Hey folks, Doc Sean Baker here. Don't know what to get your loved ones for Christmas. Get them the gift of grilling with the grill that uses the exact same heating technology as a world's best steak houses. This year, get a free grill cover, pizza stone, pizza peel, apron, and cutting board worth $250 when you purchase a swank grill. The grill heats up to 1,500 degrees to grill the juiciest steaks you have ever tasted in as little as three minutes. At 1,500 degrees, you can get the perfect sear and create a delicious crust. Visit www.shwankgrills.com to get yours now. That's shwank, S-C-H-W-A-N-K grills.com. No promo code is needed. Climetric is, in my opinion, it is about stimulating the tendon. Do I still have the reflexive capacity to walk down the stairs in the middle of the night and think that there's an extra step at the bottom and have that sudden catching action of being like, "Whoa, do I still have that?" If you want to make something as intense as you possibly can handle, it needs to be as simple as possible. As soon as you increase the complexity of that movement, the intensity is significantly going to drop. The higher intensity movement, that is, more simplistic, is going to serve you better. If you want the most potent stimulus, you do something barefoot on concrete. But we know that when we do jumping in plymetric activities, we can at least maintain the level of where we're at for a lot longer rather than it drying up a little too early. What is our biggest superpower as a human, which is the ability to anticipate? We lose that again. That's something that we've really, truly lose. Welcome. We've got Matt Watson with us today. We're going to talk a little bit about some stuff I don't normally talk about on this channel because we talk a lot about health and stuff, but this is a part of that, in my view. Matt is an expert in something called plyometrics. You're background as a high-level high jumper, maybe gave you some insight into that. You've got a lot of, obviously, training in the strength and conditioning world. Maybe just a real quick highlight of who you are, Matt, for the people who aren't familiar. As you mentioned, background in high jump and track and field, and really from having a great mentor and coach really led me down a journey of trying to dig into the true values of a plyometrics dynamic movement and seeing how conventional strength training is only a small piece of the pie. That's really been, after retiring as a high jumper and actually having to, I was thrown into the deep end and given this group of athletes that I was still an athlete, but I had to become the coach when I meant to all became ill at the time and it was a case of you now need to learn. I went from that until eight years past that now, we're at a stage where I've worked with everyone from pro athletes and Olympians to working with Jen Pop and really making this more about everyone becoming a better and more athletic form of themselves. I was looking at research last night and looking at the statistics at full rates in the elderly population and wondering how I can support and allow people to benefit from the work that I do for later years in life. It's led to me being a strength conditioning coach, consulting with teams and individual athletes in a, I would say, more of a dynamic strength capacity involving speed and power and so on. Let's just give some definitions out of the way. A lot of people, when I think about plyometrics, they refer to this Russian guy by the name of the Vorkashansky that sort of was popularized at back in the maybe 1960s or something like that, but what exactly is a plyometrics? We just have our, so people know what we're talking about. Yeah, it's always the first thing that I lead off with in that a plymetric is in my opinion and I think a few people might have maybe slightly different opinions, but it is about stimulating the tendon and in order to stimulate the tendon best, there requires a landing and a takeoff component to have a full plymetric sequence. Now, Vorkashansky did come up with something really nice actually in one of his books, Super Training, and it was the plymetric landing sequence and it showed airborne based things that are happening within the body, whether that's neurologically, whether that's the muscles firing prior to contact and then the responses as to what happened within the landing sequence. So we had this lengthening and shortening of the tissue and that really is what we're hoping to achieve is stimulating this tissue at a really fast rate and in a lot of, unfortunately the fitness world I think does often bastardize what we're looking to achieve in the performance sector unfortunately, but it's often seen as any form of jumping is a plymetric movement and whilst there is huge benefits to other jumping methods, a true plymetric is something that involves a landing and takeoff. Now, some coaches will tell you that in order for it to be truly plymetric, it needs to be of massive shocking stimulus and I'm in a place now that actually I think that we can broaden our horizons in terms of how intense it needs to be and we can have more sub-maximal or rudimentary forms of plymetrics that still can provide a small stimulus that allows us to get to more intense forms of plymetrics. Yeah, you have dealt with a lot of high performance athletes and to be honest, this is generally where it is where we see D1 college athletes, professional athletes, these are guys are really utilizing but I think it is translating more into the general population, the gen pop and then as an old guy, I'm like, this has a value for older people to or can but it's got to be something you can't just start doing max depth jumps on D1, you got to transition there. And there's people out there a little talk, can I just jump on a rebounder and I think we can discuss that. That's not going to do it in my opinion, a rebounder, it's nice to get the blood flow but it's not going to give you really any plymetric stimulus, is that fair to say? Yeah, I think that again, we've been very constrained as well to this idea that we require a box or an external stimulus that is going to create the high forces for the landing that we're going to receive and actually my thoughts are going more and more to what our class is like a locomotive plymetric. Can we find some space and can you move in that space? Can you bounce from one leg to the other? Can you carry some good speed? Can you use movements that decelerate the body effectively? And that I think decelerating and accelerating is one of the biggest assets that we can have as a human as we move into older ages. So it becomes for me about how can I scale something effectively for everyone and how can everyone have access to being able to do this? And realistically, I