The Power of Early Resistance Training | Judd Lienhard

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Power of Early Resistance Training | Judd Lienhard

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show
• Host/Author: Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
• Episode: The Power of Early Resistance Training | Judd Lienhard
• Release Date: November 5, 2024

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon engages in a compelling conversation with Judd Lienhard, a former Army Ranger and an expert in speed training and athleticism. Judd shares his extensive experience in training athletes of all ages, with a special focus on children. This discussion delves into the critical components of early resistance training, debunking prevalent myths, and providing practical strategies for fostering athleticism and longevity from a young age.

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The Importance of Early Resistance Training

Dr. Lyon begins by presenting startling statistics: 75% of children and adolescents fail to meet the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity daily ([02:05]). This lack of activity during formative years can have long-term detrimental effects on health and athletic potential. Judd echoes this concern, highlighting the unique opportunity to instill healthy habits early on.

Notable Quote:

"If we do not do deep and meaningful interventions for our youth, they don't have a chance." — Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [04:06]

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Debunking Common Myths About Youth Training

A significant portion of the conversation focuses on dismantling myths surrounding youth resistance training. Contrary to popular belief, Judd asserts that children can safely and effectively engage in weight training. He emphasizes that concerns about stunted growth due to weightlifting are unfounded and that proper training can enhance muscle density and strength without adverse effects.

Notable Quote:

"The myth that children shouldn't weight train is absolutely insane to me." — Judd Lienhard [10:37]

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Practical Training Approaches for Children

Judd outlines essential training components tailored for young athletes, emphasizing the differences between training children and adults. He introduces the Mass Method, a performance-based workout program designed to improve movement, athleticism, strength, and speed through structured drills.

1. Bracing with Weight Belts ([39:22]):

   • Utilize loosely fitted weight belts to teach children proper bracing techniques.
   • Encourage diaphragmatic breathing to stabilize the spine without risking hyperextension.

2. Gait Training ([41:02]):

   • Teach proper walking patterns to prevent issues like valgus collapse.
   • Implement drills such as "pretend you have laser beams on your toes" to enhance movement precision.

3. Posture Improvement ([43:34]):

   • Incorporate isometric exercises to maintain neutral pelvic positions.
   • Use simple movements like lifting the butt off a chair to counteract forward head posture from prolonged sitting.

Notable Quote:

"Mobility is not flexibility. Mobility is being able to control your body and your limbs through different ranges of motion." — Judd Lienhard [46:44]

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Mass Method Overview

Judd elaborates on the Mass Method, emphasizing its focus on proprioception, neuromuscular control, and functional movement patterns that transcend traditional exercises like the bench press. The method includes:

• Movement Prep ([50:30]): Slow, controlled movements to enhance body awareness and prepare muscles for activity.
• Flow Series ([56:47]): Sequenced rotational movements that mimic athletic actions, improving core strength and coordination.
• Go Component ([58:01]): Incorporates plyometrics and unilateral exercises to build explosive power and balance.

Notable Quote:

"Physical fitness is so much more than muscle strength, endurance, cardiovascular flexibility; it includes power and mobility." — Judd Lienhard [46:36]

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Central Nervous System in Training

The discussion delves into the role of the central nervous system (CNS) in resistance training. Judd explains that children's CNS can handle frequent, high-intensity training without the risk of overtraining that adults might face. He introduces methods to monitor and manage CNS fatigue, such as grip strength tests and quality of sleep assessments.

Notable Quote:

"Kids can literally max out. A kid can go and sprint like on the playground every single day and not come home and be like, I can't focus." — Judd Lienhard [36:03]

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Incorporating Neural Toning and Breathing Techniques

Judd emphasizes the importance of neural toning—techniques to regulate the nervous system for optimal performance and recovery. This includes:

• Breathing Methods: Techniques like box breathing and diaphragmatic breathing to activate the parasympathetic system.
• Visualization: Mentally preparing for exercises to enhance focus and execution.
• Auditory Cues: Using music strategically to manage energy levels during workouts.

Notable Quote:

"Learning to tone your nervous system to activate your parasympathetic system is incredibly important for adults." — Judd Lienhard [64:36]

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Implementing the Mass Method

Dr. Lyon and Judd discuss practical ways to integrate the Mass Method into daily routines for both children and adults. This includes:

• Regular Drills: Incorporating one-minute perfect push-ups, walking lunges, and single-leg exercises.
• Adaptable Workloads: Adjusting exercises based on individual progress and anatomical differences.
• Mindset Training: Encouraging presence and focus during workouts to maximize neural and physical benefits.

Notable Quote:

"One perfect push up a day can drastically improve your back strength and overall posture." — Judd Lienhard [68:06]

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Additional Misconceptions and Advice

Judd addresses further misconceptions, such as the necessity of traditional exercises like the bench press for muscle growth. He advocates for bodyweight variations and functional movements that offer similar or superior benefits without the associated injury risks.

Notable Quote:

"Muscles do not know load; they know tension. You can build muscle without traditional weightlifting by manipulating speed and lever length." — Judd Lienhard [76:40]

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Conclusion

This episode underscores the profound impact of early resistance training on children's long-term health and athleticism. Dr. Lyon and Judd Lienhard collaboratively highlight the necessity of debunking outdated myths, implementing age-appropriate training methods, and fostering a holistic approach to physical development. By adopting strategies like the Mass Method, parents and trainers can cultivate stronger, more resilient, and athletically capable youth, setting the foundation for a healthy, active life.

Final Notable Quote:

"We are indoctrinating our kids into an immobile, metabolically dysfunctional life. It's time to change that narrative." — Dr. Gabrielle Lyon [46:37]

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Disclaimer:
The content of this summary is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Listeners should consult health professionals for personalized recommendations.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Dr. Gabrielle Line show, where cutting edge science meets innovation and practical application for everyone. Today I sit down with Jud Lionheart. I have to tell you, Judd, who is a former Army Ranger and a expert in speed training and athleticism. He himself is a former lineman, that's right, collegiate lineman. And trains and has trained multiple athletes, including children. I have to say, to date, this is one of my favorite podcasts. Here's why I think in this conversation in longevity and wellness and muscle, we talk all about strength, hypertrophy, force and power. I didn't know that we were missing critical components to athleticism and longevity that can be taught in childhood, like tone of the nervous system, like mobility and stability and ways that we move our bodies through flow and things that we can do. For example, protocols to do. If you are sitting all day. This episode was so eye opening. I would just encourage you to listen to this whole thing through. Now please join me in conversation with Jud Leinhart. Judd Linehart, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you on and I want to tell you why, number one, you live an athletic and an athlete's lifestyle. And I don't know exactly how I found you, but I'm always looking and so fascinated with this idea of how do we train to our ultimate capacity and how do we prevent injury. And then finally, which is probably why I'm so selfishly excited to have you on, is I want to talk about children and children training, which you do better than anybody. So welcome to the show.

[B]

Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

[A]

Now, I'm going to give you some statistics which is not. These statistics are not going to be shocking to anyone. Primarily not you. 75% of children and adolescents don't meet the baseline physical activity recommendations. And I was looking, I think it's 60 minutes, five days a week, gross, an hour, basically. That's crazy. Think about it. Children and adolescents, this is the time where you are bonkers. You have so much energy. You know, if you're a parent, I'm a parent. I can't keep up with these kids.

[B]

It's mind boggling.

[A]

They don't even meet 60 minutes, five days a week. Okay, I got more for you. The other thing is physical activity and there's some data here. So this is Avery Fagenbaum and he is obviously like the goat in this space when it comes to producing literature on youth and adolescents and athletics. He says that physical activity declines starting at the age of. Do you know it well, you know it because you saw the prep sheet. Six years old.

[B]

That's insane. I thought that was kind of a tie. I was like, there's no way this can be right. I was actually shocked by that.

[A]

Shocked. Yeah. And you know, you and I were chatting before the show started that children, adolescents are so different when it comes to testing. We have a ton of data. In middle aged later life adults, we have very little if not. I'm not aware of any muscle biopsies with healthy youth, are you?

[B]

No, none.

[A]

So we basically.

[B]

You don't know what's going on in the inside of the muscle.

[A]

We don't know. And then before we kick this off, one of the most important aspects and you know, if I were to think about who is a population I'm most concerned about, it's our youth. When people are in their 40s and 50s. I love you guys, but get yourself together and you have the opportunity to get yourself together. But if we do not do deep and meaningful interventions for our youth, they don't have a chance.

[B]

Yes, completely agree. You know, a lot of years spent working with kids and it's an emotionally and physically formative time, obvious statement. And there's little things that we can do that will make a huge impact.

[A]

Why children? Why are you concerned and interested in training kids? And by the way, you know, if someone were to look at your Instagram, you work with athletes, you know, kind of like spans the gamut. But I do know that you are very interested in the youth and why.

[B]

So it's one of those things. I was very blessed to be put in a position that I didn't originally want to be in and I think that's very common. But once I got in it, I understand how big of a blessing it was. So the owner of Acceleration, a speed training place, offered me a job and it came down there.

[A]

Where was that?

[B]

It's in Austin, Texas. It was a long time ago, like 13 years ago, and got a chance to start. The population at the time was mostly middle school kids. And at the time I was very uncomfortable with that because I was used to. I just got out of the Rangers and I was college football player and personal trainer.

[A]

And what position did you play in college?

[B]

Middle linebacker. And so I just wasn't comfortable, especially, you know, middle school age kids wasn't comfortable. And it was the biggest blessing that has ever happened to me because the bonds that you form with them, the important role that you can play in their life and the longitudinal time that I can stay with these Kids, you know, a lot of these kids, you know, when I first got there, we were kind of limited at age 11 to 13, and then we backed it off to age 9, moving forward. So some of these kids I got to train from age nine and I still train them. They're 25 years old now. And just to see them develop and to see the development of, you know, child after child after child and all the struggles they go through and the specialness of that population, the things that they deal with emotionally, physically, biomechanically, how they don't respond the same way as adults, how they need to be trained.

[A]

Different than adults, that, I mean, it's so fascinating. Again, 13 years ago, you fell into this position of speed training, right? So was. And I don't even know what speed training is. And why would someone speed train? You talk about hypertrophy strength, okay, but speed training.

[B]

So, you know, there's a myth, you know, a lot of myths out there that you can't train speed. People like to say that because they don't want to train speed. And, you know, sprinting is, you know, biomechanics, sequencing patterns. There's an art and a skill to speed training, and it can be trained and enhanced.

[A]

And is that from say. So you mean from a sprinting perspective? So if someone wants to get faster, we're not talking about quick feet moving in a lateral position, Right? You're talking about going from point A to point B.

[B]

Yes, but all kinds of speed, you know, change of direction of speed, you know, acceleration, which is acceleration, is both speeding up and slowing down. It's just a change in the rate of velocity. So acceleration, top end speed, everything that encompasses speed and athletic performance. But we are known for linear speed and enhancing that. Now, obviously there's limits. You can't change the average person into, you know, Tyreek Hill or one of these guys, but you can definitely. Everyone can get faster. And usually when they come in, you know, we do high speed filming analysis and we hook them up to machines so we kind of see what's going on. And within the first couple sessions, we can find a couple things that are easy fixes that will have an immediate impact on how fast they are.

[A]

You said something really interesting, that we can't train children the way that we train adults. Tell me what that means and what age do you think is too young for kids to start training?

