ropes, most of us just know one or two exercises that we saw on Instagram. In this episode, Aaron dives into all the different movement patterns and practical applications that battle ropes have including grip strength, power, and the ability to train all 3 metabolic pathways. Tune in for this one and make sure to catch the break where Aaron does a hands on demo with the battle ropes. Enjoy the show, Mike

Absolutely. Yeah. Pre or post even. Right. So to get muscle recruitment, you can do it pre and just do a couple of short bouts or to decompress afterwards. You know, you can do kind of longer bouts and just sort of relaxedly go through it. Welcome to Barbells Show Hooked. I'm Mike Butzer here with Doug Larson and Kenny Kane. And we're up here at Innovative Results, and we're hanging out with the founder, Aaron Guyette. He's a master coach on his battle ropes. And we're going to get into energy systems, metabolic pathways, and you use the battle ropes to teach that and train that. Correct.

Yeah. And so that's much different than what we normally encounter. With CrossFit, we think about metabolic pathways and we think about Metcons. Correct. Or we might think about an Airdyne. Yeah. Something like that. And usually I'm using different tools if I'm wanting to work one pathway versus another.

And it sounds like you're using the battle ropes to train everything. Yeah, absolutely. And I think with the battle ropes, once you understand the principles of the metabolic pathways, then you can carry that into any tool. You can go back to your barbell. You can go back to kettlebell. You can go to an airdyne. And now you know how to program for a lactic power or

for lactic which is you know our strength component or the aerobic side of it um and and that's the beauty of the battle ropes is it forces you to come away from the normal um i think preconceived notion of uh force which is either calisthenics where i'm i'm moving my body and i'm i'm being explosive or or not explosive and just running whatever with body weight or an amplification of gravity which is kettlebell or barbell or mace or steel club or any of the other tools that we use at at any or most gyms so we we tend to kind of pigeonhole ourselves or paint ourselves into a corner, like this is the only way to amplify force

to get enough force load to work this particular metabolic pathway. But once, if you use a rope and you're able to get into power or the alactic metabolic pathway, or you're able to get into strength or you're able to work aerobic, well, now you realize, oh, force is force is force.

It doesn't matter which tool I'm using. If I can get to it with a battle rope, well now I kind of understand the concepts of force and using the force with any other tool, whether it's an amplification of gravity or not. I think it's cool to use a single tool to do all that because you're actually focusing on the energy system and not so much worried about this tool for this or that. And I see where it can shore up any confusion. Before we go any further, can you tell us about your fitness career? What got you to the point where you're working with battle ropes?

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, first I started with the Marine Corps, just being really into fitness in high school, um, and then kind of, uh, getting smashed in the Marine Corps, but, but, and realizing that that's not the way to build the best bodies, um, whether it's aesthetically or, um, for performance for athletes, uh, you can't just smash yourself into the, into the ground and then pick yourself back up and smash yourself in the ground. Do that consistently and create a good body.

So I got interested in just movement and lifting weights and, you know, whether it was for me at that point, it was dumbbells, barbells, you know, and sort of your traditional bodybuilding and powerlifting components. I wanted to get huge and strong because I was scrawny because I ran too much and humped too much weight or did too many rucks in the Marine Corps. So I want to get big and strong and started to learn about that and then got into fitness at LA Fitness. I started, you know, just doing basic personal training at LA Fitness. And then from that point, I realized I think I can do this better.

So kind of ventured off onto my own, started Innovative Results in August of 2005 and realized that there's way more than just bodybuilding. There's way more than just powerlifting out there and just immerse myself. And the more I learned, the more I realized I didn't know. And that's still the case today. I keep learning more and realize, dang, man, there's so much that I don't know. And not too long ago, we were actually on the other side of this building, Innovative Results, and we hosted John Brookfield, who is really like the guy that brought battle ropes into the fitness industry and, uh, got a level one certification from him, level two certification from him,

and then got an opportunity with, uh, on it, on it Academy, because I had been doing it for almost a decade, uh, doing ropes, battle ropes for almost a decade.

They said, Hey, do you want to, do you want to write our curriculum and teach our certification? And I said, Oh, let me, let me call John Brookfield and make sure that's okay

called him uh emailed back and forth and and basically he gave me the ominous dominus so boom here I am uh with great opportunity to teach metabolic pathways uh force through a tool that I've been using for almost a decade to help athletes help uh special ops guys help military guys and help just uh average Janes and Joes get better with their body, better at what they do, better movement. Yeah, I think a lot of times we think about strength and conditioning, and we just think about conditioning as the time when you're breathing hard. Yeah.

