Navigating Combat Sports Training As An Adaptive Athlete w/ Matt Solomon (SSOF Ep. 38)

James de Lacey1:51

So Matt, do you want to just maybe dive into what adaptive, or what it means to be an adaptive athlete, kind of define that for anyone listening?

Matt Solomon2:41

Yeah, so you've got the Olympics, which everyone knows about, and then the Paralympics, which everyone also knows about and potentially sees a little bit less of because it's less mainstream. There's less media coverage. And basically, Paralympics is an Olympic event for people with disability.

So the term "adaptive" comes from a place where not everything has to be disability. You just adapt what you're doing. So for example, a squat could be a unilateral squat for a person with a singular amputation. So adapting refers to what you're doing in the day-to-day, and it's just a bit of more of a respectful term without putting disability first. So that comes into some language stuff.

"Able-bodied," for example, as opposed to... you hear a lot of people making mistakes on things like "normal." Well, everyone's normal or not normal. I know a lot of people who aren't normal but they're not disabled. So "able-bodied," for example. And I even correct my athletes on some of this stuff as well, because if they don't do it, then they're going to give that message to other people too.

So it basically means that it's a person first. So we use person-first language as much as possible. It's person, then disability, and preferably not disability as a descriptor. But it's person-first language. It's a person who is going to have an adapted training schedule.

And that could mean an adapted sport, for example, using a wheelchair to move. It could mean having some kind of prosthetic, for example, to complete the sport or to use it in daily life. So that encompasses a lot of different people, and the different types of disability you see is huge, right?

So you can kind of get an idea of someone who, let's say a person has had a single leg amputation, then you kind of get the idea that all the other parts of the body are usable, potentially, apart from that one leg. And even that one leg, to the point that it's amputated, is potentially usable.

So let's take someone who's had an above-the-knee amputation. The hip's still usable. It might be slightly atrophied. There might be other kind of things going on with that hip, but it's still usable, potentially. So I think it's an important starting point to work from is to look at what's possible. And that's often a lot.

And this is obviously trying to refer back to throughout this entire podcast, what people can learn from that. So if you're going to have an injury, let's say you've got an injury to your lower leg, it doesn't mean that that entire limb is off limits. It means potentially that your ankle is off limits, but your knee and your hip still are available to train.

So it's just a case of finding ways to adapt exercises or get the adaptation that you want for as many parts of the body as possible without either, in that injury situation, without doing some damage to the injury, or in the example of an adaptive athlete, while allowing for the fact that some things can't be the same.

James de Lacey6:06

Actually, a recent news piece came out from New Zealand. It must have been last week or the week before that's quite fitting for this. That's the first blind jiu-jitsu player to get his black belt, and I think it was in New Zealand. So it shows what's possible there. Obviously, there are limitations, but things can be done.

Matt Solomon6:06

Absolutely. And I think it's nice to see those stories as well where you're like, you know what, you don't have to put those limitations on yourself. Because a lot of things come from society. People tell athletes, "Oh yeah, well, you can't do this," especially doctors, medical professionals. And they're like, "Oh, you're dangerous." And your mom comes in and it's like, "Oh, you shouldn't do that. It's dangerous for you."

And I work with a guy whose WhatsApp profile picture is him on a half-pipe in his wheelchair, and he just goes off of it. And you just can't... you can't do this on a halfway, just goes off of it. So you kind of get that idea for what is actually dangerous and what's perceived as dangerous and what's possible and what's perceived as not possible.

And I think when you start to explore the boundaries of what people are telling you you can do, you can often see that it's not even close to what is possible.

James de Lacey7:30

I know there's different categories for adaptive athletes, and you probably work with a range of them, like the visual impairments, the amputees and stuff like that. So this might be more of a general question, but I guess what kind of principles or guidelines kind of guide, or do you follow, when training these kinds of athletes that kind of lets you get the most out of them that people can essentially apply, whether they're an adaptive athlete or not?

Matt Solomon7:58

So I think probably the best way to describe it is to take you through the process a little bit. So there's a lot of stuff that I'd like to touch on. Standard principles, progressive overload, looking for an adaptation as opposed to exercises, the obvious stuff that almost all S&C professionals are doing.

