The Athletes Podcast
The Athletes Podcast is a leading source of information, inspiration, and education for anyone interested in optimizing physical performance, maintaining good health, and living an active lifestyle. Join David Stark as he interviews some of the world's biggest athletes and fitness professionals, The Athletes Podcast provides practical advice, expert insights, and real-world strategies to help listeners achieve their health and fitness goals.The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire the next generation of athletes!
The Athletes Podcast
The Secret of Athleticism with Chong Xie - Episode #276
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Episode #276 features Chong Xie, Founder @hyperarchfascia_training and Therapy ® (HFT). Chong is a Clinical Fascia Researcher, Performance Coach for the Pros in MLS, NFL, and NBA. We challenge muscle-first thinking and show how fascia, the body’s tension network, drives elastic power, foot-to-glutes connection, and resilient performance. Practical drills, footwear context, nutrition timing, and new research back up big gains without bulky mass.
• what fascia is and why it integrates force
• signs of an elite foot and glute activation
• EMG evidence of elastic athletes vs segmented movers
• how to train the foot–glutes connection safely
• case studies on punching power and ankle stability
• strength versus elastic performance under speed and fatigue
• footwear choice based on mechanics and adaptation
• fascial gliding, recovery, and pain reduction
• nutrition timing for collagen synthesis and antioxidants
• self-tests and three-month remodeling timelines
• environment, barefoot culture, and epigenetic influences
• open-minded advice for the next generation
The 276th episode of the Athletes Podcast, brought to you by Perfect Sports Supplements, Pioneer Auto Group, Alder Grove, for providing us with an amazing Jeep Wrangler!
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Opening, Credentials, And Claim
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we started w to work together before before she's a she's a world champion. She she had we we had a good four months before we took the fight against the the ex-champion at the time. So our biggest goal is to increase to make her more faster driven, increase her punching power because the majority of the punching power comes from the glutes. And and we actually had a device, uh device called Aquaback that can measure the puntage, how much pressure, how much punching power you have. And then from that from that uh study, we we understand she increases roughly 50 to 60 percent.
SPEAKER_00You're the most decorated racquetball player in US history. World's strongest man from childhood passion to professional athlete. Eight-time Iron Man champion. So, what was it like making your debut in the NHL? What is your biggest piece of advice for the next generation of athletes? From underdogs to national champions. This is the athletes podcast, where high performance individuals share their triumphs, defeats, and life lessons to educate, entertain, and inspire the next generation of athletes. Here we go.
What Fascia Is And Why It Matters
SPEAKER_00The man who reverse engineered the 1%, Chong Zi. You didn't look at what average people do to get better. You looked at what the greatest of all time have in common physically, and you looked at what they have and put that together, aligning perfectly for the hyperarc fascia training program. The expert in the field, 22 kilograms of fascia that most people have no idea we have even inside our body. So we brought you on to share a bit more about what fascia really is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thank you for having me. Well, first first of all, as we are all performance coaches, we are educated primarily in the muscle and how the muscle works. And that knowledge is really derived from dissection. So we you know we we look at cadavers, we cut off cut up the body, we look at how the human body actually functions, which is a great way to learn about anything, right? You have to break it down and to the smallest component and try to understand it. However, in this process, for majority of the people who are not in the field doing clinical research, a very important thing that was missed was the fascia. So the fascia is this material, this now we know that it has a lot of different functions, very important functions, which is a gel-like substance, also water-based collagen, that integrates everything. Okay? And that's in the background. This this accounts to 20% of the human body, and it's roughly between 17 to 22 kilos on average. And it's a huge component of the body. I mean imagine if you take your car to a mechanic, and then the mechanic says, Oh, I I I I took apart your car, but I don't know what that 20% does. But I'm gonna put it back and make sure your car runs well. Like would you trust that answer?
SPEAKER_00No, you you've called it the invisible difference before, right?
SPEAKER_01It is an invisible difference because we were not looking for it, and because we were ignor we we purposely tossed out in the trash doing dissection because we didn't know at the time, scientists didn't know what it does. And now, with the emergence of fascia science and including this material, including this organ and tissue, we understand a lot more about how the human body works. Not just from a sports performance perspective, but from a pain, chronic pain perspective, from how the muscle is actually working when you actually do exercise. And why some of the mainstream training that we have been doing all these years could be detrimental to the actual performance, to the actual athleticism that we're trying to develop, especially in young generations, young athletes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know our goal is to educate, entertain, and inspire the next generation of athletes. So this is an important message for us to get out there.
The Elite Foot And Natural Signs
SPEAKER_00But why why would it be that if we strip the shoes of an elite athlete like LeBron, James, Kevin Durant, like we'd see a completely different foot structure than the average person? What are we looking for in an elite foot?
