Mark Bell's Power Project - The Blueprint for Speed and Athleticism | Brian Kula

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

Brian Kula took Nsima and me through a full speed session, then broke down the principles he has used with elite athletes, including Christian McCaffrey. We talk about why speed should be the priority, how to return to sprinting without getting hurt, why the best athletes still master the basics, and how rhythm, recovery, foot strength, and smarter weight-room training build real athleticism.Special perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK/TRT/PEPTIDES! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com and use code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off Self-Service Labs and Guided Optimization®.🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast➢ https://www.PowerProject.live➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerprojectFOLLOW Mark Bell➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybellFollow Nsima Inyang➢ Ropes and equipment : https://thestrongerhuman.store➢ Community & Courses: https://www.skool.com/thestrongerhuman➢ YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=e

I'll tell you right now, every person on a 53-man roster is a genetic freak. That doesn't mean they're all going to be the NFL player of the year or an all-pro. I've always, you know, really valued speed, obviously. I think it's got to be the priority in training. I approach it more of it's a support system to the movement. Rhythm's kind of a skill, right? And I think just like people say they're not fast, well, speed's also a skill. You don't get better at something by not doing it.

So you kind of have to get in, struggle through the pain points of, you know, not being good at something, doing it over and over until you get better at it. Even Christian McCaffrey is still doing the basics, right? That's right. Yeah, I mean, I think the best athletes in the world are still doing the basics. My big thing's always been simplicity done consistently leads to mastery. Sometimes the best training is not training at all. The best thing is that never stop sprinting.

All right, Brian Kula, welcome to the show. And thank you for taking us through that awesome workout today. That was incredible. You bet, man. That was a phenomenal effort out of you guys today. It was fun. Now, you were saying that you train a lot of your athletes in a similar fashion. I mean, I'm sure, you know, it matters.

their age and all these other things. But you train very high-level people. You train all the way from people in the NFL, all the way to high-level track athletes. And what does that mean? You train them in a similar way. Yeah, I mean, I think just the structure of, you know, what we're trying to accomplish from energy systems,

the training really doesn't, you know, have a ton of variability. Obviously, sports specificity, you know, comes into it. And you have to consider all those different factors of, you know, what's their training age? How long, you know, what year are they in the end? NFL, you know, are they a rookie, are they a 10-year guy? All those things matter. But we're still kind of approaching it with the same framework, you know, every athlete needs some of the same stuff. So when we say we train them similar, you know, I put you guys through a workout that

would be very similar. We'd put, you know, an NFL guy through, maybe just different intensities, volumes, densities, you know, things like that. Yeah, that was really fun learning some of those track drills today and to, you know, some people might get frustrated when they find something that they're not good at or they're or uncoordinated or maybe feel like embarrassed but I kind of I personally kind of like that I like finding those things um obviously I'm not gravitating towards things I totally suck at but it's nice to find things that you're a little unfamiliar with and then I guess what I like about it is I like learning them right because then once it clicks you know that if you just keep working at it something's going to click and so some of what you

showed us today, the difficulty level can really go through the roof. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's strength and weaknesses, right? You know, every athlete's got things are good at and they're not good at. And sometimes we tend to gravitate towards what we're good at and don't really want to work on the things we're not good at. So I think exposing some of those weaknesses and trying them and, you know, causing some adaptations that you might not get otherwise to be really good. You know, I think one, one cool thing you were talking about on the track is what we're seeing so many people that want to get back and to sprinting, want to gain some athleticism back.

And a lot of these people come from a like gym background, right? And you were mentioning something along the lines of like, you kind of have to maybe switch the thing you put importance on. So can you talk about some of that? Yeah, for sure. I've always, you know, really valued speed, obviously. I think it's got to be the priority and training in my, you know, opinion. And so, you know, I like the gym.

I think the weight room is super important. I think it just, I approach it more of it's a support system to the movement. So, you know, we teach the movement patterns, you know, how to apply force and everything. And then we're going to reinforce that in the weight room by trying to, you know, create better concentric, eccentric, eccentric, isometric forces. But really are focused on the movement patterns first. Yeah. And let me ask you this, too, because on the track, and I want to mention something that I've heard a coach say before. And I found it very unfortunate because there are people that have this outlook.

There was this coach that was talking about the capacity of rhythm. And he was mentioning, there are just some athletes who have rhythm and some just don't. And it's just a natural thing and you can't really do much about it. And when I heard him say that, I don't want to say who it was because I don't want to put them on blast, but it frustrated me a bit. Because in my mind, like, I know so many things that people can do within their practice to develop a level of rhythm. But what type of importance do you think rhythm holds when it comes to athleticism? And how can people, if they find that they don't have rhythm when it comes to their movement,

what are some things they can think about to add into their practice? Sure. I mean, I look at it as, you know, rhythm's kind of a skill, right? And I think just like people say they're not fast. Well, speed's also a skill. So there's things you can work on. So I disagree that, you know, rhythm is just something you either have or don't have. Now, it could be a weakness that you're going to have to work on. And so some of the challenges, you know, that we talked about today of, you know, different locomotion patterns, things that are going to stress the system on challenging your rhythmic abilities are the types of things we try to put into training to help enhance that. You don't get better at something by not doing it. You know, so you kind of have to get in, struggle through the pain points of, you know, not being good at something, doing it over and over until you get better at it. So just like anything, you know, you got to put the work in, you know, if you don't have rhythm, which I think is highly important. We talked about it today of being, you know, almost a critical KPI for athletic performance is to have some coordination and rhythmical abilities. So it has to be part of your training. Yeah, to have a little bit of rhythm and to be able to just have coordination with some of these various movements.

And then what you showed us today was, you know, here's all these track drills, but here's kind of what these track drills mean. And here's, and here's why we're trying to do them. Sometimes you don't get all the backup information. I know for myself, when I was a young kid playing football, I didn't really, you know, the coach didn't really, you know, make us fully understand why we were doing some of the movements. And I think that maybe they didn't know.

I think a lot of the coaches didn't know anything about like sprint mechanics back then. But that was really helpful in you explaining like, oh, this is to help you kind of cycle your foot better. And this is why we're trying to, you know, pull the foot in this way or whatever it might be. And so the coordination of some of that stuff can be really difficult. When I see, you know, when I see someone like Christian McCaffrey doing so many of these drills, he's like running, you know, with the towel over his head or running with a stick over his head. and doing all these things, and he's doing it so beautifully, and he bouncing and bounding. I know that he's someone that you've worked with for over a decade. There's many different levels to what we were doing, but even Christian McCaffrey is still doing the basics, right?

That's right. Yeah, I mean, I think the best athletes in the world are still doing the basics, you know. I got to see the Jamaican national track team one time do a little training, and they all started off with like a walking A March. you know, one of the most basic rudiment, you know, drills that, you know, we know. And it was really cool to see, you know, at that level that they were still going back to the basics. And so even with those, you know, high level NFL guys, the first week or two in the off season, we're still going back to the very basic bounce series, locomotion series, you know, things and just kind of getting them back to the basics. It's, you know, my big thing's always been simplicity done consistently leads to mastery.

So if you get, you know, just take something that's very simple, do it over and over and over again and create. some repeatability, you'll get to the level of mastery where you see somebody like Christian who moves so proficiently. I mean, he's pretty gifted, right? Like his mom and dad gave him some nice, nice gifts to work with. But he's also done a phenomenal job of year in and year out in the off season, you know, attention to detail of how he approaches training. And that's why it, you know, that's why he looks so efficient on the field. What does that drill do that, one where he's holding like a towel or stick over his head and then sprinting? That's a PVC pipe.

So we'll put that into some of our sprint drills just to work on some posture, right? So we're just working on like we talked today about, about, you know, where the upper body position is and hips. So we'll use that as just an external cue to help with some of the posture while they're doing sprint drills. And, you know, the cool thing is I've seen video of you guys not just doing stuff like this, but also doing some crawling drills. You do, you bring quite a bit of variable movement, even stuff in the pool into his S&C, right? right? So I think sometimes when people see that type of stuff, they look at it and think it's gimmicky. Why do you have these things added into his, and probably a lot of your athletes' repertoire? Sure. It's a complex system, man, you know, like athleticism, what you see on the field on Sundays or, you know, the Olympic Games or whatever, those are really complex systems that those athletes are trying to accomplish.

And it takes, you know, a different look at different things that they're getting better at. You know, it's not just about like how much can you squat, you know, concentric forces. There's spinal engine. There's fascial work. There's, you know, mobility and stability. Rewan. I'm sorry. I don't want to, I don't want to get in your way.

But when you mentioned fascial work, that word within, you probably don't pay attention to the fitness side of social media, and that's good. Okay, that's good. But the idea of fascial training within fitness has, there's some people who are all about it and you see them doing a lot of wild stuff. And then there's certain coaches who are like, that is a fad, a gimmick, get away from this evil stuff. Now, you are really good at understanding the nuance behind these things. When you say faschal work, what is it that you mean?

You know, I wouldn't say that I'm like resident expert on fascial training. I kind of explained to you guys today, I think a lot of these systems that are out there now, somebody takes one thing and they go down that rabbit hole of like, I'm a fascial trainer. I'm a, you know, animal movements. I am, you know. And I'm not any one of those. I'm more of a shotgun approach. And I just understand that, you know,

facial tissue in the body is one of the organisms that we have to consider in training. And so, you know, fortunately with Christian and his team when I was with him and, you know, full time doing, we had a lot of different people that were able to speak into. We had somebody who did Eldoa with him, you know. And that wasn't my area of expertise, but I got to learn from it and see it

and understand it at a little deeper level on just... What is Aldoah? Aldoa is kind of a joint space, you know, joint space, spinal alignment, you know, type of exercises. And again, the load that these players take, I think the simple mind of me, the simplicity component is that, you know, these athletes are under load so much, so often. And that's, you know, even when we're training, we're putting load on their bodies. So when are we deloating them, you know, and some of the Aldoa work, the fascial work, the mobility work, that's where that has to come into play.

