THPStrength

Isaiah: 00:00

What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the THP Strength Podcast. Today we are going to be talking about max isometrics. I just finished a cycle focusing on them and we're going to go over what it is exactly, what the benefits are, the science behind them, should you do it, should it not, the downsides of doing this type of training. But before we get into that, I wanna give a quick shout out to our sponsors over at thbstrength.com.

Isaiah: 00:23

If you wanna jump higher and get healthier, go sign up. They are the best vertical jump trainers on planet Earth and quite possibly the universe.

John: 00:33

Use code THP for a 10% discount for the first month Yeah. At checkout.

Isaiah: 00:39

And it's already like a 80 something percent discount.

John: 00:41

Yeah. If you don't sign up at this point and you've been on the edge, I think that's stupid. There was a time when it was much, much, much, much, much more expensive and

Isaiah: 00:53

It's gonna go back to being

John: 00:54

Yeah.

Isaiah: 00:54

Much more expensive.

John: 00:55

I was able to to plea make a plea deal for you guys to try to convince my colleagues to to try to discount it for a bit to help the people that think it was a little bit too expensive. You'll be grandfathered in if you sign up now. But if you don't, you're gonna be SOL. So that's my pitch for you guys. Anyways, getting into it.

John: 01:14

Isometrics, why we did it, what what the what the focus of it was. I guess we should start always with what we usually do, is what is your experience with isometrics in general? Not necessarily even max IOs, but if you've done those, what are your experiences with those as well?

Isaiah: 01:29

I think most people are probably thinking of isometrics as only being done for knee rehab because at this point, it's very popularized. Everybody uses them now for knee rehab. Shout out Ebony Rio, Jill Cook, and also myself. And my experience with it in the past has only been tendon rehab.

John: 01:52

I never had you do pauses or anything?

Isaiah: 01:54

I've actually yeah. I've done pauses. I've done squats with But like sub max

John: 01:58

mole, right, or something?

Isaiah: 01:59

Yeah.

John: 01:59

Okay.

Isaiah: 01:59

Yeah. Yeah. The way we did it this cycle was the first time I've done them like that, which was literally try to push an immovable object as hard as possible. And it was definitely the first time I did it with non knee extension movements. We did them with Nordic hamstring curls, we did it with seated calf raise, with standing calf raise, with hip thrusts.

Isaiah: 02:22

So it wasn't just the squatting, the knee extension stuff that we were doing isometrics with. And I guess we're about to find out to see how my performance increases or decreases or stays the same after this deload week and potentially later down the line because as we know, you might not see the results of your training until months down the line. A lot of people kinda attribute their success and jump performance in a training cycle to what the current training is when it could really be the previous few months. But we're about to see the effects of it. I will say it was very difficult because intent has to be really high.

John: 03:01

You know, most people thought it was idiotic, quote unquote, from one of my followers. Yeah. The most idiotic form of training he's ever seen, which I guess if you don't know anything about sports science, it would seem that way. And we haven't even really defined what an isometric is, so I'll do that real quickly. Isometric just means same length.

John: 03:18

It's anytime you're contracting under or doing a muscle contraction where the length of the muscle isn't changing. So holding a push up, holding a squat, holding a single leg squat, if you held a dumbbell like this, those would all be examples of isometric contractions. And then the intensity at which you're doing it is how close you are to moving that weight. Right? So for example, if I put if Isaiah's max is three hundred pounds in something and I put three zero five pounds and that's his absolute max, he shouldn't be able to move that weight no matter what.

John: 03:50

Right? He shouldn't be able to move that 305 pounds. That would be his isometric max is the point at which he's overcoming that object at rest and moving it upwards. So that was the focus of what we were doing here. It was not a submaximal isometric contraction.

John: 04:06

It is him, like he said, moving as hard as he possibly can against an immovable object, which again, it looks ridiculous. I know a lot of you guys who did the programming during COVID, I had a lot of these sorts of isometrics because there was no other option for a lot of people. Right? They didn't have access to a weight room, but you had a tree in your backyard and you can push. You could try to move it.

John: 04:28

Like, you could try to pick the tree up or or lift

Isaiah: 04:30

It it up does look ridiculous. It looks ridiculous. You don't know what we're trying to do, it does look ridiculous. But even that, something looking stupid is kind of a a relative term.

John: 04:40

Yeah. It's only stupid if you're stupid.

Isaiah: 04:43

Like, if you've never seen a a back squat exercise, and then you go like put like hypothetically, if you don't know what training is or anything like that, and you see someone like back squatting, it might look weird.

John: 04:55

Ridiculous. Yeah. It's just uncommon is what I would say. Yeah. Yeah.

John: 04:58

It is a relative

Isaiah: 04:59

People people attribute something looking stupid to novel novel things.

