UpLIFT You: Strong Body, Strong Mind
Join host Leanne Knox for an in-depth look at the stories behind the barbell, lifting and life. We give you the tools and resources and chat with the leading experts to help you build physical and mental fortitude for whatever stage of life you're at. Tune in every Saturday at 7 AM AEST and prepare to be Up Lifted.
UpLIFT You: Strong Body, Strong Mind
19 | The Path to Pain-Free Performance with Dr. John Rusin
Ever wondered how you can transition from an elite athlete to a coach focused on health and longevity for all? Join us as we welcome Dr. John Rusin, an acclaimed sports performance coach and injury prevention specialist. John shares his remarkable journey, including the pivotal influence of his father, an athletic director, and mentor. From his comprehensive education to his early coaching experiences, John reveals how he laid the groundwork for a successful career, eventually shifting his focus from professional athletes to powerlifters, bodybuilders, and the general fitness community.
Shoulder health is a critical focal point in our conversation. John provides actionable insights on maintaining a balanced push-pull exercise ratio to alleviate chronic shoulder pain and enhance overall postural function. Discover how implementing a holistic strength and conditioning program can optimize your training, whether you’re an elite athlete or simply striving for a healthier lifestyle. John’s practical tips on integrating recovery and cardiovascular health into your regimen are invaluable for achieving pain-free performance and long-lasting well-being.
As we explore the balance between fitness and family life, John shares personal anecdotes about coaching his nine-year-old son and the importance of being a role model. Learn about the Pain-Free Performance System’s six core physical characteristics and the significance of a balanced approach to training. From building dynamic mobility routines to incorporating diverse movement variations, John emphasizes the need for variety and cardiovascular conditioning. Finally, we highlight several tailored fitness programs, encouraging listeners to start early and make informed decisions for long-term health and performance. Don’t miss this enlightening conversation with one of the industry's leading experts.
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Welcome to Uplift you creating strong bodies and mind. Get ready to power up your day with practical strength training tools, inspiring stories and build resilience of body and mind. It's time to Uplift you, together with your host, leanne Knox. Okay, welcome back to Uplift you, the podcast where we give you practical tools and insights into creating a strong body and a strong mind. Today, we welcome Dr John Roosin, one of the greats of creating a strong and resilient body for athletes and everyday people alike.
Speaker 1:John is a sports performance coach and injury prevention specialist who has been named one of the top 50 fitness experts in the world by Men's Health magazine. Dr Rusin has been coaching elite athletes and clients for nearly two decades, including Major League Baseball All-Stars, national Football League All-Pros, top 10 WTA tennis players and multiple Olympic gold, silver and bronze medalists in multiple sports and events. John is also the founder and CEO of the Pain-Free Performance Specialist Certification, which is America's biggest and fastest growing training education system that has certified over 15,000 coaches, physical therapists and physicians since its start in 2018. I have personally worked with John as a performance coach when I was competing in powerlifting and I have also done John's certification in pain-free performance systems. I have witnessed firsthand the amazing system John has created, leaving no stone unturned, to achieve optimal health and strength. So welcome John, to Uplift you and thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Thank you, leanne, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1:So, John, can you introduce yourself and give us just a brief background on your journey to adopting your never-miss-a-day mentality on your journey to adopting your never miss a day mentality.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I grew up as a high performance athlete myself and I was indoctrinated into athletics at an early age, with my dad being an athletic director of 27 schools in the Western New York area, where I grew up. That took me to being a division one athlete. It took me into multiple degrees in exercise science, physiology, physical therapy, and then eventually working in high performance athletics as a performance coach, mainly for professional athletes, olympic athletes, and then, about a decade later, transitioning to my current specialty, which is health and longevity for general fitness consumers and everyday people.
Speaker 1:That sounds like to me that your dad actually was a really big mentor and inspiration in your life. Can you tell us a little bit more about that as well, Like how did your dad inspire you to become what you are today.
Speaker 2:Well, I think you're a product of not only your genetics but your environment, and I can remember, before taking my first steps, being in the basketball court, in the weight room, at the football field, on Saturdays at the high school, and it was just part of my life from the day I was born all the way up and through my development, and I was extremely fortunate to have not only a role model but a coach inside of my own home.
Speaker 2:That took everything to the next level for me, whether it was coaching my little league baseball teams all the way up into coaching my high school team, being in the gym on Sundays shooting three pointers a hundred before we could leave, or just jumping into the high school pools on cold winter days with all of my friends just to be active and staying off of the computers and staying off of the TV and instead doing something awesome that could just better us as kids.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of that. I just got used to doing things at a high level because that was the only thing that I knew at that point in time, and I think just that environment that was created, but also the mentorship and the coaching that I got from an early age of somebody that really knew what they were doing and did it at an extraordinarily high level for 30 or 40 years. It's something that I find myself very lucky to have gained a lot of experience when I was 10, 15, even 20 years old, to the point where when I moved into the coaching profession at age 19, it was like I almost had a decade of experience before I trained my first client.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds like that's a really interesting transition that you've made there, too, when you say that you have coached so many high-level athletes, and you being an athlete yourself. So there was a transition from high level athletes and coaching them into general population coaching and a real focus on that health and longevity. How did you go through that transition? What made you decide that? What you'd learned as a child and growing up and teaching you know high level athletes how did you take that from helping everyday people with health and longevity?