And next to that, there's a huge mental side of it where you're going to try and remove those barriers that we talked about. You're going to try and convince them of what is possible and challenge them in a way which is going to get the best out of them.

So to take you through how you might go about doing that: you're going to get an athlete who comes in, and day one, hopefully they've had a medical screening and seen a physio. Let's assume that's the case and you've got that information. So you're going to get that information. You're like, "Okay, this is Steve. He's going to do A, B, and C. These are things I need to look out for. This is his history." I've got a reasonable idea of what is possible for Steve at this moment. He comes in.

Either you throw that out the window immediately or you didn't even have it. So I like to work pragmatically.

I like to work pragmatically where I'm like, okay, I've got an idea of roughly the movement patterns which I want to hit, especially for an athlete who's just coming in, basic level athlete. They probably don't have a huge movement library. So they're going to come in and be like, right, I want you to, for example, squat, hinge, push, pull vertically, horizontally, rotate, brace, whatever. And I'm just going to, for that person, find potential exercises.

So let's say that your most basic squat is a goblet squat and you're going to go, right, shall we try a goblet squat? Obviously the warmup, whatever. Goblet's quite cool, so you give them a light weight and you say, okay, do this, demonstrate the exercise. They do the exercise and immediately you can see some stuff which is potentially different.

So let's say that there's a person who has cerebral palsy and they have really high muscle tone in their ankle, the calf for example. Then you can see that that's a limitation. So that mobility isn't there, that knee doesn't travel forwards like you wanted to, the heel raises, and you're kind of in a standard scenario for an able-bodied athlete. That's a contraindication. We might not want that in our squat.

So in that case, you start asking the question to yourself, right, okay, is it something that I can improve? Is this something that I can improve now quickly, or do I need to adapt the exercise? So if I can improve it with a cue or a different exercise, then that's kind of easy. But potentially that's not the case, right?

So you're kind of like, okay, well maybe we want to work on it long term and we accept that this isn't the right squat for you right now. So let's say we put wedges under the heels and we say, right, do the goblet squat again. And now all of the physical parameters, the technical stuff which you want to see, that straight back, below parallel, whatever your squat KPIs are, they can hit that with that one simple adaptation.

So basically they'll come in and I'll do that for all of the exercises that I think are reasonable. Like, let's say there's eight exercises in the movement pattern that we've just listed, and we'll just take it as an exercise by exercise basis and we'll go, right, this is possible, this is not possible, and we start to build out that exercise library.

Session two, depending on cognitive abilities of the athlete, maybe they do some different variations. So you might, instead of doing a dumbbell bench press, you do a barbell bench press and we see how they can control that bilaterally. So you could progress it that way. You could also just say, you know what, I want to work on that mental side, I want to teach you to train.

So I don't want to be worrying about the technique of everything all the time. I want you to come in, I want you to look at your program, recognize the exercises, and just be able to repeat those next week.

So that depends highly on the cognitive side of things. And the example I mentioned with CP, things which you take for granted in an able-bodied athlete might not be the case. So we know that with cerebral palsy there's some organizational skills which might be lacking. In fact, there's a huge list of stuff which might be going on cognitively which we're not aware about. So it's really important to know how that athlete wants to be talked to, how they best communicate.

And that could be down to a neuropsychological research center which we send some athletes to if we think is necessary. And we'll get our report back and they're like, this person, they can't work visually, they just can't see stuff in their mind. So there's an example of a head coach this week who was like, I was taking an athlete and we were going to do the course recognition.

So we're going to go on a bike, we're going to go, we turn left and we go right, and we're going to learn the course before the race the next day. And the athlete just couldn't retain it. Did it two or three times and had no idea what was going on. And the coach is like, what's going on? And then afterwards, after that investigation, they're like, they can't learn using visual stimuli. They need to hear it, they need it written down or audible.

And with that in mind, obviously that person, you communicate entirely differently. And now to that person it's like, right, left, right, long straight, roundabout, whatever. But you're not going to do the whole hour-long nice little chill out course or whatever. It's just pointless, there's no need.

So back to the story, you're going to come in and you're going to be like, right, we've got a list of exercises that I want to do, we're going to adapt those exercises, and then we're going to teach you how to train. And hopefully along the way we're going to make you into a better human being.

