2522: Athletic Training Secrets With Alex Whitehair

Summary

Episode 2522: Athletic Training Secrets With Adam Schaefer

Release Date: January 30, 2025

In this enlightening episode of Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth, hosts Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews delve deep into the intricacies of athletic training with their esteemed guest, Adam Schaefer. Drawing from his extensive background in sports and self-taught expertise in biomechanics and training methodologies, Adam shares invaluable insights into optimizing athletic performance, preventing injuries, and tailoring training programs to individual athlete needs.

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1. Introduction

The episode kicks off with Justin Andrews introducing Adam Schaefer, highlighting his exceptional training techniques and his ability to transcend conventional fitness methodologies. Justin emphasizes Adam’s unique approach, which combines a deep understanding of physics with practical training applications.

Justin Andrews [02:41]: "He's amazing. You're going to love this episode by the way."

2. Adam Schaefer’s Background

Adam recounts his journey from being a dedicated athlete in hockey and martial arts to becoming a renowned trainer. A pivotal back injury during his teenage years sparked his transition from athlete to fitness expert.

Adam Schaefer [03:16]: "I started out as an athlete, played hockey my whole life, martial arts. But a back injury at 15 shifted my focus to understanding how to train effectively without pain."

His battle with scoliosis and subsequent exploration into physical therapy and training led him to self-educate extensively in physics and biomechanics, enabling him to develop training regimens that address both performance and injury prevention.

3. Training Philosophy

Adam emphasizes the importance of understanding the underlying forces and biomechanics that drive athletic movements, rather than merely replicating them with added resistance.

Adam Schaefer [06:27]: "Sports are really just all physics. A foot colliding with the ground, a bat colliding with a ball. Understanding these forces is crucial to developing effective training exercises."

He advocates for a holistic approach that integrates stability, mobility, and strength, ensuring that athletes can perform movements dynamically while maintaining control and preventing injuries.

4. Training Modalities and Techniques

Adam discusses various training modalities, each serving a distinct purpose in enhancing athletic performance:

• Powerlifting: Focuses on raw strength development, ideal for athletes needing to bolster their foundational strength.

  Adam Schaefer [22:11]: "Powerlifting is the best for strength, just raw strength. If someone is fast but a bit weaker, powerlifting strategies help elevate their overall performance."

• Bodybuilding: Enhances muscle hypertrophy and mind-muscle connection, addressing specific muscular imbalances.

  Adam Schaefer [23:28]: "Bodybuilding techniques increase time under tension, improving muscle control and reducing future injury risks."

• Plyometrics: Develops explosiveness and ground contact time but should not be used for conditioning to avoid injury and maintain movement quality.

  Adam Schaefer [65:35]: "Plyometrics aren't meant for conditioning. They're for movement habits and explosiveness."

• Isometrics: Strengthens tendons and improves joint stability without the dynamic strain that can lead to injuries.

  Adam Schaefer [54:48]: "Isometrics emphasize tendon strength and allow for more frequent training without tissue damage."

He also highlights the use of various tools like resistance bands, sleds, and landmines to simulate sport-specific movements, ensuring that training is both relevant and effective.

5. Recovery and Athlete Management

Adam underscores the critical role of recovery in athletic training, emphasizing adequate sleep, proper nutrition, and consistent recovery practices as foundational to performance and injury prevention.

Adam Schaefer [21:08]: "Recovery is one of those things that's so easily overlooked but absolutely essential. I constantly remind my athletes to prioritize sleep and diet."

He employs methods like checking in on athletes’ sleep quality and overall recovery status to tailor training intensity and volume, ensuring sustainable progress without overtraining.

6. Case Studies and Success Stories

A standout moment in the conversation is when Adam shares his experience training Tommy Pham, a professional athlete who sustained a severe back injury. Through targeted isometric training and biomechanical adjustments, Adam facilitated Tommy's return to high-level performance within approximately two months.

Adam Schaefer [49:09]: "Working with Tommy was incredible. Despite a traumatic injury, his dedication and our tailored program saw him back in the game strong and injury-free."

This case exemplifies Adam’s ability to customize training programs that address specific injuries and performance goals, demonstrating the real-world applicability of his training philosophies.

7. Challenges in Athletic Training

Adam touches on the difficulty of balancing different training aspects without overcomplicating or overloading the athlete. He critiques common pitfalls, such as the misapplication of plyometrics for conditioning purposes, which can lead to decreased performance and increased injury risk.

Adam Schaefer [66:23]: "If you spam plyometrics and use them for conditioning, you're setting athletes up for poor movement patterns and potential injuries."

He advocates for strategic implementation of training modalities, ensuring each tool is used appropriately to maximize benefits while minimizing drawbacks.

8. Unique Insights and Conclusions

Adam’s unique integration of physics and biomechanics into athletic training sets him apart in the fitness industry. His emphasis on fundamental movement patterns, tendon strength, and movement efficiency provides a robust framework for enhancing athletic performance.

Adam Schaefer [56:20]: "Isometrics take the least toll on the body and are incredibly effective for tendon health and muscle activation."

He concludes by encouraging trainers and athletes to embrace a diverse set of training tools and to prioritize foundational movements like walking, which, despite being simple, offer profound benefits for movement quality and injury prevention.

Adam Schaefer [36:46]: "If people just walked more, it would correct so many imbalances and reduce injury risks significantly."

Notable Quotes

• Adam Schaefer [06:27]: "Sports are really just all physics. Understanding these forces is crucial to developing effective training exercises."

• Justin Andrews [16:42]: "You might pile up more strength, but if you don't maintain your technique, you could degrade your performance."

• Adam Schaefer [24:40]: "The more explosive you are, the greater the toll your movements are going to take on your body."

• Adam Schaefer [56:20]: "Isometrics take the least toll on the body and are incredibly effective for tendon health and muscle activation."

• Adam Schaefer [66:23]: "If you spam plyometrics and use them for conditioning, you're setting athletes up for poor movement patterns and potential injuries."

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Conclusion

Adam Schaefer’s insights offer a comprehensive approach to athletic training, blending scientific principles with practical application. His emphasis on individualized training, movement efficiency, and tendon strength provides a nuanced perspective that challenges conventional methodologies. For trainers and athletes seeking to elevate their performance while maintaining health and longevity, Adam’s strategies present a valuable roadmap grounded in science and real-world effectiveness.

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Follow Adam Schaefer on Instagram: @realgameathletics

Connect with Mind Pump:

• Instagram: @mindpumpmedia, @mindpumpsal, @mindpumpadam, @mindpumpjustin, @mindpumpdoug
• Website: mindpumppodcast.com
• Training Protocols: mapsfitnessproducts.com

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This summary encapsulates the key discussions and insights from Episode 2522 of Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth, providing a comprehensive overview for those who haven't listened to the episode.

Transcript

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[Sal Destefano]

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go.

[Adam Schaefer]

Mind Pump Mind Pump.

[Sal Destefano]

With your hosts Sal Destefano, Adam Schaefer.

[Justin Andrews]

And Justin Andrews, you just found the most downloaded fitness, health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. In today's episode, training to maximize athletic performance, Strength and power and agility. It can be a mystery. Well, today we have expert trainer Alex Whitehair on the podcast. We found him on social media a long time ago. He trains people exceptionally well, using techniques and having an understanding that we haven't seen with a lot of other people. In today's episode, we're talking about athletic training secrets with this guy. And again, he blew our mind. He's going to be. He's amazing. You're going to love this episode by the way. You can find him on Instagram at Real Game Athletics. Go check him out. He's got great, great stuff. Now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor bioptimizer. So Bioptimizers makes a product called Mastzymes. These are digestive enzymes that increase the optimization or the utilization of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. How much? Well, you can take your protein and increase the amino acid utilization by 1000% or more. Makes your protein much more effective. Helps with digestive issues. Good stuff. Everybody should be using Mass Times. Go check them out. Go to buyoptimizers.com that's B I O P T I M I z e r s.com mindpump use the code mind pump10 get 10% off. Also, 48 hours left for the January special. So these are workout program bundles, meaning multiple workout programs put together. Each bundle is $300 off or more. Here they are. We have the New to Weightlifting Bundle, the Body Transformation Bundle, the the New Year Extreme Intensity Bundle, and the body transformation bundle 2.0. All of them $300 off or more. Go check them out. Go to maps january dot com. All right, here comes the show. Alex, welcome to the show.

[Adam Schaefer]

Great. Thanks for having me.

[Justin Andrews]

You got it. So we. We found you on Instagram because.

[Alex Whitehair]

Don't take the credit.

[Justin Andrews]

Everything we do is a week.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's true.

[Justin Andrews]

You guys showed.

[Mind Pump Host]

We're a collective.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, you guys showed me. But, you know, there's. There's. It's not common to see really, really good trainers who understand exercise. Biomechanics application also get popular on social media. You tend to see the, you know, kind of like, I have abs type of deal or whatever, but the way that you train athletes, the way that you perform exercises and demonstrate and explain. I mean, you know what you're doing. You really do know what you're doing. And we have a lot of trainers and coaches that listen to the show. So we thought we'd have you on to kind of talk about this a little bit. If you wouldn't mind kind of talking about your background a little bit first for people who don't know, and then I'd love to ask you some questions about your training.

