28 Combining bodybuilding and athletic training

Hello, and welcome to the high performance physiology podcast. I'm Chris Beardsley. I'm here with my co-host Rob Mauseri. I'm going to talk about combining bodybuilding training programs with athletic preparation training programs. So essentially a question that we get very, very frequently is, you know, I'm currently doing a kind of maybe bodybuilding style strength training program, not necessarily competitive bodybuilding, but more on the kind of like, you know, recreational side of things. And then I want to do some kind of sporting activity at the weekend, maybe a Saturday morning, place kind of basketball or the soccer or whatever. And I want to incorporate elements of athletic training into my program. How do I do that? Now, what we're going to do today to kind of capture all the possibilities and make this as relevant to as many people as possible, we're going to kind of try and present this as a spectrum. So basically, you've kind of got sort of a range of options open to if you want to kind of do this. You can either go down the route saying, the program is a bodybuilding program, but we're going to add some athletic kind of elements to it and make it a little bit more athletic allows to do that. Or the opposite end of the spectrum is going to be, we're going to have an athletic training program and we're going to incorporate a little bit of hypertrophy extra into it. And then of course, you've got anywhere between the two extremes. So with that said, let's jump straight in and start talking about this because I think actually talking about this is probably going to give more information than, you know, me giving a long talk about how physiology works. So let's start with somebody who's doing a pretty kind of comprehensive bodybuilding training program, not necessarily obviously going to be a competitive bodybuilder because if they're a competitive bodybuilder all in on that particular kind of sport, that's their sport, they're not going to be kind of looking to play another sport. Weekends, they're kind of bodybuilding is their sport. So, but you know, maybe there is somebody who's recreationally bodybuilding, but you know, they do now want to start incorporating a little bit of athletic kind of training into their routines. So Rob, how would you go about, you know, helping that person who maybe comes to you for a consult, consultancy session and says, look, this is what I'm currently doing. It's a really kind of, you know, comprehensive bodybuilding routine that I've got going. You know, it's pretty good. I mean, it works. It's three times a week. It does all the kind of regions. It's not kind of doing silly things, you know, kind of like, you know, Bruce Blitz or like that. So the program works as a bodybuilding program. What are you going to kind of start with as a way to introduce some athletic elements into their training program? Yeah. As you were talking the more I thought about this, the more I realized how many, how many of these I've actually seen lately from some like ex bodybuilders and that as well. And I'm like, oh, there's actually a ton to go over with this one. So I think, you know, if I have someone who's been doing that kind of a program and they want to start getting just a little bit more athletic, the stuff that I'm going to add right off the bat is going to be super basic, introducing some jumps, you know, right off the bat. Almost everyone can go, you know, right into some vertical jump work. Maybe some, you know, broad jumps, stuff like that. Not really a high barrier to entry there. People want to get into, you know, a lot of people want to get into running and sprinting specifically. Only thing could be more athletic. There I might not throw someone right into max velocity sprinting off the back, you know, maybe some worries about hamstrings and some other stuff. But, you know, in that case, maybe something like a hill spring, you know, where the velocity is going to be a little lower, going to be a little more lean forward. I'm never going to really hit that max speed. I'm going to be a good introduction and get them obviously doing something way faster than they've previously been. And I've definitely given that people that plenty of times. Yeah. So I would say those would be my two main ones and then obviously some throws for the upper body. Especially if you want to play basketball, you want to play volleyball, you want to hit something, you know, just getting some like high speed I effort throwing off the bat would be a good route to go. Totally. I think that I'm just kind of make that a little bit more practical in context to a workout. You know, what we'd be talking about will be putting those kind of jumps and throws, medicinal throws in right at the very beginning of a kind of workout. So they'd be looking at their existing workout plan. And we would just say, look, you know, you do your warm up and hopefully do kind of temperature based warm up, whether it's cardio or as you do standing under the hot shower. And then you go into the gym and you do three to five kind of max effort, vertical jumps and, you know, a couple of medicinal throws. And you know, as time goes on, they can add in some horizontal jumps. They can add in some throws in different directions. Maybe even start looking at rotational throws. And that kind of, you know, really won't take up enormous amounts of their workout time. It's adding, you know, five to ten minutes extra into their total workout time. So hopefully not kind of pulling away too much from the existing kind of routine that they're doing. So we're trying to be as minimalist as possible really on this kind of side of things. Okay, cool. So that's