Pass the CSCS by understanding Bio-Energetics w/ Professor Dr. Andy Galpin

Unlock the secrets of bio-energetics with Dr. Andy Galpin in a mind-expanding journey that's a game-changer for personal trainers and strength coaches alike. As we unravel the truth behind energy systems, we're getting down to the nitty-gritty of athletic performance, from the role of macronutrients to the misunderstood world of lactate. It's not just about hitting the gym; it's about hitting the right energy pathways for sport-specific excellence. Dr. Galpin’s insights promise to sharpen your coaching toolkit, equipping you with the science-backed wisdom to elevate your athletes' game.

Feel the intensity of an MMA fighter's training as we break down the complexities of conditioning for combat. We're tearing apart the typical training playbook and offering a tailored blueprint that supports the unique needs of these versatile athletes. From weaving strength sessions that protect joints to harnessing technology for optimal recovery, this episode is an all-access pass to the strategies that prepare warriors for the octagon. It's about fine-tuning the engine, not just fueling it, and we're here to show you how.

Step inside the ring of the strength and conditioning world where opportunities knock for those who persist. We share the trenches-to-titles tales of industry professionals who've carved their path in this competitive arena. Listen as we recount a massage therapist's incredible journey to working with boxing legend Manny Pacquiao—a testament to the power of showing up. These narratives aren't just inspiring; they're your roadmap to making a mark in the high-stakes game of sports performance. So, tune in and turn your career aspirations into your professional reality.

Want to ask us a question? Email email info@showupfitness.com with the subject line PODCAST QUESTION to get your question answered live on the show!

Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/showupfitnessinternship/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@showupfitnessinternship
Website: https://www.showupfitness.com/
Become a Personal Trainer Book (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/How-Become-Personal-Trainer-Successful/dp/B08WS992F8
Show Up Fitness Internship & CPT: https://online.showupfitness.com/pages/online-show-up?utm_term=show%20up%20fitness
NASM study guide: ...

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Show Up Fitness Podcast. We're great. Personal trainers are made. We are changing the fitness industry one qualified trainer at a time with our in-person and online personal training certification. If you wanna become an elite personal trainer, head on over to showupfitnesscom. Also, make sure to check out my book, how to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Have a great day and keep showing up. How to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Addy everybody and welcome back to the Show Up Fitness Podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:33

Today we are going to listen to Dr Galpin and he's gonna help you pass the CSCS focusing on bio-energetics. To become the best. If you want to become a great strength coach, you need to learn from the best. Get into the right environment, the right coaches and professors like Dr Ainda Galpin. Listen to this one. It's amazing. We start our next CSCS class in a couple weeks. We are in March, excited to help you pass the sucker in 60 days or less. If you'd like to sit in one of the live classes, which are also recorded within the Show Up Fitness level three portion, shoot us an email, info at showupfitnesscom or you can DM us showupfitness. Have a fantastic day and remember big biceps are better than smaller ones. Keep showing up.

Speaker 2: 1:24

Yeah, I guess where do you want me to start.

Speaker 1: 1:27

Where would you be directing your intro classes that you would teach, Like if you were to have a 30 minute little session and people someone were to raise their hands, and I'm really trying to understand bio-energetics, can you?

Speaker 2: 1:37

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1: 1:39

I know that's such a hard loaded question, right, but Right, all right, I'll say this.

Speaker 2: 1:46

To get the full picture, you can go to a number of the videos you were offering earlier on my YouTube page, and I would even include the video series on training for endurance. All right, this is really because this is really what we're talking about. The energetic systems pay very little relevance for things like peak vertical jump, so it's really an issue of maintaining work over. Time is where energetics come into place, and then what that's relevant is when you're preparing an athlete or an individual, you need to make sure that you're training them in what we call the right energy system before the sport or the engagement are going to be participating in, and so that's why understanding these things becomes relevant is to make sure that you're preparing them, typically for conditioning-based purposes, even a power sport. That has to be repeated multiple times. The same thing holds true. I guess the largest overview is bio-energetics itself is it's simply a term of understanding how we create energy for physical work, and you could plot this across two ways. So the first way would be where are you getting the energy from? And then the second one is how is that energy being created or utilized for physical work? And so, at the most basic level, energy is coming from your macronutrients, which is, for the most part, carbohydrates in fact. And so if you look at this, think of this as a funnel Everything is going to be kind of swirling in your body, is going to go in your stomach, it's going to come out your stomach and your blood and move throughout its way and eventually it's going to go into muscle. Now, once it's in the muscle, then it has to then be used to create energy, and so all that's going to swirl around in this giant funnel and that's basically going to be carbohydrates and fat and they're going to go through there. So the question then becomes how do we use those two items to make energy? And the easiest way to think about this is at the very beginning.

Speaker 2: 3:43

You have what we call a phosphocreatine or PCR system, so HP, pcr is how it's usually accumulated. So in that simple equation, you're taking phosphocreatine or creatine and you're basically using a one-to-one exchange. So one molecule of creatine creates one molecule of this energy, and we'll get to what this energy thing is later. That is stored intrinsically in the muscle and it is used. So the muscle you're using is a muscle that's being burned. So if you're contracting your bicep. You're using the phosphocreatine stored in the muscle fibers and your bicep directly.

