Athletic Genius Mastermind

In the bunch of them. I didn't say everything that I wanted to say, so I think I'm going to record another one today and then do just a little bit of an edit so it's more efficient.

Yep. That's an art in itself.

Definitely.

Yeah.

All right, the. The goal here this morning is to jump into the athletic topic Questions, current ideas, what's on your mind at the moment in the athletic realm? Greetings, Debbie Charles.

John.

Fab. Welcome. I saw. I saw the back handspring that Evan did. It was really nice and smooth. It's still seems like a long way off to do a back handspring. Even though I'm doing nice back somersaults, I know I can land a backflip. But the back handspring seems so far away. Has anyone played with the gymnastic efforts? Maybe the trampoline is going to help in Montenegro.

Really just trying to master the back bridge. Being able to walk on it first.

And then I just.

You know, going back about more I think has been help helpful. I haven't. I haven't tested it. Backhands for your backslid.

Yeah, yeah, I've back it. Back bridge walking's super, super challenging. Keen to dive deeper into that as well. I've done a little bit without the hands as well, but I keep forgetting if you try. Yeah, try without the hands. Maya's good at it without the hands. She's got a really nice limbo walk. She can just go into it at any moment, kind of head below the hips. That's goals. But yeah, being. Being able to do that extension as well as we can do the flexion. That's the.

I just, I just got done with my guys today. I'm curious what anyone's thoughts are on very heavy isometric look with any type of athlete, regardless if it's like bodybuilding or powerlifting. Like, for example, like quarter squat isometrics. Not even trying to keep it up. I don't know if keys. You play around with them at all or. Yeah, a bunch of people been using those Glam, I think has played around with those a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. The question is like the duration. Yeah, I've. Yeah, I definitely played around with super heavy rack pools. When I've done the super heavy quarter squats, I've. I've generally let like let them move the bar. I've done them from the pins and then start from the dead start but overcome. Um. Yeah, I've used them and, and I've read about them. There's a lot in the. There's guys who recommend, like, in that six to ten second range, super heavy. There's definitely something to it, but they're very draining as well. Like, they're very hard on the nervous system. They're not so hard structurally, like. But. Yeah, probably depends on the sport whether if you really need a lot of that isometric strength, then it maybe makes sense. But otherwise I would prefer dead starts and pauses. And yeah, I'm a fan of heavy partials. Like, step ups are heavy partials. So if you want the loading for the legs of a heavy partial, then step ups are really good. If you want the loading for the back and the trunk as well, which is good for football and such, then I like the heavy partials in the rack from a dead start. Yeah. Going against bands or against change for those heavy partials would make it harder to pick up inertia as it gets easier. Yeah, the.

Yeah, what I did today was the. I go like slow eccentric to 90 on the squat, 90 degrees hold. They hold for like three seconds and then they drop, go full range. And I superset it with bent knee calf isos. So while the kids are squatting, their partner is doing bend knee caf ISO. And I've been. They have been really liking that. But they always, they ask me about it like, yeah, can we do this? Whatever, Whatever. I'm like, well, I'm trying to understand why they like it so much. They like being comfortable.

They like the bent bent knee calf ISO is that you're talking about or.

Well, they like it paired with that, that type of squat where you go down, hold that 90, and then drop, go.

Yeah. Cool.

Maybe every three or three weeks, I'll change up the squad type every week.

Yeah, yeah. The thing with isometrics and maybe part of the reason they like it is like, you can switch the brain off a bit more because you're not moving, you're not having a rebalance. There's less thought going on, but they're still doing something in between. So they're not standing around, which most athletes don't really like standing around in my experience. But yeah, there could be lots of other reasons why they're. Why they're liking them as well. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Like, the Charles didn't use isometrics very much. He used, you know, some pauses and. And such. Louis Simmons didn't really use isometrics so much. But there have been good coaches and lifters who've been big fans of the isometrics. A lot of the old time guys, they, they loved training with chains and from the time when it was more like circus inspired and putting on a strength show inspired, when that was a bigger part of the strength world. There, there were a lot of. There were more isometrics, less when there was less equipment and more chains and things being used. But yeah, there's, there's nothing wrong with it. This is, I think of it like you have this biological battery that's putting out force and if you like when you keep the button down, then you use that battery really fast. If you think about my son's always playing with these drones and stuff. Like if you keep the drone on, accelerate up, then the battery is going to go down faster than if you're pulsing it on and off. You can feel this when you lift heavy, especially if you're neurally drained. When you do slow eccentrics, you actually allow the neural battery to recharge while you're going down. So even though you're under tension, you're getting relative rest versus if you're using lots and lots of concentric force. But when it's like a calf exercise, then the neurological component is smaller, so it's not. Not such a big deal. So yeah, the like it. It is what it is. Like yeah, maybe Davi would have thoughts about the isometrics as well. And it's more relevant, like very relevant for BJJ compared to a lot of other.

