SHOP TALK - Episode 6: Exercise order, selection, individualization, and specificity

On today's podcast, Tyler and Trevin discuss the importance of program individualization, specificity for performance, and how exercise selection and order can change based on patient/client goals.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Shop Talk. I'm Trevin. I'm Tyler. We are here to break down the latest trends in rehabilitation, strength, and conditioning all through the lens of evidence-based practice. Our goal is simple cut through the noise in the fitness industry and talk about what actually matters, why it works, and how you can apply it. On today's podcast, we will be diving into exercise selection and order. Perfect.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Awesome. So today I want to ask you this is another fun question that kind of just ease us into it. What's your go-to cheat meal? You know what I mean? I know that like diet-wise, that's not like a hundred percent all the time. Like we've talked about like the mental health with food and everything, but what's your go-to if you're like, man, I just don't care right now?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

I feel like it it's either pizza or Mexican food. Okay. So right now it's Domino's, just a meat lovers stuffed crust from Domino's or Jalisco's. Have you been to Jalisco's in town? Yep, it's great. Yeah, I get it. It's called the Three Amigos. It's just this huge plate of meat and just covered in cheese and sauce. It's so good. Heck yeah. So I'm uh, yeah. Mexican food's probably number one than I'd say pizza.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

Nice. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

But not that I don't eat those often, anyways. You know what I mean? You say cheat meals, but I have them probably more frequently than I should.

SPEAKER_03 1:25

That's all right, man. You're in the gym, you're working hard, burning calories. It's like, you know, I enjoy, I enjoy a good meal. You know what I mean? Um, I'm not like a crazy bodybuilder on stage where it's like, oh, I have to be 100% on my diet, and then at the end of the competition, I can have a big cheat meal, cheat day kind of thing. It's not like that. So yeah, I like good food.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Yeah, I try to not have too bad of a relationship with food and allow myself to have those things every once in a while. Right? It's not too often, but you know, a couple times a month, I'm having a couple slices of pizza here or there. Day and night we go to Jalisco's and get some chips and salsa. So I love it. I've never been much of a dessert cheat kind of guy. Like I enjoy some ice cream here and now, here and then or like a crumble cookie, whatever, but I'm never really craving sugar. If you're lucky, yeah, it's more like it's just like heavy carbs and more salty than sweet. Okay. Unless it's like milk duds, dude. I will go hard on some milk duds, mate. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 2:24

You like it when it gets stuck in your teeth, yes. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

It's crazy, dude. I love it. It's so good.

SPEAKER_03 2:29

It's funny. All right, cool. Well, loosen things up a little bit for sure. But um today, starting off, so we we are talking about exercise selection and order, and then Trevin has other things that are gonna kind of bounce off of that. But I wanted to start with some big questions for exercise selection and the actual organization of your workout. So, number one, does it matter? Number two, why does it matter? Like, does it lead to better results, better recovery, quicker results, easier sessions for the patient or the client? And then number three, what does the research suggest? So diving right into it. Um, before we even started the podcast today, we talked about a little bit behind the scenes of like how you program for yourself and for clients and everything like that, and how traditional strength training or I guess just resistance training in general um is usually outlined with like multi-joint exercises and then more specific accessory work afterwards, right? And I started talking about the approach to rehab sessions. So I want to kind of give an example of a well-known injury, so that way we can kind of uh get some ideas from that and give some examples of how a session would go. So the easiest kind of not easy, easiest injury or like overuse chronic issue that I can think of that does involve like the lower extremity, which you know, there's knee, ankle, hip, all of that. So multi-joint, but we have to approach it a little bit different than just like a strength uh program. We can't just dive straight into the squats. Okay. So with IT band syndrome, there is some sort of mismatch happening with the glutes or the hamstrings or the quads or anything like that, where it is pulling a ton of tension and often getting overused in some capacity. And oftentimes it's with like endurance athletes, runners, rowers, things like that. And I could not start a treatment session just jumping straight into, okay, we're gonna do multi-joint strength movements right now, right? The session would probably look something more like some soft tissue work, trying to loosen things up a little bit. But then if the patient is really low irritability and they're like, oh yeah, it hasn't hurt too bad for a week or so, we could try some squat variations, maybe not like full depth. We could do box squats or something like that, or goblet squats. But then what if that is still irritable? Then we have to kind of back up and and reorganize the whole training session. So then that's kind of where rehab is different than strength and conditioning programming, because it's like we need to either calm things down or build certain parts back up. So I put, for example, trying to relax the hamstrings. Let's say this patient has really, really tight hamstrings and it's and it is pulling on that IT band, making it very irritable. We need to do some sort of isometric to get that thing to relax for it to ease up a little bit, right? So starting off the session, that's not a multi-joint exercise, just doing a hamstring banded isometric to get that muscle to calm down. That's not multi-joint, that's just the knee, right? But that's where we would start. And then after the isometrics, oftentimes there's less pain associated with it. And then maybe we could move into a multi-joint exercise, like a squat or a lunge or something like that, right? So I don't know. I think the interaction is interesting between how I would program for rehab versus strength and conditioning. But starting out, like it's all about what the patient can tolerate too and how irritated that tissue is. We don't want to make things worse for recovery, but at the same time, we can't be too easy on it and just let it sit there stagnant because that doesn't help us at all getting back to our sport or activity. So I'll open it up to questions, but truly, that's the easiest way I can say it is okay, start off with soft tissue, and then we do some single joint stuff, maybe some single leg stuff to work on some glute activation, or even some tablework to work on some mobility with that tissue, right? Some like self-mobility, not me actually having hands on the patient. And then from there, okay, can we tolerate like a big body movement for strength? Because those movements are still important. Having an axial-loaded multi-joint exercise, like that's important, right? Um, for any athlete truly. But it's it's just like you kind of have to take it session by session, week by week, depending on what the athlete did outside of PT. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

So I had a couple questions for you. How many of these overuse injuries are because people have taken a sabbatical from training for a couple years and then they hop back on where they left off, where they left off without any progression? For example, right? So ex-athletes trying to go back into sprinting or heavy back squatting or Olympic weightlifting or endurance athletes that took some years off, but now they're going from a couch setting where they're pretty inactive to wanting to run a marathon again, again without any progression, probably leaning on experience as an ex-athlete in terms of volume, intensity, and frequency where they no longer have the capacity to manage that, which is obviously going to cause a lot of overuse injuries.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

So, how how much of that are you seeing in PT where it has less to do with I don't know, there's not really an injury problem, it's just their approach to exercise is off.

SPEAKER_03 8:31

It's a huge, I mean, dude, that is one of the biggest points that I educate my patients on truly, especially with active individuals, right? That people are trying to get back to sport or running or whatever their hobbies are, right? Because they're like, well, in high school, I used to do this, this, and this. And it's like, okay, well, you're 35 now. That's gonna look a lot different. And the way that you have to progress looks a lot different. So we actually have to take a few steps back, and then I help lay the groundwork of how like small progressions should look week to week, right? So I would say that is a huge percentage of what I see, honestly, is and we talk about this term all the time, load management, right? It's not always speaking about load as in like how much weight's on the bar. It's like your actual load in terms of exercise, right? How much are you doing every single week? And is it building up? Are you giving your body time to repair, or are you just beating the crap out of it, continuing to push through it? Right. So that's a huge part of it. And then some people, they do that, that up and down, that big up and down where it's like, oh, I'm gonna run a marathon, right? And then they stop for a long time. And then they're like, oh, I'm gonna do a 5K. So then they start running and training again for that. And and like it's just this huge up and down pattern instead of being consistent, like across a year or whatever with their training. And I get it, life, life gets busy, things get messy, but I don't know. It's like that consistency is really, really important if you do want to do those things, like run a marathon or or whatever your sport might be, because you can't just jump back into it and expect your body to be good to go. Like you can't be pushing these crazy miles and trying to get these certain times or whatever, because that's how injuries happen. Truly, it's it's a lot of what I see.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Yeah. And unfortunately, I bring up the running example because it seems that more often than not, people are using cardiovascular training to enhance weight loss. And they see a lot of people on social media running marathons, ultramarathons, doing high ROCs events, things like that. And in their head, they're thinking that that is what is creating the weight loss or these great physiques or whatever it may be. So they're like, Oh, I'm gonna start putting the miles in on the road and doing these high-intensity exercise sessions, which isn't truly the answer.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Well, dude, let me say this right now.

