September 25, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode of The Body Pod, we talk with Dr. John Rusin, renowned doctor of physical therapy, performance coach, and creator of the Pain-Free Performance Training System (PPSC). With nearly 20 years of experience working with professional athletes, Olympians, and everyday clients, Dr. Rusin shares how to train for longevity, strength, and injury prevention — without sacrificing performance.
We explore his six pillars of physical fitness: prehab, mobility, power, strength, hypertrophy, cardio, and athleticism, and how they form a foundation for sustainable fitness and pain-free movement at any age. Discover how to train like an athlete — even if you're not one — and learn practical strategies to build resilient joints, bulletproof your body, and stay strong for life. Whether you're a coach, trainer, athlete, or someone looking to move better and feel better, this episode delivers expert insights on functional training, injury prevention, and fitness longevity — all without the burnout or breakdown.
We explore his six pillars of physical fitness: prehab, mobility, power, strength, hypertrophy, cardio, and athleticism, and how they form a foundation for sustainable fitness and pain-free movement at any age. Discover how to train like an athlete — even if you're not one — and learn practical strategies to build resilient joints, bulletproof your body, and stay strong for life. Whether you're a coach, trainer, athlete, or someone looking to move better and feel better, this episode delivers expert insights on functional training, injury prevention, and fitness longevity — all without the burnout or breakdown.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
My name is Haley and this is Laura and welcome
to the body Pod.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome doctor John Russen. We are thrilled to have you
on the body Pod.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Thanks so much for having me. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
This is okay. So I've learned. I've gone down a
rabbit hole and learned a lot about you. I had
no idea that you were a physical therapist as well.
And then I love the injury prevention expert because this
is my whole age group that I work with. There's
just no way too You're always getting these, you know,
(00:43):
later in life, these more frequent injuries for women, that
especially since I only train women. But that's kind of
what we see in the guests that we interview, and
we'd like to kind of talk about that. So can
you tell us a little history of did you finish
school and you started and you were teaching physically like
(01:04):
you practice as a physical therapist for X amount of
years and then you started your online business or how
did that work?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
No, So, I trained my first client nineteen years ago.
It was a collegiate athlete and I started off as
a collegiate stranding conditioning coach University of Buffalo, that was
my first job. That was my alma mater, and I
was like super cool just being in the high performance
athletic space. And about a year or two into that,
I was like, hey, I can get some more free
(01:31):
education at school, and I ended up going to another
local school where my mom was a professor, and Damon College.
I did my doctorate a physical therapy, and contrary to
popular belief out there, I've never actually practiced as a
traditional physical therapist. After three and a half years of
graduate school, I ended up moving out to southern California
and getting right back into sports performance, spending the next
(01:53):
ten years working primarily with overhead throwing athletes baseball primarily football,
a little bit here in their tennis, and then that
took me a lot of different places, Major League Baseball, NBA,
and also working for Chinese Olympic Committee for Olympic athletes
over in Beijing, and also doing similar work in Australia
(02:14):
as well. And then fast forward that to about twenty thirteen,
twenty fourteen, I was back stateside and I started writing
articles and that picked up very quickly as I was
continuing to train, you know, fifty five sixty hours a
week in person kind of transitioning between sports performance into
more of a holistic health and longevity focus with my
(02:35):
own clients than really with my training acumen of trying
to focus in on that population.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Woy, you've done, you've succeeded, you've done well.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I know what a niche specialty like? Overhead throwing athletes?
Over the head throwing athletes. Is that what it's called?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah, well it was what I was. So I was
a Division one baseball player, good to my day, like
everyone says, but I had some arm injuries. I had
some catastrophic injuries that led me to not playing baseball
anymore and actually coaching baseball in the weight room instead.
And I that's what I knew. It's what I grew
up with. My dad was an athletic director as well,
(03:15):
so I was like inundated with a lot of great
information very early on in my life, even before I
was a coach myself, and I thought that was my
right to win right out of the gate. And I
was like, yeah, I'm doctor so and so, but nobody
really gives a shit. What they heard about was, oh,
John used to play baseball Division one, and that's what
gained the credibility very early on to say, hey, he's
(03:37):
one of us. He can understand what I'm going through.
And then going in and starting working primarily at those
baseball players. That was where I was able to cut
my teeth for the first time, going from Buffalo, New
York to southern California, which is two different worlds.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Oh yeah, East coast, West coast, so different there done that,
it's very different. Okay, So with the do you own
do you train men then or now do you train females?
Speaker 3 (04:02):
So I trained men and women at that point in time,
So there was a lot of tennis players in the mix,
and I actually for an entire year I coached on
the WTA Tour, so a lot of women. I would
say fifty to fifty between men and women in terms
of when I used to coach in professional sports and
Olympic sport. We have to remember it's not always all men.
(04:26):
Maybe we get a lot more attention for certain things,
but there are a lot of Olympic sports, especially overseas,
that we've never even heard of here in America and
the other countries tend to do really well on these
more niche sports that are kind of behind closed doors.
So started to work into those populations, probably fifty to
fifty with the athletes. But it was a wake up
(04:47):
call when I came back and I transitioned into more
like general fitness because the huge marketplace and the huge
need and the true niche, which really isn't a niche,
is being able to service the people that take up
a vast majority of the paid population in the fitness industry,
which is our ladies.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, they're the ones that are that have the especially
at this kind of later stage of life. They have
money and they are open and they want help.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah. Interestingly enough, so my first major League Baseball player
that I worked with out in Sokel. The only reason
that I had the opportunity to work with him was
because I was personally training his wife and we had
a really great connection. You know, we had the usual goals. Hey,
I want to be fit, I want to move well,
I want to lose fat and look awesome. And we
(05:38):
were doing well. We had good connection, and all of
a sudden I got a referral to her husband. I
was like, oh cool, I love referrals. That's the best
kind of type of client to give. Little did I
know this guy like came second, like the best Major
League Baseball pitcher you know, in the league a number
of years prior, So yeah, it was. It's yeah, it's
a weird circle that we run because you know, along
(06:01):
the lines of my career, I've always delped in both
directions in terms of men and women and found commonalities
in the way in the systems in which I would
utilize with their training, but also finding the unique and
diversity between these two population sets.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
I love that you just said that. I love that
you just said that because I feel like there's either
you know, we shouldn't train there's no need to train
men and women differently, and then there's people that are like,
it's all men and women are you know, it's very different,
And so there's these two camps, and I'm always kind
of in this space. I mean, as you're probably aware
(06:38):
that menopause is having a moment and a lot of
women are getting into the gym for the first time.
So I'm curious to see how when you said going
from professional athletes and then all of a sudden working
with gen pop, I mean, it's was it hard for
you to scale it back because it's a different animal,
(06:58):
I mean, and you knew that going to it, but
it's really a different animal, especially when you sell programs online.
Do you only work one on one with people online,
or do you have programs that are evergreen that people
can just buy anyone For the.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Last twelve years, I've had evergreen programs. I'd have one
on one training. We have a pretty robust business offerings
across the board in terms of online now, but back
in the day, I would do two distinct things. So
I do one on one with my athletes and then
also be able to do team training. And team training
is really where you tend to learn more about kind
(07:31):
of avatar based populations and you can see commonalities between
groups of people and you can try to problem solve
in proactively to see how you would program for a group.
That is the collection of making concessions for the best
and the betterment of all that are going to be
involved with that. And I think training the teams is
what now allows the online space to be a little
(07:54):
bit less taxing in terms of making these micro adjustments
because you've seen a lot, you know, with a personal
trainer who's working forty hours a week, which is a
ton of hours. Maybe you see twenty twenty five individuals
in that week. When you're doing team training, you see
twenty five individuals in a single session. So it's very
interesting to get that type of boots on ground experience
(08:17):
with these different populations. But more specific to your question,
I saw that there were some glaring weak links in
terms of the athletic performance sector in the way that
we are keeping our athletes healthy. Because in the business
of trying to get athletes out into their competitive seasons,
really there's three keys to success. One you make sure
(08:37):
that they don't get injured. Two, you make sure that
they don't get arrested. And three multiple make sure that
they don't get fat in the off season, because you
will get blamed and you're going to get calls from
their agents and also their head coaches. So if you
can achieve all three of those things, it had nothing
to do with their vertical jump or their forty yard dash.
It just had to do with making them feel and
(08:58):
function as well as they possible we can being the
extraordinarily athletes that they are, so injury prevention, injury risk mitigation,
and then trying to callous the movement system. That was
the primary goal of my athletic performance endeavors with my athletes,
but when it came to the general fitness population, I
use exactly the same systems with my athletes as I
(09:20):
use with these people, because when it push came to shove,
why should somebody who's forty six years old, a mother
of four that is working a full time job and
trying to be super mom, why should they be trained
with any less emphasis, with any less detail than somebody
who is making a couple million dollars on the field
on Sundays. I think everyone.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Deserves me too, my gay men, but that's not how.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
We treat our ladies. That's not how we treat our
men in general fitness population today, We're just hammering them
with random programs. We're getting cookie cutters, we're getting hobbyist
training people, and we lack the science and the efficacy
of experience. And that all comes back to how do
we stay healthy, how do we stay functional? How do
we move well? So we can not only do this today,
(10:06):
but be able to open up our minds to how
we do this for decades into the future.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Oh yes, okay, So if we're talking about you had
a post about the six physical characteristics starting with prehab. Well,
I think you added prehabit was power strength, hypertrophy, cardio, mobility, athleticism,
And I want you to touch on all of these
if you will, because I agree one hundred percent. I
(10:34):
feel like these are all needed. So when I saw
this post, I was like, yes, we're aligned. Sometimes you're
not a you know, I don't have to align with
anyone that I have on I love different viewpoints, but
this was very well aligned with how I try to
run my programs too. So can you kind of touch
on those and why it's important, especially for us as
we age.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Well interestingly enough men versus women training back to your
previous question, and I would argue that more men need
to be training like women, not the other way around.
