Episode 008 - Mike Lawless

Mike Lawless is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and the Owner of Lawless Athlete Performance.

Here's a quick overview of our show:
✅ Ascending levels of competition and being at the bottom of the totem pole
✅ Balance your resources and doing the little things that matter to get an edge
✅ Conditioning traps and how to properly develop energy systems for athletes
✅ Overcoming imposter syndrome
✅ ..and much more

For more information visit Mike's Instagram at @lawless.pt or

Please follow us on instagram @athleticperformancepod for more content and solutions to this podcast.

Transcript

M-2-peakfast: 0:05

Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.

Mike Lawless: 1:33

You know, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess, I guess part of it is jealousy or, or what that would be termed, but because the online market seems like it's so oversaturated. I like I'm on James's email list and he said, like, don't don't think that way because there's so many people out there to be to help, but. I feel like there's like two groups of online coaches. There's like this group that, you know, got into it and they post body online and, you know, maybe don't have the knowledge base that a lot of us hope that we do and, and want to help people. And then there's that group who. Like myself kind of feel a little bit intimidated, but have hopefully have the knowledge base to help a lot of people. And it's like when you see online coaching, you're like, well, I don't want to do that. I don't want to just like post what I look like online and then get clients from there that maybe aren't all that involved, but at a high price point. But trying to find that blend of using the knowledge that we have to help people and be attractive per se on social media.

Ryan Patrick: 2:50

There's, there's definitely a lot to be said. You know, this debate goes back and forth, like should, should a trainer, should a strength coach look a certain way? And does that extend to their credibility? And there's, I think there's plenty of examples of coaches who are in shape who don't know enough about training, and I think there are plenty of counterexamples of guys who maybe are not in great shape, but actually have a tremendous knowledge base. I think the average strength and conditioning coach like a D1 or NFL level is not like a physique coach. Looking type of individual. And that's, and I think that's totally, totally okay. You know, but gosh, I can't remember who I was talking to about this, but I think of, there's like two things that I think about when it's like, okay, I certainly want to establish. My credibility for my with the foundation of, I get results, right? That's, that's to me, number one, two is I still want to look the part and walk the walk more importantly, because I just, I don't like I don't like not living it. To a certain degree to me, it feels like there's some dissonance there, maybe some incongruency, and I'm just not okay with that. So for me, that's always still going to be a priority. And to be honest, I just like looking good and feeling good. Like that's okay. But the Steven Pressfield book, the art of war, there's, there's always one page and I, it was Karen I was talking to about this and I can't remember the verbiage exactly, but the essence of it is. You know, a professional does not boast, but that doesn't mean he's not going to throw down a 360 tomahawk jam just to let the boys know he still means business. And it's like, I can probably take this approach online, right? Like most of the content is going to be about helping coaches, helping athletes, helping people do their exercises better or get more out of it. But every once in a while, it's like, maybe I just show up and like flex. You know what I mean? And so I always think of, like, the Dr. Dre, like, Like, what about guns? You think I sold them all? It's like, no, we're still like strapped and we're ready to roll. So I don't know. That's just kind of where I am with it. It's like, I don't, I don't want the body to be the leading attractor, but I also am not afraid to remind people that like, I'm still getting it.

Mike Lawless: 5:03

Absolutely. And I feel like I can get caught up in either way. Right. Because of kind of a lot of the model that we follow. You know, we are so not picky. Picky is not the right word, but we care about. A lot, but I think what's been good from a lot of the people that I follow, and I think I saw it on Kyle Dobbs. This page was like, Hey, to a certain extent, we're making all of this up. But I think I think what I. I'm trying to find a blend of right now. It's like, yes, we're making it up and I don't have to be so picky about exercise selection, but I think there should be a base knowledge in a trainer or coaches model of knowing what Looks like a good exercise selection and, and progression and what does not. And that's like, that's what I want to convey on my content. I would guess.

Ryan Patrick: 5:59

Yeah. It's a tough line to walk, right? Because certainly I don't want to post technique that looks horrendous. And I see a lot of people, especially in like my local market, you know, they, they, they coach large groups of athletes. A lot of kids are running through the same thing and it's like, I can pick 5, things out real quick. Like, Ooh, need to fix that, need to fix that, need to fix that. And that's just how my coaching eye is, right? Because I want, I tell kids like when they come, I'm like, we, we do not have any fancy exercises. Yeah. There's no secret sauce here. We do the common things uncommonly. Well, that means we're going to take the things you've done or the things you've seen other athletes do, and we're just going to do them at a higher level. And they inherently get this, right? Because if I explain it in terms of their sport, like if you're a basketball player. Like emotion offense can be run by any team. This is not, it's not like this crazy concept. It's not like they're, they're in semi pro where they invent the alley oop, right? That's not what happens when you get beat by another team. It's, they just execute things at a fundamentally higher level. Or they're just more athletic, but still, I mean, it allows them to do the basics. Well, then the opposition. And so, you know, this line that we walk is you know, what is what is acceptable for now? Like, I'm not maybe going to get somebody into the perfect squat on day 1. So what. What kind of things am I allowing them to maybe not have perfected? And ultimately what you arrive at is like, here's a hierarchy of things that I want to do, but you have this sense of prioritization of, yeah, these things down here don't matter, right? His like hips a little bit shifted to the right. It's like the kid has no idea how to even like stabilize enough to, to go through this pattern. I'm not going to work, worry about a right hip shift, you know, or a loss of like five degrees of hip internal rotation. And so sometimes I think this, This tendency is very well intentioned, but it also becomes this like quest for Perfection that kind of interferes with like doing things just fundamentally like sound. Yeah.

