Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 952: Chad Wesley Smith of Juggernaut Training Systems

Episode Date: January 24, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin speak with Chad Wesley Smith of Juggernaut Training Systems. Does he do a lot of consulting for gyms? (4:53) When he goes to visit these sports teams, what does he help them with? (7:05) What exercises does he find gives athletes the biggest carry over? The ‘Exercise Pyramid’ explained. (9:59) Chad’s sports background as a kid to today. (16:08) What was the goal when he started Juggernaut? (18:33) Where did he get the idea to write an eBook? (20:35) Did he see early success from the athletes he trained? (24:40) How did his training system stand out from the rest? (25:15) How different does the training look like for a lineman compared to a wide receiver? (27:49) What are his thoughts on the sports camp on one’s ability to accelerate/decelerate? (33:40) How much of lifting is skill vs. just using your muscles? (38:35) Does he believe kids should play multiple sports? His ‘3 Phase System’ for youth athletes. (44:39) How does he explain athletes like Bo Jackson? (50:04) Are the injury rates higher with early specialization in sports? (55:01) Why we are taking away the development of children with the lack of movement/activity. (57:30) What strategies does he implement to lessen sports injuries? (59:35) What are some things within the sports and conditioning field that ‘grind his gears’? (1:00:52) How important is wisdom vs. knowledge in coaching? (1:08:43) Does he see people paying more attention to programming? (1:13:25) Is he finding it hard to scale down his strength getting into ju-jitsu? (1:16:15) Is powerlifting enjoying a growth period at the moment? (1:19:55) What made him start the YouTube channel and his online training system? + The future of training systems. (1:27:39)  Featured Guest/People Mentioned: Chad Wesley Smith (@chadwesleysmith)  Instagram Website Juggernaut Training Systems (@juggernauttraining)  Instagram Podcast YouTube Cory Schlesinger (@schlesstrength)  Instagram Joe DeFranco (@defrancosgym)  Instagram Zach Even - Esh (@zevenesh)  Instagram Products Mentioned: January Promotion: MAPS Anabolic ½ off!!   **Code “RED50” at checkout** Mamba Sports Academy Mind Pump Episode 887: The Fastest Growing Sport in the World with NRG Esport Co-Founder Andy Miller The Juggernaut Method 2.0 Training Youth Athletes for Long-Term Success The Best That Never Was (Marcus Dupree) The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance - Book by David Epstein Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. So Justin, you're the one that got in contact with Chad, right? Yeah, yeah, I reached out. My friend Corey, that we had on Corey Slesinger recommended Chad because, well, and I knew of juggernaut training systems before. I mean, anybody who's in the powerlifting world, the Olympic lifting world is heard of juggernaut.

I mean, they're all over. They put out quality strength. Very high level stuff. High level information. One of the few publications, online publications that is coming out with quality stuff. These guys know what they're talking about. And it was a good podcast. I mean, we got pretty deep into lifting,

deep into training. I liked it when we talked about the stuff about kids. Hands down the best part of this entire podcast. If we lose you at the beginning, because it is a little bit slower, the information is pretty high level and specific to strength training, but I think anybody and everybody that either was a kid at one point and played sports or has a kid that is playing sports or thinking about playing sports, there's a must listen to section that I mean there's I call it nugget bombs.

Yeah, well, there's not a lot of times where we get a guest, especially in the fitness world where I'm like I'm intently listening because I have no clue on what the best answer is for this discussion. Oh, I learned a lot right there. Right. So did I. So he goes into, you know, literally from five years old up to adulthood, kind of what the cadence of training would look like and sports would look like for the ideal performance long term for that athlete. And a lot of it is counter to, it's counterintuitive to what most people would think. So if you at all are into sports or have a kid that's into sports, I highly recommend listening to at least that section of-

That's like in the middle back half of the episode. Yeah, good, good section of this issue. Yeah, but good strength, information, good stuff for power lifters and athletes. And again, these guys, an incredible resource of good quality information. Now he is the host of the, of the the Jug Life podcast.

Jug Life. They have a YouTube channel, really good quality strength information, Juggernaut training systems, that's how you find them on YouTube. His, the Instagram is Chad Wesley Smith, so that's at Chad Wesley Smith, and you can also find their official Instagram page

for the company at juggernaut training. I also would like to remind everybody that this month, Maps and Obolic, which is our foundational strength building, metabolism boosting, muscle building fitness program is 50% off. Just go to mapsfitinistproducts.com. Use the code red50, RED50 for the 50% off discount.

And you can also take a look at our other maps programs. One of the best ways to get your body to respond to training and get your body to improve rapidly is to train yourself appropriately according to your current fitness level and your goals. And so we have different fitness programs on that site One of which will be best for your body. You can find all of that at maps fitness products.com So without any further ado, here we are interviewing Chad Wesley Smith of Juggernaut training systems. Chad, where are you located? Coastamysa. Okay. So not a bad fight for you either. Yeah, we're coming up here this weekend already. Oh no shit. Yeah, so I'll do a seminar tomorrow afternoon and Sunday in Oakland.

We're at Oakland. Who's at Jim or? Yeah, at a maxes gym. So maxeeta, very creative gym naming. Hmm. And I'm going, going today from here up to do some stuff with the 49ers. Are you one of the new 49ers gym? We're going to Levi. Oh, OK.

Have you see that they just opened their first like collab, right? So it's a gym. Mark Maast master off is doing a line with the NFL And they just opened the 49er fit gym which is here in Santa Clara which I think it's really close to there So you'll probably imagine you as a pro go buy it Maybe a rod was there yesterday. I know they just had the big launch for it. So yeah, when are we gonna go there? I don't know we're supposed to They haven't turn over on the on the staff. They fired the head strength coach. So

really, I didn't know that. So do you go and do like consulting for a lot of places and gyms? Because I mean, just a little bit of background that I have on you, I mean, as far as strength and powerlifting, you guys have been, in my opinion, one of the most credible best resources on YouTube that I've ever found. And so, I would imagine you probably go around and help out a lot of other geniuses. Any powerlifter I know always refers me to your guys stuff.

So, yeah. Yeah, you know, when I started out, we did a lot more stuff in sport performance than we have recently, but I get getting back into doing more of that. So done some stuff with the 49ers with the Rams. Just yesterday, Wednesday, did like a coaching education thing for the Mamba Sports Academy. It's a crazy facility that Kobe Bryant, it was just called Sports Academy before. And Kobe Bryant invested in it,

maybe six months ago, 100,000 square foot facility and 1000 oaks. What? Wow. It's sick or what? Is it ridiculous? Yeah, it's got, you know, tons of volleyball courts, basketball courts, because they're hosting tournaments there as well as doing combine prep and coaching. Oh, yeah, from little kids to grandma's, they got Jiu Jitsu school in their physical therapy, like one stop shot. They have full gamut. They have a esports training facility when I had seen that on the website. That's creeping in.

We just started talking about that. Yeah, we had a guy on that was like trying to explain to us how insanely popular this is and how much money's being thrown at it now from even professional teams. They sell out, you know, they're selling out bestball arenas. Mm-hmm. And some of the features I've seen on ESPN, it's crazy to see that the same time as someone involved in powerlifting and weightlifting, it's just like, man, they're getting 15,000 people to show up for a $15 million grand prize for field play fucking video games.

Mario Brothers. I'm just one a thousand pounds without you. Yeah. It was that's really impressive. It was only five years ago that USA Weightlifting had their national championships in a roller rink in Akron, Ohio. So.

So. Wow. Perspective. When you go and you work with these professional teams, these professional football teams, what are some of the things that you help them on? I mean, I would imagine at that high level, it gets very specific on the things that you can even help them with. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of whatever questions the coach has and they want to talk about.

