Barbell Shrugged - Triphasic Training w/ Cal Dietz - The Barbell Life

Episode Date: August 4, 2019

Cal Dietz has been an Olympic Sport Strength and Conditioning coach for numerous sports at the University of Minnesota since 2000. During his tenure, Dietz has trained athletes that have achieved 400+ All-American honors, Teams that have won 33 Big Ten/WCHA championships teams and 10 NCAA Team Champions. He has consulted with Olympic and World Champions in various sports and professional athletes in the NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB, MMA and Professional Boxing.   Cal Dietz on Instagram   Please Support Our Sponsors Savage Barbell Apparel - Save 25% on your first order using the code “SHRUGGED” Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   --------------------------------------------------- Show notes: https://shruggedcollective.com/tbl-dietz --------------------------------------------------- ► Travel thru Europe with us on the  Shrugged Voyage, more info here: https://www.theshruggedvoyage.com/ ► What is the Shrugged Collective?  Click below for more info: https://youtu.be/iUELlwmn57o ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

You're listening to The Barbell Life. On this episode, we talk with the one and only Cal Dietz. He's the creator of Triphasic Training and an all-around brilliant guy. Cal was able to share with us some crazy insight about single leg safety bar squats, tapering, contrast training, and so much more. This podcast is absolutely essential if you are into strength and conditioning, but Cal also weighs in on how his methods could give massive benefits to weightlifters, powerlifters, and crossfitters. Now, Travis has talked a little about his amazing athletes in all sports, and we're

really proud right now about some of our D1 college stars, and also Tommy Bohannon, an NFL starting fullback for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Travis created an off-season program for Tommy recently to get him stronger and faster and then to get him tapered and ready for the preseason. And if you want to see this very program, well, we've got it for you. But even better than that, Travis doesn't just give you the program, he walks you through why he programmed the way that he did and how you can customize your programs for your athletes of any sport, in any situation, with any combination of strengths and weaknesses. Now, of course,

Tommy is in there as a case study to learn from, but there are also four other case studies from some of the MASH Mafia's amazing crossfitters, Weightlifters, and Powerlifters. If you want to check out these case studies, if you want to see the ins and outs of Tommy Bohannon's program, if you want to learn how to customize your programs, well, you can check out our new guide that we've just launched called The MASH Files. It's over at maselite.com slash mash files. That's mashelite.com slash mash files. And during this launch period, we've got it at our special launch discount. So grab it now.

Again, that's over at mashelite.com slash mash files. And now I'm Loren Penelis, joined by Crystal McCullough and Travis Mash as we talk with Cal Dietz. Hey, guys. Today we've got a very special guest for our show, someone that we've tried really hard to get on our show because he's a super busy guy, and we're very honored to have the University of Minnesota's Associate Director of Athletic Performance, the man, the author of Triphasic Training, Cal Dietz. Thanks for being on. Well, hey, thanks, guys. I appreciate you guys having me and understanding my schedule and working with me on that.

Man. Got to pay the bills, man. Yeah, bro. I totally get it. The life of anyone in this industry is is busy if you're gonna make a living so yeah yeah busy's good yeah busy pays the bills not busy is broke so that's good yeah right uh yeah i've been pushing stuff back for nine ten months right now and i feel like uh i gotta get rolling on some they just set some time aside but

things just keep creeping up and deadlines and things like that. So is it snowing in Minnesota right now? You know what? It's crazy. It just did yesterday. I was in Seattle. My wife sent me. And I flew home last night. It's way too early, right?

It shouldn't be snowing. It'll melt. It's actually gone now. But you're just like, yes, yesterday it did snow. Wow. Well, I don't know if you know this, but I have an associate gym in Minnesota, in Egan, Minnesota, Undisputed Strength and Conditioning, but I go to Minnesota a lot. My daughter lives there, so I love Minnesota.

Awesome. Yeah, I know. It's great. Yeah. All right, man, let's get into it. For anyone on our show who does not know you, could you give them a little bit of your background and just who you are and what makes you so amazing i guess i got into the field just you know with my interest in training you know i grew up and uh went to college i'm 45 now so 25 27 years ago obviously with college i wrestled played football in college two sport athlete that was a tough one um but i didn't know any better, right? Yeah.

And then I, you know, with that interest, coaches that knew me said, hey, there's a GA. So I went to the University of Minnesota, actually did a graduate assistant strength coach. And I grew up in Ohio and then moved out here. And then I – it was a pretty good situation. But then I left, came in and got a full-time job. And then a year later, the job opened up and that was like 20 some years ago. I was, or 18,

19 years ago, I was able to interview and get the job I have now still. And I probably, I was not qualified. That's for sure. But back then, you know, people hired people that probably weren't qualified. Sometimes that happens still, right? We know this. Still a little bit. Yeah. Then you know what? I got the job and I knew I wanted to be a strength coach and work as hard as I could. It was a good situation where I trained like 14 teams or 12 teams at that time. Wow.

Yeah. I oversaw that with one assistant. And now there's like four people to do that job or five. And then I – so that gave me my background on programming where I was writing 28 programs a month. My Lord. Yeah. And I was a young coach.

My girlfriend at the time was training for the Olympics, which is now my wife,, in women's ice hockey. She won a gold Nagano and a silver in Salt Lake. And then, yeah, so she was gone. And, you know, we'd chat at 9 o'clock at night, and that's usually when I went home after that chat, right? So that's just all I did. I was kind of a loser at that point in my life.

You know what I mean? In regards to socially. But that's all I did. I was kind of a loser at that point in my life. You know what I mean? In regards to socially. But that's all I did. And you know what? I did that pretty much until she got done with the Olympics and then toned that down a little bit. And then when we had kids, I toned it down a little bit more, obviously. But I've been there almost 20 years total.