like a adding in the tiniest possible element that we could for somebody who wants to keep as much of that bodybuilding stuff as possible. Now let's take another step and say, okay, so this is somebody who now wants to take their athletic side of things a little bit more seriously. Not like we're not coming from the opposite end of the spectrum still. We're still just taking another step. So I'm guessing that this is the kind of place where you would start thinking about adding in a little bit more of our classic framework. So our classic framework being high velocity, heavy strength training, plyometrics and then eccentric at the end. So if we're taking that extra step, what would your next kind of place to go? Yeah, so following the usual framework, we already talked about this stuff at the beginning. So after that, we keep the heavy strength training. Probably on the back end of the strength training section of the workout, start adding things like you mentioned rotation. That'll be typically missing from a lot of bodybuilding programs. Maybe some stuff with the hip flexors and things like that that people probably will have not been doing. And then towards the end of the workout, maybe that point, depending on the sport and what the person wants or needs to start introducing some plyos and then your semi-centric stuff. So if they do want to start getting into sprinting, for example, start doing semi-centric work for the hamstrings. If the plane is something where they need more change of direction, things like that. Think about some eccentric work for the quads. Then that point is based on whatever sport activity the person wants to get into more and then start adding just a little bit more of those things towards the end of the workout. And of course, this is now going to start pulling stuff away from the core. Yeah, you might not have three girls. Yeah, so this is the point where we're going to start losing exercises. We're not going to have all the regions. We're going to start ending up with a little bit less of the bodybuilding stuff in the middle. So as you said, again, just to kind of lay this out practically, we're still keeping the high velocity stuff at the beginning, which probably wouldn't have caused us to lose anything. But we're keeping that high velocity stuff. Now we're looking at the heavy strength training stuff and we're going, okay, here are heavy strength training exercises that I would be doing as a bodybuilder or as a recreational bodybuilder. And now we're going to start having to pull some of that out and replace it with hip flex or work with heavy rotations. If I'm not doing hip thrusts already, they are absolutely going to be going in. See, this is the hip thrust fan club. So ultimately, that is got to then come down to the individuals saying, well, what am I prepared to give up? And, you know, people will look at you and say, well, you tell me, no, no, it's about what you want. It's like you're sure for Zeeq, you make the decision, what do you prepare to give up in order to get this athletic side of things in there? But we'd absolutely want hip flex work in their strength work, we'd absolutely want heavy rotation. We'd absolutely want to have those three are non-negotiable, really. Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of assuming that they're doing some kind of squat pattern or kind of like, yeah, I mean, most bodybuilding programs are. Exactly. I tend to count that in there. That would be in there as well. If there's some reason wasn't in there. So, but yeah, so that, that, so you're modifying now the heavy strength training with some exercise selection, and then we're going more towards the end and you're okay, maybe we've got a plyometric in there, probably, you know, just a calf plyometric at the beginning, not too exciting. And then, and then obviously finally, we're looking at the eccentric works, we've probably got a couple of reps of Nordics and reverse Nordics, or, you know, actually, what could happen? This is an interesting idea. Instead of the knee extension and leg curl being done in the heavy strength training part to work, you could just pull them out and do them as easy as you can do them as easy as you can. That could be pretty cool compromise, because you won't get a heavy strength training benefit from that. It's just not a perfect one. Yeah. For sure. For sure. Cool. Okay. So, that's kind of probably somewhere in the middle there, and that's like a kind of combined sort of style program. And then obviously then the opposite end of the spectrum would be to say, well, you know, what if somebody's coming from the athletic side? So they've been training as an athlete for a period of time, and they now want to kind of move slightly more in the bodybuilding direction. Actually, I think this is probably the easiest example of all of them, but let me know what you think. I mean, tell what you do. Yeah, for sure. So taking the classic framework there, you start with your jumps, throws, etc. You do your heavy strength training, assuming they're already doing their playoffs, eccentric work, whatever it may be. They want to move more towards the bodybuilding end of things, say currently an athlete's doing maybe just a few exercises, big compounds, also like a hip thrust squat, a white girl, some kind of press, some kind of like pull down chin up, and then, you know, maybe some kind of dip over and press some like that, which is pretty common. usually it'll be pretty minimal, you know, athletes aren't spending a ton of time in the gym. Also, you want a more bodybuilding style program. Well, you know, whatever regions you do, muscles you decide you want to grow, start adding. If you have currently just, you know, for your