Speaker 2: 4:17

Right now that is not energy, for a phosphocreatine is not coming from carbohydrates or fat. It's a little bit unique it comes from its own storage, so it's made within the muscle. That one throws the analogy up a little bit. But outside of that, as you start to continue to repeat that in general, you're going to move to using carbohydrates, and you can use carbohydrates in two primary ways. The first one is called anaerobic, and it's called that because anaerobic means without AN Typically before word means without, and aerobic typically means oxygen. So the anaerobic system means you're able to create energy without needing oxygen. It doesn't matter if oxygen is there. It can be present. It's just simply irrelevant to the equation. So it's not necessary, can be there, can be, not irrelevant. So the anaerobic system is a little bit better than phosphocreatine in the sense that it can create a little bit more energy per molecule. So one carbohydrate comes in and you can get three or four things of energy where phosphocreatin is one to one. But it's not much better. So instead of burning out after a couple of seconds, it's going to give you maybe some seconds to a couple of minutes of energy, and so think of this as something that you're going to use during like interval training. So you got to have burst for 20 seconds. You're going to run out of phosphocreatine in a couple of seconds and you're going to take a break and you're going to do that again. Eventually, you're going to have to turn towards carbohydrate, because the energy demands is simply too high. The downside is, the carbohydrates you use for anaerobic anaerobic glycolysis is what we call it are coming also from the muscle that's being directly contracted, and the total amount of carbohydrates that you can simply store in your muscle is limited. And think about it. Your muscle is only this big or that big or that big. There's just only so much carbohydrate that can be stored in there. And so the other byproduct of anaerobic glycolysis is the end result of that process creates mechanisms that cause fatigue. Think of this as, like it causes acid. It's not really what work, how it works, but if that's what helps, you think of it for now. And so it is fast energy, it is short, lasting and high fatigue.

Speaker 2: 6:38

Okay, well, great If I have to sprint 30 seconds and save myself from being attacked by a mountain lion or something, right, but I can't simply stain that output over minutes and minutes and minutes and minutes at a time. I'm going to have to have a different strategy. So if you continue to work past that, say 30 seconds, and you ran, say, half a mile in our meters, something that was a couple of minutes, two or three or four, you're going to have to switch overtly to the aerobic side. And we're still using carbohydrates, we're still going through glycolysis, but now aerobic meaning it requires oxygen, and so you simply have to have the time to inhale, bring in oxygen, get the oxygen from your mouth into your throat down to your lungs, exchange it across your lungs, take it from your lungs into your blood, putting your blood and move it to the exercising muscle, get it into the exercising muscle, get it into the mitochondria and help that make energy, and so it's simply a slower process. It's more effective. You get way more mitochondria, way more energy out of it, 10-fold more energy per molecule of carbohydrate. But the downside is it's much slower. Remember the anaerobic glycolysis can simply be created right then in the exercising muscle. So less fatigue, but slower. And so energetics are built, or not built, but they're fortunate in the fact that they exist in a way that allows you to do anything you want to do, but everything has a pro and a con. So whatever type of physical exertion you need, you have the ability to create energy. Sustain that there's just downsides. So we're still simply talking about using carbohydrates as a fuel source.

Speaker 2: 8:12

If you continue past that point now you can start to mobilize and utilize fat as a fuel source. And fat is not coming well, much of it some small amounts, but very little is coming from the amount of fat stored in your muscle. It's coming from the amount of fat you have stored everywhere else. So this is the first time we've departed now from this idea of energy coming directly from the contracting muscle. So fat utilization comes from everywhere throughout the body. It's just why when somebody loses fat after four or five months of exercise and nutrition, it's not like they lose fat only from the exercise muscle. It comes somewhat equally from the entire body. That's not the case with carbohydrate use. It's not the case for muscle creating. So the downside of fat is again that it's purely aerobic and has to be mobilized from the back of your neck and your wrist and your ankle and your toe and hamstring.

Speaker 2: 9:07

Move from there, put into blood and we'll throw out the blood. Take it up in the muscle, take it into the mitochondria, and then it creates even a 10-fold greater amount of energy on top of that. Now, the energy that all of those systems create is called ATP, and that's the only energy currency, not only with that exercise, but within the entire human body and all of biology. So anything that's alive has to make ATP. That's the only thing we're aware of that can be used to create cellular energy. So it's all going to the exact same end place. We simply have an ability to use that.

Speaker 2: 9:42

Now the amount of carbohydrate you have stored is fairly limited, because it's again coming from directly from the exercising muscle or, if you need to back up, your liver actually stores quite a bit as well, and so you can break it down in your liver, put it in your blood. Blood will circulate around and the muscle will take it out of the blood, kind of as it moves by, but your liver again, it's only, you know, yay, big. So fat storages are unlimited, and you know, just look around, we can see that's clearly the case of. You know how fat the story is. So fat is really best served as a energy supply, for backup reserve. So when you start to burn past your total ability to use carbohydrate. You have this unlimited supply of reserve as well as something to sustain us during very low intensity. By that we mean very slow demand for fuel. So what you're doing right now, sitting around sleeping there's no need for speed here. So why burn our limited supply of carbohydrates and we can use this unlimited supply of fat? So that's, in general, how biologetics work, and it's just to wrap this thought up and then I could go back and any place or move on.

Speaker 2: 10:54

It is when you're talking about training an individual athlete.

Speaker 2: 10:58

We need to understand the demands of the sport or the activity that they're in, and then we need to make sure that we're deploying the type of training that will improve the functionality of any of these systems.

Speaker 2: 11:09

And so if we look at this and you compare, you know, an American football player to a 5k runner, to an ultra endurance athlete, it's quite critical that the energy systems they need for their different activities are trained appropriately so that they can develop the mechanisms needed to do that.

Speaker 2: 11:31

And what I'm kind of jibbling around saying is every one of these systems are quite adaptable, and so if you want to optimize fat burning, that's great, you can do that and if you train those systems you'll get better. But that's going to come with the consequence, probably, of the anaerobic sign of the equation, which, for ultra marathon, fine, you don't really need to be super fast for 20 seconds, but you need sustained energy over a long period of time. If you optimize the fat end of the spectrum and you're working with an individual like the American football player, it's going to come with the consequence of physical speed, and so that is a downside of training in long sustained methods, because now you're probably you're probably undercutting your ability to go through anaerobic glycolysis. In summary, so this is why proper training interventions are important and this is why understanding these systems, even at the most fundamental level, provides you a greater scientific back and get rationed off of what the type of training you're doing with your athlete.