And what does that mean. It means that we need
to fall into a more holistic, well rounded program that
can address all the physical characteristics that as human beings
(11:16):
we were designed to do. But many times over the years,
with mileage on our bodies, with injuries, with learned disuse,
we have not only not trained optimally, maybe we haven't
trained at all, and we haven't been able to get
back into the game in terms of being able to
reorchestrate what a well rounded program may look like. And
those six they sound intimidating. You're like power, strength, hypertrophy,
(11:39):
cardiom conditioning, mobility, athleticism. You need to prehab before, you
need to cool down after. Holy shit.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Yeah, everyone's like I'm out too much.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
It can be a little bit simpler. And when we
go through and we teach the whys behind why we're
running a multimoddalic program like this, this truly is the
best way to be able to extend our health today
in our longevity tomorrow. We will have the science to
back this, we have the studies to back this, and
we have decades of experience to see that this multi
(12:11):
modal approach is what not only gets people in makes
them feel good in the real time, but also extends
their ability to be able to sustain and I think
sustainability in terms of a well rounded approach. It allows
us to stay in the game for longer and as
we know, every single year, every single decade that we
can notch down on our belt is one that we
(12:33):
can become closer to being a physical outlier when we
do get into our older years.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Oh wow, Okay, So for power, do you, how do
you define that in your programming?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, power aka move fast. So we want to be
able to not only produce force, which is like what
the old school meetheads will tell you. Oh, power is
all about force production. It's like all right, cool, Like
we're not in a NLCA textbook here. What we're looking
at is having our ability to be able to have
those high threshold motor units being trained. So we want
(13:07):
to have our people being able to train fast, train athletically,
combine the entire body functioning as a unit and being
able to have acceleration and more importantly, as we age,
the ability to decelerate. So we think about things like skipping, jumping, jacks, medicine,
ball throws, anything that has a low level plometric component
(13:30):
to it. And we're able to orchestrate different training parameters
around different training tools like the landmine and the kettlebell
are two of our favorites. And being able to have
a little bit more well rounded of like hey, we
just don't have to crush the weights right now. Sometimes
we have to move well. We have to have synergy, smoothness,
articulation of how we're moving in the quality that we're
(13:50):
moving and being able to display force, not just go
in and act like powerlifting is the only way to
get power work.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
In Wow, okay, great, now if we move on to strength,
so can you give I know there's we can get.
You know, there's crossovers between the REP ranges. But as
far as like strength, what are you meaning by that?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Yeah, So any of these physical characteristics, they're not first
defined by REP ranges. They're defined by the fields. So
we just said power is move fast. Strength is strain.
So what is strained strain is when we hit pseudo
failure on a set that has technical proficiency still in
our system, meaning that it's still a quality rep, but
(14:35):
the concentric speed slows. So hey, we grinded out a
nice rep. That's the straining point that we're looking for.
That is what is actually going to get us our
stimulation in terms of this particular physical characteristic. So traditionally,
strain is going to be found for strength improvements anywhere
from about three to eight repetitions. But we're seeing that
(14:58):
we can have strength be not only in the mechanical
associated improvements with the training of it, but also neurological.
So when we're thinking about the impacts of strength we're
getting mechanical tissue readjustments, and we're also having that neurological
component of being able to open up our ability to
control more weight because more loading on the system is
(15:19):
going to have a myriad of health benefits for it.
But we're really looking for the compound movement pattern squat
hinge lunch, push pull with free weights to go heavy
and to hit a string with good form.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Okay, you said free weights. Now tell me why you
said free weights versus machines or the pros and cons
to that.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Well, machines there's a time and a place for it,
But for my training system, it is more closely associated
with hypercha fee or metabolic stress being induced on a machine.
Anytime a machine is introduced into a program, it is
for a very specific reason. Knowing variable out the degrees
of freedom, the motor control. The ability to have technical
proficiency is brought to down to a bare minimum, and
(16:01):
the amount of hey, let's move this machine from point
A to point B with load on it is brought up.
But strength is a skill, and as soon as we're
locked into the machine, there's really no skill. I'm sorry,
but there's no skill on something like a leg press.
There's no skill on something like a lap pull down.
It's more of a hey, let's get the mechanical tissue stressed,
(16:22):
and there is absolutely time and a place for that.
But when it comes to strength, we want to be
able to control our bodies moving through space through a
full and complete range of motion and being able to
have technical proficiency with load on the system. Those are
the two differentiation points.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Okay, So then we have hypertrophy next, which is usually
around eight to fifteen reps. I mean that's in the
general guidelines.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
The general guidelines. Yeah, the mythical hypertrophy REP range. I
would say that I program a vast majority of the
time for functional hypertorvy is what we call it, with
compound based movement patterns in the eight to fifteen it
really just tends to feel good, especially for people that
maybe don't have a huge amount of load capacity and
they do need to get a little bit more of
(17:06):
a REP in the system to be able to get
to that end range strain, so hyperchaffy. There's many roads
that lead to hypertrophy a little bit different from strength.
So volume is going to be a key driver here.
We have a lot more variance in terms of the
tools or the modalities in which we use in order
to elicit a hypertrophic effect. But this allows us to
(17:26):
have fun and not to have to be so strict
in terms of the periodized progressive programming of hyperchurvy versus
something that's a little bit more standardized, like strength, but
hyperchafy is key, and really the places that we look
at in terms of injury risk mitigation is being able
to have hypertrophic benefits at the upper back, the laps,
the glutes, the hamstrings, That entire postterior line is where
(17:49):
we funnel a vast majority of our hypertrophic programming volume.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Okay, great, And so then we move on to cardio.
And I love that you're not just a strengths dude,
and my cardino.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Or I do concede to help as well.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
So, yes, what are your thoughts on cardio? I mean,
for those I know what your thoughts are from reading
your Instagram. But we have all of these, we have
different zones and where do those fit into a program
like yours?
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yeah, Like cardio is another one of those hot button
terms right now where it's like, oh, all cardio, all
you need to do is walk. It's like, ah, not quite,
not quite. What we look at in terms of cardio
and condition is being able to separate out these two
training modalities in order to give an optimal health system.
So we look at cardio is any sort of reciprocating
(18:45):
movement that happens in a lower heart rate zone, so
anywhere from sixty to eighty percent of maximal heart rate
zone two or zone three for all the nerds out there.
So we think about staying there reciprocating motion something like
an aerodim bike walk, running elliptically whatever you can move
the arm opposite of leg with and going for ten
(19:06):
plus minutes and then trying to optimally get to one
hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty minutes per
week in those specific zones. So that is a low
hanging fruit for many people because there's different ways to Hey,
you're walking your dog, you can make it a trainable zone.
You're going out and getting your steps, and you can
(19:26):
make that a trainable zone. You can also get in
and actually program it like you do your strength work,
and that's what we tend to do. But on the
opposite side of things, we're looking at getting anywhere from
fifteen to thirty minutes of higher threshold zones zone four,
zone five. This would be more indicative of conditioning. So
conditioning will be more interval styles where we're going high
(19:49):
heart rate, bringing it back down with the recovery interval,
and then being able to have repeat bouts of that.
And there's many different ways to get to that heart
rate zone as well. Cardio. I love reciprocating motions for conditioning.
I'm really a big fan of reciprocating motions, but we
also know very well that the thing in the chest
is what we're primarily training, and there's many ways to
(20:11):
elicit that heart rate effect that we're after in terms
of zoneability.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Okay, and then mobility that has a place I always
skimp on it, and I even have mobility progress in
Paris is like I can't skimp on it anymore because
it's starting to become a non negotiation.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Yeah, seeming more critical now than.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Ever everybody, and I think that over time, just like
muscle mass will reduce anywhere from one to two percent
per year after the age of thirty five, we tend
to see the same types of statistics when it comes
to people's mobility. But let's define mobility, what actually is it?
You know, you'll have the bros be like, my lifting
is my mobility, and then you'll have the mobility gurus
(20:53):
be like, don't lift, it's going to negative impact your mobility.
We're always going to be the middle ground on things.
So I think the two ways to go after mobility
is being able to have it integrated within your warm up,
integrated within your cool down, and then also being able
to adapt and display high levels of mobility aka full
range of motion with some of the foundational movement patterns
(21:13):
squat hinge, lunge, pushing, and pulling. And if we can
do that, very rarely do we see that people's ability
to maintain mobility as they age. It doesn't tend to
become a huge issue. It does become a huge issue
if your training program is making you less mobile. And
I think that's one of the marquee problems today and
kind of the popularized Instagram age where we have the
(21:36):
influence of bodybuilding and powerlifting really having a huge push
into the general fitness population, and we tend to look
at mobility as like, hey, can you squat to depth
with the bar on your back? But we're looking at
having mobility. Can we extend full ranges of motion not
only in isolation with mobility work, but also an integration
with movement patterning.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
So when you have a program and you're training someone
and it's in their warm up, do you have them
do It's not just like you're warming up your body
like specific mobility exercises. I sometimes see.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
People at the gym doing them and I think, Okay,
they're preparing their body to left. What are some examples
of things that you do in your warm up?
Speaker 3 (22:24):
So the warm up is going to be a phasic approach.
So we have something called the six phase dynamic warm
up sequence. It brings you through phase one, which is
soft tissue work, Phase two, which is movement based stretching,
Phase three which is corrective exercise aka mobility drills. Phase
four activation drills, Phase five movement pattern prep. The big
thing that you're going to be doing that day, you
(22:46):
practice it in phase five, and then phase six is
going to be central nervous system stimulation. A lot of
power and athleticism in there. But when we look at
the opportunities to be able to press mobility drills into
our programming, we have maybe a two to three window
in the warm up. We have different ways to have
mobility accentuated super sets and different triset strategies inside of
(23:07):
the strength or hypertrivy focused training session itself. A fillers
so you're not just sitting around looking at Instagram between
your sets of rest periods. And then we also have
the ability to just have that cool down, have a
more low level, low amplitude of movement mobility drills that
we can get in and calm down the nervous system
after a training day. But in all actuality, you know,
(23:29):
we say that mobility is extremely important, but many of
the benefits from mobility are once you gain them doing
some of the more fluffy stuff. If I'm being completely honest,
between the warm up, the fillers, and the cool down,
your full range of motion capacity to move your body
under load is a really great maintenance plan for mobility.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
So you're doing it throughout the whole workout, correct, Yeah? Okay,
what do you find the hardest movement pattern to teach?
Speaker 3 (23:56):
The hip hinge? The hip pingch hands down is going
to be the hardest because people have learned disuse of
what the hip hinge is, but they also have a
negative connotation or association with things like, oh, lower back
pain is the most common pain point amongst Americans today.
