Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 36 - Dr. Ramsey Nijem: Recovery, Power Training & Learning from the NBA + NCAA's Best!

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Ramsey Nijem, of Kansas Men's Basketball (the number ONE team in the nation).When I met Dr. Nijem for the first time he was acting as the director of sports performance for the NBA's Sacramento Kings. While still with the Kings Dr. Nijem launched the Bay Area Sports Performance Symposium, a tremendous conference for coaches, trainers, and fitness professionals.Ramsey is one of the most creative, positive, and uplifting spirits in the strength and conditioning world and a true joy to have on the show. In today's episodes we talk about:What it takes to reach goals with a hectic schedule.How important is formal education.The importance of recovery.How to incorporate power training into any workout routine.Why you should never be a "crab".And much more!Follow Dr. Nijem on Instagram HEREThanks for listening.---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS: Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Guys, welcome into another episode of the podcast. Today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Ramsey Nijam, head of sports performance for University of Kansas' men's basketball team, the number one team in the nation before, well, coronavirus happened. Before Ram was with the Kansas Jayhawks, he was the head of sports performance for the NBA's Sacramento Kings. While living in Sacramento, I met Ram at his event, the Bay Area Sports Performance Symposium. It's one of the best collections of strength coaches,

fitness enthusiasts, and just personal trainers all around. And it's an incredible symposium if you're looking to learn from some of the world's best in the areas of sports performance, longevity, and nutrition. So sit down, enjoy the conversation today with Dr. Ram Nijam. It's going to be a good one. I promise you'll enjoy it and learn a lot. Dr. Nijam, how are you doing, man? I'm good. How are you?

I'm well, as good as I can be, you know, crazy times, but I think that I'm keeping my head above water and I've seen that you're doing the same, which is good. So for those who are listening who aren't familiar with you, and they should be because I've posted a bunch of your stuff and I've talked about you before on the podcast, even. You are currently the director of sports performance for the Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball team, correct? Right. Yes, sir. I just finished my first season with them. And you guys finished number one in the nation before COVID-19 knocked out the tourney. That's right. Unanimous number one team. You guys were, are you pretty confident you guys were going to run the table? You know, it's, March is called March Madness for a reason because of, you know, the possibilities of 64 teams playing each other.

And one game eliminations are always hard. So, like, yes, I'm confident. But I think that the excitement of March is upset and stuff like that. So I acknowledge that that's a possibility. But we were, man, we were high at the right time. I think we finished 17 games in a row on a win streak. So yeah, no, it would have took a lot. It would have took a team playing better than they've ever played to beat us and us probably playing at, you know, subpar levels. But

when we were on our A game, I had confidence that we could beat any team in the country. Yeah. And before you took the job at Kansas, you were with the Kings. And I remember reading an article that you were actually the youngest strength coach in the history of the NBA. And that's quite an accomplishment, particularly given that it's such a congested field and it's really hard to make a name for yourself. And I think that's something that you've done the right way. Could you kind of describe that journey from whenever strength and conditioning kind of got on your radar,

however old you were, whatever you were doing to taking it all the way to the NBA and then now to the highest level of the NCAA? Yeah, I'll try to give the short version of that. But it's, you know, when I entered my undergraduate, I entered actually as a accounting major. And I had no idea strength and conditioning coach was a job. I didn't have a strength coach in high school. And this was, you know, pre-social media and all that. So even strength coaches weren't really that seen. You know, now you get like on ESPN, the random blurb of a strength coach running along the sideline and all of that.

Like that didn't really happen even 10 years ago. And now with social media, you see that more. So it was after my first year at my undergrad, UC Santa Barbara, I realized accounting wasn't for me. I thought about transferring to play basketball. I've always been a basketball guy. I loved basketball growing up, played, you know, through high school. And I still wanted to play through college. I thought about transferring. And right at that decision point, it was actually my

older brother who was like, yo, why don't you just become a personal trainer? You know, you work out all the time. You like it. People always ask you for advice. Like, do that. And I'm like, well, I don't know what that looks like. And he's like, man, you just take a test. And I've always been good at tests. So that was like the inception of it. Really, I'm like, well, I don't know what that looks like. And he's like, man, you just take a test. And I've always been good at tests. So that was like the inception of it really. I'm like, wow, if I could create a career around helping basketball players, then maybe we, maybe we chase that dream. And I mean, the rest is history as they say, you know,

I've met some really good people along the way that kind of looked out for me, went on to get my master's. And then when I was 23, I became the assistant strength coach for the Sacramento Kings. And then at 25, I became the head strength coach. And something you just mentioned was, like, how congested the field is. And so, you know, when I was 25, the head job opened up, the Sacramento Kings. As I mentioned, I was the assistant there for two years already.

