#493 Christian Thibaudeau - Training With Isometrics, Eccentrics, Complexes, and Cluster Sets

Welcome back to the Lift Free and Diet Hard Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Cotes. Join me along with industry leaders and friends on a quest to get more people through the gym door and eating and living healthier. Join me where Evans meets empathy while rejecting fitness industry fads and extremism. Let's begin. Oh it's always an honor to have Christian Tibito back on the podcast. One of the true legends of strength conditioning. A prominent long-time tenation writer, one of the people that inspired me to start writing for them, an author of several books. And you and I finally have the opportunity to meet in person. We both spoke at Spontier all a couple of years ago. Big honor in my career. It's great to see you, my friend. It's been, it's great. It's great. Just the fact that I'm doing this podcast means that my health is doing better because as you know, I did have some bad stuff happens, but I'm back in my productive self and I'm happy to be here and share some information. I know we had to reschedule this one because you know, you literally went in to have some surgery done. Open art surgery might take precedence over doing a podcast. It does every time and I'm grateful to be here sitting here talking to you today. So I want to get in some cool training stuff, but I have a detour first and I am genuinely interested if you ever feel pressure to stay visible. I mean, we can use the word relevant in a sense. We'll come back to it, but visible as an authority in the fitness and strength conditioning space. And I'm going to create some context here. You are one of the true faces of T Nation for a couple of decades in an era before social media was really popular. You know, a face of overall strength in conditioning education. And now we have an age of social media. Yep. And it does happen that the age of social media happens when I'm degrading physically myself. Right. I'm getting older. I'm not as strong as I used to be. I know that as a muscular as it used to be. And of course, the health issues didn't help that, right? So if I try to stay relevant, I need to be out there all the time. I need to fight and compete with guys in their 20s doing amazing stuff, amazing physics either because they're genetic freaks using drugs or whatever, but still they're are presenting a great facade. Doesn't mean the information is good because I find the information on social media to be two or three steps behind what we had when we were writing long form articles. We were going deeper into concepts and we were not afraid of going against the grain. Now it seems like you have two school of thoughts when it comes to training on social media. And you are part of one of the two school like the high effort crowd and the high volume crowd, right? So it's like you're either a Democrat or a Republican. So it's like people are afraid to agree with some stuff the other side is saying. So we have like two sides that are essentially saying the same message. So you never get an in between. You don't have people who are willing to go outside of the boundaries of each of these school of thoughts. And so training is becoming to me extraordinarily boring. Like everybody is preaching the exact same thing. Like of course, you have two different school of thought. But within those schools of thought, everybody is preaching the exact same message. Essentially you're just like reposting the content of others and reposting their own content. Like there's very little original thought. And in fact, if you go against the grain with a training method, right? But it doesn't fit what the science says. It doesn't work. Yeah, but I have a, I'm training like a, okay, I'm going to use myself as an example. And then the bodybuilder I'm training. As you know, and those who listen to maybe your previous podcast with me know that I have suffered a pretty severe shoulder injury. When I was getting ready for a photo shoot, when I was my leanest and driest, then I thought to rotate or cuff muscles doing of all thing, a rear delt raise, like something that would never cause an injury, right? And it's been like two years. And I haven't been able to like contract my front delt and my, the long head of my bicep on the left side, right? I tried everything. It's like I have nerve damage and could not contract these muscles. You know what fixed it? Long duration isometrics. Like, for example, my shoulders, I would just hold the top position of an overhead press in the spin machine for three minutes. And dude, my shoulders blew up so much at my left side now is bigger than my right side. Same thing with my biceps. For two years, like I literally had no left bicep. And what I started doing was just holding the 90 degrees position open and curl. And again, three minutes. And dude, I'm back to curling like 90 pounds. And my, my bicep, my left bicep is almost caught up to my right side. Now, if you told the science-based guys get one of the great method for hypertrophy is to hold the position for three minutes, you'd be called crazy, right? But it's not just me. I've used that method with two competitive bodybuilders who within two weeks made significant change in shoulders development using those holds. And you know what's funny? And that's super contoured, contoured, intuitive is that we start the workout workout with that. Like two sets holding three minutes at the top, right? So the shoulders, you're going to get a massive pump. And I'm, I'm, I really mean massive. Like, both commented like it's a pump unlike any type of pump I've ever had before. But to meet the most surprising thing in that in both cases, these guys, despite completely frying those shoulders on those holds, beat their shoulder press PR five minutes afterwards. Like in that same workout. So to me, that was shocking. My theory is maybe like that massive swelling in that muscle caused an increase in stabilization, increasing pressure on the joint, allowing you to press more weight. But it was significant. I'm talking a guy who did like 315 four reps on shoulder press in his mid machine. It's crazy. So I mean lots of stuff is not supposed to work, but it does. We've seen things like someone gets a really good pump from doing a bunch of hamstring curls. Hamstrings are pumped and all of a sudden you're actually pushing some serious weight on squats. You do later, despite the supposed fatigue, although squatting doesn't actually recruit or put much tension on the hamstrings. However, if they're bigger, pumped up, the knees are warmed up. There's actually something you're literally springing off of. The thing is that many, a lot more stuff happens with an exercise than just I'm creating the trigger to stimulate muscle growth. There's so much more to it than that. Like, for example, pre-fatiguing a muscle might be used either to increase the recruitment of that muscle in a compound movement or decrease it depending on how you're doing that set. For example, let's say that I have dominant triceps. Well, I could fatigue my triceps to the point where when I'm bench pressing, the body will change its muscle recruitment strategy and use more pectoral rather than triceps. So you can focus more on the chest. Someone with, let's say, chest dominant and wants more triceps could actually do some triceps work, but non-fatiguing. Just contraction practice to make those neuromuscular junction more sensitive, which brings in the triceps more. So in both cases, you're doing a tricep exercise prior to bench pressing, but you have two opposite effects depending on how you do it. Now, in theory, it should not work, but it does because it's not just about creating the stimulus for growth in the muscle. It's about programming the brain to do what you want. So if you have a lagging chest, you're going to use strategies to change your recruitment pattern in movement. When you do an exercise, you're going to use the muscle that either has the best leverage to do the exercise or that is dominant because the popular theory now is neuromuscular matching. The muscle that has the best leverage or the muscle fiber that have the best leverage to lift the weight will be recruited first of or do foremost of the work. But in reality, it's not as simple. I've seen, for example, hockey players because they use their legs so much in their sport, when they go away in the gym, they're going to have a bias toward glutes because that's what they're using when they're skating much more than quads. So even if they're squatting, most hockey players will get glutes grow, not quads grow, even though neuromuscular matching says that you should be recruiting quads. So there are a lot more than that. And oftentimes your natural neurological tendencies, what your brain wants to use the most because you have more experience contracting that muscle might go So