Transcript 0:00 [rock music] Welcome to Iron Sights. 0:07 This podcast candidly seeks to create opportunities and deliver impact by sharing the experiences and wisdom of successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders who unapologetically aim to win in health, fitness, business, and life. 0:21 I'm your host, Scott Howell. Welcome to old school meets new school, tradition meets innovation, and imperfection meets excellence. Thanks for listening, and enjoy the show. Back on the Iron Sights podcast. 0:33 Today we're talking plyometrics done right, uh, the importance of prep work to make sure that you're s- set yourself up for success, avoid some stuff, get some advantages from some stuff. 0:43 Uh, I don't know if anybody caught or was watching the NBA playoffs. I am not, but this, uh, reel went wild of this guy. It's Tyrese, right? Yeah, Tyrese Haliburton. Tyrese Haliburton. Yeah. 0:52 Blowing out his Achilles on the court the other night. Yeah. Dude, like, so I caught it and I sent it to everybody, and- It was a nasty one... Steven's like [laughs] Steven's like, "I cannot watch this." 1:02 I didn't watch it, no. I, I can't watch it. Don't wanna watch. I can't- I saw it rolled up- I can't watch Achilles popping. No, I can't... it rolled up all the way up- I can't, no... like, basically to his knee. 1:08 I can't watch that. Yeah. Can't watch that. I, I saw the video and I was like, "I bet this is gonna be in slow motion." Yeah. I'm not gonna watch that. I can't. 1:14 Well, and then on the broadcast- I'm like, people getting legs snapped in football, can't watch it. On the broadcast, they literally kept showing it ev- like- Over and over... 1:22 every few minutes they'd be like, "This is what happened to Tyrese Haliburton." [laughs] And they'd show it in slow mo. Yeah, because it keeps people glued to the TV. 1:26 Literally people are like, "I don't wanna see this again. This is disgusting." Yeah, but everybody's watching, like, a, with one eye, with one hand over their face- Yeah, it's a car accident... 1:32 with the, with the gap in their fingers. Amazing people don't wanna see that, but they'll watch other things on TV. Oh. Or in the news. Oh, yeah. Or all over social media. Mm-hmm. 1:40 Um, back to the, to the boobs and butts and, you know- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm... whatever. Yes, boobs and butts. The death videos. [laughs] And everything else, all the, all the quality stuff. 1:48 But I, the point of that was is that that's not what inspired this podcast, but it certainly is relevant to kind of- The topic... what, the, yeah, the, what we're talking about. 1:54 And part of the question I was asking, you know, the group, and I was just kind of getting into a discussion 'cause I had just come off another discussion with a practitioner that works with some NFL and, uh, and NBA athletes about training protocols and kind of what's going on, injuries. 2:08 There's a local team here, won't say which one, he works with. They were plagued with injuries last year. 2:14 And, you know, I started to kind of ask some questions, like what's going on with the strength and conditioning staff over there? What's going on with the PT staff? What's going on with the ATC staff? 2:22 And the, the end of that conversation, I guess, just to wrap it up, was basically it's kind of a clusterfuck, and not a lot of people are talking to people. People are, to one another. They're jockeying for positions. 2:32 Um, there's a lot, there's some bureaucracy and some, some politics going on there. One of the main guys left, went to another team. Um, and that's not uncommon, you know- Yeah... 2:41 when you're looking at, like, collegiate or, um, or professional sports. 2:45 Um, that's, at least that's been my experience and my knowledge of it and talking with people that work closely inside that and at all different levels. 2:52 The point of that is, is, you know, how does it trickle down [laughs] to the athletes? And we start to see these people being plagued with this type of stuff. Like, what is it? Like, what's the problem here? 3:02 Um, and why so much now versus maybe before? And because we're seeing, like, the most athletic, you know, professional athletes we've probably ever seen just in terms of the skill and the talent level. 3:14 I think there's some things the game has been change, the games have changed. The rules have changed. 3:19 Uh, you know, what people wanna see, I think influences that in terms of points scored, touchdowns scored, you know, whatever it happens to be. 3:25 But regardless, we got these very athletic people running around out there, but they seem to be getting injured more in the, when I, maybe m- maybe more, more or less. I don't have the st- the stats. 3:37 Well, I mean, so for this, for specifically, like, with him, there was eight, um, Achilles tears in the NBA this season, which is th- mo- by far the most that there's been to date. 3:48 Um, so definitely there's some sort of uptick in these injuries. And there's lots of theories, like a lot of people. 3:53 You know, of course everyone's, it's people bashing their training could have saved them, and the people bashing those people bashing each- Yep... 3:58 so a lot of back and forth, but there's a lot of theories why this is occurring. But regardless, you cannot deny that there's been an uptick in these. 4:04 Especially in these injuries, I think, are most interesting, something like that, that is a non-contact injury, right? Yep. It's not an injury that someone, like, oh, it's more physical, he got hit. 4:11 It, that was something that he was just going to accelerate out, into a move and pop, right? Yep. Which with him, there was some stuff that you could, there was some, uh, things that- How he was set up... 4:20 well, and how he set it. But the, I think this is also maybe part of the discussion as well, is the prerequisite of he had a calf strain that he was playing on- Mm... on that side. Mm-hmm. 4:29 And I think, and there's some people I think, in my opinion, are kind of uneducated in this that are trying to say that those don't have an impact on each other. Oh, like, 100% no. How could they not? Yeah. 4:37 If the [laughs] if the calf that attaches to the Achilles is compromised, then you're gonna put more stress on the tendon. 4:44 So I think there's definitely, I, I think there's probably part of it is players playing on things 'cause there's so much money involved, that they probably shouldn't be. He shouldn't have been playing on it. 4:52 If it was regular season, he wouldn't have been playing on that. Yeah, going into the postseason, so. But it was the finals, so it's like- The game seven... he's gonna try to play. Exactly. Yeah. 4:59 Game seven of the finals. He, he had played two games. I think he strained it in game four or five, and he had already played a game or two on it and was fine. But then compromised. Fine. He was fine. Yeah, air quotes. 5:08 He made it through the end of the game. But then he made it through that, and boom, he tore his Achilles. So I, there's a lot of discussion of what are the causes, and I think there's a lot you can go into with it. 5:16 Yeah, uh, it, t- that brought up, I, a very close friend of mine, uh, is a shooting instructor, does a lot of movement, teaches courses, things like that, and he was having a problem with his l- right foot for a very long time, and he was dealing with some stuff that was going on on that side. 5:31 And then, um, I hadn't talked to him for a while, uh, you know, about stuff, and I was just checking. He's like, "Yeah, dude, now I'm dealing with a calf tear." He actually tore, tore his gastroc on the opposite leg. 5:41 I go, but he didn't tell me that. I said, "Is that on the opposite leg or t- other side from the, the, the foot injury that you had?" He's like, "Dude, I never thought about that." 5:49 I go, "Yeah, it's probably overcompensation for however long you were nursing that thing, but still had to perform." Right? Still had to play. 5:55 So there's absolutely causate, or there could be absolute- More than correlation there. There's, there could be s- some causation there. 6:03 But I, I wanted to get into this because, you know, as I'm looking at, and this is coming off the podcast we just put out, uh, when we were talking about concurrent programming. 6:10 Folks that are trying to get a lot of things done inside their program. When I say a lot of things, they're trying to kinda do it all, right? 6:16 They're, they're working their strength, they're trying to w- work their speed and power, and they're also working capacity and fitting it all in, and then the overlap that happens with all kinds of things, right? 6:26 Uh, when we look at the physiology of what's going on with energy systems as well as, you know, what gets y- you know, muscular system, the neuromuscular system, how those things interplay. 6:36 And when I say interference, um, I'm saying, like, well, what's getting overworked? What's not getting worked enough? 6:42 And then where do those things meet in the middle, in the power band there to potentially create an injury? But I don't wanna make it all about injury. 6:49 I started with that 'cause it was, it's kind of fresh in my mind, and I had sent it to you the other, the other day. 6:54 It's not always about injuries, but it is about performance, and if you're injured, you can't perform, right? 6:59 And if you're, you're not able to, um, to operate at whatever your, I don't like this word, but I'm gonna use it, optimal level is for the thing that you need to do, then you are underperforming, right? 7:09 You're not going to p- be able to perform. Then obviously, the worst thing that can happen is you can't perform because now you've, you suffered a catastrophic injury. 7:18 The off-season for these NBA guys is gonna be so short for, for this guy. He is not gonna be back for next season, um, for, uh, at the beginning of next season. It's going to take months. 7:28 This is a, like a one-year recovery process. Yeah, they're, they're saying he's out for all of next season. Yeah, so. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it, it varies a lot. Sometimes it's... 7:35 Well, and that's another discussion I, I didn't hear the extent of it. Was it- Was it a total avulsion or, or, or complete tear all the way through? Get the message in there. 7:42 Sometimes they are trying to push the athletes closer to, like, a six, seven month. They, like, there are some athle- and again, it, it depends- Yeah... 7:47 on the, some of the specifics of that, but- Look, we, we get him in the PT room. We get- Yeah... we get some surgery done. 7:52 We get some peptides on board, you know, maybe some other things, whatever the magic is, the magic sauce is out there that can help, help this process. But the bottom line is, like, this dude's done. Yeah. 8:01 Franchise player, right? Um, who, who is done, and obviously, at a very critical time. I mean, there's a lot on the, on the line. People that have worked their whole lives to get to this particular point in their career. 