It's some decompressive? Decompressive. Absolutely. We do a lot of stuff in the pool as well. You've seen some of the pool work that we do with him and getting in the water kind of unload your body allows you to move a little bit better. And some of it's like plan B training. We're training maybe three days a week at a high level.

So what are you doing the other two or three days out of the week? You know, you're not sitting around doing nothing. So we've got to be careful of how much output we have. But we also want to try to make sure that the system is ready to go for the next session. So there's a lot of active recovery and things that you can be doing to help. the whole system, you know, be at its best come next training day. Being a strength and conditioning coach seems to be so difficult, whether you're the team's coach, you know, whether you're the 49ers, Strength and Conditioning Coach, or

yourself, there's like so many other influences, too, on the players. You know, the players end up talking to each other, like, oh, I use this guy last year for stretching or whatever right now. And now you have to, like, as your, as the Strength Conditioning coach for somebody, you have to kind of understand that this guy is doing all these other disciplines right yeah and it could be hard to manage and it could be you know someone in the 49ers camp it could even be not necessarily the 49er strength coach it could be someone from higher up who is suggesting that all the players hey we all have to follow this like protocol we all have to do this and so those are all things that

you kind of get factored into and then someone might be like all these players are getting hurt or you know it's just there's there's a lot going on behind the scenes that people probably don't know about there is there is and the the main thing is the athlete right the athlete's the main the main feature you know i was always just like a small assistant you know i did my thing speed wise and stuff and tried to help manage some of those things but you know by no means that i ever feel like i was the guy you know making you know mr mccaffrey you know who he is there were a lot of different influences you know of trainers and and therapists and things like that working in his life and he's got some new new people working with him now and you know it's it was a pleasure to be able to be a part of that but you're

only just a part of it, you know, because they, and the ones that are really good, they're the ones managing all that. You know, they, they understand what their body needs, you know, who they need to bring in for certain things. And some things work and some things don't. We had off-season where, you know, we added things in that we look back now and probably say we might not do that again, you know, and it's, it's a, there's not a manual to this thing, you know, it's really working with the athlete, what are they dealing with, what, you know, what are they dealing with injury-wise coming out of the season? How are we going to assess that? How are we going to attack it? Is it a season we can really put on, you know, put the gas on and go? Or is it a season where we need

to just kind of decompress and get you back ready for September? You know, because training in March and April is important, but what the most important is that you're ready to go game one in September. Yeah, it's crazy too, because how many training sessions do you actually get with some of these high level people? You're mentioning some of the track athletes that you train and stuff. I'm sure you're able to probably give them some workouts and get some input back and forth. But in person, working with them, it's probably easier said than done probably. Yeah, it is. I mean, you know, my off-season is with Christian.

I was usually living at his house or, you know, traveling to see him, you know, where he was. But you really get about six weeks in the off-season and six weeks in the summertime, you know, with them as far as one-on-one, it's not a lot of time. And they spend a lot more time with their team and or on their own. And a lot of them have to be really disciplined and good, you know, within their own little ecosystem, you know, because, you know, you got to control a lot of different things. So, yeah, you don't get to spend a ton of time. what you hope to do is instill some really good qualities and like habits with them while you do have them. You know, I'd have some pro soccer girls that would come in, you know, for three, four, five weeks tops. And that's all the time you get with them. And they play almost a nine month season.

So you're not really training them year around. You might get a really good three or four week block in with them. And then you got to hope that they'll take some of that and implement it throughout the season on their own, you know, because our team might not even value the things that have helped them, you know, reach their highest levels. And so, um, there's a lot of just relationship that happens in there and trust that, you know, they're going to go do some of that stuff on their own. And with what you had, uh, and Seema and I go through today, you know, you might say, you know, for the, for where we're at, maybe twice a week, maybe three times a week with something like that. And so again, it, it, uh, reduces the amount of times you're going to be like working with somebody,

uh, because you need to be able to recover from these workouts. Um, I, I think that's maybe, Maybe some people have a misconception, maybe some of the people that are trying to get faster, maybe some of the people listening to this show, thinking they need to get right to the next set. But that's not what you had us do today. No. No, I mean, I got five speed laws that I try to kind of follow.

And the fifth one is rest and recovery. You know, it's not, sometimes the best training is not training at all. You know, and just letting the body recover and reset and come back fresh live to see another day. So, you know, more isn't always better. You know, and we, I guess, through, you know, weight room and some different things where you do see some successes if you just kind of keep at it.

Speed speeds a whole other monster that you got to be very careful, you know, and kind of approach it from a not necessarily micro dosing, you know, where it's minimal, but you got to be careful how much you put on an athlete. You know, let me, I'm curious about this. Like let's actually even like bring it down from the elite level athlete because everyone wants to start spreading. You know what I mean? I think everyone wants to get that capacity back. And there is, uh, you know, How would you help somebody who, let's say they have some capacity to do some sprinting, but they're probably wary of going at 100%. What are the maybe concepts that you think they should keep in mind when they're practicing sprinting,

with their intensity, with their stride? I know there's a lot of stuff, but just things to keep in mind so that you can get that capacity back safely. Yeah. Because not everyone's trying to go sprint 100 meters, but they want that capacity back to be able to get into a sprint. Sure, sure. Yeah, the best thing is to never stop sprinting, right?

Yeah. Because once you stop, it is a little bit hard to get it going again. But I think, you know, just good sound training principles. You know, you wouldn't like, I haven't been in the wait room for six months. So you're not just going to go back in and start ripping, you know, five by five. And, you know, you got to approach it from like a progressive overload and start very, you know, light. And maybe it's just one day a week of some light drill work that you slowly work into, you know, high level sprinting. I mean, you guys were a pretty good example today.

of, you know, maybe different age, you know, different training stages. And so what I did during that session was reduce, you know, some of you, Mark, had you do a little bit of less of something. I did you do a little more of something? And that's, you know, to me, it kind of becomes common sense. But that's just because I've done it for so long and the people that want to just jump into it can't just go full, you know, gangbusters. You'll get hurt because it is, we talked about it today, high exposure to possible injury. You know, you're always on the threshold and speed of of getting injured. And so with an older, an older client or an older athlete, you probably just want to ease into it really slow. Yeah. And you had us, I think, you know, maybe about the time

this podcast is up, the video of what you had us to do, it's probably going to be on Mark's channel or whatever. We'll have it linked here. But you had us go through a lot of different types of drills, kicking drills, karaoke drills, different types of foot contacts. And I think like a lot of, even me, a lot of people kind of like look at that stuff like, you know what? I want to just go sprint, right? But what the importance of that? What would you say the importance of learning how to like master some of those? Yeah, I mean, there's, well, first of all, just like in the session, you want to potentiate up, right, so that you're ready to sprint. So that's part of it. The other part of it is just developing the qualities that are going to allow you to be a better sprinter.

You know, we talked about being able to relax, you know, contract and relax. Do you have the structural capacity to handle the sprinting? So some the ankle isometrics that we did and some of the drill work so that you're attacking some of the mechanical, you know, side of things. The neural response, you know, are you getting the nervous system, you know, stimulated enough to be able to move the needle? So all of those things are why we do those things. It's like, I think Stu McMillan with Altus just had something the other day on like the warm up isn't like something additional that we do. It's like part of the thing that we're going to do. You know, and I actually really liked, you know, how he framed that because I think we're, you know,

we're getting ready to do a max velocity session today. So we're going to do max velocity focused exercises, dynamic flexibility, things like that that are going to help help us prepare for what we're going to do. It's kind of weird because like with lifting, you could like, could be a little haphazard with your warm up. But some people that understand strength on a high level know that the warm up

is not anything to really mess with. Like you want, you want to like, now everyone could be a little different. Some people could get used to like less sets and less reps and, you know, they could, they could figure out all kinds of different things. But you're, when you're lifting, you're really trying to like turn your nervous system up. And I think that sometimes we don't realize that's what we're doing when we're trying to sprint. Right. And so you're trying to get out there and turn that nervous system to where it's dialed into

what you're about to do. And so you, some of the warm up stuff that you do, it might feel like it might be tedious and it might be you might be like why am I why am I warming up for 30 minutes when I'm going to run for seven seconds it's dumb right you think it's kind of stupid but the more intense the thing that you're going to do the longer the warm up probably needs to be and I would say like a long distance runner could benefit a recreational long distance runner could certainly benefit from doing track drills however they don't really need them you know if you're just cruising on a three to five mile run here and there and you don't really care a ton about setting the world on fire, then you can probably just tie your shoes and move around a little bit and, you know, do the quad stretch that everyone does, a little hand-mey stretch, you know, the tricep stretch, and then you can probably, and this way, how about that one, that one's always a good one, cross the body, right? And then you just take off and you're probably okay. But when you're out there on the track, it's important to kind of dial it up. And you're

getting in reps that are mimickers of sprinting. And you need mimickers of sprinting because you can't just sprint all the time because sprinting is brutal. That's right. Yeah, I mean, what did we get three reps in today? Yeah, right? Of actually high-level sprinting. And we potentiate it up to that over the course of about 30 minutes. We've got hundreds and hundreds of reps driving our foot into the ground. That's right.

