Pavel Tsatsouline: How to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.240 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.660 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.240 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.460 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.480 | My guest today is Pavel Satsulin.

00:00:17.960 | Pavel Satsulin is considered one of the premier

00:00:20.320 | strength training and fitness coaches in the world.

00:00:23.040 | He has pioneered the development of various programs

00:00:25.720 | to improve strength,

00:00:26.740 | which he calls the mother of all fitness.

00:00:29.460 | Indeed, today you will learn about strength as a practice,

00:00:32.400 | as a skill that can be applied to sports,

00:00:35.480 | that can be applied to general fitness,

00:00:37.560 | to getting leaner, to getting faster,

00:00:39.880 | and to improving your endurance.

00:00:42.500 | As Pavel Satsulin explains,

00:00:44.280 | by building one's strength through body weight exercises,

00:00:47.620 | free weight exercises, and occasionally machines,

00:00:51.000 | one can develop incredible levels of fitness at any age.

00:00:54.580 | We discuss some of the spectacular examples

00:00:56.960 | of people in their seventies and eighties

00:00:58.760 | performing strength feats like a hundred pull-ups per week.

00:01:01.560 | And we emphasize that one does not have

00:01:04.280 | to be seeking hypertrophy.

00:01:05.720 | One does not have to be seeking getting larger muscles

00:01:08.380 | in order to get exceptionally strong.

00:01:10.920 | I myself, these days, am focusing primarily

00:01:13.360 | on trying to get stronger and build endurance

00:01:15.840 | for sake of health and for general life reasons.

00:01:18.780 | And because getting really strong

00:01:20.800 | turns out to be very beneficial in every aspect of life.

00:01:24.640 | Today, you're going to learn how to get extremely strong.

00:01:27.660 | You can add muscle if you want in parallel with that,

00:01:30.960 | or as Pavel Satsulin explains,

00:01:33.020 | you can pursue strength and flexibility for their own sake.

00:01:36.800 | And there's tremendous value for doing so.

00:01:38.960 | So today's discussion pertains to women, to men,

00:01:42.000 | and frankly, to people of all ages.

00:01:44.280 | I do think that pursuing strength as its own thing,

00:01:47.120 | independent of muscle growth, right?

00:01:49.140 | Which we hear so much about these days.

00:01:50.880 | Everyone wants hypertrophy, grow muscle, this and that.

00:01:53.400 | Pursuing strength as its own thing

00:01:55.120 | is a tremendously valuable endeavor.

00:01:57.520 | Today, you're going to learn how

00:01:58.940 | from the world's premier expert in this topic.

00:02:02.460 | You're in for a very special episode with Pavel Satsulin.

00:02:05.500 | He is truly in a class all his own

00:02:07.500 | when it comes to fitness and strength training.

00:02:09.660 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:12.500 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:15.140 | It is however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:17.300 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:02:19.300 | about science and science-related tools

00:02:21.060 | to the general public.

00:02:22.420 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:23.680 | this episode does include sponsors.

00:02:26.080 | And now for my discussion with Pavel Satsulin.

00:02:29.220 | Pavel Satsulin, welcome.

00:02:31.300 | - Andrew, pleasure to be on your podcast.

00:02:33.420 | Respect your work a lot.

00:02:34.720 | - Thank you, likewise.

00:02:35.940 | - Thank you.

00:02:36.780 | - I will say that you and perhaps one other person

00:02:40.300 | have truly changed the way that I think about fitness,

00:02:45.080 | the way that I train,

00:02:46.780 | and I'm super excited to talk to you today.

00:02:49.460 | So I'm withholding excitement.

00:02:51.220 | There are a bunch of different ways to think about

00:02:54.980 | this thing that we call fitness,

00:02:56.320 | strength, endurance, hypertrophy,

00:02:58.700 | and there's so much information out there now.

00:03:01.000 | How do you conceptualize fitness?

00:03:03.720 | Meaning, do you look at things through the lens of,

00:03:06.780 | are we focused on nervous system,

00:03:08.160 | bone, connective tissue, or muscle?

00:03:10.420 | Do you look at things through the lens of

00:03:12.860 | anterior chain, posterior chain, hypertrophy, strength?

00:03:15.960 | I would just like to get your sort of

00:03:17.340 | high-level conceptualization of this thing

00:03:19.380 | that we call fitness with the idea in mind

00:03:22.700 | that most people would like to have

00:03:24.660 | some level of endurance, some level of strength,

00:03:26.980 | and feel healthy, and presumably look

00:03:29.980 | however they wanna look,

00:03:31.220 | but let's set aesthetics aside for the moment.

00:03:34.020 | How do you think about this thing we call fitness?

00:03:36.900 | - Well, first of all, Andrew,

00:03:38.980 | strength is the mother quality of all the other qualities.

00:03:42.700 | So this is, again, it's a statement by

00:03:44.740 | Professor Matveev, Leonid Matveev, going way back,

00:03:47.760 | and without a foundation of strength,

00:03:50.420 | you cannot build anything.

00:03:52.660 | So any athletic event requires a base of strength.

00:03:57.620 | Of course, that shot putter's gonna need

00:04:00.220 | much more strength than triathlon athlete,

00:04:04.020 | but they all need strength.

00:04:06.260 | Speaking of which, in triathlon, in marathon running,

00:04:10.300 | in distance, in cycling, it's been proven that

00:04:14.420 | putting athletes on a heavy, low-repetition strength regimen,

00:04:19.420 | the kind that doesn't really add muscle,

00:04:21.060 | but just makes you stronger neurologically,

00:04:22.700 | and it makes them race faster.

00:04:26.420 | So once you're stronger, everything becomes easier.

00:04:29.420 | How much stronger you need to get, that will vary.

00:04:32.660 | In the Soviet Union, they had something called

00:04:35.220 | the model athlete.

00:04:36.900 | So they figured out that for every particular event,

00:04:40.260 | your odds of succeeding are gonna be much higher

00:04:43.580 | if you're able to squat this much, or bench this much,

00:04:46.320 | and jump this high, and so on and so forth.

00:04:48.140 | And this is easy enough to find these numbers

00:04:50.540 | for your individual sport, and talk to various coaches.

00:04:54.140 | For people who are not competitive athletes,

00:04:57.900 | who just want to enjoy life,

00:04:59.700 | you just need to think about having a reserve of strength

00:05:03.100 | for whatever it is that you might do.

00:05:04.940 | So look at some PT standards in, let's say, in the military,

00:05:08.940 | or in law enforcement,

00:05:10.340 | and possibly apply them to yourself.

00:05:12.580 | I don't want to impose my set of standards,

00:05:15.100 | because there are many different,

00:05:16.140 | like I might prefer pull-ups in X and Y and Z,

00:05:19.620 | but if we're looking at strength as the foundation

00:05:22.500 | for general physical preparation, right?

00:05:24.940 | So there's such a thing as general strength preparation,

00:05:27.320 | that's part of that.

00:05:28.620 | There's also special strength,

00:05:30.180 | which is sport-specific work, that's different.

00:05:32.780 | And there are different ways of getting this done.

00:05:35.300 | But as you and I know that certain exercises

00:05:38.880 | are going to have a great carryover

00:05:40.660 | outside these particular exercises.

00:05:43.200 | So as long as you're mobile, as long as you're symmetrical,

00:05:48.340 | and those are the things you have to address first,

00:05:50.220 | you need to look into work of a great cook, for example,

00:05:53.860 | then strength has to be your priority.

00:05:57.480 | Once you have reached a certain level of strength

00:06:01.540 | that's appropriate for your sport,

00:06:03.020 | or appropriate for your lifestyle,

00:06:05.740 | at that point, you can just maintain it

00:06:07.260 | and focus on other qualities.

00:06:09.180 | So I will give you an example.

00:06:12.040 | Soviet scientists, Vysotsky and Denisenko,

00:06:16.340 | they measured a number of athletes in 20 different sports,

00:06:21.340 | athletes of different levels.

00:06:23.260 | So they evaluated various quality.

00:06:24.860 | One was absolute strength.

00:06:26.780 | Another was rate of force development, pretty much power.

00:06:30.060 | And the third was, is the rate of muscular relaxation.

00:06:34.740 | So how quickly the muscle can relax after contraction,

00:06:37.900 | which is very, very important.

00:06:39.940 | And they have found that strength grew just very little

00:06:45.500 | from the intermediate level to the advanced level.

00:06:47.620 | There's not a lot of improvement.

00:06:49.500 | Power increased a little bit more,

00:06:51.980 | but the speed of relaxation is just shot up

00:06:55.780 | as the athlete became more advanced.

00:06:58.080 | So it's again, so strength, it is the mother of all qualities

00:07:02.000 | but that's not the end all for everybody.

00:07:04.380 | So reach the level that is appropriate

00:07:07.260 | for your sport or activity,

00:07:08.900 | then just maintain it efficiently

00:07:10.700 | and focus on something else.

00:07:13.820 | If we talk about strength, if we can talk about

00:07:15.580 | other qualities, or we'll get to them later.

00:07:19.220 | - What movements do you believe, if they exist,

00:07:22.820 | all people should include in their weekly routine,

00:07:25.580 | someplace when thinking about how to develop,

00:07:28.580 | perhaps maintain, but for most people,

00:07:30.540 | it's going to be the goal of still achieving some strength.

00:07:34.380 | - Okay.

00:07:35.220 | - Strength increase, excuse me.

00:07:36.940 | - I think there has to be a very low quantity of exercises,

00:07:39.820 | just very few exercises you wanna focus on.

00:07:42.540 | And I'm gonna give you some options to choose from.

00:07:45.860 | So what we try to do at Strong First in my company,

00:07:48.020 | my school of strength, is we try to provide people

00:07:50.820 | with various simple, very low tech,

00:07:53.500 | high concept ways of addressing, reaching their needs.

00:07:56.140 | Because for one reason or another,

00:07:58.480 | for this individual, the barbell is the preferred tool.

00:08:01.340 | For another, it's the kettlebell or bodyweight

00:08:03.260 | or something else.

00:08:04.940 | So I'm not going to say that if you don't do

00:08:07.140 | kettlebell swings or barbell squats,

00:08:08.660 | you'll never amount to anything, that's just not true.

00:08:11.060 | But you can pick some, you can pick some events.

00:08:13.860 | So you definitely ought to do something

00:08:16.340 | for your posterior chain.

00:08:17.380 | You absolutely do.

00:08:18.680 | If we are looking at the barbell,

00:08:22.160 | I would start out with the narrow sumo deadlift.

00:08:27.700 | - So this is narrow grip, but--

00:08:29.020 | - Not narrow grip, pardon me,

00:08:30.220 | but your stance is just wide enough

00:08:32.140 | to let your arms through.

00:08:33.500 | Your arms stay parallel to each other.

00:08:35.500 | And so you just find a very comfortable stance for yourself.

00:08:38.860 | So Professor McGill has been in your podcast.

00:08:41.060 | He explained to you about the, you know,

00:08:43.540 | different hip architecture and so on.

00:08:45.560 | So you have to find whatever works,

00:08:47.360 | whatever works for you.

00:08:49.020 | And when people talk about functional strength training,

00:08:52.280 | and then they start standing on a bowl

00:08:54.620 | and juggle oranges, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me,

00:08:56.480 | because that doesn't look like my life

00:08:58.020 | or yours probably, right?

00:08:59.460 | But if you have to get a heavy bag of groceries

00:09:01.900 | or something, you got a deadlift.

00:09:03.980 | And the narrow sumo deadlift,

00:09:06.040 | so if you look at power lifters,

00:09:07.540 | an example would be, classic example would be Ed Cohn.

00:09:10.340 | That's a narrow stance sumo.

00:09:12.060 | I'm not talking about wide sumo,

00:09:13.220 | that's a very sport-specific event.

00:09:15.180 | And you practice that first.

00:09:17.820 | You learn how to hip hinge.

00:09:19.820 | It's extremely important to learn how to hip hinge.

00:09:21.800 | Again, Stuart stressed that how important it is

00:09:24.420 | for your back health and for your longevity.

00:09:26.860 | So you learn to do that.

00:09:28.460 | Then whether you decide to pursue the deadlift or not,

00:09:32.100 | if you decide not to pursue high numbers in the deadlift,

00:09:34.620 | maybe it's not appropriate for you,

00:09:35.940 | or maybe you're lacking the coaching.

00:09:38.420 | Fantastic exercise for everybody is the Zurcher squat.

00:09:42.700 | So in the Zurcher squat,

00:09:44.900 | you hold the bar like this in the crux of your elbows.

00:09:48.180 | So it's resting right here.

00:09:50.220 | It's possible to pick it up off the ground,

00:09:52.180 | but it's an advanced skill.

00:09:55.180 | It's an advanced skill.

00:09:56.020 | Better just to walk it off the rack.

00:09:57.840 | The advantage of the Zurcher squat

00:09:59.520 | over let's say the back squat or the front squat

00:10:02.220 | is even if you have messed up shoulders,

00:10:04.420 | wrists, elbows, you still can do that.

00:10:06.780 | Coaching the Zurcher squat is very easy, very simple.

00:10:10.820 | And you have tremendous reflexive stabilization

00:10:14.100 | of your midsection.

00:10:16.020 | It's just very, very powerful.

00:10:17.860 | So you acquire that skill of getting tight.

00:10:20.980 | So getting high numbers on that exercise in the Zurcher,

00:10:24.900 | so let's say an athlete could shoot for double body weight,

00:10:28.420 | that's a really good goal.

00:10:30.620 | And the bar for those listening, not watching,

00:10:32.900 | is cradled in the crux of the elbows in front of the body.

00:10:36.020 | Are the arms crossed?

00:10:37.540 | - You can hold them like this.

00:10:38.860 | You can hold them like this

00:10:39.980 | or different ways of holding them.

00:10:41.280 | You definitely would wanna get proper coaching.

00:10:43.580 | You don't wanna bruise yourself.

00:10:46.500 | You wanna be comfortable.

00:10:47.340 | You wanna do it right.

00:10:48.580 | But it's not, doesn't take a lot of skill to do that.

00:10:51.460 | You find some pressing exercise.

00:10:53.940 | And again, if we're sticking with the example

00:10:56.260 | of the barbell, the bench press has gotten bad reputation,

00:11:00.420 | thanks to the gym bros.

00:11:02.100 | And all gym bros do is they bench pretty much.

00:11:05.100 | Well, these days they also check out their phones, I guess.

00:11:07.700 | - Every set, between every set.

00:11:10.500 | The 11th rep, I joke, is people checking their phones.

00:11:13.440 | - Yeah, there we go.

00:11:14.420 | But if you look at athletes,

00:11:16.500 | athletes who also do some lower body work,

00:11:20.120 | some posterior chain work,

00:11:22.020 | and something for the midsection,

00:11:23.540 | and again, Zurcher's quote could address that,

00:11:26.020 | they are making a great use of the bench press.

00:11:28.460 | So it's nothing.

00:11:29.300 | It's a very simple exercise.

00:11:31.220 | Well, not very simple.

00:11:32.260 | It's a relatively simple exercise.

00:11:34.540 | And unlike other pressing exercises,

00:11:38.180 | it allows you to make strength gains

00:11:39.900 | with a very low volume of training.

00:11:42.380 | So you can do several sets of five once a week

00:11:44.900 | in the bench press and keep getting stronger.

00:11:46.900 | Good luck doing that in the overhead press

00:11:48.660 | or in the one-arm pushup or something like that.

00:11:50.940 | So those are just a couple examples.

00:11:53.260 | There are many other examples.

00:11:54.360 | You can do snatch grip deadlifts.

00:11:56.880 | You can, the list is very, very long.

00:12:00.040 | We can address the same thing in the same way

00:12:02.040 | with kettlebells.

00:12:02.880 | You can look at the bodyweight exercises.

00:12:04.800 | But you need to find several exercises

00:12:06.520 | that have a reputation for building strength

00:12:09.280 | that reaches beyond the ability to do this exercise.

00:12:13.400 | If you just do curls, you know, you're gonna do,

00:12:16.040 | you're gonna get better at curls, but not at much else.

00:12:19.320 | So Canadian scientist back in the '80s,

00:12:24.080 | Digby Sale and his team made some interesting discoveries.

00:12:28.360 | And again, they just found that doing something

00:12:31.080 | like extension is not gonna carry over to the squat.

00:12:33.360 | It's just not.

00:12:34.380 | The coordination is so radically different.

00:12:38.020 | So you find several exercises that you enjoy

00:12:40.960 | that don't hurt you, that you have the equipment available,

00:12:45.960 | that you got the proper coaching for,

00:12:49.620 | and you pretty much stick with them.

00:12:51.280 | And there is absolutely no reason

00:12:52.880 | for you to change these exercises.

00:12:55.740 | It's possible to change them on the margins, you know,

00:12:57.640 | from a wide grip bench press to narrow grip bench press,

00:13:00.780 | squats with a pause and so on and so forth.

00:13:04.080 | But you don't really have to do a great variety of things.

00:13:08.320 | Variety is a good topic, we can discuss this later.

00:13:11.000 | But like looking at the example of weightlifting,

00:13:14.160 | as much as we can find many reasons

00:13:16.680 | why variety could be beneficial,

00:13:19.240 | improve neuroplasticity, reduced risk

00:13:23.720 | of repeat of strain injury and so on,

00:13:25.960 | but so is the statistics in weightlifting.

00:13:28.720 | There's no correlation between the number of exercises

00:13:31.280 | and the platform results.

00:13:33.660 | And for people outside the sports, it's gonna be the same.

00:13:36.520 | So find this limited, just limited battery of exercises

00:13:40.200 | that you can do well, you can do pain-free,

00:13:43.880 | and just enjoy them for years.

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00:16:29.700 | Would a combination across the week of some sort of squat,

00:16:34.840 | let's say the Zurcher squat,

00:16:36.300 | perhaps a kettlebell swing or something else

00:16:40.080 | for a posterior chain pull-up and dip

00:16:44.200 | be a fairly comprehensive program?

00:16:46.960 | - Absolutely.

00:16:48.080 | - I'm a fan of dips.

00:16:48.960 | I like dips a lot.

00:16:49.800 | I heard you say that you were,

00:16:51.960 | some years ago you said that you were using dips

00:16:53.840 | for economy of time.

00:16:55.780 | And I started getting into dips.

00:16:57.480 | I haven't quite figured out the best way to load dips once,

00:17:01.440 | because once you get past 15, 20 repetitions

00:17:04.120 | of the body weight dip, it gets,

00:17:06.040 | I don't know, it turns into something else.

00:17:07.880 | - Sure, absolutely.

00:17:08.960 | - It turns into aerobic exercise, perhaps.

00:17:11.720 | - Well, Luke Ames, he was a powerlifter

00:17:15.240 | from the golden age of American powerlifting.

00:17:16.920 | He says, "Anything over six reps is bodybuilding."

00:17:19.840 | - Yeah, I'm trying to stay in the lower rep range today.

00:17:22.120 | I'll talk about this with you more,

00:17:24.040 | because I think a growing number of people,

00:17:26.720 | both men and women who are starting to do weight training

00:17:29.080 | or really incorporate strength training into their program

00:17:31.800 | are seeking a combination of strength

00:17:34.040 | and perhaps endurance as well,

00:17:35.880 | without putting on too much size.

00:17:37.520 | Maybe size in some select body parts.

00:17:39.280 | - Well, Andrew, I think they need to do

00:17:41.120 | possibly several different types of training.

00:17:43.520 | But going back to your examples,

00:17:45.280 | dips are fantastic if you can,

00:17:47.600 | if your shoulders can handle them,

00:17:48.880 | if you know how to do them.

00:17:50.320 | It's a great exercise, but not particularly democratic.

00:17:53.120 | That's the problem.

00:17:54.200 | So either you can do it safely or you can't.

00:17:56.560 | And possibly, it's possible to coach some people

00:17:59.120 | to do the dip.

00:18:01.200 | So if you're coaching somebody to do the dip,

00:18:03.120 | the first prerequisite is to build up

00:18:05.320 | to a full skinned cat.

00:18:06.900 | So it means you're hanging upside down,

00:18:08.440 | you know, look up what it means, folks, on a bar.

00:18:11.160 | So you gotta be able to get yourself in that position.

00:18:13.020 | So if you're able to do that,

00:18:15.720 | and if you're able to get out of the position,

00:18:17.680 | you know, strongly and confidently,

00:18:19.800 | there's a good chance that you can start up and doing dips

00:18:22.800 | and be coached into that.

00:18:24.240 | If you can't, probably not.

00:18:26.440 | So either try to build up to that,

00:18:28.240 | unless there are medical restrictions or not.

00:18:31.000 | You mentioned the example of pull-ups.

00:18:32.520 | Absolutely, pull-ups are one of the best

00:18:34.920 | general strength exercises.

00:18:36.940 | And again, to your listeners, general versus special.

00:18:40.980 | Special, in Soviet terminology, just means sport-specific.

00:18:44.140 | So the carryover, when you start doing pull-ups,

00:18:47.900 | when you excel at pull-ups or the dips,

00:18:50.940 | you are going to get a carryover

00:18:52.620 | so far beyond this exercise,

00:18:54.300 | which is exactly the reason you do that.

00:18:55.980 | So I like your choices very much, yeah.

00:18:58.460 | - What about specialized training for grip strength?

00:19:01.560 | I believe that if somebody's large,

00:19:05.280 | if they can squat 500 pounds,

00:19:08.080 | if they can deadlift 600 pounds,

00:19:09.840 | I don't really care if...

00:19:11.800 | The question is, can you open the pickle jar?

00:19:13.400 | - Sure.

00:19:14.240 | - This is a critical home test.

00:19:15.080 | - I just get my wife to do it.

00:19:17.460 | So grip strength is extremely important,

00:19:21.760 | and you being a neuroscientist,

00:19:23.440 | you know the disproportional representation

00:19:25.680 | in the motor cortex of your gripping muscles

00:19:27.360 | and the forearm and everything.

00:19:28.520 | So, and there is another reason why grip is so important.

00:19:32.940 | So if you make a fist, if you make a very tight fist,

00:19:36.540 | you're going to feel the overflow of tension,

00:19:40.420 | irradiation going to other muscles.

00:19:42.500 | So pretty much by gripping tighter,

00:19:46.380 | you are instantly increasing your strength

00:19:48.740 | in anything that you do.

00:19:50.420 | And so a very simple example for listeners,

00:19:53.180 | take some pedestrian exercise like curls.

00:19:58.500 | And do as many strict reps as you possibly can

00:20:01.680 | the way you normally do them.

00:20:03.580 | And then start just crushing that bar or that dumbbell

00:20:06.620 | or whatever that you're curling,

00:20:07.580 | you will immediately be able to knock out several more reps.

00:20:10.800 | So that makes you so much stronger.

00:20:12.200 | And again, the value of a strong wrist and grip

00:20:14.780 | is obviously very important.

00:20:16.440 | For whatever reason, obviously it correlates with longevity.

00:20:20.080 | We don't know why.

00:20:21.240 | We have no idea.

00:20:22.120 | Correlation is not causation,

00:20:24.280 | so we don't know whether getting a stronger grip

00:20:26.600 | is going to make us live longer,

00:20:27.640 | but statistically it's worth a try, right?

00:20:30.480 | So one can either find exercises that train the grip

00:20:35.480 | in the context of developing something else

00:20:39.080 | or train the grip directly.

00:20:41.580 | So either way is great.

00:20:43.600 | So the first examples would be climbing the rope

00:20:47.240 | or doing pull-ups and weighted pull-ups on a rope.

00:20:50.600 | That's a great way to train, obviously.

00:20:53.000 | So what you do, the way you program it is,

00:20:55.260 | let's say once a week you climb the rope

00:20:56.840 | and a couple of days a week you do pull-ups.

00:20:58.560 | That's a good way to go about it.

00:21:00.160 | And you don't need to do anything else.

00:21:02.360 | And another example would be some exercises

00:21:04.720 | like the kettlebell snatch.

00:21:06.720 | When you start snatching a heavy kettlebell

00:21:10.020 | and you drop it from overhead,

00:21:11.880 | that eccentric loading is very, very powerful.

00:21:15.720 | And that develops grip very, very well.

00:21:18.680 | And again, right now we're talking more about

00:21:20.280 | what people in the grip world call the crushing grip.

00:21:24.920 | You know, how you squeeze something.

00:21:26.560 | There are other types of grip that they differentiated,

00:21:28.960 | but this type of crushing grip is what's going to help

00:21:32.220 | most athletes and non-athletes the most.

00:21:35.860 | And I will also warn you that hanging on the bar

00:21:40.860 | and doing farmer's carries,

00:21:43.940 | beneficial as they are for many reasons,

00:21:46.400 | it's not going to do that much for developing the grip.

00:21:48.960 | - Interesting.

00:21:49.800 | I started incorporating farmer's carries

00:21:51.160 | thinking it was gonna improve my grip, but.

00:21:53.520 | - They're healthy.

00:21:55.560 | If you look at McGill's work,

00:21:59.120 | he will tell you that carrying two heavy objects,

00:22:02.480 | it's going to really pound your spine.

00:22:05.240 | But on the other hand, asymmetrical carry,

00:22:08.120 | it appears to be very beneficial.

00:22:10.240 | Then there's another interesting example.

00:22:11.920 | Now, right now, I'm not talking about grip training at all.

00:22:15.360 | Not even talking about strength training,

00:22:17.080 | but I'm talking about sort of a former run.

00:22:20.000 | Dr. Mike Prevost, who used to work

00:22:21.840 | for the U.S. Marine Corps Navy,

00:22:23.200 | he developed this very interesting protocol

00:22:25.240 | and a test called the kettlebell mile,

00:22:27.560 | where you take a kettlebell

00:22:28.600 | that's approximately 30% of your body weight,

00:22:31.120 | and he has good reasons why it has to be that way.

00:22:35.480 | And you pretty much run with this kettlebell,

00:22:37.760 | and you switch hands as much, as often as you want.

00:22:40.120 | And it's a fantastic way to improve your running posture,

00:22:45.120 | to develop very stabilizing muscles,

00:22:47.280 | and to improve your ability to rock,

00:22:49.560 | but it doesn't beat you up as much rocking does.

00:22:51.600 | You know, rocking, carrying heavy weight,

00:22:53.080 | that's, it's rough on the body.

00:22:54.760 | So it's a fantastic way,

00:22:56.680 | it's a fantastic way to train your endurance,

00:23:00.560 | an additional way.

00:23:01.840 | - How heavy is the kettlebell that-

00:23:03.200 | - 30%.

00:23:04.240 | Because he says when you start going heavier,

00:23:06.160 | it's going to affect your gait.

00:23:07.800 | So you're not really, you know,

00:23:08.880 | you have to kick your hip over to the side.

00:23:12.160 | It becomes something else.

00:23:14.040 | - That's a heavy kettlebell.

00:23:15.120 | - 30% of your body weight?

00:23:16.200 | - Yeah, I mean, I'm 210 pounds.

00:23:18.560 | It's not trivial.

00:23:19.680 | It's probably something like 62 pounds

00:23:22.640 | or something like that, 70 pound kettlebell.

00:23:25.200 | It's not, no, no, no.

00:23:26.040 | It's not trivial by any means,

00:23:26.960 | but it's also not something you jump into immediately.

00:23:30.260 | And also what's very cool is,

00:23:32.400 | because you get to switch hands very often,

00:23:35.560 | you are not destroying your QL

00:23:38.040 | and other stabilizers that are contracting isometrically.

00:23:41.320 | And so what we're doing right now here

00:23:42.800 | is kind of a form of anti-glycolytic training.

00:23:44.640 | If you can muscle contracts briefly and then relaxes,

00:23:47.880 | contracts, relaxes, and the contraction cycles

00:23:50.680 | are really short, you're able to avoid glycolysis.

00:23:53.640 | You're able to keep that muscle working aerobically

00:23:55.920 | for a long time and not beat yourself down.

00:23:58.400 | So to the listeners who'd like to try it,

00:24:01.040 | start by walking with a kettlebell,

00:24:04.600 | pass, you know, switch hands often,

00:24:06.200 | then eventually build up to running

00:24:07.880 | and obviously build up gradually.

00:24:09.400 | - Held like a suitcase?

00:24:10.440 | - Yes, only, only like a suitcase.

00:24:13.080 | - Okay, yeah.

00:24:13.920 | There's a podcast led by a guy named Cam Haines.

00:24:17.140 | He's a bow hunter.

00:24:17.980 | He's one of the people that really brought extreme fitness

00:24:20.320 | and ultras to the sport of bow hunting

00:24:23.000 | and is legendary there.

00:24:24.160 | And for his podcast, he has,

00:24:25.600 | he carried the 72 pound rock up,

00:24:27.480 | it's about a thousand feet of elevation

00:24:29.000 | in the Oregon wilderness.

00:24:30.160 | And I've done it.

00:24:31.440 | It's hard because of the shape of the thing.

00:24:34.640 | And so you're moving it from shoulder to, you know,

00:24:37.480 | to football carry, to, you know, infant carry.

00:24:41.240 | And you're not talking about that.

00:24:43.120 | You're talking about suitcase on the right.

00:24:45.360 | Are you trying to crush the grip while you're doing it?

00:24:47.080 | - No, you're not.

00:24:47.920 | No, this is not, this is not developing a grip whatsoever.

00:24:49.940 | - And you're running at 10, 20 minutes, 30 minutes.

00:24:53.220 | - Well, his goal, he says, run for a mile.

00:24:55.020 | That's the goal.

00:24:55.980 | And he has some numbers.

00:24:57.500 | I can give you a link.

00:24:58.340 | You can look it up.

00:24:59.160 | - Great. - Back to Mike Prevost.

00:25:00.380 | And direct grip strength training is great as well.

00:25:03.900 | So for example, the best products with that would be

00:25:06.700 | the captains of crush grippers from Iron Mind, Iron Mind.

00:25:09.980 | Iron Mind is the company that started

00:25:12.280 | the serious grip training pretty much in modern era.

00:25:15.020 | And their grippers are the golden standard.

00:25:17.840 | Some years ago, my colleague at Strong Force,

00:25:20.200 | Brad Jones and I, we decided to get serious about it

00:25:22.560 | and see what that feels like.

00:25:23.920 | And we spent many, many months.

00:25:25.800 | We were both able to build up to closing the number three

00:25:29.760 | gripper from a parallel set.

00:25:32.280 | So that means that gripper takes 280 pounds to close.

00:25:37.040 | And when you're using very small muscle groups,

00:25:39.040 | it's extremely, extremely hard.

00:25:40.960 | And the observations that we both made

00:25:43.400 | and other colleagues and people have made

00:25:46.060 | that once you are able to do that,

00:25:48.220 | everything becomes so much easier.

00:25:49.900 | However, the training itself is extremely hard.

00:25:52.780 | Because people are thinking that when you're training,

00:25:54.800 | the grip is just some kind of isolated thing.

00:25:56.900 | You can drive the car and you can kind of squeeze

00:25:59.700 | this little pink thing that you picked up

00:26:02.300 | at the department store.

00:26:04.260 | No, when you train with a heavy-duty gripper

00:26:07.940 | like the one from Iron Mind, it's a full-body effort.

00:26:11.740 | And you need to use pretty much every neurological trick

00:26:19.220 | in the book in order to exert yourself.

00:26:23.540 | So for example, if you have ever seen the San Chin stance

00:26:30.220 | in karate, which is a stance where the knees are kind

00:26:33.500 | of pulled inward and shoulders are pressed down.

00:26:36.860 | There's a lot of tension.

00:26:39.740 | Everything's very, very seriously engaged.

00:26:42.220 | The toes are gripping the ground.

00:26:44.180 | So you're pretty much gripping the ground with your toes.

00:26:46.540 | You're contracting your glutes.

00:26:48.060 | You're bracing very, very hard.

00:26:50.100 | You're compressing your viscera.

00:26:52.220 | Your lat is firing.

00:26:53.420 | And you're sending all this effort.

00:26:55.300 | The only thing, they're not working.

00:26:56.860 | Like, you try to keep your traps and face out of this.

00:27:00.460 | And you're directing this effort into your grip.

00:27:02.940 | You get just as tired from doing that work

00:27:05.260 | as from doing, like, heavy squats or something.

00:27:07.660 | That's remarkable.

00:27:08.780 | But if you like that, it's a fantastic thing to do.

00:27:13.580 | The motor neuron recruitment that you are describing

00:27:16.660 | is phenomenal.

00:27:18.980 | I have one reflection on this relationship between grip

00:27:21.900 | strength and longevity.

00:27:24.260 | Just a little bit of neuroscience.

00:27:26.580 | You may be familiar with this.

00:27:27.780 | So forgive me if you are, but for the listeners as well.

00:27:31.020 | The motor neurons that control movement of the torso

00:27:34.300 | lie closer to the midline on both sides of the spinal cord.

00:27:38.100 | The motor neurons that are responsible

00:27:39.860 | for more distal muscles, that is further from the midline,

00:27:44.900 | sit outside of those.

00:27:46.580 | And so as you get out to the movement of the digits,

00:27:48.820 | you know, the fingers and toes,

00:27:50.380 | those are the most distal from the midline.

00:27:54.980 | The rate and pattern of degeneration of motor neurons

00:27:58.740 | as a function of aging, even if there's no ALS

00:28:01.620 | or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or anything,

00:28:04.340 | is always outside in.

00:28:05.820 | We don't know why this is.

00:28:06.860 | It may relate to the presence of the enzyme SOD,

00:28:10.420 | superoxide dimutase, but it does seem that people

00:28:15.420 | that train their peripheral strength,

00:28:17.980 | they can offset some of that outside to in,

00:28:22.100 | or distal to more close to the midline degeneration.

00:28:26.300 | So I believe, and this is just a belief,

00:28:28.460 | that it's not just correlative,

00:28:29.700 | that when one trains their periphery,

00:28:31.740 | they actually can offset some of the degeneration.

00:28:34.500 | It's also the way it's mapped in the brain,

00:28:35.940 | which is a kind of a discussion outside of here.

00:28:37.780 | We'd need to get some diagrams up

00:28:39.060 | for people to really conceptualize that.

00:28:41.260 | But it's also the case if you look at older people,

00:28:45.100 | 70, 80, 90, their calves are generally atrophied,

00:28:48.700 | even if their torso is still very thick and muscular

00:28:51.260 | if they did training.

00:28:52.100 | So I feel like obviously training the core

00:28:54.140 | and the torso is so key, but training the peripheral muscles,

00:28:57.700 | at least from the perspective of longevity,

00:28:59.740 | it makes sense why that would be important.

00:29:01.140 | - Well, there are so many reasons, obviously, to do that.

00:29:03.060 | So I think that whether you choose to do that directly

00:29:06.580 | with grippers, or, and there are some other devices,

00:29:10.300 | obviously, unlimited number of devices and exercises,

00:29:13.100 | or as a part of another exercise, like climbing the rope,

00:29:17.260 | definitely strongly encouraging your listeners to do that.

00:29:20.100 | - I'm gonna try this running

00:29:22.420 | with the kettlebell on one side for,

00:29:24.420 | I'll go out for a mile with it on the right, and then-

00:29:26.780 | - Oh, no, no, you switch all the time,

00:29:28.220 | switch as much as you want.

00:29:29.740 | Because if you try to do it on one side,

00:29:31.300 | you're going to pound your stabilizers,

00:29:33.780 | just pound them, you're not gonna recover forever.

00:29:36.260 | And this way, this is one of the secrets

00:29:39.260 | to developing isometric endurance,

00:29:43.660 | is very rapid switching, you know, short contractions,

00:29:47.900 | and brief rests, and over and over and over.

00:29:50.940 | That way you're not, you know,

00:29:53.020 | the muscle doesn't go into ischemia and, you know,

00:29:56.900 | keeps getting oxygen pretty much.

00:29:58.820 | - I'd like to talk about concentric

00:30:00.580 | versus eccentric portions of a movement,

00:30:02.340 | concentric generally being the lifting phase,

00:30:04.540 | and eccentric, of course, folks, the lowering phase.

00:30:07.440 | Is there a case for just doing concentric movements?

00:30:12.580 | - Yes.

00:30:13.420 | - Is there a case for emphasizing the eccentric portion?

00:30:16.060 | How does one balance those when thinking about soreness,

00:30:19.900 | recovery, and frequency of training?

00:30:21.820 | - Okay.

00:30:23.100 | Well, first of all, the case for concentric only

00:30:25.180 | is if you're trying to minimize muscle growth,

00:30:29.180 | and if you also are trying to minimize soreness.

00:30:32.580 | So for athletes in weight classes,

00:30:35.700 | or athletes in sports where you get punished

00:30:38.140 | by carrying extra weight, it's a very good idea.

00:30:41.140 | So for example, when Barry Ross coached Alison Felix,

00:30:45.820 | at that point she became the fastest,

00:30:49.740 | she won the 200 meters in the world,

00:30:52.700 | she was 17 years old, I think, she was the youngest.

00:30:55.220 | And so he would have her do deadlifts,

00:30:57.340 | and they were concentric only,

00:30:58.980 | and she would have her drop the bar.

00:31:01.620 | And the reasoning for that is exactly that,

00:31:04.500 | you're able to get stronger,

00:31:05.580 | you're not putting on extra muscle mass,

00:31:08.380 | also it's safe, it's really a very, very safe way to train.

00:31:12.700 | And in programming a protocol for somebody

00:31:18.660 | who's not necessarily in that boat,

00:31:21.420 | it's still just for the sake of variety,

00:31:23.420 | you may want to choose to avoid the eccentric

00:31:26.740 | on certain days, like you're trying to recover,

00:31:28.900 | accelerate the recovery.

00:31:30.260 | So you lift the weight, but then you step down,

00:31:34.540 | so you could definitely do that.

00:31:36.340 | Eccentric work, it's supposedly very helpful

00:31:41.340 | to promote hypertrophy,

00:31:42.460 | but there are a lot of ifs and buts in there.

00:31:45.140 | I'm going to talk right now about the eccentric strength,

00:31:49.420 | eccentric work for strength, specifically.

00:31:51.940 | It's very, because the muscle is strongest

00:31:55.220 | whenever you're lowering the weight,

00:31:56.520 | it's very easy to do something knuckleheaded and get hurt,

00:31:59.880 | which is, gym bros do that all the time.

00:32:02.620 | And instead of doing that, what the wise,

00:32:06.820 | much wiser approach is to get a perfect spotter,

00:32:11.220 | great competent spotter, and put on,

00:32:15.540 | after you've done your normal couple

00:32:16.980 | of low repetition heavy sets,

00:32:19.580 | add maybe five, 10 pounds over your maximum,

00:32:22.120 | and make a perfect eccentric

00:32:26.900 | with an intention of lifting it.

00:32:29.840 | So you're lowering this bar that you're just,

00:32:32.900 | you know, the bench press barbell.

00:32:35.680 | You're lowering it to your chest and you're loading yourself

00:32:38.140 | like you're ready to press it back.

00:32:40.120 | You pause on your chest without losing tension.

00:32:42.220 | You're ready to blast it back.

00:32:44.400 | And then your spotters take it off you.

00:32:46.580 | And you do this about, do this about two, three times.

00:32:49.460 | This sort of a strategy or a variation of it

00:32:55.900 | was used by Rick Will.

00:33:00.180 | He was able to bench press over 500 pounds

00:33:03.220 | wearing a t-shirt at the body weight of Buck 81

00:33:07.180 | back in the '80s, one of the greatest bench pressers,

00:33:11.060 | who was extremely intelligent about his training.

00:33:13.440 | And he did the same thing with his heavy attempts as well.

00:33:16.720 | And incidentally, even better, not even better,

00:33:20.400 | I should say you do this in a different day,

00:33:22.560 | when you combine this same type of eccentric

00:33:26.200 | with a very perfect assisted trap,

00:33:30.420 | not forced trap like bros do.

00:33:32.280 | It's all you, bro, you know,

00:33:34.000 | the guy's shaking there and dying.

00:33:36.560 | No, so again, let's say that your best bench press

00:33:39.300 | is, you know, 315.

00:33:41.000 | So you load up 325.