I think They're for the most part people are gonna look to me to juggernaut as like all right How do we get our players maximally strong? But to be honest that is not that important of equality for NFL football players Like they're gonna be strong enough, but even the strongest NFL players aren't gonna blow You know blow you away in terms of of powerlifting numbers. So They're going to be strong enough, but even the strongest NFL player isn't going to blow your way in terms of powerlifting numbers. So, I'm much more interested in my background as Track and Field, much more interested in about how to manage all aspects of skill acquisition alongside the physical preparation and really

figuring out exercises with the highest transfer of training. So really high dynamic correspondence because yeah bench press squat, that's all well and good and you're not going to have a really successful NFL player who's like bad at those things but I saw enough, I've seen enough times with athletes that I've worked with in the NFL who I could bench. Even offense lineman, guys who played, you know, a buddy who played at SC and then for the Raiders for a couple years. He was benching 350 when I was benching 550. He was squatting, you know, 450 when I was squatting 850. I could jump higher than him, jump farther than him, but when he came out of a of a three point stance and and through a double hand punch, that was really fast and really hard and

way harder than I could do it. And that's the skill that he needs. So if Benchy more and squatting more and general jumps and stuff isn't transferring that highly. Which grant is only like N1 example, but how can we find exercises that mimic the direction duration velocity of the sporting movement to get better transfer? And that's something that looking back at my own track and field career. If I could go back in time and change things as huge bench, huge squat, huge vertical jump, all the stuff. But I was like, there are other guys who can't do that stuff as well as me, but they're throwing the shot put farther. So how are they doing that? They're throwing heavier shots, lighter shots, you know, more rotational strength

drills, things that aren't maybe like as sexy to measure and I was like, well, what's your best? You know, barbell standing barbell twist. No one ever asked that. Yeah. And I'd be like, well, I've been 500 and I squat 750. But that barbell twist had a lot more reason why they were throwing 70 feet and I was throwing 65. What are some of the exercises that you're seeing that are giving people or athletes the biggest carryover? I mean, as trainers, when we train, we train average people, we don't train. I've trained very few high, high level athletes. And when I train the average person, a squat has a huge carryover of them. Just getting

them to be able to squat and getting the stronger the squat, I could see lots of carryover. But when you're working with that level of performance, what exercises are you finding? Are there movements that you're finding that have incredible carry over that? Maybe the average person wouldn't even consider? You know, to paint with a broad brush on those kind of movements would be a bit tough because it's gonna be so specific to not just a sport,

but a position within that sport as well. But, you know, how we're gonna classify exercises and this all goes back to Dr. Anatoly Bonduchuk. He was the National Throws Coach for the Soviet Union for 25 years, coached the two best hammer throwers of all time, and revolutionized this idea of special strength. Rather than just, all right, I'm going to get this hammer thrower to squat as much as you can, snatch and clean as much as you can, snatch and clean as much as you can.

We can actually take those numbers down to about 70% of what he previously thought, because now we're gonna throw heavy hammer on the short wire and these different rotational type of drills. So he classified exercises, general preparatory, general developmental, special preparatory, special developmental competitive exercise.

Oh, interesting. So competitive exercise is the sport that's the tip of the pyramid. I've heard you talk about this pyramid, a specificity. And yeah, if you go into that even a little further. Yeah, so if you're to think about exercise, selection, and athlete qualification as a pyramid. The tip of the pyramid is the competitive exercise. It's the most specific thing you can do. And- Give an example of that, like for a sport. So we, so let's understand. So let's take weightlifting as the example.

This is kind of a simple one. If the Bulgarian system, the most specific training, maximums, multiple times daily, maximums, snatch, clean jerk, squat, or front squat, as all they would do. But, and Ilya Ilyin, you know, is the best example of this, because he and his career went through this entire pyramid. So, as we look at the, let's actually go the ground up on the pyramid. Day one, base of the pyramid, very broad. The most people are there was the broadest and the most exercises will possibly transfer to their, to their improvement. So let's say that,

you know, if you think back to the, the first day, you were, you know, the first month that you lifted or someone who's brand new to training, all of the exercise they could do that would improve their squat. Of course, any squatting variation, lunges, leg extensions, leg press, goblet squat, tons of different mobility exercises, probably just fucking thinking about squatting would improve their squat at that point. As they become more qualified and like better at squatting, the exercise selection starts to narrow. Now thinking about squatting

lay extension stuff like that, maybe that might not help as much or at all. Yet higher and higher on that continues to be more focused and then it's going to basically just be squatting and very close to variations to it are going to have a big carryover form. So back to the weightlifting example. First, heard Ilya and speak at a seminar in late 2013. And yeah, I think late 2013, late 2012, one of the other. And he talked about when he started weightlifting, he was five, five, six years old. And his mom sent him to the weightlifting club with his older brother because he was like hyperactive and

he would just run around the house such as I could get out of here. So now he said he would run around the gym and do all the exercises. And that probably didn't mean that six-year-old Ilya had free reign of playtime in a Kauzak weightlifting gym, but it meant that he did very broad preparation like the base of the pyramid. Because six years old, so of course, it's the bottom. So he's doing stuff like gymnastics, base drills, all kinds of calisthenics, swimming, jumping, track and field based drills, playing games, doing weightlifting, technique, and then it's about the time that he was 18. He had no relative weakness. So he began training in the Bulgarian style. Three, you know, probably 11 to 16 sessions per week.

three, you know, probably 11 to 16 sessions per week. So some double days, some triple days, snatch to maximum, clear and jerk to maximum, front squat to maximum. Three hours later, same thing, three hours later, same thing. His progression from run around the gym to do all the exercises to the most specific training possible, you know, it wasn't instantaneous. It wasn't, well, I just ran around the gym and did all the exercises, and then on my 18th birthday, they're like, no, only these ones now. You know, it just changed in proportion as he went

because those general phases of training, gymnastics, swimming, and that kind of stuff, things he still does to this day, they didn't have direct transfer to his snatch and clean and jerk performance like they would have earlier. Right. So the same thing when you get high level NFL player, MMA fighter, whatever it is, all

those exercises can have their place at the right time during the year. But when you're, you know, a month out from starting or your in training camp or something, is it worth the energy to try and put 10 pounds on the guy's bench press or 20 pounds on a squat? Is that going to make him better or is this, you know, five yard sled push from his stance, going to make him better or different explosive med ball throws where he's, you know, punching with two hands, that kind of stuff, that's going to have a much higher transfer. That makes a lot of sense. I've heard a lot of strength coaches actually talk about the importance of basically introducing these young athletes to as many sports as possible. Oh yeah.

And then starting to refine the process and specializing later on as a mature. Is that similar to how you grew up? I know you were involved in a lot of sports, but kind of take us back to that. You were a track guy, you said, right? Because you looked just like a cross-country runner. Maybe two or three of them. Yeah, so for me personally, I kind of lucked into my parents. Yeah, and they weren't like, all right,

this is how we're going to make Chad and a good athlete. I just do a lot of sports and a lot of them turned out to be ones that are very helpful. You know, I started playing soccer and all that stuff organized when I was five years old and then started tracking field that eight years old. At that time, I ran 50 meters and 100 meters, four by 100 relay and through the shop put. And I was just doing that because I was like, oh, my friends started doing track the year before

and he's good, so I'll go hang out with Kevin and it'll be a good time. And then I did track from when I was eight till I was 23. And eventually dropped the 50 and the 100. But not till I was like 13, 14 years old when I started to get bigger in high school. Even I'm always proud of this. When we were 13, we were 7 California, 4 by 100 champions, 4 white ways from Irvine. That was mostly just we had good technique on the handoffs, but still got

the W. So I did track, did basketball, soccer, then high school played football and track and field. And then went to University of California Berkeley on a track scholarship. So the shoppo was there for two years, junior college for a year and then finished my last two years at a small N.A.I. school in Southern California called Concordia where I ended up throwing 63-10 in college and then one year as a post collegiate through 65 7 But at that point 2009 had started juggernaut 10-year anniversary this year Oh, yes, thank you. I kind of forgotten about that until as

Right in the date on something that January 2nd or was like one two night Was that hashtag 10-year challenge thing? No, of course I wrote 2018 and I was like, no, 2019. I was like, 2019. Oh, we started company in 10 years ago. Yeah, wow. That's crazy. What was the goal when you started Jagannath?

Yeah, so you know, we started as a sport performance gym. So it was a physical location, train people. Yeah. At that point, I was still doing track. I realized through the first about nine months of that, I was like, well, I'm working about 65 hours a week here, all the other people who are trying to go to the Olympics for the shop put,

they just throw the shop put all day. So I don't think this is gonna work out. So from the business side of stuff, we just wanted to train out. So from the business side of stuff, we just wanted to train athletes. You know, Joe DeFranco was like the really big influence on me the summer before my senior year of college. So summer of 2008, I was in New York visiting my brother and rented a car and made, was essentially a religious pilgrimage for me to New Jersey to go to Joe to Franco's gym and A couple months ago doing this doing the seminar or doing a podcast with him and we got to reminisce over that

And you know, I made like a YouTube vlog out of it before that was really a thing unfortunately the music on it now YouTube like to let you yeah, so it's just like silent YouTube like to let you. Yeah. So it's just like silent. I don't know if it he are now, but but that's what I want to do is exactly what he did. You know, it was train football players and do combine prep and train MMA fighters and all these badass people and we did that for three years in the original location. But into 2010, I wrote the Juggernaut method ebook, like the first one that I'd done. I did my first parallel team meet and with the success of that book at the time, I was like, well, you know, training people in person is really cool. But we're never going to have more than 120, 150 people that we see

here every month. There's tens of thousands of people that have bought this book. Plus, I didn't have to pay rent to sell it. Said, so maybe this internet thing, it'll be a something deal. How'd you get the idea to write, because it's back in 2010, not that long ago, but in, I guess, new media, internet, land,

and promoting yourself online. It kind of is, right? Like, where's like a lifetime, multiple lifetimes ago? Where did you get the idea to do that? You know, at the time I was on a lead FTS, I'd been on there for about two years. And there were a couple other people doing ebooks. Basically, Jim Wynnler had five, three, one. And I was just like, oh, that seems like a good idea.