SPEAKER_03 10:56

I think we've talked about this. Yeah. Um, it would actually be more beneficial for somebody who wants to get back into fitness and lose some weight and feel better about their body to actually start weightlifting instead. Yeah rather than hopping on a treadmill and running or walking for miles and miles and miles. Okay. I get it. If you like running, stick with that. Awesome. Okay. But the benefits and the health and the I guess actual longevity of everything, like your body-wise with weight lifting outweighs running by I don't even know, right? Like I can't even really put it into words. So the reason why, too, like, dude, when you start putting on muscle mass, you're going to first of all burn calories in the process, but then your basal metabolic rate goes up. Like your actual just energy expenditure when you are resting, when you're sleeping, that goes up. So it's like, why would you not lift and put on muscle? Because then you're just going to be using more calories with the daily things that you do. That's the easiest way to lose weight, honestly, rather than hopping on a treadmill and oh, I got to run 10 miles. It's like, what? Why?

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Why? That's crazy. Yeah, that's something that I have written down that we'll talk about here in a minute. But I would really like to know where that came from, where this idea of I want to get back in shape and lose lose body fat, people automatically go towards the the running. Yep. And you hear it a lot. And I'm using marathon because I see it all the time where people want to lose weight and they sign up for a marathon, which I think is great. You're attaching a long-term goal to the process, which is great. But maybe we start at a 5K and then a 10K and then a half marathon, and then maybe we do a marathon a year or so later, and opposed to in a couple months. People don't really put a lot of respect on these training goals that they're giving themselves. I'm not saying you can't go run a marathon in a couple months. What I'm saying is you're gonna get severely hurt running a marathon in a couple months, and you're gonna hate it so bad that you're not gonna ever want to do it again. And then you're gonna yo-yo back to this unhealthy way of living that you were before where you're inactive and you have a bad relationship with exercise.

SPEAKER_03 13:15

Yeah. I think, I think the bad relationship thing is is huge. I see it all the time where people start start running and they're like, yep, I'm prepping for this race, blah, blah, blah. Then they get hurt and they're like, oh man, like running always does this to me, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, okay, well, slow down, right? It's probably more so your load, right? And like your volume week to week. But that is a bad way to look at exercise in general, right? Oh, I hate going, I hate running because it always hurts, or I'm sore after, or oh, last time I was running, I got a stress fracture or whatever, right? Like there's so many things that can happen. And and same thing with weightlifting. Same things can happen in the weight room. Injuries can happen, I get it. But running is such a repetitive and cyclical exercise that it's so much more common to get overuse injuries in the feet, the ankles, the knees, the hips, everything like that, than lifting a couple times a week, you know? So, anyway, we could probably talk about that forever and ever. But um, yeah, the whole the whole running thing, just jumping back into it, leads to a lot of overuse injuries because your body's not ready.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah. Well, and it's not just running, but people will demonize certain modalities of exercise when really it's the it's the way you progressed and the way you approached your training that's causing these problems, not necessarily the mode of exercise. Exactly. You hear a lot of, well, it's my knees. I can't run because I have bad knees. It's like, well, no, you have bad knees because you weren't progressively overloading while you were running. You didn't have a good approach to that mode of exercise. There was no progression. You went from absolutely no running to doing a very high intense, eccentric, loaded mode of exercise. It's gonna make you extremely sore and cause a lot of injury if you haven't prepped yourself for it. And then running becomes this bad thing where it's like, well, I don't run anymore because it's bad for me. It's just my genetics don't let me be a good runner. Like you hear it all the time. It's like, hmm, you could probably be good at most things, you just have to progress it appropriately. Yeah. As we'll get into like the individualization and specificity of things.

SPEAKER_03 15:25

But well, and that's why I gave that example of like the IT band, right? That's a very specific injury, but talking about individualization, it's like I have to treat that patient as the person they are walking in the door that day, right? I can't have this whole plan completely outlined week and week and week and week, right? Because they might come in and they're like, this is nine out of 10 pain. I can barely walk, right? I had a runner that that actually happened to. We calmed it down, we did gentle exercise, things like that. The following week, she's like, Yeah, I'm I'm sitting around like a four, right? But it was based on her volume outside the clinic too, right? It wasn't just the stuff we were doing in PT, right? Um, but anyway, so it's like I have to approach each session a little bit different. I can't be like, oh, well, I treated this guy's IT band over here. This is what worked for him. Let me do it for this girl right here, and it'll work the same because hers was much worse in much worse condition, I guess, because hers was much longer time. So she just kept running through the pain. But anyway, so individualization is super important. Um, and yeah, just my example of, like I said, IT band syndrome, it's just a good place to start because it does cross multiple joints. There's multiple muscles involved. So it's like it gets even more complex on top of that.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

No, that makes sense. I like how you discussed the exercise order as it relates to like your prehab methods and opposed to a traditional strength and conditioning program or personal training program, however you want to look at it. Typically, right, we're starting off with more intensive multi-joint exercises, compound lifts, things that are more technical and skill oriented at the beginning of the session because we want to prioritize quality over quantity early in the session, and then we're slowly progressing to maybe some accessory work or lower intensity work later in the session, maybe followed with some prehab after. I did have a question in regards to like the strength and conditioning style that we just talked about. So, when it comes to prehab exercises, is that something that is worth the time of a normal athlete, whether or not they have injuries that they're prehabbing from? Right. So, for example, um as a tactical athlete, should I be doing prehab work for my ankles because I'm running on uneven terrain out in the desert? Or is that a waste of my time? I don't have ankle problems, but I could if I, you know, twist an ankle over a rock. So is prehab saving me from those injuries, or am I wasting my time in the gym? That's such a good question.

SPEAKER_03 18:04

Um, and this is the famous PT answer is that it depends, right? It depends. Um, I think that it is worth checking in on those things, right? Doing certain exercises maybe once a week, twice a week, just being like, okay, how are my ankles feeling? Are my ankles still strong? Can I move them the way I need to move, right? Do I have good stability in single leg stance? Like checking in on those things, not a bad thing, right? In terms of doing a full session for your ankles, right? It's not like that needs to be your phone. You don't need to come into the gym for two hours and be like, I just need to get my ankle stronger. Here we go. Like this is prehab or whatever. It's like, no, do your general strengthening exercises, right? Like if you're squatting, if you're deadlifting, if you're doing lunges, if you're doing Bulgarian split squats, all of that still ties into your ankle as well, right? So that's still technically prehab. But then I get what you're saying, like these very specific exercises, like, oh, I need to work on my banded aversion strength or whatever, right? It can be beneficial. But at the same time, if you've never had an issue and you're like, oh no, my ankles always feel good, like I have really good boots, and it's never been an issue. I can understand the argument that it would be just excess volume for no reason, right? But if you're not doing a full one to two hour session just for the ankles and you're just tacking on a couple of little exercises here and there to check in on those motions and make sure they feel good, they feel strong. I don't think there's anything bad with that. What I hate to see are these usually younger individuals that start putting on crazy amounts of volume and like banded work for shoulders before they go like bench press. And it's like, okay, I get warming up the shoulders. That's great. That's amazing, right? But you don't need to be doing four sets external rotation, four sets internal rotation. Oh, we're gonna do um over and backs with the band, like whatever you want to call those pass-throughs, pass-throughs, right? So it's not like you need to do all of that kind of volume before you bench press. You want to warm up your body, you want to warm up your joints, make sure the shoulders feel good. But if you start taking that volume too far, that can actually inhibit your performance on the bench press, right? Because it's like, well, now those muscles are just tired. So then what do you think is gonna happen when you lay under a heavy bench press load and try pressing that? Your shoulders can feel like crap. So it can go either way. I like I said, I think it's important to check up on those things, make sure it feels good and do it once or twice a week, but it's not gonna be like imperative, like if you skip it for a week or whatever, right? If you have an ankle injury though, then yeah, staying on top of your ankle strengthening and stability is much recommended.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Gotcha. Sometimes it to me it comes across as more of a flex or hyper focus on minute details for most strength coaches, where they throw an overload of prehab exercises at the end of a workout, using bands and chains and these fancy mobility drills and things like that. And I'm always asking myself, like, what's the practical application of this? Like, I understand the importance of mobility and I understand the importance of having you know strong ankles and mobile shoulders or whatever it is. But sometimes to me, it looks like it's almost a hyper focus on that. And at times seems like a waste. It can be not saying that it isn't useful at certain times of the year or whatever, like you said, it depends on the situation. But like other things in the fitness industry, people will use crazy looking exercises as a flex to maybe get some traction or people to sign up for their training program.