00:33:44.700 | You lower it perfectly.

00:33:46.660 | And you're lowering at the speed of your max attempt.

00:33:51.460 | So you're not going very, very, very slow.

00:33:53.580 | You know how guys do it.

00:33:54.680 | They take the first quarter of the range of motion

00:33:57.300 | very slow and then they fall through.

00:33:59.160 | That doesn't do anything at all.

00:34:00.580 | No, you lower it at that rhythm of your maximal weight.

00:34:05.340 | You pause and then you press it.

00:34:07.920 | And your training partner gives you enough assistance

00:34:11.840 | to make it feel like it's about your 90%.

00:34:14.740 | So the fact is you get to feel a super maximal weight,

00:34:18.640 | but you're not experiencing any psychological stress.

00:34:22.400 | It's very, very powerful.

00:34:23.600 | And again, you do this maybe for one or two singles.

00:34:28.520 | This also ties with the Soviet research on gymnasts.

00:34:32.440 | They came up with something

00:34:33.320 | called artificial controlling environment.

00:34:35.960 | So they compared a group of gymnasts

00:34:38.060 | that was working up to some strength-demanding skill

00:34:42.680 | with doing typical regressions.

00:34:45.160 | And at the same time, they were also

00:34:46.740 | working on typical strength training, weighted pull-ups,

00:34:50.520 | and so on.

00:34:51.680 | And the other group would have the coach provide

00:34:55.640 | this perfect assistance to enable

00:34:58.440 | the athlete to perform the skill at a higher level,

00:35:01.140 | as they put it, living their motor future, motor future,

00:35:04.940 | but with enough help not to make it hard, but not stressful.

00:35:08.980 | And the difference in gains were just dramatically.

00:35:11.940 | There was so much gain, so much faster.

00:35:14.180 | So I would say that would be a very good way

00:35:15.980 | to use eccentric work.

00:35:19.420 | Isometric training calls can also

00:35:22.300 | be very powerful for strength.

00:35:24.620 | And a great value of isometric training

00:35:28.980 | is in its ability to coach you to lift properly,

00:35:32.740 | and not just lift properly, other athletic events as well.

00:35:37.180 | If, let's say, that you're trying

00:35:38.860 | to learn to throw a front kick, and you're

00:35:41.820 | doing it all over the place.

00:35:43.780 | But if you place your foot on a wall,

00:35:47.180 | and if your coach or sensei positions

00:35:49.500 | your body, your foot, in a certain way,

00:35:51.860 | and teaches you to start applying pressure

00:35:55.500 | to that wall and the ground at the same time,

00:35:57.820 | and kind of pulse it against the wall, adjust your body.

00:36:02.180 | And then you relax, shake off your muscles,

00:36:04.300 | and you go hit the bag.

00:36:05.260 | And suddenly, you're going to do so much better.

00:36:07.300 | The same thing, let's say, that you're

00:36:08.880 | trying to optimize your position for the bottom of the deadlift.

00:36:13.340 | So you load up more weight that you could possibly lift.

00:36:16.740 | And then you wedge yourself under,

00:36:18.780 | and you start applying pressure.

00:36:20.980 | And it doesn't feel good, so you change it a little bit.

00:36:23.540 | So isometrics are very powerful for not just

00:36:28.220 | for strengthening the sticking points,

00:36:30.140 | but also for optimizing the angles.

00:36:32.900 | Then we're also dealing with something

00:36:34.540 | that there is also a great disinhibition effect.

00:36:39.540 | So what your listeners might not know is--

00:36:43.220 | so there are two--

00:36:45.100 | you have two pedals in your nervous system,

00:36:47.180 | as in-- pardon me for telling you this.

00:36:49.140 | Obviously, you know all this.

00:36:50.540 | But there is the excitation inhibition.

00:36:52.220 | There's the gas pedal and the brake pedal.

00:36:55.340 | And there are various influences,

00:36:59.100 | some of them psychological, but not all of them,

00:37:01.220 | that are taking away from your strength.

00:37:03.380 | That's called inhibition.

00:37:05.060 | And under certain circumstances, there

00:37:06.820 | are documented cases like a lady lifting off

00:37:08.900 | the front of a 3,600-pound car to save her son.

00:37:13.660 | And there are documented cases of that.

00:37:15.780 | So that disinhibition takes place.

00:37:18.340 | So isometrics does have some disinhibition effects,

00:37:23.220 | properties, very, very powerful.

00:37:25.140 | Also, isometrics teaches you to--

00:37:28.260 | teaches you not to give up on a heavy attempt.

00:37:30.780 | Because if you put--

00:37:34.300 | the experiments were done in a safe manner on the machines,

00:37:36.900 | obviously.

00:37:37.900 | But if you put an inexperienced person,

00:37:40.140 | and the machine is moving at a slow rate,

00:37:45.140 | so when the speed starts approaching zero,

00:37:49.460 | that inhibition takes place.

00:37:53.060 | So pretty much the subject thinks the gig is up.

00:37:55.500 | I'm not going anywhere.

00:37:56.740 | That's it.

00:37:57.220 | I'm done.

00:37:57.700 | I'm just giving up because I failed.

00:37:59.500 | But training with isometrics allows

00:38:01.580 | you to develop this kind of a neural drive endurance

00:38:05.540 | that you need to grind through safely through a heavy attempt.

00:38:08.380 | So very, very powerful.

00:38:10.020 | How would you incorporate isometrics into it

00:38:11.820 | so you can do this as a part of your warm-up?

00:38:16.020 | You can also do paused reps.

00:38:19.700 | They're fantastic.

00:38:20.980 | When you combine eccentric, concentric,

00:38:24.900 | and isometric contraction all in one.

00:38:26.900 | So perfect example for the squat, you lower to parallel,

00:38:30.180 | and you stay tight.

00:38:31.540 | And you stay there for three to five seconds.

00:38:34.180 | And then you explode upward.

00:38:35.780 | So that's a great way to train.

00:38:39.020 | I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor AG1.

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00:39:54.200 | - I'd like to talk about neural drive.

00:39:57.140 | I attribute you with popularizing, maybe you invented it,

00:40:02.660 | but certainly popularizing the term like greasing the groove

00:40:07.180 | in one of your books.

00:40:08.140 | And by the way, we provide links to Pavel's books

00:40:11.060 | in the "Show Note" captions.

00:40:11.940 | I'm a collector of your books.

00:40:13.700 | - Thank you. - I love them.

00:40:15.140 | Some of them are getting to be collector's items,

00:40:17.460 | they're a little bit harder to find,

00:40:18.540 | but you'll have to compete with me on eBay.

00:40:20.980 | But some of them can be found elsewhere

00:40:22.460 | and we'll provide links to those.

00:40:24.980 | But this notion of greasing the groove

00:40:26.980 | completely changed my conceptualization of strength training.

00:40:30.820 | - Thank you. - Because I was weaned

00:40:32.780 | more or less trying to run cross-country

00:40:35.660 | during the cross-country season.

00:40:37.060 | Only ran it once, but I greatly enjoyed it

00:40:38.660 | and continued that sort of training.

00:40:40.300 | Or trying to put on strength and size,

00:40:42.500 | and kind of a numbskull, young male approach to things.

00:40:46.460 | But it served me reasonably well.

00:40:49.140 | I'm grateful that I included both.

00:40:51.220 | However, I was so tuned to this notion

00:40:54.840 | of training a body part, creating an adaptation,

00:40:59.840 | then waiting for the adaptation to occur,

00:41:02.100 | and then training the body part again.

00:41:04.260 | The arguments are all over the internet,

00:41:05.820 | two times a week, three times a week.

00:41:07.140 | And then I came across this concept of greasing the groove,

00:41:10.380 | which as a neuroscientist felt so intuitively correct,

00:41:13.980 | and turns out to be correct.

00:41:15.720 | You'll explain what it is,

00:41:17.900 | but the idea that more frequent training

00:41:19.940 | or practicing of a movement

00:41:22.180 | opens up a tremendous number of opportunities

00:41:24.580 | for development of strength,

00:41:26.300 | of size hypertrophy if one wants.

00:41:29.380 | And I would say just generally more flexibility

00:41:31.940 | over one's total fitness program.

00:41:33.980 | Once one understands this concept,

00:41:36.300 | you no longer look at this split, or that split,

00:41:38.500 | or this many reps, or that many reps,

00:41:40.060 | or this volume, or that volume.

00:41:41.380 | All that is important,

00:41:42.820 | but you can start to think about it

00:41:43.820 | through the lens of the nervous system.

00:41:45.720 | And to me, it was like water in a desert

00:41:49.300 | to finally encounter something

00:41:50.740 | that brought together all these different concepts.

00:41:53.300 | So could you please explain for people

00:41:55.700 | what greasing the groove is?

00:41:57.380 | And then I think the implications of it will become obvious,

00:41:59.500 | but we'll also spell out what some of those are.

00:42:00.620 | - Andrew, please interrupt me,

00:42:01.620 | because this is about to become a,

00:42:03.620 | this might get really long.

00:42:04.940 | So please interrupt me at any time.

00:42:06.380 | So first I'll talk about the neural component.

00:42:08.360 | Then we're gonna talk about the frequency

00:42:09.980 | and the morphological adaptation,

00:42:11.820 | structural adaptations as it leads.

00:42:13.700 | So ladies and gentlemen, grease the groove.

00:42:15.740 | We are talking about, let's use an analogy.

00:42:19.440 | Let's imagine that you are a bow hunter

00:42:24.580 | and you're working in your garage.

00:42:26.900 | And then you walk out of your garage

00:42:28.740 | and you shoot an arrow.

00:42:30.500 | And you just go back to going about your business,

00:42:32.900 | working in your garage.

00:42:34.820 | Or let's say you're a kid who practices martial arts,

00:42:39.700 | and on every break between classes,

00:42:43.040 | you just go in the corner and you practice your kata.

00:42:45.540 | This is the best way to practice your skill

00:42:48.500 | in small portions in a spaced out manner.

00:42:51.340 | What's really fascinating is traditional education

00:42:57.340 | and traditional strength training,

00:42:59.660 | it's based on the cramming model.

00:43:02.060 | So remember cramming for an exam.

00:43:04.220 | So you're studying at night

00:43:06.500 | and you somehow squeak by and you pass it.

00:43:09.460 | Okay, great.

00:43:10.300 | And then a couple of days later,

00:43:11.380 | you happily forget everything.

00:43:13.740 | So in contrast, imagine that you are,

00:43:16.260 | let's say you're studying a foreign language.

00:43:18.380 | You write words on cards,

00:43:21.140 | and at every opportunity you're standing in line

00:43:23.500 | in the bank.

00:43:24.540 | So the lesser mortals are fooling around on their phones.

00:43:27.460 | You're just going through your deck.

00:43:28.620 | Like, oh, can I translate this word?

00:43:30.020 | I go put it back in the deck, flip it over.

00:43:32.540 | The next time you're in some other place,

00:43:34.700 | you do this again.

00:43:35.940 | So this is an example of space practice

00:43:38.020 | versus the traditional mass practice.

00:43:40.980 | And the evidence of the superiority of space practice

00:43:45.980 | is just overwhelming.

00:43:48.140 | It goes back to the 19th century,

00:43:50.660 | and there is at least like more than 1,000 papers

00:43:53.140 | published on that.

00:43:54.460 | And still very few people do that, which is really sad.

00:43:57.640 | And strength is a skill.

00:44:00.520 | So two interesting things happened in the '50s.

00:44:04.340 | One is Thomas Rush.

00:44:06.220 | He was an American exercise physiologist.

00:44:09.300 | He proposed that strength adaptation was largely a skill.

00:44:14.300 | And he looked at pretty much the adaptations.

00:44:18.340 | He noticed that there's no correlation

00:44:19.660 | between the muscle growth and strength.

00:44:22.380 | Then at the same time, a Soviet scientist,

00:44:26.900 | Stepanov was his last name,

00:44:28.940 | he was measuring the electrical activity

00:44:31.580 | in the muscles of weightlifters who are pressing overhead.

00:44:34.940 | And back then, the press was one of the competition events.

00:44:38.660 | And what he found is as the athletes got stronger

00:44:43.120 | after some months, the EMGs started dropping off

00:44:46.660 | when they're lifting the same weights.

00:44:48.940 | So pretty much he found out that

00:44:51.580 | the nervous system activity became more economical.

00:44:54.580 | They were able to try less hard,

00:44:58.300 | yet still lift the same weights.

00:45:00.220 | Or pretty much they could try harder

00:45:03.100 | and lift even heavier weights.

00:45:04.980 | And hypertrophy could not explain that

00:45:07.060 | because in the '50s, the Soviets were very anti-hypertrophy.

00:45:09.940 | They were just doing doubles, triples, singles pretty much.

00:45:13.020 | So if we look at what's going on,

00:45:17.700 | it's the Hebbian mechanisms.

00:45:21.140 | So pretty much every time that you activate

00:45:23.980 | a particular connection, synaptic connection

00:45:26.820 | between the neurons, that connection becomes stronger.

00:45:31.260 | So if you do it over and over and over.

00:45:33.180 | So the grease, the groove is the analogy

00:45:35.780 | is that command that's coming in

00:45:38.700 | from your brain to your muscles, that's the groove.

00:45:41.140 | That's that pathway.

00:45:42.700 | And the more you use it pretty much,

00:45:44.220 | the more grease it becomes.

00:45:45.260 | So it's like becomes a superconductor.

00:45:47.200 | So in the future, you don't have to try as hard

00:45:49.300 | to lift the same amount of weight,

00:45:50.800 | or you can try the same amount and you can lift harder.

00:45:52.900 | So we haven't even addressed the neural drive yet.

00:45:55.820 | We just pretty much made the motor neurons

00:45:57.580 | more responsive to it.

00:46:00.540 | And it's a very easy and very simple way to train.

00:46:06.380 | And strength comes very easily and very, very unexpectedly.

00:46:11.260 | To make sure that it does happen,

00:46:14.700 | you have to address the issue of specificity.

00:46:18.100 | So specificity pretty much means without getting too much

00:46:21.540 | into the weeds, to get stronger, first of all,

00:46:23.860 | you need to lift weights that are heavy enough.

00:46:26.220 | And if you're looking about percentages of one rep max,

00:46:29.700 | we're looking at like 75 to 85 typically.

00:46:33.140 | If you go too light, you don't make the impression

00:46:36.460 | on your nervous system.

00:46:37.780 | And it's just not specific enough.

00:46:39.420 | If you go too heavy, very quickly,

00:46:40.900 | you're just going to burn yourself out.

00:46:43.220 | And so pretty much, it's a weight

00:46:45.860 | that's heavy enough to respect and light enough not to fear.

00:46:50.220 | And the second of all-- and this is very surprising--

00:46:52.740 | is you only do about half or fewer reps

00:46:55.860 | that you possibly could do.

00:46:57.580 | So for example, let's say that you're lifting

00:46:59.980 | 80% of your one rep max.

00:47:02.020 | And let's say that you're able to do eight reps maximum

00:47:07.140 | with it.

00:47:08.660 | We're just fairly calm.

00:47:11.020 | Well, you're only going to do about three to four reps per

00:47:15.140 | set, and that's it.

00:47:17.060 | And the gym bros at this point go crazy,

00:47:18.860 | like, where's the intensity?

00:47:20.700 | Well, intensity in strength training

00:47:24.180 | is just how heavy the weight is.

00:47:25.940 | It has nothing to do with the effort.

00:47:27.660 | And it's been proven over and over

00:47:29.380 | that that's much more important than how hard you're

00:47:31.820 | exerting yourself.

00:47:32.540 | There are times for that.

00:47:33.540 | There are absolute times for that.

00:47:35.260 | But if the weight is heavy enough,

00:47:37.100 | and if you do half the repetitions that you possibly

00:47:39.540 | could do, you're going to get stronger.

00:47:42.420 | It's very safe, and you're not going

00:47:45.980 | to burn out psychologically.

00:47:48.780 | And it's also very easy on your body.

00:47:51.020 | So also, that builds muscle as well,

00:47:56.060 | purely because you're able to do a very high volume of work.

00:47:59.700 | I'm not able to explain the mechanism why it builds muscle,

00:48:03.020 | but as the Soviets found out in weightlifting research,

00:48:07.940 | there's a correlation between the volume and--

00:48:10.780 | Robert Truman-- between the volume and the hypertrophy,

00:48:14.540 | everything else being equal.

00:48:16.060 | You're going to get bigger.

00:48:17.620 | So almost every day, you're doing

00:48:19.420 | the sets of three, four reps, maybe even five,

00:48:21.980 | and they start adding up.

00:48:23.900 | And before you know it, you're stronger.

00:48:25.820 | And at the same time, you have developed muscle.

00:48:28.140 | So to summarize the grease, the groove,

00:48:30.300 | you're trying to train moderately heavy as often

00:48:35.860 | as possible while staying as fresh as possible.

00:48:40.580 | And if you decide to do it in the gym,

00:48:44.140 | a very simple protocol would be a set every 10 minutes.

00:48:47.580 | It sounds really bizarre.

00:48:48.660 | Why?

00:48:49.620 | Why would you rest for so long?

00:48:52.860 | This apparently has to do with initial memory consolidation.

00:48:56.580 | There's so much that's still unknown.

00:48:58.460 | So we do know the grease, the groove works great.

00:49:00.860 | But we speculate that some of it has

00:49:03.140 | to do with some of the same phenomena related

00:49:04.940 | to learning in other fields.

00:49:08.380 | So if you're doing something over and over,

00:49:10.940 | like you're saying 2 plus 2 is 4, 2 plus 2 is 4,

00:49:13.940 | you're just using your short-term memory.

00:49:15.700 | You're not memorizing anything.

00:49:17.460 | But if you say 2 plus 2 is 4, you go get a coffee,

00:49:20.140 | you come back, and you try 2 plus 2, 4.

00:49:24.140 | So there's that desirable difficulty

00:49:25.860 | that you have in there.

00:49:26.780 | And you have to process that instead of just

00:49:29.180 | go through the groove.

00:49:31.300 | That apparently helps this adaptation.

00:49:34.340 | So rest for at least 10 minutes.

00:49:36.740 | Do sets of about the repetitions of half of what

00:49:39.900 | you're possibly able to do.

00:49:41.980 | And listen to your body.

00:49:43.860 | Typically, train two, three days in a row,

00:49:46.140 | and then take a day off.

00:49:47.220 | But listen to your body.

00:49:48.820 | Incidentally, this grease, the groove

00:49:50.540 | is the topic of my next book.

00:49:53.620 | I have completed it.

00:49:54.500 | It's not published yet.

00:49:56.540 | If you look at--

00:49:58.180 | I can't pronounce the Hungarian professor's last name.

00:50:00.780 | Csikszentmihalyi.

00:50:01.780 | Thank you.

00:50:02.220 | Thank you.

00:50:02.720 | I appreciate that.

00:50:03.580 | So he's talking about that perfect challenge,

00:50:06.380 | perfect practice lies in that channel

00:50:08.980 | between boredom and anxiety.

00:50:10.860 | So if you put yourself in that channel,

00:50:12.940 | and if you keep lifting this moderately heavy weights

00:50:15.700 | with a moderate effort over and over and over,

00:50:18.260 | you're going to get strong.

00:50:19.740 | That's one of the many ways to get stronger.

00:50:21.780 | Are you doing anything in the rest periods

00:50:24.540 | between these 10 minutes?

00:50:25.580 | So is it, let's say, bench press,

00:50:29.740 | wait 10 minutes till you bench press again.

00:50:31.540 | But in the meantime, you're doing

00:50:32.820 | Zurcher squat five minutes after the first bench press?

00:50:35.340 | That's one of the way to do that.

00:50:36.700 | You can do up to three exercises at the same time.

00:50:40.580 | So let's say, Zurcher squat and the bench press,

00:50:42.620 | and maybe a third thing.

00:50:43.940 | But I'd say those two are enough.

00:50:45.860 | And another option is you can do that.

00:50:47.900 | You can incorporate this into-- if you would do only one

00:50:50.700 | exercise, you can squeeze it into your lifestyle

00:50:54.180 | or your athletic practice.

00:50:55.340 | So for example, let's say you're teaching a track practice

00:51:03.500 | or martial arts class.

00:51:05.540 | And every 10 minutes on the clock,

00:51:07.220 | you just have the class do--

00:51:09.700 | drop and do three hard--

00:51:11.300 | let's say three one-arm push-ups and then get back to the class.

00:51:14.620 | So there's no interference whatsoever.

00:51:16.260 | In fact, it's better than no interference.

00:51:18.740 | Back in the '60s, Soviets found out something

00:51:21.100 | called the strength after effect.

00:51:24.340 | So if you do strength work that's not exhausting in nature

00:51:27.540 | and that's not novel to you, it has a tonic effect

00:51:31.980 | just for anything that you can do with your brain

00:51:36.780 | or with your body, anything.

00:51:38.540 | So what they would even do-- some coaches

00:51:40.380 | would do so-called strength warm-up.

00:51:42.660 | They would warm up, as usual, for a track class,

00:51:45.380 | let's say, track practice.

00:51:46.980 | Then they would do, let's say, three sets of three

00:51:49.180 | of something like with 80% max, which is not much.

00:51:53.340 | And they start their practice.

00:51:56.540 | Then the coach noticed that the athletes

00:51:58.700 | are starting to droop a little.

00:51:59.940 | He'll repeat that.

00:52:01.740 | He might repeat that up to three times.

00:52:03.780 | So what you have is by having this short, very small dose,

00:52:08.860 | like a nanopractice of strength, you rejuvenate yourself

00:52:12.540 | and your productivity increases so much.

00:52:14.540 | So whether you want to just do the strength exercise,

00:52:17.700 | several of them in that one hour period,

00:52:20.100 | or whether you want to combine that

00:52:22.460 | with writing a great American novel, that's your business.

00:52:26.020 | I suppose if someone has access to the appropriate equipment

00:52:28.700 | at home, you could incorporate Grease the Groove

00:52:30.740 | into your entire day.

00:52:32.620 | That's ideal, yes.

00:52:33.700 | And obviously, it's difficult with some equipment.

00:52:35.780 | But what you could do, you could use the heavy-duty grippers.

00:52:38.620 | You could do one-arm push-ups.

00:52:41.420 | You could keep a kettlebell under your desk

00:52:45.260 | and press it at every opportunity.

00:52:47.540 | And again, the idea is really just practice.

00:52:49.420 | You just try to hit a perfect, perfect trap.

00:52:52.780 | And notice that if you have some issues,

00:52:58.100 | if you're a warm-up-dependent person for orthopedic issues--

00:53:01.700 | I'm talking about warm-up and very much in the body,

00:53:05.060 | not the mind in this particular case--

00:53:07.260 | then it might not be appropriate for you.

00:53:10.020 | Although, with 10-minute rest, it might still be OK.

00:53:13.060 | But practicing a skill without the warm-up,

00:53:18.460 | that means rehearsal, is very powerful for improving

00:53:21.580 | that skill.

00:53:22.620 | People think they automatically equate performance

00:53:25.020 | with improvement, with learning.

00:53:26.540 | But it's not so, not at all.

00:53:28.420 | When you are doing something that's just out of the blue,

00:53:32.140 | it's the way a sniper would take a cold shot.

00:53:36.420 | That's so much harder, because you have

00:53:38.020 | to have produced that solution.

00:53:40.620 | Or maybe an example that's closer to most viewers, golf.

00:53:46.540 | You go to the driving range.

00:53:48.260 | You start hitting it.

00:53:49.580 | And like, wow, you're amazing.

00:53:51.220 | You just get yourself fine-tuned.

00:53:52.620 | You hit.

00:53:53.500 | You're perfect.

00:53:55.100 | Then you go and you play the game.

00:53:58.260 | And you cannot replicate that.

00:53:59.860 | Because suddenly, different club, different topography,

00:54:02.980 | everything is different.

00:54:04.420 | And you didn't have the luxury of that tuning yourself up

00:54:07.220 | right there.

00:54:08.220 | So it feels-- it doesn't feel like you're stronger,

00:54:10.940 | but you are going to get much stronger.

00:54:14.220 | I've been eager to share with you some recent findings that

00:54:16.640 | are not my own, but that I think you might be curious about,

00:54:20.220 | and that I think most people, hopefully,

00:54:22.020 | will be curious about as well.

00:54:23.500 | It's not greasing the groove specifically,

00:54:25.940 | but it provides a at least partial mechanistic

00:54:28.740 | understanding of how particular types of physical movement

00:54:32.220 | with this high motor neuron and attentional engagement

00:54:35.260 | can generate high levels of alertness that

00:54:37.220 | can be devoted to, as you say, writing the great American

00:54:39.740 | novel, perhaps.

00:54:41.260 | There's a guy at the University of Pittsburgh

00:54:43.100 | named Peter Strick, who for the first time

00:54:45.520 | started to map the connections between the adrenals

00:54:48.540 | and the brain.

00:54:49.380 | And he was able to do this using some really cool technology.

00:54:52.460 | The basic takeaway is the following.

00:54:54.380 | Adrenaline released from the adrenals,

00:54:56.580 | as some of the listeners may know,

00:54:58.700 | doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier.

00:55:00.420 | But it turns out it binds to receptors

00:55:02.020 | on the vagus, which then stimulates

00:55:03.700 | noradrenaline in the brain and provides this increase

00:55:05.980 | in alertness.

00:55:06.620 | So then the question is, how do you get your adrenals engaged?

00:55:09.620 | We can sit here, and we can do a staring competition, which

00:55:12.080 | I'll lose for certain.

00:55:15.140 | But there are all sorts of psychological tools.

00:55:17.740 | Caffeine, et cetera.

00:55:18.940 | There are all sorts of ways to-- cold water.

00:55:21.300 | But it turns out what Peter found

00:55:23.500 | was that there are particular locations in the motor cortex

00:55:27.100 | that send basically a two-synapse connection,

00:55:30.820 | disynaptic connection, directly to the adrenals.

00:55:33.360 | And the areas of motor cortex that engage the adrenals

00:55:36.340 | cause them to release adrenaline.

00:55:38.180 | But just by sheer movement of particular muscle groups,

00:55:41.580 | the core, as you were talking about before,

00:55:43.340 | like bracing the core, causes the release of adrenaline,

00:55:45.820 | which then, via the vagus, causes the brainstem area

00:55:50.540 | to release more adrenaline.

00:55:51.700 | Wake up the whole brain, essentially.

00:55:53.300 | Increase learning and performance in anything.

00:55:55.900 | And as well, the stronger and stronger activation

00:56:01.280 | of the motor neurons, deliberate activation

00:56:02.780 | of the motor neurons, seems to engage adrenaline release.

00:56:05.180 | Now, to me, this was a wonderful way

00:56:07.140 | of trying to persuade people that they

00:56:09.820 | have internal control over this thing that we call motivation.

00:56:12.860 | That movement itself can increase adrenaline,

00:56:15.020 | which can increase the tendency to want to move.

00:56:16.980 | - As long as, again, you don't want

00:56:17.900 | to have too much adrenaline either.

00:56:19.220 | - Right, right.

00:56:19.860 | And I'd like to talk about that.

00:56:21.740 | But I think I, and so many other people,

00:56:23.900 | were kind of raised and conditioned,

00:56:25.360 | at least in this country, to think,

00:56:26.740 | oh, if I want to increase my level of motivation,

00:56:29.020 | I need to, like, I don't know, watch an inspiring video.

00:56:32.380 | That could be great.

00:56:33.220 | Or I can drink caffeine, or an energy drink.

00:56:36.140 | And certainly that will do it.

00:56:37.740 | But to me, the discovery that particular movements

00:56:42.640 | and particular muscles being engaged in activity itself

00:56:46.340 | changes the neurochemical milieu,

00:56:48.140 | I mean, of course it had to be, right?

00:56:49.620 | It's a big duh.

00:56:50.900 | But I think that, anyway, I was excited to share

00:56:53.220 | with you this data. - Well, thank you.

00:56:54.420 | - I didn't discover them. - That is news to me.

00:56:56.420 | - So I read "The Naked Warrior."

00:56:58.100 | I was closed when I read it, but it's a wonderful book

00:57:01.300 | because it talks about body weight, only exercises,

00:57:04.620 | and this concept of, for instance,

00:57:05.980 | like trying to crush one's fist on, you know,

00:57:09.860 | making a really strong fist on the other side,

00:57:12.160 | and how that will increase your gripping ability

00:57:15.260 | on the other side, this kind of thing.

00:57:16.780 | - Yes, as you know, with your background in neuroscience,

00:57:19.740 | obviously, there's so many neurological phenomena,

00:57:23.020 | like if you can think of like muscle software

00:57:24.980 | that we have access to, that if we become conscious

00:57:27.940 | about accessing that, we can be so much stronger.

00:57:30.580 | - Yeah, so when you talk about doing a set

00:57:33.820 | of three or four repetitions, or two to three repetitions

00:57:36.180 | at about 85% or 80% of one mass, waiting 10 minutes,

00:57:39.900 | and then the intervening 10 minutes,

00:57:41.100 | going and trying to learn something important,

00:57:43.380 | or physical or cognitive, this makes perfect sense to me

00:57:46.420 | because of the relationship of adrenaline,

00:57:48.140 | but also the way that your entire nervous system

00:57:51.140 | has changed in the intervening period.

00:57:53.420 | - And plus, you have the contextual interference.

00:57:56.060 | So one of the Greaser group is now something

00:57:58.620 | that I invented, it's something that I was able to codify

00:58:01.660 | and explain and possibly refine,

00:58:03.260 | but it's been around since the day of Ecclesiastes,

00:58:05.940 | and specifically in strength training, Paul Anderson.

00:58:10.140 | Paul Anderson, one of the greatest weightlifters

00:58:12.060 | of all time, he was a big favorite of the Soviet public.

00:58:17.060 | Very tough group to impress,

00:58:19.900 | but they called him the wonder of nature, he was so strong.

00:58:23.260 | And Paul Anderson would do a set of squats,

00:58:28.220 | then he would wander around, drink some milk,

00:58:29.940 | half an hour later, do a set of presses,

00:58:31.980 | then go do this again.

00:58:33.780 | And so he reinvent, not should say reinvent,

00:58:38.140 | he invented without knowing neurons from nylons,

00:58:43.140 | many of the training concepts

00:58:45.980 | that are just cutting edge today.

00:58:47.860 | And again, so this concept of contextual interference,

00:58:50.380 | remember we talked earlier how,

00:58:52.380 | if it's harder for you to produce a solution,

00:58:54.660 | if you're trying harder to remember two plus two is four,

00:58:57.220 | or how to throw the ball, then you're gonna learn more,

00:59:00.300 | as opposed to if somebody just hands it out,

00:59:01.900 | two plus two is four.

00:59:03.620 | So Paul Anderson had both the spacing,

00:59:05.980 | time came like, so the groove has been forgotten

00:59:09.340 | in the sands of time,

00:59:10.780 | and the contextual interference, he did another exercise

00:59:14.100 | that erased whatever previous groove right there.

00:59:17.060 | And it's very fascinating how looking at some

00:59:19.780 | of these old timers and just how genius some of them were.

00:59:23.980 | - Yeah, the unconscious genius aspect of it is so cool.

00:59:27.140 | And of course, I don't wanna be disparaging

00:59:28.940 | of common gym programs these days,

00:59:32.480 | but I do feel like the way that most people train.

00:59:35.080 | Yeah, he'll do that.

00:59:35.920 | Yeah, the way that most people train in terms of thinking,

00:59:37.820 | okay, I'm gonna hit the gym three, four times a week,

00:59:40.140 | or I'm gonna train chest one day and chest and biceps.

00:59:42.740 | While that has some value,

00:59:45.140 | I feel like for creating all around strength

00:59:48.580 | and hypertrophy, there's just such an incredible

00:59:52.780 | treasure trove of other things

00:59:54.380 | that you're sharing with us today

00:59:55.860 | that are just not discussed as much

00:59:57.800 | because people don't take the lens

00:59:59.540 | of the nervous system component.

01:00:01.180 | One thing that I'd love to ask about the nervous system

01:00:03.580 | in terms of training adaptation and recovery

01:00:06.200 | is that I was weaned somewhat

01:00:09.220 | under the thought patterns of Mike Mencer.

01:00:12.640 | This was in the Dorian Yates era.

01:00:14.480 | And I knew Mike a little bit.

01:00:15.840 | I paid for a consult with him over the phone.

01:00:18.100 | We never met in person.

01:00:19.340 | So that had my mother asking,

01:00:21.760 | you know, why is this grown man calling our home?

01:00:23.680 | And why are you, in the old days,

01:00:25.280 | you had to wire somebody money, so I do.

01:00:27.480 | But it was so worthwhile because Mike taught me

01:00:30.760 | that the goal of training was to induce an adaptation.

01:00:33.320 | Anything additional was not necessary.

01:00:36.200 | And in his case, he felt was counterproductive.

01:00:38.660 | Very infrequent training, et cetera.

01:00:40.320 | And it worked tremendously well to take me

01:00:42.120 | from like 150 pounds to 210 pounds,

01:00:44.360 | which I had no need to do,

01:00:46.200 | but my body just reacted like crazy.

01:00:48.720 | But then again, I was 16, 17, and 18 years old in that time.

01:00:51.680 | Probably could have done any number of different things

01:00:53.960 | and experienced similar results, who knows.

01:00:56.400 | But the concept, of course,

01:00:57.520 | is that you train to induce an adaptation,

01:00:59.240 | then you rest, and then you allow the adaptation

01:01:01.400 | to serve the, you know, moving higher poundages

01:01:04.420 | in good form, this sort of thing.

01:01:06.720 | The problem, however, is that,

01:01:09.400 | and Mencer highlighted this,

01:01:10.520 | is that training of any kind, running, lifting, et cetera,

01:01:14.380 | taxes both the nervous system as a whole

01:01:16.800 | and the muscles locally in the connective tissue.

01:01:19.360 | How should we think about training and recovery?

01:01:21.440 | So when you describe grease the groove,

01:01:23.720 | I could imagine if I had a home set up

01:01:25.460 | or I'm going to the gym,

01:01:26.300 | I could maybe do four or five rounds of this training.

01:01:29.320 | But at some point, it becomes counterproductive.

01:01:32.600 | So- - Wow, a lot of great questions.

01:01:34.600 | - I'm just trying to think about

01:01:36.080 | how to schedule this sort of thing,

01:01:37.920 | keeping in mind that the nervous system fatigues as a whole,

01:01:41.040 | and then there's also the issue of local muscle fatigue

01:01:43.280 | or even the propensity for injury, if you just overdo it.

01:01:46.520 | - Sure. - Yeah.

01:01:47.400 | So if we could just riff on this for a little bit.

01:01:48.880 | - If you don't mind, Andrew, I'll break it up

01:01:50.400 | because there are a lot of great questions right there.

01:01:52.340 | So one, as you mentioned,

01:01:53.320 | there are different ways of training.

01:01:54.460 | And again, we grease the groove load parameters

01:01:57.560 | apart from the long rests

01:01:59.200 | are very much based on Soviet weightlifting system.

01:02:01.800 | And I'd like to talk a little bit about that later.

01:02:04.800 | Another system that is a completely and radically different,

01:02:08.280 | and it ties very much to Mike Mentzer's training

01:02:11.740 | for reasons that become obvious,

01:02:13.520 | is the classic American powerlifting system from the '80s.

01:02:18.080 | And when people argue about training methods,

01:02:22.000 | what they need to understand is

01:02:25.000 | there are many ways to get the job done.

01:02:27.440 | You know, Art Kuvio, his research in Estonia found

01:02:29.880 | because there's so many different combinations of stimuli

01:02:32.520 | and the different adaptations that result,

01:02:35.360 | you can arrive to similar outcomes

01:02:37.840 | in a lot of different ways.

01:02:39.120 | So to say this is right and this is wrong,

01:02:41.760 | you cannot sometimes do that.

01:02:43.160 | I mean, I can say most of the things are wrong,

01:02:46.200 | but I can also say there's multiple right ways of training

01:02:49.560 | and they can be radically different.

01:02:51.600 | And they're different

01:02:52.420 | because they rely on very different phenomena.

01:02:55.220 | So in this particular case,

01:02:57.240 | you're talking about recovery and frequency,

01:02:58.780 | which is again, a great way to address it.

01:03:00.780 | I'm gonna talk about two systems

01:03:04.060 | that are completely different

01:03:07.260 | and yet have that same pedigree

01:03:09.940 | that they have brought so many gold medals.

01:03:13.900 | So one system is the Soviet weightlifting system,

01:03:17.620 | is again, where athletes would train several times a day.

01:03:21.220 | And Bulgarian system is a more extreme example of that

01:03:24.780 | and every day.

01:03:26.140 | And the other extreme would be

01:03:27.580 | the American powerlifting system,

01:03:29.860 | exemplified by Hugh Cassidy,

01:03:34.260 | Marty Gallagher, Ed Cohn, Kirk Kowalski.

01:03:36.860 | So starting from the '70s through the '90s,

01:03:39.360 | those are really glorious day for you as powerlifting.

01:03:41.920 | And in that system, they would pretty much do

01:03:44.460 | one or two heavy sets per lift once a week.

01:03:47.300 | So it's kind of a little bit like Mike Mancer's work,

01:03:50.180 | kind of, but we'll address why.

01:03:52.900 | So how can that be and how can both systems work?

01:03:58.900 | So you address the recovery.

01:04:01.380 | There's a concept called heterochronicity,

01:04:04.460 | which hetero means different, chronicity refers to time.

01:04:08.060 | So the different systems in the body

01:04:09.540 | recover at different rates.

01:04:11.920 | And if you don't take that into account,

01:04:14.940 | then you're going to have some serious problems.

01:04:17.700 | So the Soviet system took,

01:04:22.060 | if you look at the Soviet system with frequent training,

01:04:25.840 | they looked at, okay, we want to do frequent practice,

01:04:28.380 | which is exactly what we do.

01:04:30.620 | We don't want to beat the muscles up so much

01:04:33.380 | that it takes them very long time to recover,

01:04:36.580 | not too much eccentric stress,

01:04:38.540 | not too much acidosis, avoiding things like that.

01:04:41.680 | And they were able to adjust the loads in such a way,

01:04:47.300 | so let's say your weights are heavy, but not too heavy.

01:04:50.220 | The reps don't go too high,

01:04:51.500 | so you're able to recover pretty much overnight.

01:04:55.300 | And the benefit of that is it's been shown

01:04:57.740 | that if you fragment a given workload

01:04:59.740 | over more days and more sessions, you get better results.

01:05:03.620 | And your body is able and your nervous system,

01:05:07.500 | endocrine system, your carcass,

01:05:09.180 | everything is able to handle much more

01:05:11.700 | if it's split into small doses.

01:05:13.620 | So let's use an example of a meal.

01:05:14.940 | Let's say if you were trying to do an eating competition,

01:05:17.860 | how much you can eat in 24 hours.

01:05:20.260 | So it's not like those Coney Island,

01:05:21.860 | how many hot dogs you can eat in one sitting, no.

01:05:24.020 | But you would probably eat a lot more

01:05:25.460 | if you spread it throughout the day.

01:05:27.220 | And this is the same idea.

01:05:29.700 | Just like that parable from Nassim Taleb

01:05:31.500 | about the king that got angry at his son,

01:05:35.940 | and he says he's gonna crush him with a big rock.

01:05:38.700 | And you realize, well, what did I do?

01:05:40.500 | I don't want to kill this kid.

01:05:42.020 | But the king's word is king's word, right?

01:05:45.180 | So he ordered his peons to break up the rock into pebbles

01:05:50.180 | and then just dump these pebbles on the kid.

01:05:52.420 | So that's the same idea.

01:05:53.380 | So fragmentation, the load always allows you

01:05:56.700 | to do more and do it safer.

01:05:58.340 | So something else is related to that.

01:06:02.180 | In some training systems,

01:06:05.820 | some training systems rely on adaptations,

01:06:08.660 | let's say for strength, that go in the muscle,

01:06:11.580 | that go beyond just the contractile proteins,

01:06:14.140 | just the part that create force.

