PlyoMat with Rich Burnett & Keegan

Just, you know, basically getting. Getting to a point where a frustration almost, but also, like, it's a pandemic. So I'm kind of chilling. I've got a lot of spare time on my hands. But how can I recreate. How can I recreate the just jump map? Basically, like, I. I knew this technology. It's not rocket science. The product's been out for 30 years. Like, surely I could figure out how to do this. And so I just was texting buddies that I, you know, went to college with who are now at, you know, or engineers. You know, one works at Exxon, and he's. He's kind of telling me about these other products called Raspberry PIs and these little computers that he can use to hook up hardware to and all this stuff. And I was like, okay, so that's where we started. But the cool point. And then I'll. I'll break up to this, let you guys ask some questions. But the cool and amazing moment that I always love telling this part of the story because it's just insane how it all happened. But. Are you guys familiar with the Nextdoor app? It's like Facebook, but for neighbors. I don't know if you guys have heard of that.

Next door.

Okay, so I got on Nextdoor. It's like May of 2020. I learned enough information to be able to know that there was a. There's now this area of research and development and design that I couldn't do. Like, I just knew I needed an engineer. Like, just straight up, I need an electrical engineer to help me with this part. Like, I kind of figured out I got the parts together. I had this random switch mat that I, you know, got from a. A vendor. And I have this other stuff, and. And so I put on next door a post of like, hey, I've got this project, and I just titled it, like, like, like Electrical Engineer Needed. I mean, this is just my neighborhood. So it's like, there's a shot in the dark. You never know. Put it out there. And I took pictures of everything. Here's what I'm trying to do. And, you know, lo and behold, I had two people reach back out. You know, we're all. It's. It's. Again, we're all quarantined. So everybody's just either out in the neighborhood or stuck at home. And, oh, Larry Eaton, who's now my business partner, we're 50, 50 now. He. He reached out. This is three years ago. So he reached out and. And I went to his house and I brought all this stuff with him, and I was like, here you go. Like, turn this into magic, you know, like. Or work your magic. Turn this into something. And, you know, it took about a year from that point to really get, like, a decent first prototype. But we worked together, spent a ton of time with each other. I would go back to my house, have a version that my kids jumped on. You know, my garage and my office just turned into, like, you know, the craziest scene of electronics everywhere. But. But, yeah, man, that's. That's how it kind of went. And then a year later is when we first decided to become a business. We knew we had something at that point. I was 20, 21, spring. We sold eight to Iowa football. We sold a couple to Mike Boyle. And at that point, obviously, things just kind of took off. Like, once you reach, like, college athletics and then somebody's influential as Mike Boyle, it's. It was almost like, beyond my control in terms of people knowing about it and then. And then, yeah, it was pretty much like playing catch up up until now. And it's still a crazy time now, for sure.

Yeah, I'm happy to hear that. I'd love to hear questions from. From guys here. You can use the chat box or you can unmute, turn your camera on if you. If you can. But yeah, I think there's been a lot of demand for this for. For a long time. Like, the. Getting the just chomp mats has been a hassle, and it's like this obscure website that's like. Doesn't seem like it's still in business. It seems like it's out of the birth of the Internet, and. But still, they've been showing up these. These simple devices. And yeah, the. The. You've done a great thing with kind of leveraging off that, and I love that you kind of paid respect even to the fact that the Just Jump mat doesn't give you exactly accurate data. Like, you've got the Just Jump mode in there. It's almost like a tribute to the roots of this thing. What were. What were your thoughts with. With putting that in? Was it sort of just to make it compatible for those who've been using Just Jump for a long time? Or was it, like, respect to the. The path that you've been through, or what was it?

Yeah, and that's another fun part of the story. You know, when my partner first completed the project and said, all right, here's our first version. Let me know what you think. I jump on it. I'm like, you know, what's going on? Like, why am I only. Because I you, you. When you jumped on the disc jump mat for so long, you know what number you're gonna hit. You know, it's like I should at least be at 25 right now. And I was like hitting maybe 20, 22. And I was like jumping harder with more effort, and I was still like 23, 24. And I was like, you know, something's wrong, like this thing's broken or whatever, you know, and, and that just started the process of understanding that the just jump map basically has an inflated value. So it's not that it's quote unquote inaccurate. Paul's a really smart guy and he's electrical engineer. So my theory going back to when he first created this thing is that he added in what my partner and I call a fudge factor. Basically, whatever flight time you get, he's multiplying that times, you know, a set value that adds, you know what I, what I found about 0.05 to 0.07 seconds of flight time per event, which translates to 5 to 7 inches higher. And so I, you know, we'd all known that when somebody jumps into just jump at like, there's no way that's actually 40 inches or that's actually like 30. And you measure it up like with video analysis and you could see it. Studies have been published comparing it to force plate data. And the, the technology is good in terms of reliability. Like it's, it's going to measure things very consistently so which is arguably the most important piece. But the number it's giving you and telling you that it's inches is actually an inflated value. But no one ever really like attributed that to just adjust jump mat. A lot of people just thought that that was just switch met switch mat technology in general, which bothered me a lot because it's just not true. And now everybody associates, oh, if I have a mat on the ground and I jump, it's going to be way higher than what a force plate would tell me. But if you really, you know, Keegan, you mentioned using another piece of technology you couldn't get to work. But I mean, there's several products out there now with Fusion Sports Smarter Jump, who just sold it to Vault Skyhook just came out so swift. Easy jump our product. You know, I know and I've seen a couple others that even the G flight kind of laser sensor there, which is not a switch mount technology, but it's different than force plates. You know, they're all, we all have the same issue. It's all, like, basically accurate, you know, it's. It's like. It's all as accurate as a force plate. You know, not as accurate because a force plate just uses different technology but. Or different math rather than. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's. It's not that all switch mat technology is higher value. It's just the Just Jump mat. But the just Jump mat has invaded our universe for the past 30 years to such an extent that it's. It's all we know, you know, it's. It's. And now it's good for my business because I can basically, you know, sell this to a coach who's like, yeah, I use a Just jump mat for you, Keegan. And you remember, like, the good aspects of. I turned it on. It worked. It was. It was smooth. And that's my goal, right? I want to be. I want to have a product that you just turn on and it's super easy to use, but at the same time, I have to then educate them on, like, look, our product is accurate. It's. It measures time very, very well. My electrical engineer is a really smart guy, and he created this using an oscilloscope. An oscilloscope is what, in the electrical engineering world is a machine that's, you know, minimum five to ten grand of just this giant machine that when you hook up any sort of electrical timing device to it, it will tell you exactly when that circuit opened and closed. And you can. You can graph and segment exactly like, okay, that is how much time was spent, you know, on that effort. And you can compare that to your technology, and then you could just make sure your technology is foolproof accurate, and just. That was 0.07 seconds greater. And. And again, it's what my partner and I both just concluded that it was done purposefully to basically match vertex numbers, because. Which is brilliant, I guess, you know, because they sold a lot of these things. So clearly, you know, those higher values appealed to people.

Yeah.

And it's what now? Like, Mike Boyle, I mean, we had this conversation all the time on Twitter, and he'll gladly hop on this podcast and say the same thing, but he doesn't want to go back. Or it's like, he doesn't want the accurate numbers. He wants the value that. That people have been programmed to, because those are the. These are the people working with. It's human nature to want to see a 40 if I've hit a 40 before. Otherwise, you're just disappointed. You're just like.

And it's not the, it's not the sport itself. So if it is an aid to other sport or assigned to show if your training's working, then something that's more motivating versus something that's less motivating to continue to train and to, you know, to believe in the program and stuff like, you may as well persist it. In the end, it doesn't matter. Like, you know, outside of American sports, the vertical jump is not as omnipresent. People don't really know their numbers. There's no combine in a lot of other sports. So to me, the numbers didn't matter. Like, whatever it said would have been new to me and it would have been fine. All I wanted to see was whatever you scored before, if you scored a six before, I want you to score a seven know, by the end of the preseason, I want you scoring seven and a half by the time it's finals time. It doesn't matter at all what the unit is. It's just is this person becoming more explosive. I did focus on the, the single counter movement jump and I think that was a large part because I was working with rugby players and they don't tend to have as much of a plyometric background and base. So I want to touch on that side of things of working with athletes who are heavier and potentially aren't going to tolerate the plyometric type work as. As easily. Like, my first priority was to keep our guys healthy. We had a small squad and I wasn't really that familiar with it. So we just kept it really simple of. And I guess for me that was correlation to acceleration and that's what I was looking for. Like, are these guys going to accelerate better? They weren't. Look, it wasn't so much about the chomps. What, what were your thoughts be on that? Like from a coach's perspective, looking at improving athletes and heavier athletes.

Yeah, on, on that point specifically before we really dive into plyometrics, which I hope we do because that's why I created the product. A lot of people don't really understand plyometrics. You know, they, they do plyometric activity and exercises, but they don't really understand the stiffness aspect of what happens between your muscles and your tendon and how important the, the role that your tendon plays to store that elastic energy. But that's, that's only going to happen if your muscle is strong enough and stiff enough in the moment to allow the tendon to do its job. And so with Bigger athletes. You know, take Iowa football for example. You've got guys, you know, a 300 pound lineman is just a common thing in that scenario, right? And so number one, they wanted bigger mats. They wanted a three foot by three foot mat. So we, we got that done. They also wanted a protocol for the pogo test that was only four reps instead of the industry standard at the time and is still now, which is the 10 5. So the 105 is what was popularized in research when studying the stretch shortening cycle and studying the reactive strength index where basically I pogo jump, you know, 10 times and within that 10, it's a really intense pattern because I'm trying to be as explosive as I can. There's going to be some noise and a few of those reps won't be as good. You know, I just, I might lose control a little bit. So the 105 means that I'm taking five of the, of the best five of the 10 and then it's done. I move on. Someone else, you know, does the, the effort. So I put that into our, our app, you know, as a protocol for testing rsi. But you know, Iowa football is like, man, that's too intense for our guys. Like, let's do a four, two. And so every week still to this day, going on a year and a half now, no, two and a half years. Goodness. They have all their football players do this 4, 4, 2 test as a, as both readiness as both. Are we getting better? Because RSI really does correlate with a lot of things. And so we'll talk about that later. But you know, it big, bigger people, you know, struggle with that intense interaction with the ground because their, their force is multiplied, you know, so like you do have to be a little bit smarter with the plyometric choices. You, you know, like, like the shock method, like really intense depth drop jumps, you know, those things for someone that's bigger. But I will say, you know, the difference between two 300 pound high school kids, one who gets a Division 1 scholarship and it's a four star and one who's like barely, you know, struggling to get notice other than him just being big. One of the biggest differences, plyometric ability. Because that and what I'm talking about is footwork. And people say, coach, how do I get my feet faster? It's not literally your feet, you know, it's not like my feet just are better feet than this other person. It's my ability to anticipate contact and force. It's my ability to, you know, have really strong lower extremities, but it's also my core. I've seen crazy high correlations between RSI and relative trap bar deadlift. Just straight up core strength is what is necessary to stabilize my spine when these intense forces are happening, which, you know, lessens my body's ability to really be a victim to gravity, but rather use the force to their advantage. You know, that's what elasticity is. And so you test two 300 pound linemen, one who actually could do plyos, and you're like, holy crap, that dude looks like a cat. You know, he looks really springy still. Or Jordan Davis from Georgia running a 47 or 48 40, you know, at last year's combine, which just blew everybody's minds because he's £360. Like, you know, it's still important for bigger athletes to do the explosive activity. It's just obviously you have to progress it accordingly because they just have so much more mass to deal with and that affects everything.

