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Habits and Hustle
Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power
00:18:15
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- [00:01]
A
Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.
- [00:08]
B
Are you getting injured because you're training wrong and don't even know it? On this Fitness Friday, I'm joined by Henry Abbott. Henry is an award winning journalist, the founder of True Hoop and the author of the book Ballistic. We dig into the science of injury prevention from why knee pain often starts in your feet or or your hips and how toe yoga and better landing techniques can boost your performance. So if you're stuck in the injury recovery cycle or just getting old like me, this episode can change everything. Let me share my daily routine game changer with you. It's the Momentous 3. I've been using their protein, their creatine and omega 3 combo for months now and the results are undeniable. These nutrients are key for long term health and performance, but hard to get enough of through diet alone. The crea pure creatine boosts both physical and your mental performance. The grass fed whey tastes great with no weird aftertaste. And their Omega 3 is a must for recovery. So since adding these, my energy, my recovery and my overall well being has really improved. So if you want better performance, this is the way to go. Visit livemomentous.com and use my code Jen for 35% off your first subscription. That's livemomentous.com code Jen for 35% off your 1st subscription subscription. Trust me, you'll be happy you did. So today we have on the podcast we have Henry Abbott, who wrote this book called Ballistic, which is the new science of injury free athletic performance. We're going to talk all about how we can prevent injury instead of just treating it. And the funny thing is not so funny to me. I hurt my knee last night and today I have Henry on the podcast. Is that not coincidental?
- [02:20]
A
I mean, I'm not happy about it. I would be more fun to meet you. Feeling 100%.
- [02:24]
B
Thank you.
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A
All right, let's explore.
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B
I know, right? Like of all of all the guests to have the day after, which is weird because I never, I have like, I've had like a million ankle and Achilles injuries because of my love for running and cardio, which is probably terrible for my body at this point, but knees? Never. So what's the most common injury, by the way, what is the most common injury for women and what's the most common injury for men?
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A
You are. This is. We're opening with a pop quiz, Jen.
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B
Yeah, we are. Are you ready?
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A
I don't think I am. I, I, I can tell you this. So I spent three years marinating in this, like, movement data from this place called P3 in Santa Barbara where they're 35 years into gathering it all and almost everything that goes through there. These are thousands of athletes. Almost all of the recommendations are to change something about how you move in the feet or the hips. So like knee injuries mostly come from above and below. And I really came to think of it. Did you? I did not. The answer doesn't have to be yes, but did you take physics class where you do that egg drop experiment?
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B
I did.
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A
Okay. And you use like pipe cleaners and duct tape or whatever materials? Okay.
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B
I try to black, I try to like, kind of like not think about my years in high school, but. I'm joking.
- [03:39]
A
I found this book has tons of physics in it I had to learn. And like, not along, but I hated physics class. I, it just, it was literally I was a great student. But I, that one class I was like, I don't even care what you're talking about.
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B
I did not pay attention.
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A
But okay, so you got the little egg. Now think of your upper body. Is that egg? Right? This is 80% of your weight is in your torso.
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B
Okay.
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A
And our, like pipe cleaners and duct tape is our legs. These are the little devices we have to make it so our egg doesn't shatter when you land from running.
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B
Right.
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A
When you jump off of whatever. One of their biggest assessments they do is you step off an 18 inch box and just land on these force plates on the floor. So they're really well designed for it. You know, we have a good system for this. If you land correctly.
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B
Right?
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A
Right. They want you to land with your toes up on the balls of your feet and do this stiff ankle and the force is going to go into your calves and then your, then it's going to, into your quads and it's going to go into your glutes. And those muscles can handle a ton of force safely into old age. But if you get a little weird, right. We all move a little weird. We sit a lot, we, you know, exercise. Strangely, we have odd habits. For instance, if you land on your toes, then your, the next thing that happens is your heel slams down, which accounts for all of the biggest measurements they have. All of the biggest landing forces come from that heel slapping down. Because now your egg, right, is pushing on the down through your knee onto bone, the lower leg bone, the tibia. And it's like, like a pull cue, like punching the ground. Right. It's Instead of passing the forces through soft tissue, it's passing through that bone. Like, that's a very common and popular way to hurt your knee is like the force of the ground is traveling up to your knee through this hard device. Right.
