Mark Bell's Power Project - Keys for Creating Strong, Explosive, Resilient Athletes - Joey Bergles || MBPP Ep. 931

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

In this Podcast Episode, Joey Bergles, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how Joey coaches athletes ranging from elementary school all the way to D1 College to become Strong, Explosive, and Resilient Athletes Follow Joey on IG: https://www.instagram.com/joeybergles/   New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below! ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code PowerProject to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Better Fed Beef: https://betterfedbeef.com/pages/powerproject   ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin!   ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM   ➢ https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements!   ➢ https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off!   ➢ https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order!   ➢ https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!   ➢ https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!   ➢ https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off!   ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en    Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

Mobility a lot of times can just kind of get, I think, put into a box. When you kind of apply something new or kind of unique or like a different style, I think like I do, that it's kind of like, oh, I've never seen or thought about this before. How do you get someone to buy into the mobility aspect of things? It doesn't look gimmicky to me. It looks like there's a purpose. It looks like there's a whole program going on. If I'm not seeing what I want on a bodyweight squat, right, why would I move on to like a goblet squat or like a weighted squat or like whatever?

We've had different people come on the podcast and talk about increasing tendon strength, but what do you do with athletes to specifically work on that? How do you get people faster in the weight room? Because I think sometimes coaches will say, can't teach speed. Okay. I think I hit the button.

The wrong button probably. Or the right one. Maybe. Stop judging. Hey, I appreciate you taking the time to show us all this stuff in the gym. That was great. No, absolutely. I appreciate it.

It's awesome to be here. And you see some of the exercises that people do online and I see some of the 90-90 hip stuff and you kind of see people just kind of move their body around, which I'm sure is great because movement is movement, right? It's nice, but you had a much more intense approach with some of it to the point where you were yelling at us as if we were doing, like, heavy squat reps, right? Yeah. Yeah, no, I think, you know, that's a key.

That's just personality-wise. That's kind of, you know, what works for me. And I think especially, like, from an athletic standpoint, like, I probably wouldn't do that if I was working with someone that's, like, you know, a 70-year-old grandma or, you know what I mean, like, realistically. Come on, grandma. Yeah. But I think, like I said, it works was working with someone that's like, you know, a 70 year old grandma or, you know what I mean? Like realistically. Come on grandma. Yeah. But I think, like I said, it works well and it gets people like you,

you, you meet people where they're at. So like, okay, I'm a competitive individual. All right. They're probably gonna want to do things that are relatively competitive, relatively intense, things like that. So like from an athletic standpoint, that's what, you know, a lot of, you know, whether it's football, basketball, baseball, that kind of relates to you because you've been coached like that.

You kind of have some level of intensity, enthusiasm. So I think that, you know, as we were talking about mobility, a lot of times can just kind of get, I think, put into a box of kind of like just like lie down, you know, roll around and like whatever that when you kind of apply something new or kind of unique or like a different style. I think like I do that. It's kind of like, oh, I've never seen or thought about this before. Like I thought we were just going to lie around and whatever. And you're kind of going intense or like whatever. You know, so that's just something over time that's worked really well for me. And, you know, I've had pretty good success with it.

I was really attracted to the stuff that I saw online that you were doing. You were doing so much work with so many people. Like you're having these looks like pretty young people. And I've coached myself before. I've coached some high school kids and man, it was so much fun, but it was so challenging. And I'm seeing these people squatting with really good form and doing what I would consider to be complex exercises, front squats, box squats, and you have unique ways of utilizing bands and chains and weight releasers.

And it doesn't look gimmicky to me. It looks like there's a purpose. It looks like there's a whole program going on. And I just love the enthusiasm. You're getting these guys all fired up, guys and girls. And what does it take? How do you get control of the room when you first walk in? Because you've been a coach at many places now. When you first walk into a room of like

30 kids that just want to kind of dick around and throw rocks at each other and mess around with each other and not pay attention to the new guy how do you kind of start out how do you get their attention um you know that's a really good question uh i think i'm pretty serious about what i do um so i think when you're kind of, uh, I wouldn't call it, I guess maybe in command or whatever, but like, okay, here's how we're going to do it. Here's how we're going to go about it. Now I'm going to go about that different ways. So like, I might come off like, you know, pretty serious on something or whatever, or I might start like kind of making some light jokes and now let's get into it, like whatever. But I'm also going to be,

um, you know, as I, as I mentioned, if we're going to do something, I'm going to do it done a certain way. So it might not be perfect on day one. All right. But, you know, I've got it kind of where I envision it going. So we need to be at certain steps when we're going about that. So when I have like a large group, you know, trying to meet them, you know, just being honest, like, hey, Saturday morning, I know. Hey, you guys want it. And this has been, you know, a realistic conversation I had with older Division One football players.

Like Saturday morning, it's 8 a.m. Right. do you just want to be here or do you want to get better because like i'll be honest i really if we're just going to mess around i don't want to be here i don't want to be here at 8 a.m just kind of like saying we were here because you know when we go play it's not going to be something in a scorebook uh you know 10 years from now that said well you know what they were here on saturday mornings doing extra work it didn't make them better but they were there it's either going to be a winner or loss and that's kind of how i view a lot of i'll just be honest you know stuff in that realm of so if we're gonna be here all right hey it's 30 minutes we're gonna lock in and we're gonna get this done or i'll just be honest you can leave like it's fine like you don't have to be here but if you're

gonna be here we're gonna get better does everyone understand that like and it's not like putting on well i just read some leadership book and like whatever i'm like pretty serious like i want to get this done it's gonna be done this way and we're gonna go about that you know what i mean so like i think having those realistic like conversations and if someone hears that like oh you know i mean you get some people that may be like uh whatever but a lot of times people are like lock in and let's get to work you know i mean same with the younger kids i'm like hey like uh come talking to them where they're at like what do you guys you know what do they what do they want to improve a lot of them just want to lift and they want to learn and they want to get better on that stuff all right so hey like let's lock in let's focus

why are we talking right now like why are we doing this other stuff and then as we get better like I said as you advance in a lot of this stuff then like a lot of stuff that you're seeing um not necessarily like in that clip but like some other stuff I mean that wasn't stuff that we just started with you know stuff that was advanced and progressed to and that's kind of how the process happens um you know so like you see like seventh and eighth grade girls they're going over on our lateral stuff they're fifth sixth graders um you know when you can listen you can pay attention you can focus on that stuff that allows everything else to happen you know i mean it's very the teaching aspect i'll be honest i feel very confident in

that so like when i the plan that i have the teaching the coaching i feel very confident in that the problem is when there's not people aren't listening they're not focusing that just takes a long time like there was a really good quote, and I can't remember the book, but it was a first-grade teacher, and she said, I need first-graders that can come in and listen and sit still, and then I can teach them numbers and letters. It's not the other way around. Like I need first-graders that can come in, sit still, and listen, focus,

and then I can teach you everything. It's kind of the same. I'll be honest. I've applied that a lot with myself of like, if we can just listen, pay attention. I feel very confident. It might not be perfect or you might, I might not know how to do something, but I feel confident. I'm going to learn. I'm going to, I'm going to put the time and the effort in to try and get this to be the

best that it can. All right. So I think that's just looking at it like that. And then just being open and transparent. Like I want you to get better. Like I really want you to get better. But if you're, you're talking, you're messing around, like we can't, there's no secret. There's no secret plan. There's no secret secret exercise like if you're trying to do whatever

is that we're doing like some of those mobility or what other drills but you're talking you're having a conversation you're not gonna you're you're really not able to push yourself to the level you need to get better if that makes sense and i think that's where if you can start harnessing the focus the attention to detail on that stuff that makes the whole training process so much easier in just in just my opinion so like if we're not going uh the way that i want okay let's stop like we're either not going to do it or we're going to be done or whatever but like there's going to be like a certain um i guess standard if you will of like this is how it's going to be done and this is just how i'm going to run it you know what i mean um and maybe that's me you know yelling maybe

that's me having a conversation like joking maybe that's whatever it is but like if we're doing it it's gonna be done at a really high level and that's that's just how i'm gonna go about it so i think that's uh you know and to be honest i think everyone's got a different personality i think maybe my personality is unique if you want to call it that you know i mean it's just this is who i am and i think whether it was college junior high like whatever i think i'm just different'm just different, you know, personality-wise than most people. You know what I mean? So, like, I probably can't explain it very well, but I think, like, oh, you're kind of unique, you know, like whatever.

Like, I think that when I say something, man, I haven't heard a coach, you know, be that kind of honest before or whatever. Okay. Well, now you're probably listening differently, and it resonates differently, if you will. I don't know about you guys, but I'm jealous of those kids that get trained by him. Imagine having such a great coach at such a young age. Yeah, I didn't have that much in college.

Even in high school, I didn't have a strength and conditioning coach like that. But an interesting thing that I'm kind of curious about is you work with all these kids. And you were talking a little bit to us in the gym about how you kind of get them to pay attention because there's a lot of them at one time. I think a lot of coaches may struggle with that, trying to get kids to actually do what you need them to do, but all of them doing what you need them to do. And then the other thing is, is when you see a lot of these clips on your page with them doing a lot of these complex movements, it's surprising to see young kids working with load and look so good with it. They all look extremely proficient. So how did you set that up? And the reason why I'm asking this is because we've had different

people on the podcast work with kids in terms of S&C. And some people don't think that kids should be working with squats and deadlifts and that type of thing at a younger age. They think it actually negatively affects them athletically. But if all the kids were doing the things like you show them in these videos, all these kids would be just fine. So how do you get this set up? I think it starts with having like a long-term process or long-term plan in place. So when I'm working with like say a 12, 13, 14, whoever it is, right? I'm looking, you know, three, four, five years down the line, right? So what we're doing, you know, for this, you know, month, two month, three month, it sets everything else down the line.

So like the example I'll use is if you can't squat very well, right? How, like if I want to get two years from now and I want to do like a, like an accommodating resistance session, because that's what's needed to get your vertical from 33 to 34.5, but you don't squat very well, how well is that going to, how well is that going to work? Like you have to be able to squat well to be able to get the specific modalities that you're probably going to need. Right. So starting with that, like if I can't add very well, if I struggle

with just basic addition, subtraction, when I get to algebra, I'm going to struggle big time. So I try and take like, Hey, if I'm looking, if we're, we're starting with our body weight squats, I want it to look pretty much perfect. It's challenging. We have a large number of individuals because everyone's gonna be a different level. But the nice thing is, is like, if you spend an extra week or two doing bodyweight squats with a 12 or 13 year old, it's fine. Like they're, they're going to get benefit out of it. They don't need to rush. And I think people want to rush too quick on stuff. I don't need to rush. If I got six years to train someone before they even go to college, we can take an extra week, two weeks, three weeks.

I can take a month, but like kind of the point we were talking about earlier it's gonna be done at a really high level that's just the standard so like okay if i'm not seeing what i want on a body weight squat right why would i move on to like a goblet squat or like a weighted squat or like whatever so like you know that's a really good example of just you know in i think that was two years seventh grade 2021 freehand front squat all right uh you know that was a and you see the fight and the thing i'm really the thing right there all right that's a seventh grader to a freshman right but you see the fight and the thing right there that's a 7th grader to a freshman but do you see how he struggles he doesn't cheat his depth

look at that last one it's unbelievable and he maintains an amazing position and good job by the spotter the spotter knows what's up you gotta let him strain but part of skill is not just like you can do the movement that's like a max lift what does your technique

look like under a relative like heavy max lift most times what you see with kids is like it gets heavy and what does their what does their squat depth do they cut it they cut it and they cheat it and i told them like in this like before that and other ones and again just being honest my personality i you know kind of went on to like, what do you call it, 300 speech before, like whatever. I told him, hey, here's the deal. There is no honor in putting more weight on the bar and doing a quarter squat. There's zero honor in a weight room. You can go to any weight room in America.

And he kicked the kid in the chest and he fell off a cliff. Spartan! There is no honor. I said, you know what there is honor in? It's heavy. You go down, you might might miss it but at least that's honorable that's honorable in the weight room to do your same squat that you always do and you miss the rep all right so like boom i talk about that whatever and you know and they've been squatting for so long that when you only know one way to do something you don't see people deviate too far out of it for the most part you know what i mean so like okay you've been

doing squats for two years now. Now it gets heavier or whatever. You're not going to probably see someone just like, man, I've never seen that before. You know, whatever. But that just comes from the reps and the reps and like all the time spent doing bodyweight squats, doing goblet squats, doing freehand front squats, doing, you know what I mean? Like all that other stuff. So that's what like I look at from a skill standpoint.

All right. What do we look like when it gets heavier? What are we looking at? Like all these other stuff. So like that example right there, you saw the first one was like a six second lower, if I remember correctly, which we spent a bunch of time slow eccentrics, long pauses, because that's not just from a, uh, preparing the tissues and what we're looking at from an adaptation with that.

It's a learning process. When you have to go slow, you're feeling your body in those positions. You're understanding how to do the movement correctly, right? Most of the time, what I see is people will do squats, pushups, other stuff, but it's just done fast. There's no control. There's no position so you might be doing it but you're not actually learning like the positions now as we go it's funny because i would get people comments like how how long do you do all these slow lowers for whatever and then like you saw that second video people are like man they're squatting weight they're going on way too fast

like what do you do like boom boom i'm like literally like a couple years ago i had people saying you're going too slow you're doing too much of this and i got people saying you're going too fast right that was part of the plan like the internet that right there and i talk about like rapid eccentrics right the faster you can move eccentrically is extremely important from athletic standpoint like you eccentric peak velocity is a key component that i look at like with force place and other stuff so like the faster i can eccentrically load the more basically elastic energy i potentially have the opportunity to use. So you look at someone, a world-class football player or whatever, when they're coming into a cut at high velocity, there's a ton of eccentric

velocity, right? You have somebody that can't run that fast. They're either having to slow down or they're like, whatever, right? If you can't make cuts at high velocity, it really limits your ability to be very, very good at the highest levels. So when like that example right there, that wasn't, I don't start, I don't do rapid eccentrics with kids that are learning. You've got to develop and we take time and like whatever. And now when I want this specific adaptation that I need in the program, I can do it because I can squat good. I understand how to do it correctly. All right. So now I can go so like that, that example right there, like that kid, I think he was at like a 27 vert, if I remember correctly. I think he did like 33.8 or 34.

