How The Carolina Panthers Prepare On Short Notice & Special Wrestling Exercises w/ Tom Barbeau (SSOF Ep. 18)

James de Lacey1:49

So do you want to maybe cover, I guess, your philosophy around how you're preparing guys in those two weeks without burying them come preseason games?

Tom Barbeau2:44

Well, a couple things. One, they have the opportunity to train on their own, so that's, we educate them. We send them all the information that we're allowed to. Everything is voluntary, everything is optional, but we give them all of the information and then we'll even tell them their GPS data, and that's really how we prepare them for camp.

We use an undulating volume calculation for everything we do, and then we build them up to be prepared for what they're going to experience week one of training camp or week two of training camp. And then that way, you're not blowing them out of the water and hopefully you can build some sort of chronic workload, some sort of capacity for the high-speed yardage, for the changes of direction, for the efforts they're going to have to make.

So I would say that's how we tackle it, mainly. But then do you have guys that don't do anything and next come in week one? I'm sure we do. That's why, so the first day of training camp in the NFL is traditionally a conditioning test.

And you have to be smart with it because you don't want to have injuries because you made your conditioning test so hard. But you can really tell too. A guy starts running, if it's rep four and they look bad, you know, okay, this is going to take some work.

But I am sure there are guys that don't do anything. Now, some of them are lucky too, because this is the 1% of the 1%, and they are absolutely mutants. So some of them can not do anything and they're totally fine.

James de Lacey4:15

Yeah. What I saw, I saw an interview, I can't remember what player it was, and he was talking about how he drinks a coffee and then he eats a bag of candy for dinner and one meal, and that's his diet. And he's what, 200-something pounds? I think was a running back, just jacked.

Tom Barbeau4:15

I know Marshawn Lynch was famous for eating Skittles all the time.

James de Lacey4:15

Oh yeah. Some people, just lucky. Their mom and dad are way cooler than my mom and dad, that's for sure.

Tom Barbeau4:44

So for anyone listening, you are not these genetic freaks.

James de Lacey4:44

No, so don't copy what they do. You would have already been found if you were.

So say a fighter gets called up, he's got maybe two, three, four weeks to prepare for this fight. He's been training leading up to this, but not with any real intensity because it's kind of out of camp. How would you then approach, you can use football, American football, as example, how you kind of do it there? I guess it all kind of transfers over.

But then how would you look to set out that maybe two-, three-, or four-week period going into a competition so you can essentially maximize the training to transfer over versus combating having too much fatigue going into their competition?

Tom Barbeau5:39

Yeah, I think what I would do is if I knew I had two, three weeks, and I don't know exactly what metrics you have, what you're tracking in the fighting world, but I would say that my first week, I would want more volume, not a crazy amount of volume, probably a little over a third of the total volume that I'm going to have for the three-week period.

I probably want a little over a third, and I'm going to have moderate intensity, a little bit higher volume. Then the second week, I'm going to increase the intensity and I'm probably going to decrease the total volume of stressors. And then that'll put me in at the third week, hopefully the most prepared.

That can be whatever it is, the amount of time sparring versus the intensity sparring, the running, whatever you are, whatever you are using, the biking. Yeah, that would be my—and the other thing that a piece of technology, especially in combat sports, that I think is super valuable are the Moxy monitors.

James de Lacey6:39

So I don't know if you—I have, I haven't used it, but I've read lots of bits and pieces on it, and I want to get one eventually. Dive into that.

Tom Barbeau6:39

I especially in a sport like fighting, I think that is absolutely the most valuable, because you can really track like it shows—so it shows you oxygen saturation, total hemoglobin. Then you wear a heart rate monitor, it shows you your heart rate.

So in something like combat sports, you'll be able to see when the athlete is not resaturating or able to completely saturate oxygen. So you would know you can cut your workout when you're no longer resaturated, and then you don't go in the tank. You only have two weeks. You can't afford to overtrain in two weeks because you got to train and peak.

So it's like, yeah, if the goal is an aerobic workout, well, I'm training for the aerobic workout, and the second my adaptation is no longer aerobic, I'm done because I'm not gaining anything more from that day. Yeah, in my situation and in our situation, that's really hard to do because we have 90 guys you're preparing. Especially at the beginning training camp, by the end you have 53 guys, but you can't have 53 Moxy monitors being run at once.