John: 05:03

And it yeah. And if they don't understand, they just think it's stupid. So why we're doing isometrics? Like I was saying, Isaiah, maybe initially, what would you say, three years ago, I had kind of explained what I thought was happening during intense elastic activities or stretch shortening cycle activities. Yeah.

John: 05:20

And Isaiah at the time kind of understood it, but more or less just trusted me. I tried to explain the why, but it was very It's

Isaiah: 05:27

hard to

John: 05:27

wrap obscure. It was complex. I mean, it is. It's complex. Yeah.

John: 05:31

It's a complex thing. It's hard to wrap your head around and really understand, especially if you have formal education in sports science. I would would say exercise science.

Isaiah: 05:38

Actually not hard to wrap your head around, but there's a lot of things you need to understand in order to understand it. Like, you need to know what a stress shortening cycle is. You need to conceptually understand what a muscle lengthening under tension means, what a muscle staying the same length under tension means. But from there, I think visually, how you visually represented it. Yeah.

John: 06:01

That's why I wish we had the whiteboard.

Isaiah: 06:03

Yeah. We need the whiteboard. The whiteboard would

John: 06:05

be It's okay. I'll do my best to explain it.

Isaiah: 06:06

Especially because you're little thing.

John: 06:08

Yeah. And this is gonna be a reoccurring topic that that we'll revisit, right? It's not gonna go away because this is a new concept. It's something that a lot of people, again, don't understand fully. We don't even fully understand it, but we are seeing it in research.

John: 06:22

We've actually seen it in research for years. But we're seeing it in different muscles at different joints during different activities, not just running in the soleus and the gastroc and the Achilles. So that all said, basically there were multiple focuses when doing this. When I am programming, I'm trying to surf the force velocity curve. So I'm trying to go from lower intensities to higher intensities, and I'm doing that by going from lower velocities, lower weights in multi joint movements, to faster movements, specifically eccentrically and isometrically, and higher forces during those activities.

John: 06:58

If you've ever seen the force velocity curve, you know that the highest forces happen during eccentric muscle contractions where they're moving really, really fast.

Isaiah: 07:05

If you don't know what a force velocity curve, Google it right now. Yeah. And make sure it has both

John: 07:10

Those tails. Yeah. You need the eccentric tail and the concentric tail. And so on the eccentric tail, what you'll see is really high velocities, really high forces at the the far end tail. So that's what you should end a progression with because training needs to go from low intensity to high intensity.

John: 07:26

It's also what happens when you look at specificity, right? Like jumping is a fast eccentric movement. You go through fast angulation negatively and you get a stress shortening cycle and you jump off the ground. The thing you need to understand is that curve is viewed in isolation of a muscle fascicle. Meaning, when they are testing, they're looking at a muscle in an isokinetic dynamometer, They're basically putting you in a mechanism where they're saying, look, this machine is going to push your leg down no matter what, and we're gonna do it at different angles per second, angulation per second, different velocities.

John: 07:59

Where can you resist it the most or lift it up with the most force? And what they see is, look, when we force your leg down at 300 degrees per second in knee extension, you produce the most force. When you are just asked to push into something isometrically, it's kinda middle of the road. And then whenever you're asked concentrically to move across different angulations, it's either less or equal to that of isometric, right? So as you move faster concentrically, like really, really quick on an isokinetic dynamometer, so it's going to move up no matter what, you're pushing into it.

John: 08:29

You know, they see basically that your force output during that is really low. That makes sense. Right? However, that is only looking at a muscle fascicle, just the muscle's ability to contract. Usually they might do multiple reps where it's like up and down, but it's kinda weird, you have to learn how to do it as an exercise.

John: 08:47

If you've never seen an isokinetic dynamometer, it's a really expensive machine they have in sports science labs. So that's how they got this graph, right? That's great. That's dandy. But what we're not taking into consideration is collisions.

John: 08:58

Meaning when your foot strikes the ground and you have a stress shortening cycle happen. Now, this whole concept was thought to follow the exact kind of logic that we see with the ice connect dynamometer. However, that is not necessarily what happens with really, really good athletes or even animals like a cheetah or a deer or something else. What you see these these organisms do, specimen like Isaiah, is that their muscle actually produces a lot a lot of force, or better yet, the joint is able to produce a lot of force or stiffness via a different, I would say, mechanism? Yeah.

John: 09:37

You say mechanism? Yeah, yeah, Basically the muscle whenever you're doing a negative action, meaning like if I were to have my ankle joint go into dorsiflexion or I were to go into knee flexion, for example during a squat on the down phase or during a depth jump, we'll just use a depth jump. That's gonna be the easiest way to explain it. So what happens in really, really good organisms is that they're able to take advantage of their tendons' properties to propel them upwards, right? They stretch.

