How Your Neurotype Influences Your Training Program w/ Christian Thibaudeau (SSOF Ep 64)

Christian Thibaudeau1:20

And after, well, the problem is that I'm only a meter 73, so that's not really tall enough to be a football player. So when I entered college I decided to switch to Olympic weightlifting because, well, I was very suited for that sport. I was decent on the Olympic lifts when I was training for football, so I felt, well, might as well do it as my main sport. And eventually that led to also some strength work, some bodybuilding work, and eventually to strength coaching.

Because the fact that I was able to teach the Olympic lifts got me working with athletes in the first place, because I was in a very small Canadian town and very few people actually knew these lifts. And back then there was no real strength coaching. My original mentor was the only strength coach in the region, and he, right from the bat, I was 19 and he told me, well, you're going to train the guys in the gym, I'm going to do the programming. So I was 19 training 28-year-old professional hockey players. So that's how I just started.

James de Lacey3:06

No, that's... we do not the same path, but a similar path. I'm the same height as you, I got into Olympic weightlifting eventually as well. I think it somewhat suits our body types being relatively moderately tall or short, but yeah.

Christian Thibaudeau3:33

Oh, there we go, compact. I'll steal that one.

James de Lacey3:33

But I think what is really interesting is, for me at least, is your neurotyping system. And I listened to a lot of your stuff in the past, and one of your Just Fly podcast, you did this, must have been... I was working in professional rugby at the time, so it was probably five years ago. I think I can still remember that episode. It was really good. You touch on different things. We'll touch on some things in there.

But first, for the audience and myself, do maybe just define or touch on what neurotyping is, and we can go into some of the details.

Christian Thibaudeau3:59

Neurotyping probably comes from the fact that I come from a psychologist family. Both my parents were psychologists, and I've actually worked with my father, and I always understood the impact of personality on performance in sports, as well as performance in life.

I also understood from a very young age that if you're a coach, for example, and you're working with a team of several players, well, not all players... or if you're working with athletes of many different sports, not all sport players respond to your command the same way or to your approach the same way. And I felt that, you know what, most coaches basically stay the same even though the personality of the athletes they're working with vary widely.

So with one athlete, for example, your approach might really work well because it connects, it drives them, it hits all the emotional chords, if you want to call it that, that helps them be the best version of themselves. But with others, it actually had the complete opposite effect. And that's true for the way you give feedback, the way you teach, and I found that it's even true for the type of training you are applying to various people.

I right away saw and concluded that some people will do a lot better than others with abbreviated, very heavy training, whereas others will respond a lot better to a higher stimulus training program with a lot more volume. And some are naturally gifted or prefer eccentric work, and so on and so forth. And that was basically my driving point.

But the real reason I actually started to develop the neurotyping system was because I needed to understand my own flaws. I always saw myself as a deeply flawed individual: self-esteem issues, always seeking approval from others, which can actually be good because it drove me to excel in some fields, but it also puts a lot of pressure. I don't deal well with criticism, I don't deal well with disrespect.

I mean, I have a... nobody likes being disrespected, don't get me wrong, but I have this exaggerated response to lack of respect or perceived lack of respect. And I needed to understand why I was this way, why was I always worried about this things and that thing and stuff. I wanted to be the best version of myself, and I just started digging into a rabbit hole and found the connection between the neurotransmitter levels and personality profiles or personality traits.

And many of them are actually inherited or genetic, if you want to call it that. And I was reminded of when I was talking to my, looking at my son, even when he was two years old, he basically has the exact same personality as I do. So a lot of it is genetic. Of course, you always have learned behavior, but learned behavior will only make you vary within your own genetic predisposition.

James de Lacey7:08

Gotcha. So neurotyping then, at least the system, is predominantly the psychological aspects. Is there any physical parts of that, or I guess any physical traits that influence that system as well?

Christian Thibaudeau7:08

There is, because I found that there was some connections between the various neurotransmitters as well as muscle fiber typology, for example. And it makes sense, because if your brain is wired, for example, to be violent and explosive, then it makes sense that you would have the physiology to support what you're built for. That's one thing.

And you see some connections. For example, people who are naturally very explosive will have a higher acetylcholine level, because acetylcholine level, it potentiates the stretch reflex. That's one way that the neurotransmitter profile or personality can actually be connected with performance. Furthermore, acetylcholine being the neurotransmitter that plays the biggest role in neurological transmission, people with higher acetylcholine levels will learn much more easily, and more importantly, they are very good visual learners. They will just look at someone perform an exercise and they can actually almost feel it in their own body.

Now, people with high acetylcholine levels will be extremely fast learners when it comes to motor habits, motor patterns, skills. They get that very, very quickly. These are the people who might pick up golf and within a week they'll shoot 80, and we just hate these people. Why? Anything they try, they're instantly good at it. And they might switch. I mean, I was training an athlete who was national level in one sport, and within a year was national level in another sport. And that's just the kind of people that have high acetylcholine levels.

Now, some people will actually deal better with stress than others. Some people will need stress more than others. Some people are built for high effort, short effort, will tend to have a higher ratio of fast-twitch fibers, again, to support the mechanics they have. So there's not a perfect but a strong connection, correlation, between neurological... psychological, if you want to call it... I prefer to call it neurological. Psychological is more a behavior observation model, whereas...

Neurological is more looking at the biochemical structure of the brain creating those behaviors. But yeah, there's a pretty strong connection between all of that. And again, as far as raw physiological research, we found gradually more and more clues that genetic component that is in your DNA will impact your personality.

For example, some people will be born with a fast version of the COMT enzyme. They call it catechol-O-methyltransferase, the enzyme that breaks down adrenaline or dopamine when it's released, the two neurotransmitters that amps you up. So people who break it down really fast, they will be extremely good under stress because as soon as adrenaline goes up, well it can come back down at any time, right?

