You've Been Doing Triphasic Training WRONG w/ Cal Dietz (SSOF Ep 206)

Cal Dietz1:52

And people think there was a lot of science in that one. But you know what? That one, I'm not going to kid you, there was a wing night for baseball on Thursday night, beer and wing night. And they'd come in and I'm like, man, the original plan was to do the heavy loads at the end of the week like the Bulgarians did. But it was going so bad because of that beer and wing night on Thursday.

Fridays, they weren't doing right. So I just said, "I'm going to crush these guys and do the high volume day on Friday after they go to the beer and wing night." I'm not kidding you. And then it worked out. Actually, it worked out, and I switched it with other teams, and that was 27 years ago.

But the undulating model, high volume at the end of the week, yeah, I still do block method most of the time. And it's not like, people say, "Well, you do a dynamic day in the middle of the week," where I might do an iso on a Monday or a dynamic Wednesday and an iso on Friday. But the focus is always going to be what they need. So I just tell people you can do a mixed combination, but if you need to get strong, isometrics are really the fastest way to do it. So that's what I do.

I got an eight-time world champ trained here yesterday and an eight-time world champ, four-time Olympian, two-time Olympic champion. And if she needs an isometric phase, I can't do isometrics once a week for the next 8 weeks and really move the needle on her. She's got to do a concentrated focus of it. And yes, mixing qualities up every day is fine for a lot of people that aren't very—that haven't pushed the limits and gotten to the end of the pathway where little things here and there need to be tweaked.

So I still do block method and I just find that people say, "Oh, well, you're only getting good at isometrics." But look, especially in young athletes or anybody—most athletes until they've trained for 20 weeks in a row, isometrics will make you more powerful. Theoretically, they shouldn't as much, but they do, especially if isometrics is your weak link.

So I kind of look at things as a rate limiter. What is the rate limiter? What's holding them back? And when I do that, guess what? I've measured all the other qualities move the needle a little bit. It may not be a lot, but even though I'm only doing isometrics.

James de Lacey5:24

Well, when you say isometrics, so originally, I think there was some examples where an isometric phase would be something like a pause squat. So not a true isometric exercise, it's just isometric focus within the exercise. So how does that look then? For example, with that world champion that's coming in, is the entire program then pause-based movements or are we talking actual isometric stuff done as well on top of it?

Cal Dietz5:45

Both.

James de Lacey5:47

Both.

Cal Dietz5:47

So we'll pause some exercises. We'll do overcoming. We'll do iso holds. But most of it is at a heavy load, above 80%.

And look, when people look at my program, right? If somebody wants to search it right now, triphasic training current program, I list three or four programs in there. And the thing is when you look at it, you're like, "How does Cal do theoretically 90 to 100 sets in a workout?" And there's a few things that are going to be intertwined I'm going to release in the next couple of years. One was the hormonal control that goes on, and then I stumbled upon a couple of them.

One of the years, the cortisol levels in a couple of my guys were so high because they played hockey. And so that whole summer we started doing sets under 10 seconds. And I told him, "Look, man, you might be a little bit out of shape or less fit than you were the year before, not necessarily out of shape." And all sets were under 10 seconds.

And then lo and behold, when they go back, their VO2 max was going up. All three of the guys with that—back when they were testing in the NHL and there were a few teams—they were like, "Cal, I felt in great shape." But I think the biggest thing was the reason why I stopped at 10 seconds, because I stayed in the alactic phase of the energy system. So all sets that year, and I undulate, I go a 7-second then the next time they do a 5-second and next time they do a 10.

And they were able to lean up. Their cortisol levels were managed because if you go past 10, then you get into glycolysis and eventually you're going to start to release a ton of cortisol if you're getting into 15, 20-second sets and 25 even all the time.

James de Lacey7:44

Are you talking about the isometric sets or different things?

Cal Dietz7:48

Everything under 10 seconds. And I've been doing that for 17 years now, I think, with some pretty great results. And in the original triphasic book, man, I had 30-second sets in there, 25 seconds. I mean, those were grinders. And actually, you can do that. And I've gotten some information out of the Soviet Union, some coaches. And I made the contacts and so forth and then also Brazil.

But ultimately, I'm telling you there's a day you can do above the 10 seconds, but we found some pretty profound research that—and I'm probably going to release it in the next couple years on this. I just got to confirm everything I'm doing. But that staying out of the glycolysis, so then you don't release as much cortisol throughout the workout. And then back to the 90 to 100 sets, right? There's another reason for that.

And it's kind of—if you look at that program when I say triphasic training current programs, if you really watch everything, it's oriented in gait. Because when I switched over, I was playing around with it before COVID, but then COVID was pretty good to me in regards to—the only thing good about it was I had 6 months of reading where I was able to crush—

And I came back and revamped my programs and what I saw was if you look at my programs and the exercises we're doing, the hand placements and everything is oriented to gait. Because there's two times in your life when you're a young kid or a child and adolescence and when your brain explodes and that is when you start to walk and you start to crawl. Those two times things happen. And what I did was I oriented all my exercises towards gait.

And what happens is if you do an exercise, so for example, I have an exercise in here and let's say the athlete, I put everything correct. Hand position—and we're just talking hands are pronated, one hand's pronated, one hand supinated—it could be gait. We do the exercise and the athlete can get 12 reps in 10 seconds. And then we do it in reverse which would be the opposite of what you should do if you were in gait cycle.

And I check them and we video them and they only get eight reps in 10 seconds. Then we switch the hands back, they get 12. Then we switch it back, they only get seven or eight.

So the point is it I call that a positive neural response, right? So I do 90 sets of optimal exercise with everything in the right position. I'm not even talking neutral spine. I'm talking this is oriented to gait. So then, and at the end of that, I got around, I remember my first year we were checking so much stuff, around set 60 to 70, 80, people were hitting lifetime PRs on their running and or vertical jumps with 90 sets, 60 sets.

And then I had some coaches come back and they were like, "Cal, I'm getting some results with this." And I got a lot of coaches all over the world. And I'm like, "Well, try bilateral, right? Just do everything bilateral with reverse." So then they did it with either opposite hands or just bilateral instead of lateral with the right gait position in their exercise. And people can look this up, it's on some of my pages, the positive neural response, I just released that.

But the point is, if I can get 90, if let's say I'm doing five, six, 800 reps in my workout, but all the reps are a positive response versus a negative response, then I can do so much more. You become efficient at movement. I saw compensation patterns clear. And I'll be releasing a bunch of stuff. I have released a bunch of stuff.

If you look at everything I do, if you look, if people want to obviously it's all free, but triphasic training principles, I have a principles page of 50 or 60 principles, 50 or 60 methods that I use. And you can actually start to see how things are tied together.

James de Lacey12:02

I'm going to follow you down a bunch of these rabbit holes because there's probably stuff I think the listeners will want to go deeper on, but there's also things that keep coming up that I just want to, I'm just going to go with the flow with this. And you mentioned about gait stuff. I just wanted to come back a little bit. I remember you went through a phase of floating heel. I don't know if you still do. Are you still using a lot of that? What context is it useful for you versus not?

Cal Dietz12:22

Yeah, well, I mean, I had a phase, right? Well, I was the first person I think that I know that started it. And I got it from probably 16 years ago, 15 now. And the reason I did it because I realized that the weak link was these people when they were running. When I say the people, my athletes.

I make them stronger and then when their foot would strike the ground, their heel would sag when they were running or accelerating. And I'm going, "Well, that's a link in the kinetic chain that's a problem." So, then I did a lot of floating heel to make their heel stronger. And people say calf raises. I'm like, "Well, it's kind of not the same if you're doing a single leg safety bar squat with 700 lb, right? The calf raise is probably not the same."

And I then went, "Okay." But, then I found Chris Korfist, a speed coach out of Chicago. He's his spring ankle. The spring ankle exercise and people can look that up. And so I kind of went away from the floating heel only because the spring ankle fixed almost everything, right? It was fixing all the problems.

And when I say that, you have somebody, you're doing running and they swing out their arm, their right arm when they run. Most coaches tell them to hold their arm in, right? When they run. Where I realized that if I just told them to hold their arm in, I didn't fix the problem. I eventually did enough muscle testing and tracked the problem down to the foot. The foot was weak on the opposite side.

So when your foot strikes the ground, your left foot strikes the ground when you're running, if this arm kicks out, it's because there's no stability in your foot. So then your back gets tightened down, your arm swings out to balance. So my point is, I know so when I see that in my gym, I don't fix it, especially when they come in.

It takes usually about two veterans in here, probably 2 weeks. Four to 6 weeks is some of my younger athletes who never been here before. When they walk in, the spring ankle will fix the arm from swinging out when they run. So instead of coaching them to get them in the right position, I actually go and try to fix the real problem.

James de Lacey14:28

Got it. Got it. Yeah, yeah, I love Korfist's stuff. I actually bought 10 years ago when he had these small little speed training modules on there with his different drills and things and that was awesome. That was awesome. It was bringing the Bosch Principles into these drills without talking about ecological dynamics or any kind of constraint stuff. It was just built into it. It was a couple of my favorite sprinting resources I guess of a few sports.

Cal Dietz14:57

Yeah, he was one of the first ones to have the 1080 in this country. I think he was the first one. And the things he's taught me because I got 4 1080s in my gym, right? We do them every day. We run in between the sets. And it's pretty scary when you sit down with a 1080 and what he could tell you as athletes.

How about this? Him and I were talking and I just tested a guy. I won't say where he went to school, but he was a friend of mine's son, and he got slower in college, right? And I mean, he's possibly going to play linebacker in the NFL, but Chris has said, "I haven't seen too many college strength coaches make anybody that much faster." That were with him, and I'm like, "Oh, man."

And some might be fast enough, and they just need to put on 30 lb, right? But I'm just like, "Hmm, I wonder what the testing is." Right? It's pretty crazy how that happens. I just don't understand it, right?

James de Lacey15:53

Wasn't it just all of it was on max strength training 24/7 in college often?

Cal Dietz15:58

Yeah, there's a lot of variables that could affect that, but you're sitting there going, "Where are people testing if people aren't getting faster?" That's the big question. Because I test everything. I test my freshman when they walk in.

And I've had a couple another Olympian of mine, she put on 27 lb as a female and then got right around 2 and 1/2 to 0.25 tenths faster in the 20. Over a course of a 12-month period, right? And that wasn't me. That was the maturation process, too, putting the weight on. But yeah, and then she ended up making the Olympics.

But I don't know. I just test everything, and that's I find it people don't test a lot of things, and because then there's things that don't work at certain times, and how do I know that? Because I've tested so much. You're like, "What?" And you got to live with the fact that yeah, this just didn't get better. But and then you start thinking through why it didn't get better.

