Heroic Nation Podcast
The ONLY podcast addressing Physical Health and Mental Health for First Responders.
Host:
Anthony Shefferly
-Full time Police/SWAT (16+ years)
-Master's in Science: Psychology
-Tactical Strength & Conditioning
Owner Heroic Fitness/CrossFit Tactical Strength
College Football/CrossFit Regionals/BJJ/Kettlebells
Heroic Nation Podcast
Strength, Resilience, and Martial Arts: Josh Setledge on Athletic Longevity and Training Innovation
Unlock the secrets of athletic longevity with Josh Setledge, a powerhouse in strength and conditioning dedicated to grappling athletes. Josh's journey from childhood karate enthusiast to wrestling aficionado, sparked by a love for Bruce Lee, unfolds as a testament to the power of martial arts in shaping resilience and discipline. Through his work with influential figures like Mark Bell, Josh shares his mission to enhance athletes' performance while minimizing injuries, offering a treasure trove of insights for anyone looking to excel on and off the mat.
Discover the profound impact of discipline and delayed gratification on personal growth. Hear how embracing consistent effort and patience can lead to monumental changes in life, guided by the wisdom of role models like Ed Milet. Our conversation digs deep into the critical role of positive influences during formative years, exploring how they foster resilience and determination. Josh opens up about navigating identity crises, especially when faced with the pressure of high-stakes sports performance, and how stepping away from wrestling redirected his path to coaching and rediscovering his passion.
Explore the art of strategic training with Josh as we dissect the versatility of the conjugate training system and its adaptability for various sports. Learn how to balance intense workouts with adequate recovery to avoid burnout, all while keeping an eye on long-term fitness goals. We also discuss innovations in training for tactical athletes and the exciting development of the Strength Matrix training app. This episode is a goldmine of strategies and stories, offering guidance for athletes and coaches striving to create a sustainable and fulfilling athletic journey.
Welcome back to another episode of Heroic Nation podcast. I try to say that more epic every time so that you understand how epic this podcast is, anyway, okay, so Josh Setledge is on today and that dude is awesome. He is a conjugate based coach. He coaches jujitsu and grappling athletes and really helps people get more time on the mat with way less injuries. And that's really what part of strength conditioning is is to make sure that we're getting injured less, at least becoming more durable within the context of our sport or whatever we're doing, whether it's life or specifics or whatever. So really, really a lot of good information. He used to work for Mark Bell. He was on Mark Bell's PowerCast not too long ago and really has a lot of good information and a really good story. So definitely check that out.
Speaker 1:I think you're really going to enjoy the podcast. Definitely check that out. I think you're really going to enjoy the podcast. Additionally, and lastly, make sure that you are in the school community. If you're not in the school community, message me directly and I'll get you in, or you can go to school and search Heroic Industries. That's school S-K-O-O-L. Not sure why they spell it like that. Must be cool or trendy. All right, all right, all right. That's all I got. Enjoy the podcast and live a road.
Speaker 2:Get any training in this morning, not yet.
Speaker 1:I've been full go since I got up. Nice, yeah, how about you? It's nine o'clock there, right?
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, yeah, no training this morning, but I got some training later in the afternoon that I'll do once work is done, so got that to look forward to.
Speaker 1:Nice, cool, awesome man. Well, thanks for jumping on. I appreciate it. It's nice to see you again. Nice to connect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I'm super excited. I've been looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:Well, hope I don't disappoint. Yeah, so I mean, it might not be power cast level, but it'll be. It'll be close, It'll be. Hey, you're all, you're all good, bro, All right? Um well, yeah, man, let's. Uh, I got a ton of questions I'd like to start with like a little bit of your background. So, like where? Um, I know you're you're a little bit younger than me Uh, where is your background from? Like sports, growing up, that kind of stuff. Where'd you get started with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, uh, as a kid I did like I tried a lot of different sports as a kid and I wasn't I didn't really find like a huge passion for any of them. So I played soccer a little bit, played basketball definitely super sucked at both of those. And then I remember my cousins and uncles were all into Bruce Lee movies and Kung Fu movies and all that stuff, and so martial arts had kind of been something that I had like wanted to do but didn't really dip my toes into. And I remember there was one day where my mom had signed my brother and I up for a trial class at one of the martial arts schools in town and she's, and it was right at the start of summer, and she said okay, this summer you guys can choose to either learn how to play guitar or do karate. We didn't even know that the martial arts we were doing wasn't technically karate, but karate was the like catch all term for any martial art and there was punching and kicking head. It was karate automatically. Um, and so she's like you can do karate or you guys can learn how to play guitar. And I remember thinking in that moment like, oh my gosh, I got to hurry and decide I was like I'll do karate, and so I stuck with, uh, martial arts. The martial art that I had done back then was called bok fu, which is kind of like it pulls from a lot of different martial arts. There are some karate components in there, there is some kenpo components in there, there's some kung fu stuff in there, jeet Kune Do, and it was just a great exposure to a lot of other martial art influences and I stuck with that for a long time.
Speaker 2:And then I got to a point where, like where the economy was after the oh eight crash and all that stuff, my parents told us like, hey, you know, paying for karate or martial arts year round is pretty expensive and so we can't do this year round. But your middle school has a wrestling program that I think is like for most public school wrestling programs it's free or pretty close to free. It might be like I might have to pay like one $50 payment to like cover the insurance or something, but it was a lot more affordable than doing martial arts year round. And so my dad was talking to me and he said, look, here's kind of your options. You can either check out wrestling and see how that goes.
Speaker 2:And I didn't want to wrestle at all. I absolutely was super adverse to it, didn't want to do it. But a friend of mine was wrestling and they did some off-season practices over the summer. And so my dad said, well, how about I just take you to some of those wrestling practices? You don't have to do it when the season starts, but at least do some of these off-season practices just to see how it goes. And so I went and it was awkward. And you're in middle school and you're like I was kind of at a new school, so I was trying to like make friends, and it was just super awkward. It wasn't what I was familiar with, and so the first three or four practices I hated and I thought were super lame. But then, sure enough, by the end of those off season practices I think that took maybe like there was two months worth of practices, maybe by the end of it I loved it and I was all in and I freaking loved wrestling and I very quickly just went all in on wrestling.
Speaker 2:Like within a couple of years I just ditched martial arts and so like I'm just wrestling now, um, and so I just leaned into that really hard for four years, so from eighth grade to junior year of high school, was when I was doing wrestling. And then also around that time, like around middle school, was when I also really started to get into strength training and lifting and all that stuff. You know I mentioned that my uncles and cousins, they were all into Kung Fu movies and martial arts stuff, but then they were also into bodybuilding. They would watch all the Arnold movies, all the Rocky movies and my dad lifted a lot early in the morning. So I'd kind of been surrounded by strength training for a while but didn't really do anything about it. And I remember I was doing martial arts at the time.
Speaker 2:But there was another guy at our church that was like he was the coolest guy ever. You know like. He was, I think, like two or three years older than me. Everyone thought he was the coolest dude ever. And I remember we were at like a church cookout and my dad was talking to his dad and I overheard their conversation and my friend's dad said like yeah, like my son Logan, he's been doing pushups and sit-ups every day in his room and like been working out and stuff. And I heard that and I was like oh dang. Okay, all right, if Logan's doing it, then I'm gonna start doing it too.
