Mark Bell's Power Project - Ramsey Nijem - NBA Strength Coach by 25, NCAA Champion by 30 at University of Kansas || MBPP Ep. 793

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

In this Podcast Episode, Ramsey Nijem, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about Ramsey's journey from the Sacramento King's head Strength Coach to winning a National Title as the University of Kansas Strength Coach. Follow Ramsey on IG: https://www.instagram.com/dr.ramsey.nijem/ Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject  ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en  Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #KansasJayHawks #strengthcoach  #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast

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It's going to make your ass look fat. And your ass will look fat. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. God damn it. That was a good one. That was a good one. Make your ass look fat.

What's going on, coach? You guys won a national championship? We did. We did somehow, someway. That's wild. Crazy. Crazy. 70,000 people.

72,000 people, I think, were in there. It was chaos. My mom got to go, though. That was really cool. But my two brothers went. And a few weeks, like a week prior, two weeks prior, my twin brother was like, oh, I can't go. He's a firefighter, and he has a daughter.

And so he's like, that's just too many days to be without her. I said, look, man, I'm not going to peer pressure you. This is for the national championship, bro. And I remember telling him, we're going to win, though. Ain't no just talking shit. We're going to win, though. And then we won. So, yeah, it was amazing.

It was really like the coolest sporting event that I've ever. I mean, I was there with the team, so that's one thing. But just to be in there, it's like, yo, this is crazy. What's it like being in that town when you guys are winning like that? That's got to be amazing too. Yeah, for sure. And the first, because the Final Four is there. Or you mean in Lawrence?

Yeah. In Lawrence. Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah, it's just crazy. I mean, it's such a basketball town, obviously. But the whole entire city is, you know, all the way down to Kansas City, like the whole thing. So we play our conference tournament in Kansas City. And so that's exciting and that builds it.

And when we go, obviously, through March, yeah, the whole town is just rallying behind you. And then we did, obviously, the parade. And you're talking about, I don't know, like hundreds of thousands of people just lining the streets. Just losing their mind. Yeah. Like, it's just like, yo, this is actually pretty cool.

Is the Final Four always there? Because I'm kind of unaware. I'm the guy that's like... It's in different spots, I think. Yeah. Every year it moves to a different city. Okay. So this year it was in New Orleans.

Okay. So, and that was actually a good kind of town for it to be in because obviously you got Bourbon Street there and all that. So, and the Final Four is cool because, yes, we get the highlights going. The Final Four is cool because most people will go out there for the weekend. And so this is obviously the North Carolina game, the last game, but before that we beat Villanova. And so if you came even to support Villanova that night when you're on the street,

even Villanova fans are like, damn, man, y'all beat us, but go win that shit. So it's like people just start to rally for you a little bit. The tournament is special. You got 64 teams in there, and you don't see the same thing from college football, though college football adopted a playoff system, and they have some teams that go in there. But it's like the top six or something. I don't even remember how many teams are in there but there's not nearly as many teams as

there are in the in the final four yeah and when the final four happens like these teams that you never heard of these areas that you never heard of sometimes get these huge upsets like i'm sure during your time at kansas you've been there for three years even with as great a run as they've had i'm sure you you guys have been upset here and there by some teams where you're like, like other people haven't heard of them, but they still might be a good team, like James Madison or something like that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, the upset story is what makes, you know,

they call it March Madness for a reason. It creates the madness. So, yeah, and big teams. I mean, big teams fall. Like, obviously, Kentucky lost this year. But it's basketball. I think that's why it's Obviously, Kentucky lost this year. But it's basketball. I think that's why it's fun. One or two guys can get hot, and if you have a good kind of scheme,

you can figure it out. One or two big shots, just like that one. Yeah, it's definitely fun. That's why it's so hard. Even if you look at us, Coach Self now is the only active coach with two national championships. Obviously, he's, in my opinion, the best college basketball coach, but it's also just because the tournament is so hard.

It takes relatively some luck. You've got to have the right matchups and all of that, and the seating is important. That's why there's no other coach with two, just because of how hard it is. How does the rest of the school get good at shit? Because the football team, they don't do so well in Kansas, right? Well, they haven't been for the past decade or so. Mark's allowed to say that because his wife is an alumni. Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And an athlete, a swimmer. So he gets to say things that other people can't. But, yeah, I mean, I think it's obviously hard, but it takes time. And they got a new coach now, so I think they're on the right path. But we got our first football game this Friday, so hopefully we kick it off with a good start. But it just takes time.

Yeah, it's tough because you see the football factory teams, like they're good at football, and then they're not usually as good at basketball. And there's a couple schools that are pretty good at multiple sports, but it's got to be hard when you're, I guess, you build a tradition, right, and you recruit and you're known for, you know, Kansas is known for basketball. For sure. Yeah, yeah.

And I'm sure that factors into if you're a football player, a different sport, right, you probably think, well, that's a basketball school. So it probably takes time to even it out a little bit. But I don't mind being a basketball school, that's for sure. Go on. I was going to say, being a strength coach, how do you sift through, like, current trends of, like, what people should and shouldn't be doing in the weight room? And then also just maybe naturally what some of your guys might gravitate towards maybe they see something on instagram and they're like i want to try this knees over toes program or i want to try this this new thing that they see out there

how do you do you reign the guys back in do you give them freedom like where do you lie on that yeah good question and with social media now they do see all that stuff and i like it because because what it ultimately does it just creates buy-in to taking care of your body. There's not too many things that I would say you really shouldn't do. So for the most part, I'll say, hey, if you like that idea, let's find a way to mix it in a little bit. Or educate on when to do it, when we shouldn't do it. But I actually really like when they bring me stuff because it just means you're actively engaged with that process. And then I can use that to obviously, hey, you want to do that?

Great. We can add that here, but you got to do this too. So it creates ultimately, I think, more buying. But it usually just starts with the education. I'm going to do something. I'm going to have to do it. Hey, that makes a lot of sense, but you're having to be 6'10", 250 pounds, and that might not.

But let's regress that and do it this way, right? And so just finding ways to, I think, mix in the things that they think they might like. Or sometimes we'll just try and they're like, oh, damn, really like that that's fine too 6 10 250. yeah it's a lot of mass but actually you know on top of what he just asked what have you been seeing because like obviously we've had ben patrick on the show we've had those guys from goda who work with a lot of field athletes on the show i'm just curious like since you've been working with nba players and college level players too what has what from some of these practices actually been very effective?

Like what have you been able to take and use and see being very effective for some of these players? Yeah, for sure. I mean, things like knees over toes and full credit to the branding that's gone behind that and pushed in the content machine to allow that. that and pushed and the content machine to allow that but at one level like we've known getting your knees over your toes that's it's good for you for years right we've seen research on that stuff mm-hmm and more so I think a lot of people are afraid to allow the knees to go over the toes yeah and so it's it's like the flip of that like it's okay if that happens because ultimately force has to go somewhere so if you limit the translation of the knee going forward

then the force is just gonna get shot up to the hip or maybe get stuck in the ankle. So you have to disperse force some way. So allowing the joints to move freely is important. So things like that are important and, you know, you gravitate toward it. But there's so much out there with social media that for the most part, if there's an idea that I like, then I'll just go to the research and say, oh, does this make sense and how can we mix this in? And there's some ideas that are like, hmm, that sounds really cool for social media.

You like Seidman? I don't have a problem with him, you know? But so much, I also like separate, I think, thought processes from clickbait information. It's like you do that because you want to create. Yeah, and he's even amid that, yeah. click bait information it's like you you do that because you want to create you want to create that yeah and you want and and it's fine because because people will follow you and then you'll sell a book and like whatever you got bills to pay so i never hate on anybody putting money in their pocket uh but i always just stop at like as soon as you start claiming injuries will occur

it's like we don't we don't know enough about that stuff no matter who injuries will occur if you do this if you do this or if you don't do this if you do full range of motion squats you're more likely to get injured yeah as opposed to my uh quarter squat or whatever as opposed to my perfect 90 degrees and it's like right okay that's why very difficult to say that for sure yeah we just don't it's really hard to study injury, and you can't appreciate that through social media and how much people put out there. But unless you put some fear in somebody, they're not going to follow you or buy your book or whatever.

So, like, I get it, and like, whatever, I respect the hustle, but it's so hard to understand injury because injury is binary. You either got hurt or you didn't get hurt. But the challenge with that is that the odds of injury are not binary. So it's very much possible that somebody almost got hurt but didn't. And so because of that, it's really hard to understand how training would influence somebody's injury risk. Because the only thing we know is did you get hurt, did you not get hurt. But it's possible that you were playing through pain and you never missed a game.

So you actually were injured but not classified as injured because you didn't miss a game do you think it's fair to maybe make the statement of like um if you're not well conditioned if you're not in good shape you're not in top shape then your likelihood of getting injured might happen might increase simply because you can kind of picture the athlete maybe being out of position yep yeah getting in compromising positions like my effort to go dive for the ball might be different than somebody else who's a You can kind of picture the athlete maybe being out of position. Yep, yeah, 100%. Getting in compromising positions. Like my effort to go dive for the ball might be different than somebody else who's a little quicker and they're already a couple steps, and they don't have to even dive for the ball.

They don't have to go into the stands because they were a little quicker to begin with and just in better shape maybe. 100%, 100%. Yeah, I mean, we could talk openly about those ideas because that's not saying you will get hurt. But the odds of you getting increased risk of injury, the odds of you getting hurt are certainly higher if you're a deconditioned athlete. If you're not in shape, typically bad things will happen. And whether that's acute stuff or just fatigue breaks down kind of your movement strategy.

So we'd call it kinematics. So as you fatigue, your movement quality would break down. And then over time, that can put you in risky situations, and that's where you get ACL or something like that. That's got to happen a lot on the court. All the time. Because you're up and down the court a lot, right? Which is why you've got to be in shape, right?

And so if you play, you run, right? And that's the ultimate kind of model. You want to be in shape because fatigue, they say fatigue makes cowards at everyone. Fatigue makes you worse at everything. so if you're really good at basketball if you are fatigued you're going to be not as good and so no one would argue no one can argue that being a better shaped athlete a more conditioned athlete would make you better at your sport because even if you're michael jordan if you're tired you're not the best version of michael jordan yeah and so that sprinkles down across everything. Yeah, so something like being stronger, it could be beneficial,

but it also, if you are working so much on your strength that it makes you inefficient on the court, you can argue that you would be more fatigued on the court because your movement pattern isn't efficient. So that's where it gets to be really science-y and really interesting on your part because you're dealing with these athletes. They already move really well yep and you're like shit man i don't know what's optimal for this guy the guy's 6 10 250 pounds he came in here he can jump like crazy he can already move

like crazy what are some of the things that you kind of look at or look for like do you kind of assess a person and say well you know at this stage, it's probably not even a good idea for this particular person to even mess with any squats because their movement pattern seems compromised somewhere. So let's work on something else. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think there's always opportunity costs, right? So if somebody is relatively strong and you focus on making them stronger, even if that increases injury risk, we don't know if that's true. But what we do know is by you spending time making them stronger, you don't have time to focus on other things like making them conditioned

or making them more mobile or focus on their injury kind of history. So I think you just have to balance all of that. And at some level, once an athlete is strong enough, and that's a whole other debate of what's strong enough, but once we figure out, like, hey, you're strong enough, we have to work on the other qualities because there's so many qualities to sport, especially basketball. As far as squatting goes in general, I mean, we'll start,

we modify everything, right? So, like, we might go with a hat-filled variation. So we might raise your heels up with a ramp. That's going to allow the knees to get over the toes. It's going to allow you to actually kind of bend and fold a little bit better. We might put your hands up to be supported, keep a more vertical trunk. And now that load is getting dispersed across the joints, predominantly the lower body,

and that way we'll save the low back a little bit. And ultimately that's the goal. I think it's not necessarily just to squat people, but find variations of squatting. Because to me squatting is just a movement pattern. How do we do this with the least amount of negative cost involved exactly right and so so many times we say squat people just think it's barbell back squat like well no squatting is just a pattern of triple flexion right so as we go into this flex position of the ankles the knees and the hips what's the best version of that

for my athletes and some of them a back squat works some of them a safety bar works sometimes it's a hat feel sometimes it's a safety bar or excuse me a front squat sometimes it's hey we really like this but we don't like loading anything above the torso so why don't we just put you in a belt squat or hey none of this works let's just put you in a leg press so we have so many options that we can use i think strength coaches or coaches in general that think well squat means back squat it's like no squat means pattern and then find the pattern that works for you and your athletes. And if you have anthropometrics that allow you to squat, great. And if you don't, let's put a variation out here that works.