And so as this job opens up and my boss who hired me, who was serving as the head strength coach, left to now where he works with Chicago Bulls, I'm looking at this vacancy like, do I think I deserve it? Yes. Do I think I can do it? Yes. But do I think they're going to give it to me? I don't know about that.

I'm 50-50 because I was 25 years old at the time. So part of me was like, no, go get that. You deserve that. But the other part was like, well, you're also 25. You've only been here two years and you can literally post this job right now and get thousands of applicants who would love to take it. Fortunately, I did enough during my two years to impress the right people and they felt confident in my ability to run the show and so yeah man at 25 they gave me the head job and I spent three years doing that and that was an amazing amazing just time in my life I mean it was the dream job quote-unquote period you know I bought my first house in Sacramento I went through like the contract negotiation process and all that that goes into like getting that type of job. And after three years, I actually signed an extension.

So I signed a fourth year extension. And then out of nowhere, I got a random phone call from Hall of Fame coach Bill Self and Kansas Jayhawks. And at the time, I wasn't looking to get out. I never looked at the job market, even when I was in Sacramento, like when you got your dream job, you don't really look at the job market. You just head down and keep working. And I got a random phone call. And, you know, one thing led to another. I found myself interviewing. I found myself on campus. I found myself taking a big picture look at my life where I wanted to go and realize that this opportunity was the right move at the right time for me. So left last year in September, not even a year to the day, and spent the year with Kansas Jayhawks. And like you said, man, it was a great year, finished number one overall. And now that's kind of where all my attention and focus has been. And now you've kind of had that sport background as an athlete, and that's kind of what got you into wanting to work in sports performance but you also have quite a bit of academic accomplishment in uh the collegiate space you have a doctorate degree and that's

not something that's very easy to accomplish particularly doing what you were doing at the time as a strength coach i believe when i went to the first basp i don't even know if you had accomplished that yet maybe you had but i believe believe it was still something that was at least in the works or you were wrapping up. So that was something that you worked on kind of simultaneously. Can you talk about how that academic path helped you with what you've accomplished in the strength and conditioning space? Yeah, for sure. And so, yeah, I finished the degree and I think I walked in August 2018. And the first Bay Area Sport Performance Symposium that you attended was, I think, April 2018. So a few months before. So I was probably wrapping it up at the time. So,

yeah, I hadn't even finished it then. And just that process was, it was fun. When I started with Sacramento Kings, I had already started the degree. And so when I got the call, you know, of a verbal offer for the assistant role, I basically said, look, I'm thrilled to do it. I'm flattered to be considered. It's a no hesitation, absolute yes for me. The only thing that I requested was, can I finish school? So I didn't care about the salary. I didn't care about the work hours. I didn't care about nothing. The only thing I cared about was, do I have the freedom to finish school? And the reason I had to ask was

because multiple times throughout a season, I would actually have to leave the team to go to campus. And so once they said, yeah, like we support that, you know, that pursuit and we understand that that's going to make you ultimately better for for us and our players. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it's in the NBA, you get busy, but you also have a lot of downtime, right? Like you spend so much time in hotels and buses and airplanes that there's actually a fair amount of time that you can. Some people use it reading or listen to audible books. Some people might watch TV shows. And for me, it was just like, yo, just anytime you have extra time, just put it towards this degree and try to knock this thing out. But yeah, it was, it was certainly a fun journey and it was something that, you know, I tell people like the undergraduate basically teaches you how to remember things

and then spit them back out. A master's degree at some level begins to introduce like critical thinking and application. And then a doctor teaches you how to just solve problems. So I tell people like if you have a doctor, like someone has a doctorate degree, it doesn't mean they're like smarter than people or anything like that it ultimately just means that they probably have the skills to go find answers so like you know I don't know a lot about politics for example but I guess if I spend a whole bunch of time trying to figure it out you kind of have that skill set to either you know appraise research or search and appraise research apply research critical thing and all those things and all those skill sets really was just an extension of what I

learned at my master's degree at Cal State Fullerton and I had such a good staff there like I never thought I didn't even think I would get a master's degree I went into my undergrad thinking like yo in four years I'm out this piece I'm not even down for school like that and you know one thing led to another you find yourself at a graduate level, and the staff was so amazing and poured into their students so much that I was like, yo, this is actually fun. And the biggest difference, too, is, you know, in your undergrad, you have to learn about things you don't care about. Like, if you don't like history, you still have to take history classes.