SPEAKER_01Right. So there are a few features that we call it the signs of the naturals, the signs of elite naturals. So number one is the prominence of the anterior tibialis tendon, which is that big tendon in the front of the ankle that goes directly to the arch, which is very, very important. And then we can also see not just LeBron James and Karen Duran, but in fact, a lot of the Olympian athletes who are doing track and field, they share a similar trait. So those people, they're you know, they're the the bodies all built in a similar way where they can glide easily, they can sprint fast, they can jump high, right? And they don't necessarily have to have big muscles, especially you know, long jumpers or high jumpers. They don't necessarily need to have big muscle mass, and yet they can generate enormous amounts of power. And this is the same case for women. So so you look at the athlete that are competing in high jumping, long jump, or triple jump, especially for women, they're built very slender. Right? There's no big muscle mass. So to say that they are generating power from big muscle mass or from very big, strong muscles, or they can lift a lot of weight like the power lifter, this is this is wrong because that's not how the body actually works.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I I've got people who follow you, like Liz Gleedle, who's a Canadian Olympian javelin thrower. I've got Mitchell Hooper, world's strongest man, Phil Heath, who follows you. He's a eight-time Mr. Olympia, like seven time, eight-time, whatever. Like you've got all ends of the spectrum here because ultimately we're all athletes to some degree. We all have this fascia within our body. What do the skeptics say though? Because people are gonna say you can't separate fascia from muscle.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So that's a common pushback you get from people who haven't read a lot of literature or haven't actually experienced, you know, what you can get from the hyper fascia training exercises, right? So the way what the way that it works is is like this. Now, when you do weight training, are you separating muscle from the fascia? You're not. You're just but you're isolating, let's say you're doing a bicep curve, you're lessolating the muscle repeatedly, right? I I want to train my deltoid, I want to train my biceps, I want to train my triceps. I'm going to isolate that to or isolate the glutes by doing you know hip thrusts or things like that. So you're isolating the muscle group specific to complete that execute, that motion, right? And you don't call that okay, that's that's the same thing as movement, as sport. You call that weight training because you're adding more resistance and then you are executing repeatedly in those areas, right? Now, for hyperarch fascia training, what we are trying to do is of course the muscle and the fascia do not separate. However, they are going to be movement that you do and also mechanism in the in the body that actually reinforces the fascia or causing the fascia cells to change, to be stronger over time. So these are the exercises that we are focused on. We're not focusing on isolating the body, but we're also focusing on what exercise, what stimuli that we can actually build this holistic foot-to-glues connection.
SPEAKER_00Like the big toe glute connection. Yeah, okay, it makes sense. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's not just a big toe, it's the plantar fascia, too. It's the arch. That's why we call it the hyperarc mechanism. Because the the when we do the neurological studies and we also do other type of performance metric studies, we find out that the elite-level athletes actually have a very high level of foot-to-glues connection. And this is not present in average athlete or everyday people. And this is not something that we talk about. There was a device that was that was made, a startup company called Ethel'EMG. They're no longer in business, but it was they had the 20 million or to 40 million fund to build this suit where you just wear it in the body, and then it will it has surface EMG. You can detect doing movement to see which part of your muscle group you are using for that given movement. Now that's a very useful tool for us because let's say if I have somebody some elite level athlete do you know do a walk or just simple movement, right? Walking or do a hop or or do a throw, right? We can see what's happening underneath from the neurological perspective, EMG.
Skeptic Pushback And EMG Evidence
SPEAKER_01So these people, when they walk, for example, there's a lot of glutes action, a lot of glutes signal. But if you ask the average athlete or it's just somebody who just lifts some ways, but they're not, they don't they're not athletic, you don't see this. You see other parts of the EMG. You see okay, quads, a hamstring let up. So clearly there's a difference. And then when you go to, for example, exercises like compound movement, for example, a squat, this is where it gets really interesting because elite level athlete is able to use the core and glutes much more. But the average athlete, they generally their body is more segmented, so they would be using the using the quad and lower back. So you can clearly see a distinct difference between the elite level athlete and the average athlete despite you know muscular differences, despite like you can have big muscles, for example. Even the average athlete could have bigger muscles than the elite level athlete, or even lifted more, for example, concentric-wise, but when they're on the field, they can't compete.
SPEAKER_00Because you've like the and that's where I guess you'd get into the weightlifting tribe, because you've mentioned that like traditional heavy squatting can actually hinder certain types of athletic flow or bounce. Where do my most strength coaches get it wrong when trying to build explosiveness?