So he went from seventh grade to freshman, like seven inches or whatever. And so not saying it's all entirely, you know what I mean, the program or whatever, but like, okay, now he's 33.8. I want 36. Now I want 38. And you know what? We might not get there, but like that's kind of at least my philosophy. Like we're trying to push performance to keep going up. If we want just if we want to be lackadaisical i don't care if you're a

freshman in high school or you're a world-class nfl player or whatever like as a coach if you're if you're working with a coach it's not very like kind of like oh well okay like whatever like i want to work with people at least and this is me uh just personally i want to work with people that want to push me to be my absolute best so if i'm working with a coach that's like i want this and this and we're going to push to that you're probably gonna get your best performance out of yourself right i think i veered off significantly from whatever than from whatever the original question was um oh how do you get kids to uh like whatever so like keeping that in mind so like trying to like i said look at the long-term play and then like i said if i'm not seeing a good body weight squat we'll stay

we'll spend extra time doing it right now we're going to goblet right one of the things that i do is i always go heels elevated when i'm teaching the squat right and people say when you start yeah why do you do that i'm like well here's the thing there's a lot of kids that don't need it but like if i have a group of 40 kids let's just put everybody on on the on it because there's going to be kids that need it on there it's very hard to individualize training when you're starting to work with kids and you have a large group but if everyone's just in the exact same thing hey even if you don't need to have your heels elevate i mean those are uh freshmen in college, but you can see like right there,

and that's what it should look like. And I'll be honest, I have, you know, freshmen in high schools are doing more weight than that, and those are freshmen in college, Division I football players. But like to that point of, you know, I put everybody heels elevated. Okay, we learn how to do it. We learn how to push our knee forward.

We learn how to sink down. It's an easier movement. Okay, now as we go, I might say, okay, hey, after I've watched for a couple weeks i can kind of tell okay you 15 or 20 i want you guys to take your heels off the board so now the whole group of 40s running all right and that's a sixth grade girl with a 50 pound dumbbell but you know what i mean but like now so like this was i think a month ago she's doing an incredible form her back it couldn't be any straighter and i think i've got a video i haven't posted it but i think she can do she was doing a 60-pound dumbbell flat-footed. So, like, that's sixth grade.

You know what I mean? That's got to make her confident playing her sport. Oh, absolutely. Throwing around 60-pound dumbbells. And I'll go to that example. And the thing that I really enjoy working with younger kids specifically is, like, they're, like, I'm hearing them. And that's when you know they enjoy it because it's, like, you're coaching whatever and then they're like talking to the group like okay we did a 40 pound dumbbell like let's try and do a 45 next week like whatever I'm like okay like you're they're

they're making their own goals in their head yeah you know what I mean which is a big thing so like a good example too kind of with that is I think there's a like a coaching aspect of uh so like if I have a kid and this is one that happened recently i had a fifth sixth grade uh girl that i've been doing body weight body weight like on the on the split squats and i was like oh you can grab weight if you want to she stayed with body weight was doing good whatever the next week i look over and like wait she's got a 20 pound dumbbell i'm like she just went over and grabbed it herself she and you know, she's feeling confident in herself to go grab that. All right.

And then even though like half the reps were good, there was ones where I was like, realistically, I would have been probably gone maybe a 10 or 15, whatever. But I was like, okay, this is like a big step.

Like she had the confidence to go get that. If I come over and be like, I don't know, see how we should probably go down to a 10. How's that going to feel to like a 12 year old? Like, oh man, I tried something and it didn't work good.

Okay. You know what? Like I probably would have gone less. We're not going to get hurt like a 12 year old? Like, oh man, I tried something and it didn't work good. Okay. You know what? Like I probably would have gone less. We're not going to get hurt doing this. We're fine. This is good for right now. When we come back next week, then I'm going to come back and we'll see what she grabs. And I might be like, hey, why don't we grab like a 10 or 15?

And like, I just want to see this that week. So I'm not saying that what you did last week was bad, but now I'm kind of coming back. Let's go here. Like whatever. So like, those are kind of like the micro kind of what's kind of going on in my head when I'm seeing that stuff. Now you get times too where you get like the kids that like, oh, here's a 70 pound. Like no, no. Yeah.

Like no. Your technique is like you're not – you know what I mean? But every situation – that's what coaching is at least in my opinion is like you're trying to – what's the individual? Like what do they need to progress? Sometimes it's just confidence. Like you're crushing that. Like you can do another 20 pounds like easily you know what i mean because you get some kids that they just want to like go less or like be comfortable and it's like they just need that like no you can do more like i don't and part of it

helps me too is like and i tell them like how diligent am i on technique very like very i'm like so if i'm telling you i think you can go up on 20 pounds if i do if i'm doing that do you think i'm gonna let you see like a bad squat or whatever like no i'm like i believe i've trusted you and i think that's where it comes like when you have like a high standard and i say something like that it's like i'm not just like you know trying to hey put 50 pounds on let's see how it goes yeah like i said i try and keep that standard high so i think the kids like kind of like a light bulb like oh i think you're right and then they do it it's like i'll be honest you probably done that for two more reps like whatever you know i mean it's like that's kind of how i try and build like confidence and like kind of repertoire um you know with kids

and like kind of just being honest and transparent like i said with that stuff but i think the confidence and that other stuff is really big and then just like i said um you know with large groups trying to set it up to like okay we're going to keep working uh to make sure it's really good and we might take an extra couple weeks doing it, but I want to solidify it. Now we'll move on. And I'm not scared to regress. So like a good example, like with my freshman football, like I didn't like how our back,

they started learning how to back squat end of eighth grade. We went into the summer, right? And I was kind of running around doing coaching. You know, I couldn't be around them all the time. In the summer, I was just like, you know what? I don't like, I'm just like, man, I don't like how our back squats are looking. So I'm like, hey, here's what we're doing football season started we're going back to freehand front squats and i know you've been doing for two years i don't care the back squats

don't look how they want we're not doing this or whatever i don't care if we have to spend another year doing freehand front squats it's going to be done at the level that i want and i expect and like whatever we went a month cleaned up some stuff, looked great, going to back squat. Back squats have been great since. So I'm not like, okay, freehand front squats was a big regression. But hey, you know what? The back squats, they're not looking how I want,

and they're not what I expect. So I'm not scared. Like I said, and still you're 14, 15 years old. Okay, we'll spend another couple months regressing or whatever. It's not the end of the world. But like I said, that's what, if I want something done it's gonna be done at a high level so if i have to regress to get there we're gonna do that and i think that's kind of one of the the standards hopefully the kids or whoever i'm working with kind of see if like it's going to

be done at a super super high level how do you give them like a little bit of autonomy um and just make them feel i know you're not there to like necessarily just make them feel good all the time but how do you like you know you got – maybe the couple of kids maybe that are kind of behind. The form is not there. It's just they're not ready, and they really want to do some weights. Do you maybe have them utilize maybe a different weight rather than like a barbell on the back or something like that? Yeah, so I would say kind of two parts on that so i would do first of all like probably like uh either a dumbbell uh like variation of whatever we're doing go lighter um so there are times where i'll be like like a bulgarian split

squat where i'll be like i'll show them like the first time we do it i'm like okay if you want to go to like a we've done it before but we're going to a barbell because i want to increase the load um also because like a lot of times like with uh you know kids in general like the grip is your limiting factor like when you're holding dumbbells so it's like okay like with the bulgarian like if you're doing it with a barbell like a front squat grip you can overload it more because your grip's not going to be as big of an issue so like that that's an example of like i would go to that and i'd be like here's the deal there's a lot more like it's relatively safe but like your balance there's a lot more you don't if you have dumbbells you can drop them barbell is different if you

don't feel comfortable with that, perfectly fine. Stay with dumbbells. Anybody that wants to try and go with the barbell, you can go ahead and do that today. So whichever one you want to do, you can go ahead and do that. So I'll do stuff like that, you know what I mean, where it's kind of giving them the option. And it might be like they stay with dumbbells for two weeks and then they go to the barbell, if you will. So that's one way, dropping it down. And then I'll be honest.

dropping it down. And then I'll be honest, I think the other thing too, is like, my biggest, my biggest things is if you can show up and you just show up and you, you want to work hard and you want to get better. That's honestly like one of the, probably the most, that's the most important thing, especially with younger kids. Like I'm just like, you know, the perfect program, you know, the perfect exercises. But like to a certain degree, if, if, if you, if you show up and I think it's a life skill, honestly, like and like man i want to get better today like if you show up to school and i know it's kind of like uh might sound redundant but like if you kind of show up man i hate school like whatever like boom boom yeah how how well do you think you're gonna do with it you know what i mean if you show up like and i say like show up to the weight room i'll be honest if you just kind of go through

the motions right now when you're 12 13 14 years old you'll make some progress because it's the first time you've ever done you picked up a dumbbell you're gonna, 13, 14 years old, you'll make some progress because it's the first time you've ever done, you picked up a dumbbell. You're going to get to a point though, where you can't just show up. Like you can't, you have to show up and you have to have a level of focus. You have to work hard when you go into life, like business or whatever. If you kind of just show up kind of like not really great attitude or whatever, you're going to set yourself back significantly. Right? So when I have kids and I, and this is one of the biggest things I think is really important is I try and give praise. I give praise, not necessarily like, oh, you squat the most, you bench the most, or whatever.

I try and praise great technique. But also, you know what? Like, I take a lot of pride in the kids, and I'm very proud of the kids that show up. And they're not the biggest. They're not the strongest. But they show up every day. They were, some of those kids, I was with you at 8 a.m. in the summer when you were in seventh. You didn't have to be here.

of those kids, I was with you at 8 a.m. in the summer when you were in seventh. You didn't have to be here. And I'll highlight them, not just to them, to the entire group, like 60 kids. Like, hey, you know what? He's running around everywhere. He has a sense of urgency when he comes in. He wants to get better. And I don't care if you squat, you bench press 65 pounds or 265 pounds, right? If you show up every day and you work hard, you want to get better and you keep doing the best, whatever your best is, and you keep giving that that 65 pounds it's going to go to 70 it's going to go to 75 you're going to get more reps it's going to come right i know it can be difficult but if you just show up and do your best every day you're going to make the progress and i think that's one of the things i really try and highlight because i have a lot of kids that'll

stay they'll pick up you know i mean like we have specific ways i want stuff turned in the weight room so like the way the weights are turned the way that the kettlebells are lined up, all that stuff, the benches have to be lined up a specific way. And I'll have a lot of kids that they're going to pick up other areas that aren't theirs. So it's not their responsibility. And I tell them, if you go out into life and you're doing stuff or you're picking up other people's areas,

do you know how valuable that is as a company, as a business, whatever? No one told you to do that. And you know what? People might look past or whatever, but I respect that. And I really appreciate that. Like, and I'll highlight them in front of other people, like their peers, other coaches, like it has nothing to do with your skills or your abilities, but like, that's the stuff that I really appreciate. Like, Hey, you're helping that person doesn't know what they're doing, but they showed up for the first time today, but you went over there and helped them and showed them like, I want to highlight that because you're doing a great job. So that's

one of the things I really try and uh you know do a lot do as best i can honestly is to try and highlight that because i think those are important life skills and those are the stuff from an environment standpoint that is like probably one of the best things from a team atmosphere you know what i mean when you have everybody kind of like wanting to be their best regardless of whatever their best is that's how you get these high performance environments when people are just trying to drive and be the best they can so like that's how that's uh kind of how i go about it i try to just really highlight and you know um you know praise of stuff that i want to see um or stuff that's going to be really beneficial um you know for the long term yeah do your kids the word kids that you work

with do they end up thinking long term about things because for example when we were just talking about the squat and with a lot of videos on your page you show a video from maybe 2020 with a kid and then 2023 and you'll see that progression and when a lot of videos on your page, you show a video from maybe 2020 with a kid and then 2023, and you'll see that progression. And when a lot of people, let's say that they started lifting or being in the gym as an adult, they want to go straight to back squatting. You don't set up the preliminary box squats. You don't do the air squats. You don't do any of the free hand front squats. It's just straight to the back squat, cut depth, and you just keep loading weight from there, right? Whereas if you had a two-year goal of being able to then squat 225 with perfect form, most people wouldn't be injured by doing certain things in the gym. So, like, do your kids end up – Jesus Christ, what –

You got to watch the whole progression, though. Eighth grader. But, yeah, do they just – do you drill in that long-term thinking with them? Yeah, I think – i'm trying to think uh yeah i think i try and use highlights so like i think one of the things that's helped me out a lot to be honest is uh is my experience at the collegiate level so like it's one thing when you kind of say stuff it's another thing like so like jordan loves like a really good example i think i got one of his videos on there i should um i don't know where oh that's a softball player andrew he also has a youtube channel too if you

need more content to be able to find uh but like so when you could be like okay i worked with jordan love when he was a freshman through for three and a half years so i literally and this isn't um this is just the reality of like jordan came in at 177 pounds and never lifted and was just very small and very weak but he moved really really well and then he goes from like you know struggling to a barbell to like two and a half years later he's put on 45 pounds and he's full front squat in 350 you know I mean like so I've seen that I've literally and there was the nice thing with that is like quarterbacks was my main position group there might have been but like pretty much whenever Jordan Love came in the weight room I was i i was there the whole time so i saw that process play out you know what i mean so like

when people want to like rush through stuff with a 12 or 13 or 4 i've literally seen my own very eyes that process play out like putting 45 pounds on in like two and a half years of like you're like just the the pictures speak for themselves but the strength the other stuff of uh what was that i think that was 335 yeah that was in the summer so how old was he with the with the weight gain from what year to what year uh that was 2016 to 2018 you know how old he was um so he was uh he came in early so we graduated early so he was 17 he was 17 when he uh got to college so 17 to 19 i want to say 45 pounds good body composition uh yeah yeah i'll show you guys the picture i don't know if i have it online but like literally like you and the thing is you can see the like that's the thing

that's helped with like the squat whatever like you see the legs are like twigs to like his legs are like just tree trunks and i'm like you see the vmo just popping off the bone. I'm like, this is the process, like literally just slow and steady. Keep what you have to work really hard, be consistent. And so like, that's the thing. Okay, I worked at Texas Tech. I worked at like with these, you know, NFL guys or whatever. Terrence Steele is a great example. You know, he's the offensive tackle for the Cowboys.

So Terrence Steele was an undrafted free agent, right? He went from being an undrafted free agent to starting for the Dallas Cowboys at right tackle. For the last three years, he's maybe missed a couple starts, but he's right now probably one of the best right tackles in the NFL, going from an undrafted free agent. But you know what set Terrence apart is he's 6'6", super hard worker, great, like, whatever.

I've got pictures of Terrence, 6 a.m. workouts, those same drills, were those 90, 90. I've got pictures of Terrence at 5 46 a.m. just in the weight room 14 minutes before nobody's in the weight room. He doesn't even know I'm taking, this isn't like where like you're posing for. I'm in the, like, I just wanted to like, he's there 14, he's there 14 minutes early in his 90, 90 stretch. Cause that's what he was told. This is what you need to focus on to get better. Yeah. How many people do you know that show up just right at 6-8 there's a lot or how many people show up late or whatever how many people were there at a lift 15 minutes before it starts doing something so minute and so small i've got other ones at 544 you know i mean like these are like january and

february when nobody knew who he was but that's who he was that was him doing everything he could to make himself better and that's how you go from being an undrafted free agent to starting for the last three years and just about to make a bunch of money yeah for the Dallas Cowboys but like those are the little things that I can tell like when I say tell kids or like whatever I'm like this is the stuff like that separates and I'm not saying you'll go play in the NFL or whatever but like those people are doing that and if you're not doing that and you're not as talented what's going to happen when you step on the field court whatever whatever it is.