think one of the most eye-opening part of coaching and running an online business has been throughout the pandemic. I had people in the Philippines that were doing my performance plymetric programs on the streets of the Philippines on concrete but they just needed some open space and they were able to still achieve fantastic results. It doesn't have to be this perfectly created. You need certain boxes to get certain stimuli. We were actually able to achieve a lot just with body weight and the speed that you carry. Yeah, and obviously you and I got to meet you in Southern California this summer. And of course, I was nursing the quad poles. I couldn't really go hard. But I mean, some of the things that were just striking me is just a simple act of hopping in place on one leg. That's probably one of the most stimulating things you can do. It's because you're doubling that you're having to carry all your way through one limb. Very challenging. I'm humbled how hard it is to hop as a nearly six-year-old man. I'm like, this is embarrassing. But let me ask you, because in this audience right now, I know there's a seven-year-old woman. There's, you know, women have never really been athletic. Maybe spend a lot of their life obese. How do we get those people to where you want to go with this? What does a scaling look like for somebody who's maybe completely sedentary, perhaps older? How do you get those folks engaged in this type of stuff? So one of the big steps for me has been understanding what we can do to create that stretch for the tissue that we're looking to stimulate. So we're looking to get the muscle to stiffen and for that to pull on the tendon. And in order for us to do that, we need more and more force. But we can start from a real basic standpoint. Can you stand on two feet? And let's say that you can oscillate in and out of a short range of a squat and build up the speed in which you oscillate within a real short kind of zone. And it might seem like it seems strange to do it. You can always put your hands on the back of a chair or hold a rail, put your hand against the wall. But can you drop into that? Can you feel comfortable to create this feeling as if you're becoming a little bit bouncier? And we're really looking to build the speed in which the tissue can return from that lengthening and shortening action. So that is a really basic standpoint. Now, where we go with that is based on your own prescription of how does that feel? Am I able to handle that? Is that frightening me to do that? If so, there may be that you need a basic strength protocol to get you to a stage where you could handle that. But all of this should be self-prescribed. So I often get people to pulse on the spot. Like I mentioned, without leaving the ground, and you might go one, two, three, and then do a small baby takeoff. And I'm talking like, just leave the ground and see how that feels. And you can make it soft on the landing. It doesn't have to be really stiff and hard. And it's all about feeling those sensations. Can I handle when I drop into that landing? Or do I feel like everything is going to blow out? Or I just want to disperse the energy or I want something to hold on to to catch me? And that's why I always keep those hand supports there if need be. And then I think if you do have someone that then wants to build up that intensity, then it's about one, two, three, a double hit, one, two, three, a triple hit, then maybe building in. Can I do a couple of repetitive landings? And how does that feel? Because the repetitive landings are going to be the one that it will just continually build and build and build in terms of intensity. And then you might have someone that actually has a little bit more confidence. And if they can joke, can I create a little bit of airtime in between the strides that I do when I jog? Because it's starting to become a little bit more plyometric there. Let me before we go too much into the sort of the prescriptions and stuff. Let's talk about why it might be important for an older person. As an orthopedic surgeon, I saw a lot of little ladies trip over the dog, they break their hip and they're done. So that's the extreme end of that. But what benefit are we gaining by accessing this ability? Just from a pure functional standpoint, let's say for a 50, 67 year old, what could that do for them? I think there's nothing more empowering than the feeling of if I'm sat down and let's say that you've got, let's say you've got a grandchild that's running around the house and you have to stand up and quickly flinch and make a cutting action or accelerate out of a position that you wouldn't necessarily always feel comfortable with. And when you use plyometrics or you use methods that take you beyond what you might do in day to day life, there's a lot to be said for that. We talk about it in sport and training athletes. How can I go beyond the demands of the sport? And it's the same in day to day life. How can I do that? Are there going to be things that I've never done before? I haven't done in the last 20 or 30 years that are going to come up. And I think that is like a most important part of that. It's the same notion of do I still have the reflexive capacity to walk down the stairs in the middle of the night and think that there's an extra step at the bottom and have that sudden catching action and being like, whoa, do I still have that? And plyometrics aren't just about the tissue response, but they are about the neurological reflexive responses to how we initiate those signals from our brain down into the joint that's going to have to activate and flinch and prepare best for unexpected movements. So I think those are, I think that's the first point for me. It's really just feeling like I can do a lot more things. I can be a little more dynamic and athletic. There may be things that come up where I want to react or I have to react. And I don't want those to end with me rupturing in Achilles or something catastrophic like that. There's also a second component to it. And I think that there's a lot to be said with regards to our tendons and joints. And a lot of people that may have a lot of joint pain could also be related to tendonopathies and tendonitis. And once we can get to a stage where we can actually allow this joint to freely move, we have what we class as the intrafusicular matrix, which is the glue-like substance within our tendons. And that's what allows our tendons to glide effectively and to lengthen, short and effectively. And when we don't have that, it feels, we do feel like we have that dried up kind of feeling in a joint, your knees feel creaky, your hips don't feel good to move. So again, there's this constant lengthening and shortening that our tissues really love to constantly go through. And to