Whereas some people will have really bad or slow COMT enzyme. Then the problem is, once they release adrenaline and dopamine, it stays with them for a long time. They will get into a small traffic incident, right, and it will piss them off the whole day. Now these people might, when the situation gets stressful, they might crumble under pressure because they get over-amped up, they get tight, they over-think, they overreact.

So knowing someone's personality profile can actually help you as a coach to put the person in the better situation for them or change your interactions. I mean, if you take someone with high acetylcholine level who is a very good visual learner and you give them 10,000 coaching cues, it will just bore their brain out of their mind and they will actually have a reverse effect on learning. They will get worse because now they become overthinkers.

But if you have someone who is a naturally anxious person, someone who is an over-worrier, so typically that's someone with very high adrenaline level, very low serotonin, very low GABA, he's always amped up, okay? The brain is always firing on all cylinders, which creates anxiety because anxiety is nothing more than your neurons firing too fast for you to control your brain and it gets out of control. That's all that anxiety is.

A panic attack is your brain going so fast that you lose control of your thought processes and your thought processes create stories, create emotions that aren't there, right? So those people who are more anxious, they actually need those 10,000 cues because they need to know in every little single detail the task to do. Otherwise they are overwhelmed with anxiety and they just can't perform optimally.

James de Lacey12:36

Do you find that the top of the top elite athletes are maybe higher in the acetylcholine, I guess, just because they learn faster? So they're the ones that just pick everything up, they're the ones the best at the sport?

Christian Thibaudeau12:36

Absolutely. I mean, you will always have grinders who have lower motor skills, who are not natural athletes, and who got there through sheer work and will, right, resiliency. I mean, you will have these guys, but they are few and far between.

I'm not belittling the importance of hard work. I mean, hard work and the competitive spirit is paramount to elite athletics. But people who need to compensate a lack of motor skill or lack of motor learning capacity with simply doing more work to get there, well, it's rare. Because when you think about it, if you need to do five, six times the amount of work as somebody else to get to the same level, well you're going to burn yourself out pretty quickly.

And because of that, it's almost unsustainable, and they get more injured. Because once you are neurologically fatigued from all that effort, then quality of movement suffer and you put yourself at risk of injuries. So there will always be grinders, but they are much rarer than the natural athletes when you look at elite level sports.

That's why when you look at the profile of elite athletes, it tends to be narrower than when you work with lower level athletes because of simply a selection process that only the top ones make it to the top.

James de Lacey14:05

No, I'm with you there. I've worked with a few of the people at the top level, and I mean, yeah, I've talked about this many times in the podcast too. They can be so [expletive] in the gym—no, you're good, they're good. They can be so bad in the gym, not strong, nothing, but then on the field or whatever they're doing they crush everyone. And they're stronger than everyone on the field in their sport. And it's, yeah, that's the difference between that gym strength versus actually being good at the sport and being strong in the sport.

Before getting back to the podcast, I want to let you know there's a link down in the description for the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground Community. You can get all the help you need for your combat sports training. You get every single Sweet Science of Fighting training program, online course, and you get access to a range of coaches within the private Discord community. So go check that out. And back to the podcast.

Christian Thibaudeau14:52

Yeah, exactly. You always have some positions in some sport where you can have one physical trait that allows you to dominate, even though you're not the most skilled person, okay? For example, in American football, if you are a defensive lineman or fullback, if you are stronger than everybody else, even if you have a low skill, you can probably dominate at least to some degree, right? But that is the exception and that's really sport-specific.

James de Lacey15:26

Do you want to maybe dive into some of the neurotype things? I know you got different types based on your test. You want me to dive into some of those? And a lot of the audience are, I guess, fighters themselves or athletes themselves, so they might see themselves in certain categories. I know I think you got a free test on your site too for people to see.

Christian Thibaudeau15:26

Yeah, if you go on T-Nation.com, you can actually download a free source that explains all the neurotypes. And obviously, it's weird that you mention that, because when I give conferences or seminars, I actually get more questions regarding relationships or jobs than I do about training athletes. Because, well, it's personality profiling. So I apply it to sports, but the same applies to any aspect of your life. And basically, it's just understanding how your body works, right?

So if you look at the—we have three big categories of types, and each category has two subtypes. So the three categories will be the Type 1, the Type 2, and the Type 3. The Type 1 will be someone who has a high dopamine response. So either they are very sensitive to dopamine, like the Type 1B, or they keep their dopamine for very long when they release it, the Type 1A. I'm going to get back to these types in a moment, just keeping the broad strokes here.

The Type 2 would be more dominant on adrenaline. Basically, they morph into a different personality when adrenaline is on or off. So I'm going to use myself as an example. When I'm under a low adrenaline state, so I'm relaxed, I'm shy, I'm introverted, I lack confidence, I have problem with speech. You name it, I'm really the typical introvert. But as soon as adrenaline kicks in, I morph into an alpha version of myself. I become extremely extroverted, very verbal, my thinking process speed up quite a bit. So basically, it's between Dr. Banner and the Incredible Hulk—that would be the comparison for the Type 2, okay?

And the Type 3 would be the more analytic personalities. They are the over-thinkers. They are those who might have chronic anxiety. They are people who like routine, they like repetitiveness because they constantly have high adrenaline and the neurotransmitter responsible for calming the brain down are very low. So they are always in that heightened state. And the reaction to that, at least for them, is to be over-thinkers. They have this inside stress, and the only way to fight that is to reveal nothing about themselves, only do what they know will work. They don't take chances, they don't like variations.

So if you look at the types, okay, and the Type 1s, which tend to dominate the field of athletics at the highest level, you have the Type 1A and the Type 1B. The Type 1A, if I could use one personality to describe a Type 1A—and just by using that, nobody will want to be a Type 1A, but I think it really shows exactly what it is—it would be Donald Trump.