against your goal, you might favor a muscle that is already developed to your liking and you want to focus on other muscles. So now you can obviously change exercise or we can use techniques to bias the muscle you want to hit. For example, if you bench pressing, right? Now that's going to be hard on your ego because it's going to require using less weight. The more weight you use, the less capable you are of biasing a muscle because the more the heavier the load, the more you go toward your natural setting, natural neurological setting. But let's say you want to focus more on your chest while you try to squeeze the bar inward. That's going to recruit chest. If you want to hit the triceps more, try to spread the bar apart. So during the exact same exercise, you can actually bias one muscle over the other depending on how you're applying force to the bar. So it sounds like you're describing mind muscle connection when you're working with synergistic muscles that work together in movement. Yeah. Well, yes, but it's not just about like I'm feeling that muscle bro. It's really more a matter of the way you apply force, the vector of force application changes muscle recruitment. So let's say you're grabbing the bar, you're trying to spread the bar apart. It's not moving a force because you're holding it, but you're still applying force that way. And that will recruit more triceps because the function of the triceps is to do that. And even that here, the petrol, it's more this. So if you apply force inward, then you're telling your brain, this is the muscle I want to use, the petrol, because if I'm trying to do this, it's an isometric action, but it still recruits the muscle that does that function. And when you're pressing that way, then you obviously will recruit us muscle more. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. So one of the things I was actually going to ask you about and we can go to it is you've been posting recently about overcoming isometrics and isometrics in general. It's funny, obviously I understand the concept and friends of mine like Lee Boyce and Melody Schoenfeld have both done presentations on isometrics. But I feel like I have a bit of a blind spot in adopting it into my training matrix. So can you maybe give, you know, the enthusiast, certainly entry level coach breakdown of the utility of isometrics and maybe explain what overcoming isometrics are, so that's useful. So I've been using isometrics for at least 25, 27 years. It was always, because when I was training athletes, more frequently my system was one day is focused on isometric, one day is focused on eccentric, one day is focused on concentric. It doesn't mean that we do exclusively that type of contraction, but we have a focus on that isometric has always been super interesting to me. Maybe my favorite method, I first learned from it from old books by Bob, Hoffman and so on and so forth. So you have basically two types of, well, we have three types of isometrics. Four, if you include the functional isometrics, which is a mix of overcoming and dynamic movement. But let's start with the three big broad families. The first one being overcoming isometrics. Lying isometrics is you're trying to move a weight that cannot be moved. So you're trying to overcome the resistance, right? Yielding isometrics is you are holding a weight in place. You're trying to prevent that weight from going down. So the, the comparison would be let's say an overcoming isometrics on bench press would be bench pressing in the power rack against the safety pins because you cannot move the whole rack, right? That's sport that don't floor. Yielding isometrics would be loading the bar with let's say 70% of your maximum 60% and holding a key position in the lift for a certain period of time. And then you have the third one, which is the oscillatory isometrics, which is more than athletic thing. So you have like you're catching the weight and you're contracting so you're stabilizing and then you're pushing it right back up and then catching it again. So essentially like micro contraction as thing of fraction of a second or you're pushing against a bar releasing, pushing releasing, pushing releasing, pushing releasing. So it's like it, it's trained the nervous system to turn the motor units on enough, on enough, on enough, on enough, which is very useful for explosive activities like sprinting like jumping, like changing directions. Now but if we stick to the two one that will interest us as people who want to get stronger or more muscular, so you have the overcoming and yielding. So let's look at the benefit of the two types. And they are obviously subcategories. So to me the overcoming asometrics is mostly used as a strength builder and as a muscle contraction enhancer or as an activation tool. When you apply force against an immovable resistance like all the strength you have like you're pushing as hard as humanly possible for like six to nine seconds. You just want to stay in the ATP system. So if you go above nine seconds then you start glycolysis. So you're basically shifting down when it comes to force production. You want to stay at six to nine seconds. So if you're pushing as hard as humanly possible you will actually recruit more motor units than during a maximum dynamic effort. So you can actually train your brain to recruit more motor units. Of course the benefits for strength are quite obvious. If you recruit more motor units going to be stronger. But for hypertrophy if you train your nervous system to be better at recruiting those fast with fibers then you're going to be better during a regular set at recruiting them, bringing them into play, getting a stronger growth stimulus with less effort. Also a side benefit is that the reason why you're recruiting so many so much more fibers with the isometrics is that it sends a stronger signal from the brain to the muscle. The stronger the signal means that when you're doing a regular lifting you need a lower percentage of your top signal strength. That means you can do more volume because you have less risk of central fatigue. Central fatigue is what? It's that signal getting weaker and weaker and weaker. But if it's 50% stronger even if you lose 25%, 30%, 50% of your capacity to send a signal you're still capable of sending a strong enough signal to recruit those fast switch fibers. You can do more effective sets. So the stronger the nervous system the more effective volume you can do the more growth you'll get. Furthermore overcoming isometrics can be useful and to me that's the best use for overcoming isometrics to fix a weak point in a lift. The main drawback but also the main quality of an overcoming isometrics is that you are increasing strength at the angle being trained and then you have like a 15% or 15 degrees carry over range. But if you let's say you have a bench press and your sticking point is let's say six inches from the chest well you can train that range with very little fatigue with very little energy use. So you can add that to your workout once you're done with bench pressing without adding too much more you're not going to add muscle damage. You're not going to have much fatigue much more fatigue and not burn much more fuel. So you can add that work without increasing the risk of over training and it's going to increase rapidly the strength of that sticking point. Now if you're looking at yielding isometrics holding a position or holding a weight preventing the weight from dropping down. So it can be like holding a curl like I was the example I mentioned earlier like I was holding at 90 degrees for three minutes. I was holding the shoulder press top position for three minutes. For example these are extreme cases we call them extreme isometrics okay. You essentially have two different types of extreme isometrics either in the short or the shortened position or the length in position which would be called loaded stretching okay. So for example doing a bench press with dumbbells and holding that low position okay. Now if you look at the short extremistometrics that is probably the best method to rapidly increase the capacity to recruit a muscle okay. And depending on the duration of the set it can also trigger a significant amount of growth because think about it the muscle and again it depends on how you do it. It's just about holding the position you actually have to voluntarily contract the target muscle as hard as you can okay. So you are are actually practicing contracting that muscle for three minutes. So that's 20 times the contraction practice you get from a set. So that rapidly improves the capacity of the neuromuscular junction to receive the activation signal. And on top of that, you get a monstrous accumulation of metabolites in that muscle. Because when the muscle is contracted, blood cannot come in or out. So you rapidly accumulate lactate, hydrogen ions, stuff like that. And you