unknown 21:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

And I was genuinely curious on what your actual opinion was because you see a lot of it um kind of this junk volume, you know, quote, prehab work.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

Yeah. How about the guys? That are like bulletproof your knees, yeah, right, by this 16-week program, right? All right, dude. Like, I get it. If you, if you've tried rehab with certain PTs or maybe a Cairo or a strength and conditioning coach, and you still got bad knees and you're like, yeah, I want something to continue to work on for weeks and weeks and weeks or whatever, great, great, that's awesome, right? But how much of that is just excess volume for your knees that you're putting it through that would actually it would just be more beneficial to just do like actual just strength training, you know? So I totally get that that it looks like it's just this weird hyper focus, as you as you put it on these movements or these very intricate exercises for specific muscles when it's like, was this really worth it? Um it depends because you you just have to be you can't half-ass it. There you go. There's the easiest way to say it. You can't, because if you're gonna truly prehab something, you gotta be consistent with it. You gotta follow it up, you gotta progress it, you gotta work on it, right? You can't just do a couple of banded exercises and be like, okay, I'm good, right? That's not changing anything, that's not doing anything, right? That's just increasing your your total volume for exercise, is all that's doing. Junk volume, as we called it. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Well, I was curious because when you think about it, if you're dealing with somebody that has an overuse injury, for example, myself, like I've dealed with I've dealt with some Achilles tendonitis with just the amount of running volume that I was doing prepping for high rocks, because I even I'm a victim of giving myself way too much volume that I'm not ready for. So I'm dealing with overuse problems. And I started kind of doing some research into like prehab exercises for my Achilles, but I was doing that in addition to already trying to run. So I'm already having overuse injury, but now I'm just adding more volume to an already overused tendon. Isn't that a fun game? It's interesting. I'm like so.

SPEAKER_03 24:00

I mean, you're you're the man to ask. So well, dude, it's such a great question because you're right, because you're like, well, that just means I'm loading it more. Like, what is that? What is that doing? Um so typically the the balance, and this sucks, right? This this is the hard part of my job is having to tell people, hey, we need to pull off your running volume just a little bit and build up some tendon like strength, I guess is the best way to put it for ease of you know, conversation here. Um where it's just like pull off the running for a little bit, build up those Achilles, right? Get those nice and strong, and then start building your running back up slowly. And that's usually the the way I try to approach it. Because if you keep the running the same and then you just add on more calf raises and isometric hold and things like that, it's like that's just that's it could be doing more damage than good. Yeah. I don't know. No, I get that. No, it's good answers. Yeah. Well, like I said, it all depends. That's the hard part. It depends on the person, depends on the injury. Um, it's hard to give like a straight up one-line answer like, yes, do this for every body part. You have to pre-hab every body part. Like, that's not realistic. So yeah, no, that's a good answer.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

I I feel like if you're asking a professional a question like that, the correct answer is it depends.

SPEAKER_03 25:20

Yeah, it really does. It really does. Um, every patient's different. So that leads in perfectly to what you want to talk about, which is individualization, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Yeah. So the two topics that I brought, instead of me diving really deep into the specific exercises that I think that you should do or the exact sequencing that you should be doing, I thought about kind of taking a couple steps back and looking at it more so at the specificity and the individualization of training. That way you can make these decisions based off of those rather than trying to overcomplicate things by trying to pick like the most perfect exercise or the most perfect sequence for a training day, because it really depends on the individual, right? And the specific goals that you have. So when we talk about specificity, we need to look at the set principle, right? Which is specific adaptations to impose demands, which basically means that in order to get the desired adaptation, exercise selection and sequence, the sets, reps, intensity, and volume all need to reflect the specific goals of the individual. And I know that this sounds pretty self-explanatory, but time and time again, we see people using the wrong tool for the job. Like, how often do we see people use cardio as a weight loss tool? And then we watch them crash and burn because it was some sort of punishment that was that wasn't maintainable, nor the most effective way to lose the weight, and most importantly, keep the weight off. Where a more effective approach would have been finding some nutritional guidance and then supplementing that with minimal effective dose strength and conditioning work to improve lean mass, health metrics, and their quality of life. Yeah. So it's it's like putting a quarter in a gumball machine, hoping that you get the blue one, but you keep getting yellow. Then you continue to put quarters in until you get the blue one. But now you have 20 gumballs, and only one of them is blue. So sure, I have some gum, which would be the undesired adaptation or yellow gumballs, but it isn't the exact piece that I actually wanted, which was the desired adaptation or the blue gumball. So, how much time did I waste hoping that I would get the thing that I wanted when I could have just gone to the store and bought a bag of blue gumballs?

SPEAKER_03 27:46

That's such a good, such a good analogy. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Yeah, that's so good. So, whether it's for competitive athletes, recreational athletes, or even the general population, it's important that you're using the right tool for the job. This can be accomplished by one, hiring a really good coach, or two, writing your performance or fitness goals down and then doing some kind of research on your own to figure out what the best approach would be based on your individual training goals. And I think a really good example of this is something we've discussed on previous episodes, and that is the use of bro splits when we were in high school. Although hypertrophy-specific training is great for certain goals, it wasn't the appropriate tool in regards to optimal on-the-field performance. I'm almost certain that the hypertrophy gains did help, just not to the extent that an appropriate training method would have. Yeah. So that's just a good example to me of specificity. So going back to like the cardio thing and the gumball thing, right? We got to get away from this guessing game of just going to the gym and doing this kitchen sink approach and hoping that we're just going to get some kind of adaptation that we've always wanted. It has to be very specific to what your goals are. If your goals are weight loss, we need to spend some time finding the most effective ways to lose weight. And time and time again, we have seen that going and getting on the treadmill and torturing yourself through endless amounts of cardio and supercloric deficits isn't the right move for long-term weight loss, right? Sure, it might help for the first couple weeks, but what's what's the chronic adaptation there? You're probably going to yo-yo like the majority of people do. Or, like we had talked about some of the best ways to lose weight is to one fix your diet, because 95% of it's diet, and then use cardiovascular training and strength training to improve performance and increase lean muscle mass. Like you said, increase your metabolic rate by putting on some lean muscle mass.

SPEAKER_03 29:52

Yeah. It's literally the biggest cheat code that you see.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Absolutely. So everyone's doing this cardio hoping that they're gonna walk out on the other side with six-pack abs and look lean. But we have a bunch of people out here that are skinny fat and they're wondering why they're skinny fat and why they don't look like this person on a magazine that they want to look like. So, one, that's pretty unobtainable and unrealistic. And two, it's not the right tool for the job.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

So when we talk about specificity, you really have to understand what your goals are and find a good coach that can point you in the right direction, or dive into some literature and figure it out on your own what the best way to approach it is.

unknown 30:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Which again, we've talked about in previous episodes, is really hard due to the amount of information that's on the market. We don't know what's good and what's bad. You and I do, fitness professionals do, but for people that don't have the time to dive into the literature or go back to school because they have other goals outside of fitness, they don't know. Right. They just assume and trust.