That's right. So, you know, those are things you have to do to help iron in the mechanical piece of it, build some structural capacity. But you can't just go out and sprint, you know, 100 times in a session. So you build that capacity through some of the drill work is how I've always kind of looked at it. And our bounce fire series is a great example of that where we get those ground contacts in. We're working on some mechanical stuff. We're even working on some of the neural capacity of the coordination piece without gasing

and taxing the system to a level that they can't recover from. And we still want to have some quality reps towards the end of the session as well. You know, I don't want to have so much warm up or so much, you know, prehab that now they're fatigued come time to sprint fast and we don't touch the oven. You know, we want that oven to be hot when we go. One thing I admire about you is that you've mentioned. to a bunch of other coaches. You've talked about this method, that method,

this other person, that other person. And we've interviewed a lot of people, and we don't have a lot of people that do that. We have some people that do that. But some people are like, I got my system. They have kind of their own way. Where'd you pick this up?

How have you found that to be valuable for you? Man, I'm just standing on the shoulders of others. You know, I'm really just a product of, you know, my grandfather and my dad, you know, I kind of watched them. you know, I didn't get to where I got to by myself at, at all. You know, I'm really just mimicking and copying a lot of the things that I've seen. Have I formulated some of my own ideas? Yeah.

Do I have a little bit of a system? Yeah. But I don't think it's, you know, I spoke at a clinic this weekend and I challenged everybody. I said, hey, don't we all kind of do the exact same thing, right? We're all in this room trying to say, I do it better than you do it. No, no, but, but we're all doing the same stuff, man. We all do resisted runs. We all do weightlifting. We all do max velocity.

We all do these things. And so, you know, I think it's at some level just a little bit arrogant to think that you have the only way to do it. And two, you know, does every athlete that you coach fit into your system, right? So if you're not flexible within your system, then how can you coach multiple athletes? You know, that's always been, you know, I built a lot of the stuff that I do at the highest level around Christian because I was with him for, you know, about 10 years. And but that doesn't mean that when I got another athlete, I didn't have to assess what their needs were differently than Christian, you know, that might need something completely different. So, yeah, I mean, I look up to other coaches. I study them, I watch them.

I've never really been one to beat my chest around, you know, hey, I know everything because I don't feel like I do. And I think, too, like I'm big into the mentorship and the relationship piece of this business. And I think the community, you know, there's just so many good coaches out there. Guys like Tony Volani, Les Spelman, Tony Holler, you know, go down the list. And some of them have coached all pros and some of them have only coach youth athletes. But there's some youth coaches out there that are freaking phenomenal. I mean, one of my mentors that I got to learn from, Tony Wells was a youth track coach in Denver.

And no one's ever heard of him. You can't find a piece of information on him on the internet. Those are a lot of times the best coaches. He's the best coach I've ever been around. You know, he was unbelievable. And so, you know, for me to be arrogant and say like, hey, this is, you know, I do it better than everybody else is just foolish. You know, I'm curious about, you know, different athletes have different amounts of excitability, right? So you're going to see a guy go out there and he's just like ready to go.

like he's high sympathetic, boom, ready. And you'll see other guys that go out there and they're like, they need a bit of time to warm up. In my mind, right, I have this, at least for myself, my goal is to, like, for jiu-jitsu, if I'm going to a competition, my goal is to get myself ready to compete, but also be, have a level of calm

within that level of excitability. So I want to be, oddly enough, more parasympathetic before I fight or have more tone before I fight, right? What are your thoughts on getting ready to do something hard, do a hard workout, get ready for a game, but also helping the athlete potentially keep a calm mind throughout. Do you think it's different for certain athletes?

What are your thoughts there? I definitely think there's probably some individual characteristics around an athlete that might need a little more hype or a little more, you know, juice before they go. But I also think, too, there's a level of maturity around that, you know, an athlete that, an athlete. Yo, that one of your balls. Thank God. Yeah, I didn't hit your foot because that's a heavy ass ball. I didn't even see it.

I mean, either. shiny balls going around. All right. So you were saying. We get, you know, the level of maturity like, you know, young athletes might need, you know, all that hype works out for them, right? But as athletes grow and mature, they realize that, you know, it's more than that. And they have to have a, you know, sound mind and be calm going into a situation.

You know, you're taking the field in front of, you know, 100,000 and it's a big game. And, you know, to get more parasympathetic in that moment is much more beneficial to you as an athlete. But that comes with some maturity. Yeah. You know, when you're young, you got smacked across the face a couple times, take a smelling salt and like you run through a brick wall. You know, that doesn't always work the higher level competition that you get to. So I agree, though, there's probably some people that need a little more of that than the other just on personality. But, you know, I think as athletes age and mature, they start to understand that you need that level of calm, you know, before the storm hits.

I have a second question on top of that. And I'm just curious about like your instincts, because I don't know if this has been necessarily studied in a sense. But I've found, because I've had also athletes put some of these ideas into practice, even with aspects of their breathing, right? And they're finding, and I've found that I'm able to recover from harder sessions easier because I'm not as a, I just generally, even when doing something hard, I'm not as tense. And because of that lack of tension, it's like my body's able to handle the stress better. So what are your thoughts there?

Do you think that there's something to it? Do you think that that's in the head, placebo a bit? What do you think? I mean, like we mentioned this today a little bit, like everything's an output, right? Even like recovery is an output. Yes. So I think getting, getting excitable, you know, to a level is also taxing on the system, right? Now, I don't know the physiology around, does that create a bunch of cortisol?

And so it prevents, you know, recovery. I will say that the, you know, the Russian lifters, like they spoke out against it. They didn't, they didn't want their athletes to get all hyped up during training. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I've seen out of the really, the best athletes, right? right, the ones that are the all pros, the, you know, all-star type athletes, they tend to be the ones in the back of the crowd. They're the last ones out of the locker room. They're the,

you know, the calm force, you know, when they take the field is what I've noticed. Now, that's not any sign. Not everyone's always a Ray Lewis. Yeah, yeah. And you know what? And he was pretty good. So it worked out for him. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Because again, some guy's personality just need that. They need the, they need the hype, the fanfare, you know, all the things. but so I think it is probably personality a little bit. But I definitely think like, I mean, we used to talk a lot about, you know, we got to get kids up for practice and down for games, right? Because in practice, you know, the kids come out.

They're kind of lethargic and stuff. And so you had to work really hard as a coach to get them up for practice. But then for a game, we wanted to kind of calm them down. I mean, you can't get yourself ready for a game on Friday night. Then, you know, maybe go try another sport. But so we would work hard to try to be, you know, really intense practices. But then on game day, to be calm, collected. Let's be smart. Let's know what our goals are going in and try to keep it more calm.

There's a lot of like romanticizing about like Marv Marenevich's program and Jay Schroeder's program. And we see a lot of these videos of people, you know, jumping from the top of their garage and like doing all kinds of crazy training. But it seems like you're a fan of some of those training modalities. What are some things we can we can take from some of those clips that we see sometimes on Instagram? Yeah, I mean, I think just like we talked about with these systems, you know, like, I mean, Marv and Jay and, you know, I've gotten to know some of the guys that are now understudies of those, those people. And, you know, there's some really good stuff in there. And I think, you know, it's funny because now we're almost like in this full circle moment where everyone's now looking back at the Soviet method and shock method and, you know, Wyrkoshansky's work and, you know, all this stuff. And it's like, guys, that's been around for, you know, 50, 60 years.

And we're just now getting more access to information. So we see it a lot more, right? I mean, 20 years. ago would we have known, you know, what was going on in some of these training programs? And now we see it all the time on Instagram and stuff. And so, but if you look at those things and you look at the quality, if you're looking at it through the lens of a coach of what are we trying to develop and you see like, you know, an altitude drop, which is, you know, heavy, eccentric, you know, yielding. Well, that's a, we should have that in our training programs. Does it have to be all we do? I don't think so. Does it have to be from 10 feet high?

Well, I mean, again, you know, some of the things people miss on the Soviet system was it was kind of a like, you know, they'd get thousands of athletes and whoever survived ended up being the ones that were good. And so that's not necessarily like, I don't want to take my NFL group in the off season to be like, all right, who's going to survive this off season? You know, bad, bad tactic. So, you know, you kind of got to consider the context. And that's what I try to do a lot. I see a lot of things. I've been so fortunate to meet some really great coaches. But I try to figure out the context of why they're doing it and how it can maybe fit into my system in a small you know, a small way. And, and then if I really like it, it might take a little bigger presence

in what I'm doing. I'm pretty resolved in a few of the things that I like to do. Speed priority is never going to change for me. But, you know, how can I continue to enhance that? Even at, you know, the ripe old age of 53, I'm still trying to learn and, you know, put it all together because I think there's just good smart minds out there and we'd be, you know, foolish to not take some of the advice from those people who have done it better before us. Sometimes when we see some people like doing stuff like really rapid, like just looks like craziness and they're like, using a band or something. Do you think that those have value? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, when you're talking about that ability to contract relax, I mean, that's exactly

what they're working on there. It's that neural work that we talked about. You know, I did a lot of a lot of years of trying to figure out, you know, when I, when I go on a podcast and someone asks me how we train and I'm able to say we attack the neural, the mechanical, and the structural system, that took a long time for me to kind of be able to verbalize. You know, I think 20 years, I was one of those young coaches doing things that I didn't really understand. It worked. know, some of the success that I had left some clues that we were doing some pretty good stuff. But then I had to probably reverse engineer my thoughts around why we were doing those things. And now that's, you know, why I'm so passionate about, you know, being in the presence of other coaches

and then mentoring to younger coaches of the why behind it. It's why I talk nonstop when we were training today because I can show you the drills, but I want you to understand why we're doing those drills, you know? So that's where my passion lies now is to, you know, really learn the deeper dive of the why. behind it. I think when Cal Deetz was here, he showed us a couple things with with some bands. And I don't remember exactly what they were. But I know that sometimes when people see clips like that on Instagram, they're like, this is bullshit. And then I think people get carried away and they think that that's all someone does. And again, it's like we need more. More context.

