The Shintaro Higashi Show - Talking Physical Therapy with Emil Berengut

Episode Date: December 22, 2020

In this episode, Shintaro sits down with Emil Berengut, a senior physical therapist at Memorial Sloan Kettering in NYC, to talk about the discipline of physical therapy, injuries treatment and prevention, and effective training methods. Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to the Shintaro Higashi Show. This episode is a conversation I had with Emil Berengud, a senior physical therapist at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City. I hope you guys enjoy. So you are a physical therapist, right? Can you tell us a little bit about what you do? Sure, sure. So I'm a board certified physical therapist.

I'm board certified in orthopedics. I was trained in sports physical therapy at Hospital Special Surgery. Graduated 12 years ago from NYU physical therapy program. And I am currently a co-founder of a virtual physical therapy startup called Mend Health. Oh, wow. That's really interesting. Yeah. We'll hear more about that for sure.

Yeah. That's what I've been doing for the last eight months or so. Amazing. Yeah. I'm super excited to be here. I've been in martial arts for the last 18 years, one form or another. For the last probably 15 years, I've been doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu. For the last 11 years with Marcelo Garcia at the Marcelo Garcia Academy and all the instructors there. You know, my son trains judo with you guys.

Right, yeah. It's an awesome experience. I trained some judo at NYU with Oishi Sensei. He has a, I think he comes, he still does this, I think. And he does like a evening class. So I did that while I was in PT school. Also trained in Muay Thai for many years. And some boxing.

So lots of martial arts. Lots of martial arts. Great. That's awesome. I love hearing that. And did I hear back in the day, you know, you had a clinic above the Marcelo Garcia Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school. That must have been great. I did. Someone get their arm cranked and like, ah, my arm hurts. Like, let me go up and see Emil. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Was it kind of like that? Yeah. It was a kind of a built kind of a built-in customer base. I think, so for me, I think it's important to note that, you know, a big reason why I'm a physical therapist had to do with martial arts.

You know, I started martial arts as a way to kind of stay fit, got really busted up, tore my ACL. Oh, you tore your up, tore my ACL. You tore your ACL. That's brutal. Yeah, I broke a bunch of toes. Yeah. And so for me, I just kept getting injured so much that for me, the natural progression was to essentially go back to school and become a PT.

And so the thing, Marcelo's really developed very organically. There's like a boutique studio upstairs. You know, unfortunately a bunch of guys and women who train would kind of get hurt all the time. And I just did it in a lot of ways as a service to the academy. I really love, for me it never

really felt like treating because we would just kind of do yeah i'll talk about uh jujitsu the whole time so it was just a real amazing yeah so i did that for a few years it was yeah it was great i could kind of imagine like how did you hurt your knee? It's like I was in De La Riva and then the person is like, oh, so what'd you do after that? What did the guy do? Like, what happened next? You know, like, what are you working on? It's like, hey, I'm here to talk about my knee. De La Riva does it every time. Oh man, that's so funny.

So you must have seen a lot of injuries up there, obviously, with it being a pretty competitive academy, right? Yeah, a lot of injuries. A lot of everything from, unfortunately, pretty severe, like, open fractures to limb dislocations to, obviously, knee injuries like ACL, MCL. Yeah. Two more minor things. Those are probably more common.

Just kind of land wrong. You know, us jiu-jitsu guys, we're not the best at falling or throwing. So things fall out of place. Definitely a different kind of injury set, right? If you're doing judo and doing bjj like in judo you get a lot of knee injuries right when the you know tanya toshiro sort of the side of the knee you get a lot of shoulder injuries if you fall wrong you get concussions you could get rib injuries fingers and toes and things like that uh what is the most common one in BJJ? So I would say hands get probably the most, to be perfectly honest, most people honestly don't even seek too much assistance from physical

therapists for finger injuries. They just tape them up. I was listening to your show with Travis and you guys are talking about the different tape methods and yeah Yeah, so those are probably the most common, you know what, you know, obviously what happens is people have grips and someone rips it out Yeah, and so Now if you injure your your your flexor tendon like the time you're on the inside. That's that's. That's not good. What about something like this? Like I have a mic I'm gonna show you right now. Yeah, yeah. And then I have a, I don't know if you could hear my hand.

Is that a bad thing? Is that bad? Sounds in the joints, I could probably spend hours talking about sounds in the joints. And this is my spiel about sounds in the joints. Typically, typically sounds in the joints and this is my spiel about sounds in the joint typically typically sounds in the joints are completely benign however uh you know because people will say like my neck is yeah this sounding yeah um however if there's a sound in a joint after an injury or there's pain that goes along with it it usually means

one of a couple of things either there's a tendon that's gliding over surface over joint right sound always means friction that's like just physics or in the worst case scenario it's an unstable joint that's actually if you're um uh uh you know and i i mean i've seen your forearms i know i know if you're if your muscles are so strong they could actually be pulling a joint out of alignment that's also possible yeah interesting so you see something like that with like the knee when you have a really tight IT band and then the patella gets, you know, pushed off to the side and then it's grinding up on the articular cartilage, something like this. Um, yeah. So that's a very common thing. People will, you know, will be more in most cases, uh, knee sounds like

that, just the patella grinding. It's not the end of the world it's not horrible um i i for uh for most people i would say i wouldn't go out of my way to make it pop yeah if there's no history of the kneecap actually leaving you know being blocks or dislocated it's usually pretty harmless, now there is a history of an injury. Um, it hurts, then it's definitely something, something is going on and, and, and, and you want to get it checked out for sure. Interesting. Interesting. So what are some of like the common misconceptions about physical therapy and, uh, things that you would advise athletes that might be watching judo guys, grapplers guys grapplers because I'm sure a lot of people have it kind of wrong right um

you know I I'm not I'm not an absolute kind of a guy but I will say yes there are tons of misconceptions so probably the main one is that we are kind of glorified massage therapists mmm so the second one is people often can't tell a difference between us personal trainers and chiropractors. You know, that's a real thing, right? Between doctorate of physical therapy, right? It's a DPT now. And so physical therapist, personal training, they both have PT in it. People just assume, oh, you know, right? Yeah, so in most states, the name PT and physical therapy, including New York State,

it's a protected title. So you cannot call yourself that unless you are a physical therapist. People do anyways. You know, I'm not in i'm not a in pt police um what i do i what i will say is as you know uh eugene is a physical therapist now yeah um we we work really really hard and uh to get this doctorate it's not just a matter of the title it's also the years the three years of education that goes into it yeah i want to tell people you know we're trained in um not just techniques but we're trained in

diagnosis and i think that's the important differentiator between for example massage therapists and personal trainers that um they're not necessarily diagnosticians so I've been trained to treat anyone from who is a newborn to someone who is a hundred years old yep yeah so newborn wow that's impressive that's really interesting yep so whether people have had stroke I've worked from folks who can't leave their bed to people who are Olympic athletes. What's the difference between occupational therapy and physical therapy? Sorry to interrupt your show. No worries.