Because ultimately the goal is just to strengthen the lower body for the most part. What are your thoughts on, you know, I mean, there's an idea of like athletes being strong enough, right? But we've had people come onto the podcast that aren't, you know, they don't favor lifting for field and court athletes um the go guys specifically they're not a big fans of like putting a barbell on somebody's back or an athlete's back because they feel that it like will cause them to have flat feet on the court which can potentially you know you can injure your knee or something like that right what are your thoughts on that idea and that logic? Yeah, good question.

I typically don't subscribe to any ideas that are, if you do this, it's going to cause this other thing. Because the body is just way too complex to, I think, kind of limit it down or narrow it down to this chain reaction that we think will occur. If you take a still image of something, right, and you say, well, this is what will happen, it's like, well, that was a dynamic task. You just happen to capture it in that moment. Their idea is that like, it'll code in bad movement mechanics that will then show

itself up on the court. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I would agree with that because you know, we have, to me, it's like this, this black swan approach of like, if you could find one anecdote, if anyone has an anecdote of something, they say, well, this is what will happen. Well, then you can just find the alternative to that and say, well, no, that can't always be true because we know athletes have squatted and played 20-year careers.

So like logically, that doesn't add up perfectly to me. But I think the bigger discussion is you don't necessarily have to use a barbell. You can find other ways to load people. And ultimately strength, to improve strength, you You can find other ways to load people. And ultimately, strength, to improve strength, you just need to find ways to load it. And then it opens up the can of worms of what is strength, right? Okay, do we define strength as can you squat two times bodyweight back squat?

Well, no, probably not. That's not how you should define strength for a lot of people. And unless you're a powerlifter, you don't necessarily have to do anything, right? If you're a powerlifter, you have to do certain movements, and we're going to do those movements because that's your competition. That is your sport. Yeah. But in basketball or any other sport, your sport is the actual sport. So who cares how you load it? Just find ways to load it that I think would align with whatever you believe in, right? So in general, I don't think you have to do barbell anything. Yeah.

But it is a good option for some people for sure. And then at some level, it's an absolute load conversation. Barbells just allow you to load things at an absolute level, right? The total mass on the body. Barbells are a nice kind of venue for that. Bless you, Andrew, right? Man down. But yeah, there's totally other options.

Yeah, and I think ultimately think ultimately too you got to consider when we think about strength training what we're really thinking about is force expression and so so many times we think of strength training we just look at it from kind of an external perspective how much how much load is on the bar yeah but really what we care about is force expression which is really an internal measure of how much is the body producing how much force is the body producing and because of, we know that if you can move the same weight faster, there's more force being produced. Or can you move just more load in general? But we've almost narrowed down strength to this idea of how much load is on a bar. And for your average

gym goer, it's probably a fine definition. But for athletes, especially high level athletes, it's probably not a great definition of strength especially because in sport strength is so much time dependent it's very much time dependent and so it's well it's one level can you produce force at a peak level max force but what's probably more important in sport is how fast or how rapid we would call that you know rate of force development how rapid can you produce force because that's probably gonna be a little bit more important and so an analogy like for my guys we talk about vertical jump all the time.

But the rim is only 10 feet. So if an athlete could jump 40 inches versus an athlete who could jump 44 inches, I would argue that the guy who could jump 45 or 40 inches,

the sport performance wouldn't change. The guy who could jump 45 is going to maybe have more highlights, but two points is two points. And so if the rim is 10 feet or the ball is at 11 feet

or 9 feet, who can get to the ball faster for a rebound? 10 feet or the ball is at 11 feet or nine feet who can get to the ball faster for a rebound who could dunk the ball faster for to score right and so sometimes the rate that things occur at is actually much more critical in sport than the absolute number and so like for me if a guy can jump 40 inches i don't really care to make them jump higher right i think force and any other quality can kind of be contextualized around that it's like once you get to a certain point you don't need to keep improving that thing. Just go improve something else. Cause there's so many things that are important in sport. Have you seen anybody lift more and perform worse?

Ooh, uh, there's research that actually supports that. I don't know if I've ever seen that like with our data. Um, but there is research out there that supports that. And I don't know if it's, I would just say like a time component that comes to that comes to mind immediately like if i spend tons and tons of time squatting but i don't spend hardly any time jumping how good is jumping am i going to be yeah a hundred percent a hundred percent um and i know there's research on actually on um surfers i think surf sprint times and they found uh, don't quote me on this. It's been a while since I read the research, but they did a bunch of, I think, pull-up variations. And, uh, they looked at the athletes who were stronger in the pull-up were actually slower in the surf

sprint. But, but the rationale was you spent so much time focused on this movement pattern that you didn't spend time focused on the other thing. And so it's just a time, a cost of time, essentially. Um, I don't think, I can't think of a reason why being stronger would ever hurt you unless you're producing so much force that you don't have the eccentric qualities, the breaking force to accept or accept that load that can get you in some way. Or if you're working on it to your detriment, like you love deadlifting and you got a guy who breaks into your weight room and is deadlifting, you know, every day just because he's obsessed with it and it hurts his back. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, if there's acute consequences to that over time, then yeah, because ultimately, you know, if your back is sore, now your practice isn't as good. And then now you're not getting good in practice. And now that means you're probably not performing well in the games. So a lot of that comes to mind, too. But independent, just strength, being stronger in general, I don't think is going to ever hurt you. But if it comes at the cost of anything, then now it's probably like, okay, we either need to spend more time doing other things

or in your seeking of improved deadlift or squatting, it comes with some consequences. Well, now you're sore all the time and now you can't practice or you can't focus on other qualities so but independent of all those things being stronger typically is a good quality to have do you have like a uh kind of like the same base marker as you did for the vertical for speed because i would imagine like if you're faster on the court you you'll you'll get you'll get a lot of advantage and then if somebody's a little bit faster than you then okay well yeah they got a little bit more advantage. And then if somebody's a little bit faster than you, then okay, well, yeah, they got a little bit more advantage there too.

So it's a little bit different in my opinion, but do you have anything like that? Yeah, I mean, speed in basketball is typically measured by three-quarter court sprint. And so if you look at like fast players, they're at like 3.1 or below on a three-quarter court sprint. So that would be, you start at a baseline,

you run through the opposite free throw line. And if you're a very fast guard, for example, if you can get to 3.1 or below, you're very fast. But then it comes down, okay, if you're a very fast guard for example if you can get to 3.1 or below you're very fast but then it comes down okay if you're at 3.2 are we going to focus on getting you to 3.1 or below three seconds and if so at what cost right and so uh i think sometimes it's almost like is he fast and what is fast well now it's like always context dependent what is fast me i don't know can he blow by his defender right can he get to the cup create some pressure on the defense and then fan it out or so it's almost like you oh you got to bring all that in all the time what does fast mean? I don't know. Can he blow by his defender? Can he get to the cup, create some pressure on the defense and then fan it out?

So it's almost like you got to bring all of that in all the time to say, is he fast? Well, we can measure it but then also, hey, you're very fast

when no one's guarding you but when someone's in front of you, you're so damn slow. And you're dribbling and everything else. And you're dribbling and you got to think and now there's a mental component

so there's so much of that that pretty quick you can tell if a guy is fast or not and if and if you're confused on it he's probably fast enough he just needs to get better at other things right he can't dribble he's thinking too much he can't read the defense but if you're slow if you're a guard and you run at three five okay you're just slow and so we just need to improve that quality right so sometimes it's so obvious that you just need to improve the the underpinning qualities but if you have to ask the question they're probably fast that you just need to improve the underpinning qualities. But if you have to ask the question, they're probably fast enough.

You just need to work on the kind of conscious or cognitive component or reading the defense or you don't know how to dribble or your bag isn't deep enough. Like I tell my guys all the time, like you're fast. You just don't have the skill set to express that. And I've seen athletes who can jump 40 plus inches, but they never dunk in a game. They can jump high enough, but as soon as you give them a ball, they just can't put it all together. It's a lot to go one, two dribbles, read a defense, jump up,

and then a defender jumps and be able to dunk it, right? That context is a very challenging thing for some athletes. But in a layup line, like I've seen athletes, they're the most impressive dunker ever in a layup line. But in the game, you never dunk, right right and so it's putting those pieces together yeah because like how often are you going to run three quarters of the court and then just hit the brakes or try not to run into the back pad right yeah so you gotta stay in bounds if you have the ball so that makes sense yeah the variables yeah for sure and you bring up a good point too of like basketball is

an acceleration based sport it's not a top-end speed sport because like you just talked about at some point you need to slow down or you run out of bounds and when you run out of bounds you hurt your team because now they're going five on four the other direction and so now we don't have a defender back so we focus a lot on acceleration but top-end speed for the most part isn't basketball specific now you can argue if you increase somebody's top-end speed you make their accelerations faster, or you can just make their accelerations faster, and that's kind of what we choose to do or I choose to do.

How does one make acceleration faster? Oh, man, that's another can of worms, but there's a bunch to it. But ultimately, you can look at it from the underpinning qualities of, okay, acceleration is more force dependent. There's more time on the ground. So if you make them stronger, that'll typically transfer. And then there's kind of an orientation of force, a horizontal component you also need to get them good at leaning right and so a rule of thumb could be a 45 degree angle right can they get into this lean position and then apply force into the ground backwards to propel

themselves forward so when you think about accelerating faster it's some of those components right like especially early acceler is more force dependent. And then can you get them to obviously transfer their force into this horizontal lean? And you could do different movements, right? Like a hip thrust or an RDL, more hip dominant exercises might transfer better for that. But ultimately, are they fast? I mean, excuse me, are they strong relative to their body mass? And then can they put that force production into the floor at the right angles?

So an athlete who stands vertically right away isn't going to be good at acceleration because their force is going straight down and that's more top end speed mechanic but you need to be able to lean to push the floor backwards so you can go forward versus top end speed it's okay to basically hit straight below you because you're just trying to maintain speed at that point can you still play a little bit what are the what's the team thinking about oh man they think you suck no they think i'm they they gotta think i'm somewhere between michael and lebron yeah they gotta think that they gotta think that it's a lateral movement from those two yeah exactly anything below that is just disrespect i was gonna ask uh are you

involved at all with like any of the recruiting process like i know that's a whole it's its own thing but i can just imagine that like they would want some input in regards to like some of the mechanics that the players that they're looking at might have you can be like okay yes this guy does start at that 45 degree he's going to be easy to work with etc etc so do you have any involvement with that yeah yeah certainly involvement in recruiting at the NBA level is more of what you were talking about hey what do you think of his body what can you do for you know with that frame over the course of a year how much weight can you put on him we would screen his movement quality what do you guys think from an injury risk perspective because at that level there's a lot of money involved obviously and so you're going to make

some decisions based on current kind of player but also future player. In college, it's a little bit different. We don't do any testing in recruiting. That's going to be more based on if the recruiting coach thinks he can play here and wants to offer him a scholarship, then it's more of a pitch. We just want them. We want them to come here. We're already sold we want that player, and now we're pitching to them.