And in a sport like football, all the pads, that doesn't work. But yeah, in a one-on-one setting, I think that it would be invaluable.

James de Lacey8:03

Do you want to maybe dive into explaining some of those concepts, maybe for someone who's not quite sure of oxygen saturation, desaturation, all that kind of stuff? Kind of maybe a high-level overview of what you're looking at and trying to achieve with it.

Tom Barbeau8:32

So oxygen and PCR are connected. When oxygen depletes, PCR depletes. As oxygen returns, PCR recovers. And we always think of ATP being the energy source, but ATP just allows you to relax. It's the calcium that allows you to contract.

So the best athletes are the ones that relax the best. That's what the coordination is, really. They have the ability to relax and recover. Everybody can contract more or less the same speed.

So with this monitor, you get lines on the screen, and it shows you the total hemoglobin levels, so that's the amount of blood. As you exercise, that increases slightly to a certain point. You have nitric oxide, you have these things that increase blood flow.

And then what will happen is with an intense contraction, you'll get an occlusion. So say 30 to 50% intensity of a contraction, you'll get venous occlusion, so blood cannot get out, so then it's—

Like you have a hose, the back end of the hose gets clogged, and then the blood flow keeps coming in and you'll see more total hemoglobin. Then above 50% contraction you'll get arterial occlusion. So both ends of the hose get plugged and now oxygen levels will, or sorry not oxygen, total hemoglobin levels will not change. It's the same amount of blood.

At the same time oxygen is being used, so I'm exercising, they're going to decrease. I am getting more and more blood flow so hopefully it's decreasing at a slower rate. Then I have an intense contraction, I start to deplete oxygen as blood flow increases because I have that arterial occlusion. Then I have a very intense contraction, arterial occlusion, no more change in blood flow but that blood is still, the oxygen is still getting taken out of it and I'm going to have a steeper decrease. Does that make sense?

James de Lacey10:07

Got it. That's in the muscle correct?

Tom Barbeau10:07

Correct, correct. Yes, that is at the muscular level. So when I'm looking at this Moxy monitor I am putting it on, for example vastus lateralis or I'm putting it on deltoid like a rear delt, and then I'm seeing exactly what is happening.

James de Lacey10:34

Nice. So I guess let's look at maybe some practical uses for this in training. So what are you looking at to essentially stop the session or even stop the rep, and then are you also using it to dictate recovery periods between maybe intervals on the bag or whatever it is?

Tom Barbeau11:08

So when you start the exercise you'll see the oxygen levels, when they warm up you'll see them rise up a little and as you warm up we talked about you have increased blood flow. But then when you're watching you're going to see the oxygen desaturate. So oxygen at max effort exercise, oxygen desaturates in 17 seconds plus or minus three.

Your more fast twitch guys will be a little faster, they'll be closer to 14 seconds. Now for me in my setting here that is super valuable. I know that a max effort of 15 seconds, that's all they got. So if we're doing bike sprints and I do anything more than 15 seconds, I'm just having a glycolytic effect. I'm just causing more fatigue than, so that's something I think super valuable, super applicable not even knowing, not even needing the monitor.

But then the other things are like, so I'm exercising, the oxygen desaturates, and then I watch it come back in recovery. So instead of starting your athlete early, we talk about we don't want to overtrain, you can wait for them to completely resaturate. You can wait for breathing levels to return select back towards normal and then you do your next set. So you're not just digging them deeper, deeper, putting them into survival mode.

James de Lacey12:43

Yeah, so that's almost like you could do your alactic intervals using the Moxy monitor. Then you just look at desaturation, soon as it hits the bottom, stop. It'll probably be 10 to 15 seconds, stop. Then let it recover and that way you're not digging into that anaerobic lactic area where you're building up those waste products.

Tom Barbeau12:43

Exactly. And even if you want to build up lactic products, if you want to do that, well then you can watch that happen too and then you know that's happen. Really, you just, the value in it is you know it's happening.

James de Lacey13:07

Yeah. And you can measure precisely instead of guessing through arbitrary time limits. Because obviously we, like because we don't always have access to things like this, so we like to prescribe, hey alactic power fits we want around 6 seconds or 8 seconds, then alactic capacity looking like 10 to 15, and then maybe lactic looking like 20 to plus to whatever. So it kind of gives us, hey this person, we can get an individual reading for them to be like okay this is alactic for them rather than giving an arbitrary, I guess, time.

