Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1035: Joe DeFranco

Episode Date: May 20, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin talk with world-renowned strength and conditioning Joe DeFranco. The moment he knew he was meant to help people. (6:25) How his ‘tunnel-focused’ mentality jump-started his career early on. (8:12) How did the relationship with Onnit happen? Fall out? (11:30) His process of scaling himself out of the day to day gym owner duties. (23:40) His biggest problems with CrossFit. (28:29) The evolution of his training methodology. (44:24) Are there different protocols of how he assesses the average person compared to an athlete? (50:05) How does he assess a ‘freak’ athlete? (52:42) The amazing story of working with Miles Austin: From ‘no-name’ athlete to NFL star. (54:24) How the ‘gym family’ is a REAL thing. (1:03:42) What surprised him the most about the ‘politics’ in pro sports? (1:06:21) Why studies don’t tell the whole story: The importance of context. (1:09:47) His take on social media: The good, the bad & the ugly. (1:17:18) How the more you learn, the more you go back and progress. (1:26:45) How does he incorporate ‘new’ technologies into his life? Clients? (1:28:50) Why the more you know, the more the answer is “it depends on A, B, C, D…” (1:34:15) Has he ruffled any feathers in the world of academia? A ‘conscious competence’ rant on sled pulling/pushing. (1:35:22) What makes his certification different/stand out from the others out in the space? (1:44:52) Featured Guest/People Mentioned Joe DeFranco (@defrancosgym) • Instagram/Twitter Website YouTube Podcast Tim Ferriss (@timferriss)  Instagram Aubrey Marcus (@aubreymarcus)  Instagram Paul "Triple H" Levesque (@tripleh)  Instagram Miles Austin (@MilesAustinIII)  Twitter JB Morin (@jb_morin)  Twitter Related Links/Products Mentioned May Promotion: MAPS HIIT ½ off!! **Code “HIIT50” at checkout** Sign Up to Attend Joe DeFranco’s Coaches Certification Course at Mind Pump HQ Nov. 9-10th, 2019! The 4-Hour Body : An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman - Book by Tim Ferriss CAMRY Digital Hand Dynamometer Grip Strength Measurement Meter Auto Capturing Hand Grip Power 200 Lbs / 90 Kgs VERY-HEAVY SLED TRAINING FOR IMPROVING HORIZONTAL FORCE OUTPUT IN SOCCER PLAYERS  

If you want to pump your very, very long time, really looked up to and respected. And Joe DeFranco is one of those people. He's somebody that I for a while, as a personal trainer, I was like, this is the guy. He knows his stuff, he's communicating the right stuff, he's got integrity. Yeah, he's a legend in the strength conditioning world. Oh, and what was crazy was knowing him and being so like, again, I followed this guy for so long contacting him on Instagram and he's like, oh, I love listening to Mind Pump and I was like, what the? It's so crazy to hear someone that you know, somewhat idolized say good things about you and what you're doing.

Yeah, so he's been putting out, I remember as a kid, right? So we were in high school. So he's been putting out fire since I think like 99. And back then, there wasn't a lot of resources for athletic performance. So if you were a young kid or college athlete and you were trying to increase your 40 or you wanted to jump higher.

There just wasn't a lot of good information. And I remember being a kid like searching for that. And he was the name that kept popping up and he was the person that was working with all these professional athletes back then that was putting out really good science-based information. And so that was my first experience with them way back when. And so I've always had a lot of respect and admiration for him as an elite trainer for a plus. I absolutely love his no bullshit attitude, which I think resonates with all three of us. Right.

And it felt that way, the minute that he came in the room or the minute that we all finally got together, it was just him sticking to his guns and having integrity when all these like flash in the pan, modalities come in and out of our industry and he's just stayed true the entire time and that's why, you know, he is, you know, a legend in his own right. It was funny, we're not huge fans of the big fitness convention thing,

but it's funny talking to Joe, we're like, hey, maybe we should all visit the Arnold Classic one of these years coming up. So, if you go to that, you may see us at the next one. Yeah, that's the plan is for us to link up and do something with it. I mean, there's just not a lot of people that I think we get that, that you just know we're gonna be close to going forward from now, like we get a chance.

I mean, what are we at now? I think I figured out the other day. It was like 300 something people as far as interviews that we've done here. And a lot of really intelligent, great, brilliant minds and good people who we've remained good friends with. But no doubt, I think he will be a strong ally of mind pump for a long time. And I'm just, I'm so excited to say that because we already had so much respect for him, not only as a professional,

but now as an individual because we've got to know him and his personality. He also put together what we believe to be one of the, if not the best fitness certification that's out there for coaches interested in training people for speed and performance and strength. His certification is no joke. It's one of the harder ones. It's not an easy one to get, but if you have it, people know it means something. And what we did is we offered our space to him to host one of his certification classes. So on November 9th and 10th at Mind Pump Studios, Joe DeFranco

will be having one of his certification courses. And we're very, very excited to be hosting this. Again, that's November 9th and 10th. If you want to sign up, you have to go to cppscoaches.com and then go to schedule and find November 9th and 10th. So you can sign up. And that's going to fill up quick because he hasn't done a lot of things here in the West Coast. Not at all. Make sure you sign up as soon as possible. Oh, it'll be packed, it'll 100% will be packed.

Also, you can find him on Instagram at DeFranco's gym. His website is DeFranco'straining.com. And then he's got a great podcast. We were actually on there recently. He interviewed all of us. The podcast is called the Industrial Strength Show. Now before we get into the interview, I want to tell everybody that Maps hit.

This is our most effective in the short-term fat burning program that we have. It's high intensity interval training with barbells and dumbbells and three different levels. It's expertly programmed. It's 50% off to help you get ready for summer. All you gotta do is go to mapshit.com, that's M-A-P-S-H-I-I-T,

dot com and use the code hit50, H-I-I-T-5-0 for the discount. And that's it. So without any further ado, here we are talking to the always awesome and great Joe DeFranco. This conversation has been waiting to be had for almost fucking two years. I would say we'll be first started,

when we first started taking off with the podcast, people were like, we've been demanding this. Yeah, we obviously have a lot of crossover with our, I mean, shit, I did the, I reposted your post that you did yesterday about flying over and you fucked my DMs up all day. I mean, I must have had 100 plus people that, oh my God, I've been waiting for this and ask them this

and ask them that. And finally, you guys are connecting, you like so. And likewise, likewise, that's what I think I reached out to Sal when your names just kept coming up more and more. It was like the first time I had kind of seen you guys and like the, you know, the iTunes that when you look at the top podcast, I saw the Mind Pump kept popping up and then I listened to a show or two, but nothing real consistent. And then at our certification, a cert didn't go by without, without at least one of our coaches coming

up to us and saying they listen to my podcast and then saying, man, you got to get together with the Mind Pump guys. I want to see you all hear all you guys in one room, when you're going to do it, when you're going to do it, and then I heard you're on the West Coast, and I rarely travel. So, yeah, it's been two years. We're finally, I was like, I can't take care of this anymore. We're going to make it happen. Well, your name is, I mean, you're one of the premier people in fitness, and you have been for a long time. I mean, as a trainer back in the day,

you were the guy that, you know, I would read, and I would listen to it. Dude, I had your DVD when I was in college, and I was playing football, and I wanted to, you know, improve my power and speed and strength, and so it's a trip, man. That's a little circle for me. That is cool. It makes me feel old, but it's good.

Now, how long have you been doing this professionally now? I knew this is what I wanted to do from, as soon as I wanted to play in the NFL was my ultimate life goal, like a lot of kids, I guess, that play football. When that was taken away from me, I knew after falling into a depression for a couple months or a year, I knew the next best thing was I wanted to help other people. And I got to the point where even when I was playing football,

I loved the training and the preparation just as much as the games. And I loved football more than anything. So when that was taken away, I was like, I'm also pretty, I've always been pretty self-aware. Like I know I'm not good at much. And nor am I not a very well-rounded guy. I don't have a ton of interests.

Like I love the gym, I love training. I love teaching, helping people. So I knew that's what I was going to do. So I went to college for exercise science and when I graduated, you know, at 21, 22 years old, I did an unpaid internship for a year and I stayed in the industry since then. So from 22 to now, I'm 43. I've been making a living either at a personal trainer

at someone else's gym or for the last 16 years, you know my own gym and my own business and brand. Oh, that's fantastic. When did it all start to take off? Because you came out you started off as a trainer When did things start to really take off for you? When did you start to realize like oh, I'm becoming a voice in this industry? I work for someone else for, and this is an important, I think, lesson, especially now in the Instagram age and the, you know, that we're in this time with social media and everybody wants to be

insta-famous and world-renowned. I was, I was, quote unquote, famous in, like, my own town. For the first five years, I was in the industry as a personal trainer, working for someone else. I always pride myself, and I did a lot of things wrong, but one thing that I did right was, I was so tunnel vision focused on just being

the best damn trainer for my clients, my athletes. So from 1998 to 2003, no one in the world knew who I was, but in Bergen County, New Jersey, I was the top trainer. Like, you want to get strong. At that time, I was a lot of football players, but I would probably probably work with a dozen different athletes at that point, just predominantly football players. But if you were a high score college football player, like it was go to Defranco, go to Defranco, he's the guy. He's the guy.

So I kind of developed a name for myself in my own town, which I think is important before you try to become famous on Instagram, and there was no Instagram back then. So you had no choice. But like I developed my craft, and I just, if I wasn't in the gym training, I was home reading about training. If I wasn't reading about training, I was training myself.

And I've, we might get into a little bit my injury history and all that has helped me as a trainer and a coach because I went through five years of hell with a tumor in my sacrum. So even that, I try to put a positive spin on and look as a learning experience, the amount of doctors and surgeons that I was all over the world trying to get help from my back. So for five years, it was just like in a cave, in a cocoon of just my own little world

of developing that knowledge and that experience. So then when I started my own business in 2003, I got to say without any marketing or anything, I did pretty well right from the beginning. I also had a very small gym, so I had close to no expenses. I started very small, which was smart. But I was able to get clients right off the bat

because it was five years of building that foundation. People thought I just came out of nowhere and opened up the storage closet gym and became like world renowned, but there was at least five years of real world professional experience before that. And I started at 12 with my dad. So before that five years,

it was another attend before that of training and being 12 with my dad. So before that five years, it was another, a 10 before that of training and being obsessed with this stuff. So I wanna apologize to the audience right away because I already know what I'm gonna do with you because I have so many questions I wanna talk to you about and I'm sure we're gonna fucking bounce all over the place. I do the same thing.

So I'm gonna apologize to the audience right away that I'm not gonna go in chronological order and ask you traditionally, oh, what happened with the injury and then taking me all the way through your training crickets? I just have questions that I've wanted to ask you for a while.