Occupational therapy has a their primary focus is on getting you ready to do the what they call the occupation of life. getting you ready to do what they call the occupation of life. So their focus might be on, and they work in kind of numerous settings. So one, physical therapists don't do a ton of stuff with mental illness, for example. Occupational therapists do a lot. And so. I didn't know that.

Yep, yep. So my first experiences with OTs, phenomenal OTs at University of Maryland when I was, I used to be a social worker. I didn't do that. OTs also work a lot with kind of hand injuries. They would also do things like teach children how to write, children who are having trouble with writing. And for them, it's an occupation of their schoolwork. And please, my OT colleagues, don't kill me. I'm doing my best. And so there's some overlap between what PTs and OTs do, primarily when it comes to working on upper extremities. So like shoulders, elbows, hands, but that has to do more with your area of specialty practice and so if you're a hand therapist you could be an ot or a pt but then there are also these other areas but um pts i mean if i had to

just kind of broadly put it we tend to work a lot more with like bigger joints and bigger movement things like walking jumping you know you know, et cetera. You ever heard of this guy, Squat University? I have. I have. Yeah, he's great, isn't he? I think he started off as a PT. I'm not sure if that's right or wrong.

Maybe I'm just making it up. I don't remember properly. But something like that, that's really interesting to me, you know? Yeah. And do you lift weights yourself? I do. I mean, all I've got at home? I do. I will now, I mean, all I've got at home, I've got two kettlebells and that's all I can fit. Basically we're in a

New York apartment. I do. Um, strength training is, is a, is a really important part of my, uh, me being able to grapple basically. It, it, it's the only way I can keep doing it. Um, but yeah, I lift usually when we're not in a pandemic, I usually lift, uh, twice a week is what I shoot for. Nice. And you do heavy squats and things like this, or do you keep it? Um, I don't do super heavy squats again. You know, it was, I felt very validated, uh, listening to Travis when he said i just got to be able to lift a person you know yeah yeah that's true yeah true and there's a point of um so one of the the things that i realized a while ago was basically so because i used to be really into crossfit but i realized that crossfit is really a sport of its own yeah And so what I realized is that either I'm going to be really good at CrossFit or I really want to do martial arts.

And I really want to do martial arts. Yeah. And so for me, lifting is a way to do martial arts without getting hurt too much. Interesting. Yeah. CrossFit by itself, it could potentially lead to a lot of injuries, right? Because when you're doing movements like the clean and the jerk, it's so technique heavy. And when you're just ripping it and roaring it, just going for reps as a part

of like an overall, right, it's very difficult to stay healthy. So what is a good workout regimen would you say to stay healthy in order to keep grappling? So for most grapplers i would say first and foremost is doing something they enjoy and i'll be honest with you because most guys i talk to if they you know they play judo if they do jujitsu that's all they want to do and uh so for them it's important to find something else that they can cross train in and so first and foremost the second thing is uh aerobic conditioning so i've i've seen studies on this um there are studies out of brazil out of japan that looked at the energy systems that are used in various grappling sports.

And so one of the key differences, for example, between jujitsu and judo is judo tends to use a lot more anaerobic systems, whereas jujitsu is a nine to one ratio of aerobic to anaerobic. It's a lot more of a slow burn staying in that like 70% of your max heart rate. Yeah, wow, that's interesting. I never were to have quantified something like that, but now that you said it, I'm like, wow, that's a really interesting factoid. Man, say that again, nine to one?

So nine to one. So for every 10 minutes you're spending on the mat doing nirwaza or doing jujitsu, every 10 minutes you're spending on the mat doing there was our, we're doing jujitsu. It's, it's, you're spending 90% of it in a row using your aerobic system and a 10% using your anaerobic system. And so when you're working out, then you're working your conditioning for most jujitsu guys, unless they're super competitive people who are doing going to like you know abu

dhabi where they're going to be going up against wrestlers ensemble players and judoka um it really doesn't behoove them to spend a ton of time working on their anaerobic conditioning you know the jumping the sprinting that stuff because for most of them that's not what the that's not that what the research says the energy systems um are that they're using interesting interesting but would you make the argument saying that 10 of the time that they are using explosive energy systems like this like you really want to be exposed when you're like fighting off a mount or something like this yeah yeah for sure scrambles is a scramble is a scramble and so but if you think i love that you said scramble i love that you know the terms right i love that so if you think about it if you've got

somebody who is training so i you know i'll make recommendation to to for someone to work on their conditioning, right? So you've got to think of it as layers, right? So your first big layer is your aerobic conditioning. It does not benefit you to work on your anaerobic without having a good aerobic base. For most athletes, I would say, even I would say weekend athletes, you want to be able to have a good aerobic base. There are many ways of measuring it. You want to be able to run at a decent pace for like two miles, maybe as a, right. Um, you don't have to make like competitive times, but you should be able to run two miles. So then the next one is you want to start building your anaerobic base right um

and so the amount of time you're spending building your aerobic base and your anaerobic base uh for let's say jujitsu guys should reflect the kind of training and the kind of game that they have now i would say if somebody is a big scrambler, somebody who primarily does, let's say, nogi, who trains with a lot of wrestlers, for them, that ratio is going to be different. Yes. What about judo? So, well, with judo, you know, every time I do stand-up, I'm dying. You know what I mean?

Because for me, it's scramble and scramble and scramble. Yeah. I would say there's a much bigger component of anaerobic strength and a lot more upper body strength as well. So whenever you're training your conditioning, although for most people, you can get away with things like, I don't know, just to put it simply, running, stairs, you know, something like that. For judo, you also want to consider that things like muscle fatigue and your upper body muscle fatigue, right? So think about, let's say an example would be for boxers working the speed bag,

right? So they're working their upper body conditioning. So for judo, I can imagine you want to build in that upper body conditioning. So things like battle ropes, things like swimming, you know what I mean? Upper body, all of those things help you work on just local muscle endurance as well as your cardio too. So I had sort of like a couple of different thoughts. Somebody just asked me on my live stream on Tuesday, like what is the best workout for judo, right? For you personally, or me or whatever it is. And I told him that there's different schools of thought. I've heard people say, you want to replicate the type of exercise energy

systems that you use in judo in the gym, right? So it's like high intensity interval training with like a quick bench, quick exercise, sprinting on the treadmill. And I hear that, right? And I've heard other people say things like, okay, no, you want to develop your power, like strength and, you know, just deadlift and bench to make your joints stronger, things of that nature. And I've heard other people say like, no, the best way to get strong in judo is doing judo, right? So there's sort of three different education systems. And I kind of fell into the, you know, area of like, okay, I need to gain a little bit of weight in my weight class and be physically stronger. So I'm going to opt to go the route of heavy deadlift, heavy bench

you know pull out weighted pull ups and things like this like natural power lifting sort of movements you know what do you think about that sort of a thing so I think I would I'm gonna give you kind of a weaselly answer so I think there's room for all three of those things and And I'll explain. So you were a very competitive athlete. And when you were competing on the world team, and you were just sort of on the circuit, would you say you maintained your training intensity the same for 365 days a year? Or would you say you had a more of an undulation kind of a rhythm to your training? Undulation for sure.