Speaker 2:It wasn't a calculated decision, so to say. It was a decision by necessity. So after graduate school I left the Buffalo New York area and went out to Southern California to live out my dreams to live in SoCal, the mecca of health and fitness and performance, be able to work with a myriad of different types of athletes at a high level and really just do some of my best work out there. Very quickly life happens and I relocated to Madison, wisconsin, where I currently live. This was about nine and a half years ago at this point, so I'm going on a decade and all of a sudden I went from being in Southern California between San Diego and Los Angeles all the professional athletes and all the different sports out there, all the pro teams to Wisconsin. We don't have pro sports here.
Speaker 2:I live in Madison, where the University of Wisconsin is the number one thing but it's NCAA, and very quickly I had to be agile in a space where I knew I had a skill set and a knowledge base that could span from performance into preventative fitness.
Speaker 2:But it was a good three, four year transition period between going from Southern California to Wisconsin, finding the highest performers in Wisconsin, which are power lifters, bodybuilders, olympic lifters and then trying to find where my systems, where my skill sets, fit in for this brand new population.
Speaker 2:So between high performance athletics and what I'm currently doing today, I had a three to four year transition point where I was predominantly working with a lot of power lifters and that was awesome because those were the best athletes and those were the highest performing athletes in the state of Wisconsin and very quickly I realized we have a lot of really strong people here that were banged up, that were failing physically, simply needed to to get healthy, put the pieces back together in a different way so they could go out and compete and also continue to compete for as long as they'd like to, to have some autonomy with their competition so talking on that particular point, because I know that a lot of our audience are powerlifters, olympic weightlifters, olympic weightlifters and general gym goers interested in getting strong when you say that you know you had that strong population of people who were banged up, can you explain?
Speaker 1:what can you explain? And the people listening will know why we're both laughing. We're both laughing, but can you explain how, like how, was these people who were so strong, having issues that were affecting, you know, their basic lives? So in the gym they might've been able to squat 250 kilos, but what was their daily life like and how did that show up in their bodies and how did you help them?
Speaker 2:so I wouldn't necessarily say that in the gym they were able to do what they wanted to do.
Speaker 2:Very quickly my niche became having people that were falling off whether it be performance plateaus, pain injuries that were leaving them away from being able to train meaningfully for their betterment of performance, like there was a bridge period between where they were at and where they needed to get back to.
Speaker 2:It wasn't necessarily physical therapy, but it was something that needed to change in terms of more of a holistic, strength and conditioning based program that allowed them to simply get healthier so they could display the strength that they inherently had developed over years, if not decades, at that point.
Speaker 2:But there was a host of issues that we tend to see pretty routinely whether it be knees, whether it be hips, whether it be lower backs and, of course, shoulders, those tend to be the chronic pain points that are the highest amongst the active, strong population in these barbell sports. So barbell sports being, you know, olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, bodybuilding and then CrossFit. I coach a number of athletes at the CrossFit games as well. So when you think about taking extreme amounts of volume and intensities, matching those two things together and really knowingly neglecting a lot of the other physical characteristics, and especially the movement systems that allow us to be our strongest, our biggest, our highest performing. These are the types of things that we would go through in an auditing system and be able to just plug back in what we know that a human being should be able to be doing in terms of their performance, but also optimize their performance while mitigating risk of pain and injuries in the process.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I know from my experience working with you that really the magic in your system is having that well-rounded approach to strength. So, before we go into that system, you touched quickly on one area that I believe our audience would really benefit from, one area of the body I'm talking about, and that is healthy shoulders, because, from my experience as a strength coach, all of the areas that you're talking about definitely knees lower back, all of the areas that you're talking about definitely knees lower back um, their issues too, uh, shoulders, because of the amount of overhead work that olympic weightlifters do and the um, and even in the powerlifting world, the bench press, shoulders create a lot of issues, um. So can we just really hone in now and can you give the audience some tips, some recommendations on what you believe creates healthy, strong shoulders?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, interestingly enough, over the last decade, amongst the active population, the shoulder is the number one chronic pain point and the number one acute injury point of all area sites of the human body, even more than chronic or acute lower back pain. And this is really going unnoticed because many of the medical system or the healthcare system's focal points are lower back pain. And very quickly do we see that these active population people meaning that they're in the gym or they're actively moving their bodies two plus times per week for at least 150 minutes per week, not even just weightlifters, not even just powerlifters, but people that are just generally active they're dealing with chronic base shoulder issues and they're left with acute base pain points that are really limiting not only to their training, not only to their fitness, but also their holistic lifestyles. And there are many different issues that are co-factors in why we tend to struggle with the shoulders more than either the lower back or the knees today, different than we did a decade or two decades ago. But largely it comes back to matching the current demands of your lifestyle or the current demands of your daily postures, with your training volumes, intensities, patterns and also distribution of your exercise selection, and we have a mismatch amongst all mismatches today when it comes to the shoulders.
Speaker 2:I'm not telling anybody anything that they don't know right now, but nine years ago I wasn't using an Apple iPhone 15. I was still like texting on just a normal phone and just like slaving through it on my fingertips. It's not what it was back then. So today the demands of screen time are extraordinarily high. We are seeing nine and a half plus hours per day on screens today in America, and seven plus of those hours are on cell phones and you're like, oh my God, if you actually count that all out, it means that you sleep, you maybe eat and the rest of your life is spent with you on a smartphone.