[B]

Well, there's no age that's too young. It depends on what type of training you're talking about, how intense and the nature of the Training, because children are learning from a very early age. They're sponges. So in some regards, they pick up and they learn way better than adults. Just like they do with language. Right. So sprinting and athleticism is a language. And, you know, on the flip side of this, not to digress too far, but, you know, I got so used to training kids for speed, when the adults started coming to me for speed, I had to really understand how hard it was to change what had been wired into them for so long. Whereas kids, their neuroplasticity is, you know, they're so much more agile mentally that they can really learn a lot faster. But the thing is with kids is they have a naturally shorter attention span and you have to make it a game for them, and you have to keep the instructional blocks much shorter. So there's an art to it. And when the instructional blocks, like 30 minutes. No, I mean, I'm talking. Well, it's an hour session. But within that hour session, we'll have, you know, four to five, three to five minute blocks of instruction broken up by one to two minutes of play. But then you have to design the play in a way that is still beneficial, that will still teach them what I'm trying to teach them, but it's kind of disguised as play. So it really is an art to effectively train children.

[A]

What was, when you think about training children, what are some of the most important things as parents listening that our children should be doing? Because again, I would guess that more myths exist with children childhood training, and maybe we should even kind of highlight just a handful of those first. And before we move into. You've been working with children for over 13 years now. So what are some of the biggest myths?

[B]

So adults are focused on losing weight. So a lot of times they superimpose the diet that they're trying to do onto their child. And they have different nutritional needs. You know, like every child should control their sugar intake, but they're more focused on calories. So if you have an overweight child, they try to put that child on a calorie restriction and make food a punishment, just like they unsuccessfully do it themselves. They're afraid of too much protein intake, even for children, because the myths have been put out there. That's hard on the organs and things like that. That's a whole other topic that you know more about that than I do. So nutritional myths are the first hurdle. They think that certain supplements like creatine are bad for their children and things like that. And then the next one is they don't keep exercise fun for them. And they put too much pressure on performance outcome rather than consistent practice and preparation. You know, a lot of it's psychology. So you have to. Every criticism you have to give a child, as far as improvements go, I call it sandwiching. You have to start and end with a positive. So you have to build them up consistently and end every session with a positive outcome mentally to keep them motivated to coming back. So it's just a different approach with children. And then, you know, the biggest one that we're going to talk about is the myth that children shouldn't weight train, which is absolutely insane to me. And the fact that it still persists like it does in this day and age is criminal.

[A]

I know. And you know, especially when we think about the barriers to entry. So we know that most children are sedentary and if we are not in these moments of growth. So right now there's a handful of critical moments where, you know, their bone is building, their musculature is developing.

[B]

Hyperplasia at that age can happen.

[A]

Yeah. So, yeah, let's mention it. Let's hear about it.

[B]

You know, hypertrophy versus hyperplasia, cells get bigger versus cells multiply. So hyperplasia can happen, both of fat cells and muscle cells, other cells as well. But children, both good and bad, during certain ages, it's known that they can experience hyperplasia, and adults too, when it reaches a certain level, maybe under certain circumstances, which is much more rare. So, like if your child is predisposed to things that, like overeating and being sedentary, they can, their fat cells can actually multiply. But the converse is true. Like weight training at that age could result in more muscle cells and denser muscle tissues. Yeah, yeah. It's an extraordinarily crucial age to expose children to resistance training for a number of reasons.

[A]

And, you know, I'll just say that my children, we were talking are three and five and you better believe they have their own pink and green kettlebell.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you want to know what's so crazy? I have 35 pound kettlebell and I think I have a 35. What, Matt, like 45 and then like.

[B]

A 60, I think.

[A]

But yeah, you better believe that my five year old has no problem. She's my five year old, weighs 42 pounds. She can easily lift her body weight.

[B]

Kids tend to be extremely strong in relation to the body weight. Like a lot of kids can climb a rope and no feet, no problem. Very few adults can do that. And here's another Thing and this is very controversial on my part, but kids, nervous systems are designed to protect them. Very rarely will a kid hurt him or herself lifting weights, especially if it's a weight that they're picking up off the ground. A kid will pick something up with what we consider atrocious technique, especially with hinging patterns because they bend over and round their back, something that would definitely hurt an adult. And I'm not recommending new trainers encourage this, but I've rarely seen a, a young child hurt themselves picking up a weight that. It's like a protection mechanism within them. And we're very worried about the. It doesn't, you don't need to be a doctor to understand this, that the whole stunt your growth and growth plates thing is a traumatic acute injury. It is not stress on the bone over time. And if we're talking about peak impact force, the running and jumping and landing and rolling, they do have much higher peak impact forces than lifting weights. So the peak impact force risk and the, and the, the growth plate risk is complete nonsense. And I cannot believe that it hasn't been dispelled by now. It has in the scientific community.

[A]

It has, but again, it takes over a decade for anything to get to the boat, which is exactly why I had you on here. So thank you. There's a really great paper and it's called is Muscular Fitness Associated with Future Health benefits in Children and Adolescents? And this was a systematic review and a meta analysis of longitudinal studies. Again, children are not biopsied and here's what they found. If you are a parent, listen up because it's much easier to settle in on good habits than it is to break habits in your 40s and 50s and beyond. A high level of physical fitness in childhood and adolescence is associated with lower body mass index. Well, we don't really care about that, but you know where this is going. Lower skin fold thickness, they're leaner, lower insulin resistance, lower triglycerides, lower cardiovascular disease risk score and higher bone mineral density. And that's just a handful of the things that they looked at. So if you were to pick one activity you know, you were to think about, okay, so the parents are thinking, how can I encourage my child? So if we were to think about. I'll just selfishly think about my 5 year old. This girl is so naturally athletic. We have her in jiu jitsu, she's in swimming, she practices on her brother who is three. It's a terrible thing. She's doing kettlebells with us and weightlifting. Just because she's seeing it. Would that be a time to. You know. I had Jordan Shallow on the podcast and he talked about how when we see athletes that are great nowadays, that they have begun their athletic training. I don't know, five years old.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So if I want my child, and I want what she wants, to be an extraordinary athlete, let's just say, right, I'm just making this up, what should I do for her?

[B]

So there's. This is a great question. And there's a fine line between starting the athletic development young and specializing too young to create burnout. And the Soviets did a lot of things wrong. One of the things they did better than us was the GPP focus for a long time. So general physical preparedness. Even athletes, they wanted to become elite athletes later, they didn't start out with too much of the training in one specific area too soon. So more general in nature. And then even when they became elite athletes, there were breaks in the year where they would back off and it'd be more general physical preparedness. So even if your child is a tennis player, I understand the urge is to have them on the tennis court for eight hours a day. Maybe. Well, not maybe. Definitely. It's better to have them on the tennis court for one hour a day and another hour in the weight room and another hour doing some gymnastics, basic gymnastics and body weight training and things that are fun to keep them varied in interest and healthy. And that's just the psychological aspect is very important. Parents tend to push the kids too hard, too soon in a way that doesn't keep it fun for them. And that's one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is they don't push them at all. They don't push them to try new things. They don't push them to encourage them in a positive way to push past that discomfort barrier. So they get used to understanding what it really takes to excel at something.

[A]

Do you think that that's trained. Do you think some children are more psychologically minded to be physical in nature? Because, again, you've seen many, many children.

[B]

Absolutely. Some kids just have a higher pain tolerance.

[A]

It's an attribute. Right. Something they're born with.

[B]

It is. And so some of that basically is nature. And it's just a natural attribute. But a lot of it, the kids never even know. And because the parents just don't expose them to the different things.

[A]

Do you think that that's one reason why children are becoming more sedentary? Because maybe we're just softer as a culture.

[B]

Yeah. And they're modeling the behavior after the parents. A sedentary parent's gonna have a sedentary kid and you don't have to be the master coach. You just have to bring your kid along with you and let them see you model behavior. And if not, if not, if you're a parent that is sedentary, then you have to get them in something where people aren't. If you're laying around watching TV all day, they're gonna do the exact same thing. They're sponges.

[A]

Well, and we already know that nearly 75% of the pop, 50% of Americans don't even exercise. We're laughing, right, because we keep a fit crew here. And then 75% don't even meet those the recommendations. So we have to do something. If you were to pick, let's say when you think about some of the most important things, you said something very interesting, that the nervous system, does the nervous system develop before the muscular system or is it kind of in tandem? Do they know?

[B]

So in my experience as a trainer, I'm not a scientist, this is just what I've observed as a trainer and things like isometrics, we, we can look as the kid pulls on a non moving object before a certain age, after a certain age, when they pull, the force output stays fairly consistent. I'll have little peaks and valleys in it. But when a kid pulls on it under the age of definitely under puberty. But in some kids reach this sooner when they pull on something doesn't move, their, their nervous system will peak to a certain point and then plummet. And I swear it's a self protection mechanism. And I feel like their brain does not want their nervous system to fire too fast or too hard because it's trying to protect these tissues that are very supple and nimble and mobile, but can't maybe protect them as well as they could once puberty hits. So it's a self regulating factor. But if a child can learn to start to tap into their, you know, high threshold central nervous system ability, how that impulse at a younger age, I have seen it have carryover. So when they hit puberty, they're light years ahead of the other kids.

[A]

So what would be an example, you.

[B]

Know that so things like depth jumps. So have a kid get on a platform, jump off and stick the landing. You know, things that would kill an adult. You know what I mean?

[A]

I'm cringing right now.

[B]

Like the neighbors would see me let Levi, my son jump off like a five foot ledge and like oh And.

[A]

I'm like, how old, how old is Levi?

[B]

He's 8 now, but he was 4 at the time.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And sometimes he would eat it, but he never hurt himself. I'm like, he's learning how to absorb force and produce force and, and he's helping the central nervous system. I didn't even bother explaining that to him. But I'm like, I just said he'll be fine. You know, and like kids that like when you look at kids, they'll jump out of trees from like 10ft in the air and land and they won't hurt themselves. I mean every once in a while it happens. But if they can, if they can do that, they can pick a kettlebell off the ground. You know, I would never have a 40 year old adult jump off an 8 foot platform ever. Right. You know, until, unless they were highly trained. But things like jumping down, rolling fall, max effort lifts, not usually with like an amortization phase, like a back squat.

[A]

Wait, what, what does that mean?

[B]

Like when you go down the eccentric and you have to overcome the eccentric to produce the concentric, like you have to come down and squat, stop it and go back up.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But more like a deadlift. So like you picking something that doesn't move and you just have to pick it up off the ground or like a push up, you're starting on the ground and you put like a little plate on their back and you see if they can lift it. Because if they can't lift it, they can't lift it, you know, and it's max effort lifting. And a lot of kids in the country and stuff would do this while I was thinking they'd climb trees and if they can't get it, they can't get it. And nobody looks at that and thinks it's dangerous.

[A]

Right, but when they call that, they call that what, farm strong or something?

[B]

Yeah. I mean seriously, like a kid would carry implements around all day that were very heavy or climb trees. And since it's a tree, it doesn't register that that's dangerous. But if it's a pull up bar, then all of a sudden it's different people's minds and this is dangerous. That child is weight training. It's like a good child should be weight training everywhere they go. Yeah. You know, like suitcase carries, carry your dog and put them in a, you know, something like, you know, like wrestle a calf to the ground.

[A]

An alligator.

[B]

Yeah, it's all of those things and that's all high level CNS output, close to max effort. That you cannot sustain. The thing that drives me crazy in physical education, I hate to call it that, because it's a joke, is they focus way too much on cardiovascular development at that age at the expense of neuromuscular development.