And that training process, that teaching them how to train, can be as simple as you're going to turn up on time, preferably five minutes beforehand. You're going to do your warmup, and I expect you to do that by yourself. In the first couple of weeks I'll help, but I expect that to be something you can do without me telling you which exercises.

So you're going to come in, you're going to do your stuff, then you're going to do the program which is written down for you. You need to learn how to do that, how to move in space, how to deal with all the other people that are in the session, how to adapt the exercises. And eventually the goal is then to start working together to improve that exercise library to the point where I'm like, I think we can get this to be a more specific exercise for you.

Because the head coach says this, the physio says that, you're telling me another thing, and I'm going to put all of these things together to change the way that you squat so that we can get a more specific joint angle, contraction mode, whatever. Go through Vershansky's five things, go through all of that and make a more specific exercise. So you go from, we're just going to do movement pattern through to specific for that individual and for their sport.

And in doing that, you come across these barriers, and the first one that you always get, and that's the one that I hate the most, is "I can't do that." So on that day one, I'm really conscious of the moment that comes, and it's going to come, I know it's going to come. It might even come in the first exercise where you're like, I can't do that.

I'm like, you can't do it in the same way that I would do it, maybe, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. We're going to adapt the exercise and we're going to give you a way to do that.

So really simply, think about the squat there that we mentioned. Maybe you can't do the squat in the exact way that I just demonstrated, but with wedges it's all easy. So with that in mind, we kind of try and stamp that out as quickly as possible, change that mentality from "I can't, I'm limited, it's not possible" through to, "Okay, with some small adaptations I can actually achieve a lot more, both in my training session and potentially outside of it as well."

James de Lacey15:58

I think what might also be useful for people listening, I know obviously at your Papendal facility, I know I've been there as well and it's damn nice. You've got a billion gyms in there and a lot of space, and I think you've got, you almost have, you have the privilege of having almost a gym to yourself to be able to do this.

Now I know you've talked to me about traveling and having to train in gyms. I guess I don't know if they're commercial gyms or just gyms with other teams and people. Now I'm sure a lot of people listening maybe have adaptive athletes or are an adaptive athlete that can only train in maybe a commercial gym. It's filled with people, people using all sorts of different equipment.

So I guess do you have any advice or guidelines in that situation where, hey, you go to the gym but you might not have easy access to whatever it is you need? You need to, again, adapt your training session because of the environment you're in.

Matt Solomon16:52

I think it's probably quite similar to if I was to go to a general gym. I have to wait 10 minutes for the squat rack and I'm like, yeah, now I got to do something different. I mean it's not too dissimilar.

I think what's crucial then is that exercise library that we discussed is broad enough, and either there's a coach with or the athlete themselves understands the exercises well enough so that they can adapt that themselves. So let's say, for example, Monday gym, bench press is full of guys who are just trying to bench press as much as possible. Half horrible, half reps, horrible technique, you know how it is, Monday bench press day.

And your athlete's there and they're like, I'm going to bench more than this person with good technique for more reps, and they can't do that because it's full, whatever. Or if the athlete has no idea that a dumbbell bench press might also suffice, if they can't do that, potentially a floor press could be an option. And if they can't do that, they could use machines. They have no concept of that, then that's quite a big issue. So again, it comes back to that exercise library where you're like, if we can teach them a movement pattern...

And we can say, let's say our horizontal push in this instance is ideally a bench press, but if they can't do that then it's a dumbbell bench press, and if they can't do that then potentially a floor press. Like you go through that list of ideal scenario and every step away from that is less ideal, but you're still going to get a stimulus which is comparable at least or comes close to what you want. I think that's probably the most essential.

That's an education thing, and I'd say a given understanding from the head coach or the strength coach for what you're trying to achieve. So the adaptation that you want and which exercises are potentially suitable for that. If you say, "Right, I want to achieve speed and power on upper body bench press today," and they're like, "Right, okay, I'm going to do speed and power so I'm going to do a dumbbell bench press but I'm going to throw the dumbbells," I'm like, "That's dumb, don't do that."

But conceivably an athlete could apply that methodology and make decisions. So I think it's an education thing. It's allowing them to experience as many things as possible within a certain movement pattern in the gym, and accepting the fact that sometimes in that situation it's difficult, just like it is for anyone else to go into the gym and be like, "Right, it's a busy gym and I've got to share equipment with people."

