Dr. Dustin Oranchuk On Training Isometrics & Eccentric Quasi-Isometrics For Enhanced Performance (SSOF Ep. 28)

James de Lacey2:31

I have no idea. I'm like, I've been to a few places around, but America is a pretty big country, and I had never heard of it either.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk3:02

But, you know, I wasn't a very good student in undergrad, so if I wanted to get a graduate sort of diploma or certificate or a degree of some kind, I was probably going to have to leave Calgary anyway, or it would have taken me several years of just industry experience to actually be considered for any other kind of program.

That was attractive as well. A, I already had that friend that I had met in Connecticut. B, it was going to come with a graduate assistantship, so I was going to make it so I wouldn't need to take out any sort of massive loans for further education. I got there, had a really good time. I worked with swimming, a little bit of women's basketball and women's volleyball as well, which all were interesting and insightful in their own right.

And began doing some research as part of the master's project. So that one was comparing basically a weightlifting derivative with a loaded jump squat and looking at adaptations in jump height and force and power and all that kind of stuff. So that was my first sort of, like, first author publication. And I kind of caught the bug on that, and I also was teaching courses at the same time.

So after I graduated the master's, published, I was teaching in the summer, and I said, "Hey, you know, this is something I really like to do, so let's go and pursue a PhD." I kind of didn't really know all that much about it. I never expected to go beyond a bachelor's, and then when I started the master's, I didn't expect to go beyond that. And then I thought, okay, so I found—so I kind of looked through my reference list of my own thesis and I looked, "Okay, well, whose names come up the most frequently?"

And there were some that I contacted that never got back. There were some that were interested, but they didn't have any funding. And then some of the names that came up a lot were people that, you know, James, which is John Cronin.

James de Lacey4:58

He'll be on the podcast. John Cronin will be on the podcast in a couple of months. I just locked him in today for later in the year.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk4:58

Yeah, so a great guy, and we've done a lot of stuff together. So, you know, definitely no mistake in connecting with JC. Oh, for sure. And Adam Storey as well. And then my tertiary supervisor was at Victoria University in Melbourne, and that's Dr. Andre Nelson. I had already mentioned Adam.

So I came back to Canada while I was sort of waiting to see what kind of scholarship opportunities we could drum up. I was back at home, I took on the head strength and conditioning coach position for the University of Calgary Dinos football team.

It was a pretty big challenge. You had to organize, you know, a hundred student athletes and got two assistants. And the University of Calgary, not to say that it's a bad setup by any means, but it's a different setup. The weight room is set up mostly for Olympic sports, so it's relatively small. You got a track, you've got sort of a weight room that's separate from the main weight room. I won't get into the details there.

But the challenge really was taking a hundred athletes all at once, separating them across three locations, and having them shift. So, you know, you have one group starting off on the track, and then another group in the main weight room, and another group in the sort of accessory weight room. And then every 45 minutes you rotate them around and float and all that kind of stuff. But that was a great experience, and those guys were fantastic to work with and for, I guess.

And at the same time, I was also volunteering in a research lab mostly looking at neuromuscular type fatigue and nerve stims and brain stims and EMGs and all that, which was sort of a backup plan where if I couldn't get a scholarship that year, then by the end, you know, by a year later, six months later, you'd have a couple publications to show for it, which would help me to kind of move on without having to pay completely out of pocket for a degree.

So that all worked. I ended up getting a scholarship. And it was actually at that point, it was really hard to leave because I enjoyed working with that football team so much. But I did, and the PhD sort of happened from there.

For the most part, very productive, a lot of good stuff. And that brings me up to the paper that you sort of mentioned, which was the systematic review of different kind of modes or different types or prescriptions of isometric training. So the studies that were included in that were anything that had two or more groups that were using different kinds of isometrics.

The majority of those, or maybe not the majority, but more than any other subcategory, was looking at different joint angles, so different muscle lengths, or more could maybe describe the different kinds of isometrics.

So there's different joint angles and muscle lengths. There's, of course, different intensities, so submaximal holding for time or maximal efforts. And then there's—these were not included in the systematic review, but the PhD thesis was having to do with holding isometrics and there's also pushing isometrics. And those are also known as yielding isometrics and overcoming isometrics, etc.

But one of them would be pushing against an immovable object, so like pushing against a wall or like a force transducer or something like that that's chained to a rack, so you cannot move it no matter what. That's sort of your classical isometric contraction that you see in basically—well, a very large percentage of the research that just looks at strength and conditioning or fatigue or cancer or anything like that where we're testing strength.

And then the other version of that would be a holding or a yielding isometric where you're resisting movement from some sort of outside force. So you're holding a dumbbell with your elbow at 90 degrees, and you're doing that for a specific amount of time or potentially till failure, or a cable stack or a barbell or a training partner, or you're holding a push-up near the bottom, something like that.

And those have differing effects, or at least recruit the nervous system a little bit differently. So I'll give you just a little teaser, but Andre, myself, and a few others were very slowly, very slowly picking away at a systematic review comparing holding versus pushing.