Tom Barbeau13:34

100%. It lets you meet, it lets you be specific to them. I think for combat sports, invaluable. And yeah, in the team sport setting knowing, the better understanding of the bioenergetics, it lets you make better decisions.

And also you do it with one athlete who's here in the offseason that wants to try it on their bike conditioning or whatever, and then you see the, I think it gives you a better coach's eye. Because when you look at the fatigue now, oh I'm seeing how you're breathing, I'm seeing how you're acting. Well you're probably not the only one. So now all of my athletes breathing like this, whatever, and this is probably what's happening at a bioenergetic level.

James de Lacey14:12

So how much then are you emphasizing or focusing on that bioenergetical energy system development, looking at a pure physiological approach to the conditioning say for your NFL guys, versus maybe looking at more of an output based I guess progression? You're just looking more at work capacity, how can I repeat, I guess, these explosive efforts over and over.

Tom Barbeau14:44

Is I think it depends on the year. It's an annual plan based thing. You know in February when it's the beginning of the offseason and you're sending home your optional training, you have some guys here, that is more looking at something like the Moxy. You're trying to have more aerobic adaptation, we're doing more aerobic circuits, you're trying to restore range of motion, all of those things with it.

But that is when I would do more of the bioenergetic approach. That's like your GPP kind of thing. That's you look, and because the goal of the GPP right is to increase all of your capacity. So now I just worry about the specifics of the capacities when I get more close to sporting time, whether that's the last month of the offseason prior to OTAs, or the two weeks that we have of strengthening initiating only prior to OTAs, or the six weeks right now prior to training camp.

That's when you worry about the sport specific work to rest ratios. For us that's, gotcha, 5 to 6 seconds on and in the NFL is around 6 seconds on. In college it might be six to seven because the plays are a little longer and it's 35 to 40 seconds off. So then you are training them for that specifically.

James de Lacey16:10

Yeah. I want to dive into that a bit. So that would be the average, correct? That's the average work to rest.

So how do you then, obviously we can take averages, I'm sure a lot of people listening maybe have read average work ratios and MMA, jiu-jitsu, whatever it is, and they look to replicate that in their training. But obviously just replicating the average doesn't prepare you for the game of football, doesn't prepare you for MMA, whatever it is. Because obviously you have work to rest ratios above and below that. So how do you then program around that average then to prepare them for the entire game?

Tom Barbeau16:36

So if you look, especially if you look at the offensive and defensive data, there are very, very few plays longer than 10 seconds. It's extremely rare. So occasionally they, and even it'll probably happen organically within the training. Like our big guys push, our defensive and offensive linemen will push Prowlers as part of their specific conditioning, and they'll probably be a couple reps when they're tired or whatever, take longer than 6 seconds, maybe it's 8 to 10.

So one, I think that it'll happen organically in our setting. But I do think there probably has to be a day, whether it's a circuit in the weight room or something, where you give them exposure to worst case scenario. I would put it on, we talked about waving the volumes, I would put it on my higher volume week. Because that's right before you deload, that's the week you're cooking with gas anyways. So just sprinkle that in, but it's just touching the exposure of how it feels.

James de Lacey17:40

Yeah. Do you, I guess do you, you mentioned obviously you know how long the players, I guess for your, I think was your defensive lineman there, that extends to maybe 10 seconds. What about the rest as well? Because obviously with my limited American football knowledge, for example Tom Brady marching the offense or marching the other team's defense down the field in the last couple of minutes and they're going play, play, play. Is that something you also have to take into consideration?

Tom Barbeau18:10

Of course. So I think, so it's tempo right, exactly what you're talking about. Our teams that play with tempo, that happens a ton in college football. There are certain offenses that play a pro style slower offense, certain offenses that play a faster tempo, like spread, very popular in Texas.

Traditionally I think football coaches tried to prepare for it in the week before practice. So then all of a sudden the practice, but you're digging your hole right then. You're actually probably making yourself more fatigued come game day because we know you can't really adapt in a week. So that's where, to your point, you probably have to sprinkle in bits. You definitely have to sprinkle in bits in the off season.

