How Elite Speed Is Actually Built
Alright. What is up, guys? Welcome back to the THB strength podcast. We have the same guest, the same glorious, infamous guest that we had last week, last Monday, and that is the Rolf Oman. Rolf Oman.
John:The probably one of the best strength conditioning coaches I've maybe ever met. I dare I say that. I give you that compliment, Rolf. And also one of my favorite old people. Like, I I say that every time.
John:He's one of my favorite old people. So we have Ben is also here. Ben has lots of questions. And, yeah, we're gonna I have I have one that's been eating me away for for quite some time since last week, and that was about plyometrics and DIS and as it relates to some of the the loading that you've done, whether it's with the Quantum or with Kaiser or with mass and airbase loading at the same time, the combination. So Can you You know,
Isaiah:I need to find DIS real quick for
John:Oh, yeah. Dynamic dynamic isometric dynamic isometric strength, and it is essentially a measure of how well you convert eccentric energy into concentric velo. Would you agree with that, Rolf? Yes. That assessment?
John:So how this is fair enough. Fair enough assessment. So how would you differentiate between what you get from a plyometric stimulus to what you get in a Kaiser mass based and air based loading setup?
Rolf:Well, I mean, the whole reason behind the quantum was that I I think I touched a little bit on on it during our last show, is that in Sweden, they did with pro hockey players. They did a project called Brakeman. And essentially, what they did is they they set up an electrical system, some electrical motors, and they lowered super maximal eccentric loading on these hockey players. So they would just follow it down and try to break 300 odd kilos, whatever it was. And then they would stop it at when they got to, for example, 90 degrees, and then the athlete would then well, they they'd raise it back in under the to the ceiling again.
Rolf:And then they would do, like, one rep at a time. So they do three or four reps that would constitute a sit. And then they'd rest and then they do this again. So they did this over multiple athletes and over quite a period of time. I can't remember exactly how long it was.
Rolf:I think it was something like three months, four months. Basically, what they found and what they got out of that was that all these athletes got immensely strong. I mean, they got ridiculously strong. And that meant then, okay. So what are they gonna do with this?
Rolf:Okay. Which which is good. Maximum strength for them, you know, blah blah blah. But it didn't really sort of do much else. And and in fact, when they looked at at speed and power, there was actually nothing had happened.
Rolf:In fact, in in a in a lot of cases, these guys were were actually worse. And then through the Malmo Sports Academy and my my very, very long colleague and and good friend, Kenneth Rigby, who's produced nine decathletes over 8,002 over eight and a half thousand points. So he he's knows what he's doing. And he and I have worked with MuscleLab for many, many years and with ForcePlates and and this sort of thing. Now what we did was that we got a bunch of people together and sort of took, you know, over from where they left off the Brakeman project.
Rolf:And we started looking at this and thinking, okay. So you get we know you get real strong with eccentrics. But, you know, what what is what's going on? And basically, what we did was we started testing these hockey players doing a a squat jump from they'd go down to about, you know, so it's 90 degrees, hands on their hips, stop for three seconds, and then they jump. And then they would do a counter movement jump.
Rolf:Now what we saw with these hockey players were that they virtually had no difference. So they they jumped, let's say, 45 centimeters in the squat jump. And then with the CNG, they some of them jumped actually a centimeter less or they jumped two centimeters more. So that told us then very, very quickly that first of all, these guys, what they've done before and with this project that had been done with Brakeman, there was capacities increasing. But when it came to utilizing the straight shortening cycle fast, nothing happened.
Rolf:So that that prompted us to to to think a little bit, and that's when we came up with what we call the EA index, which is the elastic
John:Is it activation? Elastic?
Ben:No. Elastic Elastic is the acceleration index.
Rolf:Index. Yeah. Exactly.
John:That is Fucking nerd.
Rolf:So what we so so what we did with that was that we took peak velocity and divided by time to peak velocity. So in other words, it shows what you can actually do in the stretch shortening cycle. And then so we started with these hockey players and and, I mean, their their EA index was, like, three, four, five. It was it was, you know, virtually nobody that had, you know, double figures, you know, above 10, which surprised us. But then once we started training and actually doing things velocity wise, eccentrically, these EA numbers, they just crept crept up.
Rolf:So that then told us that, okay. So now all of a sudden, you can do things at at high velocity. So that then got us thinking And,
Isaiah:sorry to cut you off. What exercise was this being measured on?
Rolf:The actual test itself?
Isaiah:Yeah. The EA index. Like, how like, what test were you doing to get the EA index?
Rolf:Same same thing again. A squat jump and a CMG just to see what was happening. Yeah. And then we then we looked at the standard test that we standardized back then is what we are still using, And that's twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, and a 100 kilos in a Smith machine preferably where we can just test horsepower. It's like a it's like a human dynamometer.
Rolf:You strap a car, you know, into a, in a dynamometer, and you spin the back wheels and you see how much rear wheel horsepower.
John:Oh, we know all about that.
Rolf:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So you don't you don't look at technique.
Rolf:You don't look at, you know, what kind of chassis do you wanna curve in in curtain corners and in braking. The only thing we're looking at is rear wheel horsepower. So that's why we do that test in in a Smith machine. We we don't wanna fiddle around with with technique or balance. It's just down to whatever level the athlete feels that this is where I'm strong.
Rolf:They they pick the arrange of motion themselves. All we want them to do is move 20 to a 100 kilos as fast as possible, both eccentrically and concentrically. So basically
Ben:Does your Smith machine not have, like, a a ceiling on it? Because I I feel like I would just smack my head if I try Well, that's
Rolf:that was the first yeah. Exactly. Well, that was the first thing we had to do was go fortunately, we have a company in Sweden that makes a little bit bars and and and equipment there, Elaco. They And also they also make a lot of machines, you know, like, you know, squat racks and all this. So we had them make for for the for the Malmo Sports Academy.
Rolf:They actually made a Smith machine. I think it's three three twenty.
John:Made you you got Allego, the Allego, the most premium, premier Olympic weightlifting equipment you can buy, to hand build you a Smith machine.
Rolf:Yeah. They build one for this for the Malinois Sports Academy. That's a flex. Yeah. It's pretty good.
John:Oh, that
Isaiah:that is Everybody has a price. Everybody has a price.
John:Has a price.
Rolf:It's so once we once we started that project, we realized then very, very quickly that, okay, there are there's something here that we that there's no literature saying. And that is that the the amount of or how you sort of ignite or how you start with what we now know is the filament winding theory, which Randy called DIS. That's where the DIS comes on. That's that's Randy's name for for what actually happens. So what we found was that there are two triggers.
Rolf:One trigger is is as we saw with the Brakeman project is load. So slow heavy eccentrics that would trigger the filament winding adaptation. But as we see, what actually transpires with when well, we know there's a calcium wind up. But obviously, there are other things that are that are playing into this, which, you know, people who are lot smarter than me can can work out. Ben, for example.