Yeah, I tend to use, but I never use like in the contest context that you guys are doing, I tend to use more the just body weight stuff. But yeah, that's. It's kind of new for me.

But the calf hold would be body weight. Is it merch or just holding a light dumbbell?

Yeah, body is body weight. Right? And then obviously the squat is like a long pause at 90 paired with that position. So like the often I've ever, at least for me when I do drop go squats like or drop catch squats or you know, going fast into it. If I don't have my like calf prepared or solely prepared, I sometimes get like a clicking and sometimes I feel like a pop. And it could have an issue with the, with the calf. So I do like that combination because of it. Like it literally helps him for the squat.

Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool.

I use l sit today. One thing that's super relevant for us, it's the hip flexors and tend to be weak in everybody. Our defensive position with our. When our back is on the mat is all about Bringing the knees close to the elbows so you don't give connection on the hip so they can pin you. So yeah, I try to. I think I'm moving forward with my programs. Like reinforcing the hip flexors would be a good one. And then I do this in class just with L Sits. But I do have a question for you guys as like I've been exploring Nordics and reverse Nordics. I still, I still don't have a full Nordic. I've been working a lot on the centrics only and then I changed receipt recently just to incline and work like both ways back and forward would be that approach to progress. So.

Does anyone else want to go first? I'm a big fan of. So there's a few things here. Dove. Usually when people start them, they feel like the connective tissue is going to explode when they start doing Nordics. I really like the long stuff to work against that. Like RDls probably help. But like the straight leg, nose to shin, like head to shin. I would, I did a lot of them before I went to Dominican Republic. And then I hit my first Nordics when I was there where I'd been working on it before using Nordics. But it seemed like improving the quality of the connective tissue was the thing that changed it for me. And I wasn't getting any of that kind of weird pain in the connective tissue behind the knee and stuff when I once I did a lot of those. The other thing I would say that I would recommend and do more of is like single leg in the 45 degree hyper with bending the knee. Like if you have a 45 degree back extension then doing those or and also doing like partials at the bottom of the Nordic with using like push ups so you can do more reps but you're getting that specific overload of the bottom position. So say like sets of 20 in the bottom where you're just assisting as much as you need to and then like yeah, assisting a little bit on the way down as well. Like not making it too, too hard for yourself but giving yourself a volume of practice. And in the bottom of the Nordic, because that's the thing, if you work from the eccentric, you never practice the part that's weakest because you always go fast through the part where you need to work the most. So you keep working the part that needs least work and eventually it'll work anyway. It'll match up. The other thing that I really like is if you get one of those foam pads like they use them in Physio for balance. It's just like a big square pad foam and you put that in front of your. On your thighs. That will also give you reps sooner. If you get like two of those, then you. You get the feeling of the Nordic. It's just as though you have a really squishy bench, which a lot of the really good benches, but they. They feel like that. They feel like you have a lot of foam in front because they're kind of squishy. And they make it a lot easier to get reps. It's a lot easier to get a Nordic on the Atlantis Nordic curl bench or some of those nice benches versus especially like the partner one is. Is way harder if someone's holding your ankles. So what are you using at the moment to do them? Do you have one of the machines or.

I just use a strap and the. The normal benches in the. In the gym, you know, I strap.

Yeah.

Hold my feet to strap and using just like a normal gym bench.

Yeah, Yeah, I. I like that that way and I. I was able to do like that before. I was able to do it on the Nordic bench. But some of. Some of the guys don't like it because they get some. They've had strains or something with it. But I forget which way they were saying was more risk.

But.

Yeah, I think.

How are the legs close? Yeah, it's a little bit wider part.

Like on a regular Nordic bench, easier than when you get your both legs close on the potential doing at the moment.

So.

So the legs wider a bit, you mean?

Yeah, if your knees are not like, against each other. If your leg are just fitted.

Yeah.

More open, it might start easier to retain the body weight.

I have space on the bench for the knees not to be together, but the feet are definitely together.

