Maximizing Transfer From Strength Sports To Athleticism w/ Ed Cosner (SSOF Ep 120)

Ed Cosner2:03

But I could also jump on a 36-inch box, land straight-legged, and talk [expletive] to you while I was doing it. So bleacher work, everything else: hops, skips, everything, always moving like an athlete, no matter what my size was.

And when I trained a boxer in San Antonio, Jesse James Leija, who was a former two-time World Boxing Champion—not while I was training him—James was phenomenal, little 130-pound fighter. And when I was training guys during the lockout, he would always say, 'Hey, you gotta run this, this is Jerry Rice's workout. You gotta run this, this is Jerry Rice's workout.'

And I looked around one day when he was saying that. He's like, 'What?' I'm like, 'Man, there ain't no mountains here. Jerry Rice runs up in the mountains. This is what Jerry does.' I said, 'You're doing 16-110s. Every football player in America is doing 16-110s right now. That's just a normal test.'

And I mean, he was really good. I mean James, no ego involved in it and everything like that. But I explained to him that he was running, but he wasn't running against the clock and he wasn't resting against the clock, and how it would change when he did. So we talked that whole season. Of course, I won a, we won an NBA championship that season. And James asked if he could start training with me.

So we were, and we never touched a weight. And a lot of people look at me, they're like, 'Oh my God.' No, we didn't touch a weight. We threw med balls, we jumped, we did the speed ladder. Oh my God, somebody might, you go crazy if they, I said they did the speed ladder. And he ran 400s and 200s until we got about four weeks out, and we would run shorter distances.

But he hopped bleachers, he single-leg hops. I would make him single-leg run down 100 yards and everything else. But we threw the med ball, and that's what we got strong with. So my philosophy will carry over, but it carries over into when I examine the sport, what the sport needs, not what I need.

James de Lacey5:13

Would you take that approach, I guess, because many years since then as well, would you still take that same approach with some athletes? Or are there some athletes that you would not lift and just do throws, jumps, and running, etc.?

Ed Cosner5:13

No, I pretty much want him to lift a couple days a week for that strength. James just didn't have the time. And then when he fought, after he fought Costya Zoo in Australia in 2003, he was going to fight, he was fighting Gatti next, and we started lifting then. He had had time to do that and then started seeing the benefit of it. So trying to convince him.

But not throwing names out or anything like that, but like Avery Johnson. Avery Johnson was probably 10-11 years into his career and never done Olympic lift in his life. Was he gonna do one? Nope, he sure as hell wasn't. But get him to do single-leg squats. We would do RDLs single-leg. So after he did single-leg squat, he'd leave his leg back there to balance, he would do his RDLs that way.

And we'd do that, and we'd do some light jumping. We'd go out to the floor and do med balls. And then we'd had an upper body, one upper body day as well. Was that the best thing for Avery? Maybe, maybe not. But the best thing was is twice a week he'd kill himself in there. And we'd go out to the floor, we'd throw med balls, would jump. And then he would tell me he's done, and his Southern accent from being from Louisiana, I mean, he would be, 'Ed, I'm done.' Okay. And I'd take my med balls and go back in the weight room.

And there were other guys that wanted to do more. And then you always have to, I don't know, said it before, but there's always some bartering and bickering, especially with professional athletes, but even with high school athletes. I mean, there were guys in a team like, 'Hey, if you do this, this, and this for me, I'll teach you how to do two new arm exercises.' 'Oh, what do you know about, what do you know about bigger arms? Your arms are big, but there's not a lot of cuts.'

So I'd have to pull up a picture from bodybuilding, and they didn't believe it was me. I don't know if they didn't believe it was me because I had abs and was cut or that I had. But it was my way of getting them to do stuff. So yeah, I mean, I would find ways of getting to them and getting them to lift.

It's the same thing as I'm doing here right now at Hobart Field, where I'm at right now, working for the Air Force Special Operations. And I work with civil engineers, I work with firefighters, and I work with EOD techs. And the EOD and the firefighters, they like to lift, but they're not doing the best lifts for them. They're doing bodybuilding or whatever you're crafting off the internet.

So trying to start incorporating what they want. They all want functional training, whatever the hell that is. So I kind of introduce different things to them. And some strongman circuits and everything else, bring it down a little bit different than when I was working for Nola Gold doing it. But they love doing it, it's a challenge. And I'm getting them to do what I want them to do. And hopefully they don't ever hear this, but I'm getting them to do what I want them to do without them having a clue that I'm getting them to do this.

James de Lacey8:43

Yeah, perfect. And you mentioned about obviously the term functional, which is still thrown around today, even though it's not really a thing. But to tag onto that, before I come back to some of the weightlifting stuff...

Machines and free weights, because that's obviously typically classed as free weights seen as functional, machines seen as quote unquote nonfunctional. Love to know your taking opinions on using machines versus free weights for athletic performance training.

Ed Cosner9:07

If I've got to add some weight to some muscle mass to somebody, we're going to do some free weights, but we're also going to use a mix of machines. If I got guys in season, especially in season, we'll get some power cleans in, we may do back work in, but then we're going to get over on a machine where I can go chest supported, like a Hammer Strength row, pull down as opposed to pull-ups.

You get a guy that's shoulders are banged up playing whatever sport that he's playing, whether it's rugby or throwing or anything else, he's only going to be able to do so much.

Machines are good on that, but I like the machines to get volume. I'm not going to do a ton of, we're going to do fives and heavy fives and stuff in RDL. I got to get a little bit of volume work on a shoulder or a hamstring, I'm going to go over to a leg curl machine. Now we'll stretch afterwards, I'll make sure that muscle's not just short the whole time, but I don't ostracize them. I mean, I use them. I don't use them all the time. I use them sparingly in the work, but I'm still going to use them.

James de Lacey10:17

The last thing I want to think about is having to do volume on barbell rows. I hate that exercise so much.