Yep. I'd love to hear if guys jumping in. I'm sure you have tons of questions, comments, thoughts coming up. There's some of the, some of the coaches in here have experience with the ATG system and they're coming out from, from that angle. And there's tons of stuff I've, I've made a. My most popular stuff on YouTube has been talking about this relationship with the tendon and strength and the elastic component and the neural component and what stiffness really means and, and all these kind of conversations. So but if, if guys here want to ask, ask questions and get involved pre, please feel welcome.

Yeah, I'll make a comment on that. Keegan, real quick is I felt once I took this deep dive into reactive strength index and like started reading like study after study and article after article, you know, I already had my master's degree in kinesiology. I already had taken biomechanics, exercise physiology. But I still was like just now understanding how the muscle tendon complex works. And I, it was either I should have paid better attention in school or I was like, just disappointed that I didn't learn this, you know, biomechanics, because it's just so fascinating the role that the muscles play in this like beautiful kind of harmony of relaxing and stiffening up and contracting to allow the tendons to store more energy and to use that. So you think about any dance, like dancing is really a great illustration because there's so, it's so there's so much freedom of movement yet at the right time, it can be really intense, you know, like. Like a gymnast tumbling, for example. Those are some of the most, you know, elastic human beings on the planet, just because of how springy they are with how much force they can create. And they also make good Olympic weightlifters, by the way. But, you know, some, you know, girls that did this test for me, whether it was college or high school, and they were scoring off the charts, one of the very first questions I would ask is like, you know, were you a cheerleader or are you a cheerleader, or did you do gymnastics? Because just that activity of tumbling and exploding on one movement that they've done since childhood, even cartwheels, like, develops that elasticity, and boys don't do that as much, you know, except for, like, you know, the fat kid growing up. Like, I was probably in that category. Like, you're not going to see me doing a cartwheel or, you know, you know, just all of a sudden, just do a somersault for fun. You know, it's like. But you realize, like, man, how much strength that that creates in your core as it relates to your lower extremities and everything else, to be tolerant of the ground and to use the ground and springboard off of it, essentially. So, you know, the one concept that still to this day is something I fall back on a lot. And I'm sure, you know, in the ATG universe, you guys, it sounds like you've. You've already kind of taught based on this a little bit, is really just the spectrum of stiffness and compliance. So in physics, like, stiffness refers to the physical quality of a piece of metal or something that resists, like, deformation. You know, by definition, you can rate how stiff something is by how less likely it is to actually be deformed whenever you have external force. And so that's the muscle. The muscles are supposed to have that much stiffness because we can create stiffness, you know, right away within our muscles, and then we stiffen up to allow things to happen, and then we relax to allow things to happen. We want deformation is good. Sometimes when we're trying to move and juke somebody out or, you know, flow, like in a dance activity. So when you. When you realize that it's just this constant interplay of stiffness and compliance over and over and over again happening, part of my body will be stiff while the other part's compliant to allow this freedom of movement to happen. Like, it's so cool. And what really, to me determines, like, athleticism is an athlete's Ability to stiffen up one area body, you know, with maximal strength while relaxing another or stiffening up the whole body. In the case of a reactive strength index, that's what you're looking at when an athlete is doing five pogo jumps at that moment, like as soon as they interact at the ground, they have to be incredibly stiff in their trunk and their core. However, their shoulders are still free. As soon as they attack the ground, they float back up to allow freedom of height. But really it's a maximal display of, of. Of stiffness. You know, like how, how well can I resist this ground as I'm falling towards it and the right second just springboard off of it. So the athletes that typically get the highest RSI scores are, you know, like your wide receivers, you're really strong and talented offensive linemen because they do fast foot, explosive footwork all the time. They're just bigger, but they do well according to their body weight. Usually, you know, like with a baseball player, you know, you're not. It's. Or a wrestler, you know, you're not really. It's more of a kind of a high leverage activity that they do mostly or, you know, in wrestling, it's just a grind. You're just grinding it out. But like, it does still tell you a lot about core strength. And then for the, for the shortstop, you know, their ability to have that pre hop before they do an activity or a pitcher, even just how much core strength they have to have to maintain all that power through leverage, you know, so there's still, there's an application of RSI and, and the pogo test basically for every sport. But you can. The thing about RSI is you can, you can measure however you want. Like once you get a plyomat and you can, you can measure contact times, you can measure flight times. I mean, you can just let your creativity run wild in terms of like, what specific task are you remaining the most stiff in? Like, you know, single leg. We do a single leg RSI test that really resembles a triple jump or a long jump. And it correlates really highly with sprinting. It tells you a lot about the ankle.

How strong are you going? Like jump off to left, right, land, or.

This is one. I've been talking to Joel Smith a lot from Just Fly podcast, where it's like basically left foot and here's the mat.

Yeah, so you jump start off the.

Mat, forward to the bat. It's just my left. My right leg's up in the air and then immediately spring off of that one. Foot, but I land on two. So you're kind of eliminating an athlete's ability to land on one leg. We're not worried about that. We're just seeing how springy they are off the left, how springy they are off the right. And man, if you want to find out like how strong an athlete is in terms of their ability to tolerate the ground. And I've never been a good one foot jumper. Like, I've always meathead like two foot. Let me just jump and look awkward while I try and dunk, you know, or to me, like the most athletic people can pop off of one foot pretty easily. You can always tell a meathead, like trying to dunk is when they just can only do two. You know, it's like that's just how it is. But which is fine. But you know, the, the one foot jumper, you're like, okay, wow. Like you can really store and, and release so much energy through one foot, like through one ankle and one tendon. Like, that's, it's impressive. And I make our, like, at the facility I am, I'm at now, we have a gym, we have rims that we can lower to 8ft. So we'll do a little complex where we'll do, you know, one foot dunks off my left, one foot off my right. You know, we're doing some loaded jumps, some, some reactive strength stuff and it all, I call it the bounce house. And we're all just kind of rotating do this circuit. And the kids like it, but it's also, it really exposes their weakness, you know, in one foot and one ankle. And, and I think that that's like a really untrained thing. And I'm not talking about just bounding, you know, we bound a lot. But how much force are you producing through one, you know, foot for maximum displacement, you know, maximum height. That's something that people don't do as much other than when kids are just trying to dunk, you know, but you know, just the ability to measure that with the plyomat and just know that we're making progress is awesome. And then, you know, in a little bit I'll, I'll bring up my ultimate goal from day one, which was to prescribe plyometrics based on an athlete's profile. You know, is an athlete more force dominant or are they more elastic and choosing your plyometrics based on that? Like, some athletes are, yeah, very force, force dominant. Just think about sprinters. You know, some sprinters are very thick, you know, very strong and and they're just as fast as your skinny guy who ran the 400 all in high school. But the 400 guy is super elastic and he's so lean, he's as fast if not faster than your thicker guy. And you're seeing that more I feel like in the Olympics, you know, with Fred Curley and some of these guys who are just super lean, super, you know, quick off the ground. Like it elasticity and force, you know, they, there is like that optimal combination of both for whatever activity you're doing. But some athletes by default they're just, they just prefer force or they just prefer an elastic approach. And so if you have just an athlete who's 13 year old soccer player or just someone who's just developing or early on, or even an adult or you know, anybody, if they really profile themselves to be more on the foresight of things and they just want to jump as high as they can and they don't really understand the value of elasticity or the other one who's just only super quick but not getting as much out of each attempt. Like you can build a whole program around that, you know, and shift them toward one way or the other.

Yeah, so that's, that's the approach that you take is to fill in the gap more so than program towards their strength. This guy's more force dominant, therefore we're going to focus on their squats. But you're more so the other way of like this guy's more force dominant. Let's, let's make him more elastic or this guy's just a kangaroo, let's get him squatting. Is that generally where you've seen best results?

Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, I'll just be honest, like this is more of a, you know, kind of an early approach and total paradigm shift of how you approach plios and prescriptive stuff. Because most people don't prescribe plios. Most people, it's just there's weight room which we will get big into prescribing hypertrophy, strength, endurance and set and rep schemes. There's a gajillion sudden rep schemes for strength stuff. But how many sudden rep schemes are there for plios? You know, very few like options. So in terms of like let's just bound, let's just you know, do pogos, jump rope and all this stuff. No one's really, you know, deciding that well this athlete probably is already very elastic. Let's actually just do more of this other type of longer contact type plyo, you know, and it Comes down to really how long the contacts are typically is how you measure this. So like a quick contact versus a long one. Obviously the longer contact is more displacement, quicker contact, not as much displacement. And so that's simply one of the best ways to kind of categorize plyometrics, you know, and so I wasn't even referencing the weight room yet bit, Keegan. I mean, it's you. That of course, should be taken into consideration with the. The profile. But I was even just talking about just the plyo drills that you choose, you know, just which ones are going to benefit the, like, the athlete more. Do they do more single leg stuff? You know, am I profiling that part too? But I'm sure you guys have seen, like, I think Paul Favorites did this too, but, you know, and I. And I took it as well, maybe from him, to be honest. Maybe Max Mars or one of those guys. I just, I remember seeing a quadrant right of like, you know, the top left of the quadrant, which I know it might be backwards on this camera, is, is high height, low contact time. That's the sweet spot. It's like you want everybody to be high rsi. Like they're in the blue square. They're like, they're truly the kangaroos, right? And then shift over, it's red, high height. But low con or long contact time, they're slower. You know, bottom right is the worst place to be. I colored it yellow. You know, low height and low contact time, it's probably your bigger athlete. They just don't handle force very well. And on the other side is green. Good at the contact time stuff, but not. They're not producing as much force. So, like, that alone. And where the athlete can get plotted, as soon as they do a pogo test, it plots them in one way or the other, and it also scores them. To me was like one of the most satisfying parts of this whole journey with Pliomat is to work with my, you know, my mobile app developer to say, hey, if they scored this RSI score with this contact time and this height, let's plot them on the squadron like, exactly what that was. Because two athletes can get a 3.0 RSI very differently. Like, the score could be a 3. 0, but their strategy could be totally different from each other. One athlete scored that because he jumped higher. One athlete scored that because he was quicker. So I wanted to. To not only just learn the outcome, I wanted to learn the story. Like, I wanted to learn the strategy behind that. Why did they, you know, attempt that? But you Know, any good coach who's watching the athlete do it can see what you know, okay, they're definitely more forced on it or definitely more quick. Because all you're doing when you, you know, do this test and you tell an athlete jump five times, you're telling them, all right, you know, I don't, I don't say this, but you know, it's basically jump as high as you can, as quick as you can. I usually leave that first part out. I say, hey, find a good height, like, jump pretty high, be aggressive, but definitely focus on spending as little time on the ground as possible. And it's a, it's a big learning curve for kids because they're like, so coach, do I, you know, so which is more important, height or quickness? And I say it's both. But typically athletes who literally try and jump as high as they can, they can't handle it. They come back to the ground and it's just like, you know, not enough stiffness to handle it and they just kind of crumble and they're all over the place. So again, those are your more force dominant athletes who, who they don't care about the consequence of elasticity. They just want to jump, man. They just want to fly and use their big strong quads and just go, you know, without anticipating the ground very well. So again, you doing that test, profiling them, it's really good information, you know, but even in a moment, you can help a kid. You can just some of so much of it's neuromuscular and like proprioception that you can actually address an athlete's issue with that in 30 minutes. You know, you spend enough time with them in the moment and you're like, hey man, this is what I mean by being more elastic. And you already, you can improve their score. So when you talk about like a eight week program, then get a good baseline, know where the IRSI score is, where they are at the quadrant and they might be right in the middle. So where you could, you could still hit weight room hard and, and do all the different plyos and not really worry about shifting and we're one towards the other. But if, if they are struggling with, you know, the force output on it and they're good on the ground, like that athlete needs to be doing some heavy loaded jumps. They need to be doing some long bounds, some really explosive or explosive, really longer threshold stuff off the, of a depth drop or something or a box that, that shifts some kind of back up to more force, dominant, you know, that's what the box really does and why it was so popular, you know, with Yuri Vergashansky, you know, for so long, like the shock method and stepping off of a box like it, it's such an intense amount of force coming at one point with a longer contact first anyway, and then you kind of shorten the contact later that it. The athlete really has to understand how to take all this energy and then use it to their advantage, you know, back on the way up. So some athletes had never been exposed to something like that. And why, you know, maybe they're good at being quick, but they're just not good at really like harnessing and using all this energy, you know, to their advantage. So, yeah, there's just so many ways, man, that you can take this technology and it's not just Plyomat. It's, you know, like there's all these other devices now that measure, you know, stiffness and through contact times and reactive strength. Like you can, you can do some really cool stuff with reactive strength index.

So the higher, yeah, Pete's asking there about the height that you drop from. The higher you drop from, the more the strength component is, is going to be a factor and the more it's going to shift them more towards being force dominant away from.

I think so, yeah.

More elastic.

I, you know, there's a lot of people a lot smarter than me. I wouldn't consider myself like an expert necessarily in plyometrics just because I created this product. I'm not going to pretend to be. But you know, if, if you're introducing more force that the athlete has to, you know, absorb, basically they have to counteract. They have to, you know, create more forces to even deal with this at the muscular level. That is what can overload the tendons even more. So. So if you introduce more energy and more force and more load or just a higher box, then yeah, I think that that influences the fore side of it a whole lot more because the athletes just otherwise not tapped into that. You know, they're just not jumping very high. They're not, when they are springing like, not release like springing to the point of displacing their body weight more. So. And I guess you could say the same about sprinters who maybe for max velocity, their, their wheels are spinning. They got no issue with the, with the top speed stuff, but from zero to 10 yards, you know, maybe they're not projecting out as far because they're not as strong. You know, they're not really pushing their body forward as as much. And that typically is a weight room quality, you know, just straight up strength and, and allowing the, the hip to be a whole lot more explosive, you know, as you go forward. So that's why people do like heavy weighted sleds, you know, and, and prowler pushes and really focusing on projection. You have to introduce more loads of. To bring that quality out, I think. You know, whereas, you know, your max velocity spinner, that's where you say people are just born with it type thing. Those are your athletes that man, they just either so fast twitch or their, their hips can just cycle so fast. But. And their stiffness is really good too. I mean they're so elastic on the back end. And I, I do not have that quality personally. Like you put a bunch of weight in my hands. I can block clean pool a ton. My birds pretty good. But man, I'm slow like on the back end. Like I just. And I can't jump off of one foot, you know, so to me it's anything. So.

Yeah, that's probably. Most coaches will probably have that profile mostly because that, that's. If you build, if you like the weight room and you get, you know, you fall in love with the weight room, which is traditional for. If it's called a strength coach or a strength and condition coach, then you tend to put yourself in that category. Maybe if we labeled it something else, if we called it a, a power coach, it'd probably be a better thing or a speed and power coach. But how do you. What, what is. If you had to change yourself? Like say you were, you were going to be by the time you were 45, you were going to be the age group champion in your local 100 meters or, or triple jump or high jump. Like, what, what would you do to shift more towards that? Because it's probably relevant to most guys who've been more weight room dominant rather than doing this sort of explosive work.

That's a great question, King. I love that. It's almost like an intervention in my life. Like I gotta, I gotta change. That's not.

You have to do it, man.

Just. I've broken my body, you know, so many, in so many ways, lifting as much weight as possible that like, you know, I'm in pain just doing the most simple things. But man, I love just playing like tennis is like my thing. Like I'm terrible at it, but I freaking love playing tennis. Like I can play tennis like all day long and it's just this quick, explosive activity that it's not that, you know, Intense on my body, right. Like pick up basketball. If I play pickup basketball, which is what I played in high school for two weeks, or I'm sorry, if I played it for two hours, I couldn't move for two weeks. You know, it's like, it's just so, like my body just doesn't recover well from that anymore. But yeah, I guess I kind of love speed now, obviously, you know, and it's. I'm so bad at it that, like, I need to train kind of that back end. I need to be stronger through one foot. I need to, you know, cycle better. And so that type of training is fun to me. It also exposes, like, how weak my hamstrings are, you know, in a lot of ways. And, and so what.

Yeah, what are those movements for you for, for more of a single leg emphasis and cycle speed? Like, what are you, what are you actually thinking about there in terms of.

The exercises really, like bounding all the different kind of bounds that you can do. John Garrish is my go to guy for all things bounding. Les Spellman's, you know, stuff on, you know, just top speed work and, and what he's doing with those kinds of drills. Plyometrics, Honestly, that's what I needed. It's ironic that, like, I'm the. I created the plyomet and I. And I need to be doing more plyometrics, but it's just like I'm such a, a meathead. You know, I'm so wired for so many years of like powerlifting type stuff for so long. But what I really do still enjoy, and I just get a lot of bang for my buck out of it, is Olympic weightlifting. I love to clean a jerk and a snatch. I see you snatching a lot, Keegan. Like, it's the. The what. The satisfying part of it is the timing, the posture you have to be in, and just the ability to really, like, organize your body in a very sequential and smooth way that requires a lot of flexibility. It requires stiffness at the right time. Like that when that bar is above my head, like, I have to create the right amount of stiffness at the right time while my hips are relaxing, you know, so it's like. And then, then I have to create a bunch of tension at the bottom end of my hips. So your whole body is doing this again, kind of interplay between stiffness and compliance. And it's just really cool to, to see yourself on video to do it successfully. But then of course, as soon as you add, you know, 15 more pounds or, you know, three, four kilos. Like, your, Your, your form is trash. So it's like. And then you have all new respect for the people that do this, you know, for a living, and then do it really well. But I love Olympic weightlifting. So, I mean, yeah, if I can change anything about my body, it's. Or just kind of my athletic profile at this point in my life, you know, it's, it's, it's appreciating the grinding stuff of cardio. Like, I've fallen so far off of. Of my muscles ability to just withstand, you know, the duration of any event because I Olympic weightlift. So, like, you know, you can take a break and do another one, but, you know, you get me on assault bike and I, I'll be just destroyed, you know, so this, it's. Everything I've done is so neuromuscular up until now that I haven't. It's been a long time since I've done anything that was, you know, again, I keep referring to as a grinding activity, but it's just like, man, like making my muscles really just work. And so, you know, when I came across, you know, Ben Patrick stuff and met you, Keegan, kind of through Instagram and stuff before, man, I'm. I love the density, you know, stuff and I love, you know, yells course, even just the first level, you know, the introductory stuff. Like, I've, I've taken so much of that and used it with my athletes. I've used it myself. Like, you guys are certainly onto something in terms of addressing some significant voids and needs in the American athlete and the American coach, because we've done things a certain way for so long that there are some big holes and big voids that are missing, you know, in the athletic profile.