One of those being, how did the relationship with Onet happen and how did you become like the main gym? That's because you have, it's a Joe Defranco gym, right? At Onet, how did that relationship happen? Although not just recently, we don't have that anymore. We had it for two years. And now the Cameron Joss, who was the head coach there,

the Defranco head coach, just recently moved back to New Jersey. So it's relatively new though, it's not like you're... I didn't know that. So yeah, so there's more, more stuff you could talk about. Yeah, let's go there. Basically, it's not as juicy maybe as you're hoping, but for...

You wouldn't do Iohasca, let me guess. No, I'm not that guy. I got enough issues without adding any outside of it. Yeah, that's all another thing. But how did that, so one day when I was, so I started a store of 500 square foot storage closet was there for three years, grew out of that, went to a 2000 square foot warehouse gym. That's when like YouTube started, I was like one of the original

guys on YouTube before it was really anything I would post videos of my high school kids for them. And I'm getting to your question, but I'm just setting it up a little bit so it doesn't seem completely random. I would, it's funny because high school kids, we were, we were producing some freaks in the gym and, you know, we had kids doing 54-inch box jumps and, you know, 700-pound trap bar deadlifts in high school and all this crazy shit. And they wanted to kind of brag and show their friends at school what they were doing at the Franco's.

So I didn't even know how to use YouTube at the time. My girlfriend at the time set up my YouTube account with video, I think it was like the old flip cam at the time. She would, anything cool was happening at the gym. She'd snap a quick video posted on YouTube. I didn't realize that's when all of a sudden we started getting athletes from other states come and travel into New Jersey to stay and train with us.

And then coming from other countries to come train with us, it was just one day, it's like you check your email and rugby players from England wanna come. And we had volleyball players from Italy and an Olympic snowboarder from Switzerland, like, we just started getting all these crazy athletes. And from all over the world to come to like, you know, a broken down warehouse in New Jersey,

which is just, it still was surreal to me when I'd pull up to work each morning. But we started developing that name where people all over the country and the world were really starting to follow us. So that's when I moved into another, I could get into, I got offered a reality show from a very, very big production company too that I turned down.

I kind of kept my integrity. We get it. Yeah, what was the theme of that? They wanted it to be like, they pitched it originally like what I wanted to be, which was the interesting stories of all these athletes from all over the world with these dreams of, you know, trying to make it to the NFL

or high school kids trying to get a scholarship. And we did have a unique bunch of characters in the gym, which I thought there was plenty of reality and storyline without having to fabricate anything. Drama was all there. And it quickly started turned into, hey, does your dad come by the gym? Do you guys fight a lot? If he came in, yeah, and then they set up lighting in the corner of the gym and say, like,

if you argue with your dad, can you walk over there? And I'm like, this isn't what I super orchestrated. Yes. And so I had, I was under contract for two years. They shot like a sizzle reel met with A&E history channel. And I probably one of the few people in the world who turned down a reality show just because, you know, I give a shit about my integrity.

And I said no matter how if this turns into the Jersey Shore of gyms. One day it's going to be over and huge. But yeah, huge for a couple years and then my integrity shot. I'm done. It's over. You're the right decision. So, uh, that's nookie of fitness. Yeah, yeah. Who knows what I could have been. But, um, so all these things started happening. Tim Ferris came to the gym. I was the guy who, when he was doing research for his four-hour body book, I was the guy

who kind of put him through a mini-combine. That was huge pub for my gym. And I think that might be how Aubrey, Aubrey Marcus, the CEO of Onet first heard about me. I might be wrong, but for some reason I'm remembering him saying something about the four-hour bodybook with Tim Ferris, because that was a big thing for my business. But whether it was that or him just kind of hearing about me, one day I got a call that he was in New York. I was taking shroom tech at the time. They had just kind of started getting big, not like they are now, but they started

to have a name and working with a lot of athletes, I was always looking for any legal edge you could get. And I was never into the pre-workout stimulants for athletes, like most pre-workouts, just because they're not just lifting weights, they're doing energy system training and a lot of sprint training. And in the summer, I was always looking for something that could maybe help them without giving them the heart palpitations. And some of the negative effects that a lot of the pre-work workouts had. I stumbled on the Shroom Tech Sport Supplement, which I loved, and I started taking it, started giving it to some of my athletes.

I think I just, without having any kind of affiliation with on it or anything, I'm the type of guy, if I like something, I'll give you a plug on Twitter or Instagram, maybe it's not good business, I'm not looking to get paid for everything, I'm genuinely trying to help people. I think I was really promoting the Shroom Tech sport for a while because it was really working well with my athletes on quote unquote conditioning days.

That's how, and then Aubrey, I think, appreciated that. He was in New York one time for business. He said, I'd love to stop by your gym. He'd stop by. He trained. I let him jump in with my, I had a to stop by your gym. He'd stop by. He trained. I let him jump in with my, I had a group of NFL guys, eight to 10 NFL guys. I had him jump in, train with those guys.

He was kind of picking my brain along the way. And two, three months after that, I got a random call from him saying, listen, we have about 10,000 square feet of space in our warehouse. At that point, they were just supplements. They weren't doing much with their training and like the kettlebells and all the implements that they have.

He said, instead of doing our own gym, I'm looking more for a well-respected brand, someone that's well known in sports performance. And of all the gyms I've traveled to in the world when I went and trained with you that one day, the atmosphere, your gym, your knowledge, you had the most well-rounded program, it wasn't just strength, it wasn't just mobility, you had the most well-rounded program

that I've ever been around. What do you think about having a DeFranco's at the on-it headquarters as kind of a satellite location for your business. So what he didn't know at the time, what I was struggling with, at that point, my gym is like any men's health, muscle and fitness, anytime they would have like a top 10 gyms in the world, top 10 gyms in America, my gym was always listed

and not because I had any connections with any of those magazines. They just genuinely, I'd get a call saying, hey, this is some so and so from men's health, we did a top 10 list. Your gym is on that list. Like, so by point being, we were at the peak of popularity, but behind the scenes, and this is a, we could get into this too, I'm sure, but I didn't, as the business grew, the headaches that came along with it. I wasn't as happy even though most people thought I was a multi-millionaire. I have one of the, you know, most bad ass gyms in the world, training all these pro athletes, but I had, I just had twin daughters. I was never home. I was like burning the candle at both ends,

burnt out like crazy. My, well, girlfriend, wife now, girlfriend at the time, tell me like, you, you're killing yourself. Like, I know you love the gym, but I don't know, like, maybe instead of having a second location in Austin, maybe that's almost, I don't wanna call it an out, but you're starting

to do some stuff online. I just got in triple H as a client and I was doing stuff with the WWE. I really didn't need the gym. It was almost more of a, as you guys know, the gym business, it doesn't make you as much money as people think at all. Especially private warehouse, you know, and some of the richest pro athletes are the cheapest. That's a whole other thing. There's so much truth to that. Yeah.

So people don't understand that either because it's an honor to train them. That's what I just give you a picture you put on the wall and that's that pays your mortgage right? Yeah. That's right. So, yeah. So, very, very hard, difficult decision like laid up at night for months,

but I finally decided I would have never shut the gym down completely, but still having DeFranco's kind of live on, in on it without me having to do all the kind of behind the scenes day to day, I was like mate, that's, this might be the perfect move. So I had a young trainer at the time, Cameron Joss, who just graduated college, wanted to work full time at the gym. He was single, 23, 24 years old.

Didn't have, you know, family obligations in New Jersey. He was, I asked him, I'm like, would you be interested in going and running the Franco's at the on an academy? Like, you'd be the guy. I'm not going to be there. Like, I'll fly in and out here and there, help you get the Honored Academy. Like, you'd be the guy. I'm not gonna be there. Like, I'll fly in and out here and there, help you get it set up, but like, you're gonna be the guy.

He said, yes, we did it for two years. It was great, but on it kind of grew tremendously, so at that time, so they started doing more, training in the gym business, so to speak, even though the training and the clientele, a little different. They have some athletes and some MME guys, certainly, that they work with. But for the most part, we were still kind of the athlete training and they were doing more general pop.

But we just grew out of it. Like it was now that 10,000 square feet with on it doing training as well. And our training, it was one of those things where we grew out of that space. If we wanted to continue, we'd have to open up, open up our own location. Cameron just want nothing bad happened. He just wanted to move back to New Jersey.

He was like, I tried it, not really my place that I want to live the rest of my life. I think I want to move back to New Jersey. He was like, I tried it, not really my place that I want to live the rest of my life. I think I want to come back to New Jersey. I didn't want the headache of opening up. I was overwhelmed with my New Jersey gym. I didn't want to open up a gym in Austin, separate from on it where I have to go back to running the day to day.

So we just kind of mutually parted ways. I didn't even know. I didn't even know to I didn't even notice that. So is your name pulled off on the thing? Yeah, yeah, all that. It wasn't for a while. That's why it took them to paint over and they kind of rebranded their gym now as well.

Because I know they have like 10th planet Jiu Jitsu in there and I think they were figure, I don't wanna speak for Aubrey or them, but I think they were almost trying to figure out what they wanted to do in their space. So that's why everything, our jerseys were up on the wall still and the name was up. But now Cameron is back in New Jersey. He trains athletes out of my, I told you guys, I have similar to what you have more of a private, non-descript studio where we have a couple kind of VIP pro athletes

that come and train with us, not open to the public. He runs that. He trains 98% of the athletes that come in there and we're completely out of Austin now. Right. So what do you do now? So you kind of scaled yourself back in terms of how involved you were with all the running the gyms and the training. How did you scale yourself back?

What kind of things did you move into? So while I was running the gym and I talked about being overwhelmed at that time, and while I thought I would made me able to maybe pull out of the gym was I had started a certification with my partner, Jim Smith, Sm from diesel strength and conditioning long-time friend We started our CPS certification seven years ago now going on eight years already, which is crazy But that was like three years in the making 40 plus years of combined experience, we just got frustrated with just the whole system. You guys know that certification, there's 9 million certifications, none of them mean anything. We both had every certification under the sun and realized we never used them

when we were young and started actually training athletes in the real world. You had to kind of figure things out for yourself. So we were like, say we changed the game and came up with the cert that actually made you a better coach when you went back to work on Monday. You could utilize this stuff and those letters meant something after your name. It's not just most certifications. Unfortunately, it's a seminar that they jack up the price

and hand you a certificate at the end. So instead of charging a hundred bucks, they charge a thousand and say, oh, it's a certification, but you're not learning anything like, or especially the coaching aspect. Ours is a true, I call it's the equivalent of a college curriculum for personal trainers and coaches. And you don't just get a certificate after the weekend. You have to go home, do train people on camera. All the things that you learned, you have to show us, you have to video record yourself,

implementing it, show us that you're using the coaching cues. How do you train on a real? There's a real accountability. You have that portion and then a written test on top of it that you send in and you don't just pass like we go through those videos and those tests. Wow. And, well yeah, a lot of people don't realize

that the popular surds, the ones that make all the money, one of the reasons why they make a lot of money is they have a high pass rate. That's part of the formula. Part of the formula is you have to have a certain amount of people passing, otherwise nobody wants to... Yeah. It's harder to sell it. Exactly, exactly. So ours certainly isn't easy. We were talking before we started recording.