James de Lacey9:50

Oh, nice.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk9:50

And yeah, I can't share the details yet.

James de Lacey9:50

Yeah, I don't have any details really yet.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk10:28

Because we haven't, we've kind of finalized the search, we found all the papers, kind of coating them. Of course I'm not a full-time researcher at the moment. I do strength conditioning with people and other projects, so things move slower than when you're in a PhD and your scholarship tells you, "Hey look, full-time job research." So things move a lot slower, but I will say there's some interesting things. I think it's going to be very clear-cut.

All the studies or almost all the studies show similar things in terms of antagonist versus agonist versus synergist muscle activation. And then there's a couple very intriguing ones that I think have potential for really interesting application, and that's where the holding isometrics tend to result in less inhibition, greater activation. And that's with experimental pain.

So for example, the researchers would have some sort of a saline solution that they would inject into a joint or a tendon that would be an irritant, so it's going to cause some sort of pain. And then they would have the participant either push against an immovable object at a certain number of Newtons, or hold a contraction against a certain weight that is equal to that same amount of Newtons. And then you're measuring basically the EMG signal from the relevant muscle groups, and there's less inhibition when the person is holding that same force versus pushing against that same force.

So it's hard to say because it's not a training study or anything like that, and it's only I think two, maybe three. Paul Hodge's group is responsible for two of them, and then I can't quite remember off the top of my head what group the other one is. But that's I think a really interesting application, is probably more the rehabilitation side. And I think that's true for isometrics as a whole, although then there's people like Danny Lum and Alex Mata who have done a lot of stuff showing, you know, no, wait, you can use isometrics very effectively for performance. It's not just a rehab tool.

James de Lacey12:40

Nice. So I guess the question comes then for someone maybe listening to this, why would someone choose to use an isometric exercise over just traditional strength training? So where does it really fit in a strength training program?

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk12:40

Yeah, so again, other than Danny and Alex and a few other people that have shown that, hey, it can fit in a lot of different places including close to competition, traditionally the isometric sort of contraction occurs fairly early in a training cycle or immediately following injury leading into more sort of traditional training. So that's where the majority of evidence still lies, although again that might change a little bit more and more with time.

So if somebody sustains some sort of an injury or has a surgery of some sort, so one of the sort of interesting things about my current position here is that we do work with athletes, individual athletes, team athletes, but probably even more so at least right now is pre and post-surgical people who have had injuries, want to avoid surgery. So it's not uncommon for me to work with motor vehicle accident victims or somebody who's recently had an ACL reconstruction.

So they have these reconstructions or these injuries, maybe they don't have surgery but they can kind of recover on their own. So you start off with pretty passive measures, assisted active, assisted range of motion movements, gradually moving into isometrics. If somebody's had a shoulder, a rotator cuff tear, they're not going to be able to move their arm very well, so we just use the isometric contractions to activate the muscle, try and maintain the muscle mass as best we can, so that when the sutures and the injuries and the tear kind of recovers, the swelling is gone, the pain is managed nicely, then we can move into our dynamic sort of more typical movements.

And that's traditionally how isometrics have been used for a very, very long time, kind of come in and out of vogue as most things do with athletic populations. And using isometric squats to potentially change the sticking point during a squat, or using isometric mid-thigh pulls to try and improve the second pull for a weightlifter or whatever things you might have.

James de Lacey14:52

So I guess the follow-up question is that is regarding the isometric itself. Obviously you mentioned joint angles as one of the variables that you can kind of play with within isometric training. Maybe just to keep it really simple, we have something like a leg extension or leg curl. Obviously we can potentially do the isometric at the very top with a shortened quad, or we can do the isometric midway, or at the very bottom with essentially a lengthened quad.

Is there a time and place where you would choose a long or short muscle length for the isometric, and kind of what purpose you would use those for?

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk15:30

Definitely. So this was one of the main findings from the systematic review that myself and my co-authors had put together. And actually Danny Lum had a very similar systematic review that came out just a little while later, so I like to say we're probably working on them at the same time and I just got to the punch by a month or something like that. So I'm sure hopefully he laughs about it too.

And then there's also been many systematic reviews on not necessarily isometric training but just training in general that have found very similar results where, you know, biasing your training towards a long muscle length or doing a full range of motion versus a partial. Where if you bias the isometric training to a longer muscle length, so like a straighter arm for the biceps or the heel is closer to your butt in the leg extension, or the heel is farther away from your butt, more extended for a leg curl, that typically that's going to result in greater muscle hypertrophy.

And typically it will also result in greater strength, which is plausibly because if you have more hypertrophy you have a greater potential for strength.

There's a tiny bit of controversy around that. I think it was like Jeremy Loenneke and Thomas Balshaw went back and forth with a couple like pretty insightful comments or letters to the editor, I can't remember exactly what section that fell into, in MSSE, a little interesting about whether or not hypertrophy actually leads to strength or not. But anyway, regardless, the longer muscle lengths typically build more muscle, typically lead to a greater increase in strength throughout the range of motion, for sure at that longer muscle length. And then the shorter muscle length training, the effect is more limited to joint angles that are similar to the joint angle trained.

