The Evolving Science of Strength and Conditioning w/ Exercise Scientist Dan Cleather

People worry so much about power instead of just simplifying it and worrying about impulse when they're trying to design their training and to design their impact on their athletes. The thing that is misleading for people from the outside is that the unusual exercises are the ones that get the attention. Like Bonda Chucks throw us, you know, you'll see them throwing this out of the other, you know, but if you think that they're not squatting as well, you know, you're cozy. You've got a football player here, a combat athlete, like a wrestler here, and you got a triple jumper here. Would you set up a training system that would have it eccentric focus or concentric focus days? I would think about the dynamic correspondence of, you know, what I'm doing in my training to how they're exerting force in this sporting environment. When you actually get down to programming it, it's force production. So like it still relies on the base of general strength. So, you know, there's probably going to be things, you know, in the program that's in times of the year for both those athletes that are very similar. How are you looking at those athletes? How does that influence what you think that they should be doing in their training in the gym and then they're training outside the gym? Wow. Yeah. That's that was a big one. We're going to go over the best ways that you can exert force and become more explosive and we're going to start right now. I was fortunate enough to sit down with Dr. Dan Cleether, who's worked in the realm of sports performance. He is a professor and a researcher that also happens to be a coach during the podcast. Dan and I get into different concepts around impulse around being explosive. What the difference is between force, output and time versus power. These are all high end concepts. But fortunately throughout the podcast, we talk about these high end mechanical concepts and then link them into high end training and programming. So this thing is absolutely stocked with content. I've been reading his books over the last five to six years. I'm telling you right now, get his books sit down, listen to the podcast, take as many notes as possible. Ask yourself more questions because this is a podcast that's going to take your knowledge to the next level. Now let's get started. The first question I have is I've listened to your podcast any podcast that you've done. It's not a lot, but I've found them all. And then I've read your books. I haven't read the new one yet. But some of the most important things that I hear as a strength coach is one understanding how athletes exert force and understanding sort of the concepts around impulse. But then also understanding constraints within sports. And I guess the first thing that I wanted to do was ask you like if you're looking at athletes as a strength and condition coach, let's say, and you've got a football player here and you got a combat athlete like a wrestler here and you got a triple jumper here. How are you looking at those athletes in determining their ways that they apply force and then what those, I mean, I guess also the constraints and what that does to the force application. And then how does that influence what you think that they should be doing in their training in the gym and then they're training outside the gym. Wow. Yeah. I think that's my answer to that question is that's kind of coaching, you know, like it's like, you've got an individual in front of you. And you use all the tools that you have to kind of work out what they're good at and what they need. And part of that is looking at how they move part of that is thinking about, OK, what causes the way that they move. So like how are they good at expressing force are there any ways in which they're not good at expressing for. And kind of like taking it from there, I think I clearly kind of. You know, the nature of the sport that that athlete is involved in is going to change what you're going to do with them, but kind of that's that's going to mold. You know, the athlete that you have in front of you. So the athlete you have in front view will have, you know, probably be quite already quite well determined by the sport that they've been doing for how long they've been doing it. And clearly, you know, there needs to be some understanding of the sport itself. But yeah, like I don't I don't think I have a. I don't think I have a model or a system by which I would kind of say, OK, this is what I'm going to do. It's more kind of like, OK, well, let's go in the gym and see how you move and see what you can do. And I'm sure we'll find something that's, you know, interesting to play with. So I guess all for that then is like, and I when I want to use the like think of American football as a defensive line and let's say, and I like to use this example. And I have a very close friend who coach the Olympic champ in the triple jump. And if I see all fence or defensive lineman, it might take like a half second for them to make contact. And, you know, it's it reminds me you've used this example in the past and in force where you talk about an athlete putting force into the ground on sand. And what they're jumping with their counter movement might look like working on a jump on a hard surface. And it makes me sort of think this way with football and somebody applying force into grass or turf versus a triple jumper who's running full speed. How do you running full speed and then they have crazy amounts of force, you know, relative to their body weight when they're grounding. How do you differentiate and maybe this is where we could lead into impulse is like, how do you differentiate training in the in the sense of. This athlete, this athlete needs of maybe a little bit, they're not, they're not applying force as fast as the triple jumper, at least in from my layman perspective. And then I try to think through, okay, how, how would I do that in the gym? And I guess that's where I wanted to keep picking your brain and lead into like the understanding of impulse, but then the time constraint is very different. And then I wanted to see how you might compartmentalize that to the original versus that, you know, defensive lineman or offensive lineman, whatever it might be. That's a really, yeah, that example is really interesting because yeah, like, like, as we know, we, you know, we want to be able to generate and express huge amounts of force, but, you know, that what those two athletes are doing in terms of the way that they expressing force that will be very, very different. So kind of like, if you think about this triple jumper, when they're, when they're running, like they have, you know, they're very constrained in how they, you know, how much time they have to exert force. You know, and they're going to be super, super bouncy, you know, so they're relying on, you know, elasticity, they don't have huge changes in joint excursion as they're existing force, they're bouncing along the track. So equally, equally when they, you know, get to the point that they take off, you know, they're, they're still going to be relying a lot on elasticity, but they're going to be generating force because, you know, using the momentum that they're taking into the board. So kind of, you know, they've already got, you know, they've already got momentum and they, you know, they can use that to kind of as a vehicle to produce high forces when they actually start jumping. So the line man has none of that, you know, they're, they're, they're starting from a position where, yeah, they don't have any momentum at all. So they have to generate all of that force themselves. They, you know, they're starting from zero, but they're going to be starting from a much more flex position. So they're going to be producing force through larger joint raged years of motion. And they're not, you know, their first step or two is, they're going to have a load more time to exert force. And, you know, so, so that force production is much, much more concentric dominant. And, you know, it's much more going to be about, you know, the abilities of the muscle tissue itself to be able to generate high forces. Then it is, you know, in the triple jump, where it's about, okay, you know, recycling the forces that you're experiencing and bouncing down the track. So kind of like those, that example is, is super interesting because although, yeah, the goal is high force, the means by which that force is produced is very, very different. Okay, so you're sort of saying that when you look at somebody like a triple jumper, they're going to have greater, there's more of an eccentric component, I guess, in the sense that, especially when they're grounding and they're going through like the hop the step right and you're looking at it, you're going, okay, there's out. And that contributes, whereas somebody like a football player, they're starting at almost deeper than 90 degree position if they're a defensive lineman. It's going to be all concentric and it's going to be this longer timeframe that they're putting that force into the ground. Well, first is that sort of accurate, what you're saying? Yeah, I would say that, you know, like the linemen as they start pushing, you know, whereas the clip will jump for a bouncing. So do you when you're training then do you set up as a coach if you're training, if you're coaching someone who in this case, let's say theoretically or hypothetically, in this case, would you set up a training system that would have it like eccentric focus or concentric focus days or would that be a different way? Like how would you set up your training then? I mean, I would always kind of, you know, like in this case, you know, I would come back to kind of first principles. So like I would think about the dynamic correspondence of, you know, what I'm doing in my training to how they're exerting force in the sporting environment. And so kind of like we've done