Extremely extroverted, needs to be the leader, needs to dominate every situation, needs to be the center of attention, is willing to do absolutely anything to win. So these are normally extraordinarily competitive, extremely hard-working individuals. They treat absolutely everything like a contest. They not only are they good under pressure, they actually seek conflict.

I was—it's funny because I was watching Arnold Schwarzenegger's documentary and he said that never let a good crisis go to waste. That's so Type 1A. It's the perfect sentence. Conor McGregor, Michael Jordan, all of them refer to the same thing, right?

James de Lacey19:11

These would be two extremely good examples.

Christian Thibaudeau19:11

Never let a good conflict go to waste, meaning that if there is no conflict, they might create it because they thrive in that situation. And nothing is worse than a Type 1A in a peaceful and stable environment. Their brain gets bored out of their mind, okay? So that would be the typical personality of the 1A.

The 1B is also extremely competitive, but because of a higher level of serotonin and a higher level of GABA than the Type 1A, which can act as a brake to all that—

Competitiveness—they can turn it on and off pretty easily. So they are extremely competitive, they need to win, but they don't have the need to crush other people. They don't need to cheat, they will not do everything possible to win, just what they feel is just and fair.

The best natural athletes would be the 1Bs—those who have the highest motor skill levels, those who acquire skills very easily because they have very high acetylcholine but also very high serotonin levels. Now I know that if you don't know biochemistry that doesn't tell you anything, but as I mentioned about acetylcholine, it's the neurotransmitter of motor learning and also explosiveness.

But also serotonin—serotonin is a neurotransmitter that I would like to call it the adjustment neurotransmitter. Serotonin allows you to adapt your neurological activation state. Are you amped up or you calm down or in between, and adapt it optimally to the situation you're in? So basically it allows you to fit neurologically in the situation you're in.

So if the situation is stressful, it will allow your brain to get sped up and activated, but not so much that you get panicked. And if you need to relax yourself, it will also allow you to relax. So these people are very good at going from one thing to the other. They adapt very quickly to changes in situations.

They are not upset when, "Okay, I was supposed to do this today, but let's do this instead." They actually love that. They love variation, they need variation, because acetylcholine and serotonin are the two neurotransmitters that need to be high to be good at facing new situations without stress.

Okay, the type twos are more—I wouldn't say they're not competitive, but the driving force of the type 1A is winning. That's the driving force: the competitiveness. The type two, the driving force is being respected, which is different. I mean, winning will get me respected, but in many cases just being good enough—like to get third—is good enough to be respected. See what I mean?

So the type twos, oftentimes—if you play a sport, they won't tell you that, but subconsciously, the type 2A, the type 2B, the best spot to be on the podium for them is second. Because it's good enough to get them respect, but the number one will not be pissed. So if he's number one, the number two is always pissed at number one. See what I mean? So now he's good enough to be respected, but also nobody will hate him. Everybody hates the first.

So basically, the driving force is they need to feel that other people respect them, like them. So because of that, if you look at the type two, the type 2As are the morphers, the social chameleons. They will adapt their personality to the person they're with, which sometimes makes them seem sleazy, because they—it's not like they don't have any personality of their own—they will often modify their opinion based on the people they're talking with.

Like, they're often pretty good at arguing both sides. So depending on what they feel will get them the most respect or admiration or likeness, or that the person in front of them will like them more, they will use that opinion. They will become that opinion. See what I mean?

So it's kind of hard to pinpoint their exact personality because they can change very quickly, because their strategy is, "I'm going to change into something that I think that this person will like." So one of their best strategies for that is that they are extremely good from very early on at reading body language. That's why 2As actually oftentimes make very good coaches, because they can very easily read the body language of the people they're working with, and they have the capacity to change their personality to suit what they've seen.

And the reason for that is the type 2A naturally have very low self-esteem. So they need to feel respected, admired, loved, whatever. But because of that, that low self-esteem, they don't trust people who give them compliments. Compliments always seem funny to them, because, well, if you believe—for example, let's say that someone tells you that you're so good-looking and in your mind you're ugly as [expletive]—there's no way you're gonna believe that tells you that you're good-looking.

The only way for them to know if someone likes them or not is to be able to read body language. So from a very, very early age they develop that skill naturally. So that's pretty much what they are. They are often—I would say modelizers. They will have this one person at the moment who they idolize or they model themselves upon, and they will copy that person.

A funny story: I was, few years back, I was trying to get back into weightlifting, and at the moment Klokov was very popular among CrossFit athletes. So I said, "Well, I want to be Klokov." I mean, he's jacked and strong. And, weird—I mean, I bought all the Klokov clothes. I had the Russia winter shirt, I bought his bar, I bought his program, I was walking like Klokov in the gym. And that's not on purpose—I was actually doing that.

When I was first training for Olympic weightlifting, I actually had some white T-shirts and I printed "Bulgaria" in the back because I was the Bulgarian strength. So the type 2As are like that. They will look at, "Oh, this is a great coach or this is a great athlete. I'm going to train like it." And just the fact that you're training like someone you idolize will boost your own self-esteem and boost your own motivation.

So the best way for these guys to perform is to find a good mentor. And you, as a coach, is to act like that. For example, I started coaching high school football again—not just for strength training but actually coaching football—and I have this one player who is the exact, like, the prototypical 2A. Extremely low self-esteem, but he kills it in the weight room because he feels, "Well, if I'm stronger, it's going to earn the respect of the team."

And every week he comes up with, "I've seen this video of Vita Vea's move. Can we practice this in training?" And every week or every day would be a different video from a different player. So with that guy, you need to become a mentor to that guy. So you basically—you make him feel like you're putting special attention to him, and not that you encourage him in looking at his videos, but you steer it in the right direction.

And type 2Bs will be your overly emotional people. Again, there are subtypes, but I'm just going with the broad types because it's really complex as it is—it's like a 12-hour seminar. But the 2Bs, the best way to describe them is emotional. Emotions. They are driven by the need to be loved. That's different than being respected. They need to be loved as a person.