If you do a good job of the bioenergetic side, of the aerobic conditioning side, I think you give yourself a bigger buffer to handle it and to recover from. Because yes it might just be one drive, but it's also going to be in a, if you're playing a team that plays tempo, it could be a whole game. And then if your guys don't have a good aerobic system, you're screwed.

But again, I think you sprinkle that in on your worst case scenario day. Maybe one day you're giving them two seconds longer than the average up to the worst case, and maybe on the other high volume week you shorten your rest ratio slightly.

The other thing to consider is where else are you getting your conditioning. We think that you only conditioning during conditioning sessions, but really, to quote I steal from our director sports or he's our human performance director, he's our sports scientist, Andrew Alop, is "everything is conditioning." And he and I joke about it all the time because you're in the weight room and it's "oh, we're lifting," but what are you doing in between sets? It's a recovery.

You got the heavy sled sprints that are popular right now. Well, if you complex them with unresisted sprints, all of a sudden your guys are tired. That's conditioning. I think that always needs to be remembered. I don't know if that really answers the question, but that's something you got to think about.

James de Lacey20:44

I mean, most people equate conditioning to fitness, but conditioning is about being prepared for your sport. So anything you're doing, technical training, whatever else you're doing in the gym, is conditioning because that's your preparation. It's just taking and I mean as you got in combat sports, the sport is conditioning really. You don't want to use it as conditioning, but the sparring is used as conditioning 100%.

And then I guess for people listening to hear worst case, like "what the hell is that," I guess other gyms and teams have kind of popularized their terms for it. Fight Gone Bad, City Kickboxing has their Spider Workout—they'll be considered I guess worst case scenario. But you can also break it down, at least in my opinion, into more specific work.

For example, within rugby, you can break down peak periods within certain like one, two, three minutes. And you can be like, "Okay, you usually have in defense you might have seven or eight contact situations." So you know, okay, that might be the peak within that one or two minutes, which means when we go to do training session, okay, we want to exceed that a bit. Maybe we'll do 10 contacts within that one to two minutes or whatever it is.

So within fight sports you could potentially—it might be a little difficult—I guess you could watch some footage and kind of count strikes thrown, shots taken, whatever it is, and then kind of build your own worst case scenario for maybe a really fast-paced fight. Like, for example, I think Khabib versus Justin Gaethje, like Khabib walked down Justin Gaethje for what, a round and a half, and Gaethje was absolutely cooked. So that's maybe one way of looking at worst case scenario.

Another way I looked at was I actually took the averages from some of the research looking at work-to-rest ratios, and obviously they give standard deviations. So I just took kind of one standard deviation above, because we're looking essentially above 70% of what usually happens, well outside 70% what usually happens. Okay, maybe use that as a threshold for your worst case scenario, maybe a little above that. So there's things in there you can kind of look to as well, rather than just putting together a random hardcore circuit and then hope.

Tom Barbeau23:02

I think, is it Darren Burgess? I think in his RTP he essentially does that, if I remember correctly. He's built a calculator that gives all of his metrics because he's in soccer. He's at least he was in soccer at the point that I watched this RTP presentation. And he has built every metric and he has the standard deviations based off it, and he tries to prepare them for one standard deviation about exactly what you're talking about.

James de Lacey23:02

Oh, nice. People say and then it makes them feel better, exactly.

Tom Barbeau23:02

Oh, awesome.

James de Lacey23:30

Let's jump into a little bit of, I guess we come to somewhat of conditioning side. NFL players are basically pure power athletes. Combat sports, most of them require a lot of power, even though they're kind of going to repeat it over a longer period of time. But maybe let's cover some of the weight room ideas in terms of developing power. Is there anything, this is going to be a very general question because obviously it's individual and all that stuff, but is there anything in the weight room you really like for developing power? Maybe it's exercises, set, reps, whatever it is.

Tom Barbeau24:00

So we do the heavy resistance sprint, that would be because I know I think power is plane-specific. So to start with that, we use the 3D strap for our quarterbacks and we do rotational power. It wraps around your shoulder and we'll throw a ton of med ball. We throw a ton of med balls.

James de Lacey24:00

Was that strap designed specifically for rotation?

Tom Barbeau24:26

It's called Strap, it's sweet, and it's neon yellow so everybody knows. Look sick. And it's awesome. You can do mobility with it, you can load T-spine mobility, and it's pretty cheap. Awesome product. There's my shameless plug for them.