overall back, you just do a pulldown. Well, immediately, maybe add in a Kelsal shrug for your traps. If you're doing just pulling exercises, obviously all both flexors aren't getting a ton out of that. Though in, you know, one or two curl variations, based on what you want. Middle delts, one that, you know, aren't really typically hit super well in an athletic focus program. Immediately do, you know, behind the neck press, a lateral raise, something like that, something that'll actually hit that area a bit more triceps, you know, some direct work for like the long head to round out your arm, if you're just doing presses, pulling out getting very much a long head tricep in there. So, you know, then start with like an extension with the arms of the side. And then yeah, just go on from there, whatever regions in that you decide, you want to start growing the most to round out your physique, just add in those exercises. And then if you have to, you can start pulling out the plyos and things that you might not want to keep in all year. Anyway, you know, you throw in a leg extension intake out, eccentric quad work, stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, this is a really interesting one because it kind of feels that it has to be context specific. So, you kind of want to know the reason why the athlete is suddenly deciding that they want to kind of focus on their physique a little bit more. It's like, is it because maybe you're just not competing right now. In which case, actually, you've got a lot more freedom. You can move from two times a week to three times a week. You've got capacity to move to the round. You can drop out. So, as you say, the plyos are going to come out automatically if you're doing that anyway. So, there's a bit more kind of room for maneuver. But if they're kind of like, well, no, I'm going to carry on competing that way. I think I'm on a minute, you know, kind of. Why do you want to get something? You can't do these things, you know, kind of to the best of your ability, you know, simultaneously. So, I think that's probably a really context-specific one, but I have to know exactly what it is that's going on there. And that actually bridges into another issue, which is that, you know, everything in the training week has to kind of be taken into account. So, if somebody's been doing like a bodybuilding, just coming back to the original example, and we're starting out with bodybuilding style routines, and then moving towards the athletic side of things, you know, if the bodybuilder or the recreational kind of bodybuilder has been just doing their thing for the last kind of, you know, a couple of years, and now they're suddenly deciding to put an extra kind of exercise session into their training week, and that's maybe just after their game or whatever. And then they actually also now want to do a midweek training session with the team that they're going to be playing with at the weekend, and you're like, oh, okay. I want to keep doing three times a week or the other day or something like that. I'm like, okay, I've got some bad news for you. Yeah, you're going to pull one of those days out. Nothing comes a week lifting. Yeah, so I think that probably is again where we kind of, one of the things where we're starting with recreational bodybuilding and just telling you in a few jumps, cool. And then you're just playing a casual game on a weekend, you're not doing any other kind of sport training at all. Fine, no problem. You're taking that extra step, you're going to go, okay, I'm now going to want to do some actual athletic exercises like hip thrusts and kind of heavy torso rotations and that kind of thing, hip legs to work in my actual heavy strength training team. I'm going to have some pliers in there. I'm going to do some, you know, kind of super maximally centuries, and I'm going to have like a midweek training session with the guys before I then compete at the weekend. Okay, now you're on a two day week program. Yeah, devil. And they're looking at you like, no, no, no, no, I want to do three and lie, I don't care. No, definitely, yeah, the strength training workouts minimal. I think this is yeah, really, really important because ultimately this is the purpose of today's podcast. I mean, we've kind of gone through I think a really good approach very, very quickly already, but I think the fundamental messages, there is no such thing as a program that does everything to the same degree as individual programs can do that thing. So you can't have to go towards and meet those goals as quickly if you're doing them at the same time, compared to if you're just training for one goal, someone, you know, at a time. So you want to be an athlete, train like an athlete, fine, no problem at all. I want to be a bodybuilder, train like a bodybuilder, do that, no problem at all. I want to do both things at the same time. You're now going to be proceeding at a slower rate on both of those things. That's just because recovery over the entire week is limited and everything like size causes exactly the same type of fatigue. I'm just going to say that again for people who may be missed that. Every single type of exercise, whether it's aerobic, whether it's anaerobic, whether it's strength train, whether it's plyometrics, whether it's super maximally sentries. Every single exercise causes the same post workout fatigue mechanisms and they just add up. So if you start doing lots and lots of extra exercise during the week, they start adding up and you accumulate and by the end of the week, you're now in a state where you can't actually perform and you can't get the adaptions in the subsequent training sessions that you're going to do. So you just have to start taking