And for me, it's a good spot because i have um a lot of ability to keep learning and trying and experimenting things for a number of years you know man that's pretty impressive to be at one school in this industry you know most of my friends who are in the strength industry world especially like collegiate and or pro you know they bounced around a million times you know yeah coach do you are you familiar with coach joe can the other carolina painters oh yeah yes he's my buddy you know he's been you know what uh bounced around a million times. Coach, are you familiar with Coach Joe Ken of the Carolina Panthers? Oh, yeah. He's my buddy. He's been, you know what,

I forget all the different schools, Boise State, Arizona State, Louisville. Was he at Ball too? That's where his son went to school, I think. Anyway, but one of the things that you mentioned, you said you oversaw 12 different sports.

Coach Ken would say that he thinks that a coach that doesn't at least have a background in that will never quite grasp the industry as a whole because that really makes you apply all of your skills to be able to adapt a program to all the different sports. Yeah, I would 100 would 100 agree 100 just because you know you train from elite level shot putters to world-class sprinters to hockey players to you know tennis players and people that you know i call them country clubbers that don't necessarily want to train you know i mean right so um you have all types right so uh yeah it's it it was it gave me my background and then being able to apply things and understand and have an awareness of different different things that come up. Just really it was the injuries in the sports that would occur. And I'm trying to prevent those. So that gave me a big background. So that leads me to my first important question, which is how did triphasic training evolve um well you know what

it basically came about where i was experimenting with various things and and then uh and when i say that like just different methods and you know and i read some stuff where like isometrics yeah they're you know they're they're effective but nobody it was a russian article or a russian manual thing and and they said well we just don't know and people just don't know how to apply them to sports and and i'm like okay that's that's that that's arguably and uh because you know you take an elite level athlete you do isos for with them for a while and and they might get slower you know um but so so then what transpired was, you know, and I knew I, eccentrics had value. I mean, even Charles Poliquin, who, you know, just passed, like he was big on eccentrics. And, and then I was like, okay, so I thought, well, let's try those. And

the block training method came into mind and I was using that. So I'm like, well, you know, I try ISOs for a while and I'll try eccentric training for a while. But, um, and I kept playing with those. And then all of a sudden when you, we put the eccentrics together and then the ISOs after that. Right. And essentially the, the track kids I was training were throwing, were running really fast. I mean, started running faster. And actually when we tried this, I had a world, I call him world-class track coach, Phil Lundin. He was our track coach at the time. And he's like, well, you know what, if we do this eccentrics, they may get sore. They may run slower, but let's see what happens. You know, and he was willing to say, okay, they may not run as

fast as they could, but in a couple of weeks, let's see what happens. So we went through these cycles and, and we were, and then he was like, man, their times are getting better and things are working out. And then, you know, so, so the premise behind, well, the results were basically, we got some crazy good results, right? And, and really what it was, was there was kids that you would identify that had weaknesses. Let's say they did have eccentric strength weaknesses. Well, they got some crazy good results more than some others, maybe, you know what I mean? And kids that just needed to get strong, maybe with the isometrics, they got great results. So basically it's results based in track and field and swimming is where I tried everything because with other sports, you know, with hockey, which is my main sport now,

there's so many variables. There's more variables in hockey than there is anywhere else, right? Because you got the puck, you got the goaltender and and you know i've even seen some of my older pros that get slower when they're 35 years old but they still score goals right a lot of them because they know the game track and field and swimming it's just straight ahead yeah and there's less variables or like way slower that's a wrap yeah weight lifting power lifting they're all the same they got some goal oriented-oriented, you know, objectives. And you know if you're getting better. So that's how Triphasic was formed.

And then it just became, and that was, you know, 20 years ago. But you're just sitting here going, okay. But we have some, there's many other things that it does in regards to like in the eccentric phase, it remodels tissue. You know what I mean? So you get, you get your tissue remodeled on the muscular side. And then once you remodel that new tissue, then you make it extremely strong by doing isometrics in the deep position, you know, or the stretch position.

And it takes a lot of weaknesses out of, of your athletes and prevents injury at a pretty high level just because the tissue's stronger and then you become stronger and you become you have the ability to handle more force and be more reactive well cal let me let me do this um for those who are not you we've kind of hinted at it talking about you know centric and isometrics and everything but what's kind of the cliff notes version of what triphasic training is for those who aren't familiar with it yeah um in the in the basic it's it's really every human movement has a um a down phase let's say so if you're standing there you do a down phase when you go to jump

you go down which is the eccentric part of the lift. And then when you, at the very bottom, when you go to reverse the action, there's a brief split moment where the muscles paused, okay, to reverse that action. And that's the isometric window. And then the concentric is the explosion up. And so what happens is, is basically triphasic breaks those three movements down from three phases, right? Took me, I didn't name Triphasic till about 10, 12 years after I started it. Okay. So I found, and then what happens is you just, you just take about two weeks at a time to three, if you want, and train and focus on that particular quality. So the eccentric phase is first, and you spend two weeks. And then the next two weeks is the isometric phase, and the next two weeks is the concentric phase. And basically what you get is you make all human movements that are dynamic. When I say that, so throwing a football is dynamic.

It has an eccentric because you've got to load it. Baseball, jumping, weight weight lifting catching a clean um and really if you look at it pulling a clean off the floor what guys do is they load themselves so there's some a little bit eccentric there right when when guys get that stretch reflex and start to pull even though it's it's from a off the floor there's not it doesn't look reactive. But the way people do it is they actually cause some stretch when they go to low detention and it pulls it up. So anyway, long story short, that is what you have. It's a foundation of human movement in all dynamic movements. And you just break that up and isolate those three qualities into a training block.

