Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2522: Athletic Training Secrets With Alex Whitehair

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Athletic Training Secrets with Alex Whitehair His background in the fitness and training space. (1:57) Where did he get his inspiration? (6:32) Translating application to action. (7:41) How he assesses an athlete. (12:48) The challenge of working with an athlete and not disrupting their timing or technique. (15:21) How athletes are SO different from sport to sport. (18:16) The difficulty in communicating recovery to his athletes. (20:23) The various training modalities and how he would use them. (21:25) Why if you’re going to add in one area, you need to dial back in another area. (24:10) Risk vs reward. (27:03) Why training cycles are important. (29:17) The tools he uses and why. (33:05) Exercises with the most value. (35:08) A sports connoisseur. (42:43) The most difficult athlete to train. (43:54) Proud athlete comeback story. (48:29) Lessons learned from Bruce Lee’s training. (52:31) How he uses isometrics with his athletes. (58:09) The differences between training men and women. (59:48) Plyometrics AREN’T meant for conditioning. (1:03:37) What does his business model look like? (1:10:00) Downsides of building a business on social media. (1:11:19) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit MASSZYMES by biOptimizers for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP10 at checkout** January Promotion: New Year's Resolutions Special Offers (New to Weightlifting Bundle | Body Transformation Bundle | New Year Extreme Intensity Bundle | Body Transformation Bundle 2.0  ** Savings up to $350! ** Fundamentals of Biomechanics Mind Pump #2402: The 5 Reasons Why Walking is King for Fat Loss (Burn More Fat than Running & How to Do it Correctly) Padres' Tommy Pham settles strip club lawsuit, working to get strength back from stabbing Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest/People Mentioned Alex Whitehair (@realgame.athletics) Instagram Website Paul J. Fabritz (@pjfperformance) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is mind pump in today's episode. Training to maximize athletic performance, strength,

and power, and agility, it can be a mystery. Well today we have expert trainer, Alex Whitehair on the podcast. We found him on social media a long time ago. He trains people exceptionally well using techniques and having an understanding that we haven't seen with a lot of other people. In today's episode we're talking about

athletic training secrets with this guy. And again, he blew our mind. He's gonna be, he's amazing. You're gonna love this episode. By the way, you can find him on Instagram at realgame.athletics. Go check him out. He's got great great stuff. Now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor Bioptimizers. So Bioptimizers makes a product called Massizimes. These are digestive enzymes that increase the optimization or the utilization of proteins fats and carbohydrates how much Well, you can take your protein increase the amino acid utilization by a thousand percent or more makes your protein much more Effective helps with digestive issues good stuff. Everybody should be using mass times. Go check them out. Go to buy optimizers calm

That's bi Optim izer s dot.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump 10 get 10% off. Also 48 hours left for the January special. So these are workout program bundles meaning multiple workout programs put together. Each bundle is $300 off or more. Here they are. We have the new to weightlifting bundle, the body transformation bundle, the new year extreme intensity bundle, and the body transformation bundle 2.0.

All of them, $300 off or more. Go check them out. Go to mapsjanuary.com. All right, here comes the show. Alex, welcome to the show. Great, thanks for having me. You got it. So we found you on Instagram because.

Don't take the credit for it. Well, everything we do is a week.... We do. Don't take the credit for it. Well, everything we do is a we. That's true. You guys showed me. We're a collective. Yeah, you guys showed me, but it's not common to see really, really good trainers who understand exercise biomechanics application also get popular on social media. You tend to see the

kind of like I have abs, type of deal or whatever. But the way that you train athletes, the way that you perform exercises and demonstrate and explain, I mean, you know what you're doing. You really do know what you're doing. And we have a lot of trainers and coaches that listen to the show.

So we thought we'd have you on to kind of talk about this a little bit. If you wouldn't mind kind of talking about your background a little bit first for people who don't know and then I'd love to ask you some questions about your training. Well, first of all, thank you very much. I know you guys had a lot of incredible guests on here, so it's a real honor to be sitting in that same chair. And I really appreciate all that. Yeah, I guess I started out as an athlete, played hockey my whole life, martial arts. That's kind of my athletic background. And I didn't really get into the training side of things until I had a back injury when I was young. I had scoliosis

and that sort of threw off my hips a lot. I was about 15 or 16 when that happened. And at that point, I was like, okay, I went from being in shape to this crazy amount of pain, I could barely move. How did you find out? How did you get diagnosed? I mean, you. So I went to a bunch of doctors. I went to a bunch of chiropractors, orthopedics, like all sorts of specialists.

And they all just kind of said the same thing. Like we don't see a whole lot on the x-rays and you know, you should be all right. I'm like, oh, but I'm not. You know? And so I bounced around different chiropractors and stuff. And I was that guy after a while that I was like, oh, this stuff doesn't work until so I bounced around different chiropractors and stuff.

And I was that guy after a while that I was like, oh, this stuff doesn't work until I did find a great chiropractor in Rochester that really helped me. And at least got me back to where I could be a functioning human. But the difference between being a functioning human and going through your day to day and getting on the ice and playing, you know, full contact hockey is a big difference. So I'm like, okay, let me try to figure out how to get myself back in shape. And that's when I sort of dove into the training side of things.

Cause I tried physical therapy, didn't really help. It helped to the point where I could, I was good at the positions that they had me doing like planks and squats and stuff. But then once I got outside of those basic positions, it, it wasn't the same. So I'm like, okay, I started reading three, four hours a day. Um, really just trying to figure out, okay, how can I play pain free?

Cause I'm experiencing things out there that I'm not feeling in the gym, you know? So let me figure out what are these things? I actually started with like physics, like, okay, I'm feeling forces, right? What's force? Okay. What's a force vector? You know what I mean? And, okay, I'm feeling forces, right? What's force? Okay, what's a force vector? You know what I mean?

And I'm experiencing lateral forces and rotational forces. And so I started with like as basic as you could go. And then I worked up there and sort of got into now, how does, how does this sort of flow into anatomy? How do I counteract these forces or get comfortable with them, right? What muscles are responsible for that? So kept doing that and, you know, praise God got myself back in the game. And then I started playing. I played in Canada for a bit, played in Sweden,

started doing some personal training just on the side because I was like, I really enjoy it. And started the Instagram page and I was like, well, this stuff helped me. Let's see if it helps anyone else. Didn't really have any expectations whatsoever. And, you know, it turned out started helping a lot of people. And a lot of the guys I played with high level hockey players and stuff. So they wanted to start training with me. And this was before I was even like a personal trainer per se.

And I was working with these guys, you know, getting some results and, uh, just sorta branched off from there. And then after my hockey career, I just went into it full time. Wow. So this is all self-taught. Yes, sir. Started with physics. Yeah.

I've never heard anybody go that direction first. That's really interesting. Yeah. I mean, what do you think about sports are really just all physics. Absolutely. It's a foot colliding with the ground, a bat colliding with a ball.

And I don't claim to be a physics expert per se, but I do my best. And I really started with that because it was a matter of trying to figure out what I was experiencing out there. And I feel like I couldn't come up with the exercises I needed to unless I really understood on the simplest level what I was feeling. And then once I sort of got an idea, like, okay, now I get it. Then I started sort of coming up with exercises that made me more comfortable in those scenarios. This makes a lot of sense though.

Seeing a lot of these like exercises you're performing in your videos. They're so innovating and unique. Uh, I would say like, I haven't seen a lot of these movements before, cause I was going to ask you like where you got your inspiration from in terms of other strength coaches out there other Modalities or certifications or anything that was there anybody else that kind of stood out that you're like picking stuff from I Mean the biggest inspiration was pain

Pretty potent ones right But I mean, I just more so watched a lot of athletes. Like I was a big Bruce Lee fan and you know, just, I read a lot online and the coolest thing about today, the internet certainly has its drawbacks, but it also has anything you could ever want to learn about, right? So any study, you know, any even book they use at the highest level in colleges, you could find yourself.

