Grand Slam Journey

74. James de Lacey︱Strength Training for Sports Performance, Injury Prevention and Longevity

• Klara Jagosova • Season 3

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Unlock the secrets to unwavering commitment in your physical and professional pursuits as strength and conditioning sage James de Lacey joins us on a compelling odyssey through consistent performance. Let James, armed with a wealth of experience, unravel the myth that perfection trumps persistence. Together, we dismantle some of the fitness industry's most stubborn myths, providing clear-cut guidance for those on a quest to amplify their muscle mass and bolster their strength.

Witness the transformation of James de Lacey from tennis to strength and conditioning virtuoso, a journey sparked by a knee injury that steered him toward the shores of coaching and strength training. His story isn't just about personal growth; it's a masterclass in applying the power of 'intent' across various sports, tailoring training to the individual, and the indispensable role of strength and power. James's narrative also highlights the delicate dance of maintaining peak performance while staving off injuries, offering tips and insights for athletes at any level to preserve their edge and elevate their game.

As we wrap up our conversation, we explore the horizon of strength training not as a mere addition to your routine but as a cornerstone for lifelong health. Together, we challenge the prejudices of aging, discussing how to blend power, speed, and resistance training into one's regimen. We expose the fallacies surrounding strength and hypertrophy training, highlighting the potency of diverse workout structures. James's wisdom isn't just for the tennis enthusiast or the gym-goer; it's for anyone who yearns to forge a foundation of confidence and strength for the journey ahead. Join us for this enriching exchange, and remember to connect with James through our episode notes to continue the dialogue.

Watch it onYouTube: https://youtu.be/sm4NnJ9tUUA

Connect with James:
https://sweetscienceoffighting.com/
https://www.instagram.com/sweetscienceoffighting/
https://www.youtube.com/@sweetscienceoffightingpodcast
https://liftbigeatbig.com/

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James:

consistency wins over anything else. There's so much shit going on people trying to optimize this, that morning routines like no, like. All that matters is consistency. That's the only thing that matters. With anything it can be dieting for building muscle or losing fat, it could be training for any of those, you can't have the perfect training session. You can't have the perfect diet. You can't have the perfect anything. You just have to do it over and over and over and over and over again.

James:

It's just the idea that you have to do things for a long time and learn as you go and iterate, instead of trying to search for the perfect thing. Do it for typically a week and then be like, oh, this isn't working, I don't like this, and try to fit something into your lifestyle that doesn't fit. I mean, you see all the time with crazy diets, now carnivore. Uh, what else is going on if you're eating sticks of butter and shit like that's crazy. Stop doing that. If you're doing that, people overhauling their entire lifestyles like could you imagine with the family and you're like, okay, now I'm going to start doing intermittent fasting. So I'm only eating, let's say, six, eight hours of the day, but my family eats breakfast together, but I don't eat breakfast in the morning. Now what do I do? Oh, but now I'm only eating meat, but my family's still eating everything else. So, like, how do you fit that into your lifestyle? You can't, it's impossible and you're going to literally just fall off the bandwagon in a week.

James:

So everything congregates in the middle. You have carnival one side, vegan one side. You have high-tension training one side, zone two the other side. Everything is in the middle and it's just about being consistent with whatever's happening in there and you'll get to where you're going. You have to jump in and do things wrong to start doing things right. You cannot do things right from the beginning. Anyone who runs their own business knows right. You can't just like do a course and it's like I know exactly what I'm going to do with this business. I do shit wrong every damn day. I'm like trying to learn things right now. I don't think I'm spending money. I'm like is this even going to work? But you have to do it and you have to take that action.

Klara:

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Grand Slam Journey podcast, where we discuss various topics related to the Grand Slam journey of our lives Sports, life after sports, and lessons we learn from sports and how we're applying them in the next chapter of our lives. My today's discussion is with James de Lacey. James has a master's degree in sports and exercise science. Since graduation, he has worked with professional, elite and international athletes in three different countries. He's a strength and conditioning coach by trade, writer, author and educator by night. James has competed in Olympic weightlifting at the national level and loves passing on everything he has learned to get strong and jacked. He has assembled, and continues assembling, a team of his most trusted friends and colleagues within the strength sports and strength and conditioning space to give you the no-bullshit information the internet desperately needs, and this conversation is just about that.

Klara:

James and I dive into all sorts of things related to tips for strength building, conditioning. We debunk many myths and discuss the importance of strength and power within all sports, prevention of injuries and general longevity. If you enjoyed this conversation, please share it with someone you believe may enjoy it as well. Consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. This conversation is also available in video on the YouTube Grand Slam Journey channel. This is your host, Klara Goshova. Thank you for tuning in, and now I bring you James de Lacey. Hello James, Welcome to the Grand Slam Journey podcast.

James:

Thanks for having me, klara, appreciate it.

Klara:

Of course, Great to have you. I just recently recorded a conversation with your amazing wife.

James:

Mona.

Klara:

So it's great to have a power couple on the podcast, talk about strength, mental toughness and many other topics that I'm sure we will dive into with you. But before we do, just a quick intro. I know you've been working in the realm of strength for a really long time various different sports through your upbringing that led you to coaching and really focusing on being a strength training coach.

Klara:

You're also the owner of Lift Big, eat Big, which I love the name, so we will dive into many of these topics related to your Grand Slam journey of sporting life coaching and strength building. But before we do, I want to also give you an opportunity to introduce yourself Anything you want to add, James.

James:

Yeah sure, James DeLacy, I didn't tell you when we talked previously. Tennis was actually my main sport.

Klara:

Really.

James:

Yeah, that was my first ever job was coaching tennis as well, so I thought I'd spring that up on the podcast. Tennis was my main sport growing up. It started when I was like five years old, played competitively probably not to that level like what reserve grade club in new zealand which is it's not bad, but it's not like amazing. It was in the tennis academy at school. So I was was all tennis. All I cared about was playing tennis. And I started coaching at 13 years old and coaching's been pretty much my only job really throughout my life and then it turned into a career in strength and conditioning. But yeah, so tennis was a big part of that.

James:

So I actually fell into this world because I was doing so much sport during my teenage years tennis, soccer, whatever else that I ended up having a small knee injury. I had to get some meniscus surgery for that at 16 years old. I couldn't do anything else. So I ended up in the gym and then from there I just set my new path, basically my life down that way, and then from that I actually wanted to be a physiotherapist. I'm glad I did not become a physiotherapist that would be horrible. So my grades were good enough to get into physiotherapy.

James:

So I was doing, I guess, the similar realm at university. We had our professor of sport and recreation come into one of the lectures and gave a presentation on exercise science. Me and my friend looked at each other and we're like, okay, that's actually what we wanted to do. Switched from that, then the rest is history Went on to do my master's, worked in professional rugby Romania, usa, new Zealand as well as international rugby as well on top of that. So, yeah, it's been really, really cool. Jumped into all the different bits and pieces around that yeah, thank you for describing that.

Klara:

I have so many questions related to that. But going back to being 16 years old and going through surgery and recovering, and it seems like you actually found strength, which is fantastic, but I would argue I don't know at which point of your life that was. I don't know if surgeons were recommending you go to the gym and start squatting. It seems like sometimes those two don't go hand in hand, I think nowadays they do, but maybe back what 10, 20 years ago?

Klara:

that wasn't potentially the norm. So what was that journey? Like I know, you've been big into Olympic lifting, and so is obviously Mona. But what was your journey? What led you to starting working on strength at that point in time?

James:

So at that point it was was like I just basically had to sit on the bike for my knee. I wasn't a, I wasn't like one of those hardcore knee surgeries. It's just stitching up the meniscus, so the recovery time is longer than an older person who just gets it cut out and you're kind of like good to go. Since I was younger, obviously, the stitching made kind of sense, so I was just sitting on the bike 20-30 minutes a day, but then upper body weights is what I started there.

James:

We had the personal trainer at our school gym had a couple of programs and literally just like I don't know if I was in there, I don't know how many times a week, just lifting weights and obviously at that stage, like you just make gains like crazy. So I was just getting in there, I was going with a friend at like before school, at like 6 am and things like that, just fully dedicated reading. Back in the day, when there used to be like fitness bloggers. I don't know if you used to have like an rss feed and you'd have like all the blogs that came up and people you followed. I'm just like reading that stuff all day.