stuff out. That means that we're always going to move people from three to two times a week. Still full body, of course, but we're going to move them from three to two because they are going to be doing other training sessions as well. I'm assuming that if you get to that point where you're taking the athletic activity, so seriously that you're now doing heavy torso rotations, then we're going to make the assumption that you're probably got a middle week training session of some description for your sport as well as your competition at the weekend or whatever else is you're going to do. So cool. Awesome. Rob, so what are you seeing in the kind of the wide fitness industry in terms of approaches because you mentioned, I'm just going to kind of jump in and kind of add a little bit of context to this. I have my own kind of reasons for talking about those because I see a problem very, very commonly which is that some people will just say athletes just need to train like a bodybuilder and then just play their sport. And I'm very, very opposed to that. I think that the kind of program that we've or the model that we've outlined is 100 times better than that idea. Yeah, you can push the pretty, pretty easily. Honestly, it's if that were the case, like say someone just plays their sport and then does a bodybuilding program. Yeah. Well, you know, you take like I work with some viable players, for example, if it were the case so they could just play their sport and then do a bodybuilding program. You know, you'd consistently see their vertical jump heights improving. You consistently see their ability to hit the ball harder improving without like specific gym work to improve those things. And it just doesn't happen. You know, since I started with one of my girls, we've put like five inches on a vertical jump. You know, you're getting everything you need from just playing games and then you can just bodybuild on the side. I mean, yeah, it sounds great. It sounds easy, but in practice, that just never works. And so you can squash that super easy. Well, I think you can, if you start from a physiological perspective, because I think a lot of people go, oh, I'm moving fast in my sport. Therefore, all the speed related options come from my sport. No, they're not. No, just rarely are you going to be hitting absolute, you know, max velocities and then a lot of these sports, especially in a volleyball. Yeah, the lack of stability and the kind of the concentration on the game and the focus on the coordination. It pulled down your ability to concentrate on motion equipment and fire rates and that kind of thing. So your brain basically has a capacity, a finite capacity to devote resources to a thing. If you're focusing on the coordination aspect of it in the timing and the moment and the and the strategy and all of those things at the same time, your brain is not going to produce max effort and devote all of this max effort, potential to motion equipment and fire rates. It just can't do that. So you don't get those kind of adaptions the way that people think you do. It's just fundamentally comes from a misunderstanding of how adaptions are actually stimulated. They think, oh, I'm moving quickly, therefore, I'm going to get speed related to adaptions and no, that's just not how it works. So, but yeah, I mean, even that's just the whole speed side of things. But of course, you know, you've got all the other stuff as well on the strengths. I mean, that's certainly not going to come from the sport. And I don't see any heavy torso rotations in many bodybuilding training programs and I don't see any hip flexor work either. I mean, it's cool. It's cool that we're getting hip thrust in the program. So, okay, you know, okay, if a bodybuilding program has a hip thrust in it, you know, then okay, it's taking a big step towards being relevant from athletic point of view. But I'm still not seeing the other stuff that I would want to see, you know, from a sprinting perspective on the hip flexor side. I'm still not seeing anything on the, you know, kind of a heavy torso rotation from the throwing or kind of swinging side of things. And in terms of eccentric, there's just nothing there. I mean, that's just completely absent. And then if you have someone who's throwing in there and they need the velocity focus work for the arms for the upper body. And they're doing like, you know, very heavy dumbbell presses and things like that. Of course, you're now just going to see a negative effect because the program is actually not taking that into account. Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think this is it's really, really important. It's so common, so commonly see that message where people are just going, you know, just follow this standard bodybuilding training program and and then play your sport and you'll be fine. I'm like, no, that is absolutely not going to work. And there are different things. Cool. But when we were talking about this just for the podcast, you mentioned that you've seen a lot of bodybuilders come out of bodybuilding and move into add, move into the athletic kind of way of training. And suddenly they start doing some really, really weird kind of training methods. And I'm just going to let you kind of describe a bit of the problems that you've seen in that particular respect. Oh, yeah. So I think one of the one of the biggest things I see so so many times with the former bodybuilders and so much lately is like they come out of bodybuilding and all of a sudden they think they need to start being athletic. They need like stability and remedial exercises and to target all the quote unquote small muscles that weren't hit well. And you know, things like that, like stuff that they just