I do think. I do think the easiest way to feel more comfortable, like Keegan was saying with those pipes. I think also if it's. If that's like too crazy for the tendon. I like to do standing pancakes and health before I get into Nordics. But like any pancakes, really, really strict. So like quads flexed, hips are hinging, back is not rounding. Getting as deep as I can. And then like wide stance and then long and controlled elephants. Like elephant walks. Like spending three seconds with an active, like, flex quad. And then I do Nordics. And I noticed that like many people, It feels more comfortable. You still obviously won't. You'll be able to progress faster in it because it doesn't feel so like, jacked up or like you have to drop or like the tenon's gonna snap. But also the concentric. I do like to separate eccentric and concentric on like separate days and then I add them together. So for the last three to four weeks, I just did eccentrics with my team. And then we did concentrics at the end of our low back day. So we did eccentrics at the end of our lower day and then econcentrics at the end of the posterior day. And then once they start getting used to the two different variations and opening up the hamstring and the tendon behind the knee, then you can progress a bit faster. But I do think you want to break it up and then gain mobility behind the knee. And that's the easiest way to progress fast.

One thing that helps myself as well was to work on a regular Nordic bench. But I was elevating the front of it. So I was working on the full range of promotion. But because the bench was a little bit inclined like this, we don't have the same.

Friends.

But you don't have the same like, intensity, but you still work on the full range. And that's how I learned. And then I went lower, lower, lower, lower until I reached the ground.

Yeah, that's what I've been starting to do for the past, I'd say two to three weeks. I've been like elevating the bench. So it's like the same idea what you're saying. So I'm working all my. And I was before that I was really working on the centric and pushing myself out. And now like I have it inclined and I do both. I touch it and I come back, but it's inclined.

Have you tried with Ben with bend?

I not on the incline, but I.

Tried with bend as well. I enjoyed.

I enjoyed to work with bent.

Because.

Then you can use up like your maximum strength you have, but still get decreased with the resistance of the band and you still work on the full. And then you reduce the the band resistance until you get with your own body weight.

Got it.

Got it.

And I'm doing something for that. For the handstand push up, for example, I have one intensity session a week and one which is a volume. And I choose for the volume session, I choose one I can handle for 10D3, for example. I can do a 10D3 instant push up free instant push up. But it's not like the most powerful. I couldn't work for volume. I decreased my level. I choose, for example on this one, the deficits bikes push up with the barrel and the feet elevated to work on a big range of motion. And on the second day of that one, I do 10D3, then I try to work until the 10D4, then 10D5 until I reach the 10D6. And then I will increase the difficulty of that movement. And the second training of the week, which is the one I want to learn, it's the full 90 degree handstand push up. And this one, I'm doing like one repetition only every two minutes in the first week, then one every one minute and 45, and one every minute and 30 seconds until I reach 10, one with this one, and then I get the bend lighter. So maybe that could be something to work on as well. For the Nordico.

Yeah.

One or two sessions of volume a week, and one that is the very intense one that you work with full movement but with a thick bend to start. And when you reach like the one one rep every minute, you can just use the lighter bend and then go on, go on until you reach with your body.

Yeah. Yeah, that's good, man. Thank you.

Amazing.

Post off some videos, Davi, doing some of the ideas here. Show us where you're at with it. I'm sure it's not far away. I see you got big quads. Maybe the extra volume on the hams can help as well. West side Barbell, they used a lot of extra volume of banded hamstring curls. That's why I like also what I was talking about with the pulses. It's like an opportunity for more volume. Like what Fabio is saying with, you know, get more volume. If you put the band in, all of the ways can work. You can decrease, you know, decrease the load with the band. You can decrease the load with the incline. Can decrease the load with the foam pad. I like the foam pad because you just put it in. You don't have to set a bunch of stuff up, move things around, pack it up, take it out. You know, the simplest way is what I prefer. But yeah, the. The. You'll. You'll get it. I'm sure it's not too far away. And then using a bit more kip to start with as well can be a good way. Just so you feel the movement. If you practice the. The movement of extending the glutes and extending the arms and. And then work towards more strict if you want to. But there's nothing bad about. I mean, it's just. It's an easier variation if you get some momentum through what you're doing with the upper body. It's a variation of the same thing. It's an easier variation. Still good?

Yeah, sounds good. Gonna work on it. Adding this stuff. I was just very between like Nordic one day a week and the other day I was working more RDLs than elephant walks and Hamster coast. But the idea of like breaking down like Fabian said, the session for volume. The session, my intense. I think it might be a good idea as well. I'll play with the ideas. Thanks guys.

