Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 216 Live - Cory Schlesinger

Episode Date: May 24, 2019

Cory Schlesinger is the strength coach for men’s basketball at Stanford University. In his first two seasons, Stanford’s 2017-18 squad posted its highest scoring average (75.9 ppg) in 16 years, best field goal percentage (.461) in 14 years and collected the fourth-most rebounds (1,368) in a season in school history. Schlesinger has revolutionized in-season strength training for collegiate student-athletes, with a method that is now internationally recognized. He is continuously sharing his knowledge and experience on multiple platforms, including podcasts, satellite radio and several public speaking engagements. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

You've been counting your macros over there? This man eats like 300 grams of protein a day. He's getting 300 grams? Yeah. I was surprised. Like, I mean, that's a lot. It doesn't seem... Your poop stories are going to increase.

Well, so I don't know. I'm going to ask somebody who definitely has a lot more knowledge than me, but I think there's definitely something to the MK677 that I'm taking because ever since I started, my poops have been totally normal. No explosions out the back, no emergencies, just pretty straightforward, just regular taking a dump. How long has that been happening? Since I, so probably like seven weeks now. You've been having normal poops.

Yeah, it's kind of weird. It's a miracle. So I think I'm retaining more calories than I have in the past too because I have been gaining weight. Could be something that you're taking, but it could just be your body has finally adjusted to some of the diet. Hopefully, yeah. You've been messing around with diet stuff for a while.

Right. Maybe just have the tools to have a normal stool every once in a while. Tools for normal stools. That's right. I like it. That's what we need. Yeah. It's amazing how poop is the ultimate fantasy, like a good poop.

Now like the gold standard, like shit, today is literally a good day. Yeah. Somebody told me a while back that they're i don't know i don't i don't know i don't know where it stands now but uh i called it an analyzer this is going to get interesting i know it's going to get good real quick right um but basically it was uh something that can tell you like about your poop but i was like man could you imagine if you had that like in your house it could give you like feedback and information about whether you're on track with your eating. I mean, it gives you a lot of information about your gut health and a lot of information.

A lot of it's in your poop. Yeah, I would hit a PR every day. Yeah, a lot of great information's in your blood. There's a lot of great information in your butt, too. I probably set records for volume back in the day. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that could be another thing it could yeah it could like take a picture of you like when you've taken your biggest dump

you stand up and you take a picture yeah like woo yeah stack butt stuff yeah always get to talk about how much it weighed and everything that's actually something i was curious about like if they could somehow implement a scale inside a toilet like you know here's the base weight i mean it's so complicated because of the water oh yeah well that's what i mean though but like it would always stand for it he could probably figure it out there's a lot of smart people over there smart people rubbing off on you no not at all like it's all a fake like i've totally faked my way into the situation so that's good do you by some odd chance know a guy named ron fedco

no oh man can you grab the the mic and just kind of aim it towards you oh there you go yeah ron fedco he used to be my power lifting coach a long time ago and he ended up being a professor at stanford but there's probably a shit ton of people at stanford so right makes sense he wouldn't run into him but he used to be a savage power lifter no shit he uh bench pressed 225 i saw him do it uh he benched 225 for 64 reps jesus he benched around 545 he competed at 220 and 198 really he was just super strong i think he was squatting seven and pulling seven you know he was just just and he's brilliant well he has yeah he has so he has a phd in um like mathematics and something and like some sort of specifics on mathematics i can't remember exactly what it was um but then he actually went on to win a uh an academy award

because he took his math and he applied it to special effects, and he helped make special effects for water. Wow. And just him and the team he worked with, the company he worked with, they won an Academy Award. It was unbelievable. You're describing Beast from X-Men. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. No, this guy is like, yeah, he's twisted.

It's not safe for him to he's twisted, you know what I mean? Like he's, he's, uh, it's not safe for him to be like out, you know, out in the streets. Basically he's like bipolar on top of all this. So it's, yeah, some puts in some,

uh, interesting, uh, twist into his relationships and stuff. Anyway, we got Corey Schlesinger here. Did I say it right? Close enough.

Schles, Schlesing. So how did we say Schlesinger? Schlesinger. I did get it right. Schlesinger. Yeah. I'm pumped up, man. I'm fired up to talk to you. Appreciate being here, man. You know, being a strength coach for basketball players, like, you know, a lot of times these really talented athletes, sometimes they don't want to get after

it. You know, so I was just talking to a friend this morning, a good friend of mine for many, many years, Ben Alderman. He just recently got into working with some basketball athletes, some guys that might be picked up in an upcoming draft and stuff like that. And he said, man, I have never done this before. I've never worked with people that don't really want to work out that much. Like they do want to work out. They do want to get better, but they don't have this burning desire. They're going there because they're supposed to go there. They're going there because a lot of times your camp or whoever you're with that's helping you get drafted, your agency rather, they're paying for you to get some of these treatments, massage therapies and different things. And they're paying for you to go train, but you don't really want to train. You're seven

foot three and you dominate and you're like, I'm good, man. I don't want to like lift. And the process of lifting, it takes a really long time to gain any strength. Do you face any of that or is it different being at Stanford? It's easier at Stanford as far as getting the quote-unquote buy-in because these kids, they've jumped through hoops their whole life just to get into Stanford. And the way they think about development is, well, hard work. And it doesn't matter what form hard work comes in, whether it's studying hard or playing basketball hard or lifting hard

or preparing for sport hard. So at Stanford, I was able to pull off some things that I don't think I'd ever be able to pull off anywhere else. We do this methodology called microdosing. So essentially we're in season training and we lift six times a week. And it sounds crazy, right? Like, oh my gosh, your training volume is so high. But once again, it's in small little increments. And essentially we just take one major movement and ride the hell out of it that day. And we do it before they go into their individuals and then right into team practice. So essentially it's more of like a glorified strength warm-up more so than anything or a potentiation.

And so how we organize it's pretty simple. We go more max effort work, you know, obviously further away from competition. And then on game days it's a lot more elastic and reactive. And so you can fit in a week, I mean, six different training sessions. If you do a lot of, I mean, if you do very similar things every day, then the kid who wasn't very good at lifting weights, just from the volume, the sheer volume alone, all of a sudden motor learning, they're able to actually train really well. They're actually good looking weightlifters,

even though they have 7'2 wingspans, because it's just a sheer experience alone. I mean, in one season, if you look at it from a volume standpoint or a frequency standpoint, they've done four years of training than what they typically done in one season. So that's what's been great about Stanford, because no one even questioned it. I just came through, and I was like, look, we're going to lift every day.

This is how we're going to set it up. You guys are going to come in, knock this out, go right into practice. And then from that perspective, like, yeah, at the beginning, it was a little bit of rumblings, like, man, we lift every day. You know, and then from that, I was, I made it really simple. I was like, whoa, here's option B. And I just made option B and C way worse than option A. I'm like, okay, we can come in early in the morning, train for an hour and a half, two to three times a week in season. I don't think you want to do that right now. That sounds terrible. Yeah. So I'm only bringing you in once a day. So now I'm removing a stress alone. And I think that's the biggest aspect that we're not seeing enough, especially in sports performance is the holistic stress and then of course being a kid at Stanford that stress the academic load it's way way higher so for

me it's almost like a control every single day I see these guys and now I can see from a readiness standpoint where they are have that conversation with the coach before they go into that dynamic environment aka practice and now we can start making or have more flexibility within our training so now there's more autonomy in their training. There's more actualization in their practice. And so, yeah, for us, it's more readiness. People, you know, they really undersell and then they also over-talk about recovery.

And they talk about recovery in weird ways. I think as soon as we talk recovery, we're kind of thinking about stretching and foam rolling and massage therapy. But I always think recovery starts with the training process. Amazing. You know, and it sounds to me like, man, if I'm an athlete and you're telling me we're going to probably do like one movement a day with maybe I'm sure there's still a variable in there of some warm up. Right. And then there's there might be like a quote unquote like back offset or something in there. You can explain a little further in a minute. But, um, if you were to tell me, yeah, you're just going to do one exercise, but we're coming in and do it every day

right away. My mom would be like, Oh shit. Like, that's kind of cool. Like I get to lift. We're going to be able to like probably work pretty hard while we lift. And then we're going to be able to work pretty hard in practice. Cause I we're going to be able to work pretty hard in practice because i'm not going to be slowed down by this this lifting and a lot of athletes you know a lot of athletes think lifting is kind of stupid they're like don't they don't want to do it's not it's not their thing their thing is the sport a lot of times that's what they're passionate about that's what we're excited about so i think that from that perspective i would think i would be like damn i'm going to be fresh for both that's going to be sick right i mean the one thing that i like the most is it's just habit forming like especially when

they're not away from me or when they are away from me I mean that's kind of their routine as soon as they go like they're doing pickup well they're going to go hit some dumbbell snatches or they're going to go through complex so for us our warm-up is complex every day the istavon work where essentially you have a barbell dumbbell dumbbell, kettlebell in your hands, and you go through basic movement patterns, RDL, or a hinge, a hip flexion, maybe a triple extension, a push and a pull. And essentially you do that every single day. If you break that down, that's every movement that you would ever train besides the bench press. So these guys are becoming great hingers because they're getting the volume, squatters, great pressers, and great rowers. What else do you want?

And then you do that through a long period of time. All you're doing is building up that capacity so they can actually get strong one day. And essentially, you look at that complex, for instance, we'll use cleans, for example. If you're doing a clean complex before you go hit heavy cleans, well, if I'm looking at 20 kilos on the bar in your complex and it looks like shit, probably not going to be a good day. Hey, pack it up. You're good, man. Like, hey, you hit your warmup set.

Go ahead and go. But I don't want to miss those opportunities that they want to get awesome. You know, like there's days and you've just experienced this. You feel like shit. You're probably hung over or whatever. You come in and all of a sudden you hit a PR.

You're like, where the fuck did that come from? But if we only train one to two times a week in season, quote unquote, maintenance, which you see in all basketball, you're like, where the fuck did that come from? But if we only train one to two times a week in season, quote unquote maintenance, which you see in all basketball, you're going to miss all those opportunities to actually get strong. Those, those opportunities are going to come once every blue moon. But for us, it's coming like two to three times a week, depending on how our training is. So look, if we, if we really break it down from a holistic stress standpoint, all I'm doing is priming them up for practice. If you only did one movement every day, think about it.

Like, all right, Mark, you're coming in, you're squatting. That's the only movement I'm going to let you do. You're probably going to go hard as shit during that squat. And then the next day, okay, you got bench. You're probably going to go hard as shit on that bench. Do that. Now I'm training guys stronger, faster, more often. What do you think happens at the end of season? We're in january february march and we cut practice volume in half that's where prs are set so now that's the

time we're trying to win fucking games right like that's the games that matter we're trying to win a championship why not be the biggest fastest strongest team then not build all this shit in the off season because you see these great videos of you know guys hitting prs at the end of summer great summer training went well guys but PRs at the end of summer. Great. Summer training went well, guys. But now you're losing all of that with a six-month season. Yeah, you're a few percent worse.

Yes. As the season goes on, your strength goes down. I remember experiencing that playing football. I remember at the end of the season trying to bench or squat or something like that. It felt terrible. Right. But if you have that sheer volume alone. And once again, if you do a complex, what is it, 20%, 30 20 30 you're just working on movement patterns you're just keeping it fresh um but the part that i like is now i actually have data to back it up so we have our

force plates and i just take a very simple metric and it's like what we were talking about earlier everybody's got to understand that metric okay everybody knows what jump height is right oh yeah okay players are into it coaches are into it i'm it. But now that I have force plates, I can go into the details of like, okay, eccentric rate of force development, RSI mod, concentric impulse. I can see how they're actually creating that force. And what's really cool about that is now I can look at it from a fatigue management standpoint. And the way we train is when we're in January, February, March, our holistic volume is cut in half because practice isn't as tense.

We're mainly doing film. So now we have this huge reservoir of stress or capacity, I should say, that we built. Now, shit, let's just get awesome. We've got this big reservoir to actually train hard and heavy. So we're hitting our PRs at the end of season. And it just so happens to reflect

in our counter-movement jumps at the end of season. I mean, guys are not only hitting lifetime or excuse me season prs but some guys are hitting lifetime prs in march shit that's what you want right like you want the guys performing at the highest level when it matters the most yeah other than force plates because you mentioned that is are there any other like new things that you guys use to track metrics on these players absolutely i mean that's that's the hot topic in sports now, right? It's all of these data points. And most importantly, it's, okay, data's cool, collecting data,

you know, getting every metric you can under the sun, but the real issue is actionable data. Like, what are we actually doing with this data? And the example I used earlier, the counter-movement jump, everybody in the entire program, hell, the guy who's washing the jock straps knows the counter-movement jump, everybody in the entire program, the guy who's washing the jock straps knows what counter-movement jump is. Good. We can all have the conversation. So it's apples to apples. Now if I run in there and we have GPS data, so it connects on, we use this little chip, it's basically on their back, and they run around and I can see everything

they do. On the court? On the court. In real time. From what my understanding is, some of this came from the San Antonio Spurs. Is that where they kind of started some of this, like with Tim Duncan and stuff like that, and they pulled them off the court a lot? Yeah, so that's a bit amazing. I think from that perspective,

it was more of just load minutes, right? And for us, it's, look, we just actually want to see what the stresses are. So you're looking at jumps and everything. I can see it all. Literally, I can be in my weight room with my iPad, and I to see what the stresses are. So you're looking at like jumps and everything. I can see it all. Like literally I can be in my weight room with my iPad and I can see what play we're running because I can see the dots in real time

because it's web-based. So the company is called Conexon, but basically it's GPS indoors, which that's kind of new now because you can get it outdoors. You can get it with soccer. That's why soccer is ahead of the times because they actually have all these years of data. But now we can get GPS indoors. So now I

can have that same apples to apples conversation with the staff. Everybody knows what speed and distances, right? Like any asshole knows that. So I can just go, Hey coach, like our intensity, here's an intensity metric that we're going to say is associated with how hard practice was. intensity metric that we're going to say is associated with how hard practice was. Here's a distance metric. Okay. Today, this is what today looked like. Boom. Just like you do in a weight room, load volume, same shit, right? So now we're all having the same conversation. Once again, we can get in the weeds and we can look at Excel three. We can look at, you know, D cells, X cells, left and right asymmetries. We can look at all this cool stuff, right? But is it actionable?

Does the head coach know the data? Like, can he do something with that data? Or is he just going to go, hey, Corey, great Excel spreadsheet, man. Don't know what the fuck to do with this. We're still going to run this offense today. Okay, whatever, right? Do what you got to do. But yeah, so once again, other technologies.

Bloodwork is starting to become a big topic now. It's a great company called InsideTracker. Really, you just go to CVS or go or not CVS, but like a Safeway, get your blood drawn. And it's a web based company takes, I think it's 30 or some years worth of research and basically look at your blood specific to a sporting population, not just general populations. We're not just getting, you know, here's your T score, like you're 300, you're good. And you guys are doing this with the players right now? So it depends on the situation. So ideally that's something very intensive, right? Ideally, we're not going to be able to say, Hey, everybody, we're drawing your blood three times a year. Now, if you are a professional team, absolutely. I think that'd probably be the best route. But we do it in case situations, like certain circumstances that we're like,

man, this guy experiences fatigue a lot. Is it just he's tired? No, no, like magnesium's probably shot. Like we got to look at some things that could be easy fixes, right? Like from a supplementation standpoint or just from a diet standpoint. No, vitamin D D, we prescribe,

was it 50,000 IU vitamin D because the population I deal with, we're indoors all year long. I don't care that we're in California. I mean, we travel all around the country. So things like that, yes, are cool. But it's really interesting in this day of data is everybody wants to chase that fucking 1% of performance increase.

And I'm like, you're missing this 99% of just training fucking hard. But the warriors use it. Right. That's what always happens, right? It turns into this fucking race war. Duke uses it. Right. And then your coach is like, oh, oh, someone's scrambling, right?