8:11 Mm-hmm. Yep. On the coaching side, on the ownership side, you know, on the fan side- Yeah... if you're a, if you're a Pacers fan, you know, whatever else, and now, like, what does that mean for us? 8:19 So anyway, the point of that is, is, like, maybe that's not relatable to most of the people listening to this show, but certainly not being able to perform, being taken out of your game, or not performing to your best should be on your mind, you know, when you, when you're working out. 8:31 There needs to be intention. There needs to be a purpose to stuff. 8:33 So I don't wanna get into all of the things around plyometric training, but I think one of the most important things is prepping yourself to be able to do it so you can perform your best and avoid these types of, this type of stuff, or worse, or, or, or again, maybe it's not as bad as a total, you know, Achilles tear or a calf strap tear, but it puts you in a position where you can't perform at the level that you wanna perform, and then you end up making compromises, and you do workarounds that set you up for all kinds of other stuff. 9:01 Well, and I think, you know, to relate this to the individual who's not this high-performance athlete even, I think within the last year, I probably have had, I can think of five or six different conversations of people either that I've known or close that I've known who have actually had, like, an Achilles tear because they weren't prepared, and they decided to go join their local volleyball league, or they tried to, like, get on a skateboard, and they haven't done it in 15 years. 9:23 [laughs] Yes. And I've literally, I think I've known, like, five or six people who have torn their Achilles in the past year. Yeah. So definitely applicable even if you're not a high-performance athlete. Mm-hmm. 9:30 Y- yeah, so kinda it, it goes across all kinds of different market segments and whatever, so we wanna talk about that. And, and, and, you know, a- a- again, the, the importance of talking about being prepped, right? 9:41 And so that's a very broad term in, in, in this, but if we broke it down to kind of the micro, like, if you're going to start doing this, like, and you're gonna do this in your workout, your micro session, right? 9:51 You're doing this once, twice, three times a week, whatever it is, adding some type of a plyometric. 9:55 And these things show up all the time in places that I think are completely inappropriate, and I get why they're doing those, you know, especially when you're going to a lot of group program sessions, uh, where you're jumping up on boxes, jumping down, running, sprinting, pushing sleds. 10:10 Change of direction. High fo- Yep... 10:12 high force output, right, type of movements that increase heart rates, that increase body temperature, right, that get the blood pumping, that get, you br- the respiratory rate goes up. You're burning calories, right? 10:24 Mm-hmm. And people are burning calories, or they, they, they go to exercise to burn calories versus get fit, perform better, live better, all that stuff. The, the priority is a little mixed up. 10:35 And so again, the warmup being an extraordinarily important part of this and the reasons why, um, particularly in this type of, in this type of a, um, an application when we're looking at plyometrics. 10:48 So plyometrics being that explosive movement that you're doing, and it shouldn't be in a lot of reps in a row. It should be... 10:55 Well, we'll talk a little bit about that, but, um, so without getting into, into that too soon, it's that thing where you're going max force output for a short period of time. 11:04 We're using a very specific energy system, and there are things going on at the nervous system and at the tissue level, right, that are extremely important to maybe understand at least at a base level so that you can set yourself up for success. 11:16 Yeah, and so I, I think that's breaking down, like, what's going on at the tissue level, and I think when is this appropriate? And it, it's giving some adherence of that we want people to be doing plyometrics. 11:26 You should be doing them, but one, they're, like you said, they're not applied correctly a lot, like doing them for time, doing them to a exhaustion, doing them with kinda lackluster mechanics. 11:36 Um, but- Doing them with load... doing them with load that especially you're not prepared for. Yeah. 11:39 But then even if an application of there needs to be some prerequisites that you've established before you can get into, um, these regularly, and then how are you going about it? 11:48 One, on the micro, like the warmups, things like that, but then on the macro level of, like, do you have good stability? Do you have good t- tissue quality, even just strength? Can you maintain these positions? 11:57 Can you absorb force? Like, all these other things that are important before you start to really implement and do these things drastically so. Yeah. 12:04 So just, again, getting, sort of going back and talking about the warmup. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to get all the systems firing, right? 12:10 So w- obviously, we wanna be prepared for this from a strength perspective, right, uh, and a capacity perspective in order to do this. 12:17 We'll talk about that a little bit, too, but you, you need to be in a position to, to be able to handle the loads that you're gonna be putting on yourself. So, um, that takes some work. 12:27 And so w- again, going back to appropriate versus not appropriate, this is not appropriate for somebody that's just getting into a fitness program or getting some type of workout program, or is re-entering after quite some time. 12:39 I would also say a lot of this stuff is not appropriate for somebody that is dealing with some type of dysfunction or injury, right, or something that's nagging. Those things need to be addressed first. 12:49 So those are kind of some prerequisites to kind of think about. 12:51 That might sound obvious, yet we see people, again, making compromises to burn calories, to get through the workout, to not look like the person that's lagging in the, in the group or whenever they're going there. 13:02 And, and it, it is true that over time you can build that capacity, but how are you doing that, and are you setting yourself up for sort of long-term success? Now, I'll also say this. 13:13 We're looking at a professional athlete here, right? Um, when we look at this NBA guy who's been doing this his entire life, and one day this thing happens. 13:20 He may not have had another injury ever like this, but now he's faced with this. 13:24 So the point there being is if you work hard enough and you play hard enough and you do this long enough, you can do all the right stuff all the time, and these things, this might not be avoidable. 13:33 But whatever we can do to mitigate that, I think it's important. So just from a, a perspective, um, of, and we're not doing this just to say, "Listen to us so you don't get injured." 13:46 It's not always about that, but that should be in the back of your mind, especially if you just wanna be healthy and do your thing, so. 13:51 Well, the other thing is, too, you know, we're talking about the lower extremity, and we, we talked specifically about the Achilles. But think about the individuals who have had a, a pec tear, right? Yep. 14:00 As far as, you know, um, [lips smack] an avulsion or biceps tendon for that matter. Yeah. So it's not just the lower extremity. You have to make sure your entire body is prepped. 14:09 H- how I kind of think about and explain to people is, like, when you're in a car, right? A car accident is, is gonna happen at some point. 14:15 You can do everything you can to prevent it, but a car accident is sometimes gonna happen, an injury, right? 14:20 But that doesn't mean you also can't do the things to prepare yourself, to set yourself up to s- for success that you don't have these things occur. So yeah, sometimes a pec is gonna tear, but how's your programming? 14:30 How's your, um, you know- Yeah... total volume you're working with? How's your warmups? How's your different things? So you still wanna prepare yourself. 14:35 So that, I think this conversation around plyometrics is really rooted in, yes, injury might occur. Things, um, shit happens, right? 14:42 But we still, there is a way to go about this to prepare yourself and set yourself up for the most possible success. Yeah. So there's a process, right? Yeah. 14:49 And, and, and being focused on the process versus the outcome, calories burned or, you know- For sure... the time that you're setting on the board for the watt of the day or, or whatever else. So, um, prepping. 14:58 So we're prepping tissues. We're prepping the, the, the nervous system. We're also prepping our brain, kind of getting focused on what's going on. 15:04 We're also checking in during that warmup, like, what's, what's not feeling right? Where, how am I feeling this? 15:09 And I think the other thing about the warmup is people like to think about things, um, very, um, v- very, like, proximally. Like, I'm gonna do jumps today, so I need to work on my knees and my, my ankles to start. 15:21 Now, this is total body movement. 15:23 It takes the entire body in order to, to basically tap i- or, or to be efficient at using this built-in spring system, if you wanna look at it that way, we call the stretch shortening complex or cycle. Cycle. 15:34 Sorry, stretch shortening cyc- cycle, and, and how that actually works. So I think it's important maybe to just kind of cover that for a second. 15:42 So basically, you have this, this spring system, which is a combination of the neural system and the muscular system, right? And within the muscular system, we're also gonna include those musculotendinous junctions. 15:53 So where the tendon ties into the muscle that ultimately ties into the bone, and the nervous system that ties into that, and then obviously the strength and stability, uh, and mobility that's, that's, that, that you've, 16:06 uh, I guess, accrued over time or may or may not have. So obviously, all of those are important factors, uh, you know, when we're looking at stuff. So 16:14 basically, you have a couple different phases, and this is stuff that probably people know. You have an eccentric phase. That's the stretching phase, right? 16:21 That's that phase where the, the, the muscle fibers, those, pardon me, those tissues are getting longer, right? So when you think about, like, doing a, a, a, a jump, if you're doing, like, a standing high jump, right? 16:32 You're dropping your, you're dropping your knees down, your hips down, and what's happening, in this case, we're talking about the Achilles. Uh, and we're talking about that calf complex. The calf is lengthening, right? 16:42 That tendon is, is, is supposed to open up and ac- and accommodate that lengthening at the ankle joint, right, as you get into that flexion, right? 16:50 Um, and then you have this, what we'll call, it's called an amortate- am- amortization phase. Amortate. Amateur. Yep. [laughs] I almost said amortization. Amort- Amortization. Yeah, amortization. I, I broke it up. 17:03 Thank you. [laughs] But amortization phase, and that's kind of this, this, this transition of where we go into the stretch, and we have this kind of stored energy in it. Yeah. 17:11 It's just kind of sitting there, and it's ready to be kind of sprung open. So when you compress the spring, in this case, again, we talked about stretching it, but we're compressing a spring. 