What Is Strength? | Brett Jones | Modern Wisdom Podcast 112

Brett Jones is the Director of Education at Strong First. For every article suggesting one-per-week heavy lifts there's another advocating daily top end strength work. Today we get to hear the opinion of Brett, a man who has spent most of his life working out how to make people strong. - Extra Stuff: Check out Strong First - https://www.strongfirst.com Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  If I were to give one piece of advice, well, we'll make it two. Number one is patience. True power means you're patient enough to allow that power to come to fruition. So it means at the top of my swing, and if it's, if it is the games and you are doing the overhead swing, fine, you got to do what's required for the competition. You have to wait for those arms to reconnect for your, to your ribs before you hinge. Then you have to allow yourself the time to hinge before you hit the quick turnaround. And now you gotta be patient, keeping the arms against the body as long as you can. So you have this full transfer of energy from the hips and midsection to the arms and the bell.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  And so what I see a lot of people do is they rush that. They hinge too early on the way down. They're trying to come up too quick on the way up and they're letting the arms disconnect before they've fully expressed the power from their hips. So if they would display patience at those three stages, wait long enough for the arms to reconnect on the way down. Give yourself time to hinge and then keep the arms against the ribs as long as possible as you're producing power through the ground. You're going to find a much more powerful swing and better transfer of energy.

• 1:24Chris Williamson?

  I'm joined by Brett Jones, Director of Education at Strong First. Brett, welcome to the show.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  Excellent. It's great to be with you today and really looking forward to speaking with you and your audience.

• 1:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, me too. We, uh, we haven't touched on strength that much yet, not in its, not in its purity. We've, we've circled around it a little bit, but we're talking all things strong today, right?

• 1:45Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Um, there's, strength has been, uh, it's, um, been a, something I've pursued, uh, for most of my, uh, adult life, uh, in, in various forms. And, uh, I, I look forward to the conversation on it.

• 2:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's going to be good. We'll have some CrossFitters, some powerlifters tuning in, uh, amongst people that just want to be able to lift the shopping a bit, the, the shopping a little bit heavier, I guess as well. So they might benefit as well.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  Um, absolutely.

• 2:12Chris Williamson?

  Talking about strength, how do you, as someone who spends his entire time thinking about strength, how do you define strength?

• 2:20Speaker 00

  So, strength can be, so if we first go with this, uh, this idea of physical strength,

• 2:28Speaker 00

  that can be your ability to produce tension, your ability to produce force against an outside object, or to manipulate your own body, um, against a given leverage or position. So, it's the ability to produce tension, to produce force against an object, um, and manipulate an object, or your own body, uh, like I said. So, that, that's kinda the, the 30,000-foot view. Um, when you, if you get into the mechanics of it, there's obviously a lot more going on. Uh, when you go beyond physical strength, and that's, you know, within Strong First, one of our, uh, we, we actually have like a code of conduct. We're students of strength,

• 3:11Speaker 00

  uh, we're quiet professionals, and we believe that strength has a greater purpose. And the, the mission of Strong First is to pursue, promote, and practice strength, because we believe strength has a greater purpose. And that greater purpose, obviously, uh, transcends physical strength into many other areas. Uh, my grandmother is one of the strongest people that I know of on the planet, and she's never lifted a weight in her life. And so, we're not just referring to this concept of physical strength. We do believe that building physical strength can provide a window into, uh, greater strength in one's life, uh, in many areas, not just the physical.

• 3:52Chris Williamson?

  I understand. So, yeah, you've, you've touched on one of the, the two, uh, taglines, I suppose, or one of the, the two major elements that Strong First has, which is, "Strength has a greater purpose," and "Strength is the master quality." Is that right?

• 4:07Speaker 00

  Yes. So, if you look at, uh, Metviev said, uh, that, uh, strength is the foundation of physical development, um, for the, uh, for all, uh, qualities of, of physical development. So, uh, I, I remember being in a talk with, uh, Eric Cressy years ago, and, you know, Eric, uh, gave a great analogy. People have tried to give me credit for it, so every time I get an opportunity, I give him credit for it, because it's where I heard it. Uh, but basically, he said, you know, uh, "Strength is the glass." Every other quality you want to develop goes in that glass. And so the bigger your glass, the more of those other qualities you can develop.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  And so strength maintains a focus and a foundation for people's training. And it's interesting right now as, as physical training has become more. I'm gonna go old school here for just a second. So if you look at some of the ancient training systems, and I'm drawing back to the Greeks and the German Turnverrein system and some of the, some of the other old training systems, which primarily came from training military and, and warriors and things of that nature. They really had three main components to them. There was a martial component, which was your ability to respond appropriately to aggression.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  And you could easily look at that from a martial arts or military perspective. And that makes very good sense. There was a restorative component because learning the martial tended to knock you out of center. And so you needed techniques for health and recovery and regeneration to be able to go do the other stuff again. And then you had a pedagogical body of knowledge that supported the other two. Fitness has become our martial art. Fitness has become the thing, so our pillars of training have switched to where now our training, our fitness has become this thing that we do for itself.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  Whereas we used to get fit to go do other things. You know, the restorative component in the ancient systems was meant to just allow you to go practice the martial stuff more. I'm a very exciting guy. I enjoy hiking. So my, my training at this point supports my hiking and, and not in addition to my own training and training of my students and the teaching that I do at CERTS and things of that nature.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  So since fitness has become this martial art, this thing in and of itself, that's changed some of our relationships with with some of these modalities, strength training being one of them. Within a competitive environment, within an environment where people are using fitness as this display of what they've accomplished, then you start using the tools of barbells and body weights and things like that for either higher repetitions or for conditioning or for, you know, these other aspects of physical development.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  And the strength training kind of gets, can get lost a little bit.

• 7:27Chris Williamson?

  That's interesting that fitness is now for fitness's sake rather than in service of another purpose. That is an interesting way to frame it. Going back to one of the things that you said at the beginning about strength being the cup and everything else filling it. Would you be able to explain how you would see something most people probably wouldn't link with strength, like endurance capacity perhaps? How do those two link together?