I think we're up to 12 DVDs or 12 videos, seven or eight manuals that you get in the mail before you even come to the, to the, to the cert. Then it's a full weekend, eight, eight, 30 in the morning till six at night. We don't normally break for lunch. A ton, just super comprehensive from assessment and, and, you know, kind of pre, pre-movement prep and warming up to speed, power training,

program design and everything in between. So that took up a huge chunk of time, but once we got it up and running has become a sustainable business that is growing. And now I think we've certified over 1,000 coaches over the course of seven years, which still isn't a lot, you know, when you compare it to other search to your point, it's not just get as many people

in here, get their money and say they're certified. But that's how we wanted it. So that took up a lot of time, energy, effort. That was one thing. I have a DeFranco insider, a membership community, where I give a ton of free information online, but for the more advanced stuff, it's a more specific type programming and exercise demonstrations,

and some live seminars that we give those type of things. Those are on the DeFranco insider. That's a monthly membership type of deal. So between those two things and getting triple H and Stephanie McMahon from the WWE as a client and training them two, three days a week and I'm a consultant for their developmental program in Orlando, the WWE Performance Center, implements our CPPS system with all the aspiring WWE superstars. Those three things enabled me to make enough of a living where I felt comfortable.

If I get rid of the gym, I'll still be able to pay my mortgage and feed my kids. Yeah, and earlier you were saying how you have a lot of crossfitters now that are taking your course, even though you've been openly evocally critical. Yes. Criticized kind of the crossfit. Well, let's talk about that a little bit because of your exercise science background and very sports-specific style training. Now CrossFit emerges at a noir.

What did that look like for you and your gym? Well, the thing that annoyed the hell out of me was I had my storage closet gym, I started in 2003. I don't know when CrossFit came along in the quote-unquote boxes, but the thing that pissed me off is when people would see my gym and like, oh, it's CrossFit, I'm like, I was, before CrossFit was a thing, we had attractors in the gym and chains and sledgehammers and heavy and then falls like they invented it. But yeah, I was I was doing full seminars

on on sled training and yeah, heavy sled drags and but implementing it properly not just random bullshit throughout against the wall see what sticks kind of deal. I like this guy. So besides that that just more of unannoying that people would come in say, oh, is this CrossFit? People that didn't really know who we were. But for the most part, I didn't, people would come to DeFranco's

because they knew of us already in the reputation. 98% of our business, I would say, was referrals of other athletes that trained there. Or they watched our YouTube videos. So we didn't get many naive people, but a couple of parents would come in, that would be annoying. But the thing that affected my business and training was obviously not every kid, especially the high school kids, they can't train with us and afford maybe to train four days a week with us the entire year. So a lot of high school kids would train with us twice a week, but then they would have to lift that school twice a week. And we would do our best to

educate them, give them some stuff to do at school without kind of stepping on the coach's toes and being respectful. But the thing that pissed me off and all my coaches was they would train with us twice a week, you know, properly, where we're giving a shit about warming up and, you know, quality of movement and technique. And then they, we ask them, oh, what are you doing at school on Thursday and Friday? Oh, Friday, it's CrossFit Friday. We do CrossFit. My biggest problem with CrossFit, listen, if you're an adult and you want to go to CrossFit class, it's a free country, do what you want to do. When athletes do CrossFit as their off-season training, that drives me nuts and that's

where it is. I don't say many things are good or bad because context matters, but doing CrossFit as a football player, baseball player, hockey player is bad. That is not even, quote, maybe the worst way to train because you have a very, very specific energy system demand, very specific demands of your sport. Training for everything is the worst thing you can do as a football player when the average football play lasts four to six seconds and you get 20 to 40 seconds break and there's X amount of plays per game. You don't need to be doing random train everything I call it's like going to dinner and you know having spaghetti cereal a steak of you know like just sushi, like mix every friggin' main course and meal on the planet and just have it all in one meal. You're probably gonna puke if you do that.

Same thing with CrossFit. Throw a whole bunch of shit in the workout and ironically most people puke at the end of the workout. And using them in ways that they're not appropriate, like Olympic list of fatigue, I never understood that part. Didn't make any sense to me, because that's not their value at all,

and it increases the danger factor by a million, but it's doing something that needs to be perfect every single time. I mean, talk about how important it is to train for specific types of adaptations, or specific types of performance. Yeah, like if I'm gonna train for power, there's a specific way to train for power.

I'm not gonna do plyometrics to fatigue in a circuit, because now I'm using something that's good for power and I'm turning it into... I might as well jump a play. Yeah, we talk about this a lot. I've spoken about it on my podcast recently a lot too, because it comes up so often

and that's... And again, I think the, in the world of Instagram and we have five seconds to catch someone's attention. They see something like a box jump and so they go, oh, football players do box jumps to get explosive quote unquote. So then they throw it in their crossfit workout, but exercises in and of themselves aren't magic. So it's how you execute that exercise. So I could take a box jump, and that could be an amazing exercise for developing explosive power if I implement it properly, low reps, high quality, high speed, full recovery. So there's maximal outputs, maximal recruitment

with every jump. That's how I'm gonna jump higher. Doing a hundred box jumps in the least amount of time possible at the end of my workout when I'm fatigued. Now you just took a great quote unquote explosive power exercise and made it the worst exercise known to mankind for a football player looking to improve his explosiveness. So that's where execution matters.

It's not, there's no magic exercises. I used to when I was younger, you would think, oh, football players, they have to squat, they have to bench, they have to clean. You had like these exercises that you thought, they were all basically categorized for different sports football players, Ben Scott, deadlift clean, baseball players do a lot of rotator cuff work. Like everybody kind of had their, the exercises that were associated with those

different sports. But as you get older and you gain more experience, you realize you could switch out. It's not about the exercise. It's more about the fundamental movements. And I can't tell you how many. And if I have more NFL players that don't barbell squat, then do barbell squat because as I've gotten older and I've trained more football players longer into their career year four, six, eight, 10, 12, they get beat up. And yes, I want them to remain strong. More football players longer into their career year four six eight ten twelve

They get beat up and yes, I want them to remain strong and I want I want to do everything I can to make them more resilient to injury But it can't be at the expense, you know the the last thing in the world I want to do is get them hurt in the gym So maybe a barbell squat isn't the best thing for a 37 year old NFL you know lateral training yeah more stance you know a lot more unilateral work maybe it is a goblet squat you can't overload it as much but if someone with

low back issues that's just looking to maintain their strength I'm gonna throw in a goblet squat we've done a ton more unilateral work we're still getting that squat pattern. There's just, you have to get out of that mindset thinking that you have to get certain exercises into a program. It should always, the exercises and the methods should be determined by the athlete and their initial assessment when you get them.

Yeah, and I think too, when an athlete first starts off or you're first trying to add that strength and that muscle mass, those exercises make more sense, but as they get more experienced, it's like you're trying to sculpt a piece of art out of a piece of granite, you start off with a sledgehammer, then you move down to the finer instruments and tools. And these are experienced athletes that you're working with,

doesn't make sense to take a sledgehammer to them. In fact, that's going to probably make things easier. We're talking about athletes right now, but I would argue that it's just the same applies to the general population. You made a comment before we got on air about certifications and how holy shit, then also you get a training client that's like, oh, this client has a back problem. What the fuck do I do? Nothing happened.

So I look at CrossFit and I see the general population like you has no business there. I mean, I have been a trainer for 16 years now, going on 17 years and I've never taught a client a snatch. Like you just mean either. Like it's just one point. It's just so advanced and it would take me months, sometimes years for clients just to get them

to move properly. Yeah. Just a basic movement, much less something so skilled like that. So I have the bone I have to pick with them. It has more to do with just the average Jaina Joe, which is what I see when I walk into those facilities, I don't see a lot of athletes. I see a lot of fucking moms with have three kids and carrying 30 extra pounds of body fat on them. They can't do a proper body weight squat, much less learn a snatch or do any of these

at least high level movements. Exactly. It's baffling the amount of clients or athletes, whoever you're talking about. If you just did a basic body weight squat in your assessment or a basic overhead, have them go up against the wall, put their head and low back against the wall and reach both arms overhead. The amount of people that can't do that while maintaining proper position, you know, most I would say well over 90% can't

can't do a proper overhead reach with no weight or body body weight prisoner squat hands be on your head, no external load, just squat down, stand up, over 90% can't, yet how many people in the gym are squatting, overhead pressing, barbell benching, dead lifting, it's, that's why, and that's why lifting weights gets the reputation it does with a lot of the mainstream public. Oh, it's dangerous, oh, it's bad for your joints. Yes, if you do it improperly, just like anything else, It does with a lot of the mainstream public. Oh, it's dangerous. Oh, it's bad for your joints. Yes

if you do it improperly just like anything else it is bad for you but if you implement it properly and and you assess your clients and then slowly progress and build that's when training and resistance training is probably the healthiest most most beneficial thing you could do in the world. I think, I still think lifting weights is, if you had a pick is the single best form of exercise for athletes, general pop, everybody in between. Absolutely, it's, you can completely individualize it

to the, to the person. And in the context of modern life where we're sedative, Terry, we have all this food in front of us. It speeds up your metabolism. No other form of exercise, that's it. But then going back to the squats and the dead lifts and the overhead presses, the goal, my goal always was to be able to get my client

to be able to do those things. Sometimes they never got to that point. Sometimes I trained somebody, Mrs. Johnson is 65 years old. I trained her for three years. We never got to the point where we could do a barbell squat. But boy, did she get a lot better because the goal was to get her to be able to do some of these fundamental movements.

Yep. You know, I don't want to interrupt, but just think you're talking about like average Mrs. Jones or whoever. I could tell you triple H who, you know, most people know one of the most jacked, you know, well known. Spaceman. You know, athlete slash performer slash celebrities in the world. He still hasn't, I've trained him for over eight years.

We haven't done a regular free barbell squat. The only variation of barbell squat I've ever done with him is a box squat because of his knee and he tore both quad tendons like off the bone, both legs, severe, severe knee issues, ankle issues. He got suplexed into a wooden pallet and a piece of the wood splintered off, went through his wrestling boot, through his calf, to his bone, ripped it out, soaked with blood, finished the match. I don't know what made me think of that because it's, it's worth a stomach crazy.

When I first met him, he told me that story and I was like, holy shit, but. That's our goal. The first time I trained him, I've trained him for over eight years now and like he's had the worst ankle mobility I've ever seen. It's just like granite, like he's in a cast, like just no movement.