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, first of all, thank you very much. I know you guys had a lot of incredible guests on here, so it's a real honor to be sitting in that same chair, and I really appreciate all that. Yeah, I guess I started out. Started out as an athlete. Played hockey my whole life. Martial arts. That's kind of my athletic background. And I didn't really get into the training side of things until I had a back injury when I was young. I had scoliosis, and that sort of threw off my hips a lot. I was about 15 or 16 when that happened. And. And at that point, I was like, okay. I went from, you know, being in shape to this crazy amount of pain. I could barely move.

[Alex Whitehair]

How did you find out? How'd you get diagnosed?

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, so I went to a bunch of doctors. I went to a bunch of chiropractors, orthopedics, like, all sorts of specialists. And they all just kind of said the same thing, like, we don't see a whole lot on the X rays, and, you know, you should be all right. I'm like, oh, but I'm not. And so I bounced around different chiropractors and stuff, and I was that guy after a while that was like, oh, this stuff doesn't work. Until I did find a great chiropractor in Rochester. That really helped me and at least got me back to where I could be a functioning human. But the difference between being a functioning human and going through your day to day and getting on the ice and playing, you know, full contact hockey is a big difference. So I'm like, okay, let me try to figure out how to get myself back in shape. And that's when I sort of dove into the training side of things because I tried physical therapy didn't really help. It helped to the point where I could. I was good at the positions that they had me doing like planks and squats and stuff. But then once I got outside of those basic positions, it wasn't the same. So I'm like, okay. I started reading three, four hours a day, really just trying to figure out, okay, how can I play pain free because I'm experiencing things out there that I'm not feeling in the gym, you know. So let me figure out, what are these things. I actually started with like physics. Like, okay, I'm feeling forces, right? What's force? Okay, what's a force vector? You know what I mean? And I'm experiencing lateral forces and rotational forces. And so I started with like as basic as you could go. And then I worked up there and sort of got into now how does this sort of flow into anatomy? How do I counteract these forces or get comfortable with them, right? What muscles are responsible for that? So kept doing that and you know, praise God, got myself back in the game. And then I started playing. I played in Canada for a bit, played in Sweden, started doing some personal training just on the side because I was like, I really enjoy it and started the Instagram page and I was like, well, this stuff helped me, let's see if it, you know, helps anyone else. Didn't really have any expectations whatsoever and you know, turned out, started helping a lot of people. And a lot of the guys I played with high level hockey players and stuff, so they wanted to start training with me. And this is before I was even like a personal trainer per se. And I was working with these guys, you know, getting some results and just sort of branched off from there. And then after my hockey career, I just went into it full time. Wow.

[Alex Whitehair]

So this is all self taught?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes, sir.

[Mind Pump Host]

Started with physics. I mean, yeah, I've never heard anybody go that direction first. That's really interesting.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, well, I mean when you think about sports are really just all physics, you know, it's a foot colliding with the ground, a bat colliding with a ball. And I, I don't claim to be a physics expert per se, but I do my best, you know, and I really started with that because it was. It was a matter of trying to, like, figure out, like, what I was experiencing out there. Right. And I feel like I couldn't come up with the exercises I needed to unless I really understood, like, on the simplest level, like, what I was feeling.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And then once I sort of got an idea, like, okay, now I get it, then I started sort of coming up with exercises that made me more comfortable in those scenarios.

[Mind Pump Host]

This makes a lot of sense, though. Seeing a lot of these, like, exercises you're performing in your videos are so innovated and unique. I would say, like, I haven't seen a lot of these movements before because I was going to ask you, like, where you got your inspiration from in terms of other strength coaches out there, other modalities or certifications or anything like that. Was there anybody else that kind of stood out that you're, like, picking stuff from?

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, the biggest inspiration was pain, I guess that's not a bad one. Pretty potent ones. Right. But I mean, I. I more so watched a lot of athletes. Like, I was a big Bruce Lee fan and, you know, just, I read a lot online. And the coolest thing about today, the Internet certainly has its drawbacks, but it also has anything you could ever want to learn about. Right. So any study, you know, any even book they use at the highest level in colleges, you could, you could find yourself. You could find lectures and all that. So I couldn't name the. Anyone off the top of my head, but if I had a topic that I was interested in, I would just look it up and I would find an answer. And then, you know, I would just kind of branch off from there.

[Alex Whitehair]

I. I think it's important for the audience to know, I mean, how I found you. And you were actually, I don't think your page was that big yet when I first reached out, because it was a couple years ago when I first reached out and just like Justin said, you know, and I remember this when I found Paul Faverts, I found Paul Faverts early on, who's a, you know, you know, athletic trainer for NBA players and stuff like that. And the same thing, kind of the same thing went off for me is like, I remember finding his page. I remember seeing your page, and I'm seeing things that I never seen before, but yet they made sense. And I knew why you were doing it. That was intentional. That's what blew my mind. Because there's a lot of stuff where people do a lot of creative random that is just doesn't make sense. And the application Is ridiculous. And. But right away, I could see what you were. But yet I had never seen it before. That drew me to your page. Right away, I was just like, it's not often that I see a trainer doing movements and stuff that I'd never seen before, but then I could look at it, go, oh, I know what he's doing. That's it.

[Justin Andrews]

So the big challenge with what Adam's saying is the typical trainer may think to themselves, okay, let me see if I can strengthen what I'm seeing on the field. And what they do is they merely copy what happens on the field and add resistance in some way.

[Mind Pump Host]

Right.

[Justin Andrews]

So, you know, oh, there's running, there's swinging. Let's add weight to a bat and have them swing. Or let's. Oh, he's a boxer. Let's have weighted gloves. Maybe that'll. Whatever.

[Adam Schaefer]

Right.

[Justin Andrews]

And so. And that's a challenge. How. How did you look at what happens in the field? And rather than just replicating it, how did you go from that to exercises that can contribute to better performance on the field?

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah, well, I think it's.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's the positions, it's the movement patterns and where you run into. Sometimes a bit of problem with trying to just load a specific movement is a lot of these movements come from the legs and the core. If you try to just load the movement, the arms come into the equation, and now you're messing up the whole movement pattern. So you just got to make sure when you start working those positions and those movement patterns that you're not overemphasizing the weaker muscles of the kinetic chain, if you will. And the stuff that you think you haven't seen before, necessarily, you probably have seen before to some degree. Subconsciously. You just don't realize it until you see it in an exercise. It's being repped out. Right. So it's like, how can we work these things? Like, you know, stability, mobility with stability. Because that's what athletics is. It's all the different aspects of fitness sort of merged together. Right. So I guess to answer your question, it was just a matter of really studying sport and understanding the forces and what muscles are going to take on the load. Right. And it's like, okay, if I. If I do this one movement on the field, I know the majority of the effort is coming from the lower body and, say, the posterior chain. I gotta make sure that I can do something similar to this, but load those more powerful muscles that are actually responsible for the action.

[Alex Whitehair]

Do you remember the first thing that you Went and applied or practiced and then watched it translate to the ice or whatever. Do you remember what it was?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah. I started doing a lot of anti rotation and antilateral flexion because like, like I said, throwing those hits, taking those hits, I would still do it, but it didn't necessarily feel good. And I'm like, okay, why am I, why can I not brace for these? Like, I can say if I'm bracing on a squat, right? And I realized because I'm experiencing those rotational forces and those lateral forces, so I'm like, okay, I have to work isometrically and to counteract those more specifically. And that's when it started to really translate. And I could feel the difference when I started working that isometric strength, but from a whole bunch of different angles. And I still remember, I think, the first game where I was able to throw a hit without feeling any sort of pain. I was like, oh, all right, here we go. You know, like, that's been so cool. Yeah, like, let's see what this, this body can do now, you know, and from then on, it just sort of branched out. And then I got into some isodynamic stuff. Right. Because you can't just be completely isometric. You can't be a statue out there. So you gotta be able to, say, engage your core isometrically while keeping your body moving dynamically. Yeah, right. So that's kind of where it started and then it just sort of grew from there.

[Alex Whitehair]

So obviously the, the physics background, which is so cool to hear that kind of how you reverse engineered that was. Can you recall another subject, another book, or another person that you like, started to pick up to, started to add to that. That was like the next. Because I feel like the physics was obviously the base.

[Adam Schaefer]

Sure.

[Alex Whitehair]

That was huge. Kind of reverse engineer it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

Then you remember like the next, like, oh, wow. That unlocked another level of what I was doing. Do you remember what it was?

[Adam Schaefer]

There's this one book I got that was a great book. It's called Fundamentals of Biomechanics. And it really intertwines physics really well with anatomy. And I thought that was really cool. So that definitely helped my understanding. But then more so it was just application, I think, and hands on learning, like working with athletes. And because everyone's so unique, right. And seeing how these methods affected them versus somebody else, you know, it's not like you could get, you can take two different athletes, give them the same thing and get the same result necessarily. You might get two different results based on their strengths and weaknesses.

