December 9, 2019 • 35 mins
These exercises and training modalities are all the rage right now, but are they right for you? If so, are you doing them correctly? Get the answers as Tom breaks down the exercise science involved with these popular exercises and routines with internationally-acclaimed Sports Performance Coach Mike Boyle.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of My Heart Radio.
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted. I'm Tom holland Mike Boil. If
you don't know the name, you should. If you're listening
to the show, soon you will you'll know exactly who
Mike Boyle is. Mike Boyle is simply one of the
(00:23):
world's top strength and conditioning coaches specialists. It's as simple
as that. When I first read his stuff many many
years ago, I said, I am going to learn from
this guy. I'm gonna read everything he writes. I'm going
to study his philosophy and just I study learned from
the people who are the best of the best. Why
(00:43):
waste your time with anything but And he's one of
those guys. And these are the guests I bring on
this show because I want you to get the greatest
results in the shortest amount of time with the least
likelihood of injury. And guess what, Mike Boyle follows all
three of those principles. Mike Boyle is the coach. If
(01:04):
you're remotely anywhere close to Boston in Massachusetts, you train
with Mike Boyle. If you're serious about what you do.
Professional athletes collegiate athletes, Olympic athletes, all trained with Mike Boyle,
the Boston Bruins, the Boston Red Sox, Boston University. He
specializes well, does a lot of hockey, but he does
(01:24):
all sports, the US women's Olympic hockey team, but also
their soccer team. And he trains quote unquote real people,
but he trains the best of the best. That's what
he's known for, and for great reason. He's super smart.
He's awesome at what he does, and he comes at
it from science. And like most of my amazing guests
(01:46):
on this show, it's gonna be that same theme that
seems to annoy a lot of people, and I get
why it does that. The answers are quite often simple.
It's the application that's challenging because we wanted to be
more complicated, We wanted to be more complex, and it's not.
And he's gonna explain why. Now, what are we gonna
(02:07):
talk about. We're gonna talk about what I have seen
the fat workouts, the not fat workouts per se, but
the fat exercises that have just exploded in popularity over
the past decade or so. And I chose three. So
I'm gonna speak with Mike Boyle strength and Conditioning Guru,
and to use that term again with him is one warranted.
(02:30):
We're gonna talk about Olympic lifts. We're gonna talk about
am RAP and what that means. The acronym is as
many reps as possible. And we're gonna talk about plometric
box jumps because if you walk into any gym today,
those three things are being done like crazy. We talk
about why. We're gonna talk about who should do those,
when you should do those, how you should do those,
(02:51):
and maybe when he shouldn't. I'm gonna talk about it
from a scientific perspective. We don't just instead of union.
We use facts here people science not super deep because
that's boring to most people. We're gonna use science. We're
gonna talk about those three exercises and why you should
(03:13):
or shouldn't do them from exercise physiology standpoint enough with
me because we need to talk to him. The best
of the best coming up after the break, strength and
conditioning expert, phenom guru, whatever you want to call it,
it's deserved coming up Mike Boyle. We'll be right back
(03:44):
and we're back. I could not be more excited. I
have followed this guy for so many years. There are
very few people that I say, you know, this is
the guy to listen to, and you're gonna you're gonna
figure out why if you don't know if Mike Boyle,
let me give you his quick bile, which I had
to condense down as I do with all my great guests,
(04:05):
and because they're just they've done so much so. Mike
Boyle is an internationally recognized strength and conditioning expert. He's
got well over thirty years experience in the industry. He
brings a depth and breadth of knowledge that is truly
unmatched in sports performance training. His client list is truly
like who's who of collegiate, professional, and Olympic athletes from
Boston University, the Boston Red Sox, Boston Bruins, also the
(04:28):
US Women's Olympic soccer and hockey teams. All right, He's
an international lecturer. He's the author of numerous books and
DVDs and his website you gotta go there www. Strength
coach dot com. It's truly the number one source of
performance enhancement on the Internet. So that's that's a site.
There's so much stuff out there. That's where you go
and you go, Okay, this this is what I need
(04:49):
to know. His gym is renowned Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning,
and it offers truly the most comprehensive performance enhancement training, reconditioning,
and personal training in the nation. And if you don't
pull even me, Men's Health magazine voted at the number
one JIM in America. So there you go, Mike, Thanks
so much for taking the time. I know you're super busy,
like have an hour a couple of days a week
for podcast now, including your own. Yes, it's great. I
(05:11):
actually really enjoyed doing these because I think it's a
great way to get out to a much broader audience
than then we might get in sort of the book
writing world. So it's good. I like it and and
I love that. Thank you, and thank you for taking
the time. And yeah, it's a unique way. You and
I pretty much been in the industry the same amount
of time, and this is yet another unique way, right
that we can truly reach people. As you said, and uh,
(05:32):
what I've find is it it's it's pretty interesting that
I don't know the feedback you're getting. I gotta make
things shorter and shorter people. People keep saying, stopped talking
and just get to the point. So I'm learning to
with this new medium. Functional Training for Sports. That's one
of your books that is like, how many versions of
that do you have now? I mean just so popular.
There's only two. There's two thousand four one, and then
there was a two thousand I want to say seventeen.
(05:54):
We did the uh what we're going to the second edition,
but it ended up being called New Functional Training for
Sports because they have rules with books now in terms
of if it's more than new, they have to consider
it a new book. So it is technically a new book.
So you worked harder on it, you put you put
more awhere. But I didn't want to do it, to
be honest, I was very hesitant. Not even I was
(06:15):
not hesitant. I was resistant. And the acquisitions editor just
was very nice. He said, just read the book over,
and he said, if you read it over and you're
happy with it, I'll stop bothering you. You don't read
your own stuff, Like who does that? Right? But I did.
I went back and I went through it, and I
was like, this book stinks. To do it. Yeah, let's
(06:37):
not say stinks. I mean sure, most of it you see,
of course it's it still applies. But we want people
to get the most out of their workouts. And that's
why I want to talk about Mike like again, but
in the business, the same amount of time you have
specialized though in professional athletes, people who can't afford to
get injured, right, I mean, you want what all strength
and conditioning coaches want, greatest results, shortest amount of time,
(06:59):
and then that third opponent with the least likelihood of injury, right,
And that's where the art and science comes in. Absolutely,
I mean, and that's because and that's what I think
is really interesting when you look at other people who don't.
When you don't have that constraint, it's very easy to
be sort of majo and cavalier about what you're gonna do.
And then when you insert that constraint in, when you
(07:19):
insert in a general manager and an agent and the
player themselves, who's not going to be happy? You know,
the coach, all these people are going to be unhappy
if this guy gets hurt doing something that you think
we always talk about the idea of balancing risk reward.
I think what we're always trying to do is balance
risk reward. Yeah, and that's and and listen from just
an ego standpoint, I can't tell you how many people
(07:40):
come up to me in the gym and they're like
to challenge you to something right, do this or that,
And I go, hey, you win. I'm good with that.
You win. You could do more pull ups like and
and that's it. And as you said, like, you can't
afford and I love the way you said it. People
who aren't professional athletes, hey, go at it, do what
you want. But but I think what's so amazing, Mike,
is that they don't. It's the causation, coral lation. They
(08:00):
never blame the exercise for the injury they have, or
so rarely I should say, oh, well, because the trainer
is always going to try to point the finger in
a different direction, that's the problem, or the coach is
gonna point the finger in a different direction, and it is.
You're right, I mean, it's it's difficult, but I always
look at it. Think even I try to tell our
adult clients, you can't afford to be heard either. You
(08:21):
gotta work right and you can't afford somebody's. To me,
the most egregious thing is when you get somebody's kid hurt, right,
somebody's child when you have to call a parent and
say your son or daughter got injured today doing something
because I didn't balance the risk and reward the way
that I should have. And that's not a fun conversation. No, no,
(08:43):
and and and it's getting you know, another topic, right,
the kids in sports specialization. We'll talk about that too,
because you're kind of going right there, and that's that's
nuts to me. And and real quickly, I got two
boys who play hockey and they were asked to do
the team sports strength conditioning with not you if it were,
but I mean at nine and at eleven groups situation.