that analysis in the last five minutes a little bit already. So, you know, we've said, you know, okay, force production in triple jumping is going to be, you know, small drawing excursions, especially when, let's just talk about the running phase of, you know, not the jumping phase. But like, you know, if you take just the running phase, you've got, you know, yeah, high forces, but in very short, you know, very short time periods with small joint excursions, which are, you know, really, really elastic. You know, whereas the start of the lineman is larger joint excursions, you know, and, you know, very, very pushy like, you know, like it's about, you know, the force that's actually being produced in, you know, like, I mean, the force is being produced in the muscle when you bounce as well. But kind of like it, you know, like there's a, you know, there's no kind of, there's not something that you're relying on to help you produce the force. So kind of, yeah, like the challenge, you know, the challenge for the, the challenge for the athlete, or the way that the athlete is producing forces in those two different environments is very, very different, you know, and so kind of, you know, the training, you know, should very much reflect, you know, the very large differences in how those athletes are producing force in the environment. Like, when you actually get down to programming it, you know, like, you know, you're still going to have, you know, general and specific things. So kind of like, you know, like it's force production. So like it's still, you know, relies on the base of general strength. So, you know, there's probably going to be things, you know, in the program at certain times of the year for both those athletes are very similar. But the sort of specific prep of those athletes is probably, you know, very different because the way that they, you know, are producing force in the competitive environment is so different. Right. Okay. You mentioned dynamic correspondence. Can you sort of go into in dynamic correspondence, like the, the principles around that or the theory around that and what that would sort of mean for somebody who might have, like, really, you use the principles of a dynamic correspondence as like a checkpoint. What would someone be, you know, somebody listening, they've never heard this term. What would that entail? Yeah. Thank you. Like, yeah. So, I mean, like dynamic correspondence, like it, you know, comes out of kind of Russian training literature. But it's essentially kind of recognizing the fact that, okay, you know, in sporting performance, like, you know, what's probably going to be the most important variable always, or in the vast majority of cases, it is, you know, the way that we produce force. So kind of like if we want to make someone better in the competitive environment, then, you know, we need to be training in a way such that we improve their capacity to express force, but that we improve that, but more than that, that we improve their capacity to express force in the sporting environment, you know. So as we've seen in the example that you gave me, by, you know, the way that force is expressed in the sporting environment can be very, very different. And so kind of what dynamic correspondence gives us is, yeah, like it's a checklist of boxes of different things, different facets of how force expressed, which we can look at, and we can think about, okay, you know, how does that apply in the sporting skill? How does that apply to the exercises we want to use? And then hopefully that we can pick exercises, you know, which correspond. And so kind of in the classic model of direct correspondence, there's five criteria that are given. And those are kind of, one is, okay, the kinematics of the movement broadly, you know, so like that's, you know, how the movement looks. It's not, that's not super focused on force. Ironically, the kinematics of the movement is normally where most coaches stop when they consider specificity, you know, so they just think about, okay, how does it move? How do they look when they're moving? And don't actually think about the forces that are causing those changes in movement. Anyway, that's the first criterion. The second criterion is, okay, well, what joint angles are you in when you're expressing the peak forces? And so like there's a nice contrast there. And again, in the example that we're looking at, you know, so the triple jump when they're running on their track, their joint angles are pretty extended, you know, when they're going to be expressing peak forces, whereas I'd imagine, you know, the lineman is going to be in deeper joint angles when they're expressing deep forces. So like where the force is being expressed is different in those skills. So that's the second criterion. The third criterion is looking at, okay, well, what's the magnitude of the force? Okay, so kind of like, you know, you don't, you know, and I always feel like this is a sort of like the king criterion. It should become the above others because it's the criterion that gives you overload. So it's, it's pointless or, you know, like you're not going to get a huge amount of returns if you're choosing a training exercise, which doesn't allow you to overload your athlete in some way, like it doesn't have to be more force than, you know, the exercise in the gym doesn't have to be more force necessarily than in the sporting environment, but certainly you need to be able to overload it in some way by doing more reps or, you know, there needs to be an ability to overload. So that's the third criterion. The fourth criterion is, okay, well, the timing of the force production. So you know, like what's the window that's available to you to express force and how does the sport, how does the exercise correspond to that? So again, in the example you gave, it's, you know, those are probably very different. Like, you know, the, you know, when the triple jump is running on the track, they probably point one of a second to express force, you know, whereas, you know, the first step from, from the line for the line, and it's going to be much more time available to them. So that's the fourth criterion. And then the fifth criterion is, okay, well, how is the, the musculature, like the musculous skeletal system actually producing force? And again, that's, you know, we probably saw a contrast there, you know, like so it could be, is it concentric, eccentric, is the stretch shortening cycle involved? Is it just one effort or is it a repeated effort? And again, we've probably got, you know, you know, you know, a little bit of a contrast again here with the, you know, the triple jump versus the line when at example, because, you know, the line when they're running on the track is going to be very, very bouncy. You know, whereas, as I said, kind of the, the line man is going to be much more concentric dominant off the line. So kind of, I guess, you know, sorry, just to, yeah, so, oh, shut up. Go ahead. I'm sorry. No, I'm not having my fault. But so, I guess, you know, how, how you use those criteria is, yeah, like, you know, like it, you know, like it, it's not, it's not a hard science. But just in thinking about, okay, well, is my training likely to get my athlete better or expressing force in the competitive environment? You know, I just think through each of those criteria and think, okay, does it color, you know, where does it correspond? And, you know, then, then you get, you can get some sort of sense, some sort of feeling for, you know, whether your training regime is specific to the sporting demands in some sort of way. Again, that doesn't, you know, every exercise doesn't have to be desperately specific. Like, you know, you can have very general exercises in there because they're building a base. But equally, kind of, if you're thinking about, okay, you know, how specific is this particular exercise to my sport? You know, like if it ticks a number of those criteria quite strongly, then it probably please pretty specific if it doesn't then you know it's either very general or maybe it's not useful. Guys we're talking about high-end training concepts. We're talking about mechanics and research and all these things that are really really overwhelming you don't know what to do but fortunately for you we have a strength training app known as peak strength inside peak strength. We take all these concepts all these exercises all these thought processes and put them into a well-executable program. It's going to be based off of your personalized setup. What kind of equipment do you have? How many days a week can you train? What type of sport are you training for? What are your goals? What's your training calendar? When do you need to peak? Peak strength does it all specifically for you? It's the first link in the description. It's a pin comment. Head over to peakstrength.app, the Google Play Store or the Apple iOS Store. Download Peak Strength. Select your specific sport or if you're a coach or a normal person listening to this, get into athletic fitness and start your journey to becoming a savage. Now let's get back to listening to Dan Cleether. I think that's the one that's the one interesting concept. So it's like when I okay when I when I look at dynamic correspondence I think it it is a way to to have this filter or this lens to create some type of system off of and to have is like a checkpoint for the constraints of the sport but then when I'm looking at it also I look and I say so I was coached by Anatoli Bunderchuck and when I think about the kinematics of the movement we did a lot of stuff that was like like so I was a shop putter and we would do half turns with a dumbbell and throw that or throw a rock or throw a concrete block and the kinematics would would very closely resemble that of a throw. But we got into the system later on in you know where all of us were much more developed and we could probably all clean over 150 kilos back squat over 230 kilos or so bench press 