Rolf:The thing that we've the thing that we understood was that if we're doing things very slowly, then we can't we can't have this elastic property with the stretch shortening cycle. So therefore, that we saw then was was coupled to to velocity. So in other words, we had to move fast in in the eccentric portion to elicit what we needed. But as we then started with those tests, we then saw that filament winding actually has the second trigger, which is velocity. So depending on where sort of on that scale your event or or sport comes in, when it comes to eccentric demands, you are going to use either either one of those two or somewhere in between or or a combination of them.
Rolf:So once we understood that, okay, so it's velocity. That's that's all it's about. Then we that's why I built the Quantum. Because now what I wanted to do was to be able to to pull apart the eccentric phase and load heavy eccentrically, and then in a very short fraction of time, deload and then explode concentrically. Mhmm.
Rolf:So the quantum can do that.
Isaiah:Can you can you describe what the Quantum is for the people that don't know that are watching this?
Rolf:The Quantum is the first product that that was built by my original company. It was originally, the story is that it it was. And what it looks like today is two towers that are connected with the Smith machine. Originally, it was not. Originally, it was all the technology was housed inside a free motion dual cable cross because we had a a an agreement with Freemotion and its CEO, Patrick Halt, who was who I met in in in the Laker headquarters in Sweden.
John:Rolf, is this, is this mostly is this what it looked like initially?
Rolf:That's what it still looks like.
John:That's what it still looks like?
Rolf:Yes. Okay. That's what it still looks like. So the
John:See if I can find a picture here. Keep going though.
Rolf:Yeah. So it was in a in a dual cable cross, and then it was going to be put in the technology was gonna be put into Freemotion's machine series. But, unfortunately, the company that owns Freemotion is a mass massive big company, an American company called Icon. They own Reebok. They own Brunswick.
Rolf:They they are a monster. I mean, they're a billion dollar company. And the the people up the top of that company, they did not believe in this technology. So Patrick was told that not to go ahead with with what the the agreement that he had signed, and we had to scrap the project and everything else, and that was it. So long story short, we had to that was in 2009.
Rolf:So we were all ready to go to market in 2009. See, that's a good picture of it.
John:Yeah. So it did it pretty much this is what it looked like when you when you had it
Rolf:more like? But you can but you can see here that that the Smith the Smith machine is is fairly low, but you can do a lot of stuff in it. But it was still not ideal, and that is because a lot of the ceilings where it was going in were too low.
John:Were low. Yeah.
Rolf:So they couldn't fit in a three meter, which is what we wanted. But the so the whole thing I canned, and then we had to find a a chassis to put the the technology in. And what was then done by an industrial designer is this monstrosity that's in front of you. Because these well, the the the thing is these towers, they're built out of one piece of steel and it's about 10 mil thick. There is one single machine in the whole of Scandinavia that can actually that can actually fold the the the steel into that shape.
Rolf:It's actually folded. And then once it's folded to back to one side, then they they weld at in the back. So they fold it this way, and at the back, they then in the spine, they they then weld it. And then they So
John:it looks like yeah. I see the free motion.
Rolf:So the mow the motors are down in the bottom of it, and you've got an arm. Sorry. The motors are sitting at the at the end of the arm, my mistake. And then the the lines go through the the that that that arm, which you can then move from the the position it is now up to the vertical or virtually vertical, 45, 60 odd degrees. So that gives you a lot of a lot of scope.
Rolf:It's got about five meters, six meters of line. So you can move about five, six meters out. So you can actually use it as a quantum where it's two machines connected to the Smith or you can use them as two separate systems. And it's got two gears. Gear one is up to, I think, 30 kilos, if I remember right, and eight meters per second.
Rolf:In gear two, it can generate by itself without any external load. It can generate close to 300 kilos at four meters per second.
John:It's ridiculous. So you can go crazy, crazy fast. How do you
Isaiah:get the index loaded too much and you're too weak.
John:You die.
Ben:How do you fail it? Like, yeah. That's what I was thinking. Like, I got I I feel like it would just bury me.
Rolf:Yeah. No. No.
John:It's 300 kilos.
Rolf:Can I can I I'll be a pain in the neck? My my charger is not working. I've gotta go get another cord.
John:Yeah. We'll pause you.
Isaiah:Pause it.
John:Alright. So Rolf grabbed his power cord. He couldn't figure that out, but it's okay. Rolf, you know, technology is not your expertise. We won't hold it Just against so you know, Rolf and I are friends.
John:So if anyone watches this back and like, how dare you disrespect Ralph? Oh, man. I'm gonna be like, don't worry. We we have a good chat. We we like to bust each other's chops.
John:He tells me I coach circus, animals, and, I tell him he's old. So that's just our relationship. But, yeah. So he he got his power cord. Good for him.
John:But you were saying that there's two gears. One of them can go eight meters per second with 30 kilos. The other one can go 44 meters per
Rolf:second. It starts it starts at 30 kilos because that is virtually what you what the Smith machine weighs with the Olympic bar with all the couplings and everything connected to Smith machine. The lowest weight that you can have on the on the 10 o economy is around 30 kilos.
John:So how fast can you move at eight meters per or sorry. How much weight can you move at eight meters per second?
Rolf:80 is it 80 kilos, I believe? Sixty, eighty kilos?
John:So you could hit at eight meters per second. You could be moving it'll move downward at 80 kilos. Yeah. So you can't put it
Rolf:at 300 kilos and put in. But the thing is, you can then you can then add external resistance to that, for example. So you can you can bump that up. So you would That's the that's the whole thing.
John:Like, hypothetically. I mean, this would be a terrible idea. But you would ex so what what could you ex you could accelerate well, the mass based loading would be, like, it's gonna be capped at accelerating at gravity, but you could accelerate it further 80 kilograms of load at eight meters per second. So how fast? Like, if you put, like, a 100 kilos on it, and that would ex that would be that would move downward.
John:You know, like, whatever
Rolf:At eight meters per second. If you drop underneath it as fast as you possibly could, it will it will come at you at eight meters per second.
John:It'll still okay. Yeah. Wow. That's fun. That's good fun.
John:I'm not gonna lie.
Rolf:No. And that's and that's that is sort of the whole what we've now, you know, what we now know. And with the filament winding, how how that actually triggers and what you can do with that. And then if we then look at what Randy was doing with Kaiser racks is where it's it really gets interesting because with the Kaiser rack, you can actually mix air and mass. So you get this air this hybrid loading.
Rolf:So once you sort of get to about a fifty fifty air mixture and and mass so if you've got, let's say, a 150 kilos, what, 330 odd pound and 75 kilos is air and 75 kilos is mass. This 150 kilos, it completely it does completely different things than a 150 kilos of mass. Mhmm. It it is it is so alive, in the eccentric phase. It's ridiculous.
John:Because So is that where you're hitting the craziest EA indexes?
Rolf:Yeah. The what is what is interesting about the Kaiser is that there is virtually well, first of all, air is faster. The air air cylinders is faster than gravity. So that sort of gets us past that discussion. And then the thing that you sort of get the athletes to to train is their willingness to to drop down as fast as possible eccentrically.
Rolf:So once you get into this zone, which we would call the last sort of three degrees when you slam on the brakes, that is what Randy would then cause the DIS. And that's what we now know is there is no no lengthening of fibers in that phase. In that phase, there are other other things, and we now know it's myosin and actin have locked, and and Titan is is making this move like a bungee cord.