Ed Cosner10:17

Or a squat. I mean, you want to get some volume, you're not going to do that on a squat. I'll do that on a leg press, but I'm not going to do it on a regular squat, not even with a safety bar squat. Because once you start fatiguing, you start helicoptering and moving.

People think that a lot of times when Louie Simmons first started talking to everybody about philosophy, that was one of the things that's what he looked for, the multiple sets of threes and twos. Eight sets of three was one of his first ones. It wasn't just because that's what the Russian literature had him doing. He looked for that volume that he needed for his powerlifters, but he wanted it at a heavier weight.

But then he also looked at it like, if I tell this guy to do a heavy set of five or a heavy set of eight, he's going to fatigue and he's going to start slamming off the bottom or he's going to start helicoptering where the bar starts to twist and everything else. He's going to get hurt.

But if I do this eight sets of three, I'm still getting 24 reps in volume. I'm getting it at a little bit higher load, but I'm also making sure that I don't injure that person. So that was one of the things I took from him. He used to come to the NSCA conferences. I met him in '95, '96, '97. He would come to them and pretty much hold court out in the lobby of the hotel. Sit down and talk to him.

I mean, Louie was always—I might not agree with a lot of all of his stuff or anything like that, but I don't agree with all of anybody's stuff. I don't agree with all of my own stuff. But he was always willing to share and willing to talk to everybody, so he was a lot of fun to be around.

James de Lacey12:20

What's some of the stuff from Louie that you don't agree with?

Ed Cosner12:20

I don't agree with changing out exercises as often. I don't really like partial lifts. Not really big on partial lifts. Close grip bench, yeah, I'm going to use a block in that, but I also am not a big believer in gear.

I ran almost a little experiment with myself. I detrained a little bit from having an injury and my knees were bothering me, so I'm like, you know what, I'm going to wear a pair of light knee wraps, wraps that I would normally have wrapped down my knee and back up. I'm just going to wrap down my knee and it'll give me some support, a little bit more support than a knee sleeve. Well, I started using them. I used them for four weeks. I was like, man, I want to, I'm going to squat without knee wraps.

Now, these knee wraps are from when I first started powerlifting in 1985, all right? So they're older than most people. So they still had some elasticity to them. A couple weeks ago, I squatted without them and my knees were weaker. They were actually weaker. And it was like, wait a minute.

Sitting, squatting to a box all the time just doesn't equate over for athletics. I've used it different times in my training cycles, mostly when I feel like I'm not going low enough or I'm not getting where I want to be, or my knees—after I blew both of my achilles—so athletes are always going to be injured somewhere. A lot of my Airmen that I track, we'll do a little bit of box squatting to get them down there.

But a lot of them have issues because of their ankles, because of the boots that they wear all day long. I mean, I got guys that are the civil engineers, they're driving big trucks and tractors and heavy equipment and building roads, building runways, building buildings. So they're out there working their asses off, and their feet are a little bit more banged up than others. But I don't think I know any athlete that doesn't have a screwed up ankle somewhere for sure.

James de Lacey14:25

I've got to get a live question for you from the YouTubes here, from Amil Plucky—hopefully I said your name right. Is there any reason for combat athletes to train above eight reps, even on isolation exercises?

Ed Cosner14:25

First, I wouldn't have them do isolation exercises anyway. I'm just not—we're going to use a whole body compound, especially for that. We're going to use the whole body like they're going to use in combat, or whether it's combat where I look, I'm looking at it with my Airmen, or combat where I'm looking at like a combat sport. Using a whole body, I'm not going to use, I'm not going to do anything in isolation.

James de Lacey14:54

Would you go above eight reps for any of the exercises?

Ed Cosner14:54

No, generally not. I'll go eight, but and that's when I start manipulating the rest time. So we might do the eight reps, we might do it on shorter rest times, 30-second rest in between sets, or more of like a conditioning effect when you're going the high-intensity effect, pushing through it.

I mean, you can look at like a one-arm bench press. We'll go one arm on one side, we'll roll it over on the chest, go to the other side. Well, that other arm was resting while you were doing it. Roll that dumbbell back across your chest, just keep going. Same thing for dumbbell rows. I mean, we're going to, you do it, you do the other side, you just keep going back and forth. Stand up when you need to, your lower back starts tightening up, stand up.

But isolation, so I don't know, isolation to me—maybe I'm not understanding—but isolation to me is like a side raise, front raise, bicep curl, tricep. We'll do that towards the end. We're not going to do, they're not going to go more than eight reps or so. Maybe if we do a burnout set or something like that, eight to 12 to 15, but I don't.

James de Lacey16:10

So coming back to your partials thing. Well, you mentioned that you don't do partials. If someone's—I mean, obviously if someone's injured and they can't get down the full range, I get that. But if someone's not injured, they can do their full range normally, are partials never part of the program, even say maybe closer towards a competition fight, anything like that? Or is it always, you're just, you want full range of motion on everything?

Ed Cosner16:36

Partial like maybe partial on a squat jump or something like that? We're not going to do it on a squat. Oh yeah, for a thrower, for a jumper, that's something different. That quarter squat, heavy overload on the quarter squat, that's going to be in there.

For strongman, that's where I picked it up. When I was doing strongman, trying to get the stone on top of the barrel, because I'm all a five-foot-freaking-ten with short-ass arms. So trying to get it up there, but I looked at Gary Taylor, who was an Olympic lifter in '84 for England and then did strongman, won World's Strongest Man I think in '93.

Problem, he's 5 foot 10, 5 foot 11, trying to get it up there. So we would do a front squat to a quarter and overload it in that. There's videos of Ryan Krower doing an ungodly amount of weight doing quarter squats and stuff. Yeah, I mean that's in there for that, but you're going to have to have some training time in before I introduce that to you. You're going to have to have a significant amount of training time before that gets introduced.

James de Lacey17:54

No, you're good. Regarding Westside as well, so for anyone who's not familiar, Westside is Louis Simmons, the creator in geared powerlifting. And one of the, I guess we could say Westside conjugate philosophies around dynamic effort, max effort, repetition effort, et cetera, does that carry over at all to your program? There are quite a few coaches that use, I guess, a lot of that framework with the athletes. Is there something you often use at all?