It's kind of a sales process of, hey, can we get this player here, and what are they going to them right it's kind of a sales process of hey can we get this player here and what are they gonna get when they get here right so yeah I'm involved in every recruiting pitch now but it's not any testing or it's not the question of do we want them or not want them it's we know we want this player they're here let's convince them that this is the right spot for them and you know my quick sales pitch is you won't go to NBA or not man what we doing right and so and then we give them the track record of that, obviously with, with the Kings, I was able to work with a lot of players,

some of those players they've heard of, right. Whether it's an OG like Vince Carter or some of the younger guys that the players can relate to. So yeah, it's a little, always involved in that recruiting process, but the NBA, it's more of an evaluation. Whereas in college, it's more of a, Hey, let's convince him and his parents that this is the right spot for him when it comes to something like weight gain you know sometimes even that gets to be complicated because like does the player really need to gain weight or does he

need to just be stronger like is that the reason why you want someone to gain weight or do you want them to gain weight because a center typically weighs this much or forward you know typically weighs this much but again forward typically weighs this much. But again, what's the reason why you want someone to be that heavy? Maybe for a particular athlete it might slow them down too much. How do you go about getting some of the guys bigger? That's got to be challenging because you're trying to keep them athletic at the same time. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

For our guys now, I just use NBA data. So there's a really cool analysis from 2018. They just averaged every draft pick and by position, by body weight, and some strength numbers because we have the combine data. So I use that as a rough rule. Now you're lined up to get drafted. Yeah, hey, man, you're 6'4", or you're 6'3", and an average. Okay, even though the NBA has changed so much over time, like it's kind of positionless now.

But for the most part, okay, anyone who's 6'4", weighs 220. Okay, so you weigh 180. We got a long way to go. Now, it doesn't mean you have to be at 220 to get drafted. But if we know that that's an average, that's low-hanging fruit. Let's try to get you there. Now, that's a big gap, so we won't get you there. But to me, it's more of can we create buy-in?

Now you know you should gain weight. So one level is just that. Let's compare you to other people in the NBA because you're going to be going up against them. That's your dreams. Let's help you get there. Mass also to me, so that's like one level. The second layer is it becomes kind of at some level body armor. If you have really thin legs, for example,

and you get ran around screens all of the time, and then you get kneed, well, if you have very thin legs and you just don't have the mass on top of that, now you'll get a bone bruise, and now you can't play for a week or two. And we've actually dealt with that. So when I had Darren Fox, you know, he was light as a feather, and that helps him. That's why he's so fast. That's why he can jump so high. But those qualities only help if you can play. But if you're also so thin that every time you get need, you have to miss a game because literally it creates a bone bruise because you don't have the padding above it well now the conversation is hey you don't need to gain mass necessarily because you're not strong enough you just need the body armor and then the last part is obviously that strength right we do know that

cross-sectional area of strength they're going to have relationships so sometimes you're not strong enough and our goal is actually strength but what comes along with that is eating and sleeping and recovering and that adds mass as well so whenever i think of size i kind of look at it like okay let's comp to nba players and then if we can't get there is there a rationale for body armor because they're going to run you around screens and you're going to have to hit and bump play type comes to mind like are you a physical guy do you create contact and if so you probably want to have maybe a stronger upper body or bigger upper body to create some contact and then lastly is obviously that force component.

You can build, like the idea of building force independent of mass is to me an argument not worth having. Just get people stronger, and if weight comes along with that, great. I'd agree, yeah. And then if they need to gain weight, then get them to gain weight. And if strength doesn't come along with it, sometimes that's okay as well, right? Because sometimes it's just a mass conversation, right? Two bigs, two centers, all things being equal, the one who weighs more is probably going to be a little bit more effective, right?

Because if your defender is pushing on you and you weigh 220 versus you weigh 250, well, that's just a heavier mass for them to push against. Even if you produce the same force as somebody who's 220, because you producing force is either holding your own ground or creating some space. But if a defender has to push on you, having more weight, it's just more weight for them to push on. And over 40 minutes, do you want to push? If I'm a defender, I would rather push on a lighter person who's 220 than 250.

And over 40 minutes, you'll break them down if you weigh a little bit more. Some of these athletes are insanely strong on the court, right? Like there's some people you can't figure out how to, like they can box you out and they can do all kinds of crazy stuff and if you were to see them in the weight room you know they put 185 pounds on their back and they just look like they don't even want to try to squat it much less actually squat it right yeah absolutely and that brings in obviously like to me strength is a skill and so there's so many athletes that are very strong in their sport but they're not quote

unquote strong in the weight room and to me that's, that doesn't mean they can't produce force. It just means that they're not good at your movements and that's okay because squatting is a skill. All right. And so if you were to squat for years, you would get very good at the skill, but they don't need that skill to be good at their sport. They need force to be good at their sport. And a lot of them have that, right? And like, there's been times where I'll jump in and I'll try to guard somebody in the pro level or college level. And they're way stronger than me on the court and like there's been times where i'll jump in and i'll try to guard somebody in the pro level or college level and they're way stronger than me on the court like there's nothing i can do but i bench squat and deadlift way more than them and it just means that that's just a skill that they haven't cared to take on and a lot of times it's justified because they've spent so

much time developing their sport skill that they didn't need their strength in the weight room right unless it's football for the most part that's probably going to go across almost every athlete football players are used to the weight room through high school. They'll use it, especially if you're at the D1 level, right? It's rare that you get to the D1 level in football and you haven't touched a weight. It's very common in other sports. So the first time you've actually had consistent training was once you got to college, but they were just better than their peers. And that's how you get a D1 scholarship. As far as recovery is concerned, because we know that obviously sleep plays the biggest part in terms of some of these athletes being able to recover from session to session, gain size, etc.

Did you notice a difference between dealing with NBA athletes as far as recovery and then dealing with college athletes? I know that you're the number one school, so maybe they're more committed to that. But when I think of college athletes and college students, sometimes it may seem hard to get those kind of individuals in line what do you find yeah yeah i think no i think you hit it on the head like in in the nba it's your your rookies are basically your college guys right so some of them need the education around why to do stuff and hey you're gonna hit a rookie raw 50 game a rookie wall 50 games into the season and so we have to focus on recovery early so that doesn't happen so you educate there but for the most part in the n NBA, guys understand recovery because 82 games, if you don't understand recovery, you'll find out soon enough why you need it.

There's 82 games that are going to drive your body into the ground. And if you're not actively recovering, then you're just going to feel terrible towards the end. And I always say the teams, talent aside, the teams that end up winning the most in the playoffs are the teams that just don't fall off. A lot of times people think it's like this this kind of increase in performance over time but really it's just who doesn't fall off and if you look at the past few years with the injuries in the NBA that's for the most part has held true college is a little bit different

actually it's almost like the the increase in performance through March like the teams that can peak at the right time like there's no college basketball team in the world right now that's good at basketball right it's just too early but basketball team in the world right now that's good at basketball, right? It's just too early. But obviously once we get through our non-conference schedule, we get a little bit better. And then conference schedule comes, and hopefully you're competing at a high level.

And then you hope to peak in March toward the end of season. Whereas the NBA, once you're about 20 games in, you just want to be in shape and just don't fall off. And then the really good teams, like the Warriors, they won't care about some losses during season because they know their bigger goal is the end of season. But for the most part, to answer the question, most NBA players know the importance of recovery and the value of it. College is a little bit different because they're just used to getting by with whatever. They won't

sleep. They won't eat. They'll show up to lift. And then they'll feel terrible. And you're like, what did you eat today? Nah, coach, I didn't have time't have time say i don't give me that you had time you just didn't figure out a way to eat and find find a place to do it so there's much more education that needs to occur at the college level yeah some of it's just money and the nba player can go out and buy his own recovery boots and spend 500 on it or 200 on a massage gun and college players for at least historically haven't had the funds to do that with nil that's now, and players can go and buy some things. What's NIL? Name, image, and likeness.

So it's how college players are getting paid now. Okay. They can use their social media and stuff like that, right? Yeah, yeah, social media. I mean, there's agencies now that get them deals. So now that will actually help. There's been a lot of negative spin on that, but I think it's actually positive.

I mean, it's definitely positive. But it helps from even a recovery perspective because now I can say, yo, yo, fam, go buy a damn massage gun. And historically, they would say, how am I going to get that?

And now I say, you can definitely get that because I know the deals you're getting. DM that. Yeah. Or DM them, right? I mean, you just got $10,000

for passing out, you know, sandwiches at the drive-thru. Like, you can buy that now. So I think that'll actually improve over time with some of this stuff because as soon as you attach a number to somebody, they begin to think of their body as their business. And in the NBA, that's always been the case

because you were getting paid to play basketball. And in college now, there's part of that. Like, yo, if you get hurt and you don't play, your name, image, and likeness will decrease. So you are a business now. And now let's start to treat our body as a business. Let's recover appropriately. So I think that'll actually start to improve a little bit. Are these guys seeing you train the way that the Kings used to see you train? Because I remember

you and your buddies over at the Kings get all hyped up and you guys would train hard. Do you still have time for that? And have you created a culture like that at Kansas? Yeah, not as much because we used to train every day in there and that was great. Not as much now, just the way that kind of, you know, in the NBA, you essentially, a guy can train before practice, after practice, any time of the day essentially. You're essentially a personal trainer, right, to 15 guys. That's your job as the head strength coach. College, we train as a team and they have classes. So there's less visual of that. But occasionally I'll jump in and, you know, oh, yeah, they're hyped to press 80-pound dumbbells or whatever.

I'm like, oh, that's cute. And you jump in just to show them you can still do it. Right, right. And they know that. And then it's still through social media. I'll post stuff occasionally. They know you're practicing it. Yeah, and I think that ultimately that's all I want.

I want them to know that I practice what I preach because that creates buy-in. So, yeah, not as much, much though we used to get after and then you guys came over a few times yeah that was great yeah that's incredible um but you know getting the guys to buy in you mentioned that many times i would imagine that you'll have to also kind of make some compromises in there with maybe your own belief system and some of the things maybe you don't think it's the best idea in the world for a couple of players to pass a barbell back and forth and do curls until they can't move their arms anymore but there must be some room for some of that because you you probably need to allow the guys to do what they want to do and to do things that they consider to be fun, right? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And we do things like that, right? We let them do-

21s today. Yeah. We let them do some of like dogmatic things or things that are just for fun and that creates buying. But I look at buying like every relationship, which means compromise has to occur, right? Whether it's a friendship, whether it's a relationship with your wife or your kids or anyone, like in general general there's compromise that occurs to maintain solid relationships because if it was your way or the highway then you wouldn't have that many friends or people around you so we all compromise and i look at strength and condition very much the exact same way and typically we build so much trust early that guys

they're not seeking for ways out of things so if they come to me and they need a compromise hey coach that doesn't feel that good on this or hey, hey, coach, you mind if we do this? It's typically like, yeah. If a player tells me something hurts, I believe him. So let's change that. If a player tells me, hey, I need some gun show today. Great. Basketball's tank top season anyway, so you might as well get some guns on you. But, yeah, there's a ton of compromise that goes on.

I think over time we build so much trust that guys don't take advantage of that at all. For the most part, they do what I want them to do. And then because of that, I let them do some things that they want to do. As long as it's not going to hurt them. Right. And for the most part, it won't like a bicep curl is not going to hurt anyone or anything in the

weight room for the most part is not going to hurt anybody. So if there's things you see on social media, you want to try different core drills. Great. Let's try it. Let's give it a go. And over time. If you start having a deadlift competition,

then you might step in and be like, Hey, like, I don't think this is a great idea and those are my favorite moments because there's times where that happens like we'll use social media

so I'll tell our social team to come in and record on days just because I know that the output that they give those days is much better and so we'll do that

but then because of that they go so much harder and it's like I gotta pull them back now like I appreciate you're trying to do that but we're not there in the program yet and I'm not gonna risk risk your back being sore because you want to look cool

on Instagram so we call like cap energy I tell them like fake the energy right like yo do another set but you know we're just going to get two reps but let's time it up so I play into kind of that content with them because ultimately I want them to be bought in and I want them to get content because I want them to share that stuff because I want them to feel like that's part of their identity right like I'm a guy who works hard I'm a guy who shares that nobody wants to be phony so if you're sharing that you're working hard you better actually work hard all right so uh yeah sometimes I pull them back but um I would rather do that than having the athlete that you got to always push push push like I want the guy that I could pull back and

then over time we kind of build that and eventually he's a freak right and that's what you want freak athletes who can compete at a high level. I was actually about to ask you that because like, you know, there are some athletes who go like they go so hard in the weight room because they're trying to develop so quickly, but they don't know when they're doing too much. So I'm assuming like on your part, it's smart programming to make sure that even if they go so hard, they're not going to fuck themselves up and you'll notice those guys anyway. Yeah, absolutely.