John:Right.
Rolf:So the fact that we then can get into that phase and do it successively, so we'll add more and more air to to the the the equation. So we'll have a a mixture of 80 mass 20 air, and then it'll be seventy thirty, sixty forty, fifty fifty. And now all of a sudden, things just they go absolutely nuts because this thing is moving so fast.
John:So what is the what's the highest? Because well, two two questions. One is that I tested on the belt squat with Donovan, DBT, on the on the protocol you said. So I I think it was, like, put your body weight I think it was body weight with with Patrick. You did body weight, 50% mass or band loading, 50% mass loading, something like that.
John:It was something like that. It was as fast as you can, six reps up and down. Right? The highest watts I could get peak peak wattage was only, like, 2,000 with Donovan. And Donovan was like, he's he's very powerful, which is not even remotely close to what Patrick was hitting.
John:How did you hit like, is it the sampling rate too low, or is he jumping at the top or how are you hitting the peak wattage that you're seeing?
Rolf:It's interesting because we've we've seen that with, you know, across a broad spectrum of people who do that test with the the Kaiser system or with bands. At first here in Australia, there was there was no there was no rack here, so we were using bands. So we basically, what we did was we we used two bands that had 15 kilos of resistance each. So we put one on each side. And then when the when the bands were at the maximum length when they hit that position on the on the box, we're using a soft box, then the the bands were giving about 15 kilos each.
Rolf:So we're we're able then to accelerate into the eccentric phase much, much, much quicker than what the athletes could do. And and as I said, when they slam on the brakes, they they have to slam on the brakes. Seriously. And and what what we saw was that after about normally, when you do a power testing, the first rep is is is usually whatever whatever it is. The second rep is better because now we've been able to utilize the elasticity between the first and the second rep.
Rolf:And the third rep is, in most cases, most athletes will will get a better reading after the third rep. There are some that hit her on the second, but majority, I'd say eighty percent of people will hit their peak numbers at three. Then four drops back to about where two was, and then five drops again. Six, seven, and eight, they just keep dropping if we keep banging away with with with numbers. What happens is that we've never really and the thing is when we've done those, we haven't which we we we haven't hadn't really understood the mechanism behind.
Rolf:Why weren't we getting this when we were doing high numbers of of of of power? So if we're doing sixes and eights, why weren't we seeing that things were really, you know, with the Muscle Lab system? Why weren't things being absolutely going nuts on reps sort of six, seven, eight, and and and downwards? That was very simple because what Randy had been saying for years is that he said, I think that the filament winding when it remember I said there's two triggers. One is load, one is velocity.
Rolf:The velocity needs to be above 80% of volitional velocity. That's
John:that's percent above above volitional.
Rolf:Yeah. So it's gotta
John:be So if you're not
Rolf:so if you're not saying fast enough eccentrically, it won't it
John:won't hit the power output.
Rolf:It it won't trigger it. No. It will then trigger it as it would if you're using load. So it it you're actually moving fast, but let's say you're moving at 70%. It's still it's the system then still thinks, oh, this is too slow.
Rolf:And I can I can handle this by just turning on the mechanism for filament winding for load? And that's what it does. It doesn't it doesn't go into the next the next level. So you've got to get above 80%. So that's what we figured out then that the faster we we can get these athletes to drop underneath this, then the better it is.
John:And What sort of what sort of eccentric velos do they have to hit for that to happen? Do you know? Peak velos?
Rolf:No. Well, you can hit this at at at it's sort of, like, one and a times body weight. You don't need massive
John:No. But I'm saying, like, what peak eccentric negative vertical velocity? Do you know what they're hitting downward?
Rolf:Oh, you're probably looking at about 1.7, 1.8 and above.
John:Of negative vertical velocity.
Rolf:Yeah. If if we re if we rewind a little bit to get to get you to understand where where all this sort of came from. What is that? We did a project, Kenneth and I, back in 2011, I think. Yeah.
Rolf:'11 or maybe '10. Whatever. So what we did was we wanted to find out what happens if you do isokinetic with accentuated eccentric into an isokinetic. Because isokinetic, we were told by all the the the the bright sparks out there that you're only gonna get strong. Nothing the power is not going to increase.
Rolf:So we said, okay. But that that but they what they've been doing is slowly centric and then into an into an isokinetic. So it's slow, slow. So we thought, okay. What happens if we go real bloody fast?
Rolf:And then because of the quantum, I can I can tell the quantum whatever whatever speed concentrically? So I can set it at o point three meters per second. So it'll go full bore down. As soon as I turn it around, it will only allow o point three meters per second up. So then we started doing that.
Rolf:And what we found, and this was really interesting, for 10 sessions 10 sessions at two sessions a week, usually on a Monday and a Thursday, their numbers went completely off the chart. Absolutely off the chart. So they were getting massively more ex
Isaiah:Oh, no.
John:Uh-oh. We lost Ralph, guys. I'm gonna pause it. They got massively explosive, and then you disappeared. We we it was like a cliffhanger moment.
John:What happened?
Rolf:Yeah. Well, that was that was intentional by me. Yeah. So what we found was once we started doing this protocol was that it capped off at about 10 at about 10 sessions. Once we got to 10 sessions, the system just couldn't sustain this this type of work.
Rolf:So then all of a sudden, everything just plateaued. It didn't matter what we did. So we did twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen sessions, and it just after 10, it just plateaued. So we then realized, okay. So somehow we're we're into some system here that that the body, for some reason, understands.
Rolf:But once it gets to around eight, ten sessions, it then says, no. I'm not doing this anymore. My understanding is and what I believe is that was the cause of this was the fact that when we move very, very rapidly into the eccentric phase and start slamming on the brakes. The only thing that's able to handle this is fast twitch fibers. So once we turn this around and go back concentrically, we're we're utilizing probably one of the biggest adaptations that we have in strength training and that is time under tension.
Rolf:So now all of a sudden, these fast twitch fibers are getting subjected to time under tension at at a rate they've never been before. So they're they're pushing virtually for three seconds and then bang back down and pushing for three second, man, bang back down. We found two things. Four, five reps and you're absolutely you are cooked. And three sets.
Rolf:That's it. Three sets of five, you can walk out of there. And what we found then was that every athlete that we put into this protocol, they got ridiculously powerful. To the extent that we we we ruined a the season of a of a a a 13 for the high hurdler, who is is one of the best physical specimens we've we've tested in in Sweden. What happened was that well, basically, in the hurdles, you've got the first hurdle.
Rolf:You're coming out of the blocks. It's it it's at thirteen seventy two meters. That's the spacing. It doesn't move. Now all of a sudden, if this athlete has improved power by 30%, guess what?
Rolf:He's gonna be about that far further forward. Now all of a sudden, his his lead leg doesn't come up high enough and he can get over the hurdle. It's still on the on the rise as he smashes into the hurdle. So we messed up all his timing. So for the whole year of 2012, it was either a race he would he would smash the first three, find a bit of rhythm, and then come home like a freight train.