220 210 kilos and I think it's easy to get lost in the kinematics of the movement looking and resembling this but then ignoring the other stuff I think it's almost like this natural wave and it's interesting that as I've gotten older as a coach I've actually gotten further away from that specific checkpoint of development of athletes because I think the vast majority of gains can happen just by focusing on the other points in correspondence and I don't know if that's something that maybe you have seen or or not especially in regards to force application amongst different types different types of athletes. Yeah like I mean I have a lot of sympathy for that position like I think I think the most important thing about dynamic correspondence is it just brings attention to force you know like you know it's it's it's it's it's it's it's just an idea like it's a system but you know like it's not a universal truth like it's main value lies in in this idea of okay you know there's probably some relevance in the kinematics of movements you know like of course there is but it's very natural because we can see the movement but we can't see the force it's very very easy to like just stop at how the movement looks you know whereas you know dynamic correspondence like pushes you to think about okay well but why like why are they like what's causing them to move like that and then like yeah it's it's it's very very structured and rigid um you know and that might be helpful when you're starting out as a coach because it gives you a checklist but kind of I guess um once you uh you know start thinking in terms of forces um you maybe don't need that checklist so much anymore like you you know you're used to kind of you know appraising how an athlete is moving not just in terms of what they're doing but like the how of how they're achieving that so like as you kindly said I could plug my new book because you know as often as I want like you know like it something the analogy I use in that is um you know like it's a bit like the matrix you know so like you know once you start seeing the code that's on you know behind it um you know then everything gets gets easy but kind of you know I think young coaches they can't see the code that you know they just see the movement you know like you know what what you need to what you need to get to is being able to see okay but what what lies behind that what what's what's you know causing the changes in that movement um and and yes so the value in dynamic correspondence is is in giving you a tool to learn that you know and giving you some framework for you know doing that more formally but once you you know once you're a more mature coach and and you you think in terms of forces like uh you know like it you know there's no way that I kind of you know yeah would formally sit down go okay I've got this athlete here I'm gonna think through you know all five of these criteria uh you know to try and work out you know whether I think this is good or not of course I don't I guess the hardest part is a coach is like okay so I have this influence from from from from Bunderchuck from Dr. B and it's like this like very specific transfer of training and you've got transfer of training in the sense of like he would say you know you could throw a half pound or a thirty pound dumbbell or a fifth you know whatever I guess it would be like a 10 kilo dumbbell whatever and you would throw it at 10 meters per second well that 10 meters per second is much closer than one meter per second on the bench when you have a 13 to 15 meter per second shot put release release their speed of release and it made sense and I and I carried this over into weightlifting so I have a very big weightlifting background and I'm actually thinking about this I just got done coaching at the American Open and one of my girls went 108 132 and I had I had this influence from Bunderchuck of variations variations variations so we do a lot we we still do a lot of variations but as I've gotten developed as a coach now over the last 15 years I've recognized that like variations matter and they matter from a technical perspective but it still comes back to like this overarching force application of what is she squat if she squats 200 kilos versus 180 kilos she's going to put out more force and her snatch is going to be better and I feel like this is I just constantly have this weird almost matrixly feeling where I'm like it would come back to this and this making the athlete have the structure to apply more force and then the sport sporting realm will take care of itself and there might only be two two you know like between two and seven types of lifts that that should be resembling like the actual variations I guess is how I would call it I don't know I'm sort of rambling there but one of the things that I was reading your book coming back home again and I'm looking through my notes from like two or three years ago because this one you released I think in 21 and I'm looking at it and I had comments from you know four or five years ago that still ring true and it was like okay I'm thinking about Anna and I'm like how can I get her to total 250 instead of 240 and I know where her back squat is right now and I'm going it still comes back to one thing if she can apply more force in the same time she will snatch more and it she's got to increase her back squat but then I want to segue this into why should you know maybe and and I just wanted to tell you like I had like these aha moments reading your book again and then I'm going why do people worry so much about power instead of just simplifying it and and worrying about impulse when they're trying to just design their training and to design their their impact on their athletes I mean just you know to pick up on you know like the the the weightlifting example and and also what what what you did with Dr. B like you know I think I would guess you know like in your training as an athlete you know even though you threw all these sorts of you know different weighted instrument in influence like you still had accumulation and intensification for phases like you were still squatting yeah you know like you know like you know you were still squatting you were still you know doing there than pick lifts you know and so you know like it's you know like you know like I I believe like like you do that you know that you just have to keep bringing up the base you know but then you know that but then you bring up the base and then you have to like you know translate that into the competitive environment and then but you know the the work that you do to translate it into the competitive environment is just sharpening the edge you know like it doesn't bring up anything else so then you have to go back and build the base a bit more and you know so like if you're thinking about the weightlifting there it is well. Yeah, she just needs to squat more. But then you need to go and do some snatch cleaning jerk. And then she'll do a better performance. But then if she wants to get better, she needs to squat more. And then you need to go and do some snatch cleaning jerk. And that's training. And I'm sure it was the same as who was a throaer. It was like, fuck, we need to do some squatting. Like we need to do some squatting. OK. I don't know what the-- you already have-- So like, yeah, as I thought, you need to get stronger. But then you need to go and throw some stuff. But then you need to get a bit stronger. And it's the same thing. Like the thing that probably is misleading for people from the outside is that the unusual exercises are the one that's that get the attention. So it's kind of like-- so like Bonda Chucks throers, you'll see them throwing this or the other. But if you think that they're not squatting as well, you're crazy. It's just-- you don't see that for me. They're not-- like, a squat is not as hooky. It doesn't have as much eye attention, eye grabbing. I mean, unless the weight is insane. And I guess the interesting part with Dr. B stuff is that we would throw lift. And then in the afternoon, we would throw lift. And then the next day, we'd throw lift. So we never really went that heavy. But every day, you might snatch 100 kilos for four sets of four. Like, in the-- like, two sets of morning, two sets at night, every single day. So the accumulation of that, you weren't doing max strength work, but you were going-- the load was insane. Now, and I've seen things that I might-- that I disagree with now as far as shop put in discus training is concerned that I learn from them. And I'm not saying anything bad, because I think it was really-- it really was amazing. But I think with the weightlifting example-- and maybe this also comes back to it-- is it's like the timeline, the time to get good at it. And it's the skill to learn it. And there's other psychological aspects behind it as a coach as well. But it still comes back to-- yeah, I don't want to talk as much about that, because I still want to get back into the impulse stuff. And like, trying to shed light on what impulse means for different athletes, or what it means in general, and how different athletes can apply it to become better at their sport versus power. versus talking about power and talking about-- and I did want you to define how you would define-- I've heard you use the word power, then you sort of catch yourself. But then also how you define explosive and explosive athlete. And then all falls under when we're talking about impulse. I got-- I will get onto that topic. So just as-- like, and then side-- kind of-- like, we stand on the shoulders of giants, as coaches. Like, but that doesn't mean we have to agree with everything. These are main two people did before. I saw on Twitter yesterday, or something, someone who had posted some replies that they got when they've written to Berkishansky asking him questions. And he'd written back to them, was like, pages of notes. Like, it was wonderful. And I was looking at them. But he