You could find lectures and all that. So I couldn't name anyone off the top of my head, but if I had a topic that I was interested in, I would just look it up and I would find an answer and then I would just kind of branch off from there. I think it's important for the audience to know how I found you. I don't think your page was that big yet when I first reached out, because it was a couple years ago when I first reached out. And just like Justin said, you know, and I remember this when I found Paul Fabritz, I found Paul Fabritz early on who's a, you know, athletic trainer for NBA players and

stuff like that. And the same thing kind of, the same thing went off for me is like, I remember finding his page, I remember seeing your page, and I'm seeing things that I'd never seen before, but yet they made sense and I knew why you were doing it. That was what blew my mind. Cause there's a lot of stuff where people do a lot of creative random shit that is just, doesn't make sense. And the application is ridiculous.

But right away I could see what you were, but yet I had never seen it before. That drew me to your page right away. I was just like, it's not often that I see a trainer doing movements and stuff that I had never seen before, but then I can look at it and go, oh shit, I know what he's doing. That's sick. So the big challenge with what Adam's saying is the typical trainer may think to themselves, okay, let me see if I can strengthen what I'm seeing on the field.

And what they do is they merely copy what happens on the field and add resistance in some way. So, you know, oh, there's running, there's swinging, let's add weight to a bat and have him swing, or let's, oh, he's a boxer, let's have weighted gloves, maybe that'll whatever. And so, and that's a challenge. How did you look at what happens in the field?

And rather than just replicating it, how did you go from that to exercises that can contribute to better performance on the field? Yeah, well, I think it's the positions, it's the movement patterns, and where you run into sometimes a bit of problem with trying to just load a specific movement is a lot of these movements come from the legs and the core.

If you try to just load the movement, the arms come into the equation and now you're messing up the whole movement pattern. Yeah. So you just got to make sure when you start working those positions and those movement patterns that you're not over emphasizing the weaker muscles of the kinetic chain, if you will. And the stuff that you think you haven't seen before necessarily, you probably have seen before to some degree subconsciously. You just don't realize it until you see it in an

exercise that's being wrapped out, right? So it's like, how can we work these things like, you know, stability, mobility with stability? Because that's what athletics is. It's all the different aspects of fitness sort of merged together, right? So I guess to answer your question, it was the different aspects of fitness sort of merged together. So I guess to answer your question, it was just a matter of really studying sport and understanding the forces

and what muscles are going to take on the load. And it's like, okay, if I do this one movement on the field, I know the majority of the effort is coming from the lower body and say the posterior chain. I got to make sure that I can do something similar to this, but load those more powerful muscles that are actually responsible for the action. Do you remember the first thing that you went and applied or practiced and then watched it translate to the ice or whatever? Do you remember what it was? Yeah, yeah. I started doing a lot of anti-rotation and anti-lateral flexion. Because like I said, throwing those hits, taking those hits, I would still do it, but it didn't necessarily feel good.

And I'm like, OK, why can I not brace for these like I can say if I'm bracing on a squat, right? And I realized because I'm experiencing those rotational forces and those lateral forces. So I'm like, okay, I have to work isometrically and to counteract those more specifically. And that's when it started the, to really translate. And I could feel the difference when I started working that isometric strength,

but from a whole bunch of different angles. And I still remember, I think the first game where I was able to throw a hit without feeling any sort of pain, I was like, huh, all right, here we go. You know, like, let's see what this body can do now, you know, and from then on, I just sort of branched out and then I got into some isodynamic stuff, right? Cause you can't just be completely isometric or

you can't be a statue out there. So you got to be able to, say, engage your core isometrically while keeping your body moving dynamically. So that's kind of where it started, and then it just sort of grew from there. So obviously, the physics background, which is so cool to hear how you reverse engineered that, can you recall another subject, another book,

or another person that you started to pick up, started to add to that, that was the next. Because I feel like the physics was obviously the base. Sure, sure. That was huge to reverse engineer it. Yeah. Then you remember the next, oh, wow, that unlocked another level of what I was doing.

Do you remember what it was? There was this one book I got. It was a great book. It's called The Fundamentals of Biomechanics. And it really intertwines physics really well with anatomy. And I thought that was really cool. So that definitely helped my understanding. And it really intertwines physics really well with anatomy. And I thought that was really cool. So that definitely helped my understanding.

But then more so it was just application, I think, and hands-on learning, like working with athletes. Because everyone's so unique, right? And seeing how these methods affected them versus somebody else, it's not like you could get, you could take two different athletes, give them the same thing, and get the same result necessarily. You might get two different results based on their strengths and weaknesses.

Talk about that a little bit. How, cause you, I mean, that's another high level. That's another real important, or I think a thing that I see a lot with like, uh, trainers that kind of don't know is like, they learn like a plyometric exercise and it's like, that's what they teach to every single athlete. Yeah. Talk about how you, because I know you've worked with a lot of different types of athletes, what it's like assessing them, and kind of what you're looking for.

And then what makes you go, oh, I'm going to take him or her in this direction, or focus on this first, because you see whatever. Yeah. So I start very broad. I think sometimes it's easy to get to tunnel vision, and like, oh, let me look at their ankle, or let me me look at their hip flexion hip extension I just watch the move to start um sometimes there's a lot of video on that sometimes I do it through some movement assessments and I just go off my first impression like is this

something that looks like they're tight when they move is this something that looks a little unstable when they move and most people could do this that's the crazy part is like most people could take that very broad look and make a pretty accurate assessment. Like if you name an athlete, you can be like, oh yeah, they're super explosive or they're super smooth. You know? It's like, OK.

So I see that and then I get more specific, right? But I don't want to, it's like if you look too close at a painting, right? You miss the bigger picture. Yeah, yeah. So I start with that. And then if I see the instability or if there's some stiffness to their movement, a lot of times that stiffness will come from just one area. They're

not completely stiff. It might be their hamstrings that are a bit tight, but that's going to make them look stiff overall. You address that and you kind of fix that overall movement issue. But then you got all the different training methods right and I look at all the training methods almost as like martial arts like coming from a martial arts background where you're going to pick and choose which one the athlete needs so you might need someone that needs a little bit more of a power lifting style if they need to really gain strength or if somebody's just has a lot of underdeveloped muscles you'll even take a sort of a bodybuilding approach just to improve that mind muscle connection

and develop those muscles. Pliometrics, of course, mobility. And I think it when you, it's like MMA, right? If you've got somebody that's a good striker and they're going in to MMA, you're like, okay, we gotta work on that grappling to get you on par to make sure you're well-rounded, right? So I kind of look at all the different fields of training

like martial arts, and I'm like, okay, which martial art, if you will, does this athlete need to optimize their performance? And to this day, I've never made a program that looked much like another program I made. So I'll become super specific to the athlete. One of the challenges, I've heard this communicated before a long time ago, and it blew my mind,

is when you're working with a high level athlete, I'll use an example of earlier I talked about weighted gloves for boxing, right? The reason why you don't take a top boxer and just have him use weighted hands and shadow box is because you might make his arms and shoulders stronger but you throw his timing off. Now he's throwing hands that are heavier

than what he's gonna throw in the ring, throws his timing off and Now he's throwing hands that are heavier than what he's going to throw in the ring. Throws his timing off. And so his skill degrades and it makes him a worse boxer. How, talk about the challenge of working with an athlete and not throwing off their timing or their technique. Like, cause I could take, if I snap my fingers and made every athlete in the world 50% stronger, some would be better. Some would be worse

because they don't have the ability to utilize in time properly with this new power or what have they developed. Talk about the challenge of doing that. Yeah, I mean, every athlete, like I said, it's an individual case, right? And you gotta sorta know who they are as an athlete, know who they are as a person.

And I find guys will move a lot of times almost like their personalities, you know, it's tough to have noticed, but it's really that specific. And if you've got someone that is a very intense already, then you've got to really be careful loading up certain movements because they will

sacrifice some technique and some timing just to increase their output. Right. So it really is on a case by case basis. And sometimes you do the opposite with an athlete. If you've got somebody who's real intense, like, Hey, we need to loosen up a little bit. Let's drop some of the weight and just focus on being loose and fluid. Yeah, it's the, uh, the tricky part is always just not overdoing one area. Like you talk about making an athlete 50% stronger, right?