And then you get better results from the dynamic lift. Now here's the catch right away. When I first started doing it, remember those, those four to six weeks after I, from the day I started it, the athletes didn't get always great results, but then when they super compensated and healed and recovered about eight weeks from the time I started, it was when all the sport results started getting into play, you know? So for weightlifting meet or powerlifting meet people, you know, and this is me coaching people or just sharing times with, or experiences with emails is if, if you have a 12, if you're 12 weeks out on a weightlifting or powerlifting meet, if you want to do triphasic, you need to start it at 12 weeks out

you do your triphasic phase and then spend your normal six weeks peaking plan getting ready for that meat so that's the most ideal scenario in most cases i see so you like a six weeks you know of a two week eccentric two week asymmetric two week concentric then bounce into the normal like peaking phase taper them and then go yes yeah i mean i could definitely so in the you know when you're doing the eccentrics block let's start there what are the main movements you would focus on well right now i do uh i mean it's mainly you know squats was the big one you know and then you would do the assisted lift so I like back squat front squat you can do step ups my main lift now honestly is the safety bar single leg squat and when when I say that you have you know the safety bar the normal safety bar squat and i i literally have girls that use 365 single leg safety bar squat

and well that you know what people hear that they're like what but you'd be shocked how fast these people adapt like i was talking to a nfl team they're like oh my guys and i mean i have a thrower um sean donnelly who i think he just threw 77 meters over in Europe. Yeah. Yeah, right, in the hammer. Yeah. So he did an 800-pound safety bar single leg squat. I mean, that's crazy.

Right. But people like the NFL coach was like, I'm not sure that my guys can handle that. And he limited them to like 275. Well, that went out the window the next day because they were up to 502 workouts or something you know i mean and they weren't on and then he just stopped him there he didn't let him go on a bit higher but here's the catch so you're actually holding on to like handles so when you're doing this right because my concern here isn't balance and coordination with 500 pounds or 600 pounds on your back because i mean i'll have

180 pound guy use 585 right and and then when we squat down, you know, when I do my squats, um, it's more of a straight down knees and I put my knees in front of the toes. Okay. And then we go with our, actually, when people walk in my weight room, they're looking around and they see all my athletes squat in that bar. And most of my single leg lifts with their toe their heel off the ground right because here's why and they're it's just barely off the ground right but there's tension in the foot i have to make their feet strong and what i find is people have really weak feet and that that's so awesome because it's specific to sprinting at that point it's specific to every sport I got, right? Just because they're running.

You know what I mean? So what's the only thing touching the ground when you run? It's just the ball of your foot. The foot, right? So if one of those arches in the foot are bad and not strong, your body knows it lacks stability. Right. So when the foot lacks stability or strength, because think about what's happening on that foot. Let's say you come out of the block when you're acceleration, or you just

take off at a sprint. If one of those arches are bad and there's multiple, and I look at it like six arches, there's three extensor and three flexor arches in your foot. And if one of those are bad, then your body knows it's not stable. So you're applying like 600, 700, 800 pounds of force maybe on the ground, depends how strong you are in explosive, when you go to accelerate. And there's lack of stability in the foot. The body says, I've got to find stability. So then what happens is it goes to the knee and says, nope, I cannot find it there. And then what it does is it goes up to the hip.

And I find those athletes with bad feet have a lot of hip problems like they muscles locked down to find stability that's so funny since i have a i have terrible arches and i have a right that's really interesting yeah yeah and honestly i just i when before i actually started trying to fix a lot of stuff i would go around look at the kids okay yeah you you got to go to Cairo more often than most. And I start, you know, and I can test their hip muscles, ab abduction, lateral sling and so forth. And then I looked at the feet and you actually can test their toes and various things for the flexor. And they always had one or two arches that didn't necessarily add up to the strength that they should.

So that's why I squat with that safety single leg bar is that their toes are on the ground. And when we squat, we actually teach them to curl that toe and squeeze that big toe into the ground. Because it helps that glute firing pattern. Right? And that glute fires more effectively. That's what we teach with squatting. I mean, people are now. I mean, when I was a powerlifter, nobody really taught me that.

It was just until recently I started thinking about, you know, doing that with a big toe. Yeah. I didn't know it fired the glute until now. Well, yeah. I think it's the Binsky reflex, right? When babies are born, they'll scratch the bottom of their toe or their feet to make sure that there's reactive, that reflex, right? So that toe squeeze.

Now, the problem is like Minnesota in in the summer it's great beautiful weather right everyone wears flip-flops problem is when you go to walk with flip-flops on that you don't squeeze that toe into the ground you actually lift that toe up to keep the flip-flop on when you walk right so you got problems oh man i once had a physical therapist to tell me to throw my flip-flops away yeah i've heard that was a good call you should probably go back if you do well i don't wear high heels do you lauren i do not but i've heard people say flip-flops are bad for you yeah just on halloween for me that hurts all right so like so you're using a big movement right now as a safety bar single leg squat.

So how many times a day, I mean a week, do you train? Well, in the summer we train five days. Okay. So it's really like a three-day split. Legs on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Or, yeah, a six-day split, I guess. And then we go Tuesday, Thursday, mainly upper body. Do you do a movement for the upper body, eccentric, asymmetric?

Yeah, yeah. So we got bench press. And really, actually, so if you start triphasic today, I would probably pick one, two big movements per day with some people. But if you look at my program now and my advanced kids, and actually if they have an aerobic base that's really good, when I say that, if they're fit and they can handle a lot of stress, we do eccentrics on every movement that day.

Assisteds, you know, so, and like in the weightlifting model, like, I don't know if I would do it during the power clean, but, but do it on your assisted lifts, you know, the RDLs, the straight legs or, you know, whatever you choose. Yeah. The whole deal. So, you know whatever you choose yeah the whole deal so you know and i i i'm a big um proponent of you know the larger movements obviously because you know when people ask me what do you do for your core and i'm like i don't do a lot of core just because we do these big movements and then when we scan our kids we know that their muscle mass and their their core when you do a dexa scan or something, is pretty thick compared to most.

You know what I mean? So, yeah, it's just I'm not a big core proponent, to be honest. Me either. I mean, I squatted 1,000 pounds. I didn't do any kind of core. Yeah, you probably could. I promise my core wasn't weak. Yeah, yeah, right?