More context behind what some of these clips are. Yeah. I mean, we've, you know, a training Christian, right? Of course, we put him on blast on Instagram with all the stuff. And, you know, people would often reach out and, you know, pick this apart or pick that apart. And I'm like, buddy, you don't even know what we're doing. You know, let me, let me tell you what our whole offseason block looks like. And now you might understand that one drill that you saw on Instagram. So I just, I'm, I try to, you know, at least be cautious of what I'm judging when I see other work being done because you just don't know the whole story. Now, there is a cool exercise that you guys do.

I don't know if you've ever tried this one before, but maybe you've seen it before. But it's really nice because it allows you to like jump way higher than. you normally can handle. I've seen you with Christian and I've seen other people do this as well, but I've seen you having him jump while holding a band. And the band is attached to the, you know, to the rack, like from the pull-up bar. And it's kind of pulling you upward. What is that drill mimicking? So we're just accelerating the jump, you know, no different than we do like overspeed running, right? I think we're all pretty familiar with like some sort of towing for sprinting and we're trying to kind of help the nervous system embrace some new speeds, right, that they're not used to.

so it's no different in the jump where we're kind of unloading the system to get them to be able to jump a little higher, a little faster. So it's just another like piece of the cog of introducing the energy system of, you know, moving fast. So it's usually done in some sort of a contrast. You know, we have like a heavy box squat. We do some hurdle hops. We get reactive. And then we, you know, maybe band jump, you know, to get some of that fast overload in a jump in a jump activity. Actually, you know what?

Quick question even about that. You mentioned a heavy box squat. 90 degree joint angle. But my curiosity is, you know, I think when, again, when some coaches see athletes doing things with some limited ranges and they're not going full ROM, right? They're like, oh, that's not that. What are you doing?

You're not going ass to grass. You're not. So how would you have people think about what you're trying to get out of these exercises? Because I think when people see these limited ranges of motion, they think that the athlete is not even doing a movement, right? Right. So what are your thoughts there? My thoughts are, I mean, really as simple as what are your goals?

You know, like if my goal is, hey, I'm a powerlifting coach and we got a, you know, we got to squat past parallel or 90 degrees. Well, then that's where we have to train to. You know, with athletes, we don't always hit deep ranges of motion. And there are times of the season where range and length is very important, you know, early off season, trying to get some tissue quality going, getting some deep ranges, deep squat, goblet squat, things like that. It's very appropriate for an athlete. a beyond 90 degree squat for an athlete that's played five, six years in the NFL, the risk reward for spinal loading and the knee, you know, potential is just not worth it for me. And, you know, that athlete also is not hitting those positions much at all.

So, you know, they're usually up over 120 degrees in their angles. And so we're going to get strong in the angles that they play their sport. Wow. Okay. Yeah, I would say, I would say to go along with that a little bit, to play along with that line of thinking, if you just want to feel good in your day to day and you don't want to be like kind of lumbering around and wearing your workout everywhere you walk,

then maybe considering training a little bit more like an athlete might be a good idea. I'm not saying to abandon deep squats, I would still advise that you do them, but maybe they're done more intentionally and maybe they're done maybe with not such a high frequency or maybe when you do them, you're not just doing it with a barbell

with extreme amounts of weight. because we know that that. Yeah, it's just going to make it. Yeah. It has its benefits. Yeah. And sometimes it's fun. But it can leave you kind of licking your wounds.

That's right. Well, I mean, for us with an athlete, like, especially the high level athlete in an off season, you know, my football guy spent 17 weeks just getting banged up. So the last thing I want to do is present a whole bunch more load or potential injury in anything that we're doing. So we really have to run kind of a risk assessment on the exercises that we're doing. and how can we get them healthy? How can we prepare them for the load demand that they're going to see without risking injury? So, you know, sometimes that's a deep squat. And, you know, and then every athlete has their own individualized what they like, you know,

because that's the psychology around training is also very important. And there's some athletes that just need to push a bunch of weight. And so we're going to get in the weight room with that athlete maybe a little more. Some athletes feel like, you know, I'm, you know, more of an elastic athlete might feel like, I don't really like the weight room that much. And sometimes that's okay, you know. I saw a thing the other day. I thought it's the best thing ever.

Like the only KPI that we should worry about is winning. Right? So what makes you win? You know, and if it's a high box squat versus a deep 90 degree squat, you know, which one's going to make you win? At the end of the day,

that's all anybody cares about. So I'm just much less married to like specific exercises. And what we're kind of talking about is like the technical model. It's the same thing in sprinting. We talked about it on the track today. I can coach to the technical model and make you try to be perfect from what the book says, or I can just work with how you move the best that we can

and get you as fast as we can within that. And that's probably better than me just forcing you into the technical model that it's supposed to look like. Actually, let's talk about that a bit more too, because you mentioned a few different sprinters through history and even modern sprinters. And people that coach sprinting, a lot of people are just trying to change people's form.

And sometimes it's necessary. It makes sense. but what are your thoughts on some of that? Because like, you know, when I think about it, it's like Mark, Mark's a great example because when he started sprinting, he had less range within certain tissues. As rat range is improved, even aspects of his sprinting has improved. And that range is going to continue to, he's going to get more and more access. So his sprint form will adjust based off of what his body gives him.

Sure, sure. So what are your thoughts there? Yeah, I mean, I think you got to work with what you have a little bit, right? Yeah, and I think we've seen phenomenal world champion, world record holders that wouldn't have what we would call picture perfect form. So I think you've got to fix gross, you know, if it's a gross... Can you pull up Abby Steiner for Ryan? Abby Steiner's a great example. You know, a lot of people said, oh, her arms, you know, her arms are too straight.

They're totally, you know, out of the technical model. But she held the NCAA record in the 200 meters for a while, you know. And so, you know, it's just hard for me to be like, oh, yeah, if her arms were better, or she'd be faster. Because I don't really know if that's true or not. You know, and we get a lot of, you know,

coaches that'll kind of pick that apart. And, you know, I always use Michael Johnson. I always go back to him because he held world records for 20 plus years in the two and the 400 meters. And, you know, he didn't have perfect posture.

His arm swing was different than a lot. I wouldn't say it's bad because obviously it was a world record. So, you know, the question might be, are we all trying to teach it wrong? And should we be looking more at, you know,

how those guys did it? I don't know. You know, I also don't like to compete. compare what we're trying to train with athletes to outliers. So, you know, Michael Johnson was a freak. You know, Abby Steiner, freak, Christian McCaffrey, freak. Now, they can get away with some things that us lay people can't necessarily get away with.

So we're still going to try to coach into some modeling and make sure that it's efficient. And if we see something that's really poor, then we try to fix it. But also understand the individual. And to me, that's the art of coaching. You know, it isn't just this cookie cutter. here's how you should do it. It's 30 degrees here, 120 here. It might be a variation for each athlete.

You know, it's interesting in thinking about how high level someone like Christian McCaffrey is and then to know his dad, a Hall of Fame wide receiver for the Denver Broncos. And it's interesting to kind of think like, okay, well, genetically, he's supplied with all the gifts, right? But then we see him when he was a young guy like running around the football field when he's a little kid. And you could say he's very undersized for a football player. His dad was 6.5. I think Christians is 5.10 or so. I don't know.

Somewhere in that neighborhood, right? Genetically, he could have been like, I'm undersized. You know, I'm smaller. Like, I'm not going to be able to do this. And there's obviously a lot of training that went into all of it. So to kind of play devil's advocate a little bit, I think he's a combination, right, of like a of you know somebody who probably possesses some great genetics you've worked with them so you've seen it firsthand um but someone who's also putting in putting in the work and i think so many

of these athletes are that way yeah it's just that we have a tendency to just kind of brush it off and be like ah i guys a mutant ah my guy's a freak and yeah they are they are a mutant they are a freak but there's some probably things that go into making them the mutant and the freak that's more than just 1,000 percent. Two of the right people having sex. I mean, 1,000 percent. I mean, Christian's the blend of both of those things to perfection. And then at the highest level, like the NFL is full of mutant freaks.

I'll tell you right now, every 50, every person on a 53 man roster is a genetic freak. That doesn't mean they're all going to be the NFL player of the year or, you know, an all pro. And so there is a delineation between you're a freak, but then you're a freak and you also put all the work in, the time in. the right recovery, the attention, the mental game. I mean, when you first met him, what did he, what did he weigh? Didn't you meet him in high school? You've been coaching him since high school, right? Yeah, yeah, he was 14 when I first got him.