And earlier you touched on it too about this idea of strength. Like one thing, we jump our players on the force plates weekly. And so we have objective measures to say what's going on internally with this athlete, right? And if we start to see some decrement or some breakdown at an objective level, then we had to take a step back and evaluate with the program. And then obviously at the subjective level, right, they just tell you, Coach, I feel like, you know, I don't feel good today. And sometimes that's take a step back, look at the program. And then obviously at the subjective level, right, they just tell you, coach, I feel like, you know, I don't feel good today. And sometimes that's take a step back, look at the program, why is that?

Or sometimes it's, hey, practice was just three hours yesterday and it was just hard. So that's expected. Other times, like in our off season, some of our accumulation phases, I tell my guys you're not going to feel good. And we might know that some of these metrics are going to come down, but we also know that they're going to come out of those feeling recovered and refreshed. So I think it's always kind of these metrics are going to come down, but we also know that they're going to come out of those feeling recovered and refreshed.

So I think it's always kind of where are we at in the program, how are they feeling, and then take a step back and try to contextualize that. Like why do you feel that way? Is it the program? Is it other things? How's your sleep? How's your recovery? And if all of those things are aligned and you still feel terrible,

then it's probably the program, and let's back off or make some changes. But, yeah, you've got to constantly evaluate that because there's just so much going on. And as much as we know about strength and conditioning and performance, there's actually a lot we don't know. And so I always say every athlete is an experiment of one, right? It's an N equals one experiment. And for some athletes, your program is going to work great and they're going to get bigger, faster, stronger.

And other athletes, it's not going to work or they're going to break down or whatever. And so you just have to figure out why that is. And there's so much that goes into that. Outside of basketball, do the guys work on jumping much? I don't know if outside of basketball. I mean, you mean specific planes? We'll do some mechanic stuff for sure.

Do you do a lot of jumping in the gym? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Box jumps and things like that? Yeah, we'll do not a lot. I'm a big believer that if your exposure is just high quality, you don't need a ton of it. So, you know, in one session we might get 20 jump efforts, and that would be top end for me, like 20 good efforts.

Now if it's lower level, like extensive stuff, like hurdle hops, even jump rope, right? At some level jump rope is a plyometric. And so you can do 100 to 200 contacts in jump rope, and that's pretty easy for good athletes. But that's a lot of contacts. So there's always that relationship. If it's a high effort exposure, then we're going to bring it down.

It's going to be quality over quantity. And if it's a low effort, a low amplitude effort, then we can do a bunch of that stuff. And sometimes the goals are different, right? If we're going to jump as high as we can, maybe we'll use boxes to decrease some of the landing impact. But the goal of that is to get them to jump higher. A lower amplitude, high extensive, so like a jump rope, that just might be, can we prepare the ankle and the tendons and the Achilles for the stiffness and the loading that occurs in three hours of practice?

So we kind of approach it from two different angles. But if the goal is to jump higher, it's not going to be that many efforts because you're getting a ton of time on your legs in practice. You're going to get a ton of jumps in practice. But we still do want to expose to max effort jumps because if a guy could jump 40 inches, you're not going to jump 40 inches every practice. It might be rare. Even if you go to catch an alley-oop, right? Because you're only going to jump as high as you need to to dunk the ball and the rim's only 10 feet. And so occasionally if a guy can jump 40 inches, we want to expose him

to those 38 plus inch efforts just so that he can get exposed to high efforts. But when we do that, quality is high and quantity is low. Since it's college, I'm curious about this. We've been talking about like alcohol quite a bit on the show because, you know, some people when it comes to their dieting or when it comes to life, they want to be able to fit alcohol in while still being able to perform. But you know that it doesn't help anything as far as performance. It doesn't help anything as far as sleep. It can really mess a specific athlete up. Now, these guys being in college and having fun, I know that there's an education piece, but do you find that there is any type of issues with having to have like deal

with alcohol in these athletes at all? Or is it something that's not really, are they on point when it comes to dealing with that and performing? Yeah, man, we've never seen issues. You know, college kids are going to have fun and you want them to have fun. And because a big part of being a holistic athlete and actually recovering is you have a social life, right? And so if you isolate yourself, that's not good for anything. So you do want to have a social life. It's never been a problem. My education is simply know who you are. If you're a guy that goes out and you practice terrible the next day, then you need to know who you are.

And if you're vice versa, a guy who can go out and have a good time and come to practice and play well and go in the games and play well, then you found your balance. But I think it's important to know who you are and find your balance. And the examples I always give are in the NBA, guys will go out, obviously they have money and you're in good cities. And I've seen players who can go out till four or five, 6am and go for 30, 40 points the next night. And then I've seen guys who can do that and they are terrible.

And I think it's just important to know who you are, right? Like I don't, I'm not going to tell you who you are, but you need to know who you are and just have that self-awareness and be real with yourself. Okay. When I go out, I'm terrible. So I you who you are, but you need to know who you are and just have that self-awareness and be real with yourself. Okay, when I go out, I'm terrible. So I probably should limit the amount of times I'm going out in season, right? And vice versa, if you're a guy who can do it, well, there's a bigger conversation of you don't want to do it all the time and all those things. I know your influence and all of that, but I think it's just important that we want our guys to be social in general. I want people to be social, right?

We know that's good to be a good human. You should have a social life. But at what cost? And I think you just need to know what that cost is. You mentioned the force plates. What other things do you guys look at? I know sometimes in the NBA they might look at how many times an athlete jumped per game and how far they ran and they track.

I think maybe San Antonio Spurs were one of the first teams to do it. They really tracked everything. Do you guys get that intense with trying to track what each player does on the court yeah not not as intense in the nba or excuse me in college um mainly because of the infrastructure of technology so like in the nba there's a there's a technology called second spectrum that there's a camera system at every nba arena and you don't have to do anything you're going to get that data regardless so after every NBA game you can download basically a massive excel spreadsheet that's going to tell you every player that played the distance they ran the average velocities they ran the jump counts you can get all that information without putting anything on the athlete without I mean you pay for it but the teams all pay for them anyways

so some of the amount of the amount of data NBA teams, some of it's just non-invasive. And then some of it is invasive, right? You're going to do different tests. You're going to jump on the force plates. Your trainers or your sports med staff might do something. You might literally take blood draws, biopsies. I mean, you could do everything because you just have a massive budget and you could justify everything because you're paying $120 million out on contracts. College is a little bit less invasive. We still have force plates. We'll look at the velocities they move at. We do have two different wearable technologies that we wear on the practice court, and you can wear them in the games. So you still get a fair amount of information, but certainly not to the extent of the NBA, mainly just because there's an expectation now in the

NBA that we're going to look at our athletes from a million different angles to keep them healthy. And then there's just a budget conversation of NBA teams that are worth billions of dollars, that are paying hundreds of millions of dollars, can justify $50,000 in technology and data collection. But we still look at a fair amount of things, but certainly not to the same extent. Any idea how much somebody would jump in a season? Have you ever looked at a number like that? You ever see, oh, this guy jumped 40,000 times last year? Yeah, that's a good question.

I don't know. I'd imagine it'd be pretty high, obviously, because it's not just jump frequencies you would want. You would also want to understand, like, the height of those because a two- to three-inch jump, right, if you think of spot shots or good three-point shooters, they actually don't jump very high at all, right? And so that's still a jump, though, right? You can quantify a jump as anytime your toe leaves the ground,

that would be a jump versus high efforts. Like I ran through an NBA game once. It was like one time per minute, you would get a quote unquote high effort jump. And that'd be for a rebound or maybe a pull-up jump shot. Now I'm just watching the film, so I can't quantify that. What is that, jump shot now i'm just watching the film so i can't quantify that what is that over 10 inches i don't know um but it's not as frequent if you start to actually put a number to like the intensity of it how high is this jump and i don't know if you were to put like eight to ten inches that's not that frequent the low level jumps are super frequent because it technically at some level even running is a plyometric so you're leaving the ground so is that a jump is a spot is a spot shot a jump uh i just know it's a lot it's for sure a lot but then you know lower level

stuff might be more tenderness and so you can take on some more of that versus if you get into need uh deep knee bends or deep angles in general that's going to be more musculature so now you're you know if you go to jump 10 15 20 inches that's just more damaging to muscle tissue and that's the stuff that we probably really care about you want to understand low level stuff from a tendon perspective just to track and understand load over time but that's not going to damage the tissues as much as deeper knee bends or higher jump efforts or even accelerations and decelerations those high intensity things are what will make you sore the next day and then that over time creates the need for recovery and if you don't attack that then that's how you break down and you know bad things could happen whether it's a decremented

performance or an injury do you do anything for landings like uh you have people jump down from boxes or i mean that's a lot of times where guys get hurt but they unfortunately they usually land on somebody else's foot so i don't know if there's any training that you can do for that yeah yeah i mean yeah in basketball certainly because it's a vertical sport with people underneath you the anchor roll is a big problem we don't do too much around that because there's not much you can do to control that. But landing mechanics in general, we do coach, and so we'll have them drop off boxes. We'll have them land in positions that we think are important.

We'll do that with single-leg variations as well. And so we do attack it, but we understand or I understand that there's a limitation to how that's going to transfer because sport is just chaotic. You're going to go up and jump to, you know, for what might be a casual dunk, and then you're going to land for the most part, you know, one leg in front of the other, and you're going to be able to absorb that force, and there's plenty of time, and you'll run out of bounds, and then you'll stop and you'll turn and go the other way. Like, that's a typical play that you would want to see.

But then what might also happen is you go up to jump, and then you get fouled, and now your body, there's torsion, right? So now your arm is coming across your body. Your trunk is swinging around the hip. The back leg is going to swing behind you. Now you're landing on one leg, but you got torque coming around with momentum and you're 6'10 and 250. And now that knee is trying to figure out what is going on. And those are positions that you can't predict or control. So I always think, can we get our athletes to do all the right things from the wrong positions? And that's ultimately the goal is like, can we give them the capacity to handle

all of that? Right. Like, I don't know what's going to happen in the sport, but I want to be confident that you can handle whatever is going to happen. And that just is, you know, you, I call it chaos. You just want to start to introduce chaos into your training at some level and get your athletes comfortable managing that chaos because sport is chaos. You know, earlier you were mentioning that, I don't know if you do it also in college, but you're mentioning how you guys have like a screening process and you can kind of tell, oh, this athlete is going to be injury prone this way and that way. And, you know, Mark mentioned the landing, right? What ways, when you visually look at an athlete, what ways do you tell if like, oh, they're injury prone with this or that? You know,

like some people like go to, they have this assessment that they take people through and they watch how people walk and all that stuff. What do you look at? Yeah, good question. And that's the million dollar question. I think there's a bunch of screening processes out there, whether it's different people, like you mentioned, different companies. The challenge still is, to my knowledge, at a high level high level high level research none of those have actually been shown to prospectively predict injury okay so what i'll do is i'll look at a guy just how he moves right we're going to squat we're going to hinge and we're going to put you in a lunge position and we're just going to move you through a range of motion there and look at

how that looks and how that feels right and so there's some some glaring red flags for example if every time you squat or get into a position where you need single leg stability and flexion, your knee caves in, right? So you might call that knee valgus. And so early on, you know, call it 10 years ago, we would think that that was a predictor of ACL injury. A lot of the new research that's come out, especially the bigger cohort studies have shown that that alone doesn't actually predict ACL tear. And that's why this stuff is so complicated, because it's just so hard to study. But I have some rules of thumb. I don't want to see you cave into your knee every time you land, or every time you squat, or every time you get in a single leg position. If we put

you in a lunge pattern or a split squat position, and we see some asymmetries at the knee level, just that perturbation. So if I see on your know, on your right side, if your front knee, if your front leg is in front of you, you go down, even isometric, so you go down to hold a position, and that looks very stable. You look comfortable. And then we switch sides, and on your left knee, it's shaking all over the place. You can't find stability.

Is that going to lead to injury? I don't know. But are we going to work on that? Yes. And so that's kind of how I look at it. And then we'll look at our force plates. You can look at force ratios. And then you could also look at asymmetry. So we have dual plate system where we can look at your left leg versus your right leg.