SPEAKER_01I wouldn't say I wouldn't say they're getting it wrong. I I would say it's it's really because of their understanding of the body is not complete. So the understanding of muscle is is correct, but because there is a fascial component that was missed out during dissection, and we didn't know what the fascial component does in conjunction with the muscle. We didn't understand how this athlete is built. So we were just focusing on okay, let me build more muscle, let me just build more muscle cells or m muscle type 2, muscle fibers, but ignoring how the elite level athlete are actually developed. You see? So we had this when we when we started training the athlete in the first place, we we already had this pre-notion, okay, yeah, we gotta make the muscle bigger. But we were not looking at how elite level athletes, how they developed since childhood. Because a lot of these elite athletes like LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Alan Iverson, John Moran, or Messi, Ronardino, these people, when they were developing, they didn't have big muscles. So then the question we should really be asking ourselves is how do you get that athleticism, the balance, the coordination, the power, the vertical jump, the brow, the more power without big muscle mass. There gotta be something, right? So that something is really the fascia because the fascia, this fascial integration or fascial connection does not require you to have big muscles. It's about the tension that it can create between joints and how the force transmits from the floor, from the ground, to the entire body.
SPEAKER_00Would this like have anything to do with like we often hear athletes talk about being in like the zone or moving effortlessly? Is that like a flow state or is that a physiological state of the fascia or just a mental one? Is that a possibility?
SPEAKER_01It's both because your fascia is integrated to your nervous system. So 40% of your fascial integration is innervated by sympathetic nerve fiber. So how much you can turn on
Building The Foot To Glutes Connection
SPEAKER_01your sympathetic state, which is the fight and fight and fighting state, is so important. Your ready state, ready to go. Elite level athlete, why they can, you know, they make they can jump high because they can activate that. They have the access to their to their sympathetic state much better than average people. Okay. And this is so important to understand because the biggest question that we we never really ask ourselves is, you know, what why this this neural, where's the neural power coming from? Right? So when we look at athlete, when this is also because uh we were looking at signs, looking at things that are elite that are solely unique to elite level athlete. And that was the foot. The foot has a different structure. And then by reverse engineering this foot structure, we can then improve performance of an individual. It doesn't matter if he's an athlete or not, despite the fact of his muscle size. So this is where we're doing the clinical trials for, is to prove it. Number one, there is a foot-to-glues connection that we can actually examine. And number two, can we get measurable or significant measurable difference after 12 weeks of training?
SPEAKER_00Three months, that's all it takes, eh?
SPEAKER_01Big difference. Because your your your fascia, your fascia takes time, obviously, because of the various different cells in the body, namely the myofibroblast cells, it has it's a precursor to a lot of functions. So the fibroblast growth factors, one and two, they also play significant role in you know tissue remodeling, healing, growth of other type of cells, regulating your body functions. So it's not just a small thing. So basically, what we're trying what we're trying to say is the elite athlete undergone a neurological strengthening process, a neurofascial process, all these time underneath our nose. And we didn't we didn't really ask the question. But we were really concerned with how big the muscle is. But that is the wrong way to look at it because the elite level athlete did not develop with big muscles, or they have superior muscles, bigger, much bigger, during childhood. They develop regularly, however, during development ages, if you have this mechanism, I would say it's like Black Panther suit. Okay, I'll just make it easier analogy for people to understand. That's powered by most advanced AI. Okay. And this this suit powers you in every movement. So when you move around, it's it's recoiling, it's doing all the calculation, and it's light. It's making you feel like you're like a feather. You don't like your weight don't exist. You can be like 200 pounds, but it feels so light that you can glide, you can and also because of the tension that it creates, tensor strength it creates, you can be accurate. Because like a string, right? If you really pull the string really, really hard, you can control the accuracy. If the string is lack of tension, obviously it doesn't matter. You can try to make the same movement, but because it lacks tension, so the result is hit or miss.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I mean you've talked about working with elite athletes, one of which being UFC champion Zhang Weile. I hope I said her name correctly, in a sport like MMA where balance and grounding are everything. You said a three-month time period. Like what specific changes did you see in her movement after after focusing on fascia training?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we started to work together before before she's a she's a world champion. She she had we we had a good four months before we took the fight against the the ex-champion at the time. So our biggest goal is to increase, to make her more fascia driven, increase her punching power because the majority of the punching power comes from the glutes. And and we actually had a device, uh device called Aquaback that can measure the punch, how much pressure,
Strength Culture Versus Elastic Performance
SPEAKER_01how much punching power you have. And then from that from that uh study, we we understand she increases roughly 50 to 60 percent.
SPEAKER_0050 to 60 percent over those four months.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And she's not the only one because we have other amateur boxers.
SPEAKER_00Holy crazy.
SPEAKER_01You should see yeah, you should see the clinical trials once the data came out.
SPEAKER_00It's I gotta get down to New York and start training with you. Because you also have claimed that your system can reduce ACL injuries by up to 60%.