Then potentially they have the option to switch up exercises, switch up the order of exercises, or just flat out change the exercise, provided they're able to do that.

James de Lacey19:33

Nice. Have you, I guess I don't know if this you would have come across this or it would be applicable because I guess you work with athletes that are performing this sport, but have you ever come across or experienced or seen like maybe an adaptive trainee or athlete that was just so limited there wasn't much they could do at all regarding training?

Matt Solomon20:02

Not very often. I mean, not that I personally trained this person, but there was one guy who did wheelchair rugby who came in who was severely limited. And wheelchair rugby is a sport where you have to have some kind of disability on three limbs, so like, or three parts of your body, so like you're really limited.

And because of that level of disability which is required as an entry to the sport, the person came in and wasn't my athlete, but I was like, "This is tough." Like there's a limited amount of stuff you can do. You've got like a glove which allows you to grip and pull stuff, but there's not a lot going on there.

So for me personally, I'm fortunate that the majority of the people I work with have probably less severe disabilities than a lot of people who would then potentially be at home. Obviously being in a privileged situation, you see the best of the best, the most able, and those people are selected because they are able for their disability.

And I've not yet come across people who are severely unable to do a lot of things. And even the people who are slightly less able to do stuff, you're still able to challenge them. So I mean, there's an athlete I work with who she's a double leg amp above the knee and a single arm amp below the elbow, just below. So that's a lot of not being able to do stuff, but we can still do a pretty comprehensive program, like a well-rounded program.

Lots of pushing and pulling, push-pull vertical or horizontal.

James de Lacey21:43

How are you doing the push and pull? Obviously with, because it's one hand, right?

Matt Solomon21:43

Yeah. So we'll do a single arm dumbbell press because that person has a prosthetic, and it's something that they got relatively recently. So initially it was just single arm dumbbell bench press, and for this side it would be like a fly inwards. But because they have the prosthetic, we can now build up a little bit of weight and do some kind of dumbbell press semi-symmetrically. So that's possible.

Same goes for shoulder pressing, similar idea. Pull downs, same, right? So you can see for those kind of big movement patterns that that's all possible.

Legs, initially it was a lot on cables. So adduction, abduction, extension, flexion, like just standard stuff. But we can do a hip thrust, like it's just short levers, so you accept that that's different. So it's kind of like a, imagine a reverse plank from above the knee. Got to, so hip thrusting is possible.

Yeah, there's way more than you initially expect. And obviously we worked together for a while now, and a couple of months ago she has the prosthetic and I was like, "Cool, we're going to do as a group, we're going to do who can hang on the bar for the longest."

Because that brings, that's a fun little game, but like if you get them to select teams and you have different disability levels within the group, they all select the biggest strongest guy in this case first. Like he's the go-to guy. I'm like, "That guy's going to fail horribly hanging for a long time. He's big and strong, he's just too heavy."

So you get like that kind of mental challenge of we're going to select the team that we think is the biggest, the strongest, and then actually as the team that was the smallest, they were able to hang the longest. So anyway, that aside, this athlete was put into a team and they were like, "I can hang here with my prosthetic just chilling out." And I'm like, "Oh cool, can you do some chin-ups?" And one and a bit was possible, but I'm like, "That's super impressive." So we can train that.

And then since then we've been training hanging, press-ups, pull-ups, that kind of stuff. So you can get an idea of initially it seems like you really can't do that much to the point where you're kind of like, "Oh, what do I do?" And then when you get into it and you work with a person and you get that basic program and you keep working with that person, you're like, "How can we further train your legs?"

Last week they had to replace an exercise. Like they said, "Look, this is your program. Brilliant. I believe in the program. You need to replace an exercise. I don't care what it is, it just can't be the first four big ones, but like the accessory exercise, you need to replace one." And they're like, "Oh yeah, yeah cool." And the athlete just said, "I'm going to do step-ups." Like you're going to do step-ups? Yeah, crack on.

I had no idea what she's going to do, but I got this little box, stepped up onto it, and like with a big kind of body movement got up there, stood up, back down again. I was like, "Brilliant, you go."