Mike Lawless: 8:05

Yeah, I agree and I think if Again getting back to like well, that is my biggest beef with With those separations of those two camps. It's like well I don't, again, some of it maybe is jealousy because those people obviously have way more clients than I do at this point, but it's like, if you were, you talked about the big thing you pride yourself on is like, I want to, I want to be and walk the talk and look the part and also be based on results. It's like, if we're not moving well and we're not, we're not doing things over a period of time, we may get a quick bout of results just because we're doing something. But. Those results probably aren't going to stack up well for the long term.

Ryan Patrick: 8:52

Yeah, you know, with this in mind, I think a really important question that I want to ask you. And for those of you who don't know, Mike, very well, he is, I feel like you're slowly turning into Cameron Haynes, man. You're just like the do it all man, which is like, totally awesome. But I've coached Mike for a while, but Mike is. A guy who has a tremendous amount of discipline and structure in his workouts, he's a guy who is tactical with his own training and you have, you are probably one of the most hybrid athletes that, that I've ever worked with, meaning. You are insanely strong, especially when we talk about relative strength to your body weight, your engine, your work capacity, your endurance, your stamina, however you want to quantify that is just outrageous. You can jump high. You're pretty fast. Like, you know, if you, we look at like a, a radar graph of like your fitness attributes, or we're like creating a player, right. And we're trying to pump these stats up. Like you're pretty high in all of these domains and What I want to ask you is when, when you're writing your programs and you're thinking about development of either gen pop or athletes, what are some of the big rocks in, in your training program? What are these things that are higher in the hierarchy and more important to you?

Mike Lawless: 10:12

Yeah, I think I take that approach, whether it's a bias or not, because of my skills. And I guess what I was blessed with just being diverse it. I, I. I take that to both gen pop and athletes, so I think, you know, and Kyle posted this the other day about sports specific as well. So starting with athletes, like, I do not want to, in effect, change how an athlete is playing its sport, per se. I just want to give them the best training qualities I can possibly give them to allow them to improve at their sport, right? And I think a lot of us, a lot of us think that way. So, in that way, I want to be well rounded. I want to give them some base power, like, how do I set up a power exercise that is going to be the simplest way for them to improve their power so they can take that to whatever field or court they play. And express that. I'm not trying to change how they express it. So if that's a trap bar jump and I can teach that to a 14 year old in 10 minutes with a group of five people then I'm going to use the trap bar jump not to say I have anything against a power clean. I'm just going to. teach that that looks really powerful. I can progress that very easily. Whether it be reps or sets or speed of the bar, whatever it may be. So I, I just want to start with, let's do something powerful. You know, we talked about me jumping. I still do that even though I'm training for, you know, a triathlon. So that's where I start with my athletes. Like I want to make them powerful, but in a simple way. And then I think we want to look at strength qualities from a standpoint of squatting, hinging, pressing, pulling. I still do all those in my training. I'm not, I'm really going to look at the gaps in an athlete and, and make sure that all of those are, all those buckets are filled and then from a conditioning standpoint, I think that's where the It goes back and forth between the old school model of, you know, football coaches making people run 10 40s after practice every time. That's that's what my coach did in high school. And then the, the, the kind of opposite of like, we don't need to condition athletes at all because their sport conditions them. I think a blend of that because. You're maybe going to get some conditioning. I know Christian McCaffrey, it just got posted all over TikTok. I don't, it slips my mind who trains him. Brian, Brian Kula. That's right. But you know, the TikTok post was like, well, he doesn't do anything over five seconds and doing a lot of that anaerobic work, PCR work, because he does such a high volume of it is conditioning and all, all sense of the word, which I think fits me with thinking that all conditioning really turns out to be is like volume times intensity and if your body is able to handle The volume and the intensity that you're giving it, the levers of those probably don't matter all that much. Obviously, if you're biased on 1 extreme, right, if I'm doing really high volume, you know, slow work. But I'm an explosive athlete, like, no, I'm not saying that for Christian McCaffrey, but I'm saying if within your time domain, especially if you're an athlete, you have a certain amount of time to train. If I can. Improve your conditioning while not breaking down your body for your sport. I don't know if we need to get super specific about how we're doing that.

Ryan Patrick: 14:00

100%. You know, coaches always gravitate towards glycolytic work anyway, because it's hard. Most of, most of the athletes that come in that we work with, sprinting to that, I'm like, okay, we're going to sprint today. They're like, ah, shit. Like, you can just see it on their face because they associate, like, sprinting is really glorified conditioning for most athletes. Where we're, we're talking about a scenario where it's maximal intensity and very long recoveries yet. Most athletes. They're, they're good at going 90 or even 95%, but they don't understand how to get that extra 5%. And, and a lot of what you kind of went through there to me was like, it's almost like, I think about parenting sometimes, like make it easy to do the right thing, you know, because in really like to drive intensity as high as possible, things need to be simple because complexity, complexity just interferes with the ability. To raise intensity. Like those two things are definitely inverted. And you know, it's not saying somebody can't learn to do a power clean, but I think there's a progression for, for athletes to really use that at the highest level. And you have to understand that cleaning a barbell is almost half of an entire sport. You know, that in and of itself is like the sport. So, I love what you're saying here and I would like to, To kind of continue down this conditioning thing for just a second, if you don't mind you, so what are you going to implement with your athletes, knowing that sometimes the coaches may be get upset at the way athletes are performing versus what, you know, the other competing commitments that athletes are coming to you, which is presumably is like more speed, more power more explosion.