still-- in there, he was like, the most important thing for a rugby player is their ability to express power. And as I'm going to argue now, I don't agree that that's correct. But that doesn't invalidate our field. It's built on the contributions of this great man. But it doesn't mean that everything that he said was right. Like, it doesn't mean that everything he did in the training of athletes was right, or that it couldn't be improved. Like, it's just-- but-- you know, and it's appropriate to critically appraise what they did. We just need to do so with some humility and some understanding of the context in which they were training people. So-- but yeah, like, it's time for the question. You're entirely right. But, you know, like, I will sometimes use the word power in a way that I'm unhappy with, and then catch myself. And the reason for that is that, like, you know, power has a meaning towards as a word. But then it also has a mechanical meaning. And it's entirely natural and human. But, you know, we assume that the meaning that we use for that word, when we use it in just general day to day conversation, is going to be the same as the meaning of for that word in mechanics. And it's not. Like, it's categorically not. And, you know, the problem with that, there is-- like, it's fine if we're just using it as a word to describe something that we're seeing. And if we all understand what we mean by that, it's fine. But the problem is now that we're in an era where we measure this stuff. And, like, you know, once you actually start to measure this stuff, like, the stuff that we're measuring isn't exactly what we think it is. And that's where we start to have problems. So, you know, power. So, like, you know, to be very, very technical. But, like, you know, power is derived from kind of-- well, first of all, you need to have this quantity of works on. OK, so-- or let me go back. Like, you know, like, what's it going to be important to us if we're looking at how athletes change their movement? Is, you know, the force they're expressing. Like, we've talked about that half an hour. But, you don't-- you know, like, if you just look at each instant in time, all you have is, OK, well, that actually-- you know, an instantaneous acceleration. Like, that's not-- that's just a snapshot of what's happening. Like, if we actually want to see, OK, well, you know, how, you know, why did that offensive lineman accelerate, you know, change their velocity from 0 to whatever it was? You know, we need to sum up. We need to add up all of the force that they expressed, you know, in the time period when their movement was changing. And there's two ways that we can do that. Like, we can sum up their force just by, you know, taking it over the time period. So, OK, like, what's the sum total of the force that they expressed over the one second they were accelerating? And if we do that, that's called impulse. And that's quite intuitive, I think, to understand even though the word is unusual. The other way to do it is that we could instead add up all the force that they produce over the certain distance that they move. OK, so like-- OK, so in the 10 meters that they were running, how much force did they express? And that's called the work done, OK? So like, the impulse is a bit more intuitively easy to understand, I think, but OK, work done fine. Like, you just not-- you know, you're just not thinking in terms of time. You're thinking in terms of the distance covered. How this relates to power, then, is power is the rate of change of doing work? OK, so like, it's an instantaneous measure. Like, at each point during that period where they were doing work, how quickly was the work they were doing changing? That's really not intuitive at all. Like, I think, you know, like, it's-- you know, pretty sure that's not kind of what people have in mind when they're using that word power. So kind of like-- those are the definitions of this quality. So now if we kind of like come back to what they mean, OK, well, impulse, like, there's an absolute, you know, one-to-one relationship between the amount of impulse you express and your change in velocity. So kind of like, you're-- you know, again, if we say that this alignment was accelerating for a second, like, they started from zero velocity. Their velocity at the end of that one second will be exactly proportional to how much impulse they applied. Like, that's the factor that determines what their movement looks like at the end. So it is the performance quality. Like, it's the same, you know, in a vertical jump. Like, in a vertical jump, again, you start from zero velocity and then how high your jump is determined by what your velocity is at the end. And again, you know, absolutely, it's entirely, you know, it's proportional, you know, the velocity you have at the end when you take off is exactly proportional to how much impulse you expressed. Like that's more impulse, more change of velocity. And that's what we're interested in most of the time. So that's kind of why impulse is so clear. If we come back to power, sorry, can I jump in? Yeah. I think, I think, so I wanted to bring up Jeffrey Dyson's book from like 1962 and he says, he's got this thing on impulse. And it's like the change in speed of an athlete or disc is a shot does not merely depend upon the force applied, but also upon the time which operates. That's impulse. The impulse of a force is equal to the momentum goes into, but like the first line to me is it is an exact, I don't know why, but for me, it like I have this highlighted and like, wow, that's really it's as simple as that. And then when you just describe it with a vertical jump, it's like, those are directly linked together. It's like it's, it's, and I don't know if this is accurate, but I look at impulse is like very clear snapshots in time. And it's like, this is what happened during this period. And this is what the impulse was. And that's, I don't know, it just, it seems clear to me, whereas when you describe power, like, it's like, okay, so if I'm thinking about an offensive lineman play and they're running, you know, let's say they have to hit, they make contact and they push for four to six seconds, like, I would rather train each little snapshot possibly than really think about what's their total power during that one play. I don't know if it, like, I don't know if I'm even making sense when I say this stuff, but it just seems clear, the impulse, the way you described impulse is much clearer, especially through the vertical jump lens. Yeah. Oh, I agree. Like, you know, what we have is, you know, but like the instant tape, you know, what's happening in that instant, like in in that, you know, has some correlation to what's going to happen. But, you know, like that, you know, you could, that, that isn't what changed, you know, changes movement. Like you have a period of force expression and it's drawing that period of force expression that the, you know, changes their velocity or changes the velocity of something. And so kind of like if you want to understand how they managed to change that velocity, like, you need to look at that window, but, you know, like what happened in that full window? And that's what impulse gives you. Like impulse tells you exactly how much force did they express during that window of time? And we know that that what, how much force they expressed during that window of time will be absolutely perfectly correlated with how they changed the velocity of movement. So like, you know, it is everything. And, you know, like it's also kind of, you know, it gives you insight into things where, you know, profound insight in things. So if you're taking the vertical jump example, like, you know, that's all that's important if you want to jump high. Like it, it's all the constraints of the sport, but like if you simply, you know, want to touch the highest point, you know, flag that you can, can on a vertex, then all that matters is how much impulse you, you produce. And impulse is, you know, how much force over how much time. So actually kind of good jumpers. Yes, they'll be able to get up to high forces, but you could have it, but you know, like less careful jumpers hit probably a higher peak, but they don't sustain it. And then it drops off, you know, better jumpers might not hit as higher peak, or they might hit a higher peak, but they'll get to the, the, the force level that they're going to get to quicker, then they'll sustain it for longer. And that, you know, so that, you know, they have, rather than having a curve that's just a triangle, they'll have some sort of, you know, trapezoid like shaped thing, you know, which gives you more impulse. So that's one thing, you know, like, so, you know, you can, you can misanalyze someone's jumping. If you're, if you're just thinking about instantaneous moments in time, you might think, okay, well, they hit a higher peak. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Like so on page 15 of force. But, but you know, like, you know, if you're, if you're just simply thinking about peak force and you've got the peak force in a jump, you might go like, well, this athlete has a great to peak force, so it must be better. But if our peak force is this profile and someone who has a lower peak force has this profile, they'll jump higher. You know, so that's one insight from it. The other insight from it is that actually, if you can stay on the ground for longer when you're jumping, then you have more time available to you to express force against the ground and you'll jump higher, which is very counter intuitive for people. But skillful jumpers are able to keep themselves on the floor for longer. Like, you know, the reason that we extend our limbs in the way that we do is to keep ourselves on the floor. People who are skillful at using their arms, that keeps you on the floor as well. So actually having, you know, being on the floor for longer gives you more time to create, you know, create impulse. Like, you're expressing force over a longer time period. So you end up jumping higher. Like, that's, I believe why you see kind of people who, you know, do really well in the combine. You know, they have these really, really flexed, you know, hit flexed positions when they jump. Like, that's just, you know, like, that's the technique that allows you to just, you know, stay on the ground for a long time and jump high. Like, that, you know, you have to be realistic about that task because that task, you know, there's no one trying to hit you, you're not trying to get a shot off before someone, you're not trying to block someone shot, you know, like in the sporting environment, sometimes it's not, you know, you don't want to spend a long time on the floor. And so that's why people, you know, you'll see people not jump, they'll jump in the combine in a different way to how they jump in the sporting environment because in the sporting environment, actually, sometimes you want to get off the floor quicker. But, you know, there are some sports, like if you look at volleyball, like volleyball, you know, hitting is entirely predictable. Like, you know, like, there's no rush to get off the floor. Like, you know where the ball is going to be. You can take your sweet time, you know, like, you know, so volleyball players will jump, you know, really, really flexed, I believe, you know, like much more like you'd see in the combine because they're in no hurry to get off the ground. They just want to get as high as they can. You know, whereas, you know, a basketball player, like, well, they have to get up, you know, like, you know, it's a disadvantage if they take time jumping. So, you know, they will spend less time on the floor and they'll be more upright when they jump because, you know, the demands of the sport, you know, require that. That, that actually does make a lot of sense there. And I like that example. I actually, I literally just posted a video of a girl learning how to use her arms when she jumps. And it's like, and I do think there is a lot of sports where you will see that. And that would be more of a hip. You would say that would be slightly more hip dominant if they're using much more arm swing on a jump, typically, especially from a standstill. Like, I mean, I think that that would be a correlation that, you know, like, I mean, I think, like, when you watch people who don't know how to jump, you know, like, it's really, you know, they kind of like do something weird with their, you know, sometimes their arms are completely not coordinated, you know, with what they're doing at all. But like, you can see that they kind of, you know, like they feel like they're throwing their arms up and their arms are going to drag them into the air somehow. And there is, you know, a component of that to the arms. But the more important thing is this, like, because this sticks you to the floor, you know, you know, so it's, you know, like, you know, again, I believe the more, you know, the more profound reason why your arms are so important is in prolonging the time that you say on the ground, like, you know, it's so it's interesting. So we did a podcast with the world record holder with vertical jump and he actually says this exactly that like when he's doing his, like, if he's out on the court, he thinks so he likes to work on his speed and this kid cleans squats everything. And he says like he likes to think about he's running into the ground as hard as he can. And so he knows that when he's running faster, he can jump higher. And I, you know, there's the image of like step-in-home running really quicker and echa McPherson. These are like crazy high jumpers relative to their height. They have so much speed. And then they run into the ground and you can see that's a little bit longer time on the ground, but because the speed is so, you know, to the naked eye, you might not think it's them when you actually analyze it's like, oh, they're on the ground a little bit longer. because of what you're sort of talking about. Is that accurate? - Absolutely. Like, you know, like, you know, lots of things that we do when we move are trying to use stuff that's available to us to produce more force. Because like, you know, like, if we're just producing force concentrically, we're limited in that. So like, you know, if you think about a drop jump, like, you see super high forces in a drop jump, but that's because, well, the landing, you know, automatically, you know, like, you know, automatically provokes, you know, a higher force, you know, than you could get if you just start on your own. So kind of like, yeah, like, if you're dunking a basketball, like going in and, you know, going in fast and hitting the ground really hard, if you're strong enough to be able to handle those forces, you know, it is a way to use your momentum into the ground, to, to, to, to, you know, have a higher rate of force development and to hit higher peak forces. You know, so, so absolutely that's, like, you know, the high jump example is similar, but also different, you know, like high jump, you know, like, you also want to hit the ground hard and block because that is, you know, blocking into the ground, it is a way of, you know, you know, building force quickly, but they're, you know, in a high jump, you also have the off leg, you know, so you can swing the off leg, like, and the off leg allows you to kind of like, transfer your horizontal momentum into vertical momentum. So there's kind of like two mechanisms there. But yeah, like, absolutely, I think kind of, you know, one of the reasons why, you know, strength training, you know, can have a big effect on approach jumping is, is, you know, like the stronger you are, the more you can tolerate slamming yourself into the ground, you know, and, and, you know, like it's like, you know, like you're using your approach, like a drop, like, you know, like it's like a drop jump, like, you know, to, you know, and you're using that, you know, that approach to, to just, you know, use your momentum as a, as a strategy to have higher rate of force development and hit, and hit higher peak forces than you can do if you're just standing and jump. Right, right. Okay, I wanted to ask you, I have, this is 100% selfish question here, is that when, when I'm writing out our training, so we, I believe in training, okay, there's, there's essentially there's four, there's four characteristics of strength or, or four characteristics and athletics. And I think it comes down to speed. And this is just physical quality, not related to technique. There would be speed, there would be strength, there would be explosiveness, and then there's endurance, okay. So I like to take those four areas and then I look at like three proms on each area. And so I wanted to pitch you and I want to see, and I want you to punch holes and say this is stupid, or at least maybe where you would alter it. Because if I look at like strength and this is where I've been trying to think through, since I've read your books, I've been thinking through, I want to be like this impulse crusader, as where does that sound? And I look at, I look at explosiveness and I define it and I go, okay, if I'm training an athlete and I believe that they lack explosiveness, okay, so how do I break this down? And I go, okay, I got impulse and this is where I'm struggling. I have impulse. I use rate of force development, which I feel like it's part of impulse. So it's sort of wrong, but this is where I'm looking for some help here. And then I look at it and I say right right now I'm talking through and I say neuromuscular efficiency, but then I define that by like, if a kid doesn't max their back squat or anything like that, but their clean gets better, I look at as they're, they're maybe, they have more efficiency. Like they haven't gained strength, but they've gained efficiency. And I don't know if that's right or wrong. If I see that their RFD is bad in the sense of, I might test that through like a quarter squat or coming off the pins of a quarter squat. And then I look at impulse and I think about that through, actually, I will measure that through a clean. And I don't know if that's right either. But I wanted to see, and maybe I should pitch you the strength components as well. But I wanted to see from the explosive aspect, like where do you see the holes being in something like that? I don't think this, I don't see a huge amount of holes in it. Like, you know, like I would, you know, like see that as you're labeling, you know, different parts of the force time curve. You know, and I, you know, like in my mind, it's similar. So like, you know, one thing I didn't say is impulse is the area underneath the force time curve. Yeah. So like, you know, more area underneath the force time curve, you know, equals better. Like, you know, like how can you, you know, how can you make the area underneath the force time curve larger? Well, you can have a greater rate of force development. So like that means that, you know, kind of the, the angle of the force time curve, you know, if it's like this, you're slowly, you know, accumulating force. If it's like this, you'll get up, you know, it will be more area underneath it. The second thing is, okay, well, how high does it go? And then the third thing is how long, you know, and you know, in a lot of sporting environments, you don't, you're constrained in how long, but there are some way you're not like jumping. But, you know, so, yeah, like, I agree with you. Like, I think when we talk about explosive power and there's power again, you know, but like when we talk about, you know, an explosive ability, we're talking about rate of force development. You know, like that, that, that for me is that. Like, and that's it, you know, like early, I'm going to, you know, make mistakes here, but kind of like that's some, you know, like that your only rate of force development is very much a neural quality. Like, you know, like it, you know, it, you