01:06:19.140 | So for example, the Soviet system,

01:06:22.180 | they also tried to increase the storage

01:06:23.780 | of creatine phosphate, which is the kind of immediate fuel

01:06:28.020 | for muscle contractions, for this type of work,

01:06:30.660 | for lifting heavy weights over and over.

01:06:33.260 | And so by training sometimes easier,

01:06:36.740 | you're able to keep stimulating

01:06:38.660 | that creatine phosphate adaptation,

01:06:40.260 | but without the still allowing muscles to recover.

01:06:42.260 | So this kind of a dance.

01:06:43.940 | And it's fairly complex.

01:06:45.940 | Then on the other hand,

01:06:47.660 | the American system did something completely different.

01:06:50.820 | And the explanations for what happens

01:06:55.060 | in the muscle within this American system,

01:06:57.860 | we didn't know for sure,

01:06:59.740 | but there's a hypothesis by a Russian specialist,

01:07:03.140 | Vladimir Pyataschenko, that seems quite credible.

01:07:06.460 | So here's, so again, the system, here's the system.

01:07:08.700 | You train hard, you do one hard set once a week,

01:07:11.740 | or two hard sets.

01:07:12.740 | So the satellite cells that are immature cells in muscle,

01:07:18.660 | they're sitting there waiting to jump in,

01:07:22.620 | if you need to replenish the messed up ones.

01:07:25.300 | In order for the satellite cells to get their job done,

01:07:28.140 | they try to figure out, scientists try to figure out

01:07:31.380 | what sort of stimuli are required.

01:07:35.300 | And one, a strong case can be made

01:07:40.100 | that a very particular damage to the microstructure

01:07:45.020 | of the muscle can provoke that stimulus.

01:07:48.140 | But that damage has to be very specific.

01:07:52.180 | If you beat up the muscle with a baseball bat,

01:07:55.580 | you're just gonna get a whole lot of scar tissue,

01:07:57.260 | and some satellite cells will just die,

01:07:59.140 | and others will just become scarred.

01:08:01.660 | But if the cross bridges in the muscle,

01:08:05.780 | the cross bridges is that part

01:08:07.140 | that does create force in the muscle,

01:08:09.380 | if they do tear in a very specific way,

01:08:12.740 | it seems to do the job.

01:08:14.780 | So the way the muscle contracts is, so there is,

01:08:18.180 | imagine that you're rowing a boat on the water.

01:08:22.500 | So water is one protein, it's called actin,

01:08:25.860 | and myosin is the ores that are moving in there.

01:08:29.700 | So the ore dips into the water, hooks, and pulls.

01:08:34.500 | And that ore relies on available energy in the muscle,

01:08:37.780 | so these ATP molecules of stored energy,

01:08:41.540 | they're floating around.

01:08:43.380 | And the head, myosin head, needs that ATP

01:08:47.660 | in order to bolt, to hook, to produce force,

01:08:50.220 | but it also, it needs ATP to unhook as well.

01:08:53.580 | And it's in this in-between stage, it's called a rigor.

01:08:57.820 | So whenever the muscle has produced force,

01:09:01.020 | but there is not enough energy for it to relax,

01:09:04.780 | so the muscle is stuck in rigor.

01:09:06.100 | So think of rigor mortis.

01:09:07.620 | So if you tear a dead body's muscle, it's gonna tear.

01:09:12.140 | And supposedly, this is going to happen

01:09:14.900 | only when you're able to,

01:09:17.180 | when the consumption of ATP is really high in the muscle,

01:09:21.700 | but the supply is not.

01:09:25.220 | And so if you do that in the first,

01:09:28.980 | let's say, 20, 30 seconds before acidosis set in,

01:09:33.660 | that's what should happen.

01:09:35.860 | Because if you wait longer

01:09:37.900 | when there's a lot of acid in the muscle,

01:09:40.420 | acid, it kills that reaction that uses ATP.

01:09:45.420 | So you're not using as much anymore.

01:09:47.380 | Sure, the demand is down, the supply is down,

01:09:49.980 | but so is demand, so it's not so good.

01:09:51.940 | So if you raise that fatigue point,

01:09:54.580 | so if you try to deplete that creatine phosphate,

01:09:58.060 | that kind of rocket fuel of the muscle

01:09:59.820 | within about 20, 30 seconds,

01:10:02.260 | then presumably some of these hooks,

01:10:04.260 | some of these ores are gonna get stuck.

01:10:06.660 | And when the muscle's lengthening,

01:10:08.060 | and they're gonna tear.

01:10:09.300 | And that's a very specific tear.

01:10:10.820 | It doesn't happen on the outside of the muscle.

01:10:12.340 | It happens just on the inside, in there.

01:10:15.060 | Whether this is true or not, I do not know,

01:10:17.820 | but it's a pretty good theory

01:10:18.980 | that does explain Mike Mentzer's method

01:10:22.660 | and explains the American powerlifting method.

01:10:26.460 | Interestingly enough about Mike Mentzer,

01:10:28.020 | and again, to the listeners who are not aware of the method,

01:10:30.020 | that means train the muscle really hard,

01:10:31.700 | very infrequently, with very low volume.

01:10:33.780 | Professor Yuri Verkhoshansky, before he died,

01:10:37.980 | you know, famous Soviet sports scientist,

01:10:39.780 | known in the West mostly as the father

01:10:42.420 | of what is called plyometrics in the West.

01:10:45.300 | But he's also done many other things as well.

01:10:47.980 | He spoke very highly about Mentzer.

01:10:50.340 | He thought Mentzer was brilliant.

01:10:51.940 | Mentzer was an innovator.

01:10:53.340 | But many people, some people get good results from it

01:10:56.820 | like you did, and a lot of people do not.

01:10:59.020 | And so pretty much what Pratasenko suggested

01:11:04.860 | that might happen is eventually you'll reach the limit

01:11:09.980 | of adaptation of how much you can deplete,

01:11:12.700 | how much you can deplete the creatine and phosphate

01:11:14.460 | in that window.

01:11:15.300 | That's when you hit the wall.

01:11:17.140 | And this is where the American system comes in.

01:11:20.980 | This system is called cycling.

01:11:22.940 | The history of cycling is fascinating.

01:11:25.420 | The relationship, the interaction between the Soviet

01:11:29.380 | and American strength schools is absolutely fascinating.

01:11:32.620 | So just to go back for a minute,

01:11:34.780 | Soviet track athletes in the '50s

01:11:37.580 | were using the typical stupid high rep reps to burn.

01:11:41.980 | Then in the late '50s, some very sharp young specialist

01:11:48.940 | Vitaly Chudzinov, he made a case at a conference

01:11:53.140 | that what are we doing?

01:11:54.580 | Let's look at what, he said, let's look at Paul Anderson,

01:11:57.540 | Di Hebburn, Bruce Randall, these North American strengths.

01:12:00.820 | Let's look what they're doing.

01:12:02.180 | They're lifting heavy stuff for sets of three to five reps.

01:12:04.820 | Let's knock this nonsense off.

01:12:06.620 | Soviet track athletes started doing that right there.

01:12:09.620 | So this is how the Soviets, for example,

01:12:11.260 | learned from Americans.

01:12:13.180 | That's an example of how it went the other way.

01:12:16.100 | The classic periodization, as it's known,

01:12:20.100 | Matveev's periodization, in which you kind of start out

01:12:23.500 | with higher volume and less specific to lower volume,

01:12:28.020 | more intensity and so on,

01:12:29.380 | that periodization is not used by lifters

01:12:33.700 | in the Soviet Union.

01:12:35.020 | Lifters thought that's just completely not,

01:12:37.300 | it's just not usable.

01:12:38.540 | It's just inappropriate for their needs.

01:12:40.180 | Arkady Vorobyev, the professor and Olympic champion

01:12:43.060 | made a very strong case, why?

01:12:45.420 | But Americans who got some limited information about it,

01:12:50.420 | American power lifters, not weight lifters,

01:12:54.100 | were able to develop their own training system

01:12:56.420 | based on that premise, something that the Soviets didn't do.

01:12:59.660 | And the way it worked is like this.

01:13:01.420 | You don't necessarily have very high volume,

01:13:05.020 | but you start, I'm gonna give you a most classic example

01:13:09.060 | of this type of cycling.

01:13:10.300 | Again, this is Cassidy, Gallagher, Cohen-Karwoski.

01:13:16.020 | Four week blocks, let's say there's gonna be three,

01:13:20.060 | four week blocks, maybe four.

01:13:21.500 | So you do lift once a week.

01:13:24.740 | On week four, you go for PR.

01:13:29.100 | So let's say this is a month of fives.

01:13:31.980 | So this is on your week four,

01:13:33.620 | you're going to do a PR set of five, you plan for it.

01:13:36.940 | Week three is somewhere around your old PR.

01:13:40.180 | Week two is lighter, week one is lighter still.

01:13:44.420 | Okay.

01:13:45.820 | And then after that, you may increase the weight,

01:13:49.500 | but still relative effort is going to drop

01:13:51.460 | and you're gonna kind of repeat the process.

01:13:53.660 | So it does multiple things.

01:13:58.460 | On the muscular level, so what Pratasenko explained,

01:14:02.380 | you pretty much decondition yourself temporarily

01:14:06.180 | and you progressively increase that creatine phosphate use.

01:14:08.980 | So initially, when you're deconditioned,

01:14:11.460 | it doesn't take as much to get the stimulus.

01:14:13.140 | You don't have to push really hard in the first week.

01:14:15.780 | You push harder in the second and harder and harder.

01:14:19.260 | There's a concept, there are concepts in periodization,

01:14:23.780 | so in sports science, of reactivity versus resistance.

01:14:26.820 | Reactivity means how responsive your body is to the stimulus

01:14:29.820 | and resistance, kind of like in the medical terms,

01:14:31.740 | you know, how much it can, you know,

01:14:33.540 | it's not affected by it.

01:14:36.940 | So when you're starting light after layoff,

01:14:41.580 | your reactivity is high and your resistance is low.

01:14:44.900 | It doesn't take much.

01:14:46.180 | So boom, suddenly you build this muscle

01:14:48.540 | and then you keep building up.

01:14:49.660 | And when you reach a peak,

01:14:52.380 | then you just step back again.

01:14:55.220 | And on the side of the nervous system and endocrine system,

01:15:01.060 | much later Soviet research,

01:15:03.060 | they said you can train hard maximum two weeks out of four.

01:15:06.620 | That's it.

01:15:07.460 | More than that, you cannot handle.

01:15:08.420 | - So for every month, you're training-

01:15:10.180 | - Two weeks hard.

01:15:11.140 | - The other ones you're cruising, you're...

01:15:14.300 | - Not as hard.

01:15:15.140 | Sometimes easy, sometimes...

01:15:16.820 | There are different ways of programming it.

01:15:19.180 | The typical one that you hear about in the West

01:15:21.860 | is you're gonna build things up for three weeks

01:15:23.540 | and then down in four.

01:15:24.500 | It's one of the about 16 different possible arrangements.

01:15:27.820 | Doesn't have to be.

01:15:29.420 | There can be...

01:15:30.980 | Here's one brilliant way.

01:15:32.340 | Franco Colombo, who passed unfortunately,

01:15:36.540 | was not just a great bodybuilder.

01:15:38.220 | He was a great chiropractor and great strength athlete.

01:15:40.620 | Super strong, very strong, and brilliant.

01:15:43.820 | So he told me about his deadlift cycle.

01:15:47.660 | Week one, moderate.

01:15:49.620 | Week two, heavy.

01:15:51.020 | Week three, moderate.

01:15:52.380 | Week four, very heavy.

01:15:54.180 | Again, this is a different way of arranging the same concept.

01:15:58.100 | And these American powerlifters were able to build a system

01:16:03.100 | that built the muscle probably exactly in this manner.

01:16:08.820 | What was happening at the same time?

01:16:11.140 | Oh yeah, and there was also another angle

01:16:12.740 | how that system possibly has worked.

01:16:14.420 | This is fascinating.

01:16:15.500 | Any type of exercise that you do

01:16:18.860 | makes your muscles more slow to twitch.

01:16:22.540 | It's just the way it is.

01:16:23.500 | It's very, very bizarre, yeah.

01:16:24.980 | - Even explosive.

01:16:26.340 | - Even explosive.

01:16:27.180 | - Even just trying to crush the bar

01:16:28.740 | and drive the deadlift up.

01:16:29.860 | - Even that, the more you do it.

01:16:31.020 | So Goldspank's research back in the '80s

01:16:33.380 | that any cycle of stretching or contraction

01:16:36.020 | resets the heavy chain myosin,

01:16:39.060 | the contractile proteins that makes it towards slower time.

01:16:42.100 | So any type of work.

01:16:43.380 | If you do biopsy on somebody who is a couch potato,

01:16:46.420 | you're gonna find that person probably has

01:16:47.940 | a higher concentration of white fibers than you and I.

01:16:52.460 | - Wild, very counterintuitive.

01:16:53.940 | - Very counterintuitive.

01:16:55.100 | And so that's like a default setting for the fibers.

01:16:58.180 | However, if you take time off,

01:17:03.060 | something changes, and it goes beyond the change.

01:17:06.380 | So this research came out of Sweden, I believe,

01:17:10.460 | when they trained a group of subjects in strength.

01:17:14.460 | They saw a predicted decrease in the ratio

01:17:18.540 | of type 2X fast-fit fibers.

01:17:21.540 | Then they took a couple months off,

01:17:24.100 | and then they experienced, they called it MHC overshoot,

01:17:27.620 | myosin heavy chain, again, like fast fiber overshoot.

01:17:31.620 | So they had something like 70 more percent fibers after that.

01:17:34.980 | - Wild.

01:17:35.980 | Nobody takes two, three months off these days.

01:17:38.660 | - But they figured out, Verkhoshanskyi figured out,

01:17:41.580 | that is not needed for athletes,

01:17:44.340 | because obviously you get deconditioned in other ways.

01:17:47.260 | So remember, we're talking about heterochronicity.

01:17:49.620 | Different processes take place at different rates.

01:17:51.980 | So it's like you're constantly playing whack-the-mole.

01:17:54.380 | So this is getting out of shape,

01:17:55.780 | but this is not recovered yet.

01:17:57.500 | It's a game.

01:17:58.340 | That's a game of training programming.

01:18:01.020 | So in the American system,

01:18:02.980 | first of all, the infrequent training,

01:18:05.660 | it reduced the stimulus for the conversion

01:18:08.540 | of the fibers towards the slower isoforms, slower types.

01:18:12.140 | And the second, all the taper that they did later.

01:18:14.700 | So suddenly switching from five-suit,

01:18:16.380 | like one triple, one double for a few weeks.

01:18:19.340 | If you do that for just a few weeks,

01:18:21.220 | you do like a one triple, one double,

01:18:23.420 | you're not gonna lose much muscle mass,

01:18:25.700 | because it really takes over a month.

01:18:28.180 | But there's enough time for the myosin

01:18:32.420 | to reconfigure itself to a faster type.

01:18:34.100 | So that's probably what happens.

01:18:36.140 | - Interesting.

01:18:36.980 | - And neurologically, I think what happens probably,

01:18:39.660 | they exerted themselves very strongly once,

01:18:42.340 | once, twice a month.

01:18:43.420 | So it's again in neural drive,

01:18:45.220 | probably with strength and disinhibition

01:18:46.820 | and other things like that.

01:18:48.500 | And the irony is the system has lost its popularity.

01:18:53.500 | Some records in the deadlift,

01:18:55.340 | like Dan Austin's record and possibly Naba's,

01:18:58.660 | set back in the '90s and '80s.

01:19:00.420 | Oh yeah, Lamar Gant.

01:19:02.100 | Lamar Gant, this is the strongest deadlifter

01:19:06.220 | pound per pound in history.

01:19:08.460 | So like 683 at buck 32 or something like that.

01:19:13.180 | And it was done back in the '80s.

01:19:15.700 | So he trained that way.

01:19:17.100 | Dan Austin.

01:19:17.940 | In other lifts, records have increased in part

01:19:20.860 | because of the equipment changes and some other reasons.

01:19:23.820 | But Ed Cohn dominated the platform for decades.

01:19:28.820 | So there are some great, great lifters who train this way,

01:19:31.580 | but then the system lost its popularity

01:19:33.380 | for reasons have nothing to do with its effectiveness.

01:19:36.900 | It doesn't mean it's appropriate for everybody though,

01:19:39.020 | because training a lift once a week for one or two sets,

01:19:42.340 | there's not much practice.

01:19:44.060 | And that's a problem.

01:19:44.980 | So unless you're training under a very high level coach

01:19:47.660 | or you're already coming in with great skills,

01:19:49.340 | it's really good.

01:19:50.380 | Second, if you need any kind of a level of endurance

01:19:53.060 | or if you're playing other sport,

01:19:54.980 | you're gonna be very sore from this type of training.

01:19:57.100 | So it's a great system for certain type of people.

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01:22:47.400 | - Based on what you just told us about Franco's training

01:22:49.680 | and the rest, seems that shorter training cycles

01:22:53.960 | might be advantageous,

01:22:55.080 | even just conceptually and practically.

01:22:57.200 | Like I've tended to break up my year

01:22:59.400 | into 12 to 16 week training cycles.

01:23:01.880 | I've been doing that for a long time.

01:23:03.120 | And now that I'm 49, this is the year that I decided

01:23:05.280 | I was going to start modifying my training a bit

01:23:07.120 | because certain little things aren't working for me as well.

01:23:10.720 | You might laugh.

01:23:11.560 | I'm actually curious whether or not you'll laugh

01:23:13.480 | or approve, I switched at some point

01:23:17.040 | to using the belt squat, these belt squat platforms.

01:23:20.760 | I just feel like-

01:23:21.600 | - You may want to explain that.

01:23:22.480 | - Yeah, the belt squat is essentially

01:23:23.720 | you stand on a platform.

01:23:24.820 | So you're on, unfortunately you're on display

01:23:27.420 | for everybody there, but that's not why I do it.

01:23:29.100 | You step up onto a platform.

01:23:30.440 | Sometimes it's called a pitch shark.

01:23:31.720 | Rogue makes a belt squat.

01:23:33.760 | There are other ones, of course,

01:23:35.360 | have no relation to any of those companies.

01:23:36.840 | And you wear a big, thick lifting belt,

01:23:38.980 | but it's kind of sagging in the front.

01:23:40.880 | And then you, as if you were going to attach a weight to it,

01:23:42.960 | but you attach yourself to,

01:23:44.080 | usually it's a cable or a lever between your legs.

01:23:48.440 | Sounds scary, but that lever or cable

01:23:50.360 | can drop below the level of the platform you're standing on.

01:23:53.320 | And you can load up quite a bit of weight on this.

01:23:55.400 | What I love about it is you can get very vertical

01:24:00.400 | if you want, or just a little bit of forward tilt

01:24:02.800 | 'cause you can place your fingers on the handles.

01:24:04.740 | You can grip them if you like.

01:24:06.240 | The point being, there's a lot of degrees of freedom

01:24:08.240 | in terms of stance.

01:24:09.320 | And I like that you're not loading the shoulders.

01:24:12.520 | - True.

01:24:13.480 | - I don't want to sound like a wuss, but I'll do it.

01:24:16.400 | I moved from standard squats, back squats to front squats,

01:24:19.280 | then to hack squats.

01:24:20.360 | And then now I've been playing around a lot

01:24:22.200 | with the belt squat and really enjoying it

01:24:24.240 | 'cause you can go really deep,

01:24:25.760 | can blast out of the bottom position.

01:24:27.420 | You can load up lots of plates on there

01:24:28.840 | if you have the strength to do so

01:24:29.920 | without the feeling that you're just compressing

01:24:31.940 | your whole spine or worrying about dropping the weight.

01:24:34.680 | So I'm enjoying working with it.

01:24:36.280 | I love your thoughts on belt squats.

01:24:37.760 | - True.

01:24:39.080 | - But in general, I am hearing you

01:24:42.100 | and I'm thinking that moving away

01:24:43.400 | from this 12 to 16 week cycles is going to be advantageous

01:24:47.420 | because what I'm finding is that

01:24:49.320 | it's hard to account for life events in that way

01:24:51.560 | and plan training and travel and all this,

01:24:54.360 | but four weeks is kind of a manageable thing.

01:24:56.160 | This month, this is what I'm gonna do.

01:24:57.880 | And of course the months work together.

01:24:59.440 | The body doesn't know the difference

01:25:00.440 | between February and March, as it were.

01:25:03.080 | - Well, in California, it doesn't.

01:25:04.160 | - It does, right, it does, right, exactly.

01:25:06.200 | The seasonal cycles are real elsewhere.

01:25:09.160 | But I'm thinking shorter training cycles

01:25:10.980 | might be a strong conceptual and practical framework.

01:25:14.720 | And yeah, I'd love your thoughts on both of those,

01:25:17.940 | the belt squat or leg work that's non-spine compressing

01:25:22.100 | and shorter training cycles as a general theme

01:25:24.700 | that people might think of incorporating

01:25:26.140 | into their training.

01:25:27.380 | - The belt squat and this leg work

01:25:29.680 | that's not spine compressing,

01:25:31.160 | I'm going to address healthy people like yourself.

01:25:34.420 | So if somebody has medical restrictions,

01:25:36.060 | you gotta do belt squat because the doctor says so,

01:25:38.260 | that's what you gotta do.

01:25:39.700 | As long as you're also addressing

01:25:43.060 | the rest of your posterior chain,

01:25:44.580 | as long as you're training your lower back,

01:25:46.300 | your upper back, obviously your neck,

01:25:47.780 | which obviously you're doing that,

01:25:49.460 | and in some other manner,

01:25:50.860 | there's absolutely no problem with that.

01:25:53.420 | So let's say you're doing some shrug pulls or something,

01:25:55.940 | you got that taken care of,

01:25:57.100 | or you're doing some deadlifts.

01:25:58.740 | And also for power lifters,

01:26:00.740 | what power lifters do, it's a tactic,

01:26:03.820 | is when you're training the same lift,

01:26:07.180 | especially if you train the same lift very frequently,

01:26:09.660 | there is always that heterochronicity,

01:26:11.460 | something is not catching up quite as fast.

01:26:13.900 | So you're going deadlifting and your hands are beat up,

01:26:18.860 | use straps, or you come and do the deadlifting

01:26:23.260 | and your back feels like, well, it's time to deadlift,

01:26:25.780 | my back is not quite ready.

01:26:27.460 | Well, you could go do a narrow sumo or something like that.

01:26:31.220 | So there are ways of modifying things this way.

01:26:33.340 | So you're able to, if let's say you hit some hard deadlifts

01:26:37.380 | or hard squats and you need some additional leg work,

01:26:40.340 | sure, you don't need any extra stimulation

01:26:42.180 | for your upper back and mid back.

01:26:43.820 | However, if you are a person who has more of a minimalist

01:26:48.820 | who does fewer exercises, then you just can't afford that,

01:26:53.020 | because then you're gonna have to do

01:26:54.220 | some additional exercises.

01:26:55.660 | You're gonna do something else.

01:26:57.140 | So may I suggest for your listeners and viewers

01:27:00.100 | to do Zurcher squats, again, a fantastic exercise.

01:27:03.900 | It does not beat up your shoulders.

01:27:05.460 | It does not build up your elbows or your wrists.

01:27:09.100 | It may leave some bruises, you know,

01:27:11.140 | but it's okay, you can live with that.

01:27:13.260 | And does that answer for the bell squat?

01:27:16.580 | - Yeah.

01:27:17.420 | - And by the way, machines in general,

01:27:18.780 | here's also a very interesting observation about machines.

01:27:22.420 | Machines are very useful for advanced trainees

01:27:26.960 | and fairly useless for beginners.

01:27:30.640 | - Oh, I love that you said that.

01:27:31.560 | I barely touched machines early on in my training,

01:27:35.280 | dare I say, call it a career,

01:27:36.520 | but I've been doing it for more than 30 years,

01:27:38.000 | so I'll call it a stage run.

01:27:40.240 | - It's a good run.

01:27:41.080 | - Yeah, it's a decent run.

01:27:42.840 | - But if you imagine the scenarios, what do people do?

01:27:45.800 | What do people do?

01:27:46.640 | Oh, it's safer, get in,

01:27:47.760 | climb into this machine right there.

01:27:49.480 | You're not developing any stabilizers,

01:27:51.320 | so you get out of this machine, you get crushed somewhere.

01:27:54.000 | But on the other hand, if you're a more advanced lifter,

01:27:58.720 | so like, you know, Marty Gallagher,

01:28:00.560 | one of the top powerlifting coaches in the world,

01:28:02.600 | he might recommend leg presses

01:28:04.920 | in a very specific deadlift stance to a lifter.

01:28:08.860 | And this is going to increase strength on your leg drive

01:28:12.400 | without beating up your back,

01:28:13.640 | but you're already doing your deadlifts,

01:28:14.800 | you can definitely do that.

01:28:16.400 | So advanced lifters may make a good use of machines

01:28:21.400 | and they don't need to be taught how to do that,

01:28:23.360 | they can figure it out.

01:28:24.840 | But beginners really should just use exclusively free weights.

01:28:28.520 | I'm not saying everybody should do squat, bench, deadlift,

01:28:30.960 | kettlebell snatch, and this and that, no.

01:28:32.720 | There's a large menu of exercise to choose from,

01:28:35.920 | but you gotta choose just from that menu

01:28:37.600 | where you discover the weight that's free,

01:28:40.400 | that's truly, truly free.

01:28:41.680 | Should we move on to the cycle, shorter cycle?

01:28:44.360 | - Yeah, the shorter cycle.

01:28:46.120 | - A lot of it depends on the type of programming

01:28:50.240 | that you do.

01:28:52.680 | So the type of progression that you use.

01:28:56.120 | So if I may, may I step to the side on that?

01:28:59.160 | So in strength training,

01:29:01.600 | you can look at the typical linear progression,

01:29:04.060 | we just progressively increase the weight.

01:29:06.160 | It only works for beginners, obviously.

01:29:10.000 | You look at the wave progression,

01:29:12.480 | where you're going up for a while,

01:29:14.320 | then backing off, and then going up again.

01:29:16.880 | And interestingly enough, in this classic American cycle,

01:29:20.060 | there's a wave there.

01:29:20.960 | Even though the weights keep going up every week,

01:29:23.520 | but if you did a set of five with 500 pounds

01:29:28.080 | on the fourth week of your fives,

01:29:32.000 | and then you went to 520 for triple,

01:29:35.280 | 520 for triple is a lot easier.

01:29:37.400 | So there is a deload built in there,

01:29:38.920 | just people don't realize it.

01:29:40.160 | So it is a form of wave loading as well.

01:29:42.680 | Then there's also the step loading.

01:29:46.800 | Step loading is a very interesting way of going about it,

01:29:49.520 | and I believe it's the preferred programming choice

01:29:52.580 | for do-it-yourself people,

01:29:54.360 | who not necessarily aspire to records,

01:29:56.800 | but want to train in a very simple manner.

01:29:59.700 | And step loading pretty much means where you start out,

01:30:05.000 | it's kind of like reverse,

01:30:06.020 | think of George Costanza approach

01:30:07.560 | to progressive overload, right?

01:30:11.200 | So it's like regressive overload, do the opposite.

01:30:14.520 | Instead of starting light and going heavier,

01:30:16.280 | start fairly heavy, and then stay with it,

01:30:20.240 | and then stay with it, and stay with that

01:30:21.880 | until it becomes fairly light, and then increase.

01:30:25.160 | In that case, you're staying this longer.

01:30:26.800 | So that's a good approach for less experienced people.

01:30:30.840 | There are limitations, advanced athletes

01:30:32.920 | run into limitations of this method.

01:30:35.480 | And finally, there is a variable overload,

01:30:37.940 | which is what's used in the Soviet weightlifting system,

01:30:40.720 | and later in Russian powerlifting,

01:30:42.600 | and there's no progression there at all.

01:30:44.840 | It is just based on pure aperiodicity, irregularity.

01:30:49.840 | So it's like, imagine muscle confusion,

01:30:51.640 | but the smart kind, and nervous system confusion,

01:30:54.640 | where it lows whiplash, like at least 20% every time

01:30:58.360 | in volume from session to session, or week to week,

01:31:01.400 | and exercise are changing and so on,

01:31:03.140 | so there's no progression whatsoever.

01:31:05.100 | So if you're using a fairly conventional

01:31:08.400 | linear or wave progression,

01:31:12.560 | the shortest cycle is generally a good idea,

01:31:15.680 | at least for older lifters.

01:31:17.520 | Like in using the American powerlifting experience,

01:31:21.800 | older lifters, looking back at Ernie France,

01:31:25.280 | Rickie Crane, Rickie Crane especially,

01:31:27.360 | who passed recently, unfortunately.

01:31:29.360 | So they were observing how an older lifter

01:31:33.720 | can't afford to start as light,

01:31:36.360 | because he doesn't stop losing ground too much,

01:31:39.060 | and he can't afford to go as heavy as well,

01:31:41.440 | or not for long.

01:31:42.800 | So they pretty much switched to shorter cycles,

01:31:44.880 | something like eight-week cycles,

01:31:46.600 | even possibly six-week cycles.

01:31:48.740 | So it's a legit approach.

01:31:51.400 | But there are many different ways, obviously,

01:31:53.500 | because you're looking at the big picture.

01:31:55.320 | You kind of have to look at it from up close,

01:31:57.760 | and from afar, but overall, I'd say yes.

01:32:00.840 | If for older and more experienced lifters,

01:32:03.160 | it's a good idea.

01:32:05.000 | - Great.

01:32:05.840 | Most people, I think, who do resistance training these days

01:32:11.020 | would like to also have

01:32:12.120 | some degree of cardiovascular fitness.

01:32:14.060 | In fact, I think one of the great things

01:32:15.440 | that's happened in the last five to 10 years

01:32:17.200 | is that most everybody, men, women,

01:32:19.500 | we can talk about kids and kid training,

01:32:20.900 | but adult men and women are thinking about muscle,

01:32:25.440 | the importance of having muscle,

01:32:27.000 | and being strong in particular,

01:32:29.040 | as part of their longevity and health.

01:32:30.640 | I think this is a great progression

01:32:31.880 | that's so very different than when I was growing up,

01:32:33.820 | where the only people, at least in American gyms,

01:32:36.200 | that lifted were pre-season football players,

01:32:39.460 | bodybuilders, and maybe a few other niche groups.

01:32:43.740 | But now, things have really changed.

01:32:45.540 | Earlier, we were talking about

01:32:48.040 | why the Soviet system and training for strength

01:32:55.180 | has been the tradition,

01:32:57.020 | and here, why things are just so different

01:32:59.700 | in how we conceptualize resistance training.

01:33:01.820 | I'll just go out on a limb and say what I believe

01:33:04.500 | and have thought for a long time,

01:33:06.240 | which is that what screwed up everything,

01:33:08.180 | in terms of people's conceptualization

01:33:09.740 | about how to use resistance, is bodybuilding.

01:33:12.780 | I mean, no knock against people

01:33:15.380 | that wanna make bigger muscles, but-

01:33:16.220 | - That was a screw-up, number one.

01:33:17.740 | - Yeah, it seems to be that the idea is,

01:33:20.740 | you go to the gym multiple times per week,

01:33:22.620 | you get a pump, I mean, this notion of the pump,

01:33:24.580 | like, it always feels aversive to me.

01:33:26.960 | Not the pump itself, but when people talk about it,

01:33:29.100 | it just feels a little inappropriate.

01:33:30.780 | Like, let's get a pump.

01:33:31.860 | Like, it just feels weird when people say that.

01:33:33.820 | In any event, but this whole notion

01:33:36.700 | of just flushing the muscle with blood

01:33:40.820 | and getting it to, sure, you get some window

01:33:42.820 | into your potential future self if you go home

01:33:45.340 | and eat a bunch of food and sleep,

01:33:47.220 | but somehow it's so unathletic in its approach.

01:33:51.700 | And I have friends who've done competitive bodybuilding

01:33:53.860 | and that sort of thing, not too many,

01:33:55.220 | but so I have respect for the sport at some level,

01:33:58.420 | but I feel like the way it's spilled over

01:34:00.180 | into "gym culture" has done equal harm and good.

01:34:06.100 | And what I like so much about your work

01:34:07.940 | is that it's really about strength as a skill,

01:34:10.260 | strength as an asset for longevity.

01:34:13.640 | And I guess when I think about somebody

01:34:17.220 | who wants to be strong, somebody who wants to be healthy,

01:34:21.040 | I also have to ask, should people be training

01:34:23.700 | for strength and endurance,

01:34:25.180 | like the two opposite ends of the spectrum?

01:34:26.940 | 'Cause it seems to me that would be the answer.

01:34:28.540 | - Great question.

01:34:29.380 | - As opposed to what most people do,

01:34:30.500 | which is, "Hey, I'm gonna go to the gym.

01:34:31.460 | Maybe I'll push a sled and then I'll, oh no,

01:34:33.380 | I'll do some kettlebell swings.

01:34:34.540 | And then I'll also do some pull-ups.

01:34:36.140 | And then I'm gonna take a picture

01:34:37.580 | of my tricep in the mirror."

01:34:38.620 | I mean, it just seems like,

01:34:40.320 | while it's better than doing nothing,

01:34:42.900 | it's clearly not making America that much healthier.

01:34:47.100 | And I just think there's such a vast landscape

01:34:52.340 | of opportunity in training for strength and endurance,

01:34:54.980 | but they seem at such odds with one another for most people.

01:34:58.140 | So maybe we could just kind of throw up

01:34:59.780 | on the whiteboard here,

01:35:01.580 | this notion of training to get strong,

01:35:03.820 | strength as a skill,

01:35:05.020 | strength as something that's valuable for longevity.

01:35:07.300 | I think we touched on that a little bit earlier.

01:35:08.900 | And then endurance,

01:35:10.100 | the ability to carry two suitcases to the airplane

01:35:12.960 | without coughing up a lung at the end.

01:35:15.500 | Also the ability to take a hike with your partner

01:35:17.940 | or your kids, maybe actually have a backpack on your back

01:35:20.780 | and not have to stop every 50 paces.

01:35:23.100 | Just being a fit overall person,

01:35:24.860 | which one, forgive me for the duration of this question,

01:35:27.220 | but when one travels to Europe,

01:35:29.540 | I haven't spent too much time in Eastern Europe,

01:35:30.940 | but when you get over to Switzerland or Austria,

01:35:33.780 | you see people who are strong and they have endurance.

01:35:37.380 | I mean, I imagine a Sherpa is strong

01:35:38.900 | with endurance as well, right?

01:35:40.500 | - By the way, Sherpas are really messed up.

01:35:42.500 | Their mitochondria are truly messed up.

01:35:44.340 | This is excessive hypoxia.

01:35:46.100 | It's very interesting.

01:35:46.940 | Their metabolism is quite severely anaerobic.

01:35:49.660 | It's very weird.

01:35:50.500 | - Oh, weird.

01:35:51.340 | - Their markers of oxidative stress is really, really high,

01:35:54.340 | but sorry, that's off topic.

01:35:55.540 | - No, no, we can touch on that 'cause it's interesting.

01:35:57.940 | People who live at altitude and-

01:36:00.020 | - Up to a certain point.

01:36:00.900 | Denver is good, the Himalayas is not good.

01:36:03.180 | - Okay, well, yeah, I have Scandinavian relatives

01:36:05.700 | and you go to Denmark or Sweden or Norway

01:36:10.380 | and you just look at these people are so healthy.

01:36:12.740 | Their posture is great, they're strong

01:36:14.500 | and they're not spending a lot of time in gyms.

01:36:17.100 | Sometimes they are.

01:36:18.300 | So what's going on in terms of strength and endurance

01:36:21.180 | and maybe how bodybuilding and this notion of building muscle

01:36:25.180 | has perhaps caused some issues

01:36:28.380 | that we need to help people reconceptualize.

01:36:31.500 | - Once again, several great questions.

01:36:34.820 | Let's talk about bodybuilding

01:36:35.860 | and then before getting to endurance.

01:36:37.700 | What you said, it's absolutely true,

01:36:40.420 | but I'd say that there are different types of bodybuilding.

01:36:43.820 | If you look at bodybuilding historically,

01:36:48.500 | it was guys were strong.

01:36:51.980 | I've had the honor of knowing

01:36:53.580 | some golden age era bodybuilders

01:36:56.620 | like Franco Columba and Dave Draper and Clarence Bass

01:36:59.700 | and these guys were formidable.

01:37:03.300 | They were not just pretty boys,

01:37:06.140 | they were absolutely extremely strong.

01:37:08.420 | So I think something happened in the culture

01:37:12.660 | where bodybuilders stopped valuing strength,

01:37:17.660 | some bodybuilders.

01:37:19.180 | There's still a number of guys out there

01:37:21.340 | who are following traditional methods and are strong.

01:37:24.820 | Also, interestingly enough, the bro split,

01:37:28.180 | hit once a muscle once a week, it's not necessarily bad

01:37:32.420 | if you again follow more of a into this

01:37:35.140 | classic American powerlifting model.

01:37:37.460 | So instead of training three times a week, you train five,

01:37:40.580 | in addition to your squad day, deadlift day, bench day,

01:37:43.500 | we can have shoulders day and arms day and whatever,

01:37:46.860 | but you go heavy.

01:37:47.820 | Look at Reg Park with his sets of five.

01:37:53.900 | And if you focus, if you emphasize this medium reps,

01:37:57.980 | and again, Soviets eventually came to the conclusion

01:38:02.020 | that for strength, you should stick

01:38:05.540 | in the one to six repetition range

01:38:07.580 | and you shouldn't do a lot of singles and doubles.

01:38:12.020 | Threes and fours should predominate,

01:38:14.180 | but fours and especially fives and sixes,

01:38:17.460 | this is where you get both hypertrophy and strength.

01:38:19.660 | That's that beautiful combination.

01:38:21.780 | And fives have a great tradition

01:38:24.540 | in American powerlifting as well.

01:38:25.940 | If you train with fives, you're gonna get muscle

01:38:27.740 | and you're going to get strength

01:38:28.860 | and you're not gonna complicate things.

01:38:30.900 | So there are some bodybuilders out there

01:38:33.300 | who train in this particular manner

01:38:35.580 | and they're fantastically strong,

01:38:37.140 | just not many of them, unfortunately.

01:38:38.980 | But I also would like to add that there's another influence

01:38:42.500 | that mess things up.

01:38:43.500 | I would take the bros of the '90s

01:38:46.620 | with the big bench press and the chicken legs

01:38:48.380 | to these guys who stand on balls and juggle oranges

01:38:53.140 | and whatever the hell they're doing.

01:38:54.980 | I mean, this, the idea is,

01:38:57.420 | so there's the concept of neuroplasticity,

01:38:59.860 | which obviously you know so much more than I about,

01:39:02.380 | that that's always thrown around.

01:39:04.820 | Oh, you need variety.

01:39:06.460 | And so they throw every circus trick

01:39:09.460 | at these poor clients.

01:39:12.660 | And by the way, I use the word clients purposefully.

01:39:15.020 | Like at Strong First, at our school of strength,

01:39:16.820 | we have students because there's lots of clients.

01:39:21.380 | But in that world, they're definitely clients.

01:39:23.420 | Well, today you're going to stand on one foot

01:39:26.540 | and then you're going to pull on this cable.

01:39:28.300 | And then tomorrow you're gonna kneel

01:39:29.580 | and you're gonna do this kind of thing.

01:39:31.500 | While asymmetrical loading and symmetry

01:39:36.420 | are absolutely something that's needed

01:39:38.340 | under certain condition,

01:39:39.980 | you need to do it in a professional way.

01:39:41.540 | Like if you look at Gray Cook's work,

01:39:43.780 | Gray will tell you just get yourself symmetrical

01:39:46.220 | and start lifting instead of resort to this unlimited,

01:39:50.860 | what a colleague of mine, Mark Griffin,

01:39:54.140 | called random acts of variety.

01:39:56.100 | So I'd say that's the other, there are way too many choices.