So I think number one, power is plane-specific. So what's specific? Horizontal versus vertical, rotational, lateral in some cases. So we do lateral bounding, we do horizontal bounding, we do vertical jumps, we do loaded jumps, mainly trap bar. I know a lot of teams in the NFL trap bar clean pull. We haven't done that. We regular clean pull.

James de Lacey25:00

Trap, yeah.

Tom Barbeau25:00

So it's like a trap bar, like a power shrug.

James de Lacey25:00

I know that's really popular in the NFL.

Tom Barbeau25:00

We regular clean pull. We do everything on GymAware, so we'll put up targeted velocities. That's something that we didn't do prior to here, and I think that is so valuable, especially in this setting. You get guys from all different teams, all different training backgrounds, and they might show up week four and they're going to play that week. So you can't test them, you can't like—no, no, get on the GymAware.

And there is a correlation between velocity and intensity. So we're clean pulling today, we want it to be 2.0 peak velocity. Look at the screen, figure it out. And the intent you get from that is outstanding. Everybody is competing. With our trap bar jumps, in GymAware you can put up a leaderboard. So in OTAs, our trap bar jumps, we would just put 135 or 95 on all the bars, we put the leaderboard up and just watch the speed go up.

You got guys jumping 3.8 meters per second with 135. It's obscene. And then the next guy sees it and gets mad when he does.

James de Lacey26:15

Fantastic, a way to competition.

Tom Barbeau26:47

I think also the thing that I've been learning recently, this is interesting, is like, all right, if I clean pull or I clean, I'm going to improve concentric rate of force development. If I trap bar jump, I'm actually probably going to drive power more than the rate of force development. I think there's this huge argument between trap bar jumps and cleans and all this. And I think you need both. You need your ballistic jumps, you need—because you are training different things. The ground contact time can be different. And you need your unloaded jumps too.

James de Lacey27:19

If anyone's interested in I guess planes of movement, force being plane-specific, if you just search for "Spectre theory" on Google, you should find my article on Science for Sport about that.

But do you want to maybe dive into differences between power and rate of force development? Because people listening will be like, "Okay, I want to be powerful," and they're like, "Rate of force development, what the hell is that? Isn't that the same thing? I'm just producing force most quickly."

Tom Barbeau27:50

Yeah, so I think, well, one of the things that you probably want to be able to test on a force plate. Now, if you can't, I understand, or like GymFlight, something that is giving you ground contact time.

But so in the case between the two, right, like the clean, you're getting a higher spike initially, then you get the unweighting phase. And the nice thing about the clean, if you catch it, you get the eccentric rate of force development as well. Whereas the trap bar jump, the ground contact time, that traction time is longer, but the output is greater. So that is driving up your peak power versus your RFD, since you're spending more time on the ground, so you have more time to produce force on the jump than you have a little less with the power clean.

James de Lacey28:11

Got it. And so I guess that's kind of your reasoning for—and the argument of should you do Olympic weightlifting for combat sports, the argument is, "Hey, if you have good technique or you have the time to learn it, use both jumps and Olympic lifts because they're going to give you two different qualities."

Tom Barbeau28:41

Exactly. And go throw med balls and do your regular plyos. Do it all. Do it all.

James de Lacey29:07

So I guess within a session then, are you looking at kind of like a vertical integration model? For anyone, vertical integration is kind of just like doing touching all different qualities at once. Are you looking at that, doing that in one session? Are you kind of planning, maybe it's a strength day and then a power day?

Tom Barbeau29:07

We vertically integrate.

I'm Canadian, so it's Charlie Francis. I have to. But yes, we, that's exactly what we do. So we'll do a total body day. Our first day we use as a primer, because in the offseason, in the season in the NFL, traditionally it's four days, but it's all four in a row because guys leave on Fridays.

So the Monday we'll use as a primer. It'll be more upper body, it'll be our faster conditioning. So we run these what are called metabolics. They are short. We run them on about a 6 to 35 work to rest ratio. That'll be on the Monday, and then they'll do some sort of upper body. We might push press on that day, so you get a little day too, so that gives you the stimulus for Tuesday, which will be our max velocity day.

So we'll match our max velocity with our weight room power and then with a lower body lift. We'll do our big bench press on Monday too, so that's also part of the primer. We might do a few sets of push press and then bench. But so yes, that's exactly what we'll do. And then our Thursday is our heavy resisted Excel day, and we'll clean or trap bar jump both of those days. We will trap bar deadlift. We will speed squat. We'll single leg squat, all that stuff.

