Mark Bell's Power Project - The Communication Secrets Of Successful Elite Coaches - Vernon Griffith || MBPP Ep. 955

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

In episode 955, Vernon Griffith, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about the best coaching practices and the importance of mobility. Sponsors mentioned on air: ➢ https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢ https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box Follow Vernon on IG: https://www.instagram.com/vernongriffith4/ New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://drinkag1.com/powerproject Recieve a year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 & 5 Travel Packs!   ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   ➢ https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off Mind Bullet!   ➢ Better Fed Beef: https://betterfedbeef.com/pages/powerproject   ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin!   ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM   ➢ https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!   ➢ https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off!   ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

How do we take away like some of this noise so I can make sure that people are doing these exercises properly? A lot of coaches, they want to say like, what's the best exercise or what's what exercise do you start with? The most important variable is intent. As you were taking us all and having us think about the cues, it changed. Ask them to do the movement. And then, hey, where do you feel this at? Oh, I feel it here. OK, interesting. And I was like, hey, are you feeling this in the hamstrings? I didn't touch it. And he was like, oh, yeah, hamstrings.

And then like a week later, he's like, man, I'm getting some pain like on the front side of my leg. And I was like, oh, really? And he was like, yeah, my hamstrings. Oh, no. I can cue you all day and program like a robot. But once you feel that sensation, it's there forever. How would you help a new coach really start to progress? I mean, coaching.

Every exercise becomes a mobility intervention. Getting deep in a bench press, loading that shoulder, getting into those positions, that's mobility on the shoulder. Crawling is great. Squatting is great. Bench press is great. But it also depends on what that person and their past experiences are. You're going to human a lot longer than you will athlete. You're going to athlete for a very short time. So I care much more about the human. Pepperidge family, welcome to the podcast. We are 900 plus episodes deep, bringing tons of different experts in fitness, health, nutrition, and business. And we thank you all for your support.

And we're also glad to be bringing these individuals to you. Now, if you've enjoyed this podcast and it's brought benefits to your life, we'd really appreciate it if you left a five-star review on Spotify or Apple, as that helps the podcast grow and thrive, and we can continue bringing you amazing content. Thank you for your support and enjoy the episode. Hey, thanks for showing us all that stuff in the gym today. I think it was really interesting. You know, when you do like rotator cuff work,

it's real easy to kind of just be like, oh, I'm going to, you know, adduct my arm or whatever you even call this motion, externally rotate the arm. And we tend to kind of get lazy with it. Maybe some of us don't have the same range of motion. So maybe one person can get more out of it than another. But I liked what you were showing us was really just to like hold and stabilize and then start to move the body around a little bit. I mean, when you're trying to get someone to do something specifically, the more variables you add that they could mess something up or go away from what you're looking for,

it's more like just focus on that one spot, drive intent, slight deviations from there, and then how can we improve based off of that? So that position of rotating slowly, drive intent, slowly rotate a little bit more, drive intent. I've had a lot of success with that because it removes the guesswork. It just almost empowers that person to hold that position versus them just passively going through the motion without value in that movement. This is the mastery of coaching, and I think it gets lost. I think some people get fired up and excited to be a strength coach, or maybe they get an opportunity to work with a high school team or something like that. And they're like, man, I'm going gonna put them through this west side barbell program and

they're gonna be doing this maybe doing that and then you get in front of like 40 kids and realize that it's like just pure chaos and it's kind of mayhem and it can be really difficult to train people or to coach people so a lot of what you do must be sometimes just to kind of simplify and how do we take away like some of this noise so I can make sure that people are doing these exercises properly and maybe on occasion it might be something like let me just teach these guys how to drag a sled forward and backwards because if I can do that then I can then I can have 10-15 minutes where I can go and talk with somebody else in the gym and explain a different movement to them then I can circle back to them I can go and talk with somebody else in the gym and explain a different movement to them. Then I can circle back to them and I can know that they're going to be safe because dragging

the sled forward and backwards can be pretty simple. A lot of coaches, they want to say like, what's the best exercise or what's, what exercise do you start with? The most important variable is intent. So I can give you bench press for five reps or give bench press for eight reps. It doesn't matter if there's no intent behind them. So it's the intent that we choose building that relationship with that athlete or that client that they understand the intent that they should approach those reps with. That matters more than any of the exercises you choose. The idea of intent that you're talking about reminds me of the idea of just like when bodybuilders talk about a mind muscle connection. When bodybuilders are doing a lot of movements, although it's, you know,

they're focusing on a specific isolating one specific muscle group. The great bodybuilders tend to talk about, I am focusing on moving this in a very specific way. I'm focusing on feeling this in a way I'm not just moving to move. And with the intent that you're talking about, I'm wondering how do you get somebody to go from being just, again, like we were mentioning,

passively moving and just going through the motions of the movement to really thinking about the way that they're moving? Because as you were taking us all and having us think about the cues, it changed. Like when you had me doing that face pull and you noticed that my elbows were in and I was here and then you just said, move your forearms out. And I was like, okay, I see what you're going for there. How do you get people to start thinking about those things? I think, um, as coaches, we love to overload cues on the front side and say, Hey, today we're going to do squats. They were going to do external rotation. I want it to look like this. I want it to look like this. This is the cue. This is the cue. This is the cue where it's more of, Hey, we're doing a face pull. I just want you to pull it back to this position. Let's start, give them some safe cues, some safe parameters to keep them

within. And then from there, like ask them to do the movement. And then, hey, where do you feel this at? Oh, I feel it here. Okay, interesting. What if you did this? Now feel it there. Like with you, hey, watch you do the movement. And then, hey, now put your hand here.

How does it feel? Oh, now you feel it there. Because once you feel something, you can never unfeel it. So I can cue you all day and program like a robot. But once you feel that sensation, it's there forever. So now whenever I program that exercise again, I know what's going to happen because you've already felt it. I think it's genius in a way because I think that we forget how much is coming at somebody. And who knows someone's level?

You might look at certain people and think, well, this guy must have spent a lot of time in the gym, but maybe he hasn't. Maybe he just is in great – maybe a particular person is just in great shape for a number of reasons. And you don't realize how much noise is going on in their head about the exercise that they're doing. And so I really liked what you said in the gym about letting the athlete tell you where they're feeling it because we've had a bunch of different people come in here before. And I'm like, oh, you feel that in your hamstrings? Feel that in your hamstrings? And you're like, I'm still trying to get a feel for the exercise the right way. I'm still trying to position my feet.

And no, I'm not really feeling. A lot of times, like if you haven't, if you're not really familiar with an exercise, who the hell knows? Something totally different could be burning and on fire. It could be your ankles. It could be Andrew is always feeling it in his triceps. We always joke about that. But yeah, you don't really have an idea of where someone's going to feel it the most or how they're going to load in accordance to their body. I mean, we think about the gym.

The gym, there's a lot going on. There's other people working out. There's music blasting. There's so many distractions. People are looking around. People don't want to be different. So they're kind of looking what someone else does. Like, hey, focus eyes ahead. But then they're looking next. Like, am I doing this right? Am I doing this right? So I was telling a similar story earlier.

I had a client one time and we were doing hinges. And I was like, hey, man, you feel this in your hamstrings? Do you feel this in your hamstrings? Or it was more of like a squat, like a squingy position. And I was like, hey, are you feeling this in the hamstrings? I didn't touch it. And he was like, oh, yeah, hamstrings. And thenstrings and then like a week later he's like man i'm getting some pain like on the front side of my like my leg and i was like oh really and he was like yeah my hamstrings and i was like dude your hamstrings on the back of your leg you're like pause so anatomy chart please okay these are the hamstrings class everybody understand that

so in that point now going forward i don't ever ask anyone hey do you feel this in this muscle because for one the second i put that thought in their head they're gonna be like oh yeah hamstrings i'd rather them just do the movement and then be like hey where do you feel this touch it and then once they touch it i'm like oh okay that gives me an insight of what's going on inside their body because my coach's eye, you know, these ocular muscles, I can only see, I can't see what's going on inside your body. It's not x-ray vision.

So that insight of that person building that relationship with them for them to say, hey, I'm feeling it right here. Interesting. All right, let's turn your foot a little bit more. Okay, let's slide back. Now I feel it here. Now I can start to discover what's going on inside their body. And now these cues become more powerful because it's specific for that person rather than just yelling across the room, hamstrings, hamstrings.

And the person is like, I don't know what my hamstrings are. Where did some of this curiosity for range of motion and movement come in? Have you been a huge fan of that for a really long time or is that something that you migrated towards over the last couple of years? It's the clients that I work with, quite honest. I work a lot with military special operations guys, disabled veterans. And when you have one injury, there's a flow chart for the most part. If I'm having problems with my external rotation or I'm having problems getting hip internal rotation, for the most part, there's direction from a textbook standpoint, like, hey, access this, now this, now this. But when you have two injuries, when you have three injuries, when you have TBI, concussions,

when you have all these other things laying around on top of each other, where do you start? So you just start with movement. You start with watching them go through big positions. You watch them trying things. And then from there, it's, Hey, where do you feel this? How do you feel this? And then those questions I think guide better interventions, but that's what propel propelled a lot of the stuff I talk about with mobility and stuff. It's, it's collaborations with my clients on the floor. It's not me just posting pictures on social media. It's, Hey, this is an actual client going through this human organism, organizing his body, getting up off the floor, asking questions, gaining that feedback, making it specific for them.

You, you know, doing certain movements like up against the wall and you doing an exercise where you're, you're lifting, you're on your butt, you're lifting your leg up over a dumbbell. Like years ago, would you kind of think some of these exercises were dumb? Did you not have an understanding of them? And like, kind of how, how did they, how'd you start to really incorporate some of these things? Uh, well that one specifically, uh, are we talking about the social media posts or are we referencing that? Yeah. A lot of your social media posts, you know, like I just thinking like, um, you're a big guy, you got a lot of muscle and being a strength coach, sometimes we're just thinking about like lifting, you know, and we're thinking about like just getting after it. So I'm curious if,

if there was a stage in your life where you were turned off to some of these movements. I mean, I don't know if I've turned, I was turned off, but it's more of now my eyes are open. Like a lot of the stuff that I've shared in the past, people have said like, man, that's so outside the box or how do you think out so outside the box? And like, none of this is outside the box. To me, you know, understanding the importance of oral health, telling someone to get a root canal to fix their squat, that's outside the box. That's outside of my scope of practice. But me prescribing a mobility intervention, that's not outside the box. Maybe the better question is, why is your box so small? Like, why are you closing in with such

parameters and thoughts that you're not allowing your body and your mind to explore what the human body is capable of? Well, let me ask you this, because that's a very interesting thing. You know, you have multiple certifications. You're the 2022 NCSA and SCA trainer of the year. You obviously have a lot of academic knowledge, but when I was asking you earlier, like, where do you think you've gotten the most benefit of learning? You said it mainly came from people, mentors, et cetera. I think a lot of coaches that are listening like probably look up to you and they want to kind of understand how you think the way you do. So how would you help a new coach really start to progress?