Speaker 2:And so, sure enough, I started doing pushups and sit-ups. And then I start like trying to look up stuff like on the internet of like how to grow my biceps and things like that. I take my dad's weight set from the garage and I put it in my room and I just I really got bit by that strength training bug and I even more so than wrestling, more so than martial arts, I really just got into strength training, and so I I bought P90X with all my birthday money in eighth grade and I was, you know, hustling those P90X workouts. And the biggest switch for me was when I went to the wrestling season. Uh, in high school, I immediately saw a difference in my level of athleticism compared to a lot of the other kids I was wrestling with that weren't strength training, and so it was a very strong feedback loop of like, wow, I spent all summer lifting weights, getting stronger, and now I can perform a little bit better than the kids that didn't spend the summer lifting weights and getting stronger, and that really, that really fired me up.
Speaker 1:What do you think that that's a big thing, that that? So I coach my son's uh varsity football team. I, I'm their strength coach and uh and I spend a little like all winter long. I spend time just telling them like you have to put in the work now. This is a massive exercise in delayed gratification.
Speaker 1:It will pay off but it will not be for you know, months potentially. So you're saying, like at a middle school level you started making the connection that you know all this work that I put in in the off season with wrestling practices and GPP and you know strength training. Then you made the connection Wow, I'm in way better shape than all these other kids. Like, how did you manage to make that connection so that it made the like the payoff for the delayed gratification? Like how are you able to connect the dots like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I think it started really slow and then it kind of gradually built up from there. Like the window of delayed gratification that I could handle started really small. So, like working out for, like as far as like doing the P90X workouts, I think that was like a 90 day program and so I definitely couldn't foresee like the end result in 90 days. But I did kind of see some of the delayed gratifications of oh okay, in the first four weeks of this phase I could only do 10 pull-ups, now I can do 15 pull-ups, like that's pretty cool. And like I was sore during a lot of these workouts. I was tired during a lot of them. I liked doing them because they were fun, but it definitely wasn't always convenient, especially like during the summer when your friends are going out and riding bikes and having fun. Like I wanted to stay home and work out. So I was able to see a little bit of delayed gratification for a couple of weeks at a time, and then you kind of see that happen enough times, where then you start pushing it out a little bit further. Okay, well, what if I dedicate three months to something, or four months or six months to something and I don't really see the fruit of that labor for another year. And so I think that the idea of delayed gratification, it starts really small and then kids, especially in that pivotal ages of, like middle school going into high school, some kids will lean into that. At least from my own experience and some other things I've noticed, I think some kids will lean into that and their ability for delayed gratification increases. Other times kids don't lean into that and it does stay pretty short, like they can delay gratification for a couple of weeks but they can't really stick to something longer than a couple of weeks and I think it takes a really good coach or a really good mentor figure to be able to continue to encourage them, to continue to lead them, to continue to also display, like, the results of delayed gratification. I know there was one wrestling coach I had he also did CrossFit and he was. He was like he was the most jacked person I'd ever seen in my entire life and so listening to him say like yeah, I've been training this way for a long time, I can do all these pull-ups and run a mile in this time, he was like the embodiment of delayed gratification and so, at least for me personally, that definitely helped. Having him as a coach, having him as a mentor to be an example of the end result was super helpful.
Speaker 2:And I think if someone doesn't have an example of the end result or they're using delayed gratification for something that is really hard to conceptualize, like if a team, if a football team or a wrestling team, has never made it to like league finals and they're just, they've always been the team that sucks. Every school district has one. Every school district has a team that absolutely sucks. Everybody knows that when they match up either in football and wrestling, for one team it's just another loss because that's the story that they've like accepted. For another team, it's going to be like, hey, this is our easy week because this team absolutely sucks. It is so hard for that team that's kind of just been indoctrinated with this idea that, yeah, we're just the team that sucks. If they don't have, it's hard for them to break free from that. If they don't have, it's hard for them to break free from that If they don't have an example of someone coming in and kind of like constantly communicating the vision of what could be.
Speaker 2:And so I remember, like I want to say, like our wrestling team sucked or anything but journey of never winning a single wrestling match as a freshman in high school to then going undefeated and only being scored on once his senior year of high school and being a state champion. And he kept speaking that message to us over and over and over. He kind of embodied the end result of delayed gratification. The other coach, the assistant coach, was like the most jacked guy I'd ever seen in my life. He continued to speak about delayed gratification in the same way where hey, he didn't. He didn't say it this literally, but I took it as him saying. I am the embodiment of delayed gratification. And so if you want to have like giant traps and giant biceps like me, you have to do what I did, which was keep training week after week, year after year, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I think some of it too. I really like a lot of stuff you said, cause it reminds me of my childhood too. But but yeah, you, you, you talked about Bruce Lee movies, 80s movies, like the entertainment that was those eras was like super masculine, very aggressive, very jacked like, and all of it, all of it had such a strong masculine influence. And then and then you double down with that, so you get that from this. This just speaks to like what you absorb is who you become and who you're around is who you become, right? So you listed all that as like entertainment. But you also talked about, uh, uncles, your dad, the weight set at home, uh, the coaches that you had the access to, these men that were, that were very masculine and have been there and done that and they're just like you know three, four chapters ahead of you and you want to get where they're at. So I think all of those things are are hypercritical uh to development. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I heard uh, Ed Milet. He's a um, he's like a uh motivation and personal development, personality and stuff.
Speaker 1:Entrepreneur Great teeth, great teeth, that guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he, yeah, that guy's got teeth. Teeth for days been snacking on electricity or something. His teeth are are out of this world, Um. But I heard a podcast that he did where he talked about the idea that kids' behavior is oftentimes caught, not taught, and so I recognize this.
Speaker 2:As a coach, I can continue to try to teach these kids that I'm coaching. When I was coaching wrestling, I can try to teach them these things and, yes, sometimes that might not connect, but really what connected the most was what they caught a glimpse of in my own behavior or how and I modeled or acted in my own life, and that could be good or bad Cause sometimes there's something like how can I teach these kids to, you know, not get so easily frustrated? It's like, well, I'm trying to teach them not to be easily frustrated about things, but they've caught from me that like, yeah, coach Settledge gets easily frustrated on some stuff, and so I think the the idea of caught not taught is so powerful in either direction. It could be powerful in helping a kid catch all the right things to implement into their life the idea of delayed gratification, the idea of being disciplined, or they can catch some things that maybe don't have the same positive effect.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, and absolutely Cause, like, as a coach, you have to, you have to walk the walk. Like you can't just say like, hey, you got to do this, and then all of a sudden, I'm going to go drink beer every night and be a fat loser, right, cause they're going to see through that, like kids, especially kids, like we don't give them enough credit for how smart they are, like I think about, like when I was, you know, 12 years old, 13 years old, I could look at an adult and be like that guy's full of shit. That guy probably walks the walk. You know what?
Speaker 2:I mean Like you can tell that right away. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But there is also something to be said about like, like all right. So something we talk about a lot on on our team is like managing your emotions, being able to like regulate your nervous system. Like I'm big on that for everybody, based on on anything that you're doing, you have to know how to regulate nervous system. But there are times when I get pissed and I don't regulate as well as I should and I fly off the handle Like it's not like all the time, but once in a while.