We have this program, the Juggernaut Method program that I had written and we're using with the majority of our clientele, which were high school athletes from various sports. It was just like a good kind of base beginner and immediate program for them. So, I just asked Dave Tate, I think I was like, hey, should I make this into a book? And probably the guy who was even the bigger influence on it was an Bob Eilin felt. Some people would know him as Rob Fitzgerald or the angry coach. I think I remember that. Yeah, so he wrote for Elite FTS He wrote a lot of stuff for them under different pseudonyms and and like ghost writing things

But he was also the senior editor of muscle and fitness So right as I'd gotten on to elite he had taken that job and and moved out to Southern California And I was like the only person he he knew out there for a guy who is the most New York person imaginable. Like, I had been like NYPD, you know, coach football, coach lacrosse out there, just a gristled New York man. Yeah. And very angry. But says angry coach Nick name was that for Poe, but he was also an excellent writer and he kind of encouraged me towards that and I showed him the program and he's like, oh, yeah, this will be, this will be great. It will be a hit.

Now what made you want to do it online? I mean, like you guys have a huge presence. Well, he made the comment that, you know, at one point, he noticed that the gym is only going to fit about 150 people in there. And the book was reaching thousands of people. I think the light bulb probably just went off. Like, if I want to make some good money doing this, this is probably the direction. I go. I'm smart. Yeah. And there was just a lot with the everyone or not everyone, but so many people, I think more so at that time too, had seen people like Joe to Franco and Zach Ebenes, and we're like, yeah, I want to have this hard core, you know, warehouse gym, and do that. And there's so much that comes along with it that's not

just training, you know, as bad ass athletes. There's a lot of, you know, hours in the day where those people can't train. It's very hard to make a small box, very successful. People just assume that with all the flash and shit that there's a lot of money in this, they're really isn't. It's tough. Yeah, and there's a lot of bathrooms to clean and taxes to do and all that kind of bullshit too.

So we finished the lease there in late 2012. At that point, I'd started training a lot more football players, which is what I really enjoyed the most. And I was like, this, I can train just this group and focus on our online stuff. So, at least I ended, moved out of that place, sublet from another gym, so I could just train football players.

And the group that I really liked was I get high school seniors As you know the day after their season finished and get them ready to go to college go play college football It's cool. So in two in two years they had an incredibly comprehensive program. I'd see these guys two to three hours a day five to six days a week nutrition mobility on on, speed and agility, in the weight room, everything about it. Like as or more comprehensive than what we had even done

for NFL combine prep stuff, because it was six months with them rather than 10 weeks. Now what kind of success did you see from that? Did you just have a lot of success? Oh yeah, and it's cool now to see some of the guys are in the NFL. Oh, that's cool. And like the first, second, third years in the NFL.

And in those two years of really pushing that group hard, you know, we had two guys to SC3D UCLA, three to Washington, two to Washington. Wow. And it was fortunate that Orange County is kind of like hotbed for a high school football. I mean, one of the bad 9D1 guys from one school, so that was helpful.

What were you guys doing? That was different. What were you guys doing that was different than a lot of other training systems or? I think how comprehensive it was the biggest piece. It was incredibly competitive. how comprehensive it was was the biggest piece. It was incredibly competitive. You know, the group was pretty much 15. The first, the first year I had to recruit a bit more

and say like, all right, you guys should come do this, this special training group we're going to do. But then the next year, because the first year, guys were so successful, I'm talking like on average and the numbers are going to be a bit off, but it was in this ballpark like plus 50, 60 pounds on all their benches. Wow. 100, 120 pounds in the squat, you know, minus. That's so rad. Yeah, taking two to three tenths off the 40-yard dashes and guys gaining 20 pounds of body weight in this six-month span. It's, you know, a miraculous time of life for your 18 years old.

Yeah. Hyper-eric monitor. Yeah. And obviously very talented genetically, like that's why they get... Yeah, but not to take anything from your programming. I mean, that's exactly what happens when you got the recipe for... And I feel like 10 years ago, we are in such need for that. And especially that age group, like the high school

going to college, I didn't feel like there was a lot of people that were presenting a lot of really good information around that time. Yeah, so we just got to, I think the biggest thing was that it was so comprehensive and so competitive, that I planned out six months of training for each person by their position, by what kind of system they were gonna run at their school, what kind of conditioning tests they had to be ready for.

They worked with our PT's right off the bat to have sort of customized movement plans for them. So did you base it by their positions? Yeah, wow. Yeah, that's another level. You don't see that anywhere with string conditioning coaches and programming. Yeah, and the position stuff is like, it seems like kind of a no-brainer. Right. Right. And people are getting better at it now, but you see these these conditioning tests,

and this part is still bad for a lot of teams even up in the NFL. These conditioning tests, and they're running 110s or 300 yard shuttles, and it's like if you're a watch the football game Yeah, you know watch this guy never moves more than five yards Yeah, he's got to be the wildest animal possible in this five yard by five yard box Over and over again. I always thought that 45 seconds. Yeah, our lineman having to run all these hundred yard sprints with us I'm just dying and it's like, come on, let's make it a little more specific to what they're going to do. Well, let's let's let's talk a little bit about that because I think it's really interesting for the listener to understand is like how different the training looks like

for, let's say, a lineman versus a wide receiver. And maybe you can give some examples of things that you just absolutely would not do with a wide receiver that you would do with alignment and vice versa. Yeah, so I talked some and kind of principle-based ideas about this and then can get some specifics for the actual positions. The first thing you got to do is look at the athlete. So this is going to be for any sport, the kind of sports science term would be a time motion analysis.

But what we're looking at is how far do they move in each effort? So football is nice and straightforward because you say hike, then the whistle blows, and then you get a little bit of rest where the basketball or soccer is kind of continuously ongoing. But for football, it's simple because all right these these guys move zero to 10 yards per play. These guys move you know five to 20 yards. These guys move five to 35 yards in one play. What kind of velocities are they going? What sort of resistance do they face along the way? Change direction type of stuff. So once we can establish that in the time parameters, how long arrests do they have in between

those efforts. Now we can start to design some really effective running programs for these players. And that, you know, I think people think because I'm a power lifter, I just got a lift, lift, lift, the lifting, as long as you don't do something really dumb, there's a lot of lifting that's good enough for football players, basketball players. People wanna try and reinvent the wheel with some of that stuff and get into it to...

Crazy movements and shit. Yeah, things that are overly creative. Yeah, I saw one other day on YouTube with the rotating all weird on the stability ball and punch it and she likes that stuff. Like, you guys could create that with a landmine and you get the same fucking carry over, man. Yeah.

So assuming you're not getting overly creative in the weight room, a lot of those things can be good enough, but people will really mess up these running programs because the first year we did NFL Combine Prep and had like six guys get drafted and we're asking them, you know, these wide receivers and stuff, well, what kind of speed training did you guys do at your school? You know, we'd run 16 110s or, you know, 20 40s or something like that and it's like, no, not what kind of stupid conditioning did you do? What kind of speed conditioning did you do? What kind of speed training did you do? And with my background being track and field,

I got to have exposure to a lot of really high level sprinters and had a special opportunity for my first three, my last year of college in first three years, Juggernaut, hosting the UK Athletics, the British National Track Team for their warm weather training camp. They'd come out California for about six weeks and this is Dwayne Chambers, it was 642 and the 60 European record holder in the 100 meters. Christina Huwagoo is gold medalist in the 400 and see these, see these, they most elite

sprinters in the world work out. And when you see really elite sprinters do speed training, you know, do their speed work. You're like, well, these are the fucking laziest people ever. They just did five seconds of work and then they sat around for five minutes. Yeah. Yeah. But that's what real speed training has to be. It has to be these incredibly high level efforts.

Because it's anaerobic. Yeah. And no matter how many, you can run as many four eights as you want. No amount of four eights make you run a 4-4. Now, when you run a 4-6, you can't 4-8, 4-8, 4-8, 4-8, when you're tired, doesn't make you run a 4-4. It makes you run a 4-8. So all these football guys were getting conditioned

and improperly conditioned rather than doing real speed training. So putting together the right kind of running programs for them, what the right distance is, the right rest intervals for it to be appropriate conditioning, that I think is a big piece and a big differentiation between positions, because you can get into general speed training stuff. Yeah, we're gonna start on the line

and run in the straight line as fast as we can for this given distance. But then as we would progress through the year, we would get into more like a special capacity, special strength exercises, but they're in our special conditioning exercises. Doing stuff like maybe a wide receiver in defensive back or running back in linebacker, wide receivers and DBs, we put them in a 20 by 20 yard box and say, all right, six seconds, you tag him as many times you can in six seconds. The linebackers are running backs, maybe they're in a 12 by 12 yard box. Same idea. So this guy's pursuing this guy's changing direction. They're moving similarly to how they would in a football game.