He's a, you know, he was a football track kid for us at Valor. And I mean, he was a gifted athlete from, you know, very young. I mean, that kid, I think, I don't know if he ever lost a youth football game in his whole career. I think he scored about 150 touchdowns in youth football. But, but, you know, but then he put all the work in, you know, from even. the young age, you know, from the time he was a freshman, he kind of treated himself as a, as a pro. And, you know, what does that mean? Well, that means the right training, the right

nutrition, the right sleep. He wasn't going out and partying on the weekends. You know, he did it all right to, because he knew he had a goal. I mean, his goal from day one, I can tell you this, I think without any hesitation at all, is he was going to be a Hall of Famer from the time he was a, you know, sixth grader. And so he's been working towards that ever since, you know, and unashamed. He is one of the hardest working kids I've ever been around. it's cool that it's cool there's so much you know video footage of him working you know since he's since he was so young to kind of see that to see all his background you know what I mean yeah yeah he's he's a he's a boosted and made it faster yeah yeah he's a he's a special kid you know and

obviously like you said genetically he's he's very gifted um but man he's put in all the work you know he's an absolute pros pro and trains like it um you know been so fortunate to be around him during those times and, you know, drink a cup of coffee with him in the morning before training. And, you know, he's already watching film and preparing for the day. And, you know, I just, I just think a lot of young athletes, you know, go, I want to be like him. How do I be like him? Well, it goes well beyond the sprint drills and, you know, the things that you get to see on Instagram to just the way he approaches life. Yeah. So, so many of these sports, you know, a lot, unfortunately, a lot of kids are, well, it's not unfortunate. I shouldn't say it that way.

But it's somewhat unfortunate that a lot of kids are just thinking like, oh, football season coming up. I got to train for that. Yeah, yeah. It's maybe like, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to like say anything negative towards that because at least it's training and it's cool that kids are excited to play football. But it's like it doesn't really work that way. Sure, sure. Yeah. It's like you need to, you can't just wake up, you know, in the summertime and just start training for football. Yeah. That's like you got to be training for football kind of year round or whatever sport it is. You got to be. Yeah. And sometimes your training for it is sometimes doing another sport. Right. That's right. That's right. Christian was a three sport athlete in high school.

And, you know, he's kind of your classic no days off guy, you know, and honestly, when he was young, I remember sitting at a breakfast spot with him in Austin, Texas must have been eight, nine years ago. And he's like, I'm going to give myself two days off this year. And I was like, buddy, I don't know if that's real sustainable, you know, but that was his mentality. You know, I was like, I'm not going to take days off. I'm going to be the best. And to do that, I'm going to make sure. Now his days off, he understands, you know, those days off have to be, you know, not high outputs,

but he definitely, you know, takes it very serious every day. and he'll do that until the day he retires. I think some people maybe don't understand how many times this guy has touched the football in the last like 10 years or something. So there's a lot of criticism about the injuries that he's had over the last maybe four or five years. But like I just think that that's pro football. It's like good luck trying not to get hurt,

especially when he carry the ball as much as he has. He's touched the football more than anybody ever in the last probably 12 years of his career, right? Because even when he was at Stanford, I mean, the guy was, you know, tooting the rock, 35, 38 times a game, right into the NFL where he, you know, same, same trend happened when he was at Carolina. And, you know, even now, he's still, you know, still very much involved, you know. He's unique in Seema because he can catch the ball really well as well. So he, he, they use him like

the whole entire game and he gets the ball a lot. Yeah, yeah. It's a little different than most other running. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's a, I mean, if you've been in an NFL locker room or on the sideline and seen some of those monsters, you know, that are trying to take his head off every play, injuries are going to happen, you know, and there's only so much. training that can prevent injury. Some of them are a little bit, you know, freaky. And, you know, sometimes it's just accumulation of load, you know, that takes its toll on the body. And so you mitigate the best you can and get through the season and then kind of put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And, you know, he's had a couple of pretty good years here recently. But some of it's just,

you know, bad luck, you know, and like you said, it's NFL football. So it's a car accident every weekend. Well, you had us do a little bit of barefoot stuff before we started. And then, You also mentioned George St. Pierre, and we actually just did a podcast kind of talking about how cool we think it is. George St. Pierre is always like trying all these new and different things, and whether they're new or not. But he's exploring things that are new for him. And he had his feet on those PVC pipes, and that was something you were mentioning like, oh, it would be good for me to do. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the feeder, like I said today on the track, you know, the feeder, you know, where the rubber meets the road.

And so I think it's very important that those are healthy. So taking care of them, you know, with different, you know, barefoot drills, you know, ankle stuff. The pipework is, you know, it can be complex, but it's a fairly simple concept of just, you know, pro preception and balance and, you know, getting those toes to spread out a little bit, stuff like that. So, yeah, it's an important component that sometimes gets overlooked because it's not that sexy, you know, to think about working with the feet. But the foot and the ankle complex are, man, they're like the keys to the kingdom, in my opinion. You know, what kind of changes have you noticed with athletes?

Because you've been putting focus on this for years, right? I'm just going to mention for myself, I remember, like, when I was playing soccer for all those years of my life, I never really paid attention to that. It was actually, because my cleats were so narrow and I have such a wide foot, I had to get a surgery on my right foot, which stopped me from being able to run for a period of time. So because of that, took me out of soccer. And then when I started focusing on lifting, I didn't even realize it. But after a period of time, I started walking with it. duck feet, right? And then when we started talking a few people, maybe, I don't know, 2016, 2017, and I started paying a lot of attention back to that. Over time, my feet now,

my feet were walking forward. Like, I don't have to try to point my feet forward. I just walk that way. But it took years of kind of changing things in the way that I was like focusing on movement. So what are the type of things that you've noticed when it comes to that with athletes? Yeah, I mean, I think obviously we're much more aware now. right of of you know wide toe box shoes i mean you know christian's christian's new shoe brand he just spent a couple years developing a shoe you have them on now that's right yeah these are my my while on earth's here so you can show them to us maybe you can pop pop one off yeah here we go shameless plug there see here we go while on earth that looks cool man but yeah i mean he spent

he spent he spent a lot of time i think in that because he had so much trouble over the years you know with with shoes that had really narrow toebox and stuff and he's got a big as you can imagine he's got a big strong foot. So, you know, there's a, there's just, I don't know, I'm not a foot. Cool, man. Yeah, I'm not a foot expert, you know, I just know that it's an important piece of the puzzle to make sure that you're addressing. And so, you know, anything you can do is better than probably what we've been doing, you know, give the, give the foot some space, um, work on some of the pro pro preception, the rock mats. I know Mark's standing on his rock mat back here right now. So I think all that stuff is good. Yeah. You, uh, you have kids and your kids are a little bit

older when your kids were younger and they came to you and they're like dad i want to did you you know did you whip out your bounce fire sheet and or or were you trying to be a little bit more reserved my poor kids um yeah no i mean you know they they did a lot of stuff with me you know they were gym rats they'd come to practices with me and stuff like that i i tried not to be total psycho dad you know and and make them do anything i think a lot of stuff they did with me we can make you as fast as you want to be let's go They wanted to. We had some great times over COVID, right?

When things were just shut down and we'd go to the park, you know, and we'd all go mess around and train and stuff. But, you know, they were athletic. You know, they did some athletic stuff. And, you know, just like me, my dad was a coach. I'm not sure if I always took full advantage of what I was living with, you know. I mean, I know I had friends that valued the things that my dad brought to the table more than I did, just because I went home with it every night, you know.

And I'm sure my kids were a little bit the same of like, oh, it's just dad, you know, on preaching this stuff again. What's Mass Pacific Force? Come on, man. But I did. I get to work with my son's basketball team for an offseason and, you know, worked with my daughter and, you know, did some of those things that probably helped him a little bit. But I wouldn't say that, you know, I had like my arm around them, you know, helping them

all the time. I did want them to have a little bit of a desire and love to want to do it on their own. And they were also involved in some sports that I wasn't involved in, basketball and soccer. And so they had a lot of time, as we all know, you know, they're playing a lot of soccer, playing a lot of basketball where training really kind of was a secondary deal which was tough for dad to you know swallow sometimes but you know you're fighting the system of you know what they're asking them to do so it seemed like a lot of what we got to with training is like we did like some eccentric

stuff some isometric stuff and so I'm trying to think like even if you were an athlete that wanted to be able to like cut and and move differently than just being able to like sprint on the track it still seems like a lot of what we did covers some of that still. Yeah. I mean, to me, you got to cover the gamut, right? Like, you know, force production, force absorption, that's kind of where it's all at. So you got to produce a lot of force to be able to move fast. If you want to be able to stop and change direction, then you got to be able to handle that force.

So, you know, the triphasic strength, you know, model of concentric, isometric, and eccentric, and eccentric loading, you got to be able to figure out when and where you're going to sprinkle that in. So I try to, I try to put it into all of our. training sessions where we're getting a little bit of it in every training session. I'm not a big like, we're going to block you in an eccentric phase. We're going to go into isometric and then concentric a little more calditsis trifacic system. I'm more of, you know, we're going to try to hit like we did today. Yeah. We had some isometric today. We had some eccentric. We had some eccentric with the

deadlift. And so, you know, we're going to try to touch some of those things because in sport, I feel like, too, we don't separate out in a sport when that stuff happens. We see all those different qualities during a football game or during a soccer game. So when we train and that's something I actually took from Dan Paff, you know, and he helped me kind of organize some weight room stuff years ago. And it was like, I was having a hard time, you know, do we upper lower split? Do we do an eccentric phase? You know, it's like, they need all of it all the time. So just train it all the time. And, you know, that's kind of where I came up with my templating system of how we do our weight room. That makes a lot of sense to me because like, I mean, for for any sport, because like outside of maybe someone who's focused on powerlifting, right? Right. Because like over time, you could get all these capacities and

improving gradually rather than like having a block that just focuses on increasing that as much as possible. You know what I mean? That's right. It does make a lot of sense. Sure. And you'll have athletes that have, you know, deficiencies in certain qualities. So you might need to sprinkle a little more concentric on the real elastic bouncy athlete. You know, or if you got a real strong athlete, then you might need a little bit more eccentric, you know, bounce work with those guys. So there's some, you know, juggling around that. But I still think don't take away all the concentric from the strong guy. Don't take away, you know, all the twitchy from the fast guy. So it's just a little bit of, you know, maybe a little bit more salt in this guy's chili

and a little more pepper in this guys. You know what I mean? You know, I want to actually ask something. You know, we did a trap bar deadlift today. I saw Christian McCaffrey also using the trap bar. And there's a straight coach that called that an abomination. He was on our show. He calls the trap bar deadlift and abomination.