Well, this person ran their best time, and I recycle back with an isometric phase or an eccentric phase, and they got slower. And I'm like, "Well, we sent you some isos can make a fast person slow for a while." And then if you do all the right speed and power training after the iso, and then later they can get faster again, but that's a, you put somebody to a limit after a couple years, and then if you're going to go back and readjust triphasic training, then it might be eight weeks before they hit that best number again or and then get a little better after that, right? And so those are the margins you're just trying to push over time.

James de Lacey17:31

How are you running those eccentric phases now because in the original book it was kind of more tempo based. Are you doing true eccentric overload with your guys through that?

Cal Dietz17:39

Yeah, well we, the main lifts are that's single leg safety bar squat. Right? I mean I was told when I started that 15 years ago, because again I don't want to say I started but I'd never seen it anywhere, right? When I started. And the reason I started it was because I was trying to get more stress on these athletes and then not blow up their backs and I didn't know. So I thought they wouldn't go above their squat max but lo and behold the first day everyone's going above their squat max.

Well, and then I ran a test on it with throwers. The thrower athletes the shot putter and discus thrower everybody. And what happened was we stopped squatting people for about eight weeks. We did a triphasic cycle with a safety bar single leg squat. And some of these dudes were going 8, 900 pounds. In the whole group there was a group of nine or 12. We, the average group average back squat was 600 and we're talking raw, right? So you're talking they're throwers, they lift. That's what they do, right?

And then eight weeks later lo and behold we hadn't back squatted except one day before the max day and the whole group's max went to 660 and we hadn't back squatted. So that was effective. The single leg safety bar. And then I, and we were doing super maximal loading so we'd go 110% above their max. Right? So well that's why I had, we had guys doing 800, 850 with single leg. It was pretty crazy. And you'd go down with 800 and you'd hold it down in a pretty decent deep squat position with one leg.

And then the magic, too, I think, especially for the men, to get that response was the hormonal response. It's huge. And it's a pretty safe way to train. I've never, look, I've done, and there were strength coaches talking about what I was doing, and they're like, "He's going to blow everybody up. He's going to, you can't do that. You can't do super maximum isometrics or super maximum." Well, lo and behold, you can, right? I haven't blown anybody up. I got a, I just got some rings. I've won a bunch of championships, right, with it.

So, and if anybody's live, I got my, we just got my Olympic ring yesterday from the women, congrats in the chat and in the comments. Yeah. The women winning the Olympic, I owe it all to them, that group of women at the US Women's Olympic hockey team. It was a pretty amazing in Milan this year. It was pretty amazing experience.

James de Lacey20:09

I think Jordan, I'm just going to keep going right into topics. You mentioned coaches giving you flak for that single leg. I've seen recently, I would say it's a very unfair criticism, people giving you flak for a lot of... Well, I guess people showing like, for example, the glute ham raise, the single glute ham raise with the two bands where they're kind of flying out back and forth, almost like an oscillatory iso.

Cal Dietz20:29

And it's the razor curl, right? It's my—if you look on my YouTube page, people can find it, razor curl, right? And then it's the high speed, right? I didn't—that's not flak. It is extremely high velocity, high speed.

James de Lacey20:40

But go ahead, yes. And I think there's very unfair criticism about—I think most people kind of come from this kind of bodybuilding background. Oh, you need tension, this and that. You need to control it. But if we're talking like we're looking at very high velocity hamstring exercises, we're trying to maybe kind of work on contract-relax kinetics or whatever it is. Like this is exactly what you're kind of looking at.

We're just going into, okay, you got that exercise. You got a bunch of others. We can even go down that specific one. But then also, this kind of oscillatory isometric space, I would say you kind of made it very popular with the AF system. Touch on that and then touch on where these fit, how they transfer, advantageous, disadvantageous positions, all that kind of stuff.

Cal Dietz21:15

Well let's start with the razor curl with the bands on it, right? And look, people are like "Oh you can't—" I remember one guy sent me—I don't respond, right? Like, he was like "Oh you can't train pro athletes this way." Well, like actually in that video there's something like an $80 million guy in the back. There's a $60 million guy that walks through and there's a $20 million guy and they just did all those exercises, right?

And then they don't have hamstring problems. And the key is that I prepared people to do hamstring work at that high velocity with the eccentrics I said. Does that make sense?

So and then yes I think the oscillatory movements—and I do them with the bands—I many years ago I just saw people become more coordinated with. And then when that was like 10, 12 years ago and then what happened was I have a device that actually measures like the five qualities of muscles called a TMG, right? Tensomyography. And what happened was the one major quality the Soviets figured out was the one reason physiology—not the mind but physiology-wise—what the best athletes in the world had above maybe just people on the Olympic team that won the gold medals was how fast your muscles relax. It was Medgyesi, right? He found that.

And I believed it but I also confirmed it once I got that device, right? Cuz it'll measure the speed at which a muscle—and then the representative from TMG also confirmed it. But the point is is that those oscillators cause force relaxation, right? And what happens is the athlete becomes more efficient and then the speed at which their muscles relax is the master switch. Right? And then what happens is they become more efficient.

So if somebody wants to look up like a pretty efficient movement, I would say if you look up primetime, the straight-legged runs on my YouTube page and search Olympian. There's a female in there that's 5'11", about 185 pounds that looks so smooth, and she is traveling so fast, but it's so smooth that she doesn't look like she's giving much effort, but it is violent, and she is traveling so fast, faster than some many of the males in the gym at that time, right?

But the point is is I am trying to teach the muscle to turn on and off. So, somebody's running down the field—and there's some NFL games outside on the gym here—and they pull a hamstring. It's a lot of times because that hamstring couldn't release tension fast enough. There's something uncoordinated. And that's nobody's fault other than it could be an old injury, right? It could be I've seen bones in your feet not be in place that cause undue tension all the way up the sling. So like it's a very complex problem.

But the hamstring tolerance, if it's coordinated and everything's functioning correctly, what you'll find is that you're less likely to have hamstring problems. And then it goes back to that my programs are such high volume, right? They're so high volume, people are like, "Well, how do you do that?" It's just because I feel like I got these athletes highly coordinated.

So my volume, if the muscles are turning on and off and the mitochondria is all dialed in and all the compensations are reduced as much as they possibly can be, you could do a high volume program and get some pretty crazy good results, right? And I just keep testing things. That's all I do. I test and make sure I get results.

James de Lacey24:53

And that relaxation pace is always interesting. Well, I don't know if you've read maximal sprint cycling paper. I think it's 2020, Jamie Douglas's paper on basically looking at maximal cyclical speed and essentially activation relaxation kinetics and its effect on it. And yeah, as you mentioned, four to six times longer to relax than it is to contract.

So you've got that piece as you mentioned you're trying to drill with that training. And then obviously you have the calcium sensitivity side if you're doing some other more high-intensity stuff. Then you have the actual training contract-relax within the AFSM method, whether it's a razor curl or other positions. Like you kind of like marrying everything together. It's quite nice to see.

And when you say more coordinated as well, you're talking about the actual sporting movement, but obviously within the movement itself you're—should be able to get more reps in that. Maybe say you're doing a 10-second set. You're going to get more reps to be more efficient. Is that how you're kind of progressing those?

Cal Dietz25:52

Well, what you'll see is if somebody comes in and are doing oscillators after eccentric isometric phase, right? And we say, "Hey, when I was training for time specifically only, and if it was a 10-second set, they got eight 16 sets in or 16 reps in." And then four weeks later of doing oscillators and variations, they're doing 23 reps instead of 16 because they just came out of isos and eccentric and they're not as coordinated. But then everything—and they can get 20 to 30% more reps in the same time frame.

Then you know there's a positive neurological effect on that movement. And then you're getting more like what? Seven more times on and off of your muscle, the relaxation, the force relaxation, right?

So the key with all this is if you look at my the neurological aspect of my gait and getting positive neurological responses, and people come in and let's say they end up doing 90 sets. And I'm not talking 90 big sets, right? It might be a rotator cuff. It might be a neck, right? Like whatever. But that's all the 90 sets in my workout. People leave and they say, "I actually feel better leaving when I'm doing this type of workout now." Does that make sense?

Versus you leave and you got—you always feel like you're beat up, you're tired, which you should be, but they say there's something about my the way I'm walking, it feels better. So that's the big thing. Like we're built to survive to run and walk away, run away, blah blah blah. But ultimately, if when I watch people and they start moving more fluid because they're doing a certain training set, I'm like, "Ah, I think I'm onto something here, right?"

Because I tell people, "Hey, video somebody running. Do 10 sets of five on back squat. Doesn't even need to be heavyweight." And then as soon as they're done with that 10 set, watch them run. It's awful compared to what the first one was, right? So in my gym, at any time somebody can go run and it looks pretty good. I think it actually will look better maybe than the first time we ran after we warmed up.

James de Lacey28:11

How do you decide or what is your thought process around the advantageous and disadvantageous position? So like bottom position of a squat I also do versus top position. Is there sporting athlete differences?

Cal Dietz28:24

Well, like I would say—well, I just give a quick one. Like let's say hockey's in a deep position most of the time. But I usually do everybody in a deep position, right? Just because it's in the stretch position. Cuz I'm trying to—now, if let's say a distance runner, I consult them for a few and like I'm not going to put them in that deep position because they're never going to get there, right?

And the biggest thing is that I think they needed was some joint stiffness qualities. So I would do a higher single-leg squat hold, right? Or a higher eccentric top-third range motion. And then they were going pretty heavy, right? Because that's one thing too about eccentrics. Like, people—you got to realize like you got to get above 80% to go to actually cause an effect to increase the eccentric qualities that you want in that muscle.

And when I say that, like the actin and myosin head inside the muscle on the deep physiology needs to be contracted and then you lengthen and it tears them apart and then the body rebuilds that. Right? And then that's how the tissue becomes more resistant—to its tensile strength goes up, right? Its ability to hold more tension.

So then when they go run and then you add after the eccentric phase, ISO makes that strong and then—and I cover a lot of this in triphasic, too. Mike did a great job writing this. And then we go and do a power phase or plyometrics at that top-end range of motion, bam! Like, things start to—you get a profound result.

And then it's really with a distance runner, it's really about running economy. Cuz when the foot strikes the ground, if you can—if the muscle doesn't move too much, contracts, stretches the tendons, they—like you get a lot of free energy return. Cuz the best running athletes in the world or the best running animals in the world have long tendons when you watch them, right? So they're the most efficient. It's a lot of free energy that's taking place.