[Alex Whitehair]

Talk about that a little bit. How. Because you, I mean that's another high level. That's another real important or I think a thing that I see a lot with like trainers that kind of don't know is like they learn like a plyometric exercise and it's like that's what they teach to every single athlete.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

Or talk about how. Because I know you've worked with a lot of different types of athletes. What it's like assessing them and kind of what you're looking for and then what makes you go, oh, I'm going to take him or her in this direction or focus on this first because you see whatever.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So I start very broad. I think sometimes it's easy to get too tunnel visioned and like, oh, let me look at their ankle or you know, let me look at their hip flexion, hip extension. I just watch the move to start. Sometimes there's a lot of video on that. Sometimes I do it through some movement assessments and I just go off my first impression like, is this somebody that looks like they're tight when they move? Is this something that looks a little unstable when they move? And most people could do this. That's the crazy part is like most people could take that very broad look and make a pretty accurate assessment. Like if you name an athlete, you can be like, oh, yeah, they're, they're super explosive or they're super smooth. You know, it's like, okay, so I see that and then I get more specific. Right. But I don't want to. It's like if you look too close at a painting. Right. You miss the, you miss the bigger picture.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

So I start with that and then if I see the instability or if there's some stiffness to their movement, a lot of times that stiffness will come from just one area. They're not completely stiff. It might be their hamstrings that are a bit tight, but that's going to make them look stiff overall. You address that and you kind of fix that overall movement issue. But then you got all the different training methods. Right. And I look at all the training methods almost as like martial arts, like coming from a martial arts background where you're going to pick and choose which one the athlete needs. So you might need someone that needs a little bit more of a powerlifting style if they need to really gain strength or if somebody just has a lot of underdeveloped muscles. You'll even take a sort of a bodybuilding approach just to improve that mind muscle connection. You know, and develop those muscles, plyometrics, of course, mobility. And I think it, when you, it's like mma, right? If you got somebody that's a good striker and they're going in to mma, you're like, okay, we got to work on that grappling to get you on par to make sure you're well rounded, right. So I kind of look at all the different fields of training, like martial arts, I'm like, okay, which martial art, if you will, does this athlete need to optimize their performance? And to this day, I've never made a program that looked much like another program I made. So I'll become super specific.

[Justin Andrews]

One of the challenges I've heard this communicated before a long time ago in a blew my mind is when you're working with a high level athlete. I'll use an example of earlier I talked about weighted gloves for boxing. Right. The reason why you don't take a top boxer and just have him use weighted hands and shadow box is because you might make his arms and shoulders stronger, but you throw his timing off. Now he's throwing hands that are heavier than what he's going to throw in the ring, throws his timing off and so his skill degrades and it makes him a worse boxer. Talk about the challenge of working with an athlete and not throwing off their timing or their technique. Like, because I could take, if I snap my fingers and made every athlete in the world 50% stronger, some would be better, some would be worse because they don't have the ability to utilize in time properly with this new power. What have they dealt? Talk about the challenge of doing that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, I mean, every athlete, like I said, it's an individual case. Right. And you got to sort of know who they are as an athlete, know who they are as a, as a person. And I find guys will move a lot of times almost like their personalities, you know, it's something I've noticed, but it's, it's really that specific. And if you got someone that is a very intense already, then you got to really be careful loading up certain movements because they will sacrifice some technique and some timing just to increase their output. Right. So it really is on a case by case basis. And sometimes you do the opposite with an athlete. If you got somebody who's real intense, like, hey, we need to loosen up a little bit, let's drop some of the weight and just focus on being loose and fluid. Yeah, it's the, the tricky part is always just not overdoing one area. Like you Talk about making an athlete 50% stronger. Right. And strength really isn't. It's hard to be a negative thing, but it's the time that you're going to put into it that can be a negative thing.

[Justin Andrews]

Like if you take away from other things.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Like, let's say you're in that upper, like 5% or 1% of your squat. Right. Well, now I'm gonna have to really crush you to get another 1%. But we got other areas that we can hit where you can gain 20 to 30 real quick. If you guys remember when you started working out, you probably made those gains, those early gains really quick, the newbie gains. Right. Well, you can make those same gains in other areas like mobility and balance. The problem is those areas are just harder to quantify than lifting necessarily. But they're very real. Obviously they're very real. It's just like you, you don't have the numbers like you do on a lift. So I guess to answer your question, you look at some of those other areas too. Be like, okay, do we need to just load this up to get the best result, or can we dive into some other areas and boost your overall performance quicker and better that way?

[Alex Whitehair]

That's a. Okay, that's a really cool. At least a really cool question, because I think of, like the average person. I, I think the same way when I'm trying to train a client. There's. There seems to be. Okay, there's a bunch of things that we can do, but I know over here I can. There's so much room to, to go, so that's where I'm going to put my energy and focus. So because I'm gonna get the greatest return, it doesn't mean that I couldn't have focused over here and got return there too. It's just that big. If I'm gonna spend an hour, I'm gonna spend an hour here because I'm gonna get the greatest roi. Why is there, when you look at athletes, are there things you see in common? Like almost all I'm going to do something here because that's going to be. Or almost all these. Like, do you find things in common or is it so different because the sports are so unique? What is it?

[Adam Schaefer]

I'd say it's. I'd say it's very different.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Most athletes at the highest level, they're all very strong, right? Because like I said, that's the most quantifiable. Quantifiable aspect of training. So they've all, they've all gotten to a very high level of strength, but not necessarily all of them. Sometimes you do want to take that more conventional approach. Right. And just because you branch out into other things doesn't mean you stop the fundamentals and the conventional stuff. Right. You do the. The other stuff sort of in addition to that. But it's all very different. I mean, athletes are so different, sport to sport, and even position to position. You look at something like football, right?

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, yeah, that's different.

[Adam Schaefer]

And you got a wide receiver and a lineman. Yeah. And a quarterback.

[Alex Whitehair]

So different.

[Adam Schaefer]

Those might as well be three different sports entirely.

[Alex Whitehair]

So true.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know, you got one guy that just throws a. The whole time. You got another one that catches it, and you got another one that just has to be a wall.

[Alex Whitehair]

Which is crazy when you think about that, when you say that, because that is so true. Yet when we're at the high school level or even just say 20, 30 years ago, they're all training together, kind of doing the same thing.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. And even, unfortunately, you see that when you get into high levels, they'll get, you know, they get a piece of paper and they're all doing the same thing. I'm like, oh, this coming from a more outside perspective, I guess. I'm like, that just doesn't seem right out of the gate. You know, it's. How can you train these guys that are basically playing different sports? You're going to train them the same. Yeah, it's. It doesn't make sense. And that's why you really got to vary what you do with how specific not only the sport is, but even the position within the sport.

[Mind Pump Host]

Do you find it's difficult to communicate recovery to your athletes and be able to kind of rein them in, in terms of having them get proper sleep, having them, you know, their diets especially? I've found that athletes are probably the most difficult. Like, what's your experience with that?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, it's. Recovery is one of those things that's so easily overlooked. Right. Cause it doesn't feel like it's doing anything in the moment. But yeah, you definitely got to stress it. You gotta. It's just kind of a constant reminder thing. Like, hey, did you. I'll actually ask before we train sometimes, how'd you sleep last night? Because I think it's really important to gauge that. You know, there's been studies that show the increase of injury just based on a bad night of sleep. It's unbelievable, you know, So I ask all sorts of stuff like that. Do you feel recovered? Do you feel sore? Did you sleep all right. Has your diet been consistent? You get to a point that guys do get more professional, the higher level that they get. And they're more on top of that stuff because they have to be because the margin for error is so much smaller. But it definitely needs to still be reminded of.

[Justin Andrews]

Talk about the different modalities and how you would use them. For example, you mentioned bodybuilding and powerlifting and mobility. Talk about the different modalities, what they bring to the table, when you'll use them, when they're valuable, maybe when they're not valuable.

[Adam Schaefer]

Sure. So powerlifting to start is the best for strength, just raw strength. So if you got somebody that's sort of a, so you got a really fast guy, but maybe he's a little weaker, maybe he's not on par with the average of the level that he's playing at. Well, you're going to implement some bodybuilding or, sorry, some powerlifting strategies. Now what that looks like is like I said, say they're very fast, right? It's like, okay, well let's cut back the speed work just a touch because you're already really fast. Let's add an extra day of heavy lifting, right. Just to get you on par with where you should be. And then we could maybe get back to the speed work. But we got to get that strength up. So we're going to implement some powerlifting strategies. Bodybuilding is if somebody is like just overall underdeveloped, muscular wise and needs to improve their mind muscle connection. But, but especially to a certain area, like hockey players for example, tend to be very quad dominant because the sport is a constant push. It's a constant push and it's also, it's played in a completely different plane of motion than every other sport. It's entirely in the frontal plane. You know, you push laterally to go forward. So they have some posterior chain weaknesses. And to address those you're going to use some bodybuilding techniques. And not just weaknesses, but mind muscle connection and.

[Justin Andrews]

And hypertrophy.

[Adam Schaefer]

Exactly, hypertrophy. You're going to do those three sets of 12 and you're gonna get more time under tension to improve, to improve their ability to control those muscles and activate those muscles. And whether or not they feel it on the ice per se, doesn't really matter. It's going to keep them from getting injured in the future. And then plyometrics, of course, explosiveness, ground contact time, those athletes that are not very twitchy, that spend too much time on the ground, you know, and they got to Be able to sort of get that fast twitch reflex. You're going to use different types of plyometrics. Olympic lifting is that, you know, on the force velocity curve you got power right in the middle. That's sort of your Olympic lifters, you know, they're the most powerful. So you're going to use, let's say to get your vertical jump up. You know, you want to use some power strategies where you're not necessarily doing consecutive actions, but getting that good first step. You're going to do some Olympic lifting strategy, some dumbbell snatches and stuff like that. And of course you don't have to go overboard with any of these. It's all moderation. And the percentage that you implement is going to vary based on each athlete. Like how far behind are you in this will decide how much we're going to use this field of training.

[Alex Whitehair]

You said something that I think is really important for us to highlight and talk more about and that was, you know, if you have like the speed athlete, you're going to focus over on some of the, the powerlifting, but you're going to take back a little bit of his speed training.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes.