And it's like, well, there's a bunch of different things. Number one is like, well, maybe that guy understands how to use the tracking really well, which that is who's taking this information and doing something with it. And then also, too, there's so many other factors. There's recruiting. There's like maybe we don't have the right ballplayers, which we can track everything we want to track but maybe we just uh have too many uh players that aren't aren't that good i call it tracking mediocrity like who gives a shit right give me

give me some guys that are like you're one and done track those motherfuckers like i get that but you know you got this like affluent kid from that's like six foot tall trying to play post. You're like, what the fuck are we going to do with that? It doesn't matter what you do with that kid. He's still six foot tall. You're like, I'm a strength coach, but I'm not a magician. Fact. Chicken shit to chicken salad.

I use that with my staff all the time. So what I tell my staff as far as recruiting, I'm like, whatever you recruit, think that's already the best version of themselves. And whatever I add on top of that, great great but don't make me the transformation guy because if you make me the transformation guy you're going to fail every single time because what is performance and it turns here's another topic like it turns into okay does my guy look good in a jersey damn that's a good strength coach i'm saying come on i guess like any assholes tricep it's like he's got some big ass shoulders shredded right and it's like man who's if there is then if there is some data that says swole ass triceps or a nice little horseshoe makes you shoot a three better than 100 we're gonna be fighting extensions so the cows come home right but that shit don't

exist right i mean there's so many other variables that go into it. And if you really go to these NBA games, get as close as you can to the players and just look at them. Oh, yeah. And you're going to go, shit, like Kevin Durant ain't swole. His legs, man.

Oh, my God. Like, you're wondering, like, how do you not break? Yeah. But then, like, James Harden, like, nothing against him. Kind of dad bod-ish, you know what I mean? And killing motherfuckers, like, just crushing. Emmitt Smith.

Emmitt Smith was like that. Emmitt Smith had some, like, traps, and that was about it. It was kind of chubby, the rest, you know? Right. Greatest, or most amount of yards, anyway. Running back of all time. So my goal is just to make efficiency. Now, it just so happens, yeah, some armor building.

Absolutely. I don't want my team looking weak. Like, fuck that. Like, no, they're reflecting. Do you're reflecting do you have like a swole day like just to play around do you have like bicep tricep uh blast off day or something like that we have a swole like month because we're as soon as we come off off season the last thing i want to do is beat the shit out of joints right the last thing i want to do is be on the court it's uh important to let them have fun too right play whatever music they want and kind of just have at it every once in a while. So what's cool about Stanford is like we're called the farm, right?

So now we have our arm farm, right? With the Stanford logo and all that. So we have like six different, you know, arm workouts. Guys just choose whatever they want to do. But I let them have the autonomy to do whatever they want because that's the shit they want to do. They want to look, hey, it's tank top season year round in basketball. You feel me? Like everybody wants to have some. Oh, wow.

There's Harden. Wow. That's awesome. He's like, I don't care. He's like, I don't give a shit. I'm getting paid. How often do you let your guys like choose? Because like when you think a lot of strength coaches, right?

Yeah. They're like, even when I was playing soccer, right? My strength coach, he would give us benching and squatting or whatever. Right. We do that maybe three times a week, but we don't have choice. Right. We do this and we do this weight. Like how often do you give them choice? This is like my favorite question. You have no idea because in January, February,

March, where it's time to win, that's where I give them the most autonomy. There's a neck up perspective that a lot of people miss. Like, look, don't get me wrong. We can read, you know, super training. We can lead, we can read all these these books that tells us what the hell happens. But if the intention is not there, I don't care what French contrast method, I don't care whatever you do you think is working, it ain't working if the kid doesn't think it's working. So for me, yeah, I'm going to force you into this box of you're going to front squat because that's going to make you better.

And that kid really wants to do like a trap bar jump, something that he feels is going to make him better. Once again, I don't even track loads. I mean, I track them at the end of the session, but I don't say you have to hit this certain load. I don't say you have to get somewhere. All I do is say, hey, here's a hip flexion pattern. You choose what hip flexion pattern you want to do. We're going to track that over time, but I don't really care where you get to, but here's the 10-dose speed we're going to have it at. The only thing I have control over is I want you in a quote-unquote zone so move that shit at strength speed speed strength absolute velocity relative strength whatever we're working on that

day but you choose the pattern that just makes sure they're not being lazy exactly and amazing and what's amazing is look i i think i'm an okay strength coach, right? But when you're seeing counter-movement jump heights increase as the season goes, it's not me prescribing loads. It's not me saying, oh, man, on this day, like, we hit 87% at, you know, 1.0 meters per second. No, it's not that. It's the kid said, fuck it. I get to choose that. I get to move it however I want, as fast as I want.

And I get to pick the load. And then all of a sudden, you just see action, right? You see, Oh man, it's kind of movement jumps. Height just got higher. That wasn't me. I always give them the, you made yourself better. I didn't do shit. I create an environment so that you can go do that shit.

Now, once again, you have your shit heads every once in a while, right? So you got to earn the right for that autonomy. Yeah. Right. So my, you know, my upperclasslassmen basically they can be autonomous almost all year round um well in season off season fuck you no it's my time we're we're riding some some horses hard but when we're in we're in season you earn the right to have autonomy you earn the right to train hard by yourself or not by yourself but like with your own intention like with your own

intuition because this is the biggest fucking crime i see in strength and conditioning especially in college is kids leave not knowing how to train themselves they're like where's my where's my sheet at like i don't know what to do you know i don't have my sheet coach can you send me a sheet no motherfucker you gotta pay me now you know what i mean like that's what you generally see but my guys like i let man they send me workouts like when they go'm like, hey, I just need to see this at least. Right. And the shit that they come up with, I mean, it's basically everything that I've already taught them. So now they actually know how to train.

Man, that's life. That's skills for the rest of their life. You know, I send, they take their brothers to the gym with them. Hell, I've seen, I had one kid take his mom to the gym with him. Right. And they're doing kettlebell complex. And I'm sitting there like, bro, you taught your mom how to do some serious swings. I was like, that's love right there.

I can't imagine any other sport performance program that, to me, that's the goal. I just created lifetime habits so you can be successful. Oh, there we go. Man, that is crazy. You got this crazy thing where you throw a kettlebell back and forth. What's the deal with this thing? What's that, like a 30-pound kettlebell where you throw a kettlebell back and forth. What's the deal with this thing? Man, all right, so. What's that, like a 30-pound kettlebell?

Bro, that's 124 right there. Yeah, that's 124 kettlebell. We're flipping back and forth to each other. And that gentleman, his name is Michael Castro Giovanni. He's like a journeyman, if you will. But he developed this really, or he systemized this idea of kettlebell partner passing. And I have a very, really, really dope friend. His name's tony but very psychedelic if you know what i'm saying um but just unbelievable human being and he introduced me to this um probably a year and a half ago and then you

know i thought it was like a novel thing right i was like okay meatheads we're circus act we're just throwing you know this is kind of cool Didn't really think of it from a stress response adaptation aspect, right? And then I tore my Achilles in November and I was like, shit, like, how am I going to reverse engineer this situation? Because the number one thing I could not do, obviously, with a torn Achilles is I could squat. I worked up to squatting, deadlifting, but I couldn't do anything dynamic. Couldn't sprint. I couldn't jump. I couldn't get off the ground.

but I couldn't do anything dynamic. I couldn't sprint. I couldn't jump. You know, I couldn't get off the ground. So how am I going to create the same loads, the same eccentric rate of force, the same impulse that will allow me to, that I experienced with counter-movement jumps or sprinting?

And I was like, holy shit, like this throwing of kettlebells back and forth to each other. And there's this unbelievable neck-up aspect, the reactivity, you know, the connection with one another. Like, I mean, I can see, you know, quarterbacks and wide receivers doing this before a game because there's this heightened state, right? You can't create that heightened state with another partner before game day or right before you hit the gridiron or right before you hit the court, right?

How do you create that heightened state? Because yeah, we're throwing a 203 pound kettlebell back and forth to each other. You can fuck each other up pretty quick if you ain't doing it right yeah so now there's this heightened state right there's this focus that you wouldn't have normally that you see in a warm-up i mean you watch basketball warm-up warm-ups jesus christ man they're going through like layup lines like all lackadaisical and you know whatever which is going wrong like get loose for the game but what truly gets you hype or uh heightened sense and a focus right before tip off nothing yeah so to me it's like almost like a blend of getting out of the weight room a little

bit and working that neck up aspect but yeah for me as far as remodeling my tendon like achilles tendons like basically they're so strong they can lift a fucking car all right so how am i going to create that kind of impulse to remodel that tendon because at that point it was it looked like a forearm back there it was just fat yeah so as soon as we started doing those throws i mean within two weeks all of a sudden that tendon got a little thinner and a little thinner and it just started becoming a lot more pronounced and prominent i was like oh something's happening downstairs it's because i'm actually giving it the load to remodel properly. Yeah. How do we repair, uh, you know, from an injury, you know, uh, a lot of people that are listening to the show, they've had muscle tears and things of that nature and stuff that I've

learned from, uh, guys like James Smith. I used a strength aerobics, uh, I believe, which is from, uh, for Shansky and me. And, uh, I used, um, some I used some eccentric loading and I healed up fast where it worked really well for me. What are some suggestions that you have towards something like that? Man, to be honest with you, it's more of intuition than anything. Like I didn't hire a PT. I didn't, I did all my own rehab. Now, obviously I have a little bit more of a knowledge base than your general population and understanding the human body. But I mean, everyone knows their pain threshold. Everybody knows like, okay, if I'm going to walk and I'm pushing off the ball on my foot, well, how do I reverse engineer that so I can do it? All right. So maybe I need to do some ISOs where I'm just like literally working on

shifting weight to the ball on my foot. Start there. And once again, it's like, look at the end goal, reverse engineer it. And what you, it's like, look at the end goal, reverse engineer it. And what you generally see is like you see in these PT clinics, it's like, all right, here's like your abduction, abduction, here's your band work. Here's all this. And it's like, don't get wrong. That's shit's great. But like after, if you're training, if your rehab doesn't start to look like training really quick, then you're not doing rehab. You know, rehab is the initiation, right? Like you're doing like some isolated stuff. I get that, right? But if you really want to remodel tissue

and get the nervous system to do its job and to reconnect, that shit's got to look like training really soon. Yeah, I tore my pec on a Sunday. And on Monday, James Smith said, you got to go in and bench. 100%. And I was like, I don't know if I can. He goes, yeah, of course you can. He's like, with the bar?

He's like, anything's possible, you know? And so he's like, you know, put the bar on there. And then he had me do it, you know, some other movements in between and stuff like that. But yeah, I mean, it worked great. And I just, I progressively added weight and he just kept kind of sneaking stuff in there. And before I know it, like 30% turned in like 40%. Right. And then I was like, oh my God, like I'm at 80%. And like today is going to be heavy.

And I have no idea if my pecs healed or not, but here we go. And it was totally fine. That's amazing to hear because, I mean, like the power lifting or the weight lifting strong man, like these guys have already had shit figured out for a very long time. And the problem is like, don't get me wrong, research is important, but if we wait on research, it's going to be 20 years before we're like, oh man, maybe you should do some active pushing as soon as you get hurt. Right. For instance, you just put the bar in your hand and started moving

it. That's not a meathead thing. No, there's that makes all the sense in the world. Cause you want to remodel that tissue as soon as possible. If let that sit you can think about the scar tissue you can think about how this muscle is not going to do what it's supposed to do from a neural aspect because you destroyed it to that point and now you're just going to sit on it now you're just going to let it heal and that fucked up stage that's what they always tell you right they always tell you not to move it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Literally the dumbest thing. Like,

I mean, hell, like before I, or when I tore my Achilles, I literally just threw a boot on and started moving because I know I needed to keep locomotion. I think a lot of lifters don't understand that a lot of movement is, is a restorative, you know,

it's for restoration. It's to recover. Absolutely. It's almost to like prep you for the next workout. So sometimes you might go in and I like your concept of kind of the one exercise a day type of deal. I know there's other exercises in there, but one main focus of the day. Um, I've been doing something similar for years now. Sometimes I go overboard with the assistant stuff too, but typically the way that the Westside barbell method is set up in the

conjugate system, yeah, you go bonkers on one thing. You can kind of go for it on one thing. And then when you're done with that, you finish up with three or four other movements. And those three or four other movements, they're meant to be done kind of passively. You're not trying to break a world record on dumbbell tricep extensions. You're just trying to get a lot of, and somebody will say, I can't do dumbbell tricep extensions. They said, yeah, of course you can.

You ever try it with five pound dumbbells? I'm like, no. Like I was trying with the thirties. Well, try a weight that doesn't hurt. Right. Right.

You know, like let's try to, but when you go through exercises that don't hurt and you kind of, uh, have a good pace, I mean, now you're building up some conditioning, you're building up some connective tissue, you feel good, you feel like you're worked hard and you're in and out of the

gym faster even. Absolutely. And even on that topic alone is, you know, especially working with basketball players, I deal with really, really messed up bodies as far as like, they're a good quote from my good friend at Texas, Daniel Roos, he said, they are giraffes with clown shoes. This is essentially what we train. And I was like, damn, that's so accurate. That is like the most beautiful example. So if we want to train with that type of volume, you guys like that shit. It's starting to settle in now.

Okay. But you got to have these regression models set in place right like don't get me wrong cleans and snatches are amazing right i was a purist in the beginning oh my god every one of my guys did that like you wouldn't believe i think that's how i initially got quote-unquote validated as a strength coach it's because i had seven foot dudes snatching and they look damn good right so in the back of my head i'm like yeah man fucking i'm a good strength coach because i can do this shit reality probably like until i had force plates i was was like, fuck, what was I doing? Don't get me wrong, it was good.

They did it with good form, but it's like, yeah, you got 60 kilos in your hand, sweet. That doesn't mean shit if you're trying to actually get a response. So now I have to regress these models. So we do a lot of variations that we just take a trap bar and do the same type of intent. So, for instance, we're all familiar with the clean. You pull it the same, you and do the same type of intent so for instance we're all familiar with the clean you pull it the same you catch it the same the only difference is you don't manipulate the bar around your around your body and catch it in this awkward phase right with this wrist extension so now i just hijack the system to be able to get awesome really really fast and these guys are

moving weights like 20 to 40 kilos like experienced lifters they're moving 20 to 40 kilos more at a faster rate yeah why would i just go down that path of just so going on to what you're saying you can start wherever you you can have your end goal in mind but don't be afraid to regress and you can get heavy on regressions like you can train it well just for instance my guys they gotta manipulate their center of mass and they got these long ass levers and that's going that's's hard. That's hard. But day one, when they come in and we, we deadlift for the first time, they're deadlifting with 203 pound kettlebell to them. They're like, no way I can even touch that. I'm like, bro, get the fuck, stand over top of it. Manipulate that. Hey, that's how you manipulate a load. Now this is you, you are taking your levers and using it to your advantage. I don't care how tall you are. Now we put a barbell in your hand with 203 pounds. Oh, it's a totally different story. No wonder why your back hurts. But my goal is yes, I want to get them doing complex patterns, but more importantly, I want to get them strong as fast as possible. So sometimes you got to hijack and regress those complex patterns so that you can train more often. And again going back to like tissue remodeling like if you're hurt just regress it like you were talking about just

regress and do the same thing it doesn't have to necessarily come in the form of a barbell louis simmons has a great quote he said uh the only thing olympic lifting's ever done is made some fancy shoes which by the way i can't squat that i'm like i put myself in that mold but he's 100 right i mean oh my god there's a lot of things that I like about it. There's a lot of things. Well, and when I've done seminars and stuff, I'll ask people, I'll say, who in here has lifted 400 pounds?

A couple of people put their hands up and I'll say 500 pounds. And then a couple of hands go down and now a couple other hands come up, I'll say 600. That's usually about like where it stops. And I'll say, okay, well, what lift was that in? And they'll say it was a deadlift. And I'll say, okay, so it wasn't in an overhead squat,

and it wasn't in a clean and jerk, and it wasn't in a snatch. And so my point is not to demonize those exercises, not that you would never do those exercises. Different people have different reasons to utilize those exercises. But the point is, is that through the bench press, squat, and deadlift, they're called the big three for a reason. Because you can handle the biggest amount of weights on them. Right. And that has a lot of value, as you just pointed out.