There you go. And that's, that's ultimately, that's the answer for everything, which is most weekend athletes and most people like myself, um, are, they tend to train at relatively the same intensity. So everybody has a routine. Let's say I go, I'm going to go train in the gym, do my, my grappling sport of choice five days, because that's what my schedule allows. I'm going to have one or two days of strength and conditioning, or maybe yoga or something like that, because that's what my schedule allows. And then, um, when I have, let's say a period intermittent competition, I'm going to just double everything, and then I get hurt. But instead, I would say, like yourself, like most elite athletes, they never train at the

same intensity all the time. Probably the most famous example I can think of is, I've always heard Floyd Mayweather outside of his training camps, which are typically six to 10 weeks, um, they've asked him like, what do you do? And he said, yeah, I play basketball. No, you know what I mean? He does something completely different. So you can do your sports specific training, you know, let's say judo, you can lift, um, more like high repetition, low weight. You can do your cardio. And then there's also room for more heavy lifting, et cetera. You have a specific purpose in mind.

You said, I want to gain some weight and I want to gain some power, right? And so you want to build in a block of the time that you're working on that. So you want to build in a block of the time that you're working on that. But when you're lifting heavy is not the time when you're going to be doing two days in the gym training with some killers who are here from Russia to train. You know what I mean? Yes. This is like time you're going to work on your technique or you're going to have easy sparring rounds. You're going to decrease your, let's say, running or whatever else you're going to have easy sparring rounds you're going to decrease your let's say running or whatever else you're doing similarly you want to closer to competition you're going to kind of ramp up so you you sort of peak and then you just want to stay there you just want

to keep the fire burning what you don't want to do is what i unfortunately i see so many people do is they basically they double their training load immediately. They start doing everything at once. So they're, you know, working out in the dojo or the gym in the morning, then they go lift in the kind of middle, mid morning, and then they go back to the gym and they do hard sparring in the afternoon. And then after months and months of enormous preparation, a week before their competition, they get hurt. And then after months and months of enormous preparation, a week before their competition, they get hurt. And then now they're competing with like a, you know, a torn adductor muscle or something like that. You know, they're like taped up, taped toe to toe.

But if you look at athletes who have actual strength and conditioning coaches that are trained and educated, look at college athletes, you look at professional athletes, you look at the IOC and people like that, they will tell you this is when you ramp this up. This is when you work an aspect of this. And this is when you do technical stuff. Yeah. And, you know, I always had strength and conditioning coaches and this and that. And some were great and some were not so great. But a lot of the times what I had a difficulty was if my strength and conditioning coach wasn't from my world of judo, he never really watches a practice, doesn't understand where I'm coming from, the imbalances that I create. Right. And then so he's, you know, thinking like, oh, this is, you know, week eight of our lifting program. Like we're going to crush you in the gym today. And it's like, actually, you know, I got a tournament, you know, tournament

this, or I have to go do hard, you know, Rondoria today. So there was a little bit of a disconnect there. I felt like. Yeah, for sure. For sure. For sure. A hundred percent. Yeah. Your, your strength and conditioning professional, your healthcare professional, they have to know what the specific demands of your sport are. You know, like the number one recommendation when I, you know, earlier, you asked me about like the knee sounds. So a lot of jujitsu guys, they, they get the knee sounds, they go talk to their doctor and you know, no, so they tell them, don't, they say, what is this? What is the sport you do? Wait a minute. You're spending most of your time kneeling.

Stop doing the sport. And, you know, they're not going to stop. And you just lost the patient and you just lost an opportunity to really allow them to train successfully. So you have to understand what the demands are and what they're willing to do and how they're willing to modify their practice. And that's just that. Yeah. I had a doctor one time, I went for my hand issues and I had like sounds in my hands were killing me. And it was like 22 or something. I went to the doctor and the doctor goes, what do you do? Judo? It's like, I would quit judo. And I was like, I'm not going to quit judo. And then the doctor goes, what do you know? I'm the doctor here. Like, you don't

have to listen to me. And then he walked out and I'm like, Jesus, what do you know i'm the doctor here like you don't have to listen to me and then he walked out i'm like jesus what is this i'm not quitting judo you know yeah uh but the x-ray showed like a lot of like not a lot of space between my fingers and all that stuff yeah uh i mean you know you know i mean you more than anybody know you've been doing this your whole life you know we definitely make sacrifices and i think it's possible to do this a lot safer. And for all of us, like my goal is to be able to be doing this on some level until I'm very, very old. And, but at the same time, you know, we all kind of have these, I guess, risks we accept. To me, having done kind of striking sports for a few years, I got a number of concussions. And I have to tell you, there was a point where I just said to myself, you know what? This is it for me. Like, I can't keep doing this.

This guy wrote that. I do. Yeah. I do stay away from it. Yeah. I actually had a neurologist tell me basically because what happened was there was this almost like a normal curve in my ability to take punishment, like punches. Start out really low. Basically anybody kind of rings your bell. Then you go up and you're like, man, I feel great. I don't have to wear headgear. I can do hard sparring. I take knees, I can take elbows. And then you take a couple of hard shots or do maybe a couple of tournaments or kind of smokers and where people are really

trying to take your head off. And then you start to notice your ability decreases. And then I just had concussion after concussion after concussion and after i had probably five or six concussions it was a wrap for me and then um i remember the last one i had was probably i think i was doing like we were practicing um in a in a in jiu-jitsu we were doing like double leg takedowns and i just slammed my the side of my head against the guy's hip as I was driving yeah and I had that say you know that sensation of like the nausea and the light sensitivity and it took nothing and so uh for me personally uh it was just not a long-term proposition I knew I couldn't keep striking for many many years yeah I love it that you said smokers.

That's such an industry term, right? A boxing industry, right? Most people are not going to get that, but that's awesome that you said that. I heard it. I was like, oh, man, I love that. So does PTs also deal with brain injuries? Yeah. So we work with concussions.