have that repetition and rhythm to how we do things all becomes, it all has this kind of cyclical nature of creating good flow, whether that's blood flow, whether that is things like the gel-like substance in our tendons. And in turn, I think that it will improve how those joints feel. Obviously, it has to be scaled effectively, but I think that there's a lot to be said with that. Yeah, it's one of the things as an old guy or getting old guy, so to speak. I've noticed it, it's not been hard to maintain strength. It's not been hard to be reasonably endurance-based, but the thing that's really hard is to be able to quickly change directions, quick to hop to jump. Those things go away very quickly. And it's really hard to, but the emphasis has not been on that traditionally. We went through the 1960s, '70s, where everybody was jogging. In the '90s, people started doing some strength training, but no one has really, particularly in the older age groups, outside of a few isolated track and field athletes, has really sort of said, "Hey, it's time to start hopping and jumping and changing direction and doing plyometrics." And I think that's the next frontier for the older population, for those that care to have a vigorous motor bus life. And let me just talk, because you have a program that's called Plios Plus, and I think maybe you have some other things in there. Let's talk about the evolution of that and some of the components of that, because you've got this light-tier, ping-tier, medium-tier, deep-tier stuff. What does that stuff? What does that mean? So, the whole system from Plosplios is, it really is inherited from my coach, Eric Little, who was a Canadian track and field coach, coach Olympians, Commonwealth champions, in a high jump into Cathlon. And his coach, Zoltan Tenke, was a Hungarian coach that had a lot of influences from the Russians back in the late '60s, early '70s. So, there's kind of been this handed-down kind of system that Eric could improve from Zoltan in terms of how it could be used among larger cohorts of athletes. And now, I've taken that on from Eric, and it really is four. I classed them as tears, but it could be looked at as movements or how high or intense that you can use a certain form of plyometrics. So, within all of those tears, we have five movement patterns. We have a two-foot movement, a two-foot split move, split stance movement, a two-foot split exchanging stance movement, and then we have the two single-leg movements, one leg to the other, which we class as bounding, and then hopping on one single leg. And all of those five movements can fit into every tear, and those tears go light tear, which is very rudimentary, quite easy, relaxed, very it should feel that you could do a lot of high repetitions of those movements, and then it scales up into what we class as the medium tear, and the medium was just something that was not maximal, and it wasn't super rudimentary, but it was more sub-maximal. So, we're starting to move a little bit more intent, but you're able to relax a good sprinter that is able to relax their cheeks and maintain maybe light conversation whilst I'm doing these movements. The pink tear, or we class as our maximal intent-based movements, they are a lot more for performance-based athletes, and then we also have our deep tear, and our deep tear is just longer, deeper ranges of motion that isn't necessarily plyometric, but is a lot more about taking the tissue through deeper ranges. So, the perfect example is a long split stance where the front and back foot have good distance between them, and that fact knee is dropping down and almost touching the ground, and you're coming in and out of those actions. A little bit more metabolic in the processes that happen there, but that really becomes a supporting factor to all the really tall, stiff work that we do. Hey folks, it's Dr. Sean Baker. Revolutionize your health with Rivera, struggling with type 2 diabetes, obesity, or autoimmune conditions. Rivera offers a revolutionary approach to treating chronic diseases with personal low-carb nutrition plans, remote biomarker monitoring, and 24/7 access to expert medical providers and coaches. Rivera helps you address the root cause of your health concerns. Be part of the future of health care. Join the waitlist today at Rivera.com and take the first step towards lasting wellness. Yeah, and so it'd be like getting into a squat and pulsing down into a deep squat would be more of a deep tear thing. And again, it's not that the quick contact time, it's more of just moving the muscles through that range of motion type of thing. We see as far as, like I said, again, I want to make this accessible to the average person, and I don't know you do as well, but the volumes that someone might look at in these things, obviously the light tear stuff is more conducive to high volume, the ping tear stuff, you probably have to moderate the volume quite a bit on. How do you say like this person wants to go from couch to how do we get into that? How do we start? Sorry, I just had to take my headphones out there. They were running low on battery. I apologize. So it really is about understanding. So if we have the movements like the light tear, they might seem rudimentary to someone like myself or something within performance, but that light tear or that initial sequence of movements at a very low amplitude still might be quite intense for someone that is, you know, trying to go from couch to something a little more dynamic. So it really is about monitoring fatigue within the set that you're doing. So honestly, you can go with a very simple arbitrary number. We are going to do 10 repetitive two foot movements where you are just bouncing on the spot. And it could be that you're leaving the ground an inch. It could be up to five inches, whatever that might be, whatever feels good for you, but your focus really within this movement is to keep tall. You don't want to flex too much into these movements. So if you are flexing into it, because you can't handle the forces, then you may need to reduce down the intensity of how high you are jumping. And then our focus is to reduce the time that we spend on the ground. So our ground contact time or the time that we spend on the ground is also a really big influencing factor to how much contribution of the tendon we're getting. The longer we spend on the grounds, the more likely it is that we flex at the joints. And actually, the tendon says, I don't like to be stretched like this. Offload this to the muscle and the muscle will take care of it. And where we want to get to is using more tenderness recoil, is the best way to look at it, because the tendon can store and release energy a lot better than the muscle can. Obviously, the muscle is still being used, but it's