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B
Horrible.
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A
Yeah. So there's a little. This is what they're doing there mostly, you know, Then the other big area focuses the hips. So if you think about it like the ankle and these lower leg muscles control how the lower leg bone expresses the force of the ground, and the hip controls how the upper leg bone expresses the force of your torso coming down. And they're gonna meet at the knee, and hopefully they meet well. Right. And they. It sounds like they have been for most of your running life, but maybe there's a little something. If you went there right now and they assess you, they. I. My guess is they would find you'd be there for an hour and they'd be like, hey, Jen, there's a little something. We gotta strengthen this thing in your hip or we gotta do some of this thing in your lower leg.
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B
Well, the thing that you said was very. That I think is very interesting and kind of. I think some people know that, but maybe others don't, that everything comes from your feet or from your hips. I learned about my. The whole feet thing pretty recently that if your feet are not strong, then your entire body is going to be prone to more injury. Prone to more injury issues, basically. And you. You don't get power if your feet are weak. And so the first question I have for you is, how do we strengthen our feet so we can get more power in our body?
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A
Well, there are. There's a whole bunch of, like, you can go on YouTube and find. My daughter right now has a thing. She's doing toe yoga. I don't know if you gotten into this.
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B
Have you seen this? No, I did not.
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A
I'm doing it with my hands a little bit. But you, like, lift your big toe and you start lift the little toes and, like, there's all these little muscles in the foot that you can strengthen.
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B
Oh, yeah.
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A
So.
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B
But so it's called toe yoga.
- [06:46]
A
Yeah. Look up toe yoga. That's not really a PT recommendation that I've seen, but they do a ton of stuff. So, you know, if you think of our calf muscles, the kind of. Like this is kind of two lumpy muscles on the outside. That's the gastroc.
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B
Okay.
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A
Underneath it is the soleus and the post tib, a tibialis posterior.
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B
Okay. So let's not be so like, so sciency. Because people are going to, like, basically stop listening to this podcast.
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A
Here's what's going to happen. There's going to be. I assume he knows what he's talking about, because in the first five minutes, he said to be all this. And now I'm good right now.
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B
I think you're an expert. Whatever. Exactly. Or they're like, I don't know what the hell this guy is saying. You know, click off.
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A
So look up those muscles, though. You want to exercise them. Like, a lot of our exercises really work, like, what we consider those visible outer calf muscles, but it's those underneath ones that I'm telling you, in the research from P3, it's like, it's a major recommendation. You want a lot more work capacity in the lower leg. They had me doing. I went through their procedure and have my own suite of issues. But, like, this is one of my things. And this would be jumping rope, hopping back and forth over a dowel, every kind of plyometric. But you kind of build up into the bigger ones over time. And at the same time, you mix that in with, like, stand on one leg, you know, and raise up and down very slowly. And if you can do 15 of those, then you're cleared for, like, bigger contacts. I was getting back to running after a back thing, and I had to get to, like, where I could really get to 15 slow raises before they. Let's. Yeah, on one leg.
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B
On one leg, yeah. Okay. So let's say that. So, like, let's kind of make this as simple for people as possible. So in order to strengthen our. I asked you about the feet. How to strengthen our feet. You said we need to strengthen the lower part of our calf.
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A
So they're into. At P3. Their recommendations are heavy on all of the muscles beneath the knee as a method to stiffen the ankle.
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B
Okay.
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A
So that when your foot hits the ground, to have your powerful foot, the Achilles is loaded.
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B
Okay.
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A
So, like, you want to have. They call. They say to land toes up. It's like a little cue. It doesn't really mean then your toes fully up. But that's. If they say that, you'll get your foot more on the ball.