So my story is like yours, man. Like, I appreciate you being open about that because a lot of coaches will hide behind their barbell numbers and be like, well, yeah, I've trained hard in the gym, and that's the thing that you can yet. And it's like, it's a good thing to be strong with a barbell, have a powerlifting background or a weightlifting background, but it's another thing to be able to really go off one foot. And yeah, that's. That's not me either. And part of the reason why I fell in love with ATG and was like, so excited for Ben to get this message out was I had tendonitis since I was 10 years old. I had it like, in my, my heel kind of growth plate and Then the Osgood slider stuff and then patella tendonitis and then actually injured my Achilles doing pogo jumps in the warmup. Like 10 years ago when I first got the job in France with the rugby team, I went over there. I'd been backpacking for five years before that. It's a funny story how I ended up, you know, running the team, but I was over there. It was pre season, it was winter, I was doing three warm ups back to back and I was bringing energy to the warmups and I was just, you know, getting after it and I sort of aggregate aggravated my Achilles and thought nothing of it and just kept pushing through, kept doing the same kind of warmups, you know, week after week. And I've had issues ongoing with my Achilles insertion since then and because I don't really care that much about sprinting and, and then, you know, being able to jump off one foot, it's like on and off that I've addressed it and it's still my, my weakness, my Achilles heel. I just went and grabbed the rim in, in, in Florida the other week and I did some sprinting and some jumps, but then it's, it's sore since then. Like I inflamed it and it takes a while to settle down because it's like the bony insertion one. So I'm with you on, on this stuff, but I am interested in seeing if I, I do want to face that demon. That's part of the reason I've gone back into snatching because I got to 100 before I went to the cloak off seminar way back and it was like the, that was a big thing for me of like, wonder if I could ever do that. Seems crazy because I was pretty weak kid and I couldn't even overhead squat. I couldn't like my shoulders had been weak. My brother had multiple shoulder reconstruction, so I kind of thought I'm prone to mess my shoulders up as well. So it was like I always go after the stuff that seems kind of craziest and hardest and I got to that 100 kilo snatch back then and that was after I'd bothered the Achilles and like the Achilles would niggle a little bit, but basically just get on with it, you know. But the part of it going back to the snatch is it's a path towards okay, if I get back to snatching that sort of weight, then maybe I can be intelligent and transition into like some really low level kind of parkour stuff. Like that's, that's actually my dream now is like by 45, I'm able to do like, low level parkour and I chat with a bunch of guys who have really cool stuff. Ryan Ford is doing like, the speed parkour courses, and his guys are winning world titles in this new speed parkour format. And there's a few people within uncommon success, like my. My network now in my own program, super diverse. And so that's sort of challenges me of like, I wonder if I can be really terrible at that versus not be able to do it at all. So, yeah, like, I appreciate your. Your vulnerability, Sharon. Of like, I'm not the best at this, but often it is the areas that you've had the most struggle. Like, that's why I latched onto atg and I want the next generation of coaches to build strength from the ground up and to jump once a week and to do these things that, you know, Ben's encouraging and I do think they'll have a better future. Maybe. Maybe it's too old. Like, maybe I'm too late. Maybe I'll never get back there. Maybe for you as well, like, but maybe we do as well. And that's that mystery of like, what if. What if by 45 I can actually just sprint all out and not have to worry about it or, you know, dunk a tennis ball, you know, at 5, 5, 10, 45, like, that'd be pretty cool. Maybe I can. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? What would you prescribe for me? Or what would you.

Yeah, no, the funny thing about, we have a track lane behind our facility now. It's about 50 yards of mondo track. It's beautiful. It's amazing. You know, and the funny thing about sprinting all out and not being worried, like, I'm. I'm so slow that I'm not worried about pulling anything. You know, it's like my legs aren't even moving fast enough. And I'm not talking about, like, you know, I'm not terribly slow. You get me on a basketball court, I can, I'm fast and in my ability to anticipate things and to, you know, read and react, you know, but like, it just true top speed is what I'm talking about. Like, I got kids that I'm training, you know, One kid ran 22, 23 miles an hour, and it's 40, which is just ridiculous. He ran a 44 laser. Like, he's unbelievable. We have other kids running 20 miles an hour, and I'm like 17ish. You know, it's like, what would it look like to get me to 18, you know, or to 19. And obviously, I've been doing this for a long time. I know what I'm missing. But it. You guys know, man, it's hard to train yourself. Like, it is, like, for at least somebody who's already training so many athletes. Like, and it never feels like you're doing enough with that. Like, it's hard for me to sit down and make a program for myself unless I had. Unless doing it with somebody. If I'm doing it with somebody, then it's definitely better. But then you talk about the snatch, Keegan, and like, you trying to get back to that threshold that for you mentally, is an accomplishment. I guess the hard part for me on that is, like, what is that threshold for me and how would I define success and. And starting to snatch again? Like, number one, I guess, would be do it technically, proficiently, without pain would be step one, you know, Number two, like, doing a weight I've never done before because I've been patient and I've. And I've done things the right way and I've been consistent and. But then I have to ask myself, like, what would it really take to get to a point where I've snatched more than I've ever snatched before, and am I ready to commit to that? You know, because otherwise you get frustrated and then you feel like you've invested all this time and energy and you never really finished the deal. You never were successful. So that I'm more guarded with myself on that now more than ever. It's like, rather than just starting something up arbitrarily or just starting a new task, like, really trying to evaluate it more so of, like, how would I define success in this? And then. And then, if anything, overachieving, you know, like, because that's so good for us mentally, to not just, like, take on something, you know, choosing a. A way of evaluating success in it that's probably not even achievable in the first place, and then failing, and then that sucks, you know, now you're just like, okay, I'm in more pain. I didn't actually achieve what I wanted to achieve, you know, so, like, if I'm really going to take on hitting 18 miles an hour, which is a modest goal for me, then, like, what would it take to get me there and my really, you know, committed to it, and then, like, it'd be really rewarding If I hit 18 miles an hour.

Yeah. What are. What are your thoughts like? Because this is a. This is a controversial one as well, and I'VE been heavily criticized. I've been criticized by people for like, why do you care about your own training? Why do you put so much emphasis on coaches training? It's not the only way to do things. Like, let's. Let me start with that. Like, there are coaches who don't train that much, who've never been that athletic, who get amazing results, and that, that can happen. My experience, though, is that it's more likely that a coach is going to progress if they're a poor athlete and a poor coach and they're just trying to get their career started. If they become a reasonable athlete, they're more likely to become a reasonable coach or a good coach, like through that, that journey. But what's your, what's your take on the coaches, the coach's athletic role in. For yourself, like, how you feel as a coach? Does it impact your energy as a coach or your, Your belief as a coach? You know, what's going on for you personally, man?

Yeah, absolutely, it does. Especially, I mean, I kind of understand what you're getting at too, is like, do I have to look to part two, like, for my athletes to respect me? Some of that kind of comes in. They believe in that, like, entirely. I do for myself at least want to know that I'm not the least athletic person in the room anymore, you know, And I want to be like that, you know, as I age and as I continue to coach. But like, a lot of times, when you think about your hormones and just the way creativity is stimulated out of health and achievement and psychological health, like, if I'm ever in a rut, like, programming wise or I just kind of feel like, man, I'm just. My energy's low or I just don't really feel like I'm doing my best as a coach. Chances are it's because I. I'm not doing anything myself and I'm not achieving anything. And I'm not, you know, because our bodies crave that. I think just from simply from a hormonal standpoint, you know, I think we thrive off of achievement and athletic ability and just. Even just a regular routine stuff too, of flexibility and, you know, walking backwards for 10 minutes, you know, like all those little things that are just easy and practical that, you know, if you remove them from your life, like, you know, there's a massive difference of just. I'm no longer even healthy enough to be creative and to sit down at my desk and, like, come up with things. And so I. That's just my personal experience too, of, like, Man, I'm healthiest whenever I'm at least attempting to accomplish something. Like, parkour Sounds awesome. Like, I have two boys now. They're eight and five. My youngest, we put in. We put both our boys in gymnastics, at least for a little bit. My youngest, he's actually really good at it, so I might kind of keep that up with them. But even though it doesn't feel good, like, going to a gym with them and, like, tumbling around and, like, hanging from a bar or, like, you know, trying to cartwheel with them, like, that's like. It's like, I know my body just craves it. So how would I define success on that? Like, I once took a gymnastics class in college at a community college I was at. It's very rare that they offer, like, a. An elective for gymnastics, but it was awesome. I loved it, and I was terrible at it. Like, I. My vestibular system is bad. Like, I didn't like being upside down, like, because I never did this stuff as a kid. But it was easy to define sex success with that, because if I could even just do a back hamstring with somebody helping me, like, it was very rewarding. And so that's why I took on Olympic weightlifting, because I was so bad at it that, like, every little step of progress was very successful for me. It was very rewarding. And so you kind of get to a point not where you necessarily master something and move on to something else, but just being humbled by it, but knowing you enjoy it and sticking it out is so good for, I think, our psyche. And I think we're better coaches because of it. I think learning, trying something new, being decent at or getting better at it, just that alone is good. Versus me trying to snatch again. Like, honestly, if I were to try and clean a jerk and snatch again and try and be decent for my age group or whatever, I would only be disappointed. Like, it would only probably hurt because I know at some point in time, my back would get flared up, my knees would bark at me again, and I would have to do tons of mobility work that I don't have time for. And it's like, you know, or go see a physical therapist to, like, give me the manual therapy I need. And, like, or I could just take on golf or tennis or just try something that I'm not very good at, but it's still athletic and still requires some other tweaks and things that. That I think would make me a better coach. Because now I'm humbled again. You know, I'm saying, like now I'm learning.

I'm going to get, I'm going to get a table tennis table here in Montenegro in the next couple of days. So that, that'll be something that I can put myself fully into. That shouldn't break me. Yeah, I like, I love the idea of, you know, staying, continuing to go through things that are mentally uncomfortable because you're not good at them. Like going to your child's gymnastics gym and you're a strength coach or an athletic development guy and then you goof in, in that environment. Like I think I've been through that as well and I think it's really, really good to, to do that. I took on a lot of that stuff at 30. Like when I quit working pro in, in the rugby full time, I moved to a new area. I got a trampoline, there was a gymnastics center nearby. I learned how to do a back somersault. I'd already learned handstands, but it was, it was really good for me going through that stuff. And I got into circus stuff more as well. Like I learned a four ball juggle and then I went to five ball juggle. And I think that, you know, having those experiences as an adult, like, I'm really bad at this and I don't know how I would ever be any good at it. And then persisting through that. I, I love giving adults, especially, you know, men who don't want to look bad. Like, we all like respect and we all, we all want to do things that others look up to. But what I look up to most is people who continually go back to that. Like, this is really uncomfortable for me, but I'm going to get after it. And yeah, even athletes that I've worked with, you go, yeah.