John: 10:04

Yeah, they stretch them. And so if you stretch a tendon, it stores energy and then it releases that energy, right? So you're looking at two things. You're looking at the muscle and the tendon, or the muscle fascicle and the tendon. We call this a musculotendinous unit.

John: 10:16

So it's a whole unit. So what you'll see is during a stretch shortening cycle, the musculotendinous unit is lengthening, and then you get to the bottom, and it's the same length, and then it shortens, right? And that makes sense because, you know, your quad muscle will lengthen during the down phase, and then it's at a set length, and then it shortens as you push up, right? That's why we see all the muscles tighten up and get really stiff as you flex your leg. So during a jump, actually, what happens is while the muscle muscular tendinous unit is lengthening, you have to ask yourself, out of that two components, the muscle and the tendon of the unit, one of them is going to be lengthening, and the other is going to be either lengthening or shortening, depending.

John: 11:00

Right? So we know that the whole unit's lengthening. And we know that the tendon is stretching, right, in good organisms, like a cheetah or Isaiah. We know the tendon's stretching. It's storing energy.

John: 11:12

So if the whole muscular tendinous unit, right, is made up of that muscle and that tendon, we know that the tendon is lengthening, right, as the joint is negatively moving and it's, you know, you're flexing, if we're looking at the quad, then the muscle, for that to happen, can either lengthen, it could stay the same length, or it could shorten. Now which of those options would give you the biggest amount or the greatest amount of stretching in the tendon? And the answer is slow or just concentric muscle action. So I'm gonna say that again. While the muscular tennis unit is lengthening, the muscle and the tendon can each correspondingly lengthen or shorten.

John: 11:55

In good athletes, the tendon lengthens, okay, because the muscular tendon is unit lengthens, but if you wanna stretch it more, the muscle can continue to pull upwards and stretch the tendon even further. That would be during the landing phase. So what I'm saying is during an eccentric joint action or a negative joint action, the landing phase of a depth drop where we think we're developing eccentric strength, we're actually developing potentially concentric strength in really, really, really bouncy, elastic organisms. Right? And so similarly, this kind of go or not similarly, I guess, in as a consequence of this, when I'm looking at programming, I have to take this into consideration and say, well, if I want ath if I want my athlete to act like the cheetah, then I need to train his muscle to be very strong and slow, or just concentric, relatively slow concentric activities to keep pulling on that tendon and stretching it.

John: 12:51

Now this only happens in collisions. You would have a really hard time training this in a weight room activity. So in the weight room, when we're we're looking at doing certain things, there's layers of specificity. Right? So if I'm looking at a squat for example, like an eccentric squat, that's a really slow movement.

John: 13:10

Right? Isaiah has 500 pounds on his back, but it's really relatively slow compared to him jumping. There's different focuses by, you know, that I'm trying to address when he does that. I'm trying to get more type two motor recruitment, alpha motor recruitment. What does that mean?

John: 13:26

That means he's recruiting a lot of type two muscle fibers because it's a very heavy eccentric movement, which we know recruits a lot of type two fibers. So we can have hypertrophy of type two fibers. We can see those muscles increase their activation during that activity, which could potentially help him jump higher because again, type two fibers are very explosive. We're also seeing potentially the tendon is under a really high load for a relatively long period of time. That could stimulate the chondrocytes or the tendon cells to produce collagen matrix that is either gonna help him feel healthier or potentially even improve his stiffness in that tendon, right?

John: 14:00

So it's not necessarily, you know, and this goes even further into like the actual changes to the muscle fiber, right? So it's not necessarily just looking at, well, what happens during elastic collision, like running or jumping or something like that. We might have underlying goals that we're trying to achieve in the weight room. And I always say this, the weight room should be at least one degree of separation away from whatever it is that you're doing on the court or the track, in this case dunking. Right?

John: 14:28

So when we're looking at jumping higher, and you're asking, how does isometric play a role into this? Not all, every single muscle in his body is probably functioning under that perfectly elastic scenario where the muscle is stretching concentrically and and and or the muscle is shortening concentrically and stretching the tendon a lot. Not every muscle in his body is probably doing that. And we don't even know necessarily if he's doing that. The second option, is what less fantastic organisms do, is the muscle will contract isometrically.

John: 15:02

So while the joint is angulating, the muscle is actually anchoring in place. So the musculotellinus unit is still lengthening, right? But it's not lengthening quite as much, and so therefore it's not stretching the tendon quite as much. And so what's actually doing the stretching is the fact that angle or his angulation of that joint is changing. That's what's stretching the musculotendinous unit.