But then you hear about, you know, he's wood pallets getting, you know, shoved through his calf muscle, high ankle sprains, broken ankles. Now he's 49 years old. My point being even though people look at him on TV and you see this jacked specimen famous dude. I'm not trying to fit a square peg in a round hole or whatever you want to call it, like just because he's an ejected, advanced, strong athlete. I'm not making him barbell squat when his body can't perform that. I'm not just going to try to make him do an exercise that doesn't fit for him because of his knee issues

and his lack of ankle mobility. Yeah, I still want him to get that squatting pattern in and I wanna overload it because of the physical demands in the ring, but a box squat allows him to sit back a little less ankle mobility required, much less stress on the patellotendin and knees, more glute hamstring activation, which he lacked when I first started training him,

et cetera, et cetera, that makes it a better exercise for him. Doesn't mean box squats are better than free squats. It means for this client, that's the perfect fit. And that's what you should be doing forever. You know what I think part of the problem is, and I remember coming up with this years ago, watching somebody run when you go outside in the summer here in California, a lot of people like to run, and nobody knows how to run probably. Everybody runs terribly.

Athletes don't run. Yeah, and I'm watching these people, and I'm like, this person's gonna hurt, there's no way they're gonna continue. And I thought to myself, like, God, humans evolved to run. One thing that we do better than any other animal is run for distance, really,

in terms of athletic performance, and throw for accuracy. Those are the two things that we do really well. And I said, God, why do, why does running cost so many injuries? I said, I know because people don't run to learn how to run. They don't run to practice running. They run to get tired. And I think this may be some of the problem with all exercise including weights.

People go to the gym and lift weights, not to perfect the skill of weights. They're not practicing weights. They're lifting weights to hurt. They're lifting weights to feel. I'm here to hit my legs. I want my legs to get sore and I want to perfect the skill of weights. They're not practicing weights. They're lifting weights to hurt. They're lifting weights to feel, I'm here to hit my legs. I want my legs to get sore and I wanna feel the pump and it's gotta burn or whatever.

Rather than going in saying, I wanna perfect the split stance squat. I wanna perfect the front squat. And you go into practice. Yeah. I think if people treat it like practice it'll be totally different. I think we'd have a better chances of it

going mainstream and being the form of exercise. 100%. But everybody, I think the problem with athletes and general pop is everybody's after the feeling that they have that day. You know, they want to walk out of, that's why one of the reasons CrossFit is very popular. You walk out of there, your feet right, you're tired.

And that must have done something. I puked, I feel like shit, I'm sore as hell. I can't walk for three days after, but they're not, they're what they should be doing is what's your goal? You should, everybody should have a goal. Why are you training? You should be training for something,

and then evaluate every couple weeks months. Have you gotten any closer to that goal? Have you achieved that goal? Or are you just always freaking tired and sore? I, I, I, I use the terms like training versus working out where I like to say a training program is there's a plan involved. There's a reason and a purpose to everything you do. Mondays workout is setting you up for you're not going to kill yourself on Monday because we want to come back on Tuesday or Wednesday and train. And Wednesday's workout is going to respect what we did on Monday and everything's building

and progressing to a specific goal. The workouts aren't just individual, you know, separate entities where we walk in and you go, oh, yeah, you guys have a barbell on the floor. Let's deadlift today. All right, let's run around the block a couple times. Let's just get tired. There's no reason. There's no purpose.

There's no progression or plan. And that's again one of my issues with CrossFit. And like some of these group exercise classes in general. You can't do it in a group. Separate. There's no plan. There's no progression. They're all just separate entities.

Each workout. Do you remember when you started a piece that together as a trainer? I remember having this attitude where it was either all or nothing. I was either all on my program, balls to the wall in my training, where I was completely off the wagon. And I realized that that was setting me up for failure,

it was also setting me up for hitting these plate toes all the time. Do you remember what part of your career that you kind of evolved beyond that? Because I know a lot of guys, especially when they come from the sports performance background, they tend to gravitate towards this intensity all the time and training that way instead of training smart

like you're alluding to right now. Yeah, and that's a great question because I think we all, when we first start, you get after it and there's that mentality of kicking ass and beast mode and you wanna get jacked and you think that's what you get after it. And there's that mentality of kick and ass and beast mode. And you want to get jacked. And you think that's what you have to do. You just associate training with hurting.

And that's part of the process. But I think would help me get over that and understand a little better was when I started working with college football players preparing them for the NFL Combine because that is very, very specific. It's like on this date, you have to run a 40 yard dash, do a vertical jump or broad jump, but two 25 bench tests, except there's seven tests that we have to get better at. I started getting guys and quickly I realized they would tell me what they were doing with a former

coach or I would get a I'd also get guys that went to the NFL combine didn't perform well and then seeked me out because then you have a pro day basically you have another chance at your school after the NFL combine each of the big time D1 universities have a pro day which is basically a combine at your school. So if you don't do well at the combine in February, in March, early April, you have a chance to kind of redeem yourself. So I would get some of those guys that were like, man, I ran really shitty 40 time.

I got four weeks, man. Can you help me out? I got to redeem myself. And when I would ask them what they were doing, I realized all of them worked hard. It was, I don't know what happened. I was doing two days, I was doing three a days, we were killing it.

And I don't consider myself the smartest guy in the world. I got an 890 on my SATs. I'm not that naturally smart. But it just, I was like, you're training for a 40 yard dash, which takes four and a half seconds, and it's a very specific skill. And I don't care that you train 16 hours a day, clearly that has nothing to do

with you need to be really fast, really efficient, really explosive, for 4.4 seconds. Great, you trained three times a day for six weeks. And so when one of my big, and I had an issue with that with NFL agents because they were more about just babysitting guys, they would get these young, you know, their kids about to become multi-millionaires. So they would care more about how much time

I kept them in the gym because they were worried about them getting in trouble. So that's a whole another issue. But I always battle with that, and I was like, no, I have a reputation for getting results and taking these no named guys and having them perform well at the combine. And kinda like my secret sauce was I wasn't killing them. I added them all up once. If you add up all the NFL combine testers, seven main ones,

it's less than 20 seconds of total work in the three days that you're there. So your training has to be specific. There has to be a reason and a purpose and a progression for everything you do. And after I did that for a number of years and developed a name and reputation as a top guy when I certainly didn't have the facilities that all the top places were in California, Arizona, Florida, nice weather climate, beautiful areas. I was competing with those guys

in my broken down New Jersey gym in freaking February. The reason why they would take that trek to New Jersey and the shitty weather and all that was the results I was getting. And then when we started training more general pop clients, it just kind of hit me one day. It's like normal people should train like that too. They might not be looking to improve their 40-yard dash,

but whether their goal is to drop, and that was the other thing that made me realize your goal needs to be specific. You can't just say, Mrs. Jones can't just tell you, I want to get in shape. You can't just say, Mrs. Jones can't just tell you, I wanna get in shape. You should make her give you a specific goals. What does in shape mean to you? I wanna drop 4% body fat by June 1st,

because I have a pool party. I'm going on vacation, whatever. Doesn't matter what it is, have one main goal, and then you could have maybe two or three other goals that kind of complement it, but a specific goal. And then a reason and a purpose for everything you do to get there, everything you do should be to help you accomplish that goal. Some of those workouts, exercises, techniques might make you tired and be hard.

Some might not be from an effort standpoint, but as long as we're reaching that final destination, and it's never final, you always want to have it to be ongoing, but as long as it's we're working towards a goal and improving, that's what I always sold them on. Don't just go on the feeling for today. Look more big picture. Why did you hire me? I'm doing, I, you, by all means, ask questions.

I don't like when people question me, but asking questions I have no problem with answering because I have, I legit have a reason and a purpose for every friggin' thing I do from the very first warm-up exercise to the last cool-down exercise. I could tell you why we're doing it and it's all to help you get to that goal.

Is there a major difference? Like, let's say you get said client that's NFL or aspiring NFL athlete or you have the, you know, the typical mom who's got to lose 20, 30 pounds and she's at two or three kids. Is there a different protocol on how you assess and start them? Are they similar?

That's another great question. It's more similar than you think. People think like pro athlete like, oh, it must be crazy. The shit you do not really like, I would say the general assessment is this, I wouldn't say it is. The general stuff is the same. Like we spoke about a simple overhead reach with your back and head up against the wall. A bodyweight squat, a push up, can you hold a push up position when we remove one base of support, lift up your left hand or lift up your right hand, lift up your left leg, what are your hips doing, what's your upper back doing? There's a couple basic assessments

that we do. The biggest difference for the athletes would then be we add in the performance based ones at the end. Like in within the warm up, I'm going to run a 10 yard sprint at the end. We're going to do a vertical jump. I'm probably going to test a regular vertical jump with a counter movement compared to a static jump, which gives you a ton of great information for an athlete. Basically, you have them perform a vertical jump, then give them a couple minutes, then do another one, but this time when they descend, hold in the bottom for three to five seconds,

and then from there explode up and see the difference. Generally, you want the static jump for a quote unquote well-balanced athlete. The static jump's gonna be about 85% of the counter-movement jump. If I've had a lot of athletes that the static jump is going to be about 85% of the counter movement jump. If I've had a lot of athletes that their static jump is the same, they vertical jump 30 inches, and then they could vertical jump 30 inches from a static position, that would show you that they're more forced dominant, they're stronger than they are faster.

So they would benefit from more dynamic work and explosive work. That athlete needs more speed. Then you get more the elastic reactive type, leaner NFL receiver types that you give them a counter movement, they jump through the roof. As soon as you don't let them use, you kind of negate the effects of the stretch shortening cycle and you make it more forced dominant

and just strength dominant, they can't jump over a sheet of paper. That athlete would benefit from a little more strength work. So little things like that may be not as important for my mom, but for an athlete super important and will help you reach your goals way faster. Have there been like athletes that you have assessed and as you're going through it, you're going like, holy fuck, this kid's going to be a blast to work with you. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, what are the tales? Like, what do you see? Like, when you're doing that, you're like, oh, this could be fucking awesome. Though the best ones are the ones that are already, you know, they come to you and they've, they're already pretty much a freak athlete. But then in our

world of, you know, regular assessment, strength training, the general physical prep aspect of it, you'll be surprised how many of them suck. Like, you NFL, big 300 pound NFL lineman who can't make it through a 10 minute dynamic warm up their gas. They have no just general physical preparedness, like just no general fitness. A lot of them are not as strong as you would think. They have great leverage because they have really long arms, but the amount of NFL I'm in that couldn't even bench press 315

would you would be amazed. And not that it's to be all end all, but you would be shocked at how weak these guys are in our weight room world. I love working with them because they've already, if they made it to a high level without any of that, they're just kind of blessed on the field. Those are the guys, you get them generally stronger. That NFL lineman who can't bench 315, when you get him to bench 365 and you improve his general fitness and you increase his mobility a little bit so his low back doesn't hurt as much anymore. Now he was already a freak with

with a low level of GPP. Now you improve that and now you have yourself a super freak all pro type. Do you have easier than you think? You have like a favorite that you look back and you go, oh man, I took this kid and he did it. That you're most proud of, that you've looked into watchtowards expressed all that you've put into him. Yeah, one of the big ones, and I'm showing my age now because this was always a very timely story, and now he's already retired from the end of the year. Come, God, when, like married, like, you know,

the amount of kids I trained in high school that are married with children now, and have kids that are, you know, coming to me, it's crazy. But, Miles Austin was a receiver with the cowboy. Yeah, I'm a cowboy's fan. Oh, all right, so you know, he had that two or three-year stint where he was like the best receiver. Yeah, bro.