So in terms of where to use those, I think it makes complete logical sense that if you're after just a general improvement in muscle and tendon morphology, then you would bias your training towards longer muscle lengths, assuming that the injury, if there is an injury, is not bothered by being at that joint angle. So some people will find, "Hey, I can't pull, I can't put my knee in that position," or "I can't do an isometric pushup where my shoulders are very flexed because my shoulder hurts because I had surgery on it not that long ago."

Okay, cool. But if you can, using the longest muscle length sort of possible without pain will probably result in better muscular adaptation and strength throughout sort of that entire range that that muscle can work in. And then the other side of that would be if you have somebody who's very healthy, you're not necessarily using isometrics for tendon health or muscle size, then it probably makes a little bit more sense to use the isometrics at a joint angle that is most specific for that person's sport or activity or goals or what have you.

So as an example here, we work with people who have had injuries or people who are older getting back into shape, not always just athletes. So somebody might have a hard time climbing stairs, so it probably wouldn't make a ton of sense for us to try and get the squat as heavy with a barbell, at least not right away.

You're looking at practicing step-ups and maybe like literally walking upstairs while just holding a dumbbell in one hand or something like that, or if you were to use isometrics, maybe it's something similar to a stair step that you're just having them kind of hold at the bottom.

James de Lacey19:36

So if you're prescribing some of these isometrics, what's your typical set-rep scheme that you're kind of using with these?

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk19:36

Yeah, that's a tough call. I think the first thing we need to think about is just the general organization of a training session. So how much time do you have with the person, what is most efficient? Typically when we're starting off, we start out with submaximal effort for relatively long holds. So you're looking at holds of 30 seconds, maybe up to 60 seconds, and perceived effort of maybe 60, 70%.

If you have a strain gauge or a force frame or a force plate or something, then that makes it a little bit easier to track progress over time, as opposed to just saying, "Okay, push it a 6 to 10 effort."

So that's definitely a challenge with prescribing isometrics without technology, which I think is probably a limiting factor for probably the majority of strength coaches and rehabilitation professionals. But probably starting in around the range of four sets of 45 to 60 seconds at somewhat of a moderate intensity should be enough to get somebody who's using isometrics for a rehab purpose to get enough stimulus where something is going to happen, something...

Is actually going to trigger an adaptation. And that's going to be, you know, that's about four minutes of time under tension at a fairly moderate intensity, which sort of kind of corresponds to doing like three sets of 10, four sets of 10 on leg extension. So these things are pretty tried and true. It may or may not be optimal. It's really hard to say what an optimal dose is for different people, but we do know that putting somebody on a leg extension machine and having them do three sets of 10 with like a minute rest between sets, it does work.

Like everybody who's ever started out in training has probably started out doing three sets of 10, and it doesn't really matter who is prescribing. It doesn't matter if it was a healthy kid who's 14 years old in the weight room for the first time or a 55-year-old father of four. Three sets of 10 works to start. Might not work forever, but it's going to work to start.

So isometrics is probably the same way. And then if we're talking about athletes, I mean I know this is a podcast about fighters mostly, so from that point on, probably going to gradually reduce the amount of time of a set, maybe add sets, and probably build up to somewhere around 80 to 100% of sort of max effort. Because we need to be explosive, we need to have maybe a little bit of endurance, for in the grappling side of things for mixed martial arts or something like that.

Then that's potentially where isometrics are actually going to be a little bit sport specific. You're holding somebody in a grappling position or you're on the mat and you're doing mat work and being able to hold a position, resist your opponent from pushing or pulling your arms or legs into certain positions, could actually be sport specific. As opposed to like a 100 meter dash runner, it's going to be pretty minimally sport specific to do isometrics, although again, like Alex Natera and Dati might disagree with me.

James de Lacey23:16

So then I guess you're moving from holding isometrics and gradually working your way towards the pushing isometrics as you become more accustomed to them?

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk23:16

Yeah, I think that is logical, except for the specific circumstances where holding isometrics are going to be more specific for sport. And again, my viewpoint of isometrics is that for the most part they should be quite far down the list in terms of accessory work for the majority of athletes because the athletes have to move, have to be dynamic in their contractions.

So the isometrics might help with things like tendon stiffness, muscle size without doing a lot of damage or creating a lot of fatigue. But when you're organizing a training program for, let's say, a sprinter, I mean sprinting is number one, clearly. And then probably number two, three, and four in some way, shape, or form are going to be like med ball throws and power cleans or a weightlifting derivative of some kind.

And then probably like back squats or box jumps or something like that where they're dynamic, they're using the muscles. And then sort of maybe towards the end of a training program—we're talking about training order or training session—is now maybe you have your sprint specific isometrics. You're on your back, you're pushing into that squat rack and you're on one toe on a close to extended limb, the other knee's up in the air and you're pushing. You're just sort of reinforcing those positions while hopefully creating some improved tendon morphology at the Achilles tendon and so on.

James de Lacey24:57

Is there—have you used, I guess, pushing or overcoming isometrics as a form of potentiation for maybe in a complex or something like that?