And likely it ends up becoming a more healthy version of yourself. Just outright like you just, whenever you do pursue these other things, like it's, it's healthy. So like it's kind of like my approach to health and wellness. Yeah is, is psychologically attaching myself and committing to something that, that, you know, it's a new journey. You know, that's really what it is. Kind of, to summarize, I think what we're talking about, but like it's keeping me active because otherwise I, I don't think like I, I don't like working out anymore, man. Like, I'll be honest, like I work in a $3 million facility. I've got everything I could ever dream of. It's amazing. You know, we got versa climbers, we got a Basketball gym, we got a ping pong table, we got a track lane, we've got racks, machines, I mean, you name it. Like, there's the turf space. There's nothing I can't do in that facility yet when I walk in there, like, I just. The thought of, like, working out and like, putting myself through some stuff, like, I don't want to do curls. Like, I don't want to, you know, do anything like that, but like doing a handstand push up, like, that's, you know, we're doing anything. Calisthenics. It's like my body craves that and, and, and going to the gym and shooting for 30 minutes. Like, I, I'd rather do that, you know, so anything kind of more calisthenic based, you know, more running on the track, sprint work, plyometrics, like, all the kind of stuff that ATG pretty much like represents is. And why I think it's so successful and so popular because it's likely to not only not cause you pain, but it's likely to actually reduce pain. And, and it's just based human movement. So, I mean, why wouldn't I. Because it's just the weights. The weight gets to a point, and weight training is phenomenal and so good for athletes. But, like, I've just done it all. Like, I've done every lift known to man, and I've done it all very well. And I've. And I've prided myself for years on like, barbell movements, but also all kinds of stuff, you know, med ball throws, you name it. And med ball throws are still great. But it's just like, you know, now that I've. I've gone through five years of Olympic weightlifting, and I used to live seven minutes down the street in Atlanta from Power of Grace Performance, where Jordan De la Cruz trained and Harrison Morris. And Harrison Morris would be in a platform next to me, squatting 600, weighing 180. And I'd be over here, you know, just like, just trying to squat, you know, my body weight, you know, for some reps and trying to work on my technique. Like, that was cool because I'm like, man, here's like the, the best in the world, and then here's me. And we're like in the same facility. And it was just cool to be a part of that. But I'm okay with leaving that part of my life behind me now. But it's still hard to, like, I still want to pick up a bar and, and clean it, you know, it's like. But I just got to rewire my brain and just like attach myself to something else, you know? But.

Talk a little bit about your experience with the, The ATG stuff. Like which. Which movements have stuck with you or made their way into your programs. How do you look at it? Because it's. I think we're everyone. As simple as it is. Like, I think everyone sees it in a different. In a different lens, you know, and uses it in a different way.

Yeah, Backwards sled walk, you know, would be the. The number one biggest takeaway. Just straight up, like I do with all my athletes, we do a lot of like, lateral sled drags, backwards sled walk. Like, we. Because we have so many sleds and a perfect piece of amount of turf. And then.

Did you already have that all set up before the ATG revolution?

Yeah, I guess. I mean, like, so now when you're talking about, like when atg, When I first kind of seen it and seen Ben stuff like, I was still in Atlanta, that was probably during COVID or just after it. I would guess maybe late 2020 or something, or early 2021. And so I knew that with the new facility, I did want to do some heavier sled walks, whether it's backwards, sideways, you know, and. And we did. Yeah. But I guess so definitely credit Ben and ATG and you guys for even just wanting to buy through Sorenex. But it's. They're not the ones who. It's spud belt. They have this nice thick belt that kind of. You just. It can fit.

ATG partnered with Spud. ATG has spud made belts that say ATG on them now. It's. Yeah, it's. It's pretty cool that, that partnership. I. I had a bunch of spud stuff from before I knew about atg. It's like super high quality.

This is.

I like the branding and stuff as well. It's just cool. But, yeah, it's good to. I'm excited for those athletes, man. Like, the, the opportunity that they get to. To warm up with the backward sleds and use the forward sleds and the sideways. Like, it's not that Ben invented sleds, but he's able to get a message across simply enough and sexy enough over and over again. That is changing programs, it is changing weight rooms, and it's changing commercial gyms. Like, commercial gyms are demanding people demanding more sleds. In the same way, CrossFit. There's a CrossFit esque type area in all commercial gym or most big commercial gyms now, usually it's not done that well and it doesn't really fit for lifting and whatnot. But they did change their structure. And I think you're going to see that. We are seeing that already with commercial gyms of like, they might have a Nordic bench or they might have a tib bar or they might have, you see, I think soon they'll all have backward treadmills that are actually set up for that or they'll have the sled area. I know, I think that's a good, that's a good thing. It's strength training basically came from powerlifting, bodybuilding and weightlifting. Right? Like that's where it originated from. But then there's this whole other thing of athletic sports that are based around running. They're not bodybuilding, they're not powerlifting and it's not weightlifting. But we still use that way of thinking. And it comes, it all comes from those books and that research where there's a better way to do it for strength training. And that Joel, you know, Joel at Just Fly has definitely played a big role in getting that kind of methodology. The, the Bosch, you know, the, the, the Friends Bosch. And you know, he came to the roosters in, in 2013 and he was talking about his system. Like the team that I was coaching, the, the head of performance brought him in and I was like, well, what's all this stuff that he's talking about? But that position specific strength for running makes a ton of sense. Like everyone does that in weightlifting and it's happened in powerlifting. But then position specific strength in, in, in running positions has kind of been rejected. But then his way of talking about it also is, is different where he was saying don't strength train. But then it looked like strength training to me looked like isometrics. So it was like. But yeah, all this evolution I think is a good thing. And these discussions. And to me it's still the wild west, it's still early days. Like, compared to the science of putting up bridges and building high rise. I don't think we're there with athletes where it's like, we know exactly what to do, we know how to adjust things. What you're talking about with the plyometric profiling is like, yeah, we don't know that stuff yet. And we should know that and we should know it more with the long and short range stuff as well. Of like, how do we dose this and how do we, you know, how much does this athlete need? How do we profile them accurately to identify where they're most likely to get injured based on, you know, the ATG way of looking at strength training. This stuff, it hasn't really happened yet and it's exciting to think that, you know, it is going to. Over the next few years. What are you excited about for the future of athletic development? What will you be doing differently over the next few years?

Man, I think, you know, the, the whole industry is just shifting towards speed and, and all things gate, you know, and it's like, it's interesting and I think it's good. I think it's overall positive, you know, and, and I guess he's talking about.

Kind of the go to and that kind of influence or like just the.

Details of each revelation of, of like in, in my world anyway, what I see in a lot of the conferences I'm a part of and everything, it's, it's max speed is like posted everywhere. You know, your flight 10 times, your, your things and it's almost taken out of control to where it's like, you know, people are glorifying max speed for all athletes when it's just like vertical, it's the new vertical. It's, it's everything else which is fine. But I mean it's important and it typically means if you're faster then other things are getting better too. But it's not the end all, be all. Of course, like anything else, I mean the ability to react, you know, and, and do game speed and actually like lower my speed when I need to and increase it, like those are the things that really win games, you know I'm saying. But, but yeah, I think overall, I mean I'm also big into velocity based training.

Yeah.

For, for the right, all the right reasons of what we've been talking about so far as to. How do you define success with the barbell movement? You know, using velocity is just more information to make sure that the stimulus that you're aiming for is what is, is actually what's being done. If you don't have velocity, then it's very difficult to like, I mean coaches been doing it for a long time can know if that bar movement was too fast or too slow. But like you know that it's like, man, okay, we're right here in the sweet spot. Let's get our volume here, let's get all our reps and if you dip out of that, it's no longer doing what we want it to do. And so with kids and I work with 11, 18 year olds, with 12 and 13 year olds, I feel very confident and safe doing barbell movements with them with velocity to make sure that they're in the right range. And it's like, it's awesome. And it's so cool to see them organize their body in a way and, and do a movement with enough power and enough speed. But it's still very high quality, you.

Know, so they're going to stay fresh too. I think that's the thing with the velocity based training that a lot of people don't. I think that's a big part of the benefit. It's. Yeah, you want to put emphasis on the concentric speed of the bar. Like that makes a lot of sense. That's. Charles Poliquin's been kind of our, a big emphasis, you know, big influence. And Louis Simmons is probably the other, your biggest name that a lot of people don't like. But both of them had a huge emphasis on concent speed. Louis with the banded work at the chains. Um, and Charles was always about accelerate the bar through the, the concentric phase as much as possible. But what you get out of that is that you, if you miss the grinding reps, you potentially leave so much more juice in the, in the central nervous system and so much more juice in the brain and recover significantly faster. And, and maybe you don't actually, maybe don't lose much in terms of strength gains. Like I, I have a feeling like you, you, you, you get the strength gains without getting anywhere near as much fatigue when you just avoid the, the grinding reps. Like maybe that's the part of the secret of velocity based training. What's, what's your take on that? Like, like leaving juice in the cns?

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I, I tend almost to a fault to do that with all of my programming and a lot of it is because of the way youth sports is today. These kids are being grinded elsewhere already. They're grinded out, you know, they're. I'm getting them especially now that I'm no longer in a school and I no longer have these kids as like my kids and I have their schedules and everything. Like I see them all day long now. It's like I'm in this other facility and I know what they're doing at their schools and I know, you know, what kind of condition they're in. Because most sport coaches and local, you know, people in this area as well as where I grew up in South Texas, they define success in a football practice by running a bunch of 110 yard sprints, you know, until the kids are throwing up or, you know, grinding out a set of 10 on back squat. And so they're getting the grinding like that. That's already happening. Their, their body is getting the conditioning to where they're, you know, I'm going to focus on the nervous system. I'm going to focus on, like we did cluster sets the other day with some of our older kids, you know, so, like, and I love cluster sets, like, but velocity just helps again, further promote and quality control the nervous system. I mean, that's exactly what you just said, leaving some juice in the tank. So that, that happens, but because the quality is better and we're gonna, we're gonna train the things that I want to train. But there, don't get me wrong, there's a time and placement. You got to grind it out. You got to develop the peripheral system. It's not all the nervous system. I mean, your peripheral system is what gets you to the fourth quarter, you know, and, and, and get you through those key tough moments where I am cramping or my body is falling apart, but I have to win. So as long as there's a threat of all that or it's slotted in early enough in the off season where we built that base already and we didn't let that base go for whatever reason, there's a lot of coaches, it's in football programs who for the whole month of July are crushing kids with conditioning. And that's when you should be getting faster and developing your sports skill at the highest level and doing some conditioning. But there's some coaches around here that are doing it like every day, and it's like. And they're totally neglecting any sort of speed work just for the sake of mental toughness.

And then they're going to pick the fast kids, you know, after all that, like all the kids who just worked really hard slog their guts out. But they're slow. They're not going to play. Like, that's the bottom line is that the fast, the fast, athletic, powerful kids are going to play. But you can, you can. It is much more trainable, I think, than, than a lot of people give it credit. And even a lot of strength coaches will, will sort of not take responsibility for changing, changing the numbers. I think that bringing the, bringing it back to the start, like having the mat and actually having some numbers and holding yourself accountable to some numbers is a. Is a great thing. We've got Neil Sus in Germany here. He's working with swimmers in Germany and rugby players. He's working mostly with Youth athletes. He has a question here he wanted to ask as well.