SPEAKER_01Not not I mean we can we can reduce the the risk of injury, probably we don't have the percentage, but probably probably around that range because of the fascial integration from the foot to glutes. So we have a lot of case studies, but we have to, it takes time and money and resource to turn case studies into clinical trials.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01So the first step is the first clinical trial that we just did is for the chronic ankle instability and pain. You have to have like 10 years, 15 years, or five years of chronic ankle problems.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01That you tried whatever the mainstream method, it didn't work, right? Okay, you come to our study, we not only fix you, but we also measure your vertical jump. So week one to week 12, and it's randomnized. So this RCT is randomized and from age 18 to age 45. Man, man, woman. Doesn't matter, right? And I just I have to tell you, some of the some of the result is is shocking.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So I'm trying to wrap my head around because a lot of people will you know look at this and say maybe it's just plyometrics with a new name. I also hear someone like Brad Thorpe, who is preaching isometrics as basically the sole form of training. I'm also hearing the fact that you know tendons, ligaments aren't even necessarily being considered in this argument potentially, because people are talking fascia muscles. Like, where does all that work in? What how would you classify this as an isometric, a pliometric? Like what do you really consider?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it's it's a it's a nomenclature. It's really the naming convention, right? So when we talk about fascia, we can what consider all connected tissues. So which means your legament and your tendon is part of the fascia, not separated from it. So when people talk about, oh, we do tendon training, we do plyometrics, that's in a way to train the fascia because the fascia, for example, your Achilles, your your tendon do not, it cannot, let's put it that way, cannot work in isolation without the fascia integration. If it does, it will break. That's why people have ruptures. Because your your your connective tissue, your fascia, has tensile strength 552 times stronger than muscle fiber. Okay, it's 276 m megapascal. And then the muscle without the fascia is really weak. It's only 0.5. So that's the enormous amount of tensile strength. So the your fascia is actually what protects you when. You lift weights. Like, why didn't why doesn't like you're you're standing there holding, for example, 200 pounds. Why doesn't your body disintegrate? Like you're not firing all the muscles, right? The fascia has to play a significant role. And this is also why people get injured doing weightlifting or in other type of sports movement because the fascia has to give up first.
SPEAKER_00I'm just trying to absorb all this right now and think about how you know for the average athlete or for the weekend warrior or for the young 14, 15, 16-year-old, like, hey, I'm just learning about fascia for the first time. How the heck do I make sure that I'm treating it with the same level of importance as I am, my muscles, as I am, my nutrition, as I am my mindfulness? Like, do you separate this on days where you're working strictly on strength and then you're working on your your fascia specific days? How do you break this up in your training, John?
SPEAKER_01So strength, you know, strength is really defined as, you know, so the mainstream lens of strength is just okay, how much I can lift, right? But the how much
Sympathetic Drive And Flow States
SPEAKER_01what you can lift in a slow manner does not equate on court strength or on field performance. Okay. Right? So for example, if somebody coming at me full speed, I took a charge, I'm able to take it, and then the other person might fall down. The guy might be bigger than me. So that's a different type of strength than, for example, I'm gonna lift 300 pounds or 400 pound of weight. So these are different things. So without the fascial integration, if your muscle is really, really strong, you can still, for example, compensate in ways to lift you know 300 pounds, 400 pounds. But that doesn't mean your fascia is working holistically when it when the speed, there's a speed factor to it, or when or there's a fatigue factor to it. You have to use it over and over again, right? So when we build strength, what we're trying to build, especially let's say for people who are playing sports, this is not for okay, I want to look good, right? Solely from the lens of performance. The the people, the people we have tests, people, some people they they can in five weeks, up to 50% more strength gained from from different types of leg press test.
SPEAKER_00Just simply from firing their own fascia.
SPEAKER_01Just working on the the foot to glutes, working on this neurological connection, the neurofascial connection, you can pull more because your glutes, 80% of the fascia laddera inserts in your glutes. That's tremendous. But when you look at anatomy, right, it the glutes actually just attach to your IT van and go down. That's only the 20% of it. So in reality, that anatomy diagram that you see is basically incorrect. Because you have a huge chunk of fascia goals interintegrating your glues and coming down to your foot. And when we do dissection, which I did in Stanford, we can just pull this fascia from the glues, the entire leg will move.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so you're doing research, you're doing clinical trials as we speak. You've worked with elite-level athletes across all sports. Are all athletes the same? Like when you look work with a Pion Sisto, who's a footballer soccer over here in North America, how does that differ from you know, say in New York, if you were working with, you know, someone else on the New York Rangers, for instance? Like, how does that differ in Yeah?