SPEAKER_03 30:57

Yeah. Right. Like that's what humans are hardwired to do. Oh, this guy looks like a professional. I should trust him. Well, that might not always be the best thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

A lot of it has to do with the aesthetic goals that everybody wants. Like, let's be honest. Everybody wants to look good naked. When you talk to the majority of people in the general population, outside of people that really care about performance, it's all about I want to look better. It's summer's coming up, I want to have six-pack abs. I want to be sub-10% body fat. That's the majority of people. And there isn't anything wrong with that, but people aren't using the right tool to get there. Like we've talked a lot about bro splits and bodybuilding, but they're the best at looking good naked. And what do they do a ton of? They do a shit ton of lifting weights. And into when's the last time you saw a bodybuilder running outside? You really don't. They are probably walking around the stairclimber for cardio. And they're really not using cardio to lose a ton of body fat. They might be at the end of their prep to get like a little couple, you know, like microdosing caloric deficit, but that's not the grand scheme of things. They're manipulating their diet as well.

SPEAKER_03 32:05

If they need like an extra hundred, 150 calories, then yeah, they hop on the stair climber or whatever and do that for 20 minutes, but they're not hours and hours and hours on there every single day. That doesn't make sense. You know how tanked they would be, especially being in a caloric deficit like that. That just doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

So and that's not to say that increasing your activity level doesn't help improve weight loss because it does, just not to the extent that fixing your diet would. Right. And we're not nutrition coaches, that's outside of our scope. Like we can provide suggestions on what you should do, but both you and I know, and if you ask anybody that's been in the fitness game for a really long time, they will say, in terms of manipulating your body fat, the majority of that comes down to your diet. We need to use strength training and cardiovascular training to improve health metrics and quality of life and performance. I promise you, if you just take this advice, manipulate your diet, but just use fitness as a means to improve your performance. I promise you, the aesthetics will follow. If you're eating based off of how you are training and you're eating to have great training sessions and to recover properly, you're gonna look good. I promise. Like you can manipulate a couple things here and there to lose a couple more percentages on your body fat. But if you lift weights, do a decent amount of cardiovascular training, and you fix your diet, you're chilling, bro. It's not, it's not super complex, it's just sometimes hard to maintain. And there's a lot of information out there getting people messed up because they don't know where to start. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:42

No, I think that's great. And I just going back a little bit to the to the gumball thing, I think that's such a good way to put it into perspective where it's like you keep putting on all these quarters and all this time in in the way this ties in in the gym, right? You keep showing up, you're dedicated, you're doing all this stuff, but you're not getting the results that you want because you're not you're not actually focusing on the stuff, right? So it's like if I want a bigger arms, do you think bench press is the way to get bigger arms? It's like it's like maybe a little bit, maybe a little bit. A little bit tricep, right? Yeah. But that's not that's not the idea of like this argument. It's like, no, we're gonna do some bicep curls, we're gonna do some tricep extensions, we're gonna do some variations mixed within, we're gonna adapt your volume, right? In the best way for hypertrophy gains to get your arms bigger. So that's just like the thing that pops into my head, because it's like, yeah, if you want certain results, you you gotta kind of put your money where that's your time, I guess, for the gym. You gotta put that into what you're actually trying to achieve. So I think some people, like you said, just get mixed up and they're just like, well, yeah, I want to lose weight, so I'm gonna go do cardio. That's it's just not right. So it just doesn't make sense to me in my head. But you know, when you're around the space for long enough, you start to learn these things and then you think everyone else knows these things. But like you said, people have lives outside of fitness, right? For me and you, this is something that we do every day, all day, and we can talk about it forever. But other people just don't care. They're just like, Yeah, I want to look good. So anyway, I think it's important that we try to provide good information like that. And it might sound crazy, honestly. Like, I try to put myself in the perspective of somebody like listening. And I know even some of my close personal friends, that they show up to the gym and they get on the treadmill. They're like, Yeah, I need to do some cardio. I need to, and I'm like, why? I'm like, why? You save your energy, go lift, right? Like the weights are just right over there. So it all depends on the goal. If you want to get good at running, go run, right? That's great. But if you're trying to lose weight, do a little bit of everything, and of course, main thing nutrition.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

So yeah. Um, I said this last week, and I think it's a great thing to continue saying, but it's just hard work misplaced. It's not that you aren't doing the work, it's not that you're not working hard enough. So don't beat yourself up thinking that you need to do more. That's not necessarily the case. It's just the tool that you're using for the job. Again, find a good coach or find some good resources to use that point you in the right direction. And just to conclude specificity, it's really simple as if you want to be good at squatting, you have to squat. If you want to be good at sprinting, you need to sprint. If you need big, if you want bigger arms, you gotta isolate the biceps and triceps. Like it's as it's as simple as that, right? Um, there's certain tools that you can use to get you there faster. Um, but that's where good coaching comes along and experience, right? We we know people that aren't even in the fitness industry that have just been working out their entire lives and they have it figured out. They're not even fitness professionals, they just know how to get games because they've been in the game for so long that they know how it's done. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 36:54

So it's great. If you don't know, ask questions. And if you're not getting the results you want, I promise you it's not you. It's there's nothing wrong with you, it's not your effort level. That's the problem. It's just how you're approaching the goal that you have. You just might need to be a little bit more specific to the goals that you have in mind.

SPEAKER_03 37:13

Well said. Well said. Um, and then you have the next part, which is individualization, yeah, right, which ties in really well to rehab.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

And individualization individualization is it's very similar to specificity, but has more to do with the specifics of an individual, such as your training age, your time availability, your desired outcomes, previous injury, and your likes or dislikes. And I have contraindications, dude. I have such a hard time saying that contraindications. Yeah. So basically, and we can get into that in a minute. But no, I wanted to touch on a couple of these in in greater detail, right? So, for example, training age. Um, so what is your previous experience and how much training can this person actually tolerate? What's their what's their load capacity? Are they a beginner? Are they an intermediate? Are they advanced? And this is going to drive decisions around program design variables to include exercise selection, frequency, volume, and intensity. So when it comes to individualizing a training program or a training day based off somebody's training age, that's what's going to determine how many sets are we doing? What's their rest period here? What's their reps? Um, how many exercises am I doing? How complex are these exercises? Am I doing Olympic weightlifting variations or am I just teaching somebody a basic hinge pattern because they just started? So that's kind of where training age falls into that category of individualization. So if you have anything to add to that, please do. I I do.

SPEAKER_03 38:48

And I'm trying to not open a can of worms here to tell you the truth. Um so the most important part of like a PT evaluation is the subjective history, talking with the patient, what's actually happening, getting their background, everything like that, right? But what I saw time and time again, and I can guarantee anyone who's listening to this, or maybe your own personal um experiences with physical therapy, but I've I saw it a lot on my clinical rotations and all the evals that I watched. There are so many PTs that don't ask, like, what does your training look like? Like, what are you doing for hobbies? What does your daily activity even look like? Do you know what I mean? Like there's there's so many other variables. They're just focused on the injury, right? The injury themselves. And that's okay, that's fine. But then what happens when you actually take that patient out for their first follow-up session and you try loading them, right? Or you try going into single leg stance, but you realize, oh my gosh, this person can't even stand on one leg, right? Those are things that you test in the eval, but it's also so important to get a background of like, have you ever lifted weights? Have you ever like done multiple? There's so many people that come in here for physical therapy and they're like, oh no, I've never done step-ups for a set of eight before. You know what I mean? And it's just body weight, right? So it's like even very basic exercises like that. It's like you have to get a background on their training age, right? To get a good idea basically where to start, right? Otherwise, you're going in blind and it's really hard to gauge, like, okay, I can't blow this person out of the water, right? Like I cannot make them so sore that they can't walk the next day. I can't do that, right? So it's really, really important in physical therapy. Once again, individualization is one of the top things that we learn in PT school is like every patient that you see and that you eval is going to be different. And you have to get such a well-rounded history, and training age is part of that history in order to progress them and get them healed and get them back, right? Um, yeah. So training age is very it's a it's a hard topic in terms of physical therapy because there's a lot of people, their training age is zero. They've they've never touched weight, they've never touched a barbell, they've never done that. But then on the other side, if you're a sport PT, you're treating people that are squatting 500. You're treating people that are overhead pressing 250, like crazy things like that. And you're like, oh my gosh. So kind of having a well-rounded subjective history, I don't know if people care about this, is is one of the most important things you can do as a PT or clinician.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