So why do you like the trap bar for what you do with these athletes? I think it's a, you know, it's a safer path forward with athletes where you have limited time, right? I think the deadlift on a straight bar is a great exercise. And I think, unfortunately, though, it takes a lot of time for great techniques so they don't get injured. I don't have time for an athlete to get injured. And, you know, especially with youth athletes when you're trying to teach them, you know, and I think deadlift covers, you know, about seven major muscle groups, you've got feet on the ground, you're pushing through the ground.

It makes a lot of sense for me as an exercise selection. But it's also, I can get an athlete in about two training sessions to do it well. You know, I get him into a good hinge position, shoulders back, and we can, you know, execute that where, you know, a back squat, as we all know, with different body types can take a long time to develop or even Olympic lifts, which I love Olympic lifts. I was a track athlete. We used to Olympic lift all the time and I loved it. But, man, it can take some time to get a kid to do a quality hang clean.

And so, you know, I'm trading time for, you know, I guess just being able to get to the where I need to get to a little faster. And that's kind of where it came from. I was also heavily influenced by Barry Ross's book, Underground Secrets to Running Faster. Great little paperback, quick read book. It was Allison Felix's high school coach that kind of had her on a weight program, mass specific force, were really focused on the kind of the concentric movement to like not have hypertrophy take place during the lifting for like especially female athletes. And he was big into trap bar deadlift. And, you know, quickly I spent 14 years in a weight room. You know, I figure I got about 30,000 hours in a weight room.

And I just know that, you know, time on task, I can just get a lot faster there with the trap bar. So it might be an abomination. I don't know. But it's worked well for us. Okay. It's funny to hear not, you know, you don't want hypertrophy, you know, from training. And your training specifically, how would someone train if they're trying to not, you know, I guess, have more muscle mass? I will never go to a doctor ever again about my general health.

all they want to do is put you on pills. Really well said there by Dana White. Couldn't agree with them more. A lot of us are trying to get jacked and tan. A lot of us just want to look good, feel good. And a lot of the symptoms that we might acquire as we get older, some of the things that we might have, high cholesterol or these various things,

it's amazing to have somebody looking at your blood work as you're going through the process, as you're trying to become a better athlete, somebody that knows what they're doing. They can look at your cholesterol. They can look at the various markets, that you have and they can kind of see where you're at and they can help guide you through that. And there's a few aspects too where it's like, yes, I mean, no, no shade to doctors, but a lot of

times they do want to just stick you on medication. A lot of times there is supplementation that can help with this. Merrick Health, these patient care coordinators are going to also look at the way you're living your lifestyle because there's a lot of things you might be doing that if you just adjust that, boom, you could be at the right levels, including working with your testosterone. And there's so many people that I know that are looking for, they're like, hey, should I do that? They're very curious. And they think that testosterone is going to all of a sudden kind of turn them into the Hulk. But that's not really what happens. It can be something that can be really great for your health because you can just basically live your life a little stronger,

just like you were maybe in your 20s and 30s. And this is the last thing to keep in mind, guys, when you get your blood work done at a hospital, they're just looking at like these minimum levels. At Merrick Health, they try to bring you up to ideal levels for everything you're working with. with. Whereas if you go into a hospital and you have 300 nanograms per deciliter of test, you're good, bro, even though you're probably feeling like shit. At Merrick Health, they're going to try to figure out what things you can do in terms of your lifestyle. And if you're a candidate, potentially TRT. So these are things to pay attention to to get you to your best self. And what I love about it is a little bit of the back and forth that you get with the patient care

coordinator. They're dissecting your blood work. It's not like if you just get this email back and it's just like, hey, try these five things. Somebody's actually on the phone with you going over every step and what you should do. Sometimes it's supplementation. Sometimes it's TRT. And sometimes it's simply just some lifestyle habit changes. All right, guys, if you want to get your blood work checked and also get professional help from people who are going to be able to get you towards your best levels, heads to Merichhealth.com

and use code power project for 10% off any panel of your choice. Yeah, and that's not every athlete, right? I mean, like football players, they got to have a certain amount of mass. basketball, tall, skinny basketball guy, we probably want to lean into some of the hypertrophy. But, you know, a female sprinter who's maybe already reached maturity and we don't want her to put on any more weight, right?

We talked about the weight vests today. Just like a couple pounds on an athlete, you know, competing at a high level in a sport like track and field can be the kiss of death. And so, you know, we want to still produce forces. So we still have to lift and do all the things that we're doing, but we want to try to eliminate some of that hypertrophy work. So I had a lot of success with it with my female track teams

back when I was at the high school I was at, of just, we really kind of ran with that program for the, almost the whole year. So we did a lot of elimination of the eccentric loading for, you know, now we got a lot of eccentric work done with our plyometrics, and it's not like we neglected our eccentric work, but in the lifts, you know, my experience has been like a high school girl in the weight room,

starts lifting heavy weights, they just blow up. I mean, they can. They have the propensity to, like, you know, grow pretty quickly. So you got to be careful, you know, because a girl gets all big and musly. I had a little sprinter. She was U.S. number one, went up to Oregon, got really big and strong in the first year put on like six or seven pounds and didn't run as fast as she ran in high school. You know, and just, you know, you put 10 pounds on a weight vest today.

You're probably not as fast as you are without it. So. And if you were to put on, you know, two or three pounds. Sure. And it was through the style of training that you're talking about, maybe your force output would match whatever body weight that you gained. It's an index, right? I mean, like force index, you know, how much. What do you trap bar deadlifting comparative to your body weight, right?

So if it's high, you know, if you're at a 3.0, you're moving really well. So if you've put on some weight, but you're still moving the whole weight room, you know, you're probably in good shape. Yeah, it's interesting because you could think like, oh, like, you know, if I'm doing these movements this way, if I'm lifting in this protocol, I'm not gaining muscle, but that might be all someone's here, but you're gaining a lot of other things. That's right. That's right. You're gaining the neural drive.

you're gaining strength. It's not like you're not gaining anything. That's right. And they're not specifically like going to get as muscular. Right. Because it's not optimal for hypertrophy. Exactly. Bingo.

What if the, you know, when you were showing us some stuff on the track today, like some of the footwork drills, et cetera, you were able to show those very well. And I found that, I find that very impressive when, you know, we're working with somebody and they don't just tell us what to do. They're also able to allow us to see it because they can do it, right? I know not everybody needs to be able to do that, but how important do you think that is for a coach?

Because I know some coaches, like, they have a lot of theory, right? But then there are coaches like you who are able to do the things that they talk about, to an extent with like some of the injuries you're dealing with, but you still showed it very well. How important is that for you? Well, first of all, thank you. I appreciate that. I mean, I think we talked a little bit today, not at length,

but I think it's pretty important that you have something that athletes can see, right? And if it's not you as the coach, then you might want to have an intern or, you know, an athlete that you can actually have them see what you're trying to. I'm a big, you know, see it, feel it, listen to it. You know, I did a lot of explaining to you guys today. So you're listening. But then I'm also showing you in case you're more of a, you know, visual learner, kinesthetic, do it, you know, even if it's wrong. So you can feel it. And then we'll fix it.

So I think you're trying to touch. That's like good teaching model is touch all the different ways that people learn. Yeah. And so I think it is important. I don't think you have to have been a. you know, some, I mean, I wasn't some great athlete, you know, I did okay in a couple things. But, you know, after 30 years of demonstrating and dialing in the drills, I can still show it well enough to, you know, you understand what I'm trying to do. Yeah, the, we got to use a couple different things today.

And we mentioned, we mentioned the vest. What do you think the propose vest is doing from David Weck? I mean, I think, hell David, I think he's on to something, you know, it's a really cool piece. I think part of the reason I gravitate to it is I've used weight vests in a lot of our training. It's a way that we load, apply metrics. It's a way we can do some loading and deloading. I like a lot of, you know, some contrast training where we do like some loaded runs with unloaded runs. And I like it for that purpose. I think the ability for it to add load into your force loading, but then the way that it springs off the ground.

So it kind of eliminates some of the just total, you know, output on your body is really unique. you know, and it's, it's kind of goofy. You know, you hear the springs rattling and stuff and everything, but now, you know, he's getting great results on it from the PAP effect of running with it and then taking it off and running. You know, you said today, you would felt faster with it on, you know, where you were getting more force, which was kind of the validating moment of if we put more force in the ground, we're going to move faster.