And I feel like he came out of nowhere. No, no shit, I didn't know you trained him. That he didn't come out of nowhere. I will tell you. Look, yeah. He was in a warehouse gym in New Jersey when nobody knew who the hell he was. I love his story.

Hey, he was just great personality big smile. One of those guys that you love being around. Like I just love going to the gym when he was there because he just was one of those dudes who just the energy was awesome, super positive. So that's always important to me. But um, so he went to mometh college, which at the time was one double a non scholarship almost like pretty much like a division three school in New Jersey, non scholarship. He was actually a um, he threw the javelin in high schools, like real high level javelin thrower. Football coach made him go out for football his junior

year just because he was a good athlete. He went to a really small high school and ended up being really good, but not like scholarship football player goes to mom with college real small school in New Jersey. Does good enough where he's on the radar of NFL scouts and teams because come combine time. He gets invited to the NFL combine, which was amazing being from the the small school he was from. Very long story. Sure, he came to me while I love it so much is that was someone where the training really, really mattered. His agent walked in, he said,

listen, he's a small school kid from a school. Nobody ever heard of there's not one NFL player to ever come out of mom of college. The, you know, the cards, the stacks against them to begin with. He was 200 and he was like 222 pounds to, no, he was 240 when he first came, which is a report for Big Ass and all in his ass and thighs.

And I remember him looking that big, and I'm ready for this. You ready for this, you did. His favorite, and I know more about nutrition than your average guy, but I have a nutritionist I work with that I refer out for like the real high level stuff, I don't claim to be an expert in that area, but I was able to do his nutrition

because his favorite food was hot dogs with blue cheese. That was his favorite food. I'll never forget it because I remember, because I remember he took his shirt off and he was like, he had a six pack. He steps on the scale and he's six to 240. I'm like, damn, you get, where are you holding it? And I'm like, what do you eat?

And I don't mean to give a wait. I think I've told this story anyway, but he tells me my favorite food is hot dogs and blue cheese. And I only shit once every three days. Is that bad? That's not normal. That's not normal. Yeah, no, I don't know.

That's not, I you think you'd be shitin' three times a day with that diet, but um. No, I don't know. That's not, I do think you'd be shitting three times today with that diet, but um, so he's too, he's too heavy. And he, the NFL went to Mommoth College. His junior year when he started to make a little noise to get a 40 time on him. And he ran a 4-6-2, which is very slow for,

especially a small school wide receiver. So it was awesome. First day, he ever walked into my gym, his agent who was a young agent, like trying to get his first breakout client. He was like, listen, he got invited to the combine, but I talked to every NFL scout. They said they're not even looking at it.

If he doesn't run a four, four or better, they're not even gonna look at it. They're not gonna give him a shot. He's not gonna get a chance to show. He could play in the NFL because coming from the school, he came from no scout is going to take a chance on a guy with a four six. Because if he doesn't pan out,

what people don't realize is the scout that kind of pulled for him on that NFL team, that dude could get fired for wasting a pick or a position on a Division 3, 240 pound wide receiver runs a four six. So that's why like the numbers at the combine, while we all know they don't tell the full story, those, they're important in the sense of the coach or the scout that kind of pulls for you on that team. If you don't pan out, they at least have something to fall back on they could listen to the guy ran

A four three jumped 40 inches like how how was anybody gonna know he was gonna suck on the field like and so the guy could almost save his job that way so Yeah, so scouts are gonna take a chance on a guy like that So as agent said you have to get him to run a four four or better I time him the first day because I never trust what anybody else says, fully electric. He runs a four six, two, 40 yard dash electric. But his first 10, he took like eight and a half steps

to run 10 yards. So real short choppy steps. Yet when we got him in the weight room, he squatted over 500 first day. Like just easy with just like put the bar in his back. And I'm usually very, very cautious. And I air way more on the side of caution, especially during the first couple workouts, but it

was one of those things, 315 looked like 225, 405 looked like 225. And he just kept going up. I stopped him at 505 and was like, damn. He was the first athlete I ever got that said, you're strong enough for what you need to do in the next eight weeks that I have you. We're not gonna, I'm not gonna use up any of your energy during the week trying to build your strength. I don't need to get you from a 505 squat to 550.

That's not gonna get you from the four six to the four four. You're already, you have the strength to run that fast. If anything, it can almost hinder it. Who I was muscled he has, I would think. Yes, his lower body is so big and powerful, but his hips were very tight. And, you know, I don't wanna, the point I wanna get across is,

even with a high level athlete, it's not as complicated as people think, but there's also maybe a little more to it. I'm not going to go through all of his training, but generally speaking for eight weeks, we focused on mobility, like every from static stretching to dynamic to heavy-ass sled drags with really big, long, powerful strides, opening up his hip flexors, his groin glutes, really opening up his stride length. And the strength training we did was predominantly unilateral work and sled work, very specific to the angles. And, you know, the, I wanted him getting very accustomed applying force in the ground, in the right direction.

So the strength work was very specific to the 10 and the 40-yard dash. We worked a ton on mobility, cleaned up his diet, which was easy. It was basically like stop eating hot dogs with blue cheese. Whenever he'd go out to dinner, he'd just call me at night. I remember like my wife at the time was like,

a girlfriend at the time now, my wife was like, you give these guys way too much access to you, but I was so invested because I remember like my wife at the time was like, a girlfriend at the time now my wife was like, you give these guys way too much access to you, but I was so invested because I was like, this is the guy, man, the no name who's gonna make it. So we focused on those things. And sure enough NFL Combine comes, he runs a 4.47. We didn't run 140 yard dash in eight weeks. All I did was 10 yard sprints, open up his stride. We didn't run 140 yard dash in eight weeks.

All I did was 10 yard sprints, open up his stride. He went from running, taking eight and a half steps to running 10 yards to at the combine. I remember watching it. I knew before he even finished the 40, the first 10 I counted his steps. It took him six and a half steps to run 10 yards. So he covered more ground.

It didn't look fast because the ground contact is longer when you're accelerating because you're building up speed. You're eating up ground. It's more about force into the ground and angle, you know, that big forward body lean. He hit that 10 yard mark at six and a half steps. I was like, he's got it. And then he finished official time 447. That he still didn't get drafted. Um, and he had the highest vertical jump of the entire combine 40 and a half inches, which the dude could jump through the roof. But uh, that gets him, that gets him a try out with the cowboys. Does good enough to make the team, which I don't, I take zero credit for. That's all him, the football, uh, him showing

what he could do on the field was all him. But you know, he would tell you those two steps taking two less steps on a 10 yard sprint got his foot in the door with the cowboys. He plays special teams for a year and a half. The cowboys have a couple injuries. Yeah, we had someone go down and that's when he came in. He steps in, blows it up for a couple games. The next year he signs for $54 million, changed his life forever, and not that I'm taking credit for that, but like helping him to, he doesn't get that chance to show what he could do

without that work we put in. So like that one always stands out to me because it changed his life. How many of these guys that you've impacted like to remain like friends? Like you build a bond with her? Almost all of them, which is cool. I mean, you lose, as they get older and have families

and kids, it's not like, it's never the same as when, I mean, I'm with these guys more than I'm with my family, which was an issue when I had the gym with my family, which is why I don't have the gym anymore. One of the reasons, but I always say that the gym family, which is why I don't have the gym anymore. One of the reasons, but I always say that the gym family, it's not just a cliche thing, that is a real thing. I'm with these guys multiple hours a day, every single day for months, or I have some guys in the NFL.

I have clients, I have two clients right now that I've been training nonstop year round for 16 years. Like I have more clients right now that I've been training nonstop year round for 16 years. Well, I have more 10 plus year clients that I could even count at this point. So, yeah, a couple of them make it to the big time and they do the, I got, when Miles started dating Kim Kardashian I didn't hear from him too much.

You understandably. I let him slide on this. Let him slide on this. Let him slide on that one, but otherwise for the most part. And I think it's, again, it's a testament to the gym. I never marketed the gym. It was all athletes that trained there would tell their friends about it. And they knew what it was.

It's no air condition. We even my third gym, which right before we moved to Onet, which I call, which was my dream facility, the indoor turf field, it was still only 5,000 square feet. It wasn't huge, like certainly not a glowboat gym,

but like 5,000 square feet, hardcore warehouse, but no air condition in like the backroads of New Jersey, two minutes away from the hood. Like, it's just bare bones. It's like Rocky Balboa meets Ivan Drago. Like the old school atmosphere of Rocky with exercise science and the, you know, all the new technology and equipment. I always thought it was like that perfect combo. But if you if you were a pre-Madonna type, you wouldn't like the gym, because we didn't baby you.

I don't make you a protein shake afterwards. And you know, I don't set you up with your massage. Like, I always held athletes accountable. Seniority, the athletes that train they're the longest are the ones who get to pick the music. It was one bathroom in the whole facility. It's just, it's not a place that you would, that pre-Madonna's would be comfortable. And I think that's why I have such a good relationship with the guys.

Better type of people came there, you know. It's just, it was kind of set up that way. Now you're, you're also a really fun guy to ask questions like this. You trained so many professional athletes. that way. Now, you're also a really fun guy to ask questions like this. Like you trained so many professional athletes. Was there anything that surprised you like about the politics of professional sports or seeing guys get fucked over on deals? Like, is there anything that surprised you when you started to get into all this? Yeah. Uh, there is just as much politics in pro sports as any other aspect of job.

Like people sitting in the stands think that pro athletes have it easy, but they go through and listen, I don't feel sorry for them because their paycheck is pretty good for that. But that paycheck's pretty good, but it's also for a very short period of time. And they do have to deal with a ton of politics. You would think no, but I've just, I've been behind the scenes a little bit. There's, it's like the good ol' you know, the boys club where my coach is now a coach.

So I got the job because I knew this guy since college, even though someone else is more qualified than me. Unfortunately it's not the best. I know a lot of amazing strength coaches who can't get a job in the NFL just because they don't have the connections, not because they're not good enough. And I know coaches, amazing coaches that were in the NFL that got fired because of the team not doing good, having a bad year, and maybe the head coach not being the best yet,

the strength coach is like the fall guy because it's easy to blame the strength coach. That was really surprising to me, just like talking to strength conditioning coaches we've even had on the show, is like how politics have eliminated their chances of getting on an NFL team or like helping them out or NBA, where like, you know, they're getting these coaches

and it's all based off of like, I know somebody and it's this network that they found themselves in versus. There's really not a lot of quality, real high quality, strength conditioning coaches at the highest level, it seems like. Unfortunately not.

Like Buddy Mars is with the Arizona Cardinals, amazing, one of the original strength coaches deserves the job, but he's gone periods of time where I remember him, he thinking he was done and he couldn't get a job. And he's not the type to politics. So he hasn't, you know, maybe gotten some jobs that he does deserve.