Speaker 1: 12:33

Was that the hope when you're in the acid that we're talking about. I know some people will get into the whole lactic acid, some people will talk about lactate, and can you just give us some clarification on the conversion? If I'm understanding correctly, it's essentially lactic acid is produced and then very quickly it's converted to lactate, and how that plays a role into that burning sensation that we may be feeling.

Speaker 2: 13:23

Yes, so it depends on how long you want me to go here, but the quick answer is it's okay, I'll do it.

Speaker 1: 13:32

Was that kind of close?

Speaker 2: 13:34

Yeah, yeah, close enough for science. So when you're going through anaerobic glycolysis or when you're going through glycolysis periods, so glycolysis, lysis anytime you hear that phrase, it just means splitting or breaking. Glycol is referring to glycogen or carbohydrate molecule, right? Well, most of the time you're going through this, you're going to be using glucose, and so glucose is blood sugar. It's the same sort of thing that you need to think about. Now, that is a molecule comprised of six carbons. In fact, what we call it a carbohydrate is because those molecules are simply six carbon chains, with one hydrogen or with one water molecule each, so it's a carbon that has been hydrated. This is one carbon, one water. One carbon, one water. That's all it is. So you got six carbon molecules.

Speaker 2: 14:22

Now, when you go through this anaerobic glycolysis, you're splitting that six carbon molecule into two separate three carbon molecules. Okay, we call those pyruvate. Now, that's splitting. Anytime you split an atom, you're either going to use energy or provide energy. In this particular case, it provides energy. It's called extragonic, so it gives off additional energy. That's the energy you're using to then go create that ATP I was talking about. So that's it. So it's very small from just a single break. Now, now you've got these two, three carbon pyruvate molecules that you have floating around and, for various chemical reasons, it's not really happy that way, and so what you're going to immediately need to do is shift those into the mitochondria and turn those into acetyl-CoA, which are two carbon molecules, and run those things through the Krebs cycle, and that's the entire oxidative side. That would be the mitochondria, that would be the aerobic side equation, or the slow glycolysis. So, coming back to the three carbon molecules, pyruvate, they're not going to sit around that way, and so what you're going to have to do is attach a hydrogen ion, and hydrogen is synonymous with acid, free-floating hydrogen. That's what we call it pH, it's potential hydrogen. That's what that means. So if there's a lot of potential for hydrogen, there's a small potential for hydrogen. That's a higher or low pH, and high pH for a low pH acid base. So what the pyruvate is going to do is absorb one of those hydrogen molecules, and a pyruvate that has a hydrogen molecule attached to it is now called lactate, so it's a very, very similar thing. So I honestly don't worry too much about the differentiation between lactate and lactic acid. It's exactly like you said and it's not a big deal. It happens some of this instantaneously.

Speaker 2: 16:03

I think the more relevant part of the conversation is one what happens with the lactate, and is that causing my fatigue? And so the answer to what happens to the lactate is numerous. One it can then be reconverted right back into sugar and use this fuel in the muscle. It can be shipped out of the muscle into the blood and sent to another muscle that's not being exercised. It can then re-convert that back into pyruvate, put that back into sugar and store it. So it's a fantastic fuel source. It can be shipped to the heart Heart is amazing at using it directly as fuel.

Speaker 2: 16:34

It can be shipped to the liver and it can also be shipped to the brain, and the brain loves lactate as a fuel, loves it, and this is one of the reasons why you'll see folks do things like. You'll perform better during finals week if you exercise, and the reason is lactate is quite productive as a fuel for your brain. So this is why memory goes up, cognition goes up. All of these things are in hands when people exercise. That's not just like magic. This chemistry reasons. The last part around the conversation is as lactate is simply thought of as a fatigue inducing molecule. It's just not true. I guess it's the most one way to put it. So is it relevant to the conversation? Yeah, as fatigue accumulates, will lactate accumulate, most definitely, but that is a failure of understanding causation versus correlation. So the two things are going up at the same time, but one is not causing the other.

Speaker 2: 17:32

So we have other mechanisms that we know causing the fatigue and they have to do. The bunch of things you really probably don't care about at this point. And if you go back, if you get to the part of learning and there's like a CSCS prep about the sliding filament theory and the role of calcium, the role of the Phosphogen in that system, those are probably explaining a lot of it, as well as the acid produced from the things like ATP hydrolysis. So eventually, when you make that ATP a molecule, you got to split that. That actual process Generates a ton of acid.

Speaker 2: 18:04

So those are probably the things that are causing more fatigue than than the lactate. It's just simply, when we started measuring these things back in the day, we would notice hey, at this level of fatigue very low, there's this level of lactate. At this moderate level of fatigue, there's a moderate level of lactate, and now G is really high levels of fatigue, high levels. So it seems to be that these things are Just one or one. Therefore, lactate is probably what's causing the, and that's, in fact, the original way that they found this was they were taking blood work from stags, so that this is the, the the undulate the.

Speaker 2: 18:37

You know what we would more look like is that deer over here in Germany. They're their stacks. So I think it was German and they just simply noticed, wow, if we had to chase and hunt one down, that lactate was really really high. And if it was not, and it was really low. So Fatigue and these things are being caused by lactate, and it sort of just carry there for a couple hundred years until we realized that's not actually the top. Yeah, it's. I guess the one way to think about it. I guess, to summarize all that is yes, fatigue is probably associated in large part to Cytic buildup. That's simply because the enzymes responsible for interview production Don't work well in acidic environment, so they simply stop and even the hydrolysis are splitting part of that ATP. That's the same thing that takes an enzyme. That enzyme doesn't work well in a really acidic environment. So you're gonna start to sense that buildup of acid. You're gonna send the signals to your brain that says register that as Pain and suffering, so don't do that anymore. Sort of stop.