So concussion is a, it's a complex phenomenon, right? And we're actually learning a lot more about it. It used to be just concussions. Well, first of all, they were ignored, right? Completely. Yeah. For a long time. For a long time. Then it was like, ah, you know, just take it easy for a bit. But then we're starting to realize there's like connection to your balance system, to your vestibular system. There's connection to your, so for example, there's lots of research that shows that people with a recent concussion are more likely to get a musculoskeletal injury. Really? Yeah.

Oh, shoot. Interesting. Yep. Absolutely. So not just, you know, brain injury, but it also affects your nervous system goes through from the top of your head to like the tip of your finger and everywhere in between so you injure one place in the nervous system it's gonna affect everything and so physical therapists work on vestibular issues primarily things like helping people do tracking this. Can you explain vestibular? What'd you say? Can you explain vestibular? Sure, sure.

So we have- For our listeners who don't understand it, not me. No, no worries. Of course. So vestibular, another name for vestibular is your inner ear. So we have three balance systems roughly. We have our visual system, our inner ear system, and something called joint position sense or proprioception. And that is kind of how I know when I close my eyes, I know where my hand is in space,

kind of like that. So vestibular system is the inner ear system. And so that is the one that tends to get most affected with concussions. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yep. Wow. So interesting. So what do you think like some of this stuff, like lots of injuries, obviously in martial arts, and you know, we've been talking about that. Is there a way for you to prevent a lot of this stuff? Or I have a little note that I saw online. It was like a meme. I follow a lot of physical therapists, right? And this guy said, like injuries generally come from either going too hard too fast or muscular imbalances so I'm not a big muscular imbalance person per se but I do agree with them with the first part so yeah so

it's called the rules of twos right it's too fast too soon too much too much too fat too but I would say I would add to that also um too tired oh yeah and too much at once so I could tell you from personal experience I generally get injured in two parts of my training sessions I get injured at the beginning of open mat because like I'm like a, I don't warm up enough, right? Because there's no like formal warmup in open mat, really. You're just kind of like, hey, you know, get yourself up. And my first, second roll of the day, in the good old days when we could still do that, I get injured or I get injured at the very last or second to last roll. So fatigue is a huge factor, which is why you're conditioning and recognizing what your current energy state is is super important.

The second reason, honestly, is I would broadly put it under our ego. Ego, yeah. Yeah, because every single one of us has heard a pop, has felt a click, has felt something out of place. We're under adrenaline and we just keep going, right? Oh, I'm just going to, you know, I'm not going to use that arm or I'm going to like, you know, stand on one leg or something like that. Whatever it is, right? you know stand on one leg or something like that whatever it is right and so um i i always think unless you're in a competitive kind of a setting and and like frankly you're getting paid for this

take a moment out sit out figure out what's going on with you you're not really going to know what's happening until you've cooled off a bit and adrenaline has you know dissipated and then and then decide whether you want to keep going or not because i can tell you my some of my worst injuries have been when i felt that sensation that i knew i was hurt and i said ah forget it i'm just going to keep going yeah like a completely severed uh acl or something like it's hard to go through that or i mean some people do right people do let me tell you my the acl that was torn i didn't know for years oh wow yeah yeah i didn't know i went and i heard i got kicked in the leg in uh i think it thai boxing probably or some yeah i was sparring got kicked in the leg

my leg would just hurt but it wasn't terrible yeah i trained on it got but it got a bunch of pt for the leg uh one day i decided to get an mri because it was just really hurting me and the guy said um and this was years later, he said, you know, you have a torn ACL here because I tore my meniscus. That's what happened. I tore my meniscus. And he said, you know why you tore your meniscus is because you have a torn ACL. Didn't even know it. I don't recommend it to anyone. If you know that it's torn, it's not a great idea because you will tear everything else that's attached to it. But yeah, it's not a great idea because you will tear everything else that's attached to it.

But, yeah, there's a good chance that you can train through an injury without knowing it because the adrenaline is so powerful. Yeah, that's true. Wow, that's incredible, yeah. Man, that knee stuff though, all those injury stuff is really scary, right? I mean, I kind of feel like I got to get my knees. I would say for me personally, the scariest injuries are obviously our fractures. And second to that are neck injuries. Oh, yeah.

Neck injuries are really scary. So I'll be honest. I guess maybe because I've dealt with so many injuries over the years, everything like a knee or shoulder or this, yes, you can get pretty catastrophic injuries. You know, somebody lands on your leg wrong, or you land wrong, or you twist or somebody applies like a, you know, heel hook or something like that, you can get a pretty catastrophic injury. But that will typically affect you. You know get surgery you get rehab you should be back most people are back within a year right yeah you severely injure your neck yeah you messed up you know and I'm not talking about like you know you can't

turn your neck for a week or two or whatever, but you get a neck injury, um, uh, that, you know, the, that, that can, that can end your, uh, you know, your fighting days. Oh, definitely. For sure. There's definitely. So what about like knee injury, ACL, you get surgery, how long does it take general three to six months? They say, right. But it's not really three. No. So, uh, really interesting. So here's what research says. Okay? And this is very unpopular, but research is research, right? I can't argue with data. So at minimum, after an ACL, return to sport is nine months at minimum. But in order to return to sport, I tell people, these are the physical benchmarks you have to meet. And return to sport does not mean return to competitive sport.

It just means return to some training. came out that said basically if you uh um don't return to play to sport for two years then your chances of re-injury grow even lower but say that again so if you wait for two years so if you return to sport after nine months after surgery you still have a fairly significant chance of re-injury in some sports, right? Judo being one of them. Yeah. If you return to sport after two years, your chance of ACL re-injury is much lower. But who wants to stay out of their sport for two years? Nobody. I'll tell you this story. One time I went to a tournament overseas for judo. And I was in the room with the best guys in the United States judo.

Every single one of them that has done anything in judo, probably about 10 of them. And we're all talking about injuries. And in that room, pretty much everyone except for me had an ACL surgery, which was kind of like a crazy, crazy. Of course, it's anecdotal, you know, but like, uh, I was so surprised. We're like, wow, every single one of you guys had ACL surgery. And they're like, yeah, you haven't. It's like, and I was like, no, I haven't, you know, uh, I found that really wild. And they all were like, yeah, we were back in the,

in the dojo three months. We weren't doing full live rounds, but we were there, you know, it takes about six months. And that's like sort like sort of you know the common knowledge of like uh athletes and i guess it's wrong right i mean because data doesn't lie you know well data doesn't lie now there are exceptions and these are the exceptions so one um many professional athletes will be back in time way sooner because basically they don't play they don't they don't get paid right so if if you're in a team sport your team calls the surgeon your team and I've been in those situations where your ethics are really questioned, they pressure the physical therapist, they pressure the physician to clear them before they're ready. And, you know, you have to always, I believe, as a healthcare professional to advocate for the patient, the patient will tell