You know, one in three people this year will have
(24:16):
a serious bout of lower back pain that will leave
them out of work. And they're reading these statistics and
they're like, oh shit, like not doing anything even close
to pushing my hips back and picking up something off
the ground or hinging my hips back from neutral. So
the hip hinge tends to be the most complicated and
convoluted to reteach. We have a really good amount of
(24:37):
success reteaching it because interestingly enough, the hip hinge is
honestly the highest yield that we could possibly have out
of any of the movement patterns because it trains the
biggest strongle its muscles in the body. It is a
true integrator between the upper and lower. We have the
hands with the radiation onload, we have the feet with
the radiation on the ground, and we are able to
(24:59):
get into a full and extended range of motion into
hip flexion and into the ability to move load from
that position which is super strong. So this is a
non negotiable for all of my programs and all of
my athletes and clients that I train is that we're
going to find an entry point into the hip pinch
and we're going to reteach this thing because this is
ultimately the one that has the best opportunity to extend
(25:22):
your help and longevity.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
And half of it. Don't you feel like they're the
backs are weak and that's they don't know how to
hip pinge correctly. But the backs are weak, and they
think just doing a bunch of setups means their core
is strong.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, so it's a chicken or the egg. So I
tend to see that, yes, people absolutely have disused posterior chains,
meaning that yeah, the lower back is weak, the glutes
are weak, the hamstrings are tight and weak, and they're like, man,
I can't even move through this pattern, let alone load
it quite yet. And I also see that people are
(25:58):
stronger than they think they are because they've been honestly
walking around, moving around training many times, almost like they
have a parking break on the Ferrari. They're trying to
move through things. They don't necessarily know how to breathe,
how to brace, how to actually move in an integrated
and connected way. And the reason that the lower back
tends to look weak for many people is that they
(26:20):
cut themselves in half. They kind of know how to
control their shoulders, they kind of know how to control
their hips, they definitely don't know how to control their shoulders,
hips and core integrated as a functional unit. That's something
called the pillar complex. That day one is the first
thing that we go to master with our clients because
giving them strength and stability at their shoulders, hips and
core cross connecting on the front side of the body
(26:43):
the back side of the body, it makes them feel safe.
It makes them feel strong, and they're more likely to
be able to move in a proper way if they
have safety and stability in their brain.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yes, all right, I'm getting your programs.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
Wow, I.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Want to add some additional ones to mine.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
How do you put this all together in a week?
How does that look then, now that you've gone through everything.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
It's a great question. We're actually missing one. We're missing athleticism,
and that very quickly is being able to think about
moving power, moving fast, but actually moving fluidly with some
sort of rhythm, you know, not going out and not
knowing how to move your body through space. But in athleticism,
we're looking at moving the body through space having a
(27:33):
step mechanism with something that we would program, so we're
not just standing in the same spot with a preamptal race.
It's more reactionary, and I think that the play component
of athleticism is something that is usually missing in many
people's programs as well. But it's interesting that you asked
about how do you put all these pieces together. This
is something for the last nine years that I've done
(27:54):
with pain Free Performance, which is my certification company, and
we are the biggest and the fast is growing certification
in the fitness industry in the world today.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Congratulations.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Yeah, it's been that you certified twenty thousand coaches, practitioners,
and physicians in since twenty nineteen, which is our inaugural year,
and this is going to shock people. We've done this
all in person, so we've run two day certification courses
all across the globe. We're almost at a thousand total
(28:26):
certifications that we've run and we have those numbers. So
when we talk about the systems that we run, we're
not just talking shit. We're teaching this stuff and we're
seeing hundreds of thousands of avatar users utilizing these same
strategies where we can actually make better recommendations, evolve the
systems with the growing needs which are definitely apparent today,
(28:47):
especially in America, And we just know very well that
we need to be fluid and continue to adjust if
we're going to be at the forefront of education.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
That's Wor's your favorite place that you've been in.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
The Australia before? Co?
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Oh, me too.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Australia is our favorite.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
It's the best super fit people down there. Like I
go around, I teach the course, I'm like, damn, should
I even be teaching this course? I don't even look
like I trained compared to ninety percent in my audience
right now, Like, oh my God on Earth.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, I love Sydney. Okay, So I love this comment
that you had on your Instagram where you said sometimes
you have to be bold. I like this one because
it's bold. Most people blame their age is the reason
why they are weak, overweight, immobile and in pain and fatigue.
Oh it just just happens with age, is it.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
I don't think so, because I'm training ladies in their
fifties and their sixties that are better at fifties and
sixties than they were in their twenties, and they will
attest to this stuff. I'm training men in their sixties
and seventies that are doing things in terms of their strength,
keyp performance indicators that they never touch in their thirties
and forties. So I truly believe that it's more than
(29:59):
just a cliche like sound bite like oh, age is
just a number. I see it every single day. So
that's why I believe in it. And that's why, you know,
bold statements do come out like that, but I think
that there is truth to be saying. If you do nothing,
you will deteriorate, and it will become very, very apparent.
With not this slow deterioration of one to two percent
(30:21):
per year of your physicality or your functionality, something big
will happen in your life, and you'll blame your age
on it. Hey, I just have my labs and oh
my god, like, what happened? How did this happen to me?
When they've been eating like shit for you know, three
or four decades, or they'll come in and they'll have
a catastrophic knee injury and be like, oh man, when
I used to play high school football and seventeen, I
(30:42):
could have never thought this would happen. But you haven't
done anything in the last twenty five years to be
able to help that or prevent that. So I think
the mileage racks up on the system and poor quality
of lifestyle in terms of sleep, stress, nutrition, movement, hygiene,
and also just exercise and physical training. The lack of
all those things compound over time, putting mileage on your
(31:05):
system and really forcing it into the garage at times.
And then people tend to look at the lowest common denominator,
which is I'm getting older. But there's nothing normal about
losing your physicality, losing your health due to aging.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah, I mean that other statement that you had too
about now I can't find it, But it's that your
health habits, like you don't just pass on your genetics,
but you pass down your health habits that your children
are watching. That hit home to me.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I have a nine year old son, and everything that
I do in terms of my coaching, in terms of education,
and also me being able to role model inside of
my own household, like it means everything to me. And
I've always been that way because I never wanted to
be the expert in front of the room teaching a
certification course, not practicing what I preach. If it's so
(32:01):
fucking good, how can you afford not to do it?
And that's what I always tell with our coaches and
our trainers. It's like you are your best sales. You know,
you are the reason that people are going to come
in and do what you want them to do in
terms of helping themselves. But you got to practice what
you preach. You got to be able to role model it,
and you've got to live your vocation, not just a
(32:22):
job or a profession. But when it comes to your kids,
I think that's huge. You know, we are in third
grade now, and I say we because I bring my
son to school. I pick them up every single day,
part of the community, and you know, up until they
go to school, you're kind of like, yeah, I can
control everything. This is how we do things. You have
like your blinders on, and then all of a sudden,
(32:44):
you go into youth sports or you go to school
and you start looking at everyone else and you're like, wow,
there's some challenges out there. It's definitely diverse challenges, but
I want to make sure that I can put my child,
even if he is an outlier, in the best possible
position to just live a normal life. But I think
living a normal, healthy life today it leaves you in
(33:07):
a small fraction of the percentage of people that are
willing to do some base things in terms of their lifestyle.
To be able to facilitate something like that.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
It's hard. I have well, I have three children, but
my youngest is fourteen, and our kitchen and living room
are kind of like together, and he started getting this
habit of just eating on the couch while he was
watching TV. I said, absolutely not, and so he would
do it like when I wasn't there, if I was traveling,
or i'd come back, and I'm just like, no, this
(33:40):
cannot be the habit you are So it's mindless eating
when you're just when you have a TV on, like
you're not even present with what's happening. And I teach
this in my to my females, you know, just bringing
it back because it's so easy to dissociate in this
all of us. I mean, I don't know if you
have different clients, but I'm assuming that there's not a
(34:01):
lot of clients that are like John. I have nine.
I have all the time in the world. I kick
it every day with just you know, easy peasy, like
everyone is doing a million things, and so how do
we fit this into their life with good habits and
good movement.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
It's a hard one. So everyone is perceived busy at
all times, no matter what you're doing, and that's the
realities of today. But I tend to use an approach
for coaching that is not everything all at once. It's
meeting somebody where they're at and being able to have
the extension of our time together, be able to peel
back the union layer by layer, because the biggest thing
(34:42):
is that we have sustained habituation. So whatever we put
into a program, I never make short term goals for
people or short term solutions that are not scalable for
the long term. Our best opportunities as coaches and as
business professionals is be able to teach and lead our
clients into making these habit changes that can sustain themselves
(35:05):
so slow, we'll eventually become fast. And when we start
to get these compounding benefits, I think not intimidating people
with like, all right, this diet and this sleep schedule,
and buy these four different wearable devices, and you've got
to get a red light, and you know what oxygenation,
the hyperbaric chambers are fucking awesome too, Like people go,
oh my god, that's what Instagram is today, if.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
It's a full time job, is.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Literally selling one hundred different things, supplements, training tools, all
this different stuff. Whereas we tend to look at the
basis of the foundation of what a healthy lifestyle is.
Can we get you habituating your movement, Can we get
you into a trainable state multiple days per week in
terms of strength and then also conditioning. Can we actually
(35:50):
control what we're doing in terms of nutrition, and can
we have some conversations about sleep and stress because all
of those factors can bite us in the butt very
very quickly. And as soon as we have those base layers,
having a foundation, which usually takes honestly like three to
six months, then we can start to have the sexier
conversations of like, yeah, that red light bed that I
(36:11):
have at my house is pretty fucking awesome. You well,
but it's not from day one.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah, layered in how they can do So, well, let's
talk about rep ranges. I mean, you posted something that
I commented on that, I mean, do you work You
clearly work in all rep ranges?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Yes, yeah, so entry points, it's always going to be
middle ground for people. So if people are just getting
started going into like a one RM versus a fifty RM,
the polarized ends at this spectrum, probably not quite yet
for you. But once we get into like intermediate phases,
get a couple of years of serious training down, you're
able to have your movement patterns locked in. Then we
(36:49):
can start exploring a lot of these different rep ranges
because they have a lot of different benefits in terms
of just the physiological benefits of them, but also the
mental and emotional benefits of being able to not tax
or system being like, oh my god, my programming today
is seven exercises, They're all five sets of ten Like
that is defeating for anyone who's ever trained on a
(37:10):
program like that. And it's also the assumption that all muscles,
all movement patterns are treated equally and they're all the same.
That is not true. So when it comes to being
able to file in different rep ranges for functional reasons,
we tend to go with more of a phasic versus
versus static approach. So a phasic approach would be like, hey,
(37:31):
are these performance patterns? Are these performance muscular regions and
we tend to hit them more with power and strength schemes.
So that's anywhere from one to maybe up to eight
to ten. And then hey, do we have more stability
components that need to be addressed. Do we need more
of a hypertrophic effect? Do we need muscle armor to
support posture and capabilities and deceleration. That's where we tend
(37:54):
to chase more of like that eight into the fifteen
or twenty. And then every now and then I love
to throw my client, so just a big fuck you moment,
but there's times to challenge yourself. So it's like, oh,
the science says, you know, eight reps for everything is
always the best. It's like, yeah, you know, a textbook
can tell you that, but if you've been training people
(38:15):
long enough, you know that there needs to be some
challenges and some mental and emotional components to keeping you
going and excited and showing you how you can push
the limits in a very safe and standardized way. So
we tend to go through things like the goblet squad challenges.