And strength really isn't, um, it's hard to be a negative thing, but it's the time that you're going to put into it. They can be a negative thing. Like if you take an athlete away from other things, like's the time that you're going to put into it. They can be a negative thing. Like if you take an athlete. You can take away from other things. Yeah. Like let's say you're in that upper, like 5% or 1% of your squat, right? Well, now I'm going to have to really trust you to get another 1%. But we got other areas that we can hit where you can gain 20 to 30% real quick.

If you guys remember when you started working out, you probably made those gains, those early gains really quick. The newbie gains, right? Well, you can make those gains, those early gains really quick, the newbie gains, right? Well, you can make those same gains in other areas, like mobility and balance. Um, the problem is those areas are just harder to quantify than lifting necessarily. But, uh, they're very real, obviously they're very real. It's just like you, you don't have the numbers like you do on a lift. So I guess to answer your question, you look at some of those other areas too. Be like, okay, do we need to just load this up to get the best result or can

we dive into some other areas and boost your overall performance quicker and better that way? That's a, okay, that's a really cool, at least a really cool question because I think of like the average person, I think the same way when I'm trying to train a client, there's, there seems to be, okay, there's a bunch of things that we can do, but I know over here, there's so much room to go, so that's where I'm gonna put my energy and focus.

So because I'm gonna get the greatest return. Doesn't mean that I couldn't have focused over here and got return there too, it's just like, if I'm gonna spend an hour, I'm gonna spend an hour here because I'm gonna get the greatest ROI. Is there, when you look at athletes, are there things you see in common? Like almost all, I'm going to do something here

because that's going to be there. Do you find things in common? Or is it so different because the sports are so unique? What is it? I'd say it's very different. Most athletes at the highest level, they're all very strong. Because like I said, that's the most quantifiable aspect of training.

So they've all, they've all gotten to a very high level of strength, but not necessarily all of them. Sometimes you do want to take that more conventional approach, right? And, uh, just because you branch out on other things, doesn't mean you stop the fundamentals and the conventional stuff, right? You do the other stuff sort of in addition to

that, but it's all very different. I mean, athletes are so different sport sport to sport, and even position to position. You look at something like football, right? Yeah, that's different. And you got a wide receiver and a lineman and a quarterback. So different. Those might as well be three different sports in total. Right.

So true. You got one guy that just throws a ball the whole time. You got another one that catches it, and you got another one that just has to be a wall. Which is crazy when you think about that, when you say that, because that is so true. You know, you got one guy that just throws a ball the whole time. You got another one that catches it. And you got another one that just has to be a wall. Which is crazy when you think about that, when you say that, because that is so true. Yeah. When we're at the high school level, or even just say 20, 30 years ago,

they're all training together, kind of doing the same thing. Yeah. And even, unfortunately, you see that when you get into high levels, they get a piece of paper and they're all doing the same thing. I'm like, oh, this is coming from a more outside perspective, I guess. I'm like, that just doesn't seem right out of the gate.

You know, it's a how can you train these guys that are basically playing different sports, and you're going to train them the same? Yeah. It doesn't make sense. And that's why you really got to vary what you do with how specific not only the sport is, but even the position within the sport.

Do you find it's difficult to communicate recovery to your athletes and be able to kind of rein them in, in terms of having them get proper sleep, having them, you know, their diets, especially I've found that athletes are probably the most difficult. Like what's your experience with that? Yeah, it's a recovery is one of those things that's so easily overlooked, right? Cause it doesn't feel like it's doing anything in the moment. But yeah, you definitely got to stress it. It's just kind of a constant reminder thing.

Like, hey, did you, I'll actually ask before we train sometimes, how did you sleep last night? Because I think it's really important to gauge that. There's been studies that show the increase of injury just based on a bad night of sleep. It's unbelievable. So I ask all sorts of stuff like that. Do you feel recovered?

Do you feel sore? Did you sleep all right? Has your diet been consistent? You get to a point that guys do get more professional, the higher level that they get, and they're more on top of that stuff, because they have to be, because the margin for error is so much smaller,

but it definitely needs to still be reminded of. Talk about the different modalities and how you would use them. For example, you mentioned bodybuilding and powerlifting and mobility. Talk about the different modalities, what they bring to the table, when you'll use them, when they're valuable, maybe when they're not valuable. Sure. So powerlifting to start is the best for strength, just raw strength. So if you've got somebody that's sort of a, so you've got a really fast guy, but maybe he's a little weaker. Maybe he's not on par with the average of the level that he's playing at. Well, you're going to implement some bodybuilding or sorry, some power lifting strategies. Now what that looks like is like I said,

say they're very fast, right? It's like, okay, well, let's cut back the speed work just a touch because you're already really fast. Let's add an extra day of heavy lifting, right? It's like, okay, well, let's cut back the speed work just a touch because you're already really fast. Let's add an extra day of heavy lifting, right? Just to get you on par with where you should be and then we could maybe get back to the speed work, but we got to get that strength up. So we're gonna implement some power lifting strategies. Bodybuilding is if somebody is like just overall underdeveloped muscular-wise and needs to improve their mind muscle connection, but especially to a certain area, like hockey players, for example,

tend to be very quad dominant because the sport is a constant push. It's a constant push and it's also, it's played in a completely different plane of motion than every other sport. It's entirely in the frontal plane. You know, you push laterally to go forward. Um, so they have some posterior chain weaknesses and to address those, you're going to use some bodybuilding techniques and not just weaknesses,

but mind muscle connection. And, uh. And hypertrophy. Exactly. Hypertrophy. You're going to do those three sets of 12 and you're gonna get more time under tension, um, to improve, to improve,

to improve their ability to control those muscles and activate those muscles. And whether or not they feel it on the ice per se, doesn't really matter. It's going to keep them from getting injured in the future. And then plyometrics, of course, explosiveness, ground contact time, those athletes that are not very twitchy, that spend too much time on the ground, and they gotta be able to sort of get that fast twitch reflex, you're gonna use different types of plyometrics.

Olympic lifting is that on the force velocity curve, you got power right in the middle, that's sort of your Olympic lifters, they're the most powerful. So you're gonna use, let's say, to get your vertical jump up, you wanna use some some power strategies where you're not necessarily doing consecutive actions, but getting that good first step. You're going to do some Olympic lifting strategies, some dumbbell snatches and stuff like that. And of course, you don't have to go overboard with any of these. It's all moderation. And the percentage that you implement is going to vary based on each athlete. Like how far behind are you in this? We'll decide how much we're going to use this, uh, field of training. You said something that I think is really important for us to highlight and

talk more about that was, you know, if you have like the speed athlete, you're going to focus over on some of the, the powerlifting, but you're going to take back a little bit of his speed training. Yes. How often do you see both coaches and athletes just piling on more and more and more? Is that a common thing that you see? Yeah, definitely.

And I think having been an athlete myself makes it easier to understand the importance of if you're going to add one area, you've got to dial back another area because just the toll it takes. And the higher the level of the athlete, the more careful you gotta be about that. Like the more explosive you are, the greater the toll your movements are gonna take

on your body with everything you do. Everything. Everything, yeah, yeah. I mean, think of like a baseball pitcher, right? The hardest throwing pitchers tend to get hurt the most. And it just makes sense. If you could throw harder, you're putting more strain on your tendons and your joints

and all that. When you come down from the mound, there's more impact on your lower body. So that's something you've got to be cautious of, especially as you get into higher level athletes, is you have to draw back one area if you're going to increase another area. And then you can gradually sort of increase

their volume over time, but it has to be gradual. And there's something called acute chronic ratio, which, uh, is a helpful tool with that, um, that basically measures this week of training, how much volume you did versus the last few weeks of training, and you make sure that the discrepancy between those two isn't too great. Um, so that's a helpful tool. Um, but yeah, it's super important. So are you tracking that through like an app in total volume or what do you, how

you not necessarily, I mean, when you work with a lot of athletes, you sort of keep a mental note of it. You write out all their workouts, right. And so, okay. And you can sort of, you can do it by reps. You can do it by, um, distance. There's a whole bunch of different ways you could go about it. Um, it's kind of hard, uh, um, I guess put concisely one way to measure all of it. But as you work with more and more athletes, you sort of get an idea of like, okay, I guess, put concisely one way to measure all of it. But as you work with more and more athletes, you sort of get an idea of like, OK, I know this is going to be too big of an increase.

