Happy New Year everybody. Very excited to close out the New Year with episode 486 of the Strong Life Podcast with my good friend, a mentor. Somebody I do explain is I go to him for like fatherly strength coach advice. If you don't know me and you never been here before, welcome aboard Strong Life Podcast as your host, Zach Evanish, and my guest that I'm talking about in episode 486 is my buddy Joe Ken, a.k.a. Big House Power, we just call him House. He's been a great friend who I met when back in the day on the lead FTS, he was part of the Q&A staff and all these NCAA regulations were crazy and on that staff, he was known as coach H, but we had met in person and I will embed these videos when this goes up on ZachEvanish.com, just click on the podcast. I'm going to embed the videos of when he visited the first underground strength gym. He was the strength coach at Louisville and Louisville was playing Rutgers and so Friday, I called out sick from work, I met up with Joe, I met up with Adam Fight, Joe Connolly, and Brian Dermody, Brian Dermody went on to become a strength coach at University of Iowa, Hawkeyes, Adam Fight had been in the NFL, D1, and now he's a professor and also gym owner up in Boston, he's at Springfield College, his wife is also a professor, he's an amazing person, an amazing coach, just amazing at everything and then Joe Connolly's at Arizona State and the tree, the coaching tree that was connected to the house is always amazing and we actually, I forgot to ask him about things he had his interns do way back in the day, but I don't want to crush this intro too long, we go two and a half hours and really no better way to close out the new year than with such a great guy, if you want the truth you go to house, if you want somebody who's going to be warm and fuzzy and bullshit you, you go to somebody else and the title of this episode is putting the strength back in strength and conditioning, I think you guys are going to love it, let's keep crushing 5 star reviews, I'll do a quick look online right now, if anybody has left a new 5 star review, nobody has emailed me yet from the previous episode to get your gift which was the Russian line power course and by the way, I'll link up Joe Conn's website which is bighousepower.com, you could follow him on Instagram which is awesome, I've got all of his programs and I love his programs, I'd say the one that really blew my mind, it's called reinforcement strength training for neck and head support, holy crap you've never seen such an in-depth program, it's not really just training the head and neck, it's really training the torso and preparing the body for combative sports, it's amazing, so let's see if there's any new 5 star reviews, we're at 596 ratings, I love it, there are no new 5 star reviews, they might be, sometimes they take two or three days you post something up, but we're gonna get, let's get through, let's get past 600 reviews before the new year, that's 24 hours from now, okay big thanks to everybody for being great listeners, great supporters, I'll link up in the show notes, resources we have, training programs you could join me with and if you want to do any consulting, all that stuff's available, love you guys, big thanks, strongly podcast creeping up on almost 500 episodes, almost 600 reviews, love it, enjoy this amazing two and a half hours with Joe Ken, big house, talk to you guys soon, wishing everybody the best new year ever, happiest, healthiest to you and everybody in your circle, talk to you soon. Welcome to the strong life podcast where we talk about dominating in strength, health, business and life. And by the way, if you're a parent out there and you've got a teenager, get over there and see Zach, talk about being jacked up, his place is jacked up and ready to go. There's no better program than here, I pushed myself beyond the levels that I can go in here, got it, it's on the ground. Have you ever seen Zach Evanesh, oh he's a trainer out of New Jersey, first of all, let me just congratulate him on his badass name, that's a great name, what's his name again? Zach Evanesh, Evanesh, Evan, that's a pretty nice name. One, all right, the only way to do a proper kick off of the strong life podcast for the year 2024 is with big house power, Joe Ken, my guy, the Tony soprano of strength and conditioning. Something like that. I've been watching, I've been getting back to watching the sopranos because of just, I'm not impressed with the movies and TV shows of today. Well, I mean, with streaming, man, it's like every, everything's a movie now and everything's a mini series or a short series, you know, you can get on the Netflix and binge watch a six series mini series, which is really like a three part movie back in the day when you go to Star Wars one, two and three. Give you a six station mini series. I mean, I mean, I guess it's the wave of the future, that's for sure. I mean, it doesn't seem like, I mean, I don't, I don't have anything but streaming channels. Yeah, there's, there's also no like ending to some of these series. Like, it's like they got busy, they ended it. And then I think somebody said, well, if they're not getting like certain viewership, the Netflix is like, Hey man, just cut it right there. So some of those series never had like a proper ending. There's several of them like I jumped in on and I'm like, okay, when's the, when's the launch date for a series, whatever? And I'm like, Oh, it's on hold. It's just like how long like the Cobra Kai series is like, when you're going to finish this thing up on me. Well, I watch. Yeah, it's like, well, I watch, I'll tell you what's a good one if you don't want to ask you. Paul said King with Stallone. Yes, I'm out. He's a badass. Yeah, that's a baller. What I love that one. Tough. Dwight man, Freddie man, don't mess with him. That's actually on, that's paramount. Yeah. He's pretty tough. He's pretty Jack too. You know, he ain't afraid. He's not afraid. He's on the, he's on the news. He's on the supplement program of all 70, 80 and 90 year old people. That looked like there's 50. It was funny. I was listening to the sports radio for some reason was getting on a kick about how much this generation of the, the older person looks so much younger than in generations past. Like they were saying like, if you're, you're a little bit younger than me, but like you remember like Sanford and son and, and Archie Bunker. Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, Archie Bunker, if you would have said how old Archie Bunker and the bunkers, you'd say 65. He was 48 and either was 44, right? With all that gray hair. Yeah. Fred Sanford was 48 when they started Sanford and son. They were talking about the one guy from cocoon, the older guy who used to do the diabetes commercial, who looked like he was 70 and cocoon. He was 50 years old. And, and you could just see how, now what, what is that? Is that, is that an art? And I think for our age bracket, the fitness boom was that it's all time greatest in that 80s with the, even like, you could say what you want. Richard Simmons, all those shows. What was that? That one dude that was go on. Go on. Corey Everson show Lee Haney. I mean, we, we went through the whole body building revolution in sport. I mean, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger led to physical fitness council for, you know, residency and stuff. I mean, so who's on it now? Like, I don't even know, like, so like, always at your brony. Yeah. I mean, we all, we came up through a generation that now when you look back at it, we probably benefited by the way society treated fitness. And now it's, you know, it's gone backwards. I know you do a really good job of advocating fitness at the youth levels. But, you know, the truth is we always want to, like, yell at the kids for, oh, they don't do this. These kids don't work hard. Hey, man, the adults set the rules that no kids, no kid is going to vote out physical education in school. Yeah. No kid is going to vote out, you know, certain rules in sport. Like I'm tired of hearing, like, with football, all these guys are soft. They couldn't do this. We'll never know if they could, because they've never been asked. They've never been asked to do two a days the way we did two a days. They banned it. They never, they've never been asked to play with the physicality that used to be in a lot of sports. And that's across the board. I mean, the game has changed to reflect the growing, just natural athleticism that athletes have evolved to. And I think some of the innate traits that used to hold high regard, like, I don't want to get into defining toughness. But it's a skill game. It's not a street fighter game in a lot of these sports. And we have to stop criticizing the athletes as much as we've got to watch how society and those who are in charge of the rules and regulations have created this persona of a lot of athletes. And I think that's where, you know, we have to, you can't compare what I did to the football players now. That's not fair to them, because I know this. I think a lot of those guys could have made it through what I went through because they're athletically enough to do it. But I can tell you this, in this era, I wouldn't make it as high as I did because I'm not athletic enough to do it. See what I'm saying? So I agree. But I think when people look at certain things and they criticize, that's why I laugh. And again, once in a while, I have to say something on Twitter, but I don't go on Twitter because I find it laughable. I find it laughable about some of these people that I hold in high regard that continue to just want to stir pots because, hey, man, I don't need to stir the pot to be relevant. I can walk down every street of any university and big house is relevant. I don't need to make some stupid comment on fricking Twitter for somebody that nowhere I stand on something. It's all propaganda. Look, it's bullshit. A lot of these guys I respect, but like, and everything's recycled. Like when I'm just the other day, and I had to say something, some guys were talking about three day a week training, like, oh, I was in that conversation. I'm like, where have you been? Broke like, this isn't nothing new. Yeah, like, where have you been? Like, I got blasted when I started doing that in the 90s by college strength and conditioning coaches and professionals by going back. What do they want you doing? Four days. You had to live four days. Oh, why lower upper lower. Yeah. But see what they don't understand is this. Here's what I've been trying to tell people nowadays, especially with these high school people who want to get a library. Remember this, that, and I know you're a proponent of strength training, but you're also a keen wrestler, and you know, sport. Your daughter's a high level tennis player. Here's what I'm going to want everybody to listen hard. And I'm a proponent of lifting weights. All these sports started with no one lifted weights, and no one started everybody stopped lifting weights. Guess what we would be watching on TVs? All those sports. Yeah, so let's not get it twisted. Yeah, we have value in our roles. 100%. There's no question. We have value, but don't get it twisted. Those sports don't need us. Well, I say I was just at the high school wrestling. I said number one rule to being a great wrestler is what? And they think it's a trick question. They think I'm trying to get them to talk about strength. Yeah, I say, you got to be great at wrestling. But I said, the problem is some of you are pretty good, but you're so damn weak. It limits your ability to express your technique. My daughter, if she deadlifts more, will not be a better tennis player. She actually doesn't need to get stronger. It will probably work against her. She needs more strategy. Yeah, learning where the ball placement. When do you put back spin versus time? Yeah, now you're playing chess. She's a checker player. Now it's time to play chess. But I'll say this house like with the strength training, and you speak about this athleticism. What I've seen is strength is getting less important. Even my coach said this to me. He said, dude, our guys could like sprint and jump. He's like, but they're not really that strong. And I was like, yeah. Taking the strength out of strength training. Just remember that we've gotten so far over into skill development. Yes. And again, a lot of that is too. And you can't blame it on a lot of these coaches. Look at where all these. And again, when I talk about these games, I'm mostly talking about the football and even basketball. And these games have turned into highly competitive athletic games. Is there physicality? Yes, there's physicality. But when quarterbacks dominate the games and wide receivers dominate the games, and it's not the up front and running back, the game is changed. I mean, for Saquan Barkley to rush for 2000 yards in this era, he should be the leader in the clubhouse for the MVP. Because that's not supposed to happen anymore. Derek Henry at one point had a chance to do the same. If he would have done that, he would have been the only guy in the history rush for 2000 yards in two separate seasons. And here's a guy who was really cast away from the team that drafted him. And he's still going to rush for over 1800 yards this year. So if you look at the teams that win in the NFL, I can't speak because I studied enough that I feel like I have value in saying this. But the teams right now that are winning, if you look at their coaches in their backgrounds, they're still practicing hard harder than most. And they believe that there has to be even though they're passing, they have they believe in strong defense and some resiliency of a running game. Yes. I mean, that's high school too. Yeah. And the teams that have gone too much into studying the data and studying the the player loads. And I'm not saying that's not important, because it is health and safety should be at the forefront. But here's what I will tell you. You're neglecting health and safety when you don't practice hard enough to be ready to play in a game. You're not physically or mentally prepared. You have no durability. You're not. Yeah. Any and this is where I will say I will just call us call anyone. I'm tired of hearing someone say that games should be the hardest day of the week. Are you effing kidding me? That's the game's the hardest day of the week. Why is everybody still getting hurt? Because they're not prepared to play in the game status all the time. So I'm working with athletes with more injuries than ever before. And so what I'm seeing is there, I feel like strength training, strength recognition, whatever people want to call it has been like, hey, I could copy some of that shit on the internet and we could do it just fine. I've never had so many athletes injured, dislocated knees, separated shoulders, shoulder dislocations, torn ACLs. Now, when I look at those athletes, I don't say to myself, if I just would have done more speed and agility, I could have helped this kid. Every time these injuries happen, I say lack of muscle mass, lack of strength, lack of durability. And at the college level, I wonder if you're seeing this because I'm not sure where I know you're speaking at so many clinics, director of education for dynamic fitness. But here's what I've seen or at least heard. I was a strength coach at two division one wrestling programs. We would strength training the morning, then they would do an afternoon wrestling practice in season twice a week. I've heard some schools telling me they might lift very short 25, 30 minutes and then practice. So it's one session. So they don't do two. And there's a lot of like optional things for the rest of the life. Hey, if you don't want to do this, I'll give you this in that. And I know next year guaranteed with NIL and football, it's there is going to be a contract that says I don't put a bar on my back. Well, and again, and that's where certain things just have to be. Again, and again, I'm not saying you have to put a bar in their back. Like, I know, I think you said you were talking with Mike Boyle and they will not back squat. And let me just tell you, I again, I give credit where credit's doing. And I am am I perfect at that? No, but I long I learned a long time ago that, Hey, man, it's okay that you didn't know that, right? Like, yes. And and I remember when I was at Boise State, we were a back squatting machine. Like, I mean, I literally like I tell people now don't build your programs around exercises. Oh, I'm telling you at Boise State, we were built around what year what years was that house? That was like 90s. Yeah, early 90s. I grew out of why were you not front squatting? I mean, that's because I was building out this plan of the tier system with this athletic whole body approach, but still with that meat head powerlifting now, resonating from the strength sports. We were doing front squats, but not to the a point where it resonated with me like, Oh, wait a second. I have to look at things differently. And and when I took over the Utah job and I replaced Chris Doyle, Chris wanted his big mentors with Mike Boyle, because that was his strength coach at BU. And that's when I really started studying Boyle stuff. And the front squat portion of it really hit me hard. Like, I've said a lot of times, I've had numerous epiphany moments in strength and conditioning where you're like, damn man, that just makes that's like so ridiculously smart. Like you're an idiot. Like, you know, like, why didn't you? But it's not for you. I've thought of other things that other people have, you know, so so it was Mike Boyle who really got me thinking about and the truth is now I don't know if I was coaching high school, what athletes I would actually have back squat. Yeah, I really. And again, and I just think there's just so much more because again, what I'm training, I'm utilizing a movement to enhance another sport. I'm not using a movement to enhance another movement. You know what I'm saying? Like, when I look at people have to look at when I look at those two squats, and I said this to Mike, when I have somebody fault or on technique, it's majority going to be back squat. Front squats tend to be deeper. I love what it does for ankle mobility. You feel your trunk or people want to call it the core. Jim Wendler, I don't know how long ago he stopped, but he said in season he won't back squat, they will just trap bar deadlift. I have kind of like moved things I moved away from was we were very aggressive with our training at the first underground that you came to. So we could do grind reps, but I felt like the kids were emotionally into it. So they didn't overthink it. Today, I find like kids might overthink stuff. So I kind of, I have the training, and then I also look at what is the mentality of the athlete. Look at the handle because if they're not exposed to it, and by the way, House, why I think strength and conditioning is taking a hit is because kids are so overcoached from all these privates that they're just like, I, I've heard this before, when we sometimes lose kids, the phrase they tell their dad is, I just want to train with my friends. Like they're so sick of everybody telling what to do. They want to fucking go to the gym, hang out a little bit. You know what? That's those kids there will find more of a passion in their, in their long term life than those who are forced to do something. And