01:40:00.260 | And when there are no constraints,

01:40:01.700 | when everything's available, you go to a store,

01:40:03.500 | everything's available, you don't know what to pick

01:40:05.460 | and you can stick with that.

01:40:06.460 | So that's a very big problem, I would say.

01:40:09.300 | So I would say the less time people spend on the internet,

01:40:14.100 | unless you're looking up research papers

01:40:16.180 | or doing something else valuable or,

01:40:17.860 | fine, watching a good movie, that's all right.

01:40:19.780 | So unless you're looking up a research paper

01:40:21.380 | or watching a movie, forget about it.

01:40:23.500 | Or your podcast or my website, that's it.

01:40:26.020 | The rest of it, it's off limits.

01:40:27.620 | But strength and endurance,

01:40:31.060 | endurance is a very broad term.

01:40:34.620 | And if we talk about, let's talk a little bit

01:40:38.820 | about training for athletes for endurance

01:40:41.460 | and let's talk maybe a little bit

01:40:42.660 | for the general population.

01:40:43.980 | We're trying to do for health and again,

01:40:45.220 | for just going for a hike.

01:40:46.500 | So the endurance of being able to do triathlon

01:40:52.540 | or swim a very long distance,

01:40:55.660 | the adaptations are primarily taking place

01:40:57.780 | in the slow fibers and you have some very specific

01:41:01.580 | adaptations to the capillaries and the mitochondria,

01:41:05.820 | so many things, but in a very specific way.

01:41:08.100 | And that's not going to help you,

01:41:09.620 | let's say, if you're a fighter.

01:41:11.220 | It's happened over and over where a guy

01:41:12.860 | who's been a marathoner, he takes up MMA

01:41:16.940 | and he starts getting gassed really rapidly

01:41:19.420 | because while he has, his slow fibers

01:41:23.140 | can keep going forever, but not at the intensity

01:41:25.340 | that's required for this particular sport.

01:41:27.900 | So, and also we're talking about there's endurance

01:41:31.780 | that's peripheral and central.

01:41:33.300 | So you're talking about obviously your heart,

01:41:35.780 | you're talking about your lungs,

01:41:37.140 | you're talking about the plumbing,

01:41:39.060 | but then you're also talking about the extraction

01:41:41.500 | and use of the oxygen, which is huge

01:41:43.220 | and it's totally different.

01:41:44.460 | It can be trained with the same methods,

01:41:46.420 | but adaptations are very different.

01:41:48.620 | So then when people realize that,

01:41:50.260 | oh, let's start smoking these MMA guys

01:41:52.900 | and martial arts guys and BJJ guys,

01:41:56.020 | let's just make them puke

01:41:57.020 | and that's going to improve their endurance.

01:41:59.220 | And it does improve their endurance,

01:42:01.660 | but at a very high cost.

01:42:03.260 | So in the service sports science,

01:42:04.620 | there's a term, the cost of adaptation

01:42:06.380 | comes from Felix Meyers, a professor,

01:42:08.740 | he was a cardiopathologist originally,

01:42:13.740 | but later again, his research and stress is amazing.

01:42:17.140 | So there's the cost of adaptation.

01:42:19.540 | And it's the same thing is pretty much

01:42:22.740 | as buying a car or a table.

01:42:25.340 | You can get the same table for a lower price

01:42:28.500 | or you can pay the top dollar.

01:42:30.220 | So you can increase your strength

01:42:31.660 | while at the same time blowing your back out,

01:42:34.100 | or you can increase your VO2 max

01:42:37.140 | while getting a resume in the process,

01:42:40.100 | or you can do it in a healthy way.

01:42:41.820 | So one of the issues you have to look at,

01:42:43.620 | they're trying to lower the biological cost

01:42:45.700 | of the adaptation.

01:42:47.180 | So in strength training, we do that by very careful

01:42:50.820 | and not training hard too often.

01:42:52.740 | So again, the American system is two weeks out of four.

01:42:55.820 | The Soviet system, pretty much the same,

01:42:57.500 | although the planning is going to be different.

01:42:59.900 | First, if we look at the cardiovascular adaptations,

01:43:04.100 | before we're looking into the mitochondria

01:43:07.660 | and into the muscle,

01:43:08.700 | most of the work should be done below the threshold,

01:43:15.860 | pretty much.

01:43:17.460 | So what's the threshold?

01:43:18.740 | So for runners, let's say you're running

01:43:20.780 | and you're able to maintain a conversation.

01:43:23.260 | And when you start running too fast

01:43:24.820 | and you cannot maintain the conversation,

01:43:26.260 | you pass the threshold.

01:43:27.780 | It's like you're going faster

01:43:29.540 | and you're breathing harder linearly.

01:43:31.380 | And suddenly it goes like this, like a hockey stick.

01:43:34.220 | So at that point, your body's no longer able

01:43:36.100 | to process all that acid

01:43:37.900 | and things are starting to get hard.

01:43:39.860 | So there are certain implications.

01:43:42.260 | There are certain implications for your muscles, for sure.

01:43:45.820 | We'll discuss that in a few minutes.

01:43:47.580 | But for your heart,

01:43:49.740 | there are two things we're primarily trying to train.

01:43:52.100 | One, we're trying to train the stroke volume.

01:43:54.940 | So pretty much how much blood the heart can pump out

01:43:58.660 | with each contraction.

01:44:00.500 | And it's a very simple thing to do.

01:44:02.980 | You get up to like,

01:44:06.020 | you know, 70 to 85% of your maximal heart rate.

01:44:13.020 | So the heart starts stretching, literally.

01:44:17.420 | So, kuchung, kuchung, kuchung.

01:44:20.060 | So this blood is incoming and the heart starts stretching

01:44:22.700 | and it requires volume.

01:44:24.460 | Some Tour de France riders,

01:44:26.940 | they might throw the food in the back of the cycle

01:44:30.540 | and they ride all day

01:44:32.020 | because that's what they've got to do.

01:44:33.940 | And that requires that adaptation.

01:44:36.300 | For people who just do it for health,

01:44:37.700 | you don't need to do that much.

01:44:38.700 | You know, 30, 40 minutes several times a week is enough.

01:44:41.260 | But for a high level, you have to stretch the heart.

01:44:43.940 | If you start redlining the heart rate,

01:44:47.380 | the heart starts twitching.

01:44:49.340 | So there's no time for it to fully relax and stretch.

01:44:55.940 | You're no longer really increasing your stroke volume.

01:44:59.060 | And what you're doing right now,

01:45:00.780 | you're strengthening your ejection fraction,

01:45:02.420 | which is like the strength of the heart,

01:45:04.340 | which is needed for athletes

01:45:06.260 | whose sports require redlining the heart rate.

01:45:08.540 | You know, if you're a fighter,

01:45:09.460 | if you are a 400 meter runner,

01:45:11.660 | you absolutely need to do that.

01:45:12.900 | But what they found,

01:45:15.260 | it went back to German research going to decades later

01:45:18.380 | and then the Soviet research.

01:45:19.820 | If you start redlining your heart rate

01:45:24.860 | before you have that volume that you put in

01:45:27.460 | and built up the stroke volume,

01:45:29.540 | you're just heading for pathology.

01:45:31.540 | So there are arrhythmias,

01:45:33.100 | there's all sorts of different things that the aphibs,

01:45:35.500 | all sorts of things that can start happening that are bad.

01:45:38.380 | And also your performance is not gonna be very high

01:45:41.500 | because again, your stroke volume is not there.

01:45:44.380 | And even for athletes who do that,

01:45:46.420 | they should do it for a very short period of time.

01:45:48.500 | It's just too stressful and it's just not needed.

01:45:50.940 | Typically it's a peak, it's peaking phase for some weeks

01:45:53.500 | before leading up to the competition.

01:45:56.220 | So pretty much steady state, steady state exercise

01:46:00.940 | like riding a cycle or jogging or hiking,

01:46:03.660 | when you're still able to talk,

01:46:05.820 | it's the best, most efficient and healthiest way

01:46:08.260 | to promote that quality

01:46:10.460 | when you're increasing your heart stroke volume.

01:46:12.460 | If you decide to get a little more intense at some point,

01:46:16.460 | interval training is appropriate,

01:46:18.700 | but unfortunately it's completely and totally messed up

01:46:20.980 | and misunderstood.

01:46:22.500 | It's like a catch all term,

01:46:23.820 | high intensity interval training.

01:46:25.820 | And Brent Rushall, a professor out of San Diego said,

01:46:29.300 | this is nonsense, this term is a nonsense.

01:46:31.100 | What does it even mean?

01:46:32.460 | Like what's high intensity?

01:46:34.100 | And also here's a question,

01:46:35.220 | what does low intensity interval training mean?

01:46:37.660 | Going back to taking a step to the side,

01:46:44.660 | but that's discussion will help us

01:46:46.060 | when we discuss what happens in the muscle terminology.

01:46:48.860 | So there are different rest periods between sets.

01:46:52.780 | There is the ordinary rest period.

01:46:57.100 | So which means you pretty much recover your function.

01:46:59.780 | It's like you're just as strong

01:47:01.220 | or just as enduring as from the previous set.

01:47:03.900 | There is the supramax rest period,

01:47:09.380 | when if you rest extra,

01:47:10.820 | sometimes you get some extra performance out of it.

01:47:13.620 | And there is this stress rest period

01:47:16.900 | when the next set is gonna be harder.

01:47:18.820 | Your performance may or may not be compromised,

01:47:20.700 | but it's gonna be harder.

01:47:22.380 | So with ordinary stress or ordinary rest periods,

01:47:26.180 | that is called in track, it's called repeat training.

01:47:28.940 | You know, so you run a hundred meters,

01:47:30.580 | then you rest for, you know, whatever, 10, 15 minutes,

01:47:33.340 | as long as you need longer possibly,

01:47:35.460 | then you repeat it again.

01:47:37.260 | And your performance stay this way.

01:47:38.700 | Interval training, again, it's established,

01:47:40.580 | it just means that things are gonna get worse

01:47:42.900 | from set to set.

01:47:44.140 | So that's the definition of interval training.

01:47:46.860 | The irony is the interval training was designed

01:47:50.740 | to increase the intensity of exercise

01:47:53.100 | while reducing the demands on the body.

01:47:56.500 | So if you look at the works of work of Fox and Edwards,

01:48:00.620 | they're pioneers of interval training in the United States,

01:48:03.900 | they gave some great examples.

01:48:05.140 | So let's say you're running for 30 seconds

01:48:07.740 | and you're at this speed

01:48:09.420 | and you're gonna produce this much acid

01:48:11.580 | and your heart rate is gonna be this high.

01:48:13.700 | Well, if you run for 10 seconds

01:48:15.380 | with short periods in between at the same speed,

01:48:19.260 | you're going to produce a lot less acid

01:48:20.980 | and your heart rate's not gonna climb to the stratosphere.

01:48:23.540 | And that type of training is very, very useful.

01:48:26.780 | And interval training can be used

01:48:28.220 | for promoting any type of adaptation.

01:48:30.380 | You can use it for hypertrophy.

01:48:33.940 | So here is one training method

01:48:36.820 | I learned from my colleague, Fabio Zonin.

01:48:39.220 | It was designed by Professor Masseroni

01:48:41.300 | in Italian Mystery Universe and a professor.

01:48:44.340 | Okay, you take 80% of your one rep max,

01:48:46.460 | so let's say presumably eight rep max,

01:48:49.060 | set a five, rest for 30 seconds,

01:48:52.060 | set a five, rest for 30 seconds.

01:48:54.500 | If you cannot do it anymore, you're done.

01:48:55.940 | And then you come back, maybe 10 minutes later,

01:48:57.460 | do it again.

01:48:58.300 | That's the example of interval training again.

01:49:00.660 | - I see.

01:49:01.500 | - And you can structure interval training

01:49:04.060 | for adaptations within the muscle,

01:49:05.820 | of mitochondria, and you can also do that for your heart.

01:49:09.140 | So here's how you do it for the heart.

01:49:10.580 | Today, there are a lot of fancy popular protocols,

01:49:13.380 | but all you have to do is go back

01:49:14.460 | to what Germans did many decades ago.

01:49:16.820 | Here's the premise.

01:49:17.820 | Your vegetative system, your heart, your lungs,

01:49:21.420 | your plumbing, they have inertia.

01:49:23.780 | So for example, imagine yourself as a kid.

01:49:26.500 | You run really, really hard.

01:49:28.460 | You know, you run for, you know, 100 meters or something,

01:49:31.340 | or less maybe, and everything's fine.

01:49:34.940 | And then you're talking to your body and (gasps)

01:49:36.940 | suddenly you start sucking wind.

01:49:38.500 | So that's an example of this inertia.

01:49:42.580 | So if you get your heart rate up

01:49:44.700 | to about 85 to 90% one rep max,

01:49:47.940 | and then you suddenly switch to jogging,

01:49:51.020 | you don't wanna stop because that's just way too,

01:49:53.020 | way too hard for your heart

01:49:54.220 | without getting that venous return from muscles working.

01:49:58.500 | What happens is the heart slows down,

01:50:02.860 | but there's that blood keeps on moving,

01:50:05.260 | and the blood literally stretches the walls of the heart.

01:50:08.580 | - I see.

01:50:09.420 | Sprint perhaps, 100, 200, 300, 400 meters,

01:50:12.700 | and then jog back?

01:50:14.700 | - Traditionally, it was not quite a sprint.

01:50:16.980 | The duration would be typical 60 to 90 seconds.

01:50:21.060 | The intensity is such that you get up to top off

01:50:23.500 | at 85, 90% of your heart rate max, something like that.

01:50:26.820 | And then you jog until your heart rate goes to about 60, 70%.

01:50:31.380 | So that's roughly about the same probably.

01:50:33.820 | And that, to look things up,

01:50:36.820 | it's like German interval training

01:50:39.100 | that was done.

01:50:40.140 | It is based on very definite physiological events,

01:50:44.780 | like this is what the heart does,

01:50:46.460 | this is what we're trying to do with the heart,

01:50:49.020 | and instead of inventing some things

01:50:51.260 | that are just simply trash the body

01:50:52.660 | for no reason whatsoever.

01:50:54.860 | And part of the problem also, Andrew,

01:50:56.380 | is it's very easy to get misled by quick gains.

01:51:01.380 | So, and it happens in strength world

01:51:05.420 | and in endurance world.

01:51:06.540 | Let's remember the years when you and I

01:51:11.500 | and every other male listener bench pressed

01:51:14.460 | their max once a week.

01:51:15.580 | You're strong.

01:51:17.660 | Next week, you're stronger.

01:51:18.900 | Third week, you're stronger.

01:51:20.020 | Like you're doing the math like, okay,

01:51:22.180 | well, I should be setting the national record

01:51:24.540 | by Christmas and maybe be going to the world by summer.

01:51:29.020 | And then at six weeks, you're done.

01:51:31.260 | And for experienced athletes,

01:51:32.580 | happens sooner, like after three weeks.

01:51:34.660 | The same thing with endurance.

01:51:35.860 | When you start doing glycolytic work,

01:51:37.500 | when you start redlining your heart rate

01:51:39.100 | and increasing the abscesses,

01:51:40.460 | your performance jumps so quickly.

01:51:42.420 | It's very contagious.

01:51:43.420 | It's like, oh, not contagious, pardon me.

01:51:44.980 | It's very exciting.

01:51:47.020 | And you think that you're gonna keep going forever,

01:51:49.740 | but you really absolutely will not.

01:51:51.620 | So for, if you want to train for,

01:51:55.180 | if you want to train your heart,

01:51:58.100 | a good way of doing that is steady state work.

01:52:03.300 | If you decide to do some sort of intermittent work,

01:52:07.820 | there are several different ways.

01:52:09.460 | One is intermittent exercise

01:52:15.780 | that's more of a repeat in nature, not interval,

01:52:18.020 | which is very bizarre to people.

01:52:20.420 | Let's say that you go moderately hard for 10 seconds,

01:52:23.940 | you go easy for 10 seconds,

01:52:25.260 | and you do this for 30 to 60 minutes.

01:52:27.060 | Imagine doing that.

01:52:28.820 | - That's good work.

01:52:29.780 | - It is good work, but you know what would be shocking to you?

01:52:32.300 | That you're not going to produce that much acid,

01:52:34.220 | you're gonna redline your heart rate.

01:52:36.780 | Better would be like 10 seconds of work,

01:52:39.020 | 20 seconds of rest, that'll be all.

01:52:41.500 | Fascinating research that Swedes did

01:52:43.340 | back in the '50s and '60s on that.

01:52:45.340 | It's amazing, if you keep the work periods short,

01:52:47.780 | you're able to not produce a lot of acid,

01:52:51.100 | but just go very, very hard.

01:52:52.460 | And you're gonna be able to train your heart

01:52:54.420 | and your lungs in this manner too.

01:52:56.660 | You can also do,

01:52:59.700 | and you also have peripheral adaptations

01:53:02.420 | in the muscles, mitochondria and so on,

01:53:03.860 | vascularity, some capillarization happening too.

01:53:07.340 | But you know, it's also interesting,

01:53:08.660 | there's one particular type of,

01:53:11.380 | I hate the fact that it falls onto

01:53:13.380 | the high-intensity interval training umbrella,

01:53:15.420 | because it's not.

01:53:16.340 | Because everything that sounds like hit,

01:53:19.660 | it's not good to me, because it's just made up label.

01:53:22.980 | But there's one type of training

01:53:25.340 | that delivers great benefits to your

01:53:28.540 | cardiorespiratory system.

01:53:30.180 | And at the same time, it also does that for,

01:53:32.660 | you know, for your mitochondria

01:53:34.100 | and even builds muscle in the same time.

01:53:36.100 | In TRAC, it is called glycolytic power repeats.

01:53:42.180 | And in the last 20 years,

01:53:45.980 | there were several good papers that were done on that.

01:53:49.260 | Dybala, Bregmaster, I think.

01:53:52.540 | Pardon me if I'm mispronouncing their names.

01:53:54.660 | But pretty much you do Wingate,

01:53:56.420 | like a 30 seconds of heart exercise,

01:53:59.740 | followed by approximately five minutes of rest,

01:54:01.900 | and you repeat it several times.

01:54:03.500 | Here's what's unique about this type of method.

01:54:07.660 | It gets your heart rate up to about that 85, 90%

01:54:13.020 | or something.

01:54:14.060 | Then you're gonna walk it off after that.

01:54:15.860 | So you are going to get adaptations for your heart.

01:54:19.780 | It's not the most effective way,

01:54:21.780 | but it's for healthy people,

01:54:24.460 | it's a healthy way and it's a very efficient way.

01:54:26.820 | At the same time, we'll discuss later

01:54:28.380 | what happens in the mitochondria level.

01:54:30.420 | But also what's interesting,

01:54:31.980 | you're also likely to get build some muscle as well.

01:54:35.100 | And typically there is the conflict,

01:54:39.220 | which we're getting to this point

01:54:40.340 | about like strength versus endurance.

01:54:42.380 | Typically there's a conflict of strength versus endurance,

01:54:45.260 | because, you know, if you're looking in the

01:54:48.020 | mTOR on one side, AMPK on the other side,

01:54:50.500 | things seem to be like, okay, this is pulling one way,

01:54:53.020 | this is pulling the other way.

01:54:55.140 | But somehow this particular load,

01:54:58.620 | while promoting peripheral and central endurance also,

01:55:03.140 | endurance, at least in the fast and intermediate fibers,

01:55:06.220 | also does promote muscle growth.

01:55:08.140 | - Interesting, and what sort of exercise,

01:55:09.860 | this is not sprints,

01:55:10.940 | this would be kettlebell swings for instance.

01:55:13.260 | - In the studies that were done,

01:55:14.900 | they use Wingate, they use cycle, they cycled.

01:55:17.700 | Sprinting, if you are going uphill,

01:55:21.020 | you can certainly do that.

01:55:22.940 | - 'Cause this 30 seconds is hard, you're pushing.

01:55:25.700 | - You're pushing.

01:55:27.140 | Going on a track, it's too easy to get something messed up.

01:55:30.420 | So going uphill, you can do that.

01:55:32.180 | We do that with kettlebells.

01:55:33.500 | We did this work in my first kettlebell school

01:55:35.900 | over 20 years ago, where we would do a set of,

01:55:38.860 | you take a heavy kettlebell, moderately heavy kettlebell,

01:55:41.620 | like, you know, for you or me to be like a 70 pounder.

01:55:45.660 | And we would snatch it really hard for a set of 20, 25 reps.

01:55:49.940 | And then we just jog till the heart rate comes down.

01:55:53.500 | And then we take this leisurely power lifting rest.

01:55:56.460 | And we're gonna do it again.

01:55:58.140 | And it's a fantastic way to promote

01:56:01.780 | various aspects of fitness.

01:56:04.340 | So you're gonna get in cardiorespiratory endurance,

01:56:06.380 | you're gonna have get peripheral adaptations,

01:56:08.260 | endurance in the muscle.

01:56:09.820 | And you're also building muscle at the same time.

01:56:13.180 | The reasons for that, here's the theory.

01:56:17.260 | Again, all the conversations we have

01:56:19.660 | about this is what happens in the muscle,

01:56:21.460 | all these are theories.

01:56:22.620 | We know pretty much if we do X,

01:56:25.380 | we're gonna get Z, whatever, or Y,

01:56:28.300 | some kind of result at this point.

01:56:30.180 | But we may not necessarily know for sure.

01:56:32.140 | So the following is another one of the theories,

01:56:33.860 | but it's another good, credible one.

01:56:36.020 | So this is Professor Viktor Selyanov.

01:56:38.820 | So according to him, the preconditions for muscle growth,

01:56:42.620 | in addition to the obvious,

01:56:43.820 | like food and things and hormones.

01:56:47.180 | So when you reach a certain level of acidosis,

01:56:51.420 | only a certain level of acidosis,

01:56:53.140 | not necessarily very high,

01:56:55.580 | that those hydrogen ions will make the membrane permeable

01:56:58.660 | to the hormones, so they're gonna enter

01:57:00.100 | and go into the nucleus and start doing their job.

01:57:02.620 | So that's one of the part of the explanation.

01:57:05.060 | Then at the same time, also the free creatine,

01:57:08.900 | when creatine phosphate, that hot fuel gets burnt off,

01:57:11.940 | that's also anabolic for one reason or another.

01:57:15.340 | So there are some explanations.

01:57:16.540 | Whether that's how it is or not, I don't know.

01:57:19.460 | But the fact is doing a hard 30, 40 second set,

01:57:24.380 | followed by a very generous rest,

01:57:26.380 | we're talking about five, 10 minutes,

01:57:28.300 | and repeating it five times, possibly more,

01:57:31.060 | it works very, very well.

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01:59:03.500 | What should I do during my rest periods?

01:59:05.380 | - All right, well, first of all,

01:59:06.220 | whenever your heart rate is high,

01:59:08.800 | the very first thing is to not to suddenly stop

01:59:12.140 | because you want to,

01:59:14.420 | there are valve, one-way valves in the veins

01:59:17.920 | that whenever you contract the muscles of the legs,

01:59:20.980 | they help to milk the blood back through to the heart,

01:59:23.100 | so basically they reduce the stress on the heart.

01:59:25.740 | So just walk it off first, the first step,

01:59:27.820 | if your heart rate was high.

01:59:29.420 | Then the second thing is you want to do exercises,

01:59:33.620 | you want to do relaxation,

01:59:35.420 | myorelaxation, muscle relaxation exercise.

01:59:38.660 | What they are is if you watch boxers,

01:59:40.460 | how they, you know, shake off their shoulders

01:59:43.940 | and drop their hands and do things like that.

01:59:46.420 | These exercises go back to the '30s,

01:59:49.100 | Soviets used them since the '30s

01:59:50.820 | and they used them with elite athletes,

01:59:53.820 | kids in grade schools and everybody.

01:59:56.460 | So these exercises serve several functions.

02:00:00.820 | One is if you are doing an exercise

02:00:03.520 | that is strength exercise in nature,

02:00:07.020 | some of the cross bridges are stuck pretty much.

02:00:09.580 | And so your muscle is a fixotropic, it's like gel.

02:00:13.060 | So by moving your muscle in a passive manner,

02:00:15.540 | you get it unstuck.

02:00:17.540 | And so you restore circulation, obviously.

02:00:19.880 | And the other reason is, again,

02:00:24.040 | control of muscular tension is very, very important.

02:00:26.460 | It's important to learn how to contract the muscle

02:00:28.300 | for strength, it's very important how to relax for speed,

02:00:33.300 | for endurance, just for happy life.

02:00:36.100 | You look at the best sprinters,

02:00:37.420 | note how relaxed their faces are when they run their jaws.

02:00:41.060 | Relaxed, how relaxed their necks are.

02:00:43.020 | So relaxation is something that's practiced,

02:00:44.940 | just like tension.

02:00:46.660 | So regardless of what exercise that you just did,

02:00:49.100 | shaking off, we call this fast and loose drills,

02:00:51.820 | shaking like passive, like turn your muscles to fat.

02:00:54.820 | So you wanna do this for a little bit.

02:00:56.960 | Then after that, it depends how long is your rest.

02:01:00.620 | So if you're taking,

02:01:02.420 | and depends which exactly that you're doing.

02:01:05.540 | In some extreme examples, let's say that you're a sprinter.

02:01:07.900 | Remember we talked like doing sprint repeats

02:01:09.580 | with let's say 100 meters in 15 minutes.

02:01:11.660 | You think, wow, sounds like a great, great training session.

02:01:15.220 | Well, the problem is these guys do need these 15 minutes

02:01:19.120 | to get the acid out of the system

02:01:22.060 | and have some other functions to recover.

02:01:24.580 | But after a couple of minutes,

02:01:26.360 | the CNS excitability goes down.

02:01:28.320 | So what the Soviets figured out back in the '40s still

02:01:32.700 | is what you do then, after you walked it off,

02:01:35.340 | after you shook it off, you here and there,

02:01:38.420 | you insert some very kind of light and easy hops

02:01:41.780 | or whatever using the same muscle groups.

02:01:43.900 | So these poor athletes really have

02:01:45.540 | a complicated rest protocol.

02:01:47.020 | There's really no rest for the wicked there.

02:01:50.020 | If you are a lifter who's taking

02:01:52.460 | very long rest periods in between,

02:01:54.940 | let's say you take those 10 minutes,

02:01:56.920 | then after your heart rate is down and after you shook off

02:02:01.200 | and after you walked it, you can just sit down,

02:02:03.260 | you can do whatever you want.

02:02:04.660 | Do not sit a slouch because obviously,

02:02:08.140 | Stu McGill explained why that's not a good idea.

02:02:11.840 | And speaking of slouching,

02:02:13.400 | one reason that runners get their backs jacked up

02:02:17.340 | after running or some endurance event

02:02:20.020 | is again, they go into their knees

02:02:21.620 | and they get into that collapsed posture

02:02:24.620 | and their discs are really pliable and warm after the run

02:02:28.540 | and then suddenly put them into flexion

02:02:30.080 | and they get messed up.

02:02:30.960 | So yeah, you also gotta, like you point out,

02:02:32.700 | to watch our posture,

02:02:34.180 | but you really gotta watch your posture during recovery

02:02:36.260 | because you slump between your sets of squats

02:02:39.780 | and then you could blow something out right there.

02:02:42.520 | - Interesting.

02:02:43.360 | I used to think that I would,

02:02:44.900 | this recurring sort of lower back hip thing

02:02:47.120 | that I finally feel is under control.

02:02:49.780 | And I used to think that it correlated with travel

02:02:52.300 | and something about maybe not sleeping as well

02:02:54.260 | and traveling perhaps.

02:02:55.600 | But what I've noticed is even if I just sit too much

02:02:58.380 | after training my legs hard, I end up with this back issue.

02:03:02.460 | So just moving to a standing desk configuration

02:03:04.720 | after training legs, irrespective of travel,

02:03:06.580 | has really helped.

02:03:07.460 | And I think, I mean, nowadays,

02:03:09.420 | there's all this excitement about walking.

02:03:11.020 | I don't know how much time you spend on social media,

02:03:13.900 | but walking is the new thing for 2024.

02:03:16.660 | People discovered walking can lower post-meal blood glucose.

02:03:19.880 | I mean, all stuff that was intuitive, great thing to do.

02:03:23.640 | We'll see what happens in 2025,

02:03:25.220 | what the new thing is. - What's the next hot thing.

02:03:26.980 | - And I'm a fan of walking, but in no small part,

02:03:30.220 | because it just feels like it loosens up everything

02:03:33.220 | after training.

02:03:34.180 | And I like to train early in the day if possible.

02:03:36.340 | And I noticed a dramatic reduction in kind of aches

02:03:39.860 | and strains as a function.

02:03:41.340 | - Also, the other thing you could do,

02:03:42.740 | I remember when I watched your podcast with Stu McGill,

02:03:45.860 | you mentioned that the upward facing dog,

02:03:50.300 | Cobra, Cobra helps you, right?

02:03:51.740 | Putting yourself in extension. - Ending into extension.

02:03:53.740 | - So for people for whom that works,

02:03:56.940 | you can just lie on the floor in your elbows

02:03:59.780 | and just read a book.

02:04:01.340 | So for example, at Strong First courses,

02:04:04.500 | when people do exercise and then we teach them,

02:04:07.100 | so we have several authorized postures.

02:04:09.220 | So you either have to sit ramrod straight,

02:04:12.420 | you can sit in a Lotus or a Seiza or something like that,

02:04:15.340 | or you can half kneel still upright,

02:04:19.220 | or you can lie on your stomach.

02:04:20.820 | So we do not allow this collapse posture

02:04:23.460 | because this is a great way to get hurt.

02:04:25.260 | Plus, you look like a slacker when you're a slacker.

02:04:28.740 | Mentally, you're not gonna be focused

02:04:30.260 | on whatever you're supposed to be doing.

02:04:31.900 | So I think that's a good idea.

02:04:34.780 | And to bring us back to,

02:04:36.260 | do you wanna talk a little bit

02:04:37.300 | about the peripheral adaptations from endurance?

02:04:39.660 | - Please, yeah. - Okay, and then maybe

02:04:40.500 | we can talk about what should people do who are not athletes.

02:04:45.100 | So a much bigger thing than the VO2 max

02:04:50.020 | is the adaptations, the ability of your muscles

02:04:54.820 | to extract and use the oxygen.

02:04:57.620 | So this, again, called this revolution,

02:04:59.660 | anti-glycolytic revolution,

02:05:01.220 | comes from also Yuri Verkhoshansky.

02:05:03.740 | Again, he's known as the father of plyometrics,

02:05:05.740 | but he's so much more than that.

02:05:07.980 | And back in 1980,

02:05:10.940 | he looked at the typical endurance training protocols

02:05:13.780 | and he says, okay, everything,

02:05:15.060 | everybody's trying to push the athlete

02:05:18.380 | to the greatest degree of discomfort

02:05:20.660 | and make the athlete accustomed

02:05:22.100 | to that degree of discomfort.

02:05:23.540 | And he says that that's just wrong.

02:05:26.380 | Instead, we need to figure out how to postpone the fatigue

02:05:30.620 | and how to fight the mechanisms that produce the fatigue.

02:05:33.420 | And he says, glycolysis, anaerobic glycolysis

02:05:35.940 | is the primary cause of that.

02:05:37.820 | We could split a lot of hairs,

02:05:39.140 | whether it's the glycolysis itself

02:05:42.900 | or it's the acid coming from ATP breakdown

02:05:47.900 | or whether it's non-organic phosphates or whatever,

02:05:53.100 | but whatever it is, it always happens

02:05:54.700 | when the acid doses is running high,

02:05:56.860 | when acid becomes high.

02:05:58.260 | So that doesn't really matter which exact factor is.

02:06:03.260 | So he figured out you need to promote aerobic metabolism

02:06:08.460 | in the working muscle fibers.

02:06:10.340 | So he decided that endurance training

02:06:12.180 | for high-level athletes

02:06:13.820 | and people who are not athletes,

02:06:15.180 | it will apply to you as well, has to be specific.

02:06:18.220 | That's exactly why like that marathon runner

02:06:22.300 | who joined the MMA class and then Sucking Wind,

02:06:26.580 | his endurance is totally not specific.

02:06:29.260 | Here's an example of specific endurances

02:06:33.220 | where you're using the same muscle fibers in your sport

02:06:37.100 | and in a mode that's consistent with that sport.

02:06:39.900 | So Verkhoshansky would have people like skiers, for example,

02:06:44.900 | do this very long push-off on the ski and then glide.

02:06:48.900 | Push-off and glide.

02:06:51.140 | And yeah, Suleyanov who came after him.

02:06:53.940 | So an example of that,

02:06:55.020 | you have this really powerful contraction

02:06:56.940 | of the muscles that are used in your sport.

02:06:59.420 | And then there's that relaxation

02:07:00.820 | during which the muscle recovers its myoglobin oxygen,

02:07:05.180 | that there's a small amount of oxygen in the muscle.

02:07:07.420 | And it requires that creating a phosphate fuel

02:07:09.900 | that is used for that short-term.

02:07:11.820 | So pretty much instead of relying

02:07:13.740 | on that acid-producing metabolism, glycolytic metabolism,

02:07:18.020 | that you start using on one hand to use Lifter's metabolism,

02:07:22.820 | create a phosphate, that's what fuels a set of three reps.

02:07:27.060 | And on the other, you're using this marathon runners,

02:07:29.220 | aerobic metabolism.

02:07:30.780 | So you're like putting glycolysis in a vice.

02:07:33.820 | And a great example of that comes from...

02:07:38.820 | Verkhoshansky is not the only one who came up with this idea.

02:07:42.580 | It's been reinvented by others.

02:07:44.660 | So in boxing, Leon Spinks,

02:07:46.940 | to the viewers who don't know who he is,

02:07:50.380 | Leon Spinks was a professional boxing world champion.

02:07:53.740 | And he defeated Muhammad Ali, amongst among others.

02:07:57.820 | So he's a great champion.

02:07:59.380 | And he hired Arthur Lyddiard,

02:08:01.700 | who was a great running coach from New Zealand,

02:08:03.900 | to work on his conditioning.

02:08:06.500 | And Lyddiard had him do work in the heavy bag

02:08:10.340 | for an hour and a half to two hours, nonstop.

02:08:14.140 | And he says, "No, of course you're not going all out.

02:08:16.660 | Sometimes harder,

02:08:17.700 | but you're definitely not tapping the bag.

02:08:19.700 | You're not shadow boxing."

02:08:21.620 | And so if you're putting your muscle fibers

02:08:24.300 | in a very specific metabolic window

02:08:26.340 | and do it over and over and over,

02:08:28.220 | that they start adapting to it.

02:08:31.140 | Fast fibers start developing mitochondria.

02:08:34.140 | Fast fibers start developing capillaries.

02:08:36.740 | Fast fibers don't lose their strength,

02:08:39.740 | but they start developing the plumbing

02:08:41.660 | and the ability to use the oxidative system

02:08:44.220 | to recover rapidly.

02:08:45.500 | But going back to, again, this larger prioritization idea

02:08:49.060 | is when you start with a new stimulus,

02:08:51.540 | it's your body's highly reactive,

02:08:53.820 | but the resistance is low.

02:08:54.900 | You cannot take much of it.

02:08:56.420 | Then that teeter-totter goes the other way.

02:08:58.660 | You'll no longer, so you have to figure out

02:09:00.180 | how to restore that reactivity.

02:09:02.340 | And different training systems do it differently.

02:09:04.340 | So an example of the American powerlifting system,

02:09:07.820 | you basically go lighter, start over the lightweight.

02:09:10.900 | So you decondition yourself purposefully,

02:09:13.140 | like two steps forward, one step back.

02:09:15.060 | That's another example would be to use

02:09:18.620 | what the Soviets call specialized variety.

02:09:22.300 | And this is something that you could see

02:09:24.300 | in the Soviet weightlifting system with Medvedev

02:09:26.460 | and Alexei Medvedev, one of the scientists and coaches,

02:09:30.180 | and also the West Side Barbell Powerlifting Club.

02:09:32.780 | So specialized variety, as opposed to random variety,

02:09:36.980 | is when you have the same lift

02:09:39.700 | and with just very slight modifications.

02:09:42.020 | So the motor program, the intention stays the same.

02:09:45.140 | But again, imagine that instead of dead lifting,

02:09:50.140 | dead lifting from the platform,

02:09:51.740 | you're dead lifting standing off a plate.

02:09:55.460 | So just slightly increase the range of motion,

02:09:57.460 | but you're still doing the same thing.

02:09:59.140 | Or imagine that you bring your grip

02:10:03.700 | and the bench press a couple of inches in.

02:10:06.180 | Or imagine that you use a block,

02:10:08.180 | just as a popular exercise in powerlifting.

02:10:10.900 | You put a, like imagine putting a brick on your chest,

02:10:13.500 | something the size of a brick,

02:10:15.140 | lowering it to that, pausing and pressing back

02:10:17.940 | to work that very specific sticking point.

02:10:20.340 | So you're still benching.

02:10:22.060 | So what you're doing is you're resolving this conflict

02:10:25.180 | between accommodation and specificity.

02:10:27.820 | And like, on one hand, it's novel,

02:10:29.460 | but on the other hand, it's really,

02:10:30.500 | it's like same but different.

02:10:32.340 | It's a very good tactic.

02:10:33.980 | It requires the knowledge of the iron game.

02:10:38.980 | It's not some, because if you go from the bench press

02:10:42.540 | to the military press or dips,

02:10:44.700 | you might see improvement, but, or might not,

02:10:47.580 | because that's not specialized variety anymore.

02:10:50.060 | But if you look at, like in Medvedev,

02:10:53.500 | Alexei Medvedev, when he coached the national team,

02:10:57.060 | for these clean and jerk and snatch,

02:10:59.140 | for the two competitive lifts,

02:11:02.260 | they had 100 variations.

02:11:04.460 | - Wow.

02:11:05.540 | - But all these variations were like, okay,

02:11:07.900 | so now we're snatching from a hang.

02:11:09.940 | Now we're snatching from blocks.

02:11:11.740 | Now we're jerking from the rack.

02:11:13.300 | Do you see what I mean?

02:11:14.140 | They're all, this reminds me of,

02:11:15.820 | this reminds me of this humorous book about Scandinavians,

02:11:20.180 | written by a Scandinavian,

02:11:21.940 | explaining how very different different Scandinavians are.

02:11:25.100 | And so this book has pictures of the same guy

02:11:28.020 | wearing different sweater.

02:11:29.180 | - Sounds about right.

02:11:30.020 | - So yeah, that's-

02:11:30.860 | - My Scandinavian relatives will chuckle at that.

02:11:33.260 | I feel like one of the, again,

02:11:35.980 | I'm not trying to point out the ills of the fitness culture,

02:11:40.500 | but I feel like if I were to put up on a wall,

02:11:43.260 | the two or three things that have caused the most confusion

02:11:45.940 | and reduction in people's potential results from fitness

02:11:50.180 | would be seeking the pump as its own thing

02:11:52.940 | and seeking soreness as its own thing,

02:11:55.100 | and then confusing panting hard

02:11:56.700 | and sweating a lot with intensity.

02:11:59.020 | I feel like those three things,

02:12:01.020 | people think I had a great workout,

02:12:02.420 | or my new trainer is,

02:12:03.980 | I finished just completely depleted.

02:12:06.540 | And then these are the same people

02:12:07.780 | that are complaining about an injury,

02:12:09.100 | or they quit, or they don't have the motivation

02:12:11.660 | because they're not taking whatever pre-workout is required

02:12:15.940 | to generate that kind of "intensity."

02:12:19.140 | I'm not looking for agreement,

02:12:21.860 | but would you agree or disagree?

02:12:23.220 | I mean, and then maybe by comparison,

02:12:25.620 | we could sort of throw up on the wall

02:12:27.300 | the things that we should be seeking when we train,

02:12:29.980 | as opposed to these kind of--

02:12:31.660 | - You know, before I answer this question,

02:12:33.260 | since we're talking about the peripheral adaptations,

02:12:35.500 | you made a great point about seeking pump.