[Alex Whitehair]

How often do you see both coaches and, and, and athletes just piling on more and more and more? Is that a common thing that you see?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, definitely. And I think having been an athlete myself makes it easier to understand the importance of if you're going to add one area, you got to dial back the another area because just the toll it takes and the higher the level the athlete, the more careful you got to be about that. Like the more explosive you are, the greater the toll your movements are going to take on your body with everything you do.

[Justin Andrews]

Everything?

[Adam Schaefer]

Everything. Yeah. I mean think of like a baseball pitcher, right? The hardest throwing pitchers tend to get hurt the most and just makes sense if you could throw harder, you're putting more strain on your tendons and your joints and all that. You're. When you come down from the mound, you're. There's more impact on your lower body. So that's something you got to be cautious of, especially as you get into higher level athletes, is you have to draw back one area if you're going to increase another area. And then you can gradually sort of increase their volume over time, but it has to be gradual. And there's something called acute chronic ratio, which is a helpful tool with that that basically measures this week of training, how much volume you did versus the last few weeks of training. And you make sure that the discrepancy between those two isn't too great. Great. So that's a helpful tool. But yeah, it's super important.

[Alex Whitehair]

How are you tracking that through, like an app and total volume or what do you. How you.

[Adam Schaefer]

Not necessarily. I mean, when you work with a lot of athletes, you sort of keep a mental note of it. You write out all their workouts. Right. It's like, okay, and you can sort of, you can do it by reps, you can do it by distance. There's a whole bunch of different ways you could go about it.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's kind of hard to, I guess, put concisely one way to measure all of it. But as you work with more and more athletes, you sort of get an idea of like, okay, I know this is going to be too big of an increase. We've been training together for two, three months. I know this is going to be too much of a step up. You don't necessarily have to do the math every single time, but it is a helpful tool.

[Alex Whitehair]

So the, the, the discrepancy between those weeks is what's more important? What.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes.

[Alex Whitehair]

What happens if it's too much? What happens if it's too little? What are the, what are the common things that you see?

[Adam Schaefer]

Sure. So if it's too much, the, the risk for injury just goes way up. Right. And then if it's too little, you're just going to plateau. Right. You're not gonna be able, you're not gonna be able to make a ton of progress or maybe even a decrease in progress or even a decrease.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And, but here's the thing is you can keep the same level of volume per se, and you can just increase the intensity a little bit. Like, that's progressive overload in a lot of ways. Not always volume, but sometimes intensity. But even when you increase intensity, you got to be mindful that you're not increasing too much or that you might have to dial back in another area.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Mind Pump Host]

How often do you have to go through, like, your list of exercises and be like, risk, reward, in terms of, like, what you're going to present them, especially like if, if you're, if it's a beginner athlete or if it's an advanced athlete. And, and I know there's some discrepancy in terms of like, the trap bar versus like conventional deadlifts. Like, what are your thoughts around all that?

[Adam Schaefer]

So risk, reward, once again, all depends on the athlete. Right. It's kind of like if you never squatted before, I'm not going to have you try to squat you know, 315, the risk reward there is too crazy. And if you take an ath, if you take someone who's not super athletic, I'm not going to have you do all these advanced movements because the risk reward, it's like the same thing. Or I'm not going to have you do a crazy high box jump or depth drop or whatever. I look at it the same as if we jumped right into squatting heavy weight when we've never really squatted before. So I guess that's sort of how I assess is how athletic is the person and where are their strengths and where are the weaknesses. If I have somebody that is not very mobile, I'm not going to immediately go to a exercise that demands a high level of mobility because then you're just asking for trouble. So.

[Alex Whitehair]

So an example what you're saying is if you have an athlete and you know he's been playing football forever and part of his routine, he's, he's been a great deadlifter. He always deadlifts £450 or like that. You might still focus on that. Let's say another. But then you get another kid. Great football player. Also never deadlifted before. Maybe use a tool like trap bar. Is that, is that what would make the difference there?

[Adam Schaefer]

Sure, yeah. Yeah. And I, I think just you could, you go with a trap bar. You could go with some just dumbbell rdls and stuff just to get sort of that, that feeling that stretch through the posterior chain and stuff before you jump right into it. It's all about reducing shock on the body. That's the biggest thing. Anytime you shock the body, we don't like it very much. And that's when you're asking for trouble. If you, if you have somebody that is very adept in all these lifts, it's, it's not so hard to add on to that. But if you're sort of starting from scratch, you're going to run into some trouble with that initial shock. And that's where acute chronic ratio comes in. Again, it is just reducing shock on the body. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Talk about training cycles, because there's a. What we work with a lot of general pop and the podcast communicates a lot to the average person. And oftentimes people will see athletes or high level, whatever, physical performing people, and they'll look at it and they'll look at these crazy hard workouts and they're like, oh, yeah, I need to work like that.

[Mind Pump Host]

I have to do this.

[Justin Andrews]

I got to do that workout to look like that person. Or whatever, not realizing that even that athlete doesn't train like that all the time, that they train like that in a season. And there's offset talk about those cycles and why they're so important and why you can't just go hard all the time.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, well, some of the, I guess, for lack of better term, that the cooler looking stuff is also the more taxing stuff too. And. But it's, it's, it's fun, you know.

[Justin Andrews]

And it gets views.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. But you got to have that foundation that doesn't change much or progresses very gradually. And that's why my, my slogan that I've had since the beginning was for those looking to give 110%, this is where to get the extra 10. Because that's really what the stuff you see on my Instagram is. It's the extra 10. You know, it's not meant to replace all that good conventional training and stuff that is well established. It's. It's meant to add on to that, give you a bit of an edge, you know, address some of the areas that maybe standard training doesn't address quite as well. It's more so working on the skill of athleticism. Like, if I was to ask you, like, what is athleticism? Like what. What would you say? What would come to mind?

[Alex Whitehair]

It's the expression of strength. The greatest.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right.

[Mind Pump Host]

All components in one.

[Alex Whitehair]

It's.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's body control, it's multitasking, it's the expression of strength. Right. It's not just one or the other. It's everything sort of merged together. Right. So I. What the exercises like that are sort of meant for is to work on that skill of okay, we got this strength, now let's work on applying it, let's work on using it. But that doesn't mean you stop acquiring the strength or don't keep up with it. Right. You always keep up with it and then you just work on applying it.

[Justin Andrews]

How do you feel about this analogy? Because I've used this before, but it's like you have a symphony with different instruments and each, each performer practices alone, but they also have to practice together. You practice alone to get good at your specific part and what you do, but you practice together, so everybody sounds better together. Talk about that analogy with exercise where you focus just on strength or just on speed, but then you have to also do them all together so they can all work together.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So there's a lot of ways to go about that, which is really cool. So let's say you do your normal, like training split. You got your speed work, you got your strength work. Well, maybe at the end of your workout you do, you work on learning a new move. And the process of learning a new move is also very beneficial. You just do one exercise, working on that. Or let's say you train, you know, six days a week, four or five days are going to look very standard. And then one day is just all about movement. So that's sort of how you merge it together and how you pick and choose where you implement it. And to the degree which you do that is going to vary based on the athlete. Like I find the more natural the athlete per se, the more sort of conventional approach you can take. Because like I said, we're working on the skill of athleticism with these trickier looking exercises. So the more natural the athlete, the more conventional approach you can take. And then vice versa, sort of the less natural the athlete, the more we can dive into these other movements. Because a lot of times the less natural the athlete, the stronger they are because you tend to fall back into your strengths. So if somebody made it to a decent level, they probably did it based on their strength, not necessarily their athleticism. In which case you can use some of these more advanced exercises and gain a lot of progress with them. That's a cool way to look at it.

[Justin Andrews]

What about the tools that you use? Talk about free weights, machines, tables and bands. All of them have different values. When do you use each of them and you know, what are they all good for? Not good for.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So obviously from an athletic perspective, I tend to go with free weights when it comes to that side of it. Unless again, we have somebody that is really underdeveloped in an area and we don't want stability to be much of a factor and we just want to act to activate the muscles. Then we'll get into some machine work. Resistance bands are great for balance and stuff. Balance and explosiveness, because the amount of resistance changes through the range of motion. So if I do one of my favorite exercises, I do a skater squat with a band sort of diagonally across my body, while at the bottom of the movement there's almost no resistance. But at the top you have a ton of resistance. So you got to learn to engage your core and everything as you go up with the resistance and then as you go down, you disengage, because if you don't, you're going to overcompensate and you're going to fall. So you get this feedback from the band and you learn how to activate your muscles in a way that counteracts that changing pull, if you will. Landmines I like a lot. They offer horizontal and vertical resistance at a very common angle. You see in sport, like, you could take still shots of athletes when they're doing a cut or something or taking off, and you'll see an exercise that's very similar to what you see on a landmine. And then chains at all.

[Alex Whitehair]

Chains? Oh, chains.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, chain. Chains are great, too. Chains are great. Sleds I'm a big fan of, with your traditional sled work, but then also I like doing some pushing and pulling stuff with them because that, that's really what you're going to be doing on the field. You're not up against a bench and have this support. You're going to have to use your core and your legs as the bench, if you will. When you push upright, that doesn't mean you stop benching, but you just practice transferring that strength you acquired from the bench into a more live, applicable setting that you're going to actually encounter on the field.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

So sleds are great.

[Justin Andrews]

Any exercises that you see that, that you're like, man, this, these are, these are exercises that I almost always have value. I can always, almost always use them with the different athletes that I work with.