know, which is how it feels as a coach as well, isn't it? Like, you know, like this is where the science kind of like supports the intuition. I'm not being very coherent now. Like in super training, like that, you know, they, you know, they label kind of the curve and they have kind of like, you know, starting, you know, they have the rate of force development. And they divide it into kind of like the early part of that climb and then the later part of that climb. And I think that that's a really clever and sensible definition. So you kind of like got, okay, well, you know, this, how quickly can you switch on? You know, like it's, it's really, really neural. Then like higher up on that, you know, still on the climb, you know, it's a bit of more of a strengthy, you know, strengthy, you know, explosiony type component, you know. Okay. So let me, so that's where I, that's, this is where I'm struggling as a strength coach, because I look at that. Okay. I look at it. Okay. 400 milliseconds is like dropping under a clean. Even even shorter than that would be ground contact on on a, on a sprint or a jump. Then a little bit longer than that might be and, and I've called that like blast and pulse. I've in the past and then, and then for myself. And then I called the next one where it's a little bit longer would be like the pole of the clean or, or the push of the guy coming off the line to make contact. So that might be like a half track into the seconds a little bit longer. I just wanted to, I needed to get that out because I think about it that way. And then I think about the lifts or the exercises that help and then trying to designate where is the athlete struggling with their impulse? Is it on the RFE base 12 foot that from, from super training and thinking through like, okay, these are the exercises are these are the lifts that this person sucks at. And if we increase this, this will get better. But I don't know if that's right or not. Yeah. Like it feels right to me. Like, you know, I, you know, I think, you know, like, yeah, you've got, you know, strength is your ceiling of the first time curve, you know, and, you know, and moving up your ceiling has, you know, probably has, has benefits. But then yeah, like I kind of, you know, for me, the way it feels is like, absolutely, when we're talking about someone being explosive or being powerful, we're talking about their RFD. Like, but I think that it's, you know, I would sort of view that and look at it like, okay, is it early RFD? In which case it's something, you know, probably a more twitchy component, or is it later RFD, you know, which seems to me to be kind of more kind of, you know, Olympic weightlifting-y type quality. But, you know, like, you can, you can see that in athletes, you know, like, you can see an athlete who's super, super twitchy, so like they can start. But then it just, you know, like they don't pick up, you know, or like they can't start, but then they pick up, you know, but then it, go. Or you get an athlete who can start and then keep accelerating. I think there's a huge amount of wisdom in that classification in super training of kind of like, okay, you don't just look at the RFD as one quality from zero to the peak force. The first 50% and the second 50% are different qualities. They're different strength qualities and that's reflected I think in the scientific literature as well. To me, there's something very profound in, we actually don't really think about, it's not really talked about in the field, like we just talk about RFD. When people calculate RFD, they'll just take the whole curve. I really do think there will be value in kind of like, okay, what's the first 50% and what's the second 50%. There's a lot of diagnostic value, I believe. What I try to do is if I'm measuring that and what we do, because we don't have all the Hawking Dynamics shit, we don't have like tons of stuff that we use. Like we have a VBT tracker that we might use, but I actually even would argue like when we're looking at peak velocity or average velocity, I'm thinking about how it actually means in regards to force and that's what I'm using it for more so than I am the time. But to go back to the RFD discussion is I'm like, if I see somebody like, if we do a hang or if we do two boxes or for a weightlifting movement, like a two box snatch or two box clean with my football guys, I'm looking at it like, if I have a kid who's really good with like a two box clean, then that's like late stage RFD that they're really good with. But then if they stop with like, you know, double A triple jump or single leg triple jump, then they struggle with early and then we'll see that that early corresponds to their sprints being slower. And then if you know, then we can see their flying tan increases if their single leg triple jump gets better or we can see their starting tan gets better if their two box gets better. And it's like, I think that's where we as strength coaches get so lost in, it's a simple, it's a simpler formula than, then we make it out to be if we can tie exercises to those qualities. And I think that's what I'm trying to do from, that's why I'm trying to pitch this to you. But I like it because that's like coaching. You know, like that's a coaching eye and coaching wisdom. And like I think that gets a lot lost a lot in a culture of measuring stuff. Like for me, how I would think, you know, like very, very simply how you could see these different things in the weight room. Like, and again, I've got the picture from super training in my head actually because I think there's like a diagram of someone dead lifting a barbell that's next to it. But you know, like you can see, you can see if someone, you know, like it, you know, if you watch someone take up the slack in a deadlift, you know, like it, like when they go, when they go, do they go, does the bar, you know, like before the bar leaves a floor, does it instantly bend? Like are they, are they, are they able to very, very quickly, you know, get it out, you know, start, start, you can see, you know, before the bar lifts, you can already see that they're bending the barbell. You know, if they can do that from the word go if you can see if they've laid down for like, or conversely, like, you know, does it take a while, you know, before the barbell starts to bend? You know, so just, I mean, like obviously this is, you know, talking about like a pretty heavy deadlift if you're, you know, it, you know, like it, you know, what happens before the weight leaves the floor, you know, but you can see someone who, who, who, who, like everything just goes on straight away, you know, versus someone who doesn't go on straight away, but eventually they get there, you know, and so like, I really do think that that's, you know, yeah, like it's, you know, something that you can, you know, like if you, if you have the coaching eye, like it's something that you can see, you know, and I'm with you that like, you know, you know, like, you know, getting an idea for, okay, is someone twitchy, like, you know, like, like, like for me, like that's what I would call, you know, that's the first 50%. It's like, you know, like are they just all, you know, you know, real nervous energy? Like, do they have that, you know, and if they don't have that, like what can we do to teach them that? So, you know, like, these are kind of things that, you know, like, yeah, we can use, um, measurement devices as a tool to try and see those, but also I think we should have some intuition for that as coaches as well. We have that story. Yeah, like, if you're watching a deadlifter, it's like, okay, they got that early RFD, but, and this is dude, I argue this bullshit all the time, where I'm like, if I get a kid, let's say, let's say, oh, wait, like, my throwers, they don't really, we don't really deadlift. But if we're doing like one box cleans, dude, you get a, you get them on a deadlift once they get the slack out of the bar and they can just once the slack, so the slack would be the early RFD to me, at least in my opinion, the second, once it comes off the ground and they turn it on, that's like late stage RFD and that's where I see something like a clean coming into play and taking over it for the lift is like, okay, and if they, if they fall forward, they lack that because they're not doing enough loaded work from a shorter range of motion, which then decreases their time when they, when they have that. So that's where I see, and I don't know if that makes sense, it's like if I put people on a box or two boxes, it's decreasing the amount of time that they can apply force. So they have to have higher RFD, at least later stage RFD, does that make any sense? Yeah, like I, I'm now firmly feeling like I've lost the mechanics and I'm just talking as a coach, like, but you know, like it, which isn't to say that they're not consistent, but like, you know, like it feels right to me, you know, like I, I, is this what you're talking about on this page on super training? The camera has just blurred. Yeah, that's exactly, I think that's exactly the one on the right. Okay, that's on, on the page 107, 108. Yeah, okay, that's why I thought. I mean, I, you know, like if you're talking about weightlifting, you know, like I think, you know, I don't, I don't rag on CrossFit, like I think CrossFit is, you know, has been, you know, a wonderful gift to weightlifting as a sport, like, you know, like how, how can, having many more people participating in a sport, not be a good thing? like however, one of the things that I think you see a lot in crossfit athletes when they weightlifts, that's missing is the violence of the acceleration in the second part. Like, there's something in how they train that, maybe it's doing the reps, where this, when you go, you fucking go, you know, like just doesn't seem to be there, you know, foot for them. And you know, like to me, that's, and again, I'm kind of rambling a bit now, but to me, that that ability to just violently go