I was curious, you want to talk about some juggling for athletes? I'm gonna start posting more about it, but yeah, people hop on board eventually.

Yeah, yeah, I saw you, I saw your post. It's just so abstract. The concept of, even the concept of general skill development, like strength training in the gym is general strength development. You're not just doing your sport. Right. But then when we go to talk about skill, we think, oh, we should just do the sport. And there, there's a place for that. But if you can figure out ways to make it more difficult but related to the sport that you do, then you'll be better. And you see this with a lot of the top athletes, they're doing different stuff. Saw the, I think it's one of the basketball players. Really tall guy, stands on one foot a lot. Is it Irvin? Kyrie? Irvin? I don't know. Might be, I don't, I don't know. But you know, you see like he's Kevin.

Kevin Durant.

Yeah, it's Kevin Durant. Yeah, exactly. He, you can see like he's, he's training differently. And then he was running his own summer camps, teaching other players how to do the stuff. And you could see even the other pros, they weren't as comfortable with getting onto these one foot positions. So it's just, it's just this like simple extensions of what they already do. Exaggerate it. It's the same idea is I think that, I think that lens might help Justin to get the message across to people you're talking to is like, look, we do strength training to overload the things that you're going to experience in your sport. And we know it works. We know you can't win a shot put gold medal if you don't overload force with weights. You're not going to compete. Just not going to happen. So why would we not overload skill if we want to be the best? And yeah, that's, that's the, the general idea. There will be pushback of like, no, we just need to train specifically. But it doesn't work for strength. And you can see, you can see a lot of the best have. Have these other methods. Sometimes they don't publish them. But I think that angle is one that some athletes will get a hold of.

Yeah, you're talking about Kevin Durant, funny enough. I'm making a real shouting out Corey Schlesinger. I don't know if you know who he is. Texas.

Yeah.

So I love his stuff. Like, it's pretty much like he'll work back bridges with his guys and their basketball players and then he'll do just different ball drills and then they'll have like a jump day and then they'll do those hamstring client metrics, you know what I was talking about? They'll do those on game day with supersetted with RDLs. But then they'll work juggling like he just does everything. And they just. The Texas team and the Houston team have broken both have broken school records often and that like over the past few years of working. But Corey trains Kevin Durant often because he worked with him when he was at the Suns. And yeah, you like the more that you work. Like the abnormal stuff in the gym. Abnormal. Just see the guys at play way better than the other players. They're doing the different stuff in the gym. Like, it's just, it's so clear. But yeah, Corey's a good example of somebody who. He plays around with a lot of different stuff. I don't know if you've seen his.

Page often, but yeah, he, I, I looked, I, I saw him a few years ago on some podcasts and I saw that he's taken a more creative approach to stuff and doing the micro workouts and stuff. Yeah, I saw that he was following me. I followed him back and yeah, send him a message. Just saying it's cool. I saw that post the other day with the guys doing the cartwheels and all that stuff. You can see that they've been working on it for a while, like their ability to crawl and. But then the cartwheels were actually pretty impressive and shows they've got good wrist development as well as the body awareness. Yeah, he's, it's cool. He's doing good stuff. It makes sense that it's interesting that, yeah, he's there with Kevin Durant and yeah, it's, it is, it is this, it is more difficult, Justin. Like people are gonna. Because they want to call it strength training and they're like, hey, this isn't strength training or they want to call it strength and conditioning. It's like, well, this isn't strength conditioning, so then it must be. But if you call it athletic development and you think, what are the best athletes? Like, circus performers are some of the best athletes in the world. They go a long way beyond what a lot of professional athletes can do, especially in terms of general development. But until the concept sinks in, until that like, memory hook, it's like the work with Paul where you don't have a concept of the things to be able to associate ideas with, then it just looks ridiculous and then just, you know, obviously it invites hate and rejection when. If you challenge the way that people normally think about things. So it's gonna, yeah, it's gonna trigger people. When you like balance training does, like people hate on the Marinovic stuff that power, I think it's power three or whatever is. But that, that work is really good. It's just not strength training. So if people think, oh, you're doing really shit strength training or they think it's top speed running, oh, and okay, it's not top speed running, so therefore it's really shit. No, it's foot quickness. It is what it's meant to be and it's a piece of the puzzle. You see that guys do it in isolation. I found a German account that's doing the Marinovic training method. And you can see he's not strength training the people that he's working with. And yeah, you can see like they look like athletes and they're just doing quickness stuff. They need to do some atg. They need to be able to produce a force. But at the same time, that method is not invalid. There are a lot of, well, strength trained athletes who could do with spending time with Marinovic and the Marinovic method. So, yeah, that's. It's a message that needs to be delivered with love as well. I got another reminder about that in the last 24 hours, like people are making hate posts and putting stuff, you know, putting stuff down. I've done it in gentle ways in the past and my message generally, I guess over the years has probably been, you know, agitated about how poorly things are being done. But like, yeah, it has consequences to make really negative stuff. And you think like people think they're just getting likes, but people end up getting death threats and, you know, it ends up being like significant negative to people's lives. When you put out conflicting stuff. It's like, it's not fun once people don't understand the consequences of the shit that they put out. So I don't think it's worth playing the controversial card. If you're planning on being big, if you're planning on having a family, it's just not worth doing anything. That's. That stuff's shit. Even though people are doing it. Like, people are doing it to you, Justin. Trying to get clout, trying to get clicks. They don't understand what they're doing. They don't understand the consequences. I don't think they're evil enough to be wanting to do what they're actually doing, which is inspiring other people to be really hateful and to do really stupid things, things that they, you know, maybe are going to end up in jail for. Like, so with all this, when you're putting across a strange message, like the. And I do it and people recommend it to. To be controversial and, you know, go after people and criticize stuff, I think it's. There's no. It's not intelligent and we shouldn't do it as a. Like, in our organization. And ATG is. Ben's been on that train for a long time to not push back and be loving in his message. It sort of was reaffirmed to me in the last couple of days as well. It's really important to do that.