Asymmetries comes to mind, obviously. And my general rule is anything less than 10 percent is not a big deal. So it's more like a green flag. If you're 10 to 15 percent asymmetry, my yellow flag you and anything above 15 percent, you might say, well, that's a red flag. Now, does red flag mean you're going to get hurt? No, I'm not saying that. But a red flag means we're going to address it. We're going to do something to try to decrease that asymmetry. Anything less than 10%, you would just call it human variability, right? Your right leg is 8% stronger than your left leg. And sometimes we think that's a bad thing, but it might be positive. It might be because you jump off your right foot all the time. And that's why you can jump 40

inches, because you jump off your right foot. the time. And that's why you can jump 40 inches, because you jump off your right foot. And we've created more stiffness and strength at that leg, and now you can jump higher. So sometimes we pursue the correction of things, whether it's a movement or whether it's a force metric. And that might not be good. You might be taking away something that makes them good at what they do. You also, you know, if you're jumping off, say, your left foot, your right hip flexor, like if you're jumping off say your left foot your right hip flexor like if you're jumping off one foot right your right hip flex flexor is uh flexing powerfully so you could say oh the left side is stronger but you don't really know because are we measuring the hip flexor on

the other side like maybe that whole side is stronger because maybe your abdomen and maybe everything contracts even harder on the other side but just not looking at it yeah for sure and the body is going to compensate and find a way, right? So usually if there's something going on on one side, there might be something on the other side that's counterbalancing that and creating some form of symmetry, but the way that you've measured symmetry is not being shown, right? So, yeah, we just try to, again, contextualize everything.

And ultimately, I never jump to the conclusion that this will lead to an injury. Because I've seen some athletes who literally when you put them on a slide board and tell them to do a reverse lunge, they fall over. They have no balance. And you might say, well, this player is going to get hurt. And it's like, well, actually, no, because every time they fall, they fall gracefully. They fall all the time, but because they fall all the time, because they lack balance, they've actually found a way they fall gracefully. They fall all the time, but because they fall all the time,

because they lack balance, they've actually found a way to fall gracefully. They're not rooted into the ground so hard that they might sprain their ankles. Exactly. Versus your athlete who has great stability who never falls, but every time he falls, he hits the ground. Yeah, we've seen the athlete who's like, yo, you don't really fall that often, but every time you fall, you break the damn earth.

That's probably not good, right? So I think that even athletes, even subconsciously, find ways to work around the way that they move, the way that they express force or absorb force or fall or whatever it is. PropRoger fam, this episode is brought to you by Vivo Barefoot Shoes. We've been wearing these shoes for almost a year now. They're flexible. They have a wide toe box.

They allow your feet to get connected to the ground, and they will make your feet stronger, and they don't look like shit like a lot of these other barefoot shoes andrew how can they get them for the best barefoot shoes on the planet and they also look really really good head over to vivo barefoot.com slash power project at checkout enter promo code power project 20 to save 20 off again vivo barefoot.com slash power project promo code power project 20 to save 20 off links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes let's go ahead and get back to this podcast i'm actually kind of curious about that um you know sometimes people look at the way like

lebron walks right with his super duck feet pull it up pull it up i'm gonna look for it right i gotta find it and some people are like oh this is this is so bad this is injury but lebron it's like he's he's known as one of the guys in the NBA that has longevity, right? Yeah. And then people look at the way like Jordan walks and they're like, oh, that's perfect, right? Now, we've seen so many athletes and pulled up, like you pulled up the sprinter that had the. Oh, yeah. Yeah, like the knees were moving in a weird way, but he's one of the fastest people on the earth, right?

Yeah, Justin Gatlin, I think. Yeah. in a weird way, but he's one of the fastest people on the earth. Yeah, Justin Gatlin, I think. Yeah, and I'm wondering, have you ever looked at the way somebody moves and it was super odd, but it ended up just working really, really well for them? Because people want to have one way that people and athletes should move, but it doesn't seem to be that way in practice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Great, great point. And see it a lot in jumping. You'll see that knee collapse a lot in jump Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Great, great point. And see it a lot in jumping, right? You'll see that knee collapse a lot in jumpers, even high jumper, like guys who can jump really high, not high jumpers in track and field, but just high jumping basketball players. And again, 10 years ago, you look at that and say, well, that's not good. That can lead to an ACL tear or something worse. And now it's like, well, hold on. Everybody who can jump high has that. Is there a performance benefit to that, right? Is there a performance benefit to allowing the knee to get into this valgus position?

There's that footage of him walking, and then there's another guy, like, making fun of it, impersonating it. That's hilarious. And some of that, too, is just, like, learned behavior, right? You have stiff ankles, so the knees don't want to go over the toe all the time. So in your casual day of life, you found ways around that, right? And some of it is movement-specific, right? Like, if I can get kind of to my big toe, for example, I might be able to push off of that big toe for longer and create more force.

But because of that, that whips kind of the hip around, and now you've got this movement of, like, Justin Gallant you mentioned. And I think there's something to that, right? There's something to perhaps like allowing joints to move in and out of range of motion, especially rotational ranges. It allows them to spring load different joints that would give you a force expression out of that. Then the conversation becomes, well, that's clearly a benefit or potentially a benefit, but it's also potentially a risk. And if it's a potential risk, do we need to fix that? But in the process of fixing that, do we take away the benefit?

And that's where it just gets super complicated and super hard. And then you add in the fact that we don't know a lot about injury. And I've studied this stuff. I'm not the guy who just says that. You mentioned the NBA earlier. So my dissertation, we looked at four years of injury data, and every single minute that a player played in the game, we had the camera system data. I mean, you're talking about millions of data points.

And we go and we create a injury prediction model. And my injury prediction model, my area under the curve was like 55%. So it's basically a coin flip, which isn't a good, strong predictor of injury. But it wasn't a lack of data. It wasn't a lack of effort to understand it. It was just that this stuff is very complex. Because anytime you think you have something that might lead to injury, there's something that might counterbalance that, right? We talked about fitness, for example. So someone can move perfect, whatever perfect is, but if they're out of shape, it doesn't matter because their movement breaks down. And vice versa, somebody can have quote unquote bad movement mechanics, but if they're very strong, they may have force capacity to allow for that to be okay over time.

So because there's so many things that are going on, it's like we just need to understand this athlete at every level we can. And then create a plan that we're confident in and execute that plan over time. And, you know, knock on wood, hopefully injuries don't occur. But then when they do occur, the benefit of having data is that when we return you to play, we understand who you were before you got hurt. And now we can return you to at least that status, if not better. So, yeah, it gets complicated for sure. But it's not, I think it's easy to go out and say, well, this is why people get hurt. And then you sell DVDs and books and get Instagram followers.

And maybe I should do that so my follow gets up. But I think the honest approach is that there's a lot that we don't know about this stuff. Whatever perfect is, I think that was perfectly said. That's what you just said. And I think that that's, how do we know how someone's supposed to move? I guess we can have a history of the way that we've seen certain people move

and say, this seems to serve a lot of people really well. But when someone's foot is pointed out when they go to do something as opposed to someone's uh foot pointed in as you're pointing out it might do six or seven other things that we're not even really thinking about it might serve the hip or it might serve uh the shoulder it might be a way for them to get around some sort of uh maybe they were just born with uh shorter hip sockets or something and it And they're getting around some sort of maybe genetic limitation to express their full genetic potential. Absolutely. Absolutely. And when you talk about this stuff, because really injury is diagnostic, right?

Like it's a diagnostic test of will you get hurt or will you not get hurt? And so if you do a movement screen and you classify, hey, I have 15 guys and five of them are in the risky category. So now we've diagnosed and said five of you will get hurt. And guys and five of them are in the risky category. So now we've diagnosed and said five of you will get hurt. And then all five of them get hurt. And you say, well, my test is perfect. That's rare. What typically happens is you say all five of them get hurt, and then one of them gets hurt. And you say, see, my category worked because I said that he would get hurt and he did get hurt. But you didn't consider everybody else that you said would get hurt. And so in diagnostics, this is like medical testing, you would say that's sensitivity and specificity, right? Even if it's

something like cancer research, right? Or cancer testing. And the goal is that if you say something about somebody that that happens, and if you say it won't happen, then it won't happen. And so I can predict every injury for anybody. I can go to a coach and say, coach, all 15 of your guys are going to get hurt. And then when one of them gets hurt, you say, see, I predicted your injury. I told you he would get hurt. Yeah, but you told me 15 would get hurt and 14 did not get hurt. And so your test or your diagnostic was actually terrible. But because we're humans and because we attach our ideas to things that we think about, you only notice the people that got hurt.

And now you say, well, see, I told you if you did that, you would get hurt. And then he got hurt. Well, yeah, but you told me 20 people would get hurt and only three got hurt. 17 were actually healthy. So your test is actually terrible, but you're not going to say that on Instagram or anywhere else. You're going to talk about the three that you predicted. Though 17 will get hurt at some point though, man. Yeah, they will. They will. You're right. So yeah, I can predict every injury. I would say every athlete will get hurt eventually. And now I'm a hundred percent accurate because every athlete is going to get hurt. Congratulations. Well, they play through

injury. Yeah. And so then the other challenge, even is going to get hurt. Congratulations. Well, they played through injury. Yeah. And so then the other challenge, even another layer to this, is when you do that, if you were to do a diagnostic or a screen of anything with athletes and you say, well, we think these seven are at risk of injury, you're not just going to wait and watch them go out and get hurt because that's what you would want to do.

To figure out if a test is good, you would say, okay, these five are going to get hurt. Let's go watch them play. Let's not intervene. We're just going to go watch them play and see if they get hurt but you wouldn't do that because you're a performance coach you're a trainer you're a pt you're a diet whatever you're a coach so you're going to say okay you're you might get hurt i'm going to go out and try to change that and reduce the risk of that so now you have an intervention that's occurring prospectively out while they go out and try to get hurt so it's just

so complicated so for you to really figure out if a screen was to work, you would have to first screen them. You would have to say, okay, of these 20 guys, these 10 will get hurt. You need one season to just let them go out and get hurt. And let's say eight of them do get hurt in that group. Say, okay, we're pretty confident that this works. You still have no idea what would affect that to decrease that risk. So now you need another year.

You need a whole different group. You need to do that test again. You need to get 10 more people who might get hurt, 10 who don't. And then you would give them all an intervention. And you say, does this intervention work? Well, last year, eight of them got hurt. This year, only four got hurt. Okay, we think something's working. Okay, let's do that again now. So it would take years and years of research and years and years of watching people get hurt. And then years and years of you manipulating your intervention to ultimately ever be confident that this is probably going to work. So instead of what we say is we just use logic and we say, okay, a hamstring strain is

pretty common in soccer. We know that a hamstring strain essentially occurs because the hamstring doesn't have the capacity to stop the leg from ripping. So what are we going to do? We're going to improve the strength, the conditioning, the velocity mechanics of that tissue, maybe improve the fossicle length, the length of that tissue or that muscle fiber. We're going to do all those things and just hope that it works yeah and to me that's an okay approach because it's probably the honest and logical approach versus the research approach which would just take years and we don't have time for that so that was a lot yeah well a lot of people don't want to say that we're hoping for the best but ultimately that's that is kind of what what has to be done right with your athletes and your efforts try to

help them move better i would imagine and to you know i guess potentially uh avoid injury in some regards there must be sometimes a pattern though with somebody who's like oh you know my my back hurts a lot you know they they have they have a symptom and maybe not only they have a symptom that they just have pain in their back, but maybe another player also, you mentioned injury history earlier. So maybe you have a guy that continually hurts his left knee. And then if you kind of think about it, you're like, well, you kind of walk around like an idiot.