• 7:52Speaker 00

  So one of the easiest examples that I could give is if if it takes you at this point, a thousand motor units to accomplish some movement. And that could be a whatever you want it to be. And we're just talking in very broad strokes and generalities, right?

• 8:09Chris Williamson?

  Let's stick to deadlift. Everyone knows the deadlift. Let's talk about that.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  Okay. So let's say for the deadlift, you have to recruit at this point, a thousand motor units to accomplish that movement. If I increase your strength, your neural efficiency, your recruitment, your your structural ability, your ability to produce tension and that that efficiency, because we do look at strength as a skill. Um, you know, people, uh, very few people look at somebody shooting free throws and go, wow, he's a really good free throw shooter, but he just has good technique. Um, they just say he's a good free throw shooter. Um, within strength training, there, there can be the excuse, well, he's not that strong. He or she isn't that strong. They, they just have good technique. Like, but strength is a skill.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  And there are, we'll talk about it more later, but you know, there's, there's, uh, people that spend lives 20, 30, 40 year careers trying to get better at one or two or three exercises. So it's not, uh, it is, it is a lifelong pursuit. Um, so let's say due to our training and everything, I take that thousand motor unit requirement and I drop it to 500.

• 9:23Chris Williamson?

  How would you do that?

• 9:25Speaker 00

  Uh, via good strength training. So broad strokes. You become, well, yes, because if neural efficiency increases, if my ability to recruit, and we're going to sound like, I'm going to sound manic here for just a second, but let's take a little side journey. Uh, we refer to being a strength professional. And when you look at, uh, let's use the bench press as an example. When you look at a strength professional on the bench press, and they, they've actually done this with some EMGs and looking at it, this efficient transfer between muscle groups, uh, during something like the bench press. When a strength professional gets wedged in and they begin their bench press, there's

• 10:09Speaker 00

  this really smooth transition from lats to pecs to, to shoulders to triceps. And it's like being in a Formula One race car, right? Boom, boom, boom, boom. You don't even feel the gears change. You just go faster. Compare that to somebody who's learning how to drive a stick. Right? You're going to get, you're going to get whiplash and, and damage your neck because, you know, they're, uh, uh, you know, they're shifting gears and it's, it's really herky jerky. And you see that in somebody who's a novice at the bench press. They'll bring it down. If they don't bounce it, then they'll bring it down and then there's this big push and there's nothing coming behind it. So it it fails and comes back down or it it fails and then the second muscle group kicks

• 10:54Speaker 00

  in or you know, however you want to phrase it. And so the the strength professional has learned how to have these really smooth transitions throughout a range of motion displaying, producing force against an object or whatever. Um, so yeah, that efficiency um leads to the ability to have greater tension, greater efficiency throughout the movement. So I am kind of staying away from some of the um mechanical properties at the moment and referring more to the neurological. Um, so through good strength training, I make you more efficient. And now I get to the point that as a result of increased uh better recruitment,

• 11:38Speaker 00

  better efficiency, um potentially better quality of the tissue. Um, now that thousand motor unit effort is a 500 motor unit effort. How many more times are you going to be able to produce that 500 motor unit effort? Because now you have 500 motor units in reserve.

• 11:55Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  So as those initial 500 fatigue, you just start tapping into the 500 we now have in reserve and your endurance has increased at by means of increasing your strength.

• 12:08Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. So the work capacity has gone up because it's less effortful to achieve the same movement?

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:15Chris Williamson?

  Okay, that's interesting. So we we've kind of circled around it for a little bit. How how do you uh contextualize strength or what are the components of strength?

• 12:26Speaker 00

  Wow, that's uh, that's a a broad uh topic.

• 12:30Chris Williamson?

  Fair point. Fair point.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  So.

• 12:34Speaker 00

  Um, cause if if we're sticking with the physical, then um, there is uh, so let's break that into the neurological, uh, which is the patterning, uh, the efficiency between muscle groups and really, you know, having a really high level of skill in that movement. And when you dive down and you really dig into something like a deadlift or bench press or a squat or a clean and jerk or whatever you wanna dig into, um, a one-arm push-up, whatever a case may be, um, that neurological aspect, um, your ability to bring, uh, your

• 13:16Speaker 00

  intra-abdominal tension, your high-tension techniques, your efficiency, uh, transitioning through the muscle groups, that neurological aspect is is really key. And, uh, that means, uh, one of our key programming principles is we we keep a continuity of the training process. So if I'm gonna look towards building strength, I'm gonna be doing the same exercises for a a good period of time to allow time for this learning and efficiency and gaining of skill. If I'm switching exercises every four weeks, um, I I doubt there's been a successful Olympic lifter, uh, that has changed exercises every four weeks.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  Um, they may be modifying their routine within the context of of trying to optimize the clean and jerk and the snatch, uh, but they're gonna work on the clean and jerk and the snatch. Um, and then highlight areas that need attention. So this continuity of the training process is gonna stick with us. So from a neurological standpoint, we're really focused on this concept of strength as a skill and, uh, practicing and pursuing our strength over time via the continuity. From a more structural standpoint, now we're talking about the tissue quality and, uh, there's all of these things that happen within a muscle, uh, that produce movement. Uh, you can go down to the the, um, the muscle fibers and and look at the cross bridges

• 14:41Speaker 00

  and actin and myosin and, uh, myokinesis and you've got, uh, the calcium going in and out. You you know, you have this really Um, complicated physiological thing, um, and of course, the energy to do that via the ATP and the mitochondria and um, all of these things. So there's, there's, there's these two, uh, I prefer to treat the physiological aspect as kind of a black box, where we do things and we get a response and I don't necessarily need to understand all of the details that's happening in the black box. Um, and actually from a computer standpoint, there's a lot of uh, artificial intelligence algorithms and things like that that are basically treated like a black box. They actually don't understand what's happening

• 15:23Speaker 00

  inside the AI box, but we get results that come out the other side.

• 15:28Chris Williamson?

  The inputs controlled, the output is what you want and the process in the middle, it doesn't really matter so much, I don't suppose, as long as the output is what you wanted.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:39Chris Williamson?