Ed Cosner18:25

Yeah, I use that. I've been using that before—what was it called before? Oh [expletive], yeah, I have no idea. It was training, part of the training.

Yeah, you had days that were going to be a little bit more explosive. For me it would be more Olympic lifts and throws in it. You have days that were going to be more strength oriented, and you had repetition days. But the repetition day for me would be challenges, I mean, with your workout buddy. Challenges always, there was always that. I mean, and more power to Louie for coining it and running with it. I mean [expletive], he introduced it to a lot of people. People like to use it, not give them credit.

I'm real big on giving credit to everybody that I've stolen stuff from. I tell people all the time, it's like, "Oh man, that's a really good idea." The first time I use it, I'll give you credit for it. The second time I use it, I'll say, "Hey, I learned this from somebody." And the third time, shoot, I was doing heavy squats and I came up with this idea.

James de Lacey19:34

Oh, perfect. Give us some examples of those challenges.

Ed Cosner19:34

Oh man. My buddy Milo and I, we'd get done doing our squats, and I'd have to get a couple of sets on the way back down. We'd stop at maybe 500 pounds or something like that, 455, and it was like, all right. It was whoever went first.

Sometimes you just do the reps that were part of the program and you're done. And then other times it was like, all right, you're supposed to do five, now I'm on eight, nine, ten, twelve. Put it in a rack and just walk off and see if he would do the same thing. Or we did—we put 585 on the bar one time, we were supposed to do eight sets at three. We decided to keep doing just keep doing three on two minutes rest.

We decided that we were going to keep doing our sets of three on two minutes rest until one tapped out. And what did you get to? 17. Didn't walk right for four days.

James de Lacey20:27

I can imagine.

Ed Cosner20:27

I had a Jeep back then too. It was hell pushing on that clutch.

Just little challenges like that are always going to be there. Or, one of the younger kids in the gym talks a little trash or something like that. Yeah, so you have to step it up and then you challenge them. Milo would do it the bench press. My other friends—I didn't, my bench press sucked, even though I powerlifted. I would rather do behind the neck press or overhead squats, that kind of stuff.

James de Lacey21:18

Well, that behind the neck press that you showed me, what was that, maybe seven or eight years ago, the one in the rack? I love that one where you're seated with it behind on the pins and you're trying to just lower it back down quietly back to the pins each time. That's awesome.

Ed Cosner21:18

Yeah. A lot of people don't understand, is when you're doing a press behind the neck, you're going to push press it. So from your traps to head, right there, right around the ear, you're going to use momentum to get that bar up. There's no way you're going to use a decent amount of weight trying to press off your traps unless you're some freak Olympic lifter or something like that. Most people aren't.

So yeah, I used that for that. I started doing that when I was a kid, but then I picked it back up when I was in 2006 when I went and visited the Crusaders. Started talking to Ashley Jones and my buddy. It was like I had to, I was doing some work, my shoulder was jacked up, and I started talking to some of the older guys. Their shoulders were jacked up. I was like, "Yeah, you can press off the pins like this, you can do this," whether it's from the front or from the back.

But then you don't have to worry about bringing it back down. Most people, yeah, the hardest part is bringing the bar back down unless you're your sweetheart, Lona. I mean she can bring the bar back down. The rest of us, that thing comes crashing back down at light speed with no control. You miss the traps and you get your spine.

James de Lacey22:34

Yep. You miss the traps or spine.

Ed Cosner22:34

Or like me, Jesus, I came down with a newer Texas Power Bar with a rough knurling, yeah, a real rough knurling. And I was in a—it was a Seattle Sonics, back when they were, before they became the Oklahoma City team. I was there and the bar came down and it hit my fat wrinkle in the back, took a chunk of skin off. That thing didn't stop bleeding.

I'm like, "Yeah, I know that I had the bar close." But then I took a shower and I was like, "Man, why is it burning so bad?" And I looked in—my back from where I was letting the bar drop was just—it was like it wasn't just in one spot though. I mean, how did I get it down there like a low bar squat? I'd hit so many different places. So to me it's just a little bit more control, mostly control to restart it and get a good hard drive out to the lockout and then back down.

Yeah, that's always been my favorite press. I just did them yesterday. I'm going to do them tomorrow before I did heavy barbell rows.

James de Lacey23:47

Nice. I actually have another question from Anil here on the YouTube. He's saying, "Is there any value in unbroken speed reps?" So basically no pause, fast eccentric and concentric. So I'm assuming just going up and down, up and down, up and down.

Ed Cosner24:16

Usually you're inviting injury when you do that. That's like touch and go deadlifts. Anything like that, you're inviting injury. So if I was going to do like that, like a pull—and I do my clean pulls that way where I'm going to get five reps. But I'm going to load, I'm going to take the bar down to maybe my socks or mid-shin and I'm going to reverse and come back up. I'm not going to touch the ground floating.

James de Lacey24:43

I've been doing a lot of floating reps recently too. Is that okay? Floating rep?

Ed Cosner24:43

Yeah, that's a good way of doing it without taking a chance to get hurt. If you're touching the ground all the time, you start fatiguing. One arm gets a little longer, one shoulder rolls forward, you're going to tap, you're going to tap wrong on one side and you're going to start twisting in the wind and you're going to end up getting hurt. So I wouldn't do it in a squat, just because I don't want to—a lot of my athletes are beat up. Knees, ankles, everything, everybody's got different flexibility on there, so I'm not going to really do that.

James de Lacey25:07

Yeah. While we're on the topic of certain lifts, Zercher squats, there's always contention around Zercher squats. You for them, against them?

Ed Cosner25:35

I like Zercher squats, but I use a fat bar. Oh yeah, I use a fat bar because I don't want that little bar digging in.

James de Lacey25:35

Use a Zercher pad down?