Speaker 1: 19:38

Yeah, that's. It's always great just to be able to get that Almost cliff notes just because you know, I went to school University of Connecticut and got a green kinesiology and professors are just so great to be able to have conversations. I really feel for people today they're trying to get that from an esoteric textbook and you're seeing a corey cycle and as this, money, atp and then, and then great, you pass the test. But then can you actually train someone? Can you help the athlete? Can you help perform better? It's like you have, you know, you have like your St American football player and you haven't run in a bunch of miles.

Speaker 1: 20:13

It's like no, that's you know, you gotta look at the duration intensity of the sport and I think that's why I'm so fascinated with what you do as well with MMA athletes, because that's probably one of the harder athletes, because you're right in the middle of anaerobic, anaerobic and so like if you just trained aerobically well, you need to have that Maximal intensity when you're ground and pounded and doing that. So you know, for the next little block, I wanted to get more insights on how you specifically will work with your MMA fighters and and what have you found with the current science and protocols that have been the most efficient to helping them. And also, it's always case by case. If you have someone who's more aerobic, maybe you need to challenge them in a different way. But just talking a little bit more about that, I think, will be really fascinating.

Speaker 2: 20:59

Yeah, it is incredibly tricky sport. One of the reasons I became so interested in it many, many years ago is for that exact reason. It just didn't fit with the descriptions in the actual exclusive textbooks of it is. You know, sometimes two to eight second Complete physical exertions, maximal outputs, full body contractions. Think of, like the wrestling exchanges, right, trying to defend your life from someone trying to get on top of you and beating your face in that's. That's different than blocking a guy on the football field. Because I played golf football, I know there's just nothing like it. Right, defending your physical health is is quite different In a sport where no one's going to help them stop you.

Speaker 2: 21:37

That's the point, in fact, they're cheering for to happen. It's very, very different. But you got to repeat that over and over again for Five minutes and then you get a little bit of a break and you have to do that five more times. So it's just, it's 25 minutes, 30 minutes total of work, which is, you know, supposed to be on this other end of spectrum of aerobic, and then it's, but it's also, you know, five second burst and it's also the glycolytic and no stuff, because you're going to be doing sometimes 20 or 30 second grappling exchanges. So it's just very, very difficult to prepare for.

Speaker 1: 22:08

So, like would you, one of the things that we do a little differently with our prep courses, we're trying to get people. We get people to pass, it's pretty easy. And the second part is well, let's, let's try to get some application, because in the in the cscs text that this is, this is, you know, there's a lot of good information in here. You know there's a lot of good information in here, but at the same time, it's it's missing that big elephant in the room, which is the hands-on application. So we're really big into internships and being able to watch and see what they're doing and and being able to provide that application, because you know, unfortunately, with trainers today, a lot of them are, you know, put it nicely, they're idiots, because you know they pass the simple little test and then they just use their anecdotes and this work for me. Therefore, it's going to work for everyone.

Speaker 2: 22:52

Yeah, and it's scary yeah yeah, it is.

Speaker 1: 22:56

And so you know, with with the cscs, what we try to do is we give them a little more of this is how, like you just did one on last week on, how do you do one for like a skateboarder, and so we break down, like you know, the energy that would be primarily required. Here's like an example of workout. So some of the athletes who you've been working with, what would a you know if you're you know we got a big title fight on, say, you know, march, you know, maybe eight weeks out. So what does some of that in and out of day by day? It's so much more challenging because you also need to factor in like rest and and like I don't know if you do much with like hrv and and all that. There's a lot of so much more that goes into it versus, you know, football player.

Speaker 2: 23:39

It is is far more complicated the. So I work with professional athletes across multiple sports, pga. Golfers who are playing every weekend and they're playing four or five days a week and they're on the course for five hours Plus. They're going to practice. Right, physical demands are not extremely high, but technical demands. You have no room for error. Right.

Speaker 2: 24:03

If you lose two percent of your skill Because of fatigue or your focus, that the the whole round is over. You don't have two percent, the whole thing is gone. You contrast that to a sport like powerlifting. Or you could lose 25 of your technique and still be probably okay. However, you don't have the room to be anything but 100 strong. If you're 96 strong, the whole thing is over. Contrast that to like our baseball players. Depending on position, what position they play, you might not need to do anything besides six or eight second burst at most two or three times a game or a pitcher. It's 120 or so maximum bursts Split up over several hours.

Speaker 2: 24:52

So you have to think about all these different sports and you're like, wow, some of these are extremely high skill demands. Some of them are extremely high physical output demand. Mma is much closer To the physical output demand than, of course, something like a golf. If you lose 10 percent of your skill in a make, you're just fun. You could lose significantly more if you lose 10 percent of your strength and MMA, you're gonna be, you can be just fine, because there are other ways to win the sport with technique and skill and strategy. You know that there's no other way to win powerlifting. There's no strategy and skill really for the most part, and there's no physical output required for golf. It is simply a technique and there is, of course, your strength. You know. But you know what I'm saying. Right, there's strategy and all that stuff. What's shot to hit and club and but it's basically can you hit the ball exactly where you want to hit it In the shot you want to hit it? Yes or no? That that's all it comes down to. Right, no one's pushing your ball, no one's grabbing your arm while you're swinging, no one's like blocking the whole, it's just can you go out there and do it right? So, thinking about that in terms of MMA, the way that I break it down is you have to understand what are all the physical demands and then how do we prepare for that? So a golfer might Work out five or six times a week. Right, if they're not competing, but that's, that's probably, and there may be some physical therapy. But like, talk about real physical output five or six times a week and that would be quite a bit.