  I like it.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  So we, we, we get kind of bogged down into the physiology because it's fascinating. I mean, you talk about the, one of the things that, that we work on is this balance of tension and relaxation. And so it sounds weird for a guy that's all about strength to be talking about relaxation, but if you're not able to relax, you can never fully bring your strength to bear. And from an athletic standpoint, if I'm walking around half tight all the time, I'm neither efficient or fast or powerful. So I have to be able to relax. Well, relaxation actually takes more energy in the muscle than contraction.

• 16:17Chris Williamson?

  Is that true?

• 16:17Speaker 00

  Because now you have to, yeah, you have to pump out the calcium that gave you the cross bridges and the, and the contraction. Now you've got to pump that out in order to create the relaxation. And so there's this, um, there's this balance to be achieved and uh, your skill at relaxation can enhance your strength and your ability to produce power and force and things of that nature. So, but that's complicated. Like there's a lot going on in there and I'm, I'm a, just a good old knuckle dragger. I like, uh, I like, you know, lifting and doing the fun stuff. And um, while I have gone down some of the rabbit holes of the, the complexity, um,

• 16:59Speaker 00

  You can still read the research and see how conflicted we still are on things like hypertrophy and other aspects of muscle development. So there's a lot going on there. So I just kind of treat that as a black box. And like you said, the input, the output, and the magic happens in the black box.

• 17:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Honestly, one of the problems that I found when I was a young guy and learning about lifting and stuff, so I'm going back to probably 2007, which is like bodybuilding.com days, like quite heavily forum-based. And it was so bro-science-y. And for every article that you read that said one thing, you could find one that said the opposite. And the same is still true now. Like for every person for whom keto works amazingly, there's another person for whom high carb works amazingly. And then someone will do intermittent fasting and someone will stick to a more consistent, steady grazing-style, sort of typical bodybuilder's diet.

• 18:00Chris Williamson?

  You know, it really is a case of trying to find the principles, I suppose, and moving those forward. So I've got a couple of questions. I've got one question for you, which will come up in a little bit, which I think might be like you trying to choose your favorite child. For now, when we're talking about strength, is progressive overload king?

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Yes. However...

• 18:25Chris Williamson?

  There's always a caveat. Brett, there's always a bloody caveat, isn't there?

• 18:30Speaker 00

  I know. And it's, it'd be, life would be much simpler if we were able to just give absolutes. But only siths deal in absolutes. So we'll stick with the asterix and the caveat. Yes, progressive overload is the key, but I... Within Strong First, which we call ourselves the School of Strength, we specialize in kettlebell, barbell, and bodyweight, not only from a technical standpoint, but from a programming standpoint. And Pavel's recent work within Plan Strong and Strong Endurance in particular, with his new book, Quick in the Dead,

• 19:10Speaker 00

  you can get a window into some of our new conditioning and strength and conditioning research and work that we've been doing.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  The fourth branch of the School of Strength is programming. And in the development of Plan Strong, when Pavel took a step back and he looked at the most successful Olympic lifting dominance of the Russians. And you can make all the comments you want about the pharmaceuticals that may have been involved, but everybody was doing it and the Russians were still dominant. And not only were they dominant, they were dominant over years. Olympic lifting is not considered, it's a young person's sport, right? Well, they had Russians setting world records in their 30s and late into their 30s and still winning world championships and Olympics and things like that.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  So when you really look at their programming, yes, it's progressive over time. But we tend to treat that as this linear relationship, where we're always going up.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  When you look at a very successful program like the Russians had, what you see is that. There's a lot of variability. And actually, about 80% of their work happened around 70% of the 1RM. So there was a tremendous amount of work happening at a very accessible.

• 20:45Speaker 00

  Effort level, which you can recover from and you can build skill with and you can have all of these great results. And then you're, you're doing some work in the top end, a little bit below that, but about seventy five, eighty percent of their work happened in this about seventy percent one RM sort of area.

• 21:05Chris Williamson?

  What's the, what's the rep range on that? If you were to go to failure, probably about six?

• 21:10Speaker 00

  And yes, but here's the thing, we're never going to failure. So yeah, seventy percent might get you six to eight. And there's tremendous variability in how people line up on those rep charts. I was always able to operate actually at a pretty high percentage of my one RM. But then if you looked at the charts, I should have been lifting way more.

• 21:35Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's, that's me. That's me. Unfortunately, can rep out something, can rep out eighty, eighty percent or seventy percent for ages, but then just the top end of that curve flattens off. There'll be a lot of people at home that are the same.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. So what you're looking for is the progression over time, but you, and I just wrote this article for Strong First, you have this waviness in the short term. So you're, you're always manipulating that variable. And yeah, like I said, we're progressive over time. We're not progressive in a linear standpoint. So kind of like the stock market. Yeah. If you look at it day by day, it's doing this. If you look at it over time, it does that. But if you just try to do this and be purely linear, you're going to run into problems.

• 22:23Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Well, if, if that was true, if I could simply go to the, go down to the bench and add a pound every day, I'd be three hundred and sixty five pounds heavier in my bench, you know, year after year after year, which obviously just doesn't happen. So you fatigue out both from a central nervous system standpoint because of the skill driven and neurological driven aspects of strength, and you burn out from a physiological standpoint because tissue adaptation, tendons and ligaments are kind of the slowest to adapt. We'll build some big old muscles and the tendons and ligaments are like, dude, we're not ready yet. And so you have to allow time for overall tissue adaptation.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  And that also responds very well to having this variation in what you're doing. Uh, so that you allow time for all of these things to come together.

• 23:19Chris Williamson?

  Hmm, I suppose that cycling through different movements, as you said as well, and sticking to maybe two months with one particular routine or three months with one particular routine and then periodizing into something else will probably allow you to to achieve that as well. So, right, I'm gonna, Brad, I'm gonna ask you the the most difficult question that I can ask you. Um, you're only allowed to do three exercises for the rest of your life.

• 23:42Chris Williamson?

  What are they?

