How Strong Is Strong Enough

James de Lacey3:14

No, I love that. That's awesome. Yeah. No, it's a funny one. I think most of the value from it comes more from bringing more of a constraints approach to actual training versus the isolated drills in the gym.

In saying that, some of those isolated drills in the gym I found just kind of make a good transition from maybe if you're doing a circuit-based, a general circuit-based warm-up, and then you might do some of these Bosch style like that single leg RDL snatch or whatever it is. It's almost like a bridge between the warm-up and then maybe your main power movement or speed movement in the gym because it kind of it just works well in between.

Whether it... that's the biggest complaint about the system is that how do you quantify what's actually working, and as you mentioned does it really matter? I don't know. But I think the main things I've taken out of those learnings and with the book is that constraints approach of okay in rugby or whatever field-based sport there are certain things when running that need to happen for an athlete to be proficient, look like they're gliding while they're running, and it's usually foot from above hitting the ground and then upper-lower dissociation. So being able to do things with the upper body while the lower body is maintaining speed.

So just setting up things on the field like I would have for some acceleration stuff rubber mats on the ground on the field and you sprint with rubber mats in random places, and obviously if you're not getting foot from above you're going to trip, and so just it's just kind of building failure into some of those drills to be able to transfer.

And you don't have to do just that because you can go one to one. So even just simple wicket drills, sprint wickets are a constraint that are going to force thing from above, and you can go one rep wickets and then one rep without and you're just transferring the feeling over.

And that's at least that's where I found most of the application. And then obviously there's a ton more, there's a bunch of ankle stuff you see people doing and trunk things as well. So there's some stuff there, but again, as you mentioned, you still got to have the big rocks under it. You can't go, as everyone says, you can't go full Bosch.

Dane Miller5:35

Yeah. I think honestly what's funny is the way you just described those drills as well is honestly probably the best description of a constraint drill. That's the other issue I have. It's so complex. It's so... I don't even know if this is a word. It's complexly put out that it's like, "Dude, I want to get kids that are 10 to 30 really, really good at whatever sport they're going to do. Can you tell me yes or no that this will happen?"

And I'm not saying that this was a real discussion, but it's just this crazy roundabout description of a drill. But you actually just described the drills like a wicket drill really almost through the Bosch translation. And I think that's what that system almost sort of lacks. They don't make it as simple as possible. Take a complex thing and simplify it and be able to tell me in 30 seconds cuz I'm a dumbass, right? Like that's what I want.

James de Lacey6:27

Yeah, the thing that really cemented it for me was other than getting that practical stuff from John Prior was Chris Korfist. He has a... I don't know if he still sells the videos, but he has a... I can't remember what it's called. I've got them, but it was like speed drill $10 videos.

And he has different series of A skips, A runs or high knees and things like that, but he incorporates the upper body to dissociate them. So, say you're doing a high knee run, but he's doing pushing and pulling with the arms up and down or he's doing rotations while you're doing it. And I was like, but he doesn't mention Bosch or anything to do with that in the videos.

And you go, "Ah, okay. Now I start to find the links of what you're trying to achieve with some of these things into this, I guess, more of that speed stuff or you can see more game, quote-unquote game speed style drills because it has a little more application." But that really kind of put it into perspective at least for me.

Dane Miller7:51

Yeah, I would agree. I would echo that. Yes, for sure.

James de Lacey7:54

Yeah, I actually just had a super chat in here. "Love both of your work, Jensen." Thank you very much. Please appreciate it. Well, I mean, we're just going to continue on the conversation anyway. It's good.

That Bosch stuff is always controversial. I mean, even with the... you even look at their muscle slack theory and it's kind of like when you take it too far, at least in my opinion, because true Bosch is not having counter movements, because if you have a counter movement, you're not taking up... he wants everything from a static start. So you take that slack, you find the optimum length of the muscle and then you're doing something, and that kind of goes against a lot of the other things that you're probably trying to achieve from training if you're just taking out counter movements and stuff.

Dane Miller8:44

Yeah. I think where I've struggled with all this stuff is that if I look at it and I look at the numbers of what we do on site and we are looking at how we test athletes, it's still okay. So we do very specific plyometric days, we have speed days here, we also lift very heavy, we also do dynamic lifts and stuff.

And I guess the issue I've always had is no matter what we do... well not no matter what but what we do is we still see if someone's front squat goes up they jump higher as long as we're still doing the plios, as long as we're still doing that. If someone's clean gets to a point... and we've from the years of testing people we can see like okay these are around the body weight, the body weight numbers, percentages relative to age, relative to experience training.

As long as all of these things are still happening, these controls, if a front squat goes up or if even like a shot putter, if we see their bench goes up, dude, three weeks later they throw farther.

It's not... and it's not that I dislike the movements in the sense that I think how you were describing it is actually how we ended up now using them. They're almost more of a warm-up before big move. Sometimes we might use them as a warm-up at a track if we're doing even just almost like a hip airplane to a hip lock. Stuff like that, but it's less so.

It's become... for two to two plus years it was like everything we did was in this and it's just slowly come down to like 5 to 10% of the program. And I guess that's where the interesting part of it is.

Yeah. I wanted to share that with you though.

James de Lacey10:39

No, I love it. And the other interesting part are the people who are using it almost exclusively. I don't know if you followed like Speed Power Play, which was I think that was like John Fry and Lee Edgars.

Dane Miller10:53

I don't think they post as much anymore.

James de Lacey10:55

No, they still post. I saw a post. They still post every now and then. I don't definitely don't post as much, but they almost show full training sessions of some of their fighters and other athletes that essentially all this kind of constraints or kind of Bosch style stuff, which is is interesting to see because it's I almost say it's so skewed towards one side.