James:

That was basically me, even through university, just reading all that stuff. And at that point as well, especially through university, when you're training and things okay, you have studies and stuff, but it's not anything like you're working full time. So it was just me and a crew of friends that all we did was wanted to go train, try things out, do stupid stuff. I think that was the big thing is making sure we did as much stupid stuff, I guess, as possible, because eventually you learn from doing all that different stuff and just training and playing sport. And that was all through that journey.

Klara:

And this switched from soccer and tennis, because that's more of endurance and running type of sport right To really focusing more on strength training.

Klara:

Is there something that you can point out that stood out to you, because that seemed pretty much night and day, and I would maybe even love to dive into your view of tennis players and how they strength train or perhaps not strength train because I have my own experience. So now that you've been through a whole bunch of sports and focused on building strength and muscle for variety of athletes, I would be curious to dive into that at some point of this conversation. How did you see that transition for yourself?

James:

yeah, like I've been through quite a few sports competitively tennis, soccer at the same time, rugby at one point, olympic weightlifting competitively, now jiu-jitsu for a while now too, so it's a lot of different, a lot of different sports, but the it was the point where I was at school I was lifting weights. It definitely helped my tennis.

James:

People noticed to help my tennis I could definitely hit harder from that, and then it was at a point where you realize like shit, there's no way I'm going to be able to go pro. There's levels, so, like everything, most people realize at some point they go, okay, there are definitely levels to this, especially when you come out of small countries like New Zealand. The competition infrastructure is not like it is in the US or Europe and things like that too. You just got to be playing all the time and playing high level competition and I was playing like national competitions in new zealand, you know. So it's kind of like, okay, I'm not gonna go, I'm not gonna make it in this soccer was. I liked it, but it wasn't something that I was like passionate about and I wasn't exactly like that good at it either. So it's kind of like I enjoyed lifting and you know you see results from lifting. That was fun.

James:

I really liked olympic weightlifting. Being exposed to it within the university gym. There were people around strongman style training. I have a friend who competed twice the world's strongest man. I'm good friends from university and a whole bunch of people from there and just being around all those people, I think just seeing it all being like I really love the sport and just getting into it, because originally it was just kind of training to get big and strong, I'm gonna say for sport, but kind of not really at that age. You're kind of just getting big and strong, just to get big, because you're big and strong, yeah.

James:

And then in terms of how tennis players generally train, I'm sure we've all seen the clips of the various things like random bandit stuff, agility ladders, replicating the swing with cables and things like that.

James:

It's funny because it's prevalent in every sport, right, every sport has the same issues of someone trying to take the sport itself, throw in the gym and make it look like you're doing the sport in the gym. I mean, golf is a prime example, pretty much exactly the same as tennis, with the same things going on there. Even boxing mma to some extent has these same problems where people are punching with bands and doing all sorts of different stuff. And unfortunately it negates the principles of training for sport, because the principles of training for sport are universal for all sports. You just might make some small modifications in terms of what you're trying to prioritize, maybe the kind of modes of exercise you're doing, but the principles remain the same and when you're going down these roads of clinical, trying to be very specific, with doing banded forehands and backhands and whatever else you're doing, you're not providing enough stress to actually transfer to what you're trying to do.

Klara:

I'm curious about that. So I've used quite a bit of the banded stuff. I do have to say, though, now I use it more for activation, so I do it before I get on the court, to warm up some of the specific muscles and get a little bit more activation.

James:

You're talking about like more like band hip stuff right and walking and things like that. What are you talking about like banded swings?

Klara:

yeah, because that's what I've been taught. Like imitating forehands, backhands, you do kind of the surf overhead, so I have this sort of light band that I try to go really fast to get my heart rate up but also get a little bit of resistance for my arm. But that's what I mostly do before I get on the court now and I have about. It used to be a half an hour routine or longer.

Klara:

Now it's like 10 or 15 minutes, because that's all I can do. Half an hour gets me actually to a point where I'm tired. So obviously as I age I had to adapt my warm-up routine for tennis. But I also have recognized the importance of strength training for tennis. I do see some of the professional athletes now working more on the strength training, but I remember back in the day, for whatever reason. It's funny when I talk to some of my other friends, athletes who play different sports, they always laugh at us tennis players when we would come to the college gym and do strength training.

Klara:

People say oh, you tennis players, you do like these five pounds, like wrist curls and stuff, because tennis players used to hate lifting.

Klara:

Because tennis players used to hate lifting and I was actually one of those that luckily came across a strength training coach in college who taught me some of the early Olympic lifts that actually really helped my strength and stamina on the court, because you need strength in order to sustain speed and endurance, which totally makes sense, but back at that time I don't think people thought about it that way, so let me stop there. I think it's kind of a long-winded way, but what's your view now, kind of knowing what you know, when you think about building strength, maybe specifically for tennis players, what might be helpful?

James:

I treat it similar to how I'd almost train most endurance athletes.

James:

So I've had a few endurance athletes when I had a small academy back home ultra endurance, marathoners, triathletes and things like that where training volumes are high, like you're on the court. You're basically doing marathons or endurance sessions on the court when you're training and you're doing it multiple times a week. And same thing with endurance athletes that are logging miles every day and you get to the point where you can't spend hours in the gym or multiple days in the gym and doing a lot of volume, to the point where you're going to have your technical training suffer. Same in pretty much most sports in that philosophy where the gym should complement whatever you're doing on the court or whatever you're doing for your sport, and that means that typically you're doing lower volumes and higher intensity, which sounds counterintuitive to most people. They're like wait, if I lift heavy weights, am I not going to be sore and tired and broken? But it's like no, the sore, tired, broken comes from when you're doing four or five sets of 10 of whatever it is you're doing over multiple exercises three days a week. That's when you're going to run into problems and volume is the killer. Volume is the killer that will crush your well, since you make you fatigued, crush your training effect and you're not going to get out of it what you want.

James:

Because the idea within training for a sport like tennis one is you're reducing the risk of injury right from abuse injuries. So typically strong athletes are less likely to get injured. There's some good review papers on that. It doesn't mean that becoming a powerlifter means you're not going to get injured. It just means that just having general strength is good and then, on top of that, you're trying to improve qualities that are going to help you with tennis. Typically that's going to be speed, power, strength etc. And if you're just doing volumes of work, like I think most people go and thinking, hey, if I just do 20 sets of lunges and I go do some push-ups and things like that, yeah, okay, you're building maybe a general base level of strength there, but at some point you need to attack those qualities of speed, power, strength etc.

James:

And that requires typically intent, which most people don't have in their training sessions, and intent is a huge one, like you see it all the time. If you're watching, if you ever watch an athlete's training video, especially some of the top. I'm not doing tennis in particular, but top pros. I'm on one of my youtube channels on sweet times of fighting. I break down a lot of pro fighters training footage that just gets put up on youtube and you see it all the time and there's just no intent behind what they're doing.

James:

They're doing jumps with dumbbells, but it's kind of like just getting off the ground and then maybe doing something else and it's just like jumping or throwing something, but there's no intent behind it. And they had for you to actually make the adaptation, that the stress has to be powerful enough for your body to adapt. And that means having the intent behind whatever you're doing to essentially spur the adaptation, especially when you're looking at speed and power. Right, because you can't develop speed and power without actually using speed and power in training. I mean, that's why, with olympic lifts as well as mentioned as well helping you to get the bar overhead, you can't do it slowly, you've got to do it pretty quickly. Now, that's not to say that Olympic lifts are the panacea of, or strength and power training, because even moving barbells to your shoulder overhead is still much, much slower than a sporty movement, and it's also much, much slower than jumping, plyometrics, throwing, et cetera, sprinting. So that's just most of that in a nutshell.

Klara:

And you talked about intent. Can you actually explain a little bit more what you mean by that?

James:

Yeah, think of it as effort. Think of it as effort. So, if I'm trying to jump with dumbbells, I'm trying to jump as high as I can, every single rep, every single rep should be your limit.

James:

Obviously there's different things, like if you're doing some maximal jumping or extensive jump plyometric circuits because you're preparing yourself to do those later. That's a different story. But if you're looking to develop speed and power and that is your main focus of that session or that exercise, then every effort needs to be maximal and that means you also need long enough rest between your sets and not do too many reps where you incur so much fatigue because you want every set to have that maximal.

Klara:

Yeah, do too many reps where you incur so much fatigue because you want every set to have that maximum.

Klara:

Yeah, and I do have to say from my experience I've had many great coaches and there was one thing that actually they've always paid attention to, I'd say not in college but in my academy when you're preparing for tennis or even doing the conditioning.