James de Lacey30:16

So, how does this all change in season? Because you've talked a lot about, "Hey, we do maybe longer eccentric isometric phases. Guys come out, they don't perform as well. We need to go through a block of power training" kind of thing. In season, for example, your hockey girls there, I'm assuming you can't go through these longer blocks of ISOs in season when they're playing every week, all that kind of stuff. Or even athletes that are competing often and don't have very long pre-seasons or off-seasons. How does that change then with that programming?

Cal Dietz30:41

Well, if you've done the off-season and you've gotten conditioned, then the in-season, I can drop your load probably 30 to 40%. Look, I do the high volume in-season, or out-of-season. So, I'd say if you don't have a high volume program, I would probably drop it 40%. But in my case, I have to because they still got to go practice now. They still got to practice. So, it's about 40% drop and I just keep the best exercises I think are pertinent to your performance.

The one I—this summer, the Yuri exercise, if people look it up, it's called the Yuri. Y-U-R-I. And when I came up with that thing, I can't believe somebody didn't figure that exercise out before me. But that was 6 years ago. I put it in a rack and it's basically a top end—it looks like a top end speed movement, where you have a band in front of your hips and you're just—you're kind of taking that top end speed drive forward. Your hands are hooked in the rack.

First day we did that, we did, we ran on a 1080 and I actually rarely—I warmed the athletes up, and they ran on the 1080, got the best three reps, went over to that Yuri exercise, six reps each leg, two sets, went back to Yuri, and everybody PR. So, I realized then it was a great potentiator exercise. And then, this summer, we were looking at acceleration and I threw the Yuri in to run some tests and, lo and behold, because I knew everybody ran faster and a few of the kids ran 0.7 m/s faster at top end speed after they did the Yuri.

James de Lacey32:23

That's huge.

Cal Dietz32:24

Yeah, well, right? I'm like, oh, so I knew it was a potentiator and I literally do that every leg day, that exercise. But then this summer, we were looking at acceleration. All we did was took a 10 and they did the Yuri and lo and behold faster. So, it's one of the best and then what I pair that with if people want to look up is I pair the Yuri—they'll do the Yuri in the rack and then—and there's a hack for the Yuri.

You don't even need to do it for with the rack. You can tie two bands together and hold them and—but it's, I think it's a Yuri in the rack I call it for people if they want to look it up. But then I do the Yuri and then we go over and we do a prime time exercise.

A straight-legged run in the weight room. And I started that 6 years ago and I'm telling you it fixes patterns. It fixes—if I have an athlete walk in here, I did this year, I had a number of athletes that were from foreign country and coming to the NCAA—you can't come here for the summer. And they had some bad patterns. But I'm telling you the Yuri exercise and the prime time fixes a bad hip extension pattern.

For example, a couple were using their hamstrings and a couple were using their lower back to start hip extension. And I'm telling you after two or three weeks of that, of the Yuri and the prime time just twice a week—it literally and I RPR, obviously reflex performance reset, put all that together and their patterns are so good and guess what? They just start climbing up the chain on getting faster and faster and faster, in season.

James de Lacey34:04

That's what I was going to ask you with the Yuri as well. You kind of covered it there, but how much of it do you think is actually, I guess, overload in terms of maybe mechanical force, whatever, versus the technical aspect we mentioned, the hips being able to actually project horizontally and bringing that over to the sprint.

Cal Dietz34:21

It's got to be both because I get such good results. So, the tech—when the foot strikes the ground there's a huge stretch, obviously in the hamstring through the calf and the hamstring and the glutes. So, there's a lot of tension in there at that point. You know what I'm saying? And then but using one method that I'm big on especially in the Yuri—if somebody's driving forward and you can see that if their heel doesn't come off the ground, they're not using their big toe. If that makes sense.

So, I call—I found that years ago about, about 12 probably. Well, I knew the big toe was important. I found that many years ago. I had a—you know, being in hockey I was working with hockey with the other 12 sports at the time I was working with. I was fortunate to, you know, you have a kid break their toe with a puck in their skate.

And then you got to get past that and but you could see their butt shrink on that side. So, then I knew, realized, in some of my freaks I would test the toe strength and I remember one that literally had a 44-inch vertical—and I mean not the arm swing 44-inch verticals. We're talking about a 265-lb monster with a 44. And then hands on hips 39.

James de Lacey35:43

Damn.

Well, you and I can't go pro.

Cal Dietz35:48

That's why you and I can't go pro.

I mean, I can—I barely get over the phone book. I mean, but, you know, not the arm swings, not legit. I'm talking super powerful person. And the point is that person's toe—you would test their toe strength and it almost dislocate or break your thumb when they pushed hard. You're pushing against them, "all right, squeeze your toe" and it snap, it would snap. You're going, "that could tear my thumb off." You know what I mean?

And but then I put it all together and then really started focusing about 12, 13 years ago on using the big toe to fire the glutes. Because—and people say it's the Babinski reflex. Well, by definition you lose a Babinski so it's not really a Babinski. I just call it toe glute reflex. I wrote articles on it. I've been doing it for a number of years, and it fixes so many problems.

James de Lacey36:36

So, are you trying—are you doing anything else to train the big toe strength other than say a Y scale or some kind of projection based movement?

Cal Dietz36:43

Well, the spring ankle. And then everything you do—if you look up glute ham, if people want to look up glute ham and Olympian. I got a female Olympian doing a full-blown glute ham. And you'll see her as she comes down and her hamstrings about to start to reverse to go back up, as she's going fast you'll see that big toe through her shoe grab that plate. And that's not coached. Well, I didn't coach her. I coached other people. But she had it. She's one of the best skaters in the world. And I think in ice hockey for a number of years.

And because, well, when we measure everything going on with her, she was so smooth it didn't look like she was working that hard, but she was flying around the ice. But the point is, you use that big toe to fire that glute, then so then the hamstring pulls correctly. And then everything works optimally. And so many athletes now, I'm telling you especially wearing the flip-flops, shut that off. They, it literally shuts them off.

And I coached the big toe to fire even on the bench press. So, and I'm, you know, people might people are asking me, can you put out a course on this? I probably will. But when that bar comes down at high speeds to bench the first thing that should happen is your toe squeezes and then your glutes fire a little bit to cause tension through the front of the part of the upper body and that glute should push off the bench just a little bit or move to cause a stretch reflex through the upper body at about 200th of a second, right around that window.

So, the glute fires 200th of a second to 300th of a second before the bars reverse in high-speed, high velocity. So, you'll see it goes bang bang, the glute goes—so, the toe squeezes, the glute goes bang, and then the bar reverses its safe time. Bar comes down, it's bang bam. So, and that tells you if that person everything's working correctly and the timing's right.

You know, because even my best athlete, the four-time Olympian that was in here yesterday, she gets out of an iso eccentric iso phase, guess what? That timing is not there. Takes a little—even though she's one of the best I got in regards to all the timing that she does, it's still—I've trained her out of that. I've by doing the heavy loads, I've trained her out of that reactiveness that's optimal. And but it comes back really quick. Does that make sense?

James de Lacey39:21

Can you quickly run through some of the spring ankle stuff just for the listeners as well, so they get some context?

Cal Dietz39:25

Well, the spring ankle, it's really just there's two foot positions. Basically, you get on the edge of a, we used to do with plates now. I have a spring ankle device, but you can just do it with 45-pound plates or two bumpers, basically. We put somebody on it. Just the forefoot is on the plate, the heel's off the plate.

And what we'll do is we'll get down, and you'll hold a low heel position, and you're in a single-leg squat at that point, so that the knee's really far in front of your toe, and you're holding that position. And not at the bottom, just a little bit above what you would say is completely relaxed, and holding it. And look, when you have your athlete start that with no weight, they may go 5, 6 seconds before they start shaking.

And then eventually we add weight, and then eventually in my gym, all we do, we get in that position, and we have a belt squat hooked to a thing. So, it's then an isometric overcoming. And once I get athletes there, which it doesn't take me long, I actually don't even progress them anymore. I just go right to that. And then I never go away from that. And that fixes so many hamstrings and hip flexor problems.

And then the other position with the spring ankle with the foot is basically you're holding the heel as high as you possibly can. And you're still in the deep squat with the belt squat on and you're pushing down. And you do those, and I don't have time for that. I got 80 athletes to run through this gym in about 5, 6 hours.

So, the spring ankle seems to be the fastest and the most efficient way. And then I only do isometrics on the spring ankle. And I had some world-class, pretty elite coaches in here. And I'm like, "Well, Cal, you do isos on the ankle, your spring ankle, and that's all you do." And they're like, "Why don't you do any dynamic?" As we're standing beside the guy running on the 1080, accelerating.

I'm like, "Well, okay, let's look at that sprint. Is that dynamic?" And they're like, "Oh, yeah, never mind." They realized what they were asking at that point. I mean, I got a 100, 220-pound person running at 5.7 meters per second on his third step. That foot's absorbing 6, 700, 800 pounds of force on the forefoot. So, that's the dynamic part of it.

So, I only do iso, I only do isos on neck, mainly iso on grip and foot anymore. I don't really do because I just need that the grip, the neck, the feet to stay strong. And that's what we do.

James de Lacey42:02

So, you're doing mainly overcoming as in 6 to 10 second max efforts or you ever doing longer yielding holds in those positions?

Cal Dietz42:10

On the ankles, I only do the overcoming for 10 seconds. I only do the overcoming for 10 seconds.

James de Lacey42:16

And you're supersetting that with those sprints or you do them on their own?

Cal Dietz42:19

Oh yeah. I just put them right in. Because I feel once I get everybody trained and pretty, I just put them right in. In my gym, and again, people can look up my programs. They're free. They're on my blog, triphasic training current programs. You'll see how I pair it. And then I pair 12 exercises together.

And I put a video of somebody going through those 12 exercises in my gym. Guy goes through it. It only took him 5 minutes 30 seconds. And then he does three sets. So, he's just knocked off 36 exercises in 17 minutes. And then we do another block of nine. And there's another block of six. We'll do that three times. And you're getting into the 70 to 80 sets.

I've had athletes do auto regulation and they've got as many as 120 on that day. Because they were still jumping high. We're regulating with the jumping and doing a vertical. We were still jumping high and they ended up doing 120 sets.

James de Lacey43:13

So, what does traditional or quote unquote traditional strength training fit into this if at all? Because you see the program there, it's very, you could say, a circuit-based training, has a lot of different unconventional style exercises based on your testing. Is there a place or do you ever do maybe more traditional-based strength training? Squat, bench, deadlift, whatever else, the typical.