I mean coaching. I think that's the step that everyone skips nowadays everyone wants to post social media posts or videos and exercises and go viral and they don't understand how other people work they know what works for them but that doesn't mean it works for someone else I like to say people on social media now and what people are calling coaches which they're not is they can reverse engineer an exercise. Like they can say, oh, well, if I'm trying to improve your pistol squat, you should do this, this, and this. But they've never engineered it for a client that's actually

trying to get towards that goal. So it's all hypothetical situations. So to me, if a coach wants to get better and fine tune their craft, it's the actual be on the floor with clients, clients that are different. Like, I mean, I've coached everyone from, you know, my daughter's 13-year-old softball team, which is chaos, to, you know, Olympic athletes, professional athletes, some of the best athletes in the world. So it's diversifying and experiencing as many clients as you can. What have you found when you do work with younger people?

Like, what's the, what's a big difference that you've noticed in maybe, is there a difference in being able to keep their attention? Absolutely. But my, my number one goal with youth athletes is confidence, especially with the female population, young ladies, but it's making them confident in a place that might not feel confident big not within reason big guy tattoos old old equipment dirty floors they're already walking in that place going like you know what is what is this place you know what is this and making them thrive within that teaching them that hey you should deadlift you should do chin-ups like strong is cool those sort of memories I don't think ever

go away. You make someone strong with a barbell in their hand, you'll make them strong with a pencil, with a paintbrush. They never forget that stuff. Strength is, that confidence to me is what's important. So let me ask you this then. As far as communicating well with somebody, because I've seen a lot of coaches communicate with clients, whether kids, adults, and I just listen to them, just like that person does not like the way you're speaking to them. You know what I mean? And obviously you've, you've, you know, you've worked seminars, you've done, you've coached a lot of coaches. So when you help people learn how to communicate effectively to clients, whether it be kids or adults, what are the big concepts that you think would be beneficial to like the little thing you

mentioned in terms of not saying, do you feel out of your hamstring or but where do you feel that? That's a big thing that can make a very big difference for a lot of people. So what else do you think would be helpful for coaches in terms of communication? When I've given presentations in the past and talked about communicating to me, it's obviously building relationship first. I think coaches expect athletes or clients to respect you. If you don't respect them first, it's not a one-way street. It's a two-way street. You build relationships, you know, back and forth. Like I trust you, you trust me. Okay, now we have a relationship. So now I can start to build those thoughts and talk to them and relate to them in their language. But honestly,

I go back to my time in the military. Like if you're not transmitting on their frequency, they're not going to receive it. So if I'm, if I'm talking in language or verbiage that they don't understand, if I'm trying to prove how smart I am, and I'm trying to impress you instead of express what I want, you're never going to listen. And then you have the other side of that where the coaches that just yell. And I relate it to me being a dad. if i come in over the top and i elevate my volume any of us that have ever been in a car in the emergency broadcast system comes on and just goes what what's the first thing you do you turn the volume down your

athletes do the same exact thing if i come in yelling this and be like oh god here he goes again turn the volume down or worse they turn it off and now they're not even paying attention so it's meeting them where they are and then trying to nudge that from there um i think a lot of times when it comes to training i think sometimes people aren't really realizing how much of the piece of the puzzle they might be missing by not being able to do certain movements and when it comes to like something like a bench press you're thinking like, I just need to be strong. I need to keep my body kind of tight. And I don't need to be able to express like a lot of external rotation.

But a lot of times when you can't express those movements, we end up in compromised positions or what does happen, you know, when you go to do a bench press and now the shoulder starts to slightly flare forward. Maybe if you had a capacity I mean maybe if you train the rotator cuffs or maybe if you trained some of the stabilizer muscles and you train some of the ranges of motion maybe when you do get in a compromised position you could kind of save yourself in those spots or maybe you'll be able to have more sets or more reps or be able to just handle more in your training so that you can overcome certain barriers and continue to get stronger and stronger. And I think a lot of that is missed a lot of times when it comes to a strength athlete and even a bodybuilder.

Kenny showing stuff to in SEMA, I think it has a lot of value in the sense that maybe like we won't see a net positive strength gain right away. But over time, if we can stay healthy, then that's a big piece of the puzzle. I mean, if you're healthy, you're available. If you're available, you probably feel good about yourself. If you can consistently walk in the gym, that's a great feeling. An injured athlete or an injured person is a pretty shitty feeling, man. No one wants to be hurt. Reduced to nothing sometimes. Exactly. But that's what I think the concept of mobility, it's the ability to move. And now every exercise becomes a mobility intervention. Getting deep in a bench press, loading that shoulder, getting into

those positions, that's mobility on the shoulder. And I think once you start to bridge that conversation of this is mobility training, strength training is mobility, working these joints, working through these positions through a full range of motion, like now it starts to build value. And now these small nuanced things of getting into these positions, getting in the shoulder, it builds value. So now we prescribe those smaller movements like we did earlier. It's like, oh, I get it. I'm connecting the dots now. And there must be a lot of kind of give and take of giving some prescriptions of some of those movements and then also letting people – giving people something to kind of almost play with, right? Like do some dumbbell presses. Do some – right?

Yeah. And I mean that's my thing. My company is Performance Explored. It's all about exploring things. So it's almost like give them a nudge, see where they take it. Because they may take it further than you ever intended. I mean, I've given athletes, clients, especially my online remote people, like movements to do and I prescribe them. And they'll come back and be like, hey, I added this rotation. I'm like, damn, I didn't think about that.

Like, that's great. Where did you feel that at? Oh, I felt it more in my adductors in my groin. I'm like, perfect. Let's add that in. So it's almost like empowering them through their body to look inwards. It's easy to flash the light. When you turn that flashlight inside, now you can kind of open up a deeper dialogue does it seem

like there's like common spots that people are common spots or pieces that a lot of people are missing when it comes to maybe just like athletes internal rotation of the hip or like are you noticing anything in particular i mean it'd be easy for me to say internal rotation of the hip and like shoulder mobility and feeling confident in those positions. But, I mean, it would be easy to say that based off like the amount of clients that I've worked with. But, you know, everyone's different. Everyone's on their own path. And maybe some people just haven't had much practice there. And then after they do it for two weeks, maybe it's a little bit, quite a bit better.

Well, people train where they're comfortable. Like no one's going to train where they're not. It's very, it's very slim that you find someone that's like, oh yeah, that was a great workout. I really didn't want to do it. And I did all the things I didn't want to do. Like if I go in there to work out tomorrow, I'm going to do things I like to do because that's pretty normal. So I'm going to work through a range of motion that feels good.

I'm going to work through a range of motion that feels good. I'm going to work through a range of motion that I feel confident in. So if you never get to try the other side, like, yeah. Having worked with and continuing to work with a lot of disabled vets, you probably get a lot of injuries that most trainers probably, number one, don't know how to deal with or never deal with. But you figure out ways for these people to, you know, deal with or never deal with, but you figure out ways for these people to, you know, solve those problems. Now, how do you get them open enough to be able to move into those positions that are obviously very uncomfortable because maybe they have a missing limb or a massively injured knee? How do you do that? It's just, it's just small nudges. And for the most part, most of the guys I work with, and then, you know, based off my experience as well, it's people want to do things they used to do.

And, you know, the VA is constantly telling you what you can't do when you're in the military and you get out. It's like, hey, man, you're never going to do that again. Forget running. Forget squatting. Forget doing that. Like you shouldn't lift over 75 pounds. Like all that stuff. Hey, forget having your shoulder go over your head.

And, you know, you've been told for years, like, you know, you have have to go do hero stuff and now it's well don't don't deadlift too heavy so it's almost like people are waiting for someone to just finally come along and be like yeah you can do it like why not why not do it and i think that once someone realizes there's that glimpse of light like yeah i can still do this then it it's infectious. Then it's like, well, how much can I do? So it's almost this process of this infectious thing of just empowering them with confidence to get back to what they used to be or close to it. I mean, obviously as we age, things start to go away a little bit. Yeah. I mean, getting feedback from those people must be huge too, right? Yeah. I mean, they have complications that other people don't have.

And when they start to give you feedback, it probably has helped you a ton as a coach in general. I mean, it's, it's shaped how I coach and shaped how I communicate. It's shaped how I look at the body. Like when you see someone with no arms deadlifting, it changes how you look at movement. It changes how you look at a hinge pattern. It changes, it changes everything. And now when I work with a client that has all those limbs and all those opportunities, it's almost easier to coach and build those conversations because I've seen like bare minimum. It's almost like if you have your guys' weight room or you have just a couple kettlebells, when you have all the bells and whistles, it's kind of easy to be a coach. When you don't have that stuff, now you've got to get creative. How have you been able to be creative with the spine? We were talking about that a little bit, but on your page, you do a lot of stuff that allows people to move the spine in different ranges of motion.

And we see a lot of other maybe strength coaches do certain things. It's very – the spine stays in a neutral position. There isn't much rotation. There isn't much extension or flexion. It's fairly rigid. What opened your mind to that? So it was actually a guy. So the spinal engine, definitely something that's big in sports, and we were talking about it.

There was a coach specifically. I can't remember his name, but he's put a lot of good stuff into it in cricket. But the spine is meant to move. The spine isn't fragile. the spine is meant to move. The spine isn't fragile. The spine is meant to rotate. And there's this kinesophobia with lifting outside of, like you said, that neutral spine position. Like, oh, I can't do that. Well, why can't you do that?