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk24:57

I have, I have. Again, whether it's been more effective than just doing a heavy squat before doing jumps or whatever, it's hard for me to be confident in saying that it's better. But in some cases people seem to enjoy it more, especially if we're still maybe working on like back squat form.

So if I'm working with a young guy or a girl or even an older guy or a girl and their back squat is not super pretty, then I might not want to use a heavy back squat to try and potentiate going into box jumps. So using an isometric squat or an isometric mid-thigh pull or something similar is just going to give me a little bit more confidence that it's done right, they're using the relevant muscles in the right way. And then rest a couple of minutes and then use the jump and take advantage of hopefully that potentiation that some people get.

James de Lacey26:01

Okay, that's an application. I'll bring up a very brief little aside with all the—you get people to do the potentiation and they'll do their really heavy squat and then immediately go into a jump and then rest like five minutes. And I'm just going to put it out there, I think it should be reverse. You do your potentiation, you rest five minutes, then you do your jump, then you go back to your potentiation with minimal rest.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk26:34

Yeah, there needs to be a longer rest between the big strength lift and the actual power exercise. The power lift, the power exercise will cause a lot less residual fatigue than the potentiating strength movement. So if you're still limited by a training session being 60 minutes or 90 minutes, you need to fit a rest period in somewhere if you're using post-activation performance enhancement. So you're probably better off—got to go by the new term. It's not PAP anymore, it's got to be PAPE or whatever it is.

James de Lacey26:57

Yeah, PAPE. So anyway, brief aside on that one. I think there's got to be a study done. There should be a study done where they do their heavy squat or heavy iso, rest almost no time at all, do their jump, then rest three minutes and then repeat. Or they do their potentiation, rest three minutes, do their jump, then go back into the potentiation. I think that's—whoever's listening, that's for your second PhD.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk27:29

Well, we'll see.

James de Lacey27:29

I want to dive into some, I guess, some more advanced areas of isometric, and that is the eccentric quasi-isos. So it's a mouthful. It sounds like a bunch of—I don't know, made-up stuff, to be honest, when you hear the word. But it has some interesting applications within athletic performance and development. Do you want to maybe dive into what the eccentric quasi-isometrics are and then kind of where they fit? I guess what kind of adaptations you're looking to get out of them?

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk27:59

Yeah, so eccentric quasi-isometric was a term that I'd never really thought about or heard about. And then when we were putting together the whole PhD team and what the topic was going to be, John threw some ideas out at me and we talked about them. And then when André came on board, that was something that he was interested in. And this is actually a term—these quasi-isometrics—I think the first time that's been put in writing anywhere is in Super Training. I can't remember the page and chapter, but Verkhoshansky wrote the word quasi-isometric somewhere in Super Training.

I have the book. I can't tell you I've read it from start to finish. I've read all sections and referred back to it, but I've not read the whole thing. So I won't pretend to be one of those guys. But it's in there. And quasi-isometric essentially refers to some sort of a contraction where minimal joint movement is occurring.

So that's going to be either where we're purposefully holding, like a push-up. So in that case it's a quasi-isometric in the way we sort of think of a yielding or a holding isometric. A quasi-isometric could also mean like on the concentric portion of a squat, it's where we're in the sticking point. It's not heavy enough or high enough load or enough fatigue for us to be going down yet, but we're not really moving it up.

It's very, very slow. That sticking point in a squat is an example of, or trying to maximally hold something—there's a little bit of movement, but it's still more isometric than it is eccentric. If we're like lowering a maximal deadlift or something like that.

So the eccentric quasi-isometric, or EQI, the way that we proposed to do our studies was to do a holding isometric until fatigue or essentially failure at that joint angle. And then you continue to try your best to resist the downward movement or the eccentric. So in terms of effort, it goes from a heavy holding isometric to a max effort eccentric contraction. So it's sort of that combination of those two things together. So definitely a little bit different.

And I'll just say right off the bat, any of our studies where we wanted to actually do a training study, that's what COVID kind of destroyed. So we had people going, we had taken muscle biopsies, we had done our pre-testing. We weren't there yet—that was definitely a few months away from being finished. But that was the goal.

We were going to compare EQIs of the knee extensors with dynamic, so concentric-eccentric, in an isokinetic dynamometer. And we're going to equalize the conditions on impulse. So then we were going to look at what changes in terms of like max strength at different joint angles isometrically, as well as like a concentric.

Evaluation, and then of course we had the biopsies so we're going to look at what happens biochemically inside of the muscle, all these types of things. Muscle size, ultrasound, pennation angle, fascicle length, these types of things. So unfortunately it didn't happen. It might still happen someday.

Yeah, those muscle samples are still in a fridge freezer somewhere in Melbourne. They wouldn't be valuable for a training study, but they would be valuable for acute changes in muscle chemistry. And then fondre can get himself another PhD student or a master student that wants to do that. They're awesome.

And then again, I won't spoil anything, I don't want to name any names, but there's a group in, I'll just say somewhere in Eastern Europe, that's reached out to me and they're doing a little bit of work in that area that I'm going to try and help them with because I would love nothing more, regardless of authorship or anything.