I can tell you that with my two sons, I mean, we've talked about this on and off the air where my oldest son was more marinavaged, Todd Marinavaged, and our Marinavaged. People need to see that. And he does not go in the gym. And he was one of the best lifters I ever coached, most the best technical for sure. But he never had fun in the gym. Who's that Joey? Yeah, his first exposure is glute ham raises, chin, and Nordics, right? Yeah. Where Peter was not coached by me, because I was with the Panthers at the time and and was exposed to training differently. He started Travis, right? Yeah, he got to go with Travis and some of his friends and, and he wound up resonating in to become in the strength coaching and training. So you, I mean, there's a lot to that. Like even for me, my passion, I mean, like, you know, in our, you know, and I trained at the high school with our high school coach, we had a good program, but that's where all my friends lifted. And that was some of my friends got in the bodybuilding. We all got into that, but we all, but we always had time during the year where we all went to the gym and just trained and just had a fun, like, you know, great time bodybuilding. Like, hey, we'd show up, we'd go to Dunkin Donuts and get a coffee and go into the gym drinking coffee doing seated behind in that presses for an hour, you know, to do that. Again, it's a resonating, special, you know, so those kids, I don't mind that just like, I always built in the program where even in the pros, we had a, we had a, you know, and that was the one good thing about having a three day week program, you could open up for the players to have the option to have some fun. Like in the pros, we had a player's choice day, like we were going to be training four days a week. How often was the players? Oh, wow. What were the, what'd you do again from the whiteboard and let them create the work out or they just? Well, it's funny how that works, right? Like some guys, some guys had specific things that they did with their personal and private coaches. So that was their time to implement it. Then we had all of our like, what I call our blitzes or our, our corrective type of programs, like, hey, if you got an ankle issue or you need more hamstring, a lot of guys who just go in there and do extra vacuum guns. Some guys just did, you had to do something. Some guys who weren't big lifters would go and foam roll. Some guys would do, why did you have to do something? It was part of their contract. Well, yeah, you got, you got to get paid for attendance. Yes. So if we're going to run and lift, you have to participate in the run in the lift to get credit for the day. So on players choice, you may not choose a lift, but you got to come in the weight room. When did you start the players choice? Just with the NFL or? No, we would do that. We call them blitzes in college. When I was at Boise State, you could come in Tuesdays and Thursdays and we'd have a blitz board where you could come in on your own. Hey, coach, I want to do extra back today. Okay, do program 22 and they'd go and it was a giant pinup board and they'd go to play program two. And then when we got to Arizona State, that's how you gained extra points to make the hard hat club. So guys would come in like, that's where like, and that was when the extra workouts and Louis Simmons started picking up. Yes. I had guys that trained feed. That's what people don't understand. We are, our programming was three days a week, but I had guys, our fullback, Mike Carney, who played in the NFL for, did he get 10 close to 10 years, he trained in the weight room, seven sessions a week. Why? Because he loved the train. He's a meathead. Like, if you saw a bike today, he works, he's one of the X NFL guys who does like equipment checks at the games. He's five, 10 and five, 10 wide, like a brick shit house. And he loves to lift weights. Like, I like Mike Carney so much that when he max squatted, I made sure that he max squatted six hundred and one pounds. So he would always be one pound better than all my six hundred pound squatters. It's a mental if you. So like for him, when you see my charts, you'll see these guys, you know, seven, six, fifth, and then you see Mike Carney, six or one. And they're like five guys at six hundred. Did you have in college house? Like I was just thinking, some, you know, sometimes you see the kids that love to lift, but they're, I think you told me sometimes those kids are sitting on the bench right next to the coach. How did you get them to say, need you to take this energy and commitment and pick up the skill? Or is it some guys don't have the skill? Yes. And then imagine. And then how many guys that had the skill and didn't have the cognitive ability to translate it to the field of play, because the tactical and the technical couldn't match from a mental standpoint. Yeah. And you see, like, it's, that's where you see some of these guys who are all combined and play like they're in, they're running a marathon, because they're, their minds cannot react to the ongoing situations as fast as their athleticism. I've seen that several times. We had a safety that was like that and USC had a safety that was like that. My wife, he, he, the kid from USC was so talented, it didn't hurt him in college. But when he went to the pros, he had a hard time of playing to that speed, because it was hard for him to recognize. And then you have the, the opposite. One of the best players I ever coached in college that no one will ever be here about. And I rate him behind Steve Smith, who's probably going to the Hall of Fame soon. He's a finalist this year. And Terrell Suggs, who's a first time finalist, and he may get into the Hall of Fame. But the next best college guy ever coaches, a guy I'm never here of the car is doing five nine, 215 pounds, strong safety, who ran four seven, but on game day, ran four fly, like that fool knew how to play ball. So why didn't they why didn't anybody play him up? Well, because when you run 215 and you're a safety, you went and you're five nine, you ain't going to the league. Well, what about, um, I don't fall football enough, but that big guy JJ, did he not do a combine? I heard there's like a clip on Instagram, James Harrison, where somebody's interviewing me. He's like, you don't know who I am. He's like, I never did a combine. Yeah, he was he probably only did a pro. There's no doubt James Harrison played at Kent State. He was a free agent. He didn't go to the combine. He did a pro day. If he was lucky, he was even did the pro day. What is what's the pro day? It's your it's your on campus combine. Like when you hear when you hear these guys, Oh, I'm training for the combine. And and again, are you training for the combat? Are you training for your pro day? Because unless you get a combine invite and only 300 something kids get one of those, you're training for your pro day. Yeah. Well, all these all these kids who are now saying, I'm gonna, I'm opting out. I'm going to go train for the combine. Are you? Are you getting ready to go for the your pro day? Which one's more important to combine? Because that means the pros think you're one of the top 300 something talents. Well, when you were at Arizona State was Adam Archuleta there or no, he was all he had graduated the year before I got there. So he like killed the combine, but then he was a hell of a player. Was he? What do you get? A lot of injuries in the NFL or how many years did he play? I don't know. He played quite a bit. But again, there's a guy who and again, I don't want to speak out of turn because he was a hell of a college player and had a tremendous career in the NFL. But here's a guy who his size, he was able to do things in college that his size in the pros. I don't want to say he was out of position, but it was a different position. What was his position? I think he played more of his safety in college and played more of like an outside linebacker robot, excuse me, a safety in the pro, but more of that outside rover type of guy on defense like in the box type of hybrid. And again, I'm probably speaking out of turn, but I do know from my from my recollection and again, he's still had a great pro career. He was just that when you're in that size, speed, it's now again, if he played now, he'd probably be better off in this. This is what I'm saying. You know, everything's errors like his skill set now is probably would be like like I played college football with Ricky Pro. Ricky Pro played 17 years in the NFL. He was one of the top receivers that no one ever heard of. He's got two Super Bowl rings. He's caught over 700 balls, but Rick was the epitome of what everybody knows of Julian Edelman, the one guy who's got the podcast from the, I don't know if that's Edelman. All these little slot guys that are making 100 catches a year. That was Ricky Pro in the 80s in the early 90s. So why didn't he get Ricky Pro? Why is he not known? Because he played on the greatest show on turf with three other wide receivers that are in the Hall of Fame. But Ricky Pro was the was the number one ride receiver at the Arizona Cardinals in in the early early 1990s. But again, it's just the way it is. But he he was that guy like Ricky Pro caught touchdowns in the Super. Ricky Pro won the NFC Championship game for the for the Rams that year they went to the Super Bowl. So this guy is like people know Rick and Ricky Pro taught a lot of those dudes who in the Hall of Fame had to run routes. Like that dudes, and this again, it's just there's so many different stories of errors and how people, just like, for example, everybody knows I'm a fan of Lyle Alexander. I think, you know, when you get to that point in your life and you see what happens, I don't want to get into the drugs and all that. The guy was on the juice. We all know he was on the juice. I trained with him. He went to my high school. Him, my dad, were boys. The dude was on the juice, but that doesn't take away from the the diligence and the and how hard he trained and the desire to be successful because of the way he was raised. And because he played in an era that didn't track sacks until the they didn't track sacks till his second to last year in the NFL and he played 17 years. But if you look at all those guys in that era and and they and they count sacks, he has over 100 career sacks and no one talks about him. Yeah. I think maybe that they don't know would be the all time sack leader. I think if they counted sacks when he played. So this is the things that you have to remember about errors and people and and and how things and how things change. Everybody's got a story. Every generation has a different type of personality to it. And and again, it's all dictated by the higher ups and the grown ups that are dictating how things are done. It's not that it's not the athletes stop. Hey, and I'm not saying that some kids don't need to grow up and some kids don't need to mature and some kids. But when you've not been constantly exposed, it's not their fault. It's just like when I'm getting ready to talk again at these long term athletic development. And and I don't want to and one of my slides is called free play. And what the lack of free play has done is it doesn't allow the youth of today to explore their own bodies because everything now is so subject to like you said, organized, regimented training. So they don't they don't know how to fall. So we're teaching them how to fall. They don't know how to roll. So we're teaching them how to roll. We don't know how to land. Deceleration. Yeah. Oh, I didn't jump out of a tree. I didn't jump off. But yeah, but here's what I did. Like, hey, man, we used to run from the cops when I was in. I say this shit all the time. And we know we had to learn how to do. If you were talented enough, you could hurdle offense. Yeah. But if you weren't, you had to learn to jump up and do that over. Yes. Yeah. Put your stomach on the bar. And we've been chasing my cops. Let's just put it out there, my dog. Yeah, man. You know, we throw snowballs at cars in the middle of the street. And we call it white lights. And if the white lights came, yeah, I learned how to sprint. So that also, things like, you know, I'm speaking at I was with the wrestling team in my school, we live in a beach town. Dude, my gym is a mile from the beach. I said, guys, I've been here 16 years. I've never seen any of you guys wrestling on the sand. I've never seen you guys organize something on your own. And in our town, also our girls basketball team at one point was like top 10 in the state. Our boys also, I have never seen a pickup game of basketball in 16 years. And we played tackle football on the street. Yeah, I lived right down the street from a golf course. We used to play tackle football on the 12th all the time. And again, we was just things like, and the other thing that free play and things like that, people talk about the, you know, the the exposure and the and the exploratory chances to learn. But the one thing that I really think free play has has really neglected in the in the youth is the development of leaders. And what do I mean? And what do I mean by that is just think about like we said, right? If you live in, where do you live in Edison? Man's gone. Man's gone. And I live in Inwood, and we know each other. And we're going to go, all right, that get your 10. And I'll get my 10. We'll meet at the park in the middle. And let's see who got the best boys. And then what happens is somebody's the captain, right? Yes. And then somebody's not the captain. And then everybody's looking for who's the leaders? Who's the tough guys? Who's this? So you're building a hierarchy of leadership. And you don't even know it. It's just like when you go to a basketball, you're going to play a pickup game and they go, okay, first two hit the free throws, you guys are the captains. And then you pick the team. And then you see who wants to jump up right away because they want to make the shot to be the captain. Yeah, find out who doesn't. Then you get the captains and then you start looking around. And you start to find out, all right, how these guys lining up because the guys who are trickling to the back, they don't think they're any good. Yeah, guys who are trying to pick me, pick me. We're never going back. Listen, we're not doing that. So it's only going to get. But here's, but again, so guess where that now where that falls, that falls on us, the coaches. And the problem with youth coaches are they think they're going to win the Super Bowl with six and seven year old. And then it becomes, well, I coached so my kids playing quarterback, your kid can't throw underhand. I have, listen, as a dad, I had to explain to my son those very things. And also, I actually chatted a little bit back and forth with all recruits who was in the NFL and he's like ripping the bears. And he said, you know, the problem with football coaches is it's all ego. It's all about them. He's like, he's like, they actually don't care that they're losing. They're just serving their own ego, even if it's hurting the team. The best coaches don't coach schemes. They coach players. The best coaches know multiple screens. That's why I like for me, when I came up, the best thing that I think that benefited me when I created the tier system was I could go up right now and program any way you want. You want me to program four day a week with Olympic glitch? You want me to program four day a week power lift? You want me to program a six day a week beginning bodybuilder? Because that's called learning. That's not just hanging your hat. Well, I trained conjugate. You can't train conjugate if you never trained traditional. You don't have the background and you don't have the understanding. You have been trained enough on a back squat to do 47 variations of a back squat. This is also why I love Arnold's Encyclopedia, all those bodybuilding exercises and the stories of him talking about different training partners, different gyms, the environment, and then also Bill Pearl's the Pearl's keys to the inner universe. There's so many exercises. Well, the strongest style survived. When I read that book, I actually read the strongest style survived after I came up with the tier system template and the more I read this book, I was like, well, I feel pretty good now because Bill all I did really was create a template that looks like Bill stars on steroids. Yeah, that's a super basic program. So here's what you said. This is why we got to remember, right? Simple doesn't mean easy. I say that all the time. Simple doesn't mean easy and safe doesn't take a day off. So if you build a program based off of that, it doesn't matter if you do one exercise a day, get really good at that before you start going into all this other craziness that people think you need. Because again, I'll go back to our very beginning of what we said. These sports don't need lifting as much as us lifting guys need these sports because we need the athletes to train. Well, these kids, I think athletes need strength when I look at, here's what I'm seeing house. This like the top is get at least that high school. I'm seeing like, there's no athletes. It's just these top highly skilled and then everybody else is kind of getting their ass kicked. And by that, by me saying there's no athletes, like let's say we're have a kid just like running over hurdles. They don't know how to move their arms. They look like a role. Remember, there's a difference between being very good at a sport and being an athlete. That's what I'm saying. They can't move back to everything we said. Why can't they move? Because they've never had to move without someone telling them exactly how to move. It kills it. So I only think I think it's going to get worse. Now, here's something I want to ask before I forget, you're talking about the era. And we just mentioned like the simplicity of strong a shell survive, which was clean squat and some sort of a press heavy medium light. Now, we're talking about Adam Archuleta. In the early 2000s, I had the VHS freak of strike. Freak of training. Nobody really was like, whoa, Nordics, eccentric drops. Nobody was into that until these past few years. Everybody wants crazy shit. But again, I mean, now his coach studied that. Yeah, Adam had a tremendous remember, Adam Archuleta was strong. So strong. And he was a bump. He was an athlete. Like, because if you remember that too, it's the same thing when Louis and them came out with Chuck Vogel pulled triple X. If you remember those particular videos and you watch them intently, you'll always notice that when there was a movement that most everyone could do, there was multiple people that did it. But if there was very specific movements, the only person in the video was either Chuck or Adam, which is telling you that some of these dudes ain't ready to do that stuff. And that's where, like, when people used to say Chuck Vogelpoo could wear out every one of his workout partners, well, yeah, because not many of them could do a thousand pounds of band tension with a thousand pound squats. Now I'm exaggerating. But why do you think what I'm saying is, I feel like today you kind of were alluding to it with Twitter or X, like everybody's got to have this kind of polarizing comment. We were exposed that maybe there just wasn't enough of us. We got Adam Archuleta's freak of strength on VHS. Remember that early 2000s? Yeah, I