So the type 2B, they want someone to like the person they are, whereas a type 2A, they want the people to respect what they are. So that's a different strategy. The type 2B strategy will be to act as a confidant, act as someone who always is there for everybody. He will be everybody's best friend. He's the over-carer. See what I mean? And that's because he has very, very, very high glutamate level.

High glutamate level—glutamate is, well, first, glutamate, if you look at the textbook, it's mostly a memory neurotransmitter. But the reason for that is because it's an emotional amplifier. The more glutamate you have, the stronger your emotions are.

So what happens is that if you have a very positive emotion, it's becoming like the best day of your life. But if you have a very slightly negative emotion, it becomes, "I'm going to kill myself." Okay, I'm exaggerating. But they are extremely emotional and have very large mood swings because of that. And that's because, again, the glutamate is an emotional amplifier.

And the way it works on memory is that, well, the way the memory works—memory is selective. It's impossible to store in your brain every single little thing that happens every day. That's just way too much information. There must be a selection process. And one of the keys that the body uses, or the brain uses, to know which memories will occupy the biggest place in your brain—which is stored with more accuracy and more details—would be the emotional state you're in when that happens to you.

And that's a survival mechanism, because, for example, if you had a situation and you had a very, very strong fear, then it's going to be imprinted in your brain so that you avoid that situation in the future, or that you also ingrain the way you got out of that situation. Make sense? And similarly, if you have a very positive emotion, well, it's going to be imprinted in your brain because you will try to get to that again. So that's the way the brain works, and that's why glutamate is a memory neurotransmitter. But at the core of its function, it's an emotional amplifier.

If you look at the type—if we go back to the type 1A, like the Donald Trump I mentioned earlier, or the Conor McGregor, or the Michael Jordan—Michael Jordan being a great example of that—

I mean, that's one guy who I don't want to say he wasn't skilled, okay, but there are many, many players who had more skill or natural talent than Michael Jordan. I mean, he missed a lot of shots. He wasn't the best, but he was a... he outworked everybody. And that's one of the examples of a grinder who could actually become the top just by outworking everybody and just through sheer willpower.

But a Type 1A, they have very, very, very low glutamate level, so that's why the emotions are very stable. That's why also they have no empathy. I mean, you look at Jordan, the way he talked about his teammates not working hard enough and getting on their back—that's someone who doesn't have empathy. Everybody... if I'm working here, everybody needs to be working there—not understanding that not everybody is the same. But that's a Type 1A.

The Type 1A cannot change their personality. Type 1A is not empathetic. He doesn't understand other people's emotions. He cannot put himself into other people's places. But if you look at the 2Bs—2Bs will have a fairly high level of acetylcholine and also very high level of glutamate, which makes them extraordinarily empathetic. Because empathy is, first, feeling what the other person feels.

So you can have intellectual empathy, meaning that you understand that this person is sad, so I'm going to change my behavior. That's one thing. I have that. People who read body language have that. But that's not empathy. True empathy is: I see that you're sad, it actually makes me sad, and I can't control it. I just develop the same emotion.

Because there's a thing—and sorry, I'm going off course about training—

James de Lacey31:41

No, you're good.

Christian Thibaudeau31:41

We have something in your brain called the mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are there for motor learning, the visual learning. They discovered mirror neurons when they were doing studies on monkeys. They put an electrode on the brain of a monkey. He was eating a banana, and a certain region of the brain would light up. Then he would give the banana away. A different region of the brain would light up. He would grab something—a different part.

So basically they did the study just to see which part of the brain would light up depending on the actions. And then in the second study, they put a second monkey in front, also with electrodes, and he was just observing the first one. And they noticed that the same zone would light up in the observer monkey as the doer monkey, plus another small zone, which was the mirror neuron zone.

The mirror neurons basically tell other neurons to activate based on what you're seeing. And that's the root of visual learning. Acetylcholine potentiates those mirror neurons. So, for example, I have a pretty high level of acetylcholine. So when I'm looking at someone do, let's say, a lat pulldown, I can actually feel my own lats contracting, or at least tension.

So acetylcholine would be the first thing: I'm looking at your body language, and my brain can actually light up the same zone of the brain that would light up if I had that position. If someone is like this, my brain knows that if I'm like this, I'm sad, and this region of my brain—the one that creates sadness—would light up. So if I'm seeing someone like this, the same zone would light up in my brain.

And then glutamate will amplify the emotions. So the more glutamate I have, the stronger the feeling gets, and the more I actually feel the person's emotion. That's true empathy. And that would be the Type 2Bs. So they take everything personal. They tend to gravitate more toward jobs like nursing, like psychology, like where you help people—but not doctors. Doctors are typically in the Type 1 situation. They are extremely competitive by nature. That's because of the way medical school is built.

And then the Type 3s will be your chronic overthinkers, people who overanalyze everything. I mean, the extreme case of Type 3 personality would be OCD behavior. I mean, Georges St-Pierre is like that. I mean, Georges St-Pierre will always, for example, when he's on the road, he said, "I'm going to hold my breath until the light turns red," or whatever. He always does those things. He always does things the same way. But he is extremely structured.

So you can actually become a great athlete if you're a Type 3, but you need to set up routines. You need to set up fixed behavior, fixed schedules. These are the athletes who will be good only if they know exactly what can happen, what will happen, and how I react when this happens.

I'm going to give an example. We had a goaltender in hockey in Canada who was a great goaltender, but once they changed the defensive pairings in front of him, he became a completely different player—not because the defensemen, even if the defensive players were just as good, but they played a different style. They were not in the... they didn't react to the puck position the same way.

So he couldn't, like, in his brain he had created: "If this happens, I do that." But that was changed. So it took him a long time to readapt, and it created anxiety, which led to drinking problems to fight the anxiety.