Speaker 2: 26:12

A baseball player If you're playing baseball every single day, you might also get a lift in a couple of days, but they're going to be very short 30, 35 minutes, 40 minute lift and maybe a little bit of conditioning, but very little. American football player you're going to play one day a week. You're going to practice, but they're not super hard. Total physical exertions two to three times a week. Because going through the game is so physically demanding you have got to push way towards recovery during the week. You don't have the ability to last a season if you're training for hard four or five times a week. All of these sports again, you're talking a single handful of physical exertion per week. With MMA you're going to double or triple that in a given week. You're going to have minimum 10 practices almost always, and some folks will be closer to 12 to 13. And so right away we've got a doubling of total training and we've got training that is very physically demanding.

Speaker 2: 27:11

Wrestling is like you're getting kicked and punched and hit and things are impacting your body, which induces a different level of fatigue there. So it's quite challenging. What you have to marry are what do we have to do from injury prevention side? What do we need to do skill wise and skills broken down into four or five different sports wrestling and striking, and jiu-jitsu and judo, and different types of striking and all these. Okay, so what I simply do is this if we're in fight camp and we have a fight coming up in March, fighting is number one, so we start there.

Speaker 2: 27:44

What do you need to do with your actual skill? Just like a golfer would say, like the first thing is how often do you need to hit balls? What type? Break me down, like, how many times are we in the course? How many pluses we did? What are we doing? Okay, great, so in that particular case, we're going to do three boxing sessions a week. We're going to do one Muay Thai session a week and we're going to do two reps or whatever the athlete likes to do.

Speaker 2: 28:06

Right, all right, now let me go watch the sessions. What are those things look like? And I'll not, but one of the major things I'm doing when I'm watching practice is. I'm looking at energetics. What systems are you getting into? So you'll see some folks go to wrestling practice and you'll see it and you'll be like that's actually kind of just like 40 minutes of modern intensity, sustained output, which is what you need.

Speaker 2: 28:30

If you're going to fight a 35 minutes fight. You need to be able to go at least 40, 45 minutes, and someone were very rhythmic. Right, it's just like normal ballman. It's not up and down, it's not hard, it's just really consistent hard work. Okay, am I on my mind and thinking, okay, she's checking off that box of condition, she's got that down, I don't need to go on now that she's doing that twice a week already, or good thing.

Speaker 2: 28:53

Other times you're going to like keep boxing practice and maybe they're throwing hard combinations and it's as hard as you can for a four or five punch combo which takes under one second, and they like to wrestle a lot and they go over, check me and the coach, you know, moves them around a little bit and then they say something and then blah, blah, blah and they're maybe doing a two or three second burst, resting for 10 or 15 seconds and doing that again. Oh, okay, she's got that combination, she's got that energetic system, so she's phosphor-creating, but she's repeating it. Multiple got it. So now I'm looking okay, sustained long output over time. Got that in wrestling practice. Short max effort, peak power burst, repeated over time. Got that checked off. And kickboxing Okay now what are we missing in the middle? Are we doing anything in like the 20 second domain where it's maximum effort for 20 seconds, resting and doing along?

Speaker 2: 29:42

Oh yeah, we're gonna get that in, probably not to get to, but that's in our sparring there or whatever. We do this okay. So all I'm looking for is then where is the last piece? And I may say, okay, you know, we're not doing anything. That's more like two minutes of sustained work, which is a higher cardiac output type of thing, two to three or four or five minutes max be able to. So I might plug that into our conditioning program and we're probably gonna do that on something that's very concentric, focused not a lot of eccentric.

Speaker 2: 30:11

So we're not gonna do box jumps and landing and running. It's probably like an aerodyne bike or a roller, where there's not a lot of impact, that we can get to a different energy system because the impact is so high on our sport. And then I'm looking at to round that out do they truly have anything that was strength training Maybe, maybe not. Did they have anything to make sure that we're getting all the other benefits of strength training, of joint integrity, balance and things like that? You know okay, so I may add those little pieces in and then I'll look for do I getting any true muscular endurance work, yes or no? So that's all I'm doing.

Speaker 2: 30:41

So, depending on the fighter, my program may be totally different depending on what they're getting or not getting in their things. And this is why understanding energetics is so important, because you don't just wanna be like. This is my MMA conditioning program. You can be blowing people out of the water and it may be a great program for the right person, but it can be a whole of a program for the right person because the training styles in their sports they differ so much.

Speaker 1: 31:08

And per athlete too. So I mean, it's a specificity where you relate to another sport. It's like a Tampa Bay's offense may not work for the diners' offense or whatever, so you need to be able to make it relative to the people you work with. Now, do you, during those fight camps, do you have just like you're talking about endurance and stuff but do you have specific days that you will just focus on resistance training?

Speaker 2: 31:31

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not days, but there'll be sessions. So when you think of MMA fighter, you think of, instead of thinking about it as like days, think of them as half-dates, so we treat the morning as like a whole different day than the afternoon.

Speaker 2: 31:46

So yeah, we'll do, depending on the athlete, anywhere between two and three strength, pure strength training workouts per week, depending on the person's an in-campus, different than outside of camp, of course. And when I say two to three pure strength training, those are not fatigue days. That there's not like a we're gonna do a circle of kettlebells and that's not what I'm talking about. They're in fight camp. You're gonna get that shit in fight. That's not what we're going after. When we have a strength training day, it is very low fatigue for the most part, and it is all the things you're not getting in training. So this tends to be very high in the force requirement, very low on volume, because you're not gonna get. How are you gonna simulate a 600 pound deadlift? Yeah, in practice. How are you gonna simulate a peak vertical jump? You're not gonna get those things right so that we're getting that in the spectrum. It's a lot of over speed stuff, so it's a lot of compensatory acceleration.

Speaker 1: 32:42

It is a lot of a.

Speaker 2: 32:43

You know potentially some agility stuff, depending the low back that stuff out, because it's you know, it is pretty fatiguing High power, plyometrics, that type of stuff, but all very low volume, very high rest and then some what we'll call joint integrity stuff. So it could be, you know, closer to the hypertrophy end of the spectrum, but you're talking like you know two sets or something like that and it's positional stuff. So maybe glute, glute, bridges or something like that, two sets, 10 at the end of the workout, or it could be maybe even some some bicep curls over at press and rowing. You know some pull-ups, something like that, but it's in camp, it's very low volume.