Positionals start stuff like coming out of their stance. You know, moving laterally for a couple yards, then straight ahead. All that stuff is important. Like you can't just do the special exercise. You have to develop the straight line speed because so much of sport speed is actually happening at like less than 100% effort. So if you are, if right now you run a four or five, but most of the time you're in the game, because you have to be aware of everything going on and change the direction, you're actually

running more like 80% of that speed. Well, now if we can run 4.4, you can still run 80% or you can run 76% and still get past the guy and now is conditioning is easier and everything. Create more of that like speed reserve with traditional speed training and then the capacity with the more specific drills. What's your thoughts on the camps that say that in sports training that the ability to decelerate is more sports training that the ability to decelerate is more valuable than even the ability to accelerate. What do you think? I mean, that kind of prioritizing it like that,

they're all important. That's an overgeneralization statement for sure. Yeah, I mean, the ability to decelerate, to change direction, to have these very slight shifts in and body weight, the vision and understanding of how the play works. That's what allows someone to play very fast. You know, as we're here in the Bay Area, two San Francisco 49ers who are perfect examples of this. One to the good side of things, Jerry Rice. Jerry Rice is not a fast goat guy in terms of running this blazing 40 yard dash. You know, he's like a 4, 6, 4, 7 kind

of guy, Tim Brown same same way. But he has such a great understanding of what the defense back was going to do, what he had to do, anticipation of everyone's movement, that with this small fake and everything, he could create this little bit of separation to look like he plays really fast, to look like he was the fastest guy out there. Yeah, defense defensive back a few years ago named Taylor Mays, yeah, from USC, freak of nature, 4, 3, 40, 6, 3, 240, 45 pounds, absolute freaking nature. We're talking to the former strength coach for the 49ers. And he talked about how slow Taylor May has played because when he was in high school, he could go three steps out of position. Right.

He can make up for his sloppy play. He can make up for it. So he's just lazy. And then in college, even at USC, he could go two steps out of position and come back and make the play, but that can happen in the NFL. Right. So even though he ran a four three, his reactions and everything made it more like he was four five or six.

Wow. After you think that happens in professional sports, you think that's common? his reactions and everything made it more like he was four five or six. You think that happens in professionals' sports? You think that's common? Yeah, for sure, for sure a common thing. And some of it, I wonder if it's, you get these really fast, like a common criticism among like the really fast players and the drafters. Do they just have straight line speed? If you had like a track guy coming,

but it's not inherent, I think that being incredibly fast in a straight line means that you can't change direction. You know, that's not like something wired into their muscles that way. We have a weightlifter we coach again, I name James Townsend. The most explosive person I've ever been around. He played football at Iowa and then for

the Bears for a couple years. Even now James is 33 or 34 years old. He's power cleaned and I'm talking about barely abend in his knees in the catch, 193 kilos, 425 pounds. He weighs 200 pounds. He hanged power snatch 150 kilos, 330 pounds. He got today and 43 inch vertical 11, 5 broad jump all this stuff. So I'm like, man, you know, how is so strong, so fast. I was not the best player in the NFL over. I asked him, you know, talk to

him about when he was playing. He's like, yeah, I just wasn't that smooth in and out of my breaks and all this stuff when he's running routes. And then it got me thinking, there's probably, there's a lot of people like James. He was the fastest player when he was 10 years old. I was 15 years old and all the way through. So when he was a little kid, when you develop a lot of those change of direction,

abilities and coordination where he and have to because they're like, well, just, just, you know, get the corner. Just go. Yeah, just go. Just run the street and you just run past everyone where you get a guy like Russell Wilson who's not like a super fast 40 yard dash guy. I heard him tell him a story about he would go to the mall. He's a little kid,

and then like the crowded, just kinda center, center court, center court of the mall, he would just try and sprint through the crowd. Not. And like cut and change direction through all the people. Yeah, just like 10 year old kid, just sprint through the crowd,

get to the other side as fast as he could. And him and his friends would like start on one side and race to the other side through the crowd. Without hitting anybody. Yeah. So he became great in juking people out and changed in direction, and so much of that stuff kind of goes back to even the pyramid of strength and development. You had to develop those qualities early, and it's like learning the language, it's hard to learn the language when you're an adult. It's hard to improve coordination and athleticism when you're an adult compared to when you're a kid. It's not hard to communicate to most people of how important skill is in sports, but sometimes when communicating to everyday people who just like to work out,

how much just your gym strength is also a skill, telling people that there's a lot of skill involved and just being strong with your everyday workouts when you're deadlifting and bench pressing and squatting. I mean, how much of it is skill versus how much of it is just your muscles? The bigger numbers you lift, the more of its skill. And you know, the skill of the one rep max for a parallel

to and weightlifter is going to be hugely important. Like for me, parallel to and I squatted 970 pounds bench, 567 deadlifted 815. 23 25 total at the time when I did, I think it was the ninth highest of all time. I've moved down that list a little bit. But I have people, people that I've coached, lifters that I know who in so many of the exercises

around the squat bench and deadlift were far superior to me. But they were not better at one-wrap maxes in those lifts because they'd probably spent a lot of their training life doing more bodybuilding type of stuff and things that were just a little bit less specific. So they didn't have that skill, but we're talking about the top, you know, 0.1% of lifters in the world, as you move farther down that pyramid, yeah, just being more muscular and stuff

is gonna allow them to lift more certainly. You had mentioned like the gentleman you had brought up who trained in Bulgaria and was doing, specific lifts and he was doing them three times a day, like this incredible amount of frequency. And I guess in the early days of weightlifting, when the Iron Curtain was up, they were blowing us away because they,

was it because they understood how important it was to practice in this incredible amount of frequency of training versus our weight lifters? What was the big difference between those two sides? And why were they kicking or asking so much? Was it that they trained so often to practice the skill versus just maxing out on the lifts? Yeah, so the sport of weightlifting is kind of interesting

because it's gone through these ebbs and flows of being really dominant and everyone now. It's like, oh, the US sucks at weightlifting. We're getting a lot better now, especially as other countries are having to clean up. Back 50s and 60s, we're very good, as good or better than, than Russia. At some point, they decided to put a ton of attention towards sport as a political tool and, and really developed a level of sport science and really developed a level of sports science and infrastructure to their sports that the US does not have now that it probably never will have. It was state sponsored.

Yeah. And that started, you know, as Ilya Ilyan, is that Lovatov is talking about for Kazakhstan, but former Soviet Union. The idea of him starting when he's six years old in like a sport school type of setting that's I think what set them apart more than anything is that they had this incredible level of general preparation. So by the time they were, you know, 18, they were able to just excel that much more. And that kind of just goes to a long term or short term development model. And you see some of these young lifters in the US. Now CJ Cummings, Harrison Morris, incredible, incredibly talented guys.

Ian Wilson was one who sometimes I get worried. I see those kind of guys because I wonder, is their coach more concerned with them being the best, you know, 15-year-old in the world, or being the best 25-year-old in the world? Because the two aren't the same. Someone might still be the best 15-year-old in the world, training in a bit more general sense, but just because they're more talented,

but doing the things that will make them immediately good are very specific training And you think they should it would be better to avoid that if you want a long term for sure You want to so if you if you take a early an approach and this goes for for any sport a lot of general training early and Slowly over time, you know when when the athletes, depending on the sports some like gymnastics, that's going to be a little bit earlier. But weightlifting, track and field, most team sports, when the athlete gets to be 18, 20 years old, maybe about 10 to 12 years in of training, where you're really going to shift to a lot more specialized

training, you're going gonna get athlete who improves, you take an American sports model, six years old, you play club soccer, you play club soccer all year, every year, soccer, soccer, soccer, soccer practice, SPP, special physical preparation, sport practice all the time, no attention to GPP necessarily.

Athlete improves like this tapers off Athlete with a lot of early GPP later SPP Improve like this that intersection point 17 18 19 20 years old so in the beginning so Jeannie is getting the asses kicked you want GPP means you're basically rotating sports right you're playing all general sports Yeah, that can be it for sure Okay Yeah, right. So they're getting their butts kicked 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, right around 17. You're saying, now they're as good as the kid who's been playing

just soccer his whole life, but then they start to surpass them. Yeah, because now their sport skill is close enough while their physical skills are probably far superior. And then their sports skills are going to continue to improve and they're better. Their greater physical skills will allow them to learn the sport to develop the sports skill to a greater degree. So based off of that recommendation, you would then would probably recommend that most kids play as many sports as they can all the way through high school. Before they start to really narrow it down to one.