So like coming back to the original question of like being able to draw on those like real world experiences of like NFL guys, major league baseball guys or whatever, here's the process. And it'd be one thing if you don't have that, like, okay, like whatever, when I can show pictures and I can show this, like, Hey, literally I'll pull out here's, here's him squatting a buck 35. You know what I mean? And he was three years older or like some of the ones that helped to like

with the girls of like, I had a lot of like division one, you know, softball and soccer girls that like they were starting body weight or free hand front squat with a barbell, like day one of college as a freshman. Right. I've got seventh grade girls that do that now. Oh, Ooh, those are the old. Okay. Those are some old.

So you'll see, it's actually interesting how my training philosophy has changed. So I think that was like 2014. Okay. But'll see it's actually interesting how my training philosophy has changed. I think that was like 2014. But it was a lot more Olympic-based. I just saw soccer. Just pause for just a second. So you don't use Olympic lifts that much now? Oh, no, I do.

I'm saying I was very, so like in that video you're showing right there, it was very snatch, clean, jerk. Like there was a variation every day. And it was very Olympic, a very, very Olympic-based. I still use it, but not nearly to the extent of – to that, if you will. Why did you abandon some of that? I'll be honest. I think it was kind of one of those things where it was like kind of –

you look at the numbers, I'm like, okay, is this really – is this – am I seeing – if I don't do this, am I still going to see the same improvements relatively? I'm not saying right, wrong or different. Every situation is different. I was just kind of like, you know what? I think I could allocate time a little bit differently. So I think time's always going to be one of your biggest limiting factors. So if I have an hour and say, I'm going to spend, you know, 12 to 15 minutes of it doing, you know, snatches, I'm not saying I'm not against that or whatever, but I can't be necessarily sprinting or i can't be doing some plyometrics in that 10 to 15 minutes right and i think one of the things kind of changed for me a lot probably would last like three four years just

kind of looking at stuff is like from an athleticism standpoint how well the individuals that can move fast change direction move fluently and well are generally the ones are very good in sports you know what i mean so like okay if we're doing like our sprint work or our plyometrics or the other stuff, you know, I see that translating. If I have a limited amount of time, I see that translating more so than, and I'm not trying not to come off as like anti, like I love them. I've competed in Olympic weightlifting. I love it.

But I'm just saying from those examples of, I generally would rather allocate my time doing that stuff. That's just my personal opinion. I'm not against it. I've seen good results, like I said, using it before or whatever. But that's just kind of the rationale. Maybe if you're more one-on-one, maybe you would go back to utilizing that more often. And I think actually that's a really good point because you'll get kids that like there's a teaching or whatever,

but you'll get – you got 30 kids and you might have like 10 to 12 over – they'll pick it up good, but then you got the five to 10 that are just still bad at it. And like, okay, like you go through like, say snatches and like, okay, you're doing like tens on each side. Cause you don't understand the movement. Like how much power are you really producing? Cause you're still, and I understand. And I've got some pretty good at what I think are pretty good progressions, regressions, whatever, but you still get to the point where it's like, okay, well how much, like we've

been doing like a month now. I don't really know that this is getting you better. You're going to need to progress so far that you're not even doing anything similar. And I can't individually coach that one individual all the time. So that's kind of, honestly, the rationale-wise. So, like, that's a good example. That was a soccer player, but that was at 175 for a pause. So, you know, we've come pretty accustomed to, you know, young men training and lifting, but that's still like a relatively new thing.

Like I think that people don't really realize strength and conditioning is still like it's a new profession in some way. It hasn't been around that long. But how do you feel about girls training and just I guess even children in general just training at young ages? Yeah, so I'll start with – Depth. Jeez, that's insane. Yeah, these girls are unbelievable. So I'll start with girls.

So I think most of my – I'll be honest. A lot of my experience – I think that was one of our clean progressions, the pull and the clean and the ISO. But most of my experience or a lot of my experience has been with like girl, like women's soccer is probably one of the sports I've worked with the most of any sports from the colleges, from NAI, division two, division one. So that's where a lot of my experience comes from, honestly. So I think it's extremely valuable. And I think that's kind of one of the things where you're seeing a change to

where it used to be very just like football. You just train the conditioning because you play football. Now you start to see other sports a lot more kind of like see the value in it and i think kind of the same same um for uh female sports as well is that when you you look at like the benefits first of all from an injury standpoint and like what can you do from an acl standpoint and uh you know a knee injury standpoint in general but also from a performance standpoint like speed development strength plyometrics like how all that kind of correlates, whether it's volleyball, soccer, basketball,

all those kinds of physical attributes that go into it from a training standpoint. So I think you're starting to see a better shift too, in terms of like value in terms of like at a younger age with like girls and female athletes and the benefit in it of it, you know, as well. And with kids, I think we talked about a little bit earlier is that I think I'm, I'm a big proponent in, in kids, you know, lifting and working out and having, uh, you know, getting involved into it. I think the thing that's can be a challenge

now is cause just with social media and just kind of just stuff in general, kids see stuff and they want to think about, you know, I need to be doing this or trying this or whatever it might be. Um, and I think that's kind of where it becomes trying to more educate in that sense of like, there's a lot of kids that like want to get into the gym now that are like 12, 13, 14 years old. Whereas like,

I didn't really didn't start lifting until I was probably about like, I think a sophomore in high school. So like 16 years old, you know what I mean? What was that? 15, 16 years ago, which is probably common.

You know what I mean? Like whatever. Now you're getting kids that are 11, 12, 13. It's like, I think I was telling you like earlier, like,

you know, you get like, Oh, do we high bar or low bar back squat? Like, wait you're 13 how do you know that like you know i mean like i didn't know that till college like so you're getting kids that are like you're you're where'd you learn that at youtube or whatever or wherever it is so you're seeing more of that kind of uh kind of come about you know i mean just with the way uh things are so i think it's very beneficial to teach kids and instruct that stuff because i think that's the other problem that i see is a lot i see a lot of

kids working lifting out going to commercial gyms and other stuff but like it's some of the technique is really really bad and what you generally see is like people i just want to lift more weight and like you sacrifice form and technique and they're not looking long term you know i mean which is we all we all weren't thinking long term when we started lifting it was like i just want to lift more weights or i want to get bigger stronger like whatever it is so i think that's where the coaching aspect comes in of like i'm not going to set you so like i don't really max with like younger kids like okay we might try and like after we get to a certain level of competency okay we'll do some like rep matches like a five rep max maybe or like you know something like along those lines but i'm not really not trying to like push the outer limits

of your capacities right now when you don't have a good skill set if that makes sense um excuse me so like that's uh one of the big things and I think uh trying to just uh teach them that uh you know technique matters you know I mean I think that's kind of going back to the standard of like when I have as high standards for technique and the other stuff that uh you know that they can see down the line like how it's going to be beneficial and how it's going to help them squat more weight, bench more weight, whatever it might be, kind of with that. So I think it's key, like I said, to try and teach and educate because I think a lot of teaching doesn't just happen in three weeks.

You can't teach someone to squat three weeks and be like, okay, hey, go at it. Go load the bar up. You know what I mean? It's a long process, and I think that's one of the things. Going back to the Olympic lifting example, so I was at Lindenwood University, which is where like if you're familiar with Fernando Reyes, who competed for Brazil, you know, over numerous Olympic cycles, you know, was probably one of the best, you know, or strongest weightlifters in North America. So I saw a lot like some high level, high, high level training training happened from an Olympic lifting standpoint.

And like it was really interesting that when you have a high level of technique, you can't, you don't see much fluctuation from it. Like even there was an example like Fernando, who's, I think he snatched like 200 kilos. I think his best clean and jerk is like 240, 245 kilos. It could be off on that. But like, there was one time I was training and like, he took a video, it was like 160 kilo snatch. And he's like, come over here, look at this video.

You see how right here, the bar gets away from me just a little bit. Like if that was 170 or 175, I would have missed it. 160 wasn't heavy enough or whatever, but I was able to make it. And I'm like looking at this, I'm like, yeah, I don't see that bar looks like it's literally like right on your body. Like I'm not seeing this or whatever, but that was like the depth and the perception that he had, you know, like looking at something like that. Um, that was kind of like eyeopening for me that like, when you're at that high of a level, like it's just ingrained, you're not going to see like oh wow you just like feet are flying all over the place or like whatever

so that's kind of how i try and apply it like with lifting the teaching whatever it is trying to ingrain and that doesn't come from a week or two weeks that's months and like years of just repetition learning the process you know things along those lines so i think it does it does allow like i said there's videos uh like i've got some uh uh videos now like you'll see like we were doing like a session like pin pin uh uh chain pin squats you know i mean because that's what that's what i wanted to go for from a rate of force development standpoint with uh like our football kids or whatever but they weren't full squatting they were half it was like a half squat or whatever but um that's what i wanted for that specific adaptation but again like we spent so much time doing our squats and the other stuff and the full range of

motion that we were able to work to that and utilize that because it was what was needed you know what i mean yeah of you using methods when they're when they're appropriate not just using them just just because per se and i'll be honest there's probably people that think like some of the stuff that i've done is not appropriate you know because they're 16 or 17 years old which you know um it's fine like i said i i'm i'm open to criticism you know all the time whatever but i do also feel pretty confident i think things through looks like it's working yeah i mean right like i said trying to think things through like really well you know i mean so it's not just kind of like random stuff or like whatever like well i have a thought process behind this and like

some of the ones like the weight releasers um you know which i've got you know like some sophomores in high school 16 years old and people like oh it's too like whatever i'm like i've also got videos of them doing freehand front squats two years ago in eighth grade, like literally to like, you know, going through this last two. So if you've been doing something for two, two years now or three years now, like, okay, like you can agree or disagree, but like, you know, I thought this method worked pretty good. And I'll be honest, this individual had like a 29 inch vertical and then we go through this and

now he's jumping 33, like whatever, like, Oh, this one. Yeah. Like right here. Yeah. This movement, these movements are great the weight releases off the bar as you go into the lowest position of the squat or however you set it up you know you can do it in bench press and stuff like that too so like i said like that one right there like i think i uh like had some just phenomenal results with it like okay and like i try and like okay what are the numbers like so if i'm looking at some of our sprint numbers or our uh vertical jump numbers like okay they're not really improving then this method didn't really do kind of what we wanted but i'm like okay i haven't uh like i think

the example um at three kids this winter jump over 36 inches high school right two of them were sophomores one was a junior right this is on a jump mat um so uh i never had like the highest i had was a 35 before i think or whatever at this same school. So I'm like, okay, you can like whatever. But like I don't – I've been here like three or four – whatever now. I haven't had any 36s. I just had three in this cycle. And those were kids that were like put three or four inches on over like a 10, 12-week period.

I think people that have never used that, they don't know what to think of it. And I think that they may not realize what a great teaching tool that is to have heavier weight on the eccentric and how much sense it makes. I mean, the eccentric portion of a lift, you're going to be stronger, the lowering portion of the lift. And then as you go to the concentric, the weight comes off. So even for somebody that's not explosive, if 10% of the bar weight comes off at the bottom, you're going to kind of feel explosive. And there's kind of like a stretch reflex going on in the body as well, right? Yeah. And like that's, I think the thing is, is, okay, we're doing this for a four week cycle

over a 52 week period. You know what I mean? You're not, I'm not doing this. You're not doing it every day. You know what I mean? It's like a specific stimulus at this time. And then we, you go on to something else or whatever. So I think that's the other thing too.

So like, even on this one, like it a four-week cycle where the first two weeks was like a slow five six second eccentric and then it hits then you bounce out the next one was the iso so you'll see like at the top the goal here is to take that load get to that halfway mark and then isometrically hold it and then basically just let it drop and free fall you know what i mean so like that was the that was how it was thought out that was the goal that was the four week basically cycle on it then we take them off and then we're going to other stuff or whatever so like i said i thought it was really good and if you've ever done it before the amount of just like motor unit recruitment that you're going to get from that of like

literally having you know 110 with the chain with the hooks on per se you have 110 of your max on so you have more than your max on you're either isometrically holding it or you're slow lowering it then like then like 100 pounds comes off the bar it's like you can't replicate that with any other kind of training method or modality people will do maybe like with a jump or something they might lower themselves in a jump and let go of the weights as they jump up or something but it's kind of funky yeah and so like you get the stimulus like oh man i haven't felt this before and then i look and like i said the vertical numbers and other stuff like okay this worked pretty good now would it work good for someone that doesn't have a squat good like every person that's there they're squatting you know really

well you know i mean with that so they're able to do the movements they need it we're kind of like you know at that point where i want to drive more progress so i think that's like i said that's kind of the the rationale or the thought process behind it but jen just trying to be like i said confident and diligent i've done the leg work and thinking through it so even if it doesn't work or people disagree okay that's fine like i'm gonna want to be the one that looks in the mirror and say like i think i said on one of them, like, I'm either going to come back with my shield or on it. So like, okay, you know what?

I want a 36, I want a 38, I want a 40-inch vert. Okay, like you're not, and I know this kind of sounds maybe like over the top, like whatever, but like the athletes, the one that has to deal, like live with it, and I'm the one as a coach that has to live with it. Okay, we didn't get to 37 or 38. Like it's a person, like whatever, you're not having to deal to deal like that's if you take it somewhat personal as a coach you're probably gonna drive more performance you know what i mean it's not like probably some motivational quote you're gonna read it's something that you've probably just been doing you know if you've been

in the profession or you're just around strength conditioning it should matter to you you know what i mean like okay it matters i can tell you i can go down the list of my you know 60 yard times in baseball i can go down and tell you, okay, I ran this in Northern Illinois. I ran a 7.20 in February of 2005. No, it was 2006. I'm sorry. But you know what I mean? I ran a 7.2.

Then I ran a 6.95 in Rockford, Illinois about three months later. You know how good that felt? Like I literally, like that felt really good. And then I go to the University of Illinois that summer in 2006 and July 2000. Yeah, July 2006. And I ran a 7-0-0 on my first rep and I was like I come into that I'm expecting around 6-8 like maybe six I'm like I've been going through training phenomenal like training myself but like this was really good I'm feeling faster and then I go from a 6-9-5 to a 7 I'm like what that's that can't be right second

rep I run I'm like that was faster 7-0 Like, I just had, like, three months or two months of great training. How did I just get slower? So, like, that was, what is this, 17 years ago? Yeah. Okay, I still, I'm kind of talking, like, passionate. Like, I still, that still, there's emotion tied behind that. Like, I didn't, like, I was going through that. I was trying my training methods and the other stuff.