I mean, it sells books, right so people people jump into it and get excited about it i guess so that is awesome so you see you uh so for the people who are just incredibly like can handle lots of volume they would do eccentrics on everything that day so let's give a let's take a lower body typical like you know what are the assistance movements you use well so after the safety bar well i usually pair it up with some plyometrics so the main lift like that safety bar split squat and i do something called the french contrast and i got it from giles commetti he was a french uh he was a french uh scientist um i think i gave him credit he wrote articles about

it not sure he was the one that invented it i think it was warner gunther was a world record shot put holder if you go on youtube have you ever seen those youtube videos yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah with the guy he'll do a squat eccentrics and various things like that and then he'll jump over hurdles and then and this is a 300 pound man incredible yeah right jumping up uh bounding up a stadium steps and things like that but that's why it was a world record shot put holder for a while you know what i'm saying so so i actually pair that a lot with the uh with the main lift the the french contrast so what you do is you do your main lift and then you get out and you do a set of hurdle hops and then you go over and you might do squat jumps with like 65 to 90 pounds. My women using 65, my men using 95. And then you go back to another plyometric maybe, or even

hurdle hops. And that's a four exercises. So you go back squat, hurdle hops, squat jumps, and you're using about four reps on each of these. And then you end with another plyo, whatever you want. Let's say hurdle hops. And then that's French contrast. And I'll be honest with you. I get emails all the time from coaches all around saying, hey, thanks for reminding me about this because it is a very effective method in regards to power and speed and explosion. Yeah.

I mean, we use contrast training not to you know that degree where there's four but like normally i will pair like a squat up with like you know a depth jump or a you know a seated box and whatever so but not the force that's i'm definitely you know they'll be doing that soon yeah yeah it's it's a really and, and then what I did, and this is where I come into play as application. And so I'm like, I got such great results with the French contrast. So let's say you do three or four back squats, three or four hurdle hops, four squat jumps with weight, and then four hurdle hops again. So then I was like, well, one of the things I did, I call it potentiation clusters. I wrote some articles on it.

And what it is, is I, instead of doing fours of everything, I basically do a single of everything. So I do a single and back squat. I walk over, I do one hurdle hop. I do one squat jump and I do one hurdle hop, go right back to the back squat and do a single. And I roll through that four times and that's your set. So instead of doing a set of four sets of four on the exercise and then rest i do a 16 singles through that i totally get what you're doing yeah and i you guys in weightlifters that's where i learned the clustering was the weightlifting community instead of doing you know a set of three i'll do three singles right you know i mean right in the same set there and with about 10 to 15 and i got better results because and here's why you increase the quality of the reach repetition so you do 16 singles that are super high quality oh totally i understand because yeah we've talked a lot about you, post activation potentiation about, you know, you do a squat and then you do a jump every time.

I could see each time you do that jump, it would get better and better. And yes, yes. So the quality of those. So each each each example, whether you do four set or four exercise with four with four reps, you get 16 reps. If you do 16 singles, you get 16 reps. If you do 16 singles, you get 16 reps. But when I track the quality of them through all my testing equipment, the quality of the 16 singles are much, much higher. I would totally see how you should do that. And this is with no rest, right?

Just rolling through? Well, yeah, just walking over to the next one. Boom, hitting a big – Now, like I say, one hurdle hop. So really, instead of doing like people think oh i jump over one hurdle no i actually jump over the first hurdle get that good rebound when i hit the ground and then jump over the second one does that make sense you get the depth jump yeah yeah yeah and if you can't do it with people say well i can't do french contrast

300 pound line and i'm like yeah you can just like drop off a small box, hit the ground and jump up onto the big box and then just walk off that thing and do it again. You know what I mean? That's an easy way to do it. People, when people say can't, what they're saying is I don't want to put the effort for the most part.

Like, like squat a tall guy. I can't do this. I mean, have you tried? Probably not. So what kind of percentage are you working with, with that workout on the, like the squats? Um, what kind of person percentage? Oh, percentage. I'm sorry.

Sorry. Oh, so I, I'm sorry. I use them all the percentages. So this is no kidding. I trained from 120% on that single leg safety bar back squat. So this is why I get some really good results. So actually I'll give you my formula. So I basically take the back squat so this is why i get some really good results so actually what i'll give you my formula so i basically take the back squat let's say it's at 300 pounds and then i uh times that by 90 percent so i get 270 and that's what i've come up with is a single leg safety bar squat max wow yeah so yeah that's so it's a lot more than most people would think right but and but but people can do a lot more than they think because here's the deal like my again i have girls that don't want to put 185 on their back

on the back squat but they'll do 275 on the safety bar single leg squat because it's more comfortable. So it's really a stress hack. Does that make sense? Yeah, I totally get it. Yeah. And then, so when I say that, so realistically the 300 pound back squatter might be using 330 on the safety bar single leg squat. Now, yes, when they go down on the eccentric phase, we have to help them come up and they do that. And really what I do is I train everything under 10 seconds at that magnitude and at that level. And that was mainly to stay in the alactic short sprint system. So my sets are between five and 10 seconds. And when I do this, so I also do clusters and I got this from weightlifting. You do a left leg for seven seconds, let's say. And then your partner does his or her left

leg for seven seconds. Then you go right back in and you go right leg for seven seconds and they go in and then you do your left leg and then he does his and then you do your right leg and he does his and then you go through the French contrast. So you do your hurdle hops. So I cluster that. And that's, and then the reason for that 10 second model. And I use that actually all summer. Most of my, any weightlifting, most of my kids do 10 seconds. And what it was, was when I do so much training, the key was I, I realized that when they get into lactate all the time, they started producing a lot of cortisol. Right.

So to manage that cortisol, which we can't get into the metabolics, but that's a day lecture, right? The interaction of cortisol and insulin sensitivity is your two biggest concerns with even young athletes. And I actually found that I manage that better. So I can stress them out and I manage more cortisol. So there's less of a cortisol reaction and quarterly people talk about cortisol. Cortisol is good and it's, you have to have it, but too much is bad. Right? So, and then your insulin sensitivity has issues when you produce a lot of cortisol all the time, you can't recover as well. So I keep my sets under 10 seconds for that reason and um and that's at 120 110 on

my super maximal loading that'll be in triphasic too when when i get a chance to finish that um you need to do that yeah those loading methods right and and really so honestly my professional athletes that come in and train they spend four four weeks above 80% the whole summer. And those four weeks are at 120. Right. Yep. So in four weeks, they get as strong as they were the year before. Oh, so you use it to keep these pros in their tip-top shape.