17:19 And so you have all this kind of energy that's trapped in there. And then there's the next phase, which is the concentric phase, which is when you let that thing loose, and you explode into it. 17:28 And so now you're shortening that calf muscle, right, it, which goes into that tendon, which is attached to that bone, right? And that, that, in, in, in that shortening phase, that's where your power is getting produced. 17:39 Yeah, and I think it's really important to talk about that turnover phase. 17:42 There is this, um, active, like, dissipation of energy, um, to where if that phase isn't done effectively and efficiently, uh, and quickly, then every, every millisecond that you're in that phase, that turnover phase where you're not, um, transitioning to the concentric, there's a dissipation of energy. 17:57 Mm. And it's lost as heat, right, through that. So that's really important to, a lot of the mechanics with plyometrics is very much a timing thing. Mm-hmm. It's very much a timing of the contraction. 18:06 There's actually even, like, a, a co-contraction or pre- preemptive contraction of the, um, of, like, an anticipation- Um, for the tissue when you're going into movement. 18:16 So like if you look at a sprinter when they're absorbing, there's actually like a pre-contraction when they're proficient at it of the calf into the Achilles to help with this phase. 18:25 So the timing of this is really, really efficient. So when you're practicing this, and this kind of goes back to the warmup being really, really important, is plyometrics aren't just about having maximal power. 18:34 It's the timing and the rhythm of this power, and how do you apply this absorption into this turning around phase and then this production. Right, and this happens everywhere, right? Yeah. You, you mentioned pec tears. 18:44 Like, whatever you're doing, pushing, pulling, jumping, spring, uh, spr- uh, sprinting, decelerating, accelerating- Yep... it's all part of this stuff. 18:51 So if you're constantly tr- uh, training in maybe a very slow, controlled tempo, you are not ch- Don't miss that... you're not challenging that temp- Exactly... 18:57 you're not challenging that, that, that timing at all, and that's why tempos are important. 19:02 Um, and so, you know, ef- effectively what you're doing in the warmup, we had mentioned this, is you're priming the nervous system. You're getting things switched on. 19:09 That whole electrical system, if you wanna look at it that way, is now kind of getting fired on, and you're making sure all of those fibers and all of those things are, are sending the signals the right way and then sending the signals back the right way so that timing can happen. 19:22 You're also increasing, like, that tissue readiness. Yeah. So again, the length, the sliding and gliding, the lengthening, and that, b- it being ready to go. 19:30 So, and when we talk about tissues, we talked about muscles and tendons, but it goes deeper than that. 19:34 There's fascia in there, um, in, in each muscle, in all the muscle fibers, how they run over one another, how the tendon is, is, is attached, what that attachment looks like, like how the tendon is formed, what might be going on at the tendon, and at, at, at the junction of the muscle and in the j- in the junction of the bone. 19:51 So there's a lot of, a lot of things happening here. 19:53 Yeah, and I think you mentioned really quickly the fascia, and I think this is an example of there is a total body, even like a mindset nervous system impact of prepping, um, a movement. 20:02 But there isn't a coordinated effort of the connection or the kinetic chain of tissues. Yeah. That is really where the fascia impacts. 20:08 You know, like the calf isn't directly attached into the hamstring, but there's a fascial connection, and those are both really important for propelling you forward. 20:15 So these warmups that start to ease you into when you're going into, like, say, more of a max effort or in an intensive, um, uh, movement of starting to build that kinetic chain and that technique of how do you apply force through that whole chain of movement from the ground, reaction force from the ground up into that movement. 20:32 So as you're, as you're moving into that, we can kind of break it out into, like, kind of four phases of the warmup, right? 20:37 And, and the way we kind of, k- kind of break it down is let's just start with something simple but accomplishes those things. This could be super simple, and so we kind of think of this as like a dynamic, active warmup. 20:49 This is a common term, but I think misunderstood and often misapplied. It should be very specific to whatever you're doing that day. 20:55 And to, if today is a day where we're working speed and power, then we need to be warming up appropriate to the speed and power. 21:04 Going over and doing, you know, something contradictory to that, again, doing slow, controlled tempos. 21:09 There may be a time and a place for this, um, to kind of get a feel for kind of where I'm at, but I do need to move with some tempo at, at speed and, and produce a little power. So e- easy things. 21:19 You could jog a little bit. You could jump rope. Um, you know, do, getting on a rower, probably not the best choice, right? 21:25 We, we need to do something where we're, we're getting the stretch- Replicates the movement patterns that we're gonna be doing... it replicates the m- the m-... 21:30 Yeah, exactly, and gets that stretch reflex kind of in tune. Yes, exactly, and it's, it's light. It's very extensive. It can be for a lot of reps, and it's tr- starting to teach that timing, right? 21:39 Again, we talked about really important, it's rhythm for plyometrics. So it's beginning. So jump rope is a perfect example. It's very based on timing and a rhythm. So that's where you wanna kind of start to do that. 21:47 You're getting the tissue moving. You are increasing your bl- you know, core body temperature. But there's more to it than just, like you said, rowing, right? 21:54 So once we have the thing kind of fired on, you gotta think of that as like a pulse raiser, right? 21:58 We're just kind of getting things fired up and, and, and moving, including, you know, w- maybe get a little bit of a sweat. It might last two to three minutes, right? Just doesn't have to be a long time. 22:06 We don't wanna wear out the system. We're just trying to switch it on and basically stimulate the system to work right, work right for us. 22:12 Then we might move into some more joint mobility stuff, and this might be, again, very s- this should be very specific to whatever it is that you're, that whatever, whatever you're, you're focusing on. 22:21 So if it's like a jumping movement, maybe we work into s- like some hip opening type of, type of things. This is very controlled. It's very intentional. You're not spending a lot of time there. 22:30 Maybe, again, two to four minutes of hitting some, a couple of things. This isn't a workout, right? This is just a warmup. It's getting you prepped, prepped to move. Um, again, going back down to the ankles. 22:41 You know, maybe we're doing like some ankle rolling, some plantar, plantar flexion. Dorsiflexion. Dorsiflexion. 22:45 We're just moving things where we're getting it to move through ranges, kind of maybe pushing it through actively. Like, that is through our own power, moving it through some, some stuff. 22:54 Not going in and stretching it, right? Not getting on the, not getting on the calf stretching machine and stretching that beyond what our active range is. That's not what we're trying to do. 23:04 And I, it's, "Hey, um, you know, I need to stretch out my calves today." Do you want that extra stretch before you're asking it to do this explosive movement? Yeah. 23:15 And, and I think it's important if you think about, we kind of, I think we use this analogy for this, um, the stretch reflex, um, as kind of like a rubber band, right? 23:22 So for you to really get the maximum recoil effect on a rubber band, right, if you only pull an, a rubber band back like half an inch, you're not gonna get much of a recoil. 23:30 But if you can pull it back to its max capacity, that it can, can be controlled and not snap, right, you're not damaging the tissue, then you're gonna get a more powerful recoil. So to an extent, right? 23:40 There's always a, there's always a sweet spot with this stuff. Well, there's also pulling it past that inch and a half, right? Exactly. Where you, where you may damage the tissue or you may lose some of that effect. 23:46 Yeah, you're losing some integrity. Exactly. And on top of that, whether or not the rubber band is fresh, or if it's an old rubber band- Yes... and it's dried out- So-... and it's starting to fracture a little bit. 23:53 So what is the integrity of that system- Mm-hmm. The tissue... before you start pulling and tugging on it? For sure. Exactly. 23:58 But this is where the argument is that if you're, let's say you're trying to get into this position, l- we, you know, we've been talking a lot about the lower extremity, right? 24:05 Where if you have this pre-loading phase to get the calf under stretch so you can absorb force and produce force in a jump or a sprint or whatever you're doing, if you can't get into any degree of dorsiflexion under control, if you haven't accessed that range yet and now you're gonna try to do it with abs- deceleration and acceleration to a high intent, that's where there m- is gonna be an issue. 24:23 So you wanna make sure that you're prepping those ranges of motion that you have the capacity and ability to get to so that before you get into the dynamic plyometric explosive work. All right. Mm-hmm. 24:33 This, we're, we're only a few minutes into this, right? This, this does not take a lot of time, but it is intentional and we got some things going. So we've, we've done the pulse raiser, we got a little joint mobility. 24:42 We're working kind of local to where we're, we're working. But w- w- we should also be thinking about what else is involved. If I'm gonna be, again, doing jumping, that's a total body movement. Mm-hmm. 24:52 So I got my back, my hips, my shoulders, my pushers, my pullers, everything's getting involved there. And so here's where I'm gonna work into a little bit more dynamic movement, which is gonna be total body, right? 25:00 It's just, this is where I start getting out of the local stuff and I start to get my body to move through different things. 25:05 I was just having this conversation with Shelton Stevens, I mentioned him on the last podcast as well. He's gonna be dropping here pretty soon, where we talked about how he applies this stuff, where he gets the... 25:14 He gets people doing, he gets his guys doing things that are a little bit outside of the norm, things that, that are outside of their comfort level. Not things that they're used to, things that challenge them, right? 