SPEAKER_01So everyone has different fascial connections. But Peony Sisto, when he came to me, he he played for Denmark. He was playing in Europe, he was playing in Denmark, and he always had this Achilles problem. There were games, like some some days he couldn't even play. And and then when we did our evaluation or assessment, I found out number one, he had there's a myofascial disconnection on the leg that he had this this problem, this chronic issue. So we always start with assessment. We we try to find if your foot-to-glue connection is optimal, or does it was it was it damaged, or what happened? We try to understand what your background story is, and then we can measure this. And once we measure measure the foot-to-glue connection, and then we find out where the fascial adhesion is, we try to remove
Case Study: UFC Champion Power Gains
SPEAKER_01that. And then we have we we continue to do the exercise and try to try to form the fascia and the muscle integration. Because a lot of times when you have an injury, it inhibits the muscle. But how does it know to inhibit which muscle? It's through the fascial connection. So for example, you have you let's say you have a cut on your Achilles, your body will automatically limp. So how does the body know, like I need to use more on this side of the body? Because the muscles and tendons are all segmented, right? They don't have any way to talk from this foot to the other. But from the fascia you can't. Because the fascia is a compensatory mechanism and it has been ignored. You see? So that so now so now your other body part has to do more work. Now this is the this is a bigger picture, but the smaller picture is let's say you have group of muscle and you have certain fibers that are damaged, then the other part of the muscle will be activating, invading more. So, for example, let's say you your soleus is injured, right? Now you're going to use gashrug a little bit more to do the same thing. So that's how the body knows. But how does it know? It's through the fascial continuum of this network.
SPEAKER_00Would that also play a factor if you know a soccer player, for instance, or a hockey player is throwing on a small shoe and it's impacting the actual movement that is that the foot's allowed to do within that shoe or within that skate, for instance?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean a shoe plays a very significant role in performance. There are like if you if you would pay attention, you know, you know how these NBA stars they have shoe companies behind them, right? So when James Harden first switched from Nike to Adidas, he couldn't make a three. The first game. He couldn't make a three, he was zero for seven. You gotta watch that game. When when Michael Jordan switched from Converse to Nike, he broke his foot. Did you know that story?
SPEAKER_00No, I didn't.
SPEAKER_01He broke his foot, he actually broke his foot in the immacular junction, I believe. But but he that that was one that was the founding story of of Nike, because Nike with Reb was like, oh, there's no way we can get him Michael Jordan, it's done. But it was Michael Jordan's mom who convinced Michael Jordan to stay with Nike. And that's why the relationship blossomed. So he you know he didn't blame Nike, he just continued to adapt to the shoe. And then gradually he was able to play in them. And Nike at the time is like, okay, I'm gonna pay extra fine for you to wear our Nike shoe, which is black at the time, because you the the league didn't didn't want any any color shoe at the time. So that's that's the story. That's why you have Jordan, which is a billion dollar grand brand now. But when you change the shoe, especially you're not adapted to the shoe, there's a lot of changes in your performance.
SPEAKER_00Was that because Converse was a flat-sole shoe and Nike wasn't, and when he made that adjustment, or what what exactly was the
Injury Risk, Ankle Trials, And Outcomes
SPEAKER_00issue with the shoe that caused that?
SPEAKER_01That's something that needs investigation. But definitely definitely the you know he was fine with Converse, and then the only factor he changed was to the Nike. Okay, give me one second.
SPEAKER_00I only grab this chong because I had a couple pairs of shoes sent to me over the past couple days. First off, shout out to New Balance for sending these beautiful shoes. But you'll notice there's a bit of a heel to that.
SPEAKER_01That's that's so much.
SPEAKER_00There's a bit of a heel. Now, this is a running shoe, this is a marathon training shoe. You'll also see over here my barefoot manual power, just Amazon special, 30 bucks, but there is no heel to that. So, obviously, you and I know the benefits of barefoot training versus training with something underneath. I'd love for you, as the expert, to break down these two shoes, what you should be wearing for, whether you even need that much heel on a new balance, for instance, when you're doing long runs.
SPEAKER_01Right. So this this this question, it's easy to answer, and also it's for some people it's not easy to understand. But I'm gonna try to make it simple. It depends on that person's facial connection. So there is no there is no like standard shoe that's that's like for example, if somebody who's quad dominant and has has not developed a foot proper foot to glue connection, that person might run better in that a D that was a new balance, a new new balance shoe because it's bulky and because they're a heel striker. They don't generate too much force, but then they use the cushion to help them propel. So they basically use that shoe as a mechanic interference to complete their mechanical task.
SPEAKER_02Right?
SPEAKER_01But now if you're a fascial driven, your foot glue connections is good, then the the other shoe, the barefoot shoe, will perform better for you because your your body knows how to impact the ground, how to suspend the weight, especially when the foot receives strong impact, it will activate, co-contract all your muscles properly. Now the person who runs in the for example in the the cushion shoe, over time, their body could break down, especially when the heat, when the heat goes up. Right? So there's also the the race factor to this. So the African, for example, African athlete, they perform better in warm climate. So temperature, so this is also why you know sometimes they they're better on the field because the shoe, if the shoe doesn't have too much too much holes where it the the breathability breathability, breathability is poor, so the temperature increases, right? The African athlete still does better in those those type of shoes than, for example, a shoe that has that can cool the foot. Because it just genetics. There's genetic differences to this.