didn't happen to like isolate, you know, while they're like sure they're not isolating their extumal rotators and they're not doing all these like little goofy exercises. But if you're trying to become athletic, you don't need any, you don't need any of that. Like I'm never prescribing those things. I'm never giving someone a bamboo bar bench press to work on their shoulder stabilizers or like very, very, you know, demanding like stability, demanding single leg stuff and all these like weird variations. And I see a ton of that. You know, in that case, you'd be much better off taking your bodybuilding program. And then yeah, just chucking a couple jumps in those at the beginning. But instead they do all these weird variations and, you know, funny looking at your sizes, asymmetrics just for the sake of it. You know, because they're most of the time people were saying they're getting, you know, neural benefits and increasing recruitment, potentiation before they're set, like things like this. You know, one of the classic stealth we talked about in the Potentiation episode. Yes, so you just get, you know, these wild programs, tons of pliowork, like really, really high volumes of pliowork, all of a sudden off the bat. And I've seen a couple guys, not naming names, hurt their Achilles, hurt their knees, you know, stuff like that because all of a sudden they're doing just a million reps of these things when they haven't done them in a decade. And, you know, you and I talk all the time about plios and using very low doses and that and I myself, you know, with my athletes and myself, use really, really low volumes of pliowork. And then you see someone doing, you know, 80, 80 jumps. I'm like, yeah, this is not a recipe for being athletic. It's a recipe for messin' yourself up off the bat. Yeah, and that's really, really bad, isn't it? I mean, so just kind of categorize these errors. The chasing stable, or in unstable exercise type. I think chasing those unstable exercises or those unstable situations is probably one of the big categories. So people want to put themselves in these unstable circumstances. They're lifting tiny weights because they've got, you know, kind of, their brain is focusing so much on balancing that it can't really focus on motina accruement. And of course you've got big correctivation going on at the joint. So there's just there's there's very little capacity to lift any kind of load there. Obviously that's not really having very much with training effect in terms of the kind of strength adaptions that would be interested in. But it's also not doing anything extra. So I think a lot to let them go into that, they go into that type of training. They go, okay, I'm giving up a little bit on the strength side of the hypertrophy side. But what I'm gaining is they think they can transfer this stable, this, this stabilization ability that they think they're gaining to a sporting context. And you can't, that's the, that's the, that's the really big error. Even physical therapy at that point is really. Don't get me started. Oh, I know, but like, good, good physical therapists. I know how to move well on from those ideas and, you know, that like unstable surface training is going to be giving you anything towards that point of performance. And I don't know how these things are just still hanging around among strength coaches because it, it should be pretty common knowledge at this point that they're not doing anything. And I've seen people do, you know, like ankle stability training and they say it's improving ankle stiffness for running and things like that. And I'm like, you are so far from our care. It's unbelievable. Yeah, it's, there's, there's no transferability of that kind of skill that's being learned in the unstable exercise task to any sporting context. It's not happening. And it really kind of finds its roots in the older strength coaches from sort of 20, 30 years ago, who believed that strength training is just loaded coordination training. And it's like, it's not. There's nothing, that, that statement is completely 100% wrong is absolutely not true. But yeah, so stabilization training or stability training or training, try and gain some stability in other circumstances like sport from an unstable exercise is definitely a big error category. And then the, yes, another error category would then be throwing in loads and loads of plyometric type exercises, which has, you know, we've said is, is literally kind of the opposite to helpful because all this doing is kind of repeatedly straining and recoiling the tendon, which doesn't make it really adapt positively. It's probably just going to create damage. And that is obviously potentially going to be a problem further on that. As you mentioned, people end up with tendon opathy sometimes in that scenario. And we did a podcast on that. I mean, we did all. I think another one I see that people move into is, I mean, obviously, you know, there's all kinds of functional exercises and yeah, people doing all of a sudden things like fashion training and, you know, all that kind of stuff, which I don't know if you've seen as much of it as I have because my algorithm is just cooked. But, you know, doing all kinds of things like they think they need to train their, you know, anterior oblique sling and target all these various slings and facial regions and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, I don't think people, I mean, a lot of times athletes, obviously, they're great athletes because they're genetically gifted. They're not well educated in strength and conditioning. So they tend to fall for these, especially post-career. But yeah, you all of a sudden, you do all these like goofy things and maybe your body, if