Yeah, it's not as difficult as you kind of think, and a lot of the stuff they've already done already because they have to like overcome these challenges in daily life. So yeah, I mean it's not reinventing the wheel, it's giving them the opportunity to express movement in whatever way they can, and then it's my job as a coach to then pick up on that and be like, "Yeah, that's a thing we can use," or "Maybe if you modify this we can get this adaptation which is something I didn't necessarily expect."

James de Lacey25:32

Yeah, there's a lot of good lessons as well that can be applied to able-body training. And I think one interesting point might be the idea of training one side and becoming too imbalanced. I know people, maybe they injure their leg or their arm and they won't train the other side for the fear of, "Hey, I'm going to make this side too big or too strong or whatever, and when they come back I'm going to have this big imbalance between my injured side and not injured side."

Obviously you have athletes that literally can only train one side properly. So do you want to maybe dive into a little bit of that and be like, "Okay, is this something that people should really worry about? Is there such a big discrepancy between sides when you're training one side chronically because maybe you've injured the other side?"

Matt Solomon26:00

I get where that comes from, right? It probably comes from bilateral sports. For example, running, despite being unilateral, you're going to do two things, so that's a bilateral sport. So yeah, I get in some situations that you want that evenness.

But I've had athletes come to me like, "Oh, I'm wonky, like I don't want to be more wonky." I'm like, "Yeah, well, but like..." So they, "I'm wonky, I don't want to be more wonky if I train one side." I'm like, "You're already wonky, mate. Like can't get any worse." Like it can, you can get more wonky, but like is that a bad thing?

And it's very difficult to say to someone that if you, let's say left and right, left right, my left, yeah, if you're here, left is stronger than right and you want to be stronger because it's going to make you more robust, you're going to move both of these things up. Now in a normal situation you might want this. For an adaptive athlete, you might go, "This one has this potential and this one has this potential," but then you have like a huge discrepancy, a larger discrepancy.

And the question is, do you want more absolute strength and therefore like some kind of robustness, some kind of ability to load, or...

Do you want symmetry? And until now I've come across one athlete where we've gone, we want more symmetry, and that's a cycling athlete. Because obviously it's a cyclical sport, and on one leg we've kind of got to the point where we can make you stronger, but if you're an endurance athlete, we don't need to make you that much stronger. And in that situation we've had a conversation with head coach, and head coach is like, you know what, that looks cool, don't make it weaker, keep it as it is, loads of focus on the other leg.

So in my view, I'd rather have higher absolute values of strength and therefore a larger discrepancy in limb symmetry, than a really nice semi-symmetrical—but let's say symmetrical—situation where they're weak. If your weak is piss, you're going to get injured. If you get injured, you can't do your sport. I would rather have someone who has an imbalance of let's say 30 to 40%, but is as strong as possible on both limbs, and therefore that gives them the opportunity to train more. That gives them the opportunity to perform their sport at higher intensities without getting injured.

If they can do both of those things, the volume goes up, the intensity goes up, and we can coordinate that limb better because of increased muscle mass, increased strength, whatever, increased training time, then they'll all win. So if it's not that direct performance—like stronger, better coordinated, faster, powerful—to performance, it could be that indirect: you're going to train more. And therefore, if you can train more efficiently, higher intensities, better coordination, then yeah, that's a win as well.

So for me, although there might be research conflicting that, I'm kind of sat there going, it's the world we live in where you're going to be a bit wonky. So we're going to lean into it. And I'd rather be strong and wonky than weak and wonky.

James de Lacey29:29

I think what's often not publicized as much is there's really good research obviously around training the uninjured limb to help speed the healing of the injured limb. I think, I can't even remember the body term—there's some crossover, bilateral transfer or something. Man, it's been a while since I've dove into that research. But obviously training one side can help speed up the healing and recovery of the other side. Obviously training your uninjured side can also strengthen the other side too, so you've got those benefits.

So yeah, I'm with you on that. I don't—for anyone who's maybe suffering from some kind of limb injury where they can't strength train that side—100% strength train the other side. You're not going to, in my opinion, develop enough strength and size in the time you're injured on the other side to make a huge difference in terms of asymmetry. And even if you do, when that limb comes back you're going to, as you start to train that side, you can always prioritize that one side too, or you know, whatever it is you need to do, and it will come back pretty quick.