[Adam Schaefer]

Sure. I mean, all your conventional stuff is great. There's not like a conventional exercise I'm like, I dislike or whatever. So that's going to compass a lot. Like your split squats, your barbell rows, your pressing exercises, all of that. But then skater squats. I'm a big fan of curtsy squats. I'm a big fan of, because they really stretch that glute medius and get you moving in the frontal plane, which more athletes, you know, need. Unless you're a hockey player and you spend most of your time in the frontal plane. But I like those a lot. I like. This is kind of a crazy one. Walking. That one is really underrated. It's kind of wild. Yeah. Wild concept. Right? No one, no one walks. And it's like the thing we're meant to do the most.

[Mind Pump Host]

Yeah, right.

[Adam Schaefer]

Like, if there's one form of exercise I could, that you could do the longest, it would be walk, you know, and walking will correct imbalances. It's great for your heart, health and why athletes?

[Justin Andrews]

So, so we, we love walking for the average person for a few reasons. One, everybody can still walk with decent biomechanics. I can't get the average person, have them run without Teaching them a technique and working, otherwise it'll hurt themselves. Most people can do it doesn't tend to break the body down. It's pretty recuperative. It's good for you. It's great activity daily. But for athletes, you know, these are people running all the time. They're always, they're working out. Why walking for athletes?

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, I think that's why they don't want to do it, because they, they do all that other stuff and it doesn't feel like it's doing anything when you do it. So, like, if, if you're training hard, you know the effort that you're putting in that you're going to get some return on it, just like subconsciously. But when you're walking, it doesn't feel like it's doing anything. So it's so hard to get them to go and do that. And also so much of their day is spent being active. Right. That when they have free time, they don't want to spend it going for a walk. They'd rather be doing something more entertaining than walking. I think it's. Yeah, I think it's a combination of, of all those things. But it's. I, I try to get them all to walk. It would. If people just walked more, I swear it would put some, some physios out of business because it is, it's so good for you. And like, it's a general population and athletes, and especially athletes when it comes to fixing imbalances and whatnot.

[Alex Whitehair]

Now, are you, are you just general advice walking, or are you actually queuing? Are you actually talking to the athlete and having them break their gate down? I mean, what does that look like?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, so sometimes I like it as a cooldown, of course. And when observing that, you could sort of see asymmetries in their gait, if you will, or you look at the, the feet and stuff, you see internal, external rotation, you know, and coming from the hips, and you definitely know all of those things. But it's more so a general recommendation because it's, it's hard to walk too much, right? Yeah, that's the last thing I'm worried about, somebody walking too much. I mean, I haven't seen it yet. So, yeah, I'll do it as a cooldown sometimes and I'll take some notes when I'm doing it. But also it's like a general recommendation, like, hey, after dinner or something, go for a walk, you know, and who knows if they do?

[Alex Whitehair]

I mean, it's so interesting because you wouldn't. That you Wouldn't expect.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

Like Sal says, that's like probably the, the most boring advice we always give to everybody and we talk about doing it 10 minute walks after your meals. But coming from training athletes, you probably wouldn't think that that's a normal piece of advice, so.

[Adam Schaefer]

Right.

[Alex Whitehair]

It's interesting.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's like, you know, at the highest level, most of these guys spend more time sprinting and lifting heavy than they do walking. And it's the thing we're meant to.

[Alex Whitehair]

Do the most is walk, I imagine. I don't think I've ever really thought about it that much. But with those really high performing athletes, they're probably the two extremes. They're either going full throttle, you know, training like an athlete or they're playing video games doing nothing.

[Adam Schaefer]

They're like, they're like dragsters.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know, like it's all out. It's a hundred or it's nothing. Nothing. It's no in between.

[Justin Andrews]

And you said something very interesting that you, you really, I mean, I never thought of it that way. It is something we're meant to do and if you don't do it, there's something that's lost. And I think, I don't. I think you're 100% right. When you lose something that you should be able to do. Well, fundamentally it probably has some carryover, negative carryover to other forms of physical expression because you're supposed to do it.

[Adam Schaefer]

Absolutely. And it's like we might not even know all the negative effects of it. You know, by guarantee. A lot of the issues we see with athletes, you know, we see so many athletes tearing their Achilles and stuff. And who knows, maybe if they just walked more, some of that stuff would be avoided. We don't necessarily know all the repercussions of not doing the thing we're supposed to do the most. Like, you know, I could say do, do as many push ups as you can, run as much as you can do a plank, as long as you can walk as much as you can. And guess what? You're gonna be able to walk longer than you do all of those. Yeah. And it's just so, so much in our DNA to not do it, I think is extremely detrimental.

[Alex Whitehair]

Well, I gu. Really thought that much. It makes so much sense. And it makes a lot of sense too, to your dragster point that those super hybrid. Because I, I picture all my friends that were, that made it to the league and that and I, I can see them either full out good killings or playing video games.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

It's like there wasn't a lot of, you know, I don't remember any of them. Like, I'm gonna go for a half hour stroll and walk.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's like, yeah, never.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah, I don't think that happens.

[Justin Andrews]

It's an interesting, it's a very brilliant observation because there are a lot of things that we can't necessarily quantify. For example, I mean, we went through a pandemic where everybody covered their mouths and everybody, what's the big deal? And I remember saying on the podcast, we read each other's faces all the time. There are going to be consequences that, that we're not even aware of. And assure it turns out, especially with kids, there were some big consequences. When I seeing people so just not walking regularly and only running, only working out has got to have some negatives which probably translate to things like injuries.

[Adam Schaefer]

Absolutely. And it's just, we don't see the negative effects right away. I think that's why it gets overlooked. Whereas other things that we do wrong, we can observe the negative effects pretty quick, but we don't necessarily see the negative effects of not walking until maybe it's too late or until maybe down the road it's, if you think about the dragster analogy, maybe it's like an oil change. Maybe it's something like that getting that circulation, just doing that very natural movement pattern that we're supposed to be doing the most. Maybe it works something like that.

[Alex Whitehair]

It's a super interesting observation that I don't think so.

[Justin Andrews]

Do you have any formal certifications or is this all observation self taught?

[Adam Schaefer]

This is all observation self taught. I, I, I did a, I did a cert through a gym like a decade ago and it was, you know, it was, whatever.

[Justin Andrews]

Your observations are incredible. I think one of the smartest trainers I've ever talked to. Have you always been like this, this, Were you like a weird kid that just read books?

[Alex Whitehair]

Yes, bro. I think that's, I mean the fact that you went to physics to start unpacking this but makes a tremendous amount of sense. Yeah, a tremendous amount of sense. But I don't think I've ever heard somebody say that. That's where they went first and then reverse engineered it. But I mean, what a brilliant.

[Justin Andrews]

Were you into weird things as a kid? Were you reading like books on dinosaurs and becoming like knowing everything about them?

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, I, I've been interested in a whole bunch of things. I wish I had a lifetime for each topic. I'm interested in psychopathia Britannicas. There's a There's a whole bunch of things I could get into. But physics has always. Has always been something that's interested me. And then when it came to applying it to sport, something else that I really enjoy just felt like a very natural fusion of the two.

[Alex Whitehair]

Now, are you, are you a connoisseur of all sports and are you enamored by watching some of these super athletes or are you, Are you okay? You are?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Alex Whitehair]

So do you like, watch like a John Moran basketball? Just go like that is. Fuck you. Unbelievable.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

Because I see that. That's how I am. I love all sports.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

And I think part of what makes me geek out is when I see an athlete or like a wimby. Right. Somebody who's seven foot six that moves like a guy who's five, five is just.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

People don't understand that until you understand the physics. Like, that shouldn't be possible.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Yeah. So when you start learning the physics of it, you understand how more ridiculous it is than it even looks.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know, but yeah, when it comes to sports, like, I'm not. It's weird because I'm not like a huge sports fan, but I'm an athlete fan. And not in like one particular athlete, like, but just watching athletes and watching the highest level guys do what they do. And that's where most of my learning now is hands on. I get to see a lot of these guys in person. And I'm trying to learn as much as I'm trying to teach. That's why I'm always like, in my mind, I still identify as I'm an athlete. My occupation is a trainer. Yeah. But at the base of it all, I'm an athlete and that keeps me learning.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And I'm trying to pick up new things every time I work with an athlete.

[Mind Pump Host]

What's been your most difficult experience? Like, what was the sport in the athlete? And.

[Justin Andrews]

I can imagine that. Sorry to interrupt, but I would imagine swimming would be. Because it's so different from. From field sports. That's got to be where you're like, oh, this is going to be very different. To train.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Somebody who swims.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. Swimming. And I had a. I had a pretty crazy experience with swimming years ago. That's a whole nother world. I remember I had a little hamstring pole and I went swimming because it was a form of cardio that didn't bother my hamstrings so much. And man, how different that was and how much efficiency matters. And being mindful of your breathing, it's like you think you're in some type of shape till you get in the pool and you're seeing these older guys and they're just killing you. And it's because they're efficient, they're not necessarily stronger or more explosive and that it's just a completely different world. So, yeah, anytime you take a sport where the primary form of locomotion is completely different than what's our natural form of locomotion, it's very unique. And like hockey is one of those, or any type of skating sport, swimming is going to be another one of those. And you definitely, you got to learn a lot. You got to learn what the effects of those sports are. And that's when you apply your anatomy and knowledge. Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

And your physics, I think. I think that's where the, the physics and then that's background plays a huge factor.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. Well, I remember I watched a doc years ago. There was a documentary that showed Michael Phelps and then. So obviously the world's best swimmer at the time, probably all time. Right. And then they had the world champion marathon runner. And the height difference was dramatic. But their legs were the same length, the torso, because the marathon runner had these really long legs. Michael Phelps has these tiny legs in this long torso. And that's when it really dawned on me that at that level, not only are they great athletes, but they're also just genetically.