Like there is, I don't know if they're doing it otherwise or just not posting it, but there is no kind of like maximum strength work. There is no hard ballistic training. It's kind of just like all this, I don't even know what you call it, to be honest.

Dane Miller11:31

I think this is my other issue, is like the first day that we had Sam Mattis, who's a discus thrower, doing he did a snatch to a box. We were like, all right, I just wanted to try and see, like, first day, single leg snatch to a box. How high can we go? Because in my mind, I did this with Joel Seedman's stuff and I never read any of Joel Seedman [expletive]. I literally just watched his stuff.

James de Lacey11:57

You didn't buy the $300 ebook.

Dane Miller12:00

No, no, I did not buy the $300 ebook. But I took all Joel Seedman stuff and I was like, okay, if absolute strength, and this is what I think, how I see this, is like my model of deciphering another system, is if absolute strength is poorly applied or if it doesn't have an application, when I would do your system that we have no exposure to, I shouldn't be good at it.

I should not be good at all because I've never done it. So I have no skill. And if it's truly skill-based, I should have no ability to do it, or at least minimal, because it's skill-based.

And so, with Joel Seedman stuff, I tried probably 50 exercises. We made a couple YouTube videos. I did, he had reclaimed that he had a world record bench press, and I just took a bamboo bar, threw 100-pound dumbbells on, and did more than. I'm like, yeah, some of the movements I like, but most of them I'm like, dude, if if absolute strength stuff is so bad, as a 39 at the time, I'm 41 now, but at the time when I did it, I shouldn't have been able to just be really good at these movements.

And then in the same regard, going back to the Sam discussion, is the first day, and we have this on video, Sam goes forward on a single leg RDL, has 60 kilos on, and just is like boom, right to two boxes. So about 15 inches. So, you know, I don't know centimeters-wise, I guess that would be 30 to 35 centimeters, right?

James de Lacey13:36

Yeah. And like just toys it on each leg, both legs. And I'm like, okay, he's got a 30 to, or he's got a 35 to 40 inch vert. He's a specimen. He's a beast. But he also back squats 300 kilos. He cleans 200 kilos. And you're going to tell me that that inhibited him as an athlete?

So, but then he goes and does that movement, and dude, I've seen videos of some of these guys that are true 100% Boschers, and it's like, come on, come play American football training like that. You're going to get murdered. Like you'll get destroyed on the field. So I think they all have, they have their space, they have their place for it. But when you are all 100% on it, I don't think that you're, I don't think you're appreciating the sports for what they are, really.

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Dane Miller15:24

Yeah, I fully agree with you. I mean, you can replace Bosch with the fascial movements and everything else. I saw you did another Functional Patterns video the other day, and it's exactly the same thing. Like everyone's so focused on this isolated thing, and they forget that muscles create movement. But then, you can even look at like the three component graph of like of muscle, like the contractile component, the passive elastic component, the series elastic component.

All these three things are what contribute to moving bone at whatever it is you're trying to do. And if you're just looking at one thing of those things, you're missing out on everything else.

And I mean, 100%, it's like, and I think that's the interesting part, not to go off on Maudy, but you see the rotational [expletive]. And this is the other weird thing, is like, dude, we train throwers. So the ultimate rotation sport.

James de Lacey16:26

Yeah. It's literally everything we do. So I always laugh because I'm like, dude, are they not watching other sports that are doing this? I think that's the wild part. It's like some of the most rotationally based athletes I know are also the strongest, but they also lift really heavy, and they also have crazy mobility as well. So, and I know what their mobility is based off their measurements, based off of mobility people actually measuring them, and guys that are like doctors. It's crazy.

So I guess, not to go too far into negatively speaking on other people's stuff, but I always think it's like exactly how you just described it. If you're so in tune on, and I would do the same thing if I was, like look, if I just looked at absolute strength movements and was so in on that, I would be ignoring all this other stuff, and it would, it wouldn't be, I would be the absolute strength version. I would be the powerlifter version of Functional Patterns.

And I think I was trying to type, because I have this, I've been having this conversation with one of my close friends on, like, what's your mental model? And I wanted to, I wrote this down. I didn't even want to share this. I didn't feel like I needed to share this with you, but it's something that it's like, what's the mental model for explaining biomechanics or physiology and how people, this can be like a deterministic model with factors around constructs and actual measurable quantities, and then how they all statistically or conceptually relate to the outcome of a performance.

And I think when you try to have a model with all these different things, that's reality. But if you're just, if you're taking out everything and you're isolating it, it's not as as real. That even came from, ironically, a discussion about speed people, because I think speed people just are, can be the same, where it's like you should just do speed and it's like so much so that, yeah. Sorry, I'm going off.

Dane Miller18:33

That's good. I guess it's like if you are just dialed in on speed, or you're just dialed in, and it's interesting because I had this conversation with Aaron Gadson, who's a triple jump coach, long jump coach. He's coached the Olympic champ from 2024. And he's like, cool, I can see someone's time in a 20, but what does that matter? I want to see Thea's time.

So he got a radar gun because he wants a specific speed at a specific point on the runway. And he's like, I don't think measuring, I don't think measuring speed in distance matters in some sports, because I want to make sure prior to the last three steps that her movement is at this speed, or Jordan, guy that almost won the Diamond League in the triple jump from Jamaica, the other guy he coaches, is at this speed at this point and this speed at this point.

And it's interesting because to hear him say that, as a guy who speed is a huge component of triple jump, he's actually basically saying like, if we measured speed in a 40-yard dash, let's say, it's not immeasurable. I, for him, it's not immeasurable. So we have to know the construct of how people view whatever the hell they're measuring. And to say, and I'm saying this because I was actually, I'm preparing for a podcast with a really big speed guy, and I'm not anti-speed. I'm just thinking through trying to punch holes in their arguments for the discussion purpose, really.

So I don't know if any of that [expletive] makes sense.