I took it personal. You know what I mean? So, like, as a coach, yeah, okay, you know what? Yeah, I'm trying to drive, like, other stuff. I took it personal. You know what I mean? So like as a coach, yeah. Okay. You know what? Yeah. I'm trying to drive like this stuff matters and it should. And I think if you want to go to like another level as an athlete, whatever it is, get around

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power project links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes how do you get some of these athletes and we're talking about it like you mentioned the hip 1990s um how do you get some of them to buy into the mobility aspect of things? Because that's not as fun for most people as loading some weight onto the bar and lifting some heavy shit, right? So how do you build in that habit to those athletes and help them understand that this is going to be something that's going to help you on the field, it's going to help you long term?

Yeah. So I'd say like first of all, I think one of the things I like about this stuff that I do, obviously getting biased, but like, okay of all, I think one of the things I like about this stuff that I do, obviously getting biased, but like, okay, when you're doing it, it's like, man, that was really hard. Or like my hip, that was my hips cramping up or whatever. Okay, like you can agree, disagree or whatever, but it's like, man, I don't know what you did, but that was, I haven't felt that before. So there's some level, and I think there's some level of like buy-in trust when like,

when I start, some of it too is I try and I've thought this through pretty well. So if I'm going to start working with, there's a reason why we did those movements that I did with you. I've done those enough to know that, okay, 99 times out of 100, you're going to cramp. Your hip's going to feel really good. You're going to be looking at it like, man, I haven't done that. What does this guy know? Whatever. There's some other stuff that might be more appropriate or that would be better for you,

but there's a good chance you're not going to do it right. You're not going to feel it. And if you're like, man, this didn't really work. Now I say something, you're like, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. So you Jedi mind trick him. So, yeah. And I've done this enough that I know how you're going to probably cheat. I know how you're going to like, whatever.

Now I come over and like, stop leaning. Nope, nope. Get the ankle up higher. Nope, nope. Like, whatever. And now you're like, dude,. I know how you're going to like whatever. Now I come over and I'm like, stop leaning. Nope, nope. Get the ankle up higher. Nope, nope. Like whatever. And now you're like, dude, I'm trying to get this ankle up. And now I'm kind of yelling at you. Like whatever.

You kind of get like whatever. And you're just like, man, like whatever. And it's like, wow, I've never experienced this before. Manipulation. Yeah. Like, okay. So now, hey, we're going to do this. And you're like, okay, man, my hip's feeling really good right now.

I don't know. I'm going to listen to that guy. You know what I mean? So I'll i'll be honest for some of that so now i can get back to maybe i'm not maybe i want to do this thing down the line but i'm not going to start with that i'm going to start with the stuff like i said there to get to that point now so when i get to there you're like we didn't even do any spine stuff but like spine stuff is probably one of the most beneficial stuff that you can do because most people they can't articulate their spine at all so i'll put say like move i'll put my finger on l3 move flex and extend l3 and you'll see like t8 through t6 just whatever i'm like no no no not your threat i want this spot right here to move

but most people's spines are so messed up and they have no um basically um ability to articulate each individual segment but that's what you see the problem is if you start with that people are gonna be like oh this is dumb all, like, I don't feel anything. Like, well, this is stupid. Like whatever. I'm like, yeah, because you're not doing it right. Like, but the problem is if I have 40 people, I can't coach each individual person.

So if I start with something where everyone's kind of looking around, like this is dumb, this is stupid, even though it might be the most beneficial thing for you, I'm not going to get what I want done next because I have no trust or no buy-in. But if I do this and this, you're like, dude, this is awesome.

Hey, now everybody bring it up. Look, stop. Pay attention. This is super do this and this, you're like, dude, this is awesome. Hey, now everybody bring it up. Look, stop. Pay attention. This is super important. All right, listen. Right here. Do you see how he's moving up his spine? I need you to stop.

Watch this. All right, you got to boom, boom, talk, whatever. Now everyone's like, okay, okay, let's lock in. Let's go do it. You're like, whatever. I built that up because of the other stuff that I did, if that makes sense. So like that's how I try and go about it.

And then trying to explain too and like to educate, like I said, okay, you probably want to lift. You want to get bigger, you want to get stronger, you want to get better at your sport or whatever. Well, one of the first ones, this is an example I used when I was at Texas Tech of like, okay, who wants to play in the NFL? Everyone's hands go up, right? What do you need to play in the NFL? It's size, strength, speed, whatever. I'm like, okay, you know do you need to play in the nfl it's size you know guys size strength speed like

whatever i'm like okay you know what you need you need tape so you need actual like game tape like you can't just have like great combine numbers but you never have like game tape on the field yeah and you need numbers so like okay if you go for 80 catches for 1100 yards and like whatever 17 tds or whatever because you got tape and you got numbers now okay size strength whatever but like that's what the scouts are looking at first they're looking at the tape and you're not what's your production you know i mean how do you get tape and how do you get numbers it's actually be on the field so like if you're not healthy and you can't play you can't get tape you can't get numbers, you can't get numbers. So if I go a whole four-year career in college

and I played six games my freshman year, eight games my sophomore year, three games my junior year, and four games my senior year, how many opportunities did I have to accumulate tape and how many games did I have to accumulate numbers? Not a whole lot, because I admit, like, whatever. But if I can go, I played nine games my freshman year,

12 games my sophomore year, 10 games my junior year, year 11 games my senior year just based on the law of numbers you're gonna have more tape you're gonna have more numbers you're gonna have a better opportunity to get drafted go higher and make more money okay so now i'm probably talking the language that you want to hear so when we're doing this this mobility stuff like i was showing like and i'll pull people down all right if your hip can't move and now i yank on it do you know where all that tension and all that force goes right in your knee if your hip can't move and now I yank on it. Do you know where all that tension and all that force goes right in your knee? If your hip can't internally rotate, it's going into your, your knee,

your MCL. Now, if I typically, now, if I rotate your tibia, now it's ACL. So if this hip can't move, but it needs to go here,

it's either going to compensate or your knees done. All right. You, so that's trying how, that's how I try and, uh, get that by and like, understand like this is important and kind of like to,

to just being honest, like, dude, I'll be honest. I would rather, I like lifting weights. lifting weights like i i personally i like the speed the power as you can see the other stuff but if you're not healthy and you're only at 80 or 90 percent or this this nagging injury we can't do that stuff yeah so we got to be it's like an insurance policy we've got to be doing this stuff to make sure you're healthy to be so you can train

so you can play so like we've got to do this stuff and like i was saying if it's stupid we're not going to do it and i've said that before like i'll be honest if i look at it and there's been a lot of times where i'm like man this is a good idea i like this thought out then we go on it i'm like oh this is dumb this is this is not working how i thought it and i'll bring i'll tell the kids like hey that's this was dumb we're not doing this again like i'll be honest it's stupid like okay we're fine and so i'm not i'm not scared to say that was a bad idea on myself or whatever i think honestly if you've ever been in situations the worst like one of the things that's like horrible is like when you get someone that's

like everybody knows it's a bad idea this isn't working but they keep trying to play it around like it's going great like we're doing a good job like no it's not this isn't working like the uh coach that won't let go of his play yeah it's like coach the play fucking sucks the whole team hates this play and every time we run it. Everyone knows that we're going to get smashed. When we run it. But you still continue to run the same play. Exactly.

So when you show. It sounds like weakness. But when you admit that. It gets more buy it and trust. From everybody else. Because when you can admit. And there's books that talk about this. When you can admit your shortcomings.

As like a leader. Or like whatever. People. That resonates with people. You know what I mean. Now you have to have a certain level. Like if you come in as a first year like whatever you're like oh that didn't work good or whatever you don't have that like experience or that kind of like i guess resume if you will but once you develop that and then you admit your mistakes and other stuff it helps in the whole process so like i'll tell um we were

doing so actually like in that uh the we were doing a pin squat uh just like recently so like with my older football players like our varsity guys we were doing pin uh pin back squats like a 90 degree um you know on our day two our second lower body day um and i was doing the same thing with the freshmen but the freshmen um the varsity guys had done variations before this was the first time with the freshmen and i'll be honest it just wasn't the freshmen they didn't have the pin set right i was trying to help them with that they didn't let them too low on some of them and it just was like it just wasn't working good and i was like okay you know what like in my head i'm trying to correct i'm like okay you know what we're just these guys are just gonna go to we're gonna do pause squats for the next we're just gonna whatever and so i

told them like at the end i'm like hey guys stop turn the music off all right listen up right i'll be honest this this is on me this isn't going good you guys are doing good you guys are working hard you guys are doing everything you want but trust me we're not gonna do the pin squats we're just go regular back to regular pause back squats or whatever so we'll finish up we got two more sets we're gonna finish up do the best you can but we'll be done with this don't worry about that okay okay i have no i have no problem admitting like what i'm seeing isn't working it's good i don't care if you're 15 or you're 60 years old i'll admit when i'm wrong or i'll try and do you know i mean it's because that's hard to do it's

hard to admit when you're wrong this isn't going but like i said i try and be as open like just try and be as honest as i can um at least from my perspective i'm probably biased on that but i think that's one of the things that really helps too like from the mobility and the other the other stuff but just trying to um you know explain kind of the long-term big picture on why it's so important why we need to do it how do you get people faster in the weight room because i think sometimes coaches will say you can't teach speed yeah um so i think so when you look at the weight room i would kind of combine it like uh just strength conditioning in general so like i think one of the biggest things is is looking at like the overview of your kind of training process in general so one of the biggest

issues that i think are one of the common problems that people have with speed is like when you look at rest periods like quality if you want to get faster you need to have quality reps that's like really really important right so one of the things that a lot of people do, and I see this even when I coach people like remotely or help people is the rest periods are way too short. So I use like sprint timing systems, which are really, really nice. Cause it's like, okay, you run, here's your, you ran a one Oh two on this flying 10. You are supposed to have three minutes of rest, but you cut somebody in line and you went before I told you or whatever, and you only had 60 seconds of rest, and now you ran a 109.

I got slower. No. You're tired. You're fatigued. You might feel like you're fresh, but you need a general rule, and I apologize to whoever this came from. It's not mine, and I just use it. For every 10 yards you sprint, you should have about 10 seconds of rest.

So if I sprint 30 yards, a 30-yard sprint max max effort i should have three minutes of rest before i go again right most people will go like 40 50 60 seconds of rest if you actually had like gps data or whatever you would see like okay the first rep was good then the second third and fourth rep were just they weren't very they weren't fast enough to elicit the adaptation you need to run fast so i would say i would start there of like okay you know what it's not about doing more it's about doing higher quality work right the second thing thing is when you look at, so I'll go with, there's basically two kind of components I would say from a speed standpoint, acceleration and max velocity, right? Acceleration, there's three key components,

and this is not mine. This is from, I believe it's Jonas Dedue. He's a really good coach. I've taken his course. He's out in the UK, does a phenomenal job, right? From an acceleration standpoint, there's three things. It's how well you project. So how well your hip projects, right? Your ability to switch your limbs and then how stiff you are in contact or your reactivity, right? So what you're looking at from acceleration is basically how well can you project your hip and the orientation of it. So to be able to project your hip, you need to produce a good amount of power. So I need to literally see the hip move and I need to see at the angle, if the angle is too vertical, right? I'm not projecting out. And if it's too low, I'm not going to set myself up for a good second and third step, right?

The second thing is how well you can switch. So basically how fast I can get once I extend, how fast can I switch into my next step, right? If I can't switch very fast, it's going to take longer, and I'm not gonna have enough force coming into the ground to be able to basically recycle that energy, which comes to the third point of the reactivity. So when that foot kind of like we were doing with the pogo hops, how stiff can I be on contact? If I can take that elastic energy, like this example right here, and I can bounce straight up, or if I have to hit and then go slow, I'm losing elastic energy.

So when I look at acceleration, those are the three things that I look at. So like, what are the drills that we can do? So we'll do stuff like the broad jumps, resisted broad jumps, um, you know, stuff like that, switching drills, and then just running accelerations fast and then making sure that we're rested. We'll do resistance sprints and other stuff. When you look at max velocity, you're looking at basically, um, you know, probably for most people, 30 yards plus, you know, faster athletes are still like accelerating past that point, but generally you're looking probably 30 to 50 yards on that. And at that point, you're looking at how fast and how stiff can my ground contact times basically be so we'll do stuff like the pogo hops are a great example um we'll do

wicket runs because i think that's one of the things like most people are really really bad technique wise and i've and i've talked about this you don't have to be a world-class sprinter in my opinion from an athletic standpoint but most people's sprint mechanics are so bad that even if you just go from bad to average that's like really what you need but you'll see positions and it kind of comes back to physics if you're running and when you strike your your foot is in front of your center of mass you're literally hitting the brakes your body has to hit the brakes to stop for your center of mass to catch up and then you can go again so if i'm trying to go as fast i can do i want to be hitting the brakes while i'm running no and that's a common thing is that you'll see the foot strike in front of the center of mass. You'll see a very long

like backswing. So like as soon as my foot leaves, I want it to come through and I want to come down. If you see this long like elongated like backswing back here, it's taking you so long

to get into your next stride. It's also just wasting a lot of energy and you're not getting in the right positions to be able to transmit or utilize elastic energy in a way that's going to

allow you to run fast. So utilizing drills to try and kind of correct that, fix that. And like I said, so like those are the two things and then just running fast. So like if you're running 30, 40 yards or whatever, getting two to three reps on that or whatever, whatever your kind of program says, but that's probably the biggest thing. And then from the weight room, being able to produce more force. I think that's probably the biggest thing in the weight room is being able to produce force. So like if you're trying to run fast and um there's different

squat standards but like okay if you're a college you know football player and your best front squat's 185 pounds you're probably not producing like very much like unless there's something that i'm not seeing or whatever all right now you don't have to squat you know five or six hundred pounds per se to do that but there's a certain level of strength to be able to produce the force to be able to run especially from an acceleration standpoint or to be able to jump or things like that so like that's one of the biggest things in the weight room is being able to generate more force and then there are other stuff like i like utilizing like eccentric eccentric means so like uh you know focusing on rapid eccentrics different variations where the load is maybe isn't as high but the goal is to basically go down as fast as

you can you know so you're probably talking more like 70 ish percent bar weight in that where you're trying to basically rapidly snap down and explode up i'm talking about a squat right yeah squat or like a bulgarian a bulgarian split squat i'll do rapids on like jumps too so like a rapid eccentric on the jump um uh on that and then utilizing i like utilizing once we get kind of advanced it kind of comes back to uh developing to developing a level of competency in what you're doing. I think accommodating resistance is really good as well. And I wouldn't, like I said, start off with that and whatever. But I think from an athleticism standpoint and a speed standpoint, there's a lot of benefits to when the time's right, incorporating chains, bands to a certain degree.