Ed Cosner25:35

Oh, for real, yeah. I think Rogue makes a Zercher pad. I'm looking at, I want to order. Yeah, so I mean, better than taking a beach towel in that. But yeah, I mean I'll use a—I'll have a sweatshirt on when I—

Do it and I'm going to use the fat bar. That's why I like the yoke, like the yoke walk. You can use that for carries and all that, but I just use, I have a 2-inch bar, just axle bar. So I'll use that. It just displaces a little bit more. So yeah, I like them unless it's for a strength athlete or somebody else. I mean, I'm using it right now. I'll use it for some of my population.

I used to see it all the time. This guy that owned a gym up when I was in Houston. I wouldn't use it for a baseball player. I don't want to put that bar across that bicep tendon where it comes down that forearm. So I'm not going to use it for a kid that's built like a wire hanger, little skinny ass arms hanging out.

So there's a little bit of, have forearms and it'll pat up. I've used it before, but I really like using the fatter bar for it. I think it's a little safer.

James de Lacey26:53

What do you think? The front squat just provides a bit stimulus anyway because you don't have to support it in your arms and you're still getting a front loaded bar.

Ed Cosner27:19

Yeah, yeah. I like front squatting. I like keeping the things in the front. I do my back squats, I do high bar, low bar. What I found is a lot of people using specialty bars, the longer bar, the safety squat. I've actually went back to, because I want to get back to doing overhead squatting and I grabbed the bar, yeah just go underneath it, and I couldn't get underneath it. My flexibility had gone so much in my right shoulder because that was my injured shoulder that I lost a lot of that flexibility.

So I've been spending the last couple of weeks just trying to get the flexibility back to go underneath the damn bar, just trying to make sure I maintain my flexibility and mobility. I put a picture up the other day, yesterday, stretching, and I do that.

When I got to the Spurs in '99, Bry was my boss. He sent me out to the ASCM clinic, Pete Gasu, who was one of the very, was actually a football player named Junior Seau. He was his trainer when Junior was at USC, the whole time in the NFL. Junior played 18 years in the NFL and Pete's a physical therapist, but in athletics it was brilliant.

So I learned out there is like you get in this position right here and you stay for three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, giving your muscles a chance to relax, relax a little bit more, relax a little bit more. So that picture I put up on my social media in the power rack, like that, with my leg pinned back, I stayed in that position for five minutes, stretched my arm over my head and I just laid there.

I would sometimes go to the floor and do it, but I was just too damn lazy and the bench was right there, so I just laid on the bench.

My airmen, they'll come in for extra workouts and they've seen me in there stretching. One guy actually, I was just stretching trying to get my shoulders out, get both of them down because my right shoulder, my hand would not get to the ground. And I was trying to sit there and almost like a doorway stretch and I just lay there.

And I was just laying there for a couple minutes and they came over to check to see if I was dead. I was like, I don't know if I should be thankful that y'all were checking on me or the fact that y'all think I'm that old that I died.

I tell them because they keep removing the damn safety catches on the racks. You don't need to remove the safety catches for squats. Most of you don't squat low enough, you're not going to hit it. I want them up for bench press. They're like, yes, we don't, I don't want to come in here in the morning when I walk in at 6 o'clock, because the gym is open 24 hours for them. It's just their gym. I'm called, I'm embedded so I'm in their compound.

So they can come in there anytime to get their workout. It's like, yeah, I don't want to come in here and somebody's got a bar across their neck. I'm going to feel really bad when your mom is missing you and the Air Force doesn't know where you're at, because I'm just going to throw your body out to the side. There's a couple of bears that walk through the, that walk through here, so I'm sure somebody's going to get eaten somewhere.

They were like, "Oh man, that's funny." I looked, I was like, "Oh, I thought it was fun. I was serious." But this is different being here though. I mean, there are actually bears on base. There are little black bears on base. I haven't seen one yet. My senior strength coach Adam, he's like, "Yeah, he backs through the gate thing right here." So I keep going out there, I throw like my apple cores over. I want to see them, I want to visit with them.

James de Lacey30:51

So you're just inviting them closer and closer?

Ed Cosner30:51

Yeah, I'm trying. There's also another area by a track that we have in another area where a gym, there's several gyms on base for different units, and they have a snake wrangler because there's snakes out there. Like, yeah, that I don't want to see. That you will find a 260-pound guy screaming like a girl.

James de Lacey31:45

Also want to touch on, Ed, just quickly before we come back to that, your strongman conditioning. I know you're a big fan of conditioning circuits with, I guess for the listeners, strongman-based exercises: tire flips, sledgehammer, farmer's walks, carries, et cetera. Maybe run into just some of the, I guess, what, when, why, how basically.

Ed Cosner31:45

How? Why? Because when I was in the Army, we didn't have the fancy gyms like I work in right now. So pushing a deuce and a half, two and a half ton truck, jeeps and all that, that just became necessary for what we wanted. When I got to the gym in San Antonio, when I started training there, there was a shop out back and this when World's Strongest Man was getting a reemergence in the late '80s, and there was a shop out back that had the big Earthmover tires. So I'd go back out there and flip them, beat on them with a sledgehammer for conditioning, that kind of stuff.

So I'd already started doing that and using it as conditioning. Multiple tire flips. I have one where the guys think I'm a cruel bastard: is jump on the tire, jump in the tire, jump on the tire, flip the tire and just keep going. So I started putting that together and had been doing it that way for a while.

And then Evan Marcus is a real good friend of mine. Evan's now with the Cardinals, Arizona Cardinals. When he was with Cleveland, I went up there with Ben Franks, my All Black Ben Franks. We met up there and kind of focused a little bit more. Kind of taught me how he put stuff together. I started using it more in conditioning. I didn't have like row ergometers, so I used the battling ropes.

So it was stuff that I already been doing, but I just kind of learned how to put it together a little bit better. Some of the different carries and everything else. And then so I look at it and I'm going to put some strength parts in there with some endurance, and then I'm going to bring it back down a little bit.