James de Lacey20:07

No, it's it's perfect. That's the whole whole point of the podcast is to ramble on stuff like this. And it's funny how you mentioned speed at certain points, because the same thing with maximum absolute strength, you have these big ceiling numbers, like max velocity, absolute strength, et cetera. But obviously all sports are constrained by time, and everything almost comes down to how quickly can you get there.

So it's like, how quickly can you accelerate to whatever velocity? How quickly can you produce force? How quickly can you produce power? How quickly your heart rate can get into essentially close to maximum heart rate? How quickly your heart rate can come back down? Like everything is just time-based and how quickly you can do something.

As you mentioned, if you're too far on one side, if you're just like powerlifting is everything, you're going to have problems. If you're just whatever else, you're going to have problems, just because some of these qualities, they are helpful, like maximal strength is helpful, but to a certain point. If you're doing not other stuff and doing maximal strength, you're going to have negative adaptations towards speed. And those negative adaptations aren't just, oh, I'm slow and stiff. It's kind of like muscle architecture changes, tendon changes with it.

Dane Miller21:17

Yeah. And I think that's where it's this fine balance of all of these qualities. And the crazy part is if I try to get a strength coach to even identify what are the qualities, what are the characteristics that we need to dial in on, people can't. I mean, I always have to go political, but I always ask this about the government. What's the purpose of the government? If we all define the purpose of the government and the role and the spaces the government should be involved in, we would at least identify where we can have debates.

And it's the same thing with strength and conditioning. If we just identified the areas, the characteristics that we have to work on, then it makes it at least it would likely prevent that argument. It would prevent the guy from going all powerlifting or it would prevent the guy going all speed based.

What's funny is we did a podcast with this guy who's a strength coach at Tulane and he goes, "Look, max strength does have an impact on speed to a point." Age and capability, strength. You get a kid, he's 18, he's never lifted before, and he goes, his back squat goes from 135 to 315, he's like, I guarantee you he's gonna get faster.

Now, after that point, it's more about durability. That max strength might keep him more stable. And if we just maintain that max strength, maybe he gets a little bit stronger, but we keep that durability there. Now, we can train his speed, but if we back off entirely, now he might get hurt quicker.

So it's interesting balancing these things and that's where to me that's a much more okay so we're going okay strength is one of them speed's one of them those are characteristics we have to identify that we have to be training in one specific way or in multiple ways but we have to balance how much we're going to push one versus the other based off of where the athlete is and that's where I think the debate needs to come down to. Not like you can't measure strength.

This is from one of the podcasts I'm prepping for. I'm like, okay, you can't measure strength. I could make an argument you can't measure speed based off of what Aaron said. Well, Aaron wants to know what the speed is at a specific point. And if he has to have a radar gun, are we measuring the arm speed? Are we measuring the peak velocity of the movement of the athlete running? Are we measuring the average velocity? There's so many arguments you can make with all this stuff.

James de Lacey23:40

You can nitpick anything at this point.

Dane Miller23:43

Yeah. That's the whole thing. And it's like we shouldn't nitpick because at the end of the day I got to deal with kids that are that are 10 to 30. Most of our athletes are 10 to 20 years old, and then I got 20 plus athletes that are world class Olympic NFL style guys. Most of the time it's like do your pio squat more and jump more. Like that's it. We're here to hold these [expletive] accountable. That's it.

James de Lacey24:12

Yep. And that basic stuff always works. You mentioned as well with the you mentioned you have the almost like performance thresholds. Do you have anything off the top of your head where you kind of see once you reach a certain level on certain lifts that going any further may give you some benefits but may not translate to performance as well.

Dane Miller24:32

Yeah. In most cases, so for us, going into the the confines of what we focus on, we look at explosiveness. So this could be the way we measure explosiveness would be a broad jump, a vertical jump. Clean does bleed into explosiveness, it leaks into max strength a little bit as well, but it's mainly explosiveness. A power clean we would put in there, but mainly some type of simple jump that let's say you're at your house and you have a kid and you're like all right let's test your vertical or let's test your broad you can do it pretty easily.

And then we would look at strength, so this would be a back squat, a front squat, a single leg squat, a bench press, a pull-up. We don't do a lot of deadlifts, we do deadlifts but we don't measure them unless you're a powerlifter. And then we're looking at speed, so we want to see a 10, we want to see a 20, a flying 10, a flying 30, those are those assessments. And then we have endurance work. So we're looking at a 7-minute assault bike. We might look at a 5K. We might look at a 60-minute run. What's the average?

Okay. So we have those as assessments. Those are the four areas: explosiveness, speed, strength, and endurance. And then when we look at it, it's like, okay, if I see someone's front squat get to 1.8 to two times body weight, you won't see any more improvements. And it takes a long time to get there relative. So the front squat relative to a vert or a broad. Okay. So if you have a vert or a broad or a 10, a 10 yard sprint, you will push. Let's say you take a kid and they front squat 1.2 times body weight and then they front squat 1.4 times and then they front squat 1.7 times and then all of a sudden they're at 1.8.

You'll see that their other things as long as we're still doing them will improve up until around 1.8 to two times depending on the athlete. Really good athletes can push that number a little bit higher because they're able to use it better in most cases. Athletes that might not be as coordinated might have to do more work in that specific test for it to move up.

So front squat 1.8 to two times, back squat two times to 2.2 times. Dude, these are big numbers. You're looking at a kid in high school ass to grass back squatting, if they're a middle linebacker weighing 220. We've got to get them to anywhere around a 200k to 230k back squat. And we would probably see if they're back squatting ass to grass 500 lb in high school, they're probably going to have a 35 to 40 inch vert.