James de Lacey31:13

Nice. I guess how do you then balance the volume of the work you do in the gym with the technical training? Obviously with those week, do you guys have technical training in those weeks with us?

Tom Barbeau31:13

But our guys are not allowed to have a foot, like throw a football or touch a football in our facility in the off season. So it's a unique challenge. Now it's different in OTAs because in OTAs we actually have a bit of both.

So then we will adapt what the weight room is doing to the field, because football is number one, of course. The sport, the main thing is the main thing. But yeah, so we'll talk to the guys about what, our quarterbacks go and throw with a different coach or with receivers. So we'll talk to them, our receivers will go run routes, and we'll talk to them what days are best to go, what days are best to go work with their outside coaches, what days are best to run their longer routes versus their shorter routes.

And then if a guy is going to go and run a bunch of deep balls, like we'll cut his speed yardage absolutely in the training session. Now it's tough when you can't put a GPS on them in their session and go see what's going to happen, but you can guess. And we have awesome guys, and I think we've educated them fairly well to this point.

So they start to know what it feels like, what it looks like, and they can say, "Oh, I'm going to go do this, this." Like, it's all voluntary. Like, they have to give you the information, but they are more than happy to. I think they trust us at this point, so it's like, "This is what I'm probably going to be doing. How would you plan it?"

James de Lacey33:04

Nice. I guess maybe for any of the combat athletes listening, maybe they've gone through a hard couple of sessions within their sport, and then they have maybe strength training in the gym later that evening. How would you scale back the, I guess, gym training based on, for example, maybe they had a huge workload on the volume?

Tom Barbeau33:04

I think it's volume that kills you. And by volume, are we talking rep sets? I calculate total reps in a session. That's how we do it here. So we calculate total reps that count, that are at above 50 to 60%. I know the Chinese weightlifters only count above 70%, but that's their sport. But we calculate total reps that count.

So maybe on the docket you're supposed to do four sets of five on trap bar deadlift. Well, come in and hit four sets of three, but go touch the intensity that you wanted, because that's going to be what really pushes the needle and drives up those capacities, those capabilities.

James de Lacey34:08

I think that's where some people get it wrong, is they start to, they want to pull back, but they pull back not only how much they're doing, but they pull back how heavy or I guess how fast they move too within the gym. Then obviously you kind of lose, you got to lose everything when you're doing that, versus, hey, if you just even if you just do two sets of two or two sets of three, just because whatever has happened that day, and you reached that intensity that you needed or whatever it is, it's better than coming in and being like, "Okay, I'm just going to do a couple of sets but way lighter."

Tom Barbeau34:36

You got to give your athletes what they're not getting. So when they're practicing their sport in a fatigued state, they probably aren't getting a max strength. Maybe a wrestler is, maybe an offensive lineman is, but probably not getting a max strength output, and they're probably not getting a max stretch-shortening cycle output.

So if you're going to do a plyometric, maybe it's just one or two sets of your depth jump or whatever you're prepared for that day, whatever you have planned, but you got to give them what they're not going to have.

James de Lacey35:01

Yeah, for sure. That's a recurring thing that's come up on this podcast too, which is great. But before I take you back to your time working with wrestling a bit, I'm going to put you on the spot and ask you your opinion on the off-season training that a lot of these players get on Instagram when they're away from, what do you call it, is it summer training or whatever it is, summer off-season training?

Tom Barbeau35:34

I think it's very tough. I think it's tough for the players to know where to go. I think it's tough because you have to put out the fancy stuff on Instagram in order to get the players. And I also think it's getting a lot better. In the last, okay, I mean, I haven't been in it that long, but in the last three, four years, the popularity in speed training has just exploded, right? There's now a speed coach everywhere.

And yeah, for the most part, that's probably a good thing, because instead of it just being, "I'm going and I'm doing my conjugate wave and I'm not running," they're going, they're running, they're on the track. Yeah, they might do a ton of ladder drills that day, but if they're going and hitting some max velocity sprinting and they're going and changing direction, and it might look crazy when the guy throws a ball at them and they have to cut, but at least it's a reactive cut. Like, there I think there are a lot of good things coming.