Grad school is not like that. You just take classes that you care about. So, like, it just became this, this like flame that wouldn't go away. I was super passionate and wanted to learn more and want to learn more. And then you get to a point where it's like, OK, what are the limitations of my knowledge? How do I learn more about those and fill those gaps? And so, yeah, that journey was was just one that kind of naturally evolved. It wasn't like a goal, you know, originally. It just kind of naturally kept going.

At some point it was like yo you're 22 with a master's degree you might as well knock this thing out and be 26 or 27 and be all the way done with school so um yeah man it's something that I look back now and I'm like yo that was kind of a lot of work uh but during it you just have your head down and you're just putting work in so you don't really notice. Yeah, no, I think that's actually kind of unique because to look back on it, I've done this even with my undergrad, I only have a bachelor's degree, but I was doing a lot of things at the time. And I think to myself, like, man, I had a lot on my plate that I was kind of just, again, my head was down, you know, nose to the grindstone type of situation. So you kind of forget how busy you were.

But those types of things, the ability to do that work is pretty rare. Was that something that was kind of instilled in you from an early age? Did you get that from mom or dad? Where did that come from? Because even though it's something you love, there's a lot of people who love strength and conditioning. There's a lot of people who are really interested in helping people but they're not able to you know run a strength and conditioning program in the highest level of sport while pursuing an academic goal simultaneously yeah um you know it's funny i

looking back now of course like the the the quick answer is like my mom certainly instilled everything um in me from a work ethic and from a character side, like every part of who I am as a man comes from her. Like she raised us. She raised me. I have two older two brothers. I have a twin brother and older brother. So my mom raised us on her own. And so the quick answer is like my mom, for sure. the quick answer is like my mom for sure. Um, but then I think like the more, um, perhaps relatable answer to everyone is like, I always have looked at, I'm, I'm, I'm a competitor at heart. Like I love to compete. Um, and school just became my playing field. Like I had to come off the basketball court and hang the shoes up cause I wasn't good enough to get paid to do that. So it's like, well, I still have this competitive spirit. Where do you put it? And school just became for me like that, you know, strap the

sneakers on and let's get to work. And so I looked at every class like competition, like, you know, I got I would walk into grad school. I would walk into tests. Like I remember I walked into our biostats test and I told the professor and, you know, you have relationships with all these professors. And I walked in like, y'all about to kill this test. Y'all not ready for me. I was just, I'm just like the shit talking strength coach who just puts that energy into school, who put that energy into school. You know, I don't do it anymore, but that was, I think, just kind of the framework or the frame of mind for me. It was like, yo, this is competition. Like, somebody's going to challenge you, and the challenge happens to be a test,

or the challenge happens to be a paper, or a dissertation, or whatever it is. Like, there's a challenge in front of you, and you got two options. You can either, you know, walk away from it, or you can stare it dead in the face and say, let's get to work. And so, for me, school just became just became like my sport, I guess. And I was always pretty good at school. Like, I don't want to like downplay that because I do understand that the formal academic setting isn't for everybody. And I don't push it on, you know, anybody. Like some people want to go to school, some people don't. So there's a man, it's 2020, you can learn just as much on YouTube for the most part as you can in classes. And so, you know, I definitely like

appreciate that side of it. But for me, I was always just good at school and in the formal settings, even through high school. And so it just became like, yo, just keep applying pressure, like just keep going. So, yeah, I mean, my mom, but also I think just that inner athlete in me. Now I don't compete on the basketball court, so I'll compete in school. But now that that's done, right now it's like, what else can I compete in? What are the challenges that I need to create for myself and try to solve? And some of that stuff comes to mind. Yeah, I think there's a lot of value there for people who are in the space,