25:22 So they have to think a little deeper. A little plasticity there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're starting, yeah. 25:26 So we're starting to work things that are not inside y- your comfort zone maybe, or things that are, that maybe look a little funky, right? 25:32 Or feel a little funky, and that's okay because it's getting things to switch on in a way that it wouldn't typically be switched on. 25:38 Again, heightening that, that, that sen- that sensitivity, but also switching on that entire system. Again, we're not doing this for a long time. We're doing this for a couple minutes. 25:46 Maybe two, two to four minutes of this as well. So we're picking a couple of things that we do, or maybe it's one thing that involves the entire body. It's a walking lunge with a rotation. 25:55 Um, i- i- as an example, maybe if we're working upper extremity, we're adding some thoracic rotation with a push, move to a single arm, you know, kind of thing. We're reaching across our body. 26:05 We're just moving around, um, is essentially what that is when we're talking about dynamic movement prep. 26:10 And then lastly, we're gonna move into something that kind of starts to work that plyo in that, um, like a s- we'll call it, like, specific activation. 26:19 So now we're kinda gonna k- kinda go back to, like, if I'm gonna be jumping, right, what are some of the things that would mimic that? We talked about, like, the jump rope as an example. 26:27 That kinda starts things, but it's really kind of ankle dominant, right? You're using a little hips. You're us- using a little k- knees for sure. But now we're gonna do something that's a little bit more explosive. 26:37 Not too much. Again, we're not trying to wear out the system, but things like pogo jumps, like just standing in one place, just kind of bouncing up and down. I'm not trying to create a bunch of height here. 26:46 I'm not trying to set any records. I'm not trying to get my heart rate up too high or anything like that. Mm-hmm. I am just getting into that timing, right? 26:53 And that loading, unloading, loading, unloading, loading, unloading very quickly. And so, like, pogo jumps is, is something. So something, something e- [coughs] Excuse me. 27:04 Something that is not o- uh, too strenuous, but does mimic and is closer to what you're about to get into. Um, pogo jumps are great for pre- pre-sprinting, you know, as well. 27:14 You're, you're, you're working that ground contact. You're starting to, again, wake the system up a even a little bit more. 27:19 And now, when, when you're done doing that, now we're ready to move into whatever the intention of that workout is. 27:27 And again, like, uh, uh, using sprinting as the example, this is where we move immediately into our sprints. 27:33 So start to finish, we're talking about maybe, like, eight minutes to maybe 15 minutes max, depending on how long you're staying maybe in that active mobility piece or, or dynamic mobility piece. 27:46 The, the start and the finish is pr- or the steps one to steps four are usually pretty short. 27:51 Um, you could put maybe spend a little bit more time in the middle depending on how you're, you're, you're feeling from the previous workout or what you're kind of noticing in, in your movement. 27:59 Yeah, and even when you, you know, with, uh, this stuff to finish out with that is as you start to get into these movements, there's still kind of this ramp-up phase, right? 28:06 So yeah, you're gonna start doing, let's say like your power, your jumps for that day is a box jump or like a, um, or a, uh, broad jump, like a forward jump, right? Yep. 28:14 You're still are kind of easing, find, making sure your mechanics are sound, making sure the movement is sound. You're building into that. 28:20 Um, and then by the time you get to that, like, third round, right, you're getting into that more, that's where you're really, really starting to ramp up the intensity. 28:25 I guess, are you talking about, like, then when you're doing these, doing it at, like, maybe a, a percentage of your output perhaps? Yeah. Yeah, you can start to think about it like that for sure. 28:33 Like, put some sort of metric in it. Like, I'm gonna work at 60% for the first one, then maybe 80%. And now you're really- There's a build... you have, there's a building effect, right? 28:41 Even in the specific movement that you're trying to work with. So, so far... Go ahead. Christian. 28:44 I was gonna say, could we go through, like, a, a brief example of what a four-phase warmup would look like for a broad jump, for example? Yeah, we could do that. Yeah. 28:55 So again, so we, we talked about you're gonna get that pulse raiser going. So we're gonna get things going. Again, like- Let's, let's pick skipping or, you know, a jump rope, right? 29:05 So you got the jump rope going- Yeah... as an example. Yeah, yeah. So I like something like that. 29:08 And so if we're, if you're wanting to get some specif- um, specifics here, something that is bilateral, if we're doing a bilateral jump, you can work on that timing. 29:16 So yeah, something perfect like, um, jump rope would be great. You can start to build some of that rhythm, right, that you're trying to- This is phase one. Right. Exactly, phase one. 29:23 Uh, phase two, right, if we're thinking of couple of the, uh, things that are important when you're getting to a broad jump, so if we're thinking more of the joint specific is, one, obviously the ankles. 29:31 So we're doing some of that ankle work, the dorsiflexion. But actually make sure you're getting good hip extension. 29:36 So if you have some limited hip extension, doing some sort of active movement into hip extension, so like a half-kneeling stretch where you're coming into active hip extension or you're pulling into act- active hip flexion, something like that, 'cause that is a very, very important, um... 29:49 You're working on a lot of hip extension in something like- In your broad jump... a broad jump, right. Uh, then from there, um, you can start to work into where we're getting to more integrative movements, right? 29:58 You can, things where you're trying to get, like, a walking lunge with an overhead reach, right? Mm-hmm. Something like that, 'cause you need to get into that big overhead reach position. 30:05 That's kinda rein grainy, that good hip extension on that back leg that you need for a broad jump. So you can do walking lunge with, like, an overhead reach from that ba- away from that back leg up and over. 30:14 That's a great way to start to build some of that. Then you can get, when you're getting into more of that dynamic, you can start to work in, one, you can work into some of those pogo hops. 30:22 Um, so you can start to build some of that timing and some of that movement. And then you can start to work into some, um, I call them, like, snap downs or depth drops- Hmm, hmm... from that. 30:30 Where even just a standing position, you're reaching tall up into the air, you're in good triple extension, you're on the balls of your feet. 30:35 And then you drop, you snap your arms back, and you're trying to work on that absorption landing phase- The eccentric... into the hips, the eccentric landing. Mm-hmm. You've mastered that eccentric landing. 30:43 You've got everything fired and moving. Then from there, you can start to get into some lower intensity. 30:48 There are different ways to do broad jumps, where it's more repeated broad jumps or more a specific one-rep, like, output broad jump. But you're working either whatever format you're doing from there. 30:57 And you can get to the broad jump. You're working on that good landing mechanic, which even if it's repeated, is still important. 31:02 And then now you can start to actually r- ramp up your broad jumps, making sure, big thing, that there, there's ample rest in between them, so. 31:08 Yeah, so g- you, that was a good segue there at the end, just in terms of working into whatever the, the focus work is there for the day. But, uh, a couple, c- just a takeaway there. 31:17 One, it doesn't have to take very long, but at the same time, don't rush it. Yes. Love it. Right? Again, there's process here, and it shouldn't just be going through the motions. 31:24 If there's any intention being put into this at all before you get here, this is could, could be the f- the most important part. However, so we've kinda just taken through a warmup going into there. 31:33 Things to consider foundationally. Yes. Like, are we ready for this type of work? Can you squat? Can you lunge? Can you- Stabilize... can you stabilize? Right, yeah. Yeah. Ca- [coughs] Are the, can you do the basics? 31:44 Do you have, like, a basic foundation of, of, of strength? And if you don't, you need to back up, right? You ne- you need to back up, and we need to work those basic foundations. 31:53 And, a- and again, like, how would you do that? That varies by person based on where they're coming to this and what their level is like. But you need a basic foundation. And if you can't squat properly, right... 32:03 And, and when I say properly, broad statement. Depends on what type of squat we're doing and whatever. 32:08 But the squat pattern in general, if you can't own that movement from the top to the bottom and from the bottom to the top, and do that repeatedly, under load, you know, for a period of time, right, then what... 32:19 W- we need to, we need to back up a little bit. We need to focus there. 32:21 Again, going back to the person that's literally jumping right back into a workout program doing stuff like this is, uh, is, is something we gotta look at. And so again, there, there needs to be a build-up phase to this. 32:33 And again, the strength piece being a huge piece, but the mobility piece, right, the awareness piece, um, and the capacity piece. Like again, going back to how much can I handle and for how long? 32:45 And those should be measured, and they should be tracked, which we talk about a lot. But that's a good prerequisite to, like, should I be doing broad jumps right now? Yeah, so exactly. 32:54 Like, can you actually maintain the good positions for the movement? Can you actually build that c- you know, strength under control? 33:00 So you shouldn't be doing something dynamically like this if you can't do it slow with control yet. 33:05 With li- obviously with lighter loads and different intentions, but for example, like, a broad jump is basically like a dynamic hinging movement. It's a horizontal movement. 33:12 If you can't, uh, you know, hinge well, if you can't do an RDL with some control and some degree of ownership in a good position, you probably don't have any, um, you know, any business going into a broad jump right away, right? 33:24 Um, I, I love this rule, too, of, you know, working on movements that you can absorb the force before you- Yes... really produce force. 33:32 So I think a lot of talking about those landing mechanics, like that sta- snap down exercise. Generally, when you are gonna start to do more plyometrics, you need to make sure that you can absorb force first. 33:42 So this can be from just a very low height, like a, from your toes, or it can be off a box, or it can be working, really just making sure your landing mechanics, where you snap down like a depth drop and absorb that force initially. 