John: 15:23

Now the muscle, again, can do something, the tendon can do something. We know the tendon's stretching. So if the muscle stays the same length, then the tendon's not quite as long, the musculotendinous unit could still stretch a great deal, and you will store a lot of energy that way, especially if you have a lot of angulation, and a really stiff tendon, and the muscle's really strong asymmetrically, it might not be strong enough to keep contracting concentrically, but you're gonna store more energy than you would if you did an eccentric And now in this scenario, you have the muscular tendinous unit is lengthening, like it should, and the tendon is lengthening. But now, what if the muscle's lengthening? So if the muscle's lengthening, while the tendon's lengthening, the tendon is actually staying at a relatively smaller distance of stretch.

John: 16:08

It's not stretching as much. So if you're doing a eccentric muscle contraction during a collision, the tendon is not stretching as much as it could be if it were doing a concentric muscle contraction.

Isaiah: 16:17

I have I have a a question I wanna interject here.

John: 16:20

That is why we did maximal isometrics. Yeah.

Isaiah: 16:23

So I I I have a question. You know how when the muscle stretches, you get the stretch reflex? Right?

John: 16:30

Yes.

Isaiah: 16:30

Stretch a certain amount, muscle spindle activates, boom, you get a stronger contraction. If the muscle

John: 16:37

It's too slow. The stretch reflex doesn't happen. It's too slow.

Isaiah: 16:40

But you get more stretch from the tendon.

John: 16:42

Right? You will Yes. You get way more force

Isaiah: 16:45

in the more beneficial than having activated that

John: 16:47

The stretch stretch reflex is is a theor it's a hypothesis, and it's theoretical. Here's the thing, stretch reflexes happen it's a slow reflex.

Isaiah: 17:00

Yeah.

John: 17:00

It's not very fast. It's definitely slower than spring.

Isaiah: 17:03

Yeah.

John: 17:03

Right? And so, yeah, you might have a stretch reflex happen, you might have a lot of force, but if it took you four hundred milliseconds to to have a stretch reflex. That is probably not advantageous, right? So I don't necessarily think that the stretch reflex is the driver of very, very yeah, high of elite performance. I think it's too slow.

John: 17:22

And there are different types of stretch reflexes, like there are short latent ones, there's medium latent ones, and long latent ones. Typically the bigger the muscle fiber, the slower the stretch reflex. So for example, in your fingers, have or your eyes, you have really short latent stretch reflexes. Right? Yeah.

John: 17:38

Now the the bigger the muscle, and this applies for typically the type of muscle fibers in the in that organism. Right? The smaller the fiber, the more fine tuned it is, typically the faster twitch it is. Like your eyes. Your eyes are very, quick.

John: 17:53

They can't even move Like squirrels. Yeah. They are. Like squirrels. Birds.

John: 17:56

But if your bicep is a really large relative to your eye muscles, you're fine finite movement muscles. And so, you know, they don't they contract much more slowly. There are more Yeah. More slow twitch fibers in there so that you can gradient movements. Typically the more distal a muscle is, meaning towards the outer parts of your extremities, the more you're gonna get those fine motor units, those small motor units where they might have more type two fibers.

John: 18:26

So again, if you're looking at jumping, we're looking at big ass muscles moving a really big distance relatively slow compared to like a squirrel or a bird or a lizard. And so, yeah, that's that's basically why. Now, it it throws a wrench in things because if you were functioning on like a a three month macro cycle, you're gonna run you're not gonna have enough time to really follow a perfect low intensity to high intensity progression. Mhmm. Because remember, if I'm looking at the muscle fascicle, it goes eccentric as the highest most intense, then isometric, then concentric.

John: 19:07

Right? So if I'm explaining it the way I just explained it to you, it's actually the reverse. The most intense thing is concentric, and then isometric, and then eccentric, right, in terms of intensity. The most intense thing on the tendon is if it's concentrically stretching during a collision. And so I propose what you would wanna do is not necessarily view the weight room, or how it differs, I guess, is when you start adding velocity.

John: 19:33

So even though the muscle is even

Isaiah: 19:37

though

John: 19:37

the muscle is contracting concentrically slow, maybe, the muscular tendon is unit is moving very, very fast.

Isaiah: 19:45

Yeah. Right? Almost like opposite. In weight room movements, the specificity is like flip like flip flop, but in a collision.

John: 19:52

It's yeah. It's the other way. Exactly.

Isaiah: 19:54

It's like in a weight room, you wanna train from low intensity to high intensity, which is what you said earlier, concentric to eccentric. But then in collisions You go the other way. It's the the other way is is the specific.

John: 20:06

So you would start with less intense elastic collisions where you don't have as much energy stored and released in the tendon. You you you have less stiff, less aggressive changes in joint angulation velocity. Yeah. You can really look at at look at it as like what is the muscular tendon's unit doing, right? Yeah.