Mike Lawless: 15:43

Yeah the, the biggest, and I know, you know, but I worked as a, as a. Strength conditioning coach in a high school setting where I had all the varsity sports. Now about a year removed from that, but for 2 years so coming into a new school as the coach over some of their strength and conditioning, right? But some of the top athletes are also going to private strength coaches. So there's always that dynamic of. Try not to step on any toes because there's some strength coaches that are doing great work. There's some that are running through kind of like we talked about. I think we may have been off air but like A lot of athletes are running through a lot of the same stuff that you can pick out nine or ten things movement wise that's maybe not great, but they're still training. So they're still taking, you know, money out of the bank account. They're still fatigued when they come into me. So trying to adapt to that one was challenging. And then you have coaches that are like, when I'm doing high end power work and speed work with long recoveries on the back end You know, coaches are like, well, they're not going to be in shape to play their sport. And to me, and I know, you know, we think a lot of the same lines is if I can get your top end up here, then fatigue wise, if our top end is higher than a lot of other teams, the other teams are having the same fatigue as my kid. I don't believe I can out condition 14 year olds against another team's 14 year olds. I just don't think Unless we're just not doing anything, sit on the couch, we're going to get that done. So to me, if I can bring our top end up and have muscular strength, muscular endurance built in the weight room and really good sprinting mechanics and bring that top end up, then at the end of a game, you know, it's not, it's not aerobic endurance that is making your team tired. It's that they don't have that high of a top end. So,

Ryan Patrick: 17:40

you know,

Mike Lawless: 17:41

their top end has now come down.

Ryan Patrick: 17:42

Yeah, anybody who watches sports you know, within the first couple of plays, a team that is just faster, more explosive and going to be too much to handle, because if your team is not able to keep up at the intensity of another team. wear you out. It doesn't matter how conditioned you are. And when we really think about like the, the adaptation cycle of the different fitness attributes, the adaptation cycle of maximal speed or the adaptation cycle of strength or hypertrophy conditioning happens on the shortest of those cycles. This is why teams can start football in July and be in shape by the end of August. It doesn't take that long, but like if you start weight training in July, you're not going to be a ton stronger by the end of August. It's a much longer adaptation cycle. Power is longer than that. Speed is even longer than that. And so I try to communicate this to athletes. It's like, yes, we need you to be in shape enough to do this work and to recover from it. That, that is a non negotiable because if you can't get sufficient volume, we can't get enough stimulus. But beyond that, it starts to interfere from your recovery potential. And it takes away from the things that I feel like as an athlete are real separators. Speed, power, strength. I can get you in shape in a couple of weeks. Not a thing. You're going to do some glycolytic work. You're going to do, you know, some, some a lactic aerobic. It's going to suck a little bit, but it's easy in terms of getting you where you need to be. What are your thoughts?

Mike Lawless: 19:24

Right. I think, I think two things off of that. Both those adaptations take longer to, to form because there's skill involved. There's, right, we're talking like down to the cellular level involved. There's Neuro stuff involved with all three of those skills, right? Power, strength putting those two together, and sport skill, you know, so you have new power and strength. Now when I go to That feels different, right? After a, a 12 week cycle, I know if anyone's gotten more powerful and you go to stick your foot in the ground, you're like, Oh, that even though I have more power now, that feels differently. Like I'm going to move differently. And although those take longer to create the adaptation, we know from research that it's the inverse as far as losing it. Right? I'm going to lose that speed quicker. Right. I'm going to lose that power quicker and I'm noticing that as I, you know, I'm trying to hold onto those adaptations that I've worked so hard to get as I move. Personally, as I moved into this longer volume endurance work, right? I'm still trying, but the good thing is we know a little amount kind of holds onto those gains that we've made as well. If we're, if we're intentional about that. The second thing is bringing it up. I just listened to Evan Picon talk about, you know, his model and I, I try to understand, I hope that I have some sort of grasp on it. It sounds awesome. And I mean, he's, he's awesome, obviously. But I think it's a perfect example of that volume intensity thing I was talking about, even if we, even if it was important for your sport to make these aerobic gains. Do you have, you have you have an extra six hours a week while you're going to two hour club practices and coming to me? Because we don't have enough time to do the volume that's going to make a difference. We have enough time. That's going to do the volume to break you down a little bit and not be able to do the intense volume at the level that we need to. So that's. In more simple terms, that's what I would like to say to parents and sport coaches is, it's just like, this is the best bang for our buck.

Ryan Patrick: 21:49

Absolutely. Like, it's you know, getting in shape again, I think easy, right? You, you do some things, you build up more capacity, more tolerance inherently, I think very valuable for athletes because fatigue. Is an independent risk factor for injury, right? A lot of things go wrong when people get tired. So again, like, I think, I think we can agree. And I think it's important to communicate. We're not saying don't get in shape. Don't spend time on this. But, you know, when we're talking about really, really improving these adaptations, like, even, even with aerobic, even though it does happen on 1 of the shorter timelines, you're still talking about, you know, capillary density, Capillary density. You're talking about central adaptations in the heart and enlarging the left ventricle. Like these are also things like if you're really trying to raise the ceiling on VO two max or raise, you know, the levels of hematocrit so you can, you know, transfer more oxygen. Like these, these are things that do start to take a little bit longer, but again, it's like it takes a tremendous amount of volume to start to push these things up and so, so little to just maintain.

Mike Lawless: 22:56

Right. And I think you said a great Role and getting back to my programming stuff. If I have an athlete, if I have the opportunity to work with an athlete for a long period of time, not just, you know, 8 weeks. If I then the more. General conditioning models can be worked into those training programs because we can dial that back when. Maybe we don't need to take money out of the bank account per se, or make people fatigued when I'm getting closer to competition. But when I'm not, I can kind of keep all of those systems intertwined, just like I would in a gen pop person. It just may be more structured towards higher intensity because they're going to move, move towards higher intensity stuff. And that's where Evans model I thought was cool is it's like, okay, we have the muscle that's utilizing it. Is it a mitochondrial or capillary density problem that like when they go to do a bike sprint they just like either don't ever go hard enough, right, and the muscle doesn't have the opportunity to build that tissue because it doesn't need to, or like they don't do enough of that work to Kind of initiate those adaptations and then the utilization stuff he talks about obviously we're gonna have to do some some of that higher Volume work to get those central adaptations and stuff in the heart and then he kind of talked about if you don't fit into either one of those models and I'm You know, summarizing what he does very well. So go listen to Evan's stuff. If you want to do that, it's it'll put your brain in a, in a twister, but also he's just, he's great at explaining that. But if you don't fit in either 1 of those, the muscle utilization or the transport kind of system, then you're more of the respiratory model, which that's where we talked about the traditional glycolytic work to my understanding. So.