I would go through and I would say, "All right, we're going to do 12 reps on each one of these." And then Evan taught me, he would have them set up and it was like, "All right, how many times can you go through in 30 minutes?" Or "We're gonna go through six times. Mark your score down." Now it becomes a little bit of a challenge because your rest is what you want to take.

And I really had been doing it, and I really started kind of perfecting it when I was with NOLA Gold. And we would do it every Friday. And the funny part is I had some good forwards doing it, but I had more backs doing it than forwards. One guy that really took to it is a doc called Doc, Doc Isley, James Isley, 37 years old, still playing for the NOLA Gold, active duty Navy. Those circuits kind of created him and that. He was a...

As he even puts it in a testimony he put on my website, fat and out of shape from multiple deployments. He had done multiple deployments overseas as a Navy medic embedded with the SEAL Teams as well, so he's been blown up a little bit, he's been beat up a little bit. Taught him how to do that. That was a great way of putting—for the big guys, it was a great way of getting in shape but not feeling like you're riding a bike and losing everything.

You don't really realize how hard you're working until you see that puddle of sweat that's underneath here. So now I want to kind of put all my circuits together and the ideas and the reasoning behind them, and I want to start putting that out there. Because I'd put it in there and then you'll always see it. I mean, if I shared a few with you, but you'll see them on my older Instagram.

There was always going to be kettlebell swing, goblet squat, pull-ups, push-ups, and that was just to get the heart rate back down and give them a little bit of rest inside. So they thought doing 20 kettlebell swings—not that much fun—and then holding it, pulling it up, holding it into a goblet squat for 15, 10 pull-ups or 10 push-ups, five pull-ups. You don't think that's much when you look at it, and then it's a lot when you get done doing the other three exercises that are in front of it.

That brings it back down, you got another one, and you go back through it again. But for them it was always a challenge. Athletes, and I think just people in general, want to be challenged. I don't think anybody doesn't want to be challenged in their training if they're really into it, they're really seeing what they want to do.

I mean, I've done it even with a swimmer, Josh Davis, who was a multi-gold medalist in 1996, a multi-gold and silver medalist in 2000. Never lifted weights when he was at University of Texas. A little bit of stuff, but they really didn't lift weights back then for swimming.

And he came to me. Now, his wife was an unbelievable volleyball player and basketball player at UT. She was trained by Angel Spassov. This girl had a 240-pound power clean. Yeah, and a big vertical leap. And Josh just looked good.

She was rehabbing her knee and he came in there to do some pull-downs because she was in the weight room in his IZOD shirt with the collar popped up and a pair of khaki shorts. She's looking over, I'm like, "Andy, you're working out?" So he wanted to be challenged.

He never did pull-ups before, he never did dips. And I have a thing where we were going through, and then he ended up doing eight pull-ups every minute for 10 minutes—80 pull-ups. Turned dips the same way. And he started where he couldn't do four pull-ups to start, and that's what we got him to. He was a great guy, he was fun to be around. But yeah, he would take a challenge.

There's a reason he was an Olympic medalist. He'd take a challenge. I don't think you could get—I don't think you could do that, Josh. "We'll do it this way." "Oh yeah, I can do that. Get out of the way, let me show you."

James de Lacey38:08

Do you always—are your strongman conditioning sessions always standalone, or do you also have ones where you do maybe after a strength session?

Ed Cosner38:08

I'll do small ones after a strength session. Yeah. No, these were standalone. The strongman would probably—after we warmed up and got everything going, probably about a 15-20 minute warm-up inside the gym. Maybe some dumbbell—I like dumbbell power cleans in that. We do that warm-up and everything, get a little bit of bicep, a little bit of stretch, go out there and walk them through it.

That workout is going to take a good 30 minutes at least, if not 40. Then they're going to take a good 10 minutes to cool down. The gym in New Orleans, WBAC, the West Bank Athletic Club—most unbelievable gym there is—but Bob had a great pool, so they'd jump in the pool for a little bit.

And we would do everything until about 10:30, quarter to 11:00, and 11 o'clock we would all end up as a group at an all-you-can-eat sushi place. Destroy it. Destroy the place.

James de Lacey39:29

Can you give us some examples of what a strongman conditioning circuit might look like?

Ed Cosner39:29

So I would use the—like I said, we didn't have the ski ergometer, so I would use the battling rope. Battling rope. I can't give them times because they're going through, so it would be reps. So it might be 30 reps or 40 reps with that.

And then I might have the—I have a zercher carry set up with the yoke walk. So pick that up, go down, pick it up, bring it back. There's going to be a farmers carry in there. Sometimes the farmers carry by the side, sometimes overhead carry—one arm overhead, two arms overhead. So it's going to be—there's going to be a carry in there.

They would do the tire flip, or we might—and you would not believe how many people have never swung a sledgehammer before in their life. So we get the sledgehammer out there, that kind of stuff. There's going to be probably five, maybe eight exercises in it.

Like I said, I'm always going to bring it back down. We're always going to have some swings in there. I use the kettlebell swings because I know it really stretches everything out. I want long swings. I don't want that little short arm whatever the heck that is that you see some of the ones do. And I know they get taught that way sometimes, but I want big long swings underneath, I want big long swings out.

Medicine ball slams were always in there. That were going to be in there. It might be front slam, side slam, that kind of stuff. Bob had a great 100-pound medicine ball, so I had a 100-pound medicine ball and maybe a couple 100-pound sandbags, and I would have them over the shoulder a few times, that kind of stuff.

But it's always going to be well thought out and then challenging. And then I'm going on it and just sit there and watch. Throw things at me. And the more of them that laid on the ground gasping for air, the prouder I was.

James de Lacey41:42

It's such a good modality too for even just for grapplers, just because you're having to hold other human beings all the time. And you don't often see even just basic, I guess, carries and stuff in a lot of, I guess you'd say, grappling programs for some reason. It's almost like they're falling out of favor and being forgotten.

Ed Cosner41:42

It's interesting. There's a guy here, Nater. Nater's a stud combat athlete. Wrestled for the Air Force—not the Academy, but for the Air Force. I mean, wrestled in high school. He teaches combatives and that kind of stuff.