Yeah. Yeah. There's been a few more. Eight posts.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just. Yeah. How you explain that is super clear. I think that if you want to have the conversation, then have the conversation directly with the person that is portraying different methods of training, like, but it shouldn't be expressed in that way. And I'm trying to have. My goal is to be able to apply a lot of different things and take from many different people and not like, we talked about this in Mexico. It's like, ATG is the base, and then what can I throw on top of it to, like, help them the most? And I just. I'm trying. Yeah. And I think Ben is definitely taking the approach of, like, just being kind and not even responding or blocking people or whatever he's got to do. And, you know, that's an approach. But I also want to be able to, like, take feedback. Not hate feedback, but be able to take feedback and then be like, okay, what. What can I add? What can I take out? And then voice that out to people and, like, be like, this isn't the only way. How do I hit all areas? I just made it real, actually. How do I hit all areas of training in one session? And I gave an example. I think that would help people, like, understand like, how twisted the strength training I Guess social media has. Has become. And, like, how can I, you know, add all different messes? I mean, obviously I. I'm one person, but, like, you know, the more that I show results with guys, with my athletes, like, I'm about to have the college event again in two, in two weeks, and we're going to do different stuff. Like, and I'm excited and I want to record it all. People can be like, these kids are juggling, they're balancing, and they're going to squat, and then they're going to do split squats, but then they're going to do these depth jumps and they're going to go to the field, then they're going to practice handstands. Well, what's going to happen? Like, let's see the results of this.

You know what I mean?

Like, I want people to see that, like, these things that people post, they're all valid. Not really. Not the hate stuff, but everything, every method is valid. I'm gonna see what works, what we can work in with each session, balancing stuff. And then, like, their feedback to me will be everything that I need. It's like, oh, yeah, maybe this works. Maybe this helps, maybe this doesn't help. All right, Mooch?

Yeah.

I don't really understand the handstands thing. Oh, cool. Well, like, whatever. Like, you know what I mean? Like, but I want to try it all. And see if people buy in, because the athletes, more often than not always buy in. Like, you still be. You still see guys going to Joel Seidman, but they're still going to him. There's something behind what, Like, I'm not saying that it's producing the greatest results, but I. There's still guys that go and train with him.

