S6:E16 - Unlocking the Training Secrets of World Champions

Welcome to the show that punches you in the face with information. Welcome to the Enterprise Fitness Podcast. My name is Mark Ottobre, owner and founder, and I'm your host. Today I'm joined by two of our enterprise trainers. We've got Jason all the way from Ireland and Shane, the Frenchman himself. Yep. Welcome, gents. All right, today's show we are getting into training myths debunked, secrets, my philosophies. These guys are some of our new trainers here at Enterprise, so we thought it would be really fun to get these guys on a podcast and rapid-fire me questions on training and unpack my brain for all of you. And these guys will have some fun asking me questions. So Jason, you won the rock-paper-scissors.

I did, so I'll kick things off.

Yes, perfect.

So when it comes to a lot of my clients, a lot of them are very busy. They're CEOs, they're just always very hectic lifestyles. So my question for you, Mark, was how do you actually keep them to stick to their plans or their schedules, the training regimes? What kind of tips or implements or strategies do you implement in their lives?

Well, firstly, never give someone advice that they're not going to be able to implement. So it's always understanding people's commitment levels, because the analogy or the example I give— if I told you 5 amazing things but you only implemented 3 of them, you would feel like you failed. Whereas if I told you to do 1 amazing thing and and you implemented one of those things this week, you felt like you won. And then next week I tell you to implement something else, then you feel like you win again. And then that's where we stack behaviors and success breeds more success. So how do I get these people to stick is someone will say to me, I can train 2 to 3 days a week. I'll say, great, let's train 2, not 3, let's train 2. Why? Because I know you can do 2. And then once you get comfortable with 2, then maybe 4 weeks or 3 weeks, how do you feel about training an extra day? And at that point, because things and the training routine starts to feel familiar, and you'll either, you'll either get, yes, I can do that straight away, or now I realize how much time and effort it takes to be able to do this, I can't commit to that. And that's also fine, because what you do want is you want to have an accurate representation of what someone is able to do. You want to have the map laid out. Because once you have the map laid out, then you can start making decisions and also then cater goals. So for example, if someone says I want to win a bodybuilding competition and put on 10 kilos of lean mass in, I don't know, 6 months, it's very— that's going to take a lot of— sorry, my leg just cramped. That's going to take a lot of work, effort, and things compared to training. This is really putting me on— for those who can't see on the YouTube, my— yeah, I had my leg lights, my hamstring just cramped. Funny time to do it on a podcast. No, but those folks, you need to make sure that the goal is— the expectations are set is where I'm going to, right? So the expectation needs to match the work that's going to put in. So if they're only doing, as I said, if they're only going to do once a week, they can't expect to win a bodybuilding competition with working out once a week, right? The effort needs to match the goal. And if they can only train twice a week, that's fine. Maybe their results are a little bit slower, but we want to get long-term results, so we want to value stack. We want— sorry, we want a behavior stack. Once we can stack those behaviors, then we're able to obviously create that outcome, and then habits are formed, and those habits become patterns, are the groundwork for reliable change.

Yeah, so you would start with the patterns.

Yeah, the things that they can absolutely commit to. So it doesn't have to be— yeah, how you split that up— do you do whole body, do you do upper body, do you do lower body— all those things They're great, yes, obviously you can, you can take a varied approach on that depending on what you want to, depending on the client, right? But I think for people who are busy, the biggest win first of all is to get them set up in a routine and get them going. And yes, how they spend that time, if they've got only 2 hours a week to train, how they spend that time, you want to get the most out of your workout. That's where people do come here because they know that for the time spent, they're going to get maximal and optimal return from that. So it makes sense to spend time with a trainer if you've only got so much time to spend on exercise. Yeah, I think that's probably— that's where I begin, is just being really real with time that they can commit and the expectation of what they're after for their goals.

Yeah, what if the time is changing constantly, like they don't find out until they can't come to the gym on the day, they got an emergency meeting, they have to go somewhere, right now they have to fly to Sydney, they have to do something like that, so the times you made no longer work.

Yeah, so I think the first question I'd ask is, are there times where you absolutely know you can train? For example, they might have a really hectic period or Monday through Friday, but they know they can train. And then also, then what can they do when they're, they're flying? Can they train at a— in their lunchtime? I think there's always things that people can do, but they immediately rule out a lot of the time. And it's just some— sometimes asking the questions and getting comfortable with— like, because when I travel, I find— always find a gym. Why? I actually enjoy finding gyms when I travel to see what, what gyms are around. I enjoy going to other gyms because I love training. Yeah, for me, if someone traveled with me, it wouldn't be uncommon to see a bunch of different gyms on the travel, right? But it's getting people's head— and then once people start doing that and start behaving like this, they realize, oh, actually I can— when I'm away, I can go to the gym at this other gym and pay the $20, whatever it is, and do a workout. And that's where you know how to train yourself, it just, it does become a lot easier.