02:12:37.260 | I'm gonna give you a great example

02:12:38.580 | how when not seeking pump is gonna do,

02:12:40.580 | so can I deliver a great adaptation for you?

02:12:43.260 | So do you remember that idea of punching the bag

02:12:46.940 | for an hour, let's say, or two hours?

02:12:48.420 | That's how that promotes mitochondrial

02:12:50.460 | and endurance development in the fast-switch fibers.

02:12:52.700 | That can also be done with strength exercises as well

02:12:55.900 | for wrestlers and MMA fighters.

02:12:57.860 | So you can do the bench press,

02:12:59.020 | you can do bench press and develop endurance

02:13:02.140 | in your fast-switch fibers.

02:13:04.420 | The nature of endurance is very peculiar.

02:13:06.940 | You know, in team sports,

02:13:09.260 | there's a term "repeat sprintability."

02:13:11.460 | So repeat sprintability means that,

02:13:13.460 | let's say that you sprint for 20 meters,

02:13:15.540 | rest for less than a minute,

02:13:16.740 | sprint for another 20, you know, just something like that.

02:13:19.020 | So sprint rest, sprint rest,

02:13:20.700 | which reflects the nature of team sport,

02:13:24.420 | football, soccer, and so on.

02:13:25.940 | It's totally different from running 400 meters

02:13:28.660 | around the track.

02:13:30.140 | In strength, endurance is the same thing.

02:13:33.180 | NFL combined, you know, it's a fine test, whatever.

02:13:36.740 | It's a nice bodybuilding exercise, good pump.

02:13:39.340 | But on the field, you're not doing 30 reps.

02:13:43.540 | You're doing one rep, and then a little bit later,

02:13:45.340 | you're gonna do another rep.

02:13:46.940 | So your conditioning for fast-switch fibers

02:13:51.420 | can be structured in the same manner.

02:13:53.260 | So there's Russian research,

02:13:55.900 | a researcher named Bovikin,

02:13:57.500 | he put his several groups of athletes

02:14:01.420 | in different protocols.

02:14:02.900 | So one of them was doing the typical high-intensity,

02:14:06.060 | whatever, circuit training, smoker, right?

02:14:08.220 | So you take 70% of your one-rep max,

02:14:10.420 | and you do this for 30 seconds,

02:14:11.820 | and you go push hard, and then you do the next one,

02:14:14.020 | and very typical.

02:14:15.380 | Then the other group, anti-glycolytic group,

02:14:19.420 | these athletes would lift the same 70% one-rep max

02:14:22.780 | for three reps.

02:14:23.820 | They do one exercise, second exercise, third exercise,

02:14:28.100 | rest for one minute, do it again, and again, and again.

02:14:30.460 | So to the listeners, 70-rep max,

02:14:33.180 | an average athlete can probably crank out

02:14:35.420 | about 12 reps with it.

02:14:37.020 | A fighter is probably gonna crank out 20-some reps

02:14:39.780 | with that easily, so they only do three reps.

02:14:42.860 | And so three reps, another exercise, another exercise,

02:14:47.740 | rest for one minute, do it over and over and over.

02:14:50.540 | And the end result was really fascinating, the outcome.

02:14:55.300 | There is one particular test discovered

02:14:59.700 | by the same researcher that correlated,

02:15:03.340 | has the highest correlation in competitive performance

02:15:05.900 | for MMA fighters.

02:15:07.580 | So this test was R0.888, it's very, very high.

02:15:13.340 | And very interesting thing, what it is,

02:15:15.340 | it's the rate of heart rate recovery

02:15:18.740 | after an all-out set with 70% one-rep max deadlift.

02:15:23.740 | It's hard set, it's brutal, very, very brutal.

02:15:26.780 | Interestingly enough, the reps with 70% one-rep max

02:15:30.420 | correlation was not so good.

02:15:32.380 | Even the deadlift strength was not so high.

02:15:34.380 | But it's that recovery from that was very, very high.

02:15:39.060 | So the group that did this anti-glycolytic work,

02:15:42.780 | never did more than three reps,

02:15:43.980 | completely blew the traditional training group

02:15:46.500 | out of the water.

02:15:47.740 | Then in addition to that, they were able to bang out

02:15:50.380 | a lot more consecutive reps as well.

02:15:52.220 | They weren't even in training for that.

02:15:54.020 | Then after that, they also saw competitive,

02:15:56.260 | better results in competition and so on and so forth.

02:15:59.180 | It's a great way to train because you're able to,

02:16:05.860 | so you take, imagine taking a weight that you can lift

02:16:09.740 | maybe 12 to 20 times.

02:16:13.220 | And you lift it about three times.

02:16:15.340 | Rest for a minute and do it again and again and again.

02:16:18.220 | This is very much like a blue collar worker's day.

02:16:22.740 | And you're not seeking pump whatsoever.

02:16:24.940 | But as a result, you're going to develop that type

02:16:28.740 | of endurance that repeats strength endurance

02:16:31.500 | that very much is applicable to most combat and team sports.

02:16:35.300 | And also for the real life.

02:16:36.540 | Whenever you are moving furniture,

02:16:40.580 | you're not trying to look, I'm gonna try to get a pump.

02:16:42.700 | Let's see, get this piano up there and I'll get another one.

02:16:45.340 | Then we're going to rest for 20 minutes.

02:16:47.020 | Then we're going to start over.

02:16:48.300 | No, Swedish work on occupational strength,

02:16:53.300 | they found that old and crafty and wily workers

02:16:56.740 | like loggers and others, they were able to like,

02:16:59.460 | they keep their efforts very brief.

02:17:02.420 | And then they rest for a few seconds

02:17:03.780 | and do it over and over and over.

02:17:05.740 | So that intermittent nature of rest is very powerful.

02:17:10.980 | - It seems like this is a repeating theme.

02:17:12.860 | And by the way, thank you for spelling that out.

02:17:14.380 | So for people that perhaps want to try something like this,

02:17:16.620 | and I intend to, four exercises.

02:17:18.860 | - Three.

02:17:19.700 | - Three exercises, excuse me.

02:17:21.580 | Done each at roughly 70% of your one repetition maximum.

02:17:26.100 | So what you could do for about 12 repetitions,

02:17:27.940 | but you're only doing three repetitions.

02:17:29.600 | Rest a minute in between exercises.

02:17:31.220 | - And the rest active again.

02:17:32.180 | Just walk around, shake it off and do this four,

02:17:35.140 | do this about 15 times, possibly later.

02:17:37.820 | - 15 rounds.

02:17:39.020 | - Up to 15 rounds.

02:17:40.020 | And so this could be Zurcher squat, pull up,

02:17:45.020 | dip, deadlift or something like that.

02:17:50.340 | Maybe going deadlift and then Zurcher squat.

02:17:51.180 | - Yeah, I probably would not do the deadlift.

02:17:52.460 | You know, you used really good examples.

02:17:54.300 | So this is a protocol that I did for a couple of friends

02:17:58.020 | of mine for their high-level BGJ competition.

02:18:00.540 | We did exactly that.

02:18:01.460 | They did Zurchers, they did pull-ups on towels,

02:18:04.780 | and you know, more specific and more grip.

02:18:07.020 | And they did the closed grip bench press.

02:18:09.480 | And the reason it's closed,

02:18:10.420 | it doesn't put on quite as much mass,

02:18:12.180 | but it, you know, works at triceps really quite nicely.

02:18:14.740 | But yeah, but you can even do it with one exercise.

02:18:17.500 | Three reps, rest for a minute,

02:18:18.860 | three reps, rest for a minute, and so on.

02:18:21.460 | - How many times per week is one repeating that?

02:18:23.580 | - You can repeat this three, four times a week easily,

02:18:25.980 | but it depends on what else you do.

02:18:27.420 | Twice a week is enough.

02:18:28.980 | Even twice a week is enough.

02:18:30.300 | And it fits your strength training regimen.

02:18:32.700 | It doesn't take away from your strength day.

02:18:34.700 | So it pretty much, you can treat that as your light day

02:18:37.000 | for your strength for the same lifts.

02:18:38.540 | - Okay, so, and this would,

02:18:40.620 | is going to increase endurance,

02:18:43.420 | but is also going to increase strength somewhat.

02:18:46.940 | - It's going to increase strength somewhat.

02:18:48.900 | In Bovikin's experiments, it definitely did,

02:18:51.780 | at least on fighters.

02:18:52.700 | But realize fighters typically are not that strong.

02:18:54.920 | So up to a point, up to a point,

02:18:56.860 | it is going to increase your strength as well.

02:18:58.580 | And at the very least, it's going to support your strength.

02:19:01.420 | And it's a great way to just perfect your technique,

02:19:04.900 | perfect your skill.

02:19:05.900 | It's wonderful.

02:19:06.740 | It's very, very meditative.

02:19:08.700 | My colleague at Strong First, Brad Jones,

02:19:10.900 | he even just wrote a book about it,

02:19:14.540 | Iron Cardio, because he took a protocol,

02:19:17.880 | strength aerobics protocol, like this Russian protocol

02:19:20.260 | developed by another one of my colleagues,

02:19:21.820 | Alexey Sinat, another one of our instructors.

02:19:24.420 | And he just used the whole system and people loving it

02:19:26.780 | because, sorry, I'm going to go back

02:19:29.500 | from the beginning to Alexey Sinat.

02:19:31.500 | So he lives in France.

02:19:34.300 | And he was coaching some-- he was

02:19:36.380 | coaching some law enforcement, some law enforcement personnel.

02:19:42.600 | And they were on a stakeout where they absolutely

02:19:45.220 | had no ability to train normally.

02:19:47.900 | And they wanted to do something, something effective.

02:19:50.700 | So he said, OK, take this kettlebell

02:19:53.060 | and you keep it in your hotel room

02:19:54.540 | or wherever is your stakeout.

02:19:56.460 | Do one clean, one press, one front squat.

02:20:00.460 | Put the kettlebell down.

02:20:01.780 | Shake it up.

02:20:02.740 | One clean, one press, one squat.

02:20:05.300 | Put it down.

02:20:06.380 | And like a metronome, in a very rhythmical manner,

02:20:08.660 | you're not trying to breathe hard.

02:20:10.980 | You're not trying to get a pump with singles.

02:20:12.860 | You won't.

02:20:14.020 | And you do this for-- you do this for about 30 minutes

02:20:17.200 | or whatever amount of time that you do.

02:20:20.460 | And it does develop that repeat strength endurance

02:20:23.500 | fantastically well.

02:20:25.060 | There is additional secondary effect of some cardio

02:20:27.440 | because you're breathing in between pretty much.

02:20:29.940 | You're recovering.

02:20:30.660 | Your heart is recovering.

02:20:32.140 | And you're not getting sore because you

02:20:35.220 | talked earlier about people seeking pump and seeking

02:20:38.100 | soreness.

02:20:39.500 | One of the reasons soreness comes from

02:20:41.540 | is obviously a lot of eccentric contraction.

02:20:43.860 | That's very true.

02:20:45.100 | But what people don't realize is that soreness also

02:20:47.500 | comes from too much acid.

02:20:49.780 | In the past, the coaches used to tell, oh, acid

02:20:53.420 | burns holes in your muscle.

02:20:54.840 | It doesn't.

02:20:56.140 | But what it does do is when the acid levels are

02:20:58.660 | high in the muscle, it stimulates

02:21:00.700 | production of free radicals, which pound the cellular

02:21:03.260 | membranes later.

02:21:04.540 | It also stimulates activity of lysosomes and phagocytes

02:21:08.280 | that just eat up, eat up the muscle.

02:21:11.660 | So if you do too much--

02:21:13.180 | if you do too much acidic work, you're

02:21:15.180 | going to be sore as well.

02:21:16.740 | So seeking that makes no sense whatsoever, especially

02:21:20.420 | as we know, not even from scientific studies,

02:21:23.300 | but from athletic experience, some people

02:21:26.260 | get sore all the time, see no progress in anything.

02:21:28.740 | Some people don't get sore.

02:21:29.900 | They keep getting stronger and everybody in between.

02:21:32.660 | So there is no correlation.

02:21:34.820 | If you're looking for pump, on the other hand,

02:21:37.740 | if you're trying to build muscle,

02:21:39.900 | one very well-building strength, one very simple guideline

02:21:43.820 | would be achieve some pump with a heavy weight and low reps.

02:21:48.940 | So if you keep your reps to five and fewer, even three,

02:21:52.980 | but you achieve a little pump, that

02:21:55.020 | means you've performed a sufficient volume of work

02:21:57.740 | to stimulate the adaptation.

02:21:59.340 | What exactly happens in the muscle, I cannot tell you,

02:22:01.660 | but it absolutely does work for both strength

02:22:04.060 | and both hypertrophy.

02:22:08.320 | So many theories about what causes hypertrophy.

02:22:11.300 | At least you and I know that we don't know.

02:22:13.340 | We're just speculating here.

02:22:15.660 | I really appreciate that you always acknowledge that,

02:22:19.340 | that we're not totally in the dark about hypertrophy.

02:22:23.580 | I like this theory about the hydrogen creating

02:22:27.340 | a permeability of the cells.

02:22:29.740 | And you mentioned that then it gives the hormones access.

02:22:32.500 | Some folks might know--

02:22:33.460 | - To the nucleus, yeah.

02:22:34.300 | - And some people might know that the steroid hormones

02:22:36.740 | like testosterone, estrogen, and others,

02:22:38.660 | they combine to cell surface receptors,

02:22:40.380 | but they can also go into the nucleus of a cell itself

02:22:42.780 | and cause changes in gene expression,

02:22:45.420 | which is sort of, if you just think about puberty

02:22:47.220 | as the most salient example, right?

02:22:49.100 | There's all these latent potential

02:22:50.880 | in the cells of the body,

02:22:51.980 | but then once the testosterone and dihydrotestosterone

02:22:55.300 | and estrogen arrives in the body,

02:22:56.620 | depending on the sex of the individual,

02:22:59.460 | then you activate hair growth, you activate breast growth,

02:23:02.500 | you activate muscle growth, thickening of the vocal cord.

02:23:04.620 | Anyway, that's through changes in gene expression.

02:23:07.480 | In this configuration that you described before,

02:23:10.820 | you know, of doing this three repetitions and repeating,

02:23:14.300 | you may be doing that three times a week.

02:23:15.140 | - Up to three, you can even do one, as you mentioned, yes.

02:23:17.260 | - Right, three times a week.

02:23:19.340 | - Could I also train for strength simultaneously?

02:23:22.060 | - Absolutely, you can.

02:23:22.900 | - Same days or other days?

02:23:24.300 | - Other days.

02:23:25.140 | - Other days, so on the intervening days,

02:23:26.780 | I could go in and do my real strength work.

02:23:29.700 | - Yes, and you look at your priority.

02:23:31.620 | If your strength is more important,

02:23:34.060 | do this type of a strength aerobic work

02:23:37.200 | no more than twice a week.

02:23:39.180 | And, you know, then you do strength

02:23:41.500 | like an additional three times or four times.

02:23:43.860 | If that type of endurance is more important,

02:23:46.840 | do real strength work once a week,

02:23:48.660 | and then three, four times of the other kind.

02:23:50.860 | This is also a very good idea in general for planning,

02:23:55.300 | for training different qualities.

02:23:58.660 | Because trying to develop everything to a high level

02:24:01.220 | at the same time, it's impossible.

02:24:02.980 | Simultaneously training in parallel everything

02:24:05.700 | only is good for young kids when they're developing

02:24:08.300 | because, you know, you gotta try everything.

02:24:10.540 | Nothing's at a high level.

02:24:12.100 | Later on, there are different models

02:24:14.220 | of how to structure addressing different qualities.

02:24:18.280 | So one example would be block training.

02:24:20.940 | So here's one really good example

02:24:22.420 | how strength and hypertrophy can be addressed,

02:24:27.420 | can be addressed at different periods.

02:24:29.780 | The experiment goes back to 1970s.

02:24:31.960 | It was done on Ivanov, Kiseleva,

02:24:34.700 | I forgot the third author.

02:24:36.840 | Experiment done on throwers.

02:24:39.420 | And they were doing squats and bench presses.

02:24:43.660 | And one group was doing 85% for five triples,

02:24:48.660 | you know, typical heavy type stuff.

02:24:50.840 | The other was three sets of 10 with 60%,

02:24:53.480 | which is fairly typical hypertrophy work.

02:24:56.480 | Jim Brose would say that's too light for six sets of 10.

02:24:59.000 | And I say, "No, it's not."

02:25:00.480 | Because you still have to throw the shot for the next day.

02:25:03.000 | If you do 10 sets of 10 reps to failure,

02:25:06.520 | you're going to be completely done.

02:25:08.080 | Your strength will be down by about 40%

02:25:10.280 | for the next few days.

02:25:11.960 | So, and so the one group did this,

02:25:14.900 | the other group did this.

02:25:16.240 | They both made good gains.

02:25:17.720 | And the third group, but up to a point,

02:25:20.640 | then they plateaued.

02:25:21.600 | The third group, they alternated

02:25:22.880 | two weeks of this, two weeks of that.

02:25:24.960 | And they, in the squat, interestingly,

02:25:27.320 | I have to say it didn't make that much difference,

02:25:28.960 | but in the bench press, there was a huge difference

02:25:30.960 | that alternating these two types stimuli.

02:25:33.420 | So that's an example of block training,

02:25:35.000 | how you can do that.

02:25:36.320 | But what you can also do

02:25:37.680 | is you could simply maintain a quality.

02:25:40.940 | So fortunately, it takes a lot less work

02:25:43.280 | to maintain anything that you've reached

02:25:45.120 | than to get there.

02:25:48.720 | So typically, training some quality once a week

02:25:51.920 | at a moderate effort is enough to maintain it.

02:25:54.200 | Like in strength, example of strength,

02:25:56.240 | if once a week you lift 80% of your max

02:25:58.440 | for three sets of three reps,

02:26:00.320 | you can maintain your strength easily for months.

02:26:02.980 | Easily, it just doesn't take much at all.

02:26:05.440 | And you don't want to stop your strength training ever.

02:26:07.560 | Totally, because again, it has that,

02:26:10.600 | it will improve everything that you do,

02:26:12.740 | even your endurance.

02:26:14.320 | But then you can switch the priorities in the same manner.

02:26:16.880 | And people can do that in their own way.

02:26:20.320 | Oh, okay, here's a great example.

02:26:22.360 | So I love Stu's biblical week.

02:26:24.080 | So where Stu McGill, he trains two days a week of strength,

02:26:28.300 | two days a week of mobility, two days a week of endurance,

02:26:32.200 | which is a very good and balanced model.

02:26:36.080 | But what you could do for a while

02:26:37.760 | is you switch to doing one, two, three.

02:26:39.820 | So let's say one quality gets three days a week.

02:26:42.920 | One quality gets two, one quality gets one.

02:26:45.720 | And then you shift the priority.

02:26:47.720 | So this sort of a serial specialization

02:26:50.800 | is a very good tactics for experienced trainees.

02:26:53.880 | - Maybe switching it up once every month, perhaps?

02:26:57.400 | - Once a month is good, once a month is good.

02:26:59.280 | - And maintaining that, you know, moderate, hard,

02:27:04.160 | what was it, moderate, very hard?

02:27:05.640 | What was Franco's, what was the cycle?

02:27:08.600 | Forgive me for forgetting.

02:27:09.440 | - You know, you can do that as well.

02:27:10.840 | Yeah, Franco had four weeks of deadlifts,

02:27:13.960 | moderate, heavy, moderate, very heavy.

02:27:16.840 | And again, we can define them a lot of different ways,

02:27:21.200 | but we definitely need to vary the effort,

02:27:26.200 | not just the intensity somehow in our training.

02:27:29.660 | It can be done differently in different training systems.

02:27:35.620 | One very simple way is just to stop your sets earlier,

02:27:40.620 | before, long before failure.

02:27:42.660 | And, you know, later on in some weeks,

02:27:44.540 | just get a little bit closer to that.

02:27:46.540 | So that's an example of that classic American cycling,

02:27:49.700 | powerlifting cycling.

02:27:51.220 | So when on your week four,

02:27:53.920 | you're gonna do five reps with your five rep max.

02:27:56.660 | But on week one, you're doing five reps

02:28:00.140 | with your perhaps 10 rep max.

02:28:02.380 | So that's a very simple way of doing that,

02:28:04.940 | where you go easy and then you go harder,

02:28:07.900 | and then you start over.

02:28:09.180 | But there are many, many different other ways

02:28:10.860 | of structuring it.

02:28:12.340 | But generally speaking, I'd like to warn people

02:28:14.380 | that training hard has to be done,

02:28:18.060 | but it's not something,

02:28:19.380 | it has to be done in really small doses.

02:28:21.860 | Like let's use singles as an example, heavy singles.

02:28:25.060 | Heavy singles are the special sauce of strength training.

02:28:28.300 | They cannot be used as the foundation of your training

02:28:30.840 | unless you are, except for some very few

02:28:33.260 | genetically gifted individuals.

02:28:35.880 | You know, we all know that Bulgarians have done that

02:28:37.820 | in weightlifting, but again,

02:28:40.780 | these guys were specially selected, specially assisted,

02:28:45.780 | and they were broken very quickly.

02:28:48.340 | Soviet champions, there are some Soviets

02:28:50.700 | who won the Olympics at the age of 36,

02:28:54.140 | like Plukfelder and Alexeev.

02:28:56.920 | For weightlifting, that's just an absolutely old man.

02:29:00.260 | And Rigert said, David Rigert said, I think what?

02:29:03.100 | 63 world records, because they were very careful

02:29:07.000 | about when to use this near maximal stimuli.

02:29:11.560 | They figured out this, and the system itself,

02:29:13.620 | the Soviet weightlifting system was totally empirical,

02:29:15.700 | which is really fascinating.

02:29:17.200 | They just looked what works, what doesn't,

02:29:18.760 | compare it, and just kept trying.

02:29:21.040 | So they've experimented with everything.

02:29:23.160 | And they simply have found that certain observations,

02:29:26.520 | like okay, lighter lifters can do more heavy singles

02:29:31.040 | than heavier guys.

02:29:32.480 | Intermediates can do more than the advanced guys.

02:29:36.040 | It's gonna vary from lift to lift, a lifter to lifter,

02:29:40.080 | no difference between guys who are on drugs

02:29:41.920 | and guys who are not, but you have to individualize it.

02:29:45.060 | And they found that if you do too many heavy singles,

02:29:48.340 | you're going to not progress rapidly or hurt yourself.

02:29:51.280 | You don't do enough, you don't progress as quickly.

02:29:53.820 | So it has to be, you have to find

02:29:55.220 | that sweet spot for yourself.

02:29:57.140 | And they also were very definite

02:29:59.400 | that the singles are maximal.

02:30:01.300 | So that's what competitions are for.

02:30:03.700 | So they would go to 90, maybe 92 and a half percent

02:30:07.860 | once in a blue moon, 95,

02:30:09.420 | but you're not there to test yourself.

02:30:12.740 | There's even like Russian power lifters,

02:30:16.460 | what they do a couple of weeks before a meet.

02:30:18.700 | They have this workup to await,

02:30:24.300 | that's kind of max.

02:30:25.780 | So the word for this Prikyutka,

02:30:27.780 | and Prikyutka, it translates kind of like estimate.

02:30:31.180 | It's like an estimate, this is not.

02:30:32.620 | You're guessing like, hey, see, this is where I'm at.

02:30:34.600 | That gives me an idea of what's gonna be my first attempt,

02:30:37.280 | what my opener is gonna be.

02:30:38.700 | Instead of, oh, I'm gonna test myself, I'm gonna show them.

02:30:41.700 | Gym is not the place to show anything.

02:30:43.740 | That's what the platform's for.

02:30:45.660 | So you need to find,

02:30:47.580 | if you're interested and serious about strength,

02:30:49.820 | you need to find how often you can go heavy

02:30:52.540 | in the different lifts.

02:30:53.940 | Start with something maybe once a month, about 90%,

02:30:58.940 | and then try to see doing it more,

02:31:01.060 | doing it fewer times.

02:31:03.940 | But the meat and potatoes of the training

02:31:06.420 | has to be in these moderately heavy weights.

02:31:08.800 | Heavy enough to respect, light enough not to fear,

02:31:14.180 | and most of the work has to be done with that.

02:31:16.260 | So it's like those sets of three, four,

02:31:18.340 | maybe five reps with 80%, something like that.

02:31:22.460 | And that's fairly universal across the training systems

02:31:25.460 | because the American powerlifting system is organized,

02:31:30.060 | the cycling is organized totally different,

02:31:32.660 | but that's, again, there's going to be fives

02:31:35.820 | and threes and fours, that's gonna be a big deal.

02:31:38.140 | Soviet system, different, but a lot of threes,

02:31:40.700 | a lot of fours, some fives, some variations.

02:31:43.660 | But why it is so?

02:31:46.500 | Some of it possibly has to do with skill practice

02:31:50.300 | because this goes to an example,

02:31:52.980 | it's a Western study of a discreet skill.

02:31:55.660 | A discreet skill to listeners,

02:31:57.420 | that means something that happens once,

02:31:59.100 | kind of like a throw or a lift,

02:32:01.060 | as opposed to continuous skill like running.

02:32:03.980 | And in an experiment, they tested these athletes

02:32:06.260 | to do this discreet skill for six sets of one,

02:32:09.080 | three sets of two, or one set of six.

02:32:12.260 | And two sets of three did much better.

02:32:14.740 | So supposedly, it's like there's certain amount

02:32:17.060 | of repetitiveness, like when you hit the perfect trap

02:32:19.340 | and then you're done.

02:32:20.740 | So again, triples have that very special quality.

02:32:24.220 | - And presumably, there's a drop off of ability

02:32:27.020 | to concentrate and really execute properly.

02:32:29.180 | - Absolutely.

02:32:30.020 | - I mean, one thing that keeps coming through here

02:32:32.500 | is that whether or not one's talking about high volume

02:32:35.340 | or low volume or endurance or strength,

02:32:37.860 | quality, quality, quality.

02:32:39.900 | - Oh, no doubt about it.

02:32:41.060 | - Everything else is potentially detrimental

02:32:43.780 | and frankly, has added a lot of confusion

02:32:46.180 | to the fitness literature, where people, I think,

02:32:49.060 | they're doing five sets of five or do I do 10 sets of 10?

02:32:52.180 | And if I may, this isn't my field of expertise,

02:32:57.180 | but again, having been in and around it for a while,

02:33:00.960 | I feel like the message that keeps coming through

02:33:03.460 | that's going to deliver the results

02:33:04.780 | is every single repetition, high quality.

02:33:07.700 | The rest period, high quality.

02:33:09.380 | Whatever that may be, walking around, shaking it off.

02:33:12.060 | The structuring of the program, high quality.

02:33:15.060 | I think people are far too haphazard

02:33:17.440 | and seeking the pump and soreness and some sweat

02:33:20.900 | so that they can have their post-workout shake.

02:33:23.460 | Well, I'm not trying to be-

02:33:24.300 | - And a selfie.

02:33:25.140 | - And a selfie between every set.

02:33:26.980 | And just kind of check the box.

02:33:30.260 | Even for people that aren't competitive athletes,

02:33:32.140 | I think there's just such an enormous range of things

02:33:34.660 | to be gleaned from taking one's fitness training seriously.

02:33:38.340 | Even the word fitness is kind of a strange word.

02:33:41.700 | Training seriously, right?

02:33:43.340 | I've never even called it a workout.

02:33:44.740 | I think I picked that up from men.

02:33:45.820 | So you train, like I've never-

02:33:47.840 | - Or you practice.

02:33:48.680 | - Or you practice.

02:33:49.500 | I like that very much.

02:33:50.340 | I also like the distinction between students and clients.

02:33:53.080 | That's a very, these are not just labels.

02:33:56.180 | I think they really-

02:33:57.020 | - No, they're really not.

02:33:57.840 | - Change our cognitive frame.

02:33:59.120 | - In the Soviet system,

02:34:01.660 | when you're talking about your training session,

02:34:03.540 | oftentimes it was referred to as a lesson.

02:34:06.380 | When various qualities were developed,

02:34:08.460 | like strength, endurance, and so on,

02:34:09.980 | Verkhoshansky, for example,

02:34:11.540 | often mentioned that education of qualities.

02:34:15.140 | And at Strong First,

02:34:17.360 | we talk about a practice, not a workout.

02:34:21.200 | And a great line that was written 100 years ago

02:34:26.020 | by Earl Litterman in his "Secrets of Strength."

02:34:29.860 | And back then, strength athletes understood

02:34:33.580 | the importance of not training on the nerve.

02:34:36.800 | So they understood, you just train,

02:34:38.840 | and then eventually you're gonna go for a PR,

02:34:40.620 | but the rest of the time, you don't kill yourself.

02:34:43.700 | And when he's describing kind of this

02:34:45.660 | early adherence to this high intensity, whatever,

02:34:50.340 | and he's referring to him, he says,

02:34:51.860 | "He has literally worked himself out."

02:34:55.300 | And he says that that's something

02:34:56.420 | that a strength seeker cannot afford.

02:34:58.420 | So semantically, when you're trying to work yourself out,

02:35:02.260 | that you're trying to exhaust yourself,

02:35:04.520 | or are you trying to practice, to excel,

02:35:06.900 | to get better at something?

02:35:08.440 | And that applies to any quality,

02:35:10.140 | because endurance very much has a skill component,

02:35:14.380 | just like strength, because the ability

02:35:16.780 | to reuse the elastic properties of the tissues,

02:35:20.520 | the ability to relax between the contractions

02:35:23.980 | to restore the circulation,

02:35:25.860 | the ability to maintain the proper posture,

02:35:28.340 | and so on and so forth, these are all skills.

02:35:29.840 | The breathing, breathing skill, huge.

02:35:32.080 | Extremely important for strength,

02:35:34.100 | for endurance, for absolutely anything.

02:35:36.180 | And if you're going through this mindlessly,

02:35:38.580 | it's, yeah, nobody's gonna get very far this way.

02:35:42.020 | - Okay, so while one could use resistance training

02:35:45.100 | in order to generate strength and endurance,

02:35:47.620 | you explained how to do that,

02:35:49.260 | there are a good number of people out there,

02:35:50.580 | including myself, that sometimes like to get outside

02:35:52.660 | for a run or to hike,

02:35:54.680 | as you mentioned earlier about the rucksack.

02:35:57.900 | I'm not such a fan of the rucksack

02:35:59.340 | because of being pitched forward,

02:36:00.460 | but I like this idea of carrying the kettlebell

02:36:02.260 | and switching sides.

02:36:03.420 | Nowadays, they also have some weight vests

02:36:05.580 | that are a little bit more close to the body

02:36:09.380 | that distribute the weight.

02:36:10.740 | What are your thoughts about going into the gym

02:36:15.180 | in order to do the strength training

02:36:17.080 | and then generating the endurance work elsewhere?

02:36:20.300 | To be blunt, how would one combine lifting and running

02:36:23.420 | in a way that allows one to get stronger

02:36:25.300 | and develop endurance, perhaps simultaneously?

02:36:27.920 | - If we're talking about right now,

02:36:30.780 | people who are just active, people who are not athletes,

02:36:33.020 | there are several things they need to keep in mind.

02:36:35.340 | One is the timing, relative timing,

02:36:38.140 | of strength work and endurance work.

02:36:40.380 | If the strength exercises that you're doing

02:36:43.500 | are primarily neural adaptations,

02:36:46.340 | as to what you're targeting,

02:36:47.780 | which means lower repetitions, heavier stuff,

02:36:50.420 | then it's important to be fresh

02:36:52.640 | when you're doing the exercise.

02:36:55.120 | It's not really, doesn't matter as much

02:36:57.500 | what happens afterwards.

02:36:58.940 | So which means that you could do some heavy deadlifts,

02:37:02.300 | you know, heavy deadlifts,

02:37:03.700 | and then a few hours later, you can go for a hike.

02:37:06.500 | On the other hand,

02:37:07.740 | if your lifting is more hypertrophy oriented,

02:37:12.740 | it's less important if you come in tired.

02:37:15.820 | It's okay even if you just hiked in the morning

02:37:17.540 | and then you went, did your curls.

02:37:20.060 | But afterwards, for 36, 48 hours,

02:37:23.440 | it's ideally to restrict endurance exercise.

02:37:26.880 | So because you're really going to have

02:37:28.420 | a massive conflict right there,

02:37:30.340 | and it's not a good idea to do that.

02:37:33.580 | If you're doing our preferred workout,

02:37:35.740 | let's say sets of five reps.

02:37:37.000 | Five reps, again, they address both endurance and strength.

02:37:40.020 | Well, I guess you better keep a window

02:37:41.900 | on both ends right there.

02:37:43.700 | There's always a conflict.

02:37:45.020 | You know, Thomas Sowell said there are no solutions,

02:37:46.980 | there are only compromises.

02:37:50.620 | So you just have to decide which way you want to compromise.

02:37:53.880 | But that separation in time really does help.

02:37:57.320 | The other thing is spending different times

02:37:59.180 | when you focus on one thing versus the other.

02:38:01.340 | So the next two months,

02:38:02.460 | you're going to spend on hitting your strength hard,

02:38:05.100 | and you're just going to do two hikes a week

02:38:06.580 | just for your health, just to maintain.

02:38:09.020 | And then summer rolls around,

02:38:10.380 | and you put your lifting on the back burner.

02:38:14.120 | You lift less, not necessarily lighter, just less.

02:38:18.380 | And you spend a lot more time outdoors

02:38:20.400 | and do these different things.

02:38:22.820 | Keeping in mind also the duration of training.

02:38:28.480 | So the longer your training session is of any kind,

02:38:32.480 | the more you are triggering adaptations

02:38:35.940 | that are more in favor of endurance.

02:38:40.940 | So your cortisol level goes up,

02:38:43.220 | and there are some other things that do happen

02:38:45.380 | that drive you towards endurance as opposed to strength.

02:38:48.040 | So even in your strength training,

02:38:50.280 | don't make the sessions too long.

02:38:51.960 | - What's too long?

02:38:52.900 | - It's really hard to know at this point.

02:38:56.280 | In the Soviet weightlifting practice,

02:38:58.280 | the top guys would spend two and two and a half hours.

02:39:01.020 | They would, for them, that worked, that seemed appropriate.

02:39:03.960 | But then again, don't forget,

02:39:05.160 | at that point, they're juicing.

02:39:07.100 | And in the pre-steroid areas, those times are shorter.

02:39:10.660 | And this is one of the differences in steroids, by the way,

02:39:13.660 | that's in your training when you use steroids or not.

02:39:16.260 | As I mentioned earlier,

02:39:18.620 | Soviets established the correlation

02:39:21.120 | with the volume of lifting and muscle mass.

02:39:26.120 | That's one thing.

02:39:27.640 | They also established correlation

02:39:29.560 | between volume of lifting at 80% or higher and strength.

02:39:34.240 | And the correlation is very strong, 0.84.

02:39:37.640 | However, if you're talking about the muscle mass

02:39:41.400 | with that lighter stuff,

02:39:42.760 | some lifters would just get great results,

02:39:45.360 | and some lifters would just get more endurance.

02:39:47.840 | And they found that guys who are juicing,

02:39:50.380 | they can keep doing higher volumes

02:39:51.960 | and still keep getting more muscular.

02:39:54.440 | But the guys who are not, who are clean,

02:39:57.100 | they're just not able to do that.

02:39:58.920 | So trial and error, probably,

02:40:01.480 | like Marty Gallagher says, fill an hour.

02:40:03.360 | I think that's a safe guideline, fill an hour.

02:40:07.080 | - Yeah, I like the fill an hour.

02:40:08.440 | I don't think I've ever spent more than an hour

02:40:11.160 | of actual work in the gym, maybe 75 minutes or so.

02:40:16.160 | I notice if I train longer than that,

02:40:18.660 | I pay a serious price in terms of post-exercise fatigue

02:40:21.920 | later in the day.

02:40:23.060 | I'd actually like to talk about this concept.

02:40:26.000 | I looked it up before sitting down today.

02:40:27.720 | There's a little bit of literature starting to emerge,

02:40:30.080 | not as much as I would like,

02:40:31.860 | about post-exercise cholinergic depletion.

02:40:35.880 | So much of our ability to hold our attention

02:40:38.700 | is dependent on epinephrine, norepinephrine,

02:40:40.800 | and acetylcholine release in the brain.

02:40:42.840 | And of course, muscular contractions,

02:40:45.060 | acetylcholine being the dominant transmitter

02:40:46.800 | from nerve to muscle, communication.

02:40:50.160 | But this idea that if we exercise too intensely,

02:40:54.680 | or even if we just do cognitive work

02:40:56.440 | that's very intense for a period of time,

02:40:58.820 | that there's this post-exercise cholinergic depletion,

02:41:02.160 | and then we get this, what people typically call brain fog,

02:41:04.800 | although that's not a real medical term.

02:41:07.160 | So I think from the practical standpoint,

02:41:09.760 | a lot of people who would like to train more for strength,

02:41:14.040 | train more often for strength,

02:41:15.680 | do strength and endurance work,

02:41:17.920 | that the challenge sometimes isn't just scheduling it,

02:41:20.960 | it's that we feel depleted and tired afterward.

02:41:24.380 | Have you observed this?

02:41:25.520 | And is there a way to use strength training

02:41:28.120 | or other forms of training to improve cognitive function?

02:41:31.240 | Because again, as you pointed out,

02:41:33.760 | only compromises, not solutions.

02:41:35.960 | But I do see a world in which one

02:41:37.960 | could use their physical training to give them a,

02:41:40.800 | for lack of a better word, a boost into the day.

02:41:43.160 | So you're getting stronger, you're developing your health,

02:41:46.640 | and you're also able to then lean into your day

02:41:48.720 | with more focus and intention.

02:41:50.240 | That would be the ultimate scenario, yeah.

02:41:53.040 | - Well, there's obviously, we're looking at a zero-sum game.

02:41:55.500 | So there's, you only have so much,

02:41:57.840 | you know, your resources are limited.

02:41:59.900 | One thing that will absolutely help is fragmentation.

02:42:03.980 | It's been proven that dividing up a given workload

02:42:07.340 | into smaller chunks allows you,

02:42:09.660 | doesn't matter what it is, whether it's endurance training

02:42:11.580 | or strength training or some cognitive work,

02:42:13.900 | you're able to, you're able to do more.

02:42:16.580 | And that's one thing that to consider.

02:42:19.060 | The other is obviously the feedback.

02:42:24.060 | You know, you have to listen to your body, pretty much.

02:42:27.280 | Soviets stressed very much that you have

02:42:29.280 | to take the cybernetic approach.

02:42:30.920 | You have to have the feedback,

02:42:32.040 | no matter what the training plan says.

02:42:34.240 | Arkady Zvabiv says you have to listen to,

02:42:37.180 | you have to listen to that feedback.

02:42:39.340 | And freshness in the Soviet system of strength training,

02:42:42.200 | and not just in weightlifting, freshness was paramount.

02:42:45.400 | It's even better, let's talk about how track athletes

02:42:48.620 | in the Soviet Union trained for strength.

02:42:50.120 | And that's more, that's will be even more applicable

02:42:52.440 | to a lot of the listeners,

02:42:54.360 | because they definitely didn't spend two and a half hours

02:42:56.320 | in the, you know, in the gym.

02:42:58.000 | So professor Vladimir Dyachkov, he was a head coach,

02:43:02.040 | and he was one of the first to implement heavy lifting

02:43:05.560 | for the track, after, right after the Soviets decided,

02:43:09.200 | hey, look at these Americans, you know,

02:43:10.920 | lifting heavy weights, Bruce Randall

02:43:12.520 | and Paul Anderson and Canadian Doug Hepburn.

02:43:16.240 | So these lifters, he has absolutely says,

02:43:19.620 | always do low reps.

02:43:21.380 | So they would never do more than three, four reps,

02:43:23.820 | even with the lightest weight, even with a warmup weight.

02:43:26.900 | They spent a lot of time doing just singles and doubles,

02:43:30.500 | and it was absolutely essential that they stayed fresh.