It works like, it's, it's. It's a good method for producing a lot of force. And, and there's something to the position specificity. There's something to the instability. Is it in isolation you can, you know, I, I wouldn't recommend it, but in, like, the, the concepts make sense. Like, what he's saying is true. It's just when you, like, what he's pushing against, what he's saying doesn't work. I, I don't agree with, like, I don't think that you need to take out the mobility stuff or the motor patterning stuff in, in other ways. And the athletes that he works with, none of them are taking everything else out. They're all out running on the field. They're working with a physio, they're doing their stretching they're doing their speed coach work. So none of them are doing what, you know what he's saying, of which as I've understood the message is, you know, to do that stuff in isolation and don't, don't use any full range movements and blah, blah. Like the professional athletes aren't going to be doing that like even just by playing their sport, but they're all going to be working with multiple coaches if they're professional athletes. So yeah, that's the thing. Like just look at who it is and what they, you know, who they work with and then what the context of that is. Like if, if they're doing a bunch of mobility stuff with other people and they're seeing a physical therapist whenever anything is slightly challenged and the physical therapist is going to prescribe for it, then, then that system isn't being applied in isolation. So you can't, you don't even know what the consequences of it are if you apply it in isolation. Maybe he's applied it in isolation to himself. Maybe you can see it, the consequences of it there. But yeah, you know, he's, he's played that controversy card to build, build a brand and sell a expensive ebook. I don't know whether that's, you know, how money motivated he is. I don't know him at all personally to know how, how it fits in to his values in that way.

But yeah, yeah, I'm not saying, I'm not saying that I'm gonna do his stuff. All I'm saying is, you know, there's athletes still going to him.

Yeah, right.

But hey, like if I look at the guys that don't really say anything about anything in the fence community, Burgles and then that guy Corey, like they don't really ever say much. They literally everywhere and they use it for their systems. Like Joey will use atg, then he'll work plyometrics and work isometrics, then he'll work the flywheel, then he'll work, you know, running and jumping different routines and stuff like that and then he'll do like days where it's just plyometrics and same same thing with the guy Corey. So if I, like, if I realize the best guys use. For the most results.

Yeah, yeah. If you can understand why they fall in love with the system and what the impact was for them. Like Marv Marinovich, who developed the Marinovic system, which is the system that's most against like a powerlifting type approach for athletes. He was a really good power lifter, played in the NFL, but he was like super strong barbell stuff and he wanted something different for his son. His son was the best high school quarterback and college quarterback and probably might have been the best quarterback in the NFL with the system that he developed, which was a very intricate system of force development, balance and skill. The Marinovic system came out of him being a bit jacked up from too much heavy barbell work and then wanting to do something different. He understood force. He was never going to miss the force part of the equation with his own son because he'd been a champion powerlifter. Like he wasn't going to have him be weak. And so yeah, Todd was super smooth athlete and developed himself from a young stage. Always look at like what was the problem the coach was trying to solve. And then you understand for Ben Patrick it was never a lack of plyometric drills and elastic work. Like he was always going to be wanting to hit the layups and wanting to hit the dunks. So that was never going to be an issue. The exposure to elastic type stimulus. And he tried all the jump programs and such. So what he was lacking was the connective tissue integrity and that's what worked for him. But he, he'd already been building the motor patterns to be able to, to dunk and to be able to jump off all four plants and all that stuff. Like he'd been, I don't know, I don't know how well he actually got into the awful plants thing, but that's why his system is so much dominant, so dominant around connective tissue development through strength training because that was his experience. Every, every coach has their story of why they love the stuff they love. I wanted to expand my own mind and vision of the world and I wanted to challenge athletes to have a bigger perspective about what they do and why they do it, how they do it. I only moderately implemented it with the pro rugby because it was still developing at that time. We didn't, yeah, we didn't do anywhere near as much of it as I would do now if I was with them. But yeah, that's my goal, you know. So my system is really expansive because my goal is to expand the minds of the people that I work with as well as their physical capacities. That kind of talk would seem ridiculous to half the strength coaches out there because they just want the guys that produce most force. It's always in that context. But yeah, that's, but I do.

Yeah. I do think though, like if I didn't know what you're trying, what that sort of Perspective is what your. Your perspective on, you know, bringing that into the training stuff world. If I didn't know that, I'd probably just be a hip guy. I gotta be honest. Like, if, If I was just like, I probably just focus around the hip and low back and just train guys, and that would be my focus. And you have to have a great hip and low back and da, da, da, da. But because I was able to learn from your perspective. And like, even when we talk about this at West Palm, like, you were mentioning that there's something. There's something with, like, dancing, there's something with ballet, there's something with, like, adding these things in and da, da, da, da. Where I'm. I remember you talking about that. I'm like, you start to expand your mind. At least I expanded my mind as a train coach, being like, well, you know, let's add different subjects into the training and see how it goes. And the second that I started to do that, started to add different things in. Like, one, it's more fun. Two, the results are ridiculous. From what? From my experience. So I do think that as a strength coach or as somebody who aspires to be a good athlete, Realizing that if you're not learning and like, you're assuming that your experience is the only correct thing. Yeah, it's my opinion.