Ryan Patrick: 24:50

Yeah, so I want to try to unpack this and I haven't listened to Evan stuff, but I think just for the listeners to simplify this the, the model of conditioning you know, if you're just looking at a base level, you know, coaches maybe just do things that get kids in shape. Right? So this is, we're, we're really talking about an evolution of just how we're approaching training and his model seems to be based on using different KPIs. to see, is this an issue of delivery? Are you getting adequate blood and oxygen to the target tissue? Or do you have an issue at the peripheral end, meaning in the muscle that's working actually utilizing the substrate in the oxygen that's or nitric oxide, or however, you know, he's approaching that, but are you able to use it on the peripheral end? And again, there's A certain physiological markers that we're using to diagnose some of this stuff. Is that fairly accurate?

Mike Lawless: 25:46

That's essentially it. Yeah. And then, like, if you don't fit and most from my understanding, his, his kind of research on it is most people are going to fit into 1 of those 2 buckets. And if you're kind of not as limited on that, and you're more respiratory, VO2 max stuff, you know, you, it's more falls into that traditional VO2 max stuff where really high intensity for short intervals, resting and, and such so, but not a lot of people are actually limited in his point of view. By that actual intake of oxygen as they are this transport and utilization.

Ryan Patrick: 26:20

Yeah, which is wild to think about because most people feel like they're suffocating. Yeah, you've got the, you've got the ability to continue to unload oxygen and it's not even an issue. It's a CO2 tolerance issue. That I think most people have trouble with.

Mike Lawless: 26:36

Yeah. And again, based on the type of conditioning, you know, if we're talking utilization, you talked about on the peripheral level of mitochondrial density and stuff like that again. You, you kind of have to put in that type of work at a certain level of intensity, or we're not, you're not going to condition the tissue. So,

Ryan Patrick: 26:57

yeah, I try to communicate this to people, like, especially when we do certain lower intensity things, or I give them a protocol that's primarily nasal breathing, because they almost feel like they're, they're suffocating. And it's like, I know they're going to be okay. And I tell them this is not about. you know, depriving you of the ability to get oxygen in. It's about you not being able to get as much CO two out because that is going to build you know, the sensitivity of different receptors within You know, your cardiovascular system that are going to allow you to push higher intensities because you're going to be able to tolerate this buildup of CO2, which is really what makes people feel like they're suffocating. And if you don't like cardio and you don't wanna do this you can just hold your breath and see how good you are, are that because you'll. You'll quickly experience what a CO2 buildup feels like. That's what's making you feel like you're suffocating, even though you could probably hold your breath quite a bit longer. It's a, again, not an oxygen thing.

Mike Lawless: 27:59

Yeah. There's some, there's some research I forget. I think we were talking about when we all met up and Knoxville there a couple years ago, like there's some research on people improving their, their aerobic capacity by just doing breath holds. Right. So not doing, not doing actual cardio. I'd rather. I'd rather bang it out on a bike or treadmill. But I guess some people like that

Ryan Patrick: 28:23

Yeah. Look, I, I don't have time to sit around and woo. Saw my way to fitness. You know what I you know what I mean? I gotta, I gotta get after it. I gotta get some output. Yeah. We're,

Mike Lawless: 28:32

and I, I think though, that talk of. You know, it's this, you know, it almost gets back to the, the grind my gear stuff of, of how am I going to get someone results? And that has to be some sort of a set and myself results, you know, and us as you coaching me. Different communication is like, if I'm always doing the same thing and just calling it conditioning or calling it strength training, like always just like, although more people are working out now, you know, and that's great because of what they saw on TikTok or YouTube or whatever. It's like a lot of people are doing the same thing for a long period of time and expecting different results. Right? Like, well, I get on the treadmill and I walk for 30 minutes, you know, every day, like, why did I stop losing weight? Or why did I, why do I still feel out of breath when I go do this thing? That's way more intense or way longer volume than that. It's like, well, because you either didn't have a coach who steadily progressed you and looked at your movement or looked at your programming and, and got you to that goal, because that's what they know. Or, you know, you're just not aware of, of how, how hard or how well you're doing something that

Ryan Patrick: 29:52

you're doing. Yeah, the, the irresponsible progression can work in one of two ways, A, not progressing at all, or B going too wild.

Mike Lawless: 30:04

Yeah, and I think that is really what is getting back, you know, just drawing back on the beginning of our conversation, the imposter syndrome that gets me, you know, but I need to be more confident and, and how I'm progressing people and, and knowing that, like, no, I, I got this. You know, I'm always going to be questioning myself, but I got this, like this person has this goal. I know how to safely progress and get them there. Yeah.