Matt Solomon30:57

Agreed. I think, again, if one side is bigger, that's fine. I don't know if anyone's seen Rafa Nadal's left arm. That guy has one huge left arm and then one arm, you're like, it doesn't look the same. It's logical, it's his sport.

So yeah, I mean, when you put it into context, I think there's huge examples throughout the sporting world where it's not the case everything is perfectly 50/50. And if you were to get one arm or leg or whatever bigger than the other, that's cool. Deal with the fact that this is stronger later. Strength is never a weakness—it might be if you're then unstable or whatever—but if you got stronger this side and this side is the same, then you can always train this side extra. No one's going to die from training a little bit more on one side.

So I think it's probably blown out of proportion for a lot of athletes. I think there might be some research available in some specific scenarios where you want as much symmetry as possible. Brilliant, if that's the case in your sport, crack on, go for it. I mentioned an example where it might have been earlier. But I think for most of the people in the scenarios I work in, it's just not attainable. And therefore, as long as the physios I'm working with aren't losing their absolute over it, or whatever, then I'm kind of like, crack on.

James de Lacey32:12

And asymmetry is not always the—it seems to be, as you mentioned obviously in your cyclical sport like cycling, it's a little different because you kind of want even power outputs on each pedal, I guess, to maximize cycling performance. But for rotational sports, baseball, I mean even judo to some extent, you might have a favorite side you like to throw on or favorite side you like to grip. Obviously striking sports, you're going to probably have a preferred stance and things like that, and these all are going to create asymmetry.

If you spend too long trying to correct an asymmetry, you may see performance reductions in your normal whatever stance or thing. So think baseball: you swing one side, then you try and bring up the other side to even it out, then you might run into some issues performance-wise, and you probably won't see that huge—hey, injury—man, I hate that injury prevention. I still see it everywhere, man. It's still going on.

Matt Solomon33:13

It's not my fault, mate.

James de Lacey33:13

I'm not saying—now yeah, you're the one debunking it all on Instagram.

Matt Solomon33:13

No, I don't actively sit there and—yeah, I'm not going to call out physios or whatever. I'm tempted sometimes, but I'm not going to sit and do that. No, all good.

James de Lacey33:13

No, I think we covered pretty much everything to do with—well, at least the questions I have with adaptive athletes. Is there anything you wanted to add regarding the adaptive side? I know you've got far more experience than I do in that area.

Matt Solomon33:43

I think probably touching on how to adapt exercises quickly. So yeah, go for it. Something that I enjoy—I don't want to say I'm good at it, but I'm probably better than I was a couple of years ago at it—through these scenarios and situations.

So I think it's important to realize where you can adapt exercises and then how to do that, right? So I'm putting up a slide, and I'm going to have to translate it from Dutch as I go. But I did a presentation a few weeks back for physios, and basically I tried to think of all the stuff which I do to adapt exercises.

And variables could be stability. So let's say a person has an asymmetry and stability on one side is less. How do you add stability to an exercise to create force? Obviously there's a continuum from stability and force. So for example, if you're going to do a hand-assisted split squat, potentially with a safety bar, hat squat, whatever you want to call it, you could do way more in terms of load and therefore get a really positive adaptation.

So obviously the loading itself—how much load you're going to do—that plays into it. The load position, so left arm, right arm, back, front, that can have a huge impact on the levers which you're going to use, and therefore technique. So for example, front-loading a squat is generally way easier than loading a squat on the back in terms of technique, and especially for learning. So how does that work?

Let's say a person does have a limb symmetry. Where you position the load, left arm, right arm, could have a huge impact. If that person doesn't have good grip strength in an arm, can also have huge impact. So you have to appreciate the fact that if you only load on one arm, what's that going to do to the other side of the body?

Mobility, something we covered earlier. So for example, ankle mobility, that could be something that you want to work on as a target to improve. But accept in the meantime that you do want to get some kind of learning and load in, so therefore you're going to make allowances for that.

Range of movement. I work with an athlete who just has limited range of movement, and although I'd love for that person to squat deep, it's not possible. We can do it and then he breaks, and I get an angry head coach, an angry athlete. It's not worth it. So we created an environment where that person feels safe to exercise and make the most out of their training by limiting the range of movement and building the load up.