That's. It's. It's going to be interesting to see where you end up. I don't think a lot of the coaches that I've worked with have coached. The ones that have worked in sports have coached the winning teams in Irish sports, in Australian sports, in hockey, rugby, a bunch of different stuff. But I still don't think we've really applied this. It doesn't even exist as a concept. General skill development. I mean, it's there in little pockets on the Internet, like, you can find little bits and pieces here and there.

But.

The term strength coach is not really fitting for what we're talking about. Strength and conditioning, strength coach, it automatically puts you in that box. Like we're talking about with business. It's not going to be put in a box. But in terms of developing the athlete as well, it's not. It's not good to put yourself in that box. And people do say athletic development coach, we've got to define what that is. And a starting place is to have those five capacities. Skill, speed, stamina, strength, stretch. Like, why would we not want to develop, continually develop skill? Most of the best athletes already have a big base of skill from doing multiple sports. We should Continue to develop that base. It's logical, but it's still foreign. Yeah. It's not, it's not part of the curriculum. It's not part of the way of thinking about it. So it's fun if you want, if you want to share it and if you're, if you're putting it out there, just know that it's gonna really hurt a lot of people's brains and trying to be gentle or have compassion for the fact that you're trying to take them somewhere that they haven't been before. Mentally, it's important, Especially on the Internet. In real life, it's fine. You can, you can because you can work with the people.

Yeah, I mean, I'm willing, I'm willing to just, you know, see where this takes me. There's no way those five capacities anybody could disagree with. I mean, unless, like, you know, you're close minded. Like, it's, it's clear if you've played any competitive, complex sport and not just like, you know, it's swimming your entire life. Even then, like, still. Oh yeah. I mean, I'm going to keep rolling with it. I'm going to keep trying to expand and show people that many different ways to do things and you know, if it invites hate, like, cool, but like, just try it, like, try it for yourself. See how it goes. That's, that's, it's gonna be like my message to everybody. And if, if I get asked to hop on a podcast and talk about like whatever I'm doing with these athletes. Well, I want to bring my athletes with me to the podcast. Like, I don't want to just have me speak this into whatever I'm saying and then not have, you know, some people be like, some people ask the guys that I work with and be like, well, is this what you, this is really what he does. Is it really helped you and not me just claim to say that it's helped a lot of my athletes. Like, I want people to understand it.

So.

That'S, that's the plan. But.

Yeah, you can, you can interview them as well or doing, doing podcasts with them and such. Yeah, it's exciting. Path.

All right, I gotta get going, but good talk. Anybody who's in here who can hop on the call tomorrow would love to talk about the socials as well, but appreciate you guys.

Thanks, brother. Talk soon.

All right.