33:54 And, and m- maybe you're drilling that for a few weeks before you even start to work on redirecting that force. So. Yeah. So it's that power development and, and, and more specifically, how to control the decel. 34:06 And so we look at, like, like, these non-contact injuries, like what's, what's happened to, uh, to, to this basketball guy. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, when we look at ACLs. 34:13 ACLs are generally non-contact injuries and, generally. Yeah. Like, look at sports like football, hockey, contact sports like that. Um, certainly there are things that happen. 34:21 But when you look at the ones, a lot of the ones that do happen in places like specifically football, it happens in the deceler- deceleration phase. It's when somebody is moving at speed. Cutting. Yeah, they're cutting. 34:32 They're stopping. Change of pace. Right? And they're changing directions, and things go directions they're not supposed to go at the times they're not supposed to go there. 34:40 And, and, and we wind up getting things like ACL tears. 34:43 So it's about power development, and that can be done in your strength training program by working through d- tempos, by working through the different phases of the movement. 34:52 Again, uh, concentric, eccentric, and, uh, isometric, um, so that we can strengthen different levels or different ranges and work through different tempos. 35:01 And when I say tempos, it's not just moving slowly, it's moving fast, it's moving faster. How fast can I move lighter loads? Mm-hmm. 35:09 So- That, which brings us kind of into the next thing, which is, like, the more advanced development of plyometric work where you see people load things, right? 35:18 If you don't have those other prerequisites on board, how to control deceleration, how to control force, both, again, in the decel, the eccentric, and then the returning to concentric, uh, with your own body weight and with some type of loading, overloading it through a high-speed, high-demand movement is probably not the direction you wanna go. 35:39 So as we're starting to move into, like, the loaded stuff, the advanced loaded, loaded stuff where you're jumping with, with plate carriers on or with weight vests, or you're doing, like, jump pulls with a barbell or with a- Trap bars... 35:53 with a trap bar or things like that, which are very popular. It's a fucking fantastic movement if you're set up right, for I love trap bar jump pulls. Mm-hmm. 36:00 Like, I think they're, I think they're fantastic for total body strength and power. 36:04 Um, but, and, and speed development, you know, as we're moving into other, you know, specific applications like sprinting or whatever else. 36:12 But if you can't do those things, if you can't do those things under slower tempos first, and controlled things like eccentric p- uh, eccentric loading, this is not a place we want, we wanna be. Yeah. 36:23 And you can start to think, kind of what you're talking about, you can almost think of what we did in the warmup as also, like, the prep of something that might be your block. So there's different types of plyos. 36:31 There's more extensive plyos, where more rhythmic and light and not a lot of force, and they're more f- maybe for a little bit more volume. 36:37 There's more intensive plyos, which are really, like, based on these power aspects. Um, so let's think, like, a pogo hop or jump rope. 36:44 That might be your plyo for a little bit, working on just ext- exten- extensive ability for that connective tissue to be durable and handle that load. 36:51 Um, then you can start to really think through the line of before even getting to weighted jumps, can you do body weight jumps? Right. Can you do those different things? So we talked about that force absorption. 37:00 We talked about that. Then you can even think of, like, um, easing in force. There's also, like, band assisted- Mm-hmm... 37:05 um, movements like that, where you're holding a band to, you know, strapped to the top of a rack, and that's reducing some of the force you're dealing with. Then you can get into body weight. 37:13 Then you can get into single leg. Yep. And then you can get into where you're starting to load these things, right? 37:18 And that's where really trying to manage, the, the sweet spot with plyos is that you n- you wanna incorporate them, and they are very valuable, but you really need to manage your ground contact time, and you really need to manage the amount of force that you specifically can handle for your ground contact. 37:31 So that, things like that, that can a- apply are, one, how much you weigh currently. Like, what's your strength? What's your capacity in general? But then even, like, how much force, like, what's the vertical? 37:41 So, like, if you're doing a depth drop, like, a heavier person, if they, if they're on a higher box, they're gonna get more accel- uh, acceleration forces that they have to deal with that absorption. 37:49 So these are all things that you want- It's a lot of gravity... that's a lot of gravity pulling you down, [laughs] right? [laughs] So you gotta think about those things when you start to program these drills. 37:56 Um, one, are you doing all the other things outside of the plyometrics? But then what are your ground contact times right now- Mm... and how are you handling that and programming that? Total volume. 38:04 So total volume for that. So I think when you start to kind of program, there's, we can kind of think of those more extensive plyos, which can be done maybe more than once or twice a week. 38:13 Um, but they, again, they're not super intense, and that can just really be working on a lot of that rhythm, right? Like, ti- the timing. The timing and stuff like that. 38:20 So that's, like, the pogo hops or the jump ropes or maybe a little more, the, like, the A skips or light sprinting stuff like that, um, or light jogging, running, um, 'cause it wouldn't be sprinting if it was light, right? 38:30 But, uh, then you can start to think of where you're getting into these, like, heavier plyo sessions, where this should really, if you're getting where it's, like, po- uh, power development, that should really only be done, like, twice a week, um, depending on how many sets you're getting in. 38:43 Um, you know, you should only really be getting, like, um, one to three movements for that, and you should really be doing it up to, like, twice a week to really be developing that power. 38:50 Yeah, I think this is where things get cloudy for people. Yeah. Because they're getting programs that are going to classes or they're going to things where they're, they're getting that all the time. Yeah. 38:58 They're getting some form of it very often. 39:00 And again, going back to the, the, their interference of, of what's happening, they're like, are you really getting power and speed development if you are not set up correctly and don't have the proper recovery time? 39:12 And, uh, but I just wanna emphasize something you said there just about the loading, the loading part. And, and again, I mentioned, I, I jumped right into plate carriers- Yeah... and the trap bar deadlift. 39:20 There are ways, and you mentioned things like bands. There are ways to increase loading without actually onboarding an external load. Yeah. 39:27 Now, one of those ways is, again, it is just going to the single leg stuff, right? Yep. So I can land great with one leg. Can I land great with two legs? How does that apply? Well, when you're running, right? Yeah. 39:38 There is, one's, one's landing while one is pushing, right? Yeah. So one is going into an eccentric while one is going into a concentric to, to some extent. Yeah, yeah. 39:47 There's things, there's ha- there's a push and pull going on on both sides. But my point being is, is like, again, most... We, we go back to, like, that non-contact thing. 39:55 Like, the, uh, with the ACL specifically, or this, if you saw the video of Halliburton and, and his tear, like, he was offset, right? Mm-hmm. 40:04 He's not two legs underneath him in a nice firm what you might consider, like, a squat stance. 40:08 He's in an offset position, so he's got different loads at different, at different times in the movement pattern that he was trying to complete, which is basically an acceleration movement down the court. Yeah. 40:19 From, like, almost kind of like a track start position- Yeah... um, i- is, is kind of what it looked like. Again, you can see this on the internet. It's, it's not hard to find. 40:27 Point being is he wasn't in this ultra-stabilized position, right? It, he was offset and it, and, and got caught. For whatever reason, his body didn't like where he was at that point and something let go. 40:40 Um, so we can move to single leg stuff. We can move to offset positions, um, split squat jumps, things like that to, to load things differently in different phases at different times during, during your movement. 40:50 So those are ways to start to kind of ramp up your plyometric application. 40:55 The other part about that is, is we're, we're, we're kind of starting in, this is kind of the next piece to this, is we're starting in more of the sagittal, or excuse me, the frontal plane. 41:03 We're just kind of moving up and down in space, like what's happening right in front of us. But we haven't moved through a transverse plane. We haven't moved through the sadd- sagittal plane. 41:11 So that'd be moving side to side, left to right, or doing any twisting or turning. 41:16 Which is basically what we were wa- we watched happen in that thing, or going back to my football example, while the, the guy's decelerating, turned, trying to change directions- Yeah... 41:25 change his trajectory, and so you've got these forces coming into all the joints and all the muscles at different levels, at different times, from different directions, not just gravity pulling you up and down. 41:36 It's important to train there. If you can't do that in the frontal plane, and do that well, adding in highly dynamic plyometrics in a sagittal plane or in a transverse plane, you're asking for trouble. 41:49 Um, and more, more, again, not just on the injury side, you're just not gonna be able to perform at the level you could potentially perform if you're not using the building blocks the, the correct way. Yeah, yeah. 41:58 So I, I, you know, I think people can get a little bit carried away when you start adding these, like, mimicking- 100% agree... mimicking sport, and, like, trying to get super specific. 42:06 But yes, when we're working mainly in the sagittal plane, where we're in this, like, movement of only up and down, like if you're only doing a box jump, if you're only doing a broad jump, that's not what this athlete's gonna mimic. 42:16 So when you start to get into where you're moving from side to side in the frontal plane and then the transverse plane, you can do things where you're, you know, going into a lateral bound into a rotational box jump, and you can do these things where you're learning to absorb force, produce force in different directions, and that can be really valuable when it's still done pro- when it's programmed in a smart way, when it's programmed to an extent that it actually makes sense, and it's not just the bulk of your training. 