[A]

And, and what, when you say cardiovascular development, do you mean that they are just putting them in a track and they're jogging around?

[B]

They're literally trying to teach them how to maintain their weight through exercise, through aerobic exercise. And like, I almost had a fit when I walked in one day. And on the physical education, think about how complex physical education, that term, physical education can be. And they're literally having the kids run around the gym and get popsicle sticks to see how many popsicle sticks they can get an hour, like an hour of just jogging. And most kids, they don't need that much cardiovascular activity because they're supposed to be getting that through play anyway.

[A]

Do we know how much they, quote, need?

[B]

I don't know how much they need, but if a kid's active most of the day, their heart rate should be Fairly high. Zone 2 cardio, they should be getting that throughout the day anyway. It's more older adults that kind of need more of that for heart health. Kids like more in high intensity interval training, which not like the boring type that we do, but literally sprinting down a basketball court, stopping, taking a break for a few seconds, and going the other way as part of their play. When you look at kids play tag or at the swimming pool, really what they're doing, think about how cool it is. I'm sorry, I'm all over the place. Let's say you're going to the swimming pool. This the best thing a kid can do. And it's like the worst thing an adult can do. Because when kids go to a swimming pool, they have races underwater. They build their CO2 tolerance by holding their breath. They compete and build confidence. Adults go to a swimming pool, they sit down, they drink, they get too much sun exposure, they gossip like it's two completely different experiences and they're both in the same environment. So things like, you know, chasing and playing tag and holding your breath and building confidence like that in all spectrums of development are crucially important.

[A]

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[B]

Yes.

[A]

And, you know, it makes me think, do they inherently know? Obviously it's not conscious. Do they inherently know what they should be doing?

[B]

Oh, I firmly believe so. You know, the default for young kids is always to max effort, everything. And we're always trying to, quote, pull them back and pace yourself. And my least favorite thing to hear is like, hey, stop running. No, please, never stop running. Yeah. You know what I mean? I feel like, what's the stat? Like over 18, like, 95 of people never sprint again in their life. And then like, we use sprints as punishment. Like, whatever you do, encourage your kid to sprint. Even if they fall down and bust their nose or knock out a tooth, God forbid, don't tell them to stop sprinting. Like, I got it. There's levels to safety, but this constant, slow down, stop running. Don't jump, don't tumble. Don't let your kid out. Just sit there like a bump on the log. Like we are doing. We're trying to wire our kids in to be sloths, and that's not what they want to be naturally.

[A]

Yeah. And also what you're saying with this hyperplasia of musculature, you know, I think that there's this continuum, this. This spectrum. So we talk. Everybody talks about lifespan. Okay. We already know what that is. And then you hear a conversation about healthspan whoopee doo. And what I actually think is it's a broader conversation. What it really comes down to is muscle span.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

The length of time we live with healthy skeletal muscle in which we can move weight, move our bodies against force and gravity in a meaningful way 100%.

[B]

And this is the thing with muscle. There's a lot of things that go into lifespan, how socially active you are, your metabolic health, you know, things like that. But muscle, when you think about it, your emotional health, it impacts all of those other things. So you know more about the, the metabolic benefits to having muscle that you can speak on that for days, and then the orthopedic piece. So if you don't have muscle, you're not as stable, you don't have the proprioception, you will fall and break a hip, and then you become sedentary, and then you're socially isolated, and then your diet degrades, and then you don't get the sunlight and it's like a cascading effect and it can be rooted back mostly to muscle.

[A]

Yes. And I bet you I'm just throwing this out there, but it probably, I suspect we set up ourselves in childhood.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely, 100%. Have you ever seen that? Like, it's funny because, like, science takes so long to prove things that we just inherently know. You ever see somebody has nice legs and they're like, oh, I don't really work on my legs. Well, how do you. Well, as a kid, I was a soccer player. Oh, I love to do this. And it's like, it's always a kid. I would do this. And I, you know, it's from a young age and you just see it and we know it, and we just wait for science to prove what we already know.

[A]

You know, here's something that I've seen in my clin. I agree with you 1000%. And here's something that I see in clinic, is that those patients that were very active in their youth, that even for whatever reason, do not have a favorable body composition now, they've lost muscle, they have gained body fat. I put those people on a good nutrition plan. We connect with a great trainer who's focused on hypertrophy and strength. So, yes, there's this continuum. Make sure that their hormones are together. And it is like a switch that flips.

[B]

It's, you know, the satellite cells and things that you referenced, those don't go away. Those are still there.

[A]

And then when you think about something that children. So we could say, we'll say safely say that at any age, children should be sprinting, should be lifting weights, should be doing body weight stuff. They should be doing tumbling, jumping, doing anything and everything that they can within safety. Right?

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Fair to say at 5, it's maybe a little bit more structured. Like they can take A class. My daughter can do jiu jitsu. She can sprint, she can lift things. Probably doing natural speed training. Her nervous system is now encoding these behaviors. Do you find that there is a time that kids really. That there's almost a differentiating time again? Because you've seen children. Is it 13, that it's almost like a division at 13, when hormones are now increasing testosterone, that. That is the time that we have to make sure that they take action.

[B]

Yes. At that point, it's almost too late.

[A]

I mean, tell me what you mean by that. This is important. So this is important for people to reframe and think about it.

[B]

So there's a myth that kids, first of all, it's getting dispelled directly that kids can't get stronger until they go through puberty because they don't have testosterone. But there are so many things that have to do with muscle strength and bone density and athleticism that has nothing to do with your androgens. And.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, and so forever they thought that a kid could not see progress. I have seen it firsthand that that's just not true.

[A]

I didn't know that that was a thing that children. That they don't think children can get stronger or see progress.

[B]

Oh, I mean, yeah, they just don't think that it's. They think it's pointless. I think it's dangerous to have kids lift weights, and that's pointless because they can't gain muscle without testosterone. Well, women don't have testosterone with very little. And they can still gain muscle.

[A]

Yeah, it's.

[B]

And it's. It's. A lot of it is independent of hormones. Insulin sensitivity. Insulin's most anabolic thing in your body, like keep your kid insulin sensitive and just, Just, you know, a reaction to strenuous activity. And it's not just about muscle size. And then the strength is a hard thing to measure because the kid's limbs are getting longer. So even if their muscles are producing more strength, they might not be able to move more weight is just on a longer limb for right now. Like, adults don't grow limb length. So we can predictably see if a muscle is getting stronger by how much weight they can use. But if a kid's muscle gets stronger but that lever gets longer, they can't move more weight. Doesn't mean the muscle's not stronger. You know, so sometimes a kid will get slower in adolescence because their limbs get longer, and it takes a while to catch back up to that. So they can't turn their levers over as Fast. So there's just so many variables there. But it's just, it's extraordinarily important that kids are resistance training at a young age.

[A]

Do you think that is there an age where we have to begin to think about this many days a week? So for adults, for example, if you were to say a 30 to 40 year old, okay, we'll say, well, these are kind of different ages, right? Because 30, you're still pretty robust. But let's say for a 40 year old. 40, 50 year old, you would design a program that would be what to start three days a week, hypertrophy, three to four days a week.

[B]

But as little as one day a week does have benefit. But ideally three days a week, minimum.

[A]

But for a child who has not been through adolescence, and then we'll get to adolescence or even in adolescence, is there. Is it almost. They should be lifting weights every day.

[B]

This isn't what people think. It's actually opposite. Okay. The more advanced you are, the less frequency you need or can handle.

[A]

Wait, say that again.

[B]

The more advanced you are in training age and the older you are, the less frequency of intense training you need or can handle.

[A]

I would totally agree with that.

[B]

So kids can literally max out. If you were going to have them do this on a squat every single day, and it would not. They would be able to recover from it. It would not affect their central nervous system, because their central nervous system literally cannot produce that much of a charge yet. Whereas once you go through puberty, they're more likely to get hurt. Their central nervous system starts putting out a huge vault, right? Basically huge charge, and they can actually start to hurt themselves and they can actually start to overtrain. You literally almost cannot overtrain a child.

[A]

I mean, that's fascinating when you think about the central nervous system. Is there a way that we would have a measure by proxy? How would we be able to tell if the nervous system is being stressed?

[B]

So it's one of these things that's very highly contentious right now because when they directly measure central nervous system recovery, it shows that the central nervous system recovers very quickly. But we know that not to be true based on what we see in our field. So they know it has something to do with glutamate and cortisol doesn't go down and you have so much dopamine and release that your serotonin can't get up, and adrenaline. So they don't know if it's the actual central. The neurons themselves or the byproducts that have resulted that need time to clear. So I want to caveat that first because some people listen to this, they may be study geeks are like, well, studies have shown this central nervous system recovers very quickly. And I understand that. But we know as professionals in our field that if you're going to max out on a sprint or a jump and your athlete is over trained with the high intensity stuff, it's going to take seven to 14 days before they can peak again.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Whereas muscle tissue, you can crush a muscle four days later, that thing's probably ready to go. And there are variables, person to person, muscle group to muscle group. But to get back to your question, very simple ways to test it. You know, the carbon dioxide tolerances, CO2 tolerance, very cheap, easy way. And just buy a grip strength tester. Very simple. Also more subtle ways, more qualitative ways, like quality of sleep. Are you waking up? Do you go to sleep really fast, but then you wake up in the middle of the night. That suggests your cortisol stays level throughout the night and it keeps waking you up. Now if you're just tired and you crash and you don't want to get out of bed in the morning, that's probably more peripheral. You're just very tired. But if you fall asleep easily and you keep waking up or you can't feel like you relax or you can't get your heart rate down or your brain fog, those are all signs of your central nervous system needs a break.

[A]

And do you think that. And it would be very. And what I'm hearing you say is that it would be very difficult to get a five or six or seven year old to that point. Right.

[B]

Physically, emotionally. Right. No, because emotionally, if you're emotionally pushing and abusing your child.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They will become overtrained in a hurry. But if they're having a good time and they're just doing it on their own, literally. A kid can squat. You know, Bulgarian system for adults where they squat the max every day like it's a known thing they have to go through. That's called a dark period, where it's a year and a half of over training. Your central nervous system, where you're miserable to get to the other side.

[A]

Couldn't they be more effective at that?

[B]

Yeah, so very. That's why very few people, it's just, it's not necessary. Whereas kids can literally max out. A kid can go and sprint like on the playground. They'll have a period where they race each other.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they will literally race full speed every single day for Two months or until they move on to something else and the kid doesn't come home and be like, I can't focus. They just doesn't happen. Where if it's an adult did that with the fourth or fifth day straight of doing one, even one max effort sprint, they would be completely fried neurologically. Their reflexes wouldn't be as good. Their grip strength would be down, their broad jump would be down. Quantitative measures and the first thing an athlete does is after they're prepped, I'll have them do a grip strength test or a broad jump. And if it's more than 10% off their norm, it's like, well, you need to back off today. I don't care how you feel. Your performance is telling me you need to back off day.

[A]

And that would that be for more of the. I mean, listen, we live in Texas and Texas takes their sports very seriously. I'm like, what state am I in? You're laughing. You know, it's true. They've got the training programs for these six year old or whatever to go into the. I mean, it's just crazy. Is there an age that. So is there an age that that kind of starts looking at CO2 tolerance? Would it be 6? Too young. I mean, where, where do we think about.

[B]

I wouldn't worry about measuring the central nervous system until you get to puberty.

[A]

To puberty, you know what I mean? It seems that when puberty happens, everything changes.