And then utilizing different like ISOs, different stuff like we show with the weight release. Just to interrupt for a second. different like you know isos uh different stuff like we show with the weight release just to interrupt for a second but like a weight releaser a band especially there's other ways to go about doing this i guess a plyometric you are um you're getting a kinetic energy into the body because you're dropping the weight much faster than you normally could uh with a band with the weight being on there and let's just say it's 300 pounds at the top of the exercise uh it might be 200 pounds at the bottom of the exercise but you can like go down so quick that your body still thinks that amount of weight is on there and then you're

going to push with more force is kind of some of the idea and concept and then when you're running or doing a plyometric jumping down from something and jumping up on something else uh kind of same principle right like if you if you jam into the ground as hard as possible when you're running some people might think like shit you're going to hurt yourself well you would hurt yourself probably if your tissues weren't prepared for it so you could hurt yourself but uh that is going to be the way that you're probably going to run the most efficiently because you're going to take advantage of stored energy in the body absolutely and like that's one – kind of what we were talking about earlier too of there's a huge elastic component of running. So an acceleration, like being strong and muscular, it's – I don't want to say –

It can be to your detriment in some cases, yeah. Early in acceleration, that's why you kind of see some studies about like Olympic lifters like being able to stay up 10, 20 meters or whatever because you're producing a bunch of force like which is an acceleration as you get to top end velocities you can get and like this is um you know relatively i wouldn't i don't know common or whatever but you'll see some people where it's like man they're not super strong but they're so elastic they can transfer like you look at some like triple jumpers is a great example because that's triple jumpers um i believe from the russian literature is like triple jumping is the highest correlated exercise to like the 100-meter sprint.

So basically, if you look at being a really good triple jumper, you're utilizing a ton of – that's all elastic energy. And you look at a lot of them, they're kind of longer, leaner, not super muscular per se, but their tendons are so stiff. And when you look at being able to be successful in the 100 meters, once you get past 30 or 40 meters, it's how elastic basically can you run you know with relatively good technique and other factors or whatever so like that's one of the biggest things of of uh when you're looking at like the plyometrics and the other stuff of teaching the body how to utilize elastic energy

how to have stiff contacts how to be firm and kind of like to that point of of using and again this isn't my example um and i apologize i like to give credit to the people where i get it from and i can't whatever but someone had a really good example of, I think it was Ken Clark. He's a sprint researcher about like your hip, like hitting a nail. So like when you get to like your A position or whatever, if you just come down and barely hit the nail

or you come down and strike it, that's kind of what you want your hip to do. Like when you're sprinting, like you have to be aggressive and you have to be violent. And that's how you produce that high spike in ground contact. Now the other thing is how well you can handle that so like if you're if you're if you're not stiff and you're unable to handle that first of all your body's probably not gonna produce it because it knows it can't it can't

it's gonna be a waste or you're gonna slow yourself down but like that's why you want to use like the plyometrics the isometrics um you know other stuff to to create more tendon basically stiffness to be able to handle those higher levels of forces you know what i mean and you look at like what the amount of force is coming down like if you're running 24 25 miles an hour or whatever it is like you know from there's a ton of on the lower leg forces coming down on that that um you know that are required to be able to run it i want to say it's like a thousand pounds from hussein bolt yeah i mean it's absolutely like a ridiculous number and like i said those are specific adaptations are going to come from uh be running at those type of velocities if you will yeah so obviously running at those

velocities you mentioned plyometric and isometrics and like we've had different people come on the podcast and talk about um increasing tendon strength but what do you do with athletes to specifically work on that so i'll do um so plyometrics but then i i've started using a lot of isometrics and i'll be honest um probably even just the last like three-ish weeks um there's a really good uh you know course i just took it's from alex natera it's a sprint specific isometrics uh not not uh getting any you know money for endorsements or whatever but um so even just like the last three weeks and this kind of goes back to again like i'm always trying to learn and like advance and like improve what i'm doing so like

i'm doing some stuff right now like with that stuff like there's different sprint positions and the isos and we're doing some different tests i've done different tests on like force plates looking at like how much force are we producing you know with the ankle the hip um you know different joint positions with that they're kind of correlated to sprinting so doing utilizing different stuff like so uh like right now we might be doing like say an ankle iso push right and then we're doing our we're doing everyone's going through that then we're doing our back squats you know what i mean so doing basically um these different angles against whether it's you know sometimes it's max iso so you're pushing against a movable object for like say maybe five seven seconds and

you're trying to literally if i've got like a bar and a squat rack and i'm at the right angle i've got it set up to where like there's so much weight in the bar that you can't move it but your goal is to lift you know 600 pounds off that position. Because if you can, then you're producing the amount of force you're producing. So that's one of the ways that I'm kind of going about doing that. A lot of the ISOs, the plyometrics, you know, and then incorporating stuff, like I said, like with the lifting stuff as well. I think that's kind of my kind of process right now for that. And again, like I could be doing like these sprint, these ISOs,

and it's like, oh, this doesn't work very well. Okay. Like we'll go, you know, maybe, you know, it's kind of a waste, you know, times like one of your most important things in training. So you can only delineate so much of it or you only have so much of it available, not even just from a programming standpoint, from a recovery standpoint. Like I can't do three hours of plyometrics. Like I just can't.

So if something's not beneficial, kind of wait at opportunity cost. we're wasting our time doing it. So trying to figure out like, oh, wow. Like I said, the weight releases was a really good example. Like, man, that worked really good. I'm probably gonna be using that and other, like, I'm going to try and figure out different ways to use that. Cause I saw good results from it. All right. Some of these is like, man, this like this worked really well. Um, you know, we're going to keep trying to drive it up and try those numbers high. I had a kid, um, a freshman that, uh, kind of getting to go back to some of these videos. I gotta, I gotta make the, I gotta put this this one up because it's a good one um but it was like one of the isos like the the spring ankle from caldeets and like people like oh this doesn't

get you faster just sprint and i was like oh wow never thought about that thanks like never thought about sprinting to get faster man like appreciate it or whatever like platter like whatever but i've got the video of him like doing it he's struggling like big time and i think his best flying 10 like a year ago was like a 102 101 he just ran and he's had like a 96 like in the fall or whatever but he just ran like a 0.93 like a month ago which is like i think that's close to like 20 getting close to like 22 miles an hour um which is like as a freshman like that's that that's the third fastest time i've had or whatever that's you're you're moving that is fast or whatever but i've got like the people are like oh this doesn't work like whatever and i'm like well i mean he just ran there's other stuff that he's doing or we're doing or whatever but it's like

okay the numbers they are what they are he's dropped over a tenth on his flying 10 to go from like 20 miles an hour to close to 22 miles an hour and he's still 15 years old or whatever so like that's kind of one of the list okay this isn't working our numbers aren't improving yeah then we won't do it or whatever but like the isos like i said i've seen really good results with them um in conjunction with the burgle jump and the other stuff so that's how i'm kind of incorporating it and i think the challenge then becomes two of like how do you incorporate or where do you incorporate that stuff you know i mean so like there's some stuff like people like people ask for like a general answer on stuff like uh you know like when you're doing say this exercise where do you put it at i'm

like okay how many times is team training a week like where are they at in their their their training program uh are they in season out of season wherever it is how many athletes do i have how much time do we have because they're all gonna affect what you do like you have to know like what are your parameters and then i can go put that stuff in so like how i was saying like the ankle pushes and hip pushes like we're doing it and the reason why we do it is because the bars like if you have a lot of people and you have to okay say you're say you do back squat and then bench press right it takes you have a lot of kids it takes a while to go from the bench press or the squat down to the bench press so if you only have like say 35 maybe 40 minutes and it's taking an extra three to five minutes to transition from back squat to bench

press per se that's a good percentage of your time so like i have that stuff set up so it's like we're doing the that push off the racks but we're going right into back squat. So there's not a whole lot of transition time that we have to move. You might have to take, you're gonna have to take the weights off, but we're already set. You know what I mean? On Wednesday, we do bench press and a hip ISO push, right? So bench, the hip ISO push, we don't need anything at the rack.

We can do it somewhere else. So that's why I have the hip ISO push on that day. It's because we can bench, we can't bench press and do with the ankle push because you can't be in the same spot. So like when people ask those questions it's like well i've got to have all the details set up and then i can figure it out kind of like a puzzle piece from there so like there's some stuff that we do at the end of the workout because okay we just don't have time to do it or like if we don't have time to get it done i need to get this other stuff done that's

more higher priority i don't know if we'll have all the time to get everything done so if we don't get it done it is what it is you know i mean so like that's kind of that's kind of how i go about and i think that's the challenge of like just trying to figure out your own program i think one of the struggles that people do have is they try and take somebody else's program or ideas and then put it into you know i mean it doesn't fit like like there might be great ideas you know i mean um but if it doesn't fit congruently into what you're trying to do with the program you're running then it's not going to like work good you know i mean like like the cake there's a good like cake example like okay you know what like if you get actually that maybe it's not a good

example i don't know you're baking think about your bacon i don't know like okay chocolate chips is good and you know what uh pepperoni tastes good on my pizza yeah those are two good ingredients but if i put them together you know what it's probably not gonna whatever i make is probably not gonna taste very good you know what i mean i don't know unless we try there we go there we go salty sweet spicy a little bit that sounds like that sounds like were you at west side when jm You know what I mean? We don't know unless we try. There we go. There we go. Salty, sweet, spicy. That sounds like, were you at Westside when JM was there? Yeah. That sounds like one of JM's, actually speaking of that, Alex, I was going to ask you about

some of those stories about like, what was it? Like the candy? Like, you know what I mean? Like in the pockets where you like, you like let it melt or you like you drink the chocolate syrup because it's easier to get more calories down. Oh my God. I see all kinds of stuff there. I mean, see mcdonald's you know guys walking in with like mcdonald's bags and stuff but one guy um named tilt he was 450 pounds and he's like doing

uh he's doing like lap pull downs and then like i'm trying to like you know sneak in like a set but then he just turns around and then sits on the lat pull down machine and i'm like i'll just wait you know and then i see like a snickers bar fall out of his pocket and then he like does his set and then he's like sitting there he's sitting there on the lat pull down like eating a snickers bar i'm like only only in this place why did you guys call him tilt uh yeah he was born uh with something a little bit off and so he kind of walked to the so this guy had some scoliosis shit and y'all like let's make fun of him i wasn't about to make fun of him he was fucking big but he was one of the more talented people there i mean he i think he did a good morning with like a thousand pounds oh my wow yeah it was wild

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it's funny it's funny- Have you ever been there? I haven't. It was funny because part of, I think, what helps too is just kind of have general conversations, you know, like with the people that you work with, clients or whatever. Like, okay, we can relate. We can talk about this or whatever. And so, like, there's this, like, gym. It's actually a really good, they had a really good business idea because they basically

made this, so, like, the high school that I work at, it's, like, 2,500 kids, but then there's two junior highs that are relatively close. It a busy so like the gym is this gym has become like the cool kids go there and work out or whatever and it's like 10 bucks a month or whatever um so it's like it's always packed apparently like three to seven it's all high school kids junior high like there's nothing you can't do anything or whatever and so like uh like one of these kids freshman great kid or whatever but he was like because there's only like four squat racks or whatever and i was like oh how's it been going at this gym uh place or whatever he's like oh it's good it's hard to get a squat rack though and then there's like this one power lifter he's always coming in and then he takes it he's always breathing heavy too and he takes like eight

minutes between each set and he's at the squat like he'll be at the squat rack for three hours and so he just hogs it to himself or whatever and i'm just and i thought you would appreciate that story or whatever because i'm like oh man like the the the fight for some of these kids like i'll be honest like so i was like one of them like yeah i had to wait two hours for the squat rack i'm like dude that's when you go at a different time or you figure another gym to go out like dude i'll give you credit if you're waiting two hours to get to the squat rack like you deserve it congrats respect do a different exercise yeah exactly i'm like okay we're moving on or i'm coming back at like eight o'clock tonight or like whatever um but no yeah it's funny hearing some of those like we all like we're at that age you know i mean we're going through the gym stories you see the

guys or whatever you remember that uh actually i remember their their age the supplements uh you remember this supplement called gackic i i remember hearing okay so like i actually have a very so basically and this is kind of this is like my junior year high school so like gackic had this claim that it would improve strength by like 10 point it was like 10.7 i want to say it was something like that where it wasn't like it wasn't like 10 it wasn't five it was like man this seems like this is like a like an interesting like whatever i'm like it was like 60 bucks like which like dude when you're in high school like 15 years ago like whatever like man that's expensive or whatever i'm like i need this supplement or whatever and i remember that time it was super easy because i remember my bench press

was 200 pounds so i was like the 10 percent was like okay i if i take this supplement i'm gonna bench 220 all right so like i go to gnc and i'm like asking like so wait is this like it's guaranteed to give me a 10 increase the guy's like oh yeah like you know like whatever i'm like so i bench press 200 right now yep there it is i bench press 200 right now i'm gonna bench press 220 pounds after taking he's like well it might be like the second or third time but yeah he's like whatever i'm like and he's like there's a full re i'm like i think i might ask like full refunds if i don't do it i get all my money back he's like oh yeah for sure i'm like okay good awesome i take it all right and i take it for like a week and i'm like dude this stuff's like i think i actually did hit a

five pound pr so i think i got the 205 but it wasn't 220 like it said i'm like dude this is be like whatever so i go back with the open bottle of gackik to that store and i'm like i want my money back and i remember the guy looking at me like, wait, what? I thought you were just going to, I didn't think I was ever going to see you again. Like whatever. And I didn't know at the time that GNC,

they got there, like you got your, what is it? Commission for your sales. So like the guy made money from selling that to me. And I'm like, yeah, I want my money back. And he's like,

Oh, like couldn't believe it. So like, that was my story. Cause I remember like vividly, I should be benching 220 right now. This supplement didn't work. And actually the funny thing about that too is I remember you couldn't go because like there was only like a Walmart like where I lived.

The only shaker bottle, like now shaker bottles are everywhere. Like it was like a Rubbermaid like this. I think I still have it in my parents' house, but it's like this weird Rubbermaid. That was the only shaker bottle you could get at stores like 15, 16 years ago. You know what I mean? Now you see like the regular shakers everywhere. So like that's kind of one of the things that I just remember in my head. Like the first shaker bottle I ever got was to get the Gackik.