42:39 Random. Right, random. Yeah. There still needs to be rooted in strength training, rooted in all these other things. 42:43 Um, I think another, uh, one of the other, like, kind of last applications that we've talked about a lot is, like, contrast training- Yep... 42:50 where you can apply this, where this can be done with a maximal strength, um, movement, where you contrast this, like, light power plyometric exercise. 42:58 So good example with, we were talking about the broad jump a lot, horizontal force production power, right? 43:03 We can think of a deadlift or a trap bar deadlift, where we're working in that same kind of general force vectors that we're, um, we're trying to implement. 43:10 We're doing something heavy for whatever the set reps, three reps, five reps, and then we're gonna get into a... 43:16 Almost immediately within 20 to 30 seconds, we wanna get into that contrast set as soon as we can and apply that repeated bout. And there can be, we were talking a lot about the nervous system, right? 43:25 This has a really big impact on these implements for producing power and movement and timing. 43:29 When you work a s- one movement pattern and then you apply that same movement pattern with, on different ends of the power, um- Spectrum... you know, the power spectrum, right? 43:37 You're gonna get a good effect, and that's a really good way to develop this as well, and it's also really time efficient. Yeah. It's a good way to do that. 43:43 So is it really, uh, y- so now we're talking, now we're moving into more of, like, how this should be programmed, where does it fit in. Yeah. And again, this is where it gets cloudy for people, and couple things came up. 43:51 One is that it can get a little wild. Mm-hmm. Like, you see, quite frankly, it's like madness. Uh, like, what are we doing here? Yeah. Like, what is, what are we actually trying to get accomplished here? 44:01 Can I measure this? Do I know what I'm doing? Do I know if I'm getting better at it or not? 44:05 Because if it's totally random and wildly just kind of inserted into programming, you never get, you're, you're never gonna get the result that you could potentially get by, again, working through this process. 44:17 So, uh, you know, one of the things you can kind of say about it is don't train what you can't, or overtrain what you can't land. Yeah. What you can't finish, maybe, is the way to look at it. Mm. 44:25 Like, mechanically, you need to be working at a, at a really good level before you start working into this madness of, like, how creative can I get with these movements? 44:35 And this mimicking, try to, try to, uh, you know, train how you fight kind of thing. Like, fight how you fight, right? Like, go train, like spar or play basketball or play football. That's the fight, right? 44:46 That's where this stuff can show up for you. But trying to mimic what's happening on the court, the field, the mat, or whatever in the gym to build these things, the process gets really muddy. 44:56 Um, and you see coaches doing that all the time because they, they think they're doing something new. 45:02 It makes the client feel good 'cause, "Oh, I've got a basketball in my hand, and I'm in the gym, and I'm doing plyometrics." Like, do you need to do that? Like- Yeah... you we're trying to work skill, a, a skill here. 45:12 We need to think about it as practice, right? For the things that we're trying to improve skill on and practice with. 45:19 The balls and the, you know, and all the, all the other things, all the other implements can come in later. So yeah, let's not get wild with this. The, the, you, uh, this happens a lot in programming. 45:29 You go, "I, I gotta go ha- go, you know, hire the very specific basketball strength and conditioning coach 'cause he does this, this cool stuff on the, you know, in the strength and conditioning room with, with med balls and basketballs, and he tries to mimic what's happening on the basketball court inside what's happening with his plyometric training." 45:46 I'm not saying there's no place for that, but when it turns into that and that is the thing that we're doing, and this is what makes me different, that should raise a red flag for you as a, as a client or an athlete. 45:57 Yeah, for sure, especially when it's not rooted in the other foundational things we know that have a big impact on that, like strength training and even muscle building when needed and stuff. 46:04 And I think another with that that's a really common mistake is t- starting to turn these into, like, cardio, turning in your plyos into cardio. Yeah. So- Yeah, God... re- Taking too much, too long. 46:12 Yeah, [laughs] exactly. Like, the, the goal with plyometrics for this action to be is totally the, um, idea that quality over quantity with these. 46:20 Quality, intention, timing, um, positions, uh, outputs, all that is way more important than when you do that. So sometimes when you're doing some of these exercises, you're gonna do three jumps. Yep. Right? 46:32 And you may rest, like, 60 seconds to two minutes even- Yep... depending on how intensive it is and where you're in in that block and all that, where you sh- definitely should not not be resting. 46:42 You shouldn't be doing them for time. You shouldn't be doing box jumps for time and then jumping down and then jumping up and then jumping down as quickly as you can. That's not developing power. 46:50 Yeah, there's, we've talked about, there's conditioning components- There, there may be sports-... and if you, and there, all that kind of stuff... that, that require that stuff, but that's not what we're talking about. 46:55 But you're not developing plyometric, um, capabilities doing that, right? So it needs to be intentional. It needs to be with effort, and you need to rest [laughs] longer than you think for these as well. 47:04 Yeah, so don't mix up plyometrics with capacity. Exactly. Right? It's capacity before plyometrics, and in that order. 47:12 And you can build additional capacity by applying the plyometrics properly, but you have to have the base level of capa- capacity in order to do this, and that, that stretches across all the systems, including the energy systems, again, which we touched on a little bit in the last podcast. 47:25 Yeah. Um, you know, in that, that, that-[inhales] leads into or circles back to what you're talking about in terms of recovery time. 47:31 So, you know, when we're looking at kind of the programming, you mentioned some examples like contrast training as that example. Again, that, that, uh, trap bar deadlift immediately followed by the broad jump, right? 47:40 And you were t- and specifically the, the post-activat- activation potentiation that, that exists there. 47:46 And that, that being we've switched on the system, we've got all things firing, we've stimulated, it's all fired up right now. We rest very little time, maybe 30 seconds, then we get right into our broad jump. 47:55 So we're, we're utilizing all the things that we have on board. That's... Contrast training is a very powerful tool. Again, it's an advanced tool, right? It's not something that people should be jumping right into. 48:05 If you don't have those foundations first, right, let's not move into, to that type of programming. [inhales] In terms of volume, in ter-... You, you were mentioning this, like how much do I actually do of this? 48:15 Look, the good news is there's been a lot of research on this over time for a lot of years. This is, this is pretty well-established science in terms of like what is the optimal, not the minimum effective dose. 48:26 You were talking about that on the last podcast, and put out a good clip today actually on that, just about what's the difference. 48:31 Like, minimal just kind of keeps you in the mix, where optimal gets you to actually move the needle on making the improvements. Exactly. So what, what is that? 48:39 So for this, we're looking at like maybe 10 to 25 ground con- contacts in a workout. Yeah. Right? So, and you may pick one to maybe three exercises. And so we're talking about timing, like in 10 to 25 ground contacts. 48:53 If I had five sets and I did only five reps per set, there's my 25 ground contacts, and I'm done. Yes. That's it. I'm done, and I'm moving on to the next thing in my program, whatever that happens to be. 49:04 I'm not looking for hundreds of ground contacts in one, in, in, in one set. In fact, that's detrimental. Yeah. And now you're taking away from the work that you actually just did. 49:14 All that warmup stuff, all that initiation stuff. It's the garbage stuff. Yeah. Y- That's what... 49:20 You can look at it that, like yeah, you're working in the garbage zone at that point in terms of making gains on the plyometric capability. 49:26 For su- It's like when we've talked about like junk volume with other types of exercises. 49:29 Like adaptation to stimulus form on exercise is all about stressing the system and your body's ability to recover from that and produce a response that increases performance and output, right? 49:40 So if you overstress the system, though, one, it may just inhibit your ability to train again, right? But it also may lead to an overuse injury, and that's where some of these things can occur. 49:49 Not saying it will occur, but if your volume, a lot of things with this is just your programming sucks, right? Yep. If you're doing this too much, you're overstressing the system. 49:56 You can't recover and, and get better to increase your performance. That's where some of these issues can arise. Yeah. I, I think the, your programming sucks is actually more common than most people realize. 50:06 Um, and I, I think there's a, there's a, there's a large level of overconfidence I think that exists. Uh, like I know there's a lot of things I don't know, but I am aware that I don't know them, right? 50:16 And so again, going back to how do we know, like there's a lot of research behind this stuff. Um, a lot of it. And it's... 50:23 The, the Eastern Europeans did a fantastic job of doing this, and then it's just been advanced over time. But it d- as it's advanced over time, things have gotten lost and people have lost their way. 50:33 And again, I go back to the question of like, why are some of these professional ath- why do we have eight Achilles tears in the NBA this year? Something's going on. 50:40 Like, there's some dots that need to be connected there. And who, w- where is the, where, where are the faulty patterns and, and, and, and points? 50:49 Where are the break points in this, in whatever the process is in all of the things? So is it the warmup? Is it the nutrition? Is it the sleep? Is it we're playing too many games? 50:59 Is- I was gonna say the prolonged season... The prolonged season. We're deep into the season. Is it we're playing injured? Playing from too young of an age- Yep... 51:04 and too intense for too long, and too many tournaments, and not having a- And not focused, not doing the strength training and- And not having an off-season, and not playing different sports and getting different forces. 