Speaker 2:That's the new normal today, and even amongst people that are training an hour or two in the gym every single day. We are all going to be slave to the normalcies of our societies, and today it is so handheld, technology driven that we can't have success in the gym. We can't have success in performance, running the programs that we ran 10 years ago, let alone eight years ago, let alone five years ago, because the demands of daily living as a human being are just that much different. The big mistake that people make is thinking that what they used to do will work the same today, even though the variables have all changed. What we do with our training system specific to the shoulders, is we look at the ever-growing evolution and daily demand changes that happen amongst sites, amongst positions, amongst postures, and then we try to rebuild and reverse some of those ill effects from just living in normalized modern society by training strategically to better bulletproof or create resilience around some of these more vulnerable structures similar to the shoulder complex.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you're absolutely right. If you even think about the people that do go to the gym regularly, ironically, the majority of their programs are on a cell phone, even while they're in the gym, like 10 years ago we would have had a piece of paper. Now we're on our apps following our programs. So you're absolutely right. It's daily postures that are putting repetitive strain on the shoulder structure. And delving even deeper into that, what would you prescribe for people that have, you know, like a lot of it is those two tendons that are in our shoulders because of our forward shoulder posture. What is your general rule and prescription? Because I know that you have? I know your systems have certain sort of rules or standards that you go by for each body part to keep them healthy. So what is it, particularly for the shoulders?
Speaker 2:Well, when we're seated or when we're using handheld technologies, we throw ourselves into a position that isn't inherently dangerous by any means, like there's no fear mongering happening here. We're just calling it what it is so we can identify it and work to reverse it with the opposite base patterns that can actually restore some sort of homeostasis inside of posture but also inside some of these key acute structures of the shoulder. But looking generally at an auditing process of when I'm working with somebody that maybe has chronic pain points at the anterior shoulder, vast majority are going to have this generalized anterior shoulder pain. It's kind of like generalized lower back pain. Nobody knows what the hell it is, but it hurts right here and it usually hurts with pressing base movements, whether it be overhead in the vertical plane of motion or whether it be horizontally, something like a bench press.
Speaker 2:And many times our first plan of action upon the auditing process is looking at push-pull ratios a pull pattern basically pulling something towards the body, whether it be vertical or horizontal, or a push pattern pushing something away from the body vertical, horizontal and everything in between. There should be a proper ratio between trying to restore some sort of postural function again, especially in the upper quadrant, so the entire shoulder complex and everything else that attaches into it. So establishing a starting point of a three to one pull to push ratio, and that is total volume as indicated in reps, that is where we like to start clients and athletes out, especially if they're identifying or they're experiencing chronic pain points in these sites. So three to one doesn't seem like a huge deal. But many times people are in a one to one ratio coming in or they've been in a one to one ratio for the last 10 years or we've seen, especially in specialty powerlifting, olympic lifting, a lot is so push dominant that we tend to fall into a two to one push to pull ratio, which is actually six times different in terms of the way that you would calculate out volume.
Speaker 2:That could potentially restore shoulder complex. So three to one pull to push, you are doing three times as much pulling volume as you're doing pushing volume and, as simple as that sounds, over maybe a four to six week period of time, obviously, executing the exercise, selection properly, being able to train hard, get stimulatory based reps, all that good stuff this tends to really help reverse some of those chronic issues at the shoulder. Will it cure a rotator cuff tear? Absolutely not, you know, will it heal a fracture of the bone? No, but when you're dealing with chronic issues that are just kind of nagging aches and pains that limit that top end 10% of your performance, whether they mentally, emotionally, physically, psychologically those are the things that we can start getting at and actually restoring where people are feeling good so they can actually function again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's absolutely right. And thinking about not only the performance in the gym, thinking about your performance in everyday life, because the amount of people that struggle, if they're struggling with shoulder niggles and issues in the gym, they're also going to, in my experience, struggle with them in everyday life, for example, sleeping the amount of people that cannot sleep properly because of shoulders because, as you know, when you roll on your side, your shoulder rolls in. So that's going to trigger the same pain as if you're sitting there with your phone out the front or a press above your head because your shoulder's in the wrong position. So that's great that we've touched on that area, because I do believe that that is as you've said and the research has suggested. Shoulders are a really big issue, not only for people's performance but for their quality of life, and that's what people are listening to this podcast for. How can I increase my quality of life? By using strength as as um, as a basis of that, and that's what you're a guru at.
Speaker 2:John, yeah, we always say what's the point of being big or strong if you're always chronically hurt or in pain?
Speaker 2:And as cliche and as simple as that sounds, it always goes back to making training a form of making your life better.
Speaker 2:It is a means to an end of living a better life via what we're doing, and that does not buy us against competitive athletes versus everyday gym goers.
Speaker 2:We all matter and that was one of the big transitions in my career is that when I was focusing on people winning at a high level, being active and being able to be available at a high level for a season or a competition, the same systems that depended on me having success with them simply came to.