Yeah, to me that makes sense. And I never had even thought about it that way. But when you look at, for example, an injury between like let's call it a sprained ankle, right? A third-degree sprained ankle. You have uh if have an advanced athlete, and then you have somebody that's never been in a weight room. Um, even just like the exercise selection and the progression is gonna look so much different. So much different. Where like maybe, and I'm not bashing PTs, but maybe there's like a standard progression for everybody here. Hey, here's the standard progression for this. But A, the athlete's probably too advanced for that progression, it's not gonna do anything for them, or for the person that doesn't have any training age, even just the first exercise on the list of progressions is way too hard for this person. Yep, because, like you said, this person has never even attempted to stand on one foot and try to balance because they don't really care about their fitness and health that much. And so we have this huge spectrum where you can't just, you know, square peg, round hole kind of a thing where it's like, nope, this is what the textbook says, right? This is how you should be progressing, progressing, but a good coach, physical therapist, whatever is gonna make those changes kind of on the fly and individualize every single um, you know, training session based off of the individual. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 42:39

So um the funniest part is like I wouldn't have a job if rehab was the same for every person. Absolutely. Because there would be a book called Rehab for Ankle, right? There would be a book called Rehab for Knee. So that's why I get frustrated, like with social media BS, um, because people will be like, oh yeah, bulletproof your knees, right? I know I already said this, yeah, but then they'll show four exercises. Dude, you have no idea who's watching that reel, right? Some people can't tolerate a knee a band behind the knee because what if they have like a cyst back there, right? They can't do banded TKEs trying to bulletproof their knees because they have that's a contraindication, right? Like, so it really frustrates me to see these cookie cutter things that are posted on social media and people are like, oh, I've been doing this for my shoulder rehab or my knee rehab or whatever. And it's like, dude, that's not the same as getting like individualized PT that's one-on-one. Like that is so, so different. So, anyway, like I said, I'm trying to not like just open the can of words, but it's such an important part of um intaking a patient and truly getting them better and back to what their fitness level is or whatever, right? It's like, I don't know, it gives me a headache just thinking about all of the posts that I see, right? And of course I'm in the fitness realm a lot. So it makes sense that I see this stuff pop up on my feed, but it's just nonstop like. Oh, you have weak ankles, do these four exercises every day. And it's like, it's like, that doesn't work for everyone. There's a floor and a floor and ceiling effect, you know? So it's like, um, those are all things that you have to consider when you're when you're treating patients. But anyway, not trying to make this all about PT. It's just it's wild. Um, the the tie into the training age thing.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

So yeah, those are great, those are great takeaways. 100%. And I've we hope to have coaches and physical therapists on this podcast. So any takeaway from whether it's the strength and conditioning side or the physical therapy side, I think is absolutely great. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate I appreciate you listening through my through my rank. No, I think it's great. I think it's very important. So to bring it back to individualization, the next thing I'd like to discuss is time availability. So we have an idea of what may be optimal for training frequency and volume. But does the individual have the time availability to actually meet the optimal? Or do we need to find creative ways to get as close to that as possible? What adjustments can we make to training volume and intensity to ensure we are getting an appropriate training stimulus with the time that we do have, rather than forcing a schedule that isn't sustainable long term? I think about time availability a lot. And you see it a lot on social media. You see a lot of personal trainers pushing it, and we get so glued to these ideas of like, no, I need to train six days a week, five days a week, three days a week. And then we start diving into training splits and whatever else, like what we talked about last week. And really, when I think about time availability, is every single person has other responsibilities outside of the gym that may be giving them more or less availability to exercise. Exercise is obviously extremely important. It's something that should be a priority for everybody, but we all have different responsibilities outside of the gym. For somebody that works a full-time job, for moms that have kids and that are running them around from practice to practice, they're not going to have the time availability of like an athlete, right? So, as coaches, I think it's extremely important to individualize a training day or a training week or whatever training split you're using based off of that person's availability. Because really, what it comes down to is their ability to sustain this long term. You're setting them up for failure if you're forcing them to train four days a week, five days a week, and you're telling them that that's the only way when it's not the only way. You have to be able to make those adjustments based off of that person's time. And then picking exercises and training splits that, hey, if you miss a day, it's okay. Like we're good. We can still maintain, we can still make progress here. You can only make it to the gym twice a week. Sweet, we can make that work. Yeah, we're gonna make it work, and opposed to forcing these training splits or exercises on somebody when quite frankly, they just don't have the availability to make that happen.

SPEAKER_03 47:06

Yeah. I like I like that that's uh something you think about a lot. Um tying this back because strength and conditioning rehab, right? Both of us here, um that's something that every coach, every clinician should be uh taking into consideration. Um on in my realm, once again, I'll say I'll say something LPT related one more time and then I'll ask you some more questions. But um all the time, the go-to frequency is like, okay, I need to see you three times a week for six weeks. Why? Why? Right? Like if the person doesn't have time for that or has to take time away from their kids or their their work or whatever, it's like that's really hard, right? And then on top of that, sometimes clinicians will be like, oh yeah, and then along with the three times a week that I need to see you for three months or whatever, um, you're gonna be doing home exercise program every single day. Right. And I'm like, no, that's that just seems like overkill, right? So to me, when I'm trying to balance like frequency and volume and everything like that, that's how home exercise programs should balance that out, right? Anything that we're not hitting here in the clinic or don't have time for, or I can only see the patient maybe once, maybe twice a week, then it's like, okay, your home exercise is gonna help boost this up a little bit. So that's that's a big thing, once again, in my realm of this conversation in PT, it's it's I don't know, pretty imperative. Um, and I think uh physical therapy just as a profession has kind of lost its way because it's been, oh, well, I just need to see you three times a week for this long for for any injury. And it's just like, well, that's not really true.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

So well, progression doesn't look the same for everybody, correct, either. So putting somebody in a box and saying you're gonna be good after six weeks, and then you let somebody walk out the door and they're not fully recovered, like it's kind of on you, bro.

SPEAKER_03 49:00

Mm-hmm. So a question I have for the time availability, yeah. With athletes that do have more time to dedicate to their sport and their craft and their lifting. Where's that line of doing too much, right? And how often do you have to educate, or what are you telling them? What are you explaining to them about, okay, this is why we're only doing this much strength stuff. This is why we're only doing so much skill stuff. Like, where's where's that line? Because they might have all the time in the world after school, before school, maybe at lunch. Like, they might have all the time in the world because they're just a young kid, right? So I don't know, talk to me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 49:38

What is really hard is so you have the majority of people that we have to try to convince to get into the gym. Athletes are somebody that we have to try to convince to stay out of the gym, or at least the ones that are extremely passionate about a sport. So trying to tell somebody that they need to train less is extremely hard, and I would argue harder than trying to convince somebody to get in the gym. It's very true. We've both been there. Even with what we know now, if we went back and I were to tell my younger self, you don't get to go work out today because you've done enough, I would probably flip myself the bird and go work out anyways. I wouldn't listen. And you see a lot of that. A lot of pushback. Yeah. As a coach, trying to get a kid to understand appropriate training volume. Um, one, make sure you're accounting for what they're doing outside of the gym when you have them. So as a coach, you can ask questions. What did your day look like? What did you do this weekend? Are you doing anything extra on your days off? Because sometimes kids need that. Sometimes kids need the bro lift session anytime fitness uh at midnight because they're going through it because they broke up with a girlfriend or something. You need that, you need that, right?

SPEAKER_02 50:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:58

There's other benefits to exercise that aren't just performance related. A lot of it can do with mental health. So I really think what it comes down to is just having really good communication with your athletes and asking them questions. Because if they're telling you, hey, I'm running routes with my friends on my days off, or I, my family really likes to go backpacking in the summer and we do a lot of aerobic conditioning on my days off. Then as a coach, I can then individualize their training session that day based off of whatever else they're doing. If I have a kid that really likes recreational activity and is on a mountain bike all summer or is hiking or is dirt biking and is doing something very cardiovascular cardiovascular oriented, why in the hell would I blast them with conditioning when I have them? I'm just gonna work on the stuff that they're not working on.

SPEAKER_02 51:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

Right. So I think a lot of these problems can be answered with good communication.