using a much different way. It becomes that it's a lot more isometrically focused. So it's more statically holding on, whilst the tendon can then be stretched. And the bony end will then stretch the end of the tendon as well. So we are still creating great strength through the muscle when we're fast. But if it becomes too long, then it offloads that tendon and then the muscle will go through that lengthening and shortening phase. So yeah, can you keep that contact low? And can you keep what you feel like to be a relatively similar jump height? And if it feels quite fast and light, you could start to build up a certain volume. But if it starts to then feel like it slows down or reduces in height, then sensationally you can say, "Okay, I'm done." Or you get someone else to observe it. Or you can film yourself and say, "Okay, I can see that within rep 9 or 10, that's when it started to look a little different and fatigue is creeping in there." Realistically, it's pretty safe. Again, if you need hand supports, if you need to hold onto something to the side of you, then do. And when it feels like it's too much, "Okay, cool. I need to really grip on here. Come down, relax, reset." And again, these could potentially take between two to four minutes for a reset of the ATPPC system, which is really our fast twitch energy system that creates these dynamic responses. So it takes a few minutes to get that restoration so that our brain can reset. And then you could try it again. And if it's the case that's set on set, you could see that you're getting worse earlier, that it's the case that you just need to build up a bit more of a capacity to handle more of that volume. But I always say, "Sorry, go on. Go ahead." No, I was going to say, with the two foot stuff, which is the easiest, that provides the most support underneath your center of mass, like jumping rope. Somebody with jumping rope would be similar, right? Because you don't want to have these big long flexions on the knees when you're jumping rope, skipping and bouncing or more bouncing than truly jumping or loading up and going through this. So jumping rope is, it is a good method. The only thing that I think slightly changes it for me is the position that you land. And there's often a lot more of a four foot focus. So you're landing a lot higher up on the foot when you jump rope. Whereas when we do some of these light apply metrics, you might be able to get onto a lot more of the foot, which can create just what feels like a more of a stable base there. So that's maybe why I would take away the idea of a jump rope at first, just to feel some stability. But after a while, that could be a good way to build up that volume. There is also that side of it as well, that when you have that other thing to think about, you're thinking about the jump rope, does that diminish the quality of the landing and what you're doing? But do you know what I often get some people to do is you have you've got to pretend jump rope and whatever it takes for you to feel like, Oh, this feels that rhythm. And sometimes the rope does create that flowing rhythm to it. That could be a nice way to go about it. Yeah, I and for those that don't know, you've got a great Instagram channel with your name on there. And it you just do a really nice job. And one of the things I like about as you talk about simplifying, because you see a lot of people in my feed, because I look at plyometric stuff and you're somebody get a lot of other people's stuff. And it's it becomes very complicated. And I like the fact you're saying, Hey, you don't have to complicate the movements, because when you complicate the movements, you lose the intensity. And you lose the whole purpose of why you're doing it when you're jumping 15 different directions. And so maybe talk about some of that, why? Well, because I see people where they're jumping over 15 different obstacles and they're going six different directions. And there's a waste of time to do that. Yeah, it's a great question. I think the I always show like a spectrum chart that if there are two lines, an intensity is rising in one direction, complexity will increase in the opposite direction. So if you want to make something as intense as you possibly can handle, it needs to be as simple as possible. As soon as you increase the complexity of that movement, the intensity is significantly going to drop. A lot of people think that because it is difficult to do that the intensity is high, but it's not it's often not the case. What happens is when you see someone that is that goes forward over a hurdle, and they go sideways, and then they change to a single leg and go backwards and move forward. And it's all over the show. Ground contact time is first of all the thing that is diminished straight away. They might be able to achieve clearing the hurdle, which is great. But actually, if we're looking at this from a standpoint of gen pop, although there is a fun element to it, you have to realize that the quality of the movement is what's going to truly change and give you the adaptations that you want to improve health styles or whatever you're looking to improve within your life. So I think that just spending a good chunk of time working on the higher intensity movement, that is more simplistic, is going to serve you better. Now, that's not to say that you can do movements where you're moving forwards, you're moving laterally, you're moving backwards. That's totally fine. They're still pretty simplistic. It's all these cuts and changes of directions onto a box off of a box. We don't require this external stimulus all the time to give us this goal-orientated focus. Make the ground the orientated focus and how you react to it. And that is what's going to truly give you the tissue adaptations and the neurological adaptations that you need. Let's see within the first year of training it. Let's talk about the ground a little bit because I've been out there doing this. And sometimes I'll do it on the sidewalk because that's what I have. And people, "Oh, no, you should be doing it on astra-turfism." How much does this surface make a difference? Do we have to ease into harder surfaces or what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, it's always going to be a case that one of my mentors used to say to me, "If you want the most potent stimulus, you do something barefoot on concrete." And it's because there is just less of a yield of that surface. So therefore, the tissue in your body has to deal with it. If the surface is softer, then it's going to become a lot more muscular in focus. So if you want the best biometric stimulus, you would chase a harder surface. But if you're starting out, it is about understanding what is going to give you a certain effect. So you may feel good while