Because when you pick your kid up off the ground, you're doing that. When you pick the groceries up off the ground, you're doing that. When you do anything in the backyard, you're doing that. And there was one client I had specifically, he was a triple amputee. So both legs gone, one arm gone. And he walked in jokingly, but he came in one day and he was wearing a tight shirt. So I was giving him crap about it. And I was like, oh, nice shirt, man. We don't wear that tight shirt stuff in here. And then we laughed about it, whatever, so I was giving him crap about it. And I was like, oh, nice shirt, man. We don't wear that tight shirt stuff in here. And then we laughed about it, whatever.

And I was watching him crawl around on the ground, for lack of a better word, on his little nubs. And I was watching his spine contort. And I was like, interesting. As a coach, I'm so used to looking at limbs. Like I watch a leg move and I watch an arm move. And I'm like, oh, look at the action of the arm, the action of the hip. But he doesn't have those. So it forced me to watch his spine. And he just happened to have a shirt on that day that was super tight. And I saw how much his spine had to move to propel his

body across the ground with crawling. And you had to move almost maybe like a, like a lizard. You ever see the way that they have to walk and their whole body will contort. Yeah. And then from that moment, I was like, oh my God. Like the spine gives so much rotation. It's involved with the hip and the shoulder, that equal and opposite reaction of walking, just normal locomotion. And I just never kind of looked at it from that perspective. I mean I have a new – everyone wears shirts in our facility. So I don't see guys with no shirts on running and watching their spine move.

But watching that moment, it was purely enlightening because I was just like, wow, the spine is beautiful. It's like poetry. It's watching it move and pass off the hips to the shoulder as you walk and move. And for him crawl, it was just, it was pretty powerful. So from that point forward, it's like, okay, well, how can I get the spine to move? Knowing this now, knowing that now that I, I do believe this, I'm a believer, I've seen it, how can I influence this more? So how can I add rotation into normal exercises? How can I add rotations into crawling patterns? How can I add rotations into wall movements? How can I contour and challenge these rotational positions? Yeah, people are big fans of even just crawling. Do

you have people, do you suggest that for some people? Within reason. So it's easy for me as a coach to be like, crawling's number one. But I come from a military background and I had one client

one time, one military guy. I was like, hey man, it was one of the first guys I worked with when I started working with a lot of

active duty retired disabled guys and I was like, hey, I got this great crawling pattern and he was like, fuck that.

And I was like, what do you mean? Get was the, it was the first time I had a coach tell me no, or an athlete tell me kind of no. And I was like, I kind of like stepped back. I was like, what do you mean? And he was like, bro, I'm not, I'm not crawling, man. And he was like, I've crawled enough. Like I, I am never going to crawl again. And at that moment I was like, wow, great exercise, wrong person. So it's like, there's no right exercise. Like crawling might be great, but it also might be the one thing that pisses that person off. So now this, this intention, this, this, uh, opportunity that I'm trying to create now becomes a negative relationship. Luckily with him, I already had a good relationship. So we kind of laughed it off.

Um, and now I'll kind of put them in every now and then just to be funny because i've been working with him for years but uh you know it's it's crawling is it's crawling is great squatting is great bench press is great but it also depends on what that person and their past experiences are like to them to him crawling was a punishment bear crawling for 100 200 300 yards in the military so he was like i'll never crawl again cool i think they did studies on some people uh in regards to like the spinal engine i think they had some i want to say they had a person running with no arms on a treadmill have you ever seen any of that stuff it's really fascinating they have them like sprinting um and the spine you know with this individual is actually very stiff and i don't know it's just it's it's interesting i know there's like a lot of debate on you know, with this individual is actually very stiff. And I don't know, it's just, it's interesting. I know there's like a lot of debate on, you know,

the way the spine should move and the coiling and all those different things, like some of the stuff that David Weck talks about. And there's people on opposite camp who are like, that has nothing to do with anything. And there's some people who are like, well, you know, some great athletes are maybe displaying that in certain instances and certain instances,

maybe they're not. I mean, comparing what normal people should do to what elite athletes are maybe displaying that in certain instances and certain instances maybe they're not i mean comparing what normal people should do to what elite athletes are doing yeah they're here some of it okay yeah the guy has yeah it's so cool but that's that's what i saw yeah and i was like holy crap like look at that spine move and i was just like i've i never thought about the spine like that you go back to like all your anatomy and physiology and biomechanics classes. We never talked about the spine moving like that. It's always rigid. The limbs move, you fire anything out of neutral is wrong.

And then you see that and you're like, Oh, that's different. That's actually right. Um, and now that it's almost like once I've seen it now, I can't unsee it now. It's everywhere. Right. Um, so it's, you know, just being open to it, I guess. So you have a hot date coming up, and you look in your closet, and all you see are the old, ugly clothes that you usually wear

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That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash Power Project. And you'll automatically receive 20% off your order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. How do you help trainers? Because some people might still be looking at that and thinking, well, if I want to implement that with someone or if somebody wants to start implementing more spinal movement for themselves, they may be wary, they may be unsure, they may try something and think like, oh God, that doesn't feel good. So what are some things that people need to think about when trying to incorporate more spinal movement into

some of their lifting, some of the movements they're doing in the gym, what should they be trying to think about so they can do it safely? I mean, try to get the rotation where you want it from. So if you're trying to rotate through the T-spine, like more isn't better. I think that's a big misconception with mobility training. It's like, oh, I got to get my hand to this wall. No, you don't. There's no rules. There's no rules on like, you don't get a golden ticket if you're one inch away from the wall or three inches away from the wall, it's just, Hey, rotate comfortably. See how you feel. Cool. Exhale. All right. Inhale, bring it back. Let's exhale again. Let's see how you feel. And then just kind of moving through that, exploring your own body and where you're at. Like there, there's no right answer. Um, and there's no like ultimate goal of like, Hey,

the epitome of a T-spine rotation is touching the wall. No, because are you getting that from your lumbar spine? Is your knee opening up? Are you compensating somewhere? Like it'd be pretty incorrect for me to say that there's one size that it's the right answer for one way. How about the barrier of breathing? Because when a lot of people start moving into those positions, maybe they're holding their breath. Maybe they find it difficult to breathe into the diaphragm.

So how is it that you help coach people to breathe through a lot of those movements? So I think there's two approaches. You can have someone do like the structured breathing, like having them exhale, having them inhale. But honestly, I like to do that and I like to talk to them and have them just conversate with me while they're going through it and just see if there's any differences. Like if it's by me, by them having a casual conversation. Yeah, man, as I'm going this, Hey, what do you feel? What do you feel? So I'll ask them like, Hey, what are you feeling right now? And as they're opening up, they're talking and I'm like, huh, interesting. Cause now they're not getting pressure. They're not using pressure as an aid. So, so those sort of, those sort of concepts are just, just playing with it.

Just slight layers of things. And just as a coach, like how can I truly find out what's going on inside this organism? Like if I just – if every exercise is scripted like – then how real is that? No one is going to do that on a daily basis. But like having them talk, having them breathe, OK, even going opposite, having them inhale as they open, exhale, and just taking note, like as a coach, like either if you're writing it down or a mental note, whatever it is like, Hey, when I had them do this, this is what happened. I gave an input. This was the output. I gave this input. I got this output. And I think that that's the, that's the secret sauce with coaching is like how many layers of a movement can I create?

Yeah. Within a given training session, are you trying to a lot for, you know, some sort of recovery methods like within the training session, or is that something you have people do kind of more on their own, like myofascial release or it looks like it looks like a lot of the range of motion stuff is incorporated into the workouts. Or are you more of a fan of just kind of like, just not over prescribing so much lifting that the person needs to even worry a ton about recovery? A good mentor of mine, he left me with something that I hold true to this day. I'd rather be a mile short than an inch too far. So when it comes to working with athletes, when it comes to coaching athletes, I'd rather

under prescribe, not give them enough, then reach too far. too far then now i got oh man we got to recover oh hey man i'm really oh we got to we got to pull it back we got to pull it back we need to go do this we need to go do that i'd rather leave them a little less and think about the long term and i'm going to touch all that stressors and all and all that tissue and get get the get the stress that i need from a long-term perspective rather than just trying to imprint my thumb on them right then and right there. Rather than wipe them out in one training session. Yeah, exactly.

But for a recovery standpoint, honestly, we go for walks after every session. It's like we go for a walk, 20-minute walk, get some sunlight, talk about the session, shake it out. Like to me, if you want a foam roll, great. If you want us to do trigger point stuff, awesome. If you want a foam roll great if you want to do trigger point stuff awesome if you want a static stretch i don't care like if that's your thing i'm not going to take it from you like the worst thing i can do as a coach is to tell you something doesn't work that you believe in exactly i haven't and i had a client one time specifically did that he was uh

he nfl guy off season and he was coming in he man, I gotta, I gotta find a cryo place. And I was like, for what, bro? And he was like, and he was like, Oh, you know, man, after every session, man, that's how I feel after, after our hard practices, I feel great. Cause he was coming in from out of town. And I was like, Hey man, I don't even, I don't even know where one of those is. And he was like, what do you mean? It's so good for you. It does this, this. And I literally, in that moment, I couldn't help myself. And I said, actually, it doesn't, it does this, this and this. And he, I saw it in his face. And I was like, he went, oh, and he was like, bro, that that's been like my thing. And he said it like that. And in that moment, I was like,

I just took this dude's superpower. I took his superpower just to stroke my ego. So in that moment, I was like, never again. If, if, if it's not going to hurt an athlete or a client, man, I don't care. If you want to go lay on the grass and breathe, but naked in the sun, cause you think it gives you endorphins of whatever. Hey man, great dude. Go for it. That sounds awesome. I had a guy one time that laid on the ground and he put rocks down to align his chakras after a recovery. Heck yeah. And I was just like, hey, man, great. And he was like, hey, it does this and that.

I'm sure it does, man. I'm very happy for you. But the last thing, the placebo effect is powerful. The nocebo effect and telling someone it doesn't work is even more powerful. So whatever that person wants to do to come back down to where they were when they walked in, that's what I want to do. What if they tell you, Bench in 405 for reps is their recovery? Then we got to have a conversation.