We've been training together for two, three months. I know this is going to be too much of a step up. You don't necessarily have to do the math every single time, but it is a helpful tool. So the discrepancy between those weeks is what's more important. What happens if it's too much? What happens if it's too little? What happens if it's too little?

What are the common things that you see? Sure, so if it's too much, the risk for injury just goes way up. And then if it's too little, you're just going to plateau. You're not going to be able to make a ton of progress. Or maybe even a decrease in progress. Or even a decrease, yeah. But here's the thing is you can keep the same level of volume, per se, and you can just increase the intensity

a little bit. That's progressive overload in a lot of ways. Not always volume, but sometimes intensity. But even when you increase intensity, you've got to be mindful that you're not increasing too much or that you might have to dial back in another area. How often do you have to go through your list of exercises and be like, risk reward in terms of what

you're going to present them, especially if it's a beginner athlete or if it's an advanced athlete? And I know there's some discrepancy in terms of the trap bar versus conventional deadlifts. What are your thoughts around all that? So risk reward, once again, all depends on the athlete, right? It's kind of like, if you never squatted before,

I'm not gonna have you try to squat, you know, 315. The risk reward there is too crazy. And if you take someone who's not super athletic, I'm not gonna have you do all these advanced movements because of risk reward. It's like the same thing. Or I'm not going to have you do a crazy high box jump or depth drop or whatever. I look at it the same as if we jumped right into squatting heavy weight when we've never really squatted before. So I guess that's sort of how I assess is how athletic is the person and where are their strengths and where are the weaknesses. If I have somebody that is

And where are their strengths and where are their weaknesses? If I have somebody that is not very mobile, I'm not going to immediately go to a exercise that demands a high level of mobility because then you're just asking for trouble. So an example, what you're saying is if you have an athlete and he's been playing football forever and part of his routine, he's been a great deadlifter. He already deadlifts 450 pounds or whatever like that. You might still focus on that. Let's say, but then you get another kid, great football player also, never deadlifted before. Maybe use a tool like trap bar.

Is that what would make the difference there? Sure, yeah, yeah. I think just you could, you go with a trap bar. You could go with some just dumbbell RDLs and stuff just to get sort of that feeling that stretch through the posterior chain and stuff before you jump right into it. It's all about reducing shock on the body. That's the biggest thing. Anytime you shock the body, we don't like it very much. And that's when you're asking for trouble. If you have somebody that is very

adept in all these lifts, it's not so hard to add onto that, but if you're sort of starting from scratch, you're going to run into some trouble with that initial shock. And that's where acute chronic ratio comes in. Again, it is just reducing shock on the body. Talk about training cycles because there's a, what we work with a lot of general pop and the podcast communicates a lot to the average person, and oftentimes people will see athletes, or high level, whatever, physical performing people,

and they'll look at it, and they'll look at these crazy hard workouts, and they're like, oh, I need to work like that. I gotta do that workout to look like that person, or whatever, not realizing that even that athlete doesn't train like that all the time, that they train like that in a season and there's all Talk about those cycles and why they're so important and why you can't just go hard all the time. Yeah. Well, um, some of the I

guess that for lack of a better term that the cooler looking stuff is also the more taxing stuff too and But it's it's it's fun, you know, and, uh, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. But you gotta have that, um, foundation that doesn't change much or progresses very gradually. And that's why my, my slogan that I've had since the beginning was, uh, for those looking to give 110%, this is where to get the extra 10, because that's really what the stuff you see on my Instagram is it's the extra 10, you

know, it's not meant to replace all that good conventional training and stuff that is well established. It's meant to add onto that, give you a bit of an edge, you know, address some of the areas that maybe standard training doesn't address quite as well. It's more so working on the skill of athleticism. Like if I was to ask you you, what is athleticism? What would you say? What would come to mind?

It's the expression of strength. The greatest. Exactly, right? All components in one. It's body control. It's multitasking. It's the expression of strength. It's not just one or the other.

It's everything sort of merged together. So what the exercises like that are sort of meant for is to work on that skill of, okay, we got this strength, now let's work on applying it, let's work on using it. But that doesn't mean you stop acquiring the strength or don't keep up with it, right? You always keep up with it, and then you just work on applying it.

How do you feel about this analogy? Because I've used this before, but it's like you have a symphony with different instruments and each, each performer practices alone, but they also have to practice together. You practice alone to get good at your specific part and what you do, but you practice together so everybody sounds better together. Talk about that analogy with exercise where you focus just on strength or just on speed, but then you have to also do them all together so they all work together.

Yeah, so there's a lot of ways to go about that, which is really cool. So let's say you do your normal training split. You got your speed work, you got your strength work. Well, maybe at the end of your workout, you work on learning a new move. And the process of learning a new move is also very beneficial. You just do one exercise working on that. Or let's say you train six days a week, four or five days are going to look very standard. And then one day is just all about movement. So that's sort of how you merge it together and how you pick and choose where you implement it.

And to the degree which you do that is going to vary based on the athlete. Like I find the more natural the athlete per se, the more sort of conventional approach you can take. Cause like I said, we're working on the skill of athleticism with these, uh, trickier looking exercises. So the more natural the athlete, the more conventional approach you can take. And then vice versa, sort of the less natural the athlete, the more conventional approach you can take, and then vice versa, sort of the less natural the athlete,

the more we can dive into these other movements. Because a lot of times, the less natural the athlete, the stronger they are. Because you tend to fall back into your strengths. So if somebody made it to a decent level, they probably did it based on their strength, not necessarily their athleticism,

in which case you can use some of these more advanced exercises and gain a lot of progress with them. That's a cool way to look at it. What about the tools that you use? Talk about free weights, machines, tables and bands. All of them have different values. When do you use each of them and what are they all good for, not good for? Yeah, so obviously from an athletic perspective, I tend to go with free weights when it comes

to that side of it. Unless, again, we have somebody that is really underdeveloped in the area and we don't want stability to be much of a factor and we just want to activate the muscles. Then we'll get into some machine work. Resistance bands are great for balancing stuff, balancing explosiveness because the amount of

resistance changes through the range of motion. So if I do one of my favorite exercises, I do a skater squat with a band sort of diagonally across my body. Well, at the bottom of the movement, there's almost no resistance, but at the top you have a ton of resistance. So you gotta learn to engage your core and everything

as you go up with the resistance. And then as you go down, you disengage, because if you don't, you're gonna overcompensate and you're gonna fall. So you get this feedback from the band and you learn how to activate your muscles in a way that counteracts that changing pull, if you will. Landmines I like a lot.

They offer horizontal and vertical resistance at a very common angle you see in sport. You could take still shots of athletes when they're doing a cut or something or taking off and you'll see an exercise that's very similar to what you see on a landmine. And then, chains at all?

Chains, oh, sleds. Yeah, chains are great too. Chains are great, sleds I'm a big fan of with your traditional sled work. But then also I like doing some pushing and pulling stuff with them because that that's really what you're going to be doing on the field. You're not up against a bench and have this support.

You're going to have to use your core and your legs as the bench, if you will, when you push upright, that doesn't mean you stop benching, but you just practice transferring that strength you acquired from the bench into a more live applicable setting that you're going to actually encounter on the field. So sleds are great. Any exercises that you see that, uh, that you're like, man, this, these are, these are exercises that I almost always have value. I can always almost always use them with the different athletes that I work

with. Sure. I mean, all your conventional stuff is great. There's not like a conventional exercise that I'm like, I dislike or whatever. So that's going to encompass a lot. Like your split squats, your barbell rows, your pressing exercises, all of that. But then skater squats, I'm a big fan of. Curtsy squats, I'm a big fan of because they really

stretch that glute medius and get you moving in the frontal plane, which more athletes need. Unless you're hockey player and you spend most of your time in the frontal plane. But I like those a lot. I like, this is kind of a crazy one, walking. That one is really underrated. That's kind of wild. Wild concept, right? No one walks and it's like the thing we're meant to do the most. Yeah, right. Like if there's one form of exercise

that you could do the longest, it would be walk, you know? And walking will correct imbalances. It's great for your heart health. The white athletes, so we love walking for the average person for a few reasons. One, everybody can still walk with decent biomechanics. I can't get the average person to have them run without teaching them a technique and working otherwise they're going to hurt themselves. Most people can do it, doesn't tend to break the

body down, it's pretty recuperative, it's good for you, it's great activity, but for athletes, you know, these are people running all the time, they're always, they're working out. Why walking for athletes? Well, I think that's why they don't want to do it because they do all that other stuff and it doesn't feel like it's doing anything when you do it. So if you're training hard, the effort that you're putting in that you're going to get some return on it, just like subconsciously, but when you're walking, it doesn't feel like it's doing anything. So it's so hard to get them to go and do that. And also so much of their day is spent being active, right?