Cal Dietz43:36

I've always paired it with something. So, I would say what you see there is, it could be so interchanged. Anybody could take any exercise and sub out in my program if you look it up. So, it could be squat. But I don't do much, I don't do squatting anymore. Only because I got most of my athletes that, the biggest thing with squat is if I got a female that'll do, I've had females do 600 single leg squat.

James de Lacey44:06

And that's a half quarter, that half quarter set.

Cal Dietz44:08

Yeah, half quarter. And but they don't want to squat 185 on their back with a straight bar. So why push it? And the biggest thing about squats is just holding the bar. That's the biggest downfall of squats is just holding that bar with that load.

And look man, I did throwers where we lifted 12 times a week. No, 11. We did Monday through Friday, it was twice and the Saturday was once. And we squatted and Olympic lift every day some form of those. And I love them, but I just got better results doing it with safety bar split squat.

The other one I like is using a belt squat and then getting down in that deep position and hooking the chain to my rack and then doing a single leg belt squat isometric. My athletes will work so hard. And they get so strong in that deep position. They'll do it 10 seconds just violently push.

And I've had coaches in here, "So you're not lifting, doing a back squat." And they're like, "So it doesn't look like you're using any weight, but I got a pro hockey player down deep in a deep single leg belt squat position. He's got no weights on, just a chain holding down. And his veins are popping in all through his neck.

And the guy's like, "Well, you think you're missing anything?" I'm like, "I don't know, man. When I check this guy, he had 600 pounds of force coming down through his one leg. I think they're fine."

I asked myself all these questions. I don't, people question what I do and I'm like, "Look, I've already asked that to myself because I drive myself crazy." And it's a fun way. Here's how I create so much stuff is I question everything that I do which creates problems that I didn't even know I had. And then I turn around and I go, I make solutions. And that's all I'm doing.

All of these things I seem to create was I ask questions and then I created some solutions. That's it. That's all I've been doing. And no one's ever asked me a question that I probably hadn't asked myself already. Honestly. And I don't take insults. I don't take an insult.

And if you don't like, all I'm going to say is every, I don't release a lot of things until I know they work. I'm going to release this whole concept of the gait exercising. But I've done it for 6 years. And I have gotten profound results.

And we're talking people that have came in to my program with two disc surgeries, problems galore just doing the traditional training. And they didn't think they could do what we do here. They start out and they kept rolling through and basically the compensation start to clear, things get better, they run faster than they've ever had even before they were healthy. And I'm going, well, at least I'm not screwing them up. At least that's my goal is not to screw people up.

But the fun thing though is for me is every day I come in I actually try to find new things. And but that new thing is, I may try three or four things that are nah, that's stupid. It didn't work only because I test.

And if I was a young strength coach listening to this, if I had to do it all over again, I would have learned muscle testing, kinesiology wise, the first part of my career. Once I, so what I do now is if you're running and your arm's out, what, people talk about well, you don't coach that to be in. No, because I eventually tracked all the muscles all the way down to the foot that realized this was a foot problem. Does that make sense?

And actually it really came from a chiropractor who I had a kid run with his arm out as a male run with his arm out. The Cairo adjusted the bones in this kid's foot. They come back to the gym, didn't tell me, runs, and I'm like, "Oh." Something happened because his arm's held in because I got to remind him all the time. Guess what? He's like, "Oh, no." I'm like, "Did you do anything?" He's like, "Well, I went to this Cairo." And then it dawned on me and I was able to start muscle testing and I tracked everything down.

James de Lacey48:28

And that's the basis of RPR, correct?

Cal Dietz48:30

Well, that's part the—well, that's really just muscle slings, right? But yes, they do fix it with RPR, because really a lot of times if it's not bones out in the foot, the arch is fairly weak for people. And if that arch is weak because your foot's not strong, and then so the right foot hits the ground, my left arm will sneak out.

Now, the thing about RPR is I can hit my RPR spot even though the foot's weak, but it's going to shut off, right? Because the foot's weak. But the other thing is, let's say you got a strong foot, kid's been with me 3 years and all of a sudden he's running with his arm out. But what happened was there's these bones like the talus, the cuboid, or the calcaneus. If they're out of position, the foot gets weak again.

Because it's neurologically protecting itself for whatever reason, and the arm will sneak out. So then, you know, right? There's a whole lot of things that can go on. I mean, our system is so good at survival.

And that's what people got to stop thinking—like everything's weak. No, no, it's not a weakness. Your body's doing something, moving the arm out, not because the lat's weak, not because anything's weak. It's because it's got to survive the foot striking the ground and be balanced, right? Because if I fall on my face, I could die. I could hurt something and I could die, right? Basically.

So I quit thinking that everything was a weakness and start thinking why is the body doing that for survival. So then getting back to muscle testing, if I see someone doing an exercise, let's say a reverse hyper, and I see them try to bend their knee before they bend their hip tries to straighten it, I know I muscle test and realize there's a hamstring problem. Or there's a glute problem and the hamstrings compensating because the glute's weak. Does that make sense?

And then the same thing if you're doing a reverse hyper, if you see their lat flare up before they go to move their glute, then you know you got a QL compensation pattern, right? And it's actually the same with an RDL. You'll see the legs kind of stiffen a little bit if they're doing an RDL. You'll see the upper back move before you see the glutes fire and push the hips, right?

So these are all the things you got to look at and then, again, I muscle test everything and figure out the real problem and then I try to fix the real problem without coaching them. Because then let's say that reverse hyper, if they're bending their knee, but then I go in and I get that hamstring working or we pick the right exercises that gets the hamstring working, then they move the reverse hyper correctly without ever coaching them, I know I did the right thing.

That's my goal, right? Is optimal movement. And that's what I'm going to teach in my exercise course with all this with the hand position and everything. It kind of even—eye position affects the way things fire.

James de Lacey51:20

And I want to go down that rabbit hole, but before that because you've told a lot about sequencing hamstrings and stuff, what's your take then on the Nordic? The traditional Nordic and this kind of obsession.

Cal Dietz51:29

Yeah, well it appeared when everybody started doing it in European soccer that the hamstring problems were not, right? And I hate to say that.

James de Lacey51:38

FIFA 11 warm up. Got to do the Nordic as part of that warm up, you know? Prevent—

Cal Dietz51:42

I know and I just didn't like—so, so there's—and then okay, so to belabor this point, I guess, where's all the hamstring problems in soccer? In the flexor part of the hamstring and not, you know, there's more in the flexor because you're—in my opinion, there's so much force on the flexor part of the hamstring down by the knee versus up high at the glute, right? And I know there's more meat up there, blah blah blah, whatever. But I'm just telling you, I just don't do Nordic hamstring curl, right?

You can look at my razor curl, which is I feel is a little bit better at high speed with lighter weight. But I never had hamstring problems. So I was like, I'm not sure I need to do that. And I tried Nordic myself. I think I slightly, you know, sprained my hamstring. I'm like, well, I don't think we're doing this. And I was a little heavier than most, right?

So the point is I just—and it's such a slow movement, and that's not the goal. Like if I'm in a high-speed in-season, why am I contracting slowly? That's not the coordinated high-speed movement that needs to happen in sports, if that makes any sense.

James de Lacey52:47

No, I'm with you. I'm listening to Norse. I didn't use it either, better options. I understand where they're coming from because, hey, you're on the field, you've finished training. Go do two sets of Nordics. They're on the field already. You know what I mean? But in terms of actually—as you mentioned, there's a sequencing in it with running, there's coordination involved. There are other things you can do. There's potentially extreme muscle soreness from that high-load slow eccentric overload. I mean, there's just a whole bunch of things that just doesn't quite jive.

Cal Dietz53:22

Yeah, no, it's slow. It has nothing to do with high-velocity running. It has nothing to do with—

James de Lacey53:30

Actually, look at all the NordBoard stats, they'll tell you otherwise.

Cal Dietz53:33

I don't care what they say. I just don't, right? And I think it's still a decent measurement for strength, right? I'm not going to say that it's not, right? But it's only measuring the flexor of the hamstring and not the extensor part. Because the hamstring obviously we know is biarticular and goes over multiple joints, right?

So I think it's fine for the lower, but for the upper, I'm just not buying it. You know what I mean? I'm not buying it. And that's where the upper's the part where a lot of—like if the foot strikes the ground acceleration, that lower hamstring's yielding, it is yielding, right? It's a yielding force, but the upper's in a—is propelling the hips forward to travel down the track or the field, but I don't know.

I just think they have to evaluate a little bit of where all this come, and I'll be another one that I'll be honest with you that I saw. This is 25 years ago, maybe 30, when all the core bracing books came out. Look at sports hernias and osteitis pubis—just shot through the roof, and then more back problems in sports.

Because I'm a big proponent that look, I just tested it 30 years ago when all that came out. I did a bench press test, measure everybody, see how fast they could do. We did over 100 athletes. Now you're going to brace your core when you bench press, and the bar speed slowed down in everybody. So I was like, you know what? I'm not going to brace the core when you do stuff. I'm just going to go natural and I think I'm pretty—I think everyone, not everybody, but people are now. And I looked 25 years ago, I took heat from people, right?

I was like, I just don't think it's that good or it's working. I think it's good for people getting out of surgery, but James, all I did too was I tested people in a 20, and I said, "All right, run your best 20. Good. Now run your best 20, and let's brace our core." And they were 3/10 slower, and I'm like, "Why am I going to do this in the gym with anything that I do?"

And now we know that and now we know that the spine—the amount of things that are happening by bracing the core, you're uncoordinating that spine. I'm just going to be honest with you, on the way that things should happen naturally, right?

James de Lacey55:55

You mentioned the eyes. I've had Dan Victor on here a few years ago. I really enjoy his stuff. I know you guys collaborate a lot. I've had Shawn Sherman from Square One. I've had Dylan Sealey talk vision stuff. Dan took me through some eye sticker cards on here and everything. Man, the stuff I don't know about it. Try to learn as much as I can because it's such an interesting area. And I know you've been doing it—Dan took that infinity walks, you call it the goat drill.

Cal Dietz56:19

Yeah, the goat drill.

James de Lacey56:20

Doing that for a while. So I'll let you go down the rabbit hole. It's going down the rabbit hole of all the—

Cal Dietz56:24

Yeah, yeah, the goat drill is—so, for people if they want to look up the goat performance drill, and it originally came from infinity walks. I just, no pun intended, I just put it on steroids, right?

And really the profound things that I've—I've had people call me about this. And really it's—so, it was originally created, the infinity walks was by Dr. Sandback. She had a behavioral clinic for children that had severe behavioral problems. And this kind of calm them down, right?