Like doing a trap bar deadlift, what a great, like who can't, I mean, who can you think of that can't do a trap bar deadlift? No one. And then who can you think of that can't do a trap bar deadlift? No one. And then who can you think of that can't do a snatch? Right. Everyone. Yeah, including me. I mean, that's what's beautiful about the Olympic lifts, and the reason why I use them more extensively,

not like CrossFit by any means, but just teaching them the movements within a complex is the motor learning, is the focus and acuity to execute such a complicated movement even though if it's at lighter weights but for me that's my readiness testing right anybody can grind out you know some squatting benching and deadlifting which is totally fine but hitting a very complex movement like a very intricate movement if that bar path doesn't look good one day and complex you know something's up or they're constantly re-gripping that bar you're kind of like nervous system shot like what's going on and they're not hitting that

bar pathway that they normally hit you're like i don't need a heavy load to tell me that because you can like trust me you got your white walk-ons who can grind the out of that stuff right yeah like dude he's not going to play it doesn But, like, you got your guys who are so narrowly driven. It's like, dude, like, I got to have something that I can tell your story, not by grinding you through something that puts you in the hole more. So, once again, training it extensively. Like, yeah, snatch complex. Like, fuck, no one's going to get hurt during that.

Did you say white walk-on? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You cut that. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. It took a second to hit me. I mean, I'm still thinking about the fucking giraffe with the clown shoes.

I'm like, white walk-on. Well, let's just be like, okay, in the college basketball game, there's not many other walk-ons. They're sitting beside me. Hey, look, Duke plays with a lot of white guys, and they still win championships, right? It's shifted a little bit lately. Yeah, they got Zion, who's like just out of this world. Freak, man. Freak. That's crazy. I'm shifted a little bit lately. Yeah, they got Zion who's just out of this world.

Freak, man. Freak. That's crazy. I'm excited to see his development. I mean, he's a dad bod that flies through the air like you wouldn't believe. A dad bod? Oh, yeah. For instance, if we were to look at the number one metric that determines true jumping capacity is lean body mass.

The leaner you are, the higher you can jump, period. This guy's holding on to some extra weight. If he was like, and he will get to that, I'm assuming at some point in the NBA, he will get lean and he will be scary. Remember he blew out of his shoes?

Yeah, he will be scary as fuck. He blew out of his shoe. Did you ever see that? Yeah, I saw that. I saw shit was gnarly. That shit was really gnarly. What kind of athlete can do that? Blow right out of his shoe? Bo Yeah, I saw that. I saw it was gnarly. That shit was really gnarly. What kind of athlete can do that? Blow right out of a shoe.

Bo Jackson never even did that. In that case, like sign this kid up. You're going to have to do some special testing on him. Mutant. Yeah, fact. You know, it's crazy because you, I don't know how many athletes are on the team that you work with, but, you know, you mentioned the giraffe with the clown shoes, right? Yeah.

You're working with like 20-something of those. And I think basketball is one of those sports where, you know, we look at a group of soccer guys, right? They're close to the same height. They're not super tall, not super small. They're pretty average. But basketball players, seven feet. You mentioned the 7'2 wingspan.

You're dealing with a lot of different types of bodies. So with that being said, how do you maneuver working with all these different players in a group training type of setting and specifying like what to do to help each of them progress? Right. How do you how do you do that? So everyone starts at the same place, you know, and that's where I utilize the shit out of kettlebells because kettlebells are easy to manipulate, easy to teach and easy to repeat efforts. And I can get them pretty heavy, pretty fast. Right.

and easy to repeat efforts. And I can get them pretty heavy pretty fast, right? You mean like easy to manipulate in the sense that it's like almost a little bit more idiot-proof? Very much more idiot-proof. You can learn how to lift on it quicker. Absolutely. And, you know, the barbell, you have to, like, for instance, let's look at a swing compared to a clean. Now, obviously, it's two totally different force vectors and all that, and I totally get it. But for simplicity, if I have to do a clean, I have to manipulate that bar around my knees. Right. But if I have

a kettlebell, it's in my center of mass. So that's super easy to manipulate. Cause I mean, that's the goal, right? If you want to lift the heaviest way, you got to put yourself in a position, balls over it. Bingo balls are just dangling over. Right. So like that's how you basically, that's how we teach it. Um, and it um anyways what was the question again oh yeah the uh the group training aspect yeah so everybody starts on the same deal right but you progress through basically like an award system or a graduating system um so when you come into like one of our micro dosing sessions you'll see a prescribed pattern right here we're doing hip flexion but you'll see 13 different squats, right? And some of it's based off autonomy and some of it's based off limitations, right? So that's why I'll use the

athletic training platform from Westside. I love that thing as a belt squat because shit, these dudes long levers, right? Last thing you want to do is put a bar on their back in most cases, especially in season. So I can now, they're limiting factors, their upper back strength. Now just hijack that all right we're just going to go downstairs i want to load the shit out of your hips we'll put a bar on your back still so you can work on the pattern and build that upper back strength in time but i could load it light up top but heavy as shit down low so now hey that's a great squat for him right so that makes a lot of sense so if you were to load someone up with like 315 because they're

a giraffe with clown shoes they might be moving all over the place. It might be sloppy and they might be kind of dumping the weight into their lower back and causing all kinds of problems, maybe even hurting their knees. But if you go on a belt squat, now they can hold the thing in front of them. Well, the one that we have has something in front of you. But they can kind of sit back into the squat more, maybe not cause any damage to the knees. That makes a lot of sense. And there's not a lot of teaching that goes on with the belt squat.

It's amazing, right? It's just like maybe they might have to move their feet around a little bit, and that's about it. My goal, honestly, with most of my guys, and this is what we were talking about earlier, like where do I start with them? I start with them in every self-limiting exercise

as possible. Example, like a belt squat. You can't really fuck that up. It's pretty tough to fuck that up. Dragging a sled. Yes. Can't mess it up. Can't mess that up it's pretty tough to fuck dragging a sled drag yes can't mess it up can't mess it up pushing a sled dragging beautiful example um one of my favorites is a bottom-up kettlebell press it's really hard to mess that up right press an overhead and it's difficult it's a true press though like it's truly a true press everything

has to be stacked for you to actually execute it at a high level. If it don't, then it falls and you go, fuck, I suck. Right. And it's like, okay, that's your pass fail. So the more self-limiting or pass fail strength exercises I can give them, not only do they learn intuitively like, oh, this is what it's supposed to feel like. Because I mean, you've done squats for 30 years or whatever, right? You've changed significantly, right?

And your intent and where do you feel X, Y, and Z and how do you, oh, okay, I'm going to break early here. Like this has changed. Like some small shit like that. You did that. Like a coach may have gave you a cue, but that intuitive action is like, oh, man, like now you taught somebody how to train. You know, you can give somebody self-limiting exercises so they can learn from their own mistakes opposed to me is just all right guys every everything's perfect it's here it's like you can look at a perfect squat something can still be wrong intrinsically 100 but once again i don't know that it's a good comparison

for them like why do you lean to the left when you're you know the guy's putting pressure on you this way and they're like i don't't know, I've just always done it. That's the way I'm able to get enough separation to score. Right. And it's kind of like what you're saying with the squat or with, uh, and SEMA doing like jujitsu or, you know, whatever you're practicing and you start to learn, you start to, yes, you have a coach and you have a mentor and you got someone that's working with you, but you start to really learn it yourself. Right. And those guys are masters on the court because they've been doing it for a minimum of 10 years probably but the weight room's not always their thing right and i'm so glad you brought the jujitsu aspect because that's literally where we start i'll take everybody to the wrestling

room and we do jujitsu partner training low level gymnastics tumbling drills we learn how to be a good athlete do you think aside from like you know know, what that's doing, uh, in another sense, do you think that's just building like some community? I mean, getting that close to somebody else like that is like a, it's a tough thing. A hundred percent. It's a tough thing to like get over. Right. Well, they're close to each other in basketball, right? You're posting up and like, but they know that world. Right. But this is like, you're kind of like, yeah, you're like fighting each other almost. Essentially, we do everything but the combative aspect. Right.

So for us, like I just and I misspoke earlier. We make that my goal is to make them better humans before I make them better basketball players or better athletes because they suck as humans as far as from a movement profile or a physical literacy standpoint. Because, man, they're six foot eight and they live in a five foot ten world. So they're fixed. I mean So their hip flexors are shit. Their backs are shit. And you wonder why, right? It's because of the world they live in. So now I've got to basically take them through childhood development all over again.

And so we start in the wrestling room, right? Shoes off. We're all in there, and we start literally from the ground up. It's like little kids beat the shit out of each other. Yes, exactly. Exactly. But these kids like think about it they play basketball they play on a hardwood surface they get knocked down to the

ground a lot have you ever watched a basketball player fall oh my god atrocious like there's nothing smooth about that shit at all right it's like someone falling down a set of stairs it's it's ugly and that's where most injuries happen so what if i gave them the toolbox they can actually learn some falling progressions. Now they know how to absorb the ground, not just through their feet, but they can dissipate and go through their entire body. So maybe I hit that right foot and then roll over to my left hip on my right shoulder. Boom, I'm popping back up. I'm in an athletic position.

Just low-level tumbling. So if I can give them those tools, mean i'll never forget this when i was at uab i had this kid from africa he gets uh he takes a charge all right most kids put their hands behind them and that's how you see fucked up wrists right this kid goes right into our volleyball roll progression and just boom pops up on his feet and then looks over at the sideline it was like you didn't dunk but okay that works like that's dope like but that was a movement strategy who knows he could have fell back on that wrist and shattered his forearm i don't know but we're learning these strategies that help them be

like more resilient and more durable and it ain't necessarily through strength it's through giving them more physical literacy to be able to basically figure it out when they're in that screwed up situation oh that's the shit i'm talking about oh now they mentioned that like uh with with kids you know it's really important that they do a lot of different stuff so it sounds like uh you still think that that's valuable even with these guys who are a little older i mean they're some of them are still like teenage years and uh in their low 20s right but do you think it provides a lot of value for them to have them doing some other things well we're in that day and age now of specializing super early in sport right kids are getting stuck in aau from the age of 12 all the way to 18 without playing any other sports so they constantly play

in this hip flexion position, never really get into true extension, and they never interact with the ground like in other sports. So, yeah, I got to make them better humans first. I need to give them such a physical literacy. I have to go back in time to give them the things that they've lost through childhood development because they specialized so early.

And you wonder why you're seeing these crazy injuries these days i mean you got guys like blowing shins out of their or bones out of their shin you're like what the this didn't exist back in the day right and that's also like footwear and some other things that we can go into later but i mean to me it's like if i was to truly develop a basketball player i would put them on blacktop and i'd put them in Chuck Taylor's and I'd say, go play, learn how to play basketball now, because now you have some self-limiting factors, right? Now I can't create and absorb the forces or I can't create the forces that I cannot absorb because there's Chuck Taylor's, you know what I'm saying? But you

watch the crazy shoes that we wear now, that's some ISO holds, look at the shoes that they wear now, and they're able to do whatever they want. I mean, they can heel strike so far outside their knee, and they're wondering why they have patellar knee pain. Come on, guys. It's just simple. They're striking with their heel on everything. And so if you put them in a situation where it's like,

ooh, if I strike with my heel, that shit would hurt, then all of a sudden they're going to change the way they move, and they're going to be in a more favorable position to create load and absorb load. So that's what I think is like, man, let's go backwards in a lot of ways, especially in our development. I threw it out there for our offseason. I'm like, let's do individuals on the blacktop.

Corey, their knees. No, no, no. I assure you, they're not going to land hard because they're going to actually learn how to land appropriately within their sport we can do all the shit you want in a controlled environment in the weight room in the in the wrestling room wherever we do but until you relate it to sport there's not going to be that much transferability right so yeah how do you create leadership in the group and do you sometimes use those leaders to say hey man like bell slacking off over there man like uh and sema like you know go go uh go kick his ass or go you know get him

get him going you know or do you do stuff like that that's such a man it's such an interesting dynamic little mind games in there my goal is to create as many mind games as possible but the problem is i'm playing mind games with low-key genius people. That's the hard part about being at Stanford. UAB? Shit, yeah, man. I can play whatever game I wanted to.

I can turn up that temperature in the room and I can dial that in and get the response I'm looking for. Stanford, it's a little different deal. I'll quickly tell this story

and hopefully it'll give you an example. I had this one kid. He's actually in the draft or in the combine right now, probably a first-round draft or probably a lottery, but he's definitely a first-round draft pick. This kid comes from Orange County.

Awesome kid, but super reserved. Very not your typical kid, I would say, especially a basketball player who's super good at basketball, should be super confident walking around, talking, can't make eye contact. Just didn't really develop those skills growing up you know and it's like he doesn't really talk and i'm sitting like yo man like a lot of people here don't think you're you know you're into it like a lot of people think you don't like being here like yo like open your mouth like are you okay

like and we developed a rapport because i had so much more time with him in the weight room than sport coaches do during the off season because of ncaa rules so I'll pull him aside one day I'm like yo look everybody thinks you got a problem man like what's good like talk to me like what is happening with you like is there something we need to address so what do you talk about I'm like dude you don't talk like talk to us tell us what's going on he looked at me super perplexed and he said this shit he goes Corey man I just don't waste words what the you just hit me with some socrates shit like i like he hit me with some shit and this is an 18 year old kid and i was like i waste a lot of fucking words like i'm wasting some right now i'm like damn wow yeah there's a quote that says uh a wise man once said nothing yes fact let that

one sit in your brain for a little while. You know what I mean? And that's where I was like, you know what? Mind games, leadership, all that. You know what?

This is going to have to come from the top down. This might not come from the weight room. You know, looking, I think you're in a really cool, you're in a really unique situation because we have the guys from Brand X here. I don't know. Do you know who they are?

They work with like crop. They do like kids workouts in terms of the weight room and they help them learn how to move from a young age. Right. But you know, you're dealing with a lot of guys that plays basketball and you mentioned that they're specialized in basketball, right? So they come in. Do you see a lot of like deficiencies in this newer generation of players because of the habits that they may have? Yeah. They're playing sports, but they're also sitting down a lot. They also pay, maybe had smartphones from when they were a kid. So they're like, like this all the time. Do you see anything special going on with those athletes? It's always the same story. Dorsiflexion shit, hip internal rotation shit, T-spine shit.

It's all the big three, right? Every single time. Now my posture has gotten amazing because of the environment and the ecosystem I'm in. I deal with guys that are seven foot tall. So I'm looking up at them all day. My sternum's lifted. Like I got great posture all day long because I have to talk to these guys. Right. But then I realized they're talking to me too. And they're like this. And it just makes all the sense in the world that, yeah, like you should be in those poor positions. And so once again, going back to the human aspect, we do these global patterns where it's like you see in traditional like wrestling or jujitsu, like for instance, a reverse wrestler bridge, right? Where you're laying on your back and you are, so to get them into that true extension.

I mean, day one, like these kids can't get their hands to the ground and they're just laying on the ground, right? With their feet flat. And they're kids can't get their hands to the ground and they're just laying on the ground with their feet flat. And they're just trying to get their palms on the ground so they can go into that overarching bridge and reverse can get their hands there. It makes all the sense in the world. So for me, it's not about making them a better basketball player. If I can give them the capacity to be a human, right, the things that everyone should be able to do, then their recovery gets better. Then they're, you know, they're getting up and getting out of bed every day is better. Their life becomes easier. So now I don't have to deal with holistic stress as much as I used to.

And like you were saying earlier with the recovery aspects, the best thing in the world is to have a good plan. Fuck recovery, fuck ice baths. Don't get me wrong, those are great things, but that's a temporary hijack because you missed that you missed prescribed load so what the hell are we talking about recovery when it should be really well thought out training and then that comes from the practice situation too so um but as far as like i mean i just had to get them to internally and externally rotate that hip i gotta get dorsiflexion like you wouldn't believe the knee over toe because that's where they play in.