Speaker 1:You'll see in coaching, like you kind of lose it for a second and you stepped outside of what you teach, and that's, that's an opportunity to make sure that you are like whoa, assess yourself, because we're a work in progress too. Like just cause your coach doesn't mean perfect, but to actually discuss like hey, did you see what I did here? I screwed up. Like I don't demand perfection, it's the pursuit of improvement. Like you know, that was wrong of me and and I'll take ownership of that. And if you do that in front of a team or a client or whatever like that, I think that goes a long way too, you know oh, absolutely that.
Speaker 2:That was something that I distinctly remember at times, like my wrestling coaches. I remember them uh, like apologizing for things and aspects of their behavior and sometimes like as a kid I didn't really think it was a huge deal like i't, I don't care that coach cusses around us, Like we cuss all the time, so who cares if coach cusses? But I remember like using that as as an example. Like if coach set the standard of, hey, we're not gonna, you know we're not gonna swear on the wrestling team, which is like impossible, but you know we're going to do our best not to uh, and someone catches him swearing that he's not upholding the standard that that he created. And so to see like a coach have the humility to apologize for something like that, I think is the act of him having humility. To like to apologize is more impactful than just the idea of just like not cussing. You know cause not cussing is just like here or there, but the importance in like being the model of like. Hey, here's a standard, Like I'm not above the standard because I'm the coach, and if I veer off from that standard, I owe it to you guys, as the team that I'm leading, to humbly apologize for that and, like, make things right and then get right back on upholding the standard to the best of my ability. And I think you're right, Like kids, kids are crazy smart, Kids are kind of ruthless.
Speaker 2:Like I think what's so cool is that kids are have, in a good way and in a bad way, have a lot less life experience to filter some of their, some of the things that they say or some of the things that they pick up on. And I think as we get older and as we move into adulthood, we start filtering so much more, which in a lot of ways, that can be beneficial. Like we definitely shouldn't just be saying everything that immediately comes to our mind all the time, but kids do kind of have like a brutal honesty to them that uh can. Sometimes I feel like I can get checked by that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, um, okay, so so that takes you to high school. You said, you wrestled till junior year. Did you stop yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, I didn't end up wrestling my senior year, so one thing that was great about wrestling was like it was intense, it was awesome. There's so many aspects of wrestling that I loved, but definitely at that point in my life it was I was having a lot of struggles with kind of understanding my own self-worth and I put my entire identity into wrestling and I'm naturally competitive and so I just put it all into the competition aspect of wrestling winning and losing. If I went to a tournament and I went two and two, like okay, I went two matches, lost two matches, I can kind of deal with that. If I won three matches and lost two, like I feel pretty good. If I won the tournament, I feel excellent. If I lost the tournament, I feel like absolute dookie, I feel horrible and I put all of my identity into wrestling and constantly put this pressure on myself.
Speaker 2:And it really got to a point where by the time my junior year started and the time junior year ended, I absolutely hated wrestling, Like I just despised it, I didn't want to do it, it was, um, I hated going to every practice and it was just. It was just a rough go and I just got to the point where I was like I really don't even care about wrestling anymore. I not nothing about it is necessarily fun or enjoyable not that everything needs to be fun or enjoyable, but it wasn't fun or enjoyable because I felt like the pressure I was putting on myself to achieve this identity of being, you know, undefe, being perfect, being like never getting scored on, never having any sort of flaw, which is like an impossible goal to reach. Every time I fell short of that, I felt like my own confidence and my self-worth just continued to drop, lower and lower and lower. And so I remember I went to all the wrestling camps over the summer and I stuck with it, just like really ride it out.
Speaker 2:And I remember, right before season started, senior year, it was like honestly, like I hate this, like this is not enjoyable, this is not fun, this is like it's not something that I really feel is serving me in any way and I just didn't have a love for wrestling anymore and so I just decided, like you know what, I'm not wrestling senior year. And, uh, like I took a lot of flack for that Like there are definitely teammates and coaches that are like like why aren't you wrestling this year and all that stuff and that senior year, I definitely went through a huge transformation and went through, I'd say, like a lot of healing internally, just to figure out, okay, where am I going to put my identity? Is it going to be in my wrestling record? Is it going to be in what tournaments I perform well at, what tournaments I don't perform well at? Is my identity going to be a feeble thing that changes every week when we do challenge matches? Or am I going to put my identity and who God's created me to be? Am I going to put my identity in things that just go beyond wrestling and that go beyond the success or the wins and losses at the end of the season?
Speaker 2:And so that senior year, I really went through that transformation and what's interesting is that senior year. If you had asked me, like, do you think you'll ever do anything related to wrestling ever again, I would have said hell, no, like I'm not doing any sort of wrestling related activity ever again. Screw wrestling, I hate wrestling.
Speaker 2:Um, but then in 2017, I actually went back as a coach and coached at the high school that I wrestled at previously, and I think what's so cool about that is that, if I believe if I had decided to wrestle my senior year, I would have hated it even more and I probably, like, would have despised wrestling exponentially more and definitely wouldn't have ever come back or wouldn't even been open to the idea of coaching wrestling. And I think, kind of stopping wrestling at the year that I did gave me the space to do a lot of the internal work that I needed to do for myself, so then I could come back as a coach and kind of recognize and see some of the other athletes that are struggling with the similar things that I was struggling with and be able to help them and speak to where they're at through that process a little bit better. So, um, it's, it's a it's a weird turn of events, I'd say, but I'm definitely thankful for how it all turned out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sometimes you don't see, like, all right, this is actually going to be a good thing in the long run, but we're not really sure how it's going to work out Right, all right, this is actually going to be a good thing in the long run, but we're not really sure how it's going to work out Right. And I think that that the fact that you got burned out there there's a couple of things right, that that kind of jump out. Number one is like we talked about how beneficial the seventies and eighties were for transforming masculinity. Right Now, the downside of that is, this is where it can get dark is that if you put all your, all your identity into the physical aspect of getting hyper-masculine, then if that is taken away, like, who are you?
Speaker 1:You know, and that's kind of what you went through, not through like, like I got injured a bunch, like in college or, yeah, college, and then in in later, but, uh, so I had to face that through injury, where it's like, well, who the hell am I now that I can't do X, y, z, right, I put all my identity in being strong, being athletic, being a football player, being whatever, and now I don't have it Right, um, and that's hard to deal with. Um, so it has to be, it has to be more than just the physical and you have to kind of face those aspects of you and and, and you know one, one book that's always kind of helped me with, that is is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, like who are you at?
Speaker 1:your core, you know, like he had everything ripped away, including his health, in a concentration camp no clothes, nothing, just standing there literally naked, uh in, in, as frail as you can possibly be before death. And it's like, well, who are you? What do you have? Like you have you at your core, so like really getting comfortable with yourself is is a hard thing to do, because it's hard to strip away all these external things, you know.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely Absolutely. And that's I haven't read that book, but like I've. So many people recently have been mentioning that book, so I probably should just like order it on on Amazon, but it sounds like a powerful message.
Speaker 1:It's such a quick read and it's uh, it's so digestible, even if you just got on audible, like anybody that listens to this podcast, if more than you know seven people do, hopefully, but, hopefully, but, uh, but like that is one that that will benefit everyone, regardless of what stage of life you're in.