you're doing movements on concrete. But the next day, you might not like it as much. So there's the, you have to be aware of what that looks like. So I'll often tell people, if you've got some grass, use some grass. If you've got some turf and you can find turf to use the turf, indoor basketball courts are a nice one as well. But if you can't, you might have a volume that you've been using. Just cut it by 20%. And that normally gives you a kind of safety net in terms of how is it really going to affect me negatively the next day? Can I just turn it down in intensity 5%, 10%. And that's just going to just make sure that it's not going to trip me up the following day or so on. And often it's the case that tendon issues will occur if you're just increasing too much of that volume on too hard of a surface. But realistically, we're amazing animals at adapting. You will get there if you only have hardwood floors or concrete. Yeah, fair enough. And then let me talk about it, because you said you spent time with Rich, and there's ways to measure some of this stuff. And so there's different mats or video cameras and things like that. Talk about, is that useful tool? Can that be a useful tool? And how might someone use those things? Yeah, so we have what are called switch map technologies. And one of my good friends, Rich Benet owns a company called Pliermat. And it is literally a giant light switch. And all it measures is the time in which you are on that light switch or off that light switch. So we have equations and algorithms that measure how long you are in the air. And we can use that to dictate jump height to some degree. And we have formulas. A real prevalent one is the reactive strength index. And we take your contact time, and we divide it by, or we take your jump height and we divide it by your contact time. And that would be doing a test where you are stood on the mat and you jump five to 10 times in a row as high as you can, but as fast on the ground as possible. And that gives us a really good reading as to how effective you are at recoupling or utilizing the energy of falling, and then being able to recoil that energy back up into the air. And that's how your tendons work best, really. So we give what's called a reactive strength score. And great athletes will score a 4.0, but it could go down to us. I had my two-year-old daughter doing it, and she scored a 0.9 or something like that. But it's great. You can literally just step on, and you jump, and it will just continually feed you data onto an app on your phone or onto their little devices, and it's excellent. Obviously, there's apps as well that can do it, but I think what is really good for someone starting out with this is you can constantly see those pieces of data. You can see, when I mentioned earlier, how do I know when to, how much volume I need to do? I can look at a set of data of the contact times, and as soon as it goes over a threshold, the app that Pliomat has, it flashes up red, or it makes a noise and says, "You're too slow. You're too slow, you're too slow, basically." And that's where you can cut the session and understand where fatigue is creeping in, or how you might not be ready for a certain movement and how you're not able to get off the ground quick or produce hot jump height in a certain movement. How much do you think that this is trainable? Obviously, some people genetically are just going to jump higher and faster than others. Someone's going to be a byproduct of how much you weigh, a bigger person who can have a hard time getting off the ground. But all things being equal, and there's a training effect, obviously. But do you think the tissue actually changes its properties over time to allow for greater stiffness quicker turnaround times? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. We have a lot of data that suggests that, longitudinally, we can truly change the quality of the tissue and how it works. So we can improve the extensibility of the tendon, of how well it works. The tendon is a very stiff tissue. And we want that to be able to take it through length and for it to recoil back fast. And there's a lot to be said in older ages, like the collagen with an attendant has a shelf life of 180 to 200 years. But what's inside it, the gel-like substance is what we start to lose. And the gliding of the tendon starts to diminish. But we know that when we do jumping and plyometric activities, we can at least maintain the level of where we're at for a lot longer, rather than it drying up a little too early. Muscular stiffness as well is a huge one that can create what we class as joint stiffness. So the muscle is able to act in a real stiff way to recoil energy through that tendon effectively. And then overall, we have a lot of neurological learning that can come in where we create really what is our biggest superpower as a human, which is the ability to anticipate. And we lose that again, that's something that we've really truly lose. But the best movers in the world, they can preactivate their muscles up to 80% of a maximal voluntary contraction that they might do on an iso-dynamometer, without being on the ground. So whilst they're airborne, they're coming in to hit the ground, and they're already prepared to strike and receive enormous amounts of force. Now, if you look to look at it in a fragile, older population, what's happening is we don't have that anticipation, we don't have the ability to preactivate. And what happens is we hit the ground and then try to react. So again, a lot of these neural responses as well can be built up. And the best way for me to describe it is that we have this highway of neuromuscular kind of responses that we send up and down from our brain to our joints, to our feet, whatever it might be. And we want to strengthen the quality of that highway. And if we don't, we major trauma, if we just don't use it, that we break down, we have this real poor connection of that neural pathway that we're constantly sending signals down. So we lose that ability. And we have the data to show that we are getting better at preactivating and understanding how we're responding to a stimulus. Again, proprioceptive awareness through balance and everything like that, there is a lot to be said through understanding where you are in space. And that's something that we constantly, it constantly diminishes over time. Let me ask you, in the past, I've read, and I think this is probably incorrect now, I think the data doesn't support similar, but there was a basic requirement or like a certain strength requirement before you could even attempt plyometric. Like you had to be able to squat, I don't know, one and a half times your body, before you should ever try doing a plyometric. Is that true? Or can anybody do this regardless of