Speaker 1: 33:21

Well, volume and that'd be fascinating to see, like what that program would look like, because it's probably so non-traditional. It's not like oh, it's patterns and movements, like we're squatting, we're hinging, we're pushing, pulling me Like you're-.

Speaker 2: 33:32

No, it's pretty traditional.

Speaker 1: 33:34

Oh, is it okay.

Speaker 2: 33:35

Oh yeah, no, it's like they're gonna come in and they're gonna do all the normal warm-up stuff you would do move us up. We typically have some sort of corrective thing because they tend to not move. You know super well in terms of our athlete Right and jump, so something like that. If something's nagging them or something, we're working on a shoulder position or something, it's shoulder rehab stuff.

Speaker 2: 33:56

And then it's gonna get right into once they're good and thoroughly warmed. We're gonna move through general progression. So some speed stuff. It could be like a medicine ball slam and you know 20 pound, 15 pound medicine ball, and they're gonna do you know slams, three reps and something like that. And then we might pair that with an overspeed band assisted pull-up or something like that. Or we might pair that with a broad gym. You know one, two, three broad gyms, something like that. And then there'll be a lot of you know there'll be like a circuit, but it is, you know it's a trap bar deadlift and you can do two reps at 85%. And then you're gonna set that down, kind of like shake it out, and you're gonna do you know three projects. Okay, then you're gonna go over to the bench and we'll do a dumbbell bench. Same thing two or three reps, you know, not a max, max, but pretty heavy, and you can get that done. And maybe like a rotation med ball, you know punch or something like that. Okay, then you're gonna go over and do you know so kind of do you know push, pull, push, pull, something like that, and that's the kind of circle we're talking about. It's max and 10. And then you might finish that all up once that's finished by our corrective stuff again, whatever it needs to be single leg squat for 10 each leg or something like that, or single leg RDL to dumbbell, whatever other stuff we need to clean up at the end, but it's gonna be very much push, full squat, hinge, press, like.

Speaker 2: 35:20

In fact, I had one of my UFC fighters a couple of years ago when we were still on campus and just finished training and had to go teach class and it was my basically my CSCS prep transition class and I said do you want to come and talk to my class or whatever. And they were all excited. They're like oh, my God, you know. And they're like well, what's your training like? She's like we squat, we press, we pull, we hinge. And they're like oh, I'm like I don't want to tell you guys like we split squat. Of course we do rotational stuff and we carry.

Speaker 1: 35:53

What's your meat and potatoes? You got to stick to that we forgot to overload and go.

Speaker 2: 35:58

All right, we put it's a little barrels and farmers carries, and you know like it's strength leadership 101. This is an extremely high, high level individuals. Not, she's not her beginning of her UFC career. She's, you know, she's at the very top.

Speaker 1: 36:13

So they were like, oh, and I love seeing that with, especially with the MMA world, because you do see a lot more of the team, or is it? You know football, you have your medical staff and you have your athletic trainer, but, like with MMA, they're bringing in more professors and bringing in more dietitians and you're trying to get the elite of the elite to try to get that extra, you know, quarter of a percent, because at the end of the day, that can put you on top of everyone.

Speaker 2: 36:37

So yeah, some do some. Some are still pretty bad, but I'm sure most are pretty bad.

Speaker 1: 36:45

Right.

Speaker 2: 36:45

Some are trying to get there.

Speaker 1: 36:47

Do you just, you know, obviously not calling it one up, but do you sit like what are some of the things that you see that are kind of like, oh, just Well, we still have?

Speaker 2: 36:55

we still have some of the problems. We've been fighting in the sport for 20 years. When you've got wrestling coaches from 1974 that still want to run the weight cut and you got you know the oh. I fought in the UFC in 1992. I don't have to diet for a fighter. You know like we have a lot of that crap. So you're just like, oh, my goodness, what are you doing?

Speaker 2: 37:16

You have a lot of managers who want to get involved. You know I mean that's true of any professional sports Sometimes you just get really bad folks. You get training partners that I've been doing this for 10, 25 times. I know how to. You know, let me do your strength and dish thing Like I know how to get you great work. I'll get you in such great shape. You're like you have no idea what you're doing, right, you, besides getting somebody super tired, but it's not you know qualification for this field anymore.

Speaker 2: 37:41

So you have a lot, a lot of things like that, and that's it's because you don't have teams in the sport. They're all individuals, and so if you know a fighter wants to bring on and wants a physical therapist on board, wants a sports med staff, wants a dietitian lens, they got to pay all those people out of their own pocket.

Speaker 2: 37:59

And then there's just not enough bread to spread, or a team you're. You know if you're paying a physician 300 grand to be a team physician, or that's probably low but if you pay enough to say a dietitian, 200 grand to be to work with 50 guys well, that's kind of like everyone spits the bill a little bit, but when it's MMA fighter, you're the only one to pay the bill and that's why you're bringing on all these people.

Speaker 2: 38:18

When it's coming out of your pocket, it's just so. The numbers don't work very well. So it's either the elite elite that can afford it or you know one that can kind of work, deals with little individual people, but for the most part it's. It's difficult to be a full team unless you're at the very top. Even in the UFC the numbers aren't really there.

Speaker 1: 38:37

That's fascinating, cause I mean it sounds like it's pretty much like every other sport. Then you're going to get people that bring on their their buddy, who's a trainer, and let me show you how I do it, and you're just doing Instagram stuff and you're like what the hell and? And that athlete can just be amazing and so he can win, and then, therefore, they will associate that training with why he got to where she got where they're at, and it's that's what's frustrating from the, when you actually implement the best scientific principles as of today, it's just like so far off.