John: 20:25

If the muscular tendon's unit is moving very fast and changing its length very quickly, then odds are you want it to act more like a slow concentric muscle action Yeah. And stretching the tendon a lot.

Isaiah: 20:38

So how do you become if you're an athlete and let's say you're one where you can't produce a lot of force and you're somebody that in a stretch shortening cycle you're having eccentric contraction in your muscles

John: 20:51

You're a bad athlete. Stretching.

Isaiah: 20:52

How do you How do you go the other way? Make your muscles act concentrically slow or isometrically during a stretch shortening cycle? What what type of training would you have to

John: 21:01

do The caveat to that is the muscle has to have very high innervation to be able to handle those quick quick stretches, right? Yeah. The tension in the muscle is going up really quickly. Yeah. Really, really quickly.

John: 21:16

It's just that the muscle is still contracting concentrically despite that, right?

Isaiah: 21:20

Mhmm.

John: 21:21

It's basically like, oh, the tendon is stretching, Right? Oh, the my momentum is forcing me downwards because I launched myself into this jump or I've stepped off a 60 inch box. My body wants to melt into a a puddle of of clay or slime, but my muscle is and so my muscle has to generate a lot of tension really quickly. Right? Yeah.

John: 21:40

So what muscle action you do during that, I don't know if we know the answer to that. Right? I think the key is train. The key is train.

Isaiah: 21:47

It's Yeah. Follow the training rules.

John: 21:49

The training principles and you'll see that specificity. I don't think we necessarily know how to bridge the gap between those two things, but I think we'll need Biometric. To know

Isaiah: 21:57

Biometric. Yeah. That the geologic? He's a yeah.

John: 22:00

Hypothetically, yes. But I don't necessarily think that that's even the the full answer. Right? Yeah. Because you can't just do a bunch of plyos and say that's gonna fix it because then, yeah, maybe

Isaiah: 22:10

you are storing more

John: 22:11

energy in the plyo and during the plyo and now you're fucked. Your Yeah. Achilles hurts, your knee hurts, you're overloading too quickly, your nervous system goes the other direction because it's too intense basically. Right? So I think you have to follow all of the same training laws.

John: 22:25

It just adds a layer of complexity or I would say not even complexity. I would say it adds a layer of advanced understanding to what you're to what you're doing in the weight room and on the quarter and understanding how the interplay between those things is and maybe adding more understanding Yeah. To why you're doing what you're doing when you're doing it. Right? It's almost like it it takes the it takes the lens off of it's like sunglasses.

John: 22:57

It's like removing sunglasses or or like the first time you see the full vibrance of something. Right? Yeah. If you haven't for, if you were blind and all of a sudden now you can see fully. Getting glasses.

John: 23:07

It's like getting glasses. You can now see things in more detail and understand things in more detail, which makes might make you a better coach if you know how to use

Isaiah: 23:15

What's interesting is like like you've mentioned before, we don't truly know what's happening in a stress shortening cycle. Like we can hypothesize and we can run experiments and stuff to get our best possible clue into what is happening and there is a chance that for example training isometrics or heavy eccentrics there is a chance that it's not transferring in the way we think it's transferring, but I still think there's benefits. Oh, yeah. Because one, you're getting variety.

John: 23:44

Yep.

Isaiah: 23:45

And we know variety spurs on adaptation. Two, we're training really intensely. I was literally just reading in my studies, in my daily, I quiz myself every morning, but it's saying you recruit type 2B fast switch muscle fibers when intensity is 80% or higher compared to maximum intensity. So we're training when we were doing those isometric I'm frickin' hitting the bar getting an insane amount of peak forces in a short amount of time and the intensity is really frickin' high and we know high intensity transfers well to to jumping to jumping high. So I think even if it's not transferring in the way we think it is, there are still benefits to that training.

Isaiah: 24:26

And I think we've seen time and time again, I mean, time I train heavy ass eccentrics, I tend to jump high Yeah. One one to two months later after that. This is my first time doing isometrics, but I can generally have a good sense of You're not doing after after ten plus after ten plus years of of training, I I can tell when something is helping even though it's very intuitive.

John: 24:51

And the other thing I don't

Isaiah: 24:52

I don't wanna use the word woo woo, but it's like an intuition. Like, I just know like Oh, this feels jumping. This feels Yeah. This feels specific. This feels like it's gonna transfer well.

Isaiah: 25:00

I get that sensation from isometrics.

John: 25:02

We never because I wasn't a 100% certain, and I I'm the test. Usually preach this. Yeah. But I still added in eccentric or concentric muscle contractions. It's not like all we did were just maximal isometrics.