That when they have free time, they don't want to spend it going for a walk. They'd rather be doing something more entertaining than walking. I think it's a combination of all those things. But I try to get them all to walk. If people just walked more, I swear I would put some physios out of business. Because it's so good for you.

And it's a general population and athletes and especially athletes when it comes to fixing imbalances and whatnot. Now are you just general advice walking or are you actually cueing? Are you actually talking to the athlete and having them break their gate down? I mean what does that look like for you? Yeah so sometimes I like it as a cool down, of course. And when observing that, you could sort of see asymmetries in their gait, if you will. Or you look at the feet and stuff,

you see internal, external rotation, you know, and coming from the hips. And you definitely know all of those things, but it's more so a general recommendation, because it's hard to walk too much. Right? Yeah. That's the last thing I'm worried about somebody walking too much. I mean, I haven't seen it yet. So, um, yeah, I'll do it as a cool down sometimes. And I'll take some notes when I'm doing it,

but also it's like a general recommendation, like, Hey, after dinner or something, go for a walk, you know? And who knows if they do. I mean, it's so interesting because you wouldn't, that you wouldn't expect. That's like probably the most boring advice We always give to everybody and we talk about doing it in that ten minute walks after your meals But coming from training athletes, you probably wouldn't think that that's a normal piece of advice. So right interesting It's like, you know at the highest level most these guys spend more time Sprinting and lifting heavy than they do walking. And it's the thing we're meant to do the most is walk.

I imagine. I don't think I've ever really thought about it that much, but with those really high performing athletes, they're probably the two extremes. They're either going full throttle, you know, training like an athlete or they're playing video games, doing nothing. They're like, uh, they're like dragsters. Yeah. You know, like they, it's all out, it's a hundred or it's nothing.

It's no in between. And you said something very interesting that you really, I mean I never thought of it that way. It is something we're meant to do and if you don't do it there's something that's lost and I think you're 100% right when you lose something that you should be able to do well fundamentally, it probably has some carryover, negative carryover to other forms of physical expression because you're supposed to do it. Absolutely, and it's like we might not even know all the negative effects of it. I guarantee you a lot of the issues we see with athletes,

we see so many athletes tearing their achilles and stuff and who knows, maybe if they just walked more, some of that stuff would be avoided. We don't necessarily know all the repercussions of not doing the thing we're supposed to do the most. I could say, do as many push-ups as you can. Run as much as you can.

Do a plank as long as you can. Walk as much as you can. And guess what? You're going to be able to walk longer than you do all of those. And it's just so much in our DNA to not do it I think is extremely detrimental. Well I guess I never really thought that much about it. It makes so much sense and it makes a lot of sense too to your dragster point that those super hyper because I picture all my

friends that were that made it to the league and I can see them either full out killing or playing video games. Yeah it's like there wasn't a lot of, I don't remember any of them like, I'm gonna go for a half hour stroll and walk. It's like, yeah, I don't think that happens. It's interesting. It's a very brilliant observation because there are a lot of things

that we can't necessarily quantify. For example, I mean, we went through a pandemic where everybody covered their mouths and everybody was like, what's the big deal? And I remember saying on the podcast, we read each other's faces all the time. There are gonna be consequences to that that we're not even aware of, and I'm sure it turns out, especially with kids,

there were some big consequences when I was seeing people. So just not walking regularly and only running, only working out has got to have some negatives, which probably translate to things like injuries. Absolutely, and it's just, we don't see the negative effects right away. I think that's why it gets overlooked.

Whereas other things that we do wrong, we can observe the negative effects pretty quick. Yeah. Um, but we don't necessarily see the negative effects of not walking until maybe it's too late or until maybe down the road. Yeah. Um, it's, uh, it is, if you think about the dragster analogy, it's, maybe it's like an oil change.

Maybe it's something like that, getting that circulation, just doing that very natural movement pattern that we're supposed to be doing the most. Maybe it works something like that. It's a super interesting observation that I don't think I've ever thought of. So do you have any formal certifications, or is this all observation self-taught?

This is all observation self-taught. I did a cert through a gym like a decade ago and you know, it's whatever Your observations are incredible. I think this mortis trains I've ever talked to you Have you always been like this? Were you like a weird kid that just read? Yes The fact that you went to physics to start unpacking this blows my mind itself, but makes a tremendous amount of sense,

a tremendous amount of sense. But I don't think I've ever heard somebody say that that's where they went first and then reverse engineered it. I mean, what a brilliant way. Were you into weird things as a kid? Were you reading like books on dinosaurs and becoming like knowing everything about them? I mean, I've been interested in a whole bunch of things.

I wish I had a lifetime for each topic I'm interested in. Psycho-GDLs, Britannicas. There's a whole bunch of things I could get into. But physics has always been something that's interested me. And then when it came to applying it to sports, something else that I really enjoy, just felt like a very natural fusion of the two.

Now, are you a connoisseur of all sports and are you enamored by watching some of these super athletes or are you, are you, okay, you are. Yeah, absolutely. So do you like watch like a John Marant in basketball and just go like that is fucking unbelievable. I see that. That's how I am. I love all sports. And I think part of what makes me geek out is when I see an athlete or like a Wimby, right? Somebody who's seven foot six that moves like a guy who's five five is just,

people don't understand that until you understand the physics. That shouldn't be possible. Yeah. Yeah. So when you start learning the physics of it, you understand how more ridiculous it is than it even looks. You know? But yeah, when it comes to sports, like I'm not, it's weird. Cause I'm not like a huge sports fan, but I'm an athlete fan. And not in like one particular athlete, but just watching athletes and watching the highest level

guys do what they do. And that's where most of my learning now is hands on. I get to see a lot of these guys in person. And I'm trying to learn as much as I'm trying to teach. That's why I'm always like, in my mind, I still identify as I'm an athlete. My occupation is a trainer, but at the base of it all, I'm an athlete and that keeps me learning.

And I'm trying to pick up new things every time I work with an athlete. What's been your most difficult experience? Like what was the sport and the athlete and... I can imagine that, sorry to interrupt, but I would imagine swimming would be, because it's so different from field sports, that's got to be where you're like, oh, this is going to be very different to train somebody who swims.

Yeah, swimming, and I had a pretty crazy experience with swimming years ago. That's a whole other world. I remember at a little hamstring pole, and I went swimming cause it was a form of cardio that didn't bother my hamstring so much. And man, how different that was and how much efficiency matters and being mindful of your breathing. It was like, you know, you think you're in some type of shape till you get in the pool and you're seeing these older guys

and they're just killing you. And it's because they're efficient. They're not necessarily stronger or more explosive. And it's just a completely different world. So yeah, anytime you take a sport where the primary form of locomotion is completely different than what's our natural form of locomotion, it's very unique. And like hockey is one of those or any type of skating sport, swimming is going to be another one of those. And you definitely, you got to learn a lot.

You got to learn a lot. You got to learn what the effects of those sports are. And that's when you apply your anatomy and knowledge. Yeah, and your physics, I think. That's where the physics in that background plays a huge factor. Yeah, well, I remember I watched years ago, there was a documentary that showed Michael Phelps.

And then, so obviously the world's best swimmer at the time, probably all time, right? And, so obviously the world's best swimmer at the time, probably all time, right? And then they had the world champion marathon runner. And the height difference was dramatic, but their legs were the same length. The torso legs. Because the marathon runner had these really long legs,

Michael Phelps has these tiny legs and this long torso, and that's when it really dawned on me that, at that level, not only are they great athletes, but they're also just genetically born to look. Made for a specific sport. Yeah, they have the leverages and the, and how different it would be to train a Michael Phelps on a conventional exercise versus a top level marathon runner.