They're like, ah, you might want to slow that down a little bit. But it's my thing. I feel so soothing. Yeah. How about for, because like I see like some online coaches and stuff, they kind of become like certification chasers and they just want to get certs here and there to kind of make their IG profile look a little bit thicker. Has like some of the literature caught up to like some of the spinal movement stuff? Because I'm just thinking if somebody hears this, they're going to be like, no, the book says the complete opposite of what you're just explaining. Not to my knowledge. I don't think there's much in textbook or that i've seen from a professional education standpoint but you

got to remember if something has and i could butcher this if something has ceus with it and it's uh what is it called is it it's um whatever a course is validated type thing then it's been validated from like a year ago. Like, and that doesn't change when it changed with, if content changes now, the whole validation process has to start over to my knowledge. So for those big educational companies, those big personal trainer certs,

like those, those are pretty rigid for the most part. Now, if you have smaller people with like workshops and stuff like that, those, those might be more up to date with what's going on, but those are often pretty opinionated as well. So it's hey this is my way okay well there's many my ways and there's many right ways so you know i i don't i don't really have an answer for that i guess do you have uh interns or anything like that like how do you uh advise

people get you know start to get some some of the knowledge that you got i mean yeah i definitely had a lot of interns um right now i currently don't um but ask coaches get to know coaches drop in um internships are great but obviously you have to make money so some people can't afford that um but it's just learn as many things as possible i can honestly say some of the best things i have learned have had nothing to do with strength and conditioning. Like to me, three things jump out. I took a ballet class in college. I had to take two electives, one credit electives, and I took a ballet class. That was one of the hardest classes I've ever took, if I'm being honest with you. But I learned so much about the human body, like everything that you see now on social media about like controlled articular rotations, that's a ballet movement. Deep ranges of motion, high plantar flexion, what the toes can do, hip flexion, shoulder position, shoulder extension, shoulder flexion.

Those are all ballet-specific things. And I remember standing holding the bar and holding my hip up off to the side like dying. And now people post on social media like oh well that's so-and-so's company no it's not they just packaged it that is that is ballet that is that is movement art that is an art form in itself um and i took an i actually my other class that i took there was a one credit class was aikido so the the movement of energy so being able to take someone's energy and use it against them. So that's big with like my football players is how do I take someone's energy, use it against them? How do I use leverage?

How do I shape my body? How do I position my body around theirs to create leverage? That was powerful. And then the other was I took a massage course when I really got into like fashion and how much, you know, how much it portrays to the body and, you know, I, we can argue about what it does and I, I don't really care too much about the concepts of the training of it and stuff, but it just interests me in that moment. And I was like, Hey, I'm going to go, I'm going to go attend this fascial course. And it wasn't, you had to be a licensed massage therapist or a doctor of physical therapy to attend it. So I, I, I did whatever you

strength coach would do. I just lied. And I said, I said, yep. I said, yep. I'm a massage therapist, whatever. I show up the first day, obviously when massage therapist, I walked in, they looked me there and I got like a couple of odd looks, obvious, just how I look. And they were walking around the room introducing themselves. And I was like, hey, my name is Vernon Griffith. I'm obviously not qualified to be here, but I'm very interested and I would just really like to stay for this week. And they were like, yeah, you can stay, but obviously you're not allowed to touch anyone

because I'm not licensed to touch people. But that course and how they looked at the body and how it stretches and the lines of the body and how you can massage things to influence tension, it was very eye eyeopening. What you said there about like all those things are pretty fucking awesome because they all go into lanes of like certain things that we've, we've been seeing here on the podcast.

But the idea of taking a ballet, a ballet class and that having an influence on the way that you coach people, it's really cool. Cause you know, we had just, we just had Ryan doors here and he came, he talked about Pilates. He talked about how that was something that was influenced by dance, but you watch the way that you coach people, it's really cool because, you know, we had just, we just had Ryan Doors here and he came, he talked about Pilates. He talked about how that was something that was influenced by dance, but you watch the way that dancers move. Good dancers. Yeah. Right. And even

like, and you also watch the way that really good martial artists move, right? It's almost like they're, they're dancing in a very aggressive way because they have really good footwork. They have really good bodily articulation. They can move their bodies in ways that most people can't. And obviously, if you're underneath a barbell, you're not trying to move your body in that way. But if you can take away some of those things and have your body still have the ability to express some of that or an element of that, you know, it's something that could be so beneficial as a long-term longevity piece you know a lot of the stuff i share people say well i don't care about that i'm just here to get bigger faster stronger that's great and i'm not telling you not to do any of that like we bench squat and deadlift with

every one of my people in some capacity but we also fill in the cracks like we have the big bricks but the mortar is what holds them together that's daily movement that's daily life and then if I do have someone that's really having a hard time getting that and they're like man why would I do this I'm like well if you get hurt outside of here you don't get to bench if you get hurt outside of here we don't get to get that squat session in so these are the movements that are going to make sure that you're available to do the things that you want so filling in the cracks that that's my like hey this, this is why if I, if I really have to influence and try to pressure why we need to do this stuff, that's going to be my way in. The amount of times I've heard people just injuring themselves because they bent over to

pick something up for sure. And they pull something in their back because they're not used to going into flexion in that way. It's like that can be avoided if you just allowed yourself to venture into those positions a little bit more often, even if it wasn't inside of the gym. I have more clients too, that have threw their back out, getting a towel out of their shower than deadlifting. So, I mean, I mean, it's, it's just, it's, it's, it's, that's how I look at it. Like that, those are the things that are going to set you back. The gym, most people are fine, man. If we have an injury in the gym, it's pretty catastrophic. It's like, what the hell happened? And normally that's a load thing.

So it's normally the stuff at home. Like, hey, man, I picked my kid up wrong. I hurt my back. Hey, I was on the ladder. Hey, I was digging. I was in the garden and my back's too stiff. I can honestly say the worst my back ever feels is when I was trying to give my kids a bath or doing the dishes and like standing leaning over the sink and I'm like man how can I deadlift so much but I can't do the damn dishes like that's but it it goes hand in hand yeah and you have to figure out you know maybe other types of movements

to uh be able to get through some of those movements that you might have to do in your day-to-day life like you might have to do things statically you might have to do in your day-to-day life. Like you might have to do things statically. You might have to do things where you're, um, you get yourself in a bad position on purpose with a lighter load. You hold those positions and you explore those positions, right? Yeah. Well, even think about the, the, the positions that you fate, you feel on a daily basis are things that you're comfortable with. One of the best mobility warmup routines I can ever prescribe to anyone is just have someone lay on their back on the ground, stand up with no hands, and watch how their bodies organize. For one, don't give them any cues first. Just be like, hey, lay on your back.

You can even record it if you wanted and be like everyone stand up and watch. They put their hands on the ground and they put their hands on their knees and then they stand up. and they put their hands on their knees, and then they stand up. And then you show them that and be like, I actually read a study a long time ago that one of the leading indicators for longevity in life is being able to get up off the ground without your hands. So now that's a big thing that I program. So a lot of the hip mobility stuff you see, it's because how, if we have better hips,

we can get up off the ground without using our hands. So when getting, lay flat on your back, stand up without your hands. Okay, now I want you to put one hand on your head, one hand on your opposite knee. Now stand up without – now stand up. Now I want you to put both hands behind your back. Now stand up. Roll over. Okay.

Now I want you to stand up without using your hands. And you watch this human being organize, and that's probably one of the only times you'll get someone to move outside of their normal day to day. Let me ask this because we're all big fans of, and we have the, I guess, luxury of just being able to live this lifestyle, right? Like we think about this all the time when we're at home, we're doing things in different positions. We're purposely trying to put ourselves in different positions outside of the gym so that there's no way, there's no movement that's necessarily foreign to our bodies. But you know, if somebody is working in a normal job, like you have a lot of people that just – they're working or they're military.

So some of them actually get into weird positions. But how do you help people think about the idea of movement not just being the in-gym thing? Or is that something that for some people maybe that is the only way that they're going to be able to get this in? To me, that one drill getting up off the ground connects the dots. Having someone lay on the ground and get up and then they're like, oh man, that was easy. All right, now get up off the ground without your hands. And they're like, oh man, it's so hard. Think about the next time you're playing with your kid and you're on the ground.

And like everyone's felt that. I mean, when I used to be really big into powerlifting, I remember playing with my daughter and I was, you know, very stiff getting up off the ground. And now that I look at it this way, that helps connect the dots with someone. Like, hey, man, think about playing with your kid. Do you want to be the dad that doesn't get to go on the playground? Are you the dad that doesn't get to go up on the slide because, you know, your hips hurt and you can't get up into hip flexion to get up the stairs or to get up the rail? But the getting up off the ground is normally enlightening because people don't think

about that. They just think about a daily task of getting up off the ground, standing up. And then you say, Hey, don't use your hands. And you watch them. Like they're like leaning and they're like, wait, why, why can't I, when did this happen? That's normally when people say they're like, when did I, when did I stop doing it? It's like monkey bars. If you're an adult and you get up on monkey bars, you get like halfway through the rungs. You're like, when did i when did i stop doing it's like monkey bars if you're an adult and you get up on monkey bars you get like halfway through their rungs you're like when did this happen how was i able to do that yeah you're like when did this like when did this happen but until you're exposed to it you're just like oh yeah i can monkey bars absolutely man i used to go all the way back and forth do it and they jump up there and they're like wait they get like three

in they drop and they're like it hurts shit. When did that happen? But until someone feels something, it has no value. Once they feel it, they're like, oh, and then from there they choose. I'm, I'm just a, I'm a nudger. I just nudge people, give a little drop of advice, nudge. If they take it, they take it. If someone gets up off the ground and they still don't care, cool. Then maybe they don't care. You know,. That's not my job to tell you what's important. It's my job to hopefully enlighten you a little bit. Hopefully you take that breadcrumb and run with it. But if you don't care, I'm never going to convince you to care.

I think there's a lot of things that people do and maybe they don't realize it, like just throw themselves on the couch. They don't sit down. They don't do a four, three, two, one onto the couch like they don't just like they don't sit down yeah like they don't they don't do a four three two one onto the couch they just just explode onto the couch or just even when somebody goes to sit down um just at a dinner table somebody goes to sit down on a chair i've noticed you know a lot of older people they'll kind of start their descent a little slow and then they just and it's like that probably has a cost to it yeah slamming

your spine on the chair like that all the time and then when they go to get back up they'll you know use their hands on their knees or push off the table and those are all things like i really recognize a lot of that when i was power lifting so often making myself really sore or just kind of being banged up and just leaning on shit all the time. And I'm like, man, I need to, I think I need to work on some of this sometimes. So I started addressing it years ago, but I think it would make a big difference in a lot of people's lives if they, you know, could sit themselves down and gently handle that eccentric on their own. Yeah.