Klara:

We used to rather like shorter type of conditioning workouts that may have been anywhere between even 15 to 30 minutes and they could have been spread throughout the day to maximize our readiness for that and really maximize that intent. And every single one needed to be always sort of a maximum effort, because that's eventually what a rally on the court is. So you're trying to replicate every single ball. It's not really just the mindset, practicing the mindset, because every single point you have to play with the mindset like it's your last one to put your best effort in, but also obviously the sprint, because that action, reaction, especially in tennis, it's so important. The first two steps will really dictate whether you get to the ball, because those are the most important one for acceleration, because it's such a dynamic sport and there's so much change in direction, like it's probably the same in rugby, soccer, right, many other sports you have specific things. Well, maybe in soccer you kind of run more, but once you get into the ball and need to navigate around players and there's probably a lot of that agility and sprint, which actually, funny enough, going back, we used to play soccer quite a bit back and like for fun, because they said it's a really good way to get a little bit of the footwork, even for tennis and footing anything from

James:

your experience, jim youim there's a few different things I can dive into there. What do you want me to start? I can start with the fallacy of agility training. I could also go down the road of conditioning in terms of what people are trying to achieve and the general idea that pretty much all sports are the ability to repeat high intensity efforts over and over and over again, obviously to a different extent. Right, tennis is more of endurance based, repeating probably not maximal efforts, versus sports like boxing, mma or repeating very high intensity if it's over and over over a short time frame. But I'll start with the agility stuff. So do stuff always interesting. It's funny because anything that involves changing direction gets kind of lumped in with this word agility. But agility isn't the ability to change direction or to react to someone. You know, like people drop balls and stuff and then you have to like you know, react and get those.

James:

You know? Yes, because that's not. That's not agility, even though people would call that stuff agility. You can call it reactive agility, but reactive becomes redundant when you define what agility is and that is a reaction or a change in velocity. So movement of the body in reaction to a sport, specific stimulus, and that is a reaction or change in velocity. So movement of the body in reaction to a sport, specific stimulus and that's where most people get this idea wrong is the sport specific stimulus is the most important part of it. And if you look up warren young agility or if any of the listeners are interested I don't know if any of them are about going this deep but warren young agility, he's like the agility guru, I guess you could say, of research and I had the pleasure of actually listening to him during one of his talks back in new zealand and he has some great papers on the side. I'm not on the idea, I'm stuff that researched on agility.

James:

So typically you have change of direction, speed, and then you have agility which is reacting to the stimulus. Attention to speed tennis, right, hitting the wide forehand, stopping coming back, that would be like. So change of direction, speed, tennis, right, hitting the wide forehand, stopping coming back. That would be like a change of direction. Speed. If you put elite and sub-elite athletes, this is usually the best way to decipher whether a quality is important to the sport or not. If an elite athlete is much better than a sub-elite athlete at a certain quality, this probably means it's important for success. If elite athletes are better than elite athletes and their quality is probably not as important for six in that sport. So you take them, you do a change of speed test, you basically run five meters to the line and run back. Sub elite athletes tend to perform just as well, if not better, than elite athletes when you add the sport specific stimulus to react to. So in these examples that we're doing, like aussie rules football, so you know someone basically stepping one way or the other and you're having to react to which way they're going the elite athletes far outperform the sub-elite athletes in these studies.

James:

And then when they correlate these two change direction. Speed and agility together there's only about a 30% correlation. So basically they're saying that both qualities are independent of each other. So I can be really good at running to the line and back and faster than anyone else. But then when I'm playing tennis and I can't recognize that that toss is going to mean it's a kick serve coming to my backhand, then it doesn't matter how fast I am right, because I can't read where that ball's going and what's going to happen with the spin of that ball. So those are those ideas around agility where you can potentially train the footwork and things in isolation. But when it comes to the actual sport itself, you need to be able to recognize the patterns that your opponent is showing you and be able to anticipate what's happening.

James:

I think because tennis players, you spend so much time on the court playing with different people with different games, like it almost becomes innate within tennis training itself. Like there's no other agility work you can really do. You're playing games all the time, like some of my favorite games always like one person on the baseline, two players on uh at the net playing, playing. They're trying to pass. You know whatever's going on there. So all these different things are all giving you different looks of what's going on, and that is what agility really is. It's within the technical sport training itself, versus trying to, you know, catch balls and and do other different random things. Uh, so that's the other side. I don't know if you want to jump in there before I ramble on some more different things it makes sense.

Klara:

I guess just how I would explain it from a bringing have been trained. Tennis has so many different components that in order to really gain the agility, as you're correctly defining it being able to move within the court and react and read the game there's also ways to be more effective with that movement and that's what we would almost. You think about it, a component of it, and you would train what are the steps and footing to effectively then get from the forehand side to, let's say, back to the center and backhand.

Klara:

So there's like these specific steps that first is like crossover step and then sidestep and how long or short they need to be, and then you practice dose in isolation, let's say in the conditioning that is more static. In isolation, let's say in the conditioning that is more static. There are some reactions you can actually replicate, like people throwing the ball, even by hand or with the racket. That is still a little bit imitating. But then you take that to practice off the court, then on the court, and yeah, we used to spend hours doing that, obviously on the court, and coaches would then kind of try to piece it together. So you first, I guess, make it simpler for the body to understand and remember those steps and then you try to implement that in the tennis game overall, yeah, for sure For sure that's definitely a solid way of doing it In terms of the things I'm referring to.

James:

I'm referring more to, I guess you could say, people trying to just get faster at changing direction a solid way of doing it in terms of the things I'm referring to. I'm referring more to, I guess you could say, people trying to just get faster at changing direction or faster at, say, reacting to something. That's where it's kind of like is the transfer ready there, versus when you're learning that footwork? Yeah, that crossover is important because that's getting you faster back into the court and then when you're able to figure out what the hell's going on in the game, yeah, you can use that for sure one additional thing, though, that this makes me also think about is the mindset.

Klara:

So you're saying, well, is this or isn't this relevant? But then I'm also wondering, how much is it training your own mind and almost like confidence in the belief system? Because if you're doing these drills, uh, off the court and let's say a coach is tossing you a ball, you gotta feel like we we used to do the happy feet and then try to think about, like, try to run as quick as you can, either forward or different directions, or sometimes multiple balls, to react sort of to the back and forth, that feel of the movement and getting that movement of the tennis court. I think alone just that practice builds a little bit more confidence perhaps in ourselves and just that fluidity and comfort of being able to then implement it on the tennis court when you have the ball and racket and strategy and stress and all of these other components.

James:

So, but that's part of the physical training, right, that's like that's the strength, that's part of your strength training, or strength and conditioning. Yes, in terms of what you're trying to achieve there, because it's off the court, the quality you're you're doing is almost um quickness. You're looking at deceleration, change of direction, all all of that. So that just ends up being part of that strength conditioning, improving that physical quality that you can then take into your more technical stuff on the court.

Klara:

And I do want to go back. You mentioned there's principles that are the same across the sport. And you have seen and did personally and have coached various different athletes in different sports. So I'm curious what have you observed from there? If you put sports in general into, let's say, one big bucket, what are some of the principles that you find are universal?

James:

yeah, well, outside of endurance based sports, because that's a bit different. But like repeating I mentioned about repeating high intensity efforts is typically underpins most intermittent sports. So sports that have stop starts, um, obviously endurance sports are a completely different beast, but in terms of, uh, I guess sports principle, training principles that reign across all of them, it's it's the same thing. Right, you're still trying to develop strength, speed, power, um, muscle mass to self-extend potentially, and then then conditioning on top of that, and how you're developing that kind of depends on the sport. But all those things are the same for every single sport. And repeating high-intensity efforts it's a funny one because there's a few different trains of thought of doing it. There's a few old-school ways that are still being done. The thing with conditioning you can kind of get good at it just from playing the sport and a lot of the times a lot of the top athletes may not have the best conditioning, and when I'm talking conditioning, let's just label it fitness for everyone.

James:

So it's a little easier to understand, but the top athletes may not have the best fitness, but they know the game so well that they're in position already, or they know where the ball's going to be, etc. So they don't expend as much energy. And you see that within, for example, team sport, soccer, rugby, etc. You'll play small-sided games often and you'll play, for example, 5x5, whatever bigger grids, because everything's tracked with GPS. Your best players don't typically have the highest workloads because they know where they need to be and what they need to do. They know when they need to expend energy and when not to. For anyone who practices martial arts or grappling, you'll know that If you're a white belt and you go against a black belt, the black belt is barely even breathing. The white belt is dead because they know when they need to work and when not to. So there's obviously that in play there.