think I got mine. I might have gotten mine on the first DVD. No, it wasn't. Okay. 20 years ago. Over an Arizona State in 2001. So what I'm saying is we didn't see we didn't see altitude drops. We didn't see all these different shock training methods. It only became popular. I guess what I'm trying to say is this era, they chase likes and views. And that's why that shit's cool. But you and I, somebody who's been around, you've been around a lot longer than me, I can watch a back squat. And I know we're not saying that's it. But I could see a beautiful back squat. And I could also see a lot of fucked up shit from back squat. So I know when I'm looking at a back squat, it's not all the same. But I just think this era is chasing so much flash that doesn't have a transfer. Well, and remember a lot of these guys who had chasing the flash with some of that stuff that Archuleta did. And I'm not saying they don't have the strength base to actually do some of that stuff. Yeah, dude, he was absorbing vertical leg press. He was catching four or five on the bench. And again, he was a freak of training. There's not a lot of those guys like that. Well, it's just like anything else. Like I tell people all the time, if you watch somebody who is proficient in in the clean or the snatch, to me, that's like weightlifting ballet. True. I mean, it is, I mean, when you see a flawless Olympic lift, I mean, there ain't no, if you're into, if you're in the lifting, like if you're into the iron, they, there ain't much that's more impressive than looking at something that that looks that easy when you know it's not like, you know, and even then like we can go back and forth. And even the great some of the people, especially in the women's division, I still just get horrified when I watch these with the, what is it, valgis knees? Is it that as valgis when the knees go in? Cave in. Yeah. And it's, and again, a lot of it is because there's, to me, they're so deep. And again, when you look at a lot of Olympic lifting programs, there's unless there's supplemental movements are minimal. Like, like, I like with Coach Red Brock, if they did, if they did pistol squats or some variation of a pistol, would that help that knee stability and the lower quad muscles where that may not happen? Or are they doing enough admin adductor work for their hips? I don't, again, I don't, you know, these are looking, I don't study enough to know that, but because for me, training an athlete, all that stuff matters, because all I'm trying to do is bring in as many small, stabilizing muscle groups, because all I'm trying, I've had to come full circle on this, but the more, like I was just telling my wife now with the way I have to train through injuries and and building up certain to stay rather competitive, if I went back to the NFL right now, my programming would be insane for veterans over eight years. Jesse Ackman said that he said he front loads them with all that, you know, isolation. I've been front loaded stuff like that my whole time. That's why I call what people call warming up. I think I've called preactivity prep forever, because I love it, warming up. And I got that term from Charles Staley. When I heard Staley say that at a conference, we were hosting at Arizona State, I walked up and said, I said, that right there is a term. Would you call preactivity prep? Preactivity preparation. Are you preparing or you warming up? And again, there's times for a general, calisthenic warm up or a five to 10 minute, you know, walk the treadmill or ride the bike. But if you're preparing for a vigorous strength workout that you're going to say is athletic based and you're helping to fulfill needs of an athlete that pertains to a specific sport, it shouldn't be warming up. Because to me, athletes are very smart and they are listening. If I tell you we're getting ready to prepare to do something versus we're getting ready to warm up, warming up to them is, I'm going to talk to my friend and do a little bit of shit. True. I call prep at the high school. It keeps them a different preparation means, yo, we're focusing in full. And if you don't like it, hey, man, we're going to do up downs. You know, I mean, that's and now we hate that. Yeah, I hate punishing with exercise because I always feel like I do too. Like we got run these dudes, right? Hey, man, I you know how many guys I used to run, but they were so talented that running didn't get they could they'd rather miss and run that then they'd rather run extra than show up for weight. So yeah, it's just listen, the kids are different, but so are the adults who created what we're in. Wait, don't blame the kid. He's only doing what he's asking kids. Listen, kids don't know better because they you only know what you're exposed to in your environment, right? Yeah, you grew up in Long Island, tough environment. That makes sense to you. Kids in Manasquan. I always say, yo, man, last time somebody got punched in the face was 1975 and it was an accident. You know, I like me, nobody cares. You got to remember, Ken Leisner went to the same high school my dad did. He went to the same high school of years. Lyle Elzeito did. I mean, you heard the stories Ken Leisner said about growing up. They don't. And again, I'm not saying I'm some super tough guy. I'm nowhere near as tough as my dad, but I didn't have to be because he made sure I didn't have to be because he was that guy. But like when my dad my dad walked the streets of Inwood man, people were like, Oh man, that's the wrong guy. Don't mess with that dude because he's one of those dudes where Hey, I'll take the punishment after I whoop your ass. Like, yeah, he makes those guys where I do that those guys. And again, you see that like, that's why I tell people when they want to define toughness, right? Like, I remember when people would be like, Oh house, you're one of the toughest guys on the team. And I'm like, and I'm looking around like where I grew up. And I'm like, yeah, you all don't define tough. Like I define tough. But I'll get my ass whooped in a fight. Now what I learned was I was football tough. Yes. You know what I'm saying? Like, I was football tough. But like, to say that I was a tough guy, like, Hey, man, we're gonna go fight some dudes. Yeah, I might be that dude in the back. I might be like picking up the scraps because I'm not gonna be the first one out there throwing a haymaker. Yeah, they say foot toughness is context specific. But now that you mentioned Dr. Ken, like, I feel there's some elements of hit that you could use. But now it makes me think what why did he love hit? Because he grew up in essentially a hit environment where everything was intense and go hard. So it made sense to me. And this dude, you saw the videos that I just actually found some of the videos. I have this. This guy has his wife on the knotless compound leg extension leg press. She's literally throwing up doing leg extension holding the barrel. They thought that wasn't they thought that was normal. I have video footage from him training in the garage and him with Mike gentry at Virginia Tech. So let's say like his and then his stepson, Devin Tolbert, who's a shrinkage now at Bowling Green. Yeah. But when he was at Navy, he destroyed that guy, man. I heard I heard and again, what did Dr. Ken really do before? A lot of us did. He brought odd implementing into strength training for sports. He would have those guys trained. He trained all those strong men, dude. Well, how he conditioned those guys how he trained at Zuber's gym in California, which Bob Zuber, the owner, was a frogman, which was the original Navy seals. So they were underwater demolition team. What do those guys know how to do? Weld. They don't have to build shit. But like, for example, on that video of Dr. Ken training the Virginia Tech guys, let's say I'm doing a tire flip, which we don't really do that much of anymore. We had all these big tires. We just don't do that stuff anymore. They flipped a tire at the length of a football field. Us, we're like, Nope, you do three reps. It's a power movement. Not Dr. Ken. Oh, fuck. I got I could find right now of when we had a tire flip competition in 1998, on the snow, dirt cutters, first year, Boise State, where we had competition, then we literally had the guys flipping up and back down the field. Five flips a guy was a relay. Five flips the next guy. I love that stuff. In the snow. Yes, in the snow. I think that was normal activity. Yeah, I mean, we had I've got I've got clips of us doing that with our offensive line after practice, have doing squat shuffles carrying stone, doing punches with with kegs, pass pro shuffles. Yes. Doing pass pro sets on their knees with a tire, like a chest, like a metal pass, just punching the bat. What happened to us? We get too smart seriously and start overthinking fucking everything. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff like, again, what is every, you know, because I think and that's why you have to always reflect. Like, Golly, why did you start doing that? Like, we were talking the other day and it was, I think it was when me and Brian was training Brian Shaw for the second world strongest man. And we were talking about six inch step ups, because you know, a lot of what they do is carrying and movement and putting a lot of force into the ground with carrying huge loads. And I was like, you know, it's funny because I used to do six and step ups a lot with my offensive defensive lineman for first heavy first step for, you know, applying force in the ground. And where I got it from was when I was at Boise State, our head track and field coach, Ed Jacobi, was one of the best jump coaches in the world. He was the 1992 head coach with the 92 or 94, I think it was 92. He was the head coach of our world team. But and he had, he recruited a bunch of kids from Jamaica, but he had his guys doing six inch step, all his jumpers. Does she high jumpers? Six inch step ups with like 110 percent of their quarter squat max. Oh, Jesus. I mean, ridiculous. And and he told me it was to work on applying force at takeoff for the jumps. And if you watch six inch step, and if you watch, watch how guys take off or triple jump up, well, more so the long jump and the high jump, what they are, right, right before takeoff, what's that? When you always hear that they hit the toe, but right, it felt right. It just like they're just applying massive amount. And and I'm like, well, that makes sense for alignment, especially not so much to D line, but as much as it was in the old line back in those days, you know, get and I mean, so there and there's a lot of value. Like, you think, when you think about like different range of motions, it's like, it's not a big range of motion, but go ahead and do a set of 10 each leg even right now with, you know, for, you know, I mean, you move pretty good way. So I'd say put two in a quarter on a new 10 each leg. So I told you, yeah, I don't go heavy on single legwork anymore, but that would be brutal. Think of speaking of like these special exercises, and you're mentioned in football, not just track, what I'm seeing is also in the change of athletes. And I wonder with you doing all the education and speaking so much, like, if you're picking up on certain, like, commonalities happening, but what I'm seeing is, uh, linemen are getting, there's big kids, Don Thompson posts this a lot. They're just fat. They're can't wait too much. Wait, they're not strong. And I think it's because squat bench clean only, but not enough body building hypertrophy work. I don't even know. But how much of that squat bench cleaner they actually doing too? Probably. And a lot of it. A lot of it. A lot of it too. Now is remember now. In high school, now it's all about taking up space. Hell, half the high school kids that play online don't even know how to get in a three point stance. So their mobility and their flexibility is horrible. And are you seeing this or are people coaches telling this to you? This is a man, this is just watch. Yep. This is just watching a lot of look at the college game. College games the same. We had, hey, when I left the NFL and I've been out five seasons now, I told our general manager, I know you can't do this, but we need to red shirt all our offensive linemen. We draft because they're not strong enough and they don't bend enough like they used to because they don't get into three point stances. And the game is built so much on speed that again, strength has become minimal as far as an emphasis. And everything is on movement and, you know, max velocity and yes, being able to participate in space. So what would you do? What would this red shirt look like for them? For them? And again, it'd look a lot like what a red shirt in college would be except it's in the pro model, right? But there spoke with Rusty with a couple weeks ago. And I think was actually the year before he told me now, the team is 50% transfers. Yeah, that's yeah. So do you remember when you and I first met in person when you were with Louisville? Do you remember the conversation we had at the diner? Yeah, what was that? Was it Bob's big? No, Bob, what was the name of that? That diner closed. It was, I think was just called the Edison diner. It was great. So that diner closed. But you guys, you and fight and Joey Connolly were talking about this. I don't, I think it was a six week intro for the freshmen in the law zero program. All unilateral, all body weight, body weight. So now Rusty said, he's like, we don't do that more because you put it to or for freshmen. Yeah, he said everybody else is a transfer. Yeah, I mean, it's the game has definitely changed. Like, like I told everybody, my developmental system that we built out in a lap, that's gone. That's totally a non-existent at high level college. Division two, division three, lower end one double A, but even the group of five, because here's what happens. You develop these guys in two years, say I'm at like, let's just, and again, I don't want to, if I throw out of school, it's not to detriment the school. But say I'm the strength coach at Marshall, a really good group of five team. They won 10 games this year. And I get a kid that's a one star kid comes in in the freshman all I'm in. And in three years, I turn him into this all conference guy. Guess what happens? Now the big schools that didn't want to recruit him are like, oh shit, he got developed at Marshall. Let's give him a couple of hundred. He can come start for us because he's an all conference player. Hey, I know one of my friends and colleagues that I've kind of came up through, retired from college strength conditioning for that reason. He was developing guys at a group of five school, and they were transferring to SEC and ACC schools before he got to reap the benefits of going to bowl games with guys that he developed. So he stepped down. I mean, again, because what happens when you lose? That's wrong enough. Yeah, how old was my age bracket? But that was what? Three couple of years back. Okay. No, and again, it's like, so you got to, you know, so it's a whole different approach and watching like Joe Connelly now at Arizona State and Ben Hilgert at Boise State watching those guys intermix a lot of that stuff because there's still has the young guys still got to be developed somehow. It's just that you cannot invest that. What I call that quadrennial plan approach, it has to be expedited in small doses. Like you may have to take some of that block zero stuff like a Nordic curl or something like that and just, you know, paste it into your overall program. Yes. Yeah, that's. But look, even that's the way it is. Yesterday, I received two messages by parents asking if we just do drop ins, like the commitment is gone. And I said, listen, I could take your money and BS you, but I'm lying to you. We do a three month minimum because what am I going to do with you if you drop in here and there? Here's an example. Kids want to train with their friends. We said this before. So we have kids that train with their friends. Well, this kid saying like during our holiday workout, we kind of have that, what did you call the workout house? That's like, no, the free day. It's like a player's choice, player's choice. So we do that the morning of a holiday. So we did the morning of Christmas Eve. We'll do it tomorrow. He wanted to bench and even without going heavy, every rep on the way up, he's bridging his asses in the air. And do we teach that? No, where does he learn it? I'm training with my friends. And so I always say to parents, listen, he's benching or whatever the exercise is, but we do the same. I go, but you and I drive cars, but we don't enter NASCAR. We're doing the same thing, but it's how you do it. Or in wrestling, you know, I told the guys here, there's a Jersey guy who's like a five or six time world champ. He's an Olympic gold medalist. Do you all shoot a double leg? Yes. Well, so does Jordan Burrows, but he does it a lot differently. So it's how you do these things. And so I agree with what you're saying. And when I got to high school, I had to learn to give them freedom. 