And honestly, in my head, I was like, man, I don't, you know what? I think there's too much of the powder sticking to the side because it's kind of rubber. When you would shake it, I'm like, I need one of these like glass, you know, like mixing drinks. Maybe that's why you didn't get that extra weight on the band. No. Yeah. That's why I was like, man, I just need a different shaker bottle. Like I'm trying to like run through it.

Like there's no way this has to work or whatever. And the one you used was a powder. Yeah. Yeah. It was powder. Pills and the powder. Yeah. All right.

Sounds, sounds, there's a good sound. Dude, there's 300 milligrams of caffeine in the GACIC pills. It says that increases muscle performance by an average of 21%. Okay. It's gone up there. It went up there. Okay, it went up. It went up because it wasn't that high.

But I remember it was like 10 or whatever. But anyway, and it's actually interesting now when you look at supplements of like, we were talking about BPAC and like the focus and whatever. And I remember back like when I was, you know, the kid's age that I train now. And you would look at like, okay, what do I want to buy? Like whatever. And it was like, okay, the good buzzwords are like, that's where you're going to get my money.

All right. Hey, like, you know, increase pump by 10.6%. The vascularity or, you know, arterial blood flow, like get straight, like whatever. I'm like, okay, this is what I'm reading. If I read anything that was like improve focus, improve. Okay. No, no, I don't want that. No, no, no, no, no, no, not get my money.

Now when I look back though, when you you look at it like from a training session, when you go in, if your mind's just everywhere else, whether it's business, like whatever, how good of training sessions do you normally have? But when you're able to just completely lock in and you're just like completely there, and so like that was like a really, and it kind of comes coming back full circle like a training standpoint, if you're not focused or like completely kind of immersed into what you're doing, you're not going to be able to get the results that you probably could or that you'll need to at some point because you get to a point where you're okay, you're not going to be able to get the results that you probably could or that

you'll need to at some point. Cause you get to a point where you're okay, you make progress in the beginning, but now you got to actually like, you know, work harder, that focus, the other stuff. So like that's kind of like from the mobility, the other stuff, that focus is such a key component of the training process. And I've kind of like, like I said, BPAC, you know, talks about a lot of the mind muscle connection, like that level from a bodybuilding standpoint.

And that was kind of like a light bulb for me from a coaching standpoint with a lot of other stuff that i do but it's just funny going back to the supplements about like man yeah i don't need focus like no that's not like whatever kind of like the buzzwords and now trying to so it helps me to honestly think about what's going through kids heads when you're trying to like relate to stuff and like okay what what was i thinking at that age you know what i mean and it's like i i've still fight this battle of like kids will go to the gym and they'll max on bench four days a week, like whatever. And it's like, no, stop.

We have this whole six-week cycle set up to bench, have your heaviest day here, and you just did it two days ago. Like don't stop doing that or whatever. But part of it is like I go back because I remember like I fought like hell to go from 200 to 205. I was benching four days a week. Every day was a max out day. Like I got it.

You got it. You got it. You got to hit your, it's coming at some point. And then you don't stop. You don't step back to like, oh man, you know what?

I probably should have done fives or seven or something like whatever. But like, it helps you relate or it helps me relate to those situations. You know what I mean? Because, okay, this is what, this is what their head's going through.

So when you're trying to talk longterm and the other stuff of trying to like come at it from that angle or like whatever, or like I said, like the, the examples, like the split squats. Okay. Like I'll use myself like,

okay, how bad, man, your ankle, your knees not going forward, coach, your back knees really bad. Like,

yeah, this isn't very good. I'm like, exactly. So if you don't do this right now, this is probably what you're going to look like when you're my age. You know what I mean? So like,

if you keep doing just what you're doing, keep doing like the closet, like the split squats and you keep working on this, you're going to look so much better and everything's going to be so much better. You're not going to have some back problems probably or hip or knee or whatever it is or whatever. So like that's how I try to use like myself in those examples to help kind of look long-term on that. Cool.

What you got over there, Andrew? I'm just curious. I remember when I was a kid everyone said lift kids lifting it'll stunt your growth or whatever where the heck did that even come from uh that's a really good question yeah I'm just I know it not it's false but like I'm just curious because like I heard that so many times yeah I mean I think honestly I think some stuff just gets keeps getting passed down kind of like the knees over the toes stuff i think some stuff just gets started just keeps getting passed down but no one stops to like critically think or like why are we doing this or why don't like why do we keep doing the same thing over and

over like what's the quote like the most dangerous thing or in a bit or whatever is like we've always done it this way yeah you know what i mean and it's so i think some of that i i don't i don't know the history to be honest um uh but i think i would imagine it's probably something like that where it just got repeated by somebody maybe maybe like a doctor or somebody else. It was probably relatively credible. It just kept getting repeated and repeated and repeated over and over again. And so kind of to that point of the knees over the toes, because I like using this example a lot.

It's one of my go-to's of my doctor said your knee shouldn't go over your toes, or my mom said your knee shouldn't go over your toes, or whatever it is. And I was like, okay, your knee going over your toe is basically your, you, you have to be able to dorsiflex your ankle. That's a by-product your ankle dorsiflexing. All right. So if your ankle can't dorsiflex, your knee can't go over your toe. So like, if I told you, you can't raise your hand above your shoulder, would you say, what would you say? And you're like, Oh, that's stupid.

So like, if you could only go to right here, what would you like, whatever? Like, no, I should be able to do this. Like, well, how is that any different? Like, how is it you could only go to right here what would you like whatever like no i should be able to do this like well how is that any different like how is it your shoulder only going to right here different than your ankle stopping as soon as your knee starts getting past your toe it's the same it's a shoulder your hip your ankle like whatever you i would say that you'd be like you're an idiot i'm like but that's the same concept of what you're talking about right now you know what i mean and then like people i didn't think about that like whatever i'm like okay well if you just keep repeating the same thing over and over i think that's where like the critical thinking aspect comes in of, okay,

well, why are we saying this? Or why are we doing this? Or like, why shouldn't kids lift? And I think like, as I talked over there, if you're good, I would, and I'll tell people this. I don't, I think lifting and training for kids is phenomenal. I think bad lifting for kids is really bad and I wouldn't have kids do that. All right. So if it's going to be like, Hey, should my 12 year old train? I think that'd be really good. If my 12 year old is going to go to the gym and just rounded back deadlift do a bunch of stuff

i would say they are better off waiting to to if they even if they wait three years to get to high school but they can work with someone that's good that's going to teach them that's a lot better i would say right now that's a lot better but those are two different contexts you know i mean that's hard to you can't it's hard to give general answers on that and and that's what i think a lot of times too i think it's better to be more conservative training kids with that in mind you know i mean like okay you don't need to be doing i don't care what your max bench press is for the most part you know 13 years old or whatever or like some of this other stuff because yes i do think it's important but like the reality of of like what am i probably gonna see if i tell that to 30 kids you're gonna see a bunch of you

know just bad lists squats whatever it is so i think trying to be like realistic about where people are at, where kids are at. And then, like I said, if you start with body weight stuff, most people are so bad with body weight stuff and it's so challenging. You can stick with that for a long time. Then you start doing like longer eccentrics, longer pauses, you know, different ways to like kind of utilize just the body weight. I think you can make a ton of ton of progress on that. And it can take you from a long period in the training standpoint.

And I'll be honest, it's relatively like safe. You know what I mean? Like I think there's a big thing to be said of as soon as you start implementing like external load into stuff then i think that's when you kind of start i wouldn't say like the stopwatch or whatever but like that's when you if i if i do a quarter squat with a body weight squat okay i'm probably i'm not getting the amount of force into my hip joint i'm not creating whether good bad or indifferent as soon as I start externally loading stuff and applying more force into that hip, shoulder, ankle, and kind of compromise bad positions, that's going to have probably negative repercussions down the line. You know what I mean?

So I can do bad stuff body weight, and it's probably not going to be as detrimental. As soon as I start doing external loading into some of those same positions, you're kind of amplifying the effects of what's going to happen down the line, in my opinion. You know what I mean? So that's how I try and look at it from a lower back issue and other stuff. I really do think, I think, and I'm sure there's people that will disagree or whatever, but where I'm currently at, I think if you fix a lot of hips

and ankles, like with kids, or you just keep what they have at 12 or 13, and then you just keep moving well in the 20s and the 30s, I think you would see a significant reduction in like lower back, other type of issues in 40 year olds, 50 year olds, 60 year olds, all those other kind of issues that start happening later in life. Because one of the things like I try and read a lot, I read, you know, a bunch of kind of a broad range of stuff, you know, from, you know, strength and conditioning stuff, a lot of stuff from business, a lot of like, you know, genetics, epigenetics, you know, different

science, science areas. And like I'll ask like so what like genetically what is happening differently at 40 years old compared to 15 year olds in your ankle you know what i mean so like there's really not like when you look at epigenetics and the other stuff of like okay you don't get into positions collagen deposition other stuff but like when you have a bad ankle it's not probably because you have some genetic like whatever it's because the body isn't going through the isn't going through those positions there isn't uh you know um forces going through those positions or whatever or and i think this is like the big thing and this is why the movement is so so so important and i can't

stress that enough all right because i know i've dealt with this i see it other people deal with it like if you can't move and you can't move very well and you get to 40 or 50 how what is the quality of your life going to be like like and i'm not even talking about like whatever but like you're probably gonna be sitting around more you're not gonna move as much you're probably gonna be eating more you're gonna be snacking more you're not gonna whatever so like movement is such the foundation to in my a quality life and a long a long being able to live a long life right if you start having my ankles killing me, I can't even go walk for my mile. You know what I mean? As a 55 year old. Right. So what

are you probably going to do? You're going to sit around, you're not going to do as much. And now you look at like from a, from a blood sugar standpoint, from a, an insulin standpoint, what is that going to do to your body? So like, if you can keep someone moving good right now, like, again, you can be lazy and move really good. You know what I mean? But like, okay, if you can move good and I want to go for that five mile walk or i want to go play pickleball or i want to go you know play you know you know in the backyard with my kid or whatever if my joints and everything's moving good i'm gonna be able to keep that active lifestyle and i should be able to keep that you know 60 70 you might have to you know regress some stuff or whatever but like hopefully

i can do that in my 80s and plus but the problem is when you start getting someone like i got bad knees and at 47 what like what what's what's going to happen the next 30 years you know what i mean like as your as your body as your as your you know ability to you know uh your blood sugar and your other stuff starts like as you age and you look at what happens with as we age and how the cell kind of responds to aging and just over time that's going to have a detrimental effect on that, on your overall health. You can look at like the neuro, the neurocognitive components of it, like movement, right. Releases BDNF, right. Which is like basically a fertilizer for your brain. You know what I mean? Like it's extremely important for neurogenesis.

So if I'm not moving my neurocognitive abilities are probably going to be severely limited. You know what I mean? So like, that's one of the things that I think at looking at like, okay, if you can keep someone moving good and then just keep them moving good for the next 30 40 50 years of life their quality of life at 50 60 and 70 it's gonna have the potential to be so much higher or you're having to back problems at 50 or 60 okay it's gonna be tough to like you know i mean like you're probably not gonna want to even just do a whole lot so like that's kind of where my thought process is not even just from an athleticism

standpoint but just even from like i guess a human longevity life standpoint i think those are the things too that you can start teaching kids good habits at a young age of like getting out and moving doing this stuff you're gonna be a lot more likely to keep that stuff for the rest of your life if you're if you have a sedentary lifestyle which i think what we're seeing now with younger kids okay like at 35 and it's like okay you need to be more like everything works everything works a lot better when you're younger you can make mistakes like and i said when i say mistakes you can eat junk food and like oh you're still pretty skinny or like whatever you can do that at 17 18 if you start you see that when you start at 45 you can't your body doesn't handle it the same way but you

keep those same habits you had and you eat the same way or whatever you same stuff your body it's like i'm not doing anything different but your body's kind of worn. It's, it's your pain. You're not able to handle those stuff that you have. And I think that's why, especially like eating habits and all that stuff becomes, you know, super, super important. You know what I mean? Kind of like you talked about, like, it doesn't have, it's not super complicated, but if you, if your normal lunch is, you know, eating a bag of Doritos and just snacking like at night and like whatever at 15,

okay. Like you're probably going it's gonna it's it's that's probably not a good long-term habit standpoint for life you know what i mean and i think that's kind of one of the things to try and look at of like what are like the good habits that we can keep and then how can you keep those for the rest of your life and like what are manageable you know what i mean because like i know i've done keto a bunch of times and other stuff and it's like you know some of it too i think is honestly like the stuff that i've done has been i really liked it but it's also like kind of that mental challenge of like oh man keto like for you know seven or eight weeks you got to be like on point with like

okay i gotta you know meal prep everything out because it's like whatever like i was uh that was like five years ago i was in keto but we were playing in hawaii so like okay you're taking a trip to hawaii but you know what i mean so i'm like dude i got my thermos like with my i think it was like ground beef and there was like avocado and I can't remember like olive oil or like whatever yeah but like you know you're I can't remember how long the flight was or whatever but I'm like everyone that's eating they're like you know sandwiches or whatever but I'm like you know like no I gotta eat my my cold stuff out of my thermos or whatever but mentally it was like man you know you kind of feel like man I'm challenging myself I'm like going on that stuff or whatever

so I think that's where like you know as you go in life or like whatever maybe you just really enjoy it awesome or whatever but I think that's where like, you know, as you go in life or like whatever, maybe you just really enjoy it, awesome or whatever. But I think that's the stuff at a younger age, the movement, the nutrition, the other stuff, setting the foundations so that you're able to kind of, you know, enjoy the life that you want to live and things along those lines. So that's kind of my approach to the movement, the nutrition, the other stuff because I think that really does lay the foundation. It can change.

The problem too is like you don't get everybody, you know, just the way society and like, you know, government and politics, everything's looking, you know, the next two, four, six years. Nobody really looks 20 years down the line because it doesn't, you look 20 years down the line. It's not, it's going to, it doesn't affect your ability to get reelected. You know what I mean? Like whatever. But that's kind of the problem that we have is like, if you want to address problems 20 or 30 years down the line, you probably need to be looking at addressing it now. You know what I mean?

And I think that's one of the things hopefully like with the information, the other stuff that becomes available, people start to kind of think about that, like whether it's parents, kids, you know, whatever it is, and kind of like look at that, you know, in a different lens. Yeah. The spinal articulations, I saw you actually doing some of that with a kid. Like you had a PVC pipe on one. Oh, yeah.

Like on his lower back and then another one on his upper back. So you kind of mentioned that earlier, how you find to be really important so what is what are some of the things that you do with these kids to help them get better control over their spine and why do you specifically do that and think it's important the reason i ask is many coaches don't they don't necessarily pay attention to the movement of the spine but you do so um so i'll start off by saying this i don't do as much as i should or i wish I could. Some of that, I'll be honest, kind of comes back to the training efficiency standpoint of, like, okay, I got 35 or 40 minutes. What – or maybe even less, sometimes 30 minutes.