[B]

The thing that I would start at a younger age is, and this is crazy that people think you can't do this, is teaching your child to regulate their central nervous system, teaching them breathing methods to bring themselves up the neural toning, breathing methods to bring their neural tone up and prepare them breathing methods to bring their neural tone down and help them relax and recover both in between workouts and in between sets. So there's ways to breathe in between sets. I call it intra workout breathing. To where you can really bring your nervous system tone down and help you recover and then extend the duration that you're able to be intense during that workout. We can teach children this. I really feel like weightlifting belts should be everywhere. And hear me out here, because you can put them on very loosely to where it's not tight and you can teach your child to braced breathing to where they try to put pressure on that weight belt all around. And teach them how to brace while breathing. Teach them how to like diaphragmatically breathe. And we can teach our children breathing, we can teach our children gait, we can teach Our children to hold their tongue on the roof of their mouth and nasal breathe. We can teach them all these things that will extend to the time when they get to adolescence and the central nervous system becomes an issue. They're already prepared to help themselves recover.

[A]

My kids are real bummed you came on this podcast because guess what is going into the Amazon cart today? Give me your top three, because I'm going to try this. I hope you're around when the kids come home, because we were doing it. Your top three drills. So if you were to pick three drills that the parents are listening here that have younger kids, would it be the belt? Would it be. Tell me, take me through it.

[B]

The belt is a great way to do it.

[A]

And we don't care what age. Right. I'm talking. My daughter's getting a hot pink one with leopard.

[B]

Yeah. So something that's loose enough that you can put a finger or two in between so it's not already tight, and it's easier to just have them, you know, between internal cueing and external queuing for children. External cueing, which I mean by that is don't try to get your body to do something. Give them a task to accomplish that gets their body to do that thing. So if the belt is on, it's like, hey, pretend like the belt is about to fall off your waist and breathe while breathing, produce pressure on all sides of that belt so they can breathe into the back of their pelvic bone. I think Andy Galpin was where I got this from. Dude is a genius.

[A]

And, you know, but don't tell and do not tell Andy that Andy has been on this pod. He's a very dear friend. Make sure you edit this part out. No, I'm kidding.

[B]

But, I mean, a lot of people, they can't put pressure when they brace into the back of their thing. They have to rely on, like, hyperextension and their bones, you know, where they, like, try to draw their abs in, but they don't understand it's a belt. Right. And teaching our children brace breathing. So I'll put a squat belt. People think I'm crazy. Like, why are you having this kid squat with a lifting belt? I'm like, it's not. So they can lift more weight.

[A]

So they can feel and breathe.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's cueing.

[B]

Yeah, so it's cueing. So without me having to talk their ear off, which I'm talking to ear off right now.

[A]

No, that's why you're here, brother. If you came here and just sat here and was quiet and I was doing the talking. Man, I'm telling you, everyone would be turning this off.

[B]

So I'll have them put a weight belt on really loose and goblet squat or whatever version of squat they want to do and go down and hold it. And I'll tell them to breathe in the bottom position and try to keep pressure on the weightlifting belt. And then they learn to not have to hyperextend their back to stabilize their spine. You know, as much back injury happens through hyperextension as it does through flexion, just teaching a kid to brace properly is enormously important.

[A]

So number one, you have two more to go.

[B]

I would say gait is very important. So walking patterns, teaching them how to walk properly, proper walking strategies from step to step.

[A]

I don't even know how to do that. Do you know how to do that, Matt?

[B]

I always say pretend like you have laser beams on your toes and make sure that the laser beam is pointed on your big toe, pointed in the direction you want to go. And when they land, they're going to go heel to the outside edge and then roll to the inside edge and just practice that gait.

[A]

Do you have videos on this? On your. I don't get on that.

[B]

You know. And then without fail, if you look at somebody that doesn't have a butt, look at their feet. Their feet are always turned out, turned outwards, and then that has a cascading effect. Then their arches collapse. It produces valgus press inside of their knees. They have knee problems. Then they have hip joint problems. They get tight hip flexors because certain muscles are having to stay contracted that shouldn't have to. To stabilize that inappropriate movement pattern. Things like that.

[A]

And the question everybody wants to know, and that's only number two. So teaching gait. Can someone without a butt get a butt no matter what?

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Doesn't matter the age. Just ask him for a friend. Gait patterns. And basically though, this is also what you would imagine anyone who has a body should be doing. Yes, but we can start it young so that they don't have. Because you look at the kids, they're very well proportioned. In general, they don't seem.

[B]

Yeah, you see kids squat down. It's like perfect.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, but on this. But they also don't seem to have awkward movements. I, I never go. Not that I'm looking at kids butts, but I, you know, I mean, I see my kids butts all the time. They, they are very proportionate. And every. Seems like every child is built that way. And we almost train out of it, we detrain out of it, we change our movements.

[B]

So it's the symptom of our society through sitting is it's the four things that work together. So strong glutes and strong abs, they help pull the pelvis into a neutral position here. But then tight hip flexors and an over developed lower back will pull the pelvis into anterior tilt. So when we sit down all day and we don't use our glutes, we get tight hip flexors, weak glutes, weak abs, and it's just this perfect storm of an anterior tilted pelvis and it just cascades down everywhere else. So teaching a kid to maintain a neutral pelvis is very important. So teaching posture would be the third one. How to stand with proper posture, you know.

[A]

But now you're cheating because we said nasal breathing. Remember? We were talking about breathing.

[B]

Oh, just breathing.

[A]

No, no, I didn't know. I just wanted to know the top three drills that we were gonna do.

[B]

Oh, for breathing.

[A]

No, no, no. It doesn't have to be for breathing. But I don't know. So we have the brace, the gait and then the. What was the third one?

[B]

Oh, posture. Teaching proper posture.

[A]

Okay, tell me. Okay. And I could teach my 5 year old or do they already naturally have perfect posture?

[B]

It might vary a little bit from child to child, but a lot of it in like their confidence in social situations, if they want to make themselves small or they feel like they have to lift their chest will affect posture over time. And also like the nature of our schooling where they're sitting down. Yeah.

[A]

What do we do about that? Is there.

[B]

There's nothing I can do about it.

[A]

I better get to work.

[B]

Better schooling.

[A]

But it's not gonna happen. And you know, I do worry about this with our kids. Cause they're sitting for hours a day and then they get their 30 minute break. Is there something that we could do to teach our little kids? Hey, honey, when you are, you know, when you have a bathroom break, I want you to do this.

[B]

That's a great question. So isometrics. So teach your kid to put their hands on their chair and you know, lift their butt off the chair and hold it, you know, and that'll loosen up the neck, you know what I mean? So they don't get that forward head posture. So just hands on the bottom of the chair and hold your butt out of the chair and then try to hold your feet off the ground, you know what I mean? And it's not enough movement to where the Child will get in trouble in class, and then reciprocal inhibition. So if you isometric pressure in one direction, it's going to help relax that muscle. So, you know, sitting there and then putting pressure against their hands and kind of lifting up against their hands like this, and that'll work the abs and the hip flexors. And if you can track the hip flexors actively, they're gonna. They're gonna want to stay more relaxed. So it's the same like when people get on a flight and my athletes, I'm like, hey, while you're on that flight with your seatbelt on, I want you to do isometric hip thrust into that seatbelt. And that's just gonna help relax those hip flexors. It's like little tricks. And same with people that drive a long time. So, you know, chin tuck into your seat back.

[A]

Everyone listening is like, is my chin tucked? I know I'm doing it.

[B]

So isometrics are huge when you're forced to be sitting for a while. So if you can't move, contract even if the joint isn't moving. So you have to, like, dig your heels into the floor, back towards your butt, even if they're not moving. So you get an isometric hamstring contraction.

[A]

So these. I love these top three drills. You've got the brace, the gait, and then isometric movements. This is going to be really fun to teach my. I mean, it's going to be really fun because, again, I'm always looking for ways to set my kids up to be okay in this environment. And if this. One thing that I want people to get from this podcast in particular is that I'm not worried about the older adults. I'm not worried about midlife. You guys know what to do? Yeah, they know. You know, if you're listening to this podcast, you know, but our kids, we are going to indoctrinate them into a immobile, metabolically dysfunctional life.

[B]

The other thing is the reasons we exercise. If you look up the definition for physical fitness, it's gross. It's muscle strength, muscle endurance, cardiovascular endurance, and flexibility. That is their definition of physical fitness.

[A]

Okay?

[B]

Physical fitness is so much more than that. They leave out power and mobility. Mobility is not flexibility. Being stable in different body positions.

[A]

It's not. Mobility is not flexibility.

[B]

Mobility is not flexibility.

[A]

Tell me the difference.

[B]

So mobility is to be being able to control your body and your limbs through different ranges of motion. So being able to be stable. Yoga is not flexibility. Yoga is mobility. If somebody's relaxed and you're pulling on I don't know how true this is, but I've heard doctors say when a patient has passed out, no matter how tight their hamstrings are, you can take their leg and like this. And it's. So the. The mobility is there, the flexibility is there. It's just the neural toning that their body is sending them because they know that they should not be in that range of motion because they're not ready for it. So it's a neural tone. So mobility is very important. I don't care if you stretch, which mobility has a stretching aspect to it, but become very mobile. Learn how to be stable and support loads over all kinds of range of motion. And reduce base of support and standing on one leg and unilateral.

[A]

Reduce base, reduce mat, ground, contact, it.

[B]

Reduce kind of contact time.

[A]

You know Pat Davidson.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Pat was on. Love Pat, and he talks all about ground, grounding. And when you reduce the base of support, I mean, you definitely are pushing someone to become more physically capable.

[B]

So exercise like bench press, squats, and deadlift, people view those as the foundation. And this is where I differ. It's very controversial. Those are performance exercises. Those are measures of performance. The barbell, bench press, back squat, and deadlift are performance exercises. When a kid comes in, I might teach them to hinge or squat, maybe. Usually I put them on one leg, I reduce their base of support, and I start to work on their proprioception.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

I will do a single. I will teach a single leg RDL before. I'll teach a double leg rdl, because once they get that single leg down, the double leg is easy, you know, and if a kid is. Sometimes they come in and they have to do it for school. I'll teach it the bilateral one first. But usually I teach reduced base support. I slow everything down. I go over how to hold positions. You know, you want stability before mobility. You don't want to stack performance on top of dysfunction. Those are two tenets.

[A]

Okay. So stability before mobility. And when I think about mobility. And then you're gonna have to teach me about stability. When I think about mobility, I think I'll just make this up. It's a goblet squat, where you're going, you know, you're descending and you're very mobile. You can get to the bottom. And I think that that's kind of mobility.

[B]

Yes. And then flexibility. Somebody's landing in the back, and you can just push their legs into that position. That's flexibility.

[A]

Okay. You know, and then where does. You said stability first. Now Then where is stability and mobility kind of fall? And how are we training those aspects?

[B]

Sure. So before you try to get an extreme amount of mobility, make sure they are first stable in positions leading up to that and can hold it for a certain amount of time. And then have them hold stable positions and produce mobility off of that.

[A]

Give me an example of that.

[B]

So, like, a lunge position, and they hold the down lunge position, and then they have to do an overhead press and, like, reach back behind their head from that stable position. Or, you know, they're holding a lunge position or an RDL position, and then they have to, like, open their chest up to the wall. So hold stability before mobility. Like, if they can't control the range of motion, they should not be doing the range of motion.

[A]

And is this why we see adults get injured frequently?