But, but until you, like, if you don't value that or you're not open to it, it doesn't matter. Right. Like, it's not my job to tell someone, hey, it's very important for you to do this. If you don't see the importance, then OK, then what are your goals? Because obviously I'm not going to – my goals are not your goals. So whatever that person's intentions are and their goals, I would like to make them a better human outside of their sport. But if they don't want to human and they only want to sport, okay.

You could stand there in someone's living room with a little stopwatch and count four, three, two, one. I think you could do that. They'd have a clipboard and be like, Oh, okay. You messed up again. Yeah. Chart the progress. You know,

you did mention that you had a lot of really great mentors that you're able to learn from. Like I'm curious, like maybe who some of those people are and how they helped you become who you were. Because for a lot of people, some people don't know who to look for. Maybe they're looking for information. They're not sure who has like a lot of things that's really going to be beneficial for them. Because nowadays there's so many people that you'd see on social media that are doing certain things, but not, maybe some of them might not be the best person to get the information from. If I'm looking for mentors, I'm probably not looking on social media. Credibility is not the highest resource on

social media. Viralness is like people that can do cool, crazy shit. Like those people aren't working with athletes. There's a reason they only post themselves all the time. It's because they don't actually train anyone. So I would seek out the leaders of like colleges, leaders of, you know, check the NSCA, who are they talking about? Like that's those, those sort of educational platforms are what I would do. Uh, the Kabuki thing, the, uh, perform better. I I'm indifferent. I don't care where you go, but like those would be looking up those presentations, seeing what those people are talking about, not like snippets on social media that are hypothetical, like actually diving into a true professional, what they're doing, who they're doing it with, like that, that sort of credibility, that sort of putting it out there

for people like that person didn't do it just willy nilly. That's not a social media post where you just throw it out there and you go, maybe it does good, maybe it doesn't not. That coach prepared for that. They took all the time with their clients. Like that sort of presentation, whether it's NSCA, play, CVAS, PS, like those sort of organizations that put on those events, those learning opportunities, that's what trainers should go to. They should learn from high-level coaches because they've performed and they've worked with such high performers and they can relate to things so highly that we just constantly look for like the lowest denominator type thing.

Like if you're a trainer, like you can still learn from the highest level coaches. That doesn't mean there's no need to be like, well, I don't need to know that. No, you do need to know that. Like that person is very smart. So I would look for those sort of opportunities. Like social media is great, but you don't need mentors on social media. Well, a lot of the best strength coaches, they're like – Nothing on social media.

Yeah, they might not be on social media at all. Yeah. They're too busy. Yeah. And honestly, some of the best mentors I had, they taught me very little about training. It was more about making me confident as a person or, hey, you're doing the right thing, almost empowering me for doing it or with my family life or with business. Like those are the mentors that shaped me because that sort of confidence spilled over into the weight room because now it's like, oh, I'm more confident as a human being. Because now it's like, oh, I'm more confident as a human being. I mean, George Carvajal, Ben Hilger, Mike Hill, Megan Young, like these sort of people are like, I look at them as mentors, but they're like my colleagues. They're people that at some point in my life have been very pivotal to my exploration of who I am. Yeah. Now, along the lines of certifications, I know we've kind of talked about this, but no, there's maybe someone who doesn't have any certs and they're a trainer

and they're like, I don't know what to get first. Or maybe they're, that's like, they're like, oh, I don't, there's so many, there's NASM, there's NCSA, there's all these things. Where would you suggest that somebody maybe try to think about starting with their knowledge base? I know it depends on what type of coach they're trying to be, but let's say that they're trying to work with athletes and strength athletes. I mean, if you know where you want to work and who you want to work with, then there's nothing wrong with like an NSCA or NASM. I mean, they've been around forever.

Thousands, I mean, maybe even millions of people have bought those certifications at this point. But that sort of black and white knowledge, I think, is you have to have that. You have to have the black and white knowledge before you start talking about the gray area. And nowadays, everyone just wants to do gray. Everyone wants to spin kettlebells around and do all this crazy stuff, but they don't understand the anatomy behind a squat or a hinge. Now you're trying to have someone do something dynamic that doesn't understand the anatomy of a hinge pattern of what's going on. So it's like we're jumping past the black and white to go to the gray.

But NSCA, NASM, I haven't – I don't know the personal training educational platforms for those now. But those would be great places to start. But they're just springboards. Like those aren't the end-all, be-all as well. People will say, well, that's not going to teach me everything I need to know. Nothing will. But you can learn from anything. So starting there and then just, you know, working your way up. How'd you get into all this in the first place?

Okay. So my story in the strength and conditioning is not, it's not normal. When I see people that I grew up with, they're like, what the hell are you doing? Like, what the fuck? I used to fake injuries to get out of the weight room. I was the most intimidated. The weight room. I got a little something right here. I can't bench today. I was the skinny, scrawny guy that had his foot in the ice bucket. Like, I hated the weight room.

And I got in the military, and I did it the wrong way. I remember on one deployment, I lost a lot of weight, and I felt like I was 60 years old. And then I started looking at, like like elite FTS and, you know, those sort of, you know, Mark Ripito, Jim Wendler, old school. And I was like, man, this is so cool. This is so cool. So I started learning.

Then I went to college for it. But like to me, it was out of my own journey. Like I didn't grow up with like a coach that was like pulling me along. Like, hey, man, let's go to the gym. Let's lift. I got you. It was everyone's in there strong as hell lifting weight. And I walk in and I'm like, nah, dog, this is this. I don't feel good here. Like I don't feel safe. And I left. Uh, but I do

remember, um, one day I can't remember where I read it, but I read that creatine. I remember I read something like a men's health and I say I had my money. I had like 30 bucks and I went to like a local Revco, which is like a Walgreens or CVS here. And it was at the bottom counter. And I remember buying it. It was like $30. And I remember sneaking it underneath my hoodie into my house and I did it for a month and no change. And I was like, man, this is bullshit, man. I'm never going to get big. I can't work out. Um, and then I didn't, I mean, I didn't take fitness serious for, honestly, years. I was really fast.

I was really strong body weight, so I didn't really care. But then as I start to learn and value it more, it's kind of just grown. But I don't have a typical pilgrimage of watching Arnold Schwarzenegger training videos when he's in high school. Why were you fast? Did you do track or do some other sports? Or did you just happen to be fast? You know, back in the day, you just grow up playing all the sports. You grow up just playing outside.

Like back then, parenting was go outside. Like be at home, be home when the streetlights come on. I mean, that was just spent all my time outside. And you're from Virginia. I imagine there's a lot of like woods and shit like that to play in. Yeah. I mean, it was just nonstop. I spent almost my whole childhood just outside. So, you know,

I think it's just, it just comes with it. Being a kid, kids don't get to really experience that anymore, unfortunately. Yeah. Kids get real specific about their sports nowadays and they start playing the club sport and all that. What is, what's some of your opinion on some of that? Oh boy. This is, all right boy. This is just my opinion. I think kids should play as many sports as they want to play. I think some parents take it as, oh, everyone should play multiple sports, and now they bog their kid down.

Now they play soccer, and they run immediately to basketball, and then they run immediately to this. I don't think that's the answer either. If my kid wants to do soccer, which my youngest is 10, he's really into soccer right now. Um, I would love for him to like do something else. Like, Hey man, you want to do guitar lessons? Hey, do you want to go do rock climbing? Hey, do you want to go to this? He's like, no dad, I want to play soccer. I want soccer. I'm just like, okay. So then it's like when we go outside and play doing different things. But my daughter was the same way. She grew up playing softball her whole life.

She never wanted to do anything else. She was like, I only want to play softball. She played basketball for a little bit, but she's going to college to play softball. But she loves it. And I think sometimes we hear like a Division I coach say, the best thing I want is a multi-sport athlete. Patrick Mahomes is not a good quarterback because he played baseball. Patrick Mahomes is a great quarterback because he's a great quarterback.

LeBron James is a great basketball player, not because he played football, but because he's a great basketball player. In today's society, I think kids, what's more important than playing multiple sports is having an off-season. Getting to be

a kid, getting to work out, getting to like experience fitness as a positive thing rather than a, well, next box, check it next, next sport, check it next sport. Um, so I, it's almost like we need to take a step back and realize these kids aren't going professional, like fitness, working out, training should be a positive thing that they want to do for the rest of their life. Not something that's just like me trying to relive my dreams of me not making it so instead of it being just the kid hops in sports sport like if a kid likes a sport cool but just try to see if you can expose them to a few different ways of moving because you know i think of the idea of like a kid that let's say a kid loves just baseball yeah right in baseball yeah in practices maybe you're doing

a few things here and there but there's still just such limited ways of that athlete generally doing things that maybe it might be beneficial to venture into other i don't know other types of sport other types of sport that may allow for a bit more jumping or a bit more extended running or sprinting etc what are your thoughts on that i I know it's, I would go even a little deeper than that. It's, we get tied up in this strength coach world of developing performance for what? Like I'm trying to develop a human being. Like my daughter can play three instruments now. She's involved with multiple school activities.

She makes great grades. Like that is a well-rounded human being that can be a productive member of society who gives a shit if she's a great athlete she can swing a bat really good and she's a good softball player but like who cares if I'm developing a basketball player tennis player like I'm trying to develop a productive human that's not

reliant on the system that can be a productive person that can do anything that's capable and confident of anything and so when i think about when coaches say that and they're like well you got to do this and like at no point did you reference this kid just being a kid like at what point does this kid just play get to play video games with his friends chuck E. Cheese where a kid can be a kid oh i didn't even know that but at what point does this kid just get to go to the beach or get to go to the water park or get to do all these other activities? And that's like something we truly mess because we're just like – we just put them in this meat grinder of just like development, development, development.

And then when they – the saddest part of all of it is when you get to the end and the kid doesn't make it. Now what? it is when you get to the end and the kid doesn't make it. Now what? I know way more kids that didn't make it after college that didn't make it pros than made it. And those are sad stories because they went to school for something they didn't want to go to. They had a terrible relationship with their dad because her dad just forced something the whole time. They only know working out. They never got to experience debate class or forensics or computer nerd school or computer engineering. Theater. Theater.

They didn't get to experience. They didn't get to have friends outside of sports. So now all they know is sports. All they know is how to communicate with athletes. So now when they have to go out into the real world, they're like, wait, you guys aren't just like me? No. This is not society. Society are normal people that didn't play sports.