you're beat up from, you know, high-level athletics feels a little better initially because essentially it just comes down to load management. Instead of doing a lot of hard, heavy things, you're now kind of doing nothing. So like, initially, you feel that and then you get the idea that these things are, oh, I feel good. This is good for me. It's got to be something positive and you can't target any of these things anyway. And whatever you're doing, it's not really doing anything. You can't train fascist separate from muscles and muscle fibers. It's not happening. That idea is like all over the place right now and it is crazy. Yeah, I mean, I think this, yeah, I think this is just kind of people jump on bunbugs, don't they, kind of get excited about something. But yeah, I mean, fundamentally, you know, there's this kind of idea that, but actually, what is it? I mean, it's, yeah, I guess it's like we're training something that is separate from the muscles that we were training. It's like, it were training muscles and now they think they're training. They're training sort of systems or kind of muscle and fascia combinations or something. I don't really, I've never really looked at it seriously because I don't see any data in the research literature. So I don't look to it. And actually, that's just an observation that I kind of would like to make more generally. I do get a lot of questions where people say, what do you think about? And then they insert the name of some kind of model that somebody's working with. Yeah, and I'm like, well, has there been any published data talking about the underlying physiology? And they're like, no, well, then I won't know anything about it, will I? Yeah, I've gotten those as well. I mean, you specific coaches, fancy. Tell me what the underlying physiology is now coming on that. But if there's no underlying physiology that this being reference and I can't really give you a comment because it's like, as far as my universe is concerned, consists of, you know, physiology and what's been published in that area. And if it hasn't been published and I don't know about it because I don't go reading on the internet for, you know, random models that people have made up which may or may not have value in them. I just don't know because I can't see what I don't read about. So, you know, there you go. There's been the thought just kind of rolling around in my mind that I just want to kind of add before we finish, which is that. Yes, I think it's important to kind of recognize that there are errors that occur like the search for unstable exercises and the overuse of plyometrics. But there are kind of some exercises that I see that I think are probably useful ways to bridge someone from one type of training into a different type of training. So, you were kind of mentioning Hill Sprints as a way to bridge someone from going sort of from a pure bodybuilding perspective. I mean, imagine someone who's literally just been doing nothing but kind of machine work for a couple of years and never done anything like a run or a sprint or a jump or anything like that. And now we're kind of starting to just move them in the direction of going, let's do something a little bit more athletic. And obviously we kind of said, look, can't move a jump, medicine ball slam, great kind of starting places because you can kind of start so maximally and you can just kind of work your way up. And they're very kind of low kind of, you know, challenge, low problem, low kind of impact, if you like. For that reason, I do actually like, and people are going to kind of hate me for this. Because I've got a lot of times saying I don't like this exercise, but I don't like lunges for bodybuilding, for example. I do not like lunges for bodybuilding. I don't even like single leg work, body single leg squats, like split squats. Single leg work obviously is fantastic in the right context, like in the extension or whatever, or even leg press. But I don't like single leg squats. I don't like single leg as in split squats. I don't like lunges. I don't like anything like that for bodybuilding purposes. I think that the coordination demand really makes it kind of pointless. What I think is interesting, though, is if you're bridging someone from doing just heavy strength training and you wanted to start moving towards the eccentric side of things, I do actually like lunges for that reason. I think that deceleration and you can work in different directions. I actually quite like that as a kind of way to start moving someone towards doing more athletic type situations, because as you say, the deceleration is very, very directed into exactly what they're going to experience in a sporting context. Because if I kind of like take someone who's just been doing nothing, but machine exercises, and then try and get them to start doing, you know, running around a court, changing direction, I'd be much happier if they'd done some directional lunges to kind of a postman, their body to being able to decelerate in those different directions before doing. Now, does that mean I'm going to start putting multi-directional lunges in every single athletic program? No, I'm not, because the athlete's been training since they were 12, and they don't need to do that. Yeah, they won't need it. And that's the thing people miss. They're like, "Oh, my athlete is, you know, kind of running around the court all the time. They need to do multi-directional lunges. I'm like, no, they don't, because their body has figured that out since they were like, as I say, 12 years, or they don't need to do that, because they've already got it inside their kind of operating system. But what I'm saying is, if you're starting with someone who's literally