Speaker 2: 39:05

I can say this, though it doesn't take very long for the athletes to figure out the people that know what they're doing and the people that don't, in terms of the scientific background. So if you do walk in with a little bit of scientific background, you do need to learn to know what you're doing, right. So just because you're taking your CSCS doesn't mean you know how to coach a UFC fighter, right, oh yeah. But once you've learned to start, you know how to coach. It doesn't take long for them to figure out. Like. I'm not going to, I'm not doing that like fighter, I'm going to work with Coach Chris like he's and then.

Speaker 2: 39:35

So it will show pretty quickly. So if you ever find yourself in that, you're not usually got to fight those battles very long because they're going to be like, oh, and they're going to leave your workouts and be like, oh, wow, and you're going to do a month of your training and you're like, wow, god dang, my shoulder doesn't hurt anymore and they're going to leave you know their buddy Tommy's workouts, who's an ex-pro fighter, and they're going to just feel broken as hell for a friend. It's not going to take them long to figure out. So my point, I guess, is the same it is worth your time in terms of like this stuff, it does matter and you'll last longer than other folks.

Speaker 1: 40:10

What's the last little thing? I had a question for you. I'm always curious. You know who I can inspire as you like. Who do you constantly learn from, because you know you're doing such great stuff for the field of you know strength and conditioning and your professor as well. But, like I was, like I've got Dr Kramer who's my professor, and I always ask, like you know, who are you learning from and who keeps you going, motivates you?

Speaker 2: 40:33

Oh my gosh. I am fortunate to have colleagues across many fields. I think, that's one of the things that makes me a little bit different, and so I'm not just staying in the lane of you know, nsca, nothing I love, it's my home right.

Speaker 1: 40:49

That is 100% my home.

Speaker 2: 40:52

But I mean I have my friend, cody Burkhart, who's at, works in NASA and runs the Hymn Performance Division there and we have a lot of side ventures and some really crazy stuff we're working on. I've got colleagues in the aerospace industry like Cody who are pushing the limits of performance. I work closely with the UFC PI's Performance Institute and all of the dietitians and sports scientists they have out there. I've got some of my former students all over the country in the NBA and Division I basketball their private strength and conditioning coaches, high performance directors for NFL players. So I'm pushing and pulling on all those individuals. Some of the professional athletes I work with have just unbelievable people on the team, so it's a really good back and forth. I mean I could certainly give you tons of names here if you want, but I'm happy to do that too. So I've got a long place.

Speaker 1: 41:51

A couple of people I know, like I think it's Corey Peacock, oh sure.

Speaker 2: 41:55

Corey yeah.

Speaker 1: 41:56

So I'm always fascinated just to look at other people.

Speaker 2: 42:00

Let me give you tons of names of people. Sorry if I drop your, forget your name, I assume I can never remember this.

Speaker 1: 42:06

You know, I said Cody Burkhardt's just incredible.

Speaker 2: 42:09

A lot of these people don't have social media, by the way. They're like if they do, it's very minimal or almost a little burner accounts for the most part, but Cody is on social. Cody's fantastic. I love Phil Daru's stuff. I love everything Corey does down there. Roman Fulman at the UFC PI, clint at the UFC, pi, duncan at the UFC PI those are all fantastic. I've known Lauren Landau for many, many years. I absolutely love these doing.

Speaker 1: 42:39

Do you know Duncan pretty well, yes, I do Duncan French right? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that he was my back in 2004,. But he was a.

Speaker 2: 42:47

Yeah, he was with Kramer at both states, following him to Yukon.

Speaker 1: 42:52

Yeah, I was sure that was him and I'm like, yeah, duncan, I reached out to him and he's busy, but that's crazy. Okay, yeah, he's great.

Speaker 2: 43:01

Reed Reel in China is outstanding. Ian Duncan in Australia is incredible sleep science. I've had an unfortunate work with him A tremendous amount. Brandon Harris in Phoenix is an unbelievable strength conditioning coach. Luca up in Seattle is incredible. I love all the Luca stuff that he does and Vigor Sports up there. Joel Jamison, of course, with conditioning is outstanding. Matteo Dr Capo nutrition out here in LA is another one of my colleagues who I love. Dan Garner with nutrition is just a rocket scientist.

Speaker 2: 43:42

He's unreal in terms of nutrition. Gabe Rengel, one of my former kids out there, ramsey Ninjem at Kansas, this is doing he's always done great stuff. He was at the Sacramento Kings before that. He's Patrick Ward with the Seattle Seahawks is awesome. I mean, those are just like quickly off the top of my head, amazing. And then, versus it all upbringing, I liked one of your comments to someone you do.

Speaker 1: 44:11

You were doing a little professor Q and A and someone was asking what's it gonna take to be a good strength and conditioning coach? And, as you alluded to earlier, you're talking about how you can't just get a piece of paper and go in there and all of a sudden you think you're gonna be great. You need to work with people. But you said someone's really great. You said be relentless. So what would be that little elevator speech that you would give to a new aspiring strength and conditioning who's talking with someone who's been doing this for a while? What would you give them?

Speaker 2: 44:40

Yeah, a handful of things. Every time I get people reaching out with these kind of like career advice questions, it's always the same answer. So for number one, you already said relentless. That's it right. This field is bred on people who are simply ready to outwork everyone else. Now, that doesn't mean you have to have a lifestyle that it used to be. I mean, you probably know, 20 years ago, if you want to be a strength and conditioning coach, you were getting up at 4 am, you're getting home at midnight and you were uncalled 24, seven, seven days of holidays. Right, that doesn't exist anymore. It was totally untenable, just not sustainable. That's not the lifestyle anymore. But if you want to get in, you want to work professional athletes.