How many goblet squads can you get at fifty percent
of your body weight unbroken? And world record seventy three,
(38:37):
but twenty five plus is the repraanche that we're looking for,
and we tend to do things with timers and duration
based sets that get people pushing past their limits. And
I think that a well rounded way to be able
to train all the different physical characteristics, but also training
different REP schemes, but then also not even have reps
some of the times to do different duration based sets.
(38:59):
It keeps people emotionally engaged and fresh in the process.
And if we can do that, then everything feels a
little bit different. And we've seen that also the recoverability
neurologically and mechanically tends to be favorable if we're doing
a lot of different ranges versus just standardized textbook ranges.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
This is what I say when when women will just
want to stay in one REP range and I'm like,
do you want to do that for the rest of
your life? I'd poke my eyeballs out of boredness after
you know, a couple of months. I mean it has
to really. So do you see when you were training
professional athletes versus gen pop do you have a periodize
(39:42):
like where you get them? You know, you start off
with a general phase and then you move up the
ladder and then maybe come back down to what does
that look like over say six months to twelve months.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Yeah, the old school model of periodization is definitely that
it's old school because I don't necessarily see anyone doing
it at the athletic performance realm any longer. Even when
I had athletes, we weren't training them for six months.
It was an off season. You got six weeks if
you're lucky, and it's unbroken between vacations, And the same
thing could be said in general fitness populations today. You know,
(40:18):
one of the common things that I hear is like, Oh,
I don't want to come and work with you until
I have twelve months of nothing else going on, so
I can just focus in on this. I'm like, what's
that gonna be? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (40:29):
So see you never?
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yeah, so see you never. So you have to be
able to be flexible enough to be able to keep
the momentum rolling even if things are varied, even if
things need to change or maybe some stuff gets missed.
So how do you do that? A DUP, a data
undulated periodization plan is what I always believe in and
that tends to work very well with kind of the
(40:54):
forever client. The forever client is somebody that is looking
to train forever. So when we have no end goal
of being like, hey, we finally achieved it, like you
got to your race or you got to NFL Super
Bowl Sunday. When you don't have that, when the goal
is to train and feel good all the time, you
have a lot more flexibility on what can happen. So
(41:14):
I tend to always keep all six foundational movement patterns
squat hinge, lunch, push bull carry into everybody's program, and
I dabble into all six physical characteristics as well, power strength, hypertrophy,
cardio and conditioning, mobility, and athleticism, and I tend to
toggle up and down different phases. But complete honesty, my
(41:35):
clients don't necessarily feel like, oh my god, I'm bodybuilding
this month and then the next month I'm doing endurance
work like. It never feels like that because you get
the itch of having those fields of the different characteristics
that we reviewed in every single training program, So you
still got the feels. But the way in which you
program in terms of exercise selection, in terms of volume distribution,
(41:57):
but also total workload is going to be different. And
the way in which I usually do it is I
go through I have kind of like a movement phase
which we have maximal range of motion and we have
more of the unconventional exercises that lateralize and add rotation in,
and then we more have a strength phase where we
(42:17):
go in and webate base strength and hypertrophy work. And
then the last phase would be more of a peak
phase that would naturally bring us to some heavier loads,
some prs being set and naturally being set and not
having to be pushed. So that tends to go three
phases at the time, and it circles for it four
times a year.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
I love it. Yeah, I love that. So you are
a fan of unilateral training.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Huge fan, huge fan. There's nothing more quote unquote functional
than asymmetrical lower body stances. Unilateral training especially at the
lower body, but obviously benefits at the upper body as well.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
So how much you said that you program in lateral
rotational movements into every program, So that's just part part
of it. You don't have like how much what would
the ratio be to if you're doing a daily undulated
then it's what like kind of even each portion is
(43:15):
even of lateral rotational movements in there.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Not necessarily, so daily undulated periodization means that you're doing
slightly different training days every single week or every single
training block, so you have this constant flow of variants,
but the variance can be very low. It means that
maybe we hit one or two reps more, maybe we
pull this exercise out and put it in with front
foot elevated versus rear foot elevated split squads. So it's
(43:40):
these tiny little variances that keep people engage but also
keeps the chronic stress off the system mechanically. And with
that being said, when we go and put these different
phases in, we are looking at if it's an individual client,
if it's somebody that I'm working one on one with,
they're individual presentation, their abilities, their needs, their goals and
(44:03):
wants analysis is extraordinarily important. So when we look at
making considerations in terms of distribution of volume and empasy,
we tend to go at those needs bass. But when
it comes to hey, you're going to do a badass
program that's going to be able to help you across
the board, and this is going to work optimally for
eighty percent of people eighty percent of the time. That's
(44:24):
a big program or a team or something like that,
then we tend to go in and say, hey, we
are going to prioritize certain ratios. We call them the
pain free training ratios that I have had a huge
amount of success with in my career. The ratio that
gets the most attention is three to one pull to
push ratio, meaning that we have a three to one
total volume distribution between pulling exercises, which are mostly upper
(44:49):
body pulling hinging at the lower body, then push exercises,
which is pushing at the upper body in more need
dominant squad patterns at the lower body. And people go, WHOA,
that's way too too much, But really we're looking at
distributing volume throughout the things that can keep us strong,
keep us stable, build the post heer your back line,
and be able to have some sort of postural reorientation
(45:11):
with the way that we're emphasizing this amount of volume.
But it also works out very well because there's certain
muscles that respond awesome to volume, certain muscle groups that
respond awesome to volume. Upper back and laps respond awesome
to volume, glutes respond awesome to volume, and those are
both on the post aior line. So we tend to
really go in and try to prehab and rehab people
(45:33):
with strength, rather than having to do corrective exercises all
the time.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Well, then you're having to pull the dudes back from
all the e bench pruss so three to one they're like, no,
we want to do three push to one full.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
I made the comment before more men should be training
like women. I totally believe it because the average guide
today gives men a bad rap when it comes to
how somebody should be able to train. Go to your
local commercial gym on a Monday and tell.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Me what you see.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
You already know. You already know anything that you can
see in the mirror. You're training that ship you're going in.
You're like, man, it was a tough weekend, bench press,
bicep curls. I'm going to go on the decline bench
and get some sit ups in before I get out
of here. And it's everything mirror muscle based. Whereas I
think that the ladies, especially over the last decade, they
found that, hey, strength can transform my body. Strength can
(46:26):
give me the physique that I've been looking for previously
with things like yoga or pilates or endurance sport. Strength
can give me not only the physique, but the functionality.
And if I were to say, and I throw all
women into one category, which is not appropriate, but I'm
going to do it anyways, I would say that it's
more glute focus, it's more lower body focus. But if
(46:47):
I were to pick one versus the other, you know,
the meat head Jim bro versus the booty girl that's
going to the gym and hitting lower body five times
a week, I'd go with the lower body post to
your chain emphasis every single time. But I think there's
a way to upgrade both of these approaches and be
able to meet it in the middle.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yeah, that's it's a great balance.
Speaker 4 (47:09):
So your pain free.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Can we go back to the pain free performance quickly?
Because I feel like a lot of people in the
age that Hayley and I are really focused on, one
of their main complaints is like joint pain, like a
pain and they kind of ache.
Speaker 4 (47:26):
And I don't think.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Anyone should use age as an excuse for anything. I
think we get better with age as well. How do
your programs just have that pain free component to it?
Or if you're able to say to one of your clients,
I'm going to help you become pain free, how is
(47:48):
it that you're doing that since you are the pain
free performance specialist.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
That's such a great question and it's a common question
that we get, and the approach is trifled. So we
go in add a more direct approach. If we have
pain or a quote unquote movement dysfunction that we need
to just optimize a pattern, we do that more directly
within the warm ups, within the cool down, within the
off days, the un sexier things that look a little
bit closer to physical therapy than it does high performance
(48:15):
strength the conditioning. Second thing that we do is we
look at entry points in terms of not having one
single exercise variant be mandatory, because there are no mandatory
exercises for getting strong or building muscle or losing fat.
That's a total myth. Not everyone has the same exercise selection.
That's totally fine. But being able to have appropriate exercise
(48:37):
variations that we climb up and down on on a
progression regression scale. We call them the six foundational movement
pattern progression pyramids. Finding the entry point of what somebody
can train hard, train heavy, but we also move and
train well with that is going to help things right
off the bat. When we go on into a corrective
phase with some of the warm up drills. And then
the last thing is many times people are dealing with
(49:00):
chronic pain and injury issues, especially if you're seeing multi site.
Hey my shoulder, my neck, my lower back, my hip,
and my foot. Okay, that's the other person out there.
So the average person in America today that's training is
dealing with two point three chronic pain issues. Two point
three So like two to three issues.
Speaker 4 (49:20):
I believe that.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Fine.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
So when you're thinking about that, we also have to
look at the other twenty three hours of the day.
It's like, what are we doing to actually regenerate our system?
Are you sleeping? Are we having our nutrition locked in?
What does your stress cycle look like? And how do
we actually put these pieces back together? And there are
times in places one hundred percent, when somebody has a
clinical pain issues, we get them right to the clinician.
(49:45):
You know, we're not going, oh man, you tore your
ACL yesterday, come in and do pain free performance with me,
just fine, like that's not this. But we are specialists
in that subclinical sect of people that are just dealing
with chronic issues that aren't bad enough to leave them
out of the gym altogether, but they are inhibiting what
they can do in the gym, and this is where
(50:06):
we tend to go directly at with the warmups, with
the region and also with smart exercise and programming selections.
And we've had a huge amount of success with that.
But I think people sometimes feel bad, like, oh, I'm
dealing with this issue and it's only me. My shoulder hurts,
my back hurts. We pulled twenty thousand people over the
last seven plus years, and these are all like really
(50:28):
high end performance trainers and physical therapists and people that
know their shit. Ninety three percent of the room raises
their hand when they say, hey, are you in pain
currently right now? Ninety three percent certification.
Speaker 4 (50:41):
I believe that, but that's a high number.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
It's a high number. And then we go, well, who's
been in pain in the last three months? And then
everyone's hands go up and we're like, yeah, we're dealing
with issues. But really, in terms of pain free performance,
we are trying to co manage two of the most
subjective things in the world today, which is the human
pain response and the human movement system. Both of those
(51:05):
things together, we need to be able to problem solve
far more than just the textbook we need to be
able to make it human, make it individualistic, and be
able to empower people to get in and move and
do what they can and not feel defeated on what
they can.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
I love that. That's a great way to wrap this up.
Thank you John for joining us and for your expertise.