51:12 Like we've talked about that, like especially basketball, like the AU scene is they're playing tournaments every weekend from the age of like, you know, 12 or whatever- Yep... they start at [laughs]. 51:21 And they- Fifth grade... and they don't have an off-season. They play their club sport in the off-season. They do this repeatedly. 51:26 And you know, again, these non-contact things, at the end of the day, that's a lot of an overuse over time, a wear and tear kind of issue. Yep. 51:33 And so I think if you're doing that repeatedly for years on end, I think that's where... I, I think that's where some of the issue lies. So going back to the shitty programming. Yeah. Here's where you'll find it. 51:41 Here's where it shows up. One, using plyometrics for cardio. Yep. Right? Again, using plyos for calorie burning, basically. Mm-hmm. 51:48 So when I say cardio, um, I'm talking about, you know, what, what I think people think of when they think of cardio, and that is I need to burn more calories so I can lose fat. Yeah. Right? 51:56 So, or just get into better condition. Use conditioning, use capacity programming, not plyometric programming for increasing your, your cardiovascular VO2, uh, uh, you know, LTHR p- uh, um, outputs. 52:11 Like y- use it appropriately. Plyos is not the place for that. Other thing is, is like a high volume of this with just shitty mechanics. Yeah. Right? 52:19 It's programmed in, so I'm gonna do it, but I'm doing it poorly, right? I'm not doing it well. There's foundational elements of this that I have not addressed and need to go back and address. 52:28 And so again, just getting a program without any prerequisites being handled before that is shitty programming, right? Yep. And whose fault is that? 52:35 It's gonna be the consumer's fault at the end of the day for picking the wrong thing for them. Again, understanding that you can't know it all, so that's why we're having this discussion. Yeah. Like, just be careful. 52:45 Buyer beware. 52:46 Um, and then the, the last thing is, is on this, I think where it shows up is in, in shitty programming, is somebody, again, prescribing or somebody subscribing to a program that they are not prepared for outside of like, "I'm pretty strong," right? 53:00 "I, I'm pretty strong. I move pretty well, but I've got some issues underlying here. Like my tissue quality's not that good anymore. I've gotten older," right? "I've gotten a little stiffer. 53:09 I've gotten a little less mobile. I'm a little less flexible," right? Like, "I have some baggage," right? "I have this knee that's kind of been a thing." 53:16 So you're choosing programs Hoping to get in better shape without addressing the underlying things that exist there. 53:23 And then oftentimes what happens when the, you're not getting the result you're looking for, you get hurt, it goes directly to, "That was shitty programming. This program sucks. I'm hopping to the next program." Mm. 53:34 No, no, no. [laughs] Like, let's, let's take a few steps back and peel back the layers on the onion here and figure out what's w- what's really going on. 53:40 Yeah, was it the right program for you at that time at where you're prepared for currently with all these other, um, things, you know, brought into, into, into perspective for it. 53:49 So I think, too, like, you know, i- is this for you? Like, if you- Yep... 53:52 are gonna be the person that's wanting to know, like, whether it's from the coach's perspective or the individual to see, "Hey, am I ready for this stuff?" 53:59 Like, one we talked about, do you have strength and general capacity in general, um, with other, with the movements, right? Can you squat? Can you lunge? 54:06 Can you do all these other what we say, like, kinda basic fundamental movement patterns with, in a controlled manner? Um, something that I think a lot of people neglect is, can you balance? Can you balance on one leg? 54:16 Yeah. [laughs] Can you balance on two legs? Can you b- I, I, d- Mm-hmm. Sorry, I just had a lot of client flashes in my head of it, you'd be surprised the amount of people that cannot balance on one leg for 10 seconds. 54:25 Yep. Which, do you wanna go and jump onto that one leg now if you can't even do it in a controlled manner with no varying forces? So I think that's something to really think about. 54:33 Do you, um, do you have good mechanics, right? We talked about the deceleration component, good landing mechanics before you work on the big force and positions. 54:41 Um, so I think that's what, but when, you know, this is important for you to do even if you are older. I think- Yeah, for sure... I think it is, but you just need to alw- like we said, quality over quantity. 54:50 Um, things that people don't really think about, like we talked about mechanics, but some of those things where doing two leg before one leg, having some assistance if you can, work on your mechanics. Yep. 54:59 Things like what surface are you jumping on is really important. A lot of people don't think about that. 55:04 If you're out doing these on the concrete, that's a lot of a harder force than if you're doing it on, like, a soft turf. And obviously there's a sweet spot 'cause if it's too soft, there's- Yep... 55:11 some instability there, right? But a turf, for example, has some force absorption. It's allowing more of a, less of a hard impact up through the joints, up through the chain. 55:20 Um, things like that are st- how you start to do it. We talked about the kinda extensive vers- versus the intensive. So can you do, like, jumping? Can you do, or, like, pogos? Can you do jump rope? 55:29 Can you do these things that are low impact, um, before you start to think about these higher impact or these higher power output, um, activities. Yeah, I love what you said there just about the contact surface. 55:39 Uh, I think that's important to understand, and how does that work practically for, for people that are going to classes or going to the gym or whatever. Look, we're, it's the summer. 55:46 Maybe you've got that gym with the roll-up door, and so they're, they, you can take equipment outside. 55:50 If you think that doing, uh, these plyometric movements outside on the concrete is, is the same as doing 'em maybe inside on the turf that you've been working on or on the rubber mats that you've been working on, you are sorely mistaken. 56:02 It is different. The class is full tonight. Uh, it's annoying in here. It's too busy. It's too hot, right? I'm not underneath that AC. The fan's not blowing on me. I'm gonna go outside. I'm gonna do my stuff out there. 56:12 Beware, because that is a much different surface, so your ground contact will be different with regard to how your body responds and absorbs that. 56:19 Well, on top of that, too, is are you wearing the proper footwear to be doing- Yeah, 100%. Mm-hmm. 56:25 I, I think the NBA was, I, I heard some rum- rumblings that the NBA was trying to blame the footwear for all the Achilles injuries. Oh, I mean, everyone, yeah. 56:31 [laughs] So, okay, so, you know, at the beginning of the conversation, we were talking about all these other factors as far as, you know, what could be the potential as far as for an Achilles rupture, and one of the first things that went to my head was, okay, so how new are these shoes? 56:43 How old are these shoes? Have the model of the shoes changed in the last couple of months? 56:48 'Cause if they're going through the shoes, you know, I mean, the model of the shoe, even though it's the same brand, it can vary a little bit. So- Well, that's why I stopped wearing Nikes... you know? 56:57 Well, yeah, and the- Well, I wasn't gonna name drop that brand. [laughs] But, I mean. Stopped wearing them. Yeah. They kept changing them. It was, every model was d- Yep, I was the same... 57:03 I just want the same fucking shoe, man. Just give me the same shoe. Yeah. They couldn't do that for me. I can't do them. I can't do it anymore. 57:07 Well, and that's, like, with even, I was, a- and with this especially, we were talking about, like, an Achilles, like the amount of drop on the shoe, the amount of angle on that- Exactly, mm-hmm... 57:13 can really, really change the amount of stretch on that. Yes. So if you're having a shoe with a bigger heel, and you've been training on that, and then you- Mm-hmm... 57:19 get one that's a flatter sole, when you go to and accelerate in a, in a movement, you're gonna have a bigger drop and a bigger stretch [laughs] on that Achilles, and that can be a big impact. 57:26 Yep, and then as far as, like, the shoes that you're wearing on a daily basis to the shoes that you're wearing for your- Right... your, um, practice or your training. For your sport, yeah. 57:32 Your skill practice or training, yeah. For sure. So, um, k- We had a whole episode on feet. Yeah, we could do a whole other. I know. [laughs] Well, we, we, yeah. 57:38 [laughs] We, we've done a couple on feet and shoes and- CC's a foot nerd... 57:42 foot mechanics, and, and I, and I appreciate that, uh, actually, and I think those that spend time in this un- understand the value of proper footwear, uh, in keeping our athletes safe, performing their best, and keeping them injury-free. 57:54 Anybody that's had feet issues in, in their, in their life understands the importance of, of footwear, or of proper footwear, no matter what you're doing. It's like hygiene. Yeah. [laughs] It's, besides the hygiene. 58:05 But, um, that, that said, like, again, going back, can I use plyos for conditioning? If you're asking yourself that question, you might be doing that. The basic answer is no. Don't do that, right? Yeah. 58:15 Unless you have a high level of capacity, you have a high level of all the foundational, uh, components that we talked about, and you are programming it very specifically. 58:24 Again, there are camps out there, or there are, uh, exercise, uh, ca- ugh, what do I say, I guess, genres out there that seem to kinda put this in randomly. 58:36 You know, one of the things we didn't, we didn't talk about was, like, kinda where this goes in the workout. And I don't know if I ment- if we mentioned that or not. It should go at the front Oh, yeah Right? 58:43 It should go at the front of the workout Once you do your warmup, first thing you do Yeah, you do your warmup. You get right into the stuff where the body's fresh, those energy systems are fresh. 58:49 Again, we talked about how minimal the, the, the g- amount of ground contacts can actually be. Again, people think 25, that's so low. It's enough. Yeah Right? That's what you should be doing. 58:59 Then you move on to your strength or other power and cap, uh, speed and, and capacity work that isn't plyometric based. Yeah. 59:06 Um, however, there are things that you can do to work these components, like med ball throws, like, uh, pushing a sled, right? 59:14 That can help, um, basically augment that plyometric work that you're doing without doing, um, without, without going through the, the, the high force outputs on this at the same timing. 59:24 But they can prep you and put you ready for that. I love the sled for this stuff. 