So I've been thinking your left knee probably hurts anyway. So that's where you might be able to get into some corrective stuff that may help. But again, it's still be really hard to tell how much it will help and what it will do. The way someone stands, the way someone rests, the way someone plays the game is going to have a massive impact on their knee or lower back pain or whatever it might be. Right. For sure. Yeah. And I always say, you know, I always say hope isn't a strategy. Right. Like, although we're out there and the hope comes from confidence that we're doing all the right things and we lean on the research with that, we lean on our experience with that, right? You call it evidence-based practice. So even though hope isn't a strategy, the reality is if

someone comes in with knee pain, okay, what are the things that we know might influence this knee pain? Maybe it's down to nutritional level. Maybe we need to get them some collagen, for example, right? Maybe it comes down to the tissue capacity level. Maybe we need to get them some collagen, for example, right? Maybe it comes down to the tissue capacity level. Maybe we need to start them with some isometrics to decrease knee pain and then build that out, build some strength in these different positions. Maybe it comes down to the fact that it's tenderness. So every time they do more stretch shortening cycle, explosive-type movements, maybe spikes in that type of movement category is what's causing knee pain.

So can we build that load over time? So we can always reverse engineer what's going on and then obviously create an intervention to influence that. But at the end of the day, you can do all of that and it's still an experiment of N equals one, right? Just because the research says something about a group of people, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work for your athlete. You want to lean on that and use that stuff, but you got to use your own experience and use some logic. And ultimately it's a process, right? Hey, we're doing this, and that seems to work. I've had athletes come to me and say,

Ram, every time I do that, that feels good. Great, keep doing that, right? Like, I'm not going to overthink it. You say that feels good, that decreases knee pain. Great, keep doing that. And then we'll leave that, and then can we add other things in over time? And I think that's ultimately the goal is just a gradual process to reduce pain, reduce risky behaviors,

and ultimately improve the performance of the outcome for your athlete. How do you get guys to move better? That's a good million-dollar question. I think ultimately movement is a skill. Just like I said, squatting was a skill. So I think whatever better is to you, have them do those things, right? And so for me, you know, I want to see a guy, if we take something as simple as like a reverse lunge, right, or a lunge pattern in general. Well, if I want you to get better at that patterning, because ultimately what is movement, you want to reduce it down to the motor patterns. You might call it a squat, a hinge, a lunge pattern, your upper body, your pushes and your pulls,

any type of trunk rotation. It's like, well, let's just do those things and let's progress those things gradually and accordingly. Progressive overload. When we say progressive overload and load doesn't have when we say progressive overload it doesn't necessarily mean weight it just means progressively moving that thing towards a direction that's typically more complicated or faster or heavier progressive overload any movement pattern and typically guys get pretty good at it and it doesn't take a lot like i've had i mean you take our off season for example so the way we

get to a rear foot elevated split squat, right? You put your back leg up on something and you basically squat through that front leg. The way we get there is from a split squat and reverse lunge patterning. So we'll start with a split squat, which is very stable. You know where you're going to be at. Drop down and up. We use some tempos and we build that. Can you reverse lunge?

Now, can we add a dynamic component? And then can we just stick you in a relatively true single leg position, right? It's not a single leg squat, but it's a rear foot elevated single leg squat. And I've had athletes who get to that and they're terrible at it. They just can't find balance. They can't find stability. So we coach them through it. Hey, if you create distance between your back leg and your front leg laterally, that gives you more stability. Hey, the reason why you can't get into range is because your front foot is way too close to your back foot. So let's spread that part out, right? And so, hey, every time you can't get in the range is because your front foot is way too close to your back foot so let's spread that part out right and so hey every time you stand the process the problem for you is actually starting in the standing position so we're going to start you

with the knee down bottoms up position and then we start to create and move this thing around it's like oh this you look terrible last week you look a little bit better this week it's still not great you were a two out of ten now it's a five out of ten and by week four i got guys moving with you know appreciable amounts of weight that looks pretty good it's like an eight out of 10. Now it's a five out of 10. And by week four, I got guys moving with, you know, appreciable amounts of weight. That looks pretty good. It's like an eight out of 10. Hey, you don't look like me when I do it. Cause I've been doing this for years and it's a movement that I'm good at, but you look pretty good and you're passing the eye test. So let's load this up. And now we could, now we get into what we care about the load and the velocities and those things. But I actually don't think it's that hard to get people to move better. I think it's just progressive overload

and have a proper progression or regression as needed. But most athletes will find a way to figure it out. That's why they're athletes. Like I've had people. Some fascial work. Like you mess with that? Like you have guys, you know, rolling out and doing that kind of stuff? Yeah, a little bit.

Especially because any pain at a joint or inhibition at a joint or a tissue level can transfer to a joint. And now you don't want to move through that joint freely. So for sure, you know, if something feels tight, that feeling of tightness, that sensation of tightness will influence your movement. So if we can reduce that sensation through a foam roll, for example, or even a static stretch for a little bit, that will reduce that sensation of tightness and then now you're more willing to move through. So if you have a tight quad, you're not going to like a rear foot elevated split squat because that back leg is going to get a stretch in the quad. So one way we can improve that patterning is by letting you foam roll your quad

or getting into what I would call a couch stretch. So put your back leg up on something and then sit up tall, and now you get a stretch in that back kind of quad. But by doing that, we reduce the sensation, which comes from the brain, and now the brain says, oh, yeah, I don't care if you move through the range of motion, and now you can move freely. And so did we improve movement? Yeah, but you can do that in 30 seconds. Right. And some of that is just playing around with the brain because ultimately movement is an expression of the brain and sensation or pain, quote unquote,

is also an expression of the brain. Along with that, I'm curious about this because like, obviously these are D1 level basketball players. And when you work with NBA, those are NBA players. So they're probably moving pretty well. They're probably not too stiff. But have you seen any benefit with athletes becoming a bit more flexible and mobile and that helping with their overall performance? And it's not just like stretching, like obviously going through a rear vidale split squat and some of these movements will allow people to become more flexible. But have you noticed like that the flexibility aspect increasing and from there movement and performance increasing? Or is there is it not that important?

Yeah, great question. And you said something to the front in there. I think it's super important. You said most of them move pretty well. And I would totally agree with that. But I've had people tell me oh he's a terrible mover and it's like well because he didn't pass your movement screen well that's because you created what movement was

you defined it and they didn't pass your test but I just watched I've literally had an athlete go out put the ball between his legs yeah the guy dunks from the fucking free throw line windmill dunk and it's like do you know how complicated that is it's not a good mover yeah he's a terrible mover but he's literally 7 feet put the ball between his legs, spin to a windmill dunk.

And it's like, wow, if that's bad movement, then I don't have a chance, right? So, yeah, I think that that's important to understand that part. But ultimately around the idea of flexibility or mobility or stiffness, some athletes are actually relatively stiff because stiffness is a spring load that would help you perform. And so, you know, I never tell my athletes go do a bunch of yoga, for example, because we never want to just create flexibility without the capacity to control and express force through those ranges of motion. And for the most part, high performance doesn't occur at deep ranges, right? If you think of like high jumpers, they're not getting to parallel in their squats, right? Like it's a minimal knee bend, 15 to 25 degrees or so.

That's what it is usually. Yeah, within that range, and you're very strong and very fast at being able to get off the floor with that. The other side is if you're way too stiff, there may be some longitudinal, some long-term negative consequences with that, right? There may be. Because if a joint is too stiff, it will lack movement variability. And so if a joint is stiff,

it's going to want to stay in the same kind of movement pattern over time. And so an analogy might be, think of like a river. And if a river is, if a joint is stiff, the water of the river is going to stay in the same spot over and over and over and over, and that's going to erode the banks of the river much faster. Versus if you have more movement variability, then that force or that water can get dispersed in many different ways, and it's not going to erode the banks of the river or the tissues over time. So you want to create some mobility and flexibility, quote unquote, just to provide force dispersion avenues. We want to give the joint and the body options to disperse first over force over time. Cause if not, it's going to default to the same pattern over and

over and over. And over time that can wear down a joint or a tissue. And so that's probably not good, but it doesn't mean you need to be out there doing yoga all the time. It just means that, Hey, if you get to a certain range, you know, if we're talking knee flexion, if we get to 45 to 60 degrees and that's tight, can we get that a little higher? Can know, if we're talking knee flexion, if we get to 45 to 60 degrees and that's tight, can we get that a little higher? Can we just actively search for a little bit more? And the great thing about strength training is that we know strength training is actually flexibility training or mobility training, right? Research has shown that if you just train, strength train through a full range of motion, that it will actually improve the range of motion

and it will give you force expression in those ranges of motion. And that's the ultimate goal. What you don't want to do is give somebody way more range of motion, but then you didn't accompany that with any strength or power qualities. Because now they're accessing ranges that they can get to, but they're not used to controlling that. And that's where bad things can happen. Makes a lot of sense. What do you do with diet for people? Good question.

Is that hard with these guys? Yeah, it's relatively hard. But the good thing is that just from if you were talking about body composition, right, top-level nutrition, body composition, we play so much, we practice so much that my guys don't really gain weight during season. They'll gain some weight when they get away from the court for a little bit and then they come back to it. In general, once I get a guy to a body weight that I want for a season

and we want to do that before season starts, I just want you to stay there all season. It's very rare that we want to have drastic body composition change or body weight changes through season. So do they eat good? I don't know. Probably not all the time, right, obviously. But is it okay?

Because I think my first goal with nutrition is, are you getting enough calories? I don't want to see guys lose a ton, unless you needed to lose fat. I don't want to see guys lose a bunch of weight, right? So if you're at a good body composition, if you're using skim folds, you know, call it your guards at 8%. And you're there. Well, the goal is like, can we stay there and not lose weight over season? Yeah. And so sometimes that means we ultimately, we need to get calories. And so now you get into that quantity versus quality discussion of nutrition. And to me, it's like you need to start with quantity because we just need to get the calories.

And so although like the chicken salad is a nice idea, if the Chick-fil-A is what you have access to and you need to go get that, go get that. Because I would rather have you eat, quote unquote, bad food than not eat at all. Chick-fil-A is good food. And Chick-fil-A is good food, man. And Chick-fil-A is good food, too. And then beyond that, like, there's actually some education around that. Like, guys will come to me and say, Brian, you know I'm going to eat Chick-fil-A, but what should I get?

It's like, cool, man, let's pull up the menu. Let's find. If you like both of these options, this one has a little bit more protein and a lot less fat, so let's just get that. And that stuff they don't care about. I'm not going to take away your option. I'm just going to tailor your options to ultimately what you like so around training i'd imagine the players get uh pretty good meals right when they're on campus and they're they have access for sure

right the challenge they can do yeah they can do what they like yeah and we have uh we have a system where they basically have a we call it a red card they have a credit card essentially that um this paid through their scholarship and there's like i don't know maybe 15 restaurants in town that they can go to now and they all have cars now because nil they all got their own car and stuff so that's wait how do they have their own car yeah yeah everyone's got their own contracts now yeah they like really yeah yeah so everyone has their i mean before my running joke is like some of y'all haven't made a left hand layup in a game you got a car but i I like it. The benefit is now there's no excuse to not go. Because just a year ago, it was, man, I might have a ride.

And now it's like, that's not an option anymore. Man, I might have money. It's not an option anymore. But in general, I look at nutrition like, can we get the calories? And then once we've got a system to where you're getting calories, you're not losing weight. You're not gaining weight. We found this caloric balance that we need. Perfect.

Now let's improve the quality. Hey, you're going to Chick-fil-A anyways. Here's what you should pick instead of this. And then over time, we'll start to mix in some of those other things. Hey, I know I drink a lot of soda. Like, how can I switch it? And sometimes like some coaches are like, oh, just drink water. I'm like, that's not realistic.

Okay, so we know we don't want you to get calories from your beverages your beverages can we get to water can we get to a gatorade zero right a lower or it might just be a flavored option that's zero calories sometimes that's good right and so um yeah i think it's just like educating and tailoring through whatever they got going on uh the biggest gaps that we see is like guys they're just young right they're young, and so they don't know how to – time management comes to mind, right? Like, I didn't have time. Okay, like you didn't want to get up early to make breakfast, which is fine, but you knew that that was going to be the case. So why don't the night before we create some things that you can wake up and eat?

Things that we know we do because we're adults and we – They just lack some of the time management skills around nutrition. Yeah. And that's like the first kind of hole we need to plug. And then we do obviously give them some different supplements and stuff like that. And that helps. But ultimately, I just look at it. Are you eating and can we time that appropriately?