• 23:43Speaker 00

  So, uh, yeah, you're right. It's like choosing choosing children. Um, so I'll give two different answers.

• 23:53Chris Williamson?

  Yes, such a politician's answer.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  But I told you what I was gonna do.

• 23:59Chris Williamson?

  Fair enough.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  I didn't, I didn't, I didn't dodge the question.

• 24:01Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  I just said I was gonna give you two options.

• 24:03Chris Williamson?

  All right.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  For me personally.

• 24:06Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  Um, I am a squataholic. I love to barbell squat.

• 24:16Speaker 00

  Because I do a lot of swings and a lot of kettlebell work. I don't have to do as much work on my deadlift because I I do a powerful hip hinge on a consistent basis. So I personally like to squat. And I think for the individual, it's finding which are you? Do you need to squat? Do you need to deadlift? Uh, because both of those are gonna give you mileage for a long time. If you're not swinging and working on a powerful hip hinge, then you probably need to be deadlifting instead of squatting.

• 24:49Chris Williamson?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 24:51Speaker 00

  If that makes sense.

• 24:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does. It does. Why? Why would you put the deadlift ahead of the squat in isolation?

• 25:01Speaker 00

  It is, so there's a couple, and I'm putting it ahead of that because if I'm swinging and producing a lot of power in my swing, then I'm already doing all the strength work I need for my hinge, quotation marks, caveat. So that's why I put it, if you're not gonna swing, you definitely need to build your hinge and work on your deadlift.

• 25:22Chris Williamson?

  And that's not achievable just with a squat?

• 25:26Speaker 00

  I don't think so. I think there's aspects of the deadlift as far as the inclusion of the upper body via the grip and the lats and the way the deadlift happens that make it a different animal than the squat. The squat carries with it more skill requirements. You are loading the spine in a unique way. So there's different aspects involved in building that squat, pardon me, which I think make the deadlift a better choice over time for a broader swath of the population.

• 26:04Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  So that's kind of the, from a symmetrical standpoint, you need to figure out whether you need to squat or deadlift.

• 26:15Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 26:16Speaker 00

  We gotta push. We gotta do some sort of press. And military press or bench press? So I told you I was gonna give you two options. Military press incorporates the standing posture. You do need to have a very stable midsection, the ability to resist extension and maintain your position under that overhead load. And so the military press has, I'm gonna say, higher requirements than the bench press.

• 26:48Chris Williamson?

  Globally.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  Globally. But the bench is a great way to produce upper body strength. And the way we teach it and really, you bench from your feet. And looking at a good lateral arch, not necessarily an AP arch, you set a foundation via the feet and the lateral arch to really drive through the upper body. So you're gonna build more upper body mass and strength via the bench press. You're gonna build upper body strength via the military press. So picking which one you need there. But you know, make your choice.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  Um, I, and we're sticking with strength training here. Um, I do think you need some sort of pull, uh, such as a pull up.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  I think the lats are, uh, such an important tie in from upper to lower body. And for everything we want to be doing, whether it's running or deadlifting or squatting or benching or pressing, um, I think the lats deserve their, their moment, uh, kind of the upper body squat as it was once known.

• 28:01Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm. I get it. Well, one thing that I'm interested in is your inclusion of kettlebells because it's only been recently for me that I've seen, uh, kettlebells really kind of come into their own. Guys like yourselves and Onnit, um, uh, companies that are really, really pushing the, the sort of kettlebell movements, not just as, because kettlebells maybe for me 10, 10 years ago would have been part of a bums and tums class for like my mom to go and do, you know what I mean? It'd be like a two and a half kilo kettlebell or something like that. And it's kind of just there to make someone feel like they're lifting a

• 28:43Chris Williamson?

  weight. Whereas now there's much more sophisticated, um, public knowledge about around the training for that. Can you talk, talk us through your, your vision and your views on, on kettlebell training overall?

• 28:56Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Um, it's something that I've been, I first got, um, certified, uh, with Pavel, uh, in February of O2. Um, I started teaching with Pavel in, in April of O3. So literally for 16, almost 17 years, I've been traveling, uh, the US and the world, teaching kettlebell training and, and certifying others and, and the use of the tool. Um, so the kettlebell for me represents such an excellent entry point to the world of strength.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  And a bridge towards the world of conditioning and power work that make it a really unique and and really a tool that I think belongs in everybody's program and everybody quotation marks caveat because that's no one thing for all people.

• 29:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  So I think the thick handle and offset center of mass make it a very different and alive tool in your hands where now you're controlling this rotation or movement of this center displaced center of mass or that displaced center of mass is actually guiding you into better positions during the movement. It so it requires a increased level of alignment with integrity under load and I'm grabbing that from Gray Cook, one of my other mentors. And so via the get up and the press and things like that that take advantage of this offset center of mass, you have this alignment with integrity under load, which builds this kind

• 30:30Speaker 00

  of great postural control, which helps set the foundation for a lot of the strength and the power work that you want to be doing. And so the kettlebell in my mind and what I've seen over the last, you know, 17, 18 years of using the tool myself, I think it really fits a need for people that a dumbbell, a barbell kind of don't provide because that that weight centers with your grip instead of being offset. An old joke for us is you can't swing a barbell between your legs more than once.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  And so the kettlebell allows you to achieve this really unique loaded eccentric position, which has tremendous carryover for anything athletic. And from a power standpoint, I think Zatsiyorsky and others would put it in a power metric category, not plyometric, but it still produces, I can produce three, three and a half times body weight eccentric load at the bottom of a 24 kilo kettlebell swing.

• 31:43Chris Williamson?

  Because it's so dynamic, right?

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Exactly. And that loaded eccentric really is unique. So I think kettlebells fulfill, check a lot of boxes. And you'll see this if you look at Quick in the Dead. Once you've built a base of strength. Power training has a lot to offer and you have to be strong enough to be powerful. And so we're still not forgetting that strength is the foundation. But once you have achieved a base level of strength, that power work really delivers across multiple spectrums of physical development, whether we're talking about endurance, power or strength.

• 32:20Chris Williamson?

  What's the difference between power and strength?