59:28 Um, it loads the entire body if done properly, you know, depending on if maybe you're pulling, you know, using a strap or something around your hips or whatever else. But there's a lot of stuff there. 59:35 And med ball throws for that upper body, you know, throwing the med ball against the wall or the ground or what- whatever else to work that, that, that, um, that stretch reflex component that we were talking about, as well as build some capacity before we start getting into more, the more high-intensity stuff, like a plyo pushup or something even more dramatic than that when you're, you know, when you're, you're using a machine or something that, um, some, some other type of piece of equipment that can add that much more external force to you, where you're not just, um, accelerating through the concentric, but you're having to decelerate it on- Yeah... 1:00:08 the eccentric. So you can work the different components there. Um, I, I mentioned, like, the, those, those people that are more of an advanced age. 1:00:17 You know, like, how, how do we implevi- im- uh, implement this into their training? You, you said that before like, "Hey, everybody should be doing this if they can," right? If they're, if, if appropriate. 1:00:26 You should get to the point you should be training this. You should want to. Yes. Right? 1:00:29 You should want to, and you should, and, and, and, and be training in a way that gets you to a point where you can absorb or decelerate, absorb, and then accelerate out of certain positions. 1:00:39 You will find a much higher level of fitness. Um, you will achieve a much lever, uh, higher level of capacity there, and you'll feel better. You'll feel, you'll feel more confident. 1:00:48 Again, if that's not your thing and you just wanna look great in a bathing suit, um, that's fine. That's, that's cool, too. But if you're trying to be more of a well-rounded athlete or human, I think this... 1:00:56 And you like to do other things, surf, snowboard, ski, run, you know, or jump out of airplanes, you know, whatever, whatever the thing happens to be, this is, these are things that should be implemented in your program. 1:01:06 So how do we adjust? We decrease things like, uh, like amplitude. So we talk about, like, pogo hops as an example or a broad jump. We just do them a little less high, right? Mm-hmm. 1:01:15 We don't do them quite as fast to start. We start to slowly, uh, integrate these things in. We reduce the number of ground contacts. We don't do 25 in a workout. We do 10. Yeah. Right? And we call it good, right? 1:01:26 And we start to slowly build into this, see how the body responds. You should expect that your body's response in terms of recovery time will likely slow as you get older. It's just the way it is, right? 1:01:36 So don't try to rush the process. Don't try to get somebody to the ski season, right, starting in Th- December... starting at post-Thanksgiving. [laughs] Right? 1:01:45 Like, you can get some work done in that amount of time, but that's not the time to finally implement your plyometric training, your capacity training, in order to be able to handle this stuff. 1:01:53 So, um, again, th- things, things like that. 1:01:56 And I think the, the bigger thing there as you maybe get a little older or you've been out of the, the mix a little bit is emphasize the quality of what you're doing and the recovery, um, from the thing that you're doing. 1:02:05 Again, going back to shitty programming. If this is programmed into your workout every day, right, I'd be asking myself a question like, "Why are plyometrics in my-" Mm-hmm... "program every day?" 1:02:14 If y- you or your coach cannot clearly articulate that and give you a very solid rationale, I would run far and fast. Uh, that's just not a good, not a, not, not a good platform to be working from. And we see a lot. 1:02:27 Again, it's where the, where the waters get muddy, particularly in the concurrent programming or what's h- often referred to in, in this bastardized term called hybrid athletes. Mm-hmm. 1:02:38 Um, that's where you're starting to see it get lost. Uh, we're just taking ideas, and we're bolting things onto other types of programming without a lot of rhyme or reason. 1:02:49 Sometimes somebody can talk a good game and tell you about that, but again, I want you to be able to articulate exactly what's working here, how are we measuring this, and how do we know that we're being successful. 1:02:59 Yeah. You might have all the parts to the machine, but you know how to, you need to know how to build the machine with those parts. 1:03:03 So I think a lot of people just throw the kitchen sink of all those parts, all these mechanics of a program, but you actually need to know how they fit together and how they can balance each other. Yeah. 1:03:11 So if you're doing this on your own or e- even if you're a coach, I think some great tools, uh, to be able to use to kind of assess kinda where you're at or just get a good, a, a good picture. 1:03:19 So a lot of times we're doing plyometrics, you don't have a mirror, right? There's, there's not a mirror to kinda see what you're doing. 1:03:24 You're just focused on getting that broad jump done or that high jump done or whatever the thing it is that you're doing. Maybe you're sprinting, right, as a, when you're working your speed work. 1:03:32 Like, how do you, how do you kind of examine or analyze what you're doing or what you might look like? 'Cause you might think you look a certain way [laughs]. [laughs] Mm-hmm. 1:03:40 But if you film it, everybody's got a phone in their damn pocket now, right? So if you film it, that'll give you some really good feedback on kinda what things look like. 1:03:46 And it can clue you into, "Oh, shit, I'm really weak through here. Oh, my posture sucks. Oh, um, I can see my hip flexion is not very good here, or my hip extension is not very good in that, in this particular thing. 1:03:57 Like, I'm locking out through my knees and ankles, but my hips are still in flexion," right? That kind of thing on a jump. Like, it's, be the same as if you're, you're doing, like, Olympic lifting. 1:04:05 Like, where are the breakdowns in these things? Because as we get deeper into these more advanced movements, more advanced movement patterns, uh, the nuance and the details fucking matter. Yes. Yeah. 1:04:15 So, so filming it is a, is a good way to look at it. Um, the other thing is don't forget about the decel training. Whenever you're starting a program, start there. 1:04:22 You know, like, we, we, we talked about the, like, the pogo hops is a, is an easy way to kinda get warmed up. The drop squats. The drop squats, the, the, um, snap downs. Yep. Dead squats. 1:04:31 Of stepping off of a box into the landing position, examining that landing position. Those are good ways to kinda get a good feel for where you're at, and they're very telling. They're v- For sure... 1:04:40 they're very telling when, when you get into that. 1:04:42 And beware, if you have not done that type of training before and you start to implement it, particularly if you're going way deep into the, uh, total ground contacts game, or cave, if you wanna call it that way, you're gonna be sore. 1:04:55 Mm-hmm. Like, you're, you're, you're going to be sore. This is, so if you're trying to avoid Not being in good shape for the next workout. Start, when I say slow, start, um, uh, calculated. Yeah. Right? 1:05:07 Uh, we can't get faster training slower. Uh, period, hard stop, end of the day, right? W- we, sometimes strength training is a little slower, right? Sometimes we're working mechanics with lighter loads, right? 1:05:21 But working slow does not make you faster. You're going to have to work faster. You're gonna have to increase the speed of that ground contact response in order to get faster. So we're gonna have to move there. 1:05:31 So start with less in terms of how many, right? And, uh, and again, like amplitude, heights of boxes, heights of how high you jump, things like that, and start to build up. But don't sacrifice, sacrifice that for... 1:05:45 Don't sacrifice speed for the, again, the decrease in heights or amplitude or, uh, number of ground contacts. That still needs to be pretty consistent. Again, a good way to look at that is just film yourself. 1:05:55 So anyway, lots of stuff on plyometrics. Um, I could, we could go on all about the programming and where it goes in or whatever, but I think key takeaways we kind of covered. 1:06:04 Uh, if you wanna start implementing this stuff, make sure you've got a good foundation. 1:06:09 Uh, that's a good strength program, strength training program, and all your programs, all your programming should generally be rooted in a solid resistance training program. 1:06:18 Good strength training programs take all this stuff into account. While you might not be doing plyometrics, you're setting up the system for success when you transition into doing maybe more plyometric work. 1:06:28 Two programs, that's why I love Strong. Everybody loves Strong. RDF Strong puts you together. It gives you that basic foundation of muscle hypertrophy and strength to set you up for success. 1:06:38 You can move into Max, where we hit this stuff, and we hit it in this, in this exact format, what we just went through today, through the warmup, through the, the training programming. 1:06:48 All the volume is all calculated out. We're not doing that shit every day, every week. We're incorporating bands. We're incorporating boxes. 1:06:54 We're incorporating balls and sleds, jump ropes, things like that, that, um, that we talked about on the, on the show today that should be in your program. So, um, Strong is a great place to start. 1:07:04 So if you're not sure, you've been out of the game a while, um, don't go to, "Hey, how do I do plyometrics training?" 1:07:09 Go to, "How do I get a good foundational strength and hypertrophy training program that sets me up to then start to, um, incorporate some of these other variables?" And, and we've kind of built that progression for you. 1:07:19 So check it out. You can get 25% off RDF Strong. Just go to rdfstrong.com. Uh, when you, when you get there, just use code STRONG25. Uh, it's a four-month program, and so it, there's a lot of value in that. 1:07:32 It's all mapped out for you. You get all the exercises. There's a, we even include some educational material, so you know. Some people don't read it. They just, "Give me the workout templates." 1:07:41 Of course, the workout templates are there for you, but you get access to us, too. 1:07:44 So if you need adjustments to, to anything or if you have questions about things, you need some workarounds, you don't have a piece of equipment, you're not really sure, one of the things you get when you get into that, any of our programs is you get access to us. 1:07:54 So happy to help you. So check that out. Again, that's rdfstrong.com. [upbeat music] Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Iron Sights. 1:08:02 If you enjoyed our conversation, you can support our mission by hitting the subscribe button, leaving a review, and sharing the podcast with a friend. I'll see you on the next episode.