Rolf:Or he would he would find the rhythm and get away, but then it would fall apart in the middle. So, you know, it was it was just a crap season.
Isaiah:And this was the the e the really fast eccentric with the isokinetic?
Rolf:Yeah. Yeah.
Isaiah:How much loading on the eccentric?
Rolf:Wasn't it
John:six meters per second, Rolf? Didn't you have six meters
Rolf:per second? Well, we're we're moving it, you know, somewhere in in those vicinity four, five, six meters per second. It didn't really matter because it once you get up about over four meters per second, it's it's it's more less academic because
Isaiah:it's, like, technically can you low like, can you lower eccentrically? Like, if I were to just do a counter movement jump, what would be the the low on that? Oh, by the bottom?
John:Whatever gravity is.
Rolf:Yeah.
John:And how far you lower? The further you lower, the faster you'll be going. Yeah. So, like, in a normal counter movement jump, you might only lower, like, I don't know, maybe, like, 10 inches, let's say. It depends on the strategy.
John:Some guys will not lower a lot at all. Some guys will lower a ton. But Yeah. Depending on how far you fall and when you start pushing back up and braking, that will determine the peak below you hit, negative vertical velocity you hit, but it's not high. It's not very high, like, all.
John:I like like, for example, Donovan, when he did with bands, he's hitting like, he's basically he's trying to, like, pull himself okay. Actually, a better example is, like, on a clean. You know, when your feet come off the ground? Yeah. That's because you're picking your legs up faster than your center of mass is accelerating downward.
John:Right? So unless you pull yourself down with the bar, right, against the inertia of the bar with your arms, you can't accelerate faster underneath it. That's why I get low weights. You'll see guys with the bar stomp and, like, throw the bar up. Right?
John:Because Oh. They can't pull themselves down fast enough.
Isaiah:So if the counter movement jump, you're just weightless. Essentially, you're dropping. Because what it feels like, guys, like, I'm throwing myself down.
Rolf:This is a this is a good point with Zion, when you when you say wait list, because a lot of people tell Randy and myself that Kaiser has no eccentric phase. Because the fact that when you move fast, the the the the weight is actually moving faster than you in in some in some sense. If you drop very quickly under a Kaiser rack or or or or a a Kaiser squat, you don't actually feel any any loading per se. But what does happen is as soon as things that you slam on the brakes, then
John:Yeah. That's when all force hits. That's the same as a counter movement jump.
Isaiah:That's like where the magic is happening. Like, that's where
Rolf:you're acting.
John:That's where DIS is, baby. That's why it has to be at a joint specific angle. And because most people most people, when they ask me, oh, how do you want me to do these depth jumps, or how do you want me to do these fast squats, or how do you want me to do these really fast eccentric squats? And I say, pick the angle that you jump at. And they're like, what do you mean?
John:And if you look at the cycles I've written, you'll see that in there.
Rolf:And, Isaiah, if you look
John:at Evan's four, you need to break at the angle to hit the DIS and because you only got, like you said, Ralph, what, three degrees where you're actually gonna get that right
Rolf:The last three degrees is where where everything happens. So if you look at then what what, you know, what we do and I started doing many, years ago after a a huge influence of Charlie Francis, of course, was to to as we went towards the season, the the range of motion decreases, thus acceleration increases. So for example, we'll we'll move from cleans from the floor to hang cleans, to drop hang cleans. And and then hang cleans become in the next phase, they we don't actually clean the white because that's that's completely irrelevant. A lot of people think that, you know, you're getting triple extension if you do high pulls like clean pulls.
Rolf:It really it's not it hasn't got anything to do with with triple extension per se. It's it's it's just an it's an expression of being able to to to do hip extension. That's what we're after. So that's why we go over to, for example, step ups. And what we've seen with step ups, which, you know, I think you and I have talked about, John, is that we Yeah.
Rolf:We go from 30 centimeters, which is virtually 90 degrees, and then 20 centimeters, and then 10 centimeters. Why 10 centimeters? Because if you look at the the the amount of of knee flexion, hip flexion at 10 degree at 10 centimeters, that's getting very, very close to what you're actually doing when you're running at peak velocity. And we've actually got down five. And and it's interesting because once we go to five centimeters, we don't call it a step up now.
Rolf:We call it a step down because you're actually stepping down. You're not stepping up per se. And that is that most athletes that we've tested, they can't handle five centimeters. They simply can't coordinate at that speed.
John:Yeah. It's just too it's like you can't without the proper, like, stress shortening cycling that you would see in, like, a sprint, it's just not you just can't set it up fast. You can't
Rolf:So if we then fast track backwards, when Randy said to me the first time, and he said, probably the most important quality of running fast and determining factor is is your elasticity. And this was something new because everybody was telling you, you know, it's at university and so forth, it's all about fiber. It's all about fiber. If you haven't got enough fast with fiber, you can't move fast. Well Mhmm.
Rolf:That's not the truth. We've got we've had guys that we've tested in Europe with biopsies, and we know that that they're extremely high in fast with fibers, two a, two b, and yet they can't run fast. Why? Because they simply can't reposition. So they've got no elastic quality, so they can't get the wheel around.
Rolf:So they get caught with a big wheel here and there's this tiny little thing like a shopping cart wheel at the front and they go nowhere.
John:So They just can't reposition the foot in front of the body.
Rolf:Can't reposition it. So going back what we just said is that when doing all of these eccentric, testing and and back and forth, we very, very quickly we can see then that with a a decrease in the box height and the increase in in output as far as as time to peak velocity and so forth, that athletes will reach a level where all of a sudden somewhere around ten, five, eight, nine centimeters, that's when they they bottom out. That that is the equivalent to the elastic threshold. They simply can't reposition at at these velocities. So therefore, then that tells us, okay.
Rolf:And we're we're still trying to figure out, you know, where how do we how do we measure the difference between that and when we see on the on the ten eighty Sprint? Because I'll have to bang my own drum here and and and and brag a little bit. But in back in I think it was 2013, I went to Holland. Was it '13? No.
Rolf:It can't be '13. It's gotta be 1516.
John:Oh, fifth No.
Rolf:No. You told me the other day. It was no. It was with the the first the first models of the '10 80 sprint that that I got to Rainer. The first one was the first one that was ever used was Randy in 2015, which I went to China with to Randy.
Rolf:Now year later, I'm in Holland with with Rainer and his head of biomechanics, doctor Paul Bryce. And they're using a Maglev ray laser and everything and then measuring velocities and ground contact times. So we're we're pulling guys at at speeds above what they could actually run unassisted. So we then I then said to to Rainer, I can tell you when the guys have reached that limit. And he goes, what?
Rolf:I said, yep. I've worked I've worked out how to do that. And he said, no. Bryce didn't believe that. He said, no.
Rolf:You need lasers and all that to do that, mate. I said, no. So we had a little experiment. So we ran a bunch of guys, and then I would say whether they were positive, negative depending on what I saw in the in the in the the metrics on the sprint. And I got every and I got every one of them right.