get the hormonal response from that. So it is a fairly decent hypertrophy stimulus on itself. If you do the loaded stretch, the loaded stretch is the best training method nobody's doing. The benefits are almost too many to quote. I mean, you have obviously an increase in range of motion, right? Because you are in the longest position you can reach for a muscle. And you're holding that position. What will happen, depending on the duration of the set, which can range from one minute to three minutes? Fatigue sets in, peripheral fatigue. The muscle gets tired. And it can no longer hold the weight. But you're already in the lowest position, you can voluntary go to. So what happens is the fatigue. The weight starts sinking down lower. Lower than you can first achieve during the set. And that trains the nervous system to, hey, know what? That range that I could not reach exists. I can get there without injury. Most problems in range of motion are neurological, not muscular. The nervous system either ignore that despite of the range of motion exists or doesn't know it can get there safely. So the loaded stretch, because you're getting fatigued, the protective mechanism gets out of the way. And you can reach at lower position. It rapidly increases range of motion. But more than that, and that is the main difference between loaded stretch and stretching. Is that it increases range of motion while the muscle is contracted? So that trains the body to be able to contract the muscle where it's normally not contracting. Because a more lengthened muscle, you have less room to create those cross bridges. Acted miles in cross bridges. It's harder to produce force. But now you're training your muscle to produce force in its most extreme state. So when let's say you're an athlete and you're tackling someone and your shoulders go way out of your normal range, normally it would snap because the muscle just cannot produce force. And then the joint goes on at a whack because of the force applied to it. But if you're capable of producing force in an extreme position, it can absorb the external force applying that stretch action. So the release of injury is much lower, okay? It also makes you stronger in a position where you're normally weaker and have to rely on stretch reflex to get the job done. But importantly, interestingly, it also has a very strong hypertrophy effect. First, because, well, you are contracting the muscle. You are holding a load. Force is being produced. Tension is being produced. So you're producing a pretty high level of tension because, as you know, the slower the movement, the higher the tension potential. You're not moving. You can produce maximum tension and you're maintaining the tension for a long period of time, which sends a very strong signal because contrary to dynamic exercise, you can hold a load very close to maximum for three minutes. You will never be able to do reps for three minutes. So it's actually very high level of tension. So that's the first growth stimulus. But more than that, because the muscle is stretched and contracting, these two things, both the stretch and the contraction, compress the capillaries that send blood to the muscle. So blood cannot come in or out. Oxygen cannot come in. Metabolites cannot come out. So that Ipoxia lack of oxygen and that accumulation of metabolites increase growth factors, IGF1 mechanical growth factor in that muscle which is anabolic. And furthermore, research have shown that that loaded stretch increases the sensitivity of the IGF1 receptors. So now you're in a situation where you get an increase in IGF1 level because of the metabolites and Ipoxia and an increase in the receptor sensitivity. See, that's why it's not just about mechanical tension, even if the studies show that. You need the mechanical, and you do get the mechanical tension. That's the main driver during the loaded stretch, but you get the best way to explain growth factors, mechanical tension and hypertrophy is talking about growing crops or growing a plant. So if you want a plant to grow, you need the basics. You need song, you need water, you need a fertile soil. If you don't have these three elements, the plant won't grow, right? These three factors, those bread and butter, the basics, it's your mechanical tension, okay? You absolutely need that to some extent to stimulate growth. Then if you want the plant to grow faster, you add fertilizer, okay? Now you have the soil, the sun, the water, you add fertilizer, the plants grows faster, okay? The fertilizer is the growth factors, okay? Now, if I'm putting fertilizer, but I have no water, no sun, no soil, it doesn't grow, it actually kills the plant. So you cannot have just the growth factor, I'm gonna inject IGF1 and not train, it's not gonna work, okay? The growth factors potentiate the response from the mechanical tension, okay? That's very important. So that's basically your hypertrophy. Now, I personally, my favorite form of isometrics, is the yielding isometrics. So holding a weight in a certain position or holding a position, because it has met much more uses than the overcoming. Overcoming is great for fixing a sticking point, to amp up the nervous system, or to maintain strength in season for an athlete, without much energy expenditure, no muscle damage, no soreness, no whatever, right? But yielding, you can use the loaded stretch, you can use the position of highest tension, you can use a key athletic position, you can use the shortened position, depending on the effect you want, okay? And you can change the duration. What I find is that you're gonna do set of one minute, if your goal is to maximize tension, if you wanna maximize potentiation, if you want to maximize strength, okay? And it's also obviously gonna strengthen those tendons quite a bit, because especially the loaded stretch version, which is great to reduce the injury of a movement. And if you go at two minutes, that's to me the sweet spot for hypertrophy, for holding a position, okay? Either loaded stretch, shortened position, or the position of highest tension. And three minutes is great for training, like in my case, a muscle that you lost the capacity to contract or to recruit. So it's contraction practice, it's feeling that muscle, mind muscle connection, or endurance, stuff like that. So it really a matter of what you wanna train. What I find is to get those structural changes, so changing the muscle construction, increasing hypertrophy, you need at least a time under tension of three minutes of those yielding isometrics. So it could be three sets of one minute, could be two sets of two minutes, it's one set of three minutes. You can sometimes go as high as six minutes with the bodybuilders that I'm training, but I'm training, but because they're on anabolic, it's a different response. Because the main thing that people ignore with anabolic is that the main benefit is that they make the slow twitch fibers as sensitive to growth, as the fast twitch fibers. So that's why methods that would not work with naturals, like the very high volume, the super high reps, not going anywhere close to failure, it works with bodybuilders using anabolic, because all these methods never actually reached the fast twitch fibers, doesn't really matter because the slow twitch fibers for them will have the same growth response to training. Whereas on natural lifters, you do want to maximize fast twitch recruitment, if you're going to maximize eye pro-drophy. - There's a lot there. There's one thing I grab. No, this is good, I'm learning stuff, which is one of the side benefits of this. There was one thing, and I wanted to grab onto it all of it. You made me think of anybody who fights in mixed martial arts and holding some of these positions where they're not strong, it can obviously, it makes you stronger those positions, but also more injury resilient when you are pushed into a stress-to-position. We're in another human. being is literally pulling on or pushing force against you. - 100%, okay? - Because that's possible. - I mean, when somebody is pulling you, it's essentially like having a dumbbell pulling you down. So it's an external force forcing the stretch, or you need to be able to contract that muscle when it's in its longest state to reduce the risk of injury. - And there's a fair bit of isometric tension in grappleings specifically when you are fighting. - Okay, it's okay. - Let's extend this a little bit, because we can bring this into eccentric contraction. So the negative portion. And I mean, I'm pretty comfortable saying that we are stronger in an eccentric contraction than we are in a concentric. I think the statistic might be something like a 30% to 40% stronger. - For most people, it's 20. Someone with 30, 40 is typically an extremely explosive athlete. I mean, the most explosive athletes I've trained all have an eccentric strength in a 40 to 50% range above their current