you, I'm ready, I want to play, I want to do more. You have to advocate. advocate and for me it's a matter of it's not just a time matter it's a matter of meeting those specific physical criteria and if you don't meet them i'm not going to clear you yeah as unpopular but you know what people can also you know they can tell me to go and you know yeah sure especially athletes right yeah you know what i mean what do you mean i can't compete already it's like yeah you want to go out your shoulder again you know yeah sure especially athletes right yeah you know what i mean what do you mean i can't compete already it's like yeah you want to go out your shoulder again you know right it's it's your choice it's your body so um but what i will tell them is that if you re-injure that the surgery the second surgery is much much worse and then you're definitely out and slash in most cases, your career is done. Yeah. It's a choice you have to make. Yeah. When you get ACL surgery, do people come back a hundred

percent? No, it's never a hundred percent. No, no, there's never, it's never a hundred percent. There's unfortunately lots and lots of data to support that. Um, there's lots of theories about it, why. Some people believe there's inadvertent nerve damage when they do the surgery. And so the quad, the muscle that's on top of your thigh, above the knee, they believe it just never quite recovers 100%. You can get pretty darn close if you get not only if you get good rehab but also if you stick with good rehab uh but it's never going to be a hundred percent so does that depend also on the different type of knee strings like they used to pull a part of your hamstring they now sometimes get a cadaver's achilles heel does that still happen or no yeah so there's uh roughly there's probably

um i would say there are three most popular surgeries in united states and then there's one additional one that i've had uh patients from overseas um so uh there's uh so this is to keep in mind. So autograft is part of your own body. Allograft is cadaver. Allograft a lot of athletes like, because you are back out playing much sooner. Allograft is the cadaver tissue. You can reinjure it. Your chance of reinjury within the first 12 months in many sports is upwards of 30 to 40 percent that's not good that's not good now your autographed why it takes longer is essentially

you're doing two surgeries first they have to get the graft from your hamstring or from your patella tendon and then they have to implant it. And that's why your recovery is much longer because it's two surgeries. And then one other thing they're doing overseas I've seen is they're actually taking part of your IT band. Your IT band is a thick rope. If you look on a cadaver, it's super thick, so they graft that. Each one of those surgeries has its own pluses and minuses. People with after your patella tendon, which is a small kind of a wide strap that is below your patella that connects to the bottom part of your leg.

So they take a small part of that. So there's a higher prevalence of front of the knee pain with that, which for kneeling sport kind of sucks, right? I got horrible front knee pain all the time going up, down the stairs. Did you get ACL surgery? I did not. Oh, you didn't. Oh, you still have the torn ACL?

Yep. Oh, you're a crazy person. So it actually, actually what happened was apparently what the surgeon said on the MRI, it actually scarred over. Oh. But there's still things I can't do. So for example, when I play soccer with my son, I have to be really, really easy and light. And I cannot, I love soccer, but I can't

play soccer full because the pivoting and the running, you know, I feel the knees pretty wobbly. The way I play jujitsu has been to adjust to my style. So I do a lot of passing. I don't play a ton of guard. I'll play close guard. I'll play butterfly. But, you know, earlier you talked about like De La Riva. It's just not for me. I just can't do it. My knee just doesn't do that.

What about like reverse De La Riva? That doesn't require too much. Doesn't matter. Anything that where my knee is flexed and shifted, it doesn't work. Or anything. Because if you think about it, it's not even as much about what I do with my leg. It's what's the guy passing it. So if they're going to stack that De La Riva and they're putting all their pressure body weight on it. It just, it hurts, doesn't feel great.

And as a result, I've had to adjust my, adjust my game. So do you have a right knee or left knee pain? Which one is the knee? So it's my, it's the, it's the left knee that, that the ACL is torn in. So do you leave with your right leg going to like a knee cut or whatever? Yeah. Okay. So that's probably good right if someone does a knee reach situation you're not compromising right it's just stronger like yeah so i did i will typically do more stuff with my right but

um i honestly think that's more of a function um of me uh just being a very strong righty. But weirdly, I feel, sometimes I actually feel like maybe because I've done so much rehab on the left side, I actually feel that it's much stronger than my right leg. Awesome. This is why I focus on strength, injury prevention, training the stabilizer muscles, tendons throughout the body, over pure explosiveness by regardless EXA. Yeah.

Yeah, great. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, if it works for him, that's great. Yeah. And, you know, I don't want to give people the impression that explosive training is not good for you, it's not necessary. It just has to be put into context, right? And you just have to

do enough. So for example, commonly people will ask me about plyometric training, right? And plyometric training originated in a former Soviet Union, basically involves preloading a tendon before you explode into a motion. Right. So things like jump squats and even all the stuff you do on a box, like step down, jump downs, all that stuff. So what I will typically tell them is that is a phenomenal tool to develop power and explosiveness. But you have to meet two criteria. Criteria number one, it has to be required for your sport. Criteria number two, and this is from the original sort of criteria they used in former Soviet Union which is you have to be able so for lower body plyometric training you

have to be able to painlessly squat 60% of your body weight at least 10 times through full range of motion. Oh, wow, interesting. Which was why what bugs me when they do plyometric training in like gyms and like HIIT classes, and many of those individuals unfortunately cannot squat any percentage of their, they can just do a body weight squat. Yeah. And so they've got them doing these like high intensity training that was really designed for elite level athletes.

And they're using it as a weight loss tool. Yeah. But for our friend who just wrote, I mean, that's great. Working on stability, working on, you know, in jujitsu, it's a lot of isometric strength is required. So working on those small muscles around the hip, the shoulder, around your neck, all of those things are great because you're going to spend a lot of time

doing that in that particular sport. Yeah. And I think people are liking it, right? Because people comment that. I don't know if you see the comments. I do. Yep. I do. Yep. Yeah. Wow. Right. I'm going to selfishly ask a personal question. Go for it. That's what I'm here for. Yeah. So I love squatting heavy, deadlifting heavy, but I have a bone fusion in my right ankle, which causes a lot of mobility issues in my right ankle, which causes a lot of imbalances. I turn one side judo all the time. Sure. I have lots of, I pull here, right?

So I've come to, you know, like re-injure my back when I'm going deadlift. I used to go really heavy like over 500 pounds heavy yeah and then even squat yeah i've seen it yeah and thank you and even in like the squat too like 400 squat was a thing but now man it's like i can't even you know i could like do 315 but yeah there's just so much freaking pain and it's like i could barely walk the next two days and you know i know the internal external thing and the ankle mobility test but there's just some things that I uh is it should I just ditch the squat or no so you should not ditch the squat but you should uh moderate the loads you should manage the loads and um you should also what shoes do you wear I wear weightlifting shoes you might

be one of those people who actually needs even more have you ever tried like a two and a half pound plate under the heel yes okay and it still doesn't know it's a little bit better it's a little better yeah yeah but you know sometimes like fractured my foot a few times. So it's like sometimes the weightlifting shoes puts a lot of pressure on the, you know, I have really wide feet also. It's like I have lots of weird things going on with my body, you know? So. So this is what I would do. So this is, and I hope this makes you feel a little bit better.