It's just, it's so fascinating. This is one of my favorite things about this field is it's a science, but it's not an exact science. And that's what I love about it. It's like we have some guiding principles, but we can't mass produce Michael Jordan's. So that tells you that there's something different for each person.

There's a bit of art to this too. Yeah, and it's like if there was a program that worked for everyone that could pump out those Michael Jordans, we'd all be on it by now. So it's really a matter of figuring out what's gonna work for what athlete. And that's why I say it's a science, but it's really a matter of figuring out what's going to work for what athlete. Yeah, and that's why I say it's it's a science But it's not an exact science So do you ever try and reverse engineer it like watch?

Sydney Crosby do a move or something and go like oh shit like the capability to do that How do I go and train to be able to do you ever reverse engineer stuff with us? I mean, I researched so many athletes as funny you mentioned Crosby is one I've actually researched a bit and I Remember reading an article. This is forever ago, so I'm not going to be quoted exactly. But everyone talked about how strong he is on the ice. And he is very strong when you get him in the gym, from what I've heard. But what I read was the real secret to his strength

is his mobility and how he can lower his center of gravity. And he gets really low on the ice. And he's always lower than the guy who's trying to hit him. So he's really low on the ice. And he's always lower than the guy's trying to hit him. So he's really strong on his skates. That's this one article I read, and I thought that was a really interesting concept. So it's like, OK, you can, and that goes back to physics. You can sort of utilize physics in a way that

is going to overcome strength in a lot of ways. Because you could be stronger than someone. But if they got that lower center of gravity, who knows who wins that one necessarily? Well, now I see why you like martial arts so much. Yeah. Because martial arts literally, it boiled down to leverage, technique, physics

to be able to overcome a larger, stronger, faster opponent. Yeah. It makes perfect sense. Yeah, martial arts is definitely a huge inspiration for everything I do. And that gets you into other areas of physics, too, if you really examine it. Like, you know, you could have two athletes that produce equal

power based on the math equation, you know, force times velocity is the power equation, but how they transfer that power might vary. So like, let's say one athlete has weak risks and it buckles at impact. Well, now you have an equal an equal equal power but not an equal efficiency transfer of that power right and you can have something that has more power but doesn't transfer it well because of something like that so that's one of those areas where you can look at it okay if we address this broken link in the chain we're gonna get very fast results have like let's

increase your powers like those leaks let's fix those leaks. And that might be all we need to get to that elite level. Do you have a favorite story or a favorite client that you took on that you fixed a leak or did something and then you got to watch it get expressed on the field or the ice? Oh man. Yeah. Well, they're all so different and you know And you don't want to necessarily pick out favorites. I love working with all of them. But one really unique one that stands out is my guy Tommy Fam. He's just a beast. He's a savage.

And he's such a professional too. And he actually got stabbed. And I think it was the off season or whatever. And I helped him with that. And I stabbed just was the off season or whatever. And, and I helped them with that. He got, and I stabbed just to put mildly, he got sliced all the way through his back. Oh my God. Like straight through the spinal erectors.

And they said, if he didn't have as much muscles he did, that would have killed him. Cool. So then you got to, it becomes a matter of, you got a rotational sport, mobility and strength through the midsection is huge. So I remember when he called me, he's like, yeah, so I got an injury. And I'm like, OK, what do we got?

Pulled hamstring, knee strength. What do we got? He's like, I got a doozy for you. That's a new one. Let's figure this out. And so I worked with him for a long time. And he's still playing to this day and playing really well. And he's just such a competitor. And it was just such a pleasure to work with.

And it's, it's, it's another one of those examples where I feel like I, I learned and took as much from that as I hope he took from me. Sure. Um, because it was, uh, he has such a great example of what a professional, uh, should be as an athlete. What a unique example. So muscle sliced, he lose some of that. You gotta work on compensatory patterns now

and compensations. What did you do? Exactly, and that's where you can't just look to a textbook. Yeah. And be like, what do I do here? There's no class. You got flipping through the pages. Where's the stats?

No more spinal records. Slice through class. Yeah, flipping through the pages. Where's the get stats? Right. Right. Right. No more spinal records. Yeah, exactly. You must have that page. Yeah. And you can't just have them, say, do squats. Right? That's not going to get you that movement pattern back. Because in something like baseball,

you have something called hip and shoulder dissociation, which is basically what it sounds like. It's your ability to rotate your pelvis while your shoulders lag behind. Right. That creates a stretch through your mid section and triggers a stretch reflex. And then power.

And then you come through with a lot more velocity. The whip. And a good way for people to understand this at home is if you go to press your finger down as hard as you can on a table or something, okay, do as best you can and then pull it back and let it go. Yeah.

And that's the stretch reflex right there, just on a very small scale. So that plays a huge role in baseball when it comes to power and the swing, when it comes to throwing the ball and everything. So it was a matter of reestablishing that mobility, but then having the contractile strength recover from that stretch position.

And then being able to decelerate, right? Cause now you got, you, you can get one side figured out, but now you gotta deal with the repercussions of that power. Right? So it was a very unique case. Very slow process for you guys. How long did it take you, Phil? Well, I mean, I started working with him when he started to get back on his feet. And I mean, we got... So I don't know the exact... Time frame. So I don't know the exact timeframe because I don't know the timeframe from when it happened

to when we got him back on the field. Once you got ahold of him. Once I got ahold of him, I'd say it was about two months because the season was starting. And nothing to take away from the effort and time he put in because like I said, he's such a hard worker and I look at it, I was a resource for him. And he gets immense credit for navigating all these resources. And you just try to be the best resource you can at that point. But you've got to have both sides of the equation.

You've got to have somebody that is willing to put in that extra work. And not only the physical work, but learning about the body, right? And he is that type of person that puts in the time on both ends, both physically and mentally. I was, earlier when you said you were a Bruce Lee fan, I perked up a little, because I was a huge Bruce Lee fan, but not just because of his movies. Some of the first strength training workouts I did

were the ones that we still have, the way he scribbled in, you know, what he was doing. And he was the world's, you know, a lot of people would consider him one of the world's first like mixed martial arts, at least from a philosophy standpoint. I had the Tao of Jeet Kune Do. And his training methodology was interesting.

One thing that he did that he talked a lot about was isometric strength. Bruce Lee liked to practice a lot. And there were stories of him being able to extend a hundred pound dumbbell. You know, here's this guy's a hundred and fifty pound guy. Was there anything that you learned from Bruce Lee or his training that you then could apply to your own just as a fan?

Absolutely. Bruce Lee was really ahead of the curve with a lot of this stuff because something I found out coming from the martial arts background is I feel much better when I have a big isometric base to my training than a dynamic base. And I think it's because the nature of a strike versus a lift is very different. Hmm. Like when you do a bench press, it's a slow push. You know, even if you try to do it fast, it's going to be slow in comparison to the velocity of a punch, right? A punch or any strike is a snap. There's not a lot of tension through the muscle. You get almost coiled.

Yeah, so it comes from the hips, it comes from the legs, but there's not any tension because that's going to hinder velocity. Like if you took an EMG of the pack shoulder complex and tricep, bicep, it'd probably be very low. There probably wouldn't be a ton of activation because it's a, it's a kinetic chain reaction, if you will, and isometrics I find don't necessarily hinder that because you're completely static. I think when you get in the habit of that slow pushing with all that tension, it's kind of a neurological adaption that that's how you move.