Rolf:So they realized then, shit. What if how the hell did you work this out? And what I what what I was doing was when we only had the quantum, I was doing stuff where I've got enough line and I've got a force plate that's connected to my muscle lab. So then I was running over the force plate and I was getting pulled over the force plate. And then I could see at different speeds what was happening to the Newton meters because everybody breaks.
Rolf:When you when your foot hits the ground, even if you're positive, you're still breaking. There is a breaking in the support position in sprinting. Now once you're up at at peak velocity, that that constant, that newton meters that is actually if you're getting pulled, you're you're gonna get a newton meters which balances out and it becomes very the average sort of gets very, very tight in the in the the width of how much it fluctuates. So that tells us then that, okay. Now we know when they're positive, what the new meter should be.
Rolf:And then we added a little bit of speed. The new meters stayed about the same. We added more speed. Now it's starting to creep up. We added a bit more and it went too high.
Rolf:Then we looked at the laser, and then the laser would then give us exactly what we what we already knew. That at that speed that we're pulling, let's say, we've gone it from 10.5 meters per second to 10.7. At 10.5, everything's okay. 10.7, bang. They hit the elastic threshold.
Rolf:Now they can't reposition. So we've been using that metric, a few of us, for close to ten years. Ten eighty says it doesn't work. Once we once we found where these thresholds were, we realized then that these numbers, they they were correct. And we've been using them for well over a decade.
Rolf:So we know that it is imperative to to find where the elastic threshold is because assist you've got two types of of of speed when it comes to getting assistance. It's either assisted speed where you're getting assisted up to how fast you can run maximally. Maximally. And what you can do with that, which for example, Rainer did with one of his athletes, they actually did speed endurance assisted. So they could run more speed endurance because he's getting a little bit of assistance to to get through the acceleration phase to get up to to that speed that they wanted.
Rolf:So instead of, let's say, doing three by 50 meters or four by 60 meters, they could they could do five or six at 60 meters. So now all of sudden speed endurance volume had increased because we're able to do a little bit more because we're now not taxing the system as much getting to the to the velocity that we needed. So the next part of that is is over speed, and that is when we are now running faster than what we actually can on our own. And now comes the critical part of that. There is something called the elastic threshold.
Rolf:In other words, how how quick can I run and still reposition? Now normally, if you've got a ramp at about three degrees, we know that, you know, literature and testing has shown us that if you get on a ramp and get about a 20 meter run down a ramp three degrees, you're gonna you're gonna get pretty close to and most people will get pretty close to to finding the elastic threshold. So we've been told 33%. But like everything else in sport, these are arbitrary numbers that, you know excuse the the the no no punt intended. But a lot of these professors, they don't they don't coach people.
Rolf:So their numbers are sort of they're they're just yeah. It it fits into a nice table. In reality, we have athletes that just completely break all these molds. We get athletes in front of us that do things that just completely off the chart. I'll give you an example.
Rolf:CT, Christian Tyler, three time Olympic champion in in the triple jump, second longest triple jumper of all time. We pulled him at 12 and a half meters per second, and he was still positive.
John:Just so everyone knows, Usain Bolt's top below, I think, is 12.1, I wanna say.
Rolf:12.3. No. It's bit higher.
John:Point three, Ben? Is that what it is? 12.3.
Rolf:So
John:he's running faster while being towed without breaking than Usain Bolt. So he can reposition and still hit the ground, but he just can't can't get there.
Ben:What's max speed like without towing? Do you know?
John:Like, eleven five? I think it's eleven five.
Rolf:Yeah. Somewhere in about eleven five. So we're about a meter per second, which is massive. It's it's just it's off the chart. You know?
Rolf:It it there's no 3% here. We're talking, you know, sort of, you know, if you think 11 and a half, what's 10% of that? That's that's that's 1.15. So he's he's virtually three three times over the limit where, you know, what we're taught at university, you can't run faster than three Three five. Three, yeah, three degrees or 3% higher.
Rolf:Yeah.
John:But What's I've always said it. Christian Taylor is the greatest athlete to ever walk the face of the earth, in my opinion. He's just he's a specimen. He's a specimen.
Rolf:I mean, he's a guy that got bored of triple jumping and goes to 400 meters and runs the sub 45.
John:He's a unit.
Rolf:I mean, that's that's He's
John:a bouncable. He's a kangaroo.
Rolf:That's just insane.
John:Yeah. And you look at the forces on the ground, and he's just he's a one of one he's just a one of one athlete.
Rolf:So Which which which then sort of gets you back into the plyometrics bit because what is
John:I was gonna say, so how do we jumper. Right. Yeah. When you when you when I you know, initially, posed the question as what about Playos? What makes DIS all the stimuli you just talked about?
John:Why not just play why doesn't why don't Playos do it? Is it related to the countermovement jump conversation we had? Because I could just fall from a higher box. Right? Or is it that you complement what you're doing on the track with plyos with the quantum air mass base loading?
John:How do you how do you view plyometrics? Would you rather do them?
Rolf:Well, yeah. It depends on the athlete. And and, you know, I mean, if we look at, for example, some of the sprinters that I've had and they've run, you know, fairly quick, you know, ten ten, do we do a lot of pliers? No. But we do a lot of of DIS work and and short step ups, that sort of work.
Rolf:And then we and then we run fast. Mhmm. Is that
John:just just not seen tolerable?
Ben:Is it is it, like, is the DIS stuff more tolerable than plios? You just get a higher volume
Rolf:Yeah. I this is what I this is my my view on it. I think plios, for example, if you look at one of the most successful throws coaches of all time, Vesterin Hofstensson, who who coached Daniel Stall, the Swedish discus striker to an Olympic gold. He had a couple of guys before that who who won discus goals. He was one of the first throws coaches to take out plyometrics for these big heavy guys.
Rolf:Once you start weighing sort of hundred kilos and above, then plyos really you need to be very, very careful because they they do work, but they also you know, what they what they do to the system and how much recovery you need out of the system is is becomes crucial. And the the heavy you are, the more it's virtually like if you look at, you know, sort of a Nordic Nordic hamstring. How long do we need to recover from a Nordic a session of Nordic hamstrings with a sprinter before we can go out and run at maximum velocity? Anywhere between seventy two and ninety six hours.
John:Yeah. It's a lot.
Rolf:Yeah. It's a lot. So, therefore, do we we don't have that that sort of time frame within a weekly program or a nine day cycle to to wait four days before we can actually do something at an with with intent. So therefore, if we then can can more guide the and limit to what we're doing and do it progressively with loading in the gym, From what I've seen and and my own results is that we are able to do this. And I think the the key takeaway is people don't break down.
John:Yeah. And I think too, you know, some of your warm ups do integrate. They integrate that. You know? You're gonna have
Rolf:Well, yeah. You some stuff in there
John:that is inherently close to to shock loading, but it's not it's it's graded, you know, because Patrick took me through kind of what I don't I don't know if that's what Randy does too, but
Rolf:you give what you do? Has a
John:Or sorry. Randy. I said Randy, but Yeah. Well, what's Randy, other one?
Rolf:A bigger warm up than than what I have in that sense. And they tend to especially Rainer tends to do very I mean, what people will say when they see our warm ups is that was a big warm up. Well, it sort of it was warm up, and then it's it's sort of transformed into a it's part of the of this of the actual session.