James:

But regarding repeated high-intensity efforts so often it's labeled as well as like repeated sprint ability. It's big, and especially big in soccer because it's such a big component, and tennis, obviously you have a little bit of that as well, but that's typically underpinned by how fast you are, so how fast your first sprint is. Obviously you can have a bigger decrement and fatigue or slower sprint times as you go through, say, a test like that, and it's typically underpinned. The recovery is typically underpinned by what they call aerobic or oxidative processes. So think about I think everyone's talking about zone two now is you know you have to do these?

Klara:

long, long, this long that right.

James:

So typically those processes are what underpins that recovery between sprints. When you start adding other things, it becomes a little more different, but there's that kind of model of conditioning. I'm still processing, I guess, this new model of conditioning in my head, so I'm going to try to explain it if it's going to help me anyway. So typically we look at it as like energy systems, right. People are like, okay, I need to do aerobic conditioning, I need to do anaerobic, lactic conditioning, I need to do alactic conditioning. Now the problem with going down this model of energy systems is you can't isolate an energy system. All energy systems work together all the time and I think most people might be familiar with the graphs that show 0 to 10 seconds is all alactic, 0 to 30 seconds is all anaerobic, lactic, and then forever on is all aerobic energy system right.

James:

But then when you actually look at the data presented at the research, you see someone do a 30 second sprint. You see 30 to 40 percent of that is through aerobic processes, using oxygen. Then you, you basically see all three energy systems used. If you, if you attach a uh a monitor on someone's muscle, that message measures muscle oxygen saturation. So how much oxygen that muscle is using you do a 30-second sprint or a 10-second sprint, you see oxygen plummet. Basically, the muscle is using oxygen, but it's supposed to be anaerobic quote-unquote without oxygen doing that exercise.

James:

So we're in this point now where things are starting to shift, where these energy system models may not be as accurate as we once thought and perhaps it's more about trying to target adaptations within the muscle or adaptations within the heart, because these are our two, typically our two main limiting factors within conditioning right, how much, how much blood can we pump from the heart or how much oxygen can we deliver essentially? And then how well can our muscles use that oxygen for energy? And those are our two limiting, typically our two limiting factors. You can go down, uh, like lungs in terms of breathing. That's typically not much of a limiting factor from my understanding. Um, so these two are the main ones, and thinking of it that way seems to be a little more clear, at least in my head, in terms of trying to structure conditioning for athletes, because, instead of being like, we're going to do anaerobic conditioning, but you know, like, just because I went three or four seconds over what is prescribed as not anaerobic anymore, like you know, these guidelines are they that stripped?

James:

So, yeah, so that's kind of what I'm thinking now and then, uh, I guess within that you can cover, like I'm not going to say, probably most tennis players probably wouldn't be limited by heart function or by by being able to deliver oxygen, just because of the amount of volume they're doing, of just lower intensity work, or just the amount of time you spend on the court right, you spend so much time on your feet training. It may come down more towards I think most sports tend to fall into this where it becomes down to quote-unquote muscular endurance, which is their ability to use the oxygen and recover between efforts and not, uh, at least within. I think it translates well. There's good research, new research within professional boxing, showing that these fighters, they're not able to recover between rounds, not because of the heart, but because their muscles aren't able to recover between rounds.

James:

Not because of the heart, but because their muscles aren't able to essentially use and refill the oxygen well enough between the rounds and because tennis, obviously you're playing points, points, points, points you need to be able to recover between each point, each point, each point, switching ends, et cetera, sets. You've got longer time to rest, but you need to be able to recover the oxygen between rallies to be able to maintain the oxygen between rallies, to be able to maintain that performance throughout the whole thing. And that's where it comes down to repeating those efforts. It's hey, are we going to prioritize improving these adaptations muscularly or we're going to prioritize essentially? Now there's different way, more scientific things that you can do to potentially look at that over my head in terms of actually testing it.

James:

But there are some general guidelines, like, for example, if you get tired, uh, this is actually from, if anyone's interested, evan pike on. If you search him on instagram, he's got some really good stuff but uh, if you're very tired, uh, quickly, like you're more of a strength, power style athlete, I think typically you're more centrally limited. And then the other way if you're more endurance based, you're typically more peripherally or muscular limited. I think that's what he mentioned.

Klara:

Hopefully I got that right and based on just my experience and observations, actually what you have mentioned, because we tennis players spend so much time running on the court I would add that the endurance type of the adaptation with the heart that you mentioned wouldn't be such a big problem.

Klara:

I think it's more of the recovery and how you train your muscles to use the oxygen more effectively and recover faster, because over period of the years that you train you kind of develop that endurance on the court quite well. So that actually continues to prove my theory. Just reflecting my own tennis career, I always say if I did strength training more accurately or added more to my routine, I would say if I was stronger I could have been a better athlete. Because also building some of the specific muscle groups help you one no, just prevent injuries and there's plenty of movement and rotation and in just tennis overall, being such a one-sided sport, develop certain parts of your body very differently. Anybody Anybody can maybe picture Nadal, right, or Federer. They always look like one of their arms is so much bigger than the other and like it goes to pretty much your whole half of the body. So when I was a kid I would go to a normal doctor. They would like be looking at me like if I'm normal.

Klara:

So I always had to go to sports doctors because they didn't understand how the back and obviously the one side of your body develops differently to recover faster and then be able to sustain and sprint to the balls quicker as you continue going on through how that match right. That can go anywhere from maybe one hour if it's quake to several hours if it's the five setter. Some of the men play on the grand slams.

James:

So yeah, like uh, was it john, is the nicholas ma 70-68 for like the fifth set or some stupid thing like that.

James:

Crazy, but it's like with the strength training, it will make efforts easier. Right, the relative efforts will be easier in what you're doing. For the actual peripheral adaptations, it's typically done. It's not a hard or fast one, but it's typically done through sprint interval training. So things like getting on a spin bike could even be running sprints, but it's something like six to 10 second efforts and or even up to 30 seconds potentially, and then you're resting like 10 to 60 seconds. You're maybe doing 10 rounds of that.

James:

It's it sucks, it is so shit. It is like, seriously, we, I was doing it. One of the one of the main researchers doing this now is I was trialing out some of his stuff just so I could send him some data. We were at the 24-hour gym and I was upstairs on the spin bike and I did four rounds or 30 seconds max effort with 60 seconds rest. My cords were so pumped I couldn't even walk down the stairs afterward, like you, like that. But that's that's intent, right, that's the intent you have to have when doing this stuff. To get those adaptations, you have to push to the point where it's uncomfortable and it sucks, and that's just kind of what you have to do to really push those adaptations.

James:

Now I will say that it's not just those intervals that are going to catch there. You kind of got to go over the spectrum. For example, while it might help in terms of mitochondrial function, our aerobic powerhouses to use their energy might not help in terms of blood vessels, in terms of growing your blood vessels, etc. So that's typically potentially done. Well, they don't know, but they're correlated, like the. The most blood vessels per muscle fiber ratios are in elite endurance athletes. So okay, they do high volumes of endurance training. Potentially there's something there. So you know, there's always give and take with everything. That's why you can't just do maximal heavy powerlifting training or you can't just do Olympic weightlifting or you can't just do bodyweight training, you can't just do sprint interval training. You kind of got to mix and match depending on where you are in your training career, where you are in the training season, etc.

Klara:

Etc yeah, and just what you mentioned, to add my own experience I've been doing. Now I can't do much endurance stuff, although that's always the easier because from tennis you're so trained.

Klara:

So going for a run, or the chippers, let's say, in crossfit. Then people may know that those are my favorite. I'm pretty good in suffering through 30, 40 minutes and sustaining the same amount of energy, because that's a lot of what tennis is like. So I really had to reframe how I train and gotten more into strength training, mainly also because I have some things that are abused from tennis and running. Actually, feet is one thing that I'm protecting. So I do most of my cardio now on a rower or the assault bike, and one of the best things I've been doing, which I hated CrossFitters. Do you know the assault bike?

Klara:

I think if you want to just have some torture machine in your garage that if you do like four minutes a day, you're going to be a better human.