whether it's as a fitness enthusiast, hobbyist, coach, maybe they're a strength coach at a high school. They can borrow from what's made you successful and try to find that within themselves, wherever that may be. Now we'll kind of pivot over towards a little bit more of what it is you actually do day-to-day with your athletes. And I've been a lifelong fan of sports in the NBA in particular, and I've noticed in the last, I would say five to six years, there's been a huge peak across all professional sports, but really in the NBA on looking at the wear and tear that comes on to these guys' bodies from an 82-game season, a 17-week season, whatever that may be, whatever the sport. We're really evolving rapidly looking at the stressors that are being placed on these guys' bodies so we can prolong their career and manage injuries. You've kind of been in the space that whole time. What have you noticed, like what are the biggest changes from when you got into it as an assistant strength coach many

years ago to now running whole programs? What are you looking for and what have you seen change in how we really look to keep athletes on the court, on the field, healthy and injury-free. Yeah, for sure. It's a space that's probably looked at almost too much at times, especially at the professional levels, and understandably so. I mean, some of these guys are getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per game. Like, when you break down their contract and divided by the 82 games and obviously playoffs for, for certain players, but you know, there's, there's a huge dollar amount that is at play with their health and their ability to compete.

So I certainly get why there's been a huge emphasis on it, but man, at some point it's almost like, yo, we're here to play the game. Like we got to play the sport. That's what you're ultimately here to play the game like we got to play the sport that's what you're ultimately paid to play the sport um and so you know the the changes that have occurred even from when i started as an assistant you know in around 2013 2014 um some of the like uh monitoring systems started to introduce themselves in the nba um so like we were one of the first teams with the catapult system,

which is like a local positioning system, but you have like these GPS systems or ultimately just hardware that you put on the body, the track external workload. So that just might be, you know, total distance ran or a number of accelerations and decelerations or change of direction or some speed metrics if you have those. So that was like that's one side of it and then obviously there's the internal side um but what i always tell people is like yo load monitoring is certainly not new people have been wearing heart rate monitors for years um the explosion in the research came in around 20 like i said 2014 2015 because technology had just progressed to a point where it just became very relatively

cheap to buy some of these systems and put them on your players. So then naturally an explosion in research occurs. Stress management becomes a thing. Certain teams start to arrest healthy players. And now you're like, what the heck is going on? That becomes a thing. And then you fast forward to like Kawhi Leonard winning a championship with the final Raptors and like certain people have credited that to like the Raptors conservative approach and making sure he was healthy for the playoffs and not worried about losing games regular seasons like there's been this natural progression um but some of it I think just has to do with technology being able to progress. And, you know, I think in general,

there's a good place for it, right? Like, what I tell people too, is it's literally no different than strength and conditioning, right? Like when you look at a periodization model, when you look at writing a program for an individual, one of the principles of S&C is progressive overload. Progressive overload is workload monitoring. It is workload management, right? It's understanding what is the load, whether that's volume load, whether that's a velocity characteristic, what is the load or the demand that this individual can handle right now? And then how do we progressively build that over time without, you know, incurring an injury? And that's all it really is. I just think that you start to put some of these modern technologies,

some of this research around it, some of these really modern framing. So you call it, call it a Q chronic workload ratio, which is literally no different than 1980s fatiguing readiness, like conceptions, right. Or concepts. So I think where you run into some issues though, is you have like traditional coaches you have like modern sports scientists and then we we've positioned these two kind of industries as if they're competing but they're really not like every coach wants their

star players to be healthy because they win more games so yeah I mean it's it was actually frustrating at times in the NBA, because it's almost like, you know, we're about to workload monitor them out of competition levels. And then you fast forward to where I am now in college setting. It's like, yo, I learned a lot this past year, because we practice really hard. But guys get in really good shape, and they become really robust. And they become able to compete at a high level through periods of workload that in the NBA we wouldn't even allow players to get to at times. You know, there's been a shift almost too far to the safety side at times because it's very much possible to underprepare an athlete, right? So, yeah, man, it's been cool to watch, but it's also been

frustrating at times. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. Yeah. One of the things I've seen a lot in the hobbyist space or even the gen pop fitness space is most people tend to not really have a quality understanding of what elements they need to be aware of to recover properly from their training.

