Episode 448: Henry Abbott: Preventing Injuries Before They Happen + The Soviet Secret to Athletic Power

Ever wonder why you keep getting injured in the same places despite your best efforts? In this Fitness Friday conversation on the Habits and Hustle podcast, I talk with Henry Abbott, author of "Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance," to explore a revolutionary approach to preventing injuries before they happen. We discuss practical exercises to strengthen your feet, the fascinating Soviet origins of plyometrics, how proper landing technique can transform your athletic performance while keeping you injury-free for years to come, and much more. Henry Abbott is an award-winning journalist and founder of TrueHoop, a respected basketball media platform. He previously led ESPN's 60-person NBA digital and print team, which published several groundbreaking articles and won a National Magazine Award. His new book "Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance" explores revolutionary approaches to injury prevention through the science of ballistic movements. What we discuss: Henry Abbott's book "Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance" How most knee injuries originate from weaknesses in the feet or hips The importance of strengthening feet and lower leg muscles for injury prevention "Toe yoga" as a method to strengthen foot muscles The role of the nervous system in injury prevention The benefits of plyometric exercises as we age The Soviet origins of plyometrics through Yuri Verkashantsev's research Building progressive training approaches for those with existing weaknesses Thank you to our sponsor: Therasage: Head over to therasage.com http://therasage.com/ and use code Be Bold for 15% off TruNiagen: Head over to truniagen.com http://truniagen.com/ and use code HUSTLE20 to get $20 off any purchase over $100. Magic Mind: Head over to www http://www/.magicmind.com http://magicmind.com//jen and use code Jen at checkout. Air Doctor: Go to airdoctorpro.com http://airdoctorpro.com/ and use promo code HUSTLE for up to $300 off and a 3-year warranty on air purifiers. Bio.me: Link to daily prebiotic fiber here https://bio.me/?utm_source=Jennifer, code Jennifer20 for 20% off. Momentous: Shop this link https://www.livemomentous.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorDUIZz3psr1Qsq_n1yE8_6JTq_QUFabOO9lH65HDEXCIoJOPLj and use code Jen for 20% off To learn more about Henry Abbott: Website: https://www.henryabbott.com/ https://www.truehoop.com/ X: https://x.com/truehoop?lang=en Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, this is Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:07Jen Cohen?

  Are you getting injured because you're training wrong and don't even know it? On this Fitness Friday, I'm joined by Henry Abbott. Henry is an award-winning journalist, the founder of True Hoop, and the author of the book Ballistic. We dig into the science of injury prevention, from why knee pain often starts in your feet or your hips, and how toe yoga and better landing techniques can boost your performance. So if you're stuck in the injury recovery cycle, or just getting old like me, this episode can change everything.

• 0:48Jen Cohen?

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• 1:30Jen Cohen?

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• 1:56Jen Cohen?

  So today we have on the podcast, we have Henry Abbott, who wrote this book called Ballistic, which is the new science of injury-free athletic performance. We're going to talk all about how we can prevent injury instead of just treating it. And the funny thing is, not so funny to me, I hurt my knee last night. And today I have Henry on the podcast. Is that not coincidental?

• 2:19Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm not happy about it. It would be more fun to meet you feeling 100%.

• 2:24Jen Cohen?

  Thank you.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  All right, let's explore.

• 2:26Jen Cohen?

  I know, right? Like of all, of all the guests to have the day after, which is weird because I never, I have like, I've had like a million ankle and Achilles injuries because of my love for running and cardio, which is probably terrible for my body at this point. But knees, never. So what's the most common injury, by the way? What is the most common injury for, for women? And what's the most common injury for men?

• 2:52Speaker 02

  You are, this is, we're opening with a pop quiz, Jen.

• 2:55Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, we are. Are you ready?

• 2:57Speaker 02

  I don't think I am. I, I can tell you this. So I spent three years marinating in this like movement data from this place called P3 in Santa Barbara, where there are 35 years into gathering it all. And almost everything that goes through there, these are thousands of athletes, almost all of the recommendations are to change something about how you move in the feet or the hips. So like knee injuries mostly come from above and below. And I really came to think of it. Did you? I did not. The answer doesn't have to be yes. But did you take physics class where you do that egg drop experiment?

• 3:28Jen Cohen?

  I did.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Okay. And use like pipe cleaners and duct tape or whatever materials?

• 3:32Jen Cohen?

  Probably. I try to black, I try to like, kind of like, not think about my years in high school, but I'm joking.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  This book has tons of physics in it. I had to learn and like not along. But I hated physics class. I, it just, it was literally, I was a great student, but I had that one class, I was like, I don't even care what you're talking about.