So it's actually helping you do that in real time. So I think it's a really cool piece. I don't have enough experience with it yet to be like I'm putting my, you know, full-blown stamp on it. But I also, you know, I'm dabbling with. it, trying it out with some different athletes. Now I'm trying to figure out how I would program it in. You know, and I think the other really cool thing, going back to the rhythm piece that we talked about, it has that spring, but it gives you this audible feedback of your ground force and this tactile

feedback because you can feel it. So inherently, you're trying to find a way to have the, have rhythm with the vest, with the ground. That's right. And when you're able to tap into that, it's just so much more efficient and smooth. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely a tool to be reckoned with. I feel like, I think you're going to see, you know, over the next, let's call it, coaches are going to start using it. You're going to start to see some protocols around how they're using it. And that's, you know, I've had some communication with David, even in the last couple of weeks of just, you know,

hey, how do you see this best being used? Because I can know where I would put it in my programming of even if it's just substituting it for a regular weight vest. But then, you know, how am I going to use it on the track for some potentiation effect? And then also an ability to load an NFL athlete without putting too much load on their body. that's kind of the unique piece of it is you're getting this benefit of extra weight, but you're also getting this unload when it hits the ground, which could be like game changer for, you know,

an athlete trying to move the needle. I can see a lot of benefit for even somebody who maybe has like a slight injury, like a lower leg injury, just kind of like not jumping necessarily, but just like kind of oscillating and just kind of walking. And maybe that would provide a little bit more gentle load as they're like, you know, progressing, pass and injury. Something you mentioned to me when I was doing some of my sprints is you mentioned like, hey, punch that hand, you know, punch that hand back a lot further. You kind of said your arms, you know, aren't moving, you know, as much as they need to.

But something that is not really thought about that much when you're trying to project yourself forward is how much downward and back motion there is. And I think the vest really promotes a lot of that. It does kind of teach you like, yeah, I do need to like smash into the ground hard. hard and you were you know advocating for that that we basically slam into the ground and I think that maybe some people would think like man I don't know I don't want to slam into the ground like a sprinter they look you know light or they look but they are slamming the ground right yeah I mean a high level sprinter looks like they're not putting a lot of force in the ground because they amateurized so good at the bottom put up gout gout yeah you know those guys are applying a massive amount of force

but the difference is like when you or I put a massive amount of force in the ground, it looks like. It looks like Thor hitting the ground with a hammer. You know, it's like, boom, and the ground breaks. And your foot squishes and your heel starts to get towards the ground. Yeah, yeah. But these guys, they're able to apply that force and then come off the ground with a rate of force development that is just so elite and high

because they have a great ankle complex, their nervous system. And so it doesn't look like there's a lot of force being applied. But they're applying more force to the ground than you and I. So it's really kind of a, it messes you up vision. to think that there's you know they're not applying as much force yeah this guy here's got some twitch to him yeah i've seen slow-mo video of his ground contact and it's just his he's so stiff when he hits like they're all super stiff but yep he just looks exceptionally so i wonder if you look at him you know he's a tall slender you know he's applying a lot of force but there's not a lot of weight to it so

he's just he's floating you know just absolutely floating yeah his coach was saying that uh when she first met him that he was just like all up on his toe and he just like walked around like that all the time. And she's like, I, she's like, I tried to, you know, get him to walk a little bit more,

a little bit more normal, but I'm like, maybe you're going to mess him up. Right. Well, think about like the soleus development and the, you know,

the ankle complex of all that. Like, we talked about the bounce fire today. Like all those thousands of ground contacts of doing that movement develops a complex that helps your RFD. It helps your, you know,

stretch shortening cycle. You mentioned, uh, how important hills are. Yeah. Let's dive into that. a little bit. Where would you use a hill? Is it a hill a good place for some of the people listening maybe to start out? Hills are great. I mean, hills pay the bills, right? And I know as a track coach,

that was a staple for us is our fall workouts. I mean, there's some capacity to it, right? You got some, there's basically load, you know, because you're moving uphill. The ground comes at you faster because you're running uphill. And so you have to have really good front side mechanics. And I just, you know, whether it's on a treadmill or, you know, running up a hill, they're just, it's really good in a return to play situation because it's kind of easier on the hamstring. Because again, that foot's going to hit the ground before it gets overextended. So development of hip strength, you know, hip flexion, hip extension as you're running uphill are all the reasons why I think hills are phenomenal. So they're not always like, where do you put them? For us in track, we use them a lot in the fall as like a strengthening kind of capacity, you know, type of work.

sprint repeatability, developing some strength in the soaz and the hip flexors and stuff. Not much of in season. We start to kind of bring that incline out as we get into the end season. And I don't think you're going to want to run like guys in season uphill necessarily, but more of an offseason capacity, you know, kind of strength work. You can build quite a bit of capacity for sprinting with some drills and some hills. Drills and hills, baby. Right.

I like it. What about utilizing some drills on the hills? I know some people are fans of like broad jumps uphill and single leg bounds and so on. Yeah, I see I see some people doing different things. I think it falls into two buckets for me. If it's a technical drill, I wouldn't want it to be on a hill because we don't want to change the mechanics of what the technique is trying to be developed. If it's more of a power output thing, like a broad jump, then I think jumping uphill would be relatively equivalent to wearing a weight vest. So it's like whatever modality that you have, you're adding some load to that exercise.

I think that's all really good in a progressive model. I wouldn't just day one be like, hey, we're going to broad jump uphill. But if you've gone through a progression of we're doing some broad jumps on flat ground and now maybe we added a weight vest and now we're going to go do it up a hill, that would make a lot of sense to me. You know, when I think about like going back to kind of the variability of stuff that you've done with Christian and probably all the athletes you work with,

when I think about the practicality of it, I don't see gimmicks. I see options because for a field athlete, you know, you have to be able to solve the different problems of people coming at you. You have to be able to potentially, maybe you have to step your leg out so you can produce force in another direction, right? So the more options you have, the more ability you have to deal with different situations in unique ways.

You know, when you saw Sequin jump backwards over it. Most people wouldn't even think about doing that, but he did because he had that movement option. So it's like, you know, I mean, of course, then it can turn into something where, well, well, are we going to do everything? But, I mean, even so, it's like, developing a lot of movement options

will just give you that much more ability as an athlete in my opinion. More tools in your toolbox. Yeah, right? I mean, you asked me today, you said, you know, what makes the best athlete. And I said, you know, what I said? Do you remember what I said?

I don't actually. What did you say? Adaptability. Adaptability, there we go. I just think the best athlete can solve the problem on the field, on the court, on the track, better than the other guy.

So that makes them a better athlete. And so I don't know if there's any one attribute. You know, a lot of guys get to the finish line in a different manner. You know, regardless, fill in the sport. You know, they're just a lot of to get gout gout's incredible. But so is Kenny Bairnick. And I'd say they're two drastically different sprinters. So, you know, but adaptability, you know, they're both figuring it out.

So I think a great example. I don't know if you guys have been paying much attention to the NBA, but like Jalen Brunson on the Knicks, right? The story behind him and his team versus like the Spurs and Wembe is so interesting because Jalen's a 6-2, 6-1-6-2 guard, underrated. People like constantly were saying that, oh, this was a waste of money, et cetera. And Wembe is the, he's the freak, 7-4, whatever, right? A mate can shoot three, can do everything. But Jalen, with what he was able to do with his team, is able to, you know, win without having all of the genetic gifts that people would assume. because he had like the dude is just so skilled in so many ways.

Right. Yeah, he's amazing. Again, again, what's the number one KPI? Adaptability? Winning. Winning. There we go. Okay.

Okay. So, yeah, they won, right? So, like, I mean, whether he's the best athlete or not is kind of, you know, who cares? They won the championship. Four games, the one, too. Yeah, man. Yeah, it's pretty special. Pretty, pretty deadly.

I think athleticism looks different in a lot of different ways. I mean, Jokovic in Denver, you know, last couple of years. I don't know that any of us would slow mistake him for like an athletic guy, but we could argue that he might have been the best athlete in the NBA for a couple years. Absolutely. Still top five. Yeah, for sure. So I just don't know that there's a, you know, like this model of what, you know,

athleticism is supposed to look like. Yeah. When it comes to sprints, do you ever, is there ever a focus on the slowing down part? Yeah, I mean, I think it's more injury prevention, right? You don't want to be just like slamming on the brakes after a real max velocity effort. I mean, I don't, we don't have too many examples in sport where you're going from pure max velocity to stopping. You know, that just really isn't a thing, at least not that I'm, you know, fully aware of.

I guess you're running as fast as you possibly can, but it might be for very short. Right. For like five yards or something, 10 yards. So when we're training and we're hitting like a max velocity effort, you know, we want to slow down slowly, safely. A lot of injuries actually happen in the deceleration phase of like max velocity work, just because maybe an athlete kind of, you know, loses focus. They get out of position. They overreach and they pull a hamstring or, you know, get a quad or something like that. So I think just paying attention to how they're decelerating and cueing them. Like we didn't do that for you guys

today. Right. Now, I think also too, I knew that we weren't going to be hitting, you know, massive 25 mile an hour, you know, marks. So it wasn't going to matter as much. But if I, you know, if I'm coaching some high level NFL guy and I know he's going to, you know, hit it, then we got to, okay, just remember when we're slowing down, we're going to do it safely, take it out 60 meters if you have to. Let's make sure we live to see another day. Yeah. Yeah, I felt what we did today was amazing.

I wanted to see if, Ryan, if you can bring up maybe like one or two clips from like some recent runs, maybe you can just break down what you're seeing because you were mentioned to me on the track that I tend to overreach a bit. and maybe we can find some examples here. And I thought some of the advice you gave me today was really valuable. Yeah. Yeah, I've been watching your story, which, by the way, is amazing. I mean, if you guys that are watching don't know Mark's whole story, man.

Tune in because the guy's done an incredible deal here at almost 50, you said. Yep, it's going to be 15 December. Man, so pretty incredible story. But yeah, just kind of breaking down some of his form of, you know, we worked a little bit today on dorsiflection, right, and having a good loaded foot when it hits the ground so that we're not, you know, overreaching and having any, you know, additional braking forces.