concentric strength. - A quick break from this episode of Shoutout, Irpee Strength, and the RP Hyperetry App. I have a big confession. I've never used a coach before. I've always auto-regulated my training for decades. But I've known Dr. Mike Isertel and Nick Shaw, the founders of RP for years, and I'll get behind anything they create, including years of reading their books, consuming their media, attending their seminars, and having them a guest on the show. And I've been using the RP Hyperetry App now for several months. And several things have happened. It forced me to make smaller and more gradual, but better increases in weight, volume across time, like putting five pound plates on each side of a light press. Like, who does that? Never before, only 45. It cut out the jump volume. It made my workouts faster and more efficient. I show up with a plan. I didn't have to think about what to do. I feel more accountable having a lot of my progress. And I don't skip things because I don't feel like it. If hiring a one-on-one coach isn't for you, using the RP Hyperetry App is the next best thing to manage your gains and to take the guesswork out of your program. There's a 38-moneyback guarantee. So you can try it risk-free. And if you don't like it, I'll give you your money back. And I've also got you a $50 US dollar discount. So go to rpstreg.com/coats and use the code "coatsRP" or go to the link below in the show notes. That's rpstreg.com/coats and use the code "coatsRP." - Okay. And the way I've seen this one in practice, I've gotten a lot of people to be able to do their first shit up ever by, you know, you do a lot of vertical polling, you get their last stronger, what have you. And yes, there's an element of strength, the body ratio, you can't ignore that. But if they get close but they can't yet do that shit up, well, one of my favorite things is to have them hold an isometric hold, you know, at some part of maybe a mid range of a shit up, but actually getting them to jump or step to the top of the motion, try to stay there for a split second and then get them to lower themselves, their full body weight, for maybe, you know, three, four, five seconds total with control through the full range of motion. And most people can do that, even if they're not capable of a positive shit up, they can do that negative. And enough exposure of that and training through full range of motion at the eccentric. It's one of my favorite tactics works well for pushups, it works well for other things. But the way I want to tackle this is we also, in the old bodybuilding lore, we believe that the eccentric phase of lifting was the most important part for muscle building now. Now I'm hearing different and it makes logical sense because if we are stronger in an eccentric that a concentric than, and you're training to near failure, well, you're actually training the concentric portion of the contraction and near failure. But you are probably not training the eccentric portion to near failure. Therefore, it may not be as good a stimulus from the eccentric. So by that logic, I'm comfortable saying that eccentric are not the key. They're a piece of a bigger puzzle. Can you explain all that? - Furthermore, what it also means, and that's a point I really changed my opinion on because I was, of course, of that belief, that the central, first of all, everybody told us that, the science back then told us that, the research told us that, but I'm going to get back to the original research in a moment, what it also means, I mean, especially if you're talking about natural lifters. Again, because there's a distinction that I mentioned briefly earlier on. A natural lifter needs to maximize fast switch motor units for maximizing growth, right? Now, recruiting those faster fibers is directly dependent on the amount of tension you have to produce, or the amount of force you have to produce. So, when doing an eccentric during a regular set, as you mentioned, you are significantly stronger during the eccentric. So not only do you not reach failure, when eccentric failure, once you reach concentric failure, all the reps you're doing eccentricly are easier, okay? I like to give the image that, to get faster fiber recruitment with a weight, the weight you're lifting needs to be at least 80% of what you can lift at that moment, okay? Doesn't necessarily mean 80% on the bar. Let's say, for example, that you have 70% on the bar, okay? On the first two or three reps, you're not recruiting the faster fibers, but you're fatiguing by two or three percent on each rep. So if the bar is 70%, rep number two feels like 73. Rep number three feels like 76. Rep number four feels like 79. Oh, you're getting close to 80. So by rep number four or five, you are recruiting the faster fibers during the concentric portion. But if you are 20% stronger eccentrically, then the weight also feels 20% lighter. So let's say I'm lifting 70% on rep number one, I'm actually lowering 50%. Mm, because I'm 20% stronger, see what I mean? So by rep number five, you are lifting that 80%. But you're still lowering only 60% of what you can lower, right? So you're not recruiting the faster fibers. So even if you're going more slowly, yes, you have more tension, but you're not recruiting those sexual fibers. It needs to feel like you're lowering at least 80% of your maximum lowering strength, which will only happen roughly when you hit concentric failure because you're 20%. So hitting your concentric failure means that you are attempting to lift away that is slightly above 100% of what you can lift at that moment because of fatigue. So that means now the centric, if you're 20% stronger, feels like 80% of what you can lower. So there is essentially no repetition in your set that recruit the faster fibers during the eccentric phase of the movement, right? So if you look at the research, the original research, the one that I caught in my first book in which I talked about the benefits of the eccentric overcome centric were done using isokinetic devices. So an isokinetic device is, imagine a leg extension. So it's an extension machine, but there's a motor in that. And isokinetic means that the movement goes at the same speed regardless of the force you're applying to the bar, right? So the faster you try to go, the more resistance the machine applies, right? So what happened is that the machine will always try to push as hard as it can to do the speed program. So let's say for example, you're doing an eccentric contraction and you program a speed of let's say 100 degrees per second which would be very fast, okay? Now I'm trying to resist that with all I can then the machine will actually produce a humongous amount of force to force me to go down with that speed. So that's why the original eccentric research actually found more hypertrophy and more strength gains with fast eccentric. Because the eccentric was more powerful exactly than the concentric of the same wrap. - Correct. - Because the machine needed to apply tons of force to force your resisting. I'm trying with all my force, my strength to prevent the machine from pushing me down. But the machine wants to go 100 degrees per second which is super fast, okay? So it's pushing a lot of weight. So if I'm not resisting much, then it won't apply much force. So when they were doing those research, it was all max effort concentrics. Even if they did 10 reps because I might be fatigue 5% per rep but I'm still trying to apply as much force on the bar and the machine will reduce the force application. It just wants to go at a certain speed, right? So all those research found that eccentric led to greater amount of hypertrophy and strength but that was because the force applied by the machine was much higher than when you were doing the lifting portion. Okay? Because you're stronger eccentric. So the machine adapts the amount of resistance to the amount of force you're producing, if I'm 20% stronger, it applies 20% more force downward. So now it makes the eccentric rep more effective. So the real take on message is that a super maximally eccentric, meaning an eccentric load that exceeds what you can lift is very effective for growth and strength. I'm not saying it's safe but it's effective, but going slowly on purpose during a regular set will not lead to more growth. What it does, it increases control of the movement. It maintains the contraction of the muscle, whereas if I'm lowering without controlling the weight, you're losing that tension and you might lose some of the capacity to recruit the muscle, muscle and a correlation of lactate and stuff like that. So it's got a major factor, it's not a major factor. There's even a case to be made for the benefit of a fast eccentric for strength. And I actually wrote an article about that that I called the perfect rep on tination. And the way I explain it is like the first, I'm not even sure it's there anymore because they