Yeah, thanks Rich, for the talk. Pretty interesting. Yeah. As Keegan said, I work with kid and adolescent swimmers and that's pretty interesting. While the jumping, they don't need the repetitive jumping in the pool, but they love to jump. Like the motivation is, is there, it's very easy. And once you have a number there, like with your mat, for example, it gets even bigger. The motivation, like to jump high, we don't have that, unfortunately. So. So we have a diagnostics room at the training center. But I can't use it every time and would be perfect to have like something like your mat there and then just see the result every time they jump. And yeah, that would really make the development much easier and also the participation.

Yeah.

What I try to develop is to let them do some, some type of jump every time when we have a session. The single leg is not the most important. Obviously they have the starting jump, which is like a staggered stance, but still they will profit more from a normal vertical jumping variation. It makes a huge difference, especially on the shorter distances, like 50 to 100 meters. And what I see with the kids, like, they start at age 10. I started working with them and you have big genetic differences already at that age. So some they don't have to train anything. They can just jump on a box that's almost body height and they don't train for it. And then others, they are really scared, but they develop it. The hard part then is if they do it in the group and I tell them, yeah, let's jump on the box. Today the kids, and especially the girls that are not as good, they are scared and they don't want to be exposed. They don't want to be the ones that can't make it, which is hard. So maybe a map there as well is, is an advantage because you, yeah, you can just see the number, it's different. You don't have to be scared to fall over anything. And the other interesting thing is that with your profiling that you mentioned earlier, that would be cool to see because we. I have different athletes. Like some they jump really easily, really high, really far, but they can't really land. So I cannot do a triple jump, for example, because they will fall over. Broad jump would be okay, but they can't go full intent because they know they can't land land very well. So yeah, many interesting things there. And I just wanted to also tell about my experience, like, well, what I do with them and if that makes sense. But I definitely see the value there. Kids love the numbers and they love the game and they love to compete and they can do it all day almost.

Yeah, thanks for sharing all that, Neil. Two. Two things. One is I trained swimmers, really high level swimmers in Atlanta for six years. I, I ran a swim club with an Olympic swimmer named Carl Krug. He was Canadian, but he, he worked at Louis Simmons, believe it or not. He worked, he went to west side, he trained at Westside. It helped him be a really high level swimmer. So he did heavy prowler pushes, heavy deadlifts, and, and, and he's, he's a swimmer, he's an Olympic level, you know, so he started a club with me and at the school I was at, we had an indoor swimming facility. It was amazing. And we had Caleb Dressel come to the facility, you know, and Caleb Dressel, you know, one of the fastest in the world. He has a 41, 42 inch vertical. Like when you really kind of reverse engineer some of these like high level swimmers, like they are kind of springy and, and have some really good power output. I mean watching Caleb, I watched him in person go off the blocks and into the pool and it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It looked like I was watching like a tiger, you know, pouncing on a, an antelope or something. You know, it's just how far he got like, like before the, he finally got out was just so incredible because he has so much power and he's so long and so swimmers are very compliant. They use all this leverage, which is why they suck at landing. You know, they having a swimmer broad jump or like play pickup basketball, you're just like, please don't get hurt. Like they're just, at some point their, their tendons and muscles aren't used to like these rapid movements and stiffening up. But, but he was strong and he was so explosive and, and yeah, you're right about swimmers loving the numbers because everything they do is numbers. You know, everything's a race. Like track athletes, everything is that instant feedback of how fast was that? You know, so they respond very well psychologically. They can handle that feedback, whether it's velocity based training or the plyomat. And so yeah, we incorporated that all the time. Any chance we get, you know, we, we put heart rate monitors on them for conditioning. They love that, that because they saw how many calories they were burning. But like vertical jump, obviously, if I hold some dumbbells and I jump as high as I can and land like telling Them, they. You know, they have to hit 18 inches with these dumbbells, or they have to hit 16 inches. I mean, like, it's just so healthy psychologically for athletes to, you know, be assessed in that way and be stronger. But the other one thing I want to tell you, Neil, is we're gonna. Our. The company that I use for our mats. Mats, the actual mats that we buy, they're a German company. And so I'm. I'm excited to ship soon straight out of Germany to kind of the European market. So we don't really have that yet. Right now I have to ship from here in Tennessee in the United States. But very soon, we'll have the opportunity to ship the mats because they're. They're kind of heavy. But we do have some options that are smaller, and I don't think Keegan has seen that one yet, but it's basically like, instead of one big mat, it's just two that you can connect, but you can fold on top and put it in a duffel bag and carry it around. And so hopefully, we're gonna. We're gonna get that under a thousand dollars US Dollars, and so the smaller version anyway. But, yeah, so it's exciting. Definitely some big things. Plyomat to get into the European market, but also to have some different options for mat sizes that are a little bit cheaper and more portable. So hopefully in the next six months or so, we'll have some progress with that.

Yeah, that'll be a good thing, to have it available easier. Yeah. Thanks.

Shipping is expensive. Yeah. What's going on, Garrett?

Hey, thanks so much for your time, man. Really appreciate you. I'm looking forward to you and Keegan's parkour off at some point. That would be cool. So, questions. How does. A lot of us are competing athletically and. And you can see your opponent and directly compete with them. How would you say that competing from a product standpoint compares to competing in an athletic standpoint?

You're saying, like, me versus another company right now? That's. Yeah.

Because you're still competing. I would have guessed in the marketplace. I'm just wondering if you give us your perspective, because that's something I'm totally unfamiliar with, but I will be developing products in the future, be it an offer or like a service. So I'm curious to get your perspective on that.

You know, that's a fantastic question, man. Appreciate you asking that, Garrett. I would say that right now, it's still new to me because when we replace the just jump map, we're not really replaced them. I mean we've obviously we became a competitor with them even though. And a lot of it was just because I couldn't get a hold of Paul. I mean just flat out. And I don't mind sharing that and I don't say that as a way to, you know, compete with them. It's just information as to why I even created this in the first place. Since we've come out, there's been another product that simply faster put out called the Skyhook. And they've, they've copied a lot of our stuff. I mean the quadrant that, that I created in the app, it's in their app. You know, the, the just jump mode that we have, it's also in their app, which I didn't think anybody else would, would do that. So you know, they're more expensive than ours, the battery life isn't as good and some other things. So they're also not really marketing their product. I'm not really marketing our product very much. You know, we're a small startup so like every dollar we spend, you know, we, we are very conscious of and if I don't really need to market and I can just talk to my friends and do word of mouth and that's good. But you know, at some point from a competitive standpoint, I guess, I guess I'm, I'm learning how to not. And I don't even know if I want to become this way, but like I'm learning how to become a business minded person in the sense that I, that I even care to compete with revenue and try to get as much revenue as possible. I'm just, I don't think that way. I'm half Filipino, I'm a coach, I serve kids. Like I just, my, my brain is wired to just like serve and just give and be empathetic. So like it's, it's almost like I, if there's a big pot of gold out there in the market, that, and if I don't get my share, I'm okay with that. Like, but that's bad business. Like, that's not, that's not a way to, to be business, you know, savvy. But I also have a full time job and I, you know, I love what I do. So it's not like I need this to grow in order to live, you know, so I'm not motivated by survival or anything. So it simply would just be more money and wealth, you know. But you know, I also understand that I can support my family back in the Philippines. I can do more things financially for people here in the community, my. My own family. But, like, you know, financially, if I'm stable, I don't really have that competitive mindset, you know, to, you know, dominate the market, if you will. But. But I will say in the past few weeks, though, I've been challenged with. With scaling our business, you know, because, like, it's. It's kind. I'm kind of at a point now. It's been two years since we've been a business where it's like, okay, either we sell this business or we do it ourselves and scale it. So, you know, I even talked to Ben a little bit about that, and we've had a couple people that wanted to buy us. Vertimax was one of those two. And it's like, I just don't know that I'm even willing to give this away either. But if I know if I don't do anything, then. Then it would just die. So, like, I. I also don't want that to happen. So. So I want to make sure that if I do decide to scale, that I do have a more competitive mindset and I'm, you know, seeing things from a business lens for the right reasons. You know what I'm saying? So I don't know if that answers your question, but I'm learning how to be more competitive, you know, which ironically, like, I get upset about my athletes who aren't as competitive, you know, so, like, I guess, you know, at some point I need to learn how to do that and think more of a business mind. So. But he sounds like, perfect.

You can look at it as service as well. Like when, when Usain Bolt sets a new 100 meter time. Like, it is a service to humanity to show look at this is what's possible. And how many people does that inspire and the service that you're providing with what you're doing, like that. That was a conversation with Ben. It wasn't like, hey, you're going to get loaded with this. It's like, the world needs to know about this. There's so many kids out there who can't do the sport that they want to do, and so many guys our age have just given up. Like, let's. Let's see if we can get this idea out to everyone, because it's made a difference for me. It's making a difference for you. We've got a few hundred other people here saying it's good. Like, let's. Let's see what we could do with this. Like, that's how the conversation went. And now there are a lot of guys who are like, yeah, I've just dunked for the first time. I'm 40 or I'm 43 or you know, there's that it is happening where we are, we do get those stories. And so, you know, to me, like the, this mat is a really, really important tool that puts into perspective what you're doing in the weight room. So you don't just get in love with a big back squat or getting heavier and heavier. And it does give those athletes who have that intelligent coach or even the athletes themselves. Like there's more empowered athletes than ever before who care about their own journey and going to go research stuff on YouTube and like look for what do I need to be doing? Maybe my coach doesn't know everything.

And.

That, you know, it's affordable. It's actually something they could do to have one of these mats at home and to be evaluating themselves and to build a program based around that. Like it is, it is a great service. So it's not, it depends on your values. It depends on the individual's values of like why you do what you do. But I don't think many people in the fitness, you know, strength, athletic side of things, it's not really what you do to get rich, right? Like you go work in tech or you're going to go work in, you're going to be a lawyer or you're going to be something else. You know, you don't become a strength coach because you think, oh, this is the part path to fast cash. Like this is an easy, easy job. I don't think anyone's accused a college or high school strength coach of having a cushy high paying role for sure.

And I think that's why I've had some credibility obviously early on and up until now know that I'm coach. So people know that where my heart is, where my incentives are or my motives rather, you know, like my mode, very pure and, and I don't, and I just don't want that to change about myself. And so I, I don't to get so deep into this business side that I, that I'm losing kind of who I am. So that's why I, I haven't gone full time with it, you know, because even though I could and it'd still be a service geek and I still, I still want to be a coach. Like, I still want to coach. I'm very, I'm young, I'm in my early 30s, like there's no reason for me to not be coaching at least for another 10, 15, maybe 20 years, you know, but. But I want to, you know, I do, really. I have an entrepreneurial mindset. I love creating things and refining a product that helps people and so solving problems, you know. And so I watched a lot of Shark Tank, you know, Now I'm kind of living it, you know, with. With the business side. So it's kind of surreal to me. Like, it's all very cool because our business is a very good place. You know, we're ready to just scale, you know, ready to. To maybe go retail and sell a lot more of these faster. So. So we're having a lot of serious conversations right now about what that looks like, but I'm also taking my time with it. I'm not rushing into anything. Like, I'm not worried that we're going to lose our grip on the market or anything, because I don't even feel like we ever had a grip on the market. I just feel like people, we sell out all the time, so this will be the first time that we haven't sold out before. So if anything, I'm okay with just bootstrapping this and just being slow and, you know, but, you know, at some point, we're going to have to ramp up, but I just want to make sure that I'm in a good place when that happens, you know.