Could you break down the different types of conditioning that exist? Yeah, I mean – Or why it's important, too, that we would want to break this up. Yeah, so if we're, let's say I'm training a special ops guy or even a CrossFit guy, like, I know that that dude needs an equal amount of all his metabolic pathways because the special ops guy, he's going to, you's gonna potentially have to hike or hump or walk or run for a significant period of time or fight maybe in a battle

for a significant period of time. So that's aerobic, right? That's being able to just continue to do movement for long periods of time. And it's not your high level, high intensity movement, but at some point, if somebody comes up to him and tries to take him down, he's going to need to be explosive, as explosive as he can be at that time, to pick him up, put him down, wrap him up, do whatever he has to do.

So he's going to need alactic or power, explosive power as well. So I can condition explosive power or the a lactic metabolic pathway that chemical interchange in our body that is able to nervously recruit as much muscle contract those muscles explosively to take that guy down in the way in which he decides to do it but then be able to go back to okay now the guys up. He's zip tied on the floor. Now we've got to pick him up and we've got to carry him because our vehicle broke down or whatever. We've got to carry him eight miles back to our forward base or forward observation

base or our assembly or whatever it is. Right. So now I need aerobic capacity again. So you can condition a lactic, which is the power. You can condition lactic, which is that strength. And you can condition the aerobic or the endurance part of any person, any athlete. Average Janes and Joes need explosive power too. I mean, you know, little Lily runs out into the street. Mom needs to be able to shoot out there as fast as possible, pick her up and get her out of the road. So you want every single person to at least have a little bit of that access.

But then as a coach, what I'm looking for is, hey, what is your point B? What are you trying to get better at if you're a metabolic conditioning or metabolic pathway standpoint now I know what I can start working on throughout his or her training regimen and training programs training cycle up to whatever it is that they're going to work toward right so this gym is a little bit you know a little bit it's a lot unique compared to like your standard CrossFit gym or strength conditioning facility like it's almost the unique compared to your standard CrossFit gym or strength and conditioning facility. It's almost the opposite in the sense that you have a matted weight room type area over there.

That's a very small percentage of the gym and then the rest of the gym is mostly open space and turf. Whereas most other gyms that I've been to, if I'm to stereotype them, they have mostly weight room space and then a little bit of turf. It's kind of the opposite. How did you choose to structure this gym like this um you know i think there's so much to explore

in human movement and uh we we tend to just see the tip of the iceberg in terms of human movement uh when we go and train strength and conditioning or we go to, whether it's a CrossFit gym or a big box type corporate space or another boutique fitness gym, we think of strength and conditioning as weights. We've sort of got that preconceived notion. This forces you to see it from a different perspective. Let's explore this first, and then we can add some other tools and components. So by making it open, it just kind of frees you up mentally to jump into a new kind of paradigm or new way of thinking about movement and about strength and conditioning.

And it's also really incredible to host events because a lot of times events need just open space. So if you're peering around weight equipment and stuff like that to try to see the presenter, it's kind of difficult. So also from a business standpoint and hosting events, it works really well too. But really traditionally, that was actually my former business partner, Corey Beasley, and that that was what we uh kind of wanted we wanted to force people into a new paradigm see see this as a fitness playground more than uh you know a box to to get you know to lift up heavy weights and then put them down we do want to do that too and that's really important in everybody's programming right if i'm trying to work lactic uh metabolic training or metabolic conditioning i i that's a great and easy way

and it's and it's the tried and true method that's been pervasive in the industry for a long time so i can i can work it that way and and so we we do but this just forces that that mindset uh it just opens it up makes it totally different can we just go two steps back, if you don't mind, A.A. Ron? I can call you A.A. Ron. Oh, I like that. Just to help some of our viewers and listeners get clarity on energy systems, because I think a lot of the people that follow this show think of energy systems in the way that some textbooks

often refer to them or the crossfit certifications refer to them so we a lot of crossfitters sort of understand it as you've got this oxidative this longer one then you got a glycolytic then you got a phosphogenic and i know that there's some overlapping similarities but can you just clarify that just so that we are clear on sort of language understanding moving forward? Because I'd like to hear your description of that. Yeah, yeah. The phosphagenic, right? ATP-CP interchange happening. That's your power, right? And here's the thing, you know, you call it phosphagenic, you call it the glycolytic cycle, right? Which is the lactic right that i'm that