People want to train hard. They want to go to the gym five, six days a week. They want to do CrossFit. They want to do all this different stuff that really puts a demand on for most people's body that might be too much. What are some of the kind of just bread and butter things? Because you made a good point. There's an answer somewhere in the middle here, right? We have modern day coaching, we have modern day sports science, and we can really take good care of our bodies meeting somewhere in the middle. What are some easy just take home things gen pop people can do in the middle to improve their recovery, perhaps even monitor their fatigue or performance that you would recommend? Yeah, for sure. On the recovery

side, I'm easy want to sleep more. Like, if you want to recover from some of these sleep is probably the best thing you can do for yourself. Not probably it is the best. Second, that becomes nutrition. That's a can of worms that we probably don't even have enough time to get into. But I think ultimately it's just looking at your body weight every day is going to be a good indication of the number of calories that you've been able to consume at some level, the type of calories that you're able to consume and then hydration status. And then hydration status. So whatever your goal is from a body composition side, you have to put that within the context of recovery. So for example, if you have higher training volumes, if you want to go out and do CrossFit every day this week, hey, I'm not going to be the guy that tells you not to, but I will be the guy that says, if you're going to do that, then you probably want to make sure you're getting some extra hours of sleep. If not creating extra hours through full sleep at night, then at least add some naps. This is probably not the week that you want your body weight to go down because you're going to need those extra calories to recover or to refuel recovery. And then check your weight every day because large changes in body weight are probably indicative of your hydration status. So like

sleep more, check your weight, make sure you're not losing weight this week. And now within the context of body composition, if you're doing five to six days across it, because you want to lose weight, that's fine. But week one or week two is not the time to do that. Because if you spike training volumes, you spike training intensities, and you drop calories to create the caloric deficit you're looking for. But now you've got a nice recipe for getting hurt. So slow and steady wins the race and track those things over time. So that was the recovery.

I think the other one you asked was monitoring fatigue. Yeah. If there's any technology that you think Gen Pop may have access to, they don't, you know, I know that you have access to the best systems in the world but you're also quite privy to some of the things that are probably out there on the market for the average joe who might just say hey i want to maybe get some idea of what my stress level is what kind of impact i'm putting on my body is there anything you'd recommend even if it's not in the tech space for people to do that? Yeah, for sure. I mean, heart rate monitor is still relatively cheap. I think that there's value in understanding

your heart rate during even like a standardized run. So if you have like a warmup that you do every day, just knowing what your heart rate is during that basic warmup every day is going to be helpful because if that thing seems to be spiking a lot that might be indicative of your nervous system levels other things that are free like you know you can wake up every day and give yourself a three question survey and something as simple as like you know how sore am i today mood wise you know how am i feeling today and uh do i want to do i want to train today i think having a question there like that becomes important because now it's just like a yes or no. And that yes or no becomes pretty suggestive of where you're at from a recovery side.

Like if you for three days in a row have the answer of no, I don't want to train. No, I don't want to work out. That's probably telling you like for some reason you're not motivated. And that might go back to, again, sleep and nutrition and some of that. Or it might come down to the monotony of your training. Maybe you need to change that. And we know that monotony of training can lead to actually some injury risk. So that's a free one for me. But I think ultimately just being aware of your energy levels and your mood, because overtraining symptoms are going to sneak in and you're going to become more aggravated. You might have some sleep apnea. So little things like that are things that I think we can just do a daily check every day. Just check in with yourself. Like it could be multiple times

a day. It could be when you wake up. It could be, you know, around 4 or 5 p.m. Like, yo, how aggravated am I today? I just went to work. I just had my day. My typical day has hit me. Am I more or less aggravated? Am I more or less fatigued? Am I happy? Am I not happy? Like all those things are going to give you a very good indication of where you're at from a recovery or readiness standpoint. No, I love that. I think a lot of people are probably listening like, oh my gosh, I'm totally overdoing it because I'm always irritable. And they might not have made this connection that those fatigue symptoms that we incur from training, we can actually see them in other avenues, like our mood, like our desire to train. It's not just purely physiological.