just been bodybuilding for, you know, however many years, they never really had a history of sport, or maybe their sport was in swimming, or something, like, you know, my sport was. So, like, you know, just people go, "Well, you know, how do you?" I like to joke that you kind of take a swim and pull them out out of water, and they kind of look a lot like a penguin, because because they're kind of like, they've got to, like, they can go in one direction really quite effectively. You try and get them to go sideways. It's just the wheels coming. Not happening. So, so yeah, you kind of like, you take an individual who's got that bodybuilding experience, or maybe sporting experience that is not relevant to, you know, kind of multi-directional sprinting. And you're like, "Okay, actually, some lunges in different directions, do some lunges forward, some backwards, some, laterally, separately, not kind of trying to make this into a game rhythm." It's just three and one exercise. It's actually just a couple of forward ones, a couple of, and the focus is it's not a strength training exercise. It's a starting point towards eccentric training that is specific for the kind of loading parameters that someone's going to sing as well. And I'm not talking about this as being something that people carry on progressing for, you know, you know, to start with it. I'm just saying it's an interesting way to bridge people in that direction. If you like it's, yeah, it's kind of like a, sort of, a transition type strength training where in the future, they'll just be playing the sport, doing the supermax maze antics, doing the heavy strength training, doing the kind of the method that we've described. But I think in this particular instance, it's an interesting kind of sort of thing to drop in there. I don't usually give this kind of practical kind of talk, because it's not my area of expertise. I think it's an interesting one to drop in there. Cool. I don't use, like you said, I don't use lunges and I don't think about them too much, because people tend to need them. But in that context, definitely, definitely a really good idea. Cool. Anything else before we wrap this up? I think that's been a pretty good, pretty good collection. We covered it pretty well. Fantastic. Cool. We did have an announcement. So let's do it. So the announcement that we are going to make is that we are now bringing the high performance physiology method to a training group, which you will be officiating. So we've been setting that up this week. We've got it all ready. And the first phase is going to be focusing on vertical jumping. Should be a fun one. So yeah. So we get a lot of questions from people saying, how do they improve the vertical jump or how do they get started with athletic training? So I guess really, this will be for everybody who wants to make a start on improving that athletic points. Everybody who wants to get better at vertical jumping. So even if they're running an athletic training program at the moment, they will probably learn a lot about how to improve vertical jumping by joining this group. They just want to improve athletic. I mean, the good thing about vertical jumping is that it is quite an all round kind of athletic training kind of activity. So if somebody wants a general athletic training program, they're not looking to sort of focus on anything is in particular, this is going to be a great start. But again, if they're wanting to improve vertical jumping specifically, it will be absolutely perfect for that purpose. And ultimately, it probably fits pretty much in the exact middle of the spectrum that we've been talking about today. So it's going to be, it's going to be for people who want to accomplish a really solid physique at the same time. I was getting really, really good at particular sporting activity. It's going to hit those two goals pretty effectively, probably better than any other program. I can think of it to be honest, but still being solidly on the athletic side. So it is going to deliver all the athletic kind of side of things, but it is going to give people a sense of an element of kind of physique maintenance in there as well. So I think this is probably, you know, really, really good program for people who kind of want everything, but also it's going to be a super solid program for any athlete because it is still going to be running two times a week. I mean, that's that's the important thing. It's not deviating from that. Yeah, this one will always be two times a week because I have another training group where it rotates a little bit between the phases for anyone who wants to know this one will always be the two times a week. Yeah. Very much athletic focused. And then as we go on, we'll rotate the specific focus occasionally, you know, vertical jump sprints, things like that. Fantastic. Awesome. Great. It's going to be really, really exciting. Obviously, I'll be publishing details on my Instagram fairly repeatedly about what's going on in the group. Sure, Rob will do the same. And any questions that people have happy to take them, you know, on Instagram and, you know, add comments and, you know, suggestions or whatever it is that people want to hear about it. Cool. Fantastic. Very exciting. So hopefully that will start to make the high performance physiology model a little bit more method, a little bit more popular and this idea of doing high velocity work, heavy-strength training, biometrics, and supermax phase entries at the end in a workout for athletes, pretty much all year round, according to what they need, rather than kind of having phases and periodizations and all that kind of nonsense. So cool. We'll stop there and we will come back with another topic next week.