Right. But they're taped and braced all year round. Right. So now their foot structure, that lower leg complex is totally compromised. So they got super weak or weak foot intrinsic strength. They don't have the range of motion, not from a stiffness perspective or it is stiffness, but it's because of weakness. not from a stiffness perspective, or it is stiffness, but it's because of weakness. So now, I mean, basically every training session and every part of the training session, other than like squatting and cleaning and snatching,

we're shoeless. I get them out of their shoes as much as humanly possible because they got to build that foot strength. If not, I mean, they're going to have the same compromise, like ankle rolls, ankle rolls, ankle rolls, because just because you put a cast on it doesn't make, doesn't make it strong, right? That's a, that's a high, a temporary hijack. And we do that year round. Something's going to happen eventually. I hope I answered your question. No, no. Yeah. You can almost make an argument that if someone can do a, uh,

a bridge, like you're suggesting, um, or even some of these kinds of basic movements that were shown as kids or used to be shown as kids maybe they don't even show them anymore but i could probably make an argument that you might recover from stuff a lot easier and also sometimes i mean have you ever seen you ever watch a football game and watch someone get uh like one of those cowboy collar tackles the guy jumps on their back and and grabs the back of their jersey and yanks them down. And it just looks like they blew out both quads. Well, some of those dudes get up totally fine from that. Right.

But some of those guys are probably people that can go on their knees and probably bring their entire body back and put their arms up over their head and just rest that way. And they're comfortable in that position because they have the body to be able to do it and the mobility. Now, if something like that happened to me, I'm probably going to blow out both quads. Cause it's like, I I'm really overreaching, uh, my, you know, my set point of, of where my body can go to. It's really all about dissipating force, right? So if I can use every joint in my body to dissipate a thousand pounds of force, let's just use that for simplicity.

every joint in my body to dissipate a thousand pounds of force let's just use that for simplicity then each joint is probably going to get what three to five pounds but if i don't have the mobility or the motor or the strategies to be able to get into some of these positions then all of a sudden i only have 50 joints or some especially my basketball players 15 joints to dissipate that thousand pounds of force so now it becomes a lot more localized pressure and then all of a sudden oh my low back oh i blew up my my my quad right you wonder where this is coming from it's because they can't dissipate their force through their entire system appropriately and there's rhythm and coordination synchronization that goes with that too so there's a lot of aspects that go into basically manipulating force and if your hips

are tight or they're not operating properly and you're doing squats and your knee kind of keeps caving in, you know, definitely there's a possibility that your knee is going to be more sore than the next guy. Your knee is going to be more compromised or your right quad is sore and you're not sure why. Like, why is my right butt cheek and my right quad super sore from yesterday's workout, but nothing else is? And it could just be that one simple thing. And what I always try to tell people is, you know, when you're, when you're warming up, there's a lot of different ways you

can warm up and you can try to get yourself in different positions and stuff and better positions. But one of the warmups I do is I usually go on a belt squat first belt squat helps me move a little bit better. I kind of wait until I can squat into a deeper position. Even if I don't do the belt squat, when we do regular squats, I'll squat the bar, I'll squat a plate. And when I'd squat those weights, I might take them a few times.

I might squat the bar a few times. I might squat one plate a few times. I might squat two plates a few times. And I could be squatting, I don't know, uh, eight inches above parallel at first and then six inches above. I'm waiting until my body is like, all right, dude, you're, you got the, you're warmed up. You're, uh, you're moving a little bit better, but I'm not forcing anything. I'm only going to like what my body will allow me to do.

And then when I'm ready, because I know like, look, if I go right to four or five plates and I start trying to move those weights around, um, that I can potentially get hurt because now I'm at the end of my range of motion for that particular day. Cause I came in, you know, kind of stiff or whatever.

So, and, uh, I think it goes back to a little bit what you were saying. You got to get back to the movement that got you hurt in the first place. And I think this is true with your warmups. You got to kind of quickly get to the movement that you're going to do. You can do a lot of warmups and there's a lot of different things you can do that can be beneficial, but I don't think you should be wasting a lot of time, you know,

get to that main movement, get to that main exercise and then get fine, find the range of motion that's comfortable and then stick with that. That's beautiful. And that's one thing that we've somehow, once again, this wasn't me being smart. It just so happened to work out is with our micro dosing, we actually do our major lift last. I want them leaving with the most strong impulse or the most fast impulse, whatever they're doing, going right into practice. So it just so happened how it worked out was in our a series it's basically a bunch of isolated movements that supports whatever we're doing that day for example if we're doing a squat there's a lot of prone hamstring curls right or swiss ball curls or any of that imagination anything to do with the hips but it's when you get there you're all right like everything's lubed up

you're ready to rock and roll and then you get you sneak the volume in early you know it's kind of like um we're gonna come up there and train with you that's it dude come through this sounds like fun dude hell yeah man i got some i got some cool shit up there too um what you're mentioning too is uh this is really smart and um you know people i hope they're really paying attention because these are exercises that don't really require warm-up right now what you're mentioning it doesn't require any warm-up exactly and i I think that that's great. You know, um, machines are like that. I mean, even if you're look, even if you're just don't like to think about this shit too much and you don't want to stretch your shoulders and do all these different things with the bands and different and roll on a foam

roll and stuff, right? If you don't want to do any of that stuff or you can't figure that stuff out, hop on a machine at a gym and, around. Like that requires zero warmup. Keep the weight super light. Do a set of 10, rest a minute, do another set of 10. Your body starts to get hot. Your arms start to get pumped. Your chest starts to get pumped. Move over to the bench.

You're ready to go. New facts. I mean, where it came from for me was I was trying to be like, trying to be a really bad bodybuilder when I was really young. And so I bought John Meadows mountain dog training, right? And the one thing I noticed before squat days was like prone ham curls. Like you wouldn't believe. And I was like, why the fuck am I going to do that? I did it. You know, I followed it. And then I went squat and I was like, Oh my God, my squat feels amazing. Like I just sink right down. Like, why the fuck haven't I been doing this? Just, just makes sense. So,

and the one thing that I like too, is i'm becoming a lot more machine based as a performance guy it's like i can't believe you just said fucking machines bro like you're training with machines like you will fuck no i'm 100 riding that wagon because look they're already getting all the movements in sport you know like i gotta find a way to train tissue and i gotta do it in a way that doesn't compromise joints. So I'm not saying like, that's what we stick with. But as far as like all your accessory work and getting, getting the, the quote unquote lubrication, if you will, so you can feel good with your big bang movements. Shit. Yeah. I'd miss you. Hell yeah. Like I wish I had more space so I could have basically

a gold gym in there, not only for myself, but for my guys. Yeah. You know, we talked a lot about how you're training your guys i'm sure we'll circle back to it but look man it's important for you to be jacked in fact what kind of training you doing buddy man i'm a douchey like i'm like a really douchey failed like guido body build like i'm trying my best um you're trying to get that pump for the jersey shore exactly man except yeah except for in likeCal, it's like way easier than it is in SoCal. But for my own training, to be honest with you,

it's been intuitive for the past like 10 years. And I've been all the way from an Olympic purist to powerlifting to bodybuilding. But bodybuilding has always kind of been there because it just makes my body feel good. It's fun. Like, fuck, I don't want to look like an asshole. And what you see in sport more than anything oh shit yeah i'm looking kind

of thick right there now um but what you see in like it's fucking crazy is you see these strength coaches and they don't look like they picked up a bar oh i know i was like bro like i thought how does this work so oh man yeah you caught me on a good day so you don't like it if they know like maybe they they they apply all this stuff, but they don't do it themselves. Oh man. It's a fact. Like it's no,

Jesus go home. Like the guys who don't have a fucking bar in their hand daily in some form or fashion, like go home man. Cause what are we really doing? Like that. I'm a big fan of coach house. I love seeing like his Instagram posts and stuff.

He's always doing different shit. He's always, I mean, he competed in a powerlifting meet, I think, uh, just, I don't know, eight months ago or something like that you know so my 50 51 something like that my last competition i did a physique show um in birmingham um mr birmingham by the way uh won the city title what's up literally the lowest level i think everybody already knows that like literally the lowest level of amateur body.

But for me, it's look, like you got to want to live and breathe this shit. You know, like if you don't, if you just want to be the guy chasing the science and chasing the metrics and you think you're doing something. Once again, you're chasing that fucking 1% that might, I mean, it's not going to tear the scales. You know, like if you ain't training hard, why are your athletes going to train hard? Do these guys get to see you train? Oh, absolutely. I jump in all the fucking time.

And you probably train more stupidly than you train them. Fact. Oh, what I do? Well, we've done the kettlebell throws, believe it or not. So we did it in a team setting, and it went really well. But obviously it was properly progressed, and that's why it was executed at a high level i was really surprised because obviously you're taking you're taking an asset right like if we weren't in college we're in pros that's an asset like a true asset with a

million dollar worth and i'm asking to throw kettlebells back and forth one another and it's kind of like you're fucking crazy cory but at the same time we're in the off season and the last thing i want to do is have these guys running and jumping. But I want that eccentric. I want that impulse. I want to be able to train that ability to be fast and to prep it. And to be honest with you, since I've been doing that kettlebell partner passing, I look behind me and all of a sudden I'm like, oh, shit, that's an ass. Like, oh, wow, where did that come from?

Not bad. My traps, my upper back. Did you get an Instagram picture for us? You know, DMs later. I can send one. Building up those glutes. traps my my upper back did you get an instagram picture for it for us you know i um dms later i can send one that's good um building up those glutes but i'm telling you that post chain all of a sudden i was like holy shit like there's something to this and it's almost like that dan john with kettlebell swings like the what the fuck effect right do you do you try do you mess around you experiment a lot maybe something you've heard or something you read and you're like oh shit i

want to try this with my guys but let me let me be dumb and let me try it first. Let me kill myself first time. So honestly, like that's, I think that's where I've gotten most of my following is because I do really crazy shit and I chase like these random rabbit holes. Um, but it's all solution based, you know, like I'm trying to solve a problem, not just trying to get likes on the gram, you know what I'm saying? And for me, partner passing, that example was a solution to something. And so that's one thing that I set up with me and my interns is every Wednesday we have play time. I know it sounds kind of weird, but it's like, holy shit, Corey, what are you doing with these interns down in that closet? What do you do with these young kids?

We pick an implement and we just say go. For instance like we use some landmines one day and then basically like within my small little world of strength broke the internet with this landmine rotational snatch and people are like what the fuck like how does that even look you can probably find it somewhere um but i was trying to think of a way for golfers right because i trained some high level golfers i'm trying to find a way to do some true power work in a rotational plane. It's just not just med ball throws and shit like that.

And so what we did is we actually set them up horizontally to the landmine, or perpendicular, I should say, and essentially go from that position into an overhead snatch. It's a regressed movement pattern. It doesn't beat the hell out of their joints. Here it is right here. Boom. And you can think for a golfer how amazing

that would be but then again you can actually relate that to almost any sport right i like that that looks kind of fun yeah it looks like it takes some coordination a lot of coordination you're just ripping the shit out of weights i mean at the end of the day if you can rip weights and not get hurt doing it you're probably doing something good for the system right yeah that looks that looks uh but i mean it's challenging that's my intern josh back at the time he's now uh he was with the ram at the kings actually for a bit um but essentially like once again if you're not constantly trying to seek new solutions then you're going to set the same program up year after year and nothing's going to change and everything you

do is within your ecosystem into the population that you train. The things I did when I was at Santa Clara, the things I did when I was at the OTC, at UAB, at North Carolina, you know, now I'm at Stanford. It's all changed based off my population and the environment that I got around me. One of my good friends came through. His name's Joel Smith. Really sharp dude. Came to my weight room for the first time a year ago. And he just goes, man, this is like a, it's like an old like a mechanic shop and i was like what do you mean he's like dude you got like so many different like weird tools that's like oh my god it's inspiration like at any moment i can

look over at the wall and see this like oh that would fix that now i just don't have a room with just your bare bones you just got barbells dumbbells and it's like okay well of course you only have one solution you know your toolbox is limited oh i really like all these moves right here these are great yes so i play college basketball don't look at my stats i sucked um but this is this is like the old pistons though you know this is i love this yeah i was basically beating the hell out of it that was preparing for intramurals when i was at uab yeah i honestly it's it's a joke uh with our staff because i i used to play in these manager games so it was the night before our actual games we play pickup with the other team right and so everybody on their support staff sometimes assistant coaches and their managers

and i always pick up a fight every time it's always some shit pops off and it's because like dude i'm more meatheading now i'm not as fluid and smooth as i used to be like i don't have that pop like that was the only reason why i got a scholarship was because i can actually move pretty well and now i just like fucking bulldozer fuck it like just put a shoulder in someone's chest and see what happens later but it's yeah i mean i don't know like training basketball is so much fun because i came from a basketball background but went meat route you know so many college basketball that's why you and ramsay vibe so exactly he loves he loves to get after he loves to get a pump he loves to play man he loves to play and so most college basketball strength coaches football dudes nothing wrong with football dudes but

they're so like the i mean you know the culture in football because you play football it's very dynamic and it's it's very selective right same thing in basketball even more so in basketball right it's a totally different dynamic so that's where you know you have a college basketball string coach who's actually played college basketball unfortunately that's really rare in my field or in my little niche of college basketball even professional basketball mainly it's like some really smart dudes who publish a paper overseas training basketball. And you're like, what the fuck? You mentioned like kind of getting heated, you know? And it's funny because I think that basketball just kind of brings that out in you sometimes.

I mean, I remember like as a kid, I played every sport. I played, you know, football and a bunch of other things. And I never really got that mad like you know like i i'd have some really good battles with somebody in front of me in football and like it was just kind of part of the sport but man basketball can be really frustrating guy steals a ball from you or you go to shoot it and like you know he he blocks it but then you're thinking that he fouled you just because you're so frustrated what do you think it is about that sport? There's a lot of trash talking too.

Yeah. And it's really good. Yeah. A lot of shit talking. It's so much more intimate. That's what I like about basketball is, you know, there's no helmets.

So everybody sees each other's face. There's no pads and stuff. None of that. And it's super combative, but the real issue or the real deal is. You never feel like it's your own skill problem. Right. It's a guy bump.

The guy fricking hacked your arm, you know? Right. But what's cool about The guy fricking hacked your arm, you know? But what's cool about basketball is that you can go play, you pick up basketball anytime, anywhere at any age, pick up football. That's a way harder to do. Right.

So to me, and it's a, it's an intricate skill. Like shooting a basketball is holy shit. That's like, if you really break it down, that shit's hard, but everybody can kind of do it just with,

it just depends on the success rate. So even if you're a football dude who's like, fuck, you just clink the backboard, one out of every 30 you're going to make. So it feels like if you play, you should be able to make more than you actually can. By the way, for the record, people that play crazy defense and pick up basketball,

I mean, come on. Just relax, dude. No, the dudes that take charges. Just relax, bro. Those are the guys you want to punch in the fucking dick. What do you mean? That take charges on you. Oh, yeah. Like, what the fuck are the guys you want to punch in the fucking dick. That take charges on you. Oh, yeah.

Like, what the fuck are we here for? We're here to get buckets. Like, we're not here to, like, stand in front of each other. It's a low-key all-star game right now.

No one's playing defense, dude. Yeah, you just block the lane a little bit and you swipe at the ball here and there, man. I thought we had an agreement. You're, like, all up on my shit.

That's funny because that's me right there. I have no other skill in basketball other than playing really hard defense and that's what i would always do just get right up on somebody seriously and it's so frustrating like man this guy's right up my ass i can't do anything i can't even pass the ball i don't want to actually try yeah stop okay super embarrassing i actually was that guy in a certain situation so i was playing college basketball and i was

doing an internship at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with the men's basketball team. And which, by the way, shout out to my mentor, Jonas Horatio, most amazing string coach. Anyways, so I'm playing pickup at noon with whoever's at Carolina.

And just so happens, Jared Haas, who's the head coach at Stanford who hired me, was the assistant coach. And so that dude played at Kansas. He was a baller. Like, oh my God. He's like a legit celebrity in Kansas. It makes no sense.

Like, it's crazy. So anyways, he's the best guy out there, clearly. And I'm the guy that's currently playing college basketball. So I was like, okay, we're obviously checking each other. And so I'm picking him up full corks. I'm like, he's old, so I can wear his ass down because he's going to bust my ass because he's got a really good skill set. So he's old. So I can wear his ass down. Cause he's going to bust my ass. Cause he's got a really good skillset.