And we were talking the other day—like, a lot of wrestling programs, even when he was at the Olympic Center, is, "Pick that guy up and carry him." Carry each other, different carries and everything. And that's really effective. Dan John's got a lot of great stuff with the overhead carry.

He's the one—I've got, it might be a 30-pound kettlebell in this hand overhead, and I may have a 50-pound kettlebell in my opposite hand.

James de Lacey42:35

I used to do that with my athletes too.

Ed Cosner42:35

Okay, there you go. One—I don't even know where the hell I came up with it from, Dan or from what—it's like a waiter carry. I had these guys, because I wanted to stretch those wrists out. Michael Baska was a really good player for me with Nola Gold. Put a 20-kilo plate on his hand, put it over his head like he was carrying a tray, and walked.

You swear when you take that—you swear your arm is up, your shoulder's next to your head, your arm's straight. Then you get a video of it, you look like this. So it really became conscious, and I really like a lot of that work on that upper back and the scapula up there. I love doing carry.

James de Lacey43:23

Let's see. One that we just—I just did it with mine. So I put little circuits in at the end of a lot of my training sessions for myself as well, and for my guys now. I mean, one we did this week was a 10 swings, 10 single-arm swings, five cleans, and then 10 squat to press.

Ed Cosner43:54

And then got done, you have to hold it overhead, you had to walk to the end of my gym, and you had to switch hands and do it again and just keep going back and forth. Rest when you want. I always tell them rest when you want, but you're trying to get them all strung together in that. And do four of them, and that'll get you breathing hard. So always looking at things like that to put in there.

Because I don't want to just—and never been—I trained, I'm in pursuit of strength for strength itself. That's what I'm chasing. I'm chasing strength just to chase strength.

Right now my next goal is—well, [expletive], no one knows it yet, but you'll know it now—in 2025 next year I want to go to Scotland the first week of August and do Dinnie Day. I want to do the Dinnie Stones. I'll be 63 years old. I want to lift the Dinnie Stones.

James de Lacey44:52

So how are you training? Are you doing any kind of—do you have a Dinnie replica or anything?

Ed Cosner44:52

Pin work. I'm going to get the Dinnie replica pins now from Cerberus. I'm gonna have—because I'm challenging myself to do that, but I also want to hit some of the other manhood stones, the other historic stones, the Inver Stone and some of the other ones. I got some buddies over there. I'll stay for a few extra days and go hit some of the other stones that I've lifted before and some that I have never lifted. So that's my next challenge to myself, learning how to pick up the stones again.

Getting my sandbags out—not going to chew up my arms with my stones. I actually gave my stones to one of the kids that I train. Wasn't a kid—he's a grown-ass man, but they're all kids. He was doing strongman when I was at Fort Campbell for a few months. He was doing strongman. I didn't feel like—I brought the stones from San Antonio to Clarksville, Tennessee. I didn't feel like bringing them down to Florida, so I gave them to him because I use the sandbags a lot more, the heavy sandbags.

My buddy, one of the strength coaches on base with me, he's got a whole array of sandbags. I have a few of mine that I'll bring in, and they'll sit there as a challenge to the Airmen that are in there. It's always going to be—I'm going to bring my—I have shot puts from 8 pounds to 28 pounds for grip work, for like an open grip work.

And I have all my Iron Mind toys in a toy box in my office. And guys will come in—hey, we want to do this, hey, we want to do that. We got some guys talking—I'll have guys at lunchtime come in just to do some grip challenges.

James de Lacey46:34

That's so good, though. That's so good.

Ed Cosner46:34

When I laid—I threw out the all the grippers, all my grippers. I threw those out like, hey, this is how much this one is, how much pressure this one is. It takes this. I'm like, if you can—oh my God, I got guys that are gonna probably gonna end up with tendonitis in their forearms trying to close that tough one.

James de Lacey47:01

I've got a trainer, a one and a two, and I can close the one, but the two was just like, that's the Captains of Crush.

Ed Cosner47:01

I have my number three that I got certified on. Oh, damn. It's funny, I just looked down. I'm wearing my Iron Mind shirt too. Exactly. When I closed the number three, Terry Todd—God rest his soul—he certified me. Oh, wow. But now I pick it up now, James. I'm like, how did I do this? I drove over this thing on a—I know that I gave myself tendonitis so bad that I had to stop training for it once.

James de Lacey47:28

Oh my gosh, just from trying to do it.

Ed Cosner47:28

But now I want to do the number two.

James de Lacey47:55

You know, as a—what's the trick? Is it just doing like, almost like five-by-fives with it, doing high reps with it? What is it?

Ed Cosner47:55

I did more high reps with it and trained that other piece that Randy sells. It's a little piece like this and about that big around to put the weight on it to figure out how to close. The problem a lot of people have is closing it at the end. So you use a—you put like a two-and-a-half-pound plate on a training strap, hang it from the training strap, grab the training strap with the one you can close and hold it, and that'll teach you to finish closing it.

I did a bunch of eccentrics. I did a bunch of eccentrics with it too, or like slow—I would close it with both hands and slowly let it come open.

James de Lacey48:22

I've done a few of those too.

Ed Cosner48:22

Those are—yeah. But you really got to be careful because you really do take a chance to get some nastiness up in that elbow where it comes on the top side. But yeah, I can love doing them. I really think that they're beneficial. I like all the grip toys.

Yeah. Not just that—Randy's a friend of mine. I'm ready to put up another post because I was reading all my other books, and I got some great books. I'm gonna reach out and talk to Dan Clay, that wrote Power. You got one for—I think it's a running one—but Little Black Book of Training Secrets. It's really good. I got turned on to him by a buddy of mine, Pete Harding, who's the CEO of Tonga Rugby.

James de Lacey49:08

I knew Pete when he was just when he was a strength coach.

Ed Cosner49:08

Yeah. And he's real good friends with Ashley Jones. That's how I met him.