So I think it's good to have friends outside of sports, be in clubs outside of sports. Like that's when I think about a kid, that's, that's where I go. So it's easy to say like play multiple sports. I mean, sure. If you like playing multiple sports, man, I love that. That's amazing. Different ranges of motion, different planes of movement like that is obviously going to make you a better athlete, but like you're going to human a lot longer than you will athlete. You're going to athlete for a very short time. So I care much more about the human. Power positive family, your current shoes are messing up your feet. These have a narrow toe box. So your toes look like this within their shoe. They're not flat. So you're not using your feet as you're taking every step and your feet are

getting weaker because of it. And they're stiff as so your feet aren't able to move the way they're supposed to throw those shoes out and get your hands on some Vivo barefoot shoes. We've been wearing Vivos for a while now. They have their casual novices, their hiking shoes. They have different types of workout shoes. But the big thing about these shoes is that they are flat so that your feet are being used when you're walking around the ground and you can strengthen your foot. They're flexible so your feet aren't stuck in a cast and kept static. And they are wide. They have a wide toe box on all their casual shoes, their hiking shoes, their workout shoes, so that your toes have space to splay and be what they are meant to be. I love the flexibility of these things.

So go to vivo barefoot.com. Andrew, how can they get it? Yeah. Vivo barefoot.com slash power project. And at checkout enter promo code power project 15 to save 15% off your order. Again, that's at vivo barefoot.com slash power project promo code power project 15 to save 15%. And dude, those are very valuable. Quit throwing them everywhere. Most people they people they're like don't don't crush my air forces well you can just bend that's what they're for links in the description as well as podcast show notes got you some what's the uh the scale of genetics that you've kind of seen come through your gym over the years some pretty pretty good freaks um you know some people are born to do things and it's cool.

But that plays a big role in it for sure. Does it make you scratch your head sometimes? You're like, oh, I wasn't expecting that to happen that way. One kid jumps out to me specifically, the worst weight room kid I've ever worked with. And he ran a 4-4 and I watched him hurdle over someone with the guy standing upright coming through the line. And I was standing on the sideline. He jumped over him and then ran for a touchdown and i looked over the coaches like one of the first games i was there i didn't even start working the team and i was like holy shit and he was like he runs a 4-4 and i was like god damn and instantly as a coach i was like all

right this is gonna be amazing get him in the weight room and watch him he's like squat like terrible it's like 135 and he can't even move and i was just like wow like there's knows how to move on a football field yeah yeah and then and then it's like okay and me as a coach i'm like oh well you got to get better at this and then i watch that and i'm like maybe i need to like peel back my ego as a coach how can i make that person better because what i think is better might not be better for them. Or maybe you need to get everybody else to squat like him. No, I don't know about that. All right, everybody, you got to get down to 135 wobbly squat. You know, that does make me wonder when looking at a kid like that, who let's say weight room, they're not the weight room king,

but on the field, you can see them, they have strength, they have explosivity. Does it make you wonder if, you know, because a lot of coaches want to build that in the weight room. Is there a better way of trying to do that than just, you know, hopping them on a squad or having them do some jumps? Like how do you think people can change how they do things with athletes to maybe turn them into that athlete? Or is that just genetics and talent for some people? Well, to maybe turn them into that athlete? Or is that just genetics and talent for some people? Well, I think the sport landscape, for one, is changing.

Like in coaching, we are becoming more field aware, not field, not being, not like seeing sport, watching sport, how do I prepare? That line used to be so far apart. It was bigger, faster, stronger, like lift big, lift heavy, and then you just go to the field and we'll just watch from here. But now those lines are definitely starting to get blurred with some good friends of mine that are definitely pushing the envelope with that.

But what's the point of the weight room? If you're a high school teenager, the point of the weight room, like in my mind, should be, hey, I want you to work out for the rest of your life. So will you become a better football player or basketball player? Sure. Maybe you become more powerful, stronger, a little bit more confident. Great. But like, I hope that what you can learn and the details that you pick up on and the confidence that you get is something you do forever.

And that's how I approach the weight room. It's like, am I preparing this athlete? Yes. But more importantly, I don't want the weight room to become a negative thing. I don't want them to be like, fuck, man, lift at 5 p.m. I want them to be like, hey, I can't wait. Let's go. I can't wait to get there.

Coach makes me feel great about myself. I can't wait to work out. I want after that coach finishes high school or finishes college to be like, hey, what was that? What were those things we were doing? Like, I want to keep doing that. Like, that's what I want. I don't want someone that just checks the box and goes.

It should be a positive experience. What you got over there, Andrew? A pretty direct question, actually, because you were talking on social media about adductors and the importance of that stuff. Maybe if you can explain that here. And then also, my adductors are weak. And Seema's been showing me Copenhagen's, and I'm having a hell of a time with them. Even with regressing them to the point where I just I put my my ankle up to a cable machine and I just kind of do like a version of it there instead. Because laying down on my side and putting my leg up on a bench is actually kind of painful.

Yeah. But I really, really want to get my guard game up. I want to be able to like squeeze a watermelon between my legs. So I want to develop that. So if you can explain why they're so important for athletes in general, but then also maybe how I can start and start building up some strength there. I think when we look at the hips specifically, everything is abductor focused.

Everything is like external rotation. What makes someone special or an athlete is accessing the internal rotation, being able to squeeze your groin, the adductors. The amount of involvement they have with the pitch of the pelvis and what's going on when we change direction, those are very underutilized. And I think undervalued and strength is an easy component for that. But it's when, when I'm talking to like clients or whatnot, I give the, I always give the analogy of like, everyone's into bunts, everyone's into butt stuff. No one's into front stuff. Like, Hey, it's real.

That's real. The front stuff, the stuff that's down there and you're, you know, that pelvic area, that's what makes an athlete good. That's what makes them wiggle. stuff that's down there and you know, that pelvic area, that's what makes an athlete good. That's what makes them wiggle. Um, so when it comes to like strengthening that area, something as simple as just sitting on the ground, squeezing your knees together and then putting your arm between your knees and squeezing that and building up that strength and then squeezing different angles. So squeezing wide, squeezing closer, squeezing really close, and then progressing to that

Copenhagen position that you were talking about, like just, just building on it and programming it no different than any other muscle. Like when you look at everything as an opportunity for growth, now progression becomes endless. Like can you start here, start here, and then just start progressing more and more. But the groin, the adductors, that's been one thing that I've noticed not only affects the squat and the deadlift and the position, but also affects the field position because people are more confident being in their hips and loading in their hips. You watch them, they'll come out of breaks faster. They'll be able to decelerate and angles faster. It's almost just like unlocking something that they didn't know was locked. Yeah. And even with a sprinter,

like a good sprinter, you see a lot of times their knees come inward, their knees kind of kick inward towards the midline of their body. And that probably takes a tremendous amount of strength in that area. How about the extremities? For example, the feet, the grip. What have you been doing with people as far as, or what have you noticed, I guess, as far as people's feet, activation when lifting?

Because as we've been going down that rabbit hole for years, we've made so much progress. But now when we see people lift and we see what their feet are doing, you can see why their knees are caving in when they're doing certain things, because the way that their weight is displaced in their foot. And when they start to fix those things and pay attention to those things, it's like a light bulb moment goes off for them. So when it comes to cueing, I think coaches get themselves in trouble. And I think that one of the oldest cues there are are big toe down, pinky toe down. And when you see athletes, because I've specifically said that to athletes, I mean, you drive your big toe down and you see the big toe go down and the first met go up.

That's more important. I'd rather have the balls of the feet on the ground and the heel. The toes are added icing on the cake. But it's those parts of the bone of the foot that matter when it comes to displacing force, putting force into the ground, creating torque. But it's watching what people do. Like take your shoes off. Let's see what they do. I mean there's a lot that can go into that. Yeah.

So like where would you have an athlete – like if somebody just – they never really paid attention to much of what they're doing to their feet when they're lifting, when they're moving, et cetera. How would you help somebody bring awareness to it? I mean, the easiest answer would be to take their shoes off and ask them to do something. Gotcha. Because they'll instantly be like, oh, I haven't done that. And that's different. People like different. Athletes like different.

Because then it's something that they haven't felt before. And like, oh, that feels different. Athletes like different because then it's something that they haven't felt before. Like, oh, that feels different. That's normally a good thing when someone says, man, that feels different. Most people don't go like, ah, it feels different. It's always normally a positive thing. Like, man, that feels kind of different. It feels interesting. But taking the shoes off is an easy answer.

But as much as I love barefoot training, as much as I love barefoot shoes, it's not for everyone. Like hockey players, basketball players, football players, you're wearing cleats. It's part of who you are. And as a performance coach, like it's my job to prepare someone for those demands. So if I only train barefoot all the time, am I preparing their foot to go in a cleat and run on turf? No, I'm not. am I preparing their foot to go in a cleat and run on turf? No, I'm not. So the shoes have to come into play at some part, but it is a way to relieve that. So to me, it's like the barefoot thing, the barefoot lifestyle, the barefoot thing, it's almost like taking my foot off the gas.

So for athletes, it's like, Hey, you don't have to wear barefoot shoes all the time. You don't have to be barefoot all the time, but when we're training certain movements, let's kick the shoes off. When we're doing this, let's kick the shoes off. But when you go back on the field, you obviously got to put your cleats on. So it's being realistic at the same point, like not being so hard in my thoughts that I don't forget about the fact that this person, they still have to do their job. Like my military guys, they still have to wear boots. They still have to do these things. The hockey players, they still have to wear this cast on their foot that sits on a piece of paper. That's not going to change.