Speaker 1:and in 2020, like with cops and covid and and riots and all that, it was like that was really uh, that was really instrumental for me to go back through it and really re-examine like what does this mean to me now versus what did it mean to me five years ago, 10 years ago, whenever I read it last, and that was really, really good, because I was looking at, like man, if we get forced to do, you know, uh, these things as cops, I'm not going to stay. What does that mean to me now that my 15 years of identity have been wrapped up in being a SWAT cop? Like that's a hard thing to pull apart too and be like were you just going to give that up? Like who are you without it? And it starts creating this, this anxiety, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, like you, you really have to know, like. No, this is a job, right, this is a sport, this is these things that I play right now, these things that I do right now, and these are seasonal, right? Uh, some seasons are long, some seasons are short, but, uh, but, it's all just me going through this. You know, as as as the person, that I am Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:Um. The other thing, that kind of jumped out is like not near as deep, but I think it's worth stating Um. Did you play any other sports in high school?
Speaker 2:No, well, no high school related sports, but I did doing CrossFit all throughout high school as like a way to train for wrestling. I did compete in CrossFit, which was super fun, and that's one thing I'll say. Like I definitely made it. Looking back, I made the mistake of thinking like, okay, I know what you're going to say already I love.
Speaker 2:CrossFit so much. If I only do CrossFit I'll be better at wrestling, and it makes sense that all the guys that beat me at wrestling spent most of their summer at wrestling camp and not at CrossFit. So there was definitely a skill discrepancy that I couldn't make up with burpees and thrusters and all that stuff. But that was the only other thing I competed in. I did one CrossFit competition and, speaking of like delayed gratification, I think this the one CrossFit competition I did was probably the greatest and most impactful example of discipline and delayed gratification that I've ever experienced in my life up to that point, cause I was doing CrossFit. Uh, so our wrestling coach had he was a police officer. He also ran like a police officer specific CrossFit gym that was like attached to the police department and since he was our wrestling coach, he would just bring us all in and so a lot of other cops were there and it was awesome. It was like a huge community. What department was it For? Roseville PD in Roseville, california. Yeah, it was sick. I don't know if they're still doing it now, but at least 10 years ago it was awesome. And so the community aspect of CrossFit and like getting after it with all those guys was really fun. And so I kept going. I kept going and one of the coaches there said like hey, there's a CrossFit competition coming up at the end of the summer. You know, you should definitely look into, look into doing it. And so me and my best friend, zach, was like dog, we should totally do this. And he's like, all right, let's do it. And so we signed up for the competition and I still have my workout journals from that summer and I can look back at my whole daily schedule, which was like if you looked at my schedule, you definitely knew I was watching every rich phoning video possible Cause if he posted a workout, I tried to do the exact same thing. And, uh, I trained all summer for that competition and there are certain memories that I have of people asking if I wanted to go out and like get pizza or if I wanted to go out to the movies late at night and stuff like that. And that summer I said no to all sorts of stuff because I focused solely on training for this CrossFit competition and I took it super seriously.
Speaker 2:I like I tried to do everything I possibly could. I would go to different CrossFit gyms and try to learn from other people. I would stay late and do extra accessory work. I would, you know, watch videos on how to like perfect my form on certain things to be more efficient in all of my movements. I like try to dot all my, all my I's and cross all my T's. And then, um, me and my friend Zach. He was training for it too, and we'd do some of the training sessions together, but a lot of it I was training in my garage by myself. And so we show up to the competition and the only two people in our division is just me and my friend Zach. So we were the only only guys, uh, in the competition for our division. We were in the teenager division. What?
Speaker 2:year was that this was 2013. So it was the fittest of Roseville competition in 2013. And so I took it super serious, like I'm going to be the fittest teenager in Roseville. All these other teenagers are getting smoked. And then we show up to the competition.
Speaker 2:It's just me and my friend, me and my friend Zach, but I go through the competition and it's just me and my friend, me and my friend Zach, but I go through the competition and I crushed it and I won and it felt amazing to like hip. They gave us the some of the workouts before the day of the competition, so I tested some of these things and sort of like PR basically on every event, and then to stand on top of the podium at the end of the day, like that felt amazing and it made all the times that I didn't go out and have pizza with my friends, all the times I didn't stay out late, all the times I went to bed early, it made it feel so much better and it was like the sweetest, most intoxicating feeling of all time, and so that was like the only other thing I competed in in high school outside of wrestling. But I'd say that competition probably had a greater impact on a lot of other areas of my life, I'd say more so than some of those other wrestling competitions did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, crossfit, like. I ran my CrossFit gym for like eight, nine years and, you know, on top of being a cop and man, I learned so much about so many things movement mechanics, different. You know that's where I got introduced to the conjugate system and all that kind of stuff like Olympic weightlifting. You know that's where I got introduced to the conjugate system and all that kind of stuff like Olympic weightlifting. All of that got to train with some amazing people, right, people that I should have no business like having conversations with, right, um, but what I found, and and I'd love to hear your opinion on it uh, is that the addictive nature of the intensity, because it it's so hard and but it feels so good you know what I mean and it becomes like I want to be destroyed every day because that means I'm better, that means I'm working hard, that's like that is gratifying me in the moment, and it just overuses your nervous system.
Speaker 1:You over tap the well, like you can only tap that well so many times and then it burns you up Right. Then you start having adrenal issues, uh, sleep problems, recovery issues. You can't just dig yourself down into a hole without any recovery, right, and especially if you are, uh, older. Like that same timeframe, I was training for regionals right back back in the day, like old school CrossFit regionals, you know. You know 20, 2011, 2012, 2013. Those were my years. That was my season, right, what region were you in?
Speaker 2:Central East. Oh, that was the meat grinder of a regional bro. That was, if anybody at least I mean you were there, but from what I remember it seems like whoever won at regionals is like we might as well just copy and paste that podium to the crossfit games. That's how deep of a well of competition. The central east.
Speaker 1:Was that? That was brutal back in those days, back in the og, the og crossfit days, because that was froning bailey um pancheck. They're all from ohio and uh, who else was in there?
Speaker 2:uh, graham holmberg was out with you, right, holmberg? Yeah, I'm missing out on him in Ohio too.
Speaker 1:Marcus Hendren was there for a while. Oh yeah, dude Marcus was a badass man. He was a stud. He only lasted like a year or so and then he bailed EZ Muhammad. He was in Tennessee, oh yeah. Yep, he was a stud. So, yeah, I ended up finishing in 2012. I ended up finishing 16th, I think. So I was like wow, and we took five that year to the game, so I was like 10 spots out right, or 11 spots out, so I thought that was a pretty big deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's huge.
Speaker 1:But so and then I made the assumption that I was going to be back next year and go to regionals and hopefully try to finish top 10. And I doubled down my efforts. I burned it down from 2012 to 2013, doing every competition under the sun, going as hard as I could, and that was the worst thing I could have possibly done, because I got fried and I didn't make the cut for regionals that year. And then I got injury after injury after injury and that was the end of the competitive journey for me. You know what I mean as far as CrossFit goes.