SPEAKER_03 51:50

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 51:51

To be honest with you. Absolutely. Like we can get into the weeds and well, hey, kid, like you need to train this many days a week for this long, and this is what recovery, and you need to have 72 hours between planetric training days, and then you need to have a conditioning day between your strength training days to allow yourself to fully recover. Like we can go into all of that, but realistically, you're the coach, you're the one that has to make those decisions. Just talk to your athletes and figure out what they're doing on their days off, and then you make the adjustments to them. Because again, they're paying you, they're the ones that are showing up to train hard. You can't control them, anyways. You can only control what you're doing with the time that you have with them. So make those adjustments on the fly based off of what they're doing.

SPEAKER_03 52:29

Yeah. So then this ties into a big, big topic group training sessions. Yeah. Yeah. Which is scary, right? So, how how do you check in with 15 kids, right? And be like, oh, okay, what'd you do this weekend? What'd you do this weekend? Oh, what does your recovery look like? What's your sleep like? You can't do that with that many kids, right? So then you throw these exercises or plyometrics or strength training at them, and it's like, you don't know how they're responding to that. You you can't track 15 progressing kids, right? You can't track that over time. So that's when it starts to get a little bit scary. That's just the first thing that pops into my head.

SPEAKER_00 53:08

Yeah. And it's scary when it comes when you look at it from a testing and evaluation standpoint. And as a coach, like you're let's say you're testing a couple athletes periodically and you're seeing them chronically decline. Um, you might think as a coach that you're doing something wrong in the gym, but the non-functional overreaching, non-functional overreaching that is happening is actually coming from all the extra work that they're doing outside of the gym with you. It's the extra speed and agility work, it's the goofing off with their friends or not getting enough sleep or whatever else that they're doing. But again, it just comes back to that communication piece, which it goes away when we do these group training sessions. That's where having an individualized training program for you specifically is going to be the most optimal for performance. I understand that group training is a thing and it happens. And as a coach, you do the best you can with what you have. You focus on the meat and the potatoes of what's actually going to increase their performance. And you can just tell the athletes everything that you know and hope that they listen. Talk to the parents and hope that they listen. Which, as a coach, can be extremely frustrating and difficult when they would rather take the advice from social media and some homeboy that played college football that thinks he knows everything, instead of taking advice from a fitness professional that actually has the credentials in the background to give you the right answers. So, group training, it's great if that's what you have to do. But as a coach, you can probably just teach your kids how to auto-regulate. How are you how are you feeling today? Give me a like, if you have 10 kids, hey, RPE, how are you feeling? One out of 10. Okay, you're a six, just go a little bit lighter today. Oh, you're a 10, go a little bit harder today. So you can make micro adjustments as a coach within group training. It's just a little bit harder.

SPEAKER_02 54:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:58

And you're gonna have a little bit less of an individualized relationship with those athletes than you would if you were to have them one-on-one or even in just smaller groups of like three or four.

SPEAKER_03 55:08

Yeah, I think that's great. That's a great way to look at it. That it's still possible, it's just harder. It's just harder. And you, I mean, that just puts more on the coach. It puts more on the coach, puts more on the trainer. And it's like it's a really hard thing to, of course, train somebody one-on-one, right? But then if you are wanting to improve performance or strength or functionality in any population, right? It's like the best way to do that is not in a group of, you know, I I wouldn't have five PT patients out here at once that are maybe in their 60s, 70s, I don't know, right? Just any population. I'm not gonna have all of them doing the same exercises out there because, you know, what if one of them slept bad? So their balance is a little bit worse today, right? I can't, I can't check in on all of them at the same time on like difficulty level and how they're feeling. So it's just like that just puts a lot more on the coach, right? And what they need to handle. So yeah, because because they're they're being trusted as the professional. So that's that's something that falls into their lap.

SPEAKER_00 56:05

Yeah, and to bring it back to the specificity of this when it comes to group training, the more specific the goals, the more specific the training needs to be. When we talk about like general population and like normal group training classes that you see at like gyms, I think there's space for that. There's room for it. We're talking about general health metrics and you know, increasing quality of life. I think that's great. Yeah, there's gonna be some things that aren't individualized great, but most of these people that are in these classes prioritize fitness and then they they learn to auto-regulate themselves, anyways. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:41

So well, I mean, dude, I I love the individualization. I mean, that's very close to everything I do day to day, right? With one-on-one sessions and and PT versus um just basically personal training, sport conditioning and stuff. Um trying to see if there's any oh it's funny. We of course we get sidetracked here. Like, I mean, every time we talk, it happens every time. Um but I put something under exercise selection for strength and performance athletes. And you're totally right. For um strength gains and everything like that. I mean, it all needs to be more specific. But now talking a little bit about the order of exercise, I thought this was interesting for strength gains. Yes, of course, they're gonna recommend multi-joint exercises first, where you can actually put the most effort into the lifts and everything for hypertrophy training. So basically just bodybuilding splits. There actually wasn't a huge difference, which was interesting because I guess it's all pretty, it's you know, one joint specific, like, oh, okay, biceps. Okay, now I'm doing triceps, right? So it's like that makes total sense. But for anyone who's interested, I have the article here. It's Nunes JP et al. So um that was in 2020. But yeah, I thought that was interesting in terms of order selection. I know that we derailed, but you know, I just thought that was good to bring up.

SPEAKER_00 58:02

And I don't have this specific article on me, but I know there are some meta-analyses that have been done on muscular hypertrophy and exercise sequencing. Honestly, as long as we're going close to, you know, close to failure, like zero to three reps in reserve with whatever rep range you're training in, you're gonna see hypertrophy regardless. We also know that the interference effect with hypertrophy gains with the addition of aerobic training isn't that great. And so whether or not you do your cardio first or your hypertrophy second within the same training day, if your goal's primarily strength or hypertrophy, the interference effect isn't super great. Or that becomes more of a problem, is with athletes that need more rate of force development and speed, the interference is a lot greater when we start incorporating cardiovascular training into it and other characteristics that aren't necessarily as compatible.

SPEAKER_03 58:53

Yeah, I love it. So I love it. I love how you can just rattle that off, man. Truly. Because this is this is something that you're so passionate about and you've been studying for so long. So it's just cool to hear you talk about that. Um, yeah. I'm trying to see if I have any other questions, but then if you have any other questions, feel free.

SPEAKER_00 59:10

No, I wanted to add another thing to time availability that's very in line with what we're talking about right now. Um, in regards to time availability, right, is the opportunity cost of learning new skills within the gym. So I am a huge advocate for speed and agility work, ply metrics, and Olympic weightlifting. Not just for the athlete, but for general population or recreational athletes. I think they're great. And I'm very confused as to why we as a community stop doing those after we start, we stop playing sports. But all of these skills are they're extremely challenging and they demand a lot of respect in terms of the time it takes to master them. If we're talking about athletes with time availability and with a greater time availability and a longer runway, all of these skills are definitely worth the opportunity cost, right? But for somebody trying to obtain general health benefits from exercise, it may not necessarily be worth the opportunity cost. There's definitely a large spectrum, right? And everyone needs to decide for themselves what's worth their time and what isn't. Um, but for those with time restraints, we need to find exercise protocols that hit the meat and the potatoes in regards to their individualized training goals instead of pushing these exercises on them that might be a little bit more complex and require a significant amount of time to train and maintain. Because you can't dip in and out of Olympic weightlifting. You're kind of in or you're out. Like it's very technical. Same thing with sprinting and agility work and plymetrics. This isn't something we can train once a year and come back to and be great at it again. So I think in terms of time availability that goes along with exercise selection, the more time availability you have, the more time you have to dedicate to skill-specific things that can optimize performance, like Olympic weightlifting, which is amazing for rate of force development, the speed and agility work, the pymetrics, which again are also great for the general population. But if you don't have the time to master those skills, your time might be better used just focusing on the meat and the potatoes or just developing general strength and cardiovascular fitness.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:21