[Mind Pump Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

They have the leverages and.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And how different it would be to train a Michael Phelps on a conventional exercise versus a top level marathon runner. It's just, it's, it's so fascinating.

[Adam Schaefer]

This is one of my favorite things about this field is it's a science, but it's not an exact science.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

That's what I love about it. It's like we have some guiding principles, but we can't mass produce Michael Jordan's. Right. So that tells you that there's something different for each person.

[Alex Whitehair]

There's a bit of art to this.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. And it's like if there was a program that worked for everyone that could pump out those Michael Jordans, we'd all be on it by now.

[Alex Whitehair]

Right.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know, so it's really a matter of figuring out what's going to work for what athlete.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And that's why I say it's. It's a science, but it's not an exact science.

[Alex Whitehair]

So do you ever try and reverse engineer it? Like watch Sidney Crosby do a move or something and go like. Oh, like the capability to do that? How do I go and train to be able to do you ever reverse engineer stuff like that?

[Adam Schaefer]

I mean, I, I, I research so many athletes. It's funny you mentioned Crosby. He's one I've actually researched a bit. And I remember reading an article. This is forever ago, so I'm not gonna be able to quote it exactly, but everyone talks about how strong he is on the ice, and he is very strong when you get him in the gym, from what I've heard. But what I read was the real secret to his strength is his mobility and how he can lower his center of gravity. And he gets really low on the ice, and he's always lower than the guys trying to hit him. So he's really strong on his skates. That's this one article I read, and I thought that was a really interesting concept. So it's like, okay, you can. And that goes back to physics. You can sort of utilize physics in a way that is going to overcome strength in a lot of ways, because you could be stronger than someone, but if they got that lower center of gravity, who knows who wins that one?

[Justin Andrews]

Now I see why you like martial arts so much, because martial arts literally boil down to leverage technique, physics, to be able to overcome a larger, stronger, faster opponent. Yeah, it makes perfect sense.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, it's. Martial arts is definitely a huge inspiration for everything I do. And that gets you into other areas of physics, too, if you really examine it. Like, you know, you could have two athletes that produce equal power based on the math equation. You know, force times velocity is the power equation, but how they transfer that power might vary. So, like, let's say one athlete has weak wrists and it buckles at impact. Well, now you have an equal, equal power, but not an equal efficiency transfer of that power. Right. And you can even have somebody that has more power but doesn't transfer it well because of something like that. So that's one of those areas where you can look at it. Okay, if we address this broken link in the chain, we're going to get very fast results. Instead of, like, let's increase your power.

[Mind Pump Host]

Those leaks, you can see right away.

[Adam Schaefer]

Let's fix those leaks, and that might be all we need to get to that elite level.

[Alex Whitehair]

Do you have a, do you have a favorite story or a favorite client that you took on, that you fixed a leak or did something, and then you got to watch it get expressed on the field or the ice?

[Adam Schaefer]

Oh, man. Yeah. Well, they're all so different, and, you know, you don't want to necessarily pick out favorites. I love working with all of them, but one really unique. One that stands out is my guy, Tommy Pham. He's just, he's just a beast. He's a savage. And he's. He's such a professional, too. And he actually got stabbed, and I think it was the off season or whatever, and, And I, I helped him with that. He got. And I stabbed us. To put mildly. He got sliced all the way through his back.

[Mind Pump Host]

Oh, my God.

[Adam Schaefer]

Like. Yes. Straight through the spinal erectors. And they said if he didn't have as much muscles he did, that would have killed him. Cool. So then you gotta. It becomes a matter of you got a rotational sport. Mobility and strength through the midsection is huge. So I remember when he called me, he's like, yeah, so I got an injury or whatever. Okay. You know, what do we got? You know, pulled hamstring. That's a new one. Let's, let's. Let's figure this out, you know, and so I worked with him for a long time, and, you know, he's still playing to this day, and, and playing really well. And he's just such a competitor and was just such a pleasure to work with. And it's, It's. It's another one of those examples where I feel like I, I learned and took as much from that as I hope he took from me.

[Alex Whitehair]

Sure.

[Adam Schaefer]

Because it was. He is such a great example of what a professional, when you should be as an athlete.

[Justin Andrews]

What a unique example. So muscle sliced, he loses some of that. You got to work on compensatory patterns now and compensation.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. What did you do exactly? And that's where you can't just look to a textbook. Yeah, right.

[Mind Pump Host]

Like, no manual for that.

[Adam Schaefer]

What do I do here? You know, there's no class flipping through the pages where there's no stats.

[Justin Andrews]

No more spinal erector.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. And you can't just have them, say, do squats. Right. That's not going to get you that movement pattern back. Because in something like baseball, you have something called hip and shoulder dissociation, which is basically. It's what it sounds like. It's your ability to rotate your pelvis without. While your shoulders lag behind.

[Justin Andrews]

Right.

[Adam Schaefer]

That creates a stretch through your midsection and triggers a stretch reflex and then power. And then you come through with a lot more velocity.

[Alex Whitehair]

The whip.

[Adam Schaefer]

And a good way for people to understand this at home is if you go to press your finger down as hard as you can on a table or something. Okay. Do as best you can and then pull it back and let it go.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And that's A stretch reflex right there. Just on a very small scale. So that plays a huge role in baseball when it comes to power in the swing, when it comes to throwing the ball and everything. So it was a matter of reestablishing that mobility, but then having the contractile strength recover from that stretch position and then being able to decelerate. Right. Because now you got, you, we, you get, you can get one side figured out, but now you gotta deal with the repercussions of that power. Right. So it was a, it was a.

[Alex Whitehair]

Very unique case, very slow process for you guys. How long did it take you, Phil?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, well, I mean, I, I started working with him when he started to get back on his feet. And I mean, we got. So I don't know the exact time frame. Time frame, because I don't know the time frame from when, when it happened to when we got him back on.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah. Once you got a hold of him.

[Adam Schaefer]

Once I got a hold of him, I'd say it was about two months.

[Alex Whitehair]

Wow.

[Adam Schaefer]

Because the season was starting, so, and, and nothing to take away from the effort and time he put in because like I said, man, he's just, he's such a hard worker. And I look at it as, I was a resource for him and he gets immense credit for, you know, navigating all these resources. And you just try to be the best resource you can at that point.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

But you got to have both sides of the equation. You got to have somebody that is willing to put in that extra work and not only the physical work, but learning about the body. Right. And he is that type of person that puts in the time on both ends, both physically and mentally.

[Justin Andrews]

I, I was. When you earlier, when you said you were a Bruce Lee fan, I perked up a little because I was a huge Bruce Lee fan, but not just because of his movies. I. Some of the first strength training workouts I did were the ones that, you know, we still have where he scribbled in, you know, what he was doing. And he's one of the, he was the world's. You know, a lot of people would consider him one of the world's first, like mixed martial arts, at least from a philosophy standpoint. Yeah, I had the towel of Jeet Kune do and yeah, his training methodology was, was interesting. One thing that he did that he talked a lot about was isometric strength. Bruce Lee liked to practice a lot and there was, there were stories of him being able to extend a hundred pound dumbbell at, you know, here's this guy's 100, you know, 50 pound guy. Or was there anything that you learned from Bruce Lee or his training that you then could apply to your own? Just as a fan?

[Adam Schaefer]

Absolutely. And Bruce Lee was really ahead of the curve with a lot of this stuff, because something I found out coming from the martial arts background is I feel much better when I have a big isometric base to my training than a dynamic base. And I think it's because the nature of a strike versus a lift is very different. Like when you do a bench press, it's a slow push. You know, even if you try to do it fast, it's going to be slow in comparison to the velocity of a punch. Right. A punch or any strike is a snap. There's not a lot of tension through the model.

[Mind Pump Host]

It almost coiled.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah. So it comes from the hips, it comes from the legs, but there's not any tension because that's going to hinder velocity. Like if you took an EMG of the pec, shoulder complex and tricep, bicep, it'd probably be very low. There probably wouldn't be a ton of activation because it's a. It's a kinetic chain reaction, if you will. And isometrics, I find, don't necessarily hinder that because you're completely static. But I think when you get in the habit of that slow pushing with all that tension.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's kind of a neurological adaption that that's how you move. And now I'm doing something that is, I guess, relatively similar to a press, but it's not. But because it follows the same tracks, I'm in this habit of that slow and getting maximum tension because that's what like bodybuilding is maximum tension. Right. And feeling it. Well, punch is the exact opposite. You almost want to feel a punch through your arm and shoulders as little as possible. You don't want that lactic acid buildup. Right. And because of that, I think the isometric stuff was way ahead of its time. And also a lot of new stuff is coming out now is the benefits of isometrics with tendon strength. And the way I explain it, you got two types of isometrics. You got overcoming and yielding. For anyone doesn't know, overcoming is if you're trying to push in a movable object, like push up against the wall, that's overcoming. Yielding would be like a plank or a wall set where you're just holding a position. They're both great for tendon health. I like overcoming, but the way I try to explain it is if you look at the tendon, just like a rope that attaches the muscle to the bone. If I wanted to rip a tree out of the ground with a truck and I attach a rope to the tree, what is going to stimulate that rope more? If I take off and the tree rips right out of the ground, or if I floor and the tree doesn't budge?