John: 25:17

I still did

Isaiah: 25:18

Max strength work.

John: 25:19

Max strength work, you know, both well, concentrically. You know, eccentrically, you would have to put a shit ton of weight on the bar. I mean, technically, he's still getting that during jumping at some muscles. Well, we think. We know.

John: 25:30

What's really cool You're still loading eccentric muscle contractions.

Isaiah: 25:33

What's really cool?

John: 25:33

Catch of a power clean.

Isaiah: 25:34

Is what's really cool is we put just above weight. We like estimated what I would be able to move possibly off of the pins and the whole cycle for hip thrust. We didn't do it as much for the calf raise because it's difficult with the setup that we had. But for hip thrust and for the squatting, we put just above the weight that we estimated we could move and it was cool to see that on the last week of the cycle, I moved the weight finally like hip thrust. Yeah.

Isaiah: 26:01

I was was I literally got the four zero five off on a single leg and I was able to hold it there where I couldn't even budget the first two weeks. Then the squats, I moved three fifty five when I couldn't move that weight the first two weeks. So it's it was cool to see that there was adaptation. I did get stronger. That was pre You generated more force.

Isaiah: 26:22

I

John: 26:22

think too, like, we look at Alex Natera's work, he's been studying this stuff for a long time, and he's a really, really good sports scientist out of Australia. Like, I saw the concepts, and I understood the concepts, and I wanted to apply it in a way that made sense with was systematic with our method. Right? Like, think you could try to do this stuff yourself, but it has to fit into your system. And I wasn't looking at his system and going into his full lecture and understand I didn't take his his course or anything like that.

John: 26:51

If you're interested in that, you're welcome to do that too. For me, was like, how can I integrate this in a way that makes sense Yeah? That's gonna keep Isaiah healthy, that's gonna meet the demands that I'm seeking to meet or address the focuses that I'm seeking to address? Wanna see really high intensity. I wanna see a 100%.

John: 27:06

So I used waves. So that I and I but I wanna see him stay healthy. So how do I do that? Okay. Maybe I don't go three waves at a 100% or a fifteen second rep at a 100%.

John: 27:14

I'm gonna build him up into that. And there's tons of ways you could progress that, but that was the way that I chose to do it that I kind of got feedback from him during the cycle and I I feel like it worked pretty well. It took a lot of time. That's the only downside. It took a lot of time.

Isaiah: 27:26

Yeah. The workouts were long. What what's cool too about this method is like, if you guys don't know how what THP is like, it's basically we have a ton of training cycles. I mean, I've said the number before, don't even remember, but it's hundreds. We have hundreds of training cycles and we load them up for our athletes.

Isaiah: 27:42

And what's cool is we've kinda tested we have like hypothesis. Right? We there's the science. And we're like, okay. According to the science, we feel like this training method could work.

Isaiah: 27:51

And then we kinda test it out. And then I jump higher, and then we start using those training cycles on our

John: 27:57

athletes. So sometimes I'm definitely He is definitely the experimental rat

Isaiah: 28:01

that we just And there's like four or five there's four or five THP athletes that are always like, let me let me do what Isaiah's on right now. Like, I wanna like Alright.

John: 28:08

If you wanna try to be in that testing pool of what other people but actually, you know, it's interesting too. Alex Ackerson. I think it was was it Alex Ackerson?

Isaiah: 28:16

I think so. Yeah.

John: 28:18

Is that I think that was it. Yeah. Don't He he did it because we we have an Alex Afer as well. But Alex Afer is the one that was like a one foot jumper. High school, was a freaking long jumper.

John: 28:29

Alex Ackerson is someone that's been with us for a while on and off and came back to us and was like, I'm ready to focus. I'm ready to get all after it. I've tried a bunch of different programs and I was like, alright. He's like, I'm ready to train hard. It's four zero five.

John: 28:39

Deadlift went up. He, you know, improved a lot in the first month. And the second month, was like, I wanna do the hellacious cycle that they're doing. And I was like, go ahead. And that was the last one you guys did.

John: 28:48

That was really hard. Yeah. So he did that full cycle, and he was jumping super high last week.

Isaiah: 28:54

Oh, really?

John: 28:54

Yeah. And then he was like, I'm trying isometrics now. And I'm like, okay. You can try it out. But Yeah.

John: 29:01

It's good to have multiple people try it. But it what's also interesting too is like, I can control or understand a lot of the variables that are happening in my athletes' lives. Whereas like in a research study, that doesn't happen. I can control for a lot of it, and I am pretty objective when I'm looking at it, but also with some understanding of what variables may have played a role in As that

Isaiah: 29:24

opposed to in research, what's usually the case in research.

John: 29:27

They're not shit athletes.