• 3:49Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, right, right, right.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  But, um, okay. So you got the little egg. Now think of your upper body as that egg, right? This is 80% of your weight is in your torso.

• 3:58Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  And our like pipe cleaners and duct tape is our legs. These are the little devices we have to make a So our egg doesn't shatter when you land from running.

• 4:06Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  When you jump off of whatever, one of their biggest assessments they do is you step off an 18 inch box and just land on these force plates on the floor. So they're really well designed for it. You know, we have a good system for this if you land correctly.

• 4:18Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Right. They want you to land with your toes up on the balls of your feet and so the stiff ankle and the force is going to go into your calves and then you're then it's going to into your quads and it's going to go into your glutes and those muscles can handle a ton of force safely in the old age. But if you get a little weird, right? We all move a little weird. We sit a lot. We, you know, exercise strangely. We have odd habits. For instance, if you land on your toes, then you're the next thing that happens is your heel slams down, which accounts for all of the biggest measurements they have. All of the biggest landing forces come from that heel slapping down. Cause now your egg, right?

• 4:54Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Is pushing on down through your knee onto bone, the lower leg bone, the tibia. And it's like, like a pull cue, like punching the ground, right? It's not instead of passing the forces through soft tissue, it's passing through that bone. Like that's a very common and popular way to hurt your knee. Is like the force of the ground is traveling up to your knee through this hard device, right?

• 5:17Jen Cohen?

  Horrible.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So there's a little, this is what they're doing there mostly, you know, and the other big area focus is the hips. So if you think about it, like the ankle and these lower leg muscles control how the lower leg bone expresses the force of the ground. And the hip controls how the upper leg bone expresses the force of your torso coming down. And they're going to meet at the knee and hopefully they meet well, right? And they sounds like they have been for most of your running life, but maybe there's a little something, if you went there right now and they assessed you, they, I, my guess is they would find, you'd, you'd be there for an hour. They'd be like, hey Jen, there's a little something, we got strength in this thing in your hip or we gotta do some of this thing in your lower leg.

• 5:51Jen Cohen?

  The thing that you said was very, that I think is very interesting and kind of. I think some people know that, but maybe others don't, that everything comes from your feet or from your hips. I learned about my, the whole feet thing pretty recently, that if your feet are not strong, then your entire body is going to be prone to more injury, prone to more issues, basically. And you don't get power if your feet are weak. And so the first question I have for you is, how do we strengthen our feet? So we can get more power in our body?

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Well, there are, there's a whole bunch of, like you can go on YouTube and find, my daughter right now has a thing, she's doing toe yoga. I don't know if you've gotten into this, have you seen this?

• 6:34Jen Cohen?

  No, I did not.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  I'm doing it with my hands a little bit. But if you like lift your big toe and you certainly lift the little toes. And like, there's all these little muscles in the foot that you can strengthen.

• 6:42Jen Cohen?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  So but

• 6:44Jen Cohen?

  So it's called toe yoga.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you just look up toe yoga. That's not really a PT recommendation that I've seen, but they do a ton of stuff. So, you know, if you think of our calf muscles, the kind of like, there's this kind of two lumpy muscles on the outside. That's the gastroc.

• 6:57Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Underneath it is the soleus. And the post-tib, tibialis posterior.

• 7:04Jen Cohen?

  Okay. So let's not be so like so sciency because people are gonna like, basically stop listening to this podcast.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Here's what's gonna happen. There's gonna be like, I assume he knows what he's talking about because in the first five minutes he said tibialis posterior. And now I'm good, right?

• 7:17Jen Cohen?

  Now they think you're an expert.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Whatever.

• 7:19Jen Cohen?

  Exactly. Or they're like, I don't know what the hell this guy is saying. You know, click off.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  So look up those muscles, though. You want to exercise them. Like, a lot of our exercises really work like what we consider those visible outer calf muscles. But it's those underneath ones that I'm telling you in the research from PT, it's like, it's a major recommendation. You want a lot more work capacity in the lower leg. They had me doing, I went through their procedure and have my own suite of issues. But like, this was one of my things. And this would be jumping rope, hopping back and forth over a Dow, every kind of plyometric, but you kind of build up into the bigger ones over time. And at the same time, you mix that in with like, stand on one leg, you know, and raise up and down very slowly.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  And if you can do 15 of those, then you're cleared for like, Bigger contacts. I was getting back to running after a back thing. I had to get to like where I could really get to fifteen slow raises before they let me start running.