where they're starting? Yeah, so it's really funny because a lot of in typical fashion, within the strength coach world of Instagram and Twitter, everyone bashed it and said, you don't have to squat two times body weight to do this. And it was from an old National Strength and Conditioning Association book from Beechlenel, 2008, I think it was written. And what they actually said is that in order to do a depth jump from 60 or 70 centimeters, and I'm like, do you know what? I'd probably expect you'd need to be pretty strong to be able to do that. So it's probably not a bad thing to go to. So that's where that question of, what do you deem as a plyometric? So if you deem it to be getting someone to be able to land and take off, and it can be in the smallest manner possible, then no, you don't need really any arbitrary number when it comes to a back squat. Now, I think that you can be assessed by a physical therapist. If you're starting out, you could be assessed by a PT or a strength coach, and they can give you a very basic assessment of saying, you know what? It looks like you probably need to do a little bit of strength training. But I honestly think that you could probably do enough bodyweight stuff that would get you ready to move in a very simple dynamic way. So yeah, very arbitrary number. I've seen on your content, it comes through very often this phrase, hopping never leaves a program. And I assume that's referring to more of your advanced athletes, but let's talk about the value of hopping. Why is that such an important thing to aspire to? So the phrase is again, inherited from my coach, Eric, but the a hop. So if we're talking about a hopping action in my world, it is a unilateral unipital action. So you have one limb and you continue to propel yourself along on one limb. So right or left, left, left. Now, what happens is we don't just have gravitate gravitational pull pulling us into the ground and providing us with this really high stimulus. What we have is similar to running, but we have what's called negative foot speed. So the limb constantly cycles round. And the faster we whip it into the ground, the higher the forces and intensities become. Now, that becomes really valuable for us when it comes to understanding how to deal with high breaking actions. And those breaking actions are phenomenal with regards to actually using that breaking force and creating an outgoing take off as well. Again, those pre anticipatory skills and pre activation skills have to be tenfold. It is so fast and so dynamic in the way that it's happening. You have nowhere to hide when it comes to a hopping action. So if you really want to understand it, if you're listening, just stand on the spot like we did Sean, just pick the foot up. Can you hop on one leg and can you pick it up over your ankle? Now, what does it feel like to pick it up over your calf? And you start to see straight away that the higher you pick it up, the faster it whips down. And it becomes this humbling experience for us. So what we do in the similar way that sprint coaches do is that we constantly leave a small portion of hopping in our program every single week of the year. And it keeps that stimulus there. Much like sprinting does, it drops and reduces in our capacity. I think we lose top speeds in something like 10 days. And I think it goes the same for really reactive jumping actions. We start to lose those qualities that are more of the neurological skill side of things within about 10 to 14 days. So it never leaves the program for my athletes. Now I would love for that to be the case for gen pop, but it might not be the case for everyone. But I think that there's some true superpowers in that plymetrics in general, whether and maybe the plus plios program, lighter, deep tier, so on and so forth, how frequently should maybe if you said if you can make a prescription for the general population, let's say we can get rid of the cat and say, how often should we incorporate this type of training? Yeah, so what we provide as well with plus pliers programs is a layout of different programs. Now it depends on who you are and how you can do this stuff. So if you have a heavy schedule of other things, then we might want to spread it out thinly throughout the week. We also might not have the opportunity to do so we might bring it together on a couple of sessions a week. And it might just be the case that we have to figure out how it best fits. So with our tiered system, we have the light tier, which really I think could be in there almost four, five times a week. And I don't think that you need to do masses of volume for that work. I think that actually doing a lot of a little of this often with a high frequency, it's going to serve you really well. It's going to constantly keep that tissue going through those just light, easy ranges of motion really well. And over time, it's going to build this real big volume of landings. And actually, you might see over a 12-week period that you've done thousands of these landings, but actually it's building the tissue qualities up really well. And it's just starting to develop you in a way that people assume that you have to get these big hits little and often. And I've changed my thoughts on that. And I actually think spreading it out through the week is really valuable with quite rudimentary movements. And so where you might go with more intense forms, so you might, let's say you're doing it four times a week, the light tier, the medium stuff you might put in two days a week with those light tier movements. But then you also might do on the opposite days of that when you're not doing the medium tier, you might use deep tier movements. And so that might be a way for you to get in a few sessions through the week that are slightly different. And they might be more opposing than they are constantly doing the same sort of stimulus. That's why we have the deep tier in there as well. But also if you didn't have the time to do it multiple times a week, you can bring it all together and you could do light, medium and some deep tier twice a week. But you're going to need 48, 72 hours recovery in between those. And obviously, monitoring fatigue, if you turn up to doing something again and you are just flat, then it's going to be a day that you need to move on. Okay, it's not going to happen today. I understand that I need to make sure that I'm fresh and I feel bouncy and dynamic when I'm doing this, and it's just not going to work when I'm fatigued. Let me ask you this is just a kind of an interesting thing I've observed. When I have both legs under me and I'm bouncing up and down, getting three, four, five, six inches off the ground, there's a certain field. But if I split my stance, one leg in front, one leg in the back, is it just because I