[B]

Yeah. So here's the thing with adults. They know to warm up inherently, but. And they should know. I think I know. So this is one of my core tenants, is the warmup is lightweight, high reps, fast speed.

[A]

Right, right, right. So this is the tendons. We've got lots of. By the way, Judd, this is amazing. We have lots of tendons here. I gotta make these protocols easy. What are we doing for a warmup? And no, I didn't realize that everybody had to warm up.

[B]

So this is. Children really don't need to warm up.

[A]

Yeah, I noticed. Maybe that's why we're injured all the time.

[B]

I have them warm up just to practice their movement patterns, but they can go out and sprint off the couch and be totally fine.

[A]

Why is that?

[B]

Because they're still in their natural state. They're still in the state we should be in.

[A]

You think that we could maintain that? Childlike, really?

[B]

Kelly Starlett thinks so. Supple leopard. That's tenet is if you work on tissue quality and health and control your natural tone, then you should be able to jump off the couch and sprint down the street and not hurt yourself. I'm not there.

[A]

Tell me about this warmup. What do we have to do?

[B]

So we all inherently know that force is what makes us and breaks us. What I mean by that is to generate muscle strength and size, we need to have some kind of force. But force is always. Is also the thing that hurts us. Now, what goes into force? Speed and acceleration, or load and acceleration, rather mass times acceleration. Right. So we know that when we warm up, we need to reduce the mass, which in our case is just the load. Like, we don't start squatting 500 pounds right. But what they will do is they'll take the barbell and they'll squat to a full range of motion very fast for high reps with the barbell. So they are forgetting part of that equation.

[A]

Who is they?

[B]

Adults, adult lifters, runners. You know, like, they'll. So they don't control the acceleration piece of force, and the acceleration is the one that's really the one that determines injury. So when they go through, they'll do very fast, light reps. It's like, no, maybe a moderate load at a very slow speed, because then you're controlling the other half of that equation, which is acceleration.

[A]

I see. It's so fascinating. And this is the tenets of the warmup. Everybody should be warming up. And what I just want to reiterate here is that we are looking at low. So we're looking at. For the first tenant of the warmup. For Judds, tenants of the warmup. Slow, slow and moderate weight.

[B]

Slow, moderate weight and play with range of motion. And slow can be so slow that it ceases movement altogether and literally becomes an isometric hold. So people have joint pain. I say, go to where it hurts, that joint angle, and hold it until it stops hurting, you know, and then increase it. And if it doesn't stop hurting, you know, not to progress past that joint angle. But. So, like, my knee hurts. I'm like, okay, your knee hurts. Now start to lunge very slowly. Where does it start to hurt? And they'll tell me. I'm like, well, hold that position for 30 seconds and tell me if it's still hurting. Sometimes they say yes, and then I'll have them back off. Sometimes they say, no, and then I say, okay, now go one inch deeper. Now does it hurt? And they'll say, yes. I'm like, well, hold that. And if they do that for two minutes, their muscles will be fried, but they'll get a full range of motion with no pain. Just like that.

[A]

Wow. And is that just. Is that, you know, due to disinhibition.

[B]

Or a little bit of. Like, their fibers and their tendons probably aren't fluid and healthy. So when they go to that, it takes a little bit of time to relax everything and not get those pain signals. But that is your brain also telling you you're ready to go in a bigger range of motion or handle a bigger load.

[A]

So slow. So it's really slow, controlled.

[B]

Yeah. So, like, my mass method thing is like, you know, slow flow, go, grow, show.

[A]

All right, tell me about that. Sounds like something else, but it's same thing.

[B]

It's just the first part. And I don't call it warming up either. I call it movement prep.

[A]

So, you know, and this was one of the reasons I was also very excited to have you on. You are the founder of something called the Mass Method. That's M A S and again, this is a performance based workout program dedicated to improving movement, athleticism, strength and speed. Now set the stage for our Mass method.

[B]

So it's just a way to simplify very technical sounding things that elite athletes have had access to for a long time. And the very good coaches know that isometrics and very slow movement is a great way to quickly prep an athlete and to increase their proprioception and their body awareness, activate their central nervous system. So the slow is just even if you can move through that range of motion, you're going to do it very slow and under control and you're going to practice the pattern very slowly and then you're going to go into the flow and it's really just sequencing. So there's human sequence patterns that are common across sports and activities from the ground up. So how your leg is internally rotating, how your hips are moving first, how your scapula starts from retracted to protracted, how your arm starts from externally rotated, internally rotating. So it's just a flow from the ground up, the sequence of the movement.

[A]

And is that the same for any movement? So for example, it has nothing to do with limb length or I don't know, retroverted pelvis or any of those other things.

[B]

The degree to which you do it might vary based on your natural anatomy, but the basic tenants hold fairly true across a surprising breadth of activities. Even sprinting and squatting. When you extend the hip, hip, the femur should internally rotate as you extend your hip in a squat. A lot of people don't know that, like very good squatters know that. So you're going to start as you're going to go down, you're going to externally rotate your femurs and external rotation as you come up, you're going to experience internal rotation of the femur. That is not valgus collapse. Those are two different things. So sprinters too, when they strike the ground, their, their femur and their hip is going to internally rotate as their foot pushes through the ground and they're going to toe off from an internally rotated position. So if you see people sprinting and when they toe off behind them, their toe was flailed out to the side, that is a huge biomechanical error that needs to be addressed immediately. So that's one of the things we do. I'll film an athlete run from behind. If they toe off and their toes pointed out the side, I know that's a thing I need to address. So. And then. But specifically across all throwing hitting patterns, it's a very similar. Whether you're hitting a golf ball, throwing a football, throwing a punch, it's a very similar pattern across many different disciplines.

[A]

And that is important to know for a tenant of a warmup or it's just important to know. It's just the second kind of component to. As we're thinking about structuring a movement method. Is that where kind of that comes in or.

[B]

Yeah, in my opinion it's a great way to prep an athlete very quickly to exercise. So both mentally, neurologically and physically. Is a flow pattern, a sequence pattern, Ground based sequence pattern.

[A]

And can you with that, can you give me an example? Would that just be a sprint or what would. What would that be?

[B]

It'd be. So you start out slow, slower. So from the slow you start with slower flow. I'm really flat. And then it's more of a unilateral ground based where you're pulling on something and you're rotating your limbs in and then you're disassociating your lower and upper body so your hips will move first and then you'll kind of leave your torso and then you'll bring everything together. And as you do that and they're called my flows. I have like a flow series.

[A]

Okay, you do have a flow series. We all want to know what this is.

[B]

There's an infinite amount, but I have 13 that are kind of standard to help people and they're just included in every workout out in my app. But I just standard flows for people so they don't have to do this.

[A]

Kind of like a yoga esque movement or lots of rotation.

[B]

It's more of a rotational. When you look at it, it's going to look like a rotational thing. But like, you know, I'll see trainers feels really good and they have them doing this and that is not a flow. That is not a natural thing. But when you look at somebody throw a baseball, their whole body doesn't move together, right? They'll, they'll point their back leg, even a punch, they'll point their back knee drive off the inside edge of the plant leg. Their hip bone will point to the target first. They'll create tension and torque here and then they'll release that into the target and finish here. With an internal rotation.

[A]

Internal rotation.

[B]

And it's common across so many different sports and activities. And a lot of people, they just don't know how to do that anymore. They forgot from the time they were a child. And just wiring that back in and it's a really fast way to prep the body. And it's like great for the core and the abs and the hips.

[A]

I love it. We're gonna. Matt, we're trying this. We are trying this tomorrow. What's next? What is the next.

[B]

So go, which is just more like performance based exercise. So it starts out, it's almost always unilateral in one form or another. A lot of times it's body weight. So like a single arm ring, push up a single arm.

[A]

Wait, I have to think about this. It's very complicated because when I'm thinking about Go, I'm thinking about exactly what you said. Squat, bench, deadlift.

[B]

So to me, that's the grow. And what I mean by grow is size and strength.

[A]

Okay. What you're talking about is again, I think that there's these tenets of stability. And so you are talking about, you know, exercise choice as we develop in a unilateral. Because unilateral strength is probably. Unilateral strength would ultimately equal bilateral strength, right?

[B]

Yes, unilateral increase bilateral. But most of the activities you do in day to day life are unilateral. In a version of unilateral, which is cross pattern, which is push and pull at the same time. Or this side is extending and then this upper side is extending. So extended here, extended here, which would mean flexed here, flexed here. So it's a cross pattern either side to side. One side is pushing, one side is pulling or up to down in a diagonal, which is that oblique sling you hear people talking about. All of that is cross pattern, which is a version of unilateral. Okay, so that is under the go category. There are athletic movements that transfer have a high transferability to day to day life.

[A]

Like what?

[B]

So things like push up variations to start with and I will flow through the go as well. This is great.

[A]

Push up variation, meaning wide grip or.

[B]

Wide angle moving, like, you know, single arm bench press with a dumbbell, single arm overhead snatch, single leg box jumps, hopping, bounding, things like that. That's more to go.

[A]

You want people to learn or gain ability to do those things again.

[B]

Yes. So people think that they can no longer do plyometrics. Because they think of plyometrics. They think of like box jumps and.

[A]

Yeah, it's terrifying.

[B]

So, but plyometrics can be like a band assisted hop. You know, where you put a band that kind of helps you out and you just hop on the ground and that increases your bounce. And you can do that with single leg activities too, or just like skipping side to side. Anything where you're bouncing is technically a plyometric. So plyometrics can be for anybody. You just scale it up or scale.

[A]

It down and you think that that's a necessary component, a crucial component, and.

[B]

It'S not included in physical fitness.

[A]

It's not? No, it's not in my training program, Carlos.

[B]

If you just do the things they list, muscular endurance, muscle strength, cardiovascular flexibility, you're a generally healthy adult. But then you're not very nimble or agile. And then what happens is since you're not very nimble, one misstep, acute injury, and then you're laid up for six months. And who knows what's going to happen over that six months? You know what I mean?

[A]

I know exactly what you mean. The components that are missing are because, you know, this is, you know, like a first language to you. You got this. But for the rest of us, I'm actually, this is very eye opening for me personally because, and I know for many of the listeners or viewers is that we think about muscular health as muscular endurance, strength, but we're not thinking about this idea of being nimble and agile.

[B]

So sequencing, proper pattern and sequencing is crucially important. Having a bounce, which means your tendons can store and release energy, power, being able to move with speed, run up a flight of stairs, jump up off a couch and grab something. Everyday power in our lives, lives catch something that falls down, the ability to absorb load. There's so many things about athleticism that are just not metabolic conditioning. So that's far beyond cardiovascular health. It includes that, but it's also, you know, how strong are your mitochondria? How big are your mitochondria? Like, you know, things like that, how fast can you practice, can you process, you know, lactate, things like that. Like how can you use lactate, what's your lactate threshold, what's your VO2 max? That goes beyond cardiovascular health.

[A]

Yes. And I think that we, you know, it was interesting to hear your reaction to this plyometric, to this bounce is crucial.

[B]

It's. Yeah, it's the most neglected maybe.

[A]

I mean, it's. Again, I interview experts all the time and I had not thought about this plyometric and ways to do it. So my dad in his mid-70s, he should be doing some kind of movement beyond his Tai Chi and lifting weights. We need to begin to think about this plyometric component, this go component. And do you think about this as injury prevention or do you think about this as how do we increase our muscle span? How are you thinking about injury prevention.

[B]

And also like health span.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You know, because first of all, the most important thing is muscular strength and size. But people already do that to some extent.