• 8:19Jen Cohen?

  Calf raises.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, on one leg at a time.

• 8:20Jen Cohen?

  On one leg.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:21Jen Cohen?

  Okay, so let's say that, so like, let's kind of make this as simple for people as possible. So in order to strengthen our, I asked you about the feet, how to strengthen our feet. You said we need to strengthen the lower part of our calf.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  So there into, at P3, their recommendations are heavy on all of the muscles beneath the knee as a method to stiffen the ankle.

• 8:43Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  So that when your foot hits the ground, to have your powerful foot, the Achilles is loaded.

• 8:48Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  So like you want to have, they call, they say to land toes up. It's like a little cue. It doesn't really mean you need your toes fully up, but that's, they say that you'll get your foot more on the ball.

• 8:58Jen Cohen?

  Right. So if they say toes up, that means you should be landing on your heel.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  No, great question. So they want you on the ball of your foot, but not, but with your toes a little bit flexed up. Which brings, so instead of being kind of sloppy with a relaxed foot, they want your foot like tense and loaded. Because they want to activate the spring of your Achilles, right? They want it so that when your foot hits the ground, you're quickly, subconsciously, this beautiful system will be passing the force of landing on the ground into your glutes, into your butt. Let's kind of go up the chain. If it hits your toes, now we have a kind of slow process of rolling further down to the heel, like I mentioned. If you land on your heel, then you're getting this bony thing.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  So you kind of want to be in the middle where all of these muscles in your foot are taking the force of landing.

• 9:49Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  And if you're doing that, think about it, if you jump rope like that with your, on the ball of your foot, if you.

• 9:55Jen Cohen?

  Oh, on the ball of your foot, right. So when you jump, okay, so but, so when you do that jump rope on the ball of your foot.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:01Jen Cohen?

  So that's what I meant, why I didn't mean the heel.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  You're working out your foot right there.

• 10:03Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't mean the heel before. That was a, that was just a mistake.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Edit it up.

• 10:08Jen Cohen?

  Yeah. No, no, it's okay. I just misspoke. But like, so if we, so what are the benefits of just jumping jump rope on the ball of our foot then?

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Great question. So ultimately, running the way you want to run where you're not going to have your knee hurt will be come will come from figuring out hips or lower leg where there's some weakness or oddity is as like a kind of that's kind of a dumber like building muscle system.

• 10:36Jen Cohen?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  But then there's like the much more clever thing is this like nervous system sending a little electrical signals up and down, which kind of happens faster than we can think subconsciously. So when you're jumping, these fast things, this is the reason the book is called ballistic. That means like airborne, right?

• 10:49Jen Cohen?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  When you're doing these airborne things, you're engaging this like your brain to get better at landing, right? To like fire the systems that need to be fired in time. So that these little things happen in life where you like, maybe you're walking down a mountain trail and you trip a little and you have to like throw that foot out and like you want to that could be a moment you would tear your ACL, or it could be a moment that you just go ping and on this thing and you want to like have your system practiced.

• 11:16Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  And being snappy with like the good foot placement and the good knee over the toes and the hips over the knees.

• 11:22Jen Cohen?

  So we're basically essentially training our nervous system.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 11:26Jen Cohen?

  Right? So when we could potentially have an accident like that tweak of an ankle or something, we are conditioned to snap back, like to to be strong enough or our reflexes to be fast enough that that won't happen.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Absolutely right.

• 11:41Jen Cohen?

  Okay, so that I guess because I also heard that just overall like plyometrics as you age is really important.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Hmm, totally.

• 11:50Jen Cohen?

  Is that accurate too?

• 11:51Speaker 02

  They don't have a lot of recommendations at P3 for everybody, but that's one of them. They everybody they want everybody, almost everybody who's in there gets some kind of weightlifting recommended and some kind of plyometrics. And then there are, I mean, some of the trainers make fun of the founding doctor, Marcus Elliott, because he's just loves the plyometrics so much. Like he's just, to him, it's like, everybody should be doing them. Aggressive plyometrics. He wants you to. So what they do is, in the first assessment, they have a you can do it with like a broomstick. They just lay a dowel on the ground and they put eight seconds on the clock and you have to like put your feet parallel to the dowel and you hop back and forth sideways on two feet as many times as you can in eight seconds. There's a guy whose name is Sanford Spivey. He's a venture capitalist now, but when he

• 12:33Speaker 02

  was like a Boston University soccer player, I think I'm not saying he did it 42 times in eight seconds. Like, that's five plus times a second.

• 12:43Jen Cohen?