i'm referring to or strength um and that's really when you feel the pump right like that's what a lot of bodybuilders are going after if you're if you're trying to create hypertrophy for your athlete that's what you're going after and then oxidative that aerobic right with oxygen um movement with the use of oxygen when your body like we don't get to tell like hey bicep you're gonna you're gonna use the atp cp like we don't get to decide that our body sort of naturally decides that stuff so when i do something explosive i still might be using some of my oxidative or aerobic or or endurance uh musculature and and and i might be using some of the glycolytic cycle, right, or glycolysis or lactic, right, that I was referring to. But if it's a massive movement because of the way our body recruits, right,

at first, you know, we have to learn how to recruit that much muscle and move it all at the same time. So if I pick up this, I kind of know already what that weighs like. But if I try to pick up the turf or you or a butt. Well, I'm 400 pounds. Yeah, so if I try to pick up 400 pounds. It's not a solid muscle. Just jammed.

At first I might be like, oh, whoa, I can't really move that. So then the body naturally, nervous system recruits more, tries to fire more muscles, more and more and more and more and more. And before you know it, now I'm tapping into that ATP-CP in order to actually create that movement. I'm using as many muscle fibers as my body can create. So to get effective at it, you need to do it more than once, right? So if I got it right then then what you were doing is understanding how these how this works physiologically but then people coming off the street don't necessarily know that and then you're using the single modality of the battle

ropes to you know you go we got this big open space grab a rope we're gonna do this for a short amount of time we're doing for a long amount of time and we're gonna do it somewhere in the middle and you're gonna understand how those things feel differently and then from there now you've got a platform to understand what the hell me a a ron is your coach is going to tell you what to do absolutely you're going to get stronger and okay copy well and and so then the beauty of the rope right is if i have a a maximum amount of muscle recruitment if I'm if I'm trying to tap into that ATP CP it might take me a couple of sets to really get that right maximum force production right but the cool part with the rope I will see the rope move bigger

and brighter and further and further and so I can set myself away or closer to that anchor to now see how much force am I generating right and and then now as a coach I can immediately change the dynamic or immediately change the variables to get more or less out of my athlete okay oh you're doing too much we're trying to hit lactic so settle it down a little bit you don't need the wave to go that far we don't need the wave that big. Let's do this instead. You know, or it's,

it's funny that you say that periodically when I've got clients training with battle ropes and just that wave, you know, I'll either say, you know, you need to do X amount of, of swings or, or reps on the ropes.

And then, you know, the first set, it's like coiling all the way to the thing. And by the fifth set, it's like, yeah all the way to the thing. And by the fifth set, it's like, goo-hoo, goo-hoo. Yeah. Goo-hoo. That's a good sound effect.

Yeah. And they're like, it's still a rep. I'm like, no, not so much. But it's, you know, our qualifications for reps and other things is a little bit easier. But, you know, I think it's such a – I love it as a tool. I think it's sort of underused right now in this space. Absolutely.

Yeah, and it's really, really easy to coach. Yeah. If you screw it up, your wave just looks like crap. That's it. You're not jacking yourself up. If it's too much, you just let go. Is that one of the reasons why you chose to use the ropes? Because you felt like maybe some of the other things used were, you know, jacking people up?

Actually, I first chose to do the ropes because. Because you were a beat-up Marine? Yeah, because I was beat up. No, it was actually because John Brookfield made it look. If you look at him, he's like the nicest older gentleman that you can see. I mean, he wears sweats. He wears a T-shirt. You know, he has a little bit of extra cushion.

And you wouldn't think anything of him. sweats he wears a t-shirt um you know he has a little bit of extra cushion uh and you and you wouldn't think anything of him he holds some of the like greatest feats of strength in america in the world right like ripping decks of cards like 50 in a minute he's pulling semi trucks he's been he's bending like steel yeah right he's bending steel and putting it into uh you know mail mailboxes um or mailer boxes or whatever the guy's incredible and so i watched him on the ropes not only is he incredible with strength but then he he goes forever and he's just talking the whole time like oh yeah this is what you know we're just kind of creating waves and yep here we go and then you get up to it and you do it and it's like the sound effect that you

made and you just feel pathetic and so i was like okay i don't want to be pathetic i want to be like that guy what do i got to do and so i just kind of you know dove in head first so that's originally but then i realized so when you use the rope it's purely concentric right there's not a whole lot of eccentric so you want something in season that's going to keep you from getting sore but still maximize your performance ropes are your ropes of your game right that's your deal it's purely it's purely concentric it's like doing yeah concentric uh you know olympic lift or whatever and then just dropping the load yeah it's the same thing but with a rope, the chance for injury is severely decreased.