I think we talked about a little bit of lack in hip extension, you know, the ability to get some of that stride length going. So, you know, just a, it's just a couple things. And obviously here, not in a max velocity run,

you know, we're going to see different technique. We talked about that also today. So. Yeah, just cruising on some of these runs that we're showing. It's different. I mean, a distant stride, like literally those guys heel strike, right? They're rocking on their heel through their forefoot. And so we would never teach that to a sprinter. And so the speed at which you're, you know, training at obviously makes a difference in technique.

But for, you know, as we're trying to get faster, we're trying to hit that, you know, 60 second mark for 400 meters at some point, you know, or, you know, I don't know if it'll happen before 50, but we're going to get there. We got to address those things so that we can create the most efficient, you know, efficiency that we can out of you. And we had, you had in SEMA today on the Z tread and he had them cranked up to, what, 26 on the degree of incline? Yeah. And 10 miles an hour? How'd that feel in Sema? Oh, it, after the sprints, it didn't feel horrible. You know, I was working on the, focusing on the front side mechanics.

So it felt good. When I was able to kind of like get calmer in it and felt even better. So still a little bit of thought that's happening, though, which I don't necessarily like. but when you do anything new, there's going to be a little bit of like downloading going on. Well processing, yeah. But what did you notice? Yeah, I mean, I think as you, that was my whole coaching point over the few reps was just to try to get you to relax a little bit. I think you hit pretty good positions, but you prevent it by, you know, trying to muscle your way into positions.

Yeah. Versus just being a little more elastic and hitting, hitting good positions. And as you started to do that, those last couple reps, you know, even at the high, at the high incline, you were rolling. And it was more efficient. I think you probably could have held that for 10, 15 seconds, you know, whatever. We pulled you off at six seconds, but that wasn't the intent for the day. So it really is about creating an efficiency through those models of neural, mechanical, and structural buckets that, you know, every one of those traits plays into that at some level.

And so for me, so I don't reach out in front, what do I need to do? Well, the first thing is just making sure, and you actually've gotten so much better here, But making sure that we're getting to the front side. So after we've got full extension off the foot that we're trying to recover that heel through the hamstring and get into the front side so that we're prepared to strike the ground, that's cue number one, right? That has to happen. Secondly, then we want to have a good loaded foot so that that's prepared to apply force to the ground.

If we strike with a planter flexed foot, then we're going to have a little bit of force leaking and force loss at ground contact, which now we've just wasted, you know, wasted some force. Right. So those two things in particular, you know, can be game changes. It throws your timing off. Yeah. If my foot, if my heel almost gets to the ground, then it throws a whole cycling of the leg off. That's right.

That's right. And then, you know, in top end speed like we were working today, we want really short ground contacts, right? We want just ta, ta, ta off the ground. Now, in acceleration, it's a little different. As we're pushing, we're going to have longer ground contacts. And, you know, you'd be better at that because you're a big, strong athlete. You know, both you guys would be better in acceleration. than in the top end, which is why we focused on max velocity.

Yeah, and you had me lean forward a little bit today too. A little bit, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, your ground strikes are just a little bit too far out in front of your center of mass. And because you're strong, you're still able to move, but you're not moving as efficiently as you could. And I think as soon as you started getting a little further under your center of mass,

you started to feel, oh, I can move a little faster now. Awesome. Thank you so much for taking us through all that training today. That was incredible. Of course. And you had us put on like some cream, like some CO2 cream. cream now I've only been made aware of this because my friend Ron Penna does a bunch of studies and a bunch of stuff with CO2 but um yeah tell us more about that and you have some weird suit that you

want to try out that's right that's right so air therapeutics um is a company I've been working with now for a few months and um it's just a it's a you know the paste that we put on this morning it's called the renew paste um it's kind of a good potentiator um it's like basically like kind of metabolic um gets the oxygen started to deliver to the tissue. before you work out. So it increases blood flow. There's the bore effect, which is taking the oxygen off the hemoglobin and then being able to be available for tissue. Because really like sprinting is not just muscular. You know, there's definitely like, you know, the other physiology around it. And so oxygen being our lifeblood is something that we need. And so to make it more readily

available and usable in our system before we train is huge. So today we lubed up the posterior chain hamstrings, calves, solace and stuff to give some extra, you know, potentiation for that before we trained. So we use it in a prehab that way. But then, yeah, the suit itself,

which we'll get in tomorrow and demo it for you guys, is basically like... See you can find their website, Ryan. It's a, it's A-E-I-R therapeutics. There it is. And it's a suit.

You know, it's got, it's an airtight suit where we're going to suck all the oxygen out of it and then fill it up with some CO2. which is kind of the chemical reaction that takes place to help this bore effect happen and get oxygen into your system to help recover. And so in recovery, it's really good.

It's like a CO2 suit. It is. Wow. It is. Yeah. Kind of like going in like hyperbaric chamber, but the opposite, right?

Because it's the CO2 versus oxygen. Yeah. Yeah. The way I kind of explained it is we got plenty of oxygen, right? Like we're, you know, we'd all be probably 98, 99% saturation if we took a pulse ox. So it's not necessarily an availability. issue. It's more of a deliverability issue. And once that happens, that CO2, you know, gets in there

and helps that oxygen get into the tissue. So we get enhanced recovery and blood flow and, you know, all the good things that oxygen does for us. So, yeah, there's like kind of a neurological efficiency for us before we train, but then, you know, after we train, it helps us recover better. It can even be like parasympathetic, you know, kind of, I do it in the evenings and helps me sleep at night, things like that. So, yeah, really cool technology. of a group that I'm working with, and a doctor out of Minnesota. And so we'll have to,

we'll put him in touch with you because he's, he's really smart and understands the, you know, the human body at a really high level. I've been in a CO2 tent before. And it was kind of trippy

because I was in there for a while and they kept cranking up CO2. And then like you're talking and you're just normal. And then you're like, I can't waste any breath. Like I can't, you don't want to talk after a little bit

because it, you know, it just starts to be like harder to breathe. Yeah. The thing I like about this product is it's just, it's non-invasive. It's just on your body. You guys put the paste on, and it's probably still working for you a little bit. And then, you know, the suit, you can throw it on and watch TV.

It's, you know, it's pretty easy to use. But there's just some really good qualities around it. And it's, you know, it's an affordable piece. And the paste is easy to carry around in your bag and use, you know, use where you got some issues going on. I had my wife had a little shoulder issue she was dealing with. And she put that on a couple times a day. It's supposed to help your skin, too, right? Yeah.

I have like a cut and stuff like that. I heard people talking about this a little bit, but I haven't had much exposure to it. So I'm glad that you came with this. Yeah, they're using it for some skin care stuff. And, you know, like even some stuff with cancer and all kinds of really cool stuff. I mean, oxygen's our lifeblood, right? So anything that can help deliver that better.

A lot of the modalities in recovery we see kind of restrict the vaso, you know, restriction. And this actually helps vasodilation. So we get some additional blood flow out of it. So really cool technology. excited about it a lot. I think I think actually it's something you guys know that what the sodium bicarb stuff has done kind of for like the middle distance and the distance events and track. I think this could be very similar, you know, for sport of what that's done of I'm not sure people really understood it. But now you won't find a middle distance runner that isn't, you know,

using bicarb. So I think once people are onto this and they understand, you know, how powerful it can be and how simple it is, I think you'll see a lot more athletes using it. This is really, really interesting to me and I'm gonna look into it more because like through you know I read the oxygen advantage in like 2016 and quite a few of those books and McEwen he's very big on you know learning okay of course when you get to certain types of intensities ventilation will increase in your mouth has to open but if you can improve your ability to breathe through your nose even in certain high situations where the output is high when your respiration and ventilation is lower you are more CO2 tolerant because you're holding on to more, right? And it also increases the

amount of time it's going to take you to have to open your mouth to breathe, right? So I find that very interesting because that improves your breathing efficiency. I've just never thought about this type of being able to apply it and sit in it, right? So this is really, really cool. I've never seen something like this before. It's wild, you know, and it takes a little minute to kind of understand, right? And I think for me it was best just to try it. and use it and see how it helped like my wife's shoulder. You know, I deal with like a torn meniscus and I got a metal ankle. And so I'm always in pain.

I'm always in inflammation. And, you know, a 30 minute treatment every night, you know, kind of reduces the inflammation. I feel better. I sleep good. So, yeah, it's good stuff, really good stuff. Congrats on the weight loss too. I think last time I saw you.

I think you said you lost like 25 pounds or 20 pounds or something. Pretty close. Yeah, I'm down about 22 pounds right now. What would you do different? Stop eating. No, I'm kidding. Stop stuffing my face. You know, I just kind of committed to, you know, a discipline, right?

Like I told you guys, I've been really good at taking care of other people for a long time. And I think I just kind of finally prioritized myself a little bit. And, you know, got up, walked three miles with my wife every morning now, which is an awesome time to spend with her, you know, first and foremost. But then also I'm getting, you know, getting out of bed, getting my eyes in the sun, getting that walk in. And we walk at a pretty brisk pace. We're about 15, 30, you know, mile pace guys. for a walk and then I'll go hit the gym and you know committed to four days of lifting by the way I'm going to need to get a lifting today before I leave just so many use your gym and just committing

that way and then you know watching calories and making sure I'm hitting enough protein has really been kind of the secret awesome where can people find you um you know I'm on instagram Brian Brian Kula or at Kula sports performance is the business that I'm involved in in Denver. ETS is a company that bought my company and now I'm involved with them moving forward, one of the largest growing performance companies in the world. So got a lot of involvement with a lot of different things, but those are some places where you can find me. Awesome. Strength is never weak. This week, this never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.