Because sometimes guys will wake up, they'll miss breakfast, they'll go class, class, tutoring, lift, practice. And you get to practice and they're, damn, I'm lightheaded. It's like, what did you eat today? No, I didn't have time. It's like, no, you did have practice and they're, damn, I'm lightheaded. It's like, what, did you eat today? No, I didn't have time. It's like, no, you did have time. You didn't prioritize it, right? And so I think it's just a lot of that education.

These guys got, I mean, I know supplementation isn't the biggest thing, but electrolyte supplementation for athletes that sweat a lot is a pretty big deal. Do they do much of that over there? Do they provide that? Or do you not think that's that big of a deal for them? Yeah, no, it certainly is. They sweat a ton, obviously. So, so yeah we provide some stuff and then our trainers obviously provide some stuff and um and they're pretty good about like hydrating we're

mainly because we practice so hard that yeah you're gonna find a way to get some like and coach kind of treats water breaks as like a benefit so like when they can drink and refuel and obviously have katorade on the sideline um they they find a way to get kind of rehydrated because we just practice so hard I think sometimes if your training isn't that intense then there's times where you can go hours without rehydrating because you just don't feel a need for it but when your training is very intense you're gonna find a way to go get some water or reef because coach is telling you it's water break

time and everyone's part of the culture so and then we'll supplement a little bit with it, but not a ton of like just like salt packs or anything like that. It's usually just through Gatorade and other things. So it seems like in the NBA, not that you had more, I'll say more influence over the players now, because like in the NBA, you have your strength coach. You probably have a mobility coach. You got a diet diet coach you got a coach for every aspect of it but it seems like right now you have a little bit more influence on the players are you finding like that being one of the biggest differences between NBA and uh and college yeah for sure I think it's it's one of the reasons why I love what I do a lot more now uh and I loved what I did before in the NBA but

um college is special because you can really impact them and you can influence a ton of different areas around the performance spectrum, whether it's strength and, you know, diet, whether it's conditioning, whether it's what the coaches are doing with film and all of that, like that total process of being a high performer,

you can control, right? Sleep recovery. But then it's the other stuff too, right? Like we talk about life. We talk about being social. We talk about being vulnerable, can control, right, sleep recovery. But then it's the other stuff too, right? Like we talk about life. We talk about being social. We talk about being vulnerable, being open, right?

Like part of some of the things we do, we'll do some breathing drills in our sessions, and I'll have guys close their eyes, and we'll talk about life with their eyes. Like those moments are few and far between in the NBA, but they can be structured right into every single day at the college level. And then obviously that impact that you have is in the NBA, you know, it's funny. People always just say, oh, I'm sure you had to deal with so many egos in the NBA. And, like, that's not actually true. Most of the egos are the support staffs and the coaches in the front office.

The players, for the most part, I've never ran into a bad guy in the NBA. Sick. They're all super. They're just like us, right? Like a lot of them are, they're going to have walls up early because there's so many people

that want to get to them and access them. But over time, if you're patient and build trust, they're homies. They're your friends, just like the friends

we all have. And so they just happen to have $100 million in the bank. You know, it's a little different. Like my friends don't have that.

They just happen to drive like a lamborghini but but i've i've never seen a player like with an ego that was massive right like and some of them some of them will have them if you disrespect them and things like that but but we all have egos and we all don't like being disrespected so as long as you're good to them um so i've never dealt with that with guys. The challenge, though, is there's a lot going on in their lives in the NBA. Because I always look at the NBA rosters.

Okay, like a third of them will be on your rookie contract. They're rookies. They need education. They need life skills. The middle of the pack guys are figuring things out. They're like your veterans now. They're starting to have some sense of every part of life. Maybe they have a girl or a kid.

And then there's like your final five or final third that's like, hey, this is their final one to two, three years in the league. They're truly just veterans. You're not improving their performance. You're just trying to keep them healthy. And so some of them have kids and those things. So there's a lot. They have contracts. It's a contract year.

They have agents. They have deals. They have investments. And in college, it's not really like that. I mean, it might get there eventually with NIL and stuff, but for the most part, you're all 18 to 22. You're all here to play basketball. Basketball's the second priority.

Education's the first. Student-athlete. But for the most part. You kind of laughed when you said that. No, I didn't laugh. Turn the cameras off. So I think there's a hyper focus, though, on the game. And so we're allowed to really focus on that.

So that's been fun. What's it like being in an organization that has a long history of winning versus where you were before? Yeah, no doubt about it. It's fun, man. It's expected. It's expected. And that's the big part. There, no doubt about it. It's fun, man. It's expected. It's expected, and that's the big part. There's an expectation to win. There's an expectation to compete at a high level.

There's a pressure that comes with those things. And when you don't meet that standard, if you lose a game, right, like losing a game with us now at Kansas, it means something. You don't want to lose, and it hurts to lose. And in the NBA, whether it's the Kings or other organizations, there's just too many games. There's 82 games. So you're going to lose games.

No team is going to be undefeated. There's an expectation that, like, in college, you want to go undefeated. That's, like, a realistic expectation. How many games are there in a season? Maybe I missed it. Well, in conference, you might play 30 games, essentially, around 30 games if you make the tournament. A couple teams have gone the whole length, right? One team, we did last year. So, you know, up to like 40 would be max.

Is that the first team in history to run the table the whole way? No, we didn't run the table last year. No, I think there's been a couple teams that have run the table. A couple teams, right? Yeah. Like 36 games or something like that. Yeah, and I couldn't even name them. But even my first year I got there, I asked the players, what's our goal?

And across the board, every player said, go undefeated. Win every game. And I thought it was like a joke the first couple. I'm like, okay, this guy's tripping. And then it was across the board. So I told the team, I'm like, yo, every single one of you said, go undefeated. And this was my first year, so I just came from the NBA where, you know,

the Kings didn't win a lot at all. But there's just, you won't go undefeated no matter how good you are, right? And, I mean, the record's 73 wins, right? So you're going to lose at least 10 games no matter what, right? And I told our team, like, yo, every single one of you has said this. Like, what is wrong with y'all? And they said, Ram, this isn't the NBA. There's no reason why we would lose any game.

And that year, we lost three games and we lost zero games when healthy. So every game that we lost, and that's no excuse, we would have lost any, like whatever,

you lose games. But we only lost three games and it's like, oh, there is an expectation to win every game, right? And there's a consequence if you don't. Nobody's happy about it.

Like it ruins, it ruins spirits for a little bit, right? But that's how it should be. But that's how it should be. Like, that's how it should be. There should be an expectation that we're going to prepare better than you, we're going to compete harder than you, and ultimately at the end of the day when you check the scoreboard,

we're going to be up. And obviously I'm not saying you're going to win every game, but that expectation is set and it's real. And it's so fun to be a part of. It's such a different world from the NBA. Now, obviously, I'm a little biased because my time in the NBA was with the Kings, and we didn't make the playoffs. But it's such a different world when you lose a game that nobody is happy.

Like, nobody's smiling for a few days. Like, it's pretty bad. So it's been great, though. I love to be a part of it. I'm so fortunate and happy that I made that decision because it changes your life perspective a little bit. It's like mediocrity is not the expectation. Winning is, right?

And it's not a negative, like win at all costs, like nothing like that. It's just we're going to practice harder. We're going to prepare harder. We have a coach that's better, and ultimately there's an expectation that if we live up to our potential in this game over the next 40 minutes, we will be the better team. Now,'t always do that but that expectation is so fun to be a part of your um players probably almost know like our coaches are better than

most the other coaches so as long as we follow this plan then we're good right yeah i think so i think that for sure there's a confidence in in our coaching staff and our hall of fame coach obviously um down like the national championship game like we were down 15 at halftime and people always say like how'd you guys come back at halftime and i think a big part of it was our our players believed that ultimately we have a better we have the best coach in the in the country on our sideline and that helps because if you can gain momentum and start believing that you'll win then when it comes down to winning time that last one to two minutes we're confident the plays we call and and whatever coach decides to do

we're confident that's the right thing to do uh and that's so cool to be a part of the coach that the is who's the head coach it's bill self right uh-huh yeah bill self so like why do players trust like what's his coaching style uh like how does he coach coach people? Yeah. Why do they trust him so much? I mean, I think ultimately the trust just comes from a track record of winning. Like, at home, his record is 90-something percent. Overall, I think he has the highest winning percentage in college basketball. I'm pretty sure. Don't quote me on that.

So I think it just comes from a track record of, like, he's lost, like, 16 games at home in 20 years. Like, we're not going to lose. And part of that's obviously our sixth man, right? Like, our, he's lost like 16 games at home in 20 years. Like, we're not going to lose. And part of that's obviously our sixth man, right? Like, our fans are incredible. But I think the trust just comes from a track record of, oh, he wins, right? And so if we buy in, we'll win. It's probably no different than if you were an investor

and you met a hedge fund manager and he made billions of dollars, you probably would give him your money without thinking. And I think it's like partly that in sports. Like I'm going to give into the program without questioning. And it takes time, right? But you start to see it work. And that's why last year was so incredible because we won. We played seven players in the national championship game.

Down 15 at halftime, we played seven players in the national championship game. And six of them had been with the team for three years or more. So this wasn't done with one and done McDonald's All-American talent. This is done with our best player who went number 14 in the NBA draft was a two-star recruit locally. Our 21 draft pick was a local kid as well. We started three kids that are basically local to our area. so for all the hype that goes into one and done mcdonald's all-american recruiting nil all that stuff it's like now we just have a coach and we have players that buy in and we're gonna go out there and compete and so i think it just comes from a track record of this dude's been doing this at a very high level for a very long time and then we

have obviously some reminders right there's banners around And so it's easy to say like, oh, it works. It's right there, right? Like, eh, it works. And the players are so young that they're not in a position to question. And there's an IQ too. You know, I can go on all day about this stuff, but there's an IQ to the game

that is on display all the time whenever coach speaks. It's like, no, this dude knows the game. So you're gonna buy into that. That's an interesting thing though that you mentioned there. Cause like, I mean, I don't watch as much basketball as you guys but when i do end up paying attention to college basketball it's when like oh zion williamson's going to this team or you you hear about some player that's gonna go number one and which team is he on right but you

guys it's not always that you have those players it's just that it's such a good coach and such a good setup that this team still fucks everybody up. Yeah, for the most part. Yeah, you're right. It's very, I mean, even like Zion, they didn't win a national championship. Winning a national championship is very hard, obviously, because we talked about that earlier. There's some different matchups and luck that's involved. But it's hard for one player to drastically change.

In the NBA, it's even to that point now. But one player in the NBA can drastically change the entire game. And it's just a little bit different in college because there's less possessions, there's less space. The way that it's reffed is a little bit different. It's a slower-paced game. When you say there's less space, what do you mean? The court's the same, but because players can't shoot as well. So the NBA players can make shots from damn near half court.

So because of that, the defenders have to stretch out and guard you. But in college, you can be guarding someone that can't make a three. So like you can't make a three. You shoot 20% from three-point line. I want you to shoot that shot. So now I'm going to stand in the key or near the key, so I'm going to collapse the defense. So there's no space to move, whereas in the NBA,

I mean, your centers can shoot now. And so everybody's spread out, so there's so much more space. So there's, I think, ways in college to neutralize really good players, whereas in the NBA it's very hard because everybody's good. So if you send a double team at Steph Curry, well, he's going to pass to Draymond, Draymond's going to go downhill, and he's going to make the right read, and Klay Thompson's in the corner, and he's going to make that shot. So it's very hard to double team or triple team.