I have been following you for a while now and
I just loved your approach and I'm looking forward to
diving into some of your programs too. I like that
you have some differences than what I offer. But thank
(51:43):
you for joining us today on the Body Pod. It
was a pleasure speaking with you.
Speaker 3 (51:48):
Thank you so much. It was fun.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Thank you. Where can people find you?
Speaker 3 (51:53):
You can find me at doctor John Russin dot com.
That's the main hub for pain free performance, get PPSC
dot com, g E, T, P, P s C dot com,
and then all social media is doctor John Russin.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
Go look him up. Thanks for listening everyone.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a
five star rating and sharing the body Pod with your friends.
Hi everyone.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
My name is Haley and this is Laura and welcome
to the body Pod.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome doctor John Russen. We are thrilled to have you
on the body Pod.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Thanks so much for having me. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
This is okay. So I've learned. I've gone down a
rabbit hole and learned a lot about you. I had
no idea that you were a physical therapist as well.
And then I love the injury prevention expert because this
is my whole age group that I work with. There's
just no way too You're always getting these, you know,
(00:43):
later in life, these more frequent injuries for women, that
especially since I only train women. But that's kind of
what we see in the guests that we interview, and
we'd like to kind of talk about that. So can
you tell us a little history of did you finish
school and you started and you were teaching physically like
(01:04):
you practice as a physical therapist for X amount of
years and then you started your online business or how
did that work?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
No, So, I trained my first client nineteen years ago.
It was a collegiate athlete and I started off as
a collegiate stranding conditioning coach University of Buffalo, that was
my first job. That was my alma mater, and I
was like super cool just being in the high performance
athletic space. And about a year or two into that,
I was like, hey, I can get some more free
(01:31):
education at school, and I ended up going to another
local school where my mom was a professor, and Damon College.
I did my doctorate a physical therapy, and contrary to
popular belief out there, I've never actually practiced as a
traditional physical therapist. After three and a half years of
graduate school, I ended up moving out to southern California
and getting right back into sports performance, spending the next
(01:53):
ten years working primarily with overhead throwing athletes baseball primarily football,
a little bit here in their tennis, and then that
took me a lot of different places, Major League Baseball, NBA,
and also working for Chinese Olympic Committee for Olympic athletes
over in Beijing, and also doing similar work in Australia
(02:14):
as well. And then fast forward that to about twenty thirteen,
twenty fourteen, I was back stateside and I started writing
articles and that picked up very quickly as I was
continuing to train, you know, fifty five sixty hours a
week in person kind of transitioning between sports performance into
more of a holistic health and longevity focus with my
(02:35):
own clients than really with my training acumen of trying
to focus in on that population.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Woy, you've done, you've succeeded, you've done well.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
I know what a niche specialty like? Overhead throwing athletes?
Over the head throwing athletes. Is that what it's called?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah, well it was what I was. So I was
a Division one baseball player, good to my day, like
everyone says, but I had some arm injuries. I had
some catastrophic injuries that led me to not playing baseball
anymore and actually coaching baseball in the weight room instead.
And I that's what I knew. It's what I grew
up with. My dad was an athletic director as well,
(03:15):
so I was like inundated with a lot of great
information very early on in my life, even before I
was a coach myself, and I thought that was my
right to win right out of the gate. And I
was like, yeah, I'm doctor so and so, but nobody
really gives a shit. What they heard about was, oh,
John used to play baseball Division one, and that's what
gained the credibility very early on to say, hey, he's
(03:37):
one of us. He can understand what I'm going through.
And then going in and starting working primarily at those
baseball players. That was where I was able to cut
my teeth for the first time, going from Buffalo, New
York to southern California, which is two different worlds.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Oh yeah, East coast, West coast, so different there done that,
it's very different. Okay, So with the do you own
do you train men then or now do you train females?
Speaker 3 (04:02):
So I trained men and women at that point in time,
So there was a lot of tennis players in the mix,
and I actually for an entire year I coached on
the WTA Tour, so a lot of women. I would
say fifty to fifty between men and women in terms
of when I used to coach in professional sports and
Olympic sport. We have to remember it's not always all men.
(04:26):
Maybe we get a lot more attention for certain things,
but there are a lot of Olympic sports, especially overseas,
that we've never even heard of here in America and
the other countries tend to do really well on these
more niche sports that are kind of behind closed doors.
So started to work into those populations, probably fifty to
fifty with the athletes. But it was a wake up
(04:47):
call when I came back and I transitioned into more
like general fitness because the huge marketplace and the huge
need and the true niche, which really isn't a niche,
is being able to service the people that take up
a vast majority of the paid population in the fitness industry,
which is our ladies.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, they're the ones that are that have the especially
at this kind of later stage of life. They have
money and they are open and they want help.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah. Interestingly enough, so my first major League Baseball player
that I worked with out in Sokel. The only reason
that I had the opportunity to work with him was
because I was personally training his wife and we had
a really great connection. You know, we had the usual goals. Hey,
I want to be fit, I want to move well,
I want to lose fat and look awesome. And we
(05:38):
were doing well. We had good connection, and all of
a sudden I got a referral to her husband. I
was like, oh cool, I love referrals. That's the best
kind of type of client to give. Little did I
know this guy like came second, like the best Major
League Baseball pitcher you know, in the league a number
of years prior, So yeah, it was. It's yeah, it's
a weird circle that we run because you know, along
(06:01):
the lines of my career, I've always delped in both
directions in terms of men and women and found commonalities
in the way in the systems in which I would
utilize with their training, but also finding the unique and
diversity between these two population sets.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
I love that you just said that. I love that
you just said that because I feel like there's either
you know, we shouldn't train there's no need to train
men and women differently, and then there's people that are like,
it's all men and women are you know, it's very different,
And so there's these two camps, and I'm always kind
of in this space. I mean, as you're probably aware
(06:38):
that menopause is having a moment and a lot of
women are getting into the gym for the first time.
So I'm curious to see how when you said going
from professional athletes and then all of a sudden working
with gen pop, I mean, it's was it hard for
you to scale it back because it's a different animal,
(06:58):
I mean, and you knew that going to it, but
it's really a different animal, especially when you sell programs online.
Do you only work one on one with people online,
or do you have programs that are evergreen that people
can just buy anyone For the.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Last twelve years, I've had evergreen programs. I'd have one
on one training. We have a pretty robust business offerings
across the board in terms of online now, but back
in the day, I would do two distinct things. So
I do one on one with my athletes and then
also be able to do team training. And team training
is really where you tend to learn more about kind
(07:31):
of avatar based populations and you can see commonalities between
groups of people and you can try to problem solve
in proactively to see how you would program for a group.
That is the collection of making concessions for the best
and the betterment of all that are going to be
involved with that. And I think training the teams is
what now allows the online space to be a little
(07:54):
bit less taxing in terms of making these micro adjustments
because you've seen a lot, you know, with a personal
trainer who's working forty hours a week, which is a
ton of hours. Maybe you see twenty twenty five individuals
in that week. When you're doing team training, you see
twenty five individuals in a single session. So it's very
interesting to get that type of boots on ground experience
(08:17):
with these different populations. But more specific to your question,
I saw that there were some glaring weak links in
terms of the athletic performance sector in the way that
we are keeping our athletes healthy. Because in the business
of trying to get athletes out into their competitive seasons,
really there's three keys to success. One you make sure
(08:37):
that they don't get injured. Two, you make sure that
they don't get arrested. And three multiple make sure that
they don't get fat in the off season, because you
will get blamed and you're going to get calls from
their agents and also their head coaches. So if you
can achieve all three of those things, it had nothing
to do with their vertical jump or their forty yard dash.
It just had to do with making them feel and
(08:58):
function as well as they possible we can being the
extraordinarily athletes that they are, so injury prevention, injury risk mitigation,
and then trying to callous the movement system. That was
the primary goal of my athletic performance endeavors with my athletes,
but when it came to the general fitness population, I
use exactly the same systems with my athletes as I
(09:20):
use with these people, because when it push came to shove,
why should somebody who's forty six years old, a mother
of four that is working a full time job and
trying to be super mom, why should they be trained
with any less emphasis, with any less detail than somebody
who is making a couple million dollars on the field
on Sundays. I think everyone.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Deserves me too, my gay men, but that's not how.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
We treat our ladies. That's not how we treat our
men in general fitness population today, We're just hammering them
with random programs. We're getting cookie cutters, we're getting hobbyist
training people, and we lack the science and the efficacy
of experience. And that all comes back to how do
we stay healthy, how do we stay functional? How do
we move well? So we can not only do this today,
(10:06):
but be able to open up our minds to how
we do this for decades into the future.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Oh yes, okay, So if we're talking about you had
a post about the six physical characteristics starting with prehab. Well,
I think you added prehabit was power strength, hypertrophy, cardio, mobility, athleticism,
And I want you to touch on all of these
if you will, because I agree one hundred percent. I
(10:34):
feel like these are all needed. So when I saw
this post, I was like, yes, we're aligned. Sometimes you're
not a you know, I don't have to align with
anyone that I have on I love different viewpoints, but
this was very well aligned with how I try to
run my programs too. So can you kind of touch
on those and why it's important, especially for us as
we age.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Well interestingly enough men versus women training back to your
previous question, and I would argue that more men need
to be training like women, not the other way around.
And what does that mean. It means that we need
to fall into a more holistic, well rounded program that
can address all the physical characteristics that as human beings
(11:16):
we were designed to do. But many times over the years,
with mileage on our bodies, with injuries, with learned disuse,
we have not only not trained optimally, maybe we haven't
trained at all, and we haven't been able to get
back into the game in terms of being able to
reorchestrate what a well rounded program may look like. And
those six they sound intimidating. You're like power, strength, hypertrophy,
(11:39):
cardiom conditioning, mobility, athleticism. You need to prehab before, you
need to cool down after. Holy shit.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Yeah, everyone's like I'm out too much.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
It can be a little bit simpler. And when we
go through and we teach the whys behind why we're
running a multimoddalic program like this, this truly is the
best way to be able to extend our health today
in our longevity tomorrow. We will have the science to
back this, we have the studies to back this, and
we have decades of experience to see that this multi
(12:11):
modal approach is what not only gets people in makes
them feel good in the real time, but also extends
their ability to be able to sustain and I think
sustainability in terms of a well rounded approach. It allows
us to stay in the game for longer and as
we know, every single year, every single decade that we
can notch down on our belt is one that we
(12:33):
can become closer to being a physical outlier when we
do get into our older years.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Oh wow, Okay, So for power, do you, how do
you define that in your programming?