John:Workout. Yeah. This is where I've done it.
Ben:Session or for a weight session?
John:For sprinting. Because when you do the sprinting, I don't know, Ben, you probably haven't seen it, and I'm not gonna give out raw secret sauce. But Oh. I'm not gonna give out raw sauce. Sorry.
John:But I'll tell you this. I'll tell you right now, boys. Listen up here. This warm up, it it is you know, Patrick took me through it, and, obviously, Patrick is Ralph's son for those of you that don't know. And it is incredibly progressive in a very neurally relevant way.
John:So it it starts smaller ranges of motion, lower forces, goes to bigger ranges of motion, higher forces to
Rolf:you
John:know, I'll just say that one of them is like a single leg hop, but it's like a pickup. You're going fast, covering distance. Like, that is intense, but the volumes of it are low enough that it doesn't piss you off or anything like that unless you were already pissed off coming into the session. But it then you know, that you might start with something like a dribble run, you know, where you're just, like, fast. And then it goes into that hop.
John:Rolf, I don't know if we lost you here. Few technical hiccups. Don't worry, folks. It's not my fault. Just BC, being BC.
John:Yeah. So we say that that's his son's term before computers. I didn't think of that myself. But we were talking about how this gets progressively more intense than you do and integrate some of those plyos into into the into the warm up. And then you were kinda talking about how some people look at Raynaud and Randy's warm ups, and they're a little bit more, would you say, like, extended longer kind of
Rolf:They're more more extensive. Yeah. They are.
John:Why did you kinda move away from from that? You just felt like it flattened guys out sometimes?
Rolf:Yeah. It's a good question. Why did I yeah. I I just I just think that, to be honest, I don't think I've had really the genetic thoroughbreds that these guys have had. So therefore, I've had to be, you know, sort of a little bit more careful about their their neural systems Yeah.
Rolf:In in the sense. But but then again, it's it's interesting because what we what I've learned is that as athletes get faster and faster, they they tolerate less and less of of high volume neural loading. They they become they they tolerate it, but they don't they they can't tolerate more volume. And that is I think that's one of the biggest mistakes people make when athletes are getting older. They're sort of pushing 27, 28, 29, 30.
Rolf:If you look at somebody, you know, there's been a few of them. Asafo Power was one. He was still running, you know, sub ten seconds at, what, 36 or whatever it was. Mhmm. And he's run a 100 sub tens.
Rolf:I mean Right. You know, you've got More than anyone else. Yeah. More than anybody else by far. But if you look at what he did when he actually ran fast and and a lot of other things, the volumes got got less and less.
Rolf:So if if I sort of look at the athletes that I've had, a lot of them, they just simply don't have the backgrounds because, you know, sometimes when you when you get these athletes, they are already 23, you know, 22, 23 years old. And what I've got to work with is what what they've done in the proceeding, let's say, three to five years. That's that's my base. Then I've I've got to sort of figure out, okay, what can I do with them from where they are? And therefore, you know, everything is is going forward, everything is is is a new is a new neural pathways that we're we're creating.
Rolf:If you look at, for example, Jacob, Jacob was a a guy that had run ten forty once. He was a ten fifty, 55 guy on, you know, on his average. That was about what he was capable of running. And to then to sort of run-in, you know, ten ten and and actually be up just under 12 meters per second in peak velocity, that is a huge, huge improvement. Mhmm.
Rolf:And you can only do that if you if you have a a slow progression of of maximum velocities and and eccentric capacity training and so forth. But, I mean, basically, when, you know, when I started working with him, his background in in in in the weight room was was of absolutely no use. It was I mean, it was just which it is in a lot of cases. Mhmm. You know, there's just too much too much emphasis on cross sectional area.
Rolf:There's too much emphasis on volume. And I think that's one of the things that a lot of people get freaked out with both with Rainer and and and Randy when they see what we do in the weight room. We're in and out. It's you know, we're not there for two hours, two and a half hours. Because if we did that with these spreaders who are wide the way they are, they would be toast.
Rolf:I mean, absolutely, you know, toast.
John:What's what's interesting is I've started to test these theories with two foot jumpers. Right? Because, you know, I think you could look at just one of the fundamental programs that I would write or, you know, Mike, one of my mentors, maybe probably not Boo. I don't I wouldn't lump him in there per se because I don't know definitively. I've I haven't looked at enough of his training programs, but I'm sure it's pretty somewhat similar.
John:You know? And you'd say, well, there's a lot of volume of of strength work in there, you know, quite a bit, whether it's the general days. And then I listened to a lecture the other day of boo, and it was like, yeah. This is, like, right in line with what I do, and it makes sense because, you know, it's in line with what Mike was taught, Mike Young, my mentor, and and what I was taught. And so, like, iterations of it.
John:Right? And I have now gone, right, and tested. I've tested that for years. I know what it is utility. I've seen it work thousands of times.
John:I've seen, you know, guys jump higher and higher and higher as he is a prime example. And I think one of the reasons it's so effective is because, and I've said this for many, many years, There's when you're working with thoroughbred horses, you need to treat them like thoroughbred horses. But when you're working with a show pony, you need you need to get that show pony acting more like a thoroughbred. It's gonna be a little different. So I think, you know, that has very much changed how I like, not how I do things, but how I view things.
John:When I maybe to some extent, it's just I don't have the luxury of working with thoroughbreds like you were saying. Right? Like, you know, you're rarely do you come across a guy that is running ten fifty even. Right? I'll be lucky to get guys that run eleven seconds in a 100, and you gotta do some things different.
John:But on top of that, with two foot jumpers, we're I've said this before. We're more like throwers. We are a lot less this two foot jumpers specifically are a lot more like throwers than they are like spinners. They neurally if you look at their RFDs, their early RFDs are not crazy. Their peak forces are nuts.
John:Their zero to 200 RFD, crazy, crazy insane. Peak watts, crazy insane. Like, those are the metrics that separate two foot jumpers from other other athletes. Right? Like, they can just generate a metric hit load of force over longer intervals way better than other people, way, way, way better than other people.
John:But I think if you look at a sprinter, right, you talk about the pop 100, I think, is, like, one of the metrics you guys use. Mhmm. Like, that metric is gonna destroy these guys. You know? Like, like, your sprinters are gonna destroy them at that metric.
John:And I've been looking at force plate data all day, believe it or not. I was talking to Isaiah about it. And I I was looking at my isometric myth type pull data, my countermovement jump data. I jumped up depth jump data from 60 centimeters. It's not very high.
John:It's, like, 18 inches. Right? It's not, like, crazy. And what you'll see consistently, if you look at the isometric myth die pull data, Isaiah's gonna get way higher peak forces than I do. Right?
John:Mhmm. His RFD, early RFD, though, is not as good as mine, and I've said it for years. I'm like a Tesla. I'm crazy good at generating force really, really fast, really, really fast. But once I get the 200 or one fifty, I can't keep ramping it up.