Except if it's a hotel gym and there's nothing except treadmills and ellipticals, right? You can't really train yourself.

If you have a hotel gym?

Yeah.

Oh look, I've stayed at hotel gyms, but sometimes the answer is go on your Google phone, closest gyms, right? What do you find? And that's what I do. People say there's only a hotel gym. Yeah, can you drive? Is there a big— and if there is only a hotel gym, see what the hotel gym has. You can Can you always do push-ups? Is there a chin-up bar? Can you do core work? Can you do mobility work? There's always— if you think hard enough, at the very least you go for a walk. Sometimes it is about— I think Will Smith said it best, it's easier to stay ready than it is to get ready. And he was saying this about his movies, that he just stays ready. He was always ready for his— the next big role. And I think with training, that's exactly the mentality that I have, especially when it comes to training, is that if I say hurt myself or get injured or something happens I don't stop training because it's harder to get back into training, right?

Yeah.

But you can have that mentality where you are ready. It's a lot easier to stay ready than it is to get ready.

Shane, how similar would you train an athlete in regards to their sport?

How similar would I try to train an athlete in regards to their sport? Yeah, explain.

Let's say, for example, a golfer.

Yep.

Right, so he basically does this, the swing. Right? So he wants to come to the gym and improve his performance. How would you train him? Would you get him with a barbell, or would you like attach those swing things?

Definitely not. Definitely not. So, so this— probably the best example is with boxing, right? So shadow boxing with what? Oh, shadow boxing with dumbbells in your hands makes no sense. It's actually a bad thing to do for a boxer. The reason why it's a bad thing to do is because let's say the boxer's hand weighs 5 kilos, right? When I'm pushing out there, they punch straight out. When you've got dumbbells attached, they're now using the front delt to punch, but they don't use their front delt to punch normally, if that makes sense. So you're now training the neuromuscular mechanics of the way they punch. They're doing shadowboxing, and now they're using their front delt way more than they would if they were just normally throwing a punch, if that makes sense. So it's good.

I've heard it reduces speed as well.

Absolutely, because you're, you're fucking with their pattern. And you don't fuck with an athlete's pattern of how they do the sport. It's like body weight. So with a golf swing, you're not going to get better at golf. So if your club is, let's say, 2 kilos, and then you get a 10-kilo club and you start swinging with a 10-kilo club, that ain't going to cross over to you swinging better. What it is going to make you better is swinging with a 10-kilo club. It's a specific skill. The other way you want to look at it is— this is how you look at training athletes— is number one, you look at what are the muscles involved in that sport. So for example, golfers— lats, core stability, huge rotation, and being able to stabilize through rotation of the spine. QL, glutes. For a golfer, for example, definitely lats, obliques, abs, everything that's in that— involved in that transverse, that rotational plane of motion. That's what I want to get stronger. So I'm going to use a wide grip chin-up. I'm going to use, say, landmines. I'm going to use a lot of core work, and I'm going to use a lot of stability work and things are going to stabilize the spine. I'm going to use, say, even a deadlift. I'm going to use farmer's walks or even counterbalance farmer's walks because it's going to be challenging unilateral sides and counterbalance sides. Same with the boxer. One of the things I'm definitely going to use is a close grip incline press, but I'm never going to put dumbbells in their hands My, my job as a strength coach is to upgrade the hardware. I'm not gonna fuck with their software, right? Their software is up to the skills coach. Go to your golfing coach to make you a better golfer. I will just make sure that you can golf pain-free and you have no limitations, and then when you do hit the ball, you hit the ball further and harder because you have more muscle and there's no— how do I say— there's no inhibition from the muscle and there's nothing mobility-wise that's causing you not to create a full rotation. That's what a good strength coach does. A good strength coach does not make them a better— they don't make them better at their sport directly. They make them a better athlete, which enables them to be better at their sport. Yeah, yeah.

You've trained a couple of athletes.

Yeah, yeah.

So what kind of— what would you take into account when you're building their programs? I know you've mentioned like the exercises and stuff, but how would you program them for success?