have like taken out lots of articles out of the site. The first two-third of the eccentric was done under control, not super slow, just under control to make sure that you're maintaining the contraction of the muscle. The main benefit of a slow eccentric in my opinion is mostly with beginners because beginners already have a hard time contracting their muscles. Where should I feel this coach, right? We've all heard that, right? So if you go fast on the eccentric, you lose that contraction. Going more slowly makes it easier to contract that muscle. So while you're learning to use your muscle, you're learning to perform an exercise, there is a benefit. So the first two-third would be under control and the last third would actually speed up the eccentric. And then when you start the concentric, you try to apply as much force as you can. So what will happen is that you go from a fairly rapid eccentric to a fairly rapid concentric. That creates a lot of shearing force at that turnaround point. Where the muscle is what? The muscle is lengthened. So in that lengthened state, which for many muscle is the part that is most sensitive to grow, right? Then that creating that forceful turnaround, forceful meaning there's a big difference between the eccentric and the concentric strength or velocity at that turnaround. When you're switching from eccentric to concentric, there's a huge amount of force, huge amount of tension in that muscle in the most grow prone section of the range of motion. Of course, that's kind of like plyometrics. So you don't use plyometrics from the start with an athlete. He's going to get injured, right? So it's something that you eventually can work up to once you learn to use your muscles. You can load safely in those long, in those lengthened state, and you have stronger tendons and stuff like that, but there's a case to be made for that. It's a little like fast eccentric portion, potentiating the growth stimulus. This episode is brought to you by Just Bite Me Meals. I work long days and won't compromise my client experience or sacrifice my work at sleep or nutrition. So I needed a whole game reliable meal prep service so I could save time on cooking and chopping and have more time for the stuff that matters. 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Going back one step, I think logically a couple of tactics that would probably work reasonably well to elicit eccentric effectively would be forced reps. So classic bodybuilder training tool where you literally have a partner who may be lifted, let's say at a curl, they lift the bar for you and past the point where you can no longer do a concentric. And then you are still doing any centric past your ability to do the concentric. If you get hit and centric failure, then your partner helps you do the go to eccentric failure go to well, you look Mike Menser actually like wrote about that like 30 years, 40 years ago, you go to concentric failure, then you're going to hold the weight for as long as you can hold it. So you go to isometric failure, which is slightly stronger when you cannot lift the weight anymore, you can still hold it in the position for X amount of seconds. And then you go to eccentric failure, so you do the eccentric as slowly as possible and your partner helps you lift it up. But there are other methods that does the exact same thing that first you can have the two one technique. Because you do the concentric with two limbs and you do the eccentric with one limb. So leg curl, you go up with two legs, remove one leg, go down with one leg under control. And you can also have the two movement technique. Let's say you're doing I had a client do this tomorrow yesterday. We did dumbbell tricep lying dumbbell tricep extension, right. So we do the extension and when he can no longer lift it up. What we do is we continue doing the eccentric as a tricep extension, then drop the elbows and do a press concentric. Then we can keep doing the centrics and pressing concentric can do the same thing with flies, for example. Or you can even do that kind of regular movement like a good old Zotman curl, for example, you curl and the supinated and you do the lowering in a pronated, which is weaker in that position. And a lot of the stuff is classical stuff that classical bodybuilders figured out that worked, right. I think there's obviously and I want you to speak to this some trade off where you're if you're doing a lot of eccentric to failure. Certainly what we call traditional past failure training. And we know the eccentric cause more muscle damage and therefore more soreness and more fatigue. There's going to be a line where you go too much too fast with the stuff and you're probably at a tip pass to point where there's so much muscle damage that actually interferes with how well you recover to trade or the next time. So thoughts on that. I was talking to a pro bodybuilder. I'm training. A guy you should definitely have on your podcast. I'm going to send you his information. The guy is super smart. He is a great prep coach. He has lots of very good information. I mean, he's worked under Dave Tate, other meadows and all that stuff. Yeah, I can read a lot of baggage of knowledge. When I thought him is that the muscle damage reduces insulin sensitivity that muscle. So that that slows down glycogen, the storing glycogen muscle, which is one of the first steps toward recovery. And that would obviously also decrease. I mean, what's it uptake by the muscle, reducing the rate of repair that muscle? Okay, too much damage will be a negative. Not only that, if you're so excessive, you can actually cause so much muscle damage that the muscle fibers cannot be repaired. They have to be regenerated. So you actually use material from satellite cells to create new muscle fibers. But since they're new fibers are going to be smaller in the first ones, we're actually losing muscle size. That's why people oftentimes lose muscle when they doing too much work because of that. But yeah, so I'm going to give you an example. Okay, and that that's not necessarily a body centric, but it's about doing so much damage that you're making the session a negative rather than positive. A few years back, I wanted to get back into Olympic weightlifting, because I just did like a four plates high poll on tination, which I never done when I was competing weightlifting. Well, dude, if I get my technique back, I'm going to snatch 400 and clean like 450. So, but the problem is that I had been training like a bro for like five years, which mean no legs, right? So I need to regain my leg strength. So the first workout in I did a complex. So three extra three, yeah, three exercises as a circuit quarter complex. So was the first one was back squat with chains added on and the weight releases to emphasize the centric weight releases are like hooks you attached to the bar and you can lower like 20 to 30% more than you're lifting. And five reps with that would have fairly heavy weight at the time. Then I did 10 jump squats with 60 kilos and then 10 depth jumps. So standing on a box, 1.5 meters high, dropping on the floor and jumping as high as possible. And I did 10 rounds of depth. I was like, dude, that's a fucking awesome workout. I'm going to go. You must have had sore for seven days doing that much eccentric overload. 21 days. 21 days, okay. For 21 days, I was incapable of doing a body weight squad. My vatius lateralis were so sore. It took 28 days and I'm not exact, that's the exact number of days. It took me 28 days to be able to squat the same weight I had in the bar for that workout. So, of course, that's an extreme example, but that's an example of that. You know what? By wanting to do too much of a good thing, you can actually turn the workout into a big negative. Sounds like what Rich Piat is, eight-hour herbs workout, some deniacal shit like that. You said that Paulican had this one-the-arm cure. Actually, another guy that came up with it like in the 1960s, but Charles Rornarticle on Teenation about like the one-the-arm cure, you would essentially do like a microarm workout every 30 minutes, and you would like have a shit done of like carbs in there, just to maximum swelling, lots of sodium. So, you would gain like an inch and a half on your arm, which it was just swelling, but anyway. I've heard about protocols like that actually last a little while, but you're right, it's swelling. But you said complexes, and so this was a question I had planned. So, it's perfect. I would love for you to define cluster sets and complexes, how you use them, and how effective they are. Well, let's start with complexes because we were on that subject. Complexes and not to be mistaken with the barbell complexes, like a java-rich complex, what you do is say, you do five different barbell exercise with the same weight without dropping the bar. Okay, or the barbell complex in CrossFit or something like that. That's