I would very much like to just see that come to some sort of an end point because it's just a loose thread in the back of my mind that just always bothers me. Oh, we didn't get that done, we don't know what the answer is for this particular question.

But we did run an acute study. One of the acute studies did get finished and published and all that kind of stuff. And in that one we compared the EQI contractions equated on impulse with eccentric contractions. And for that we looked at muscle soreness at proximal, middle, and distal lateral and anterior quadricep, pennation angle, fascicle length, muscle thickness of the vastus lateralis at proximal, distal, and middle regions, as well as muscle thickness, which in this case is muscle swelling, right? There's not going to be any actual adaptation in terms of protein synthesis and actual muscle tissue in one session.

But muscle thickness or swelling, another measure is echo intensity, which also sort of represents swelling or perhaps muscle damage to some degree, which is, again, for people watching, we have to figure out what echo intensity actually means. We don't really know yet. We don't know what echo intensity means. We need to figure it out. Somebody's got to do like a Z-line damage streaming study and echo intensity correlational thing anyway.

And then also we looked at fatigue or loss of strength throughout the range of motion, both isometrically and concentrically. So basically the conclusions of that particular study were that eccentric contractions caused more muscle soreness, and I'm just trying to remember exactly, basically all the measures of muscle damage and fatigue were a little bit greater in the eccentric group than the EQI group.

So the conclusion of that, again hypothetically, because no training study has been done, is that the EQI group will allow the muscle to be exposed to an equal amount of impulse, right, equal amount of actual load, something that the body needs to adapt to some way, whether it's the nervous system or at the muscle or whatever, but with less swelling, with less soreness, with less acute fatigue than the eccentric condition.

Okay, so sort of the takeaway from that, assuming that that could be repeated and shown in different ways, is that an EQI contraction, doing a bout or two of a handful of bouts of EQI contractions on a few occasions would potentially result in better resistance to soreness, better resistance to fatigue when we get back to like actually doing supramaximal eccentrics or doing regular type training. So it's sort of like one extra step between doing submaximal isometrics, maybe EQIs, then normal training or maximal eccentrics or whatever else.

And there's a couple different proposed mechanisms for that. So there was a narrative review that we published in JSCR on EQIs. And one of the proposed mechanisms might be that by holding these really long contractions through that range of motion with the EQI and accumulating that sort of impulse is that we're going to, for a while, trap a little bit of calcium in the muscle.

And that's going to cause potentially an adaptation where the T-tubules are better at moving calcium in and out of the muscle. And that calcium sort of being trapped inside of a muscle fiber is part of what causes muscle damage, not just mechanical tension that's pulling the fascicle.

And if you have better calcium transport, then we might be able to reduce DOMS.

James de Lacey36:59

Nice. That one application I see of this instantly is, for example, Jiu-Jitsu or grapplers or even wrestlers jumping up, maybe have a dip belt on with 10, 20 kilos between their legs, holding the top of a chin-up position and then just holding for dear life until the arms go straight essentially.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk36:59

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I think that would be a great application to that, and I've used that with a couple of people where pulling strength and pulling power is important. And specifically for those grapplers, Jiu-Jitsu and some of these MMA type athletes, then that's actually one of the very few instances where not only are we going to get a relatively specific morphological response in terms of their biceps, their grip, their brachialis, their lats, actually getting a stimulus to grow or become stronger, but it's also at least kind of sport-specific, right?

It looks like a position on the mat where they're holding an opponent and not letting them go. So it kind of passes that sort of smell test as far as sport specificity goes for those kind of athletes as well.

James de Lacey38:08

How long's too long to be doing the eccentric quasi, because obviously if you did it body weight, you could probably hold that for quite a while, especially in that short muscle position.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk38:08

Yeah, well, if you have strong hands, then sure, which you would imagine grapplers would have. So at the Calgary Stampede we have every year, there's a hanging competition with the bar that's, so I gave it a go. I couldn't quite make it, but I'll train for it a little bit better next year.

But yeah, I think with the EQIs, we, at least for right now until more evidence comes out and more people try it with more people and we have more sort of both anecdotal and empirical evidence on it, I think it's probably best to treat it similar to other types of resistance training. And by that I mean that we probably still want to follow generally that continuum where you want to, if you're wanting to build muscle endurance, then you want to be able to hold for like over a minute.

If you want to build sort of closer to that max strength, then probably only going to want to be holding for 15 seconds. You just got to load accordingly essentially.

So I would think for a grappler or a fighter, and you can correct me on this because I don't know that much about fighting or mixed martial arts or anything of that nature, but they're in the grappling positions and they're on the mat for a good amount of time, but it's rarely over a minute before somebody kind of breaks away, makes a move, the timer runs out, they're saved by the bell or what have you.

So I would think anything longer than a minute is probably going to be a little bit too long. And probably by the time the minute's up, their grip strength is going to be more of an issue than it is like their back strength holding them up, especially if they're starting right up here where their chin is actually above the bar.