45 minute training session, last seven minutes. Yeah, your arms or keep doing more sets for generally, most times, it's arms are ads. Correct. That's what I saw at the NFL. A lot of times when God, but here's the other thing you find out too is a lot of times the guy just want to know they have the chance to do it. Because you have any time guys will say, coach, what should I do today? And I'm like, you're the one who said you wanted to be able to do stuff on your own. They don't know what to do on their own. You know, when what I tell coaches is when I got hired at this high school, I was like, man, these kids are probably going to know a lot of stuff because YouTube was getting a lot of educational stuff. And so my first two weeks, I had football and wrestling. And then I would have like two groups after that was open. And kids were coming in and I'd say, Hey, my name's Coach Evanesh. I'm a strength coach here. Let me know if you need help. And every kid said, no, that's right. I'm on my own program. And you know what I thought, I took no offense. I thought, Oh, he's probably watched Eric Cressy videos. He knows how to train or this kid. Maybe he watched Elliot Holson. He knows how to squat. Oh, I remember that. He killed it early on. Yes. And he did great training. And so I saw nobody do legs for the two weeks. All I saw was like death defying bench press to like almost dying. Mr. Beast workouts. Yeah, then 30 minutes of arms and then leave. I saw nobody squat. And I said to myself, all this free information and they, why don't they know how to just squat low and why are they benching and turning their head sideways and go? And so we've said more information is not solving the problem. I don't know who's watching all these videos. I sometimes think other strength coaches just watch them. Oh, I think, well, I think the smart people watch this. Smart videos and the people who are just like, you said better. Yeah, just like, hey, man. Smart people. Well, again, it's like, I mean, it's like, I went to Wake Forest. Some people would say it's almost Ivy League. It's a great school. But here's what I'm going to tell you. History 101 at Wake Forest is no different than history 101 at foresight community college. The difference is the academic levels that they allow in those colleges, right? So if you only let people with 1400 SATs into a school, a guy like me is in trouble where if I go to the junior college, I'm at the top of the class. So you have to raise your game. Hey, I chose to go to Wake Forest and had nothing to do with academics. But once you sit in those classes, they ain't giving seas out for free at Wake Forest. Oh, yeah. You got to work. And it's even hard to get a B or A. And when you're sitting around kids who are not like, and again, I'm not saying I was academically challenged, but I wasn't academically gifted. But almost every other student that's in there that doesn't play a sport is academically gifted. Yeah, you can see the different, you can see the different levels of intelligence. It's no different than when you walk out on the football field. You'll know right away where you fit. I went to Wake Forest for one reason and one reason only. I knew I could start there for four years based off the other places that recruited me. And I would have started there four years if I didn't blow my knee out as a freshman. I don't care. I'll go to my death bed. When I've gone to the NFL, I don't know that. When I know this, I started four years at Wake Forest. And that's why I went there 100%. That was number one. And number two was I wanted to go to North Carolina and they told me I was too small and didn't offer me a scholarship. So I was going to play against them because I went to, I could have easily been at Syracuse. Syracuse was always number one until as far as recruiting the the hell out of me, they were always the everybody had to chase Syracuse when it came to how much time they invested me. But I wanted to go to Carolina. Wake actually came in late because I think they heard I wanted to go to Carolina and Carolina wasn't offering me. And then when I went to Wake and I went down on my recruiting visit, I knew right away like, well, I'm coming here because I'm a big fish and a little pond. Now, I'm a very, I was, I'm again, I'm working out a while. I was able my high school coach played a Virginia Tech. My dad and my high school coach played on this 1961 championship team at my high school. Nobody bullshitted me when it came to playing football. I'd have went to Syracuse. I'd have been a two year starter, maybe three. I'd have went to South Carolina. I would have been a two year starter, maybe three. But if I go to Wake Forest, I'm starting four years. So again, these are things that, you know, these are all stories and, and people, people know that like when you walk into building, you should have extreme confidence in who you are, but also understand the realities of things. Also, like, was I the most talented? No, but I had a tremendous back then I had a tremendous strength base. And my work ethic was off the chart. Like, you were just not work people. Yeah, you were training a little bit with Lionel El Sato or when he, when he, the year he got traded from, and that's not not every day, but the year he got traded from Cleveland to Los to the Raiders, he moved back to my hometown. He was dating a woman back there. So he would train at the local Jacqueline and my high school. That was the big gym back then. My junior high wrestling coach was fitness coordinator there. So there was a lot of times we were in the gym at the same time. And and I got to watch what was he doing? Because Jacqueline back then was very much chroma. There was a Jacqueline down the road for me. We had a machine, but they had a free weight area. Yep. What was he doing? He he was, I would say was a what we would call now like a power building approach, a lot of power lifting with, you know, he always looked good. And remember, he loved LA. Like he he was going to look good. So he was doing it. He was doing his volume and yes, but like on the neck presses. Yeah, I mean, you know, quarter squats, full squats, leg presses, you know, and I saw him like I saw this. This was live. This is a true story. He was training with a kid kid. I don't know if he a free agent offensive lineman from the Jets. He was training with. And the guy was going for 500 pounds for his first time ever. Or bench bench. Lyle held a 100 pound plate over his head and said if he doesn't get it, he'll drop it on his head. The guy did it twice. Dude, you know what's interesting too, comparing that to today is I always tell people I never saw people like give up on a squat until CrossFit became popular. You're grinding. You're like bailing out. And I tell this story, I don't know if I ever told it to you, but I was training at the local gym. I was 15 or 16. And there was a dude older than me, 25, I think football player, wrestler, you know, from high school. And I was like struggling on the leg press. And he said, yeah, like six, eight, 10 feet away, if I recall sitting on the bench. And I'm like, I go help me. And he goes help yourself. Yeah. Like, well, and that's where I learned, I learned that where best advice ever. When you're when you're training by yourself on the bench, never use collars because to dump it. So you can dump it. You know what I learned, you know, doing that like back then I was always forced reps, drop sets, somebody spot me on everything, the dumb stuff. But a guy, I asked them to spot me one of the bigger guys in the gym. And I was benching and I'm stuck. And I was like closing my eyes and I'm stuck for all and I opened my eyes and he said, you went for it, get it. And what he was telling me is like, I ain't here to save your ass, man. You want to do this? Don't quit. And so I came up with the philosophy of you make the rep or die. So I tell an athlete, and they're like, cook, make the rep or die. Like you can't, when a kid is like, coach, should I go heavier? I go, no, you can't because you're already doubting. You don't even know. I tell people all the time, when I say that's it, I could do more. That's it. I could tell you I could do more. Right. Then when it's fucking laying on your chest, don't ask me to help you. Oh, okay. You can see from a mile away. I know like, hey, man, that's like one thing. Like my kids, my two kids, Joe in particular, Joe couldn't tell you one way he ever lifted in training. Ever. Why? Because you remember? No, he didn't know. I just, he knew that whatever I told him, I knew in my heart, he could do. Yeah, you have the coach's eye. I mean, it would be it. He, he, I mean, I'm serious. He what he doesn't know till this day, he couldn't tell you. Well, let me see this house. We have interns. We got a great relationship with a very small under the radar school. We're getting great interns. And one thing I try to tell him is like, when I've gotten away from athletes doing grind reps, I don't want force reps. If you've got to touch the bar, it went too far. But I feel like that's something you learn by training. Yeah. I think that's kind of, see, not for me, what I've learned in training athletes, this is just training athletes. Yep. When it comes to volumes and stuff, and intent is a big word, right? How do you define intent? What I've learned is with the forest, not so much the forest, but like the grinding reps, I'm going to save those for the accessories. Because it's safer. And that's where I'm building my size. Like I'm not using a bench, a squat, a clean, or a press anymore to build size. I'm using that to build strength and performance. Yeah, it's a performance. Yes. So that's changed. Like, I remember back in Boise State and that Utah, when we were doing some more traditional linear periodization, we'd start a 12 week summer with a four week, we use descending sets, five sets of descending sets, squats, 15, 12, 12, 10s. Yeah. That's how they do that too. Yeah. That's how they started the summer week. And that's when we would run 300 yard shuttles and stuff like that. First thing about this, we keep saying, hey, this was old. You mentioned Chris Doyle. I think when Chris Doyle was at Iowa, these kids got hospitalized, they trained after winter break. And the workout from what I saw was like nothing crazy. It was like five sets of 10 squats with prowler sprints. Maybe it was worse. But I don't think that's something mind blown where you have to get hospitalized. Yeah. Yeah. I don't I don't want I wasn't there. I can't speak to it. I can't speak. But you know, I feel those things. What I'm saying is I'm always going to get negative repercussions. Okay. What I'm saying is house is that the quote unquote wrong training, running a 300 building dirt building an oral fitness. Maybe it's not specific to sport, but it built their fitness. It built durability. My guys were in shape. Yes. I got I'm tired of hearing it, but it's funny how now, but but now you listen and some more stuff now. And again, for everybody who's going to tell you all you got to do it to sprint, you're still seeing people now with a you got to get your own two in. You got to get like I used to just call him conditioning. Now they call it don't to cardio, right? Like, because everybody's wearing straps. What about this? I'm going to I'm going to expose my tissues. What? You're going to fucking exit. That means like, I'm going to go for a walk. I'm exposing my tissues. I'm going to go take a tool to control my tissue. You know, like, I mean, like, you know, it's dumb is what I'm saying is like, who are we trying to impress? It's bullshit. Just speak. You know how you you want to know how you impress somebody? Again, team sports. Did you win? Yeah. No one can. And again, I'm and I don't mean this in any derogatory way. Nobody's checking your injury port at the end of the year. If you win the Super Bowl, I promise you that. You're right. And no one cares that you had 47 guys bench 400 when you're one and 15. That's right. It's the only KPI that matters in team forces. Did you win? Okay. So number one, be great at the sport, which comes down to there's there's got to be onus on the sport coach because there's a synergistic relationship. That's a thing. Yes. Can you in your role understand, and this is where you have to go watch practice. Now, nowadays with the single sport strength coach, it's almost like if you don't go to practice, well, what are you doing? Because you don't have any other sports to coach. And but like, I used to always tell people, man, your best thing you can do is one, if you go watch practice, two things happen. The player sees that. Oh, damn. What's he doing that practice? I thought he just hangs out in the weight room. That's number one. So now you're going to meet them at where they live. Yes. Because generally, they're coming to meet you where you live. True. They don't love the weight room like you do. True. Maybe you told me that long ago. And I was like, what are you talking about? But they don't love iron. They don't love the iron. And then, and then what you have to learn is how can you take generalize movements and build them into a program where the kid thinks it's athletic enough that's going to help them in their sport. Okay. Say something else. We've gotten away from general or even general specific now everything. They're trying to mimic shit and they believe it. Like it's dead. And then okay. And then what did we say? How many times do we set? And why are people hurt? They showing so many times you can expose somebody to the same movement. It's like again, it's like a body into that shit. I remember one time we were talking to the women's basketball coach who was my number one proponent at Boise. And we brought up something about utilizing a weighted basketball to do shooting. She goes, don't you ever mess with weighted basketball? I'll work on this shot. You work on their strikes. Boom. Perfect. But but there but then there is some value with what I said. And we did this before it came out. We took basketballs and rigged them up so they could work grip for rebounds. So before you see all these balls now with with J hooks to hook up onto a lap. Hold up. We were doing that with duct tape at Boise State in 1991. Well, but that's different than taking somebody with a one pound basketball and shooting free throws thinking it's going to get them. Help me. You just threw that whole people shot off. Yeah. House. Well, you know what else that's different? You're you were thinking you're figuring shit out versus I saw these videos. I'm copying them. I don't really know what they mean or what it's doing. That's the other just kind of those two. And that's where a lot of times these younger strength coaches are so much into regurgitation. They have no background and just like I said, you can read all the Louis Simmons stuff you want and all the things he recommends. And I'm not saying that's not right or wrong. And you can tell me everything that's in those books. But what you can't tell me is what books before that you should have read to understand that better. And more importantly, you can't give me your own opinion on what you just read. That's right. Well, this is why Louis said this or Zach evidence said this. Hey, man, I talked to Louis and I talked to Zach. I know what they say. What did you say? And they don't know what that means? Well, you know why it's got to mean something different because you're applying it to a different environment. 100% you can't different people. You can't the day like I used to remember this. Remember back in the 90s, right? Most high school strength coach. Most high school coaches didn't have a strength coach, right? So all the football coach would do is go to the local college and take their program and try to do it at their high school. That's right. That never worked. It's just like, why did bigger, faster, stronger work like a lot of high school? Because it was simple. Correct. It wasn't based off of anything else but the free big lifts. Yeah, five by five, five by three, five, you know, the old it was five by, you know, whatever it was, five by eight, five by 10s. But it was the same, every day was the same exercise. That's good at the simple stuff. But when you started going with the college program, hey man, you don't coach college kids. Your weight room's not the same as mine. So you, how are you supposed to, you don't know anything about subbing out, making the alternative move. So again, you have to build on what your, your personality is, what your weight room is, what your weight room is, what your weight room is, is, I mean, there's a lot of factors that come into, like I have a slide that I put out with a program design, right? It's a, what did you call it? I think it's like ideal versus reality. Like, yes, you have this idealistic way of how a program should look. And then I walk into my weight room, you've been in there and like, well, that ain't real. That program I just wrote ain't working in this room. Like, happened to me at my high school. I was like, this shit doesn't flow. I got a bunch of people standing around. Yeah. Hit, hit program. A hundred athlete workout when you got six racks. I personally, like at my high school, I have one A, one B, one C, two A, two B, two C. Do I like three exercises in a row? No, but you got to get them in. So you got to get them in. You got to medley it. They get distracted. Um, I have two or three teams. So I need some of you here, some of you on the bottom. Do I like splitting it up? No, but I turn the kids into coaches. They get to work. Yeah, they get the work done in peer and you got to get not perfect. You got to get peer peep. You got to get people to believe in enough where you could do some peer led versus code. Yes. Yep. And I spoke with, uh, yeah, it's a thing. It's like, you got to always be hungry to learn. Like you and I, listen, I listened to business podcast because I have to, but you want to know what's most exciting to me talking, training and like hearing these things. Let me see this house. Um, with your role with dynamic, what have you seen changes to weight rooms, uh, programs, just things that you've picked up on with all the traveling and, um, do you help set up the weight rooms or do you go and kind of? I'm usually, I'm more of the lead, like I try to make connection. I'm a connector. Yep. Uh, when there are times when our TMs will call me and say, Hey, a coach has questions. What's a TM, a character manager. Yeah, region. Yep. Yeah. So, Hey, I talking to a coach, he's thinking about like the inverse curl. Does it really understand what the value is compared to other things? Can you jump on a call and talk training or they coach, uh, this guy has your book. He's got questions. You're talking training. I love, uh, sometimes depending on how the conversations go, we met, like I talked to, uh, one coach, I'm going to see in January and a lot of it is how they train versus how the room should be set up. Um, you know, my, my, because of my background in training where I was exposed to powerlifting, but I was also coached by an HIT strength coach. I'm a hybrid. I believe in machines. I believe that I believe in freeways. I believe in explosive movements. What, what machines are you, are you a fan of machines for this high school or college? I'm a fan of machines for all level of the sport because there's just certain things that regardless of what we want to say, our athletes are going to take longer and certain movements to get strong enough to do them with their body. I'm always going to look for things bodyway first. That's why the blog zero stuff. And I believe this when it comes to injury prevention, the, the most injury free kid is the one who has the most relative body strength, meaning they can do a pistol squat, they can do a Nordic, they can do a chin up, they can do a proper push up. They can lunge a hundred yards body weight. That is very, it's more rare house that no, I know. Hey, man, I'm, why am I beat up today? Because my relative strength was piss poor because nothing against it. I got thrown into a weight room at eighth grade and was I strong enough and prepared enough to do some of the stuff I was asked to do? Prop no, I know I wasn't because I still can't do it. Weren't you exposed to those things in elementary and middle school physical education? Yeah, we were. But again, I was still a bigger kid. So the best I ever did on the presidential physical fitness test was 15 second chin hang because I couldn't do a chin up. It wasn't strong enough because I was always bigger, had a hard time with rope pulls. Now, what, what I did do good at, which was laughable was I could run distance. So I got the 400 meter patch, I got the 800 meter patch. I got the mile for time patch. I got the sit up patch. But you know, I missed out on the push up, you know, in a certain some of those other types of things. So do you think you mentioned 400 meter? I remember 100 yards back then a 440. Okay, Ryan. Do you remember Ryan Schumann? He was a lineman for Virginia Tech then a strength coach. He told me that when Iron Mike coach Mike Gentry was training everybody. He's like, everybody had to, I think, run. I don't know if he said the mile or the 400 meter, you had to run it within a certain time. And he goes, it didn't matter if you were lying to the skilled guy. I could tell you right now, when I got, when I first got that, when I first went to Wake Forest, our running test was a 30 minute continuous run, 100 yards back. We were for the big guys, everybody. We had certain amount of laps we had to get done. When Bill Dooley took over, we had, and it all, we had them for two years and we would report on whatever day we would