So I got to do everything I can to wear him down. So, you know, it's like near the end of the day and he's coming around half court and I'm like full court pressing this dude. Like what? Everybody's like, God damn.

No, I'm trying to win. Fuck that. This is a legend. He's a hall of famer. Like, no, I'm trying to,

I'm trying to get this dub. And he comes across me at half court and his back goes out. He drops down and everybody's like, what did you do, man? I'm like, I swear to God, I didn't touch him. Since that day, he has not played basketball. So then he calls me when I was at Santa Clara. He calls me. He's like, hey, Corey, do you remember me?

I was like, yeah, Coach, of course. And he goes, yeah, I remember you. He's like, well, you're the one that ended my basketball career. And I was like, oh, shit. I'm like, I was really hoping you wouldn't remember that part. And he goes, well, how about you make it up to me and be my strength coach? And I was like, bro, that's sick. So, yeah.

So you can fuck somebody up and hopefully get a job one day. Have you been able to get him back on the court? No. No. But he does train, though. He does train. So I give him that. Damn.

He probably was inspired by how hard you were working. That or he's like, fuck this guy. I'm going to make his life hell. I get him now. He's actually the best. I don't know about, like, coaching is one thing. Everybody's a good coach at that level. But as far as, like, a human being, holy shit,

he's one of the best human beings. What are you trying to do with yourself right now? Are you trying to get bigger, smaller? Are you trying the best human beings what are you trying to do with yourself right now you're trying to get bigger smaller you're trying to uh lift more what are you trying to do man i mean all of it right i can i can say all the above right yeah i mean for me i just want to continue going down the solution specialist route like i just want to continue finding solutions for whatever that is but for me i want to be as jacked as fucking possible like i want to look awesome i want to be able to be shirt to be shirtless. I want to do the things that you do. That shit's dope to me.

Why not? The older I get, why do I need to fucking move that way? I just want to look awesome. We should just do this podcast shirtless. Fuck, I'm in. I'm pale as shit, though. That's my only issue. Dude, the lighting here, everybody's fucked.

You're going to have to get better lighting. No, I'm just going to have to get a spray tan. What do you do with nutrition for your athletes? Because that can be a really hard thing to tackle. Man, great question. Now, once again, luckily, I have really sharp kids. I kid you not, in the recruiting process, I have some kids who are telling me things

that they're already doing nutritionally that I'm like, damn, that's pretty spot on. Like, good job. But luckily, we have a really good system set for the guys to be successful. We have two training tables, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. We have fueling stations that are available for the guys, have access whenever they want.

Most of that's healthy-ish? Very healthy. Very healthy. Now, in our locker room, it's not so healthy. I saw Rice Krispie Treats the other day. I was like, what the fuck, guys? We want them to have calories, but there's timing. If we do this timing right, it could work, but they're grabbing it probably at 10 o'clock at night or heading out the

door and I'm like, right, sleep's going to be shit. Um, now with that being said, there are certain scenarios where I've actually prescribed like intermittent fasting for some guys. Um, even some guys with 24 hour fasting. Um, but it's once again, special case scenarios. Um, surgery is another great, um, deal for fasting. Like, um, a lot of research with Dr. James LaValle, um, fasting before surgery does all these great, um, or enhances all these great growth properties that help you heal faster.

Interesting. So yeah, there's once again, that, uh, thing we were talking about earlier, Prolon that suddenly look into, it's really, really cool, but it's fascinating it's fascinating research yeah you so you were uh let's talk about that because that was really fascinating you were telling me about uh it's basically my understanding of what you were saying it was a way to fast right but you get to eat it just doesn't interfere with your m tour production or something like that right yeah essentially so that your body doesn't know that it's eating still so anyways uh so what it is's a shoe box. Essentially is what they send you with five little boxes in it. And it's what you can eat. It's like tea soups. It's one little bar. It's kind of kind of weird, but it actually tastes pretty good. But the only reason why I'd even consider something like this is because my applied sports scientist, who's now back in the military.

Brilliant dude. Like absolutely brilliant. He's like, Corey, I'm going to increase your test. I'm like, sweet. Let me pull my pants down. Let's get this thing going. He's like, no, no, no, not that way. I was like, oh shit. Okay.

He's like, just try this. He's like, don't train for five days. I was like, fuck you. Like, no, I want to train. He's like, no, no, no, just trust me. You're going to gain lean body mass. You're going to lose body fat and you don't even have to train.

I was like, all right, man. Like, we'll see what you got here. So anyways, I did this day three, right? So it's basically, it's basically a five day fast, but your body doesn't recognize the food that you're putting in it. So your body still thinks it's going through a fast, but you're able to quote unquote still eat, right? So that's the beauty of it. What does everything have in it? Is it, is there like fat in there or any calories at all? So it's not, it's really very low calories, but the bar has a little bit of carbs, a little bit, but it's like specific types of carbs so that your body, once again, doesn't induce that mTOR.

So it doesn't go through that. Oh shit. I'm just got fit. So basically that's the, that's the big driver of getting awesome, right? More you can induce mTOR, big, big, big, big muscles. So most of the time, anything that you're doing in training, you're trying to induce that to induce that in force so with um so eating can kind of shut that down no you can increase it okay yeah so like you know like um i mean basically you're superficial like bodybuilding stuff right like you have that high insulin spike right anabolic right um but anyways we're in day

i'm in day three and they're like yeah you can have a little bit of coffee you know it's like cool so i take're like, yeah, you can have a little bit of coffee, you know? It's like, cool. So I take it because I love fucking coffee. So have a little bit of coffee. And it was like jet fuel. It was the most mental clarity. Like it was like, you wouldn't believe energy. Like I'm writing this book and I just told it, like I knocked out 20 pages like that. I was like, holy shit, this is amazing. But that's not the effect I was caring about. I was like, what about this test? Like, what about me getting awesome? Like how did this fit into the plan? So finally I was able to refeed so day five ends i'm in day six okay i get to start eating you know philly slowly feeling better able to start training a little bit and then i go to bed day day night or day seven i go to bed and all of a sudden it was like

strong like bull i was like whoa shit okay cool all right it didn't go away the entire fucking night i'm sitting here like two o'clock in the morning i'm waking myself up because i'm rolling over and it's like oh shit it's still there and i'm like what the fuck is going on here like it's 10 like i wake up at or eight o'clock the next day and i'm like okay like this is like beyond four hours deal like i need to call a doctor right it's like the viagra commercials i was like something's really fucking wrong here that That happened night seven, night eight, and night nine. And I'm like, okay, something happened. Now, my plasport scientist, Chase, he did blood work before and after and saw some great results.

Unfortunately, I didn't do the blood work to say objectively how much. But I'm not rocking hard on that for three nights straight, like nonstop, and not got an increase in testosterone in some form or fashion. So we did the body fat or the body comps with it, dropped 3% body fat, gained two pounds of muscle. I was like, that's not bad if I'm not doing shit. It's really not bad. But, you know, it was really – and then my digestion got a shit ton better. So, yeah. That's crazy.

Five days – so it was five days of fasting. Were you hungry? Because what's in this box, it keeps you from getting too hungry. What's the box called? So, yeah, it's called Prolon, P-R-O-L-O-N. And, I mean, the amount of research in it is overwhelming. They're using it with cancer patients for cancer research. Like they're doing it during chemo and they're not losing their hair.

Like it's amazing what it's doing. And so there's, finally, there's a lot of money backing it because I mean, think about like big pharma and all that. Like who makes money off people not eating and not taking medicine? No one, right?

But it's- Prolon. Prolon. They got a box. Bingo, Prolon. But I'm sorry, what was the question? No, it's okay. No, we were just shooting the shit. No think it's great I think look anything that's gonna

anything that's gonna promote or push someone towards some of these ideas like whether someone tries a you know a day of fasting or multiple days it's just good to have the conversation it's good that people are talking about these things I know more and more people are trying intermittent fasting.

I recommend it to everybody. I think everyone should try it. It is one of those things, just like any other diet or any other training program, anything you ever try, a lot of times it's not going to work right away. Right. Now, if you're a lifter and somebody says, hey, you ever try a 5x5 program and maybe you've been been bodybuilding your whole life. Odds are the five by five program probably be easy and it probably feel great. It probably will work for you. Same thing with diet. If you've dieted before and you've tried a bunch of different things, then you can just switch over. Someone can just recommend something to you. You can just all of a sudden jump into a carnivore diet and not have any

trouble. But normally, if you're not used to these things, especially fasting, you might have a rebound. You might fast for like 24 hours, and then you might eat for 48. Right. It's like coming off a bodybuilding show. Yeah. That refeed is real. Yeah.

You might have some rebound, but it doesn't mean that it's ineffective. It just means that it didn't work that great for you the first time around. You've got to get used to it. Right. You know, you mentioned the, like when you were telling, when he was telling you about doing a five day fast,

he told you about increasing your tests. So do you like, is your test on the lower end or was there a reason for that? No, it's just, he told me I can increase tests and I'm like, shit. Yeah.

I don't even know what that means, but I'm in, I don't know where my normal levels were at the time, but I was like, dude, anything to do that. I'm in. And did he say if this had a prolonged effect or if he was just like, like right after very cute, very cute. But like you think about it, you go through like a five day fast. I mean, Mark, you just went through a three day one, right? Um, there is this, and I

hate the word detox cause that's not technically what happens, but it's like this cleansing of the mitochondrial cells that now it's, you're actually optimizing whatever you're is going on in your ecosystem inside your body because you're not processing all this random shit. Like even the air we breathe, like depending on the pollutants in it is somehow slowing down. Like you still have to filter that in some form or fashion. So now we're not adding, you know, three to four meals a day set up this amount of time. Now your body's not dealing with that. It's truly being able to reset if you will. And so for me,

I was like, yeah, I mean they recommend it once a month. Fuck that. Not doing that. Cause that means you can't train five days out of every month. I'm not doing that. But I mean once every two to three months,

I don't see why not. So let me ask the training aspect of it because like Mark, you were training during this three day fast, right? Why do they say like, what's the reason for not training? I mean, for me,

I don't know the actual reason as far as like why i wouldn't train but my dude recommend he's like don't train i was like all right fine but i don't see why i mean i guess you can i mean it just depends on what type of training right i mean in my head i'm like high volume high intensity doesn't matter i can break my body down because i don't have to perform for shit so for me i it'd probably be bad for me personally during my training because i basically just go ham on everything for no apparent reason or rhyme or reason just i just do anterior posterior splits and i just keep it that's pretty guilty of of doing too much as well and i definitely on that second day i was like asking a little too much of myself but i got

through it and i think that you know if i was to do another fast i would i would still lift i'd still train i think that um maybe i would do a little bit more like you're saying i'd have like one main focus maybe i would do kind of a lot of warm-up stuff that was more like almost like mobility drills and some different things to get me to sweat right different things just to burn calories and feel good just get your heart heartbeat going and then i'd probably move into like some deadlift squats bench or whatever and i didn't i didn't really have any problem when it when it came to actually deadlifting it felt fine i think like it's a great opportunity to go back through like some technical aspects of the lift right right i mean maybe not chase that you know you hit your work sets and it's like all right screw it one by 20 at the end

which was you know maybe obviously not a time for that but But, I mean, I don't see why you can't. You can get strength without having all these substrates that help support your new level of strength because strength is neural-based. So that's where it's like maybe you don't need those substrates. What about supplements? Any good supplements? Does anything actually help with strength? Is there anything that helps your central nervous system or your neural drive or the man everybody's going to laugh at this one but it's like the most well

researched supplement and no one's doing it well enough is water like water is the hugest one and people just screw that one up completely um but also like creatine like 40 years worth of research it's amazing like why aren't people doing that all the time? Five grams before and after. Like that's super easy. But NCAA, I can't even allow, I can't even give my guys that stuff. Really? Oh, man, it's unreal.

The rules and regulations in NCAA doesn't make a lot of sense. Here's a crazy one for you. I could not give them a supplement that was a, I think it was a three to one carb to protein ratio. So anything like, for instance, I couldn't just give them a scoop of 100% whey protein. It had to have at least triple the carbs to go with it. And I was like, why? Like, they can just go eat a steak or they just go eat a chicken breast. It's the same thing.

You know, obviously there's some fat, but I'm like, that doesn't make much sense. But that was the rules and regulations. You had to have more carbs or more protein? More carbs. Yeah. Yeah, I had a three to one or more protein? More carbs. Yeah. You had a three-to-one carb to protein. I guess that's a muscle milk contract, you know, cytomilk. I mean, like you look at –

Or cytosupport, sorry. I mean, you look at a lot of that, and you're kind of like, why? And then they finally, like, changed it. They're like, oh, okay, maybe not so much anymore. And it's like, man, how was that rule even set in the first place? It just didn't make much sense. But, yeah, as far as, like, can't give the guys, like, you know, essential amino acids, can't give the guys creatine, can't give the guys like you know essential amino acids can't give the guys creatine can't give the guys you know a lot of things that are just super like i

can't even no it's changed now like within the last month i can give them fish oil how long that fight was to get fish oil to our guys like they're like no it could be dangerous what the fuck can you uh at least suggest it or no yeah yeah oh you can suggest whatever you want like i can say ashwagandha go yeah but if anybody pops comes back on me he's like oh of course you don't have a job no more sweet right right wait so like they would test for certain things so um see that's the really sketchy part right is when do they test who is doing the testing because the university can test and then the NCAA can test even caffeine yeah I mean like that so when I was interning at Carolina during like before or after the national championship game Tyler Hansborough was like like tested extensively for caffeine

like too much caffeine he's out and it's like what the fuck like that's that's pretty obnoxious you know uh so that's like to me it just doesn't make much sense you know but now i got trained um world-renowned swimmers and the amount of testing they do oh my god the blood work alone i mean it's like six times a month and they come at random and you have to log in all of your activities you have to tell them where you're going to be throughout the whole month so they can surprise you at any time that i mean it's it's almost criminal how they just treat these girls like they're just like cattle and that's man that's this guy it's part of the deal right you're just trying to find people that they're that won't get busted right let's not test the football team let's keep testing these uh man okay 15 year old girls facts facts so it's really interesting but then again international competition is way different than ncaa how do

you train swimmers it's gotta be a little complicated right um you know what it's to be honest with you i don't change anything it just depends on their ability. Right. So one of my swimmers is a freak. So it's just like working with any other athlete where you're going to kind of address like, like, what are the main issues here? Like, what do you like to do? What do you hate to do? What do you what are you good at? What are you bad at? Right. All these different things. I mean, the number one goal when the Team USA came to me about training them, they were basically like, look, they both don't like training. You got to help them like the training process. And I was like, easy. I'll kill that part.