There's not a whole lot of impact happening because it's a wave. And it's not like you're not pounding. Obviously, if you jump or something like that, then you're going to have to deal with the impacts of that. But otherwise, you can create a ton of explosive power with a really thick and really long rope. Ah! That was your chance. That was your chance. I teed it up.

I teed it up. He paused. He did the whole thing. But lots of power. Well, it feels like the target was way too easy. That and we opened the show. I don't know if this was recorded, but Mike opened the show or as we started recording, ketones in your butt.

I wasn't recording that and so i actually jumped three spaces from that to getting ketones in the past the brain but blood the brain but it's an important barrier to cross every once in a while with either coffee or ketones this is a this is an essential. This is an essential amino acid. It's like you don't have a full protein if you don't do that. There's one more thing. You don't have a full life if this doesn't happen. So what were you saying about thick, juicy plumps? Juicy plump, long and thick.

Throbbing rope. We just went 50 shades of gray-er. This just came up. Since we just derailed for a moment, let's go full derail. I was just recalling the story when I put my index finger into a car door, watched it close, and went, that's not good. And then unlocked the car and then went to Kaiser, which was my medical provider at the time.

Now, while there, the nurse wasn't very pleased with my ability to not tolerate pain. And he kept saying things like, well, you shouldn't be able to feel your finger. And I'm like, I do, I do. And I would like some more stuff in there because it's a sensitive area, a lot of nerves. And anyway, he started to come up with a couple of stories of people that had come into Kaiser, one of which was an example of a couple. The fella in the couple was about 50.

The girl in the couple was in her mid-20s. They thought it would be a good idea for her to take plaster of Paris and mold it around his erect penis while he was excited. Well, there was a point at which the blood came out of the penis. However, the plaster of Paris had dried at that point. So he had to come to the emergency room for an emergency circumcision under local anesthesia to help get all the plaster of Paris off. Yeah, soak that up.

Anyway, back to thick, fanny ropes and training. Mike just went into a spot. We went full derail, and you guys went, Kenny, you missed one, but I feel like I – You made up for it. Made up for it. Yeah. It takes a lot to make me speechless.

Good job. We're under the naive assumption that was done sober. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I love that that was the idea at some point, though. Baby, who has plaster of Paris? A, you know, unless you're a sixth grader making a science experiment. I was going to say, I grew up with that shit.

Yeah, but maybe they just were inspired by the kids, and maybe there was some other stuff involved. Honey, I brought home plaster of Paris. You know what that means. No, paris you know what that means no no i don't know what that means uh walk me through this i'm i'm a little concerned right now man i'll be i'll be doing some research on the internet tonight yes i know unfortunately i will too i've now i have to find out more about this was the 90s. Right before the information superhighway, as it used to be called in the early 90s, was even a thing, really, that people knew about.

So massive amounts of power. Massive amounts of power. Yeah, we went full derail, so we can easily jump into another subject. I think it might be a good idea to break here. We would come back. I actually want to find out what we should do if we want to get started with the ropes. Yeah. So I've seen the ropes. I've played around with them, but I know about two moves,

and I don't even know if I'm doing it right. No, I think all of Instagram knows about two moves. So we're right on track. This is normal. Perfect. Yes. All right, let's take a a break and we'll get back okay hey folks Mike Bledsoe here and I'm gonna let you know that on the video version we spend about five

ten minutes with Aaron and he teaches us how to use the ropes and all the different ways that we can get into it so I highly recommend going and watching that, then coming back here and listening to the rest of this show. Thanks for joining us. I call that an estrogen headlock. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's what that is. That's it.

I'm tapping. Yeah. All right. If I want to get started in battle rubs, what do I do to get started? Yeah. Yeah, so I think understanding the relationship between you and the anchor is probably the most important thing if you go anchored. If you go unanchored, then that's a whole different paradigm. It's a whole different thing.

So you're tying the battle rope to something or you're looping it around something? Yeah, whether it's looped around and doubled, right, or you're tying it off. Make sure you tie it off well. I've seen and heard of some gnarly incidences where I just make a bunch of knots, and then they were doing some crazy power stuff and then broke their tailbone or whatever. Broke their tailbone? Yeah, yeah. So I teach them.

They fell backwards on their ass? Yeah, they were kind of pulling back on it and creating a bunch of waves and then fell back, broke their tailbone. You can get injured doing anything. Anything, right? I'm like, this is crazy. Well, we now know plaster of Paris on the penis and battle ropes can put you in the ER. Correct. Yeah, so a figure eight, we use a figure eight knot, which is like easy to untie.