John:Isaiah just he's like, what? Just keeps going, baby. He's on the dyno, and he just pushes past one twenty. I might get there sooner, but he's going one seventy, one eighty, 200. His zero to 200 is way better than mine is.
John:You know? He can just keep pushing. And I think with sprinters, you only have eighty milliseconds upright. And acceleration, you got what? Maybe a 100 you got eighty milliseconds upright.
John:What do you have in acceleration? Maybe a 100 and I mean, the longest stride is block clearance, and that's
Rolf:Yeah.
John:You know? That's one stride. So it's just like, you know, you the early RFD and how you get that early RFD, obviously. Mhmm. Because if you're talking about what happens when you hit the ground, you're getting winding filament.
John:And I think it's just like, what you guys to do that, you have to be so gnarly fresh for guys to be able to hit the ground and be reactive that you cannot afford to do things that gnarly stale you, like leaving bread out to mold by doing heavy squats at super high volumes, super frequently. I think you do it for a time. I think there's, like, a use case for it, obviously. But, like, it just the transfer to training, the transfer of training, you look at, like, RIP Anatoly Bondertruck, I think it just it starts to get it just doesn't it just doesn't carry over. Right?
John:And you talk about TPV and time to peak velocities and how it's an acceleration in dices and how it, like, you know, you you see a major difference there too.
Rolf:Yeah. And I mean, one of the things that we've talked about this in in in the past. One of the things that we saw with TPV very, very early on, and we're talking sort of very early February. MuscleLab came out in '98, and I'm I think by the time sort of 2000 turned the corner, we had already worked out that time to peak velocity is probably the best neural fatigue indicator that there is. Because the the the the bottom line is the the most difficult thing for the human body is to move light objects fast.
Rolf:So therefore, if you've got anything if you wanna see the, you know, the capacity or the the the state of your neural system, throw throw or do something light and fast and use that as a baseline. So you know that when you're in peak form, you can do you can do x. And then you you test x throughout the year, and you you can then tell what if where the neural system is.
John:Right. And it's not crazy fatiguing on the neuro like, the muscular or tinnitus system. So it's like, you know, a squat jump of 20 kilos isn't gonna
Rolf:No. Exactly. That's why we've we've kept 20 kilos in because the 20 kilo squat jump test, that shows us what your TPV is. And we can then see straight away in the warm up that they warm up, they do a couple of jumps, and I can directly see TPV is is two hundred and twenty milliseconds, and it's normally a 100 and let's say, a 160. Okay.
John:So You're thrashed.
Ben:So you're using that as, a readiness assessment before a workout? Yeah.
Rolf:Yeah. Okay.
John:Yeah. Do you do it do you do it before the warm up for the sprints or after the warm up for the sprints?
Rolf:Most no. I don't, actually. I most of the the the TPV testing that I do is is is in the gym. So for example,
John:Monday sprint.
Rolf:Yeah. Mondays, we do acceleration, and then after that, we we go we hit the weight ramp because accelerations and and weights Yeah.
John:They're Yeah. Right.
Rolf:They work really well. So that that gives us then a TPV of of the way the system is. And then we have rest day Wednesday, and then we will have different levels of max velocity work on Thursday. So we'll start running at about 90% and ramp it up 92, 94, 96, 98, and so forth. But that then tells me that the TPV on on Tuesday afternoon, I will know what the TPV is.
Rolf:And that will then tell me that with that nearly forty eight hour, it's not quite, but if you sort of lift in the afternoon on Tuesday and then you run-in the afternoon on Thursday, you've got you've actually got forty eight hours of rest, not not twenty four. So we we usually
John:run You're saying you'd sprint Monday, lift
Rolf:Acceleration is on Monday, lift Tuesday,
John:TPB day. And this is Tuesday after day when you're lifting? So it's Monday morning. Right? You got, like, 36 off.
Rolf:Yeah. So depending on on what we see and where we are in in the in the in our, you know, six week block, we might I might then, for example, if I see that the guys are a little bit sort of they're getting close to that level where it's we we need to have more rest, I'll move the the the wait session. I'll actually move that from the morning. I'll move it to the afternoon or or the other way around.
John:So you'll try to give them more rest as they fatigue?
Rolf:More rest.
John:But if they're fresher, you might even put it on the same day. Like, well, we're good. Like, know, it's TBVs or
Rolf:That is that is what we've, for example, have done with when Randy was you know, we were working together in China. We would do activation in the morning, and they would actually do lifting in the morning. And then they do block accelerations in the afternoon.
John:Interesting. So you would do you go Monday, Excel. Tuesday, you do that fast zappy lift, step up, step downs, whatever, drop cleans off Wednesday, pull work, whatever, if you're Randy. Thursday, you come in and you say Max we're gonna do t p would you do the max v, or would you do the TPV work in the morning? And then this blocks or you do the block starts on Monday, you would go in the weight room first with Randy?
John:Yeah. Oh, interesting. And then Thursday, you'd come in
Rolf:and say And I've done it. I've I've I've I've shifted this around. So we we'll do we'll do accelerations in the morning and, you know, out of blocks and all that, and then we'll lift up to that. That works just as well.
John:I think yeah. That that that's what I would innately
Ben:And you're still doing two sprint days or do you do, like, another speed endurance day? Like, everywhere, when I was going through Randy's course, he talked about he did, like, ACL max v and then, like, blocks and plus then, yeah, blocks plus speed endurance or tempo
Rolf:Yeah.
John:With stew.
Rolf:Yeah. Okay. Usually, what what what we do is we do speed endurance on on Saturdays. And and as long as this before the season starts, so we'll do accelerations Monday, and then Thursday is max max v, and then Saturdays is is tempo. Now the tempo there, it starts very, very sort of, you know, it's it's tempo work that is done at 70% or less because it doesn't text the neural system and it's just to get a bit of an aerobic base.
Rolf:It actually also works your your gastroc for because you're you're doing you're doing running. So we don't do we don't need to do as much standing calf work. We do more seated calf work because of of the of the Type of lingerie can get. Players. Yeah.
Rolf:And then as as time progresses and we get closer to the season, that tempo work is then is then shifted into being more specific speed endurance sessions.
John:Do you find that I mean, I've heard this many times. Speed endurance is like it's like poison. If you dose it too much, too intensely, too frequently, you spoil spoil everything. And
Rolf:Yeah. So
John:you've really gotta be, like, you need that third like, you can get that third day in. You can go excel max v, and you can bleed in some speed endurance. You could go two one fifties, and you're like, we did it. Like, we you could you could do that without just absolutely wrecking guys on that by Monday because then they only have forty eight hours of
Rolf:rest. Yeah. Yeah. The the volume wise with speed endurance is is actually fairly low. Generally, for example, I'll run, you know, sort of it can be at the start of the season, you'll go a one eighty, a one fifty, a one twenty, a 100.
Rolf:And then it it it moves down from there. But it when when it as as the volume moves down, the Do intensity moves
John:you ever have to move it to the Thursday?
Rolf:Sometimes I do. And it depends when we are getting close to the season so that we here in Australia, we compete on Saturdays usually. It's always Saturday competition. So therefore, that Saturday session, the body is then used to racing and doing that type of work on a Saturday. So it doesn't come as a shock for the system that all of a sudden we start competing.