Speaker 1:So I would say that, looking at your situation, it's it's it's possible that the emotional burnout could have been from not doing a different variety of things. You know what I mean. Like energy system sports, like you chose CrossFit, which is super glycolytic, very, very intense, and wrestling, which is super glycolytic and even more intense. Right. So, like, the intensity is awesome and that's what we want, but at the same time, it's like, bro, we got to get you out of this mix so that we can do some different stuff and let your body kind of cycle and heal, you know.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely, if I I will say like one of the things that I I find that I'm so thankful for was that I did end up going back to coach at the same high school that I wrestled at, under the same coach, and I was able to help kind of like influence and tweak some of the mistakes that I feel like were made when I was an athlete, and kind of tweak some of those things to allow for a little bit more longevity for the athletes I was coaching on the wrestling team. Because when I was wrestling, I mean, once season started, there was like one month where you weren't allowed to compete, or there's like some weird thing with the school district you can't have competitions during this month. But basically once that month was over, it was competitions every single weekend all the way through until the post-season, which is where most guys would try to like qualify for for the state tournament and stuff like that. And so every single weekend we were just getting smashed. We're traveling, you go wrestle for two days, come back, you like just basically be a vegetable on Sunday and then you go right back into hard practice on Monday, and there was at least from my perspective didn't seem like there's a whole lot of periodization with how the training was done. It was all intensity all the time, competition, which I think is great within a team.
Speaker 2:I do think that sometimes comp, the the emotional burnout from competition, can sometimes get crazy, crazy high, and so I think that also needs to be periodized. So when, like properly structuring, when you have two guys that are like fighting for the one varsity spot, managing well, when you're going to let them like really beef it out and practice and separating them, so that way it's like they're not constantly just grinding each other to dust and then you follow that up with, well, what do we do in our off season? We just do CrossFit all the time, which is like the same thing same crazy, crazy high level of intensity. Uh, doing something slower and better quality made no sense because it was all about, like bringing your time down, getting more reps on your AMRAP, and so I 100% agree like pairing those two things for four years in a row definitely led to a lot of physical burnout, led to a lot of injuries for myself, led to a lot of emotional burnout, and I think what's cool is that one thing I tried to do when I came back as a coach was tried to periodize training a little bit better, to allow for kind of like um I mean people who are familiar with the conjugate system have probably heard like try to keep high intensity training sessions separated by about 72 hours.
Speaker 2:That doesn't always work out perfectly, but if you can at least have that in mind, where okay this practice? The intention of this practice is we are going to go hard in the paint, like crank the music up, like turn the heater on in the wrestling room, like we're going hard in the paint, but then we're going to follow that up with something that's a little bit lower intensity. Not that we're, not not that we're going to take the day off, but it's going to be more focused on skill development. Lower intensity, the music, even the music we put on it in the wrestling room, is way more relaxed. The intensity of like even how we're communicating with the athletes, of like okay, also back to the center and all that stuff. We could just kind of like relax a little bit more, make it more I don't want to say more of a fun practice, but it says there's more levity to it.
Speaker 2:We do that for a day and then that way they're a little bit more recovered to come back and hit it hard for a dual meet or, uh, another hard wrestling practice. And so I really tried to implement that a lot when I came back as a coach and, um, I think in a lot of ways I got some of that stuff right and I can definitely look back and see like, yeah, I definitely got some of that stuff wrong. Um, I maybe emphasized box squats a little too much with some of those wrestlers, but you know, as a coach I mean you're, I know you're familiar with this too Like you get fired up about something you have everybody do it, and then you realize a little bit later like, okay, there's some nuances that I could have implemented with that a little bit more but then you know better for next time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's no perfect map, and that's what I, honestly. What I love about the conjugate system is it's so applicable to modify, right, based on your schedule, your sport, what you need it to be like, whatever you need it to be, you can fit that system into it and you can use the principles of that, like max effort, like once every 72 hours let's try to separate those so we don't fry ourselves now in the middle of that stuff. Um, like, how do we do dynamic effort? How do we uh add accessory lifts? Like what are the accessory lifts look like? Maybe it's landmines, maybe it's barbells, maybe, you know, depends on what you need it to be. Um, so that I really, really, I really like, and then uh, and then dosing this is always the way I've tried to phrase it Like you have to take intensity as a dosage, right, it's almost like a medicine.
Speaker 1:Like you have to stimulate, like whatever. You have to stimulate the growth with the intensity. Right, it's not. Intensity is not the purpose. The purpose is to become good at this thing, whether it's wrestling, football, even powerlifting, whatever, or CrossFit. Like, the goal is not this workout, the, the, the stimulus of this workout is going to give you what you want. Now, how often do you need that? This is a dosage thing. Like if you take vitamin, vitamin C is really good for you, but if you take vitamin C every day, six times a day, you'll have diarrhea. You know what I mean. Like it's, it's it there. There comes a time when it's like all right, it's almost medicinal. Uh, it's kind of the way I look at it now. Um and uh, and overdosing that is going to like take you backwards.
Speaker 2:I love that. I haven't heard anybody break it down that way, but if you don't mind, I'm going to steal that, cause that that is a perfect way of thinking about it. Like you can definitely have too much of a good thing, and the vitamin C example is fantastic. Like you're right, there can be too many sets above 90% that can fry yourself. There could be too many sets of speed work that you do. There could be way too many sets that you do of repetition after work, and just because you can do more sets or you feel like you can do more, that doesn't always necessarily mean that it's going to be the most productive thing for you. And one thing that I try to when I have conversations with other coaches or even with some of the athletes that I coach that are a little bit more interested on the strength and conditioning side of things, I try to always bring it back to the VIP principle, and so V stands for vision.
Speaker 2:Having a goal, in my opinion, isn't enough. Like if your goal for your next jujitsu competition, your next CrossFit competition, your next football game, your next wrestling tournament, is just to win, like good, freaking luck, cause that is literally everyone else's goal too. So just having the goal to win isn't enough. You have to take it a step further and start really thinking about okay, what's the vision for this training camp, what's the vision for this football game, what's the vision for this wrestling tournament? And that vision is going to be specific to you and what you need to do to be able to achieve that goal. So one guy's vision may be hey, like, I'm really strong in wrestling in a standing position, but I kind of suck at bottom. So my vision is to really make sure that I keep the matches standing and stay on top and then in practice, I'm going to work on getting better at defending on bottom position. The vision for a certain workout may be hey, I definitely need to get stronger. Getting stronger as part of the vision, but it's also to make sure that you have the right intention for all of those practices and training sessions. So, vip, I would be intention. So going into the workout, going into the practice, with a very clear intention of hey, the intention of this workout is we do want to lift some heavy ass weights above 90%, but only want you to hit like one to two reps maybe, so like you work up to a heavy single, hit something heavy. If you feel really good and want to go for a PR, take that second set, smash that PR and then we're done. We're not going to like blast our arms and like completely destroy ourselves and get crazy, do a ton of extra volume, because that's not the intention of this one workout. In a wrestling practice context, that may be. Hey, the intention for this workout is to drive up the intensity and we're going to push it. We got 90 minutes on the clock but we're going to go super hard in the paint. Ultimate high intensity for 90 minutes. That's the intention for today, but the intention for tomorrow is to bring the intensity all the way down. So it's going to be a lot of play, wrestling, skill acquisition stuff, very, very low intensity and then P for VIP would be purpose, and I think that is.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of athletes take the first step of understanding and creating a vision they can sometimes get into, like setting the right intention for a given training session.
Speaker 2:I think it's important that athletes take a one step further and do a little bit of work to understand the purpose of what they're doing.