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, power aka move fast. So we want to be
able to not only produce force, which is like what
the old school meetheads will tell you. Oh, power is
all about force production. It's like all right, cool, Like
we're not in a NLCA textbook here. What we're looking
at is having our ability to be able to have
those high threshold motor units being trained. So we want
(13:07):
to have our people being able to train fast, train athletically,
combine the entire body functioning as a unit and being
able to have acceleration and more importantly, as we age,
the ability to decelerate. So we think about things like skipping, jumping, jacks, medicine,
ball throws, anything that has a low level plometric component
(13:30):
to it. And we're able to orchestrate different training parameters
around different training tools like the landmine and the kettlebell
are two of our favorites. And being able to have
a little bit more well rounded of like hey, we
just don't have to crush the weights right now. Sometimes
we have to move well. We have to have synergy, smoothness,
articulation of how we're moving in the quality that we're
(13:50):
moving and being able to display force, not just go
in and act like powerlifting is the only way to
get power work.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
In Wow, okay, great, now if we move on to strength,
so can you give I know there's we can get.
You know, there's crossovers between the REP ranges. But as
far as like strength, what are you meaning by that?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Yeah, So any of these physical characteristics, they're not first
defined by REP ranges. They're defined by the fields. So
we just said power is move fast. Strength is strain.
So what is strained strain is when we hit pseudo
failure on a set that has technical proficiency still in
our system, meaning that it's still a quality rep, but
(14:35):
the concentric speed slows. So hey, we grinded out a
nice rep. That's the straining point that we're looking for.
That is what is actually going to get us our
stimulation in terms of this particular physical characteristic. So traditionally,
strain is going to be found for strength improvements anywhere
from about three to eight repetitions. But we're seeing that
(14:58):
we can have strength be not only in the mechanical
associated improvements with the training of it, but also neurological.
So when we're thinking about the impacts of strength we're
getting mechanical tissue readjustments, and we're also having that neurological
component of being able to open up our ability to
control more weight because more loading on the system is
(15:19):
going to have a myriad of health benefits for it.
But we're really looking for the compound movement pattern squat
hinge lunch, push pull with free weights to go heavy
and to hit a string with good form.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Okay, you said free weights. Now tell me why you
said free weights versus machines or the pros and cons
to that.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Well, machines there's a time and a place for it,
But for my training system, it is more closely associated
with hypercha fee or metabolic stress being induced on a machine.
Anytime a machine is introduced into a program, it is
for a very specific reason. Knowing variable out the degrees
of freedom, the motor control. The ability to have technical
proficiency is brought to down to a bare minimum, and
(16:01):
the amount of hey, let's move this machine from point
A to point B with load on it is brought up.
But strength is a skill, and as soon as we're
locked into the machine, there's really no skill. I'm sorry,
but there's no skill on something like a leg press.
There's no skill on something like a lap pull down.
It's more of a hey, let's get the mechanical tissue stressed,
(16:22):
and there is absolutely time and a place for that.
But when it comes to strength, we want to be
able to control our bodies moving through space through a
full and complete range of motion and being able to
have technical proficiency with load on the system. Those are
the two differentiation points.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Okay, So then we have hypertrophy next, which is usually
around eight to fifteen reps. I mean that's in the
general guidelines.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
The general guidelines. Yeah, the mythical hypertrophy REP range. I
would say that I program a vast majority of the
time for functional hypertorvy is what we call it, with
compound based movement patterns in the eight to fifteen it
really just tends to feel good, especially for people that
maybe don't have a huge amount of load capacity and
they do need to get a little bit more of
(17:06):
a REP in the system to be able to get
to that end range strain, so hyperchaffy. There's many roads
that lead to hypertrophy a little bit different from strength.
So volume is going to be a key driver here.
We have a lot more variance in terms of the
tools or the modalities in which we use in order
to elicit a hypertrophic effect. But this allows us to
(17:26):
have fun and not to have to be so strict
in terms of the periodized progressive programming of hyperchurvy versus
something that's a little bit more standardized, like strength, but
hyperchafy is key, and really the places that we look
at in terms of injury risk mitigation is being able
to have hypertrophic benefits at the upper back, the laps,
the glutes, the hamstrings, That entire postterior line is where
(17:49):
we funnel a vast majority of our hypertrophic programming volume.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Okay, great, And so then we move on to cardio.
And I love that you're not just a strengths dude,
and my cardino.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Or I do concede to help as well.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
So, yes, what are your thoughts on cardio? I mean,
for those I know what your thoughts are from reading
your Instagram. But we have all of these, we have
different zones and where do those fit into a program
like yours?
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yeah, Like cardio is another one of those hot button
terms right now where it's like, oh, all cardio, all
you need to do is walk. It's like, ah, not quite,
not quite. What we look at in terms of cardio
and condition is being able to separate out these two
training modalities in order to give an optimal health system.
So we look at cardio is any sort of reciprocating
(18:45):
movement that happens in a lower heart rate zone, so
anywhere from sixty to eighty percent of maximal heart rate
zone two or zone three for all the nerds out there.
So we think about staying there reciprocating motion something like
an aerodim bike walk, running elliptically whatever you can move
the arm opposite of leg with and going for ten
(19:06):
plus minutes and then trying to optimally get to one
hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty minutes per
week in those specific zones. So that is a low
hanging fruit for many people because there's different ways to Hey,
you're walking your dog, you can make it a trainable zone.
You're going out and getting your steps, and you can
(19:26):
make that a trainable zone. You can also get in
and actually program it like you do your strength work,
and that's what we tend to do. But on the
opposite side of things, we're looking at getting anywhere from
fifteen to thirty minutes of higher threshold zones zone four,
zone five. This would be more indicative of conditioning. So
conditioning will be more interval styles where we're going high
(19:49):
heart rate, bringing it back down with the recovery interval,
and then being able to have repeat bouts of that.
And there's many different ways to get to that heart
rate zone as well. Cardio. I love reciprocating motions for conditioning.
I'm really a big fan of reciprocating motions, but we
also know very well that the thing in the chest
is what we're primarily training, and there's many ways to
(20:11):
elicit that heart rate effect that we're after in terms
of zoneability.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Okay, and then mobility that has a place I always
skimp on it, and I even have mobility progress in
Paris is like I can't skimp on it anymore because
it's starting to become a non negotiation.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Yeah, seeming more critical now than.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Ever everybody, and I think that over time, just like
muscle mass will reduce anywhere from one to two percent
per year after the age of thirty five, we tend
to see the same types of statistics when it comes
to people's mobility. But let's define mobility, what actually is it?
You know, you'll have the bros be like, my lifting
is my mobility, and then you'll have the mobility gurus
(20:53):
be like, don't lift, it's going to negative impact your mobility.
We're always going to be the middle ground on things.
So I think the two ways to go after mobility
is being able to have it integrated within your warm up,
integrated within your cool down, and then also being able
to adapt and display high levels of mobility aka full
range of motion with some of the foundational movement patterns
(21:13):
squat hinge, lunge, pushing, and pulling. And if we can
do that, very rarely do we see that people's ability
to maintain mobility as they age. It doesn't tend to
become a huge issue. It does become a huge issue
if your training program is making you less mobile. And
I think that's one of the marquee problems today and
kind of the popularized Instagram age where we have the
(21:36):
influence of bodybuilding and powerlifting really having a huge push
into the general fitness population, and we tend to look
at mobility as like, hey, can you squat to depth
with the bar on your back? But we're looking at
having mobility. Can we extend full ranges of motion not
only in isolation with mobility work, but also an integration
with movement patterning.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
So when you have a program and you're training someone
and it's in their warm up, do you have them
do It's not just like you're warming up your body
like specific mobility exercises. I sometimes see.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
People at the gym doing them and I think, Okay,
they're preparing their body to left. What are some examples
of things that you do in your warm up?
Speaker 3 (22:24):
So the warm up is going to be a phasic approach.
So we have something called the six phase dynamic warm
up sequence. It brings you through phase one, which is
soft tissue work, Phase two, which is movement based stretching,
Phase three which is corrective exercise aka mobility drills. Phase
four activation drills, Phase five movement pattern prep. The big
thing that you're going to be doing that day, you
(22:46):
practice it in phase five, and then phase six is
going to be central nervous system stimulation. A lot of
power and athleticism in there. But when we look at
the opportunities to be able to press mobility drills into
our programming, we have maybe a two to three window
in the warm up. We have different ways to have
mobility accentuated super sets and different triset strategies inside of
(23:07):
the strength or hypertrivy focused training session itself. A fillers
so you're not just sitting around looking at Instagram between
your sets of rest periods. And then we also have
the ability to just have that cool down, have a
more low level, low amplitude of movement mobility drills that
we can get in and calm down the nervous system
after a training day. But in all actuality, you know,
(23:29):
we say that mobility is extremely important, but many of
the benefits from mobility are once you gain them doing
some of the more fluffy stuff. If I'm being completely honest,
between the warm up, the fillers, and the cool down,
your full range of motion capacity to move your body
under load is a really great maintenance plan for mobility.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
So you're doing it throughout the whole workout, correct, Yeah? Okay,
what do you find the hardest movement pattern to teach?
Speaker 3 (23:56):
The hip hinge? The hip pingch hands down is going
to be the hardest because people have learned disuse of
what the hip hinge is, but they also have a
negative connotation or association with things like, oh, lower back
pain is the most common pain point amongst Americans today.
You know, one in three people this year will have
(24:16):
a serious bout of lower back pain that will leave
them out of work. And they're reading these statistics and
they're like, oh shit, like not doing anything even close
to pushing my hips back and picking up something off
the ground or hinging my hips back from neutral. So
the hip hinge tends to be the most complicated and
convoluted to reteach. We have a really good amount of
(24:37):
success reteaching it because interestingly enough, the hip hinge is
honestly the highest yield that we could possibly have out
of any of the movement patterns because it trains the
biggest strongle its muscles in the body. It is a
true integrator between the upper and lower. We have the
hands with the radiation onload, we have the feet with
the radiation on the ground, and we are able to
(24:59):
get into a full and extended range of motion into
hip flexion and into the ability to move load from
that position which is super strong. So this is a
non negotiable for all of my programs and all of
my athletes and clients that I train is that we're
going to find an entry point into the hip pinch
and we're going to reteach this thing because this is
ultimately the one that has the best opportunity to extend
(25:22):
your help and longevity.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
And half of it. Don't you feel like they're the
backs are weak and that's they don't know how to
hip pinge correctly. But the backs are weak, and they
think just doing a bunch of setups means their core
is strong.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah, so it's a chicken or the egg. So I
tend to see that, yes, people absolutely have disused posterior chains,
meaning that yeah, the lower back is weak, the glutes
are weak, the hamstrings are tight and weak, and they're like, man,
I can't even move through this pattern, let alone load
it quite yet. And I also see that people are
(25:58):
stronger than they think they are because they've been honestly
walking around, moving around training many times, almost like they
have a parking break on the Ferrari. They're trying to
move through things. They don't necessarily know how to breathe,
how to brace, how to actually move in an integrated
and connected way. And the reason that the lower back
tends to look weak for many people is that they
(26:20):
cut themselves in half. They kind of know how to
control their shoulders, they kind of know how to control
their hips, they definitely don't know how to control their shoulders,
hips and core integrated as a functional unit. That's something
called the pillar complex. That day one is the first
thing that we go to master with our clients because
giving them strength and stability at their shoulders, hips and
core cross connecting on the front side of the body
(26:43):
the back side of the body, it makes them feel safe.