• 32:23Speaker 00

  So, um, power is how quickly you can apply your strength.

• 32:29Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  Strength is how much force you can produce.

• 32:31Chris Williamson?

  So it would be the equivalent of horsepower versus torque?

• 32:36Speaker 00

  Yes, I, I, I'll go with that analogy very, very easily.

• 32:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, a torquey, a torquey engine might not be quite so fast, but can pull a very heavy load. A high brake horsepower engine can go very quickly, but might not be able to pull such a heavy thing. And then in between the two, you have a midpoint. Okay.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 32:56Chris Williamson?

  So we will have a lot of CrossFitters and other strength athletes listening, but CrossFitters especially, we're about to enter the open, which is a period during which there will inevitably be kettlebell swings. Would you be able to talk us through how you see the optimal kettlebell swing? Or what the, some of the coaching cues are that you look for that you think most people might, might mess up with?

• 33:19Speaker 00

  I think if, if I were to give, um, one piece of advice, uh, well, we'll make it two.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  Uh, number one is patience.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  True power means you're patient enough to allow that power to come to fruition. So it means at the top of my swing, and if it's, if it is the Games and you are doing the overhead swing, fine, you got to do what's required for the competition. Um, it's waiting for those arms to re, I'm gonna just pull my camera off the, yeah. Um, you have to wait for those arms to reconnect for your, to your ribs before you hinge. Then you have to allow yourself the time to hinge before you hit the quick turnaround. And now you gotta be patient, keeping the arms against the body as long as you can.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  So you have this full transfer of energy from the hips and midsection to the arms and the bell. And so what I see a lot of people do is they rush that. They hinge too early on the way down. They're trying to come up too quick on the way up and they're letting the arms disconnect before they've fully expressed the power from their hips. So if they would display patience at those three stages, wait long enough for the arms to reconnect on the way down. Give yourself time to hinge. And then keep the arms against the ribs as long as possible as you're producing power through the ground. You're going to find a much more powerful swing and better transfer of energy.

• 35:03Speaker 00

  Um, so that more than anything, if people would display some patience, um, they're going to be, they're going to be a lot better off.

• 35:13Chris Williamson?

  I can definitely feel in myself when I'm doing a heavy kettlebell workout, especially when we, we are going to the overhead standard from CrossFit. Um, I can tell when that excitement during a workout takes over my form. Uh, and I know that when that's happening because my traps get pumped. And it's because I'm going to guess because I'm upright rowing that, that way up and overhead, that pull and pop, pop, as opposed to allowing myself to swing through and then taking it from there. That's interesting.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  And that's so, and when you look at it from a timing perspective, um, and it sounds like, you know, oh, he's saying, you know, be patient. It's the, every rep's going to take so long. And it's not, it's just being patient enough to allow those things to happen in the proper timing and sequence. Um, you'll actually, you know, the, the rep's speed will be not that much different, but it will be that much more powerful and efficient because now it's happening in the correct sequence.

• 36:16Chris Williamson?

  That's a hell of a lot quicker when you don't have to put the barbell, that, that put the dump, the kettlebell down. It's a hell of a lot quicker when you don't have to take as many, when you take like half as many breaks perhaps because you're moving better. Okay. So that's, that's the first one. And what's the, what's the, what's the second, the second cue?

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Well, I, I went so long into the first one that I'm, I'm, oh, okay. Sink your breathing.

• 36:36Chris Williamson?

  Okay, interesting.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  Now, and there's, I'm gonna give you the kind of, there's a, we'll call it a boilerplate answer, and then knowing that there's techniques and strategies to optimize the breath during an extended effort. So, we have a competition within Strong First called the TSC, the Tactical Strength Challenge, and one of the aspects of that competition is a max snatches in five minutes.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  So, and we have people that'll achieve with a 24 kilo bell, and some with a 32 kilo bell. We'll have people achieving 120, 130, 140 reps within five minutes.

• 37:18Chris Williamson?

  That's disgusting.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  It's, oh, it's awful. As soon as I recover from it, I'll do it again.

• 37:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  But, so, you know, the sniff in to have good intra-abdominal pressure and bracing during the hinge, and then having the forced exhale match with when the hips finish,

• 37:38Speaker 00

  that sinks your power, so that your power is efficient over a number of reps.

• 37:47Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  So, what happens is during a sustained effort, you will reach a time point where the need for oxygen becomes great, and so that breathing pace needs to change. One of the easiest ways to change with that, especially within a five-minute effort, is the double inhale. So during the hinge, instead of having a single inhale, you have a double inhale, and so you're actually kind of filling the tank and topping it off, and then having the exhale synced with the hips.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  And then there's ways to have multiple breathing cycles within every rep.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  And so there's double breathing.

• 38:35Chris Williamson?

  Really getting into the nitty gritty here then. I guess this is how you get 130 kettlebell snatches in five minutes out.

• 38:42Speaker 00

  Right. And that's why I prefer the boilerplate answer.

• 38:45Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 38:45Speaker 00

  Because getting into the double breathing gets a little more complicated.

• 38:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So what we're talking about is that you're going to breathe out as your arms are releasing contact with the body on the way up. Is that correct?

• 38:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would, I would sync it more with the finish of the hips.

• 39:01Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  Rather than thinking about the arms, but you are not releasing the arms from the ribs until the hips finish. So yes.

• 39:10Chris Williamson?

  Understood. Okay. And then as you're coming back down, you're taking the breath in just before you begin to hinge?

• 39:17Speaker 00

  Uh, yes. So when you hit the bottom, you've got that bubble of interabdominal pressure that gives you something to then produce force against on the way up.

• 39:26Chris Williamson?

  Yes, there's definitely been times I can think of, I'm sure that the listeners will be able to sympathize as well when you are breathing too much and you just get out of time and you're fully exhaled at the bottom as you're swinging a kettlebell through your legs and it feels like someone's come up behind you and kicked you in the middle of the arse and you're like, nearly fall forward into the, into the workout, which is not nice.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  Not great.