But these are the overthinkers. Someone who, for example, I will teach them a squat for like 20 minutes, going through everything from wrist position to feet position, and after that they still have 10 questions. And they will have 10 follow-up questions to the 10 questions. And then, once I explain everything, they will come back next week: "But I saw a video of Chris Duffin doing something different on the squat." It's not because he's doubting my capacity as a coach—it's because they need to have all the humanly possible knowledge about the squat to feel comfortable. Otherwise it just creates more anxiety, more anxiety, which creates more tightness, which impacts movement.

Because that's one thing: choking is misunderstood in sports. Choking, nine times out of 10, is more an issue of over-excitation of the brain rather than the brain calming down. What happens is we have the reverse U-curve, the inverted U-curve of performance. So basically, if you're at the bottom, your brain is firing very slowly. I'm not amped up, I'm not activated, so my performance is low. As I amp my brain up, my performance capacity increases until I reach my apex. Then if I keep activating further more, it doesn't increase—it starts to decrease. And here would be the choking zone.

The reason you're choking is that, let's look at, for example, muscle strength and muscle tension and muscle tone. The more adrenaline you have, the more amped up your brain is, the harder your muscle is—the muscle tone increases. But that allows you to be more reactive. It allows you to be stronger. It allows you to be faster. So that will improve performance as you amp your brain up.

But if you over-amp it, what will happen is that an increase in muscle tone becomes a tight muscle. A higher strength production becomes impossible to control your strength output. So basically you will lose movement precision because your range of motion will be cut short. And that especially happens in the flexor muscles. Flexors, hamstrings, pec minor, traps—these are the muscles that get tight under tension.

When I give a seminar, my traps feel like I've just done like 20 sets of shrugs, and my hip flexors are so tight I couldn't drop into a bodyweight squat—even though normally, even just standing out of bed, I could front squat like 400, okay? Because I'm a natural squatter. That's what that does.

But imagine if you're an athlete—you create the over-activation that makes your hip flexors tight. That's going to affect your running, not just your stride length, but your stride mechanics. And you loop your feet around to compensate for the lack of extension. So that was one of the reasons for choking. If you're a weightlifter, for example, getting tight flexors and tight traps, you can't finish the pull. So you pull forward. That would just be one example.

Then on a brain level, if you amp your brain up, you're thinking faster, you're more competitive, you're more driven. But if you over-amp it up, now you are overthinking and you are reacting too fast. So now you're making bad decisions. So that's what leads to choking under pressure: someone who is not capable of controlling their excitation levels. And that would be a function of either GABA or serotonin.

James de Lacey39:36

Nice. And seeing a lot of these different types as well, I can relate to completely. I think I'm a 2A as well, based on what you're saying. Even my Instagram, my fitness power account, my username is "Kobe." So I think we followed the same route there, trying to model Kobe with that.

But can you be a blend of different types? I'm thinking now my wife—she's a professional weightlifter, Commonwealth medalist in Olympic weightlifting, CrossFit, all sorts of achievements. She would be a 1B because of that, but she'd also be a 2B. She's a sport psychologist, a whole lot of empathy. But she'd also be in the Type 3 category because of anxiety and things like that. So do you have people cross the whole picture?

Christian Thibaudeau40:08

That's a typical 2A. The way the 2A is, it's literally a blend of everything. They have the neurological capacity to be any type. Some will change their type depending on the intensity of the situation.

Like me: when I'm presenting, I'm a 1A or 1B. When I'm under stress, I'm actually becoming more of a Type...

But it also can be just because your brain learned that to be good in that part of my life I need to be that personality, to be good in that part of my life I need to be good in that person. Then again, a type three is not about profile or an unusual profile for a weightlifter. The difference between weightlifting and, in fact, weightlifting of all the strength sports is the best for type three because it's about precision, it's about proper body mechanics.

It's not, well, yes, it's about load because your goal is to lift more weight, but technique is the way you do that. I mean, a very good technical lifter with decent strength will outlift a very strong lifter with poor technique.

So type threes are masters technician. They will be very patient in developing technique, whereas a type 1A, you just can't wait to add weight to the bar. They oftentimes will be very strong, like Bulgarians, but the technique just is not there. It's not as efficient as like the Chinese, for example. I mean, lots of Chinese lifters would be type three.

But that's a weird thing though, and that actually brought in the importance of the way you were brought up, because it can also play a role. If I remember, I was at a client, was a weightlifter, and after the test he scored the same in the 1B category and in the type three category. Both were very high, and that's very unusual because these are basically polar opposite types.

But he was a Chinese lifter who was brought up in a traditional Chinese family where, I mean, again, that's no disrespect to the nation or anything, but they are extremely controlling. It's very hierarchy-based. You don't speak out of order, so you basically ingrain yourself into being a type three even if you're born a type 1B, see what I mean.

We see that a lot also in former militaries because military, it's a type three thing. Yeah, you have the gung-ho people who jump out of parachutes and shoot at people, but at its core the military is about respecting orders, always folding your bed the right way, always eating the same thing at the same time, doing always the same regimented practices and stuff like that. So that's more suited for a type three.

So that's something that can actually morph your profile and you take habits from that profile. So that could be possible, but typically when you see high traits of 2B, three, and 2A, that would probably indicate a type 2A with high glutamate.

James de Lacey43:47

Gotcha. Did you know you can represent Sweet Science of Fighting while you're training? We're more than just a membership, we also have rash guards and shorts. If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see that we have the Sweet Science of Fighting 2.0 shorts, and we also have the Sweet Science of Fighting short and long sleeve rash guard. There's another design coming soon, but you can get those on XMmartial.com and you can go down the description, you can find that, and back to the podcast.

Christian Thibaudeau44:16

Gotcha. Okay, so I want to try— oh no, you go, you go.