Ryan Patrick: 30:30

I think this is a, I think a lot of the great coaches have imposter syndrome to a certain degree. Because you and I, you know, just talking about Evan stuff, I haven't, I don't dive deep into it. I haven't read that research. I know enough and understand conditioning, at least to a level that I can get athletes in shape. I would like to know more. And I'm certainly going to break into that over time, but there's that hesitancy of, well, I don't know as much as the guy who knows the most about the subject. Therefore I'm not qualified to speak on it, you know? And so we, we kind of get in this place of like. We know there are guys who know more about each individual thing than maybe we know. And so we kind of end up playing it a little too reserved. And I think this is probably really important to just discuss in, in the context of athletes as well. Right. Because I see so many athletes who have a tremendous, uh, amount of talent. Of athleticism who, you know, lack confidence or certainty to a certain degree and it just manifest as poor play. And so a lot of, you know, what we're doing is certainly we want to improve the physiological outcomes and biomechanical outcomes for our athletes. But there are probably psychological components to this as well, because You know, I've seen kids gain confidence from getting stronger whether or not strength is the most important thing for them or for their sport. There's the associated benefits that come with just them getting stronger. And so I want to take this conversation. I'd like for you to talk a little bit about, you know, the imposter syndrome and your experience with that. And then maybe and enlighten me a little bit, because I'm always curious how people do this and infuse this into their coaching. But I just love to hear, you know, what you're doing with your athletes to maybe, or even jump up clients, especially kids who are rehabbing to allow them to get back to a level where they're. They're feeling more confident in their practice and their, their play.

Mike Lawless: 32:41

Yeah, I think I think as you talked about, we have a variety of a range of confidence levels when you're, when you're dealing with teenage kids, even into, into college, college athletes that are really good. You know, you have a wide range of Ego is not really the right word but I would say A projected ego, at least, with kids with lifting and when they come in, maybe they have a little bit of experience if they're lifting and or maybe they have no experience at all. And I think you have to kind of deal with that the same way. It's it's promoting that you kind of know. What you're doing and your intent is to make them the best that they can possibly be. I think when I'm trying to coach someone, whether it be a girl that walks through our doors and has never touched a weight in her life and has never seen anyone that looks like her touch a weight in her life, or the teenage boy who maybe has seen something on Tik TOK and knows that back squatting 400 pounds is the only way he's going to be able to dunk a basketball. You know, whatever that may be, as long as when I take them through the first thing I'm going to take them through, whether it be, you know, coaching a squat, the way that I coach a squat, they feel my intent be there. And I feel like maybe that's the way I clean up a lot of my imposter syndrome myself is just being intentful when I'm, when I'm coaching an athlete or coaching a gym pop client that. Like, hey, this squat is not, is not the most important thing in the world, but because you feel that I want to make you have the best squat you can possibly have, like, that hopefully gets felt through my coaching and cleans up them being like, Oh, I know exactly what I'm doing on the teenage boy example that I, that I listed, like, hey, can we not, can we not turn our toes super wide? Like, I'm cool with you being toes out, but this is why I want you to do it this way. Right and with the girl example, not not dividing the boys or girls because there's both both ones of these, but, but anybody who's been in a, in a, in a setting knows what I'm talking about. But with her. By the end of that session being like, heck, yeah, I can squat like this is no problem now. So now when we go to a more complex exercise, she has kind of that when that we we had a couple sessions ago, and she can be confident to now get under a barbell and squat because we already have the principles set up.

Ryan Patrick: 35:20

Yeah, so I'm the way that I'm hearing you explain this. One, you're investing yourself in their success and the way they're executing and two, you're putting them in a position to be successful, which is very congruent with the way you described. The big rocks of your program, you want simple things that, you know, they're going to smash and hit out of the park.

Mike Lawless: 35:46

Yes, absolutely. And I think even just based on you describing that right now is based on an external and internal queuing, you know, going back to our coaching model, but even if I, I'm, I'm kind of using the example of the squat a lot, but yeah, absolutely. I want them to feel at the end of a 20 minute coaching session there on that squat, like why I want it to be done that way. Like, for the example of the kid who turns his toes way out, just because that kind of is an easier position to get to, like, what he feels when I get him set up in the quote unquote right way to squat, for him, personally, like, what does he feel at the end of that session? And I think if I can get an athlete to that point, one, they get more confident in their movement. And also, it just, It creates buy in back to me because they were confident that they knew something and it's not that I'm telling them that they're wrong per se or putting myself above them. I'm just saying like, Hey, that's a thing. And this is another thing that I want. I want to do this thing right now.

Ryan Patrick: 37:01

Yeah, I think the buy in piece is so important. And I, you know, when our athletes come in, one of the first things they try to establish. With them is I, I want to create a thread of similarity across the workout so that they understand, like what I'm, what I'm telling you in one area of maybe how you're squatting is going to be relevant to how we're doing some other things. And, and it all seems like I just tried to, to kind of, hog tie all of these things together and hitch them back to their goal, right? So like we're doing this because. It will improve this thing that you wanted to improve. We're also doing that because it's kind of similar, but it goes back to doing that thing. And I think at the end of the day, just, you know, good movement in the gym. When you see it, you know, somebody who lacks stability and control and like, without getting into the nuances of biomechanics, like, you just want these kids to, you know, like it, enjoy doing it, see success. And, you know, see improvement over time just so that they can establish doing it at a high level. Do I know that a split squat is going to make them a best, a better basketball player? There's a lot of things that go into being a basketball player, but improving the performance of that might change, you know, their ability to get in and out of a cut to decelerate, to accelerate, you know? So it's like, I don't know. I just, I feel like you just really have to tether these together. Cause ultimately like we're, kind of telling them that they're not good at these yet, but in a roundabout way of like introducing opportunity. Cause they, I think they have a very high ceiling. Most of them.

Mike Lawless: 38:42

Yeah. And you talked about right before we got on here, like as you got older, especially with Jen's Jen pop clients that are a little bit you know, more self aware maybe, I mean, as an adult, you should be a little bit more self aware than you are as a adolescent, I would hope, but. You know, maybe not so much but I think you're able to kind of say what you, you know, you've gotten to the point you said where you kind of just put it to them and say, Hey, this is, this is what you need to do. If you want to hit this goal. I think the cool thing about providing intent, both with gym pop clients, and especially with, with our youth athletes is that you can It's like once you form that relationship and you, and you show them that intent from the get go and like form a relationship with them a real relationship, then you are able to almost joke with them. And I think the best coaches can do this of like, Hey, it turns out you're not a very good squatter and like, in a loving way, say like, that's okay. We're going to get better at it and look how much better we've gotten at it by really setting up good programs. Right. You're able to kind of use that to kind of poke them and be like, that's why we're doing this, like, because they see the results after you've done it. But it's like, Hey, remember that? That's why I'm the coach. And that's why we're going to do it this way.