• 39:53Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no. But again, as you say, a lot of the people that will be listening may be doing these under fatigue. You know, if you're a CrossFit athlete and you've got this in amongst a bunch of rowing and potentially pull-ups or something else and your grips going and everything else like that, you do need to be, you do need to be delicate with that. So I suppose trying to adhere to that as closely as possible is, is not going to be a bad idea.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  Definitely. And, and that would lead into a, a potentially another podcast on the concept of the difference between your training and your testing. And the fact that your, your training does not always have to look like you're testing. And you build capacity and minimize fatigue rather than always trying, because conditioning, and I know we're getting away from the strength message, but the conditioning has kind of fallen into, the primary camp that conditioning has fallen into is building tolerance.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  Basically, this is gonna suck. So we're gonna do it and over time it will suck less because you are have better tolerance to this. Um, there is another way and in building capacity, your ability to handle the energy production and the byproducts and the, the, the, the efficiency of the, of the organism versus the tolerance of the organism. And so when, and again, you look at quick in the dead and, and Paul's new stuff, you'll see a lot on this. Um, you can build a lot of capacity and have, have better health, kind of lower injury, better performance and test better. But if you're always testing yourself

• 41:34Speaker 00

  and you're burning that candle hard, it's like having a NOS, it's like having nitric oxide on your car. Well, if you're using that to go pick up a loaf of bread, um, you're gonna burn out your car. You want to save that for that one moment where you need that extra boost.

• 41:50Chris Williamson?

  Is that where the 70% or so window appears to be optimal? Is that one of the reasons why that will be in there as well?

• 42:00Speaker 00

  It is.

• 42:02Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting because again, I'm around a lot of CrossFitters, but I'm just around a lot of athletes who like to go hard as well, whatever their particular given field. There, there is a, a subgroup that train in our gym who are just sadists and they enjoy, they enjoy getting into that 190 BPM heart range. Like that's, that's what they live for. And I, you know, it is, it is very unique in the fitness world based on what I know, having spoken to guys like Dr. McGill, um, Brian Carroll as well, these sorts of guys who talk about, uh, embedding the movement engrams in as perfect a way

• 42:47Chris Williamson?

  as possible, especially if we're talking about, you know, big lifts that need to be perfect. Um, and doing those under fatigue appears to be a very, very dangerous way to train.

• 43:00Speaker 00

  Yes, I would, I would agree with that. Um, and I, and I think that, uh, there's one reason we prefer something like the kettlebell swing, kettlebell snatch as our display of, um, uh, maintaining our, our, um, skill over time, under fatigue.

• 43:17Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Cause there's, there's different ways to look at this. And as we're building, pardon me, as we're building these patterns, I have to load you to find out if that pattern is going to hold up under the load. And then I need to, if, especially if I'm training an athlete or, or, or somebody, uh, I'm going to have to push you into some fatigue to see if that pattern is going to hold up under the fatigue. And it's my job as a coach to know when to pull back because you're not handling the, the fatigue, uh, and the form, or the load in the form. And so that's where my skill comes in to say, that's enough for today. Or yes, you can push, go a little further. Um, so definitely, yeah.

• 44:00Chris Williamson?

  Can you suggest any, uh, heuristics or rules that people who don't have a coach that's on hand can use?

• 44:07Speaker 00

  So it's, I, I would, uh, I'm going to, I'm couch this in a couple of different ways. Uh, I would say that rest is the single most abused training variable.

• 44:20Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  We, we don't rest enough. Um, and I remember years ago when the high intensity interval training really became popular and was basically a response to this idea that nobody had time to train. And so here comes this high intensity interval sort of protocols and, uh, Tabata, uh, which nobody's ever done Tabata outside of the original Tabata research. It's, it's a miserable, uh, thing to, to even think about, much less endure. And, and just cause you're doing, you know, burpees for 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, you're not doing Tabata. Um, it was a completely different thing, but anyway.

• 45:00Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 45:01Speaker 00

  You know, here comes this message that you have this high intensity with short rest for a compressed period of time and you accomplish all of these great things. Um. That's, yes, you will for a little while. And then the wheels will fall off.

• 45:19Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 45:19Speaker 00

  Because it's like a crash diet. You just can't maintain it. It's, you know, if you're, if we're doing the cabbage soup diet, you know, we're gonna lose a lot of weight and accomplish some great short-term results, and then we're not going to because nutritional deficiencies and problems will set in. When you burn the candle to both ends and in the middle, and you're burning the gnaws every time you go into the session, the car eventually falls apart. You just can't handle that level of stress over that period of time. You exceed the ability of the organism to compensate and recover from that stress. Um, and again, we're back into the capacity versus tolerance discussion.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  And I would rather build capacity and have this health aspect to my training. Um, I'm an ancient forty-eight years old, and I, I can tell you that I, I enjoy the health aspect of my training.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  From a strength standpoint, I was the eleventh guy in the world to bend the red nail. I've accomplished a, a good number of grip strength feats. Um, some decent, not great, uh, power lifting numbers, uh, raw. And so I, I've built my strength and I, I've worked on that end of things. I've snatched a kettlebell a bunch of times and worked on the conditioning end of things. Um, but the only place health comes before, or fitness comes before health is in the dictionary. Your, your training should be driving you towards a, a better, uh, standpoint as far as your health is concerned. And we may sacrifice that from time to time in order to accomplish a performance goal. Certainly if your goal, uh, I was working with a guy at a workshop and his goal was to bench five hundred.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  And he was doing whatever it took, and you can read into that whatever you want to. He was doing whatever it took to get to five hundred.

• 47:12Speaker 00

  And I gave him a couple of mobility techniques and things to work on because he was really suffering with his shoulders and but he was gonna do whatever it took to accomplish that goal. As long as he's willing to change goals. Once he's accomplished that. And regain the health of his shoulders and body and things of that nature, fine. Like, we make these decisions from time to time. If you're gonna run a marathon. Get ready to spend a lot of money on treatment and surviving the training and the marathon. And then hopefully you get healthy, you know, on the back end of that. So we make those decisions as long as those are conscious decisions and things that we've factored in. If the only thing we know how to do. Is burn ourselves to a frazzle.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  Be forced to take time off. Either due to illness or injury. And then burn ourselves to a frazzle again, I think there's a better way.