They're probably going to have a clean around 330 to 350. They're probably going to have somewhere if they're a linebacker running like a 4.7 in a 40. Their shuttle time, that's another measure of speed I didn't mention, will also improve, probably would run like a 4.2. Now, this is a good athlete, a good kid.

So, front squat, 1.8 to two times, back squat, and this is from all of our data on site, two to 2.2 times. Power clean usually around 1.5 to, and that's pretty heavy, 1.5 to 1.6 times. A full clean you would probably see 1.6 to 1.7. Those are big lifts. These are heavy so it takes a while to get there.

Single leg front or single leg squat. So like a rear leg elevated split squat is what other people call them. We just call them single leg squats. This numbers are usually around 1.5 to 1.6. Bench press is usually about 1.7 to 1.8. It's actually sort of weird. It's close to it's around a little more than the power clean. A little bit less than the front squat. I'm trying to think off the top of my head as far as I did front squat, I did back squat, I did single leg squat, I did the cleans.

A snatch you would see one times to 1.2 times, 1.25 times. I'm trying to envision the case studies that we have. And then the pull-up not so much in other areas that's more specific to a sport like swimming or wrestling. So that's not as there's not as much of a carryover to a medball throw is another explosive measurement that other people use. We don't use it, but other people use it and we know that the bench will actually increase that.

So that would be the main lifts if you're doing a clean or a front squat or a single leg squat or a back squat. Those are the numbers that we that that once you push past that.

So okay. So we just we got back from world champs with our elite group. We had seven athletes at world championships for track and field. We come back. Okay. How did everybody do? Well, we had our Samoan dude got third in the discus. So we got a medal. Seven people there. We get a medal. Pretty freaking good job. I think pretty good job, especially for an unfunded athlete to beat the [expletive] out of guys that are getting funded by full federal governments.

We did a good job. Now, does does the benefit come from, Alex's case, who's the medalist, or Sam, the American discus thrower, who we mentioned doing the snatch with a single leg RDL, he his back squats 280. Is is he going to throw farther throwing or squatting 300 kilos, which is 660? Probably not. Will it help him hold his finish a little bit longer so he can accelerate a little bit more? Maybe. I don't know. It could. It might.

Behind the neck jerk measure of explosiveness that we do is if he back squats 300, I know he's going to behind the neck jerk 240. He's done 227. And if he hits the split position, which is a direct mimic of, and I'm not a huge sports specific guy, but it's a very similar position to the finish on the discus, it might actually lead to a better transfer in that position at the front. And also I, not to get too in the weeds of the technique of the discus, but the position out of the back emulates a position at the front.

So, there's an argument that you could make, yeah, if he's a little more stable and if he can maintain his explosiveness, his twitchiness, we might see a little bit of a push on his back squat to 290 to 300 would transfer, but it would transfer in the other lifts that the back squat also pushes.

So, it's like now you got to play this game and then you got to play the season and then you got to look at the season and it's like I don't want to worry about if we got to do a single leg RDL rotating hip lock when I can just play this numbers game based off of all the analysis that we do and I might use that exercise I just mentioned as one of his warm-ups and he might say, "Yo, I feel better when I do that in my hamstrings or whatever it might be."

But yeah, for I'm even trying to think when we see tens and 20s because we do a lot of tens, we do a lot of 20s. We do a 20 yard sprint with a 12 kilo load and that is directly correlated to that 1.5 times single leg squat. That is a test that we use a lot with field athletes that have resistance and it's a test that we use a lot with wrestlers because they're going against resistance in an opponent. So that's the other thing is we like to have the assessments sort of resemble a situation.

If you're an O a D lineman O lineman you're coming off the line so you have resistance when you make impact and you have a longer ground contact time. So having a resisted test in speed I think does correlate to a point in those cases and in a wrestling mat when you're putting force into the mat and then the mat sinks a little bit that's where we'll use that test that weighted test.

So, a single leg squat carries over really well to how many bounds does it take you to go 20 yards? And then when we're running the weighted 20 yard with 12 kilos on that, it's a literal just direct correlation. This goes up, this gets faster. This goes up, this gets faster up to 1.5 times.

Yeah, I'm just trying to like tap into my brain and share those things. I'm trying to think if there's other some things around explosive push-ups when we measure on a jump mat. With bench press, speed bench, we also do a time bench that we use video timing like specific weights for high school versus close collegiate throwers, and male and female. So, we'll test that. And we do we have recently started doing a lot more stuff with VBT on squats and bench, too, but we haven't I don't have an update on that stuff.

James de Lacey33:28

Yeah, D. That's that's cool. Making my head turn on all different things like you could even with the rest of the stuff like load velocity profile them based on resistance sprints and you could program resistance sprints based on like optimal power load if you wanted and then I mean you've even got even with throwers I guess you could do like rate of force rate of power development like force at 200 millisecond. I mean, you need equipment to do this but you know, it's there's some cool stuff you could do off the back of all that, too.

Dane Miller33:58

Yeah, some of the things and maybe this would be okay. So, I try to set everything up so that all of us that coach here, it's like simple. Now we have a 1080, we got we have the vault speed gates. We got a jump mat, we got our we also have the Vert like old school vertical jump. So we have multiple ways to measure all this.

Looking at like a running back. Okay. So we have a kid, one of our running backs is one of the best D2 running backs. This dude's a dog. Okay. His name's Jaden Stewart. He plays at Kutztown. Kutztown's number three in the country. He's, you know, this past weekend averaged like nine and a half yards per carry. Had two touchdowns. They're good.

Jaden's case was okay by midsummer he's single leg squatting 185 kilos he's running a very fast time with the 1080 12k test Legend who does all our speed comes to me and he's like and he knows I also have FOMO if we don't lift heavy or we don't clean heavy I just I just feel like we're missing something. But he comes into me and he's like, 'Look, look at the data. Look at the chart.'