So first thing is like, what's their sport, right? So no, no, the first thing is there's so much nuance in the actual sport itself. Like, if you look at some of the top guys in the world who coach different sports, most guys who coach top sports don't coach multiple sports. They coach one sport really fucking well because there's nuance in sport. And you go— and it's not to say you can't cross over because there are guys who have, and we've done it here a bunch of times. But the point is there is nuances with training. My thing was competitors for a long time, like physique athletes, which isn't really a sport, it's like performance sport so much. But then I went to boxers and I really got good at training boxers, right, or being the strength coach for boxers. The things that I looked at was a boxer, and this is what I did with Andrew, was we looked at his heart rate when he spars. And this was something that shocked me because I thought his heart rate, say, during a sparring match would go from, I don't know, 180 to 160, down to 150, back to 180, and the heart rate would have some variability. It didn't. Round 1, 160, 160, 170. Round 2, it went down a little bit, like in the middle of the rest, went down. So sometimes we'll get down to 150, 140, and then go back up 180, 170, and it'll just stay there for 3 minutes. And that surprised me because I wasn't expecting that. I thought there'd be much more variability, but this is where the more data you have on your athlete, the better you can make decisions. I looked at that and I went, huh, okay. When I'm doing conditioning work for this guy, it's not— there is no— in 3 minutes, if he's fighting for 3 minutes, which he is, he doesn't get time off for that 3 minutes because now we're making— so what I did was I came up with circuits for him, really hard fucking circuits. Some of them actually on YouTube. And he had to work for 3 minutes and I gave him 60 seconds. So our energy system works was 3 minutes on, 1 minute off, 3 minutes on, 1 minute off, 3 minutes on, 1 minute off. The reason for that is that's his fight. So I was— again, if you talk about the pyramid of specificity in sport, I was preparing him for a singular thing. If he needed— he didn't need to be good for 4 minutes, he didn't need to be good for 3 and a half minutes, he needed to be good for 3. And when he was an amateur, he needed to be good for 2 minutes. So guess where the energy systems was? It was 2 minutes. It wasn't 3 minutes. So you've got to have specificity in what you're actually trying to prepare for. So is there, say with golf for example, golf there isn't any energy system demand. They're hitting the ball multiple times in a day, but it's more about getting them strong and then being able to prepare. But once they hit that ball, they have ample time to recover before they hit the ball again, right? It's not a big deal in golf. Understanding the sport, understanding the mechanics of the sport, understanding the energy demands of the sport that's going to inform what needs to be strong and specifically what ranges of motion. Because it's not a case like, say, in boxing, I don't need them— I mean, it'd be nice if they can do, say, a front, a full depth front squat, but it's not necessarily a need, it's more of a want. But I do need them to have a strong posterior chain because they are going to get pushed against their fighter. So that's where deadlifting, for example, if I've only got 2 workouts a week with with a boxer, I'm probably going to choose a deadlift over a front squat every day of the week, most of the time, depending on the athletes.

Would you go bilateral or unilateral?

Depends on the athlete. I'm always going to be opting— depends on dysfunction. So if someone's dysfunctional, then you're always starting with unilateral, but as an expression of strength, it's bilateral. So no one does— no one cares about what the one-legged maximum squat is. No one cares about what the one-handed dumbbell bench press is.

I'm asking because like he wouldn't Give 2 punches at the same time.

No, one, one at a time. Yeah, but as I said, this is where the line of thought— so these are only indicator lifts, the indicator of performance. So you're not— you're using them as an indicator that the athlete is getting stronger. And the most important thing with indicator lifts is that they— how do you say— controlled. As in, there is variation, say, there can be variation with, say, dumbbell press. There is no variation, and that would be a supplementary movement to being able to perform a bilateral movement. So the performance is still going to be, and the testing is still going to be bilaterally for sure, for sure, because it's more standardized. That's why you use it, is because you want a standardized method. So even like the tempo and cadence of the lowering is going to be 4 seconds down, 1 second up. Not 3 seconds, not 2 seconds, 4 seconds for an athlete, because you do want to control the variables. You absolutely want to control the variables and compare apples with apples.

Yeah, and then you would like progress to more of a powerful move compared to more of a strength move, like periodization towards the—

no, for the indicator lift, we're going to be— we're only picking one indicator. So say for example, my boxer, I'm not choosing even a flat bench, I'm choosing an incline barbell bench press for my boxer because shoulders are also more involved. But that's going to be the indicator lift that all my supplements— so if I do power work, then I'm still going to measure my power work and my outcome of my power work. Did it make this lift stronger as well? So it should make everything else stronger. But I'm still going to be using that as a measuring tool because you want to make sure your measuring tool never changes. It's not like I'm going to do like incline barbell press now and then I'm going to— 2 months, I'm going to change to a medicine ball throw. How am I going to measure the medicine ball throw? Very hard. You can measure it with distance. Yeah, sure you could, but I still want to have the strength aspect covered as a measurable. So as I'm developing power, yes, power is obviously very important, but power and strength obviously are closely correlated. If you have a base of strength, you will be able to become more powerful. But if you're powerful and you're not getting any more power, it's probably because you're too weak. That's where you've got to work on strength. And again, the job of the strength coach is to pick up, do I need to work on power, do I need to work on strength? I would say for most high-end athletes, top athletes, it's always a case of more strength. Before putting power in. Because most good athletes, they're pretty powerful, they're just not strong enough, and there's dysfunction. And when you, you do things like give them a test, things start to collapse.