There's a lot of psychological stuff that gets impacted by that physical stress. So I think that's a super good share. Another thing that's a cheap tool that I've used, and it's actually a tip that I borrowed from Joe DeFranco, who trains a lot of football guys out on the East Coast, is actually a grip strength measuring device. And it's really simple. You just squeeze it as hard as you can, and it's going to give you a rating of how strong your grip is. And if you're going in each day and you're hitting around the same marks, you're probably okay to train. But if you jump in there one day and you grip it and you're down 10

to 12 points, you're like, okay, there's clearly some fatigue going on here. I don't have the output. So just little tiny data-driven things, or like you said, I think subjective readiness tests are super, super awesome. Even for gen pop people who just want to make sure they're not overdoing it and actually get the benefits from their training. Absolutely. And so something that I talked a lot about with Joe Grinstein, who came on last week, is that we should be borrowing a lot of elements from different sports, different philosophies to really kind of create a fundamental platform for physical growth, whether that's as a bodybuilder, a powerlifter, an Olympic lifter, a basketball player.

There's a lot we can borrow. And one of the space that I just don't think gets enough clout is sports performance, particularly for Gen Pop. Are there any things that you think of that your average gym goer could borrow from the sports performance space, maybe outside of recovery because we hit on that, maybe some in the gym stuff that you think could really help them with long term fitness, health, injury prevention, pain management, all that stuff? Yeah, for sure. Two things that come to mind really, when it as far as like,

the crossover between gym pop and maybe sport performance or the highest levels of sport performance. You know, one that comes to mind for sure is like the value that I've, that I've previously mentioned here is there's a huge value in keeping people healthy. And where I think the average gym goer doesn't appreciate is the value of keeping yourself healthy. Like you go in, you want to jump right into it. You want to,

you haven't worked out in three months and today's the day where you think it's time to go for a one RM or, or spike volume, like steady wins the race. Because ultimately when it comes to gym pop fitness, you sure some people want to lose 10 pounds for, um, the Cabo trip that's around the corner. And, and we'll always have these just cyclical yo-yo dieting things that come to mind. So you lose 10 pounds and you gain it back. So you lose 10 in January, February, because you got the new year around the corner or the new year just hit. You're super motivated and you become demotivated because March hits and whatever. And then summer's around the corner. It's like, well, let's use 10 more pounds. And then that comes back up and then it's like wedding season and

then you lose 10 more, but then that comes back up. And then it's like wedding season. And then you lose 10 more. But then that comes back up. And then the holidays hit. And now you gain 10 extra pounds. And when you look at your year, you had the goal of losing 30 pounds, but you've actually gained three. And it's not because you've just slowly gained three. It's because you lost 10.

You gained eight. You lost 12. You gained 20. So your body weight becomes this natural yo-yo. And that's actually super challenging long term, metabolically speaking. So when I always think of gym pop, I'm always just like, yo, think huge picture. Like, where do you want your body to be physically in 10 years? Now just start to create the lifestyle that leads to that rather than going into the gym today and thinking like, I'm going to lose 20.

Like, it's not going to happen. thinking like I'm going to lose 20, like it's not going to happen. And I say all that to say, when you have the mindset of I'm going to chase this acute goal at any cost, you're going to end up getting hurt. And now when you get hurt, it just began, again, becomes this vicious cycle that becomes challenging for people. So I think appreciating slow and steady wins the race is going to actually take care of a lot of those health problems. For me, more, I think, tangible kind of application side of things. I think power training is something that gym can start to consider doing a lot more.

There's a lot of really cool research coming from, like, the neurology side with how power training can actually influence a lot of different health things, especially like the psychological or neurological level. So I think throwing things in occasionally with your gen pop, and even though you might only do bodybuilding, you might only do power lifting type training where you only focus on either muscle size and muscle strength. But if you throw in power occasionally, I think it's going to benefit both sides of the high-perspective strength point, but it also is going to have some long-term effects.

I mean, I just think of like, if you're 50, 60, 70, and as you get up in age, if you're going to like go and step down the stairs or the curb and you fall, like now you're going to break a hip because you're a little bit older. Well, that strength training is going to play a role

in the bone health and the tissue health, but also power training is going to play a role in your ability to kick that foot out and catch yourself. So I think that those things come to mind for sure. Like power training, if you're looking to add something tangible to your training routines, and then again, like big picture thinking and not getting caught in the rut of like, let me lose 10 pounds by tomorrow. Because that one, you're not going to do that anyways. And you're probably going to get hurt chasing that ball. Yeah, no, I love that. And I've, I've used power training with my gen pop clients on occasion here and there just as a means to keep things fresh. And again, to keep those tissues receptive to transmitting and absorbing different forces. But for people who don't know the term power training,