James de Lacey44:16

You probably will find that anxiety will be highly dependent on her fatigue level. The more fatigued they are, more serotonin comes down, so it's much harder to bring down adrenaline, and they become, the brain becomes more reactive because the neurotransmitter that can amp the brain up are dopamine, adrenaline, and glutamate.

Christian Thibaudeau44:48

So someone who's very empathetic, okay, will have high glutamate, and that high glutamate also amps your brain up, which can also create anxiety. Like the type three will have high glutamate and also high adrenaline. And the reason why they are, it's weird because type threes are typically fairly empathetic, okay. But also because they want to avoid conflict, they seek to understand how people are feeling to avoid those conflicts.

But they don't externalize it because for them, taking other people's emotion and talking about them and making— because being empathic, you need to share your emotions too. Type threes will be more protective about their emotions because they see that as a potential way of making themselves weaker and exposing themselves to a more stressful situation.

But biomechanically, biochemically, yeah, type 2A, if they have high glutamate, 100% will have traits of a type three.

James de Lacey45:56

Nice. And I want— I bring this— yep, now carry on.

Christian Thibaudeau45:56

I was the type— the type two, I only talk about the main types, but there are subtypes of the 2A, for example. And the 2A actor is very, very close to the 1B. Very close. So they have acetylcholine, but just a bit lower than the type 1B. They have adrenaline sensitivity, but they also have high glutamate, so they can— the difference between me, I'm a type 2A, the passionate type 2A passionate is I don't control my changing behavior.

It depends on my emotional state, whereas a type 2A actor can change their behavior. They can create personalities and pick the one they want to be depending on the situation they're in. And the type 2A actor is very close to a type one.

James de Lacey46:32

Gotcha. So I want to try to bring this as practical as possible for a lot of the fighters listening. If they identify as one of these neurotypes, maybe they go through your document, I'll link that in the description too— does that influence the way they should train or can train? Are there changes in training that you make based on the neurotype?

Christian Thibaudeau47:04

Yes and no. Meaning that the stimulus to train or the way you need to train would still be influenced by the need of your sport if you're an athlete. If you are a sprinter and you are type 2B, you're not going to train like a bodybuilder, even though that's a type of training that type 2Bs will respond to. So there's a difference between the type of training that will be the easiest and most natural and more satisfying for your neurotype and the type of training you should be doing for your sport and for yourself.

Ideally, you'd find a way to at least make it close to what your body needs and your brain needs while still being applicable to your sport.

But if you just look at the broad strokes, the type one, both 1A and 1B, would be normally more aimed at the training load, meaning the main driving force will be gradually increasing the weight. They need to see that they're getting stronger and better with their training, so that typically makes them better suited for higher intensity trainings. If we're talking about strength, that would be more, that would be their natural setup.

The main difference is that type 1B can tolerate a bit more volume. They can do more variation because they have high choline, so they are capable of quickly adapting to a new exercise. They also have very good capacity to transfer the gains from one exercise to another. Like they will increase their front squat even if they have been back squatting for two months. The back squat will go up. So a type 1A, if they improve their front squat but don't train the front squat, the back squat will go down. So they don't have that capacity to transfer motor skills.

So the type 1A would be a lot more, like if we look at weightlifting, it would be more— I don't want to say Bulgarian model— but Bulgarian model with smarter intensity programming, like very small exercise selection. Whereas the type 1B would be more Russian model, Russian or Chinese model, with lots of variation, lots of assistance exercises, because they can actually benefit from assistance exercise a lot more, the type 1A.

Then if we look at training in general for performance, the type 1A will be better suited for raw strength, heavy, heavy work, heavy partial stuff like that. Whereas a type 1B will tend to use acceleration, the stretch reflex a lot more. So doing like slow eccentric won't work well for them. Doing like pause lifting is not going to be in their wheelhouse, but they will be very good at using the stretch reflex. So we're going to use more accelerative movement.

If even if I'm using like slow eccentric with type 1B, I will allow them to speed up in the last quarter of range of motion to still get a stretch reflex. Otherwise, their performance drop is just too large. Like a type 1A, if they go from a regular squat to a slow eccentric squat, they might drop like 5%, whereas type 1B will lose 30%.

And if we look at more of a bodybuilding approach, the type 1A would be like typical, like Dorian Yates style, Mike Mentzer style, progressive overload or DC training. I'm just add more weight to the log book, beat the log book. If they were looking at a powerlifting program, the best example of a pure 1A program would be the 531 by Jim Wendler— as 1A as one can be.

It's funny because like Dave Tate, if you knew Dave Tate, Dave Tate is a 1B. Like he's very explosive lifter and he responds well to variation. He needs variation. And that's why, for example, some people, they will try the Westside system for strength and they will get massively better on their totals, and other people they won't, it won't move. Because the Westside system doesn't train the squat, bench, and deadlift heavy. They train variations of the squat, bench, and deadlift heavy. So if you don't have the capacity to naturally transfer the gains to the competitive movements, then you won't perform.

Also, the type 1B will naturally get a lot more transfer from the weight room to the field than the type 1A because of the — so for, I like to use a transfer phase where I use complexes. For example, I might do a strength movement or power movement along with a sport skill or a controlled sport skill like a sprint, like a jump, or like a kick or something like that, whatever.

And the transfer phase for the 1A would be a lot longer. The type 1B might not even need a transfer phase because they transfer so fast. So that would be like a broad stroke thing.

The type 2A, everything works. The worst thing for type 2A is to stick to the same program for a long time. I mean, one of the most excruciating experiences I had was when I did Sheiko program — Sheiko program on powerlifting, which was basically squat, bench, lift pretty much almost every day and stupid volume. That's the thing though, I tried it when I was 45, so it wasn't really good for my joints. But there's very little variation, see what I mean?

So after like three weeks it gets boring. Same thing for me, like 5-3-1, after three weeks it gets boring. So I need variation, I need to experiment things, I need to throw something in my training. So that's the main thing with the type 2As: if you stick to the exact same approach for a long time, they will gradually lose performance because their motivation goes down and subconsciously they just don't train as hard.