Ryan Patrick: 40:06

There's a subtlety inside of this that I think I want to address. And I think you'll have some opinions on this as well. But I tell my athletes like this, this program, because we give them all workout cards, right? They got to shoot. And it's got all the stuff on there that they need to do. I'm like, yeah. Your job is not to just go through and do all the things on here. Your job is to, to execute this. And there will be some days. Where they come in, they're tired, they had some kind of period of congested competition, a weekend long tournament, and they just look and move like trash. Their knees hurt, their back hurt, whatever. It's like, I don't want you to go through this stuff and just check the box. We're here to perform and it's like, you know, I've had some kids, they're doing like some simple, like a lateral bound. It's like, they're falling and I'm like, like, I just kind of shield my eyes and turn away and they make eye contact. So they know I'm kidding with them. But it becomes this. This kind of a joking reminder of, hey, let's. Let's slow this down. Let's clean this up. Let's get out of this exercise, what we're intending to get out. And you know, if we got to do an extra set or some extra reps, like let's do it the right way. And it's okay if we don't get to exactly everything on there, because guess what training training is dynamic. It is an emergent process. The program that I've written was is now three weeks old and I'm making a guess guess about where you're going to be and how much volume you're going to be able to tolerate three weeks down the road. And so I just can't emphasize. I think that aspect of of how you communicate with the athletes. And let them know that you're here to make sure that they're, they're doing it the way that's going to get them to their goals.

Mike Lawless: 41:56

Yeah. I think that was awesome. Like the way you said that, and it really connected multiple things that I'm thinking of. It's like, why do I, you know, you, you led this off with saying how regimented, how like, like, I think at 30 years old, like I, I am like, I, I line out my weeks and like, I know what time I'm going to wake up. I know what I'm going to eat every day. I know, obviously I mentioned to you, we're having a baby girl in June, so I know that's going to change some things, but you know, my attitude towards life is like, all right, we adapt. And I. I just make it even more regimented, right? And I think that's what gives me some of the imposter syndrome with, with my career that I've chosen and what I love to do. Because training, yes, is set up like that to prevent injuries from happening or whatever. But on the actual day to day, It's not that at all, right? It's this adaptive. It's the opposite of being regimented. You have a program and you have it set, but just like you just said, you know, a client texts me and says, you know, this ribs really bothering me from some of the broadening I've been doing. It's like, we got to adjust right now. Versus what I like to do in, in my, in my private life, and it's like, no, no, no. I wake up at this time, I do this, I do this, I do this, it doesn't matter. And one of the quotes I think I've, I don't know if I created this or, but I got it a lot from, from reading the Stoics and such is, like, everything matters, how we do it matters. But everything that we can't affect doesn't matter. So like everything matters and nothing matters. So like you said, the program, when you come in and you're, you're sore from last night's game, and we're going to have to do two sets of eight really well right now, instead of four sets, eight. That doesn't matter, but how we do that two sets of eight does

Ryan Patrick: 43:56

matter because to me It reminds me of going back to like the locus of control right there. There are other teams in the region There are other athletes in the region that maybe have more talent more skill more more whatever parents who do X Y Z Their parents are wealthy. They can get all the training all the nutrition yada yada. You cannot control those things You can't control A lot of these variables, but you have to, you have to kind of return to the things that you can influence, which in most cases comes down to your responses, your actions, your choices, and it's not always easy to maintain a level of congruency with that. And I'm talking right now to my athletes. I'm talking to adult clients. I'm talking to, I'm talking to myself on some level too, because it's easy to get caught up in all of the other things. That I think are going on out there and really forget like in an attempt to to get things to be the way that you want you control or try to control everything that ultimately you can while in doing so forgetting to control the thing that you can, which is you. And so like you, you have to sometimes strip that away and it's, it's okay. There's just a lot of noise. Sometimes there's a lot of you know, these kids are glued to Instagram. So I surf, especially now that I started posting, I'm on Instagram more than I want to be. That's super annoying. I don't love social media, but I start to you fall into the compare and despair trap. I start worrying about what other people are doing. How am I going to keep up? And I'm like, Oh wait, I'm on here because I'm supposed to be posting and I'm supposed to be sending a message because I'm on a mission. And And it's like, I totally forgot to do that thing. And so, I, I just urge and invite everybody, especially my athletes. Hopefully you guys listen. There there's so many things that are just abundantly in your control and it's not always easy. Especially when I, now lately I've been talking to kids, like when they want to go to college, I'm like, okay, here, here's the conduct of the kids that I've seen that have gone to college and Like division one and beyond it's, it's not that they're like super intense and like hat down over the eyes. Serious is a heart attack about what they're doing. They train hard, but it's, it's almost like the, the people underestimate the consistency with which they do this, you know, so it's this overestimation of intensity, underestimation of duration. And it becomes hard because it's a series of choices that you have control over. I know it's fun to go be a teenager and a party with your friends and be late and sometimes drink alcohol. Cause I know some of y'all do it. I've heard some of these kids who are going to the next level say, look, I get it. The kids like girlfriends are out, they're having fun, but I want to get up and train on Saturday. So I told him like. I'm going home so I can get to bed by 11 and I don't know, it's just it's just so simple, but it's something that I think can easily especially with just the influx of these other influences that we can really forget. To, to leverage because it's the only thing we have leverage over.