So it's being realistic in the same aspect. Do you think that when it comes to cleats, because there are companies like, you know, there's Code Footwear where they try to make wider cleats for athletes. And that's the only one I know so far. I know Graham, the barefoot sprinter, probably knows others. only one I know so far. I know Graham, the barefoot sprinter probably knows others, but when you, you know, having worked with so many sport athletes, having seen so many of them move. And when you see cleats are super narrow, like my cleats are what took me out of soccer. I ended up getting a bunny net. My toe shifted in my, like my pinky toe had to get a bone shaved off and I couldn't run for a year and I was cut. Right. Because my feet were too fucking wide. Um,

and I wonder, do you, do you think that the cleats are literally, that is something that helps individuals cut and it's necessary for cleats to be so narrow for these athletes? Because a lot of athletes just like work through that discomfort because that's what they have access to. Or do you think there's a better way to do things as far as that's concerned? That is going to be an interesting concept as it develops because it's purely hypothetical at this point. I was actually having a conversation a week ago with a coach

about that and they were like oh this barefoot cleat thing and i was like ah i don't know man like i don't know when someone puts their foot in the ground i don't want anything to move i just want the gas pedal like i don't want it's like pushing the gas on a car and you see it like no when i hit the gas it's got to go or you don't or you're cut like that's how it works so it's it's going to be interesting as this develops with these more wider toe box cleats and stuff like that develops if the big shoe companies get on board with it it'll be very interesting but as well the athletes themselves like do they feel good it's something we always forget we get so driven in this performance lane of it's going to make you faster. It's going to make the, does it make that person feel good? Like, do they

not just like it? Like, Hey man, I don't, I don't like how it makes my foot feel. And my foot's moving around too much. I like it being in a cast. Like no one's asking the athletes like that. Um, and I have some, I have some, most of the football players I work with, they downsize their cleats. So they are more rigid. So their foot doesn't move around at all. So if the object, the aspect of giving them something where their foot moves, like that's going to be an absolute no-go. So it's, it's interesting. It'll be interesting how this, how this plays out, honestly. Gotcha. When it comes to conditioning, how do you handle some of those things? Cause that's a big part of strength and conditioning, right? Yeah. I think sometimes that part is maybe pushed off to the side.

So we've been making fun of this on social media lately about putting the C back in strength and conditioning, putting the C back in S and C. But I mean, you go to a strength and conditioning conference and look around. There's just huge, jacked, strong guys with high blood pressure that are heavy breathing going up the stairs. And it just makes you feel bad because you're like, man, like you're so much more than that. But like the culture of lifting heavy and it's, it's interesting because I don't know if there's a right answer and it's easy for me to say like, uh, you know, you should do it. But from an athlete perspective, conditioning

is truly a part, even anaerobic is aerobic in nature. Um, so building that aerobic capacity, being a better human, being able to adapt to stress, that's a huge thing, especially with my military guys, the better your aerobic conditioning are, the better human being you are to adapt to the environments that you're in. Um, if you get worked up over stress or going up the stairs or, you know, picking up your kids, you're going to be less inclined to make better decisions. Or if you're in the military and you don't have any sort of conditioning, you're never going to do an op right there. You're going to go in a mile or two, and then you got to go make good decisions.

If you're a firefighter, you're not just showing up to the fire like, all right, let's go. You're ramped up. You're running in. You're carrying something. You're running up the stairs. Now make a good decision. Or law enforcement officers, hey, you're running down this person. Now make a good decision.

And that's the part of conditioning I think people forget is like it influences better decisions because you're operating at a higher capacity because you're not over-fatigued. And I think that's something people forget. They only think performance like, oh, I don't want to lose my gains or I don't want to be smaller or I don't want to be less explosive. I look at it as I want you to make better decisions. Are there any things that you do for some of these athletes, first responders, that they do have to be in high-stress situations? They do have to make good decisions, meaning that there's an element of them that has to be in control and somewhat calm. They can't be purely sympathetic and erratic even though what they're doing is that way. So what are some maybe concepts, things that you help them think about to help them focus in more on making good decisions and being aware of the decisions they're making?

So it's something as simple as like, like farmer's carries being more, um, we were talking about this earlier with balance in like your eyes. When people do things, they normally focus eyes straight ahead. Like even me looking at you right now, if I was to look at Mark, I would, I would turn like this. I'm not going to be like, Hey Mark, you know, I'm not going to cut my eyes and if I did, people would be like, dog does that. You know, I'm not going to cut my eyes in them. And if I did, people would be like. My dog does that all the time. She's always like looking at me like this. I'm like, what the hell?

Exactly. So we're so like, we're so used to like doing stuff like that. So something as simple as like a farmer's carry challenging position of the eyes, being here looking like this. Hey, when they're walking, I'm like, hey, what's up there? Pick up the rack. Pick up the rack. Okay, now pick up this over there and they're just like adding those layers of eyesight and then once again getting back to the capacity is adding that breathing component like everyone wants to do everything under a big gulp so i had an aha moment with one of my combatives guys and everything with strength conditioning is bracing, but we always look at bracing is

so gulps. But when it comes to fighting, when it comes to life, it's sips. So you should be able to do like, like something, get some stability, find some stability really quick. If I was to like stumble, I wouldn't go as I'm falling down, but I would get tight really quick because I have to, it's my body's response to stress. So training both of those. So training with a full breath, training with no breath, training with little sips of breath, being confident and, but adding those sort of layers into movements that you're already doing, like it's purely value add.

You're adding such layers to movements that you're already doing. Why not? Yeah. It's funny. Like me and my girl were on a walk the other day and like, sometimes she'll just start walking backwards. And I was thinking about that because I saw her walking backwards. She was like,

I was like, you don't, most people don't get in that position a lot. Like, cause I mean, mostly it's forward intention. Your head's here. Like the only times where most people are maybe doing that is when they're

trying to change lanes or, you know, but outside of that, when are you looking behind you like that and trying to be aware of what's going on? Those are the little things. I was watching. So one of my football players was Y receiver and he was breaking down like in the off season, what can make him better. And I pulled up a video, not saying he's the epitome, but of like OBJ running and he was running down like in the offseason what can make him better and i pulled up a video not saying he's the epitome but of like obj running and he was running for a route and i was like what do you see and he was like oh he's spotting the ball he's using all this football

vernacular which i know is cool and i was like and he was like well what do you see and i was like i don't see his shoulders moving at all he's able to spot that ball with his neck and his head and his eyes and he was like yeah his shoulders are so straightforward yeah because he's able to run turn find it in the corner of his eyes he doesn't have to turn so now we're talking about max speed max velocity he's able to keep his technique moving and locate rather than turning side shuffling trying to locate so it's like this isn't a variable of training that we can add in. And so like with my military guys or the tactical professionals, like when you enter a room,

like you don't have the ability to just like turn and look, you've got to be able to take in everything, every, all fields of vision. So from that, I think that's a huge aspect and layer of training that you can include. Pat Project family, we love beef on this podcast. We talk about it a lot. All right. We love our meat. But sometimes eating the same meat all the time can get a little bit boring. That's why we partner with Good Life Proteins, which also has certified Piedmontese on their website.

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on all of that different meat that's going to be heading to your door. Once again, head to goodlifeproteins.com. You can enter code POWERPROJECT and save up to 25%. Links are in the description box below as well as the podcast show notes. Do you maybe have them do things too

where they get their heart rate up quite a bit and then move on to another exercise where they got to concentrate perhaps? Yep. I've done that. I've done it like memory as well like get under a lot of fatigue now do some sort of like memory game i had actually had a football it was kind of enlightening i was working with this private school and i had them put together nine piece puzzles when they were fatigued like we would do a lot of fatiguing, like the old school, like my little pony, like Thomas, the tank engine type things. And we would do like a bunch of

fatiguing capacity drills, like sprint or whatnot. And then I would be like, and there would be a puzzle there. And it'd be like, now put together the puzzle. And you'd see them sitting there like, like struggling. And they're like, what, what? And I was like, but think about you on the field. Think about you trying to make a decision now and you're frazzled. Like that's how important conditioning is. It's not just, you know, do I have abs? Do I not get tired? It's like not only do you not get tired, but when you get to a situation that now you have to make a decision, make a good one.

So I think there's a lot of value. Yeah, that's amazing because a lot of times in a sport you you get like sucked into a certain play or a certain thing that someone did because you are starting to get fatigued or tired or maybe something the person did or the team did previously set you up to be vulnerable to whatever that play or whatever that move is that they're doing and then when you ask them like hey what happened was the answer always i don don't know. I just, I just reacted. Well, if you have a better conditioning with you and conditioning is an arbitrary word, but now you can respond to situations.

Now you can be a little bit better. And I think even me personally, I don't know if it's, I'm able to manage stress a little bit better, but just me as a dad or whatnot, I'm able to have that liminal space between, you know, stimulus and response that I can be a little bit better because I'm, you know, I'm a little bit more control of like, I have a lower resting heart rate, like things like that affect, affect everything. I'm not blowing up in traffic now. I'm like, relax. I'm really curious about your thoughts on this because like the first time I started thinking about this was from reading Kelly Stratt's book in 2013, Supple Leopard.

You know, when he was talking about doing all this myofascial lease, he's mentioned don't make a pain face. So I stopped doing that. I was like, oh, instead I just tried to keep my face chill and calm even though I may have felt those sensations and for some reason allowed me to calm down. I took that into lifting with squatting and deadlifting and the lifts felt easier. I took that into jujitsu and now when doing things like I was watching competition videos from like my first comps, the calm face thing has always been something that if I just – my face just is chill, I feel as if things are easier. Now, working with so many military guys and first responders, is there anything you notice with guys who are high level and working under stress? Do you notice anything about the way that they project what they're going through? Is there a projection? Is there no projection? Is there any theme there or is it just an individual type of idea?

So it's interesting you say that. The face is a projection of what your body's going through. You see someone that's sad, you see someone that's angry, you see someone that's confused, it's because their facial expressions show. So if you can control your facial expressions, like there's some, I think there's some psychological aspect of you controlling of your emotions. Like you are in control of that. So by you saying I'm more calm. Yeah. Because you're being more intentful. You're, you are in control of what's going on for someone that's like, or like my kids are like, dad, stop squinting your eyebrows. Cause I'm getting upset and I'm like squinting are like, dad, stop squinting your eyebrows because I'm getting upset and I'm like squinting. I'm like, dad, stop squinting.