report, we have physicals way in that night, 12 minute run. Lyman had to run six laps in 12 minutes. Big skill, six and a half, a mile and a half in 12 minutes. Yeah, for guys that weighed what would you wait, two 75 line or D line? It didn't matter. You had you could have weighed 400 pounds or 200 pounds. You played O line or D line. You had to run six laps in 12 minutes. What do you think of that just in general back then? That's what it was, right? The whole run was big then. But that was Wednesday night. Then we woke up. The next morning, whatever that day was, and we had to run at 880 for time. Our time for Lyman was two minutes and 45 seconds for a half mile. What? Tell me a lot of guys failed that. I didn't. I was good. I ran 237. I ran 237. My junior year and 243, you must have been flying like running from the cops. But again, I mean, I ran, I ran, I ran six and three quarter laps and six and a half laps in a 12 minute run at over 275 both years. And then we had to, then we had to finish with, so if you pass those first two, you had to run 12 40s for under time, under 0.5 of your best time from spring. If you failed one of them, you had to run 16. So we ran. So now when you look at it from what we know from, and I'm just getting into strengthening conditioning. So I'm learning energy systems. I'm like, this friggin football coach, you probably doesn't know anything except trying to beat our ass. Just just tested us in three different energy systems, aerobic, anaerobic glycolytic and anaerobic APC. And I'm like, this fucking dude didn't even know what he was doing. And we're getting tested. And everything was just be tough. I think everything was about tough. We ran, we ran in shape. So we ran a 12 minute run on Mondays. We ran full gasters on Tuesdays, full gasters on Wednesdays, half gaster on Fridays, walk through on Friday, play on Saturday. So when you think back to all that, and we had two to three hour practices. Yes, and double say all this like, no, we had triple sessions and no recovery modalities. Yeah, we had three, we had three recovery modalities. Did you have ice bath? That's it. And very few guys didn't do that. I mean, they went home and went to sleep. Exactly. Now, then we had, and then, you know, we lifted what two, I lifted four or five days a week my last two years when I just loved it, because I love the iron. Like in the end, I chose to be a strength coach, because I love the iron over the grass. And, and like, and that's when it got to the point where I just love the iron and almost to a point where I was a detriment to my football play and ability. Right. You're putting in so much time. By the way, do you, I know we're jumping around a lot house. You know what, when I have an athlete that tells me he wants to be a strength coach, as I say, nope, you have to be a physical therapist who can also be a strength coach, 100%, especially just like again, it goes back to this era. I want to, and I'll, and I'll tell you, most of what I'm doing now with training, especially the step is physical therapy related. Prehab rehab type stuff. I don't even, yeah, I don't even call it that. It's called building stabilization, bodybuilding movements. Exactly. It's like GPP. I mean, and where I want, like, I was just thinking about this when I was in the shower about the way I'm writing these programs is I need to go visit a PT for like two or three days, just so to make sure I'm correct in what I'm calling these movements. Like horizontal abduction of the shoulder versus just pure abduction of the shoulder. You know what I'm saying? What's shoulder hyperextension? What's shoulder hypereflexion? What's hip, what, what is hip internal rotation really look like? Yeah. Because all these things that I've done as a general physical preparation specialist, now I want to know a little bit more of the intelligent part of why things are the way they are. I don't ever, I don't think I'll ever be like, have that eye, like I have the coach's eye to look at general technique and know what we have. But I don't know if I'll be able to be like that true professional, like a physical therapist who can really die. And I don't know if I want to be that. I rather hire that person on my staff and teach me enough to know that, hey, you need to go see Zach the best I know are also strength coaches. So I take my kids to my buddy. He started a company in New York City. He put it in a crossfit. Everybody's getting hurt. Yeah, he's got making bank now a while back. And then their other location is inside of a predominantly overhead athlete. So baseball players. So he's loving life. Right. So I took my daughter and son to him for UCL, little leaguer shoulder, all this stupid shit that happens because they could also touch and feel what's Yeah, or their they can they have that different assessment. But there's also this house. There's also physical therapists who might have a kid who had an ACL surgery. So let's say a kid had to get ACL surgery in September, October, I see that kid in June. And that kid can't do a full body weight squat. To me, that's another problem. And I've seen that at the college levels. When I visited, like you said, what do I see visiting schools? I visited in one college and a kid was coming off an ACL. And some of the exercises that that person had him doing, that that athlete was not prepared. And their technique was so bad that I almost wanted to walk over and say, yep, you are not helping this kid. So here's the deal with that. And I would tell you this, if I was starting a program from scratch, depending on how the position I was in and how I would build out, there's two things. If I was building out just a pure strength staff, and I was the head strength conditioning coach, I have somebody that I would hire right now, that would be on my staff as one of the five assistants for assistance with me, that is a physical therapist. Exactly. Even if I was doing it in a private facility, or I would put in a physical therapist, or if I was taking a role as a high performance manager or the high performance director or health wellness, you know, performance director, yeah, I would separate sports medicine athletic training with sports rehabilitation, because I think it takes the there's too much going on. And I think that the most overworked right now, to me and that setting is athletic trainers, I think they're given way too, they have a lot more than a strength coach does on their plate. Well, and for various reasons, and to me, especially post surgical rehabilitation, that is such a unique to me niche capability that I would separate my rehabilitation department as a as a and my sports medicine. Now, would they work out under probably the same roof like we all do? Yes, right to communicate. That would be a director of sports rehabilitation and a director. Oh, I see what you're saying. By the way, um, like I've some athletic trainers love the kids in the room. And John Wellborn said he goes, you know what I learned early in my NFL career? That athletic trainers room is like a virus. And if you get hang out in there too long, you never get rid of the virus. Well, never true to that. If you look like they they they serve certain people in coaching like they they would tell you, yeah, again, it's all it's all I don't want to get too much into it. But I do know there was one particular head coach back in the day who we know who he is. Crusty as hell. He made sure that he made sure that the training room was the coldest, you know, both in place, no TVs, no nothing, because he didn't want you in the training room. He didn't want the training room to be the players lounge. That is a problem is yeah. And it's right. More time you train because then it's always like anything it comes back to like anything you have a problem is I'll just go to the trainer. And again, I'm not saying that that's not a detriment to the trainer. That's just the way the environment's been created. And it's just like some guys don't love the weight room. And some that's a problem. If you are in a contact sport, but then the guys who hang around the weight room too much, now you got to worry about it. Okay, even I'm telling you, get the F out of here, dude, like, yes, yes, you need to go watch film, but that is that's a quality problem. Whereas the athlete that is hanging out with the athletic trainer, and it's, you know, the lounge, that is a culture problem that is and sometimes the kid that's avoiding the weight room is is highly talented. And it gives the younger kids a real bad kind of idea of what's going on here, man. Am I supposed to actually lift or should I not lift that hard? It confuses the only so let's go back to you. I don't want to crush you. You got another podcast coming up. What's like things that you're picking up on, you know, anything in our industry with your role at dynamic, the education you're traveling a lot. So what are you seeing? What's anything good? Anything. The good, the good in certain some states is public school funding is ridiculous. Like where? Because New Jersey was crazy. Like how do they get the money fundraise? No, public referendums. Public referendum. Yeah, so it's school boards pass. I mean, I'm talking 40, 40 rack weight rooms with an indoor. I mean, it's it's Texas right now, like Coke Tioxo. He is on middle schools in Texas. Huge. I think the biggest thing that I see is, and this is going to be a continue to be a fight more states and more people becoming more educated and knowing that you need a full-time strength coach. Yeah, you need administration. I think that some of you. Are you meeting administrators at all houses? Do you not get into those? Once in a while, at the bigger events, I'll talk to some of the national coaches like and try to give them my perspective. But again, I can't take the lead because I'm not in that position to take the lead. I can be a tremendous support and advocate and help you. But like, I'm not the executive director of the NSCA. I'm not the executive director of the NHS SCA. I'm not the executive director of the CSCCA. But these people enrolls where they can help promote certain things like, you know, like I don't think there's a lot of quality strength coaches that would really like to leave the college setting and go to a high school. But because they're not certified to teach, most public schools won't accept the CSCS as the certification accreditation to be a late coach. Some schools are doing it are getting away. They're hiring. I know in South Carolina that they do it. Oh, yeah. There are certain states in my town. He's an employee of the school district. He's not a teacher. He runs strength and conditioning, which gets pulled out of PE class. So it's got to be. So there's certain ways that but but this is where to me is if like if like I know if I'm an executive director of one of these high levels and we're going to talk about how strength and conditioning is evolving. Like remember, when I started Block Zero, I told people Block Zero programming should start. You should officially walk into a structured program your second semester of eighth grade leading into your high school years. But now strength and conditioning is guiding so much better at the high school levels. Now I'm like, you need to start middle school. Like one through five, you can do a lot more of their free play, you know, that's what I did. I'll mention school. Just figure it out. Like remember the old like you also you laugh when a coach would just throw the kickball out. He probably was doing us a favor. I did a different sport every month. Like like one day he'd throw a kickball out and we'd actually play kickball. Then some days we'd play dodgeball. Like it was like whatever the hell. Hey man, go figure it out. But which is important. But now but again, we have to look at how the environments change. So to me now with the way I would the way I look at the beginnings of a Block Zero program for that age bracket, you know, that middle school now is the attack point. Like if you really want to make, if you're somebody who is passionate about training, passionate about giving back and preparing these kids to be healthy and resilient, it's going to be hard to say injury free, but resilient and robust enough to take the impacts of what they may occur in sport, you want to you want to figure you want to be a middle school strength. They just listen, they move if you look at pictures of our groups and compare them to 15 years ago, you'll see majority middle school kids with us. Why high school? Some high schools have strength coaches. I said earlier how they just want to train with their friends. So they don't want to be coached anymore. But we're getting them before all of the craziness happens. And the one I'm trying to say is our best athletes train with us starting in the middle of sixth grade, seventh grade, they get this crazy foundation that when it's time to teach them how to do a hang power clean, they've done so many front squats and athletes and swings. And they've been walking on their hands and pulling sleds and doing carries and doing all this high rep dumbbell work. And then, yeah, they're ready. They're so funny to say that. Sure. Because when you brought up Jim Wendler, there was one thing too, I remember when I was chatting with Jim about what he did with the high schools, he said the other one that he saw was a tremendous amount of muscle mass and and kind of conditioning was heavy high volume goblet squats. He told me the story. He said like the 100 guy would do he said 50 reps. Yeah, forget about the lower the lower body. He said their upper backs. Yeah, got monstrous. And I was like, I used his you talk about simple is effective. What he does with that high school program, they also have so his wife is running middle school. So now they got the feeder program. But he's also got his head coaches on board. And I've always said the most influential part of your strength program is if your head coach says this is what we do. Oh 100%. Boom. If your head coach don't support you, you are exam and swimming upstream. But here's what I'll tell you this. And this is probably not what people want to hear is then where when you are a multiple sports strength coach, where your where's your enthusiasm and effort is going to go to. It's going to go to the programs that are invested in you. And then you're going to kind of just play the game with because again, those athletes walk in knowing my head coach don't care. And here you are. You know who gets crushed with that track and field. I hear this in every school. They don't show up until the season. And I think to myself, okay, you're a sport coach. I could ask a first grader, should you only train for two months in season? Or is it a good idea to show up just once a week in the off season? And so yeah, that's that is calm. But Jim told me about that 50 reps of 100 pound dumbbell. So I said, man, I'm going to come up with a some sort of a system where you got to earn your way to the bar because kids were like, Oh, yeah, I could bench. I could do this. And I thought to myself, when I was a kid, benches were left with a plate on each side. So now I tell you couldn't leave you couldn't if you couldn't bet your plate, you were screwed. You can't do it. Yeah, you can't do it. So now it's okay. You want to put a bar on your back and you're a boy. I used to say 75 pounds for 10 reps. If you wait under 175, over 175 is 100. Then I learned, you could get away with it for one set. Maybe you got lucky. So now I say you got to do three sets of 10 with the 75 or the 100. Then I know we're ready for a bar on the back. My preference is to teach the front squat first for the girls. I say you got to do 50 for 10. The bar is 45 pounds. Not I think I can. I did it yesterday in the my basement with my uncle. Show me right now performance on demand. And with benching, I say nobody's benching with five and 10. So you got to start with a quarter. And that means you probably got to bench 40 pound dumbbells for 10. And it what it does is it avoids the crowd behind the bench. And I say, listen, if you're not there, don't be mad at me. Take it out on the weights, get stronger. I ain't stopping you. I also tell them if you're pissed off that you're not benching, who's stopping you from doing 100 pushups a day? How many of you have even done 100 this month? How many of you can do one? That's right. And the other thing too, like I've had that kids can't do pushups. This day and age two, where the parents are part of the problem, right? Like I tell people, not only do we have to protect the athletes from themselves, we have to protect them sometimes from their parents. True. And what I saw that wrestling match. I just and I have these in my notes for one for one of my upcoming presentations is if I if I'm starting a block zero program for the middle school, I'm inviting the parents to come in and participate. So they can see that an ISO lunge. You you could tell me you squat 500, but I'll break you off on some ISO lunges. Yeah. And let me see. Oh, you could like like I used to tell like I remember my young laugh and that dad's like, yeah, I train on my own. They're like, you don't you don't need to tell me what to do. Okay, but you're working out, brother, you ain't training. That's right. But like I I remember doing this at football camps at Arizona State all the time. Mark Oohi Ahmed, I used to just laugh, wow, we could break these. Where's Mark now, by the way, Mark works for our venture capitalist firms in fund fund rating. Okay, brother. I'm actually invested in a in this project you do with metabolic testing. Okay, with really cool stuff. It's a it's it's getting it's getting it's it has proof of product. That's good. Now it's getting into those, you know, high level investment, whatever. I'm just just all the dice. But, um, you know, my my thing is when you look at some of these things, it's I want to I want to see the parents who say, well, why is any bench pressing? Can't do a push up, buddy? Can or but I was going back to the story with the push up was I my youngest son goes out for his first tackle football in Louisville. First day, any of these kids are in a helmet pads, right? They're all tiered up. And now, you know, now they're running. Now they're doing their sprints, and now they're circling up to do push ups and sit ups, right? Now, by then you know, they're not doing push ups. They're doing hip downs, right? No, I'm talking about hit like their hands are straight. They can't bend their arms. They're just dropping their hips down and they look like a seal, right? Yep. And they're yelling and yelling. I went over to one coach. I go, Hey, let me see you do a push up. Yeah. Like, you know, like you're you're you're yelling at kids that ain't never been in heads ever. Some of them ain't never even played football. They're crying their eyes out. And you're yelling at them to do push ups, right? Well, let me see you do a push up, right? At that young age, they are so influential that if you do it with them, they really they buy in. But again, it's like, first of all, they shouldn't even been doing the push ups to sit ups because the kids are all crying because you ran them and they don't know how to play football yet. That's right. Like, so, yeah, I just think like to me, it's because when I when I was in the private sector, you know how much I think and you know, in the private