So you mitigate that by a couple things: one, starting closer to a longer muscle length for the lats and the biceps for that matter, and starting with more of a 90-degree elbow angle. So that's going to make things much harder without actually adding weight.

Or you could for sure add a dip belt or a weight vest or something like that. Off the top of my head, I would probably aim for somewhere around 30 to 45 seconds. But that might change again based on the individual and what fighting sport they're in and all that kind of stuff.

James de Lacey40:27

Well, what exercises have you used the eccentric quasi-isometrics with? Because I'm keen to, I'm just going to give this stuff a go with the pull-ups, because I haven't actually, I haven't actually done too much myself. I need to get into this. But is there any other exercises that you like to use?

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk40:59

Yep, so it's been a little while, but probably the one I used it on the most was a snatch grip deadlift from the podium or from stands. So the reason I use the stands and the snatch grip is just to increase the—oops, sorry about that.

James de Lacey41:23

No, you're good.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk41:23

Little spam call, probably. I don't know anyone from Bakersfield, California. So the snatch grip deadlift from the podium, in this case I would use straps for sure.

So I would do a deadlift, I would lower the bar directly to right around my knees, and then I would fight as hard as I could to hold it there as long as I possibly could.

James de Lacey41:56

Oh, nice. You have the podium you're standing on, so you end up in sort of this deep squat and you have this big hip flexion and all these types of things.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk41:56

So I've quite enjoyed that and I would do that solo one. I would do that myself. I don't do a lot of full Olympic lifts anymore, but I'll still do power snatches.

James de Lacey41:56

And I'm with you, I'm with you. I'll do a good session of muscle snatches and then—

I might do like three sets of five snatch pull with the shrug and the active ankle flexion and then you might end it with like maybe one or two sets of an EQI where you're standing up with a heavy weight. Like well how heavy? Like are we talking over like, are we talking?

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk42:23

Oh probably close to 140% or so.

James de Lacey42:23

Okay, okay. So you're like, you're packing plates on.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk42:23

Yeah, so I think my best ever snatch was 122 or something and when I'm doing that particular exercise I'm closer to 150, 160. And again I would take that with grain of salt if I'm a weightlifter because I'm not a weightlifter anymore.

So that's going to give you a good amount of fatigue, but if somebody's maybe a powerlifter and they're looking to strengthen up that portion of their deadlift or a general sport athlete, track and field athlete, even for martial arts, wrestling and grappling, like those positions you're often in anyway. So yeah I like that.

James de Lacey43:23

I really like that. Glutes, your quads, your lats, your lower back, all of that kind of stuff is just having to really fight to stay in this really nice solid position. So that's one I like.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk43:23

The other one that I think is interesting, has interesting application, is like a glute ham raise or a Nordic of some kind. So that one would be very difficult and you'd have to, I think a glute ham raise is probably a better way to go than just the straight Nordic from the floor because we all know that Nordic goes from easy, easy, easy to impossible for most people.

There's no point in a Nordic where they're like okay here's the right place to stop and do a quasi isometric. There are people but usually by the time people can do something like that with a Nordic they can probably already do a Nordic. So they would have to be very, very advanced.

But if you were doing a glute ham raise or potentially a hamstring curl then an EQI might be a really good idea. And that's because you can bias it towards the longer muscle lengths, especially in like a seated hamstring curl. That muscle is really long, all the hamstring heads.

And then there's also sort of the discussion or the idea that the reason why we get hamstring pulls is not because the muscles don't have enough eccentric strength but because they don't have enough isometric strength, specifically yielding isometric strength. So that lower limb starts to swing and our hamstrings are fatigued or weak or there's some sort of lack of neuromuscular control, whether again that's because there's already a minor injury that they haven't picked up on or they've just had too many sprints in a week or I'm not sure.

I'm not that well read up on the hamstring strain literature at the moment. But for some reason the hamstring is no longer able to hold the lower leg at the proper angle. The lower leg gets away from it just a little bit, hamstring gets outside of that sort of optimal length or the length that it should be for the sprint and we pull a hamstring, we tear it or we pop it or whatever.

James de Lacey45:37

That's why I tell fighters not to sprint for their damn conditioning because they're not runners.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk45:37

Sure yeah. And so the papers on that one are Bas Van Hooren and there's the other one, he's got the books and he's got the bar.

James de Lacey46:07

Yeah I remember that.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk46:07

So there's that stuff. And again I should have been reading it, but Van Hooren had a paper very recently, maybe 3 months ago, in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science and Sports looking at fascicle dynamics during a bunch of, I think it was three or four different resistance training movements and trying to relate that back to hamstring strains and trying to prevent them and all that kind of stuff.

James de Lacey46:41

Not that big on that muscle slack theory aren't they? I know at least Bosch and Van Hooren are big on the muscle slack, the idea that the muscle essentially hanging and then you got to preactivate it before doing something. That preactivation is what essentially gives you the optimal muscle length and protection et cetera, et cetera. So yeah it's interesting some of the stuff are coming out with.