Into boxers, did they come to you, or was that—

Yeah, they came to me. Interesting story. My mentor, Charles Poliquin, he has the PIC Poliquin. So he's passed away now, late and great Charles Poliquin. He had a program called the Poliquin International Certificate. Poliquin International Certification Program, and there's levels 1 through to 5. And to be a level 5, you had to either train an MVP— MVP of a pro sports team like NFL, NHL. Obviously we're Aussies, so I ruled that one out. Or it would be like a Brownlow Medalist, our equivalent in AFL. Or you had to train a Commonwealth Games gold medalist or an Olympian. That— I think I had to finish top 3 in the in the world. So it's very hard to get. And I remember Janet and I had a lot of wins with the competitors that I was training. I think Janet won her 4th Australian title, and I said, Charles, Janet's won 4th Australian, she's competing internationally, she wins everything. He said, Mark, physique comps, you train bumfuck athletes. Train a real athlete and then come back. I was like, fuck you, Charles. Charles is a very interesting guy, right? Yeah, straight up. But he, he always pushed me to do— he always pushed everyone to do better, right? And that was his way of saying to me, work harder, which I said accept. Then, power of the universe, 2 weeks later, I get an email from a guy I used to do— be in a call center with, and when I was much, much younger. And I thought he was fucking with me because he sent me this resume and it said on it, sparring partner of Floyd Mayweather. Sparring partner of Kostas Tszyu, sparring partner of every like famous boxer you could possibly think of. And I called him up, my man, what's going on? He goes, yeah, did you get my email? I go, yeah. He goes, do you want to work with him? I'm like, yeah, but is this a real guy? He's like, yeah, come down to the gym tomorrow, you'll meet him. I'm like, so I met Freddie, Freddie Tooks. Shout out to Freddie. And Freddie's amazing guy, and he was my first boxer that I trained. And Lee saw all the work that I was doing with the physique athletes. So that got my foot in the door, saw that I was getting really good results, and then he approached me. He was— my friend was the manager of this boxer, and basically we made a deal and I coached him. And Freddie was going to go for the Australian title because he was always the sparring partner of the world champion, and now he wanted his shot. He won the Australian title. He looked fucking amazing. He looked amazing. And I think he was in his 40s when he fought, and people were like, man, this guy looks incredible. And he looked just jacked. And people would ask, what have you been doing? And he'd say, go see Mark at X-Press Fitness. And that kind of got me noticed on the boxing scene. And the person who noticed was young Andrew Maloney, and he heard about me from training Freddie. And then I was speaking to a friend of mine, Belinda, a very old-time client of mine, and we're sharing goals. And I said, look, I want to get my POC Level 5. And I said, this is— she goes, I know someone. Who do you know? She goes, oh, I know Andrew, he wants to go Commonwealth Games. I go, really? She goes, yeah, I'll introduce you. So introduce me to Andrew. Basically the meeting went like this. I went, so I want to get my PAC Level 5, you want to win Commonwealth Games gold, so I'm going to coach you for free, I'm going to get my PAC Level 5, and you're going to get Commonwealth Games gold. And he looked at me, he's like, yeah. We shook hands, yeah, and I became your strength coach. And we coached, I was with Andrew I think for the first 11, 12 of professional fights as well. So all through his amateur career into the start of his professional, and now he's gone on to win World Championship and doing really great things in Australian boxing, him and his brother Jason. And that was my foot in the door. And then from there, we've had quite a few boxers come through our doors. Uh, again, I'm not coaching at the moment, I'm really focusing more on the business. But yeah, I love training the fighters. There's a lot— it was a lot of fun, a lot of fulfillment. But that's how I got into it.

Yeah, that's fair. It's great, man. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned you did a lot of circuits with them and they were crazy. Yeah, I haven't actually seen the video, but, um, can you tell me what was involved in that?

So basically it was a phase of— I wanted to collect data about what their heart rates— I was saying what their heart rate was because I basically wanted to show the boxing coach at the time that they're doing a lot of steady-state cardio, and I'm like, it's not really relevant to what you're doing in the ring. Because— and then we did tests and I got him to wear his Garmin did a run and his heart rate would be like 140 static, up a hill might get to 180, maybe 160, and then put on sparring and then see what it does. And then I was like, all right, I need to mimic what happens in sparring in the gym in a controlled setting, but push you harder than what you'd get pushed from an aerobic perspective— or anaerobic perspective, rather. I need to push you in a controlled situation harder in here, control, and obviously get you stronger at the same time as well. And obviously the biggest thing is Biggest thing I think you're training any athlete is time and their recovery. They'll push. An athlete will find a way to break through a wall. Yeah, a good athlete.