And now I'm doing something that is, I guess, relatively similar to a press, but it's not. But because it falls the same tracks, I'm in this habit of that slow and getting maximum tension because that's what like bodybuilding is, maximum tension, right? And feeling it, well, a punch is the exact opposite. You almost want to feel a punch through your arm

and shoulders as little as possible. You don't want that lactic acid buildup, right? And because of that, I think the isometric stuff was way ahead of its time. And also a lot of new stuff is coming out now is the benefits of isometrics with tendon strength. And the way I explain it, and you've got two types of isometrics, you've got overcoming and yielding. For anyone that doesn't know, overcoming is if you're

trying to push in a movable object, like push up against the wall, that's overcoming. Yielding would be like a plank or a wall set, where you're just holding a position. They're both great for tendon health. I like overcoming, but the way I try to explain it is if you look at the tendon, just like a rope that attaches the muscle to the bone. If I wanted to rip a tree out of the ground with a truck and I attach a rope to the tree,

what is going to stimulate that rope more if I take off and the tree rips right out of the ground or if I floor and the tree doesn't budge? What's going to stimulate that rope more? Plus the tension. Exactly. And just the intensity of that tension, right? That's sort of why an idea of why isometrics sort of emphasize the tendons, not over the muscles, but to a greater extent than dynamic training. And what data is this? This is interesting to me.

It makes perfect sense. So there were studies that showed it strengthened tendons. It's gotta be injury protective as well. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so there's studies out there. I couldn't cite any off the top of my head, but you can observe this actually in a lot of different types of athletes.

If you look at rock climbers, look at the tendons in their wrists and they're like cables. They're hypertrophied. Totally. Hypertrophied and isometric. It's mainly isometric and concentric. You're holding the screen. Well, that's what I mean. Their tendons are bigger.

Yeah, their tendons hypertrophy. Yes. Exactly. Yup. And you don't see the same thing even with a very proficient and advanced bodybuilder. You don't see those tendons adapted in the wrist. So we have studies, and then we also have things that we could literally observe,

which is really cool. And I sort of think that when you talk about like old man strength or farmer strength, right? I think that's where a lot of this comes from. We talk about that all the time. Is that concentric isometric strength. And it's also interesting enough, like I said, you start to think about the stuff we naturally

can do that concentric and isometric type of exercise takes the least toll on the body. Like you don't get a sore from it. And it's also the same type of exercise you do if you do say a labor job. You're not having these long eccentric contractions or else you couldn't do it eight hours a day, five days a week. No.

It has to be isometric and concentric like battling hay or whatever. And I think you get these people that acquire that strength and also get very good at applying that strength because they're doing so many different things with it, but they might not necessarily look like a bodybuilder because you need those eccentric contractions to put on muscle. So I think that's where a lot of that comes from. Yeah. You know, there's funny because we actually have verbiage to explain. And when I say this, people are going to know we have verbiage to explain people that are really strong, but they're not that big. We call them wiry. And I think what we're talking about are tendony guys,

you know, with the big tendons. We all know those guys, right? Those wiry dudes are just really, really strong. And it's exactly what you're talking about. Very interesting. He was ahead of his time with isometrics and forearm training. You explained that a little bit,

strength in the forearm, staying loose. I remember reading his books and he said, don't clench your fist to the very end. Yes. To stay as loose as possible. Yup, yup. Really, really interesting. So how do you use isometrics with your athletes?

Well, I use them all the time. I use them if somebody has a problem area, you know, that they've experienced tendonitis in or any sort of injuries, we'll do lots of isometrics, like, you know, every day, um, basically. Frequency with that. Yeah, frequency, cause you can get away with it. That's the, that's the beauty of isometrics.

You want to use what makes them unique is you can train them more frequently than you can dynamic exercise. You just don't get that tissue damage. So I'll use it for injury. I'll use it for strength development too, cause you can do more max effort or close to max effort work when you're doing isometrics than you can if you're doing normal lifting. So there's a whole

bunch of applications for it. Yeah. That's what we like to say. We talk about, well, that's not isometric, it's concentric when you talk about the sled, but that's why we, the point you're making is that you can do a lot more of like driving a sled than you can do barbell back squats. Exactly, exactly. So it's very interesting, in isometrics unfortunately aren't sexy looking, so they're not nearly as popular as they should be. Because if I did a post on isometrics, I'm doing nothing. You're just looking at it. But it's got to be the most underutilized

effective form of training. Whenever I hear athletes or coaches talk about isometrics, I'm always like reminded, like, man, this is something that people need to take advantage of because it's so incredibly valuable Yeah, 100% another advantage of them is you could load almost any position. That's right Um, you could take any very sport specific position and load it and apply a lot of effort in a way that you probably couldn't with Dynamic exercise so they that there's one piece of advice

I would give it would be more isometrics and I'd walk. Go back to that. Tell them to walk. Brilliant. Talk about some of the differences between training men and women. I know that it's overstated often, the differences between them, but with female athletes

in particular, one particular area where you see a difference is the hip to knee angle and the increase in ACL tears as a result. Are there specific things you try to do with female athletes to prevent some of those injuries or make up for, train around, or just modify because of the different shape that we have? Sure, so I haven't worked with a ton of female athletes,

so I don't have as many case studies to reference per se. That's not by design. That's just sort of how it's worked out for whatever reason. But what you're going to want to do with, like you said, the difference in our lower body shape is you want to work on properly joint stacking with them in different scenarios. Because where that sort of taper becomes a problem

is when you're producing force and it's like you got a bent piston, right? You don't have an optimal line of force so you're just gonna want to put them in a lot of scenarios where hey make sure your hip knee and ankle are in a good line and make sure that line is in line with the direction you want to go and that you're producing force because that's the difference between say like a knee valgus and not a knee valgus right like the knee can buckle in and you could produce force that way so long as it's in line

with the force vector, right? It's a problem with a squat because you're producing vertical force and now you got shearing force. That's why it, when it becomes dangerous. So that's just a skill thing almost. Yeah. Very, very interesting.

What, what about unilateral versus bilateral training? Uh, you know, you'll hear coaches say, oh, you know, with athletes, it's like all unilateral. And then I'll hear some people say, oh, it's value bilateral, or is it just both? I think there's value in both. I think just that, so obviously you could put up more weight

and load bilateral movements more, right? And I think there's tremendous CNS benefits that come from that total load that you don't necessarily get with unilateral movements. That being said, you move contralaterally, so unilateral exercises are gonna work that better. So I think you need a combination of both. I try to stay away from absolutes when it comes to training, right? You've already said the most important word that any good trainer does, which is depends.

It depends. It depends. Because I feel like if you got a guy already who's squatting 500 bilaterally, it's like, well, we don't need to do a lot of that already because he's already got that, right? Exactly. So he's probably going to do a lot more Bulgarian split stance stuff. You got it. You got it.

Because maybe he doesn't have that stability and can't apply that force as effectively from one leg like he can from two legs. I love that you say that because I think that I think that is a problem with a lot of what happens in our space is we tend to divide all of us. Yeah. Oh, he's in the camp of this, you know, this is always the right way. It's like, really, when I think about it, it always depends. Yeah. These are all incredible tools and the client matters the most. Exactly. Where they're at. So and I think more collaboration between the different arts, if you will, is when you're going to get the best product. Because like I said, when you start talking in absolutes,

I don't know what it is about that. It's like if you don't have one way to address everyone, it's like you're admitting defeat or something. It's because humanism. It's tribalism. Humans are tribal, and we want to belong to a camp. And how dare you say, well, I kind of belong to everything. I kind of use everything.

It's like, choose, you need to choose a camp. Yeah, so that's unfortunate that it's that way. But that's part of the- You're so taught though, I think that has a factor to it. That's right. Because I think you get entrenched in the doctrine that you kind of come up with. And I think that a lot of these coaches

don't branch out from that and really experience a lot of the value in these other modalities. But I think it's really unique that you have a different perspective than a lot of other strength coaches I've talked to. Do you see any, would you like, I don't know how often you scour the internet or look at what other coaches and modalities.

Anything that jumps out at you that you think is kind of abused for athletes, like, oh man, everybody does that, or everybody thinks that, like, do you see anything like that that jumps out to you that you right away see and you're like, oh yeah, they probably shouldn't be doing that, or like, I don't know why everyone does that. Um, hmm.

I think the lack of implementation of other tools, if anything, is the biggest thing. It's like every approach, it is dynamic, you know, lifting exercises, and then you play your sport. Yeah. And it's not like necessarily an overdoing of it. It's just a lack of doing things alongside with it that are going to complement it. I can't think of one thing that I think like that every athlete

does that is too excessive. I feel like I see a lot of a poor application towards plyometrics. Like one of the things that like right away I saw the way, the way you did plyometrics, like, yeah, I know he knows what he's doing. Like I think we're at a place now in training athletes that we understand plyometrics are valuable.