Like yet to see it done I guess within the performance. Like I like the concepts but no one's going fully down that road and just using their concepts because sometimes they can get pretty farfetched with only doing concentrics, doing no counter movements, no eccentrics, and you're kind of like, you know.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk47:08

Well and I mean this is the issue with sports science research and exercise science research anyway. And I've fallen into this sort of trap as well and probably 99% of sports science researchers that anybody's ever heard of gets trapped into this realm of we need to publish this and we need to get it out there.

And if we could all take the effort of, we might have to sacrifice a certain amount of time and effort and number of papers and citations and things like that to put together these really robust training studies where we're actually taking a good group of athletes, giving them both very well-rounded strength and conditioning programs but with very subtle differences.

So like there's nothing right now where we have good sized group, good sized sample, two plus groups, they're both doing really good training in general, but then one group is doing pushing isometrics with their hamstring and one group is doing holding isometrics with their hamstring and we track that group for four years and we look at hamstring strains.

Like it's impossible, it's practically impossible and it's not anybody's fault, it's not any university. It's just it's almost impossible because you need to be able to track these people for a long time with really robust measures. And if I had $10 million I don't, I'm not sure I could accomplish something like that at least not on my own. And what researcher in sport science has $10 million?

James de Lacey48:55

Exactly, it's funny because there's not much money in it is there. There's people who, there's people who break ground like massive ground in cancer research and they have a hard time getting funding.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk48:55

So it's, hopefully it happens someday. There's some interesting organizations floating around nowadays but that's what really needs to happen with these isometrics, with really any sort of research in sport and exercise science and strength and conditioning. We need to get away from trying to just take people in, have untrained off the street and one group does deadlifts and one group does jumps and well which one jumps better at the end of the session and then which one does deadlifts better. Like we kind of know.

James de Lacey50:01

For sure. I want to take this back before we finish to your master's research, your loaded jumps and weightlifting derivatives. Without rehashing the whole should you do loaded jumps or not, what did you find there and I guess what are the applications of both in terms of loaded jumps?

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk50:01

Sure yeah. So that one was with the swim team that I was doing and this was actually kind of an example of where they had the same training program. They did the same number of reps and sets and relative loads in their squats and their chin-ups and their dumbbell presses and their pull-aparts and their ab work.

And then one group did loaded jump squats with, we used a trap bar for that and we loaded that to basically like the optimal power range that had been determined by I think it was Turner, somebody in Ireland had done it. So we loaded that and then we had the other group perform the hang high pull which was chosen instead of like a power clean just to ensure that everybody was using at least kind of good technique.

So two limitations there: it was only trap bar jumps and it was only hang high pull. And then also the hang high was loaded to optimal power so they're both loaded differently. So the trap bar jumps were going to be lighter than the high pull or were going to be. And we trained them, jeez I should be able to remember my own research, I want to say it was eight weeks, I want to say it was eight weeks, it might have been ten.

But it was probably eight weeks and the whole thing was ten because we had the pre-testing then the eight weeks then a week off and then post-testing. That's what I think it was.

And the findings there were that there were no statistically significant differences between the groups in terms of improvement. So both groups did have a statistically significant improvement in both jumping and isometric mid-thigh pull and some of the other measures that we did. But there was no statistical difference between the two.

That being said, the loaded jump group had a moderate effect size in their favor for squat jump peak power. So the conclusion of that or the practical application of that was that either one can be used, neither one is inferior to the other. Again, at least in that population and that sort of context. So if you feel really comfortable teaching the Olympic lifts, you've got bumper plates and bars and whatever else for a group that big, then awesome. If you don't feel comfortable teaching the Olympic lifts,

Maybe you're not a strength conditioning coach, maybe you're a father trying to help their kid perform better and there's no qualified S&C's around. It's a little bit less of a problem now because we have all the online coaches and online services, but back even when I was doing my Masters—that long ago, that was six, seven years ago—and six, seven years ago online coaching was a thing but it wasn't nearly what it is now. Now everyone's an online coach.

You work out, you start seeing a little vein in your forearm and you think you're going to do a great job so you go on Instagram. Yeah, so the conclusion from that one was, hey, you know what, it probably doesn't matter as long as you're moving weight fast.

James de Lacey53:05

That's a good conclusion. I like that. Just move weight fast.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk53:33

Jump with load, jump with various loads. If you want to do Olympic weightlifting, do various Olympic weightlifting movements or derivatives at various loads. Throw medicine balls at various loads and you're pretty well sorted.

So that was—I tried to be as nice as possible. Well, not even as nice. That was another one where social media takes over sometimes. I remember reading comments on Twitter or wherever, and it'd be something like, "Look at this stupid paper that says you shouldn't do Olympic weightlifting derivatives." Something like, "These authors have clearly never taught anybody how to do weightlifting derivatives before."

That's the classic argument, yeah. And I'm like, "Okay, I've competed in weightlifting, I've done fairly well, I love it." I still follow world weightlifting pretty closely. I have most of my athletes do some sort of weightlifting derivative at some point. So I was like, "I'm just pointing out, hey, if you don't feel comfortable doing weightlifting derivatives, then just do loaded jumps and it's fine. It's cool."