And injury as well.

Yeah, time, exactly. So you can't have their bodies breaking down, but you need to get the work in, you need to get them stronger. They're the variables that you're playing with. And yeah, with Andrew, I was looking at his heart rate and then I was like, all right, there has to be a better— and as we start, because thing is, you have two athletes have similar skill, the stronger one's always going to win. Them because they're stronger. The goal is to get them stronger, but then when they're leading up to camp, the question is they need to be ready. Because conditioning, unlike strength, you can have a base of conditioning. I haven't maxed out on a lift for a long time, but the other day I was fucking around on the chin-up and I did 50 kilo chin-up. My best is 62 kilos. Now I haven't done that in a long time. I haven't lost my strength. What I'm saying is strength takes a really long time to build, but once you have it it's there always. Whereas conditioning, it's the easiest thing to gain. So if we did an 8-week block, all of us, of conditioning work, we would 100% in 8 weeks, we would be better conditioning, we would have more specificity for conditioning. We did 8 block of strength, we'd get a little bit stronger, but we want to do like 18 block of strength, 18-month block of strength, right? Yeah. So we build up our conditioning, but it's also the first thing to— that your body will lose. So it means that we don't do anything for a while, we're going to lose that very quickly. So when you're thinking about this for your athletes, you always want to think, I want to prioritize strength for the most part, and then when they get closer to, say, the fight or event, be very specific in the type of, type of conditioning. It's always that pyramid. So the base, you have the base, which is like your general aerobic work, and then as you get closer and closer, you want it specific for that event, right? As, as, so that, like Olympic athlete, for example, 2 weeks out, if there's 100 meters bet your bottom dollar they're only doing 100 meters. But maybe 18 months out, they're going for like longer runs and stuff like this. So the specificity point. So anyway, the circuits, basically what I would do, I tested a whole bunch of different ones. The hardest ones were actually— so I'd use 3 minutes, sometimes I do 6 exercises. Every exercise was 30 seconds, so it was all time and it was all challenge-based. So basically, like, what it could look like is We'd do vertical ball throws, 6, but then he had to hit the roof on each one. So if you didn't hit the roof, it was like a bad rep. So if you got—

so you wouldn't count it, is it?

I'd count it, yeah, but he'd be pissed. Okay, fair, because he's not putting as much power, he's not able to repeat the same amount of effort, there's a limit of power, if that makes sense. So it's measurables there. Then we might move into, say, something like 30 seconds of ropes, which would go really super hard for 30 seconds. Then maybe 30 seconds of a prowler push. And then 30 seconds of prowler push, for example, it's what's the distance you can cover? 30 seconds of a farmer's walk, how much weight are we using? So that's what I mean by a lot of it was performance-based. 30 seconds of chin-ups with full arm extension, wasn't like half reps, had to be 30 seconds. And by that time we got to the chin-ups, we were really tired. So how many good chin-ups can you do in 30 seconds? We use that often in our training. Yeah, and it was very hard and we did change it sometimes to making it like a minute of work, a minute, 3 exercises. They were really hard, those workouts. But I definitely preferred the 6 exercises, 30 seconds each, usually 3 to 4 rounds, really hard. And then basing it on performance, like the sled pull— we do sled pulls as well. And when he— in the first round, he would get the whole sled. And then second round, he's only got 60 seconds rest. Second round comes along, he's thinking— because a good athlete, they're going to be competing against themselves. He's like, fuck, I better be able to do this again. Not just do this again, but I want to beat it. So this is where the workouts became really mentally tough for him because he was always— I built things in there that he knew if he wasn't working hard enough, and he's the type of athlete that would get pissed at himself if he didn't hit the roof. He'd be pissed, and I have to remind him, don't get too upset.

Yeah, the winner's mentality.

Yeah, winner's mentality. I didn't hit the roof. I want to do it again. I'm like, no, time's up, you've got to live with it. Yeah, like you've got— and then when we would rest, saying that 60 seconds rest, I'd be like coaching with breathing. In through your mouth, in through your nose, out through your mouth, in through your nose. Control your heart rate, try and really try and recover. Because obviously in a fight, what happens?

Your heart rate goes spastic and, you know, yeah, and you're getting punched in the face at the same time.

Yeah, exactly right. It's super hard, so you need to calm yourself down. So that's what I tried to mimic inside of the gym was trying to calm— use it as a safe environment, basically controlled environment, that was able to then calm him down. Like, he was able to calm himself down, get control of his mind as well. Yeah. So that's basically the background there.

Fair enough. What about his recovery capacity? So if you injured him, I'm sure that would be very bad for you.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. So what about his lifestyle? What things did you have to like really make sure were on point for lifestyle, for his lifestyle, just for his recovery capacity?