(09:03):
So the first time I ever emailed a coach Mike,
and I said, I'm out, my kids are out, you know,
And that was really hard to do. But another topic,
I love it. So let's just go so you know,
I still go to the gym and I see certain things.
Obviously there's a tendency towards some some new type of training,
not new, but more popular now. And I just want
to go through three of them Olympic lifts and wrap
(09:25):
as many rests as possible and box jumps and and
we'll talk about you know, kind of what those are, about,
what they should be for, and the cost benefit of
all of those. Right, So let's start with Olympic lifts.
What are Olympic lifts to you? Like, you know, in
a nutshell, when do you use them? What are they for?
That kind of stuff. The reality is, I love Olympic lifting.
I think Olympic lifting is has got a bunch of
(09:45):
really strong positives in terms of and one of the
things that we've been talking about. I think it's great
for helping kids with collisions because just the fact when
you're particularly when you're cleaning hand clean, which is what
we would sort of favor, you get used to having
to receive weight almost in a way like you would
receive a hit, which is really valuable. I think it's
great from a concussion standpoint head and neck because you're
(10:06):
you're obviously using your easiest muscles and the muscles you know,
in that whole head and neck area when your Olympic lift,
and there's a massive amount of positives that the negatives
come in when you start doing this with adults who
don't need those benefits. So if I look at Olympic lifting,
it's like the old tricks is for kids, uh commercials.
The Cereal Olympic lifts are for kids. Olympic plus are
(10:29):
do not our adults do not Olympic lift. We have
rare instances where someone will try to make a case
for Hey, we have one woman who's a master's track
and field person. We've got a few people like that
who want to Olympic lift, and I think can get
the benefits from it. But in general, I always say,
the average adult can't even getta call it the airport
screening test. The average adult can't get their arms over
(10:51):
their head. Watch going to stand by the airport screener
and watch people when they say put your arms over
your head, and then look at that person and think
you is that person is going to be able to clean?
Is that person is gonna be able to jerk or
overhead press or do whatever people have people doing. So
you just get into this situation where you're again you're
failing to balance risk and reward. What is the reward
(11:12):
when you look at an adult and say, do we
need concussion prevention? No? Do we need to be able
to take a hit? No? Do we need? You know,
is there's so much explosive power development in the lower
body that we couldn't get from some sort of you know,
other climetric type drill. No, so you get a lot
of nose and very few yeses. So I kept trouble
um a massive yes person. We teach our kids to
(11:34):
clean starting at eleven, My my kids, my children Olympic lift,
but we do not prescribe them or use them with
our adult clients at all. And you I'm guessing, Mike,
you didn't start doing those lifts with them on day one. Well,
you know what says we do start We start teaching
clean because we we would look at clean as a
whole method versus apart method teaching, and that's just a
(11:58):
teaching style thing. But we do pretty much start teaching
the whole clean. But you know, hand clean above the
knees and it's but it's teaching and that's the difference
not doing. And I think that's where we also fail
with you know, when we're teaching any beginner, is that
you've got to look at this in terms of it's
a skill acquisition. It's not a strength exercise anymore are
(12:18):
a power exercise. We want to see you require the
skill and I think that applies to just about everything
that we're doing. We want to see you acquire the
skill of squatting. We want to see you acquire the
skill of Olympic lifting. And then at some point we'll
worry about sort of the resistance and you know, we'll
worry about that. We want to worry about the how
before we worry about how much. So I love that,
(12:38):
and I should have clarified. And so you're such the
expert that you just go right there naturally. Uh So
it's the teaching side, and so you're not doing a
heavy load squat. You're not You're not making them, You're
teaching them how to do the movement first, right. You
want that that that purity of movement. And it's not
about how much, and it's not about how many reps.
It's about doing it right and doing it right. I
(12:59):
tell our coaches that all the time, in terms of
I had I could care less how much weight somebody lifts,
particularly in the beginning, I really care very very strongly
about how well they lift the weight because they'll reap
the benefits of resistance training without us right basically trying
to kill them. Right. I have so many people come
up to me and that mike, And they always ask
(13:20):
me if I'm hurt because of the way I'm doing
in the speed I'm doing that, and I said, that's
the greatest compliment, and again he goes out the wind.
I don't care if they go, you hurt and why
are you doing those exercises and why you're doing them
that way? And I go because they don't want to
get hurt. But that's so rare, right, And I'm next
to the people who are, you know, dropping the heavy
amounts of weight and throwing it around and yelling at
(13:40):
so yes, and that leads just naturally then into as
many reps as possible. Uh, you know, I get it
if you're competing, if if that's your you want to
do as many reps. But let's talk about what that
entails and how that changes the exercise when you go
as many reps as possible. Well, but the reality is
there is only in uh, there's only one competition whereas
(14:01):
many reps as possible matters, and that's the one, the
ESPN televised version that we were mentioning. Other than that,
there's nothing else where as many reps as possible even matters.
So I think that's one thing we have to look
at and we would talk about it. It's really funny.
Somebody so am wrap you know, as many reps as possible,
(14:23):
and then someone else um said a grap as many
good reps as possible, and so which I like better?
And so I like the idea. We talked about the
idea of training to technical failure. Charles Probloquent Transgation coach
W has since passed away, sadly coined that term years ago.
(14:43):
We're gonna lift a technical failure, and I think that's
a pretty good standard. And technical failure to me means
when you cease to be able to do the exercise
in the way that I prescribed it for you, that's
technical failure. That means if you're doing it too fast,
if you're bouncing it, if you decrease ranch emotion, if
you've lost for any one of those things is going
(15:03):
to be considered a technical failure. And we're gonna be
case sets old, right, And I can't funny people, So
I can't get another one. I don't want you to
get it. I don't care if you can get another one.
I have no interest in that. I have an interest
in you've you've run out of good reps. The amount
of good reps that we got is done. And usually
the way you know, technical failures. There was one that
(15:24):
wasn't you know what I mean, So one that you
didn't like, and you're like, okay, you know you did
one that I didn't like, and that was one too many.
We're definitely not going to continue down this app of
you know, keep going until you've exhausted every compensation strategy
that you can come up with. That was I read
that post of yours way back when, and that was
(15:45):
what I was gonna get to next. You went right
there and that So people, I want you to really
take into what Mike just said, technical versus muscular. Right, So,
and we've been saying this, you know, as a personal
trainer many years ago. Mike, it was, you know, how
many reps should I do well until you start to
lose form? Right until the last few reps are difficult,
but you start to lose more, then it's over, right,
(16:06):
you don't do And the problem is, I would argue,
is that again, I always use that paper clip analogy, Mike,
where you gotta bend the paper clip five times and
four breaks, right and and that's the body that what
we're backing things like that is if you're not gonna
hurt yourself right necessarily doing that exercise, but you're gonna
bend down to get your toothbrush three months after doing
it wrong or doing too many and then you're gonna
(16:27):
feel it right exactly. I use credit card I think
credit cards eat better analogy because you know, I always
tell people if you start bending your credit card and
just hold it between your fingers and start bending it,
You'll think it will bend forever. And then at at
some point you look at the credit card and you realize, wow,
there's a fracture line in that card. Like suddenly that
card is developing a little line on it. And then
(16:47):
if you keep going relatively quickly, you'll have two pieces
of credit card in your hand and it it's I
use that analogy all the time for people because that's
when people say, you know, kind of it doesn't matter
like it does and p Well, I was like, oh,
you're talking about plastic, not the human body. And I'm like, yeah,
I'm pretty dawned similar And I mean, we do know
that tissue goes undergoes what they call plastic deformation, and
(17:12):
there are certain tissue properties, particularly in connective tissue, where
they do have properties that are similar to plastics. So
so you's pretty good. So I've been saying this is
like twenty years of the paper clips. So now I'm
officially the plastic card. You've changed me to that. I
love it, But get on the credit card band rock.