Speaker 2:Are they healthy so they can go out and be at their best? Did they need to get 10% stronger? Did they need to get 10% faster? Not necessarily. They simply needed to feel empowered, they needed to feel optimized, they needed to have confidence and they needed to be as pain-free as possible so they could go out and display the natural talents that they'd been working their entire life to achieve. It's no different from any client that I work with today to say that an Olympic athlete is more important than a mother of four that is the cornerstone of her family is a joke and the second that I figured that out. It was a trajectory changer for my focus of my career, but also the way that I've been able to educate along those lines of being able to make high-performance, intelligent-based training, pain-free performance, more accessible to more coaches and end users worldwide.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So, before we go into, I'd really like to delve into your pillars of your pain-free performance system Because, as I said before, that is one system that I've personally worked with that is vastly different from a lot of strength programs that are out there, because it takes into account not only developing your strength of your basic systems, like we're developing.
Speaker 1:You know all you know hamstrings, quads, back, everything functional movement that's developing strength, but it also takes into account recovery and, most importantly in the world that I'm in, it takes into account healthy heart and lungs. So I know that you've got a very clever system where you're actually training every day of the week. Clever system where you're actually training every day of the week. However, the training is to provide a healthy overall approach to that person living their life the best they can. Before we go into that but I wanted to ask you a question because you just brought it up how has your mentality of this mentality of being as pain-free as possible and looking after yourself as a person and an athlete how has this mentality impacted your role as a father, a family man and a coach? Because I know that you're very, very passionate about your family.
Speaker 2:It's everything. So I've always been one to train. I was never one to miss a day. But I think that when you start to run your own systems, when you start to be your own avatar that you tend to focus in on professionally, it's a practice what you preach model, but it's so good that you can't afford not to practice what you're preaching.
Speaker 2:For me in this current point in life, I'm not only coaching clients, I'm not only running multiple businesses, but I'm a full-time coach to my son in multiple different sports. He just turned nine years old last weekend and we work hard. We're at the fields every day in the summers playing baseball. We're on the court every single day in the winter when it's snowy here, and he's competing in judo and we're all across the country doing his competitions with that. But I never wanted to be the dad that had to sit on the sidelines because I was hurt, I was out of shape and I was unable to go in and be a participant in my son's development or my son's happiness. And I think that is like my North star, and that's the North star for a number of the clients that I work with is they want to be fully present, they want to be fully immersed in everything that being a parent has to be for them and it's something that definitely brings your fitness to be something more than just yourself, but it's for the betterment of your entire family and definitely those people that depend on you.
Speaker 2:But I even have to change up what I'm doing a little bit to be active. Like to throw 200 baseballs in batting practice every day. Like it sounds silly, but it's like you got to be prepared to do something like that. Or just swing a bat it sounds silly, but it's like you got to be prepared to do something like that. Or just swing a bat. Lala, my partner was like man, like you're doing the exact same thing as Cam's doing at baseball practice. I'm like, yeah, you got to be prepared for that stuff.
Speaker 2:But I think it brings it full circle that it gives you something to work towards but also something that you can display as a role model for your child. You know we started off in saying that I had this great role model as my dad being an athletic director and as a coach. You know, maybe I don't know any better than to just try to display some of those same positive qualities that my dad showed me with my son Cam. But that's the type of life that I choose to live and I put a lot of time investment into it. If it's not us working, if it's not us spending family time, it's us doing things out at the field or in the gym or at the court, and that's what we tend to focus on as a family here at our household.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds like you are repeating the wonderful opportunity that your dad gave you and you're emulating that in your own family and using physical movement as the catalyst for that. So that's what's important in your family and that's how you get you know, that's how you bond with your wife and your children and turn up and show up and be present as the best father that you can be, as the best father that you can be. So, going back to your systems and you talk about your pain-free performance system that you have how do you balance the different training modalities in that system?
Speaker 2:Well, there's six core characteristics physically that every single human being needs to be able to at least maintain for a lifetime.
Speaker 2:Many times we have to redevelop them and gain in those physical characteristics in order for us to display a healthy lifestyle.
Speaker 2:So those six characteristics are athleticism, power, strength, muscular hypertrophy, cardio and conditioning and, of course, mobility. And there are elements of each and every one of those six in each program that I put together. No matter if you're in the major leagues playing baseball right now or you are just looking to lose 20 pounds in the sixth decade of your life, those are the core competencies that many times we have lost due to neglect. We have to rebuild more strategically or we've just fallen into the camp of being dogmatic in one if not two of the six core competencies that tend to lead us down a rabbit hole to pain and injuries eventually. So being able to distribute at a needs basis how to redevelop and how to maintain those core physical characteristics, that is the starting point for looking at where somebody is, how they're currently presenting, going through an auditing process and seeing where we need to pick up those weak links and be able to restore the entire movement system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so for someone who is, let's go. There's two different populations here that I'd like to discuss with your six-part system. Firstly, obviously we'll focus on the performance side of it. So, thinking about the people that generally listen, that are listening to this podcast, obviously they are prioritizing strength and hypertrophy. Yes, um, one of the issues that I see, uh, constantly in the strength world is the lack of mobility, um, which, which will, which will eventually lead to some type of injury, um, if mobility neglected. And you know what I'm going to say is the second area, and that is 100% you know, the cardio component, because people go to the gym and they're investing, say, four or five sessions a week and they're doing one to two hours in the gym and then they think, well, I just don't have time. I don't have time to do the cardio, at least I'm strong. Can you explain to the audience where there might be some flaws in that mentality as regards their overall health?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see it all the time. So, not to be generalist, like everyone's the same, but the general outlook that I'll see for a strength-based athlete is that they will hit the big compound lifts. They'll go hard and heavy on them, more of like a strength emphasis, and then they'll use accessories more in a hypertrophy-based blocking. So they have two out of maybe six of those characteristics, the ones that they knowingly neglect. I think mobility has gotten a little bit better over the last 10, 15 years since I've been in this industry, but cardio and conditioning are like the red-haired stepchild of a strength athlete's program. They have so many different excuses of why they're not doing it. Hey, bro, science, I don't want to lose my gains. Hey, time zapped oh, I don't have time to do 150 minutes a week of zone two, steady state, low intensity cardio.