[A]

Yeah. And I agree with you. I think muscular strength and size.

[B]

So I don't want to get the impression, I think this is more important than strength training. Strength training is crucial.

[A]

Right. I mean, you have to be doing that. It's like brushing your teeth.

[B]

Yes, exactly. The biggest neglected piece is balance in plyometrics.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Being able to absorb and produce force quickly.

[A]

And how often does someone need to change? So let's say someone's traveling and they can't get to the gym. Let's just say you can always get to the gym. But let's say, I don't know, the flight was delayed and you just can't get there. These are things you could probably do in the airport and something that you could do every day. Right. To be, no matter what. And if you do these things with this slow warmup, this flow, this go, are you able to maintain performance and at some point do we become less needing to do this like warm up situation?

[B]

Yes, potentially. But also the warmup, the stability practice and the flows have value as far as training value, not just, just preparatory. So practicing the sequencing and the pattern is going to keep your core healthy and your hips healthy, mobile. So it's more than just a movement preparation. The bouncing, things like that, very low volume, low frequency can have a huge impact. So if you, you know, it's something like you get a ledge that's six inches high and you just time yourself and see how fast you can jump up and down off that six inch ledge 20 times. And you do that three times a week and it's literally a minute and a half of training. It will drastically improve your foot health, your ankle health, your knee health, your hip health.

[A]

Are we training barefoot?

[B]

That would be ideal.

[A]

But I mean, okay, what are some other really overlooked kind of elements to adult training?

[B]

Some of it's the same is the breathing and being able to control our central nervous system and aid in our recovery. So bring down our cortisol levels. So we both know how powerful cortisol is and how it can be a good thing if it's Healthy. But if we can't control our stress levels and our cortisol levels, it's going to hinder our sleep. It's going to help. So learning techniques that we can do like meditation. It sounds foo foo. It's crucially important.

[A]

I know I'm getting back into it. It's tough for me. It's probably tough for a lot of us.

[B]

Learning to tone your nervous system to activate your parasympathetic system is incredibly important for adults. And I know that doesn't sound like training, but it should be considered part of our training regimen.

[A]

Yeah. I also really appreciate this conversation because we're now not just talking about metabolic health, we're actually talking about youthful athleticism and aging athleticism. And that is definitely overlooked. You know, I'm guilty of this and really thinking about other additional things that if you are doing the basics, it.

[B]

Doesn'T take very much either.

[A]

It doesn't and we are not. If you were to give me an example of what does this addition look like? You gave me the example of someone should be training three to four days a week for strength and hypertrophy. That's a no brainer. It's like brushing your teeth. You layer on the warmup, which is amazing, which I'm not doing. And then the flow patterns, which we're going to be able to see what you're doing on that. Go to your Instagram and we'll link some of those. And then the go pattern that is in addition to a baseline strength training. Is that right? Is that how am I thinking about this?

[B]

In a way, yes. But there's carryover. Okay, so the go. The go stuff does have benefits to your strength. Like doing a single arm push up will help increase your core strength, your chest strength. And it is a considered a go pattern. Doing some form, if you're able to of broad jumping will increase your muscular strength in your lower body.

[A]

Could anyone try that? If I was, you know, could someone just try. Anyone listening to this, Would that be. Would be a safe exercise to try broad jump? Yeah. No, I was like, I would, I have lots of ideas.

[B]

I would start by jumping up a couple steps with both feet and practice the landing because the impact won't be as hard because you're jumping up so the landing's not. And then practice easy low box jumps where you're. You're not doing it to exhaustion. It's not trying to get your heart rate up. You're practicing that, that movement pattern. And then like an easy squat jump where you Just jump up and you practice the landing. Like start with that. Broad jumping is a very athletic and demanding thing to do.

[A]

Okay, so you gave examples of that. And then the other work kind of at the third thing. Is it really important that it's a unilateral push up? So you have unilateral push up, single leg rdl. What are some of the other exercises that just, you know, a handful. If people are thinking, okay, well you know, what should I be thinking about?

[B]

So it does not have to be unilateral. I prefer unilateral because it has such a benefit to core and hip health. And that's something that adults struggle with. Is, you know, the, the anti rotation abilities that's going to help you. The anti extension, you know, abilities. The, the unilateral is going to carry in. It'll improve your ql strength and your oblique strength and your oblique sling. So no, it does not have to be. If it's ground based and you vary the velocity of the movements, add some power element to it or it has a total body nature. Like a push up is a total body activity. But don't go in there and just try to rep out as many push ups as you can. That's not the point of this. It's to get the perfect push up. So I have this thing I call the 1 minute push up where they start up and they take 30 seconds to go down.

[A]

Sounds like torture.

[B]

And then they hold it for 10 seconds at the bottom and they come up for 20 seconds. They just do one of those every morning. And you'll be amazed by how much better your back feels with one minute every morning, a one pushup every morning.

[A]

I love that, everyone listening. You guys should try that. I'm going to try it.

[B]

One perfect push up a day.

[A]

One perfect push up a day.

[B]

And you would be astounded by how difficult that is because you don't get any momentum on the way up. So I first got it several years ago. I read about what Russian martial artists would do and it was a 10 minute push up. They would literally five minutes down and breathing so they can learn to control their body when they're breathing hard. And five minutes on the way up. And I struggle to do more than a two minute push up. So I tailored it back to a one minute push up because most people can do that. And it's the perfect push up. So it's ribs in abs, tight, glutes squeezed, chest pointed towards the ground, spine neutral, not like head up. Just trying to rep out because everybody just wants to know how many push ups you can do. Like, well, how good is your pushup? So, like, for kids, when they come in, I'll have them do a push up. I think it's criminal that we have our kids bench press before they get good at push ups.

[A]

Do we?

[B]

Oh, absolutely. It's crazy. In middle school, they start benching with a barbell, which is insane to me.

[A]

Because they don't have the motor control or because they don't have the stability to do it.

[B]

Barbell is a perform barbell bench press. Great. Actually, it's a performance. It's a highly technical lift. It is. We just don't realize how technical it is to do appropriately. It's open chained, so it's. They're having to control it.

[A]

And what does that mean, open chain for them?

[B]

Well, open chain is like the end of what you're moving is not stabilized. You know, which open chain isn't bad.

[A]

But what would be a closed chain.

[B]

A push up, because your hand is on the ground, you know, so. And there's no core involvement in a bench press. Like high level bench press. Competitors will disagree with me, but most people just lay on their back and start pushing. Whereas a push up, the entire chain has to work together to produce force. So what I'll have them do is I'll come in, I'll have them start on the ground and put their hands on the ground and slowly start to produce force until everything starts to move slowly. And I'll cue them on the way up, you know, ribs in chest down, head in neutral, glutes squeezed. Dig your toes into the ground. I'll have them, like, start to, you know, internally rotate their. On the way up, internally rotate their humerus. Like all the little subtleties that make for the perfect push up. And I'll get that kid to do one perfect push up, you know, and then you worry about getting the 50 perfect push ups. Until a kid can do 50 slow perfect push ups, they should not be on a bench press.

[A]

That and was the. Would the same be for an adult?

[B]

Absolutely. There's no reason for most bench press. Most adults to bench press. There's. And I love the bench press. It's just a performance exercise.

[A]

And intel, it's universal bench day on Monday.

[B]

It's insane. And the same dude, if I cued him to a perfect push up, not some of these garbage push ups, a perfect push up, they probably won't be able to get 10 pushups.

[A]

And then if someone is saying, okay, Judd, well, Pushups are exciting, but no rep. But am I going to actually be able to put on mass? So if someone is thinking, okay, I want to use the bench press to build my chest a push up, because I suppose it would be difficult to do this. Progressive overload would be. You wouldn't be able to put on the same mass. Right.

[B]

That's a common myth. So I always say you don't advance past the push up, you just advance the pushup. So there's a lot of ways to advance a pushup as simple as putting a band around your back. So it's a band resisted pushup to doing a one arm pushup. And then you can progress the one arm push up to where you're holding a weight plate. As you do a one arm push up, you can literally make the push up so hard, there's not a single person in the world that can do it, you know, to where Bruce Lee was doing it off two fingers, you know, I mean, like, you can make the push up extraordinarily hard. Like, I'm not plugging my program, but in my program I value.

[A]

Well, you're here because we want to learn about your program. Program.

[B]

So in my program, I value push ups so much. There are literally 30 variations of push ups in my program. And I'm not saying you don't bench press, but what you can do is you can do far less bench press and add in push ups and get the same benefit.

[A]

Far less bench press and probably less injury.

[B]

Oh, for sure. So first of all, bench press is such a difficult and complicated exercise. Bicep tears are a risk. Pec tears are a risk. Elbow and wrist injuries are a risk.

[A]

The barbell tendonitis, definitely.

[B]

It's not a natural. The barbell is not a natural implement. That's also what makes it great, though, because we can load it up with a lot of weight, but it's not a natural thing. So what we can do is we can build a robust system with far less volume of the lifts. So when you think. Think about a guy on chest day. First of all, it's insane that we have a chest day.

[A]

We have a day fronting string, tank tops, fake tan.

[B]

We have a day dedicated to mainly our pecs and a little bit of delta and tricep. An entire day dedicated to that, which is insane when you look at the way we move in general, that we are taking an entire day and dedicating it to something that has very little impact on our overall athleticism. Now, if you're a construction worker, somebody working outside and you're doing all that anyway and you go in and you have a chest day, more power to you. But if you're walking like a duck and you have hip pain and back pain and you're taking one day out of your training microcycle to do chest, what are you doing? No wonder you don't have time to do this stuff. I'm sorry if I get upset by this but it's asinine. It's like man, why are you taking a day and doing chest?

[A]

You have so many other things you need to be working on and you.

[B]

Can make your chest look great. Just incorporate it with everything else.

[A]

I am so happy to hear that you guys have been getting your blood work done. Most likely because arguably we know that nothing is more important than staying on top of your health responsibilities. Right now there is more talk than ever on hormones and you know where you are at and the only way to do that is to get your blood work. And I'm so grateful to our sponsor InsideTracker whose service I use myself to test my own hormones. They offer 10% off inside tracker subscription and any plan just head over to insidetracker.com drlion let's face it, to live your healthiest longest life possible, you have to get your blood work done. Most people put that off but that is not a champion mindset and you are here to get it done. And by the way, let's say you've got an oura ring or an apple watch and we all know you've got DNA. InsideTracker looks at all that and gives you meaningful recommendations. Things like food supplements, workouts, lifestyle choices and even ways to optimize sleep and stress. Yes, sign me up. Whatever it takes, whatever it is that you want, you are going to do it better with your blood work and knowing what is going on. Go to insidetracker.com doctorlion for 10 off all their stuff I recommend and take Puri O3 Ultra Pure Fish oil. Why? I did my training in nutritional sciences with a heavy focus on muscle health. There is an abundance of evidence supporting the use of omega 3 fish oil in overall health, muscle, brain, mood, the list goes on. Now I won't take just any Omega 3 supplement. I only want the best quality fish oil. That's why I've been using Puri. This is the ultimate in high quality and high class brands. Peori's O3 is third party tested. I trust it to be free of heavy metals and other impurities. Every batch, which is Amazing of Peori O3 Ultra Pure Fish oil and all of their supplements are tested against more than 200 contaminants with all results published online. Puri Omega 3 fish oil offers a high dose of 2000mg of long chain Omega 3 fatty acids EPA, DHA in natural triglyceride form. Now, I worked out a deal. In exchange for sponsorship, they will offer my listeners 20% off the entire store. That even applies to already discounted subscriptions. That means you'll get almost a third off the price. But to get this offer, go to Piori. That's P u o r I.com a DrLion or you can use my promo code DrLion. Don't wait. You'll love it. What's another myth? I mean, I think this is a really eye opening conversation for people. What's another myth or something that people really don't think about? And when I say myth, I always again, I always thought about squat, bench press, deadlift. And now I'm learning that I could probably get stronger, have better core, feel better if I can just do variations of, of bench press. Muscles don't I mean push up.