Speaker 2: 45:23

I remember actually, when I was in college I was super fortunate. I got to go to the university of Washington and spent a couple hours just following Bill Gillespie around. Bill Gillespie is in his 60s and just benched plus 1,100 pounds this weekend, so he's a monster Division one football transition coach and I went up there and it was like one of the coolest things ever happened to me. But he basically was like. I was like, yeah, I want to be, I think, a strength coach. You know elite athletes, football players, division athletes and he just looked at me that means college kid, I'm not physically imposing at all and he was just like, yeah, you and every other kid in the country, why the hell would I ever pick you? And he walked away and I was like I was even like offended. I was like that is such a it was the most amazing advice ever. Like why, why? Why would I pick you? You don't look like a strength coach Like you. You know you're not coming from any of my friends. Like why would I pick you? He wasn't being a jerk at all. Like he was totally saying like you have to differentiate yourself. Why, like you have? Everyone wants this job, everyone wants to work with athletes, Everyone wants to be famous because they work with somebody. What's going to make you different? So number one is like you know, the most executive thing you can always control is just outworking people, right? So the second one, related to that, is the answer is always yes, and that's part of your career. It does not matter how unrelated or how unimportant or how much traffic is involved. None of those things matter. If you get an opportunity, the answer is yes. As a college student. I was playing college football. I got an opportunity to.

Speaker 2: 46:57

I mean, I can tell you, I can tell you 500 of these stories of myself. Every damn time someone asked me like, how'd you get John wrong? No one, go from the world. How did you get whoever picked, like all these names? The answer is always the same, it's always I did 3000 things.

Speaker 2: 47:13

I did them way better than I had to. I did them early. I got them in before I was contracted to do paid or unpaid and 490 of those times it didn't matter, but one of those times it did and that's who I got to do this right. So you don't know. You have no idea if it's that person in the grocery store you're gonna react with. You don't know if that's the person you helped after hours. You have no idea who that one person's back. Oh, did you know? My cousin is the owner of the Rams? What, yeah, like all of my stories are like that. All of them.

Speaker 2: 47:44

How I got with my first training professional athletes with Mark Birstagan early 2000s, when these things didn't exist. Like all of these were because of three steps before that it's something to somebody who didn't matter and I wasn't getting paid for it probably. And I was getting up at four in the morning, driving an hour and a half to Portland to open up a gym at 515 for a bunch of people who I didn't care about it, absolutely I couldn't and then driving back and playing college football, all those things right. So be relentless. The answer is always yes, it doesn't matter. Always over deliver, right? So if someone asks you to open up the gym in the morning, open up the gym. Open up. Open it up not five minutes, open it up 20 minutes early. Take out the trash. Yeah, I know we already paid somebody to do that. Yep, we did that too. Yeah, I went and organized this. I cleaned out the just over deliver. You're being paid to do A to A plus B plus C, until they tell you he stopped doing C. Someone else, like you're ruining it. Fine, what I also did this. I did this like hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. Part of it, that's right, but do that.

Speaker 2: 48:47

And then number four is always treat everyone like the other person you would put your entire life to meet. That's it. Like every single client that comes to the door, every person you see in the locker room, everybody. The eight maybe it's not the professional athlete is not the person to go after. But maybe their wife works out there too, or maybe they're, or you don't even know. Like you, simply, especially in today's day and age with tech, money, you don't know who's rich and you don't know who's real. Like everyone looks like me, like I look ridiculous, right, my wife always says you look homeless, like it's so embarrassing, but you don't know, right, and in general too, it's just a better policy. People are. It makes the world better. Right To just be nice to people. So I can tell you so many stories.

Speaker 2: 49:34

My friend was trying to get a career to basically massage therapists. Who's single had a brand new baby. His wife left, left him with a brand new baby. He had no job. He was trying to start a whole new career as a massage therapist and he was in the locker room with a YMCA and this old guy came in, super rude, big fact. I was like, hey, you're the guy that's show, that does whatever stuff, right, like very insulting to me. He's like, hey, I need you to fix my shoulder hurts. I didn't ask him, told him, didn't know this guy, he didn't work there, he was just like at the YMCA working out. Guy, didn't offer him any money, didn't pay him. So he was like, okay, did some stuff on him. He got a piece of it, just kind of grunted and walked by, didn't even say thank you.

Speaker 2: 50:19

Next day somebody shows up to the YMCA and goes hey, you're that guy that does that arm stuff or whatever. He's like yeah, he goes. Okay, great, I need you to go see my uncle or friend or something whatever. Well, that uncle or friend was a guy named Freddie Roach, and Freddie Roach is one of the most famous boxing trainers of all time and he's like really no shit. So he dropped whatever he was doing. He drove straight a couple of hours in traffic up to Freddie's house, didn't ask about how much of my pain, but went over there, worked on Freddie. Freddie was like this is incredible, manny's gonna be here in an hour. You're gonna do Manny in this camp and that would be Manny Pacquiao. So he became Manny's Pacquiao's massage therapist for not his Floyd fight but the one before.

Speaker 2: 51:04

So Manny showed up and he's like hey, manny, this guy's gonna do your stuff. And I was like okay, and Manny's like I feel fantastic. Okay. So we trained these days, just told, didn't even ask, didn't talk about money. They just said it. So here's the fight date. We have a suite, there's a you know the flight's already booked for you above the blog got him out there, didn't even talk about money, worked on him for the fight, came back and I think they gave him 50 grand in cash Right like after was just like here's an envelope of 50 grand, there's something like that. My point being and it came all the way back to that very beginning like most likely when you get situations like that 99 times out of 100, it's just gonna be a rude guy and you didn't get anything out of it, but you don't know.

Speaker 1: 51:45

Yeah some people call it.

Speaker 2: 51:48

That guy has worked with so many professional athletes now for years. It's ridiculous all because of that too.

Speaker 1: 51:55

Some people call it luck, but it's just that's why the name of my company is showing up. It's like you gotta just keep on showing up and then you're gonna get those opportunities to be quote unquote lucky. But then you know, I just appreciate your time today and you're awesome. Thank you for everything. You just do.