Is it a is it a black m X though,
(17:32):
or is it you know, it depends on the client.
I'm sure you'll have that argument. I love that. And
again people I know myself and from reading and the
first time I've spoken with Mike in person, so honored
to have to be doing so we want you to
get the grace results and and and again Mike trains
the top of the best of the best, people who
make their living doing it. And you know who I
had on Mike was Matt Fitzgerald. I don't know if
(17:54):
you're familiar, endurance guy sports nutritionists, and we're talking about
different diets and he was talking about how you know,
they will try any diet as long as it makes
them better, right, because if they don't win, they don't win.
If they don't win, especially triathletes, they're not gonna eat,
so they will literally do anything that helps them and
they're not doing any of that crazy stuff when it
comes to nutrition. Uh, and they'll try it for a
(18:15):
very short amount of time. If it doesn't work, they're
out right. And the same thing with exercise. You and
I want to get the greatest results, so we could
impress people with all of this fancy stuff, but it
comes down to the basics, and it comes down to
consistency and science. It does. I use the analogy all
the time with people. I say, if you only went
up five pounds a week, and you did that for
the entire year, you go up two our in sixty pounds.
(18:38):
So if you took that theory and said, like your son,
we're gonna start them and let him squat the forty
five pound bar for ten reps, and all we're gonna
do is go up five pounds a week, he's gonna
squat five pounds for ten by the end of one year.
That's never gonna happen anyway. So what's the hard right
(18:58):
at my point is that there's no need to rush.
And I always I use all the same analogies. You know,
the tortoise in the air, so someone steady wins the race. Whatever,
however you want to look at it. It doesn't need
to be rapid, and it doesn't need to be to failure,
and it doesn't need to be as hard as you can.
It needs to be consistent. And if it's consistent over
(19:19):
a period of time, you'll make incredibly good benefits. And
the biggest thing is, you know, I was otherwise it's
sort of two steps forward, one step back, or train,
do you get her, get her take time off? Train?
Do you get her get her take time off? And
it's amazing how many people cycle through that sort of
process in their training life. And I love that way.
And that goes to weight loss to everybody. When we
tell people one to two pounds a week, they say
(19:41):
that's not enough, and you go, well, that's fifty or
a hundred pounds in a year, right, and that's doable.
And yeah, I use the term Mike all the time.
Excessive moderation. Right, it's not do a lot a little bit,
it's do a little bit a lot, and and that works,
but people don't want to hear that. You know, it's
the excess. We always exist on the extremes, right on
the pendulum when it comes to fit. Well. You know,
someone starts running and then I want to run a marathon?
(20:03):
You know what I mean? It's it is we're constantly
that's the way we're taught to think, particularly in fitness.
You know, someone sort of like running, why don't run
a marathon? It's like I like running a mile? Why
would I run? Right? Right? But this is just the
way that we think in the fitness, real fitness. I mean,
we're so backward and so far behind, and and just
(20:26):
there are days when I feel like we're making progress,
and then all I need to do is like log
onto Instagram and I can realize that, God, we've got
well and I'm starting. You know what I love about
this show, Mike, As you said, it's a new way
for us to to interact and my God, to to
have you an interview and go back and forth. And
the disruption in fitness. I keep saying his information, it's
not the equipment, and you and I both work with
(20:47):
different fitness equipment companies, and and that's great. In technology,
it's amazing. We've never lived in a more exciting time.
Artificial intelligence, all that stuff. But if you don't believe
what you just said, that slow and steady wins the
race and all that kind of cliche stuff. I mean,
that's the comments I get for the show is Okham's razors.
Stop saying that it's not so easy, it's not about consistency,
(21:09):
and it is. It is said Okham's razor is absolutely true.
You know, the simplest solution is most often the best.
I tell people the whole time. Come and watch us
train the best athletes in the world, and you might
come away and thinking it's a little it's a little vanilla,
it's a little boring, right, And again we can impress
them with all the other stuff. It's not like you
don't have that in your repertoire. Yeah. No, And and
(21:31):
the reality is, frost, we don't really want it, we
don't need it, We just need I always tell people
you need to get here on a consistent basis. You
need to not miss daigs. You need to and if
we do that, I will guarantee you the result at
the end. See and and you younger kids listening that
that is the secret there, it's consistency. I used to
(21:51):
say this exact same thing, like two clients just show
up and I trained one football player way back when
I didn't really specialize and that's more your area of expertise.
But it was five days a week, you know, pre collegiate.
And there were the days Mike where he showed up.
I took a look at them and ago, we're going
to eat. You know, we're not working out today. You
could just tell and that that's the difference, right is
artificial intelligence can't really do that, and it's about showing up.
(22:13):
But it's about knowing when to pull back and that,
as you said, it's it's a long process. And people
don't want to give a time. I mean, let's be honest.
That's probably the number one reason rights people say. I
don't have time, but I also don't want to give
a time. Deef Olson Slight Edge is one of my
favorite books. And the first three principles in Slight Edge
principle want to show up. Principal to show up consistently.
Principal three, show up with a great attitude. And it's
(22:35):
so true if you just show up, it's like and
I'm living it now by son, I having fourteen year
old and my fourtune year old is getting strong and
he's only getting strong because we lift year round. Clean
the hundred thirty five pounds for five the other day.
He's still fourteen years old. He can do five chin
ups with twenty five pounds. He can do you know
what I mean like, And it's strictly a function of
(22:56):
the fact that we lift consistent right, and then don't
miss days. I try to really make it so we're
not gonna miss a day. We miss the day we
make it up. And that fact I said, when he's
eighteen years old, people will look at my son at
eighteen and be like, wow, that kid really strong and
really fast. And I'm gonna be like, yeah, but it's
(23:18):
you know, this is like said, I'm the King of
Layman analogies. But it's like, you know, slow cooking. You
just want to slow cooking. When you slow cook meat,
it's really really good. But if you if you try
to cook something fast on the grills, sometimes you're like,
it's burned on both sides, it's raw in the middle.
It's really not not what I wanted. And you think, yeah,
(23:38):
because you've got to focus in on slow cooking. And
you know that when he's eighteen, they'll say I just
had really good genetics. Following he follows a Cooky had advantage,
but he's always in the gym, and they won't look
at the fact and think that you didn't miss days,
did miss workouts, that we were we adhered to the
really simple principles that that we need to adhere to.
(24:01):
That's awesome. And again it's it's about the work ethic
and it's it's not and I love that you you know,
we call them lamme analogies. But I always say, like
the secret to life and to fitness exists on Instagram.
Everyone posts the right things, they just don't apply them.
They just don't do them right. And it's the simple
stuff that works. So let's finish up this is simple,
but not so all these things. Box jumps, so you know,
(24:22):
now it's six foot high box jumps and you know,
jumping on, jumping off. What's your take you know on
the plyometric box jump for for the average person will
start there. Um, I've I've written a whole series of
blog posts that you've probably read, and the one I
called it the idiot Box. And and I refer to
the people that use the idiot box as skin donors.