they probably just think that that's power lifting. And I think that that's a great spot to kind of unravel that and open that up a little bit. So first, my question is, what is power as a physical expression? How is that different from strength? And then what elements does power training incorporate that make it different than traditional strength training? And how do those carry over to traditional strength training? And how do those

carry over to traditional strength training? Yeah, for sure. Well, the first side is like, it's funny, power lifting, and power training are totally different things. But yet somehow, I don't know how power lifting someone would have to give me that historical framework on why power lifting became power lifting. It should just be called force lifting. So the biggest difference, obviously, is power just has a time component. We start to consider how much force can we produce in a given amount of time, which is really limited time in general. I want to decrease the time to produce that force, which is why velocity becomes part of the equation. Because the faster you can produce something, the shorter amount of time it would take.

So I always just think of like typically triple extension or letting or like ballistic movement. So whether that's jumping or throwing things like a med ball or just moving something quick, which would be more of a triple extension type thing. Or last but not least, just an extreme more of a triple extension type thing. Or last but not least, just an extreme intent on the rate of force production. So how fast you do produce force. So maybe you're using the same weight and maybe you're deadlifting, but rather than picking up, let's say it's 50%, rather than picking it up for sets of, rather than doing a set of 10 at 50%, maybe you just do a set of three or four or five and you just do it as fast as you can with still good technique obviously but now we're starting to bring in those velocity elements which again are just proxies for constraining time because the faster

you do something the less time it's going to take to do it and then the second part i i forget the second part of that question yeah no just to carry over you did a really good job of kind of laying the foundation because it's what people are probably now grasping is like okay a one rm squat that's more strength but a max effort jump that might be more power a med ball chest pass or throw is essentially the same thing as a bench press from a movement and a muscle standpoint but one is more speed based the other one is more strength based. So they've got that. But now how does, how does the variability between those two things, particularly that variability on that speed and power side, how does that carry over to strength goals and, you know, force acceptance, transmission, all that stuff for people who are

just like, yeah, I just want to lift what, you know, why should I do this stuff? How does this make me better? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, well, I think that the quick and simple answer is it's going to just improve rate of force development. The faster you can produce force, uh, ultimately the faster you can probably accelerate something early on, which is why we get into like this accelerated strength type discussion. But, um, so doing power training ultimately is going to allow you to produce force faster when you start to think about different things i mean if your ultimate goal is just strength and you think about like your sticking point what point you might be able to get past your sticking point and for those who might not know what a sticking point is it's just

wherever you get caught in your lift and you can no longer push through so what typically we think of um you know, your big three, which would be your bench or spot, your deadlift, the sticking points for each of those are usually at the lowest points. So on the bench press, you get hit or you get stuck somewhere close to your chest, usually a little bit off your chest, right? We've all been there where you're pushing as hard as you can, and then you get to this, like, almost midpoint. You can't push no more, and then your spotter says,

it's all you, it's all you it's all you but really it's all them and they're lifting the damn thing for you um but doing power training is going to help you actually improve your rate of force development which might allow you to create enough momentum through those sticking points to ultimately make you stronger already so that would be like a quick and easy answer and then obviously when you're doing power training you're going to recruit higher motor threshold units to actually produce more force. Those are the strongest motor units that we have. And so by stimulating those and making those grow and training those and rate coding and all the physiology behind those and the mechanisms to create force, all that's going to transfer over and make you stronger anyways. force, all that's going to transfer over and make you stronger anyways. And like, I don't know, again, if I use that deadlift example of 50% for four reps,

if you take 50% and you do a set of 10 right now, for some people that's fairly challenging, right? Probably an RPE of like a six or seven, not much. But if you do a set of four and you do it as fast as you can and the intent is there, well, what's ultimately going to happen to that RPE and that exertion level, it's going to decrease over time. So because you're used to moving 50% very, very fast, when you go back to do that set of 10, it's going to feel super easy because you've already been doing it very fast. Limitations and crossover there, but I think in general, that's going to hold up pretty well for people. Yeah, I think it's a great way to work towards those potentially long-term strength and physique goals while keeping your volume and intensity lower by doing these.