There's unfortunately a lot of that. And it's just, it's hard too because it's a strange profession because we're all in this industry so we clearly believe in strength conditioning and, you know, the physical prep that takes place in the off season and during the season.

So obviously it's important, but there's no way of gauging like, you could get an athlete and do everything perfect, strength conditioning mobility, nutrition, and he blows out his knee the first play of a game. It's hit in a weird way and he gets injured. Is that the strength coach's fault? Can he have prevented that?

There's no way to really gauge it. So you could be the greatest strength coach in the world. And I always say it's like you probably don't get enough credit when things go good, the kind of coaches take all the credit and you probably take a little bit too much of the blame when things go bad. You know, chopped, yes, yes. Joe, earlier in the episode, you had talked about how important context is and you had talked

about caffeine or stimulants and how you don't want some of your athletes having those because of the potential side effects of heart palpitations or whatever. And yet when we read studies, studies show caffeine is great performance enhancer for endurance, for strength, or whatever. Or for example, I'll read a study that says 8 to 12 reps builds the most muscle. So you look at studies often times, they don't tell the whole story because as an experienced trainer, when someone asks me what rep range builds the most muscle, I'm going to ask them what rep range are you training in now, and at the same thing with caffeine, how important is context when it comes to,

because what we see right now with social media, is you have these either people who know nothing and promote terrible ideas, or you have these people that read studies and promote the science, but don't have the wisdom to apply it. And so they're like, oh, hit cardio, that's the best way to do cardio,

always do hit cardio, or caffeine, great performance and answer, take caffeine all the time. How important is context? It's literally everything. And that's why I'm not a huge science or research guy because I feel like it's, oh, you could always poke holes or context or you know a guy or an athlete. Like, just to go to your point of caffeine,

I'm a huge fan of caffeine. And I agree 100%. It is the best pre-workout supplement, performance enhancer out there. I don't know of any legal supplement that is better than caffeine, but training thousands and thousands of athletes, I know some of them,

even in just a regular strength training workout, some are just sensitive to caffeine and they don't like how they feel. So if I have an athlete that says, dude, I drank coffee twice in my life and each time I felt like I was gonna have a heart attack. I felt awful. I felt like I was gonna pass out.

I don't feel like I need it and I'm training them so I know they perform at a high level. They're energy's high, they're strong, they're fast. You know, why am I not gonna push caffeine on them? Because I have a study that says it might improve their performance by 12.7%. You know, and on the other end of that, there are also, I think there's,

it's dose dependent, which you got, and when I've listened to your shows, you guys talk a lot about real world, which I always appreciated, because as someone who is an advocate of caffeine, and it's still my pre-workout supplement of choice, I also know when you,

I'm dealing with a lot of high school and college kids, if you say, oh, caffeine is good, take it pre-workout. If the NO explode says take one scoop, they're gonna take three before the workout. And I don't know if 800 milligrams of caffeine before we're gonna be running Hill sprints outside and the 102 degree weather, now caffeine's maybe not the best performance enhancer.

So I don't know, only look at the studies. I also, I'm looking at real world reality. Like I know this Johnny, and I know if he hears caffeine is good or one scoop is good, he's going to take three scoops when I'm not there. So maybe better off I tell him, now you don't need caffeine.

Now again, the scientist might say, oh, he's not up on the research. He just told this kid he doesn't need caffeine. No, it's because I've trained that kid for seven years, and I know him, and I know what he's gonna do when he leaves here, and that's me, that's more the art of coaching and communicating, and not just being book smart guy.

And I couldn't agree more with you. Now, understanding that context is everything, and I know that you focus mainly on the strength and conditioning aspect. How often do you talk to them about other aspects of their life to get that context? Like, well, how's your sleep, how's your relationships? Like, what's going on with your diet and that kind of stuff?

Every workout starts with while they're warming up. We have a pre-warm-up that each athlete, when they come in for their assessment, when we assess them, everyone's going to have, you guys, this is where the general pop and athletes kinda, it's all the same. You see the same issues, the short impacts, the shoulder issues, low back problems, tight hips, stiff ankles, knee pain, tendonitis.

Wherever their issues are, if someone comes to us with knee pain and we see it's because their ankles are really, really stiff and locked up and we're saying the reason why you have that pain, a little bit of pain in your knee when you sprint and jump is because your ankles are stiff, your body's trying to steal that mobility from your knee. So here's what I want you to do. Come in five, ten minutes.

We have all these pre-warmups up on the wall where you're going to do these three or four ankle mobility drills before we start the group warmup. Generally, we train our athletes, even our pro athletes in small groups, but we individualize it during, we have a pre-warmup that's very specific to their problem. Then they'll get more out of the general dynamic warmup where we're doing basic calisthenics just getting their core temperature up. I just bring that up because while they're doing those lower level pre-warm-up exercises that they kind of do

on their own, that's where I'm walking around the gym saying, hey, Sally, sleep last night, how's your girlfriend? How's your mom? And you develop a relationship with all that's, if you're a good coach, you develop a relationship with your clients, you get to know them. And that's when that conversation's taking place and I'm asking all those questions.

And if anyone I've ever trained will tell you to the point where they get annoyed with it because it's the same ones, how's your sleep? Would a jeep eat? Did you go out last night? Did you drink? How's your girlfriend? How's your wife?

How's the kids? And I'm listening more than I'm talking at that point, but I'm also looking at their face and their actions. That's another big one because most athletes will just get on autopilot and be like, no, I'm good, I'm good. No, yeah, I slept last night. Yeah, I had two drinks, but I'm fine.

And then you see them dragging ass and you're like, all right, they said they were fine, but I'm gonna. And then you see him drag and ask and you're like, all right, they said they were fine, but I'm gonna take it easy today. And that's where kind of auto-regulating your workout is so important. We teach this at our cert. I say as, I love programming. It's one of the most enjoyable aspects for me.

I love designing programs. Even having done it for 25 years at this point, I don't think there has been a workout in my life where I did not switch at least one thing on that card or that workout. Like there's always, and no matter how hard I try and how late I stay up and I try to factor in the conversations we had on that day,

and what they did last week, and what we're going to do, I factor in everything and still during the course of that work at some point I'm gonna go ask shit. No, let's not do that. Let's do this instead or you look good today Let's add a set, you know, it's constantly Auto-regulating and thinking on your feet. Oh, and this is the biggest problem that I have with group training I've been you know I've gotten a lot of shit for saying that I wish group training would die. For this exact reason, because I don't think I have ever designed a program

and followed my own program to an absolute key because you're always having, and that's already super individualized. I sat down, looked at all the mobility issues, aches, pains are dealing with what's going on, wrote it all out, then they get there, then we start training, and I see something, I see a hitch in their movement, I see like something going on with them.

And right away, I have to change what I decided to do on the fly, and that's just impossible to do in a group setting. Yeah, I agree. Now, no, you've been in fitness as long as you've have. You've seen the explosion and growth of social media to the point now where it's become. I would say the dominant way that a lot of people are getting their fitness information. You know, in the early days, it was the magazines, then the internet now, it's social media, Instagram. What are your thoughts on all this? Good, bad. Do you have any, any opinions on this?

Yeah, as you can see, I have an opinion on pretty much everything, but it's good and bad. I try my best to focus more on the positive. I think it's good in that I wouldn't be sitting here right now. If it wasn't for social media, I probably don't know who you guys are. You don't know who I am. You know, we don't connect. So for sharing information and connecting and reach as the, I hate the word, I hate the word influencer, but whatever the hell you wanna call me,

I hate that word too. That's stupid. It's dirty, dirty word. I call me an asshole before you call me a pro. I freaking hate that word, but whatever the hell we are, if we influence people, people respect our opinion, we could reach more now. Like that,

I love knowing that I could post something right now and reach hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people with one tweet or post. That's amazing because when you do it the other way, before social media, like working your ass off in a gym 12 hours a day and giving so much of you, and at the end of that day, you only help 12 people. You know, like that's how I started, one-on-one training around the clock, 10 to 12 sessions a day, and just answering, and answering pretty much the same questions over and over. And you're like, man, now I could put that out there and literally help 12 million as opposed to the just 12 that were in my gym.

So that's amazing, but as, I mean, I'm certainly not the first person to talk about the problem is there's no barrier for entry. You put, you put personal trainer in your Instagram bio or influencer or coach and your coach. Like there's no qualifications, there's no barrier, like there's literally nothing. And so it's hard for that 17, 18 year old, all of us when we were coming up,

I think we all probably started with the bodybuilding magazines and stuff, but there because there just wasn't as much information, we were forced to go to the gym and then try stuff. Now those kids go online and there's nine million different influencers giving them bullshit. Advice usually just trying to sell shit. And I just wish more of the younger kids would...

I did a post about it. I think so. That's when we reconnected was when I talked about, like, if you're gonna take information information from someone at least first asked yourself, did they, are, am I following this person because they provide any value to me? Like, am I just looking at this chick's ass or this guy's abs? And that's why I like following him or did it, did he, or she give some advice that helped me? And that's why I'm following them.

So many of these influencers, they don't provide any value. It's just more of a day in the life. Here's a picture of my food. Look at me, look at me. Here's a physique update of me, me, me, me, me. Look how much I lift, look how good I look. And then they try to sell you stuff. The old man in me is like, how freaking stupid are you?

You're divided shit, you know what I mean? But like, I also don't wanna sound like that old miserable guy that's, you know, hating on the young upcoming generation. I don't know who's more annoying. The influencers are the people dumb enough to buy from these people without doing their due diligence. Yeah, what it looks like to me is we have an explosion of information and knowledge.

People actually generally know more today than they did 22 years ago when I started in fitness, but the wisdom hasn't increased. Yeah, correct. So it's like, I've read all these things, I know keto diet, I know Macros now, whereas before I had to teach people this kind of stuff, I know a barbell squat, whereas before 20 years ago,

nobody was squatting on the globo gyms or whatever, but the wisdom hasn't increased because you don't have that experience of working with people. So you got these coaches online who are coaching people based off of their knowledge, whatever, but the wisdom has an increase because you don't have that experience of working with people. So you got these coaches online who are coaching people based off of their knowledge, but they never trained people for five, six, seven, ten years, so they don't have the experience that brings along that wisdom.

So that's where I see the big disconnect for you. I agree. If there was a way where you have to have at least, I think five years is minimum. I would agree. Five years of training people in person before you can be an online coach. 100% agree. Or post any information on Instagram or have a website. Like, I mean, that's, I don't know if there's any way to do that, but I feel like just myself,

even my first, the first, and I come up with the five year thing because the first product I ever put out was a VHS tape mastering the football combine tests and that was When I was training guys for the NFL combine after my fifth class and at that point I had trained Five years five years of training guys specifically for those tests, over 100 different athletes, 50 of which were 50 plus drafted to the NFL, all 100 of which improved their, you know, electrically timed 40s and vertical jump, like real measurable results for five years. Then I put out that first VHS tape and there And today I just did a little upgrade to it for our DeFranco Insider membership site.