Speaker 2:Now I don't necessarily think that every wrestler needs to go to Westside Barbell and be a Westside Barbell certified coach. But they should understand the purpose of why they're doing a heavy trap bar deadlift. They should understand the purpose of why they're only putting 50% of their one rep max on bench press and moving the bar really really fast. If they can understand the purpose a little bit more, I believe that that helps them match the intention of the workout, the intention of the practice, a little bit better and I think that leads to greater results over time. And so I love what you said about that. All these things are doses and so if you have the right medicine or you have the right prescription that you need to successfully fulfill your vision, you can then match those dosages up with the right intention for each of those training sessions or practices and you already know the purpose that those dosages are going to serve you in your athletic development, or you know fulfilling your vision, whatever that may be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that VIP. I'm actually going to steal that so go for it Well.
Speaker 1:I'll trade, you Deal, even trade. So something that kind of you know jumped out at me with that was, like you know, vision, vision, intention and purpose and I think a lot of coaches do this well, but I don't think that they understand how important it is is that, like we need all of the short-term, the shorter-term stuff like you laid out, like why are we doing box squats today? Why are we lowering intensity tomorrow? Like what's the intention of each session? But also like what is the purpose and the vision and and the intention of doing this at all? You know, Um and I think that helps with burnout too is like why are we doing this sport? Like why do we do any sport?
Speaker 1:The goal is not to just be good at the sport, and this helps with with identity based winning and losing. You know where it's like not to say wins and losses don't matter in competition, because I think they do. I'm not like everybody gets a trophy kind of guy at all but at the same time, the goal of being good at wrestling or football right is not just to be good at wrestling and football, it's to get all of those other personal development, developing skills that delay gratification. You know, discipline, hard work, like all of those things which will take us and project us into being better people when we're done with this season of life, the transferable, the transferable skills that we get from that. And I think that's that's really important too, because if you don't like, if you fail to do that, then you get emotional burnout, physical injury, you know, like confusion as to who you are, and and even, and even if I heard Travis mash, I think, said this, I think it was Travis mash um said that like he broke the world record squat and then the day after was super depressed.
Speaker 1:It was either mash or winning, I can't remember which one, but either either way, like crushed a world record the next day, deep depression, it's like you should be on top of the world. Why? Why do you feel like dog shit now after you just did the thing that you spent your whole life working for, and it's like, okay, well, that was the only thing, that was the only thing that you were doing it for, right? So now, now, what you know, so I think that all plays into you know, building a lifetime of successful mental health. You know, so I think that all plays into you know, building a lifetime of successful mental health. You know inside of physical health.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I heard this was around the Olympics and I can't remember where I heard it, but I heard someone say that the happiest person on the podium won third place and I think that's kind of like a sobering reality. Like the first place guy, when he wakes up tomorrow yeah, there definitely is like winner's depression. Like you, you sacrifice so much for something and the journey was so intense and you finally succeed, and then it's like, okay, what do I do now? The second place person has a similar level of distraught because they sacrifice so much and they got so close and just fell short right at the end. Third place guys he's like dog, this is awesome. Like I sacrificed so much, I ended on a win. Like, yeah, I got more improvement, I got more things that I can do next time. But like I'm, I'm chilling, this is great, and I think you're right. Like, if we can look at like, why do? Why is football such an integral part of high school society? Why is wrestling in other areas of the country an integral part of, uh, high school society? Or even when post high school or post-college, like the CrossFit boom, or now I think we're even seeing a little bit with the jujitsu boom or high rocks and um, all that stuff.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of these things they're physical but it really is like a great form of personal development that we can't always get from just reading books and just listening to podcasts.
Speaker 2:There has to be a point where we take the stuff that we listen to and the stuff that we read which I'm a huge bookworm, I'm a podcast fiend, I love all that stuff but we do have to physically put those things to the test and there isn't always constructive ways to put those things to the test.
Speaker 2:I listened to a podcast where one guy he was in jail, I think for 10 years, and then he was doing like a Q and a after jail and someone had asked him. He said like I feel like I need more adversity in my life. Like should I just like voluntarily go to jail? He's like no, do not do that. Like that's like I know what you're, you're thinking that's not a great idea. Like there's other things, there's more productive things that you can do to challenge yourself and personally develop yourself. But books and podcasts are great, yet there has to be that third element where we physically put all that stuff to the test, and I think football, wrestling, crossfit, jujitsu, those crazy ultra marathon runners powerlifting strong man all that stuff can be a great Avenue for per the, for it could be a great physical Avenue for the personal development.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's perfect that you said that, cause that segues into the next thing.
Speaker 1:I want to talk about physical challenges, doing hard things and physical danger and and the seek for adventure, like I think those are.
Speaker 1:Like you talk about hero's journey, just Campbell's work, or hero's journey and the hero with a thousand faces and and those things with a thousand faces and and those things are found within that and that story is within all of human history, right, so you can't get outside of that, even if you tried, right, so so, so, in terms of tactical athletes, right, I know you're a specific jujitsu coach, but I see a lot of overlap with the training for jujitsu and and grappling specifically with the training for tactical athletes. So how, and to go along with what we just said about you know, hero's journey and physical challenges and adventure, there's a huge aspect, like you know, you talk to cops, firefighters, military guys, and if you break it down enough, like you get deep enough to like, hey, why'd you get, why'd you get on the job, like, why did you decide to do this? It's really like adventure, you know. So how do you take the training systems and apply, like what you do with jujitsu, like what's the overlap between that and tactical athletes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, thankfully I've had the pleasure of working with a lot of different tactical athletes, since, like nowadays, it seems like a lot more cops, a lot more first responders are getting into jujitsu and I've even seen like the firefighting community start to get into jujitsu a and I've even seen like the firefighting community start to get into jujitsu a little bit more as well.
Speaker 1:So there has been some great overlap and that's just because they want to be cops, man, that's, that's the only there you go, there you go.
Speaker 2:So I think the biggest thing is and I know you know Louis Simmons talks about this, uh, there's a lot of other great strength coaches that talk about this I think building a big base of general physical preparedness first is huge for tactical athletes and, um, there are pros and cons to that, because building a big base of GPP does take some time and that can be sometimes a little discouraging.
Speaker 2:So there have been um. There's one guy that I'm working with right now. He's actually competing in jujitsu this weekend. I've been working with him for two years. He's a cop in Southern California and a lot of the training that we first started doing was just building a huge engine and so he had already been a cop for a while. So he'd kind of been out of the academy for a little bit.
Speaker 2:And I'm not super familiar with how all of this works, but just from some of the conversations I've had, it seems like some police academies that guys go through like they do get in pretty good shape. There's a lot of running, there's a lot of physical stuff, some, of course, things same thing with the military that ends and the onus and responsibility for maintaining a lot of the, those physical qualities. Once it lands back on the individual, sometimes those things start to dip a little bit, and so when working with a new tactical athlete, sometimes I just look at like, okay, how much has this person maintained whatever they've built up from the academy or from basic training, and how much of that do we need to get back that big base of general physical preparedness, so base level of conditioning, base level of strength, not necessarily like doing a ton of max effort stuff, but just like, can you do, you know, five sets of five on squats, five sets of five on bench, five sets of five on deadlift, and maintain proper form and technique, all that stuff? Can you, farmer, walk? You know at least your body weight? Can you, um, if you have access to sandbags, can you do stuff like that?