He's a really good dude. Actually, '96 at the Strength Coaches Conference—UTSA wasn't going to pay me to go. I put on my own dime, so I slept on the floor in their room. So yeah. So Pete and I go way back.

But I was like, you know what? I was unpacking stuff in the spare room as I moved into my new apartment, and I was like, wow, I have all my Milos. Why don't I start pulling those out? Like, I've learned more from reading the Milos than from some of the other books. These are people that did it. They've been there. They did it. And it's not as—it's not as far-fetched. Everybody tries to make things out to be so scientific, but science has been part of strength and conditioning for a very long time now. Not enough younger strength coaches understand that.

Bob Ward, who was the strength coach—Dr. Bob Ward—was the strength coach of the Dallas Cowboys. And Bob was real big into martial arts. This is—we're talking about 1970s. He hooked up heavy bags and had sensors built into heavy bags to measure how hard an athlete could hit that heavy bag. There was a player named Randy White that used to—he went around and taught like combatives—what you would think would be combatives—to other NFL teams. Because Bob Ward brought in judo, aikido, taekwondo people to come in and teach his offensive and defensive linemen balance and fighting techniques. This is in the 1970s.

He talks about—oh God, when I heard him talk one time—talked about towing. He's the one that came up with a lot of the towing, having the athlete go overspeed on the tow. What he did was he had a piece of rope, and he had it hooked up to a motor and a thing that would spin it back. Start the lawnmower engine, the athlete would yank and then take off running. That's the original. So it's been around.

And then for me, I grew up as a half-ass athlete into moving into more being more—but when I got more into throwing, that's—weightlifting was a sport that I loved growing up. But it was strongman and throwing that I really loved. Something about that. For me it was the—and all that—that 12-pound, that 12-pound steel ball didn't make a very good transition to the 16-pound steel ball. I had already gotten bitten by the weightlifting, the powerlifting bug, or like the heavy training bug and was going that way.

But you can't be a thrower—I mean, you can't be a rugby strength coach or a rugby coach, you can't be in martial arts and not understand physics, balance and everything else. And I think sometimes we get a little—a little too far away from that. Just looking and actually, this thing—

Great. I really wish that this would have been around a little bit more when I was first starting to coach. And that, for anyone listening, it was the phone, just so I can get some pictures of some of the people. But too many rely on that and technology and they don't rely on their own coaching. They don't rely on their own coach's eye. They don't develop a coach's eye.

I can look and tell you, I mean I use a Tendo unit once in a while in my training. I use velocity-based training in and around, but I can also cheat the hell out of it. If I'm pulling and I'm doing it on a pull, if I get to about three-quarters where I'm in my strong spot and I yank back really hard, that average velocity just got tricked. The same thing as jumping on the jump mat and you see the guys and then, landing bent legs, start to pull their knees up into a tuck jump. You get more hang time.

Now I'm not saying it's not a great tool. I love to have had one even when I was at the Spurs to see where the guys were at when they walked in. But there's something to jumping and reaching at a vertex, or—and in my gym in Houston, I had—I would throw a softball on a hook and I would throw it over the rafters.

Remember how tall it was in there. I'd throw it over the rafters and I would leave it there. And it might be at 8 feet, might be at 9 feet, and see how many of the guys walked in and started jumping at it. Because there's a challenge to it.

And there's a—I don't know, it's like throwing a med ball. Throwing a med ball, I know where it lands, especially if I'm throwing on a football field. I know where it lands and I'm going to challenge myself to hit that spot or go further. And if I go less, I want to know why. If I throw it on the wall, I can hear it, so I have my own coaching with that. A little too much looking through the lens of the camera, looking through this and that, not enough just paying attention to what they're doing.

James de Lacey55:06

I've got one more question for you. I got one more question for you from Amil in the chat. He's asking, have you ever coached slow-twitch, non-explosive athletes and how would you help them get stronger and faster? Would be a slow-twitch, non-explosive athlete. So I guess like a workhorse that doesn't jump very high.

Ed Cosner55:06

If he needs to jump high, we're going to have to learn. We're going to have to get—or even just being explosive in general. Yeah, more short amplitude, more jumping, more med ball, still trying to maintain his strength. Yeah, of course I have. I'm one of them.

James de Lacey55:35

I'm one of them.

Ed Cosner55:35

I was strong. Squat almost 700 pounds in a pair of gym shorts. Squat over 800 in a competition suit, single ply, by the way, not that gear crap that they wear now. But when I wanted to move to the Highland Games and be more athletic, I was slow, slow, slow. So that's where the med ball came into play. That's where coming back to the Olympic lifts, even if they're high pulls from the floor.

But because my wrist flexibility going back this far, it's—I'm not catching. That's like I said before, I mean my snatch and clean are right about the same. If not, my snatch is even higher. I did a contest in Shreveport, Louisiana. Kyle Pierce was up there. My workout partner, I ended up snatching 145 and cleaning 120. He's like, "Here, that doesn't—" Yeah, that's the best I can do. And it wasn't a clean and jerk, it was a clean and ugly push press.

But yeah, and that's where you kind of get in there. That's where plyos come in, and basic—even just basic skipping. That's the one thing that I've been amazed is watching people skip, whether it's where I'm at now or where I've been before, is the inability to march. If you can't march, you can't skip. If you can't skip, you can't run.

I introduced him, Ben Franks—he's a strong boy. He was fairly explosive. I mean, of course he was explosive to a point. He won a freaking Rugby World Cup. It wasn't just the year that I trained him leading up into that. He had a lot of training before him, but introduced him to other stuff, other modalities, back to his cleans and stuff.

But yeah, training somebody that's a little bit slower, you're going to use a little bit more hang above the knee, maybe not as much off the floor. Like I said, I like to power clean, and I'm going to start taking you—I'm going to start taking the med ball. You're not going to just do the med ball from what you would think would be like a hang position, like above the knee. I make you put it on the ground and squat to it and grab it and throw.