So my number one goal, get them to love training. Find ways to make them successful and make them successful very quick. So a lot of objective feedback to say, oh, man, look how much better you got. And then a lot of autonomy. Like, hey, do you feel like doing that? You don shit fuck that that's that's a terrible idea why would i even suggest that what do you want to do you know give them the power of like oh man like i'm kind of in control of this thing opposed to someone handing me a sheet of paper and saying go do these 14 correctives that ain't correct and shit right so now we're actually like training like squatting

deadlifting i mean some girls are jerking like snatching i was like shit man i couldn't imagine doing this with swimmers at that at one point in in my career. But now I'm just like, shit, like they've evolved to do that stuff. So it's, it's really athlete driven. Yeah. You know, swimming seems like a kind of a hard sport because most of what, most of the benefit that you get is literally from the sport. And they're always taught that they're taught that from a really young age. My wife swam for the university of kansas and it's like how do we get better we'll always spend more time in the pool uh but there is a you know a uh there is a point of you know diminished returns at some point you can't be in the pool all day right and so uh you

know lifting has its value to just try to just make these people just stronger? Yeah. I mean, essentially, it's just to make them globally stronger, but also reverse engineer what they actually do. You know, one of my athletes, I mean, they're mainly the freestyle queen of the world, right? So I got to make sure I do everything for that shoulder complex. So, you know, certain things I'm like, okay, if she's a her biggest um or her her success is in her arms so she's got to pull pull pull like you wouldn't believe so i use utilize like some flywheel training and do some straight arm pull downs right something that's kind of like it like similar but different right and then you know some perturbations like working on end ranges frc techniques functional engine conditioning where you're hitting these ISOs at end range

so that you can allow more capacity so they can do whatever they do more awesome. Because squatting doesn't necessarily go with swimming. But with my sprinter, it does because they come off the blocks. So that blocks everything. So it's like, oh, you're a 100 meter sprinter in my head as far as track and field

goes. I'm going to train you like a 100 meter sprinter in track and field. So once again, it's just finding the commonalities common sense more than important and then getting them to have the intent to you know want to train hard i guess also too you can think maybe sometimes uh some athletes some people work with maybe they just really haven't trained their muscles in these ways before and all of it's going to be kind of new right so like what's wrong with just doing like a leg curl right you know what i mean right fact and then they at the end of the day once you got to come to an objective feedback to say did you get better right and for swimming it's obviously the stopwatch yeah right and then so that's a dynamic well it's not really dynamic

compared to basketball but that's the sport aspect but what about my super controlled environment the weight room well at the end of the day if you're more powerful in any form or fashion or you're stronger then more than likely you became a little bit more robust and you became a little bit more athletic i mean hell one of my athletes it's like here let's toss and catch you know because you're just like not like watching watching her walk i was like holy shit like chewing bubble gum and walking is is a challenge for you like we need to you know get better at that and so once again it goes back to that aspect we were talking about earlier, cleaning up their lifestyle. If I can make your 23 hours away from me more efficient, effective, then your training is going to be a lot more efficient, effective. You know, on that note of making everything outside of

training more effective, how do you drill in better habits into like college athletes? Because I remember like even my teammates, you know, stay up late and we'd still be able to perform the next day pretty well where like our coach would think we're doing all right. But if we got eight hours, I know that we'd be doing much better. So how do you get athletes to actually take that seriously? So it depends on the athlete. So number one, like the basketball team, the number one thing I'm more concerned with than anything is eating. Like these kids just don't eat. Like they go off starburst for three days and i'm like how do you live like that's amazing i know guys like that yeah it's like and they like they still perform at a super high level so i created this uh group it's called the gang train so a group chat and everyone i made it competitive where it's almost like everyone's trying to one

up each other on these plates so they shoot me a photo of everything they eat so you got five dudes who are just constantly competing against each other like who's getting in the most calories right now luckily they're all like basketball players there's not really fat basketball players so calorie like let's just start with calories to begin with and so now okay i'm not worried about you getting fat now if i got somebody that overnight got fat then obviously i'd have to pull them off the game train do some other things things. But now with my, um, in my pros or with my pros, I give them this,

uh, aura ring. Have you ever seen those? I've heard of it. Yeah. Big time tracking. Yes. Big time.

So once again, I'm not going to win. I'm not going to help them win gold medals in the weight room, but I can help them win gold medals in their ability to have the best restorative sleep possible. So once again, it's got, you got to find a way to increase value.

It's not necessarily with a barbell or a dumbbell. So for them, if I can educate them on sleep hygiene and track it and say, hey, these are things you want to do before bed. Let's see if you get more deep sleep or more REM sleep. If we can find a way to systemize that and replicate that when they travel, shit. I mean, that is going to help them win more so than me getting them, quote unquote, stronger. Yeah. Trying to sleep on the road is tough.

Oh, man. The food's a little different. Everything's a little different. And even just listening to guys like Matthew Walker talk about, you know, sleeping in hotel rooms. He said you get half sleep. It's like your brain just like won't allow you to like be totally rested because you're in a different environment yeah and so man that's you're getting like half sleep it's like shit how do i get eight nine hours sleep then you know

the best part about the olympic games is the swimming is the first event so luckily you just get them in get them out hopefully you can optimize that time you're there man like track and field i think it's's the next two weeks later. But some of these sports that are there for a whole month and don't compete, that's tough. What's that been like to go to the Olympic Games, have an athlete win a medal and stuff like that? That must be a really rewarding experience. Well, I've just picked them up in the past two and a half years. So I haven't actually went. But as far like world championships like having them succeed in world championships you're just like man this is kind of cool right like but i mean once again like uh

like letting letting your uh like your pit bull loose on somebody right like like we're gonna mess you up well luckily for them they're already good at what they do yeah so i do everything i can to be as like unbelievably humble as possible. It's like, dude, you're going to win with or without me. The only thing I'm going to do is try to create an environment for you to just, A, have fun, enjoy the training process so that there's some longevity to it. And if it adds a couple of years to your career, awesome. But as far as like, oh, yeah, I cut off three-tenths of a second off your 100-meter your 100 meter no don't be that guy there's too many of those guys out there and you're like dude it was a genetic freak before you got your hands on them like cut that shit out you know

you know seems that you're doing a lot of things different from uh like at least the strength coach that i worked with this is like vastly different and you mentioned um you mentioned his name fast but you had a mentor when you were talking about unc. Did he, or did he like, I guess, groom any of this into you or how, how, how did he help you out? He was the, he was the one, like the Yoda, if you will. Right. Because in my head, I did an internship prior and I was like, oh man, got everything. Yep.

Got it. Three months of interning. Yeah. I got the strength thing. Cool. And then I'll never forget this day one in his weight room um i mean of course like especially in my world if you can clean you're good right like when you show off a clean you're pretty solid right so i was like oh yeah like he's like you

want to train today i'm like fuck yeah i'm gonna train i'm gonna clean man if i can go up there boom thought i hit a great clean he goes what the fuck was that? And I'm like, oh, my God, I should have benched. I should have fucking benched. I fucking knew it. But from that perspective, he took me to the process of like, look, there's a quality aspect to this that you've obviously not been pervy to. Like, you need to understand the quality aspects of training. And then from that perspective, he made my latitude so wide, like opened me up to areas of training that's like, hey, think about the best in the world at what they do. All right. How can you reengineer that for your population?

So, for instance, I deal with a lot of foot and ankle issues. Who are part of the best people in the world with their foot, with their feet? Soccer, you can imagine. But like ballet, gymnastics, right? Like, oh, shit, what do they do for training? Might make a little bit of sense. You know? So now it's like, Oh shit, like barbells. What are those? Like, let's go with this other world and start still jujitsu. Like for me, that was a huge one. Just the partner training

aspect alone. That's where I was like, Oh, there's so much more value in this opposed to just, let's get a barbell in our hands. Don't go wrong. That's great. But that's not sport. Sports so reactive. And once again, like blending iron with that reactivity, you can't just go, all right, squat, right, and then get the neck up component. That's where that kettlebell partner passing came in. Shit. Now I got best of both worlds. So I can get height and state.

I can get reactivity. And I can get load that are like speeds and velocity that you see in sport. I mean, don't get me wrong. Grinding out a one rep max on squat has benefits. But when I looked at my micro dosing data from the entire season and I looked at intuitively what the guys did, they floated around speed, strength, strength, speed the entire season. We had small moments of max effort strength. We had a little bit more absolute velocity, but they lived in speed, strength, strength, speed. What is that? 60% to 80%?

Makes a lot of sense, right? Or 40% to 80%? It's like, hmm, makes a lot of sense. So shit, that actually was what they do in sport. And they intuitively knew that. We talked a lot about strength training so far. What about conditioning? What do you do for conditioning of these athletes?

I think that is a thing that a lot of wannabe strength coaches miss out on is they are kind of teaching the clean and jerk and the snatch and the squat and they're getting excited to get their athletes strong, but then the athletes aren't in great shape. And I think that I don't think you can ever be in too good a shape. Increasing that conditioning, I mean, some battles are harder than others, and the fourth quarter could be more difficult against one team versus the other.

So how do you get these guys in shape? The one thing I will always do is I will always remember what it's like to be a player. That's the number one thing. Oh, is this when Isaac messed himself up? Oh, God. Oh, okay, yeah. Okay, so there's a video that's not shown

with that ball hitting him upside the head. Luckily, he's a tough Australian. This is my Lithuanian. He's a little crazy. He's got the weirdest body, too. But anyways, as far as conditioning goes, I will always remember what it was like to be a player. And we did the craziest conditioning

when I played at Berea college. Like it was, I mean, obscenely ridiculous amount of volume, right? So it's a sport coach prescribing shit that he thinks works. Right. But nothing ever prepared me for that first game because there's that

emotional response that will always fatigue you immediately. Right. So you go one or two aspects, you go, okay, I'm going to build such a big reservoir so they can handle that hopefully. Or I go into the sport and I build out those drills and those practice sessions to be able to truly specifically get them into the shape that I want,

because what I want is optimization. I don't want stress for stress standpoint, because look, I'm trying to get these guys maximally strong and powerful while at the same time, they got to play a 40 minute game. So you need to talk to the coach about that, right? You need to say, Hey, look, here's what I think would be great to implement. It'll take a half an hour, 40 minutes, right? Right. But here's why I think we need to do it. And it's important. And then luckily for you, it sounds like he goes for it, right? That's a great thing about my staff,

man. They're, I mean, we, we send staff meetings weekly. We go through loads, we go through like, and that's what I needed something to say what load is.

And that's where that GPS data came in. And I was like, okay, like acute, we can talk acute to chronic, which is a topic in it, even in itself, but probably not an important one.

but more importantly importantly like what's the end goal so now i got game data let's reverse engineer game okay we got uh data from a double overtime game against ucla okay that's probably our hardest situation of the year all right let's reverse engineer that because i want optimal conditioning i don't want general conditioning you know what i'm saying because i want them to be strong and powerful and be work capacity. Let's just leave it at that. Just the most optimal work capacity opposed to just saying, all right,

go run the fucking mile. Like what the sport demands for that. Right? So it's reverse engineering, the actual game itself, and then being able to be as efficient and effective within your sport. But like, my guys should be able to play another game after a game.

The only reason why they can't is maybe the emotional stress was so much like the heightened state the crowd all of that but as far as from a physical standpoint they should be able to play two games is there do you guys do anything in terms of helping helping athletes deal with i guess the mental side of things or the anxiety side of things because we had um you know patrick patrick mckeown was on the show he was talking about nasal breathing and yes helping you relax etc are there any things that you do to i guess help them with better breathing patterns and and in that realm the nasal breathing to me is like the easiest one to put out because everybody

can do it yes there's some intrinsic thing or intricate things that you to optimize it but especially in traveling and resetting if you will um just get in a dark room focus on our belly breathing nasal breathing um but as far as like the mental aspect we luckily have our own mental uh health performance coach right or that's the the title that we gave it from our staff her actual title is she's a clinical psychologist um but from that perspective they actually have someone that's not technically associated with basketball that they can go talk to opposed to you know like hey man like jim brolin's trying to figure this shit out it's like no someone can

actually like with some real legitimacy help and identify which to me is the biggest one like identify certain attributes and personalities that you want. Now, unfortunately at Stanford, it's the recruiting pool is very, very small. So the kids that we can actually get in there that are talented enough. So it's mainly like find the best, get them here, and then we'll figure it out. But from that perspective,

that's when it becomes a little bit more reactive, which is okay. But from the mental performance aspect, luckily we have someone on staff that can really, really, or that helps optimize that for us. Your area where you train people is a little different than the general area that they train, like the football players and stuff, right? Yeah. So we have four weight rooms on campus. Technically we have a really, really small track one. And then we have two huge ones, Annex and Arriagaaga um annex is where football

trains huge compound um annex is like the size of a basketball court um but we have 36 sports and the one thing i did not want was distractions because i know i'm going to train these guys way different than anyone else and not in a sense of like oh i'm better but in a sense of like the culture i'm trying to build right i'm trying to get these guys to train and lift weights every single day. Like once again, like that's basketball. Good luck. Like that's the one where you're like, fuck,

like that's an uphill battle that you will never get to the top, right? But if I had my own little nook and cranny that is right in the arena, that is right beside the locker room, that goes right into the training room. So it just filters right into the practice gym. Okay, now I have an environment that is logistically set up for success and I can put the exact equipment I need in there to help train them the right way. So I have this small little closet space. I mean, it's, it's not big at all. I mean, the ceiling's not even made for these kids. I mean, it's like a low ceiling. So like there's only a certain area where we can do overhead work. I'm not even shitting you.

So like, if we have to like move some shit so they can do it but with that being said it's grungy it's nasty like it was basically a storage unit and it was leftover gym equipment because it's so hard to get stuff out of stanford so they say fuck it was throwing this room um but i cleared it all out and got my own stuff in there but what it is is it's a safe place place for them and these guys come in all like it's basically they they don't go to the locker room first they come through the weight room first and just hang out uh but it's like nasty as shit like it's really not yeah i mean look at that like that is not a college weight room and like that floor i'm trying to tear up the floor purposely so hopefully i can replace it one day like literally that's i think that's really where the kettlebell partner passing came from was like

hopefully i could just break the floor so they can give me a new one but if you can look i mean that space where they're cleaning right now that's the only place you see that overhang right there's no way they can lift overhead in there and I mean that's small little guy but that's that's a kid I was telling you about um the first round draft or it's going to be a first round draft pick um but I mean these guys I mean like they low-key they live in this world where everything's affluent and prestigious because they're on Stanford's campus. But where they train is grungy as shit. It's like a fighter's mentality.

There's not even nice shit on the wall. It's a random fridge in the back. So I kind of like that aspect where maybe that is the mental side that I'm training is I'm giving them more of a blue-collar opposed to a white-collar approach. How is it working with these guys? I mean, is it, are you, it looks like it's fun. It looks like it's a lot of work, but it looks like it's fun. It's honestly, I've never worked a day in my life. Like, okay, no, I take that back.

I was a waiter at Shoney's when I was like 18 and that lasted for like two months. But since then, I've never worked a day in my life because I've been in strength. And so, especially with these kids, I mean, it's not like I'm having a conversation with a kid. I'm having a conversation. What are these movements called? These guys are getting up off the ground like a Turkish getup almost, but just with a med ball type deal. So we call that a 90-90 getup. So if you're familiar with like a 90-90 positions for hip internal and external rotation, to me, this is a human movement.

Every human should be able to get up off the ground without using their hands. with like a 90-90 positions for hip internal and external rotation. To me, this is a human movement. Every human should be able to get up off the ground without using their hands. And now we found a way to progress it. So we'll take this Atlas stone, which they range anywhere from 20 to 150 pounds. And then my guys who are really good, I just have them go above the head with it. Is this easier? No. Or harder than without anything?

Yeah, way harder. It doesn't act as a little bit of a counterbalance. Does this help them also when they're like falling on the court? Yeah, exactly. It's the ability to internally and externally, it's like to move their hips in positions that allow them to drop their center of mass so that they don't just fall like you see someone falling off of like a building. Essentially, they're lowering their center of gravity so they can absorb that force a lot easier.

But if you can't do a good 90- 90 get up, you probably can't squat well and you probably can't deadlift well. Or if you do, you're just like that super muscle bound, contracted guy, which that's totally fine, too. But that's not good in sport. You know, I needed I need degrees of freedom so they can have access to do whatever, like change the direction or vertical jumping that they can do. have access to do whatever, like change of direction or vertical jumping that they can do. Yeah. You should be able to move a little bit further than whatever's required of your sport. So even, even as a power lifter, it's not great to be, it's okay to have some tightness and actually it can be somewhat beneficial in some ways, but it's not great. I mean, I've hurt my back before just warming up on a squat where, and that's why I don't force a squat anymore I take my time warming up even with just like 135 or two plates just because I'm trying to shove into a position

that my body's not ready for that's really good for your lower back these kind of butt scooches yeah the butt walks lower back exercises and once again a lot of this like that v-ball roll all this and this is like low V ball roll, all this, and this is like low level plyo is just learning how to land,

um, and then train it extensively. Um, so that's, that's the type of conditioning we do. We do like plyometrics on softer surfaces more extensively because they already do it intensively on the basketball court. So it's a way of just developing like tendon and ligament strength.

Um, and, and the fitness component that goes along with that. But that's what's so cool about that wrestling room. We go in there. I mean, there's no fear of falling. It's so cool. But we actually do a lot of partner work where we're actually picking each other up and putting

each other on the ground. All the intrinsic muscles that are involved in that, I mean, that's real world strength, right? That's like farm boy. Like I got a hay bale and threw it on a loft strength. To me, that's more important than any fixated pattern with a barbell or dumbbell. I love those movements, but I have guys that are like super strong on the court, but super weak in the weight room. So what does that tell me?