And so we have a spreadsheet for the football guys, the guys that are like the good, you know, the guys that we think can do really big damage. The high school kids were just like, 'Yo, just shut up and squat more and jump more and we'll be fine.' But with Jaden, he goes, 'Look, Jaden's flying 10 is just under one second. It's fast, but it's not it's not like blow your doors off fast. His 40 is good. 40 is like a 46 at the time flat.'

So he's like I think Jaden's low-hanging fruit. So I would call this like a load velocity profile to a point. It's not official, but it's like he goes, I think if we just ease up a little bit with the lifting and when we're running on Tuesdays, because that was our day to that was our day to do max accelerate or max velocity work. If we could get him like maybe one extra rep and he's a little fresher and then after the third or fourth week we back off and he just does the same amount of reps but he's still fresher and he's moving faster.

We might get him to run like a 45 on the 40 because his other speed is there. His acceleration's phenomenal. His strength is already good. And it's like, okay, then then we can back off. And these are adjustments that we make without really without re like yes, we have equipment. We're in a privileged situation, but we're not in like a crazy crazy, you know, we're not like an NFL combine group. We don't have that type of tech.

So, it's like our whole goal is that we can make those adjustments with minimal tech and still really really see an improvement. And in Jaden's case, that's what ended up happening. He runs a really good 40. Feels faster in the middle of the season. I think because we actually ran him too hard towards the end of the prep, I actually think we probably had too much volume on his high speed days.

But then now he's, you know, in the season and he's running really well. So, I think that I don't know. I was trying to share like how we would do our version of a load velocity.

James de Lacey37:28

No, love it. It's perfect. Had a question in the chat here as well. Actually, I've had a couple of questions like this. I think for you around the same kind of theme, but interested in what you both think about weightlifting derivatives if you progress a snatch grip, high pull or clean pull from a high hang instead of instead and if so, what numbers you'd look for if so? So I guess the question is where different derivatives yay or nay. Would you use them over maybe a full lift? Or do you use them in conjunction with them? And then what numbers you look for?

Dane Miller37:58

Okay. So this is where I would go to that statement of what's the model like what's the mental model? Because I'd be like okay is this for athletes? Is this for a weightlifting like a weightlifting athlete or sports performance?

James de Lacey38:12

Sport athletes.

Dane Miller38:13

Yeah. And honestly, first the way we teach our athletes is we don't teach we teach no feet movements for our football guys. So like there's videos we of Nick Singleton who's running back at Penn State had sadly part of the greatest collapse in the history of college football possibly. But Nick in high school cleaned 160 and if you watch his feet, he doesn't really move. Like he barely moves his feet at all because we teach what I would argue is a derivative.

We teach sliding, we teach no feet movements a lot. So we we tend to use box movements for our performance athletes. And hangs a lot of box stuff because we we tend to single leg squat really heavy, a lot heavier than most people do. So, we want to just I think boxes actually that's even the discussion I wanted to have with you. That was the video you posted was the impulse aspect of two boxes. So, that was I think I might have commented on that.

James de Lacey39:15

Yeah, that's the one from the Just Fly podcast, I think.

Dane Miller39:17

Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, we we use derivatives a lot. I love them. And then I would argue part of our progression we do so we do have a top down progression. we have a bottoms up progression. But if we go top down, which I prefer, you know, we go set the grip, set the stance, we'll go like a snatch press, we'll do what we call weeks rack. So we'll do like almost an external rotation with the bar.

Then we do overhead squat, then we do snatch balance, and then the next part of that progression is we go to a high hang snatch with a slow eccentric, and then we do like a high hang muscle into that position. Then we go into the high hangs power then a high hang full. So to answer their question that's how that's how we think through that and we use derivatives and we I really like high hangs for performance athletes in general.

Especially if their vertical sucks. If we have a kid who's who squats a lot and their vert is like let's say they back squat 405 and their vert's like 27 inches. It's like dude how are you a gumby like come on. And so we'll use we'll use slow eccentric high hangs into a power snatch or a power clean, but usually a power snatch because it's a it's a little bit it emulates sort of what their trunk will be doing on a vert, but then also we'll do almost where they're doing like a rhythm pull into the from a high hang. So yeah, we we use all those.

Are there are there times maybe even we can just go combat athletes or any athletes any athletes where you would go with powers or even just pull variations over the full lifts?

Powers. Yeah, we use over the full lifts. And again, I don't think that one's better than the other. I think it's dependent. I think some kids learn really well doing power into a full they get confident in that case. Like if you have a kid, if we would look at like, yo, when we tested this kid's power clean was 93% of his full clean. Like a lot of athletes when they first come to us, their power clean's higher than their full.

A lot of people that even follow us that that's a common AMA question. I'm like, well, one, you should power clean less, and two, increase your front squat so you get really, really stupid strong in your front squat. And then you're going to see the full clean will go up. And if you're full cleaning more, that's a skill. So, that becomes better.

You asked about pulls. Yeah, we use pulls. Especially if we're getting close to peaking, we'll back off on full lifts and we'll do partial pulls for like almost like a speed aspect with the throwers. If we have someone whose wrist is banged up from football or wrestling or some swimmers if I if I don't want them to go overhead too much because it's in season they might do a high hang snatch pull and not or a two box snatch pull but not actually rack it just because they do so much volume in the pool. So, yeah, we do that.

Now, heavy pulls, I would argue as much as we do heavy pulls with our weightlifters, we really don't do that much heavy pulling with our performance athletes outside of RDL's. We don't do a lot of cleans and snatch pulls. Not saying I'm not oppo like that I'm opposed to it. We just don't we just don't piece it in as much because we squat more.