Well, to keep them strong, right? To get them back to where they were like when they were in college right but it's only four weeks so they they muscle through it right i mean some of them are making millions of dollars and they're like man i'm like yep just four weeks you want to do it you're like yeah i can handle four weeks right so yeah making millions yeah exactly so then and i even do i even do light loads down to 25% to – at the 25% to – is the lowest I'll go. So I might do – I might end up doing French contrast at 25% of your back squat or maybe it's actually 25% of your jump squat, which is whatever formula I use for that. But so girls are using 95 pounds or maybe 120 pounds or just high speed squats with bands and then they go over to the

french contrast and do the hurdle hops and the and the squat jump with like 45 to 65 pounds on the bar would that be in their concentric phase when they're doing that low percentage i literally do it in every phase when i think it's when i think we need to do it and you need to add in some more like explosion i would say yeah and uh it it's worked in every phase um you know in season i don't do that much volume with them right i like the potentiation clusters in season because i'll drop the volume a little bit on those but it's still the big thing about in in season for athletes and strength coaches that I think you got to keep the quality super high. You know, keep the quality.

Now, you know, the big thing I think about quality when I say that is about the speed of the movement and power. Because I think people shift over into a period of, you know, over the years is that they don't apply enough stress. Like they see an exercise and it looks great and everyone tells them it's great. But there's no stress to this exercise. And I have devices like TMGs where I can actually analyze the muscle. I usually tell this quick story. I had a girl that trained with me four years. She was a beast.

She'd been training or she'd get tested by the national team. And it's actually on my YouTube page. It's the untraining of an athlete story or something like that. And, and so she had all these tests and then she goes, she's finished this with me and she goes to the national team and they said, Hey, we do our program. Well, she basically traded out what three, 315, 325 single leg safety bar squat at 140 pounds for a 16-pound kettlebell swing. I said, what? A what? A kettlebell swing. I mean, was that a real strength coach or was that the support coach trying to do something?

That was a real strength coach, right? But it was more functional based. So this girl went through a training program that was god awful yeah at times right mine but she got great results so she does theirs for three months and i actually and she asked me if she could do it in our weight room so i i had somebody take her through so she did it all right right and then so i have an uh heart rate variability devices right and the one i use is their mega weight so here's your spoiled i'm just going to say that right now like yeah i have So I have heart rate variability devices, right? And the one I use is OmegaWave. Dude, you're spoiled.

I'm just going to say that right now. Like, yeah, I have this device. I have that. The advantages of working within the University of Minnesota. Go ahead. Well, yeah, but Minnesota didn't buy that. I bought that. Oh. Oh, wow.

Now that's a baller right there. That's a hit, right? Yeah. Yeah, and I didn't tell my wife I bought it. So then she sees something on the credit card and calls me. So that wasn't good for a little bit. I do that a lot. Yeah.

So what happened was I actually omega-waved her. And guess what? There was no reaction to the training that she was doing from the national team. Yeah. Of course there was no there was no parasympathetic response so your her body never shifted into recovery so people go so she wasn't recovering no she didn't apply enough stress to have to recover to have to recover right and then guess what with all of her numbers and testing like they went down yeah and nobody could figure it out yeah this is what's happened i mean people are so funny like you know like

like you have to stress the body like you know like there are going to be periods where you you need to beat your athletes up a little bit like if if they're always like feeling good that's not good you're you're under training them right and look it and i tell and you know there's there's coaches out there if if you want to train with these heart rate variability variability devices you know you got to say if they can't train you can't train well i disagree right because i agree with you in season or in your peaking phase to coming up to an event right right you don't want to train them up two weeks out when they're in a bad state no you don't want to do that because because you're too close to competition or in season

but in the summer if you don't take them into a little bit of that deprivation area or or push the adaptation you're never going to get a change in physiology. If you read the definition of supercompensation, you'll understand what you're talking about. You literally beat the body to a pulp. I mean, that's the goal. In a good way. And this is where I like to do the eccentrics for two weeks, because here's why.

So if you focus on that specific stressor for two weeks, what happens to the body is that it gets very good at adapting to that stressor. Right. So you can actually, and people say, well, what if you do eccentrics on Monday and isos on Tuesday and mix them? I'm like, you can mix them and you'll get results. The problem is the body has to recover from multiple types of stress and it's not as good at it, right? It's very good at adapting to specific stress. And that's why I block load a lot of things in the off season is that it's very effective at adapting to eccentrics during a two to three week window i i just tell

people here's the example if you're going to train for a powerlifting meet or to try in a triathlon same time does that work we know it doesn't right it just doesn't so what's the other end of that spectrum to do something very specific yeah and that's like when you look at my program like cow you're doing all eccentrics for under 10 seconds. Yes. And that's because all the energy systems, my main energy system, the short-spin alactic system, is being trained and stressed. And then the eccentrics are. And my body works at healing those eccentric training sessions extremely. It gets more effective. I see.

Totally. Yep. I understand why i mean like not going into the you know the lactic system like you're you can get really good at recovering like you're just doing the you know getting some muscle damage from the which is a good thing from the 10 second stressor but you're not crushing the body with all the cortisol and yes exactly that's why i manage it so so the the goal and what what you actually find is if you get better in your a lactic system you actually hold if you're stronger more powerful and can repeat that you actually hold off the lactate system from kicking in even when you go

into competition which is good yeah you know once it kicks in you're getting into you're starting yeah you're starting to get to that that end limit at some point right so and you know if you're stronger then if you're doing let's say you're doing a certain exercise and it's 40 of your max you shift in lactate but you get stronger and now it's only 20 of your max you can go a lot longer totally yeah so what about so we've talked a bunch about the eccentric phase. What is the isometric phase? Well, we'll get back to the podcast in just a minute, but I did want to take this opportunity to say thank you.