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B
Right. So if they say toes up, that means you should be landing on your heel.
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A
No. Great question. So they want you on the ball of your foot, but not. But with your toes a little bit flexed up, which brings. So instead of being kind of sloppy with a relaxed foot, they want your foot, like, tense and loaded because they want to activate the Spring of your Achilles, right? They want it so that when your foot hits the ground, you're quickly, subconsciously, this beautiful system will be passing the force of landing on the ground into your glutes, into your butt. Let's kind of go up the chain. If it hits your toes. Now we have a kind of slow process of rolling further down to the heel. Like I mentioned, if you land on your heel, then you're getting this bony thing. So you kind of want to be in the middle where all of these muscles in your foot are taken the force of landing.
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B
Okay.
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A
And if you're doing that, if you think about it, if you jump rope like that with your. On the ball of your foot. If you.
- [09:55]
B
Oh, on the ball of your foot. Right. So when you jump. Okay, so, but. So when you do that jump rope on the ball of your foot. Yeah, so that's why I meant. Why didn't.
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A
You're working out your foot right there.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't mean the heel before. That was a. Yeah, that was just a mistake.
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A
Edit it out.
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B
Yeah, no, no, it's okay. I, I just miss bespoke. But like, so if we. So what are the benefits of just jumping jump rope on the ball of our foot then?
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A
Great question. So ultimately, running the way you want to run, where you're not going to have your knee hurt will be come. Will come from figuring out hips or lower leg where there's some weakness or oddity as, as like a kind of. That's kind of a, A, A dumber, like, building muscle system. But then there's like the much more clever thing is this like, nervous system sending a little electrical signals up and down, which kind of happens faster than we can think subconsciously. So when you're jumping these fast things, this is the reason the book is called Ballistic. That means like airborne, right? When you're doing these airborne things, you're engaging this, like, your brain to get better at landing, right? To like, fire the systems that need to be fired in time so that these little things happen in life where you, like, maybe you're walking down a mountain trail and you trip a little and you have to like, throw that foot out. And like, you want. That could be a moment you would tear your acl. Or it could be a moment that you just go and on this thing and you want to like, have your system practiced, right? And being snappy with like, the good foot placement and the good knee over the toes and the hips over the knees.
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B
So we're basically essentially training our nervous System.
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A
Totally.
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B
Right. So when we could potentially have an accident like that tweak of an ankle or something, we are conditioned to snap back, like, to. To be strong enough or our reflexes to be fast enough that that won't happen.
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A
Abso. Absolutely. Right.
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B
Okay. So that I. Cause I also heard that just overall, like, plyometrics as you age is really important.
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A
Totally.
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B
Is that accurate, too?
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A
They don't have a lot of recommendations at P3 for everybody, but that's one of them. They. Everybody. They want everybody, almost everybody who's in there gets some kind of weightlifting recommended and some kind of plyometrics. And they're. I mean, that some of the trainers make fun of the founding doctor, Marcus Elliot, because he just loves the plyometrics so much. Like, he's just. To him, it's like everybody should be doing him aggressive plyometrics. He wants you to. So what they do is in the first assessment, they have a. You can do it with, like, a broomstick. They just lay a dowel on the ground and they put eight seconds on the clock. And you have to, like, put your feet parallel to the dowel, and you hop back and forth sideways on two feet as many times as you can in eight seconds. There's a guy whose name is Sanford Spivey. He's a venture capitalist now, but when he was, like, a Boston University soccer player, I think. I'm not saying he did it 42 times in eight seconds. Like, that's five plus times a second.
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B
That's amazing.
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A
They show that video to NBA players, and NBA players are like, what it's like. So he's obviously got this really snappy nervous system and good musculature and all that stuff. Right? So that's how we start with the plyometrics at P3, and then it just goes up from there.
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B
What's the benefit of doing plyometrics from side to side for your body?