don't have that under the center of the mass that becomes more challenging? What is the point of that? You know, what you look goofy doing it, to be honest, but what is it? What is it? What is the progression there? What are you trying to achieve in that? Yeah, with the with the split stance as well, you, because you're creating a narrower base, there's definitely a higher requirement for stabilizing muscles to do a bit more work for that balance to be a little bit more required, and the proprioceptive quality is going to be there. But also you can start to focus on maybe how you could shift that single leg that's in front with a little bit more of a focus there of let me just feel what it's like for me to get a little bit more through that front leg, and the back leg can just hover behind and support in a way that just gives you a feeling of stability, but isn't necessarily taking the brunt of the load. So it gives us a way to you could stay balanced, but then ultimately, you might want to shift more onto that front foot. And it's a really good way to just ease into more single leg movements. And that then becomes more intense by using limb speed. And what I mean by that is we will we'll use a split stance movement, but then we'll use a split exchanging movement where the front limb is coming forward, and sorry, coming backwards, and the back limb is coming forwards. And as that backbone comes forward, it creates those breaking forces. And it's almost like you're cutting back and changing the direction of that limb moving. And it's an increase in intensity. And it's that one step further, closer to single leg movement. So that's how I progress movements. It's two foot, it's split stance, it's split exchanging movements, and then we would get into single leg bounding. We're talking about the lower extremity. We see a lot of focus on the Achilles 10. And that's probably made about the patella 10. And we've got 10 in throughout our limbs. How do we how do we affect like our quad 10 in our patella 10? Is there benefit to plyometrics on those structures as well? Yeah, you're doing a lot for especially for breaking forces, like those tendons are a lot shorter in range. In comparison to like the Achilles is a propulsive tendon. It is we are using it to propel ourselves along. But the quad and patella, because they're in anteriorly on the front of us, there are going to be a lot more of a figure of breaking. So if you're if you are someone that's older, if I want to be able to catch myself, they those short tendons have to be really good at being stiff and able to stabilize rapidly. So if we're just bouncing on two feet, we're going to get a little dip of our knees coming forward, but we're getting what would be good in those stiffer ranges. And it really teaches us how to control the transition of our center of mass forward. We're able to create that breaking force and catch ourselves. If we don't and we have this soft knee that just we just have no control. Now, what we also preach with the plus ply system with the deep tier is being able to also take those tissues through length at the knee joint and hip joint. So we also have the muscular extensibility and capacity to go there. So that's why we use deeper ranges of motion at speed. So we can use deep range motions with strength stuff. So let's say you're doing a back squat where we're trying to shift things with our system is can you get into those deep ranges, but at speed, at velocity, can you drop into it and handle those forces? And that really is paramount to just general athletic development, whether you're an athlete or whether you are an elderly population, or someone that wants to carry this through into older ages. Yeah, I can see an older person going into a fall. The first thing would be the breaking force from the tendons. And then if that fails, now you've got the yielding ability to slow it down and catching with the muscle. If that also fails, then you hit the ground, then you come to my office with a broken hip. And I got to do all that stuff so I can see where you've got these these various mechanisms. The deep tier, let me get your thoughts on this. I know we've touched on this. There's the knees over toe because the toe is big on stretching getting that big knees over toe stretch. He's doing a little jumping and stuff like that. What would be your what is he doing? What maybe you perhaps disagree with? Because I think it's we all disagree on different things. What are your thoughts on some stuff he shares? It's funny enough, he reached out to me the last couple of months about my deep tier stuff and was asking me questions about it. And I think we like to online, we like to give very one-sided hit of this is our bias. And there might be he may also have kind of beneath the layer of social media, he might also have thoughts on how taking things like the knee joint through excessive ranges of motion for every knee issue probably isn't the way to go about it. So the differences between patella tendonitis and quad tendonitis is there's going to be different ways in which you need to support that. But if someone comes into you and they say, I have knee pain, you would need to mitigate those risks from where that knee pain is happening. So I have some a couple of buddies. One of my one of my buddies Jake tour is a massive patella tendon researcher. And he shows that some of the movements that are done just create shearing forces on the patella that's really going to aggravate her. So it might be in certain times that that could be good for a population, but it also could be pretty negative for that population. So that's how I look at every case that comes to me is different. So if it is a fact pad issue, if it is a like I said, a quarter or patella tendon issue, they're going to be so different. So when it comes to the deep tier stuff for me, I always provide a very different strategy of how we would let's say flex the knee. So there might be movements that we roll through the foot and we do get the shin dropping and big knee flexing angles. But also I know that if someone struggles with a certain issue, I can get them into a split squat front foots elevated. So that shin stays vertical and we just drop down of that back leg and we control how much shearing force is going through the anterior portion of that knee. So there's so many different strategies that I use to mitigate some of those risks. And I can just point people in the direction that I think is going to benefit the most. How do you obviously athletes get injured all the time? I unfortunately periodically do have full pull stuff because I'm pushing try to push myself pretty hard. How do you work around those things within the framework of this system? Obviously it's going to depend on the individual and