Okay. So when they've done research, uh, about total strength gain, not power, but strength gains, and they had people lift heavy, low reps, heavyweight. And then they had another group do the reverse lower weight high reps yeah their strength gains at the end of the study period were identical but the injury rate was higher in the heavyweight group yeah I, I could definitely see that. So I work with injured athletes all the time. I get them squatting. First thing I did in my clinic was to buy a squat rack. I think it's an important, super important development tool for, not just for athletes, but for humans, period, right? Yeah. So what I would propose to you, and I don't know your individual situation, obviously disclosure, disclosure, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer,

everyone listening. But if you work with a professional, it is possible to continue to squat if you're mindful of the load and you're working within what your body allows you to do. So what I'm going to recommend, these are some of the things that I use for people in your condition. Doesn't mean that it's going to apply to every individual who listens to this. to every individual who listens to it. So squatting half range. So not going, do you go like ass to grass?

So you suggest that? So no. And I'll tell you more about that, about the deep squats and relative. Well, anyway, I'll tell you a little bit more about that. So put a pin in that. So you can squat half range. You can squat quarter range. You can add things like lunges. You can do, you can squat half range and add isometric holds at the bottom.

Ah, rest pause. Yeah. I do some of these. Yeah. So you can do all of these things, right? We get focused on the number. We do. But instead, I want you to focus on what we call RPE, which is rate of perceived exertion. So it is how difficult this exercise is. away with lifting much lighter weights, but get more of a workout than you do with lifting heavy. And then you can't walk for two days. True. That's so interesting. How do I overcome the psychological barrier of like, man, I used to squat this, you know, I used to squat 315 for 20, no problem. So now it's like when i do 135 it's like i feel my knees i'm like oh man my back is kind of achy and then i go 225 and it's like all right i'm gonna call it a day i do it back here now look i built this i see it yeah i see it

i'll try to talk my wife into uh letting me put a squat rack in an apartment so far it's a hard hard pass yeah no one wanted me to put it in there, but I was going to the gym nearby. You know, when things opened up, I had three days in a row where I couldn't get on a squat rack cause it was so busy. Oh yeah. Of course. I was like, you know what, man, forget it.

I, there's too many people down here, you know, too many issues. You guys coughing on me. I'm waiting for a squat rack. I was like, you know what? I'm just going to freaking do this for now. You know, until things go back to normal. Normal. Right.

Yeah. It's a huge psychological barrier. Yeah, I hear you, man. I don't have an easy solution. I can tell you a lot of people struggle with that same thought, what they used to do. And I would say arguably for people like yourself who are like high level, it is very, very tough to not be able to be at that level, especially in this phase where you're still a young guy, right? You're in your 30s. What are you like, like 35, you said? Yeah.

Yeah, you're still in your 30s. You're like, you're strong. You've got good technique. So you can, you know, you can work. You can spar with guys who are like you know half your age and still do really well against them but um there's still going to be some limitations that uh unfortunately our body just puts on us so so what i tell to people is i want you to imagine like a scale and think about what's important to you.

So if it is important for you to do, let's say judo for the rest of your life, right. In some form, you're going to have to make sacrifices because unfortunately we cannot be the best at everything. That's true. I still have a dream though. 600 pound deadlift. It's like my elusive goal. You know what I mean? I've been still wanting to do it. Sure. Sure and if that's your focus then you're gonna have to kind of make something else is gonna have to give so you you have to figure out what you're willing to give up to achieve that yeah so another deadlift question because you know sure since

you're here now i usually see you at the dojo all the time but it's like you know it was in the context of like you're taking your kid to judo, right? You have to go get ice cream or something. And then I'm like, wait, wait, let me ask you. So deadlift, then, you know, I have limited mobility in my hamstrings as well. So at the bottom of the range of the motion, I sort of do like a pelvic tilt situation where I have the tuck under butt wing, as they say, right? And it puts a lot of strain on my lower back. What do you think about going down half a little bit, you know, maybe two inches off the floor, like that's

completely legit, you think? Absolutely. Absolutely. I put plates, A, personally, for my patients, and for my athletes that I rehab, 45 pound plates, two, three, whatever it needs to, because a lot of people like yourself, they come in, they just don't have the range. And I tell them, you know, I work with like NYU basketball players, right? These guys, I mean, you know, it's like, it's not like a D1 school, but it's still there. These guys are good. They're very athletic, but you know, they're six, five. And it's a totally different lever arm going down from six, five than it is for me. I'm five, nine, right.

Et cetera. They cannot reach the floor, right. Or they have to bend their knees or they have to adjust their technique or their lower have to adjust their technique, or their lower back, as you said, kind of has to accommodate. Your body will do whatever you ask it to do, right? It's like a, I call it like a kind of a dumb executive, right? Whatever you tell it to do, it'll do. But it's not always going to do it the best way that you need it to do. So I give them sort of, I don't know, I don't want to know, I'll give them a permission. And I say, listen, what are you here to do? You're here to be the best deadlifter in

the world, which you can achieve. You can stretch your hamstrings, you can work on your deadlift, or you're here to play a sport. And in their case, let's say it's basketball or whatever it may be. Right. And so for your sport, you do not have to do deadlift in the strictest sense of the word. Yeah. But, you know, they say like, okay, so at the end of the range of motion, there's a strength curve and a strength collapse. Right. So in that case, I'm always going to be weak in that range of motion. And then the, you know, theoretically, like, what if you're putting that movement pattern, you know, when you're doing judo, and then you have to,

you know, take on load in that compromised state? Don't you want to be, you know, strong there? Don't you want to be mobile enough? You should work on that, right? Some people have said this to me. And that's fine. You can work on it. But instead of working on that range, and you see actually professional powerlifters do this all the time. They work ranges. They work top range, mid range, lower range. I'm sure they have some jargony terms for this. But what I think about is, so if you cannot lift, you said, how much do you deadlift usually?

What's your sort of deadlift weight? I mean, I don't really want to say anymore sure let's say let's say you're deadlifting i know you're deadlift like 500 or something right so 565 was my max at one point and i was consistently fours but now i'm only like messing around with like threes you know like 315 that's like the most i'll go because i'm too scared to blow out my back again so if you cannot do this weight from all the way to the bottom, right? So why don't you work a much lighter weight from that range? So you're still working that strength, right?