sector, you need your money, right? It's hard to turn people down. You have many people I turned around like this ain't for you like, Hey, I do it all the time. Are you going to use parachutes? No. Like they called me Mr. Miyagi when I trained the year at Ricky Proles because we didn't use any anything. We did reverse lunging, backwards running, ISO holds. And all we did was just try to get them as strong as we could relative Nordic curls, planks, all of this stuff. And when finally, when I turned them around and let them run, every parent was like, huh, I didn't know my kids could run that fast. Okay, I said, because we got them stronger and they got to mechanics. Yes. You can't have a six year old pulling a damn parachute. I tell them, listen, you're all running with a sled. I go, tell me, when you see somebody successful, are you also saying, thank God, you know, Johnny is so weak. That's why he's fast. So here's the other thing. We're talking about all the speed and agility. Strength training is work. Running around cones. It don't take it's just your night. Yes, that to me is fun. It is fun. And listen, we do more like open loop, not so much closed loop, but the what's happening. Then you said it, that might be the tireless podcast, like putting the strength back in strength and conditioning. What's the wrong with strength and conditioning now? Like it's like, and again, I don't want to get into politics. But, you know, like, you know, we have this make American great again. Yeah, I said, you know, let's make strength thinking, let's make strength training great again. Like it's in my, my son, my son, Joe is like, put that on a t-shirt. Hell's yeah. Listen, when I say get strong, I don't, I think people, the lack of context, hey, you got to be strong. But guess what? When we're training for strength, we're jumping, sprinting, we're throwing. I don't do strength and exclude speed. I don't just do speed and exclude strength. I don't know why that's why you're smart. You don't get involved on Twitter, because everything is so well, and that's like, and that's like when people would come, well, can he train with you, but then do his speed work somewhere else? Oh, I don't do speed work. I didn't know that all of this is encompassed. Yes. It's a sports performance program. I mean, when you when you won't run fast, you don't need speed work. You need other things. Here's the thing. You can't run fast. Because like you said, your posture is so poor because you're not strong enough to maintain. We have to put every quality track coach talk about, or anybody, right? Posture and stance. Yeah. Well, if you can't get into that, don't matter. John Wellborn says posture and position. Unfortunately, and I tell this to other coaches from a business perspective, we need to use the words speed and agility and core strength, because parents don't know what the fuck we're talking about. And kids still don't like we had a kid. Art, you know, we do our prep, then it becomes movement prep. It segues into speed, deceleration, change of direction. And then he says, my parents want me to do speed and agility go. We just did we just do that. We just went three minutes. He's like, uh, but what do they see? They see one video of a kid doing a trap, our deadlift. And now they think all you do is lift weights. And it's bad. And I'm like, yo, where's this? Where's the where's the speed ladders? Your son training. Right. Your son. People don't understand. It's a mess out there. The speed ladder is a is a is a drill for foot speed, not speed. It's patterning. And I'm not saying it's, there's not good or bad. Like I stopped doing ladders, but I'll be honest with you. Well, we were pregame in the NFL. We set up ladders. Cause our guys like doing quick, they like doing it. Boom. They believe in it. So do it for me. I, but like we would do it more for really just to warm up the ankles and defeat. Correct. But it wasn't like I wasn't going to say we did speed ladders. I don't even know why they call it speed ladder. They probably should be called agility ladders more than anything flat foot ladder. But Dave Tate said this in those early days. What were you coach 62 on there back in the hole? I was coach H coach 62 was my low coach and coach X was buddy. Why were you coach H? Where did H come from? House house big house. So, uh, you know what he said in those early days, he's like, oh, everybody says benching is not functional. He's like, well, guess what? If the high school athlete, uh, increases his bench press and gets bigger arms, I've built his confidence. He's like, is that not a transfer of training? No, I told anybody. No, I mean, that's the number one transferable trade confidence belief. You just said it. I'm using the foot ladder. Why? Okay. I'm prepping ankles. They believe in it. Yeah. No, man. I'm told everything. You and that's why I believe it's important when you bring these kids into their setting for the first time, you put them in positions of success early. Yes. If you throw them under a bar and they fail, they're not coming back. You crush their confidence. So, I've always said that I've got a slide. The number one transferable trait is confidence. Period. Love it. Nothing else. Nothing else matters. It doesn't matter how much you lift. It's just why I believe in volume accumulation training versus increasing the weight with younger athletes. I'd rather you do more volume with the same weights for multiple weeks in a row so that you build the confidence. I have done that too. House, you know what? Because first of all, you can't add weight every week. It's just a foul. That's a foul. And I came up with a lot of that because I got to a point in my training where God, I don't want to go up 25 pounds every week. It's an emotional stressor. You're going to add to your flat load to weights. Yep. And guess what you're doing? And if you do it for density, now you're getting in shape. You're your lean body mass and you're getting stronger. And it gives them an opportunity to improve technique. So, what you said about giving them chances to win, I'll say, hey, guys, you don't have to add weight. Maybe your reps are a little faster. Maybe your technique is better. Or a little slower. Again, that's what I'll tell you. Show me how strong you are with the eccentric. I love how you explain that. Yeah, I mean, it's simple, man. Just, hey, man, show me how fast you are. Show me how strong you are. It's that simple. Again, and that's 100% from remembering how Arthur Jones manipulated his rep tempo. And when Charles Pollack went started giving the number system to certain tempos. And for me, it was, what can I do to make it more understandable for an athlete? Like, what is cute? Like, you know, we I use that all the time. You told me it's very simple. Yeah. Hey, man, when you're doing the work, show me how fast you are. When you're not when the work's doing you, show me how strong you are. Now, and now if I want you to overload the eccentric, then I'll say we're overloading the eccentric. But what you find is athletes will manipulate the eccentric based off of the once they do the first couple reps, they'll sometimes get even slower to really show you like they start to manipulate the eccentric tempo on their own, which helps build muscle, which helps build joint integrity, which builds durability. By the way, you can't figure this shit out unless you're training a lot yourself. And people don't know, when you were coaching all these sports, you told me you were coaching with your first son on the baby. I don't know, like the baby front pack. Yeah, like a front map side. Yeah, you got to coach your face off so much that you're become a beautiful man. Why, why, why is it important now? Like, why do I think and sometimes some of the strength coaching has deteriorated is because we've, we've come into what what I call, you know, single sport strength and conditioning, where again, and this is where like with multiple sport that when people talk about multiple sport athletes, are they are they now there are some, there are some athletes who can excel at multiple sports. And when I when I remember that being called was be called like a a like say you're a three sport athlete and you're all state in all three, that would be considered an a a all sport athlete. That doesn't happen anymore, unless you're like our candidates very small, small, but like, but then like for me, I was a two sport athlete in college. I mean, in high school, high school, I was a football player, and I was a wrestler, but I was an AB multi sport athlete. I was using B to enhance a, and I was above average in B, but I wasn't excelling in it in a, but that exposure to be allowed me to be greater at a, and it's the same thing with coaching. If I'm, if I'm exposed to more demands and more different movements from different sports, I'm going to be better at coaching. You've exposed your tissue. I just wanted to use those words. So what I say is like there's the, there's the exploratory fact, you're a free play, and then there's the exposure of movement from being multiple disciplined. But you know what else house, the football combined with wrestling, a lot of the younger football players are afraid of contact. They've never put their hands on anybody because I watched my neighbor. He's got four kids, two boys, two girls. The boys are outside, and they're like playing baseball, but it always ends in a wrestling match. And I tell him, he's like, man, my kids are going to kill each other. Go the best thing they're doing is all that wrestling, and it builds such confidence. But here's what's interesting. I do not see football coaches and wrestling coaches working together. Like, so our, our head, the best two years of the two years that I was on the high on the high school wrestling team, our head football coach was the assistant wrestling coach. We here's what I would say. Okay, you need your lineman to get more athletic. And our our starting running backs are two starting running backs and linebackers, play basketball, wrestled, and our and then the offensive got so our are two starting linebackers and and running backs. Same two guys, they started both linebacker and running backs. They were are 167 and 177 pounders in wrestling. They actually, they were heavier than that when in football season, our 215 pounder was an offensive guard, defensive lineman and full back his his junior and senior year. And then I was the heavyweight and back then in New York, the heavyweight was 250. And I played offense and defensive line. We had a couple of guys were corners and DBs that wrestled and some run and the skill guys or the skilled guys do play basketball basketball. Basketball. We had a really high track team. We had really good sprintering. By the way, we're talking about like weightlifting looking beautiful coach Red Brock. I love he does a good job. He does a great job. They have great posture. They clean. They look great. He does a lot of mobility through exercises. I to me, I could tell and he he don't have a beautiful weight room and he's in Texas. So he makes it work just like remember John McKenna when he was in the basement bomb shelter. Yeah, it was like it was like it was a bomb shelter. Yeah, it's a bomb shelter. That's what it was. It was a narrow hallway with a friggin row of turf and got it done. Yeah, exactly. And that totally remember Louis Simmons first gym. We all visited it was in it was never there. It was in it was in a bay no different than one of my single car a little bit longer than one of my bays. And everybody thought it was the mecca you'd walk in and it was just a dirt pile. And I remember when Dave used to go like, Hey, what what should we bring? Like everybody would bring t-shirts, but they're like bring like toilet paper because there's never toilet paper in the bathroom. They said they always got stronger because of the environment. He's like we knew leg day was box squat, blue injuries and reverse hyper. He's like there was no room in that place. Maybe you did pull throughs to do that. Just a pile of dumbbells in the I mean that place. When they used to film it on the video, when you went there, it was just a right it was it was in the strip mall and it was a single bay. Right with the windows blacked out. Yeah, blacked out with with I think look you work for dynamic. I've been contacted by some of these equipment companies to start doing some of that stuff. And then there's part of my heart that says we just need some fucking bomb shelter weight rooms. Yeah. Again, that's where like for me, what I like about my role is I'm not and I've and I've told them let's not just think about the educational space. Let's think about all the private facilities and and the studios and the boutique gyms that could because to me it's all about how do we get all like when it comes to like the business parties, it's yeah, would you love to get the entire weight room? Yeah, but that's a battle. You know, that's a battle. You're battling other really good companies that make good equipment and it and a lot of that's relationship. It's just going by lowest bidder and then sometimes it's just yeah, sometimes it's horrible. But my whole thing is how do we get our logo in your building? Hey, you're going with their racks. I know I can't convince you otherwise but do we have any accessory pieces? Let me issue some about racks. Yeah, I love your half rack. I'm almost contemplating like I've, you know, at my gym, I've had half racks. I've had cages. I currently at my high school and my gym have smaller cages. What do you like? You've got the half rack. Does it? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it depends on how you try. I think this day and age, like again, it all comes back to me with the half rack versus full rack. It all comes back to your philosophy on squatting. If you're going to be predominantly a front squat team, you probably can get away with half racks because the front squat is easy to dump. You miss a lift in a front squat, you dump it, it hits the ground. If you're doing back squat and again, I'm not saying you're not teaching your spotting techniques but you don't spot a front squat. No. And kids will do dumb shit. Yeah. So even if you taught them the right way. So you don't front, don't, you don't front, you don't spot a front squat. It's very simple. If you go, if you push that rep too high or the weight's too heavy, your upper body's going to crash and you just let the ball fall in front of you. But if you're going to be a back squatting program, and you're going to really be bringing it, then you're going to need some full racks because you want to have that extra straps in case your spotters because sometimes it happens. You can teach a guy how to spot and even in a world championship, you see they've got five spotters and something hits and the spotters, it's over. Listen, I'd say this. It comes down to like the way I would train now versus one. And again, why is there a half rack in your garage? Is it for space? Why did you go? I would love to have a full rack. The full racks are huge now. Yes, but yeah, because they have the back end plate loaded. If I could have a full rack and have a full rack because of the way I train and the way I like to do things. But I thought I was in a college setting right now. There's no doubt I would have one row of half racks, one row of full racks. And even when I was with the Panthers, we had a combo rack where the front side was a half rack with the platform. And the back side was like what we call like an open-ended full rack because what it was was I had the cross beams on the back end, like a full rack, but it didn't come off the top. So they used to call it like, we've got somebody might have called it a mini rack. I can't win more was the very first person who did it. Then Sorenex did a model, then we did a model with Hammer, but it gives you enough of a height on the back end, where you could have the extra spotting pins. That might be, that might be, but the full rack, if you're looking at it from an aesthetic and how you want to perceive your personality of the weight room, there's nothing like having a good big burly ass full rack. A big beefy if you can get like oversized steel and you got the money that looks cool. And when you walk into certain right rooms, you know how they're going to train. The way our configuration was with the Panthers, and I don't know how they, I think they've refurbished and renovated the area, but the way we set up the room was when you walked in the room, it was like having two rooms. I wanted to make sure that people understood when you walked in the room, the first thing you saw was the racks and the free weights, because you knew we were going to get after it. And then in the back half of the room was all our supplemental machines. It had a row of upper body, a row of lower body, a row of lower body. We were talking about machines before. Are you guys making machines? I know you're making the... Yeah, we make, we make more, see, this is where again, where you get so caught up in the rock game, people don't realize we've got a really good line of accessory pieces. There's certain pieces that I... What's your favorites? Because I have a small space in front of my gym that if they left, it's like 600 square feet. I always say to myself, I would put in some body building hammer pieces or something. For us, for us, I really, really like our our isolateral plate loaded lat pull down, love it like, and for me, like I tell people, I'm very honest in my assessments. I try to get on as many pieces as possible. That's why I like training at like powerlifting gyms and bodybuilding gyms, because they always have unique pieces. The one gym you train at has a lot of old normalists. I love it. Well, that's Jack King's. The next time you come here, we're going there. Oh yeah. But like for me, so like I tell people, a lot of people in my business, they try pieces. I train pieces. What do you mean? I mean like, hey, house, tell me, like, like how many times did you hear people? Oh, I tried changing bands. I don't really get it or well, that's because you didn't ever trained it. Like you didn't go through. It's just like, oh, I went to this exhibit hall and I got on the, you know, the Zach Devanash low row. It sucked. You tried it once. How do you know it sucked? What I'm going to do is, I'm going to get up in the morning and when I'm doing my early bird workout, I'm going to go train that thing. I'm going to put some weight on it and I'm going to train on it like I'm training to get my ass kicked. Yeah. And I'll know. So like for me, and then when you're beat up, like, like I know with way my shoulders are and the fact that I need surgeries and I know if I get on a plate load of machine and I have no pain in my shoulders, I'm like, oh, this is going, this one gets ranked very high. But like, so for me, I tell people, I don't try pieces. I train pieces. And I'm not, and if I haven't trained the piece, I can't give you an honest assessment of how I fit in it. So like for us, our isolateral lap pulldown, I love. Is that one in your garage? No, I don't have that one. Okay. I have just a regular pulldown. Gotcha. Then our four, if I had the room, it'd be in my garage and our 40 degree T-bar row. So our chest support room. Okay. Oh, I love it. Those are my two. Those are my two, like money, upper body pieces