not what I'm talking about. Complexes are essentially a cladic training tool, in most cases, in most cases. You can use them for hypertrophy if you really put your mind to it, but it's mostly a performance tool. Because what you do with it in the complex is you're training the same movement pattern, okay, let's say a squat, the squatting pattern, the hinge pattern, a press pattern. But with different point in the strength velocity curve, or the force velocity curve. So, for example, let's take the complex idea stupidly, okay. You have the squat, which is a strength movement. Then you have the barbell jump squat, which is a strength speed movement, like heavy power movement. Then you would have the depth jump, which would be a reactive strength movement. So, you have three different types of strength application for the same movement pattern. I'm going to use an extreme example that I used with Bob Saladatli and football players. We had five different points in the strength curve in one complex. So, the first one was an overload, like a movement that would overload a range of motion using your sports. So, for example, when you're sprinting or when you're playing football or whatever, the knee angle, the hip angle you want is roughly 100 degrees. You're not going lower than that. So, it was a half-ish squat from pins, okay. Obviously, using more weight than you can use on a full-back squat, okay. So, you do, let's say, a set of three to five reps. Very heavy. Then you would rest two or three minutes, because that's the thing with complex. You have a rest period between station. It's not circuit training. You want the nervous system to be fresh at each station, because you want to maximize force production, regardless of the type of force you're trying to apply. The second exercise would be a strength movement. It would be a full-back squat or a full-front squat. Again, set of three to five reps, resting two to three-ish minutes. Then you would move on to a strength speed movement, which could either be, let's say, a power clean, or it could be a loaded-jump squat, okay. So, heavy-ish power moving fast with a significant amount of weight. Then, we would rest two or three minutes. We would have the fourth station, which would be a speed-strength movement. So, now, it's maximum speed with no load. So, it could be a vertical jump. It could be broad jumps. It could be stuff like that, okay. But each jump with a pause. I'm jumping. I'm resetting. I'm jumping. I'm resetting. Again, something like two to five reps. The last station would be more of a reactive strength movement. It could be depth jumps, but normally it would go with hurtle jumps. Vertical jump in series. As soon as you learn, you jump again. Broad jump in series. Knee tuck jumps, stuff like that. So, you have different points in forced application. You can also do that, instead of doing the hurtle jump, you can do a sprint, for example. So, that was an example of an extreme complex, five station. You could do like three sets of that, and that's your workout. You cannot do anything else. You're done. I found that you can actually just train the two extremes, and it works just as well. You don't need those middle points. So, for example, doing that's your very heavy half squat from pins, and then doing vertical jump or jump squat, as a complex would give you most of the gains than you would get from the multiple point complexes. A lot more time efficient, a lot less fatigue. Of course. Of course. And then you can vary depending on, because reactive strength is a different animal in itself. So, you might do that differently, but that's one thing you can do. You can also use it for, let's say, technique improvement. For example, you could do a loaded version of a sporting movement. Let's say you're a baseball player, okay? You can do a loaded version of a swing. So, basically using a heavier bat than you normally would eating a ball, or throwing a ball that is heavier than a regular ball, then you would do an under-loaded version of a movement. So, let's say swinging a lighter bat, throwing a lighter ball, for example. And then you would do the regular sport movement. So, what happens in doing that complex is that the heavy movement increases neurological activation. It also makes the muscles involved in that action stronger, keep all the producing more force. And ironically, in movements like a throw, like a swing, it improves what we call sequencing, okay? Sequencing is the order in which the segment of your body comes into play. So, let's say, for example, in a golf swing, okay? You start by applying, normally you should start to apply force on the ground with your feet. Then your hips shoot. Then your core shoots. Then you have the whole shoulder girdle shooting. Then the arms follow and the wrists finish. That's the proper sequence. What happens is that most people, especially strong people, they will start swinging with their arms first. They want to muscle the bar. When you have a heavier club, let's say for example, a club that is let's say 6% heavier than a regular club, okay? Then it automatically slow down your arms. So, the arms now get back in their proper sequence because they cannot be fired first, because they will be lagging behind everything out. So, that improves technique. So, that's the purpose of the heavier work. Then you have the lighter work, which trains your nervous system to go faster, okay? Personally, when I see baseball players swinging, like putting weight donuts on the bar on the bat and swinging slowly, or people sprinting with added weight, but not doing the over-speed variation. I'm thinking you're training to be slow. You're training to be slow. There's some evidence to support what you just said, because I have heard that especially with the weight of donuts, just before you step up to the plate, it actually has a net negative, because I could also see this logically that you're altering the motor pattern and your timing of a precision skill movement, too. That's 100%. You should never do a sporting movement slower than usual, because of an overload, without a faster version, because you're going to learn to learn more about it. Actually, when I was doing my master's, that's actually the study I did. We had to do a quote-unquote study. It was not an official study, but as if we were doing a test. What I had to do is I had the subject do a vertical jump with a weight vest, 20% of their body weight, so they would do a set of 10 reps. Then they would have a three minutes wash-up period to remove the defective fatigue, and then they would do a vertical jump. They would do a vertical jump first, then they would do the set of 10 reps of loaded jump squats, then they would do a vertical jump. I would ask them, "Did you jump higher the first time or second time?" Every single subject said, "I jumped higher the second time." Every single subject jumped lower on the second time after the loaded squats. It increases the perception of speed, because your brain is comparing the regular vertical jump speed with the last information it had, which was the jump squat with the weight. The brain compares, "Okay, I went that speed with the want to. unloaded. So of course, it feels faster by comparison, the contrast is marked. But compared to the first jump, the performance was better prior to the heavy loading. So the baseball players should actually swing a lighter bat before going on play. Okay, that's interesting. I want to break something down. So if someone uses, let's say, let's say a track bar jump. So that's a weighted jump. Or let's say you have them sprint, because I've been doing this with with young hockey players. You have them sprint with a sled. Now my logic with sprinting with the sled, obviously there's resistance there. So they have to work harder. But also it's a constraint that prevents them from actually getting maximum speed despite the fact that they're able to have to do the exertion. Now logically, it would stand a reason they would get stronger. And therefore performing later on, they would be stronger and faster. Is that untrue if we don't turn around afterwards and just have them do something without the constraint? The sled is a different animal. Sled sprints are a different animal because it's not sprinting. It is. But it's not an actual sprinting technique. You're not in this position, you're using your arms. So the brain does not interpret it as it's a sprint. Furthermore, hockey players don't sprint on the ice. They're skating. It's not the same movement pattern, right? But even then, when the one studies looked at loaded sprints with sled either pulling a sled or pushing a crawler, up to 20 meter sprints. Even with as high as 50 percent body weight, it had a positive impact on sprinting speed over 60 meters. Okay, here's the reason is that when you are doing a sled sprint, what are you doing a sprint? The first 10 