For him, like, in the amateur, I think he was working a bit, and then he got professional professional, so he's able to really focus on it. But look, nutrition— I definitely ran his bloods and got sent them over to Christine, so she was helping with those things and like keeping on top of that with supplementation. So yeah, supplementation, nutrition. The biggest challenge, like, if you're working with an athlete like I was that has to hit a weight class, there's only so much food they can eat. Yeah, that was tough. But I think for me, where I hacked— tried to biohack it— was looking at these— getting Christine to look at— she looks at all the blood work getting her to look at the blood work, then give me feedback on this is what's happening from a blood perspective, these are the constraints. Okay, if this is the constraint, then we need to either supplement with something that's going to help immune systems, or vitamin D, vitamin C, something like this. Or you say immune system's being run down, you might be getting sick, because that did happen, right? If you push an athlete really hard, it's not even the injury, because I mean, the two biggest killers of an athlete is injury and illness. So injury is one thing, and you obviously want to avoid any injuries, but the other one that's not as spoken about is illness. Yeah. And if you are super high training volumes like a boxer, it's hard, right? How do you manage that? And that's where regular blood work and seeing what the immune system's doing— okay, this is what's happening. We were doing 4 days a week. This isn't working because you've got all these other stuff. Let's drop to 3. You're actually training harder than you ever have. Let's drop to 2 because you have to manage that. So that was my kind of trapdoor in to look at that. Supplementation, sleep, and then I said a good athlete's going to be across all these things and be pretty routine in the way they do things.

This is more fine, like, tweaking things.

Fine tweaking, soundboard. A lot of it is collaboration. It's like, how you feeling today? Some days, like, come in, and this is with any client, they come in and they haven't slept, they're ratchet, like they've just had a big week and And you got it, this is where you got to read, and I've had this as well, it's harder to coach yourself obviously because say my program, it might say 6 sets of something, 6 sets of deadlifts with a max, and you might even had a good sleep but you're just not feeling it. Yeah. And you start moving, James would come up to me, man, and just, he would see it, right? He'd be like that. And I'll do the same thing with my athletes. I'd see my athlete move, I'm like, no, it's not happening today. We're not doing that workout that I wrote, was good in theory, but in practice we're going to be doing something else today. And you have to make that call as a coach on the fly. And that's where it's like getting regular, because you see, like, many athletes comes in, you get— or any client, they're in a good mood, they're in a bad mood, okay? They're in a good mood, or they're happy, or they've got energy, I'm going to smash them today. They're in a bad mood, they're not happy, or not even a bad mood, they're just a bit down, depressed, or whatever it is. How's your recovery been? They haven't recovered from the workout last time, okay, we need a bit more time. You change the workout up. So you gotta— and for people who, like, the higher the training load is you got to be super cognizant of that. You've got to be super in tune with your clients of where is the training load at. Because like, even say Janet's another example, we won like 4 Australian titles. I would— a lot of her programs, I was testing her constantly to see where her breaking point was, if that makes sense. I wanted to see her come into the gym and be fucked, as in I'm having a down day. Great, we've hit that point, now we recover. If that makes sense. Because that's where the most growth is, and you want to be able to push it. But you just need to go— what the mistake that most people want is they go there and they don't let people recover, and then they get injured. If you want to go to the cusp of that, great, we're here. You know what we're doing today? Walk. You do anything, like, it doesn't matter. Just do a working day, just light pump, 10 sets of 3, 4 exercises, done. Get a pump, go home, see ya. Yeah, that's it. The rest of the week's gonna be a light week.

Yeah, I'd imagine that's hard to communicate to athletes though. They won't want to do that.

No, it's not as hard as you think because like when they get to that point, like that true point, they know. They're like, man, I just like— and I've been there so many times myself— is you go from— this is the thing, this is the fuck thing about it— you go from can't wait to work out today, this is going to be amazing, I can't wait to work out, and like the first like 2, 3 third week comes around, you're like, man, I hate my fucking workout. I don't— like, you start dreading the deadlifts, you start dreading. You're like, oh, maybe I'll have another coffee, maybe I'll eat after meal, maybe I'll train after meal 3. Yeah, um, I'll do it after meal 4, maybe at the end of the day because I have more food.

So you'd rather have a forced deload than plan a deload?

Correct. Not a forced deload is— the thing with deloading is a good deload is when you find the person limit, if that makes sense. You see it coming. There's a program Charles used to run, it's called Super— what is it? Super Compensation? Super Compensation? Super Accumulation Program. I forget the exact name that he had for it. It's exactly that. You do enough sets, the program would start, and you start hitting PBs, and then all of a sudden you'd start missing lifts. And then when you start missing lifts, do you actually train? The purpose is to train until you start missing lifts, and then when you start missing lifts, that's when you do your deload. That makes sense.