that we do. We have some. So like, again, I don't want to talk out of turn. But we were the first manufacturers for Arsenal's equipment. So a lot of their first generation pieces in their line, we actually build the similar model. So we have several of those pieces in our repertoire. Another piece that we have that I really, really love. And I can't, I have to get more, I have to talk to our engineers to talk just so I have the right terminology to talk to you about it. But our leg extension machine is on fire, like, plate loaded or selectorized. Yep. I think we're coming out with a plate loaded combo seated leg curl leg extension. But does it hurt your knee? You've had a company surgery. That's why I'm saying, like, I've had plenty, I'm getting ready to have another one and I needed knee replacement in the other knee. But yeah, that's why I'm saying pain free. So the way the way the, the way the, the way the pad. So you know, a lot of times when you get on a leg, leg extension machine, depending on if it's adjustable or not, it's, it can throw you off. Like if the pads too high, you're going to be able to do a shitload of weight. If it's too low, puts a lot of pull on the, on the knee, especially if you're like us that have knee issues, this one has some type of rotating. So regardless of your like your leg length, it's automatically going to find the, what I would call close to a biomechanical correct position for the pad. Yeah, I love like I don't 50 pounds double leg for me. I'm getting my ass kicked for a set of 12 to 15. Wow. Doing, doing quality, perfect rep. Remember that that was like open chain exercises was kind of like, don't do that. Do you do that with athletes now? Mark Mark Bell said this, our boy Mark Smelly Bell said something a long time ago. And it made a lot of sense to me. And we kind of were hitting on it. Said somebody came to his gym, you know, his gym is free. And the guy just had no muscle. And he said to the guy, listen, dude, the best thing you could do is join whatever gym for three months and do every machine in there for like three to five sets of 10 to 15 reps and just build some muscle. Well, it goes back to this, like, and this is where we learned from just the history and how things go. So when I first came up, you know, it was all based on body parts, you know, body building. And then we got into that, you know, sports specific, athletic. And it was like, well, most movements in sports is multi joint. You don't need to do single joint movements. And then all of a sudden you saw how all the nautilus pieces started moving out and all the racks started moving in. All the leg extension and leg curls started moving out. And all this other bull crap started more racks came moving in, right? And then you go back to, like you said, your best, your best ways to improve hypertrophy is isolation movements. When it comes to like the whole now, yeah, can you get? Yeah, you need your compounds, but to finish it off, yep, specific muscle groups is ice plus. Now we would go into that print, right? Like back in the 90s, every the number one thing that we're doing here is to prevent injury. Well, if I'm if I'm really saying that, and then when you look at, like you said, when you study PT and athletic training and rehab, what's the first strength exercises most people do when they start coming back off of a limb injury, single joint isolative movements? Well, if I'm going to do that after I've already been hurt, maybe if I did that before they got hurt, they may not have got hurt, one. And if they did, maybe the injury wasn't as severe, because I protected them. You like, like when we when I first came up, we saw a lot of people getting hurt with dislocated shoulders and posterior capsule problems, because everybody was jerking in Olympic lifting and doing oh, oh, and doing full snatch. But no one ever thought, hey, these guys shoulder dexterity and strength, to prepare to do that. Okay. So what happened was when I took over the some of the programming, I stopped snatching altogether, except for our throwers, we went dumbbell snatch. No, just not. Well, it kind of gravitated. But at this point, I threw out all snatching. We did continue to jerk. But what I did is I implemented, because I was meeting with the team physicians, because they were very consciously aware that we have way too many shoulder surgeries coming out of the weight room. It was, it was evident. And again, this is me coming up and I, you know, like I was the assistant and I'm watching and learning this was no detriment to my boss at the time. It was just the way we guys trained. Yeah. When I took over, I instituted a whole posterior, you know, started doing more T-rays, Y-rays, more shrugs, more back. And then because I pulled this, I pulled the snatches out in the exercises that, and again, that's why I say there's not a bad exercise. There's poor application of the exercise. And just because you can doesn't mean you should. And that's where it's like, to snap snatches of a specific movement for a sport, I'm not training a sport with a sport. Mike Conroy, one of the best American weightlifting coaches in the history of the USA, best yet the high school level taught me Olympic lifting because he was a Boise State alum and said, Joe, all you really need to do is shrug pull. Well, you went through phases. I remember you went through phases of like clean pull. You, I remember you saying for yourself and even in college, like we did cleans, then we went through clean pulls and not catching it. Yeah, I stopped for three for two and a half years. I didn't do a clean at Arizona State because I didn't think we were teaching it right. And we were getting nothing out of it. Who helped you teach it the right way? Well, I just had to break it down because I wasn't, I watched, I went, we were doing professional development. We went and watched a team that their coach came more from an Olympic based philosophy. And I watched their whole team clean from top to bottom best play at a worst player. And I'm like, oh, that's how it's supposed to look. And that's what I went back and said, we're not doing full cleans until I figure it out. And that's when I came up with the push jump punch, shoes and men, and that and that teaching progression. And then we wound up being a very proficient across the board from day one to day year five. You could, yeah, look, we prefer hang power clean. I don't have blocks anywhere. I hate when kids pull from the floor, ass goes up, then they jump out. But here's what I'm going to tell you with that. And this is watching. And this, yeah, this is why I laugh when people say, oh, you shouldn't deadlift and in strengthening and this thing for sports. Well, if you're damn sure going to clean from the ground, yes, better be deadlifted. Because if you don't have a strong enough deadlift, that clean is going to be exactly what you said. And one thing I know about strength is you will always be able to deadlift more than you can clean. So if you've got the confidence and pull a clean right, you're never going to have to worry when you walk up to a bar when you're power cleaning to know that you at least are going to be able to get that bar in proper second position. Rusty, I seen on his programming, it'll say deadlift plus meaning pick it up into the deadlift, then go into position. I think there's a lot of ways to do it. And we so we, because I didn't, because when I first started in collegiate strength and conditioning, all we did was hang clean. And then as I evolved and wanted to get a full position or hang power clean, some guys front squatted, what caught I didn't, I let it happen. Yeah, it's a natural occurrence. Yes, we had some guys split clean catching a yeah, I had to do that. And I had, and I taught for our skill guys, we would have alternate leg split cleans. You know, it's funny, is I know you think like this, but a lot of guys, they'll see it and they won't pay attention to the fact that the same leg is going back. Yeah, you got to talk about everybody wants to talk about, Oh, are you split cleaning? Well, look at the history of weightlifters. They did a lot of it. Yeah. This is like I said, when weightlifters start telling me about certain things, and again, I, I'm not a weightlifting coach, I'm a strength and conditioning coach for athletes. And they would get very low, some of them. Yeah, but I'm like, you guys talk about like this is taboo. That's how how many pictures can I pull off the internet right now? The split snatching split snatching crazy. And what's interesting was sometimes there's videos of them cleaning. They're not even like coming up. They almost catch it like a muscle cleaner. Well, like, well, that's Paul Anderson did. Yeah. And you know what that tells me? Strong as fuck. Yeah. That's it. Strong. And so let me think that. Let me see this last one, House. I know you got to go. I'm killing you here. You were talking about the isolation, the bodybuilding. Yeah. And talking about the rehab, right? So if we're going to use that, then we've got to be able to implement that into your programming. And that's where, and you really noticed that in the end of like the end of, and it goes back to like with the Louis Simmons, right? Like 20% on the big lifts, 80% on your accessories. Yeah. So there's a lot. And now I would say this early on, like, if you got these kids, and again, depending on there's a lot of things, but like to me, that's where I, where I built out this one, you could still build out these models. I went early on, we focused a lot on the big lift for technical. And then as you each year, you went through the program, like the volume of the big lifts would get reduced. But the intensity was higher. Yeah. But the amount of the accessory work would improve, because we wanted to expose you to even more work. I agree. So so like, when you hear people talk about the older you get, the less volume you need, that's in weightlifting. I still need volume with my athletes, but the volume is going to change. So like, if you're doing 10 sets of two as a, as a sophomore in the squat, and I'm a senior, I'm doing five sets of two, when I'm picking up my volume somewhere else. Yeah. Well, there, as when you're an upper classman, your intensity for the big lifts is much higher, because you've got the technical efficiency. You're exerting much more. You're getting more out of it. Out of it. Then again, I was just, Hey, man, I'm just naturally gifted right now. So when you were mentioning like the split jerks. So I'm talking about bodybuilding, I've been watching, I think like, I don't know who they are, but there's like video footage of the Chinese weightlifting halls. Those guys are built now. I don't care. But if you see somebody there, sir, like these guys are taking accessory work, but you see these guys taking 10 pound, excuse me, 10 kilogram plates, doing full circle level raises. Yeah, I mean, whatever the new raises, I can't even do a plate raise with a 10. So check this out though. Then you'll see, let's just say an American or anybody, they do a split jerk, and they're everywhere. And I'm like, I you want you people. I think they just can't assess. I'm looking at the arms. You have no triceps. I'm almost watching your elbow. Hyper extend. You have no shoulders and hair. But here's what, but there's no set. And that's where like the problem when Louis Simmons would talk about weightlifters, what what I think what he was trying to talk about, like, and this is where I think why Travis Mass had a lot of success as a weightlifting coach, because he brought strength into weightlifting. Because like, and again, there's certain numbers, but like, I never could understand where, well, if I cleaned and jerked 300 pounds, I would only use a squat max of 120%. That's how they would train. But that's where, but then you'd watch Shane Hammond and these guys and Mark Henry come in who could do well more than 120%. And want to know why these dudes are ricocheting out of the bottom of cleans because they were strong. And I think Travis did a good job of taking his powerlifting background and what he learned through that and implementing that in the weightlifting and coming up with a model where he brought legitimate absolute strength work into the game that I think helped a lot of his life. Yes, I saw I was down there. We ran into each other doing seminars down there. He'd have them like doing max effort, right pulls shit like that. But I always say like, hey, there's a system that you that's already been proven like, okay, if I want to get great at football wrestling, blah, blah, there's somebody that's already done the system. All right, house, let's shut it down, my bro. I could talk to you all day. Anything else you want to talk about? Is there a question that people don't ask you that they should be asking you a topic? I mean, I don't think I think, you know, hey, I've been around a lot. I'm a very, I think I'm a, I definitely have a strong opinion, but I think they're well thought. I reserved the right to be wrong. I'm, you know, we've all, we've all kind of had our different past, but I always tell people, I'm very strong in my opinions, but I don't just wing it. They're very well thought out because that's all I do all day is think about things and what I've seen and how can I take the experiences I've had to help some people not fall into traps, like whether it be even like when I'm talking to guys about their contracts and versus, hey, do you even know you're on a contract? Do you know that your contract is at will versus a yearly, a full year or a multiple year contract and how you get paid out? Like, you know, or versus, you know, why, why, where was your evolution where, you know, in 1991, if I would have told you I would be more leaning to a front squat, to a back squat, you would, you would say, ah, that you ain't the house I know, but you just, you know, it's just a matter you watch the evolution of what training is. And again, if you're going to call it what I call my system athletic based strength training, then you've got to really look through a different lens than, you know, yes, you're going to pick movements and methodologies from powerlifting. This is where this is why there's to train an athlete. There is no really right or wrong answer because there's nothing there. Like I said, they don't, it's nothing. It's not like, hey, if I power lift, there's several templates out there that that's the way you go. If I weight lift, here's the templates for weightlifting. If I body building, here's the basic templates, but for training an athlete, there is no, that's why there's multiple. I like that you call it like a poetic based strength training. That's perfect. I mean, again, I, and again, I justify that play stuff, different things. I think athletics is based off of whole body movements. So why would I go up or low? This is just my simple justification for me doing an upper day and a lower bait doesn't make sense if I'm training a team sport athlete. I do it when I feel like they need the volume. But see, that's where I'll just do blitz work. If I'm not seeing them frequently, see, that's my concern now with the athletes who predominantly trained twice a week is I got to do full body work. But I just feel like I'm not getting enough volume to build muscle. And a lot of them need the damn muscle. But here's, but here's the thing is that you can't, you can't worry about that. Nope, I can't control it. That's what it is. And what you would hope is that the kid that's coming in twice a week. And if he is consistent, hey, coach, I know I got it. I got a small rec center near my house. What do you think I should do? Yes. And I always used to tell my guys, you could never do enough rows. There you go. I like that. Never do enough rows. Like, I ain't worried about you doing benching. Yes. Like I would tell you right now. And I tell people and I will tell I'm speaking at several high schools. We ain't bench pressing unless you can overhead press, bro. I love that. And again, it's backwards. And here's why. Here's why I can say that now, because I've worked two years and I've been in the mix, in the dirt with high level strong men. And you know what I could tell you is, if you get your overhead press up, your bench will go up. But if you get your bench up, your overhead pressing going up. Correct. So and what's more athletic than being on two feet and balancing a heavy load over your head. I love it. I mean, what about with your shoulder prompts? Have you rethought the bench in over high press? No, because my yeah, I should have, I should have done more overhead pressing. I should have learned how to do pull ups. I should have done more back work. And and again, it comes back to we did I didn't do enough antagonistic work coming up over emphasized. And again, just the way it was, right? No big, it is what it is. You live and learn. That's why, again, and and because of the way Brian man made some good points of where like, you know, I used to say, well, you know, if I do 10 reps on the bench, do 15 reps on the rose, I don't know. He the way the anatomy and the structure of the shoulder move, it really isn't about that anymore. It's just adding more back work. Like to me, it's like, Hey, we're going to bench, we're going to do 10 reps. We're going to do a horizontal row for 10. And then we're going to do three sets of 25 bent over T-rays for rear delt. We're going to do four sets of 25 face pull for rhomboids and upper track. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's going to do more frigging back work. That's why, like, when we would do our upper body tears in the NFL, it was a trifect, like you said, you don't like doing circuits. We wanted it to be a circus. So you did, let's just say it was bench day. Yep. Horizontal row, horizontal press, posterior shoulder, every round, you get five sets, you did five of everything. Five reps. Yeah. No, dependent five sets. So five rounds was, so it'll be 10, 10, 20, 10, 20. And then on the vertical. On the vertical day, vertical pull, vertical press, posterior shoulder. On the dumbbell day, on the dumbbell day, whatever it was, if it was a vertical cycle or a horizontal cycle, dumbbell row, dumbbell press, or posterior shoulder. And then that didn't even count the trapezius work and the scapula movement work we were doing with our next stuff. Yeah. So it wasn't, so it became more of a, it became more of a, don't, because I, my general rule of thumb is to be safe, I'd always go, I have the plus two mentality. If I'm doing eight on the bench, I'm doing 10 on the row. I like it. Yep. I mean, that's just a simple way to just do a little extra. Yeah, just in case you don't have enough time to do all a little fufu stuff. But now it's like, for me, especially like I said, with the way I'm programming now, these little programs within the programs, I call them, these men, like I said, man, I'm on a, my accessory packages right now, are on a whole nother level. Like, I can, I can take you, like, like I'm training so I have so many injuries of a curd over the year trying to do this last big deadlift. But like, I developed bilateral proximal hamstring tendonopathy in both hamstrings during this deadlift chase that I did this year. I trained through it for 16 weeks. So just think about how painful I was going through this, but I had to accomplish this goal, because I'm stupid like that. And I only have so many more max deadlifts left in me. That's right. But now that the rehab is very slow. It's a tedious process because tendons take longer to heal. So I've studied enough, talked to my therapist, but like today, I went through what is a call, I called it a hybrid stage one stage to rebuild program. I don't like to use rehab or prehab. Yeah. And if I took you through this program, and again, at your, at your age, again, I know you like deadlifted and I know you like your belt squash, you're like me, man, you're going to train the movements that you can train as heavy as you can. But I will tell you this, and you can't, this, this program from start to finish with my reset, my reboots, all my was 73 minutes. But if you, you would have, you would be like, damn, house, that's some, that's some shit, because it's stuff you're not exposed to. I have to come down and train. No, I mean, like, like some of the ISO stuff that I'm doing now, like, again, I can't do an ISO one because I can't bend my knees that way. But like, some of the other like just ISO bridging and ISO single leg bridging and then going into dynamic or ascent. Like I did, I did a deal today where he was, he was, he was a three, he was a trifecta worker. I love that he called a trifecta. He was my knee flexion trifecta. So it was an isometric leg curl. This was a double leg work. So isometric leg curl. And I'll be posting this exercise, how I set it up with a band. So it's an isometric leg curl for 30 seconds. Then I go to inverse curl. So at Nordic curl, over, over emphasize eccentric lowering. So super slow, super slow, but I get the concentric on the way up because it's counterbalance. So full range of motion. And then I want a dynamic mobility for the hamstring. And I go into a banded leg curl for 25 reps for speed speed. So I has isometric overload to eccentric and then get my speed work in. Yeah. Then I do that. Then I did single leg ham, hip dominant work for the ham string. So I did a banded straight leg pull down 30 seconds each leg, foot elevated, hip bridge, single leg with an over over emphasize eccentric, and then into flutter kicks. So I'm working hip extension hamstring, hip dominant hamstring, knee flexion dominant hamstring. And then straight leg sounds like an old Dick Hartzel band exercise. Yeah, that's all they are. They're all very easy to do that. And then my strength work for the day was, so I did my reset. I did my reboot and and root work, which is my core and activation drills. Then my strength work was three sets of 10 of sissy squat with a sissy squat bench, just body weight. And then I did metabolic conditioning. I did six rounds of 30 on 30 off on my versa climber, went into that knee dominant work. It's two rounds of that did another six minutes 30 minutes 30 on 30 off excuse me, of the versa climber did two rounds in the single leg hip dominant. And then 73 minutes later, I'm like, holy shit, a lot of work. And see now when I look at that work there, right? And I'm like, okay, how would I utilize this in athletics? These are the types of things when these NFL guys start moving back into the weight room. Yeah, like in that in that late March, yes, when this is the stuff that I'm like, this is how I would bring them back slow. I like that I did that with wrestling. And I have and I have another program and I'll send you over just a I'll send you over a little clip I'm gonna post it this week. I'll send you it over later today. Of the six exercises I do just it's a isometric program. And I either go, I like doing three rounds of 30 seconds on 30 seconds off, but I've also done two rounds of 40 seconds on 30 seconds off. And I can do the 45, but I feel like my mental intensity is better by just doing 30 really hard. What's the enough at the 40 guys are doing like several minutes of isos. And I'll listen to a cool podcast. I think you have you been on the voodoo power podcast. I think that was one of the ones you know, I've been on so many that I know the name. So I thought it was great. I love Steve. I call Steve. I think I forget Steve's last name, Thompson, maybe voodoo power podcast. I might have been on that one. Yeah, like I said, that was a lot of research before he asks before he gets you on. So he has I might I might have been on that one. I maybe in the early days, but long story short, he had Sean Greer on a high school strength coach. And Steve said, Sean, what is the limit to the isometrics? And he said, I gotta tell you, I don't know, because he's like, I did my research on like Shaolin warrior monks. He's like, they did not put limits on their holds. He's like, a Shaolin warrior monk might hold an isometric for hours. Yeah, he's like, what about, you know, farmer burns and George Hackenschmidt. He's like, they didn't set limits. Whereas today, in my opinion, we were kind of saying that we got in too smart, where we fuck up what the training could really do for us, because we're like, ah, we can't run 300 meters. I play football. Like, Oh, this shouldn't be saying. I know this. Like, here's what I would tell you is, again, it's about like you said, I want my lineman to run 300 yard shelves. You know why? So not supposed to. And if they can do it, then they can, they know they can do a lot of other things. Yes. I love it. You must train the mind. You can't just train. And again, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but I also know why I was successful with the 300 yard shuttle training is because I, I create, I, I studied it enough to know that my rest intervals and rest times were correct. And there's a time and place because when you do it, because what happens is when guys are running these, these, these conditioning drills, they're running them at max effort goal times that are just not conducive. That's where the issues are. The issue isn't with like, the issue isn't with the distance. It's the amount of effort you put in that distance. When you talk about like with Charlie Francis and they talk about those tempo runs or flush runs. Well, yeah, I don't need my guys to run max effort 300 yard shuttles every day. I need them to run that max effort after I've trained them for a period of time. Like for example, when we would train the, we would just say we would train in the skill guys that I think their, their goal time was like 65 seconds, which sounds slow, but I'm running five of them. But yet what, but yet when I tested them for two, you know what their times were? 43 45 44 48 because they had the base able to do it. Okay, bro, let it lose. You only got bad. I think we just, I think we, the athletes are on the run so much. The coaches are trying to make everything so perfect that it does not meet the demands of the imperfection, the unknowns that happened during competition. And so when can't over say, hey, man, I'm all for technology. I'm all for all the stuff we used to have to collect by hand is now right here at a lick of a split second. And, and so for me, it becomes, how can I take all this valued stuff? But remember that in the end, I got to prepare them to win a game that's hard to do. And also, I think what people forget about when they look at analytics is, hey, man, analytics don't bring anything up with the emotional quotient of a human being. Yeah, that's good time. And here's what I always bring to that is NFL guys should not play Thursday night games. They need to be, they're, they are not recovered. Most of the bigger guys, because they go from Sunday to Thursday. It's not enough time. But what I've seen is I've seen offensive lineman on Wednesdays still look like they got to hit by a Mack truck from the Sunday before and see him the very next day on a Thursday night game. And you wouldn't even think it's the same guy because they know it's go time. My money's on the line. Yes. My family's on the line. Yes. I got to be ready to go. I've watched the one thing else I learned early on in my NFL career was, you know how in college and even in high school, all the coaches like stand up. Oh, never looked like you're tired. You know what I learned in the NFL? Nobody gives a shit between the whistle. What happens between between whistles. They don't, I mean, after the whistle's blown. I watch guys walk off the field after a four play drive that looked like they just got destroyed by a tidal wave only to the ball get turned over a play later and run back out there and do the same thing over again. And it's like, no one cares. The only thing they care about is when the ball snapped till the ball stops. So if, if no one else, and I can look at like, like the hands like everybody now knows your hands on your knees is probably the best way to recover. But God forbid you did that, right? Yeah, it's like just the mental thing. Yeah. So, so for me, it became I'm not worried about stuff that doesn't need to be worried about. What I'm going to worry about is, are my guys ready to roll when the whistle blows? This is why it's all about building a huge base of recovery. Like to me, your, your conditioning test isn't about passing or failing. Because a lot of times, remember, people want to guys to fail the conditioning test. Like it was like, oh, these guys flunk, we're going to make them run it again. To me, the conditioning test was, can I build them to a point of resiliency that they can recover from practice to practice? Well, all right, we're going to close it out of this, but this is what you got me thinking about. I saw an Iranian wrestling team training. The technique was quote unquote, all wrong kettlebell high poles kind of round back box jumps, but they, they just stay crouched down. But wrestling, but wrestling is unorthodox movements. Anyway, right. But here's what I'm saying is they're doing quote unquote wrong training. There's a great Instagram. I like the guys seek a strength. They're out there. Irish guys, they've been showing, they must be getting ready to like promote something. They've been showing a lot of like combat athletes training. And I think they were showing, you could have been Iranian wrestlers again, all training as a team, deadlifting with a belt and straps. So quote unquote doing it wrong, but just working up going heavy and they're saying, look, there's a lot of benefit to training as a team competing and hitting a max effort lift. It does something not just for the physical, but for the mental, even though there's a belt, even though they're using bodybuilding. Yeah, exactly. But they're great. What did we say in the beginning? They're great at wrestling. And a lot of things like it again, and no sports like that where there is that they're in unorthodox positions. So correct. You know what again, you want to you want perfect what's and that's where you go. What's the perfect rep? Hey, what we might think is a bad rep in their world. Hey, they're probably okay. I just look at it. Like when you're strong, you're strong. Like as much as me, like Brian always gives me credit about cleaning up his deadlift technique at such a young age that he doesn't know if he'd been able to last that long the way he was deadlifting when we first met him. But at certain points in time, you're going to pick a weight where you're not going to be able to maintain form and yeah, it's just got to be strong. Well, Jim when they said this, we didn't call it the deadlift because it looks pretty. Yeah. And like for me, I have to be technically because I've got so many injuries, but like those guys, they can't they've got to be so sound. And that's why they're the strongest men in the world and I'm a class two power lifter. Yeah, house where big, big house power. Where should people seek you out for dynamic? And also we didn't even talk about your reinforcement. I mean, that is one of the best, most in depth programs I've ever can't. I mean, probably needs to get purchased a hundred times a day. It's awesome. People don't know it. But again, it's my gut. My thing is, you know, I'm at a point now where dynamic gives me a tremendous platform to stay within the things that I love with weights and being strong. And I work for terrific ownership, values, my authenticity, and what I bring to the table. And then for me, you know, I just love this stuff. Like I said, man, I'm going to be on a podcast here. We went two and a half hours dog. If I sign up for a podcast now, just lock up, I'm going to run downstairs and get something to eat quick for another one. But you know, like I said, man, I appreciate your enthusiasm. I appreciate that. You know, you're self made. I remember when I first met you, you're like, I don't know nothing about mezzo cycles of micro cycles. I just work them hard for three weeks and then hard work down and then you've evolved and you learn it. That's funny. You remember that? Well, I always remember that. I was like, at least he fucking ain't lying. Like the dude's like, Hey, I don't know. I think buddy had shared it. He said there's an intro week, then there's week two. He's like week three, you try to break another record. Yeah, mine was four. I was like everybody D loads. Yeah. And again, and that's that was your traditional four week model. It was base load, load two, then reload. And then when I learned some stuff, I love the reload that you call it. That's better. The Olympic lifting on the Olympic lifting side, they came up with what they called their top thing was performance week. So it was base. And what I liked was because they did everything in four week blocks. And this is where you when you started linking micro masso mezzo cycles together, they would go intro. So base load, we call it now D load to reload and then do the heaviest week, week four, because when you started week one of the second cycle, it was like you were reloading again anyway, because the intro was always the lightest of the session. So so instead of having like a what I call the double D load, I really went into the performance model for a lot of stuff because I wanted that fourth week to be off the script. Now all programming has to be mini cycles because here in college, yeah, like I wound up being we had to drop the D load week. But again, because week one, well, we had we had nine week blocks. That was just three, three week waves. And then we'd have to have a two week wave in the pros, a three week wave. And then yeah, it's our house in college. Those kids come and go at my high school. I'll see I'll have a team who's been with me. And then all of a sudden, I have a team who shows up out of the blue, where I got a kid on a team who shows up once every other week. And at the private sector. But here's the thing is I'll tell you this. This is what people don't understand too. A lot of that a lot of what you said happens at those military jobs. Got the guys in for two weeks, they deployed for six months. They disappear. Yeah, so I mean, it's imperfect. But you know what, that would make your job that now you got to be a creative son of a gun. Yeah, house, you're the best hang tight house for one second. So I could say proper goodbye. Thanks to everybody for listening, watching, connect with house. Man, one of the best dudes. This was the best way to finish 2024 with my guy. So then I'll see you again December 30th, 2025, every year. All right, people, hang tight house. We'll talk to you soon, guys. Well, there you go. Man, what I'm saying in the end, what other way is a proper send off of the year 2024. And guys, time flies. Think about it. I met house. I think it was 2009, 2008. I'll have to look at the videos. Those videos will get posted up onto the blog post. Every strong life podcast goes back to my blog. So if you're looking for something, I was just on the phone with a athletic director who had business questions, training questions, talking about, you know, starting, being a strength coach on the side, all that stuff is for free on the blog on YouTube. But I'll tell you this, you want to take it a step further, sign up for a consultation. That is also on the website. And here's the difference. Once you have skin in the game, you start listening better. You start taking action. Every consultation I do starts with the end in mind. So I ask you, what is your goal? What do we want to achieve before we get off the phone? I want to make sure when I do a business consultation, you're not simply over inundated with more ideas. And then you hang up the phone, you're like, damn, I'm just more confused. I don't even know what to do. I give you a starting point and endpoint and a deadline. And I think it's been extremely powerful for everybody who does the business consulting calls. But anyway, most important thing, most of you are not strength coaches. Get on over to Zach strength.com. That's the free strength training, free strong life newsletter. That is for everybody, strength coach, anybody, whoever wants to learn about strength, you go on the strong life newsletter. Now, it's so expensive. It's free. You know how I roll. Make sure you check out my boy, bighousepower.com. Follow him on Instagram. It's also got a lot of great stuff on his YouTube. He just doesn't talk about that as much. And see what he's doing over at Dynamic Fitness Equipment. They've got amazing equipment. Him and I chatted it up about half racks, full racks, you know, private facility. I love it, man. Love that guy. Love you guys. Leave a review. Let's see if we could crush 600 reviews before the year 2025. That would be awesome. And that's it, guys. I'll talk to you soon. I'm out of here. Have a great new year. Happy healthy new year. And let's kick ass. That's the only option. Talk to you soon. Talk to you next year. Make sure to head on over to ZachStrengths.com and get exclusive content, a badass, free training course, along with a special discount code for any of our training courses. Thanks to everyone for leaving Five Star Reviews. People ask me, what warrior, what are you passionate about? It finally came to me years ago. You know, when I'm passionate about, I'm passionate about fucking passionate. I'm passionate about intensity. All the self-help books, all the motivational books, the inspirational tools that you can buy, the bottom line in them is do the work. Once you get through all the pages and all the rules and all the principles and all the formats and all the plans and all the templates, it comes down to that, do the fucking work. And sometimes the only way to go about doing the work is get fucking raw and get fucking intense. Get angry and aggressive and make it fucking happy. The experts, the gurus and health and fitness, they will tell you that rest in recovery, age of ten hours sleep a night is what you need. Let me speak blunt with you. None of those fucking triple gin, punchy belly, pasting face, motherfuckers can prove the groin hairs on a warrior. What is that for you is against you. What is against you is your fucking enemy and you need to kill it. Your fears, your doubts, you're like a confidence, you're like a belief in a certain absolute destiny. You have to do something unique and great on this planet. Start today at 6.15 a.m. and you're already up and you're already dragging ass by 6.16. You can change your fucking perspective of the world and of your life. My advice? Fucking do it. Dig fucking deep and get it done. Life is not worth living without passion, without intensity. Warrior men, what's your passion? My passion is fucking passion. It takes me for life, whatever you do!