Klara:

Those are like the also bike springs that you can either, like Tabata, 20 second sprint, 10 second rest or even vice versa, which is almost harder, the 10 second sprint, because you really go all out in 20 second rest. But I noticed when I do squat so I've been adding much more powerlifting and strength training it's so directly correlates that amount of power I can push on the bike. So when I'm not doing traditional powerlifting squatting, I've been on a squatting program every other day for several years with some breaks. Day for several years with some breaks. But it is so nice to see how that strength that you built of the bike kind of translates to the power output that I'm able to move through in the Ozzled bike to where now I stand. The Ozzled bike it's never my favorite. In one day it's a torture machine. But yeah, anything you want to add, james, from again your experience, because I've seen that on myself, obviously, and so you've probably seen it on many, many, uh, more other athletes in sports.

James:

Let me try to make it a more practical at least what I was saying before, more practical for the listener. I like to think of it as it's kind of how I did a lot of my conditioning programming for the sports that I work with, and it's basically a funnel system. So most sports, at least intermittent sports, you operate kind of in this middle area, this middle grey area of intensity. So when you're on the court you don't like, for example, if you went for a slow, easy run. Tennis is a little bit harder than than that, but it's easier than your assault bike sprints, right, yes, so that's where most sports kind of sit and your goal of conditioning is to kind of get what you're not getting so you can spur on these adaptations that you want. So typically you train, uh, under what you're doing with the sport and then over what you do the sport. So you're basically raising the ceiling, like you mentioned with your squat. Squats can be part of that. You're improving that power output and the bottom. You're kind of just building that base and that's kind of how I'm still currently at least. I think that's most practical for most people Because obviously you can talk about central proof of adaptations and this and that, but for someone who doesn't have equipment, knowledge, sports scientists to go into, yeah, that can be a bitch to try and do. So this way tends to I mean, it's worked in my experience.

James:

So you'll do maybe one day a week. You might do hard sprints. It could be running tennis players can sprint. It could be bike sprints. Uh row is typically harder because of the cadence, isn't there like it is with uh biking and sprinting. But you're doing essentially six to ten ish second efforts, but you're doing max like full recovery between each round. So you're doing 16 seconds. You're resting like two to three minutes between each one. So slightly longer session. You can also do this after strength training. Depending on your time, it could be a standalone session and your goal would be, if you do have power output on the thing would be to maintain power output for as many reps as possible. So basically you can use like a 10 drop off. So if you say let's just take 400 watts and then you hit under 360, then you're terminated. You'll be done, because after that you don't get any annotations you want anymore because you're not having that high intent.

James:

So that would be, uh, one way you could do that kind of conditioning. If you don't have like, for example, if you're sprinting, you could time yourself, or you can just go by feel, or you can just go by arbitrary numbers, so typically like five to six reps in a set would be, and then you might take a longer rest, like five to 10 minutes, and you may do another series of that as an example. So that would be like the top end and the bottom end would be like your low end aerobic work. So it could be going for a slow, easy run. It could be going for a slow, easy run. It could be going for a slow, easy bike row, whatever it is, um 30 to 60 minutes as an example. You can also potentially put in there more like long high intensity intervals. I don't know if, um the audience would be familiar with maximal aerobic speed or mass training. I think it's probably one of the more practical ways to individualize your train. That becomes a little easier. Essentially, you're doing like a time trial, like a five or six minute time trial, or it could even be a 1200 or 1600 meter time trial. So if you go to a track and you run four laps, three or four laps, and you time it. That'll give you, essentially you take your distance that you ran in meters. So let's just say you ran four laps, 1600 meters, and you divide that by the time you ran in seconds, and that'll give you a number, and that number typically ranges between three and five. So let's just say you did that, you get. Let's just say four is your number, that's four. I'm gonna try to make this not complicated. Four meters per second is that number, that's your score, four. And so you're going to take that number and now you can design your intervals based on that, so that four is your maximum aerobic speed. It's the speed, the velocity that corresponds with your maximum oxygen, let's just say aerobic capacity, to make it easier. So you take that number and you can design intervals based on that speed.

James:

So typically, if you're looking at the lower end, you're maybe looking anywhere from 90% to 100 percent of your maximum speed of that four. And then obviously, if you're going to high intensity intervals, you can go above that. But for this example we're looking at that kind of lower end. Let's just say you take 90 of that, which is 3.6 meters per second, and you're going to do two minute intervals, right? So that's 120 seconds multiplied by your 3.6, which I don't know. So let's just use 4. 120 seconds times 4 is 480 meters. That's how far you're going to run or bike or whatever it is. You did for your test for those two minutes, and then you're going to rest one to two minutes. If then repeat, that would be like long, high intensity interval training that would be individualized to you because it's paced to your speed, versus just going out and be like I'm going to run this interval as fast as I can, but now you're just going back into that middle intensity that you're already doing in training, right?

James:

so that's just one way of doing it. And then obviously you've got above and below. Then as you get closer to, I mean mean, tennis tennis you're playing every damn week most of the time, so it's a little different. But say, if you were going through a preseason and you're getting closer to a competitive season, then everything kind of converges together. Now you're doing your sprint intervals with far less rest.

James:

Like we talked about the sprint interval training, so say that 10-second sprint with like 20 seconds rest of that. And then we talked about the sprint interval training. So say that 10 second sprint with like 20 seconds rest of that. And then on the lower end you might be doing honestly, you might honestly just doing the same thing. It just might be a couple of sessions of that, or you might have one that's slightly longer 30 seconds as an example to essentially just bring in the very long, slow stuff and do shorter stuff, more intense stuff and the very high intensity work with lots of rest with less rest. That's just a simple way of looking at conditioning for for most sports yeah, I agree, we always used to have a season.

Klara:

there's like the post and pre-season, and for tennis it's typically in the fall, depending how many tournaments. When you finish your year sometimes, sometimes typically September or October then you get a few weeks break where you don't touch a racket and you just de-stress and go to school or spend time with friends for a few weeks, two, three, four weeks and then that's when we would start doing some of the heavier, what we would say conditioning kind of what you had described Even more strength, a roll, kind of heavier lifts, go to the mountains, do some of the sprint training that you've mentioned and try to get a little bit more volume. So it was actually that's where they would say you're trying to bulk up for the season lift heavier, sprint faster, longer and also continue to add some of the endurance and, sporadically, to build up a little bit of fitness.

Klara:

We did, but not very much. It was usually some kind of lighter weight training. So that's back in the day. I think strength training wasn't as big, or as important as it is now. I have to say again, I added a bit more training and lifting in college Maybe my freshman year already and I actually did see the correlation of me being able to recover faster and also have more power on the court, because some people if you don't know tennis people think it's a lot of upper body and the upper body needs to be completely loose.

Klara:

Right the hand is, the arm is free, so you have to have emotion, but really all the power you get in tennis is from your legs. It's like the rotation, and so you get the power from your legs. So I think that really helped me being able to, as I mentioned before, continue to run fast If you had that period of that match and don't have this declined, no matter how long the match is, which is really kind of the point you want to continue to have the speed at the middle or end of the matches when you started.

James:

That's probably the big, probably bigger mistake, and I mean not just tennis. In most sports people will train through pre-seasons and then in the season comes, oh, I'm not, I'm not hitting in the gym anymore because I'm playing a lot and training a lot, so I'm not going to do that. And then, yeah, that's when you start racking up injuries again. You fade away through the season. You aren't able to maintain that level of play and intensity throughout the season and just for you to listen, like real practical tips that you can do in those times again, it's you gotta, you gotta completely kill the volume that you're doing. It's you can get in and do two or three lifts and be done. And I'm talking like, let's just say, let's just say you're doing trap bar deadlift with the high handles to reduce range of motion. You'll have like no soreness, nothing like you could. You could max out on that, probably still pretty good. So let's just say trap bar deadlift and let's say dumbbell, bench press, and it's actually just as an example, you could literally do three sets of three trap bar deadlift. If you know your um max, you could do like 80 to 85%, one rm and 90%. One rm would typically be like your three rep max. So you're quite below that. When you're doing three reps you've got a lot in the tank. So 80-85% one-a-ram three sets of three done by bench press. Let's just say you're doing three sets of six and you're stopping two or three short of failure on those, so that relatively hard sets but you're not pushing it to failure. Then maybe doing chin-ups and let's just say you can do weighted chin-ups, maybe you're not pushing it to failure. Then maybe doing chin-ups, let's just say you can do weighted chin-ups. Maybe you're doing five to six reps and that's like two or three short of failure. You could literally do that. Boom, done. You're not going to be sore. You're getting the strength stimulus because you're still lifting heavy and you've reduced the range of motion of some exercises to the point where you're not going to have that soreness carry over. Now would I recommend that would be like your program every week and that's what you do. No, because there's other things you probably want to address, but just as an example like that would take you 20, 20, 25 minutes and you're done and you're able to maintain that strength throughout the season.