SPEAKER_00So there's There's also the glabrous tissue that we have on our feet and our hands, correct?
SPEAKER_01The yes, the fascia. Because the fascia relaxes because of the temperature. But that relaxation depends on your genetic.
SPEAKER_00Because I have these tools called narwhals. Apex Cool Labs came out with them a couple years ago. They were actually ranked as Time Magazine's one of the top 10 inventions of the year. But I hold them while I'm working out. Yes, scientifically proven. Yeah, right, right. So you're familiar. But we have that same glabrous tissue on our feet as well.
SPEAKER_01More, yeah. It's more, it's even more important because not only that, because your foot actually has to tell the body how to engage your entire
Isometric, Plyometric, Or Fascia Work
SPEAKER_01muscle group. You know? It's because if you have less tension, your muscle relaxes, then the muscle, some muscles will have to do more work. But if you, for example, you engage the foot, the whole structure is working, and then the fascia can recoil, you do less work. You see? So the temperature plays a role.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's a lot that probably plays a factor that we just don't even think about when we're on the field, when we're on the court going 100 miles an hour. You don't think about the fact that, oh, my feet or my hands are overheating and this is directly impacting my performance on the field. I guess from your knowledge, research, wisdom over the years, what are some you know, three to five things that every athlete could do between in their training when they're trying to perform their best? Are there things that you suggest to everyone out there?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean the low-hanging sh low-hanging fruit is the difference. Like you what is the difference between you and the athlete who's better? And we need to work on that. And that is your foot. You're not necessarily your muscle, your muscle is built on the fascia. Because if your fascia matrix is bad, because there's a 2025 research, just came out, like the most recent research came out. Muscle atrophies, if your fascia matrix is not performing, it's not doing well. And I see this in in our clinical cases. We we take take people who, for example, have calf Achilles injuries or Achille ruptures, the calf size never grow back. Because when you when they do surgery, the fascia matrix on that leg is also disrupted. In some people, they don't grow back because the fascial connection is poor. So it doesn't grow back. So if it doesn't grow back, then you constantly have this one calf just smaller, visibly, much smaller than the other one. Right? But the mainstream by doing gazillion calf raises, it doesn't grow back. So it's not a matter of just fatiguing and exercising the muscle. You can do that for 10 years, you're not gonna grow back. But you have to restore the fascial connection. So once we restore that, we get the calf back. So we'll have multiple images of showing before and after.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but Chong critics say you can't actually change the structure of fascia with body weight movements because the tissue is too tough. So, how do you respond to the mechanical tension argument?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so so because we are not trying to stretch the fascia like mechanically from a macro perspective, what we're trying to do is stimulating the plantar fascia. And these receptors are making new cells, which are fibroblasts and myofibroblasts, and also the fibroblast growth factors, one and two. So it's it's through these cells that are you're changing the fascia. You're not trying to pull the fascia mechanically from a macro perspective. You can't you can't do that. It's too, like I said, 10 cell strengths is way too high. You cannot influence the fascia in such a fashion. But you influence the fascia from a molecular cellular level, gradually. This is why it takes time. It's three months. So, for example, you might do for a week or two weeks, nothing happens, nothing drastic happens. Because the cellular cycle takes time, it's not instantaneous. And it also needs, you know, high hydration, it needs proper nutrition, like vitamin C, collagen, to grow. And also your nervous system, right? Let's say your nervous system, your nervous system is people have nervous system-related issues, dysregulation, because the vagal nerves impinged, those people also don't progress because they'd have poor recovery. So to to that's a very good question. I I hear that a lot. Like you can't, you like you can't really change physically. You can't you it's like you're using brute force. No, it doesn't work. But it's it's the foot-to-gluze connection that you're you should have this pathway. So basically, your foot should be barefooted, and through the barefoot stimulation, your body then gives you different types of cells, and from these cells, you can then affect fascial connection.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah, and I I've got like I want to take some some practical takeaways for our listeners here who have stayed along for these 40 minutes. But first, you're you talked about nutrition there for a fascia. You have a unique take on it, focusing on collagen, like you mentioned, anti-inflammatory foods, vitamin C, rather than just bulking
Practical Training For Youth And Weekend Warriors
SPEAKER_00on protein. So, how should an athlete eat if they want to build elastic strength instead of just muscle mass?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that yeah. So, first of all, the timing matters. So there's research that demonstrate if you take, for example, magnesium, a vitamin C, one hour before you do any type of factoral stimulation exercise will help collagen synthesis. So the timing matters, right? So before, not after.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01Secondly, is the quality of the vitamin C you're getting and and also the antioxidant because when you do exercise, you you have your body will naturally have waste product and free radicals. So that's actually breaking down your body. So you need antioxidant to balance it back. So that means you cannot just have a carnivore-based diet. You need to have a balanced diet. And that means the antioxidant, whether it's from fruits, whether it's from vegetables, is essential to the body. So these are some of the things that you can, and also very importantly, you cannot eat heavy before sleeping. Because at night, there's the hormone that that needs to do its job, your growth hormone.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01If you spike up your insulin at night, you're going to destroy or hinder your overnight repair of the fascial synthesis.