The type 2As, they can actually do anything as long as for short training blocks. That's why for type 2A I love block periodization or concentrated loading. So for an athlete who was a type 2A, I'll have like three weeks of pure strength work, three weeks of pure power work, three weeks of pure speed work, and just rotate through that like a typical Issurin periodization. That works very well.

But also, as I mentioned, if they found a model that they respect and admire, they can stick to that program for a lot longer because they admire that person. Also, for the type 2Bs, typically they will be best set up for high-rep training, so they would typically be more attracted to like higher volume bodybuilding work and they can tolerate that very well.

They need physiological feedback that they're doing a good job because they are extremely emotionally driven. So if they don't feel an exercise in a target muscle, it actually kills their motivation because it tells them, "I'm not being good, I don't — I'm not doing this exercise properly, I'm not good, I'm [expletive], I'm crap," and it just piles on from there, just snowballs from there. So they need to feel that muscle.

Technically, the way you feel the muscle doesn't matter that much for strength or hypertrophy, but for them it does simply because it makes them more motivated. For them, if you're coaching them in a gym and they say, "Well, should I be feeling it in my quads?" during a lat pulldown, then you probably should change the exercise unless you have a very good method that will allow them to feel the exercise.

So because of that, they respond well to slower tempo, slower eccentrics, pause lifting, squeezing the contraction, supersets, drop sets, anything that creates that burning sensation. And when it comes to cardio, for example, well they will be the ones who love doing those intervals in a pool of sweat because that's feedback that I'm doing a good job.

If you compare that to the type 1B, the type 1Bs are very bad with lactic acid. I mean, if they have one flaw, it's the bad tolerance for lactic acid, and that's because a very high ratio of fast-twitch fibers mostly.

If you look at the type 3, they can train pretty much any type, but it's like they don't train well when going to failure. Because that will lead to sets that don't feel fully controlled, there might be some technical breakdown, they might feel like they're not controlling the weight anymore, and that kills their motivation. So they're more of a strength-skill approach, so they need to have each rep be done perfectly.

So failure for them is not a really good method as far as building muscle, even though physiologically it makes more sense. Closeness to failure does build more hypertrophy, but if it's creating more anxiety and kills your motivation, the point is that you will just not be training as hard anymore.

So, for example, I mean if I'm looking at strength, for example, the best model I can think of for them — because they're extraordinarily patient — would be Doug Hepburn's progression model, which I could never do. Even if you gave me 10 million, I would not do it. Okay, well, maybe for 10 million, but... And for those who don't know what the Doug Hepburn progression is, is that you have to do eight sets of three reps on an exercise with the same weight, then five sets of five on the same exercise with the same weight.

But even if you only do the first part, let's say eight sets of three reps with the same weight, the way it works is the first week you do one set of three reps, and then you do seven sets of two reps. Okay? The next session you add one total rep, so now you have two sets of three reps and six sets of two reps.

And the next workout you add one rep, so now it's three sets of three and five sets of two, see? That it will literally take you, what, like one, two... six is eight, nine weeks to add 10 pounds to the bar.

It's going to work. I mean, stick with it, you will increase your squat by something like, like 20 kilos, 30 kilos over the year, but I mean I would shoot myself before I made any gains. But the type 3 do that perfectly fine because they're extremely patient and they are more motivated by mastering a movement than adding weight to the bar. They're patient, it's not a problem. So that would be an example.

We talked earlier about weightlifting being a good approach for them because they love the technical mastery. It's weird because the typical type 3, okay — not hybrid, like a typical type 3 — would be a marathon runner. Okay? I mean, that's the mindset you need to have to be running three hours straight. I mean, you need to be patient, you need to not be bored to death.

Like my wife, being a type 1B, is the complete opposite type. She's actually in very good cardiovascular condition. She yesterday did this crazy CrossFit workout that literally I could not do the first exercise. Okay? So she's in good cardiovascular condition, but if you tell her to jog 800 meters, she will kill you. Okay? Because of type 1B, that's excruciating, just mentally.

But the type 3 is a natural marathon runner. That's — and imagine the body type you have in front of you, that will be the typical type 3. So tighter posture, stuff like that. So the first thing a coach would think, "Well, I'm going to put that person on machines because they're not built for lifting." And that's the number one mistake because what motivates them is learning, mastering.

So yeah, they might be more nervous or anxious about putting a bar on their shoulders and squatting, but they will stay motivated until they master that movement. Whereas a leg press, I mean, you've mastered it in a week. Now you need to rely on increasing intensity or increasing load, which is not their driving force, so that doesn't necessarily fit their profile.

A good progression model for a type 3 is what I call the fixed-weight progression model, and the Doug Hepburn would be an example because it's so slow. It's not fixed weight, but it's super slow. Fixed-weight progression is that each week you stay at the same weight, but you change the conditions under which the repetitions are done, making them harder.

So, for example, the first week you might get eight reps at a normal tempo. The second week you try to keep the same weight, but now using, let's say, a four- or five-second eccentric. Then the next week you might hold the middle position for three seconds during the eccentric. The next week you hold the mid-position three seconds during the concentric. And then the last week you hold the middle position three seconds both on the eccentric and concentric.

So if you can maintain the same weight from week to week, you're getting stronger because you're making the reps tougher. So that would be a fixed-weight progression model. So after those five weeks, you add weight. And now the good thing is that all those methods, like the slow eccentric, the isometrics, they improve technical learning, right, which is what the type 3 needs.

So when they get back to the heavier weight, now the technique is better and it actually feels a lot easier than it felt with the two pauses on week five. So there's zero anxiety. A lot of people, for example, okay, and that's the best example, and every coach has seen this: you ask a client to do a bodyweight squat, perfect technique or close to perfect — full range of motion, torso looks good.