And so basically when you look at it, you're walking a figure eight looking at an object constantly the whole time. And what happens is it create—the theory was, and I think it's pretty spot-on, is that and they may have proven it correctly, but the right and the left side of the brain weren't talking correct. And the second that those connect it calms you down, it puts you in a parasympathetic state.

So I started playing with it with athletes probably 12 years ago, 10 maybe. And then right after, right before COVID, I really got into it and then COVID hit, but we—but the point is I just made it more advanced. Instead of doing the walking, we just did running and we'd add a bunch of things, a lot of things. What we added in doing math and started like 50 countdown by threes so they go 47, 44.

And if you look up Cal Dietz Olympian Goat Drill, yeah, there's some of the stuff in there that I added. There's a whole—that's one of the best athletes I've, one of the better ones I've ever coached. Just illogical, right? Just fluid in everything he did. And he's doing that drill and it even pushed the envelope on him. It just appeared like if he did that drill and he came down the weight room and he'd do a Yuri and a Primetime. Everything was even more fluid.

And one of the best guys I had and I get emails all the time from people doing that drill. And look, it takes one rep. You can just—like I tell on a game day, we just do that figure eight, start at 50, move a ball around your waist, count down from 50 to 47. One rep. Get to zero, you're done.

And it literally will connect things and I see people move better. I've seen some profound things. I get stories all the time like, "Hey, we had a receiver that couldn't catch over his left shoulder. We started doing that and bam, he catches over his left shoulder and he's getting a scholarship." You know what I mean? That kind of stuff is pretty exciting.

Young kids, James, I would have young kids—I've got some crazy stories about this. Just one, one kid's, maybe shouldn't have made the team and then over the course of the summer becomes one of the better players on the team. I told the father, "Have him do this infinity walks while they're doing a remote video game. While they're doing, watch the video game, playing the video game, doing that." And they would do it three times a week. He said, "If you want to play video games, you got to do this for 10 minutes."

And all that was that kid had, I think the kid had grown a little bit so he's a little more uncoordinated. And bam, the same thing with the girls. It's a big one for females. I even had one folks that they would just have the 7-year-old watch TV with subtitles so they felt good about reading right there, her favorite show, and then bam, the coordination in this kid just went off the charts and it works for all levels of athletes.

So all you really need to do is you need 20 seconds at a time. So I quit warming up after COVID, James. I'm well above 200,000 workouts with no warm-ups. All we do is we RPR for 3 minutes, 2 to 3 minutes with guns. Now we do them with guns. We don't even hit the spots, the athlete just cranks through it.

We do a goat drill and then I do something called a stability water bag run, which is a 10 second run and I put a series, I got only got three videos of it, I got 12 to do on YouTube about the Olympics to make it get athletes faster at the Olympics if people want to look at it.

The water bag run kind of locks all the muscles in. So in 3 minutes will be about 2 and a half for RPR, probably the goat drill about 3 and a half minutes, and we'll literally have people run at 100% right after that. And we're talking 6 years and I haven't blown out anything. Okay, so but my athletes aren't, I feel like they are conditioned and they're all in shape before we start pulling the warm-ups, right? And once they're good to go then we're good to go.

James de Lacey1:00:40

So how can someone listen to this start using that goat drill? How many times a week? When do they do it? Do they need to progress it?

Cal Dietz1:00:47

I would, you can do it, I don't think you need to progress it. I think you just pick up the, yeah, just do it. You can do it walking. You can do it running. But the one thing about, I will say, and it, I have my lectures on YouTube about it if people want to dig into it, is that as you get the more advanced athletes you want them to jog and run and then doing the math because you need them to get a little frustrated because then it releases the epinephrine, the dopamine, right, and those neurotransmitters that are important for learning skill.

So, what I'm saying is you do the goat drill and it locks the brain in and then you come down and you do your Yuri and you do your prime time to drive the correct patterns home and that's how everything falls into place and becomes highly coordinated if that makes sense.

James de Lacey1:01:38

That makes sense. Then how far then are you pushing them in that? Because you mentioned you want to get a little frustrated, but I'm assuming that you could push someone to a complexity that's way too high for them and they just kind of shut up.

Cal Dietz1:01:48

Yeah, yeah, it, I think as long as they're completing a drill and they can watch the object right, I think there's different layers of that in regards to, I think if you just did it walking, you're going to connect the hemispheres. Now, if you really want to get the dopamine and epinephrine and norepinephrine released then you probably want to cause a little bit more frustration. Just pick the speed up. Right as they walk by. Well, I even in the goat performance Olympian, search on YouTube, I have people inside circles messing with your face.

James de Lacey1:02:21

Did you have a triangle not just a—

Cal Dietz1:02:23

Yeah, I said instead of two circles, a figure eight, I made it three, right? Just to even make it more complex. So, but it, I'm telling you James it was, it's like and then I'd watch people run. So, we would mess around, I'd have them run and then we'd watch them, video them, and then we just have them do one goat drill, come back and then everything was smoother, right? It's just everything just connected. So, I know it was a good thing.

Look, and I have a friend who has the EEG caps and everything and what he told me was, and I believe him, I saw the data, right, I saw the, it's like wherever the brain's at, they do the goat drill, it's like it's on cocaine for a little bit. But then, but then what happens? He's like, "Cal, here's the magic." And he's dead right on this one. It dropped below the baseline. So, the brain was now more calm, right?

Which then if it's more calm and it can manage more things, then if you look at it holistically, it can control the muscles better and cause the relaxation that we're talking about because the central control theory. Now, you go back, there's also some principles on relaxation where you probably need to have a high levels of mitochondria and the sarcoplasmic reticulum, right? So, work capacity. This, it's a very complex problem. It's not for, it's not for less than a 2-hour lecture probably on the core and I'm not qualified to give that lecture. I know, but I'm not qualified. But so that's the point, right?

My system, if somebody fully understands it and it's hard, even my assistant right now, he's been here about a year and he's starting to grasp all the details because he'll be reading something and like, oh, this is why you do it. I'm like, yeah, that's why I do it, right? And I've told him that before, but it doesn't click right away always. And he's learning, he's, but it's a, I would say it's a pretty complete system. And there's a reason for everything.

If I don't know the reason, the minimum has got some results. And every program will get results, but results based upon high performance outputs and the things that we need. So, I feel very blessed that I'm in a place where I have a lot of testing tools and I've done a lot of things to, I just keep questioning. It's that that kind of keeps me excited, right? Just every day I get up I may find a new, well, I found a pretty good one yet.

Oh, adductor magnus. So, so I was, I had a female that came in to get checked on me. She left me for summer. She's going to be in the PWHL or the women's professional league, right? She has a place. And then had a groin issue come up on some bad ice. So, she came back visit and I couldn't get her medial fibers of her glute med were shut off.

The glute med was on, anterior fibers, but the medial fibers right beside the SI joint. And then but the glute was on or the adductor magnus had a spot in it that was bothering her. And I was like, "Hmm."

So, I worked on the fibers of the posterior glute medius. They wouldn't work. They wouldn't turn on. Couldn't get them on for anything. I worked on the adductor magnus spot, didn't do anything with the posterior fibers, and then that thing turned off. So, there's a link, and I'm not sure which spiral sling it is. But I just learned that a week ago. And I'm excited to find other groin problems when we have them because I want to know if those posterior fibers of that are off, right?

So, those are the, I mean, I get excited about that stuff. Well, and it's just little things, but those are, but to me, those are big things because then now I can make some serious connections. But then also, James, I have a PT in town that swears and he's dead right. You have a groin problem, you better check your SI joint.

But that would make sense if the SI joint's out, posterior fibers of that glute medius off, then you can have a groin problem, adductor magnus, all kinds of things appear. The sooner you get that SI joint back in place or the hips, right? Then you're in a good spot.

James de Lacey1:06:29

You got some more time, Cal, or are you done?

Cal Dietz1:06:30

Absolutely. We can go as long as you want.

James de Lacey1:06:33

So, you mentioned the eyes as well, vision being important. Obviously, there's a good, are you doing anything else?

Cal Dietz1:06:39

Well, here's the big thing. I would say in simplistic in exercise, so let's say we're doing the Yuri exercise, right? Or we're doing a glute on my right leg. Let's say, even reverse hyper. We'll keep it simple. And my right glute's working. James, we found that people get better results if you look to the left a little bit in that zone if you're doing a right exercise with your glute, okay?

So, if you're doing a safety bar single leg squat with hand supported, when you go to go up, you would actually look to the left a little bit on the opposite side. And you'll get a little bit better response.

But, what's that follow? Theoretically, when your glute pushes forward you in the horizon, your eyes would go to the left a little bit. If your right glute pushes you forward, and then and then kind of what would happen theoretically is you would look briefly down or your eyes would drift down a little bit to make sure you're not stepping on something.

And then your left foot would strike the ground and then you would go back to the opposite horizon so your left glute could fire. And if you follow that, it's kind of a figure eight.

James de Lacey1:07:54

So, you're just doing infinity walks with the eyes.

Cal Dietz1:07:55

With your eyes, it's something like that. That's just kind of naturally happened probably in the wild or naturally in the human gait cycle. But, the point is I found that eye position, I'm going to put that in my course eventually, is that eye position is another important aspect of getting everything optimized at least in the gym.

I mean, even if you just hold their neck muscles right back here below the skull and they move their eyes back and forth like this, you can feel the neck muscles contracting. Shifting back because the eye then nothing else, just the eye muscles, boom. So, then you can't tell me that they don't play a factor, right?

James de Lacey1:08:42

Do you do anything then? Obviously Dan Fichter is, I guess he's most well known for someone who's eye saccades getting that peripheral up and down and things. Is there anything you're doing there or just mainly the guy

Cal Dietz1:08:54

We have done that and I screen. Dan taught me how to screen some people and shift some things, but what I found honestly is that go drill is pretty comprehensive. And I think it's just because of the frustration and it just wires things. And then the other one is the water bag run, right? Where I say that is, well, what I had, and people can look this water bag stability method, they can look this up.

James, I had an athlete who had a broken foot, and we ran her on 1080, long story short, ran her on a 1080, and she would have about a 50 to 60% deficit on her broken foot. And she didn't want to get surgery because it would keep her off national teams and so forth. And one day Chris Corfus said something and said, "Hey, this kind of turned this on."

So, we ran a bunch of tests, and she just ran. So, she ran like a 60% deficit. Ran with a water bag 15 m. And the brain had to be going, "Something is extremely wrong here." And I actually muscle tested her to how she ran, and all her glute med, her TFL, all these muscles all over her leg were completely shut off.