Maybe there's not that transferability like we think there is. But they go in that wrestling room and they own the shit out of everyone. But it just so happens to work out that they do the same thing in a basketball court. It's like, eh, you know, maybe there's a lot more to just picking someone up and walking with them for distance or manipulating someone else against their own free will. Maybe there's some more strength in that. How does the wrestling work with guys that maybe just don't get along very well? Oh man. It probably breaks down some walls, I bet, after a while.

The thing is like you have in a lot of the partner training that we do it It's so much more cooperative than it is combative So for instance if we do I mean this is where you see some character flaws if you will or let's just put character development Where we go through? This partner training drill where they start off as a group in Pairs and they start with an exercise. So for instance, like partner rows. So one guy's squatting, the other guy's pulling them up, right? So it's very cooperative, right? Then they have to carry each other down to the other end of the room. Then there's another exercise that's cooperative. Then they have to come, like there's always a travel component

where there's a partner carry. If you're an asshole and you don't like somebody, right? You can make that dead weight really terrible and that's going to make it a lot harder. But no, no, no. We have a common goal. It doesn't matter if you like each other or not. You're trying to win because there's going to be a punishment for the loser. So now you have some cooperation because it doesn't matter. You don't have to like each other to win championships, right? You just have to be able to cooperate to the point where we have a common goal to win.

Are these types of training for these athletes, I think you mentioned that you kind of learned this from somebody else or the application from another individual. But if someone's an aspiring strength coach and they want to work with athletes, how do they how do they learn some of this stuff? Because this is in textbook knowledge here, right? Right. I mean, not people are trying to systemize it. Yeah. Don't get me wrong. There's there's some good things that are out there, but you got to just get your hands in it. Like I was unbelievably lucky. So I had this semi-pro part of my life where I was like Jackie Moon,

where I was the strength coach and the player. So once again, the school I went to, I was the strength coach because I had one internship at Wake Forest, and I came back, and we didn't have strength coaches at that level. So the head coach goes, well, Corey, you know a lot about strength. You're the strength coach because I had one internship at Wake Forest and I came back and we didn't have strength coaches at that level. So the head coach goes, well, Corey, you know a lot about strength. You're the strength coach now. So I'm like training my dude, like my teammates. So from that, it's like I had so much experience doing wrong shit, but I was training athletes. So it doesn't matter what level, like I played the lowest level of college basketball, but I think where the real gold is, is kids. Like train these kids that are fifth I played the lowest level of college basketball. But I think where the real gold is is kids.

Like train these kids that are fifth grade all the way to twelfth grade. Just get your hands on people because you're going to learn through the fire more so than you're going to learn through a textbook. So in any form or fashion, like, yeah, obviously get some strength knowledge. Have something to offer to an athlete. But at some point, you've got to actually train a fucking athlete. What you see now, and it's astonishing, at some point you got to actually train a fucking athlete.

What you see now is this, and it's astonishing is people that are getting this crazy celebratory status for this wealth of knowledge that they've obtained through whatever, but have never fucking trained anybody. And you're sitting there like, yo, well, you're missing the big boat here. Yeah.

Like there's this relationship and human aspect that you're, I don't care what kind of sports science you can spit. If you can't train somebody, none of that shit matters. So I think the most important thing is keep like go to whatever level you can get access to and just start training. I don't care if it's fucking jumping jacks and calisthenics. Hell, kids are going to get more from that than they are going to get from barbells. So let's get to that. from that than they are going to get from barbells. So let's get to that.

I ended up, you know, for a few years training, uh, some people all around the country, you know, doing seminars and things like that, um, for CrossFit and just for just regular powerlifting seminars. And by going through CrossFit and dealing with different body types, you know, powerlifting is, is just so different. And the power lifters that would come to me that come to these seminars are so different. Now things have also changed a lot. So over time, things have changed where you get, like, skinnier people showing up to powerlifting seminars. But it used to just be other powerlifters that were strong, you know. But by doing that and getting that experience and then also having a background in just some regular personal training, you really learn the battle that people are going through as they're

trying to perform whatever the hell it is you're talking about. And you start to watch it and you're confused because you know how to do it and you think it's a common sense, but you're like, I guess, I guess it's not common sense just to even a tricep push down something so simple. You know, I guess it's not common sense i guess i have to teach it i have to show people it but by seeing so many different people over the years it really it helped me to kind of decipher out like where were some of these problems you know when somebody would do a squat a deadlift a bench press i saw it like unfold you know more and more and it allowed me to really grow and expand with working with the athletes

that you're working with i mean that is that is some rare territory. First of all, super high-level athletes is one thing, and then also they're giants, some of them. And so that must give you some insight that other coaches don't have. And then also coaching a big group like that you know so you could go to a Louie Simmons and you could go to some other people that have executed well and making people strong but what do they know about being a strength coach probably nothing because they probably have never trained a room full of 30 or 40 athletes before that is very difficult and how do we have you know enough bars and weights? And,

you know, do I have a different group over here? Like, how do I even piece that together? So that gets to be really complicated. So the stuff that you've learned just by being, you know, on the front lines is crucial. Facts. I mean, the one thing that I think has helped me in my progression is the more I realize how much I don't matter when it comes to winning and losing, you know, because that's the goal, right?

Like the objective goal is to win games or hopefully not to lose games. And the reason why I came to that conclusion is like a lot, I see a lot of strength coaches. I see a lot of athletes. I see a lot of different programs training and there's some shit out there that you're like, why? Like,

Oh my God, why? Like you watch LeBron stuff and you're kind of like, really LeBron? Like that's, that's what we're doing. But he's still the best in the world. I still see teams win national championships doing dumb, dumb shit. So what, what is my great program doing? Right? So you got to humble the shit out of yourself and realize that whatever I'm trying to bring

to the front lines is got to be so simple so that once again, everybody can understand and everybody can digest. So and then you remove that stigma of I got to clean. I got to snatch. I got to this. I got to that to get someone strong. Now, that shit don't matter. Like what matters is their performance on the court. If you work backwards from that, then your answers are going to be in front of you. Now the logistics aspect. Yeah, dude, I got guys from five,

10 to seven foot tall in the room at the same time. How the fuck do you set that up? Especially imagine I'm squatting, you know, squatting with each other. I mean, and then you think about like the room that I'm in already, right?

It's really messed up. What you really turn to or come to find out is you start bucketing guys with similar issues, similar problems. I mean, I got five, ten guys squatting with seven-foot dudes because they both have the same type of problem. Even though you're short, it doesn't matter. So you're in the same group. Now, as far as spotting, obviously, that's a little different.

But when you start to find commonalities, then you can start bucketing. And then all of a sudden, instead of turning this like 13 different squat, it really is, it's three, it's one pattern with three different implements to execute that squat. So then it becomes super simple. But at first it seems like super overwhelming because you're trying to individualize all this training programs

for all these different levers, if you will. But in reality, you'll end up just start bucketing it really quick. And then at the end of the day, it's do the simplest shit and squeeze all the juice out of the simple shit because people want to rush to the plyometrics or rush to the cool shit that just seems like it looks good. But oh my gosh, there's so much low hanging fruit, like fucking walking with your, like taking a dumbbell in each hand that's half your body weight walk that for 100 yards or 50 yards if you can do that it's pretty strong so many people can't

even do that like that's low hanging fruit you know hanging on a chin-up bar if you can hang from a chin-up bar for a minute or you can hang one-handed for 30 seconds yo that's strong what the fuck is strong right that's what we got to identify strong 500 pound back squat absolutely strong for basketball probably not it's probably going to teach them how to break and they're not going to be able to move very fast right so who gives a shit so once again maybe doing more non-specific strength related measures is the real goal here or is the real identifier opposed to saying man that clean look good that 100 kilo like sweet but man if i got a guy who can't even do 10 pull-ups what does it fucking matter what you got andrew i was just gonna ask

about um specializing do parents still think that that's like a good move man they're stupid yeah um i mean yeah okay i'll put it to you like this. If you honestly care about your child, you're not going to try to put them in this situation, earn that scholarship. Right. Cause that's what you really see. It's really this weird, like selfishness that I think you see where it's like, fuck you, you're going to play football and you're going to play football to the point where, you know, you're going to get that D one scholarship and all that. I mean, that's such a fucking pipe dream. Like if you look at the stats, I don't have them in front of me, but if you look at the stats i don't have them in front of me but if you look at the stats oh my god it's so rare and then you think how rare it is to get into the pros like that's the part that you're like what are you really doing all you're doing is setting your child up to be so hyper focused in one area that eventually when that domino tumbles and it's like oh that's not happening holy shit how are you going to handle that stress yeah and then you wonder why like kids are like jumping in front of trains and shit you know like that's where i'm like especially like paul alto holy shit like you should see the crazy stuff that happens there because i mean all these parents are like ceos of companies and

they're super hyper successful and if they're not valley victorian or their school then oh my god what am i going to do and they go down this really dark place and they don't know how to handle it and so yeah let's have some latitude so they can have different interests yeah does it ever make sense to like uh you know if they are a all-sport athlete but it's like man i don't know this college is really interested in you for basketball like i mean is there like a certain age where it doesn't make sense or just man i think i think anything above 15 and 16 you can start start going, I really like this sport. I might need to start hunkering down. But leave it up to the kid essentially though.

I mean, that's what I really think it should be. I mean, gosh, I mean, as a man, I'm in, in strength for, for, for basketball at high level, been in strength for 10 years. And the kids that I get that really don't want to be there are staggering because they feel like they have to be there because they're in this situation it's like well i just so happen to be fucking tall right i just so happen to have some coordination they really didn't want to fucking be there and so you're wondering like okay what like what does this even mean to you why am i even wasting my time with you because you don't even want to be here and so like what what kind

of psych like what what shit is going on upstairs that's going to really like fuck with you because you don't even want to be here and so like what what kind of psych like what what shit is going on upstairs that's going to really like fuck with you for the rest of your life when you're in a situation where that's what i identify myself with but i don't even want to be that identification yeah that shit's scary man yeah it happens though yeah i'll just uh i'll flip it right on its head then what about uh coaches like does it make sense to really like focus on one area like whether it be strength or oh you know what I mean yeah okay so as a strength coach in a team coach in general are you talking about a sport coach yeah yeah so a basketball coach yeah you generally you need to

have a niche right if you're the all-around guy you're not good at anything you know so what you see in college basketball is like okay he's the recruiting guy he's the guy that can get kids in oh he's the offensive coordinator right he's the you know he's the he's the individual or he's the uh skill development guy you know like you need to have that niche but once again like you're trying to teach a hyper specialized area right but i mean you'll see well college basketball is kind of crazy right now i mean kids dads are getting hired on staff just so the kid goes to school they're like really crazy stuff you know and evidently that's okay at the ncaa but then they're getting on everybody about paying kids let me get the fuck out of here like that's that's kind of wild to me um but as far as coaching like it's all about your interest

like for me i was a purist in the beginning but i realized like maybe that's not the way to go so i developed this latitude and then all of a sudden I had all these tools from my disposal to handle certain situations that in the past I'd have been like, Oh, hammer nail, hammer nail. Now I'm like, Ooh, that, that, that tool would do something different. So yeah. Do you think they should get paid? Absolutely. Absolutely. I know that's a very controversial topic, but absolutely. Absolutely. Now, when that happens, I'm probably fucked. Like, it's going to be bad news for me. But I mean, these kids, like, it's, I mean, it's 20 hour work weeks. You know, like what other kid that works a 20 hour work week at college or in college doesn't get paid? No i mean oh you get that you get that free education i get that don't get me wrong that's important too but if we're really like if we're really thinking about this like stanford i can say that stanford that kid yeah that 20-hour work

was worth that degree 110 but if you go to you know low major mid-major school in bumfuck louisiana or whatever and you get that communications degree and you can't even fucking write a sentence by the time you leave who used who yeah right and that's where my when i bring kids or when i was in other schools in other situations my my real goal my real impact was getting them on board with okay they're taking advantage of you like we're all. We're all riding on you. You need to ride us. You need to find a way to get yourself in a situation.

Because when I went to school, I was at Berea College, the smallest school ever for basketball. Literally, NAI. I didn't even know what the fuck NAI was until I got there. I was like, oh, this is NCAA Division V, right? No, that's not how it works.

Oh, shit. But when I got there in my first summer, I was like oh this is NCAA division five right no that's not how it works oh shit but when I got there in my first summer I was like oh shit okay I'm not playing in the NBA got that one done but I had guys on my team that still thought they're going to play in the NBA year four I was like hell no but I took advantage of that internship program that would pay for me to go to Wake Forest it paid for me to go to UNC that paid for me to go to Olympic Training Center and I was able to get some experiences before I even graduated so that I could advance in my field. Shit, that's what all these kids should do. I'm telling you, these kids at Stanford, amazing.

They got internships at Tesla, internships at Nike. I mean, they're doing big shit. I got a kid doing stem cell research, like literally presented on it in D.C. last week. I'm sitting there like, bro, come talk to me because i need to learn like you're amazing human being but that's not everywhere like that's that's like one or two schools that are really doing that you can truly take advantage of that and that's where i'm like yeah kids should get paid then yeah do you go to all the games and stuff oh yeah so i see the kids

more than the play even travel and stuff yeah so. So I'm basically, I'm with them more than any other staff member because obviously I travel recovery, regeneration, whatever that means. Um, warmups, cool downs, uh, obviously the training aspect, sit on the bench. I mean, basically I'm a nutritionist on the road, like all that stuff, like setting up meals. So, uh, the applied sports science, all that stuff. So yeah, that's, that part's cool because you always want to feel like you're a part of something you know and the more value you can bring to that situation the more you're like okay i'm really helping the cause and you're just helping with any and everything too right all facts like i'm i'm throwing on luggage on the bus

taking somebody needs a gatorade and you run to the store and you get some or whatever the hell the case is 100 man i'm like you're basically a utility man on the road, which is fucking awesome. I love that because I'm helping people. That's what we're all in this for. At least I hope. We're here to help people. I don't care if I got to clip a fucking toenail or bench press. Anything that I could do to help.

Oh, this shit was crazy. Buzzer beater. Damn. This is where I almost slip and ate shit. I was going to say, that's you in the, in the,

in that burgundy joint. Yeah. No, my suit game's really strong. Skrt. Man. See, that athleticism though,

didn't fall, didn't fall, but I almost ate shit. You can see my pinhead right there. But yeah, that was crazy. Damn,

good coaching, man. Good, good strength coaching. That's, athleticism. That's pure tricep strength on that three-pointer from midcourt oh that's exactly what that oh yeah there you are that was that

three sets of 20 yeah you can see my bald head right now leaving the ref and then that was a close call that was it that was hey there it is dang that's an athlete right there boy that's why you needed surgery it was just pop man no luckily that wasn't oh my god that was the case that would have been really ugly i've seen that happen before actually it's been like national television where coaches are like blowing out their achilles on the sideline i'm like oh man having a head coach at georgia state when he was there um fun times though do you have like any type of athletes that you really, really enjoy working with? Like sometimes when, when someone wants to work with me and they're like really strong,

uh, they're not receptive to any type of change. Right. I mean, do you like, what's your favorite and least favorite type of athlete to work with? Okay. So great example here. There's two swimmers I was talking about. One is the attention span of like a fly right like

just all over the place that's my favorite because it really takes coaching to get them because they have all the energy they might have all the attributes to make them really good but they don't have the steering wheel to keep them on the road and that's where i'm like okay this is coaching right now i can I'm steering talent. I'm helping them drive that. The one, the other, it's more like everything's okay. Like, hey, what do you want to do today? Okay.

No, that's not a response. How do you feel today? Oh, okay. Did that hurt? Okay. No, no, I need some feedback. Let me know what's going on. But that type of athlete will fucking do anything.