Now, you still see probably too much of the unbalanced, whatever, balance training, physio ball. But again, that is what the guys want. So you just have to figure out how to mix it in. And it's hard to watch Instagram and say, "Oh, this is bad because of this exercise." Like, well, maybe this is what the player wanted to do, and they clean pulled or trap bar deadlifted before, right?

James de Lacey37:02

How much say do the players usually have, I guess, a lot of power in that, in terms of what they I guess want to do in training? But I'm probably, I'm assuming not.

Tom Barbeau37:38

Well, even with that, it's a conversation. I think the key is educating them on what is important, right? Like guys, nobody wants to lift heavy when they're sore, but if you have tendon problems, you have groin problems, whatever, like yeah, you need heavy, slow load. But that explanation needs to be, that conversation needs to happen. They need to trust you that this is going to be uncomfortable right now, but it's going to make you healthier longer. That, I think, is key number one.

And then to their off-season training, I don't know, because I've never been in that sector. But I'm sure they have some say, because they're paying, right? They can go somewhere else if they don't like it.

And the other thing I think that as, in our situation, you have to do a good job of educating your players, but also giving them, if they ask, you can say, "These are places we recommend that you go," because there are a ton of places that are phenomenal. Like, I think down by you, there's a ton of great places. Up in Dallas, there's Sports Academy is up in Frisco. Apec in Fort Worth is Bobby Stroupe, he's as good as it gets. There's tons of good places in Florida. There's Exos, there's all.

So there's good, like, we have guys that go back to Jersey and they go to great places and train. So partly educating them on where to go. It just depends who you go to. And when they, I think it all comes back to them trusting you. That's especially at this level, because they're adults. Like, these guys are at the same age as me, a number of them. So we're all working for a common goal. That just needs to...

James de Lacey39:50

When we, I just want to go back a little bit to when you're working with 16 teams, so might have been a little difficult to really nail down exactly what you were doing with the wrestling guys. But maybe just a general overview of how you look to program for wrestling. Kind of like maybe the demands or determinants of wrestling that you identified that you thought were important and then kind of how you tackled those, I guess, physical capacity.

Tom Barbeau40:20

It was very different because I would only work with them maybe two days a week with the scheduling, with everything. And at the Division 3 level in the offseason, everything is completely optional. So what would happen is the guys would come in, we would do the big rock lifts, whether chinups, squat, or deadlift, whatever. I always give that option, or at least I try to. We would do rows, like all the big rocks. It's two days, you get two full body days.

But the other thing that we would do, and this is, so my father is a ski racing coach, downhill ski racing coach, and he does all the strength and conditioning. And his mentor is this older gentleman, this Russian gentleman who lives in Boston. His name is Igor Berko, and he worked in the Soviet Union and defected to the United States. And he has this training method that is completely different than anything I've ever seen, and it's land and water-based.

And it's almost entirely movement-based. It's like the loading is all like surgical tubing from a belt or bodyweight or kettlebell. And then in the pool you go in the deep end and you wear flotation belts, and it's running, it's moving in every direction, you're changing speeds. If you do it forwards, you have to do it backwards. And the key is posture and alignment. That is the most important quality. Number one is posture and alignment.

So back to it with the wrestlers, the thing I found the most is that they did too much. These guys are all borderline overtrained all the time because that's what makes them them. That's the, and so what I would do with them is we would go, one of the days maybe we go in the wrestling room and we do more gymnastics-based rolling, crawling, maybe even some more like plyometric stuff, but some more coordination stuff.

The other thing is the hand-eye coordination isn't there, like that's not key in the sport. So we would do some fun goofy-looking stuff just to give them variability, to give them variety. And then we would go in the pool in the deep end, you float, you get decompression, you can do more coordination, you do all this balance stuff. And because in that setting, these guys were going to go get everything else on their own, they were going to go do too much.

How can I unload them? How can I make them better? How can I make them feel better? So I would say I took a very, almost the reverse approach into it, but that was in that setting what I felt like was best.

James de Lacey42:45

Very interesting. So what kind of stuff were you doing in the pool then? You mentioned obviously you float. I think I missed that at the beginning.

Tom Barbeau42:45

It looks similar, like we start, you just walk. So it's flotation belt, you're vertical. You start, you start double arms, single, and walking legs. And you want to keep good posture, like you're going to, when people aqua jog, they get in that cycle position, right? But it's, no, I need up tall, I need full range of motion.