James:

Doing something as simple as that. You know it's you, it can be done, it's just got to be done. Smart, where most people will be like okay, I have, uh, I have legs today, so let's go. Now. I found this one on instagram, so I'm gonna go squat and then I'm gonna go leg press, then I'm gonna hip thrust, then I'm gonna romanian deadlift, and then it's like by then you've done 20 sets of legs, and then you're wondering why you can't train for the rest of the week, and then your legs are still sore when you're about to play compounding and I would say also the progressive overload.

Klara:

Right, there's something that I've been kind of trying to understand now through powerlifting and I've been on this program I believe I shared with you. It's more five by five, super simple. I like it because I exactly know what I'm doing and really the goal is continue to increase the weight every single time as much as you can to sort of clear it, and when you can't, to a certain point you sort of deload. Now I started adding a little bit of the, I'd say, squats with the pause, because you're trying to strengthen the bottom position, position um.

Klara:

but it was a learning and also something when I were going through it, because I always been such a high volume endurance athlete to actually rewire my brain I've always thought, oh, if I'm not running or chasing myself literally even after maybe two, three years ago to zone four and five every day for like an hour an hour and a half I'm gonna be fat and gain weight, like that was my thought.

Klara:

And so when I totally switched and decreased the volume to where I even had days off, right, so I just lifted every other day to get adapted to the strength training, which was very different effort my mind wasn't like comprehending, because, again, I'm endurance more of train up towards the volume and that's the easier workout for me. It was a whole learning.

Klara:

And then I found, you know, it just makes so much sense like if you build muscle your body's gonna be like I always think of the lean, mean machine it's actually gonna burn more even when you're not working out, like during the day, and you're going to use your body more effectively, and then you're going to have stronger positions and kind of whatever else. They will carry over to even your day, how you carry yourself, how you walk around, to any other areas of your life. So I've gotten such a big fan of strength training. It's taken me several years because I really had a hate. Like I, I've recognized what people say working out there's a lot of effort. So I've gone through oh my gosh, I would way rather go run a marathon than do a heavy squat day, but it's been so beneficial.

Klara:

So maybe that's a sequence, james, to even your area, any sort of myths that you're seeing through the sports that you've been part of or, if you want to add, variations of, like what you've seen with men versus women, because I think, like we women still had a lot of that stigma when we started lifting we're going to get big, like there's been things that's been talked to us from, you know, generations and people like forever, which, like building muscle, takes a lot of time and effort, and like it's not that you're going to start lifting and suddenly going to be huge. Right, there's just a whole regimen.

James:

There's a lot of effort that actually goes into being able to lift heavy, but, um, take it wherever you want, james I know I will say you pretty much you pretty much touched on three uh myths already that you've already gone through right, having to always have your heart rate up. I mean, people measure, like track, the heart rate in the gym when they're strength training. It makes no sense. You don't, don't stop doing that, whoever's doing that, you don't need to do that. So I will say that everything I've said before caveat this only really applies if the sport you're doing is your number one priority, right? If tennis or your sport is your priority, then everything I said kind of makes sense. If you're just kind of doing your sport not say maybe just like recreationally, competitively, and you're doing other stuff because you want to look good and get strong, then you can pretty well ignore most of what I said, because obviously things are a bit different there. You're not being fatigued for your sport. Who cares? I'm just trying to get massive for the beach. That's a different story.

James:

But in terms of men and women, yeah, I was training our New Zealand Women's Rugby League team. We had, if you have any listeners around that side of the world, basically NRL Nines, which is a relatively big competition before the rugby league season, and then we had the ANZAC test matches. That's not professional. There is a professional competition for women, rugby league, which started semi-recently at that time in 2016. It was I think it was the fastest growing sport in Australia at that time. So it was getting there. But we had obviously all the kiwi girls there. None of them really had a strength training background. The first thing I did was get them into the gym and twice a week to start training.

James:

Now, in terms of it, isn't just differences in training. Girls go hard like there's. There's either we're going this intensity or nothing. And it's funny because you will be playing warm-up games and it will just be like, uh, if anyone's familiar with with rugby league, like typically we're playing, say, warm-up, touch right, so it's just touch, play the ball, etc. You know, after five minutes you suppose they're fucking hitting each other in a warm-up game and he's like god damn, like yeah, it's pretty nuts, so that's a big one.

James:

Um, I won't say. I think maybe in rugby it might be a little different, because you kind of see it all the time. People in the gym, even the woman, uh, so I wouldn't say they were adverse to it. I think it was definitely a learning experience for a lot of them learning just basics like how to squat, how to over impress, all that kind of stuff. But they tend to like lower body progresses so damn fast with females in terms of strength. I see over and over again females that start squatting and they can their numbers just blow up and I think that there's confidence that comes with that right as well, as you see those numbers go up and you can feel that difference. Especially in collision sports where you're running into other people, it obviously helps at some point. So, yeah, those are the main differences.

James:

Dudes yeah, I mean most of them, all of them can be lazy, even the professional ones. There's a lot of really good team sport athletes or a lot of really good athletes like you were saying. They just don't like the gym, they want to just play the sport. They don't care about lifting weights, they don't care about doing the other stuff, they just want to be out on the field or the court or whatever and be playing. But you know, I think they understand why they should be doing it. It doesn't mean that everything they do is laser focused and tent what they do in the gym, but at some point you just gotta kind of let let them do the work how they do it, and at least they're getting something done versus doing nothing. You can't kind of control everyone, at least in those environments. You can't kind of control everyone.

Klara:

I mean, maybe just going back to the squatting you mentioned and I've shared how much I hated squatting.

Klara:

I think now I just stand it, but I do find it very beneficial, including what you mentioned, like the confidence. I get a whole bunch of weight. That is, at least for me, a comparison to Olympic lifters, probably on powerlifters or even CrossFitters. I'm awful squatter like, just to put it out there. I don't lift much weight and still I'm trying to learn the proper technique and I find, even from my own experience, learning how to squat properly was I practiced. It took me a long time to actually learn how to squat and I've been lucky to be part of some amazing's such a, it seems like a dynamic lift and requires a lot of muscles and something.

Klara:

As I think about aging, it will probably serve me when I think about if I'm 80 years old, if I ever lived that long, just being able to get up from the couch. That's my goal.

James:

And.

Klara:

I think just the squat has a lot of things to it For general fitness or people who are training for that. What would you recommend them, james? Or maybe just to switch it to general population. What are some of the basic things people can do to build strength and think about strength in relation to longevity?

James:

Yeah, obviously the training is different because your goal isn't sports performance, but that doesn't mean that you don't do some of the things. I think where a lot of people do is, as I mentioned, you can't just for sports performance, right. You can't just do powerlifting style training. You can't just do bodybuilding, et cetera. And I think the same thing comes to longevity right, you can't just go and you can't just be a powerlifter. I think people, people know that the top level of every sport is not healthy. That's just a reality. And I think, even if you're just training that one thing, yeah, it's better than doing nothing, but there's better than just doing that and I think, covering the spectrum of what you're trying to do. So, when you're talking about aging as well, right, you have sarcopenia, which is basically protein resistance. Weight training obviously helps with that. Being able to maintain muscle mass and to be able to use the protein that you're eating. On top of that, speed and power is one of the first things to go as you age. How many people do you know that can sprint right now without killing themselves, or jump onto something or jump off something, even even at like in their 30s, right? So those things need to still be addressed within your train. If you're not playing a sport like those, things need to be addressed in your training as much as, uh, we'd love to just be able to chess monday back tuesday, whatever it is and bro split and just get massive. If we're talking longevity, you still need to be able to do some of these things, and having these things in your training is just as important as doing the other stuff. So that means there's a couple of ways to to do it. So if we're talking like I want to be, uh, I want to train more like an athlete and become more athletic, and you have no niggles, aches and pains, no real mileage on your body.

James:

Your training structure will typically go from faster movements to slower movements. That's the structure of a session. So this is how most athletes will train as well, unless you're doing something a little more advanced, just some different things you can do. So you'll be starting with you do your typical warm-up, then you might do some kind of jump, plyometric, or throw or three or whatever it is within your training. So, or throw or three or whatever it is within your training. So jumps would be things like box jumps, broad jumps, single leg jumps, whatever Throws would be, with the medicine, ball, scoop tosses, rotational throws, chest passes and plyometrics would be things with very short ground contacts. It could be like jumping rope or skipping, it could be like jumping over hurdles et cetera, like that.