[B]

Well, this could. Any exercise muscles do not know load. They know tension. So they do not know how much weight is on the bar or how big the dumbbell is. They only know the tension they are experiencing. And there's a lot of different ways that we can go and get a muscle to experience tension, namely lever length. So if you can make the lever long enough, you can, you can create an enormous amount of tension in a muscle that and cause it to grow. So you can build your legs with no external load whatsoever just by manipulating speed and lever length. You know, single leg pistol squats. Most people can't do them. Dudes can squat 400 pounds. Can't do a pistol squat. You can build your quad and leg size by just doing bodyweight pistol squats.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So that's another one is like do you think we need load to build muscles? No, we don't. We need tension. And load is only one tool in that it is a, is a valuable tool, but it's a tool. So think about how insane this is. We spend most of our day sitting down and then we go to the gym. I'm speaking mainly to dudes here. And then we lay down to do our chest.

[A]

Wait, what are the ladies doing? They're doing the same thing.

[B]

Ladies don't work their upper bodies enough. They will spend an hour and a half on glutes and then they have rounded shoulder blades. I Don't want to pick on ladies, but work your upper bodies more. It's important, too. And they're petrified of getting big muscles, so they don't lift heavy enough.

[A]

Not anyone listening to this podcast. Nobody listening to this podcast is afraid of getting bulky. Fair, right? Fair.

[B]

I would hope so. That fills me in.

[A]

No, we are still. No, that is a myth that is deeply dispelled here.

[B]

Yes, here it is.

[A]

We're getting this out to the world.

[B]

So they literally think that if they lift, you know, more than 80 of the one rep max, they're gonna look like a bodybuilder, you know? And it's like, this is not gonna happen.

[A]

Still trying.

[B]

And the dudes think that if they do cardio, they're gonna lose all their muscle. You know what I mean? If they break a sweat, all their muscles are gonna go away immediately. Immediately. I can't do cardio. I want to keep my gains. I'm like, you're insane. Anyway, so. So they go and they do upper body. Think about this. And they lay down. They lay down and they do flat bench press, the universal chest. They lay down and they do incline bench press. They lay down and they do their flies, and then they go on a machine and they do their dips. They either lay down or sit down for an entire workout. When they just got done sitting down all day. And then they go and they do their legs. And for the dudes to squat, more power to you. That's good. A lot of times it's very common for me to see a dude go through an entire leg day and never stand up to do his legs.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

He sits down and he does his leg press. He sits down and he does his leg extensions. He either sits down or lays down to do his leg curls. And then he'll go over and like, sit down and do, like, adduction or something. You just did an entire leg day. You didn't stand up.

[A]

But what is that? Just, you know, to be on the flip side of that.

[B]

So everything starts with the ground. So firstly, develop kinetic chains. So ground based. Be standing up for as much of the stuff as you can.

[A]

And is that so that you can become more athletic or move better or. It's just the way that the body was designed to get into that.

[B]

All of the above.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And also the core, you know, it's a term we all use, but it is very important. Do things that force you to incorporate your core and have your core involved in everything. Because in the real world, it doesn't matter. How much you can push like this. If your core can't handle it, you're not going to be able to do it. And in the real world you don't get the advantage of laying on your back and pushing on a weight very often you're standing up, you're pushing, so your core's involved. You're driving through the ground. So you have to produce force through the ground. A lot of times it's a cross pattern or contralateral. So you're pulling while you're pushing. And we just don't. We don't understand how it doesn't transfer the real world. And it doesn't. I see gymbros all the time and none of it transfers to the real world because they don't know how to activate their core. They don't know how to drive through the ground. They have these big pecs and it's useless.

[A]

Big pecs, no calves. Not saying anyone in particular, but do you think that there are particular movements that everyone should be able to do? Well, so we know that there is the push, push up. What are some other movements that.

[B]

Great question.

[A]

We have to do? Well, that will translate in a meaningful way.

[B]

So bodyweight walking lunge is something that seems simple and most adults can't do it. They cannot do a proper body weight walking lunge.

[A]

Does it have to. Does your knee. Let's see. Does your knee have to extend forward? So we are not talking about up and down. I mean, is your knee. Should it is a lunge lunge?

[B]

Yes. You have to be able to step forward and. And catch yourself on the ground with proper pattern, absorb the force. Letting your knee come forward, letting your hip flexor open, letting your back knee drop fully to the ground, loading that glute and knee appropriately, keeping the knee stacked over the foot so there's no valgus collapse and then pulling yourself up and forward out of that motion. It's just a very crucial universal thing that very few people could do. It's. It's astounding.

[A]

What else? Or is that the big one?

[B]

That's like glute activation. Like use your glutes like a lot of dudes that can squat a lot of weight and other stuff. And then I have them do a bridge or lay on their stomach and try to activate their glute. When they're raising their knee, they can't activate their glute. Like everything is taking up the hamstring and lower back. So learning how to use your glutes is another one like glute bridging. On a regular basis.

[A]

Yes. I did something right. And we do that because as you're talking, I've just had major injuries. I really injured myself sprinting and I abolished my hamstring. My CNS was blasted. I was training for a 50 hour event and it was on a long stride, you know, and I just popped that sucker.

[B]

It happens.

[A]

It does happen on that long stride. And now I had to really go back and everything I do is, you know, we work on walking lunges, we work on rotations, we work on glute bridges till the cows come home. I mean, it's just like hip thrust forever.

[B]

Copenhagen planks, reverse planks and single leg reverse planks. Extremely important.

[A]

Yeah, Keep those the most. I hate those the most. Anything else? Lunging and push up.

[B]

You know, I would say different forms of pull ups or being able to hang from your weight. Like, can you just, can you even hang with your body weight? Can you just hang for a minute and that's safe?

[A]

Anyone could do that.

[B]

Yeah, no, not. I mean, if you have shoulder injuries or neck injuries or spine injuries, bad spine injuries, even the decompression, but you can do adjusted hangs to where your feet are on the ground and you just squat down and the squatting motion will have a little bit of tension and you can build into a hang. But if you're generally healthy, you should see how long you can hang.

[A]

And is that for grip strength or is that for some other indication?

[B]

Well, it's going to be grip strength, but it's going to go down the chain and it's going to work on your serratus strength and your scapular strength and it's going to see if your spine can, can support the hyperextension. You know, if you're hanging is if, I mean, do you have the shoulder mobility? It's going to work in your shoulder mobility because if you don't have it when you're hanging, your chest will be pointed towards the ceiling.

[A]

And when you say mobility again, is that in. That's not just a hang. Is that in an active motion?

[B]

Well, so a hang would be not necessarily an active motion, but you're having to be in that range of motion under strain. So the flexibility part of that would be if you're laying on the ground and somebody just takes your arm and pushes it into extension. Right. The mobility is you're hanging and your body knows it's under tension. Will it let that joint go through that range of motion? That's a great question. That's a fundamental difference. So you don't have to be moving, but it has to be under 10. Tension.

[A]

Has to be under tension. And do you have to engage that, the scapula, as opposed to just letting it completely?

[B]

Well, you can do scat pull ups. Those are great. Where you, like, let it and then you just, you know, depress your scapula. I mean, that's a great. Scat pull ups are great and. But you don't have to, you know, I probably would incorporate that.

[A]

Anything else? Am I missing anything else? I mean, everyone's mind is blown right now. I know. There's so many.

[B]

There's so many.

[A]

But again, we just. We're just picking for the people that are hearing this stuff for the first time, because they are hearing, at least on my pattern podcast, for the first time, much of these very tactical movements that are very specific in these conceptual, these concepts.

[B]

I just feel like I threw a lot at people and I don't want to overwhelm them. They're like, there's no way I can do all of this. And I just want to reassure people that you can just pick a couple simple things from each category and do them for a very limited amount of time, two or three times a week. You don't need to dedicate a lot of time to any of this.

[A]

Five minutes a day.

[B]

Yeah. Maybe even less. Yes, absolutely.

[A]

Well, the one minute push up is one minute a day.

[B]

Yeah. And so the thing is, you have to analyze diminishing returns. So are you doing something where your volume of that one thing is so much that you're no longer getting out of it the time that you're putting into it? So a dude goes in on a one day, on a chest day. I'm not picking on dudes and chests. I, like, do chess days, too.

[A]

Oh, come on. Look at this guy. He's like 260 lbs. Pounds. He's doing chest day. But you don't need 30 sets on chest day.

[B]

Like, the last 20 sets of that chest workout probably added 5% to your gains or whatever you're trying to go for. It's just a waste of time. And I know the pump feels good. Trust me, we all like it. But that's why I have the show in at the end of the workouts. That's your pump period. 10 minutes. Get a pump. Go ahead. Like, pumps are good, but, I mean, you don't need to do 50 sets for strength. Like, literally. Studies show as few as five sets above 90% of your one rep max can result per week can result in Straight gains.

[A]

Right now that's not optimal. Five sets, right, might not be optimal, but five sets, around 90% your one.

[B]

Rep max, you can gain strength for a long time. Optimal is more like 15 sets, but that's still only 15 sets per pattern. So 15, I'm sorry, not sets.

[A]

15 reps, reps.

[B]

So you can do 15 reps of squats a week in, gain strength optimally.

[A]

And that's crazy. That's one squat day reps.

[B]

Exactly. And I would divide that into two and do two sets of three twice a week. Peak of a variation of a squat. You know, the west side barbell thing. Look up Prelopin's chart. He does great on the volume and load. It's very accurate.

[A]

You know, what is it called?

[B]

Prelapin's chart. It goes over volume as compared to load percentage.

[A]

Is there something that someone has to do after their workout? Is there a cool down? Is there some kind of retrain your nervous system so you are prepped for the next thing?

[B]

Yeah, it's nervous system. It's not physical cooldown. It's get your breathing back. Back immediately. Get your breathing back. So box breathing, diaphragmatic breathing. There's a lot of different techniques, but get your parasympathetic system going as soon as you can. Everybody wants to get that protein shake in right away, and that's great. But that can wait a little bit. Get your breathing back, start to recover immediately.

[A]

What if someone is listening to this and going, you know what? I didn't work hard enough to get my nervous system amped up. Right. Would someone know? I mean, I think, you know, let's say someone is training, but they're really not. Let me ask it a different way. Should someone train to the capacity where it is essential that they have to recalibrate their nervous system, and if they are not, then whatever it is that they are doing might not be as effective as we need it to be.

[B]

No, because you should not be there every. I mean, you should always work on your breathing whenever you're not having to perform somewhere when it's just a relaxed state. You should always be training your breathing to try to be as parasympathetic as you can. Right. And I can talk about this really quickly, but there's. I do undulating neural loading, which is there are certain days where the nerve load on the nervous system will peak, but then I purposely taper it back down so I am not loading my central nervous system very much every single day. And you should not actually. And you can Work very hard and not load your central nervous system. You can go on a very hard five mile run that is not as taxing on your nervous system as two.