02:43:33.380 | And part of it was just the, how they felt,

02:43:36.420 | part of it is the performance, how well they jumped

02:43:38.500 | and so on, and how they felt after.

02:43:40.620 | So they found if you're really obsessive about it,

02:43:43.060 | you have that tonic effect that lasts

02:43:45.780 | at least until the next day.

02:43:47.840 | And the tonic effect is both for your strength,

02:43:51.000 | for your power, but also for, you know,

02:43:53.920 | your cognitive functions as well.

02:43:55.880 | But it's also very, very interesting that,

02:43:58.920 | here's an idea, do a bench press before the next day,

02:44:02.380 | before you're competing in a jump,

02:44:04.780 | or do a heavy squat the day before

02:44:07.020 | you're competing as a thrower.

02:44:08.920 | So it's, again, it's very interesting

02:44:10.400 | how the opposite part of the body stimulating

02:44:13.040 | that was very, very helpful, very interesting phenomena.

02:44:16.800 | So they found if the strength work is familiar

02:44:20.400 | and non-exhaustive, it absolutely facilitates

02:44:23.800 | whatever it is that you do afterwards.

02:44:26.000 | And restricting, this is where the difference,

02:44:30.880 | this is where track athletes were very different

02:44:32.960 | from a lot of other people.

02:44:34.800 | They tried to restrict their volume as much as possible

02:44:37.640 | of strength training, in part because,

02:44:40.000 | well, they had to do other things,

02:44:41.840 | and because they had to stay fresh.

02:44:44.080 | So if you look at the volume,

02:44:46.920 | if you look at, generally speaking,

02:44:48.040 | how many repetitions that you want to perform

02:44:50.800 | for exercise, for training session,

02:44:55.480 | and again, these are purely empirical numbers.

02:44:57.520 | They come from Soviet weightlifting,

02:44:59.240 | but they were also applied in track.

02:45:02.360 | So the minimal volume is 10 to 20 repetitions total.

02:45:06.680 | So minimal.

02:45:08.400 | And optimal is 20 to 30.

02:45:12.400 | Maximal, it becomes 30 to 50 in that window.

02:45:15.880 | So when you're looking at 20 to 30 reps,

02:45:18.040 | maybe on the lower end right there,

02:45:20.240 | you're going to build strength.

02:45:22.800 | And if you also are going to not go to failure

02:45:27.160 | and rest sufficiently between sets,

02:45:29.400 | unless you're greasing the groove,

02:45:31.240 | you need to look at at least five minutes pretty much,

02:45:33.200 | and that's both for neural and biochemical reasons,

02:45:35.960 | but more is really better.

02:45:38.280 | Unfortunately, really a lot of it

02:45:40.040 | is just comes down to listening to your body

02:45:42.320 | and just using your judgment.

02:45:43.560 | I wish I had any better, I wish I had any better answer here.

02:45:46.600 | - I think it's a terrific answer.

02:45:47.960 | I like to leave the gym with some gas in the tank

02:45:51.120 | because, well, I get paid to think and to speak,

02:45:55.200 | as it were, not to lift, but--

02:45:57.600 | - And many great thinkers in the strength world,

02:45:59.840 | starting from Liedermann back 100 years ago

02:46:02.840 | to Soviet weightlifting authorities like, you know,

02:46:08.200 | Rodionov and Roman,

02:46:10.960 | and later on somebody like even Steve Just,

02:46:14.120 | that was a very colorful individual,

02:46:15.760 | just brilliant, brilliant strength athlete,

02:46:19.920 | a farmer from Nebraska,

02:46:23.320 | who just came up with some fantastic protocols,

02:46:25.480 | but he would say that you've got to finish stronger

02:46:27.880 | than when you started.

02:46:29.000 | - I love that.

02:46:29.840 | - And that theme is very much permeates professional

02:46:33.960 | or high-level strength training,

02:46:35.920 | where this mentality of a workout

02:46:38.120 | or try to get smoked or pumped or throw up in the bucket,

02:46:41.480 | they would look at you as that's insane.

02:46:44.080 | One of the reasons that also Soviets restricted

02:46:47.560 | the number of reps in the squad,

02:46:49.000 | because you do sets of 10 in the squad,

02:46:50.720 | you're gonna definitely put on some mass,

02:46:52.040 | no question about it.

02:46:53.640 | But one of the reasons they restricted that,

02:46:56.280 | very few people did sets of 10,

02:46:57.840 | except for heavyweights who had a hard time bulking,

02:47:00.840 | and even more, is like, okay,

02:47:03.200 | that's too much cardiorespiratory stress.

02:47:05.360 | And even though Soviet weightlifters

02:47:08.080 | did some general physical training,

02:47:09.720 | like cross-country running or playing soccer,

02:47:12.600 | but they're not trying to get their cardio

02:47:14.200 | on the lifting platform,

02:47:16.360 | that has just made no sense whatsoever.

02:47:18.600 | So restricting the reps will go a very long way,

02:47:21.320 | increasing the rest periods to at least five minutes

02:47:24.840 | would go a very long way,

02:47:26.520 | and restricting the number of exercises,

02:47:28.680 | because people don't realize

02:47:29.920 | that you're using different muscle groups,

02:47:31.280 | but still using the same brain.

02:47:32.920 | You're still using the same adrenals.

02:47:34.920 | And all that stuff really adds up.

02:47:37.320 | So I would say two, during one practice,

02:47:40.800 | one training practice,

02:47:42.640 | maybe two, maybe three exercises max lifts.

02:47:45.680 | And nothing wrong with doing just one.

02:47:47.760 | And yeah, if you wanna do your curls

02:47:49.880 | and whatever, calves later, that's fine,

02:47:52.680 | but you can tack it on in the end,

02:47:54.760 | or you can do it totally separate.

02:47:56.200 | Those things don't really zap you.

02:47:58.320 | You can just come in on a separate day

02:47:59.800 | and just do your, enjoy your calf burn.

02:48:02.080 | - Love it.

02:48:02.920 | There seems to be an over-reliance nowadays

02:48:05.560 | on pre-workout stimulants.

02:48:09.080 | I'm a big consumer of caffeine

02:48:10.760 | in the form of Yerba Mate and coffee.

02:48:12.360 | I'm old school that way.

02:48:14.320 | Not that I won't- - I enjoy my coffee.

02:48:15.480 | - Yeah, you still drink coffee every day?

02:48:18.680 | - Yes, I do. - Yeah.

02:48:19.520 | - But only twice, got a moderation.

02:48:21.080 | - Moderation, right.

02:48:22.080 | These days, there's a lot of emphasis

02:48:25.760 | on just trying to get as absolutely wired

02:48:30.400 | and geared up for training.

02:48:32.200 | And I think that in part contributes

02:48:35.080 | to why people feel this post-exercise fatigue.

02:48:39.120 | They go hit the gym hard after a pre-workout,

02:48:41.840 | and then they're doing their post-workout shake

02:48:43.400 | and a bunch of carbohydrates to replenish their glycogen.

02:48:46.560 | And then of course, two hours later,

02:48:48.400 | you wanna take a nap.

02:48:49.280 | I mean, it's amazing.

02:48:50.320 | Anyone could study or do anything at that point.

02:48:53.160 | I think that's very different

02:48:54.880 | than the kind of training you're describing.

02:48:56.380 | I also just, so I'd love your thoughts

02:48:59.380 | on stimulants generally,

02:49:01.400 | and how they can support or hinder performance.

02:49:04.660 | And I'm also curious about just what's lost in that model

02:49:09.520 | in terms of learning how to cycle one's energy up and down.

02:49:13.760 | Several times today, you've mentioned this thing

02:49:16.100 | of the ability to relax the muscles

02:49:18.180 | and relax the nervous system in between sets,

02:49:21.340 | maybe even in between reps, who knows,

02:49:23.740 | but usually between sets and certainly-

02:49:25.580 | - And sometimes between reps under certain circumstances.

02:49:27.980 | - Interesting. - Absolutely, yeah.

02:49:28.940 | - Yeah, so maybe we talk about stimulants.

02:49:31.220 | Before we started today, we were talking about

02:49:33.060 | when stimulants can actually hinder performance,

02:49:35.980 | when they can help.

02:49:36.860 | And then maybe we talk about the cycling

02:49:38.340 | of tension and relaxation,

02:49:40.640 | because I look at training physically

02:49:42.680 | as a venue for exploring nervous system function

02:49:46.620 | and control over nervous system generally

02:49:48.300 | that one can apply elsewhere.

02:49:49.520 | So that's the kind of theme I'll just roll out onto the table.

02:49:52.100 | - Well, first of all, I'll preface it by saying

02:49:53.860 | that stimulants and any kind of pharmacy

02:49:56.620 | is totally out of my wheelhouse.

02:49:57.820 | So what I'm about to say is purely reflected knowledge.

02:50:01.700 | You know, with your neurobiology background,

02:50:03.620 | you can tell the listeners so much more

02:50:05.340 | than I could possibly can.

02:50:07.080 | But top athletes, when they compete after a competition,

02:50:11.260 | I'm talking about strength sports,

02:50:12.980 | like powerlifting or weightlifting,

02:50:15.320 | for the next two weeks, they're just gone.

02:50:18.900 | They're completely flat.

02:50:20.740 | Because there are two adaptations

02:50:23.340 | that take place in strength training,

02:50:28.260 | proper strength training.

02:50:29.780 | So on one hand, it's much more economical function

02:50:33.220 | of the adrenal glands.

02:50:34.460 | On the other hand, it's much higher capacity as well.

02:50:37.060 | So these are the guys and gals who are able

02:50:40.020 | to crank it up really, really high when they want to,

02:50:43.180 | but they're also able to really keep it down

02:50:45.180 | when they don't have to.

02:50:46.700 | And they do know that for the next two weeks

02:50:49.420 | after the competition, or after some idiotic gym max,

02:50:53.820 | you know, that might take a week,

02:50:55.460 | they are, they're gonna be flat.

02:50:57.140 | They're gonna be completely gone.

02:50:59.300 | So you really have to spare your adrenaline.

02:51:02.240 | The lifters who take heavy lifts in the gym,

02:51:07.240 | they still, typically they stay at the training max,

02:51:10.940 | not the competition max.

02:51:12.260 | So what's a training max?

02:51:13.300 | A training max, it's the heaviest weight

02:51:17.220 | that you can possibly lift without getting

02:51:20.380 | too excited about it.

02:51:21.900 | And back in the '50s, Luchkin,

02:51:26.740 | he was one of the fathers of Soviet weightlifting.

02:51:29.580 | He came up with a great tactic how to find that weight.

02:51:33.780 | If your heart rate goes up before the set,

02:51:37.820 | that's too heavy.

02:51:39.460 | So that you gotta, like you gotta monitor yourself,

02:51:42.900 | unless you're in competition.

02:51:44.020 | Of course, that's a different game.

02:51:46.960 | If, I will defer to others about how much one should

02:51:51.960 | or could take stimulants before training,

02:51:56.720 | lifting, I'm talking about.

02:51:58.480 | But generally speaking, you gotta do it in moderation.

02:52:00.920 | And especially you gotta save it for the times

02:52:03.160 | when you really need it.

02:52:04.000 | Like in the American powerlifting system,

02:52:06.600 | when you have during week three and four,

02:52:09.040 | that's a good time to do it.

02:52:10.660 | During the weeks one and two when the weights are lighter,

02:52:13.120 | let your adrenals recover,

02:52:14.680 | and you don't need to push yourself as hard anyway.

02:52:16.840 | So it's just one example how to go about this.

02:52:20.800 | If you have to drink some stupid energy drink

02:52:23.600 | to just get yourself up to training,

02:52:25.040 | there's something wrong in your life possibly.

02:52:27.520 | It is something that's a lifestyle choices

02:52:29.640 | and you need to address it.

02:52:31.200 | If you're always feel exhausted after training,

02:52:34.280 | you're missing out on life.

02:52:36.160 | I mean, if you're doing a very, a desk job

02:52:39.000 | that does not require high cognitive ability,

02:52:42.200 | something that's really mechanical with pen and paper

02:52:44.400 | or computer, and you choose to just destroy yourself

02:52:47.280 | on a daily basis with a lot of sets to failure

02:52:50.760 | or med cons or whatever it is, well, it's your choice

02:52:53.680 | if you wanna destroy your life like that.

02:52:55.320 | But again, if you look at your adrenal profile,

02:52:57.280 | if you look at your sympathetic dominance,

02:53:00.780 | if you look at your how you're just feeling

02:53:02.520 | is gonna be really, really awful.

02:53:04.160 | The other angle to this is, as we talked earlier,

02:53:10.320 | in learning and skill training, skill practices,

02:53:12.880 | learning, current performance is not indicative of learning.

02:53:16.680 | So just because you're able to lift five pounds more

02:53:19.080 | because you got yourself all jacked up on some drink,

02:53:21.620 | doesn't mean you necessarily got stronger.

02:53:23.920 | So you just need to come in and put in your practice

02:53:26.120 | and walk away and come back.

02:53:27.360 | And then when there's time and it's the day to go heavier,

02:53:29.680 | that's when you do that.

02:53:31.240 | So don't want to discourage you from drinking coffee.

02:53:34.360 | In fact, if you drink a stimulant,

02:53:35.800 | coffee should be the only thing.

02:53:36.940 | The rest of this stuff is, I don't know.

02:53:40.000 | - Yeah, coffee, tea.

02:53:41.320 | - Coffee, tea, and then figure out, again,

02:53:45.600 | figure out what is that moderate, moderate amount,

02:53:48.520 | figure out how to use it when you truly need it,

02:53:50.760 | as opposed to be relying on it all the time.

02:53:53.360 | - Would you mind, before we go to the next question,

02:53:55.360 | if I just share with you a result

02:53:57.280 | that I just wanted to plant in your brain,

02:53:59.600 | 'cause I've been excited to tell you about this,

02:54:01.120 | 'cause it's new results from the field of neuroscience

02:54:03.240 | that I don't think anyone's discussed anywhere,

02:54:05.360 | but I think you might find interesting

02:54:06.640 | for your sake of discussion here,

02:54:08.680 | but also for other work. - Thank you, Andrew.

02:54:09.960 | Looking forward to it.

02:54:10.880 | - I didn't do this study, I wish I had.

02:54:13.040 | The study, very briefly,

02:54:15.080 | is interested in the neural basis of choking,

02:54:19.060 | not choking someone out

02:54:20.440 | or not anything else related to choking,

02:54:22.040 | but when one feels that the stakes are really high

02:54:25.640 | and suddenly ability falls away.

02:54:28.440 | What is that?

02:54:29.560 | So what they did is they developed this game

02:54:31.360 | where essentially the potential payoff in this game,

02:54:34.160 | while recording from neurons in the brain,

02:54:36.040 | is either low, medium, or very high,

02:54:38.760 | or the occasional jackpot,

02:54:40.700 | like you could just win the whole thing,

02:54:42.960 | and the payoff is very, very considerable.

02:54:46.700 | Then they looked at the amount

02:54:48.880 | of upper motor neuron recruitment,

02:54:50.480 | so essentially the areas of the brain

02:54:51.760 | that drive coordinated muscular behavior or action,

02:54:56.360 | and what they found is that it basically scales

02:54:58.400 | with the level of reward.

02:54:59.480 | So you get more neuronal engagement

02:55:02.040 | as the reward scales up.

02:55:03.720 | However, every time the jackpot was offered,

02:55:08.000 | it over-engages too many motor neurons,

02:55:10.400 | and so this notion of choking

02:55:12.960 | when the stakes are really, really high.

02:55:13.800 | - So you have irradiation that you cannot control.

02:55:15.800 | - Exactly, it's like spillover of like,

02:55:17.840 | it's like too much,

02:55:18.680 | we could call it too much excitement,

02:55:20.080 | but it's not adrenaline in this case,

02:55:21.600 | although that's probably associated with it.

02:55:23.440 | But you think, oh, great, I'm gonna get an award,

02:55:25.840 | I'm gonna get an even bigger award.

02:55:27.240 | Okay, oh my goodness, this could change everything.

02:55:29.960 | And all of a sudden, performance just tanks.

02:55:33.040 | And so it turns out it's a brain thing

02:55:35.480 | at the level of over-recruitment,

02:55:37.360 | which just speaks to this idea

02:55:38.720 | of being able to maintain arousal within a certain range

02:55:42.080 | is an essential skill to any performer.

02:55:44.360 | I just thought I'd share that.

02:55:45.200 | - And also, thank you, that's fantastic.

02:55:46.040 | - 'Cause it's a fun set of results.

02:55:47.080 | - That's always consistent with what we know.

02:55:47.920 | - And since I was a little kid, if I learned something,

02:55:49.960 | I have to share it with somebody who I think might care.

02:55:52.800 | So if ever people wonder about why people choke,

02:55:56.440 | it is hyper-arousal at the level of the brain,

02:55:59.320 | apparently not so much the body.

02:56:02.040 | - Well, being able to control arousal,

02:56:03.680 | it's such a key skill for an athlete,

02:56:06.720 | and part of that, obviously,

02:56:09.640 | it should be directed at sports psychologists,

02:56:12.320 | and there are some fantastic techniques.

02:56:14.480 | For example, Dr. Judd Byasodo,

02:56:17.120 | who is an author who published a book with Strong First,

02:56:20.720 | Dr. Judd squatted 602 at body weight of 132,

02:56:24.120 | and that was back in the '80s.

02:56:25.520 | He was in his 40s after a serious back injury, surgery,

02:56:29.800 | and he's a sports psychologist,

02:56:31.600 | and he discusses these various skills.

02:56:33.760 | It's fascinating.

02:56:35.160 | His control of excitation inhibition was such

02:56:38.440 | that he would sleep between attempts.

02:56:41.000 | A couple of minutes before the attempt,

02:56:42.600 | his handler or coach would wake him up.

02:56:44.800 | He would wake up, he'd get himself into frenzy,

02:56:48.000 | he'd lift the weight, he'd go back to sleep,

02:56:50.080 | nine times a day throughout the day.

02:56:52.240 | Now, that's a mastery of excitation inhibition,

02:56:55.280 | your on-switch and off-switch.

02:56:57.160 | So part of that is sports psychology.

02:57:00.740 | There are tools in sports psychology for that.

02:57:03.440 | Part of it is training, is whatever you do in the gym,

02:57:07.320 | some of your habits and some of your practices.

02:57:09.960 | Like for example, okay,

02:57:13.200 | David Riggert is one of the greatest weightlifters

02:57:15.680 | of all time.

02:57:16.520 | Some people would say the greatest weightlifter

02:57:18.400 | of all times.

02:57:19.240 | And when he was discovered by Rudolf Pflugfelder,

02:57:23.320 | his coach, who was another Olympic champion,

02:57:25.880 | world champion,

02:57:27.240 | one of the things that the coach was impressed with

02:57:30.560 | is that Riggert would do his set,

02:57:33.560 | and then after his set, he would just go completely limp,

02:57:36.420 | like a rag.

02:57:37.920 | And he was very impressed with that.

02:57:39.480 | Later in Riggert's career,

02:57:42.040 | when he was a world champion already,

02:57:43.920 | in the United States,

02:57:46.080 | so there's an American coach who writes

02:57:48.680 | how he saw him in Columbus, Ohio,

02:57:50.520 | or Cleveland, Ohio, competing back in the '70s.

02:57:53.120 | He was lying and smoking a cigarette.

02:57:56.760 | And then he gets up, he snatches 60 kilos,

02:57:59.620 | like 135 pounds or something once.

02:58:02.280 | Then he just picks up something else equally trivial,

02:58:04.760 | and then he goes and does his first attempts,

02:58:07.200 | and then ends up with a superior performance.

02:58:10.880 | At a different time, Riggert bet a box of cognac

02:58:15.880 | that he would snatch 90% of his max,

02:58:17.960 | which his max was probably around 370 or something.

02:58:22.960 | So he was able to snatch 90% of that,

02:58:25.200 | no warmup whatsoever.

02:58:27.560 | And so this is this ability of that incredible control.

02:58:30.900 | So part of it is whatever you're born with,

02:58:33.460 | part of it is sports psychology techniques,

02:58:35.620 | but part of it is developing some habits.

02:58:38.020 | As soon as you're done with your lift, just power down.

02:58:41.120 | Incidentally, after training,

02:58:44.380 | a strength athlete ought to perform a cool down.

02:58:48.300 | And Russians did some numbers on powerlifters,

02:58:53.300 | and they found that the top powerlifters,

02:58:55.900 | they spend time in cool down,

02:58:57.160 | and the guys who are not so good, they don't.

02:58:59.200 | Because not only, it just allows you

02:59:01.440 | to bring your excitation down,

02:59:02.880 | get your power sympathetic, get you to start recovering.

02:59:05.380 | So you do some easy stretching, you do some meditating,

02:59:08.480 | you do some breathing exercises, whatever you do.

02:59:11.400 | But even after each set,

02:59:12.960 | so you put up that heavy deadlift or squat,

02:59:16.240 | and then you just immediately come down,

02:59:18.520 | and then you walk around and you chill.

02:59:20.720 | So you just try to tune your switch so much.

02:59:24.560 | Breathing exercises come in handy for that.

02:59:27.060 | There are breathing exercises to increase your excitation.

02:59:29.980 | There are breathing exercises that are able

02:59:32.660 | to very much put you in a state of inhibition,

02:59:35.620 | very deep inhibition, even.

02:59:37.300 | Some of them are hypercapnic, some are hypoxic,

02:59:40.060 | which means you try to increase carbon dioxide,

02:59:42.620 | or you're trying to decrease oxygen.

02:59:44.760 | There are some very sophisticated,

02:59:46.140 | yet really quite simple techniques

02:59:47.900 | that can help you do that.

02:59:51.740 | - I love this concept of just learning

02:59:53.760 | to push on the accelerator, push on the brake,

02:59:57.360 | and to play with disinhibition.

02:59:59.360 | As a first person to come on this podcast,

03:00:01.840 | even among the neuroscientists I've spoken with,

03:00:04.320 | to talk about disinhibition.

03:00:05.560 | - Really?

03:00:06.400 | - Thank you for bringing that up.

03:00:07.220 | - Well, the history of that--

03:00:08.060 | - That's a beautiful concept,

03:00:08.900 | and an important one for how we function.

03:00:10.400 | - That absolutely is.

03:00:12.760 | The original research was done

03:00:14.080 | in the '60s, Ickei and Steinhaus, 1961, I believe.

03:00:17.960 | And then later on, that was a big part

03:00:20.380 | of the training method of Dr. Fred Hadfield.

03:00:23.440 | Fred Hadfield is a legend in the iron game.

03:00:27.240 | He was one of the first to squat 1,000 pounds

03:00:31.520 | in competition, and he was just a fantastic lifter

03:00:35.960 | and just brilliant scientist.

03:00:38.240 | So he tried to direct a lot of the training

03:00:41.800 | towards disinhibition.

03:00:43.480 | So he even developed special techniques

03:00:45.420 | that are largely forgotten, ironically.

03:00:48.200 | But yes, disinhibition is huge.

03:00:50.240 | And it's also one of the things about disinhibition, too,

03:00:54.280 | it's also very important to avoid failing,

03:00:57.800 | because never failing a lift, that's part of disinhibition.

03:01:02.480 | So like we talked about Ed Cohen earlier,

03:01:04.200 | another one of the power lifting greats.

03:01:05.800 | Ed Cohen competed over several decades,

03:01:08.500 | set over 70 world records in several weight classes,

03:01:12.340 | only missed a couple lifts in competition,

03:01:15.760 | never missed a training lift whatsoever.

03:01:18.080 | Always calm, always composed, an amazing lifter, amazing guy.

03:01:22.020 | And what's very likely happened

03:01:24.520 | is that his inhibitory pathways just shriveled

03:01:28.160 | and got pruned and died.

03:01:30.480 | What people don't realize that, you know,

03:01:32.160 | greasing the groove, that's the term,

03:01:34.440 | proper term, long-term potentiation,

03:01:36.400 | is like when you are getting better at,

03:01:38.840 | like that transmission gets stronger.

03:01:41.000 | It's like your nerves become superconductors.

03:01:43.280 | But there's also its evil twin, long-term depression.

03:01:47.160 | So pretty much what happens is now you're trying as hard,

03:01:49.840 | but your muscles are not jumping in response anymore.

03:01:53.460 | So one of the ways to get this long-term depression

03:01:58.360 | is by failing.

03:02:00.440 | So whenever you're attempting certain thing,

03:02:02.120 | and if it doesn't happen, that's a way,

03:02:04.720 | that pathway starts firing weaker,

03:02:07.240 | and the inhibitory pathways start becoming stronger.

03:02:10.040 | And it becomes even worse if you're emotional about it.

03:02:13.100 | So you said quite a few things about adrenaline,

03:02:16.200 | but adrenaline has, adrenaline does promote neuroplasticity,

03:02:21.200 | but not always in a good way.

03:02:23.160 | So if you look at the PTSD treatments,

03:02:26.480 | you will find that if a person re-experiences that bad,

03:02:30.960 | whatever thing that happened,

03:02:32.600 | and then it gets into the feedback loop,

03:02:34.280 | that positive feedback, positive doesn't mean good,

03:02:36.560 | positive, it just means it keeps increasing it,

03:02:38.860 | because every time that there's a spike of adrenaline,

03:02:41.720 | that reinforces the memory.

03:02:43.800 | So if you miss the attempt,

03:02:45.400 | and you also got really upset about it,

03:02:47.320 | and you remember it again,

03:02:48.520 | so you're making yourself weaker and weaker,

03:02:50.800 | which reminds me of a very fascinating way

03:02:53.720 | that the ancients used for,

03:02:56.720 | to record some events before there's writing.

03:02:59.900 | So let's say there's a wedding between VIP families.

03:03:05.400 | They bring a kid, young kid, seven-year-old, let's say,

03:03:07.600 | and make the kid watch the whole thing.

03:03:09.800 | And after the festivities,

03:03:11.880 | they throw the kid into the river.

03:03:13.620 | The kid crawls out of the river,

03:03:16.440 | and he doesn't know, he doesn't expect it.

03:03:19.280 | And the kid climbs out of the river,

03:03:20.680 | and he's gonna remember that wedding

03:03:21.920 | for the rest of his life.

03:03:22.760 | He's gonna hold that record.

03:03:23.960 | - Because of the adrenaline spike,

03:03:25.340 | associated with the cold water. - Exactly.

03:03:26.180 | So that really did increase the neuroplasticity,

03:03:28.800 | so that memory became really deeply ingrained.

03:03:31.240 | So yeah, part of disinhibition is not promoting inhibition,

03:03:36.240 | is just not failing.

03:03:38.260 | So Fred Hatfield had a beautiful line,

03:03:40.960 | "Success begets success, failure begets failure."

03:03:43.720 | Train to success, not to failure.

03:03:45.520 | - Do you recommend actually

03:03:47.120 | avoiding training to muscular failure?

03:03:49.240 | - Absolutely.

03:03:51.660 | There is really no reason for that.

03:03:53.020 | If you're doing that with

03:03:55.000 | single joint bodybuilding exercises like curls,

03:03:59.800 | it probably doesn't matter.

03:04:03.000 | And if you're doing it for bodybuilding.

03:04:05.680 | But I still don't see the point,

03:04:07.240 | because every rep closer to failure

03:04:09.640 | that is going to increase exponentially your recovery time.

03:04:13.320 | So you're not going to get quite as much.

03:04:15.940 | Yeah, you might get more muscle gain

03:04:19.640 | from that particular last rep,

03:04:21.280 | but your recovery is gonna be increased so much.

03:04:23.680 | And also, as you start training to failure,

03:04:27.360 | you're converting more of your fibers

03:04:29.800 | towards slower times.

03:04:32.640 | So on the other hand,

03:04:33.480 | if you don't train to failure, you don't.

03:04:34.860 | So there's an interesting Spanish study,

03:04:37.720 | when they found that when athletes train to failure,

03:04:41.840 | again, some of the myosin and type 2X, fast fibers,

03:04:46.180 | they converted to 2A.

03:04:47.280 | So they became slower,

03:04:49.540 | probably because now it's an endurance event.

03:04:52.440 | When you're training for as many reps as possible,

03:04:54.280 | it's really an endurance event.

03:04:56.080 | On the other hand,

03:04:56.920 | the athletes that trained

03:04:58.340 | with half the maximum possible repetitions,

03:05:01.560 | they did not experience that decline,

03:05:03.840 | which goes back several decades

03:05:05.560 | to when Arkady Vorobyov, Olympic champion,

03:05:08.400 | scientist, head coach, incredible, incredible person.

03:05:11.800 | He said there is a big difference

03:05:15.160 | between six sets of three and three sets of six.

03:05:19.160 | It's because, and you think like,

03:05:21.480 | this sounds like the most obvious thing to say,

03:05:24.640 | but the fact is you build just as much strength

03:05:27.020 | with six sets of three as three sets of six,

03:05:30.040 | you get a lot less tired,

03:05:31.640 | you get to practice for three extra sets,

03:05:34.000 | and you can train sooner.

03:05:35.680 | So that's fundamental.

03:05:38.160 | So pushing to failure.

03:05:39.360 | Also, the other thing is about the control of your technique.

03:05:43.240 | Towards the last reps, there's no control left.

03:05:45.960 | But imagine that you always have that perfect technique.

03:05:50.960 | So you grease that pathway, that becomes a reflex.

03:05:53.940 | In fact, early on, the Soviet sports scientists

03:05:58.020 | very much view strength adaptation

03:05:59.720 | as just the development of conditional reflex.

03:06:01.960 | Kind of like Pavlov with the dogs, drooling dogs.

03:06:05.280 | And then you go into the competition

03:06:08.100 | and you psych yourself up

03:06:09.160 | and you don't even know what's going on, you're not aware,

03:06:11.600 | but you only have one pathway.

03:06:13.000 | There's no plan B.

03:06:14.400 | You only remember how to do your deadlift

03:06:16.640 | in this particular manner, no any other way.

03:06:19.000 | - The neurons are trained

03:06:20.080 | to complete the execution of the movement.

03:06:22.720 | - Exactly, and all in a very specific way,

03:06:25.240 | because there is no plan B.

03:06:26.520 | When you start failure, so you start,

03:06:28.040 | okay, this is the stressful situation,

03:06:29.880 | so I revert to plan B.

03:06:31.760 | But there's plan B for amateurs.

03:06:34.440 | Top athletes don't have plan B.

03:06:36.240 | Watch a top lifter fail an attempt.

03:06:38.760 | He or she is gonna shake with that bar,

03:06:41.920 | shake, shake, shake, shake, and finally is gonna come down.

03:06:44.560 | But it's not like the butt's gonna shoot up

03:06:46.100 | or something ugly is going to happen.

03:06:48.080 | So going back to that point you made earlier

03:06:49.920 | about the quality of practice,

03:06:51.720 | quality is absolutely paramount.

03:06:53.240 | And strength training is a skill practice.

03:06:56.600 | Any athletic training is a skill practice.

03:06:58.880 | Maybe riding the elliptical is not a skill practice,

03:07:01.560 | but it's just not a sport anyway.

03:07:04.960 | It's not anything, you know.

03:07:06.920 | Even hiking's a practice.

03:07:08.040 | You're trying to stay tall,

03:07:09.320 | you're trying to breathe in a particular manner.

03:07:11.920 | It's all practice.

03:07:13.200 | - The crossovers between physical training

03:07:15.720 | and mental pursuits are astonishing to me.

03:07:20.320 | You know, as we're talking about this,

03:07:21.560 | avoiding going to failure,

03:07:23.440 | I'm in the process of writing my first book.

03:07:26.440 | I know you've written several books,

03:07:27.640 | and I'm finding it to be very different

03:07:28.840 | than anything else I've ever done.

03:07:30.080 | And the experienced writers tell me

03:07:31.920 | that you should end on a sentence

03:07:35.800 | where you kind of know what the next sentence could be,

03:07:38.360 | perhaps to seed the unconscious mind for the next day,

03:07:41.200 | but that you don't want to run right up until a wall

03:07:43.880 | and like bang your head against that wall,

03:07:46.360 | metaphorically speaking,

03:07:48.320 | because it places a kind of frustration

03:07:51.080 | into your nervous system

03:07:52.080 | that you arrive to the page with the next day.

03:07:54.920 | I guess the opposite could be argued too,

03:07:56.400 | but it fits very well with what we're talking about here.

03:08:00.560 | Because of the early Mike Menzer training,

03:08:03.240 | or the influence, I should say,

03:08:05.960 | I've tended to train to failure purposefully

03:08:09.160 | and used to do forced reps and drop sets and all that stuff.

03:08:12.360 | As the years have gone by,

03:08:13.720 | I've started only incorporating a few sets to failure,

03:08:17.280 | and my volume has increased somewhat,

03:08:19.880 | and I'm training heavier at lower repetitions.

03:08:21.720 | And my progress as I get toward my fifth decade

03:08:24.520 | just continues to, just continues.

03:08:27.440 | And so I just decided, as you were saying,

03:08:30.680 | in the last couple of sentences,

03:08:32.000 | that for the rest of the year,

03:08:33.760 | I'm going to not train to failure,

03:08:36.400 | because I really want to experience what it's like

03:08:38.200 | to do that for a long period of time,

03:08:39.800 | as opposed to just reducing the number of sets

03:08:42.000 | that I take to failure.

03:08:43.160 | I'm also, I'm very stringent about form

03:08:45.880 | and always have been.

03:08:47.080 | And I do want to ask what are your thoughts on,

03:08:50.000 | unless somebody is training for isometric

03:08:51.840 | or eccentric specific training,

03:08:54.040 | full range of motion,

03:08:55.600 | not just for sake of building strength,

03:08:57.360 | but can using a full range of motion

03:08:59.600 | also improve flexibility

03:09:01.400 | without some dedicated flexibility training?

03:09:03.560 | And I'd like to use this as a segue

03:09:04.960 | to talk about flexibility training.

03:09:06.520 | - Yes, it can.

03:09:07.440 | So sarcomeres can grow in length as well.

03:09:10.400 | So the contractile part of the muscle,

03:09:12.320 | they can grow lengthwise as well.

03:09:13.920 | It's something that needs to be done carefully

03:09:16.520 | and cautiously, of course.

03:09:17.680 | And it's with, not with heavy weights.

03:09:20.800 | Eventually it's possible for a person to perform,

03:09:23.880 | you know, flexibility feats with heavier weights

03:09:25.920 | if it is desirable,

03:09:27.320 | but initially it's something go lighter.

03:09:29.240 | So yes, absolutely you can.

03:09:30.640 | And it's one of the easiest ways to promote flexibility.

03:09:35.640 | And flexibility also has a very much

03:09:40.640 | a neural component as well.

03:09:43.040 | So part of it, obviously, you know,

03:09:44.440 | you're looking at what's happening in the joints,

03:09:46.600 | of course.

03:09:47.640 | Part, you're looking at, you know,

03:09:50.240 | the length of the tissues too.

03:09:54.480 | But a lot of it is also the ability

03:09:57.160 | to reset the regulation of muscle length and tension.

03:10:01.320 | So it's like the ability to do a split, for example.

03:10:04.960 | It's part of it is, yeah, well,

03:10:06.640 | if you're provided your hip joints

03:10:08.520 | are built for that sort of thing,

03:10:10.240 | a lot of it is really in your mind

03:10:12.120 | because you're experiencing defensive inhibition.

03:10:14.160 | You're just afraid you're gonna get torn in half.

03:10:17.400 | So, which brings us to a very interesting parallel

03:10:20.240 | as we keep talking about quality

03:10:23.400 | and it's also talked about that flow channel

03:10:26.280 | by Professor Chiksuma, exactly, thank you.

03:10:30.320 | So between boredom and anxiety.

03:10:33.280 | So when you're trying to do a split, for example,

03:10:35.560 | so you see somebody trying to get into that stretch

03:10:38.000 | and that person goes, oh, sitting there and panicking

03:10:41.720 | and being in total pain and nothing is gonna happen.

03:10:44.520 | You're pretty much just facilitating this pain pathways

03:10:48.920 | and you're just learning to hate this exercise.

03:10:51.160 | A smarter individual would get to the point

03:10:54.160 | to the edge of pain and then stay there for a while

03:10:56.960 | and then owning it until the spindles reset.

03:11:01.000 | You know, okay, accept the new range of motion.

03:11:03.760 | Add some contraction, relaxation, contraction, relaxation,

03:11:06.680 | you know, isometric stretching,

03:11:08.360 | you know, progress, progress even further.

03:11:11.280 | So in any type of training,

03:11:13.320 | forcing the adaptations is not going to work.

03:11:15.480 | Whether it's flexibility, whether it's strength,

03:11:17.800 | whether it's endurance,

03:11:19.160 | there's time for a very high level of effort,

03:11:21.560 | but there's never time for ripping yourself in half, right?

03:11:24.760 | There's never time for hurting yourself on purpose.

03:11:27.320 | So, but yes, do a long range of motion work

03:11:31.480 | to increase range of motion.

03:11:33.240 | For the upper body,

03:11:34.840 | I'm obviously very partial towards kettlebells,

03:11:38.840 | but one of the great many benefits of kettlebell training,

03:11:42.120 | you know, a bow they handle, is the waist design.

03:11:45.880 | So you press it from here overhead,

03:11:48.480 | that offsets center of gravity, helps to pull your arm back.

03:11:51.480 | So you're just improving the shoulder flexion.

03:11:53.360 | You're improving thoracic extension.

03:11:55.400 | It's so much easier to place yourself

03:11:57.240 | in exactly good position and then just stay there.

03:12:00.400 | So it's very important to stay open,

03:12:01.920 | to keep that youthful posture

03:12:04.160 | and keep that good shoulder function.

03:12:07.760 | So, but yeah, with squats,

03:12:09.200 | you can definitely do that just very progressively.

03:12:12.040 | One warning about squats,

03:12:13.920 | if you're going for a parallel squat,

03:12:17.720 | like it is in powerlifting,

03:12:19.760 | it's parallel defined as the top of the knees

03:12:22.440 | a little higher than the crease on the hip.

03:12:24.440 | - Not a right, people will argue about this

03:12:27.360 | in some comical ways from time to time.

03:12:30.200 | So when parallel is not right angle at the knee, correct?

03:12:33.640 | It's parallel at the top of the thigh.

03:12:36.240 | I realize you said it very clearly,

03:12:37.760 | but I'm just making sure because debates abound

03:12:40.160 | on the internet.

03:12:41.000 | The top of the thigh should be parallel to the floor.

03:12:44.200 | - Well. - Or deeper.

03:12:45.760 | - Yeah, yeah.

03:12:46.600 | But when you do go for that depth

03:12:48.600 | or somewhere in that ballpark,

03:12:50.360 | you can go wide in the stance.

03:12:54.560 | You can progressively increase the width of the stance

03:12:56.560 | if you do for flexibility.

03:12:58.320 | There've been people who are doing squats

03:13:00.160 | like in almost like a horse stance style squats

03:13:03.000 | and progressively developing great level of flexibility.

03:13:05.880 | It's possible to do that.

03:13:07.760 | But you're doing that, you're going wider,

03:13:11.000 | but not necessarily deeper.

03:13:12.640 | So it's okay to go wider,

03:13:14.440 | but still your femur should not be dipping too much.

03:13:19.120 | So if you're trying to go rock bottom in the wide stance,

03:13:22.900 | your hip architecture is not designed for that.

03:13:24.600 | - Right.

03:13:25.440 | So like Tom Platz, right?

03:13:26.840 | Famous for squatting very, very deep.

03:13:29.400 | - But he was narrow, but he used the narrow stance.

03:13:31.720 | - Got it, so glutes on calves practically,

03:13:34.000 | but he was a shorter guy, right?

03:13:35.800 | - But he also, he was,

03:13:37.120 | but also he was also squatting in a pretty narrow stance.

03:13:40.080 | So in this particular case,

03:13:41.240 | you're not experiencing with the hip limitation right there.

03:13:44.720 | So it's okay for you.

03:13:45.820 | But imagine if you try to go wider

03:13:47.600 | and then you try to go, it's just, again,

03:13:49.800 | this is not a good idea.