It makes them feel strong, and they're more likely to
be able to move in a proper way if they
have safety and stability in their brain.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yes, all right, I'm getting your programs.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
Wow, I.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Want to add some additional ones to mine.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
How do you put this all together in a week?
How does that look then, now that you've gone through everything.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
It's a great question. We're actually missing one. We're missing athleticism,
and that very quickly is being able to think about
moving power, moving fast, but actually moving fluidly with some
sort of rhythm, you know, not going out and not
knowing how to move your body through space. But in athleticism,
we're looking at moving the body through space having a
(27:33):
step mechanism with something that we would program, so we're
not just standing in the same spot with a preamptal race.
It's more reactionary, and I think that the play component
of athleticism is something that is usually missing in many
people's programs as well. But it's interesting that you asked
about how do you put all these pieces together. This
is something for the last nine years that I've done
(27:54):
with pain Free Performance, which is my certification company, and
we are the biggest and the fast is growing certification
in the fitness industry in the world today.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Congratulations.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Yeah, it's been that you certified twenty thousand coaches, practitioners,
and physicians in since twenty nineteen, which is our inaugural year,
and this is going to shock people. We've done this
all in person, so we've run two day certification courses
all across the globe. We're almost at a thousand total
(28:26):
certifications that we've run and we have those numbers. So
when we talk about the systems that we run, we're
not just talking shit. We're teaching this stuff and we're
seeing hundreds of thousands of avatar users utilizing these same
strategies where we can actually make better recommendations, evolve the
systems with the growing needs which are definitely apparent today,
(28:47):
especially in America, And we just know very well that
we need to be fluid and continue to adjust if
we're going to be at the forefront of education.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
That's Wor's your favorite place that you've been in.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
The Australia before? Co?
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Oh, me too.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Australia is our favorite.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
It's the best super fit people down there. Like I
go around, I teach the course, I'm like, damn, should
I even be teaching this course? I don't even look
like I trained compared to ninety percent in my audience
right now, Like, oh my God on Earth.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, I love Sydney. Okay, So I love this comment
that you had on your Instagram where you said sometimes
you have to be bold. I like this one because
it's bold. Most people blame their age is the reason
why they are weak, overweight, immobile and in pain and fatigue.
Oh it just just happens with age, is it.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
I don't think so, because I'm training ladies in their
fifties and their sixties that are better at fifties and
sixties than they were in their twenties, and they will
attest to this stuff. I'm training men in their sixties
and seventies that are doing things in terms of their strength,
keyp performance indicators that they never touch in their thirties
and forties. So I truly believe that it's more than
(29:59):
just a cliche like sound bite like oh, age is
just a number. I see it every single day. So
that's why I believe in it. And that's why, you know,
bold statements do come out like that, but I think
that there is truth to be saying. If you do nothing,
you will deteriorate, and it will become very, very apparent.
With not this slow deterioration of one to two percent
(30:21):
per year of your physicality or your functionality, something big
will happen in your life, and you'll blame your age
on it. Hey, I just have my labs and oh
my god, like, what happened? How did this happen to me?
When they've been eating like shit for you know, three
or four decades, or they'll come in and they'll have
a catastrophic knee injury and be like, oh man, when
I used to play high school football and seventeen, I
(30:42):
could have never thought this would happen. But you haven't
done anything in the last twenty five years to be
able to help that or prevent that. So I think
the mileage racks up on the system and poor quality
of lifestyle in terms of sleep, stress, nutrition, movement, hygiene,
and also just exercise and physical training. The lack of
all those things compound over time, putting mileage on your
(31:05):
system and really forcing it into the garage at times.
And then people tend to look at the lowest common denominator,
which is I'm getting older. But there's nothing normal about
losing your physicality, losing your health due to aging.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah, I mean that other statement that you had too
about now I can't find it, But it's that your
health habits, like you don't just pass on your genetics,
but you pass down your health habits that your children
are watching. That hit home to me.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I have a nine year old son, and everything that
I do in terms of my coaching, in terms of education,
and also me being able to role model inside of
my own household, like it means everything to me. And
I've always been that way because I never wanted to
be the expert in front of the room teaching a
certification course, not practicing what I preach. If it's so
(32:01):
fucking good, how can you afford not to do it?
And that's what I always tell with our coaches and
our trainers. It's like you are your best sales. You know,
you are the reason that people are going to come
in and do what you want them to do in
terms of helping themselves. But you got to practice what
you preach. You got to be able to role model it,
and you've got to live your vocation, not just a
(32:22):
job or a profession. But when it comes to your kids,
I think that's huge. You know, we are in third
grade now, and I say we because I bring my
son to school. I pick them up every single day,
part of the community, and you know, up until they
go to school, you're kind of like, yeah, I can
control everything. This is how we do things. You have
like your blinders on, and then all of a sudden,
(32:44):
you go into youth sports or you go to school
and you start looking at everyone else and you're like, wow,
there's some challenges out there. It's definitely diverse challenges, but
I want to make sure that I can put my child,
even if he is an outlier, in the best possible
position to just live a normal life. But I think
living a normal, healthy life today it leaves you in
(33:07):
a small fraction of the percentage of people that are
willing to do some base things in terms of their lifestyle.
To be able to facilitate something like that.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
It's hard. I have well, I have three children, but
my youngest is fourteen, and our kitchen and living room
are kind of like together, and he started getting this
habit of just eating on the couch while he was
watching TV. I said, absolutely not, and so he would
do it like when I wasn't there, if I was traveling,
or i'd come back, and I'm just like, no, this
(33:40):
cannot be the habit you are So it's mindless eating
when you're just when you have a TV on, like
you're not even present with what's happening. And I teach
this in my to my females, you know, just bringing
it back because it's so easy to dissociate in this
all of us. I mean, I don't know if you
have different clients, but I'm assuming that there's not a
(34:01):
lot of clients that are like John. I have nine.
I have all the time in the world. I kick
it every day with just you know, easy peasy, like
everyone is doing a million things, and so how do
we fit this into their life with good habits and
good movement.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
It's a hard one. So everyone is perceived busy at
all times, no matter what you're doing, and that's the
realities of today. But I tend to use an approach
for coaching that is not everything all at once. It's
meeting somebody where they're at and being able to have
the extension of our time together, be able to peel
back the union layer by layer, because the biggest thing
(34:42):
is that we have sustained habituation. So whatever we put
into a program, I never make short term goals for
people or short term solutions that are not scalable for
the long term. Our best opportunities as coaches and as
business professionals is be able to teach and lead our
clients into making these habit changes that can sustain themselves
(35:05):
so slow, we'll eventually become fast. And when we start
to get these compounding benefits, I think not intimidating people
with like, all right, this diet and this sleep schedule,
and buy these four different wearable devices, and you've got
to get a red light, and you know what oxygenation,
the hyperbaric chambers are fucking awesome too, Like people go,
oh my god, that's what Instagram is today, if.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
It's a full time job, is.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Literally selling one hundred different things, supplements, training tools, all
this different stuff. Whereas we tend to look at the
basis of the foundation of what a healthy lifestyle is.
Can we get you habituating your movement, Can we get
you into a trainable state multiple days per week in
terms of strength and then also conditioning. Can we actually
(35:50):
control what we're doing in terms of nutrition, and can
we have some conversations about sleep and stress because all
of those factors can bite us in the butt very
very quickly. And as soon as we have those base layers,
having a foundation, which usually takes honestly like three to
six months, then we can start to have the sexier
conversations of like, yeah, that red light bed that I
(36:11):
have at my house is pretty fucking awesome. You well,
but it's not from day one.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah, layered in how they can do So, well, let's
talk about rep ranges. I mean, you posted something that
I commented on that, I mean, do you work You
clearly work in all rep ranges?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Yes, yeah, so entry points, it's always going to be
middle ground for people. So if people are just getting
started going into like a one RM versus a fifty RM,
the polarized ends at this spectrum, probably not quite yet
for you. But once we get into like intermediate phases,
get a couple of years of serious training down, you're
able to have your movement patterns locked in. Then we
(36:49):
can start exploring a lot of these different rep ranges
because they have a lot of different benefits in terms
of just the physiological benefits of them, but also the
mental and emotional benefits of being able to not tax
or system being like, oh my god, my programming today
is seven exercises, They're all five sets of ten Like
that is defeating for anyone who's ever trained on a
(37:10):
program like that. And it's also the assumption that all muscles,
all movement patterns are treated equally and they're all the same.
That is not true. So when it comes to being
able to file in different rep ranges for functional reasons,
we tend to go with more of a phasic versus
versus static approach. So a phasic approach would be like, hey,
(37:31):
are these performance patterns? Are these performance muscular regions and
we tend to hit them more with power and strength schemes.
So that's anywhere from one to maybe up to eight
to ten. And then hey, do we have more stability
components that need to be addressed. Do we need more
of a hypertrophic effect? Do we need muscle armor to
support posture and capabilities and deceleration. That's where we tend
(37:54):
to chase more of like that eight into the fifteen
or twenty. And then every now and then I love
to throw my client, so just a big fuck you moment,
but there's times to challenge yourself. So it's like, oh,
the science says, you know, eight reps for everything is
always the best. It's like, yeah, you know, a textbook
can tell you that, but if you've been training people
(38:15):
long enough, you know that there needs to be some
challenges and some mental and emotional components to keeping you
going and excited and showing you how you can push
the limits in a very safe and standardized way. So
we tend to go through things like the goblet squad challenges.
How many goblet squads can you get at fifty percent
of your body weight unbroken? And world record seventy three,
(38:37):
but twenty five plus is the repraanche that we're looking for,
and we tend to do things with timers and duration
based sets that get people pushing past their limits. And
I think that a well rounded way to be able
to train all the different physical characteristics, but also training
different REP schemes, but then also not even have reps
some of the times to do different duration based sets.
(38:59):
It keeps people emotionally engaged and fresh in the process.