And there's only two minor tweaks that I made. And I put that out in 2003. And now at 2019, I could say, and I'm not saying that to Bragg, I'm just saying I did it long enough and I had enough athletes that even all this time later, there's one or two minor tweaks, but if you, if you have a VHS player and you pop that tape in and that's how you trained right now, you would improve.

So that information is tried and true. If I would have put that out after my first year of training, you know, guys for the combine, a lot would have changed, but five years was like a nice time where I feel confident that you could coach people. But you have to, you have to coach people in person first before you become an honest person. There's just stuff you learn doing that. You can't learn from reading a book.

A hundred percent. You have to have that experience. Well, I don't even understand how it works right now. It blows my mind because I got into online coaching by accident. It was because when I got into competing and I was backstage and talking to all these pro bodybuilders that I would assume

knew everything about nutrition and training. It was completely the opposite. And so I just kind of fell into helping them out. That said, it started off, and it was all built by word of mouth. I didn't promote it on my website or anything. I just would be going to shows and people would be asking me questions because they knew I didn't have a coach. And I was like, man, these guys, they really have no clue.

They do a good job of starving their body and training like crazy. But they didn't have any understanding of nutrition and the understanding of programming. So I started coaching online, and one of the things that I found when I was coaching online it's extremely difficult to communicate the things that I would have to do in person. So I'd have to prod and ask a lot of questions

and send me a video of this and I was like, man, so when I see some of these kids that come up and they go right into online coaching and they've never training in person, I'm like, how do you even know what to fuck to ask them? Yeah, you know, like I had to lean on my 15 years at that time of experience before to even know what to ask to get to the questions so that I can then coach

to what I needed to do. 100% and that's why I stopped. I started online coaching just more so with athletes I was training in person, if they would travel or like I would design their, I would send them workouts to do, you know, and quote unquote, do some online coaching with them. And even those that I work with in person, it got to the point where I couldn't charge enough to warrant the amount of time I was spending, writing out descriptions, running, I'd be home,

I'd run into my basement, I have a small home gym, so I'd run into my basement, film an exercise because I couldn't explain it good enough, and I wanted to tweak a little bit from what I did with him previously. It was so much work, like I was like, this is overwhelming, I can't do this and I've been doing this for two decades, yet you have a 22 year old that's like,

oh, I have 50 online clients. And I think, like, you can't do that right. You can't do that right. That's exact, the exact reason why I scaled out of it. I was like, I just, I, it's not worth it to me financially. I don't feel good about how much I need to charge for the amount of time and effort I need to put into fundamentally change your health, these people.

So yeah, it baffles me when I see that. Integrity, I think, you know, if you have integrity, you're gonna think twice about that stuff for a quick money grab. You know, it works. Absolutely. One thing for me too, I learned later on in my career was, I started to read these old books written by old times,

strong man and bodybuilders, and I couldn't believe some of the wisdom that came out of those books. Like I started to read some of these old workouts that these old bodybuilders did, and they seemed so basic, but then I try them out. And I'm like, holy shit, or I'd read these diets, like Vince Garanda would write about eating cholesterol

like crazy. And then I came across a study that said, there may be something to this, and I increased my cholesterol and I got stronger, my performance, do you ever look back at old training methodologies and stuff and see if you can pick up some tips and stuff from those? Oh yeah, a lot of the, I feel like the more you learn,

the more you go back and the, because I do love variety, I think there is something to, you know, we all love training, but I know myself, I like to do a new exercise and not to be you know, we all love training, but I know myself, I like to do a new exercise, and not to be gimmicky, just to prevent being bored, I like trying new stuff. I found, with a lot of my programs, we incorporate three-week mini-cycles where the, you know, the goals remain the same and the templates pretty much the same, but we just cycle exercises. It's more kind of like a Westside barbell approach where you're cycling exercises

in just because I found my athletes like that variety. It gives them something to look forward to kind of that feeling of always progressing. But with that being said, when it's also, when you, you're go to is just the old school stuff that works. The basic barbell lifts, you know, squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, carry. Like the fundamental movements, fundamental exercises, they work.

The old five by five system, I go back to a lot with new clients. The strong man training, that was, a lot of that originated when like, people didn't have formalized gyms, well equipped gyms, so they lifted stones and pushed cars. And that was like a minimalist approach. Somehow, we were doing that, like I said,

back in 1998 when I started my gym in 2003, that formed the foundation, because I didn't have money to have, I only had three pieces of equipment. So a lot of the training was dragon sleds, flipping tractor tires, pushing my Tahoe. People somehow crossed the came along, like they invented that stuff.

That's the old school bare bones basic stuff you're talking about that. While a lot of things come and go, I feel like the old school stuff is what remains tried and true. Right. How do you feel about, how do you navigate through a lot of this new technology that emerges with HRV and different ways to track people's stress levels and things like that?

Do you incorporate that all in your gym or you keep of like, you know, keep that a little bit to the side. We do, listen, I, we want even at my, my quote unquote, gym now, which is more just like a private little lab. If you, when you just walk in there, it's not very impressive. It's not like my old gym where people would walk in like, oh, this is bad ass. It's cool, but it doesn't look like much, but we pride ourselves in having every gadget, everything you need in this little thousand square feet we have. If I feel like it's gonna improve performance,

I'm gonna get it. So we have things like Tendo units and things to track HRV and new piece of equipment and Cameron, my head coach over there is more into the technology. He kind of keeps me up today. I'm not the greatest with technology. If something works, we keep it.

But again, from a practicality standpoint and dealing with a lot of athletes, I found, as far as like recovery, I haven't, what works great for me, I have a cheap $20 hand dynamometer on my desk. Athletes come in, they squeeze it. I, that's part of our assessment. I have a baseline, doing a quick little grip test, pre-workout gives super, super accurate. That's fucking brilliant. Absolutely love that.

Scary how accurate that is by the way. Oh, it makes perfect sense. It's so, I had Mickey Gawl, UFC fighter, especially the UFC guys, because they're doing so much training, and he's always gonna lie. He always feels great. And you know, it's no matter what I say, 27 workouts. I feel great, I feel great. And I haven't squeezed the thing, and you know, he would be, I forget what it's, which the one I have is measured in, but it say it's pounds of pressure.

If he's, there's days where he'd be off like 30, 40 pounds, he's telling me, feels great. And I know, just make a little note to myself, I warm him up and I don't, I'm, you know, I'm into the psychological aspect, so I'm not gonna tell him, oh, we're gonna take it easy today, but I see that, we warm up and I'll make him, you know, think like it's planned. Oh yeah, today's perfect. Yeah, your grip was take it easy today, but I see that. We warm up and I'll make him think like it's planned.

Oh yeah, today's perfect. Yeah, your grip was down a little bit, but I had planned active recovery today anyway. We're gonna do some mobility. So a little bit of neck, some core training. We're gonna call it a day. But yeah, anybody listening, if you don't have the money, or you're not big in the technology for,

for nice things. I have never heard that. I had really gotten a mom at her. No, it's brilliant. That is brilliant. So what do you do? I have never heard that. I had really gotten a mom at her. No, it's brilliant. That is brilliant. So what do you do? You have them cheating that. No.

You have them squeezing it and get a baseline when they're fresh and strong. And if you stay during the assessment, I go squeeze this as hard as you can, right hand left hand, give them a minute, have a seat, and just right like that. And I do it the first week. Just so after the first week,

I really get the baseline. I kind of see where they're at. I keep that in their folder and two seconds. It's right. Yeah, by all means, still, because I didn't invent it. I heard it somewhere. Somebody told it to me. Not great.

But you know, like the grip and the nerves in your hand, it's just such a great way to measure that. Easy way to measure that. CNS, fatigue, and output. Yep. Oh, brilliant. And also, you know, heart rate first thing in the morning, if you don't

want to get all into the variability, just take you. I have a little notepad right by my little end table on my bed when I wake up before I get out of bed in the morning, take my heart rate. And if I know if I'm within three or four beats, I'm kind of good, but there's days if your heart rate is elevated mornings, you know, for me, my baseline, if it's like 65 beats a minute, there's been mornings, I wake up and it's 82 like in those are night, I didn't sleep, travel, stressed, whatever. I know, maybe it's better off that you, you know, I take a recovery day, I go for a walk in the morning and do some mobility. If you had a max effort squat session scheduled for that day,

and listen, I'm not saying, I don't want, I think a lot of people, they don't need an excuse to be an even more of a pussy than they already are. But I think that your audience and people that listen to me for the most part, want to train and are into it, and we almost need to pull the reins in a little bit. So for them, I don't, I think it's a good advice for the heart rate first thing in the morning,

resting heart rate, or the hand dynamometer before you train. Just do the hand, do it the same time. We do it pre-workout right when they walk in the gym before they start their pre-warm up, squeeze it, and that gives me as coach. Pretty good in the catch. I love them. I'm gonna buy one for myself. No, I love me as coach. Pretty good education. I love that.

I'm gonna buy one for myself. No, I love that. And that's another example too of where context matters, you just made it a great point is, and I have a hard time even on this show, we answer a lot of questions. And I think people get annoyed because we always answer, we start every answer with, well, depends.

It depends, yeah. And then we go into this whole, the more you know, it depends. The more you know, it depends. Yeah, it depends. But it's just so true because it's exactly right. Who I'm talking to, I wanna send the right message

back to like your caffeine comment, back into that. Like, you know, my client who has no motivation is lazy, can't ever go to the gym, like giving them an excuse not to train. They're looking for an excuse. I'm gonna hold back probably some of that information so I might not tell that person that, where then I have my athlete who, I have to always pull the reins back. Like, I'm gonna hold back probably some of that information. So I might not tell that person that. Where then I have my athlete who I have to always pull the reins back.

Like I'm gonna inform him some things like that. So that's, and I feel like that's for almost everything. So it's a really challenging thing as a coach. And it's because we've all, and I think that's why we came together and I wanted, you know, I flew out here just to be on this podcast is after hearing you guys, we're so, there's in the new social media world, there's so few people that have actually done it for 15 plus years in the real world and then are giving the information out there. And that's why we have so much in common, I think, even if we've had different types of clients,

when you train real people in person for over a decade, two decades, these are the type of things. It's just, is that way the more you know, the more you realize that the answer depends on ABCD. If I had a podcast 20 years ago, I would have had the answer for everything. What's the best way to improve speed? Oh, this exercises, I would have had the answer for everything. What's the best way to improve speed?