Mike Lawless: 47:03

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if, if that's, if, if I could tell, tell my youth athletes nothing else, it's just what you said. It's, it's not the intensity of how hard you can, you can show up one day and do something, but it's like, how long can you do what's on your, your sheet that you give them? If we're talking about checking boxes and again, it means how well did I do that by checking that box on the individual day? But like, if I, if I went through those sheets, like how many of those boxes are checked just over and over again, like just turning over those sheets day after day. And it's that's that's the difference.

Ryan Patrick: 47:43

Yeah, I remember the, like, Jerry, a number of people have used this example. I don't even know if it's true, but it was talking about Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian who for sure, like, barely any of my athletes will know because I'm just I'm getting older and the pop culture. Yeah, that's kind

Mike Lawless: 47:59

of like, that's kind of even. Even getting close to me. Well, kind of too.

Ryan Patrick: 48:03

Well, anyway, the story goes, come here, Mike, let me pull a seat up for you on my lap. The story goes, the story goes that, you know, he wrote a joke every day and it was like, you know, he made a chain on his calendar of X's, you know, and the goal was like, don't break the chain. And if you do, like, yeah, right back on it and it. Okay. Writing a joke is. is easy, but writing one every day, it's like easy to do, but easy not to do. And I think that's, that's the trap. A lot of people get in. It's like, well, you know, foam rolling five minutes, one muscle group, easy, easy to do, easy not to do. And there's danger in that because quickly you don't realize how a lot of these small steps really accumulate to some massive difference over the course of time in season training. Easy to do. We'll scale back. We'll make sure that the intensity is appropriate, but it's easy not to do. And guess what? If you're a single sport athlete, you play one sport a year, you're missing one out of four years of training during high school alone. You play two sports, you're missing about 50 percent of the time you have available to train. Do you think that's going to make a massive difference? We're talking about maybe two workouts a week in season, not much easy to do, easy not to do, but over time you can see the accumulation. Is going to really create separation between those who will and those who will not.

Mike Lawless: 49:33

Yeah, and for the kids who are going to go to the next level and let's, let's take that to even the next time you come in as a freshman and, and again, easy, easy choices back then, easy, easy to do is not to do you get to the level as a freshman and you're, you're not at the level of the same freshman that came in with you and did that. Yeah. Right, so you've made it, you've made it now, and you're not at the same level, that is going to lead to changes down the line, right? You're behind them now, and they're, they're there, you're trying to catch up with someone who came in at the same time as you, not even, not even the player that's older. So, I think just thinking, thinking of things, and it was tough, and I, I'm, I'm preaching to, To kids as I did not do that as a teenager at all, you know, I'm trying to try to help you see what I definitely did not see. I was like, well, I work hard when I, when I show up, you know, I'm the hardest worker when I show up, but I didn't see that consistency that I that I definitely live by now.

Ryan Patrick: 50:38

Yeah, there's plenty of adults who have enough trouble self regulating this and then. You added a kid who's got a ton of competing commitments. You know, they're at school all day, whether or not that's useful. And a lot of situations is, is debatable depending on the school, depending on the coursework they're taking. Then they've got club sport, perhaps lessons, hitting lessons, pitching lessons, shooting lessons, you name it. Then, then they have training, then they have being a normal you know, 13 to 18 year old and managing a social life. And then their nutrition and sleep, like it's tough. I mean, adults have a tremendous amount of trouble with it. And there, there was probably abundant opportunity for, for me to do better. And I think there's plenty of opportunity for a lot of my athletes, even at the highest level to do better, but most people just need to, to trend in one direction more than they are. It doesn't have to be perfect, right? Don't like, don't let perfect be the enemy of good or, or done. Do what you can and continue to improve this over time. And if I can communicate Like, I think there's a lot being thrown out. I want to put like a neat bow on it to the athletes and really to anybody is you can do anything, but you can't do everything. And so there's gotta be some level of sacrifice.

Mike Lawless: 52:04

Yeah, I forget what the quote is something about. I can't even say it now, but there are essentially only trade offs, right? And when I get back to the bank account stuff, the, the, and James uses that like you're either putting money in the bank account or you're, or you're taking money out. There's no way to put it any other way. That's in training. That's in, in, in life. And I've talked. with you about, like, I just don't know what direction I want to go, because like you said, of me trying to do a lot of different things, that is almost my downfall as well. I, I never tend to go all in on one thing, because I want to do all these things. And you just have to be self aware that, that that's going to pull you back from your maximal capacity to do one thing. Right? And, and whether it be an athlete, or someone gen pop in life, you know, If you want to get something better, you have to allocate resources to that thing. And and you can't take those resources from a made up land. They have to be deducted from another another source. So I think in my life, and I would, I would kind of throw this to to people who are listening. That's really what I'm trying to figure out is, like, I have this certain amount of finite resources and where do I really want to allocate them?

Ryan Patrick: 53:31

Yeah, I think as long as most people are doing it by design rather than circumstance or just being a willow tree that just goes with the ebbs and flows of, of circumstance and the conditions around them they'll be better off, you know, make a conscious choice. Maybe the way you build your progress plan to get there is imperfect, but you can refine that along the way, right? It's like this continual feedback loop. No different than we would in the gym. We test, we train, We audit, we adjust, and then we go through the cycle and that's how we determine what is the lowest hanging fruit. Or as I like to say, the highest leverage points for the next training cycle or the next performance boost that you're looking for, because those will, those will evolve and change over time. As you become fitter, stronger, more able, more powerful, more explosive, faster. You know, we have to work on different aptitudes to keep everything rising at a consistent pace.