03:13:50.960 | - You could end up on the floor, literally on the floor.

03:13:52.840 | - If you want to develop,

03:13:53.920 | here's a great way to develop flexibility

03:13:55.760 | for this type of rock bottom squat if you're not there yet.

03:13:59.320 | Initially been without resistance.

03:14:01.080 | Assume your normal squat stance.

03:14:04.200 | And I'm talking about a narrow stance,

03:14:05.600 | you know, shoulder width or somewhere there.

03:14:07.520 | And approach the wall, face the wall.

03:14:10.360 | Put your arms out and start squatting.

03:14:13.400 | And you will find the wall is gonna teach you.

03:14:16.640 | So it is the feedback from the wall.

03:14:19.000 | If you start doing something funny with your spine,

03:14:22.100 | you're gonna hit your head on the wall and fall back.

03:14:24.920 | So it's, it provides terrific feedback.

03:14:27.760 | It is something that I learned originally

03:14:29.640 | from a Shikun practitioner.

03:14:33.680 | And again, quite a number of skills

03:14:35.320 | that by system are picked up from martial arts.

03:14:39.300 | But we apply the strong first to use that

03:14:41.280 | for teaching people that upright squat

03:14:43.320 | and developing the mobility for deep squat.

03:14:46.680 | It's a foolproof.

03:14:47.800 | It's like Greg Cook would call this

03:14:50.840 | a self-correcting exercise.

03:14:52.320 | And those are really the best.

03:14:53.880 | When the coach can walk away and, you know,

03:14:56.040 | have a cigarette and the student

03:14:58.080 | is still gonna be able to do it right.

03:15:00.400 | - I love your book, "Relax Into Stretch."

03:15:03.100 | I think it's a really important concept

03:15:05.300 | this idea that the nervous system

03:15:06.640 | and our mental state is preventing,

03:15:09.520 | inhibiting a good amount of our natural flexibility

03:15:13.360 | that we can work with the mental state

03:15:15.640 | and progressive relaxation and contraction of muscles

03:15:18.520 | and related tissues too.

03:15:20.040 | - We absolutely can.

03:15:20.880 | And it's very much mind over the matter.

03:15:22.680 | I have a great success story.

03:15:24.100 | So one of my senior instructors,

03:15:27.520 | a strong first, Steve Freedis.

03:15:29.480 | So I met him a couple of decades ago

03:15:32.440 | and he had a severe back injury.

03:15:36.100 | So he spent eight or nine months in bed in Percocet

03:15:38.820 | and he was not athletic.

03:15:40.740 | He'd done some jogging or things like that in the past.

03:15:43.500 | And he decided to get serious about getting strong.

03:15:46.780 | So he healed up until he was healthy.

03:15:49.120 | He started lifting kettlebells.

03:15:52.220 | Then after that, he started power lifting

03:15:55.020 | and he started doing proper stretching like this.

03:15:59.100 | So he is right now, he was in his late 60s.

03:16:02.220 | He holds a bunch of American master's records

03:16:05.300 | in the deadlift, even though his back was totally messed up.

03:16:07.780 | Lifts without a belt.

03:16:08.960 | He is, you can break your fist on his abs.

03:16:11.740 | I like having people punch.

03:16:12.980 | Would you please punch, Steve?

03:16:14.740 | Just don't hurt yourself.

03:16:16.080 | But he also worked up to suspended side splits.

03:16:19.140 | And you know, that's at that point,

03:16:21.340 | he was probably in his 50s when he did that

03:16:24.260 | and maybe 60s possibly.

03:16:26.620 | And then he even competed in this crazy all around meets

03:16:29.600 | where there's one lift where you hang between two chairs

03:16:33.220 | and then you pick up a dumbbell from the ground.

03:16:35.380 | You can find the footage somewhere on the internet.

03:16:37.660 | So here's the man who did not take his injury lying down.

03:16:42.660 | So once he was cleared to train,

03:16:44.720 | he decided to approach his training

03:16:47.380 | with the attitude of a musician

03:16:50.620 | because he's a music professor.

03:16:52.700 | And in my experience that people

03:16:55.340 | who could become very successful and in strength,

03:16:59.880 | musicians and martial artists are among the people

03:17:03.880 | who can succeed.

03:17:05.720 | Because they're used to practice for many hours.

03:17:08.400 | They're used to paying attention to small detail

03:17:11.040 | and they're used to doing

03:17:12.080 | whatever other people consider boring over and over.

03:17:14.880 | So again, here is this 60 some year old man

03:17:17.200 | with abs you can break your hands on,

03:17:18.780 | deadlift records and full splits.

03:17:21.000 | That's what a human mind is capable of.

03:17:23.760 | - I love this concept of a practice or of practice.

03:17:27.980 | Not of a practice, but instead of training,

03:17:30.360 | I always thought training is such a better word

03:17:32.620 | than working out and it probably is.

03:17:34.140 | But I think practice is such a better verb than--

03:17:38.540 | - Training is also good of course.

03:17:39.760 | But yeah, practice is, it puts you in the right frame of mind.

03:17:44.280 | You imagine the word workout like Litterman quote,

03:17:46.780 | he literally worked himself out.

03:17:49.780 | - As long as you're highlighting remarkable instances

03:17:53.920 | of people in the second half of their life, let's say,

03:17:57.640 | getting quite strong, developing impressive skills.

03:18:02.800 | Before we started recording today,

03:18:04.160 | you were relaying to us that your father

03:18:06.840 | has acquired some significant strength.

03:18:09.160 | Could you just share some of his abilities

03:18:11.800 | to inspire both the people

03:18:15.120 | in the second half of their life or so

03:18:16.840 | and to motivate/intimidate the younger ones

03:18:20.240 | and get them going because they really have no excuse.

03:18:23.880 | - I'm very proud of my parents.

03:18:25.200 | And they're both 87 years old.

03:18:27.320 | And my father has always been an athlete.

03:18:29.680 | And then at the age of 71, I brought him to powerlifting meet

03:18:33.960 | and I see him in the warmup area picking up 225 pounds

03:18:37.440 | with bad form.

03:18:38.280 | I was like, "Dad, what are you doing?"

03:18:39.520 | He got interested.

03:18:40.960 | So fast forward a few years and by the time he was 75,

03:18:45.320 | he had several American records in several weight classes.

03:18:50.160 | And he deadlifted in the low 400s without a belt,

03:18:55.160 | body weight of 198.

03:18:58.680 | And in fact, back at that point

03:19:03.360 | when Professor Stuart McGill,

03:19:05.160 | who is a very good friend of mine,

03:19:06.400 | he came to watch my dad.

03:19:08.920 | I think he pulled like three to five for a triple

03:19:12.000 | before a competition at Gold's Gym, Venice.

03:19:15.000 | And Stu examined his back

03:19:16.880 | and he said he had a muscularity in the back

03:19:19.320 | of a 40 year old.

03:19:20.160 | So I thought it was pretty, pretty, pretty cool.

03:19:23.000 | So he's not deadlifting right now

03:19:26.560 | because an old injury cut up to him.

03:19:28.160 | He fell off a tracked vehicle.

03:19:30.360 | You know, like imagine a tank without a gun,

03:19:33.240 | military tracked vehicle on ice in the winter

03:19:36.040 | and about 40 years ago.

03:19:37.600 | And there are some things that cut up to him.

03:19:39.400 | So he cannot deadlift right now,

03:19:41.400 | but he's still twice a week.

03:19:43.880 | He does over 50 pull-ups in total.

03:19:47.000 | And, you know, at least twice a week,

03:19:49.080 | he does over a hundred perfect body weight squats,

03:19:52.520 | like power lifting style squats, you know,

03:19:55.200 | and he does that.

03:19:56.040 | He does pushups and things like that.

03:19:58.040 | So he just stays on top of that.

03:20:00.000 | And he's still maintaining very good strength,

03:20:02.320 | very good muscularity.

03:20:03.680 | So the approach to building muscle for him is,

03:20:06.640 | it's that same volume with medium reps

03:20:09.560 | and a medium effort.

03:20:11.000 | It always works because it builds strength,

03:20:12.960 | it builds muscle.

03:20:13.800 | It's very safe.

03:20:15.320 | It's very enjoyable.

03:20:18.000 | And my mother, she used to be a professional ballerina

03:20:23.000 | and she got started training since she was six.

03:20:25.440 | So she, because she had to train all day,

03:20:27.440 | she hates exercise,

03:20:28.960 | but she still does it because she must.

03:20:31.720 | And she came up with a great anti-glycolytic training

03:20:36.720 | protocol for herself.

03:20:39.840 | So this is something she invented.

03:20:41.400 | I had nothing to do with it,

03:20:42.560 | but it's just totally goes with Verkhoshansky's work.

03:20:45.880 | She climbs stairs at a high rise,

03:20:50.800 | and she will climb stairs from one floor to the next.

03:20:55.000 | She'll walk the hallway,

03:20:56.160 | come back and then go to the next floor.

03:20:58.240 | So that's the same idea that Verkhoshansky had.

03:21:00.560 | Intensify the intensity of contraction,

03:21:03.720 | and then give a little time to not,

03:21:06.080 | so in order to, for the acid not to pile up.

03:21:08.720 | So you keep that effort,

03:21:10.320 | creating phosphate powered and aerobic powered.

03:21:12.920 | And you know, so she does it for 17 floors or whatever,

03:21:15.400 | a few times a week and plus other things.

03:21:17.960 | But yeah, I'm very fortunate, very proud of my parents.

03:21:21.520 | My father-in-law, Roger, he is a great example

03:21:25.120 | and a great grease the groove success story.

03:21:27.440 | So he is a retired firefighter and Marine.

03:21:30.080 | And at the age of 64, and he always lifted,

03:21:34.200 | very unusual for his generation.

03:21:35.640 | He started when he was 15 and never stopped.

03:21:39.320 | But he couldn't quite do 20 pull-ups when he was a Marine.

03:21:43.080 | So at the age of 64, he got on the grease the groove protocol.

03:21:46.880 | So at that point, his max was 10 reps.

03:21:49.360 | So I said, "Roger, every time you go by the pull-up bar,

03:21:52.040 | hit five."

03:21:53.760 | And when they become really, really easy,

03:21:55.600 | then you can add a rep.

03:21:56.920 | Well, a few months later, he finally,

03:21:58.840 | when he worked up to nine daily reps,

03:22:01.440 | he tested he could do 20 pull-ups.

03:22:03.560 | So at 64, he finally aced the US Marine Corps pull-up PT test,

03:22:09.040 | something that he couldn't do as a young jarhead.

03:22:11.560 | And yeah, seeing these older folks

03:22:13.840 | who are not taking their age line down

03:22:17.480 | and taking their training very seriously,

03:22:20.360 | it's just very admirable.

03:22:22.160 | And you see much younger people start complaining.

03:22:24.360 | Some 30-year-old comes, "Oh, I'm aging.

03:22:26.760 | I'm getting older.

03:22:27.600 | What should I do?"

03:22:28.720 | It's like, "What's wrong with your son?"

03:22:31.520 | Yeah, I completely agree.

03:22:32.760 | These are inspiring stories, truly inspiring,

03:22:35.200 | and people of all ages should pay attention.

03:22:37.480 | It's not done in one leap.

03:22:40.400 | There's the progressive nature to it.

03:22:42.920 | And I think not training to failure

03:22:45.880 | is resurfacing in my mind now as we have this discussion.

03:22:48.840 | You know, the idea isn't to grind.

03:22:50.880 | It's to just grease the groove,

03:22:53.080 | get in there and do it as a practice.

03:22:55.760 | Actually, I'm gonna change my language around this.

03:22:58.040 | I realized that when I call it a practice, as a noun,

03:23:02.080 | it's not as effective as practice, as a verb.

03:23:05.000 | I'm going to practice, just for me.

03:23:07.640 | This is just my own internal thing.

03:23:09.200 | My neuroses insist that I share this.

03:23:10.920 | But I do think that semantics are important,

03:23:13.600 | as you pointed out before,

03:23:14.680 | because it has a lot to do with how we feel about ourselves

03:23:19.400 | and what we think we're capable of.

03:23:22.360 | It starts with being inspired to try something,

03:23:24.680 | but also, like I didn't grow up

03:23:26.400 | in a particularly athletic family.

03:23:30.320 | None of us are unathletic,

03:23:32.080 | but I didn't think I could be, you know,

03:23:35.720 | reasonably strong, have decent endurance,

03:23:37.920 | and I wouldn't consider myself an athlete by any stretch,

03:23:40.240 | but-

03:23:41.560 | - You're being too modest.

03:23:42.520 | - But my consistency, I have confidence in.

03:23:45.480 | Like, if I bite down into something,

03:23:46.960 | there's a good chance I'm gonna do it

03:23:47.800 | for the next 30 years.

03:23:49.240 | - Well, in consistency, my friend, Jim Wright, who passed,

03:23:54.240 | he used to say, "Consistency over intensity."

03:23:57.800 | And that's absolutely true.

03:23:59.520 | If you're doing things correctly with proper form,

03:24:03.440 | if you do it over and over, you will win over long-term.

03:24:06.880 | Which also, interesting, kind of brings me

03:24:08.520 | to an interesting point.

03:24:09.560 | You made me think of the long-term development,

03:24:12.400 | athletic development.

03:24:13.800 | Here's what I'd like to see in an ideal, perfect world.

03:24:15.920 | Nobody has tried that yet.

03:24:17.280 | But I imagine a strength athlete starting out

03:24:21.160 | using the Soviet system.

03:24:23.760 | And later, by the way, the Russian powerlifting team

03:24:25.800 | uses exactly the same training methodology

03:24:27.920 | derived from that.

03:24:29.120 | Which means you're training many times a week,

03:24:30.720 | let's say a squad of four or five days a week,

03:24:32.480 | and you're doing a lot of reps with this moderate effort.

03:24:37.200 | And you do this for years, and you achieve high level.

03:24:40.720 | And then at some point, you switch

03:24:42.280 | to this American powerlifting system,

03:24:44.480 | because your skills are already fully honed,

03:24:46.880 | and you're fully adapted to the type of stimulus

03:24:49.600 | that first system brings.

03:24:52.400 | And you switch to this once-a-week cycling method.

03:24:57.320 | It'll be very interesting to see what would happen,

03:25:01.000 | how far one could go.

03:25:02.880 | - So folks in your 20s and 30s, get going on it now,

03:25:05.720 | and we'll have a podcast in a couple of decades

03:25:08.240 | to check back. - That's right.

03:25:09.800 | - Send us a note or put in the comments.

03:25:12.320 | I'd love to talk about body weight training.

03:25:14.640 | I love, love, love the book "Naked Warrior."

03:25:17.120 | - Thank you.

03:25:18.320 | - I got that book initially because in the early days

03:25:21.760 | of starting my laboratory, I was traveling a ton,

03:25:24.360 | and I didn't always have access to gyms.

03:25:26.200 | And I wanted to try and grease the groove

03:25:29.000 | when I arrived in my room in the middle of the night

03:25:30.880 | in Germany or whatever.

03:25:31.960 | So I still have not succeeded

03:25:35.920 | in doing pistol squats on both legs.

03:25:39.360 | So one is I have some dominant and weakness, as it were,

03:25:43.520 | but I, without any natural strength ability to speak of,

03:25:48.520 | was able to learn one-arm push-ups, one-arm pull-ups.

03:25:52.800 | I'm not there now.

03:25:53.640 | I have to return to that level of upper body strength,

03:25:56.640 | but it's remarkable what one can do

03:25:59.560 | with body weight training.

03:26:00.880 | And you describe some really beautiful progressions

03:26:03.560 | in the book.

03:26:04.400 | I highly recommend this book, folks.

03:26:05.680 | - Thank you.

03:26:06.880 | - So maybe we could just take the push-up as an example

03:26:09.360 | and a handstand push-up as the extreme of that, right?

03:26:13.240 | What I love so much about that book is, for instance,

03:26:16.520 | you talk about doing a push-up against a wall

03:26:19.200 | is trivially easy for most people.

03:26:21.800 | Doing a handstand push-up free, free-standing,

03:26:24.960 | very difficult.

03:26:25.920 | But there's a series of progressions in between

03:26:29.520 | that maybe you could describe to us

03:26:31.320 | that once you realize that,

03:26:33.040 | oh, I can work through this over time,

03:26:34.820 | and if I'm not in a rush to get through it

03:26:36.800 | and I just do these a few times a week or more,

03:26:39.280 | ah, or a few times a day, a few times a week or more,

03:26:42.800 | I could do a handstand push-up free-standing

03:26:45.440 | or a pistol squat or a one-arm push-up

03:26:48.040 | or a one-arm pull-up.

03:26:49.120 | It's not outside one's reach at all.

03:26:51.920 | - Absolutely.

03:26:52.760 | - Yeah, so could you fill in some of the gaps?

03:26:54.280 | So getting people to think about the kind of physics of this

03:26:57.120 | and the principles behind it,

03:26:58.480 | it's such a valuable system and one that is a lot of fun too.

03:27:03.480 | - Before talking about the system, Andrew,

03:27:05.000 | may I speak about the relative benefits

03:27:07.280 | of different types of resistance?

03:27:08.840 | - Please. - Okay.

03:27:10.240 | So the body weight resistance,

03:27:11.920 | I'm gonna talk about body weight, kettlebells, and barbells.

03:27:16.160 | And obviously there are other things as well,

03:27:17.560 | but it's gonna take too long.

03:27:19.600 | So body weight training,

03:27:22.440 | the great advantage of body weight is its accessibility.

03:27:26.280 | So you can do a push-up absolutely anywhere.

03:27:29.120 | So that's a really huge selling point

03:27:31.880 | because for some people,

03:27:33.000 | somebody who travels all the time

03:27:35.240 | and somebody who's in places where gyms are not available,

03:27:38.280 | so that's a great asset.

03:27:40.120 | Some people just simply enjoy it greatly, that's just fine.

03:27:44.480 | The downside of body weight training is

03:27:48.040 | it's a lot harder to learn these skills

03:27:51.600 | than it is, let's say, to learn some,

03:27:54.720 | many kettlebell skills or even some barbell skills.

03:27:57.960 | So it seems very innocent and so easy,

03:28:00.360 | but it may take time to really get some of this.

03:28:04.800 | So that may take time to do it longer.

03:28:07.440 | It might take a longer time.

03:28:09.800 | The beautiful thing about the barbell is,

03:28:14.800 | well, first of all,

03:28:16.640 | the satisfaction of lifting really heavy stuff.

03:28:18.720 | Some people find it extremely satisfying.

03:28:21.240 | If you don't, maybe it's not for you,

03:28:22.520 | but if you do, it's incredible.

03:28:24.640 | Then the ability to adjust the weights in small increments.

03:28:29.320 | So you can prescribe 87.5% one rep max and you can do that.

03:28:33.680 | You cannot do that with body weight.

03:28:35.000 | In fact, with body weight,

03:28:36.400 | it's very hard to calibrate resistance.

03:28:38.240 | That's another one of the problems

03:28:39.920 | because you do need to have some skills,

03:28:42.160 | figure out the regressions and progressions,

03:28:44.040 | how to do that.

03:28:44.880 | And the other thing,

03:28:47.560 | the other great benefit of the barbell is

03:28:51.600 | some of the lifts, especially the three power lifts,

03:28:54.720 | allow you to make great gains in strength.

03:28:57.960 | And if you choose muscle mass with a very low volume,

03:29:00.560 | it's possible to do three sets of five

03:29:05.000 | once a week in the squat and get very strong.

03:29:07.800 | Try to do that with pistols, it's just not gonna happen.

03:29:10.920 | So reasons for that, we can speculate.

03:29:13.440 | We know some reasons, we don't know others,

03:29:15.120 | but it is what it is.

03:29:16.440 | The beauty of the kettlebell for strength specifically

03:29:22.840 | is it's very easy to teach the body language

03:29:26.040 | of strength of the kettlebell.

03:29:27.760 | You will think that with a body weight,

03:29:30.280 | it should be easier because a lot of the skills

03:29:32.280 | that I teach in my book, "The Naked Warrior,"

03:29:35.640 | they are either gymnastics or martial arts based.

03:29:37.920 | So it's like, okay, here's the hollow position

03:29:39.600 | from gymnastics, or here's this little trick

03:29:42.320 | from hard style martial arts.

03:29:45.360 | So they're all, both use body weight.

03:29:47.520 | Nevertheless, it takes a lot more processing

03:29:50.560 | to figure out how to do this right from scratch,

03:29:52.480 | like especially contracting your abs properly,

03:29:55.600 | especially if you don't have abs to start with.

03:29:57.920 | By the time you have them, that's good.

03:29:59.360 | But if you don't have them, it's hard.

03:30:01.480 | With a kettlebell, for example, you take,

03:30:04.080 | you start doing double front squats

03:30:07.080 | with a pair of kettlebells.

03:30:09.080 | It's gonna be like zurchers.

03:30:10.560 | Your abdominal wall is gonna light up.

03:30:12.440 | You suddenly learn exactly,

03:30:13.680 | oh, this is what it means to get tight.

03:30:16.640 | Or you stick your elbows inside the knees

03:30:18.360 | and do a goblet squat.

03:30:19.320 | Oh, this is what the proper squat feels like.

03:30:22.760 | And just very easy to integrate all your body in one lift.

03:30:31.200 | And there is an apparent disadvantage of the kettlebell,

03:30:36.200 | which also can be an advantage.

03:30:39.160 | There is no, you can't program 87 1/2% body weight.

03:30:42.440 | I mean, one rep max.

03:30:44.080 | Because kettlebells jump in large,

03:30:46.640 | like for example, from 53 to 70 pounds, for example.

03:30:50.560 | That's a big jump.

03:30:52.240 | And I mean, these days, some companies

03:30:55.120 | will manufacture kettlebells with small jumps.

03:30:59.200 | What's the point?

03:31:00.040 | You're defeating some of the reasons for the being

03:31:04.160 | for this particular piece of equipment.

03:31:06.920 | And here's what they are.

03:31:09.240 | One is simplicity.

03:31:11.080 | You only can have a couple of bells and do a lot of things.

03:31:13.880 | But the other is when you go,

03:31:18.440 | when you suddenly, let's say that you've been pressing

03:31:20.880 | a 53-pound kettlebell, and you're doing a lot of sets,

03:31:25.240 | and your goal is to press a 70-pound kettlebell,

03:31:27.880 | that's a big jump.

03:31:29.600 | So what you're going to do is, first of all,

03:31:32.920 | you're gonna have to put in a very significant volume

03:31:36.360 | of work, that foundation of the pyramid.

03:31:39.720 | Many strength authors throughout history,

03:31:43.800 | Bill Starr and many others, use that analogy of volume

03:31:46.280 | as being the foundation of the pyramid.

03:31:49.160 | You're gonna have to press that 24 kilo many times properly

03:31:52.560 | before you're going to have a run at 70.

03:31:55.440 | You have to develop the confidence.

03:31:57.440 | The other thing is, you're gonna have to acquire

03:31:59.480 | the skill of tension, total body tension.

03:32:02.680 | Everything is linked up.

03:32:04.320 | Because when you go up a couple of pounds,

03:32:06.160 | it doesn't make a difference.

03:32:07.040 | You're doing the same thing.

03:32:07.880 | You're not noticing.

03:32:08.960 | When you go up a lot, everything has to be just so.

03:32:11.800 | So as you're doing, going through your sets of five

03:32:14.920 | with a 53-pounder, you're also doing just cleans

03:32:18.080 | with a 70-pounder.

03:32:19.040 | You're starting to see what it feels like.

03:32:21.280 | You're doing get-ups with it.

03:32:22.360 | You're starting to see, acquiring,

03:32:23.720 | see what that weight feels like.

03:32:25.200 | Again, we're talking about disinhibition here.

03:32:27.240 | You're planning and owing this weight.

03:32:29.320 | So you're forced to put in a very significant volume

03:32:33.040 | of work, which is very healthy.

03:32:35.120 | It will lead to a lot of really healthy adaptations.

03:32:37.880 | And you will force to develop the skills

03:32:39.640 | to make that transition.

03:32:41.560 | And plus, you're also having that desirable difficulty.

03:32:43.840 | In skill, in learning, there is that concept

03:32:46.920 | by Robert Bjork about desirable difficulties for learning.

03:32:51.040 | If learning is very easy, if something is presented,

03:32:54.280 | you don't learn much.

03:32:55.480 | If you have to struggle, like even if you're reading something

03:32:57.720 | and the font is ineligible, ironically, you

03:33:00.040 | end up learning better.

03:33:01.520 | So this is an example of a desirable difficulty

03:33:03.720 | as you're progressing this way.

03:33:05.640 | So that is for strength.

03:33:07.120 | Obviously, kettlebell have their benefits for endurance

03:33:10.400 | and for other things as well, but just

03:33:12.240 | for adjusting the resistance.

03:33:15.120 | Oftentimes, it's just a matter of preference

03:33:17.440 | and a matter of accessibility.

03:33:19.120 | So I'm not going to say you pick this tool, you pick that tool,

03:33:21.760 | you pick the other tool.

03:33:23.360 | But if you decide to pick the body weight,

03:33:26.400 | my recommendation would be just be ready for patient

03:33:29.240 | for a long road because you have to patiently learn

03:33:33.080 | these little subtleties of micromanaging your body.

03:33:36.120 | Again, you watch the body language of gymnasts.

03:33:38.640 | You watch the Sanchin Kata in some styles of karate,

03:33:43.640 | and you'll see that amazing linking

03:33:46.280 | of the different parts of the body into the one chain,

03:33:49.040 | how the tension is used.

03:33:50.920 | So it's very rewarding, but I would

03:33:55.000 | say that's probably the most attention-demanding.

03:33:57.800 | Even though it seems so innocent and so simple and so safe,

03:34:01.120 | but it demands a lot of attention.

03:34:04.000 | But if that's your speed and if you enjoy practice,

03:34:06.880 | true practice, that's a great way to go.

03:34:09.520 | I haven't explored kettlebell training so much.

03:34:11.800 | Whenever I've tried the standard kettlebell swing,

03:34:14.160 | just kind of if there is such a thing,

03:34:15.760 | but between the legs, two-handed kettlebell swing,

03:34:18.520 | I tended to get some right side, lower back pain,

03:34:21.640 | medial glute thing, and I'm sure I'm not doing it correctly.

03:34:24.200 | And I wanted to learn kettlebells properly.

03:34:27.880 | You have an online kettlebell course?

03:34:30.040 | Yes, we do have several resources.

03:34:32.680 | So we have the book, "Kettlebell Simple and Sinister,"

03:34:37.200 | which is available on Amazon.

03:34:38.920 | We have an online course under the same name.

03:34:43.080 | We also obviously have workshops,

03:34:46.840 | live instructors that you can find locally

03:34:49.000 | at our website, StrongFirst.

03:34:51.120 | But I can tell you that, of course,

03:34:52.440 | some people are not supposed to do swings,

03:34:54.240 | as is true for every exercise.

03:34:56.000 | For example, in McGill's work,

03:34:57.320 | say some people who have problem with shear,

03:34:59.280 | sometimes they might have issues.

03:35:01.240 | But a great, great number of people,

03:35:03.640 | majority of people can do swings very successfully.

03:35:06.600 | We have seen some really pretty broken people

03:35:09.280 | when they're cleared to do that

03:35:10.800 | and when they're coached properly.

03:35:13.000 | The big issue is you have to hip hinge,

03:35:16.680 | not lift the kettlebell with your back or with your arms.

03:35:21.000 | And for that, we have very, very specific progressions.

03:35:23.760 | You cannot go move beyond this until you do this.

03:35:26.720 | Okay, here you are doing this particular hip hinge drill

03:35:29.640 | with no weight.

03:35:30.480 | Okay, good, you got that down.

03:35:32.680 | Now you're going to do a kettlebell deadlift,

03:35:35.000 | which is just a sumo deadlift with a light kettlebell.

03:35:38.440 | Then you're gonna progress

03:35:39.440 | with a very particular type of swing.

03:35:42.320 | So it's about patience.

03:35:43.800 | But the benefits are really worth it.

03:35:45.600 | So what are the benefits, let's say,

03:35:47.440 | of the kettlebell swings as opposed to, or snatches?

03:35:51.840 | Again, snatch is more of a less democratic exercise,

03:35:54.840 | like the dips, parallel bar dips.

03:35:56.600 | Fantastic for those who can do that.

03:35:58.680 | But if you can't, that's too bad, but there are alternatives.

03:36:01.640 | So again, the snatch is great.

03:36:02.840 | If you cannot do snatch, you can do swing.

03:36:05.000 | So the swing, it allows you to train power

03:36:10.000 | and power endurance in extremely safe manner.

03:36:13.520 | Because if you try to develop power

03:36:16.760 | in a lot of conventional ways,

03:36:18.640 | you will find like, okay, you try doing Olympic lifts.

03:36:21.960 | It's very skill-intensive trying to learn how to do that.

03:36:25.360 | And besides, for some athletes, it's not appropriate.

03:36:27.560 | Racking the bar and overstretching the wrist ligaments,

03:36:32.560 | like for example, for fighters, that's a case of death.

03:36:34.880 | That's a really bad idea,

03:36:36.160 | destabilizing the wrist in this manner.

03:36:37.800 | And for many athletes, other athletes too.

03:36:39.920 | You know, a pitcher doesn't want to do that,

03:36:41.920 | a baseball pitcher.

03:36:43.320 | So high, you know, then you try to do things like sprinting.

03:36:46.760 | Sprinter requires a lot of coaching, proper coaching,

03:36:50.240 | much more than a kettlebell swing.

03:36:52.160 | And it's very, very easy to rip a hamstring

03:36:54.560 | or something like that.

03:36:55.960 | So it's this kettlebell swing allows you to train power

03:37:00.720 | and power endurance at a very safe manner.

03:37:03.280 | And what's also very unique about it,

03:37:05.600 | you don't have to use a lot of weight.

03:37:07.800 | What's unique about the kettlebell and the kettlebell swing,

03:37:10.200 | another thing about the design,

03:37:11.320 | you can swing it back between your legs,

03:37:13.600 | but you don't have to let it passively swing

03:37:15.800 | between your legs.

03:37:17.040 | You can choose to accelerate it.

03:37:19.080 | This is called overspeed eccentric.

03:37:21.200 | So some years back, our colleague,

03:37:23.640 | one of our instructors, Brandon Hessler,

03:37:26.040 | he put me and several other of our colleagues instructors

03:37:31.040 | on the force plate.

03:37:32.320 | And we started doing swings with overspeed eccentric,

03:37:35.560 | which means accelerating it downwards and upwards.

03:37:38.840 | So we were using just a 53 pound bell.

03:37:41.720 | So the most experienced guys,

03:37:44.160 | we were able to generate over 10 Gs of acceleration.

03:37:47.400 | So basically we made that 50 pound bell weigh 500 pounds.

03:37:51.560 | But if to the listeners who know about how the tissues,

03:37:56.560 | how the passive tissues can handle the load,

03:37:59.600 | when the loading is really rapid,

03:38:01.680 | it's amazing how these tissues can handle it

03:38:03.880 | very, very safely.

03:38:05.240 | So you can apply tremendous amount of load.

03:38:07.240 | Of course, you don't start with that.

03:38:08.440 | That's not how you start your swings.

03:38:10.400 | So, and you can develop power endurance.

03:38:12.760 | So you can do a whole lot of different,

03:38:14.360 | many different sets, many sets.

03:38:16.920 | You've had Megan Kelly,

03:38:18.680 | one of our certified instructors out of UK.

03:38:21.720 | You know, she set a Guinness world record

03:38:23.240 | for a crazy number of swings done in an hour.

03:38:26.780 | And so she would just go, her training is,

03:38:29.360 | she would go and do swings.

03:38:30.980 | She'll do a few reps, pick up, set it down.

03:38:33.960 | And she would do it for, let's say, 90 minutes.

03:38:36.080 | Then she would do it with a heavy kettlebell.

03:38:38.000 | And the adaptations are fantastic from that.

03:38:41.040 | In the kettlebell world,

03:38:42.760 | we refer to what the hell effect.

03:38:44.720 | So what's the hell effect?

03:38:46.280 | What the hell effect is when you're getting an adaptation,

03:38:49.400 | that's not a beginner's gain,

03:38:50.800 | but it's an adaptation that's totally unexpected.

03:38:52.960 | There's some collateral benefit,

03:38:54.360 | how suddenly you're able to do something.

03:38:58.120 | And the improvements in path loss,

03:39:01.780 | improvements in resilience.

03:39:03.720 | So like, for example, speaking of resilience,

03:39:06.400 | so some of the tactical teams

03:39:08.120 | that I worked with in the US here,

03:39:09.640 | when they added either swings or snatches

03:39:12.120 | to their training with the kettlebell,

03:39:14.320 | plus one-legged kettlebell deadlifts as well,

03:39:17.560 | they stopped tearing their hamstrings.

03:39:19.540 | So you have this amazing way to do eccentric loading

03:39:23.220 | for the hamstring, but it's very safe

03:39:24.740 | and just really prepares you.

03:39:26.720 | One of my friends who's still playing baseball in the 60s,

03:39:29.280 | he says, thank you for the kettlebells.

03:39:31.000 | You know, he went through the course

03:39:32.800 | in one of the federal agencies 20 years ago,

03:39:34.680 | and he's still doing that.

03:39:35.640 | He's retired, but he's still doing that.

03:39:38.580 | So that's a great benefit.

03:39:40.120 | The amount of pure workload that you can do in this amount,

03:39:43.240 | that's why you can burn a lot of calories,

03:39:44.920 | you can develop cardio, whatever.

03:39:48.020 | But also, like, why would anybody want to do power training

03:39:52.280 | who's not a power athlete?

03:39:53.800 | Because for so many reasons right now,

03:39:56.840 | I don't need to speak about it or your other guests have,

03:39:59.960 | for the reasons of longevity,

03:40:01.240 | how important it is to have high levels of power.

03:40:05.040 | And the kettlebell swing is one of the ways

03:40:08.680 | to develop it.

03:40:09.780 | And interestingly enough, going back,

03:40:13.880 | like, you know, these accelerations,

03:40:16.200 | Professor Nikolai Yakovlev, top Soviet biochemist,

03:40:21.240 | he was just talking about sprints during, added sprints,

03:40:25.280 | when you were adding sprints just to a jog,

03:40:27.200 | you know, this kind of a fart-like work,

03:40:28.880 | he was saying how important,

03:40:30.120 | how good it is for elderly and for teenagers,

03:40:33.160 | how good it is.

03:40:34.080 | So the kettlebell, even if you're not sprinting,

03:40:35.880 | if you don't know how to sprint,

03:40:37.400 | you're able to get so many of this youth-promoting benefits.

03:40:41.360 | And again, you have one tool

03:40:42.560 | that can train all the qualities.

03:40:43.780 | You can develop mobility.

03:40:45.880 | You know, the bent press, that's a tremendous exercise.

03:40:48.440 | The bent press, where the mobility of the T-spine,

03:40:52.060 | the mobility of the shoulder.

03:40:55.440 | So like you wore a watch, and watch, for example,

03:40:59.460 | Dr. Pope Mosley, he's one of our instructors,

03:41:03.480 | and he's also a doctor and biomed researcher.

03:41:07.000 | I mean, the gentleman is 70 years old,

03:41:09.400 | and he's doing these beautiful bent presses,

03:41:11.600 | getting himself in the range of motion

03:41:13.240 | that young guys, you know, on their phones

03:41:15.660 | can't possibly get into,

03:41:17.560 | and he's doing it in a healthy manner.

03:41:19.420 | So you can develop mobility, you can develop strength,

03:41:22.240 | you can develop endurance and resilience

03:41:24.880 | in all one package.

03:41:26.640 | So obviously I'm biased,

03:41:27.740 | and I'm not saying it's the only way to go,

03:41:30.160 | but that's one relative benefit,

03:41:32.720 | one of the many relative benefits of kettlebells.

03:41:35.520 | But an overall lifelong journey,

03:41:37.680 | like if you're looking at three things right now,

03:41:39.360 | you're new to strength, what should I start with?

03:41:42.440 | I would say start with the kettlebell.

03:41:43.820 | It's the best entry point.

03:41:45.520 | We find it so easy to start coaching people in powerlifting

03:41:49.160 | or transition to some body weight strength

03:41:51.080 | after training them with kettlebells.

03:41:53.320 | It's extremely easy,

03:41:54.880 | because they get that body weight language

03:41:56.960 | of strength down.

03:41:58.000 | - I'm gonna have a few questions

03:42:01.180 | in the upcoming months about kettlebells.

03:42:02.860 | I'll try not to bother you too many times,

03:42:04.500 | but I'll- - I'll be happy to answer them.

03:42:06.500 | - Thank you, I'll use the course as a guide,

03:42:08.180 | but I'm determined to derive some of these benefits

03:42:11.380 | of kettlebells, because kettlebells have been around me

03:42:15.180 | for over a decade now,

03:42:17.740 | and I just haven't quite taken to them,

03:42:19.940 | not through some aversion,

03:42:21.060 | but I'm gonna approach it correctly.

03:42:22.460 | I love the body weight work.

03:42:24.580 | The body weight work, I don't know,

03:42:26.880 | maybe it takes me back to PE class

03:42:29.140 | when I was in high school or something,

03:42:30.460 | when we do these fit tests.

03:42:33.620 | It's usually some pull-ups and push-ups,

03:42:35.220 | a reach and a run or something like that,

03:42:37.300 | like a straight-legged toe reach,

03:42:40.460 | who knows if it's a meaningful metric,

03:42:42.080 | but in any case, something so satisfying

03:42:45.220 | about going from struggling with push-ups

03:42:48.180 | to being able to do a one-arm push-up

03:42:50.060 | or something like that.

03:42:51.700 | And you describe it in how to make that progression

03:42:54.060 | in the book.

03:42:54.980 | For people that are- - If I may just interrupt you,

03:42:56.700 | and it's also cool that you're a bigger guy

03:42:58.500 | and you're doing that.

03:42:59.380 | This is what I love to see,

03:43:00.420 | and we're seeing that as strong first a lot.

03:43:02.540 | We'll have to see bigger guys and gals

03:43:05.740 | getting into the body weight exercises,

03:43:08.220 | because that's not typical of their strength.

03:43:11.100 | We like to see skinny people getting into the barbell

03:43:14.220 | and just go against it.

03:43:15.460 | For example, seeing somebody like Dr. Mike Hartle,

03:43:18.580 | one of our master instructors,

03:43:20.220 | he's a former American bench press record holder

03:43:23.520 | and coach for the powerlifting team USA.

03:43:26.060 | I mean, watching him do one-arm push-ups,

03:43:28.020 | you gotta love that stuff,

03:43:28.900 | because normally big guys hate body weight work.

03:43:31.460 | - It's humbling. - And little guys hate barbell.

03:43:34.300 | And we just get, and not just guys, women.

03:43:37.220 | We have these ladies,

03:43:38.780 | these skinny little ladies lifting amazing weights.

03:43:41.940 | That's just always awesome to see that.

03:43:43.740 | - It is awesome.

03:43:44.880 | And I love that strength training,

03:43:46.900 | resistance training is starting to really make a showing

03:43:50.020 | here in the US and the general public.

03:43:51.660 | I think it's one of the best things to happen

03:43:53.540 | in the last few years.

03:43:54.380 | And this discussion,

03:43:56.420 | your knowledge is gonna put even more momentum behind.

03:43:58.820 | - If I just made to guide people just briefly

03:44:01.580 | on a very high level,

03:44:02.940 | great news, you have so many choices.

03:44:06.180 | Bad news, you have too many choices.

03:44:08.260 | So pick one program with an established track record

03:44:12.060 | and just stick with it and follow it for a long time.

03:44:14.700 | Do not try to over-customize everything.

03:44:17.620 | Daniel Kahneman spoke how much algorithms

03:44:20.660 | outperform humans so often.

03:44:22.660 | I've seen this over and over

03:44:23.900 | how a properly designed strength program

03:44:26.500 | or endurance program that was generic design,

03:44:31.500 | but with certain feedback loops in there.