Speaker 2:Then, once we've kind of spent some time building that base, then we can start to pick at, like, different things that are their individual weaknesses. So there was like, well, actually, with the guy that I was um, uh, mentioning earlier the cop from Southern California, he was telling me like, yeah, like lately I've had to do a few more foot pursuits, and so we started implementing some things to work specifically on that part of his energy systems, that part of his conditioning. Now that he's made detective he said he's doing a lot less of that and he's also doing jujitsu. So we still maintain some of that stuff because we should all be able to like sprint and go chase somebody down if we need to. But there's a lot less emphasis on that because that isn't an integral part of his job anymore.
Speaker 2:And so I think really, at least in my experience, it starts with building that big base of general physical preparedness. Then, once that base is built, then we can kind of divvy up certain goals and different things based on what the individual is. Weekend or, if you know, there's like some firefighters that I've worked with, that in fire season, like they're locked in on fire season. When fire season ends they're all in on jujitsu and they try to like cram a bunch of jujitsu tournaments during the wet season and stuff. So sometimes goals will shift towards that. That's typically how I look at that tactical stuff.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I'm just actually making a couple notes.
Speaker 1:No, no worries, You're good, all right, cool, yeah, I really like that. So, like you're looking at, and the way I would phrase it is like as just keeping it in law enforcement, because that's what I know best is, uh, there is a base level of of physical skills and competencies that we need to just be a cop period, right, and I would say that should be on your day of graduation. Whatever you are able to do, it should be the low bar from from everything, right, physical skills. You know, endurance might change a little bit because they run the shit out of you in the academy, but base level like you should be at, like this was the barrier to entry was getting through whatever academy is. Whatever you have now is your base level and now we're adding on from that.
Speaker 1:So your base GPP most cops, even the ones that are not in great shape, are in passable GPP when they get out of an academy, right? So, uh, if you come in in crappy shape, they're going to get you in decent shape. If you come in in good shape, you're going to get in really good shape, right, it's kind of like the military, um, but that is that's like your, that's like your barrier to entry. So any training to get GPP should be either to stay at that spot or to or to get back to that spot, and then from there then you start layering, like all right, you're in detective, now here's what your needs are. You're in SWAT, now like here's what your needs are. Uh, you know, like you're in gang unit, you might have way more foot pursuits, so here's your specific needs. But we all kind of have our, our base layer that we kind of go back to when we change positions. Does that sound reasonable?
Speaker 2:Yep, I freaking love that man. I love that you mentioned uh you mentioned Travis mash earlier, one thing that he said a long time ago that has always stuck with me and I think it applies for any athlete tactical athletes, jujitsu athletes, football players, wrestlers, everything in between is, uh, he mentioned there were four things that that everybody needs to to have to have successful training. They need to know their minimums, uh, their maximums, uh good training partners, and lock in their mindset. And he said that, uh, he got this list from a Russian Olympic weightlifting coach. And he said the fourth one was you need PEDs. But Travis said he just replaced that with mindset. So, but knowing where your minimums and maximums are, he said a lot of people know. Like you can ask anybody like what's your best pitch, like I got that on lock.
Speaker 2:But setting appropriate minimums is equally as important, because that's kind of your litmus test to know if you're losing some of those athletic qualities or you're slipping in some areas. So if your mile time, your best mile ever, was six minutes, it's like great, that's your maximum, that's your PR. You probably should not let that mile time go over seven and a half minutes, like if you start, if you run a mile and it's like eight minutes, nine minutes. You got a lot of work to do. Don't let, don't let it get to that point. So setting like a hard deck of where your minimums are at with your athleticism, I think is is awesome. That's something I pulled from Travis mash and what you had just mentioned, anthony, I think is great. Like wherever you are at physically when you graduate from the Academy, like don't dip below that, that is your new minimum, like it's only upwards from here. I think that's freaking awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the way I phrase it to uh, it's so ridiculous. Like I've heard this from several people in different Academies, but I remember when I graduated that, uh, that one of somebody that that was an instructor in the academy said, uh, this will be the best you ever shoot. The best, the fastest you ever are like, the strongest you ever are will be right now. And I was like really confused on that. I was like, well, I'm 25 and I hope to God that when I'm 35, I'm on a SWAT team, I'm just trying to project out, you know, like I think I should probably be stronger. I think I should probably be stronger. I think I should probably be better at fighting. Like I think I should be better at shooting. For sure, like these skills that I just picked up, I shouldn't peak 20 weeks later.
Speaker 1:Um, so I was always really confused about that and, and you know things, things change as you age. Right, we're not talking about like a four year span, uh, of competitive, you know sports. We're talking about like a 2030 or career in law enforcement or firefighting, military, that kind of stuff. So as you change, you change as an athlete, so you have to be slightly flexible with that, I think. But I think base level, like, if you're running, you know, a 10 ish minute mile and a half, like here at the academy, you probably shouldn't sink below, too far below that. You should probably be able to like, do that at any given time.
Speaker 1:But I would ask, like, what do you think about like appropriate minimums? I love that Like here's our appropriate minimum so that we don't like quote train to the least common denominator and that's like I hear that so often makes me want to barf. But how do you, how often do you test to make sure that you are at an appropriate minimum Like? You obviously can't do it monthly like or or weekly like. That's inappropriate. But what's an appropriate like scheduled to test these things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I you know I'm not really sure, to be honest, on what the best schedule is for testing. I think sometimes it's dependent on the demands of the athlete. So for someone who's a competitor, really the best test is how well they do in competition. But we don't necessarily want to fill a lot of their training and training camp with a bunch of tests because you have testers and you have builders and so sometimes you can test a little bit, like at the start of training camp, but you don't want to do a whole lot of testing in the middle of training camp. You really want to focus on the building side. And I think with tactical athletes what's great is that you have a little bit more room to test more frequently. But you don't want to get quote unquote assessment happy and have everything just be a test and constantly collecting data and all that stuff. And I I struggle even with saying that because I do think data collection is important. I do think sometimes that some coaches maybe lean a little too heavy on that, where it's like everything's optimized for these data points that aren't all in. I mean, unless you're going to do the combine, you know there's, it's arguable that all those data points are as important as a lot of people chalk them up to be. So I think, with tactical athletes, I think it's good to have certain testers and certain builders, and you can even look at this as like exercise selection and you just rotate those in every couple of phases of training. An example, since that's what I'm most familiar with For a certain athlete one of our tester exercises is a sumo deadlift.
Speaker 2:We won't sumo deadlift every week, but we might sumo deadlift every other phase of training. So, like every six to nine weeks, we might throw in a sumo deadlift. It also depends on their competition schedule. If week six lands on the week that they're going to go compete, I'm not going to have them do some heavy ass sumo deadlift. I'll save that for after the competition. But I think every six to nine weeks, depending on what it is, you can throw some testers in there. I think it's also good to you could use builders as indicators for your testers.