Mike Lawless: 54:43

Right. So to put a, put a bow, I guess, in my mind on this, to make an example of it, as you're talking there, I thought about this and it's like, again, we have a certain amount of resources. And if you're a youth athlete or a gym pop athlete, and you have, You have a certain amount of resources as well, right? You have, you know, you're going to have to go to school. You have to keep your social relationships. You may have other things, job that you have to do. So those are resources that you have, and then you have your training resources. These are all in the one bucket eventually, right? So let's talk about an athlete that maybe wants to get faster over the next three months. So two sessions a week, right? We're talking about We're talking about 24 sessions, right? If they're going to come, come to you and train, that you're trying to get them faster. You have the answer. You're going to get them faster if they show up and they do the work. So it's, that is a resource that's already taken then. If that is their goal, then Then that resource is, is, is allocated into that bucket and it's going to have to be taken away from somewhere else. So they need to sit down and then they did. They'll literally say this resource is going to me getting faster and I'm going to take care of all my other things that have to be taken care of. And other things are going to fall off for the next 3 months and that that's okay. But if that if that is your true goal, then those things are going to fall off and you got to be okay with that.

Ryan Patrick: 56:15

It's not an easy balance again. I think it's challenging for a teenage. You know, I mean, before before we started recording. I was, you know, bickering at my son who had totaled his car three months ago, and now his mother's letting him drive her new car, which I am not totally on board with, but I am on board with because we're a team decision. But you know, it's forgot where I was even going with that. I think I just wanted to complain out loud to the world. I'm going to let you know, let you know, everybody's listening to the podcast. But the point is, you know, he's I don't even know what the point is. I think I just wanted to complain to be honest. So, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I do want to start to wrap this up, man. We've been going hard for about an hour and covering a lot of ground. So, let's talk about, you know, your current training. What are you doing? What are you prepping for?

Mike Lawless: 57:03

Yeah. So, I mean, you've been, you've been coaching me for, I don't know how long, but it's been like three years, maybe like that. Yeah. So, and I will say, I don't know, you've told me I'm, I don't know how many workouts I missed, but I can tell you that it hasn't been. Very many in those 3 years, maybe next maybe when

Ryan Patrick: 57:26

you're in Mexico

Mike Lawless: 57:28

Yeah, maybe it was a damn a little bit but but but last year, you know I kind of followed a lot of your strengths programming and I adapted some things to to run a lot more to train for a marathon Out west got that done Was happy with how that went with me, strength training three times a week. And this year I was like, I want to do, I want to do a half Ironman. One of my best friends from, from college is an absolute stud in the half Ironman distance. He's been training for like three years. I don't know if that's necessary again, try to allocate resources. I don't know if I'm ready to allocate my resources that much to training to, to become that, or if I even have the potential, but I'm like, you know, I, I can run at a really good clip for a long time at a high intensity. Like, I feel like I have a natural ability to do that and I want to continue getting stronger. So I'm going to stick with your strength programming and try to get as strong as I possibly can. That's a goal. And then also do be as fast as I possibly can in a half Ironman distance. So June 9th is my first half Ironman. And from. Now, until then, I'm going to continue lifting three times a week and schedule's getting tight, but really bumping up endurance training I think I had like eight hours of endurance work this week, so I'm following a program on the TrainerRoad app, so they kind of just, They have no idea what I'm doing on the strength and conditioning world, but I guess my, my training mind is trying to balance that while two people are telling me what to do. So that's awesome. It's it's unique, I think maybe. And I'm, I've, I've set some goals. So I'd like to go, I'd like to go sub five hours and a half Ironman distance. We'll see how that goes. And 500 pound trap bar deadlift, 400 pound safety bar squat, and 300 pound bench, which would all be. Two of those three would be PRs. So we'll see. And remind us of your body weight. I run in between like 173 and 178 day to day basis. Those are

Ryan Patrick: 59:40

some serious numbers. Yeah. So that those are high goals. So we'll see. It's good over time. You're going to get there. So again, that's appreciate like the magnitude of what you're able to do in multiple domains simultaneously is so. So cool, but it also takes a substantial amount of work. You know, you're talking about your endurance training alone is eight hours.

Mike Lawless: 1:00:08

Yeah. And I mean, but again, I think it's only doable if I show up consistently, like if I'm sporadic, never, you can't do the things it's going to wind up an injury and I'll say props to you. I mean, knock on wood, but haven't had a single injury. And trying to combine these two things because I think it's been so focused with communication with us But also just like hey, this is a long process Like i'm not trying to do an iron man tomorrow and hit these numbers. I gotta show up for the next You know six months and do this.

Ryan Patrick: 1:00:46

It's awesome, man.

Mike Lawless: 1:00:47

All

Ryan Patrick: 1:00:47

right. So what's next for mike lawless?

Mike Lawless: 1:00:49

Yeah, so just trying to figure out deal with my imposter syndrome and trying to figure out if I can the whole training athlete thing for some of a full time job and, and see where I kind of do mostly online stuff right now with gym pop and athlete clients and then work my day job as a physical therapist during the day. So just trying to figure out over the next, I guess, five years, if, if I want to kind of make, The training thing a full time thing with with physical therapy on the side, but yeah It's trying to figure out that career wise, but we'll see where it goes after half iron, man I would like to I think right now I want to pursue that quite a bit, but it's a costly sport So we'll see some sponsors Yes Sponsor me if you're listening.

Ryan Patrick: 1:01:37

So where can where can we find you online?

Mike Lawless: 1:01:41

Yeah, so i'm at lawless lawless Dot pt on Instagram. And that's pretty much where I post most of my stuff. So that's probably, I have a, I have a Twitter out there somewhere, I don't even know, it's lost somewhere in the land of social media. So, atwallispt on Instagram is probably the best way to see. My

Ryan Patrick: 1:02:09

content. Awesome. My guy, you've been awesome. This was a hella fun conversation. So thankful we got to, to do this, man. It's been great for me to train you. Obviously, you know, I have a ton of respect for you as a coach as well. So, I appreciate you taking the time to do this, man. It was an honor and I'll be talking to you, you know, through text and in training. Absolutely. Yeah. Take care.