Yeah. So I've written a couple articles about this and the football player or the weightlifting James that I was talking about. He and I talk about this a ton because he has two daughters who are the most phenomenally talented children I've ever seen. His five year old daughter, Perseus, do like, those of five year old girl, I've seen her do 70 push-ups.

What? Like a set of 70 push-ups. That's what I'm saying. Are you serious? I quit. I'm outta here, I quit. Justin can't even do that right now. Yes, barely out.

She tired thinking about it. Yeah, five years old, she had do like a 27 inch box jump. Damn. And this was really cuz Yeah, he runs a gym and she would just come with him Yeah, I should be sitting in the stroller watching them work out and then she could walk when she was six months old I mean she's very remarkable, but she jumped on like a 45 pound bumper when she was one

And that doesn't make sense so we've talked a lot of what James about this kind of long-term development a 45 pound bumper when she was one. Wow. What? And. That doesn't make sense. So we've talked a lot with James about this kind of long-term development ideas because like, don't screw this up. Right? Yeah. It's a golden discreet. So, like a simple model for it would be to break the life up into multiple stages. So that first stage is,

let's say from about five to nine, five to 10 years old. I feel like gymnastics is where you would start. Yeah, yeah, gymnastics. So even before that five year old, part of things swimming is great because you probably swim before they can walk because a buoyancy is gonna allow them to move their body through the water,

is they don't have to have as much strength. So swimming is sort of the base and then whatever kind of like mommy and me, tumbling, gymnastics class, they can do great, but we'll start at say five years old. So stage one would be five to nine, five to 10, biological ages, a decent indicator, but kids are going to develop at quite different rates.

That's a time where, and it doesn't have to be competitive sport, but activities related to gymnastics and track and field all the time, you know, do that all year, play games. Running, tumbling, jumping, whatever. Yeah, play AYSOS soccer, basketball, whatever. Doing. Yeah, do stuff all the time. I started playing organized sports when I was five years old, soccer and basketball.

So essentially, you'd want to have one sport per season. And then the gymnastics type of stuff to be omnipresent. And when you're a little kid, you know, and this isn't the case for some people who get really heavily involved in club sports, they start practicing just that sport three to four times a week with tournament on the weekend when they're six years old. I'd say if you practice, if you had two sport practices during the week and then a game on the weekend when they're six years old. I'd say if you practice, if you had two sport practices during the week and then a game on the weekend, different sport every season for phase one. Then they become 10 and maybe 10 to 13 years old. So, you know, early adolescence to the start of high school. Then they're going to go to three

organized sports seasons with one season dedicated purely to GPP. You know, and how this actually gets put into practice, you could do it wrong and you could be like, all right, well now it's 10 year old, it's your GPP season. Yeah, it's not going to be like that. It's got to be more fun and loose the math. But the concept would be three organized sports seasons and one season just for training, you know, training for a 10-11-year-old. So that training season is going to be gymnastics, calisthenics, probably introduce some resistance training at that point.

And then the other three seasons are for the sport, but three different sports. And now maybe you go to practice seeing three to four times a week with a game on the weekend, the occasional tournament, but still some other GPP stuff throughout the year all the time. Because that's how the, you know, 11 year old soccer practice shouldn't just be two hours of of soccer strategy. It needs to be teaching them how to run, you know, a 11 year old soccer practice shouldn't just be two hours of soccer strategy. It needs to be teaching them how to run, you know, doing pushups and sit-ups and air squats and all that kind of stuff, just making them better athletes and coordination drills and everything. So that'd be phase two. Phase three, high school, you go to two competitive sports and two seasons of GPP. So the competitive sport

is going to have to be pretty much focused on just that sport with limited GPP in it. So let's say play football in the fall, do track in the spring. You're just doing that sport. You practice five, you know, five times a week. You have a game every week. During that season, then you have two seasons for general training. And then finally, the person gets to college and they play one sport, and they go into a regular sort of annual plan with times of more GPP, less GPP, more SPP, less SPP. But it's like kind of a, it's just simple strategy.

No, it's plain Bo Jackson. It's got Bo Jackson's parents on here and that is excellent. You know, you look a lot at a lot of these athletes who grow up in rural, rural areas and a lot of like strength athletes, people like John Cole, Don Reinhout, guys who were competing in the 70s and still had records standing into the 2000s in parallellifting into the 20 teens even. And it's like, okay, training, that's gotten better. Like training is supposed to have gotten better. Genetics are supposed to have advanced nutrition, drugs, all this stuff. It shouldn't even be close.

I think one really big thing that people growing up in the 40s and 50s are growing up in rural areas, have is better GPP because of a more active lifestyle, a more general, a more general preparatory base, whether that means you're doing manual labor work out of farm. All right. Yeah, you're doing manual labor. There's no, you don't have TV, you don't have video games. So you're just outside playing with your friends all the time and, and, you know, and I'm

only 30, I'm 32, but I was very fortunate in the way, yeah, that my parents encouraged me to do all these different sports, but the school I went to, to private school, we had 24 boys in my graduating class. So I went kindergarten through eighth grade with almost all the same people. Of those 24 boys, eight of us went to division one called scholarships for

volleyball, track, water polo, soccer, all these different sports. And it was not like it was some athlete magnet school. It was just a kind of unique blend of kids. We had the most competitive recess and lunch games all the time. Right. From kindergarten through, maybe in eighth grade, that's when we were finally like, okay, I guess we don't want to play like all out as hard as we can, basketball for the next 45 minutes and go to our next class, what he is held. Because now we care about girls, but up until that point, it was like,

we've been coming on. Yeah, like coming back into class, like, you know, skin, these, like, whatever is drenched in sweat, because we played hard all the time, different. Yeah. It'd be a month we'd play basketball and then we played soccer and then there's handball and forescrew and whatever it was, we had this great general preparation. So a lot of people like Bo Jackson or Herschel Walker, if you've seen one of my favorite 30 for 30s, the best that never was, Marcus D'Breeze. Yeah, they talk about them lifting weights on the broomstick and he's loading the bricks on there and then they play all these

pick up football games and pick up basketball games and and just Herschel Walker sees a train going down the tracks and he's trying to race the train for as long as he can. That's just an incredible level of preparation that if someone is in this formalized soccer practice, soccer practice, or travel baseball, and then winter travel ball, and then spring travel ball, and all they do is play baseball, they're never going to be able to match that level of GPP, because if a kid has done that, whether it's manual labor or whatever, from when they're six to they're 16, another kid

from six to 16 did club sports, with no, with whatever GPP component is involved in that but nothing outside of it. How, when both of those kids are 16 years old, this guy's been doing two to four hours a day of manual labor and play. And this kid's been doing two hours a day of soccer practice. How's the soccer practice kid ever going to catch up 10 years of GPP work that the other kid has on it. It's even more than that because There are there are formidable years in brain development where if you take a child and you have them learn

You know three different languages before the age of 10 they'll speak all three of them without an accent You could take an adult and have them learn, you could teach me Spanish, Chinese, and Russian, and I can learn them, and I'll be able to speak them, but I'll always have an American accent. I'll always have the English accent because I've missed those, those formerly bull years of brain development

where the brain, it's got a certain amount of plasticity, exactly. But there's a certain amount of development that becomes solidified in the plasticity of a child's brain is insane And so they just learn how to become these you know Just this they developed this incredible Intelligence

Through body awareness because they're doing all kinds of different things. You just can't get that later on But there's another component to that I was gonna ask you about is I bet you the injury rates are probably higher With the kids that just do the same shit all the time. Oh, for sure. Yeah, that's one of the biggest problems of early specialization in youth athletics is burnout from a psychological standpoint, but also repetitive use injuries

from a lack of a broad enough preparedness base. But to that idea of neural plasticity, that's huge, particularly in the most explosive of sports. So 100 meters being the main example, the highest velocity that people are moving in the sport. If in that formative time, kind of the stage one and stage two, or phase one and phase two that I talked about. So about six to 12 years old. If they're not doing like very fast movements in that, or they, their use soccer coach decides

that they're gonna, you know, do long distance running and run a lot of gassars during that time, that kid will never be able to run, you know, that last, the difference between 10 ones and 9 9s and the 100 meters, they'll never be able to overcome that time of like lactic based work. And it, yeah, sometimes in Orange County we have huge club sports. So anytime I'm driving in a dry past the soccer field, like there's some kind of club soccer practice going on. I see the kids running, running

gassars or just like these long jogs or something. And I'm just like, it's taking, he's taking the fast switch out of them. There's like one sprinter in there. You're killing, you're killing that one sprinter in there one day. And the, you guys have ever read the book, The Sports Gene by David Epstein. No, no, I'd be meaning to see. Yeah, very interesting. And he talks about in, I think it's the Netherlands for soccer, small, small country, but very successful soccer program.