meters, it's a strength thing. It is strength dependent. You're not using the stretch reflex yet. It's not about the speed of the turnaround speed with your flexors. It's not about stride frequency. It's not about stride length. It's just about how much force you can apply on the ground to overcome the inertia from the start. Okay, so it is 100 percent strength dependent. Great. Who was the, any one track coach? I don't remember who, Bushic Schneider said that from 0 to 10, it's the back squat. From 10 to 30, it's the power clean. Over 30, it's just sprinting drills. Okay, so the first 10 to 20 meters will be greatly influenced by increasing your capacity to apply force on the ground. Now, the squat is a pretty good movement for that, but the sled sprint is even better. Because you're applying force to the ground in a body position that mimics the body position at the start of a sprint, which is the torso as close to parallel to the ground as possible. Okay, when you look at the top speed position, the position where you reach your maximum velocity, you are upright. Because in upright position maximizes the capacity to have a longer stride length and a shorter ground contact time. Okay, because when you reach that top speed, you're going from like you had your initial acceleration and now you want to get into top speed region, you don't need to apply more force to the ground. It's just a matter of using more of the stretch reflex and stride frequency and stride length. You're not applying more force. So that's why the stronger sprints are great starters, but they're not necessarily strong finishes and vice versa. But the first 10 to 20 meters, either on ice, because the strongest correlation between speed on ice, well, it is the 10 meters sprint. That's 20 meters sprints or 10 to 20 meters sprints with a sled. That's these two. Okay, if you want to test, if you want to improve someone's speed on the ice, improve their broad jumps, their 10 to 20 meters sled sprints, and their 10 to 20 meters sprint. That 100% will correlate with any increase in speed on the ice. But okay, now why not do sled sprints that are, let's say 30 to 60 meters? Because once you reach your, once you finish your acceleration phase, which is anywhere between 10 and 20 meters, but it's the first 10 meters for sure. You go from that position. So your motor is behind you, motor being your hips, right? So the shoulders are in front of the hips. Okay, you're like in a rocket position. That is a position where you are better position to apply force, push the ground backward, push the ground backward, which is what you want in acceleration phase. But once you are finished with that initial acceleration, what happens is your body gradually go upright. Now your motor is not behind you. It's underneath you. So it has less resistance. It's easier to propel. And now it's a matter of straight length and straight frequency, straight frequency being minimizing ground contact and being able to bring that hip flexure up as fast as possible. So when you're doing sled sprints, you are training the opposite of what you want to top speed. The slab shorten your straight length because you cannot go far forward if you're leaning forward and the motor is behind you, right? It decreases straight frequency because you want to apply force, more force to the ground applying force, meaning longer contact time. And it means a body position that allows you to do that. So if you're sprinting with a slab over 60 meters, especially a proller for 60 meters, you are training yourself to stay in the acceleration position instead of the top speed position when you need it. Now to mention, you're getting into different energy systems anyway because the duration of it. One thing I wanted to create a picture for people, if you go and you look at video or stills of Usain Bolt as a really good example or any sprinters, these guys are very upright. Almost looks like they're almost leaning back exactly. And what you said about the the the stride length and the stride, the rate at which you turn over your hips, a bolt has been studied at least all six foot five. He turns over his hips at the same rate as the other sprinters. He's not actually faster. Now because he's got longer limbs, it actually is impressive that he turns over as fast as the other ones, but he gets more out of every stride length. So it's the same hip turnover, but a longer stride like, which is one of the reasons why he said, God, he's an alien. He's an alien. He shouldn't that shouldn't exist. Okay. And now I cut you off. You're going to say something else. No, I was just going to maybe switch to clusters. Yes, please. Yes. So clusters are either what, to me, the main benefit of clusters is even though it's a strength, it's seen as a strength method. It's one of the most powerful hypertrophy method you can use, especially if you're an advanced lifter. Okay. Clusters essentially means that you have rest periods between reps. So it can be between every rep. It can be every two reps, every three reps. You get the point. Okay. Personally, me, when I refer to clusters, I normally use either single reps or double reps. So it's either like one rep rest, one rep rest, one rep rest, or two reps rest, two reps rest. So when I'm training someone for strength, I will go clusters with single reps. So it's singles with a respiratory ranging between 15 and 30 or even 45 seconds, depending on is part of that because we keep seeing research how you get less strength improvement, the closer you get to failure, you get better hypertrophy as you get close to failure. But are you deliberately doing a lower rep? So that way you're getting a fast, strong rep, but you're not actually taking that to failure, even though it's heavy weight, is that right? I mean, in a cluster, eventually, like when we use it, we actually reach a point where you're close to failure. But most of the reps, yes, what you do is you minimize fatigue, so you have much lower force degradation from rep to rep, or even power degradation if you use clusters for maximum speed because it could be used if you want to maximize power hop put. So let's say you do one rep rest, 20 seconds, one rep of barbell jump squat. So you have personally, and that it's funny because I was training my son, and we are in a speed phase. He's in soccer season, so we don't do much strength lifting, we just keep like the barbell squat and power clean in there. So it's much more like drills to improve speed of movement. So today was speed of movement. So let's say the drills we did were just to learn to be fast. So because most kids are, they have problem with the frequency of movement. They need coordination, you need more experience to be good at that quick turnaround. So what we do the first drill is he is seated on a bench, and he's trying to run with his legs. So just like trying to bring the knees up, knees up, knees up, like just trying to run fast in place sitting on a bench So that like decreases the technical difficulty of the exercise versus a full-on Sprint and you can go really really really fast with that We then we did like lie down the floor Eels on a bench and just like like doing as fast as possible tapping the bench So just basically movement where you actually go much faster than you would normally go when you're sprinting because you have no Resistance so when you're sitting on a bench you don't have to sustain your body weight so your legs can actually go much much much much faster than they would normally go when you're sprinting So you're training in a system to have that super faster and around that that's the same thing as when we were The overspeed portion of the complex. You're training you're swinging either with a lighter club that allows you to go Something like 10% faster or when you're sprinting you have you can either have like a pulley that there's a Assistant called the 1080 1080 is essentially like a box There's a rope that as a motor and it can actually pull you forward or or add resistance Super great tool, but it's super expensive, but what you can do is sprinting in a slight downhill Okay, not a huge downhill because now it becomes an eccentric absorption drill, but just very slight downhill slope or you can have someone The attention elastic here and someone starts sprinting in front of you So and then it pulls you at the start so you you actually reach a higher velocity and your body doesn't have a choice But to increase frequency so that you don't fall forward So essentially you're training a nervous system to go faster than it thinks it can move to me. That's So that's what we're doing But that's nervous and training. Yeah To my coach listeners, I have a little something of value for you a $1,500 value seminar for just 19 dollars But let me explain the context first endorsing people I know and trust is everything my friend Dr. Sean pastouch It is the founder of