03:44:35.260 | Okay, if this happens,

03:44:36.100 | you have to go back and make some changes.

03:44:38.540 | Deliver much better results

03:44:40.140 | on customized programs very often.

03:44:41.820 | So find something that's simple,

03:44:44.780 | find something that does not have a lot of moving parts

03:44:47.940 | and just stick with this for a long time if it's working.

03:44:50.920 | Do not look for the next thing

03:44:52.960 | because the next thing, maybe it's as good, maybe not.

03:44:56.960 | But also do keep in mind that every time you change gears,

03:45:01.000 | you lose momentum.

03:45:02.000 | You know, you're a neuroscientist.

03:45:06.680 | I don't know if you spoke to your audience

03:45:08.600 | about the law of neural Darwinism,

03:45:10.740 | but there's a competition between the synaptic sites.

03:45:14.700 | So you have the pathways.

03:45:16.360 | So you can only do so many things well.

03:45:19.400 | So a child can do everything, but poorly.

03:45:22.360 | But as we get older, some of these pathways get pruned,

03:45:26.800 | but others get reinforced.

03:45:29.080 | And unfortunately we can't excel at everything.

03:45:32.320 | So there's this classic example with,

03:45:35.240 | and not just physically, mentally as well,

03:45:37.300 | cognitively as well,

03:45:38.840 | this classic example with taxi drivers.

03:45:42.400 | Back in the days before GPS, taxi cab drivers,

03:45:47.080 | they were supposed to pass an extremely challenging test,

03:45:49.600 | how to navigate through the city

03:45:51.560 | that was not designed to be navigated through.

03:45:54.640 | And they found that a certain part of their hippocampus

03:45:59.640 | was more developed than in others.

03:46:03.640 | And so this, you know, so they thought,

03:46:05.240 | well, maybe it's just pre-selection.

03:46:07.480 | Maybe whoever made it through the test

03:46:09.640 | were the guys with the more muscular hippocampi, you know.

03:46:12.920 | And then they monitored,

03:46:14.520 | then they monitored two groups of students

03:46:17.120 | over several years.

03:46:18.080 | And they said they started with the same size.

03:46:20.120 | And in the group that passed,

03:46:22.720 | their brains, so to say, got bigger in that part,

03:46:24.920 | and the others, they didn't, okay.

03:46:26.720 | But then at the same time,

03:46:27.840 | in a different test of a different test of memory,

03:46:30.360 | the guys who passed the test, they were not so good.

03:46:33.640 | So they lost something in the process.

03:46:36.120 | It's just life.

03:46:37.120 | It's many things in life are zero-sum game.

03:46:40.760 | You want to seek some balance up to a point,

03:46:44.560 | but there comes a point where, you know,

03:46:45.880 | you cannot do it all.

03:46:46.760 | We are limited in time.

03:46:48.200 | We're limited in our adaptive capacity.

03:46:50.680 | - Yeah, amen to that.

03:46:51.720 | And I appreciate you highlighting

03:46:53.160 | the London cab drivers experiment.

03:46:56.080 | Your knowledge of neuroscience is truly impressive.

03:46:58.360 | - You're way too generous, thank you.

03:46:59.400 | - No, it's true.

03:47:00.760 | No other guest on here has discussed long-term depression,

03:47:04.020 | which it's-

03:47:05.760 | - My dad said, Andrew, you know something

03:47:07.200 | my dad taught me early on,

03:47:08.800 | that is good things happen at junctions of fields.

03:47:12.560 | If you're always stay exactly just in your own narrow field,

03:47:16.140 | and you're just, you know,

03:47:17.440 | it's just the same thing is repeated.

03:47:19.480 | But when you start going to somewhere else

03:47:21.520 | a little bit outside, it's adjacent,

03:47:22.840 | whether it's neuroscience, whether it's, okay,

03:47:25.720 | how do they, you know, what are the martial arts skills?

03:47:28.480 | How do the martial artists do for striking

03:47:30.440 | or somewhere else?

03:47:31.280 | I think that just really interesting

03:47:32.600 | to kind of a step a little bit outside your comfort zone.

03:47:34.760 | And sometimes you see patterns, that's what happens.

03:47:37.720 | - Your father's a smart, smart man.

03:47:39.760 | - Thank you.

03:47:41.000 | - Kids and young people training.

03:47:43.400 | I don't know what the going word is now

03:47:45.240 | as to whether or not there's a, you know,

03:47:48.100 | too young to what to resistance train age.

03:47:50.780 | You know, some people say there isn't.

03:47:52.860 | When I was growing up,

03:47:54.620 | it was thought that if you squatted heavy

03:47:56.460 | or you deadlifted heavy

03:47:57.580 | before you reached your natural limits of your height,

03:48:02.180 | that it could, quote unquote, stunt your growth.

03:48:04.660 | Like your comments on that.

03:48:05.660 | But based on what we were just talking about,

03:48:07.700 | it seems that if a young person is interested

03:48:11.180 | in developing a super skill in one area, one sport,

03:48:14.780 | okay, but there's a real trade-off to that.

03:48:17.360 | And perhaps what we should do as kids

03:48:19.680 | is a little bit of soccer, a little bit of swimming,

03:48:22.960 | a little bit of gymnastics.

03:48:23.800 | Gymnastics seems like a wonderful all-around sport.

03:48:26.340 | Maybe a little archery, you know,

03:48:27.600 | try a bunch of things, some ballet, you know, try it.

03:48:29.520 | - Well, that's the time to do that.

03:48:30.800 | That's explodes that neurodiversity

03:48:33.360 | and the things that you can possibly do

03:48:35.080 | and then find the things that you click with.

03:48:37.320 | And for the physical body,

03:48:39.120 | early specialization destroys athletes.

03:48:42.240 | It is really terrible because early on,

03:48:44.940 | kids absolutely need to do a wide variety

03:48:47.300 | of different activities

03:48:48.660 | and really pursue a fairly balanced development.

03:48:51.700 | You know, there may be a bias towards strength

03:48:53.660 | or bias towards endurance,

03:48:54.860 | but they really need to do it all.

03:48:56.900 | And specialist athletes break, they break, they really do.

03:49:01.500 | So that balance between general and specific,

03:49:04.540 | it's a tough balance.

03:49:05.540 | - Yeah, and psychologically sometimes too.

03:49:07.340 | We had a guest on here who's become a psychologist,

03:49:10.680 | but she was a concert level violin player

03:49:13.500 | that injured her finger.

03:49:14.580 | And it was like the most devastating thing.

03:49:17.500 | You know, when we put all of our sort of identity

03:49:20.500 | into one thing, sure, you get your Michael Jordans

03:49:24.020 | and you get your Tiger Woods's, you know, but-

03:49:26.940 | - And seriously, there is no right answer or wrong answer.

03:49:29.660 | So I remember Ivan Abadzhiev,

03:49:33.340 | who was a head coach for the Bulgarian weightlifting team.

03:49:37.820 | He says, if Paganini played whatever instruments,

03:49:41.720 | you know, in addition to his own instrument,

03:49:45.040 | playing in 15 hours a day,

03:49:46.360 | he would not have become Paganini.

03:49:48.280 | And that's true, but I'm not saying that specialization

03:49:51.040 | is necessarily the right choice for everybody.

03:49:54.160 | Some people prefer to be decent in many things

03:49:57.880 | and it is healthy, but you still have to decide.

03:50:00.700 | You still have to make decisions.

03:50:01.960 | Very much, you're looking like at a budget.

03:50:04.020 | Do I want to buy a couch

03:50:05.440 | or do you want to go on a vacation to Italy?

03:50:07.860 | Or do I want to go on a much lamer vacation

03:50:10.820 | and buy a lamer couch and do both?

03:50:12.500 | And I'm not saying what's the right answer right there,

03:50:14.880 | but just people do have to understand

03:50:16.500 | there are limitations.

03:50:18.580 | They can't successfully compete in two sports, for example.

03:50:21.060 | It's not going to happen,

03:50:21.900 | especially if it's a power sport and endurance sport.

03:50:25.320 | And they can't study everything to a high level

03:50:29.140 | just as well.

03:50:30.500 | If you want to be a polymath,

03:50:31.660 | that was fine in the 18th century.

03:50:34.420 | Right now, it's a little bit tougher.

03:50:35.880 | - Yeah, previous guests, you may know him,

03:50:37.820 | Josh Waitzkin of chess prodigy fame.

03:50:40.600 | He's gone on to do several things at world-class level

03:50:45.080 | by severing from the previous endeavor completely.

03:50:49.360 | He hasn't picked up a chess piece since he was 16,

03:50:51.640 | which is remarkable, pivoting to other things.

03:50:53.920 | But when one looks at the data on child prodigies,

03:50:57.360 | very few of them are like Josh.

03:50:58.960 | Most of them don't actually succeed in doing anything else

03:51:02.080 | at a very high level, except hopefully survive

03:51:04.340 | and thrive in their personal life.

03:51:05.540 | Who knows?

03:51:06.380 | After being ultra successful as a young child,

03:51:11.140 | probably because their nervous system is so,

03:51:14.000 | you know, they grease the groove so heavily

03:51:15.880 | for one endeavor, it's very hard to cross over.

03:51:18.120 | Josh is exceptional in that regard.

03:51:20.900 | - Well, exceptions prove the rule usually.

03:51:23.260 | - Exactly.

03:51:24.100 | Not to say too mechanical and specific,

03:51:27.500 | but I'd love to talk about abdominal or rather core work.

03:51:31.220 | - Sure.

03:51:32.060 | - Another thing that I love in "The Naked Warrior"

03:51:34.020 | are the abdominal exercises.

03:51:35.820 | I must tell you, after years of doing some crunches

03:51:39.580 | here and there and different, you know, for whatever,

03:51:42.400 | this class or that class or trying to,

03:51:44.620 | I never really cared about having my abs defined

03:51:47.700 | for its own sake.

03:51:49.080 | One should probably be able to at least contract their abs.

03:51:52.220 | Okay, it's the level of-

03:51:53.420 | - We assess them by punching them.

03:51:54.740 | - Right, right, right, exactly.

03:51:56.260 | But there's some wonderful exercises in there

03:51:58.180 | about learning to brace the entire body

03:52:00.240 | and some, dare I say, some rather unorthodox ways

03:52:05.240 | of assessing stability at the level of the core.

03:52:07.700 | I'm thinking about the plank where somebody tries

03:52:10.240 | to either kick you over or push you over.

03:52:12.340 | This might sound violent.

03:52:13.300 | This is not where you start, folks.

03:52:14.500 | - It's kind and gentle.

03:52:15.340 | - But I never thought I could do like hanging pikes,

03:52:17.620 | for instance.

03:52:18.460 | And like now pikes are standard part of my weekly routine.

03:52:21.700 | I love doing five sets of five of hanging pikes.

03:52:24.340 | - Great, great.

03:52:25.820 | - And I will tell anyone that decides to go down this path

03:52:28.760 | that when I first tried to do a pike, I failed miserably.

03:52:32.320 | I tried an L-sit, failed miserably.

03:52:35.540 | Tried the, you know, hanging from the bar

03:52:38.200 | and just getting into a chair position

03:52:39.540 | and could just barely hold that.

03:52:40.960 | The progressions are what matter, right?

03:52:42.740 | Slow progression and patience.

03:52:44.300 | Now five sets of five pikes, trivial for me.

03:52:47.440 | But when I, I just want to emphasize that when I started,

03:52:51.060 | I was far, far away from that.

03:52:53.740 | And it's the progressions in the book that really helped me

03:52:56.380 | and I've maintained that pike ability.

03:52:57.780 | So thank you for that.

03:52:58.900 | And I say it not to necessarily to highlight what I can do,

03:53:02.620 | but that to highlight what I do believe most anybody can do.

03:53:07.060 | If you put the work in.

03:53:08.100 | - If they put a lot of attention in.

03:53:10.240 | So midsection training is one of the most misunderstood

03:53:14.420 | and messed up areas of physical culture.

03:53:17.500 | There's a thousand different exercises

03:53:19.420 | and people are going, you gotta have variety,

03:53:21.220 | this many reps.

03:53:22.560 | That's not the point.

03:53:23.740 | The point really is tension and attention.

03:53:27.160 | So that's, those are the two things.

03:53:29.180 | And ideally your best first step

03:53:33.460 | is really learning abdominal tension

03:53:35.480 | through something like a Zurcher squat

03:53:38.140 | or double kettlebell front squat,

03:53:40.100 | where the load distribution is such

03:53:42.900 | that it forces reflexive stabilization.

03:53:44.940 | And you feel, oh, that's what tight abs feel like.

03:53:48.700 | And getting somebody just weak in a plank, it's hopeless.

03:53:52.000 | It's absolutely not going to help.

03:53:53.380 | It's not.

03:53:54.220 | There are ways of building up to it.

03:53:55.540 | Yes, by rolling in the back and so on.

03:53:58.540 | So, but if you don't have that option

03:54:00.840 | or if you choose not to exercise it,

03:54:03.360 | you have to be extremely attentive to the details

03:54:05.640 | of what's going on within your abdomen.

03:54:07.600 | So you need to learn things like, for example,

03:54:09.720 | you need to learn to contract the pelvic diaphragm,

03:54:12.040 | pull your butt up.

03:54:13.360 | Because you're trying to, you know,

03:54:16.040 | trying to constrain the intra-abdominal pressure.

03:54:19.480 | Then you need to learn how to direct attention

03:54:22.640 | to the different parts of your abdomen,

03:54:24.800 | almost like a bodybuilder, but really not quite,

03:54:27.640 | more like a gymnast.

03:54:29.260 | There is this argument about, in the strength world,

03:54:31.680 | about internal focus, external focus and cueing.

03:54:35.400 | And the agreement is in motor learning,

03:54:37.120 | well, external focus cueing is so much better

03:54:39.120 | than focusing on whatever happens

03:54:41.320 | within the individual muscle.

03:54:43.000 | It may be true in the beginning,

03:54:44.920 | and it may be true outside of the strength game,

03:54:47.540 | but any top strength athlete that you will meet,

03:54:50.380 | they have their own internal cues how they do something.

03:54:53.480 | Later on, they may forget them.

03:54:54.640 | They despise them, you know, but they know how to,

03:54:56.600 | this is how I engage the lat in the bench press.

03:55:01.600 | George Halbert, bench press world record holder,

03:55:03.880 | famously said, "It took him many years

03:55:05.760 | "to finally understand how the triceps

03:55:07.420 | "is used in the bench press."

03:55:08.800 | Many years.

03:55:10.280 | So there is a lot of internal component,

03:55:12.480 | and for the abs, very, very much.

03:55:14.760 | So you have to learn how to very much

03:55:18.000 | direct your attention there.

03:55:19.400 | To get high tension, you have to keep the rep slow.

03:55:22.720 | Like you said, five sets of five, perfect.

03:55:24.680 | High reps are not necessary.

03:55:26.520 | You're not gonna burn off fat by doing more reps.

03:55:28.600 | You're just gonna irritate your back.

03:55:30.360 | That's all you're gonna do, nothing else.

03:55:32.220 | So you treat your ab training very much

03:55:34.480 | like a strength event.

03:55:38.120 | And if you do that, you're gonna get those results.

03:55:41.160 | And finally, the final detail is you need to use

03:55:45.140 | that intra-abdominal pressure as your friend,

03:55:48.840 | because in lifting like a deadlift or a squat or something,

03:55:53.200 | the intra-abdominal pressure helps you, it supports you.

03:55:55.520 | When you're doing abdominal work,

03:55:57.160 | you work against that intra-abdominal pressure.

03:56:00.080 | You just create that pressure and contract against it.

03:56:02.920 | This is something called internal isometrics.

03:56:05.680 | So it's kind of interesting.

03:56:07.160 | It's just a combination of a classic strength work

03:56:10.920 | with very internalized,

03:56:12.760 | kind of almost like a martial arts approach to it.

03:56:15.400 | Then you need to learn also how to obviously

03:56:18.440 | use your abs in the lifts, in lifting.

03:56:20.760 | And once you do, and this is the beauty,

03:56:22.800 | you don't really have to train your abs anymore.

03:56:25.060 | So Franco Colombo, for example, great example,

03:56:28.060 | in addition to winning, being super strong

03:56:30.620 | and winning Mr. Olympia, he won the best abs.

03:56:32.720 | He didn't train abs.

03:56:34.080 | He said, he told me, "I hate ab training."

03:56:36.520 | He just would stay tight whenever he did his heavy lifts.

03:56:39.720 | And this is pretty much what happens.

03:56:41.160 | When you reach a certain level of strength

03:56:43.980 | and a certain level of awareness,

03:56:46.200 | simply staying tight during your strength work

03:56:49.500 | and also employing power breathing,

03:56:51.380 | which is very important,

03:56:52.960 | you're gonna be able to get as strong as you need in the abs

03:56:56.240 | and get your six pack or whatever,

03:56:58.160 | provided you don't eat the Twinkies.

03:57:00.940 | So how do you pressurize the,

03:57:04.260 | in fact, may I show an abdominal exercise right now

03:57:07.640 | that is just sitting at this table

03:57:09.120 | that's also going to teach you how,

03:57:12.900 | teach your audience how to properly pressurize for lifting.

03:57:17.180 | So normally it's better done standing.

03:57:19.860 | So, and it's not for people with high blood pressure

03:57:22.620 | or heart concerns, you know, check with your doctor

03:57:24.580 | if that's the situation.

03:57:26.300 | So you take a normal breath in your abdomen

03:57:29.500 | and you pull up your butt pretty much.

03:57:33.660 | Like imagine you have to go to the restroom

03:57:35.580 | and you're trying to, you can't quite, you know,

03:57:37.560 | it's far away, you're trying to stop yourself.

03:57:40.140 | And then you put your tongue between your teeth

03:57:43.060 | and you start,

03:57:43.900 | and you start hissing.

03:57:49.060 | And you do this in this ratcheting kind of manner.

03:57:52.340 | So,

03:57:53.180 | try to keep all the pressure out of your head,

03:57:58.320 | out of your neck, direct all the pressure,

03:58:00.900 | all this pressure is just to really staying below.

03:58:03.860 | And so this type of hissing,

03:58:08.180 | you will notice that very rapidly

03:58:10.100 | you're going to contract everything around your waist.

03:58:12.860 | So everything around your waist is going to contract.

03:58:15.680 | And you're going to strain your abdomen.

03:58:17.340 | You're also going to start learn how to properly,

03:58:20.380 | how to properly stabilize yourself under heavy weights.

03:58:24.060 | The difference between using this technique for lifting

03:58:27.340 | and for just training the abs.

03:58:29.060 | When you're training the abs,

03:58:29.960 | there's going to be some spinal flexion.

03:58:31.540 | Not a whole lot, you don't want to do a lot of that.

03:58:33.560 | There's going to be some spinal flexion.

03:58:36.060 | When you're doing that under a heavy barbell squat,

03:58:39.540 | you're maintaining your spine is neutral.

03:58:41.380 | It's like your body stays a cylinder.

03:58:43.260 | And you're going to hold your breath pretty much.

03:58:47.800 | But the idea is the same.

03:58:49.100 | So it's like,

03:58:49.940 | so the Valsalva maneuver, one Russian coach called it,

03:58:55.860 | it's an exhalation that didn't happen.

03:59:01.300 | Okay?

03:59:02.140 | Because people don't know how to hold their breath properly.

03:59:03.620 | They just,

03:59:05.020 | and then eyes are bulging out

03:59:06.700 | where there's no stability right here.

03:59:08.380 | So first of all, you got to inhale low.

03:59:10.940 | And how do you do that?

03:59:12.420 | If you watch top lifters, how they do that,

03:59:14.700 | they will do it through pursed lips.

03:59:17.460 | You can also do it through the nose,

03:59:19.240 | but you cannot do it through big wide open mouth.

03:59:21.320 | So I'll show you why.

03:59:23.000 | So if you, you can, your folks can try it at home.

03:59:25.740 | So if you put your hand on your stomach

03:59:27.980 | and trying to do an abdominal breath,

03:59:29.820 | doesn't go very well.

03:59:32.860 | Now, for contrast, pinch off one nostril.

03:59:35.680 | Take an abdominal breath.

03:59:39.780 | Or you can do that through pursed lips.

03:59:41.180 | Try it again.

03:59:42.020 | So you see.

03:59:46.420 | - More resistance.

03:59:47.300 | - More resistance.

03:59:48.160 | And again, you're engaging the diaphragm

03:59:50.180 | instead of just your thorax right there.

03:59:53.580 | So you take that breath into your abdomen,

03:59:56.900 | in like through a small opening through your nose

04:00:00.700 | or through your pursed lips, you draw it in right there.

04:00:05.140 | And then, you know, down below, you pull it up.

04:00:08.300 | And then after that, it's that exhalation

04:00:11.960 | that didn't happen.

04:00:13.160 | Do you see?

04:00:14.000 | - I see.

04:00:14.820 | So I'm familiar with sort of bracing my abs.

04:00:18.900 | What I've not done before is the resisting,

04:00:22.340 | going to the bathroom thing that you mentioned,

04:00:24.300 | the pulling up of the butt.

04:00:25.500 | And then, so you're creating compression

04:00:27.700 | from the bottom and from the top.

04:00:28.900 | - And also from all around,

04:00:30.180 | that happens reflexively as well.

04:00:31.780 | - I see.

04:00:32.620 | So that's the position to get in to before, say,

04:00:34.700 | like a hard zurcher squat or something like that.

04:00:37.060 | - Absolutely.

04:00:37.900 | And if you're doing that for an exercise

04:00:40.260 | that's long, long in duration, you know,

04:00:43.220 | if you don't want to be holding your breath too long,

04:00:45.480 | then we have an expression that comes

04:00:48.100 | from one of the karate styles, breathing behind the shield.

04:00:51.700 | So right now I can speak to you,

04:00:54.900 | but I'm still just as tight.

04:00:56.620 | So you see what you're doing.

04:00:57.700 | So the way we test it at our,

04:00:59.540 | the way we teach it at our workshops is,

04:01:01.900 | you lie on the ground, I tell you to tense up,

04:01:04.500 | then I'm going to stand on your stomach,

04:01:05.820 | and I'm going to have you sing a song.

04:01:07.620 | And you're going to have to learn

04:01:09.180 | to properly maintain that pressure

04:01:11.140 | while still continuing to breathe.

04:01:15.380 | So you're able to stabilize your spine,

04:01:17.580 | but you're not going to pass out from maintaining that

04:01:20.620 | by holding your breath for a period of time.

04:01:23.620 | And then finally, what you got to learn to do

04:01:26.500 | is you got to learn to match the breath with the force.

04:01:29.180 | So synchronize, synchronize when you're punching,

04:01:33.540 | when you're throwing, when you're lifting,

04:01:38.060 | you have to learn how to match that contraction,

04:01:40.660 | the timing of the abdominal contraction

04:01:42.700 | and the pressurization, sometimes exhalation,

04:01:45.640 | sometimes just pretending to, with the effort.

04:01:48.860 | Once you learn how to match the breath with the force,

04:01:51.460 | it's like magic.

04:01:53.060 | And what people don't realize,

04:01:54.580 | it's not just purely mechanical.

04:01:56.220 | Mechanically, yes, of course it works.

04:01:58.020 | You know, Stu explained this so well

04:01:59.500 | about the stiffness of the structure,

04:02:01.580 | the analogy of the bicycle frame.

04:02:03.180 | It's the same thing.

04:02:04.300 | You're getting an expensive bicycle frame

04:02:06.020 | when you have strong abs,

04:02:07.420 | as opposed to the cheap one that rattles and wiggles.

04:02:11.140 | But there's also something that it's never,

04:02:15.020 | never spoken about in the West for some reason.

04:02:18.380 | The Soviets studied that decades ago.

04:02:20.380 | There's something they called the pneumo,

04:02:23.340 | pneumatic reflex, pneumo is P-N-E-U-M-O, so air.

04:02:28.340 | So there are barrier receptors,

04:02:30.780 | receptors for sensors for pressure

04:02:33.900 | inside your abdominal cavity and thoracic cavity.

04:02:36.620 | So whenever these receptors are stimulated,

04:02:41.620 | what they do is they automatically increase the sensitivity

04:02:45.300 | about alpha motor neurons.

04:02:46.820 | So what it really means to the audience is this.

04:02:50.200 | If you imagine your brain is the music player

04:02:53.360 | and imagine your muscle is a speaker,

04:02:57.560 | the amount of intra-abdominal pressure

04:03:00.440 | is your volume control.

04:03:02.080 | So by increasing that pressure,

04:03:05.160 | you're increasing the strength,

04:03:06.440 | but by releasing that intra-abdominal pressure,

04:03:11.440 | you relax the muscle.

04:03:12.600 | So that's why in stretching, as I mentioned before,

04:03:14.720 | you can't be sitting in a half split and groaning.

04:03:17.880 | No, you need to release.

04:03:20.800 | If you release that passive breath,

04:03:23.560 | again, your muscles are going to relax.

04:03:26.840 | So controlling your breath is very much,

04:03:31.000 | as it's known in martial arts,

04:03:32.440 | it's very much synonymous with controlling your body

04:03:35.120 | and your mind very often.

04:03:36.480 | - Fantastic.

04:03:37.500 | When one throws a punch,

04:03:42.120 | is it true that exhaling is actually providing

04:03:46.920 | additional power or?

04:03:48.120 | - No question about it.

04:03:48.960 | Yeah, it's been measured.

04:03:50.760 | It's been measured in fighters.

04:03:52.320 | It's also been measured in lifting as well.

04:03:56.560 | There was a study that was done in the West even

04:03:59.840 | when screaming increases strength significantly.

04:04:02.780 | And again, this is not just a psychological component.

04:04:05.480 | I mean, there may be some psychological component to that,

04:04:08.680 | but again, there's this very distinct increase of strength

04:04:13.440 | through that reflex.

04:04:17.560 | And it's very easy for the listeners to test that,

04:04:21.200 | get a dynamometer, hand gripper,

04:04:22.860 | and just test yourself on that.

04:04:24.080 | And just test it out with different breathing patterns

04:04:27.600 | and just see what happens.

04:04:29.240 | And whenever this idiotic practice at some gyms,

04:04:32.720 | oh, you can grunt right here.

04:04:34.160 | And it's just, well, I guess you can be strong here.

04:04:36.940 | And yeah, of course, if you're doing this on purpose,

04:04:38.980 | you're walking in with the bros and you're just trying

04:04:41.200 | just to make noise to attract attention.

04:04:43.280 | That's wrong.

04:04:44.240 | But strength is a noisy endeavor.

04:04:49.240 | So there may be some hissing, there may be some grunting.

04:04:53.200 | It's just absolutely unavoidable.

04:04:55.480 | And if you're trying to be quiet,

04:04:59.320 | and if you're trying to be a lady or a gentleman,

04:05:01.400 | well, maybe it's for somewhere else, not for the gym.

04:05:04.800 | - So some potentially trivial questions,

04:05:08.720 | but I think they are not trivial.

04:05:10.920 | I hope they're not in any case.

04:05:13.480 | Where should we place our eyes when we're in exertion?

04:05:17.780 | Close our eyes and grind it out.

04:05:21.160 | Look at form in the mirror.

04:05:23.700 | I'm a big fan of gyms without mirrors

04:05:26.360 | 'cause I have to concentrate on the form.

04:05:28.400 | Vision is a powerful tool and source of feedback,

04:05:33.320 | but also a source of a lot of things.

04:05:36.220 | There must be a rule about this,

04:05:37.640 | or at least a set of guidelines for,

04:05:39.840 | are we eyes closed and grimacing?

04:05:42.080 | Are we checking our bicep vein in the mirror?

04:05:45.840 | Just kidding, don't do that, folks.

04:05:47.600 | During a lift, where should our eyes be?

04:05:51.680 | Is there any idea that looking up,

04:05:53.080 | it makes it easier to drive up

04:05:54.440 | out of the bottom of a squat?

04:05:55.760 | Has this been explored?

04:05:56.600 | - Well, it has.

04:05:57.560 | There are several sides to that.

04:05:59.240 | Part of it is the spinal safety.

04:06:04.240 | So Stu will tell you that extending the neck

04:06:07.400 | is going to facilitate the entire posterior chain.

04:06:09.720 | And he'll also tell you that lifters with longer necks

04:06:12.320 | may be able to get their heads up

04:06:14.760 | and that might work better for them.

04:06:17.280 | For some other lifters,

04:06:19.960 | especially those with pronounced lordosis

04:06:22.960 | where they're very arched, big arch in the back,

04:06:25.480 | that may arch them too much.

04:06:27.600 | That might be inappropriate or just kink their neck.

04:06:29.640 | It's all possible.

04:06:31.520 | And so a lot of coaches these days

04:06:36.520 | in lift like a deadlift,

04:06:38.520 | they try to including Andy Bolton.

04:06:41.360 | Andy Bolton is the legendary deadlifter.

04:06:44.480 | He is the one, the first lifter

04:06:47.040 | to lift over 1000 pounds in the deadlift.

04:06:50.760 | And Andy and I, we co-authored the book,

04:06:52.520 | "The Deadlift Dynamite."

04:06:54.000 | So Andy's got the most beautiful deadlift,

04:06:56.440 | just the most incredible, beautiful deadlift.

04:06:59.280 | So what Andy does is pretty much

04:07:02.360 | what the standard recommendation

04:07:04.560 | for most people is these days,

04:07:06.320 | where you're maintaining a neutral neck

04:07:08.920 | and your eyes kind of a go with that.

04:07:11.280 | So you get yourself in the position,

04:07:13.040 | you know, on the bottom of the deadlift,

04:07:14.240 | like where your head is the continuation of your body,

04:07:17.760 | like you're an insect or something.

04:07:19.480 | And then you look at the spot on the ground

04:07:21.520 | that's appropriate and your eyes will come up.

04:07:22.960 | So that's a good general standard recommendation.

04:07:26.440 | For people with long necks looking straight ahead,

04:07:29.080 | it's a good recommendation.

04:07:31.280 | Some lifters succeed with crazy ideas.

04:07:33.440 | Lamar Gant, that again, pound per pound,

04:07:35.520 | the biggest deadlifter,

04:07:36.840 | he was in tremendous hyperextension.

04:07:39.120 | He was looking at the ceiling.

04:07:40.640 | Then at a high level of competition,

04:07:44.360 | there are some other subtle ways,

04:07:46.160 | some things people try.

04:07:47.840 | So Konstantin Konstantinov from Latvia,

04:07:50.240 | he was another great deadlifter who passed.

04:07:53.800 | He would look down at the start.

04:07:57.480 | He would look absolutely down.

04:07:58.480 | He was pretty much...

04:08:00.280 | And if you look at it from your perspective,

04:08:05.480 | when your neck is in flexion,

04:08:07.080 | interestingly enough, that facilitates the knee extensors,

04:08:09.800 | which is really, really weird, yeah.

04:08:12.040 | - It's when I put my chin toward my chest.

04:08:15.200 | - Not all the way down, but yeah.

04:08:16.760 | You will find that your quads are going to be stronger.

04:08:19.960 | But it's not for everybody.

04:08:21.080 | For somebody else, that's a great way to mess up the back.

04:08:23.720 | So there are some subtleties.

04:08:26.400 | And there are also some people

04:08:27.600 | who really get fancy with the eyes, eye movement,

04:08:30.200 | follow the bar, do these other things,

04:08:32.280 | like it comes from gymnastics.

04:08:34.200 | A good rule of thumb is if you look straight ahead

04:08:38.120 | more often than not, you're going to be okay.

04:08:40.640 | But from that, there are a lot of fancy ways to do it.

04:08:43.120 | As for closing your eyes,

04:08:44.920 | closing your eyes is not recommended.

04:08:47.160 | It changes the coordination of the lift,

04:08:49.240 | but for advanced lifters,

04:08:51.000 | lifting blindfolded is a really good idea.

04:08:53.400 | So Robert Roman, one of the top Soviet specialists,

04:08:58.160 | he pioneered that and he would have his lifters

04:09:00.520 | do some of the sets blindfolded.

04:09:02.960 | And it's really amazing at how much

04:09:05.160 | not relying on your vision,

04:09:06.440 | relying on your kinesthetic sense, what that does.

04:09:09.400 | It's quite remarkable.

04:09:11.600 | And also just to add one more thing,

04:09:13.120 | at a competition, at least in powerlifting,

04:09:16.080 | a lot of, I mean, the top guys,

04:09:18.920 | they don't see anything, really.

04:09:20.960 | You know, they're just deep inside their rage.

04:09:23.120 | They're not, it's a total tunnel vision,

04:09:25.240 | auditory exclusion, everything.

04:09:27.040 | So it's whatever, they're ahead

04:09:29.400 | in whatever remembered position,

04:09:30.840 | but don't ask them to look at you or see you.

04:09:33.280 | That's not gonna happen.

04:09:34.200 | - They're someplace else.

04:09:35.200 | - Yep.

04:09:36.040 | - Pavel, I must say,

04:09:38.920 | this has been a spectacular voyage through.

04:09:42.560 | - You're very kind, Andrew.

04:09:43.400 | It's been a real pleasure.

04:09:45.080 | Very, very stimulating conversation.

04:09:47.640 | - Oh, thank you.

04:09:48.520 | And I'm going to just embarrass you a little bit further

04:09:51.960 | by telling you more positive things about you,

04:09:55.240 | 'cause I noticed it makes you uncomfortable.

04:09:58.400 | It's perhaps the only thing

04:09:59.240 | that makes you uncomfortable,

04:10:00.080 | but in all seriousness,

04:10:01.000 | I don't think, I can't sense any discomfort.

04:10:04.280 | I want to just thank you for a number of things

04:10:06.840 | that are reflective, I'm sure,

04:10:08.280 | of what other people are thinking.

04:10:09.480 | First of all, the level of rigor

04:10:14.040 | that you've approached this whole thing

04:10:15.760 | of strength and fitness and flexibility and breathing

04:10:18.840 | and, you know, every one of these topics,

04:10:20.560 | too many to list off just now,

04:10:22.240 | is, it's remarkable.

04:10:25.880 | It's really fantastic.

04:10:26.720 | - Thank you.

04:10:27.560 | I love my job, so that's easy.

04:10:29.200 | - This comes through, and it's rare these days,

04:10:33.200 | but it's rare in any age to find people

04:10:35.800 | that are so dedicated to this level of rigor

04:10:40.800 | in a given area, and it's so appreciated.

04:10:43.720 | - Thank you, coming from you, it means a lot.

04:10:44.800 | Thank you.

04:10:45.640 | - Yeah, we need people like you.

04:10:47.000 | You're truly a scientist and a practitioner.

04:10:49.000 | You embody the principles that you discuss clearly,

04:10:52.400 | which is also important.

04:10:53.240 | - If I could blush, I would right now.

04:10:54.600 | [laughing]

04:10:55.760 | - Russians don't blush?

04:10:56.600 | - No. - No, got it.

04:10:58.960 | - Topic for another podcast.

04:11:00.800 | So that the rigor and the quality of the information

04:11:03.440 | that you put forth in your books and on this podcast

04:11:05.840 | and elsewhere, your online course,

04:11:07.440 | is just absolutely spectacular.

04:11:09.640 | And I hope people noticed, you know,

04:11:12.760 | I couldn't help but notice as an academic,

04:11:15.160 | but your attention to proper attribution

04:11:18.760 | for people that have done the work

04:11:20.640 | and accomplished the various feats

04:11:22.040 | from whom you've gleaned various aspects of this knowledge

04:11:25.360 | is not to be overlooked,

04:11:26.760 | because that's something

04:11:27.600 | that's so lacking these days. - It should go without saying.

04:11:29.240 | - It's just, it's so, it's remarkable

04:11:31.880 | and it's important to highlight.

04:11:32.720 | - It should go without saying, shouldn't it?

04:11:35.000 | - Yeah, it should go without saying, but it doesn't.

04:11:37.000 | You know, these days it's more about

04:11:38.320 | who can glean the most attention

04:11:39.520 | as opposed to shed light on others and their work.

04:11:44.320 | And in doing so, as we've observed,

04:11:46.520 | there's absolutely nothing is lost and so much is gained.

04:11:49.160 | It's for everybody, so thank you.

04:11:51.080 | That's a proper attribution. - Thank you, Frank Edwards.

04:11:53.480 | - Is spectacular.

04:11:55.240 | And I really look forward to sharing the resources

04:11:58.560 | where people can learn more,

04:12:00.000 | but already today you've just provided

04:12:01.720 | such a wealth of knowledge for us.

04:12:03.200 | And it's a real honor to sit here with you

04:12:05.920 | and to learn from you.

04:12:07.240 | I plan to listen to this podcast several times over

04:12:09.480 | and take detailed notes.

04:12:11.520 | We timestamp it all. - Thank you.

04:12:12.960 | - And I just hope that we'll have the opportunity

04:12:15.600 | at some point to sit down again,

04:12:17.840 | and as well, perhaps,

04:12:20.880 | to get the opportunity to train together.

04:12:23.000 | So I personally could learn from you,

04:12:24.720 | but in the meantime, on behalf of myself

04:12:26.280 | and everyone listening and watching,

04:12:28.040 | thank you ever so much, Pavel.

04:12:29.480 | - Thank you, Andrew.

04:12:30.320 | - You're a real- - Real pleasure.

04:12:31.440 | - You're a real gem, thank you.

04:12:32.280 | - And thank you for spreading the word of health

04:12:35.440 | and strength, strength and health.

04:12:38.240 | - Wonderful, thank you.

04:12:39.640 | Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

04:12:41.440 | with Pavel Satsulin.

04:12:42.760 | I hope you found it to be as interesting

04:12:44.560 | and as actionable as I did.

04:12:46.680 | To learn more about Pavel's work,

04:12:48.080 | including his books, his online courses,

04:12:50.040 | and other resources, please see the show note captions.

04:12:53.000 | If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast,

04:12:55.360 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

04:12:57.320 | That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us.

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04:13:21.480 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

04:13:23.920 | For those of you that haven't heard,

04:13:25.040 | I have a new book coming out.

04:13:26.240 | It's my very first book.

04:13:27.840 | It's entitled "Protocols,

04:13:29.280 | An Operating Manual for the Human Body."

04:13:31.400 | This is a book that I've been working on

04:13:32.600 | for more than five years,

04:13:33.720 | and that's based on more than 30 years

04:13:36.080 | of research and experience.

04:13:37.600 | And it covers protocols for everything from sleep

04:13:40.680 | to exercise to stress control,

04:13:43.160 | protocols related to focus and motivation.

04:13:45.600 | And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation

04:13:49.000 | for the protocols that are included.

04:13:51.080 | The book is now available by presale@protocolsbook.com.

04:13:54.960 | There you can find links to various vendors.

04:13:57.320 | You can pick the one that you like best.

04:13:59.100 | Again, the book is called "Protocols,

04:14:00.880 | An Operating Manual for the Human Body."

04:14:03.480 | If you're not already following me on social media,

04:14:05.560 | I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

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04:14:13.600 | And on all those platforms,

04:14:14.800 | I discuss science and science-related tools,

04:14:16.880 | some of which overlaps with the content

04:14:18.440 | of the Huberman Lab podcast,

04:14:19.840 | but much of which is distinct from the content

04:14:21.880 | on the Huberman Lab podcast.

04:14:23.400 | Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

04:14:26.840 | And if you haven't already subscribed

04:14:28.160 | to our Neural Network Newsletter,

04:14:29.760 | the Neural Network Newsletter

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04:14:33.080 | that includes podcast summaries,

04:14:34.440 | as well as what we call protocols

04:14:36.240 | in the form of one- to three-page PDFs

04:14:38.520 | that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep,

04:14:40.800 | how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.

04:14:43.600 | We have a foundational fitness protocol

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04:15:00.440 | Thank you once again for joining me

04:15:01.800 | for today's discussion with Pavel Satsulin.

04:15:04.280 | And last, but certainly not least,

04:15:06.480 | thank you for your interest in science.

04:15:08.480 | [upbeat music]

04:15:11.060 | (upbeat music)

Pavel Tsatsouline: How to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age

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