Because obviously you have a higher potential to produce load in a shorter range. So you can adapt that range of movement to suit the athlete, or you just do high box squat.

James de Lacey36:28

High box squat for that.

Matt Solomon36:28

We don't even do the box. So I just say squat to the depth which you find okay, and it's just above parallel. And we'll do, for example, a leg press and he just won't go that deep on it.

James de Lacey36:28

That's how players squat anyway.

Matt Solomon36:28

Exactly. So what were we worrying that much about when it comes to range of movement? Just accept that I would love for that person to have a really deep squat position, but it hurts, and that's going to reduce the performance for two weeks. So why are we going to do it? And it's a powerlifting standard. It's not an adaptation. Again, at the start you said, what are the principles you're using? It's adaptations over exercises. We're looking for an adaptation which—

Makes it better in the sport, not to do a back squat because that's what everyone else is to do. So range of movement's one. Coordination is another one. You can get Franz Bosch if you want, but the exercise coordination, the order of muscle recruitment, the kinetic chain, how you link that together, that can all be used as different type of exercise. How does that person's technical ability or any type of disability and impairment, how does it influence their coordination, and can we improve that?

So for example, an athlete with CP who has really high muscle tone and potentially has muscle spasms when doing exercise, how do we do a coordinative movement? Because when that exercise complexity increases, that's when the spasms come. So even higher muscle tone and therefore not the coordinated movement you want. So how do we change coordination or make it easier, more difficult, whatever, to get the adaptation that we want?

And lastly, equipment use. Obviously there's loads of adaptive equipment out there, and I think a lot of it probably comes from the powerlifting world where they're just trying to find different ways to do the exercises without getting too much monotony. And there's a huge range of stuff that people can use to adapt exercises. Even last two or three weeks we've got a couple of extra different bars in the gym. There's a landmine attachment and you've got neutral grip, you've got pronating, something like that. A couple months ago we got Swiss bar, brilliant. So it's a neutral grip bench press type thing.

There's loads of options. So I think just having a little surf of specialty equipment, specialty bars, specialty grip attachments, that can go a long way to adapting your exercises as well. So with those things as a list of, yeah, it's a basic list but it gives you some kind of structure where you can pretty much put an exercise in where you're like, I wanted to do a back squat, and you're like okay, mobility is a thing. We're going to need to potentially use some kind of wedge on the heel.

If coordination is a thing, then we want to keep that really simple. We don't want to do some Bulgarian split squat with a sandbag over your head because it's all going to go wrong. We're going to keep it as simple as possible. So we're going to do, in that case, a goblet squat whatever, with wedged heels. So with those things in mind, you can use that list as a kind of a go-to of how am I going to adapt that one first thing what I would like to have, and what comes out the other end for the athlete in front of you.

James de Lacey39:49

I think that equipment thing is hugely overlooked because I mean, most sports training is influenced heavily from the strength sports world, weightlifting, powerlifting, bodybuilding, etc. And obviously the barbell is the competitive piece of equipment. That's what they train on most, and that's what most people train on most. But man, you can do so much more and work around so many different issues when you just don't have to use a barbell for everything.

Safety squat bars, Swiss bars, Camber bars, Buffalo bars, all make things nicer on your shoulders. In fact, all those pieces of equipment are basically for your shoulders. And then you've got obviously Fat Gripz. Man, I love the fat bar. There's just so much you can do with different pieces of equipment that you don't just need to, obviously it's a bit more money to have all those bars if you're training in your home whatever, but I mean those investments, if you're training for something competitive, I think those are good investments.

Matt Solomon40:47

I think it could separate you as well if you're a facility and you're like, you know what, how are we going to separate ourselves from someone else? If you, let's say you buy three specialty bars and a standard gym has a barbell, done. And you're like cool, we got three specialty bars. You've literally given all of your clients hundreds of percent new exercises. And if you can alert them to that, then obviously you increase your value.

So I think there's something to be said for gyms looking outside of the box from cool, we got another machine or another treadmill and it does the latest thing, to can we seriously increase the number of exercise options for our clients?