James de Lacey42:54

Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm with you on that one. I mean, I think you liked my reel. I did actually reacting to your video basically saying a very similar thing, but I also wanted to touch on further around because I think people often have these questions around weightlifting as well. Like if someone doesn't have the mobility, well whatever, overhead position, the snatch, front rack and the clean, are there other movements that you're typically going to? Dumbbell variations, throws, jumps, or anything like that if they don't have—

Dane Miller42:54

Okay, so I'll use Alex actually as an example. And it's funny because I got into this argument with the guy from Strength Coaches Network.

James de Lacey43:34

Which one?

Dane Miller43:36

Justin.

James de Lacey43:37

Oh yeah, Justin.

Dane Miller43:38

Also I'm like I can hear like a mouse over in the wall like chewing on something. Dude, we live in the middle of freaking nowhere and I know I'm going to set up a mouse trap and catch him, but I just—that's my ADHD brain. Okay, go back to the question you asked me.

James de Lacey43:58

If you don't have the mobility, are there other—

Dane Miller44:00

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Alex, right? God damn, I'm so stupid.

So with Alex's case, okay, 33 years old, he's got two kids, he's older. Sometimes his shoulders bug him if he does like if he just catches a snatch a little weird. So the last four weeks he was just doing high pulls and clean pulls like this, like high hang or a high pull with it. Now myself, I'm trying to force myself to clean again. So, I've been going through mobility drills. I'm trying to get myself like six months.

If I have somebody, like let's say a good example, we had tight end in the NFL. He comes in, he hits me up, I can't clean, I don't want to snatch. Okay, this was the argument I had with Justin. And I was like, "Listen, it's not that I think everybody has to weightlift. It's not that I believe that, but I do believe this. If I have a 12-year-old kid and he grows up and they're, you know, 12-year-old kid here, 12-year-old kid here, and they're the exact same person, they have the exact same exposure except one thing.

This athlete has the weightlifting exposure. Everything else is the same. This athlete doesn't. I guarantee you this person, this 12-year-old will become the better athlete. I just—that's the way I believe, that's—

James de Lacey45:18

There was a paper published recently doing that exact thing. Dr. Andrew Pachado, a colleague, he studied at in New Zealand too when I was there. He's in the IMG Academy in Florida now and they just released a paper a little while ago on youth 12 to 14 year old golfers strength training with Olympic weightlifting versus no strength versus strength training without Olympic weightlifting, and they show better coordinative—I can't remember the outcomes—but basically better coordination plus strength on the other end of the weightlifting group versus the non-weightlifting. I'll send that to you after this or something.

Dane Miller45:48

Okay, cool. So, in using the young kid example, this is the missing part: part of our training, part of our system, part of our model is that we learn what type of person we're coaching. So, we have essentially three types of like labels. I know that's a bad way, but like we have three labels we put on kids. And then the way that we analyze them from their mindset perspective is going to impact how we speak to them.

But when we're teaching them the technical aspect of a weightlifting movement, we see how they react to our cues. We can see how they react to criticism. And that's something that I think plays a huge role in how successful we are with our kids here, is that we can see how well they learn, and then the kid also realizes that they have to be skilled. They have to have a technique to display this strength.

Now to go back to this discussion, I said to Justin, I'm like, I don't think you have to be doing weightlifting movements. And in the case of the football player, dude in the WWE that was one of the best pro wrestlers, he didn't want to do the weightlifting stuff, but he needed to work on his explosive stuff. So, okay. Well, that would come back to where's their squats, front squats, single leg squats, where are they at? Because we know that that does have an impact.

We might increase possibly volume of lower intensity jumps. So like pogo hops or jump ropes or something easier like that. Skips, a lot more skips and stuff along those lines. We might introduce more hurdle hops then after they are in the system for two to three weeks or two to three programs. Then we're going to do more intensive work like a hurdle hop or something along those lines that can beat, potentially beat them up a little bit more because it is more intense on the ground reaction.

So, I think hurdle hops. I think bounds. I think broad jump like single leg bounds. Power skips, skips for height, skips for distance. I think dumbbell jumps to a point maybe. Yeah, we'll do dumbbell snatches with athletes, wrestlers especially if they want to feel explosive. I don't think they're like—I don't think the dumbbell snatch is amazing, but I think it's good for them to feel a little bit of a pop.

Trap bar jumps to a point. We don't use them a ton, but like we use them enough that I would say that would be like a possible replacement. But really, it's like the strength to plyometric stuff that we're really looking for in those cases. Okay, where's their strength here? Okay, if their strength is good, well, let's just add a little bit more plyometrics and see what happens there. And they're going to be twitchy. So, that would be my answer. Is there a reason that you typically don't use loaded jumps a lot?

James de Lacey48:46

No.

Dane Miller48:48

Yeah. I mean the funny thing is, is like I think older people like myself, I use them a lot. I think I would say for me I would have to really think through where I would put it into a program. So, like the way we set up the entire 20 weeks when we go into assessments and stuff, and I would really want to see what I would take out, what I would—and where I would put loaded jumps to see if they would have an impact that's negative or positive.

I don't think they're bad. I mean, we will do like a loaded dumbbell jump and then you drop the dumbbells and you do a broad jump into a hurdle hop or something like that. You get creative and things like that. And maybe I would do that 10 weeks out from like a peak for the thrower, and then maybe the last four to six weeks we don't do any of the loaded jumps because I want to move even quicker. I don't have anything against them to say that they're—we just don't do them that much.

James de Lacey49:50

I mean if you're doing a lot of weightlifting as well you kind of—

Dane Miller49:53

That's the thing. We clean and snatch so much that it's like—

James de Lacey49:56

That's where I would say that would have an impact on the change. And like, yeah, we—I mean we're cleaning. We have a like the kids, we clean a lot. So it's—it that replaces a lot of things.