She ran with the water bag 15 m, just jogging. Comes back, runs a sprint on the 1080, and the 60% deficit went

I got her on the table, and lo and behold, we didn't do RPR, which we would been doing with years, turned those muscles on when I checked her. All the muscles. So, I went, "Oh, oh." So, the brain basically went, "I have to override all the compensations I have right now to survive this water bag run." Cuz it's something I can't control.

James de Lacey1:10:43

It's funny that it gets, it's funny that the water bag gets so on. I learned a lot of that through, I guess the constraint led approach, mainly from John Pryor with the England rugby and Eddie Jones. They used it a lot with Fin Russell and France.

And they used the water bag a lot for challenging as Bosch does time constraints in the hip lock. I mean similar to Corvus and in the same of switching the legs and getting all those positions. And so I'd use it in the gym we would do, you can do your A runs or anything like that or A skips whatever people do you can use it during that.

Super set as you super set that with sprints. We'll do single leg RDL to a fast hip lock so that'll be a fast eccentric hemi or fast concentric hemi really. And then heading that hip lock position holding that top position with the water bag overhead almost like a single leg snatch. And you'll be able to find those positions and as you mentioned if you relate it back to that constraint set approach you're essentially creating a perturbation to essentially find those positions with that ability. So you're getting an extra thing

Cal Dietz1:11:48

Well, you're exactly right. I would explain it this way. They couldn't get to those positions because there was something inhibited.

Holy [expletive] I got to override everything to survive this whatever's going on. You know what I mean? So I'm telling you I would mark my words that's what's happening. It's not a physiology or a functional neurology way to explain it. Right? But I'm just telling you that. A functional neurologist going to go Yeah, that's what's happening but the guy's an idiot cuz he's this is what I'm not going to go into the pons and cerebellum or or the cerebellum's and explain all that.

But the point is I am telling you and look I don't use the water bag in training unless there would be a problem that I think it'll fix like that. Once I get the problem fixed and then get that position then we're going right back to the exercise. But again that only lasted James cuz she had a broken foot. We saw this for 3 years.

And I could get her turned on with RPR, but the point was but they nothing ever lasted cuz she had a broken foot. The water bag didn't last. But I know I do RPR, I throw the water bag on, and we get her through the workout with a lot of good things going on, if that makes sense.

James de Lacey1:13:08

So then you do that before a match then too, correct?

Cal Dietz1:13:11

Yeah, absolutely. Well, right now on both my hockey teams pick up a water bag and run 10 m with it before the game. And it turns all the muscles on. They get their warm-up in, they do a game warm-up, they'll do that. They run with the water bag, do some RPR, they all do the go drill real quick counting down, and we are pretty locked in.

And then in training, we just do a go drill, some RPR with the guns, and then we water bag and we're off. That's what we do.

James de Lacey1:13:36

Funnily enough, we used to use the water bag at at half times. As a re-warm up. Yeah, so I had we'd re-warm up with the water bags, single leg snatches, all that kind of stuff, too.

Cal Dietz1:13:45

Do you know why that's that would be good? It's because you get hurt, you get bruises, things shut off. James, you get another

No, I'm telling you. And look, James, those slings, if people look at a the lateral sling and the spiral sling, especially good for fighting, right? Because that's the left foot connected to the right shoulder, right? And if you look up the spiral sling and the lateral sling, and I am telling you that is the cause of the non-contact ACL problem.

Right? Because I have I have seen in 30 videos of people running, and they blew their ACL. And I can tell you right now that I have five key exercise or key things that I look for, and it guarantees me that all those those slings are off together. And I talk about fixing it in one of my courses, right?

But here's the thing, you get. So at the Olympics, we had the Olympic team, and we had three shoulder injuries, two for sure, maybe a third. But you're talking sprains, never kept anybody out. But the second they hit their shoulder, let's say it was their left shoulder, I showed the training staff how every the muscles of those slings were all shut off all the way down to the foot.

So the point to me being, let's say you're rugby at halftime, whatever, or American football, you take a hard hit in the shoulder and you're banged up a little bit, I am telling you everything all the way down for those slings might be off. So that's why the water bag would be a good very good idea. You see what I'm saying?

James de Lacey1:15:24

I love that. I love that thinking, yeah. Yeah, that's just similar to what we do with rugby halftime, you know, come in, hit the shields a bit, re-warm up, water bags, short exploration, just so you don't come out sluggish cuz you sat for 10 minutes in the bloody timber.

Cal Dietz1:15:36

Do a go drill, right? Do a 20-second go drill. Do the water bag run. You know what I mean? There's a lot there that could be done just to make sure. Especially look, and especially, here's the profound thing and hopefully somebody can email me. My if you get this figured out, my name's Kel Dietz at gmail, right? Put on free whiskey, I'll get right to it. You know what I'm saying on the headline? So

But the point is I seen pucks people get hit with pucks and it shuts the whole sling off. I've you know, they get a bruise on their knee. It shuts the sling off all the way up to the shoulder muscles. So I'm going I don't know why. I think I know why is because the brain goes, "Okay, these small muscles aren't going to cut it. I need to turn the big muscles on." And it kind of down regulates the small muscles to do.

So because here's the deal. If somebody's glute medius off, what if that thing's not stabilizing the hip, then the outside hamstring now has to stabilize the hip. So now the outside hamstrings overworking because it's got to stabilize the hip, extend the knee. It's doing double job now, and then you got problems eventually. And it might be a month, it might be that day, it might be 6 months before something if you don't get things back to regulating itself correctly, if that makes sense.

So it's it's crazy. And so again, and then the other thing is concussions, right? Literally, I've seen people get a concussion and literally that whole sling shuts off. And now I wish you could say, "Hey, right side it would shut or left side." No, I think it it matters where the brain what side's bruised by the brain, right? Cuz you can get hit this side and the brain kind of bruises on on another area.

So it's not necessarily the spot where they got hit. But yeah, I know. I'm telling you there's it's pretty dynamic. That's what makes this thing whole so fun and is is trying to figure all this stuff out.

James de Lacey1:17:33

The sling stuff, the spiral stuff, all that I would say there is a certain population of social media that's kind of taken it and run with it to the next level when we're talking about spiral slings or that kind of stuff. I'll be interested to hear kind of your take. But how do you actually effectively train any of the slings there because if we come if we look at a big picture again, fascial based potentially whatever it is how do we get something out of it? How do we overload a thing? How do we know that we're actually training it?

Is this even trainable? That would be another one.

Cal Dietz1:18:10

Well, okay. Okay, this is going to get funny. All right, here we go. So that spiral sling, the key link in that thing is the TFL. So I muscle test the TFL to see if that thing's off. So if it's off then the lower transverse abdominis is off, it goes up to the upper opposite side transverse abdominis into the shoulder. All those muscles will be off TFL's off.

Now, yes, and then what I do is that I will—and I was looking at those the sling experts, right, on the social media training their slings. But the funny thing is is I know if somebody's walking if their slings off. And lo and behold, they walk like their slings off. So then I would do I'm like, okay, let's try the sling exercise. So I check somebody's TFL and it's not that great. We do the sling exercise that they are doing recommending and it made it worse.

So James, I'm like, I'm not so sure. But then I go do maybe an isometric where I isolate that TFL and they do a sling exercise and I integrate the big toe squeeze and guess what? I bring them back, I check the TFL and it made it strong. So I'll go back to my glute med. The glute med everybody does the glute med banded exercises, right?

So here's the deal. If I test the glute med and it's not good and I'm telling you I promise you I've done over a thousand of these tests. If the glute med's not good, I have literally had people do all types of the glute med banded exercises. I've had world-renowned physiologists, physios, I've had world-renowned training places. Kids say, oh, I got this from this place. Okay, let's do the glute med exercise they recommend and we go back to the table and it's worse.

And we're not even talking trying to fatigue the glute med. I am talking we're going to do three reps of these exercises. So they're not fatigued, bring them back and they're—That's why I'm like, it's not a glute med problem. 99% of this ends up being a foot problem which shuts the glute med down. So what I'm telling you is it's a dynamic problem.

I know people want to trash or train the fascial slings, but if somebody's running it at 9 meters per second, 8 meters per second at high velocity, you have to be able to stabilize those slings. And that's how the slings are supposed to be met. So, I like running to train the slings. I'm not going to lie.

And just high velocity movements that look good that are in a trained individual. Because like for you to say, "Oh, you got to do these slings." But and then I'm going, "Okay, let me see you run." You got the sling training expert and then I scroll through videos and see him running and I don't want any of my athletes to run like you. I don't want any of them, right? Like I'm just like, "Okay."

And I'm not making fun of them. I'm not going to name anybody, but there's a lot of people like that. I'm like, "Oh, man, I do not"—I've always said it, too. I love powerlifting. I love watching it. I appreciate it. But I don't want one of my Olympians to run like those people. If you see those people run.

There's just not—I want a coordinated human and they're not coordinated. And they shouldn't be. Why? Because they're pre-selected groove to do the job they need to do, right? I'm not knocking it. I'm just not—Powerlifting is not for athletes. I'm just telling you right now.

James de Lacey1:21:37

That's actually going to be my next question around this kind of—There's obviously all typically a very big push towards maximal strength, getting really big and strong, squat, power clean, deadlift. Like a lot of programs built around these kind of straight up and down body exercises. There's a time and place, but you got to obviously do a bunch of other things, but the overemphasis on these exercises, do you see them should I say quickly or maybe takes a long time for them to start quote unquote shutting down these slings and maybe reducing that ability to properly use them when running?

I think it kind of depends because if guys are younger and they're running and doing their sport often and then doing say maybe powerlifting back, you don't really have that issue.

Cal Dietz1:22:18

You're dead right. So, it really comes down to the individual how athletic they are, all the variables that are exist in their life. You get somebody that's a just a natural born athlete, you could do back squat every day. It might only knock him down a little bit. You don't know what—you're talking you're splitting hairs, right?

But you get somebody that—and I like the loading principles, right? But ultimately and when I'm loading somebody to get as strong as they possibly can, I need to do it as fast as I can, right? So, we're going to go super maximal loading for 4 weeks. And then the next 12 weeks we probably won't get that. It's all speed or basic explosive.

But yeah, you're right. There's a lot of variables, especially somebody that's genuinely truly athletic might be able to override all the negative effects of training to get strong all the time. And then they got a great hormonal profile and who—hey, Ben Johnson did a 700-pound squat two, three days out of his sprint. Yeah, but he did that for a hormonal response and their logical response, right? He didn't do that because it was a training effect. There was no training effect there, not a single lot of doubles.