Isaiah: 29:28

Where it's it's one, it's two foot jumpers. Almost no research on it. And then we're actually elite athletes. And it's funny because in in research and just, I guess in the general sports science world, they'll look at someone with a 40 inch vertical, and they'll be like, this is an elite athlete. Their vertical is 40.

Isaiah: 29:43

But for us, it's like, no.

John: 29:44

That's a That's that's they're like good. They're good. Alright. Yeah.

Isaiah: 29:47

But it's like good. What happens when you're somebody that has a 45 plus inch vertical?

John: 29:51

That's like you're getting freaky, but then

Isaiah: 29:53

What happens if

John: 29:54

have a one of one Yeah. You're not a freak athlete at that point. You're like a you're a spec you're literally a specimen. You're you're you're something that should be studied underneath a a fucking knife that needs to be cut open and looked at. And that's basically what I have the luxury of doing and it's nice he trust me So enough to do

Isaiah: 30:10

I do wanna oh, it's telling you two variables because Austin's doing the training cycle.

John: 30:15

Oh, yeah. So we got

Isaiah: 30:16

to get to see kind of different perspectives on this.

John: 30:18

And he's a one foot jumper, which is

Isaiah: 30:19

I do also wanna talk about the downsides of this training. What were things you saw? What are some dangers to it? And I and like I guess common things that could go wrong with this type of training.

John: 30:29

So there were a couple things that I thought of when I was riding the cycle that I was like, this is here's some problem areas with it. One is the time. I think it's really, really time consuming and I don't think that you can really have a strong emphasis on it unless you're willing to dedicate a long, like, period of time to it. Two is the logistics. It's really hard to set up some of the isometrics.

John: 30:52

Like if you didn't have a partner, can't do Nordics. The calf raises, I mean you could risk bending the freaking bar. If you have multiple people, it's really hard to do. I mean you can do it. We set up the safeties so the j hooks were facing the other way and we just pushed into them or we loaded a lot of weight on the bar.

John: 31:07

It looks ridiculous. That's another thing. So if you're gonna do it at public gym, it's just gonna you gotta have some balls and be really confident. And then the other thing in terms of like the actual biomechanics and physiology, it well, not even necessarily phys I guess, yeah, physiology, we'll call it that, is like back health was really on the cusp for you. I think we had to be really careful with some of the the the volumes, even though I was really cognizant of

Isaiah: 31:34

it. Yeah.

John: 31:36

We were kind of addressing two things at one time. I wanted to maintain or increase max strength because we had a four month macro cycle written out leading into dunk camp and it was important that we addressed max strength. And then the other thing was the cartilage. So you're basically mushing up the cartilage during these exercises. You're pushing the bones together really aggressively for a decent amount of time.

John: 31:59

And I tried to find positions where there was a lot of articulation, specifically in the knee. So you're looking at the cartilage behind the around the femur and the tibia and then also looking at it on the backside of the knee. You have a lot of pressure at a quarter squat position and the very, very bottom of a squat. So I had to find positions where Isaiah felt like, and it also depends on your individual anatomy, but I had to find positions where it felt comfortable for you to do that. So if you're not an athlete that understands her body really well or has that kind of direction

Isaiah: 32:33

Be wary

John: 32:33

and Yeah. Be wary. I

Isaiah: 32:34

probably wouldn't try it.

John: 32:35

Yeah. I like if you did if I would have done this in a quarter squat, I would have ruined my my PFP. And I've done I have done it I've done it with a single leg in 2020, 2021. I had a safety bar with I think I had like three or four blues on each side with a safety bar, I stood it up with a single leg because I was like in a quarter squat or eight squat, which is the next progression for isometrics. Like that would be the next tier of intensity, but I'm not gonna do that, right?

John: 33:00

Like, because I had to balance, you know, the the keeping you healthy and improving performance. And that's a delicate line that I am constantly walking of like, well, don't go too much this way or you'll fall off or don't go too much this way or you'll fall off. It's like a tightrope. And I have to communicate with him pretty regularly. So I think, you know, for you, it was probably brutal.

John: 33:23

Yeah.

Isaiah: 33:23

It was definitely scary. It was every session was going in there and just being like, oh, I feel like I am on the cusp of getting hurt.

John: 33:32

What's nice is that isometrics are fairly safe. So Yeah. It's hard to hurt yourself on an isometric. Would have to scarier.

Isaiah: 33:38

Well.

John: 33:39

I've seen people hurt hurt themselves on ISOs. Dylan Dylan Shamir did a mid thigh ISO pull when I was trying to teach him an isometric or teach him a power clean and teach him the positioning. And he, like, pulled something in his abdomen. And I was like, oh, just got doing donuts. Just another MPC.