[Justin Andrews]

Right.

[Adam Schaefer]

What's going to stimulate that tension? Exactly. And just the intensity of that tension. Right. That's sort of why. An idea of why isometrics sort of emphasize the tendons not over the muscles, but to a greater extent than dynamic training.

[Justin Andrews]

And what data is this? This is interesting to me. It makes perfect sense. So there were studies that showed it strengthened tendons.

[Mind Pump Host]

It's got to be injury protective as well.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so there's. There's studies out there. I couldn't cite any off the top of my head, but you can observe this actually in a lot of different types of athletes. Like if you look at rock climbers.

[Justin Andrews]

Oh, yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Look at the tendons in their wrists. And they're like cables.

[Justin Andrews]

They're hypertrophy.

[Mind Pump Host]

Totally.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Hypertrophy and isometric. It's mainly isometric and concentric. You're holding.

[Justin Andrews]

Well, that's what I mean. Their tendons are bigger.

[Adam Schaefer]

They're tendons. Hypertrophy. Yes, exactly. Yup. And you don't see the same thing. Even with a very proficient and advanced bodybuilder, you don't see those tendons adapted in the wrist. So we have studies and then we also have things that we could literally observe, which is really cool. And I sort of think that when you talk about, like old man strength or farmer strength. Right. I think that's where a lot of this comes from.

[Alex Whitehair]

We talk about that all the time.

[Adam Schaefer]

Is that concentric isometric strength? And it's also interesting enough, like I said, you start to think about the stuff we naturally can do. That concentric and isometric type of exercise takes the least toll on the body. Like, you don't get a sore from it. And it's also the same type of exercise you do. If you do, say, a labor job, you're not having these long, eccentric contractions, or else you couldn't do it eight hours a day, five days a week. No, it has to be isometric and concentric, like baling hay or whatever. And I think you get these people that acquire that strength and also get very good at applying that strength because they're doing so many different things with it. But they might not Necessarily look like a bodybuilder because you need those eccentric contractions to put on muscle. So I think that's where a lot of that comes from.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And we, you know, we, there's, there's funny because we actually have verbiage to explain and when I say this, people are going to know. We have verbiage to explain people that are really strong but they're not that big. We call them wiry.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

I think what we're talking about are tendony guys, you know, tendons. Yeah, we all know those, those guys, right? Those, those wiry dudes are just really, really strong.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And it's exactly what you're talking about. Very interesting. He was ahead of his time with isometrics.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

And forearm training. You explained that a little bit. Strengthening the forearm, staying loose. I remember reading his books and he said, don't clench your fist till the very end.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yes.

[Justin Andrews]

To stay as loose as possible.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

Really, really interesting. So how do you use isometric with your at with your athletes?

[Adam Schaefer]

Well, I use them all the time. I use them if somebody has a problem area, you know, that they've experienced tendinitis in or any sort of injuries. We'll, we'll do lots of isometrics like you know, every day, basically.

[Justin Andrews]

Frequency with that.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, frequency. Because you can get away with it. That's the, that's the beauty of isometrics. You want to use what makes them unique as you can train them more frequently than you can dynamic exercise. You just don't get that tissue damage. So I'll use it for injury. I'll use it for strength development too, because you can do more max effort or close to max effort work when you're doing isometrics than you can if you're doing normal lifting. So there's a whole bunch of applications for it.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah, that's where we like this. We talk about, well, let's not isometric. It's concentric when you talk about the sled. But that's why the point you're making is that you can do a lot more of like driving, sled, barbell, back squats.

[Adam Schaefer]

Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

So it's very interesting in isometrics, unfortunately aren't sexy looking. So they're not nearly as popular.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

As they should be. Because, you know, if I did a post.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

On isometrics, I'm doing nothing. You're just looking at it. But it's got to be the most underutilized, effective form of training. Whenever I hear athletes or, or coaches talk about isometrics and I'm always like reminded like man, this is something that people need to take advantage of because it's so incredibly valuable.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, 100%. And another advantage of them is you could load almost any position.

[Justin Andrews]

That's right.

[Adam Schaefer]

You could take any very sport specific position and load it and apply a lot of effort in a way that you probably couldn't with dynamic exercise. So they that if there's one piece of advice I would give it would be more isometrics. And I walk to go back to that.

[Alex Whitehair]

I love the walk.

[Mind Pump Host]

Brilliant.

[Justin Andrews]

Talk about the, some of the differences between training men and women. I know that there's, it's overstated often that the difference between them but you know, with like female athletes in particular, one particular area where you see a difference is the, the hip to knee angle and the increase in ACL tears as a result. Like are there specific things you try to do with female athletes to prevent some of those injuries or make up for or train around or you know, or, or just modify because of the, the different shape that we have?

[Adam Schaefer]

Sure. So I haven't worked with a ton of female athletes. It just. So I don't have as many case studies to reference per se. That's not by design, that's just sort of how it's worked out for whatever reason. But what you're going to want to do with, like you said, the difference in our, our lower body shape is you want to work on properly joint stacking with them in different scenarios. Because where that sort of taper becomes a problem is when you're producing force. And it's like you got a, a bent piston. Right. You don't have an optimal line of force. So you're just going to want to put them in a lot of scenarios where hey, make sure your hip, knee and ankle are in a good line and make sure that line is in line with the direction you want to go and that you're producing force. Because that's the difference between say like a knee valgus and not an evalgus. Right. Like the knee can buckle in and you could produce force that way. So long as it's in line with the force vector. Right. It's a problem with a squat because you're producing vertical force and now you got shearing force. That's why when it becomes dangerous. So that's just a skill thing almost.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah, very, very interesting. What about unilateral versus bilateral training? You know, you'll hear coaches say, oh, you know, with athletes it's like all unilateral. And then I'll hear some people say, no, it's value and bilateral or is it just both?

[Adam Schaefer]

I think there's value in both. I think just that. So obviously you could put up more weight and load, bilateral movements more. Right. And I think there's tremendous CNS benefits that come from that total load that you don't necessarily get with unilateral movements. That being said, you move contralaterally, so unilateral exercises are going to work that better. So I think you need a combination of both. I try to stay away from absolutes when it comes to training. Right now, you've already said the most.

[Alex Whitehair]

Important word that any good trainer does, which is dependent almost every time. Because I feel like if you got a guy already who's squatting 500 bilaterally, it's like, well, we don't need to do a lot of that already because he's already got that. Right.

[Adam Schaefer]

Right, exactly.

[Alex Whitehair]

So he's probably going to do a lot more Bulgarian split stance.

[Adam Schaefer]

You got it.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

You got it. Because maybe he doesn't have that stability and can't apply that forces effectively from one leg that like he can from two legs.

[Alex Whitehair]

I love that you say that because I think that. I think that is a problem with a lot of what happens in our space is we tend to divide all of us.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

Oh, he's in the camp of this. You know, this is always the right way. It's like, really, when I think about it, it always depends.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

These are all incredible tools and the client matters the most where they're at. So.

[Adam Schaefer]

And I think more collaboration between the. The different arts, if you will, is when you're going to get the best product. Yeah. Because like I said, when you start talking in absolutes, I don't know. I don't know what it is about that. It's like. It's like if you don't have, like one way to address everyone, it's like you're admitting defeat. Tribal.

[Alex Whitehair]

Humans are tribal. And we want to belong to a camp. And.

[Adam Schaefer]

Sure.

[Alex Whitehair]

How dare you say, well, I kind of belong to everything.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

I kind of use everything. It's like, you know, choose. You need to choose a camp.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah. So that's.

[Justin Andrews]

It's.

[Alex Whitehair]

That's in 14. It's rare way. But that's sort of taught, though.

[Mind Pump Host]

I think that has a factor. That's right, because I think you get entrenched in the doctrine with that you kind of come up with. And I think that a lot of these coaches don't, you know, branch out from that and really experience like a lot of the value in these other modalities. But, like, I think it's really unique that you, you have a different perspective than a lot of other strength coaches I've talked to.

[Alex Whitehair]

Do you see any. When you like, I don't know how often you scour the Internet or look at what other coaches modalities there. Anything that jumps out at you that you, you think is kind of abused for athletes? Like, oh man, everybody does that. Or everybody thinks that. Like, do you see anything like that that jumps out to you that you right away see? And you're like, oh, yeah, they probably shouldn't be doing that. Or like, I don't know why everyone does that.

[Adam Schaefer]

I think the lack of implementation of other tools, if anything, is the biggest thing. It's like every approach, it is dynamic, you know, lifting exercises and then you play your sport.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And it's not like necessarily an overdoing.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

Of it. It's just a lack of doing things alongside with it that are going to complement it. I can't think of one thing that I think like that every athlete does that is too excessive.

[Alex Whitehair]

I feel like I see a lot of the. A poor application towards plyometrics.

[Adam Schaefer]

Sure.

[Alex Whitehair]

Like one of the things that, like, right away I saw the way, the way you did plyometric, like. Yeah, I know he knows what he's doing because, like, I think we're. We're at a place now in training athletes that we understand plyometrics are valuable.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

So I find they all do it. But then you see them doing it in this like, circuit fashion.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

There's no attention to the detail of movement. One of the things I love about your page is like everything you teach the.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's.