But they had this incredibly high incidence of injuries with their fastest athletes. And it's because sort of what they built their model on was really high volume training. And those kind of athletes can't tolerate that because their outputs are too high so they'd have like their fastest athletes always out because of the chronic hamstring problems and stuff.

And kind of to that same effect is just training and not organized the right way for them at the right times particularly. Yeah, it's the other aspect of it even besides looking at it and saying I want my kid to be this incredible athlete is you want them to be as healthy and mobile as possible. I mean this hit me real hard what we had a movement specialist as a friend of ours, talked to us about the foot

and just how complex the muscles and the movement of the foot are and how we've completely ruined our feet because we wear shoes since the time we can walk. And I remember going online and looking at the feet of modern hunter-gatherers and how different their feet looked. I mean, their toes were all spread out and muscular. And I looked at my feet and I'm like, there's no amount of training I could do now.

That will ever make my feet, like because they've been doing it since they were children, I've missed those formidable years of that kind of development. So it's just how important. So when you look at like school programs and stuff now that they're taking out activity and children now

are stuck on electronics and seem to be encouraged to do so. Well, the lie I built like, Merse's got two kids, a 14 year old daughter and a 12 year old son, and a 12 year old son, like if he runs across the playground, like they're not allowed to run like at school, like what? Outside of like in PE type of stuff because of just liability Oh my god, this is here in California. Yeah. Oh my god. Oh, they like a yard duties out there blowing a whistle If you run it. Wow. Yeah, but what what's wrong with that is they're looking at that's upsetting with they're looking at it like You know kids dangerous kids can fall down to get hurt. Yes, of course. Yes, risk goes up when you run,

but they don't understand that they're taking away the development of that child and not realizing that their ability to move and learn how to move, doesn't just affect their body, it also affects their brain. Cause that's where it all comes from. It's not just the muscles and bones,

it's also brain development. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it, like it's gymnastics-based drills. That's going to be great. Parents with young kids like your kid in a gymnastics right away. They might, you know, they're probably never going to grow up and be Sean Johnson or Simone Biles or whatever, but just that coordination that they develop there. Dance type of stuff. Listen to this thing on Lomachenko, the boxer, and he was a ballerino, which is the male version of a ballerina. I just never actually... I don't know that you did say that. They're all ballerinas. I'd never heard that either. I understand why because it's a goofy sounding word. It's like some really Italian... It's a ballerino. Yeah, Tony ballerino.

word, it's like some really Italian. Yeah, a ballerino. Yeah, Tony ballerino. Yeah, but he was a ballerino from like a high level in Russia from like five to fifteen. And well, no wonder he's got the most phenomenal footwork and this really unique boxing style from all of that general preparation, that stuff is very, very, the madam have fun. I can encourage them to try all these different stuff and have fun doing it. So you mentioned a little bit,

like so if you're driving by and you're watching all these kids get overly conditioned and some of these things that you see really irritate you. What are some other things within strength and conditioning world and coaches that you see, that really irritate you. What are some other things within strength and conditioning world and coaches that you see that really irritate you as far as like what they're teaching their athletes? You know, if there is one thing that really grinds my gears, are people and social media and everything has made this way too prevalent, is that anyone

can be an expert. This is the most frustrating thing to me. So they're all ready to film themselves doing their thing, but they have no credential behind it. So we talk about expertise in, in a strength, or a parallel to coaches, weightlifting coaches, has really been able to be measured by three factors. And you want to have at least two of the three. And the people you're listening to,

you want to look and make sure that they have at least two of these three things and Three out of three even better That they've done it themselves If they've done it at a very high level that can be good But some people are just meant to be strong and and that's how they were born They could have done anything to get there But it does give a bit of unique perspective. If you are a really high level competitor, I think that there are unique insights you can have to other high level competitors.

100 percent. Maybe more psychological even than that real organization of training. Two, have you coached people very successfully? That's a big one. And three, what is your education in this formal, informal, my degree is in history. But I've informally educated myself about this stuff. If there's so many people out there listening, feel with maybe one out of three of those things. Very often zero out of three those things. And I see some people being touted as these guru level coaches and

these incredible sources of knowledge. While Max, or weightlifting coach, Jagannatt, he and I are at IPF World's Coach and Powerlifters or IWF World's Coach and Weightlifters, the US Open for Powerlifters, the US Open for Paralyph Team, big dogs, all these the biggest competitions in the world for these sports. And we look around and we're like, well, where the fuck are these people that, you know, where are these coaches? The ones that everyone that they got so many followers, like, they're not here because they don't actually do it.

So that's the most frustrating thing to me. Well, I think part of the problem, or maybe part of the challenge, we see this in our space all the time, is that the people who are getting all the views and attention, they're just good at looking good and communicating. And a lot of times the people who have the great information, the smart people, are boring. And they're not getting the same kind of attention. So it's like, do you look at that and say, okay, that guy's an idiot, but he's doing something right because he's getting all the views. What can I learn from that so people can hear me? Yeah. So the distinction I make there is that there's internet coaches and there's coaches

who put stuff on the internet. The latter, I think, is a much better thing. Real coaches who then want to share their information rather than people who just talk about it, you know, can make a great YouTube video. But you can have all the best information in the world. And this is really our goal at Juggernaut is we're coaches who put stuff on the internet, but if we can't figure out how to share that information effectively with as many people as possible, what's the point?

So everyone's got a different place that they might draw their line with some of that stuff on how click baity or whatever it's going to get. But if a click bait type a title gets more people to watch or read really useful information, well, that's a great thing. So, you know, for us, the last real two, maybe going on three years, as we've tried to get more professional in our video and presentation for everything, yeah, I mean, we got to learn from those people and be able to more effectively share the information. Well, that was a challenge that we had.

I remember when we first started, was that was okay. How do we get this attention and not feel like we have to do all this gimmicky type of shit? And some people gave us some heat because we, you know, when it's unfortunately how like the YouTube algorithm works, you know, is if you got a good thumbnail, you've got a good title, a lot of people click and view on it and comment it right away, it pops up and views on more pages, you're more likely to get found.

And the thing that I would always challenge people that, you know, would give us a hard time for that is just like, listen, did you did you not find the information incredibly valuable? Exactly. I think clickbaits you and then try and sell you some bullshit. I clickbaited you to get you to hear so you could hear a really good message. If you feel that the message wasn't good, then by all means speak up. But I think if you're presenting a good message,

I think that you guys sometimes have to kind of play some of the tactics in the game that some of these people are doing on this. It's just to get noticed, get out there. So, and I think people like yourself, I think we'll sustain much longer business-wise. I think we're going through a phase right now, this, you know, you've been around for a long time,

you've been in the business for a long time, like us. And I feel like we're all kind of in this Instagram, YouTube world right now that's still in its infancy. And I think the cream will rise to the top. The thing that I would like to see is because when you look at general health and fitness, a lot of the information is coming from people who look a certain way. I would like to see more coaches who understand training, really know training and who have experienced training people and working with people I'd like to see them be able to get more popular because they're the ones that are actually giving the good information

That's what motivated what we're doing here. Yeah, the look good people are given just terrible And we're just talking about general fitness stuff and I look at this and it's just I mean I've always taken a lot of pride in knowing that I have this certain level of popularity and that as a ratio to how not funny I am on videos and how fat I am. I was like, this is the most impressive ratio. I'm the least funny and fattest person to be this popular. So I always say, you're winning, dude. Let me just presenting good shit.

You know, that's the reason that we have it. Yeah, it's like they're obviously here for my mind. They're not using me for my body. But yeah, that is a tough thing, but something I've always kind of kept in mind that, you know, our number one goal is to provide people the most useful information to help them reach their goals. And that might not always be packaged in the slickest or sexiest way or whatever, but it's never going to go out of style. Yeah, so some people might come in a year or two years, five year

run and they're big and then they're gone. Right. And but, uh, yeah, I've been doing this for 10 years. I plan on on doing it for as many more as I can. I've had four jobs in my whole life, delivered newspapers when I was like 11, worked at a restaurant, coach, high school football, I did juggernaut. I'm only going to have four jobs. This is what I'll do for the rest of my life. That's awesome. That's cool. Let's talk about the difference, because you had mentioned the three things, the three criteria markers that you should look at. And one of those, which I fully agree with, is having actually coached or worked with many people.