James:

Then you'll go into something that's more of a loaded or full body power exercise. So this could be olympic lifts, power snatch, power clean. It could be loaded jumps, anything like that. You can kind of. You can kind of skip that one potentially, if those things maybe aggravate something or are too hard to do because you're kind of getting the other stuff done anyway.

James:

Then you go into your heavy lifting, so it might be like a heavy squat and you might do some kind of push and pull and then, if you have time, you might do some accessory stuff, you know abs, arms, whatever it is.

James:

That would be kind of general structure If you're, you know, niggly knees beat up, et cetera. I've found that reversing that order tends to work better, because doing jumps, motion throws when you're a little, even after a warmup, like it sucks and like I've got my I mean years of competitive weightlifting and all the other sports and whatnot, yeah, my, my knees could take a beating every now and then and I'm like there's no way I can start a session doing some of these things even after a warm-up. So typically, if you do something like your squats first and then at the end of the session you do your jumps, throw plyometricsometrics and things like that yes, it's not quite optimal, but optimal doesn't matter if you can't do the damn thing anyway. So you're going to do those things at the end and you'll feel way, way better because you've essentially just warmed yourself up better doing heavy lifting. So that would be in terms of longevity. That's where I would look in terms of training versus just trying to stick to one style.

Klara:

Yeah, Anything else that you want to suggest as myths people have when it comes to building strength that you see are often misconceptions. Maybe for just general fitness, health again, longevity there's a couple.

James:

I'll jump down two roads. I'll jump down rep ranges, so people think of strength hypertrophy. I'll jump down two roads. I'll jump down rep ranges, so people think of strength hypertrophy. I'll jump down stretching because I think both are pretty important for general hypertrophy Rep ranges. Most people think I'm going to build strength, so I'm going to do one to six reps. I'm going to build muscle. I'm going to do eight to 12 reps. I'm going to build muscular endurance. I'm going to do 15 plus reps. But we know from research now the most interesting as a rep range for a certain quality, all rep ranges build muscle.

James:

Strength is specific to the rep range you're doing. So if you want to get really strong at lifting a heavy weight, you're going to have to lift heavy weights for low reps because you can't do high reps with heavy weight. If you want to build muscle, typically you're better off lifting across the whole spectrum. But some exercises are better for different rep ranges. So, for example, if I want to do one to five reps of an exercise, barbell exercises are typically better than dumbbell, just from practicality, because good luck trying to do three reps with heavy dumbbells, because one they're going to be probably too heavy to get into place. Two, you might even might not even have dumbbells heavy enough to do it. Three, yeah, and in terms of risk of injury, much higher than using a barbell. So there are obviously better tools for different ramp ranges.

James:

So typically over a session you might do, in my structure that I mentioned before, you might do your fast stuff. Then you might do, say, three to six reps of a heavy barbell exercise and then you might do, let's say, six to ten or six to twelve reps of a more accessory style exercise, so say dumbbell, bench, dumbbell presses, rows, whatever. And then you might do something like 15 to 20 reps and there might be smaller stuff face pulls, lateral raises, whatever else. That kind of gets you across the whole rep range. If you know, if your goal is maximizing muscle, even just general longevity, that's typically a good way to go just to get strong across all of them, versus just focusing on one. Uh, in terms of stretching, most people will stretch as a way to get more flexible or mobile. But the problem is when we're talking about static stretching here, so static stretching, and when I'm talking about mobility flexibility, so flexibility is typically like a passive range of motion, right? So people will probably know you're lying down on the table.

James:

The physio lifts your leg up, you know that's how far you're, that's how flexible your hamstrings are, as an example. So that's like a passive range of motion. Mobility would be like active range of motion. Can I control that in range? Can I hold my leg in that position essentially?

James:

uh and move around shoulder, whatever it is people will like I need, uh, I'm tight, I need to stretch to get more flexible so I can, so I can knock your engine. That's already another myth. All right, stretching does not reduce risk injuries. Everything else does, funnily enough. But um, essentially, stretching you don't. You don't cause any structural change within the muscle or tendon, right? We want the muscle and tendon to be longer. That's our goal, so we can produce more force, or we can produce force at longer ranges of motion.

James:

Stretching only improves range of motion through stretch tolerance, essentially, our brain being like I can tolerate this. I can go a little further, and that's been shown over many interventions. The way to improve mobility is through load and moving through a full range of motion. So you squatting full depth and pausing is mobility training or is flexibility training. Doing a Romanian deadlift and feeling that stretch to your hamstrings under load, that is mobility training. That is what is going to give you tangible change long term in your ability to move through larger ranges of motion. And the reason is because you're actually changing muscle architecture and if we're talking, I'm going to try and make it so it's not so damn confusing.

James:

Let me illustrate it like this If your knee is bent at 90 degrees, say, that is where you can produce the most force. Now I've lengthened the muscle through doing romanian deadlifts, other eccentric style training and long, long muscle isometrics. I can now produce more force at this range of motion. So I've now shifted the ability to produce peak force to longer muscle lengths. I've now reduced my risk of injury because now, if I get into these funny positions, I can actually produce force in the range of motion. That's one of the the main benefits of doing just full range of motion strength training. You're improving that mobility, but then you're also reducing risk of injury because you can produce more force at longer ranges of motion. So yeah, that would be big, big, I guess. Two random ones more for general population to think about, maybe within their training.

Klara:

Yeah, I do love that. I find that it's also something I struggled with back in the day when I started in CrossFit more than maybe a decade ago at this point, because I've been taught oh, you're not supposed to go back in the day past like 90 degrees or parallel. There were so many misconceptions and so now, as I started squatting like I find there's no better way to get into a proper squat position than, like anything else, continue squatting and as you squat more, you pay attention to the bottom position and I see my form improving, even still after two years.

Klara:

I was like, oh, I feel like I have a better, more stable position because you strengthen those muscles, and so often I find people have this myth as I, if I stretch this or stretch that like I will be able to first get to the position better. I was like no, you need to load the muscle and start doing some of the progressive power sessions for the muscle to kind of learn how to adapt and be able to do it with some weight. And obviously, as you lift more, the muscle will get stronger and you'll be able to get into more proper positions. At least something I have found has worked for me and I'll continue to make, I guess, slight improvement. They're not huge, but when?

James:

I do get them, I guess slight improvement.

Klara:

They're, no, no huge, but when I do get them I was like, oh my god, that felt better. I feel like my squat is more intact, which I'm actually awful squatter. I think my ankles don't move very well. I don't have very good ankle mobility, so, and you?

James:

wear weightlifting shoes.

Klara:

Uh, I do yeah so that that helps, uh, for the squad for sure. And and just going back, as you and Mona obviously come from the Olympic weightlifting something I just love it's so beautiful to see how this huge heavy bar seems like it's so kind of effortless, it just flows through the air when you're lifting it. How do you think about building strength using some of the olympic lifts versus maybe some of the traditional powerlifting and I think I've shared with you more of like the training I do is just the general bench squats, barbell, row, deadlifts and push press or the basic five, five things and that those definitely translate, obviously once you add some of the motion to olympic weightlifting. But how would you think about building strengths and the differences between the two to do so?

James:

yeah, there's a couple of different things that that come to mind. I'm gonna see if I can make it coherent for the listeners and for yourself. Hey, let me start with something controversial. I don't program deadlifts with any of my athletes. My athletes don't ever commit conventional. Now I've done that through professional international rugby all sorts.

James:

Like most people think, oh, you should deadlift, squat, etc. We never conventional deadlift and I actually learned that from the first thing, one of my first internships with a professional team and they just didn't deadlift and I was like huh, wondering why then you kind of get into more and more coaching. You realize, like man, especially in like road players, like a lot, probably a lot of athletes, a lot of back problems are pretty bad and people like think, oh, you should just deadlift then to strengthen your lower back. It's like there are other ways to strengthen your lower back. You don't have to do deadlifts. It was something that can potentially increase your risk of injury while doing it. Plus, people tend to feel sore and stiff afterwards. Plus, it's probably the most taxing lift you can do out of any of them. Plus, if I'm going to do a heavy lower body exercise and I'm picking between squat and deadlift, I'm always picking the squat, because the squat has the eccentric component on the way down where the deadlift doesn't. That doesn't mean no one deadlifts. I've had athletes that just couldn't squat for whatever reason. They had to do like trap bar deadlifts, as an example, and a trap bar would separate from the conventional deadlift, um, and that's where I really like the olympic lifts. I think they take the place okay. Again, caveat if sporting performance and tennis or whatever, is your number one priority, this applies. If it doesn't, this does not apply.