It's reactive, in other words.

Correct, it's a reactive deload. Yeah, that's how I like to run, it's reactive deloads. Most people don't qualify for a deload, to be perfectly honest. Most people don't train hard enough to deload, and people who are training twice a week, even 3 times a week, don't really need a deload, depending on— obviously, let's say there's some powerlifters who train 3 times a week because they're so strong.

If you're a gym bro and you're maxing out.

Yeah, like, if you're— I mean, for general pop clients and that, you're not going to be training near the capacity that's going to warrant a deload. So you really need to be lifting substantial amount of weight or substantial volume, and you will feel it. You will feel like your lifts will go lower. That's when you need to do it. Yeah, for sure.

So how long do your deloads last? Say with Janet, how long do you— is that just that workout? Is it a week?

I've got a good story about Janet, actually. So 2012, I had a new competitor. She was training, and I remember doing this program for Janet, and it was really hard, a lot of volume. And, um, Jenna really responded well with volume. And she came in and I got her to that point where she actually looked worse, she felt like crap, and like she, she just wasn't getting the pump in the gym. And she came in and the numbers were a bit up in terms of the body fat percentages, all tracking. And yeah, she was at that point. My other competitor who was new, she wasn't anywhere near a deload. She was like peaking that week. And she had a smile on her face. Janet didn't have a smile on her face. Yeah, first time ever, right? She always has a smile on her face. And I remember advice to one is we're going to push— like, a new competitor, we're going to push you, Janet. We're just going to do like easy bodybuilding for the rest of the week. I just want you to eat like more food and write up some stuff and eat more carbs the rest of the week. Really easy week. Week later, all of the body fat points were down and completely blitzed the new competitor. Like, she was just— she Janet dwarfed her, right? The deload did wonders. And but the week before, you'd say this one, the new competitor is— it's— she— Janet looked really flat that week. And the reason why she looked flat was because we pushed her. We pushed everything. She looked flat for that reason. And then when we gave her the rest, she was fully recovered. It is a reactive deload. Sorry, was that the question you asked? Yeah, yeah, there is a— how do I say— there is an art to it. It's not an exact science, but I'm constantly watching my client.

The biceps back and stuff.

I remember I had a guy came in, he got on the seated row and he was like, oh. I go, we're not training today. He goes, what? I go, dude, I've seen you, I've been watching you. He goes, he was just like, oh, thanks, man, I feel so fucked. And he's that guy, he was a competitor, he looked amazing, got amazing results, right? He shredded to the bone when he competed. And but again, same case is I pushed him to the point and then pulled him back when he was just about to go over the ledge. And that's what, in terms of body composition, strength, that's where you want to be playing, is you want to get close to the ledge, but you want to have someone there who knows exactly that we go any further. And the reason why I'm really good at that is because I've gone over the ledge myself so many times personally in my training, because I haven't had someone who's been there for me to say, Mark, you're going home today. I wish I had someone who said that to me when the days that I wanted to go home and needed, because I wouldn't go home. There was no way I was going home.

But that's where coach, where I've been able to say to my like clients and stuff, yeah, out of the competition, would there be value in, uh, harder when you reach that limit?

No, what you're entering into is the— forget his name, but there was the Bulgarian method and the Russian method. The Russians are known for having a team of 12 Olympian— 12— a team of 12 Olympic lifters, all of them could probably break the record, right? And only one guy breaking the record, but all of them are at a very high level. And Bulgarian weightlifting team, which is a matter of the survival of the fittest, where everyone ends up broken because they go max every day. So that was built on the saying— to personify it— is if a rabbit doesn't run to 100% every day, it gets eaten by the wolf. So that kind of philosophy got translated to a training practice where you go maximal weight every single day. And there are only a few people in the world who can tolerate that intensity and volume, and most get injured from that. Most get injured and named, and very few excel. Much more excel in this path. Is there— can you push past that? Very few, but But when I say push past it, is the thing of pushing past it is usually you just dig yourself into a deeper hole and you admit the protein— not protein, but you admit the gains that you would get, the supercompensation gains that you would get if you had allowed that rest time. Because the body, it's a thing, like if you— it's fine to push hard, but you need to allow enough time to dig. The deeper the hole, the more time for recovery you need. If you keep pushing and your lifts, if you're getting weaker then it's a clear sign that you need— your nervous system now needs to recover. It's not a case of push harder, it's a case of allow recovery so you can get better. Because the goal isn't to push harder, the goal is to get better. And people conflate those things. I say to people who start an enterprise, if I wanted to make you spew, I would. If I wanted it to be the hardest thing you've ever done, believe me, I could. But I want you to come back, and I want you to enjoy it, and I want you to smile every time you come in and look forward to it. So why do I want to make this the hardest thing you've ever done? Because that's not going to make you improve. It's actually going to do the opposite. And also, the other thing from a training perspective is just putting you into a hole, that's not based on improvement. Like, you're doing, say, 10 sets of 10 on a sled, that's— you're not improving. But if we can leave a little bit in the tank, this time you do 100 kilos, next time you do 105, next time you do 110, we slowly progress up, that's improvement. Even though you had one rep in the tank every workout Now we're improving, our nervous system is getting stronger. It's not— I say people stop chasing a feeling. That's investing. You can invest in a skeptical company, you can invest in crypto and feel smart, or you can just save your money in your bank account and have saved money and do it consistently for 10 years and have money saved and know exactly where your money is, right? Or you can invest in, in poker coin or whatever skeptical coin there is because there's so many, right? You can feel smart or you can actually be smart. Yeah, yep, perfect. You got— you want to do lucky last question?