Speaker 2:There's many different reasons why people aren't falling into it, but I tend to see that the highest performers that are able to do this for a long, long time in terms of their competitive calendars, decades at a time, are the ones that are extraordinarily fit and they've built a base of cardiovascular abilities.
Speaker 2:Not only have they built a strong base for their general preparedness in terms of their cardio, but they also have the ability to display high levels of conditioning and high levels of repeatability when it comes to heavy strain and those two. The fitter you are, the higher your ceiling is always going to be in terms of performance potential. I don't necessarily care what your physical endeavor or your competition is. The fitter a human being is, the higher their performance potential, not only because of recoverability, not only because of intra-session or intra interest session and recoverability, but just because you're feeling better on a daily basis. You're more likely to have a strong and a sound body composition and you're putting yourself in the best possible position for normal health and longevity, which is heart health, cardiovascular health and the ability to actually just have a systemic function that may line up for something being something that can stand up for the next couple of decades.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. Can you give the audience some tips, some practical tips, how they can incorporate this type of training into their week?
Speaker 2:this type of training into their week. Yeah, so our rules of thumb for my clients are that we have twofold. For cardio and conditioning, we want exposures to 150 minutes of low intensity steady state cardio. This is now known as zone two. It's gotten so sexy on Instagram Everyone talking about zone two.
Speaker 2:Nobody can define what zone two is. Zone two is 60 to 70% of a max heart rate. So we want a sustained 60 to 70% for 150, plus total minutes over the course of the week. So what does that look like? It looks like three 50 minute sessions. It looks like you can break it up however you'd like. The only caveat is that we want 10 minutes of sustained heart rate at a time and that can all be cumulatively over the course of the week. We even have emerging research showing up to 180, up to 210 minutes as starting points for cardiovascular health.
Speaker 2:And resilience People go oh, I'll work up to the 150. And resilience People go oh, I'll work up to the 150. Well, it starts at 150 and there's no upward limit of what we can get a benefit from, so the more the better. The opposite side of this equation is going to be the higher zone, conditioning zone four, all the way up into zone five. So we're thinking 80 to 100% of a maximal heart rate Like you're getting that heart rate up and you're kicking your own ass. You can think about it like that. We're sprinkling this in.
Speaker 2:As compared to the 150 minutes of zone two, this is anywhere from about 10, maybe up into 30 total minutes in those heart rate zones per week, and this is something that not only do we do on regeneration-based days, like off days from your strength-based work, but we can actually sprinkle it in to some heavier strength and hypertrophy-based days as well.
Speaker 2:So there are many different ways to get after distributing that, but a little bit goes a long way there. But there are different functional modalities to be able to have it match, maybe the exercise or the physical competition demands at hand, or they're simply ways to go in and get it easy, like doing an air bike, doing a sprint or something like that. The key when we're talking about cardio and conditioning, though, is the modality doesn't matter, the mean doesn't matter. You can do anything as long as the thing in your chest gets to the proper rates and you have the proper duration over a week's time, and when you simplify it like that, there are many different ways to get at it, other than just like inclined treadmill, walking and sprinting on the air bike. That's what people think about cardio and conditioning.
Speaker 1:So, just to be clear, that 150 minutes of, or 180 minutes of zone two training does, that is, that completely outside of um people's strength training in the gym.
Speaker 2:It can be. So I'll line up people based on their frequency per week. So say you have a frequency of three or four days versus seven days. We may stack that into their actual sessions. So they may be ending their sessions with 20, 30, 40 minutes at a zone two. Many times we don't crush them with high intensity interval training after a strength training session, but many times that this zone two low intensity steady state becomes their intrasession region. It means that between two heavier days, between two strength emphases days, you can simply recover faster and get your cardio in by doing it between these workouts. This is the basis of active recovery.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so when. This is why, when you think about your never miss a day mentality, when you're fitting in 180 minutes of zone two, plus your hypertrophy, plus your functional big strength movements and your um 20 to 30 minutes of higher intensity, 20 to 30 minutes of higher intensity zone three and four mobility, and when you're fitting all of that in, of course, it makes sense that you would never miss a day. Because trying to fit it all of that into four days and four or five days and just sitting on the couch for two, that's going to be a really hard task to ask someone to do that. It is.