Yeah. So yeah. I mean, as a coach, maybe you can tell me this because I I I this is a question I try to ask every every coach that I've worked with. Or um, have you ever tried to teach a class or maybe just one or two individuals? I'm not sure like what your previous training like sessions looked like, or if it was all just one-on-one. Um, somebody had a clean full from the floor power clean. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. From from ground zero. Yeah, never doing it before.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:52

So I actually, and it's lapsed, but I did have my USA weightlifting certification that I got from California Strength. Nice. Which, if you guys aren't familiar with Cal Strength, they are like the top dogs in the United States in terms of developing Olympic weightlifting athletes, like the skill and the sport of weightlifting.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:13

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

And so I really got to learn from some of the best. And I had a really great coach when I was younger teach me all of the Olympic lifts. So it's something that is pretty natural to me still. And so when I was coaching it, it was a little bit easier. I knew the progressions, I knew to where to hold people back and where to push them forward. But it is extremely difficult and a very technical skill.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:37

Very technical.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:38

And as a coach, you have to decide again what the opportunity cost is. Because for most people, especially young athletes that don't have the time, it might not actually be worth it. Yeah. If I need to put on a lot of strength and I'm trying to improve power and velocity and rate of force development, and I'm spending 20, 30 minutes every single training session when I only have them for 45 minutes, I'm losing out on these strength gains that, yeah, sure, on paper, they might not be as optimal compared to Olympic weightlifting movements, but I still have to get them adaptation because they're playing in a couple months. So I might just have to say, okay, it isn't optimal, but I'm going to substitute this for an exercise, like a weighted apply metric that may be less of an effect, but still useful.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:25

Right. But yeah, in terms of teaching Olympic weightlifting, it's it's very technical. You have to have a lot of patience. And as an athlete, you have to understand that there is definitely a path and it takes a long time. They're hard lifts, they're very technical. But I can promise you, once you get them down, much like powerlifting, it's it's addicting. Like every lift is a new game. Yeah. Like you can just, you're so inside of your body, and you can just feel all the small different changes and the difference from one lift to another. It's awesome. Like if you've done Olympic lifting, you can definitely relate. I mean, if you're watching a video, it probably always looks the same, but it's cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:04

Yeah. It's really cool. Um, so then tying into that, this is like probably my last question, but what do you think of part practice then? So for in a for a lift that is so important for athletes, especially especially explosive athletes, right? Doing a power clean, yeah, right, or hang cleans or anything like that, right? That transition's really hard, getting underneath the bar, right? The catch. Exactly. That transition is super, super hard. So it's hard to teach. You have to spend a lot of time practicing. Um, you have to work on mobility sometimes if you can't get in those positions, right? So, what do you think about like, okay, one session you're doing pulls from the floor. So basically a deadlift, right? And then the other day, you're doing a front rack, like front squat position. Like, what is your thought about training those two things instead of like, okay, let's spend a full session learning cleaning, right? And then the next session we can barely load it at all, like empty barbell and then progressing that way versus let's load your deadlift, let's load your front squat.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:05

Yeah. I love that question. So, in terms of rate of force development, the high rates of that during Olympic lifts are through triple extension. None of it has to do with the catch. Yeah, sure, like on the like if you're doing a power clean or a power snatch, there's some deceleration going on there. There's some heavy eccentric loading, right? Aside from that, though, the majority of the rate of force development is coming through that triple extension with the high pull. Right. So if you're doing part practice and you're working on deadlifts alone and you're working on high poles alone, you're kind of surfing that force velocity curve, anyways.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:42

And I would argue that I would rather load your deadlift and train that separately than like a hang snatch pull, because really, where you are dealing with technical issues, I'm not going to be able to load you as heavy on the deadlift. Portion of a power clean if you can't power clean, anyways. So I would rather just teach you the deadlift and get you strong there. And if I'm using like a mixed methods training approach where I'm training the entire force velocity curve on the same training day, okay, so I'm gonna work more on the force side of the curve by doing a deadlift. But then when I want to work more like speed strength stuff, I'm gonna do a hang, hang clean pull or a hang snatch pull. And I don't even need the catch because it's all in that triple extension where I'm getting that rate of force development. And I don't even need to come from the floor, to be honest. When we talk about specificity and the athletic position from the blocks, does it really freaking matter if I'm coming from the floor, or can I go from some blocks above the knee? Yep. Hang clean poles or hang snatch poles. Right? The catches are sexy, the catches are fun. I think there's some deceleration components there, some eccentric loading that can be beneficial in terms of change of direction and load management. Sure. But I can also get that by training speed and agility work also or ply metrics. Right. Without having the technical piece. Without the technical piece. So using the derivatives of Olympic weightlifting, I think everybody should do 100%. Pulls, pulls, pulls. Work on the deadlift separately, use that as a strength developer, and then use the derivatives of the Olympic lifts to improve rate of force development through triple extension.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:15

Yep. So then how many high school coaches? And once again, this is not a day. I'm trying my best here because truly a lot of high school strength and conditioning coaches or um football coaches or whatever, they're like volunteers or they're not getting paid well. Like this isn't their full-time gig kind of thing, right? But then they make these kids do cleans, right? And it's like, man, that technique is not looking great, right? Like that's really, really rough. And it's like it would actually be a lot better if we just focused on your pole from the floor, if we just did, like you said, a triple extension like row kind of thing, like a high pole. Yeah, see, exactly. Rather than putting these kids in these weird positions, really technical lifts, and it's barely loaded, right? Like that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I guess, unless you're doing maybe some speed work, but then it still is not very loaded. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:02

So well, and the thing is, is you in order to improve power, you have to load the bar at least a little bit, right? Especially with Olympic lifts, where we got to be like usually above 80%, right? Like we can dip below, you know, most power exercises are gonna be between 30 and 60 percent of your one repetition max, which you can use with the derivatives of the Olympic lifts, but I would say that range is gonna be more beneficial coming from dynamic strength training or plymetrics. I think coaches just they don't know what they don't know, and so they hear Olympic weightlifting is good for power development, which it absolutely is. It's one of the best in terms of producing rate of force development. I believe the only thing better for rate of force development other than Olympic lift is like a squat bar jump where you just put a bar on your back with 30% of your one RM and you jump with the bar on your back. Yeah. And so yeah, Olympic lifting is extremely technical, but coaches just don't know like at what portion of that lift is the most important and what stuff you can kind of cut out of the lift, which really is the catch. Yeah. I don't know if I'm qualified for one or if I trust 20 kids at a time to start learning how to snatch overhead. Oh gosh. That's pretty dangerous. And I don't want to deal with the shoulder repercussions of that. I think it's a safe movement if it's done appropriately, but that's where out of my scope. Like, I don't know the proper progression for like shoulder mobility work. Like, I know you I know when you do Olympic lifting, there is a bunch of tests that you need to take before you start lifting. So, like, okay, this guy can overhead press, he can overhead squat, he can squat two times his body weight, whatever it is. Like, there's a baseline that you have to meet in order to start Olympic weightlifting, which most coaches aren't doing or don't have the time to do.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:55

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:56

Um, but yeah, it's definitely scary. But yeah, if coaches are having them do the catch when they don't need to, I think it's it's dumb because they either take it out completely or they force them to do the catch, which is causing injuries and really crappy technique, or they're loading the bar, like you said, way less than optimal in terms of power development. Now we're just wasting our time and now we're practicing the skill of Olympic weightlifting, which now we're mixing things of okay. Now we're not keeping the main thing the main thing, which is improving radar force development to improve performance. Now we're just trying to teach a guy how to catch a power clean. Well, honestly, who gives a shit? Yeah, like honestly, yeah, if you want to get good at Olympic lifting, do it. I promote that 100%. I love it, it's great for me, but it's also not for everybody, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:40

But if you're a football player, why are you doing that? Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:43

Yeah, so great benefits from the derivatives of Olympic lifting, but it doesn't have to be the full lift.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:48