One last one before you cut me off and tell me to bugger off. I think probably the biggest thing that I would want to give people from working with adaptive athletes is not only the fact it's brilliant that people should do it because it's challenging and fun, but the fact that you have to work together on stuff. And I don't know that athlete's body. They know their body.

So I pretty much come in with physiological stuff, and I want this adaptation and know physiology is this, these exercises and I can adapt using these methods we discussed. But the athlete, they've probably done a lot of it before, even if it's not in a gym setting. They've tried lots of stuff because it's their body. They've tried stuff. And we have to work together to find the solution.

So that's for exercise, but also in terms of load monitoring where potentially I'm looking at the data going, tough week, and I'm not taking into account the fact that that tough week is entirely on shoulders because that person uses a wheelchair for their ambulation in life but also for the sport. So if they're doing everything in a chair and a gym session or two and all of their 10 to 12 hours of sport, whatever, that's a huge amount of load.

So it's that appreciation for the person in front of you and then talking to them and being like, how do you experience that? How tired are you? What do you think we can do here? How do you feel during that exercise? Do you think we could try A or C? And I think to come back to that story of that person coming in on day one and you going through all those things on that day one, if you can challenge them or you can say, can I challenge you on day one, and they say yes, because they will say yes, and they say yes, you can, you can go so much further.

Even if you don't on day one, you're like, you know what, this is challenging enough. I'm not going to do that yet. Someone comes in and they have a lower limb impairment, whatever it might be. We're just going to do upper body today. I'm not interested in making life really difficult for you. It's not familiar setting, whatever. But next week, can I challenge you to do some leg exercises? Yeah, of course. Cool.

And then you leave it. And a week later, you've already got the yes. So you're like, oh, I remember last week when you said, and you get that buy-in. So I think that working together and getting to know the athlete and using that athlete's opinions and thoughts and combining that with your, as a coach in this case, your physiological knowledge, your knowledge of exercise adaptation, load, what you want from that moment in time, that training period, combining those things will give you the best results.

Whereby you get an athlete who's maybe 30, 35, and it's just you being some kind of soundboard for them. With the more advanced athletes that I work with, we just, we either sit and have coffee or we'll call in and we'll just make a program together. I'm like cool, this is the plan roughly. What do you want to do? Do you want to get rid of this exercise? Do you want to change this? You said that your shoulder was a little bit grumpy. What can we do there?

And you make this plan together, and the buy-in is huge. The athlete gets a better program, they do the program as opposed to being like, I don't want to do that. And you get this better working relationship. I think if that's one thing that I would definitely take from that group of athletes, is how to work together to make the program instead of just going, right, this is your program.

James de Lacey45:16

I can imagine another good way for buy-in is if you got into, for example, the wheelchair. If you got into the wheelchair and jumped into some of the training sessions, have you done a bit of that to see what it's like?

Matt Solomon45:16

I've not sat in a wheelchair. I was tempted to do a couple of hours just to see what it was like, but then I didn't want to get loads of questions from people like, what have you done? Oh, you broken your leg? But I still actually owe a couple of athletes after losing a bet. I'm not gambling. I lost the bet or whatever, made a joke, I said I'll do conditioning in the wheelchair with you guys once. And they just laughed, like you're going to die. Yeah. So I still owe them that, to be fair, so maybe that's something that needs to be improved on.

James de Lacey46:04

Yeah, for sure. No, I mean we covered a ton in 45 minutes all on adaptive athletes. But if anyone wants to find you, follow you, see what you're up to, see what you're sharing, where can they do that?

Matt Solomon46:04

Matt Solomon Strength on Instagram is probably the best place.

The best place. Obviously stand of stuff, LinkedIn. I have Twitter but don't bother. Don't use Twitter now. So yeah, those places are good. Reach out if you want to hear more or ask some questions, you're welcome to.

James de Lacey46:27

Matt also hosts the Science for Sport podcast as well each week. You've got a ton of episodes on there now, a lot of great coaches too. So if anyone's interested in another podcast more on sport science, there's another one.

Matt Solomon46:56

Absolutely. So that's, I think we've just done 141, so this week will be 142. There we go. Yeah, yeah, perfect, all good.

James de Lacey46:56

Thanks for coming on Matt, really appreciate it.

Matt Solomon46:56

Absolute pleasure mate, thank you so much for having me.