James:

Um, but for me, the olympic, olympic weightlifting derivatives if you can't do the uh, I guess the let's just say power, snatch, power, clean derivatives like pulls and high pulls, uh, 10 000 times better for than de-lifting, in my opinion, and I will even say if you're trying to build muscle too, because the clean pull with the shrug at the end is boss for I put back, compared to doing some like a de deadlift. So, um, I will typically look at using hang power cleans, hang power snatches, hang pulls, hang high pulls, clean pulls from floor, snatch pulls, snatch high pulls probably my favorite upper back exercise in the world, but I like them because one, they are lighter than the deadlift. Two, you're moving them faster than 10. And if you look at research, with just traditional barbell exercise lifts, right, you spend 40% to 50% of the concentric phase. So the upwards lifting phase, the last 40% to 50%, you spend decelerating.

James:

Now that doesn't mean you okay most body movements. You're accelerating through the entire movement, right. Think of like a serve, tennis serve You're accelerating to the ball and then you're decelerating afterwards. But you're accelerating to the ball and then you're decelerating, uh, afterwards, but you're accelerating into impact, whereas with squatting, de-lifting etc. You're decelerating into that lockout position. It doesn't mean they're useless, it just means that you know it's one tool for one thing, other tools for other things. Olympic lifts you don't have that. Olympic lifts. You're accelerating through the entire range of motion, which makes it more of a ballistic or you could say like throwing a projectile style curve of acceleration. So you don't have that deceleration. That's what I really like. And then obviously you have that triple extension hips, knees, ankles as you come up to. So for me that's where it takes place in sports.

James:

Training is using those Olympic lifts over something like a deadlift. It also can be your full body power style exercise. I mentioned in my little hierarchy there of a training session, your full body power exercise. I mentioned in my little hierarchy there of a transition. Your full body power size could be power snatch, hang, power snatch, whatever it is in there. Other applications for those complexes are really really nice for work capacity. Stuff for sports like tennis probably wouldn't use them as much. I think it's probably better geared towards sports that are more contact collision based. But things like there's so many different things you can do with those. You know you can do like two plus twos, three plus twos. You can do snatch pulls with power snatches, power cleans plus push presses. You can do longer complexes if you like, really trying to build up different things. I think there's obviously barbell complexes. I'll probably watch crossfit as no like.

James:

Was it the bear contact or something like that yeah, those are examples of what a complex might look like, but within weightlifting it's typically like two or three lifts, something like two power cleans, two front squats, two jerks or something like that. As an example, there's like six reps that are damn hard. So, yeah, that's where other applications are with Olympic weightlifting, but those are basically the main difference. Let me see what the power lifts and the Olympic lifts Perfectly answered that question.

Klara:

We've been actually starting to add pair complexes into our routine. So power, clean, front squat, push, press, back squat, push, press and just type down. Yeah, I hate them, they're not fun, but they seem to be effective. Well, james, I know we're sort of right on time. I really appreciate this conversation. It's been fun learning. I will definitely re-listen to it a few times just to think how to optimize my routine. Anything else you want to suggest people in 2024 to be doing more of or less of? I think, again, building strength, at least for me, have resulted in confidence, obviously under the barbell, but also off the barbell. I think getting stronger never hurts, but anything else is. There's lots going on in the world. Um, you want to suggest people to focus on in 2024?

James:

I don't want to speak to everyone, but essentially, consistency wins over anything else. There's so much shit going on. People are trying to optimize this, that to best, this to best that, morning routines. No, all that matters is consistency. That's the only thing that matters with anything. It can be dieting for building muscle or losing fat. It could be training for any of those. You can't have the perfect training session. You can training for any of those. You can't have the perfect training session. You can't have the perfect diet. You can't have the perfect anything. You just have to do it over and over and over and over and over again. Unfortunately, you can't sell that. I wish I could. Actually, I'm trying to, I guess, through Lift Big, eat Big and stuff, trying to sell it, but it's just the idea that you have to do things for a long time and learn as you go and iterate, instead of trying to search for the perfect thing. Do it for typically a week and then be like, oh, this isn't working, I don't like this, and try to fit something into your lifestyle that doesn't fit. I mean, you see all the time with all the crazy diets, now carnivore uh, what else is going on if you're eating sticks of butter and shit like that's crazy, stop doing that. If you're doing that of butter and shit like that's crazy, stop doing that. If you're doing that, people overhauling their entire lifestyles, like if you have a family, could you imagine with a family? And you're like, okay, now I'm going to start doing intermittent fasting, so I'm only eating I don't know, let's say, six, eight hours of the day, but my family eats breakfast together, but I don't eat breakfast in the morning. So it's like now what do I do? And then, oh, but now I'm only eating meat, but my family's still eating everything else. So how do you fit that into your lifestyle? You can't. It's impossible and you're going to literally just fall off the bandwagon in a week.

James:

Everything congregates in the middle. You have carnival one side, vegan one side. You have high-testing training one side, zone two the other side. Everything is in the middle and it's just about being consistent with whatever's happening in there and you'll get to where you're going. You have to jump in and do things wrong to start doing things right. You cannot do things right from the beginning. Anyone who runs their own business knows right. You can't just do a course and say I know exactly what I'm going to do with this business. Like shit, I do shit wrong every damn day. I'm like trying to learn things right now. I don't think I'm spending money. I'm like is this even going to work? But you have to do it. So that would be my advice.

Klara:

Yeah, thank you, and I conquer something I've been pondering myself, and obviously, being an athlete, it teaches you a lot of that, because to be great at any sport, you have to put huge amount of effort, daily, weekly, monthly yearly, you have to be doing it. Yes. And you realize, even after all those years, there's so many things you can improve. So I've definitely learned that from my sport. I also think each of us may be consistent in one thing, but may not be consistent in another thing.

Klara:

Maybe consistent in one thing but may not be consistent in another thing, and are you applying the consistency in the right places to drive success in the area that you have to drag success in? And so, yeah, I think again, even applying consistency to strength and power.

James:

Yep, I've been doing this power training for about two and a half years.

Klara:

You have to continue to if you want to be strong to live heavy and compound and progressive lifts, uh is definitely a way to get there and I keep improving just a smidgen, but that's a long-term goal, like strength and power, is not?

James:

built, oh yeah, over the pbc on youtube. Yeah, the pbc on youtube. I've been at it for 10 years, 10 plus years. I've been lifting for 15 years 15 years of doing this in coaching for, yeah, a long, long time. And yeah, same thing with anything you have to take action. You have to take action because there's a lot of people that will sit their models for this and be like, okay, I'm gonna go on youtube now, I'm gonna watch some other people and try figure things out and I'll keep watching and I'll watch other people do it. And it's kind of like, oh, I'll start once I have this in place, I'll start once I figure this out. And it's like, no, you just have to.

Klara:

You just have to take action and do it I agree and continue to practice and learn from if we do something wrong, iterate and pivot. So definitely something I continue to think about and, um, I don't think I can ever be perfect at it, but again, it's the process and consistency. So for anyone who wants to get in touch, follow you, maybe get more tips for getting stronger or anything related to the conversations we have had what's the best way to reach out?

James:

You can go If anyone's interested in combat, sports training or physical preparation. It would be sweets of fightingcom and that's also on instagram and stuff for more strength housed, or I guess more strength training based stuff. Uh, lift big, eat bigcom. We acquired that 2021 from the original owner. A lot of people who are in the fitness space or been in the space for a long, long time will probably recognize the brand. They said started like 2011. They were one of the bigger ones back in the day, so we have that one too. We have training programs, information, youtube stuff yeah all of it. So check those two out and you can just contact through any of those. I mean, you'll find me on instagram and things like that too, from all that stuff super.

Klara:

I'll add those to the episode notes so people can easily click and connect with you and thank you so much again for the conversation. So great to meet you and your wife, if you enjoyed this episode.

James:

I want to ask you to please do two things that would help me greatly.

Klara:

One please consider leaving a review on apple podcast, spotify or any other podcasting platform that you use to listen to this episode. Two, please share this podcast with a friend who you believe might enjoy it as well. It is a great way to remind someone you care about them by sharing a conversation they might be interested in. Thank you for listening.