Yeah, for sure. On I guess on kind of this structure topic with fighters. I mean I guess wrestlers have a predictable kind of season going, especially with college. But maybe with other fighters if you have any experience there. Does that change maybe the way you structure things where it's kind of unpredictable maybe when they have a fight coming up, or they always kind of have to be ready?

Dane Miller50:15

So, I think guys in MMA have to keep a 60 minute run or a 5k baseline. Like you've got to have a baseline of like I can go out and in 60 to 90 minutes put in, you know, let's say you got a middleweight guy, X mileage, or if you're on a bike, like a certain—you have a certain tempo that you have to hold for 60 to 90 minutes out, like basically in perpetuity in my opinion. Like it doesn't need to be crazy.

If you can go out and in my opinion that would be you get a middleweight guy and it's like if you go 60 plus minutes, like you should be able to run seven miles in 60 minutes as a guy that's a middleweight. You know maybe you're walking around 205, 215, but like it's not even that fast of a mile pace. That might sound crazy, but like even a 5K, like dude, you should be able to run like a 25 to 28 minute 5K as a fighter. You want to fight and be good and go.

Yeah. It's like I think they should because it's so unpredictable, maintain that. Because then when if you can maintain, you know, two to three days a week, you got to get some long slow work done. Two days a week, you can maintain that. And then if you get a call and you got a fight that just jumps on the calendar and it's six weeks out, you can increase your endurance quick by adding in some crazy high intensity work. Like get on the bike, do the like 30 seconds on, 15 off for 15 minutes and your endurance just skyrockets after two weeks.

So I think if you're constant and I would look at it that way the same way is like I'm always going to be this baseline. I'm always going to be this baseline of strength and I'm always going to—and then I would base this off of is the fighter. So using like a freestyle wrestler and I'll use this example with Nick Wasowski, the two-time world bronze medalist we had.

Nick always had a good gas tank. So endurance was never his issue. We knew that that baseline we could just basically like, yo, just him wrestling and then getting on an assault bike or getting on a treadmill, he can maintain that really well.

Okay, his area which ended up being pretty much why he lost to Gable Stevenson is that he wasn't as explosive. But that's where it's like we would try to keep that explosiveness baseline higher. So in that case, okay, we got to make sure his clean doesn't go below 130. We got to make sure his vert or his broad that we're doing this much plyometric work baseline.

So you sort of look at those key areas in a fighter and then you set the baselines for where their strength is, where their explosiveness is, where their endurance is. And then based off of what type of fighter they are, you might have more—you might have one of them a little bit higher baseline because it's really weak for them. Like it's just like it takes too long for them to get that going once they get once they get moving in a camp.

So I think that the way we see it then is like going back to the beginning where we talked about explosiveness, strength, speed, endurance, speed in the case of a fighter, I—my model of speed is locomotive. So it's sprinting. It's not as impactful in a sport like MMA or wrestling because there's not as—there's no locomotion in the traditional sense of how my model of speed is. Speed, now explosiveness I would say like their striking ability, that would be underneath the explosiveness.

So I would try to have their off-season training based around wherever the next low-hanging fruit is for them. That's what we're focusing on at that moment. And it might be they can only back squat 135. Dude, there's a lot of fighters that just don't want to lift. Like, they just hate lifting. They think it's like the worst thing for them. And my argument would be like, just back squat 225. You know, it's not that hard to do that. We can get 12-year-old kids to do it. Grown men should be able to back squat 225 for reps.

So that's where I would look at where their strength is, where their explosiveness, where their endurance is, base that off of—and we sort of have like a spider chart that we use internally. And then that's how we would gauge their off-season. And then when in season, when the fight comes, when the camp comes, that's when it's like, well one you got to meet with whoever their coach or coaches are and then be able to gauge like okay we got to back off of this because that could hinder their technique here, or you know this kid can't react, this kid dies after he does some high intensity work, so make sure that we do that the day before he has a break.

That's how I look at an MMA guy. Wrestling would be a little different for wrestling. I don't have much—I guess I don't know that much about the collegiate wrestling system, but from my outside view looking in, at least from random stuff, the season is relatively compact. And are they weight cutting almost like every week some of these guys?

James de Lacey56:08

Yeah. So how are you working around things like that?

Dane Miller56:11

Okay, so the way the season gets laid out, I could walk you through the whole season right now, okay? Is their season's basically starting in the next two weeks. So end of October, early November, season starts. No one really cares. They're open tournaments, but younger kids, it's great. Get on the mat, get good experience. You don't want to throttle them during this time. At least in my opinion, this is how I approach it. But we'll still be training pretty tough at this time. Okay.

Early. So they'll have a big tournament in December. Some of them will go to there's a couple big tournaments. You might go to Vegas for Cliff Keane. You might go to Midlands, whatever. Wherever big tournament you're doing in December, that's where training is really going to be geared towards in the front half of the season. Now the other thing is you're probably going to have some non-conference duel that might happen in some cases if you're outside the Big 10. That will happen. If you're in the Big 10, the dual season really just matters with your conference schedule.

So for me, it's push them during November, but it's really a rolling schedule, and it's dependent upon who is gonna wrestle in an open, but they're getting red shirted that year. So we might back off of those guys because we want them to wrestle well in the open, but they're getting red shirted. So their priority is beginning of the year. The other group is, okay, these guys priority might be that first big tournament in Las Vegas, right?

So we're going to set up training around them and in the case of our guys South Dakota State, but they're going to be wrestling Minnesota end of November, early December. So that week of Minnesota, we got to back off a little bit. So we're still going to push the guys that are starters going into those open tournaments because their priority is later. The guys are red shirted, it's different.

Then they go home for break. Some kids don't do anything. Some kids do something. Now, as I say this, the guys that are cutting, they have their whole they have their own training. They only have one day that they're doing strength work. The rest of the time, they're doing full body plyometric based stuff. And then they got to get on the bike. We do seven minute tests all the time on every single piece of cardio equipment because their match is seven minutes.