Speaker 2:When I name off those six key physical characteristics, people get very intimidated very quickly. They're like how am I supposed to do all of this? You know I field a thousand questions per week on Instagram about all of this stuff and another hundred from clients that I'm currently working with, and what it comes down to is your mobility can be done in 10 minutes a day with a six phase dynamic warmup sequence, 10 minutes in out. That's all you really have to do in terms of your mobility. Your power and athleticism happens between your warmup and your big lift of the day. So you're actually working power as a display of global function. We're not power lifting, we're not doing Olympic lifts for power. We're actually doing asymmetrical stances, med ball tosses, sprints, jumps, throws, things that make you athletic and also display power at a high rapid force rate. So that has your power. You should be doing a couple big lifts per week, going hard, going heavy, one to five RMS. Get that in. That has your strength. Accessories usually hypertrophy work and then you go into your cardio and conditioning and you fit those in on top of your regen days and all of a sudden you have this holistic plan that you're like wow, I was missing a couple of these components, but you were really missing the entire system. That creates synergy if you are indeed missing one of those weak links. One weak link breaks the entire chain. So being able to just distribute that stuff properly it's a little bit more complex if you're not familiar with the system. But as soon as you actually define what these core six characteristics are and then have a viable way of actually getting it, it's huge.
Speaker 2:In terms of the no days off, not every day has to be a kick-ass workout. You don't have to be thrown up in the bucket after every single workout. My best athletes that train every single day only have four high days per week. Usually we'll use something like an upper lower split. We'll have a key KPI with a squat or a hinge and a push or a pull pattern, and then we'll be able to build the rest of the program out with their power.
Speaker 2:Athleticism, hypertrophy, metabolic stress techniques All that stuff will play holistically together. But their off days turn into hey, we're going to do a rotational mobility-based warm-up and then we're going to get you out there and just do a little bit of cardio. Whether that be people that like to walk, maybe we'll throw a weight vest on them, maybe we'll have them carry a couple dumbbells, maybe we'll get them into the heart rate zone that we are desiring, which is 60 to 70% of max heart rate, just doing the activities that they're currently doing. We have clients that are walking their dogs with weight vests and getting in their zone two cardio at the same time, and it's a beautiful thing because we can fit this into the lifestyle a little bit easier than we can fit like a safety bar box squat at a 3RM into just like a normal lifestyle that has to happen in the gym.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Um, that that's. That's some great tips. So what we're, what you're essentially doing, is, um, having your making sure that you have your um four gym days, for example. Let's just call them gym days because people listening, they're not all following programs as such. Some of them might just be going to the gym and doing a bit of bodybuilding, for example, or even doing some gym classes, you know, doing some group classes and then the days that they're not in the gym, I believe are integral to that. They're not in the gym, I believe are integral to taking advantage of those days to create that real holistic health approach to life.
Speaker 1:So not only is it great to get out and walk your dog, maybe with a weight vest on, but that's also a great time to work on your mind, because I know from research that walking outside and looking at the trees and the birds, listening to the sounds, you're using all of your senses and in doing that you're creating a healthier mind. Because one thing we haven't touched on yet and I know that you are passionate about it as well is, you know, the mental side of health and longevity, because brain and body goes so hand in hand. Do you have any tips for that. I do know that you used to have a mobility routine where you flowed. You didn't just do, okay, let's hold this position or stretch this, or you know, but you used to actually flow the movements together. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So many times we'll do that in between the warmups and then some sort of zone two or conditioning work, and that's being able to just display some of these movements Many times on off days. One of the things that we are guilty of in terms of the strength community is we're so sagittal plane dominant, we're so bilateral dominant and anytime that we can simply get out of the bilateral stances or the strict squats and hinges and presses, that's something that we can start displaying some of this movement. Because mobility largely, and being able to feel good at your joints, is being able to articulate all these different components of shoulders and hips all around rotational base planes. And this is like putting full mobility routines together in a fun and effective way that only take a couple minutes, but being able to go in and not hold the movements but actually dynamically move through in a controlled way. We can take something that looks like three or four static stretches that nobody ever wants to do Most likely you're not going to do it on your off days and we'll flow them through it, a flow meaning that you're actually transitioning from one position to another seamlessly, and in that way we can actually achieve a trainable heart rate, because anytime you have your hands on the ground when you're not used to having your hands on the ground or you're in single leg and single arm stance on the ground, that is going to get a centralized training effect in terms of your heart rate zone. So being able to do a couple minutes of that is like a kill two birds with one stone type scenario. You get into your desired heart rate zone, you get your body moving through rotational planes and asymmetrical planes in a way that most likely a squat, bench and dead wouldn't get it for you, and it is very mentally challenging because you have to be in the present moment of your movement. You need to almost be like dance and choreography being able to know exactly what you're doing, flowing between these movements but being able to be present in the transition points.
Speaker 2:Many times we are so pre-rehearsed in the gym that's one of the pros and also the cons of gym-based training is that we're visioning our performance.
Speaker 2:We're practicing our breath, brace protocol, unracking the bar, squatting, going back it's all a pre-rehearsal.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I love to do is being able to be in a reactive state, component of your physicality as well, being able to react to your body moving through space and not have a premeditated plan for your movement, but able to just actually move and rotate through something that is novel and new and something that has variance in your body position rep to rep or flow to flow. One of the things that I love to do in the summers here in Wisconsin is surf. So we surf off of a boat in the lakes here and it is the ultimate reactionary-based training. It's balance, it's coordination, it's skill, but it's you focusing on the here and now, because as soon as you think about something else or try to do something else or you lose your mind, your butt's going to be right in the water. So, being able to bring into these components of reaction versus being able to do something like a traditional gym-based workout, which is very proactive, I think it's marrying these two components together to make it as optimal as possible.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And also, as I was talking about before, mental health, making your, your brain stronger, those reactive um opportunities to go out and move your body, um challenge your brain as well. Like you said, you have to be present and um create different connections and increase endorphins as well, because that actually to me like going um boat what is it? Boat surfing? Okay, well, that sounds a lot more, a little bit more fun than um unracking the barbell and doing a set of heavy five back squats to me. So that brings in the fun component component into daily movement and also the the um unstructured, unstructured play, for example yeah, I mean, it's huge.