Good. Time for one more here. Observations, questions. There was a discussion on the YouTube about increasing endurance for soccer. Increasing endurance for any sport. The more efficiently you can do the thing, the More endurance you're going to have. So being able to produce more force and being able to produce that force of force faster is one of the best things that you can do for endurance. Then there's technique in bjj, the technique is, is really clear of like, if you have inefficient technique, it's going to cost you a lot more energy. Other sports, it's not as big a factor, but it's, it's always going to be a factor. Still the efficiency of movement, there's a question about spinal engine theory as well, which kind of goes with that. Where's the movement coming from and how can we make it more efficient? So the first place I look for endurance is are you stronger than the opposing athlete? Because that means you can have more economy. Are you faster? If you can get to a ball with 70% effort and they get to the ball with 90% effort, then you're going to use a lot less energy than them. You're going to feel a lot fresher when you get to the ball. So the best athletes in terms of endurance in the sports that we're, you know, that I've worked in is the fastest ones, or they have to be at least up there with the fastest. They have to have good relative speed. So that's the place that I generally start. If someone has poor endurance, are they strong enough, are they fast enough? And then if they have those things like the efficiency of movement, one of the best ways to improve efficiency of movement is through flexibility. So you're not fighting against yourself so much. Especially for running, if you have a lot of internal resistance, then you're going to be slower. That's why sprinters tend to be flexible. They tend to stretch so they have more efficient movement. Then you need to be doing the thing that you want to be endurant at. If you want to have good endurance at a thing, you should do that thing. So the example is about soccer and I was digging in, turns out he's quite strong. The guy that is asking here, Julian, he's strong. So either he doesn't have good elastic properties or he just hasn't been able to play the sport. And that turns out he's been having a lot of injuries. So it's probably the fact of not being able to play the sport enough. So how would you build that endurance up? I would do a lot of isolated skill work with low intensity running in between little shuttles into full juggling. Playing against the wall. Play against the wall on your own, where you getting Making it more and more athletic as you go. Doing rowing machine or swimming for football, we know is not very efficient. You can do a little bit of it and it's kind of fun to do cross training, but it's not a good way to get fit for soccer. The same is true for running straight up and down the field. It's not very efficient for getting good endurance for soccer. So yeah, these are the, the first places that I would look like, do, do the sport more, do be able to move efficiently, be able to produce the most force. And at some point you're going to feel tired. That that's just part of it. If you're pushing hard in a sport where you're required to cover a lot of distance, like no matter how much you work, you're still going to have to work hard. So then there's the mental side of it, of being good at being uncomfortable and treating that with joy. So one of the exercises that we did at the Mexico event here was to swim as far as you can without a breath and as you feel more desire to breathe, turn that energy for life, for survival, into joy. So feel that energy as survival joy and you can play with this and you can experience it differently as more of a joyful survival thing versus I'm about to pass out or I really want to stop. The internal conversation matters in endurance. And so the best endurance athletes who break world records, they tend to play really big mind games with themselves. One example was an endurance runner who would run until he passed out. He would hold his breath sprinting and he would literally run until he hit the ground. And he wanted his mind to know when that point was. And so when he was running in a race, he would be like, well, I'm not going to pass out, so let's keep going. I used to use the line from Big Fish, this is not how I die. When I was running my hardest around a 15, 10 beep test. I know when I tested my endurance relative to other athletes, I was going further into my reserves than they were. I could tell by how far I was getting and how fit they were in other things and my state when I finished and the ability to recover from what I was doing. But when the test was part of whether you're going to make the team or not, I was able to get more out of myself than others. So that's another part of the endurance equation. And the breath hold work itself is another part of the endurance equation. Training breath hold endurance is something that you should do if you want to have great endurance, holding your breath, doing running drills is probably the best. I haven't seen it done much with skill type stuff. Probably better not to because of the mental complication. But running intervals where you hold your breath for 20 meters, run for 20 meters, hold your breath for 20 meters. Things like this like 100 meter intervals. Something that we use with the rugby player players. 20, 18, 19. It's become more popular now with the sort of the Buteyko method which is now oxygen advantage. Bringing Buteyko method to athletes. This stuff is really powerful. It works and it improves endurance and it definitely challenges the mind. Yeah. I encourage you to play the joy game with it because if you inhale carbon dioxide the fastest way to experience extreme anxiety is to inhale carbon dioxide. You literally get extreme anxiety immediately from inhaling carbon dioxide. So you've got to. You're playing with that when you play with that system and yeah it's, it's. It can be. Can be pretty intense.

We've been doing free diving here in the. In Mexico and just playing around with going down to 5, 6 meters. That's for me. But it's interesting to see how lion can just naturally good at it because of he does breath work every day for the last like five, six years and training holding his breath. So that's transferred directly into it.

And.

Yeah it's that is that dance with knowing that the CO2 response isn't. Doesn't mean you're going to die, doesn't mean you need to breathe. It's just a thing that happens in your body and getting comfortable with letting that discomfort play out is transfers very well into all other areas. It's a really free diving is quickly turned into one of my favorite things. It's really beautiful experience. I recommend it.

Brian's also done a lot of work on State. So there's the physiological and then there's the energetic. So physiologically he's accustomed himself to carbon dioxide and played around with that stuff. But then also mentally he's experiment a lot with state. Yeah the ability to relax, stay relaxed is put on test with freediving. If you're really anxious before you go and do might take a little bit longer to get into it versus if you've had a calm day.

It's habitual to immediately panic. I noticed this one mine immediately panic switch comes on as soon as I take the first equalizing your foot on the under the water the panic immediately happens. I was like why does that need to be there? And it didn't need to be there. There didn't have to be any panic at all from the beginning. It's about the story you tell.

Yeah, 100% good games, good to connect. Brothers. I'm gonna jump out, work on my writing here. Have a great day and look forward to the next connection speak. Thanks, Julian. Appreciate the kind words there. And I don't think it's the same meadow to do the. Do the mechanical version of it versus the motor patterns. But yeah, they both. They play in together. Definitely can get gains with the mechanical approach. Thanks for jumping in, gentlemen, and look forward to speaking soon.