Isaiah: 33:59

Just for for for those of you guys that if if you see us randomly getting distracted, yesterday, there was a break in, like, down the street, and the guy told us about it. Sign up for THP to

John: 34:09

get Isaiah out of the hood.

Isaiah: 34:10

Just now, a guy just came up mid podcast and tried to sell us garage electric equipment, and now there was a guy doing donuts.

John: 34:17

Yeah. In the intersection.

Isaiah: 34:19

Just sign up so I can get out of this. Yeah. Please.

John: 34:21

Please help him get out of the out of the hood. It is it's been it's been fun. It's been fun here. I'll miss it, but it's time to it's always an adventure. You never know what the NPCs are doing

Isaiah: 34:32

But in in the neighborhood. I think I think that's a good place to cut it. I guess we'll see what happens to my performance unless we impulsively dunk today.

John: 34:40

Oh. My mental health might need it. I

Isaiah: 34:45

I'd be quiet. I would be down to sacrifice a de load. At this point

John: 34:49

Would you would you sacrifice a 52 inch day?

Isaiah: 34:52

This is You would

John: 34:53

give up a 52 inch day for a 48

Isaiah: 34:55

is this is my reasoning with my training so far. After trying to test last last cycle, I've come to terms with the fact that I'm not gonna be able to PR my vertical on a vertex

John: 35:07

Until dunk camp?

Isaiah: 35:08

Unless the environment is literally perfect. Like, it's like a rented gym and I'm around other elite guys.

John: 35:13

You don't think that's gonna happen this Saturday

Isaiah: 35:14

or Friday? I don't think I don't think that would happen. I also don't want to bring a vertex to LA Fitness and stuff like that.

John: 35:21

When is

Isaiah: 35:21

the next

John: 35:21

time you think that happens?

Isaiah: 35:22

I think dunk camp is literally the only time I'm ever gonna test my vertical.

John: 35:25

Like maybe once

Isaiah: 35:26

a year? Maybe actually when we do low room session outside, I would probably bring the Vertex out and like touch it and stuff.

John: 35:32

Even then, dude, like But it's not ideal. Are we gonna do? There's a car coming. Then what do you do?

Isaiah: 35:36

Yeah. Well, sidewalk.

John: 35:38

That's where

Isaiah: 35:38

I had it before.

John: 35:39

Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That could work.

Isaiah: 35:40

But I've come to terms of

John: 35:42

the fact It's not ideal. That's still not ideal.

Isaiah: 35:43

I've I've come to terms of the fact that I probably won't PR on a Vertex until camp, and that's my goal is to be Pete Yeah. To PR at that time.

John: 35:55

Okay. But would you give up a 52 inch dunk day where your head's above the rim and, like, are you okay trading a 52 for a 48 or 49? Yeah. You didn't do that confidently. Are you sure?

John: 36:08

Yeah.

Isaiah: 36:08

I'd be cool.

John: 36:09

You sure you won't be depressed? Yeah. Yeah. What if it's 45 or 46?

Isaiah: 36:13

Look. Post dunk day depression happens when I dunk for way too long. I was

John: 36:20

supposed to And you have no footage. And I have no

Isaiah: 36:21

footage. Yeah. Yeah.

John: 36:22

And you need the content.

Isaiah: 36:24

Yeah. Oh, he's making I'm trying to run a business out here, man. I need content. I need to feed my child.

John: 36:29

I need to get out of your neighborhood, bro.

Isaiah: 36:31

I need to get out of the hood, man.

John: 36:34

I agree. Okay.

Isaiah: 36:35

The last two weeks for context, the last two weeks, the camera wasn't recording and we didn't realize it. So there was no footage. And then the second week, my camera ran out of battery, like forty five minutes in and I didn't it realize got it. Kicked halfway through the basketball game. So I've had no and and it's been good jumping days both times.

John: 36:55

Isometrics? Anyways, if you're interested in signing up for coaching, go to thbstrength.com. Use code THP at checkout for a 10% off your first month discount. And then also make sure you like, comment, and subscribe if you're on YouTube. It helps the algorithm.

John: 37:10

It helps us stay motivated. Go over to my YouTube, which is John Evans, I think, six two six five. It might also be TSB Strength. I don't know. Check it out.

John: 37:18

And then lastly

Isaiah: 37:19

get the workouts.

John: 37:20

You do get the workouts there. There's the behind the scenes over there.

Isaiah: 37:22

You literally get free workouts.

John: 37:24

Yeah. It's pretty good. And then also, if you are on a streaming platform, make sure that you give us five stars and subscribe. Again, this helps us, helps our podcast grow and helps us keep producing awesome content for you guys. Thanks for listening, and we will see you guys tomorrow.

John: 37:40

Sweet. Peace out.