when you go in the second pull is the interesting quality in weightlifting. Like, it's that, you know, that's what explosive means to me. It's that, you know, and that, you know, like if you think about this mechanically, you know, when you're, when you're weightlifting, like, you know, and when the barbells passed your knee, like, you're not starting from zero force, you know, clearly, like, you know, like the, the, the, the, the some force expression already there, you're, you know, you, you're holding a barbell, like, you know, like, you know, you've already primed the nervous system. You know, so, so, so, for me, that's the kind of, you know, that later stage are, you know, RFD, the second 50%. So kind of you have like twitchy twitchy stuff is the first 50%, you know, like, and then, yeah, the second 50% is the violence, you know, that you see, you know, in someone who is a good weightlifting. Right, but just turns it on. And I think that was a question I had for you too. It's like, I, and maybe this is just more of a trade-off for athletes is like you're trading one thing over the other is that I think through, and you say this, you say this in force where it's of like simplifying things. And I've tended, I worked with Norfolk, Vardanian. So I had an impact, like a learning impact from him with techniques. So I was very privileged in that sense. But from arguing this, jumping your feet versus not jumping your feet in weightlifting. And in my mind, I think if you're grounded longer and you're almost doing a no-feet movement, or if you think about like Lou Joujou or Yuri, Vardanian and Norfolk, Vardanian, these guys, I mean, even Olivia Rees right now, she doesn't really jump her feet super high. She sort of just slides them out. Do you think that that has any impact on impulse, or is it more of a trade-off? Like, people who jump their feet are more inclined to do this than they might express force better if they jump their feet? Like, do you have any thought on that as a technical aspect? Like, not specifically on kind of jumping the feet. I haven't thought about it enough to kind of a pine on that. The cues that we give to athletes aren't necessarily things that we want them to do. We're just things that we say to them that make them do the things that we want to do. Like, an example of that that sticks out for me, I don't think it's a great weightlifting cue actually. I don't like it. But the cue shagged the barbell, thrust your hips into the barbell. Some coaches, they actually want to see people contacting the barbell. That's not what the cue is for. Driving your hips into the barbell in my eyes is technically incorrect because you're going to hit the barbell and push it away from you. So the cue isn't given because what we want to see is then hitting the barbell against their hips. The cue is given because it allows you to understand that you need to be extending your hips forcefully. And so if that cue is used well, you're not giving it because you're trying to see them like shagging the barbell, you're giving it to them because you're trying to encourage them to extend their hips. To me, it seems like if you're telling someone to jump their feet or someone's being cue to jump their feet, the reason for that cue isn't about the end point. It's what it does to their force prediction earlier in the movement. It kind of like towards the end of the movement. In vertical jumping and weightlifting, there's too much emphasis, I think, on what happens at the end. So at the end of the second pull, and the reason that emphasis is there is because it's much easier to see that. So again, when people are starting out coaching, they can see the end position at the end of the second pull. They're not as able to, because that's slow. It's harder to see things that are happening earlier. But what happens at the end of the movement isn't because of, there's all of things that happen earlier in the movement. So again, in bad kind of cross-fit weightlifting coaching, you'll see people really strongly emphasizing people to shrug hard. But that kind of makes them stall at the end of the second pull. You don't want, at the end of the second pull, you've already done the work. You've produced the force. You don't want to be right in there. The shrug that you see, your shoulder is ending up in this position. It happens because of what your intent earlier. It's not that you're emphasizing that at the end. What we're telling someone to shrug hard is a good cue. Is if the intent is there to move hard fast, and you exert force when your shoulders are down. And then it can be a great cue. But if you're using that cue and really trying to get someone so they're here, then when you're going to stop them dropping underneath the bar, until you're going to make them be trying to exert force in a position where they shouldn't be exerting force, that's already gone. You should have exerted that force earlier. And it seems to me like the jumping feet thing, if someone's being queued very strongly to jump, that's the pattern that you're giving them in weightlifting, then I can see that there might be a tendency to move your feet more. And that's how I view weightlifting as well. But if it's someone who much more sees it as a pull or as a lever, and is using cues that are based around that, that maybe their feet wouldn't leave the floor as much. But I've never really thought about the degree of the feet moving. I'm kind of spitballing off the top of my head. I've always just thought about, even with my football guys, I'll say, look, if I can put a longer ground contact time into the ground, and then we just go like this. Now not only should I be able to pull longer, which increases impulse, because I'm increasing the time, ideally, I'm assuming. And then when you slide and catch, you would be grounded sooner, and then you're going to be receiving the bar, likely in a better position. And I think that's where, when I think about manipulating force and understanding force in training for athletes, that's like a way that I think we could take impulse and genuinely try to apply it. But I don't know if that's 100% accurate or not. I mean, my kind of like digression there was just trying to kind of understand why, you see big variations in technique in good weightlifters, and why people might be doing things that you think are non-optimal, because I'm with you. On this question of, yeah, not my idea of what the best technique would be is, yeah, you finish the pool and then you move your feet quickly to the position they need to do, and then you're able to do that. And then you're able to do that. So kind of, you know, like, you know, I absolutely agree with you kind of, I think, you know, with your idea of what would be the more ideal technique there, like I'm just kind of trying to speculate on how, you know, how people arrive at, you know, arrive at things like, you know, the thing that's, I do think, you know, that there's lots of debates in weightlifting technique. And some of those are, you know, well, you know, like, you know, people can clearly, you know, be elite, you know, doing different things. I do believe that, you know, there's sort of more, you know, on some questions, some things are more mechanically optimal than others. But also just if you're really fucking strong, like you get away with shit, you know, like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I need to think that that was one thing I wanted to bring up before and I know this is going long and I don't want to take too much of your time. But one thing I was going to bring up is like, you look at, okay, I want to take a little bit of your time on the VBT discussion because I talked with this guy's head strength coach at Tulane football guy. And he talked to me and he's like, yo. do some stuff with your with your weightlifters and he was explaining even with my throwers. Move a bar at 0.7 meters per second, move a bar, 0.5, move a bar, 1 meter per second, and then figure out like playing around with this. And it had nothing to do with anything I have ever read about with VBT, like the classic things that you would do for loading. It was more like, okay, yes, intent. The athlete is now having a game to like try and push these things faster, which I do think helps with coordination and rate of force development. And his whole thing was if you get an athlete that can squat a heavier load at like 0.7 meters per second, they will they will do a better job with their force expression. I'm trying to think how he pitched it like basically basically he was like they will use more of their tank that's left from a big backswap. Like they will know how to use it better in a shorter time frame. And I know it's a little ambiguous. It doesn't really make sense, but I've I wanted to see if you have ever seen this and I I almost wanted to relate the peak velocity discussion. I think I think when they're they're under these when they're trying to beat this machine right at 0.7 meters per second or whatever, I think the athlete is able to apply force like they try to apply force earlier and longer. And I think that's the benefit you see from that type of training. And I don't know if that's if you've encountered this at all. I can't I think I absolutely agree with you know with your last statement. So kind of like you know if you think about okay you know like a backsquadding under under a certain load okay like and what velocity you're backsquadding it at you know you're if you're going to like it. So the problem or to you know the problem with velocity based training is it's a kinematic measure yeah like you know and so we're not measuring force. And you know we need to be very very careful in interpreting things you know because you know we're not looking at the force. However it is the impulse that you're creating that's causing the change in velocity. So yeah if you if someone is you know hitting a higher velocity in their backsquad they've they've created more