So I'll go forwards, I'll go backwards, I'll go alternating arm and leg forwards and backwards, I'll go sideways, I'll walk with 360s, I will walk and toe touch, I'll walk, do the splits in every direction every three steps. And then we'll also use flotation barbells, flotation dumbbells and the long ones. You can stand on them, you can do squats on them. There's a huge variety.

I think my dad has this book that he has compiled over the last 30 years of his exercises, and he has like 30,000 exercises. I might be, it might be 100,000 exercises, but it's dude, you need to get that online.

James de Lacey43:41

It's funny.

Tom Barbeau43:41

Because the exercises, because there's so much variety, he writes them out the way he thinks about them. So it might be like supine T position, whatever the exercise is. So he and I read it, it's like, oh yeah, I know what's going on. And then someone else would say this, but it's phenomenal recovery. Every day his skiers get in the pool post-training.

So when I was at that, that was the goal. We would get the guys in the pool as much as possible. Even here we use the pool for recovery post-game. It's getting more popular. But I had never heard of anybody using the pool every day or that frequently until Randy Huntington was recently on a podcast, and he talked about using the pool every single day. I'd be so curious to see what he does because I've never really seen any, I've seen a little bit similar, but I've never seen anything quite the same.

James de Lacey45:19

Yeah. Yeah. The pool in rugby, the pool's popular, but you don't, you don't generally use, I mean it's an accessibility issue as well. You don't typically use the pool every day. But yeah, I mean I've done some stuff, even working with sevens and fifteens, often play games in the pool. So different, like almost a water polo essentially, different variations of that. And it kind of gets the guys moving, it's extra conditioning anyway.

So we used to actually go, here at Austin I was working with the Austin team on Mondays, we would come and that essentially would be a recovery day. Because our field was literally, in Texas our field was like concrete because it was so dry and like we can't have them running all the time on the field after playing Saturday and then having Tuesday, Thursday training as well, because they were pretty much semi-pro.

So we came to the pool and I would do three minute increase in like aerobic power from James Smith. So it would be like every 30 seconds increase intensity to the last 30 seconds is like 95 to 100%. And it's like easy in the pool, jogging on the spot, you're in the pool, recovering. It's cooler than being outside in the Texas heat. You're getting that aerobic work done, it's getting blood flow, recovery, all that kind of stuff. So it's like, yeah, I mean the pool is a great option for sure.

Tom Barbeau46:14

And the other, you have hydrostatic pressure in the pool. So you're actually getting more return to the heart, you're getting more probably more left ventricular hypertrophy, you're getting all these other benefits, you're getting increased cardiac output. And then the reason we do the float is you get the spinal decompression.

Like that's in this population, I'm sure in your population, everybody is so compressed. You're constantly in contact, you're constantly compressing yourself, lifting heavy. You just see the posture. These guys are compressed, they are extended. Everything, their whole life is compression, everything is tension. And it's how am I going to counteract it? So you can do Airrosti, you can do whatever, but it's how much easier is it to go in the pool?

James de Lacey47:15

No, that's awesome. I think it'll probably be the next big, next big fad within combat sports, even with just athletes in general, that probably someone will sell a cool program or something.

Tom Barbeau47:15

We should do it.

James de Lacey47:15

I'm going to get on it now. Take your guys to Barton Springs.

Tom Barbeau47:48

Oh yeah, probably damn cold, but damn good.

James de Lacey47:48

When it's 110 degrees it's like you're fine.

Tom Barbeau47:48

Oh yeah, for sure.

James de Lacey47:48

Well, I think I've actually gone through a whole range of questions for you that hopefully the audience has found helpful. If anyone wants to follow, I guess, what you're doing?

Tom Barbeau47:48

Twitter, Instagram, Barbeau Training. It's my last name, Training. You can email me. I would say those two are the best way to get a hold of me though. I'm on them regularly and respond to everything. I love talking training whenever possible. Can't, it's the best job ever.

James de Lacey48:27

Nice, for sure. And I'll put that, I'll put those down in the description too, so if you're watching on YouTube it will be there, Spotify, whatever else, it'll also be there. And then I guess if you're keen to talk to Thomas about training stuff, hit him up. Thank you. This is fantastic. Always keen. Thanks for coming on, I really appreciate it.