• 48:09Chris Williamson?

  Reminds me of Eddie Hall, hearing him talking about the way that his body was and how he felt around about the time when he won World's Strongest Man. And he was talking about the fact that his marriage was falling apart and he was barely seeing his kids and he was so heavy that he could, I think he's like 190 kilos and he's like 5'9" or something, or like 5'10" or something like that, that's some inordinate size, as wide as he was tall. And he was talking about all of these different things, but as you say, he said, "I wanted to be the world's strongest man. I was prepared to do whatever it took to do that."

• 48:52Chris Williamson?

  But one thing I've got a massive amount of respect for Eddie for. Is seeing the transformation that he's undergone after he completed that goal. So he did complete that goal, he got where he wanted to, and he has taken a complete step back from the professional side of that sport. Now he's doing other stuff, he's doing a lot more varied fitness challenges. I think he's like swimming and stuff at the moment, which was bizarre sight to see him in a pool. But, yeah, you know.

• 49:25Chris Williamson?

  You're right. People are prepared to make sacrifices for things that they deem to be valuable to them, given their values in life. They think, this will make me feel satisfied and give me a sense of accomplishment if I X run this marathon, deadlift 600 pounds, bench press 500 pounds, whatever it might be. There is a treadmill that people can get on where they don't realise that if there isn't a goal at the end of that, if it's just fitness for fitness's sake, if there's no end point, if there's no periodisation, that's when you

• 50:07Chris Williamson?

  get people that do get severe burnout or they end up with a very serious injury. So yeah, you mentioned about one of the ways that people can self judge when they're pushing themselves too hard and when they potentially need to move back towards capacity.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  So with, let's go within a session, because I think that's important. If your rep speed is slowing down, if your, so your tempo changes. And I have a very easy metric on that. If I'm doing swings and I know 10 swings takes me roughly 17 to 18 seconds, if that 10 swings starts taking me 20, 21 seconds, I'm slowing down. I am beating the proverbial dead horse. It is time for me to stop or increase my rest periods. So seeing

• 51:07Speaker 00

  tempo change, exceeding about an eight out of 10 on an RP, unable to catch your breath, you know, you're not able to recover before the next set. I've been a slave to the clock for years and have over the last couple of years worked very hard to free myself from the clock and allowing myself better recovery and not surprisingly seeing better results in my training. So those are just some, some easy kind of stop signs that we talk about within Strong First that, you know, within a session, within a set, within a session, within a training session, we look for those things.

• 51:50Speaker 00

  The, I think it's very interesting. I was asked one time on a podcast what my favorite recovery strategy was. And I think it's interesting that we have an entire cottage industry of recovery strategies that have grown up around this idea of how do I recover from the training that I'm doing? Well, my answer was proper programming. If I have myself programmed appropriately, if I am taking into account the organism and my overall stress, nutrition, sleep, uh, ability to handle work and the environment, my programming and things of that nature.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  If I've got those two things taken care of and I have done well with this environmental consideration of, of the program, then I should be recovering from my training. I shouldn't be always trying to figure out how I'm going to recover. Probably one of the easiest answers to people who are always trying to figure out how to recover from the training is, uh, do less.

• 52:54Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you're right. If you're, if you're constantly having to flap your wings so hard to stay afloat, it's probably just time that you need to reassess the program overall. Decide that you're going to just take a little bit more rest time, whatever it might be. And that's, I think, because we are exposed to the work rate of everybody else online with social media and being able to now see a, a window into the lives of professional athletes, or semi-professional athletes, or just, you know, your normal gym athlete who happens to have a ridiculous work capacity. Because you're able to see them, you use the canary in the coal mine for how hard are you working is how hard are they working?

• 53:33Chris Williamson?

  And that can lead to people setting themselves a standard which is unreachable, given their physiology. There are some people out there whose ability to recover, they can recover fine from a really hard workout and seven hours sleep. There's some people who require, you know, 10. Um, and I guess that's a decision you need to make yourself.

• 53:54Speaker 00

  It is, and if you're mindful of your recovery and your health and you know, things of that nature, and you know, if you're constantly dealing with a, and I mean quotation marks, injury, you have a pain problem or thing that you're constantly having to manage, you're probably pushing too hard. If you're, you know, if illness is a repeated thing for you, you're probably pushing too hard. And you have to take in overall life stress into consideration. If you're sleeping four hours a night, working two jobs, and you're having a lot of interpersonal stress, yet you're not going to be pushing very hard on your

• 54:33Speaker 00

  training, because your recovery ability is already taxed by this lifestyle stress. Or if your diet simply doesn't support your training, then expect to suffer and have trouble recovering.

• 54:50Chris Williamson?

  This classic type A mentality though, isn't it, that there are some people for whom you tell them to do eight and they will do 10. Well, why did you do 10? I told you to do eight. Well, I just thought more's better. And then if you roll that out, if you scale that across someone's entire life, yeah, you end up with that. So, final question I wanted to ask, and I spoke to Brian Carroll about this, and I thought it was really interesting. I know that Dr McGill agrees with this, so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. For strength athletes, powerlifter, weightlifter, Brian and Stuart are of the opinion that training the movements once per week is optimal for them to cycle for most athletes. What's your stance on that?

• 55:34Speaker 00

  Depends on the athlete.

• 55:39Chris Williamson?

  For the broadest cross-section of athletes that you know, what would you say?

• 55:44Speaker 00

  So, it's almost impossible, because where that athlete is on the spectrum, where that individual is on the spectrum, matters. If you're reaching a true physiological peak, where you know, your strength is really based on your structure and anatomy and ability to recover and everything is actually reaching a physiological peak, and you're able to push yourself to that limit.

• 56:14Speaker 00

  Then yes, you can train less frequently. But if you look at the Russian powerlifting team, they bench seven days a week.

• 56:21Chris Williamson?

  No way.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:23Chris Williamson?

  They're benched every day.