And for me, that's the difference between knowledge and wisdom, you know, in the space of just, you know, training everyday people. And we would, I would see these people who would have these advanced degrees in training or who themselves were amazing athletes, but had never worked with lots and lots of everyday people. And so they just didn't know how to apply it. They didn't have any wisdom. I mean, how important is that is wisdom versus knowledge and, you know, what you're doing? Yeah. I mean, of those three factors, the actually having coached and then it effectively and successfully is the most significant one. This is very unlikely that someone has just coached really well without having one of, if not both of the other parts, unless they're just like a great recruiter or incredibly lucky. other parts unless they're just like a great recruiter or incredibly lucky. I started coaching high school football when I was 19 years old and if I look back at the programs

and stuff that I wrote for our team and the offseason then compared to what we, you know, what I stuff I write now, the program was so needlessly complex and. That's so funny where you're going. I love it. It's funny where you're going right now because this is something that we say on the show all the time of how we used to train clients. I mean, in the early days,

I mean, we've all been doing this for between 16, 20 years. And back when I started, it was, you know, how much could I throw at the client? To confuse them and to do all this stuff. And much could I throw at the client to confuse them and just do all this stuff? And now when I look at the way we program, I mean, it's your core lifts. It's the big four core. And then it's like a few things built on that. And in fact, if we ever get a return, we rarely have somebody return anything that we, any of our programs, but if we do, it's normally somebody who has not listened to the show, they just bought

it because someone told them, and then they return it going. These are all movement. I know, I know these exercises. I thought I was going to get something totally different. Well, that's because you fucking should be doing that. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the last 13 years of of coaching people from, you know, youth athletes to professional athletes. There's just so so much understanding

that I gained of why what I was doing then was less than ideal. And even to go back farther than that, I've essentially written my own training with the exception of about a year and a half in college exception of about a year and a half in college and then about 10 months working with a parallel Fincoach named Josh Bryant, I've written my own train since I was 14 years old. So just the, you know, I was my first guinea pig and then the guys on our high school team who like they really wanted to try and train hard like, all right, then I start writing their programs and stuff too. And it's that trial and error and the psychology of working with people. That's a big one. Yeah, there's no way to learn how to do it without doing it.

And I see that you constantly revisit it. And you look back and see, okay, where are those things that I could improve upon? And I think that that's, you know, that's a great practice and something that's abberable. I don't see, a lot of times I'll see coaches and programs that are popular out there that will just, I mean, that's it. That's where, and they'll defend it by all means necessary. And it won't be real critical of it. So on Wednesday, when I did this coaching education thing

for the Mamba Sports Academy, it came about because my friend, who's the head of physical preparation there, he has his assistance every week, they rotate doing like a continuing education thing. And they make a presentation. So he tells me, he's like, our guy today is presenting about the Juggernaut method. And I was like, oh, that's cool. And I was like, well, maybe I'll show up and surprise him.

I'll walk in as he starts presenting. But I see the presentation. It's like, this is stuff I wrote six or seven years ago. Like I've learned like a ton of stuff since then. I was like, how about you guys instead of this, you know, seven year old book. Here's things that I'm doing now. And not that the stuff was wrong, then it's just not as right as it could have been. We've built on it. Are you seeing a, because I look at fitness more from a general standpoint, and I was a big fan of the bodybuilding magazines and stuff like that growing up. There seemed to be a period of time where there wasn't that much focus on training and how important training was, how important your programming was. It was at first and then it was like everybody worked out the same.

It was all about the supplements and steroids you took and everybody worked out and followed the same routine. Now it feels like people are starting to get back into programming and how important that is. Are we seeing that generally as well where now everybody's really starting to pay attention to programming and how big of a difference that makes versus all the other stuff. Yeah, I don't know if it's in place of all the other stuff, but it's definitely, you know,

people are really looking at the details there and... It feels more now than ever, so it feels like. Yeah, and for a lot of people, it's probably to a fault that they're over-analysing every just little, you know, they can put the Tendo or to measure bar velocity and their HRV and every single one of these data pieces they can get, but they don't know what to do with the data. So, you know, that's kind of always pendulum swinging back

and forth. And it's probably to over-analysing in a lot of parts right now. And, you know, I've probably contributed to that, at least in the power of the team world, because we're trying to do it the best we can. So we present a lot of information about that. But the program side of things has always been what's most interesting to me. Even when I was 14, 15 years old, and Google was much more limited than in the early 2000s and information that you could get access to just didn't exist nearly to the point that today.

But I was trying to find all of it. And I go back and still have some of these binders full of the training that I would do then because it was sprinting and jumping and throwing and lifting and all this stuff. And some of it was great and some of it was stupid, but I was all trying to put it together in the right way. And I think for me, throughout my own powerlifting career, like, yeah, I had good genetics to lift a lot of weight, but not better than a lot of the other people out there, but I lifted more weight because I did a more effective well-designed program. That's why I had these huge carryovers from training to competition and to be able to help athletes do that now.

That's always like, that's the fun part of the puzzle for me is how we're going to get the most out of this one day that matters. I started training in Jiu-Tzu about a year ago. So now I'm training for Jiu-Tzu tournaments and it's, all right, well, how do I put the Jiu-Tzu training together with the lifting? You know, you brought up the examples of kids who were so genetically gifted at speed that they'd never picked up the intricacies of the technique. Are you having issues like that with Jiu-Titsu? Because you're such a big strong dude. Are you finding it hard to like scale down your strength

and focus, I mean, I rolled, I did Jiu-Jitsu for about six years and I used to have to do that and I'm not, I'm like half your size and I remember I used to have to scale it back because otherwise I would get away with a lot of strength. Are you finding like I got a chill and otherwise you're just going to. Yeah. So as soon as I started, everyone was like, you know, roll like you're like you have no strength, you know, try to not use any of your strength. And I took that to heart right off the bat.

So trying to be as technical as possible and not use a lot of strength, but it's when it's higher about guys and or, you know, preparing for a tournament, like, okay, I gotta use the gifts now. Use the gifts that I have, but, yeah, I'm trying to learn, yeah, I'll try and, if we're drilling some bar and ball, oh, stuff, I'm gonna try it the best I can. It's, so I don't think it's mentally limited, as it is, just physical flexibility and mobility

for some of the positions, limiting me on some of the technique stuff. But actually, my first exposure to Jiu-Jitsu, it was one of the first groups that we actually trained a lot of athletes in when I opened Juggernaut 2009. It was fortunate enough to connect with an athlete named Fabio Vilela, and it's six, seven, two, 50 Brazilian dude, and we're kind of just cold calling people

and we opened up and he ran a Jiu-Jitsu school and I was like, hey, can I come tell you about what we do? And went in and talked to him and I was like, how about you come in on Monday and I'll take you through a session and if you like it, you can tell your students about it. He did that from him and training at one point, probably had 15 black belts, pretty much all Grace Iba ha, guys, the professors to every school in Orange County at the time, they would all train together Grace Iba ha headquarters where I train now

and they would come and do a strengthening and dishearing with me after guys like Humaloo Bahaw, Seven Time World Champion, Philippe Pena, who's considered like the best Jutsu athlete in the world now, trained him before he went purple belt worlds and then before brown belt worlds and they'd always be like, oh, Shad, you got the train men, you're gonna smash everybody. And like, oh, yeah you know, that would be fun, but like I can't hurt my elbow or something. I got to lift and do these.

So I just got to point late 2017. I was like, uh, parallel to him. I've done that same shit over and over every day. My first coach trained and competed as a strong man. And Garth Taylor, and he was one of the first Americans, if not the first American, to medal in the Mondiales, but he moved, and he was a big dude. But he moved like a small guy.

And let me tell you, when you do Jiu Jitsu, it's one thing to go against someone who's good. It's another thing to go against someone who's fucking massive and strong and good. It's very humbling. It's a very to go against someone who's good. It's another thing to go against someone who's fucking massive and strong and good It's very it's very humbling. It's a very humbling experience. So yeah, it's gonna be fun Yeah, I mean the whole sport has just been it's I've really enjoyed it now for now 15 months or so It's a blast is just new challenge every day and and I

You know we're 10 10 weeks out from pan Ames or something. So, I'm on my computer, and I was like, all right, we're gonna do this on this day, this on this day, and how I'm gonna fit it all in. And it's a lot of fun. Now, back to powerlifting. Has powerlifting, are they enjoying a spurt and growth in popularity right now?

Because I remember for a second there, powerlifting seemed to get a little crazy with all the equipment that they were using, the suits and the bench shirts and stuff like that. It seems like now you're seeing a lot more lifters go out there raw, and that seems to have made it more popular. Is my speculation correct?

Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I started powerlifting and at 2010. And I've never been to a powerlifting and ended 2010. And I'd never been to a powerlifting meet before. I remember when I was going to buy my first single that I was on a lead FTS and I was looking at the page and I was like, why is this one $250 and this one $50? I said, I should get that $250 when it must be better. But it was a squat seat, not a single at night. I just didn't know the difference.