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Brian Johnson, the blueprint guy, has been going crazy. He's telling everyone to wait at least four hours after you eat to go to sleep, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So, I mean, for my experience, like two to three hours is is good. I mean, four hours is even better. You go into a fasting state. Yeah. And fasting is beneficial not only to neurogenesis, but to get rid of the waste product from the body and also to clear a lot of these inefficient cells in the body. So this is really from a macro, microscopic point of view of the body. Right? So as I was talking a lot about this, you understand that when you do muscular training, this is more macro type of training. Like you're just trying to make the muscles strong, your your your tendons as a result strong. But some people, but this this the strengthening really depends on your fascial network. So you lead athlete, they do they do the same exercise with weights, they're gonna get more results than somebody who is not athletic.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So for the athlete listening right now who wants to test their fascia connection, what is a simple drill or movement they can do at home to see where they stand?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they can do the elevated talk rolls for two minutes. And I mean, if you're an elite-level athlete, you should feel the glutes very easily. And then you feel that okay, whatever your foot is doing, the plantar fascia is doing, your glutes is also doing it. Which is a very strange sensation for people who don't have this connection. And then your your your body will be segmented, and all you all you feel is your calf or foot fatiguing. Because the foot is the furthest from the brain. And your planar fascia, if it glides properly, oh by the way, one thing I did not mention is fascial gliding, it's it's very important. A lot of the chronic pain that uh people have is because the fascia doesn't glide. They're stuck. So the degree of gliding is important. So that means within the fascia matrix itself, because you have different layers, you have superficial layers, you have deep layer fascia, and then you have visceral fascia which surrounds your organs and structure the organs properly and and and really secure them when you have you know athletic and fast explosive movement, right? So all this is all this matters. So your fascial gliding is very important. So if your fascial, you're making a movement, for example, I'm making using my hand, grabbing my hand, and if my fascia in my forearms does not glide, right, you're gonna feel impingement somewhere here or here, right? Then you know. And then if you do fascial rolling over here, you can feel unevenness or ropey sensation. So this is something that you that you you get from having
Shoes, Surfaces, And Temperature Effects
SPEAKER_01bad, for example, recovery, or over here you might have an old injury at some point. So you it will have a disorganized fascia, and that will hinder the fascial gliding. And when you have less fascial gliding, you're going to have problems with force transmission upstream.
SPEAKER_00But athletes always say as they age, they just lose their spring. Is that losing your bounce an inevitable part of aging, or is that just a sign of our fascia becoming stagnant?
SPEAKER_01If your facial connection is poor, you will lose bounce for sure because you didn't have too much to begin with. But this this uh degeneration for elite level athlete is very different. It's very different. You you can't as long as you're Olympian, you can't you can still re uh retain pretty much your your athleticism if you can take care of your fascia. So we can you know we see LeBron James, he's still dunking like crazy right now, right? For 40 years old. But he's not only one. Like Vince Carter, he can still do it, but you know, people don't talk about it. Uh Vince Carter used to play for Toronto.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I I'm uh I spent six years in Toronto. He's arguably the reason why Toronto is such a big thing, a basketball hub nowadays up in Canada. Like Vince Carter, Air Canada goes hand in hand, and there's a reason why basketball Canadians in particular are performing really well right now. Guys like Shai, they're putting up numbers because Vince 10, 20 years ago, was the reason for it, and he was putting the face on the map. I want to wrap up here with one question. Obviously, we ask our guests their biggest piece of advice for the next generation of athletes, but one more little side tidbit here around epigenetics that I'd love to get your opinion on. There's a viral Joe Rogan clip that talks about pigs becoming wild boars after five to six weeks going from contained environment to out in the wild. If I'm sitting here right now, Chong, in my living room for the next three months, not doing any training, not exposing my body to any additional stimulus, and then I was to go out into the wild. Am I going to see massive changes over the course of a month and a half because of those exposures to maybe uncomfortable situations?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, your environment makes the athlete. So that's why you know the the saying, send send this weakling to Dagistan for two years and and forget, right? And then he will get stronger. It is true. Your environment shapes your your body because your body is made to adapt to that environment. So the harsher the environment for the foot and for the rest of the body, your body is going to become stronger naturally. That's adaptation. This adaptation is very natural. And this is how, for example, elite level Brazilian footballers are made, because when they're young, they're playing barefooted, you know, on the street of Brazil. So so over a course of 10 years and 15 years of this type of training, their body becomes way stronger. So they don't have big muscle masses. There's you know, if you look at Ronardinho or look at Ronard, they Neymar, they don't have big muscle mass, but they can they can play, they can, they can have good balance, coordination, power, they can have everything. But of course, they the genetics plays plays a role. But let me tell you a fascinating story because I had the opportunity, rare opportunity, of evaluating a son of a very famous Brazilian footballer in the 80s, Facun. His last name is Facun. He he he retired. He he was considered one of the greatest Brazilian footballers at the time, right? So his son came to me and he died as a bodybuilder.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01And his son is like, oh, I want to get better at at soccer and I I I watch your video, it makes sense. So we did assessment. And guess what? He couldn't do some of the assessment. I said, so you didn't play barefoot like your dad. He's like, no, my dad was rich, so I I had always had shoes. And that is a fine example. Is that genetics? It's not pure genetics. He's his dad is the one of the best footballers out there, right? So it's the the genetics plus the environment. So nature versus nurture. So your nurture is also very important. So he has all these big muscle mass, but he can't he can't play play well compared to the other barefoot Brazilian kids.