(24:43):
Because the good thing is now the idiots can get bigger, softer,
boxes so they don't become necessarily skin donors. But we
used to see the kids all time who would jump
on the metal plow boxes on wood plow boxes, and
when they miss, they had huge pieces of their shin
out and up. I was called skin don'ut because there
are a couple of times where we literally walked away
with pieces of shin, you know, with the hair still
(25:05):
on it, and throw it to the trash can. And
eventually I got rid of all those boxes because I
was like everybody else, you know, we had thirty six
inch boxes and put the boxes on top of something
else that you know, we perform these stupid animal tricks
that you know, trying to see how high boxing could
get on What you realize is that the only thing
that matters is how far you center a mask, which means,
(25:27):
generally speaking, unless you have really exceptional athletes, thirty boxes
are gonna be high. In normal athletes, twenty four inch
boxes are gonna be fine. There's no need to have
anything higher than that, Because I said, when you get
what I call the frog landing, where you're on top
of the box and you look like a frog, you know,
your knees are up by your years and it's like
you didn't move you center mass all you did. All
(25:50):
you did was work your hip flexors and that's not
the goal. And I mean I saw one. I can't
think it was one of the baseball guys that like
signed the huge contracts. I which one it was, But
same thing like running fifty in box jump where they
had stacked up all these rebox steps and he's jumping
into the wall because they suck him against the walls
(26:10):
they wouldn't fall over. And this guy made three hundred
millions contracts, three hund million dollars and it was on
the guy's Instagram And I'm almost thinking, if you could
have tried to create a testimony to your own stupidity,
this would have been it like the monument that you
wrecked to yourself and on social media saying I'm an
absolute moron. Look what I did with a three million
(26:32):
dollar player price hopper. I think it was actually and
just astounding to me to look and think, how could
anyone do this? But again it's the same. It's like
run the marathon. Okay, you know box jump is good,
then the highest possible box jump is better and stupid,
you know, contest that you're filming and just it's it's
(26:56):
the Instagram world too, right, I mean, that's a whole
another show too. That's one of the huge problems with this.
And I actually saw, like to your point, I'm not
going to name the well unknown Jim Chain higher End
to where they literally had a wooden box on the
second floor up against the window. So I assume it
couldn't have been there that long. So if you missed,
(27:17):
you're going out the window. I mean it was a
huge play glass window behind the box where people jump
it up. Now beautiful view, beautiful view, but you know,
probably not the smartest place. And I love that. I
meet people all the time and you look at their
shins as you're saying and you go, whoops, yeah, I
can't see how people I mean, as I said, the
fact that they've come out with the new uh soft
clile boxes were really a response to this stupid box
(27:39):
jumping yes, And the response wasn't let's do it right.
The response was, let's make the boxes soft. Yeah, right, right,
exactly right. So when you fail. And you know, obviously
the wooden boxers are less expensive, so more people can
put those in their gyms. But all right, so that's awesome,
you know, right there, people Olympic lifts, there are time
and a place as many reps as possible. Mike, I
(28:00):
remember walking down into my gym again and it was
a push up contest the trainer and he said, uh,
you know you're a fitness guy, do do my push
up contest? And I go, no, I'm incapable of doing
a hundred bad ones, right, I can only do, you know,
the good form, and the guy who wins is not
going to do it with good form exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(28:22):
all right, So there you go, Mike Boil like, seriously
go to uh strength coach dot com if you are
into fitness, if you really want the take on it
that it's just this. This is what this show is about.
It's science based, it's it's knowledge, it's application, it's simplifying
it down and this is a guy who trains the
best of the best. Again, my only problem with him
(28:42):
is the mostly Boston people, which you know, you gotta
get you down to New York. But Mike, thanks so much,
super helpful. You know so many of this these type
of things are going on the gym right now, and
if you want to be healthy and safe and maximize
your results follow his advice. So thanks so much for
taking the time. Like thanks, have a great day, and
(29:11):
we are back. I really hope you enjoyed that interview
with Mike Boyle. And again, if you if you have
issues with what he said, that's fine, that's awesome. I mean,
I know the reason I bring up this topic and
those specific exercises because so many people are doing them.
I get it. But I want you to be healthy,
(29:32):
and I want you to get the greatest results as
does Mike, with the least chance of getting injured. And again,
Mike Boile works with professional athletes who can't afford to
be injured, and he's that a really interesting thing is
And I don't really think about this until I started
thinking about this topic today for the show. And I've
obviously thought about this topic for a very long time,
(29:54):
but specifically when I thought about Mike and how he
works with professional athletes and how they and afford to
get hurt, and how yes, those many of you who
do these exercises in a certain way, listen, whatever makes
you happy. I'm never going to take that away from you.
I just don't want people to get hurt. I want
(30:15):
people to get the results they're looking for. But if
the results you're looking for is that feeling you get
from doing these exercises and you don't really care about
the potentially greater likelihood of injury, because that's true. People
you can argue with me too, you're blue in the face,
But that's science. That's just is And again, do whatever
(30:39):
you want to do. Will never take that away from
people to your choice exercise wise, you want to go
whatever you want to do, that's your choice. But we
talked about the science here because I want people who
maybe haven't started doing these type of exercises, are not
quite sure if they're doing them correctly, or they're not
quite sure why they're doing them. They've just been told
(31:00):
or they've seen it. I want you to have the
information to make educated decisions on what you're going to do.
And I'm gonna say this, this is my job. I've
done this for a really long time. I've studied it
for a really long time, and I get kind of
(31:21):
tired of people who haven't done either of those things
telling me exactly the way it is, with very little
to know science behind their arguments. I might best results
my clients were My greatest advertising injury free. And that's
(31:41):
not to say you're not going to have issues that
come on. Things happen, but things happen a lot more
frequently when you do certain things a certain way. That's
just the way it is. So anyway, whatever makes you happy,
that's fine. A lot of this is about stress reduction.
I'm not gonna say it isn't you know. I got
friends to do two mile runs and run through Death
(32:03):
Valley and crazy stuff, and you know what I say
about that, They need that for their head. Listen, I
do some crazy races, but I'm injury free, and I
know when to pull back, and I know that I
do all the little things to help minimize my risk
of injury. And truthfully, especially in the last decade or so,
I don't do a lot of training for those races
(32:24):
are just long, slow days. But my point is the
friends and people who do some pretty extreme things they
need that psychologically. It's the whole Mother show, but I
get that. But let's call it what it is. Let's
call it what it is. There's certain things that carry
a certain increased likelihood of injury, and it is what
(32:45):
it is, and that's all. And as Mike said, you know,
cost benefit analysis, what's the risk reward? And that is
something I have followed myself for many years. When it
comes to exercise prescription, why choose an exercise that is
really likely if you do it long enough and incorrectly
enough to get your hurt? Because once you're hurt people,
(33:08):
the body has a tough time, especially as you get older,
going back to where it was. And I love his
you know, I used the paper clip analogy. He uses
the credit card. I'm gonna switch to the credit card
because I like that visual too. Anyway, I hope you'll
learn something if it got you a little angry, question why?
Question why? And I'm not here to be liked obviously,
(33:30):
I'm here to get your results. And when it comes
to fitness, if your trainer, your fitness professional, the person
you're getting your advice from, you never question it never
annoys you. I wonder, ask yourself, why is it confirmation bias?
Are you're just hanging out with the people who are
telling you what you want to hear. But I'm here
(33:52):
to learn and to use the science for myself, for you,
for my kids, for everybody. And I study guys like
Mike Boyle because he makes me better, and better comes
with being uncomfortable regardless, and that's mentally and physically. But
holy cat was an amazing guy, such a just so
(34:15):
much great information. Uh and he's so passionate about what
he does. And that was the first time I've ever
spoken with him in person, following him for many, many years.
It's one of the coolest things about this show is
all of those people. And I had a couple of
radio shows over the years, but now I'm all of
these people that I followed, I'm talking to and bringing
to you, and that's awesome because he's making us all better.
(34:37):
That was Mike Boyle, just totally awesome, one of the
best of the best. Thank you for listening to the show.
Please rate it. I can take the comments. Listen. I
want to get better period and everything I do. Some
stuff I agree with, some stuff I don't. But please
rate the show. Please leave a comment. I would really
(34:58):
appreciate it. Tell your friends, tell your family, let me
know what you want me to cover as well, and
thank you for listening. You know, it's it's hard bringing
up topics sometimes that I know are gonna polarize people,
but it's my job. I'm gonna bring it to you
from science unbiased. I'm gonna say things like, hey, do
(35:20):
whatever you want to do. That's fine, but I want
you to have the right information going in so you
can make the best choices possible. I am Tom Holland,
thank you for listening and believing yourself. Fitness Disrupted is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
(35:42):
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of My Heart Radio.