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it is amazing. Make sure that you get some MG 12. You can find out more about them at mg12.com. That's MG, the number 12, dot com. Well, thanks for your support of these great companies. And now, back to the podcast. So we've talked a bunch about the eccentric phase. What does the isometric phase look like?

Yeah, so the beauty of the isometric phase, so after you've been through there and look, like on the eccentric phase, I haven't released everything phase. So after you've been through there and look like on the eccentric phase, I haven't released everything that happens and you can go through the research and find all the eccentric results, but you know, it caused a lot of inflammation and that immune system response. I mean, white blood cells would go up, but its body's healing itself. Okay. And responding to the stress. And then what happens, that tissue's revamped, and the actinomycin head at the muscular level are broken during the eccentric phase, and then

they heal, and they heal stronger. And then what happens, you got new muscle, and you basically make that muscle super strong with the isophase. So like you'll squat, you'll squat down, and you'll get into the deep position and hold it. And I usually always do the isophases in the stretch position. And what happens is, you know, flexibility, if you need flexibility, increases. Because you're under such tension and load. I totally agree. Yeah. Yep. And, you know, and I think you've got to be a little, you just got to be aware of your athlete. I totally agree. Yeah. you actually might stretch that tissue too much because that person hamstrings are tight because he's a world-class sprinter. And the quad is tight because, um, that joint stiffness

quality. So when he's running down the track, his, his hips don't sink when that foot strikes the ground, there's a lot of the tendons are stretched and there's free energy gathered from them so if you make that muscle too loose outside of his norms you actually might slow him down right and that's when people say well you know you do that sports back squat yeah that's for an athlete that that needs those joint stiffness qualities you know i mean now in the off season farther away from competition if he needs to get strong for acceleration you but you better squat him deeper right you know what i mean so but the closer to the meat i mean closer to his season you should probably not do so what would you do just like like a not quite full deep squat yeah i well

so i i call it a sports back squat where they're squatting. Now, when people see it, some would say it's a half squat. Well, but if you push your knees in front of your toes and go down and you actually look at the depth, you're at 90 degrees at your knee angle. Right. You know what I mean? I do. Actually, if you look at acceleration, the windows or the side view, and you look at that frame, it's the same angles. Same angles. Yeah, so it's much more specific. Yeah, exactly. a couple years that um a more specific you know like a higher type squat like you're talking about would translate to the you know to speed much more than even a full depth squat right so with

the isometrics that the goal is that i make them extremely strong right and it's it's it's it's actually harder than the eccentric phase now you'll feel more sore from the eccentrics but during my isometric phase like i have athletes during that two-week window drop their blood or their pulse by eight to twelve beats really yeah and that's because it changed it trains the vascular system with the pressure in the vascular system adaptation because what happens is when the heart beats then there's there's like it's called the pulse wave velocity it's how your your vascular system as the heart beats and sends blood what happens is that that those veins and arteries expand and then they collapse behind it so and there's actually a vortex but that's a whole nother

conversation right that's formed and what happens it becomes so much more efficient. The carrier, the arteries and the capillaries become more efficient from that isometric phase. Right. And I mean, I've seen it so many times and it does not not happen because I track a lot of things over the years. And, and, and what's happened is your heart just become, everything's becomes more efficient. The plumbing per se to send blood to where you need to get recovery, to get nutrition, to get organic substrates for doing the squat again. So that's a big factor during the isometric phase that people often overlook sure you get strong but here's an here's some other things that happen that's awesome you know um what i was gonna ask you is this is that you know with the weightlifter a lot of times they're you know they're obviously

very mobile because you know they're going as low as you can to get the heavy weight oh yeah but like you know pausing them in the very bottom of the squat would almost be like zero tension. Because, you know, they would be just sitting, their hamstrings would be sitting on their calves. Yeah. And they're good at that. They can handle that load, right? Yeah. So you want them under tension.

Yes. There's no doubt. So you'd probably want to stop it an inch or two before they get to full. Yeah, I think. Or you know what? You could stop it an inch or two before they get to full. Yeah, I think. Or you know what? You could stop it at their sticking point. If they're going to dig and stuff out of the clean where they usually hit that sticking point or that rebound effect's weaker, maybe stop them at the sticking point on the way down is what I would do with a weightlifter.

Let's say it's in the front squat, right? And then after, let's say he's down there for five seconds and then he he'll he'll drop completely down come out with a normal rebound effect right so would it be what what load would you use um so i i would go as high as 85 on them um between 80 and 85 that would be my my low. So pause five seconds. And then come up. Yep. Rep scheme of the singles?

It depends. Yeah. I mean, because if you get to, well, I do do, so like in the original triphasic, when we do back squat with my athletes, we do maybe a triple. So you pause for five seconds or eccentric down.

They need help on the way up. Now, weightlifter usually won't, right? Because their experience is strong enough. Yeah, they're help on the way up. Now, a weightlifter usually won't, right, because their experience is strong enough. Yeah, they're very elastic as well. Yeah, and they'll recruit stuff. But, yeah, my athletes, especially the non-experienced one, will need some help to get up. But usually a classic powerlifter or somebody else won't.

But it's taxing. So, yeah, you could do singles to make sure that they get it and in my opinion if you if you're down there and you can't get it just dump it right then you're good but uh but doing singles but my spotters usually we we have the kids make sure they pull it pull the athlete up make sure they help with it on the way up because at 80 yeah yeah all right i'm getting it yeah i'm thinking of one athlete in particular like december but being like because you know a lot of weightlifters have you know Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'm getting it. Yeah, I'm thinking of one athlete in particular, like December. Because, you know, a lot of weightlifters have, you know, very poor eccentric, you know, contraction

because, you know, everything is so concentric in nature. And so, which is, it's not necessarily bad as far as how much they can lift, but it's bad as, like, injuries, you know. Like, you know, their decelerators are so weak. Yeah. Well, the thing about that comment is that let's say you go down and your eccentrics decelerators are weak. The problem is what's happening is an energy leak.