SPEAKER_00I'd like to think that I'm in the other camp, but I'm probably falling in the one where I'm not completing all the assessments perfectly. But hey, that's what we get to take our perfect sports college in for, our vitamin C an hour before we train, because ultimately I gotta get better. There's always room for improvement, right, Chong? And hey, we get to learn on a weekly basis from professionals like yourself. I can't thank you enough for coming on the show, sharing your wisdom, expertise. Won't be the first time, won't be the last time we get you on the show. The way we wrap up every episode, as you know though, is we ask our guests their biggest piece of advice for the next generation of athletes. Chong Z, as the 1% man who reverse engineered what the best in the world are doing, I'd love to know what yours is for that next gen, please.
SPEAKER_01I think just keep keep your mind open because we we really don't know a lot about the the environment or the human body. We we know very little. I mean the things that we are discovering now is just the surface. It's it's really little compared to how much we don't know. And then the the more we know, the the question that we ask is okay, there's gonna be a lot more we don't know. So for example, like the scar formation of fascia, because if for example, you have fascia in your mouth, but why why you get cut in your mouth, it doesn't it doesn't form a scar. Right? So the tissue in your scar, in your mouth is very different than, for example, in on your body. You could get a scar very easily on your skin. Right? So these are very, very interesting questions that are being explored. Also, cancer, for example. How does the cancer migrate through the fascia? Right, there's a there's a lot
Simple Self-Tests And Fascial Gliding
SPEAKER_01of other parts of the human body that we are just starting to learn. So, I mean, for the younger generation out there, always keep your mind open, you know, like a parachute, you know, that's what people say. Always ask questions. And and and don't be afraid to challenge the mainstream thinking, because that's how I started. I I really just had this, I I've I I really had this experience of lifting weights, but I was getting less athletic. I'm like, what's going on here? And I was I was realizing that these people who are lanky and skinny, even though they can't live as much as me, but they were more athletic. So there's gotta be something that's powering them, and that is the neurofascial connection.
SPEAKER_00Critics are gonna argue that the claybs are pseudoscientific, haters, skeptics are gonna continue to question everything. But like you said, if you keep an open mind, we're gonna continue to evolve, become better athletes. You got guys like Victor Wembanyana, who is not a big jacked-up Phil Heath bodybuilder, but he's still an athlete out there, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, so really for longevity, for performance. I mean, if you're jacked right now, that's good because you can just build the fascial connection to use your body athletically. So you already have the other half of the equation, but you need to build the the other half, which is you didn't know about, right? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of human potential. And I I don't I don't mind because I really don't mind if people don't believe or not, because as long as we're producing champions, we have two world champions, by the way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01One in UFC and one in decathlon. You know, so and we have hundreds of hundred cases, hundreds of cases of chronic pain. So I mean, we we don't we don't really care if if the mainstream believe or not, but we are we are moving forward. You know, we're moving the athlete who are who are jumping on this train and then and then working on their foot, working on their fascia forward. That's all we care about.
SPEAKER_00I'm excited to connect when I get down to the big apple in New York to explore the other 50% that I've yet to get all of. And hey, I'm excited to stay in contact with you, Chong. I appreciate your time. Sincerely, thank you for coming on. 276th episode of the Athletes Podcast, brought to you by Perfect Sports Supplements, Pioneer Auto Group, Alder Grove, for providing us with an amazing Jeep. Chong, thank you again so much for your time. Appreciate it. All right, great.