You can do everything you want. You can try to pull it off the anchor with a truck and still untie that knot um so that's that's kind of a cool like hey getting started if you're going to do a single rope tying it off correctly is i think a great start um something that most people don't think about and and then i think understanding that you can do waves in any direction and you can do circles as well so that that relationship between the anchor and the human or between the anchor and the client or the coach or whatever right mostly humans yeah mostly some some dogs we have a couple of dogs yeah yeah and periodic marsupial yeah i saw a kangaroo training in your gym. It was amazing. So understanding that relationship.

So a lot of times we'll go static first. So pull it tight. And then you feel not only obviously everybody's contending with gravity in the ground. Everybody deals with that. We like that. That's what helps us move well. Without gravity, that would suck. Force production would be nil.

But then now you have a new force to contend with and that's it's the anchor and the rope force and so the static relationship is what you try to create when you create your waves right if the wave doesn't go all the way to the end it doesn't really create that static connection between the anchor and the person that's creating whatever sort of wave or oscillation or frequency or stimulation on the rope. So we try to recreate that. And then that gives us kind of our baseline for do I want to, okay, now do I want to create more power, more force production, or less and

go longer. And then now I start to adjust my variables to really train the metabolic pathways. And then I can have them go in the frontal plane. So they're lateral going side to side. I can, and, and then they're obviously using a lot of transverse when they're doing that. Um, I think transverse is one of the most undertrained and most needed movement patterns of the human body. 90% to a hundred percent of human movement is based off of rotation. What's up? Yeah. So if we're not training it, what's, you know. I mean, I've had this issue, which is that was an under-trained thing for me,

and then it ends up resulting in injury over time. Correct. And now you're not in the sport long enough, as long as you could have been. Yeah, exactly. So now a large part of my training is that. It's not always as sexy. No. It's as snatching. Yeah, you can So now, like a large part of my training is that. It's not always as sexy. No. It's as snatching.

Yeah, if you snatch like 300 pounds, like that's going to look cooler than me, you know, moving a 2-inch, 50-foot rope back and forth side to side for 5 minutes or even 10 seconds. Yeah, so this could be a good tool to add in to complement whatever you're doing. Absolutely, yeah. Pre or post even, right? So to get muscle recruitment, you can do it pre and just do a couple short bouts. Or to decompress afterwards, you know, you can do kind of longer bouts

and just sort of relaxedly go through it. And the cool part is it still does look kind of sexy. I mean, that's why it's so popular on Instagram, that slow-mo alternating wave, right Yeah, or two waves are coming down I mean that looks that looks cool Maybe not as cool as 300 pounds overhead, but it still looks super rad And so yeah, you can you can train in all the different planes of motion that we can generate we can use more joints So so actually creating a little bit more or a little bit better nervous communication

from central nervous system to peripheral, right, or the PNS, CNS-PNS connection, right, and then even just understanding our body proprioceptively, understanding how to, you know, throw a hook better, right. You can just train a lateral wave to get that heel coming out, you know, rotating axial rotation of the femur, rotation of the hip, coming through with the torso and then coming through with the arm, right? Which is every power movement that we do,

whether it's a kick or a punch or a throw or whatever, right? So we can just kind of train those rhythmically and train them both symmetrically. So I want to create the same amount of power this way and the same amount of power or force production this way force production that way and so I think once then you understand those kind of principles right gravity in the ground the relationship with the rope to the anchor and then now I can move it a bunch of different ways and I want to create that wave or that oscillation

to go all the way to the anchor and and now it's just adjusting variables to get what you want from your clients or from yourself. Yeah, and that's a great complement to the majority of training that we, the people that we generally hang out with, weightlifters, crossfitters, powerlifters. It's the training in a phone booth, up, down, up, down, sagittal plane the whole time. They don't really do a lot of transverse plane work.

They don't do a lot of throwing. They don't do a lot of punching, kicking, or just any transverse work done in the gym. So the ropes are a great complement to kind of a normal training program. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, any time you overuse a particular movement pattern, you're going to see issues with that unless you can decompress it, unless you can get it um to relax and and come out

so so then your shoulder works like a shoulder uh not like uh a snatch creator right or uh or a jerk or a jerk creator right which is a lot of times that's what i think what's your talent i create snatches i i create jerks and snatches. I have things of value. Really big ones. The bigger the better. So we talk a lot about ropes, which are all, of course, super cool. You have lots of interesting implements here, though. You've got the pegboards over there.