They don't have to say, dad, why are you being angry? They say, hey, why are you squinting your eyebrows? And I'm like, oh, I'm not in control of this moment at all. And I do have one of my military guys specifically back when I was using Omega Wave pretty consistently tracking HRV. And every day, cool as a cucumber, showed up, performed high as well. And I never told him, but he showed up red every single day. And I was like, man, this guy's a psychopath. What's going on inside your body? But he was so cool that in just in control of what he had going on. And then I never, I didn't show him his results for like two weeks. And then two weeks,

I was like, Hey man, I got a question. Like you are the most stressed out person I've ever measured on this item. And he was like, and I was like, what's up? And he was like, Oh yeah, I'm very stressed. And I was like, you don't show it. And he was like, yeah. He was like, what's it, what's it matter? What's it matter if I show it? And in that moment I was like, man, it's, it's the weight that people carry and how they can carry it is powerful. your facial expression shows a lot i mean just look at your demeanor if you see someone walking they're having a bad day you know like they don't have to tell you you see it on their body language you see it on their face like me looking at you right now i'm picking up on you nodding this and that if you were just like i'd be like bro i need

to shut up but but your face gives it is it is the indicator of what you of what you know how dialed in you are in the moment like what's going on so yeah absolutely and if you can control that even if it's you forcing it like stay calm stay calm i think at some point it does become the subconscious like that conscious effort does eventually become the subconscious way what is this omega wave thing you mentioned for hrv i, it's just a way to track HRV. Okay. Yeah. But to my knowledge, it's probably one of the most accurate ways to track it. Yeah. Yeah. It's been around for forever. Pretty long time. I think Joel Jameson studied on that thing for a long time. To my knowledge, it's one of the more accurate ways of tracking

it, but you have to do it at a specific time, a specific time of To my knowledge, it's one of the more accurate ways of tracking it, but you have to do it at a specific time, a specific time of the day, first thing in the morning, before you have coffee, before you do anything. So there's a lot of things that can skew it, but to my knowledge, that is the most accurate way of tracking it. What have you found in working with stuff like that over the years? It sounds like you don't really do it as much anymore, but what were some things that you noticed or found in tracking people's HRV? Uh, it's, it's trends. Um, to me, when I look at any sort of data that I collect, I'm not looking at like one day or one week, I'm looking at like a trend, like can, because people might show up one day and have a really

bad day. That doesn't mean they're going to have a bad session. That also doesn't mean they shouldn't train. So when we first got, when I first got those, one of the questions I had was people were saying, well, if someone shows up red, like I went to this presentation and they were like, they can't train. And I was like, so if Steph Curry shows up gain seven red, is he not going to play? And they were like, well, and I was like, it's, it's, it's either vanilla or it's chocolate. Like there's no – it's black and white. Either you're saying they can't or they can or you're telling me, well – so to me it's taking that data and looking at it from a subjective point of view. Like, oh, I got these numbers. This is interesting.

But this opens dialogue. So to me, whether it's a wearable, whether it's like a wrist, like an aura ring, a whoop, whatever, it opens dialogue. Like now I can ask better questions. Some of the best data I've ever collected was just sending a subjective questionnaire, like horny, hungry, happy, where are you at? And then those can tell you a lot about where someone's at if they have confidence that they're going to give you the correct answer of actually how they're feeling. But, you know, it's tracking trends over time, not just being so pinpoint with like one thing. That makes me really curious about how you as a coach use that data because, you know, obviously you said you have questionnaires. And then you mentioned this guy that he just looks calm through everything and you see he's in the red for HRV for two weeks.

this guy that he just looks calm through everything and you see he's in the red for HRV for two weeks. Obviously you're probably, you see him in the red, so you're probably still doing the stuff and still coaching him, but you're paying, probably paying more attention to what's going on since his HRV is so shitty. So how, like, how do you use that to influence the way you work with people if someone's in the red, but they're still seem to be performing pretty well. I mean, some of the best performers are master compensators and master compensators does not just mean physical attributes like, Oh, this person has a week this, so they're going to push past it. But, Oh, they're having a really shitty day. You're never going to know. One of the biggest things I tracked with HRV was the worst day someone ever had for the most part. The only thing that was pretty consistent, um,

was Mondays. They were the most stressed. And I was like, man, why are you so stressing? Like, man, stressful weekend at home. And then throughout the week they would calm down, but it was just, that was one of the biggest things I noticed. And I was like, wow. But as a coach, I didn't let it guide my, I didn't let it change my training. I let it guide maybe how quick I got into training, maybe how long it lasted, but it didn't change anything because the last thing you want is if you're collecting data on someone for that athlete to like now question their performance. So if he shows up and he's red and he's like, damn it, man. Like, well, I'd slept last night. What did I do wrong? And I'm like, dude, you did nothing wrong.

Like this is just, this is just us. We're just tracking a trend. Maybe that algorithm's messed up. It's all subject. It's all in some aspects subjective because you're comparing everyone across everyone and putting red, green, and yellow on them. So you may show up red. It's like maybe like your testosterone level. Yeah.

You're, you're in the, you're in the, in the means of being normal, but like you're one below it. So technically you're red, but you're rate is. It opens the conversation to ask someone like they show up red, be like, Hey, what happened last night? Everything cool. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's all I want to say. Awesome. But maybe they open up and talk a little bit more, man. I had two drinks last night. Oh, what'd you have? Oh yeah. It was whatever. Okay. What'd you do that night? Oh, me and my wife got into it. Oh, okay, cool. So now as I, as I see that red block, I make a note date with his wife. Oh, football Sundays. Oh, did a lot of drinking.

Ate a lot of bad food. Okay. So now that red makes a lot of sense. And I'm never going to tell him to not have wings and beer on Sunday because that's what makes him feel good with his friends and feels like a human. So I'm just going to know that, hey, on Monday he's showing up red. Get over it. And it's like, okay, it allows me to understand the lifestyles of this person. But I will say as much as I think the data that's collected is in inconclusive or maybe not as correct as people say, it does guide habits. I had one guy

specifically, um, he had an aura ring and he was like, man, this is telling me my HRV and this. And I was like, in my mind, I was like, oh, my God. Yeah. Fuck this thing. To be perfectly honest. Like, actually, fuck this thing. I must be so mad sometimes. I was like, ah.

But I was just listening to him, whatever. And he said, you know what? And I was like, let's just wear it for a couple weeks, man. See how you like it. And he wore it for a couple weeks. And he was like, dude, I've noticed that every night I drink, the next day it shows up with a low number. And he was like, man, I think I'm going to stop drinking. And that, that habit, just wearing that ring for two weeks, his wife called me a week later and after that, or send me a text. And she was like, Hey man, I just want you to know. She's like,

Hey Vern, I just want you to know that ring changed his life. He's not drinking alcohol anymore. And he's a much better father. And in that moment, that, in that moment right there, I was like, maybe it isn't all about numbers. Maybe it is about this human and this lifestyle, his, the way he perceives stress, the way he looks at stress. And maybe that objective number is what just sends someone over. Like maybe I need to make a change. And there's something valuable with that. Gotcha.

That's cool. That's really cool. Yeah, it was a cool moment. How do you like to train? Like just for yourself. I mean, right now, following – so my – I have an opportunity just to like fuck off and like go train and like just bro out a little bit like we did today.

Yeah, absolutely. So the guys I work with specifically then i'm in business with some of my great friends um we train they obviously i'm coaching them a lot but every now and then i'll jump in but uh i get messages all the time about people that are doing my programming and they have such success and sending me pictures about how good they look and one day it was like a couple months ago my wife was like yo why don't you do it? And I was like, oh shit. And I was like, you're right. You're right. So, you know, eating from my own kitchen or as they, as they say, but, uh, obviously I've prioritized my movement and my conditioning a little bit more lately. I mean, it's not no secret. I'm getting a little bit

older and I want to be, you know, there for my I'm getting a little bit older and I want to be there for my kids, but at the same time, I want to be a strong person that my kids look up to. I don't want them to see another dad and be like, damn, that dad is jacked. I want when I show up to my kids... That's a superhero, daddy. What are you?

Exactly. I want when I show up for my kids' lunch, all the kids to be like whose dad is that like that channel that's your dad god that guy's huge like even though i'm not i'm not but it's it's relative it's a child looking at it and the bar is so low for kids because of how adults now look and train that like the second they see someone that looks slightly better than that they're like and i just you know try to be that example as long as possible because you know my son's 10 and my daughter's 17 i'm already not cool with my daughter but i got like two or three more years of

being cool for my son and then you know then he's moved on to someone else but you know for the next two or three years being as good of role model as i can yeah i love it andrew take us on out of here buddy before you ask that question, though, Vernon, where can people find you and learn more about you and programs and all that good stuff? I mean, Vernon Griffith, the number two is, I think all my, or Vernon Griffith number four is all my handles on Instagram, Twitter.

Vernon Griffin the fourth? Vernon Griffith the number four. Number four is my favorite number. But, and then performance favorite number. But, and then performanceexplored.com. That has all my programs. That's my website. Gotcha.

I do want to know this because, you know, you mentioned, you mentioned taking the wind out of that one guy who loved his cryotherapy and that was like his,

that was his thing. His thing. You took it from him, right? Yeah. And I don't mean to berate that, but. I'm still pissed. You know, he still pissed you know he'll send me he'll send me he'll see like an ad on instagram for cryotherapy

and he was like thanks bitch i'm sorry man i'm sorry you know what maybe i should i'm gonna send him uh a coupon for a there we go but you know, when people are engulfed in health and fitness, they may look at something like alcohol, right, as being like just always a net negative.

Pizza, why the fuck are you eating that? Especially like certain trainers, they'll look at their clients and be like, you can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this.

Whereas sometimes some of that stuff may be so good for this person, their life, their social life, their family. It's like,

and you want to take that away, right? So how do you, well, what is your, I guess, advice for first off coaches to help them figure out a way to navigate that so they can still help their clients live fulfilled lives with their family? What's your advice to them? And what's your advice to people for handling that? So with clients and then athletes, I have that have that it is an issue, I just don't put it in your house. Like don't bring it into your house. If you go out and have a margarita on Taco Tuesday, yeah. Like you're supposed to have a margarita.

If you go out and have a nice steak dinner and you want to have a mule, yeah, man. Have a drink or two with your friends. Like live life. That's why you work out. Like there's nothing wrong with having an alcoholic beverage. There's no, there's nothing wrong with, with doing any of those things. It's when you bring them home and they become a crutch and they become something that you abuse. That's when it becomes an issue. But if, if like, so that, that's kind of like my, my thing that I

would say to someone is like, Hey, just don't, don't buy it from the grocery store. But if you go out, have fun, man, have a drink or two. There's nothing wrong with that. If you want to have a slice of pizza, yeah, so do I. Like where's a good pizza place? I would love to go get pizza. Like there's nothing wrong with that. And people that say like don't have pizza or don't have this or don't have that, it's like, well, what am I doing, man?

Like I should be happy. Like I should get to enjoy life. Like unless I'm some bodybuilder on some strict routine like bro what like like enjoy yeah