active life Sean. I had presented at fitness conferences together And we share a philosophy on helping coaches serve their clients better and Want caring professionals to stay in fulfilling career. They love Sean and active life have something a value for you If your fitness coach who works with clients who have pain and moving limitations and isn't that almost every client And you feel like you're guessing in solutions instead of following a system active life's professional biomechanics assessment workshop Will be a value to you. It's a two-day live online workshop where you'll learn foundational principles behind assessment load management and how to actually help clients move and feel better This used to be a $1,500 seminar that people would fly into attend right now It's just 19 dollars and for listeners of the show the CEO upgrade worth a hundred bucks is completely free Just use the code codes at checkout go to the link in the description to grab your spot again use the code codes at checkout I it sounded also like you were describing Tantrum kicks which I've seen like Megan Calaway. Yes. Yeah Often we'll do this stuff where for example, you might be laying You set up a band in a rack where your heels are up legs are more or less straight But you're basically kicking it to spandas. That's a straight lag hip bridge position And then you're going up. Yeah, that's exactly what we did But we're not using the bands yet because the band does increase instability It also increases propulsion so it actually trains the hip flexors To be and they've extensors to go faster downward because you have to break the upper momentum because the bands create more momentum So we actually use a fixed cushion So just do that in movement so that it's a it's a step-by-step progression But I know for for some of the enthusiast listening we got a little technical here It's some of this there's a lot of advanced stuff here, but it's really great straight-to-get issued tools And it's not to say someone has to go oh now. How do I have to figure out how to put all of this stuff into a program? No, no, no, you can cherry pick play with pieces and see if it improves your training quality or performance results And more importantly you need to understand What each method or exercise does What does it improve and then you diagnose your own personal need I believe that for in one if you're an athlete in one training session you have a pretty clear signal To what you trying to accomplish. So for example today's session Was all about learning to fire those muscle faster So I did not accept slower movement as soon as I saw the speed decrease We stopped and I only picked exercise that train that very high frequency could even be just like tapping The table as fast as possible That that's trained a nervous because even though it's not sprinting just doing that with your hand That trains the nervous system to fire fast the signal fast. So that would be specific So that would be okay. I want to improve The capacity to fire those muscle faster. What technique could I use? I can use this. Let's use this It's not a matter of okay. This looks cool. I'm gonna do that because maybe it does not address a problem that you're athlete as So you need to look at the linchpin the one thing that we need to improve right now to get the faster Increasing for performance like for let's just take sprinting Okay, I was training this guy this afternoon, and we were doing Is training mostly to be for longer distance running And he's a very muscular guy So he's actually what I call a muscular runner So most of the force application when running not even sprinting just like jogging It's done by muscle contraction voluntarily muscle contraction that costs a lot of fuel And how to know you're a muscular runner? Well very quickly the limiting factor is not your cardiovascular capacity Your legs become heavy like you're full of lactic acid or lactate your legs burn Even if you're not going fast because it's muscle contraction muscle contraction muscle contraction What we want is to try to minimize the contraction of the muscle to use mostly stretch reflex So when you're running it becomes really efficient Like you you essentially rebounding on the street you have that as little muscle contraction as possible So we did all drills where you needed to spend as little time on the floor as possible And we could see at first like you're just doing that like the high knee drills like when you playing football like the high knees Going as fast as possible it was actually like pushing on the ground like it and trying to It was going so it looked like a robot because it was all muscle contraction You need to like the ground is hard the ground is hard the ground is hard because the way you do apply metrics Will depend on what you want to train So if you do for example, you want to increase the contribution Of voluntary muscle contraction when jumping or sprinting You're going to train on the soft surface you're going to use added weight Okay, things that increases the time you spend on the ground Not one or two seconds, but like just enough To use mostly muscle not reflex and if you want to maximize stretch reflex use a very hard surface And as little resistance as possible maybe maybe maybe even under loading yourself by using a band that pulled you up Because you want to spend as little time as possible on the ground applying force so you use only reflex I really like things like power skips in the various different skips variations for something is just bouncy springy You know what actually pisses me off the most is when I I'm thinking I should I would have been such a better football player if I had taken those warm up drill seriously I mean nobody did the the ace skips the high knees the butt kick The karaoke seriously. We like just went through the motion dude. It's the perfect these drills are the perfect introduction To maximizing the use of the stretch reflex if you do it in property And I even use power skips as a warm up to my own lower body training I find that they're very time efficient. You can do this very quickly They're very low risk. You're getting bouncy on them. They loosen you up. They get some blood flowing And you can get into your training pretty quick. Anything explosive will increase your neurological activation and pay for all muscle activation So you get both the central activation and the muscle activation themselves on top of increasing You know your fluid release Increasing muscle temperature blood flow. It's it's all good stuff Christian We didn't even get through half of what I had put together But honestly you hit on some really cool stuff. I learned a lot. I appreciate this I hope everybody who enjoyed this was dug into the end especially because it was a bit technical got a ton out of it You just probably get a little you know coaches and the applications are gonna be It's the episode is very high on that for sure I am continuing to see incredible growth in the downloads and the listenership of the podcast I would like to continue that I can get Christian and other industry experts and authorities back because of things like that So please share this with someone a coach An enthusiast you think would benefit from this, but most of all go follow Christian So Instagram @Christian.tibado.tib army is your Instagram. You're not hard to find. I follow you just go search Please if you're not already there Christian are you working on anything else right now? Well, we do have the supplement line. We actually launching a second line which is more like active life kind of line targeting more the average person like for example the protein that has no taste no texture so it can be mixed in water and you don't even know it's there it doesn't taste like anything it doesn't change the texture the water can mix it in your coffee or whatever it has collagen in there it has protein in there probiotics in there and the whole line is targeted mostly to a well-being act we have a sleep product we have an anti-exedy product libido/modivation product and we actually had designed those three products when I was first developing a new topping system and they were actually aimed at maximizing one specific newer transmitter so I can't wait for that to be released it's gonna be in September but besides that I'm just rebuilding myself up that's the main project right now and some supplement line is EWS right right that's right great thank you again I always appreciate getting to talk with you I'm glad that your health is in better shape and hopefully I'll be seeing you at some sort of event I'll have to probably come to you more than anything else but we'll figure it out I'm gonna be able to travel more in the near future which is a great improvement but we can also do part to us soon as you're ready oh it's gonna happen I have more ideas already so thank you appreciate you brother right