You've got VersaClimbers. You've got sandbags. You've got punching bags. You've got kind of a monkey bar setup over here, like parallel bars. Like this is just a unique spot. Like how do you implement all these other tools into your training programs? I think with education, with responsibility, right, steward them well. A lot of times we'll get a new coach, and because they see all of these cool things if if we give them an opportunity to write some programming what we end up seeing is like this hodgepodge of all sorts of

crap in and it's like okay so what what are you accomplishing what is the goal so I think we first think about what is the point b that the client is is striving for or I'm striving for or we're trying to create in this class or this group setting? Are we trying to build lean body mass? Are we trying to lose body fat? Are we trying to build aerobic capacity? Or are we trying to, you know, recruit as much muscle as possible and really increase that force production? What is it and then in what movement patterns and then okay so what might be the best tool that's going to eliminate the most risk and we kind of start there and then as as the client or the people get a little bit more technically sound okay then

then we might now introduce some more or some different tools so i'm not going to immediately have them doing mace 360s if they can't just do a proper squat or if they don't have good glenohumeral range of motion in their shoulder, right? So how can I then build that first with maybe a different tool? So maybe I'll get them over on the kettlebell and have them work some basic stuff on the kettlebell

or on the rope to sort of open up that range and then probably doing a lot of body weight just whether it's flow type stuff or or decompressive type stuff at the end or open chain or closed chain mobility at the beginning to try to get as much as i can from that and then okay now implement this now now now we can okay, dabble in each thing. But, yeah, I think smartly is probably the best answer. Because, yeah, there's so much and you just want to use it all. And there's some things here are going to have a lot more risk associated with them, whereas other things are going to have a lot less risk.

But if you do a slow and steady approach it's going to mitigate a lot of the risk as you as you go along and as you program more and more and more for the client or the class yeah how much do you encourage your clients just come in and just play like you got you guys have the innovative results it says the fitness playground like that's you know i come in here and i look around and i i don't think i'm going to fall like a structured workout plan today i think oh i'm just going to come in here and I look around and I don't think I'm going to fall like a structured workout plan today. I think, oh, I'm just going to come in here and goof around and play the whole day. And eventually, you know, I wouldn't do that every single day necessarily. But like when I walk in here today, I'm not thinking I'm like going to go, you know, do five by five back squats. I'm going to come in here and just play. You know, how much do you encourage your clients to do that,

like on their day off or what have you? Yeah, we actually program that in a lot of times. Actually, the progression that I just wrote for like our small group and classes, off or or what have you yeah we actually program that in a lot of times uh actually the the progression that i just wrote for like our small group and classes um i wrote it based around play and i wanted to make sure that people were playing to attain power in their lower body and upper body play to attain strength in their lower body and upper body um and then full body and then play to attain aerobic capacity in their lower body and upper body that and then full body, and then play to attain aerobic capacity in their lower body and upper body. That was the whole progression. That was what it was written for.

It was play to discover my body and discover movement. And then in the midst of that, you're going to be coached on, okay, what are some issues that I'm seeing? What are some asymmetries? What are some things that we're going to want to deal with in our pre-mobility, open chain or closed chain mobility at the beginning or decompression at the end, or maybe some stuff that you're going to want to deal with in our you know pre-mobility open chain or closed chain mobility at the beginning or decompression at the end or maybe some stuff that you're going to want to do afterwards or on other days where when you come in and you play let's play this way so that you can open up this hip or or create more internal rotation of of your femur in in the hip

or whatever it might be so yeah we actually we actually, we highly encourage that. We think that's a great way. That's how we learned, right? As kids, at least me, right? I loved recess. Recess was my favorite class. I hated all the other classes. Went outside and just learned how to move my body, swung around on bars, you know, and so then I ended up being a decent athlete. It wasn't because my dad was like drilling me in the backyard. It was because I was playing as much as I possibly could, creating proprioception incidentally, right, creating body awareness, body control incidentally.

And really body awareness, body control is going to be the most significant two things that are going to reduce injury and increase performance. Yeah, and as adults, most adults don't play at all at some point you stop playing or yeah i think a lot of kids now just never play in the first place yeah which is really sad um how do you get somebody so you say you program play so it's like you create like a container for it but as an adult if i haven't played in 20 years yeah you just kind of see people get in here and get nervous? Like, oh, fuck, I don't know what to do. Yeah, of course.