Yeah, I'll do one more. Yeah, so just about your training now, have you got any goals or are you planning to do any photo shoots or get back into bodybuilding or anything like that?

I don't think I'll go back into bodybuilding anytime soon. I was planning to do a powerlifting comp and then I got injured, and I was planning to do another powerlifting comp and I got injured again, and I was planning to do another powerlifting comp.

Is this the same injury or multiple injuries?

Oh man, it's all of the injuries.

You just need someone today.

Yeah, yeah. Problems. No, it's been, it's been a wild couple of years actually. So training was going really well. I maxed out my squat 200 kilos, got a 240 kilo deadlift, I've got 135 kilo bench. And then the squat, I tore my patella tendon, my quad patella tendon. Yeah, that, that did take me back quite a bit. And so I've been working with that. And then I got my deadlift back up, and then I had this thing where my lat kind of pulled and I wasn't able to raise my shoulder. And that, that took a little while to recover. And then happened again on the other side because I was changing my deadlifting technique.

Was that down to the alternative grip as well?

No, it wasn't. I would have— no, it wasn't the alternative grip. It was really weird, but it was just a lot of strain in my lat because I don't usually hunch as much as I normally hunch. And I went— because the technique was working so well, I went from— I remember doing like 225, I was doing reps with it, and then I was doing— I was like, man, this is the easiest I've ever lifted 225. 25. And then I went to do my next set, and that's when it happened. And I was like, fucking serious? Like, this— I would have broken my PB that next week for sure because the technique was so good, and the technique that I was using. So now I've gone back to just general strength training, not powerlifting. So actually, James is helping me now, and general manager, and just general strength training, just getting everything generally stronger build a good base. And that's where, like, the other day I did the 50-kilo chin-up. So I'll get back some of these lifts that my base lifts, like, that aren't powerlifting-based. But let's say, for example, I used to be able to do 122-kilo incline bench press. I was able to do a 65, 62-kilo chin-up, 140-kilo squat, 100, 240 deadlift. Now there's no competitions for these lifts, but they're the lifts that I find that if I'm strong at then my body is rock solid. I can run through a wall, particularly the front squat. So I've got a little ways to go for that front squat, and I've got a little ways to go for the bench press. We'll get there. That's my goals at the moment. Nice.

Well, best of luck with it, man.

Sorry?

Best of luck with it.

Thank you. All right guys, where can the folks learn more about you?

So you can find me on Instagram at @coachjasonmassypt.

I'll be there. And Jason?

Yeah, you can find me on Instagram @shanefitness. The A, you replace that with an 8.

Where can people buy the book if they want to know more? They can buy it at Enterprise Diet. So if you're in Australia, you can buy it at enterprisediet.com. Actually, anywhere international, enterprisediet.com, and you can place your order there. It is on Kindle, so you can go on Amazon and buy it on Kindle. And it is going to be— probably by the time you watch this, it will be on paperback. And then the other place it will be on Kindle is, and you can order the paperback on Kindle as well very, very soon. Probably by the time you watch this, it'll be on paperback, and the audio will come eventually. Is it with your voice? It will be with my voice, but I have no idea when it's coming out because it's going to be an awful lot of work. I've got to adapt the whole text to talk it. And obviously we stock them here at Enterprise Fitness, and we stock them here. So you come into the studio if you're in Melbourne, come to the studio, I'll give you a signed copy. And, uh, signed copy. And my name is Mark Ottobre, owner and founder of Enterprise Fitness. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast, and if you have, I invite you to hit subscribe and leave us a review. And better yet, If you've enjoyed this, do share it with a friend and get the word out. We obviously make these podcasts for the love of podcasting and getting good information out, and even just sharing this with one person, I'm sure they'd love to give you a high five and, and getting them on track with their nutrition and training goals. Till next time, folks, eat well, train hard, and supplement smart.