The moment you put a bar on their back, it's like hunched over and they can't squat down past like 100 degrees. And they just can't physically get lower than that. Why? Because the anxiety of the bar on their back creates tightness in the hip flexors.

And hamstrings, which shorten the range of motion, also tighten up the traps and pec minor. It gives them that position, so it's a protective position. The reason for that, the reason why the hip flexors get tighter, is it's a protective mechanism from when we were caveman to protect the internal organs. But the body doesn't know the difference between a tiger is attacking me and a bar is trying to crush me, right? So it does the same thing. The hip flexors get tight, it modifies your technique.

So if you're capable of physically doing a body weight squat, the moment you add weight, if your squat crumbled, it's not a mobility issue. Even if you give them all the mobility you want, it won't change anything. You just need to get comfortable squatting. You can start with a goblet squat, you can start with an easier version, but get them used to squatting with a load.

James de Lacey1:01:46

Nice. I know we just reached a little over an hour. I've just got one more question for you, so I don't take up too much of your time around the idea of the acetylcholine enzyme. Obviously there's different supplements out there now, Alpha GPC being one of them. Is that something that a different neurotype could take to help them?

Christian Thibaudeau1:02:13

Absolutely. I mean, that's something that, although I will tell you something, be careful when you play with brain chemistry. It's very easy to mess things up because it's a... I mean, acetylcholine is one thing that nobody can have too much of. So honestly, it's very hard to screw up by boosting acetylcholine. It will always work with everybody, one B maybe less because they already have high acetylcholine, but it will work for everybody.

It increases power output, increases learning, it increases motor programming. That's a very good product. But when you try, for example, to increase dopamine—let's say I want to increase dopamine because dopamine gets me amped up, dopamine gets me happy—the problem is that every single supplement that increases dopamine will lower serotonin. And on the other hand, every... I mean, I'm sleeping, I'm anxious, I'm going to take a supplement that increases serotonin.

Well, anything that increases serotonin will decrease dopamine. So you got to be careful with that. But acetylcholine is certainly something that pretty much anybody can benefit from, except maybe the type 1B, but even then they will get... It's like topping off the glass, if you want, or the gas tank.

So Alpha GPC is really good. CDP choline is probably the best. So I like a mix of both. What happens, they actually speed up neurological transmission. It actually... The good, the cool thing with increasing acetylcholine is that it basically potentiates every single other neurotransmitter because it increases the speed of connection of your brain. So it makes every other neurotransmitter function better.

It also decreases the need for adrenaline because acetylcholine has many of the same functions as adrenaline. So if you have more acetylcholine, you don't need to increase adrenaline as much. You're much less likely to choke under pressure. So yeah, when it comes to nootropics, Alpha GPC and CDP choline are my first go-to.

Then we look at individual situation. Like, noopept could be good, and the racetam families could be good for someone who has adrenaline problems. Like someone who just cannot... And that's pretty unusual, but it can happen in an overtrained type 2A, for example, or maybe an overtrained type 1B. We could take hordinine. Hordinine will basically lengthen the life of adrenaline. So you're not producing more adrenaline, but the adrenaline you produce stays longer. Cortin will do the same thing.

So it's not something that most people need because while maintaining adrenaline too high for too long can actually lead to overtraining by downregulating the beta-adrenergic receptors. But if you need it, for example, if you need a sustained adrenaline level, for example a powerlifting competition or even a weightlifting... Well, weightlifting you don't want to boost adrenaline. That's the difference between adrenaline and weightlifting. I mean, you will see powerlifters like slam their head on the bar, get slapped. You don't really see that in weightlifting. You pull your ears or squeeze your traps. That's pretty much it.

But being over-amped up in the Olympic lifts will just lead to like cutting your pull short. But in powerlifting, especially since the meets are so long, then using something like cortin or hordinine will allow you to avoid crashing between lifts, which often happens. It could also be used in a rugby game, could be used because it's fairly long and you need high intensity. So hordinine could be used to maintain levels.

James de Lacey1:05:48

Nice, nice. Perfect. I think that's a good way to end this podcast. Christian, do you want to maybe plug where people can find you and follow you? And I'll link those up in the description too.

Christian Thibaudeau1:05:48

Well, honestly, Thibaudeau Army is the word. Whether you're on Instagram, on YouTube, on the internet, just Thibaudeau Army, T-H-I-B-A-R-M-Y, and that will lead you anywhere you want to go. Also, tnation.com is where I have the most articles. I also have a Q&A section there, so if you want to ask me questions you can always go to T Nation, and I'm answering pretty much any question.

James de Lacey1:06:40

Perfect. No, thanks for coming on, Christian. I really appreciate it. No, perfect. I'm done. This livestream, to finish this one, my record button won't let me stop the record, but that's okay. We can just chill. I don't know why it's done this. It's... this platform can be funny sometimes. But thanks for coming on, honestly. I appreciate it heaps. I've been reading your stuff for so long and everything. It's awesome to chat about a lot of the neurotyping stuff because that's stuff I haven't dove too much into, so it's super interesting.

Christian Thibaudeau1:06:40

I appreciate it. It's not a topic I often talk about because it's pretty niche, but if people take the time to really understand it, it can make a big difference.

James de Lacey1:07:10

Yeah, I need to... I think I must have downloaded your thing. I might have to download it again and go through it again, all the different...

Christian Thibaudeau1:07:10

I have a new version, so just shoot me an email because I'll forget. So shoot me an email and I'll send you the updated PDF. I don't have the... We haven't recorded it yet. I have given it in person once, but it has a lot more information about training methods, training styles, how to coach people depending on their type, a lot more.

James de Lacey1:07:34

Perfect. Now I'll shoot you an email after this, but this should be out in a couple of weeks anyway, and I'll email it to you as well when it's out.

Christian Thibaudeau1:07:34

Perfect, great.

James de Lacey1:07:34

All good. All right, cheers, Christian. Appreciate it.