Every single thing that we program, we have five levels down and five levels up. So when you see those, like that apprehension or that nervousness, we're immediately going back, regressing, whatever it is that we're doing. So we'll do something uh called knife fighting and actually over there we got these little foam sticks or whatever you want to talk about learning body awareness body control that's an incredible way of doing it and um but but if if they're afraid of you know moving around too much then we'll probably just have them we it becomes a little bit more regimented, a little bit

more structured, but it's like, okay, you're just going to do some basic locomotive type movements. You're going to run forward, but you're going to put your toes in. Then you're going to run forward and you're going to put your toes out. Like some real basic stuff that maybe you and I might be like, oh, that's, I mean, that's easy. I can do that. But for them, that's hard. Like, so jumping around is going to be maybe a little bit too much for them at that time um so but every coach has to be aware of that and has to kind of be on the lookout for that and then pull them aside and be like hey this is okay everybody starts somewhere and you're you're going to jump into this you know before uh before you before you even realize it i'm sure

you know in a week or two weeks you're going to be already doing this but let's just learn our body a little bit right now because you seem a little uncertain I also see you have a lot of strongman influence here as well you've got stones and farmer's handles and what not I know you have a strength background you compete in kettlebell

competitions and what not not just competes. He's the national champ. National champ. That's right. Give the guy some credit. He competes against the Russians, man. Yeah.

Guys named Ivan. How much pure raw strength training do you guys do, like heavy, heavy, heavy stuff? So it's probably about 5% of our clients do that. We have something that we call active performance where I'll actually write programming and coach people in specifically that. It's like, it's the guys that you have to actually try out to make that group setting, right, to make that class. So we need to know that you have a basic amount of power, a basic amount of strength, a basic amount of aerobic capacity, and you have a basic amount of mobility and range and and you don't have you know all these crazy injuries maybe a couple niggles here and there um but uh yeah and then and then

we'll do tire flipping or yeah uh atlas stone lifting because they've already kind of created that basic level strength because if if you don't have that and you go and try to lift a stone i mean you have to basically come out of form in order to lift those out of normal deadlift form, right? You're not, you're not like straight back. You have to curve your back. It's crazy. Right. So, um, so yeah, it's, it's a very small amount, but we love having it. It's a, it's cool to look at. It's cool visually. Um, but yeah, most, most of our clientele is not doing it. We used to have actually like a pyramid-looking monkey bar set up, and it was the same thing. It was like 3% of our clients could actually do it because going up with moving bars just was way too hard. So now we just have it flat and straight across over there, and now we've got more like 25%, 30% of our clients able to go all the way across on the monkey bars.

And they're seeing progression, you know, week to week, day to day, month to month. So it's really cool. Okay. So you have some standards that you put in place for people before they jump into that type of training. Do you have some type of consistent like assessment process when people come in that you put them through to kind of see where they're at? Yeah, we do basically like the FMS, the screening, right? And then what I'll do a lot, being a functional range conditioning mobility specialist, I'll do just a lot of assessing on the go, like when they do the warm-up, when they do basic locomotive movements. I'm looking for issues with rotating joints and do these joints go full range of motion

or do we need to work on the range of motion before we start putting them under load? Um, so that's what I'll do. But most of our coaches, they just run them through your, your basic FMS. And then, um, we annotate from there and then, and then start delivering programming and then, uh, coaching them along with that to, to, um, reduce or, or get rid of any sort of issues that might have transpired or showed their face in the FMS. And then we do, for every progression, we do your basic, you know, either five rep max with load or without load. So it's either pull-up or like an inverted row.

And then we'll do a one max set one max set so it's either under load or body weight you know what can you do we do basic push-up basic dip and usually the dip is under load we'll do it like an overhead press we'll do a front squat so whether it's kettlebell they can choose kettlebell or barbell or any other implement if they want to like a sandbag or something uh and and the front if you can do a front squat you can do a back squat right it's takes a little bit more right body awareness a little bit more body control to do that um and then we'll do a basic pull like deadlift um whether it's again kettlebell or they can do

our hex bars or they can do our barbell so they got they kind of choose on that and those are kind of our basic metrics then we have our aerobic metrics which is one minute on the versaclimber how many feet can you go um and then we'll do a how fast can you do and they do this one on their own mike because it takes forever before we leave he wants to do one minute max feet on the versaclimber or how fast you can do a mile. He wants to not warm up at all before he does it. Yes. Here we go. Here we go.

There we go. It's the best. The first time I did that, it took me a whole day to be able to walk. I was like, this is ridiculous. Oh, shit. What did I just get myself into? It's terrible. One of the best conditioning tools. Oh, yeah.

It's amazing. Terribly awesome. Horrible. Awesomely horrible. I've never used one. Dude. I don't know how I've gotten to this point without hopping on one. Actually, I do know how.