And mentally, this is where I'm not sports specific, but I am because wrestlers, they want to do a seven-minute assault bike test and they want to see that improve. So then when they get into their seven-minute match, they feel better. And that's just it's not that it's sports specific. It's just that's a mental game. They're wired different. They're crazy.

So then they come back, right? And they'll have a couple weeks where it's not that intense in January, two to three weeks. So we can get pretty good training in. And then once their dual season starts for in this case Big 12s, it's six weeks for where we're going. One big lift is on a Monday, they have a halfass speed type lift on a Wednesday and then that's it. They're not lifting the rest of the week because Friday, Sunday they have duels. So Monday they lift again.

Wednesday they got a speed prep type thing, and then duels are Fridays and Sundays and then they go in once that season's over they get about a week off and then we got to prep for the Big 12 tournament. Then we got another week off and it's NCA tournament. So you're playing the last eight weeks is just playing around with that schedule. You're not all your work's already done from the beginning part of the year. That's why you still want to get work done early.

The weight and then the weight guys, you just got to manage and make sure that they one that they're not eating crap. Two that they're not drinking, which is really hard with college kids. And then it's not really hard, but it's part of the game. And then three, that they're not getting beat up from the training. And then out of season, their big lifts are typically always on Saturday.

So I mean out of season is a whole another discussion. So that's sort of how I set up that the entire collegiate year. Thinking through the guys getting red shirted, thinking through the starters, thinking through strength of schedule, thinking through the conference, thinking through peaking a conference, thinking through the NCA tournament.

The NCA tournament, dude, you can't you can't peak wrestlers the way you're going to peak a thrower or a weightlifter. That NCA tournament is, I would make the argument the most brutal collegiate event in as a one-off event in all of college sports. The college playoff for football right now is pretty brutal, but it's multiple events. As a one-off event, I don't think there's another sport that is as intense.

James de Lacey1:01:01

How is it structured?

Dane Miller1:01:03

It's structured so they travel out on a Tuesday. Okay, they get there Tuesday or Monday. Yeah, if you're funded like Iowa and Penn State and those schools, you get out there probably on a Sunday with a back rub and a massage. But most of these schools will get we get out a Tuesday. They prep on Wednesday, they'll weigh in Thursday morning and then they're wrestling Thursday until Saturday night.

So it's three straight days and you got to win four matches to win the whole thing, sometimes five. If you win a match or you win two matches and then you lose, dude, you might have eight or nine matches on the weekend. It's brutal. And it's also the intensity, the every match, dude. You'll see guys that'll get that'll get second at NCA's or third at NCA or win it and every single match they won by one or two points because it's so tight.

There's the ability anyone can win at every moment there. It's just you're on edge the whole time. So it's a very very challenging event and you can't have them beat up and be stressed leading into the tournament.

James de Lacey1:02:14

Damn. That's good to know. Living in Texas, I need to know this stuff cuz I'm just the Big 10, Big 12. I'm just what are all these different conferences? I don't even know who's in what.

It's the most confusing thing. But yeah, super super interesting with the inseason. I can imagine it's challenging. I mean, it's I guess it's similar to kind of other sports like rugby where you're playing every weekend, but obviously you don't have the weight cut factor in rugby. So, and I would say I don't know if I would relate this to high school football guys that we have.

It's a little different with the collegiate guys and maybe I should just relate to the collegiate level, but the collegiate guys that come in, the football guys, they're if they're playing someone who's cut again is good. If they're playing somebody who's I don't know three and five or three and six, they can get a little more work in that week.

It's pretty clear as long as they're not sore going into the game they're going to be able to perform pretty well. They have a little caffeine, they take some Advil, they'll feel fine and they'll smash the team, right? I think that's where related to football is football you can do this rolling thing pretty easily in the sense that if you have a scrubby team you can get a really good week of work. You don't want to look past them, but with wrestling it's dude the top 25 guys are all freaking good. It's a tough sport dude. It's hard. It's crazy.

So yeah, I've wrestled with some past state champs here in Texas and I don't have wrestling background. I was just purely wrestling from jiu-jitsu and I was this is there's levels, and these guys are just past state champs and it just it's just crazy machines.

You just holy [expletive] man. The understanding of the movements and everything. I'm just

Dane Miller1:04:06

Yep, that's why they're so good.

James de Lacey1:04:08

But I don't want to take all your time. We've gone over an hour, but where can people find and follow you? Keep up with what you're doing.

Dane Miller1:04:15

So they could follow the Garage Strength YouTube channel. Just it's Garage Strength. I have my own Instagram channel. My own Instagram page is Ghostface DM Miller. We also have our own Instagram Garage Strength. And then we have a strength training app. It's known as Peak Strength. So we have an Instagram peak strength app. We got a website.

The app is essentially how we program everybody here on site. And we've built this out. We've done all the design, all the software stuff on behind it on the back end and we're right now a lot of the stuff that we do with assessments and with the spy graphs we're developing. So it's really fun to see how the app is developing related to what we do here with all of our athletes on site.

And it really just gives a lot of people that chance to train with us who might be on the other side of the country, the other side of the world. I was in literally in Iceland two weeks ago and a guy came up to me in a supermarket in a town called Selfos and he's like, "Yo, I train on peak strength and I know who you are." And it's like

James de Lacey1:05:16

That's cool.

Dane Miller1:05:16

That's pretty cool. So that's where you can find us.

James de Lacey1:05:19

Perfect. I appreciate you coming on, Dane. I mean, we could have gone for hours on this, so we might have to do a part two at some point, but I appreciate you coming on and sharing everything.

Dane Miller1:05:27

Thanks for having me and responding on the Instagram. That's awesome. That was fun.

James de Lacey1:05:32

Cheers. At peace.