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted. I'm Tom holland Mike Boil. If
you don't know the name, you should. If you're listening
to the show, soon you will you'll know exactly who
Mike Boyle is. Mike Boyle is simply one of the
(00:23):
world's top strength and conditioning coaches specialists. It's as simple
as that. When I first read his stuff many many
years ago, I said, I am going to learn from
this guy. I'm gonna read everything he writes. I'm going
to study his philosophy and just I study learned from
the people who are the best of the best. Why
(00:43):
waste your time with anything but And he's one of
those guys. And these are the guests I bring on
this show because I want you to get the greatest
results in the shortest amount of time with the least
likelihood of injury. And guess what, Mike Boyle follows all
three of those principles. Mike Boyle is the coach. If
(01:04):
you're remotely anywhere close to Boston in Massachusetts, you train
with Mike Boyle. If you're serious about what you do.
Professional athletes collegiate athletes, Olympic athletes, all trained with Mike Boyle,
the Boston Bruins, the Boston Red Sox, Boston University. He
specializes well, does a lot of hockey, but he does
(01:24):
all sports, the US women's Olympic hockey team, but also
their soccer team. And he trains quote unquote real people,
but he trains the best of the best. That's what
he's known for, and for great reason. He's super smart.
He's awesome at what he does, and he comes at
it from science. And like most of my amazing guests
(01:46):
on this show, it's gonna be that same theme that
seems to annoy a lot of people, and I get
why it does that. The answers are quite often simple.
It's the application that's challenging because we wanted to be
more complicated, We wanted to be more complex, and it's not.
And he's gonna explain why. Now, what are we gonna
(02:07):
talk about. We're gonna talk about what I have seen
the fat workouts, the not fat workouts per se, but
the fat exercises that have just exploded in popularity over
the past decade or so. And I chose three. So
I'm gonna speak with Mike Boyle strength and Conditioning Guru,
and to use that term again with him is one warranted.
(02:30):
We're gonna talk about Olympic lifts. We're gonna talk about
am RAP and what that means. The acronym is as
many reps as possible. And we're gonna talk about plometric
box jumps because if you walk into any gym today,
those three things are being done like crazy. We talk
about why. We're gonna talk about who should do those,
when you should do those, how you should do those,
(02:51):
and maybe when he shouldn't. I'm gonna talk about it
from a scientific perspective. We don't just instead of union.
We use facts here people science not super deep because
that's boring to most people. We're gonna use science. We're
gonna talk about those three exercises and why you should
(03:13):
or shouldn't do them from exercise physiology standpoint enough with
me because we need to talk to him. The best
of the best coming up after the break, strength and
conditioning expert, phenom guru, whatever you want to call it,
it's deserved coming up Mike Boyle. We'll be right back
(03:44):
and we're back. I could not be more excited. I
have followed this guy for so many years. There are
very few people that I say, you know, this is
the guy to listen to, and you're gonna you're gonna
figure out why if you don't know if Mike Boyle,
let me give you his quick bile, which I had
to condense down as I do with all my great guests,
(04:05):
and because they're just they've done so much so. Mike
Boyle is an internationally recognized strength and conditioning expert. He's
got well over thirty years experience in the industry. He
brings a depth and breadth of knowledge that is truly
unmatched in sports performance training. His client list is truly
like who's who of collegiate, professional, and Olympic athletes from
Boston University, the Boston Red Sox, Boston Bruins, also the
(04:28):
US Women's Olympic soccer and hockey teams. All right, He's
an international lecturer. He's the author of numerous books and
DVDs and his website you gotta go there www. Strength
coach dot com. It's truly the number one source of
performance enhancement on the Internet. So that's that's a site.
There's so much stuff out there. That's where you go
and you go, Okay, this this is what I need
(04:49):
to know. His gym is renowned Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning,
and it offers truly the most comprehensive performance enhancement training, reconditioning,
and personal training in the nation. And if you don't
pull even me, Men's Health magazine voted at the number
one JIM in America. So there you go, Mike, Thanks
so much for taking the time. I know you're super busy,
like have an hour a couple of days a week
for podcast now, including your own. Yes, it's great. I
(05:11):
actually really enjoyed doing these because I think it's a
great way to get out to a much broader audience
than then we might get in sort of the book
writing world. So it's good. I like it and and
I love that. Thank you, and thank you for taking
the time. And yeah, it's a unique way. You and
I pretty much been in the industry the same amount
of time, and this is yet another unique way, right
that we can truly reach people. As you said, and uh,
(05:32):
what I've find is it it's it's pretty interesting that
I don't know the feedback you're getting. I gotta make
things shorter and shorter people. People keep saying, stopped talking
and just get to the point. So I'm learning to
with this new medium. Functional Training for Sports. That's one
of your books that is like, how many versions of
that do you have now? I mean just so popular.
There's only two. There's two thousand four one, and then
there was a two thousand I want to say seventeen.
(05:54):
We did the uh what we're going to the second edition,
but it ended up being called New Functional Training for
Sports because they have rules with books now in terms
of if it's more than new, they have to consider
it a new book. So it is technically a new book.
So you worked harder on it, you put you put
more awhere. But I didn't want to do it, to
be honest, I was very hesitant. Not even I was
(06:15):
not hesitant. I was resistant. And the acquisitions editor just
was very nice. He said, just read the book over,
and he said, if you read it over and you're
happy with it, I'll stop bothering you. You don't read
your own stuff, Like who does that? Right? But I did.
I went back and I went through it, and I
was like, this book stinks. To do it. Yeah, let's
(06:37):
not say stinks. I mean sure, most of it you see,
of course it's it still applies. But we want people
to get the most out of their workouts. And that's
why I want to talk about Mike like again, but
in the business, the same amount of time you have
specialized though in professional athletes, people who can't afford to
get injured, right, I mean, you want what all strength
and conditioning coaches want, greatest results, shortest amount of time,
(06:59):
and then that third opponent with the least likelihood of injury, right,
And that's where the art and science comes in. Absolutely,
I mean, and that's because and that's what I think
is really interesting when you look at other people who don't.
When you don't have that constraint, it's very easy to
be sort of majo and cavalier about what you're gonna do.
And then when you insert that constraint in, when you
(07:19):
insert in a general manager and an agent and the
player themselves, who's not going to be happy? You know,
the coach, all these people are going to be unhappy
if this guy gets hurt doing something that you think
we always talk about the idea of balancing risk reward.
I think what we're always trying to do is balance
risk reward. Yeah, and that's and and listen from just
an ego standpoint, I can't tell you how many people
(07:40):
come up to me in the gym and they're like
to challenge you to something right, do this or that,
And I go, hey, you win. I'm good with that.
You win. You could do more pull ups like and
and that's it. And as you said, like, you can't
afford and I love the way you said it. People
who aren't professional athletes, hey, go at it, do what
you want. But but I think what's so amazing, Mike,
is that they don't. It's the causation, coral lation. They
(08:00):
never blame the exercise for the injury they have, or
so rarely I should say, oh, well, because the trainer
is always going to try to point the finger in
a different direction, that's the problem, or the coach is
gonna point the finger in a different direction, and it is.
You're right, I mean, it's it's difficult, but I always
look at it. Think even I try to tell our
adult clients, you can't afford to be heard either. You
(08:21):
gotta work right and you can't afford somebody's. To me,
the most egregious thing is when you get somebody's kid hurt, right,
somebody's child when you have to call a parent and
say your son or daughter got injured today doing something
because I didn't balance the risk and reward the way
that I should have. And that's not a fun conversation. No, no,
(08:43):
and and and it's getting you know, another topic, right,
the kids in sports specialization. We'll talk about that too,
because you're kind of going right there, and that's that's
nuts to me. And and real quickly, I got two
boys who play hockey and they were asked to do
the team sports strength conditioning with not you if it were,
but I mean at nine and at eleven groups situation.