I weight lifted. Avoided conditioning. You decided, no, I'm not going to do that. Yeah, they're great. You throw them in the same category as rowing or airdyne sprints. It's kind of like you were saying earlier. It's concentric only. Just burn yourself into the ground metabolically,

especially if you're doing super hard intervals, one minute on that thing at 100% would fucking wipe me out. Oh, yeah. Every time. Absolutely. How do you look at when somebody comes in, their sort of rotational plane move? And I know you were just mentioning some of the sagittal frontal things that you're getting basic diagnostics on.

But I know a lot of coaches in this space are starting to really understand like this, this, if you're coaching people in any way, or you're a fitness practitioner, this needs to be balanced out. So the things that you're talking about, I'm assuming are hitting with some degree of resonance with anybody that's listening to the show right now. Yeah. But as a master coach, what are you looking for when you see people rotate and twist early when they come in do you look for an imbalance side i mean are you able to spot the

balance side to side or is that something you see on the rope itself or when you put a kettlebell in hand and say you know you know do a wood chop with it yeah the rope is the easiest way to see you see it in the wave you'll see one side's way stronger than the other. And then a lot of times then you'll look at them and you'll realize that they're not even really rotating cleanly. They're like doing this diagonal thing, right, where they're using almost like triple extension to create their rotation. And so then you, okay, so correct. Let's try to make it smooth and clean across. And then you realize one side rotates way further than the other side. One side has more, way more power than the other side. But then it makes sense because you ask them, Oh, what did you do in high school and college? Oh,

I was a pitcher. Okay. Of course, of course, that's going to be the case. You're going to be so asymmetrical. So for us, obviously asymmetries, it's not, if it's when you get injured, but knowing that it's like, okay, I'm going to just try to mitigate that asymmetry as much as possible, but I'm probably never going to be able to eliminate it. But if I'm aware of it and if the client's aware of it and we're slowly progressing, then the chance for injury is dramatically decreased. I'm not going to say it's not going to happen.

Obviously, that can always happen. But once you're aware of it, then now you can start coaching that and guiding with that knowledge yeah yeah copy yeah i think we're going to get in and uh watch you're going to teach us some stuff with the ropes heck yeah and then if you're if you're watching this you already saw it because i think we're going to put at the beginning or maybe we'll put at the end we'll throw it around where can people find more about you uh so if you go battle battle rope exercises on instagram is a good one uh and then battle rope exercises on facebook that's where you're going to see all the workshops that i'm that i'll be doing um you may or may not see equinox if they allow me to go public they have

the choice they can either make it private for only their trainers or public for other trainers around the area. But you can check out Equinox for that. And then, obviously, Onnit Academy. If you check out Onnit Academy and just look up Battle Ropes, you're going to see any of the certifications that I'm doing with them or for them. And then, of course, obviously, Innovative Results. You can check us out at Innovative Results on Instagram or Innovative Results on Facebook.

Or at the Kettlebell World Championships. Yeah. Yeah, WAKSC, Kettlebell World Champions, Orange Kettlebell Club, got me into that whole sport, that whole thing, and we're hosting it next year, last weekend in February again. And there was 500 people this time, almost 500 lifters lifting, which is pretty incredible from I think it was 26 different countries around the world.

So next year is promising to be even bigger. So if you want to watch paint dry for 10 minutes. No, I'm just kidding. No, if you want to watch, if you know what they're doing, if you just pick up a kettlebell and try to lift it a couple of times, you realize how freaking hard it is to do that for 10 minutes straight. As an example, what's the toughest competition you do with kettlebells? How much do you weigh?

What was the record you set? So I did two years ago. I attained Master of Sport in all three lifts. I was the first American, first U.S. athlete to do that, to do it in all three lifts. So jerk, snatch, and long cycle in the same competition. And so my jerk numbers were 64, I'm sorry, 84. My snatch numbers were 137. And then my long cycle numbers were 64.

And so that's with a 32, either the jerk or the long cycle was two 32-kilogram kettlebells, and then snatch is one 32-kilogram kettlebell. You can't set it down. If you set it down, you're done. With a snatch, you get one hand switch. Finish him. So the long cycle, you have a 70-pound kettlebell in each hand, and you do a swing clean jerk.

You did how many reps with that weight? I did 64 with that weight. So 64 reps in a row with two 70-pound kettlebells. You didn't set them down. You rest. You rest in this position. You can rest anywhere, but none of it's really resting. No, you're not.

You're just not moving. Do you just kind of rest here to kind of like rest the paws a little bit? Yeah. Like just a wounded pterodactyl? Yeah. You just F my life. Why am I doing this? And then you go.

And then you do it again. That's beast. Yeah. Pain. Love it. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Hey, Ron.

Hey, Ron. Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Aaron. Thanks, Aaron.