impulse you know they've expressed more impulse and yeah they've probably done that early in the movement because you know like you you know like if you're squirting you're it's not ballistic. So like you've only got you know like you've got a fixed distance to move and you need to slow down you know so like you know the weight will help you slow down of course but kind of like you know like it yeah if you're if you're able to move faster like you've probably you know you've created more impulse at the start and maybe you know you you you keep kind of you know like you have more sustained impulse because that's what's going to you know or more sustained force expression because the total impulse that you have is what's going to lead to a higher force. So like yeah I do you know I have sympathy for the position that yeah like you know if if someone's able to squat the same weight at a faster velocity you know that probably mean you know like oh that's it you know that that means that they've expressed more impulse and that probably means that they expressed that impulse earlier in the movement you know and those sorts of things seem like they'd be valuable you know to me to me as well my only my only critical comment on on on those is like you know like giving and giving an athlete that on the screen like is a great you know target and goal for them to go for but again as a coach I can see if they're grounding that squat out or whether they can you know yeah squat it super fast you know that's fair. There's certainly like there's certainly a quality there like you know there's you know there's some there's certainly athletes that you know okay you know when they're going to fail um you know or when they're doing a near maximal squat it's going to be super super grindy and slow you know and other athletes that they're doing a near maximal squat and they still move really fast you know and I definitely prefer to have the latter athlete you know and you know using a velocity-based training device is certainly going to assess that. 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I actually think that even goes into still where you where I make this argument is like if I have an athlete who okay okay so let's say the athlete that's super twitchy and they're moving at like 0.5 meters per second on a squat and then next thing you know they're at 0.3 and they're fucking dying right like that's an athlete that fails that I see that is the twitchy athlete they're probably fast on you know in running they probably are bouncy when they jump but they lack the late stage rfd so to me if they are in and so we had a kid like this me he goes into high school next he's a junior this year in high school and he's run a sub one second flying 10 but sometimes he comes out of his start and he falls over help clean 120 kilos for a triple but sometimes he'll catch 100 and 10 kilos and he falls over and he's so twitchy and I and I relate this and I think this is the value of looking at it explosiveness through the three those three areas and then I look at the rfd the way that you had depicted like okay early and later based off of vorkashanski I see in this case this could faith lacks later stage rfd which is why he fails you might do one rep at 0.5 meters per second and then his next rep he fails because he gets out of position slightly when he's fatigued and then he has no ability to hold that that later stage I don't know if that makes sense but I I believe that that's an example of what you might see with someone who is overly twitchy and then on the on the same regard you might have someone who lacks that early stage rfd based off from vorkashanski model of the graph and they're the they're the athlete that they move 70% of their squat at 0.45 meters per second they move 80% at 0.45 meters per second they move 90% at 0.4 meters per second and there's barely ever any drop off or any increase and I don't know like that's just like something that I see that I think even though it's and it's still trying to pitch it through this lens of impulse release what I'm trying to do with that I don't know that's me blabbing sorry like it feels the same way for me like it you know and you know I just as an aside like I use the word feel now quite a lot because I you know I don't have the you know like you know we're not you know for me like we you know like it's hard to put precise mechanical language to this like you know this is the art of coaching you know like or or certainly I don't have the skills to put precise mechanical language to it but you know like you know like that that's you know and again like going back to what we were talking about before this is where you know like you kind of like you know these you know the mature you know the intuition of coaches like these are all these are discussions that are informed by mechanics you know like you know with it you know like it's based on force expression you know but but it's very hard to be very clinical and or analytical about it but yeah like you know for me you know like that's you know like super twitchy athletes are super exciting you know like you know like you know like you know like you know like it's like fuck this guy is good but but you know they still need to train you know and you know like I think you know like you get super twitchy athlete too you know you know often we'll have no max strength qualities you know or sometimes we'll have no max strength qualities you know so you can give them that but then you know also in get you know like in giving them that or you know the other qualities that you want to work on is okay you know yeah they can twitch but like where's the pickup you know and you know so it's kind of like you know often for me the you know the raw material that's exciting is someone's who's super twitchy, but they're not a champion until they've done some training. One final question here is, what would you use to replace the word powerful? Would you replace it with impulsive? I don't think impulsive is the same because you can do things like you can get lots of impulse by expressing force for longer. That's true. That skill, for me, it's, yeah, it is. Yeah, when we talk about someone being powerful, we're talking about them having great rate of force development. I don't know how you put that into an adjective. Maybe there's an opportunity there for a coach to coin a new adjective and build a system around it and make lots of money selling. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like for me, that's the misnomer. When we say power, what we offer mean is high RFC, and we don't actually mean mechanical power. Maybe one way to resolve that is just to reckon that, talk about mechanical power. So, you could then say someone's powerful, but that's RFC, but it's not mechanical power. It's messy. It's hard, it's because our language has a colloquial use, which doesn't align with a mechanic. Yeah, completely natural to make those mistakes. Yep, that's it right there. So Dan, plug, tell everybody where they can get your new book. Because in my opinion, the new book would then be how to impact athletes from a training system, but then also factor in the psychological aspects and to get them to produce force as effectively as possible in their sport. Where can they pick it up? Thank you. Yeah, like it's on Amazon, so kind of like if you search my name, like the new books called the Practice of Change. So you can pick it up there. Like, we were talking about, what's the thesis? The thesis of the book. I mean, it kind of like weaves together, a couple of my earlier books, like the Black Book and also the biomechanics one. But I guess the kind of, you know, the main angle there is just to recognize that, yeah, our bodies want to change. Our bodies are very, very willing to change in response to the things that we do. And sometimes we don't have the patience to kind of respect that it's really our body that knows how to change. Like we're just asking respectful questions of it. And then we need to give them the body time to make those adjustments because we don't know how to build muscle fibers or rewire on over the system. Like we need to let our body take care of that. Yeah, almost even hearing that it's like, let me have time to make that change and have an understanding of the time horizon. I even thought about this with weightlifting stuff. It's like we know it takes a decade plus to be a really good athlete. So why are we not doing a snatch or a clean in our training for athletes? Because we know it's going to take 10 years. So the mind will freaking learn it. And the athlete, the body, your body is willing to make that change based off the adaptations. It's just we don't, it's very hard for us to consciously comprehend or be aware of how those physiological changes occur. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's sort of something when you were just describing that that popped into my head. Now, like I agree and like patients and consistency, you know, or consistency is the main tool of being good at things. Like I just feel like a lot as when we train, we feel like we're in charge. And we're not like it's a partnership. It's a partnership between, we ask our body a question and then our body responds. Like if you kind of frame training in that way, like I think you, you know, like it helps you get into a much more sustainable, you know, consistent pattern of, you know, of long-term growth, you know, whereas kind of when you're trying to dictate, you know, to your body, that's when you kind of break your board, get frustrated, do some of these things, you know, all of which, you know, stole your long-term growth and I think. 100%. All right, Dan, thanks for being on. Everybody, get Dan's new book, head over to Amazon, pick that up today and all of his other books as well because they're absolutely loaded with content. I appreciate you coming on today's podcast. Thank you so much for the invite. Thank you. [Music]