But I remember that was like, that was one of my first times I was ever like, "Oh, this whole social media thing is real. It's not just people complaining, it's a real thing."

James de Lacey55:07

Yeah, people get pretty dogmatic on their beliefs. And honestly, fortunately, at least from what I see and stuff, and probably too on whoever, but it usually comes out of American colleges. And I don't know what it is with American strength and conditioning culture. It's just like, it's just so different. It's so different here than anywhere else in the world.

I mean, it's very strength sport biased. I mean, strength conditioning in general is strength sport biased just because of where a lot of the information has come from throughout the years. And as research starts to stack up, it's slowly changing. But the strength sport bias here in the States, I think, is even bigger than anywhere else around the world.

And so obviously powerlifting, bodybuilding, a little bit weightlifting are seen as the Holy Grails of, you get better at these things, you get better at your sport because you're stronger, whatever. But obviously now we know you can't just go blindly follow a weightlifting or powerlifting program and then expect to do well in MMA, boxing, whatever it is. In the beginning, if you're brand new to strength training, yeah, I mean you can get away with a lot of things at that training age. But as you get further down, that kind of volume and training is just going to absolutely destroy you.

Yeah, so no, it'd be cool. And I mean, I definitely experienced that because I lived in the States for almost three years, so I've seen that, seen it firsthand just the way you say.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk56:33

And Canada, honestly, Canada is not that much different in that regard. It is a very different—strength conditioning in North America, Canada and the United States is substantially different than Australia or New Zealand from what I've seen. I've never actually been to Europe, so I can't really speak on that too much.

But my general perception is that Canada, United States are different from Europe in a similar way. Most of Europe, I think, from at least from what I've seen in my experience, pulls a lot from soccer. So a lot comes through from soccer, which has its own issues in itself with what comes through. But that's a completely different topic.

James de Lacey57:33

But if anyone's looking to follow what you're up to, just Dustin, and kind of maybe see what you're publishing and things you're sharing, where can they follow you?

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk57:33

Yeah, so I'm on Twitter. I don't post that much, so I'm going to try and do a little bit better. But that's Dustin Oranchuk, so I'm sure you'll see my name at the bottom of the video description. I'm also on Instagram, and I believe that's dustin_oranchuk_phd, although maybe I should just look real quick and make sure I'm not getting that wrong.

James de Lacey58:00

I'll throw it in the description too, so people can—

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk58:00

So it's dustin.oranchuk.phd. So those are the best places in terms of really fresh content if I put it out. And then I'm on ResearchGate, so basically every single thing that I publish, whether it's in preprint format or the final version, depending on what the journals allow, I put on ResearchGate almost immediately in one way, shape, or form. And if it's not there, then just send me a message and I'll be more than happy to send it your way.

We've got some cool things coming out.

James de Lacey58:20

Nice. Yeah, I can't wait for that.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk58:52

One of the cooler things was with rodeo athletes. Oh, that was a really big correlational thing. So we got 43, I believe, across bull riding, bull fighting, bareback riding, and saddle bronc riding. And we looked—dude, I didn't even know these things exist, like these different variations.

James de Lacey58:52

I know.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk58:52

Well, I'm from Alberta, which is one of the capitals of the world for these types of things, although Texas is—I should know Texas. But a really cool learning curve population I'd never done any work with before.

And so we had those people, we tested things like neck strength, groin strength, rotation power, jump height, all those things. And then had different levels, so there was a number of athletes that were competing internationally, number that were complete beginners, number that were sort of mid-ranked in Canada, some high-ranked. So we stratified them by sort of riding success and then did a whole big correlational and looked at, well, how do bull riders differ from bareback riders? Are they shorter, taller, bigger, smaller, stronger, weaker, etc.?

And then what physical qualities tended to relate best to whether they were competing internationally or whether they were kind of struggling on the national circuit or whatever? And basically it was what we might expect if you understand rodeo riding, and that's groin strength and rotation core strength.

James de Lacey59:57

Yeah, a very unique population.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk59:57

And currently doing a little bit of work with synchronized or artistic swimming girls, so a wide range of subjects. Very niche, very niche. And so we'll see what else comes out from that.

And I'm always working with people, including—it's coming out soonish, hopefully—something with Danny Lum and myself and some of his people looking at holding versus pushing isometrics for the first time ever, that it's not an acute study or on the same day, an actual intervention. So that one's quite interesting, although admittedly small sample size. But when that's out, I'll be quite happy about it because it's one of the first in that kind of regard.

James de Lacey1:00:31

Yeah, yeah. Let me know, because anyone who's on the Sweet Science of Fighting email list, once that gets out, I'll send that through with a little breakdown as well to anyone who subscribes. But thanks for coming on, Dustin. I really appreciate your time and you sharing some of your research.

Dr. Dustin Oranchuk1:01:07

Well, I appreciate it, to you as well. It was a good time, and I'm typically pretty happy to talk about research and science and strength and conditioning, so this was a nice way to do it.

James de Lacey1:01:07

Yeah, perfect.