And I was probably, if there were 30 lifters at the meat I did, there was 10 raw and 20 equipped lifters there, and I'd done a couple of meats competing raw against, or like at big multiply, parallel to meats in early 2011. So all these guys from West Side and Big Iron and all this stuff, they're there and I'm watching it just like, I don't fuck with anyone do this.

Like this is really weird to me. Like besides that the equipment is just, I just don't understand why someone would want to do it. But also a lot of that lifting was done to a really poor standard with very lax judging letting stuff pass. And I think as people as YouTube and everything started to become more prevalent and people could see like, okay, well, they said that they have this many people that squat 1,100

pounds. But what they just did there was not a squat. It sort of shifted the tide there to raw. And then with CrossFit coming in, just so many more people knew what squat bench and deadlift were. So that exponentially increased the numbers. The first meat I ever did in October, 2010 was the first meat that the USPA had ever held. And there, probably the second biggest federation in the US. 30 lifters in a high school gym. You could drive two hours

you know from my house in Orange County. Two hour radius every weekend. The USPA would be having a meet with 60, 90, 120 lifters. And back in 2010, you're at the meat. You could tell everyone there was a powerlifter. You could tell by looking at them that they were a powerlifter. Now you go and there's from 15 year old kids to, 75 year old. Yeah, it's becoming a thing now. Yeah, grandma's and stuff.

And people instead of playing in their Tuesday night, softball league or men's league basketball, whatever, like now they do powerlifteens's been really cool to see, to see that growth, the level of lifting is unbelievable. I squad 905 in 2011. There's pretty much only two Americans. I was one of two Americans actively competing who had done that raw. Now there's like, I don't know, 30, 40, 50. Wow. Wow. Numbers that were great for 275s and 308s and stuff in 2012. Now we're being done by

198s and 220s. The level of female lifting is even more amazing than that. Marissa first set the IPF world record in the deadlift. She pulled 385 at 114. Oh, jeez. At the 2016 Arnold. That was the IPF world record. Now just in USAPL IPF, there's probably eight or nine girls in our weight class who can go over that.

Wow. And. I love, one of the things I love about powerlifting the PL-IPF, there's probably eight or nine girls in our weight class who can go over that. And. I love one of the things I love about powerlifting is what always drew me to it was performance-based. But besides that, I like it because it's a great counter to some of the negatives that people can get from fitness, which is the focus so much on the aesthetic, and especially with women, that they, to the detriment of their health, because they're just focused on how they look, and they start to cut their calories,

and they start to eat real little and overwork their bodies, where you can take someone like that who maybe has some food issues, or issues with, you know, their self-image, get them to compete in a performance-based, sport-like powerlifting, where you got to feed yourself and you're measuring your progress not because you've lost 10 pounds on the scale, but rather because you're lifting more weight. And you can get extreme in any sport, but I always found it to be a great healthy alternative or at least something that I think is a good thing that's getting popular, I guess is

what I want to say. Yeah. There is a lot of stuff like that that exists for sure. And even I think within weight class control sports, powerlifting and weightlifting, there's people who probably still struggle with some of those issues trying to hold their weight down for a weight class or who go to the other side of it. And they're like, oh fuck it, it doesn't matter at all,

how much I weigh now, just how much I lift. I don't know if I did that, but I was like 375 lifting my best, the 375, like 315 now, but so there's definitely people who are just like, it doesn't matter, I'm just gonna lift as much as I can, and that's not healthy either. But yeah, it's a great, it's a cool sport because anyone can do it. And yeah, you do get that focus on performance and it seems so many girls who do bikini or physique or something, you know, they see their Instagram, Fitzbo, and that gets them to do their first bikini competition.

It's like, well, that person's probably going to do a parallel to meet within a year, because they're going to like, I'm fucked this dieting, this terrible thing. I appreciate that, too. Well, not only that, but I think part of the increase, too, is that, I remember watching this, and we talked about this in the show before, 15 years ago, I'd come in the gym, and there'd be dust on the squat rack. Like, nobody was doing it. And we've talked about, I think, how, what CrossFit did so great for just the general fitness space is they've reintroduced, like you said, those, those exercises.

Now everybody knows what bench squat deadlift really is. I mean, it was such a foreign, foreign movements unless you were in the strength type of world. So I really think that, just that reintroduction of that and then people finding out how important those lifts are. I mean, those of us that have been in this for a long time know that, but the general population, I don't think realized how important those lifts are for so many other besides just strength and how you look,

but also just general health. I mean, you're talking about some of the most important. Listen, and then, and I think that we've talked about this also, the programming in the strength world has been superior to the body building world and everywhere else for a very long time. I mean, I feel like, yeah, that was the only place there was real programming for a long time.

Yeah, and I think, you know, track and field is always the sport that I that I look at that's the most cutting edge in terms of program design because the the highest levels of human performance with weight lifting just slightly below that and both of those can kind of trickle down to powerlifting to other string conditioning and conditioning. And then those ideas, probably eventually trickle down to general population stuff.

But, but yeah, it's certainly, when every pound, every kilo matters. Subjective. Yeah, the programming has to be that much sharper. I really like what you guys are doing. I don't know how long you've been doing this on the YouTube channel. I'm curious to what made you start doing this,

but you guys are, are those other coaches for you that are doing the logs, the workout logs? Yeah, so that one that you're talking about specifically is getting Garrett Blavins. Yeah. So Garrett is a co-creator with me. We have Juggernaut AI coaching.

It's an expert system. It is artificial intelligence, expert system. It's not machine learning stuff that would be like an unethical thing to actually try and use machine learning on humans. That's such a good topic right there. We have a buddy who actually has created a nap and that was one of the things that,

you know, we try to tell him, he's dumped a ton of money and invested in the last few years doing it. And it's like, you can't really create a complete AI for the human. I mean, because there's so many variables that could be changed. Yeah, it has to, to at least begin with known parameters that, that myself, the expert in our expert system has given to it. Right. Because if it's not, it can't just have a billion trials of things on a piece of data, that person has to do this stuff.

And if the machine thinks like, well, 10 were 10. It's not going to need tuition. Yeah, 10 was good. So 20 must be better. And let's just keep going. And then the person dies. But yeah, so we create this expert system AI coaching. It's got, it will be in a mobile app in March.

Right now it's all for powerlifting, but we'll also have it for weightlifting and then super total powerlifting weightlifting combination. So Garrett's just kind of, you know, he's running it himself and showcasing how it works. Okay, that's what that is. Yeah, and, you know, I think a lot of people thought, oh, there's these and AI, that's just like a gimmick for marketing. Like, no, it is that AI expert, expert system, artificial intelligence, like we've talked to, you know, computer science professors, and I'm like, yes guess this is our official intelligence. It's got four quadrillion permutations of the original inputs for quadrillion permutations to the program. It's taking into account athletes gender, height, weight, experience, strength,

and all the lifts, diet, sleep, outside training, stress, different technique considerations to design a totally custom program, like it's close to what I would write for them, but it does it, you know, and you have any sensors or anything involved with that processor? How does it get all the outside stress data? Now that stuff's all just based on athlete feedback. Yeah, perceived, right. Yeah, perceived, I got you. You know, as we get into the mobile app and further down other versions of it, I'd love to be able to do some like HRV integration

to it, even stuff like velocity tracking integrations to it. So we could get away from any sort of just pure perceptive RPE ratings on it. That stuff will be a bit further down the road. Now, you can get so detailed and nuanced with a lot of the stuff. And it's like, powerlifting is a pretty simple sport. It's pretty straightforward. So that stuff will be fun to have at some point, but not really necessary. So it's giving very individualized volume recommendations and frequency based on all of those individual differences, and then adjusting it, intercession, intro week, what you did on your first squat day of the week is going to change what your second day looks like.

What you do this week is going to change what next week looks like. The average of this entire train cycle this month is going to change what next month looks like so. It makes a lot of adjustments very cool interesting yeah that's that's excellent the only drawback to stuff like that is when people start to rely so much on data that they stop listening to themselves or stop, you know. But I think in combination with that kind of awareness, I mean, we're entering into a future of training that I think is going to be phenomenal. It's a powerful tool for coaches, for sure. Absolutely, powerful.

You guys are doing great things. Thank you. Absolutely powerful. You guys are doing great things. Thank you. Absolutely great. I mean, our goal when we first started this company was to highlight, first off, us ourselves bring good information to the fitness space, but then to highlight people who know more than us and they're specific areas of expertise just to get the word out. Because we always talk about this, but we're fighting a battle

right now with bad information, shitty fitness information, and we're trying to shift the fitness industry in the direction of science and what works and what doesn't work. I think you guys are one of the few guys that are actually doing things right. Thank you very much, yeah. We take a lot of pride in what we do. Yeah, we appreciate you coming on, Chad. Thank you. Yeah, my pleasure.

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