The one thing that I do—and you'll never find me doing it anywhere else other than that—but I will wear gloves when I throw med ball because it picks up too much dirt, dust and stuff. And I hate having it slip out of my hand. I've actually strained my bicep doing that—like get a good scoop toss on it, it spins out, and I've actually strained.

But if you got a pair of gloves on, like receiver gloves from—cheap pair from Academy or something like that—you're always going to grab a hold of the ball. You're going to get good reps on every one of them. Ain't no different than putting chalk on my hands for a lift.

James de Lacey58:50

Yeah, that's true.

Ed Cosner58:50

But yeah, if you got a guy that's slow in all of that, you want to introduce him to the explosive stuff, and yeah, you want to introduce them to cleans. You really do. But as you're introducing to cleans and you need them to get quicker, that's where the med ball scoop tosses start coming in. That's where jumping comes in.

I don't see any sport that jumps don't help. For sure, I had two young ladies that were bronze medal winners in Spencers, and they started—they trained with me in Houston and they jumped, not very high, but they jumped. Jumps are in my program all the time. They're in Sally's program. She's not an athlete, but she loves doing them. I mean, normal people like doing them. It doesn't have to be max jumps, but you gotta do that.

One that really helped me a lot was standing on a 12-inch box and backwards, so falling, stepping off and then getting that rebound and trying to get that tempo. I used to like doing that on stairs, one step at a time. You want to get those max jumps, but you don't still want to be able to—same as skipping—you still want to be able to get that quick reaction. Ankles nice and tight, quick reaction. Because then it comes from your hips. You're getting—and it comes from your hips. Because that's where your power comes from. Your power comes from your hips.

James de Lacey1:00:33

Sometimes I find some people will, when they're starting to do the Olympic lifts, they end up jumping like bunny rabbits. I want to stomp their feet, like man, you can't apply force to the ground if you're not on the ground. So if you're an athlete, you want your hips to drive you off the ground, not your ankles. I mean, I've had guys where I've actually not allowed them to jump while they were doing their Olympic lifts until they finally figured out to engage their hips, right? So engage their hips to be able to do that.

Ed Cosner1:00:59

But it goes back to the same thing. I love the med ball. I loved it when I was a kid throwing. And when I got to UT San Antonio, the track coach, the sprint coach, had one of those weightlifting classes that they teach in the morning for a little bit of extra cash in their paycheck. He would open up the little weight cage that we had up there, and his class did something, and he would sit over there and talk to me.

He was the one that kind of taught me. For a long time the medball fallen out of favor in the late 80s, early 90s, and track and field coaches, they're the ones that kept it in, kept it alive. So a scoop toss with a 16 pound steel shot, scoop toss backwards, scoop toss forward is still a staple in most throwers' offseason training.

It's how you measure it, it's one of the tests. It's a scoop toss, I don't know if it's backward or forward, I think it's forward, two toss forward, is a test for Bob USA, bobsled, at least it was when I was training a couple of guys that were trying to go out to it, as a real important test.

It's a test in the Army as well, a medball scoop toss backwards. So it's a good gauge on power output and easy, everybody can throw, or so you think. And to the kids that I trained when I was with the Spurs, I trained the owner's kid and a bunch of his little buddies, and they were 14 years old, couldn't could barely walk and chew gum.

We threw medball till they could get their bodies coordinated enough. When you're a kid you went outside and you ran and you threw and you played and everything, rugby ball, that kind of stuff, not these guys, not unless they were in a video game.

But you get them out there throwing that ball, they figure out how to coordinate. And go back to the same thing, talking about the medball with Jesse James Leija. I said that I used a medball on him. I used a medball in a wall and the very first time I ever trained him we ran, we did, it was probably 150 throws with a 4 kilo medball. And it was 10 exercises, went through it one and a half times, so different various throws.

And so I go up to the gym to try to visit with him, and I can see him in the ring and the boy can't pick his hands up. I mean he cannot pick his hands up. Everybody's eyeballing me because I broke their Superstar. And I was like, "Listen James, I expect you to throw more with your gut. I said especially since you golf, in this, this where your punching power comes from, that's where your swing power comes from."

We talked a little bit, he goes, "No, no, but they moved to fight up." I'm like, "Yeah, that's fine." Well, it's Chief second just kept eyeballing the hell out of me and Chief Second is his main trainer and his dad was watching me. And we were messing around, and a couple weeks later I come in there and Leo, his chief second, says, "You guys stop that stupid all throwing [expletive]." I like, "No, actually he threw 300 times today." "Why?" He goes, "Because I think he just broke my ribs through my pads."

And James look at me goes, "I understand what you mean." So somebody as great as James, I said he's a two-time world champion, he fought Azumah Nelson, he fought De La Hoya, I mean he is a stud. But to hold that medball and learn how to turn and learn how to twist and throw and learn how to, the arms are last, the torso moves and everything else, learn how to be coordinated and put some power into it.

It improved his career and he was in his 30s when I started training him. He became, he was the ex-world champion that they put guys in front of, they kind of gauge how they were to fighting for two world titles. So it made a big difference: jumping, sprinting, learning how to move.

James de Lacey1:05:40

Yeah, that's the perfect way to end this podcast. To where can people find and follow you and keep out with what you're doing?

Ed Cosner1:05:40

On my social media they can find me on there, just it's under Ed Cosner. Or old strong guys wool, as my, I use it for my for my master's lifters and my master stuff. They can reach out to me at EdCosner@gmail.com, or my website at, what is my website? Play Art, that's the one. Play Art Train Harder, which came from the sport itself is never intense enough to elicit a physiological response.

In other words, you're not going to get in condition playing the sport. Training has got to be harder. That's where you, that's where you're your strength coaches like you, me, others, that training's got to be hard. It's got to be intense and then you're going to get that good physiological response.

James de Lacey1:06:40

Perfect, perfect, it's a perfect way to end this Ed. I appreciate you coming on.

Ed Cosner1:06:40

Appreciate it too. And hope everyone enjoyed it.

James de Lacey1:06:40

Me too. Yeah, you guys have to come visit.

Ed Cosner1:06:40

Right here.