Like, okay, what can I get done? Okay, like, so if I'm doing, say, 8 to 10 minutes of that, like, okay, now I've got 20 minutes to even just, like, sprint, jump, lift, you know, whatever it is. So I'll be honest i don't do as much as i i should and i i would like to um and i guess that kind of comes back to how can i be more efficient and try and figure stuff out yeah with that said when i can i like to try and incorporate as much as i can um because the spine like i said most people it's an area that i've seen is just so bad like you get people that like like i said push up on l3 or extend l3 and like

you see like c1 c3 c4 move but like you don't see anything at that actual articulation move it's like okay like that bit that area is basically numb you know what i mean it's like like like think about like ice in an ankle that area like your nervous system has no idea where it's at so when we look at like micro movement feeds into global movement so like if i can't articulate or i can't move l3 l4 l5 or whatever all right even when i'm moving or whatever, right? Even when I'm moving or whatever, I'm probably going to be compensating above or below that. So that force isn't going to be going through, if I can't articulate it very well, eccentrically,

isometrically, concentrically when I'm moving, that segment isn't going to take force, transmit forces. It's just not going to do very much. So all that force is probably going to go above, right? Yep. So that's a good example um so all that force is probably going to go above it so like when you start having like mid-back pain or you know i mean like whatever and you're like man my mid-back is like well first of all is it your mid-back all right or is it because your lower back doesn't move or you don't articulate that your your upper back's basically carrying the weight of everything so like we need to fix the lower back and this is like thoracic rotation so basically what the the pvcs are doing is he's keeping um extension uh extension of the lumbar spine and then he's trying to uh flex the thoracic

as he goes so basically what we're doing is you see the pelvis staying straight is that you're getting that full thoracic rotation when you're going on this right so like i said this is a good really good example but the problem is like this is very in-depth articulated like this was like kind of more of a one-on-one setting so like that would be like i said i would love to do that with everybody yeah and then you'll get kids don't mess around or like whatever so it kind of more of a one-on-one setting so like that would be like i said i would love to do that with everybody yeah and then you'll get kids don't mess around or like whatever so it kind of like defeats the purpose but that's that's one of the things like i said from a spinal standpoint most people what are when you're looking at stuff what are people just really bad at and especially when you're kind of limited on time or whatever like what are the stuff that's gonna have your highest

leverage points like spine like i said if your spine doesn't move very well that's kind of a big if you break your back that's probably one of the worst or like you have a back injury that's probably one of the worst injuries you can have because you're kind of limiting what you can do you know what i mean you can hurt your ankle okay not great but you can do you know you can like work around it you can whatever i can't move my back it's hard to walk i can't walk i can't do like whatever so when i look at like how well does the spine move because like i said i think that's a big area of, uh, you know, trying to, uh, you know, incorporate the most I can. If I was on a more one-on-one setting, I would use a lot, utilize a lot more, um, to be quite honest.

But, uh, I think it's super, super important. And it's an area I've had people, honestly, too, like I've had assessments. We were talking about like the FRA assessment I had, I was doing, this was like an eyeopening, uh, one to me, I had our women's soccer team. And I was, you know, going through it. Uh, I have some of the girls I was telling her like move like L5,5 you know go through the lumbar spine and then i i didn't like whatever and then after you know a couple i asked one i'm like oh do you feel any pain doing that because i think that's good like do you hurt and he's like yeah that hurt i'm like wait what

like yeah it kind of hurt when i started moving that one i'm like what you're l4 she's like no like when i started trying to move l4 my upper back started like my spot i'm like well that's really interesting or whatever and so like that's where you see like okay l4 like this area doesn't move good and you're trying to move through the the upper back to move and it's just taking even more load because the lower back doesn't move or you'll get people that the thoracic is a mess and the lumbar spine moves good you know what i mean so like that's where like one of the ones that i've seen and that's why i think it's so important and if you can incorporate it uh to even a more extent than i am um because like i said if you can keep the spine moving good or

whatever and it's also like the articulations everything's going up into the brain you know what i mean so if the spine's not transmitting forces or it's not moving well it's really going to limit like not even just movement but also from a skill development skill acquisition standpoint about what you're able to capable to do because your body your spine is going to tell you to a certain degree where you are in space if that's messed up or it's not moving good, that's going to limit those abilities at proprioception. Gotcha. With like the 90-90 thing that you were showing us in the gym, I have a video. I'm going to pull it up.

Can, like if I did that on my own, can I mess myself up? Because like when we were doing it, like I said said it was a position that I don't think I've really ever been in uh yeah no I've never been in that and it was really interesting and I thought for sure my whole hip leg and abs everything was just going to seize up and it felt like a lot of pain was about to be you know pressed upon me so I'm just curious like if I start practicing that on my own is there anything I need to worry about like or am i fairly okay to kind of just keep leaning more into that like crampy feeling um so i would say like kind of the uh how i look at it or how i i can kind of go about it is um we don't want to feel pain so if i'm feeling pain on something that's like a big indicator on that

so if i'm feeling pain then i would say back off of it, you know, step back. We don't want to go through that. If it's that discomfort, crampy feeling. All right. If, and I would also ask like, what are your,

you know, what are your, what's your injury history? Like whatever, cause that's going to be a big one. So like if you've had chronic, like hip surgeries or whatever, that completely changes it.

If you're relatively healthy and you're feeling that crampy feeling, that's different. Does that make sense? So like, that's how, that's how I would look about it. Now at the same point too, is like, if some people, like there at the same point too is like if some people like there's a lot of people that really shouldn't do there's a lot of 90 90 stuff there's a lot of people that shouldn't

be 90 90 takes a lot of like external rotation hip and a lot of uh you know just being able to get into that position there's a lot of people if you're super restricted you don't move very well 90 90 isn't a good place to start with or what i would do is i would elevate the front knee so like a common way so like you know an air x pad or any type like a foam roller i would put that under the front knee and that's going common way, so like, you know, an AirX pad or any type of like a foam roller, I would put that under the front knee and that's going to be a more comfortable position and it's a better situated position for you. So if you have knee, if someone has like a knee issue

or something like that, I'll either elevate the front knee or the back knee because that'll take some of the stress off the knee if you don't have much, like I said, if your hip doesn't, you have like no hip external rotation, you try and get 90-90, most of that like stretch and that force is going to go through your knees if that makes sense so like that's how i'll modify it like with that so i would i would figure out what's your injury history what's

where are you feeling are you feeling like crampy feeling are you feeling like man this kind of feels like pain pain don't we're gonna we're gonna come away from that we're gonna not go there because that's not a good signal that we want but if it's that crampy kind of this feels uncomfortable like whatever feeling let's work on that then i think the other thing too is like i said trying to figure out like if you haven't been in a position before all right for the most part like i said um the stuff that we did i feel relatively comfortable with because i've done this enough and i'm not you know i mean like whatever um now if you haven't been in a position generally speaking i wouldn't want to go like oh you know what i've never been here now let's put

a thousand pounds on my back and let's let's see kind of what happens that would be kind of my approach a little bit to that too so like i would tell you kind of like you know feel through the position you know gradually kind of building some stuff but like don't go like like we're saying like the running example like okay you haven't ran in whatever hey i'm gonna run 10 miles a day like okay that's probably not a that's probably not a probably not a good idea and you know what you're probably not gonna you're probably gonna be on the couch in two days you're not gonna be able to run for a month because your knees and your hips are messed up or your ankle or your achilles or whatever it is so i think that's that's that's how it would go about that just trying to be smart but then making some modifications around that

um you know based on what your uh your injury history is and then what your kind of joints present with neotropics every single biohacker and their mother talks about the benefits of lion's mane or alpha gpc blah blah. We have this mix of supplement. But no one really tells you how to analyze what you actually should be trying to take or what problems you may have. That's why Andy Triana has made the Nootropics ebook now on our website at powerproject.live. Now, we've had Andy on our podcast multiple times, and he's educated us on so many different things along with Nootropics. But in this ebook, he goes in depth on how to analyze what your problems may be specifically and how to utilize nootropics to

help fix those issues or to help progress in certain areas. Like if you're wanting to speak better, think faster, communicate better. There's so many things he goes in depth on in this e-book and you can get it now on our website at powerproject.live the links in the description along with the podcast show notes um you actually you mentioned something interesting in the gym about you know when lifting most people focus on external rotation of it because squatting etc but you mentioned something about having access to that internal rotation could be something that massively helps external rotation why is that yeah so uh so internal rotation is kind of like the gateway um and kind

of like i talked about uh too there's times where i try to be really well read and kind of give good answers and like you know be well thought on stuff there's also i'll be honest sometimes too where like i i can't explain something really well but there's people that i trust and it comes back to me you know figuring out who you can trust or whatever there's some stuff and like this is a good example of really really smart people that I trust have kind of talked about it, explained it. It makes sense. I can't really explain the physiology of it.

But from the FRC or the FRS system, it's like Michael Chivers is someone that's really good and someone that I think extremely highly of. He was one of my instructors. He's probably one of the smartest people, honestly, that I've ever just listened to. Michael Chivers? Michael Chivers, yeah. Chivers, okay. So, I mean, he'll be talking about how evolution relates to astrophysicists

and how that relates to the joint capsule and whatever. I'm like, wait, what? Where are we at? Like, okay. But, you know what I mean? Someone, like, so when he says stuff like that and there's other individuals, I'm like, okay, this makes sense. I don't feel like I'm being taken out of the blue. but if you improve internal rotation, right. It's going to open up

space, which is going to allow for potentially more external rotation and more linear motion. Right. So a really good example on this, um, and this is kind of one, uh, that I, it made sense to me. So this was, uh, you use aura. Yes. Okay. So I had, uh, so I've had aura for five years now. So I got it. i ordered it in january of 18 and i had to wait seven like eight months to get it back when it was like there was a super long wait so i got i started using it so i've got close to like five years of sleep data on myself which has been really nice yeah it's super super uh like interesting um i can talk about that here in a second but like i got fitted for that ring because i'm trying to figure out what size i want

you got to send it whatever so i go to as a jc pennies in logan utah all right and i get the ring and i put it on and then okay like whatever and i'm like dude i can't get this like it's not just like okay so like no like i literally can't get this this so i'm sitting there for like five minutes trying to get this ring off or whatever and i can't get it and then i'm like i'm going and then i'm like trying to figure it out and then it's i'm like i'm starting to get a little bit and i'm like i i get it and i'm like what am i doing i'm like how do you get if something's tight how do you get the ring off you just kind of just relax completely do you start twisting well i mean i twist and i like so you so so you twist so you're so so you're creating some rotation to open up that linear to open up space

yeah if you will so that's the that's the example or the analogy i use like when i'm talking about why rotation is so important for linear motion. So like, if I can't get this and I pull it, I'm not going anywhere. But if I start applying a little bit of linear rotation or rotation while going into that, it comes off. It's the same kind of concept. You know what I mean? So if my flexion extension is restricted, I don't have space within our articulation. So like, if I'm trying to go here and there's no space, right, I need to create more space so that I can do this and I can do this. So if I hammer internal rotation, I'm opening up space within the joint

to be able to now move internal – or I'm sorry, linear flexion extension and then external and internal. So that's the reason kind of the analogy that I use of why internal rotation is so important. So you create space because most – one of the main problems generally like with passive range of motion, you don't have space. So you have to have space within the articulation to be able to move. So if you don't have space, you have to find ways to create more space within that articulation to create movement. And that's why like the pails and rails that I showed you for the internal rotation, that is going to help free open space.

that I showed you for the internal rotation. That is going to help free open space so now that we can move and we have more, basically, access to be able to have more range of motion, if you will. I also think that just internal rotation, like a little bit in general, just is like tighten. Like tighten it up, you know, and then loosen it up with external rotation. Like it's like you're opening up.

Yeah, exactly. And I think internal too is like it's such, internal and external, especially for the hip, is really important. But if you're opening up yeah exactly and i think internal too is like it's such internal and external especially for the hip is really important but if you're restricted internal rotation like it's going to the knee you know it's probably going to the knee you know what i mean so like okay if you will like from an acl mcl whatever standpoint like you want to have a really good um you know this was a good example that uh you know it was a different system but like dns dynamic neuromuscular stabilization the individual that taught my course was the st louis cardinals uh chiropractor for like you know a long time so a lot of his examples were sport specific

examples and he talked about internal rotation and like uh alex rodriguez and tiger woods their their injuries were very very similar and they both the the nature and the velocity and the forces that they produced whether it was tiger's golf swing or a rod swing were just ridiculous you know i mean that's what made one of the things that made them so good at what they did yeah but what having that amount of force required a lot like ton of internal rotation of the hip you know i mean so like you might look at your standards and that's why it might be like okay the whatever your is oh you need 15 or 20 degrees or whatever internal rotation because that's probably for a general like generally that's good but if you're talking about someone that like has a very unique skill set you know

i mean like a rubber guard like okay it says you need 80 degrees external rotation but if you're talking about someone that has a very unique skill set, you know what I mean, like a rubber guard. Like, okay, it says you need 80 degrees external rotation. But if you want to do rubber guard or whatever, you probably need even more. You need whatever. So both their injuries were very similar in terms of they both required a ton of internal rotation because that femur was just basically slamming into the pelvis or whatever. So if you don't have even that high, high level, that's when you start getting those types of injuries to happen, if you will. So I think that's one of the things too of like looking at like what's your

skill development what's your um you know especially with higher level athletes like what is the the things that you do what does that require and so like even like the bigger like okay if you're driving you know 60 miles an hour that's what your car tops out at like your brakes are what they are if you're driving you know you know 200 miles an hour your brakes better be able to handle you know a lot higher a lot higher speeds or whatever so that's one of the things like with the internal rotation is like you want to make sure that you've got a good amount passively and actively especially from a knee injury standpoint to be able to protect the knee um you know especially from an athletic standpoint because knee injuries you know i mean those can be life or game you know career changing if you will so if you can keep the hip moving good

you know it helps um you know helps keep the athlete on the field which what we talked about is probably one of the most important things. Got it. Is nutrition anything that you end up talking about a whole lot? In college, absolutely. It was huge. I'll be honest. High school, yes, to a certain degree. But I'll be honest. I try and tread lightly on that, and it's not because it's not important

or whatever. Kind of like I think with social media and other stuff with kids it can be very you can say something well-meaning it can be taken like a bad like just a negative way so one of the things like I'm very like even at like college like just deal like you know with eating disorders and other stuff like that or like I try and be I had to deal not with that specifically but like other situations where other you know something was said not negative you know not intended like that but it was kind of taken that way and you know there was like serious repercussions you know i mean with people's lives and that so like that's one of the things i try and be very very general with that um and not try and be very self-conscious

of that to be honest because that's kind of one of my uh i guess fears if you will is that you say something and then a kid thinks even so i try and be very specific like with with specific like okay you should be drinking water all the time right no you shouldn't be drinking three gallons a day probably you know i mean like and it's not like whatever but like you like that's like i try and be very specific like if i'm giving recommendations to be like oh no one's ever gonna think about do it you know i mean like whatever just because you're talking to 12 to 18 year old kids or whatever um but i think it's, like, really important. I think the big area that I really focus on, or I think is extremely critical, is sleep, right?