[A]

One rep deadlifts or even a max out sprint interval on the air. Done.

[B]

Seriously, like you can train your metabolic system very hard and be very tired and not tax your metabolic system. That is a core principle of mass method. So you can figure out a way to work very hard every day, but you shouldn't. But you should have recovery days and mobility days and relaxing days. But you need to vary the strain on your nervous system throughout the week.

[A]

And that this is a overarching theme.

[B]

That is what everything is built on in mass method. Like I pay attention to body part splits and modalities of training. Everything is the first thing I question is on my microcycle, which for most people is a week, it's when in this microcycle, on this day in my microcycle, what am I supposed to be doing? Is it a high CNS day, a moderate or a low?

[A]

Why am I now just hearing about these things? And my guess is that you had an experience or a collection of experiences where you were hitting a wall or you got injured yourself. There is always some reason why someone moves towards a more creative process.

[B]

The athletes I was working with, I had to figure out a way to make them better when they were extremely fatigued with their cns. So I had to figure out what was really taxing them and what wasn't. And that caused me to do a lot more research in that field over the years. And then myself training and beating myself into a wall where I wanted to work out every day. But it just wasn't having the effect anymore. And I was getting injuries because I wasn't paying attention to my recovery, especially CNS recovery. And the problem is a lot of people, they either hammer their CNS every day to where there's a feedback loop where your body will just prevent you from doing that survival mechanism, or they work out hard every day but they never fully tax their cns. It's always a metcon workout or what's your wad where they're breathing hard, but they never do that one rep max effort sprint. They never do that one rep max effort deadlift. So they're either missing it, they're either in too much of it or they're missing it. You know, their CNS is always being taxed a little. It's never being fully utilized basically.

[A]

Really, you know, we think about this kind of in entrepreneurship and you know, the most Successful entrepreneurs or the most successful operators will be able to turn it on to the most extreme. Full force hyper focus. But it's very intentional. They also turn it off like that.

[B]

So that goes into what I'll talk about, about neural toning. We have to learn how to self tone when it comes to neural toning. Bring yourself up and bring yourself down using thought patterns and breathing techniques. So if you need to bring yourself up, purposely hyperventilate a little bit. That'll tell you some. Take shallow breaths. Force Exhales. Build your CO2.

[A]

Breathe upper chest, upper chest.

[B]

Because that tells you. That gets you on.

[A]

Don't try this while driving, guys. Do not try this.

[B]

Do something that requires accuracy and focus. That'll get you turned on. You'll dilate your pupils.

[A]

Give me an example.

[B]

So bounce the tennis ball off a wall. Make yourself catch it. You know, use a yo, yo.

[A]

Maybe we don't do push ups. Now we got to do something else. So you don't know this and we didn't do this with you, but we do push ups before every podcast. Now we're going to do one arm and then bounce a ball. And this is increasing focus and neural tone. It's basically what you're saying is getting yourself in the zone.

[B]

Yeah. It gets you more to the. To the sympathetic system.

[A]

The sympathetic sound.

[B]

So another thing, another T test, this finger tap test to test your cns. How many times can you tap your finger in a minute? Simple test. Just time it. Pretty predictable.

[A]

What do you do?

[B]

Grip strength. Because I have a grip on.

[A]

But what do you do to get in that locked and lifted zone?

[B]

So here's another thing. It's like caffeine, right? We know that caffeine has a feedback loop on your sympathetic system. So if you drink caffeine too much, you're gonna like, what is it? Your adrenal glands are gonna suffer?

[A]

I don't know. Do we have caffeine IVs upstairs? I have no idea what you're talking about.

[B]

So it just loses effectiveness. So you need a higher and higher dose. Right. So it's not just caffeine though. So it's people are just hyper caffeinated all the time. Caffeine's a great tool to use. We just abuse it. And intense music. So auditory responses. Okay. So we listen to this intense music throughout the whole workout and we become desensitized to it. And then when we don't have that in caffeine, we can't get ourselves turned on.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

So if you limit the use of intense music and caffeine, then they become more valuable tools when you need them. So. So you have that in your toolkit now. So if I need to get myself on hyperventilated chest breathing, listen to some intense music and then take a shot of caffeine and I'm on. But if I'm always listening to Pantera when I'm driving and I have a two hour workout and it's intense, raging as a machine, start to finish. After a while, it's not going to have the same effect. So what I will do is on my playlist or whatever, I'll have an intense song that I listen to for the 30 seconds while I'm getting in my zone and I'm focusing and bringing the world in. And then after the set I will put on something that's like more low key.

[A]

Frozen.

[B]

Yeah, that's awesome. You know some show tune, I don't know the various show tunes, but just like to bring me back down, you know, so and so it's. I call it interest set, neural tone or intro workout. Neural toning and wow.

[A]

And would you. I love that. Would you turn off the music? Music in. Would you? If I'm thinking about. Okay, how is everyone going to be implementing this? I love I. You know, this kind of allows for a dopamine vacation. I mean this is very specific ways to intentionally turn on your nervous system, your mind. Auditory response is huge.

[B]

Visualization is another one. Okay, tell me if you're going to do a set, visualize yourself doing the set before you do the set. You know, don't just like snort pre workout, bang your head against the wall and go grip and ribbit. Like sit down.

[A]

That's what Matt does. Producer.

[B]

I sit down, I draw my world in to really, really small world. I'll look at what I'm gonna do. I'll visualize myself doing it. I'll get my heart rate up and then I'll do it. This is a very intentional neural toning. After the set, take the intense music out, you know, sit down, look around, just relax and then I'll.

[A]

Trolls is on the. Yeah, Trolls frozen. Yeah.

[B]

Focus on my breathing for a minute or two.

[A]

You'll be amazed at how you can.

[B]

Extend your workout to.

[A]

That's amazing. And then go into kind of box breathing or just chill.

[B]

So during the workout I'll do more pursed lip breathing. So it's a one second nasal inhale, a two second mouth and nasal exhale, focusing on pushing out evenly and a two second hold with no Air and then just repeat that after the workout is when I'll do the box breathing. And that's normally just 4, 4, 4, 4.

[A]

That is tactical breath. That's what the guys use in the military.

[B]

Swimming is a great way to build your CO2 tolerance.

[A]

And that's just breath hold.

[B]

Yeah, max breath hold breathing techniques like box breathing to build your CO2 tolerance.

[A]

And you guys don't try some of this, do not get all froggy and try some of this at home where you're passing out. I mean, don't do. I mean, that is not what we were talking about. Swim with a friend.

[B]

So let's say you do your normal cardio and you like to do intervals. A simple way to increase the effectiveness of that interval workout. Let's say you, you run fast for two minutes and then you walk right during that walk, try to do the pursed lip breathing for five reps at a time for 30 seconds. And then just let yourself breathe naturally for the rest of your rest interval. And then your CO2 tolerance and your fitness will build way faster than normally would.

[A]

How often would someone use these tools? Every time they lift, flip a coin. Sometimes you have access to it, sometimes you don't. So that it maintains the novelty.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. Ideally every time, but that's a lot to ask. So whenever you can do it, the more the better, you know, and if you're at a. If you want to be serious and be accountable and you're not seeing the gains and you're not getting stronger and you feel like you can't recover, I'm giving you tools to recover. And the more you use them, the better you're going to perform.

[A]

What about this whole mindset component? You're a former Ranger, won't hold that against you. Jokes are just flying in hot. Do you have to really hone that in or is there a natural aspect to what you're doing where you are not necessarily having to dip into that tank?

[B]

As far as the mental aspect is like doing each workout or training.

[A]

I mean, listen, you're trying to bring. And maybe I'll ask this in two ways. So you personally, I think that you personally are you. You are bringing something new to the table. Just like, like Kelly Sarra, just like many of the people on the podcast. So this is new information, creative ways of thinking about it. So there's you as the entrepreneur, you as the subject matter expert, and then there's you as this very athletic human. You played football and then now continue to Train athletes. Do you have to think? And you know, people will say that those two things might be different. They're not.

[B]

No, it's definitely not. Yeah.

[A]

Right. Where you are taking yourself from a mentality standpoint in your work and entrepreneurship, you will then bring into the gym. And are you thinking about that?

[B]

A lot of people have it and they don't know why. Right. They have the it. And I've studied what the it is and there's several components to it. One is breaking tasks down into smaller, attainable pieces. Don't think about things you can't affect at the time because your brain doesn't want you to excel. Your brain just wants you to survive. So your brain will stack tasks on top of yourself. And I'd see people do it in ranger school where we wouldn't be doing anything. Anything. We'd literally be eating our one meal a day with our boots off and it's like a breeze, like it should be pleasurable. And instead of just thinking about and being in the moment, they're worrying about what they have to do. Their brain is stacking tasks because their brain is trying to convince them not to do it. Because their brain does not want them to excel. It wants them to survive. So when we're fresh and we're feeling good, the frontal lobe kicks in and we're like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. But as soon as we start to get really hungry and really tired and cold or, or scared, our brain kicks into survival mechanism and it'll start telling us all these things that are coming and we start worrying and suffering when we won't have to. So learn how to be in the moment and just focus on the next task. Like, I never, Never once walked 18 miles with a rucksack on my back. I only walked to the top of the next hill and I just did that over and over because everybody can walk to the top of the next hill and I'm as mentally weak as anybody else. I just don't think about the things that scare me, not if I can't do anything about it. So analyze like I call it inside, outside, edge thinking. Either be in the moment and immersed or be out of the moment thinking big picture thoughts. Never be worrying about what other people are thinking or what you can't control, because that is your mind trying to keep you from succeeding. Because with success there's always risk and discomfort. Right? So our mind is not strong. Our mind is not our friend. We have to control our mind. We have to make it our workhorse. Right.

[A]

I mean, I love that it's basically what you're talking about. And, you know, it's interesting, again, you're a former Ranger, and. And, you know, my husband was in special operations. We are a very veteran friendly podcast, as you know. I always try to. You might not know this, but I. You know, part of our clinical practice is we support operators. Absolutely. And what you're saying is very unique and common among the uncommon.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that is.

[B]

They just don't put it to words. You know, a lot of them don't even know how they do it.

[A]

It.

[B]

They just. They don't. I'm just going to do it. Like, screw it, let's go do it. They don't think, like, I always tell people, like, when you go to the gym, don't go to the gym. Just put your shoes on and then just get in the car, fill up your water bottle.

[A]

Love it.

[B]

And then put yourself in a position where you have to tell yourself no. Like, I'm sitting here at the gym in my car with a water bottle and my workout clothes, and I have to actually get in my car and turn around and drive home. And most of us won't do that. We just stop before we start. If we just start, most of us will finish. You know, like, put yourself into position where you actually have to turn around, tell yourself no, and walk the fuck home.

[A]

And no one's gonna do that. I mean, you better not be doing that. You know, I have to say, Judd Lionheart. You know your name, so it's Lionhard. Yeah, it really flows. You are a strong, capable human, and I think that you're really going to excel in making our youth and our future way more athletic and way more thoughtful. I am so grateful that you spent the time coming up here. I just couldn't be happier. We're going to link where everyone can find you, and I'm hoping that you will certainly come back on the show.

[B]

Absolutely. It's a great experience and that means a lot coming from you especially. Really love your stuff and love what you do.

[A]

Thank you so much. The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon podcast and YouTube are for general information purposes only and do not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice. And no patient doctor relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast, YouTube, or materials linked from the podcast or YouTube is at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professional for any such conditions. This is purely for entertainment and educational purposes only.