So I find they all do it, but then you see them doing it in this like circuit fashion. There's no attention to the detail of movement. One of the things I love about your page is like everything you teach, it's very sharp. 99% of people that would try and do the movement that you're teaching on there would look so different than the way you look. I mean, again, that's the art I love of movement and seeing someone like you perform it to a T like that. I just think that's lost. I think that art is lost. It becomes everybody's trying to do jump boxes

as many times as they can in a circuit. That's right. I think that you raise a great point and I'm glad you brought that up because plyometrics aren't meant for conditioning. No, they're not a condition. They're for movement habits, you know, good movement habits. They're for stability with your movement. They're for explosiveness. They're for ground contact time. They're not for conditioning. So a lot of times I'll get like, what sets and reps do you do? Like three sets of 20? I'm like, no, three sets of three, five, maybe max. Maybe just do one. I don't care how long I have to rest in between. I don't care how many reps I'm doing. All I care about is the quality of the

movement. If I want to do conditioning, I'll go and do conditioning. I'll go run up a hill or something or jump rope, you know, battle ropes. Like there's a whole bunch of things you can do for conditioning. Pliometrics isn't one of them and that's where you could run into some injury risks too. Because you're doing box jumps or whatever, now you're inducing fatigue and all it takes is one bad step and you get hurt. Not only you're getting in the bad habits, but that fatigue might cause you to get hurt when you otherwise wouldn't have gotten hurt It's the fastest way I can walk into a gym and know who knows what no No

If a trainer knows his shit or not right away because I feel like everyone does plyometrics with all their clients Regardless of what their goals are. Yeah. Yeah, and right away how they're applying it I can go like okay, he or she knows their shit or they have no idea what they're doing right now They're just they're using it to condition. Yeah, if you're just trying to lose weight like plyometrics aren't aren't what you're gonna want to do, for example, right? They're they're athletic movement. They're they're advanced overall comparatively to other stuff and you just want to use them like almost like a prescription, you know, like if especially if you're an athlete and you're running, you're lifting heavy, one day a week, you know, 30, 40 minutes of your best movement, that's fine, you know, like two days max, if you got something that really needs to work on their movement,

but they're high impact, you know, and anything that we were talking about earlier that is kind of cooler comes with a toll that you've got to be aware of, right? So yeah, you don't want to just spam plyometrics and use them for conditioning. It makes me think of like, it's like you have a toolbox and you're going to build a house. You have a hammer and a screwdriver and a crowbar.

You're not going to take your hammer and try and put in some screws. You've got to use that on nails. You're not going to use your screwdriver and try to hammer in a nail. Uh, you're going to use the tool that's best for the job. You're not gonna use your jackhammer to hammer. And plyometrics are not for conditioning. No.

So it's even, it's even worse than that because like a hammer, nail, screw, that that stuff is used a lot in building. It's like, it's a, it's a, like he said, one time a week is enough, or one rep or three reps is enough. Like you have people using a tool that should be used a couple times and done very, very with detail, and you see people just using it all the time

in circuits and in fatigue fashion is like the worst. If you're doing 20 reps of a plyometric movement, it's like go do something else. Right. Go run, or, it's like I said, go do something else. Right. Go run or go run up a hill or go do anything else. But it's not, you're just going to get into bad habits. You can't bring the level of focus you need to that amount of reps to improve your movement habits.

You're not only that, you're even, you're harming the athlete. You're creating poor movement patterns on potentially a movement that they need to be doing on the field really well. So it's like, you're not only not doing the best thing for them, you're probably- Puzzle damage.

Regressing that athlete. And now you're also working like very submaximal, right? Cause you can't do high intensity of something of that many reps. You just can't. And it's like, the whole reason you're doing it is to get more explosive. It's like, if you want to become a faster

sprinter, you're not going to go jog, you know, for miles. Like that wouldn't necessarily, that wouldn't really help that much to get better at sprinting. It's like, once you induce fatigue, you're not going to be able to push at your upper echelon force production.

You just can't. And the only way to get better and to get more explosive is to be able to do that. Same thing with improving a lift. Like is to be able to do that. Same thing with improving a lift. You're not going to do conditioning before you're going to lift heavy. Because it's going to hinder how much weight you can put on.

Same thing with plyometrics. It's going to hinder how explosively you can move. Do you have any favorite kind of athlete to train or sport that you just find the most fun, or is it all fun? It's all fun. Like I said, each case is so different. It's all fun. I worked with a lot of football players, a lot of wide receivers. Like I said, none by design. It's just sort of how it's

worked out. Yeah, are they all online? Is everybody seeing what you're doing? They're reaching out? Instagram, just a message. Then, you know, like go to wherever they're at. How's your business? Is it growing pretty well? This is all you do now? Yeah. Awesome. This is my main focus now, for sure. Do you have your own facility, or do you train at a facility? No, I just travel. So you travel to the athletes' club?

Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah, yeah. And you factor in, because off air, we're talking about this. Sometimes athletes are hard when it comes to the billing and charging part, because they're so used to getting everything for free.

So do you make them compensate you for your travel time and all that? Is that built into it? Or is it just per session? It's different every situation, depending on what they want, how long they want me there for. So there's not one answer I can give. But usually there's something up front before I go,

and then the rest after. That's generally how it goes. It's different on a case by case basis. And how long do you typically stay? Are there any trips where you're in and out right away? Or most of them you stay in there for a while? Like, I mean, I, I think the longest I did was like seven months. Oh wow.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, and sometimes it's a week, you know, and what I'll do is I'll go work with an athlete for a week, you know, really analyze their movement and figure out what they need and I'll get them on a program for a month. And then I'll come back and visit, reassess, and get them on a very specific program based on what I saw and what we did.

That's kind of like the more common version of how this goes. Yeah. But it's always different, but yeah, in general, that's how it sort of works. Any, any drawbacks or any things that you've, you've not enjoyed building a business on social media. I mean, do you get a lot of hate or you get a lot of guys that don't know what they're talking about that want to talk shit about movements that you're doing or this or that? Sure. I mean, hate's always going to be a built-in part of that on social media,

but I just feel like I'm way too blessed to let any of that bother me. Like I'm so grateful for all that's come my way through this that it would almost feel insulting to let those things, you know, bother me in Like, I'm so grateful for all that's come my way through this, that it would almost feel insulting to let those things, you know, bother me in any way. And I have, I get so many positive comments and positive feedback and messages that are just amazing. I can't even believe, you know, some of the things people say. So you got to look at both sides of it, right? And I think it's almost like disingenuous to just focus on the negative of it. And then you have all these people that are saying positive things. I'd like to put my time into those people. So as far as drawbacks, no, not really. I love

what I do. Any plans to change that model? Like, do you ever want to have like a facility and like that, or do you love the idea have, like, a facility and like that? Or do you love the idea of trucking? Build people underneath you or anything? Yeah, it's all on the table, for sure. It's all on the table right now. The setup I got now works pretty well. But at some point, I'd like to be a bit more settled in one spot.

Where that is, I'm not sure yet. But yeah, everything's on the table. You know, any avenue, you know, I, I've thought about seminars and stuff like that. I thought about exploring all of those things. I mean, this is me sort of exploring those things, right? Sure, sure. That's for podcasts, is that right? Yeah, it is, yeah.

That's cool. It's crazy. And people were commenting, because I just started doing talking videos on my page, like, I don't know, six months ago. And people were like, I didn't even know this guy talked. Maybe yeah we'll see what's to come I'm not not entirely sure yet. I'm excited I've been paying attention to you for a very long time and I take a lot of pride in the ability to be able to look and find somebody who's on

the come up of something like that and you're doing great work. So glad that we could highlight you and bring you on our platform. So I really appreciate that. And like I said, thank you guys so much for having me come out here. It's a real honor to be here doing great work. You're a great trainer. Great job, man. Thank you guys.

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 Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes maps anabolic, 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 and over 200 videos,

the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back 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 5-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family.

We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is MindPump!