Speaker 2:So you look at any program that you put together or any training endeavor and you have one factor that is like hey, I want to get the best results possible, that's going to be boring and you're going to get the work done and you're going to grind that stuff out. And then you have the fun factor of like hey, if the fun's really high, most likely the results are going to fall to the wayside. So every time that you put something together, you're always trying to mentally stimulate somebody into being interested and believe in what they're doing with. Training is going to challenge them in a way that is still empowering, but we have to get the base work done as well. I think over the years, one thing that I've become known for is being like the king of slight variation. It's like I'm not reinventing the wheel here. Everyone's going to be doing a squat pattern. Most likely we're going to be doing a split squat, or like a Bulgarian split squat, we're going to be doing a bench press, but we're going to do it slightly different. That will challenge you mentally and get you a little bit more excited to play with something different than just like slaving away at the same bench press with the same grip and the same foot setup in the same three to five rm range. Those slight variations. They allow us to learn and stay engaged in the process.
Speaker 2:Because all of a sudden, you're you're like, all right, I'm doing a Bulgarian split squat. I got two dumbbells in the hand Four weeks. You peak it out. You're like, all right, cool, I've dominated this. All of a sudden, you're like oh man, now I only have one dumbbell in a hand, contralateral loading, my foot is elevated on the front side and I have a hanging band technique on that dumbbell. Holy shit, I feel like I've never done a Bulgarian split squat in my life and it's like it's the exact same exercise, but the way in which we strategically place setup and then also method and modality into the mix, it makes something feel brand new, even though it's still accomplishing the base goals that we know that we need to maintain.
Speaker 2:But in terms of being able to have buy-in factor, a little bit of variation goes a long, long way. We don't want to be defeatist with our variations. We see this all the time on Instagram. It's like somebody just making up an exercise on spot, putting it on video and being like look at me Very rarely will you see anything like that from myself or my team. It'll be like oh, I've never quite seen it done like that, but I've seen a Bulgarian split squat a million times before. Or we've seen goblet squats, but not quite like that before.
Speaker 2:But there's always a rationale behind it and many times the sky's the limit in terms of slight variation. What we need to avoid doing is having variation and novelty for the sake of novelty. Many times we just need strategic variations that best fit the person in front of us and gives them that little extra oomph to be able to learn something new that then broadens their human movement spectrum abilities. And, at the end of the day, that's what we're after in terms of not only being able to do squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, carry, but being able to have as broad of an assortment of variation that we're competent and confident in as possible.
Speaker 1:That is absolutely correct when you say that that is what you're most well known for, because I know myself I use a lot of your exercises that you have and we're going to get into this next that you've really share with the world on how to vary. You know the staple movements of technology. You know your squats and your carries and your hinges and your presses and your pulls. For example, I had a lady who was going hiking in Switzerland and Italy and she said, leanne, I don't know what I'm going to do, I'm not going to be able to get to a gym, not even one day for three months. And she was panicking because you know the gym was her life for three months. And she was panicking because you know the gym was her life. And I said it's okay, I've got you. So I pulled out your, your band, your 28 day is it 28 day banded program?
Speaker 2:and we don't want you to think about that that was released during covid, and covid was really a over here yes, it was, however, the even in itself.
Speaker 1:When I looked into that program, I was simply amazed at the amount of functional movement that you could produce with bands, with your creativity. Now and she's messaging me going this is the most amazing program like in the world. She said, yeah, so obviously I put all your videos, all your videos in, because you have videos for all of this as well, which is fantastic. Which is fantastic. And she's doing bulgarian split squats, um, using bands. She's doing, you know, foot, foot raise. She's doing over rows, she's doing all sorts of variations, so she feels like she's maintaining that base strength and all she's got in her bag is a set of bands. Yeah, and that is phenomenal.
Speaker 2:It's from all over the place that, oh, I don't have access to the best gym in the world. Am I still going to be able to get results? Like hell, yeah, you are. It's never a matter of your equipment. If you have the right coach that listens and is able to be present and have a conversation and have a relationship with you and problem solve, then you can get work done, you can make gains and you can maintain with almost anything.
Speaker 2:Funny story on that 28 Days Later program. So it was about three and a half weeks into COVID, thinking that was like going to be two weeks, and all of a sudden we're like our clients are getting super antsy, Like what the hell are we going to do? So a couple of my guys that I work with here in Madison we're like all right, let's put together a band program. I was like, all right, us being us, let's make a badass program that will have 28 different workouts and we never repeat an exercise. And it was almost a challenge and I shot all of those videos doing like eight reps for every single exercise in one single take. And after that day I was all stressed because COVID's happening, my businesses are gone, my family's at home Like it was a train wreck. I've never been more sore.
Speaker 2:The next day I was like people are going to do really well with this program. This smoked me. I just did 28 workouts in one day. That's probably the reason why. But you know, we were able to get strength, get hypertrophy, get a little bit of power in there, get mobility in there. We hit all the physical characteristics with a band set and it was pretty amazing. People are still utilizing that and that is music to my ears that you have a client that is climbing the Alps and doing a 28 days later band program. That is awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So when she, she, when she returns, I'll be very interested as a coach and myself and I I'm. Just what I really love about it is I get messages from her all the time telling me how much she's enjoying it. She's, I think. It sounds to me like she's almost enjoying it more than the gym.