So that's kind of cool too yeah but i like i like it's too it's more dynamic when i can steer that that that almost that craziness but you have more work to do yeah basically yeah essentially okay great question yeah can anything else over there andrew no that's everything i mean well i guess if if we were to pay you know student athletes like oh, I mean, because it is tough, right? But like, would there be like a pay scale or is it just if you're on the team, then you're going to make X amount? I think this, I think it's revenue sports are the only ones that get paid. Because I'm sorry, if you're not bringing in revenue, why would you get paid? Like if you're the fencing team, why would you get paid? Like if it's football and basketball that's helped supporting you like why why the hell would

you benefit from it um so but when you see images and jersey sales and all that i think when the kid leaves whatever's made from that he gets a percentage you know um but as far as like i think there should be a standardized pay, no matter who you are. Like if you're a scholarship athlete, this is what you get paid from basketball and football. But if all of a sudden you, you know, that number five Jersey is selling X amount,

you know, when you leave or your image is shown on commercials and PAC 12 network and all that stuff, I think you get slid something when you leave and that's your, that's your way into professionalism. Right. But that's where I think that's a healthy something when you leave and that's your, that's your way into professionalism. Right. But that's where I think that's a healthy balance.

But once again, like there's probably way better means and methods. I'm just the meathead in the closet, not the logistics guy. But, um, I think that's a fair way, but if someone, I guarantee someone has a better strategy than I do.

Yeah. Yeah. But at least it's kind of sparked the conversation, right? For sure. For sure. And then when that happens, it's going to get really interesting.

Yeah, man. Holy shit. Who's the biggest mutant you ever worked with? I had this guy. His name is Reed Travis. Dude, he transferred to Kentucky last year. He's 6'8", 256, lean as shit. Like super lean.

Unbelievably contractile, rightile right not elastic but contractile right made to lift weights and when i first met him i mean i looked at him and immediately i was like oh my god finally i'm gonna have some validation i'm just gonna have this guy do like three sets of 20 on curls and immediately i'm gonna look like the best strength coach in the world and then i realized that's him. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's a specimen. Great. He's unbelievable.

Like neck up too. He's really special. Wow. But when I watched him move, I immediately told him like, yeah, bro, like you're not going to pick up a weight for a while. And he looked at me with the biggest smile. And I was like, what the fuck? I didn't expect that.

I figured you just want to get awesome and he's like no man everybody wants to make me strong because i can get strong i'm already strong i want to be a better basketball i was like oh man dope so like we developed this immediate attraction like we had a great relationship from day one um but he's a freak um now, I will say this. The biggest performance freak I got is one of my swimmers. Now, ask Ram, because I asked him last night, the string coach for the Sacramento Kings. They have the same force plate technology we have. Counter movement jump.

I was like, what's your average on the NBA roster? He's like 18.1, which that doesn't sound high, but that's hands on hips. You're not approaching you know it's just a true counter movement jump like it's not using the arms it's not using all this momentum to help you gain like 41 inches like on a swipe but it's a true measure of straight power and he's like yeah 18 and i'm like okay um so my gold medal athlete just did an 18.1 and she's a chick.

And I was like, he's like, what the, no. And I was like, yeah. Like that, that to me is probably the most raw power I've ever seen in a human that I've been associated with. So yeah, she's freaky. I always love hearing about the mutants because there's just like these outliers, right? You know, these people that you train, you work with and they gain some weight on their you know bench and squat and deadlift and stuff and like that's really cool but it's always interesting there's just these people that they uh touch a weight and they gain 30 pounds right and just shit just goes bonkers for them and it's uh it's just it's

just rare right you know i and i I wish we knew more about some of that stuff. Like I wish we knew more about what went into you know, some of these kinds of mutants that walk around and people that have won gold medals, people that have won Mr. Olympia competitions and various things like that. Because even, even with performance drugs, it's just so rare. Like there's like, I don't even know what the number would be, but it's so rare to be like a Jay Cutler or a Phil Heath or, you know, and even just to be like one of these, to be like a LeBron James. Like what the hell, like it's genetics, obviously, coming into play,

environment, and, know there's their mindset and a lot of things coming all together um or like shack right you know like what like what the fuck planet is shack from well it's so funny you bring up peds because people automatically associate like especially when you think of like ifbb pro bodybuilders and you're like bro like jersey shore douchebag is taking the same shit. Like, come on. Like, like there's a genetic component. He's a hundred pounds less. Right.

Exactly. You're like, come on, man. Like, don't, don't, don't, don't throw the PED thing on him. Like that's bullshit. Like at the end of the day, it's still a lot of talent, a lot of genetics and a shit load of fucking hard work to get to that. So that's one thing you see, especially in my field. It's like, oh, like, oh, he ran fast because he took some shit.

And it's like, dude, okay. Like you still got gotta earn that shit like and a lot of it's gifted too who are some of your favorite uh like mentors uh what you know in in the strength and conditioning world like strength coaches like who do you follow there's some certain books that you've read that you really liked and things like that yeah i mean my mentor, my mentor, Jonas Sauration, man, just a fucking amazing human being. He's by far who I lean on the most. He's the only reason why I'm somewhat relevant in this field because he gave me my shot. He gave me the opportunity to work for free for him

and be able to foster some of his knowledge, and he's been able to direct me from there. But people that I really look up to and respect and able to talk to a lot, Jordan Shallow, big friend of mine recently the muscle doc um so smart he's uh in the area isn't he yeah so he's actually like a nomad like he travels all over the place we've communicated with him a little bit before we were working on getting him here he's he's quite intellectual like it's it's when you see that type of intelligence

and brawn together, you're just like, whoa, shit. Jordan Shallow, right? Jordan Shallow, yeah. And him and Ben Pekulski do a lot of work together. They do a lot of his tours.

I was on Ben's podcast. He's brilliant too. Good God. He's on a different level. But like, as far as like mentors, you know, people that,

they're not really mentors, but I just, from afar, I just admire like Buddy morris like i i mean gosh like i've never even talked to the guy but i mean i'll watch old youtube videos of him at pittsburgh he was coach x right yeah yeah yeah on elite yeah i used to read all those forums and i was like oh man like i just i was man he's i he's someone that stuff was fun back in the day the the elite FTS forums and stuff like that. It was literally the site I went to every day. So I'm at Campbell University in Booze Creek, North Carolina,

and I was seriously like that was my major source of information was I'd just go to elite. What's new on elite today? And I would follow all the athletes' logs and what do they do for training today? And that's what I'm going to do. I went to a seminar 15 years ago that had uh in las vegas just kind of on a whim i heard like last second that louis simmons was going to be at this seminar this before i ever met louis or before i ever trained at west side might even been more like 20 years ago but uh i heard last second i told my wife about it and

she got me tickets like as a surprise gift and uh i went to it and i met um i met james smith was there coach house was there mark uyama was there and it was like three or four other like you know stud uh head head strength and conditioning coaches like in the nfl or in the nba and they and they weren't like no one was really anywhere at the time coach house was like already with arizona state and mark was already making some of his mark but the nfl or in the nba and they and they weren't like no one was really anywhere at the time right coach house was like already with arizona state and mark was already making some of his mark but for the most most part a lot of other people really weren't got them in their infancy yeah weren't anywhere and we always talk about that and we're like it was at like the bellagio and

coach house is like he goes yeah it was at the bellagio but we were in like some garage or something he's like i don't even know if anybody knew that seminar was going on. I was like, yeah, I know. It was crazy. Well, I remember Elite, they gave me this really cool opportunity. So I want to make sure I got this right. Matt Rhodes, Vincent DiZenzo, and Jim Windman. They held this learn to train seminar or whatever it was up in Pittsburgh.

And they did it. One guy couldn't make it, but he already paid for it. He's like, just use it as a scholarship for somebody. And so I think it was Vincent who had this essay contest. And I think I came in like third or fourth, but it was basically like, why do you deserve to be here? And at that time I was like basically homeless. I was like, I'm living in my office trying to figure shit out

all the way in North Carolina. This shit's in Pittsburgh. He sends me an email on Thursday night or no yeah I was on a Thursday night saying hey it's yours if you want it I was like shit I'll be there so I got my little sorority chick fucking Volkswagen Jetta just jetted all the way up to Pittsburgh overnight well I stayed with someone in DC and then finished the trip um and then that, that was like, I mean like you don't hear that shit no more with, with my world. It's like people just want shit. And, but it's like, for instance, your wife was so awesome. Just get you tickets just to be in that moment. And for me, I was like, Holy shit, I get to be in this moment

and I'm sitting there like freezing my ass off. ass off because I'm basically waiting two hours in the car before this shit happens. No, my wife has done a couple. There's been these weird, these things that you would think would be small that have forever changed my life and her and I's life together. It's amazing.

It's really almost eerie. For example, she was working for a fitness magazine. It was a trade magazine. And, um, I was a huge fan of elite and I think I was already, maybe I was already writing on there. I don't know if you know, but for them or what the case was, but I, I loved the site. I was a huge Dave Tate fan and, um, you know, I, I connected her with Dave Tate cause I was like, Oh, it'd be cool. She's works for this fitness magazine. Uh, maybe she can get out the word, you know, that he's got these books and has a site and so on. And so, yeah, they communicated on that and she, you know, um, gave him like a free ad in in the magazine or whatever and he was like oh well if your husband's a fan let me send you some tapes i watch those fucking tapes every day that's every day i and i rewind them and i keep watching them and it's

like you can't hear anything they're shot from the other side of the room it's like louis simmons spitting all this weird knowledge and um she would come home from work and she'd be like, would you just give it a rest? She's like, our VCR is going to break. She's like, do I have to listen to this every day, all day? I'm like, yeah, I'm trying to learn. I want to know more about all this stuff. That's sick. Yeah, that was the one.

See, I love stories like that because they're just so far and few between now and the age of information yeah and how readily available it is and it turns into well people think it's easy so they just and this is shit like there's need to be there needs to be some type of etiquette about talking to people now because they're just assume that it's like okay i'm just going to ask you shit and not give anything in return it's like fuck that like come on like this has got to be a two-way street rather i don't care if you fucking buy me a coffee like i let's at least talk about this but now because everything's so readily available they assume humans are just so readily available as well and it's like the more content you produce the more shit that comes like oh here's this five paragraph dm can you answer all these questions for me like fuck no

like dude like i appreciate you know the message but can, who can reach out to all of that? And, but with those types of stories, it just don't exist anymore. It's so dope. We had somebody on the podcast recently. He was talking about how he doesn't understand how people don't, you know, attend to all their DM messages. And so I, after the podcast, I didn't want to, you know, scorn him on the show here, but after the podcast, I showed him mine.

I'm like, this is what I did. Look, right. And I said, look what happens when I showed him mine. I'm like, this is what I would look. Right. And I said, look what happens when I do answer somebody. And then it just goes again. Yeah. And they ask a lot more,

which I, I don't mind, you know, I, I do try to get to people here and there and I encourage people to ask questions, but man, you just, it's not possible to get to all of them.

I mean, I only have like X amount. You have unbelievable amounts. So I can only imagine like triple, more than that, what that would look like. But to me, I'll just like X amount. You have unbelievable amounts. So I can only imagine like triple, shit more than that, what that would look like. But to me, I'll just go back to, well, this is why I'm putting out content.

So it's rather, it's coming at some point to answer your question. Sometimes it's super lazy. Hey, you have any videos on the bench? And it's like, we just had someone here too, like at that bench, 715 pounds. Sorry if that video wasn't enough. Right, exactly.

Exactly. So, you know, it's, there's a, there's a point where people need to monetize, you know, and that's where it's, I think that's where the crossroads I'm at right now. Cause you know, college is whatever, like college is amazing. It's a nice little safety blanket. Like I don't have to go get clients, clients already provided for me. But I think that's like my next step is like, okay, how am I going to be able to make a living off of this? But it will be interesting. We'll see. Um, what are some

other things that you had to do? Uh, cause like, I do think these stories are important. You mentioned that story, you know, traveling to that seminar kind of mentioned being like homeless, like living out of your car type of deal. Like what other shit sandwiches did you have to eat? Man. Okay. There's, there's some pretty good ones. Um, cause being a strength coach is hard. And then once you are a strength coach, it's not like,

um, it's not like you're rolling in dough either. Like it's a, it's a tough job. There's a lot of hours associated with it. It's hard. Well, so here,

here's my situation at the time. So I get my, I'm getting my master's at Campbell university, which no one's ever fucking heard of. They're the fighting camels. It's like sweet mascot, right? Orange camel in Buies Creek, North Carolina.

Anyways, so I'm getting my master's there. I just so happened to luckily land a GA there at the last second. Like it was literally last second. I had six teams there,

right? Including football. Then I would drive and I lived in Raleigh temporarily. Then me and my girl Brooks. And then I was at that, that was the homeless part.

So then I would drive all the way from Buies Creek, North Carolina to Chapel Hill, which is an hour and a half. And I would do that back and forth daily and then go to night school. So I had six teams at Campbell. I would go up to Carolina to do as much as I can with men's basketball. Then I come down from seven to 9 or 7 to 10 Doing night school

I did that shit for 2 years When you're in the moment you don't know it This is just what I gotta do So many people won't eat that shit sandwich No that's what you have to do I'm not saying you have to Be homeless or anything You have to just engulf yourself in the situation It is what it is until you get to where you want to get to but a lot of people just

like they fold so quick and that's it's great for people like me should i get job security you know but that was the biggest one for me it was like fuck how am i gonna do this for two years and then you know i was at the otc getting paid i think it was like that time was like fucking maybe it was below minimum wage because they gave me a dorm right and this is like minimum wage like back when minimum wage was like six bucks i mean like that was a long time ago and then i was the director at santa clara now this is like my oh yeah baby i made it right santa clara low major i didn't know i was the director until i got there i thought it was just a men's and women's basketball job like yeah

fuck yeah basketball division one here we go and I get there and I'm like, yeah, whose office is that? And they're like, oh, that's your office. And I was like, oh, cool. So like, well, where's the boss's office? And they're like, no, no, no. You're the, you're the boss. Like you're, you run this weight room. Oh shit. I'm getting mail at my work saying, oh, you've, you've, um, what's it called? Uh, you've, uh, qualified for low income this and low income that. And I'm sitting there like, holy shit.

So I'm like 24 years old, living out in California. I'm from the fucking mountains of Virginia, like hillbilly shit. Don't know what the fuck I'm doing. It's really bad in Virginia. I've been there. Bro, like man, you go to like the coal mining aspect.

I'm not even trying to like kid and be insulting to you. It's just nuts. Man, so I'm like right where all the states meet it's fucking crazy bro it's so like i'm an hour and a half from west virginia then i'm 30 minutes from north carolina and then like another hour and a half tucky's got nothing on that area well that's where i went to school it was you've been hanging out in all the good spots i've been in the hollers and i've been in meth central like for most of my life. But coming from that scenario and then going to California, it was like, what the fuck?

Like, this is just a while, you know, but there's a lot of people that had it way worse than me. Like I got fast tracked in this shit. I came into the strength game when it was like the bubble bursted, like literally at the moment it blew up. And so that's why I got so lucky. Holy shit. If I even came in a year year later i probably wouldn't have had the opportunities now my the only shit i got a director's job at the age of 24 off the ignorance of a sport coach like if anybody looked at my qualifications they'd be like this guy's never actually got paid to be a strength coach we're gonna make him the director and i'm sitting there like thanks guys but i had that

little north carolina logo right there and the Olympic Training Center flag. And I was like, oh, this guy must be legit. You didn't really look close enough. Okay, got it. So that's like my first paying job. And I didn't know what. I was all the way away from the country, from home. I didn't have anybody out here.

It was wild, man. Wild times. But once again, there's a lot more people that's had it worse and is going through it currently. Yeah, you just got to go for it, though. Dude, my fucking intern. He's amazing, by the way. His name's Kohei. He's from Japan.

Language barrier, automatically fucked, right? But he's interning for free in Palo Alto. You know how expensive that shit is? Like, holy hell. And I'm doing everything I can to get this kid a job. And he's got to get a job by the next two months with a professional or higher education, or else he's going to get deported. So, like, I have this mission.

So, hashtag Kohei coach job. But I'm trying to get deported. So like, I have this mission, so hashtag co-hate coach job. But I'm trying to get this kid a job ASAP. That's real problems though. That's real problems. Yeah, that's brutal. I had problems,

but I didn't have real problems. All right guys, that's it. Strengths is never a weakness. Catch you guys later.