But in college, we can send a double because the player you're passing it to really can't play that well. And we know that because there's stats for this stuff, right? So it's like, well, he actually wants you to pass him the ball. So we're going to double team you. You're going to pass to him. He's going to make the wrong read or miss the shot or whatever. And because there's only 60 possessions in the game for you, that's a wasted possession. So we're going to win. If we do this for 40 minutes, we're going to win because the odds are going to play our favor and the nba is just a little bit different because everybody can play and so it's like well that's fine because i'm just gonna pass to him and he can actually make that shot or i'm gonna pass to him and he can get to this position and pass to

that guy or throw the alley-oop or whatever so uh in the nba it's i think harder to neutralize players in college you can neutralize a player pretty quick which is why the big names like Zion, who are incredible talents, their team still won't win a national championship necessarily. Yeah. What got you fired up and excited about basketball in the first place when you were young? Do you have a first memory of basketball or something like that? I mean, I'm just the classic example of wanting to play in the NBA, but couldn't make it. I mean, my driver's license says 5'10", but I'm definitely 6'2", if you ask me. But yeah, I just grew up when I was young playing ball and kind of played it throughout, obviously, high school. And then from there, didn't even know strength and conditioning was

a job. So I'm like, oh, this is a job? I mean, I could help NBA players. And yeah, it kind of took off from there, I guess. But the game is just super fun. To me, it's the best game in the world. The culture of the game is super fun. It's not necessarily the biggest game in the world. I think soccer is probably the biggest game in the world. But I think it's, to me, the best sport there. It's just super exciting. It is expanding worldwide, right?

Oh, yeah. It's blowing up. Probably started with, obviously, Jordan. But now the NBA just has put a lot of effort into its global expansion. They have global academies and stuff like that. And social media has helped, obviously, a ton and all of that stuff. So, yeah, it's definitely expanding for sure. In Sacramento, you know, we got the Kings.

So we got some very diehard loyal fans. Loyal. But, like, what's that like at the college level? Because, I mean, we see the – like, we were watching the highlights, and we all, like – I mean, I remember movies like Blue Chips back in the day. Like, college ball is, like, a different level. Like, what's it like being there, though? Yeah, it's super, super – it's, like, ecstatic.

Like, it's ridiculous. I remember when I left, so me leaving the NBA to college, like, some people from the outside looking in might say, well, that's a downward move in your career. And then people that really know the game might say, well, that's a lateral move because Kansas basketball is a powerhouse in the culture of basketball, especially the college level, obviously. And then the coaches, the strength coaches are like,

yo, that's an upward progression in your career. That's what I said. Yeah, especially coming from the Kings. You have so much King shape. My bad. My bad. Cut that. It's the truth.

We live here. 15 years, haven't touched the playoffs. In the defense of the Kings, it's just college basketball and college sports has a little bit different emphasis on their strength coach. Correct. That too. Especially NBA to college basketball. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

That part too. But I remember my first big college basketball experience from Cleveland Kings. We went to Maui, and we played in the Maui Invitational Tournament, and we ended up winning that in an overtime game in a small thing like community college gym. There's 4,000 people in there so it's tiny 3,000 of them are wearing blue Kansas blue and fanatics and then about a thousand of them were uh were

dating so they were wearing red and it like nobody sits down like it's just like chaos and it's like yo this is crazy I remember my mom went she was like this is so fuck she's been to plenty of kings games she's like this is way better than the nba and part of it's just because the nba is a business right they they want to get people in the seats they want to sell things that commission that you know they want to sell popcorn and beer they're going to have concerts at halftime like it's just it's an entire event it's entertainment you can call it college isn't entertainment it's just sport it's just raw sport and so i think that that is why you get the fanatics for sure for you why like because kansas they're the number one team and you're a young strength coach right so if they have like why did they pick you i know you're very good you're very good at what you do but like when a strength coach looks at your career and they're

like i want to be able to do what he's doing What did you do through your career to be able to be strength coach for the Kings at 28, 27? Uh, head strength coach at 25, assistant at 23. Right. Head strength coach at the Kings at 25. And now you're the strength coach at Kansas, the number one team. And you'd been doing that for a few years now. Yeah. Three years, three years. How, like, how did you navigate your career to be able to do this so successfully yeah yeah good question uh i mean top level academic wise like i got a doctorate in it and i think that helps right so like a doctor in human sport performance with the dissertation and workload monitoring injury prediction like on paper that sounds good so like very good he checks the boxes i think from

that level. But I think more importantly is just like I think the soft skills. I've been fortunate to have really good mentors who have given me opportunities and built relationships and build relationships with athletes. So like when I got hired for the Kings I was 23 and after two years my boss left to the Chicago Bulls. He's still there now. Chip Schaefer. OG Chip Schaefer is my guy. He was the athletic trainer for the Bulls in the 90s. He's Phil there now. Chip Schaefer. OG Chip Schaefer is my guy. He was the athletic trainer for the Bulls in the 90s. He's Phil Jackson's guy. So like my mentor,

one of my mentors has 11 rings. Incredible. But he taught me the ropes of the game. All the small things like post game when it's time to eat. Don't eat before the players. There's the little rules that you don't really know and you just have to learn through experience or failures. So those things are important because

you don't piss anyone off. I think the first part about building relationships is don't piss anyone off like don't go in the negative first right um and I think it's just building relationships like the players really bought into what I wanted to do and so when it was time I'm sitting there at 25 and my boss leaves and I'm like yo like am I gonna have to find a new job I'm looking at the college market because like again I'm 25 and I'm like yeah it might be time to figure something out and my another mentor came to me said hey you think you can do this and I'm a confident dude so my yeah of course I could do this stuff I know what I'm doing but there's like imposter

syndrome I like oh shit I don't know if I actually could do it but I'm definitely gonna tell you I could do it I'm gonna be very confident to you but I'm like you're hired like oh shit yeah for and I remember telling him that that day I told him I could do it, and I actually made a mistake that day. I still remember so vividly. I forgot to take a measurement or something. And I remember thinking like, yo, you just told this dude you're ready. You're clearly not ready.

But I think that the reason he felt comfortable, because when I said, I said, oh, I could do that, he said, I think you could do it too, and I'm going to push for you to get this job. And they could have posted it and had hundreds of applications for it. Yeah. I mean, it's a head NBA strength coach job. There's only 30 jobs um but he didn't he gave it to me and i think the real reason was he knew i was finishing a doctorate degree so he knew on paper academically i could i was checking those boxes he knew i was super passionate about the sport and about the game

and about research because i was the dude that was coming in with research every day yo check this new paper i'll check this out. I built a network. And so I think that he liked that because he knew that if we needed an answer to a question, I can go figure it out from people I know. And then I think ultimately the last, the kind of cherry on top was that the players enjoyed being around me. And the navigation there was, are you their friend or can you be in authority position? And I think that he was confident that I could navigate that part of it because that is hard. It's hard to be a relatively

young guy and your players are just as old as you and they want to go out to the club with you, but now you have to change up kind of your strategy and behavior. And I learned that early. Like when I first got to the Kings, players didn't really rock with me much. They were kind of, I was, you know, I was on the workout floor every day because that's what you do as a young strength coach. You're on the floor every day. But they would always wait for the head guy to come in. And I remember it was, I thought it had to do with they didn't believe

in how competent I was in strength and conditioning. And that wasn't at all. They just didn't have a relationship with me. So over a couple of months, and I remember we went to China my first trip and we ended up at a club and I'm not advocating you go to the club with your players. We went to a club and I went with our support staff, but our players ended up there and they saw me kind of in a fun environment.

And the next day I get a knock on my door and it's two players saying, yo, Ram, let's get some working. And I've never been asked that from these guys, but it was, I realized it was, you knew I knew how to do strength and conditioning. You didn't know if you wanted to be around me. And so that, I think part of it now, I'm not telling you to go to the club, but what I'm telling you is build a relationship, be a likable person, be vulnerable, be open to conversations that maybe they're not used to. I always tell my guys, even now, if the only thing you learned from me is how to trap bar deadlift, I'm not doing my job. And so as long as we can build that out, then guys will buy in because strength and conditioning, nobody's going to argue that strength and conditioning isn't good

for you. We're not selling something that's hard to sell, right? I'm not a used car salesman. Like, you know, this is good for you. It's whether or not you want to buy into me with this stuff. So I think all those come to mind, like check the boxes academically. If you can, I'm not saying you have to, if you want to work in pro sports, you probably need a master's degree. Um, but check those boxes. So you're competent building network. Cause unfortunately or fortunately, like our network is who we are, right? Like, opportunities come our way based on who we know, especially in almost any field. But in essence, see, if the job's posted online, it's likely they already have five candidates they want.

They just did that because they had to. So build a network. And then ultimately, build relationships. Be likable. I think if you can do those things, you'll end up in a pretty good spot over time. And then last but not least, be fortunate. Like, I always acknowledge that. Like, be likable. And I think if you can do those things, you'll end up in a pretty good spot over time. And then last but not least, be fortunate. Like I always acknowledge that. Like I was fortunate to,

the reason coach called me with Kansas is because one of our old scouts with the Kings had worked with him years ago. And so the scout who I didn't even know was evaluating me as a strength coach, but really liked what I was doing just by watching. And so when Kansas needed a strength coach, he calls Bill Self and says, this is who you need.

He's, you know, the best in the NBA and whatever that means, right? But that's what he said. And I was younger, and that helped because Coach wanted a younger strength coach to kind of fill the gap between the coaching staff and their age gap and where I was. So some of that helps, right, at times. So there's been times where I get sized up because I'm young. But it's like, well, while you're sizing me up and worried about me,

my players can relate to me because I can play the same music they can. I can send them DMs. I can talk shit with them. Like, I'm at their level. Smarting on Instagram. Yeah. That's true. And now it's fun because I'm at an age gap with my players now.

So with the Kings, I was around their age. But now I'm at this age gap where, you know, because I'm 31 and they're 21, we can still talk the fun stuff of life. And we can talk about music and relationships or whatever. But then there's also like, oh, I can talk to you about going through things in life. I can talk to you about the stock market. I can talk to you about buying your first house. I can talk to you about showing love to your family, calling your grandma, whatever.

Like we can talk those bigger items that I think are just as important. But if you can't have fun with the guys, it's going to be hard to relate. But once you have that relatability,

build that into the relationship because, like, they expect me to talk more about the other stuff. Yeah. Like, if I just talk music,

they'll say, ain't no free game. We call it free game now. Free game, man. We need some free game. And I might go into like, yo, man, the stock market's down for this reason. It, whatever. And that's been so cool because

now the players go to the NBA, like they'll contact me back and say, Abraham, so I'm about to get this money, but I don't want to blow it. What do you think I should do? And I'm now like, yo, I'm not a financial advisor, but I'm glad you're bought in, you know? So that's a very long way to say, you know, check the boxes academically or education-wise, build the network, and then be relatable. Be relatable. Could you beat me in a game of horse? I like my chances.

I like your chances, too. I like me three. Hey, thanks so much for being on the show today. Appreciate your time, and congratulations on winning a national championship. You got the ring with you or something? No ring yet, man. I'll send you a pic when we get in a few months. Oh, you don't have it yet.

Not yet. They're building it. But thank you guys so much for having me. Damn, that would be sweet if you walked in here with a world title or a championship ring or something. Next time. Yeah, we should petition for that. Instead of rings, you should get belts. Oh, yeah.

That would be sick. Walking around with a championship on your shoulder all the time. Take us on out of here, Andrew. That be so sick all right thank you everybody for checking out today's episode we sincerely appreciate it uh please drop us a comment down below let us know what you guys think about today's conversation and i hit that like button and subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already uh follow the podcast at mb power project on instagram tiktok and twitter my instagram tiktok and twitter is at i am andrew z and sema where you at and sema ending on instagram youtube and seena yin yang on tiktok and twitter by the way guys we've been my Instagram TikTok and Twitter is at I am Andrew Z and Seema where you at? I'm Seema Inning on Instagram

YouTube and Seema Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter by the way guys we've been on Spotify we have video there oh yeah we have video

stop fucking with me I mean thanks guys yeah yeah yeah so if you like the show rate and review because just go do that

please helps us out Ramsey where can people find you? yeah I'm mainly Instagram doctor.ramsey.nijm, and then Twitter, drramseynijm.

There's also a Ramsey Nijm UFC fighter. Yeah, there is. Y'all look kind of similar. Yeah, I think he's Middle Eastern, and I think he trained out in Concord or something. Oh, really? But, well, because he followed me on Instagram, so we followed each other on Instagram,

and I remember the first time he liked something I'm like yo I didn't like my own that's great but yeah for the record I'm not a UFC fighter and you could probably

beat me up so alright man strength is never weak this weakness is never strength I'm at Mark Smiley Bell catch you guys later