  That's amazing.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  They show that video to NBA players and NBA players are like, what? It's like, so he's obviously got this really snappy nervous system and good musculature and all that stuff. Right. So that's how we start with the plyometrics at P3 and then it just goes up from there.

• 12:59Jen Cohen?

  What's the benefit of doing plyometrics from side to side for your body?

• 13:04Speaker 02

  They do them all different ways. I don't think there's a kind of plyometrics they don't do in there. So it's just, you know, would you know the history of plyometrics? It's so cool. I love this story so much. Please let me tell you the story.

• 13:13Jen Cohen?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  So.

• 13:15Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Okay. So in Soviet times, they kind of invented sports science because they just used humans like guinea pigs. Right. They just did tons of testing. I'm like, they're top Olympians. They just try this workout, try that workout and they put sensors on them and have them do all this. So it was kind of cruel and there was tons of doping. But, um, but this guy, Yuri Verkhachan, he was kind of a heroic early doctor of this. And he did calculations, figured out like when triple jumpers, um, triple jump is a weird sport. I never really, do you know how it works? It's like.

• 13:44Jen Cohen?

  Not really.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  You run, this is going to be wrong, like you run and you like leap off one leg and then another leg. And then that third leg puts down, you like jump, do a long jump. And you can do the math of like the athlete weighs this much and they travel this far. So that means they're pushing on the ground this hard. This is where the physics comes in. I would not want to do this calculation. And he's like, well, they're, they're pushing on the ground with like 300 kilograms of force. But in the gym, none of them can lift 300 kilograms. So like some of them are magically way stronger when they're doing the triple jump than when they're lifting weights. So he's like, well, maybe if we have them do a shorter lift, shorter lift, right? Instead of doing a full squat, do like a half squat. And they could lift a lot more, but then none of them came in the next day because their backs all hurt.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  So there's something about this. And finally he figured out that it's because it's so fast. Like when they push on the ground for the triple jump, their foot's on the ground for like a 10th of a second. And when you're super fast like that, you have kind of magical ability to access force. Cause you're taking energy from the approach and using it in the explosive jump. Does that make sense?

• 14:46Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  So in weightlifting, you're not doing that, right? So that was his big aha moment and he invented plyometrics right then. He called it the shock method and basically. He started teaching all these Russian athletes to like do all these quick hopping things because you can train to be faster on the ground and you're training all these muscles in your lower leg and such. And if you're faster on the ground, you're moving more force from one step into the next one. And it's like a huge difference. Like, I think some runners carry, I think there's some research that like, some runners only need to generate 10% of the energy for the next step because they're carrying 90% from the step before, whereas some runners need to generate 60% of the energy because they're only carrying 40% from the step before. So we're all in the middle there somewhere, but like, it's a lot less work to

• 15:32Speaker 02

  run if you're really good at plyometrics, if that makes sense.

• 15:34Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, it makes, so basically, so plyometrics isn't only jumping really high and onto like a, onto a box, right? Like plyo, what, what would fall under the plyometrics category?

• 15:47Speaker 02

  I think it's all of these things that are like, training you to be really snappy on the ground. So they'll do things like step off a box and jump on the next one.

• 15:55Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Or hop sideways, or they're like, you know, hop three times on your left leg.

• 16:01Jen Cohen?

  It's all jumping, basically.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's all just kind of, yeah.

• 16:04Jen Cohen?

  Quick jumps.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:05Jen Cohen?

  Because what I, what I would, what I'm scared of, to be honest, when you were talking about that broomstick and you go from side to side, just like from over, over, over, I would be scared that I would twist my ankle because if I'm not, if I'm weak in my ankles, which I am, right? Like, once, one bad move and I'm done, right? So it's like

• 16:23Speaker 02

  I think we're putting our finger on your issue. I think this may be why your knee hurts.

• 16:27Jen Cohen?

  Probably.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:28Jen Cohen?

  But it's probably like, it's a chicken or the egg, right? If you're not strong enough, or you have a weakness in, let's say, your lower extremity, like an ankle or whatever, your foot, and then your ass, then you have to go side to side to strengthen, it's easier to get hurt that way. And then you're out for like, two months.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Totally agree. So they would put you on a progression. There's a million ways to strengthen your lower leg and hopping wouldn't probably be like, job one for you. Lifting weights, honestly, I used to strain my ankle all the time. I almost had a doctor tell me like, never play basketball again because I was like, so prone to ankle sprains. And then at some, for other reasons, I started lifting weights 10 years later. I've never turned my ankle since then.