I just think the general athleticism, the more athletic people are, obviously I'll take that over the raw strength, but I don't know. It's—I wish there was one definitive answer, but it's all individualized based upon who you're dealing with. I mean, you got a NFL DB, you could probably back squat him and never know. Like that guy's such a good athlete, right? Versus a—young female soccer player in high school.

You might be able to get a little bit more juice out of her with the single leg squat. Once she's motivated, right? The one thing I'm—I like the safety bar squats in my females, they were so motivated to do that instead of holding the back squat on their bar, right? I was like, well, we're just going to do this. I don't want to hear the complaining. So, and they'll go heavier. So, we're going to do this, right?

I mean, you can't—you can't shove that that square peg into that round hole, right? It's you—you got to stop.

James de Lacey1:24:23

And I—on the conditioning—Always seen that you go into the conditioning side or more kind of cardio based side. I know you had—I've done your contralateral circuits for like quite enjoy those in terms of just some low intensity movement, but we've seen to kind of go to like a lot of the stuff you talk about, a lot of the stuff you program is speed strength power based.

In terms of the conditioning side, how are you addressing that within the program? Is this done separately? Is this part—Is this—Is this circuit based stuff you currently have now maybe part of that work capacity based work or is this something else?

Cal Dietz1:24:52

Yeah. So, when you look at my programs right now, there's a circuit there and you—someone would say it's a cycle. I call it a cycle, but it's circuit of 12. We'll do that three times, and then we'll do another circuit like 9 or 10, and then we'll do—So, you're in here about 45, 52 minutes. And that is a high volume program. So, how much more conditioning you need? Probably not a whole lot.

All those sets are done under 10 seconds. That's to control cortisol, right? Because if I snuck up to 15 seconds to 20, you're going to release a ton more cortisol. And then but what I have found then is I'll do a lot of the Selouyanov protocols, the Russian biomechanist. I don't know if you know who he is.

He was a Russian biomechanist who created a ton of intervals. I used him. I found his work in a Bulgarian translated book. There wasn't too many of those. But these are—in these intervals are out there. Joel Jamieson wrote about them, right? Selouyanov. Those are basically Selouyanov's protocols.

And I use a lot of those, and I just match that up. So, in my gym, if it's a alactic day, which is they're all alactic days, then I will then I'll basically do short sprinting, right? Whether that's on the Airdyne. I have a multi-level oxygen device in my gym where it's a high low training. I have found some profound results with that thing.

And when I say that, because somebody gets on it twice a week for 12 to 15 minutes. And they—it because what happens it helps them get past a poor CO2 tolerance problem, right? So, if you can't manage CO2 very well, and it's just a high oxygen to low. And I've never gotten much out of either or separate, but when this—people and I use the arrow system, it is literally you go from low oxygen you create a deficit and then you flush in high oxygen.

We matched it up with the Moxy. It was pretty impressive how high you got, how you were able to recover, and then I literally had four athletes do it going to the World Championship once. They did it for 4 weeks and they went to World Championships and we were monitoring their the O rings over the night overnight for the whole 18 days and those four were the only ones that never dropped in the recovery. And they hadn't done it for 18 days. We had some back-to-back games, everybody was down. Those four were unbelievable. Unbelievable.

James de Lacey1:27:24

What are you doing in there? You should be creating oxygen debt. So you're doing some kind of hard—

Cal Dietz1:27:27

Yeah, you'll do an interval or you can just do a longer aerobic set. But you're at 20% oxygen or 16 maybe. It's like I don't know how many thousands feet, but ultimately you're sitting there going and then you're just working. And then I prep it with an empty lung hold. So you blow all the air out of your lungs. And then you go until you can't and then the only air breathing in is the low oxygen. So then there's a huge response to like open everything up to get oxygen and then you flush it with high oxygen. I'm just telling you, it's pretty profound.

So, but I again, the foundation of all this goes back to the weight program because there's 90 sets done. You're cranking through your body and I'm going to tell you around workout 20 to 25 there's a huge jump in work capacity and all that. So they're doing the program for 4 weeks.

James de Lacey1:28:21

Got it.

Cal Dietz1:28:21

Right around week five is when—and we go five days a week—is when all of the sudden, bam, everything opens up. They can do they keep their form better through the workout. Like the work capacity, their ability to recover the next day and just reproduce set after set. And then once you get to like workout 45 to 50 you're pretty locked in and then I could send them off to go to their team and do the season. Or if you get in 60 or 70 workouts your mitochondria density's off the chart, your resting heart rate.

Well, we don't do much conditioning, but your resting heart rates like I've had people that drop into the 36s and 35s and they weren't parasympathetic overtrained. Now, one of the big drop-offs, if you look up I got have an old video that's got 50,000 views like bioenergetics. When people—I tracked heart rates for years and when we went through the isometric and eccentric phase, the isometric phase their resting heart rates dropped by like 12 beats.

James de Lacey1:29:24

But it's funny 'cause it's counterintuitive, right? 'Cause people think, "Oh, isometrics raise blood pressure blah blah blah."

Cal Dietz1:29:28

No, but they do. But what it does is it trains the vascular system. So like people can have strong hearts and strong lungs, but even like the Moxy has taught me, "Hey, I got oxygen to the muscle, but there's a venous return problem." And so when I started testing a lot of people, I was like, "Well, I hear of these problems, but why don't my people have it?" And I didn't know the answer. But it was because they'd been through an eccentric and isometric phase. And that seems to fix a lot of vascular problems.

Right? So the one thing about isometrics people don't talk about is the vascular benefits in their system.

James de Lacey1:30:05

Funny enough, Dr. Andy Galpin who we'll probably mention in this podcast. We have a conditioning mentorship. He's then now breaking down the isometric data using Moxy with their current analysis that they I guess they invented as part of their analysis that in the NIRS world and seeing some pretty crazy stuff with the ISO overcoming ISOs—

—for muscle function as you mentioned. You using oxygen efficiently and effectively. So there's something there, there's something there with ISOs in a conditioning program.

Cal Dietz1:30:33

Absolutely. You know, I'm telling you, and yeah, ultimately my next book will be a conditioning book and tying all this together 'cause I have found some secrets. And like one of the methods that I use, I don't want people fired up 'cause I'll get emails about it. But there's a reason, so look, I know there's high-low methods and all this, but there are people in the world that train high intensity all the time and don't break.

James de Lacey1:31:01

Yeah, thank goodness for saying that on this podcast. My god, I've been doing videos and Instagram for how long on this and I get all this comes back. All you gotta do low intensity this that this that. And it's like, well kind of like—

Cal Dietz1:31:18

I'm telling you there's pockets of this world that don't. And they get results. And I have been shared information and I got lucky because I train high intensity 5 days a week. I don't do a high-low method. Like we go. The low would be just doing upper body—like Monday we do the high would be 90 sets of legs of lower body. And then the low would be the upper body doing 80-90 sets the next day.

Right? Like, so, and there's ways to do it and what I'm saying is there's research that's not done in the US, but it's done in another country and they found out some pretty high-level stuff on the cellular function of how you can do that and what makes sense. So, I'll get it out. It's going to be 2 years before I get that out, but like you can do it.

People don't really—I've done it for I don't know how long. People look at my program and say you can't do that. Like, well yeah, but I got Olympians, I got professional athletes who do it all the time. Like I got, I think in this gym this summer I had six people that had trained 15 years plus with me.

You know, and I haven't blown them up yet doing high volume high intensity all the time.

Yeah. Yeah, you can do high intensity. You just gotta manage it correctly.

James de Lacey1:32:34

Yeah. And people will say, well, you know, then you're not going to be aerobically fit because you're doing high intensity all the time. It's like, well, look at the Moxy data.

The oxygen always being used. You know, there's, look at all the research in high intensity interval training and sprint interval training. Like, it's not just oh, you have to do low intensity to acquire a good aerobic base. It's just not how it works.

Cal Dietz1:32:52

Well, if you train enough high intensity, well, if you look at my circuits in the weight room, they are high intensity, but it might only be one side your body. So, but your average heart rate is probably around 110, 120 anyway at times. You know what I mean? But then, I mean, and then once you get to certain point, then it seems like the heart rate will go to 160, and then I've had people drop to like 80.

Really fast. But they're never going that—like, my people are going constantly moving. You'll see the guy, if people look at my again, triphasic training current programs, if you look at that video of the guy, he just never stops rolling through the exercises. You know what I mean? So there's an aerobic capacity there. Now, they jump up out of aerobic, but, yeah, and you do that 5 days a week, and you've accumulated somewhere around 4 hours of extreme intensity up and down. That, you know, that's a pretty good—and then you go skate.

Their skating or their field work might be lower aerobic stuff, but yeah. I've gotten some pretty profound results, but also long-term capacity. Because, well, two then like I think limiting the 10-second sets, I know limiting to 10 seconds and doesn't create a lot of lactate is is better for the mitochondria at the cellular level. I'm just going to tell you that.

James de Lacey1:34:15

Did you test that? And is that something you're still testing?

Cal Dietz1:34:19

That has been found. The Germans found out, on my test cycle tests, no, but the lactate, they, there's papers out of Germany that has, "Hey, the lactate just is hard on the mitochondria." Okay? The other thing that people don't realize is hard on the mitochondria is the ammonia that's produced. And there's a lot of ammonia produced. And that destroys some things in the cell. So the cells are the key.

Eventually, if you get down the recovery path long enough and it took me a few years, but then I got to the cellular level and began to realize that we're missing a lot of things. So.

Yeah, the cellular level, like, it's crazy. But whatever. So, and those are that, I mean, that was hours and days of reading sometimes, right? Trying to figure, 'cause I'm not that smart.

James de Lacey1:35:10

I've got a couple of comments in the chat and one of them is saying that he's done isometric, he's only done isometrics, zero cardio for 2 years and his blood pressure and his resting pulse are better than ever.

So go. It kind of, it backs up what you're saying.

Cal Dietz1:35:21

Well yeah, and and look, I have another method that I use is I call fiber specific density training, which I kind of modified. I write an article about it if you people fiber specific density. And it basically you isolate the fast-twitch fibers when you train them with isometrics. And let's say you're doing a bench, so you do a isometric hold above 70% for 40 seconds. Or you can go 90% or 80% for 20 seconds. And then as soon as you're done, rest 20 seconds and then go do the slow-twitch fibers.

Which is like a be a bench press of 20 to 30% super slow and controlled for 1 minute. And that trains the fast-twitch and the slow-twitch fibers of the chest muscle. And the Soviet rowing team did that, right? Years ago, and I wrote about it. I wrote an article on it. I explained it. It's, none of this is costing anything. I have them for free, but it's just something for people to look at because also everything's done in the stretch position.