the any injury. But if you have a general framework of this is how we rehab an injury. It all is, as with most injuries, it's volume and intensity and how they interact. Are you doing too much intense work at too high a volume? And when the injury arises, it is a case of we're going to need basic strength capacities to come back. We're going to need to repair, let's say it's a muscular injury, we're going to need to repair that. But if we're getting catastrophic injuries come in, it's been a big thing and recently released a program on it. And it is taking someone to a point when they have the strength, let's say it's an ACL reconstruction, they have the strength, they're building back the stability, but there might be a depth and a range of motion that they don't like to get into. And they definitely don't like to get into it at speed. So we do a lot of oscillatory based movements with our deep tier that we put someone into a place where they just feel a little uncomfortable. They don't feel pain necessarily, but they don't feel stable there. They don't feel in control there. But we can do movements where we insert a little bit of speed and high volumes within that bandwidth. And we just continually look to grow that bandwidth of where they can go and how much velocity we can put into that bandwidth of range of motion. And that really starts to number one, builds back confidence, and it builds that repetition of saying, actually, I can go there and those neural pathways that have been completely destroyed because of catastrophic trauma, it starts to get remedied and improved. The tissue was obviously going to improve as well there, enormous blood flow we're doing oscillatory based movements, but high repetitions in those uncomfortable ranges, but at a controlled velocity and a scalable velocity is where we go with it and how we attack it. So that really has been one of my kind of best ways to go about it. And we've seen some amazing results because of it. Yeah, the deep steer stuff, which I do, I've got following your stuff and I do that from time. It's less fun. It's so much fun in the deep tier. It's more uncomfortable, which is true, which is probably why you need to do it. How do you let me ask you a question about this, because a lot of everybody's going to have the time to do a full plyometric workout as a standalone. It's usually going to be part of maybe a strength training workout or whatever. How do you time that? Is it something you do at the front of the workout? Do you do it at the end of the workout? How do you usually recommend people do that? It's a great question because we, again, it's been really eye opening working with so many more people being based online now and building a bit of online presences. There really is no one way to do it. I get a lot of people that like to get their dynamic stuff out of the way first. They like to feel best and do it then. But I also have a lot of athletes that they won't do deep tier stuff unless they've done some strength training. So they'll back squat and then they'll go and do their deep tier stuff. To me, that sounds torturous. I don't want to be super fatigued and then try to bounce at the bottom of it, but they like to feel that they've got so much blood flow there. They feel a little more indestructible. They feel really prepared to do that. So it can be the case that you could definitely spend, honestly, five to 10 minutes at the beginning of a session. Or you can, I'll often have people that will do the lights here at the beginning, literally five minutes and then five minutes of the deep tier at the end of a strength workout. And that sandwiches things really nicely there. Also can be paired up really well. So if you want to use some deep tier movements to prepare you to feel better as you drop into a squatting pattern or a split squat, use a set of that, then get into some deep squats. Again, use it again, get back into the second set or do a couple of sets and then get just into your strength training. And there are so many benefits of just a little trial and error. You might do some deep tier movements and then try to squat and go, I've lost like 15% of my output here. But if you're just chasing volume in a strength session, then that's fine. But if you're looking to chase strength, then you're probably not going to use something that's going to deplete you. So there has to be this understanding of how much I'm going to do with it. Is it just to prepare for something or is it something that I'm truly using to get the tissue adaptation that I want? Then if so, how is that going to affect everything else in the session? I think that's really important to just build it into where you feel fits you perfectly. And I've been using light tier movements followed by some deep tier and then I get into some strength movements. And that serves me really well. I feel so good doing like deep heavy lifting after I've got into it a real deeper range. Excellent stuff. Well, now we're just about out of time. Thanks for doing this. We're for people that are interested in learning more, maybe even using one of your programs, where do they go to find any information? Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram, McKinis Watson, M-C-I-N-N-E-S-W-A-T-S-O-N or plusplos.com is where we have all of our programs. We have a subscription and the programs are enormously, if there are so much in there. We also have a returning to dynamic movement program, which is for people that are returning from static rehab and they want to get moving into dynamic movements. And we have a course on the introduction of coaching plyometrics as well. So if you're interested, then please do check them out. And obviously, you can always reach out to me on social media and ask me questions. But yeah, I really appreciate you having me on. It's good to talk shop. And it's nice to talk shop outside of performance. I really enjoy getting into things and having to think like, how would I do this for a larger population of individuals? But there's anything that I can say, just start trying some of these movements. They don't have to look perfect. You just have to start it and just build it into your routine two or three times a week. And I promise you, it will make you feel so good. It's older people with a spring in their step, and this is part of it. It's being bouncing. It's just having that ability to bounce and not break. It's all about that. And our brains love to jump around. Like, I have a two-year-old door and she does not stop jumping around all day long. And she's so happy to be jumping around. And I'm like, there's something in that. We enjoy to do that. So yeah, it's fun bouncing. It is. Anyway, Matt, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Good luck to you. We'll get this out.