Well, your intensity is still quite high, but your volume doesn't need to be nearly as high when you're doing power training. So I think there's a lot of carry over there, and I think that was a super good explanation. And then kind of just circle the wagons, man, because we've talked about a lot of things and your mindset and the way you approach it has been really present through all of them. Just kind of a very thoughtful person, somebody who's very engaged with all of the things that you're working on. And you told a story at BASP last year that I absolutely loved. And I told you I was going to make you tell this story. But it's the story of the crabs. And I would like this to be the last thing we touch on because I've learned a ton of things at both of these seminars.

But this has been something that I have literally, it stuck with me every day and it pops into my head all the time. But could you tell me the story of the crabs in the bucket? Yeah, for sure and uh and shout out to lulu lemon because i did an event with them a few years ago and somebody brought this analogy until i it was a bigger um bigger kind of thing that we were working on as a team um but and this was like a sub part of it but that but the same way it resonated with you it resonated with me so much that i knew that i had to bring it as like the main point to introduce our symposium. So the crabs in a bucket story is it's not very long. It's actually very short. And it's as simple as if you put a whole bunch of crabs in a bucket, you'll never need to put a top on that bucket because the crabs won't be able to get out.

in a bucket, you'll never need to put a top on that bucket because the crabs won't be able to get out because as soon as one crab gets close to the top and he's ready to escape, there's going to be another crab that's going to pull them down. And at any given time, if one crab is close to or two crabs or three are close to getting out, there's always crabs that are going to pull them back down. And so, you know, you don't need to put a ceiling on them because there's no way for them to progress anywhere because all of their peers or all of their friends or family or people around them in their circle, or in this case, in their bucket are going to actually hold them back for you. And so I think, you know, we try to tie that into essentially in our industry. But I think it's in any industry, you know, we get so caught up in being competitive and

egos take a toll on everybody, of course. And everybody wants to be the best version of themselves. But oftentimes the best version of themselves has to come at the expense of someone else for some reason. But we try to drive home is like we can all become the best version of ourselves and we can do that together and not be crabs in a bucket. Don't pull people back when you see somebody that's ready to escape or go to the next level, like help them, promote them. So I think, you know, we tied that into our tagline for the event, which was better together. And I think to me that, you know, that the crab analogy always reminds me, how can we become better together versus how can I become better at the expense of someone else? Yeah, I love that. And I've said this all the time. There's enough space at the table in this industry for all of us to be successful in whatever capacity we want. And I think that that only gets expedited by helping each other out. When we hold each other back, we don't form the relationships we could if we spent that same energy just helping each other out. And that's something I've always noticed about you.

You're very, very energized around getting better and improving. And I think that showed today, man. And I really appreciated the conversation. So for anybody who's like, dude, I love this guy's energy. I love what he has to talk about. Where can they find you and keep up with you? Yeah, Instagram, you know know social media is the easiest way instagram is uh uh dr.ramsey.nijam and then my twitter i think is just dr.ramsey.nijam i'm not

on twitter as much i'm mainly on instagram um so those are probably the two main places that that people can find me i don't have a website or anything yet, but maybe that's coming. Yeah. Well, you're allowed to be busy. You're working with, again, the best athletes in the world at the best collegiate basketball program. So if you don't have time to make a website, I'm sure that we all understand why. Again, Ran, thanks so much for coming on. Love the insights that you shared. We'll be sure to have you on again soon. And guys, remember, toss him a follow on Instagram and Twitter. Tons of great videos and content on the IG all the time. And again, we talked a lot about positivity, mindset, power training, and incorporating those things in your life. And they're all there for you right there on social. So give him a follow. And thanks again, Ram, for coming on.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate being able to talk some shop with you here. Anytime. So guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode with Dr. Ramsey. Again, remember the director of sports performance for the University of Kansas men's basketball program. The guy has a ton of amazing things to share. Be sure to follow him on dr.dr.ramsey.najim on Instagram. He shares a ton of amazing content as well as some fantastic Instagram stories

that he calls Coffee with Coach, where he goes over a ton of different things in the sports performance space from ex-phys to anatomy to biomechanics. It's awesome. Dr. Ram is awesome. Thanks so much for coming on. If you enjoyed it,

do feel free to share the podcast to your Instagram story. Take a screenshot, tag me, tag Dr. Ram. We both appreciate it. Let's get this out here and help people live better, healthier, more athletic lives.