I've had some pretty old injured athletes that have contacted me and I'm like, "Hey, man, I'm done playing. I don't know you, but I'm like, here, try this." And then 6 weeks later they're going, "Man, I feel actually pretty good." Right? Because they're doing those isometrics in the stretch. The one thing that does is it's not beating the tissue up 'cause isometrics do a lot less damage than concentric and eccentric exercise. So you're getting a ton of work and then you do the slow-twitch fibers. You're training the vascular system.

I've had a lot of people reach back out to me with success with that program. Older people I should say, not the young. I'll do it with the young athletes to build a base, especially after an injury. They have surgery. They need that fiber specific density training that I wrote about because what happens is your heart and lungs can be in good shape, but if the muscle's missing mitochondria, then you have a problem still, right? And then the likelihood that you could get injured is another level.

James de Lacey1:37:20

And some people are limited at the muscular level, too. And I have a question here for you on the heavy strength training. Is the problem with training heavy that chasing strength numbers crowds out other more useful athletic work, or do the strength adaptations themselves pose a problem even if you're also jumping and such?

Cal Dietz1:37:37

Well, maybe a little of both, but it is the neurological strain. I think it's the straining aspect of chasing the heavy numbers, right? That's not that, because look, everything in high velocity is highly coordinated, but you're grinding out some heavy sets constantly or you're trying to, right? And it's not a coordinated fashion all the time.

It's especially after you get past the first couple reps, then you're really grinding and it's not coordinated. Your nervous system is just learning to apply everything it can, and that's where I think that interferes with the athleticism more is what I'm saying. Does that make sense?

James de Lacey1:38:16

For sure. I saw another comment here about the old Soviet systems. Judo and wrestlers dropped steady state cardio after 18 or 19 years ago, once they... Sorry, they dropped it once 18 or 19 years old, once the engine is built.

Cal Dietz1:38:30

Yeah, they're dead right. Once you have... I have some of my freaks, there's a when I look back at them, they had some form when in their through their childhood of high amounts of volume. Whether it was literally riding a bike six or eight hours a day. They had a bike track, right? And then now this kid can just adapt anything and his capacity is off the charts.

James de Lacey1:38:51

How does that change for you now, because kids aren't doing that now?

Cal Dietz1:38:53

No, I know. Well, it takes... I try to get a base built, but you're not going to be a freak like that in regards to... you're just not going to be. It would take years or drugs, right? But people do get there. I've seen some pretty... some kids walk in here and you're going, "Oh man, I don't know this kid's going to make it," but five years later you're going, "This kid's a freak." So it's still possible, right, to get that capacity up, but that's a lot of good living, that's a lot of hard training and mentally just coming in here every day and turning yourself inside out in some of these cases, right?

I had a fortune to train David Plummer. He was Olympic gold medalist and won a bronze in Brazil in 2016, I think. And you want to talk about a human being, his specialty was backstroke, that would turn himself inside out in 40 seconds to 45. You're talking pushing to where you're going, "This is... you're broken. There's something wrong with you," right? That's awesome.

But in its awesomeness, it's just absolute awesomeness. But the passion... Here's the thing, people can do that. But to walk in every day and just turn yourself inside out like that.

James de Lacey1:40:12

That's the real deal, man. That is the real deal.

Cal Dietz1:40:17

I'm just blessed that I got... I had David and he was a monster. He was a monster when it came to that stuff, right? Just a monster. So when you see that level of commitment... And we're talking David was probably 11 years deep with me. And he'd hit a second, you're going... And people stand there going, "Man. Yeah, he's been doing that for 11 years, that hard."

Man, I don't know how many people have that in them, right? "Oh, I can do it for a month or two," right? That monstrousness, yes. Unbelievable. So.

James de Lacey1:40:58

Are either those top top ones have it, eh? They just have that ability to keep pushing. Injuries, whatever else, it's just part of life. You just keep going, keep going, keep going.

Cal Dietz1:41:09

Well, I grew up wrestling, right? So when I measure people, it's kind of... And I wrestled in college and then obviously I trained wrestlers here at the University of Minnesota, right, and wrestling for a number of years, but you're just... people... "Are they hard workers?" I'm like, "Well, yeah, but that's relative compared to my... What do you want? Wrestling?" People don't get it.

I tell people, I remember when CrossFit came out and they're like, "Yeah, you ever done CrossFit?" I'm like, "Well, I've done a wrestling practice." In college, I think there was one where I lost around 12 lbs. I was 270, right? So I was like a deck chair off the Titanic. It wasn't like the small guys. I mean, I had 12 lbs of water to lose. So that... But you're like... And then I'm like, "Yeah, pushing a sled for 400 yards. That's hard, right?" Well, in the wrestling room, now you have that sled attacking you while you're trying to push that sled, right?

It's just a whole different... People just don't understand the fight, the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, wrestling. The combat part of it is just the variable that people have never... Right? And that dude's not trying to... He's not trying to do it lightly. Right? He wants to take your ass down so at the end of the practice, he's going, "Yeah, I got you today, brother."

James de Lacey1:42:25

How does your... For example, your current training program that you have up, is it more, I guess, more for quote-unquote speed-based athletes? How does that change for wrestlers who have such a high strength component? They're trying to grapple some dude who's trying to take them down 24/7.

Cal Dietz1:42:40

Well, I would spend more time in strength blocks, right? I'd go back and forth, but I would spend more time in strength blocks. And then, but wrestlers... they don't... What I found is that they're not... So I was here when we won the national title in '03, '04 with J Robinson, right, Minnesota wrestling. Brandon Eggum had some great ones. Two Marton.

But ultimately, where you're saying here, going, "Okay, they don't..." Even if you go to the speed and power, in my opinion, the wrestlers don't lose the strength, because when we would test it, they're so strong anyway, and they get the strength a lot just in the room, as you know, right? Fighting. That's where the strength comes from a lot.

So I would spend probably... Some people think, "Oh, you might be spending a little too long in the speed or power," but I felt that they were keep getting numbers better on the power, even though I hadn't addressed strength like I, let's say, I wouldn't have in track. Maybe I would have circled back sooner. But again, if you realistically look at the practices, I mean, they're trying to...

People don't understand, "Oh, this wrestler needs to train his core." Well, if you get put in a gut wrench and you stop one of those guys, right... I don't know how much more core training you need. And then if you just body lock somebody and you're fighting to get away, or the guy that body locked you is trying to get close to throw you... If you don't have a good core, you're done. All right, it's not... you're going to fold like a cheap lawn chair. I don't know anything.

James de Lacey1:44:08

And if you come back to wrestling practice after time off and you feel where you're sore afterwards.

Cal Dietz1:44:13

Your midsection and back and core, so sore. So sore.

James de Lacey1:44:20

It's horrible.

Cal Dietz1:44:21

It's horrible. Well, now I mean, if you're out... I know if you... I helped somebody rake a lawn for an hour the other day, my core was sore because... It's just, "Oh jeez, let alone wrestling practice." I would be in a wheelchair if I could make it through a wrestling practice, which I couldn't right now.

James de Lacey1:44:41

But would you apply part of a question here in the chat here. Would you apply isometrics specifically in a skill environment, for example, within wrestling?

Cal Dietz1:44:49

Yeah, I have a change of direction... I have a change of direction on my YouTube, one of my most recent videos. I have found... take a look at that change of direction on my YouTube video. It's in my first YouTube, it's probably within the first 10. It's isometric.

Because let's say you have a weakness. Let's say you got somebody in this position, you're not good at finishing, or you're wrestling this elite guy and you can't finish him. What I would do is do some isometrics with the slings that I talk, right? Because that sling aspect is one of the reasons that you're not finishing, and it especially goes into the head and neck and the spine, right?

The one thing that I remember when I wrestled some of the best guys that I was able to wrestle... One was a Soviet national champ. Was what people don't realize is the head pressure from those elite guys. When they get in on you, that head pressure... I remember the first time I felt that, I'm like, "What the hell is going on right there?" And then he proceeded to finish with a high crotch that I was just like, "Okay, what was that?" And then he did it again, I was like, "Oh, that's his head. That's how much pressure he's applying to me."

And then he had this lateral push, right? You're going, "Oh, okay." I didn't know what the slings were back then, nobody did. But you're going, "Okay, yeah, there's something different about this cat."

But yeah, I would do isometrics especially in weak positions. Even like people have ripped on me about top end speed, some of the positional things that I do, but even the Clark 105, right? But if you see somebody that's weak in a position, even at my highest speed position, do isometrics for a little bit, and you'll get something out of them. I always have. Right? Now, you're not going to get that benefit forever because it just doesn't happen, but yeah.

James de Lacey1:46:39

Okay, you've inspired me to start doing more isos in my training now. That's going to be me going forward for a bit.

Cal Dietz1:46:45

Yeah. Look at that I call it that change of direction where they're actually—did you see it? Did you get to look it up?

James de Lacey1:46:50

I don't think I've seen that one.

Cal Dietz1:46:51

Yeah, yeah. I'll send it to you. And then—but anyway, yes. So, it's kind of exciting.

James de Lacey1:46:57

No, I love that. That's a great way to end out this podcast. I appreciate you spending almost two hours here chatting. It's been—

Cal Dietz1:47:03

That's all right. I enjoy it, man. This is good stuff, fun. I enjoy sharing things. So, yeah. It's been great.

James de Lacey1:47:10

Where can people find you? Just your Instagram, YouTube, email, all that?

Cal Dietz1:47:13

Yeah. My Instagram is triphasic cal diets, I think, if you look it up. I'm not sure which one it is now. I have a website, triphasic training. Triphasic two is the book that I wrote. It builds on triphasic 1. So, if you don't have it, I'm sure people have it. I get a lot of people hit me up going, "Hey, Cal. Yeah, I read triphasic 1. I actually stole it though. I didn't—" It's fine. Whatever.

And then triphasic 2 builds on triphasic 1. So, and it has a lot of things in there. It's a lot to digest. But you know what? I feel like people are shifting that way and a number of reasons and a lot of people are—you see it on Instagram. They don't give me credit, but I'm okay with it. It's fine. Whatever. It is what it is. Other people actually call them out nowadays, but yeah.

But yeah, you can find me there. triphasictraining.com Google search. My email's caldietz@gmail. If people want to hit me up, put put free beer or free whiskey on there. I'll usually get to them. And if I don't answer, just hit me up again right after that. So, after a week or so, I'll try to get—

James de Lacey1:48:21

Perfect. No, I appreciate you coming on, man, and sharing everything.

Cal Dietz1:48:24

James, it was a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Great questions, too.