Yeah. So everyone listening, do you see how messy this can get? How quick. That's why I was laughing because, like, your little uh, you know, off the cuff kind of thing comment of like, well, you know, power clean, whatever is the best for rate of force development. I think the only thing that can top that is actually 30% loaded barbell squat jumps. It's like it's like that is exactly why education is important and coaches actually knowing what the frick they're doing. That's why it's important, right? This stuff can get messy so, so quick. And we always get, you know, sidetracked and stuff, but you know, there's just so much to unpack in every little detail that we talk about. I mean, we could talk literally just about time availability for an hour straight. So it's really hard. I mean, everyone listening to we're we're trying to dial in these topics more and more and be more specific about, you know, staying on topic, but it's just hard because this is such a you know broad scope of strength and conditioning and of course my side of a little bit of rehab too. So mixing it all together can get messy quick.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:52

Yeah, we dug through those rabbit holes hard times.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:56

Yes, but I love it. I think it's great. Um, and it's still good information, right? Um, and if anyone has questions, just reach out either to the Physio Shop Instagram or my personal or Trevin's personal. So it's all tagged on Instagram for sure. But um, anything else on your mind right now? Uh no, so then I had another topic we can speed through.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:15

I don't even know where we're at time-wise.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:17

We're we're at 112.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:18

112. Yeah. All right, we'll dive, we'll get through these ones quick before we start losing people. No, you're good. So my thing was in terms of individualization, is making sure you're programming for previous injury uh contraindications and physical restraints. So again, contraindications basically means there's a reason to not perform a certain exercise, exercise method or training approach because it could be harmful to the athlete or the client. This is more of Tyler's realm of things, but in my experience, I look at this as not introducing advanced techniques to athletes or clients who are not ready for certain level of intensity. This is strictly just due to injury prevention and proper progression of exercise. I can't expect someone to walk into the gym day one and start sprinting or doing Olympic level cleaning jerks. And some gyms and coaches are already doing this, but this creates poor movement patterns and reinforces poor technique. And the ceiling for adaptation is so much higher when we learn how to do things the right way through proper integration and progression at the beginning. So, and I had a question for you. So, when it comes to contraindications, how do you convey to an athlete or client without upsetting them that they just aren't ready for a certain level of intensity, whether that be a distance runner struggling with an overuse injury or a field sport athlete who isn't quite ready to return to sport, but insists that they are?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:44

Yeah, that's a really hard, really, really hard um topic. But I'll make it brief by talking about first that there are clinicians that they fall into that trap of when the athlete's like, no, no, I'm ready. Feels good, feels good. Of course the athlete's gonna say that. No shit, right? Like they want to get back on the field, right? And maybe they do feel good, right? But are you doing everything that you need to do as a clinician to test that? Right? The easiest one is ACL, right? Return to sport, ACL testing. Um and you know, some clinicians are really good at it, some clinicians kind of half ass it, like, oh, can you do the single leg triple jump? Can you do the the 360 turns, like all of these tests that you should go through? Um, because there's actual guidelines for like return to sport for physical therapy, everything like that, clinical practice guidelines. Um you have to stick to that. Like and I think if you stick to it of those testing and those protocols to return to sport, and the athlete can see that they're truly not ready and there's such a big difference from side to side, it's not much of a conversation anymore. It's more so like, you see, you see the difference, right? And kind of showing that because then they're like, Oh, okay, I guess so. And it's like, yeah, of course you feel good while you're walking around school or you know, jumping off the tailgate of your truck, like that probably feels fine, whatever, right? But sport demands are much, much different than that. So for any clinicians listening, or um, just in general, I'm just throwing this out there, like, stick to the research that is behind all of these clinical practice guidelines for individuals returning to sport because the athlete's always gonna say they're ready, right? I mean, freaking month five will roll around and they're like, I'm ready to get back on the field. And it's like, no, you are not. No, sorry. Like, I don't care how well your body recovers. It's like, if I put you through this testing right now, like that's a little scary, first of all, because your body might not even be ready for that. So make sure you have progressed properly up to this testing point. And then once you test, if there is a significant difference side to side, and I don't have all the numbers like on hand right now, but if there's a significant difference side to side that um is uh it's called a minimum minimally important uh clinical difference, I think something along those lines and CID. Um anyway, that basically shows the athlete right then and there. And it and it just makes it that much easier to have that hard conversation to say you're not ready, I'm sorry. Of course, we're on their team, we want to encourage them, but sometimes those hard conversations have to happen. So in terms of a distance runner struggling struggling with overuse though, so away from the ACL thing, because that's easy, just test and show, right? With overuse injuries, it's like you have to build trust with them. You have to build trust with that, with that distance runner or whoever for them to actually say, okay, I do need to back off my running a little bit, actually. Um and that's a hard thing to build, honestly, especially if it's a new patient you've only been seeing for a few weeks or something. Um, and things might be going well. They're getting stronger, more functional, better in single leg stance, like their push-off looks better, their heel strike looks better, whatever. But then when they run, they're like, Man, this still hurts. So imagine that that trust back and forth of like, oh, you're coming to see me, but you still hurt, right? And it's been a few weeks. So then it's hard for me to say, okay, well, how much do you trust me? You have to stop running for a little bit, right? Or not even completely put back off your volume. It's a really hard conversation. And honestly, it's something that I'm still learning as I go, right? Um But yeah, basically just making sure that patients are truly bought into the process and that they want to get better and that you have the tools to do that, but you guys have to work on the same team. That's that's the biggest thing. So yeah, I mean, there was kind of two questions built into that, but overuse injuries with a distance runner versus like a sport a field athlete who isn't ready to return to sports. Like there's there's different ways to approach it, but um, I just do my best to stick to what I learned in school and then also building my reputation and my trust and and patience relying on me for the best information. So nice, dude.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:57

Thank you. Yeah, good takeaways there. Yeah, thank you. Um, no, my last thing in terms of individualization was just likes or dislikes. So there are definitely two sides to this. So for athletes, in order to increase performance in sport, oftentimes it is necessary to participate in training methods or modalities that aren't necessarily enjoyable or fun, whether it's because of the intensity, the repetitive repetitiveness, or the time demand of it. But for recreational athletes or the general population, adherence is oftentimes linked to one's ability to enjoy their training. What works for you might not necessarily work for another simply because they don't enjoy it and that it's and that's totally okay. As long as the tool matches the demand, does it really matter how we got there? If I'm just trying to build lean muscle mass, you enjoy powerlifting, I enjoy Olympic lifting. If we're both getting relative relatively good levels of strength, does it actually matter how we got there? Like you'll bias your your way, I'll bias mine. But at the end of the day, you enjoy powerlifting and I don't. I enjoy Olympic weightlifting. And not saying that you don't, but right, you don't participate, right? No. And so my my point just to close us off here is if you're struggling in the gym because you're doing exercises or a modality of something that isn't actually enjoyable, I would suggest trying something different. Because as long as it's the right tool for the job and you can find a way to get to your goal by using a different modality or training program, do that. It's all about sustainability and adherence long term. So when it comes to individualization, make sure you enjoy it. That to me, that's probably the biggest one for at least general population. As if you want to adhere to it long term, you better freaking like it because fitness, you know, to be a healthy person, like relatively, like it's a lifestyle change. This is a long, this is like for life. Like I'm making these decisions for life to increase my quality of life, to stick around longer for my kids, grandkids, whatever it may be, you might as well enjoy the process while you do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:08

So don't get super lost in the you have to squat or you have to power clean or you have to do this or you have to do that. Yeah, find what you like. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's great.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:18

So yeah, I think it's it's great that you brought us into it because it's like, no, I would not really. I mean, I enjoy all sorts of barbell lifting, but not Olympic, right? Like that's really hard. I'm not good enough for that. But you know, getting getting me under just a power bar, I'm I'm great and I'm having a good time, but you you would not. So see, I have to snatch because I can't bench.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:38

Okay, there you go. There you go. So, and you know, I saw you ripping on the rower though on Instagram. Dude, yeah, killed me after it, dude. Killed me. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:48

I love it. But anyway, um, I think that's that's all you got, right? Yeah, that's often good for there, dude. Cool, cool. Well, I hope everyone enjoyed today's episode. Um, if you guys have any questions or anything, like I said, reach out through Instagram. That's probably the easiest way to reach us. Um, and yeah, we will continue to narrow down topics, get more specific as we go, and hopefully soon a guest. So okay. All right, everyone. Have a great rest of your week.