[Mind Pump Host]

It's very sharp.

[Alex Whitehair]

99 of people that would try and do the movement that you're teaching on there would look so different than the way you look. There's. I mean, again, that's the art I love of. Of movement. And seeing someone like you perform it to. To the. To a T like that, I just think that's lost. I think that art is lost. It becomes. Everybody's trying to do jump boxes as many times as they can in a circuit. That's right.

[Adam Schaefer]

I think. Think that. That you raise a great point. And I'm glad you brought that up because plyometrics aren't meant for conditioning.

[Justin Andrews]

No.

[Adam Schaefer]

They're not a condition. They're for movement habits. You know, good movement habits. They're for stability with your movement. They're for explosiveness, they're for ground contact time, they're not for conditioning. So a lot of times I'll get like, what sets and reps do you do? Like three sets of 20. I'm like, no, three sets of three. Yeah. Three sets of five, maybe max. Yeah, maybe.

[Alex Whitehair]

Maybe just do one, right? Maybe just do, do one.

[Adam Schaefer]

Then rest. Like, I don't care how long I have to rest in between. I don't care how many reps I'm doing. All I care about is the quality of the movement. If I want to do condition, I'll go and do conditioning. I'll go run up a hill or something or jump rope.

[Justin Andrews]

Right.

[Adam Schaefer]

You know, battle ropes. Like, there's a whole bunch of things you can do for conditioning. Plyometrics isn't one of them. And that's where you can run into some injury risk too, because you're, you're doing box jumps or whatever and you're. Now you're inducing fatigue and all it takes is one bad step and you get hurt. Not only you're getting into bad habits, but that fatigue might cause you to get hurt when you otherwise wouldn't have gotten hurt.

[Alex Whitehair]

To me, it's the fastest way I can walk into a gym and know who knows what. And know, know if a trainer knows this or not right away. Because I feel like everyone does plyometrics with all their clients, regardless of what their goals are.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

And right away, how they're applying it. I can go like, okay, he or she knows their. Or they have no idea what they're doing right now. They're just, they're using it to condition.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

If you're just trying to look lose weight. Like plyometrics aren't, aren't what you're going to want to do, for example. Right. They're, they're athletic movement, they're, they're advanced overall comparatively to other stuff. And you just want to use them like almost like a prescription, you know, like if, especially if you're an athlete and you're, you're running, you're lifting heavy one day a week, you know, 30, 40 minutes of your best movement, that's fine, you know, like two days max if you, if you got something that really needs to work on their movement. But they're high impact, you know, and anything that we were talking about earlier that is kind of cooler comes with a toll that you got to be aware of. Right. So, yeah, you don't wanna, you don't Wanna just spam plyometrics and use them for conditioning? Yeah.

[Justin Andrews]

It makes me think of like you think you have a tool box and you're gonna build a house and you have a hammer and a screwdriver and a crowbar and you're not going to take your hammer and try and put, you know, put in some screws. You got to use that on nails. You're not going to use your screwdriver and try to hammer in a nail. You're going to use the tool that's best for the job.

[Mind Pump Host]

Use your jackhammer to hammer.

[Justin Andrews]

Yeah. And plyometrics are not for conditioning.

[Adam Schaefer]

No.

[Alex Whitehair]

So it's even, it's even worse than that because like a hammer, nail, screw that, that stuff is used a lot. Building on. It's like, it's a, it's a, like you said, one time a week is like enough or one rep or three reps is enough. Like you have people like using a tool that should be used a couple times and done very, very with detail. And you see people just using it all the time in circuits and in, in fatigue fashion.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's like the worst if you're doing you know, 20 reps of a plyometric movement, it's like I said, go do something else.

[Alex Whitehair]

Right.

[Adam Schaefer]

Go run or go, go run up a hill or go do anything else. But it's not, you're just going to get into bad habits. You can't bring the level of focus you need to that amount of reps to improve your movement habits.

[Alex Whitehair]

And not only that, you're even, you're, you're harming the athlete. You're creating poor movement patterns on potentially a movement that they need to be doing on the field really well. So it's like you're not only you not doing the best thing for them, you're probably damage regressing that athlete.

[Adam Schaefer]

And now you're also working like very sub maximal. Yeah, right. Because you can't do high intensity of something of that many reps. Yeah. You just can't. And it's like the whole reason you're doing it is to get more explosive.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's like if you want to become a faster sprinter, you're not going to go jog, you know, for miles. Like that wouldn't ne. That wouldn't really help that much to get better at sprinting. It's like once you induce fatigue, you're not going to be able to push at your upper echelon force production. You just can't. And the only way to get Better. And to get more explosives is to be able to do that same thing with improving a lift. Like, you're not going to do conditioning before you're going to lift heavy. Right. Because it's going to hinder how much weight you can put on.

[Mind Pump Host]

That's right.

[Adam Schaefer]

Same thing with plyometric. It's going to hinder how explosively you can move.

[Justin Andrews]

Do you have any favorite kind of athlete to train or sport that you just find the most fun, or is it all fun?

[Adam Schaefer]

It's all fun. Like I said, each case is so different. It's all fun. I. I worked with a lot of football players, a lot of wide receivers. Like I said, none by design. It's just sort of how it's worked out.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah. How do they find it? Is it all online? Has everybody just seen what you're doing.

[Adam Schaefer]

And then reaching Instagram? Just a message and then, you know, like, go to wherever they're at.

[Justin Andrews]

How's your business? Is it growing pretty well? You're just. This is all you do now, and that's awesome.

[Adam Schaefer]

This is. This is my main focus now, for sure.

[Justin Andrews]

Do you have your own facility or do you train at a facility?

[Adam Schaefer]

No, I just travel. And do you travel to the athletes? Yeah. Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

Oh, wow.

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah.

[Alex Whitehair]

And you factor in because, you know, off air, we're talking about this. Sometimes, like, athletes are hard when it comes to the billing and charging part because they're so used to getting everything for free. So do you make them compensate you for your travel time and all that? Is that built into it or is it just per session?

[Adam Schaefer]

Like, it's. It's different. Every situation, depending on what they want, how long they want me there for.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

So there's not like one answer I can give, but usually there's something up front before I go.

[Alex Whitehair]

Yeah.

[Adam Schaefer]

And then the rest after. Yeah, that's generally how it goes. Like I said, it's different on a case by case basis.

[Alex Whitehair]

And how long do you typically stay? Are there any trips where you're in and out right away or. Most of them. You staying there for a while?

[Adam Schaefer]

Like, I mean, I. I think the longest I did was like seven months.

[Alex Whitehair]

Oh, wow.

[Adam Schaefer]

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So. And sometimes it's a week, you know, and what I'll do is I'll go work with an athlete for a week, you know, really analyze their movement and figure out what they need, and I'll get them on a program for a month and then I'll come back and visit, reassess, and get them on a very specific program. Based on what I saw and what we did, that's kind of like the more common version of how this goes. Yeah, but it's always different. But yeah, in general, that's how it sort of works.

[Alex Whitehair]

Any, Any drawbacks or anything that you've. You've not enjoyed building a business on social media? I mean, do you get a lot of hate or you get a lot of guys that don't know what they're talking about, that want to talk shit about movements that you're doing or this or that?

[Adam Schaefer]

Sure. I mean, hate's always going to be a built in part of it on social media, but I just feel like I'm way too blessed to let any of that bother me. Like, I'm so grateful for all that's come my way through this that it would almost feel insulting to let those things, you know, bother me in any way. And I have. I get so many positive comments and positive feedback and messages that are. That are just amazing. I can't even believe, you know, some of the things people say. So you got to look at both sides of it. Right. And I think it's almost like disingenuous to just focus on the negative of it, of it. And then you have all these people that are saying positive things. I like to put my time into those people, you know. So as far as drawbacks. No, not really. I, I love what I do.

[Alex Whitehair]

Any plans to change that model? Like, do you ever want to have like a facility and like that, or do you love people underneath? It's.

[Adam Schaefer]

It's all on the table. For sure. It's all on the table right now. The, the setup I got now works pretty well, but at some point, I'd like to be a bit more settled in one spot. Where that is, I'm not sure yet. But yeah, everything's on the table. You know, any, any avenue. You know, I've thought about sort of seminars and stuff like that and, you know, I thought about exploring all of those things. I mean, this is, this is me sort of exploring those things.

[Alex Whitehair]

First podcast, is that right?

[Adam Schaefer]

Yeah, it is. Yeah. That's cool. First one, and I met people like, were commenting because I just started doing talking videos on my page, like, I don't know, six months ago, and people like, I didn't even know this guy talked sounded like either. So, yeah, we'll. We'll see what, what's to come. I'm not, not entirely sure yet, but that's.

[Alex Whitehair]

I'm excited, dude. I've been, I've been paying attention to you for a very long time and I take a lot of pride in the the ability to be able to look and find somebody who's on the come up of something like that. And and you're doing great work. So glad that we could highlight you and bring you on our platform.

[Adam Schaefer]

So I really appreciate that and like I said, thank you guys so much for having me come out here. It's a, it's a real honor to be here.

[Alex Whitehair]

Doing great work here. Great trainer man.

[Justin Andrews]

Great job man.

[Adam Schaefer]

Thank you guys.

[Sal Destefano]

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically, improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB super [e-mail] the RGB Super Bundle includes Maps, Anabolic Maps, Performance and Maps Aesthetics. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos. The RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now. Plus other valuable free [e-mail] if you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on itunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.

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