And, like, sleep, and we can look at, like, just all the benefits. And this is kind of where the aura, like, it's been super beneficial for me because, like, I know I've been doing it for so long. Okay, HRV, this might be up or down. But I have pretty good standards. Like, where's my sleep at? Like, you know, like, whatever. If I see something, like, oh, crap.

Like, I've been doing something for five years, and I see a number I've never seen before. Like, whether it's good or bad, it's okay that's different that's telling me something or whatever um so like a really good like example and i think this is one of the probably if you ask me and this probably changed over the last like two months because of doing this probably one of the biggest health things that people could do if you just gave like one something one one general thing all all right? Stop drinking coffee and caffeine after like 11 a.m., all right? So the half-life of caffeine is about, I think, eight hours. So like half the caffeine, if you have a cup of coffee at noon,

half that caffeine is still in your body at 8 p.m. The quarter-life is around 12 hours. So if you have a cup of coffee at noon, a quarter of that caffeine is still in your body at midnight. All right? When I drive through, and I see this all the time, and this is probably if you're an investor in a Starbucks, probably not what you want to hear or whatever, but like how often do you drive by a Starbucks or whatever, and it's like 3 o'clock. It's like, dude, why is the line so long for coffee at 3 o'clock in the afternoon?

I gave up caffeine for Lent during like the religious period, if you will. That's 30 days, right? It was. Is Lent a month or no? It was six weeks plus days. So I think it was 40, I think it was 47 days, I think, if I remember correctly. But so I was always like, I don't need caffeine. Like it's not like I like drinking.

I like drinking my cup of coffee in the morning, kind of wake me up. I'm someone that like I don't like rushing out of the door. So I'll give myself extra time to like wake up, even if it's less sleep, because I want to sit down for 10-15 minutes drink my coffee kind of just you know get and then get on you know with everything um so like that was what i like i'll be honest the first three or four days like i was struggling big time like i was like dude like what like i'm literally i'm having trouble staying awake at like 9 a.m yeah yawning at like at like eight o'clock i'm like dude i'm going to bed like i bed. Like I can't like, whatever. I was struggling big time with it.

Then I started after like three or four days. Like, okay, let's try like tea or whatever. So I got into like black tea and I was like, okay, that actually, I went to that and it was just enough caffeine where I was like,

okay, this is good. I still feel really tired at night, like eight, nine o'clock. I'm like, dude, I'm ready to go to sleep or whatever.

So I went to that and honestly, towards the end, I was like, I didn't need, I didn't need coffee. Like I was like, if I never had coffee again for the rest of my life i'd be okay with tea like whatever um but anyway my sleep the last

like first couple months of the year before lent started was like oh man like why is like my heart rates you know up like you know 51 52 which is normally like you know mid you know 43 to 48 kind of my range so my heart i'm like dude i'm not trying to focus on some other stuff i'm like my recovery like why is my heart rate so elevated my hrv is kind of crappy my sleep's just bad um for the first two months of the year i cut the caffeine out all right and then i'm like after the first like like week or whatever i'm like dude i'm back down to like 43s 44s like all this other stuff my numbers are like just like my sleep every night is like phenomenal or whatever that was the only thing i changed or whatever and i've been doing this for five years like i said

it was like this is probably one of the best stretches of sleep i've had in five years and i was like man this is like really eye-opening for the amount of like caffeine because generally what i would do is you know if i if i would have my first cup at 5 a.m or what kind of depending on the day but say 5 a.m yeah i was someone that i would drink my cup then i would take my my thermos or whatever with me i sip on you know just sip you know during the day so i have another 20 25 ounces you know over a four or five hour period i try and cut off like 11 a.m but you know just get down to your desk i just enjoyed it and so like i would still have caffeine in my body you know until you know midnight or you know plus you know just when you're looking at like the half-life and quarter-life i was like

you know what i needed to stop like so i changed and i was like i'm just gonna have my coffee like right when i wake up so like 5 a.m and i'm kind of done you know generally 5 30 5 45 so like now even like it's good through the morning afternoon but also like oh man four o' and i'm kind of done you know generally 5 30 5 45 so like now even like it's good through the morning afternoon but also like oh man four o'clock i'm starting to kind of feel it and like when i go like at night i'm like dude i'm tired and i want to go to bed and my sleep still stayed where it is so like coming full story on that it was like man you know what like that i never would if i wouldn't have given up i probably would just kept doing that but like cutting the caffeine earlier in the day is probably one of the best things i think when you just look at the benefits

of sleep people waking up during the night like yeah you shouldn't be waking up in the middle of the night like that's not normal like you should be able to sleep through the night you have trouble falling asleep like i think i can't remember the book it was uh but it's basically like the neuroscience of sleep um along those lines but it was like there's three things i think that that like a researcher someone had like to all cause mortality or like whatever related to sleep and it was like sleep efficiency below 85 so like you sleep seven hours whatever 85 of that you should be asleep whatever that time because most of that even if you don't like whatever you're not gonna be asleep the whole time or whatever the second one i believe was like um an abnormally low or large amount of REM sleep

so like very very small or very very a ton of REM sleep and i think the third one was regularly takes like more than like 15 minutes to fall asleep something like that and like most people like this is what like wait so I shouldn't be sitting in bed for like an hour trying to fall asleep like yeah no that's not that's not normal like you're probably either your heart rate and this is what most people they go to bed and their heart rate's way too elevated so like okay your heart rate's way too elevated and I can tell too like when my heart's beating fast I'm like gosh dang it like it's gonna take me a while to fall asleep calm down are you on your on your phone? Like, did you just eat? Did you eat too close to bed?

That's a big one for me. Like, people eat way too close to bed. So, like, I try and set that up to where I'm eating, you know, an earlier dinner. You know, how much cell phone? What was your cell phone? You know, were you working out? Were you, like, whatever. What can you do to calm your heart rate down?

So, like, for me, I try and read two books at a time. One, like, in the morning is when I'm more focused. It's more, like, kind of, you know, in-depth. The one in the evening is more just, like like a biography or something. That's not, I don't have to critically think about it. It's kind of more relaxing. I put my phone down and it helps me, you know, calm myself down to fall asleep or whatever. So I think that's the one of like, when you look at like the caffeine consumption, cutting that out earlier in the day, I think for most people would probably have as good of effect on their lives. When you look at

what sleep does, falling asleep, you know, all the other, you know, hormonal aspects of good quality sleep, you know, with that. So, you know, I'm sure people could argue that and I'm, you know, open to change that or whatever. But I think honestly, like, if you can just cut the number of people that are drinking coffee past like noon, you know what I mean? Like, I think you would see significant improvements across the board on a lot of health markers for most of the people. We love it though. It's pretty too too delicious so you're you're um being in texas you're you know people are fanatical about football right and so you're hired by like a local high school is that normal in the area to have strength coaches at the high school i would say uh it's somewhat and it's becoming more normal um i think one of the things too is is kind of to that point

of uh you know as some of the facilities keep expanding so like there's uh you know becoming some really really nice facilities like in terms like better than a lot of colleges and stuff like that so it's like uh if schools are you know gonna have this like you know multi-million dollar weight room and like this you know indoor facilities and stuff like that but you don't really have anybody to like actually like oh man we have like you know 30 racks but you don't really have anyone to coach that it's kind of not that benefit you know i mean like you're kind of limited or whatever so those positions are becoming a lot more um prevalent i think it also too one of the things is like looking at it like when you look at just the numbers of like

it's not just high school but like your junior high so like i said we have two feeder junior highs and we have other stuff so like you know the number of kids that i work with like is probably more than anybody like you go to any school like you're your teacher your principal like the number of daily contacts i have it's probably higher than anybody else you know i mean just in terms of the number of kids maybe it's 10 minutes five minutes 30 minutes or whatever but you're around that large number of kids so i think the benefits and like i said um i think it's starting to become more normal and i think other states are starting to kind of expand into that so like uh socal um some of the the private schools down in southern california are starting to make some uh you know a lot of

investments into that um there's other areas that's becoming more prevalent um you know as well um so texas i would say you still see the ones over there like the football coach strength coach you're still like that's not um that hasn't like gone away per se and not saying, you know, I'm throwing people under the bus or whatever, but there is becoming more like full-time positions from, from a strength conditioning standpoint. Cool. Is that all we got? I think so.

All right, Andrew, take us on out of here. All right. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Please make sure you guys slap that like button and we have one more question. I do actually, because like, you know, you were talking about all the different certifications that you've you've gotten and a lot of coaches listening to the podcast so if you were to rank some of the certifications that have really helped you and helped you like apply these things to the people you work with what would be your top three or top five um i would probably start out with with the frc um certification i think that's

probably one been one of the best the best ones I've taken personally. It had a huge effect on me. That's from the Functional Range System, I guess, if you will. The second one, I would say probably the Speedworks. It's Jonah's to-do, the one I was kind of talking about. He's got some different products, but I took a lot of stuff from him that was really good on the speed development aspect so that'd probably be my second one um my third one um oh i hadn't talked about uh uh so i've taken courses from charles paulquin yeah um so i'd be

remiss not to say that because he's had a huge impact and a lot of what he does you know um you know applies to what i do um so I took metabolic analytics, which was basically like his nutrition, body fat, body composition course. And I'm taking like a private, you know, internship class with him, you know, as well. So I would say like the Poliquin stuff would be like the third one, if you will. Maybe now that I think about that, maybe they're all, they're all really good, you know, with that. But like, as you can see, probably with the squats, you know, I've kind of mentioned this as well as I think like one of the things, if you see, you know with that but like uh as you can see probably the squats you know i've kind of mentioned this as well as i think like one of the things if you see uh you know you know polyquin's obviously like a very controversial you know figure you know um but i will say like

i think at the mark of a good coach or a really good you know high level uh you know individual is when you see someone that does like a polyquin or whatever i like generally it's like man that's really good you know that's really good squat you know those movements are really good and i think that's one of the things you can see a lot of people now do a bunch of certifications or whatever and it's kind of like the more you like scale up on some of that stuff it's harder to to really get like the true i guess practitioners if you will so it might be and i see this with other stuff it's like you could be a good course but if everyone's got that certification you're gonna get people that aren't good at it yeah or whatever and i think that's the

one thing with poliquin is you see people that have an extensive poliquin background it's like okay those squats that's a really good squat like that's really good right there and i think that's the one thing with poliquin is you see people that have an extensive poliquin background it's like okay those squats that's a really good squat like that's really good right there and i think that's a credit and uh to what how he taught and his teaching system and kind of uh you know what he did you know with that so i just want to kind of highlight that um but those would probably be the three courses that i would look at and i'll be honest hopefully um you know it's probably gonna change you know hopefully a year or two from now or whatever as you know you take more courses you learn you kind of expand yourself and not trying to you know just get stuck into like the old ways and how you've always done that stuff i think that'd probably be you know one of the biggest

not to keep you know talking which i'm pretty good at but uh like you know you can look back at like some of those videos like i think my training philosophies i wouldn't say it's like completely shifted every year but like it's different what i'm saying right now is different than it was a year ago and it's different than it was two years ago as you can probably see some of the older videos and three years ago and four years ago and it's probably gonna be different a year from now and some of it too is like what you're learning and whatever but it's also stuff of like man that i thought that would work out better like that we were doing this or we changed this up and i thought it would be better two years down the line it's not okay well that's a good that's

an experience that i can draw from i'm seeing that firsthand that's going to change my philosophy you know i mean on some of that stuff um so like that's one of the things i just you know if i keep what i'm saying a year from now is different i give different courses that's probably a good thing because i've expanded as a coach i've evolved and i'm not trying to get pigeonholed into one you know idea or framework if you will so uh the last thing i forgot because you didn't ask me about my shirt it's a beautiful shirt you gave it to me oh i did yeah so like this is so i'm really big give it back so it's actually funny because one of the one of the uh one of the hip mobility drills um this was 2019 all right uh one of somebody uh from your company like reached out to me on instagram and was like i love what you do mark loves what you

do want to send you some stuff boom boom, boom. I was like, okay. Like, no strings attached. Like, sent me, you know, this shirt, some other stuff. But then they had that note in there as well. Oh, cool. So this. Awesome. Yeah, this was Jessica.

Wow. Very cool. So like I said, it was very, like I said, and that's one of the things i tried like when you get notes and cards like it means like you didn't have to you know do that or it's like wasn't asking for like anything in return or whatever but like i said i think it's obviously a credit to it to you that's cool people like like i said no yeah like i said it was really mad and cool and i'll be honest i really like the shirt because it's got it's got kind of that tight

so it makes your biceps look good it's one of my favorite shirts uh whatever but yeah it's just kind of coming coming full circle on that so i really do appreciate it awesome thank you so much for your time today really appreciate it do you have a way for people to like learn from you um so if you go uh i guess my social media right now i've got i'm in the process of getting a uh you know a website some other stuff put together um i've got it should be live right now um but it's kind of a youth course uh if you will so it's it's a youth program so my video demos the program um so it's kind of geared towards kind of like i was talking about for parents that like don't have any background on it but like here's the demos here's how you do

the exercise here's what to look for here's how to regress progress so that should be available so like i said if you want to start and it's kind of geared towards you know everybody but like okay you're in the middle of nowhere in montana i don't really have anybody or whatever like what can i do in the backyard or my gym you know with my kid so that's available i'll have some other stuff uh coming available as well. But like the social media where all that information will be at. So, yeah. Cool.

And check us on out of here, buddy. All right. Make sure you guys like, subscribe, and comment. I want to hear from all the coaches in the house. Drop those comments down below. Let us know what you guys think about today's conversation. Follow the podcast at MBPowerProject all over the place. My Instagram's at IamAndrewZNZima.

Where are you at? Discord's down below. At NzimaNyang on Instagram's down below at Nseema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube at Nseema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter. Joey, where can people find you? Because you just mentioned it,

but where can people find you? So all my social media is at my first and my last name. So at J-O-U-I Burglis, B-E-R-G-L-E-S. Burglis, not Burgles. It's common, it's common. You're right.

Okay. So I'm on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. So I think that's about it. Nice. You're going gonna have to write a book or something people need to find out this information i'm at mark smelly bell strength is never weakness weakness never strength catch you guys later bye