Because remember, heavy low reps equals light high reps, right? In terms of strength gains and also be considered, be considerate of what is required. What are the requirements for your sport? Yeah. So how often do you find yourself in the strictly deadlift position when you do Randori? Not that often, not that often. Randori not that often not that often so you can again you cannot be the best at everything you're either gonna be the best judoka you can be or you can think about competing and powerlifting very few people right there are very few was it like Bo Jackson who's the other guy who was a double sport, uh, pro player? Who was it?

Deon Sanders. Yeah. There's like two, two people like that in the world. And, uh, most of us are not it. We cannot be, you know, high elite level in two sports simultaneously. It could be like Nate Robinson, you know, basketball, football, and boxing. Well, that's... There you go.

We have a question from Robert Noble. Robert, it can come back to a degree. It's all about what level of explosiveness you're looking for. But generically, I will tell you, just because I see a lot of this, is when you're working, especially in the later stages of rehab, you want to be working a lot of single leg activity.

Yeah, bilateral stuff. Yeah, so bilateral stuff is great, right? Squat is always great. Deadlift is great, but you really want to be working a lot of single leg. So like lunges, split squats, step ups, step downs, and then single leg plyometric stuff, obviously follow the guidance of your, you know, healthcare professional, etc. But what I find is a lot of people come that I've sort of worked with after, you know, they've been working someone or whatever it may be. And they're fully functional after surgery, right? And when you test them, their bilateral bilateral skills so you have them do like a broad jump and they look great right but then you have them do like a single leg knee extension or a single leg press and uh and and there's like a 50 deficit compared to the other side and so that means that at some point in their rehab, they got seduced by the heavy squat, the heavy deadlift, and they kind of moved away from the single leg work. a single single limb activity as early as it is indicated as early as possible because i believe

that to be the best indicator of where that person is in terms of their strength explosiveness you know balance and flexibility agility interesting interesting so you're working on a platform right now to do physical therapy to deliver the service virtually? Yeah, so we've been working on this now. So I had this idea actually a couple of years ago. Obviously, it was kind of crazy. People thought like you can't do PT over virtually. That's impossible. virtually that's impossible although in places like Australia and Canada and VA here in the United States they've been doing virtual PT for decades but then kovat kind of expedited everything so we put together a platform that not just looks at just the injury but looks at the person in front of us. So what we're trying

to do is, so you know how you were talking about the psychology of things. So we're trying to integrate things like, what does it take to get you to do your home exercise regularly? How can we keep you accountable and keep you on track and make sure that you're doing everything you possibly can to set you up for success? One of the other things we're doing is we're matching patients with physical therapists based on their backgrounds, like in terms of their athletic background, and in terms of we're assessing people's learning styles. So when you call us or when you email us or whatever, we're assessing people's learning styles. So if you so when you

call us, or when you email us or whatever, we're going to ask you, what kind of feedback do you like? Do you want someone to push you and stay on you? Or do you want someone to kind of take it easy and just let you figure this out on your own? Yeah, what is important to you? Is it important for you to have a therapist with a background in your sport? You just, you know, you just talked about the guy you worked with who didn't know, who's never worked with like, you know, judo athletes before. Yeah, man, he thought I did karate. Exactly, right? How's that going to help me? You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. So how's the thing going? I'm like, dude. Not the thing, wrong thing. Yeah. I'm like, dude. Not the thing, wrong thing. So we match people up and we do our absolute best to have PTs who understand what the athlete is going through or what the person is going through. And most importantly, what they're trying to get to.

So that when I prescribe exercises to you or when I'm telling you, giving you advice, I'm not giving you advice because I want you to get good at my exercises. I'm giving you advice because I know what's important to you and I want you to get there as successfully as possible. So how do people access this service? They can just go to our website. It's menthealth.io or email us at info at mendhealth.io and we have like we have them take the questionnaire and then we just kind of go

from there got it got it i'll probably send me a link to it and then i'll put it on the description later just we are also seeing questions from Facebook. Let me go back and find some of these questions. We'll do some questions and then we'll call it a night. Cause it's kind of late already. Right. Thank you for, you know,

striking concussion stuff. Want to create a sparring league. Okay. That's great. That's not really a question, but thank you for the comment. I think she asked a question earlier. How do you aim your punches?

Okay, that's, I don't really, not too relevant. Anyway. Well, I hope well and accurately. Yeah. So we'll definitely link your situation. Yeah, any other tips and advice for grapplers out there who are you know from a PT standpoint sure knowledge of or view yeah so I would say whenever you're working with a healthcare professional so now I know

that ideally we want someone who has experienced our sport and has understands everything about it but i think it's totally okay if you teach them of what it is that you're actually looking for right whatever your sport may be because i've worked with athletes from everything from cricket to badminton you know and i've never played cricket but i, I am open-minded to learn from you first and foremost. So you can tell me exactly what you're looking for. And, um, that's the healthcare professional. That's the physical therapist that can help you the best. Somebody who's willing to listen to what's important to you. So just did ask a question quickly.

Sure. How about pulleys for judo? You know, like the pulley system? Sure. I think that's probably a better question for you. Yeah, I mean, it definitely helps. You know, if you can't get to dojo and do judo, you could work it for sure. You know, if you want to pull, you know, progressively, you could progressively overload, right, which is sort of the key to getting stronger. Right. progressively you could progressively overload right which is sort of the key to getting stronger right so you know it's good but you know i prefer the bigger movements like deadlifts and squats man i i like what you said can i ask you one more question so as opposed to deadlifting like you know there's this concept of volume right if i do 225 for 10 that's 2250 sure right yeah if i

do 135 i still want to do move the same amount of pounds. Yeah. Is that sort of the theory? Absolutely. 100%. And this formula that you just described. So I actually wrote a blog post about this. So this formula of volume is really important for people to understand that at the end of the day, matters is the total volume and so what i typically recommend because this also has to do with like progression right people ask me when do i go up right how do i know when when do i increase and this is what i tell people this is what you know what can i can i guess yeah can i guess yes uh you know i'm going to show how much of an amateur I am because I love the bro science. Correct me, please, if I sound like a moron.

But I do progressive overload. Maybe I'll do sets of eight. 60% one rep max go all the way to like eight by eight is very difficult. And I'll keep going up if I can do four sets of eight reps. And then the next sort of phase, the second phase, I'll bring down the reps to six. So the weights keep going up and now do reps of six. And then if I get stuck, I'll try to beat it. And then I think the third phase of the third month, you know, eight in the last eight to 12 weeks or so, I would try to do like, you know, four reps or three reps.

And then I'll have like a max out week and a deload week. Is that silly bro science? No, no, no. It's not silly bro science. science and you said what you just said is magic it's that what you said a deload week and if I can get honestly guys listen and and and and and female athletes if I can if you can get more people to a lot of us would not be so busy. Don't give away that secret. That's the secret. That's the secret is deload. But I will make the formula even simpler, right? So in general, this is what research says.