So when you come down and you catch, let's say, 200 kilos, whatever, if all that tissue is not working and it's weak and it doesn't contract, in order to help you reverse that weight and then stretch your tendons and all the fascia, if your muscles can't get that decelerated correctly, then it loses energy, the ability to send it back up. Right.

Because you've lost energy. It's like that rubber band that's not functioning correctly or you didn't get a full stretch on it before you let it go. That's the problem that happens if your decelerators are too weak. I could definitely see where this would work really well with weightlifters. We talked to Dr. Andy Galpin, who was praising triphasic training, and he said that it was brilliant because the eccentric portion and the isometric portion strengthened the tendons and all the connective tissue. What has been your findings and your results as far as that goes? Yeah, I mean, mostly the soft tissue injuries are pretty extremely low. You know what I mean? Once you go

through a cycle and even if the things aren't, aren't correct, when I say that if firing patterns are off, the bottom line is if you have stronger tissue, you're less likely to get an injury. So when I say that I see people running with, I shouldn't say bad form, but the reason they're running with bad form is not because the coach is not trying to coach them. It's because they got a wrong pattern. There's something there. And it may be from a former injury or whatever. So their foot's striking the ground a little bit forward when they run. The problem is the hamstring's under a lot of tension.

And they may have hamstring problems. But what I've found is if you get too strong, and then what happens is that hamstring can handle more stress. Maybe that's not the correct stuff because of injury or a flaw in technique or whatever. But this is across the board with people over the years using triphasic training is because they just see decreases in their soft tissue because you're doing very specific tissue training with it. Which is so important and so what coaches don't talk enough about. Like, you know, everybody wants like everything needs to apply

to getting them better or faster now. But, you know, if you can train longer without getting hurt, you know, if you can train longer in an optimal way without getting hurt i mean that alone is going to get you better over time and eventually you overcome your opponents yeah i mean and then it so so along with that elastic stretch and the tendons and the fascia and and what happens is you actually become more mechanically efficient. So you seem like you're in better shape, but guess what? You're just more mechanically efficient because you're utilizing the free energy.

Every time your foot strikes the ground, there's free energy available. If you don't sequence that contraction correctly, you're losing energy. Free energy. Because look, the best running animals in the world have long tendons. They use a energy, free energy. Because look, the best running animals in the world have long tendons. They use a lot of free energy. So in the weightlifting, when you catch that clean at the bottom, if you don't gather that load correctly with optimal tissue tendon utilization and sequence it right, you don't get some free energy boost out of the bottom. What would be the application? We've touched a little on weightlifting. What about powerlifting? What about someone who was a CrossFit athlete? How does the different applications of triphasic

training differ from sport to sport? Yeah, I think it would go along the same guidelines. So you're basically about 12 weeks out. Or what's your normal peaking cycle, right? Some say four weeks or six or whatever. So if it's six, again, I would come back. And if you've got a short window frame, you could actually do at 10 weeks, let's say, for example. So your normal peaking cycle is a six-week cycle for powerlifting. You could do triphasic at 10 weeks, right? You do a free squat bench and deadlift?

Yeah. And I don't know. Deadlifts are tough. They're taxing anyway, right? So you do eccentric for two. You do it for squat bench and deadlift? Yeah. And I probably, I don't know, deadlifts are tough. Like they're taxing anyway, right? So I would do the assistance. Like in powerlifting then, you know, if you got an assistance issue, I think you can throw, or a weakness somewhere. And in your assistance, I think you can throw the triphasic in. And it seems to be very effective is what a lot of people have told me. So if they have a weakness, then you really focus triphasic on that weak part, especially 10 weeks out where you do the eccentric ISOs for weeks 10 through 7. And you're essentially going to say, okay, I addressed that weak point.

Now I do my natural. And the reason you want that four to six-week window is because you've got new qualities in that muscle. You actually have to make sure if you're performing at a high level or any level, you want the body to coordinate itself so that you come into that event ready and optimal. You don't want to have new qualities developed right away before a meet or a competition because you need to be tuned in and synchronized, I should say, with your muscles and the coordination. Because everything's a skill.

Everything's a skill. Strength's a skill. Speed's a skill. And when you're optimal, then that's when you're going to perform better. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Where do you see, like, Triphasic going in the future?

Do you think that this has adapted all it's going to adapt? Well, the thing I think why it's exploded and we've sold so many books. I think I had three out-of-town coaches from out-of-this-country coaches in two months in the summer swing through that use it. And you're like, it's not a program, right? Everyone uses their own program. You know what I mean? It's, I don't want you to use my program. You got to write your own programs for your, your guides. This is why it's a, it's what, you know, I mean, the, the amount of emails I receive from all over the world, people using it, saying thanks or whatever, asking questions is because it's just concepts they put into their own program. So what's, what's, what basically has transpired is as I release more of

my methods that I, that I use in Triphasic, I think people will start to create even more concepts and I'm hoping they just share them with me really. Cause I share a lot of stuff, right? But I'm just hoping people share that with me and and really on how to uh to make even just it's really the concepts that you apply the method you apply with it so i mean i've been sent thousands of triphasic programs literally thousands and they're all different right and that's the beauty of it it's not necessarily a set program now it works you talked about joe again like people mix in triphasic with the tear system right joe again like people mix in triphasic with the tear system right you know i mean people mixed in triphasic with 531

okay weightlifting coaches mix it in so i think it's just it's become so popular because of that you know what i mean you know i've used like um not really from triphasic but we use eccentrics and we use isometrics but i love what you said about you know you know because i was always curious about when you do it all in one you say you do eccentrics for two straight weeks and that's your focus you know i was wondering about like you know maintaining those gains but now after talking to you, I definitely see it. Because making the body get efficient at recovering from that specific loading, I'm definitely going to try it for sure.