(09:03):
So the first time I ever emailed a coach Mike,
and I said, I'm out, my kids are out, you know,
And that was really hard to do. But another topic,
I love it. So let's just go so you know,
I still go to the gym and I see certain things.
Obviously there's a tendency towards some some new type of training,
not new, but more popular now. And I just want
to go through three of them Olympic lifts and wrap
(09:25):
as many rests as possible and box jumps and and
we'll talk about you know, kind of what those are, about,
what they should be for, and the cost benefit of
all of those. Right, So let's start with Olympic lifts.
What are Olympic lifts to you? Like, you know, in
a nutshell, when do you use them? What are they for?
That kind of stuff. The reality is, I love Olympic lifting.
I think Olympic lifting is has got a bunch of
(09:45):
really strong positives in terms of and one of the
things that we've been talking about. I think it's great
for helping kids with collisions because just the fact when
you're particularly when you're cleaning hand clean, which is what
we would sort of favor, you get used to having
to receive weight almost in a way like you would
receive a hit, which is really valuable. I think it's
great from a concussion standpoint head and neck because you're
(10:06):
you're obviously using your easiest muscles and the muscles you know,
in that whole head and neck area when your Olympic lift,
and there's a massive amount of positives that the negatives
come in when you start doing this with adults who
don't need those benefits. So if I look at Olympic lifting,
it's like the old tricks is for kids, uh commercials.
The Cereal Olympic lifts are for kids. Olympic plus are
(10:29):
do not our adults do not Olympic lift. We have
rare instances where someone will try to make a case
for Hey, we have one woman who's a master's track
and field person. We've got a few people like that
who want to Olympic lift, and I think can get
the benefits from it. But in general, I always say,
the average adult can't even getta call it the airport
screening test. The average adult can't get their arms over
(10:51):
their head. Watch going to stand by the airport screener
and watch people when they say put your arms over
your head, and then look at that person and think
you is that person is going to be able to clean?
Is that person is gonna be able to jerk or
overhead press or do whatever people have people doing. So
you just get into this situation where you're again you're
failing to balance risk and reward. What is the reward
(11:12):
when you look at an adult and say, do we
need concussion prevention? No? Do we need to be able
to take a hit? No? Do we need? You know,
is there's so much explosive power development in the lower
body that we couldn't get from some sort of you know,
other climetric type drill. No, so you get a lot
of nose and very few yeses. So I kept trouble
um a massive yes person. We teach our kids to
(11:34):
clean starting at eleven, My my kids, my children Olympic lift,
but we do not prescribe them or use them with
our adult clients at all. And you I'm guessing, Mike,
you didn't start doing those lifts with them on day one. Well,
you know what says we do start We start teaching
clean because we we would look at clean as a
whole method versus apart method teaching, and that's just a
(11:58):
teaching style thing. But we do pretty much start teaching
the whole clean. But you know, hand clean above the
knees and it's but it's teaching and that's the difference
not doing. And I think that's where we also fail
with you know, when we're teaching any beginner, is that
you've got to look at this in terms of it's
a skill acquisition. It's not a strength exercise anymore are
(12:18):
a power exercise. We want to see you require the
skill and I think that applies to just about everything
that we're doing. We want to see you acquire the
skill of squatting. We want to see you acquire the
skill of Olympic lifting. And then at some point we'll
worry about sort of the resistance and you know, we'll
worry about that. We want to worry about the how
before we worry about how much. So I love that,
(12:38):
and I should have clarified. And so you're such the
expert that you just go right there naturally. Uh So
it's the teaching side, and so you're not doing a
heavy load squat. You're not You're not making them, You're
teaching them how to do the movement first, right. You
want that that that purity of movement. And it's not
about how much, and it's not about how many reps.
It's about doing it right and doing it right. I
(12:59):
tell our coaches that all the time, in terms of
I had I could care less how much weight somebody lifts,
particularly in the beginning, I really care very very strongly
about how well they lift the weight because they'll reap
the benefits of resistance training without us right basically trying
to kill them. Right. I have so many people come
up to me and that mike, And they always ask
(13:20):
me if I'm hurt because of the way I'm doing
in the speed I'm doing that, and I said, that's
the greatest compliment, and again he goes out the wind.
I don't care if they go, you hurt and why
are you doing those exercises and why you're doing them
that way? And I go because they don't want to
get hurt. But that's so rare, right, And I'm next
to the people who are, you know, dropping the heavy
amounts of weight and throwing it around and yelling at
(13:40):
so yes, and that leads just naturally then into as
many reps as possible. Uh, you know, I get it
if you're competing, if if that's your you want to
do as many reps. But let's talk about what that
entails and how that changes the exercise when you go
as many reps as possible. Well, but the reality is
there is only in uh, there's only one competition whereas
(14:01):
many reps as possible matters, and that's the one, the
ESPN televised version that we were mentioning. Other than that,
there's nothing else where as many reps as possible even matters.
So I think that's one thing we have to look
at and we would talk about it. It's really funny.
Somebody so am wrap you know, as many reps as possible,
(14:23):
and then someone else um said a grap as many
good reps as possible, and so which I like better?
And so I like the idea. We talked about the
idea of training to technical failure. Charles Probloquent Transgation coach
W has since passed away, sadly coined that term years ago.
(14:43):
We're gonna lift a technical failure, and I think that's
a pretty good standard. And technical failure to me means
when you cease to be able to do the exercise
in the way that I prescribed it for you, that's
technical failure. That means if you're doing it too fast,
if you're bouncing it, if you decrease ranch emotion, if
you've lost for any one of those things is going
(15:03):
to be considered a technical failure. And we're gonna be
case sets old, right, And I can't funny people, So
I can't get another one. I don't want you to
get it. I don't care if you can get another one.
I have no interest in that. I have an interest
in you've you've run out of good reps. The amount
of good reps that we got is done. And usually
the way you know, technical failures. There was one that
(15:24):
wasn't you know what I mean, So one that you
didn't like, and you're like, okay, you know you did
one that I didn't like, and that was one too many.
We're definitely not going to continue down this app of
you know, keep going until you've exhausted every compensation strategy
that you can come up with. That was I read
that post of yours way back when, and that was
(15:45):
what I was gonna get to next. You went right
there and that So people, I want you to really
take into what Mike just said, technical versus muscular. Right, So,
and we've been saying this, you know, as a personal
trainer many years ago. Mike, it was, you know, how
many reps should I do well until you start to
lose form? Right until the last few reps are difficult,
but you start to lose more, then it's over, right,
(16:06):
you don't do And the problem is, I would argue,
is that again, I always use that paper clip analogy, Mike,
where you gotta bend the paper clip five times and
four breaks, right and and that's the body that what
we're backing things like that is if you're not gonna
hurt yourself right necessarily doing that exercise, but you're gonna
bend down to get your toothbrush three months after doing
it wrong or doing too many and then you're gonna
(16:27):
feel it right exactly. I use credit card I think
credit cards eat better analogy because you know, I always
tell people if you start bending your credit card and
just hold it between your fingers and start bending it,
You'll think it will bend forever. And then at at
some point you look at the credit card and you realize, wow,
there's a fracture line in that card. Like suddenly that
card is developing a little line on it. And then
(16:47):
if you keep going relatively quickly, you'll have two pieces
of credit card in your hand and it it's I
use that analogy all the time for people because that's
when people say, you know, kind of it doesn't matter
like it does and p Well, I was like, oh,
you're talking about plastic, not the human body. And I'm like, yeah,
I'm pretty dawned similar And I mean, we do know
that tissue goes undergoes what they call plastic deformation, and
(17:12):
there are certain tissue properties, particularly in connective tissue, where
they do have properties that are similar to plastics. So
so you's pretty good. So I've been saying this is
like twenty years of the paper clips. So now I'm
officially the plastic card. You've changed me to that. I
love it, But get on the credit card band rock.