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A
They do them all different ways. I don't think there's a kind of plyometrics they don't do in there. So it's just, you know, Would you know the history of plyometrics? It's so cool. I love this story so much. Please let me tell you the story.
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B
Okay, go ahead. So, okay.
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A
Okay. So in Soviet times, they kind of invented sports science because they just used humans like guinea pigs, right? They just did tons of testing. Unlike their top Olympians. They just try this workout, try that workout, and they put sensors on them and have them do all this stuff. It was kind of cruel and there was tons of doping, but. But this guy, Yuri Verkhoshansky, was kind of a heroic early doctor of this. And he did calculations figured out, like when triple jumpers. Triple jump's a weird sport. I've never really. Do you know how it works? It's like, not really. You run. This is gonna be wrong. Like, you run and you like, leap off one leg and then another leg, and then that third leg goes down. You, like, jump, do a long jump. And you can do the math of like, the athlete weighs this much and they travel this far. So that means they're pushing on the ground this hard. This is where the physics comes in. I would not want to do this calculation. And he's like, well, they're, they're pushing on the ground with like 300kg of force, but in the gym, none of them can lift 300kg. So like some of their magically way stronger when they're doing the triple jump than when they're lifting weights. So he's like, well, maybe if we happen to a shorter lift, shorter lift, right? Instead of doing a full squat, do like a half squat. And they could lift a lot more. But then none of them came in the next day because their backs all hurt. So there's something about this. And finally he forgot that it's because it's so fast. Like when they push on the ground for the triple jump, their foot's on the ground for like a tenth of a second. And when you're super fast like that, you have kind of magical ability to access force because you're taking energy from the approach and using it in the explosive jump. Does that make sense?
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B
Yeah.
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A
So in weightlifting you're not doing that, right? So that was his big aha moment. And he invented plyometrics, right? Then he called it the shock method. And basically he started teaching all these Russian athletes to like do all these quick hopping things. Cause you can train to be faster on the ground and you're training all these muscles in your lower leg and such. And if you're faster on the ground, you're moving more force from one step into the next one. And it's like a huge difference. Like, I think some runners carry. I think there's some research that like, some runners only need to generate 10% of the energy for the next step because they're carrying 90% from the step before, whereas sim runners need to generate 60% of the energy because they're only carrying 40% before. So we're all in the middle there somewhere. But, like, it's a lot less work to run if you're really good at plyometrics, if that makes sense.
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B
Yeah, it makes. So basically. So plyometrics isn't only jumping really high onto, like, a. Onto a box. Right. Like, ply. What. What would fall under the plyometrics category?
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A
I think it's all of these things that are, like, training you to be really snappy on the ground. So they'll do things like step off a box and jump on the next one.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Or hop sideways. Or they'll, like, you know, hop three times on your left leg.
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B
So it's all jumping, basically.
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A
Yeah. It's all just kind of quick jumps. Yeah.
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B
Because what I. What I would. What I'm scared of, to be honest. When you're talking about that broomstick and you go from side to side to side, from over, over, over, I would be scared that I would twist my ankle. Because if I'm not. If I'm weak in my ankles, which I am. Right. Like, once, one bad move, and I'm done. Right. So it's like.
- [16:24]
A
I think we're putting our finger on your issue. I think this may be why your knee hurts.
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B
Probably.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But it's probably like it's a chicken or the egg, Right. If you're not strong enough or you have a weakness in, let's say, your lower extremity, like an ankle or whatever, your foot, and then they're. You're asked, then you have to go side to side to strengthen. It's easier to get hurt that way. And then you're out for, like, two months.
- [16:45]
A
Totally agree. So they would put you on a progression. There's a million ways to strengthen your lower leg. And hopping wouldn't probably be like, job one for you lifting weight. Honestly, I used to strain my ankle all the time. I once had a doctor told me, like, never play basketball again because I was, like, so prone to ankle sprains. And then at some for other reasons, I started lifting weights 10 years later. I've never turned my ankle since then.