So if anybody's interested, you can look up work by this guy named Tim Gabbitt. He works, he's a exercise physiologist from Australia he works with a lot of like Aussie football Aussie rules football and rugby athletes and so what they found is that if you do not progress your total volume by more than 5% per week, your chances of injury are significantly lower. And the total volume goes back to the formula that you said. So to make it simple, we're just going to use tens. Ten sets, ten reps, ten 10 pounds 10 times 10 times 10 your following week right no one lifts 10 pounds what if they do whatever

right i'm not that good at math but uh if you increase you're going to increase 5% of that 10 times 10 times 10. What most people do is the following week, they're going to grab the next weight. Yes. Yeah. That's not 5%. Interesting. And it's fine for most people, right? It's also very hard to quantify for like martial artists because what's 5%, right? Who knows? Yeah. Right. But I will tell you if

you're doubling your volume of training. So for example, for martial artists is, like I said before, if you're training five days a week and you just paid the deposit for the tournament or you paid for the fee for the tournament and now you started to train 10 times a week, that's not 5%. So what you want to do is, you want to build in a large enough timeframe so that you can peak appropriately.

Don't just double your load. So 5% weekly is the recommended amount. Under 5% is less chance of injury. Important to note, these are all elite-level professional athletes who train for a living. And it's just volume, straight-up volume. It's just straight-up volume, yeah. What about, like, rest time between sets, right?

Because sometimes – you ever heard of the StrongLifts program, the five-by-five? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have, like – yeah, it's a good one. It simplifies everything. But it's like – yeah, I got injured on that too. But, you know, they have the, okay, you know, if it's too heavy, you know, rate of perceived exertion is too high, then you rest for four minutes. If you feel like you breezed through the five, you know, the reps or whatever, I'll just rest like a minute and a half.

Right. That matters too, right? Rest time in between. Rest matters because, and I think I could guess kind of when in the strong lifts. I think you got injured where everybody gets injured when you progress through after first few weeks because everybody's doing great. But then they really crank it up all of a sudden. And that's when people get hurt. Yeah. You got to rest between sets.

And here's the thing get hurt. Yeah, you got to rest between sets. And here's, here's the thing. People think about it. I don't want to get like too complicated. But basically what happens, the reason you feel tired is not just that you've exhausted your muscles, the mitochondria, the energy in your muscle cells, you've exhausted your nervous system. And when you lift heavy, when you do explosive work, when you work on your speed and power, your nervous system gets more tired than it does doing other kind of work. And so your rest should be much longer, not just for you to recover your energy

sources, right? Your glycogen, your phosphagen and all that stuff. It needs to recover your nervous system because you will not get hurt because you've exhausted like the glycogen in your muscle cells, you will get hurt because your nervous system is tired and it cannot adapt to the load. Gotcha. Rest as much as you need to, particularly when you're increasing your volume and you're lifting heavier than you need to. I'm sorry. You're saying, yeah.

Very heavy, I should say. So like, it's hard to quantify for 5% if I'm in the gym, right? If I'm doing, let's just say 225 for five, I do five sets of that. Just doing one rep extra a week, is that about it? If you just do it with reps, that's it. Just one more rep.

Yeah, you just do it with reps, that's just one more rep. Yeah. You just do it with reps until basically, um, until then you, you have access to the appropriate weight. Do you know what I mean? So you, I, you modify the, the repetitions until you're like, oh, okay, now I can just, instead of doing this many reps, I can just, that's the next plate, a 35 pound plate or whatever it is. Got it. Got it. So do you believe in the hypertrophy is eight to 12, you know? Yeah, there's good, there's good. I mean, this is a, it's, it's, it's a, there's a lot of data

behind it. But what I will say is, again, I want to reiterate this idea of deloading, is um again i want to reiterate this idea of deloading right it's important to deload and nobody wants to do that um because it's like how is it that i'm doing so well i'm lifting or i'm training like i'm doing two a days i'm doing you know i'm sparring i'm doing phenomenal what do you mean i'm going to take time off yeah um so it's important to deload and it's also important to understand the demands of your sport and train for that one more question i love i love these questions you're giving very great answers deload week 50 of the weight or 10 of the weight and then half the number of sets um i would say 50% is a good guide for most people. It all depends on what your training load is, right? Because some people's training load is so

high that they really need like a lot less than 50%. Or, you know, the other thing too is I also want to stress this idea of like cross training. This is what most people, this is the reason why most people are afraid to deload. They're afraid they're going to lose their gains. Yeah. So this is what the research says. You do not start losing your strength gains until after one month of complete inactivity. that's interesting so according to research you can take a week to do almost nothing and still come back which is why if you notice a lot of people what they say a lot of people who train very hard around the year they take take a week to go on vacation, and then there's no judo or jujitsu gym, so they're on the beach. As long as you're relatively active, maybe swimming or jogging or doing light stuff, most people will come back and they say, you know, I actually feel much better than I did when I left

because I got a chance to sleep, rest, nobody was cranking on my neck, you know, and I can train a lot better now. And you need a wife that tells you to leave the gi home on this vacation. The gi comes. The gi comes? Is that right?

The gi comes. That's good advice, man. that's good advice man that's great advice uh thank you so much for my pleasure my pleasure also it's great to see you great to see your son uh popping in that's nice i hope to see you guys soon in the day oh man you don't you don't know i think we want to see you guys more than you guys want to see us yeah can. Can I wait? Yeah. Yeah. Good luck to you. This is an amazing podcast. We listen to it. Thank you. My son listens to it all the time. I listen to it when I run.

You have, you know, great, super knowledgeable people. And, you know, they speak to me. So just keep it going. Thank you so much, man. Yeah. Thank you. Now you're part of it. I hope to have you back.

And then, yeah. Oh, here's Peter, too. Peter's watching. He's been the mastermind behind this. You know Peter from the Do you back. And then, yeah. Oh, here's Peter too. Peter's watching. He's been the mastermind behind this. You know, Peter from the Doja. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. He blew his Achilles heel playing soccer. Yeah. He was right. And you know what's funny? He wasn't even in contact with anyone. He ran, took a left and then blew his Achilles heel. Most low extremity injuries are non-contact injuries in soccer. Shoot.

Interesting. Interesting. Wow. Yeah, that's the truth. And that's why if you think about it, most rehab and preparation to prevention of injury is actually like cutting drills. Because I can't simulate a slide tackle or, you know, a football tackle on the field. But I can make you do a lot of stuff that's a lot like sort of non-contact injuries. And Peter tried to start a fight with the guy behind me.

With the leg. Because he thought he kicked his leg. People always say I felt like somebody hit me with the baseball bat. Oh, Peter. he thought he kicked his leg people always say I felt like somebody hit me with a baseball bat oh Peter thank you anytime my pleasure