Rolf:So that's why I've sort of I I've kept that. So what by the time we start competing, we are doing accelerations and we're doing max velocity and then we bleed in I think, the the competition because that becomes their speed endurance.
John:Yeah. Yeah. That's what that's what I've seen. Because then you get the highest quality work you can get. I guess I'm wondering, how do the guys you know, they can get fit enough to handle that third day, high middle day.
John:Like, that's tough. I would feel like based on everything I know about you, Rolf. Nice. I know a lot about I know a lot about you, Rolf. Okay?
John:At night, I stare at a computer screen, darkly lit room. All you see is the light, and I just, you know, I just study everything you've ever put out there on the Internet. I know, yeah, I you should be scared. Ask your son. Sometimes I stare at him sleep just wondering if I can peel any information out of his brain that maybe you've bestowed upon him.
John:I that's I try to do that.
Rolf:But I believe he talks when he sleeps, so you should start when he comes home, next time you should start sleeping at time.
John:I'm gonna. I don't have to. I just stare. So my quite based on all those assumptions, being true, how do you manage the neural fatigue from that? Because I would assume that that would be too much Yeah.
John:For Yeah. What you would do. That's a lot.
Rolf:I I yeah. I found that, to be honest, and what I saw, what we were doing in China, even with the all the the resources that we had and so forth, Getting three high neural days, you can do with a very, very seasoned athlete in optimal situations where you've got everything. You've got massage, backup, osteopaths, you've got everything. Recovery is is optimized. But you can only do it even then over short periods of time.
Rolf:So it may be a four week block that you wanna build capacity, work capacity, for example, you can do that. But in my in my book, two days a week, you you you can do that. And that's that's what what I do. And I think that's also one of the reasons then why, for example, I I don't have injuries. It's because we don't we're not we're not sort of, you know, we're not out there on the razor, you know, really sort of, you know, on the tightrope trying to, you know, extract everything out.
Rolf:I I, you know, I've because I've I had an enormous amount of injuries myself because I had a few people that, you know, were looking after me as as coaches and they were they were absolute pots as coaches. They had no idea what they were doing. Hence, nine operations. So therefore, I'm I'm very, very prone to sort of to to having more that I undercook people than I overcook people. And and it's worked out.
Rolf:It's I think it's worked out well. Mhmm. It's it's it's a balance, of course. It's always a balance. Yeah.
Rolf:And, you know, you can you can have everything that you've done destroyed by you know, you've got an athlete and you've got things things are looking, you know, spot on. And they they decide not to talk to you. They decide, I'm gonna go and get some massage. And they don't they don't sort of realize that this massage is gonna affect their their muscular tension enormously.
John:Mhmm. You know, it's funny
Isaiah:There was one time I had a massage right before a big event, and I was feeling amazing. And they massaged my calf, and it was so sore the next day. And when I did the event, I actually, like it, like, pulled a little bad to cut the the event short.
John:You know what's funny is when Isaiah, right before he had the highest bite check he's ever had, highest flight time on a jump, the day before, he got, like, Swiss massage. Think it's, like, you know, what they call it, like, the long smooth strokes. And I was like, you know, I kinda told him, I'm like, I mean, you can do this, but generally, it's not advised. Like, if anything, you know, don't don't hammer anything. You can do it really, really light, but, like, probably not a good idea.
John:He goes out, jumps super well. So the next day, Isaiah or next time, next event, he goes out, gets this massage, and just absolutely freaking destroys him on the table. And then he's yeah. Pulls his calf, I'm like, yeah. We're done with that.
John:We're doing that shit anymore. Yeah. We worked one time. We're lucky to draw, but we're not doing
Rolf:it. Yeah. Now and and this is this is very, very critical because then, you know, we we fight constantly with people when it comes to to to the medical side because, you know, we're not medicals and therefore well, for me, and especially here in Australia, it's very difficult to go in and say that the the institute here, look, you know, you need to rethink what you're doing, you know, in your in your rehabilitation and and your preventative care with these athletes. It's it's it's hard enough to getting them to understand, you know, what they what they should be doing because most of them that are doing the SNC that's being done is is is still ten years behind what Randy's doing, for example. Yeah.
John:And that's like when Patrick dislocated his elbow and they had to because he was like, yo. You don't know who dear old dad is. And they had to escort him. Police escort him out, his dislocated elbow out of the hospital because he's like, what are you talking about? You're not gonna do x, y, and z thing.
John:No.
Rolf:No. I mean, I
John:You get yourself in trouble.
Rolf:Yeah. Well, I got on the horn straight away with Rafal who worked with us in China. He's probably one of the best physios I've ever met. And I said to Rafal, look, mate. I mean, I'm in England.
Rolf:This has just happened. Patrick's just dislocated his elbow. And he asked me straight away, do you know if there's any ligament damage? And I said, no. They've done they've done testing all his ligaments.
Rolf:There's no nothing is torn. Okay? And then he said, look, you've you've gotta get a a special brace that opens up how many degrees of flexion and and extension that you can allow. And he told me straight away, get that. And we got it the next day, whacked it on, and then yeah.
Rolf:And Patrick's elbow is was
John:That's good to go.
Rolf:Need sir didn't need the surgery and so forth. But that's
Ben:They're gonna give him surgery?
John:Oh, you don't understand the level of this injury. It was disgusting. We're talking crap. No. You don't understand.
John:Patrick Rolf's son fell. I've seen the injury. It's disgusting. This thing Isaiah, you would love this video because Isaiah and I love injury videos, but we're talking this thing. You know how your elbow used to bend this way?
John:Well, it ain't bending that way anymore. Like, it was, like, snapped all the way out. Jeez. Disgusting.
Rolf:Yeah. It was it was completely out. So the elbow, like, from here, that his elbow was up was up here. Was It was out there. And there was no no ligaments.
Rolf:Nothing was was was busted. It was ripped or torn. I mean, I'm I'm sure there was, you know, Marshall Scott in his post stretched out, but nothing nothing was torn. And we we managed to get it. They they put it back at the hospital.
Rolf:They put it back in. And then, of course, they, you know, they said, oh, this is gonna be, you know, extensive physio and this is gonna be, you know, operate it's gonna need operation. Yada yada yada. But they've they haven't done anything. No operation has ever been done on his elbow.
John:Well, I want I do wanna cut this off because I know it's getting late for Isaiah. I haven't eaten yet. We can keep talking to you, Rolf, on the horn here. But thank you guys for listening. We greatly appreciate it.
John:We're an hour and fifteen minutes in this. I'm gonna I think I can mostly just post this as is. So if you guys enjoyed this, leave a comment. Let us know. We like having occasionally, we're very selective about our guests.
John:You know? We don't like anyone to bring us down. Alright? Rob picks us up. You know?
John:He's, on the stool lifting us up. He's a big strong guy.
Ben:So if you
Rolf:yeah. My stool goes up and down and so
John:Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Because, well, that's because of your age. But that awaits all of us.
Rolf:But, anyways, I hope you
John:guys enjoyed this. We'll see you next time, and