• 56:25Speaker 00

  It's because, it's because they're, and multiple, sometimes multiple sessions in a day. It's because their training is very wavy.

• 56:31Chris Williamson?

  Brett, forget the wavy stuff. They bench days every day of the week for the Russians. What's going on?

• 56:37Speaker 00

  Uh, if you look at Sheiko and, and, uh, the, the Russian powerlifting team, uh, they, uh, they do a lot of work. Um, and so there's, there's kind of this classic, uh, American powerlifting, uh, sort of mindset. Uh, Ed Cohn, uh, Marty Gallagher, uh, Kowalski, um, a lot of classic American powerlifting that is very linear. It is working each main lift once a week. Um, there's the Russian method, uh, which has multiple sessions per week. Both have had their success stories.

• 57:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 57:13Speaker 00

  Um, it's figuring out which one you tolerate and where you are on that spectrum that would dictate those, uh, decisions. If I'm working with a younger, uh, in their progression, if I'm working with a younger physiological age athlete, and that can happen at any age. I could be working with a 50-year-old who's just getting into strength training and they're at a very young physiological age. Um, that individual, I might want to deadlift five days a week because I'm building that pattern and they're still grooving it. Uh, practicing it once a week is not going to get them to a skill level where they can actually build an appreciable level of strength. Um, but yet if that's the 30-year-old athlete who

• 57:57Speaker 00

  really has been pushing hard and is nearing a physiological peak, yeah, I might be deadlifting them once a week. Uh.

• 58:05Chris Williamson?

  I love how, I love how Russian, the Russian approach is. It's like the most, we, we do bench today and, and tomorrow, like every day.

• 58:14Speaker 00

  What do we want to get better at? I want to get better at bench. Guess what we're going to be doing?

• 58:17Chris Williamson?

  We're going to be benching.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  So yeah, it is, it is a very utilitarian, minimalist sort of mindset. And we, we get into muscle confusion and, you know, all of these different things. And, and the pursuit of building strength actually means dedicating yourself to a very narrow window of things that you're going to be doing. Now, you look at something like Westside, where Louis Simmons not only had, and there's, Westside's very interesting, but they were trying to optimize three lifts.

• 58:58Speaker 00

  But Louis has like 200 assistance exercises for the bench. Because he would spot a weak spot in your bench and had a drill to address that weak spot. So it wasn't variety for variety's sake. It was variety meant to progress you in that main goal. But the goal never changed. The continuity of the training process was always there. And that, you know, strength training means dedicating yourself towards a goal of building strength and doing that over time and having this continuity of training process that leads to success.

• 59:37Chris Williamson?

  Isn't it interesting that there's so many different paths to achieving the same goal that you have Russians competing with Americans stepping onto the same platform within minutes of each other, but some training methodologies that couldn't look more different in some ways, or that you have the guys from Westside in the, the equipped leagues who are going up against other people who may never do anything other than big compound lifts, they might, their accessory work might be pull-ups and that's it. Or, you know, it's so, I find it fascinating that there are all of these different routes. And it comes back to what we said at the very beginning, right? Where it's like, you can find a proof for effectiveness or proof for ineffectiveness

• 1:00:21Chris Williamson?

  for pretty much everything. So at the end of the day, this is a nice way to round it off, I suppose, does the training methodology that you choose come down to personal preference for the one that you can adhere to the, the most and that feels the best for you? And how, how are you supposed to select? I have this myriad of training opportunities in front of me. How, how do I choose?

• 1:00:45Speaker 00

  So I, I think to get started, let's start there. To get started, uh, the basics work. Three to five sets of three to five reps, three to five days a week. Um, just to keep it as simple as possible with, with some variation in, in what you're doing. Uh, that will build strength and for the beginner, uh, I don't want to say almost any program will work, but almost any program will work, you know, for the beginner. It's when you have built a base of strength and you're trying to specialize and aim yourself in a particular direction that then the, the, the next training protocol carries more weight.

• 1:01:26Speaker 00

  Strength training joke, um, carries more weight in, in how you're gonna succeed in that. Uh, keeping in mind health and, and progress, um, you know, as long as you're being mindful of those, then you gotta know when to stop a routine and make a change. You don't want to, uh, and I know, um, the, the, I've seen it referred to as struggle porn, uh, where there's this message out there that you gotta grind and you're gonna grind and you're gonna grind. And you, you put all these hours in and you grind and, and believe me, I, I put in the hours and, and, uh, that's not a, a problem for me.

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  But you can grind too far and too deeply and cause yourself problems. You, you don't wanna quit before the process comes to fruition, but you gotta know when the process isn't gonna come to fruition and you gotta make a change. Um, so kind of a dichotomy there, uh, to, to work with. So, um, figuring out whether you're a high volume or low volume athlete, I think is one of the most important distinctions from a strength training standpoint. And I have friends of mine that can handle a very high number of lifts per month. I am not that person. I am not a, a high volume, uh, trainee. Uh, if I do a high volume routine, it needs to be, um, um, six weeks to eight weeks.

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  And yeah, small windows and then get away from it. Uh, because the, the siren song of volume, uh, becomes a little too strong. Coming for you. You overload yourself. Exactly.

• 1:03:04Chris Williamson?

  I love it. Brett, thank you so much for today. It's been great. If the listeners want to find out some more info, what have the books been that we've cited today and where else can they head?

• 1:03:14Speaker 00

  So if you go to strongfirst.com, you'll find everything there from the community forum, our articles and things of that nature. A lot of information available there. The book is Quick in the Dead, The Quick in the Dead, and has some tremendous information in it. And you'll see our barbell, kettlebell and bodyweight sort of modalities represented on the website and on the forum. So kind of a one stop shop. A lot of information to be gained there.

• 1:03:46Chris Williamson?

  I love it. Thank you so much for your time. I'm hoping that will make some people a little bit stronger. Any questions that you have, feel free to throw them in the YouTube comments below and I'll try and hassle Brett if there's anything specific that I can't answer myself. But for now, Brett, thank you very much.

• 1:04:00Speaker 00

  Beautiful. Thank you, sir. It was great to have the opportunity.