Speaker 2:She'll get back to you and be like oh, I miss Leanne so much.
Speaker 1:So when she comes back, the deal was she really wanted to go in a powerlifting competition. This lady's 62. She's been a gym goer and a a uh high car, um triathlete her whole life. So she's very active. And she had this thing in her head this year that she wanted to get the national record bench, which was 40 kilos, and then that's why when she went away on this three, three month holiday, she was like, oh, how am I ever going to do it?
Speaker 1:And I'll be very interested to see how it just translates back in the gym when she comes home as well, like how is her bench going? She's done a lot of pressing movements with the band. She's done a lot of pulling movements to keep her upper back strong, so that'll be very interesting. So we're almost getting to the end. But before we finish, I would really love you to go into the systems that you've developed and all of your amazing resources and programs that you have. Tell the audience where people can find these and access these, and also the coaches that are listening, because you have that coach's certification course, which is phenomenal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so all the programs and a ton of articles and free resources over on my website, drjohnrussincom, D-R-J-O-H-N-R-U-S-I-Ncom. You can click around there and you can go down a deep rabbit hole for free and you'll be reading there for months For the certification the pain-free performance specialist certification that is at getppsccom, G-E-T-P-P-S, ppsccom. There's also a ton of free resources in terms of articles over there and also you can see our entire world schedule in terms of the certification course.
Speaker 1:We do about 200 live in-person certification courses per year all over the world and we will be back in australia in 2025 oh, my goodness, that's exciting because I know I signed up for your course during COVID, so that put a little bit of spanner in the works as far as like working one on, like working in person with with your team, with you and your team. So that's an exciting opportunity for our Australian coaches. And can you you quickly outline I know that I regularly use your programs that you have produced. You've got there's a few key programs that people can purchase and use for themselves. Can you outline what they are and what they do for people?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if you're getting back to training, whether it be time off or pain or injuries the foundations program is awesome because it will bring you through a step-by-step progression of being able to intelligently get back to training, get back to all six foundational movement patterns and just feeling your best and feeling healthy. If hypertrophy and kicking your own ass in the gym and you're a little bit more of an intermediate athlete that likes to do that functional hypertrophy training FHT is awesome because it is going to challenge you in ways that you've never thought possible, especially with some pseudo physical therapy exercises creating the pumps of your life but also going hard squat, bench, deadlift variations. And then, if power and performance is your goal and you're really into things like powerlifting or field or court sport athletics, functional power training FPT. It's one of the favorite ones that I've ever created. This is seven day a week training. You don't have to train seven days a week, it's three to seven. But it is my take on a pseudo West side barbell method where we're using max effort days, dynamic effort days, cardio conditioning days and then also functional hypertrophy within the power base system.
Speaker 2:So that conjugate program. We called it functional conjugate when it first came out, but it ended up being functional power training. That is an awesome program. One last one is like, if you just are doing this for health and fitness, you're following me on Instagram. There's something called Summer Shred Training. Summer Shred's awesome. It's also on the website. That's app-based and you can follow around right with me and a couple thousand other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. Those resources are absolute gold for anyone who's interested in any type of fitness, because they do incorporate all of those modalities that you were talking about that are in your systems. And what final thoughts or piece of advice would you like to share with our listeners in creating a strong body and a strong mind, focusing on health and longevity?
Speaker 2:Taking action now and being able to optimize now times.
Speaker 2:We look left or right at us of us and we say, hey, we're already the fittest person, I know, I'm already the healthiest person I know, but your health and your fitness is about nobody other than you and being able to train smart from the start in terms of trying to fill some of these gaps that you currently have in your training.
Speaker 2:The earlier that you identify and the earlier that you optimize the way in which you're able to do this, you'll set yourself up for a health buffer zone that you can use for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2:Many times we think about oh, we're going to do what we do until we break down or until I'm 50 or 60 years old. The clients that I have that do the best are the ones that figure it out the soonest, the ones that, at 20, at 30, are able to make mature decisions with their own body and their own training to make sure that they can optimize their performance and their health for their entire life. The thing that we focus on with every one of my clients and every one of the coaches that goes through the certification course is earning the right to do what we love to do, which is to train meaningfully every single day by training smart every day now, so we can do it later on. And I think the earlier that we can do that, the more that we can start to question and create a holistic system, the better off you're going to be, not only now in your performance, but the performance in your own life later on life later on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, wise words of advice and I will make sure that all of your resources and where to find you are linked in the show notes so people can go and access those programs which are very well priced for what's in them Absolutely amazing, and you can repeat those, you can actually rotate through those. You know, you can go through, you know, do the power training and then you might want to do the summer shred and it's just endless, endless amounts of value in there for our listeners and I highly recommend that everyone listening go and have at least have a look at the website, which I did in preparation for this podcast, and I was thinking I would need, yeah, a week to go through all this Just to refresh my memory about all the fantastic resources that are on there. They're absolutely amazing. So thank you so much for your work and thank you so much for sharing, because you do share so many amazing resources with the world for free.
Speaker 2:It was my pleasure and looking forward to more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, John.