Do you have other product ideas, things that you want to develop in the future?

Yeah, we do. We definitely do. Because it's technology you can use for all kinds of stuff. Like even. I don't know if I should share this, you know, public. If it's a good.

You don't have to share anything you don't. You don't want to put out.

There's definitely some other cool ideas because my partner, he's a software engineer and electricity electrical engineer. So I can just come up with anything and he can probably figure out how to do it, so if he just wants to put the time and energy into it. But. But yeah, we definitely got a few other. That's why we named our company Athletic Assessment Technology. AAT is because we do anticipate, you know, whether it's just for fun or whatever, like creating other technology that assesses athletes. So, I mean, we're open to all kinds of other stuff. Not now, but, you know, later on whenever we're, you know, get more of an actual business.

Why it'd be good to. That's why it'd be good to see your business Keep growing as well. Because what that other stuff you create might be even more important than the plyomet. And so coming from that perspective, Garrett's got something else there he'd like to.

Yeah, go ahead.

So I do business development for my dad's data science consulting firm. Or I just started to. So I'm trying to learn more about how different companies, entities are approaching data. So could you please elaborate a little bit? Obviously you have the metrics and you know what you're looking for. For as a coach, could you elaborate a little on how, how data impacts you and what you're doing with it?

Yeah, man, I mean data is huge. Like actually if I, if I'm known for anything other than like, I mean as a coach or plyomat, it's, it's my Google Sheets prowess and just how much like I, I go crazy with my custom built assessments and reports and Google Sheets because it's free, number one. But you know, Google Sheets is so powerful. So I live in data. I'm, I'm constantly auditing all my own programming. One of the biggest selling points for parents here in FFF in Knoxville is this report that I provide that shows before and after very clearly data visualization is obviously significant. So yeah, you have all the data, but can I really show what that data means? And so using Hawken Dynamics force plates and speed profiling, like I can really show parents like how much better their kid is getting and how we're doing our job. And so just so I'm in that business too, right? Of like, you know, competing with other facilities in the area and using data to validate our ability to produce results is so huge. But yeah, from a business standpoint, you know, I've, I've had to learn a lot. I mean QuickBooks has been life changing and just all the bookkeeping and looking all the data and even if value valuing our company has been a big thing recently as a couple companies have wanted to bias is like, you know, what, what are we worth? You know, and then using data to figure out the value of our company and if we, you know, did sell it, what would we need to sell it for? And those kinds of things. So yeah, man, from. I've just been learning all these. You talk about metrics. Like I feel like I'm inundated with metrics. And in the athletic world, the business world, the amount of metrics that exist there is just like, like every. My business partner will text me like a new business metric every, you know, so often I'm Like, I don't know what that is, what that, like ebitda, which is like a good way to value a business, you know, seven times that or whatever. And so, yeah, you know, that's kind of a tough question in terms from the business standpoint, because I feel like I'm just learning a lot of what the data means. But from the athletic standpoint, I freaking. I live in data, man. Data is. It drives so much of what I do, because to me, that's. That's how I define success in my job. Like, if I got an athlete faster, if they got more flexible, you know, than that. And I, I have thousands upon thousands of data points from the high school I was at in Atlanta because we tested kids four times a year and I trained 300 kids a day or 300 kids took my class in a semester. So the amount of data I have on vertical jumps and RSI and speed is, is like overwhelming. And I could make some pretty strong kind of claims because of that data. You know, like, I can, I could be very influential as a coach because of the experience I've had and the raw data that I have to really tell people, like, what's correlated with what, you know, what kind of potential this kid has versus this other kid who, you know, at this age was already doing this, you know. So, I mean, like, I think data will probably be my biggest, our biggest commodity at the facility that we're at now because of how well we're collecting it, that, you know, five to 10 years, man, we'll be very authoritative in this athletic development space because of data, just the same way Google's as authoritative as they are. You know, I mean, it's. It's crazy when, when you take the time to actually manage your data and visualize it, like, how powerful it can be. Yes, sir. Good stuff, man.

I really appreciate your time. It's. Yeah, it's a powerful journey that you've been on already. I appreciate you solving this challenge of what are we going to do when we need to buy a jump mat. Now it's. Plyomat is the new jump mat, and it's going to take over. And it's a good thing. I think everyone, every gym should have one. I would love to see commercial gyms have this technology and there's a good chance that that can happen. You know, just build the monitor into the wall and. And it would be a. It seemed crazy to have CrossFit type setups in commercial facilities. Twenty years ago, everybody was. It was just machines and there was no place for free weights, doing Olympic lifting will get kicked out. And you know that that's changed in a lot of places. And I think some places will continue to go with this trend. Especially ATG is going to have an influence and there'll be a lot of other spinoff brands like there was spinoffs of CrossFit that have got bigger and bigger. I think you're going to see that with athletic training and it's, it's really time to have a system like that that is engineered for, about human performance and the human body rather than bodybuilding, powerlifting, weightlifting and even CrossFit is kind of an extension of that. It was meant to be this generalist thing, but it became another thing like those others where ATG is, is wanting to be that base layer where anyone can get their body moving well. And I think the more other brands that go after that same challenge of like how do we just get the body moving well so that it's athletic, so that anyone can sprint now 70 year olds, 80 year olds can, can be running faster. That's the dream. Like imagine if that shift happened for, for mankind. Like CrossFit got a lot of people jacked and it got 13, 13, 000 gyms around the world and people thinking about Paleo and keto and it's amazing what happened through CrossFit. It changed the whole gym scene. Right. But there can be another generation like what's this decade going to be about? And maybe it's about a strength training system that's a more, more based around what, what the body actually needs and is designed for. And maybe it's more of that body weight stuff that, that you're being called towards as well or you know, sensing that you want to experience. I just got a deficit handstand push up again the other day. I've only done maybe 20 in my life and it's like the heaviest I've been. When I did one, I did another one the other day and it's a good feeling, man. I highly, you know, recommend to anyone who loves their barbell work that thinks maybe they would like to be able to do, you know, some of that kind of stuff like, like it's, it's a fun challenge and a worthy, worthy challenge and I'm excited for what the future holds like this, this technology and a different way of thinking about training. Potentially ATG opens up millions of more people who care about how high they can jump, you know, and I think a world where people care about how high they can jump or they care about their RSI is a better world than the alternative of just caring about. But I don't know, whatever everyone else is, you know, there's a lot of distractions. There's a lot of things that are pulling the world in different directions. My take is that if athletic ability maintain is more of a focus for more people, then it's a good thing. And I'd love to see more of the high school and college athletes taking that on as a life philosophy and not just being about whether they make the pros or not, whether they make Div 1 or not, just make it a way of life for the rest of life. And this technology is part of that. Quantifying things, solving the problem. How do we safely dose plyometrics? That's a great problem to solve. And if that did proliferate as being as important as what do you bench? You know, what do you. What's your rsi? If the world cared about it that much, it would be a better world, right? So, you know, that's, that's what your technology is doing. I appreciate that all the work that's gone into getting this far with it, and I hope that today's conversation helps introduce a few more people to, to the technology. We use the mat in Florida. The guys loved it. We did end up putting it on the just jump mode because we'd had that. We'd had those numbers before, but we had a ton of fun. Some of the guys did like 30, 40 jumps in the session. And yeah, it just brings so much energy to the room. Like, it was literally the best time through the whole three days was when we did that testing. We also used. Maybe we can. I'd like your opinion or thoughts on this one as well. Use the assault runner, like maxing that thing out for speed as well. So everyone got like a max speed on the sprint and then the jump. And then later in that day, we actually did some snatch technique. And it was pretty cool to be in a room of personal trainers and coaches who were all able to do those things. And it wasn't all super high level, but I don't think I've been in a room before where they don't know that that's coming and everyone just gets on with it and no one hurts themselves and no one, you know, looks too bad. Some are more athletic than others, but that's kind of testimony to, to the, the thing that's going on there as well. But what are your thoughts? Have you tested out maxing out the assault runner? And do you. Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that as a, as a test, as a tool, as a training?

Yeah, we actually just use a shred mill, so we don't have an assault runner.

Yeah, you got different brand.

Yeah, yeah, it is, it's. And it's different. It's almost a completely different technology. It's more like early acceleration.

Part of.

It, but it's a, it's a manual treadmill that you grab onto and you just try that belt.