Oh, this exercises, I would list exercises and programs. Now you know that's not the answer. And people don't like it, depends. They want to be told exactly what to do, but I don't know, we all have integrity so we don't feel good giving. Have you ruffled any feathers in the academia world because I know that sometimes we we ruffle some feathers that way too because again back to the you know sure a study says this for

a controlled group of 30 people that did X Y and Z only but in real world that doesn't always apply. The big the big one for me was the sprinting with a heavy sled or heavy sled drags in the track and field community and the speed community for well over a decade. I was just the uneducated meathead with 890 on his SATs who was a strength guy and do nothing about biomechanics of speed. Yadayada, because their thing was kind of train slow, be slow, dragging a heavy ass sled Is not going to make you faster and that was I Never here's the thing. I was they almost Didn't give me enough credit like I never classified it as a speed exercise

I get the whole you know principle of dynamic correspondence and I understand it for an exercise to truly be considered specific. It's got to match the direction, the duration, and the speed of the movement that you're trying to improve. So dragging a heavy ass sled 20 yards is not the same as sprinting as fast as I can for 20 yards. But it does match enough of the criteria where we classify that as a special strength exercise or like general specific, a little more specific. People have no problem saying, hey, sprinters squat, right? They all have strong legs. So it's acceptable for them to squat. But somehow when I would say heavy ass sled drags are the best exercise I do outside

of sprinting to improve sprinting speed. I got crushed with studies saying, if you're dragging or running with a heavy weight, it's gonna slow you down, it's gonna alter mechanics. And for 10 years, I had no studies, but I coached, I log all my training sessions. So from 1998 to 2016, from 1998 to 2016, I logged over 30,000 10 yard sprints that I coached. Wow. And that's like a real number.

That's not me just throwing shit out there. And I have the data of, you know, dragging a heavy... Both, again, to give you context, like a contrast training pairing where you would drag a heavy sled, wait a couple of seconds, and then run a sprint, and then also assessing an athlete, training them, incorporating heavy-ass sled drags in their programming as a main strength movement, and then testing weeks or months later. 99% of the time for the majority of athletes, they were getting faster even though it's a quote unquote slow movement.

And for me, it just made, well, a, I had fully electric times to prove it. So my thing was, that's a great study. That was six weeks with 12 college kids. I have 30,000 ten yard electrically time ten yard sprints with high school college and professional athletes from all over the freaking world for two decades. So awesome study, but this shit's working for me, and that's why they're flying from all over the world to come train with me.

And it makes sense, just be again, your speed is all about, if you wanna simplify, it's forced into the ground. You need to apply force into the ground at the right biomechanical position in the right direction. That's the foundation for running faster. Then you could talk about stride length and frequency and all that, but it's forced into the ground.

And most athletes, most sports team sports are played in acceleration. So that first 10 to 15 yards is the most important. And the shorter the distance, the more it heavily relies on strength and and power. It's not as as much the elastic component of the muscle. That's more when you hit max velocity. So I saw these heavy ass sled drags enhancing their techniques. Start. Because it put them in the right, think about it.

If we load it up a sled, we went out into the gym. I loaded up a sled. If it's the first thing, if it's really heavy, the first thing you're going to do, if you're standing upright and you try to drag it, you're not going to go anywhere. First thing you're going to do is lean forward. So you're going to have to kind of just naturally, if I don't even coach you, you're not gonna go anywhere. First thing you're gonna do is lean forward. So you're gonna have to kind of just naturally, if I don't even coach you,

you're gonna drop your upper body in front of your legs, you're gonna get that lean so you could push into the ground. Then when you take your first step, if you overstried, which is a big mistake with a lot of athletes, when they go to run, and you tell them, you know, when you accelerate, you wanna cover ground, take big steps. The first thing they're gonna do, take big steps. The first thing they're going to do,

take big steps is a horrible coaching cue, because they're just going to step out in front of their hip, create that breaking force, and slow themselves down. If you try to do that with a heavy-ass sled drag, you won't go anywhere. You can't move forward until you are in that perfect 45-degree lean or close to it, and you maintain a positive shenanga, which means your knee stays in front of your foot.

So your foot applies force back into the turf or into the ground to propel you forward. You can't drag a heavy sled improperly. And that's why I loved it. It's minimal coaching cues, sets them up in a proper position and strengthens the muscles involved in accelerating at the most specific joint angles imaginable. So you're getting the strength benefit.

It's the only way to you can't practice accelerating at a slow speed. It's the only thing in in sports or it's the only activity that we can't slow down. You know, if, uh, and sorry, I know this is like one of those rants, I feel. It's a great rank. Keep going. Yeah. If you suck at baseball, I'm not going to make you go play major league baseball and try to hit a hundred mile an hour fast ball. You're going to hit off of a T. Then I'm going to, you know, underhand it, like, you know, if you're a dad, all the dads out there do nice soft toss. And then like you gonna, you know, underhand it, like, you know, if you're a dad, all the dads out there do, nice soft toss.

And then like you do, yeah, so that's how you learn. If you suck at sprinting and accelerating, I can't say, okay, listen, we're gonna work on your mechanics, let's jog a couple 10 yard sprints. Because it's not a sprint, everything's different. Yeah, you can't, because in order to practice the mechanics, you need to be running as fast as you can, that lean, the angles, you can't practice it slow.

The one way to hack that is a heavy-ass sled drag. So, you know, the four stages of learning a new skill, that conscious competence, that third stage where you're good at it, if you have the time to think about it and be coached, I would always kind of sell the heavy ass sled drags as the conscious competence phase where, as a coach, I'm walking alongside of you as you're dragging a heavy ass sled

and I'm telling you, okay, keep that forward body lean, drive that foot back into the turf, you know, drive it fully extend. And I'm not yelling all these cues at once. I'm picking one and I'm coaching you as you slowly walk 10, 15 yards, you could consciously think about what a perfect acceleration angle looks and feels like. Then we get rid of that sled.

You do that enough, not only did you rehearse a perfect 10, you strengthen the muscles at very specific joint angles. So you're going to be applying more force into the ground with each step. That's how you're going to freaking run and accelerate faster. I did it for 20 years, but there's no research to back it. Recently a couple years ago, JB Marin, a researcher at a France and a couple others really headed up and started pioneering and proving heavy sled sprinting and dragging one of the best things you could do for short sprints and accelerating. And you talk about DMs blowing up.

It felt kind of good because for 20 years I was, oh look, another study that says you're an idiot. Another, and now everyone's sending me all these studies that this guy is backing these heavy ass sleds, sprints and drags and people are quoting my articles from 2003 and I think 1998, before even had my own gym, I had written some stuff on it. So, and by the way, while that's great,

I'm not gonna be a hypocrite. Like, I'm not gonna only support research when it supports me, but it is nice. So that was the biggest thing in my world, dealing with athletes and being like a speed guy. I was always knocked for like, oh, he's not a track guy. He doesn't know about sprint mechanics.

He just trained some football players that were probably really slow and they got faster. Like while I never trained, are you saying, Bolt, no, no one has, like that's literally one of one. I've trained dudes that ran four, three, four, two, you know, in the 40, like elite, elite level athletes that got faster. Miles Austin, I named like like I could name hundreds. So it's it's worked with elite athletes

And it was nice that the research has finally caught up to that. Sorry for that long ass ramp. That was like the culmination of my life's work Yeah, and being told that you know you suck your an idiot. It's it's it's cool that now I got some people that you know you suck you're an idiot it's it's it's cool that now I got some people backing me with it. Oh shit Joe we appreciate you man. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate you guys man. Thanks for having me. Not everybody. Hey what one last thing before we hang up I'd like to talk a little bit more in depth about your certification because I'm gonna hold you accountable to doing this right now I really would just getting to know you even more than what we already did know you. I think it would be great to know you even more than what we already did know you.

I think it would be great to have you come out and host a certification in our facility. Really? Done deal. Talk a little bit about what that looks like. I think you made some good points about you guys really formulated a certification that you felt was applicable to a trainer that could go right away the first day back and start helping. What are some of the things that you think is different about your certification

that separates you from the average service out there? Well, first of all, thank you for saying that. And I will hold you guys accountable. One thing I liked about listening to your show and why it is now on my short list of podcasts is because you guys are honest. So, you not only are we going to have one here, I would love, I want you guys obviously to be here

and give your honest opinion on it. If you think it sucks, come on here and tell everybody fucking sucks. I feel, I highly doubt if you will say that, but I know you will be honest. So that's why we'll hold each other accountable there. Why it is different is because both Smitty and I had every certification you could name when I first started my business, my entire back wall was lined with certifications.

And I ultimately replaced those with football, you know, signed jerseys and it's like kind of more real world time. Way cooler. Yeah, cooler stuff that, real people that I actually helped. But our thing was why, and I think I've heard you guys bash weekend certifications as they should be, but why do we have one

and why is it different? Not only because of the curriculum, which wasn't put together in a weekend, it's literally 40 plus years of combined experience. Years it took us, once we decided we wanted to change the game, took us a couple of years to come up with the curriculum. There is 12 DVDs, eight manuals that go along with it. It's from pre-workout movement prep assessments

that we're talking about, but super practical any trainer can do very easy assessments and then what to do with the findings during those assessments. Big problem is people learn all these assessments, they do them, they find all the shit wrong with their clients and then they just throw them in a group exercise class and don't address any of the issues anyway. So then we show you how to train for each one of those dysfunctions or imbalances and everything from learning the basic

fundamental movement patterns, how to squat, how to hinge, how to lunge, push, pull, carry, breathing, bracing, strength training, program design, speed training, power development. I just scratched the surface with some of those things here today, but all of it is covered in the sir. And at the end, you just, this might not be a great sale for it, but you don't just

get certified by showing up. We give you all the tools necessary, but then you go home, actually send videos of, actually send us videos of you coaching and implementing the things that you learned on top of a written test. Then that's how you become certified. Then we have a level two. That's a little bit more of the practical application. And finally, what we're literally finalizing right now that we're gonna launch it next month is our CPPS Masters class or, I don't know what we're gonna call it yet, but probably like a CPPS Masters class or community

where we're gonna do Facebook Live, Semini and I will do Facebook Live kinda seminars. We'll pick a topic each month or each quarter and address all of the coaches. You will have to attend those or if you can't attend it live, you will get credit for watching the video. We'll do an hour or two covering the newest topics, newest trends in the industry. If we changed anything, we don't have egos where just because it's in the sir, we won't change it. Our sir has changed and evolved over the course of the seven years

So we're gonna keep everybody up to date with that. It's gonna be ongoing and have an open Q&A format within those live You know those masters classes you will actually have direct contact with Smitty and I at least four times a year throughout the process in order to maintain that cert. So we feel like this Master's class is a great way to keep our trainers on the cutting edge and to keep them sharp, not just, you know, you take a certification 10 years ago and then it's just hanging on your wall.

And we don't want trainers that are implementing this stuff. We wanna make sure everybody's up to date. And our goal is for those letters. If you see a trainer with CPS letters after their name, we want it to mean something. We don't want them to just be a bunch of letters. So it's been our life's work. I appreciate you let me take the time

to kind of share a little bit more about it. And we will 100% host one here. I appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely, man. Thanks again, Joe. Thank you guys, man. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps performance, and maps aesthetic.

Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having sound and an adjustment as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank

you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.