Is it a is it a black m X though,
(17:32):
or is it you know, it depends on the client.
I'm sure you'll have that argument. I love that. And
again people I know myself and from reading and the
first time I've spoken with Mike in person, so honored
to have to be doing so we want you to
get the grace results and and and again Mike trains
the top of the best of the best, people who
make their living doing it. And you know who I
had on Mike was Matt Fitzgerald. I don't know if
(17:54):
you're familiar, endurance guy sports nutritionists, and we're talking about
different diets and he was talking about how you know,
they will try any diet as long as it makes
them better, right, because if they don't win, they don't win.
If they don't win, especially triathletes, they're not gonna eat,
so they will literally do anything that helps them and
they're not doing any of that crazy stuff when it
comes to nutrition. Uh, and they'll try it for a
(18:15):
very short amount of time. If it doesn't work, they're
out right. And the same thing with exercise. You and
I want to get the greatest results, so we could
impress people with all of this fancy stuff, but it
comes down to the basics, and it comes down to
consistency and science. It does. I use the analogy all
the time with people. I say, if you only went
up five pounds a week, and you did that for
the entire year, you go up two our in sixty pounds.
(18:38):
So if you took that theory and said, like your son,
we're gonna start them and let him squat the forty
five pound bar for ten reps, and all we're gonna
do is go up five pounds a week, he's gonna
squat five pounds for ten by the end of one year.
That's never gonna happen anyway. So what's the hard right
(18:58):
at my point is that there's no need to rush.
And I always I use all the same analogies. You know,
the tortoise in the air, so someone steady wins the race. Whatever,
however you want to look at it. It doesn't need
to be rapid, and it doesn't need to be to failure,
and it doesn't need to be as hard as you can.
It needs to be consistent. And if it's consistent over
(19:19):
a period of time, you'll make incredibly good benefits. And
the biggest thing is, you know, I was otherwise it's
sort of two steps forward, one step back, or train,
do you get her, get her take time off? Train?
Do you get her get her take time off? And
it's amazing how many people cycle through that sort of
process in their training life. And I love that way.
And that goes to weight loss to everybody. When we
tell people one to two pounds a week, they say
(19:41):
that's not enough, and you go, well, that's fifty or
a hundred pounds in a year, right, and that's doable.
And yeah, I use the term Mike all the time.
Excessive moderation. Right, it's not do a lot a little bit,
it's do a little bit a lot, and and that works,
but people don't want to hear that. You know, it's
the excess. We always exist on the extremes, right on
the pendulum when it comes to fit. Well. You know,
someone starts running and then I want to run a marathon?
(20:03):
You know what I mean? It's it is we're constantly
that's the way we're taught to think, particularly in fitness.
You know, someone sort of like running, why don't run
a marathon? It's like I like running a mile? Why
would I run? Right? Right? But this is just the
way that we think in the fitness, real fitness. I mean,
we're so backward and so far behind, and and just
(20:26):
there are days when I feel like we're making progress,
and then all I need to do is like log
onto Instagram and I can realize that, God, we've got
well and I'm starting. You know what I love about
this show, Mike, As you said, it's a new way
for us to to interact and my God, to to
have you an interview and go back and forth. And
the disruption in fitness. I keep saying his information, it's
not the equipment, and you and I both work with
(20:47):
different fitness equipment companies, and and that's great. In technology,
it's amazing. We've never lived in a more exciting time.
Artificial intelligence, all that stuff. But if you don't believe
what you just said, that slow and steady wins the
race and all that kind of cliche stuff. I mean,
that's the comments I get for the show is Okham's razors.
Stop saying that it's not so easy, it's not about consistency,
(21:09):
and it is. It is said Okham's razor is absolutely true.
You know, the simplest solution is most often the best.
I tell people the whole time. Come and watch us
train the best athletes in the world, and you might
come away and thinking it's a little it's a little vanilla,
it's a little boring, right, And again we can impress
them with all the other stuff. It's not like you
don't have that in your repertoire. Yeah. No, And and
(21:31):
the reality is, frost, we don't really want it, we
don't need it, We just need I always tell people
you need to get here on a consistent basis. You
need to not miss daigs. You need to and if
we do that, I will guarantee you the result at
the end. See and and you younger kids listening that
that is the secret there, it's consistency. I used to
(21:51):
say this exact same thing, like two clients just show
up and I trained one football player way back when
I didn't really specialize and that's more your area of expertise.
But it was five days a week, you know, pre collegiate.
And there were the days Mike where he showed up.
I took a look at them and ago, we're going
to eat. You know, we're not working out today. You
could just tell and that that's the difference, right is
artificial intelligence can't really do that, and it's about showing up.
(22:13):
But it's about knowing when to pull back and that,
as you said, it's it's a long process. And people
don't want to give a time. I mean, let's be honest.
That's probably the number one reason rights people say. I
don't have time, but I also don't want to give
a time. Deef Olson Slight Edge is one of my
favorite books. And the first three principles in Slight Edge
principle want to show up. Principal to show up consistently.
Principal three, show up with a great attitude. And it's
(22:35):
so true if you just show up, it's like and
I'm living it now by son, I having fourteen year
old and my fourtune year old is getting strong and
he's only getting strong because we lift year round. Clean
the hundred thirty five pounds for five the other day.
He's still fourteen years old. He can do five chin
ups with twenty five pounds. He can do you know
what I mean like, And it's strictly a function of
(22:56):
the fact that we lift consistent right, and then don't
miss days. I try to really make it so we're
not gonna miss a day. We miss the day we
make it up. And that fact I said, when he's
eighteen years old, people will look at my son at
eighteen and be like, wow, that kid really strong and
really fast. And I'm gonna be like, yeah, but it's
(23:18):
you know, this is like said, I'm the King of
Layman analogies. But it's like, you know, slow cooking. You
just want to slow cooking. When you slow cook meat,
it's really really good. But if you if you try
to cook something fast on the grills, sometimes you're like,
it's burned on both sides, it's raw in the middle.
It's really not not what I wanted. And you think, yeah,
(23:38):
because you've got to focus in on slow cooking. And
you know that when he's eighteen, they'll say I just
had really good genetics. Following he follows a Cooky had advantage,
but he's always in the gym, and they won't look
at the fact and think that you didn't miss days,
did miss workouts, that we were we adhered to the
really simple principles that that we need to adhere to.
(24:01):
That's awesome. And again it's it's about the work ethic
and it's it's not and I love that you you know,
we call them lamme analogies. But I always say, like
the secret to life and to fitness exists on Instagram.
Everyone posts the right things, they just don't apply them.
They just don't do them right. And it's the simple
stuff that works. So let's finish up this is simple,
but not so all these things. Box jumps, so you know,
(24:22):
now it's six foot high box jumps and you know,
jumping on, jumping off. What's your take you know on
the plyometric box jump for for the average person will
start there. Um, I've I've written a whole series of
blog posts that you've probably read, and the one I
called it the idiot Box. And and I refer to
the people that use the idiot box as skin donors.