And if we can do that, then everything feels a
little bit different. And we've seen that also the recoverability
neurologically and mechanically tends to be favorable if we're doing
a lot of different ranges versus just standardized textbook ranges.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
This is what I say when when women will just
want to stay in one REP range and I'm like,
do you want to do that for the rest of
your life? I'd poke my eyeballs out of boredness after
you know, a couple of months. I mean it has
to really. So do you see when you were training
professional athletes versus gen pop do you have a periodize
(39:42):
like where you get them? You know, you start off
with a general phase and then you move up the
ladder and then maybe come back down to what does
that look like over say six months to twelve months.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Yeah, the old school model of periodization is definitely that
it's old school because I don't necessarily see anyone doing
it at the athletic performance realm any longer. Even when
I had athletes, we weren't training them for six months.
It was an off season. You got six weeks if
you're lucky, and it's unbroken between vacations, And the same
thing could be said in general fitness populations today. You know,
(40:18):
one of the common things that I hear is like, Oh,
I don't want to come and work with you until
I have twelve months of nothing else going on, so
I can just focus in on this. I'm like, what's
that gonna be? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (40:29):
So see you never?
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yeah, so see you never. So you have to be
able to be flexible enough to be able to keep
the momentum rolling even if things are varied, even if
things need to change or maybe some stuff gets missed.
So how do you do that? A DUP, a data
undulated periodization plan is what I always believe in and
that tends to work very well with kind of the
(40:54):
forever client. The forever client is somebody that is looking
to train forever. So when we have no end goal
of being like, hey, we finally achieved it, like you
got to your race or you got to NFL Super
Bowl Sunday. When you don't have that, when the goal
is to train and feel good all the time, you
have a lot more flexibility on what can happen. So
(41:14):
I tend to always keep all six foundational movement patterns
squat hinge, lunch, push bull carry into everybody's program, and
I dabble into all six physical characteristics as well, power strength, hypertrophy,
cardio and conditioning, mobility, and athleticism, and I tend to
toggle up and down different phases. But complete honesty, my
(41:35):
clients don't necessarily feel like, oh my god, I'm bodybuilding
this month and then the next month I'm doing endurance
work like. It never feels like that because you get
the itch of having those fields of the different characteristics
that we reviewed in every single training program, So you
still got the feels. But the way in which you
program in terms of exercise selection, in terms of volume distribution,
(41:57):
but also total workload is going to be different. And
the way in which I usually do it is I
go through I have kind of like a movement phase
which we have maximal range of motion and we have
more of the unconventional exercises that lateralize and add rotation in,
and then we more have a strength phase where we
(42:17):
go in and webate base strength and hypertrophy work. And
then the last phase would be more of a peak
phase that would naturally bring us to some heavier loads,
some prs being set and naturally being set and not
having to be pushed. So that tends to go three
phases at the time, and it circles for it four
times a year.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
I love it. Yeah, I love that. So you are
a fan of unilateral training.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
Huge fan, huge fan. There's nothing more quote unquote functional
than asymmetrical lower body stances. Unilateral training especially at the
lower body, but obviously benefits at the upper body as well.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
So how much you said that you program in lateral
rotational movements into every program, So that's just part part
of it. You don't have like how much what would
the ratio be to if you're doing a daily undulated
then it's what like kind of even each portion is
(43:15):
even of lateral rotational movements in there.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Not necessarily, so daily undulated periodization means that you're doing
slightly different training days every single week or every single
training block, so you have this constant flow of variants,
but the variance can be very low. It means that
maybe we hit one or two reps more, maybe we
pull this exercise out and put it in with front
foot elevated versus rear foot elevated split squads. So it's
(43:40):
these tiny little variances that keep people engage but also
keeps the chronic stress off the system mechanically. And with
that being said, when we go and put these different
phases in, we are looking at if it's an individual client,
if it's somebody that I'm working one on one with,
they're individual presentation, their abilities, their needs, their goals and
(44:03):
wants analysis is extraordinarily important. So when we look at
making considerations in terms of distribution of volume and empasy,
we tend to go at those needs bass. But when
it comes to hey, you're going to do a badass
program that's going to be able to help you across
the board, and this is going to work optimally for
eighty percent of people eighty percent of the time. That's
(44:24):
a big program or a team or something like that,
then we tend to go in and say, hey, we
are going to prioritize certain ratios. We call them the
pain free training ratios that I have had a huge
amount of success with in my career. The ratio that
gets the most attention is three to one pull to
push ratio, meaning that we have a three to one
total volume distribution between pulling exercises, which are mostly upper
(44:49):
body pulling hinging at the lower body, then push exercises,
which is pushing at the upper body in more need
dominant squad patterns at the lower body. And people go, WHOA,
that's way too too much, But really we're looking at
distributing volume throughout the things that can keep us strong,
keep us stable, build the post heer your back line,
and be able to have some sort of postural reorientation
(45:11):
with the way that we're emphasizing this amount of volume.
But it also works out very well because there's certain
muscles that respond awesome to volume, certain muscle groups that
respond awesome to volume. Upper back and laps respond awesome
to volume, glutes respond awesome to volume, and those are
both on the post aior line. So we tend to
really go in and try to prehab and rehab people
(45:33):
with strength, rather than having to do corrective exercises all
the time.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Well, then you're having to pull the dudes back from
all the e bench pruss so three to one they're like, no,
we want to do three push to one full.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
I made the comment before more men should be training
like women. I totally believe it because the average guide
today gives men a bad rap when it comes to
how somebody should be able to train. Go to your
local commercial gym on a Monday and tell.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Me what you see.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
You already know. You already know anything that you can
see in the mirror. You're training that ship you're going in.
You're like, man, it was a tough weekend, bench press,
bicep curls. I'm going to go on the decline bench
and get some sit ups in before I get out
of here. And it's everything mirror muscle based. Whereas I
think that the ladies, especially over the last decade, they
found that, hey, strength can transform my body. Strength can
(46:26):
give me the physique that I've been looking for previously
with things like yoga or pilates or endurance sport. Strength
can give me not only the physique, but the functionality.
And if I were to say, and I throw all
women into one category, which is not appropriate, but I'm
going to do it anyways, I would say that it's
more glute focus, it's more lower body focus. But if
(46:47):
I were to pick one versus the other, you know,
the meat head Jim bro versus the booty girl that's
going to the gym and hitting lower body five times
a week, I'd go with the lower body post to
your chain emphasis every single time. But I think there's
a way to upgrade both of these approaches and be
able to meet it in the middle.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yeah, that's it's a great balance.
Speaker 4 (47:09):
So your pain free.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Can we go back to the pain free performance quickly?
Because I feel like a lot of people in the
age that Hayley and I are really focused on, one
of their main complaints is like joint pain, like a
pain and they kind of ache.
Speaker 4 (47:26):
And I don't think.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
Anyone should use age as an excuse for anything. I
think we get better with age as well. How do
your programs just have that pain free component to it?
Or if you're able to say to one of your clients,
I'm going to help you become pain free, how is
(47:48):
it that you're doing that since you are the pain
free performance specialist.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
That's such a great question and it's a common question
that we get, and the approach is trifled. So we
go in add a more direct approach. If we have
pain or a quote unquote movement dysfunction that we need
to just optimize a pattern, we do that more directly
within the warm ups, within the cool down, within the
off days, the un sexier things that look a little
bit closer to physical therapy than it does high performance
(48:15):
strength the conditioning. Second thing that we do is we
look at entry points in terms of not having one
single exercise variant be mandatory, because there are no mandatory
exercises for getting strong or building muscle or losing fat.
That's a total myth. Not everyone has the same exercise selection.
That's totally fine. But being able to have appropriate exercise
(48:37):
variations that we climb up and down on on a
progression regression scale. We call them the six foundational movement
pattern progression pyramids. Finding the entry point of what somebody
can train hard, train heavy, but we also move and
train well with that is going to help things right
off the bat. When we go on into a corrective
phase with some of the warm up drills. And then
the last thing is many times people are dealing with
(49:00):
chronic pain and injury issues, especially if you're seeing multi site.
Hey my shoulder, my neck, my lower back, my hip,
and my foot. Okay, that's the other person out there.
So the average person in America today that's training is
dealing with two point three chronic pain issues. Two point
three So like two to three issues.
Speaker 4 (49:20):
I believe that.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Fine.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
So when you're thinking about that, we also have to
look at the other twenty three hours of the day.
It's like, what are we doing to actually regenerate our system?
Are you sleeping? Are we having our nutrition locked in?
What does your stress cycle look like? And how do
we actually put these pieces back together? And there are
times in places one hundred percent, when somebody has a
clinical pain issues, we get them right to the clinician.
(49:45):
You know, we're not going, oh man, you tore your
ACL yesterday, come in and do pain free performance with me,
just fine, like that's not this. But we are specialists
in that subclinical sect of people that are just dealing
with chronic issues that aren't bad enough to leave them
out of the gym altogether, but they are inhibiting what
they can do in the gym, and this is where
(50:06):
we tend to go directly at with the warmups, with
the region and also with smart exercise and programming selections.
And we've had a huge amount of success with that.
But I think people sometimes feel bad, like, oh, I'm
dealing with this issue and it's only me. My shoulder hurts,
my back hurts. We pulled twenty thousand people over the
last seven plus years, and these are all like really
(50:28):
high end performance trainers and physical therapists and people that
know their shit. Ninety three percent of the room raises
their hand when they say, hey, are you in pain
currently right now? Ninety three percent certification.
Speaker 4 (50:41):
I believe that, but that's a high number.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
It's a high number. And then we go, well, who's
been in pain in the last three months? And then
everyone's hands go up and we're like, yeah, we're dealing
with issues. But really, in terms of pain free performance,
we are trying to co manage two of the most
subjective things in the world today, which is the human
pain response and the human movement system. Both of those
(51:05):
things together, we need to be able to problem solve
far more than just the textbook we need to be
able to make it human, make it individualistic, and be
able to empower people to get in and move and
do what they can and not feel defeated on what
they can.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
I love that. That's a great way to wrap this up.
Thank you John for joining us and for your expertise.
I have been following you for a while now and
I just loved your approach and I'm looking forward to
diving into some of your programs too. I like that
you have some differences than what I offer. But thank
(51:43):
you for joining us today on the Body Pod. It
was a pleasure speaking with you.
Speaker 3 (51:48):
Thank you so much. It was fun.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Thank you. Where can people find you?
Speaker 3 (51:53):
You can find me at doctor John Russin dot com.
That's the main hub for pain free performance, get PPSC
dot com, g E, T, P, P s C dot com,
and then all social media is doctor John Russin.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
Go look him up. Thanks for listening everyone.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a
five star rating and sharing the body Pod with your friends.
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