Speaker 2:Like Ed Cohn talks about this. I believe Matt Winning talks about this. I believe Matt winning talks about this also Ed Cohn, who's one of the greatest powerlifters who's ever lived. He wouldn't necessarily test his one rep max uh, bench press every six weeks. But he knew he's seen enough times that if his close grip bench press went up, he just already knew that his regular grip bench press was going to. He just already knew that his regular grip bench press was going to go up. So he would implement some of those builder exercises for most of his training cycle. And just know, like hey, the correlation between close grip bench and barbell bench is pretty strong. I just added 20 pounds in my close grip bench press. I'm pretty confident that my one rep max bench press went up also. And so I think for tactical athletes like maybe you do a mile or a two mile every couple months, but if you just put in some consistent, easy zone to conditioning throughout your training week, you can almost look at that as, like hey, I'm starting to see a trend that my average heart rate during some of these runs is going down a little bit. I'm starting to see that my paces are getting a little bit faster. I don't necessarily need to time my two mile run right now, but there's enough of a strong correlation to know, like hey, I'm seeing improvements in these areas and this test is two mile test probably going to see some improvements in that area.
Speaker 2:I think one thing that I will say with tactical athletes that I try to focus on is being really careful with exercise selection, trying to find exercises that aren't going to bang guys up too much.
Speaker 2:So we do a lot of concentric only deadlifts, where they'll pick up the deadlift from the floor and then just let go at the top. That way we're not getting as much eccentric loading, not adding as much stress in wear and tear. Not that eccentric loading is bad, but sometimes it's a little bit easier to recover from a concentric only movement versus a movement that has concentric and eccentric loading. Throw in some sort of squat, but their elbows are a little bit banged up and their shoulders are a little bit tight. So we'll just rotate in a different bar, like the safety squat bar, spend some time doing that. So I don't really have a specific frequency on when I put in a lot of these tests, but I do try to make sure I have a good understanding of okay, what are the builders, what are the testers? We don't necessarily need to test all the time, but if we have the right builders we can kind of see the strong correlation with we make progress in these builder exercises. There's a really strong correlation that these testers have improved as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that a lot. That's um Shane sweat. Uh talked about that at a course I took from him. Uh, he, he talked about um, an endurance athlete that he was working with, who they were trying to reduce running volume. So they just used uh like 30 minute or 60 minute sled drags and they just just walking right. So you're walking the like like a slow duration, but you're still putting a, a timer on it and you're still adding load to it as you go to make sure that, like hey, if these correlates are going up, if you're getting faster with the sled drag and your your heart rate's getting better, and all these different metrics like it's going to correlate that when you go run, like it's all about force production, so you're going to produce more force for longer without having to, you know, bang up your joints and and do tons of volume uh, running, you know, especially as you go older.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. That's awesome yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, man, that's, uh, that's all awesome stuff. I love that using making sure that. So that would mean that you have to, like, have, have some type of an organized plan, have some type of like, like tests that you're going off of, and some type of correlates to plot along the way. So, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And I think that, just like, you can get as crazy about this as you want. If you really want to get, like you know, like nitty gritty on it, you can. That's what I love about conjugate system, too, is you can nerd out as hard as you want on it, you can. That's what I love about conjugate system, too, is you can nerd out as hard as you want. Um, and you know, for most tactical athletes, for most cops especially, like, I don't think that's necessary at all as long as you have a, like a rough template, uh, that's going to get you there. But like, that's where I think it's it's important that coaches like be be accessed and used for, uh, to help put this thing together.
Speaker 2:Otherwise, you just kind of float around.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think, as awesome as crossfit was with the whole idea of constantly varied, I do think that that, I think, in a lot of ways, had a net negative effect on a lot of people, because I think there there is, I mean constantly very.
Speaker 2:It's cool to be prepared for anything, but if you prepare for anything, you're also preparing for nothing. So you do need to have some sort of intention behind, like okay, we are going to plan out training in this way. We do want to see improvements in strength in this way. So it's not going to be a surprise when I squat this week and I also squat next week and I also squat for a third and final week after that, and so having some sort of structure and plan is super important to help, kind of. But if you want to think of it like funneling progress towards a specific goal, as opposed to like wearing a blindfold and spinning around trying to shoot a target, it's like, yeah, you might hit it, but you got 359 other degrees that you could be pointed at and you may miss it entirely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And then I think that also like, yeah, crossfit was really good for a lot of things, but it kind of got people sideways on a lot of things too. And I think that the constantly varied right part of the equation is one of uh, and I think that the the constantly varied right Part of the equation is is one of those things where most people that do constantly buried is totally random, completely random. And a lot of people that I talk to when I do these, like you know, um consults and and like hey, so what are you trying to rework some people's uh, fitness and nutrition? Like just picking out lowest hanging fruit.
Speaker 1:I ask like, hey, what are you doing for training? It's like, well, I don't know, I use this like random WOD generator that I downloaded. And it's like, oh man, like I guess it's something's better than nothing, but, dude, like we have to clean this up Cause. Same thing, like you know, they're trying to reclaim their Academy level fitness just through like random intensity, as hard as they can go, and it's just not sustainable or or good, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah it's. It's cool. Like I think the coolest thing from the constantly varied stuff was the, the idea at CrossFit competitions Like you don't know what you're going to, don't know what you're going to get or what gets pulled out of the hopper, yet that doesn't necessarily that's the competition, doesn't necessarily mean that that's the way everybody should train for 12 months out of the year, you know, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:Well, dude, that's. That's all that I kind of wanted to cover with you, like, off the top of my head, Do you have anything else that you wanted to go over? Or like where can people find you? Like, what are you up to? I know you had the?
Speaker 2:uh, what was it like? The collective or whatever you you had a while back. You're still doing that. Well, well, thanks, man.
Speaker 2:This has been an awesome conversation and I have been working on a ton of stuff. So I have the strength matrix training site, which has all the training programs, educational content and all those things, and for the last six months or so, I've been working on kind of taking that website and turning it into an app. So the app's not available yet, um, but it's in the works and I think we're only a few weeks away from releasing the beta test version, which will be really, really exciting. I'd love for you to be able to check it out once it's launched, um, but yeah, that's basically all I've been working on still lifting heavy in the gym, rolling hard at jujitsu, having a good time and, uh, you know anyone that has questions about any of this stuff. Probably the best way to reach out to me is on Instagram or YouTube at Joshua Settledge uh, is my handle on both of those and uh, yeah, anybody needs help with anything, just let me know those and yeah, anybody needs help with anything, just let me know, dude, thanks so much, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:I appreciate like you jumped on that call randomly with me and I wasn't even like a potential prospect and talked to me for a while and now you're doing it again today and it's like dude, this guy's like way too big to be spending this much time with me, but I appreciate it a ton.
Speaker 2:It's always fun to talk to you.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, man.
Speaker 2:You know, I will say, like just to speak to that, I feel I feel like so many people did that for me, like so many people that I felt like like I don't have the money to pay for this guy's time, but I'm just going to reach out anyway just on a whim, and there are so many people that just gave me their time and helped me out, and I think I really do believe that, like this type of stuff is the tide that raises all ships, like with what you're doing with SWAT and law enforcement and tactical athletes.
Speaker 2:Like think about how much of an impact that has on just the country and society as a whole. Like that's amazing. If all the people who are in first responder positions or military positions, law enforcement, if everyone's athletic development increases, they could do their jobs more effectively, which has a net benefit. And so to me, I feel like, if I can help contribute in any way and continue to pass, you know, pay things forward like, I'm always more than happy to do that. So I appreciate you taking the time to chat today. This is super fun for me.
Speaker 1:Awesome man. Well, thanks again and I'll be in touch. I got some more stuff I want to run by, but I'll, I'll. I'll save it for another day.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, you just let me know, we'll make it happen.
Speaker 1:All right, man See ya.