(24:43):
Because the good thing is now the idiots can get bigger, softer,
boxes so they don't become necessarily skin donors. But we
used to see the kids all time who would jump
on the metal plow boxes on wood plow boxes, and
when they miss, they had huge pieces of their shin
out and up. I was called skin don'ut because there
are a couple of times where we literally walked away
with pieces of shin, you know, with the hair still
(25:05):
on it, and throw it to the trash can. And
eventually I got rid of all those boxes because I
was like everybody else, you know, we had thirty six
inch boxes and put the boxes on top of something
else that you know, we perform these stupid animal tricks
that you know, trying to see how high boxing could
get on What you realize is that the only thing
that matters is how far you center a mask, which means,
(25:27):
generally speaking, unless you have really exceptional athletes, thirty boxes
are gonna be high. In normal athletes, twenty four inch
boxes are gonna be fine. There's no need to have
anything higher than that, Because I said, when you get
what I call the frog landing, where you're on top
of the box and you look like a frog, you know,
your knees are up by your years and it's like
you didn't move you center mass all you did. All
(25:50):
you did was work your hip flexors and that's not
the goal. And I mean I saw one. I can't
think it was one of the baseball guys that like
signed the huge contracts. I which one it was, But
same thing like running fifty in box jump where they
had stacked up all these rebox steps and he's jumping
into the wall because they suck him against the walls
(26:10):
they wouldn't fall over. And this guy made three hundred
millions contracts, three hund million dollars and it was on
the guy's Instagram And I'm almost thinking, if you could
have tried to create a testimony to your own stupidity,
this would have been it like the monument that you
wrecked to yourself and on social media saying I'm an
absolute moron. Look what I did with a three million
(26:32):
dollar player price hopper. I think it was actually and
just astounding to me to look and think, how could
anyone do this? But again it's the same. It's like
run the marathon. Okay, you know box jump is good,
then the highest possible box jump is better and stupid,
you know, contest that you're filming and just it's it's
(26:56):
the Instagram world too, right, I mean, that's a whole
another show too. That's one of the huge problems with this.
And I actually saw, like to your point, I'm not
going to name the well unknown Jim Chain higher End
to where they literally had a wooden box on the
second floor up against the window. So I assume it
couldn't have been there that long. So if you missed,
(27:17):
you're going out the window. I mean it was a
huge play glass window behind the box where people jump
it up. Now beautiful view, beautiful view, but you know,
probably not the smartest place. And I love that. I
meet people all the time and you look at their
shins as you're saying and you go, whoops, yeah, I
can't see how people I mean, as I said, the
fact that they've come out with the new uh soft
clile boxes were really a response to this stupid box
(27:39):
jumping yes, And the response wasn't let's do it right.
The response was, let's make the boxes soft. Yeah, right, right,
exactly right. So when you fail. And you know, obviously
the wooden boxers are less expensive, so more people can
put those in their gyms. But all right, so that's awesome,
you know, right there, people Olympic lifts, there are time
and a place as many reps as possible. Mike, I
(28:00):
remember walking down into my gym again and it was
a push up contest the trainer and he said, uh,
you know you're a fitness guy, do do my push
up contest? And I go, no, I'm incapable of doing
a hundred bad ones, right, I can only do, you know,
the good form, and the guy who wins is not
going to do it with good form exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(28:22):
all right, So there you go, Mike Boil like, seriously
go to uh strength coach dot com if you are
into fitness, if you really want the take on it
that it's just this. This is what this show is about.
It's science based, it's it's knowledge, it's application, it's simplifying
it down and this is a guy who trains the
best of the best. Again, my only problem with him
(28:42):
is the mostly Boston people, which you know, you gotta
get you down to New York. But Mike, thanks so much,
super helpful. You know so many of this these type
of things are going on the gym right now, and
if you want to be healthy and safe and maximize
your results follow his advice. So thanks so much for
taking the time. Like thanks, have a great day, and
(29:11):
we are back. I really hope you enjoyed that interview
with Mike Boyle. And again, if you if you have
issues with what he said, that's fine, that's awesome. I mean,
I know the reason I bring up this topic and
those specific exercises because so many people are doing them.
I get it. But I want you to be healthy,
(29:32):
and I want you to get the greatest results as
does Mike, with the least chance of getting injured. And again,
Mike Boile works with professional athletes who can't afford to
be injured, and he's that a really interesting thing is
And I don't really think about this until I started
thinking about this topic today for the show. And I've
obviously thought about this topic for a very long time,
(29:54):
but specifically when I thought about Mike and how he
works with professional athletes and how they and afford to
get hurt, and how yes, those many of you who
do these exercises in a certain way, listen, whatever makes
you happy. I'm never going to take that away from you.
I just don't want people to get hurt. I want
(30:15):
people to get the results they're looking for. But if
the results you're looking for is that feeling you get
from doing these exercises and you don't really care about
the potentially greater likelihood of injury, because that's true. People
you can argue with me too, you're blue in the face,
But that's science. That's just is And again, do whatever
(30:39):
you want to do. Will never take that away from
people to your choice exercise wise, you want to go
whatever you want to do, that's your choice. But we
talked about the science here because I want people who
maybe haven't started doing these type of exercises, are not
quite sure if they're doing them correctly, or they're not
quite sure why they're doing them. They've just been told
(31:00):
or they've seen it. I want you to have the
information to make educated decisions on what you're going to do.
And I'm gonna say this, this is my job. I've
done this for a really long time. I've studied it
for a really long time, and I get kind of
(31:21):
tired of people who haven't done either of those things
telling me exactly the way it is, with very little
to know science behind their arguments. I might best results
my clients were My greatest advertising injury free. And that's
(31:41):
not to say you're not going to have issues that
come on. Things happen, but things happen a lot more
frequently when you do certain things a certain way. That's
just the way it is. So anyway, whatever makes you happy,
that's fine. A lot of this is about stress reduction.
I'm not gonna say it isn't you know. I got
friends to do two mile runs and run through Death
(32:03):
Valley and crazy stuff, and you know what I say
about that, They need that for their head. Listen, I
do some crazy races, but I'm injury free, and I
know when to pull back, and I know that I
do all the little things to help minimize my risk
of injury. And truthfully, especially in the last decade or so,
I don't do a lot of training for those races
(32:24):
are just long, slow days. But my point is the
friends and people who do some pretty extreme things they
need that psychologically. It's the whole Mother show, but I
get that. But let's call it what it is. Let's
call it what it is. There's certain things that carry
a certain increased likelihood of injury, and it is what
(32:45):
it is, and that's all. And as Mike said, you know,
cost benefit analysis, what's the risk reward? And that is
something I have followed myself for many years. When it
comes to exercise prescription, why choose an exercise that is
really likely if you do it long enough and incorrectly
enough to get your hurt? Because once you're hurt people,
(33:08):
the body has a tough time, especially as you get older,
going back to where it was. And I love his
you know, I used the paper clip analogy. He uses
the credit card. I'm gonna switch to the credit card
because I like that visual too. Anyway, I hope you'll
learn something if it got you a little angry, question why?
Question why? And I'm not here to be liked obviously,
(33:30):
I'm here to get your results. And when it comes
to fitness, if your trainer, your fitness professional, the person
you're getting your advice from, you never question it never
annoys you. I wonder, ask yourself, why is it confirmation bias?
Are you're just hanging out with the people who are
telling you what you want to hear. But I'm here
(33:52):
to learn and to use the science for myself, for you,
for my kids, for everybody. And I study guys like
Mike Boyle because he makes me better, and better comes
with being uncomfortable regardless, and that's mentally and physically. But
holy cat was an amazing guy, such a just so
(34:15):
much great information. Uh and he's so passionate about what
he does. And that was the first time I've ever
spoken with him in person, following him for many, many years.
It's one of the coolest things about this show is
all of those people. And I had a couple of
radio shows over the years, but now I'm all of
these people that I followed, I'm talking to and bringing
to you, and that's awesome because he's making us all better.
(34:37):
That was Mike Boyle, just totally awesome, one of the
best of the best. Thank you for listening to the show.
Please rate it. I can take the comments. Listen. I
want to get better period and everything I do. Some
stuff I agree with, some stuff I don't. But please
rate the show. Please leave a comment. I would really
(34:58):
appreciate it. Tell your friends, tell your family, let me
know what you want me to cover as well, and
thank you for listening. You know, it's it's hard bringing
up topics sometimes that I know are gonna polarize people,
but it's my job. I'm gonna bring it to you
from science unbiased. I'm gonna say things like, hey, do
(35:20):
whatever you want to do. That's fine, but I want
you to have the right information going in so you
can make the best choices possible. I am Tom Holland,
thank you for listening and believing yourself. Fitness Disrupted is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
(35:42):
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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