Kind of like pushing a bobsled.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a very good assessment. And then the iPad will tell you miles per hour kind of as you go. So it's really satisfying, obviously. And you can increase the resistance of the belt. It uses magnets and a flywheel resistance. It is. And it's hard to do top speed type stuff on that. But we have a track, you know, out the track lane, outside with lasers. So, so between the, the lasers, the track lane, the treadmill, the Plio mat, the vbt, like, you know, our facility, we're, we're pretty much totally well outfitted to, to obsess over metrics, you know, but like I said before, it's a lot of this stuff. People get it, you know, take it out of context and like the kids still need to learn how to be an athlete, how to, you know, respond to stimulus and make decisions and move well. So like, I try not to get too deep into the metric stuff just because it's cool and they can see their progress. It's all, it's all beneficial. It's all works within an ecosystem. You got to remember what actually makes the athlete successful in a, in a game situation. You know, that's where you know, like for swimmers it was very simple. It's just like horsepower and, and you know, and reducing the lactate threshold. You know, am I gonna, you know, lose my power before this other athlete does and then eventually beat them in a race? You know, But a lot of the other sports we train, like football and basketball and baseball, there's, there's a lot more context that we try to help our kids with. But even the mental side of things, we're going to start offering some mental training or mind training and development at our facility that's like, you know, for our members is helping them with performance anxiety, you know, helping them navigate just, even an approach to training. Like, are they, are they viewing it in a healthy way? I mean, these are kids, but like they're thrown into all kinds of high performing situations that are very, you Know, anxiety inducing and. And. And oftentimes they fail a lot. You know, how are they handling that? You know, so, I mean, there's. There's so many other elements in their character. We're trying to help kids with their character and be someone that they, you know, that they look up to, have integrity, be on time, you know, so, like, that's what we care. That's what I care about personally. That's. Those are my favorite metrics because, you know, spiritually and everything else, like, where are they? Are they. Are they compassionate? Are they a good teammate? You know, so those are the things that, like, I. I don't always prioritize them the way that. That I say that I do and want to, but, like, that's what I care about most, man. Like, that's. I'm trying to help these kids be better people, you know, more than just faster on the treadmill. But it's all good. It's all fun. To me, it's just a big platform too, for just overall growth as human beings. And so it's cool, man. The whole athletic realm is fun, but, you know, dealing with the. The negative side of sports, too, can be hard because it's. Youth sports in America is just ridiculous. Like, it's just. It's all about money. It's all capitalistic. It's all about rankings and. And performances, and it's like we've lost the side of it that's like, just about fun and just about making memories and like, you know, being a respectable coach and actually being. Having loyalty, having team spirit, you know, and it's. It's just so transactional that it's like we kind of, on where we're at, deal with, like, leftovers of it and just the. The consequences of it, but. And people still don't even understand why we do what we do and like, and how development works, you know, like, people are just so obsessed. Speed and rankings and it's like, man, like, if you're a good athlete, you're gonna. People are gonna notice and you will be stand out. Like, you don't have to force that, you know, thing. But everybody feels like it's a rat race. Like, if they don't stand out at this camp, then someone else will take their spot. And it's just. It's a mad house, man. Like, youth sports in the US Is just like. I don't even. I. I can't keep up with how insane it is. But I'm sure you've noticed that. I've seen that it's probably similar to other countries too. But I know for sure for us.

It'S just, I think it's another level in the, in the States because I think because college scholarships are such a big deal, it's, and there's, and there's a lot of them. So it's a huge financial thing to get your child into a, into a good college and have them, you know, have them not have to, to pay the, the tuition fees. Like that's, that's a big opportunity and that doesn't exist in most other places. Either you just pay or the government, you know, it's already taxed and, and free.

But that's a whole other podcast episode.

Man 100 man yeah, yeah. But that achievement side of things is, is something important about the States though. Someone who like I've traveled a lot. I went to another eight different countries this year. I've been to over 50 countries. And I tell you like there's something very special about United States. I just spent some time in California, I spent some time in Florida. You don't meet men like men that have grown up in America. In other countries there's something about the culture of achievement and also like the heavy religious influence that people have values and, and they want to get after things and they want to do beautiful things like different to anywhere else that I've been. Like there's more men like that and, and there's something important about that. And I think sport does play a role in it and there's, there's a harsh and negative side to being overly achievement orientated. But then there's, there's a whole, you know, there's a lot of men today who aren't trying to achieve in anything. And I think it's almost unlivable. And, and that's the, the reality for, for so many men is once they stop being at this sporting age, they stop trying to achieve and then they're just like, they don't know why life isn't good anymore and they're, you know, self medicating and they've fallen down all sorts of horrible rabbit holes. And that's, that's why athleticism is the foundation of my program and I encourage all coaches to, to do it. But even I'm working with a lot of men outside of athletic, you know, they're not strength coaches anymore. And I find that when you get that achievement side back and you just, you want to improve yourself, whether it's just getting from 30 push ups to 40 push ups, that it can light A fire in, in you that, okay, I'm achieving again and then you get after other things. So you know, to me the, the American system, like there's, there's the balance within these things, the achievement and fulfillment, but there is something very beautiful over there. And even like that ATG event was blown away. That's the first time I've been in a room full of American coaches. I've done events with, you know, one or two or whatever, but that was all American. I was the only foreigner there. And yeah, there's a special positive energy that is, it's difficult to find. You don't, you don't see that same thing, that same culture. So I appreciate, you know, I appreciate the work that you're doing. I think it is really important work and the, the way that you're approaching things with, with those youth athletes there in locally. But now the potential with Pliomat as well, you have the opportunity to reach out to more people and impact more lives. And I think that's a good thing, man. I sense you've got a good heart. You got a big heart and some big spreadsheets to back it up. So thank you so much for the conversation today. I'd love to do it again. There's a few other guys I'd love to introduce you to who are building different app technology, solving other things. There's a guy, Mitch, in our network who's looking to change the game of soccer. He's a Canadian, he's worked with thousands of kids. He's got a really good system around improving young soccer players. But he's very data driven and metrics and I think, yeah, I, I, the fun thing is when I get to bring different minds together that have got same but different ideas and technologies and businesses. And there's another guy, ViewMotion, Ryan Talbot, he's in Australia and who developed speed technology. He's aiming to be the Facebook of video data for sports. And so he sold his technology to a lot of top organizations in the NFL and Premier League soccer and such. It's called ViewMotion. It's AI speed technology. It's starting to become more well known. But he's a really, really nice man and we sort of been working together since he started that project way back. He was a speed coach who know, develop some tech. So I'd love to have some, some roundtable discussions in the, in the future if you're, if you're open to that.

Yeah, of course, man, anytime. I'd love to help more, be more part of this thing. And you know, I have a lot of respect for you and, and Ben and all you guys. Sorry, my dog is.

You got, you've got, you've got a table soccer there. Table football.

Yeah, it actually came with the house, so.

Oh, yeah, there's one in the gym here as well. I didn't, I didn't get it either, but we just had a Nate over from the States and he was the best table soccer player I've ever seen by a long way. Going without achievement, culture, just setting a whole new, whole new standard. Shout out to Nate, who just came and helped us move some bricks here in Montenegro. But yeah, yeah, I, I, I appreciate, I appreciate the conversation. Appreciate the work you're doing. If someone wants to get a map, what's the best way? What's the best the, is the best way? Or if they want to have a conversation with you, if they want to text you or email. What's, what's the best way to get in touch with Plyomat?

Yeah, I'd put my website in the chat, but also it's Pliomat.net.

Yep. I'll put that on the YouTube as well.

And then my email is rich or Richard richardlyomat.net so. And then if you just search, you know, on Twitter or Instagram, you know, for Plyomat, chances are you'll find, you know, more information, direct links to our websites and stuff. And, you know, I just basically have an online store through Shopify, which has been great. So that's been my platform for, for selling these. And I have about like 10 left in stock now, but 50 more coming here in the next couple weeks, so. So we do things as small batches, man. That's why we're having these conversations about scaling and whatnot. But. And we do ship worldwide. We shipped one to Dubai a couple weeks ago. Shipping was not cheap, but it was.

Something where the world is at the moment. Yeah.

But you know, whenever we get established in Germany, hopefully, you know, by the end of the year, we'll definitely be able to ship a lot easier to rest of Europe and Asia. And it not cost as much, but I mean, shipping is fast. It's just expensive. Like I literally. It took two days to get to Dubai and it was mind blowing. But because I, you know, I drop it right off here at UPS and we ship it out. But I do it all myself in my garage and my business partners in Atlanta. And so it's just the two of us, man. We crank it out ourselves. My wife helps a Little bit. So we're very small business, very small time, but customer support is through the roof. You know, I pride myself in accessibility and being able to help my customers. So my one concern was when. When Ben first and you, Keegan, first bought one, I was like, I was a little nervous about, like, you know, the scale that could happen fast with your network to where it's like, okay, I really need to make sure that we have the right business structure in place if we start selling a bunch of these, because then at that point it's no longer just me and my partner to sustain it. Obviously, I need. There's only one of me. So, like, my customer support aspect, you know, I want that to continue to be a big part of it, but I can only answer, you know, so many emails or phone calls. So anyway, it's exciting times. Really looking forward to working with you guys more and, and helping getting Plyomats. I mean, even when you mentioned commercial fitness, like, I didn't even think about that. Like, that's not even something I. I thought of. But, you know, who knows, man? We. If we can get one of these in a lifetime fitness everywhere or like a plan of fitness, that'd be pretty sweet. You know, in 10 years, like, who knows, man? This literally could just be like another. Like, you see power plates, you know, vibration technologies and Lifetime and some of these other stuff. So I feel like it is only a matter of time before these other type of metrics and tests are available to the masses, you know, whether it's at their homes or at their gyms. But, yeah, my goal is to get our price down even further. And I know, and just for the sake of keeping up and for more volume. So I'm hoping to. Right now it's $1,100 for a system. Our app is free. There's no licensing fee, but, you know, I'm hoping to get it even lower, especially as we offer more mat options. So. But yeah, that's. That's how you do it. Plyomat.net Love it.

Yeah, Ben's pretty mindful of that these days. Of like, if he's gonna shout something out, he checks with the people first if you're going to be able to handle the demand. Because he's definitely blown up a lot of products and kind of throwing people into a tailspin of months of delays and, yeah, all kinds of stuff. But first, yeah, there's. Yeah, but I'd love to, you know, I'd love to see the ATG gyms and I, I know It's a part of the strategy that we've been talking about to at least test the jump, test the sprints, and then it's proof for the, the rest of the system. And not everyone's going to go play basketball. You know, that's Ben's thing, like go play basketball, go dunk once a week. And you're gonna, to maintain those with the, with the jump balance philosophy. You're going to maintain extreme athleticism, build athleticism with the program. But for those who aren't doing that, I think having this ability to test within the gym is phenomenal. I think it's going to add a lot more meaning to the program in itself. And, and if you look at CrossFit as an example, like they did want to compete, they did want to be able to do the stuff. And ATG will never be like that. But if you have the metrics of jumping and sprinting, it's like, yeah, these are the outputs of what you get from, from this method. I think it's going to light people up to go from barely being able to jump 4 inches to losing a bunch of weight and getting more athletic and jumping 8 inches. I'm excited for those journeys as much as the 32 to the 36 or 42 or whatever. I do think that that is a metric that everyday people can get their heads around and value. Like getting their first box jumping. CrossFit, you see people crying about getting the. They finally get up on the box after a four year journey that should be happening with this technology. It's like more accessible, more you can monitor it day to day and then they week to week and they're going to stay in the game longer. But yeah, we could talk about this stuff all day. I appreciate you taking some time out. I appreciate your dog being patient there as well. And yeah, I look forward to the next conversation. Thank you.

Sounds good. Y' all have a good one. Take it easy.

Thanks, brother. I appreciate a lot of time. It's a little fun for sure.

Yeah, let's talk soon, man. I'm open book, so anytime you get an ideas or want to want to chat, just holler at me, man. You got my, my info and let's keep chatting through Instagram or program, whatever.

And yeah, good, good man. Yeah, we know each other a bit more now, so we'll keep chatting.

All right, Keegan.