As soon as we have a phase. We have four of our athletes who are going to the world championships in a few weeks in Turkmenistan. But when they have a long stint, then we'll definitely try it. You're ready. Probably on our younger ones coming sooner. Yeah, well, with the elite ones, I would get them back, get their fitness levels up.

And people say, did you hit it with your freshman walk in the door? I've tried it. You know what? They need to get a base buildup, and they get better results. You'll get results at any point. But the problem is you want to be in a good spot with decent fitness levels before you try it because what will happen is if your fitness levels are up

and you're in a good shape when you start it you get better results because you can handle the stress oh it's like maybe put them through like an accumulation phase get them back yes you know and then hammer all right yeah you just yeah and look i've done i've done everything with it like i've experimented to the ends of the earth you know i i i know like most of the supplements i would give in each phase i mean that might be a book down the road but i know what phase eccentrics i know the you know isometric phase what to give the vascular system to help adapt even more, how to recover from the isometric phase during the speed phase. If your nervous system is tuned up, what supplements to kind of calm it down, the whole thing. So it's a complete system.

I've just – and people have seen a small part of it really. You know what I'm saying? So, yeah, it gets deep because like look i have a library of 70 80 000 books and articles and i haven't read them all but um it sounds like you've read quite a few so i've read a lot yeah um and you know and i experiment on myself on on people i got coaches that call me and say hey i'm doing this i'm like all right do this this and this and then let's see what happens or they have this emg machine or that device and i'm like yep let's do this let's test this because i can't do all the testing on my own either so right

what about you know real quickly because we're running out of time like let's talk about in the cliff note version as lauren said of the concentric phase yeah um really you can do that at any loading and obviously it's usually done in my world between 90 so i do it in three various loading levels so it's either 92 or to 80 percent loading when i'm trying to get somebody strong right um let's say i come out of the isometric phase and i got a veteran athlete. I'll make kick him right to power. So I go between 55% and 80%. My 80s are done at singles and my 55s are mostly triples. Because I found, honestly, anything over triple,

and I know there's like Philippines chart and all that, but everything over a triple at any load seemed to slow down through all my testing. So to keep training high, I just kept everything under triples in most cases, or training quality high. Even when I go to 50%, 45%, if it's a high quality movement, even 35%, it's triples. So if I'm doing 25% with a squat jump, I usually do on my main lift, I'll do triples. Now I might go over and do three or four hurdle hops. Right. But it's like, boom. Yeah. It's triple. So, um, during the power phase, I'll go 55 to 80%. And then it took me

about it. Cause I actually peaked most of my athletes between there for a number of years, between 80, cause like weightlifting, you need to peak above 80 at 90, 95%. Because that's what your event is. But I got better results with track and field and swimming if I peaked them in the power phase between 55% and 80%. But it took me a decade to ask the next question. Well, if I made it lighter, what if I went below that? I'm not very smart, right? I just have to read things a lot, right?

But I peaked my athletes between 50 and 25% loads, whether it was a squat or squat jump. And guess what? I even got better results because it's more specific to their event. But that would took four to six weeks before the event, right? You want to get strong. Actually, that peaking model doesn't work if they're weak. so you got to get strong and then you got to do the speed stuff

it doesn't work any other way or it doesn't work well any other way oh man that would be you know even for football i feel like that would be a better way to pika you know like so i can see when you do like eccentric isometric then you're concentric you know like get them strong and then finish with power yeah with peaking at the lighter because look they run around out there so anything in sports the peaking at the lower loads are better but but people say well that's what i'm gonna do year round no you gotta get strong it training's a process people forget this in our society you got an app for everything that you get instantly the weather you know i used to have to when i was young you'd have to go to this i drove to

store when i was 16 to get my dad a paper to see the weather right right it it you know nowadays they want to do oh i'm gonna do this piece of no you got to get strong because then the speed's more effective later totally the training's a process and and our society doesn't like processes they want it instantly now man i love this it's been a great talk hey i'm gonna be in um minnesota i'm picking the date soon but um let me know i would love to come and just shake your hand but you know if you're around yeah we chat a little bit we'll throw stuff on the board yeah i mean when people show up we just talk and yeah, it's fun. That's what I live for.

Talk training, right? Yeah. We're geeks. We're two, we're geeks. Exactly. So,

well, Cal, it has been awesome having you on and thank you for being so generous with your time. Uh, take your time out of your busy schedule. So I guess if people want to learn more about you, learn more about triphasic training,

just, uh, where can they go to find out more? Yeah. I mean, uh, my main website is XO athlete. It's like extra large athlete.com. And, you learn more about triphasic training just uh where can they go to find out more yeah i mean uh my main website is xl athlete it's like extra large athlete.com and uh that's where a lot of my stuff is and then um i think my instagram's cal.deets and and things like that and i'm hoping

to get i'll have some more stuff out i have a peaking manual actually i'll send you guys some of the videos uh and some things i just created some new some new speed videos and if you want to share a couple of them you can or i don't care i'll send you guys that when i get off and then uh um and then some of the stuff i talked about if if you want to share with the youtubes but um i just did free exercise lectures or whatever so um we can uh and basically i don't know a lot of people find my email so it's uh caldeets at gmail so pretty simple i get a you know just maybe put on there some weird title to see if i i answer it you know because sometimes i get 100 to 150 a day so thank you for being on man it was awesome oh, I appreciate you guys' diligence of following up and everything.

So I appreciate you guys. And thanks for doing this. And you guys, I got an open policy. Let people know. Cool. Thanks, bud. Well, thanks so much to Cal for being on with us. We were all really eager to hear

all that he had to say about triphasic training. And let me tell you, he did not disappoint. I hope you guys love this one. And to check out more podcasts like this, to read our free articles, and of course, we've got our e-books and coaching for you as well. All of that can be found over at mashelite.com. That's mashelite.com. Well, thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.